“Buffy,” came her redheaded friend’s voice from the other side of the door accompanied by yet another knock. How long had her friend been knocking? Did she have school today? Angelus tried to acclimate himself to not just the fact he had spent the night and what that might signify to his Slayer, but also to what day and time it was beyond the fact it was daytime.
Buffy had not reacted at all since Angelus woke up so he decided to answer the door. He could certainly defend himself against a high school junior and his mate’s mother if he needed to. The chance that either of them was aware Angelus was even here was slim, so he felt safe. Somehow during their few hours of sleeping together he had positioned himself in a protective position with her closer to the wall so it was easy for him to slide off of the bed without disturbing his sleeping Slayer anymore than necessary.
He was aware when she shifted to the portion of the bed he had until just then occupied, her hand sliding along the bedding in the spot where he had just been resting. He watched her for a moment, even in slumber she was seeking him out, her mate. He had never paid attention to how strong their bond was when he had her in his possession. His possession of her had not ended with the loss of the soul they had merely lost the intimacy that had come with it when he had his soul.
He walked to the door and opened it, prepared to do battle even at such an ungodly hour. Normally, he would be resting up at this time from a night of feeding, fighting and if he was in the mood and Drusilla had not annoyed him overmuch some fucking. He could not help but smile sardonically at Willow’s expression when she saw Angelus open her best friend’s bedroom door. First was surprise followed by embarrassment and then came terror and fear. He liked the last two looks best, though the embarrassment was priceless as well. His Slayer had picked such a shy and innocent to be her best friend.
“Good morning, Willow,” he said gruffly, his annoyance at the intrusion apparent. Even if he had fallen asleep despite his intentions not to, he knew his Slayer had slept more restfully in the few hours he had been by her side than in the past few weeks.
“Angel,” she said, wide eyed.
“Angelus,” he growled. “Why can’t you people get my name right?”
“Sorry, it’s just habit,” she said in what he imagined was an attempted apology. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know that it’s any of your business, but it should be fairly obvious I was calling on Buff.”
“I didn’t realize,” she frowned and glanced at the bed. “What did you do to her?”
“I didn’t do a damned thing to her,” he growled in protest at such an accusation. The idea that he would harm a hair on his Slayer’s head when she was not in a state to fight back was incomprehensible.
“I, well, she’s just laying there.”
“She’s tired and sleeping, what do you expect?”
She pursed her lips as if she was thinking of saying something and Angelus could almost see her backpedal away from her train of thought. “We had plans,” Willow said, trying to hide her disappointment but she did not do it very well.
“Well, I’ll get right on waking her up then all because you had plans. I’m sure they were important, too. Were you going to the mall?”
“No,” she said, trying to be brave but Angelus could smell the fear on her.
“What then? Some studying? That’s really worth waking her up for.”
“It is when she’s failing classes because she’s missed so much school recently. The only chance she has of passing this semester is if I tutor her.”
That gave Angelus pause. His Slayer could not fail high school, not if she was actually going to have a chance to raise their child and provide for it. He could assist her monetarily, but he was not going to let her know that. Offering her assistance so soon would be something Soul Boy would do, Angelus enjoyed the idea of her wondering just how she was going to manage for a little while longer at least. “Then just come back later when she’s awake. She’s not going to be coherent enough to gain anything from your tutoring at the moment anyway.”
“She’s the one who told me to come here at this time. Either wake her up or I’ll go down and tell her mother you’re here.”
“Is that supposed to be a threat of some sort?”
“Do you want to get Buffy in trouble?” Willow asked and Angelus had to give her credit for choosing that rather than thinking Joyce Summers posed any threat to Angelus.
“You obviously overestimate my concern for whether she gets in trouble or not. Her being in trouble is really no longer my concern.”
“Then why are you even here?” Willow asked, her voice cracking as she spoke.
“Will?” Buffy spoke from behind them. Her voice was lethargic, sleepy, and Angelus let his game face fall into place as he glared at his Slayer’s best friend. “What’s wrong, Angel-us?” she asked as she stood from the bed. She was getting better at remembering he despised her calling him by Soul Boy’s name, but noticed the deliberateness and thought that went into her addressing him.
“I came to help you study,” Willow said cautiously.
“And I don’t know why on earth you would tell her to come by this early when you haven’t been sleeping.”
“Who are you, my dad?”
“No, not your dad,” he said, his voice low, his tone clearly warning that she had best not challenge him on this point.
“Will, give me a minute,” his Slayer said.
“Are you sure?” Willow asked, her skepticism about the rationality of his Slayer being left alone with Angelus clear.
