Fic: "Witch Night" - Part 1 of 2 (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, NC-17)
Title: "Witch Night" (Part 1 of 2)
Author: erimthar
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 5,465 for Part 1
Pairings and characters: Centrally Willow/Tara; also Xander/Anya, Buffy/Riley, Amy Madison, Joyce, Cordelia, and some others.
Summary: With the perils of Season 4 behind them, Willow and Tara set aside a special evening to explore their shiny new romance in great detail. But, as with many things witches do, their tryst has unexpected consequences for those around them.
Warnings: This story contains explicit descriptions of lesbian, het, and solo sex. It gets a bit darker in some places than most of the stuff I've written before -- nothing very extreme, but some possible "squick points" include physical and emotional abuse; prostitution; self-harm; dubcon.
Author's Notes: Takes place not long after "Restless" and the end of Season 4. It's sort of an erotic anthology story of the Buffyverse at that time... some of it fun and sexy, some of it not so much.
Witch Night
Wake up. Eat. Run on the wheel. Empty myself. Sleep.
Wake up. Eat. Fear, as the Terrible Cat paws at the bars of my cage. Empty myself. Run on the wheel. Sleep.
Wake up. Eat... what's that smell?
The rat's first conscious thought was the unhappy realization that it was a rat.
Its second thought was that its name was Amy.
Its third thought was the realization that it was well and truly fucked.
And her next thought (for she was a her now, not an it) was to wonder why she felt so wonderful, considering the amount of trouble she was in.
As her memories gradually came flooding back to her, Amy realized that the stunning pleasure she was feeling was only a part of what had jolted her back to self-awareness. Mostly, it was that smell. Not the obvious minty smell that pervaded the air of the room, but the more subtle one underneath it. Without her rodent's sense of smell, she might not have been able to pick it out. But it was a smell that Amy Madison was never likely to forget.
The room was illuminated only by the flickering light of a single tall, thin candle. It was the candle that was responsible for the aroma... for both aromas, in fact.
Amy stood up on her hind legs and looked out of her cage toward the bed, where she could see by the candlelight that two nude young women were making passionate love to each other. Willow, and the blonde girl. Hm. Amy hadn't known that Willow was a lesbian. She tried to call up her still-slightly-hazy memories, wondering if she'd missed any clues in the past. She couldn't recall Willow ever having given any hints in that regard when they'd been close friends. She wondered how she would have responded if she had.
The blonde woman was called Tara, unless Willow was being rude enough to whimper some other woman's name under these circumstances. Amy remembered that this Tara sometimes brought her food, and helped clean her cage, and spoke to her (like Willow) in words she couldn't usually understand. She was also the bringer of the Terrible Cat.
Amy glimpsed various things passing through the small circle of flickering light given off by the candle in the otherwise dark room. Willow's face, damp with sweat and tears. Tara's big breasts, pink nipples jutting. A swirling mix of blonde and red hair, and then Tara's face, beet red and convulsing in ecstasy. Willow's bottom and the backs of her legs as she shifted position. Then, Tara's hand holding... what was it? One of those novelty back-scratchers - a long stick with a little hand on the end, fingers curled in scratching position. Only this one seemed to be enchanted, its tiny fingers wiggling and squirming indvidually. It glinted in the candlelight for a moment before disappearing down into the dimness below the light. There came a sharp cry from Willow, and a sudden frantic squeaking of bedsprings.
Willow's voice was the higher-pitched one, sobbing and whimpering and occasionally pleading. Tara's was the lower one, softly moaning and groaning and purring and crying out wordlessly every so often.
From the sharp, pleasant, minty aroma that filled the room, Amy realized that the candle was a Maidenleaf Candle.
Maidenleaf was, according to legend, a gift of the virgin goddess Diana to her equally virginal priestesses. Supposedly, it only grew under the light of the moon in spots where the goddess herself (apparently still having needs, despite or because of her virginity) had lain down in the grass to make love to herself.
That was the fanciful legend, but in reality, Maidenleaf was a fairly common plant. If you burned a leaf or two as incense or potpourri with a certain simple incantation, it acted as a mild urethral irritant, intensifying sexual pleasure and fairly quickly resulting in an urgent need to orgasm. Horny Wiccans often used it that way, to enhance their sexual experiences.
