View My
Guestbook RATING: NC-17
DISCLAIMER: Joss has said that BtVS was meant to be a show about which fanfic was written, so I'm writing some. But he still owns Buffy and Angel. So do the WB, Fox and Mutant Enemy. No infringement is intended.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The usual suspects. See Part 1
________________________________________________________________
The Silken Cage
Journey - Part 12a
by
Margot Le Faye
She was wearing her favorite summer sundress, a floral print on a lavender ground. The white leather sandals on her feet were also favorites, old and comfortable. She knew he was not lying on the bed behind her, but she could feel that while he was not too close, he was not too far away. He would never allow her too far from his side. She did not look backward, but walked out the door, which opened as she approached, allowing her to enter the corridor.
She was not surprised when, after she had taken no more than a dozen steps, the corridor terminated in the living room of her mother's house.
The damage she and Angelus had caused had been cleared away. Broken furniture had been replaced, broken pictures set into new frames, broken windows removed and repaired with fresh panes of glass. Even the front door bore newer, sturdier locks. She smiled wryly. The locks would hold against ordinary criminals, and with the Slayer gone, extraordinary ones had no cause to disturb the remaining inhabitant of 1630 Revello drive. But there wasn't a lock in the world that was sturdy enough to withstand Angelus. Only the ritual rescinding his invitation would bar his entry. Joyce was safe, not because of the locks, but because he had already taken what he wanted from her home.
Joyce sat, stone faced, on the new couch, ignoring the platter of food Willow had brought to tempt her appetite. As if Willow's was much more robust than Joyce's. Willow's eyes were swollen and red, her face drawn. Giles, seated beside Joyce, didn't look to be in much better shape. Buffy's heart broke to look at him. His face was more lined, his posture more stooped, his hair more gray than she remembered from--was it only last week?
You have to keep your strength up, Joyce." He pushed the platter, and it's assortment of fruit, cheese and cold cuts, toward her. She pushed it back.
"It wasn't Buffy," Joyce said flatly, her voice tight.
"Mom, I'm right here," Buffy said. She tried to step into the room, but found she couldn’t pass the doorway. She was staring into the living room from where the dining room normally was. Except, it didn't seem to be there. She was still in the corridor outside the bedroom she shared with Angelus. . .over twenty seven hundred miles away from Sunnydale. None of the others seemed to notice her.
"Joyce, we have to face facts," Giles began tiredly, removing his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose, the way he always did when he was worried. "Even Hank had to admit what happened, when he made the identification. The dress--"
"Any girl could have a dress like that," Joyce snapped.
"With Buffy's underwear?" Fresh tears came to Willow's eyes. "I don't want it to be her. I'd give anything for it not to be her. But I don’t think another tiny blond with Buffy's perfect dental records just happened to put on her dress and underwear and…and her jewelry.
"Angelus dressed her in my things!" Buffy shouted, once more trying to enter the room."
"It isn't time yet," a familiar voice said behind her. Buffy turned.
"Faith," Buffy said. Her one-time friend and bitter enemy was wearing tight leather pants, black leather half-boots, and a black Lycra top with a keyhole neckline.
"They can't hear you because it isn't time yet," Faith explained.
"But you can."
"It's a Slayer thing," Faith shrugged.
"So, this is one of the prophetic dreams," Buffy realized.
"One of the bennies," Faith agreed. "Aside from dying young and leaving a good looking corpse." Buffy turned back to the scene in the living room, not really surprised to find that the only thing there was the blank wall of the corridor. She looked at Faith, and found the other Slayer staring down at herself in a hospital bed. Buffy approached the bed, slowly, reluctantly.
"We really did a number on me," Faith said ruefully. The two girls faced each other across the bed in which Faith lay. The bruises from their battle were faded, now, but the body on the bed was too pale, too thin, too clearly that of an invalid instead of one of the Chosen.
"I'm sorry." No matter how justified she had been in going after Faith, no matter that she was doubtful she could have defeated the Mayor's Ascension if Faith had still been a player, Buffy truly regretted the damage she had done to her sister Slayer.
"Not your fault, B." Faith looked up from her own recumbent form in its plain hospital gown, and assorted attachments of wires and tubes. "The world really can't handle two Slayers. It isn't time, yet. But they had to get things rolling for when it will be time. 7-3-0 and all that."
