From The Ashes (Chapter 19/?)
Chapter 19~ Tangled
Buffy awoke slowly, the sensation of a crushing weight within her chest gnawing at the edges of consciousness. Opening first one bleary eye and then the other, she realized that it wasn’t so much a weight within her chest, as one on top of her chest. Specifically, Angel’s arm sprawled across her upper body and firmly drawing her to him. He lay on his stomach, face nuzzled in the crook of her neck, his unmoving form warm in all the places their flesh connected. The stillness, the picture of true death in this state, should have unnerved her. But it didn’t.
It wasn’t the first time she had woken up in his arms, but it was the first time in this context. And most definitely the first time without clothes. That was the part that had her wigging.
NOW I develop a sense of modesty? Quite the late bloomer there, Summers.
She wanted to move, but was afraid to wake him. Truth be told, it was surprising that he hadn’t awakened already, and it could only be a testament to the amount of damage his body had endured. They certainly hadn’t helped his healing last night, she knew, and bit her lip as the images assaulted her senses.
Buffy inhaled deeply, inhaling him, his unique and unmistakable Angel-scent, soap and earthiness and something essentially masculine that never failed to make the feminine in her clench and ache. Lifting his arm gingerly, she crawled out from the cocoon his massive form had created, missing the safety of that entrapment instantly. The impulse came so suddenly, that she reacted before registering it as a thought; reaching out, she stroked his skin with the edges of her fingertips, lightly trailing the familiar lines of the griffon perched atop his shoulder-blade.
It felt so real. So… familiar.
Standing by the bed, she allowed herself a moment to watch him, the way he had so often watched her. Her eyes followed the contours of his broad back, tracing the muscles, seeing the scratches and bites she had put there in a fit of animalistic passion. She knew her own skin would be spotless, a blank canvas. It was so like him, to be infinitely gentle even while he was being decidedly not. Besides, she reasoned, she didn’t need the marks to remind her of where he had been, the things he had done. She could feel it on every square inch of herself.
Each time he had made love to her, it had been different. Each time, one overwhelming emotion dominated all others. Yet each experience had brought her a pleasure more intense than she had ever known, his sure, skilled fingers mapping the curves of her body as if they were roads he had traveled all his life.
Suddenly the intimacy of the situation was more than she could bear.
Not wanting to run away, but unable to stand her ground, she retreated to the relative safety of the bathroom.
Unblemished skin greeted her in the mirror. Eyes fixed on lips still red and swollen from his attentions. She felt a sharp prickle in her chest, the splinter of him that had never completely been removed from her heart. Like she’d been staked with the very weapon of her trade, and could never quite shake it. Buffy hadn’t known, not really, not until she touched those tingling lips, how deeply that stake had penetrated.
***
There were many ways he had imagined it, on the rare occasions he dared to imagine such things. He would finally break down and go to Rome. She would finally be ready, and turn up on his doorstep. Or, and only in his deepest subconscious could he lend words to this dream, he would come to her a living man and offer up his beating heart.
It was only around the time that he signed away the beating heart that he had stopped imagining.
And so, when he first opened his eyes and saw the blond hair splayed across his pillow like a golden waterfall, it took him a long moment to become convinced that he hadn’t started imaging again. First he confirmed that she wasn’t a byproduct of his currently unstable psyche, because no imagining could ever compare to this. He stared at her for a long time; this living, breathing Buffy that had clawed and tortured and teased with her fierce little hands that tore him apart at the seams. Not some mythic creature he idealized, not the ghost of another lifetime. Her. He smoothed the blond locks and pressed his face into her tanned neck, wanting to remain there forever.
A change in heart rate and breathing forewarned her waking. Angel had no such tells to give him away. It was not malice or trickery that bade him keep still as the death he was, to pretend as he never before had with her. The truth of the matter was simple; if she opened her eyes and they projected regret, he would not be able to bear it. He waited for her reaction, certain that if it could, his heart would be hammering out of his chest. He sensed everything. Heard the sharp intake of breath as she realized that she hadn’t been imagining either, savored the scent of renewed arousal as she allowed the previous hours to wash over her consciousness, felt her intense perusal of his still form. When those same fingers that had made the sweetly stinging marks now scattered across his body lightly traced the tattoo on his back in that intimate way, it was all Angel could do to prevent jumping out of his skin. What regrets could there be, if she touched him this way? He knew too, the moment when it became too much, confusion and fear bleeding into desire and driving her from the bed. It was its own separate entity, this chimera of emotional incertitude still occupying the space between them. Maybe, he could hope, if they did this enough times, if each and every time he showed her what she meant to him, she could start to believe that he would sooner walk into the sunlit dawn than hurt her again.
