Chapter Eight

It was dusk when Dru joined them in bed, sliding between the sheets, facing Willow who was sleeping on her side, William’s arm holding her against his side.

He had brought Willow breakfast and a few books to read before going off on his own to explore the house. It took him three hours, and he had been about to resort to brute force, but he figured out the little trick with library wall. The end section of shelves was on a pivot and all it took was to disengage the catch to swing it open to reveal a curving stair down.

The chamber below was probably the original wine cellar. It wasn’t a cozy setting, but it was cool and dry. He found several lanterns, candles, and few packing crates stacked on their sides to serve as shelves for books, or storage for the expected assortment of stinky herbs.

It was a private study. He wasn’t sure what he expected. Maybe an exit strategy. A store laid in for when she bolted for good, because the next time Willow ran, he was certain that she would have learned from her mistakes in the past and be ready, with money that wouldn’t be missed until far too late, documents, and plans.

She’d gotten away from him once for six weeks in London only to be found in a lunatic ward, ironic given that he and Dru had sprung her, with Dru claiming to be her sister while William claimed to be Dru’s husband. Very put upon, what with the insanity clearly running in the family. The daft bint unwittingly lent veracity to their story by blurting Dru’s name out.

In Berlin, she had coolly walked through the gates of the American Embassy before he even realized that she was no longer a step behind him. The whole step behind him business being another one of Angelus’ daft injunctions after Willow joined their happy home. If Angelus had his way, she would have been crawling around on all fours with a collar around her neck so the other vampires would get the hint. William was convinced that the older vampire made half his precious vampire etiquette up. If he wanted to have someone crawling after him, he’d get a damned dog.

Not all of the undead were terribly brilliant. Intellect seemed to play a virtually non-existent role when it came to selecting minions or true childer. Nonetheless, only the newest of the newborns wouldn’t recognize a claim, and his scent was all over Willow. A fresh bite mark on her pretty throat, and the fact that she was breathing pretty much said back the fuck off to the undead that valued their unlives, without a lot of ridiculous twaddle about her having to walk behind him in public, keep her eyes to the floor, and address everyone as Master or Mistress, to generally be treated like nothing but a convenience to fuck and feed on.

Because, he could get either commodity without keeping it alive, thank you.

He paced the small room, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he tried to decide if he should confront her about this, or let her think she had preserved her little secret. If he should tell Angelus or Darla, or both—no point bringing Dru in on it. He needed to get to the bottom of what she was up to. It could be something fairly innocent, but when Willow was her most innocuous, she was usually up to something. Still, it wouldn’t do to discount the possibility that she was hiding her witchy activities from the humans, who might go tattling to the church or the civil authorities.

His eyes scanned the room again. If she showed him the room, it was most likely that she was hiding this from the servants. If she didn’t show him the room, the most innocent explanation was that she wanted a truly private space to herself. The alternative was that she was exploring the dark arts for a means of escape, defense, or attack. He was putting his money on the former. Her instincts had always run to flight.

After he left the secret room, he did some more poking around the house. Angelus had joined him, looking for the wine cellar, checking out the dungeon prospects in the adjoining cellars like the big freak he was. They wound up in the kitchen where Angelus lounged around, sipping burgundy and pontificating on his softness while William made soup and cut a quarter of a loaf of bread into neat slices that were piled with wafer thin roast beef. There was also ham.

“She’s Jewish,” William said when he found the ham.

“Huh?” Angelus responded as if this were a non sequitur.

“Wil-low,” William pronounced her name slowly. Ponce. Angelus had been rattling on about her for a painful half an hour. Who the bloody fuck did he think they were talking about?

“She’s Jewish,” he repeated. “Jews don’t eat the flesh of . . . pigs,” he said, thinking that it was something more elaborate than just pig, but the ham came from pig, so close enough. “The majordomo character waxed on a good bit about what m’lady fancies. ‘Warm foods at luncheon, such as a soup with a cream base, and a few slices of bread with meat. Cook keeps it in the icebox, very thinly sliced’” William mimicked. “Jesus bleeding Christ! And he doesn’t know that she loves chocolate and she won’t eat ham.”

“Should have left the bastard dead,” he grumbled.

“Willow is Jewish?” Angelus was having a hard time absorbing that. “How is it that I didn’t know that? Oh, and Lucius? Stay out of Darla’s way for a few days. She was very put out about that.”

“Who is spoilt?” William asked pointedly.

“She’s my sire, and she’s old,” Angelus pointed out. “Willow is human. Do I really have to explain the difference to you?”

“My sire is a woman, too, and by virtue of siring, automatically older,” William laid a slice of bread on top of the meat the way he had seen Willow do more times than he could count. “I figure it works better that way. If you have to suck up to someone, might as well be someone with nicer parts to suck on.”

“Willow’s still human,” Angelus drawled.

“Still has my favorite set of parts,” William countered. “I’m a simple bloke. I make no bones about it. Out there,” he gestured to the wider world. “It’s see, want, take, and if someone beats me to it or beats me to get it . . . so be it. There’s always another day. But, here? I can put a bit of effort into keeping my girls happy.”

Angelus stared at him for a moment. “You really did miss her, didn’t you? I thought you were just sulking because it was my idea.”

William returned his stare. “What of it?”

Angelus gave a lazy shrug. “Has it ever occurred to you that you’ve never killed her, turned her,” he made a circular motion with the glass, acknowledging that there was never any real question of it being otherwise, “because you don’t want to.”

“Uh . . . no. If I wanted her dead, she’d be in the ground. If I wanted her turned, she’d be sleeping off a heavy meal. I’ll do it. I just don’t want to do it now.”

“Why?”

