Music of the Night
by A.j.

(Last Revisions 7/7/98)

He'd stopped by just to check.

That was all. Nothing more. She was the "weakest" of the group and needed to be checked. Besides, she was his friend, and he wanted to keep her. Letting her get attacked just wouldn't do.

So, there he was, in a tree outside her bedroom window making sure she was safe. It was weird, but she seemed to keep the worst hours of the crew. Buffy was out and patrolling until 12 then usually went home to crash. Xander played smoochies with with Cordy but usually hit the sack around 12 or 1. Giles. Well, Giles usually bombed as soon as he got home. Poor guy. Keeping up with a hypersensitive Slayer and a crowd of youngin's really was hell on a guy's sleeping patterns.

Back to Willow though. Her sleeping times were even weirder than the rest. If there wasn't some crisis of epic proportions brewing, she usually made it home before 5, called her boyfriend (or occasionally went out with him) ate dinner with her family, had a nice normal relation time with her parents and headed up to her room. Then she proceeded to log on to her computer (triple pass-worded with a 9 figure encryption lock) and stayed there. One time he'd gotten curious and stayed through an entire session. She had stared at the screen for nearly seven hours. Starting at eight o'clock, ending at one. She'd fielded too many IM's to count, read through countless pages of information on the occult and readjusted a quantum physics dissertation that she proceeded to post on a college board for perusal by MIT big-wigs.

The girl was just amazing. All that intelligence crammed into that small body was just too... astounding.

Of course, he'd been raised in a time where women weren't supposed to do more than look pretty and breed. Damn how blind those idiots had been. If *any* of the women of that time were even half as bright as this girl, the world would have been in the computer age centuries before now. Plus the world mightn't be falling to pieces.

Hmph. Now he was channeling her essay on the good vs. bad of ethane fuel. Oy did she have talent.

Staring in her window now Angel decided that she was safe. She was happily IM-proofreading an author named Keiti884 and ignoring the outside world. Shrugging, he turned to leave... except something unexpected happened.

She stood up, and walked away from the computer.

WHAT? It was only 11 on a SATURDAY! The Babylon 5 chat didn't start for another hour, and the Highlander for another three. Something was up.

Repearching himself, he tried to get a better hold on the tree. Maybe he should go ask her if she was okay... But that would mean admitting to lurking. Damn. As much as it pained him, he admitted Xander was right. He needed to get a new hobby.

She turned up a radio he hadn't noticed before. It sat on the edge of her nightstand, small and tasteful. Straining to pick up the song that would so affect this woman that she would pause in the middle of an IM session with a prominent author for whom she was beta reading, he stretched his vampiric hearing out.

It was blues.

Now that was a surprise.

He had always pegged Willow as the soft rock type of girl. She exuded a teenager-ness and innocence that, in no way, coincided with the powerful rhythms provoked by B.B. King and Ella. Such a strong music just didn't sit with her little girl image. Blues were hard. Mature. Stark. They were a music of the night. She should be listening to Kenny G or Michael Bolton.

Shaking his head, he looked back through the large window.

The song was one he hadn't heard before. The trumpet and harmonica were a little hot and the drum was slow and seductive. The style was pure New Orleans, heavy.

Willow had stilled just after turning up the volume. Her delicate hand resting lightly on the corner of the small white transceiver. She looked all the world like a little girl doing something she shouldn't. Slowly, with a grace he'd never associated with the small red-head, she started to move.

It started at her neck. Letting it go limp, she started to turn it in fragile circles.. each one achingly slow. The hips soon followed, swaying... moving oh.. so.. slowly. Side to side they swung not deviating from the second drum harmony. Suddenly, the main vocalist's voice crashed over the girl like a wave, bringing out a change in the movement of those slim hips. They were rotating now. Tiny circles, following the shifting of her head with a deadly certainty.

Angel stared, dumbstruck. With those tiny movements, she had kicked in the shield of Angel's awareness. With something akin to horrified curiosity, he took in the small hacker's appearance. She had changed for sleep before he'd appeared. She was dressed in a simple black tank-top and grey cut-off sweat pants. Her hair was back in a loose french braid. All in all not really the picture of a temptress. Weren't Lolita's supposed to have make up and heels or something?

Again, the rhythm changed slightly, giving the hacker just the right shift to bring her (until then) still arms into play. Slowly.. sooo slowly, she raised them over her head, her fingers dancing an intricate pattern on her palms. Then, stretching as far up as they could.. they started to descend. Lightly, her left hand grazed down the tender inside flesh of her right arm, stopping at the elbow, she pulled that tiny, innocent hand across the back of her head and to her shoulder. The hand disappeared for a moment but re-emerged, grazing the outside of her breast. It then worked its way down the side of her ribcage, coming to rest on the top of her thigh. The other hand, her right, lazily mirrored the left before coming to rest on opposite flank.

All this time, her hips had not ceased their slow circles. In fact, as soon as her right palm made contact with its related haunch, the circles grew bolder, wilder. BLATANTLY sexual. Around and around those hips went, not vulgar, but infinitely arousing. As the instrumental chorus hit, Willow brought her upper body into play, gyrating to the heavy beat of a fender, a trumpet and those damn drums.

Angel was confused. This was Willow. WILLOW. The girl (GIRL!!!) who made a mad dive for her bra when he'd entered her room! The girl who blushed at anything overtly sexual. She had frumpy clothes and sad-girl braids... and never had a nasty thought in her li-

Her hips circled again, hard, and she turned.

Dear Lord, she was exquisite.

Her eyes were tight shut, her mind completely absorbed in the music. Her long red hair had started to poke out of its serviceable french braid. Bits and pieces of firey hair poked out from all sides, falling carefully forward across her elf-like features, adding to the mystery of her dance.

She was a woman.

Angel's jaw dropped.

Her hands started to work. Confidently they slid up and down her slim thighs, moving to the beat of a powerful trumpet. Pausing temporarily on her hips, she pushed an entire circle with just her hands, pelvis thrusting out at the cowed vampire almost as if she knew he was there.

Angel felt as though his body were on fire. The blood pounding through him had to be near boiling. He heard a dull thudding in his ears, and the front of his pants became conspicuously tight.

Not knowing of a certain vampire's intense discomfort on her behalf, Willow moved her hands back up her ribcage, tracing.. learning. Occasionally straying to her swaying hips, they traced an intricate pattern across her stomach and sides, never quite reaching their inevitable destination.. her breasts. The tank she wore sporadically hiked, revealing just the barest hint of white flesh before falling back to touch the tops of the cut-off sweat-pant shorts.

As the music built, so did the tension in the rest of her nimble form. Rotating her hips hard and finally.. finally brushing her fingers home across those small.. perfect.. barely-visible.. nipples, she rocked and played. The music pulsing around her, she was not sweet shy Willow. She was strong, sexy, Willow.

The discordant squak of the lead singers voice tripped her up a bit, but she recovered quickly. Biting her lip in silent pleasure, she pushed her lower body harder, faster, her hips nearly slamming up towards the window.

~You were sweet as an apple on the tree...~

The final chord built and broke over the room, leaving silence in its wake. With one final thrust and cut outward with her arms, Willow stilled.

After the punishing beat of the song the sudden quiet seemed out of place. Angel watched as the spell that had caught Willow up slowly unwrapped itself, letting her go. He kept watching as she loosened and relaxed muscles. With a final shrug, she let the last of the tension leave, slowly, carefully opening her eyes.

<Oh, shit.> She was looking directly at him. He'd forgotten his precarious position while she'd been dancing. <SHIT.>

Not wanting to be caught, the shocked vamp did the only thing he could.

He fell out of the tree.

Fin