Xander took another bite from his burrito, and chased it down with swallow of milk. “…and Buffy and Faith told us that they were both fine with continuing things with the Reward, the way they were going, and we were about to return to the physical plane, when Buffy suddenly realized something.”
Joyce’s taco salad was still largely untouched.
“Uh…” Buffy shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I noticed that I didn’t have any real memories of Dawn, that were more than a couple of months old.”
Joyce sat still for a moment, and then slowly took a bite of her salad. She sat there, quietly chewing for a few seconds. “I know,” she said, eventually.
“You know?” asked Buffy.
“I’ve kinda known it, but not really in a knowing it way, if that makes any sense, ever since that first day when I collapsed at home,” said Joyce. “I was suddenly struck with the knowledge that the girl I was looking at was a stranger, who I didn’t really know…but at the same time, she was still my daughter.”
“She is,” said Buffy. “That’s something else I came away from the astral plane knowing. Dawn is my sister, no matter how she got here.”
“So, what do we do now?” asked Xander. “Do we tell her?”
“What do we tell her?” asked Joyce. “What do we really know about where she came from?”
“Just that she seems to be some sort of ‘Key’ that was sent to me by some monks to protect from a Beast, and the Knights of Byzantium,” said Buffy.
“Who are they?”
“I’ve got no idea about the Beast, but it seems to have worked over a monk a couple of weeks back, looking for info about where the Key went, but it, and the monk, have both disappeared since then. Faith and I had a run-in with some of the Knights a few days ago, and they told us a few things. If we run into them again, we might learn more. Hopefully, next time they’ll start with talking instead of fighting. We’re starting to really look for that monk again, too. I’m hoping that he stuck around town after he disappeared from the hospital.”
Xander had been firm with Anya, and his Slayers, telling them all that it was up to Buffy and Faith to choose the courses that they wanted to take. As much as Anya might want them to pursue lucrative careers in Business Administration or Law, or something like that, it was up to them to determine what they wanted to do with their lives.
Buffy remembered her Career Day aptitude test results, and the courses that she enjoyed the most, and decided to concentrate on Journalism, and Criminology. She knew that she couldn’t expect to get a job in law enforcement — not with the number of times her name appeared in the files of the Sunnydale police department — but as a journalist… Journalists were expected to show up after strange events, and ask questions of all the witnesses.
As for Faith, she wasn’t interested in attending university, but Anya got her looking through the Sunnydale Community College Calendar, looking for courses that she wanted to take. She liked her job, and she liked working with her hands. She ended the meeting with Anya with a promise to select a couple of construction trade courses that she would enroll in, after the new year.
Anya had dismissed them after the career discussion, to go about their other duties, but Buffy and Faith stayed seated before her desk.
“Mistress,” said Buffy. “There is something else I want to talk with you about. Xander’s birthday is a month away, and I want to make a special present for him. I’m going to need your, and Faith’s, help…”
Xander decided that it would be more productive the next evening, for Buffy and Faith to put their time into finishing off tiling the backsplash behind the kitchen counter, and taking care of the rest of the unfinished trim, than having them cook dinner, so he placed an order for sushi, to be delivered.
When there was a knock on the door, from the delivery guy whom Anya had buzzed into the building a minute earlier, Xander told Faith to answer the door, and to pay him from the money he’d left out on the kitchen counter. “And be sure to give him a good tip!”
Faith looked down at herself, dressed in work boots, a tool apron, and nothing else. “Seeing me like this isn’t enough of a tip for him?”
“As lovely as you are,” said Xander, “I’ve spent enough time in the food delivery sector to know that, given a choice, he’ll prefer to get ten bucks.”
Faith grinned at that, picked up the money off the counter, and sashayed toward the front door. “Even over a chance to see this ass?” she asked.
Xander spent a few seconds considering that. “Alright…I’d prefer a twenty dollar tip to seeing that.”
“Well, today’s his lucky day, I guess,” said Faith. “He’s going to get his tip and see my fine ass.” She opened the door.