He stirred the soup. Like the thinly sliced roast beef, it had been in the icebox in a ceramic bowl covered with a lid. He tasted it to make sure it was soup and not some sauce masquerading as soup. Tasted like soup. He tasted it again. “What the fuck is this? It tastes like a fat lot of nothing in particular.”

Angelus sniffed, sampling the cooking smells. “Leek,” he said firmly.

“And a leek is?”

“Vegetable. Similar to onion.” Angelus refilled his glass. “Going to answer my question?”

“Nope. I said I do it for Christmas, so—“ William chuckled, struck by a new thought. “Now, this is oddly appropriate. I’m going to turn a Jew on Christmas Eve to be raised on Christmas Day. I like that. It has a blasphemous kind of charm.”

“When are you going to tell her?”

“She’ll get the message when I’m draining her.”

Angelus nodded. “I think that is wise,” he approved. “It will only frighten her. Might make her do something to try to avoid it.”

William looked for a bowl for the soup. “Speaking of which,” he decided that it was now or never. “There’s a small cellar under the library you should look at. Looks like my girl’s been doing some of her witchy stuff down there. There are books and the usual magical folderol, all very neat and tidy.”

“Have you asked her about it?” Angelus asked.

“Going to see if she spills.”

He poured the soup into the bowl as Angelus hopped down from the counter he was perched on and picked up a pot of herbs. “Fresh chives,” he explained, sprinkling some on the soup.

“Which tells you, what?” Angelus returned to the topic of Willow.

“If she’s hiding from humans or if she’s hiding something from us.”

Proving once again that there was a devious mind behind the ‘I’m a simple bloke’ façade William liked to play at.

William opened his eyes, resting his chin on top of his lover’s head. Her heart was beating slow and steady, which meant she was sleeping deeply. He offered Dru a slow smile.

“Hello, beautiful,” he whispered, his eyes shining with love and admiration.

Dru returned his smile, gently lifting a long, curling lock of Willow’s hair to rub between her fingers. “Dolly is sleeping?”

He moved the arm around Willow’s waist to catch Dru’s hand and bring it to rest lightly over his sleeping lover’s heart, wondering if she would understand. There was a moment of clarity in her eyes, and then it was gone before she could process it. “Miss Edith is not noisy, and she is awake,” she pouted.

“Miss Edith spent her evening quietly, I suspect,” William kept his voice low. Willow shifted a bit next to him, her hand moving restlessly until she found his arm and then she made a soft, disgruntled sound. He resettled his arm around her waist, rubbing slow circles against her stomach.

Dru wasn’t above pinching or screaming to wake Willow up when she wanted her company, and normally he wouldn’t try to dissuade his sire. “Dru? You know when you are having one of your days when the stars are spinning and you can’t hear for everything they are whispering all at once, and your head—“

“Hurts,” she frowned at him for making her think of such things. “Bad William.”

Bad William could precede a pout, a sulk, or a fight. He gathered himself, ready to get Willow out of the combat zone if Dru showed some claw.

“Sometimes it is like that for her, too, my darling,” he whispered. “Not the same, but as terrible and she’s not as strong as we are.”

Dru considered this for a moment, her fingers gently stroking the skin over Willow’s heart. “Poor, poppet,” she breathed. “I can smash and bash and fill my head with lovely screams and make it all better.”

William kissed the top of Willow’s head. “She can’t. It makes her head hurt and her chest ache, and she needs sleep and soft words. Soft hands.”

Dru kissed Willow’s forehead. “There, there,” she offered, looking at William to see if she was doing this right.

“I love you,” he breathed, looking at her like she was something wonderful.

“Do you love Miss Willow, my William?,” she touched her lips to Willow’s forehead. “No. That’s silly,” she realized. “Sometimes I like to pretend that she will be ours, forever and always,” she said, careful to add. “I know that she is yours my darling boy, but . . . you will always be mine, and you’ll share her with me? Always? Dru, William, and sometimes-our Willow?”

“Not Miss Willow?” Dru rarely spoke of Willow as if she were a person rather than a doll.

“Miss Willow, for now,” she acknowledged.

The little twists and turns in her mind were fascinating. The mortal creature in his arms was Miss Willow, and Willow was the creature she would become after he sired her. It reminded him of his aborted experiment with creating another identity for himself in a nom de guerre. Darla and Angelus had refused to indulge his insistence on being called Spike and for a couple of months they had fought over it, and then Willow came along, and he sort of forgot about it.

She cuddled closer to them and Willow roused enough to slip her arm around Dru’s waist, her cheek coming to rest on the upper swell of her breast. Dru accepted the change in position with a smile, her graceful hands stroking Willow’s hair and skin as she cooed to her.

Oh, no. That won’t wake her up, William thought, twisting at the waist to pick up one of the two cheroots that he had carried over from his room. There were times when Willow slept like a rock, through the worst weather, and the noisiest forms of transportation. Dru had taken the initiative to gather more of Willow against her and was busy dropping soft, closed mouth kisses in her hair, and against her temple. He watched Dru’s hand moving beneath the sheet, over Willow’s waist, her hip, her leg, nearly down to her knee. Dru’s arms were unusually long. Not freakishly so, she was nearly his height, long limbed and she moved like one of the ballet dancers they saw in Paris might if it were natural and not some studied idea of grace.

He smiled as he watched them. Dru had slipped one of her legs between Willow’s before her hand moved back up. Her hand cupped Willow’s breast. William noticed the barely perceptible change in her heart rate. She gave a spare shake of her head, pressing her cheek against Dru’s chest, making a dry, kissing sound as she fought to stay asleep.

