Part 2
The journey back to the Hyperion passed in almost total silence, both of the vehicle’s inhabitants absorbed in navigating the tangled web of their respective needs and emotions.
As the shiny, black Plymouth sped through the busy city streets, Cordelia struggled in vain to make sense of the tumult of conflicting feelings that were whirling about inside her head. She was beyond angry at Angel’s contemptible behaviour towards her, but – to her utmost shame – completely turned on by it too.
Her body’s sudden animal lust for him shocked Cordelia to the core – nobody had stirred this kind of dark passion in her before, and she wasn’t entirely sure how to handle it. She was still reeling from the after-effects of his hard and brutal kisses, not to mention the unforgettable sensation of his cool fingers moving urgently inside her rapidly dampening panties.
Damn you, Angel! After what you just did to me, I should be kicking your fat ass to the moon and back. Yet, here I am practically begging for more. How completely ick-worthy, is that?
Letting out a heavy sigh, the seer shifted uncomfortably in her seat as the car steadily made its way towards its intended destination. She was acutely aware of the relentless throbbing between her thighs, as well as the feverish anticipation that buzzed through every nerve ending in her body.
Beside her, Angel pointedly ignored his soul’s nagging doubt and surrendered to his baser desire to dominate his beautiful captive in every way imaginable. The prospect of having Cordelia completely at his mercy, begging and screaming for him to take her, strongly appealed to his demon’s inflated sense of male superiority, and his carnal cravings intensified with each passing kilometre.
The seer had been correct in her assumption that perfect bliss was a long way off for the vampire at present, but that didn’t mean that unleashing his soulless side was totally beyond the realms of possibility. The sight of Cordelia squirming around in her seat as if her panties were on fire, only strengthening his resolve to have her though, and he just wasn’t bothered enough by the potential consequences of his rash decision to reverse it.
Angel’s lips curled up into a slow smile of sensual satisfaction as he quietly observed the fidgeting seer – oh yeah, she wanted him – badly – he could detect the sweet scent of her arousal piquant in the atmosphere between them. The intoxicating fragrance was deliciously heady and, combined with the delectable smell of her fresh blood, inflamed his spiralling lust to new planes of existence.
The Plymouth eventually drew to standstill outside the Hyperion, and Cordelia tensed, waiting on tenterhooks for the brooding vampire’s next move, her heartbeat accelerating with both fear and excitement.
Relishing this second and unexpected opportunity to prove to the seer that she belonged to him and only him, Angel shifted a little closer, sliding his right arm along the back of the passenger seat. Dipping his head, he placed his mouth directly over the twin bite marks on her neck, darting out his tongue to gently lap at the oozing wounds. Cordelia shivered helplessly in response to the caress of his cool lips against her hypersensitive skin, and he purred in predatory delight at her reaction.
After he lifted his head from the crook of her neck, Angel reached down with his left hand to trail a forefinger sensually up the inside edge of Cordelia’s bare leg. The trembling seer drew in a sharp breath as she watched his wandering hand disappear up underneath her knee-length skirt, but the vampire simply curled his palm around her upper thigh, rather than touching her in a more intimate fashion.
Angel squeezed Cordelia’s leg gently, his fingers flexing into the toned muscle of her inner thigh, while he waited patiently for her to lift her wide, sultry eyes to his darkly possessive gaze. When she did, he slowly and deliberately licked away the coppery blood that still coated his lips, prompting a soft whimper to escape the seer’s throat as her uncontrollable arousal jumped up another notch.
“I thought you said you didn’t need me,” Angel broke the thick silence in the car, his voice low and triumphant. “Yet, all I have to do is touch you in a perfectly innocent way and you’re on your knees and begging for it.” Cordelia stiffened in white-hot anger – the vampire’s purposely-seductive manner had cast a hypnotic spell over her ability to think clearly, but his egotistical exultation prompted her fury to resurface with a vengeance.
“Arrogant much! I so am not begging for it!” she exclaimed, kicking her leg and trying to dislodge his hand from her thigh.
Angel’s only response was to tighten his grip around her leg and refuse to let go, his fingers bruising the soft flesh as he did so.
“Get your hands off me, you blood-sucking freak!”
“There really isn’t any point in denying it, Cordelia – I can smell how wet you are for me. I know you hate yourself for wanting me, but you can’t escape the fact that you do. You belong to me – just admit it.”
“Pfft! In your dreams, dumbass. You were the one who started it anyway – what with all the kissing and the… the… humping!”
The vampire laughed at her self-righteous anger, “Baby – you’re in my dreams every single night. And the things I do to you in them… well, I guess it’s time for you to find out.”
