Part 15
The heat of the day had settled like a thick, sticky blanket over Los Angeles. The air was heavy with grimy pollution but a few hopeful clouds grumbled in the sky, rolling together with the threat of a summer storm. Lightening pierced in the distance, jagged forks of white that seared the atmosphere with a fresh burst of ozone.
Rancho Park Golf Course was a lot like every other golf course Cordelia had seen in her life.
Green and hilly.
Or at least it would be if it wasn’t stumbling towards one in the morning and the sky wasn’t a sheet of charcoal above them. So, it was possibly green but definitely hilly. The trek to the 16th hole had been an exercise in balance, Cordelia’s heels sinking into the soft earth with every step they took, leaving a trail of divots for the groundskeepers to scowl at in the morning. Sacrificing her shoes for the greater good, she’d waved away Angel’s offer of help, knowing that she needed to concentrate on the task at hand without the distraction of Angel playing on her mind.
One foot in front of the other and just walk, she’d told herself. Walk, don’t think about the vision, don’t think about the man in front of you, don’t think about the things you felt, the things you saw, the things you want. Who you want. Walk, dammit, walk.
So she walked, heels tearing up the perfect turf, ready to save the innocent without, she hoped, getting her hands dirty. How difficult could it be to rid the world of a few pygmies?
Easy.
“Easy, my ass,” Cordelia grunted as she struggled to shake the demon from her arm. It scrabbled frantically for purchase before losing the fight and dropping to the floor, but before she could deal the death blow it jumped back up like a jack in a box and tangled its small hands in her hair.
“OW! Why you little-”
Jaw clenched against the fire that erupted in her skull, Cordelia swung the pint-sized hell beast in a half circle until it faced her. She narrowed her eyes and brought her knee up to where she hoped was the demon’s groin.
Its hands loosened from her hair and, with a pained whimper, fell to the ground.
“What the hell are these things?” Angel shouted, raining blows down onto the head of the one that had attached itself to his leg.
“They’re bloody well not pygmies, that’s for sure,” Wesley panted, struggling beneath two of his own.
“They looked smaller in my vision!”
“Yes, well, that doesn’t exactly help us now, does it?”
“Gottcha!” Cordelia crowed as she sliced the head of off her own Frodo with an axe. She swayed dizzily as she levered herself off her knees and to her feet. “Will you two stop messing around and just kill them!”
“I’m trying,” Angel barked as he twisted the neck of the demon attached to him. It made a sickening crunch that Cordelia felt in her gut. She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat.
“A little help here would be nice,” Wesley muttered as he stretched for the sword that lay just out of reach. Angel grabbed the two demons by their necks and hauled them from Wesley. They spat and kicked in his restraint, yellow teeth gnashing in anger.
Angel brought their heads together with a loud crack. They twitched before finally going limp.
“Ugh,” Cordelia grimaced.
He let them drop from his grasp and wiped his hands on his pants with distaste. “Next time I say something’s going to be simple, stake me.”
“Will do,” Wesley nodded, accepting the hand that Angel offered and pulled himself to his feet. “Do you think that’s all of them?”
The ground was littered with two dozen unusually short corpses, limbs twisted and wounds trickling with blood. Dead, they looked almost harmless. If you hadn’t just spent the last twenty minutes trying stop one of them from humping your leg, that is. Their skin was dull and leathery in the moonlight, faces pitted with scars, their hands small. At least that much of the vision had been right.
“God, it better be. I’m about ready to throw up and pass out,” Cordelia said as she dusted herself off. Miraculously, she was demon-goo free, which sadly couldn’t be said the same of Wesley. “I’m not sitting in the same car as you.”
“Why not?”
“Because, ew.”
“It’s just a little, er, mucus,” he frowned, trying to wipe the slime from the front of his jacket, only for it to attach itself to his fingers in long shimmering trails.
“We’re hosing you down.”
A thick glob of goo slid down Wesley’s forehead and dangled precariously from the end of his nose. “That might be a good idea.”
Angel swung his sword over his shoulder and nudged the nearest corpse with the toe of his boot.
“Please please please say we’re not on burial duty?” Cordelia begged, tugging on the sleeve of his jacket.
“We’re not on burial duty.”
“Liar,” she huffed, slowly rolling her head to one side and then the other, carefully stretching the muscles of her neck beyond the brittle limits left in the wake of her latest vision. Her eyelids dropped briefly even as a voice at the back of her mind chided her to force them open before Wesley stopped trying to rid himself of demon ooze and noticed. In the meantime, she hoped the flickering shadows and light cast by the storm would help hide the toll, at least for another day.
“How’s your head?” Angel’s voice rumbled close beside her under the cloak of distant thunder.
“Still attached. Which is more than I can say for some of these guys.” Judging from his lack of response, Cordy decided her attempt at humorous deflection had fallen a little flat.
Another lie that her head didn’t hurt was on the tip of her tongue when his arm wound around her waist, fingers settling on the strip of skin where her pants rode low on her hips. The words dissolved at his touch and a shocking, slow burn crept up Cordelia’s spine instead, stirring the memory of the vision that she’d successfully ignored for the last hour. Her skin throbbed, prickly and sensitive to the hot air. Sweat settled coolly between her breasts, making her shiver, making her remember the wet slide of his tongue over her skin.
Angel’s grip on her hip tightened, the line of his body tense against her side. A signal, she supposed, for her to stop denying the toll the vision took on her body. It was an unnecessary reminder, given what the two of them had recently resorted to for that very reason. She lifted her chin to assure him that she was okay, relatively speaking, but the heavy set of his brow stilled the reply in her throat.
Lightening flashed erratically above them, too close for comfort, flooding the landscape with a moment of ivory white that seared away the mask of genuine concern to reveal open want on Angel’s face hidden beneath. He looked as surprised by the discovery as she was, and equally unable to cast it aside. Cordelia swallowed, knowing her face betrayed the same desire as she counted the seconds that would tell her how close the storm was.