"I don't understand."
"Me neither," Faith shrugged. "Not much of it. I'm just saying."
"If you don't understand, then why am I here?"
"Because he isn't." Faith's gaze locked onto the other girl's, brown eyes holding green. "He's taken your blood and he's renewed his mark." She reached a hand to lightly brush the brand on Buffy's neck that showed where Angelus fed from her. "It was a symbol, once. That's why it never healed, when everything else fades. Now…he's made himself part of you, just like you're part of him. And when he's close, your dreams are his."
"He's always close. . ."
"There's close, and there's closer. He's. . .occupied right now. When he isn't, when your dreams are his, we can't come to you."
"'We?'"
Faith cocked her head, listening. "We're out of time, B. But don't forget. . .." She faded away before Buffy could ask what it was she wasn’t supposed to forget.
And then she found herself naked; strong, large hands caressing her breasts, a demanding mouth pressing fierce kisses to the back of her neck. With a sigh, she turned in his arms, so that his hands slid from her breasts to her back, holding her close, while his mouth moved from her neck to claim her own mouth with more hot, demanding kisses which she as heatedly returned. Her lips opened beneath his, granting him entrance and she reached her arms up to twine about his neck. Somehow, she was lying down, no longer standing in the circle of his arms but pressed beneath him on the bed. And his skin was oddly warm, not merely lacking the usual vampiric chill, but almost radiating heat, the way the flesh of a fever victim might. The erection hard and insistent against her belly nearly burned, and keening, she opened her thighs to him, needing that unexpected fire to burn itself out within the fires of her own flesh.
Buffy came awake as Angelus slid into her, the impossible heat of him burning her deliciously, so that she moaned against his mouth. She lifted her legs, wrapping them around him, taking him more deeply inside her willing body.
His lovemaking, always vigorous, was almost frenzied, and she responded to it in kind, her hunger rising to meet his. As the last vestiges of sleep cleared from her mind, she recalled the vivid images from her dream. . .and she recalled the decision she had made not much more than an hour earlier. Buffy pushed the dream images away, as she pushed away the consideration of Angelus' unwonted warmth. She could think about such matters later. For now, she gave herself over to the intense, almost savage attention Angelus was paying to her body, his manhood scorching inside her, setting every nerve exquisitely aflame. Her tongue battled with his, she tightened her embrace, gathering her strength. . .
. . .and flipped them so that she was on top. Still kissing him, she pulled her arms from around his neck, scraping her fingernails across his nipples so that he growled ferociously into her mouth. Her hips jack-hammered down on him, meeting the demanding pace he himself had set. She moaned as he burned deeper inside her, his hands kneading into her buttocks. She didn't really expect him to accept her assertion of dominance, and he didn't. He soon twisted again, so that she was beneath him once more, but she was no more about to accept his assertion than he had been hers.
They made love like warfare; violent and passionate and all consuming. The bed could not contain them, and they slid to the floor in a tangle of bedclothes and supple flesh, unable and unwilling to break their devouring kisses; hands caressing, squeezing demanding, hips clashing together like a force of arms. The struggle for dominance was deliciously played out as they writhed together in untrammeled abandon, intent on each other's pleasure as much as their own.
She was the Slayer but she was only human. The hard flesh inside her, unerringly rubbing against her most sensitive spots with every forceful stroke, soon had her sobbing as her crises approached. Angelus could feel the tell-tale signs, and he growled in deep satisfaction as she finally broke their kiss, whimpering his name over and over as she got closer to the edge. He rolled with her a final time, so that he was above her once more. She didn't try to fight him, this time, merely pulled him closer, her nails scraping down his back as she seemingly tried to pull all of him inside herself. Her passionate response excited him further, if that were possible, and he strove to meet her unspoken demand. Angelus reached to push her legs yet higher, bending her knees back to her shoulders. He raised himself over her, staring down at her so that their gazes locked. Her eyes were cloudy, almost gray with passion, her lips were swollen from his uncompromising kisses. His name was spilling from those lips in a breathless litany, filling him with the most glorious sense of possessive power that had ever come to him in any period of his existence; human, demonic, or ensouled.
Angelus thrust inside her, going as deep as he possibly could, deep and hard the way he needed to go, the way he had taught her to need him, deep so that he was as close to her as he could get, burying himself as in a second, most delightful, tomb. It was exactly what she craved. Buffy came around him with a final shriek, her body tight and hot around his, so that his own pleasure crested and he came inside her with a roar of the most bone-deep satisfaction he had ever felt.
