Odalisque

Author: Elen

Parts: 11 - 15

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~Part: 11~

The dog Angelus acquired for Drusilla was a silky King Charles spaniel. He was a little old, and very sweet tempered, and when Dru brushed him he would stand, shivering a little, his tail sweeping back and forth. Willow kept him fed and watered and took care of walking him to do his business. Dru named him Mr. Buttons, because his eyes looked like wet, shiny black buttons.

He let Dru tie ribbons in his hair, dress him in her doll clothes, carry him around slung over her arm, and sleep with him under her chin. When he saw Willow he tended to chase at her, latching onto her skirt to yank on it.

Ingrate, Willow thought as he grabbed her skirt, shaking his head back and forth, a low growl vibrating in his throat. She gave her skirt a tug. "Stop it!" she hissed at him.

Mr. Buttons bared his teeth and tugged harder.

Lucius stopped down gracefully and pinched the little dog's ear hard. He relinquished his grip with a yelp, and raced back down the hall to fling himself against Dru's closed door, scratching at the wood panel and whimpering frantically to be let in.

"Thank you," she said to the vampire, who had since risen to his full height.

She didn't expect a response, or receive one, and continued, down the steps. William had made good on his threat to burn her clothes, and a new wardrobe had been procured. She was wearing a yellow morning dress that gathered below her breasts and fell straight to the ground. He watched her. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she turned left and disappeared from view.

Watching was permitted. He could even speak to her if he wished.

Before he had died, he had thought himself past any desire to hurt her, but he was a vampire, and hurting people came second only to killing them in the order of things he desired. He knew he was not alone in this. Some of the other minions could hardly look at her without their thoughts showing. Lucius liked to think he had a bit more control than that. He liked to watch her. He liked to talk to her. The slight degree of discomfort she had around him wasn't fear, but it was pleasant to witness and feel responsible for creating.

In the midst of a change so profound that Lucius occasionally found himself staring into a middle distance, entranced by the heady feeling of power he now had, the house had a rhythm and demands that had to be met, and he remained a part of that. The four vampires who were lodged on the second floor were at the top of the hierarchy. The minions, of whom he was one, were allowed to sort themselves out with interference that was deliberate, playful, or accidental from above-you could never really tell.

How the girl fit in was that she was off limits, and you had to be careful about ignoring her. Paulus had learned that. She had asked him to carry something for her out of the library and into the salon. The former footman had stared at her for a long moment and very deliberately walked away.

The message was very clear. They were vampires. She was not. They did not have to do anything at the biding of a mere mortal, and would not.

Paulus had disappeared for a day and a half into the dark hole below the kitchen, denied the hunt. William had beaten him, without giving any reason for it, which should have been understood to be unusual. William was nothing if not direct. Darla and Angelus were subtle and cruel. William was brutal and direct.

The way Lucius saw it, they wouldn't ever actually say that the girl had some standing that required respect, obedience, or loyalty. She was human. She was prey. But, at the same time, there was the real possibility of provoking William if he was in a mood to be annoyed, and there was always the possibility that the girl was intent on some task that Darla or Angelus set for her.

Andreas found himself before the Master explaining his failure to render some minor assistance to the girl. Andreas had pointed out that the girl had not told him that the task she had undertaken was on his behalf, and Angelus' attention had switched to her.

"Is that true?" he demanded.

"Yes," she conceded.

"Then how was Andreas to know?" he asked.

She considered that for a moment. "Without asking? Sounds like a riddle to me," she observed, making it clear that she would not make it her problem.

It was the precision in which she spoke that made her position perfectly clear. She could not compel anyone to do anything with a politely worded request, but if they failed to comply they took the risk that they were failing, not her, but the Master. She neatly implied that there was an out-they could ask a relatively simple question before deciding how to proceed. Still, Lucius half expected Angelus to punish her for this, but he simply laughed at her logic and dismissed her with a wave.
~~~*~~~
 

Willow made herself a pot of tea and opened a tin of shortbread that had mysteriously appeared. Long before the family had arrived, arrangements had been made with local merchants for the regular delivery of food, wine and liquor, coal, firewood, ice, and other necessities that reflected the function of a household of the size their numbers indicated. Most of the food left the house to be dispensed to the poor. Twice a week men from the synagogues in the Jewish quarter arrived in the early hours of the morning to take away items that she left for them.

There was a certain amount of danger in this, which ensured that the activity would be conducted with discretion by all involved.

Drusilla consumed nothing but blood. Angelus and Darla enjoyed wine, brandy, sherry, and might sample other luxury goods if the mood struck. William liked to nibble, though his tastes tended to revolve around things that might accompany a good English styled tea. She was the only person in the household that actually required food, and most of the time eating was a chore for her. There was the bother of preparing food for one person, and then the consumption of food that was a constant reminder of the continuation of a life cycle that she was ever conscious of her desire to end.

She took her tea into the library and retrieved the mail placed on a silver salver in the foyer. Wafers were removed to be placed in a section of the rosewood tray where her writing supplies were stored. The mail was then sorted into categories. Calling cards and invitations were stacked for Angelus and Darla to read. The bills from trades people were read over and the sums entered into the ledger for the household expenses and then bundled for the estate agent to deal with.

Her meticulous attention to this task was a way of extending it to consume another chunk of her day.

Invitations to parties had started pouring in immediately after the family had arrived. Angelus and Darla liked to move amongst the best circles. They took subscriptions to the opera and theatre, and Angelus maintained a voluminous correspondence with people he had met and deemed useful over the years.

At mid-day the household began to stir to life. Angelus joined her in the library, and she rose to pour a glass of wine for him, which he sipped while he read through the mail she had set aside for him and wrote the replies that he indicated that she would address for him. Dru wandered in with Mr. Buttons slung under her arm and she dumped the dog in Willow's lap, his sharp toenails digging into her thighs. Angelus frowned at the dog, and at her for her role in saddling them with the dog, and told her to walk the mutt.

She was in the foyer putting her outerwear on when William came down the stairs. Mr. Buttons, in a demonstration of doggy discretion, made sure to put himself on the opposite side of Willow, inadvertently tangling his leash around her skirt, under her coat.

He untangled the leash for her and finished buttoning her coat until the fur collar was snugly secured, the silky fibers tickling her jaw. "When you are done with your walk, I'll expect you upstairs," he told her.

She walked Mr. Buttons. They had a predictable route, twice around the square with a visit to the small park. He was well behaved on their walks, trotting beside her with an eager air of interest in the familiar surroundings that she was unaware that she mirrored, smiling shyly at the accustomed sight of a nanny from one of the neighboring houses whose charges paused to pet Mr. Buttons before going back to their games. Dog walking was a task usually left to servants, so the odd English girl walking her dog had not gone unnoted, and in fact, at times she was observed with great attention by at least one young man who made a point to always walk the park at certain hours of the day.

The temptation to create an opportunity to speak to her was tempered by the presence of his companion. To the casual observer, they were a young man in his mid-twenties, who moved with determination and a pronounced limp, aided by a cane, and a man, perhaps a decade older, who stood ready to offer assistance that was never asked for. The limp was very real. It was the result of a near fatal encounter with a Fiyarl demon in Berlin six months ago in what was meant to be an anthropological exercise that had gone badly when he had gotten too close to the demon he was observing.

He was supposed to have learned a lesson in caution from the experience, but his older companion was ruefully aware of how lightly it was regarded. The girl really wasn't their quarry, but Harry was simply fascinated by her. She had been spotted in Paris and Lisbon, but it was Harry who figured out that she was the same woman, and back tracked through records and notes to find that she had been spotted with the four vampires they were watching at different times, in different places, going back at least six years. She was undeniably human, and possibly, a witch unless her patronage of magic shops in Paris and Lisbon was on behalf of one of the vampires, possibly the mad woman that was rumored to have stunningly accurate visions.

She had rather abruptly disappeared from view about three months ago while the Scourge of Europe was idling in Portugal, and the most obvious conclusion was that she was dead. The four vampires were the Watcher's Counsel's particular interest, so her absence was noted without further inquiry. Once the vampires had been traced to Prague, the two Watchers had been dispatched to observe them.

It was a dangerous business. Other Watchers given similar assignments had disappeared in the past, and for nearly forty years, the Counsel had sealed the records on the Scourge, They moved around too much, and there were more dangerous Masters controlling the vampire populations of major European and Asian cities who demanded more attention. It was believed that the Scourge sprang from the line of Aurelius, headed by a truly ancient and powerful Master vampire who had headquartered himself in London for a century. They represented something of an anomaly, living amongst humans, a quartet loyal only to each other. The minions that they created were simply tools, discarded when they were no longer useful. Building a power base seemed to have no interest to them. They lived like birds of prey, constantly on the hunt, leaving carnage in their wake.

There was a Master in Prague, and the presence of the cadet branch of the Aurelius clan in her territory was a challenge that she had backed away from for the moment, which was bound to cause problems.

Finding the girl in Prague had been a surprise. It suggested that there was more to her presence in the household than the obvious. Harry had immediately posted to London a plan that they take the girl and spirit her to London to be questioned. London had yet to offer a reply to that plan, so they watched her without being too obvious about it. A complete lack of curiosity or attention would have drawn as much attention as not, so it was a fine line they walked as Harry stepped aside on the gravel path, tipping his hat to her as she passed with her dog.

She ducked her head, murmuring a bland greeting in German. The dog's tail wagged and he gave a sharp bark, eyeing Harry's cane with an unmistakable gleam of interest before he lifted his leg.

"Mr. Buttons!" she moaned, mortified, trying to tug the dog away.

Harry laughed heartily, standing slightly behind him, David smiled reassuringly.

"I'm so sorry," she said, having slipped into English, and then realizing her lapse, repeating the apology in German.

"Please don't feel that you need to apologize," Harry said in English, cocking his head as he smiled at her. "It is such a pleasure to hear someone speak English that your dog may consider my walking stick his to-"

"Mr. Wyndham!" David said reprovingly, playing his role perfectly.

"Oh, dear," Harry shook his head, "Now, I'm afraid I must apologize," he said. "I most humbly beg your pardon, dear lady," he said gravely, adding a little bow.

She looked a little flustered, either by the fact that she was talking to two men she had not been introduced to properly, or simply by the fact that she was talking in English. It was hard to know.

David gave her a small bow, "M'am," he said, and she took the moment to urge the dog to move and continued on her way past them.

Harry limped over to a bench to sit for a moment, trying not to look as exhilarated as he felt at having made contact with her. "Pretty little thing," he said blandly, cutting his eyes at David, who looked very annoyed and didn't bother hiding it.

"You ass," he said. "For all you know, she's not to talk to anyone and you are going to get her killed," David Giles told him.

Harry's eyes narrowed. He still had hopes that London would agree to his proposal to take the girl alive and interrogate her.
~~~*~~~
 

Once Mr. Buttons' leash was unsnapped, he took off at a trot, his nose in the air as he sought out Drusilla. In the salon, Darla lifted her head from a book she was reading to watch the former Cook not offer any assistance to Willow as she removed her outerwear. It made him nervous as he wondered if he should take the girl's coat and gloves while his demon rebelled at the notion.

She hung her things up and went up the stairs without taking any notice of his discomfort. She let herself into her room, finding it almost as she left it that morning. The bed was neatly made. A book she was reading rested on the table on what she thought of as her side of the bed. On her pillow was a velvet box.

"Curious?" William asked, his arms sliding around her from behind.

She hadn't heard him come up from behind her, which was deliberate. He liked scaring her like that.

It would have surprised both of them if they knew that the Watchers were speculating about the possibility that they had placed her in any kind of danger by speaking to her.

She looked at the box. From the size and shape of it, it appeared to be jewelry. "Are we going out this evening?" she asked.

He laughed. "Probably. Might take you with us, too," he added, steering her out into the hall, his fingers working the cloth covered buttons at her back until he had loosened them enough to gain access to her exposed back. He steered her down the hall, past Drusilla's door, and through the slightly ajar door to Angelus' room. "We're bored," he told her as she took in the sight before her.

Angelus was sitting in an armchair, naked with Lucius on his knees in front of him, sucking his cock, his hands bound behind him.

Matilde was there too, standing off to one side, watching them. She had that hungry look that minions always seemed to have. William kicked the door shut, making Willow flinch at the sound.

She unbuttoned her sleeves while William finished unbuttoning her dress, smoothing it off her shoulders to slide to the floor. The dress was so loosely fitted that she had not worn stays. William removed her half boots and rolled her stockings down to slip over her feet. She raised her arms to help him take her chemise off. Once she was naked, he kissed the palms of her hands and brought them to his body. By the standards of the day, he was hardly dressed at all, no coat or waistcoat, just a shirt, loosely knotted cravat, braces, trousers, and socks. She worked the knot loose and unwound the cravat.

He took it from her with a thoughtful look, folding it lengthwise between his fingers.

"Take your hair down, pet," he said.

