Chapter Twenty-Four

It was so unusual for her to be the only one awake in the house at night that it almost felt like an adventure. William had been waiting for her when she came back from the stables with her parcels. He was drinking from the bottle of wine, but he wasn't drunk. He pointed out the dessert that he had brought home for her and followed her as she went to the library.

She took her supplies down to her cubbyhole under the library and started unpacking the contents. He had prowled around restlessly until she thought that he would tell her to leave it and come to bed with him, but he said something about wanting a bath, without a shred of innuendo, and he left her alone to finish with her organizing and sorting.

When she finally came up, near dawn, Cook was dozing in a chair by the door and she almost made it past him before he opened one eye and sort of smiled at her, without really smiling. She went into the kitchen and found the chocolate tarts, taking one with her to eat with a glass of water before brushed her teeth and went to bed.

He was in her bed, reading, when she came in, and he looked up from his book briefly, before returning to it. She decided to save the tart and the water for when she woke up, and left them on the table in front of the window. The bathroom was a mess. William had left his damp towels and dirty clothes on the floor and she shoved them into the hamper before completing her nighttime rituals.

When she came to bed, he turned down the linens on her side of the bed without comment. She was just starting to fall asleep when she felt him find her hand under the covers, holding it lightly, his thumb stroking the side of hers once before falling still, and she felt a pang at how familiar it felt before she finally fell asleep. When she woke up a few hours later, he was still awake, still reading. She turned her head enough to read the embossed title on the spine. It was a volume of stories by Edgar Allan Poe.

If they were normal people, this might have been mistaken for cozy domesticity, but they weren't normal people. He must have gotten up at some point while she slept, probably to make sure that the windows were covered. He was lying on top of the coverlet, one knee slightly bent. Feeling oddly removed, Willow watched her hand move from under the covers to over them, to rest on his bare hip. Not looking at his face, her field of vision was restricted to his narrow, well-defined abdomen and thighs. A sparse line of light brown hair arrowed down below his navel to denser, wirier pubic hair that looked coarse and felt silky. Her half asleep mind automatically drifted to a catalog of body hair textures she associated with him until she made herself stop.

In the cradle of his thighs, his flaccid cock lay motionless. She remembered wanting to ask Xander what it was like to have an appendage, and saving the question up for some time when she really felt like freaking him out, just to see the horrified look on his face.

She used her fingernail to trace the line of hair downward, and heard him turn a page, and felt him briefly touch her hair. If they were normal people, would she feel this need to take him in her mouth while he was like this, soft and quiet and undemanding, and make him hard? She knew that if she kept touching him, she wouldn't have the opportunity to feel the softness that would disappear.

A moment later, she discovered that she was right. She took all of him into her mouth, and he made a sound like he had just remembered to start breathing. She let her lips slide over the hardening length of him twice, which was all it took. He was hard and full, coolly silky under the press of her tongue.

She felt him moving around as he put the book away and adjusted the pillows at his back before running his hand up her spine to tangle briefly in her hair.

He edged down in the bed and touched her, fingers slipping through her hair, over her back. His hands providing direction until she was poised over his mouth, shuddering at the light, teasing pressure of his tongue. Making him shudder in turn at the scrape of her fingernails on the inside of his thighs. His hand massaged her ass, staying as far away from the bruise on her other thigh as possible, working out the tension in her hip since she had unwittingly favored the leg where Drusilla had bit her so hard.

She wanted more. His fingers in her while he took his time, nibbling and sucking on any part of her his mouth lingered on. Later, when they kissed she thought if they were normal people they might have kissed at least once before they had come in each other's mouths, but what did she really know about what normal people did anyway?

He might have settled between her thighs, but his hand brushed the scabbed over bite mark that Drusilla had left and he had a quick flash, not of the other day, watching them together while he silently seethed, but of tonight. Angelus holding Claire's ankles, her legs spread, her bruised cunt, swollen and smeared with traces of blood and semen and he rolled Willow over on her side, supporting her uninjured thigh with his own as he guided himself inside her, and the feeling eclipsed the lingering memory of the last few hours. The scent of incense was thick in her hair.