One.
Two.
Thunder rumbled.
They needed to get out of there.
“Well, at least the night can’t get any worse,” Wesley said, unaware of anything but the pointless task of trying to flick the mucus from his fingers.
As soon as the words had left his mouth, the first drop of rain fell.
Cordelia pulled away from Angel, whose expression had returned to run-of-the-mill furrowed brow, and scowled at Wesley. “You just had to say it, didn’t you?”
***
Hurry hurry hurry, he had to be quick.
Remember how her jewelry box sat beside her moisturiser, her hair brush beside the small stack of CD’s. Replace everything as it was found. A place for everything and everything in its place.
Hurry. Hurry. They’d be back soon, his Cordelia and the vampire she spreads her legs for.
No. Don’t think about that. It’s not her fault. He seduces her. She’s young and naive, just needs someone to rescue her.
No. Whore. She’s a whore. Needs to be shown, needs to be told. She can’t keep doing this to him.
Her lingerie drawer screeched loudly, hinges old and rusting.
Pretty, pretty Cordelia, dressed up in silk and ribbons for him. One day. Soon. Everything will be different. Everything will be better. Not like last time. He can wait. She’ll be worth it.
Hurry hurry hurry-
The front door of the Hyperion creaked open.
-too late.
***
The bedroom door closed with a click behind Cordelia, she slumped against it with a tired groan as Angel tossed his keys on the chest of draws and walked quietly across the room, navigating the darkness with tense shoulders. He turned the small bedside lamp on, casting the room in a warm yellow glow before throwing open the balcony doors, beckoning the warm night inside. The quiet clatter of rain and the bass growl of distant thunder filled the still air.
“What an enormous waste of time,” Cordelia said, letting her muddy shoes fall to the floor.
“The kids we saved might disagree with you,” Angel said as he watched the night from the open balcony.
“You know what I mean,” she muttered, closing her eyes.
Puffing out her cheeks, Cordelia exhaled slowly. With Wesley safely at home, she could finally stop pretending that the vision hadn’t exhausted her, that her brain wasn’t still crackling with electricity and that her body wasn’t demanding
Angel’s touch.
She opened her eyes to find him watching her closely from across the room. The low lighting cast him in muted tones, his face swallowed by half shadows that hid his eyes and danced over the sharp angles of his cheekbones. Rivulets of water ran down his temples from his sodden hair, slowly disappearing into his sweater. The scent of rain and Angel filled the room, filled her senses, and Cordelia found she couldn’t stop looking.
She’d always known Angel was handsome. Salty goodness, even, but that had been six years and a lifetime ago. They were no longer the faces on the sidelines, to be picked up and put down when the situation called for it. She was no longer the spoilt rich bitch, the untouchable Princess, the secretary with questionable filing skills. He was no longer the property of Buffy Summers, her no-bone boss, her sexless best friend.
Standing before her, he was a new Angel.
Body tense, jaw clenched, eyes two pools of promising pitch that should frighten her, should make her run screaming from the room, but didn’t. Darkness and light, demon, man and soothing balm, this new sum of him had crept up on Cordelia unknowingly, making her fingertips tingle and her mouth go dry.
This is what kept Darla obsessed even with Angel’s soul and a river of blood-drenched guilt between them. This is what tempted Buffy despite a destiny she couldn’t deny and Angelus. This was the angelic face that could corrupt both sinners and saints. And Cordelia had somehow managed to live in blissful ignorance of the true lure a certain brooding vampire could pose until right this minute.
A revelation that might have come too little, too late for her own good.
She swallowed as she shrugged off Angel’s jacket, her throat clicking loudly. Though his jacket had shielded her from the worst of the rain, her skin still felt damp with the lingering humidity. Her palms were clammy, beads of rain and sweat clung to her hairline. She felt disheveled and on the verge of something she couldn’t rationalize away.
“You OK?” Angel asked her, his voice a rumble of thunder in the distance.
“Yeah,” Cordelia nodded and for once it was the truth. She laid Angel’s jacket over the back of a chair and slowly spanned the distance between them, her footsteps sure. She breathed in deeply when the gap became inches instead of miles, her nerves buzzing with left over adrenaline.
Angel shifted his weight from foot to foot and Cordelia wanted to tell him to relax, but couldn’t find the words as the drop of water that had settled in the dip of his clavicle stole her attention. It glittered like a pool at midnight, shimmering against his pale skin, vulnerable and seductive, making her think of the long summer nights in Sunnydale Lake before she’d learned the truth about the monster beneath her bed.
Cordelia brushed the back of her hand over the side of Angel’s neck. “You should get dry,” she said, her thumb ghosting over the pronounced bump of his Adams apple.
“It’s just a little rain, it won’t kill me,” he murmured, his gaze catching and holding hers.
“No, I guess it won’t,” she said thoughtfully. Cordelia stroked her thumb over his jaw and up to his temple, wiping the rain away carefully. He closed his eyes as she ran her fingers though his hair, combing the storm-flattened spikes until they stood proudly once again. A contented rumble vibrated through Angel’s chest when she scratched her nails gently over his scalp.
Four days of annoyance and restlessness slipped into nothing but a memory as Cordelia found the familiar comfort of Angel. She knew, deep down, that it was foolish to connect such a feeling of safety with this man, this vampire, but the pain was less when he was near, even if the vision she’d had earlier-
…wrists pinned above her head as he licks the sweat from between her breasts, mouth hot, stubble scratching against her sensitive skin. Thighs shaking with sweet desperation, she pulls him in to her, into her body, beneath her skin.
Back arching to the rhythm of his groans, harder and harder until the headboard rattles against the wall and the pillows are thrown from the bed. His lips bruise, their teeth clashing, blood in the corner of her mouth and she wants more, God, more Angel, more everything, and he gives it to her because there’s no need to refuse now…
-wasn’t reality. She blinked herself back into the room only to find her hands splayed against the hard wall of Angel’s chest and her lips pressed to his neck.
