Chapter Four

The coolness of his body, his hands, his cock, especially inside her, aside from being unnatural, was different enough to made her register his touch in a profound way. He picked up her body heat given enough time, but never quite warmed to the same temperature. His thumb kept moving back and forth over her clitoris in the same hypnotic rhythm, never varying in the depth of pressure or speed, sending jolts of sensation through her that made her splayed legs bend at the knee, her feet pressed against the velvet counterpane. His finger stroked her, penetrating to its fullest length, retreating to join the fingers that were holding her spread apart, then sliding back into her, sometimes hard, sometimes slow. He had kissed his way down to her breasts and took one nipple into his cool mouth, sucking on the hard point, tugging on it with his lips, sending little jolts of pleasure through her.

She had one hand over her mouth to stifle the sounds that she was making, and the other touching his hair, winding her fingers in it the way he did with hers, wandering down the back of his neck to clutch at his shoulders.

He kissed and nibbled and licked his way down to her navel, kneeling between her widespread legs, pausing to look up her body, his blue eyes sharp with amusement at her attempt to keep her sounds behind her hand. His tongue dipped into her navel, making her twist under him.

“Stop that,” he scolded. “If I wanted you quiet, I would have gagged you.”

She shuddered at the idea and he laughed softly. “I’m in a mood for compromise,” he told her, moving his hand from between her legs with a lingering caress and pulling her hand away from her mouth. He moved her hand down between her legs. “Now, be a good girl and slide your fingers in your hot little quim for me, pet,” he said silkily. Moving his free hand to cup her breast, rolling her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

She slid one finger inside herself, moaning at the sensation.

“Fingers, love,” he reminded her. “Give yourself a good fingering for me. I love watching you fuck yourself,” he said, sitting up, his fingers twisting and tugging on her nipples.

She added a second finger, rubbing the heal of her hand against her tingling clitoris.

“You’re so wet,” he mused. “But, not to worry, your merry little bands of humans, they might hear you moan, but only a vampire could hear the sounds of your fingers working your wet cunt.”

The muscles in her legs and lower back tightened, and she threw her head back, her hips instinctively lifting off the bed as she reached for the sensation that was peaking.

She came with a soft, keening cry.

Darla sighed. “Well, that took a ridiculously long time,” she observed. “Your boy must be loosing his touch, Dru.”

“He makes bright colors, like silvered fishes, swimming in bloodied water,” Dru said placidly as she stabbed her needle through the cloth she was working on.

At moments like this, Darla’s palm itched to slap Angelus. He was working on his second brandy, watching Drusilla work her needlepoint with an air of contentment. The girl was a complete loon, but one thing she took away from her convent experience was skill with a needle. She held up her flame stitch for them to admire.

“Very nice,” Darla said grudgingly while Angelus beamed at his insane childe. Needlepoint. Useless, absurd, pointless exercise, though it did tend to keep Drusilla relatively centered. Angelus’ weird admiration for the so-called gentle arts was lost on Dru, who could barely be taught to do anything but hunt after she was turned. Darla suspected that was why Angelus was so intent on stuffing William’s little pet with music and drawing lessons and other inane skills while she was still living.

Dru stabbed the needle into the stretched fabric to secure it. “Is it time for supper?” she asked, cocking her head to one side in a manner that was rather charming in a child-like way. “I’m ever so hungry,” she confessed.

Angelus rose, and offered her his arm. “Then, let’s see what’s laid on in the dining room,” he suggested. “Now, Dru?” he squeezed her hand. “Remember, no catch and release, eh? We don’t want anyone wandering out into the night.”

She gave him a sly, conspiratorial smile. “Just snapping turtles and sugar plums, dearest Daddy.”

Darla heaved another long-suffering sigh.

Dru held up one finger, and the three vampires listened to another keening cry, possibly loud enough for even the oblivious humans to hear.

“My William does such delicious, sinful things,” Dru observed as they left the salon.

“So loud, pet,” he teased as she panted for breath. “And we’ve barely begun. You’ll be hoarse by the time the night is out,” he predicted. She moved her hand, with a vague idea of wiping the stickiness of her own secretions off on the counterpane, but he caught her wrist before she could complete the motion.

“Compromise, if I recall,” he moved her hand to her mouth. “Now, you can suck on your fingers. I’m going to be tasting the same sweetness.”

Her eyes opened and she stared at him with a fathomless expression. Her index finger slowly traced the outline of her lips. The tip of her tongue stole out to touch her finger. Lust brightened his eyes as he watched her finger disappear into her mouth.

His hands stroked the insides of her thighs. He was in no particular hurry, he decided, starting at the bend of her knee, planting a soft kiss there, and rubbing his lips against the warmth and smoothness of her skin.

Matilde turned away from the wardrobe, wondering if she heard what she thought she heard. Sofia appeared in the doorway, her eyes round with wicked glee.