Cordelia gasped as he suddenly vanished, and then promptly reappeared outside on the passenger side of the car. Geez! I didn’t even see him do the blurry vampire motion thing.
Angel yanked open the car door, literally threw her over his shoulder, and then turned to stride with purpose towards the Hotel’s front entrance. The outraged seer batted her fists uselessly against his broad back and violently kicked her legs, loudly voicing her indignant objections in his ear.
“Put me down, you sexist pig! It may have been okay to act like a caveman way back when, but this is the twenty-first century – get with the times, asswipe.”
As soon as they entered the Hyperion’s small courtyard garden, Angel stopped suddenly in his tracks, his soul’s conscience somehow fighting its way to the surface. What he was doing, it was tantamount to rape – there was no two ways about it. It didn’t matter how willing Cordelia seemed earlier, he hadn’t once given her a proper chance to refuse him.
He set her back down on her feet, “You can go.”
“What?” Cordelia asked sharply, baffled by the abrupt change in his demeanour.
“Leave now if you want – go home to that nice cosy apartment of yours and forget any of this ever happened. But understand one thing; if we cross that threshold,” the vampire indicated the double doors of the Hotel, “Then we finish what we started on that warehouse floor – no second chances, no going back. Got that?”
The seer was stunned into silence by this declaration and simply stood there gaping at him, her hazel eyes wide and her mouth hanging open like a guppy fish.
“Come on Cordelia – make up your mind,” Angel growled impatiently, the tenuous hold that his worn down soul currently had over his inner demon starting to lose its grip.
Cordelia’s brain snapped back into rational thought at the edgy tone that she heard in his voice. Mulling over her options, she slowly let her gaze wander over the vampire’s tall, muscular form – Angel was poised like a tightly coiled spring, the tendons in his shoulders taut and his big hands fisted by his sides. Her eyes unconsciously dropped to the impressive evidence of his need, pressing hard against the fabric of his pants, and her insides clenched and released in response to the sight.
Part of her wanted to run away as fast as she could from the volatile vampire, but the faint hope that she might somehow be able to pull him back from the precipice he was teetering on, still burned bright within her. She was positive that his ardent kisses had communicated more than just sexual passion and was sure that, somewhere deep inside; Angel was desperately clinging to the humanity that she seemed to evoke within him.
If that was the case then maybe, just maybe, it was possible to rescue him from the brink of chaos. He’d had enough control to stop when she’d begged him to at the warehouse, hadn’t he? In addition, he’d offered her this chance to walk away too. Perhaps if she willingly shared her body with him, she could reach through the thick lead walls that surrounded his emotions, and touch the heart and soul imprisoned within.
Her mind made up, Cordelia took a deep steadying breath, walked up the few steps that led to the Hyperion’s entrance, then pushed open the heavy doors and descended gracefully into the Hotel foyer. She looked about her and noticed the layer of dust that covered everything, shocked to see that the vampire’s previously fastidious nature had fallen by the wayside. The untidy state of the place told the seer, more than anything else did, just how low Angel had sunk in the past few months.
The sound of the doors crashing shut behind her brought her out of her reverie, and she whirled around to face the dark-haired vampire. Her heart skipped a beat as he deliberately slid the top and bottom bolts shut on the Hyperion doors, effectively locking her inside the hotel with him.
Turning around, Angel slowly walked towards her until they were standing barely millimetres apart, and Cordelia shivered at the predatory gleam that she could see shining in his gaze. She closed her eyes and tilted her chin upwards, expecting him to kiss her, but the vampire’s cool lips merely brushed against her cheek as he bent to whisper in her ear.
“I’m gonna make you beg,” he promised in a low, seductive tone, before sweeping her up into his arms and ascending the staircase at lightening speed.
Angel set the disorientated seer back on her feet when they reached the first floor landing, then took hold of her wrist and tugged her down the corridor after him, forcing her to run to keep up with his long purposeful strides.
“Where are we going?” Cordelia demanded when they passed by the entrance to Angel’s suite, and carried on down the length of the corridor.
The vampire chose not to answer her question, and continued to tow her along the hallway until they reached the last bedroom on the right. Twisting the door handle, he ushered the bewildered seer into the dark hotel room ahead of him, and then stepped in after her, firmly shutting the door and plunging them into pitch-blackness.
“Angel?” Cordelia enquired, hating the way in which her voice trembled with nervousness.
Her tremulous query was met with silence. She could hear faint rustling noises behind her, but it was only when she heard the sound of a zipper being lowered, that she finally twigged that Angel was shedding his clothes in preparation for what was to come next.
Cool, wet lips suddenly tickled at the nape of her neck, and Cordelia yelped in surprise. “Damn it, Angel – turn a light on, will you? This isn’t funny.”