He watched her pull her lower lip into her mouth as her eyelids drifted down, the back of her head settling against his shoulder. He rested his chin on her head, his own eyes closing as he concentrated on the way she felt around him and against him.

“Do you ever wonder what this would be like if we were just normal people?” she asked.

His eyes opened and he lifted his head to look at her. “Died a virgin. I don't know what normal people do.”

“Me either,” she said, touching his face. “Sometimes, when you are behind me, and I can't see you, I imagine you, and you're,” her hand curved into a claw, “Grrr,” she growled at him in an almost comic version of a vampire.

“Yeah?” he thought it was one of the oddest things that she ever told him. He started to tell her that if she was that curious about what it looked like, Angelus could show her sketches of them together like that. Sketches of beauty, unaware, defiled by a monster who was all too aware, and savoring every inch of her. He kissed the corner of her mouth instead. “Don't close your eyes,” he said. “We'll pretend to be normal, if that suits you.”

“How?” she asked.

Good question. How? He sifted through a sea of memories that were available to him. A bit of her hair tickled his nose, distracting him, and he smoothed it back, behind her ear, which proved to be another distraction. He traced the outer edge of his ear feeling something like awe at the delicate shape and texture of the humble curve. Other body parts tempted, all available to be touched or rubbed up against. He sank into her a little deeper, feeling the way her ass nestled against him. Then he smiled, and kissed the corner of her mouth again.

“You are probably thinking we should put the lights out,” he said. “But, I think I'd want to look at you, and if we were normal, I'd need the lights for that.”

She turned her head a little more towards him, and he read in her eyes a willingness to indulge in this game that she had started between them. “I'm shocked,” she said, a little too mechanically, and she rolled her eyes at how trite that sounded.

He nodded, acknowledging her contribution. “I can tell,” he teased, bending his head to kiss the upper swell of her breast. “I'd be thinking about how I wanted to shove my hands inside your dress all night, how I drove myself crazy thinking about playing with your sweet tits and kissing all your freckles, and maybe how this would be the night that I'd figure out a way to convince you to hold still while I tasted your cunt.”

To his delight, a hint of color stained her cheeks. She frowned at him. “You already did that,” she pointed out a bit tartly.

His lips found her nipple, and he closed his eyes, his tongue swirling around it before he caught it between his lips, tugging, feeling muscles in her back flex in reaction. He drew back enough to give his admiring attention to her breast. “And I'd think about how pretty your tits are after I've had my hands and mouth on them.” He blew on her damp nipple, feeling her shiver. “See?” His tongue etched a wet circle around her nipple, “hard, and wet, and so fucking pretty.”

She tugged on his hair. “Hey! Language,” she sniped. “I don't think normal people talk about ti—breasts,” she substituted. “And nipples. And they don't say fuck.”

He laughed. “Of course not, darling. They just think it. I was telling you what I was thinking,” he stressed. “Tell me what you'd be thinking,” he urged, giving the slow, shallow movement of his cock inside of her a slight twist of his hips.

He watched her absorb the sensation. It was the little things with her that fascinated him. The small ‘oh' of surprise and pleasure that was there for a second, channeled into curiosity and recognition, or in this case curiosity, recognition, and reluctant interest.

“I'd wonder what you'd think if I took your hand and showed you how to touch me,” she said, with a hint of triumph in her expression.

A wickedly pleased smile curved his lips. “I'd think I was the luckiest bloke on the face of the earth,” he told her, “but, I'd want more—“

She snorted. “There's a shock,” she interrupted.

He kissed her to shut her up. The position was more awkward for him than her. He couldn't quite get deep enough with his upper body slewed around the way it was, and she elbowed him in the ribs trying to squeeze her arm out from between them as he greedily rubbed his tongue against hers, trying to suck it into his mouth while his hips rocked into the yielding softness of her ass.

When he managed to drag his mouth away to let her breath, he rolled her on her stomach, nudging her legs further apart with his knees. “I always want more,” he agreed, propping himself up on one elbow to keep some of his weight off of her, though he wanted to stretch out against her, hold her down with his chest and arms and fuck her until she was shuddering from his cock. Her hair had started sliding down over the side of her face and he finger combed it back, sweeping it over to pool over his arm.

