I should have guessed Buffy Summers had the timing to go along with her fashion sense -- extremely unfortunate. Okay, so that was a little petty. A lot petty. But damn it all, running the agency by myself with Wesley and Gunn barely helping while Angel did a mega-brood in Sri Lanka was not the summer vacation I had planned. It totally put the kibosh on any life outside Angel Investigations I was planning on having...not that there was much of that going on. My acting career -- such as it was -- was finally buried. My social life seemed to have a hard time understanding that it wasn't dead, too.
Basically, the summer had been babysitting the office phone and the office crazy girl (what IS IT with Angel and the pathetic psychotics? He could have at least had the decency to take her along on his Asian vacation and not stuck us with her food bill), while noticing that Gunn and Wesley have inappropriate amounts of chemistry. Not that those two macho men would ever mention it, but viva the buddy cop homoeroticism.
I had to get out of the hotel.
I had to...hello. Client standing directly in my line of vision and here I was, yapping the light fantastic with my inner monologue.
"Hi," I said, looking up from my sketchpad of random Angel revenge fantasies. "Angel Investigations. We help the..."
"Are you Cordelia Chase?" the woman asked, looking me over like I was some kind of commodity.
"Yes," I said. "And who may I ask is...uh, asking?"
Yeah, that was the world of smooth and tough in the face of someone who looked like she could reach the nearest weapon before I could. Why were the chicks who always came in here wimpy blondes who gave Angel blue balls or scary evil-looking leather-wearing warriors who had lips that looked like they scorched....?
"My name's Julia," she said, giving me a come-on smile that reached all the way to her dark brown eyes. Did I mention the part where she was in a short leather skirt that showed off mile-long legs and a white blouse that showed off her black bra? "I work for the Covenant. I'm looking for your friend Wyndam-Pryce. He has a translation for me and he told me that you were capable of handling the transaction if you were out."
Wesley and the mad hotties. It was a mystery to me, but they showed up with surprisingly regularity and paid our rent, so whatever. Maybe the reason he didn't recognize his homoerotic chemistry with Gunn was because he was too busy boning all those potential clients.
"Wesley's out on a job," I said. In fact, if I remembered correctly, Wes was out decapitating vegetative demon spawn in Reseda and getting covered in slime as we spoke. "Let me call him real fast and I'll get your translation."
Julia tilted her head and shrugged. "I can wait," she replied, pointing at the couch. "Do you mind?"
Did I mind, hell. Another person in the hotel (Fred did NOT count) who wasn't one of my big stupid brothers?
"No, I'm okay with it," I said. Julia favored me with a dazzling smile, and despite the fact she had showed too much gum, I was actually struck by the thought that Julia? Pretty damn hot. She sat down and made herself comfortable and I started babbling. "So what do you do? You look a little...normal...to be one of Wesley's clients."
Julia ran her tongue over her top teeth, and I had to blink twice to realize that I hadn't seen things. "I'm an independent contractor," she replied. "I do what needs to be done, if you know what I mean."
"Oh, so like, black ops," I said, shrugging. Julia looked surprised. "Um, I mean...um. Look, our clients aren't normal, so I kind of assume sometimes. No offense."
"None taken," Julia said, standing up and pacing back and forth. The way she moved across the floor reminded me of a really big jungle cat. Maybe a panther, or a leopard. A tiger. Gunn kept pushing us to go to Vegas and see the tigers and mock Sigfreid and Roy, just because it seemed the thing to do. The closest we'd gotten? Caritas.
"Do you want coffee?" I said. "We have some. It's not really good and might be two days old, but we have it."
Julia laughed and walked up to the counter where I was sitting on a rickety barstool. I had to admit, half the time she was giving me a freak-out because she just had the total aura of being a dangerous killer who would cut me if I said the wrong thing.
"I'll pass," she said, her eyes focused not on my face, but my breasts. "So you get a lot of black ops types running around here? Interesting. I hadn't heard Wyndam-Pryce ran that kind of game."
"Well, he doesn't," I said. "We're kind of serving a specialized community."
Julia looked totally amused. "Is that so?"
"Yeah," I said. "Like, I don't know how normal your translation is, but sometimes we get people who are looking for prophecies and that kind of thing..."
Her eyes tensed up. "Prophecies?" she asked, trying to sound casual. "What kind? Does Wyndam-Pryce talk about that kind of thing to you?"