“I can see perfectly well,” the vampire replied smoothly. “The light will go on when I want to get a better look at that delicious body of yours – and not before. You better get used to the dark, baby – you willingly stepped into it, remember?”
The seer could tell from the moving direction of his voice that Angel was circling around her as he spoke. Finishing up standing in front of her, he reached out and took her hot, trembling hands in his large, cool ones, rubbing his callused thumbs over the slightly damp skin of her palms.
Cordelia gasped when he lowered her hand, bringing it into contact with the hard evidence of his desire for her. “Is this what you want?” he asked her.
His smooth flesh felt like cool marble, and she could feel the borrowed blood pulsating through his veins as her fingers instinctively closed around his thick girth. Curious, she couldn’t stop herself from running her hand up and down his rigid length, taking a measure of the considerable weight and size of him.
“Guess that means yes,” Angel commented with a low chuckle, and Cordelia immediately snatched her hand back, mortified at her actions and the vampire’s wry amusement over them.
“Get rid of the top and skirt.”
Angel’s insistent command floated out of the darkness, but the seer hesitated in complying, unsure of how far he was planning to take this game of blind-man’s bluff.
“If you don’t take them off, Cordelia, I’ll remove them for you. So unless you want to make your way home in just your bra and panties…”
The vampire left his statement hanging, letting the ensuing silence communicate to the seer his less than honourable intentions towards her.
“You are planning to let me go home afterwards then,” she shot back petulantly, even as she capitulated to his demands. Crossing her arms over her chest, she removed her skimpy t-shirt and tossed it carelessly into the deep shadows behind her.
“Well that depends.”
“On what?” Cordelia froze in the action of un-buttoning and unzipping her thin cotton skirt.
“On whether you live up to expectations or not.”
“Pfft! I’m Cordelia Chase – you should be worrying about meeting *my* expectations, big guy,” the seer huffed resentfully, letting her skirt drop to the floor before she kicked off her sandals.
“Mighty sure of ourselves, aren’t we?”
Cordelia jumped out of her skin as Angel’s voice sounded extremely close to her right ear. She wished the answer to his question was yes, but in reality, she was far from convinced that her inexperience could suitably satisfy the vampire’s legendary sexual voracity.
Her heart thumping wildly, the seer tentatively reached out into the inky blackness in front of her, shuffling forward until the tips of her fingers connected with the solid wall of Angel’s uncovered chest. Laying one palm flat against his rippling pectoral muscles, Cordelia reached up with her other hand seeking out his angular face, and then stood up on her tiptoes to press her warm lips to his.
Angel only allowed their mouths to meet in a brief butterfly kiss, before he stepped back and steered her in the direction of, what Cordelia assumed was, the bed. The wooden frame creaked as the vampire sat down on the edge of the firm mattress.
“Turn around,” he quietly instructed.
Cool hands encircled her waist; before Angel pulled her down to sit in front of him so that she was caged between his spread legs. His unyielding thighs held her captive, the short hairs on his legs teasing the silky skin of her outer thighs, and she could feel the wet tip of his erection nudging insistently against the small of her back.
The vampire’s fingers danced up the length of her spine to tangle in her bra-strap, and then he expertly unhooked the cream satin undergarment, pushing it down and off her arms to expose her full breasts to the elements.
Cordelia drew in a breath and held it, half-expecting Angel to caress the rounded feminine flesh that he had just uncovered. Much to her chagrin though, he reached around her body and began to trail a finger, horizontally, back and forth, across the sensitive skin of her lower abdomen instead.
As Angel continued to trace a maddening path along the elasticated edge of her low-rise panties, Cordelia restlessly began to undulate her hips, her body crying out for more. She clutched at the vampire’s muscular thighs, her breathing starting to come in shallow pants as dark, wanton desire flooded her veins and made her dizzy with lust – she’d never been this turned on in her life!
Unable to help herself, she voiced her dissatisfaction with the situation, “Angel please!”
“Please what?”
Oh god – the smug vamp really * is* going to make me beg, isn’t he?
Desperate for something to relieve the unrelenting ache at the juncture of her thighs, Cordelia decided to throw caution to the wind and give Angel his desired domination over her. She wouldn’t be able to get through to him if she fought him every step of the way anyway; her obstinacy would only serve to make him extra stubborn in his efforts to remain emotionally detached from her.
“Please, I need… Oh God – just touch me, dammit!”
“Is this where you want me to touch you, sweetheart?” the vampire asked in a dark tone, as he delved into her panties and cupped her mound, his fingers lightly teasing the damp curls that guarded the entrance to her womanhood.