“Sorry,” Cordelia murmured, her hot breath seeping through the ice of his skin.
Angel cleared his throat but his voice wavered when he said, “s’OK.”
Cordelia meant to pull her hands away and take a step back. This was supposed to be about the vision. Clinical. Necessary. Detached. She shouldn’t even have to remind herself of that fact. But somehow, instead of dropping safely to her sides, her hands were slipping down his chest. His dark sweater was damp and smelled familiar; rain, sweat, soap and Angel. She breathed him in as her hands finally met the cold buckle of his belt, her fingers like thieves, sneaking beneath the hem of his sweater until they felt the tense plane of his abdomen. His muscles twitched beneath her fingertips. The urge to taste that skin welled up in Cordelia, to kiss the vulnerable path that began at his navel, to lick the rain from his flesh. A shiver like a thousand ants marching over her skin crawled up her spine when Angel’s hands settled on the small of her back.
“Your hands are cold.”
“Sorry,” Angel apologized as he spanned his palms over the landscape of skin that her top bared to the world, tracing invisible patterns with his fingers until her heat fused his pores.
“S’OK,” Cordelia murmured before a question filled silence slipped over them to the rhythm of the rain falling outside.
Are you sure you want to do this now?
Yes.
Angel opened his mouth to make the question real but the words became tangled on his lips as she curled her fingers around the hem of his sweater. He lifted his arms and let Cordelia rid him of the damp garment, unconcerned with the water stain it would inevitably leave on the carpet when it fell to the floor. Cordelia walked her fingers slowly up the ladder of Angel’s ribs, her hands wanted to learn his body, to trace the hard lines and soft dips, to give back to him what he had given to her in the past.
She wondered if he would let her.
A half-swallowed groan rumbled in his throat as she trailed her nails fleetingly over his flat nipples. A blush of mottled pink spread across Cordelia’s cheekbones at the noise, the sound terrifyingly intimate beneath the low lights and hushed city outside. She leaned her forehead against the sharp ridge of Angel’s collar bone. He was cool and familiar against her flushed face, and Cordelia realized it wasn’t embarrassment that had shocked a current of heat through her body.
It was the same crackle of electricity that she’d felt when he’d had looked at her as thunder had crashed above them on the golf course, poorly hidden desire and something darker, sharp like metal on her tongue and maybe just as dangerous.
Angel slid his hands up Cordelia’s back, following the line of her spine until his fingertips met the nape of her neck. Slowly, with more care than Cordelia knew possible in his large hands, Angel unpinned her hair, letting the small grips fall to the floor like the last of her reservations. Her hair tumbled down over her shoulders in humidity-kinked waves that smelt faintly of the smoke but mostly of fruity shampoo, bitter scented hair spray and just simply the woman herself.
Angel combed his fingers through the thick brown hair, untangling the small knots before massaging her scalp back to life. Cordelia sighed, the lingering tension slowly leaking out of her shoulders and the pressure in her skull beginning to ebb away. She rubbed the tip of her nose across Angel’s collarbone in silent thanks. Her warm breath tickled over his skin like a morning mist and Cordelia felt the shiver that ran through his body as he pulled her closer, his jaw brushing against her cheek for a heartbeat before he pressed wet lips to the crook of her neck.
Distracted, Cordelia’s hands fluttered back to his belt, fingertips drawing half-formed thoughts through the line of hair that peaked above the waist of his pants. The touch drew her name quietly from Angel’s lips as he trailed a line of kisses up her neck, tasting what he already knew so well. The quiet metallic clink and leathery hiss of Cordelia unbuckling Angel’s belt echoed inside the silent room, chasing a hot shiver over her skin that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Cordelia swallowed as the throb of her body demanded she not over-think what they were about to do, to just let it happen, to spread her arms and let the current drag her under.
Angel’s hands settled on the curve of her hips, his thumbs pressing sharply into the soft flesh as he pulled Cordelia flush against his body. A small “oh” fell from her parted lips when her abdomen settled firmly against his groin, hard and urgent, his body told her silently what he wouldn’t, couldn’t, put into words.
Cordelia held her breath and waited for reality to flood back into the room, for the awkwardness and stilted conversation to drown out the rain. She waited, the seconds ticking by like hours until Angel brushed her hair away from shoulder and ran his thumb along the curve of her jaw. In his eyes, such liquid pitch, Cordelia saw everything she needed to know, even if she didn’t understand it.
The current swirled around her feet.
“Sit,” she said, jerking her chin in the direction of the bed. Angel quirked an eyebrow at her as he walked them backwards until his legs hit the bed. Cordelia flattened her hands over his chest and pushed him gently down onto the mattress, smiling when the springs wheezed beneath his weight.
A faint feeling of deja vu whispered at the edges of Cordelia’s brain as she knelt on the floor between Angel’s legs. They’d been here before, four days ago, the same room, the same reasons why, when necessity and desire had blurred, leaving them gasping and lost for words. But four days ago it had been comfort and escape. This was something different. Something Cordelia didn’t dare put a name to as she pressed the palm of her hand to his chest, gesturing for him to lay down.
“Cor-”
“Shh,” she hushed him softly, running her hands from his sternum to flat plane of his stomach. Angel hummed low in his throat as Cordelia traced ephemeral circles around his navel, fingers dancing over ivory skin and tense muscles. Her hair fell like a caress over his chest as she finally sipped the rain from his skin, warm gloss-free lips butterflying delicately against centuries old flesh, learning the sharp lines of his body until the damp salty taste of Angel’s skin was imprinted into her memory.
Cordelia ran her tongue along the edge of his hip bone, making Angel twist his fingers into the heavy blanket he lay on, scared to touch her, to move at all in case she might stop and realize what the slick slide of her tongue roused in him. She shaped the thick muscles of his thighs beneath her palms as she dropped a path of kisses from his navel to the waist of his slacks, the line of hair tickling the end of her nose.