His seed was not cold. It burned inside her like a living thing, and she welcomed the invasion. He pulsed within her, still thrusting as she milked him of every drop, and he was not stopping, not slowing, not coming to rest
The struggle, evidently, was not done.
Buffy didn't understand it. Her experience was limited to the week they had spent together, and the bittersweet night of her seventeenth birthday. But each time, his orgasm had heralded, if not the end of their lovemaking, at least a brief interlude until he grew hard for her again. She was always grateful for those interludes, which had allowed her a brief respite to recover, to ready herself for the next delicious ordeal.
This time, he stayed hard. Buffy was panting, her own crisis reached and passed. She didn't think she could take it if he kept this up.
He proved her wrong.
She struggled, at first. The very power of her response to him, the sheer intensity of pleasure frightened her. She didn't think she could bear any more. But his strength was still enhanced by repeated infusions of her Slayer's blood, while her own was still compromised by the drugs he was feeding her. She couldn't pull free, couldn't escape, couldn't stop him.
And within a very few minutes, she didn't want to.
The fever burning in his blood made Angelus impatient with Buffy's struggles. He snarled warningly, and when she didn't heed him but continued to try to pull away, he wrapped his arms around her, restraining her, then sat upright so that she was sprawled over him. Buffy was panting, still struggling. Growling, Angelus forced himself to his feet, still holding her in place. He staggered a few steps to the nearest wall, pressing her up against the hard surface, and wrapping her legs around his hips as he kissed her brutally.
Buffy had been desperate to escape him, truly frightened, truly convinced that she couldn't handle any more. Now, the shift in position changed his angle inside her, and that was enough to relieve her over-sensitized nerves. Buffy gasped at the difference, as her discomfort transmuted into something far other, and desire once more burned throughout her body. With a moan, she opened for him, sinking further down on his rampant manhood, accommodating his forceful thrusts. Her only struggle now was to free her arms of his restraint, so that she could hold onto him as he pounded into her. She lifted her face to his, seeking his mouth with her own, pulling him into another devouring kiss.
Her struggles had only excited his demonic nature, which relished torment, and force, and dominance. Her sudden capitulation and renewed ardor--relishing his torment, yielding to his force, submitting to his dominance--inflamed senses already roused to fever pitch by the venomous aphrodisiac he had ingested earlier. Angelus became mindless with lust, beyond rational thought. There was only one imperative: brand himself into the willing flesh of his mate, consume her with his passion as her flesh consumed him. Angelus tightened his grip around her, crushing her soft breasts against the sold wall of his chest, swallowing her moans of need as she pressed herself closer yet.
He slid his arms down from her sides, freeing her to wrap her arms around his neck while he gripped her hips for better purchase. He slammed her down on his cock as she tightened her inner muscles around the hardness. He groaned, demon slipping free, his fangs bruising her lips and drawing blood. The taste of it, rich with her desire and satisfaction, merely incited him to greater frenzy. He drove himself inside her savagely, losing himself in the tight wet heat of her, in the fires of her passion, the only passion that had ever truly been a match for his. He kissed her with the devouring hunger of a drowning man for air, only to find his hunger growing, his need increasing. Her heartbeat was a thunder in his ears, and finally he could not resist its siren call. He pulled away from her lips, unerringly finding his brand on her neck, and sinking his fangs home.
Buffy came, screaming, clenching around him with exquisite strength. Her blood pouring hot down his throat, he climaxed with her, hips thrusting into her with bone-jarring fury. She would be bruised, but that didn't seem to concern her as she ground herself down on him, holding him close, arching her neck against his lips to grant him better access to her intoxicating blood.
Her blood. . .he was greedy for her blood. No one tasted like her, no other Slayer had been half so good. The desire to drain it all came over him, the desire to slay this Slayer with an excess of passion, to make her climax until it killed her, and then to reawaken her as his eternal mate. . .
But then, her blood would change with the alchemy of death, and he wasn't ready to give up this delicious bounty just yet. Angelus forced himself to stop drinking her, ignoring her sigh of protest. He continued to thrust into her until the last of his seed was spent, and the fluttering of her womb had quieted.
He was still aching for her.