William and Dru’s eyes met. Dru’s eyes had a wicked, conspiratorial gleam to them. With both hands, she lifted Willow’s head, careful not to pull on it or jar her awake and he uncoiled the arm he had been pillowing his head on. Dru re-arranged Willow’s head to rest on his upper arm and he curled it around her, laying his hand possessively on her neck. The change in position gave Dru unimpeded access to her breasts. Her cool tongue traced a red mark in Willow’s skin from a wrinkle in the sheets that went all the way down to the nipple of the breast that had been slightly under her as she slept.

Dru took her nipple into her mouth, sucking, her tongue moving in circles around the hardening nipple. Not even Willow at her sleepiest could stay asleep, and William felt her heart pick up speed as she woke, abruptly, her body tensing with a little more than wakefulness. His thumb, nestled under her ear, moved against her skin to let her know that she was still with him. Dru’s mouth opened wider, taking more of her breast into her mouth. She stayed still. It wasn’t that unusual for Dru to join them in bed, and she preferred Willow to be the passive participant in their bed play.

As unfixed as Dru was she was rigid in her relationships. With her precious Daddy and Darla, she was the passive one, her eyes reflecting her need for them to notice her, pay attention to her. Hurt her. Between him and Dru things were more on an even keel. He had been a virgin when she turned him. For months after she had been like a woman he was courting, with the surety of sex. They had been as close, in his mind as any married couple. She had done things, shown him things, that had shocked and delighted him, but she hadn’t made him feel like he was anything but her equal.

Then Darla had gone off on one of her mysterious trips, and he had discovered that Dru wasn’t his, by her own choice. He’d taken one of the worst beatings of his life from Angelus and lay on the ground unable to move for hours as Angelus put on a demonstration not a dozen feet away.

She became slightly, but decidedly dominant when Willow was in bed with them. Her free hand moved up to cup the other breast, her fingers finding the nipple and pinching it playfully while William kept gently stroking her throat with his thumb, reminding her to be still.

For Willow’s part she wasn’t precisely confused about what was happening, or even surprised, and a very long time ago she stopped trying to determine what she felt about it since her feelings were of no concern to anyone but William, and even that wasn’t a certainty. He had been very solicitous today, but she recognized it as a mood, and William’s moods never lasted very long—at least the ones she processed as pleasant did not. She had never been slow to wake. William was, and he tended to be grouchy when woken abruptly—the only caveat to that was when he woke up and had something to vent his temper on.

During one of their sojourns in Spain, questions had arisen about the odd family that occupied the second floor of the inn. Strange, unexplained deaths and disappearances had mounted up. Whispers of strange sounds in the night. Darla had done her usual thing when they reached that town in Catalonia. She made a point of going to mass, heavily veiled, with Willow as her companion, in the evenings. She and Angelus dined with the mayor, the few prominent merchants, and the backcountry hidalgos. It tended to ensure that they had more time and even some warning before it became necessary to move off.

This was one of the public faces of the family. Angelus was the patriarch, and Darla was his wife. Drusilla was usually passed off as Angelus’ sister, her apparent madness a topic that was made off limits by a subtle show of offence or a freezing look. William was more often than not passed off as Darla’s brother, and Willow, depending on the mood or necessity of anyone even knowing she existed, was shuffled into whatever role appealed at the moment.

The attack had come at dusk, which was the first mistake that the towns people made. They were keeping vampire hours, the second floor of the inn tightly shuttered through the heat of the day, which actually was not so remarkable. They were looking for a girl and a boy who had disappeared the previous night, and it was almost funny, but it was not a disappearance that Darla, Angelus, Dru, or William were remotely connected to, they later determined. Darla and Angelus thought it was something William had done, since he had a talent for killing the wrong people.

When their bedroom door was kicked in he was instantly awake, dragging her out of the bed and pushing her into a corner behind him. The odd thing was that he didn’t seem angry. When you kill people with your bare hands, there’s a presumption of anger, but he seemed exhilarated, and happy, like someone had thrown a surprise party for him. Angelus had been coldly furious. After the first wave had been cut through with deadly efficiency, he had been in the hallway, dressing, and shouting orders to get the minions hunting the town.

“When you run out of bodies on the streets, start burning them out,” he ordered, effectively neutralizing the lack of invitation.

William felt her shudder, and wondered what that was about. She wasn’t keen on crawling into bed with Darla or Angelus, a fact that they were aware of and took a certain amount of enjoyment in, so she was careful not to let anything show in her face, completely unaware that her wary detachment gave her away. She wasn’t standoffish with Dru, though. The fact that Dru took to her, and that she had a calming influence on his sire was the first thing that he noticed about her beyond the obvious lure of her body. He kissed the top of her head, and went back to his cheroot while Dru fondled her.

Maybe it was the two months on her own, putting ideas into the too fertile soil of her busy little brain. If Dru wanted to dress her up in doll clothes, have her little tea parties, fuck her silly, or just about anything short of killing her, he’d not only allow it, he would actively participate, and if she needed a reminder of that, she was on the verge of getting one.

“I thought you wanted Miss Willow for a tea party, my love,” he drawled.

Dru’s mouth clamped around the breast she was suckling as she drew back, tugging on the nipple that left her lips with a wet sound. She snapped her teeth in a playful bite that made Willow flinch. He crushed out the cheroot in a saucer on the bedside table.

Smelling the fear that had sharpened her scent, Dru’s hand drew back from the other breast, hovering like a cobra about to strike. She flicked her long fingers at Willows face with a growl that he interpreted as playful, and then giggled delightedly at her flinch, before gently patting Willow’s cheek.

