Part 3
One Month Later
“This is absolutely ridiculous.” Her voice was an annoyed hiss, sizzling across his ears.
“Hey, you’ve got no argument from me,” he answered, his own feelings on the issue perfectly in line with hers. But damn, this was awkward. “Move your leg a little to the right.”
She complied.
“Yeah, that’s it,” he sighed, much more comfortable with the adjustment.
“Ahhh!” she moaned, her leg twitching.
“What?”
“Cramp! CRAMP! Shit! I have to stand up, Angel, I just can’t get my body into this position without permanent damage. Can’t we just do this the old fashioned way? You know, cheat?”
“It’s too late for that, Cordy. We’re nearly there. Just a few more minutes, and I promise, you’ll be sighing with relief. You have to stay there, Cordy,” he said, sounding desperate. “If you don’t, we have to start this all over again.”
“I can’t stay here, dumbass! I’m balancing in a way that would make David Copperfield jealous! My leg is cramping, my ass is in the air, and all the blood is rushing to my head so I’m dizzy. I can’t do this!”
“But we have to, Cordy,” he said, the desperation now clearly audible. “Doesn’t it feel good? Even just a little bit?” Even he knew he was grasping at straws. It would take a very kinky person to think this was comfortable.
She sighed, trying not to concentrate on the pain in her left leg. “Maybe if you’d help me a little, I wouldn’t be in so much pain. Besides, its your fault anyway. If you weren’t so freaking huge, I wouldn’t be in so much pain.”
He had to agree with her, if only silently. But could he help it? Not exactly. It wasn’t like he’d gotten any complaints before. Most women liked his size. But then again, Cordelia wasn’t most women.
“How is that?” he said, reaching his last free hand down and massaging her, bringing life back to her contorted body.
“Oh. . .unh. . .god, that feels so good,” she groaned as he stroked her.
“Are you two quite finished?” Wesley’s voice, off to their left, broke into their studied concentration.
Cordy sighed again, finally opening her eyes and looking up at him through the fall of her short hair. “Yeah, Wes, go ahead. We’re ready for you.”
“It’s about time,” he muttered, turning to the object in his hand. He flicked his index finger once, and a loud rhythmic clicking was heard. Then, “Angel, left hand, blue.”
“Blue!” he groaned, eyeing the large circle all the way across the plastic mat. To put his left hand there, he’d have to practically plant his face in Cordy’s ass.
Whoever invented Twister needed to have his fingernails removed with hot, dirty pliers.
He squirmed a bit, not losing his place but figuring out how to get his fingers on the blue spot without molesting his seer unnecessarily. His compromise didn’t bring his face into her butt, but it did put his cheek against her side, and that was almost as bad. He couldn’t help but inhale her scent, a spicy combination that seemed almost indefinable. It smelled like home, like security, like friendship, like destiny. And lately, it had suspiciously begun to smell like something that was infinitely more than all of those combined.
“Are you ready, Cordy?” Wesley asked, his hand poised on the spinner again.
“Yeah, whatever,” she griped, blowing a puff of air to move the hair out of her eyes. Angel’s new position had moved his big body in a more comfortable position against hers, helping her regain her balance and reduce the pain. It hadn’t improved her mood, though. “How much longer?”
“Dr. Van Buren’s instructions were quite clear. You are to play this game for one hour. If you quit, you must begin again. The hour is up in . . . fifteen minutes. The person with the highest number of wins is required to be the other person’s servant all day tomorrow.”
“Oh. Yeah. Color me ecstatic.” Her monotone conveyed her lack of enthusiasm.
Angel just smiled , his cheek brushing the soft cotton of her shirt. These homework assignments were definitely among the ridiculous, but he had to admit that they’d definitely been making some progress in their relationship. They’d been with Dr. Van Buren for a month now, and each homework assignment taught them something new about each other. Sometimes the lesson was overt, sometimes subtle. But they’d learned the hard way that blowing off their homework brought more trouble than it was worth.
Just two weeks earlier, Cordelia had opened their third homework assignment. Dr. Van Buren had begun handing them an envelope or a box on their way out the door of the session, not giving them any verbal instructions at all. Their homework assignments had ranged from going to a dance class together to writing notes to each other. But as the time progressed, those assignments had gotten more crazy, and what was more disturbing, the physical contact was increasing in measurable levels.
He smiled as he remembered her reaction to their first “Grope Fest” assignment, as Cordelia had taken to calling them. That smile turned to a grimace as he remembered the torture that followed.
