TITLE: The Watcher: Absolution pt.1 - `Til You Loved Me 2/7
AUTHOR: vatwoman
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN etc own Giles and anyone else in the Buffyverse, Anna and everyone I invent are mine.
FEEDBACK: Will be gratefully received on list, or at: vatwoman@yahoo.co.uk

"My father and brother both used to wet shave – Dad used a cutthroat."

There was an audible hiss of indrawn air from Giles. "Too much hard work needed to look after it properly and they're hell on earth when there's a nick in the blade."

Anna got up off her perch on the edge of the bath and came over to stand behind him. She looked at him in the mirror and when their eyes met, she smiled.

"What?" Giles paused, the hand with the razor in it caught in mid-air above his right cheek.

"It's sexy." Her smile deepened and took on a teasing air. "Makes you seem very manly."

Giles raised an eyebrow. "I *am* very manly." He resumed shaving.

"Alright then ,,," she leaned forward and placed a kiss just below his left ear, "… especially manly."

"Much better."

Anna felt the rumble of his reply through her body as she pressed herself against his back and wrapped her arms around him. She moved with him as he breathed in and out and for a few minutes the only sound was of the razor on his face and the splash of water as he cleaned the blade after each stroke.

"Don't fall asleep on me."

Anna sighed and kissed him again, a kiss that turned into a gentle mouthing of his neck. "I won't."

She moved her hands and for the first time he could feel the deliberate effort to arouse him: her nails on his ribs and across his nipples; the pads of her fingers stroking his skin as she pushed them between the buttons of his shirt; the whole hand making gentle circles on his stomach.

"Is this alright?" she whispered, her breath hot on his ear.

"Yes."

"What about this?"

Her hands were on the buttons of his shirt, undoing them, and his eyes jumped to hers again. He put the razor down and watched in their reflections as her hand slid completely inside his shirt. They both felt the full body shudder that rippled through him.

"Is this alright?" She stroked across his heart.

He felt her voice in his mind, wrapping itself around his thoughts, mesmerising him. "Are you trying to seduce me, madam?" He tried to sound haughty, but couldn't because, suddenly, he was grinning.

"Yes, sir. Am I succeeding?"

He groaned, the only response he could manage as she slipped the next button and dangled a finger into his bellybutton. He could feel her silent laughter rocking her.

Then all the buttons were undone and she was pulling his shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. When it had cleared his body he picked up his razor once more to finish shaving and was glad to see his hand was steady: with his insides quivering as much they were he was sure the rest of him would be shaking as well. As he tilted his head up to shave under his chin he saw that she'd stepped away from him a little and that her gaze was intent on his back.

"Give me some time and I'll tell you the stories."

She looked up at him and smiled. "Thank you. Actually I wasn't looking at the scars, although I'm glad to see this one's healed so well." She ran a finger down the mark left on him by the glass `her' ghost had slashed him with. "I was looking at this …" She touched his left shoulder-blade flat palmed, ran her hand up over his shoulder and down onto his bicep, bunched and hard as he held the razor to his jaw. "… this line …" He lowered the razor, a quizzical look on his face, not really understanding her … and then he did and looked at himself anew, looked at himself as she was looking at him, as if through a lens: a middle aged man with a scarred body, soft stomach, greying hair. "… is beautiful." As she looked deep into his eyes he knew that she knew what he'd been thinking. "So is this." Her fingers reached underneath his arm to drift across his left nipple. "And this." On down over his stomach, twirling and teasing the fine hairs covering him.

Then her arms were around him, hugging him, and she was laughing in delight and so was he. He pushed his head back slightly and nudged hers. Taking the hint she kissed him … and pulled a face.

"Yuk! Shaving cream!"

"Sorry," he apologised although he didn't sound at all repentant, "But I can't seem to get on with what I'm doing. There's this woman and she insists on taking my clothes off. It's very distracting."

"Really?" Anna reached down, popped the top button on the fly of his jeans and slid her fingers under the material.