***
The warm water soothed her aching muscles, some that she hadn’t even realized could ache. She had known, from her oft-repressed experiences with Spike and explosive dalliances with the Immortal, that sex with supernatural beings was bound to be… impressive. She had remembered, when it wasn’t less painful to forget, how Angel had made her feel, that first night. The way he had always made her feel, expounded to the umpteenth power; like she was the only thing in the universe that mattered. But still, she hadn’t been prepared. Couldn’t have imagined him like this.
He was injured, and she had barely been able to keep up. Now that was saying something.
Slayer-sense obscured by hormones at the moment, Buffy was startled when she felt the shower curtain pulled open, the cool air bringing goose-bumps to her heated flesh. She spun around, hands reflexively ready to either defend or attack. Recognizing the intruder, she placed them on her hips instead.
“That’s a surefire way to get yourself staked, stealth guy.”
Angel scratched his head, usually coifed hair endearingly messy, and arched an eyebrow.
“Really? And where is it that you keep your… weapon?”
His gaze swept over her body intimately, longingly, as if he were already tasting with just his eyes.
The ache between her legs became an incessant throb. Returning his hungry perusal eagerly, she opened the shower curtain a little wider. Silent permission to his unspoken request.
Face to face with his broad chest under the warm stream, she finally noticed the change, and stifled a laugh.
“Did the gig at Wolfram and Hart happen to come with a free membership to Hollywood Tan?”
Angel glanced down at himself, lip quirking upward in a self-conscious half-grin.
“Uh… melanin. Harm used to put it in my morning blood. She said the expensive suits lost their appeal if I looked like the dead.”
Buffy stared at him, momentarily speechless. He was acting as if he hadn’t just said one of the most bizarre things she’d ever heard.
“Harm? As in Harmony? Of Spike’s psychotic ex-girlfriend fame?”
He nodded. “She was my secretary. Sorry, administrative assistant.”
“That must’ve been special.” It was all she could do to keep her body from shaking with laughter. Angel rewarded her self-control with a sheepish smile.
“Special. Not exactly the word I would use.”
“Let me guess. Another little perk courtesy of our favorite evil law firm?”
“Well, not really so much a perk as….” His voice trailed off, losing its mirth. He looked down sadly.
“Hey,” Buffy tapped his arm gently. “What’s with the insta-brood?”
When he didn’t respond, she cradled his jaw in her hand, tilting his face up to meet her gaze.
“Tell me.”
He took a deep, unnecessary breath.
“It was Wes’s idea. He thought it would be nice to have a familiar face around.” The sentence came out like a strangled sob.
There was nothing to be said to lessen the pain of the moment he seemed to be reliving before her very eyes. Instead, she stepped into him, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist, and pressed her face into his silent chest. His hands splayed across her back, using her small frame to steady himself. Feeling her this way, warm and alive and bare against him was almost enough to force all other thoughts away. He dropped his head to place a lingering kiss on her shoulder.
“Mmmm, haven’t you had enough yet?” she mumbled, feeling the water wash his kiss down the length of her arm.
“Never.”
She didn’t respond, just laughed a little self-consciously and burrowed her face further into him.
“You know Buffy, you were loud enough to raise the dead. Literally.”
He pulled her lower body closer, flush against his, where she could feel the truth of his words.
His mouth crashed against hers hotly, hungrily, and she gasped as he stole the breath from her lungs. The dichotomy of his gentle aggression was still surprising. With the newfound knowledge that they weren’t courting an Apocalypse with their actions, he was far from the reticent being she had pulled into the bed where a part of her had been born and another had met its final resting place. It was arousing, while holding a hint of challenge that she couldn’t resist. Buffy jumped up and wrapped her legs around his waist. He chuckled, unwrapping the limbs and setting her back down. She murmured her disapproval, but he chuckled again, pressing her gently back against the shower wall. Pulling away slightly, he looked at her, and she nearly trembled with anticipation. Her hands reached out to bring him closer again, but he stilled them. He began to lower himself, eyes never breaking contact. Running a hand gently over her calf, he brought the leg over his shoulder and dove into her center in one swift motion. The air left her lungs in a fervent gasp as he claimed her, licking and flicking and biting with rhythmic grace.
This, she remembered. They had done this, back when the evidence of her arousal on demure cotton underwear still embarrassed her, edging ever closer to that forbidden line. It was something they had indulged in, all too briefly, before That Night, but not after. Never after. After, it became an integral part of their self imposed torture, refusing at all costs to come that close to temptation again. But in the privacy of her bed, hot and restless and aching for him, her nimble fingers would find all the right places and imagine it was him, twisting her sheets and her insides into knots.
Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to have him erase the memories of that frustrating year with his mouth and his tongue.
She arched into him, moaning his name, thrusting her hips into his movements. For the first time, she blessed his vampire-ness, because anyone who needed to breathe would surely have suffocated by now. But Angel simply intensified his attentions, stilling her manic hips with one gentle hand while maneuvering the other to join his face between her legs. One, two, elegant fingers found their way inside, matching the pace set by his mouth perfectly. They worked in tandem, fingers, teeth, tongue, fingers, teeth, tongue, until the heat built to a simmering boil. She tore at his hair frantically as the drops of water scorched her fevered skin, every sensation tearing through a blazing path to pool at her quivering center. And when he lapped at her with a speed akin to unrestrained rage she let go, her muscles clenching forcefully and the light exploding in such a dizzying glare that she thought she might faint.
He continued his ministrations, gently coaxing the aftershocks. When she had stilled, he lowered her leg and towered over her, bracing her sapped frame against the wall. Buffy offered him a weak smile. And for the first time since her seventeenth birthday, she saw that cocky/flirty Angel-smirk grace his lips.
This time, it was he that wrapped her legs around himself. Fingernails dug deep into his shoulders as he entered her, still slick and sensitive, and he caught one small, perfect breast in a mouth still filled with her taste. There, with the cool tile pressed against her back and the fire he was stoking inside threatening to devour her, the idea briefly materialized that perhaps this exact feeling is precisely what she had been craving all these years, until all conscious thought was chased away by an all- consuming pleasure.
***
Angel was lost. Totally, irrefutably, unequivocally, hopelessly lost, and he knew it. Every murmured sigh, every whisper of his name like a prayer across her lips, every wild flutter of her strong, ferocious heart were final nails in the only coffin that would ever contain him. With each second that passed, he pulled further away from reality and fell deeper into the world behind those green orbs that fixed on him in wonder, harboring the ocean and the stars and the heavens and life itself in their shimmering depths.
He had never felt more alive than when he was with her like this, not even the lifetime ago when he could actually claim a heartbeat.
For the sake of his soul, he remembered a forgotten day, when there hadn’t been enough time and she was all he had wanted. She was still all he wanted. There still wasn’t enough time. But he would make damn sure she never forgot again.
Moving inside her, feeling her buck against him, each forceful stroke penetrated into his very bones. It consumed him, annihilating all sense of everything but her, even his sense of self-preservation. If anything could ever make him lose his soul again, it would be this.
And when she pulsed around him, teeth sinking into his neck and her slayer muscles gripping him like a vise, the vampire who had wandered to every corner of the Earth in his two and a half centuries of existence thought, for the first time in quite this way, feels like home.
***
Buffy was famished. Having only succeeded in escaping Angel’s arms by mentioning that he should probably spend some time with Connor before the kid turned to ‘Uncle Spike’ for a good time, she made a beeline for the kitchen. All the while chuckling at the bewildered expression on the poor guy’s face at the prospect of all the ways the world according to Spike could traumatize his son.
Ha. That’ll teach him to stand between a slayer and her food.
The victory, however, was short-lived. Not ten paces from the treasures ripe for raiding within the refrigerator, Buffy was intercepted by Faith.
Face taught with worry, hands on her hips, the other slayer gave her an appraising stare. Buffy knew what Faith would see. She looked like a woman who had been very thoroughly ravished, leaving very little to the imagination.
“Soul still attached?”
“Yep. Soul-having as ever.”
Faith let out an enormous breath. Still too nervous to really laugh like she wanted to, she opted for a knowing grin.
“Always suspected you were a screamer, B.”
Buffy clenched her jaw. How did Faith always know exactly the thing to say to set her off?
“Mind your own business.”
Faith flinched, but recovered quickly.
“Look, I was just playin’. I thought we were… Man, you know what? I give up. You hold a grudge longer than a loan shark.”
“It’s not a grudge.”
“Then why can’t we get past this?”
Buffy really didn’t know where it came from. Why Faith was the only person she couldn’t find it in her heart to forgive, when she had forgiven others who were less worthy of it. She had always known it could have been her if things had been different, if she hadn’t had her mom and Giles and Willow and Xander. And Angel. Perhaps that was where the issues really lay; the bond between her sister slayer and her love. Or perhaps she was afraid how being close to Faith once upon a time had nearly irrevocably changed her. Would have changed her, if it had been just another vampire and not a human on the end of that fateful stake.