“Delivery for Ha- Ha- Ha…” the guy just trailed off, his eyes goggling, and his mouth hanging open.
“You’re at the right place,” said Faith. “How much do I owe you?”
“Uh- bu- wu-” said the guy.
Faith stood up in her toes, and leaned closer, so she could see the bill stapled to the bag; letting the guy get an even closer look at her tits, while she was at it. “Fifty-five bucks, huh?” She counted out seventy from the stack of bills she’d picked up. “Here, keep the change.” She took the bag of food from his limp hands, and pressed the money into them. She turned around, waited for a few seconds to give him lots of time to admire her bare ass, and then used her heel to kick the door shut in his face.
Faith brought the bag back to the kitchen, and placed it on the island counter. “So, are we eating here, or at the table?” She nodded toward Xander’s old kitchen table that was sitting in the area that was designated to be the dining room, when it was finished, but was now looking rather undersized for the space.
“I have a different idea,” said Xander. The Reward Light flashed.
Buffy lay on her back on a low table, no more than a foot off the floor, with her wrists cuffed to her ankles beneath it. She could feel Xander sitting on a cushion beside her with his knees touching her arms, and calves. She felt Xander’s chop sticks pick up another piece of sashimi off her breast, and then dip it into the bowl resting in her navel. “Open up,” he said.
The hood covering her head, and eyes, kept her from seeing what he was offering her, but Buffy opened her mouth, and Xander dropped the bit of raw fish into it. She closed her mouth on it, and felt the wasabi. It made her eyes water, and her sinuses burn. She stifled a whine, as she chewed.
“Too much wasabi?” asked Xander.
Buffy swallowed. “No, Sir. I like it hot!”
“You are hot,” said Xander, and she felt him pick up something else off her, but this time he ate it himself, instead of giving it to her. “So, Ahn, how was business at the Magic Box today?” he asked.
“It was very good,” said Anya, who Buffy knew was eating her dinner off a Faith table. “I sold a twenty dollar porcelain armless Venus statuette to a wiccan wannabe for two hundred dollars. She thought it was a carved marble Aphrodite.”
“Is that fair?” asked Xander. “Selling fake merchandise like that?”
“I never told her it was a genuine Greek Aphrodite,” said Anya. “And if she’d bothered to look at the base, she’d have seen the ‘Made in China’ stamp, and what sort of fool can’t tell the difference between solid marble, and hollow ceramic? Or a knockoff of a Roman knockoff of a Greek statue, from the real thing?
“Anyway,” Anya added, “she thought she was cheating me. If it was genuine, it would have been worth thousands! She got what she deserved. So, how was your day?”
Xander picked up a California roll from between Buffy’s breasts, and fed it to her. “Not bad. The boss had me helping him put together the bid for demolition of what’s left of Sunnydale High. It looks like they’re finally going to knock down what’s left of it, and start rebuilding. I told them that they should just turn the old school property into a park, or something, and rebuild somewhere else, but it seems that the school board is determined to build the new school on the same old site. Maybe we should have our Slayers take a closer look at them, make sure they aren’t demons, or something.”
“I’ve already done that,” said Buffy. “Near as I can tell, they’re 100% human, doing stupid human things.”
“Still, won’t hurt to have another look.” Xander popped a bit of extra-spicy squid into her mouth. “I doubt if the Mayor would have let anyone with real power survive on the board, but now that he’s gone, you never know. Someone might be thinking of making a move into the power vacuum he left behind.” He picked the last piece of sashimi away from her breast, and ate it.
“Normally, now that the food’s all gone, I’d say it was time for our Slayers to clean the table, but since, tonight, they are the tables…” Buffy felt him lick across her stomach. “I guess we can handle that part of the cleanup!”
Buffy heard a contented humming sound coming from Faith — the sort that meant that she was getting licked too — as Xander’s tongue moved over her body.
