Odalisque

Author: Elen

Summary: Primarily S/W, though it is an exploration of the Fanged Four, and Spike shares his toys when it suits him, so there is a S/W/D angle that is more of a relationship and S/W/Aus that is pretty much gratuitous sex. In Chapters 1-7 there are depictions of rape and murder.

Warning: Set in 1898 with potential spoilers through season five.

Notes: This started as a little drabble two days before Christmas 2003 and its now about 180 pages long.  I give my first children to Kat for giving great beta.
 

I feel like I owe a debt to the following novels that informed my perspective on some elements of the period that include: Slammerkin, and The Crimson Petal and the White.

I use the later date for Spike's turning that was revealed in Season Five. He's already been playing with his identity, but he is still primarily addressed as William.

Disclaimer: The characters, settings, and storylines created for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are the intellectual property of others. No copyright infringement is intended in this derivative work of fiction created for no commercial purpose.

Rating: NC-17, violence, nonconsential sex with multiple partners, torture.

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~Prologue~

Prague Spring, 1898

Her German was more than credible, the estate agent concluded, his eyes lingering on the woman seated before him in the handsome study of a seventeenth century town home. Her accent had improved and she rarely stumbled over words anymore. From a great distance, she had supervised the restoration of the house. Her letters had come from London, Paris, and Madrid, spanning nine months. She was much, much younger than the letters might have suggested. She spoke, wrote, thought, like an older woman, and he found that a little disturbing, but also oddly attractive.

When he met her train he had been looking for a matronly grand dame, not this little slip of a girl dressed rather austerely. Even now, she was wearing a starchy white blouse with a high neck, and a bottle green wool skirt without adornment. Her auburn hair was drawn up in a chignon at the back of her head. No jewelry, nothing pretty or soft, or decorative about her.

He had tried to change the terms of the relationship. Once he realized that she was so young, he had become more assertive. He was curious about her. She seemed so alone in the world, controlling what appeared to be a small fortune. Where was her father or husband, or some other concerned male relative to guide her? To represent her in dealings with people like him? And if there was no male relative, or husband to guide her . . . well, she was rich, and foreign, and perhaps she needed a man.

His overtures had been analyzed and dismissed. She had been surprisingly blunt. They had been in this very room and he had been explaining why he disagreed with her plans to divest holdings in a railroad scheme in favor of investing more heavily in a tea plantation in Ceylon. Before he had become her estate agent such conversations had been purely theoretical. He had never had a client with financial interests as diverse as hers. She had delicately suggested that that could change if he was not able to follow her instructions.

He was a little disappointed when she explained that her family was joining her in Prague within the week, requiring a shift in the disposition of some of her assets to cover the increase in the expenses of her rather modest household. He had a feeling that what opportunity he had to influence her had disappeared. There was a man, a brother, an uncle, a cousin, who was probably waiting in the wings to take charge.

“If I may be permitted to inquire, will I be receiving instructions from your . . .” he paused, hoping that she would clarify the precise nature of the relationship with her family.

Her eyebrows lifted at this, and she let the pause develop into a silence that was almost uncomfortable. “Only in the event of my death,” she said, speaking of it so casually that he thought she was, perhaps, making an odd joke.

~Part: 1~

Steam curled from the engine that was luffing, at rest, covering the platform with a misty white vapor that glowed in the darkness, alleviated only by the greasy glow of gaslight from the lamps stationed at regular intervals along the railway platform. She was not alone. Two uniformed porters stood by with carts to collect baggage. Two carriages waited outside to carry baggage and the occupants of the train back to the townhouse.

Outwardly, she appeared composed. She was dressed for the cool night in a heavy wool gown and a fur lined cloak. Her hands were gloved. There was a hint of color in her cheeks that might have easily been mistaken for a reaction to the wintry chill that lingered in the air. It had more to do with the increased rate of her heart beat, and the instincts that screamed at her to flee as this time that she had fought to enjoy in solitude was about to come to an abrupt end.

It had been two months. At first, she had been afraid, though she hated to admit it. She had been afraid, especially at night, alone in the townhouse, lying awake, listening to the sounds of the house around her. She slept poorly. The irony of it tormented her. Alone and safe, and it frightened her more than anything now. In those sleepless hours her thoughts had turned, inevitably to ways to escape. She had access to money, and God knew she had fled enough places in the dark of the night to know how to get away, to become traceless and invisible.

But she knew that she would spend the rest of her life, looking over her shoulder, waiting. Wondering. There was also the notion that she clung to that she was there for some reason that would eventually reveal itself.

She considered taking the laudanum that she kept in store with her herbs and potions. When she was exhausted and unable to sleep the prospect of falling forever into a deep and dreamless sleep beckoned. In the early years she had tried to kill herself twice. Those failures, desperate gestures, incomplete and futile, mocked her now.

They were coming.

She saw them, through the clouds of steam. A sleek, beautifully dressed blond woman with her hand resting decorously in the crook of a tall, dark haired man’s arm. A fur-trimmed hood that rested lightly on the dull gold of her elaborately dressed hair framed her face. The man was considerably taller, broad shoulder emphasized by the cut of his greatcoat. Despite the long train journey, they were immaculate, and they moved in the deliberate, unhurried way of experienced travelers, neither distracted nor alarmed by the adjustment to walking on the unmoving surface of the platform or the sights and sounds of a train station that had stirred to life as passengers debarked and met their waiting parties. They made a handsome couple.

A few steps behind them trailed a dark haired girl with a beatific smile on her face and a distant look in her dark eyes, seeking the night sky, incongruously carrying a doll. The doll bore a passing resemblance to the blond woman. She had been carefully dressed for the cool evening in a small pale blue coat with tiny pearl buttons, trimmed in white fur with a tiny matching muff hanging on a silk cord around her neck.

Last of all, a smaller man than the first, his ashy brown hair falling over his brow, his cravat a careless mess, loosely knotted around the equally loose neck of his blouse. His greatcoat was left unbuttoned despite the chill in the air and it billowed around him as he quickened his step, moving beyond the dark haired girl, whose dreamy gaze lingered on him with creamy satisfaction. He swept past the more sedate looking couple, earning an annoyed look from the man. The blond woman smiled indulgently, but the smile never reached her calculating gray eyes.

“Pet,” he greeted her, blue eyes dancing with humor and satisfaction, his hands, always cold, and colder now with the chill in the air, cupped her face, his thumb moving boldly over her lips.

His forehead touched hers under the brim of the hat she wore. The hatpin securing the hat stabbed her scalp, scratching it as the top of his head pushed the brim of the hat back. The unexpected pain brought tears to her eyes. The tightness in her chest had nothing to do with the pain. She knew better than to close her eyes. He smiled and tilted his head to one side, taking her upper lip between his, sucking on it delicately.

“How sweet,” Darla said in a tone that suggested otherwise.

William refused to allow Darla’s disapproval to dictate to him. He let the kiss go on a moment longer, and reveled in the bright, wet green eyes that stayed open throughout, full of pain and a flicker of defiance that had never been entirely stamped out to his delight. His arm curled possessively around her waist, exerting just enough pressure to bring her into full contact with his body. Layers of clothing separated them, but she knew that he was there. He saw it in her eyes before they closed, briefly, and then opened.

He held her lightly, against his side. Drusilla glided forward, her thin, long fingered hand lightly patting the girl’s cheek. “My William’s poppet,” she cooed. “Come home to us, dearie? Such fun we will have, with moonlight and dark wine and pretty sounds in the dark.”

She found her voice. “Hello, Dru,” she said, steadily.

Dru pinched her cheek. “Hello, Miss Willow,” she breathed, and then she giggled. “Such lovely games we shall play.”

Willow swallowed hard. In Drusilla’s not so sane mind she was merely one in her beloved collection of dolls. Not quite as beloved as Miss Edith, but up there. Dru’s cool lips brushed hers and then she was gone, dancing over to Darla. “Say hello to Daddy and Grandmum,” she ordered.

Annoyance flickered again in Darla’s eyes. She disliked being called grandmum, and it wasn’t an ageist vanity. Her connection to Dru was something she did not like being reminded of. She was damaged; an embarrassment to Darla, tolerated because she was Angelus’ childe, and her second sight was moderately useful. Her appraising gaze lingered on William and his pet. He had kept the girl, nearly eight years now. It was little more than a game to him, but it had produced interesting results.