(You could also chew the spearmint-tasting leaf, with much more intense and direct results. Amy herself had pilfered a few leaves from her mother's "secret" stash, during the most hormone-stricken periods of her puberty, when desperation had lent her courage. Chew one of those leaves, and two or three minutes later you'd better have something to lie down on, and you'd better have a box of tissues handy. The effects would wear off after the best half-hour of your life, although you'd get a burning sensation while peeing for the next day or so. Well worth it.)
The Maidenleaf Candle was simply a normal candle with bits of Maidenleaf encased inside the wax at various points along its length. When the candle burned down to one of those bits of leaf it would ignite, suddenly flooding the room with a burst of scent and causing Willow and Tara to cry out in breathless unison.
Whichever one of them had thought to buy that candle deserved some serious romance points. But Amy knew from the second, underlying scent that this was not an ordinary Maidenleaf Candle.
The wax itself wasn't normal candle wax... it was weal-tallow. Weal-tallow was a rare and expensive substance. When burned, those within range of its scent shared their physical sensations with everyone in the world connected to them by bonds of family, friendship, or destiny. Those closest to you would feel it most intensely, while more distant friends and relatives and connected strangers might feel nothing more than a slight, odd twinge of pleasure or pain.
Amy hated the smell of weal-tallow. Hated it with all her heart.
At times in the past when Amy had really succeeded in pissing off her mother, to the point that a screaming session or a cold insult or a slap in the face wouldn't suffice, she would be called into the master bedroom... now her mother's bedroom, since her father had left.
Her mother would be sitting on the edge of the bed, cold fury in her eyes, while a single weal-tallow candle burned on the nightstand. Amy knew what was going to happen then, and what would happen to her if she resisted.
Catherine Madison didn't lower herself to using a weapon to spank her pathetic daughter... no belt, no hairbrush, no ruler. Just an open hand. The goal was humiliation as well as pain. And both goals were very effectively accomplished.
She never spoke at all during these punishment sessions. The only sounds in the room would be the loud, endless smack smack smack of Catherine's cruel hand against her daughter's bare bottom, and Amy's gasping, desperate sobs. But she knew better than to beg for the spanking to stop. If she did, her mother would switch to her left hand after the right one got too tired to continue.
This was punishment not just for Amy, but for all her friends as well. Through the magic of the weal-tallow candle, every one of her friends was experiencing the same eye-watering pain she was. For them it would fade more quickly due to the lack of any true physical contact, but would be compounded by the fear of not knowing how or why they were being hurt so.
And it was punishment for Catherine, too. As Amy's mother, she shared in the pain more than anyone. She seldom gave any indication of this, apart from the occasional gasp after landing a particularly vicious blow, and a slight stiff-legged limp after the session was over.
Amy's mother would spank her so hard, and so long, that she'd have to sleep on her belly that night and would wince with pain the next day, every time she had to sit down for class. About half of the people she knew would be mysteriously absent from school that day.
Now, the under-scent of Willow and Tara's candle brought all those memories back. Weal-tallow was more expensive than those two could possibly have afforded. When they bought it, both they and the magic dealer must have been clueless as to what it really was.
In this case, the weal-tallow explained the overwhelming pleasure Amy's little rat-body was feeling, as Willow and Tara unknowingly shared their ecstasy with her. For her it wasn't sexual pleasure, exactly - girl-rats weren't really equipped to experience such a thing - but her brain was so flooded with delicious endorphins, she was surprised they weren't squirting out both her ears.
All of Willow and Tara's human friends and relatives, Amy realized dreamily, and even a few people who didn't know they existed (yet), would be having one hell of an interesting night.
* * * * *
Xander jolted awake in the midst of an epic dream that he instantly couldn't remember any of. What he did realize, after a few seconds of just-woke-up disorientation, was that he was more aroused than he'd ever been in his life. And that was saying something.
"Xander?" came Anya's sleepy but tense voice from the spot next to him. "I need to have sex with you right now, please."
"Tell me about it," Xander replied, pulling aside the sheets to reveal the state of himself.
"Oh!" Anya said brightly. "That's handy. Sometimes you can be a very considerate and thoughtful boyfriend."
"I don't think there's much thought involved, actually."
Anya grew concerned. "I feel like if I don't have sex with you right now," she said, "that I'm going to climax anyway. That would be disappointing and wasteful."
"How can this be happening?" Xander groaned. "We just had major sex..." - he glanced at the clock - "...three hours ago. I came twice. You came four times."
"Five," she corrected. "I was masturbating while I was sucking you. When you ejaculated in my mouth, I came too. I don't blame you for not noticing."
