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Cordelia made a startled noise, somewhere between a sigh and a gasp, and she gave an involuntary buck of her hips against his hand.

Silk, this time. Black, fitting close, an embroidered CC in gold lettering on the left. A frivolous purchase back in Thurisaz, when such items had been readily available.

The belt was slid around his neck, used as a loop to draw him in close. "Tell me what you fantasize about," Cordelia asked, knowing full well that the answer was unlikely to be anything so ordinary or harmless as some threesomes or light bondage.

Using his own belt against him. Shocking. He was draw in, tough.

"I wonder if you really want to know." Another smile.

"Shall I flatter you and tell you I fantasize about you?" He traced those embroidered letters with his fingertips--from the inside.

In reply, she gave a very unladylike snort of amusement.

"No," was the flat reply.

She enjoyed flattery and praise--when it was real. But truth had always been a bigger turn on for her than compliments, and the question hadn't been a covered attempt at fishing for some.

It was some draw, some pull at a magnetic opposite. She had never been very nice, had never been very kind, but she was good, and with the visions and the light and the other gifts she had received, the Powers That Be had decided to amplify that goodness in her, fill her with it until sometimes, it literally shone out of her.

Being faced with the opposite of that, with someone who was filled with darkness? It created some sort of pull, whether she wanted it or not.

"All right," he said, searching for the catch and placket on her skirt so as to slip it off and toss it to the floor with his shirt (mind the stone: it really is a bit chilly).

He sighed a little. "I've done so much, you know. I've played games with ropes and whips and knives. I've been the lover in a cuckolding. And you certainly know that I've been the third in bed with a pair of lovers." He shrugged a little. "It's a wonder that there's anything left to fantasize about at all."

"But..." and he leaned down near to her ear again, "I do think I'd like to have someone...in my thrall again. Someone who would hate me if they knew who and what I am--or at the very least fear me--and hate me all the more for what I'd do to them. But they'd be blissfully ignorant. And I would keep them that way, even while I kept them, even while I took them to my bed. I could keep them in my house, amused with a thousand different magical playthings, but eagerly awaiting my coming home again. They would be happy and they would be mine, body and heart and mind and soul, never knowing that everything they hated kept them. Perhaps they'd even love me--that would be a wonder--or think they love me, at least. So, with that, in such perfect love and perfect trust, then we could play all those games you're thinking of, with ropes and knives and things, or even with just the soft touches of two lovers together--I see some of those same ideas glittering in your eyes even now, all the things you expected me to say. I'll let you imagine them, everything from hiding on rooftops to sharp blows to sweet kisses. But they're only details, those games. They're the trappings of things, they're steps in a false dance. And when they're taken off, in the glow of fading pleasure, the game is over--or so one thinks. Because that would be my delight: to have this person who knows they hate me but thinks they love me chained to me by their own free will."

Power. That was the truth of it. Now and always.

And he kissed her again.

Now she really did lift her hips, arching less toward him and more away from the coldness of the stone.

She wondered who this shrine was for, and whether some deity was about to strike them with lightning for this particular act of blasphemy.

But, regardless of the impending doom and regardless of all the horrible things he had just said, the kiss was returned. Lips and tongue and teeth, so she wasn't sure whether she was tasting herself or him anymore.

Maybe it really was a spell, but she didn't think so. Something less magical, more primal. The earliest and still most popular of all the sins in the book.

Cordelia wrapped her legs around the man's hips and gave a yank.

There you go! Grab ahold of whatever and go for it!

He laughed again. "Wow, hey--I didn't think that'd work that well. Here I thought you just liked it when the objects of your affection fucked for your entertainment. But, hey, I'll take it."

He moved faster now--after all, he still had his jeans (mostly) on, she still had far more than that. And if they were going to defile or bless this particular shrine with their presence and their acts, he would have it all or nothing. Tugging and pulling, tossing aside this and that, slipping her underwear down (but not off, not quite yet), delighting in the sweet elastic snap and release of hooks and eyes coming undone. He liked power, it was true, but he liked skin and flesh too.

"I like that too," she agreed, even if she wasn't sure she had also liked what he had just said.

He dirty secret? A stash of gay erotica hidden under the bed of her apartment, back in LA. She hoped no one cleared her apartment while she was gone. She really didn't want Gunn or Wes making fun of her for some of those items when she got home.

Not quite slaughtered kings and dreams of hurting people for pleasure or power or whatever it was he wanted.

