Buffy did a patrol first. The newly made vampires of Sunnydale were singularly unconcerned that the Slayer's heart was breaking one more time. They continued to insist on being resurrected from their graves. She continued to insist on staking them immediately.
Riley watched her, frowning in concern. Her form was perfect as usual. She dispatched the vampires with ease. And without her usual humor, without a word, really. She was as silent and as unemotional as death.
"Are you sure your all right?" he asked, as she moved away from her latest kill before the dust had settled.
"No, I'm not." Buffy told him coldly. "I would have to say that 'all right' is about the furthest thing away from what I am right now." Her green eyes met his troubled blue ones unflinchingly. "But I can deal."
"I'm not so sure," Riley said. "Look, Buffy, if you are going up against Angelus, you are going to have to be at your best."
"I will be," she reassured him. He sighed, keeping his doubts to himself. He couldn’t reveal to her that this wasn't just the opinion of a concerned friend, but of a trained Watcher. The Council had sent him, with instructions not to reveal himself at first. When he had won her trust, he could tell her his identity, and try to persuade her back into the fold, so to speak. The moment he met her, he had serious doubts about the success of such a plan. To complicate matters, Riley had fallen for her, hard. For reasons that didn't have a damned thing to do with the Council or anyone's sacred duty, his or hers, he had done everything he could to win her over. He'd been a little more successful, there. They had gotten to the point where they were friends. To the point where she acknowledged that he wanted more, much more, than friendship from her. But not to the point where she was willingly to give him more. Riley could wait. She was worth waiting for.
And part of him couldn't help hoping that when this was over, when Angel was dead and dust and beyond her reach forever, maybe she would find herself in need of comfort, of friendship, of something more than friendship…
Wisely, he backed off now. She had already agreed to let him accompany her to LA, and he didn't dare risk her changing her mind. He would just have to hope that either another opportunity would come up for him to make her see reason, or that his magic was sufficient to protect her from whatever mental torture Angelus was sure to devise for her. They finished their patrol of the cemetery, and covered most of the others before it was time to meet the gang at the Bronze. They could swing through the last three graveyards afterwards. But he would insist she leave the Bronze early enough to get some rest. They were catching the 10:00 a.m. bus to LA, which Doyle, who had gone on ahead, would meet. They would have enough time to settle in at Cordy's vacated apartment and plan their strategy before sunset, when Buffy would begin her hunt for Angelus.
What they didn't know was that Angelus had decided to carry the battle to them.
********************
Things never got hot at the Bronze until a few hours after dark. After the younger crowd headed home before curfew, leaving the place to the high school seniors and the college crowd. He knew she would be there. With her friends, and the luckless idiot who, by making her love him, had enabled Angelus to break the bonds that insufferable, whining soul had imposed upon him.
Of course she was dancing. Her eyes were closed, her arms raised above her head as she swayed to the music. Her firm breasts were thrust high, just a hint of cleavage showing above the neckline of her dress. Her very tight, very red, very short dress. She was dancing with her group of friends; Oz, Willow, Xander, Anya, and a bland looking blond guy who had to be Finn. They weren't partnered, just facing each other in a loose circle, and moving to the music. Ah, but the way she moved…
Even with half the length of the Bronze between them, Angelus could see the hunger in the boy's eyes, as he could see the furtive, lust-filled glances almost every other male sent her way. He couldn't blame them; his own body tightened in instinctive response to that dance. She moved with an unconscious grace and eroticism that was all the more seductive for being innocent and unaware. Buffy wasn't deliberately trying to come on to anyone. Not even to Riley Finn. Angelus recalled the dance she had done with Xander to make Angel jealous. There was a world of difference between that dance and this. Angelus smiled in satisfaction and faded back into the shadows.
Time, being endless, was a commodity he could spend with indifference. It made him patient, especially with a goal like the one before him. Angelus waited calmly for Buffy and her friends to finish their evening. A few more dances, a few mochas or cappuccinos, before Buffy and Riley left, probably for her to do a final patrol. Angelus slipped out the Bronze's back door, down the alley, and around to the front of the club in time to see which direction they were headed.
