Nexus Chapter 11
Xander woke up with his head pillowed comfortably on his vampire´s shoulder, one hand spread out on the magnificent bare chest. He lay unmoving, smiling as he recalled the night before.
His spontaneous decision to court Angelus´ jealousy with his comments about Spike had yielded spectacular results. Xander spent a few blissful minutes reliving the lengthy session over Angelus´ massive thighs, him squirming and babbling his apologies as the vampire repeatedly and emphatically reasserted his exclusive ownership with the hard palm of his hand.
By the time Angelus decided that phase of the lesson was over, Xander´s ass had been on fire, his cock swollen and leaking. Before he could get his bearings, Xander had found himself on his knees on the bed, that same hard hand holding his head down to the mattress while Angelus fucked him like the demon he was, scolding Xander sternly all the while, reminding him in no uncertain terms just who it was that he was bonded to, and painting deliciously scary scenarios about what happened to bad little boys who let their eyes wander. Xander had come so hard he almost passed out.
After, worn out in the best possible way, he had fallen asleep while being cuddled and purred to, but then... Xander shivered with pleasure at the memory of what had followed, when Angelus had returned from the hunt. One minute he was sound asleep, the next he was being jerked out of sleep by his insistent demon lover, who had proceeded to... Holy cow. That. Was. Hot. Had he dreamed that? Xander wiggled a little, and the throb in his nether regions provided a hearty no. Xander smiled contentedly, then blushed suddenly as he recalled his declaration of love. But...he thought about that purr, and reassured himself that Angelus had liked it.
He let himself bask in the memories. Angelus had been so passionate, demanding. He thought about the taint of worry that he had sensed beneath the vampire´s ardor, and wondered about its cause. He felt a sudden edge of guilt at the suspicion that it might have been something to do with his teasing about Spike. That was meant to titillate, not to worry his lover. Feeling remorseful, Xander kissed the silky skin he rested against, his hand stroking lightly.
This was something of a treat; the vampire seemed to need a great deal less sleep than Xander, so the boy seldom got a chance to see him in repose. Not one to waste the opportunity, Xander studied his lover, luxuriating in his closeness.
Wherever his own flesh had rested, his bedmate was warm from the touch of his body, but elsewhere he was cold. Xander pushed the awareness aside. He knew what Angelus was, even though he never fed in front of Xander, or talked about killing. All the same, he had seen the demon, witnessed first hand the master´s brutality. He just routinely put it out of his thoughts. He supposed he´d have to face it all someday, but for now...Xander sighed as the vampire stirred in his sleep, turning his angelic face in Xander´s direction.
For now, all Xander could think about was the wonder of having anyone––let alone someone (or something) as beautiful as Angelus––want him, treasure him. Overcome afresh with love and gratitude, Xander resumed his tender stroking of his slumbering lover´s chest, his heart constricting when the vampire murmured in his sleep “Mmmm. Sweet!.Sweet bitch!.”
At that, Xander had to touch more. Sighing softly, he reached up and ran careful fingertips down Angelus´ cheek, whispering across the beautiful mouth. “Mmmm...” Angelus made a sound of contentment, encouraging Xander to further exploration. He stroked the vampire´s sensitive throat, a hot zone on vampires, and saw the sheet beginning to tent over Angelus´ groin.
Angelus had one arm draped around Xander. The other hand lay relaxed on his abdomen, and Xander examined it admiringly. It was huge, much bigger than Xander´s, and Xander´s hand wasn´t small. Although they were wide of palm and thick of finger, Angelus´ hands were beautiful, shapely and long–boned, and always meticulously cared for. For all the violence and mayhem they were capable of, they looked like an artist´s hands, or a musician´s. Xander stroked the silky skin on the back, tracing the elegant bones, and shuddered with arousal as he thought of some of the things these hands had done to him.
Glancing up to make sure he was still asleep, Xander lifted the vampire´s hand carefully, turning it so he could press kisses to the palm, loving the way the fingers automatically curled around his jaw when he did so. Xander sighed against the soft skin, then shifted so he could get the big fingers into his mouth, suckling gently on one after the other, listening to the vampire moan a little, stirring in his sleep.
With one last lingering kiss on the broad knuckles, Xander placed Angelus´ hand back in its original place, running questing fingertips up the wrist, over the powerful forearm and up over the silky skin over the bulging biceps. Gliding back to the broad chest, Xander flattened his hand, stroking the expanse lovingly, bringing his mouth back into play, brushing his lips across the silky skin, peppering it with kisses.
Angelus dreamed of his boy, dreamed Xander was touching him, and woke up ravenously horny to find that the dream had been borrowed from reality; Xander was lazily spreading soft kisses across his stomach.