She removed the hairpins with one hand, holding them in her free hand. His hands moved over her, lightly, fingertips grazing her breasts, skimming over her ribs, one hand slipping down to the apex of her thighs to brush against the soft nest of auburn curls there. When she removed the last pin, he took them from her, put them in his pocket, handing her the folded cravat.

She wasn't sure what he wanted her to do with it, so she waited. He ran his fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp, making her shiver as her scalp tingled with the pleasurable pain of having the weight of her hair shifted. His lips brushed her ear. "Cover your eyes," he ordered.

It was the most likely and least frightening of many possibilities. She lifted the cloth cover her eyes and tied it behind her head, tightly, without further instruction.

"Now, finish undressing me," he commanded.

It required concentration and thought. She closed her eyes behind the blindfold, trying to remember exactly what he was wearing. When she had a good mental picture, her hands moved over his chest, seeking the waistband of his trousers, finding the buttons that held it closed. When the waistband was open, her hands moved back to his shoulders to push the braces over his shoulders. She followed their decent on the left side of his body to find the buttons at the cuff of his shirt, unfastening them. His right hand brushed her inner thigh and she automatically opened her legs to him. When he didn't follow up on that she started to bring her feet together, and his foot nudged her leg back.

Her hands moved over him searchingly, finding his right arm, and the brace that had slipped to his upper arm, she move that down to his wrist, slipping it free before returning to his wrist to find the buttons to the cuff of his sleeve while his left hand cupped her breast, his fingers pinching and tugging on her nipple. When she freed his right wrist his hand slid between her legs, his middle finger penetrating her without any preliminaries. Just as abruptly it was gone and the finger he had pushed inside of her was brought to her lips to trace the outline of her upper and lower lip.

"I didn't tell you to stop," he warned her, watching her chest rise and fall unevenly.

Even with his mouth full of cock and his nose buried in the musky, intoxicating scent of the Master, Lucius could smell the rich perfume of the girl's cunt. His cock twitched. The cock in his mouth twitched.

She finished unbuttoning his shirt, tugging it free and sliding it over his shoulders. Having completed that task successfully, William cupped her face in his hands and kissed her mouth lingeringly.

She finished unbuttoning his trousers, pushing them down over his hips, using his body to support herself as she sank to her knees to free one leg from his trousers followed by the sock he wore, and then the other.

"You did that very well, pet," William told her, his hand falling on her head. "Stand up," he ordered. "I want you on the bed. It's behind you. On your knees, with your head down. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," she said, her voice very small, almost childlike.

She found the bed in three steps feeling around as she arranged herself according to his instructions.

With a twist of his hips and a grunt, the Master spilled himself in Lucius' mouth. He waiting impatiently while Lucius swallowed and then licked his semi-hard cock clean, and then pushed him away, snapping his fingers at Matilde, who brought him his lap desk, paper and pencils. William, naked, his erect member bobbing, took a sip of whiskey and lit one of the cheroots he was so fond of, watching his lover. There was a hint of anxiety in his expression.

Angelus glanced at Lucius, who was still sitting at his feet. "Fix me a drink," he ordered in a bored tone of voice, picking up a pencil.

Deprived of sight, Willow tried to make sense of the sounds she heard in the room, which seemed unnaturally loud as she tried to stay still. With her head down, she knew that her ass would be thrust out, her cunt clearly visible to anyone who was in the room. She had lost track of William. Once Matilde and Lucius started moving around, it became too difficult to figure out where everyone was in the room, and for all she knew, Angelus was moving too. The vampires could move with undetectable speed and stealth.

She dug her fingers into the counterpane below her.

The buds of her toes were curled up. Angelus started there, with her cute little feet, slim, with pretty arches, and the curled up toes, indicating a certain amount of tension. He made a mental note to pay attention to her feet as he sketched her in different positions this afternoon. When he got a rough outline completed, he nodded to William who grinned and took a last draw on his cheroot, chased by a mouthful of whiskey.

He pushed her over on her back, an instant later, sliding inside her with a feral growl, braced on his arms, the muscular planes of his chest gleaming in the gaslight, making Lucius' mouth go dry. He had allowed his face to change, amber eyes glowing. To free his hands, he knelt, with his legs under him, his hands lifting her hips. Lucius watched the glistening length of his cock slide out of her, and then disappear within her as his hands forced her back to arch more.

He moved one of her hands to her breast and the other to the soft, springing curls between her legs. The Master watched them intently, his pencil moving, seemingly at random, long, curving lines and hatch marks slowly resolving into a coherent picture. He caught the elegant tension in her neck, and the way her hair fell around her as each thrust shifted her a little on the counterpane.

They weren't quiet, hardly a revelation. The sounds of their coupling were heard in the house with predictable regularity. He was more direct, speaking to her, using his voice as well as his hands to stimulate her. She was less coherent. Color stained her face, from exertion and possibly embarrassment. Their bodies came together wetly, the bed creaked, the Master's pencil scratched softly on paper, her breathless sounds measured out her rising pleasure.

It was monstrous and terrible, tender and beautiful. Nothing like he had imagined.

He felt the flutter of her cunt. Her fingers were rubbing her clit in a slow circular motion that was starting to take her beyond the awkwardness of the moment. She felt a little stiff in his arms, self conscious and worried about doing the wrong thing in front of Angelus. He slid his arms under her back, lifting her, kissing the center of her chest as she wrapped one arm around his shoulders, twisting her hips as she rode his cock with his help. He kissed the upper swell of his breast, his tongue stroking her skin. His fangs sank in, just breaking her skin to taste her, hearing her cry out his name as she came.

He had no more than a sip before he retracted his fangs and licked her broken skin,  the sound of her heart beat loud in his ears. Finding the hand that had been working her clit, he brought it to his mouth, sampling the taste on her fingertips. Once freed from his mouth, her fingers tentatively explored his face.

His hands guided her hips, making her lift up and settle on his cock again, a soft sighing sound escaping her. He turned his face into her palm, kissing it, his lips moved to her wrist. He opened his mouth wider, face changing as he caught her wrist in his teeth, holding it lightly, without breaking her skin, a rumbling purr erupting from his throat as his tongue pressed against her pulse.

Her forehead fell forward, against his jaw, following the shape, her lips sought his throat, imitating his play with her wrist. His head fell back, releasing her wrist, the purr becoming a low frequency growl. She rose and lowered herself on him, getting one foot under her for leverage. One of her hands tangled in his hair, the other counterbalanced her weight, braced over his shoulder as she began to move more confidently.

In his fantasies, Lucius had assigned to her the chilly detachment of the whores that he had known, or the place of the women he had taken since his own change-passive and cringing, glassy eyed with shock as he learned that it was possible to fuck someone to death. His first kill like that had been a tender little redheaded girl that he had found hurrying home shortly after dusk. But, Willow  was wanton, spreading eager kisses over her lover's throat, sucking on his chin as she fucked him, the creamy white ends of the improvised blindfold tangling in the long hair William's hands gathered and sifted through.

The sounds they were making had a certain coherency now. They were sounds each understood and responded to, with caresses and kisses, and changes in the tempo of their bodies coming together. She arched her back to bring her breasts into contact with his chest and his hand followed the arch of her back, resting on the small of her back above her ass, urging her to bear down on him harder with an impatient sound, muffled by their mouths as they kissed passionately.

The bed was the largest in the house, a massive four-poster hung with drapes that could be closed to make a small room. The counterpane was a rich gold brocade. The colors were an homage to the ivory and gold beauty of the true Mistress of the house, but it was hard to imagine that they suited anyone more than the girl wantonly fucking William for the Master's entertainment.

It had become too much for Matilde. She was leaning against the wall beside the sideboard, her simple, drab brown skirt rucked up to her waist, her hand inside her drawers as she fingered herself. The Master paused in his sketching, holding his wineglass up to be refilled. Lucius' hand shook a little, but he managed to pour without spilling a drop.

"You can leave us now, and take that," the Master indicated Matilde, "with you," he smiled. "Since she's so anxious to be fucked, see that she is, by anyone who is willing to rut with her."

Lucius crossed the room, replacing the wine decanter on the table. Suspecting that Matilde's behavior had gotten them both ejected from the room, he wasn't gentle about removing her, feeling cheated.

Angelus set aside his sketchpad and walked over to the bed. From the sound of it, the girl was peaking, her slim body shaking as she reached her second orgasm. William nuzzled her throat, nibbling on her earlobe as her mouth opened, trembling in a soundless cry of completion. He moved in behind his boy, his beautiful seemingly soft, boy. He had never known a creature in life or death that seemed more complete than William. He was willful, and stubborn, and led by his dick, but he drank more fully from life than anyone Angelus knew. He kissed his neck, feeling him tremble. His fingers pinched his nipples, twisting them.

Dru might have sired him, but Angelus had been the one to shape him since Dru was incapable of providing any guidance to her childe. Holding William firmly, with one arm wrapped around his chest, he pushed Willow off of him. William didn't entirely release her, leaning against the arm that restrained him as he eased her down on the mattress, his cock slipping out of her.

Her chest rose and fell rapidly, her sweat dampened body twitching as his cock slid out of her. Angelus ran his thumb over her cunt, marveling at the heat she was giving off. He offered his thumb to William, who accepted it, his hands resting on his lover's thighs to keep her from closing them. Angelus pulled his thumb out of William's mouth, his hand moving to grasp the boy's cock, warm and wet from fucking, pumping it vigorously as he dominated his mouth, With his other hand he cupped his balls, making him groan.

He pushed him down, towards the girl and William took the hint, bracing himself on one arm, caressing her breasts, kissing her mouth, his hips moving sinuously as Angelus stroked his cock with one hand. Reaching between William's thighs, he fondled the lips of Willow's hot, wet cunt, avoiding her clitoris, plunging two fingers into her channel. He moved his fingers, lubricated from the girl's cunt, to William's anus, pushing past the puckered aperture, finding the bulge of his prostate and massaging it roughly as he pumped his cock.

He came with a heartfelt groan, his semen erupting in spurts, splashing over Willow's stomach and breasts as Angelus bit into his neck.

William leaned back against him, shuddering as Angelus licked and sucked on his bite mark, his fingers still pumping slowly in his ass. He slapped Willow's hip, hard enough to get her attention. "Rest break is over, you lazy slut," he said, sounding amused. "Get over here and make yourself useful."

William reached out to her, his hands moving from her legs to bring her to him, sensing some of her confusion and uncertainty at Angelus' lack of detail. His hands cupped her face and he kissed her mouth, his tongue stroking hers.

"That's very sweet. Very romantic," Angelus teased, reaching out to fondle one of her breasts.

William broke off the kiss to look at the older vampire. He smiled suddenly. "Baby? Just like you were when we started, on your knees," he told Willow, pushing her head down towards his cock. Angelus' hand tightened on his cock, nudging it towards her lips. "Suck my cock," he ordered.

Angelus decided to accept the unstated invitation formed by the way the girl was kneeling as she took the head of William's cock into her mouth. He moved around behind her, feeling her tense as he pushed her legs apart. William stroked her hair and her back, making soothing sounds he probably wasn't even aware were coming from his throat.

Angelus eyed her ass, soft, white, beautifully shaped, firm, so, so tempting. He saw William's eyes narrow. He knew better than to refuse him, but he looked angry. Angelus grinned at him, teasing him, though William couldn't be sure of that. His hands gripped Willow's hips and he pushed the head of his cock into her, feeling her seize up at his rough penetration. His cock was a bit thicker than William's, and the unaccustomed girth stretched her, introducing an element of pain that he craved.

She was tucked up neat in her bed when he came home around dawn. Restless, he prowled around the room. She had hung up her yellow dress. In the bathroom she shared with Dru, her rinsed stockings and chemise were neatly hung to dry and the bathtub was clean. He went back into her bedroom and put another log on the fire, stoking the embers, watching the wood catch here and there.

He was feeling something . . . guilt, maybe. He had left her to go out with Angelus and the girls. Left her alone with a couple of resentful minions that would no more help her than . . . sew alter clothes. It didn't feel right to him. He should have at least carried her back to her room, spared her the walk when she was probably barely able to manage it on her own after they'd spent the better part of the day fucking her.

The jewelry box lay unopened on the pillow she normally slept on. He heard Darla's voice in his head taunting him about chocolates and flowers. He should have followed his own instincts. She gave sod all about jewelry. A box of chocolates, a wild flower next to her morning coffee, and a soft word went farther with her. He frowned at the fire and made himself go over to her, sitting on the edge of the bed, stroking her cheek until her eyelashes fluttered and her eyes opened.

"What time is it?" she asked sleepily.

"Dawn," he said. "I just wanted to see you before I went to bed," he told her. "Make sure you were alright," he added.

"Oh," she looked like she didn't know how to begin to answer that. "I'm fine," she said after a long pause.

"I could stay with you, if you like," he offered.

She stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded slowly.