“I’ve thought of other games to play,” she told William, her fingers exploring Willow’s face. She cocked her head to one side. “Miss Edith’s eyes are ever so much prettier than hers, but not so naughty.” She tapped on the end of Willow’s nose. “You were naughty. Spoiling William’s fun,” her smiling became knowing, “Sometimes I’m naughty, and Daddy makes me scream.”

She ground her leg between Willow’s thighs and pinched one of her nipples hard enough to make the girl’s lips part in a soundless gasp of pain.

Dru attacked her lips, sucking, biting, her tongue pushing into her mouth forcefully, her hand molding the breast she was fondling, her thumb teasing the hard nipple, pinching, tugging lightly as she kissed her voraciously, driving the back of her head into William’s shoulder. His semi erect cock hardened as Dru’s leg rocked against her rhythmically, driving Willow’s hips back against his body. His free hand moved over Dru’s side, reveling in the coldness of her skin in contrast to Willow’s warmth. He gave her ass a hard smack to get her attention when he felt Willow struggling to breath.

“Dru?” he said dryly.

She abruptly stopped kissing Willow, who sucked in a couple of hard breaths.

“She has to breathe, darling,” he reminded her, rubbing his cheek against his lover’s hair. It was soft from being so recently washed and smelled of vanilla.

Dru smiled impishly. “Oops,” she said. “I got carried away.”

He eyed her damp, red lips. God, she was gorgeous. “You carry me away, my love.”

She levered herself up to reach his lips. The changing angle of Dru’s leg between Willow’s thighs made her close her eyes at the unexpected stab of arousal. Dru’s long hair fell across her face as she and William kissed. The inside of his arm moved over her as his hand moved over the side of Dru’s body, making her a part of the caress whether he intended it or not. Sometimes they got so lost in each other that Willow wondered if they even knew that she was there. She didn’t resent it. She knew it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with their peculiar, and unwittingly tragic relationship.

It was the hardest thing she knew about William. He loved Dru with a purity and clarity that was absolute. She was his sun and stars, and he was the firmament that Dru revolved around in her unhinged state. Their dedication to each other was so ingrained that it could almost be forgotten, until they looked at each other a certain way, or kissed, like this. Witnessing such an intimate moment should have made her feel uncomfortable, but in a peculiar way it charmed and calmed the places in her mind and heart that she was most frightened of visiting.

And she wasn’t forgotten, not really. Dru was still stroking her breast, her hand gentling even as the kiss she was sharing with William became violent, and his thumb was still moving in a ceaseless sweep under her ear in a rhythm that, she realized, mimicked her pulse.

When Dru sucked away the last drop of the blood she had drawn from his lip, their eyes met and clung. He finger combed her hair over her shoulder, drawing the length away from Willow’s face. “Sweet kisses for everyone,” Dru murmured, bending her head to delicately lick Willow’s kiss swollen lips.

It was like a minuet. She was shifted ever so slightly in William’s arm so he could reach her mouth and kiss her while Dru pressed kisses along her neck, shifting downward in the bed to tenderly kiss and lick the reddened nipple she had been fingering. William’s hand left the vale of Dru’s waist to slide under Willow’s knee, lifting her leg over his as he kissed the corner of her mouth. The change in position left her exposed, her legs tangled between his and Dru’s, the same coolness, but different textures. The roughness of the hair on his legs contrasted with the smoothness of Dru’s thigh.

His hand moved to Dru’s much fuller breast and she made a sound in her throat as he crushed it in his hand, roughly abrading her nipple as Dru kissed the underside of Willow’s breast.

His hand moved from Willow’s throat to the breast that Dru had abandoned as her head moved lower. His hand left Dru’s breast and moved down her abdomen, his index finger circling her navel as if to invite Dru’s attention to this feature of her body, and then his hand moved lower, his fingers tugging lightly on the curls between her legs. It made the lips of her cunt move just enough for her to moan softly at the sensation he was creating.

One of his long cool fingers slid along the lips of her cunt, tracing an erotic outline while Dru’s tongue dipped into her navel. Willow registered the sting of Dru’s fang after it left her skin, opening a small cut that welled blood. William’s head came up, sharply, his face changing at the scent of blood, the beginnings of a feral growl vibrating in his throat. He watched Dru as she let the slight flow of blood drip into Willow’s navel, her tongue delicately scooping the blood up. She sucked on the tip of her blood-coated tongue and bent her head to lap up the blood that had pooled. He was breathing heavily, his face shifting back, his cock rubbing against her back.

His fingers cupped her, pressing into her heated flesh, wringing a moan that was in part relieved, from her as he stared intently at Dru. His fingers rubbed against her, his middle finger penetrating her, making her push herself on his hand as her head fell back into his shoulder and her lips sought his skin, only to be lightly abraded by beard stubble on his jaw.

Dru barely paused, laying a firm hand on Willow’s hip to keep her still. A second finger joined the first, twisting, plunging in and out of her while his hips rocked against her and the cool wetness seeping from his cock made a slippery spot on her lower back.

Willow felt her inner walls clenching, prefacing an orgasm that she knew without being told that she would be denied. She licked her lips and kissed his throat. It was too early for that. Between the two of them they could keep her on edge for hours, finding their own release as it pleased them.

She wasn’t surprised or disappointed when he withdrew his fingers, leaving her trembling. The sheets had slipped down to pool around their legs. Dru’s head blocked her view of her lower body, but not her awareness of herself, spread open, the lips of her sex, wet. William offered his fingers to Dru and she alternated between them, a purr of contentment rumbling in her throat as she lapped at his wet fingers, her tongue milking the small tear in Willow’s skin for more blood.

“More?” she requested, and Willow shuddered, eagerly pushing her cunt into his hand when his attention returned to her.