Xander’s mouth left her, after a very thorough licking, and Buffy felt him moving around to place himself between Faith’s legs, as she felt Anya’s mouth descend on her pussy. She lay helplessly immobile, straining at her bonds, as Anya kissed, licked, and sucked at her cunt, and she listened to Xander fucking Faith beside her, until she heard Faith moaning out her release.
And then Anya and Xander swapped places, and Buffy felt Xander between her thighs, ramming his cock into her pussy. His hands found her tits, and he squeezed them, hard, making Buffy come.
Xander left her, and her bonds vanished. Buffy blinked against the sudden bright light as the hood that had been covering her eyes vanished, and she sat up. She looked around and saw Xander lifting Anya, her legs wrapped around his waist, as he carried her to the sofa.
She saw Anya looking back at her. “Finish cleaning up, Slaves,” she said, “while Xander gives me my orgasms!”
“Yes, Mistress!” said Buffy and Faith, together. They looked around. There wasn’t really much to clean up. The paper bag that their food had come in, along with the paper wrappers from the disposable chop-sticks went into the recycling bin, the soiled cardboard sushi containers went into the garbage. The unused chop-sticks went into the kitchen utensil drawer. There weren’t enough dirty bowls, that had been used for the sauces, to justify running the dishwasher, so Faith washed them in the sink, and Buffy dried them and put them away.
Buffy was tempted to just toss the used chop-sticks into the garbage, but they were wood, and kinda stake shaped, and she was reluctant to dispose of something that might potentially be a weapon, even if they were too flimsy to make an effective stake. But laminate a few together…
Buffy blinked as she set the used chop-sticks aside. She knew where that lamination thought had come from. Xander had her and Faith working on a Project, but it was a project that he had ordered them not to think about.
Buffy could remember all the individual components of what she had done on the Project. She could remember planing boards to be perfectly smooth, making angled dado cuts in them, and laminating them together in a criss-cross pattern. She could remember making an A-frame base, and armature. She could remember all the parts, but she couldn’t picture the whole that they went together to make, because Xander had told her not to. She knew that it amused him to know that she was making this thing, but had no idea what it was, even though she had made every bit of it herself, and worked on it every day. She also knew that it was almost finished. Xander figured that it just needed one more coat of polyurethane, before it would be done.
Xander and Anya were making love with each other on the couch when Buffy and Faith finished the cleanup, so they decided to leave them to it, and go take a shower together, since they both still felt a bit sticky from being used as sushi tables.
They took their time in the shower, slowly soaping each other down, while rubbing their bodies together as warm water rained down over them. And each of them spent some time sitting on the bench in their shower with her legs spread wide, while the other licked at her pussy, and Reward Ring, with the fingers of one hand deep inside the other’s pussy, and the fingers of the other hand in her own.
After their shower was done, and they had dried each other off, Buffy returned to her room, to do her school work, and Faith went back downstairs.
Xander and Anya were still fucking on the sofa. They were going at it doggy style, with Anya resting her forearms on the sofa armrests, and Xander behind her. They were both facing the stairs, so they saw Faith coming back down.
“Come here, Faith. Stand in front of me,” ordered Anya.
“Yes, Mistress!” said Faith, and she nearly ran to do as directed. The Reward Light flashed, and she felt her nipples being pierced by a new set of rings. Faith heard an echo of her own gasp of pleasure from upstairs that told her the Buffy had gotten her own set. Faith was pretty sure that Buffy didn’t get the set of handcuffs, binding her hands behind her back, though.
“Now, you just stand there, and let Ahn play with those lovely rings of yours,” ordered Xander.
“Yes, Milord!” said Faith, as Anya’s teeth clamped onto one of her rings, and the fingers of her left hand grabbed the other. Anya’s right hand went between Faith’s legs, to plunge a pair of fingers into her pussy, while her thumb pressed against the ring over Faith’s clit.