"Aaah!" It came out as a strangled gasp and the razor dropped into the sink from his suddenly lifeless grip. "God … don't …I …" He groaned, his hips bucking involuntarily, "… I just … bloody hell, I had no idea I was so turned on!" She moved her fingers again. "Ah, don't!" The groan turned into another laugh and then back into a groan as she sweetly disobeyed him by pushing her hand further into his jeans, forcing him to undo a second button. She cupped him in her hand; he cupped her hand in his and thrust gently. She opened button number three.

"I need to finish." His eyes were closed and his voice was raw.

"That's bit ungentlemanly of you."

Giles's eyes popped open to her picture perfect pretend pout. "That wasn't what I meant." His mock scowl was almost as good.

"So how long do you intend to be … shaving?"

"A couple of minutes give or take."

"Give or take what?" She moved her hand, massaging the hard heat beneath it.

"The continuing distraction."

"Oh well, I suppose I can wait, I've got nothing else to do …" She eased her hand out of his trousers, stepped back and folded her arms across her chest.

Giles turned around, blinking at her in surprise. "Mmm …" he started hesitantly, "… I …ah … didn't mean you should … well …let go."

Anna shrugged, "Far be it from me to distract you."

He stared at her, eyes clouding when he realised that he wasn't sure if she was joking with him or not. Then he saw the grin. "You are going to regret that."

The grin broadened. "Threat or promise?"

"Oh, definite promise!" He lunged at her, but she was too quick for him, dodging out of the bathroom with a cry of laughter. "No! Don't you dare!" She walked backwards down the hall with Giles stalking her. "I don't do sumptuous sex with crazy half-shaved men!"

Giles stopped dead in his tracks. " `Sumptuous sex.' " He gazed off into the distance and damned if she could tell if it was because the alliteration had entranced him or because he, like she, had just got the visual. He snapped back into focus, "I'll … ah …" he pointed to the door they'd just come out of, "… just go and …" He strode purposefully back into the bathroom.

"Ok …", she grinned to his retreating back, "… I'll be here."

In fact she moved and settled against the doorframe of his bedroom. Looking in at the warm, earthy tones of the decoration, the tall window opposite her, the large double bed with its wonderfully soft mattress, she remembered the last time she had been in this room, months ago, when the ghost was still in her house and her house was no where near being a home to her and the man she was about to make love with wasn't even a friend.

The light went off in the hallway and his arms wrapped her to him. "Alright?"

She turned around to face him and took his hands, tugging on them to draw him with her into the bedroom. "Very much so."

>>>>>>

It prowled around the edge of the dance floor, blurring and fighting not to blur, as it let the arousal of mating play with its control.

The hunt. The hunt is good. The hunt is strong. The hunt is everything. Hunt and mate.

Sex-smell surrounded it: the heavy scent of the musk of men, of others, and it could almost lick it out of the air.

Bodies all around. Pressing. Writhing. It was looking for one … someone … one perfect boy. Ignore others, those pleased by this form, to find him, that one perfect boy.

>>>>>>

They stopped by the bed, bodies almost touching, a warm silence cradling them. As if by mutual consent they leaned together and their lips met, warm and soft. The kiss drew out through what might have been a thousand heartbeats. Her arms around his neck, his around her back, she felt him shift, widen his stance a little and she was pulled even closer, feeling him full length down her body. Her hips pushed at him, undulating against the hard ridge of his cock, a slow, strong rhythm that he matched with flicks of his tongue at her lips and in her mouth.

He dropped his hands to her bottom trying to get her closer still and heard her groan deep in her throat. He broke the kiss and they stared at each other, both dizzyingly aroused. She touched his face, then slowly let her hand drift down his neck and chest … and closed her eyes concentrating on everything but that sense: the way he smelled, male, and minty from his shaving cream and toothpaste; his body hard muscled across his arms and chest; the hairs on him tickling the palm of her hand as she caressed him; his breathing a deep not quite pant that he couldn't hide from her.

"I need to see you."

He nuzzled the side of her head and felt her shiver as he reached her ear and breathed into it. "Then you'll have to open your eyes, Anna."