Xander felt his heart pounding harder, and his breathing getting faster. "God," he moaned. "I don't know what's happening to me."
"I've seen this before," Anya lied. "If you don't have sex, your testicles will rupture. You'll be a eunuch. And I'll be a eunuch's girlfriend. I don't want to be a eunuch's girlfriend, Xander."
Xander swallowed with a very dry throat. "I guess you'd better save me, then."
"Right." Anya threw off her covers and sat up. "I'm still naked from before. That will save time. Here we go. Number three for you, and number six for me. Or seven. Do I hear eight?"
With that ambitious agenda set, Anya climbed on top of Xander and knelt astride his thighs, pinning him down to the bed. She reached a determined hand out for his penis, and before he could formulate a warning or a protest, she grabbed hold of it.
At the first touch of her cool, soft hand, fire erupted throughout Xander's body, and he grunted like he'd been kicked in the stomach. His cock jerked right out of Anya's hand and hurled a thick rope of white syrup across the undersides of her breasts.
Xander's vision blurred. The last thing he saw was Anya's expression of stunned surprise, as she looked down at the unexpectedly sudden results of her touch. He felt, rather than saw, as Anya quickly got back into the game and took him back in hand, squeezing and stroking his shaft through his orgasm with that firm but gentle grip that felt so good. With a long groan of relief and utter bliss, he emptied himself all over Anya's belly and the tops of her thighs.
He opened his eyes moments later to see Anya staring down at him. "That was fast," she observed unnecessarily. "And messy. But very, very impressive. You're like some kind of super sex machine that's also good at cuddling me and fixing stuff and saying nice things in my ear just before I fall asleep."
"Let the record show that I don't usually do that," Xander said, exhausted.
"Yes you do," she snapped at him crossly. "Stop contradicting my romantic musings."
"No, I mean... I'm sorry I crossed the finish line without you. I just couldn't help it."
Anya raised her right hand to her mouth and started licking it clean, making sure he saw. "Xander," she said, "just before you hosed me down like a piece of cheap lawn furniture, you gave me a look that made me think of a starving man with his face pressed up against the front window of a bakery. I've never seen anyone look at me with so much wanting in their eyes before. And then you came so fast, and so much, just from me touching you. It makes me think that maybe you really like me after all."
"I love you, Anya," Xander said. "I love you."
She smiled at him. "Are you sure you're not just saying that because I'm sitting on your thighs, stark naked, covered in your semen?"
"Uh... well, I'm not saying that's not part of it," he admitted.
Anya grinned. "I'm pleased, Xander." She leaned forward and gave him a long, deep kiss. "So pleased, that I don't even mind that you came before I did and left me high and dry - well, maybe not so dry - and severely aroused."
"Your magnanimity knows no bounds, my queen," he said with a smile, closing his eyes.
"You're going to make it up to me with your mouth," Anya ordered. "Don't even think about going back to sleep yet."
"Uh... don't you even want to get cleaned up first?"
"Now, Xander."
Anya climbed off him, threw herself down on her back, and opened her legs wide.
"Wow," Xander observed, looking at her. "Is that a hot pink butterfly between your legs, or are you just happy to see me?"
"I'll let you know in five minutes how happy I am to see you," she purred. "Now get busy."
Xander got busy. And it didn't take anywhere near five minutes.
* * * * *
Tara had a large collection of candles. Non-magical ones, mostly, which she'd bought after the blackout a few weeks back. They were all shapes and sizes and colors, from thin little tapers to big ones as long and fat as her upper arm. Right now, every one of them was lying in a jumble on the bed, as Tara carefully selected them one or two at a time.
Wow, thought Amy distractedly. I never would have thought Willow could make sounds like that. And Tara is going to need to buy a lot of new candles.
Amy was trying to figure out a way to get out of her cage. Not easy, what with having no opposable thumbs, and the distraction of the ongoing haze of pleasure in her brain, and the awful smell of the weal-tallow, and the two hyper-orgasmic and noisy young ladies over there. It was a toss-up as to which was squeaking more: the bed, or the girls on it.
She figured that her human awareness would fade again as the stimulation did, after that candle burned out and those two energetic witches finally fell asleep. If tonight was a special sexy witchy occasion, like Beltane night, they might be at it until dawn. Amy hoped so.
She needed to get out of her cage, let Willow and Tara know she was aware, and somehow show them the right spell in their books to change her back. Then, they could carry on licking each other until the cows came home... and then lick the cows, if they wanted to.
