Chapter Twenty-Three

The hotel had a dining room and a lounge. The man playing piano reminded Willow of her great uncle Sheldon. His wife was her mother’s aunt Nina. They lived in Miami and they looked like they had gotten stuck in the 1950s. Sheldon wore hand tailored shirts and summer weight wool trousers that were always immaculate—perfectly pressed, falling in a break against his wing tip shoes. He had a collection of hats, all fedoras, mostly in browns and grays. When she was little, and they would visit, Uncle Sheldon would take her to the beach in her bathing suit and one of his t-shirts to protect her fair skin. They were always clean and neatly folded, smelling of cedar, soft against her skin.

He was playing a song that she recognized without knowing the name.

They were sitting at a table, Spike, Colin, Georgia, and three humans, a woman and two men, dressed in suits. Willow was dressed in clothing Georgia had picked out for her. She was wearing a fitted, sleeveless black dress that fell below the knee. A pair of low healed, pointy-toed pumps and a double strand of opera length pearls completed the ensemble. Spike had taken one look at it and rolled his eyes.

Georgia was all vampire chic in leather and spandex.

She was leaning against the arm of Willow’s chair, one hand resting on her arm, her fingers stroking the soft inside of Willow’s arm.

Pete and Jeannie were at the bar. Willow wondered what they were thinking. Was it was like being relegated to the kid’s table at a holiday gathering?

She had spent the last twenty-four hours bargaining with her body to save her friends, having sex with Spike, sleeping, having more sex, scheming to trip him up and most recently fending off Georgia’s notion of bonding over girl talk in the bathroom while Spike slept, or pretended to sleep.

Georgia chose to view her arrangement with Spike through a particularly skewed prism that was an odd echo of Buffy’s supportiveness about her crush on Xander and her relationship with Oz until Willow had been moved to point out the obvious. Spike wasn’t her boyfriend. They hadn’t eloped. This was not a honeymoon, vampire version or human. She had been standing in a bra and a half-slip at the time, and Georgia had just smiled at the collection of visible bite marks on her body.

Color crept into her cheeks and she looked down at her lap where her hands rested. She used her thumbnail to pick at her cuticles, welcoming the distraction. The muscles in her thighs felt kind of quivery and achy. Georgia had dressed her from the skin out, so she was wearing a black bra that looked like a lacy cobweb against her skin, a thong, and stockings. Her underwear drawer at home was full of practical undergarments. In the back, wrapped in tissue paper were her laundered undergarments from prom, also black but nowhere near as sexy as the things Georgia had picked out for her.

She was glad that that he had hurt her. She wished that she had bruises to go with the bite marks—more evidence of the willful and intentional infliction of harm. The choices she had made had not, in her mind, precluded the possibility that he would hurt her. Somehow it made it easier to accept what she had agreed to since he had.



Spike was bored. Face time with the humans who owned the hotel and had some connection to Colin’s mum was Colin’s gig. He had never trusted his business to humans. If he needed expertise in an area, he’d find someone to turn to provide it before he would deal with humans. The palpable lack of fear and anxiety from the three suits annoyed him to some degree—mostly, he thought they were incredibly stupid. Vampires were evil. Humans were neutral, being all soul having, they could go either way, but the ones who chose to be evil didn’t interest him particularly.

He wasn’t sure why that was so. He considered the woman with the two men briefly, objectively. She was a knock out. Tall and model thin in her tailored black suit with her graceful, swanlike neck exposed by the open collar of her blouse. Her gaze was direct, calculating, even a tiny bit amused. She had one of those accentless American voices, betraying nothing of her origins.

His gaze flicked to Willow. Georgia was playing dress up with her again. She looked absurdly demure, with her averted gaze, and a riot of hectic color rising in her cheeks. Her discomfort was obvious in the way she was trying to stay still and go unnoticed. He’d spent hours shagging her rotten, adjusting his inclinations to meet her on the relatively tame ground of her inexperience. He had all kinds of plans for her. She was interesting and amusing, and fascinating, and charmingly unaware of it, providing a nice diversion in the midst of his boredom.

The smart money said chose the evil, sexy lawyer bint, but where was the fun in that? Right now he wanted nothing more than to shed their present company and spend a few more hours between Willow’s soft thighs, fucking her senseless.

“As much as I enjoy seeing Colin and Georgia,” the older man spoke, his tone oddly soothing, “I’m here, tonight, to meet you, Spike. You are resourceful, intelligent, and your exploits are,” he smiled warmly, “legendary.”