She did and felt the world tilt under his hot gaze. "Put the light on …" a breathless demand, "… I need to see you."

Giles let go of her and climbed onto the bed to switch on the lamp on the far bedside table, from where it cast a soft glow into the room. "Stay there." He'd made it back across the bed and had been about to stand, but her words held him. He rested where he was and she was only an arm's length away.

So close and she could see him, as he leaned back on his elbows, unconsciously, arrogantly male, half naked and hard under her gaze.

>>>>>>

Yes.

There.

See into him. Sense his wellness. Youthful. Desirable. Smiling with others.

It could tell he was ready to be mated: the sex-smell was strong on him. The others fell away, parted around it, recognising Alpha.

Hunt and mate. Hunt and mate.

In front of the boy now, sex-smell so strong in the air around them, rituals to perform.

Words.

Looks.

Touches.

The boy's form pleasing it: flushed and wet and soft and hard.

Hunt and mate.

It could feel the blurring inside its body as it prepared itself.

>>>>>>

The dozen or so tiny buttons on her cardigan took her only a few seconds to open and he wondered why he'd ever thought a slow striptease erotic when there was so much charged sexiness in Anna's swift, confident disrobing.

Bare to the waist she held his eyes as she unzipped her jeans and then smiled at him as she stopped undressing. She stepped forward and he came to her, sitting up to take her hips in his hands and press his face to her stomach.

At first it was just another place to hold her, to get used to another way of cuddling her, but then her skin was just too much like silk under his mouth for him not to kiss her, not to mouth at her bellybutton, not to growl as her belly concaved involuntarily at the sensations rippling through her.

Her hand dropped into his hair, gripping, pushing him downwards. He eased her jeans off and her fingers spasmed as she felt his tongue licking her through the material of her panties: wet on wet. Then it was the heel of his hand there, pressing on her, describing slow, hard circles on her and her hips were taking up the movement and her breathing was a series of strained gasps and he caught her as she fell forward, turning her onto the middle of the bed, with him beside her, his hand still on her and his mouth on her mouth.

She felt him curl his fingers into the edge of her panties and pull them downwards. She wrenched her mouth from his, groaning out a `yes' that was an affirmative to anything he might have asked of her. "Touch me," she demanded and as she was laid naked, he did, hand and mouth: kisses that started at her mouth and moved downwards over chin, neck, breasts, belly. One moment hard pecks barely felt before he'd moved on, the next wet, open-mouthed, carnal things that lasted forever. And all the while his hand played with her, as if she was some sort of living instrument, stroking her legs, her inner thighs, caressing across her folds and into her, one finger, two, drawing out each and every response.

He dragged his mouth across her belly. Her skin was slick now: he could taste salt on his tongue. He drifted down her body, seeking wet and heat, wanted his mouth where his fingers were - wanted to push her right over the edge - and she was so damned wet, so damned responsive as he replaced his fingers with his tongue and lips. Her hand was in his hair again, unconscious changes of pressure guiding him to her most sensitive spots. He was surrounded by her, the slickness of her skin, the smell of her, her juices on his hand and face and in his mouth. Her clitoris was so swollen, so ready to be touched … and so he touched it, laved it with his tongue, closed his whole mouth over it and sucked softly, then hard as she bucked up into him, once, twice, and then again and again, crying out his name as she came.

Her whole body bowed upwards and she grabbed for his hand, seeking a hold on something concrete to anchor her through the shocking intensity of her orgasm. Where did this need to push herself into him come from? Where did this need to feel him on her, in her, come from? Where did this need to make this go on and on and on come from? Body frozen in orgasm, she could feel him drawing the sensations out for her, going with her through each wave, until she couldn't take any more. She pulled his head up and he came to her, their mouths merging in a bone-melting kiss.

She pushed away so she could breathe, and then wrapped herself around him, panting and laughing as she did so. "Ohhh …"

"You ok?"

Anna leaned back so she could see his face and grinned at him. "You're joking, right?"