“Sometimes I'd hate you for that. I'd imagine that I'd been caught, because you never looked like a girl I'd want to fuck into a mattress. You always seemed too quiet, and shy for that,” he kissed the back of her neck. “I'd think about witches and red gold hair, and wonder that I didn't see it coming,” his fingers tightened in her hair, almost painfully. “Look at this hair,” he breathed. “It was meant to catch someone's eye.”

The lamplight muted the auburn in her hair and caught the gold.

She got one elbow beneath her and twisted around, frowning at the way he was pulling her hair. “I'm a normal girl, I mean, woman,” she corrected herself. “I'm not a witch.”

He laughed at that, feeling her push back against him as she tried to disentangle herself from a pillow caught under her. Or maybe she was just pushing back against him because he was fucking her so slowly.

He let her hair fall back, spilling from his fingers, half covering her face, kissing her shoulders and any part of her back that he could reach as he got his knees under him. His hands shaped and then lifted her hips. She had to brace her other elbow on the mattress to keep from falling back into the pillows or hitting her head on the headboard. He watched himself withdraw from her, and then slowly slide back into her, feeling her legs quiver as he filled her.

“Normal girl,” he felt her fingernails scrape him when she got her hand between her legs. “Showing me how she likes to be touched,” he withdrew until the head of his cock was just outside of her, and she made a frustrated sound. His fingertips stroked her hip bones, just inside the margin of the underlying bones where she was ticklish. Her left shoulder was against the mattress at an awkward angle and he moved his hands up, spanning her waist, her rib cage, coaxing her to lift up a bit so he could cup her breasts as he slid back into her with a sigh that was eclipsed by her moan.

“I was going to make you talk to me,” he told her, he withdrew from her again, one hand moving up, following the shape of her arm, trembling a little from holding herself up. “Make you tell me all your ‘normal witchy girl-woman' thoughts on the subject,” he kissed her back. His cock brushed her fingers and she nudged the head of his cock back where she wanted him, pushing back when she felt him against her, and the sound that vibrated in her throat made him laugh again.

Annoyed with being teased, she lashed out with the hand that had been between her legs, and he caught it, his fingers closing around her wrist, and then wrapping the arm holding her wrist around her waist.

“Want to fight me for it?” he asked.

“You're an asshole,” she sounded bitter about it. “I don't know why I ever tell you anything. You just rub my nose in it and laugh at me.”

If she had burst into tears, he would have been less astonished. Annoyance crept in. When was the last time he'd had a decent shag without someone, including him, enacting a drama? He was mildly tempted to say something along the lines of ‘you started it', but it was beneath him.

He couldn't see her face, too much of her hair was in the way. Just fuck her and let it go, he counseled himself, even as he was slipping out of her body and making her roll over on her back. She started messing about with her hair, pushing it out of her face and out from under her shoulder, stubbornly avoiding his eyes.

“What in the name of hell do you want from me?” he demanded.

She frowned. “To not make it a contest that you have to win without ever once admitting that the deck is stacked in your favor.”

Oh. That. It was so apt a description of the substance of their relationship that he was left to sit back on his heels without a comeback in sight. It wasn't something he was inclined to even want to change, because he liked winning, though it was less about beating her since she was also his prize. His hands stroked her skin, feeling how warm it was, and damp. He moved enough to stretch out, propping himself up on one elbow, her thigh beneath his armpit.

“How is the deck stacked in my favor?” he asked, and he was doing it again, pushing her to bend to everything between them that made it possible for him to come out ahead.

“Why were you reading Poe?” she asked, declining to answer.

She felt him react, though he hid it well, ducking his head to spread kisses over her stomach while he lazily stroked the inside of her thigh.

“What did you do tonight?” she asked. Foreboding was a sensation that gathered in her lower back and crawled up her spine.

He looked up at her, and there was something a little pitying and pitiless in his eyes. “Don't do this, Willow,” he warned. “I'll tell you, and it won't bother me in the least, but it will hurt you.”