“Or maybe here?” he added, running his middle finger up the length of her sex, the digit coming away slick with her want.
“Oh yes!” Cordelia moaned in breathless encouragement, closing her eyes and resting the back of her head against his collarbone as she tightened her thighs around his hand.
“Or here?”
Angel flicked his thumb several times over the distended nub of her clitoris and the seer arched her back and jerked her hips upwards, crying out her pleasure into the shadowy gloom.
“Oh Angel – yes! God! Touch me like that, baby! Oh yeah like that!”
The endearment tumbled unbidden from Cordelia’s lips as she surrendered to her mounting ardour, and her passionate exclamation caused a brick from the dam around the vampire’s heart, to come loose and crumble away.
No! I will not let her do this!
Angel reined in his turbulent feelings with substantial effort, determined to remain emotionally aloof from the writhing woman in his arms. He had fired his friends because he didn’t want them too close to the bleak atmosphere that was enveloping him, but he couldn’t escape the fact that his cold and lifeless heart craved his seer’s warmth and affection, or that his demon hungered to possess and claim her body as his own.
Therefore, he decided that he would allow his starving soul to feed off her humanity just this once, but also that, come hell or high water, it was going to end at dawn’s first light. He absolutely refused to drag Cordelia along on the sinister and desolate journey that his battle with Wolfram and Hart was taking him on.
Removing his fingers from the humid heat of her panties, Angel pulled the seer flush against his chest, holding her in place with his hands spanning the length of her abdomen. The thumb of one hand lightly brushed the underside of her breasts, while the little finger of the other teased the outside edge of the dark triangle of curls that covered her sex.
The vampire then bent his head to latch onto the bite marks on her neck again, his suckling lips drawing a few drops of blood from the wound on her throat. The sweet tangy taste brought his inner demon to the forefront once more, which had been his intention all along.
Cordelia moaned in response to the seductive pull of his mouth on her neck, and reached up to fist her fingers in his spiky hair, pushing her bottom back into his inflamed groin. Angel was surprised by her responses to his touch – he knew her to be a passionate woman, but he still hadn’t expected her to be so… well… into the whole thing – at least not under the circumstances of this encounter anyway.
Maybe if we were on my bed, making love, rather than having sex in this anonymous hotel room, it would be different, but… No, no bad thoughts; I mustn’t think like that. This is sex, pure and simple; I have to remember that.
Lifting his head from her neck, he brought his mouth to her ear as his hands moved upwards to bounce the heavy weight of her breasts in his cupped palms.
“I think, secretly, you’re a *very* bad girl at heart, aren’t you Cordelia?” he murmured, sharply tweaking her engorged nipples between his thumb and forefingers and making her gasp. “Nice girls aren’t supposed to enjoy this quite so much, you know.”
The seer tensed at his words, but relaxed a little when he soothed the sting of his pinch by languidly circling the pads of his thumbs around her areolas.
“You want this *way* too much to be worried about conforming to society’s ideals though, don’t you baby?” the vampire continued as he gently massaged her full cleavage with his big hands.
“Just in case, you hadn’t noticed,” Cordelia told him acidly. “This is 2001, not the 1800’s – it’s okay for a woman to enjoy sex nowadays. ‘Bout time if you ask me – talk about double standards.”
“Mmm,” Angel agreed, bending to suck her earlobe between his lips and tug lightly on it with blunt teeth.
Cordelia’s hands rose to cover the vampire’s and she pulled them away from her breasts and into her lap. Twisting around, she tilted her head back and sought him out in the darkness, pressing her mouth firmly against his when she found what she was looking for.
Totally against his will, Angel felt himself being sucked down into a spinning vortex of powerful sentiment as her warm lips moved with purpose over his. The intimacy of a kiss went far beyond that of sexual intercourse, which was why he had deliberately avoided her attempted embrace earlier – it stirred up too many deep feelings, all of which he was desperately trying to keep locked inside.
When Cordelia’s tongue ventured out to stroke tentatively along his bottom lip though, the vampire responded enthusiastically, in spite of his vow to stay emotionally detached.
Not giving him a chance to pull away, the seer wrapped a hand around the back of his neck to hold him in place, and brought her left knee up to kneel on the bed, before she manoeuvred herself so that she was straddling his lap, with her bottom resting on the tops of his thighs.
Lying back on the mattress, Angel pulled Cordelia down on top of him, cupping the back of her head in his hand, his fingers threaded through her silky hair. As they continued to exchange frantic kisses, the seer let him take back the control, not wanting to push things too far and drive him back inside his lonely fortress again.
