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Author: Ameeya Hawke
Rating: NC-17
Timeline: S.2, I Only Have Eyes For You. Veers drastically from canon.
Summary: Spike blanks out while searching for the Slayer, and finds himself in a magic-induced liplock. In the heat of confusion, he offers Buffy a truce, and throws a series of events in motion that will change both their lives forever.
Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘em; I’m just playing. Please oh please, do not sue me.

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Chapter 1

 Spike huffed and wedged a cigarette between his lips. This was bloody interesting. Like one of those bad horror flicks, only with a lot more humor. Granted, seeing something supernatural wasn’t exactly novel; he just wasn’t used to seeing buildings literally swarmed with a wall of wasps.

Nor was he used to watching the Slayer walk around looking as bloody dazed as she did. Perhaps if he’d had more time, he would have taken a second to appreciate the glossy, almost drugged look behind her eyes. She walked right by him, after all, without so much as a blink. Mite rude considering this was supposed to be his big reveal. Dangerous predator, walking around on two legs when he had, so recently, been confined to the wheelchair that she had put him in, and she didn’t even glance in his direction.

If nothing else, though, this should be interesting. He didn’t reckon Angelus would leave the mansion for a while, even if his grandsire did seem interested in sniffing out the so-called possession going down at Sunnydale High.

Considering that the Slayer looked to be experiencing a bit of the possession herself, Spike figured he had the upper hand. She couldn’t go into stake-first-ask-questions-later mode if she wasn’t all there upstairs. If he was lucky, he might get a word in before she shook off the ghosties and introduced him to the business end of her stake.

Then again, knowing this particular slayer, he was better off not pushing his luck.

A sigh rolled off his shoulders. If he went on like this, he’d just end up talking himself in circles. The fact remained that he had no other option. Like it or not, Buffy was it. He was out of his chair, but that didn’t mean he had the strength to take on Angelus plus minions, not to mention the woman that he’d formerly devoted the whole of his unlife to serving. He wouldn’t become careless on account of his wounded pride.

Hopefully, the Slayer wasn’t so thick that she wouldn’t be able to see the logic in that. Spike sighed again and tossed his half-smoked fag to the pavement, stomping on it once for good measure. Then again, the bloody chit was nearly as stubborn as he was. She didn’t like admitting weakness, even if acknowledging one’s shortcomings cleared the pathway to success. He’d heard it all—fuck, he’d lived it—and his life was hardly a living example of learning from his mistakes.

But in the matter of Angelus and Dru, there was no other option. Spike would dust and his deranged family would end the world. Bad for him; bad for Buffy.

He figured he had the selling points lined up properly. The Slayer would have to be off her rocker not to jump at the first offer he put on the table.

Then again, judging by the glazed look in her eyes as she’d walked into the school, perhaps they weren’t too far from the alternative.

Spike laughed shortly and shook his head. “Right, here it goes,” he said. The words fell bland against the cold night air, coaxing another laugh.

There was every chance he’d completely lost his head. Bloody figured. The century with Drusilla hadn’t cost his sanity a dime; it took coming to the Hellmouth to the Slayer and her wanker of a honey to make him go officially carrot-top. He could only hope that Buffy’s human penchant for guilt and do-gooder work had played enough on her conscience to make her as loopy as he.

A smirk tugged on his lips, and he again conjured the image of Buffy walking through a wall of wasps. Something told him that he was on the right track.

Sunnydale High had an entirely different atmosphere when the lights were on and he wasn’t tossing around tables and jabbing things into the ceiling. Spike prowled the halls leisurely, following Buffy’s scent as his eyes roamed the bulletin boards and darted into empty classrooms. This was the sort of place that made him grateful for the tortuous upbringing he’d suffered through lifetimes prior; youth seemed to grow crueler with every generation.

He sucked in a breath when he finally caught up with her. She was moving sluggishly down the main hall, the air thick with the scent of her tears. And he didn’t know why, but that knowledge was humbling. It served as a cold reminder that she had lost things as well. She had lost almost everything.

Granted, Spike didn’t much care for what the Slayer suffered. Way he figured it, she deserved that pain, and then some. It was her formerly virgin pussy that had caused all this, wasn’t it? Had she been able to keep her legs shut, none of this would have happened. Dru would still be at his side. Angelus would be shoved inside that drastically unfunny soul. And Spike wouldn’t be doing the unthinkable; wouldn’t be approaching the Slayer for help, of all things ridiculous.

Bloody bint.

God, he’d be happy when things were back as they belonged. Then he could off the chit good and proper.

“Look,” he said loudly, sucking in a deep breath when Buffy’s sluggish trek down the hall came to an abrupt halt. Great. She was going to launch into battle before he could get a word in; then he’d be too dusty or she’d be too dead to do either of them any bit of good. “First things first, I didn’t come here to kill you.”

He paused and waited. And waited. And waited.

And nothing. Spike blinked.

Well, that was rude. The least she could do was acknowledge his thoughtfulness. Any self-respecting slayer’s knees would be knocking together at the prospect of facing him—an assuredly pissed off slayer-killer. Hell, he’d just spent months of his unlife that he’d never get back rotting away in a bloody wheelchair, forced to watch Angelus fuck Dru into the bloody ground. If he hadn’t already committed to this throwing-it-in-with-the-enemy rot, he’d be drinking from the Slayer’s throat now.

“Slayer?”

Buffy just stood there in the middle of the hall, her back to him.

A frown fell over his face, and the surge of irritation fell to confusion. Perhaps he’d underestimated the rumors of a ghostly invasion. His own experience with the spirit-world notwithstanding, he’d never given hauntings too much credit. “You can hear me, right?”

There was another long silence. And nothing.

Spike expelled a deep breath and hazarded a cautious step forward. “Buffy?” he asked softly. “Slayer, are you—”

“You’re the only one.”

He froze. That made bugger-all sense.

“The only one?” he repeated, befuddled. “The only one who can help you bring them down, you mean? Point of fact, love, that’s the reason I’m here to begin with. I’ve got a proposition for you. An’ before you turn me down, just take into consideration that I’m here an’ not trying to kill you. That means—”

“You’re the only one,” she said again.

Again, Spike blinked. “Yeah, pet, we jus’ covered this.”

“The only person I can talk to.”

Whatever sense he’d tried to decipher flew completely out the window. His brow furrowed in confusion. “Uhhh, Slayer, you sure you’re all rested from that fever? Gotta say, injecting yourself with a nasty bug, as bloody funny as it was, had to have worn away at what li’l sense you have trapped in that thick skull of yours.”

Or maybe she meant that he was the only one she could talk to inasmuch that they were in the same boat. They’d both lost their lovers to Angelus.

But then Buffy turned, and the second her eyes met his, his insides quivered. There was something there. Something monumental. Something earth-shattering. “You can’t make me disappear just because you say it’s over.”

There was no way to spin that. No way at all.

It’s not the Slayer.

“What?”

It was the last intelligible word that escaped his lips. The next second, fog settled around his head, and the physical world simply fell away.

Chapter 2

At seventeen, Buffy had experienced a fair share of kisses. While she wasn’t as experienced in the realm of tonsil hockey as, oh say, Cordelia, she was a girl of former popularity and one or two slapdash pre-Angel boyfriends who had enjoyed sticking their tongues down her throat. She’d also shared a couple quick kisses with Owen, the poetry enthusiast that she’d crushed on hard the year before. Yes, as far as first-date kisses went, she was quite the Guru.

Then Angel had come along, and her past of sloppy, slobbery kisses had been erased with lips made of sin. He’d kiss her, and her world spiraled out of control. Her skin hummed, her pulse raced, and her heart about exploded. When he kissed her, she felt like dying.

The lips that were caressing hers now were most certainly not Angel’s. If Angel’s lips were made of sin, these were made of redemption.

She felt like she’d stepped into a dream or a painting—something perfect but intangible. Something that she’d spent her life reaching for; something she only touched when her eyes were closed. Cool hands cupped her face as a foreign tongue explored her mouth. He was whimpering against her, murmuring sweet little nothings into her mouth, stroking her skin with his fingertips. It was the most sensual moment of her life, and she didn’t even know his name.

Pretty much because she had yet to open her eyes. She was too afraid of ruining the illusion. Undoubtedly, she was at home in bed, enjoying a nice, naughty wet-dream. Or she’d blacked out while dancing at the Bronze…and ew. Some guy just randomly comes by and makes with the kissage? That was just wigsome.

Only not so, because she was buttery goo and that was always a good thing. So if she had blacked out at the Bronze and was being taken advantage of by creepy-guy, she’d let it slide. Anyone connected to these lips couldn’t be that bad. These lips were lips of good. Good, good lips. She’d happily marry the body attached to these lips, if only to stake her earthbound ownership on their magic touch.

“Mmm…”

Then she opened her eyes, and the world around her crashed.

Spike must have sensed it the second that she did, for his eyes flew open and she found herself suddenly drowning in a crystal ocean. No man’s eyes should ever be that blue. Especially if said man was the proprietor of the Lips of Good.

Okay, Buffy, prioritize.

“SPIKE?!”

Those totally illegal eyes of his flashed with an intoxicating mixture of arousal and confusion. Then he stepped back, shoving her away from him as his face contorted in disgust. The same disgust that she was surely mirroring back at him…that was, if she’d managed to pick her jaw up off the floor and roll her tongue back inside her mouth.

Spike? Spike owned the Lips of Good?

And why the hell had he been kissing her?

It didn’t take long to remember; thankfully, recollection spilled inward before she could open her mouth and level some humiliating accusation his way. Something along the lines of: “How dare you sneak in here and kiss me?” when he was obviously as bewildered and shaken as she was.

The disgust, though, was a bit much. Her ego was fragile enough as it was. She didn’t need to know that kissing her equaled gross for men; even if he was her mortal enemy. Come on. Some allowances ought to be made.

“Ghosts,” she blurted, suddenly desperate to cover her tracks. Maybe Spike didn’t know about the school being possessed. Maybe he just thought she wanted him real bad. And maybe she should stop shaking and staring at his Lips of Good and get back to what she’d come here to do. “The school is possessed by ghosts…and hey, why are you out of your chair?”

Spike blinked at her, his mouth somewhat agape, his chest heaving deep, needless pants.

And then it came back to her. Everything. The pained conversation between Grace and James. Shooting Spike in the chest. Watching him fall over the railing. Watching him fall, and being swallowed in despair. Going back to the music room and turning on the record. And then she’d put the gun to her head, and she would have fired if Spike hadn’t been there to stop her.

No. That wasn’t quite right.

Grace. It was Grace.

“We heal,” he said suddenly.

Buffy shook her head and met his eyes reluctantly, ashamed to discover that she’d been staring at his mouth again. It was really unfair. It was completely unfair. Why, out of all the men in the world—all the living, breathing, non-vampire men—did he get those lips?

Furthermore, she’d been so transfixed on that beautiful mouth of his that she completely missed out on what he’d said. And knowing her luck, it was probably important. “What?”

“Vamps. We heal. Bloody lot faster than humans, too.”

“Oh.” Oh. Right. The chair—or rather, the lack of the chair. Spike was standing in front of her on two healed legs, and he’d just saved her life. He’d saved her from blowing her brains out and given her a kiss to end all kisses on top of that.

Or maybe the kiss had been Grace, too. Maybe Spike kissed like a girl.

The thought inspired a nervous, high-pitched titter.

“Slayer?”

“You kissed me.”

Ugh. Verbal diarrhea much?

Why oh why did the floor not open up and swallow her? Why? It was the Hellmouth; one would think that the floor would be more with the random opening and swallowing of red-faced slayers during seconds of blind stupidity.

Spike stared at her. “No, you kissed me,” he retorted, perfecting an impression of a three-year-old.

“You were all with the lunging and the grabby!”

“Oh, don’t bloody flatter yourself!”

“Flatter? You think I want vamp slobber all over my shirt?” She forced a grimace and began wiping at her top with forced vehemence. Truth be told, she couldn’t stop shaking. She flexed her hands into fists, her eyes taking a quick survey of the room, searching for something to hold onto to prevent herself from lunging into his arms. It had been so long since anyone had held her like he had just seconds ago. Since she’d been kissed like that—since she’d felt alive.

And it was fake. Every second. Every blissful touch was pure fabrication.

“Well,” Spike snapped, “of the two of us, you are bloody more likely to snog the enemy. Why don’t you tell me?”

He would throw that in her face.

Buffy waited for the perfect retort to come to her, and her shoulders slumped when it missed its cue. “This is pointless,” she decided.

“You’re telling me,” he snarled. “Gonna take a biblical flood of alcohol to get the slayer taste outta my mouth. Don’t know how your precious Angel could stomach it.” He made a face and wiped his mouth with the back of his duster sleeve, and though Buffy was convinced that much was designed only to add insult to injury, his barb hit its mark with a vengeance. “Look, you daft bint, I was only coming here to see if you would…”

The air between them fell eerily silent. She waited. His face contorted into a scowl, and he did not continue.

“You’re out of your chair,” she repeated, flexing her hands again. Her lips were still tingling—even the intrusion of Spike’s snide remarks and all the reality they bore with them couldn’t stop her insane want to leap back into what the spirits had started. The past few weeks had taken a disastrous toll on her heart. She hadn’t known how starved she was for contact. How much she missed the simple pleasure of a loving embrace. And while Spike would sooner saw off his foot than play the part of the strong male arms to rock her to sleep at night, right now, with the taste of him in her mouth, her mind was fogged and she could see no one else.

Not that Buffy needed those strong male arms; it was just comforting. It made her feel less alone when she knew, ultimately, that she was all she had. It provided a sweet lie—a lie she’d been all too willing to live without the intrusion of reality. And even so, Angel had never really offered to play the role of her male lead and take up the task of holding her at night. The implication was always there, sure, but he’d turn around and vanish just when things became interesting. Until the end. Until the one time he did hold her in his arms…until he bolted from bed and left her to his soulless counterpart.

Buffy blinked. Spike was staring at her.

“What?”

“You were off,” he said slowly, his tone belittling. She suddenly felt like an unruly child that had just broken the same rule fifteen times in a row.

“Off?”

“You mentioned the chair again, an’ then you went off.”

“You’re not in your chair.”

Spike nodded, the incredulous look on his face never waning. “A fact, I believe, we’ve more than established.”

“Why haven’t you tried to kill me?”

At that, he balked, and it pleased her that she’d finally caught him off guard. “Well,” he replied, blinking, “why haven’t you tried to kill me?”

Because my lips are still numb from kissage, and it’s gone to my brain.

“I asked you first.”

He sneered and rocked on his heels. “I asked you second,” he retorted.

Buffy frowned. “You can’t do that. It’s cheating.”

The look on his face fell from disbelieving to amused, and the change enchanted her. She’d never seen Spike amused—not genuinely amused, anyway. There had been that sadistic smirk when he’d thought she and Angel were about to burn at the hand of the Judge, and the proud little grin when he’d first stepped out of the shadows at the Bronze. But nothing that suggested that he was honest-to-God humored.

It was disconcerting. Seeing Spike look at her like a human, particularly after he’d kissed her lips off, threw her for a loop. She wanted him evil and threatening. She wanted some of her own back.

She wanted to stop shaking, dammit. It was just Spike. Spike, whose ass should have been well and truly handed to him by now.

Damn that mouth of his.

“I didn’t come here to fight. I came here because…I wanted…” He paused again, his brow furrowing and his eyes going somewhere that she could not follow. Then, before she could blink, he pivoted on his heel, shaking his head as though to free himself of a wayward thought. “You know what, Slayer? Forget it. Call it a fleeting bout of insanity, yeah? It was bound to happen sometime with the company I keep.”

She was tempted to agree, but curiosity—and a strange want to keep things civil, if not tense and awkward—stopped her. “But you—”

“Forget it.”

“You came here to—”

“An’ now I’m leaving.”

Without even trying to kill me?

That was so…not Spike.

“Jus’ bloody forget it,” he yelled over his shoulder. “An’ don’t get too cozy, Slayer. Next time I see you, it’ll be my fangs in your throat.”

The haunted tone in his voice remained with her the rest of the night.

Chapter 3

He had a hand braced against the shower wall, cool water cascading over his head and running down his body. He had a mouthful of her taste, and his lips hadn’t stopped tingling. In the many years he’d spent wandering the earth, he’d never thought that a simple kiss could make his insides melt.

God. He was such a wanker, and as tonight had so painfully exploited, he’d been without sex too long. Dru’s illness hadn’t allowed them to enjoy any play in the bedroom even before Angelus, and unlike many others of his kind, Spike was a one-woman-vamp. If he couldn’t have Dru, he didn’t want anyone. She was his reason for living, after all. She was his salvation. She was his everything.

That didn’t explain why he currently had his left hand wrapped around his cock, or why the Slayer’s name was on his lips. It didn’t explain why his mind was haunted with the image of her on her knees before him, that perfect mouth of hers sucking him into oblivion.

A long whimper tore through his throat. He was sick. He was bloody certifiable.

He was coming hard.

“Fuck,” he gasped, banging his head against the wall, his hips jerking forward violently. “Buffy.”

Buffy. Buffy. When had she become Buffy to him?

It wasn’t right. None of what had happened tonight was right. He’d gone to her in protest. He’d gone to her as a last bloody resort. He hadn’t gone to see her to have her press her succulent little body against his and kiss him in ways that made him wonder if his lips had been neglected for the past century.

Tonight was about getting his life back on track. About bringing Angelus down. About getting the wanker out of the picture so that Dru would come to her senses and remember who had been there for her without fault.

Spike trembled and shut off the shower.

Buffy.

Buffy had gotten in the way. Buffy and her luscious little mouth. He’d never considered himself the sort of bloke that got so bloody turned on because of a simple kiss; then again, nothing about that kiss had been simple. That kiss had been the sort that would inspire men to storm kingdoms just to win a second taste.

That didn’t change things. A kiss, in the end, was still just a kiss. Buffy’s lips might be delicious, but he’d never know how the rest of her tasted. Never. Tonight had been a mistake. A faux pas. A pathetic stunt played by two miserable excuses for spooks. It changed nothing. Had he been in his right mind, his mouth would never have gotten so close.

Spike frowned. Well, no, that wasn’t right. He still intended to rip her throat out, and that required mouth-on-Buffy action. But in an entirely different context. That was a step necessary to ensure that he got to lick her blood off his fingers. It didn’t mean he wanted to pound his cock into her tight little pussy.

He groaned as his disobedient cock hardened again.

Serves you right for thinking of slayer pussy.

“Spike?”

His head shot up, Drusilla’s scent flooding his nostrils. He was standing starkers in the middle of the room.

Standing, as in not in his wheelchair.

Bleeding fuck. He should have thought before he jumped in the shower. He’d just needed to wash Buffy off his skin as soon as possible.

Pity it didn’t work.

It took only a second to sprint across the room. Spike snatched his jeans from where he’d tossed them on the bed, wrestled with his t-shirt, and threw his duster over his shoulders, only to crash haphazardly into the wheelchair with a gasp as Dru’s head poked into the room.

Spike blinked at her, panting. His hair was wet. His skin smelled like soap. Had Drusilla possessed any of her faculties, she would have known something was up immediately.

He was fortunate, then, that the love of his unlife was uninhibitedly insane.

“Spike, my sweet,” she cooed, twirling as she entered the room. “Daddy has a surprise for you.”

His stomach lurched and his heart sank. So tonight was going to be one of the few nights that Angelus paid attention to him. There was no way this could be good; it merely meant that he’d grown bored with fucking Drusilla in front of the help and wanted to up Spike’s torment by making him watch as another bloke tasted his girl’s quim.

“Is that right?” he drawled, wincing as his hands gripped the wheels of the chair. After this was over, he was going to burn the sodding thing. “What’s that, pet?”

“He says you’ve been a bad doggie.”

At that, Spike froze.

“Have you, my sweet prince? Have you been a bad doggie?” Drusilla smirked and sauntered forward, her hands running a tantalizing trail down her hips and up again until she was pulling at her own nipples through the thin fabric of her top. “Waiting till it burns. The fiddle won’t be played until the city’s on fire. You want it. Daddy says so.”

He swallowed hard and forced a smile. “I always want it, ducks,” he murmured, his eyes falling to her breasts. He knew how they tasted. He knew how every inch of Drusilla tasted. And he loved her taste.

But looking at her, watching her, he couldn’t help but yearn for something hot to offset the cold. She was cold. She’d been cold from the beginning. He’d never known any touch that wasn’t cold.

From where Buffy had held his face earlier tonight, he was still sizzling with warmth. His lips had yet to stop burning.

And the burn was so fucking good, he could barely stand it.

“You want to play in sunshine.”

Spike’s eyes jerked upward and his throat ran dry. “Dru—”

His protest died the second before Angelus’s intrusive scent hit the air. It was over then. He knew, meeting his grandsire’s eyes, that it was over. Everything was over. The plan he’d carefully stitched together had been betrayed, likely by the aroma of slayer musk. Or perhaps Angelus had spied him in his dazed and hasty retreat of the Sunnydale campus. Perhaps. In the state he’d been in, Spike wouldn’t have noticed a ticker tape parade, much less a giant vampire with more forehead than face. Even if said giant vampire just happened to be his least favorite relative.

“Spike,” Angelus said quietly, nodding.

That much told him everything. Angelus knew.

Well bollocks.

Spike met his grandsire’s dark eyes and nodded stoically. “We gonna dance around this, mate?” he asked, arching a brow. “’Cause, truth be told, there are only so many clichés I can handle at a time.”

“There is nothing to dance around, as far as I’m concerned,” Angelus replied, offering little more than an apathetic shrug. “You can walk.”

“Yes. I can also talk,” Spike agreed. “I’ve been told that I have a lovely singing voice.”

“And yet you’re still in that chair.”

“Well, we’ve gotten to know each other so well over the past few months.” He rolled his eyes, his countenance not betraying how fast his mind was racing. “Can’t blame me if you’ve been distracted, mate. What with playing practical jokes on the Slayer’s friends an’ tattlin’ to her mum about popping her cherry, it’s a bloody wonder that you’ve noticed anything else.” His tossed a meaningful, however wasted glance to Dru. “Much as I can recall, it’s none of your bloody business what I can do. I don’t ask for progress reports on your numerous injuries. As it is, the Slayer has landed you quite a few.”

“Sarcasm will get you nowhere, William.”

He shook his head. “That’s such a shame.”

“What I can’t understand is…what were you trying to pull? Kill Buffy and show me for sticking it to your woman? Hmm?” Angelus stalked forward, a dangerous shadow crossing his face. “Have I truly underestimated your ego that much?”

He snickered. “There are great many things you’ve underestimated,” he drawled. “Mate.”

There was a moment of silent contemplation. Angelus simply stared at him.

Then the wanker’s leg shot out and the wheel chair vanished, throwing Spike to the ground and smashing noisily into the wall behind him. “No need for dramatics, then,” the elder vampire sneered. “I never figured you the security-blanket type. And yeah, I might be a little off my game, but time hasn’t changed you much. I know you.”

Spike pressed his palms to the floor and shoved himself to his feet. Know him? Angelus knew him? What a bloody joke. Angelus had never known him. Never. The great git had attempted to mold him into something that he wasn’t. He had an idea of what Spike was. Of who Spike was. He’d never bothered to get to know him. Not once. He knew his habits, perhaps, and that he treasured Dru above all others. But that wasn’t knowing him. That was knowing about him, and there was a bloody big difference.

“You didn’t plan to kill her, then,” Angelus mused, crossing his arms, his brows perking. “And I say that only because you’re here and not dust.”

