Blinding Passion

Rupert poured himself another glass of scotch, uncertain whether he wished for it to calm him or kill him.  Feeling for the couch, he flopped down on the cushions, sighed deeply, and then knocked back his drink.  He reached out to put the glass on the coffee table, but he missed and it crashed to the floor, tinkling into tiny shards.  It didn�t matter.  Nothing mattered, now that he had failed once again to prove himself a worthy man, and lost his vision in the process.

The anger he felt could only be directed at himself.  If he could have controlled his own desires, Willow never would have been driven to cast such a dreadful spell. If he hadn�t been so eager to punish her for leaving him and tried to force her to pretend things between them were normal, she never would have unwittingly subjected him to her will.  Of course, the others would find her and she would put it right, but they would never really be right again. 

It had been just over a year, 369 days to be exact, since they had promised each other never to speak of their night together following Willow�s moment of weakness with Xander that had put her relationship with Oz on hold.  Last night, all of their apologies and oaths to each other had been discarded in the face of Willow�s renewed grief and his undiminished longing for her. 

When he heard of the incident with the female werewolf, Rupert had feared another visit from Willow.  Yet, she stayed away, almost to the point of avoiding him, holding out hope for a reconciliation with her young lover.  He had let his guard down, assuming that the danger had passed.   Then, just when he had allowed himself to stop worrying, and even accused himself of being rather pompous to imagine that the girl would come running back to his arms, the doorbell rang.

The hour was late and the creaking stairs under his feet as he descended from his bedroom sounded unnaturally loud in the still night.   His apprehension grew as he approached the door, supposing his visitor to be a demon intent on killing him, or perhaps a government official come to reclaim the vampire sleeping in his tub, though neither of the two were generally prone to ringing the bell.

When he opened the door, he faced an immediate frontal assault, though not of the sort he could have expected.  Before he could get his arms in front of him, Willow had her fingers in his hair, dragging his head down to kiss him.  He quickly realized who it was and what was happening, somehow managing to simultaneously pull her inside, push her off of him, and close the door. 

As soon as he turned away from the door to face her, Willow launched herself at him again, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck.  For a moment, he couldn�t bring himself to stop her and he returned her kisses with equal passion, easily forgetting the guilt that had followed the last time he�d permitted himself such liberties.  Then he realized that she tasted like beer.  

He broke the kiss, and tried to school his features into a stern look.  �Willow, you�ve been drinking.  I really don�t think��

�Shut up,� she interrupted.  At the same, her hands found the knot on his old green robe, untied it, and slipped inside, finding him already aroused from her kisses.  He could do nothing but silently agree that shutting up suddenly sounded like a very good plan indeed.  The beer, it seemed, had little effect on the dexterity of her fingers.  Moments later, the robe was on the floor and Willow was making short work of the buttons on her shirt.  Shocked to find himself standing naked in his entryway, Rupert could not muster a single objection when Willow insisted that they go up to his room.  Leaving his robe where it fell, he led her up the stairs.

She pushed him back on his bed and, after quickly removing the rest of her clothes, climbed on top, not giving him the slightest chance to play the tender lover.  She didn�t speak to him, not even to ask any sort of permission to have her way with him. 

The moment she had touched him, he was lost.  Lost to his desires, and lost to the world of civilized men who did not take advantage of drunken teenagers, even when they came on to him.  Once inside her, he was lost even to himself.  He no longer knew who he was, he knew only what she made him.  She made him lust.  She made him passion.  She made him pant her name and tell her she was beautiful.  This seemed to please her, bringing her back from that far off place where her mind had wandered, getting her to look at him, to give the object she was using an ounce of her attention.  Desperate to keep her eyes on him, he heard himself prattle on about her beauty, about her perfection, and in the very deepest depths of his ecstasy, about his love and admiration of her.

All too soon, she brought him to an earth shaking climax, and made a passable attempt at faking her own.  She slipped off of him and darted into the bathroom before he could so much as catch his breath.  He heard water running and imagined her hands moving intimately on her body as she cleaned herself.  He banished the thought, having too many other thoughts to think to dwell on such pretty fantasies.  The old guilt tried to rear its ugly head, chastising him for being a slave to his most base instincts.  Yet, this time, rising above the guilt was a cautious hope. 

Willow was 18 now, and he was no longer an employee at her school.  At the very least, the specter of a prison term did not loom over his head as a consequence of this particular tryst.  Though he knew that Willow had come to him solely for confirmation of her desirability after the significant blow her self-confidence had so recently taken, wasn�t it possible that she might learn to return his affection?  Surely her presence here showed that she knew he still cared for her and had been reasonably certain he would not reject her.  Could he really believe that she would come to him and share his bed and not feel some small spark of attraction?

He tried not to let his hopes rise unreasonably high.  Many a college student had lived to regret a bed she woke up in after a night out partying.  Willow had needed an ego boost, and known right where to get it.  Perhaps there was nothing more to it.  Still, after so much time spent loving her in secret, he could not help but imagine what it would be like for her to love him back and the two of them to be openly involved. 

He decided he would take it slow.  He�d see if she seemed uncomfortable that he�d admitted his love, and leave it up to her to determine if they should perhaps explore their feelings further. 

When she emerged from the bathroom, he temporarily forgot everything but the splendor of her body.  She looked unsure of herself and he immediately fumbled out an invitation to stay the night.  When she smiled at him, his heart soared.  Leaving her to settle into bed, Rupert excused himself to use the facilities. 

It was so late it was almost morning.  He looked forward to staying in bed, snuggled up to Willow for as long as possible.  He felt certain she�d be asleep when he came out of the bathroom, so any serious talks would have to wait.  He hurried to brush his teeth, realizing that his breath had not been the freshest when Willow had kissed him and hoping he�d have a chance to make that up to her.  As soon as he finished, he opened the door to go back to bed.  Willow was gone.

At first, his heart sank, sure that she must have given him the slip.  Then optimism kicked in and he wondered if she wasn�t just in the kitchen getting a drink of water or maybe a snack.  After pulling on a pair of shorts, he wandered downstairs in search of her.  All he found was a snickering vampire, in a remarkably good mood for being chained in a tub, making lewd comments about his brief performance. 

Cursing himself for a fool, Rupert returned to his room and slammed the door on the catcalls from below.  He wasn�t surprised that she had gone, just hurt.  The anger would come later. 

In the morning, when Willow failed to appear with the ingredients for a spell as promised, the anger began to surface.  Not wanting to share his bed for the night was one thing, but avoiding him altogether was unacceptable.  Was she so ashamed of having been intimate with him that she couldn�t even show her face? 

Before he�d even worked out why he was going or what he would say when he got there, Rupert found himself on his way to Willow�s dormitory.  The confrontation was every bit as ugly as he had feared.  His pretense of concern over the neglected spell was too thin to conceal his real feelings for more than a moment.  Hurtful words filled the air and they each accused the other of being cold and heartless.  The argument came to an abrupt halt when Willow declared that he couldn�t see what she was really going through, that he couldn�t see anything at all.

He returned home, finding her words to be truer by the minute until he was completely blind.  It would be hours until he found out what had actually happened.  In the meantime, he was left to wonder whether there was such thing as an irony demon who could have perpetrated such an appropriate punishment for him. 

Now, as he sat on his couch, waiting for his mystical impairment to be cured, he knew it wouldn�t help.  Where Willow was concerned, he could never be made to see reason, he would always be blind.

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