“Who?” Matilde asked.

“No one is up here but the mistress. Retired early?” Sofia leered. “No wonder Lucius has a stick up his ass tonight. Our right, good, and noble lady is getting laid.”

“Sofia,” Matilde glared at the other maid. “Get your mind out of the gutter,” she snapped.

A soft, intense cry of unmistakable sexual completion echoed down the hall, and Sofia chuckled. “For pity’s sake! So, the mistress is getting a,” she made a crude hand gesture. “She’s not a plaster saint, and did you see either of those men? They could get me to make some pretty sounds.”

“Are you done?” Matilde asked, going back to folding. “Get it all out, because I’d better not catch you giggling with the kitchen staff, or the stable boys about such things.”

Sofia rolled her eyes. “I’m not stupid, ‘Tilde. She could turn this place into a brothel, and I’d still be glad to be here,” she grinned. “Maybe more glad,” she said slyly.

“If you are done, you can help me in here,” Matilde told her, intent on her task.

A burst of words in English issued from the room down the hall, and even Matilde had to pause, wide-eyed. She met Sofia’s eyes and had to cover her mouth to stem the tide of her laughter.

“Will, Will, Will, Will,” she chanted.

“I know my bloody name, woman,” William muttered blowing against the engorged knot of silky smooth skin, blood, and nerve endings his tongue had been lashing. His tongue gathered the heated essence of her, and he pushed two of his fingers in her hot, tight hole and growled softly when her hands pushed his head down between her legs.

“That’s it, kitten. Fuck my fingers and my mouth,” he exhorted. In the firelight, she was breathtaking. Her skin was damp with sweat, her hair was spread out around her head, and her lissome body was straining towards his mouth and fingers.

“Mmmm. Pretty, kitty, with her pretty pussy,” he cooed, rubbing his fingers against the slight bulge in her vaginal wall. “Spill your honey for me, pet, come for me, Willow. I want to taste you. I want to fuck you. I want to make you scream, love.”

His lips fastened on her clit, his tongue lashing it as his fingers worked inside her. He could feel her trying to pull him closer as her back arched, and then the frantic, confused way she tried to push him away as her senses overloaded and the pleasure became overwhelming.

She tried to cover her mouth, but nothing would have completely stifled the scream that tore through her throat as she came in long, hard spasms that wracked her small body, and made her head fall back until he wondered if it was possible for someone to break their own neck when she shuddered violently and went limp.

He froze for a second, and then heard the reassuring sound of her heartbeat, hammering in her chest. Passed out, poor thing, he guessed, laughing softly as he eased her down on the mattress. He looked down at his now painful erection, and briefly considered sliding inside her.

He generally preferred to have his lover conscious, but right now, easing himself into her wet heat sounded like heaven.

With an annoyed sound, he moved from between her legs, and adjusted the awkward and uncomfortable looking angle of her head, running fingers wet from her lovely cunt over her soft lips. Her eyelashes fluttered and he leered at her. “Hmm. Just the scent of your cunt does that to me, too,” he told her.

Her eyes opened. She still looked dazed. Her hand lifted to touch his hip. “Will?” she sounded uncertain.

“Expecting someone else, where you?” he asked tartly. In eight years, the only sexual partners she had had were his sire, Angelus, and Darla, and never out of his presence—more or less. There had been a few exceptions that he was inclined to forget and there had been a few times that she had managed to take off on her own. Angelus could be a right prick, but he held like iron to the rules that he laid down, and Willow was William’s.

“Huh?” she sounded bewildered.

He gave himself a mental smack. You made the girl loose consciousness, you pillock. Quit needling her.

“Nothing, sweet,” he relented. “I’m being an ass.”

“As usual,” she murmured, her eyelids sweeping down, and the sweetest smile gracing her face.

It did something to him. He ought to roll her over and spank her ass for mouthing off like that, for the second time tonight, but the smile that came with it made him feel like he couldn’t breathe—when in point of fact, he didn’t need to.

“You’re getting a fresh mouth on you, Red,” his tone was mild, but it made her brow wrinkle, and her heart rate, which had just started to approach something normal, accelerated as she started to become more aware of just exactly what she had said.

“I didn’t mean—“

He cut off her frightened protest with a soft kiss, moaning at the sweet taste of her mouth and cunt. “Sssh,” he soothed. “Just lay there. Catch your breath,” he said, somewhat contrary to what his rampant cock was urging. He pushed her hair away from her face where it was sticking, laying the back of his fingers against her skin. She felt a little off to him, like she was cooling down too fast. He really wasn’t surprised when she made an almost imperceptible sound of discomfort. He yanked the counterpane loose and covered her up with it.

He left the bed, walking over to the small table before he remembered that the wine glass had been left at her dressing table. Her presumptuous majordomo had only brought the one glass.