Rolling her underneath him, Angel settled his weight atop her body, so that her soft breasts were crushed against the hard muscle of his chest, her warm legs tangled up with his. Separating her thighs with his knee, he dropped a stream of nipping kisses down the column of her throat, between the twin mounds of her cleavage, and down towards the soft swell of her belly. Placing one last kiss just above the edge of her increasingly damp panties, the vampire lifted his body off hers and knelt between her spread-eagled legs.
Cordelia’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness just enough for her to make out Angel’s shadowy form looming over her, but what she really wanted, was to see his face and look into the depths of his chocolate brown eyes. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, or feeling, in the pitch-blackness of the room. That depersonalised this erotic encounter, despite the fact that she had persuaded him to relinquish some of the iron-control that he had over his sequestered emotions.
The vampire’s cool fingers curled into the sides of her underwear, and he tore the satin garment clean off her body with a sharp tug. The bed rocked slightly as Angel then swung his legs to the floor and stood up. Cordelia felt a thrill of satisfaction when she realised that he was going to turn on the light, but this was replaced immediately by a frisson of self-consciousness, as it occurred to her how unashamedly she was splayed out on the mattress, naked and with every part of her exposed to his perusal.
The seer held her breath, until Angel flipped on a small lamp, flooding the room with a muted yellow glow. His back was still turned to her, but the air left Cordelia’s lungs in a whoosh as she was treated to a full-length view of the stark naked vampire.
His skin was pale as moonlight, the black permanent ink of his tattoo standing out in sharp relief against the whiteness of his shoulder blade. The muscular planes of his back drew her eyes down the length of his spine towards the toned globes of his ass, where her gaze stopped and lingered in feminine appreciation.
It was almost as if Angel waited until she had looked her fill before he turned around, but when he did, her heart lurched in her chest and her eyes grew big and round in awe. Although familiar with the sight of his bare torso, nothing prepared her for the full-frontal image of her nude, and very aroused, vampire – he was a work of art and he took her breath away.
Suddenly the ugly circumstances that had led to this moment, no longer seemed to matter. Ever since she’d first laid eyes on him, Angel had possessed the ability to stir up deeply sensual feelings inside of her, and Cordelia couldn’t deny that she wanted him – heart, body, demon, and soul.
After he had switched on the light, Angel paused before turning to face the beautiful woman reclining on the double bed behind him. He was losing control of this situation again, letting Cordelia get under his skin, and he needed a moment to pull himself together so he could put his wits into some kind of order.
He would not give up his pursuit of his bitter enemies, and therefore could not afford to let the seer get too close – his emotional detachment was for her own good, whether she thought so or not. Having composed himself somewhat, the vampire slowly turned around to gain his first glimpse of a gloriously naked Cordelia Chase.
*Fuck!*
It was the only word that his over stimulated brain could formulate – the seer’s stylish clothing had given a tantalising hint of the magnificent body that was concealed beneath, but the reality was just… Fuck!
Cordelia’s dark hair, with its blond highlights, framed her pretty, heart-shaped face perfectly, while her caramel eyes gazed longingly at him – wide, huge, and full of desire. Two bright spots of high colour decorated the apples of her cheeks, and her lips were bee-sting swollen from their passionate kisses. The twin puncture wounds on her neck were now encapsulated within an elliptical love-bite, the purplish mark a direct result of his repeated suckling on that delicate area of her throat.
As Angel’s eyes travelled down the length of her curvaceous form, he took note of the pale golden colour of her skin, dewy with a light sheen of sweat, as well as the way that her voluptuous breasts sat firm and high on her chest, capped by dusky pink, rosebud nipples. Her belly was slightly rounded, but still perfectly toned like her long, shapely legs and arms. The dark triangle of curls, that shielded the pink, petal-like folds of her glistening centre, completed the picture of feminine perfection that lay before him.
“Jesus Christ!”
Cordelia smiled at the vampire’s muffled exclamation, feeling a surge of pride when she realised that her body pleased him.
“Better than you expected, or better than you hoped?” she asked archly, with a cheeky little wink.
“I haven’t seen it all yet,” Angel replied, avoiding making eye contact with her, lest he succumb to her astute attempts to ensnare him in her web of teasing affection. “Turn over, and get on your hands and knees.”
The seer blew out a small sigh of disappointment at his continued standoffishness, but rolled over onto her front anyway, lifting herself up onto all fours.
The vampire relaxed – now that was better; when he didn’t have to look into those hypnotic hazel eyes, it was so much easier to maintain the emotional distance that was required.
Cordelia jumped slightly when she felt Angel’s fingers trace out the pattern of her tribal sun tattoo, before his palms swept possessively over the curve of her ass. He climbed back onto the bed behind her, and urged her to scoot up the mattress towards the head of the bed.