“Angel trusts you. You proved your worth a long time ago. I know where your loyalties lie. And all of that, it should be enough. But…”
She spread her arms as if the gesture explained everything. As if it could convey all the frustration and jealousy and uncertainty directed toward her dark counterpart. Maybe it could. Maybe Faith had known anyway. She looked at Buffy, determined to make her finally understand.
“That night? When you came and found me with Angel?”
Buffy nodded tightly. She remembered that night all too well. The excruciating image would never be erased from her memory.
“I begged him to kill me, you know.”
That she hadn’t expected. She blinked furiously, trying to absorb what Faith had said. The pouty lips curved into a mirthless smile.
“I had tried to turn him into Angelus, nailed him with a poisoned arrow, shot him with a gun, tied up and tortured his friend… I would have staked him without hesitation, and he knew it. And when I begged him to kill me, gave him the chance… he just held me. Gave me a place to stay. Told me he’d help.”
Her eyes looked beyond Buffy now, somewhere into a past where Angel had pulled her back from the brink.
“I was like an animal. Attacking him, imaging… things even he doesn’t know about. It didn’t matter. He didn’t give up on me. But you know what B? Even after all that, I don’t think I could’ve ever put my full trust in him. It was you showing up that did it. He went against you for me. And it’s not an ego thing. I know you hated both of us for it. In a weird way, I think you hate me more for that than for anything else I’ve ever done to you, and I’ve pulled a lot of twisted crap. But that’s what made me believe everything he’d ever said to me. He was willing to have you hate him for it, because he thought it was right. Without that, I don’t know if he would have ever reached me.”
Buffy thought about that. Thought about Spike, and the determination on his face when he’d begged her to kill him. To just do it and not risk them all, because he wasn’t worth it. Thought about her insistence that he was. How she had gone against Giles to follow that certainty, the knowledge that Spike was important somehow. That he deserved the chance to prove himself. And he had.
Was that what Faith was to Angel? A soul worth saving because he saw the good in it? If so, she could concede that his belief had been rewarded. She could concede too that she finally understood with perfect clarity exactly how much Angel must resent her connection with Spike.
If he could put it aside, the least she could do was try harder.
She met Faith’s gaze, accepting her sincere confession. Absolving her of sin.
“Are you sure it’s not an ego thing?”
The brunette smiled wryly.
“Well, can’t really say I minded seeing that pinchy look on your face at his shirt being half off…”
She sobered then, speaking in a plaintive voice Buffy had never heard her use before.
“He’s my friend Buffy. Don’t hurt him.” It was part request, part threat.
It should have aggravated her, but it didn’t. She understood a little better now. Always had been a quick learner.
“I won’t. I don’t know what the hell we’re doing but… I can promise that I’ll never hurt him.”
Irrationally, she wished someone would ask Angel to make the same promise.
***
Angel came into the lobby to find Buffy pulling a mug of blood out of the microwave. He briefly wondered when that had become normal, for both of them.
Time spent with his son hadn’t gone exactly as planned. He’d walked into the room, hands in his pockets, shoulders hanging loosely. The picture of nonchalance. He needn’t have bothered. Connor had merely smirked, arching a knowing eyebrow at the fresh bite-mark his shirt couldn’t conceal. However, he quite admirably refrained from asking questions or making comments, and Angel was grateful that there was no need to explain that which he himself didn’t really understand just yet. They talked for a bit, mostly about Connor’s experiences at college. But soon Angel felt the hunger, the need that reminded him of what he was. Connor sensed the mood darken and couldn’t resist just one little prod, if only to see Angel scowl in suppressed amusement. He refused to accompany his father downstairs, claiming that the sound of Angel’s vigorous cradle-robbing had deprived him of precious hours’ sleep. Not to mention, scarred him for life.
The effort was rewarded. The shadow over Angel’s disposition that had been cast by the hunger was chased away by a boyish grin and a twinkle of blue eyes. And then he had come downstairs to find Buffy calmly providing him with the very thing he detested himself for craving, like it was the most natural thing for her to be doing with her time.
He wanted nothing more than to touch her again. The thirty minutes they had just spent apart was thirty minutes too long.
Angel reached up and rested his cool fingers on the nape of her neck. A tremble ran down the length of her and she closed her eyes, leaning into his touch.
A blast of wind rushed into the room.
They turned toward the center of the lobby, mesmerized as a brilliant beam of light split the air, swirling inside a torrent like the eye of some miniature hurricane. Angel lifted a hand to shield his eyes. Before he could react, Buffy sprang from his side and ran towards the manifestation.
“Buffy! No!”
But he was too late. The swirling mass seemed to expand slightly, and then drew in on itself with a sucking of air, obscuring Buffy in a flash of white.