One of Spike’s eyebrows rose. He rested his hands on his abdomen, his attention seemingly divided between the old man and Willow.

He didn’t seem remotely mollified or pleased by the . . . flattery? Willow’s hands moved restlessly. She found herself smoothing her skirt, touching the pearls she was wearing, rolling them between her fingers before her hand dropped to the skirt again, pinching a pleat.

Spike tilted his head. Her fidgeting brought his attention back to the dress. It had set him back a pretty penny, maxing out one of the credit card he had nicked the other night. The color really didn’t suit her, he decided, but he liked the cut of the dress. It left her throat and most of her back bare. The long, graceful line of the dress emphasized the delicate elegance of her body. She was a bit on the short side, but slender and gracefully proportioned. She had a smoky black scarf draping her throat, obscuring, but not entirely concealing his bite mark. She looked demure, with her eyes cast down and a hint of color staining her cheeks. Pretty, demure, innocent, and expensive.

His lips pursed at the thought. “Right,” he said slowly, his gaze flicking to the old man, a hint of contempt creeping in.

“We are aware of your . . . connections. You are part of the Order of Aurelius,” the old man continued smoothly.

Willow’s chin lifted a bit at that. Curiosity flickered in her eyes.

Spike leaned forward, picking up the leather bound lounge menu. “What of it?” he asked, sounding disinterested as he scanned the menu.

“We know enough about the Order of Aurelius to know that there is a vacuum that exists. No one has assumed leadership since the Master was . . . eliminated.”

Spike’s gaze flicked over the lawyer. “No one is likely to,” he told him curtly. What this guy knew about vampires could have been written on the head of a pin. Last of the Order of Aurelius, my arse, Spike thought. Maybe in North America where it had never counted for as much in the first place. In London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, and Venice you could find older, smugger members of the Master’s line. His one introduction to Darla’s sire had not gone down well with anyone. The Master had found nothing in Drusilla to appreciate or admire, stupid old bigot. Drusilla, and Spike by extension, were treated like Angelus’ embarrassing bastard stepchildren, an attitude that Darla did nothing to alleviate.

He had spent decades perfecting a don’t give a toss what you think attitude married to a staking on principal follow through that tended to make anyone cautious about taking that attitude with him. He wasn’t stupid, though. He knew it persisted. Fill the void of leadership? Hah. On a cold day in hell, assuming they would have him, he would delight in telling them to piss off.

He read the menu and gestured to a waiter. “You should eat, kitten,” he told Willow, sounding like some overly solicitous prat. He ordered the appetizer sampler, the chicken in peanut sauce with grilled vegetables, and more of the tea with apple and pear juice that she was already drinking for her, and a medium rare steak and a pint for himself.

Willow flashed him an uncertain look. “Guinness,” he elaborated with a wicked grin, leaning forward to run his knuckles over her soft cheek.

He sat back in his chair, having ignored Hollis or Holling, or whatever his name was to his satisfaction.

“If you find that you have need of our services,” the lawyer said, unruffled, “give us a call.”

The girl on his left took this as her cue. “We represent a large and varied clientele, including the owners of The Temple in San Francisco.”

Spike wanted to tell her to find a point and make it. He glanced at Colin, who was listening to all of this with the slightest hint of tension. Spike picked up Willow’s hand from her lap. “Dance with me, pet,” he demanded.

Without a word to the others he stood up. Her eyes went to him automatically and he smirked, pulling her out of her chair. He guided her over to the small, empty dance floor, his arm sliding around her waist, drawing her in against his body. He felt her heart speed up.

“Put your arms around my neck, Red,” he instructed, his hands moving over her ribs when she complied. “That’s a good girl,” he mocked, his mouth close to her ear, his voice pitched for her alone. “You look so pretty. Like a good little girl, all dressed up,” he husked.

“I would have thought you were less ‘Strangers in the Night’ than ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’” she observed.

His fingers splayed, feeling her through the dress. “Relax,” he shook her a little. “You’re so tense.” He listened to the music for a moment. “It’s Cole Porter, anyway. You’ve got your curious face on. What do you want to know?”

“Would you tell me if I asked?”

He shrugged. “Might. Ask. If I don’t want to answer, I’ll tell you.”

“Who are these people?” she asked. “They are . . . people, aren’t they?”

“Lawyers,” Spike’s lip curled. “And, yeah, they are people. More or less.”

“So, if we go back to the table and I say, excuse me but I’ve been kidnapped and I’d appreciate it if you could help me . . .”