Willow had been barely sixteen years old when he stumbled upon her, dragging her home like a stray cat, keeping her locked up in his room to fuck and feed on. When that didn’t kill her, and Dru took to her, he started taking better care of her. Eventually Angelus was stirred to take a mild interest in the girl, and she had proven useful. She had a quick mind, and in her late teens, she had developed some magical abilities that had probably always been there, dormant. Angelus had insisted on getting her a first rate education, hiring tutors for her. Nearly eight years later she had a place in their little family as a human servant, soothing Dru, fucking William, managing their finances, and providing them with a human to secure their dwellings.

The great fuss of keeping her alive and moderately healthy had paid off, and Darla sometimes forgot that she had not been best pleased with the project. It was nearly time to bring it to its natural conclusion, and she was eager for that. In fact, she almost regretted siding with William. Angelus was itching to sire the girl, and William had appealed to her to support his claim to her. In most things she allowed Angelus to pretend that he was in charge of their little family, but she was not above using her hold on him as his sire to snap him back into place.

“You’re looking well, Willow,” Darla said. “Prague agrees with you?”

The girl’s eyes lowered. “Yes . . . m’am,” she said.

Darla smiled at Angelus. “Doesn’t she look well, darling?”

Angelus reached for her hand, and brought it to his lips, his fingers stroking her gloved palm. “Exquisite,” he drawled in a bored tone, his eyes contemptuously raking her form.

Darla’s laugh tickled like crystal in the cold air around them. Left to her own devises, Willow was dressed like a dowd. All in black, buttoned from wrist to throat.

The porters had gathered the luggage and trundled it out to the waiting carriages. Drusilla linked arms with Willow. William kept his hand centered on her back as they moved through the rail station to the waiting carriages. He handed Drusilla up, his hands framing her narrow waist, and then turned to Willow. Angelus and Darla were taking the other carriage. He pinched her chin, turning her face up to him.

“Miss me, pet?” he asked.

“Like a bad cold,” she retorted, making him laugh at her resentful tone.

“Up you go,” he said, easily lifting her and tossing her into the carriage.

She should have been more prepared for that. Her skirt caught under her and she landed awkwardly on her knees. Before she could get up and take a seat, William had joined them in the close confines of the carriage, his hand on her shoulder warning her against any attempt to leave the floor. He took his seat beside Dru, who rubbed his thigh and rested her head on his shoulder.

“Don’t be mean,” she pouted prettily, shaking her finger at Willow. “William has missed his pretty poppet ever so much,” she told her with a knowing smile.

His booted foot probed her skirt, and Willow clenched her jaw.

He smiled at that. “Growl at me, little bitch, and we’ll play games that you’ll regret,” he warned her.

A shudder ran through her frame as she struggled to find the right frame of mind to relax and accept her subservient position. He rapped on the roof of the carriage to get the driver’s attention, and the carriage lurched into motion. Even knowing this was coming, Willow felt herself almost fall forward. The carriage was well sprung, but on the unprotected floor, she felt every jolt against the cobblestones. She felt an irrational desire to press herself against his leg and apologize—not simply as a matter of self-preservation.

“Poor, Miss Willow, all alone, for days and days,” Dru murmured. “No one to pet her, or brush her hair, or play naughty games with her soft, wet parts.”

That wholly inappropriate observation wrung a wry laugh out of William, and he relented, removing his booted foot. “Get off the floor, pet,” he ordered.

Awkwardly searching for the seat behind her, Willow scrambled into the opposite corner of the coach, smoothing her skirt down.

He toyed with Dru’s hands. “Darling? Does Miss Willow need her soft wet parts played with?” he asked with a smirk.

Rubbing her cheek against his shoulder, she made a purring sound. “Lovely, naughty games to be played, my William. My Spike, My wicked, beautiful boy,” she crooned to him. “Daddy and Grandmummy and I will play other games.”

Willow stared out the window, watching the town pass, her stomach roiling. Oh, God. The games that would be played tonight . . . there were seven servants in the house, per Angelus’ instructions, two women, and five men, not counting the coachmen.

They had been rather carefully selected. The estate agent had thought her instructions bizarre. She had not demanded the well-referenced servants that were typically sought in a household with means. She sent him into the workhouses to recruit for her. She wanted servants without families, without prospects. She told him that it was because she wanted people who could be trained to her specifications, people who would owe her their loyalty. He bluntly told her she was likely to be rewarded by theft or worse by picking from the dregs, but he had done as he was told, and she had cast her protection charms, knowing full well that no one would harm her, and if they did, it hardly mattered anymore.

Of course, they had followed their instincts, robbing the house blind, smirking behind her back at her obliviousness. There was one footman who had seemed to decide that despite the fact that she was foreign and stupidly naïve, she was also well meaning and kind, and he had knocked a few heads together and brought a semblance of order to the household. He made sure that he was always within the sound of her voice, at all times, and she had rewarded his loyalty by making him the majordomo.

The increase in pay and status had a ripple effect, changing the atmosphere of the house overnight, and all the while she pretended. Kindness and generosity, and quiet authority could overcome the dreadful obstacles placed in the path of these people. It was a social experiment, a success that amazed the nosy, disapproving estate agent.

Tonight, it ended. Tonight they would all die. Tomorrow they would rise again, undead, and she would remain. Coldness crept into her. Her face was numb with it as she stared blindly into the night. She would not be alone, nor be required to bear witness to what happened, and she quietly despised herself for feeling grateful.

~Part: 2~

Despite the late hour, the house was ablaze with light. Expensive gaslight. The fires in the main salon, the dining room, and the bedrooms prepared above had been kindled to the mistress of the house’s specifications.

She was a strange one, foreign, with odd habits that were exotic and exciting. She had very specific instructions about most things. One didn’t simply throw a few logs into a fireplace and light some kindling stripped from the dry wood. She ordered cedar and ash for the fireplaces. The kindling was a special mix of cedar shavings, pinecones dipped in scented wax, and dried herbs and flowers that filled the house with a scent that you wanted to fill your lungs with.

It was a scent, for Lucius, intimately associated with every good thing that had come to him in the house. Clean clothes, for instance. He had four sets of them, an absurd number. Most of the footman had sold three sets of the clothing they had been provided with. It was expensive stuff. The cloth and trimmings worth a pretty penny, and even more so because they did not so much resemble a livery. The trousers were black, the blouse white. There was a waistcoat, in different shades from bottle green to brown to gray to black. The coats were black, and well made, with a lining sewn in. And then there were the boots, two pairs, fitted by a shoemaker, in expensive leather that smelled delicious. The outerwear included a hat, greatcoat, gloves, and scarf.

These treasures made them the envy of the servants in the neighboring house, who sniffed disdainfully as their foolish mistress for hiring street scum and treating them like house pets. But Lucius had come to the conclusion that she was no fool. He had seen the awareness in her great, dark eyes in those first few weeks. She understood what was going on around her better than anyone gave her credit for, and she was patient, a sad empathy glowing in her eyes.

So green, he thought dreamily. Green like glass, with the light shining through it. Lush against her pale skin. She was a little beauty, that one, seemingly unaware of it.

She was no aristocrat. There was intense speculation about her origins below stairs, and only he knew the truth. She was an American. It had slipped out one night when she was up late, in the library, reading a book. It was the same night that she had offered him the position as her majordomo. She had looked up from her book and asked him if he could read. For a moment he thought she was mocking him.

She seemed to realize it, and sorrow flashed in her eyes as color crept into her cheeks. “That was a stupid question, wasn’t it?” she asked. “In America, almost everyone can read, at least enough to get by. What I meant to say is if you would like to learn, it can be arranged. I need a majordomo who can read, and since I plan to offer you the position, I need to know what needs to be done.”

She hired a seminary student to teach him to read, and her origin, one of the little mysteries of her otherness, remained his secret. Well, his tutor probably had guessed at it from his questions about America and about learning to speak English. The mistress’ German was very good, but occasionally she slipped without thinking into her native tongue and all the books she read were in English, so he thought she must miss speaking her native language.