"All the time," I said. "But I get bored. It's always the same. Blah blah, big champion, end times, obscure as hell."
Julia relaxed visibly and smiled at me again. Her damage was so high that Lloyd's of London was probably the one insuring it. And yet I was less scared and more interested thank with most of the psycho client pack.
"I bet," she said. "Can I take a look around the office? Maybe we can find my translation and get you back to your exciting afternoon..."
"I don't know if that's a great idea, Julia," I said. "No offense, but that's just not standard operating procedure."
She tried to look coy and did an okay job at it. "Please?" she wheedled, putting her hand on top of mine. "I promise I just want to get my translation and get out of your hair."
Damn Wes for finding the pushy scary people. "I think I'll go look myself. Your name's Julia, right? He tends to file by name of the translation job. Any idea what it would be?"
"Rambaldi," Julia said, letting her hand stay on my wrist a few seconds longer than courtesy or random threatening dictated. "I'll just wait right here, okay?"
Okay. I went into the back office, which looked like a fucking tornado had hit it. Wesley had no sense of cleaning up his translation mess when he had the fever and there were pages everywhere. I went straight to the yellow pad on his desk, which had some big red scrawls on it, but before I could read them, I found that I had one arm around my waist and one around my throat.
"Got bored," Julia said, mouth next to my ear. "What can I say?"
"Um," I said. "Get your arm off my throat before I kick your ass?"
Julia released my throat and laughed, and it was less an evil overlord cackle and more a sexy chuckle. "I like you, Cordelia Chase," she said huskily, moving her lips closer to my jaw. "What's a pretty girl like you doing wasting time answering phones? You should be having much, much more fun."
"You mean like getting threatened by people who have no patience?" I asked, twisting around and finding myself nose to nose with Julia. "I'm telling you that this isn't an improvement over ancient coffee or picking demon guts out of my hair. In short, there's no fun here."
She laughed again, put both hands on my hips and pulled me closer. "I know a way to make it fun," she murmured. "I sit you down in that very convenient chair right there, push that scrap of cloth you're calling a skirt up to your waist and then fuck you raw."
I coughed, blinked real hard, and tried to make the image of me on the chair getting some go away. Because I was being propositioned by a nutcase for random girl-on-girl chair sex. There was no sanity in that proposition, nor in the random girl. Maybe I'd fallen into the crazyverse, because this shouldn't have been happening at all.
"Because you feel like fucking the office manager for fun?" I asked, trying not to laugh, because if ever being taken the wrong way might lead to pain, it would be now. "This might also be the time to mention...."
"Sit down, Cordelia," Julia told me, dark eyes sparkling.
I sat. The chair was one of those padded cheap things from K-Mart, almost too flimsy for what I thought Julia was about to have us do. Also, the vinyl was going to be sticky when it was my bare ass against it.
"Spread your legs," she ordered, staring up my legs hungrily. "Like that...wider...good girl."
My heart was beating so fast and I was shivering. Julia was so not my type, being a woman and all, but she was big with confidence and confidence was definitely a turn-on. Also, danger. Both of these things were too high on the Cordelia list of sexiness (apparently higher than a penis) for my own good. If Gunn or Wes showed up now, I was so going to get it.
Julia ran her tongue over her bottom lip. "Are you scared?" she asked.
"Little bit," I said honestly. "I've never done this before. Uh. Girls. Or in a public place. Well, not actual sex in a public place. I used to make out in the library..."
"You'll like it," she promised with an evil smile, dropping to her knees in front of me and putting her hands on my knees. "Danger makes sex better. You're gonna come so fucking hard for me..."
The way she growled it at me sent a shiver down my spine, but not a scared shiver. It was actually making me wet to have her hands on my inner thighs and her tongue scraping over her teeth knowing that it was going to be on my pussy. And when Julia's fingers tugged on my skirt, I got up and let her shove it up to my waist.
"Take off your shirt," she said, eyes flashing. I did, wondering when I'd become her sex puppet. "God, you're so cute."
"Cute?" I asked, a little offended. I was doing a striptease. That rated higher than cute.
"Cute is hot," she said into my ear, pushing me back down into the chair. One of her hands got tangled in my hair, and the other stroked the outside of my rapidly-getting-drenched panties. "Oh, you want it bad, girl."