“They’ll smile politely and maybe laugh,” he told her.

She frowned at little at that, but it conformed with her general impressions of the first people she had spent any time with since she had come into contact with Spike. “And you would?”

“Not have to kill them, so knock yourself out,” he suggested. “Or not.”

“They want something from you,” she guessed.

He nodded. “That’s the way of the world.”

“Do you know what they want?” she asked.

He smiled. “Don’t care,” he told her. “I please myself.”

When the song finished, he asked for another one, and they danced until their appetizer was served. Spike mentioned going for a walk, outside, after dinner and she wasn’t really surprised to find that she was looking forward to being outside, to having some point of reference beyond the blandly comfortable hotel.

All the while she kept mulling over ‘I please myself’. It sounded odd to her, like he believed it, but that maybe he wasn’t sure that it was true. There was a hint of belligerence in it. Her mother liked to say that everything she believed about behavior was predicated on the notion that people behave in ways to achieve the things they want and need, and that the reason that she had a career was that sometimes people needed help figuring out what they wanted or needed or help modifying their behavior to get it. Using the Shelia Rosenberg litmus test, which side of that did Spike fall on?

Once they were back at the table, Spike’s chief interest appeared to be the appetizer. The female attorney restarted her spiel about representing the owners of The Temple, only this time, she did get to the point. They were upset about the damage done to the club, and the bouncer he had killed as well as the vampire that had been left behind.

Harmony, Willow realized.

“How is Harm?” Spike asked, coming to the same conclusion at the same time. “Baby,” he dipped a coconut shrimp into a dip that smelled spicy. “Try this,” he suggested, blue eyes dancing with humor at his overtly distracted attention to her.

His amused gaze invited her to join whatever game he was playing. “Don’t baby me,” she retorted, and he smiled back at her.

“Pet,” he crooned.

She refused to be subjected to the indignity of being handfed, taking the proffered shrimp from his fingers.

The question about Harmony was as much as distraction as the interaction. “She’s fine. Some people she knew arrived the next morning and she left with them,” the female lawyer told him.

Spike was mildly surprised by that. People she knew? Someone from Sunnyhell that Angel had sent to check up on him? That was interesting, and potentially useful information. He could see Willow arriving at the same conclusions and made a note to ask her about it later.

The coconut shrimp was good, though the sauce was spicy enough to make her eyes water and her nose run.

“The Temple is seeking compensation for the damage, as well as the employee that you killed,” the female attorney continued.

Seeking compensation? Spike let that bland phrase roll around for a second. “How’s the calamari?” he asked Willow.

“Chewy,” she picked up a blue corn chip and stirred it in the warm artichoke dip that was just starting to separate a bit, scooping up an artichoke heart. It tasted like a fancy variation on her aunt’s hot and spicy chipped beef dip.

If the game required him to ask what kind of compensation the owners of The Temple wanted, he was not playing. Unfortunately Colin was not clued in to this. “What do they want?” he asked, taking this seriously.

“There was several thousand dollars of damage done to the club, and there’s the matter of the dead employee,” she said. “If the damages were paid, they would want compensation in the form of a new bouncer and an acknowledgement of fault.”

Colin looked at Spike who was looking at a misshapen deep fried lump of breading with a deeply skeptical expression. Giving it a pass, he moved on to the omnipresent potato skins.

Georgia shifted in her chair. She held her glass up so that the light from the candle filtered through watered down whiskey in her glass. “I never feel like I know enough about this stuff,” she said with a smile. “I knew this girl back in high school. Her family didn’t have a lot of money, and they weren’t really southern, but she read a lot. Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Kathleen O’Brien, and Eudora Welty. We didn’t run with the same crowd in high school, and after high school, she went off to college at the University of Charleston. She came home after graduating from college and was going on to graduate school at Emory—“

“The Harvard of the south,” the older attorney said with a small nod to her, his hand resting briefly on the younger woman’s arm beside her to keep her from saying something in her impatience at the drift off topic.

“Is it? I didn’t know that,” Georgia admitted. “She was working that summer at Pier One, and we went out for drinks after work one night at one of those chain restaurants, where they have the margarita drink, or theme drink specials? I ordered something blue. She asked for Wild Turkey and water. It just sounded like something, you know? Wild Turkey and water. Like, I know whiskey and I like the way it tastes without hiding it in a silly drink poured into a glass that could double for a fish tank.”