Spike snorted ineloquently. His grandsire’s lack of confidence in people other than his own over-inflated ego was not so much surprising as it was annoying. The fact remained that Angelus had not once been able to corner a slayer and snap her neck properly. Not once. Not even when he was snogging the stupid chit. And the great sod hated it that a vampire he considered as fumbling and incompetent as Spike had not once, but twice faced a slayer and walked away with another notch on his belt.

“Ye of li’l faith,” he said neutrally, enjoying the ire twist up a notch on Angelus’s face. The wanker just hated it when his audience refused to give him a reaction.

“Well, she’s still alive, too,” the elder continued, “but I figured that was a given.”

“My prince wants to play in sunshine,” Dru observed. “He’s tasted honey and he wants more. More of the pretty little drops of honey.”

Angelus perked a brow. “So that’s what that odor is.”

“Sod off.”

“You tried to get into her pants? What? Are you that desperate?”

Spike’s eyes darkened. “You’re the one who said I had to bloody love her to kill her, right? Though you haven’t been quite as quick to demonstrate that neat li’l tidbit as I’d think. After all, you had the bint’s grubby paws all over you for months an’ you still haven’t managed to do her in good an’ proper?”

Angelus was predictably unbothered by his criticism. “I have plans for the Slayer,” he replied, shrugging.

“Yeah. Sing me another one.”

“You doubt.”

“You’ve given me li’l reason to do anything else.” He nodded to Dru, ignoring the pang that struck his heart at the harsh apathy that danced behind her cold eyes. It wasn’t like he was used to seeing warmth when she looked at him. No, his dark princess had never regarded him with tenderness or affection. Even when she appeared touched at the things he did for her—the small and the very big—the spark of gratitude was always overshadowed by a larger presence of blatant indifference. She didn’t care for him. Not like a lover, at least. More like a favored pet. And while he’d known it for a while—for years, though he’d never wanted to admit it—there was something about seeing it now. Now that he’d tasted true warmth and purity. “’Sides,” he continued, “since you’ve taken mine, I figured I’d sneak a taste of yours. See if her pussy really is tight enough to chase a soul away.”

Just once he’d like to strike a nerve. He’d like Angelus’s cool countenance to fail him completely. He’d like to send the bastard into a jealous rage the likes of which made the ground tremble and the skies quiver. However, even knowing how possessive his grandsire was over what he considered to be his property, there was nothing but cruel humor in his elder’s eyes.

Spike knew that it was obvious to every vamp in proximity that his dick hadn’t gotten any action aside from his left hand all evening. Showers couldn’t wash off the scent of sex. Not for vamps. And perhaps that was why Angelus didn’t give a bugger about what had happened with Buffy tonight. Or why Angelus wasn’t worried that he might have gotten close enough to know what the girl’s silken lips tasted like.

Buffy.

He’d left her confused. Her eyes wide and expectant, her cheeks flushed and her lips swollen from his kisses. He’d left Buffy and he’d returned to his self-made hell. Where Dru looked at him with cold, uncaring eyes. Where he was consigned to the role of the family punch-line. Where there was nothing to do but waste away as the woman he’d devoted eternity to sold herself over and over to another man in the time between planning the apocalypse.

He’d left Buffy standing in that classroom because of what she’d done to him.

What had she done to him?

“Trust me, William,” Angelus said softly, snapping him back to the present. “Nothing there worth tasting.”

Spike blinked stupidly and fought the impulse to laugh. Nothing there worth tasting? Hadn’t this prat ever snogged the Slayer?

Hadn’t his world turned over when he had?

Spike turned his eyes to the ground. Buffy. He’d left her and returned home. And why? Because finding her tongue down his throat was a little surprising; his reaction to her even more so. In those precious few seconds, he’d experienced more, felt more, from a girl possessed by a couple of spooks than he ever had from Dru.

A ghost had given him more warmth than the woman he loved. And his skin was still burning.

No more. No sodding more. He would go back. He would go back to Buffy. He would try again.

He just hoped her lips didn’t get in the way.

And, knowing how sweet she tasted, that he could keep his hands to himself.

Chapter 4

No matter how many times she repeated herself, that glossy, confused look refused to vacate her Watcher’s eyes. It was annoying. There were certainly more important things to worry with than her bizarre liaison with a recently non-crippled vampire. Things like her ex-boyfriend who had, among other things, developed a penchant for making her friends’ lives a living hell.

For whatever reason, attempting to convey as much to Giles was not as simple as it should have been. He wanted to mull over every detail—every millisecond she’d spent all not-of-the-dead in Spike’s presence. He wanted to know why they hadn’t fought. Why Spike had come to her in the first place. And he especially wanted to know how James and Grace’s haunting had influenced their behavior.

Buffy snorted inwardly. Yeah. She was really going to share sordid stories of Spike’s lips with her Watcher. And Xander was going to be the next President of the United States.

“No,” she said dryly, rolling her eyes. “For the millionth time, no. Spike didn’t tell me why he was following me. And seeing as I’m standing here, bored and annoyed and very much of the alive, I don’t think it really matters.”

Giles narrowed his eyes disapprovingly. “Your views on what is and isn’t important notwithstanding, the fact remains that a dangerous slayer-killer sought you out and then proceeded to not engage you in battle.”

“I know. I was right there.”

“It had to be something extraordinary, don’t you think?”

“No,” Buffy retorted dryly, rolling her eyes. “I think he wanted to exchange banana-nut-muffin recipes.”

Willow glanced up from where she was hunched over a pile of books. What she was researching, Buffy didn’t know. For the past few days, when they weren’t fending off whatever Angel or the PTB sent their way, the redhead was usually buried nose-deep in a book. Not that it was doing anyone any good. Sunnydale citizens were still showing up dead with not-so-mysterious neck wounds, no blood, and twisted messages from the Slayer’s once one-and-only.

The chances that the anecdote for Angel’s killing spree rested on some aged page in Giles’s library were obsolete.

“You make banana-nut muffins?” she asked, her eyes wide. Then she paused, shifted uncomfortably, and glanced down. “Okay, so I only caught the end of that. Did I mention I’m really hungry?”

Buffy snickered. “I was just explaining to Giles for the umpteenth time that I have no earthly idea what Spike wanted with me. He didn’t stay long enough. I think he was a little shook up.”

“Presumably because of what happened while the two of you were possessed,” Giles agreed, staring at her intently.

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Well, he came to you for a reason, and then backtracked after the possession was over. Sounds to me, Buffy, that it has quite a bit to do with what occurred.”

She waved a dismissive hand, doing her best to keep herself introverted. The memory of Spike’s melt-worthy kisses had fueled fantasies about the gorgeous vampire that she’d thought long dead. Fantasies that had haunted her longer than she wanted to admit. From the second that he stepped out of the shadows at the Bronze, locked eyes with her, and called her by that stupid pet name. And then on Parent Teacher Night, she’d returned home, tense and excited from their first fight. Her body tingled at the thought of how he felt against her. Hard. Masculine. Aroused. Even when he was kicking the crap out of her, there was a part of him that remained infinitely male, and separated from the larger part of him that was demon.

At first, she’d felt like she was cheating on Angel when she thought of Spike. After all, until Angel had barreled into her life, she’d never had an inappropriate thought about a vampire. They were all the same. All game-face, snarly, and quick with the dustage. Spike was definitely not the same. He certainly wasn’t like Angel or the Master, but he was immeasurably different from the fledglings she was accustomed to slaying. There was a part of him that remained alive. There was a part of him that could not be bogged down by what he was, and was rather defined by who he was.

Buffy wasn’t blind; she’d seen that from the start. Spike was different. He was different, and they were enemies.

Until last night, remembering that hadn’t been too difficult. In the days following the ruined St. Vigeous festival, her relationship with Angel had taken off, and her appreciation of Spike’s fineness—not to mention his sexy accent—had taken a backseat to her souled boyfriend. Sure, she’d make a quick appraisal of the blond Brit’s abs or whatever body part was most prominently displayed through all that tight clothing, but it only lasted for a blink. Until she threw a punch his way, or hit him in the head with something heavy and quip uselessly to herself as a large organ crushed his sexy self. Angel, until the very end, had been the center of her universe when it came to men.

Since Angel had rejoined the Unsouled and Proud Club for Vamps, however, Buffy hadn’t felt like noticing the opposite sex at all. Not until last night.

Not until she found herself kissing Spike.

Not until all her naughty, forgotten fantasies were suddenly substantiated. In the midst of her heartache—of the guilt-crushing knowledge that she had, time and time again, let Angel slip through her fingers—she’d reawakened. She’d opened her eyes, and for a blink, the part of her that was consumed with guilt quieted, and she could forget about her failure. That people were dying because she couldn’t bring herself to do the inevitable. That Giles had lost the woman that he loved because of her. For a sliver of a second, Buffy had ceased being the Slayer and had simply been a girl. Any girl. Any girl kissing any guy. She’d had her coveted normal, and the taste had been so sweet it was a miracle she hadn’t collapsed in tears.

It was fleeting, of course. She wasn’t just any girl. She was the Slayer, and Spike was a vampire. Spike was a vampire who very much wanted her dead. Angel was still out there—still killing people. And it was still her fault.

However, Spike had given her something back. Something that reality couldn’t take away. And even if his gift was an accident—even if he could care less about what their stolen kiss had given her—to Buffy, it meant the world.

“Buffy?”

She started and shook her head, forcing her thoughts to the back of her mind. If Giles knew that Spike’s lips had restored her faith in men and her own femininity, he’d accuse her of having some sick vamp fetish. This was just one of those things that he could never understand.

“Hmm?”

Her Watcher’s eyes were saturated in concern. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell us what happened?”

Buffy pasted on a grin and shrugged. “As I’ve said, nothing much happened. Spike came in after James had me. I think it took a few minutes before Grace nabbed him, ‘cause he sounded…I dunno, confused for one thing. Confused and almost…resigned.”

“Resigned?”

Oh crap. She was talking about it. How had that happened? “Like I was his last resort, I guess. Like it was the last place in the world he wanted to be. I dunno…I might be imagining things. I was kind of possessed at the time.”

Giles cleared his throat and offered a jerky nod. “Go on,” he encouraged.

Willow placed down her book and nodded her encouragement. “Yeah, this might be helpful.”

Helpful for what? For non-research? Buffy groaned inwardly, her will encouraging her mouth to shut up and keep the rest for herself, but her mouth had a way of running without giving her will or her mind much consideration. She really needed to get that checked out. “We did the whole sordid song-and-dance,” she continued. “I shot him. He fell over the railing. I walked to the music room and put on the Flamingos. And I would’ve shot myself had Spike not rushed in and taken the gun from me.”

The redhead frowned. “He was still possessed, right?”

“Umm. Yeah.” Buffy’s eyes narrowed. Where had she been all night? “He was still possessed. It was Grace all the way. Grace didn’t want James to kill himself…and since Grace’s…I dunno…essence was trapped in a body that couldn’t be killed with a gunshot, she got to reach me—James—in time to let him know.” She paused. “It was a mistake. The shooting. I don’t…I don’t know what James was thinking with, you know, bringing the gun in the first place…but what I felt when I shot Spike…” She shivered and her stomach turned. There had never been a more frightening moment than the widening of Spike’s eyes as he grasped his wound, and the love-drenched betrayal that he’d washed her in before toppling over the railing. There was nothing about shooting him—or Grace—that had been intentional. “What I felt…it wasn’t on purpose. He didn’t kill Grace on purpose.”

The library fell quiet. Buffy glanced up and shifted awkwardly. “Not that it…matters. To us. I mean, the ghosts are gone and everything is back to its normal, Hellmouthy state. Spike didn’t kill me, I didn’t kill him—”

Giles heaved an exasperated sigh. “Yes, yes, we know that. You simply haven’t been very forthcoming in what happened between you two to lead to your pacifism.”

“Not forthcoming? I just told you—”

“What happened between James and Grace, yes. That much was rather obvious.”

Buffy slumped, pouting. “I didn’t notice you stopping me from stating the obvious,” she grumbled.

“There is something you’re keeping from us.”

Willow looked confused at that, but that didn’t stop her from shooting a mildly accusatory glance in her friend’s direction. “You’re keeping stuff from us?”

“No.”

“You honestly can’t expect me to believe that Spike had you alone and did nothing about it. You put him in a wheelchair, Buffy…and he’s a vampire. They are not creatures capable of forgiveness or change. If he didn’t attack you, then—”

It angered her to hear her Watcher so carelessly clumping Spike together in the overall generalization of vampires. He was different. Spike was different. He was evil, yes, but he was hardly a mindless bloodsucking machine. He had amazing capacity for feelings of compassion and empathy. Hell, Buffy knew that just from watching him with Drusilla.

“Well, we were both a little startled from the having-been-possessed thing,” she retorted sharply. “Why are you harping on this?”

“Because—”

“You wanna know what happened?” a deep, familiar voice interrupted from the head of the library, followed by the metallic clink of a lighter striking to life. Buffy’s heart stopped and her legs turned to granite. “Simple. We snogged. We fondled. We woke up. The end.”

Giles froze. Willow gaped. And cigarette smoke filled the air.

Nerves shaking, mind racing, Buffy turned slowly—very slowly—until her gaze clashed with his.

Those eyes.

Spike only smiled. It wasn’t a kind smile, but that didn’t stop her legs from turning to butter or keep her clit from throbbing, especially when his eyes glossed over and dropped to her mouth before raking down the length of her.

When their eyes met again, his were alive with heat.

“Hello, cutie,” he said.

And Buffy inhaled sharply.

Oh God. She was in so much trouble.

Buffy all but growled as she shoved Spike over the threshold of the first empty classroom she saw. She did her best to ignore the way her fingers tingled from where she’d touched him, just as she did her best to ignore the amused leer on his face; the one that informed her that he was enjoying the manhandling way too much. Noticing the parts of Spike that were less-than-grotesque, especially since he’d literally caught her in the middle of her Spike-made-me-feel-like-a-woman musings, was a definite no-no.

Something told her, from the spark in his eyes, that he wouldn’t mind making her feel like a woman right now. Against the wall. Or maybe bent over the teacher’s desk. And while the idea had her shivering in all the right places—had her mouth aching for another sinful taste of his—she clamped down forcibly and glared at him.

“Well?” she demanded, crossing her arms.

Spike’s brows flickered and a smile itched at his lips. “Well?” he echoed impetuously, indulging in a long puff on his cigarette.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you, too, kitten.”

“You can’t do this!”

He blinked innocently. “Do what?”

“Just…come in here and be all in the…here and…dammit, why the hell are you here?”

Spike wasn’t paying attention to her. He was staring at her lips.

“Hello?” Buffy waved and rocked on her heels. “Earth to mortal enemy?”

“You have the most gorgeous mouth I’ve ever seen.”

“Well, that…” She frowned, flushed, and shook her head. Her insides flooded with heat and her legs, suddenly, weren’t as sturdy as she’d thought. “That is…very nice, but really not the point. The point…” Did she have a point? She was certain that she’d had a point. “That’s nice.”

Spike domed a brow and grinned at her, tossing his cigarette to the ground and stomping it out with his boot. “You said that already.”

“Did I?”

“Yeah.” He inhaled and took a step forward, and oh God, did he smell good or what? It wasn’t fair. Spike was a vampire. He was of the dead. Why was it that he smelled like a walking dish of man candy? “I told myself I wasn’t gonna touch you.”

Buffy blinked and realized that she was slowly walking backwards. Her back soon collided with the wall. “Oh? Well…it’s not like I have…slayer cooties or something. I’m actually quite clean.”

Oh. My. God. Was there any way she could be a little more pathetic, because that wasn’t quite pathetic enough. What the hell was wrong with her? One little possession of star-crossed ghosts and she’s all with the schoolgirl crush on Spike? There weren’t enough ways to spell disaster for this. He was Spike. Spike as in the guy that tried to kill Angel to save Dru…which, in retrospect, would have saved a lot of lives and some heartache. But then she would have killed Spike for killing Angel and that would have rendered it impossible for him to be here right now. Looking at her like a man fresh off a failed vow of celibacy.

“I shouldn’t touch you,” he said softly. “You’re the Slayer.”

“I’m the Slayer,” she repeated, nodding, her eyes wide.

He nodded as well, though it was more than obvious that the words hadn’t served as the bucket of cold water they’d intended. “I just gotta wonder…”

“What?”

“If you’d taste as good now as you did last night.”

And then, in a blink, he was on her, his hard, male body pressing her against the wall. Her breasts flattened against his chest, her arms—raised, of course, to shove him away—somehow wrapped around his neck. The second that his lips touched hers, the floor beneath her feet vanished, as did the wall at her back, and she was lost to an endless sea of pure heavenly delights. The world blinked away. Everything blinked away. Reality stepped aside, and the world was left to Spike. Just Spike. Just Spike and those lips that could thaw any frozen heart. He tasted dangerous, and the more her mind willed her to pull away, the more her body and her mouth clawed at him, refusing to let him go. His tongue belonged in her mouth, wrestling with her tongue. His arms belonged around her waist, holding her against his all-too-male body that her very female body responded to in ways that would surely see her locked up in Rehab for Slayers before this was over. But that didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Spike was holding her, exploring her mouth with that sinful tongue of his. His lips formed lyrics as he kissed her, giving her wordless poetry. Filling her veins with more of that delicious femininity that the past few weeks had been sorely lacking.

He kissed her, and she ceased being a girl. He kissed her, and she was a woman.

A woman pressed very intimately against a dangerous, soulless vampire. A woman who was so not rubbing herself wantonly against his denim-clad erection.

Spike sighed into her, his teeth lightly scraping against her lips. “You taste divine,” he murmured. “Like a slow drink of whiskey.”

Buffy trembled. “Whiskey?”

“Oh yeah.”

“I taste like alcohol. That’s not good.”

Spike chuckled. “Would bloody explain why I’m suddenly drunk on you,” he mused thoughtfully, nipping at her lips again. “I was wrong, then. Definitely not the ghosts.”

Not the ghosts. Buffy didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Ghosts meant that her reaction to him was on a purely supernatural level. It meant that Spike-when-possessed-by-dead-teacher-woman kissed like a god. That would have made things a whole lot simpler.

Spike as Spike, though, didn’t kiss like a god.

He kissed like the devil.

He made sinning so delicious, it was a wonder anyone wanted to be good.

Spike’s eyes twinkled in a way she’d never seen. Granted, the past twenty-four hours had shown her many sides of Spike that she’d never seen. Particularly the side that was all with the not-killing-her and more with the kissing-her-boneless. “Oh trespass sweetly urged,” he murmured, those lady-killer lips brushing hers once more. “Give me my sin again…”

Buffy frowned and pulled back before the Lips of Good could tempt her into further distraction. “No. We can’t.”

He pouted. God, the man had the audacity to pout. “Why not?”

“Why? Why? Need I really go through the laundry list of reasons why this is a bad idea?”

“There’s a laundry list?”

“Spike!” Buffy flattened her hands against his chest—ohh, sturdy—and shoved him away. “Giles is gonna come in here with a hack-saw in like two minutes if we don’t get back before then. You show up on my turf after the weirdness that was last night to, what, play tonsil hockey?”

He offered a lazy shrug. “Seemed like the thing to do.”

“Why are you here?”

“I woke up with the desire to snog you.”

“To what me?!”

The smile on his face ought to be illegal. No one should ever look that self-confident. “Snog you. See if your mouth was as delicious as I remembered.” He licked his lips. “Mmm. You’re better when you’re not under the influence, love.”

Buffy snickered. “Thanks.”

There was a long pause.

“So?” Spike asked expectantly.

“So?”

“Back to snogging, then?”

The idea of losing herself in another one of his silken kisses had her eyes a little glossy and her heart doing somersaults. Gah—it wasn’t fair that he had such influence over her. For crying out loud, before the stupid school got possessed by equally stupid ghosts, Spike was barely a blip on her radar. An admittedly devastatingly sexy blip, but totally of the blip-nature, nonetheless. What right did he have to stroll in here like he owned the town, kiss her to the point where she could barely remember her name, and then casually ask if they could please continue making out when she had a murderous ex-boyfriend to slay?

A soulless, murderous ex-boyfriend. Angel would never come in here, sans soul, and kiss her like Spike had. He’d rip her throat out.

They were equally soulless, right?

Buffy groaned inwardly. She’d already had this debate. It was easier to think about when the object of her musings wasn’t staring her down with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Or licking his lips and making her envy his tongue.

A few kisses and she’d reverted completely from slayer to schoolgirl. No happy medium. Spike wasn’t fighting her, which was weird, but she wasn’t fighting him; equally weird.

“You said that you’d told yourself you wouldn’t touch me,” she reminded him, attempting to step backward as he stepped forward, but going nowhere due to the wall pressed at her back. Walking through walls was not a slayer ability, but for the way Spike was looking at her—hungrily, and not in a blood-lusty way—she was beginning to wish it was.

Namely because the woman in her hadn’t felt so excited in weeks.

“I tell myself all kinds of rubbish. None of it ever pans out.”

“Why are you here?”

“You gonna keep askin’ that?”

“Well, until I get an actual answer that doesn’t involve your tongue down my throat.”

Spike smirked. “Din’t hear you complaining.”

“It’s insane.”

“Yeah. That’s what makes it so much fun.”

Right. Insanity. Fun. Thus described his fascination with screws-for-brains. Buffy rolled her eyes. “Look, I don’t have time for this. I have to, you know, stop you and yours from the big evil thing you’re planning. And I don’t wanna have to stake you here, especially because your lips have this numbing effect on my brain that I probably should’ve kept to myself because I’ve just given you an unfair advantage and now it’s out there and I just realized that I’m still talking, which is never good, so I’ll stop now, and you’ll start.” She paused, focused on a spot on the floor while trying desperately to ignore how hot her cheeks were. “Okay…so, talking isn’t my strong point.”

“No, you’re doing just fine.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

Buffy scowled, raising her eyes to meet his once more. “You’re here. And you’re with the…non-fighty, yet again. And I thought last night you said that you’d try to kill me next time we met.”

“Yeah, well, that was last night.”

“Ugh…”

“What? A bloke can’t change his mind?” Spike held her gaze for another long minute, then sighed and combed his fingers through his hair. “Look, it’s not easy for me to be here, all right? When I came to see you last night, it threw me for a bloody loop.”

She frowned. “What did?”

“You did. I had a plan, an’ you had to go bugger it up with your sodding ghosties. An’ now I can’t get you outta my head, which makes fuck all in sense, but it’s the truth.” He sighed again. “I want to stop it.”

“Then stop it. I mean, don’t get me wrong…I like kissing you, but it’s really beginning to wig me out.”

A ghost of a shadow crossed his face at that. “No, love, you’re not hearing me. I want to stop Angel.”

Everything fell deathly still. Even the dust particles froze. She couldn’t have heard him right.

“What?”

“I want to stop Angel.” An ironic smile tickled Spike’s lips, and just like that, she knew it wasn’t a joke. God, it wasn’t a joke. He was completely serious.

Only he couldn’t be, because the words didn’t make sense.

And if those words didn’t make sense, then what Spike said next surely meant that doomsday was near.

“I want to save the world.”

 Chapter 6

Her lips needed to stop tingling. Really. It was getting annoying.

Annoying along with the looks that Spike kept shooting her. He was supposed to be talking, dammit. Which, okay, he was doing. He was talking. But he was looking at her. And her lips, being lame and uncooperative, were making with the tinglies and aching for his.

It was not fair that he could kiss like that. Not fair in the slightest.

“Allow me to…interject…” Giles said. His glasses were in a perpetual polishing session in the hem of his dress-shirt. Perhaps he hoped that Spike would disappear if he couldn’t see him clearly. “You’re…you’re serious?”

Well, that was certainly profound. Her shoulders slumped and she breathed a relieved sigh that Willow had skipped out while she had discussed things with her vampire in the spare classroom. The redhead’s affinity for after-school activities had drawn her away, thankfully leaving them with only one pair of disbelieving eyes. One pair of eyes was proving to be difficult enough.