Next: Chapter 20~ Refuge Lost
Buffy awoke slowly, the sensation of a crushing weight within her chest gnawing at the edges of consciousness. Opening first one bleary eye and then the other, she realized that it wasn’t so much a weight within her chest, as one on top of her chest. Specifically, Angel’s arm sprawled across her upper body and firmly drawing her to him. He lay on his stomach, face nuzzled in the crook of her neck, his unmoving form warm in all the places their flesh connected. The stillness, the picture of true death in this state, should have unnerved her. But it didn’t.
It wasn’t the first time she had woken up in his arms, but it was the first time in this context. And most definitely the first time without clothes. That was the part that had her wigging.
NOW I develop a sense of modesty? Quite the late bloomer there, Summers.
She wanted to move, but was afraid to wake him. Truth be told, it was surprising that he hadn’t awakened already, and it could only be a testament to the amount of damage his body had endured. They certainly hadn’t helped his healing last night, she knew, and bit her lip as the images assaulted her senses.
Buffy inhaled deeply, inhaling him, his unique and unmistakable Angel-scent, soap and earthiness and something essentially masculine that never failed to make the feminine in her clench and ache. Lifting his arm gingerly, she crawled out from the cocoon his massive form had created, missing the safety of that entrapment instantly. The impulse came so suddenly, that she reacted before registering it as a thought; reaching out, she stroked his skin with the edges of her fingertips, lightly trailing the familiar lines of the griffon perched atop his shoulder-blade.
It felt so real. So… familiar.
Standing by the bed, she allowed herself a moment to watch him, the way he had so often watched her. Her eyes followed the contours of his broad back, tracing the muscles, seeing the scratches and bites she had put there in a fit of animalistic passion. She knew her own skin would be spotless, a blank canvas. It was so like him, to be infinitely gentle even while he was being decidedly not. Besides, she reasoned, she didn’t need the marks to remind her of where he had been, the things he had done. She could feel it on every square inch of herself.
Each time he had made love to her, it had been different. Each time, one overwhelming emotion dominated all others. Yet each experience had brought her a pleasure more intense than she had ever known, his sure, skilled fingers mapping the curves of her body as if they were roads he had traveled all his life.
Suddenly the intimacy of the situation was more than she could bear.
Not wanting to run away, but unable to stand her ground, she retreated to the relative safety of the bathroom.
Unblemished skin greeted her in the mirror. Eyes fixed on lips still red and swollen from his attentions. She felt a sharp prickle in her chest, the splinter of him that had never completely been removed from her heart. Like she’d been staked with the very weapon of her trade, and could never quite shake it. Buffy hadn’t known, not really, not until she touched those tingling lips, how deeply that stake had penetrated.
***
There were many ways he had imagined it, on the rare occasions he dared to imagine such things. He would finally break down and go to Rome. She would finally be ready, and turn up on his doorstep. Or, and only in his deepest subconscious could he lend words to this dream, he would come to her a living man and offer up his beating heart.
It was only around the time that he signed away the beating heart that he had stopped imagining.
And so, when he first opened his eyes and saw the blond hair splayed across his pillow like a golden waterfall, it took him a long moment to become convinced that he hadn’t started imaging again. First he confirmed that she wasn’t a byproduct of his currently unstable psyche, because no imagining could ever compare to this. He stared at her for a long time; this living, breathing Buffy that had clawed and tortured and teased with her fierce little hands that tore him apart at the seams. Not some mythic creature he idealized, not the ghost of another lifetime. Her. He smoothed the blond locks and pressed his face into her tanned neck, wanting to remain there forever.
A change in heart rate and breathing forewarned her waking. Angel had no such tells to give him away. It was not malice or trickery that bade him keep still as the death he was, to pretend as he never before had with her. The truth of the matter was simple; if she opened her eyes and they projected regret, he would not be able to bear it. He waited for her reaction, certain that if it could, his heart would be hammering out of his chest. He sensed everything. Heard the sharp intake of breath as she realized that she hadn’t been imagining either, savored the scent of renewed arousal as she allowed the previous hours to wash over her consciousness, felt her intense perusal of his still form. When those same fingers that had made the sweetly stinging marks now scattered across his body lightly traced the tattoo on his back in that intimate way, it was all Angel could do to prevent jumping out of his skin. What regrets could there be, if she touched him this way? He knew too, the moment when it became too much, confusion and fear bleeding into desire and driving her from the bed. It was its own separate entity, this chimera of emotional incertitude still occupying the space between them. Maybe, he could hope, if they did this enough times, if each and every time he showed her what she meant to him, she could start to believe that he would sooner walk into the sunlit dawn than hurt her again.