He shadowed them as Buffy did a final sweep through three of Sunnydale's cemeteries. Riley accompanied her. And when three vamps rose at once, and Riley muttered a spell that shot lightening through one of them, he raised his brows in amusement. So much for Buffy's decision never to have an office romance again. If it was, indeed, a romance.
Because what intrigued him, what made him smirk even more than he had when she first came into view, was that there was absolutely nothing lover-like about their behavior. He remembered patrolling with Buffy, remembered kisses stolen between kills, embraces behind mausoleums, cuddling by gravestones. The way Riley looked at her, Angelus knew he was dying to pull her into his arms, dying to press his lips against that full, pouting mouth, run his hands over the voluptuous curves beneath that so-tight dress. That he wasn't doing so could only mean that Buffy wouldn't permit it, at least not while they were on patrol. Not the behavior of his Buffy; not when she was in love.
The irony was delicious. Soul-boy had made the big sacrifice, leaving Sunnydale to protect her from Angelus, clearing the way for another man to take his place. Which, when Angel learned about it, did exactly what he had made his sacrifice to prevent: freed Angelus.
If it were, as Angelus now began to suspect, all a sham, either a misunderstanding of Cordy's or a misrepresentation by Buffy --wouldn't it be just like his little bitch to try to get back at him for leaving her?-- then the irony was even more exquisite. With a wide grin, he slipped behind a mausoleum, and waited for them to finish up.
Their sweep through the cemeteries was fairly quick. Only one or two new vamps to dust. Finn walked Buffy back home, still not making any move to kiss or caress her. Better and better, Angelus thought. Sure of their direction, he slipped away, taking shortcuts through the sewers that would have him where he needed to be a few vital minutes before they arrived. The absence of Joyce's RV from the driveway of the Summers' home was icing on the cake. Angelus couldn't have asked for a better set up.
His invitation was still in force. They weren't expecting him to come here, to come after her. Not after she had beaten him to his knees the last time. The more fools they. He entered through the kitchen, and took his position next to the front door. He didn't have long to wait.
Buffy had taken only a few steps into the room when she heard the muffled cry from Finn. Buffy whirled just in time to see his lifeless body fall to the floor. Finn's neck had been broken. Like Jenny's.
But for one electric instant, her horrified mind refused to believe that it was by the same hand.
"Hello, lover," Angelus smirked, breaking her paralysis. Buffy didn't waste breath on a response, just pulled her last stake from its hiding place. "Gee, Buff, and I thought you'd be happy to see me," Angelus said, padding toward her with the stealthy, lethal grace of a leopard. Buffy held her ground.
Watch your opponents eyes. They'll give away his movements every time. How often had Angel told her that, when they'd practiced together?
Don't think of Angel; he isn't here. Angelus continued to talk as he approached her, his own eyes fixed on hers. "That is why you told Cordy you were in love with someone else, isn't it? To get me back?" Her refusal to respond to the bait bothered him. He taunted her further. "Needless to say, I was…happy to hear it." Angelus smiled at her, in that utterly terrifying, sadistic way he had. And then he sprang.
Buffy blocked him, then went into her own attack. He met it easily, throwing her to the floor. She leapt back to her feet, hurling the stake, which he barely dodged. She had already retrieved another from one of the hiding places she had around the house, and was in position to lash out with a side kick. He went off balance, but not long enough for her to get in a decisive blow.
They fought a grim, silent battle through the length of the house. If possible, this was an even more violent encounter than when she had fought him to stop Acathla's rising. Buffy was deeply grateful it was going to be this quick, that he wasn't playing the cat-and-mouse games that had nearly destroyed her before. She refused to think about what she was doing, about what she would have to do. She didn't have time to mourn Riley, or regret not doing the spell to revoke Angelus' invitation, or a thousand other things she could weep for. She shut off everything but her Slayer's instincts, turning herself into the lethal, beautiful killing machine she had been Chosen to become. She had fought him before, had brought him to his knees. She would do so again because, as before, she had no choice.
But he was, as Cordy had said, stronger this time. Her own blood fueled his power, making him far quicker, far stronger, than he had been all those times they had worked out together. She dug deep into her own reserves of strength and power. She was still a match for him. Barely.