He knew the others had their own little secrets about her. The cook knew her favorite foods and spices, and hoarded this knowledge smugly. The maid who had been elevated to see to her personal needs, slight as they were, knew the secrets of her wardrobe and bedchamber, and was in her own way, equally close-mouthed.

They were participating in a conspiracy, which made the small secrets they kept to themselves less annoying to each other. They knew, for instance, that she paid them too much. Gave them too many privileges in their days off and their informality, which the neighboring servants disapproved of, making them close ranks around her. There had been one stable boy and a laundress that refused to observe this unwritten code, and they both had been run off quick enough.

The house was immaculate. She hadn’t demanded it of them when she explained that her family was, at last, joining her, but her anxiety was transparent. She had a hard time falling asleep and would wander the house at increasingly late hours. Lucius discovered her up one night, near dawn, in the butler’s pantry, polishing silver. When he mentioned this to the cook and her maid, they admitted that they had noticed her taking on other household chores. Overnight, they had become oddly house-proud. She reflected on them, as they reflected on her, so the floors had been polished, and the rugs beaten clean, and even the windows, hung behind the heaviest, and darkest of drapes, had been cleaned to sparkling.

The dining room was laid with a late night buffet. The cook had made trays of tiny canapés, chilled a bowl mounded with caviar. Toiled over wafer thin latkes, and lighter than air pastry puffs filled with chilled cream and garnished with fruit dipped in honey.

Fresh cut flowers filled vases in the bedrooms. Scented candles had been set in their holders. Lucius replayed the foreign sounding names of the mistress’ family. Angelus, Darla, Drusilla, and William. He smoothed his gloves over his hands again, hearing the sounds of carriage wheels on the cobblestones, and the creak and jangle of sound that signaled a coach stopping outside.

He opened the doors himself, letting the two footman set the outer door stops as he strolled ahead of them to the coach, nodding to the coachman above as he reached for the door.

It was flung open before he could close his hand on the brass door handle, and a man emerged, shoulders first, hatless, his brown hair loose and disordered. He jumped down lightly, paying very little heed to Lucius, turning back to assist a one of the most beautiful women Lucius had ever seen. The spare light flooding from the open doors hit her face. She was pale and slender, with raven dark hair and cherry colored lips and eyes as black as sin. She gave a girlish squeal when the brown haired man lifted her by the waist, her hands falling on his shoulders as she tilted her face to the night sky.

Laughing, he twirled her about, making her cry out something in a language Lucius did not immediately recognize.

His attention returned to the coach as his mistress appeared; hesitating above the step he had neglected to put down. Inwardly cursing at his lapse, he hurried to put the step down and offer his hand to steady her as she cautiously extended her foot beyond the hem of her skirts.

“Thank you,” she said, and then automatically corrected herself, repeating her thanks in German.

It was one of those little slips that he enjoyed.

William set Dru down on the stairs, looking back to see Willow alight from the coach with the assistance of a male servant who was looking at her like she was the Virgin Mary and Fairy Godmother all rolled into one tasty little package.

He gestured to her. “Come along, pet,” he said. “I want to see this house you’ve arranged for us.”

Lucius had no idea what the brown haired man was saying, but the gesture was easily interpreted. The footmen were set to unpacking the luggage, and his mistress joined her family on the stairs as he urged the footman to hurry. The second coach was clearing the intersection to the square, and he wanted to get the first coach away.

Satisfied that Lucius had this in hand, she joined them on the stairs.

“English,” one of the footmen concluded.

Lucius frowned at him, and told him to quit gossiping and move it along. English? Their voices sounded so unlike the mistress that it seemed hard to believe. He made a mental note to ask his tutor about this at their next meeting.

With a woman in each arm, William entered the house, looking around. Darla and Angelus craved their little luxuries, and he knew instantly that they would be pleased with Willow as his gaze took in the well appointed foyer and the servants that waited to take their outerwear. Dru patted a startled footman on the cheek and pursed her lips at him in a pretty little pout, and William laughed, amused by her antics.

Willow tried to evade the arm he had around her waist after she removed her cloak, speaking in rapid German to the servants. She looked nervous. He yanked her to him, bending his head to nuzzle her covered neck, feeling her stiffen in his arms.

He smiled. She had grown a bit independent on her own, and he was going to enjoy reminding her of how short her leash really was. Dru wrapped her arms around both of them, kissing the corner of Willow’s mouth. “Pretty, pretty, sweet and sour,” she sang.

“You’ll feed my William soon, all spicy and hot, blood and honey between your pretty legs.”

Willow thanked a God she no longer believed in that the servants' grasp of English was virtually non-existent and that Dru had not followed up with some energetic touching. The puzzled looks on their faces were unnerving enough.

“That she will, Princess,” William agreed, relenting enough to loosen his hold on her so they could leave the foyer for the salon.

“Fix me a drink,” he ordered, giving Willow a little push.

She fled to the sideboard to reach for a crystal decanter, giving a spare shake of her head to a footman who moved to take her place.

“I know what I want to drink,” Dru said slyly, curling around William. “Something lovely and warm and red, pulsing with life.”

William settled on a settee with Dru nestled against his side. “Soon, my love, soon,” he promised. “What do you think of our new home?”

“Happy, it shall be,” Dru pronounced.

Willow brought him whiskey, neat, poured into a crystal tumbler, and took a step back away from them, standing close enough to the fire to feel its heat at her back.

He held the tumbler up, admiring the play of firelight against the amber brown color. His gaze switched to her. His girl. Cased in black wool, her vivid hair drawn up tight behind her head. “I’m going to have to burn your wardrobe, aren’t I, pet?”

“You’ll do as you please,” she said neutrally.

He rubbed his cheek against the top of Dru’s head, smiling at her. “Don’t I always?”

Angelus and Darla came in and Willow moved to the sideboard to pour brandy for Angelus and sherry for Darla. She served Darla first. In some ways she almost liked Darla. She largely ignored Willow, and there was something comforting in the feeling that she was invisible to her.

Angelus took her chin between his fingers, stroking her skin. “You’ve done very well, little one,” he said, the lilt of his brogue softening his voice. “I’m pleased with you.”

Darla rolled her eyes at this pronouncement. He did things like that to annoy and undermine William.

The girl had the good sense to simply tolerate his touching, remaining as still as a statue while William’s eyes narrowed to signal his growing annoyance.

“I’ll have to think of some suitable way to reward you, now won’t I?” he teased, giving her chin an affectionate pinch before he took the glass she held for him.

William cleared his throat. “You're welcome, Angelus,” he said. Time to snap the leash. “Pet?”

He gestured to the floor beside his knee. Darla smiled to see the girl’s back stiffen ever so slightly before she sank, unsteadily to the ground beside William’s knee.

With the luggage inside and the coaches sent to the stable, Lucius gave a single knock on the salon door and entered. The two late arrivals were already seated with drinks. The couple that had arrived with his mistress was sitting closer than was proper and his mistress was sitting on the floor near the man on the settee.

“There is a light supper laid in the dining room,” he announced in German. His gaze flicked to a chair against the wall.

His mistress gave a spare shake of her head, reading the look. “Thank you, Lucius,” she said. “We will ring if we require anything,” she said, dismissing him.

William stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “Have him eating out of the palm of your hands, don’t you, pet?” he drawled.

Lucius was frustrated by his inability to understand what was being said, but he knew when he was dismissed. He gave his mistress a grave bow, and stepped backwards out of the room, shutting the double doors behind him.

“Think he’d be so devoted to you if I called him back here to watch while I tumble you here on the floor?” he asked watching the color climb into her cheeks.

“My, my,” Darla drawled. “Someone’s awfully anxious,” she said. “As entertaining as it is to watch you rut,” she made it sound like it was anything but, “I’m hungry.”

Dru patted her stomach. “My tummy is all rumbly,” she agreed, brightening.

“William?” Angelus prompted. “Need a midnight snack to tide you over, boy?”

He loosened a strand of Willow’s hair, winding it around his fingers. “Maybe later,” he said. “Save something for me?”

“I’ll save you a nummy treat, my wicked boy,” Dru promised, running her fingers over his lips.

He kissed them, lightly tugging on Willow’s hair as he rose. “Come along, precious. Daddy wants to play.”