***
The warm water soothed her aching muscles, some that she hadn’t even realized could ache. She had known, from her oft-repressed experiences with Spike and explosive dalliances with the Immortal, that sex with supernatural beings was bound to be… impressive. She had remembered, when it wasn’t less painful to forget, how Angel had made her feel, that first night. The way he had always made her feel, expounded to the umpteenth power; like she was the only thing in the universe that mattered. But still, she hadn’t been prepared. Couldn’t have imagined him like this.
He was injured, and she had barely been able to keep up. Now that was saying something.
Slayer-sense obscured by hormones at the moment, Buffy was startled when she felt the shower curtain pulled open, the cool air bringing goose-bumps to her heated flesh. She spun around, hands reflexively ready to either defend or attack. Recognizing the intruder, she placed them on her hips instead.
“That’s a surefire way to get yourself staked, stealth guy.”
Angel scratched his head, usually coifed hair endearingly messy, and arched an eyebrow.
“Really? And where is it that you keep your… weapon?”
His gaze swept over her body intimately, longingly, as if he were already tasting with just his eyes.
The ache between her legs became an incessant throb. Returning his hungry perusal eagerly, she opened the shower curtain a little wider. Silent permission to his unspoken request.
Face to face with his broad chest under the warm stream, she finally noticed the change, and stifled a laugh.
“Did the gig at Wolfram and Hart happen to come with a free membership to Hollywood Tan?”
Angel glanced down at himself, lip quirking upward in a self-conscious half-grin.
“Uh… melanin. Harm used to put it in my morning blood. She said the expensive suits lost their appeal if I looked like the dead.”
Buffy stared at him, momentarily speechless. He was acting as if he hadn’t just said one of the most bizarre things she’d ever heard.
“Harm? As in Harmony? Of Spike’s psychotic ex-girlfriend fame?”
He nodded. “She was my secretary. Sorry, administrative assistant.”
“That must’ve been special.” It was all she could do to keep her body from shaking with laughter. Angel rewarded her self-control with a sheepish smile.
“Special. Not exactly the word I would use.”
“Let me guess. Another little perk courtesy of our favorite evil law firm?”
“Well, not really so much a perk as….” His voice trailed off, losing its mirth. He looked down sadly.
“Hey,” Buffy tapped his arm gently. “What’s with the insta-brood?”
When he didn’t respond, she cradled his jaw in her hand, tilting his face up to meet her gaze.
“Tell me.”
He took a deep, unnecessary breath.
“It was Wes’s idea. He thought it would be nice to have a familiar face around.” The sentence came out like a strangled sob.
There was nothing to be said to lessen the pain of the moment he seemed to be reliving before her very eyes. Instead, she stepped into him, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist, and pressed her face into his silent chest. His hands splayed across her back, using her small frame to steady himself. Feeling her this way, warm and alive and bare against him was almost enough to force all other thoughts away. He dropped his head to place a lingering kiss on her shoulder.
“Mmmm, haven’t you had enough yet?” she mumbled, feeling the water wash his kiss down the length of her arm.
“Never.”
She didn’t respond, just laughed a little self-consciously and burrowed her face further into him.
“You know Buffy, you were loud enough to raise the dead. Literally.”
He pulled her lower body closer, flush against his, where she could feel the truth of his words.
His mouth crashed against hers hotly, hungrily, and she gasped as he stole the breath from her lungs. The dichotomy of his gentle aggression was still surprising. With the newfound knowledge that they weren’t courting an Apocalypse with their actions, he was far from the reticent being she had pulled into the bed where a part of her had been born and another had met its final resting place. It was arousing, while holding a hint of challenge that she couldn’t resist. Buffy jumped up and wrapped her legs around his waist. He chuckled, unwrapping the limbs and setting her back down. She murmured her disapproval, but he chuckled again, pressing her gently back against the shower wall. Pulling away slightly, he looked at her, and she nearly trembled with anticipation. Her hands reached out to bring him closer again, but he stilled them. He began to lower himself, eyes never breaking contact. Running a hand gently over her calf, he brought the leg over his shoulder and dove into her center in one swift motion. The air left her lungs in a fervent gasp as he claimed her, licking and flicking and biting with rhythmic grace.
This, she remembered. They had done this, back when the evidence of her arousal on demure cotton underwear still embarrassed her, edging ever closer to that forbidden line. It was something they had indulged in, all too briefly, before That Night, but not after. Never after. After, it became an integral part of their self imposed torture, refusing at all costs to come that close to temptation again. But in the privacy of her bed, hot and restless and aching for him, her nimble fingers would find all the right places and imagine it was him, twisting her sheets and her insides into knots.
Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to have him erase the memories of that frustrating year with his mouth and his tongue.
She arched into him, moaning his name, thrusting her hips into his movements. For the first time, she blessed his vampire-ness, because anyone who needed to breathe would surely have suffocated by now. But Angel simply intensified his attentions, stilling her manic hips with one gentle hand while maneuvering the other to join his face between her legs. One, two, elegant fingers found their way inside, matching the pace set by his mouth perfectly. They worked in tandem, fingers, teeth, tongue, fingers, teeth, tongue, until the heat built to a simmering boil. She tore at his hair frantically as the drops of water scorched her fevered skin, every sensation tearing through a blazing path to pool at her quivering center. And when he lapped at her with a speed akin to unrestrained rage she let go, her muscles clenching forcefully and the light exploding in such a dizzying glare that she thought she might faint.
He continued his ministrations, gently coaxing the aftershocks. When she had stilled, he lowered her leg and towered over her, bracing her sapped frame against the wall. Buffy offered him a weak smile. And for the first time since her seventeenth birthday, she saw that cocky/flirty Angel-smirk grace his lips.
This time, it was he that wrapped her legs around himself. Fingernails dug deep into his shoulders as he entered her, still slick and sensitive, and he caught one small, perfect breast in a mouth still filled with her taste. There, with the cool tile pressed against her back and the fire he was stoking inside threatening to devour her, the idea briefly materialized that perhaps this exact feeling is precisely what she had been craving all these years, until all conscious thought was chased away by an all- consuming pleasure.
***
Angel was lost. Totally, irrefutably, unequivocally, hopelessly lost, and he knew it. Every murmured sigh, every whisper of his name like a prayer across her lips, every wild flutter of her strong, ferocious heart were final nails in the only coffin that would ever contain him. With each second that passed, he pulled further away from reality and fell deeper into the world behind those green orbs that fixed on him in wonder, harboring the ocean and the stars and the heavens and life itself in their shimmering depths.
He had never felt more alive than when he was with her like this, not even the lifetime ago when he could actually claim a heartbeat.
For the sake of his soul, he remembered a forgotten day, when there hadn’t been enough time and she was all he had wanted. She was still all he wanted. There still wasn’t enough time. But he would make damn sure she never forgot again.
Moving inside her, feeling her buck against him, each forceful stroke penetrated into his very bones. It consumed him, annihilating all sense of everything but her, even his sense of self-preservation. If anything could ever make him lose his soul again, it would be this.
And when she pulsed around him, teeth sinking into his neck and her slayer muscles gripping him like a vise, the vampire who had wandered to every corner of the Earth in his two and a half centuries of existence thought, for the first time in quite this way, feels like home.
***
Buffy was famished. Having only succeeded in escaping Angel’s arms by mentioning that he should probably spend some time with Connor before the kid turned to ‘Uncle Spike’ for a good time, she made a beeline for the kitchen. All the while chuckling at the bewildered expression on the poor guy’s face at the prospect of all the ways the world according to Spike could traumatize his son.
Ha. That’ll teach him to stand between a slayer and her food.
The victory, however, was short-lived. Not ten paces from the treasures ripe for raiding within the refrigerator, Buffy was intercepted by Faith.
Face taught with worry, hands on her hips, the other slayer gave her an appraising stare. Buffy knew what Faith would see. She looked like a woman who had been very thoroughly ravished, leaving very little to the imagination.
“Soul still attached?”
“Yep. Soul-having as ever.”
Faith let out an enormous breath. Still too nervous to really laugh like she wanted to, she opted for a knowing grin.
“Always suspected you were a screamer, B.”
Buffy clenched her jaw. How did Faith always know exactly the thing to say to set her off?
“Mind your own business.”
Faith flinched, but recovered quickly.
“Look, I was just playin’. I thought we were… Man, you know what? I give up. You hold a grudge longer than a loan shark.”
“It’s not a grudge.”
“Then why can’t we get past this?”
Buffy really didn’t know where it came from. Why Faith was the only person she couldn’t find it in her heart to forgive, when she had forgiven others who were less worthy of it. She had always known it could have been her if things had been different, if she hadn’t had her mom and Giles and Willow and Xander. And Angel. Perhaps that was where the issues really lay; the bond between her sister slayer and her love. Or perhaps she was afraid how being close to Faith once upon a time had nearly irrevocably changed her. Would have changed her, if it had been just another vampire and not a human on the end of that fateful stake.