He leaned over and kissed her forehead. "I'll be a few minutes," he said.

~Part: 12~

David Giles stared at his reflection in the mirror. He was forty-five years old and he had married late. His wife, Catherine, was the daughter of a colleague. If he disappeared off the face of the earth, she would have the comfort, if you could call it that, of knowing, more or less, what had happened to him. She and their two children would be taken care of. After he had left his salad days and gotten past the notion that he had to live to the fullest since the next day could be his last, he had gone the other way. The way of safe investments offering a steady return, and frugal living.

Harry was still in the grip of the adventure of the job. The young woman they talked to yesterday, possibly at the risk of her life, was nothing more to him than the means to an end, which David had to agree, had very definite possibilities for enhancing their knowledge of the four vampires dubbed the Scourge of Europe. He didn't care for Harry's notion of capturing her and taking her to London, and hoped that cooler heads would prevail.

Taking her seemed a fairly simple proposition. She walked the dog at least twice a day, and she was always alone. But it wasn’t that simple. Taking a well-dressed woman of means off a street in a respectable neighborhood presented unique problems. The likelihood of well-intentioned interference from the servants or residents of the neighboring homes was extremely high. The authorities would be drawn into the matter, making it more difficult to spirit the girl out of the country. Harry’s plan was simple, a snatch and run for the train station, and then a train bound for a port city and passage to England.

It sounded simple and workable, but there was no reason to believe that the girl would cooperate with them, which meant that she would have to be kept confined or unconscious for the duration of their journey, which would draw attention and slow them down, making it easier for them to be followed.

He understood Harry’s frustration. He had felt it at one time himself. The object of their mission was to observe, record, and report. It was fairly boring, which was why it was work. Pressing too hard, extending too far from their brief was dangerous.

A contact in the Foreign Office had made it possible for them to lodge with a family with connections in Prague. The pattern for the Scourge, or the Fanged Four, as David had started calling them in his head, was to ingratiate themselves with the local gentry and wealthy merchant families. Once that was accomplished, they tended to feed fairly discreetly for a period escalating into a burst of violent blood letting which usually preceded a migration.

Harry had introduced the topic of the English family two streets over with their hostess at dinner, and she was familiar with them, noting that they had been invited to a supper party hosted by a mutual acquaintance, and if Harry wished a formal introduction to the girl they had encountered, she was confident that she could arrange it.

Since he couldn’t kick his junior under the table, David was left to look blandly pleased for his friend.

“Come on, David, old son,” Harry said impatiently. “It’s time for our daily constitutional,” he was worried that he might miss the girl in the park.

