Part 4
Leaning casually against the mahogany dresser, his arms folded across his chest, Angel watched in amused silence as Cordelia moved purposely about the room, arranging the furniture to her liking. After neatly lining up the self-tan supplies on the cabinet, she stripped the sheets and comforter from the bed, and spread several large bath-towels over the bare mattress, smoothing out the wrinkles with the flats of her hands.
Tucking her hair behind her ears, the seer paused to survey the makeshift treatment table that she’d created, her teeth worrying at her lower lip. Her heart was thudding at a rapid rate inside her chest, a detail that betrayed her lack of internal composure to the vampire, who delighted at having successfully knocked her off balance.
Sucking in a deep calming breath, Cordelia eventually plucked up the courage to turn around and face him, but kept her eyes downcast, refusing to look him directly in the eye.
“Umm – everything’s ready,” she told him, powerless to conceal the uneasy tremor in her voice.
“Okay,” Angel replied, matter-of-factly. “Guess it’s time for me to get naked then.”
“What? No!”
Her expression aghast, Cordelia snapped horrified eyes up to his face, her voice coming out in a high-pitched squeak. Cringing in mortification, she tried to cover up her over-the-top reaction by offering some sort of vague explanation for it.
“I mean – that’s not necessary. You can keep your boxers on, at least to start with anyway, and then we can use a towel to cover… that area,” she said, gesturing at his groin with an embarrassed wave of her hand, a ruby-red flush staining her cheeks.
Trying not to laugh, Angel schooled his features into a solemn expression, resisting the urge to crow with masculine delight. His seer was adorable when she was all flustered. It sure made a refreshing change from the aura of self-assurance that she usually radiated in his presence – although he had to admit that that side of her nature attracted him also.
“Okay – you’re the boss,” he agreed, shrugging his leather coat off his shoulders and hanging it up on the hook on the back of the door.
He toed off his boots and socks, then turned back towards her and began to unfasten his shirt with deliberate slowness, unhurriedly slipping the tiny buttons from their holes, his big fingers surprisingly dextrous.
Unable to tear her eyes off him, Cordelia stood transfixed as the muscular flesh of his chest and abdomen was systematically exposed to her appreciative gaze.
Oh yeah – I’ve still got what it takes to make ‘em weak at the knees, Angel thought jubilantly, a rush of Liam and Angelus pushing to the fore-front of his consciousness as he watched her pupils dilate to black, until they virtually obliterated the caramel hue of her iris’s.
Finally dispensing with his shirt, the vampire laid it over the back of a chair and dropped his hands to the waistband of his pants. Then, with the same teasing slowness with which he had removed his shirt, he unbuckled his belt and pulled the strip of leather through its fabric loops.
It was the harsh sound of his zipper being lowered that finally broke through Cordelia’s spellbound stupor though. She suddenly realised that her mesmerised eyes had unconsciously followed the downward movement of his hands to his crotch, and spun around with a shocked gasp, refusing to look at him as he finished disrobing.
Once he was clad in just his navy-blue underwear, Angel crossed the room to stand, barefoot, by the bed.
“So, where do you want me?” he asked of his seer’s rigidly turned back, fully aware of the double entendre in his chosen words.
“Just sit on the edge of the mattress,” she shot back in a sharp tone, her nervousness making her irritable.
Angel obediently sat down, and Cordelia blew out a breath through pursed lips, attempting to quell the butterflies that fluttered about in her stomach at the mere thought of running her hands over all that exposed male flesh. She eventually pulled herself together and climbed up onto the bed, the bottle of self-tan lotion clutched tightly in her hand.
Angel felt the warmth from the seer’s body-heat spreading across the uncovered expanse of his back as she moved to kneel behind him. He heard the pop of a bottle opening, and then experienced a scratchy sensation against his back as she liberally applied a gritty substance to his skin, working it into his flesh with the tips of her fingers.
“Why is this necessary?” he asked, curious as to the reason for the exfoliation process.