Angel twisted the blanket tighter in his fists to the rhythm of Cordelia’s breathing, her warm breath scattering goose-bumps over his skin until the possibility of what she might do next made him twitch. She smiled inwardly at his unconscious action, wondering what else she could do to make him breathe, make him shiver.
The zipper of his pants hissed as she drew it down carefully, her wrist pressing down unexpectedly on Angel’s cock. Cordelia stilled, her heart suddenly pounding in her temples. She flicked her gaze up to Angel’s face, but his eyes were closed, blind to her moment of discovery. Biting her bottom lip, Cordelia settled the palm of hand over the hardening length, curling her hand around him with a feeling of possession that shocked spider webs of want across her body. She pressed her lips against his abdomen, squeezing him teasingly as she let her teeth sink into his stomach.
“Jesus,” Angel hissed, eyelids squeezing tightly together at the sudden sensations. She soothed the blunt bite with soft kitten licks of her tongue, inhaling the deep musk of his skin, letting it swirl through her senses until the desire for more made her cheeks flush apple red.
Peeling down the waist of Angel’s pants, Cordelia held her breath as inch by inch he was revealed. She shifted on her knees, wincing when her thighs threatened to cramp. The floor was uncomfortable but she didn’t want to move, didn’t want to shatter the atmosphere with practical words. Not now. Not tonight. So she ignored everything, the strain on her knees, the vision pain in her head, the whispering voice in her brain that said stop, this is too much, too intimate as she pulled off Angel’s boots, socks and pants, until he was naked before her.
Running her nails up the insides of his thighs, she led a trail of wet kisses from the inside of his left knee up up up across the hill of his thigh, tongue darting out to capture the taste, fingers climbing the granite ladder of his ribcage. Her hair brushed against his cock, forcing a groan to fall from his lips, a broken sound of pleasure that stoked the heat that crawled beneath Cordelia’s skin as she licked the crease of flesh that joined his hip and thigh.
“Cordelia,” Angel leant up on his elbow and cupped the side of her face, stilling her explorations. “You don’t have to-”
“I want to,” she smiled, hushing him with a quick kiss pressed into his palm. “But if you don’t want-”
“No, no. I do, I mean. It’s fine. I…don’t mind,” he grimaced at his choice of words.
“Try not to be too enthusiastic, Angel,” she rolled her eyes affectionately at him. “Lay down.”
“Whatever the lady wants-” he murmured, easing back down onto the bed.
“-the lady gets,” Cordelia finished for him, curling her hand around his cock, no longer quite so shocked that this was Angel she was touching like a lover. Maybe that was what he was now, what they were in technical black and white.
Lovers.
The word made her chest feel too tight so Cordelia pushed the thought away, momentarily disturbed by how easy it had become for her to repress and deny on demand. She closed her eyes and let herself remember the parts of her vision that didn’t turn her stomach with nausea.
A wicked smile crept over the corners of her lips.
So slowly that it made his thighs twitch, Cordelia ran her hand up the length of Angel’s cock, grazing her thumb lightly over the head.
“Don’t tease,” Angel grunted, more of a warning than a plea.
“M’not,” she said, her breath whispering through the dark, wiry hair. “I’m just-”
“Teasing.”
“Shut up, Angel.”
“Uhnnnnn…..” his retort dissolved into wordless noise as Cordelia dragged her tongue up the length of him, his hips still arching towards the slick slide once she’d pulled away.
“Now that was teasing,” she said.
“Shut up, Cordy,” Angel muttered, rubbing his hand over his face, trying to regain some of the control he knew he was edging closer and closer to losing. Cordelia didn’t want him to keep control, she realized. She didn’t want this to be clinical, emotionless, just a necessity. She wanted more, she wanted….
Cordelia wanted.
She covered her hand over the fist that still gripped the blanket, pinching it until he released his death hold and tangled his fingers through hers, their palms connecting tightly. With her other hand, Cordelia rubbed the base of Angel’s cock with her thumb, licking her lips and steadying her breathing. Angel squeezed her hand in his, a million words said in one simple gesture.
Pursing her lips, Cordelia kissed her way up the dark vein that spanned the length of his cock, letting her tongue sneak short, maddening touches that made Angel hold her hand tighter and hiss through his teeth. Her hair fell over his hips as she crossed another line and took him into her mouth, the almost bitter tang of his sex on her tongue.
A sharp startled breath filled the room, dissolving into a low, drawn out moan as Cordelia slid her mouth down him, stopping when the urge to gag was too much to ignore. Pulling back, Cordelia hollowed her cheeks and sucked lightly, letting her fingers ripple over the root of his cock.
Angel shuddered with tension, forcing himself to remain still even though the urge to thrust into the hot wet cavern of her mouth made his teeth itch and spine burn. He knew his grip on Cordelia’s hand would leave her bruised, but he couldn’t make himself let go, didn’t want to break that connection, scared that if he did he’d lose more than he could afford.
Hotwetslickslide, this was more than Angel could handle, his free hand tangled in her hair, fingers snaring like vines of ivy as he squeezed his eyes tighter and tighter shut. He couldn’t look, couldn’t watch her, his best friend, Cordelia, with her lips wrapped around his cock. Too much, too much, too much when until only recently he’d only had the company of his own hand and memories that made his soul cry out.
“Cordy, you have to st-” hissed words broken off with a grunt as Cordelia brushed her knuckles over his balls, an inquisitive finger skirting behind the heavy sacks to press against the impossibly soft stretch of skin that made supernovas ignite on the edges of his retina.
Cordelia breathed quickly through her nose as sweat beaded on her forehead, concentrating on Angel rather than how her jaw and neck were beginning to ache. She’d forgotten how much work this could be, but the no longer muffled noises that were escaping from Angel made it worth it, made very damn line disappear, made her thighs shiver and lips pulse. Opening her eyes and dragging her gaze upwards, the shiver turned into fire as Cordelia saw the taught lines of his body lit with yellow light, chest rising and falling impotently, bottom lip snagged between his teeth, hands anchored to her like she was gravity as he struggled to keep hold of his control.