David was praying that they would.

~~~*~~~

The Willow that lived in the not real world didn’t believe in coincidence. There was just enough of a breathless note of falsity in the limping young man’s, “We meet again,” greeting that she felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

Her anxiety stemmed solely from being female and relatively alone with two men, one of whom had yet to politely step off the path to allow her to pass. Mr. Buttons gamboled up to him and barked a sharp greeting, his wispy plume of a tail wagging.

“Hello, there . . . Mr. Buttons, I believe,” he said, leaning heavily on the cane as he awkwardly bent to offer his hand to the dog to sniff.

He snatched his hand back hastily. Mr. Buttons' playful impulses ran to snapping at fingers, and once they were retracted, jumping up after them. Confronted with both behaviors, the Englishman stumbled a bit and his friend caught his arm to steady him.

In charity with the spoiled little dog’s bad manners, Willow bit her lower lip to keep the smirk that was forming from becoming too obvious. While the older gentleman steadied his companion, she stepped off the path into the muddied grass to walk around them.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon, Miss,” the older man had the grace to sound embarrassed about her retreat from the path to pass them and continue on her way.

She ignored it, and kept walking, feeling her anger build with each step. She glanced down at herself, her lips thinning. She was wearing her coat over a very proper dress, with gloves and a hat. In a world where clothing meant a lot, she was practically wearing a sign that proclaimed that she was a respectable person. Respectable young women were not approached in public places, and men did not lie in wait for them for casual conversation. There was a part of her who recognized that these rules were a little silly, and deeply foreign, but they were rules that were generally accepted by the rest of the world that she was forced to participate in.

So, what was it about her, in particular, that had inspired this attention? Was it some kind of signal she wasn’t aware of giving, like the so-called gaydar? Did the two Englishmen see her and form conclusions that were approximate to her ‘station’ in life. What was that? Whore-dar?

Her temper was in no way improved when she reached the house to be confronted with a smirking Lucius. No doubt mentally revisiting all that he had been made privy to the prior afternoon. She unsnapped Mr. Buttons' leash and coiled it up in hands that trembled, opening a drawer in the table against the wall and tucking the leash away before removing her gloves.

“Did the pets enjoy their walk?” he asked.

Rage such as she had never felt burst through her. Normally when she got angry, her heart pounded and her mind went a little blank, leaving her to regret the loss of control and her inability to think of anything really mean to say until it was too late. This was different. This was colder and harder, and while it didn't lend her any immediate assistance with a snappy retort, it led her down another path. Before she could stop herself or think about the inadvisability of what she was doing, her hand shot out and she spoke one word, in Latin, in a register she hardly recognized.

The vampire’s eyes widened when he realized that he couldn’t move. At least not a lot.

“Right now, I could open the door, and with one good push, you’d get your one last walk under the sun,” she told him in a voice that shook. “And I strongly suggest that you keep that in mind the next time you decide to refer to me as a pet.”

William had emerged from the salon, catching the end of her angry outburst. He was frowning, walking in a slow circle around the vampire. He cocked his head to one side and put his hand out to test his immobility. Panic was creeping into Lucius’ eyes.

A small smile played on William’s lips. “Nice speech, love, but it was in English. I don’t think he got more than the idea that he was playing with one very irate witch.”

Ignoring Lucius for the moment, he turned to her, his hands moving towards her. She flinched and took a step back. He lifted an eyebrow and moved more deliberately, practically daring her to take a second step. His hands went to the buttons of her coat, working them free for her, his eyes searching her face.

“Has something upset you?” he asked as the bit of color in her face from the walk or her display of temper washed out of her face. She looked upset.

She didn’t know what to make of his rather bland reaction to her use of power that she was almost positive he didn’t know she had at her disposal.

“Yes,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment, as he stepped behind her to ease her shoulders out of the coat.

He held the coat for a second and went back to Lucius, moving the vampire’s arm until it was extended and slightly bent at the elbow. He draped the coat over his arm with a grin. “I don’t think I care for you making my girl angry,” he told Lucius in German. “Lucky for you that she got her own back, isn’t it?”

He offered Willow his arm. “I’ll make you a cup of tea, and you can tell me about what is bothering you,” he suggested with a charming smile. “Does that go away on its own, or do you have to,” he wiggled his fingers in Lucius’ direction.

She made a twisting motion with her hand, like she was taking something back, and the vampire was free. Following his instinct to attack, he lunged at her, and William caught him easily by the throat, his thumb digging in cruelly. “Ah, ah, ah,” he mocked. “I catch you so much as baring a fang at her, and we’ll be beating you out of the rugs for weeks,” he promised, releasing him with a backwards shove. “Hang her coat, will you?” he pulled Willow along with him, down the long hall to the kitchen.

She thought, any moment now. Any moment now he’s going to start thinking about what he just saw, and . . .She stumbled when they left the hand carved wool carpet runner at the flagstone threshold of the kitchen and his free hand went to her waist to steady her. There was a small step down into the kitchen. The house was oriented on a east/west axis. Shutters had been drawn over the kitchen windows to keep sunlight out. When he was sure that she had her balance, he released her and went to turn the gaslights up for her.

He patted a work stool. “Need a boost up, love?” he asked, looking back at her, hovering just inside the door.

Worrying her lower lip, she approached him, he put his hands out with a small smile. Automatically, she rested her hands on his upper arms as he lifted her up to place on the stool. He cupped her chin, his thumb gently freeing her lower lip. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, but he straightened, and tapped the brim of her hat. “Still wearing your hat,” he pointed out. “It’s fetching, but I thought you might want to take it off.”

He walked over to a shelf, retrieved a teakettle, and went to the pump to fill it before setting it on the warm stove, opening one of the jets to heat the water. She removed her hatpin and took the hat off, stabbing the pin back through the crown as she watched him warily. He was locating cups, the teapot, and a tin of tea. The metal ball for steeping the tea was in a drawer of cutlery.

He dangled it. “Always thought these things look like a mace,” he said.

“Morning star,” she corrected. "A mace is a cudgel with spikes. A morning star is attached to a mace . . . it also has spikes . . ." she decided to stop talking.

His eyebrows lifted at that, but he shrugged. “Morning star, then,” he said agreeably, unfastening the catch and filling it with tea leaves. “What happened on your walk?” he asked. Possibly, she was angry about yesterday. She hadn't touched the jewelry box as far as he could tell. Listening to Darla? He should have known better. The plan for the evening had been to go to the opera, and it seemed likely that Willow might go with them when he had bought the necklace, if not she could wear it another time.

“How angry are you?” she needed to know, interrupting his train of thought.

He shrugged snapping the infuser shut and threading the hook through a small hole inside the rim of the teapot feeling like he was forgetting something. “I haven’t decided. One thing at a time. What happened on your walk?”

She looked down at the scarred surface of the wood worktable in front of her. “It wasn’t anything really,” she admitted. “Yesterday, a gentleman spoke to me,” she glanced up at him, shrugging. “It was the dog. He had a cane, and anything that looks remotely tree-like means only one thing to Mr. Buttons,” she said ruefully.

Unexpectedly, William flashed her a conspiratorial smile. He opened a cabinet in search of something to go with the tea. There was a bakery box of biscuit's on the second shelf. “It’s not just trees. The little bastard tried to hump Angelus’ leg yesterday, and Dru was clapping like it was the most wonderful thing she had ever seen saying, ‘do it again’. Darla laughed, so Mr. Buttons lives another day,” he explained.

Willow’s lips turned up in a small smile that quickly faded. She looked down again, her thumb tracing a scorch mark in the wood.

"C'mon, love. It can't be that bad," he said. "Did he drop something on the ground?" he teased. She had what he considered an rather overdeveloped concern about garbage being placed in garbage receptacles.

"No," she looked up at him. “It was,” she frowned, feeling the burn of humiliation again, and feeling a little ridiculous for making so much of it, “Oooh! Surprise? We meet again,” she grimaced. “Just so . . . obvious,” she rolled her eyes, “and, I know . . . I really do know, better than anyone, what I am, but . . . it’s a good neighborhood, and the way I’m dressed? And, how could they know?” she asked the table. Her face felt hot.

Somehow unburdening herself was not making her feel better. He probably thought she was being overly sensitive. “It made me angry.”

He leaned back against the counter, watching her, picturing it, figuring out the parts she wasn’t mentioning. She walked without an escort during the day out of necessity, but also for all of the reasons that she mentioned. She had reason to feel threatened as well as offended by the behavior of the man in the park, and he had every intention of addressing that problem at his earliest opportunity.

Lucius just had the misfortune of making her feel more threatened and offended, and to a certain extent he was mildly amused at the way she had retaliated. On the other hand, it presented another problem.

“Tell me about what happened out there,” he invited. “What was it that you did?”

She fidgeted. “A spell,” she said, and then made a face at the obviousness of that. “It doesn’t work on living things—well, it does, but it stops everything, so they tend to die,” she clarified. She had accidentally killed a rat that way before she figured it out, and you would think that was no big deal, but then there was a rat named Amy, and it was a big deal.

“And, how long have you been able to do that?’ he asked, a little bemused by the guilt that roiled in her expression. What the devil had she killed that had her looking like she had done something awful?

Her eyes lifted to meet his. “Six months?” she sounded less than certain. “We were still in Lisbon, and . . . there were all those rats, from the wharves.”

Ah, a rat. Vermin. That cleared up one point.

He heard the water coming to a boil and turned back to the stove, using a pad to lift the arm of the kettle, pouring the hot water into the teapot. He turned down the jet on the stove and put the lid on the teapot. “What else can you do?”

“What do you mean?”

He shot her a look that was neither amused nor indulgent. It was all business. He gestured to a crock of metal and wood kitchen utensils to her right on the workbench. “Any chance you could send something in there flying across the room.”

Her mouth went dry.

He read the answer in her eyes, and felt fear crawl up his spine. It didn’t set well with him. “Jesus Christ,” he swore. “Are you telling me that if you loose your temper you could stake me?”

She wasn’t telling him that. “I haven’t, have I?”

And, why the hell not? “Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, looking confused and frightened.

“Think of a better answer, pet,” he warned her. “I’m in no mood for word games.”

“I don’t know!” she clenched her hand into a fist. “Don’t you think I’ve ever thought about it? I don’t know. Sometimes I hate you so much that I don’t think I can breath past the way it fills me. You deserve it. You’re evil, and you are cruel, and you don’t give a damn about anything but what you want,” she said, feeling an odd little part of her rejecting this summation without finding anything in particular wrong with any single part of it.

“That’s the sum of it,” he sneered. “So? What’s stopping you?”

“I don’t know,” vehemence made her space each word out. “I just can’t.”

He moved so fast that she had no time to react, one minute she was sitting on the stool working a new groove into the wood with her fingernail, the next moment she was twisted back over the table with his hand on her throat, the other pushing her skirt up and ripping her under things. Then he was shoving two fingers in her, making her arch her back to get away from him, and the pain he was inflicting on her with an utterly cold look on his face. He let up on her throat enough for her to lift her head and then he slammed it down. Only the mass of her hair, pulled up in a bun spared her head from the impact with the table. He withdrew his fingers and rammed them back into her sore passage, making her cry out involuntarily.

“Getting angry, pet?” he taunted. “What do I have to do to make you mad?”

She was going to have more bruises, she thought dimly, feeling her mind go blank with the pain of what he was doing.

“I can fuck you right here. Would that make you mad?” he used his thumb to assault her clitoris, which was also sore from the previous day, and she turned her attention to the plastered ceiling.

“Look at me!” he roared, infuriated by her passivity. “God damn it, I’m getting some answers from you and if I have to beat them out of you, that’s starting to sound like a good day to me.”

She stared at him. She wasn’t going to beg him not to hurt her.

It had been years since she had done anything like it, and he saw it move through her eyes before the thought was translated into action. She jackknifed her body, swinging her leg around to kick him. Hampered by her skirts, he hardly even felt it, but he thrilled to see a bit of fight in her and relaxed his hold on her enough for her to get free. She scrambled back, swinging her legs over the side of the workbench and picking up the first thing to come to hand, a thin, fragile china plate.

She seemed to realize that as weapons went it was ludicrous, but she drew it in towards her chest, her wrist and arm curving around it, and let it fly, spinning with more force than he might have credited her with. He knocked it aside, vaulting over the table after her as she ran towards a butcher block to yank a long carving knife free.

“C’mon, pet,” he motioned to her. “Let’s play,” he invited.

She backed up, eyes darting, looking for an escape route.

“The only way out of here is through me,” he told her.

She backed up another step, feinting left, and throwing her weight against the butcher block to slow him down as it skidded over the glazed brick floor into him. She ran for the kitchen door throwing the first of the bolts, then kicking the floor bolt free and heaving the door open. He got his arm around her waist and flung her  across the room to collide with a brick wall. This time, hair or no, she felt it when her head hit the brick with a sound that made him wonder if he hadn’t really hurt her this time. She slumped to the floor, one hand braced flat on the floor as she tried to shake off the buzzing in her ears.

He shut the door and re-engaged the bolt before walking across the room to retrieve the knife she had dropped.

“You stupid, bitch. There is no such thing as a fair fight,” he told her, hefting the knife and burying two inches of the blade into one of the wood posts that separated sections of the plastered, white washed outer wall.

When he got closer, her free arm came up to shield her head and she cringed against the wall. He pulled her up by the arm she was trying to cover with, figuring that she had had enough. He didn’t understand it. If she had some way to defend herself that he couldn’t counter or match, she was either being incredibly stubborn in refusing to show it to him, or incredibly stupid not to use it. Or, she didn’t really think he meant to hurt her. Or she didn't care. For some reason that bothered him most of all.

He was trying to process what was most likely  when her head fell against his chest. He had no warning. He had automatically reached out to brace her other arm, unwittingly opening his stance up to her. She wasn't a graceful person. She had trouble at times managing the bulk of her skirt, and he was accustomed to catching her before she fell. She kneed him in the groin, and if he had to breathe, he wouldn’t have been able to. As it was, he dropped to his knees and felt like he was going to puke up his crushed testicles.

“You can call me a bitch, or a whore, or pet,” she spat the last at him, and he had the odd thought that he was up on Lucius in that regard. “But, I am not stupid,” she yelled at him.

“I’m mad now,” she spluttered, hands on her hips, seeming more put out about being goaded into losing her temper for a second time in less than an hour than anything else, “Happy?”

She took a cautious step out of his immediate range and concentrated on the knife. It vibrated for a moment as she tried to free it from the wall. Her lips twisted into a snarl and her eyes . . . William wondered if he was imagining it as he cradled his abused balls. Her eyes turned black. He felt something crawl up his spine, part fear, and part . . . lust.

The knife flew out of the wall with enough force that she threw out her other hand to stop it and it hung in the air, quivering. She stared at it for a moment, seemingly perplexed. When she reached out to touch the handle gingerly, the energies collapsed and the knife fell with a clatter that made her jump back with a startled squeak.

They dove for the knife at the same time. She got there first, but he rolled her over on her back, straddling her hips and pinning her wrist to the ground. He looked down at her. She was wearing a dove gray silk banyan with a bit of cording at the notched throat and cuffed sleeves finished with a silver button set with marcasite in a floral pattern. The cording at her throat was repeated on the double-breasted placate of the dress in a stylized floral pattern.

“This is pretty,” he said, watching her chest heave. He leaned forward to rest on his elbow, making sure that he placed it above her free arm, leaving her with a very limited range of motion if she decided she wanted to fight some more. His finger traced the outer edge of her ear. “Willow, my Willow,” he crooned, sounding remarkably affectionate. “What am I going to do with you, sweet?”

“Master William?” Lucius cleared his throat, standing just inside the kitchen threshold.

Cool blue eyes warned her against speaking. ‘Not a word,’ he mouthed, raising his head. “This better be good,” he warned. “What do you want?”

“I heard . . . something . . . fall—“

“Get out,” William spat, and then changed his mind. “No, wait! There’s a pot of tea steeping,” in an abrupt change of mood, he grinned, tugging on Willow’s earlobe. “Yum. Tea!” he teased her. “I’d like that, and a plate of shortbread, and see if you can’t find some chocolates. There’s a tin in my room, on the bureau, I think. See that tea is waiting for us in my witch’s room.”

He bent his head to Willow’s, resting his forehead on hers, winding a loose strand of her hair around his finger as he held her eyes, feeling her rapid, shallow, humid breath against his skin as Lucius transferred the tea things to a tray and left the room, probably cursing both of them.

Relaxing his grip on the wrist holding the knife, he stretched his index finger to reach the blade, opening a cut on the tip of his finger. He released her wrist, as if the idea of her stabbing him really hadn’t ever concerned him. He traced the outline of her lips with his bleeding finger.

She grimaced when she felt the cool, sticky wetness of his blood on her lips. “The problem—your problem, Willow, my Willow, is that you aren’t bloodthirsty enough. Deep down, you’re too soft,” he told her, lifting his head. He kissed her upper lip, savoring the taste of her lips mixed with his blood. “That’s why you let that harlot sell you when she wasn’t crawling between your pretty thighs. That’s why you let me hurt you,” he frowned  at her. “It’s your own fault, you know. You are smart, but you make stupid choices.”

She felt stupid, holding the knife that she wouldn’t use, that would only do a relatively minor injury if he could goad her to use it.

He took the knife from he unresisting grip, making a tsking sound as he sat up, running the flat of the blade over the corded silk between her breasts, miming a stabbing motion. “Far too trusting,” he mocked, throwing the knife.

It stuck in the wall with a satisfying thwack. He slid his hand under her neck and pulled her head up, licking her lower lip clean before he thrust it in her mouth, making her put her hand up to try to push him away.

He stood up, pulling her up with him, smoothing her skirts down while she swayed. “Oh, by the way, that little trick with your knee? Pull a stunt like that again and I’ll give you to Dru with a request that she pluck every single hair from your body from the neck down,” he told her, delving into a matchless arsenal of threats for something non-lethal, painful, and humiliating.

The green of her eyes turned brilliant with angry tears. “God, you’re beautiful,” he said with a tender smile, tucking her hand in the crook of his arm. “The tea ought to be lukewarm by now, just the way you like it,” he pointed out as he steered her through the kitchen, bits of china crunching underfoot.

They walked up the stairs, William keeping up a light dialog. Lucius was coming down the stairs, and William stopped him, urging Willow to continue up the stairs without him. “I’ll be right up,” he said, waiting until he heard her door shut behind her.

The smile left his face. Standing on the same stair, a half a head shorter, he exuded raw power. “Remember our little chat the day you died?”

Lucius felt the skin on the back of his neck tighten. William’s voice dropped nearly to a whisper. “The things that I would do to you, if you ever fail me or mine, will pale in comparison to what you understand about suffering. That includes her. Especially her.”

“I remember,” Lucius managed to say.

“Run and tattle to Angelus or Darla, and you’ll be looking over your shoulder for me for the rest of your un-life to make good on that,” he promised. “Where are they?” he asked.

“S-sleeping,” he stuttered, startled by the whiplash quality of the question.

William appeared to be thinking about that for a moment. Nodding to himself, he continued up the stairs and let himself into Willow’s room, shutting the door behind him.

~Part: 13~

William picked through the box of chocolates that he had asked Lucius to find for their tea, selecting a milk chocolate with a rosette crown. Willow was sitting beside him on the settee in her bedroom. He had removed the half boots she wore to walk in, and she had tucked her stocking clad feet under her. He found one of the hairpins holding her hair up and loosened it as he offered her the chocolate. She still looked a little wary and uncertain, but she took the offered candy from his fingertips and he slid the hairpin out, watching another section of her neat chignon collapse.

He had to be a little careful. The heavy drapes that blocked out the sun were not pulled completely together and she was sitting so that a ray of direct sunlight was hitting the top of her head. It would have been a simple enough thing to nudge her to her feet and have her close the drapes for him, but he liked the way the sunlight drew out the coppery tones in her hair, so he was content to leave it.

He had nibbled on the biscuits transferred from the bakery box to a Delph blue china plate. The small, oblong biscuits folded over a center dotted with raspberry jam were similar to shortbread with a slightly different, lighter texture. Occasionally, when she got bored, Willow entertained herself with baking. Mostly by trial and error she had developed her own recipe for a shortbread-like biscuit with a layer of tart lemon curd over a filling of slightly sour creamed cheese.

She sipped her tea, holding the teacup with both hands, the fingers of her left hand lightly braced against the thin china. A book she was reading lay on the low table next to the tea things. He picked it up and examined the title embossed on the spine, Flatland, by Edwin Abbott, without recognizing the title or author. She read voraciously, and her tastes were far more eclectic than Angelus', who hadn't seemed to notice that Willow's reading habits were starting to influence his.

"Do you get lonely when we leave you here alone?" he asked, thumbing through the book. She had her page marked with a bookmark Dru must have made judging by the needlework. A motif of swirling ivy that might have been stylized rendered by other hands. Dru's clever needle added details, like a mouse peeking out from between two leaves.

Her gaze drifted downward for a moment as she tried to decide how to answer him. "No," she gave a spare shake of her head. It wasn't entirely true, but not a lie either. She couldn't begin to explain the sort of loneliness that she felt.

The house had running water, and she still found herself reaching for the tap to fill a glass, as if it were so simple. The water that ran through the copper pipes in the house was not potable. The hand pumped spring water in the kitchen was the only source of water in the house that was safe to drink. Simple things like that made her feel alone.

Living amongst other humans for two months, with all of her secrets, made her feel alone.

She no longer thought of what William was doing when he was away from the house after sunset. She knew, and she knew that what she could do about it lay on her  conscience, tangled in theories that she had developed over the years. He no longer took her with him when he hunted, and that was a kind of truce between them. Unspoken, and possibly a misunderstanding of his intentions on her part, but she clung to the margins of it.

He watched her a moment longer, mildly surprised when she did not elaborate on the 'no'. It was a word she was not in the habit of using with him.

"We could go out tonight," he offered. "Just the two of us," he clarified, because he thought that she had to know that right now, it was just the two of them. His hand hovered over the chocolates. "What kind was that? The one you just had?"

"Hazelnut, I think," she set the tea cup on its saucer. "I won't be used to help you kill people," she told him.

He shot her a look. "Never occurred to me," he claimed, selecting a heart shaped dark chocolate.

He turned towards her, running his hand down her back, his thumb following the centerline of her spine. When he reached her waist he exerted just enough pressure to make her lean towards him. He made room for her between his legs, shifting around on the small, uncomfortable settee with his left leg bent at the knee, resting against the cushioned back, settling her against his chest with his arm loosely circling her. He offered her the chocolate and she let him feed her, her head falling back into the space between his shoulder and his neck while he played with the decorative buttons and cording down the front of her dress.

"Or we could stay in," he conceded, rubbing his cheek against her soft sun warmed hair. The heat warmed her scent. She was a constant reminder of the best of things lost with daylight. Angelus and Darla would go out. He wasn't so sure about Dru.

With his free hand, he lifted hers, threading his fingers through hers.

He had removed enough hairpins to leave the chignon unbalanced. A hairpin taking the stress of the weight of her hair was digging into her scalp. She reached up to pull it out. Her hair was too long. She would have never let it grow so long left to her own preference in the matter. A century ago, when lice infestation was more commonplace and wigs were in fashion, short hair was practical, at least according to Darla. Back when Matilde was her maid and not just another vampire who periodically looked tempted to eat her, she had trimmed her bangs and evened up the length.

She removed two more hairpins and a length of cotton wrapped in the collected strands of her own hair that came out of her hairbrush. It gave the chignon its shape, and the hair wound around it further disguised it inside the mass of her hair. Once her hair was free, William abandoned his play with her buttons and reached up to push his fingers into the coiled mass of her hair, his fingers rubbing her scalp.

She closed her eyes, resting her forehead against his jaw. Using so much magic took a little out of her. She had been practicing little things for a long time. Like, levitating objects more or less in place. Lifting it no more than a few millimeters and then holding it there. She had practiced on water glasses until she could move a glass without so much as a ripple across the surface of the water. That kind of magic use was soothing, though if she over did it, she felt a little light headed. The surge of magic she had felt go through her in the foyer left her nerve endings tingling in an unpleasant way. She had a pins and needles sensation inside her skull that had not completely faded.

"Tired?" he asked.

She nodded against his jaw.

He laid the hand he was holding on his thigh and unbuttoned the cuffed sleeve of her dress before working the button on the other wrist free. Then he started unbuttoning her dress, working from the throat down the front on each side. She was wearing a light cotton shift beneath the dress, trimmed across the top in lace. His hands shifted to her waist to urge her to sit up and he eased the dress over her shoulders, finding the hook at the loosely gathered waist to release the last impediment to removing the dress.

He stood up, picking up her book, and tucking it under one arm, offering her the support of the other as she stood up and let the dress slide down to lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. She was still wearing her stockings and the voluminous underpants that always made her feel like she was wearing pajamas under her gown, torn at the crotch from his brutal assault. He unknotted the drawstring and pushed them down over her hips before he led her over to the bed, turning it down for her and stacking the pillows.

"You're in a strange mood," she commented when she was all tucked in, her book in her lap.

"I know," a smile ghosted over his lips.
~~~*~~~

