"So, first up - you're a prisoner."

"I'd have to concur with that, yes."

"See, you've got our friend... all... in knots."

"Can't say we like you much."

"So, sorry about the dying, but if you try to escape, we will hit you."

"On the head."

"With very large and heavy objects. Okay?"

"Well," Darla began slowly, looking at each of them in turn, "that'd beat being annoyed to death."

"So why are you dying, anyway?" Cordelia asked, as Wesley moved to the weapons cabinet to polish something or other.

"What?"

"You know, what's wrong with you? Are you like... decaying from being in the ground for a few years?"

"Do I look like I'm decaying?" Darla snapped, not depressed enough to not be offended by that.

"Well then what is it? Did Lindsey give you something?" Cordy asked, crinkling her nose in sympathetic distaste.

"No," Darla said, crossing her arms over her chest with a sigh. "Syphilitic heart condition."

"Oh. Right. You hear that all the time," Cordelia said, rolling her eyes. "In English, please?"

"I had syphilis, I didn't know it, and it went untreated. Now it's affected my heart. Terminally. Why is it you care, again?"

"Oeuwh... how did you get syphilis?"

Wesley discretely left the room at that point. No need to overhear the rest of that conversation.

"I was a whore," Darla said loudly, opening her arms in a grand gesture. "And they weren't much for condoms four hundred years ago. There, is that what you were looking for? Can we stop with the endless questions now?"

"Oh my God," Cordelia said, her expression clearly showing her distaste. "And you're going to be sleeping on our sheets?"

Darla's irritation left her, replaced by hurt, though she was loathe to admit to feeling that. "Don't worry. I can sleep on the floor. Or maybe you can order me one of those hazmat suits, complete with oxygen tank, so you won't have to breathe the same air as me," she said bitterly. "Or better yet? I'll sleep outside." She turned to go, but Cordelia grabbed her wrist.

"Darla, wait. I'm sorry. Sometimes my face and my mouth get ahead of my brain. It's a... speak first think later condition. Not terminal, but... anyway I'm sorry."

"I wouldn't care if I wasn't human. This damn soul is pissing me off," Darla said darkly, her skin tingling where Cordelia's fingers touched. Well that was new. "You can let go now, I won't run off," she said, stepping closer, her mouth pulling into a sly little grin. "Promise."

"I don't know if I trust you," Cordelia grinned back.

"Aww, I left my handcuffs in my other dress."

"I have some."

A blonde brow lifted, and she followed Cordelia up the stairs. "You really think I won't be able to get out of them if I want to?"

"You're human," Cordelia reminded her. "No super strength."

"Maybe... but I'm still tricky," Darla said as Cordelia opened the door to her room.

"I stay here when I don't feel like driving home," she offered. "Get on the bed."

"What, no dinner?" Darla asked, but she did as she was told, climbing onto the bed and laying in the middle of it, placing her hands above her head. And when Cordelia straddled her stomach and started cuffing her to the bed, she couldn't help the soft gasp that left her throat, or the way her eyes fluttered shut, or how her back arched, pressing her ribcage lightly up between Cordelia's legs.

Cordy froze, one hand holding Darla's second wrist and the other poised to snap the cuffs on. She faltered, but shook herself out of it and closed the steel, trapping Darla's hands effectively. "What are you...?" she just had to ask. And was that a blush she saw on Darla's cheeks?

Darla flushed, turning her head to the side. "I'm sorry, it's just... I forgot how it feels."

"How what feels?"

"Having a girl on top of me."

Cordelia was about to scoff and leave her chained up, but some nagging feeling in the back of her mind told her Darla was being real. So she stayed put, just to investigate. "How long has it been?"

"Centuries," Darla breathed, wrapping her fingers around the chain linking the cuffs. "It feels different as a human."

"How is it different?"

"I'm warm... my skin is on fire where you touched me... my heart is racing and it's hard to get a steady breath."

Cordelia was a little bit enraptured by that description. "Wow. All because I'm sitting on you? What if I did this?" She reached behind herself and let one hand trail idly along Darla's thigh, stroking back and forth, just beneath the hem of her dress.

Darla jerked on the handcuffs, the chain rattling against the iron headboard, and spread her legs. "Don't tease me," she half sighed, half groaned, trying to free her hands.

"If you get out of those cuffs, I am so leaving you in here by yourself," Cordelia warned, raking one fingernail up the inside of Darla's thigh, grinning at the hiss she received for her trouble.

Darla was barely listening, more focused on Cordelia's hands than her words, but she stopped trying to free herself. Now that Cordelia had awakened the fire, she needed it. "What are you doing to me?" she panted, keeping her eyes shut, afraid to see the look on Cordelia's face.

So, this was weird. Really weird. But it kind of excited Cordelia, having this kind of power over someone as powerful as Darla. Okay, over anyone, actually, but especially someone as powerful as Darla. And she hadn't tried the girl-on-girl thing yet, so she was behind the times. "You really want me to..." she started to ask, letting the rest of the question trail off.

"I would've picked someone rougher," Darla said honestly, trying to rock her hips, but Cordelia's weight pinned them to the mattress. "But yes. Please, do."

Now, if there was one thing besides shopping that Cordelia could do, it was rise to a challenge. "Rougher?" she asked, climbing backwards until she knelt on the mattress between Darla's legs. "Like this?" She gripped Darla's thighs, fingertips digging in to leave marks on pale skin as she forced them further apart.

Darla rattled the chain again, gasping in a breath and biting her lip until she drew blood. "Yes," she ground out from between clenched teeth, rocking her hips now that she could. "Fuck me."

Well that was a little forward. "Don't I need, like, lube or something first?"

Wild blue eyes locked on slightly surprised brown ones, and Darla growled. "Push up my dress and find out."

That was the moment it became less of a game to Cordelia, and she swallowed hard, grabbing fistfuls of Darla's dress and pushing it slowly up her thighs, the scent of arousal hitting her in a powerful wave. Darla wasn't wearing underwear, and she was so wet. "I haven't-" she started to say, but Darla interrupted her.

"Just put your fingers in!"

"O-kay then," Cordelia muttered to herself, uncurling her right fist and slipping two fingers around until she found what she needed and pushed them smoothly inside. It felt amazing - hot and tight and slick, and it made her moan softly.

Darla let out a cry, bucking into Cordelia's fingers, feeling every single nuance between them as if it were the first time she'd ever been touched. She came within a minute, after a few slow pumps and a thumb brushing firmly over her clit, unearthly pleasure washing through her as very human sweat broke out across the back of her neck and along her forehead. She was trapped in a human body, handcuffed to a bed, held in the hotel against her will, but she didn't feel like a prisoner. For those few minutes with Cordelia, on a more primal plane of existence, she felt free.