“Brace your hands against the wall,” he softly instructed in her ear, as his right hand slid between her thighs and pulled her legs further apart.
Cordelia placed her palms flat against the olive painted wall, and then gasped in shock when she felt the lash of a cool tongue up the length of her sex – she hadn’t even been aware that Angel had shifted position. The vampire cupped her round bottom in his big palms and pulled her down onto his mouth, coaxing soft whimpers from her throat as his tongue probed enthusiastically at her most intimate parts.
The whimpers turned into moans that steadily increased in volume, until the seer was wailing out her pleasure as Angel deliberately drove her closer and closer to the edge of oblivion. Just as she was teetering on that wonderful precipice, ready to free-fall into bliss, the strong pull of his suckling lips on her clitoris suddenly vanished; leaving her unfulfilled and her satisfaction ultimately denied her.
Gasping for breath, Cordelia was ready to burst into tears of frustration. Barely aware of the vampire’s movements as her rose to position himself behind her, her focus was entirely on the way that her body thrummed with out-of-control need. Laying her burning forehead down on her forearm, she desperately tried to ignore the almost painful throbbing between her thighs.
Running his hands over the whimpering seer’s back, Angel could feel her trembling violently under his fingertips, and his demon crowed in delight at having reduced this strong-willed woman to such a quivering wreck. He grasped her hips firmly in his hands, and teased the entrance to her femininity with the tip of his erection, occasionally pushing a couple of centimetres inside her waiting body, but immediately withdrawing again afterwards.
It didn’t take much of this sensual taunting before the thin thread of Cordelia’s control snapped like a rubber band that had reached its elasticity limit. “Oh God Angel – just do it! Take me! Please! You want me to beg? Then I’m begging – I want you, I need you – just make love to me, god dammit!”
As he pushed inside her wet warmth with a low strangled groan, Angel gloried in the feel of her hot walls closing like a glove around his engorged sex, but found himself plagued by unexpected guilt too. Cordelia had surrendered herself so completely to him, but he’d given her virtually nothing in return; he was just using her for sexual gratification.
It was too late for regrets now though so, unable to resist the demands of his body and the insistent call of his demon, the vampire leaned forward, hunched over and placing his hands either side of Cordelia’s on the wall. Then, with his hard chest plastered to the hot, sweat-slickened skin of her back, he started to plunge repeatedly into her molten core, punctuating each hard, deep thrust with small circling movement of his hips.
As the pace of their wild coupling began to gather momentum, Cordelia began to chant out her pleasure, her words escaping in time with his rhythmic pumping. “Oh. God. Yes… Feels. So. Good… Don’t. Stop… Never. Been. This. Good. Before… Oh. Angel… Faster. Baby. Harder!”
Angel smiled inwardly as he listened to the breathless mantra tumbling like a fast-rushing river from the seer’s lips – it kind of figured that she’d be vocal during sex; it wasn’t as if she was shy about voicing her thoughts in every other area of her life, now was it?
It was this thought that suddenly brought everything crashing in on him. This was his Cordy, and he realised – with a flash of clarity – that he loved her, even though he had been unaware of those feelings until this moment in time. Therefore, although his body still hurtled towards an earth-shattering climax, a wave of utmost despair flooded his confused mind.
What had he done? He’d forever tainted their friendship with this deeply shameful kidnapping and seduction. It would always be there between them, no matter how hard they tried to forget. Nothing would ever be the same again.
Oh well, he thought bleakly as he slipped down the last few rungs towards rock bottom, Might as well go all the way. It’s not as if I can make things worse than they already are, is it?
Reaching down with one hand to circle the seer’s red and swollen clitoris with two urgent fingers, he shifted into game-face and sank his fangs into the puncture wounds on her throat, growling as her hot, sweet blood filled his mouth. The heavenly taste of her life force pushed the vampire over the edge into cataclysmic orgasm, and his hips began to jerk out of control, the bed rocking violently with the force of his erratic thrusts.
As Angel gulped down her blood and emptied his cool seed inside of her in long pressurised spurts, Cordelia arched her spine and threw back her head, unleashing a high keening wail as her inner walls began to convulse rapidly around his pulsating sex. The seer’s ecstatic climax milked the vampire of every last drop of his essence, until their exhausted bodies finally shuddered to a stuttering stop.
Cordelia let out a tiny moan, when the sated vampire retracted his fangs from her neck and sealed the bleeding wounds with a few laps of his tongue. The seer’s jelly-like limbs refused to hold her up any longer, and she collapsed facedown onto the bed, closely followed by Angel, who crushed her into the mattress with his suddenly boneless weight.