Whistling to himself as he made Willow something for dinner, William concluded that living so long with a human was starting to make him weird. The contentment and pleasure that he took in preparing a meal for her, seeing that she was fed, had nothing to do with practicality. It was some sort of bizarre corruption of his need to hunt and feed his . . . childe? Mate? Lover? Something like that. It was like the grooming instinct that made him want to brush her hair, and fuss over her clothes because she should have soft things next to her skin and warm colors and petty luxuries easily afforded.

Seeing what she could do had put him in a contemplative mood. There were reasons why she had not used her abilities against him. Reasons that she couldn't bring herself to acknowledge, perhaps, but no less real. There was a hardheaded, pragmatic part of him that refused to believe what it suggested about how she felt. That was the part of him that found her lack of resolve almost as contemptible as what it implied. There was another part of him, the part that was merrily putting together a hamper for a late night picnic that was convinced that he had discovered another piece of something important about her that made this one of the best days of his un-life.

There was something perversely charming about discovering a metaphorical stake pointed at his unbeating heart in a hand poised to strike.

Dru wandered into the kitchen. The elders were planning to attend the opera tonight. Prague was a city with a musical pedigree that included Smetana and Dvorak. She was playing with a new hairstyle copied from a magazine that depended on creating waves that were held up by hairpins and bisected across the crown with a length of scarf. She had chosen red silk, which set off her dark hair and pale skin perfectly. She wore it with the red velvet gown that he had seen before and an art nouveau ruby necklace.

She took a passing interest in the food he was placing on a plate before curling herself around him, one hand stroking his temple as she stared into his eyes. Charmed, he kissed the end of her nose. "You shame the stars, my love."

Her expression turned thoughtful. She studied the kitchen, her eyes sweeping over the surfaces as if she could read them.

"Miss Willow was naughty," she surmised.

Lucius had cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, but William wasn't surprised that Dru knew they had fought. He pinched her chin. "And that would be mine to deal with, wouldn't it, Dru?" he made it a question.

She was as jealous of his prerogatives as he was, maybe more so. "Yes," she agreed. "Yours, and ours, but only as you wish it."

Her eyes lost focus for a moment and she tilted her head back, the fingers that had been stroking his temple now gracefully pulling at the air. "This will be a night of lovely sounds, like cats all rumbly and growling, and spitting at each other, biting, and tearing."

William grinned at this apt description of the opera-not his favorite entertainment. "I wonder if they'll have orange girls?" he asked. At Covent Garden the orange girls sold fruit, making a tasty after-theatre snack for the hungry vampire while providing a treat for the hungry vampire's lover. He had a fondness for the scent of oranges and loved the way they tasted on Willow's lips and throat when he painted her throat with a section of an orange and drank from her.

Dru kissed the corner of his mouth, patting his cheek, sharing the song in his head without [[without what?]]. "I told you that we would be happy here," she reminded him.
~~~*~~~

Darla, Angelus and Dru had gone out for an evening at the opera, taking the larger of the two carriages, which required a coachman and Lucius to manage. They took Matilde with them as well, mostly for show. Darla liked having a servant or two to hover in the background, lending consequence to her public appearances.

Willow woke up to the sensation of cool lips exploring the back of her knee and lifted one hand to swat at the tickling sensation. William retaliated by pushing the hem of her shift up and kissing the back of her thighs, his hands framing her hips, keeping her from moving too much.

Willow opened her eyes. The room was dark. She had a mildly disoriened feeling, complicated by a fizzy, itchy sensation inside her skull. She wasn't sure what time of day or night it was. She could feel his fingers splay on her skin as he moved up, unerringly finding the sensitive spot above the cleft of her ass and running his tongue over it.

"Wake up," he murmured against her skin.

"I am awake," she told him.

He paused, lifting his head and then tilting it to shake his hair out of his eyes. "Hmm. So you are," he pretended to think about it while she pushed up on one elbow to look at him over her shoulder. "Human," he made it a friendly insult. "You wake up too easily," he complained. "Don't suppose you'd pretend to be asleep?" he asked while his fingers glided over the skin on the inside margin of her hipbone.

Sometimes she did pretend that she was asleep. Not so much when he was coming to bed, but when he stayed the night with her and she woke up to him spooning into her, his hands moving over her. He picked up a lot of her body heat when he slept with her. Sometimes she pretended to sleep and he pretended he wasn't waking her up.

Her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn't had much more than dry toast and chocolate to eat today. William's hand slid between her body and the mattress under her and he rubbed her stomach, dropping a kiss on her shoulder.

"Nearly everyone is out for the evening," he told her. "It's just you and me and . . . the short git . . ."

"Cook?"

"That's the one," William agreed, hanging over her a second. He climbed off of her and the bed. "Have to admire that actually," he said as he went to her wardrobe to get her dressing gown. There was an ivory satin one with quilted lapels that he had seen before and a fairly tatty looking dark blue wool flannel dressing gown. "How did this escape my attention when we were burning ugly dresses?" he wondered.

She couldn't really see what he was holding up for her, it wasn't more than a shape in the dark. She sat up. "I don't know. I wasn't consulted," she said sourly, the 'as usual' was implied.

He brought it to her as she hung her legs over the side of the bed, feeling for her slippers with her feet. She found one and slid her toes into it, yawning, and then found the other slipper, repeating the process, slowly registering that he was standing in front of her, waiting for her to stand up.

She stood and he held the dressing gown for her to slip her arms into. Recognizing the soft, worn warmth of the robe, she yawned again. "It's nice and soft and comfy," she explained.

"Right," he seemed amused. His arms circled her loosely as he fastened the two inside buttons that secured the dressing gown at her waist.

"You have to admire what?" she asked to avoid a discussion of her wardrobe. His sporadic interest in her clothing was never particularly flattering, or it had to do with getting her to take off whatever she was wearing at the moment.

"Hm?" His hands were moving up to cup her breasts. He picked up the trailing thread of his abandoned observation about the vampire who called himself Cook, feeling her fastening the outer buttons to the dressing gown. There was something he admired about the name. It came to him, "The utility. Cook? It's simple, direct, unaffected. No poncey Latin or Greek," he left off handling her breasts for the moment, smoothing the fabric over her shoulders. "Take Angelus, for instance," he rolled his eyes. "I had my little renaming period," he admitted. "Not so long after I was turned," he grinned at the memory, adopting the East End accent that went with it. "Took to calling myself Spike," he said with a certain relish.

"S-spike?" she went still, feeling a few of the cobwebs in her brain scatter.

"Yeah," his voice turned husky as he wound his wrist in her hair, baring her throat. "Mmm. Say it again, sweet," he urged, breathing in her scent, more potent at her throat, where her hair had trapped it behind her ear. The way she stammered his abandoned name was interestingly full of startled tension.

It was too confusing. She wouldn't let herself think of him as Spike. He wasn't Spike. He was William. She hardly knew Spike. She stalled. "Why?"

He misunderstood the question she was asking. He thought she wanted to know why he had started calling himself Spike. For a second he considered telling her the truth, but then abandoned the notion. She knew what he was, and he didn't have to remind her. His arm slid around her waist, pulling her hips against him. He rubbed himself against her in a deliberate way. "Utility," he reminded her, letting her feel him harden against her.

She frowned a little, knowing that he was lying to her, but not sure why. She remembered Giles explaining where the nickname had come from.

He nuzzled her neck, nibbling on her earlobe. "Say it," he growled in her ear.

She really didn't think she could. In a very crazy way it felt . . . wrong. She made herself touch the side of his face, her index finger tracing the unmarred surface of his eyebrow before slipping into his hair. He abandoned her ear to kiss the corner of her eye, using her hair to tug her head back.

"Will?" her soft voice called to him.

A part of him recognized that she was being stubborn, that she didn't want to call him Spike for some reason, and a part of him recognized that she was the only person in the world who had ever called him Will and made him feel singled out by the silky sound of her voice wrapped around one syllable.

It made him want to kiss her forehead and her cheeks and the space beneath her eyes and every little place on her face that his hands wanted to touch. There was time for that. She had just woken up and she was still sleepy, and he knew from experience that as soon as she really woke up she would want to wash her face and clean her teeth and eat something. She would be distracted. He unwound her hair from his wrist and kissed her upper lip, his tongue flicking out to graze the crisp upper bow of her lip, feeling the dryness of her skin where she had drooled a little in her sleep.

Drooling upside down. It was only something she could manage. He'd find her sleeping sometimes with her head tucked into her chin and the top of her head pushed in between pillows with an armful of bedding gathered under her against her chest. It looked too awkward for sleep, but she did it, and did not like being shifted one bit. He had tried to untangle her once and she had, without waking up, held on to the bedding and muttered a fierce, "No! Mine!"

"Go do your bathroom stuff," he said, releasing her.
~~~*~~~

He found the minion called Cook sitting in the front hall, looking bored out of his mind with guard duty. Barrier wards or no, Angelus was strict about keeping someone on watch at all hours. It was hard to place his age. He was a small, compact man with thinning hair and an unlined round face that looked almost innocent even when his demon was in the forefront.

Earlier William had an idea about taking Willow out for a late night picnic, but he opened the front door and stepped out to gauge the temperature and the weather. It had turned cool and damp, and while that didn't bother him, he knew that it was too chilly for her. He changed his mind about the picnic. It was an idea for another night.

He set the younger vampire to work making dinner for Willow. He made crepes with spinach and a white sauce and chicken, cut into medallions, lightly seasoned, and seared in a frying pan.

He told Willow to come down to the kitchen when she was done performing her ablutions. She padded in, still in her dressing gown and slippers, with her hair down and loose around her shoulders. She hesitated for a moment, her eyes scanning the room for evidence of their earlier fight, her gaze flicking to the vampire at the stove.

"It smells good," she offered gamely, switching to German, so William knew the observation was not entirely for his benefit.

"I wouldn't know," Cook answered. He dipped his pinkie into the white sauce and tasted it, frowning. "Nothing smells or tastes the same. Makes it hard to cook," he admitted.

For some reason, this observation piqued her interest. William poured a glass of wine for her, sitting on the stool he had lifted her up on earlier that day.

She made her way over to a cabinet to retrieve an earthenware cup and then to the sink to work the pump with an intent expression on her face. "Is it like food doesn't taste like much of anything, or is it like your sense of taste is more acute?"

The younger vampire gave her a startled sideways look as she emptied the contents of a headache powder into the cup. When he wasn't dead and was actually a cook, they had talked, probably a bit more than anyone knew. She didn't have to talk to him. He was a cook, not a chef. Food was a funny thing. People talk about food, and the kitchen was a comfortable place. Much too big, in his estimation, but he had learned to cook in galley kitchens on the ships that sailed on the Vltana River and in taverns on the quayside.