"I--" and Julia's mouth was now sucking on my earlobe and my spine was melting into the chair. She kept stroking me until I was trying to grind into her hand. "Fuck."
"That's the idea," Julia whispered, her hair brushing against my shoulder as she licked my collarbone awkwardly. One of her hands found its way under my bra and started rubbing a very hard nipple. "Oh, I really like you, Cordelia."
I had no witty reply, because I was hot, wet, and needed something of Julia's inside me about twenty minutes ago. And when she scraped her teeth lightly down my tummy, I whimpered.
"God, please..." I said. How long had it been since someone had taken the time to do it right like this? I didn't care what she asked me to do, or if Fred were watching, or if the Lakers were watching. I needed more.
"Mmm," Julia said lazily, putting both of her hands on top of my thighs near the hip. "For someone new at this, you're getting into it, girl."
"Please..." I whimpered. "I wanna..."
She hooked two fingers into the waistband of my underwear and tore them off. The feeling of air against my clit made my head spinny, but not half as spinny as when Julia put her thumb against it and pressed.
"I know what you want," she said with a vicious grin, moving a hand between my legs, sliding a finger and then two into me. I moaned, and she got deeper, thrusting in and out slowly. "You're so pretty..."
My hips started shoving against her hand, because God, she had me hotter than an October santana and she was still fully dressed. Julia added a third finger and I whimpered, biting down on my lip until it hurt.
"Come on, Cordelia," she said, rubbing hard but not touching my clit. "Give it up. Talk dirty to me, pretty girl. Touch yourself. I know you want to."
Historically, I wasn't much of a dirty talker. It seemed so...nasty. But the look in Julia's eyes and the part where she had three fingers in my pussy up to the knuckle made my goofy shyness seem stupid. I carefully put my hands over my breasts, squeezing them and rocking into Julia's wicked touch.
"It feels so good," I said, even more dazed as one of my hands started pinching the nipple until it ached. "God, you're so fucking hot when you tell me what to do."
She liked that, I could tell.
"Do you like how I'm touching you?" she asked, stroking my thigh with her unoccupied hand. "Do you want me to lick you, Cordelia? Tell me what you want."
"You're making me so fucking wet...I wanna come so hard, and you're touching me right..." I said. "Please don't stop. Just keep touching me. It's been so long since anyone touched me like this...God, that's good."
My mouth was dry and I was blushing, but I didn't fucking care. I kept riding Julia's hand, touching my breasts while she watched me rub against her in a slutty frenzy. I had to come soon. She had me so close....so close that I couldn't stand it.
"Harder," I pleaded. "Please fuck me harder. I'm gonna...."
She added a fourth finger and finally started touching my clit again and I wailed, brain disengaging. "Like that?"
"Oh, yes," I said, "Yes yes yes yes..."
For a good minute, I just stopped thinking and moaned and thrashed around like I had another demon possession, and when I finally came down, Julia was wiping her hand on a handkerchief before tossing it into the trash can.
"I'm really sorry I have to do this," she said. "You seem like a really nice person. And it's nothing personal..."
What the...huh?
I felt the needle before I saw it, and when I saw it, the room was going around and around and then black.
Man. Talk about getting played. This sucked.
When I came to, I was, thank God, fully dressed, if a little bit mussed. Gunn and Wesley were hovering around like twin guardian dorks. I had a splitting headache NOT from a vision, which was the double-plus suck, and my neck was kind of sore.
"Oh, thank God," Wesley said, looking horrified. "Cordelia, I'm so terribly sorry. I hadn't thought the Covenant would come here or I would have warned you. Did they hurt you?"
"What, you mean besides drugging me and leaving me on the floor and getting my new outfit dusty?" I said, trying to sound typically outraged and not literally fucked over by evil operative outraged. "No, I'm peachy."
"You sure?" Gunn asked. "Fred said she heard some kinda struggle..."
"No," I said vehemently. "There was no struggling. She asked me to find the translation and I said fine and next thing I know, she's got her arm around my neck and I'm on the floor. Thanks a bunch, Wes."
I looked over to where Fred was crouched. She lifted an eyebrow. I gave her a severe look and she shrugged. After all, it wasn't her business if I got fucked in Wesley's chair or not as long as I didn't mention it.
"I'm terribly sorry," Wesley said. "Can I make it up to you?"
I smiled. Thought about it. Yes, yes he could make it up to me.
"How about a new leather skirt?"