“It stops the tan from streaking,” Cordelia explained, relieved that the conversation had moved onto safer ground.
Frowning in concentration, she focused on what she was doing, trying not to think of the vampire’s state of undress as she moved her fingers in concentric circles, rubbing the bright blue concoction over the broad extent of his shoulders and back.
“Here,” she said, reaching over his shoulder and handing him the bottle when she’d finished. “Do your arms, legs and front, then take a shower and wash it off.”
“You’re not going to help me?”
Cordelia shifted backwards off the bed and stood up. “I think you can manage by yourself.”
She turned to pick up another white plastic bottle from the cabinet, and tossed it to him as he rose to his feet. Angel easily caught it in his free hand. “What’s this for?”
“Moisturiser,” came the reply. “Apply it to the rougher areas of your skin when you’ve dried off.”
“Rougher areas?”
The seer rolled her eyes in exasperation at his mystified question. “You know – your knees, elbows, the backs of your heels. Geez! Do I have to explain everything? You’d think someone who uses the amount of hair product that you do would have more of a clue.”
Angel finally retreated into the bathroom, closing the door behind him, and Cordelia went to wash her hands in the hotel suite’s small kitchenette.
“Come on Cor, get a grip,” she murmured to herself as she rinsed her shaking fingers under the warm running water. “You can do this. I mean, rubbing self-tan lotion over practically every inch of that gorgeous bod will be a cinch, right?”
The irony of that statement was not lost on the jumpy young woman – Angel obviously intended to make this experience as humiliating as possible, and she cursed her defencelessness against his subtle teasing. When he threw that cocky, self-confident and, intrinsically male, attitude at her, she just melted into a seer-sized puddle at his feet. It was akin to the no-nonsense, take-charge mindset that came over him when he had a demon to vanquish, and that never failed to get her hot under the collar either.
The nature of their relationship was inexplicably changing, which both confused and excited her in equal measure. While Cordelia had acknowledged her undeniable attraction to Angel a while ago, she had never dared dream that anything could ever come of it. For starters, there was his curse – which admittedly wasn’t an issue anymore – but the main obstacle had always been Buffy Summers, slayer extraordinaire and one true love of the brooding vamp with a soul, anyway.
The seer wasn’t blind to the effect that she had on the majority of the male population, and therefore accepted that it was possible for Angel to feel sexual desire for her. She just couldn’t see how he could possibly love her like she wanted him to though. Buffy was everything he ever wanted, whereas she would always be second best, a substitute.
No, it was best to keep things on a platonic footing and lock away her secret yearning deep inside her heart. Angel wouldn’t push the issue if she made it clear that she couldn’t accept casual from him. He cared about her too much to treat her in that way, she felt sure of that. She could claim the title of ‘best friend and confidante’ at least. That was something, wasn’t it?
The bathroom door creaked open then, interrupting the jumbled flow of Cordelia’s muddled thoughts. Swinging around, she swallowed hard when she saw Angel emerge from the on-suite, his mid-section wrapped in what had to be the smallest towel on the face of the planet. The white fabric just about covered the firm globes of his ass, but barely concealed the rest of his manly assets from her gaze as he strode confidently across the room towards her.
Oh God! Why is he doing this to me? she silently wailed as her, already rapid, heart rate went through the roof.
Seeing the look of panic that flitted across her features, Angel almost took pity on her – except that he was having far too much fun. It wasn’t often that he got the upper hand with his beautiful seer, and he was determined to make the most of it. The vampire was surprising himself with the ease in which he was stirring up the sexual tension between the two of them, although, deep down, he knew he probably shouldn’t be.
Contrary to popular opinion, sensual mind games were not an exclusive by-product of his soulless self; it was simply that the lack of a soul had turned a once pleasant pastime into something cruel and maliciously twisted. The talent was inborn, but, for obvious reasons, Angel had subjugated it over the years. However, as there was no motive for him to do that anymore, that part of his personality was gradually reasserting itself – much to his immense enjoyment and Cordelia’s noticeable chagrin.