He gave an internal shrug at the odd question. "It tastes like food, but it's like tasting food when you're not hungry, or when you want something else."

She let the headache powder dissolve, swishing the water in the half-full cup. "Smell and taste are connected. I thought it might have something to do with smell," she explained. "Like, cheese? Cheese is good. Stinky cheese is . . . eeew!"

William grinned. "Stilton isn't stinky," he inserted.

"Hmpht," Willow snorted. "It's vile," she shuddered, and then drank down her headache medicine, grimacing.

She washed and rinsed the cup, drying it off before returning it to its place in the cupboard. "Is there anything I can help with?" she asked.

For Cook it was like déjà vu, except that the moment that he had experienced in the past came across as somewhat incomplete. It had made him nervous then, when she was the mistress of the house and he was . . . someone she really shouldn't be talking to even if she didn't seem to know that. Now that she was, more or less, reconciled in his mind as the mistress of the vampire watching them, he had the same feeling. She shouldn't be talking to him. The skin on the back of his neck tightened. She wasn't standing that close to him, but he could smell her, distinct from the cooking odors right in front of him on the stove. She smelled like fresh water and milled soap and something warm and rich. It was a smell that was utterly unlike fresh bread baking or a chocolate soufflé rising, but connected in a way those remembered scents had appealed to him.

"Come over here and drink your wine, pet," William called her away.

Cook breathed a sigh of relief when he felt her move towards the workbench. William didn't give up the seat to her, he opened his legs to make a space for her and let his arm rest on her waist when she came to stand beside him at the workbench.

She ate there at the table while Cook cleaned up, scrubbing the skillet, crepe pan, mixing bowl, and the copper bottomed sauce pan as well as the more delicate tea cups and dishes that had been used earlier. She didn't eat all of the chicken, reserving a portion of it that, after she finished her dinner, went into one of the shallow dishes reserved for the dog. She crumbled the meat with her fingers into smaller pieces, rinsing her hands, and wiping them off on a towel.

Cook had resumed his post in the hall when they left the kitchen. He watched them go back upstairs, quietly mulling over the odd relationship.

Mr. Buttons was dozing when Willow let herself into Dru's room to feed him. He had a doggie bed that Dru had made. Angelus was the self-acknowledged artist of the family, but Willow thought Dru surpassed him in most respects. Her needlework was stunning, and she had a way of making things out of nothing that Willow found impressive. The doggie bed had started life as a doll's house. It was one of the forgotten bits of someone else's life that had been found in the attic. Dru had gutted the interior and made a purple cushion finished in a thick section of gold braid that probably belonged to a drapery pull. The interior was elaborately re-painted with an outdoor scene that was rendered in a primitive style. The trees were chunky and squat, dominating the misshapen hills that had been painted in. The windows were inside the hills and trees, the small glass panes painted across without any break.

She refilled his water bowl while he ate and spent a few minutes playing with his silky ears and lightly scratching his small domed head while he settled down again on his pillow to sleep. The headache powder had dispelled the last of her headache, but the wine on top of it made her feel a little lightheaded. When the dog was asleep, she picked up the empty dish he had fed from and took it into the bathroom she shared with Dru to wash it in the sink. She caught herself staring at her own reflection in the mirror, and frowned at the spaciness in her expression. She probably could have managed the headache without the headache powder. She knew they were a little dangerous, especially on top of several glasses of wine. The strength and potency of the medication varied and it was laced with opium, which was not yet widely understood to be addictive.

She dropped the dish into the sink when William's hands slid up her sides. She couldn't see him in the mirror, given his lack of reflection, and she hadn't heard him enter the bathroom from her room.

"Scared you?" he sounded smug.

She shut off the tap. "You're a credit to vampires everywhere," she said, unintentionally waspish.

It made him laugh. "And you, love, are higher than a kite," his voice was a contented purr in her ear. "Look at you," he bade her. One arm moved around her waist to hold her while he probed the back of her head.

When he saw her taking the headache powder it occurred to him that she might be more hurt than she was letting on. He had flung her across the kitchen and she had taken a good deal of the impact across her shoulders and the back of her head.

She stared at herself in the mirror, feeling him against her without seeing him, taking in her slightly dazed expression. She could see her hair moving and knew that it was from the pressure of his fingers. She closed her eyes. "It's making me dizzy," she protested.

He made a sound of agreement in his throat. "Sometimes you do that to me too," he told her. "I look at you, and it makes me feel like I can feel the ground moving under me."

With her eyes closed, she could appreciate the sentiment. She opened her eyes, avoiding the mirror, turning her head towards him. "Can you?" she asked.

"Can I what?"

"Can you feel the ground moving?" she asked. "It is. It's always moving. Can you feel it?"

He rested his forehead against hers. There was a slightly swollen spot on the back of her head, but her skin wasn't broken and he didn't think it was anything serious. He thought about how to answer her question. "In a way, I guess. It's more like you can almost hear it. After the sun goes down, and the ground starts to warm up as it gives up the heat," his hand curled around her head to trace the shape of her ear. She had the prettiest ears. Small, neat, delicate, terminating in petal soft earlobes.

"What does it sound like?"

That was impossible to explain. It sounded like nothing and everything, and it was as unique to the day as the tracery of tiny lines across the palm of a human hand. He had a solid grounding in the classics at Winchester. He had been enchanted by the power of ancient religions so deeply connected to the mysteries of the natural world. He had sat in the garden of his parents' home in London on the rare clear night and stared at the face of the moon and felt that he understood perfectly how it held the graven image of a woman's face, an object of veneration for thousands of years.

He felt the need to worship it. He saw that face in the outlines of Dru's face, raised to the night sky when he emerged from his own grave with the detritus of his coffin and the scattered bones of what he vaguely understood to be his infant sister scattered around him. It had made him pause, half in and half out of his grave.

He had never thought of himself as being preoccupied with death when he was alive, though looking back on it, he supposed that to a certain extent, he was. The deaths he remembered were of women. His sister, Caroline, who had lived less than two years, and his favorite aunt, Merry who had died Christmas day when he was thirteen, and his mother who had been dying for so long that she seemed, even now, poised at the cusp of life and death. Even to him, and he had killed her. His father's death when he was twenty-two had been a more significant event, freeing him from expectations he was bound to disappoint, and handing him responsibilities that he had accepted gladly because they afforded him the opportunity to be in charge of other people's problems.