“Angel trusts you. You proved your worth a long time ago. I know where your loyalties lie. And all of that, it should be enough. But…”
She spread her arms as if the gesture explained everything. As if it could convey all the frustration and jealousy and uncertainty directed toward her dark counterpart. Maybe it could. Maybe Faith had known anyway. She looked at Buffy, determined to make her finally understand.
“That night? When you came and found me with Angel?”
Buffy nodded tightly. She remembered that night all too well. The excruciating image would never be erased from her memory.
“I begged him to kill me, you know.”
That she hadn’t expected. She blinked furiously, trying to absorb what Faith had said. The pouty lips curved into a mirthless smile.
“I had tried to turn him into Angelus, nailed him with a poisoned arrow, shot him with a gun, tied up and tortured his friend… I would have staked him without hesitation, and he knew it. And when I begged him to kill me, gave him the chance… he just held me. Gave me a place to stay. Told me he’d help.”
Her eyes looked beyond Buffy now, somewhere into a past where Angel had pulled her back from the brink.
“I was like an animal. Attacking him, imaging… things even he doesn’t know about. It didn’t matter. He didn’t give up on me. But you know what B? Even after all that, I don’t think I could’ve ever put my full trust in him. It was you showing up that did it. He went against you for me. And it’s not an ego thing. I know you hated both of us for it. In a weird way, I think you hate me more for that than for anything else I’ve ever done to you, and I’ve pulled a lot of twisted crap. But that’s what made me believe everything he’d ever said to me. He was willing to have you hate him for it, because he thought it was right. Without that, I don’t know if he would have ever reached me.”
Buffy thought about that. Thought about Spike, and the determination on his face when he’d begged her to kill him. To just do it and not risk them all, because he wasn’t worth it. Thought about her insistence that he was. How she had gone against Giles to follow that certainty, the knowledge that Spike was important somehow. That he deserved the chance to prove himself. And he had.
Was that what Faith was to Angel? A soul worth saving because he saw the good in it? If so, she could concede that his belief had been rewarded. She could concede too that she finally understood with perfect clarity exactly how much Angel must resent her connection with Spike.
If he could put it aside, the least she could do was try harder.
She met Faith’s gaze, accepting her sincere confession. Absolving her of sin.
“Are you sure it’s not an ego thing?”
The brunette smiled wryly.
“Well, can’t really say I minded seeing that pinchy look on your face at his shirt being half off…”
She sobered then, speaking in a plaintive voice Buffy had never heard her use before.
“He’s my friend Buffy. Don’t hurt him.” It was part request, part threat.
It should have aggravated her, but it didn’t. She understood a little better now. Always had been a quick learner.
“I won’t. I don’t know what the hell we’re doing but… I can promise that I’ll never hurt him.”
Irrationally, she wished someone would ask Angel to make the same promise.
***
Angel came into the lobby to find Buffy pulling a mug of blood out of the microwave. He briefly wondered when that had become normal, for both of them.
Time spent with his son hadn’t gone exactly as planned. He’d walked into the room, hands in his pockets, shoulders hanging loosely. The picture of nonchalance. He needn’t have bothered. Connor had merely smirked, arching a knowing eyebrow at the fresh bite-mark his shirt couldn’t conceal. However, he quite admirably refrained from asking questions or making comments, and Angel was grateful that there was no need to explain that which he himself didn’t really understand just yet. They talked for a bit, mostly about Connor’s experiences at college. But soon Angel felt the hunger, the need that reminded him of what he was. Connor sensed the mood darken and couldn’t resist just one little prod, if only to see Angel scowl in suppressed amusement. He refused to accompany his father downstairs, claiming that the sound of Angel’s vigorous cradle-robbing had deprived him of precious hours’ sleep. Not to mention, scarred him for life.
The effort was rewarded. The shadow over Angel’s disposition that had been cast by the hunger was chased away by a boyish grin and a twinkle of blue eyes. And then he had come downstairs to find Buffy calmly providing him with the very thing he detested himself for craving, like it was the most natural thing for her to be doing with her time.
He wanted nothing more than to touch her again. The thirty minutes they had just spent apart was thirty minutes too long.
Angel reached up and rested his cool fingers on the nape of her neck. A tremble ran down the length of her and she closed her eyes, leaning into his touch.
A blast of wind rushed into the room.
They turned toward the center of the lobby, mesmerized as a brilliant beam of light split the air, swirling inside a torrent like the eye of some miniature hurricane. Angel lifted a hand to shield his eyes. Before he could react, Buffy sprang from his side and ran towards the manifestation.
“Buffy! No!”
But he was too late. The swirling mass seemed to expand slightly, and then drew in on itself with a sucking of air, obscuring Buffy in a flash of white.
Next: Chapter 20~ Refuge Lost