“Front or back first?” he asked, totally ignoring the seer’s unmistakable discomfort.
“Front… I mean, lie on your front,” she hurriedly clarified before the annoyingly self-possessed vampire took her literally.
Suppressing a grin, Angel did as instructed, resting his forehead against the mattress and folding his arms in a diamond shape above his head.
Okay, you can do this, Cordelia silently coached herself as she snapped on a pair of surgical gloves to protect her hands from the tanning mixture. Just don’t think about what’s under that towel whatever you do. Think unpleasant thoughts – putting out the garbage, cleaning up demon entrails, you know the kind of thing.
Placing first one knee, and then the other, on the bed, she gingerly knelt alongside Angel’s prone form, her movements causing the mattress to dip slightly. Squeezing a dollop of the dark brown lotion into her cupped palm, she set the bottle aside and started to apply it across the breadth of his shoulders and neck.
She then smoothed the cream down the sides of his body to where his flesh met the edge of the towel that was secured snugly around his hips. Moving her hands in long, broad strokes over the vampire’s pale skin, the seer focussed her efforts on getting an even coverage, taking care not to miss any spots.
Angel closed his eyes, hidden tension draining unbidden from his body under the powerful sway of Cordelia’s gentle ministrations. The warmth from her palms seeped into his skin and acted as a muscle relaxant, helping him unwind. The fact that the skilfully massaging hands belonged to the woman he had grown to love, only heightened the experience for him. It was utter heaven, and all thoughts of having fun at her expense fled from his mind as he submitted to her touch. This level of human contact had been missing from his life for such a long time and he revelled in the pleasure of it.
As she ran her hands down the concave curve of his spine and over the ropy tendons in his back, Cordelia couldn’t help notice that everything about Angel’s body was firm and toned. The recent frenzy of training had clearly paid off – there wasn’t an ounce of extra flab on him anywhere, any added bulk being pure, solid muscle. Despite this, he was still perfectly proportioned and not over-developed like those body-builder types. They did nothing for her sexually, whereas the vampire’s muscular form….
Okay – stop that! she mentally chastised herself, trying to clear the inappropriate thoughts swirling around inside her head.
She shifted position and turned around to work on the backs of his legs, squeezing out some more of the self-tan lotion as she did so. After she’d finished smearing a coat of the thick brown mixture over his calves and upper thighs, Cordelia hesitated for a second before bravely venturing into significantly more dangerous territory. Tentatively raising the towel, she pulled it back to expose the crease where his ass met the tops of his thighs.
“Umm – could you open your legs a bit?” she asked tremulously, glad that he couldn’t see her beet-red face in their current positions.
Angel obliged readily enough, but tensed when her fingers traced a path that skimmed the edge of his buttocks. Her touch was starting to invoke a different kind of pleasure now, one that wasn’t quite so relaxing.
When her deliciously warm hands unexpectedly slipped down between his thighs, Angel had to bite his lip to stifle the strangled groan that threatened to escape. While the swift response of his lower body was proof positive that he was extremely aware that her fingers had lightly brushed the backs of his balls, he didn’t think that the seer was cognisant of the fact at all.
As the vampire had correctly deduced, Cordelia was indeed oblivious to his predicament. Glad that the first part of the ordeal was over, she let go of the breath that she’d been holding and stood up, tugging off her soiled gloves and throwing them in the bin.
“Don’t move!” she warned sharply when Angel shifted on the bed, desperately willing his thrumming body to calm down. “You have to leave it to dry first, or it’ll go all streaky.”
Once he had alleviated the pressure off his aching groin somewhat, the vampire duly complied with her instructions, but, on hearing the clanking of pots and pans from the far side of the room, he lifted his head again, curious as to what she was doing.
Cordelia was standing on her tiptoes, rummaging through the kitchen cupboards, obviously searching for something. She finally found what she was looking for and came back towards him, carrying a medium-sized cappuccino cup in her hands.