And Spike wasn’t making things any easier. Asshole.

“Serious?” repeated the vampire in question, arching a brow in a way that made her tingle for all the wrong reasons. “As a bleeding heart attack, mate.”

“You really wish to…”

Spike’s brows perked. “Save the world? Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“I could write it down for you if that’d help clear out any ambiguity.” He huffed and shook his head, his eyes meeting hers again. An electric shock shot down her spine. “He always like this?”

Buffy forced a dry smile to her still-tingling lips. It was hard to make with the talking when all she wanted to do was suck his face until he forgot his name. “He’s just not used to bad guys waving white flags.”

He grinned, and it was too sexy for words. “I’m not one for rules, love.”

The look on his face spoke for that and then some. No, Spike was many things and none of them had anything to do with abiding the rules. The rules definitely said—underlined, italicized, the full-nine-yards—that fraternization between vampires and slayers was strictly forbidden.

It didn’t matter if the vampire in question was the sexiest creature on two legs. It didn’t matter if he made her feel female after so many weeks of being hollow inside. Perhaps her reaction to him was a side-effect of being lonely. And perhaps his reaction to her was a side-effect of being abandoned. Buffy didn’t harbor any delusions that things between her former boyfriend and Spike’s insane lover were chaste. The way the two acted together—the way Angelus spoke when she saw him—she knew that they were making it, and often.

That would certainly explain Spike’s reaction to her. He’d been deserted just as sure as she had. He was starved for touch as well.

In the end, it likely had little to do with her. She was just the owner of the lips his enjoyed kissing in the absence of Drusilla.

“D-do you know what they’re plotting?” Giles asked, glasses still in full-polish mode. “If the end of the world is Angel’s intention—”

“Not Angel,” Spike corrected, his eyes narrowing. “The git’s name is Angelus.”

Giles frowned. “I…I beg your pardon?”

There was a long, quiet moment. The vampire shrugged. “S’pose it doesn’t matter in the end, right?” he replied. “The wanker has the same face. Same walk. Same talk. Jus’ minus one soul, yeh? Jus’ got his confidence back.” He broke off then, laughing without humor. “Angelus is the prat that got a soul shoved up his righteous arse a good century ago. The beast that your slayer awakened by partin’ her dimpled knees.”

Buffy’s innards flushed with cold, a well-aimed barb striking her chest. She found herself swallowed in confusion; she didn’t know whether to be angry or hurt.

Thankfully, Giles took care of her dilemma for her. In a blink, he’d paraded across the library floor and popped Spike in the eye. The move was so thoroughly uncharacteristic on part of her Watcher that Buffy could do little more than stand numbly to the side, watching in disbelief as Spike sailed ineloquently to the ground.

“You filthy little wanker!” Giles spat. “How dare you speak to her that way?”

Spike recovered quickly enough, rolling to his feet, his eyes flashing. “Speak what way? The truth, maybe? It’s what brought Angelus back, innit? It’s why that prat’s fucking Dru sideways while I’m here in the sodding belly of the sodding beat, chattin’ up the Slayer an’ her mates like we’re old chums. You think I want to be here? You think I want to be…” He paused, his gaze flickering to hers. And perhaps it was her imagination, but she thought she saw some of the fire die.

No, check that. It had to be her imagination. Just as the shaking of her legs and the ache in her heart.

“You’re the one who came to me,” she said softly, rubbing her arms. “Remember?”

“Pet—”

“You came here. No one forced you. No one held a stake to your heart.” Her brows perked and she surged with a forced sense of confidence. “You came to me for help.”

Spike nodded somberly. “That’s right.”

“And then…” And then he’d kissed her and taken her to the stars. “And then—”

“Look—”

“I’m just saying, if you don’t wanna be here, then there’s the door.”

“I don’t wanna be here,” he retorted. “No more than you want me here. Can’t say I fancy keepin’ company with a lot that would just as soon see me dust as anything else. An’ you’d trade me over for a kiss from your boy in a blink, so don’t bloody look at me like I’ve squashed your dainty feelings, Slayer. You want Angel back, I want Dru. Simple as all that.”

Buffy froze, rubbing her arms again. A short twenty-four hours ago, and she would have agreed with him. She would have given anything to see her boyfriend’s face. To feel his hands on her skin and his whispers in her hair. To hear him tell her that everything would be all right—that the dark was over and he was with her now.

But a day had passed. The night had come, and the sun had risen.

Spike had walked into the library. Spike had come to her. Spike had done what no vampire would ever do.

“Angel’s a killer,” she said softly.

“Yeah,” Spike agreed, arching that perfect brow again. “An’ he was before, too.”

She knew that. She’d known that the second that he’d flashed his fangs in her bedroom after they’d shared their first kiss. She’d known when they tentatively started dating, just as she’d known it the night she’d foolishly agreed to share his bed. He’d taken her virginity as a killer, and he’d awoken as one as well.

Only now he’d killed people that she knew. The deaths were no longer a part of the past. They were no longer faceless names in a history book. They were people like Jenny Calendar. People like her classmates. Girls and boys and teachers. He was eating away at her reality now; the book had come to life. The names had become faces. The faces were people she knew. People she had once seen every day. People that she’d cared for.

A long sigh whispered through her lips. “He’s a killer,” she reiterated, stronger now. “And I…look, you say they’re going to end the world?”

Spike shrugged lazily, though there was something in his eyes that hadn’t been there a minute ago. “They’re planning on it,” he replied flippantly. “Angelus has gotten some bloody large aspirations. Seems bein’ shoved inside a soul tends to make one lose his marbles.”

“Imagine that,” Giles said dryly.

“He’s plotting something on the world-ending stage. I’d stake my smokes on it.”

“Yes,” the Watcher replied. “And your word’s as good as grit.”

Spike shot him a narrow glance. “Did you miss the ‘stake my smokes’ part?”

“You insolent little—”

Buffy grumbled and held up a hand, quickly putting herself between her Watcher and the insolent vampire in question. One thing was certain; they weren’t getting anywhere like this. And despite Spike’s rather abrasive manner of getting his point across, he had the added benefit of being right.

Angel—or Angelus—was crazy enough to end the world. Spike wouldn’t be here if he didn’t think so.

He wasn’t here for her after all.

Better this way, she told herself, swallowing hard. Vampires and slayers? Very nonmixy. I could write the book on how nonmixy they are.

“Giles,” she said softly. “If…if Angel’s planning something, we need to be ready. And we’re going to need all the help we can get.” She turned to Spike slowly, braving herself to meet his eyes. His too-blue eyes and the devastating way he could see into her without even trying. No one had ever looked at her like that. “All the help we can get.”

“We don’t need him. For God’s sake, Buffy, for all we know, he’s been sent to throw you off.”

Spike frowned at that. “I am not a sodding lackey.”

“Like we can believe one blessed word you say!”

“If you knew anything about Angelus, you’d know he doesn’t send anyone to do what he couldn’t do himself.”

“Angel likes to torture psychologically. How can we know that gaining Buffy’s trust isn’t a part of—”

Spike sputtered at that, wide-eyed. “Buffy’s trust?” he repeated. “Does the Slayer look like she trusts me? She doesn’t trust me any further than she could…” He paused. “Well, okay, so she could toss me quite a ways, but you get my meaning. An’ I say since the girl’s the one with the super-powers, she’s the one you oughta listen to.”

He met her eyes again, and another electric shock raced down her spine.

It was nothing. They had nothing. A few kisses didn’t mean loyalty.

He wanted Dru back. And until then, she was his substitute.

The idea left her cold for reasons she couldn’t explain, and try as she might, she couldn’t shake the feeling aside.

She wanted Spike to want her.

God, how screwed up was that?

Author’s Note: Thank you SO MUCH to whoever nominated this fic, Possession, and Beloved in Blood over at the Lost in Spike Awards! It really made my weekend! You guys are so good to me. *snuggles*

And remember to check out the new SPUFFY ARCHIVE, the Elysian Fields if you haven’t yet!!! *bounce*

It didn’t take a century of informal people studies to know that he was in the doghouse. Well, as far in the doghouse as he could be with his mortal enemy. And in the end, he supposed it was for the best. This business with the Slayer—snogging her, for instance—had already gone as far as it could. She’d opened his eyes, sure, but there was nothing more to it than that. And while he certainly wouldn’t object to sampling what, exactly, had been sweet enough to provide a moment of perfect bliss, his association with Buffy and her chums was going to be short-lived. The second that the world was secure again, he was gone.

Without Drusilla.

That thought was going to take some getting used to. After this was over, he’d be alone for the first time. The very first time. It was for the best—no matter how nerve-wracking the prospect, he knew it was for the best. He’d been far too dependent on a woman that could care two pisses for him for too long. When his mortal enemy poured more feeling into kissing him than the woman he’d been with for over a century, it compromised all hope of fooling himself any longer.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that he wanted Dru back. It was only a half-truth, after all, and it had done little more than get the Slayer all pissy. Granted, it wasn’t like he couldn’t understand why. The poor little twit had had her heart stomped on by her wanker of an ex, then Spike had come along and snogged her into the next century. He’d done that and then all but screamed that she wasn’t good enough. That abuse from his emotionally detached sire was better than the Slayer’s silken kisses.

Didn’t matter that nothing could be further from the truth.

Spike snickered, shaking his head with an ironic grin. A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on, he thought, wishing for a cigarette.

It wasn’t Buffy’s fault that he was a glutton for abuse. That there was a part of him that, no matter what, wanted Dru back. In the end, though, that was only because he didn’t know better. The years hadn’t shown him any love; Dru wasn’t going to provide that. Hell, Buffy had given him more in a few simple kisses than he’d ever gotten from his dark princess. And he deserved more.

He deserved so much more.

Buffy had definitely opened his eyes. Eventually, he’d have to decide if he loved or hated her for the favor.

Right now, all he wanted to do was touch her. Forget what he’d said in the library and chalk it up to cowardly backpedaling at the emotions the Slayer—of all people—had awakened within him. Self-examination could wait; he wanted was her lips on his lips and her body against his body. He wanted her breasts in his hands and her pussy cradling his cock. He wanted all that without worry of what tomorrow would bring.

He wanted Buffy.

I’m sick.

That might be, but it didn’t change a thing. He wanted her like he’d never wanted another woman in his life. The knowledge was terrifying but relentless. He wanted Buffy. God help him, he wanted her so much.

“Slayer—”

“You really don’t need to follow me home,” she said, not once breaking stride or even bothering to toss him a glance over her shoulder. Her blonde ponytail flopped enthusiastically against her back with every strident step, enchanting him to the point of pure absurdity. He needed a shag, and bad. “I know the way, Spike. It’s why it’s called home.”

“Buffy, I din’t mean—”

“I don’t care what you meant.”

Her tone told him otherwise, and colorfully. Women who truly didn’t care never sounded so hurt. He knew. He’d spent a century with a woman that didn’t care.

He’d also spent a century not listening when people told him to shut up. “I didn’t mean it,” he said again.

Buffy grumbled and batted a hand dismissively. “Hello? Were you not here two seconds ago? I said I don’t care. I don’t give an honest crap about anything you say, much less what you mean by it.”

“Slayer—”

“I don’t care if you want your crazy hoe-bag back. It’s none of my business.”

Spike arched a brow. “Thought you din’t know what I was talking about.”

“Shut up.”

“The subject’s a li’l touchy for me, all right? It’s not like I enjoy advertising that the woman I’ve been with ever since I crawled from the grave could give two pisses about me.” Her paces slowed then, and Spike exhaled softly, casting a hand through his platinum locks. “She used to pretend, at least,” he continued. “An’ I could fool myself then. She doesn’t pretend anymore.”

Buffy stopped completely and waited until he caught up with her, her eyes bright and vulnerable. The shattered confusion across her face was enough to make any bloke fall to his knees, thus Spike was pleased when he managed to meet her gaze with somber dignity.

She was as lost as he was. And he could appreciate that.

“Look,” she said after a long minute. “I don’t…I don’t know. Yesterday—before the ghostly possession made with the smoochies and the touchies and…everything made sense.”

“I know what you mean.”

A dry laugh scratched at her throat. “Good, ‘cause I don’t. Everything made sense in a way that was completely senseless, but at least I knew where it was going.” She licked her lips. “Now you’re all here with the distracty and the Lips of Good, I can admit some things. Like when you said that I’d run back to Angel…God, I’m so afraid that that’s true. That if he came back, I’d just forgive and forget, even after all he’s done.” A shiver ran through her, and she crossed her arms. “Throw in the monkey-wrench—that being you—and I’m so confused right now that…well, I can’t come up with a good analogy, but I’m just that confused.”

Spike had wandered off at some point. Probably around Lips of Good.

“This is crazy,” she said, shaking her head. “We’re crazy.”

“I’ve been around crazy most of my unlife,” he retorted, smiling softly. “Never felt like this before.”

“You hate me.”

“I’m willing to overlook that for now.” It was another half-truth. Something about tasting the girl’s succulent mouth had gone to his head. The whole feeling thing was a little intoxicating. Buffy had him under her spell whether she liked it or not. “I like snogging you.”

She made a face. “Snog just sounds wrong.”

“You’re the ones that butchered the bloody language. Don’t go criticizing our slang when you have terms like bling-bling floatin’ around out there.”

“Spike—”

“I know I was a jerk, all right? I’m evil. That’s how the game is played.”

Buffy rolled her eyes, her face hardening once more. And before he could even consider recanting whatever offense he’d laid out, she’d pivoted sharply on her heel and resumed her brisk pace down the sidewalk. “How many times do I have to say it to get it through your thick head?” she snapped. “I. Don’t. Care. I don’t care.”

Spike sighed. One step forward…

“You tryin’ to convince yourself or me, Slayer?” he retorted, arching a cool brow. “You change your tune so often, it’s no bloody wonder your chums have a hard go of keeping track.”

“Shut up.”

Another long sigh peeled off his lips. “Buffy, we should talk—”

“I’ve already discussed the impending and oh-so-ambiguous apocalypse as much as I care to, thanks.”

It took all he had to bite back a growl. She had to be the most stubborn bint he’d ever laid eyes on. “That’s not what I meant, an’ you bloody well know it, you frustrating cock-tease.”

She stopped walking so abruptly that he nearly ploughed into her back. Not that he would have minded that, per se. Feeling any part of the Slayer’s taut, scrumptious little body against him would be the closest thing to bliss that he’d felt in a long while. But he didn’t plough into her back—Buffy whirled around the next second, and again, he felt himself drowning in the liquid heat of her eyes. “What the hell did you just call me?”

He didn’t bother repeating it. His nose was unblemished for the moment, and from the way her right hand was twitching, he figured it was wise to not press his luck. “Got you to turn around, din’t it?”

The fire in her eyes was about the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. She was trembling with a mixture of anger and arousal, and the way her lips moved made the urge to cover every inch of her with his mouth harder and harder to ignore.

God, the thought alone nearly undid him.

“You—”

“You’re making excuses,” he snapped, giving himself a good mental shake. “Deny it all you want, love, but there’s something happening between us, an’ try as you might, ignoring it’s not gonna make it go away.”

“What happened between us was ghostly possession.”

“Yeah,” Spike agreed slowly. “Last night. What happened in the classroom was you an’ me, baby.”

“You were the one that made with the lungy!”

“An’ I s’pose all that panting an’ moaning was your version of protecting your virtue?”

“There was no panting and moaning, you twisted perv!”

“If I hadn’t brought up Dru back there, you’d be putty in my hands.” Spike’s hungry eyes swallowed her as her nostrils flared with anger and her body tightened in that delicious way that only a slayer’s could. “An’ as it is, I din’t mean it. Not all of it, anyway. So just accept my apology so we can get back to snogging, yeah?”

Buffy blinked at him incredulously. Then she huffed and shook her head. “You’re a pig,” she said, turning quickly to give him yet another scrumptious view of her biteable arse. “And I’m going home.”

“Buffy—”

“Just go home, Spike. There’s nothing to discuss.”

He rolled his eyes. Women. “I don’t have a sodding home to go to. If Dru hasn’t gone batty with another vision that spills all the glorious details of my turnin’ traitor on Angelus’s massive waste of forehead, I’m still gonna have to watch your ex fuck her into the ground. An’ between the two of us, I’d rather skip that show an’ get back to exploring how good you taste when you’re less of a bitch.”

She scoffed. “Yeah. That’s happening.”

“Slayer—”

“We had two flukes. That’s it. No more. No less. There’s nothing between us, Spike. Nothing but a bizarre-o pact to save the world and seething hatred. Nothing.”

The bint had submerged so far into denial that she was beginning to sound like she’d convinced herself of that. Why oh why had he gone off his rocker and mentioned Dru? His mind was swimming in Buffy, and thanks to his big mouth, he wasn’t going to be welcomed to that dive he’d so looked forward to all day.

Only Spike wasn’t one to take defeat easily, especially over something so stupid. It was hard to admit that he wanted something different after a century of having his eyes set on one thing, but he was determined to show her that saving the world was just a perk to tasting her sweet mouth. That, when all was said and done, Buffy was the one that had changed his tune. Kissing Buffy had changed everything. Everything.

She would know it, dammit. If he had to beat it into her thick skull, she would know it tonight.

Right now.

With a growl, Spike seized her arm and whirled her around so fast that she didn’t have time to protest before his mouth came crashing down on hers. And as before, he immediately found himself lost in her rich taste. His audacity was rewarded with a sensual, cock-stirring moan rather than a slap. God, she could drive a sane man mad with the noises she made. And just like that, whatever hint of a fight that Buffy had pretended to put up instantly dissolved. Her arms wound around his neck, her lips parting to welcome his tongue, her own pushing into his mouth and near licking a soul into his willing body. The warm heat of her pussy cradled his cock and her scent teased his nostrils. She was magnificent. She was divine. She was perfection. She was effulgent.

And he was lost in her.

“Tell me now,” he growled, nipping at her lips, his hands tugging at her ponytail until her hair was free and cascading over his fingers like water. “Tell me now that there’s nothing between us.”

Fight had abandoned her eyes. “Guh,” she replied drunkenly.

Spike grinned, his head dipping to nibble on her earlobe. “’S what I thought,” he purred, his mouth skating slowly to tease the creamy skin of her throat. “You taste like raspberries.”

“Ohhh…” Buffy wove a hand through his hair, gasping and bucking her hips against him with wild abandon that did little more than drive him crazy. “It’s…my body-wash.”

“I love it.”

His tongue lapped eagerly at the pulse-point of her throat, a low moan rumbling through his chest. Slayer blood pumped through her glorious body. She was an elixir, and as one of the only vamps that could brag as to having spilt the blood of two, he knew that her taste would redefine delectable.

“I’ll buy more,” she promised, her mouth sucking at his earlobe.

Spike’s eyes rolled up. It wasn’t too difficult to imagine her sucking on something else. Something hard and aching for her touch.

“You smell like honey,” he growled, licking at her vein again.

His fangs itched. He wanted to sink his teeth into her so badly.

But not for the kill. No. This was different. This was so different. And that knowledge shook him to the core.

He didn’t want to kill her. He didn’t want his fangs stained with red and her body crumpled at his feet. No; he wanted to bite her in pleasure. He wanted to bite her when he was balls-deep in her pussy with her tight, velvet warmth strangling his cock. He wanted to see euphoria wash across her face. He wanted her hand coaxing him to her neck. He wanted her permission—her encouragement—her pleading before he sank his fangs into her milky flesh.

“I smell like honey?” she repeated, her voice light with mirth. Her hands gripped his shoulders, her mouth releasing his ear just long enough to nip at his throat. And Christ, if she hadn’t been walking a fine line before, she was practically sprinting down one now. “And I taste like raspberries. Do I look like a turkey drumstick?”

Spike chuckled. “Hardly, love.”

“You and your food analogies.”

“’S not my fault if everything about you is delicious.” To accentuate his point, he nipped at her throat, then kicked himself immediately when she tensed in his arms. “Not gonna bite you,” he promised hurriedly, kissing her cheek quickly before seizing her lips again. “Not gonna bite you. Want you alive an’ wiggling. You have my word on that.”

Buffy just looked at him. He could practically see the wheels in her head pulling on the emergency brake and heading for the ever-dreaded backtrack in a way that would put most politicians to shame.

“Sweetheart—”

“No. No, it’s okay.” She sighed heavily and shook her head. Her words didn’t inspire much encouragement, especially when she robbed him of her warmth by slipping out of his arms the next second. “It’s…I know you wouldn’t. Well, no, I don’t. I think you wouldn’t, and I know that you think you wouldn’t. Right now.”

Spike’s shoulders slumped.

Wanker.

“But we shouldn’t—it’s…” Buffy licked her lips and shivered. He knew she could taste him there, and despite his best efforts, that hint of how much they mutually enjoyed snogging each other wasn’t incentive enough to send her leaping back into his all-too-willing embrace. “I’d love to get caught up in this,” she said at last, sighing again and running a hand through her newly-tussled hair. “In you…and the nummy goodness of kissing you.”

Spike’s plans went far beyond kissing, but he didn’t dare say that now. “I don’t really see the problem, pet,” he replied softly. “’S not like we owe it to anyone.”

“I know.”

“Point of fact—”

“I can’t. We can’t.” Buffy stopped short, her eyes falling shut in frustration. “I mean we shouldn’t. Look, something happened…yeah…with the ghosts. But that doesn’t mean—”

“So you’re makin’ excuses now?”

“You said back there that you want Dru back.”

If Spike could go back in time, he’d be sure to stake himself before those infernal words could breathe life. “Sod what I said back there!” he snarled, gesturing emphatically at the empty road behind them. “I want you, love. I want you so bad I’m gonna bust a nut if I can’t touch you. Is it crazy? Yes. I know it. I know it as well as you, but knowing it doesn’t make my wanting you go away.”

Buffy’s eyes darkened as the fight returned to her. Better, then. He much preferred her fighting rather than calm and rational. Made him feel less like a ranting, sex-crazed lunatic. “You want me ‘cause you can’t have Dru,” she said slowly, her tone dangerous. “You want me ‘cause I’m…I don’t know. But you wouldn’t be here with me if Dru wasn’t playing cowgirl with Angel.”

He bit back a flinch. “You can’t know that.”

“Yes, I can. And hey—what’s more, I do.” Buffy glared at him for a few well-deserved seconds, her luscious breasts heaving as she panted with exertion. Then, slowly, the fire in her gaze softened again, and the calm was back. “Look…there’s nothing…we’re both very lonely right now. I can’t imagine how…how hard it must be for you. I mean, I had the wiggins just seeing Cordy flirt with Angel before he went all soul-crazy. I know how long you and…I know. And having to watch it can’t be a whole lot of fun. But I’m too broken right now to be used because you’re lonely. Or to use anyone else because I’m lonely. It’s not gonna help matters, Spike. Not in the end.”

A cool silence settled between them. A cool, haunted silence.

Buffy didn’t want to be used. And she didn’t want to use him.

A woman, for the first time in his life, didn’t want to use him.

And that golden knowledge tossed him over. Standing there, on the street corner, looking into her gorgeous emerald eyes, he wanted her more than ever.

But more than that, he wanted her to want him as well. Beyond the pain and the hurt. Beyond Dru and Angelus, and their sodding mind games. Beyond the impending apocalypse. He wanted Buffy to want him.

Him as in Spike. Him as in a vampire. Him as in her self-proclaimed executioner.

He wanted Buffy to want him.

God, how buggered was that?