"Good." Giles replied with a shy, satisfied smile.

She pressed her face into his neck and held him, rubbing her cheek against his hot skin. Her hands made patterns on his back and downwards, cupping his buttocks under his jeans and boxers. "You should take these off."

"Mmm." He closed his eyes, enjoying the feel of her hands on his overheated skin.

"Come on, roll over."

He let go of her and settled onto his back. He felt her move beside him. When he opened his eyes she was sitting at his side, looking down at him, her face the picture of intense concentration. "What?" She didn't reply. "Anna?"

As if coming out of a dream, she visibly shook herself and smiled an apology.

"Sorry … I think I just had an epiphany."

The face Giles pulled made her laugh, "Is that good or bad?"

"In this case, it's good." She frowned. "I think. I hope." His brow lifted in a gesture meant to encourage her to explain. "I was just looking at you and then there was this voice in my head saying `Mine.' "

"Why wouldn't you think that was a good thing?" Giles asked gently.

"I'm not sure …" Anna tilted her head to one side, thinking. "… I suppose it sounds a bit possessive … non-pc … old-fashioned, even."

He let her words hang there for a moment. "I have no problem with being thought of as yours …"

He held out his hand to her and she took it. They smiled at each other and she let go of him. He lay back against the pillows and felt her hands on the fly of his jeans, opening them fully. He raised his hips and in one movement she stripped him of his jeans and boxers. Naked now, he propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at his body. "You know, the older I get the more convinced I become that a man's genitals are the most ridiculous looking things … and I can't tell what's worse, a flaccid penis or an erect one."

"I'm no expert, but right now …" Anna ran a quick, light finger up his hard cock, "… this looks pretty good to me."

>>>>>>

Dark and damp.

Out in the alley behind the club, dark and damp against the wall.

Blurring. Body needs to change. To mate. Fight it off. Not yet. Not yet.

The boy gasping and laughing and gasping again against it. Mouths and hands. As if it was an other. Hips pressing. Hard.

>>>>>>

She straddled him, sinking on to his thighs and rubbing herself on him, leaving him cool from her wetness when she rose up again to kiss him. There was all of her possessiveness of him in the way she trapped his hands above his head and slowly stretched herself full length on top of him, their almost equal heights laying mouth to mouth, breast to breast, sex to sex … and she felt him hard and hot and so very ready beneath her.

<'Mine'> The voice again, loud in her head as she moved on him. This man was hers. "Stay there." Echoed order from before and as before he didn't move, left his hands where she left them when she let go of him to clasp his face. The kiss started gently, but rapidly spiralled into a desperate need for him. She sat up again, looked down at him, and bent to his body with an assault of mouth on his nipples that had him writhing under her. Tongue and hands, licking, rubbing, tickling, soothing across his chest and sides. A gentle bite on a hipbone. Kisses showered down his thighs.

One lick up his cock, as quick as her finger had been moments before, a nuzzle to the heavy sac below. She felt the shudder go through him and gripped his thigh to stop him from moving. "No. Stay still." She looked up and saw him staring down at her, his eyes burning with the need to let go. She shook her head and the muscle in his thigh tightened under her hand. "I want you to come in me."

He swallowed hard, clenching his jaw as he fought for control. "Condom." He threw his head towards the bedside table. Anna rolled over, opened the drawer and ran her hand around inside until she found what she was looking for. She put the condom on top of the table and turned back to the man beside her. His body was taut, his skin flushed and he was wet, the tip of his cock weeping. With his eyes hot on her she took some of that fluid onto a fingertip and sucked it off, her finger lingering in her mouth as her tongue worked on it. Took another drop and rubbed it across his lips, licking it from there, transferring the taste to his tongue when she finished on him with a kiss.

Rubbed her palm across the tip of his cock, spreading his wetness onto her skin and gripped him. "Harder," he managed to gasp out, fighting the urge to clasp his hand around hers to show her how he liked to be touched. "Ah!" Her hand tightened, so good on him now, moved up and down in a series of quick ascents and slow descents. She lowered her head and touched her tongue to the tiny opening in the tip. The sensation was exquisite and his body jerked upwards, almost coming, needing to come, but she wouldn't let him. Moving away, stilling her hand on his cock, she touched his belly instead and whispered, "Giles, breathe."