His gaze moved to her face, shifting to reach her mouth, he kissed her lower lip, pulling it into his mouth. His gaze was warmly affectionate. His thumb rotated slowly over her clit while his fingers fucked her.

Using a nail, Dru opened another small cut. She had to draw back and flex her fingers into a fist to shake off the impulse to force her fingernail deeper under the skin. William would not be pleased if she poked holes in his girl before he had an opportunity to do his own kind of poking. She kissed and licked an irregular, round scar in the fleshy part of Willow’s side, not remembering so much how it got there, but that it had enraged her childe.

She lifted her head, watching the blood trickle in a bright red ribbon over pale skin. Her eyes flitted to William’s hand, and back to the blood, and then to watch them kiss. He was worrying at her lower lip, his head moving as he changed the depth and texture of the kiss.

She gave his hip a hard pinch to get his attention and he chuckled, casting her a look of mock contrition as he offered her his hand again. “Sorry, Princess,” he said. Her tongue swept up the rivulets of blood and she took his fingers in her mouth, mixing the tastes together on her tongue. She reached between Willow’s legs, retreating to give her wet cunt a caress, her goal, the root of her William’s cock. Reading her intent, he made a space for her hand, and groaned as her hand closed around him. When his fingers were clean and the fresh wound was sealed, she signaled her desire to roll the girl between them over on her stomach, resting her cheek on her warm, soft skin as she eagerly took William’s cock in her mouth.

He brushed Willow’s hair away from her neck and shoulders, wrapping the length of it around one wrist, kissing her shoulders and spine up to the downy hairs at the nape of her neck, blunt teeth nipping her skin in an unmistakable prelude. He could feel her tensing under him as the bites became harder, interspersed with kisses meant to sooth. His other hand played in Dru’s silky black hair as she held his hip and took him into her throat. When he felt his balls tighten with his impending climax he let himself change, his tongue roughly stimulating the blood vessels under her skin before his fangs sunk in, deep.

Dru, God bless her, took her hand off his hip to throw her weight more firmly over his lover, whose body had jackknifed with the pain of his deep bite. He drew on her hard, once, before unclenching his jaw and retracting his fangs. Dru hadn’t swallowed all of his release, and was milking the last of it with her hand in pearly drops over Willow’s lower back while he pressed his tongue against the bite, savoring the spicy tang of her blood.

And Angelus asked why he hadn’t killed her by now? How he hadn’t greedily drained her dry the first time he had tasted her amazed him. She had been a sixteen-year-old prostitute, new to the trade according to the poxy blond girl who had been pimping her in an alley. It was a specious claim, but the fear and embarrassment in her eyes seemed to lend credence to it while he haggled with her friend, who had been holding out for a simple hand job at a tuppence, because the girl had to learn something that required skills.

Which, as he had pointed out, was hardly any concern of his.

He’d tossed her a half crown and taken her up against a brick wall in a filthy alley while she shook and wept soundlessly as he ruthlessly fucked her dry, tight cunt with every intention of killing her, her friend, and taking back his half crown. Fucking frightened little girls didn’t do anything for him, but when he had bit into her, expecting something reasonably young and tasty, he had come from the unbelievable taste of her in his mouth.

She had tasted so good. So right somehow. It was like she was some special flavor he had been seeking without even knowing it. Still, it was odd, that he had made himself stop. Her friend had stopped counting her coins, the vulgar little ditty she had been singing under her breath stopping. With the instincts of a predator recognizing something with bigger, nastier teeth, she had taken off, and he had damn near taken her head off her shoulders when he snapped her neck. The taste of her blood after the ambrosia he had been sampling made him spit out the mouthful he had taken.

And maybe, it had made him think. Not Angelus style deep thoughts. He hadn’t had anything in particular in mind when he scooped up the girl he had dropped and carried her home. Angelus, Darla and Dru were busy with one of their torture marathons with a couple they had spent weeks reeling in between fancy parties and the theatre, so he’d kept her, to amuse him, and somehow he managed not to kill her.

Poor baby. She was trying to muffle her sobs in the mattress, as if he couldn’t tell from the catch in her throat, or the way her shoulders were heaving that she was crying. She was so serious. She took everything so seriously. His injunction against tears and sadness last night, for instance. No one took him that seriously, and you would think she’d learn by now. He knew damn well that he had hurt her. He wasn’t stupid, or entirely lacking in sensitivity. Even Dru had cottoned the fact that she was hurting, and she was petting her lower back and ass as she cleaned the mess they had made off of her skin. She was eight years older, maturing into a stunning woman, and there was still a bit of little girl in her.

She had to have known it was coming with a houseful of vamps in new territory, he wouldn’t leave her without the protection of an unmistakable claim, and that took more than a bit of blood play to leave.

Dru gathered her in her arms, guiding her head into the crook of her neck, one arm loosely holding her head to her as she made soft, soothing sounds, her fingers brushing away some of the tears. Her longer, stronger legs, sorted them out, pushing Willow’s to the outside as she drew her more fully on her body. With some idea of what she had in mind, he moved between the tangle of legs, lifting Willow’s hips, his hands stroking her back, moving under her to stoke her breasts.

Dru gave him a dreamy, peaceful smile, and he held her gaze as he kissed Willow’s back. Dru’s hand moved between her legs, gently petting her, her fingers finding her clitoris and stroking it. One of her fingers found his cock, her fingernail scraping him lightly in invitation.

Willow wasn’t oblivious to what was going on around her. It just wasn’t as overwhelming as the pain she was in that seemed to wake her pain receptors to her throbbing wrist, the slight burn in the too tight, bruised skin on the backs of her thighs, and the sting of the small cuts on her abdomen. She was also disturbed by her reaction to the bite. Her heart still felt bruised from that hard, brutal pull on it through her veins, and she had nearly bitten through her lip to keep from screaming, which was probably less offensive to William than her crying.