It was by the virtue of a gabby lackey that Spike discovered Angelus had decided to end the world by means of some demon from the stone-age. A demon that had met the business end of a knight's sword. Ever since his post-Buffy-snogging encounter with the great sod and the former light of his evil life, Angelus and Dru had done little to include him in their plans. That much didn't unravel him—he knew he didn't have their trust. He'd never had Angelus's trust. Granted, trust wasn't something that Angelus handed out by the barrel. Not even Darla had earned that privilege, but after so much time, Spike would expect at least a smidgeon of respect.

And Dru? Well, Dru had made her feelings about him perfectly clear.

The only thing Spike couldn't fully explain was the lightness in his heart. All things considered, he should be absolutely miserable. The woman he loved had betrayed him—physically, emotionally, and all of the above. Furthermore, Drusilla's betrayal had forced him into a corner—one that he knew he should resent with every fiber of his being. He was walking through the darkened halls of Sunnydale High, running slightly late for the Scooby meeting Buffy had asked him to attend the night before.

Buffy.

She was Buffy to him.

That thought was rather frightening, but it did little to dampen his good mood.

Buffy had him in a good mood. The same scrawny little chit who had done nothing but muck up his plans from the second he barreled over the Welcome to Sunnydale sign. The bloody thorn in his side. The bane of his existence. The one that he'd sworn to kill. He'd come here to drink her blood. To mark her as his third all the while restoring his black princess to her former dark glory.

And the thought of seeing her now had him inexplicably happy. It made bugger all sense to him, but happiness was something that had been sorely lacking in his life in recent months. He knew basking in happiness provided by his mortal enemy couldn't lead to anything good, and while there was a very large part of him that was thoroughly disgusted with himself, he similarly knew not to sneeze on whatever good fortune came his way. He'd admitted his attraction to Buffy seconds after first setting eyes on her; just as he'd vowed to have her throat torn open and her blood in his mouth. Now that they had a tentative understanding, the male in him couldn't help but soak her up for the warm, luscious female that she was.

The fact that she was the owner of the pussy his cock desperately wanted to sink into didn't hurt, either. And while she'd put a cap on his intentions to cart her to the nearest bed, the way she reacted to him had him confident she wouldn't be able to ignore his advances for long.

Her scent flooded in his nostrils. He hadn't wanted to wash her arousal off his skin, so he'd parked in one of Sunnydale's motels and tended to his aching cock.

Buffy had certainly done her share to fuel his fantasies for the night. Every time he closed his eyes he saw her face. Every time he inhaled, he drowned in her flavor. He felt her breasts in his hands and the hum of her pulse against his mouth. At times, the fantasy became so intense—so real—that he was surprised when he opened his eyes and found he was still alone. That there wasn't a warm and achingly female human beside him.

It was going to be hard maintaining composure when all he wanted to do was escort her to the nearest private area and shag her until she was no longer interesting. Until he was bored enough with her that he could off her good and proper. And bugger all if the thought of her dead didn't make him ache. That needed fixing—the sodding soft-spot for the Slayer. It was one thing to crave her quim; caring for her was something completely different.

All in all, Spike knew what he needed to do. He needed to fuck her so he could get back to the place where the idea of her broken, bleeding body inspired joy rather than outrage. He comforted his torn psyche by asserting that he'd be able to kill the chit and move on once his lusting after slayer-pussy came to an end, no matter how unappealing the notion was currently. For whatever reason, his heart and hands were tied behind his back. He wouldn't be ready to kill her until he'd fucked her.

And until then, he'd have to accept that he wasn't ready to kill her. He didn't want to kill her; he could only hope that fucking her would rekindle the oath he made to himself; that he would be able to spill her blood without regret, then move on.

It was what he told himself, anyway. Didn't matter that every time his eyes landed on the sorry chit, his gut clenched and his heart warmed.

That would go away with time.

He hoped.

Trouble was, he'd never felt anything like it before, so he honestly couldn't say whether the feeling would go away or not.

And if he was really honest with himself, he wasn't sure he wanted it to.

Wasn't that a kick in the balls?

Spike shook his head hard. If he started down this road, there was no way he was going to be able to focus long enough to tell the Slayer and her chums what he'd discovered. He sighed, stuffed his hands inside his duster pockets, and barreled through the library doors before he could talk himself out of it.

Buffy was sitting cross-legged on the front table with a book settled in her lap and her chin resting in her palm, tendrils of fallen hair hiding her eyes from him. And even though she was a good seven yards away, he could feel the exhilarated rush in her pulse. She was thriving on adrenaline, and judging by the sweet smell she exuded, she'd just gotten through a hefty training session.

The idea of Buffy in her element killed his resolve to remain professional. His cock stirred and his fangs itched. She was glorious when she fought.

Even if all she had to fight was a padded-up watcher or a worn-down punching bag.

It was a decidedly juvenile, male voice that interrupted his exceedingly distracting thoughts. And from the distinctly unmanly shrill, he couldn't tell whether or not the distraction was a godsend.

"Spike!"

Spike blinked and turned. Oh. Right. The Slayer's friends. Seemed the whole merry lot was present. The redhead. The over-bearing boy and his cheerleader girlfriend. The werewolf. And, of course, the Watcher. The bloke responsible for nearly giving him a black-eye. They were all staring at him dumbly, as though he hadn't popped by the previous day and already gone through this time-wasting mess of explaining his motives.

Granted, only the Watcher and the redhead had been there to see it, but a bloke would think that news would travel...especially since this lot fancied themselves a crime-fighting force to be reckoned with. Demons of Sunnydale beware, and all that.

"'Lo all," he said, waving dismissively before turning back to the Slayer. She looked like something had bitten her; she was pale and wide-eyed, and too gorgeous for words. Were it not for their rather attentive audience, he'd be seeing about bringing that rosy blush he loved so much out to play.

"Spike," she said. "I...oh..."

"Forget I was coming, love?

"No. I just..."

It took very little to pull the breaks on his good mood. Something wasn't right. Buffy was too pale. Too dazed. And while he'd love to entertain thoughts that she was shaken by the very sight of him, he was too jaded to allow his ego the stroke, however needed.

"Got news," he said, eyes narrowing. "'Bout Angelus."

"So do we!" the redhead chimed in, raising her hand like an attentive student. "We found the curse!"

"The curse..." Spike froze, his world crashing. "The curse. The sodding curse. You found it?"

"Buffy found it."

Buffy couldn't look at him. She was suddenly very much interested in the book in her lap.

"In Ms. Calendar's desk," the overgrown boy with the girl-voice tossed in. "You know? The teacher you murdered?"

Spike's eyes flared angrily. "Don't go pinning that one on me."

"Like it matters. Point is, we have a plan, and you're not needed anymore."

That much was enough to snap the Slayer out of whatever inner pity-party she was attending. Buffy's head shot up so fast it'd be a sodding miracle if she didn't have whiplash come morning. And in an instant, she'd bounded to her feet. "Wait," she said shortly. "We never decided that we couldn't use Spike."

The word hit him like holy water.

Use.

"Use me?" he repeated, disgusted. With her. With himself. With the notion that he could ever be anything more to her—that the night's promise could actually be kept. God, he was such a git. Such a bloody useful git. "Well, Slayer...fancy that."

She burned him with a look. "Don't start."

"Don't start? I walk in here with news about what your lover-boy is plannin' an' get the bloody third degree from some wanker who's still tryin' to grow outta his Pampers." Spike shook his head in disgust. "An' you—"

"I haven't decided anything!" Buffy snapped. "So don't start, Spike! Not you, too. I swear, I can't..." She wandered off, chopping the sentence short with an abrupt jerk of the head, wiping her eyes before anyone could get another glimpse of slayer vulnerability.

It was enough. It gave him enough. She was reeling, and it was the fire in her eyes that lent him pause. Something was off; very off. She looked, on closer inspection, like a woman at the edge of a very steep cliff, waiting for the slightest sign to send her over. And it occurred to him that he'd just walked blind into something very personal.

Something that had nothing to do with Angelus at all, and everything to do with Buffy and her relationship with vampires. Any vampire.

And right now, Spike was the perfect target.

It didn't take much to put that together. As it was, Angelus had delighted in telling stories about the large git—Xander, his name was—and how the boy lusted after the Slayer with no thought to discretion or tact. And despite the arm-candy at his side, Spike would bet his smokes against the odds that Boy Wonder had thought to sneak his way into the Slayer's knickers in the fallout. After all, he'd been proven right about vampires, and the Slayer would need some comfort in the difficult days following her first great love's death.

What a sodding waste. As though a fumbling teenager of a human would ever be enough for Buffy.

"Y-yes, quite," Giles concluded, his glasses falling into a waiting handkerchief. Spike briefly entertained the idea that the old man had been spurned into the world with a bloody square of cotton sewed to his palm. The Watcher was well engaged in a polish session before he continued his thought. "What news do you bring us?" he asked.

Spike paused, his eyes drifting back to Buffy. She'd reinstated her campaign to avoid eye-contact, standing now with her arms crossed, her weight shifting from one leg to the other. "Acathla," he said shortly.

Giles paled. "Acathla?"

"A-what-a?" Buffy echoed, her head darting upward briefly. Electricity flared between them when their eyes met, but the contact was so brief he barely had time to enjoy it before she was again paying attention to every nook and cranny in the library except for him. Which made it interesting, seeing as she intended to continue the conversation. "What's an...whatever you said?"

"Nasty bugger, pet."

"Acathla is a demon from ancient antiquity. The Watchers Council actually thought him to be a fabrication until sixty years or so ago, when more modern records of his existence were uncovered with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls." Giles shook his head incredulously. "Oh dear."

Spike nodded. "Now some museum has hold of it. Here in ole Sunnyhell. It was all over the mornin' paper."

Xander blinked, not even bothering to mask his surprise. "You read the paper?"

The question wasn't deserving of an answer; a point made well when Spike refused to even toss the wanker a glance. "But if your lot thinks reensouling the Great Poof is the way to go, best of luck to you." His eyes landed on Buffy again, agitation swelling in his chest. He didn't want to feel for the chit, but the lost look on her face was enough to melt the hardest of facades. It had to be hard for her; admittedly, he knew the tennis game the Powers were playing with her heart would eventually cause her to completely crash. Right now, she didn't need him around making things even more confusing for her.

Granted, why he should give a bloody damn was beyond him. The girl had her tongue down his throat just last night, and with a little coaxing, he knew that he could have convinced her to part her legs and take his cock into her small, perfect body. If she was now tossed up because her beloved one and only had another undeserved shot at redemption, he had every reason to be brassed. She hadn't fought his advances. Fuck, turning away from her last night had been the hardest thing he'd ever done—forcing his ears to listen to her whispers of no all the while her skin hummed and the throb of her pulse told him yes.

"I saw Acathla this morning," Giles said softly. "The curator of the museum in question wanted my opinion."

"And what did you tell him?" the redhead demanded, her voice an octave away from summoning every dog in town. It was a wonder her mutt of a boyfriend could tolerate anything that piercing.

"'Oh dear, oh dear,' were my exact words, I believe."

The cheerleader's brown eyes widened. "Did anyone order a mass panic?"

"Acathla's missing now," the Watcher concluded.

Xander wasted no time in pointing an accusatory finger at the vampire, his body trembling with disdain. "You!"

Spike's hands came up. "Oi!"

"Y-you came here to lure her into a trap!"

"How you figure? By the way I've compromised Angelus's master plan?" He rolled his eyes. "Bugger this. I'm out."

His back was already on Buffy by the time she snapped out of whatever inner debate she was entertaining. And though lead filled his boots, he refused to stop walking. Even when she called out after him. Even when she begged him to stop.

The world had already robbed him of too many things. If she thought she could have his pride on top of it all, she was in for a rude awakening.

The one thing Spike didn't count on was Buffy running after him. That took moxy he didn't think she had. To maul him with her lips in an abandoned classroom was one thing; to leave her chums and her Watcher, calling his name like he meant something to her...that was something else altogether.

It didn't mean anything, of course. The Slayer's chance had come and gone. He was through playing the perpetual whipping boy. Let her try to stop the apocalypse without him. Fuck, let her plunge Angel's soul back up the git's righteous ass—it didn't matter to him. The way Angel and the Slayer had been going at it before her cherry was popped, they'd be fortunate to get a week together before Angelus reared his ugly head again.

Might be better if he told her to bugger off once and for all. And with that thought in mind, Spike whirled around angrily, only to find himself suddenly holding an armful of Buffy, her hands on his cheeks as her mouth ravaged his. Immediately, his cock sprang to life and his anger placated. There really was no remedy for outrage like a warm Slayer tongue caressing his, her legs parting just slightly to allow his denim-clad erection solace between her heavenly thighs.

"I don't know what to do," she babbled between kisses. Her body was burning up and her eyes had pooled with tears. Her mouth nipped at his flesh with desperation that had him calculating how long it'd take to get somewhere private if he tossed her over his shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Spike. I just don't know what to do."

"What—"

"I didn't want...God!" In a blink, she'd torn herself away from his embrace. And the sudden absence of her warmth left him frozen in ways he didn't want to consider. "I didn't mean to find it," she said, every inch of her delectable self trembling with uncertainty he knew well. "It was just there. I was studying with Willow and it was just there. What am I supposed to do? He's...I loved him so much, and I was so ready to kill him. I was so ready. If I kill him now...knowing that I could..."

She shook her head hard and forced her eyes upward, and the heartache reflected behind her tears was enough to gut the strongest of men. Any hope of escaping this without his heart twice broken died that second. Forget all talk of fucking her as means of getting past his fixation and back to the way God intended it. A man didn't weep for girls who were breaking if he only felt for her with his prick.

How had she turned his world on its hinges in just two bleeding days?

Spike sighed inwardly and cast a hand through his platinum locks. Didn't look like it mattered how. He was here now. He was staring at the Slayer, whose eyes were filled with tears she'd cried for someone else. And his heart, predictably, was mush. It hurt like hell, but there was bugger all he could do about it. He wanted Buffy—this he knew—but he wanted her smiling. The pain in her eyes...

Fuck me.

"Buffy, love..."

"I know...you..." She shivered hard and crossed her arms. "I'm crazy with the mixed signals and everything. I didn't mean to...make with the lungy."

His tingling lips didn't mind. They just missed her warmth.

"I don't know what to do," she concluded, wiping at her eyes with a pitiful sniff. "And you...with the...kissing and the temporary not-being-my-mortal-enemy thing...my head hurts."

Spike just looked at her. His hands were tied. If he stepped forward and caressed her aching head with his lips, he might well earn a punch in the gut. If he stood idly, she might take that as rejection and start again with the waterworks.

The only thing he could offer her was support, and that went against every innate stirring in his evil body. Ergo, the only thing he could offer her was total self-defacement.

Though anything was better than watching her cry.

"Kitten—"

"Kendra."

Spike blinked hard. "No," he said slowly, patting his chest. "Spike."

"No, I mean—" Buffy paused, her eyes narrowing. "Doofus, behind you. Kendra."

It took a few seconds for the words to register. A few seconds that cost him dearly.

The last thing he heard, following the hard and rather underserved kick to the head, was Buffy screaming the Riot Act to the slayer behind him.

And oddly enough, as the world went black, he found that rather comforting.

Nightmares haunted every second of sleep. His mind enacted every gut-wrenching scenario a twisted imagination could provide. And each came in the wrapping of a golden fantasy.

He saw Buffy smiling at him. Buffy stripping for him. Buffy lying spread-eagled on his bed, her pussy slick with aching anticipation of his touch. He saw her beckon him forward. Saw her take his hand in hers and guide his fingers to her slippery folds. She moaned and bucked against his hand, played to easy orgasm and drenched his skin with her achingly feminine juices. She looked at him with open, trusting eyes. She looked at him in ways that made him question his existence.

Spike had always known evil things could appreciate beauty; he’d just never found purity beautiful.

And Buffy was pure. Buffy was nothing but pure.

And she wasn’t his. As dream faded into nightmare, as Angel strode into the room, there was nothing more singular than that knowledge. Buffy didn’t belong to him. She belonged to Angel. To the memory of a soul.

“Thanks for keeping her warm for me,” Angel quipped, winking. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

That wasn’t the kicker, though. The kicker was watching Buffy’s face break into blinding illumination. The kicker was watching her scoot over. The kicker was watching her throw her head back in pleasure as Angel’s hand found her pussy.

Thankfully, that was where the nightmare ended. That was when he twisted awake, finding again that he was alone in his motel bed. That Buffy’s scent lived only on the clothing she’d touched earlier when she’d kissed his lips off. That she wasn’t here to taunt him with the incredible wrong turn his feelings for her had taken.

She’d decided to go with the curse. She’d helped him back to the library after talking down the incredibly brassed-off slayer. She’d tended to his bruised head with an icepack, and told her friends she wanted to curse Angel again. Any hint of the girl who had sobbed in his arms was nowhere to be seen. Buffy acted with decisiveness. She wanted Angel back, and she’d said so while standing at Spike’s side.

Her argument? It would buy them time. Time to stop Acathla. Time to figure out how to put the apocalypse on pause.

It was just a happy coincidence that the curse would bring her boyfriend back. A two-for-one deal.

Spike moaned and threw his naked legs over the side of the bed, shaking his head hard. He was such a daft git. So bloody hopeless. Get a girl to smile at him, shed a few tears, and he was no more useful than Angel on Viagra. He wanted Buffy, and Buffy wanted someone else.

Story of his life.

The sun would soon fade below the horizon, and then it would be time to move. Spike was exhausted but wide awake, tense and ready for whatever the night brought on. He hadn’t been able to sleep—if it wasn’t the nightmares, it was worry that she might need him.

And that, friends, is the punchline.

Buffy had robbed him of his ability to sleep through the daytime, which did little more than solidify how thoroughly buggered he was. He was a demon; he was supposed to enjoy reaping havoc while the sky was dark and sleep when the sun was up. He was supposed to be out there planning an apocalypse of his own. He was supposed to not give a bleeding fuck if Buffy wanted to shag Angel until she rotted, or how many souls she stuffed up the git’s righteous arse. He was supposed to be different.

He was supposed to be so many things. Right now, the thing he focused on was the fact that he was a nocturnal creature, and he was turning arse over tit to change his habits for a girl who was probably dreaming of getting fucked sideways by another vamp.

A girl who would never dream of him.

Spike padded miserably to the bathroom sink, glaring into the mirror that refused to glare back. When had life become so sodding complicated? His plan had been simple enough. Go to the school. Talk to the Slayer. Get her to concoct a brilliant plan that involved Dru begging him to take her back as well as Angelus’s dusty downfall. But that hadn’t happened.

Buggering ghosts. The ghosts had turned his head and given his cock another pussy to crave. Crave beyond a fleeting fantasy—crave as he’d craved no woman before her. Before Buffy. And if that wasn’t humiliating enough, his heart, oh so predictably, had followed suit.

He was always falling for women who were infatuated with Angelus.

Perhaps he truly was a masochist.

“My Spike flies so far away from the other children.”

His eyes widened in shock, his feet twisting until he found himself staring at his maker. The motel door was wide open, and there she stood. Dru. Distant. Haunting. She held herself like a true aristocrat. Her hands were hidden behind her back, her hair pulled away from her face. She was dressed all in black.

Of course she was. The white gowns had vanished once her power was restored. The white had fooled him, played to his softer side. Made him believe that the sickly girl he saw—the one who pretended to love him to get what she wanted—could ever carry over in the rebirth of what no angry mob could destroy.

Drusilla had walked right into his motel. His neutral ground. The place he stayed that belonged neither to Angelus nor the Slayer. And she’d done so without triggering any of his senses. He hadn’t even smelled her.

Odd as it was, Spike was hardly surprised. If Dru didn’t want to be felt, she had ways to avoid it.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he growled, his unthinking feet carrying him to her. “An’ haven’t you ever heard of knocking?”

“I just came to see if the stars were lying to me.”

“Bloody hell, Dru, we already had this argument. I’m lost, remember?” He waved his hand a little. “I wanna play in sunshine? I’ve tasted honey an’ I want more? Any of this ringing any bells?”

“Only dirty boys play in the sunlight, my sweet.”

He rolled his eyes. “No need to tell me that. Why don’t you bugger the fuck off an’ head back to your cozy li’l apocalypse, yeah? You an’ Grandpap made it perfectly clear that you wanted me nowhere near the precious ceremony. An’ near as I can recall, I din’t invite you to keep tabs.”

“Mummy looks after all her babies,” Drusilla replied coyly, taking a step forward. “You were always my favorite baby, Spike.”

“But nothin’ more than that. Trust me, got that message loud an’ clear.”

“Daddy worries you’ll ruin everything.”

Daddy ought to be more worried about the amateur witch that was brewing up a cup of soul, or at least looking at the recipe. But Spike didn’t say that. He wouldn’t betray Buffy. The last time any from her lot had tried to reensoul the wanker, a teacher lost her life. Not that Spike particularly cared if one or all of the little Scoobies had their innards ripped out; he just knew what it would do to Buffy if she lost someone else. If conjuring a curse meant sacrificing a friend.

He wouldn’t betray Buffy. Not now.

Look what she’s turned you into.

Not even thoughts like that could persuade him.

“If Daddy figured me for anything of a threat, he’d be here himself to deliver the message,” Spike retorted dryly, arching a brow. “You’re jus’ here to keep me in the ranks. Make sure when the mojo starts later that I’m still standin’ on your side.”

Drusilla’s lower lip poked out in a way that, once upon a time, would have had him weak in the knees. Not now. Seeing her now only incited irritation. “My puppy feels mistreated?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah. For starters, not a sodding puppy.”

“Such a sad day it is for you, William.”

“You have no bloody idea.”

“You’re going to help the nightingale, aren’t you?” She took a step forward, her eyes now blazing with accusation. “You think she sings her song for you. She doesn’t, you know. She likes the way you feed and coddle her, and she will give you a treat in the end. But her song isn’t yours.”

Spike flinched inwardly, but he refused to let Dru see how deep the words cut. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t said before. Point of fact, the very first night she’d fed him the same speech. About how Buffy didn’t want him and all that rot. And while repetition didn’t make the hurt vanish, it did steal some of the punch.

“Still, she had the decency to tell me that before I got involved,” he countered. “Go home, Dru. You’re wasting your time with me.”

“I don’t think so, my darling.” She bit her lip coquettishly and her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Acathla awakes tonight. And you’re not going to ruin the surprise party.”

It was only then her arms dropped and the sword came into view. A sword. An honest-to-god sword. Spike barely had time to blink at it before the blade cut across his neck. Paralyzed shock hardened his body; he gasped his maker’s name and reached for the wound out of instinct, baring his gut in a moment of blind weakness.

“Dru—”

She barely blinked at him before swinging again. Then the wall was pressed to his back, the sword gone all but the handle that protruded from his belly.

“My Spike wants the sunshine,” she said, moving away with haunting grace. When he had the strength to glance up, she was at the window, her fingers coiled around the cord that dangled beside the cheap drapery. “Sunshine, my Spike shall have.”

“Dru,” he coughed, blood splattering on his lip. The sun had set, of course, and wouldn’t be back for hours. But it would be eventually. And as tomorrow’s day progressed, the sun would crawl deeper into the room. Until his flesh sizzled and his insides imploded. Until there was nothing left of him but dust.

The room spun.

Blood. He needed blood.

“Good night, sweet prince,” Dru singsonged from the distance. “May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

Had he been more coherent, Spike would have asked her when she’d ever had the faculties to memorize Shakespeare.

As it was, those words were the last he heard before the world blanked out.

Three years now. It had been three years. Three years since Merrick approached her on the steps of Hemery High School. Three years since she dusted her first vampire. Three years since her first Big Bad.

Three years since her first dead body.

It never became simple. She was never able to detach herself from the faces of those she failed to save. She still cried herself to sleep every night she had to wash blood off her hands. The twenty-second victim wasn’t easier to bury than the twenty-first. The body count seemed to follow her no matter where she went or how far she ran.