He looked into the unfocused eyes of the woman he held, hearing her heart pushing blood through her body, and the sound of her breathing while she waited for his answer. "I'll listen to it for you sometime and try to describe it," he promised.
~~~*~~~

The domed ceiling of the opera house had Drusilla's attention. In her lap, her needle flashed as she made a pattern of it with blue thread in a square of a white cotton handkerchief that she had snapped into an embroidery frame carried in Matilde's large bag. The handkerchief was one of William's that she had embroidered with a repeating pattern of their interlocking initials around the graceful branches of a weeping willow in a white on white monochromatic pattern in the corners. The work she was doing now was a pattern piece. She thought that the medallion of the domed ceiling would make a good pattern for a seat cover cushion on the shield backed chairs in the seldom used dining room, or possibly as a theme for a larger medallion on the center of a counterpane.

She paused for a moment as the curving sweep of the D representing her tried to find a space within the slanting bars of two Ws, becoming a bracket, a bowl, an arch, each image collapsing. A small, distressed sound escaped her and Angelus tore his attention away from the stage long enough to take the hand she had inadvertently pricked with her needle to squeeze warningly.

Daddy would be very unhappy if she spoiled his evening. Not unhappy in a good way, but in a go to your room alone way.

Darla was watching the occupants of the other boxes. She didn't need opera glasses for this pursuit, but she used them anyway. The opera glasses were like a domino in a masquerade party, disguising interest and expression. They were seated in the second tier of boxes that circled the opera house, on the left wing, which exposed a great deal of the gallery to her view, though it did not provide cover for her lack of attention for the action on the stage. She wasn't alone in her inattention. Half the assembled audience was similarly occupied.

Only Angelus, and to a lesser extent Lucius, were paying attention to the opera. Standing at attention at the back of the box next to a sideboard laid in with chilled champagne, Lucius felt almost dizzy. The music demanded his attention, but vampiric hearing being what it was, he couldn't quite block out the hum of human voices coming from the boxes and the floor below. A hundred whispers, hushed conversations, and the sounds of people breathing, their hearts beating in different time-it made his head swim.

Matilde was leaning against the wall. She had spent most of the last day and a half 'enjoying' the attention of the four male minions. Her resentment of Lucius was growing. Darla, the oldest and most powerful of the four vampires they followed had turned her. William, who was clearly the least of them, had made Lucius and still Lucius was the favorite. She was slighted. Darla was slighted, even if she did not appear to acknowledge it. ~~~*~~~
 

His concession to smoking in her room was to open a window and to get a fire started in the fireplace. Willow watched the flames lick across the wood. She needed the cool, damp night air to clear the fuzziness in her head. The combination of wine and the headache powder had left her thirsty. William had brought another bottle of wine up from the kitchen while she had been feeding Mr. Buttons.

The dimensions of the bedroom were nagging at her. The room was wider than deep, and the fireplace was on the outer wall flanked by windows that faced the garden. It seemed misplaced to her. The fireplace should have been on the wall that was to the left of the bedroom door, or on the wall facing that wall. Placed as it was, with her bed facing it and the conversation area created by the settee and an armchair in front of the fireplace, it left a mass of furniture in the center of the room.

Her wardrobe and dressing table were to their left, when they probably should have been placed on the right, closer to the bathroom door.

Since the fireplace couldn't be moved, it made more sense to move the furniture, but she had never gotten around to it, being more preoccupied with sorting out the other rooms in the house. William's little used room across the hall from hers had the fireplace at the long end of the room, so while the bed was in a mirror image of her room in terms of placement, the furnishings were more balanced.

She sipped the wine. He had a piece of her hair between his fingers that he wound around his index finger, smoothing it with the pad of his thumb before unwinding it, letting it slip through his fingers before starting the process all over again. She was sitting on the floor, at his feet. He had taken off his boots and was slouched in the armchair with one leg propped on the arm. She could feel the shape of his other leg from the knee down against her back.

When he said earlier that they could go out or stay in, she hadn't expected a quiet evening as the outcome of either choice.

William let the section of her hair he was playing with slip from his fingers. Her eyes were half closed, lending a bit of mystery to her face as the firelight played across it, warming the ivory tones of her skin. She had a bit of a widow's peak that was obscured by the bangs that had come into fashion. He smoothed her hair back from her forehead to find it, smoothing his thumb over it.

"I can feel your head vibrating," he teased. "What are you thinking about?"

"Rearranging the furniture," was her answer. "This room is all out of balance," she started to elaborate.

Rearranging furniture wasn't a topic that interested him, and he knew that she would go on about it at length given the opportunity. "That's not very flattering, pet," he chided.

She looked up at him.

When she turned her head toward him he followed the motion, his fingertips ghosting over the contours of her face. She had always been pretty. Easy to imagine, despite her background, in the life he had left without a single regret. A pretty girl with a face too childishly rounded for a cameo against the carnelian of her hair. Idiot that he was then, he would have noticed her for all the wrong reasons. The echo of his own social awkwardness would have made him uncomfortable. She had lost the lingering baby fat and the delicate bone structure of her face was more obvious. At times she looked almost plain, and then the light would hit her face in a certain way, and she was breathtaking.

He watched as she adjusted to the notion of shackling her mind to the business of pleasing him. She was giving up something in the process and it was there, easily read, a flash of disappointment and hurt that might have been overlooked. She didn't dwell on it, dismissing her own reaction without comment.

Pleasing him was her business. It was the coin of the realm that existed between them, by his design. Pleasing him was the roof over her head and the food in her stomach. It was the warm, pretty, expensive things that clothed her body. All of which he or Angelus, or Darla provided because it was what was expected. After she survived the first few months with him, nothing less would have done. It was nothing if not practical, and ultimately the only kindness she was ever offered. None of which moved her in the least.

She didn't care about the clothes. She had worn the pearl choker that he had brought for her from Vienna once because he had fastened it around her neck. She probably could have lived anywhere, if not very long or very well. Living long or well never seemed to inform her behavior. The coin she treasured was kindness and he offered it to her knowing that it was allowed because ultimately it was the greatest of all the cruelties that she would endure. He was kind and she made too much of that kindness.

She shifted around on the floor, kneeling at his feet, her hand coming to rest on his thigh, her thumb smoothing the fabric beneath her fingers in a caress that was a prelude to more intimate touching. He knew that he should let her do this, and he wanted it. He caught her chin in his fingers instead, holding her unfocused gaze. The medication and alcohol in her system were still effecting her.

He had no real notion of why she wanted to talk about rearranging furniture with him. It was a subject that Darla or Angelus might have taken unfeigned interest in and that Dru would have made into a game. His thoughts on furniture ran to 'comfortable spot to rest my arse' and not much further.

She was still holding her wine glass in her free hand, half forgotten, the bowl of the glass tipping at a precarious angle. He leaned forward from the waist to take it from her. "Are you comfortable there, on the floor?" he asked, stalling. The windows were letting in a draft. "I'd invite you up here," he gestured to his lap, "but," he waved the cheroot he held between his fingers, "I know you don't like breathing my smoke."

The gaslights were off, leaving the room lit only by the fireplace. "The fire is keeping me warm."

Her hand moved up his thigh.

"What do you want to do with the furniture?" he asked. It was too abrupt. She blinked, looking startled by the question. He had a mental image of himself fending off her advances by indulging her desire to talk about furniture that was wrong and strangely apt all at once.

"You want to talk about the furniture?"

He flicked ash in the general direction of the saucer that he was using as an ashtray, feeling mildly irritated. He really didn't want to talk about the furniture, but she said it like it was mind boggling that he would want to talk about furniture. It sounded like something Darla would say, except that Willow hadn't managed to imply at the same time that he had been raised in a barn, which, in point of fact, he had not. Unlike Darla. God only knew what she had been raised in.

He took a drag on the cheroot, held the smoke in for a moment, and let it out in a slow stream, watching her the whole time. "I think you brought it up," he said testily.

She sat back on her heels, reaching for the wine glass he was still holding. He relinquished it to her grip. "I was thinking about moving things," she began. "Everything is bunched up in the middle of the room. If I moved the bed to that wall," she gestured behind them, "and moved the wardrobe and the dressing table over to the wall by the bathroom, that would make it all fit better," she  explained, a slight frown appearing.

He followed all of it. "But, you'd have a big empty space along the hallway wall," he pointed out, thinking that it was the reason for the frown, that she had figured that out.

"I didn't think of that until now," she admitted, sounding like she was now annoyed with herself for bringing it up.

He could see the 'never mind' forming on her lips, and laid his finger across them. "Move the wardrobe and the dressing table and then move the settee and the chair to the corner by the window. It will give you a nice place to read during the day," he suggested. He frowned at the settee. Personally, it was not his favorite piece of furniture, failing his comfortable place to rest his arse test. A settee was essentially a bench, no matter how much you padded it or dressed it up in upholstery fabric. As soon as you found a position you could sink into, you were bound to sink into a hard surface that wasn't going to budge. The settee in the salon wasn't horrible-it was an inducement to good posture, but it was also reasonably large. The one in Willow's room seated two and its chief purpose seemed to be decorative.

"You should have something like a chaise lounge for your bedroom," he said. "I'd have one, but it's too . . . boudoir-ish for me," he claimed with a small smile. "I'll talk to Lucius about having the furniture moved," he offered.

Darla folded her opera glasses and handed them to Matilde as Lucius opened the bottle of champagne. Now that the house lights were coming up, Dru was putting her embroidery hoop away, flexing her long fingered hands. Angelus handed Darla a champagne glass from the tray that Lucius was holding.

The intermission was twenty minutes long. Enough time for people to move around, stretch their legs, enjoy a drink, and mingle in the lobbies and concourses or visit friends in their boxes. Darla hated this part of the evening almost as much as she loved it. The moments between being in the box, without visitors, and the arrival of the first acquaintance made her feel nervous. Angelus came to the opera for the music. She came for the whole thing. The lavishly painted ceiling, the glittering chandelier hanging like a pendant, the costumes, the clothing, the jewels, the mingling at intermission and after the performance all pleased her. The orchestra played through the intermission while voices rose to fill the space under the domed ceiling.

Their first visitor was an English girl accompanied by her mother. They were the daughter and wife of a member of the British legation in Prague, met at a reception at the legation. The daughter remembered Dru, and greeted her warmly. Wolfaert Adorne, a Belgian representing his family's banking firm in Prague that Angelus was cultivating, joined them. Wolfaert in turn introduced them to Alesso Neri and his wife, Isabella, and the box was almost too full. Lucius filled glasses and offered a tray of canapés. ~~~*~~~
 

Willow tipped her head back to catch the last drop of wine from her glass. For a second William thought she was going to lick the rim of the glass. Instead she held it up for him to see. "Empty. More, please?" she asked sweetly.

"Don't you think you've had enough?"

"I'm still thirsty," she argued. Thirst trumps potential drunkenness.

"Switch to water, then," he suggested.

She frowned at him. "Too far away," she held onto his leg as she pulled herself off the floor.

"There is a tap in the bathroom," he pointed out.

"Says the vampire," she shook her head. "Dysentery."

"Ah, Paris?" he placed the episode. He had no idea if tap water was safe to drink or not, but Willow was adamant that it was not. She drank the spring water from the pump in the kitchen. "The kitchen is downstairs . . . says the vampire that has to go out to drink when he is thirsty," he took the bottle from her and filled her wine glass a little more than half full.

She gave him a sidelong look and thanked him.

When he returned the bottle to the table she handed him the replenished glass and went over to the wardrobe to pull out a blanket folded into a neat square. She unfurled it in front of the fire and settled back down at his feet.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"The rug is wool," she pointed out. "It's scratchy."

She reached for her glass, but he held it back, studying her upturned face. "Are you getting drunk?"

"Possibly," she answered gravely, a glint of humor flashing in her eyes. "If I throw up, it will remove all doubt."

That made him laugh and he let her take the wine glass from him.

"You could come down here too," she invited, kicking off her slippers and pushing her bare feet into the blanket. He had picked up one of a half dozen cheroots that he had brought with him from his room while she was feeding the dog. "Or not," she said hastily. "You look comfy up there."

He rose to go to the fireplace, taking one of the long matches in the brass holder on the mantel to get a light. He eyed the long, thin seat cushion on the settee. Might be useful for something, he thought. He could feel her watching him. Having lost his leg to lean against, she had pulled her knees up and had one arm wrapped loosely around them. She sipped her wine, licking the residue off of her lower lip.

He had gone out earlier, right after sundown, while Willow was still sleeping. With no particular destination in mind, he had gone to the park. A sign posted at the gate noted that the park was closed between the hours of nine in the evening and six in the morning. At dusk it was largely empty. The park occupied a space that was the equivalent of two city blocks and in addition to the walking paths, paved in brick with a repeating diamond shaped pattern, there was a groomed trail for riding, and a spring fed pond with a pink sandstone pavilion that was probably modeled on the Vladislav Hall in Prague Castle.

He left the park by the north gate and caught a streetcar, seeking out a tobacco shop he was patronizing. The proprietor talked him into a pack of hand rolled Turkish cigarettes. They felt a bit odd in his hand, but they were easier to carry around than the cheroots he had been smoking for the last decade. He had passed the time with a bit of window shopping and made a quick meal of a prosperous looking bloke, relieving him of his wallet before making his way back to the house in time to see Dru off to the opera, looking utterly smashing.

Working one handed while he smoked, he unbuttoned the waistcoat he was still wearing and dropped it over the arm of the settee. Earlier that evening he had rolled his shirtsleeves up nearly to his elbows and gotten rid of the annoyingly stiff shirt collar that buttoned in around the neck of his shirt. When he had enough of the cheroot, which tasted too sweet after the Turkish cigarettes he had smoked earlier, the balance of the cheroot went into the fire. He took the cushion from the bench seat and placed it on the floor.

While he made himself comfortable, lying on the blanket she had spread out, his head resting on the cushion, Willow turned, sitting at a right angle to him, using the armchair, now at her back to rest against. Her feet were near enough to his hip that he could reach out and wrap his fingers around her ankle. He closed his eyes, listening to the wood hiss and crackle in the fireplace as his fingers moved over her ankle, finding the pulse there, under her skin. His fingers strayed, tracing the curving arch of her foot, feeling the muscles tighten under his fingers. She was ticklish. Her feet were especially ticklish. He could feel her resisting his light hold on her ankle and opened one eye to peer at her.

"I'm not tickling you," he said. Technically, he was correct. He wasn't tickling her deliberately, but his fingers were colder than her skin and she was ticklish, so even his light, firm touch was tickling, and they both knew it.

He rolled over on his side, gesturing to her for the wine glass. She surrendered it and he lifted his head to drink from it before setting it down on the floor beyond the edge of the blanket and the fringed rug on the honey colored wood floor. His attention returned to her foot and he lifted it up, slipping it under his shirt to rest against his abdomen. Her toes curled a bit. He curled his arm under his head, lips pursing as he admired the bit of calf that had been exposed as her dressing gown parted around her legs. His imagination tracked up her leg, savoring the sense memory of her that was firmly entrenched after so many years. There wasn't a place on her body that he hadn't had his hands or mouth on at one time or another.

"You are too far away," he complained, running his hand up the back of her calf. His fingers tightened when he reached the back of her knee, exerting just enough pressure to send a message. She had her head back against the seat of the chair, her eyes open. She turned her head toward him.

"Come here," his tone was wheedling, and in the firelight his blue eyes were dark and nearly impossible to read.

He offered her his hand, and she stared at it for a moment before she lifted her hand to place it in his. His palm slid over hers and his fingers tightened on her wrist. One hard tug on his part, and she would end up sprawled across his chest. She mimicked his hold on her, wrapping her fingers around his wrist, locking their arms together at the wrist. It felt a little strange to hold his wrist like this, it was too much like how he held her wrists, sometimes above her head, sometimes just like this, like his hand on her wrist was a flesh and bone manacle.

Tethered, he pulled her towards him, slowly, giving her time to get her knees under her. His shoulders shifted as he rolled onto his back, lifting his hips to keep the blanket from moving under him, settling back down. He loosened his hold on her wrist, a little amused by the fact that she had quietly forced him to by refusing to let go of his wrist. She held on to his wrist a second longer before relaxing her grip. Pushing himself up on one arm, he brought her hand to his mouth, kissing her fingertips. Her hand was cool, but her fingertips were cold.

Despite the fire, it really was too cold for her with the window open. He gave her wrist a lingering kiss and rose to shut the window. He started to draw the drapes over the view of the bleak garden below when movement in the dark caught his eye.

It was too quick to be anything natural, at the edge of the garden wall. "Love? Those wards that you cast? Are you getting anything?"

She turned at the waist to look at him, her hands hovering over the buttons of her dressing gown. "Around the house?" she rubbed her face with both hands, sitting back on her heels, a slight frown drawing her eyebrows together. She felt a slight tingle over her scalp that spread.

"I don't know," she shook her head, rubbing her hands over her arms. She was cold and the tingly sensation could have come from that or the combination of medication and alcohol, or from the awareness of him.

"I'm kind of in a fuzzy sensory place," she admitted.

It made him smile. A fuzzy sensory place. "Should I be flattered?"

She didn't answer him. His gaze left the garden for a moment, taking her in, looking serious and intent, on her knees in the center of a blanket on the floor. He let the curtain fall to cover the window and went back to her, cupping her face in his hands. "Your hands are like ice," he told her. "Why don't you get in bed? Warm up under the covers. I'm going to have a look around outside." He bent at the waist to kiss her mouth. Her lips were cold in contrast to the heat of her mouth.

"I won't be gone long," he promised.
~~~*~~~
 

Andreas could tell by the way the lead horse was leaning into the harness that the animal had dozed off despite the occasional foot shuffling of the other horse in the harness. If the lead horse was disturbed, he would grunt and bump the other horse or make a soft neighing sound to settle his harness mate down. Horses were unexpectedly interesting. The coachman who had survived the night their masters had arrived had not worked out as a coachman after he had been turned. Either he didn't much like horses or he loved them the way only a vampire could. His attention had been devoted particularly to a gray palfrey that was meant for a lady's hack and a big rawboned bay mare with a lazy disposition. The palfrey had been destroyed. The bay mare was still alive, the left side of her face marred by healing scar tissue.

The coachman was no more. Anything that vicious was useful, but destroying the Master's property was not permitted, so Andreas was driving tonight.

He discovered that he liked the horses. They were uncomplicated and very social. His presence in the stable doors made them all peer out at him. He was too strong now to be concerned about being in close quarters with large animals. He made a clucking sound to settle the more fractious of the pair down and watched the horse's ears swivel back at the sound, then forward again, then back, finally flattening a bit before he tossed his head, jerking on the reins looped loosely in Andreas' hands. His hands tightened on the reins, not pulling on either horses' mouth, but feeling the way they were handling the bit.

The lead horse clamped down on his bit, suddenly alert. Andreas looked down the long line of coaches outside the opera house, standing a bit in the box to see down the road. The doors of the opera house had been flung open and people were just starting to stream out over the stairs. Coachmen were moving along the line of coaches to return to the vehicles from where they had been visiting during the performance.

Lucius would be out on the stairs at some point, looking for the coach. They were a block and a half back in the queue. Once he reached the block the opera house sat on, Lucius would let Angelus know that the coach was there so he could collect Darla and Drusilla. He hoped that they weren't going to be long. Paulus was hunting under the Charles Bridge tonight and Andreas hoped to catch up with him. The lead horse shivered, no longer leaning on the harness, but ready to go to work, probably thinking of the hot bran mash that would be his reward at the end of the evening.