It was long moments before Cordelia was fully cognisant of her surroundings again, but she gradually became aware of the heavy, male body atop of her. She could feel a cold wetness dripping onto her bare skin, where Angel’s face was pressed against her shoulder, and she realised with shock that he was crying, his whole body shaking with silent sobs.
“Angel – it’s okay – don’t worry, I’m fine – you didn’t hurt me,” she murmured, lifting her face from the pillow to speak soothingly to him.
Angel tensed at the sound of her sympathetic voice, then abruptly pulled out of her, rolling over onto his back and covering his face with his trembling hands.
Cordelia turned onto her side and reached out towards the despairing vampire, but her hand was swiftly slapped away, her attempt at comfort sharply rejected.
“Don’t, just don’t.”
“But Angel…”
“I *said* don’t!” Angel snapped agitatedly, sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. “Are you deaf or something?”
He stalked across the room to retrieve his discarded pants, roughly pulling them on over his bare hips and tugging up the zipper. Leaving the top button undone, he gathered up Cordelia’s clothes from their scattered positions about the room, and threw them onto the bedspread. “Get dressed and get out.”
“But why? I don’t understand. I thought that…”
The vampire glared coldly at the bewildered seer. “You didn’t honestly think that this meant something, did you? Hello? Still got a soul here. As you said, this was an opportunity to get laid without any consequences, and I took it, end of story.”
“I don’t believe that,” Cordelia protested, her eyes welling up with tears and her lower lip beginning to quiver uncontrollably at his cruelty. “This is not who you really are. You’re just trapped in a cold dark place – let me help you find a way out of it – please!”
“Just go.” Angel turned away from her pleading gaze, not sure he could maintain his deliberately stoic stance when faced with the hurt expression swirling in the seer’s wide hazel orbs.
Cordelia stared at his turned back for a moment, and then began to pull on her clothes, tears escaping the corners of her eyes to run down her cheeks.
“Okay, I’ll go,” she choked out, her voice cracking on the words. “God – I can’t believe I was stupid enough to think that you were worth demeaning myself for. I let you use me for your pleasure tonight, but only because I truly believed that, somewhere deep inside, you still cared for me. I must’ve been mad to think that you would take this chance to make things right between us again.”
The seer paused and swiped angrily at her tears, before continuing to vent her feelings at the back of Angel’s head. “So Wolfram and Hart turned Darla back into vampire, big wup! There are hundreds, upon thousands, of innocents out there, and you’ve abandoned them all because of a blonde skanky ho! Why can’t you remove your head outta your great big fat ass and get over it already? What the hell is wrong with you? Do you really want to be this heartless bastard with nothing but blank emptiness inside?”
Cordelia’s last-ditch endeavour at getting through to the stubbornly impassive vampire was met only with stone cold silence though, and she turned to flee, unable to take anymore. She’d been on a rollercoaster ride of turbulent emotion tonight, and she needed to get off before she crashed and burned – enough was enough.
“You were right – I do belong to you,” she cast back over her shoulder before she left the room. “You also belong to me though, whether you want to admit it or not. These head-splitting visions have bound us together forever, and I still have hope that, someday, you’ll remember that.”
Clutching her sandals tightly in one hand, the distraught seer then stumbled, barefoot, along the corridor, her vision blurred from the copious amount of tears streaming down her face. Almost tumbling headlong down the stairs in her haste to escape, she luckily caught herself before she fell, slowing down to a safer pace as she descended into the foyer and headed for the Hotel’s exit.
“Come on – open, please!” she sobbed, tugging frantically on the handles, forgetting in her distress that the doors were bolted shut.
An ear-piercing cry, like that of a mortally wounded animal, suddenly froze Cordelia to the spot, as it bounced off the walls and made the windows rattle with its decibel level. As its echo faded away into nothingness, the crashing sounds of someone systematically destroying furniture above, followed immediately in its wake.
Finally remembering the bolts, the seer hurriedly unlocked the doors and made her getaway out into the hot, humid night, desperate to leave the scene of her emotional torment far behind her.
Epilogue – An hour before dawn…
Cordelia Chase’s Apartment.
Cordelia stood in front of the bathroom mirror, studying the inflamed bite marks decorating the skin of her throat, while the worried presence of Phantom Dennis hovered protectively behind her. Her eyes were red-rimmed from the hysterical sobbing fit, which had overtaken her as she’d stepped over the threshold into the safety of her apartment.
The seer had sunk to the floor in a crumpled heap and cried her eyes out, finally finding an outlet for the pent-up feelings of degradation and hurt inside. Dennis had fluttered about her in concern, stroking her hair with ghostly fingers, offering her chocolate and ice-cream, before ultimately settling on handing her tissue after tissue, to mop up the seemingly endless river of tears that flowed freely from her stinging eyes.