Buffy had buried strangers, classmates, and teachers. She’d stood at Giles’s side as Jenny Calendar was lowered into the earth.

She’d never gazed on the lifeless face of a friend. And even though the body was gone, it didn’t make her tremble any less. It didn’t quell the sickness in her stomach. The image was frozen in her mind. When she closed her eyes, she saw it again and again. There was no escape.

There was little difference from what she’d seen a few hours ago. Before she’d kicked herself free of police custody and torn away in desperation. The library was still a disaster. Bookshelves remained toppled. Incense and herbs remained scattered across the floor. Giles’s weapons cabinet was still empty. Blood spots still stained the floor.

And then there was Kendra.

Kendra.

Kendra wasn’t here anymore, of course, but she had been just a few short hours ago. She’d lain on the floor, her bleeding neck bent at a heartbreakingly awkward angle. Her eyes closed. She hadn’t breathed.

Of course she hadn’t breathed. Dead people didn’t breathe.

Angel had told her. Warned her that she was stupid for thinking everything was always about her. He was right. She hated that he was right. She’d stood beside her friend’s dead body because he was right. Because he’d dangled a shot at confronting him in front of her face and she’d leapt at it without thinking. Without waiting. God, without even waiting for Spike.

Spike. Spike. Where was Spike?

Buffy stood in the empty library, surrounded by the sad remnants of the attempt to stuff Angel’s soul back down his throat. Everything was gone. Wasted. Xander didn’t know where Giles was. Willow was recuperating in a hospital room. Cordelia had taken off and was probably halfway to Vegas by now.

There was no Spike. Spike hadn’t shown.

Xander had a theory on that. He said Spike had set them all up. Spike had ratted them out. Buffy had argued it was impossible for Spike to rat them out when he hadn’t known the plan. She hadn’t seen him since last night—hadn’t talked with him since bidding him farewell and sneaking a quick kiss in the hallway. After worrying over the bruise on his forehead—the bruise Kendra hadn’t, and now never would, apologized for giving him—he’d rolled to his feet, told her he’d see her tomorrow, and left.

Kendra was dead. Willow was in the hospital. Giles was missing. And Spike was gone.

I can’t do this alone.

She exhaled slowly, her eyes landing on the sword Kendra had abandoned on the conference table. The sword Buffy had kicked a cop—one holding her at gunpoint, no less—to retrieve.

In the end, you’re always by yourself. You’re all you’ve got.

Buffy shivered. The twerp from Giles’s apartment might have been right, but it didn’t mean she had to take it with a smile and a nod. Angel hadn’t mentioned Spike. Xander had even begrudgingly confessed the peroxided vampire hadn’t been anywhere in sight during the raid.

If Spike had been a part of it, Angel would have rubbed it in her face. She just knew he would have.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

She needed Spike. She might be destined to always be alone, but it didn’t mean she had to sit down and accept it. If Spike was still alive, she needed him. He would help her. He would help her save Giles. He would help her save the world.

She wasn’t about to lose anyone else. Not tonight.

She would find Spike. She’d find him and kiss him until he was glad he didn’t need to breathe. Then they’d find Giles and stop Angel. They would.

But she wouldn’t lose him. Not Giles. Not Spike. She wouldn’t lose anyone else.

Not without dying first.

A/N: I thought I’d update this before my operation. I’m having surgery on Thursday—standard, gallbladder removal. But tied in with missing-of-school, the one day my doctor wants me to remain bed-ridden, and my other WIPs, I figured it might be a little longer than I’d like between updates. So here’s more Strawberry Fields. Hope you all enjoy.

Thank you all for your patience and support of this story. It means so much that you’re sticking it out with me.

Chapter 10

Spike was dead.

Buffy stood frozen in the open doorway. She didn’t know how long she’d been there. Time had stopped ticking the second her shadow crossed the threshold. Nothing about the room seemed real. Not the turned-down bed. Not the bags of blood scattered across the window-table. Not the crucified vampire pinned to the far wall.

Spike was dead.

Oh my God.

It was the most horrifying thing she’d ever seen. Beyond every body she’d found drained. Every familiar face she’d had to bury. Spike was full of life—always full of life. He was someone she knew; someone who was not dead to her, and never had been. He was her enemy. He was her reluctant ally. He was someone she really enjoyed kissing. He was…

God, he was dead.

Buffy sniffed hard and wiped at her eyes. When had she started crying? She hadn’t been here long enough to cry. And yet, her cheeks were damp with cold tears. She wasn’t sobbing. She wasn’t whimpering. She just stood in the doorway and looked at him, crying silent tears.

Spike was dead.

It had happened hours ago—she was certain. He was pale. He was so pale. Paler than a vampire—paler than any corpse she’d ever seen. His white skin melted seamlessly into the white wall behind him. He looked like a snow angel—a snow angel splattered with blood.

He was naked. She wondered why he was naked. Perhaps he’d been here with someone. Perhaps they’d had fun. Perhaps…

No. She knew that wasn’t true. Fifteen years of living under her father’s roof had educated her childish eyes in the differences between recently-slept-in and recently-fucked-in beds. Spike had just awoken, most likely, when this happened to him. When he was nailed to the wall with a sword.

It had happened hours before. Hours before Kendra was murdered. Perhaps, even, hours before the fumbled confrontation with Angel in the graveyard. The confrontation that had turned out to be a diversion. A diversion planned and executed to render her completely and utterly alone.

God, she was so foolish. Of course Angel and Dru knew about Spike. Of course they did. Spike wasn’t staying at a motel because he wanted to. He’d told her as much when he’d scribbled the room number onto the sticky-note he found in her backpack. She was so stupid for thinking they would leave him be; that her friends would be the only ones they targeted.

How odd that her last memory of Spike would be his handing her a note. The note with his room number. How her eyes had watched his lips and wished they could go back to the part where they were making out. He’d handed her something that could have saved his life had she used her brain, and she’d forgotten it because of his mouth.

“Oh Spike…”

The second the words touched the air, everything became real. It was real. And that was all it took for Buffy to break. She couldn’t leave him like that. She couldn’t. He meant too much to her; he was her vampire, dammit, and she wouldn’t leave him crucified. Not when she was the reason he was gone. Not when his alliance with her had cost his life.

Not when she had feelings for him she hadn’t gotten a chance to explore. Feelings she was too terrified to give credence. Feelings that had allowed her to shake the shadow of her relationship with Angel off her heels, and given her the strength to acknowledge what she had to do.

She didn’t love Spike, but he was hers. He was completely hers. He was hers to fight. Hers to kill. Hers to kiss until she couldn’t feel her lips. It was his fault; he’d thrown it in with her, and she cared about him. She hadn’t wanted to, but he’d made it impossible to look the other way. He’d held her when she cried. He hadn’t mocked her weakness. He’d been there for her the way no one else had, or could have been.

And now he was gone, and it was her fault.

All her fault.

Choking back a sob, Buffy’s numb legs took tentative steps forward, her eyes never leaving his body. His throat had been slit, trailing rivers of blood down his chest. The handle of the sword had staunched the heaviest blood-flow, but a growing pool of red still soaked his lower body. He was so still. So still.

Vampires were never still. Vampires didn’t die and leave a body behind. Why hadn’t Giles told her that vampires could bleed to death?

An inhuman cry scratched at her throat. She needed to get him down.

“I’m so sorry, Spike,” she whispered, her vision blurring. Her fingers closed around the slippery handle.

God. His blood was on her skin.

Buffy shivered and shook the thought aside, instead throwing her weight behind her arm and tugging at the sword as hard as she could. A sickening sound spilled into the air, the movement reenergizing the blood flow. Her stomach turned and bile rose in her throat, but she wasn’t about to stop on account of squeamishness. She owed Spike more than that. So much more.

It took both hands—the sword was too-far buried in his stomach. She ignored the sound of metal sliding against organs and ripped flesh; she ignored the red river that waterfalled down his snow-white skin. She ignored everything until the sword was free; until Spike’s body collapsed in a lifeless heap to the floor.

“Oh God!” Buffy cried, blinking away another wave of tears. The sword tumbled from her hands as her knees crashed to the floor, taking him into her trembling arms. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to…I just had to get it out. I didn’t mean to—”

And then something happened. Something that stopped her heart.

It was nearly inaudible, but it was there.

A moan.

The gasp that crushed her chest would have killed her if she’d been anything but a slayer. Buffy’s eyes widened, her shaking hands grasping Spike’s cold shoulders. “Spike?” she whispered. “Oh my God, are you…”

Another moan. Louder this time.

“Oh God. Oh my God. Oh God.”

Buffy was on her feet in a blink, Spike in her arms. She didn’t know, exactly, how to bring a vampire back from the edge of death, but she’d be damned if she didn’t try. Her feet carried her instinctively toward the bathroom where her trembling arms lowered him into the tub. She’d seen this in movies—people splashing water on the unconscious. Or dragging drunks into the shower because water had some sort of healing ailment that brought others from the brink of delirium. Was that even true? Her mom had never tried it with her father. She’d always just let him sleep it off. What if it worked on people but not vampires?

There were only so many options.

It was always cold water in the movies, but he was already so cold. He’d felt like ice against her fingers and she wasn’t about to make him colder. Instead, she turned the faucet on at full heat and stepped back, crossing her arms nervously. Trying hard to ignore the anxious shivers that clamored her insides and made it near impossible to stand still.

Her eyes were drawn irrevocably to the gaping hole in his stomach. How could anyone, human or not, walk away from that?

She didn’t know. She thought she’d known everything about vampires but she didn’t know this. If he was still alive, would he have that hole in his gut for the rest of forever? That permanent, ugly reminder of what his relationship with her had cost him? God, what if he woke up and wanted to tear her throat out? What if…

Spike moaned again.

Buffy’s wide eyes shot to his face. “Spike?” she ventured breathlessly. “Oh God, please.”

But that was all. That was all. Nothing happened after that.

Maybe she’d been wrong about the hot water. Maybe it was cold water that held the magical remedy. Buffy lurched forward, desperation charging her veins, and switched the faucet back to cold.

And waited.

And waited.

The tub was filling. The water was turning red. Spike didn’t moan again.

He needs blood.

Where the thought came from, she didn’t know. But it remained, niggling at her subconscious as her eyes soaked him in. Spike’s hauntingly pale body. Spike immersed in a bath of blood-water. Spike not moving.

Not moving.

It came from nowhere, but she suddenly knew what to do. There was blood in the motel. There was bagged blood on the front table. On that crappy table every motel on the planet offered its patrons. He had blood. He had bagged blood. He had blood.

She had to get him blood.

Buffy twisted on her heel. She was just a second too fast to witness Spike’s eyes pop open. To see them blaze with amber as his fangs descended.

But she did hear his growl, and her feet promptly turned to cement.

The next thing she knew, his hands were on her and she was in the tub with him. His eyes were yellow, his expression foregone. There was nothing hinting at recollection on his face—there was only a feral blaze of hunger.

She was too startled to think about kicking him away. Her mind was suddenly vacant; all she knew was his name.

“Spike?”

It was the last sound to touch the air before his fangs pierced her flesh.

A/N: Thank you guys so much for your warm wishes in regards to my surgery. Everything went swimmingly—I’m pretty much back to a normal schedule. And aside from a little residual soreness, I feel 100% better.

Also, thank you guys so much for your continued support in this story. I’m gaining steam again (also seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as far as this semester is concerned) and will hopefully have a lot more time to write here soon. I know updates have been sparse, but I really am going to try and improve that in the coming weeks. Here’s hoping this fic still has readers…

BIG THANKS to whoever nominated Beloved in Blood over at Solemn Grace Awards!!!

Lastly, voting has commenced at Spark and Burn Awards . Several of my fics—this one included—and a plethora of other stories by some of the fandom’s best authors are up for awards. Head over and vote if you get the chance. It’ll really make an author’s day.

Thank you guys again so much!

Chapter 11

Spike was no novice to slayer blood. From the second he’d tasted it in China, he’d dedicated his life to chasing it down. Slayer’s blood was the ultimate trophy, and he was determined, in this contest, to always stand victor. To have this be one thing that he did better than anyone.

He’d tasted slayer blood before, but it had never tasted like this.

It had never tasted so…

Mine.

Her blood was his. She tasted thoroughly his. Beyond championing her death—beyond earning his chalice—the blood in his mouth belonged to him. His life had been a series of steps to reach this moment. To hold her in his arms and claim what was his. No matter that he didn’t remember how he’d gotten here, or whom he was holding; all he knew was it was right. His journey could end now because he’d tasted his purpose.

Mine, the demon purred. She’s mine.

Spike murmured contentedly around mouthfuls. The demon was right. There had never been a more perfect moment.

A name then. He remembered her name.

Buffy.

Buffy moaned and wiggled. Buffy tried to shove him off, but the demon wouldn’t be denied. Buffy couldn’t hold him from what was his.

“Spike!” someone sobbed, her voice tearing with pain and drenched in unshed tears. “Please! No, oh God, please!”

Please. Please. It was a word he’d come to know well over the last century.

“Please!”

Spike blinked wearily. The shapeless forms around him were beginning to realign. He was in a tub. He was immersed in icy water. His body was battered but not broken. He had Buffy in his arms, and his fangs in her throat.

He had Buffy’s blood in his mouth.

Spike’s eyes shot open and his fangs retracted immediately. Buffy’s blood. Her slayer’s blood. He was naked in the tub and she was in his arms. She was…

“Buffy!” he gasped, shaking his bumpies away, panic charging his veins. Buffy’s blood. He’d tasted Buffy’s blood. His tongue was bathed in Buffy’s blood. He pressed a shaking hand against her torn neck, his hazed mind racing to catch up with logic and reason. Buffy’s blood coated his throat. What in God’s name had happened here? “Buffy, oh God…I din’t mean to. I din’t—”

Thankfully, she hadn’t been weakened to the point of battling consciousness. Perhaps he hadn’t taken as much as he’d thought. He didn’t know, and he wasn’t about to fire off any questions. For the moment, he just needed to make sure she was all right. Explanations could come later.

What she said, though, had him trembling for completely different reasons.

“It’s all right,” she said, waving dismissively, her hand settling over his at her throat.

“Are you okay? Bloody hell, baby, I din’t mean—”

She blinked blearily. “It…you didn’t take too much. A few mouthfuls. Just…felt like…”

“My God—”

“It was my fault, really.”

He would have been knocked off his feet had he not already been sitting. “What?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Remember…”

His mind was racing, eager to fill in the gaps; in easy seconds, everything came rushing back. Dru. Dru had been here. Dru had cut his throat. Dru had run him through with a sword. Dru had nailed him to the wall and left him for dead. She’d raised the curtains in the room so the sun would finish the job come morning, if his body hadn’t drained of blood before then.

Now he was in the bath. Buffy was in his arms. Buffy was bleeding.

Buffy had saved his life.

Spike exhaled slowly, his bleary gaze taking her in. She might have been hell run over, but fuck if she wasn’t as beautiful as ever before. Sitting there in bath water, her hand over his. Her hair was tousled. Her eyes were tired. There was dirt on her skin. She shook beneath his fingers, and though she bled because of him, there was no condemnation in her eyes. She looked almost…relieved.

Relieved?

“You remember now, don’t you?” she asked weakly, her fingers slowly moving over his where he held her bleeding neck. “You remember what happened?”

“I don’t remember you, kitten,” Spike replied, cringing and reaching for his own throat with his free hand. He remembered being cut, but the damaged skin had already begun to heal. “Nothing after you got here.”

A small, near heartbreaking smile crossed her face. “I don’t imagine you would.”

“What…” His hand dropped without ceremony to his gut, his fingers grazing the sore patch of skin which had already formed over what would have been a nasty scar. He had slayer’s blood to thank for that. Slayer’s blood had strength charging his body. Had him itching with a need to pay his maker back for what she’d done to him, and take Angelus down in the process. Buffy’s blood had saved his life, and he couldn’t remember a lick of it.

Buffy’s eyes followed his hand, widening in shock. “Holy hell!”

“Yeah—”

“That’s impossible! That sword ran you all the way through! There’s no way…” She broke off with an abrupt jerk of her head, the hand at her neck dropping to his stomach and batting his away. “There’s no way this—”

“Slayer—”

“It takes me at least a day to heal a cut that’s maybe two inches deep. How in God’s name—”

“Your blood, love.” He hated the look on her face—the look those words inspired. “It’s your blood. Your…slayer’s blood…it’s the sodding holy grail for us. For vampires. Tasting you…just a drop could bring any vamp back from the edge of death. I got good a chunk of you.”

And amazingly, the knowledge didn’t come with pleasure. It didn’t come with a grin and a snappy remark. It didn’t come with pride. Hell, it didn’t even come with the urge to sink his fangs into her throat and finish what he started. He’d tasted his third slayer—the most powerful slayer he’d ever known—and he couldn’t gloat. Couldn’t even work up a grin that he knew what she tasted like. He couldn’t summon anything but remorse.

Because he’d hurt her. He’d hurt her, and that bothered him. He was too far beyond caring why it bothered him. He knew he was hopeless for her and was exhausted from fighting it. And Christ, with her blood in his body, fighting his feelings for her was nothing short of a disgrace. She’d given him a gift, willing or not. She was in his gut, in his throat, and he was drowning in her.

That particular acknowledgment made his life a whole lot easier and a hell of a lot more complicated in one bloody blink. At least now he could stop fighting his feelings.

All he had to do now was live with the knowledge that he was falling in love with another woman who could never love him back.

“My blood…did that?” she whispered, her fingers grazing his tender skin. “I…how—”

Of course, his feelings for her coupled with the fact that he was feeling much better than Buffy realized had his body reacting in a very inappropriate way. The Slayer was sitting in a tub with him, her hands on his belly, and he was naked. He was naked, revved with the most powerful aphrodisiac on the planet’s face, and the hands of the woman his cock wanted like no other were on his body.

His cock was not in the mood to ignore that. And his demon was no longer hungry for blood. His demon wanted Buffy. All of Buffy. Right now.

Buffy knew that he wanted her, of course. She’d felt his erection against her before. She’d torn his lips off with her own. The only sense that came in hiding himself now was wrapped in self-preservation. There was softness in her eyes right now unlike anything he’d seen before, and he wanted to keep it that way.

“Bring any vamp back from the point of death,” he said again, praying she wouldn’t glance down or inadvertently nudge his erection. “Though I don’ think I was—”

The shadow that crossed her face promptly silenced him. She looked, for all the world, as though she was reliving a horrid memory. It awed him to feel her trembling. “No,” Buffy whispered, her voice haunted. “No, you really…I…I thought you were dead, Spike. I thought you’d bled to death or…well, that’s stupid, I guess. I guess vampires can’t bleed to death.”

“Wouldn’t know, pet. Though I’m more of a believer now than I was yesterday.”

“I pulled the sword out and you made a noise, so I dragged you in here. I was about to go get the blood in the other room when you…made with the lungy.”

He winced inwardly. “I din’t mean—”

Buffy shook her head abruptly and rose to her feet before he could blink. “Doesn’t matter,” she said dismissively. “You’re okay. That’s what matters.” A pause. “Kendra’s dead.”

Spike would have liked to think, for Buffy’s sake, that he would have been more inclined to care had the bint not kicked him unconscious the night before, but it was a lie. Kendra was a slayer and he was still a vampire—dead slayers were good news, as far as he was concerned.

As long as Buffy wasn’t the dead slayer in question.

He didn’t offer condolences he didn’t feel. Instead, he nodded somberly and asked, “How?”

“Drusilla.”

Something hard crashed in his chest, and at once, he was both filled with pride and hatred. And hatred was something he’d never thought to feel for Dru, regardless how their story played out.

Thankfully, the Slayer didn’t let him stew for long. She gracefully stepped out of the tub, ignoring the water that dripped from her soaking clothes even if she couldn’t ignore how hard the cold made her tremble. For his part, Spike was having a time trying to avoid staring at her nipples. Bloody hard task when they insisted on saluting him through her ridiculously thin excuse for a top.

“They have Giles,” she said, her voice firm even if he knew her will was not. “Angel and Dru. We have to go.”

Spike blinked. It was one thing if a slayer had been killed; now his girl’s mentor had been watcher-napped? What the sodding hell had he missed?

“Slayer—”

“It was an ambush. It started today—this afternoon. Angel wanted me cut off completely.” She shivered and reached for the towel-rack, tossing one to him before giving thought to herself. “No friends. No watcher. No…you. He sent a lackey to one of my classes today and I was stupid enough to fall for it.”

“What the hell are you—”

“Angel lured me out so I wouldn’t be there to…Willow was doing the curse. Kendra was with them, so I thought they’d be okay.” Buffy’s eyes fell shut, toweling her hair dry without once turning to the mirror. She didn’t even bother to check the wound he’d left on her throat. “They weren’t. Angel had me out there and in the meantime, Dru was raiding the library. Now Giles is gone and I don’t know if…and Willow’s in the hospital.”

“You went out to face Angel without coming to me first?” Spike demanded. “Are you outta your mind?”

“I’m not exactly used to tag-teaming my saving of the world, Spike. I just wanted it to be over.” She held up a hand, effectively silencing the waiting retort on his lips. “I know. I know, I know. A thousand times over. I’m a moron. Okay? And because of that, I’ve lost…I’ve lost my friend, my watcher, and when I came here, I was terrified I’d lost you, too.” She paused. “Can we just save the world now and reflect on how very stupid I am when we’re back to being mortal enemies?”

Spike couldn’t help but grin. Lovely sentiment as it was, he didn’t reckon now was the time to tell Buffy they would never be mortal enemies again. He didn’t have warm feelings for enemies. He didn’t want to make love to enemies. Fuck silly, maybe, but not make love. And while he wouldn’t mind fucking Buffy blind a time or two, the dominant urge was for the former.

For the moment, though, she could think what she liked.

“You bloody well nearly did,” he said the next second. “Lose me, I mean.” And God help him, but the knowledge that losing him had her terrified made him feel as good as a bloke could after his insane ex had run him through with a very pointy sword. “Dru visited me here earlier.”

Buffy froze. “The sword?”

“Her handiwork.”

“Oh my God.”

Spike shrugged with nonchalance he didn’t feel. No matter how things had ended between them, Dru’s dust was never something he would have sought. He was through with her, yes, but killing her would have meant killing a part of himself. The part of him she’d saved from mediocrity and helped shape into the man he was today. And while coming to terms with the heartbreaking knowledge that she’d never loved him at all had promised to cripple him, he knew he could move on.

Now he wasn’t sure he didn’t want her dust. His doubt had him thoroughly shaken.

“Spike,” Buffy said softly, stepping forward. “I’m so sorry. I—”

He held up a hand. “Don’t bother,” he said shortly, wrapping the towel around his waist. “Let’s get you some dry clothes. If we’re gonna save this watcher of yours, we better—”

“You really are going to help me?” she whispered, her eyes bright.

Spike’s eyes narrowed. Aside from the fact he was more or less Buffy’s bitch, he bloody well wasn’t going to sit back and let Angelus destroy the world. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let Dru think she could get away with trying to off him. And if saving the Slayer’s Watcher would make her smile at him, he’d do it over and over again.

As it was, Spike was in her debt. She’d given him her blood. Perhaps not willingly, but she’d given it.

“Of course I’m gonna bloody help you,” he said shortly. “That was the deal from the beginnin’, right?”

“I didn’t think—”

“Buffy, you jus’ pried me from a sodding wall an’ brought me back from what you swore was the brink of nothing. If that doesn’ make me yours, I don’t know what does.” Spike cleared his throat and tightened the towel around his waist, doing his best to ignore the eager bob of his cock at the hint of how very much hers he’d become. “You want to save your watcher? Stop arguin’ with me an’ go get your biteable arse into something warm.”