“He’s been here for hours, he had plenty of opportunity to kill me when I was sleeping, Will, so yeah I’m sure.”
“What am I going to tell your mom?”
“I don’t know,” his Slayer said glancing from Willow to Angelus and then at her feet. “Tell her I wanted to get dressed or something.” Willow just shook her head, apparently realizing an argument was futile just then, finally leaving the room and leaving Angelus alone with his Slayer once again. “I guess you’re kind of stuck here now.”
He shrugged, his human disguise falling back into place. “It’s not like I had plans or anything.”
“What no victims to torture or puppies to kill?”
“None at the moment I’m afraid, no,” he said dryly. “I guess I can stay here, I imagine going downstairs and joining you and your mother for breakfast is out of the question.”
“She’s not too thrilled with you right now, no.”
“With me?”
“Well, yeah, hello? You got me pregnant and left me.”
“I think you’re leaving out some of the finer details as to why it was I left. Because you know damned well if your pathetic excuse for a boyfriend were still in control he would never have left you.”
{You haven’t left her either.}
”Shut up,” he growled in frustration at the intrusion.
“I didn’t say anything,” she bit back.
“Not you.”
“What?” she asked, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Oh brilliant, Angelus, lead her to believe you actually are insane. “There’s no one else in the room but us, Angelus.”
“I realize that,” he said under his breath. “Never mind, I was talking to myself.”
“Do you tell yourself to shut up often?”
“Only when you irritate me beyond reason, Lover.”
“Oh, I irritate you?”
“Yes,” he said, trying to appear bored by this conversation. In truth, he was pleased to see the fire back in her eyes, the appearance again of her backbone and some strength. He was tired of seeing his mate weak, depending on others to care for her.
{You’re even more pathetic than I am, I at least admitted my feelings for her.}
“Why is that?” she asked as a low growl in response to Soul Boy and his opinion could be heard coming from his throat.
“Because you do, I don’t need to a reason. That’s what ex’s do, irritate each other. They wouldn’t very well be ex’s if that weren’t the case.”
“You never irritated me until recently.”
“Things change, Buff, what can I tell you? I changed. I still have to figure out a way to thank you properly, however, it’s because of you I’m here today.”
“I wish I could say you’re welcome, but I’m afraid I’d be lying.”
“Do you miss your boyfriend that much, Lover?”
She turned away from him and walked to the window. For a minute he thought she was going to open the drapes and let the sun turn him to dust without even saying good bye. It would serve him right, too, for being so careless and falling asleep here. He should be home now, performing some destructive or terrorizing activity worthy of his reputation. Instead he was here in his Slayer’s bedroom playing nursemaid to her. If she were like most women Angelus had been familiar with in the past, particularly those who Liam had known, she would have been lapping up such attention. But not his Slayer, she almost seemed hesitant to even admit last night that she wanted him to stay with her.
{Can you blame her?}
“I do miss him. You. I don’t know how to say it.” Her back remained to him, but he could tell that she was crying by the shaking of her shoulders. “I can’t differentiate between the two of you any more. I didn’t expect you to stay last night,” she said through the tears that Angelus knew were falling freely now even without benefit of seeing her face.
“I didn’t either,” he admitted.
“What do you want from me?”
“Truthfully?”
She turned to face him then, wiping her cheeks dry with the pads of her fingers. He would love to lick the tears from her face, to taste the salty tears of his Slayer. It was more than likely the only way he would get any nourishment off of her until the day he killed her. “Yes, please, truthfully.”
“I would like nothing more than to turn you, to make you my childe as well as my mate, to have you with me forever by my side, once you’ve had this child.”
“I could never,” she said with a shiver.
“I realize this,” he admitted begrudgingly. “But you wanted the truth.”
“Yes, I did,” she admitted. “Thanks.” She smiled slightly. “Are you going to stay up here?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You could come down if you want, I realize my room is pretty boring and lame.”
“I’ll be fine, I’m used to sleeping during the day.”
“Right, you were usually going to bed when I was getting ready for school.” She shook her head slightly. “I remember when I knew that I wanted to make love to you.”
She had his attention now, not that he had been ignoring her. “Oh?”
“Yeah, it was that morning, when I visited you at the apartment. I knew it.”
A part of him was terribly insulted that it had taken her that long to want him. Granted, it had been over two hundred forty years since he had seen himself, but he had never lacked for female companionship when he wanted it. So, Angelus had always taken that to mean he was a decent looking man. Soul Boy was a romantic and certainly courted his Slayer once they stopped denying their feelings for one another. And yet a part of him appreciated the fact that she had not entered into making love to anyone lightly.