“What’s that for?” he asked, decidedly puzzled.
Cordelia blushed from the rounded neckline of her t-shirt, right up to the roots of her hair before answering his question.
“Those Speedos are cut quite high at the front, so… err… the towel is – umm – going to be too bulky. So, I thought…” the seer broke off her stuttering explanation and upended the cup she was holding to illustrate her point.
I suppose I should be grateful, she didn’t pick a teacup, Angel thought, highly insulted at her choice of cover up object. Before he could voice his objections though, something occurred to him.
“Cordelia – have you ever seen a naked, fully-grown man before?”
“That’s non of your business,” she retorted hotly.
The vampire shrugged. “Okay – have it your way, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The seer looked down at her feet and shifted uncomfortably, turning the cappuccino cup repeatedly over in her hands. “I… umm… I never saw my father when I was growing up, and it was dark in the school janitor’s closet with Xander, so…”
“You had sex with Xander in a closet?”
Shaking his head, Angel tried to banish the image, that that particular piece of information conjured up in his mind’s eye.
“No! We just fumbled around a bit. Anyway, it was pitch black, so I didn’t really see anything. And then, with Wilson, the lights were out so I never saw his body either.”
Reading between the lines, Angel’s eyes widened as the implications of what she had just said sank in. “Wilson was your first?”
Cordelia briefly flickered her eyes up to meet his, then looked down at her feet again and nodded.
“Jesus Cordy! Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Yeah right!” she snorted, letting out a short, bitter laugh.
“Cordy…”
“Back then – well, it wasn’t like it is now, Angel.”
The vampire nodded, acknowledging that the intervening years had deepened their friendship and brought them much closer emotionally. “And since Wilson?”
“No-one – I mean, I’ve been on dates, but getting impregnated by demon spawn kind of makes you cautious, you know?”
Knowing her as he did, Angel already knew that the rumours that used to circulate Sunnydale about Cordelia’s promiscuity were complete crap, but he was nevertheless shocked at how inexperienced she actually was. It made him rethink the game he was currently playing with her for a start.
He reasoned that it was okay to continue to flirt with her, but he definitely needed to temper his original approach a little. The last thing he wanted to do was push things too far and step over the boundary of what his relatively innocent best friend – and potential lover – would be comfortable with.
“If you look in the cupboard by the sink, you’ll find a small opaque mixing bowl. I think that might be more appropriate than what you’ve got,” he said, inclining his head towards the cup in her hands.
Relieved that he wasn’t going to pursue the conversation about her rather dismal love life any further, Cordelia heeded his quiet suggestion and fished out the basin from the back of the cupboard.
Whoa! she thought, gulping when she compared the relative size of the two objects in her hands.
Angel grinned at her reaction, his ego doing a happy dance inside his chest. Okay, so maybe he was exaggerating his measurements a little bit, but his choice was certainly more fitting than the miniscule piece of crockery that she’d selected for the job.
Placing the bowl on the bedside cabinet, Cordelia reached out and lightly brushed his shoulder with two fingers to ascertain whether the tanning lotion had suitably dried out. Satisfied with what she discovered, she pulled on the buffing mitt and polished off the residual lotion with short, brisk strokes that encouraged his borrowed blood to rise to the surface of his skin.
“I wondered what a beautician needed a baseball mitt for,” he commented blandly as she made quick work of the back of his legs.
“Well now you know.”
“Yeah, guess I do. It’s true what they say – you learn something new everyday.”
“Even when you’ve lived for over two hundred years?”
“Even then.”
“Okay, you can turn over now.”
Cordelia handed the vampire the basin, and then swiftly turned her back under the pretext of putting on another pair of surgical gloves. Angel flipped over and concealed his private parts, before playfully flicking the towel at her curvy backside to regain her attention.
With two bright spots of pink suffusing the apples of her cheeks, the seer moved back towards him and perched on the mattress next to his shoulder, deliberately avoiding looking at his barely covered lower half.