Buffy growled in frustration. She could feel what Anya was doing to Faith, but she was under orders from Xander that, when she was studying, she was to keep her mind on her studies, and not think about things like the stinging in her nipples from the rings that had suddenly appeared there, and that was being added to by their link. She kept her mind on reading about the court of the Russian Czar, and Rasputin’s place in it. She was starting to wonder about his humanity, given how hard it seemed to be to kill him. She made a note to ask Giles about him, though she didn’t think her history professor would appreciate anything she might have to say on that subject.
Anya was shuddering from yet another orgasm, when Xander came into her pussy. That made her bite down even harder on Faith’s nipple, triggering her release as well.
Xander collapsed back onto the sofa, and pulled Anya down beside him. Both of them were breathing deeply. He looked up at Faith, who was still standing beside the couch. “Come here, and clean us off, Faith,” he said.
“Yes, Milord.” Faith came around the couch, and knelt in front of him, with her hands still cuffed behind her back. She leant forward, and started to lick at his shrinking cock, enjoying the taste of his spunk, mixed with Anya’s nectar. When she was finished cleaning Xander, she moved over to do the same for Anya, lapping hungrily at the juices still seeping from her pussy.
When Faith had finished cleaning Anya’s pussy, Anya asked her to rise up and kiss her lips, and then to kiss Xander.
After the kiss, Xander put his hands on Faith’s shoulders and pushed her back. “Time to go to work in the workshop,” he said, and the Reward light flashed.
Faith found herself dressed in her work clothes, of a tiny, tight, t-shirt, and a denim mini-skirt, with steel toed shoes on her feet.
“Yes, Sir,” said Faith, and she rose to her feet.
There was a nearly completed table in the workshop. Faith knew that the glue had had time to cure, so she went to work releasing the clamps and straps that had been holding it together. She had just finished, when Xander came into the shop, dressed in his own work clothes.
He inspected the table carefully, running his hand across its surface to test its smoothness, and grabbing hold of the legs, and giving them a firm shake to make sure it was sturdy enough. “Looking good,” he said. “It just needs a light sanding, before we stain it.” He handed her a pair of cotton gloves, to protect the unfinished wood from the oil and sweat exuded from her skin, and a sanding pad, already loaded with 400 grit sandpaper. “You can get started on that, while I start putting the chairs together.”
“Alright, Xander.” Faith took the pad and started stroking it lightly over the wood, working with its grain, and smoothing out the few rough patches remaining. Xander had gone to the portable CD player he had in his workshop, and put on a Stevie Ray Vaughan disc. Soon Faith was dancing around the table, wiggling her ass in time with the blues beat of the music, as she sanded.
The CD had been changed to one by BB King, and Faith was leaning over the table, to reach its centre, with her hips still swaying to the beat of the music when she heard the sound of a zipper behind her. She smiled, and kept sanding.
She felt Xander step up behind her. She wasn’t wearing anything under her mini-skirt (of course) and she knew her pussy had been clearly visible to him as she leaned over her work. She kept her hips wiggling as she felt the tip of his cock brush against her. Xander’s hands took hold of her hips, and he pressed himself up against her, with his hips matching the motion of her own so they were dancing together to the beat of the music, with the top of his cock pressing along her slit.
“Keep sanding,” he growled at her, as they moved together.
“Yes, Xander!” said Faith as her hand stroked the wood, while Xander’s wood stroked against her pussy. He pulled back for a moment, and then his shaft sank into her core. They kept swaying together, only now with Xander buried deep inside her. His hands went up under her t-shirt to hold her tits, and Faith moaned.
Faith’s moan was echoed from the doorway, and Faith looked up and saw Buffy standing in the workshop door, dressed as she was, but with one hand between her legs, fingering her pussy, and with the other up under her t-shirt, fondling her breasts.
Xander saw her too. “Under the table, Buffy!” he ordered. “Lick Faith’s clit!”
“Yes, Sir!” Buffy hurried to comply, ducking under the table, and soon Faith felt Buffy’s tongue lapping at her clit, as Xander drove his shaft into her cunt. She nearly forgot that she was supposed to be sanding the table as they both drove her to the heights of ecstasy.