“I don’t—”

“Top drawer.”

Spike swore softly when she finally crossed into the other room, leaving him alone with a tub-full of water and blood that belonged to them both.

This was going to kill him. He wasn’t sure it hadn’t already.

Dru had tried to end him. Buffy had saved his life. It was Buffy he wanted in his bed; Dru whose life he no longer cared about.

This stupid town had turned his life upside down.

And something told him it was only the beginning. 

A/N: Okay, so I suck. But hey! I’m writing. Quite a bit, actually. And I promise…I’m still as into this story as I am any of my other stories. I guess in my head, I need to finish the fic that’s supposed to be short and easy to write before writing my real WIPs.

Again I say, I don’t blame anyone if you’ve dropped this off your reading list. But I am eternally grateful to those who are sticking with me and feeding my muse. Thank you to all my readers. I can’t tell you how much your support and enthusiasm means to me.

Oh, and yes…I did a major cop-out and stole lines from Becoming Part 2 toward the end. You’ll know ‘em when you see ‘em. I really hate doing this, but it’s very important that some things remain as they are, and this was the best way to do it. I tried to make it as original as possible, but…well…yeah.

Heh. I have no problem with stealing lines from Aaron Sorkin all over the place and plugging them into fics (‘cause even he said the best writers steal from others outright) but whenever it’s actual BtVS dialogue, I get all sheepish. >.<

Anyway…and I can’t say this enough…THANK YOU to everyone who’s sticking with me. *snuggles readers*

“Drink this.”

“I said I’m fine.”

Spike rolled his eyes and shoved the glass of orange juice fully under her nose. “I don’ sodding care if you feel well enough to tap-dance on a forklift, you’re gonna drink this bloody juice if I have to pour it down your throat.”

Buffy arched a brow, her gorgeous eyes sparkling with amusement. God, a man could lose himself so easily in those eyes. After this rot about the apocalypse was in the past, Spike was definitely going to take Buffy-gazing up as his favorite hobby. She was so glorious; so wonderfully glorious in everything she did. Every sodding move she made took his proverbial breath away.

“Bossy McBossy,” she replied, accepting the proffered juice with a feigned sigh.

“I drank your blood.”

“A fact I’m well aware of, considering it was my blood.”

“An’ I’ve been around long enough to know you need sweets once you’ve donated.” He held up a hand at the burning question flashing across her face. “Don’ bloody fight with me.”

“Sorry,” she cracked unapologetically, shrugging. “It’s against my nature.”

Any other night and he would’ve gotten a brilliant kick out of her jesting; this was the sort of camaraderie which had him falling in love with her in the first place. She’d grown so used to being around him in such a short period of time, whether she wanted to acknowledge as much or not was another question. But for the way she sparred with him, verbally and with that piece of walking poetry she called a body, his insides filled with just enough hope to keep him afloat amidst troubled waters. “Jus’ drink,” he said, determined to betray nothing.

“The words ‘slayer healing’ really mean nothing to you, do they?” Buffy replied dryly, arching a brow as she lifted the glass to her lips. If he didn’t know better he’d swear she was relishing every second of this.

“Not when we’re about to go up against your wanker of an ex an’ my sword-happy sire, not to mention Angelus’s brainwashed apostles.”

She snorted appreciatively. “Don’t tell me you’re intimidated,” she replied, shaking her head. “But I suppose there’s nothing wrong with being at full strength.”

Spike smiled gently but didn’t reply. There wasn’t much time to waste in the seclusion of Buffy’s home, but the longer they stayed, the less inclined he was to leave. While he appreciated the severity of the accumulating situation around them, he was increasingly convinced Buffy wasn’t ready. Oh, she could take Angelus out. There was no doubt there. The conviction in her eyes was unlike anything he’d ever seen, but God her body was so worn. Perhaps she was immune to recognizing her own limitations, but she couldn’t hide the exhaustion in her eyes. Not from him. He’d tasted her blood now—he had a part of her inside him. He’d tasted her power and as a result, he knew her strength.

And because of that, he did know her limitations. He could see them clearly because they were not his own. Buffy was tired. Not just physically—physical exhaustion was manageable. Buffy was worn by every feasible stretch of the definition. And Angelus would know it. He’d know the second her scent hit the air.

However, it wasn’t likely Angelus would be open to postponing the apocalypse on account of white-hat exhaustion. It was very much now or never; it didn’t mean Spike had to like it. He was too worried about Buffy to give a damn about logic or rationality. In the state she was in, she’d be lucky to be a blip on Angelus’s radar.

Buffy sipped her orange juice, a long sigh rolling off her shoulders. “Happy?” she asked.

“Over the bloody moon, kitten.”

She made an adorable face which he would have kissed right off her lips were they not pressed for time and suffocating under the heavy burden of the looming apocalypse. “I don’t like orange juice,” she complained.

“I’m not particularly fond of pig’s blood, but it din’t stop me from drainin’ three bags, now did it?”

Buffy’s eyes narrowed. “Not the same thing.”

“So says you,” he scoffed playfully.

“Well, beyond the obvious factors of yuck, you were all but drained.”

Spike shuddered, his gut aching on prompt. Yes, he had nearly been drained, and were it not for the fiery woman sitting on the kitchen counter, he might not be standing where he was. Fuck, chances were he wouldn’t be standing at all. Either his blood would have drained completely and he would have withered away, or the sun would have finished him off.

Buffy’s blood had given him life. He was forever in her debt.

“Same could be said for you,” he countered softly, then clarified when she shot him a questioning glance, “Drained, an’ all.”

She rolled her eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you I’m fine?”

“Dunno. Let’s find out.” Spike arched a brow pointedly and nodded at the glass in her hand. “Drink up.”

“This is crazy.”

He grinned and shrugged. “Welcome, friends, to the show that never ends.”

“You lost way more blood than I did.”

“I had your blood to make it up for me. An’, again, it din’t stop me from drinkin’ more.” Spike paused. “This is a pointless argument, love. I’m right, you’re wrong, t’was ever thus. Drink the sodding juice.”

Buffy hesitated a beat, but her eyes were dancing. “Well, as long as we’re concerned with my blood sugar, you might wanna get me a poptart,” she replied coyly, waving with her free hand. “Second cabinet on the right.”

He arched a brow but did as she instructed, unable to hide his mirth when his back was to her. “You need to be at full strength if we’re gonna do this thing,” he said, fishing out a pack of brown sugar pastries from the open box in the cupboard. “Angelus isn’t one to fuck with half-mass.”

“Kinky,” she replied with a smirk, catching the individualized poptarts-package off his toss.

Spike fought off another grin. If he kept smiling at how bloody cute she was, she’d never take him seriously. He could appreciate the need to ward off reality with humor and deflection, but she couldn’t afford to ignore the danger looming around them. Buffy had placed a lot of stock into Spike’s help, and while her faith was something he didn’t take lightly, no amount of wishing could change the fact he was still just one vamp. He’d dust at her side of it meant keeping her alive, but if he met his maker before the apocalypse was averted, she’d have no one to rely on but herself.

Granted, if they got out of this alive, it wasn’t like their problems were over. Buffy had this crazy notion in her head that things were going to revert back to the way they’d been before. Before the ghosts at her school pitted them against each other. Before he’d gotten a taste of her soft lips. Before he’d felt the heat of her skin and dreamt of how her hot pussy would feel around his cock.

Before he’d started falling in love with her.

He didn’t know what it was going to take to convince her tonight was the end of Angelus and Angelus alone. Whatever they shared—whatever was happening between them—was only beginning.

“What happens when this is over?” Buffy asked, startling him with the sudden seriousness in her tone. Either she was amazingly attuned to his every thought and concern or this was weighing on her mind more than she betrayed. And honestly, for either of their sakes, he wasn’t sure which he preferred. “When Angel’s dust and…what happens?”

The unspoken question dwarfed her actual words, but he wasn’t about to make things easy for her. “Not sure I follow, love.”

Buffy sighed and took a quick bite of her poptart. “I don’t think…no, I know…and telling you this is probably the dumbest thing I could do, but I can’t go into this thing without knowing what’s going to happen next.”

“Slayer—”

“I can’t go back to the way things were, Spike. I know…I’ve talked about it and joked about it and pretended it’s gonna happen but I can’t…” She broke off, emotion-choked words lodged in her throat. “I can’t go from…from, well, this…” She motioned between them. “To wanting you dead again. If I have to kill Angel and then…turn around and kill you, too…it’s going to break me. I can’t turn off whatever I’m feeling like a switch or something.”

Spike inhaled sharply, barely daring to hope. “Your feelings?”

“You know things have changed,” she replied, her eyes narrowing as she shifted self-consciously, placing the poptart on the counter beside her. “I don’t make out with men at random.”

“I should bloody well hope not.”

“And…” Buffy trailed off on a long sigh. “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. Except I don’t want to kill Angel if it means things go back…and then I have to kill you, too.” A still beat settled between them. “But if I…if I had to…God, please don’t make me, Spike. Don’t make me—”

He frowned. It’d been cute at first—this line of completely erroneous thinking—but if the chit was actually serious, they really needed to work on their communication skills. “You think I could go back from this to wantin’ to kill you?”

Buffy frowned. “I thought…I don’t know. I thought you and Dru—”

Oh bloody hell. Was she serious? Did she really think so little of him?

“Are you completely daft?” Spike demanded, eyes blazing. “Dru tried to kill me.”

“Well,” she replied, shifting self-consciously, “you’re a vampire.”

Spike’s brow furrowed, irritation surging through his veins. “An’ I’d wager you thought attempted murder between lovers—”

She threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know what I thought. Only…pain and blood…I thought you guys were all about the kinky.”

“Sweetheart, there’s a big bloody difference between enjoyin’ a rough shag to tryin’ to kill your…” His voice faded, inhaling deeply. First thing after the apocalypse was averted, he was going to take Buffy somewhere secluded and perfect her education on vampires. She had some entertaining delusions, granted, but he didn’t want her developing a complex when, in actuality, she was the sort of woman which inspired complexes in others. There wouldn’t be another for him after this. He wanted Buffy—just as she was. “I admit,” he continued carefully. “Dru can make things a li’l unclear. There were a few times over the years when her sex games got so bloody, you’d wonder if she wasn’t really aimin’ to off you good an’ proper.”

Buffy’s nose wrinkled, and he didn’t blame her. He probably could have done a better job of phrasing that. “Nice girlfriend you’ve got there, Spike,” she drawled.

“Well, when you love someone—”

“You let them beat you bloody?”

“Oi! Don’t knock it.”

Spike swore inwardly the second the words left his lips. He was just digging himself a deeper trench, but now it was more a matter of defending his character. Truth be told, while he’d never objected to whatever Drusilla wanted to do in the bedroom, he’d never shared her affinity for sadism. Never. Spike preferred his sex fairly straight forward: rough or gentle, depending on his mood. But despite that, he’d never wanted to deny his savior anything. If she wanted him to bleed, he’d bleed for her.

“Sorry,” Buffy retorted, her brows arching. “I just really don’t see the appeal.”

“We’re off the bloody point anyway,” Spike replied. “Dru tried to kill me. That’s not somethin’ you jus’…forgive an’ forget.”

She licked her lips and grew very still. “I…I thought you loved her.”

So did he. It was amazing how much could change in such a short amount of time. How much a goddess of light could drown out any want of a princess of darkness. How he could watch this tiny human with such adoration when, not too long ago, he would have withered at the idea of leaving Dru—no matter how much she’d hurt him.

Things had changed. Things had drastically changed. He could no more harm a hair on Buffy’s head than he could take a daylight stroll.

There was no good way to convey his feelings about his sire to the woman he’d unwittingly fallen in love with. While his love for Drusilla had withered away to nothing more than a shadow of gratitude, he could never completely strike her from his heart. He owed Drusilla his existence, but for the first time, he felt he’d finally repaid his debt. And while he would always remain grateful to her for introducing him to the night, the wealth of what he’d once felt had deflated into almost nothing.

Dru had tried to kill him. Really tried to kill him. There was no forgiving that.

“What I had with Dru is over,” Spike said, watching her intently. Was she really so oblivious to how gorgeous she was? How painful it was to be this close to her without touching her? Without nibbling on those succulent lips and exploring the forbidden contours of her body with his eager hands? He wanted to touch her so badly. He wanted to feel her skin beneath his fingers and drown in her kisses. He wanted her to cleanse him of Drusilla’s poison and bathe him with glory only a slayer possessed.

“I don’t know what that means,” Buffy replied a long minute later. “So…you and Dru are of the past. Does…does Dru being out of your life doesn’t make you any less a vampire, Spike.”

A long sigh tore off his lips and his shoulders slumped. And that was the sodding problem, wasn’t it? He should have known the entire evil thing would arise at some point to nip him in the arse.

“What I am, Slayer,” he said carefully, “is yours.”

Buffy froze. “What?”

“’m yours. There’s…God, pet, there’s no sodding way for me to go back after this.” He shook his head, shaking harder than he wanted to admit. “I din’t plan it. This…this thing we have. Whatever it is.”

“Whatever it is?”

Spike arched a brow. If she wanted to be the first to verbally define their relationship, she was welcome to it. But they were both licking their wounds right now; they were both trying to find themselves. And while he knew he wanted Buffy beyond the shadow of a doubt, he wasn’t about to pressure her into the same realization. Not right now. Not on the eve of the apocalypse her ex-honey had orchestrated. Not when she was so miserably lost.

Perhaps his advanced age gave him perspective. Or perhaps he’d been prepared to walk away from Drusilla all along. He didn’t know.

Buffy, though, was all of seventeen years old. Things at seventeen seemed endless. He remembered being seventeen all too well; he’d never thought anything could last forever as much as he had in his adolescence. Not even after Dru found him sniveling in the alleyway. Teenagers thought of forever in ways demons never could. And while Spike had thought his life with Dru would be forever, time and experience had rounded the corners of expectation.

Without Buffy, things would be different. Without Buffy, he never would have realized what he could have in comparison to what he did. Without Buffy, he’d be a wallowing mess of devastation.

But there was no without Buffy. She was right with him, and he was walking away from his old life by choice. Dru wasn’t leaving him—he’d left her. And he’d left her with the knowledge his heart belonged to someone else. It’d happened fast, yes, but he’d never been more certain of anything in his life.

Never more certain of anything. He had absolutely no idea how it’d happened, but it had. And if Buffy thought she could shake him off after this was over, she was sorely mistaken.

Buffy wet her lips when she realized he wasn’t going to make anything easy on her, her eyes dropping to her lap. “Spike—”

“’m yours.” He had the idea the words were frightening her, but with the threat of the apocalypse breathing down his neck, he didn’t care. If nothing else happened—should the worst come crashing down—he wanted her to know he was at her side. He wanted her to know to whom he belonged. “’m yours.”

His fingers slid just under her chin, his palms cupping her jaw as his lips brushed hers. It’d been too long since he’d kissed her. Since he’d had her taste in his mouth. Since he’d felt her hot tongue licking his. He loved the way her lips moved, the way she whimpered into his mouth as though her control was about to be compromised. She was light. She was innocence personified. She was everything he wasn’t, and everything he wanted.

“Buffy,” he murmured against her lips, soaking in her warmth.

“Uhhh…”

Just one more taste. One more…

It wasn’t to be. He leaned in for seconds only to be interrupted by the crash of the front door as it flew open. Buffy jumped and shoved him away before her thoughts caught up with her, and while he knew she wasn’t acting out of shame, the sudden force in her movements couldn’t help but sting.

Perhaps it was fortunate his thoughts weren’t allowed to dwell on the matter.

“Buffy! Buffy, are you here?”

The Slayer’s head jerked up, her eyes fixing on his in manner of an animal staring down the headlights of an oncoming truck. He knew it was her mum without needing clarification—one didn’t tend to forget the voice of a woman wielding an axe, especially if she had a famous daughter. He reckoned by the look on Buffy’s face that she hadn’t given her mum a moment’s thought since toddling off for school. When would she have had time? Today had started with a flaming vamp-memo from her ex and had yet to end. This was just the intermission. There was no time for mums.

“I’m in here, Mom!”

Before Spike could blink, Joyce Summers had barreled into the kitchen, her wide suspicious eyes drinking in the scene before her. He could only imagine what she saw. Her daughter in a blood-stained shirt standing beside a strange man. Well, not entirely strange, but Spike had the distinct memory of being in game face and under a chunk of wall the last time he and the woman made eye contact. He didn’t expect to be recognized.

“Are you all right?” Joyce demanded. “You’re not hurt?”

Buffy’s hands came up. “I’m fine.”

The woman’s eyes fell to the blood on her shirt. “Whose is that?” She didn’t bother waiting for a response, shaking her head resolutely. “You’re not fine. We need to—”

“Wouldn’t worry,” Spike said without thinking, wincing inwardly when Joyce’s head snapped in his direction. He really would have preferred to remain as invisible as possible, but he similarly didn’t want Buffy to find herself under more pressure than necessary. The girl was going to snap and they still had a world to save. “’S mostly mine.”

She blinked. “What?”

Buffy elbowed Spike hard, though her eyes shone with gratitude.

As it was, his interference didn’t distract the woman as long as he would’ve liked. Satisfied the blood wasn’t due to a mortal wound, the look in Joyce’s eyes swayed from concern to suspicion, and her tone followed suit. “Buffy,” she said levelly, “terrible things have happened. What were you doing?”

Spike blinked and said perhaps the worst thing he could have said. “What, your mum doesn’ know?”

Yeah, definitely the worst thing. The glare Buffy shot his way verified as much.

“Know what?” Joyce demanded.

Buffy was trembling so hard he feared she’d inadvertently drill a hole through the kitchen floor. He wanted so badly to reach out and reassure her with a touch, but something told him it wouldn’t be much help under the mother’s wary eyes.

Though perhaps a touch would have prevented the Slayer from completely falling off her rocker. “That I’m, uhh…in a band. A-a rock band with Spike here.” She shot Spike a sharp glance, silently begging him to back her up.

Bugger. He was such a fool for her.

“Right,” he heard himself saying. “She plays the…the triangle.”

“Drums,” Buffy corrected quickly.

He fought off a grin at the visual, but he wasn’t about to contradict her. If his girl wanted to play the drums in their lie, by God, she’d play the drums. “Drums,” Spike echoed with a nod. “She’s hell on the old skins.”

Something told him their brilliant cover story wasn’t sticking.

“Hmmm,” Joyce mused, clearly unconvinced. “And, uh, what do you do?”

He cleared his throat. “Well, I sing.”

There was a thick pause. Buffy plastered on her brightest aren’t-I-the-picture-of-innocence grin, which, as expected, had the reverse effect. Joyce palpably wavered between confusion and incredulity, ultimately falling completely over to suspicion again. Her eyes landed on the blood-splattered shirt once more before she completely took in Spike’s appearance.

“Buffy,” she said carefully. “A girl is dead. The police were here earlier; they’re saying you’re responsible.”

“Rot,” Spike growled before he could stop himself.

“Spike!” Buffy hissed.

“No, that’s complete rot. I can’t believe your mum would even…” He turned to the woman, eyes flaring dangerously. And he noted, with more than just some satisfaction, his love for the Slayer hadn’t affected how menacing he could look when it was necessary. The barest hint of accusation in the woman’s voice had red flashing across his eyes. Cowering right now would be the smart thing to do.

Joyce was a lucky woman. Had she been anyone but Buffy’s mum…

“The police said—”

“The police?” Spike barked incredulously. “Are you naturally this thick?”

Buffy elbowed him again, but he ignored her. There wasn’t any oomph behind it anyway.

“If you think she’s capable of killin’—”

Intimidated or not, Joyce was going to hold her ground. “I’m not going to be lectured by a stranger in my own home.” She crossed her arms, her eyes narrowing. “Why don’t you show yourself out?”

Spike huffed. He wasn’t going anywhere. Regardless, he couldn’t help but swell with warmth when Buffy grabbed his wrist to keep him from moving. She knew just as well as he did that he wasn’t budging; this was her way of providing support, and it meant the world.

“Mom, I need him.”

“Oh Buffy, come on—”

And for whatever reason, something in the girl snapped. It was unprecedented. Unpredictable. Not even Spike saw it coming. One second she was standing there, her small, powerful hand wrapped around his wrist, and the next her eyes were flashing and her shoulders were thrown back with courage unlike anything he’d ever seen. He was used to Buffy the Confident Slayer. Buffy the Confident Girl was a completely foreign concept, and she had him enchanted upon first glance.

“You want the truth?” she snapped, plowing ahead before Joyce could get a word in. “I’m a vampire slayer. Spike here? He’s a vampire.”

Spike nodded awkwardly when the woman turned her eyes to him in question. What else was there to do?

“And right now, we have to go save the world.” Buffy nodded at him, and that was that. He moved immediately for the back door, collecting the sword they’d propped between the cabinet and the door-handle and resting it against his shoulder. He moved and Buffy kept talking, standing across from her mother, who was frozen with astonishment. “The girl who died? Kendra? She was a friend of mine. A good, good friend. And the people who killed her are going to end the world. They have Giles, too. Spike and I are going to stop it. So you stay here. We’ll take care of everything.”

A smirk tugged on Spike’s lips. His girl had balls of brass. He knew her heart was thundering. He knew her pulse was racing. He could smell waves of tension rolling off her small, perfect body. But her voice didn’t waver or crack. There was nothing but conviction when she spoke. She was a vision of perfection—a tower of fortitude unlike anything he’d ever seen. And if he lived a millennia, he’d never forget this moment. Never.

She was perfect. And he was lost to her.

“They have Mr. Giles?” Joyce echoed, dumbfounded.

“Angelus an’ Dru,” Spike confirmed with a nod, even if his input was unneeded. “They’ll decorate the rug with his librarian guts if we don’ get a move on.”

Buffy’s nose wrinkled in disgust but she shot him a grateful glance nonetheless. She knew what he was trying to do. She knew without needing to be told.

“We should call the police.”

Spike rolled his eyes. Again with the sodding police.

“No. We’re not calling the police. Spike and I are handling it.”

“Handling what? What is happening?”

There was a long, tempered pause. “I’m sorry, Mom, but we don’t have time for this.” Buffy turned to him fully and nodded. “Spike?”

“The night awaits, pet.”

“No!” Joyce protested. “I am tired of I don’t have time or you wouldn’t understand. I am your mother, and you will make time to explain yourself.”

Buffy didn’t even spare her a glance. “I told you, I’m a vampire slayer.”

“Well, I just don’t accept that!”

Spike snickered and shook his head, fully prepared to ignore the psychotic woman and get to it, but he noted almost immediately that Buffy wasn’t budging. And when he turned around, he could feel anger rippling off her body like tiny shock waves. She was frozen in the doorway, and he knew without having to be told the last strain of her will had snapped.

“Buffy,” he said softly, encouragingly. He didn’t even know if she heard him.

And a few agonizing seconds later, he had his answer.

“Open your eyes, Mom,” she said slowly, her voice trembling, every inch of her fighting for strength he feared the day had already stolen. “What do you think has been going on for the past two years? The fights, the weird occurrences. How many times have you washed blood out of my clothing?” She fisted her red-smeared shirt demonstrably. “Blood like this, and you still haven’t figured it out?”

“Well, it stops now!”

“No! It doesn’t stop. It never stops!”

Spike remained silent, but he could smell her tears and it tore him apart.

“Do-do you think I chose to be like this?” Buffy continued, her voice dangerously close to teetering toward a shrill. “Do you have any idea how lonely it is? How dangerous? I would love to be upstairs watching TV or gossiping about boys or…God, even studying! But I have to save the world. Again.”

“No. This is insane. Buffy, you need help.”