Her tone had been disgusted, her nose scrunched up as she held the sheaf of papers daintily by their edges as if she feared the absurdity of their contents would contaminate her by osmosis. The box it had come from and its remaining contents were scattered near her on the sofa.
“C’mon, Cordy. It can’t be that bad,” Angel said. He stood in front of her, legs spread in a comfortable stance, his arms crossed over his chest. The pose pulled his sweater tight against his shoulders and biceps, accentuating the masculine curves in a way that distracted Cordelia for a moment as she looked up at him.
It was becoming harder and harder not to notice his purely male beauty. The side effects of these touchy-feely sessions with Dr. Van Buren were starting to unnerve her.
After merely a split second, Cordelia shook herself out of the admiration she was sinking into and frowned up at him.
“It is that bad. You haven’t read it yet, have you?” she said, her tone nearly accusing.
“No. You done yet?” he said, raising an eyebrow and holding a hand out for the papers.
She handed them to him silently, then crossed her own arms over her chest and stood waiting as he perused them.
It was satisfying to watch him hold back a growl as he read the directions, then the questions on the papers.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered, glowering. He turned the page, his frown increasing as the directions became more outrageous. “I do not want to do this,” he said, finally looking up from the papers and looking to Cordelia for some agreement.
“Me either. Give ‘em back,” she demanded, and he placed the papers in her hand. She reread them, a look of disgust marring her pretty face.
Dr. Van Buren had asked them to sit back to back in Angel’s bedroom, their spines aligned and their legs crossed away from each other. They were to lean their heads back against each other until they touched, resting their weight against each other as if leaning up against a wall. Then they were to ask each other a series of questions related to their relationship, and be completely honest in their answers.
After reading the instructions, Cordelia had just rolled her eyes and Pfft’d. Angel had laughed once derisively, and they’d agreed, in a silent visual communication, that there was no way in hell they were going to do something as stupid as that.
When they’d gone to the next session, they’d made the mistake of admitting they hadn’t done the homework. Dr. Van Buren took one look at them, then demanded that they complete the assignment in her presence.
The session had started out all right, each of them feeling like if they just didn’t have to look at one another, they could make it through this. But then Dr. Van Buren went and sent the whole thing to hell in a hand basket. That woman and her damn probing questions. They were here to work on their relationship, not have an emotional enema, damn it.
The therapist stared at Angel’s stoic countenance, then at Cordelia’s neutral one in the reflection of the plate glass window. It was unnerving that she could see both of their expressions at once, when they couldn’t see each other at all. After a moment of palpable silence, she smiled, a wicked baring of teeth that made Cordelia’s original piranha comparison soft, warm and fuzzy. The only true appellation now was ‘demonic.’
Okay, so maybe Cordelia was overreacting. But she was nervous, damn it.
The therapist’s smile held for just a moment longer, then she flayed their chests open with her words. “I gave you a list of questions to answer, questions that would help you to fill in some of the blanks in your knowledge and understanding of each other. You chose to disregard your homework assignment, so now you must deal with the consequences. The questions I gave you were relatively innocuous; uncomfortable at points, but not unbearable. Now that I’m able to be here to monitor your responses, I believe I shall increase the level of intensity. We haven’t been working together very long, but I believe this strategy can be successful.”
She stopped in front of Angel, staring down on him imperiously, looking for all the world like a general who was sending her troops to their untimely deaths.
Even though she held the unflinching gaze of the vampire, it was his seer that she addressed. This first question turned out to be nearly as bad as the one she’d asked the first day in her office.
“Cordelia, you’re answering first. When, most recently, did you have feelings of lust towards Angel?”
Cordelia visibly flinched at the question. Okay, so she’d been having these little tinglies about Angel for awhile now, practically since she’d met the guy. Her emotions had nothing to do with it; it was pure sexual attraction. But what woman in her right mind wouldn’t salivate, even just a little bit, when presented with a face and body like his? Her guard immediately went up, her spine stiffening, as she tried to find an answer to the question that wouldn’t leave her dignity scattered across the carpet like soil from an overturned plant.
“Cordelia?” Dr. Van Buren prompted when Cordelia was silent for a few moments.
“I’m thinking, okay?” Cordelia snapped impatiently. Finally, she sighed, a sound that was equal parts resignation and irritation. Finally, she answered, her voice so soft that she almost couldn’t be heard.
“This afternoon,” she answered reluctantly.
She felt Angel’s back tense against hers. She could practically sense his ears perking up, that vampire hearing monitoring her heart rate and breathing. It wasn’t fair, damn it.
