Chapter 1
Xander Harris was loud, opinionated, full of false bravado that landed him in trouble more often than not. A white hat through and through. He was not the taciturn man-boy on his knees facing the far wall, garbed in a few tiny bits of leather that did more to accentuate his genitalia than cover it, waiting for a demon to master him.
Spike suppressed a frown as he walked further into the room and barely noticed the door closing behind him. He was too focused on Harris, taking note of his lack of reaction that he was no longer alone.
The picture he made as his head hung forward, his legs held open by spreader bars attached at his knees and ankles, his arms stretched up over his head almost painfully, was too perfect a picture of submission to keep his demon at bay. The heady aroma of anguish and despair given off, something Spike had not realized he’d missed until being confronted with it so abruptly.
His nostrils flared, his dick got hard, and he took an unconscious step or two forward, blinded by the sheer need to dominate something weaker than him. To administer the pain Harris was clearly begging for. In that moment, he was William the Bloody, slayer of slayers, a master vampire at the top of the food chain.
It came crashing down around him a second later when he remembered the chip.
Frustrated, growling low in his throat, Spike veered off and headed towards the nearby table. He fingered the various implements of tonight’s festivities. Remembered with clarity the damage each one could inflict in the right hands. Angelus had been very thorough in his teaching.
Spike sighed and moved away, shrugged out of his coat and tossed it over the back of a chair. He helped himself to a glass of whiskey and tossed back a shot, and then another, determined to ignore the “please hurt me” vibe being given off by Harris.
Claiming rights to the boy had been a spur of the moment decision on his part. Not one of his better ones, either. Now that he had him, Spike wasn’t quite sure what to do.
He couldn’t not hurt the boy; Harris had come here with that in mind, after all. There was no way he could reasonably explain away the distinct lack of bruises on the boy. Then again, he couldn’t actually hurt Harris either. Not without causing himself extreme pain in the process.
He was decidedly fucked.
A bottle of whiskey later and Spike was no closer to figuring things out. What he found strange, though, was that in that time, Xander had yet to move… he’d just knelt there as if being neglected was part of his punishment.
It gave Spike pause, and had him testing his crazy, half-drunken theory.
He stood and walked purposely towards the table. His hand closed around the handle of the coiled whip, and he shook it out and let it fly before he could change his mind.
The crack was overly loud after the quiet of the past hour.
Spike waited for the accompanying debilitating pain. Even dropped the whip in anticipation of clutching at his head.
It never came.
He stared at the diagonal strip across Harris’ back, and realized that, yes, he had hit him. And, given the small trickles of blood oozing from various places along the jagged mark, he had to have hurt him.
Another thought had Spike striding to the door and yanking it open, shocking Jeff – the human assigned to see to his needs – who was kneeling just outside.
“Are they spelled?” Spike demanded abruptly. Clarifying when the human looked at him in confusion, “The boy. Can he feel pain? If I hurt him—”
“Of course,” Jeff stammered out before the vampire could finish, determined to defuse his obvious ire. He’d heard the crack against flesh and couldn’t imagine the force behind the blow and didn’t want to give him cause for retaliating. Though Jeff bore the mark of his master, something about the vampire’s demeanor said that it wouldn’t be enough to deter him if provoked. “I mean, if that is what you wish them to feel, they will. You control… that is, well, I mean—”
Spike slammed the door on the human’s fumbled explanation. He felt the demon rise up, felt it stretch and shake off its cage, free at last.
He turned back towards Xander, his eyes narrowed; the corners of his mouth turned upward in a slight smile.
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