The knowledge that she did that to him, that she had made Angel grunt her name as she gently scraped her bottom teeth over the head of his cock was intoxicating. She wanted to hear him say it again, say it a million times, say it like he did in her visions, it as though it were the only thing that mattered.
“Cor…you have to…I can’t….” Angel struggled with coherency, curling his hand around the nape of her neck, wanting more, wanting less, body straining closerclosercloser, oh God, as Cordelia attempted to swallow him whole, turn him inside out until his nerves were dead from too much, too much, too much-
“Cordy, please,” he begged, unsure of what he was actually pleading for as his hips began to rock with the motion of her mouth-slickwethot-now, now, now, she had to stop, she had to otherwise this was going to be over too quickly and it couldn’t be over yet, because this wasn’t about him, he tried to remind himself, for Cordy, Cordelia, this was for her, her, not…not him…God, yes, like that, don’t stop, no, stop, you have to-
“Stop!” Angel grunted so forcefully that Cordelia startled and pulled away.
Calm down, he told himself as he tried not to whimper at the loss. You have to calm down.
“Angel?” Cordelia whispered, squeezing his hand and nipping at his thigh with blunt teeth.
Angel groaned, body throbbing, and forced his eyes to open.
Hair tangled, lips pink and swollen, cheeks flushed and eyes two slashes of black that shone in the muted light, Cordelia watched him without reservation, letting him know wordlessly exactly what she wanted.
“You still with me?” she asked, resting her cheek on his thigh, a smug smile curling the corners of her mouth.
Angel narrowed his eyes at her mischievous tone and propped himself up on his elbows. With a quick tug on their joined hands, Cordelia found herself straddling him before she could blink.
“What do you think?” Angel smirked, gripping her waist so she settled firmly against the line of his cock.
“I think you are,” Cordelia grinned. She tilted her head to the side as Angel zeroed in on the curve of her neck, licking it like a big cat as she ground against him. “Why’d you make me stop?” she asked, voice a breathless rasp as her eyes fluttered shut.
“Felt good,” Angel mumbled into the crook of her neck, lips sucking a stain of red to the surface of her skin. He slid his hands from the curve of her hips to the small of her back, pressing his fingertips into the soft flesh, urging her closer, closer, closer until he could feel the hard points of her nipples pressing against his chest through her blouse.
“S’meant to,” she sighed, her hands finding purchase in his bed mussed hair. She tugged on the short strands until, with an annoyed grunt, Angel left the warm damp curve of her neck. Cordelia brushed her thumbs over the strong slope of his forehead as she said, “that’s kinda the point.”
“It felt really good,” he clarified, the shiny surface of Cordelia’s lips capturing his gaze.
“Oh,” she said, her mouth hanging in a perfect circle that Angel had to force himself not to lift his chin and steal from her, desperately quelling the need to covet the soft, plump cushions of flesh, the one part of her denied to him.
A rumble of frustration worked its way up his throat before he could stop it.
Cordelia raised her eyebrows. “Growly.”
“Sometimes,” Angel said, a shadow of the devil he once was passing across his eyes. At his dark tone, Cordelia ground the cradle of her thighs down harder against him, the warm buttery leather of her pants melting over his bare flesh, making him buck upwards, searching blindly for more.
A throaty moan trickled from Cordelia’s lips at the thick ridge of Angel’s erection pressing so sweetly against her. Her body was heavy with desire, muscles twitching with the need for release that had begun too many hours earlier at the club, the lingering pain of her vision nothing in comparison to the demanding beat that ran through her with every breath.
Hot.
She felt too hot, sweat settling on the small of her back, on the insides of her knees. The leather pants irritated her thighs and Cordelia wanted them gone, wanted to feel Angel’s cooler skin against the flush of her body so she could breath easily again.
“Need to….” she trailed of, unsure of what she was asking.
“I know.” Angel mouthed the line of her jaw, so close to the forbidden fruit of her lips. His tongue lapped at the smooth skin beneath her chin, hands two thieves stealing over her stomach, bunching up the material of her blouse to slide beneath and spread across her ribs. The tips of Angel’s fingers kissed the underside of Cordelia’s breasts as he laved the sweat from her hollow of her throat, making her hum and squirm, the smallest touch spreading a wild fire through her veins.
“Please,” she whispered, her hot breath curling around his ear.
Angel’s eyes slammed shut at the word, its cadence as heady as oleander and just as deadly, reminding him of a past that he would never escape, almost didn’t want to escape because the taste was as addictive as nicotine on his tongue.
Beg. He could make Cordelia beg if he wanted to. It would be so easy, to draw out what she wanted until she no longer knew her own name, until she was shaking and desperate. The demon in him crowed at the thought.
Cordelia bit the spongy flesh of his earlobe. “Please, Angel,” she repeated, unaware of the conflict crackling along his nerves.
“Christ, Cordelia,” Angel groaned, un-peeling his fingers from her ribcage and walking them slowly upwards until his palms were filled with her breasts. Cordelia let out a shuddering breath and leaned her forehead against Angel’s shoulder, her nails digging roughly into the nape of his neck when he rolled the hard pebbles of her nipples between his fingers.
“Please,“ she hissed, the sibilant sound sliding through her teeth as she rocked against him, not caring how she sounded, what one simple word might do to their friendship.
Skimming his knuckles over the sensitive sides of her breasts, Angel let his hands roam until he found the chain that held the halter top around Cordelia’s neck. He grazed his thumb over the small clasp, wondering once again how such a fragile slip of chain could keep the piece of clothing fixed in place. Angel’s hands felt clumsy as he fumbled with the clasp, worried that the tiny link would snap between his fingers.