Back and forth they fought through the length of the Summers home. End tables were knocked over, books and knickknacks flew from shelves, chairs were smashed to kindling. The damage was worse than when she had fought an army of zombies. The kitchen table was beyond repair, the dining room table was on its side by the window, two legs gone. Still, neither could get the upper hand. But even a Slayer's stamina was not without limits, and as the battle wore on, she knew she would have to bring it to an end soon.
They were back in the living room when she landed a front kick to Angelus' kneecap. He snarled, brought off balance. But he was far from helpless, blocking her next kick, and using her momentum to throw her over so that she landed, hard, on her back, the breath forced out of her.
He was on her in an instant, the stake knocked out of her hand, his weight pressing her to the floor. She struggled, but their long fight had sapped her reserves. She couldn't heave him off of her, couldn't wriggle free. And when she tried to punch out at him, he grabbed her wrists, pinning them to either side of her head, and smirked down at her.
"A good fight, little girl," he taunted. "But not quite good enough." Buffy stared up at him, her breathing labored from her long exertion. He hadn't gone into game face, and she was looking into the eyes of the only man she had ever, would ever, love. The only mercy she could expect, now, was that with her death her soul would fly free in the aether where it could rest with Angel's. The battle was over, she realized numbly. He had won.
A curious peace descended over her with that realization. Buffy relaxed, the fight leaving her. It was almost easier this way. Being strong enough to kill her beloved a second time was more than even the Chosen should be expected to do. One died, another was called. Another, who wouldn't love Angelus...who wouldn't hesitate to kill him. It was the only way Buffy could hope to accomplish her sacred duty, now. Because, as part of her had always known, it would never be her hand that drove the fatal stake into his heart.
She still made no reply to his taunting words. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her tears, of hearing her beg. She just continued to stare defiantly into his eyes. In a moment they had gone from deepest brown to brilliant saffron, as he vamped out, preparing to take her blood and her life. She closed her eyes, as he lowered his head to her throat. Nor could she suppress her whimper of pain when his fangs broke through her skin and sank deep into the pulsing vein of her jugular.
It wasn't quite the way it had been when Angel had been delirious and she had forced him to drink from her. Yes, there had been pain, then, but also unexpected sensuality, appalling pleasure bringing her to the second orgasm of her life, even as that life had come dangerously close to ending. She had known that vampires experienced pleasure in the feed. It had shocked her to learn that there could be equal pleasure for the victims.
She didn't expect Angelus to give her that. He hated her too much to want her to enjoy what he did to her. So she thought he would give her an ugly, painful death, the kind of death he had told her about when she had first learned what he was.
But she was wrong.
As he began to draw on her, every nerve in her body became alive, sensitive.
No! her mind shrieked, horrified. But her body, too long denied him, would not listen. And suddenly, everything changed.
Her body grew weaker from blood loss, and it became too much of an effort to think. No point in regrets, no point in sorrow. For whatever twisted reason, Angelus had decided to kill her with ecstasy, and if she was going to die, she would at least die reliving what she had shared with Angel. Her mind began to drift. Good, so good, his weight pressing down on her, the feel of his lips and tongue on her throat, even his grip on her wrists, keeping her helpless. At the moment, she craved being helpless beneath him, in a way that defied all sense and reason. It was intuitive submission, deference to her mate. And somehow, perhaps because she knew the culmination of this act, and the pleasure it would bring her, her response was even stronger this time.
He had only been drinking her for a few moments when she reached her first peak.
Angelus growled in satisfaction when he heard the soft, breathy cry, and felt her slender body surge against his own. Oh, but she was exquisite, a beauty to lose himself in, a triumph to enjoy for centuries. The blood he took from her sang along his veins, rich and hot and golden, an elixir like no other. Even the other Slayers he had taken before hadn't had her special deliciousness. Nothing was comparable to his Buffy.
Careful to take shallow sips, his aim to weaken, not destroy, Angelus slid his leg between her thighs. She instinctively arched into him, putting pressure on her swelling clit. He was only too happy to accommodate her. She quickly reached another peak, and he savored the difference that made in her blood. It was tempting to go on, to drain her of every ambrosial drop, but he wasn't such a fool.