“Will?” she started to get up.

“Stay there,” he said, glancing over at her. She was pushed up on her elbow. “Lay down,” he corrected. “When was the last time you ate something?”

She had a tendency to forget to eat, as unbelievable as it seemed to him. He got to feeling a bit peckish, and he drained someone. Simple as that. Refusing food had been one of her little games when she had given up on escaping alive, and was willing to escape in other ways whenever she got in a snit about something. She went on her little hunger strikes, rattling on about some bloke named Mahatma Ghandi. She took a knife to her wrists in Ghent, tried to take a dive off an eighth story balcony in Rome, screaming like a bloody banshee when he caught part of his arm on fire yanking her off the damned railing.

She had stepped in front of a carriage in London, though he was never really clear on whether that classified as a deliberate attempt to do herself in, or was just a case of being a bit lost in thought. She could do that. It had taken him a while to understand it, but basically, the way he figured it, she did everything hard. She could drift off on a thought and be a million miles away, sort of like Dru, without the charms of lunacy. She didn’t just read or study, but she sponged up knowledge and experience. A story told reasonably well could put her right on the edge of her seat. She slept hard, never quiet or still, but restless, fighting for space, the blankets, or just a good cuddle.

The sense memory of waking with her small body warming his made his skin prickle. His cock jerked, demanding his attention. He glanced down at it, and shrugged. The night was young.

He picked through the fruit, examined the latkes with a frown before deciding to give that a pass, and added some of the bread to the plate. Silly sod didn’t know her as well as he liked to think, or there would have been some chocolate. He had put an end to her last hunger strike by painting her lips with warm chocolate sauce, watching her nostrils quiver as the scent reached her, and eventually broke her.

Chocolate. He smiled to himself, and glanced over his shoulder, wondering why she hadn’t answered him. “Willow?”

“Breakfast,” she sounded less than certain of that, which meant that she was probably lying to him. “I’m not hungry.”

Definitely lying, he decided. She had known that they were arriving today, so she had probably not eaten, letting all her anxieties about this evening work on her. He cocked his head, listening actively for a moment.

Vampiric hearing was something you learned to control over time. When he was newly made, it drove him nuts. All the things he could hear, the loudness of everything, and especially the loudness in any kind of quiet, because that was the most unnatural thing of all. Made you feel like you could hear the earth turning. At a few yards, in a closed room, he could hear Willow’s heart, and the soft sound of her breathing. He let his true face show, and the whole bloody house lay open to him.

Down the hall, two humans, female from the sound of hushed voices and muffed laughter. One scolding the other. His eyes narrowed as he concentrated on what was being said. Nothing that interesting. A little gossip about his girl. He honed in on a mocking ‘looks so innocent, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth’, an observation that lacked for originality if not veracity. His eyes drifted downward as he sought to hear beyond the immediate area.

House sounds, people moving, someone moaning . . . he let his features resume their human mask. “Dinner time, pet,” he said, picking up the plate and the wine glass.

She reached behind her, fluffing a pillow to lean against, quietly muttering, “What part of not hungry eludes him?”

Third mouthy remark of the evening. Oh, someone was practically begging for a spanking, he thought, setting the plate on the table beside the bed and handing her the glass.

He caught her chin between his fingers, forcing her to look at him. It had been years since he had struck her with anything other than his own hand. He lost some of his enthusiasm for marking her up, especially since it took her so long to heal. “Are you trying to provoke me, Willow?”

Her eyes widened at the question.

“Angelus is pleased with what you accomplished on your own, as am I. You do deserve a reward, but, my love, don’t mistake me. I’m more than willing to oblige you if you need a reminder about the nature of our relationship.”

The silky menace in his voice was in no way lessened by his fingers, feathering over the pulse point in her throat, brushing over the faded mark of his fangs.

“Do you understand me?” he rapped out.

“Yes, Mas—“she sucked in a hard, trembling breath. “Yes, William,” she whispered.

He sat on the edge of the bed beside her, giving her cheek an affectionate caress, tilting his head to one side. “I like it when you call me Will,” he admitted, smiling at her, “Makes me feel like a lad.”

He plucked a small, dark red strawberry from the plate and fed it to her, seeing the distress in her eyes. She chewed mechanically, and he nudged the hand holding the wine glass, guessing that she was having trouble making herself swallow.

“You’ll make yourself sick, missing meals,” he scolded. “Can’t have that, pet.” He brought a grape to her lips, and then smiled, holding his hand out for her to spit the seed into.

Lifting his eyebrow, he selected another piece of fruit for her. “Did you miss me while you were away?”

Tears filled her eyes and her eyelids closed. He brought a strawberry to her trembling lips. She took it delicately between her lips, and chewed, swallowing hard. Breathing hard.

Even with his highly developed sense of hearing he almost missed it.

“Every minute of every day,” she whispered.