“Is there a password or something I need to get this thing open?” Angel muttered, his frustration making his fingers stutter. Cordelia laughed against his shoulder and lifted her arms to swat away his hands. With a flick of her wrist the clasp opened. Cordelia let her halter-top fall from neck and slide down her chest, finally pooling in a crumpled heap between them.
“One more,” she smiled, unlocking the second chain and clasp that ran along the small of her back.
Angel plucked the flimsy material out from between them and threw it across the room, unconcerned as it landed on a vase, making it wobble precariously, because he had a lap full of almost naked Cordelia and nothing else seemed as important as that.
She couldn’t help the two spots of pink that stained her cheeks as Angel looked at her, the wave of heat creeping down her neck, not ending even as her toes tingled with it. Resting her hands on Angel’s knees, Cordelia leaned back slightly, her hair falling down her back as she pushed her chest out. The night made her feel bold and she wanted to revel in it.
Angel laid his right hand between her breasts, counting the rapid beat of Cordelia’s heart as it vibrated through his palm. He threaded his other hand through her hair, stroking his thumb over her temple, desperate to ease the pain the visions induced anyway he could.
“I’m OK, Angel,” she said softly, seeing the concern in his eyes. “I’m OK now.”
“Cordy,” he said, just to feel the comfort of her name on his tongue. Palming the weight of her breast in his hand, Angel once again felt the desire for something more than what they had to be.
Angel grazed his thumb over her nipple. “You’re beautiful.”
Cordelia breathed sharply at the touch, nerves sensitive and screaming. She jumped when Angel dragged the flat of his tongue across her pebbled flesh, arching like a bow, searching for more of that, more of anything as long as it was Angel making her feel light headed and dizzy.
“God,” she groaned to whatever deity it was that looked after mostly-reformed-bitch-seers as Angel snagged her nipple between his teeth, tugging at it lightly until a line of lightening connected from her breast down to her womb, a flood of heat connecting her to the earth, to the ebb and flow of the tide, to the rain that fell like a sweet release outside.
Cordelia felt taut, pulled too thin over desire dense bones. She licked the sweat from her top lip, breath a continuous tremor as Angel traveled the landscape of her breasts. She squeezed her eyes shut but that only made everything sharper; his tongue on the underside of her breasts, his hands molding the tense wings of her shoulder-blades, hard muscles beneath her fingertips, spiky hair against her jaw.
Angel between her thighs.
“Want….uhnn….” Her head flopped back on her neck a Angel rubbed the heel of his hand against her sex, the inside seem of her pants pressing maddeningly into her.
“Tell me,” Angel said, voice a rough rasp of desire as he kissed a line from the dip between her breasts to the sweat sticky skin on beneath her ear. She tasted of his undoing.
“This,” she panted, “you. Angel, want you.”
Want, not need. Want. Angel didn’t care if Cordelia knew what she’d said, the word scraped across his teeth and made his cock throb painfully. His hands trailed down the curve of her spine and finally settled on Cordelia’s waist. Angel gave her no warning before he rolled Cordelia beneath him, her eyes a hazy mix of arousal and annoyance at being manhandled like a doll.
It was so perfectly Cordelia that Angel found himself inching towards her lips with every intention of breaking all the rules they had made so responsibly.
Fuck responsible, Angel thought.
Cordelia’s eyes widened and she forgot how to breath. How was she meant to remember something so complex as that when Angel’s lips were a breath away from her own?
Just this once, Cordelia said to herself. It won’t change anything.
Except, she knew, it would. One kiss would pull down the flimsy wall they’d built, leaving it broken and irreparable.
One kiss would change everything.
She saw the realization in Angel’s eyes at the same moment the thought bubbled up through the humid fog of her mind. He closed his eyes and let out a breath that made Cordelia’s lips burn. Bridging the impossible gap between them, Angel kissed her jaw.
“You already have me.”
“Show me,” she said boldly, placing his hand on the waist of her pants.
“The hotel’s empty except for us—no one’s here who could find out or interrupt… there’s no rush,” Angel popped the button and slid the zipper down, watching her for any sign to slow but seeing only the flush of her cheeks, the pink of her tongue as it flicked at the corner of her lips and the wide dilation of her pupils that urged him for more.
“Speak for yourself,” Cordelia murmured as the sultry air hit her abdomen when he peeled back the waist of her pants, making her skin pepper with goose bumps. Angel ran his index finger along the thin elastic of her thong, tracing the dip and curve of her hipbone like it was something precious, something to look after and keep safe. He slid his hand beneath the elastic, flattening his palm against Cordelia’s hip, his thumb brushing the inside of her thigh.
Time became liquid, an immeasurable notion as Angel drew a broken figure of eight over the inside of her thigh, skirting ever closer to where she needed, where Cordelia wanted him the most. She sucked a long breath in through her teeth when his thumb stole beneath the lace panel of her thong.
Her hips left the bed at the first barely there touch of Angel’s fingers against her sensitive flesh. Cordelia snared a hand through his hair and gripped the bars of the headboard with the other, desperate to keep part of herself grounded.
Angel licked the sweat from between her breasts, running his finger through the wiry hair that shielded her sex. Her leather pants confined his explorations, teasing him with what was just beyond reach.
“Wanna lose the pants?” he asked her breastbone.
“Oh yeah,” Cordelia laughed, breathlessly.
Angel sat up between her legs and grasped the leather pants by her ankles. With a quirk of his wrists, he tugged on them, the humidity damp material peeling away from her skin like slow running honey. Cordelia breathed a sigh of relief as she kicked the pants away, swearing to herself that she’d never wear the damn things again.
Running his fingers over the slightly heat-reddened skin on her knees, Angel kissed the crease where hip met thigh, the exact same caress that Cordelia had teased him with. She squirmed beneath him, tugging on his hair to get his attention but Angel refused to be moved as he pressed his nose into her lacy thong, breathing in so deeply that it made Cordelia want to laugh and call him a dork.