It seemed like he was always telling her to stop crying.

It flooded her with shame as the uncontrollable tears slipped, hot and oily over her cheeks. She was afraid that her nose was running. It was only one more humiliation amongst many. Snot, tears, flatulence, sweat, all the unpleasant reminders of humanness that vampires didn’t suffer that sometimes made her feel painfully conscious of her otherness. For two months, she had been amongst humans, and she was even more aware of these traits. It had actually bothered her. The reek of sweat when Matilde lifted her arms to reach for something on an upper shelf had her nearly shaking with revulsion.

And if Matilde was repulsive to her, what then was she?

Dru’s hand cupped her chin, lifting her face to her dark, fathomless eyes. Eyes that reached right into her, into the places she wished to forget existed, but were too close to the surface. “Cry, bitter and salty tears,” she whispered to her. “They fall like warm raindrops on my skin, to burn and tingle.” She tilted her head, as if she were listening to Willow’s disordered thoughts, her fingers tenderly brushing over her lips, making her sniff, and then cough to clear her flooded nose. “No, no. You are nothing if not sweetness and pretty colors,” she crooned. “Feel my William, my brightest star, my gentle and vicious boy.”

He was there, behind her, the head of his cock breaching her while Dru kissed her, her tongue drawing Willow’s out to tangle. Lust flared in Dru’s eyes. “You feel him. So . . . so good,” Dru’s fingers shifted to spread around William’s cock as he slowly thrust deep.

Her smile turned sly. “My William will make such pretty colors dancing behind your eyes, like sunlight on water, like firelight, burning you. Burning your cunt, spreading all around until you are burning, burning, hot and cold.”

Dru sucked on her bloodied lip and Willow gasped as William moved, thrusting slowly, torturously, around Dru’s fingers, into her. Every nerve ending in her slick, wet channel was alive to the sensation of his cock stretching her, sliding deeper inside of her, slowly withdrawing, moving back over the same sensitized flesh.

She knew that she was shaking. She could feel it as his hands moved over her languidly, from her hips and her ass, over the backs of her legs, across her back to the sides of her breasts, leaving gooseflesh to prickle her skin in his wake.

“Please,” she whimpered, wanting it. Her hands tangled in Dru’s hair, marveling at the softness, like mink.

Dru rolled her shoulders, directing her mouth to her breasts, her long finger hand cupping a creamy breast tipped with a luscious pink nipple. Her eyes twinkled. “Grandmummy rouges her nipples,” she confided as if this was the most shocking thing she had ever heard.

Their eyes met again as William hit bottom in her, and Willow found herself giggling at the wonderful absurdity of Dru.

She pinched Willow’s clit. “I made her laugh,” she said, sounding terribly smug about it, stretching like a cat as Willow’s wonderfully warm tongue flicked over her nipple. “More,” she demanded. “Harder, lovey.” She waggled her finger against Willow’s clit and clamped her fingers against William’s cock. “Not you, my William,” she smiled. “So hard,” she breathed as his cock moved through her fingers, wet and warm from Willow.

Willow applied more suction to the nipple between her lips and Dru sighed her approval. “So warm, so wet,” she purred, her fingernail lightly scraping Willow’s clit, making her moan.

He loved watching them together like this, and fucking Willow slow, feeling her tensing and quivering around his cock as he filled her, feeling the way her hips twitched when he was pushing into her, and the way her breath left her in a rush as he eased out of her. She was soaking wet. His hands spread her thighs a bit more, hearing the strangled sound of her anticipatory moan, knowing the next thrust would send him that little bit deeper inside her.

The insides of her thighs were wet. He ran one of his dampened fingers down the cleft of her ass, painting her tightly puckered anus with her secretions. He smiled as she pushed back against his finger, feeling her legs tremble. He tapped on the opening, patting it teasingly, relatively sure that if he eased his finger into her, she’d go off like a rocket, and he just loved keeping her where she was now, on the edge of a climax.

Perfectly aware of how he was teasing Willow, Dru pursed her lips at him, directing Willow to her other breast.

Not wanting his sire to feel neglected he pulled Willow’s hips back enough for Dru to slide out from under her. His arm snaked around Willow, pulling her up against his chest. The change in the angle of his penetration made her cry out his name. He nuzzled the fresh bite mark on her throat as Dru’s hands painted erotic patterns on Willow’s sweat dampened skin.

“This is just a taste of things to come,” he told her as Dru licked her Willow flavored fingers and delved between her thighs again to stimulate her clit while she remained impaled on his cock. She keened, grappling for a hold on him so she could move on his cock. Her blunt fingernails scraped his skin, scoring it and he ground himself into her while she pleaded for him to fuck her hard.

“Are you trying to make me come?” he growled.

“Mmmm. Yes!”

He wrapped his other arm around her, lifting her hips and driving her down on him hard once, twice, and then with a heartfelt groan the third time as he came. Drusilla had taken her hand away, denying her the clitoral stimulation she needed to come and she responded with a frustrated wail that made him laugh softly as he kissed her throat.

“Baby, you wanted me to come,” he teased her.

Drusilla chuckled appreciatively, eyeing them hungrily as she arranged herself against the pillows, spreading her legs.

There was something almost obscene about her completely denuded pudenda that Willow always found as disturbing as it was erotic. She had the unpleasant experience of being subjected to Dru’s extreme form of grooming on several memorably unpleasant occasions. She used a pair of tweezers to depilate legs, underarms, and pubic hairs. It took hours. The first time Dru had done it was during one of her tea parties, at Miss Edith’s suggestion. William had wandered off after an hour, with a stern glare at her that told her she’d experience something more unpleasant if she put up any show of defiance.

