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[Herein shall there be PSLs and goings-on.

Please exercise caution if you so choose to read this. Flagg being Flagg, I cannot guarantee everything that goes on here will be safe for work or even safe for life.]

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"With pleasure."

It was easy to hoist her up onto the altar: just hands around her back, hands around her hips, an easy lift, and holding on good and tight was certainly necessary.

He kept his feet on the ground for a moment and amused himself with her legs, stroking the tops of her thighs, tracing the curve of her hips. He leaned against her knees and looked at her, kindly, openly (because it made for better contrast with his stories).

"I was an executioner once too. I can't tell you how many men--and women, for that matter--I put to death. Maybe I could, if I thought about it. But I remember the swing and fall of the axe, and the sounds of the crowds come to watch."

[advancedbosoms]

"Why?" she asked, watching him, watching his eyes and face and most curiously, at those hands that had done so many terrible things.

"Why were you an executioner? Just for fun? Just to watch heads roll?"

She shucked off her shoe, toe to heel and kicking one red pump off, then the other. They clattered onto the floor, loud and bright against the gray stone of the floor.

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"Well, someone has to do it," he said, laughing. "It's not a bad job. It's a necessary thing in many places. And an honorable profession. And, besides, the executioner gets his fee--from one side or the other. From the friends of the condemned to keep the axe sharp, from the enemies of the condemned to keep it dull."

He looked down at his hands, then up at her again.

"Do you want more stories or shall I climb up there next to you?"

[advancedbosoms]

Capitalism, then? Well, couldn't fault him for that one, really. Not when she had always been the one pushing for Angel to charge people for saving them.

Cordy didn't answer, but she laid back on the altar, knees up, hair spreading around her head like a dark halo, while her arms curled up above.

Either presenting herself as a virgin (ha!) sacrifice or waiting for Leonardo DiCaprio to come paint her.

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He would take that as an invitation, thank you very much, and so hopped up there himself. He shook his boots off to let them lie with her shoes (hey, nice little referential pun there, when one thought about it...if shoes were wont to copulate; fucking shoes).

Well, anyway: he sat there alongside her, leaning over her, considering her again, and twining a lock of her hair in his fingers. Another smile--one of his sweeter, more charming ones.

"Look at you. How did you get yourself into this strange set of circumstances?"

And he bent to kiss her again.

[advancedbosoms]

She allowed it. Not much point in pushing him away now, was there? She'd surrendered easily. Like Caesar, he had come and seen and conquered (although perhaps not all as of yet and not in that order). If she was parting her legs for the man who had laughed and said what a handsome torso she would make, then why not lips? Much less intimate, after all.

Still a betrayal, though.

"Would you still want me," Cordelia asked against his lips, "If Bert didn't?"

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"I think I would. After all, I wanted you before I even knew he wanted you."

He smiled and kissed her again.

"Now, of course knowing that he wants you too--maybe that makes the wanting all the better. Can you blame me for it? Everyone wants what they don't have."

[advancedbosoms]

True. They did.

It was what had driven her to make most of her decisions in life and love, after all. Wanting that thing that was just out of reach.

Of course, getting it had never been as satisfying as she'd hoped. That was life, of course, the bitch.

"Can't blame you," she agreed. "Not for that." And fingers swift and nimble, she was unbuttoning his shirt.

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"I knew you'd understand," he said and took to tugging at her clothes too.

And now it was beginning to come over him, that feeling of want, that feeling of animal want, of metaphorical hunger, of wanting to literally bite. It settled over him and down in his belly somewhere and sent him back to her neck again, to nibble and to nip.

[advancedbosoms]

The bites didn't hurt, but she gasped anyway. For a flicker of a moment, for the briefest second of time, she had wondered if he would really bite down.

She could see it. Her body, sprawled across the altar as he tore at her flesh, biting past flesh and muscle and skin, tearing her throat out completely as her own innards dyed the stone crimson.

Cordelia shook her head, clearing the thought. No. Maybe another time, another place. Not now. Surely, he wouldn't be tearing her to pieces now.

Instead of running, she tossed his shirt to the ground.

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He could, of course. Sharp teeth--sharper teeth, anyway--were nothing new. He could bite and tear, if he wanted. And in such a locked and stony room he could fall on his slender prey roaring as loud as he felt like, and guzzle her blood with open joy.