~Part: 3~

He wished to be denied clarity. On the bloodstained chaise, the maid, Sophie, stared at him blankly. She was dead. He wasn't sure if the blood on the chaise was hers or another's. They were all dead. They had been dying for hours. He had seen it, when it began, with the beautiful dark haired girl, twirling in the dinning room, then lunging, her face a monstrously distorted mask as she ripped the throat out of Wilhem, the oldest of the footman. Wilhem, who might have expected to be made the majordomo, but cheerfully accepted it when he was not.

He'd heard it. For hours he had been hanging from a hook buried in the ceiling where a chandelier once hung. His head hung tiredly, his field of vision filled with the mess beneath him on the floor. Blood, waste, and the filmy white secretions, both his and the dark haired man who had raped him, soiled a hand cut rug.

It was an indignity he had been spared most of his life. He was too big and strong to be easily overcome, but even the women, those two seemingly frail, beautiful women, had overpowered him effortlessly, and they had done things to him, that even now made him glance down at his flaccid organ as it twitched weakly. He had, when he had the coin for it, filled a common prostitute's painted lips with his semen, but these women, in their silks and velvet, with their soft, pampered skin, had sucked him off with an expertise that would have made the fortune of any whore.

Bite marks littered his body, and he felt every one of them. In a strange sort of way, they were the least of the pains that clamored for his attention. His wrists were still bleeding. Above them, his hands were so numb that they ached, and this was nothing to the pain in his shoulders from being stretched until he was on his toes, desperate to keep from falling and dislocating his shoulders. The muscles in his calves burned with cramps and his torn rectum, tormented by the sweat that rolled down his back from the over hot fire still burning in the hearth, itched and burned. The bites were the least of it. Some bruised and aching, others simply stinging him into awareness.

The door to the hallway had been left open. The darkened corridor was empty. He wasn't sure where his tormentors had gone, or if they had gone. Across the hall the door was shut. It was the door to his mistress' room. The door behind which muffled sounds had been heard, unmistakable in their meaning at regular intervals through the long hours of the night. The sounds of a cat caught in a briar, mewling, keening. Words in an unknown language. At some point he had made up words of his own. Unbelievably course words. The language of the streets and the dockside, of whores and their transactions in the filthy alleys in the worst parts of town was his refuge.

He thought coming to this house had been the beginning of a new and wonderful life. He thought the mistress, foolish and naïve, had seen something in him, in all of them, that could be made . . . better. Who was the fool? She had lured them here to this, to her monstrous family and while they died around her, she was fucking one of the beasts in the bed he had imagined her sleeping in so decorously, so innocently, immune from the ugly things in the world she had rescued them from.

~~~*~~~

When they left the salon, Lucius, standing at his post in the hall, had turned to her, a question in his eyes.

William ran his finger up the back of her neck, probing at the bundle of hair carefully arranged by Matilde. "Have him send up a bottle of wine and a tray for you," he said, plucking a hairpin loose.

There was only the slightest tremor in her voice as she carried out this instruction. William spoke German. He'd know if she was lying or adding a word of warning.

Lucius inclined his head, taking it upon himself to prepare her tray himself. She kept odd hours, and he was accustomed to foraging for her, as she called it with a rueful smile. He chose from the fruit and bread, ignoring the canapés, and adding latkes smeared with sour cream and a liberal portion of caviar. The wine was a local vintage, kept ice cold. It tasted of apples, and he knew that she preferred it to the expensive vintages laid in the wine cellar. He kept his mind on the task at hand, preferring not to think of the rather disturbing way the brown haired man had been playing with her hair.

He had them sorted, the new comers, into couples. The brown haired man and the dark girl. The blond woman, and the dark man. Their mistress was . . . what? Sister, cousin? It made him uneasy. She had never really defined the relationships. He had not asked. It was not his place to ask.

~~~*~~~

Having clothes ripped off her body was nothing new, Willow reminded herself. He was almost being considerate about it. Wool didn't give easily, and he had left her bruised before by the pressure of cloth digging into her skin before it gave. He was using his fingers to break off the buttons that held her bodice together from throat to waist. She could hear them hit the ground, one by one, the dress slowly loosing it's mooring as the heavy fabric was released.

"We are definitely burning this," he said distastefully. "Looks like widow's weeds. What were you thinking?"

"That I was a woman, alone, in a foreign country, not particularly wishing to become someone's idea of-"

He cocked his head to one side, his eyebrow lifting. "A whore?" he taunted.

Color washed out of her face, leaving her looking oddly stricken. He could have mocked her expression, or reminded her of how he had found her so many years ago in Bristol. Instead, it stirred something like remorse; it made him cup her face in his hands, his thumbs stroking her pale cheeks. "No one could ever mistake you for anything so common," he said softly, and he meant it. Even when she had approached him, looking like she had been driven to having sex for money like any other common whore, desperation dulled by expediency, there had been something just the tiniest bit different about her that had claimed his attention.

He kissed the tiny frown forming between her eyes. "Need help with your laces?" he asked.

She bit her lower lip and nodded slowly. There was no point in fighting. After eight years she knew that William wouldn't hurt her, wouldn't deliberately hurt her, so long as she was cooperative. He wouldn't tolerate open defiance, and she had learned the hard way that his toleration was higher than Angelus'. If William couldn't keep her in line, it was an engraved invitation for Angelus to do so, and the things he had done to her were the subtext of her worst nightmares.

He unlaced her stays, dropping a kiss on the nape of her neck before stepping back to allow her to undress. He removed his frock coat and tossed it carelessly over the back of a chair before sitting down to remove his boots. They looked a bit worse for wear.

She undressed down to her chemise and stockings and he shot her an amused look, as she sat down at her dressing table to pull the pins out of her hair. At the discreet scratch at the bedroom door, he crossed the room and picked up her dressing gown, tossing it to her and waiting for her to secure it before he bade the servant to enter.

Holding the dressing gown closed at the throat, and nervously pushing her hair behind her shoulder, she watched Lucius enter with the dinner tray and wine that William had told her to order brought up to her room.

He set these items down on the small table near the window before asking her if there was anything more she required for the evening.

She gripped the dressing gown harder, painfully aware that this was probably the last time she would see him alive. "No," she said softly. "Please let the staff know that I appreciate their efforts to make my family comfortable," she said.

He inclined his head. Trying very hard to maintain a neutral expression. No matter what he might have tried not to wonder about, he was reeling from seeing his mistress in so intimate a setting with a man who appeared all too likely to be spending the evening in her room.

Four new suits of clothes, a salary half again as much as the servants who toiled nearby. A Mistress with a pleasant voice, an easy manner. He counted the blessings that he had been given and refused to be the cause of her embarrassment or discomfort.

"Shall I tell Matilde that you require her?"

She had forgotten about the maid. "No," she said hurriedly. "Not tonight."

The brown haired Englishman lounged, his stocking clad feet stretched before him. "That will be all . . . Lucius," he said with an amused twist of his lips.

She nodded when he appeared to hesitate. "Thank you," she said again.

He stepped back, something hard crunching under the heal of his foot. He stooped quickly to pick up the object, and left the room.

When he shut the door behind him her hand went to her mouth as the bile rose in her throat. William watched her for a moment, waiting for her to get control of herself, mentally warning her not to take too bloody long about it. He had spent three days on a train in an admittedly comfortable private car, but he was in no mood for the weeping and gnashing of teeth that she looked inclined to indulge in.

He rose, and saw her taking deep breaths as she fought to calm herself. The fact that she was putting some effort into it mollified him enough to go to the table to pour a glass of wine for her. He brought it to his lips to taste. The bouquet reached him before the taste on his tongue. Crisp, with an undertone of apple, probably a local vintage, and nothing Darla or Angelus would deign to pass over their educated palates, but he liked it, and he liked that she apparently preferred it.

No airs and graces for his girl.

He brought the glass of wine to her, setting it on her dressing table, guiding her back to the seat that she had left. He'd have time to poke around tomorrow, ferret out all of her little secrets. The dressing table was a predictable, neat arrangement of her brush and comb, a tortoise shell box that held her hairpins, and a rosewood box that probably held her jewelry, or at least the pieces he permitted her to keep. Nothing too valuable was kept in there, just a few baubles that she largely ignored. He picked up her brush at the same time that she reached for it.