He sucked in air, shuddering almost continuously now as if he was already in the throes of a long orgasm. "I want to be inside you." Not quite a demand, not quite a request, forced out from around a groan she could feel beneath the hand she still had on his body. She moved up and lay beside him, stroked back his damp hair and with her other hand trailed fire up his torso. Kissed him again, on the mouth, chin, his ear, back down his chest and stomach. Closed her mouth down over his cock. Sucked hard and let him go. She rolled the condom down onto him.

To lie face-to-face, legs entwined. He moved into her slowly, watching her, smiling when she smiled, frowning when she frowned, feeling every push and every moment of stillness with her.

>>>>>>

Blurring. Blurring. Hunt over. Change coming. Mate. Turns the boy. Against the wall. Face and hands against the wall. Touches him. Back. Thighs. Buttocks. Between: hot and damp and hard. Sweat on him. Sex-smell on him. Clothes pushed and pulled away. Hurry. The boy gasping, ordering, ready to be mated.

Penetration.

>>>>>>

"Too slow," she murmured. Her eyes had gone hazy as if she was looking not at him, but deep inside her own body. She bent her head and pushed it into his shoulder, mouthing, almost biting, at the skin over his collarbone.

He brushed away the damp curls from the back of her neck and kissed her there, delighting in the little shiver she responded with. "There's no such thing as too slow." Sheathed inside her, he pulled her leg up, drew it around his body and gently sank in just a little more. "Or too deep."

Her breath was coming in short, shuddering gasps now. She straightened, needing to see him, and he was waiting for her, his eyes passion darkened and a look of perfect happiness on his face.

>>>>>>

Stillness. Then movement. The boy moves against it, slowly, riding it out, gasping.

Want silence.

Want stillness.

For the blurring.

Blurring. Changing. Becoming self.

Hot on the boy's back. Hard where there had been soft.

Penetration going deeper.

And deeper.

Fear-smell now and the boy twisting and turning and writhing against the wall.

And deeper.

Hands clawing at it. Clawing at the wall. Feet kicking. Scrambling for ground.

Blood.

The boy's face wet. Wet. Whimpering.

The mating was good with the fear-smell so strong between them. It was Alpha. It was to be feared.

Blurring.

>>>>>>

Stillness. A stillness that went on and on. A stillness that allowed body to simply feel body: his hardness within her, her heat around him.

Then he moved, a slow withdrawal that felt like forever. Her nails creased his back. Glided into her again.

Stillness. So quiet. No sound. Just touch. On her face. On his chest. On her mouth, kissing her deeply. Up into his hair, fingers tightening as her body pulsed.

Repetition. Out and in. Again. And again. And again. Pulling him over her. Hips rising to meet hips, her body exalting in every thrust.

>>>>>>

Blurring.

Taking the boy hard to it as he stiffens and cries for his creator. For help from his creator. It held the boy there, limp now and glassy- eyed and gave itself up to the change.

So deep into the boy. Alpha properly mated. Young-sac delivered.

>>>>>>

And then the spell he'd woven around them fell apart and their finish was all about a headlong rush of power … giving … and taking … and giving everything to each other.

She wrapped him up in her arms as he fell to her. She could feel him shaking from his orgasm. Her own body still so energised that she thrust up into him, trying to draw out every last sensation.

Stillness. A warm quiet that cradled them.

He kissed her, slowly pulled out of her, disposed of the condom and they settled in each other's arms. Words spoken in whispers, caresses to soothe and relax, sleep slowly overtaking them.

>>>>>>

Fear-smell gone. Sex-smell gone.

Blurring to be like an other again.

Withdrawing.

Soft touches to cool skin. No more sounds.

Hunt over.

Mating over.

The boy falls lifeless to the ground in the dark, damp, alley.

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