After it was over he had suggested a cold bath and ice to reduce the worst of the swelling, leaving her to hunt. When he came home, he had gone down on her and fucked her for hours and she had been afraid that he was going to demand that she maintain herself that way.

He hadn’t to her relief. Usually Dru’s grooming instincts confined themselves to picking out her clothes or playing with her hair, or using Willow as a mannequin to look at her jewelry, which could kill an entire day easily. Then there were those other occasions when nothing would satisfy her but tweezing every hair off her body. The only line William ever drew was at her hair. It precipitated a fight that featured a lot of foot stomping and yelling, before Angelus of all people took pity on her and removed her from the line of fire to sit at his feet and read to him.

By the time William and Dru stopped screaming at each other to go look for the escaped grooming object, they found her sitting sedately at Angelus’ knee, reading from the selected works of Lord Byron while he stroked her hair. It was, what she learned to recognize as one of Angelus’ set pieces. A tearful, nearly incoherent Dru standing with her mouth at half mast as she processed the scene, and William looking like he was going to explode, while Angelus calmly stroked her hair, waiting until she finished the long passage that she was reading in a voice that shook to say with absolute finality. “Her hair is very pretty. Exactly where it is. On her head, Drusilla.”

Which took the wind out of Dru’s sails. Willow had expected retaliation of some kind. Dru could hold a grudge like a terrier and she had the hardest, sharpest fingernails Willow had ever felt. But, the matter was dropped, and her hair stayed on her head.

She felt William pull out of her, still semi-erect. He slapped her ass and pushed her into Dru’s arms, springing up from the bed to go light another cheroot. “Give her a moment to catch her breath, Princess,” he suggested to Dru before strolling into the bathroom that connected her room to Dru’s.

Dru pushed her hair away from her face, drawing Willow down to rest her head against her cool abdomen for a moment. Dru nudged her and Willow obligingly moved until she was lying mostly against her hip and thigh. She smiled wryly to herself when Dru tapped one finger on her cunt, her other hand giving Willow’s head a push in that direction.

Dru wanted what Dru wanted when she wanted it and she could be remarkably direct about expressing her needs. When she wasn’t, William was the only one who could deal with her. That made being alone with Dru an adventure, but today, she was remarkably coherent and mellow, like a snake sunning herself on the rocks.

Or as William once cheerfully observed, if Dru ever went for her throat, she’d be dead with Dru’s hand yanking out her heart before anyone could help her, so it was best to go along and get along.

She folded her legs under her, kneeling between Dru’s splayed thighs. Willow used her thumbs on the margins of her cunt to spread the lips open. Dru made an approving sound and Willow slid the pads of her thumbs over the inner lips, finding her wet. Dru tilted her hips up and she dipped her head down to run the tip of her tongue over the edges of her cunt, not unlike the way that William had teased her with his fingers.

Avoiding her clitoris for the moment, confident that Dru would let her know when she was no longer satisfied, Willow took little bites of the spread lips of her cunt, swirling the tip of her tongue over the cool smooth flesh.

She had a funny scent, like something old and dry and vaguely floral. Angelus had a theory about the scent and flavor of a woman’s secretions that had become a topic of dinner table conversation. He thought it was a product of diet, and he and William had chatted casually about this while she had an odd moment in that she was fully able to follow the arguments, having, by that time, been between enough women’s thighs, vampire and human.

She curled her arm under one of Dru’s bent legs to rest her hand on her lower abdomen as she nudged Willow with an impatient push of her hips that was a definite, ‘get on with it’. She worked her tongue over her slit, letting it flutter against the opening of her vagina before working up to the engorged knot of her clitoris, plucking at it with her lips.

A pleased moan erupted from Dru. Willow brushed her fingers against her while she flicked her tongue over Dru’s clit, and she gave a little grunt, tangling her fingers in Willow’s hair. She slid two fingers into her, sucking hard on her clit for a moment before relaxing her mouth and using her tongue.

“Hard,” Drusilla mewled. “Hard.”

She always had to remind herself that she couldn’t possibly hurt her, and it wasn’t just the vampire thing. Dru’s tolerance and craving for pain was beyond Willow’s scope. She still had to steel herself to add a third finger, ramming them into Dru as hard as she could.

Her back arched off the bed and Willow pumped her fingers in her, using lips and teeth to alternate between sucking and biting on Dru’s clit while her own twitched with what she could only describe as sympathy pains.

William wet a hand towel to clean himself off and rinsed it, squeezing out the excess moisture to carry it back into the bedroom for Willow. She’d been a nice bit of a mess when he’d pulled out of her. He smoked his cheroot, looking at the mess that the bathroom had become. Dru had been in here, leaving her wet towels on the floor and a melting bit of soap in the tub. Willow was used to picking up after her.

He opened the mirrored cabinet to see what she had stowed there. She had her little case of teeth cleaning stuff, and a row of little glass pots with different colored contents. He picked up one with something pink inside. He unscrewed the lid and sniffed at it, smelling peppermint. He shrugged, unable to imagine what that was for. The next one her recognized. It was an ointment—nasty odor to it, best left tightly sealed. The pinkish brown pot contained the stuff she used to cover bruises. He picked up a brown apothecary bottle, reading the label.

Laudanum.

Trouble sleeping or something else? He jiggled the bottle. It was more than half full. There were a couple of small brown envelopes of what he knew to be a headache powder without picking them up. The rest of it was sticking plasters and a tin of alum and another of talc.