Buffy’s tongue wasn’t only licking at Faith’s clit. Whenever Xander drew himself back, nearly removing his cock entirely from her pussy, Faith felt Buffy’s mouth move away too, to lick at his shaft, and balls, and then her mouth came back to Faith’s clit as Xander sank himself into Faith again.
Xander’s fingers grabbed hold of Faith’s nipple rings, and twisted, as Buffy took Faith’s Reward ring in her teeth, and wiggled. Faith came hard.
Xander withdrew his cock from her pussy as Faith was coming down from her orgasm, but he was still there behind her, pushing his hips against her ass. Buffy was still on her knees under the table, too, but now Faith knew that she had Xander’s cock in her mouth, accepting his seed as he came into her throat.
“You can come out now, Buffy,” said Xander.
Faith could hear the smile of Buffy’s face as she said “Yes, Sir,” and emerged from under the table. She stood up beside them.
“Give Faith a kiss,” ordered Xander, and he wrapped his arms around both of them as Buffy’s mouth pressed against Faith’s. Their lips parted, and Faith could taste Xander’s essence on Buffy’s tongue.
Xander’s hand on the back of Faith’s head turned her face toward his, and he kissed her, and then he kissed Buffy. “Let’s get things cleaned up in here, and then we can get busy on the drywall.”
Patrols were getting boring. At first, Faith thought that it was because Xander’s darts were guiding her and Buffy to the safer sections of Sunnydale, but Giles’ combing of the local newspapers, and Willow’s forays into the Sunnydale Police Department’s computer systems showed that demonic activity was really declining.
Tonight, Xander’s darts had led them to a residential area, not far from the ruins of the old Sunnydale High School. It was after midnight, and most of the houses in the neighbourhood had darkened windows.
One house’s windows didn’t mark a sleeping family, sheltering within: its facade marked the desolation of abandonment; its windows were boarded over; its lawn was overgrown by weeds.
It wasn’t unique in Sunnydale — there were lots of abandoned houses in the town — but Buffy and Faith both felt that there was something lurking inside. Maybe it was the glimmer of light that showed through a crack.
They didn’t speak. They just exchanged a look, and then Buffy went around to the back of the house. Faith waited until their link told her that Buffy was in position, and then she kicked the front door in.
The front room of the house was illuminated by flickering candlelight. The owners had taken all of their furniture when they left, and whatever had taken up residence here hadn’t replaced it. They had created a nest for themselves with bunched up blankets in the corner of the room.
Faith only saw the back of a robed figure, as it ran toward the back door after her entrance…at least until he came flying back into the room after running into Buffy. She looked down at the man lying on the floor in front of her. “Well, hello again,” she said.
The monk she had run into a few weeks earlier looked up at her.
Buffy had followed the monk from the back of the house. “You know this guy?” she asked.
“Not well,” said Faith. “Found him tied and beaten up. Took him to the hospital. He said he wanted to tell you about the Key.”
“And then he left before I could have a chat with him,” said Buffy. She turned her attention back to the monk. “So, what did you want to tell me about my sister?”
“Y— You know?”
“I know that my sister is the Key, that all our memories of her, from more than a few months ago are made up. I know that the Knights of Byzantium want to destroy her—”
“They mustn’t!” said the monk. “The Key is too precious! It must be protected!”
“Some beastly abomination wants to find her too.”
“You can’t let that happen!” said the monk.
“Tell me why,” said Buffy. “Why should I protect some cuckoo you dropped into my family!”
Faith shot Buffy a look, surprised by the anger in her voice, and she felt an echo of reassurance through their link, that part of what Buffy was saying was an act. She was angry with the monk, but it was over what had been done to Dawn, not to the rest of them.
“Why’d you do it?” she asked.
“The Key…must be protected,” said the monk. “The Beast had found us, was killing my brethren. The last died slowing her down, buying us time to complete…to complete our spell.”