After about half an hour, Cordelia finally calmed down and took the long, hot bath that she had promised herself earlier. It was a desperate attempt to soothe her frazzled nerves, and alleviate the painful ache that burned in the centre of her chest – and it didn’t really work.
I wasn’t enough.
The thought kept coming back to her over and over again, as she struggled to make sense of everything that had happened tonight. She hadn’t been enough to turn Angel away from the dark path that he was on – her love, her heart, her soul – none of them were enough for him. *She* wasn’t enough – maybe if it had been Buffy rather than her, it would have been different, but…
Cordelia shook her head – she wasn’t going to torture herself with that kind of thinking. It was hard enough to deal with the fact that she had completely humiliated herself tonight, let alone speculate whether the blonde slayer could have succeeded, where she had so spectacularly failed.
She touched her fingertips to the two puncture marks on her throat and shivered slightly – she had enjoyed it. Up until that horrible moment when the vampire had cruelly rejected her, and devastating heartbreak had set in, it had been the most sensual experience of her entire existence.
The wounds on her neck still throbbed slightly, and she rubbed at them with the pads of her fingers, trying to appease the dull ache there. When Angel had sunk his fangs into her throat, there had been pain and a sharp stab of fear, but then her whole body had exploded in heightened pleasure from the intoxicating feeling of him drinking her blood. She closed her eyes and moaned, as her body shuddered in remembrance of the mind-blowing sensation.
The seer knew she should be worried about the bite leaving a permanent scar but, for the moment, she was more concerned about how she was going to explain its presence to Wes and Gunn. If she told them the truth, then they would probably go after Angel – with a bulging knapsack of stakes – on a kamikaze mission to defend her honour.
No, it was best to keep quiet about the true nature of events. She knew it would be almost impossible to conceal the marks from the boys’ twenty-four/seven though, so she had to concoct some sort of story.
I’ll tell them a vamp attacked me on the way home, she decided, And that Angel saved me from being turned.
It wasn’t exactly a lie, even if the real circumstances weren’t quite how she would relate them to her friends. The fabrication would probably earn her a bodyguard everywhere she went, but that wasn’t such a bad thing – she didn’t want to run into Angel again, it was more than she could take. She needed a lot of time and space to repair the battered heart that the dark-haired vampire had so callously stamped all over.
Despite her pain, Cordelia still retained the hope that Angel would find his way back to his mission, but there was no way she was going to welcome him back with open arms now. Forgiveness was something that she might be able to give him, in time, but she certainly would never forget this night as long as she lived…
It had been the best – and the worst – of her life.
Hyperion Hotel
The room was a wreck – the windows and the mirror above the dresser smashed to smithereens, sharp shards of glass littering the carpeted floor. The bed-frame was up-ended and ripped apart at the joints, while the sheets and bedspread were torn to shreds.
Angel sat in the midst of the destruction, his head bowed and his knees hugged to his chest, rocking back on forth on his buttocks and heels as bleak hopelessness took hold of every cell in his cold body.
The vampire had deliberately suppressed his soul to take on Darla, Drusilla, and the collective might of Wolfram and Hart. He had purposely pushed it down into the dark recesses of his mind, knowing that he would require the brutality of his inner demon to defeat them.
It was a decision that had cost him his friends though, as well as the potential for a romantic relationship with Cordelia, he now belatedly realised. His actions tonight had been fuelled, primarily, by his demon’s overwhelming lust for the beautiful seer, and its need to possess her – body, mind and soul.
Lurking beneath these darker emotions though, was the hidden love that had been cultivated during eighteen months of living and working by Cordelia’s side. This love was an emotion that he had only come to recognise in the final throes of his passion this evening – one that he had unexpectedly gained, and then immediately lost again.
Yet, despite all this, he could not turn away from his obsession, and grasp hold of the sincere affection that Cordelia had offered to him. Because, in the end, non of it changed the fact that Wolfram and Hart needed to be punished and brought down to heel.
He would not allow them to get away with wreaking untold havoc on his life – it was simply unacceptable. They would pay for their transgressions and he refused to let up the pressure valve until they did. What had he been thinking, allowing this mere mortal woman to come between him and his goal?
Purposely shaking off the infuriating human emotions that threatened to consume him, Angel rose to his feet; once again full of iron resolve. He was a warrior – he should have never let himself get distracted by such an ill-considered side project. There was an unholy war to fight, and it was time to regroup and focus on the task at hand:
Taking his vicious and bloody revenge on Wolfram and Hart…
End