When Angel dragged the flat of his tongue over the lace, it didn’t seem quite so funny anymore.
“Unhhh,” Cordelia grunted, her eyes rolling back as he teased her, the point of his tongue pressing through her panties and into her clitoris. Angel urged her thighs apart wider, almost obscenely so but Cordelia didn’t care because the damp lace and Angel’s tongue were a distracting combination, making her want to arch and cry out, beg him for more as the rough fabric sparked firecrackers between her legs.
Angel snagged his fingers through the elastic and pulled the thong down an inch, kissing the strip of skin he’d exposed. Cordelia whined and kicked her heels into the mattress with frustration.
“So impatient,” Angel chuckled.
“So not funny,” she muttered.
He dragged the scrap of lace down another inch, revealing the dark hair at the apex of Cordelia’s thighs. “You just don’t get my humour.”
The flimsy elastic snapped between his fingers.
“That’s because you don’t have a sense of humouruuhh,” the word was mangled on her lips as Angel finally decided to stop torturing her.
Cordelia arched her neck, hair sticking wetly to her temples as Angel buried his mouth between her thighs. Tongue a wicked promise that tickled over her sensitive flesh, fingers biting into her hips tightly. Cordelia’s breath stuttered in her lungs, too much sensation, the world tilting sideways, she parted her legs wider, needing Angel closer, closer, more, more, more, her heart thundering in her ears.
“Oh, God,” she groaned, eyes screwed shut against the onslaught, fingernails leaving four half moon dents in his left shoulder as he thrust one finger, then two inside her without warning, the sound of the wet suction of her body making her face burn as Angel brought her perilously close to the edge.
Cordelia pressed the side of her face into pillow, mouth open and panting, hissing disjointed words that made no sense as thunder rolled through her limbs. “Can’t…please, Angel…I…please….” her hands scrabbled at his shoulders, desperate and blind. One, two, three fingers and it was too much, she couldn’t stop the guttural cries that burst from her throat, straining towards the release that Angel kept just out of her reach. Smacking the palm of her hand against Angel’s shoulder, Cordelia drove her hips upwards, meeting the thrusts of his hand, caught between the moment of divine possibility and the end of all things.
“Have to…have you….” she tugged on the wayward spikes of Angel’s hair, making him grunt at the sudden sharp pain, lost in the taste that made his lips slick and teeth itch. “God dammit, Angel,” Cordelia yanked his hair, a few strands coming away in her fingers.
Angel bit the inside of her thigh in retaliation, blunt teeth leaving a ring of red that she’d feel for days before he grudgingly left the sweet taste of Cordelia cunt behind. Crawling up the landscape of her body slowly, he tongued the hollow of her navel, the curve of her ribs, the rise of her breasts until they were face to face.
Brown eyes half lidded, glinting with dangerous flecks of yellow, mouth hungry, chin shiny with the damp between her thighs – Cordelia swallowed, turned inside out by the dark desire written openly across Angel’s face.
Angel grasped her left thigh, smoothing his hand along it as he hooked her knee over his shoulder. He lowered himself against her, his cock nestling between the folds of Cordelia’s sex, a shudder rippling up his spine at the contact.
“C’mon, Angel,” she begged, impatience roughening her voice to a throaty growl.
Drawing his hips backwards, Angel’s cock nudged against her entrance, making them both still and shiver, drawing out the moment until it was unbearable, the sound of falling rain and panting breath filling the bedroom.
“Cordelia,” Angel groaned, lost in the woman beneath him as he thrust forward.
“Yesss,” Cordelia hissed, fingers clutching at his biceps, head straining backwards as though she were trying to escape her own skin. Angel clenched his jaw, counted backwards from fifty, thought about anything but the intoxicating heat clenching around his cock.
The sting of Cordelia’s nails digging into his skin made Angel’s hips jerk against her, the sound of her broken gasp echoing through the storm. Let go, let go, he needed to let go, to find himself in the soft canvas of her body, to make her scream, make her shake, to hell with their friendship and take what was his.
“Hold on to the headboard,” Angel growled, words pushed out from his chest. Cordelia lifted her arms and wrapped her hands around one of the iron posts, the metal warm beneath her fingers. Or maybe it was just her who was hot, burning up from the inside out, blood boiling in her veins with every touch.
Angel pinned her wrists with one hand, balancing most of his weight on the other. The muscles in his back twitched, tense with restraint as he moved within her. Cordelia panted beneath him, back arching from the bed, bottom lip caught between her teeth.
The sight could be enough to destroy him if he let it.
A part of him ached for that damnation.
“Cordy…open your…eyes,” Angel asked to the rhythm of their bodies.
Cordelia shook her head, unable to find enough air for her lungs let alone anything else.
Angel thrust harder, making the headboard bang loudly against the wall and the bed sheet rub a burn into Cordelia’s shoulder blades.
“….Cordelia….please…for me…..”
She groaned and opened her eyes, meeting his hooded gaze with the same intensity mirrored in his. Cordelia couldn’t look away, didn’t want to as he took her over, dismantling the pieces of herself until she was just a mass of shuddering molecules. Digging her heel into the mattress, Cordelia met each thrust with one of her own, not caring when her other leg tingled with cramp at the sharp angle it lay over his shoulder.
“God,” she breathed, body pulling tighter and tighter, waves of pleasure building with every demanding stroke of Angel inside her. Breathe, she needed to breathe but couldn’t, didn’t care, this was all she needed, Angel between her thighs, rhythm breaking into a staccato drumbeat as finesse was pushed aside by pure need, the mattress wheezing painfully beneath them.
Angel felt the stretch and ripple of his face shifting, brow deepening, teeth elongating. He tried to shake it off, push it down, hide it away but he was too far gone, Cordelia had stolen too much of his control and now his mask had crumbled, leaving him stripped open and raw.