Pleased, Angelus rested his hand lightly on the dark head. At his touch, Xander laid his head down on the hard muscled flesh, rubbing with his cheek, and grinned winsomely up at the vampire.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” Angelus rested his hand on the back of Xander´s neck, massaging lightly. “I was dreaming about you.” The vampire smiled as his boy flushed with shy pleasure.
“I would have been crushed if you had opened your eyes and told me you had been dreaming about Tom Cruise.”
Angelus grimaced. “I wouldn´t know, but Spike tells me he made a ‘right poncy vampire.´”
Xander rubbed against the silky belly, feeling a little devilish. “Not as bad as Brad Pitt.” A light nibble at the vampire´s navel. “But they both looked REALLY good.”
A growl and a tug at Xander´s hair. “Ye´d better watch such talk, boy. For the sake o´ ye´r poor arse.”
Hiding his grin, Xander innocently remarked. “You´re the one that brought up Spike.”
Angelus´ grip tightened and he guided the boy´s face lower. “Think we better put that mouth to work before it gets ye in trouble, boy.”
“Whatever you say.” Contentedly, Xander pulled the sheets away from the vampire´s groin to reveal an angry red erection, head glistening with precome. “Happy to oblige.” he murmured as he went to work.
Hours later, Angelus, energized, pulled on his clothes and looked down at his claimed lying limp and glassy–eyed in a welter of stained sheets. “Well, are ye comin´ with me, or no?”
“What, for the fifth time today? Why don´t I just lie here and recover.” Xander stretched, wincing at the scattered aches he felt.
Angelus looked down at his boy, unsettled to find himself genuinely uneasy to be parted from him. After a moment, he spoke again. “No chance. Get yer ass up and put on yer pants, unless ye want to go naked.
Grinning, Xander feigned reluctance for about a second, then popped up and grabbed a pair of sweatpants and followed his vampire downstairs.
Angelus worried. When he was a fledgling, new to everything, he had obsessed about Darla. Every separation from her had been agony. That was as it should be; she was his Sire. All that had passed eventually. True, he´d never lost his desire for Darla, but it soon became a manageable thing. Since then, he´d had his passions, but had never again felt out of control.
Now, he did, and it wasn´t safe. Hell, he dreamed about the boy, and felt his pull even in the midst of the hunt. Even as he drew Xander against him on the sofa in the great room, his mind was working, searching out a way to create a reasonable distance between himself and the boy. It had to be done.
Even as he thought it, the boy snuggled against him, and the vampire felt his resistance melting away. When his childer made their way into the room, Angelus felt himself tense, remembering Xander´s offhand remarks about Spike. With a suddenness that made Xander squeak, he lifted his boy, seating him on his lap. So what if the boy didn´t like it, it was how it was going to be.
Angelus readied himself for a tussle, but none was forthcoming. Xander, once over his surprise, wriggled down to mold himself against Angelus´ body and laid comfortably into the vampire, snugging his face into the vampire´s powerful neck, carefully not looking in Spike´s direction.
****************
On edge, fed but not satisfied by his hasty, perfunctory kill, Angelus turned back home with a muttered curse, a bare hour after having left it. Here was a situation that couldn´t be allowed to continue. His obsession with the boy was eating him alive. How could any master worthy of the name be so besotted that he lost his taste for the hunt, for BLOOD, for hell´s sake. This spell had to be broken before he lost himself completely, before he no longer knew himself.
Even as he thought it, desire for the boy coursed through him. No, not broken, never broken, just...adjusted. Mastered, somehow. It could be done, and without giving up the boy. There had to be a way. He was Angelus, the Master of Masters. He was in control. And the boy was his. Some measure of confidence restored, Angelus sank back into the lust that drove him, moving with speed across the night–dark land.
In the front door, up the stairs in a blur, down the corridor to the master bedroom, and No Xander. Dead heart in his throat, Angelus fought down the panic of not knowing his boy´s whereabouts, and went to check the bathroom. Empty.
Urgently, he descended the stairs and sped into the great room. No one. Nothing. The master fought down his rising terror and closed his eyes, quieting his senses to taste the air. There. His scent. Leading out the garden door. Xander had never disobeyed his express order not to leave the house, so...
Ragged with terror, Angelus burst through the French doors into the garden, then stopped short, knee–weakening relief feeding his howl of rage at the scene before him. On the flagstone terrace, Drusilla and his Xander sat on the ground almost nose to nose. Spike, in his wheelchair, hovered over them, so close that when Xander straightened guiltily, his back pressed against the younger vampire´s leg.