He had taken enough blood so that she was no longer a threat, but he was still cautious. He easily transferred both of her wrists to one hand. He used the other to stroke down her side, to relearn each of her delectable curves. He lifted himself slightly, and slipped that hand between their bodies, under the hem of her dress, beneath the elastic leg opening of her panties. It was difficult maneuvering with all of their clothes between them, but he managed. In a moment, he had brushed through her damp curls and inserted one finger into her tight sheath. She hit her third and strongest peak. And this time his name, or a version of it, fell from her lips.
"Angel," Buffy whispered, as she felt her body reach that culmination, everything reduced to pure sensation, the world reduced to the immediacy of her giving herself to her lover. But he had drained her enough to make it impossible for her to endure that pleasure and still retain consciousness. Velvet darkness rushed to enfold her, and she gratefully sank into its embrace.
Feeling her go utterly limp, Angelus forced himself to stop. He licked her blood from his lips, relishing every drop, unwilling to waste the smallest bit. He stared down at her, her eyes closed as in slumber, as she lay pale and motionless beneath him.
Beneath him, where she belonged.
The Scourge of Europe smiled and placed a gentle kiss on the brow of the woman who obsessed him.
******************
She was drifting in a cocoon of warmth, but tired, so tired. She couldn't even open her eyes. The dream was sweet, languorous. She knew it was a dream because she was with him, and that was only possible when she was dreaming. Why was it tinged with darkness? There was something she should remember….
Soft, butterfly kisses nibbled at her lips. She knew the taste. With a sigh, Buffy yielded, kissing him back. His tongue licked across her lips. Obediently, she opened. A tongue cool as chilled wine, and just as intoxicating, caressed her own. She drank in the taste of him, reveled in the feel of him. His hands drifted over her body, and she arched into his touch. Why was he gripping her wrists so tightly, pinning them above her head? How did his hands manage to be in two places at once, confining her wrists, caressing her body? It didn't matter. She mewled in pleasure and allowed him to do what he willed. His hands found the fastening of her dress, and slipped it down her body. Why did he tug the thin spaghetti straps until they broke? Impatient Angel. Buffy smiled against his mouth.
Her bra was strapless, and he disposed of it quickly. Buffy sighed in satisfaction when she felt the cool touch of his hands on the heated flesh of her breasts. They fit his hands perfectly, she remembered…but there was something else...
It didn't matter. His hands caressed her from her breasts, along her sides, over her belly, down to her hips. She felt those hands at the waistband of her panties, and lifted her hips with no prompting. For a few moments, she was bereft. He had left her. She whimpered, frightened.
"Angel?" she whispered pleadingly.
Don't leave me alone again…she thought.
"Shhhhhh," he soothed. "I'm right here." He had known her very thought. Buffy relaxed against the softness of the bed. Strange softness. Wider than her own bed, so soft she was sinking into it, and sheets, so cool and smooth… satin? Almost like…
He slipped back into the bed beside her, covering her, and she opened for him with a sob of need. It had been so long,
too long, and it had never been right without him, not since he left her, not since he had been taken away…what had taken him away?
His mouth was on hers again, the weight of him pressing her deeper into the mattress. She needed him so badly she ached with it. And then she felt his manhood at the portals of her femininity. She gasped against his mouth as he pushed slowly inside, stretching her, filling her. A tiny spark of pain made her whimper, and he suddenly went still.
"Well, well, my love, faithful after all." He sounded pleased. But she didn't understand his words. Faithful, after all…what? "There never was anyone else after that one night, was there, Buff? And I was too tender that night to completely break through," her lover whispered, beginning to move again, slowly.
"Never anyone but you," she whispered back. The pain flared up briefly…and then he was deep, deep, inside her where he belonged and pain melted to rapture, sweeping through all her senses.
The time for words was over. Her lover took her slowly, but mercilessly, driving his thick length deep into her aching tightness. Buffy raised her legs so that she could wrap them about his waist, pulling him in tighter, harder, closer; he could never be close enough. Her body was starved for the feel of him, she hungered for the punishing rhythm he set, for his masculine, distinctive scent, for the coolness of his chest against her breasts, the softness of his hair beneath her fingers…he should free her hands so she could hold him closer. She tried to tell him this, but lost the thought in another hungry kiss.