"Drink your wine," he said, running his free hand over the soft coils of her hair.

There was no mirror on the dressing table. He imagined that her maid thought that an odd omission as he started from the ends of her hair, drawing the brush through the burnished auburn, smiling to himself as he watched the light bring out the coppery tones.

Her hand shook only slightly as she picked up the wine glass, holding it with both hands. He could smell the salt of her silent tears, mingling with the bouquet of the wine, the scent of the fire, and the lingering scent of her soap, warmed from her skin.

He'd let it go, for now. She knew very well what was to happen, and if she let herself get attached to the people she had selected for this, it was her own damn fault. From what he had seen so far, she had followed his instructions and Angelus' perfectly. She deserved to be praised and petted, and he wasn't going to let her tears interfere with her reward for being so very good.

When Angelus had suggested sending her ahead of them to Prague, he hadn't been terribly keen on the idea. It had been years since she had tried to escape him, but that didn't fool him. Behind her compliance was the same sharp, willful mind that had made taming her entertainment enough for nearly a decade. Two months on her own could undo years of work, and he was so bloody close to getting exactly what he wanted. He had waited to turn her, wanting to put a few more years on her. His one experience visiting the Master's lair in London had been more than a little humiliating. It was clear that the Master didn't think Darla's little family was up to snuff, and that he and Dru were particularly lacking, she because of her madness, and he because he was sired by her.

Willow was in aid of an answer to that. Angelus had actually unwittingly underwritten the process. On his own it might not have occurred to him to see that the girl got any kind of education. He had never met a true bluestocking in his mortal days, but he'd absorbed the impression that went with the sneering about educated women. He had to admit to a certain degree of pride in her accomplishments. She was well read. She spoke English, German, French, and Italian fluently. She had been given lessons in music, drawing, and deportment that had taken, but not spoiled her natural temperament. She was going to be a credit to him.

He knew the time for it was ripening. He had even considered making it tonight, completing their reunion in her death, but as appealing as the idea was, he'd rather not make her turning a footnote to their arrival in Prague. By tomorrow night the house would be full of the newly risen, and the long effort that they had put into her merited something more than divided attention.

Aside from that, Dru would have a bloody fit if they didn't make a production out of it, and he didn't fancy her screaming and railing at him, or the idea that if it wasn't just right, she'd turn on his new made childe in a fit of rage.

He finished brushing her hair, and set the brush aside, drawing her head back against his chest, his fingers rubbing her temples in soothing circles. She'd stopped crying at some point and was just staring off at nothing, her chest rising and falling, tension in her expression. She was listening. Listening for the sound of carnage below.

"I've missed you," he said, taking the empty wineglass from her, pulling her to her feet by her hands.

Her eyes flew to his, remembering her response when he asked her if she missed him, but he didn't seem angry, and he didn't seem to expect her to say that she missed him either. She didn't think she could say it.

He lifted their joined hands, touching them to her lips. "Undress me?" he said it like it was an invitation that she could refuse, while his eyes told her that not to test his patience.

In the old days, he wasn't William. He was Master. It was her only word for him, and it had been beaten into her. His unadorned first name was a relatively new privilege that she had been introduced to by Angelus. It had taken another beating to convince her that she would forget it at her peril. They could not take her out in the polite, human world calling them by anything but their given names.

Automatically, her hands went to his cravat, unwinding the soft linen. She started to fold it, but his hands brushed hers, and she understood that he wanted her to let it fall to the floor. She unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his pale, smooth, muscular chest. Her eyes fell on his nipples, dark, flat, male nipples. His hands stroked her arms through the robe she was wearing. His abdomen contracted, and she read the silent invitation to tug his shirt out of his breeches. His arms circled her loosely as he undid the cuffs and she licked her lips feeling the wetness pooling between her thighs.

She kissed his chest then, and he made an approving sound, his hands resting lightly on her hips for a moment. When he released her, she lifted her hands to push the shirt over his shoulders.

"Let it fall," he murmured, his lips brushing her temple. The shirt fluttered to the ground. He caught her hands by the wrists, bringing them around to the belt of her dressing gown until she loosened the tie of her own volition and shrugged out of the garment.

The firelight behind her turned her then chemise nearly transparent. The hard points of her nipples were visible against the cloth, edged in a lace. Her gaze was fixed over his shoulder.

"Look at me," he commanded.

Her eyelashes fluttered like moth's wings against her skin before she redirected her gaze to meet his. He took her hands in his, one hand bringing hers to press against his erect member. His other hand directed her hand to the hem of her chemise were it lay against her upper thighs. The fabric pressed against her, between her thighs, and a tremor shook her as she felt her own wetness soak the thin cloth.

He pressed himself into her hand. "Finish," he ordered, freeing her hands.

She unbuttoned his breeches, sliding them over his hips, her knees unlocking to allow her to kneel in front of him to unfasten the small gold buttons at the bottom of the breeches, just below the knee. He lifted his foot to allow her to free each of his legs, removing both the breeches and the stocking beneath. Before she finished with his right leg, he grasped his cock in one hand, stroking himself, his thumb moving over the foreskin to spread the pre-cum oozing from the head over the organ.

He offered her his thumb, and she took it between her lips, tasting him on his hand until he withdrew his thumb, rubbing her lower lip.

She freed his other leg as he continued to stroke his cock. His hand lifted her chin, and he smiled down at her.

Sometimes she liked to pretend that she didn't understand him at all. Didn't know what he wanted. It was a game she played in her head, and to some extent, with him, waiting until he told her what to do. Trembling, she laid her hands on his narrow hips, her thumbs riding his sharp hipbones, absorbing the coolness of his skin.

Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to feel warm, heated, human, living flesh, other than her own under her hands. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to be with someone who looked less like an ideal of perfection. He was all sculpted muscle layered over bone. His hand was still moving over his cock, but her gaze rested on his abdomen, on the downy feathering of brown hair that arrowed down to his groin.

"That's a very pretty picture you make," a trace of affection warming his tone.

His stroking hand guided his cock to her lips, and they parted. Her tongue swirled around the head of his cock, and his hips flexed under her hands. She took him into her mouth, using her teeth to scrape the underside of his cock.

His hand fisted in her hair. "That's it, love," he hissed. Christ, the heat of her mouth on him! It felt so good. His hand was wrapped around the base of his cock, pumping it into her mouth. He timed his thrusts, careful not to come while he was too deep in her mouth. She'd be coughing his semen out of her lungs half the night, which didn't suit him. He spilled himself inside her mouth with a grunt, and she swallowed it down, careful not to let any of his come spill from her lips.

Silly bint, he combed his fingers through her hair as she swallowed convulsively, her clever little tongue swirling around the head of his cock to clean him off. As if he minded seeing his seed on her lips and chin, or splashing over her pretty tits. There was no one like Angelus for seeking some stupid sodding ideal of perfection to spoil a cock sucking. He let her rest her head against his stomach while she got her breath back, his hands stroking her beautiful hair.

"Come up, now, on your feet, pet," he coaxed, using her hair to make his wishes clear without pulling on it too hard. His arm curled around her and he cupped her ass, pinching it lightly before he caught the back of her chemise and pulled it over her head. He smacked her bare ass. "Get in bed," he said gruffly. "Bleeding gaslights are giving me a headache."

He went around the room to turn the jets down. Willow sat on the edge of the bed, rolling her stockings down. William tended to fling his clothes around. His rooms always looked messy. She preferred to put things away, and sat on the edge of the bed debating the wisdom of getting up and picking up the clothing strewn over the floor. She felt the bed give from the other side, and his arm went around her waist, hauling her to the center of the bed.

"Did I tell you to take off your stockings?" he purred in her ear, his thumb making circles on her abdomen.

"N-no," she stammered. He didn't sound angry. In fact, he sounded amused, but that wasn't always the best gauge of his mood.

He plucked the stockings from her hands. "Jesus, Willow!" he muttered. "Worsted wool? We can keep you better than this." He chucked one and then the other stocking across the room, narrowly missing the fire, for which she was deeply grateful. She didn't relish the idea of her room smelling of burning wool and sweaty feet.

"They're warm," she protested.

"So is silk," he said, his hand sliding down between her legs, his fingers stroking her apart. "Ah, warm, wet, silk," he nuzzled her throat. She let her head fall back against his shoulder as his lips opened over her throat, her hips lifting.

