Chapter 16
The Running of the Taco
Cordy shoved the roll of silver tape into Angel’s hands. “Smart man. Make sure it’s good and tight. I don’t want any more slipups tonight.”
With a mumbled “damn” she quickly stuck the tape over her mouth and held it there.
Angel heard Cordy’s confirmation that what she had said earlier was, indeed, an unintentional confession. His eyes burned amber with anger at not only being lied to but at the injustice of anything being able to snuff out the light that stood only inches from him.
His demon raged so loudly it took all the control he possessed not to open his mouth and let it howl and tear the walls of that mansion asunder with sound.
Instead he channeled his entire being’s hatred, frustration and disbelief into quietly crushing the roll of tape with one hand.
Cordy watched Angel’s massive hand coil around the tape and squeeze, her eyes widening as far as they could without being able to stretch her mouth along with them.
When the roll dropped from his hand to the floor, a tangled lump of no use to anyone, she couldn’t force her eyes away from it. She waited to see if it would magically rebound into shape, unravel and wrap itself around both of them and save them from further folly.
Unfortunately for her, Angel was not as patient for a miracle to happen. Before she realized he’d moved, her hands and tape were torn from her mouth and Angel was speaking before she could put voice to the ripped pain.
“I only want to hear one thing come out of that mouth.” Angel loomed over her, bullish and snorting. She backed up as far as she could go, the counter’s edge biting into her spine.
“Why? Why didn’t you tell me?”
That was one thing she didn’t want to tell him. How? That was easy. When? No problem remembering the timeline. It was literally burned on her brain and on MRI images.
But why had she lied by omission and not told her best friend she was dying? That was very complicated and she sensed Angel wasn’t in the mood for complicated. Nope. Those eyes pinning hers to the back of her skull said he wanted short and precise. She just hoped he could take it.
“Angel…”
“No! No, whiny Angel,” he mocked. “I don’t want to hear any excuses or you trying to talk circles around me. You’re fucking dying, Cordelia, and I want to know why you didn’t tell the man who loves you more than anything else in the whole goddamn world that little bit of information! Why, damn it?”
Both palms slammed on the countertop on either side of her. She was trapped by his body but freed by his words.
As bad as this was, as much as she didn’t want to tell him all the reasons for not confiding in him, at this moment she’d never felt so happy and so alive. Her blood seemed to streak through her veins, setting every hair on end and making her skin tingle.
Eyes that were weary before softened and the defiant jaw dropped as her mouth gently turned up into a sly grin. Her voice was almost a whisper. “You love me.” It wasn’t a question but more of a taunt.
**Does nothing scare this woman? This bitch needs a spanking.**
“Shut up.” This time the words weren’t tinged with anger, but were spoken by a man totally undone. Angel’s whole body seemed to turn from an imposing stone statue to giant teddy bear in response to her husky voice and simple repetition of the words that he could no longer hold back.
His head slowly fell forward until their foreheads touched.
It seemed he’d waited generations to be in this position again. To have her in his arms willingly and be close enough to feel her heart beat against his chest. Nothing seemed to matter except living in this moment and expressing with his body and words exactly how he felt about her. Whatever the future would hold, it didn’t compare to the power of the desire exploding in his body for her.
For Cordelia, the urge to explain the reasons for lying to him about her questionable future seemed to vanish the moment Angel had said he loved her. Feelings more intense, a passion for life pushed ahead of any need to speak of death.
She couldn’t stop her body from nudging even closer to him so that their noses rubbed. “Are you sure you want me to shut up?” she asked as her lips hovered over his, so close that the moisture from her breath wet his mouth.
Angel shut his eyes and breathed her in. “Not you. Angelus. Right now he wants to spank you and I? I want to fuck you.”
**I want to fuck her, too. Hey! Wait a second. That sounded like me!**
He shifted his hips gently forward letting out a hiss when the heat of her body seared him.