Rapture was building along every nerve in her body. Too long without him, she could not resist the tide of pleasure that threatened to sweep over her, did not want to resist it. "Angel," she whimpered against his mouth. "Angel…"
He chuckled. "Almost, my love. Almost…"
Yes, she was almost there, pleasure rising in a flood tide. Buffy's heavy-lidded eyes opened, at last, and met the eyes of her beloved. Angel smiled down at her, and in one moment of ecstatic happiness, Buffy smiled at him with such radiance, such joy, that even his cold, dead heart could not but respond and almost leapt within his breast to have such a smile bestowed upon him. And then memory returned, and the joy and radiance died away like frost at sunrise.
"No," she pleaded. Not with him. She knew he had no mercy for her. She pleaded with whatever Power had chosen her, pleaded for it to make what was happening not be so. But as her supplications had gone so often before, this one went unanswered. Angelus vamped out above her and, with a growl of lust, buried his head in her throat, his fangs breaking the tender skin anew, embedding themselves in her jugular. He began to feed, not with killing appetite, but like a connoisseur savoring a rare delicacy.
Her body welcomed the newest invasion, overriding her will. The rapture that had been building for her in waves broke over her like a tempest, shaking through her with an ecstasy that broke her apart and reformed her, so that for long moments she was nothing but the pleasure she took in her lost beloved, nothing but her love for him, nothing but his…
He came inside her with a growl of satisfaction that would have been soul-deep had he possessed a soul. Still, whatever demonic force defined him was sated by the clenching of her silken, heated wetness around his shaft as she climaxed for him --him, not Angel, not ever Angel again. That force was appeased by her surrender and yielding, and he knew he would not kill her tonight, not turn her.
They were held by storm and tempest, fused together by the fires of a passion so strong it defied death, so embedded in every fiber of his being that, blind, he would see her, maddened, he would be restored by her, soulless, he would be obsessed by her. And so deeply embedded in her that she would love him though it meant her death.
It would not. Not this night.
Angelus continued to drive into her until the last exquisite tremors of her flesh subsided, until she was so weakened by carnal fulfillment that she could no longer maintain the grip of her legs about his waist, the grip of her mind on reality. With a final sigh of commingled despair and longing, she slipped back beneath the comforting blanket of oblivion, and, too pleased with her responsiveness to take exception, he let her go.
Angelus smiled down at her once more, at the wax-pale lids of her eyes, made nearly translucent by blood loss. He sighed. He would have to pace himself. He had no intention of killing her. Not for a very long time. He had no desire to turn her, either. Not only because that would simply call another Slayer --amusing children, what threat could they pose him when this, the greatest of all Slayers, posed none? No. He wanted her alive and he wanted her human, the better to savor her blood, and her terror.
And her most delicious need.
Reluctantly, Angelus withdrew from his captive's silken sheath, and pulled her into his arms, before he settled down to sleep with her on the bed in the mansion on Crawford Street.
There was a further twist to the irony of their situation, he reflected. Buffy had sealed her own fate when she had come to him, offering him --no, forcing the whining soul to take-- her blood, to save his unlife. Did she think, once having tasted that nectar, he would willingly forgo it? No. His revenge would be accomplished in a way that left her utterly in his power, able to sate his unquenchable thirst for her at will. More irony: because she had broken with the Watcher's Council when they refused to help Angel, it might be months, even years, before anyone realized she wasn't dead, that no new Slayer had been called. Her friends would never think to look for her until he had her where they would never find her, where they would never think to look.
Just before dawn, he would carry her out to the car, which he had newly fitted with tinted windows, and travel north to San Francisco. From there, it would be easy to find a cargo ship to get them to Japan. The journey from there to the Asian mainland, and on into Europe would take months, but if her friends even suspected that she was alive, they would never dream he would take that route, never dream he had put himself to the expense and trouble of spiriting her away from all hope of rescue, when he could as easily have disappeared with her into the anonymity of LA or New Orleans or New York.
And during the long months of their travels, he could devote himself to the exquisite task of teaching Buffy Summers every variation of carnality, every sensuous art he had ever learned over the course of centuries. Until she was the utter and willing slave not only of his passion, but of her own. A pleasant thought on which to drift off to sleep. But, no fool, he first checked the scarves with which he had secured her.
The silken bonds held.
The End…for the moment.