"Mmmm. I think someone did miss me," he chuckled.

His thumb rotated over her clitoris. His hand cupped the back of her head, supporting her as he took away the support of his shoulder to lay her back on the bed, his mouth seeking hers greedily.

"Spread your legs, and I'll make you feel so good, pet," he said between kisses.

She opened her legs wider, and his finger slid inside of her, making her gasp.

He raised his head, a slight frown appearing. The hand beneath her head shifted and his fingers traced the outline of her ear. "Hmmm. That's interesting," he said, his eyes narrowing. "Nobody fucking you for two months? It's made you . . . tight," he grinned. "I think I like it."

She squirmed under his thumb and finger. "Tight, wet, and aching for a good, hard fuck aren't you? "He smirked.

~~~*~~~

His task completed, Lucius lingered in the hall way outside his mistress' rooms, half listening to the murmur of voices, rolling the small object he had picked up off the floor between his fingers. He checked on the rooms that had been prepared. The luggage in the foyer had been moved to the bedrooms. The two maids were still working on unpacking the women's clothing. He took the opportunity to tell Matilde that the mistress had retired for the evening and did not wish to be disturbed.

The maid simply looked relieved, and continued working to hang garments. Sophia was across the hall in the master suite, similarly occupied. The two maids would remain available in case the mistress' family required any assistance before retiring. On the other side of the master suite, Frederick was nearly finished unpacking for one of the men. Lucius assumed it was the dark haired man. There was a subtle air of command about him, and it seemed logical to assume that the mistress had reserved these rooms for his use.

Which meant that the brown haired Englishman was assigned to the room across the hall from his mistress. Paulus was already done unpacking him and had an armload of soiled clothing to take to the laundress. Filthy English swine, Lucius found himself thinking as Paulus took the hallway to the back stairs. Left alone in the room, he found himself clenching his fists.

He opened his hand to look at the object he had retrieved from the floor of her bedroom. It was, he found, a small, black, velvet covered button. It must have come off one of her dresses. She wore so much black that the neighbors were convinced that she was in mourning. He knew he should return it to Matilde so she could find the dress missing a button and repair it. He promised himself that he would do just that, later, as he tucked the button in the pocket of his waistcoat.

There was something very odd, very wrong, going on here, though he wasn't sure exactly what it was other than the vague sense of . . . disappointment that the mistress was entertaining a man in her room.

A brother, a cousin-he didn't believe it for a moment.

Not that it was any of his business. In fact, he would have to pay careful attention to the other servants to ensure that no tongues wagged. Later, he would speak to Matilde, he decided. Between the two of them they would be able to ensure that no whispering and tittle tale went on below stairs.

He made himself take a few deep, calming breaths before leaving the unoccupied room. The temptation to linger in the hall was immense. He made himself walk down the hall to the back stairs.

~Part: 4~

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 here 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 threw her throat as she came in long, hard spasms the 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. 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 breath-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 new 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.

~Part: 5~

The servants in the dining room all straightened a bit when their mistress' guests wandered in. The dark haired girl was almost dragging the tall, dark, distinguished looking man, energetically swinging his hand, humming a little snatch of a song, her dark eyes sparkling. There wasn't a person in the room that didn't immediately hew to the fact that there was just a little something off about her, but at the same time feel a little charmed by her. The blond woman made them feel more at ease. She seemed to look everywhere and nowhere at once, reducing the servants in the room to the status of the furniture, which was actually a relief.

The dark haired man looked like he might actually talk to them, and Lucius was nowhere in sight. While the opinion below stairs was that Lucius had become a bit puffed up with his importance, he had more depth of experience dealing with the mistress, and was the most logical choice to interact with these people.

He glided into the room at last. "May I freshen your drinks?" he asked.

Dru took that moment to strike, and no one, Darla was forced to acknowledge, could match the speed of Drusilla's strike. She was like a cobra in doll clothes, lunging, game face in place, snapping the neck of a strapping man with thinning red hair, her fangs ripping through his throat as second later, her hand punching into the cavity of his chest to massage his shuddering heart as she drank deeply.

For a moment everyone froze.

The cook, standing in the service entrance thought that the clumsy clod Wilhem had startled the pretty girl and compounded his error by stumbling on her. He shot forward to drag the oaf off of her before he crushed her, horrified at this nearly unbelievable lapse. He had spent hours refreshing the shaved ice chilling the caviar and the latkes. He'd been up since four o'clock the previous morning nursing the pastry dough to its thin, flaky tenderness. The mistress had wandered into the kitchen to seat herself at his worktable and watch him work, asking questions about where he had learned to cook.

A footman standing approximately vertical to his counterpart simply could not reconcile what he was seeing-the girl's hand was wrist deep in Carl's chest and great gouts of blood were spilling down her velvet skirt, glistening wetly in the heavy nap of the fabric. His eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted.

The blond woman, a cool, social smile on her lips, turned to Lucius, her face changing into something monstrous. He spun away from her, with one thought. One purpose. He'd left her alone, upstairs, despite his uneasiness about her 'family'.

She jerked him back, one improbably strong arm cinched around his neck. He tore at her arm, no longer caring that she resembled something female, kicking backward and smashing his elbow into her ribs. He broke free and raced for the stairs.

Darla laughed breathlessly. "Oooh. I like him," she crooned.

Angelus was draining the cook. He raised his head.

Darla fluttered her hand at him. "He's mine, darling. Enjoy," she said, taking off after the majordomo. Her skirts hampered her on the stairs, and she cursed them, knowing full well that if that fool burst in on William, Dru's hot-tempered boy would eviscerate him. She snarled, baring her fangs. The most promising one of the lot Willow had found, and he had to be a noble fool.

She caught him eight feet from the door and flung him into the opposite room, slamming the door shut behind her, leaning back against it, she let her mortal face return. The man was panting with exertion and fear. Such a lovely smell, she reflected. It went nicely with the cedar chips in the fireplace.

She raised her finger to her lips. "Sssh" she gave him her most charming smile, the one that had lured countless people to their deaths. "Our William doesn't want to kill her," she confided, revealing her understanding of what was running through his mind, running her fingers lightly over the tops of her breasts. "He's just fucking her," she shrugged. "It's always the same with them. You'll see."

"What are you?" he demanded, his voice shaking.

"Anything I want to be. As is Angelus, and William. Dru? She's a whirlwind of everything and nothing, but she amuses Angelus," Darla's voice was soft, lilting, teasing. "You can be anything you want to be. You can be like us. Like William? Rutting between the soft thighs of a soft, rich, pampered woman. Filling her with his cock. She makes the prettiest sounds when she's riding his cock, our William's girl does," Darla laughed softly, cruelly, enjoying the stunned look on his face.

He was handsome. At least six feet tall, and well made. She wondered what his hair looked like when it was freshly washed and loose around his shoulders. In the careful, neat queue he wore, it looked like antique gold. His eyes were cornflower blue around the enlarged pupil.

"Close your eyes, and you can hear them. You can imagine that its you making her cry out as you fuck her like an animal."

He couldn't believe this elegant woman was saying these things to him, speaking to parts of his mind that recoiled from her words even as his body reacted in ways that filled him with horror.

"You are a monster," he spat at her.

Darla laughed. "Of coarse," she agreed, the bell of her skirt swaying as she approached him with a roll of her hips that would do the coarsest of streetwalkers proud. He opened his mouth to shout for his mistress, to give her this one warning, and before the sound left his mouth, she backhanded him with a force that sent him crashing to the ground, blood filling his mouth, and then she was on him, shoving his head to one side and biting into his throat, he gasped, and choked on the blood in his mouth as the world faded to black.

Darla raised her head, licking the deep bite mark in her victim's neck almost as an afterthought as she listened with the intensity of a hunter.

She could hear William and the girl in the bedroom across the hall. The sound of a glass breaking and a brief struggle. Her lips curled. If that little bitch reached the hall, she was fair game in the hunt, and William knew it. He had better shove his cock in her and fuck her unconscious. Stupid boy. She licked her lips.

Her head swiveled, two more heartbeats, nearer. Prey. She rose, automatically straightening her skirt, smearing the blood from her unconscious, but still living victim on her bodice and strolling boldly into the hall.

Two women, maids by the look of them were in the hall, looking more puzzled than alarmed. "You there," Darla called out. "Which one of you is my maid?" she demanded.

The two women exchanged baffled glances. "Are English speaking servants too much to ask for?" she complained, reverting to the German patois she had learned in Pennsylvania two hundred years ago to repeat her question. The handsome boy awaiting her seemed to understand her well enough a few minutes ago.

The plumper brown haired girl bobbed a curtsey. "That would be me, Mistress," she said. "How may I serve you?"

"I've spilled wine on my dress," Darla told her as she approached. "I want you to take care of it before the stain sets."

"Yes, m'am," the girl bobbed again.

There was an annoying habit, and Darla didn't care too much for female minions anyway. Angelus was the one who specified two women. Left to his own devises, he'd turn a harem.

"We heard a sound, m'am, like someone falling," the other girl said. She had a bit of a bold look about her. Dark hair and eyes, and a full lower lip that looked promising.

"As did I," she said haughtily. "Why would your majordomo be fumbling around in Master William's room, I wonder?"

Matilde and Sofia exchanged looks. "Sofia will check, m'am. If you will follow me, we'll put you to rights so you can rejoin your family."

Darla tilted her head. "Hmm. You would be Willow's personal maid, wouldn't you?" she guessed. Plump, practical farm girls had no appeal for Angelus, and this one appeared to have her wits about her.

"I have that honor," the girl admitted.

Darla could almost hear William in her head, in one of his ridiculous accents, saying something like, 'makes me want to heave'. "Now, you are my maid," she said sweetly, following the girl.