Amy might even offer to join them, after they'd turned her back into her conveniently nude girl-form. After what she'd seen and heard and smelled tonight, the Goddess knew she felt a lot less heterosexual than she had the last time it was an issue.
She had almost managed to work the latch of her cage door free with her paws, when she spotted the Terrible Cat, crouching under a nearby chair and eyeing her with interest.
Rats, Amy thought.
* * * * *
Joy DeLeo's life had come full circle in the past couple of years.
Back then, she'd been captain of the Sunnydale High cheerleading squad, with the power to award or take Cool Points from any girl in the school. The whole first page of the yearbook had been a color picture of her, in midair, graceful and beautiful as she executed a jump from the top of a pyramid. People thought she was stuck-up and kind of a bitch, because she was. But they also thought she was hot, and a very talented cheerleader and dancer. Because she was.
Her cheerleading scholarship to UCLA had gotten revoked after she'd been caught snorting coke at a party on campus that got busted. But she'd been flunking all her classes anyway, so that didn't really make much difference.
Then there had been the six months as a Hooters waitress, pulling in really good tips until her boss finally got tired of her attitude and fired her. Shortly thereafter, she'd had all her savings stolen by a debt-consolidation swindler whose act, in better times, she never would have been gullible enough to fall for.
Next, the exotic dancing job. That had involved being topless and in a g-string, and that had terrified her at first. But she was a really good dancer, and the customers really liked her, and they were only allowed to touch her to put money in her g-string. But then one of the more senior girls decided Joy was making her look bad by comparison, and got her fired from that job as well.
Now, Joy was back in the Sunnydale cheerleading uniform, which she'd carefully saved all this time. Same fuzzy sweater with the varsity letter. Same pleated skirt and matching panties. Same sneakers and socks and gold-and-red pompoms.
She would be sent by her "agent" to knock on the doors of inexpensive motel rooms occupied by men (and the occasional woman or couple) staying in Santa Barbara for whatever work or pleasure related reason.
She'd do a few cheers and jumps and moves for her admiring audience of one or two. And then the decision would have to be made. Did they want to take her uniform off her themselves, or watch her do it? Or did they want her to leave it on, except for the panties? After all, a naked cheerleader was just another girl.
This particular customer wanted her in nothing but the sneakers and socks... a pretty common request. They were sixty-nining on the motel bed, with Joy on top. He was busily devouring her, his nose buried between her buns (it tickled a little), and she was practicing her deep-throat technique. She was getting pretty good at it, but there were still the occasional gagging fits and watery eyes to deal with. It was worth it, though... the customers loved it, and said so with tips and repeat business.
Joy had her customer's cock all the way down her throat, when an orgasm came out of nowhere and hit her like a speeding bus. The pleasure spasm was so sudden, so unexpected, and so heart-stoppingly intense that she bit down reflexively... hard.
Her customer's entire body went rigid beneath her, and he let out a scream of pain, muffled by his mouthful of Joy. Her climax dissipated as quickly as it had arrived, short-circuited by shock and fear.
Oh God, was what went through her mind. Where do you go next when you get fired from a job as a whore?
But then her client's cock suddenly twitched and jerked in her mouth, and he exploded into his condom. It was a good thirty seconds before he was all finished.
Ten minutes later, Joy was dressed again, walking out the motel room door with her fee, a fifty-dollar tip, and a promise of another evening of employment the next time this particular gentleman was in town.
As she sat on the bench outside waiting for her taxi to arrive, all she could think of was, I came. I had an orgasm from a customer. A guy I don't know at all, and care about less.
She decided not to fix her eyeliner. This guy had been her only appointment for the night, and she didn't give a shit if the cab driver saw her cry.
* * * * *
Cordelia was so glad that she finally had a chance to relax.
It had been nearly two weeks now since the metaphysical migraine that had nearly killed her. The boys were surprised she'd recovered so quickly from her vision overdose, but the pain (despite appearances) had, after the first few moments, been far more emotional than physical. Mercifully, the memories had begun to fade, and her nightmares were becoming less of the "watching children being disembowelled" variety and more of the "showing up to school in an uncoordinated outfit" kind.
Faith was finally out of their lives, having been set on the Path To Redemption (trademark pending) by Angel. Cordy still wanted to roll her eyes and say "whatever" when she thought about that, even when she was alone.
But, as an added bonus, Buffy was back out of the picture for a while too. Not that she really disliked Buffy that much (anymore)... but the whole Hydrogen Bomb metaphor of her and Angel being together in the same place was more than a little stressful, especially considering his recent drug-induced flirtation with Angelus: The Sequel.