She silently toasted the older attorney. “Wild Turkey and water,” she noted. “I still don’t know what it means, but it sounds the same in my head.”

Willow’s chicken and peanut sauce had arrived and she pushed around medallions of chicken in the caramel colored sauce. Colin had relaxed a little. He was leaning back in his chair with his hands folded over his chest. The tea with pear and apple juice had made her thirsty, and she drank more of it feeling the odd sensation of pressure that she associated with an unanswered question posed by a teacher.

What the hell . . . she started to open her mouth to throw out her non-sequiter to cap Georgia’s. ‘Excuse me, but I’ve been kidnapped . . .’

But Georgia wasn’t done. “We’ll discuss it and get back to you,” she said.

That seemed to mollify the older attorney, who nodded to her and admitted that he knew very little about whiskey, but he had a wine cellar and collecting wine had become a hobby that he enjoyed.

While she picked at her entrée, Spike finished the appetizer sampler. Their waiter returned to freshen drinks and to remove the plates and Spike announced that he was going out for a smoke, motioning to Willow to join him. A few minutes later they were crossing the marble floored lobby, her heels tapping on the marble. The lobby was, she realized, the renovated lobby of a bank. The old-fashioned teller windows were still intact.

Spike held the door open for her, a remnant act of politesse that was rendered meaningless when he curled his fingers around her wrist as she walked through the door. He already had a cigarette clenched between his lips, and he lit it, pocketing the lighter as he took a deep drag. Willow found her skin prickling from the sensation of leaving the air conditioned hotel for the balmy Sacramento night, a feeling that was almost as disorienting as the streetscape that lay before her. Between the moment in the gas station and waking in the hotel room, she had seen nothing of where they were and she still wasn’t sure where they were. Colin said Sacramento, but she didn’t entirely trust that.

Tethered to Spike by his light hold on her wrist, Willow followed him as he walked for two blocks. The silence was not companionable or uncomfortable. For Willow it was simply convenient as she made herself take in street names and features of the street and its occupants that might be useful. She had taken Spike’s keys when she tried to get out of the hotel room the other day, thinking that she would take the car, not that it would slow him down. She didn’t know where the DeSoto was parked, so in retrospect, that hadn’t been such a great idea, except that it might have slowed him down, and that was a better idea.

Getting out of the hotel during daylight was her best chance at getting away. It would give her time to slow down and plan her next move.

They walked past a restaurant. Behind plate glass windows in low lighting she saw her reflection, a ghostly figure moving without reference to the still life images of people at tables or the vampire whose cool fingers were wrapped around her wrist. It made her feel not quite real, which really started at the table in the mostly empty hotel dining room where she was nothing more than an appendage.

He brought her to the wharf. The throaty wail of a saxophone drew his attention. There was a young black woman with a mane of silky braids playing a saxophone with the instrument case open at her feet in a timeless appeal. Sitting at a park bench, listening attentively was an older couple with a sleeping baby in a carrier between them. A clutch of teenagers were having a loud, multi-part conversation that seemed to be an argument about what they were going to do, and a discussion of a break-up that involved someone named Jan and Mike and that skank Tina.

Light from the wharf skipped like stones off the rippling surface of the river, turning blue-white in spots, suggesting a fast current.

“Anything you want to do?” Spike asked.

Willow twisted her wrist free. “Play scrabble, sharpen stakes, have a movie night . . . go home? That kind of thing.”

His smile was almost fond. “Stroll around, go clubbing, shag me senseless. That kind of thing.”

Her shoes weren’t selected for comfort and Willow could already feel a blister forming on her right foot where the narrow shoe was pinching the ball of her foot. Her toe, with the split toenail, was starting to throb in an unpleasant sort of way. Her left foot was only slightly better. If she put too much weight on it there was a sharp stabbing sensation that made her wonder if she had gotten all of the glass out. In the distance she could see a wide paved walk towards a park. Without commenting on her paucity of choices, she started walking towards the park and Spike fell into step beside her, finishing one cigarette and lighting another.

“Sure you don’t want to go clubbing?” he asked. “There’s a place not far from here, not as much a hole as Willie’s. There’s a juke box with anything you could want to hear—“

“Another demon bar?” she guessed.

“More or less.”

“Pass,” she said, determined not to limp. The park was looking farther and farther away and she realized that it was because the wharf was in a slight bend in the river while paved riverbank landscaping redrew the curve as a straight line. Ordinarily she would have admired the effect, but now she was thinking about having to cover the same expanding distance to return to the hotel.