“Don’t stop,” Cordelia cried out, seeing the conflict in Angel’s eyes. She didn’t care if they were brown or yellow, hell, they could be purple with green spots for all she cared, just as long as he didn’t stop. Wrapping her free leg around his thigh, Cordelia refused to let him leave her, pulling him even deeper inside her, almost to the edge of pain.
Angel dropped his forehead to Cordelia’s and let himself go, the whip-snap of his hips driving his cock inside her without mercy, part of him knowing he must be hurting her, part of him not caring because it was as close to heaven as he he’d ever get. Tightwetheat so good, too good, couldn’t stop, again and again, the headboard denting the wall, her scent coating his senses as they crashed together.
“Angel!” she cried out as the world fell down around her with a liquid rush. Her back arched sharply off the bed, light singeing the edges of her vision until she was blind. Sweet nothing, no pain, no worries, just the full thickness of Angel splintering apart the millimeters of being.
Gone. Angel was gone. The clenching of Cordelia’s body around his cock pushed Angel over the edge, his hips slamming into her, dark needful growls torn from his lips as he thrust once, twice, three times until he was shocked to stillness, bones shuddering and soul clinging on desperately as he came.
The air left Cordelia’s chest in a lazy whoosh as Angel collapsed heavily onto her, welcoming the comforting weight of him as she put back the little pieces of herself together again. Her brain was blessedly numb, the tiny aftershocks of her orgasm tingling in her womb. Slowly, because fast movement was a long lost friend, she untangled her wrists from Angel’s grasp and circled her arms around him, waiting for her breathing to return to normal and for feeling to come back to her limbs.
Angel buried his head into the crook of her neck and kissed her jaw, a poor substitute for what he really wanted. The sharp edge of his brow receded slowly, locked away once again.
“You OK?” Cordelia asked quietly, her voice a croak. She kneaded the muscles in his back, her fingers soothing, peaceful.
“S’meant to be my line,” he grunted, his lips tickling her neck, making her laugh.
When the bedroom finally stopped spinning around him, Angel levered himself up onto his elbows.
A sated smile had taken up residence on Cordelia’s face, cheeks stained with a pink afterglow that declared her youth and vitality. Her mascara was smudged in the corners of her eyes and her hair covered his pillows in a tangled mess.
It was with an uneasy sense of foreboding that Angel realized he was already addicted to that look, to the trust that glittered in Cordelia’s eyes, to the sound of her heart beating against his chest.
Grudgingly, Angel pulled out of her body, identical groans sounding at the movement of sensitive flesh. He flopped onto his back beside her, instantly missing the soft heat of Cordelia’s skin against his.
He turned his head to look at Cordelia. “Vision?”
The smile faltered at the corners of her mouth as Cordelia was reminded why they were here, why her muscles ached and her body was flushed. “All gone,” Cordelia nodded, reality flooding the air along with a silence that had been absent since they had entered the room. Cordelia knew she should be feeling awkward, uncomfortable lying beside Angel like this. But she didn’t. She knew she should get up, leave, remember the rules. But it seemed wrong somehow. Wrong to flee from the room after what they’d just done. What they’d just shared.
“What is it?”Angel asked, seeing the frown that scored a line between her eyebrows.
“Wet patch,” Cordelia wrinkled her nose with the half truth. Angel watched her for a moment before he jerked his chin, gesturing for her to move closer to him.
The words I should go, were on the tip of her tongue. Cordelia knew she had to remember the rules, but they were too easy to forget.
She turned onto her front and slowly spanned the gap between them, knowing the distance wasn’t just measured in simple inches. A moment of indecision caught in Cordelia’s chest before she laid her head on Angel’s chest, her hand finding a surprising home on his stomach.
“Cold?” Angel asked, struggling to keep the relief that she hadn’t yet left out of his voice.
“No,” she yawned, exhaustion silencing her better angels who told her they were on dangerous ground.
Angel ran his fingers through Cordelia’s hair, once again untangling the long locks. He could feel her heart slowing against him, finding its regular rhythm once more as they listened to the hotel settle around them. On the third floor, the broken shutters creaked in the breeze. The hot water pipers groaned like an old men in the walls. The refrigerator in the kitchen kicked in with a hum.
Stretching his free arm out beside him, Angel reached to turn of the bedside lamp, cloaking the room in a peaceful darkness. Cordelia’s breathing slowed, signalling her surrender to slumber.
Angel kissed the crown of her head.
It felt terrifyingly right.
***
Dirty. She was dirty. Calling someone else’s name. Not his. Should be his. Fuck her. Fuck her, Daniel raged silently, screwing up the lilac bra he held in his fist.
He pressed his forehead against the outer wall of the Hotel, its texture biting into his skin as the rain soaked through his clothes.
He looked up at the now dark room, the balcony doors still open as if inviting trouble inside.
She was still in there. With him. Naked.
I am going to destroy her, he promised himself as the rain blurred his vision. Tear her apart, make her scream, make her love me, why doesn’t she love me?
Bitch.
Fucking bitch!
Daniel pulled out a knife from the inside pocket of jacket. He thumbed the blade, careful not to cut himself, a thousand seductive ways in which he could make her bleed roaring through his veins.
He could go up there now, slip in unnoticed, the vampire wouldn’t know until it was too late. Until he’d torn her apart, taken what he was owed. What was his.
Stop. Think, the rational part of his brain struggled to regain some control. The vampire will know as soon as you step back into the hotel. You’re not strong enough to stay beneath his radar any longer. You have to wait.
Wait.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Daniel muttered, slamming his forehead against the wall with every word. He took a deep breath into his lungs, almost choking on the scent of sex that drifted down from the open doors.
She was meant to be with me.
He carefully replaced the knife back into his pocket, letting his fingers rest for a moment on his stolen bounty. The need for release still thundered in his ears but Daniel knew now wasn’t the time.
Soon.
Hunching his shoulders, he pulled his jacket tightly around his chest and quietly walked unseen from the Hyperion.
Someone else would have to pay for Cordelia’s sins tonight.