Maddened, furious, Angelus flew at his childe, lifting him by the throat and flinging him out of his chair and away. By the time Spike hit the stone floor with a sickening thud, Angelus was dangling a shrieking Drusilla far above the ground, shaking her like a terrier with a rat before slinging her, too, away, vaguely hearing ribs crack as she struck the retaining wall. Xander knelt frozen and round–eyed, clutching a half–grown black kitten.
Crazed, Angelus snatched the hapless creature out of his boy´s arms and was an instant away from snapping its tiny spine when the boy´s distressed cry penetrated the rage that clouded his mind. With a sound of disgust, he tossed the little animal away. It landed on the turf nearby and hissed to show its displeasure, then shook itself and scampered away unharmed into the night.
“Angelus!” The boy ventured nervously. The vampire jerked Xander to his feet and snarled at him at close range and then turned, pulling Xander behind him back into the house.
Xander had never seen Angelus like this; the vampire growled all the time he was dragging Xander inside the house, through the great room and foyer, and up the stairs to their room. Breathless at the vampire´s speed, Xander was too concerned with keeping up to try for conversation. Once they were actually in the room, though, he talked fast.
“Okay. Okay, I know you´re really mad. I wasn´t supposed to be outside, and I wasn´t supposed to be near them, but Drusilla was going to try to turn that kitten, and I!..”
“Be. Quiet. Now.”
Plan B. Xander stepped closer to the vampire. If Xander stepped close to vampire, vampire would take Xander in his arms. Once Xander was in vampire´s arms, vampire wouldn´t stay mad at Xander. That´s how it worked.
When Xander got close to Angelus, the vampire stepped backwards, away. Uh oh. Xander started to be really alarmed. The vampire looked completely forbidding, and he was trembling with rage. Xander swallowed and reached tentatively to touch Angelus´ arm. “Angelus, please!.”
“SHUT UP!”
The vampire grabbed Xander´s arm in a bruising grip, marched him to the table and bent him over across it. “Hold on t´ the other edge of the table and don´t let go, and don´t y´ move, or I´ll be tying you down. Understand me?” Xander nodded quickly, then gasped as the vampire yanked his pants down to his knees.
His nose pressed to the table, Xander swallowed nervously, hoping to hell that, as mad as he was, Angelus would still use lube. He heard Angelus unbuckling his belt, then the swish as he drew it from around his waist. Getting a clue, Xander tightened his grip on the edge of the table and squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself.
Angelus gripped the buckle end of the heavy black belt and wrapped some of its length around his palm. Before him, his claimed was trembling as he waited for his punishment. And so he should, Angelus thought furiously. This was no play spanking; this was discipline, and it was meant to be remembered vividly.
A voice clamored in his head, reminding him that the boy was mortal, and that this was his first serious infraction. But he couldn´t get out of his mind the picture of his boy, out in the garden where he could be snatched away, and sitting with his back cozily against Spike´s leg!
With a growl, Angelus drew back his arm and swung. The belt whistled through the air and landed across Xander´s buttocks with a CRACK! that echoed in the room like gunshot.
Xander cried out in pain and alarm as the first stroke laid a line of fire across his ass. After that, he tried to take it quietly, but God, did it hurt.
CRACK!
CRACK!
CRACK!
He did okay for about the first ten strokes, but then Angelus laid three or four particularly sharp blows right at the tender crease where cheek meets thigh, and Xander cried out again and continued to each time Angelus hit him.
Angelus counted the blows silently, stopping at twenty–four. A dozen for being outside, and a dozen for being alone with Spike and Drusilla seemed sufficient.
Hardening his heart, he opened his pants and took out his cock, rock hard from strapping the boy. Knowing Xander still had to be sore from the night before and their long session today, Angelus relented and applied a little lube to his erection.
“Boy, you will reach behind and spread yourself for me. Do it. NOW!”
Humiliated, Xander reached back with shaking hands and spread his cheeks apart, hissing at the pressure on his fiery skin.
Silently, Angelus plunged in in one hard stab, then began to piston in and out, machine–like, gripping the edge of the table. After a few minutes, he took Xander´s wrists and replaced them across the table, then gripped the boy´s hips for better leverage. Xander moaned, but for the most part accepted this part of his punishment in silence.
But he was devastated. Angelus had taken him roughly before, with passion, with lust, even with anger, but never unfeelingly. This was unmistakably nothing more than a cold assertion of dominance. The pain of the whipping he had just gotten, even the pain of Angelus deliberately humiliating him, was nothing compared to the pain of Angelus withholding all feeling from him. He decided he really, really hated it.
He´d gotten the beginnings of a hard on when Angelus took the belt to him, but it wilted as Angelus fucked him. There was none of Angelus usual creativity, his pleasure in sex, in evidence. This was just mechanical and punishingly hard. It felt like he was being raped by a stranger. Xander withdrew into his mind, and fantasized about being held by Angelus, sitting on his lap, hearing his purr.