She helped him, cold as it was, to get her clothes off. Wriggling out of the shirt and slipping her arms out of the straps of her bra, revealing breasts a bit too perfect to be real (and happy 16th birthday, sweetheart).

Happy everyday. Real or not, they were a beautiful and welcome addition to this little gathering. You will forgive him of course, Cordelia, for a little slow, almost teenaged-boy groping.

Yes, those had definitely been tits that he'd felt that day when she'd hugged him and clung to him and tried to comfort Rory Fletcher the sad widower. He was sure of it now. They had been tits and they had in fact been these very tits and hail the conquering hero. (His sadly deceased wife had had a nice set too, come to think of it. Just come to think of it.)

Much better. And fuck these jeans, gosh. He kicked them off and away. Better completely off and lying on a stone altar bare-assed than hobbled by pants around one's ankles. At least in this situation.

"You're not cold, are you?"

Cold might be the least of her worries. For one thing, she could end up with skinned knees or a skinned ass on an altar like this.

"Freezing," she complained. "You couldn't have thrown me in a room with some cushions?"

And look at her, joking about the very matter which had been the cause of so much panic, not yet an hour ago. Laughing it up, as if she had not been concerned she would be getting chopped to bits by the very man that she let kiss her now.

No, then, she could not blame him for letting some hormones dictate a move.

Her hands got caught up in his hair, twisting and turning and grabbing it until it tangled around her fingers like woven threads. And she pulled, drawing him in for a kiss to his lips, his jaw, his throat.

Biting, pulling his hair, catching him with his own belt--this was shaping up to be rather a good time after all.

Ah, but it would never be her caught in his house, in his thrall. Not now, not now that she knew. Which was too bad. And he hoped it would crush her, or at least pain her, to know that she would never be that lucky one.

He nipped at her lip again. "Well. We'll get warmer."

Maybe. Possibly. Warmer, then colder--colder than before, perhaps.

He eased her back down against the altar, the sacrificial victim in this funny little Black Mass. That was the pleasure here: the situation, the setting. No need for accoutrements here. This would do as it already was, and brilliantly. He held her mouth in a kiss, held her close to him with one arm. But his free hand--that hand was definitely roaming, slipping across her stomach, sliding down in earnest now in between her legs (because the great irony of lying with this monster is that that monster was inclined to make the whole ordeal enjoyable for all involved).

And to hell with silk underwear (though he was wondering if he could keep this second pair as another prize).

Sure, Flagg, you can keep them--until she notices they're missing.

Personalized, embroidered underthings don't come cheap, you know.

But her mind was elsewhere at the moment, focused solely on his wandering hands, until--

Fuck. "I wouldn't do that if I were--" but the hurried warning was late, and she gasped at the touch. Warm, wet, sticky? Yes, decidedly, but not quite right and also, decidedly, more red than should have been the case.

She shrunk away, pressing down against the too cold, too hard stone.

"You wouldn't do that if you were...what? Me?"

But because he was him and not the cautionary him that she had tried to warn away, he persisted in fumbling around for a little while. And then and only then drew his hand back out.

Red.

Yeah. That's what he figured. She might be well on her way to getting slicked up but what he'd felt was too much too soon.

"So there'll be blood on the altar after all. I hope the gods will be pleased. Don't you?"

He traced a meaningless symbol (meaningless, yes, but let her wonder if it wasn't otherwise) on the side of the altar and licked off the back of his knuckles. Be careful: he's got a taste for flesh and blood now.

"Do you even believe in gods?"

She watched him, brown eyes focusing not on his face, but on the hand, and the color, and the way he kicked it away.

Not knowing if she was aroused or disgusted by the act added a whole knew knot in her stomach. What was wrong with her today?

And yes, the symbol on the altar was troublesome. Wesley would have known what it stood for, would have immediately have sensed whether to run away because an apocalypse was about to come down on them.

If she had to guess, though, she wouldn't have assumed that anything this man was etching in blood could be good.

He didn't answer, he only licked his lips and smiled. And wasn't there something voracious in the gesture, wasn't there something of the wolf before or after the kill, something of the wolf licking his chops.

He'd draw a whole meaningless circle around them--marks on the four edges, marks in the corners, lines to circumscribe the space in this dark and cold room.

But he'd need more if he was going to make so many marks as that (if he was). So he moved to touch her again.

She, at least, was certainly warm--inside, if not outside. The chill hadn't reached so deep yet.

"Stop," she said suddenly, not quite afraid, not so easily achieved with this girl, but certainly feeling something like apprehension.