“Mmmm,” Cordy responded to his languid thrusts by moving her hips in rhythm. When she felt him hardening against her stomach, she couldn’t keep her hands from his body any longer.
She etched a trail of red down his back with her nails as she hooked one leg around his thigh to press him closer. Slowly her hands curved over his ass and squeezed.
Her firm grip drove him deeper into her cradle bringing satisfied groans from both.
“Do you have any idea how hard it was to keep my hands from doing that to you tonight?”
“Probably about as hard as it is for me to keep my hands off your cock right now.”
**Now she sounds like me. What’s going on here?**
“Damn!” Angel’s hands finally ripped the edge off the counter where they’d been glued since cornering Cordy against it. But that tiny interruption didn’t stop him from immediately using them to make up for lost time in touching her.
His palms cupped her face and then haloed her neck pausing only long enough to absorb her rapid pulse. Flowing over her satiny shoulders, he barely skimmed her skin delighting in the feel of the downy hairs on her arms as they stood in response to his cool sweep.
“I’m sorry, Cor. I can’t stop. I’ve loved you for so long. I know you don’t remember…” he ended with a sigh when his hands finally made their way around her slim waist to grasp the prize he’d admired and lusted for all evening.
She tried biting her lips to keep from speaking but it was a lost cause.
“I remember. I remember the taste of your skin,” she licked his Adam’s apple, “the feel of your back,” one hand slipped under his shirt and mapped the waves of muscles and steal blades of his shoulders, “everything.”
**That bitch! She’s been playing us. She rocks!**
“You’ll be sorry you kept that secret,” he said as he nipped at her shoulder.
“Ya think?” She wriggled her face under his collar and bit his neck.
He roared and in a flash, she was lifted, flipped and set on the granite island in the middle of the kitchen.
“I don’t think. I know,” he said clasping her wrists and pinning them above her head.
Her jaw dropped at his audacity not only at throwing her words back at her but making her feel helpless. But as long as she had her mouth free, she could still do damage. “Just shut up and show me what that fat ass of yours can do, if you can still move, old man.”
**Hell, yeah. Shut up and fuck!**
Angel’s mouth didn’t hesitate to shut her up. Immediately they drew each other tighter and his lips, softer than she’d remembered and sizzling with heat, opened for her tongue. They’d barely touched, barely begun to put taste and texture to memory when they both pulled apart panting.
“Shit!” Angel said as he nuzzled his way to her ear and gently bit on her left lobe.
“I know. God, I have to talk but I have to…,” Cordy trailed off reaching between them and running her finger up the bulge grinding her into a frenzy.
Still at her ear, he whispered, his breath tickling and titillating, “This is going to be the noisiest sex I’ve ever had.”
“And the best.” Her back arched when Angel roughly tugged the straps off her shoulders exposing her bare breasts to his mouth.
“It’ll be tough to beat that blow job in the car. Hot damn you have the best breasts I’ve ever…,” unable to keep his mouth and hands away from them one second longer, his tongue was too busy laving one nipple while his fingers tweaked the other to finish his sentence.
Cordy knew it wasn’t likely that she was actually floating, but her head was spinning so she clutched wildly at his shoulders and scalp just to keep grounded.
“Oh, God. Don’t stop. Never stop.”
His mouth was traveling fast, “Never. I’ll never…,” he whispered as he bit under her breast, “stop…,” licked her glistening scar, “loving you,” and scored the last words into the velvet skin of her navel just before he ripped the rest of her dress off.
“Angel!” Cordy cried and pulled up quickly. “That was my one and only designer dress.” Perched on elbows, breasts rising with every angry breath, muscled calves straining with feet curled to clutch the sides of the island, she was fire and sex and Angel couldn’t wait to burn in both.
He ripped off his shirt and cupped himself.
“Kind of in the way, Cor.”