But not for the time being. Not for now. He bit (gently), she gasped, and he pulled back just enough.

"I know," he smiled, "I bet I'll leave a mark. I have a bad habit of that. Wouldn't it be a shame if someone saw it, too."

Lovebites as red as scarlet letters, left--sent, perhaps, if they were the other sort of letters, to those who would best be able to read them.

His hands were up under the hem of her skirt now, sliding up, seeking her skin and her shape, slipping up the outsides of her thighs, slipping down the insides. Closer closer, but not too close yet.

[advancedbosoms]

Cordelia imagined it.

She imagined Bert finding the mark, and asking her, and she didn't know what she would say. Nonsense, it wasn't what it looked like, it was just--what? A rash, a mark from a curling iron, a scratch?

The nerves should have hit her, but they didn't. Maybe that's what this was, after all. A way to push him away, or to pull back after how quickly things had been moving. And who would be a better pick for that sort of game than the man hovering above her right now?

"How often do people know?" she asked. "When you take people to bed, how often do they know who you are?"

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"It's not so much 'who' as 'what.' And it's not so much 'what' as 'how much.' Think about it that way."

He hummed quietly against her skin. She was beginning to look an enticing mess, he thought, with her hair spread across that stone table and with her skirt hiked up around her hips. He was contentedly and aimlessly running his thumbs along her stomach.

"I think some of them had no idea--at least, not until after. I think they caught on then. Some knew. The really clever ones knew. And some--a very, very few--I told." He touched her nose, teasing. "Count yourself lucky again, you among these chosen few."

[advancedbosoms]

"I've always been one of those 'lucky few' who know what really goes bump in the night."

Her gaze was cool, then, level in its approximation of him. A moment, though, and she turned to nip at his finger, drawing it into her mouth, running her tongue along the tip of it:

When she bit down on him, it was hard enough to hurt.

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And it did hurt--in the most wonderful, painful, beautiful, pleasurable way. He groaned--it was almost a growl. The warmth of her mouth and the thought that she had already taken him inside her (imagine this to be the first invasion of her body) and she had bitten him (which was only turnabout being fair play). She had bitten on this finger, on this hand, that had done such remarkable and horrible things.

He hoped it left a mark to linger for a few days. He would admire it at whiles, if it did, and remember this little encounter.

"You sharp, wicked thing." His other hand went up under her shirt. "Are you sure that was wise? You shouldn't put things like that in your mouth. There could be horrible diseases or poisons there. You don't know where it's been. Whatever I have might be catching."

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"If I'm going to catch a disease from you," she said, "I doubt it's your finger that's going to do it."

A pointed once over, then.

Would he, though? Did he spread disease, did his body do that? The great, almighty Wizard that apparently spread chaos and destruction through the universe--could he catch chlamydia?

She laughed, suddenly, though it was swallowed up in a cough.

"Should I be concerned about poisonous body parts?" she asked, as she set to work on his belt.

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"No, I don't think you need to be concerned about that."

About other things? Maybe. There were so many women who would murmur in the moments just after that they were cold, so cold, so cold that they never thought they'd be warm again. They would turn away from him and huddle into the blankets (or whatever was passing for blankets at the time) and hide their faces. They would turn their eyes away when they took him, like he was some bad omen hanging over them. There were those who went mad, of course. And there was Gabrielle, since she was well on his mind at the moment, who had neither gone mad nor turned her eyes away, and he wondered sometimes what there was inside her that was twisted and blackened--either before they crossed paths or during or after.

The floor was freezing, Cordelia had said. This stone altar wasn't much better. And how much colder would she be after? She was warm now, in and out. Would she still feel it then? Or would she huddle and murmur and look away after?

Maybe her light would keep her warm.

If she was working at his belt, then he'd just go even further: and without further delay, he slid his hand between her legs, up and up, feeling for the edges of her underwear (if she was wearing any; sometimes one wonders).

Ah.

Now. What color might they be? Black? Red? Red lace? Wait, no, they couldn't be red lace, because he still had that pair that he'd taken from the doorknob. Unless it was another pair of the same, which was possible. Blue? Pure, virginal white? He gave an experimental tug.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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"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.

[advancedbosoms]

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.

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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.

[advancedbosoms]

"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).

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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.