She bumped her knees, squeezing her thighs together which trapped him more than stopped him, of course, but instinctive reactions were just that.

"Don't--do that anymore."

Cordelia attempted to sound certain, but as she wrenched his hand free, the words had risen in tone to nearly a question.

She examined his hand then, brows furrowed. And cautiously, so focused, she moved his hand to brush his fingertips against her belly, dragging the red out against the white of her skin.

"No?" he asked quietly. But he let her guide his hand.

Now that, indeed, was a beautiful sight: white on red, blood on skin. He drew another aimless, spirally glyph just above her navel.

"What shall I do instead?"

She watched his hand, quietly and disconcertingly fascinated.

"What is that?" Cordelia asked. "I mean, what does it mean?"

And even ask she asked, she slipped her own finger between her own legs, in her own blood--and then raised a hand to mark his face. Cheeks and forehead, like a warrior.

He could mark her, but she would mark him too.

"Nothing. It doesn't mean anything."

And, in truth, it didn't (well, strictly speaking it could be made to mean something but, unto itself, it was only a swirling shape, vaguely primitive, the kind of marks one might find in paint on cave walls or, yes, on the sides of strange altars).

He closed his eyes and let her mark him--like bloodying the faces of young hunters after their first kill, perhaps. But, in her mind, perhaps still more at ritual.

"Some men would fear a bleeding woman, you know."

"I know."

It would have grossed another good portion of them out. She hadn't been sure he wouldn't be.

"I can't imagine it's the most blood you've had your hands in, though." Cordelia drew her fingers back, wiped them on the stone beneath her, not entirely unconvinced a portal was about to open around them.

When most girls went after a fling with a bad boy, they just found someone with a motorcycle and some alcohol problems. Apparently she went the whole nine yards.

He grinned and he laughed deep in his throat, down in his chest. He pulled them close together again, skin against skin.

"You're right about that."

Metaphorically, literally--being an executioner was a messy job, for one thing. But if only she knew, if only she knew, that even her boy, the boy she would go to again--if not tonight then after the week was out--even his blood was on his hands. He, in his disguise, all painted blue and crouching alongside the rabble of the Good Man's forces, had let fly the bolt that had ruined the fine, dark, keen eye of Cuthbert Allgood. And he laughed again, low and dark.

A good thing she didn't know, really. There would be enough guilt for this little (or maybe not so little) act after the fact, without throwing in the fact that the evil man in question had not been a mistake simply for being evil, or for being a man that wasn't Bert, but for being an evil man that had actually killed Bert.

Too Greek by far. She'd never loved those tragedies. Too much chorus, too many masks, and don't get started about the misogyny (though perhaps, she who lies beneath the body of her captor has no room to judge).

"I'm right about a lot more things than most people think."

Legs wrapped around hips, nudging him closer, urging him on, wondering what it was about his laugh that made her blood chill again.

He smoothed his fingers across her face again, just as gently as before. Just thumbs moving slowly and softly across her cheekbones, back to her ears. He tucked his face down low along her neck again. His hands slipped into the cave under her hair.

She already had her legs wrapped around him. He was already between her legs. But, still.

"Let me inside," he whispered softly. "Would you do that? Let me inside."

Invitations are formalities. He didn't require them. But he thought she might like to hear it.

It comforted her one moment, placed her on edge the next. She liked to hear it, enjoyed the control, but it reminded her of all those vampires she'd encountered over the years. Soulless, cruel monsters that were waiting patiently for some poor shmuck to invite them inside, so they could destroy a life.

Even so. She'd made her decision.

"Yes," said the poor shmuck.

He had already guessed (already known?) her answer. But it still made him smile to hear it.

He leaned away, but only a little, only the smallest space between them, and rolled his hips against hers. One more kiss, long and lasting and deep (he was both surprised and not that she would let him kiss here: there were those who would not, regardless of what other acts transpired between them), and he pushed against her and into her.

The room was cold, this stone altar was cold, even he was cold, but she was warm--so very warm--inside.

She inhaled--a sound that turned into a hiss as she sucked air between her teeth.

It hit her like a brick to the face. She'd done it. She'd had time to run away and leave and to push him away and even to say no, no, no, she would not let him in.

She hadn't, and now there was the altar, her body, and his inside. Welcome and invited, like a cherished friend.

Bert's face presented itself at the worst of moments...and she pushed it away, opening her eyes to look instead at the man above her. "Rory," she said. And that wasn't quite right either, so "Randall Flagg."

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