Angelus felt his balls tighten and pulled out of Xander´s body to shoot his tepid seed onto the boy´s buttocks and back. He rubbed the semen in briskly, marking him, then stroked himself quickly back to erection and plunged back into Xander and resumed his vigorous, businesslike thrusting. This time, when he was ready to come, he pulled out, jerked Xander upright, turned him and pushed him down onto his back on the table to come on his torso and cock and balls. Eyes blank and cold, he rubbed this, too, roughly in, then tucked himself away and zipped up.
“Go to bed. And don´t wash.” His voice was flat and toneless, and he poured himself a measure of whisky and sat in his chair to drink it, staring brooding into the fire. Xander, feeling lower than dirt, got himself up off the table and limped down the hall to the bathroom, where he peed then washed the tears and snot off his face. The spunk that Angelus had marked him with already itched, but Xander wasn´t anywhere close to stupid enough to wash any of it off.
Feeling empty inside, he shuffled back to the bedroom, sent Angelus one last desperately longing glance, then climbed dispiritedly into the bed, settling out of necessity onto his stomach.
Angelus sat by the fire for half an hour or so, listening to Xander stifle his tears in his pillow. He´d let the boy off lightly enough. The least he could do was to make the boy spend a night stewing in his own juices, but damned if he hadn‘t become too weak to manage even that. Disgusted with himself, he sighed and gave in.
“Xander, come here.”
A moment´s silence, then a rustling sound from the bed, and his boy was padding over, moving with some difficulty, to stand in front of him, staring forlornly at the floor.
“Do you know how angry you made me?”
A miserable nod.
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
A moment´s silence, then the boy burst into tears in earnest, completely demoralized. “I´m sorry. I´m so sorry. PLEASE don´t be mad at me any more. I´ll never do that again, I swear.”
Angelus studied his penitent boy for a time, then said softly, “Come here, then.”
Xander looked up at him hopefully, and Angelus opened his arms. Xander scrambled hastily into his lap, wrapping his arms around the vampire´s neck, snuggling in gratefully and ignoring the throbbing pain in his abused backside.
Angelus stroked his boy´s belly as he spoke. “Do tell me, where was your Chip this night? Since I gave him to ye, I´ve got no right to send him to his final death, but I´m that tempted to beat him to within an inch of it for this.”
Xander pulled away slightly in alarm. “No, please don´t. It was my fault. I was at the foot of the steps, with a guard waiting for me at the top, and I told Chip I was going up right then, told him to go ahead and go out!” Out to hunt, of course, but Xander evaded that fact in his mind.
“I meant to go, but I saw the moonlight shining in.” Xander paused, and Angelus felt a spark of understanding; the boy was sure to be restless, after so many weeks without being out in the air at all. “I swear, all I meant to do was just stand in the doorway. But then Drusilla was out there with that cat, and she was going on about how she was going to turn it, and I didn´t think. I just wanted to talk her out of it. I like cats.”
“Well, ye´ll think twice next time, will y´not?” Xander nodded emphatically, and Angelus petted him forgivingly. “Just so ye´ll know, this is a recurrin´ theme with Drusilla; she´s always after turnin´ this or that. Puppies, budgies, whatever. Tried to turn a weasel once.” he said with a shudder of memory. “That was well more than a century ago, up in the north o´ England. There was some question of who was going to be eaten by who, that time; t‘was quite a determined weasel, don‘t ye know.” Angelus smiled to hear Xander giggle through his tears. “Since then, Spike´s gotten that good at distractin´ her away from it. Your cat probably woulda been safe without ye.”
“Oh. Okay.”
They sat in silence for a while, until Angelus began to feel quite a bit more mellow, and Xander was drowsing against him. “Do you want a bath, then, before we turn in?”
Xander looked up at him hopefully. “Can I? It kind of itches.”
Angelus sat him on his feet. “Go on then. Make it quick.”
When Xander returned, warm and fragrant from his hasty bath, Angelus was already in bed, the lights low. Xander lay down (on his stomach again) and looked wistfully at the vampire. Angelus held out his arms, and Xander moved hastily into them, pillowing his head on the vampire´s broad chest.
The demon looked down at the dark head, unsettled by the yearning he felt.
“Ye may feel hard done by tonight, boy, but the truth o´ the matter is, I´ve spoiled ye rotten, there´s no denyin´ it.”
Xander looked up at him, drowsy. “I like being spoiled.”
“Then best watch yersel´.”
Xander grinned up at him, then snuggled back down on the broad shoulder, not noticing that Angelus hadn´t been smiling.