“I knew it the moment I saw you,” he admitted, his head bowed so that he did not have to look at her. “It was part of what made loving you, wanting you so difficult. You were fifteen when I first saw you, still a girl really.”
“I guess I was, but I grew up pretty fast after that day.”
“Yeah, you did,” he admitted wryly. “But I still couldn’t help but think of Kathy periodically and you really weren’t much older than she had been when I killed her. Liam would have broken the neck of anyone who touched his sister.”
“And yet Angelus killed her.”
He shrugged. “I am a monster, Lover.”
“Yet, you have been so good to me the past week. I know you’ve been here, stood out on the lawn or sat on the roof outside the window.”
“How?” he asked realizing too late he should have just denied it.
“I feel you, I always know when you’re nearby. It’s not the same as the senses that pick up on other vampires.”
“It’s because I’m your mate, Buff,” he said simply. “Your body recognizes me, that’s all.”
“That’s all? What do you mean that’s all? As if that’s not bad enough?”
“There’s nothing all that bad about it. Some people can go an entire lifetime without finding their true mate. Trust me, when you’ve walked the earth for as long as I have you know.”
“I’d say it’s pretty bad when my mate is a sadistic sociopath who takes pleasure on tormenting and torturing people. You probably get off knowing I can’t be out there patrolling right now.”
“I hate seeing you like this,” he admitted. “It’s no fun when you’re not at full strength,” he added, hoping to take some of the sincerity out of the first part of his statement.
“On that sentimental note, I’m going to get dressed and meet Willow downstairs to do some homework.”
“You didn’t mention you were failing your classes, Buff.”
“You’ve made it quite clear we’re no longer anything to one another, Angelus,” she said with a shrug, walking to her closet.
He shrugged as well, curious to know if she would tell him to step out to the hall while she changed. He was not going to offer to and if she did not ask he would certainly enjoy the show. As if reading his mind, she glanced at him over her shoulder. Their eyes met and she blushed a deep shade of red when he cast his eyes downward, being brutally honest about the fact he was looking at her.
“Do you mind?”
“Like I haven’t seen it before, Lover. All of it.”
“That was different.”
He grimaced with a shake of his head. “I’m still me, it was still my eyes that saw you, my hands and mouth that touched you, my cock that fucked you.” She winced at his words, but went ahead and began to shed her pajamas. Realization dawned on him then that she was worried about her appearance. “Like this far along you’re even showing.”
“Well,” she shrugged. “Still. It’s not polite for you to watch me.”
“What if I offered to help you?”
“I don’t need any help getting dressed.”
“Tell me that again in a few months when you can’t see your feet,” he said with a low chuckle.
“You really know how to make a girl feel secure.”
“Anytime, Lover.”
“Stop calling me that,” she hissed.
“I like it. It suits you.”
“No, it does not. To be called Lover by you would mean that I am your lover.”
He smirked cockily. “That could be arranged.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You think I’m going to let someone else touch you when you’re carrying my child? You think I’m going to let you run around and act like some whore because you’re horny and can’t get pregnant?”
She walked up to him, a new top in place but her legs were bare aside from a barely there pair of dark blue panties. She pointed a finger at him, the tip coming into contact with his chest. “How dare you? How dare you think that you can control what I do?”
He grabbed hold of her finger, clutching it in his fisted palm. “I don’t think, Lover, I know. You’re mine, my mate, mine, and you’re having my baby.”
“You broke up with me, remember? You couldn’t have lost your soul and still been Angel just without the soul?”
“No,” he said loudly.
“Then where do you get off telling me what I can and cannot do? Which is it? Do you want me or don’t you? Because you can’t have it both ways, sooner or later, Angelus, I will move on to someone else.”
He growled, game face dropping back into place. “Don’t even say that, Buffy, it will not happen. Not as long as you’re carrying and caring for my child.”
“No, you see, you’re not my boyfriend anymore, you walked away from me. You said cruel, horrible things to me and left me knowing what I had given you the night before, so you cannot make me do anything.”
“But I can, Buff. You want to ensure you and our child are safe, correct?” He could hear her heartbeat increase a bit with that statement and he could not help but smirk in victory.
“You can’t possibly mean that I cannot be with anyone but you.”
“I can mean it, and I do mean it. If you want to ensure the safety of both of you, you’d be wise not to piss me off. My goal is to leave once I know you are in fact all right. Not just physically, either. No failing school.”
She swallowed hard, her eyes grew wide. “You’re leaving?”
“I am, I know of no other way for us to work this out, Lover, do you? You and I cannot operate in the same town. Our paths will eventually cross, and then you’d have to decide between dusting the father of your child and letting the sociopathic killer you deem me as loose to prey on the good Sunnydale citizens.”