“You had feelings of lust toward Angel this afternoon?” Dr. Van Buren clarified, interrupting her thoughts.
“Yes,” Cordelia answered, gritting her teeth.
“Describe them, please,” Dr. Van Buren ordered. “What were the circumstances? What triggered the feelings?”
Cordelia stared unseeingly through her reflection to the night sky beyond. Her face was neutral now, her voice sounding almost detached as she tried to remove herself emotionally from this situation.
“I came to work early, well, for me, early, anyway. I usually get there late afternoon, after Angel wakes up, but today I got there around noon. I was the only one there; Wesley had gone out for lunch. Angel walked down the stairs from his bedroom, just dressed in sweatpants, heading for his breakfast. He was barefoot, obviously having just woken up, his hair all messed up and his eyes sleepy. I looked up at him, and I felt my stomach flip as he stepped into the lobby.”
Angel relaxed against her back. He remembered that moment this morning, had recognized the appreciative look in her eyes in the instant she let it flare, but thought he’d just imagined it. She hid it well, and her arousal wasn’t even noticeable. Not even to him.
But now, in the retelling of it, with her so close, his nostrils flared as he experienced the faint, but heady scent of her lust before she controlled her body’s reactions and it faded. So light was the scent that again, he felt as thought he’d imagined it. It was surreal. He’d never, ever experienced this side of Cordy. She’d never let him this close before. But now, she couldn’t escape. Neither of them could.
Behind him, even in the sterile environment of Dr. Van Buren’s office, Cordelia relived the memory of that afternoon and the stomach clench was there again, the nether regions of her body throbbing in reaction. Then reality set in again, and she remembered that it was Angel she’d lusted after. God, it was embarrassing. She wasn’t in love with him or anything, so why couldn’t she get over this unnatural attraction to him?
Dr. Van Buren prompted her to continue. “What caused this feeling, do you think?”
In answer, she scrunched her face up, forcing the lustful feelings aside, shoving them into a box and analyzing them clinically. “It’s weird. I’ve always thought Angel was attractive; I even tried to snag him in high school before I knew he was a vampire. But after I found out, it kind of turned me off. Then after I’d been working for him a couple of months, after I got to know him, he started to look like a hottie again. Sometimes, the woman in me, the primitive cave woman,” she stressed, wanting to make sure that it was clear to the therapist that this wasn’t really her true feelings, “feels this weird lustful pull toward him as a man. But I have that when I watch Keanu Reeves movies, too.”
At that comment, Angel frowned. What was the girl’s fixation with the eccentric, dark haired actor? It bugged him that she salivated over him, that she was turned on just by watching a movie with him in it.
Oblivious to Angel’s irritation, she looked up into Dr. Van Buren’s eyes, her own glazing over just a little bit. “You know, right? I mean, you’re a woman, too. Sometimes, there’s just something about a good looking man that makes your stomach clench, your body flush, your jaw drop, and your heart race. Like when Russell Crowe takes off his helmet in Gladiator and reveals his identity. Or when you see a beautiful, shirtless man with arms that could crush steel cuddling a baby.”
She stopped and swallowed, her heart racing. “Or when your vampire boss flaunts his sinfully perfect chest and arms in the lobby of your workplace. It’s just lust, just pure horniness, nothing more.”
She breathed a sigh of relief at the last words, confident that she’d explained herself with some dignity. Well, as much dignity as a girl can when she’s talking about getting all hot and bothered.
Angel’s chest nearly burst with male satisfaction at her roundabout compliment, then glowered when she chalked it up to nothing more than raging hormones.
So lost was he in the conflicting emotions racing through his brain that he missed Dr. Van Buren’s transition of the question to him. It was a jab of Cordelia’s elbow into his kidney that brought him back.
“What?” he asked, confused.
“It’s your turn, Angel,” Dr. Van Buren said patiently, coming to stand in front of him once again. “When did you last feel lust toward Cordelia?”
That was an easy answer. “In the car on the way over here.”
It was all Cordelia could do not to whip around and stare at him. She hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. She’d even dressed conservatively today.
It turned out that it was that very choice of clothing that had turned him on.
“She’s been dressing less provocatively lately, and I’ve noticed,” he said. His voice turned wry as he continued. “The problem is, by covering it up, there are times when I just imagine what I’m missing. That’s almost worse than before.”
“And in the car?” Dr. Van Buren prompted.
“You see the skirt she’s wearing?” he asked rhetorically. “It has a slit up the front.”