And then there was this Shanshu thing to deal with. Angel was still trying to decide whether it was something worth pencilling in to his brooding schedule.
Best of all, since their former office had been blown up by some Wolfram & Hart goon, Angel Investigations had been using Cordelia's apartment as a makeshift headquarters. She had to admit, it was nice not to have to make that stressful trip to and from the office every day. But did the boys ever offer to help shampoo out the demon guts they tracked all over her carpet? No, they did not.
And that thought reminded Cordy that she needed a bath.
A real bath. Diffused lighting, nice bath salts, lots of little candles on every horizontal surface of the bathroom, and a Moby CD playing at low volume.
She lay back blissfully in the warm water until it was up to her chin, and closed her eyes with a sigh. "Phantom Dennis," she called, "you'll save me if I fall asleep and start to drown, won't you?"
She got no answer, unsurprisingly.
Moby's "Rushing" played softly in the background as Cordy felt the tension of the past few weeks melt away.
Her nipples tickled.
Cordelia giggled. "Dennis, stop that," she scolded. "You know I get ice cold when you touch me, and I'm not ready for that yet. Later. Just chill -- not literally."
Her nipples tickled even more.
Cordelia opened one eye and looked down at them. In just the last few seconds they'd gone stiff, and her chocolate-brown areolae had become tender to the touch.
Not Phantom Dennis's doing.
What the hell? she wondered.
Then her clitoris tickled. Enough to make her eyes and mouth go wide.
It wasn't that she minded her nipples and clit tickling... she didn't mind at all, in fact. But she preferred to know why they tickled.
Is this what happens when you go a certain amount of time without sex? she wondered. It had been quite some time since anything had entered her Ladygates that wasn't labelled Massengill, Kotex, or Good Vibrations. The last time anything of the warm and throbbing variety had been inside her, it had squirted her a bellyful of demon babies. That had hampered her enthusiasm for dating a little bit.
Whatever was happening now, though, felt so good. Maybe this was her richly-earned reward for everything she'd been going through lately.
Cordelia decided to just go with it, and maybe help things along a bit. She reached down and started gently stroking herself with the ever-popular circular motion. It was nice... but things seemed to be suddenly moving a lot faster than her finger-teasing should have been responsible for.
It felt good. Then it felt really good. Then it felt really quite amazingly, epicly, brain-meltingly good. Cordelia felt like her womb was doing calisthenics. She giggled wildly. God, what had she done to deserve this? She must have been a good little Cordy lately.
Everything tickled. Her nipples, her clitoris, her lips and g-spot and her anus and everything in between. It tickled more than she could stand.
She kicked and thrashed and splashed half of her bath water out onto the floor, and gave a scream that would have awakened everyone in Silver Lake if she'd been able to unclench her teeth enough to really let it rip.
It was a good minute before she could find the breath to speak again.
"D-Dennis?" she called weakly. "Could you come in here, please, and bring the loofah?"
* * * * *
Amy was trying her best to act ratlike and unobtrusive, in hopes that the Terrible Cat would lose interest and go away. But there was only so far it could go away in this room, and if Amy managed to free herself she didn't know how she'd make it to Willow or Tara and get their attention before being eaten. (Being eaten in the bad way, that is, not in the good way that Willow and Tara had been enthusiastically engaging all night.)
Speaking of which... Tara had discovered a very old earthmother spell in one of her books, which had triggered lactation in both of them. They'd held each other, kissing and giggling and shivering as they'd felt their breasts come alive and swell with milk. Now, they were taking turns suckling each other.
Tara had her head thrown back and her eyes closed, whining with ecstasy as Willow drank her. Then Willow broke off her sucking and, her mouth full of sweet cream, kissed Tara. The blonde witch moaned with joy as she tasted her own milk from her lover's mouth. They shared it between them, letting it flood down over their chins and trickle down their necks, over their chests and between their breasts.
Amy shuddered with vicarious candle-fueled pleasure from the tip of her nose to the tip of her tail. If she ever got her girl-form back, she was going to need to spend a solid week or two masturbating in order to deal with her memories of this night. Judging by the evidence of sound and scent, Tara and Willow had climaxed about two dozen times each, maybe more. Amy never realized it was even possible for two people to have so much sex at one time.
Amy had almost had sex once.