He straightened his hat and gloves, sitting up a bit straighter as he released the brake. There was a man standing at the intersection in a uniform, signaling the coaches to move up as space opened in front of the opera house. Andreas spied Lucius, waiting patiently as he approached. When it was his turn to cross the street, Lucius turned on his heel, like a little Prussian soldier, and entered the opera house. Andreas found it amusing. Paulus and Mathilde thought that Lucius was a bit full of himself, and he was, but Andreas wasn't moved to resentment.

By the time he pulled to a smooth stop in front of the opera house, Lucius was there to turn down the step and open the coach door while Angelus handed Darla and Drusilla in, leaving Mathilde to Lucius. He secured the step and the door and climbed up to take his post beside Andreas. He took something out from underneath his coat and laid it on the bench seat on his other side. He felt under the center of the bench seat for the large pistol that was holstered there, and then straightened, nodding to Andreas to signal him to drive.

"How was it?" Andreas asked, reverting to Czech. The 'family' spoke English when they were being intimate. Lucius had led them in speaking Czech when they were being private. German was the only language that they had in common.

Lucius shrugged. "A lot of noise, and pretty costumes. It was in Italian," he added.
 
 

"Am I driving them home?" he asked.

"Yes. Home," he agreed.

It wasn't until Lucius jumped down to assist at the door that Andreas saw what he had dropped on the seat. It was a handful of blood red peonies wrapped in ribbons. It almost made him smile. He could guess whom the flowers were for.

~~~*~~~

William let himself out the kitchen door. The house was built on the upper end of a rectangular lot that was bounded on both sides by a five-foot wall. There was a covered walkway on the side of the house that ran back to the stables, built at a right angle to the house. The garden was an L shaped space with a long, narrow end on the side of the house where Willow and Dru's bedrooms were. A path bisected the open square of the garden behind the house and was further divided by a path that veered right to the stable and left to an arbor. The center of the intersecting paths featured the only viable piece of landscaping, a sundial on a pedestal surrounded by a bed of scarlet tulips that were black around the edges from frost.

His family's money came from tulips, or at least speculating in tulips in the seventeenth century when a single bulb from a rare or exotic variety could fetch three thousand guilders. The ancestor that made the killing was Sir Christopher Mordaunt, de-frocked priest, failed playwright, and would-be privateer who had made a fortune selling unharvested bulbs, getting out of the trade before the tulip crash of 1637. Most of his friends and business partners lost everything, while he managed to avoid the market collapse.

He walked to the access alley behind the house. The carriage house double doors were closed, and the alley appeared empty. He backtracked and let himself into the stables connected to the carriage house from the garden door. Looking into the carriage house, he saw the Brougham was in its place. The coach was gone, which was expected. He stood still for a moment, listening to the animals.

Horses were creatures of habit. The larger coach that Angelus had taken tonight required two horses. That left two horses and the two hacking ponies. They were a little unsettled by the absence of their stable mates, but not exhibiting any signs of fear or distress that he would expect if anyone had been prowling around in the stables. One of the ponies swung his head towards him, more curious than alarmed. He tossed his head, sniffing loudly, and then settled back down.

He checked the garden again, looking around in the area where he had seen someone moving. There was no doubt in his mind that it was a someone, and that they had been watching the house. His appearance at the window had startled them into motion.

Satisfied that no one was lurking about, he returned to the house, bolted the kitchen door and took the back stairs up to the second floor. He hadn't done much more than pull his boots on and grab a crossbow from his room before he had gone out to investigate. He put the crossbow  away and got rid of his boots before returning to Willow's room.

She was in bed, as he had suggested. She had picked up the blanket from the floor and wrapped it around herself before getting in bed. He eyed the blanket wrapping. "I can only hope that you are naked under that."

She tilted her head to one side. "Was anyone out there?" she asked.

"Earlier? Yes. They've gone now," he didn't sound concerned about it. He was busy pulling his shirt over his head without unbuttoning it and unfastening his trousers. His clothes were discarded casually. She had picked up the blanket, returned the seat cushion to its place, finished her glass of wine, and hung her dressing robe and rinsed her shift in the sink while he was prowling around the garden.

Nude, he walked over to the fireplace to put another log on and rearrange the burning logs around it to ensure that the fire would burn long and evenly. When he was satisfied with that he came around to what Willow thought of as her side of the bed, near the door, and turned back the sheet and blanket, getting in beside her. He only unwrapped part of her blanket, enough to include himself inside of it until they were wrapped up in it together.

Willow wasn't sure what to make of it when he got settled. He smoothed her hair back from her face. She moved a little, trying to find a comfortable position in relation to his body and the blanket that was wrapped around both of them. He untangled his left arm from the blanket, tugging it up, higher, around her shoulders, his hand moving down her back as his right hand, under the blanket found her knee and guided it over his abdomen so that she was held snugly against his side, his shoulder available to rest her head on.

It was probably because he didn't breath that she never had a sense that she was too heavy, laying on him. There was no reminder in the rise and fall of his chest that his body was working against her weight. His hand on her back kept moving, from her shoulder to her raised hip, dipping into the vale of her waist, tracking it upward, over her rib cage, lightly squeezing her shoulder before smoothing her hair and repeating the motion, following her spine. If it was meant to be comforting, and she couldn't imagine that it was, it was failing. The blanket was woven in a windowpane pattern. The yard was soft, and the shifting of the textured pattern over her skin was bringing up gooseflesh.

She lifted her arm over his, curling it under her against his shoulder to prop her chin up on her hand. Her hair fell over her shoulder, pooling on the pillow beside his head, the two colors mixing, his ashy brown mingling with her natural light auburn. There was something smug and amused in his expression. He held her gaze as his hand moved down her spine, pausing briefly to press her into his side when he reached her hip, moving up, following the curve of her hip. She found herself holding her breath, anticipating the skin-tingling brush of his hand over her ribs.

"What is this?" she asked, curious, wary, not really trusting the mood he had been in since they had fought in the kitchen.

She found herself on her back. He shifted his weight, rolling her off of him, pulling the blanket that joined them off his shoulder as it became trapped beneath her. The hem of it fell half across her and he caught the edge of it in his fingers, shifting it teasingly against her skin.

"Seduction," he explained with a small smile that acknowledged that seducing her was unnecessary. His eyes were on her body, giving serious attention to the pebbled texture of her skin, as he pushed the blanket away and ran his fingertips lightly over her breast and ribcage, his index finger tracing a line to her hipbone. The back of his hand grazed the curls at the juncture of her thighs.

"I would know you anywhere," he said. "You could change your name, change the color of your hair, and I could pick your heartbeat out of a crowded room. You could douse yourself in perfume, and I'd still be able to smell you," his head bent until his nose was touching her breastbone and he breathed her, eyes closing as he inhaled, his hand moving down her thigh, nudging her legs apart.

He turned his head to press his lips against the upper swell of her breast, dragging his lips over her skin, his tongue following. She tensed, recognizing the intent behind the caress. His tongue felt slightly rough. He was palpitating the blood vessels under her skin, stimulating the flow of blood. She understood that he probably wasn't thinking about hurting her, at least not hurting her a lot. His hand was moving up her thigh. She closed her eyes, waiting for the stinging sensation of his fangs sinking into her skin as his fingers parted her, dipping into the warm gulf where she was already wet.

Sometimes she reminded herself that the moisture that came from her body was a form of self-defense. It did not necessarily spring from desire, but simply from sufficient warning of imminent penetration. It was one of the things that she had discovered in Bristol. That desire wasn't necessary to produce the substance that eased the passage of a body part inside of her. His fingers collected the moisture, and he made a sound, deep in his throat that vibrated over his tongue against her skin, mocking her attempts to rationalize the sensation between her legs. His fingertips reached her clitoris with a caress that was enough like what his tongue was doing that the two were connected.

The lower half of her body was still tangled in the blanket. The texture of the yarns against her back and legs was a firm caress. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, fighting the blanket to open her legs wider, to bend her knees to gain the leverage to press herself against his hand. His mouth left the upper swell of her breast, leaving the skin there a little numb. His hand slid under her neck to the back of her head, tangling in her hair until she opened her eyes.

His eyes were nearly incandescent, unearthly, eating light in darkness. No words passed his lips. He wasn't quiet, or given to moments of introspection, and there was in the deliberation of his fingers, working her towards a climax, a certain ruthless quality that was not unappealing. He kicked the blankets and sheet back, gracefully moving to kneel between her legs, freeing them. In that moment when he was hanging over her, he could have done anything, tightened his fingers in her hair to pull her head back, exposing her throat while his cock slid inside of her or bent his head to her breast to finish what he had begun there.

He kissed her. That was all. He kissed her mouth, sucking on her lower lip until her lips parted for him, until she was kissing him back. His hand didn't tighten in her hair. It cupped the back of her head and then he moved it out from under her, catching a few stray hairs that clung to his hand as his fingers moved over her face, tracing the contours of her face. It wasn't an artful caress. His lips sought the spaces his fingers touched. Her hair was too tangled in his fingers, tickling where it brushed her skin, getting caught under his lips where he kissed her. She ignored it until a strand of her hair tickled her nose, and then she moved her head to avoid his lips, trying the brush the annoying strand of her hair away.

He brushed her hand away from her face, and then the strands of her hair, finding them and smoothing them away until she caught his hand, sliding her fingers through his as he braced on his elbow.

His head bowed to her, his nose brushing hers as his eyes drifted shut, and she felt her throat tighten as he breathed her again, until his lips were grazing hers between deep breaths, nipping at hers in soft lip-biting kisses. Her tongue stole out to touch his lower lip as he found a new spot to nibble on, and he lifted his head, eyes opening.

She turned her head just enough to reach the corner of his mouth, feeling his lips part for her as the tip of her tongue slid over that neglected corner. His fingers tightened on hers, squeezing lightly, stretching his palm and fingers inside of her hand. They kissed  until they were both breathing hard, she out of necessity, and he from something as urgent as her need to breathe. He kissed the corner of her mouth and her throat, his fingers sliding inside of her, making her clutch at his shoulders and run her fingers through his hair as her hips rose to meet him. He kissed his way down to her abdomen, his tongue dipping into her navel in a prelude to a more intimate caress that made her stomach clench, and then he was lifting her to his mouth, his hands moving under her hips, slipping around to seek her breasts, and the rough stroke of his tongue across her clitoris had her arching up to grind herself against his mouth.

It felt wrong. The way he was touching her was at variance to her reaction. He was being tender and gentle and she was shoving her cunt in his face. The strangeness of the day was catching up to her.

He felt the change in her as she started to withdraw, emotionally, mentally, shutting herself in one of the spaces in her head reserved for bad moments when she couldn't cope with what was happening to her. He did the only thing he could to reach her, savoring the feeling of sinking into her as he covered her with his body, letting her take more of his weight, knowing that she needed the reassurance of him pressed against her. His thumb stroked her cheek as he moved over her, in her. "Stay with me, Willow," he urged. "Be with me," he whispered in her ear.

There was something in his voice that made her chest ache. It wasn't fair or right. She wanted to turn her head to the wall, to lose herself in the nothingness of a moment that she had the power to make one-sided. He was touching her face and whispering to her, and her mind, floating in a hazy sea of alcohol and headache medication, might have numbed her to his appeal. She only had to keep her eyes closed and let the dizziness that was lurking overwhelm her.

She could feel herself moving with his body and hands as he guided her. A touch on the inside of her right knee, adjusting the angle of her hips, lifting her knee until it was cradling his hip, her foot pressed into the slightly rough weave of the blanket that was under her body. He wasn't selfish when it came to pleasure, though she didn't necessarily see it that way. Sometimes he made her feel more like a doll than Dru ever did; a windup toy for his personal amusement. She was almost startled to find that he was outpacing her now. Her hands moved to his back, feeling the tension there as he drove into her more purposefully.

It brought tears to her eyes as he groaned, pushing his face into her hair, unwittingly trapping her hair, and pulling it enough to be distracting. She closed her eyes, kissing his throat because it was what she could reach, holding him as he stiffened in her arms, resisting his own climax at the last minute, as if it had just reached him that she wasn't there. But, she was. The knot of tension that released wasn't between her legs. It was between each shuddering beat of her heart.

~Part: 14~

There were more reasons why she wouldn't kill William than reasons why she couldn't. Oddly enough that was truer of Drusilla. There were reasons why she would never stake Dru and very few reasons why she couldn't.

Dru's talent for prophecy was unpredictable. She had visions of things that would happen in five minutes, an hour, a day, a week, or sometimes years and decades in advance. The latter point was something only Willow could know. Some of the crazier things that Dru announced would in due time come true. Pictures in boxes, white monsters without faces walking on the moon, a litany of atro