Cordelia looked down at her outfit. She was wearing an A-line, floor length denim skirt with raw edges at the bottom. There was a slit going up the front, so she didn’t have to walk like Morticia Adams all the time. It wasn’t until she noticed that the slit went up to mid thigh that she realized what had happened.
He was still talking as she made her discovery. “My car is low to the ground, and when she stepped in, I saw the length of her leg before she sat down.”
He stopped, looking up at Dr. Van Buren. He didn’t like the stare she was giving him, and felt a sudden, unavoidable urge to justify himself.
“I mean, Cordelia is a beautiful woman, after all. Every man I’ve ever seen notices her. It would be unnatural not to. But it’s just lust. Intermittent, infrequent lust at that. Sometimes my demon just pops up to the surface and I lust after her. I care about her, but it isn’t like I’m in love with her, or anything.”
Cordelia was irritated at his words, and equally angry at herself for that irritation. Why should she care about his lack of romantic feelings toward her?
“Anyway, I didn’t see anything, um, really personal, but it was enough to . . .” he trailed off.
“Flip your switch?” Dr. Van Buren said with a smile. Euphemisms were always so much fun.
Her patients looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“I know it wasn’t a clinical term, but sometimes comfort in terminology is more beneficial than professionalism.”
They just stared at her. This woman was certifiable, and she was their therapist. Wasn’t there something wrong with that?
Seeming to shake herself out of a mental wandering, Dr. Van Buren’s smile slipped from her face. Back to work.
“Very good, both of you. Admitting feelings of lust toward friends is not easy, but they are a fact of life. Those lustful pulls are not necessarily indicative of stronger feelings, but they are important to this therapy none the less. Now then, let’s move on.”
Somehow, both of them knew at that point that this uncomfortable subject would be revisited.
After that, Dr. Van Buren had made them go through even more questions, exploring tense emotions, including anger, frustration, joy, and sadness. Not seeing each other’s faces had made their declarations and revelations flow freely. It wasn’t until late in the session that they began to realize the repercussions of their loose tongues.
Angel and Cordelia had been so uncomfortable by the end of the session that they’d nearly gone home separately. Not looking at each other while they bared their souls had unearthed a mountain of uncertainty, and they’d been too worked up to work through it. What had seemed like a blessing at the beginning, not being able to see each other, had turned into a curse. With each revelation forced from them, being denied the body language of each other’s reactions was torturous. As they recalled their words, the answers they’d given to her queries about each emotion, it felt as though they’d been struck with a whip, their skin shredded until their souls were laid raw and bleeding before each other. They couldn’t gauge where they stood with each other, and revealing such intimate details without eye contact was threatening to destroy them emotionally.
After a tense day of separation, they’d met at the office and quietly agreed never to defy the psychiatrist again, never to ignore their homework, no matter how silly it sounded. There was no telling what she might want them to do next.
Shaking himself out of the uncomfortable memory of that session, Angel reluctantly admitted that their agreement to follow Dr. Van Buren’s instructions hadn’t made following this particular assignment any easier, though.
“Cordelia, left foot, yellow,” Wesley’s bored voice brought him completely back to the present and this ridiculous game they were playing.
The memories of their discussion of lust were fresh on the surface of his mind, and Angel watched with barely disguised appreciation as Cordelia’s body shifted as she found her new position on the plastic mat, contorting her body so that she was facing him now. In the process, her neckline drooped, giving him a teenage boy’s fantasy view down the front of her shirt.
Cordelia noticed the direction of his stare, then looked down at herself. Sure enough, the girls were displayed in all their glory. She just smiled and shook her head, cocking an eyebrow at him.
“Perv,” she teased, making the word sound like an endearment.
She watched his face color just slightly, the vampire’s version of a blush. Had she not known him so well, she never would’ve noticed it. She smiled inwardly, gleeful that she could unnerve him once in awhile.
As Wesley gave Angel his next instruction, it was Cordelia’s turn to contemplate, her sigh a soft breath of air in the near silence. She, too, remembered the directions in that third homework assignment that had seemed like a death warrant. In a way, it was. It was a death warrant to her anger, to the grudge she’d held against Angel since the day he’d fired her. She’d known that if she had to ask and answer the questions on those papers, if she had to bare her soul to him and have him do the same for her, she’d be lost. That was why she’d scoffed at the assignment and blown it off.
Then when they’d had to do the assignment in front of Dr. Van Buren, it had just proved her fears correct. After those questions, those intimate, probing questions, she had been lost. She’d lost a battle within herself: her battle to hold on to her anger at Angel.