She'd worn a very short skirt to school one day, and Brad -- a boy she already had a big crush on -- had stopped her in the hallway, completely out of the blue, to tell her how pretty she looked and ask her if she was going to try out for the cheerleading squad. Amy had recently lost a lot of weight -- mostly because her mother had been forcing her to -- and she was starting to feel really good about her appearance for the first time in, like, forever. And now, to get a compliment like that from a boy she liked... she hadn't been able to stop blushing and smiling for the rest of the school day.
Brad kept flirting with her in the days after, and she'd mustered the courage to flirt back. Finally, after school one evening, they'd met each other out behind the Pumphouse.
The Pumphouse wasn't really a pumphouse... it was a storage shed, on the far side of the athletic fields, on the edge of a small wooded area. The students jokingly called it the "Pumphouse" because of what frequently went on behind it. There was even a spot, about three feet up on the white-painted brick wall, where somebody had scrawled the words "PLACE ASS HERE."
When she and Brad got out there, they found that some joker had duct-taped one of those clear plastic packets of pearly-white hand soap to the wall, along with a note pointing to it that read: "Harmony Kendall's stomach after Cordelia's Homecoming Party." Amy didn't much like Harmony either, but that was mean and gross, and she yanked the display down and tossed it into the woods.
Amy and Brad kissed for a while... her first real kiss ever. She liked it in all kinds of ways. Then he asked her to stand with her legs slightly apart, and he'd gotten down on his knees and played with them. He ran his hands all over them, caressing them, savoring the smoothness and softness of her skin... the slight twitch of her muscles as his touch tickled her a little. The shivery softness of her inner legs. The baby-soft peach fuzz on her thighs. The slight hint of stubble on her calves. And then he began to kiss her legs too, and to lick them.
A more jaded girl might have considered this creepy and weird, but for Amy it was the sexiest thing she had ever experienced. The feel of his tongue and hands against her soft, bare skin... the chilly feel of the breeze against her wet legs... and the growing knot of tension deep in her belly as he'd touched her with gentle, loving hands. Even with one hand on the Pumphouse wall for support, she couldn't stop her knees from shaking.
Lightheaded, she'd found the courage to ask him if he'd like to keep going, to explore her in other places as well. But as she'd made that suggestion, Brad got a funny look in his eyes. Then he squeezed them shut, made a face, and groaned loudly. Bewildered, Amy followed Brad's mortified gaze down to his crotch. The situation was obvious.
"You came in your pants," she blurted idiotically. "Because of me?"
Brad turned bright red, then got up and ran into the woods. Amy called after him, but he was gone.
Amy spent fifteen minutes pounding her fist against the wall and calling herself every name she could think of, and feeling disgusted that witnessing Brad's accident had turned her on so much. Then she went home, intending to head straight for the bathroom for some desperately-needed alone time. Her mother, however, met her at the door with a look of fury on her face. Without a word, she'd grabbed Amy painfully by the arm and dragged her straight up the stairs to her bedroom, where a weal-tallow candle had already been lit. Catherine had then given Amy the worst spanking of her life, pounding her ass so hard that she herself had yelped in pain a few times from the shared sensation.
It had been a two-handed session, lasting a solid ten minutes. When it was finally over, Catherine had locked Amy in her room, and then limped off to the bathtub to soothe the burning agony in her own buttocks. Amy had just curled up in a fetal position on her bed and cried herself to sleep, any sexy thoughts long departed from her mind.
Less than two weeks after that, Amy's mother had magically switched bodies with her. ("If you'd gotten this body pregnant, I'd have made you regret it, you little whore," had been Catherine's first words in her daughter's voice.) At least the spankings stopped then, although Catherine found even more hurtful ways to torture Amy during those terrible weeks.
Then Buffy and Willow and the others had saved her, and banished her bitch of a mother to some unknown but well-deserved fate. To this day, Amy wondered what sorts of things Catherine had done with her body while inside it. Probably - hopefully - nothing that wasn't related to training or dieting. But when Amy thought of the urges she'd had to resist while stuck in her mother's body, she felt like throwing up. She couldn't play with herself, no matter how badly she needed to, because it was her own mother's body. Bathing and going to the bathroom had been disturbing enough. She'd had to hang towels over the mirrors when she did.
Back in the even-more-troublesome present, the candle ignited another bit of Maidenleaf, flooding the room with the sharp scent of spearmint and the squeals of the two witches. Amy nearly fainted with pleasure, but when her head cleared again she noticed that the candle was burnt two-thirds of the way down.
Time was running out, and she didn't know what to do.
To be concluded...