~~~*~~~

He kissed the corner of her eye, catching one of her tears on the tip of his tongue, savoring it. Her tears, her sweat, the sweet, hot juices that flowed between her legs, each had a different flavor, but there was a quality that each shared with her blood, some underlying, essential element that his body recognized and craved. He felt her warm breath against his chin, and lightly kissed her mouth as well, tasting the apple-y wine and the fruit he had fed her.

"Have a bit more," he encouraged. "The bread, maybe?" he suggested.

She licked her lower lip, tasting him on her lips, and nodded.

"I missed you desperately," he said, shooting her a sideways look full of mock despair. "Spent my nights getting pissed and my days hugging my pillow to my chest, no one to fight for the blankets, or too drool on my shoulder in that charming way only you possess."

His playfulness made her ache. Sometimes, when he was in a good mood, he was so . . . tender with her, and sweet.

He insisted on feeding her.

"You manage the glass, darling," he said when she sat up a bit more and reached for the plate. "Fainting like that does wonders for a bloke's ego, but . . ." he glanced down at his semi-erect cock. "Don't fancy you making a habit of it, least of all tonight. It's been too bloody long since I've . . ." he pinched her cheek. "Hmmm? Seen that pretty blush? Caused it?" he teased, feeding her another bit of bread.

"More wine?" he asked, seeing that she was near the bottom of the glass.

"Are you trying to make me drunk?" she tried to match his mood.

She had no head for liquor, and no stomach for it either which was why he passed on the rich looking latkes. All that sour cream and wine wouldn't sit well on her stomach, another black mark on the majordomo's book. Drunk, no. Relax her a bit? Definitely. She was strung as tight as Angelus' ass.

He took the glass from her and handed her another bit of the bread. "Finish your dinner, love," he ordered, going back to the table to refill her glass. There wasn't much more than a half a glass left in the bottle, so he ran his finger through the sour cream and caviar, licking it off and washing it down with the wine in the bottle.

"Drinking from the bottle," she tsked. "What would Angelus say?"

"Sod him," he said rudely. "I'm continually amazed at this obsession with a lot of silly rules that have sod all to do with being basically outside of any rule save-"

"I do as I please," Willow interrupted, doing a horrible imitation of his accent.

He laughed. The accent was crap, but it was funny. He picked up her replenished wine glass. "It's a fine line you tread. That was definitely a bit of cheek, but amusing, so, when I turn you over my knee, I promise, it will be one of those nice spankings that turn your ass pink and get you all hot to fuck me."

She heard him, and opened her mouth to say something, and then shut it, sitting bolt upright in the bed. William heard it too, footsteps, pounding up the stairs, followed by the sound of someone falling, hard, across the hall, and a door slamming shut.

She froze, one hand clutching the counterpane to her bare breasts, her shoulders hunching in as she squeezed her eyes shut, visibly cringing. She drew her knees up to her chest.

It had started. The scent of blood reached him and he had to exercise some control to keep his game face from coming on. For a moment he stared at the door. It was Darla up here, hunting. His gaze flicked to Willow, but he realized that her voice was too muffled through two doors for his lover to hear. The cringing was . . . annoying.

"Stop that," he snapped at her.

She ignored him, rocking, making some God awful mewling sound, like someone was hurting her, which, he felt like telling her, could be arranged if she didn't get a grip on herself.

"Willow! Stop it, this instant," he ordered, not bothering with a threat that he would be stuck with following through on. The last time he had done that she had been unable to walk for a month, a month in which he had wondered if he had crippled her.

She lifted her head, staring at him, looking very much like something he'd like to hunt, and then she was hurtling out of the bed for the door.

Without even thinking about it, he got rid of the wine glass to free his hands, diving after her, his hand hitting the door before she could reach the doorknob. Stupid little bitch! What did she think she was doing? There were three vampires in the house on a hunt, and one bloody step out that door would make her fair game. Angelus, Darla, and Dru were fully capable of killing her in a fit of blood lust. Angelus' stone cold bitch queen would cut her heart out in front of him just because she could. At least Dru would feel kind of bad about it, if she remembered killing Willow. And Angelus? William's blood ran cold at the things he might take it in his head to do while he was killing her.

"I can't let it happen, I can't let it happen," she moaned, pulling futilely on the doorknob. It was almost funny. He was holding the bloody door shut, and she hadn't a chance in hell of matching him in a contest of strength.

"Please, please," she begged. "I'll do anything you want. Just let me make it stop. I have to make it stop," she wept, demonstrating a complete lack of any semblance of rational thought, William decided.

She was right over the bleeding bend if she thought that running naked through the house during a hunt was going to do anything but introduce her to a whole new definition of rape and a nasty death. He hadn't been particularly gentle with her over the years, and she had been the entertainment in more than his bed, but he lacked Angelus and Darla's twisted genius for sadism, and he knew it. Didn't bother him a bit. Their little joint project was his lovely Dark Goddess, and while he worshiped the ground Dru trod, he wasn't completely stupid about her. He'd kill Willow himself, and stake her if she was undead, if she ever went the way of Dru.

Using his shoulder to keep her from opening the door, he wrapped his arm around he waist to drag her away, but she hung onto the doorknob with the tenacity of a terrier. He squeezed her wrist. "Let go," he hissed at her. He was not relishing the prospect of her causing a scene that Darla would no doubt overhear. Smug, cold bitch that she was, he thought, he would never hear the end of it.

Willow's hair whipped around her shoulders as she shook her head.

He applied more pressure to her wrist, gradually increasing the pressure while he spoke to her as calmly and rationally as he could manage. Decades of practice with his sire paid off. "Let go, love. Let me take you back to bed. I'll make it all go away, sweetheart."

"Liar," she spat.

Bloody hell. Of course he was lying. "Sweetness, I don't want to hurt you. Let me take care of you, baby."

She should have been screaming. Christ, he was hurting her. Changing tactics, he relaxed his grip on her arm and then bore down again, brutally.

A ragged sob was her only concession to the pain.

"Ssshh. Don't weep so, love. You'll make yourself sick," he crooned to her, his lips inches from her ear.

"Please," she tried again.

Any second now he was going to break her fucking wrist, and even if he had the first clue about where to find a competent doctor to reset it-another lesson learnt evidenced by the crooked index finger on her left hand, and her tendency to limp a bit when she was very tired, the lingering products of two poorly set breaks-there was no question of bringing a doctor here tonight.

"Baby?" he put some steel in to his tone. "I don't want to hurt you, but I'll break your arm and call it a good day before you get out of this room. Now," he spaced each word out, cold and precise, "let go of the God damned door!"