“And what do I get out of this deal? Are you going to stay pure in honor of your mate?”
He laughed as he placed his hand against her cheek. He drew her to him with his other hand and kissed her deeply, his tongue forcing her lips apart. After a brief protest on his Slayer’s part she parted her lips willingly accompanied by a soft mewl and she stepped into his touch and his kiss. His hand slid to her breast, which he stroked the side of with his thumb. His touch was gentle, but his kiss was anything but gentle. She did not seem to mind he noticed as she responded to his demand for further entry into her mouth.
He missed the warm moistness that was her mouth as soon as he broke the kiss, but her neck and her blood was beckoning him. Like a beacon, her pulse point called him home. He heard her take a sharp intake of breath as if she knew sight unseen that his human disguise had fallen away. He expected her reproach or for her to refuse him, but she said nothing. He grazed the pulse point with a tip of his fang, ran his tongue along the side of her neck, and then blew on the flesh there.
His hand at her cheek slid to the side of her hair, his fingers spreading and gripping her head. He did not have to force her head to bear her throat to his mouth, she seemed almost willing to let him. He was gentler than he normally was, even the people who were willing donors he did little to see to their comfort. He fed to feed, certainly not to be nice to those he fed from.
{She is not a food source.}
He ignored Soul Boy’s protest and slid his hand at her breast lower under the waistband of her underwear, sliding a finger inside of her as he sank his fangs into her neck. He groaned at the first taste of her blood coupled with a low moan of her own as he slid his finger out of her. He had no intentions on stopping and had every intention on showing her just what Soul Boy had deprived her of the night they had made love.
He worked the zipper on his leather pants and pushed her back against the door. He expected her to protest when he used both his hands to lift her up and position her so he could enter her. She made noise, but nothing resembling no or stop left her mouth, so he continued sheathing his cock with her molten-like core.
Once he was inside of her with her hands clutching at his shoulders almost as if she was hanging onto him for dear life, the need to feed from her diminished. If she had not been pregnant with his child he would not have cared about taking too much blood from her, but he was aware she needed her blood to stay strong. And he wanted his Slayer and his child strong.
He retracted his fangs from her neck, surprised at the soft whimper he heard in response to their no longer being imbedded in her neck. So she had enjoyed it, he could not help but smile at that realization as he continued to thrust into her. He carried her to the bed, pulling out of her only long enough to position them both on the bed.
“Willow,” she said, the protest a little too late Angelus mused to himself.
“She’ll wait,” he said gruffly, covering her mouth with his to stave off any further protests she might have. “I won’t,” he added. Drusilla had felt like this once upon a time, warm and tight, but she had never fit around his cock as if she had been made just for him. She had not been willing as a human either, which while fun was not the same.
While perhaps not as conscientious as Soul Boy was their first time together, Angelus did see that his mate was pleased before seeking his own release. Unfortunately, with both of their climaxes came remorse - at least on his Slayer’s part. He felt none, had nothing to feel remorse for. She belonged to him, but he was aware of the fact she had yet to get her mind wrapped around that concept just yet. In her opinion, she had just let the enemy fuck and feed off her.
“I’ve got to get downstairs,” she said softly from underneath him.
“Go then,” he said, rolling beside her on the bed.
She stood from the bed and took off the underwear she had only moments ago just put on, replacing them with a fresh pair. “I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to Willow. Or Giles. Oh my god.”
“Explain what to them?”
“Hello? You were here, unless you’ve regained your soul, you were here a few minutes ago. Not to mention,” her hand flew to her neck. “You bit me!”
“But you loved it, Lover, as I knew you would.”
“Stop calling me that!” she demanded.
“You said I couldn’t call you that since we weren’t lovers. Doesn’t what we just did make us lovers again?”
“No!”
“Wasn’t it good for you, Baby?”
“No,” she said running a hairbrush through her hair with quick, almost violent strokes. “Are you going to be here when I come back up?”
“Unless there’s a solar eclipse, yes, I’ll be here waiting for you, Lover.”
“This is not happening again. So, you can stay as long as you know that it is not happening again.”
“If you say so, Buff.”
“I say so. It was a momentary bout with insanity, I just missed kissing you so much,” she said, slamming her brush down on her dresser. She turned to look at him then. “Stay up here. My mom cannot know you are here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a sardonic grin. “Are you sure you don’t want to go again, Lover? With your blood in me I am feeling pretty good.” She left her room, practically slamming her door behind her as he laughed at the dismayed look on her face in response to his question.