He shut the cabinet and flicked ash into the sink. Willow hated him smoking in the bathroom, an opinion she wisely kept unvoiced, but you didn’t live with someone for eight years without being able to read thinned lips and flashing eyes. Even when she was trying not to let what she was thinking show she was pretty transparent.

He could hear Dru winding up and went back into the bedroom to join them. A fair bit of rolling around on the bed was in progress. They had moved down to the center of the bed in a tangle of limbs. Dru was still on the bottom, but she had her head between Willow’s legs and was gripping her ass hard enough that she was sure to leave bruises. When her tongue wasn’t shoved up Willow’s cunt she was screaming, “Harder, harder, harder,” in a frustrated wail.

He tossed the cheroot into the cold grate, as he crossed the room in a few swift strides, knowing full well Willow couldn’t give Dru what she wanted.

He grabbed a fistful of Willow’s head, pulling her head up from between Dru’s thighs, startlingly an, “Ow, ow, OW!” out of her.

“Tagging in,” he explained, ramming his cock into Dru with enough force to send her six inches across the bed and turn her frustrated hisses into a happy purr. He reached down and pinched her clit hard. “Is that what you want, love?” he asked her.

Feeling like a mouse caught between two snarling cats, Willow’s hips twisted and Dru only relaxed her grasp enough to slap her overly abused ass while William pulled her into an animalistic kiss that mashed her sore lips against her teeth.

He was pounding into Dru, and she was meeting him, thrust for thrust, his hand tangled in Willow’s hair, holding her up until she managed to get one arm up to sort of brace herself on his shoulder. “Good girl,” he grunted, turning his attention to Dru. Willow didn’t want to know what he was doing to her clitoris. She was scared to death that Dru was going to bite her.

“Like that?” he grunted, giving Dru’s clit a hard twist that had her coming, hard. He pulled out of her, still hard himself. “Dru? Let’s make my kitten purr.”

Darla found Angelus in the cellar below the library. There were hours to go before their minions rose. The next few days would be work. Teaching them to hunt, culling out the ones that were too weak, or wouldn’t accept discipline, establishing order. It was something the boys particularly excelled at. It was one of the four reasons why she put up with William. He fought like he was born to it, he kept Drusilla out of her hair, and he gave Angelus someone to argue with other than herself.

If she accidentally drove a stake in his chest next week, well, that was next week when the household was in order. Even as she thought it, she knew it would never happen. Drusilla. Angelus was sitting on a crate thumbing through a book. “This lacks nothing for atmosphere,” Darla observed as her calculating gray eyes took in the room. “What is this in aid of?” she asked.

Angelus looked up, reaching automatically for her hand. He pressed her fingers to his lips. “I’m not sure, yet. Will found it.”

Will? Apparently, today, Angelus was in charity with the brat. He smiled at her, reading her sharp glance. “Told him to mind his manners with you if he knows what’s good for him,” he told her, well aware that she was angry at his grandchilde.

“Sage advice spread on fallow ground,” she retorted icily. William was not as stupid as he sometimes liked to pretend, which made his little misadventures and the liberties he took all the more irritating.

“What are the children up to?” he asked.

Darla rolled her eyes. “What else? I’m surprised you haven’t heard them. It’s a wonder that Dru hasn’t accidentally killed William’s little pet.”

“Hmm,” he agreed. “More lives than a cat, she has. Makes you wonder if at the end of the world the only survivors will be a rat, a cockroach, and Willow,” he smiled at the thought.

That was one way to look at it. She had so far shown herself to be a spectacular failure at killing herself, or simply dying of one of the many hazards that lay before any mortal life. Aside from her pathetic attempts to end her own life, the girl had been shot, stabbed, and drowned. She had contracted influenza, pneumonia, and dysentery. She had damn near starved to death before the genius upstairs had the wit to figure out that she wasn’t being fed often enough. Her whole life was a comedy of errors, and Darla had no doubt whatsoever that the girl genuinely yearned for an end to it.

And they thought she was cruel. It boggled the mind.

“What is all of this?” she asked again.

“Will’s thinking that we take a wait and see approach. She may just have wanted to keep her studies away from the servants to prevent gossip about witchcraft.”

“The servants can’t read,” Darla retorted in a bored tone of voice.

He held up a book with a Pentacle embossed on the cover. “That’s plain enough, even for the illiterate, you’d have to agree. There are still places in the world where witches are killed, without a lot of questions asked.”

“So?” Darla prompted. “What are we waiting for?”

“She tells us about the room? No secrets, just discretion in front of her kind. She fails to tell us about the room? Well, that’s something to be a wee bit concerned about,” he tried his charming little grin and realized that she was having none of it.

Darla glared at him. “A witch. A natural born witch? And you encouraged this, Angelus! I told you it was dangerous.”

He had encouraged her study like it was an intellectual pursuit, not a potential weapon that could be pointed at them. “William has better sense. He doesn’t trust her an inch.”

“My love,” he wheedled, “she doesn’t know that we know,” he gave it his most reasonable tone. “And, did you notice? No invite into the house when we arrived,” he flipped to a page that she had left marked. A sheet of paper with her handwriting was tucked between the pages. “She took this spell and modified it to create a protection ward that includes us, almost as if we were human.”

“So?” Darla looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language.

“So, my darling, she arranged it so that the invite extends to us, not just her.”

Darla’s lips quirked. “You mean that if a vampire wanted to enter the house, any of us could extend that invitation?”

He nodded. “Very clever of her, and useful,” he pointed out.

Moderately appeased, Darla looked thoughtful. “She didn’t have to do that,” she conceded.

“And, she didn’t tell us she did that,” she pointed out.

“True,” he agreed, “so, we wait and see, but not long. Before she has the run of the house, I want to hear something about this from her lips, even if I have to beat it out of her.”