Her hand relaxed just enough for him to yank it off the door, and he scooped her up, carrying her back to bed while she wept uncontrollably, her badly bruised arm lying between them.

"Sshhh," he rocked her, smoothing her hair with his hands. "Why do you do these crazy things?" he asked, furious with her for the scare she had given him. "Maybe next time, I'll hunt, and you'll bloody well watch. You think then you'll understand when I tell you-" he heard his voice rising, which meant that he was the only person in the room listening to anything he had to say.

She was making that sound again, that made him want to make her stop. He covered her mouth, pinching her nose shut. If she couldn't breath, she couldn't make a sound. "No more," he told her, his voice clipped. "I've had enough, Willow. No more."

She stared at him, her head jerking back, once, twice. He figured once more, and then he'd let her breath again, but she went still, and then she stopped resisting, her great, tear drenched green eyes, so bright that he almost didn't mind when she cried, and he hated weeping women, fixed on his. And the brightness started to waver.

~~~*~~~

Matilde went to the closet to find a gown of a similar cut for the lady to change into. That would be quickest, and would avoid the necessity of changing undergarments and petticoats. "There's a sapphire blue in cut velvet," she began.

"My favorite," Darla purred.

Matilde jumped. She was right behind her, so close that the maid froze, uncertain what to do. The mistress was very particular about what she wryly described as her personal space, and she and Matilde had worked out little signals for such things, like a soft clearing of the throat. She had found it touchingly amusing that the courtesy that the mistress demanded of her maid was one she was careful to return, and once or twice, they had shared a quiet laugh at their odd habits.

Other than falling into the wardrobe, Matilde had nowhere to go, and whatever she might have thought or said about this state of affairs, would never be known. With a sense of uneasy astonishment, she felt herself drawn back against a soft body. A cold, wet, surprisingly rough tongue, not unlike a cat's, licked her neck, and then the white hot agony of a crushing bite made her arch away. The involuntary movement of her body drawing a low growl, a tightening of the arm around her waist, and a deeper bite.

She had the oddest sensation. It was like someone was pulling the blood out of her veins, and she frowned at the absurdity of it as her life ebbed away.

~~~*~~~

The first real, full-throated scream of the night came from William's room when Sofia found Lucius lying on the floor. That wasn't when she screamed. It was when she shook him and his head lolled back, unsealing the coagulating wound and a spray of blood hit her face. That was when she screamed, a full-throated, desperate scream of abject terror-something Angelus liked to call dessert.

He and Dru had hunted the first floor with ruthless efficiency. Angelus never had any intention of turning so very many humans at once, so it was given that there would be some that would not survive the attack in any condition to be turned, but he thought, as he stalked through the library, pausing to scan the titles on the shelves, was it too much to ask for a bit of entertainment to liven up the proceedings?

At the bone-chilling scream, he abandoned his perusal of the titles with a happy smile. "Dessert!" he caroled cheerfully.

Drusilla had already beaten him to the stairs and was racing up them, her skirts rucked up to her knees as she took the steps two at a time. When he reached the room, the boy on the floor was starting to come around. Angelus figured that Darla had left him there to enjoy later. The girl was on her knees, her arms around Drusilla's waist as she sobbed into her blood soaked skirt.

For once, Dru looked nonplussed. She cast a baffled look at her sire, and then, like a bird, lifted her head, cocking her head to one side, a sweet smile turning up the corner's of her lips. "There, there," she patted the girl on the top of her head. "Ssssh. Don't weep so," she said. "You'll give yourself a tummy ache."

Angelus frowned at her, and then he caught it too, what was the inspiration for Drusilla's grossly inappropriate and unwittingly hilarious attempt to comfort the girl they were going to kill one little tasty bit at a time. It was that idiot childe of hers and his softhearted human consort.

For every time that the girl did something that impressed or pleased him and made him feel the tiniest bit envious of William for having the wit to coddle her along, she went and did something so stupid or pointless, that he was moved to incredulity at the boy's patience.

Not that it actually lasted that long. He went from billing and cooing soothing nonsense in her ears to telling her he'd break her arm in something under a minute.

Since this seemed to work, Drusilla reached down to one of the arms wrapped around her, looked at Angelus, and snapped the girl's arm.

~~~*~~~

He felt her heart slowing. Oh, no you don't, the thought ran through his head. She'd loose her nerve. Her body's insatiable demand for air wouldn't let her beat him on this particular playing field. He could feel the muscles in her chest fighting to expand, and he could feel Willow, her lips under his hand, gritting her teeth to resist the pull to try to breath.

"Oh, fuck," he muttered, relaxing his hold on her face, watching her stare turn into a desperate, outraged, protest. The stupid, pig stubborn, bitch was now holding her breath. He dumped her on the mattress and the second she hit it her mouth opened and she was sucking in air. To cap the evening's entertainment, one of the maids started screaming her head off, and Willow was covering her ears, trying to block it out.

"Well, this is a lovely evening we're having," he said, more to himself than her. He got up, flung open the door and glared across the hall at his sire and Angelus.

"Do you bloody mind? Trying to get a leg over here, and that bitch's caterwauling isn't doing anything for me. Stuff a sock in her mouth."

Angelus leaned against the frame of the bedroom door, his dark eyes traveling over the enraged, naked vampire, looking amused at the display of temper. "Problems, boy?" he drawled. "Need suggestions?"

William turned his head to look back into the bedroom. "Pet? You move an inch from that bed, and I swear I will chain you to the foot of my bed and keep you alive until you're toothless old hag."

"I want to die," she whimpered.

"Now, William," Angelus mocked. "She wants to die. That's so sweet. Isn't it Dru? Miss Willow wants to die," he waggled his eyebrows at her. "Tell your boy to finish the job and make us a new addition to the family."

The sobbing chorus of 'I want to die' got cut off in mid whimper.

"Oh, so now you change your tune?" William muttered. "It's all 'I want to die' until it sinks into your thick skull that I haven't wasted eight years of my unlife only to forget to bring you back," he shouted at her naked back.

"William," Dru pouted at him reprovingly.

The sniveling maid started winding up again, and Dru slapped her face. "Hush now. We're talking," she said as if the maid was the one with the inability to grasp what was going on.

William grinned at her. "Thanks, Princess," he said.

She graciously inclined her head. "You're very welcome my darling, delicious, depraved boy," she returned.

William looked her up and down. She looked glorious, her long hair falling free, a bit of blood forgotten in the corner of her lip, and her dress smeared with blood. She was breathtaking. "Dru, you're so bleeding gorgeous, you make my eyes hurt to look at you."

Willow hugged her knees to her chest and wondered if shouting, 'then go fuck her,' might push him just hard enough to . . . what? Beat her? She squeezed her eyes shut.

"Well, that's an attractive look," Darla drawled as she came down the hall. "I thought you'd be enjoying your reunion with your . . . with the girl," she waved in the direction of the room. "No? Lover's quarrel? Little spat over the inevitable, and yet somehow-"

"I get it, Darla," William said, refraining from telling her to piss off.

"You do well to keep a civil tongue in your head with me, William," she warned.

"Unless you beg for an uncivil tongue," he shot back.

"How . . . vulgar," she sniffed, as if he was beneath her, and technically speaking, he was, by two generations.

"Joining us?" Darla asked.

William looked into the room at the two victims on the floor. The majordomo he had been looking forward to killing slowly was in there, and the bird wasn't bad looking. Everyone looked fat and happy and well fed. He frowned at Dru. "What happened to saving something for me?" he asked.

She looked guilty. "Oops?" she offered.

He glared at his lover's huddled figure on the bed. "Given her track record, if I chain her to the bed, she'll bleed to death chewing through a limb," he said.

Angelus' shoulders shook with a silent laugh at this observation. Half the time he wanted to beat William senseless, but the rest of the time he was fairly amusing. Their eyes met, and William gave him a small nod that suggested that he was past the worst of his temper tantrum.

"Well, then," Darla gave him a little wave. "Ta. Give Willow a kiss goodnight for us," she said.

Dru blew a kiss at him and he mimed catching it and clutching it to his heart. She paused before blowing another kiss. "Now, this one is for Willow, you insatiable thing," she cautioned.

"From your lips to-"

"Her luscious pink parts," Dru inserted.

He winked at her. "Every precious inch, sweetness."

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