“We need to tone it down a bit on your face, or it’ll be too dark,” she told him conversationally in an effort to hide her embarrassment.
After mixing up an equal amount of tanning lotion and moisturiser in her hands, she leaned over and traced the angular contours of his face with her fingers, unaware that he could see down the front of her top as she did so. Entertaining himself by surreptitiously admiring her womanly curves, Angel chose not to inform her of that pertinent fact.
The next few minutes passed in companionable silence as the seer covered the front half of the vampire’s body in the dark brown cream, working in a circle around the dreaded area of his obscured groin. Eventually though, she could no longer avoid the inevitable, and sat back to contemplate how best to go about the delicate procedure.
Observing the look of consternation on her face, Angel was about to offer to do the last bit himself, but then she squared her shoulders and determinedly reached for the bottle of lotion. To his utmost surprise, and supreme delight, she then proceeded to hitch up her cotton skirt and tuck it into the sides of her panties. Throwing one slim leg over his body, she straddled his torso, facing towards his feet.
To Cordelia, it had, at first, seemed preferable not look at him while she rubbed the tanning cream into this most intimate of areas. Unfortunately, once she was in position, she belatedly realised that she was giving him the perfect view up her skirt. She couldn’t sit down because that would result in smudging the already applied lotion on his chest, and so, stuck in an awkward situation of her own making, she had to make the best of it. She could crawl into a hole and die of untold embarrassment later, she reasoned.
Carefully adjusting the position of the basin, she quickly applied the self-tan to the vampire’s lower abdomen, skirting the top half of his groin. She registered the faint grunt that escaped Angel when she did this, but did not see how his fingers dug into the mattress, or the way his eyes rolled into the back of his head, as he reacted to the exquisiteness of her hesitant touch.
When she moved her hand to the strip of flesh between his groin and inner thigh however, the seer felt his muscles jump and tighten under her fingertips and realised, with a sudden flash of clarity, that he was getting a hard-on. To her intense discomfort, her body responded to his of its own accord, her nipples tightening to hard points and a gush of wetness dampening her panties.
Unable to help himself, Angel let out a low groan as the sweet fragrance of her excitement filled his nostrils. “Oh God Cordy, you smell so damned good.”
The seer froze at that, immediately recognizing that his supernatural senses had detected her arousal.
Oh.. My… God!
Panic rising like a tidal wave within her, Cordelia quickly scrambled off the bed and stripped the brown-stained gloves from her hands in agitation. While she nervously bounced on the balls of her feet and ran her fingers through her hair, a flood of disjointed instructions tumbled forth from her lips.
“Let it dry, and then rub yourself down with the mitt. If you get dressed, wear loose clothing. You’ll get better results if you stay in your underwear though. You need to leave the tan on for six to eight hours, but then you can shower it off. I have to go – I’ve just remembered something that I’ve got to do today. See ya!”
With that, the seer bolted from the room like a frightened rabbit, not giving the vampire chance to respond.
“Cordelia wait! Come back!” Angel called after the fleeing young woman, struggling into an upright position.
He cursed under his breath when he realised he was too late. He couldn’t chase after her when he was completely naked, covered head-to-toe in brown lotion, and sporting an erection that wasn’t about to subside any time soon.
Suddenly, the subtle game he’d been playing with her over the past hour or so, no longer seemed like the great idea it had been earlier. He should have laid his cards on the table, and told her how he felt before embarking on this campaign of seduction. He’d not given her any indication that this was about more than just sexual attraction, so it was his own stupid fault that things had ended in this unsatisfactory manner.
It was down to him to make things right again, although how he was going to do that, god only knew. His seer could be the queen of avoidance when it came down to dealing with her own feelings, in spite of her directness with regard to other people’s emotional issues.
Determined to tackle the situation head on from here on in, Angel vowed to sit Cordelia down and talk to her about the direction in which their relationship was heading. It would happen at the earliest opportunity because this dancing around the issue just had to stop. In his opinion, it had gone on long enough already.