Part 89

“What do you think?” the dark vampire asked after a minute.

“They’ll do,” his childe replied, his voice rich with emotion.  He stared at the closed door, as though still seeing the naked and adorned pets as they filed through it.

Angel nodded, a small smile upon his face.  “Yeah,” he murmured, eyes gleaming as the same image filled his mind.  “They will.”

*   *   *

Angel’s shower, after the collaring ceremony was completed, was long and leisurely.  He was incredibly aroused by what had occurred during the hours past, but had been at pains – considerable pains – to keep that hidden.  Hidden as well as possible given the huge erection that strained beneath his thin workout pants, that is.  He’d given no sign or signal of desiring any of the others to do anything about it, at any rate, and though there had been numerous subtle glances, all had respected that silent command and left him alone.  He wasn’t in the shower for more than a minute before he’d come all over the tile wall with a low groan, hot water gushing over him as cool seed surged from his throbbing prick.  The contrast was delicious.

But it hadn’t been enough.  The images of Spike with the pets from the night before filled his mind and it took two more very rough sessions with his own hands before the images finally faded to a more manageable state.  It was almost ten o’clock before Angel finally left his room.  Pausing outside Wesley’s room, he heard soft murmuring within.  All three pets were there.  He nodded to himself with a small smile, and after a quick stop in the kitchen for some blood, headed downstairs to work on the paintings.  He didn’t make it further than the antechamber to the cage room, however.  Taped to the empty boxes that hid the interior room’s door, was a large piece of paper, and on it there were just two words; The Hall.  The writing was in Spike’s hand.

He let a tentative sense of anticipation fill him as he left the antechamber and headed down the corridor towards the big room that served as both their training space and courtly hall.  The times when he had been alone with Spike lately had been few and far between, what with the need for excessive training and attention of the pets, and he and his childe’s reticence since the return from the conclave.  He wished now that he hadn’t been so vehement in his assurance that Spike would be the arbiter of anything that took place between them.  It was taking more than a fair bit of time to back off from the cliff that that path had led to; time that could have been much better spent re-establishing their long-repressed bond.  He craved that now, and cursed all the distractions with Clan and Order that necessarily kept him from focusing on the one thing he wanted more than anything else; the return of his boy.

His musing provided yet another distraction, and he was five feet into the hall before his brain registered the sight fifty feet away.  He stopped abruptly and the door slid closed behind him with a loud clang as he stared at the figure at the center of the star.  Spike knelt where the pets had hours before, with his back to the door and facing the elevated dais with its chair and banner.  He was naked.

As the pets had, the blond sat on his haunches in the at-ease position, hands on his thighs, eyes focused forward.  Angel drew in a deep breath, then slowly moved toward the kneeling figure.  As he passed his childe and circled to the front, Spike slid smoothly into the at-attention position, rising up on his knees and locking his hands behind his back.  His eyes dropped to the floor.  Angel’s gaze went immediately to the smaller vampire’s now fully exposed mid-section and his not-so small genitalia.  He was, of course, hard.  It was a few moments before the darker vampire could draw his gaze from that fascinating sight, but something on the floor, just in front of his childe, finally caught his attention.  A second sharp breath hitched in his throat as he focused on the object waiting there; a coiled bull-whip.

Spike kept his eyes resolutely downward, holding his body in the taut position required of the at-attention pose.  The only thing he could see, besides the floor and his hard, purple cock jutting out stiffly from between pale, spread thighs, was Angel’s bare feet and the bottom few inches of the black cotton workout pants he wore and the bullwhip lying coiled between them.  His nostrils flared as he tried to take in any other non-visual cues.  Confusion and a bit of anger perhaps, though he wasn’t sure it was directed at him.  Overall, though, there wasn’t really much that got past the sire scent, and that he would recognize bound, gagged and blindfolded, even after more than a century of separation.

“Why?”

Spike’s jaw ticked, but he held himself absolutely still, trying not to betray how much that soft voice affected him.

“I tortured you over the Ring of Amarra before the downfall of the Hellmouthe, and since I’ve been back, I’ve done nothing but fight and argue with you,” he finally replied.  “I ridiculed you in front of your humans.”  The other vampire thought he had finished, but after a short pause, Spike continued on, his voice now soft and hoarse, “I denied you as my Sire.”  His jaw tightened at that declaration.  “Don’t deserve the trust you’ve given me, do I?”

A long silence followed, but finally Angel spoke.

“I betrayed Wesley and Gunn.  I tried to destroy Illyria.  It was my actions – or lack of them – that resulted in Doyle’s death, in Cordy’s and Fred’s.  The guilt of all that weighs heavily on my soul, but I did worse than that long before.  I abandoned you, and when you returned, I pretended the past meant nothing, that you meant nothing,” the soft voice murmured, words sinking so low as to be almost inaudible.  “You had good reason for the way you behaved, but me?  I was scared.  I was ashamed.  I didn’t know how to make it right, so I denied it all, denied you, my most favored childe.”  The pain evident at that statement, both on his face and in his voice, was clear.  “I took the easy way out.  I was no fit sire to you.  I deserved everything that happened.  Do I deserve this now, the trust all of you have given me?”

The tick in Spike’s jaw twitched again.

“’s not the same, not for me at least.”