Her eyes watched his hand work the black fabric over the hardness beneath and her ears picked up his soft mewls of pleasure. She didn’t need the extra stimulation to be fully aroused, but she wasn’t going to turn down a free show either.
“You could always teach me a lesson.” Angel moved his hand away, took a step back and opened his arms in invitation.
**When did this turn into a Chippendale’s show? Fuck her before this spell wears off and you both act like idiots again.**
It wasn’t the tightlipped smirk that got her. It was the dare in his eyes.
Faster than Angel thought possible, Cordy had jumped from her position, ripped the button off his pants, destroyed the zipper and laid him bare with a single sweep. He barely had a chance to feel the coolness hit his butt when her knees fell into the cushion of the materials around his ankles and her lips surrounded him.
“Holy, fuck.”
**Holy, fuck!**
He couldn’t move. He tugged to free his feet from his pants but his bulky shoes and Cordy kneeling on the material kept him snared.
Angel’s urge to move stilled as he watched himself enter her again and again. His hands dropped limply and his head fell back as he allowed the woman fondling him with such passion to tame the hunter in him.
**And the pansy’s back. Ah, who cares. Keep sucking.**
He gently fingered her hair as the heat storm from her mouth whipped through his veins mocking life. When she released him, kissing him softly, her eyes unabashedly staring into his as she licked his hipbone, his knees buckled. Falling forward, Angel grabbed the edge of the island with one hand and scooped her up from the floor with the other.
“I was going to fuck you senseless, but I can’t.” Angel seemed apologetic as he smoothed the hair from her face and sipped his taste from her lips.
“I have to make love to you,” he whispered, his voice trembling low and his breath blowing cool against her skin.
Cordy saw the truth glisten in his eyes and she had to close them against the beauty as he palmed her cheek and let his thumb graze her bottom lip.
She knew he could feel her shiver against his chest, but she didn’t care. Her body was telling him her truth. He made her weak.
Angel kissed her closed lids and pressed his length against her. “And when I’m inside you for the first time as the man who loves you, you’re going to say it.”
Cordy didn’t have to ask what she was supposed to say. She’d had this dream already, but in that fantasy she hadn’t wanted to say it. The words had choked her, the old fear of perfect bliss feeding her denial for so long. Now, though, she wanted to shout them on the next Oscar broadcast for the world to hear.
The best part was that it wasn’t just because of the truth spell. She felt a confidence in this feeling that she’d never experienced before about anything in her life. There was no doubt that she was meant to love and be loved by him in whatever way and for however long they were allowed.
She smiled and placed her small hand on top of the large one on her cheek leaning into and loving the strength and gentleness of his touch.
“Angel, I…”
“Shh,” he hushed with a kiss. “Not yet.”
With a grace he didn’t think he could have at that moment, he slipped from his shoes and the twisted knot of clothing at his feet and swept her up. She weighed nothing in his arms as he carried her down the hall, her head on his shoulder, and in just a few seconds she was lying beneath him on a bed fit for a queen.
She opened herself and there was no hesitation as he slid into her for the first time in months.
A feeling of such joy clenched his chest and he momentarily tensed fearing that in his relief at finally having her, he had forgotten who he was.
**Don’t worry, asshole. I’m not about to screw this up now that we’ve finally got her. Move our ass!**
Pulling out and pushing back in, he let out a trapped breath and smiled. Bending down, keeping the rhythm slow and sweet, he placed his lips reverently against hers and repeated the plea that he had no idea her dream Angel had already spoken a week before.
“Say it, Cordy. Say it, say it, say it….”
Wrapping her arms around his neck, Cordy hugged him to her. Her hands played on the crest of his shoulders and dipped into the valley between. Slowly, they moved up his spine and her fingers slipped through his hair as their bodies glided together like silk on air.
While he nibbled on her shoulder and the crook of her neck, she brought her lips to his ear and whispered the words he had waited a lifetime to hear and she had waited her lifetime to speak.
“I love you, Angel. I love you, I love you, I love you….”