It was truly amazing how people could listen without hearing a damn word. And Spike wasn’t about to stand idly by; he’d already seen something too personal for words, and while his insides were quivering with rage, he knew how it sounded to outsiders. The woman hadn’t seen anything but blood. She had no proof.

Well, she was about to get some.

“She bloody doesn’t, you infuriating bint,” he snarled, fangs descending. He drank in Joyce’s horror with grim satisfaction, motioning quietly for Buffy to join him. “Accept it or not, the girl’s on a timetable. If you wanna be here to chat this out in the mornin’, I suggest you stop preventing us from—”

“What the hell are you?”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “He’s a vampire, Mom. Get over it.”

“I don’t—”

“We’re leaving.”

“No. No!” Joyce paraded forward intently. “I am not letting you out of this house. Not with—”

“You can’t stop me.”

“Oh yes, I—”

It was over too quickly for Spike to appreciate; all he saw was the aftermath. There was a crashing sound as the woman toppled back, and when it was over, Joyce had been shoved against the island in the middle of the kitchen. She was gasping for air as though her head had been held under water, and staring at her daughter like she held the face of a stranger.

Buffy turned back to him, her heavy, determined eyes ready. She looked ready to cry, but her voice betrayed nothing. “Let’s go,” she said.

“You walk out of this house,” Joyce screamed after her, barely recovered, “don’t even think about coming back!”

Buffy didn’t even pause. She reached for his hand, and he gave it to her.

There was no more time for pausing. No more time.

They had a world to save. There would be plenty of time once this nasty business was behind them.

God, he hoped.

She didn’t realize she was crying until she got a face-full of surprisingly cool spring air. There weren’t many strong gales of wind in Sunnydale, but they always seemed to accompany the various peaks and falls of her given mood, and her mood right now was all over the place.

She felt weak and beaten. She felt inches away from a complete collapse. She was angry and hurt. Her insides were numb; she could barely feel her legs. And were it not for the hand at the small of her back, providing subtle strength through even subtler caresses, she would have completely collapsed. It was the knowledge she wasn’t alone which kept her moving forward. She wasn’t alone.

She wasn’t ready to be alone.

“Are you all right?”

It was the sort of question one asked to be polite. The sort of question with no set answer. And even knowing this, Buffy couldn’t help a dry chuckle from tearing through her lips. There was no such thing as all right. Kendra was dead. Giles was missing. Willow was in the hospital. Her mother had kicked her out of the house. Now, armed only with a sword and a renegade vampire, she was about to face the man who’d once claimed her heart with the hopes of ending his existence once and for all.

Spike had come to town to kill her. And for some reason he was at her side. Her lips still hummed with the echoes of his kisses. Her skin buzzed when she remembered the way his eyes pierced hers. The words he’d whispered had her mind racing, attempting to reconcile the confusing storm of emotions she felt for him with the part of her holding onto the love she’d once shared with Angel.

Tossing in her growing feelings for Spike on the mountain she had to defeat tonight would get her nowhere. Instead, Buffy nodded tersely, a forced smile stretching her lips. “Why do you ask?”

“Buffy—” The tone in his voice told her plainly he wasn’t about to drop the subject.

“Look, can we not?”

“She was out of line, love. You know—”

A strangled giggle erupted through her throat. “Really? You think she was? ‘Cause kicking your world-saving daughter out of the house on the night of the apocalypse seemed to be the rational reaction from where I was standing.”

“It won’t take. She’ll—”

Buffy stopped shortly, jerking Spike to a halt beside her. “What?” she demanded, pivoting on her heel to face him, her eyes blazing. “She’ll what? Realize the error of her ways? Decide I’m not crazy when, hey, the world doesn’t end? I don’t have time for this. I don’t have time for…for…”

I don’t have time for life.

She didn’t realize she’d looked away until Spike’s hand settled under her chin, his gentle touch coaxing her eyes upward. And when their gazes clashed an undeniable sense of peace flooded her veins. She didn’t know how or why, but he wasn’t going to abandon her. Not tonight. Not after tonight. If she needed a place to stay, he would find her one. If she needed a shoulder to cry on, he would lend his. If she needed someone to fight her battles for a change, he would happily shoulder the responsibility.

Buffy was too tired to toy around with why. She didn’t know why. But for some reason, Spike was everything to her right now. Her friend. Her ally. Her kissing-buddy. And he’d promised her he wouldn’t rear his vampiric head once the fight was over. Aside from the assistance rendered the past few days, there was no reason to trust him. He was, after all, a vampire, and vampires were notoriously back-stabbing assholes. But she trusted Spike. Right now, she couldn’t help but trust him.

Perhaps the difference resided in the way she trusted him. She didn’t trust him as a vampire. She did, however, trust him as a man.

“If I stop and think about everything that’s happened, I’m gonna lose it,” she whispered belatedly, realizing they’d done nothing but stare into each other’s eyes for long, heated seconds. “Please…”

The only way to survive in this job was to compartmentalize her life. She couldn’t be Buffy and the Slayer at the same time; not when the world was at stake. The Slayer had to march in without the heavy burden of Buffy’s problems weighing her down. If the Slayer allowed Buffy to distract her, everything would end. It was what had killed slayers in the past, and what would undoubtedly kill her in the future. She was perpetually caught between two lives. She had to be one or the other. She couldn’t be both.

Not right now.

And though nothing else passed between them, Spike seemed to understand. Light filled his ocean eyes, and before she could pull away, he’d let the sword in his hands clamor to the pavement, his head dipping and his lips brushing hers. It was a gentle touch which quickly spun out of control. His tongue persuaded her mouth to welcome him, stroking her with tenderness bespeaking everything which remained unsaid between them. He drowned her in the richness of his flavor. Wholly masculine. Wholly dangerous. Wholly hers.

He’d told her earlier that he belonged to her. And for the way he moaned into her mouth, the surprising softness of his hands as he cupped her cheeks to capture her in his kiss—as though anticipating a fight she hadn’t the strength to put up—she could believe him. She could believe for a minute he spoke the truth, and he truly was hers.

She didn’t know what to do with him, but he was hers. Her heart was too sore for love. Too gun-shy to attempt to place a label on her feelings. Knowing she was going to slay Angel tonight for the greater good still hurt more than she could verbalize. She didn’t want to think of tomorrow because she knew she had to get through the night first. But Spike was kissing her, loving her mouth with his, stroking her cheeks with calloused thumbs and whispering unintelligible words into her body. He was hers. The world allowed for no other knowledge.

Spike pulled away just a hair—just enough for his unneeded breaths to tease her lips with his taste as he drowned her in his eyes. Her heart thundered and her pulse raced, but she couldn’t look away if her life depended on it.

“This isn’t over, love,” he said softly, kissing the corner of her mouth. “Not between us.”

The part of her which doubted his words was effectively killed forever. There was no questioning the conviction in his eyes. He meant what he said. Every syllable. “I know,” she replied.

“You an’ I’ll sort this out.”

Buffy didn’t bother pretending to misunderstand. “Okay.”

Spike smiled and kissed her brow, then her lips again. “Okay,” he murmured, stepping back and collecting the abandoned sword. “Okay.”

It was amazing how much certainty a simple kiss could grant. And while she knew, truthfully, nothing between them could ever be defined as simple, the reassurance fueled her with just enough to keep moving forward.

The sun would rise and this would be over.

She wouldn’t worry about picking up the pieces until she could rest.

As it turned out, the sun started to rise well before they made it to the mansion. It was pure luck, she supposed, that they ran into Xander before taking refuge underground. He’d come to serve as the cavalry, and to deliver Willow’s bloodthirsty kick Angel’s ass message. In other words, he’d come with good intentions but very little usefulness. And he’d unwittingly given her the task of telling him as much.

The only thing she could trust Xander with was getting her Watcher to safety.

For his part, Spike said something snide and disappeared into the sewers. Buffy forced her grin aside. She was just happy to hear her friend was conscious.

Xander watched the vampire vanish, nose wrinkled in distaste. “You gonna be all right?” he asked, turning back to Buffy. “I can put my rock to good use, you know.”

Buffy glanced to the indicated stone in his hands with a grateful smile, shaking her head. “I have all the help I need.”

“Spike?”

She nodded. “And before you start—”

Xander’s hands came up, stone and all, and he shook his head. “No, no. I’m all with the understanding. Really. The enemy of my enemy…and all that.”

Buffy bit her tongue and decided it wasn’t worth wasting time to argue her point. Her friend was the perpetual tennis ball in the way he bounced from understanding to suspicious without a blink. But she was grateful for him, and more than relieved that she could entrust someone else to save Giles’s life while she and Spike focused on their respective exes. “We’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Just get Giles. Get Giles. Get out. I don’t want to have to worry about you.”

“You won’t. Stealth’s my middle name.”

She quirked her head. “I thought it was LaVelle.”

“And for that, you must die.” Xander smiled wearily and took her in his arms for a quick but much needed hug. “Watch yourself, Buff.”

“Always.”

She dropped into the sewers without another word and fell quickly into pace at Spike’s side. He knew the way down here, and she was at his mercy. Didn’t much matter, though; she needed him and he needed darkness. As it was, she much doubted Angelus and company would know to expect an underground attack. Or an attack at all. Her ex had gone to a lot of trouble to sever her resources. He and Dru probably shared the belief that Spike was dust. And the longer they believed it, the easier this would be for all of them.

The sooner it would be over.

“Hello, lover.”

The words made her skin crawl. He’d called her lover during each encounter. It was a nasty word, and it would never cross her lips again. But for what she needed, the words conveyed the appropriate message. Angelus glanced up and frowned, though the element of surprise was definitely not a luxury she could entertain for long. He was shocked to see her, which was obvious, but he’d been prepared. And right now she was little more than an unwanted distraction.

“I don’t have time for you,” he remarked, bored.

“You don’t have a lot of time left,” Buffy clarified, raising the sword Spike had handed her. She could still feel the warmth in the handle from where he’d held it so long. And for a fleeting second she allowed her mind to wander to wherever he was—to the place he’d situated himself for the surprise attack—and whisper an ethereal kiss across his lips.

“Coming on kind of strong, don’t you think?” Angelus retorted, his eyes sizing her up. “You’re playing some deep odds here. Do you really think you can take us all on?”

It was damned hard not to gloat, and in the end, she decided the effort was wasted. “No, I don’t.”

“’S what she’s got me for.”

Spike’s voice filled the main gallery timed with a nasty scream and an explosion of dust, and chaos inevitably erupted. Angelus barely had time to gape before he found himself uppercut by the blow of a crowbar. And for a few long seconds, reality suspended into a steady stream of slow-motion. Buffy saw Angelus’s eyes blaze and fangs descend—the fat load of good it did him. In a flash, Spike had clipped him again, and watched gleefully as the big lug crashed to the floor.

“Guess my invite got lost in the mail, ehh Peaches?” he drawled, arching the crowbar far above his head. “’S a mite rude to exclude me an’ the lady. Especially after all we’ve been through together.”

He glanced up and met her eyes, flashing a reassuring smile. And while her timing couldn’t be worse, Buffy was paralyzed with staunch appreciation. He was magnificent. He was absolutely magnificent. His torn black tee clung to his wiry form, accentuating his muscular build with subtlety lost on those who didn’t know what to look for. There was dirt on his cheek. His hands were red with his own blood. He’d nearly died tonight, and here he was. Beating her enemy to the ground.

For me.

It was fortunate he caught her staring; else she might have assumed form of a permanent statue and let the world end all for the want of appreciating the male body.

“Slayer!” he yelled, eyes widening with worry. “Behind you!”

Buffy whirled around just in time to catch a surprisingly forceful punch to the jaw at the courtesy of one of Angelus’s cronies. Across the room, Drusilla had similarly snapped out of her daze and was making up for lost time by screaming her lungs off. Her dark eyes were trained on Spike, who hadn’t broken form. He was beating the living hell out of Angelus, and enjoying every second.

Was Drusilla angry to see Spike alive? Buffy couldn’t help but wonder as she dove under the crony’s swinging arm, her sword effortlessly lopping the vamp’s head clean off his neck and rendering him a dust-cloud. Where there was one, though, there was inevitably another. Drusilla was advancing, her steps slow and methodical, her malicious gaze not once breaking. And as though knowing Buffy would do everything in her power to stop the insane vamp, the lackeys just kept coming.

“Spike!” she screamed in warning, but her companion didn’t hear her.

He was too busy beating the stuffing out of Angelus.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” he panted, smashing the crowbar across the elder vampire’s head with a satisfying crack. It was amazing how much damage he could inflict in just a few brutal swings. By the time Drusilla was close enough to pounce, Angelus was nothing more than a bloodied mess on the floor.

“Spike!” Buffy cried, though her form never broke. Her heart plummeted—the malice on Drusilla’s face was unlike anything she’d ever seen. The woman’s eyes were thoroughly black, and in the endless sea of ebony lurked hatred which would make the devil tremble.

Spike had seen it earlier, of course. Right before his former beloved plunged a sword through his gut. How he could look at the woman he’d shared so much with and see nothing but the darkest storm of loathing without breaking was beyond her.

He’s so strong.

“Don’t stop!” Spike instructed her, gracefully deflecting every erratic blow Drusilla threw at him. He moved as though he’d already thumbed through the script; as though he knew her next attack before she did. As though reality had a five-second tape delay, giving him an immeasurable advantage.

And through it all, he never stopped worrying about her. “Buffy!” he screamed. “Duck!”

Buffy dropped to the ground and rolled, the sword in her hands lashing at the charging lackey on instinct. She was showered with dust, and they kept coming. It was all very far away—she felt her body reacting to every attack, every punch thrown, but her mind remained with Spike. Drusilla was shrieking things that would break a lesser man. For Spike’s part, he barely flinched.

On the ground, Angelus was beginning to stir.

“Spike—”

“Look at me again, Slayer, an’ I’ll rip your lungs out.” The words lacked conviction, and when their eyes clashed, she saw nothing but concern. “Finish off the giant sod. I’ll take care—”

“She’s ruined you!” Drusilla screeched, her blood-red nails scratching crimson-rivers into his cheek. “No crumpets. No tea. Nasty little Slayer wiggles inside your head. No more shadows. You’re—”

Spike rolled his eyes and clocked his ex in the chin. “Knock it off, Dru.”

How he could be so blasé when facing the woman who had run him through with a sword was thoroughly beyond her. There was nothing but cold indifference on Spike’s face. None of the hatred she’d seen earlier that night. The way he’d violently rebuked the idea he could ever again love the woman who had tried to end his life. And Buffy was so enchanted by the exchange, as well as her continued choreography to avoid the laughable attacks of Angelus’s minions, she didn’t realize Angelus himself had managed to climb to his feet until something akin to a sonic blast pierced the room in half.

Buffy glanced up a second too soon, just as Angelus jerked the sword free of the stone demon’s chest. The move was so sudden it made everything in the mansion screech to a standstill. Even Drusilla, whose screams were likely attracting the attention of every dog in the tri-state area, fell abruptly silent with an air of reverence.

“Oh,” the insane vampire breathed. “Here he comes.”

Oh no he doesn’t. Buffy scuffled to the statue, her hand clenching the handle of her sword. She’d fought too hard and lost too much to allow Angelus the last laugh. And while his cackling eyes told her he thought the battle already won, if she died tonight she knew damn well it would be in the fiery release of Hell on Earth. Angelus wouldn’t best her. Not tonight. Not now.

“You almost made it, Buff,” Angelus remarked, greedy eyes scaling the clean iron of the sword he’d extracted.

“It’s not over yet.”

“My boy Acathla here is about to wake up.” God, he spoke like a proud papa. “You’re going to Hell.”

Buffy didn’t flinch. “Save me a seat.”

The extensity of Giles’s training covered a wide range of weaponry. She’d fired crossbows, battled with staffs, and thanks to Xander, could work her way around a rocket-launcher without batting an eye. Now with her sweat-laced hand clutching the hilt of a sword, raising the steel in a lightening flash to parry the blow Angelus aimed at her head, navigating her way around a weapon she’d never manned was surprisingly simple. Time around her remained indefinitely suspended. The clouds in her mind parted and she thrived on one golden piece of understanding.

She had to kill Angelus. She had to, else the world would suffer.

“You think this matters?” Angelus rasped, lashing for her throat. “You really think this is anything but a stall? Silly, silly Buffy.”

Buffy shrugged and dropped to the ground again, thrusting the sword for his legs, the teeth of the blade scratching his calf. It wasn’t a crippling blow; it was hardly a blow at all. But she took her victories where she could and at the moment, she’d consider any blade-on-skin contact a small triumph.

“You play the hand you’re dealt,” she replied, shrugging as she rolled to her feet. “Good a motto as any.”

“You think Spike—”

The blades clashed and she found herself staring up into chocolate eyes which used to regard her with loving warmth. They held at a standstill for what felt like hours before Angelus balked, his arms maneuvering upward in an arcing swing and narrowly missing her on the downward plummet. She found herself pacing backward, her body seemingly determined to put as much space between her and Angelus as possible, even as her legs carried her forward to trade more blows with his sword.

“Gotta say, Buff,” Angelus snarled, attempting the above-arc swing again and sending her this time onto a small table, which rattled with her weight and sent small icons of Acathla-worship to the ground. “This is almost worth it. I love the way you move.”

Buffy’s stomach rolled in disgust, her sword lunging for his chest. How a bulking giant like her ex could move as fast as he did—and duck low enough to avoid contact—was beyond her, but the next thing she knew she was leaping again to avoid a blow at her legs. The floor beneath her seemed to quake when she landed, where she immediately dropped and rolled when Angelus’s sword came crashing toward her.

Only this time, she felt pain. Her arm was suddenly bare and wet. She was bleeding. It was a superficial wound, but the slice echoed through her body. Blood made everything real.

Too real.

“Gonna enjoy licking that up,” Angelus snarled nastily, tongue laving his lips.

“Sorry,” Buffy spat, forcing herself not to reach for the wound with her free hand. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “I’ve found I prefer Spike’s mouth.”

The black flash in Angelus’s eyes should have terrified her, but it didn’t. Not like the accompanying smile. She’d never seen a smile she could truly classify as malevolent. A smile which would literally make one’s bones rattle with fear. Perhaps it was a combination of his lips with the darkness in his eyes, she didn’t know. All she knew was she’d never seen anything like it before. “Spike’s mouth?” Angelus retorted, his tone betraying nothing of his outrage. “Sorry to break it to you, lover, but Spike wouldn’t know what to do with his mouth without an owner’s manual. You really think—”

“That you’re disgusting? Yep!” Buffy’s legs shot out, wiping his legs off the floor in a blink. Angelus didn’t even bother in trying to climb back to his feet; instead, he turned to face her on his knees, the sword in his hand slicing toward her in three rapid strokes, all of which met nothing but the steel of her own weapon. On the forth swing, Buffy managed to knock his sword into the table she’d leapt onto just a minute before, pinning his grip but leaving herself open for a fierce backhand with his free arm.

In the distance—thousands of miles away—she heard a feminine wail, fading as though the world around them was blinking out. Buffy’s head craned instinctively to Spike, catching his eyes as Drusilla fell from his arms in an unconscious heap. And then there were three. The cronies had either fled or dusted, Dru was on the ground, and Acathla was waking.

But she wasn’t alone.

However, for the rage that exploded across Spike’s face the second Angelus’s hand smacked her, she knew logic and reason had abandoned him. Spike was a creature of passion and impulse, much like she was, and she knew by his eyes that he wouldn’t stop before lunging—wouldn’t assess which angle would give him the greatest advantage.

Buffy sucked in a breath. Spike’s face shifted and a roar split the air, his body barreling into Angelus’s before she could scream in protest.

“Son of a bitch!” her companion snarled, jerking the sword out of Angelus’s surprised hands, the teeth of the blade slashing across the elder vampire’s gut once, then again when the other vampire attempted to rear around and regain control. By the time Angelus managed to wrangle the sword back into his possession, the bulk of the damage had been done. Blood splattered across the stone floor, gushing with an effect Buffy had only seen in horror movies. His already-pale skin whitened to frightening measures. And before she could stop herself, her mind flashed to the presentation of Spike crucified to his motel wall. There was no comparison, of course, but she saw it all over again anyway. No one’s skin, vampire or not, should ever be so white.

However, for his part, Angelus refused to reveal weakness or show pain. Instead, he lashed a bloody line across Spike’s gut, reopening the healing hole Drusilla had put there, and allowing him only a second to howl before propelling the younger vampire to the far side of the foyer with a malicious kick to his open wound.

“This White Knight shit, as funny as it is,” Angelus panted, his free hand feeling out the seriousness of his own gash, “is getting really old.”

Spike collided against the wall with a devastating crash, his chest heaving and his amber eyes burning with outrage the likes of which Buffy had never seen. And despite what she was seeing—the blood, the seriousness of the situation compiling around her, a small but very present and purely feminine thrill raced through her body—something she couldn’t explain. While she certainly had no delusions of being rescued, the possessive glimmer in her companion’s gaze couldn’t help but secure her in a way no words or actions could ever hope to achieve.

“Din’t your mum ever teach you it’s not nice to hit girls?” Spike retorted ironically, lifting himself to his feet, his left arm pressed to his bleeding gut. His legs shook but he didn’t fall. He was the picture of strength.

Angelus snorted. “Didn’t your mum ever teach you to die properly? For crying out loud, what does it take to—” His voice tore into a scream without warning, his gaze landing accusingly on the insane vampire who lay still on the other side of the room. “—rid of one’s enemies, Dru?”

“That’s precious,” Spike drawled.

“Honestly, she nailed you to a fucking wall. Doesn’t anyone stay dead anymore?”

Buffy snapped back to herself on a whim, her sword suddenly reminding her of its weight as she arched it high above her head. “You’re one to talk,” she spat, though speaking proved to be a bad idea as it only served to provide a verbal warning. Angelus whirled around and parried her attack with a hair of a second to spare, his body forced backward by the power of her blow.

“You and your game of—” She kicked him across the face and sent him back again. “—musical souls.”

“The game’s such—”

Her leg smashed his head once more, and the giant came tumbling down. On his knees in front of Acathla, his sword tumbling from his bloodied hands. And that was it. Her opening. Her chance. Buffy sucked in a deep breath and arched the blade back, her tired but determined arms more than ready for the finishing blow.

She was in mid-swing when it happened. Had it been a second too late, his blood would have sprayed the stone demon behind him, silencing Acathla’s wake just in time for Angelus to witness the collapse of his empire. But it wasn’t a second too late. It wasn’t. The vampire’s gasp and timely groans resounded through the empty corridors with the foreign hint of pain. His head jerked up, his eyes vacant and bright. It was just a flash but it was there—she saw it. And when it was over, he met her gaze for a blink before crashing entirely to the floor, almost instinctive sobs scratching his throat.

Buffy was frozen, her sword still poised and ready, her chest heaving as her mind raced. She knew, logically, what she was seeing. She knew it. Awareness stung every nerve in her body, awash with disbelief, her aching heart hammering so hard she was amazed it still worked.

No. No. Impossible.

Her brain refused to believe her eyes. To accept what she already knew. But it was there; it was right in front of her. And before she could catch up with herself, the vampire at her feet was climbing to a stand, his eyes thick with tears.

It sold her. Angelus never cried.

No, Angelus never cried. But Angel would.

And for that second, everything around her vanished. Acathla. Drusilla. Even Spike. Everything vanished, and it was just her and Angel. Angel, not Angelus, meeting her gaze, his own lost and confused. Angel clamoring for recognition. Angel…

“Buffy,” he breathed, the cadence of her name on his lips striking her like a forgotten dream. She hadn’t heard his voice in months, and without warning, every dam inside collapsed. “What’s going on?”