Angel recognized the stubborn tone immediately.

“Why?” he repeated.

“You’re my sire,” the kneeling vampire replied after a long pause.  “My maker.  What you did…”  Spike paused and finally shook his head.  “None of it matters compared to that, does it?”

“It does to me.  Now,” he added.

Spike shook his head hard.  “Don’t, please.”

Angel frowned, confused by the request.

“Don’t regret me.  Couldn’t bear it if you did.”

Angel’s frown disappeared as his eyes widened with astonished consternation.  After a long pause he shook his head slowly.

“I should, but I can’t,” he said hoarsely.  “I can’t regret bringing you into eternity with me.”

The blonde’s eyes closed with relief, and he nodded, but said nothing else, and in that silence, Angel easily read his stubborn adherence to what he’d said previously.  He sighed.  There was no getting around this roadblock – they would have to clear it themselves.  He sighed again.  He knew what had to be done.

“Stand up,” Angel commanded.

Spike stood.  He kept his hands clasped behind his back, feet spread wide, and eyes trained on the floor.

“Put that back and bring me the small flogger and the short-handled crop.”

Spike looked up abruptly, frowning.

“Now,” Angel said, clearly in command mode.  “And bring the small Cavetti, too,” he added.

Spike dropped his gaze immediately and bent to pick up the bullwhip.  He stowed it neatly away in his own chest, which rested against the wall beside his sire’s.  The bullwhip was there because Angelus had early on determined that this particular childe needed a firm hand.  William had outgrown his small leather satchel a few short years after his turning, as both he and his sire added more and more items to his ever-growing collection.  Angelus had replaced it with a large chest that rivaled his own in size just before they’d left for Europe.  The two chests followed them wherever they went, shipped and kept in secure storage in each major city they visited, though frequently only a few of the most necessary items were stuffed in traveling satchels for their smaller incursions cross country.  Paddles, whips, floggers and crops, knives, plugs, dildos, clamps, gags and numerous other toys of both pain and pleasure, the contents had been well used as Angelus remade his childe into his own image, creating William the Bloody along the way.

Spike ensured that the bullwhip was returned to its rightful place – Angelus had been a stickler for neatness in this as in everything else – grabbed the other three items, and then turned back to the star, only to find his sire now seated on his chair.  Angel gestured to him and he quickly strode up the three risers and dropped into obeisance at his sire’s feet, one hand held out.  In it he clutched the two black leather tools and a butt plug made of ivory Italian marble.

This particular plug was the smallest in a series of five Angelus had commissioned by the craftsman Cavetti shortly after they’d arrived in Florence during the Scourge.  Each one began with a soft-tapered point, widened at it’s mid-point until it was a quarter in width to its length, then narrowed again at the neck or end channel, and ended with a smooth, round disk that was an inch and a half in diameter.  Each was two inches longer than the one preceding it, with the girth at its broadest point and the end-channel increasing commiserate with its length.

The one Spike held in his hand now was only four inches long, one inch at its widest point, and half an inch at its neck.  This was indeed the smallest of the set, and was close in size to Angel’s index finger, with the exception of the mid-point, which of course was broader than that finger, though not by much.  This was no coincidence; Cavetti had been instructed by Angelus to use the dimensions of his index finger as the model for the smallest plug and his fully-erect cock for the largest, with the intermediate three sized appropriately between those two.  The largest of the series was twelve inches long, with a three-inch girth at its broadest point, and a two-inch diameter neck.

In addition to the set of plugs, Angelus had commissioned a pink-veined marble dildo replicating his erect prick exactly.  A plaster casting had been made to accomplish this, and included his balls as well, which Angelus gripped when working the dildo into his childe’s tight channel.  The replicate was uncannily accurate, with foreskin folded back to expose a mushroom shaped head.  The slit was stretch wide and open, as the whole process had been extremely stimulating to the dark vampire, who finger fucked his childe in the artist’s studio as he waited for the plaster to dry.

Cavetti had watched surreptitiously as he worked on the plugs, and Angelus had allowed it, enjoying showing off his boy.  He’d had a cast made of William’s prick when his own was complete, and commissioned a final item, a replicate of it as well as his own.  All five plugs and both dildos had been tested upon William, in Cavetti’s presence, as they were completed, ending with a very aroused Angelus fucking his childe over a sculpting pedestal with his larger-than-life real cock.

In the years that followed, and long before the phrase entered the common vernacular, Angelus often instructed his boy to ‘go fuck yourself.’  William would use his own dildo when given this command, while his sire watched.  Angelus used this punishment whenever an added bit of humiliation was required or when he simply wanted to watch his boy, having more than a bit of the voyeur in both his human and demon aspects.  All of these Italian marble articles now resided in William’s chest, a gift from the sire to his childe after the Most Favored ceremony was completed.

As for Cavetti, Angelus had given William permission to eat the talented craftsman when the last item was finished to his satisfaction, which his childe had done with relish, fisting the artist as he did in payback for having seen him used so intimately by his sire.

“Up,” Angel said curtly, breaking Spike’s reflection.  He didn’t take the articles from his childe’s hand.

When Spike stood before him, Angel slid forward until he sat almost on the edge of the seat, then patted his thigh.

“Over my lap.”