Returning to the hotel meant returning to the room and an unavoidable repeat on last night and this morning. Or would it? She looked down at herself, not really seeing the attraction, at least from his point of view. The dress was nice, but it didn’t alter anything. There were no optical illusions that it achieved to make her look more voluptuous or alluring, and her few attempts at alluring in the past had mostly fallen flat. She had to concede that no matter how painful, the shoes made her feet look pretty, but that wasn’t something anyone else would notice.

Georgia had insisted on doing her makeup, and Willow suspected that the mascara was already smudged or flaking. The cream based eyeshadow Georgia had used was irritating her eyes and she knew that she had probably rubbed them without thinking about it. How many times had she sat on the counter in the bathroom in the Bronze while Buffy reapplied lipstick only to find herself subjected to a good humored blotting of smeared mascara by Buffy? A wave of homesickness swept over her.

Willow’s internal dialog of, ‘My feet hurt. I had sex with Spike. I’m overdressed for everything. I liked having sex with Spike. I’ve been kidnapped. I’m probably going to have sex with Spike again,’ was circling around the same thought. Which was probably why she was thinking that he was thinking the same thing, though it wasn’t necessarily so, because again with the improbability factor insofar as the idea that Spike was actually attracted to her for some really bizarre reason. She was pretty sure that Oz was attracted to her because she was nice, and that seemed an unlikely positive as far as Spike was concerned.

Her heel caught on an uneven spot on the pavement, causing her to step down heavily on her right foot, wrenching a gasp of pain out of her even as Spike’s hand shot out to steady her. She jerked her elbow away, hopping on one foot to keep her weight off her abused toe, aware that she probably looked ridiculous.

He watched her for a moment, and then nodded to something behind her. “There’s a park bench,” he pointed out. “Why don’t you sit for a few minutes?”

For a moment, he thought she would refuse, just because he suggested it. She had a stubborn streak that wasn’t the most obvious thing about her until you peeled back some of the outer layers of her carefully constructed cheerful, helpful, trustworthy, and loyal sidekick persona. There was a bit of bitch buried in her that probably scared her, which might have explained why she worked so hard at covering it up.

Her feet hurt. He could tell by the way she was shifting her feet inside the heals she was wearing. Inside the hotel, on carpet or the hardwood dance floor, she wouldn’t have noticed it, but on concrete, the thin-soled shoes weren’t giving her feet any protection and she had torn them up in her barefoot race through San Francisco. Her decision to walk rather than go clubbing or back to the hotel took on a slightly martyr-ish aspect.

“You made beating off limits,” he pointed out. “If it will make you feel better, we can put it on the menu. Think you might feel less guilty if I knock you around a little bit?”

She looked him in the eye. “My parents are psychologists, Spike. If I want to be analyzed, I’ll find a professional.”

He raised an eyebrow, took a long drag on his cigarette and squinted at her through the smoke that he exhaled. “Feel a little like a lab rat sometimes, pet?”

The question was so on target that a laugh escaped her. She used to read her mother’s case studies and wonder if parts were about her in a queasy kind of way. ‘Patient X is a twelve year old girl who presents with anorexia. She is an honor’s program student, and is active in sports. High achiever with typical anxieties associated with feelings of inadequacy. Denies stress, and is defensive about eating habits . . .’ Not that Willow ever had anorexia. Before she ever worried about whether she was thin or fat, she knew about anorexia and its cousins, and understood that they had very little to do with weight and everything to do with control.

Did her parents know that she struggled with feelings of inadequacy? It embarrassed her to think that they might.

He sat beside her on the bench, one arm resting on the back of the bench behind her. He smoothed the hair at the nape of her neck in a touch the tickled a little. “I used to worry a bit about it,” he told her. “Dru’s mad as a hatter, and she’s my sire, but Angelus acted like her madness was the normal thing, and I couldn’t do anything that pleased him even remotely. He had this way of looking at me like there was just something I’d never come close to being.”

Willow frowned, wondering why he would tell her something like that. He wasn’t drunk, or angry. “How did it make you feel?” she asked, and then winced inwardly at the question.

He shot her a sly sidelong glance, catching the slip. “That had to be pretty bloody annoying,” he said. “And, my ‘issues’ with Angelus or Angel, or whoever we are pretending Peaches is or isn’t at the moment, are pretty well established. He was a sanctimonious prick without the soul, and having it made him worse, not better.”

“And what are you? If Angel is sanctimonious, then what are you?”