Because damn it, she was actually starting to like him again. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Sure, she loved him with a loyalty that hadn’t died even when he’d abandoned her, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever actually enjoyed him before, took pleasure in his presence. Really liked him, as a friend, someone she could hang out with and laugh with. When she was first hired, he’d been a kind of pet project to her, someone she needed to cheer up, someone she worked on to live a little, to come into the 21st century and loosen up a little bit. But she’d never actually considered him her best friend.
That one assignment, one hour of emotional torture, had only underscored the fact that Angel meant more to her than anyone. By answering the questions out loud, she’d had to admit to herself that he was fast becoming the most important person in her life, the one person who had the power to uplift or destroy her. It wasn’t that she was in love with him, because it was on a completely different level. It was a binding of souls, a connection on a plane that she’d never known existed.
Ever since that day, the glacier they’d erected between them had begun to melt. Now, she anticipated Angel walking into the room. She tingled when he was near. It was a very intense experience, something that she had yet to figure out.
“Cordy, right hand, green.”
“Oh, god,” she groaned, figuring out that if she moved like that, she’d have to straddle Angel or slide under him. Neither was safe. Straddling meant that her breasts would be pressed against his shoulders, her face at his lower back. Sliding under him meant that she’d be practically kissing his fly. She opted for straddling.
She didn’t make it. One slight slip of her sock on the mat and she came crashing down, pausing briefly as she hit Angel and he tried to hold her, then crashing to the floor together.
They just laid there for a minute, her face buried in the small of his back, one hand gripping his ass and the other his bicep, his head at her side, before she began to giggle. She rolled off of him, laughing hysterically, releasing the tension that had gripped her at their close proximity.
Angel just stared at her for a moment, then a smile slowly stretched across his face, his laugh starting deep within his chest and spreading outward like booming thunder. They laughed until they cried, tears streaming down their faces, Cordelia clutching her sides as if she were afraid they would burst.
Wesley just looked on, shaking his head, smiling slightly as he saw the progress that they were making. They may not actually be reconciled yet, but they were well on their way to a healthy relationship.
***
Across the city, the therapist sat in her darkened office, staring out the window at the night sky. The city’s lights twinkled back at her, a field of stars that were no less beautiful in their artificiality than the night sky itself.
Something was troubling her greatly. Dr. Van Buren’s star patients were not on their way to a healthy relationship. Despite all of her efforts, each session with Cordelia and Angel brought evidence that they had not yet admitted their feelings to one another. The latest assignment, a ridiculous game that practically forced physical contact, had been a desperate scramble at the last minute. It was obvious that some drastic measures needed to be taken, but Dr. Van Buren had yet to figure out what they were.
Time was definitely not on her side.
Her meeting with the Elders had not gone well. She’d met with them, made her case politely, but had been summarily shoved aside as if she were a teenager asking for permission to use the school gym. Her anger had swelled, making it difficult for her to control the power that flowed through her. Angel’s curse was an abomination, a blemish on the hallowed history of her people, and she was determined to see it removed. The Elders had made it clear that they were entirely apathetic to the situation, and Dr. Van Buren took that to mean that she had license to do as she wished.
Not that she needed their approval, anyway. After the disastrous meeting, she’d set plans in motion for Angel’s curse to be modified immediately. Her people had chanted the words from afar less than two days later, retracting the old curse and initiating the new one simultaneously. The new version of the curse still granted Angel his soul. But instead of losing it when achieving perfect happiness, it would be secured for eternity in that moment of bliss.
The only catch, and it was a big one, was that the curse had a time limit. If Angel didn’t experience perfect happiness again within the next month, the curse would lift and Angel’s soul would depart forever. Angelus would be loosed upon the world again, and nothing but death would stop him this time.
There was only one clear answer. Dr. Marsha Van Buren, world-renowned licensed sex therapist, had to get Angel and Cordelia to make love. But the trouble with those two was that it wouldn’t do just to lock them in a bedroom for a couple of days. She had to be subtle, yet intense. She had to be convincing. She had to be manipulative. She had to get them to admit they were in love with each other even though they denied it.
With purpose, she turned away from the window and rifled through a stack of books on her desk.
“Where is that damn thing?” she muttered.
She sighed with relief as she spied the slim volume. Snatching it up, she read the title reverently to herself, her voice a soft whisper in the silent room.
“Touch Me, Baby: A Lover’s Guide to Sexual Nirvana.” She stroked the embossed letters on the well-worn cover as if caressing the face of a dear friend. “Well, looks like you’re my last hope. Don’t let me down, okay?”