“What did you do?” asked Buffy.
“The Key is living energy, so we moulded it a body to contain it; shaped your memories so you would accept it, and sent it to you for protection. Please, you must protect it! Protect her.”
“She’s not my sister,” said Buffy coldly.
“She doesn’t know that,” said the monk. “Please, she is an innocent. She must be protected.”
Buffy and Faith returned to their apartment after their conversation with the monk. They had advised him to leave town, if he really wanted to protect the Key. The Beast had already found him once, and might again, and the Knights of Byzantium were prowling around as well. It would be best if they never found him. There were ways to make anyone talk, no matter how determined they were to keep silent, if the questioner was ruthless, or skilled enough. The Beast was certainly ruthless, though it apparently lacked the skill to use anything more than brute force to get what it wanted. Buffy didn’t know if the Knights were ruthless enough to resort to torture, but she also knew that there were more subtle ways to extract information from someone. Even Giles had succumbed to Drusilla’s mind tricks, when Angel had captured him to learn about Acathla.
The lights were dimmed in the apartment when they entered it. It was well past midnight, and Xander and Anya had already gone to bed. Buffy was only a little disappointed that he hadn’t waited up for them, but it was also a mark of his confidence in his Slayers that he didn’t feel the need to wait up, worrying, when they were out on patrol.
The Reward light flared as the door closed behind them, and both of their Slayer uniforms vanished, leaving Buffy and Faith dressed in only their Reward Rings. Faith smiled at Buffy, and made a bee-line for their recently finished kitchen. Buffy was definitely feeling the Hungry and Horny vibes Faith was putting out.
Faith already had the freezer open, and had pulled out a tub of cherry cheesecake ice-cream. “Get a big bowl, and two spoons,” she told Buffy.
Buffy got the bowl, the spoons, and the ice-cream scoop, and brought them all to Faith. Faith took the scoop, and used it to put enough ice-cream for two hungry Slayers into the bowl. Buffy took the bowl and the spoons to the breakfast bar, and perched herself on one of the stools, while Faith returned the ice-cream tub to the freezer, and the scoop to the kitchen sink.
Buffy was ready with a spoonful of ice-cream to feed to Faith, when she joined her at the counter, and then Faith used the other spoon to scoop up some ice-cream to feed to Buffy. They sat silently together, feeding each other. While one appetite was slacked, the other grew grew stronger as it fed through their link.
Faith took her spoonful of ice-cream and rubbed it around Buffy’s left nipple. It was already almost painfully tight, and the shock of cold against it sent a shudder through Buffy’s body. The cold was followed by the heat of Faith’s lips, and tongue, as she bent down to lick it clean.
Buffy took her ice-cream laden spoon, and swirled it around Faith’s right nipple.
They took turns, licking ice-cream from each other’s bodies, until their bowls were empty. They washed their dishes in the sink, dried them, and put them away, and then went out onto the terrace. Buffy hit the switch to turn on the pool lights on her way out the door.
Blue light shone up through the still water of the swimming pool. The sky overhead was scattered with stars. Buffy and Faith both made graceful dives into the deep end of the pool.
They didn’t surface again for several minutes. They twisted toward each other under the water to embrace and kiss one another. Each of them slipped a thigh between the other’s legs, and pressed it up against her pussy.
When they finally did come back up for air, they continued to hold and kiss each other, their bodies still entwined.
There was a limit to how long even a Slayer could stay immersed in water without her finger tips starting to look like prunes, so they eventually emerged from the pool. The November evening air was too cool for them to stay outside in it, especially when wet, so they used a couple of towels to dry themselves off enough that they stopped dripping, before going back inside. They went up to their bathroom to have a quick, warm, shower to rinse the salt from their skin and hair, thoroughly dried each other off, and went to join Xander and Anya in their bed.
Faith crawled under the sheets beside Anya, and Buffy slid in beside Xander. They snuggled up close to their Mistress, and Lord, and both settled down to sleep.
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