He looked across the water, and shrugged. “That’s kind of the point of living or un-living, isn’t it? Figuring out what you are. Not because of what someone else is, but because of what you do about it.” He glanced over at her and then down at her feet. “Tell you what, we’ll sit here a bit and then go back. Colin and Georgia are going to want to chat, so you’ll have a bit of time to yourself. You can have a nice soak in the tub,” his fingers stroked her neck as he moved closer, slipping his arm under her knees and lifting her legs to rest on his. “It will help with the swelling,” he explained when she started to draw back as much as she could while keeping the skirt of her dress covering her legs. He eased one shoe off and handed it to her and then the other, pausing to examine her damaged toenail.

Willow closed her eyes for a moment, absorbing the sheer relief of being barefooted again. The only thing better might have been the fuzzy kitty slipper socks Xander gave her last year for her birthday. Or a wading pool. Or cool fingers working little circles into her instep. Her eyes flew open. He had a distant expression on his face, like he was thinking of anything other than massaging her feet on a park bench on a public wharf, and she wasn’t sure that bringing the intensity of his undivided attention to bear was a good idea.

“Your hands are going to smell like feet,” she blurted out.

He grinned to himself. Right, then. Trust Willow to address her obvious discomfort with him massaging her feet with a commonplace observation delivered in a tone that was disproportionately dire.

“Do you think it could become permanent?” he teased. “I’d hate to think that I’ll be going through unlife with the other vampires saying, I smell feet. Spike must be around here.”

Her eyes narrowed as she wondered if that could be arranged. It wasn’t a really good gypsy curse with a happiness clause, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. She wriggled her foot. “Stop it,” she said. “I’m pretty sure whatever I agreed to do, it didn’t include feet.”

“I can work feet in,” he assured her.

“Don’t put yourself out,” she grumped. “And quit being . . . foot massaging, park bench sitting, just your friendly kidnapper and coercive sex partner Spike. It’s no longer confusing. It’s just irritating in a ‘how stupid do you really think I am?’ sort of way,” she told him, getting her right foot back and sliding the shoe back on as her skirt slid down now that she was less worried about it covering her than putting a stop to whatever he was doing.

He kept her left foot in place by holding her ankle. Now that she had the one shoe on she pushed the skirt back up, not before she was flashing the lacy band of her thigh high stockings. Of course he saw that, and was looking at her like he was looking forward to seeing it again.

“I didn’t pick my clothes out,” she snapped, feeling self-conscious and a little alarmed by the lingering look.

“You let Georgia do it for you,” he retorted. “That was your choice.”

He had a lot of gall. “I’m getting tired of having my nose rubbed in the latest crappy choice between crappier choices.”

He gave her ankle a little squeeze. “Good for you. Just because we have a deal doesn’t mean you have to take any shit off of me,” he let go of her ankle and she slid her leg off of his, straightened her skirt again and slipped the shoe back on.

“In a hurry to get somewhere?” he drawled as she paused with her hands braced on either side of her on the park bench.

That was it. She had had it. Her fingers tightened on the wood slats under her hand. “Understand this. I’m not confused. I know who you are, and I know who I am, and I know what I’d choose for myself, and if I can’t chose it because it isn’t one of the crappy choices that are left to me, I still know who I am, and what I really want.”

He shook his head, laughing. “Try ‘piss off’” he suggested, standing up and offering her a hand to help her up. She ignored it and got up on her own, grimacing a little. “You start off strong, but then it’s all noise, and what the bloody hell is she ranting about now?”

“Fine,” she said. “The whole time this morning, when you were having sex with me? I was having sex with Oz, and wow! It was great,” she smiled sweetly, but her eyes were savage. “Thanks.”

He pretended to wipe a tear away. “That was cruel, pet. I don’t know if my ego will survive the crushing blow inflicted by your childish infatuation with a teenage boy. Why would I give a fuck? I’m going to have you naked later. Maybe use those pearls,” he flicked the necklace with one finger. “Push them inside your hot, wet cunt, and listen to you moan while I tease your sweet clit with the tip of my tongue,” he leaned down until they were more or less eye to eye. “If you want to delude yourself by pretending the idea of your teen crush violating you is what is really getting you off, that’s your kink, baby. It’s still my fingers, my mouth, my cock.”

Somehow he had managed to get the last word. It wasn’t fair. “Then we understand each other,” she managed to grit out.

His expression was slightly derisive. “Yeah, we understand each other,” he made it sound like it was a lot more one-sided than she thought it was.