He had no intention of telling her. If she knew that Angelus had buried Claire Hamilton alive, she'd go crazy trying to get to her, not having an idea where to start looking. Angelus might tell her. He would make her work for it, and then he would watch Willow dig his latest victim up with her bare hands for fun as soon as it was sundown. Except that they had a party to go to and Darla was looking forward to it, so there would be hell to pay if anyone ruined her plans.

He changed the subject. “What did you do tonight? What put the idea of what normal people do into your head?” He could tell that he had scratched at something that was bothering her when she looked away.

He kissed the underside of her breast, feeling her heart beat, thick and heavy. Heartache has a sound. “Tell me,” he coaxed, kissing his way up between her breasts, absorbing the salt of her skin.

She tried to shrug it off. She met people, who were not exactly normal she conceded, but . . . and it was all there in as much what she didn't say. A pregnant woman, a happy couple, a small, cozy, safe home; the substance of a life that she would never have. He didn't point out that she had lost any hope of those things long before he came along, because it didn't really matter what had taken them from her. It didn't ease the hurt of it. It didn't matter that he couldn't give her children, because she couldn't have them. Her painful and irregular menses hinted at problems that could never be resolved. He didn't point out that if he hadn't come along she would have lived a short and brutal life, among the ‘normal' people who would have never seen her beyond what she did in dark alleys, against the side of a building.

He reminded her of who she was, with his hands and his mouth, and words whispered against her hot skin when she had run out of words and there was nothing but her fingernails scoring his back as she struggled to hold him.

“Nothing normal would have ever been enough for you,” he told her.

She didn't say that he was wrong, but it was there, in her eyes, in the stubborn set of her mouth. Trapped, like she was, because if she said it and was proven wrong it would be too hard to bear.

He didn't turn it into a debate. He let his eyelids drift down and shifted her around to hold her more comfortably while they slept, feeling her fingertips move over his throat as her hand folded in against his chest. He let his chin rest on the top of her head. He had no desire to be what she thought of as normal, but it was there, in his head, the idea of them. He unlived, suspended at the moment of his death. She would have been a child. There were other reasons he would have never known her, or even more likely, would have looked away had he ever had occasion to meet her.

It wasn't as hard to suspend his disbelief as he thought.

“Are you still awake?” he asked.

She made a sleepy sound, nodding and moving just a bit, pushing her forehead into his chest. “I'm hungry,” she admitted. “Too tired to eat. Tired of eating.”

He had made a point of making sure that she ate as much as she could stand over the last day. “Go to sleep. Dream about being normal. I'll be here when you wake up, and there will be chocolate for breakfast and I'll wash your hair for you, if you like.”

She frowned into his chest. “Will?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you still pretending that we are normal?”

His eyes opened and he leaned back to see her face. “A bit,” he allowed, watching her eyes open and settle on him. The hand curled against his chest, moved to his jaw, resting there for a moment until he realized that she was trying to bring him closer. Her lips brushed his and then came back, fastening on his lower lip and kissing it tenderly while her fingers stroked his cheek.

“Tell me that you love me?”

He bit his lower lip, savoring the lingering warmth from her mouth. “I love you.”

For a moment he thought she was going to say it. He could see it wash over her face, chased by doubt and he laid his fingers over her lips, willing to loose himself in the look in her eyes until her eyelids started to droop and they kissed again, softly.

They had the party Darla wanted to go to in the evening, and he knew that would be nothing remotely normal for Willow. He caught her looking at herself in a mirror when she was dressed for some soiree, taking pleasure in a pretty dress and he wondered if she ever thought about how far she was from the night they had met. He never forgot it. He puzzled over it. Marveled at it and her in all of her mysterious, incongruent aspects. On the edge of sleep, he smiled crookedly at the memory of the elderly cousin keeping his house in London, and her disapproval, not of Willow, but of what he made of her.

He let himself go to sleep with the idea of a picnic in bed, a long meandering chat about their trip to London—half the fun of which for Willow was in the planning—and a quiet afternoon before they had to dress to go out. For the briefest moment he had a glimpse of her, of what they might have been under entirely different circumstances. It wasn't cruel or disturbing to imagine. It was a validation. If he had known that she was part of all that awaited him on the other side of his grave, he would have bared his throat to Dru and asked her to bite harder.