She didn’t move. Didn’t dare. The sword remained suspended above her head. Her logical head was screaming it could be a ploy. A last attempt by Angelus to spare his life. She needed to be ready. One wrong move and…

…only this wasn’t a ploy. Her heart knew what her mind refused to believe.

“Where are we?” he demanded, erratic eyes taking in their surroundings. “I-I don’t remember.”

The sword lowered much to the gratitude of her aching muscles. She barely acknowledged the weariness in her body. The whole of her had given way to shock. “Angel?”

He blinked, his eyes zeroing in on her wound. The superficial cut on her arm. The one he’d given her. “You’re hurt.”

Did he not feel the pain of the lashes to his stomach? He’d reached for her, noticed her, before turning his eyes to himself. Her heart melted and tears finally broke free.

Oh God.

And before she could stop him, before her confused thoughts could reconcile a feasible answer, she found herself in his arms. She didn’t know how she’d gotten there—if she’d stepped forward or if he’d grabbed her. All she knew was the warmth of familiarity.

“Oh, Buffy…God.”

Her eyes fell shut, a trembling sigh tearing through her. Oh God.

“Oh my God. I feel like I haven’t seen you in months. Everything's so muddled. I…” His lips dropped to her shoulder, his arms tightening around her. And for a minute, for a blessed minute, she could let herself forget. She could.

Only, no, she couldn’t. The haze vanished after what felt like years, and she remembered herself. She remembered where she was, and why she was here. She remembered what she was supposed to do. She remembered…

Spike.

Around Angel’s shoulder, she saw him. And the hurt in his eyes nearly broke her all over again. Emotions exploded and warred, and without warning, her heart lurched and her legs begged her to go to him. To reassure him—though of what she didn’t know. Past, present, and future were suddenly in the same room. Past was hugging her. Present was staring at her as though she’d just traded him for thirty pieces of silver. Future remained in the shadows, keeping its face shielded from wandering eyes.

Angel didn’t know Spike was there. Didn’t acknowledge Drusilla lying on the ground, or the gentle roar of Acathla stirring behind him.

Acathla.

Buffy forced her eyes to leave Spike’s, drawn irrevocably to the contorting face of a stone demon. The frightening gargoyle brows angled downward, the previous gray slab of his eyes burning red. The contours of his lips parted grotesquely, and within the depths of his mouth she saw Hell itself.

Angel must have sensed the sudden tension in her body. He pulled away, brow furrowing. “What’s happening?”

Everything.

It was what she had to do. What she’d come here to do. And the words which left her lips reflected her conviction. “Shhh,” she whispered, not allowing herself to listen to her own voice. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I love you.”

Her heart shattered and she heard Spike inhale sharply, though his eyes no longer reflected a shield of jealousy. There was something else there—awareness. He knew as well as she did what she had to do. And now he was waiting to see if she’d actually do it.

Buffy didn’t give Angel the words back, but she didn’t know for whose benefit. Perhaps it was cowardice. Perhaps it was necessity. Perhaps it was selfishness. She didn’t know. She didn’t let herself think about it. She couldn’t.

If she did, she’d never go through with what she needed to do.

“Close your eyes,” she whispered, her lips unable to keep from stealing a brief kiss from his.

A kiss of goodbye. Angel deserved as much.

It was the last thing he felt before the sword speared through his chest. Before his eyes thrust open in pain. Before she took a definitive step away from him, ignoring the arm that reached for her. Her eyes refused to meet his. Refused to meet Spike’s. Instead, she merely stared at the blade she’d shoved through her first love’s body. Light flashed and the air cracked. Her feet carried her back and her eyes didn’t waver. She sensed the vortex of Acathla’s mouth growing wider, but not wide enough to touch her. Not wide enough to touch Spike. There was only Angel. Reaching for her. Saying her name. Standing there without his memories, and knowing only that she was supposed to love him.

Then he was gone. Acathla’s mouth closed and the ethereal lights blinked away, and he was gone.

The air fell silent. Buffy fell to her knees and stared.

She had no grasp of how much time passed. How long she remained on the floor, her hands in her lap, her eyes focused forward. Her heart was beating somehow, and the blood from her wound had stopped flowing. She didn’t register movement until Spike’s gentle hand brushed her shoulder. Until the solitude of her surroundings burst with clarity.

“Buffy?”

The welcome tenor of his voice washed over her like a personal baptism. Buffy blinked and realized for the first time she’d been crying. Crying silent tears. When she looked up, she found herself awash in compassion unlike anything she’d ever known. And in that second, she yearned for his arms like she’d never yearned for anything.

“Buffy, love…” Spike knelt beside her, his hand stroking the length of her arm with a feather-light strokes. “Sweetheart…”

She didn’t look at him. She wanted to but every muscle in her body was locked.

“I’ll take you away, Buffy. Anywhere. Anywhere you want.” His lips brushed her brow. “You shouldn’t stay here. You—”

Suddenly she was given the power to nod, and she seized it fiercely. “Yes,” she whispered, barely hearing herself. “Yes.”

It was the last thing she heard before the tidal wave inside came crashing down, and she collapsed in tears.

The hum of the Desoto kept him company along the lonely stretch of highway. There was rarely heavy traffic in and out of Sunnydale, and he was glad. The faster he got the Slayer away from the Hellmouth the better. Now in the aftermath, he didn’t care to ever see the pissant town again.

For her part, Buffy sat silently in the passenger seat. He thought she’d nodded off, but every time he hazarded a glance her way, he found her eyes focused with frightening intensity on the endless stretch of black pavement ahead. God, what he wouldn’t give to know what she was thinking.

If she was still with him at all.

Spike sighed, a very cold shiver racing through his body. He didn’t want to think about what had happened at the mansion. He didn’t want to think of the agony on Buffy’s face, or the way she’d looked at Angel like he was her personal fucking savior the sodding second the big git’s soul was stuffed up his arse. It was a hell of a time to be jealous, but dammit, he couldn’t help himself. In a blink he’d witnessed and suffered through a century of déjà vu. The women in his life—the dark sorceress of his past and the golden goddess of his future—falling over themselves to be with Angel, no matter the incarnation. All Angel had to do was gasp her name and Buffy was in his arms. As though the past few months Angelus had spent terrorizing her were so easily pardonable. As though her budding relationship with Spike meant nothing at all.

The only thing keeping him cool was the look he’d seen flash across her eyes. It wasn’t the look of a woman returning to an old lover; it was as though, for a few seconds, the past few days hadn’t occurred at all. As though Angelus’s regime of Sunnydale had never existed; as though someone had hit the rewind button on some cosmic remote, sending them back to a place where Buffy wouldn’t know to care for Spike. Where Buffy only had eyes for Angel. In that second, he’d known it wasn’t her steering. It was a shadow of herself. It was the girl who’d lived before her virginity was stolen by a monster.

The Slayer he knew—the girl he loved—had slowly returned to herself once her eyes locked with his. It hadn’t been immediate, and it hadn’t stopped her from kissing Angel with the lips that belonged to Spike, but he’d seen her withdrawal. The lovesick look vanished with conviction, and while the pain on her face never abated, he knew she’d come back to him.

Spike wasn’t a fool. While he’d entertained the idea of Buffy’s love for the wanker ending as quickly as his for Drusilla had, he knew it was different for her. Buffy was young. She was so young and she’d been through so much; for her, this was all she’d known. She didn’t have decades of experience in her past. She knew what she’d been handed. Now another door of her life was closing and she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to react.

He could relate. He’d be lost as all bugger were it not for her. And yet here he was. Speeding to Los Angeles as though the flames of Hell were licking his rear bumper.

Things were different for him; he was in love. He was in love with the woman sitting in the passenger seat. Because of Buffy, the pain of his sire’s attack quelled to nothing more than a gentle hum.

The pain of the love in Buffy’s eyes—the love that hadn’t been aimed at him—would render him dust if he didn’t stop thinking about it.

Let it go. She’s with you, isn’t she?

Sure, because he wasn’t dead. She wouldn’t be with him if Angelus hadn’t yanked the bloody sword out of the over-sized gargoyle. No, she’d be with her honey. Cuddled up and making kissy-face and crying a thousand tears over a thousand apologies.

Logically, Spike knew it wasn’t true. But it could be true, and that was what killed him.

“You hungry, pet?” he asked before he could stop himself. The silence between them was unnerving. He longed to hear her voice. “’m sure there’s a grease-infested fast-food joint ‘round here somewhere.”

He didn’t expect a response, and was surprised when Buffy’s eyes broke from the road, her head tilting in his direction. “I wouldn’t say no,” she replied.

A thin smile crossed his lips and he nodded. “Right,” he drawled, veering the Desoto to the right-lane. They’d passed a sign denoting an impending exit-ramp a few minutes before, and while his attention was mostly engaged with the hurting slayer at his side, he didn’t think he was so foregone as to have missed the exit without noticing.

He was right. In a matter of careless seconds, they were cruising through a strip of various fast-food restaurants and lodging options, nearly all of the latter declaring free rooms. He didn’t know if Buffy was in the mood to stop yet; if they’d gotten far enough away from Sunnydale. He hadn’t paid too much attention to the mileage signs, but he guessed they were in the outskirts of Los Angeles. Or the outskirts of the outskirts of Los Angeles. The town seemed to double in size every time he visited.

“Name your poison, love,” he offered conversationally, careful not to incline his head in her direction.

“I don’t care.”

“Only sodding place open this late is Denny’s.” At least, it was the only place he’d be willing to take her right now. The bustling nightlife of southern California wasn’t exactly the antidote to Buffy’s sorrow. He didn’t want to make things worse by degrading her goodness with the filth only thriving metropolises could provide.

Buffy offered a half shrug. “Then Denny’s it is.”

Spike inhaled sharply and nodded, flicking on his blinker and swerving into the indicated parking lot. He didn’t know if she wanted to go in or order grub to go, but this was one instance where he was willing to sacrifice her desires for her needs. They’d been driving a while now and she hadn’t slept a wink. There was no harm in a breather.

“Want to just park here tonight?” he asked, attempting to keep his tone light.

“Where are we?”

“Jus’ outside LA, I’d reckon. Maybe an hour or so.”

Buffy seemed to ponder this, worrying a lip between her teeth. Her eyes were drooping, large circles arcing under either lid. “We didn’t get very far,” she said reasonably.

“We din’t start till a few hours ago.” They hadn’t left Sunnydale immediately; rather, after Buffy’s breakdown in the mansion, he’d resigned himself to the fact that her decision making skills were likely a little fried by everything that had occurred. They’d returned to his room in the Sunnydale Inn, which had been left untouched by housekeeping. There was still a sizeable bloodstain on the far wall, and a trail of red leading to the loo.

The visual alone had made his gut ache. The bleeding from Angelus’s cut had stopped soon enough, but there wasn’t a bone in his body left unscathed. He was worn and tired, thirsty for blood, and so worried about Buffy he was afraid he’d collapse before she did. As it was, Buffy had fallen into bed without a blink, where she hadn’t slept, rather reclined and waited for nightfall.

When evening came and Buffy reiterated her desire to leave town, Spike hadn’t hesitated. And now here they were—a few hours down the road from Sunnydale, contemplating a cholesterol-heavy menu in a joint no self-respecting demon would frequent. Buffy hadn’t eaten since yesterday; since the poptart she’d barely touched and the orange juice she’d ingested under protest. Her stomach had been growling at him for hours but he hadn’t wanted to mention it. Now he was wishing he had.

There was no good way to approach situations like these. He was howling inside, screaming at the injustice of not owning her heart when she possessed every unbeating inch of his. Loving her had buggered his plans and good, but for Chrissake, he couldn’t stop. The vacancy in her eyes crippled him.

What was she thinking? Had she made a mistake? Did she regret leaving with him? Did she regret the kisses they’d shared? Did she wish…

He was going to drive himself batty if his mind didn’t mute. All that really mattered right now—really mattered—was Buffy. His feelings and bruised heart were secondary concerns. Buffy hadn’t promised him rot, except that she couldn’t off him. She’d only kissed him of her own volition once to his memory. Everything thus far had been entirely one-sided—she might like him, yes, but she’d never pretended to love him. She’d never pretended there would be something beyond their forbidden kisses after the big battle was behind them.

Angel was dead. Angel was dead because of Buffy, and he’d died without knowing why. He’d died just seconds after professing his love for her. Any reasonable bloke could understand why she wasn’t chatty.

“Wanna brave the flapjacks?” he asked, looking at the menu but not reading it. “Fried cake with liquid sugar on top. Sounds tasty, doesn’ it?”

“I guess.”

She wasn’t reading the menu either.

A voluptuous woman with frizzy red hair and a name-tag labeling her as Margo approached the table a few minutes later. She made sure to thrust her triple-Ds into Spike’s face, either not registering his wince or not caring. “Can I get somethin’ to drink for you, dahlin’?” There was a pronounced Texan twang in her voice.

Spike’s eyes unwittingly landed on the throbbing vein in her neck. “Coffee,” he said shortly, dragging his gaze away and ignoring the hungry sting of his fangs. “Black.” He turned to Buffy. “Sweetheart?”

“Diet coke.”

“Ya’ll ready to order?”

Spike kept his eyes on Buffy, who nodded. “Sure thing,” he replied. “Number three, heavy on the bacon.”

Margo jotted down the order and favored him a wink. “I love a man with a healthy appetite.”

His eyes narrowed and he nodded pointedly to his travel companion. “The lady hasn’t ordered yet.”

To her credit, the big-breasted server didn’t bat an eye. She nodded and turned to Buffy, pen ready. “What’ll it be, sugar?”

“Veggie omelet.”

“An’ a side of flapjacks.” At the Slayer’s questioning look, Spike shrugged a shoulder and clarified, “We’ll be on the road all day tomorrow, pet. Might as well eat your fill.”

“Oh, that’s sweet!” Margo gushed. “Ya’ll taking a road trip?”

“Why don’ you jus’ bring me an’ the lady our drinks?”

He didn’t miss the flash of hurt across the waitress’s face, but he didn’t care. Instead, he turned back to Buffy and reached for her hand without thinking. The feel of her skin beneath his fingers sent an electric shock through his body. “You all right?”

It was a bloody stupid question but he couldn’t help himself.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” she replied with a soft smile which didn’t reach her tired eyes. “Suffice to say, no sums it up pretty well.”

A pang struck his heart. “’m sorry, love…I din’t…I wasn’t thinking.”

Buffy nodded but didn’t reply. She didn’t say anything for a long time. Long after Margo returned with their drinks, and again a few minutes later with their respective orders. They ate in silence for what felt like forever. It nearly startled him out of his bloody skin when she spoke again.

A vamp being startled by a girl’s voice. He was truly pathetic.

“Do you think she meant it?”

Spike blinked uselessly, a forkful of sausage suspended between his mouth and his plate. “Huss’at?”

“My mother. Do you think she meant it?” Buffy’s eyes were trained on her plate, playing idly with her omelet. She’d gobbled down the flapjacks in less than two minutes. “Do you think…she told me…”

Spike stilled, unsure how to proceed. She hadn’t mentioned anything about her mother’s decision to boot her from the house since before Angelus found himself stuffed with soul again. Since before they raided the mansion. “I dunno, love,” he replied honestly. “Tempers were runnin’ high.” He paused. “Do you…do you wanna head back an’ talk to her? See if…she’s more inclined to listen now?”

Buffy was quiet so long he began to wonder if she heard him at all. Ultimately, she shook her head and replied, “No.”

“No?” Spike arched a brow and popped the bite of sausage into his mouth. “Jus’ like that?”

“Just like that.” She glanced up again, her eyes shining. “I can’t go back there.”

“You need some time.”

He hoped she would seize his observation and either rebuke or affirm it, but she did not. Instead, Buffy finished her omelet and wiped her mouth delicately. She drank her cola and the refill Margo provided without needing to be asked. Spike cleaned his plate as well, and though his demon was hardly appeased by the lack of blood in the processed meat he shoveled into his mouth, his stomach was momentarily satisfied.

Margo approached again with the bill, all signs of southern hospitality having long abandoned her eyes. She didn’t jiggle her breasts for Spike when she slipped him the check, and he was glad. There were some women on which big breasts simply weren’t flattering, and Margo was definitely one of them.

At any rate, it was hard to ogle large knockers when the ones he wanted in his hands and mouth were just the size to occupy either or both desired destinations. All the while he couldn’t help his eyes from wandering down the length of Buffy’s throat until he was staring at her chest. Just two days ago, it wasn’t hard to imagine cradling the soft weight of her in his palms, stroking her nipples with his eager fingers. Now everything had changed. Now Buffy’s mind wasn’t with him. He was fortunate enough that her body was.

“Do you wanna keep drivin’?” he asked at the register as he handed the cashier a twenty. “We can go as far as you want.”

“Sunlight?”

Spike smiled thinly. He had a canister of black gunk he could smear across the windshield if need be. He seemed to remember telling her as much, but decided not to dwell on it. “Poses no problem, sweetling. We’ll drive as long as you like.”

Buffy seemed to mull it over, not questioning his assertion that their journey could continue beyond dawn. “No,” she replied at last. “No.”

“Wanna motel?”

She nodded and curled herself into his side. Spike inhaled sharply and willed his body to keep from stirring at her proximity. Still, he couldn’t keep his heart from warming with hope. It was the most she’d done to assert contact between them since the mansion. She hadn’t recoiled from his tentative touches but she certainly hadn’t returned them. Now she was purposefully pressed against him, her head finding his shoulder as his arm closed around her. He had no bloody idea what she was playing at, or if she was fully aware of her actions. All he knew was that she’d made the prospect of motel hunting both immeasurably important and incredibly dangerous.

Not if she didn’t want to be touched. With less than twenty-four hours between them and the mansion, his hands were aching to wander across her body. To make sure she wasn’t hurt physically, even if her heart was bleeding. Moreover, the taste of her blood was still prominent in his mouth. His demon was roaring for completion; he craved the touch of the woman he loved. Craved the silky hot feel of her pussy clamped around his cock. Craved things he felt now he had no right to want.

“Ya’ll come back now!” Margo chimed with saccharine sincerity as Spike steered Buffy into the parking lot. He flashed her a disarming smile and made a point of brushing his lips across his girl’s brow.

Perhaps he’d be back later tonight. His demon’s thirst had yet to be quenched, and Margo’s neck looked mighty juicy.

The thought, at least, provided a moment of pleasure. He directed Buffy to the car and helped her into her seat. Across the street was a Super 8, and he supposed it was as good a place as any for the night.

He just hoped that rest and morning light would clear the fog in his slayer’s eyes.

“We have the room all day tomorrow,” Spike said conversationally, though the strain in his voice was pronounced. He locked the door and tossed the room keys onto the table that sat on his left. Buffy stood several feet away at the foot of the bed, her back to him. She hadn’t said anything since the restaurant. “An’ if you wanna stay longer, jus’ say the word.”

Buffy inhaled sharply and nodded.

“Sweetheart?” Spike sighed and took several steps forward, stopping when he was all but pressed against her, his chest at her back. “Buffy…talk to me.”

She didn’t say anything. His hands closed around her upper arms, and before he could stop himself, he’d inhaled the sweet fragrance of her hair. God, there was nothing about her that didn’t tempt him. Just standing here—holding her but not—and he was a man lost. He’d left Drusilla for this; for the simplicity of being with the woman he loved. True, he’d left Dru for a number of reasons, one of which being his rather reasonable problem with women who nailed him to walls, but he knew he’d be here with Buffy regardless of the way his relationship with Dru fell apart.

He loved her. He loved her so bloody much.

“Buffy please…” Spike’s mouth dropped to her shoulder unwittingly. “Please talk to me, baby. Please…”

He knew he was asking for it. Suppose she did start talking; suppose she broke down about how much she loved Angel and how she’d never heal from shoving him ass-first into Hell. It’d break him completely. It’d leave him in ruins. But God, he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t help himself. Not when he needed to touch her so badly. Not when the accumulation of the past few days was pushing past the last barrier. He’d promised her and himself it wouldn’t be over with the ending of Angelus. And standing with the curve of her ass pressed against his crotch, with her scent flooding his nostrils, the last logical strain of knowledge was dangerously close to snapping.

“Please…”

Then something happened. Something which changed everything. Before he could blink in surprise, Buffy twisted in his arms, cupped his cheeks, and dragged his mouth to hers. Warmth exploded and stars fell—her tongue pushing past his lips as his senses exploded with her taste. And that was it. He was an evil bloke. Pure evil. And the woman he wanted was growling into his mouth, shoving his duster to the ground and scraping his lips with her teeth.

Christ. What did she want from him? He wasn’t a fucking saint. He thought he covered as much with the evil thing. But God help him, her heavenly scent was thick in the air, tickling his nostrils and making his mouth water. Her body was open to him at long last, arousal pumping her veins and need stretching every move she made. And if he answered her—if he gave her what she was suddenly screaming for, there would be no going back.

“Buffy—”

“Shut up,” she barked, raking his shirt over his head before turning her hands to her own top. “Just shut up, Spike.”

Objection flared within him, but God, he couldn’t help himself. His avaricious eyes immediately landed on her lace-clad breasts, the rose protrusions of her delectable nipples silently begging for his mouth. Spike swallowed hard and licked his lips, a disobedient hand reaching to palm one of her ripe breasts before he could help himself.

“Buffy,” he choked, his dick painfully hard and straining against the denim of his trousers. “Oh fuck.”

“Yes,” she agreed breathlessly, reaching behind her to unclasp her bra. And then the flimsy garment fell away, and he was staring at her naked tits for the first time. His mouth watered and his cock strained. She was even more perfect than he’d envisioned. Golden and curvy and mouthwateringly delicious. All woman. This little creature was all woman. Her breasts were the perfect bloody handful; he wanted to feel her skin against his, he wanted to suck her nipples into his mouth. He wanted to do everything at once and it left him paralyzed with astonishment.

One would think a hundred years of living would have left him jaded when it came to the female body. But the only other woman he’d ever fucked was Dru. Dru was cold. Buffy was hot. Dru was pencil-thin. Buffy was shapely and athletic, hard where a woman should be hard and soft where a woman should be soft. Dru was pale and fragile. Buffy was sun-kissed and courageous. Buffy was Dru’s antithesis, and perhaps that was why he loved her so much. She was everything he’d ever wanted while thinking he only deserved what he’d been given. He’d never wanted for anything else while at Dru’s side, but staring at Buffy’s body he couldn’t help but feel like he’d finally surfaced from Plato’s cave. He’d never mistake shadows on the wall for the real thing again. How could he? How could he now that he’d seen perfection?

“Touch me,” Buffy said with boldness that surprised him.

No need to tell him twice. Spike all but lurched forward at her invitation, closing his right arm around her middle, his other hand wrapping around her perfect, weighty flesh as his head dove for her other breast. He licked a wet path around her nipple, drumming the perfect nubbin with his tongue until he wrangled a truly feminine moan from her perfect lips. Spike grinned and swallowed her flesh whole, worshipping her breasts with his amorous mouth and growling into her skin. Christ, she tasted so good. He’d wanted to taste her like this forever—like this and in so many other ways. The rich, womanly aroma tickling his nose beckoned his mouth like a siren. He wanted to bury his face between her legs and inhale her completely. He wanted her flavor in his mouth and her moans in his ears. He wanted her thrusting against him with desperation only he could quell. He wanted—in that second—everything.

Buffy wove her fingers through his hair and clutched him to her breast, whimpering helplessly. “Spike,” she whispered, arching her hips against his. “Please.”

All thought of going slow or providing her with an exit abandoned him without warning. He couldn’t see but for the need splitting his insides. “You wanna be fucked, little girl?” he growled, his hand releasing her breast to cup her ass completely as he angled her into the frantic thrusts of his hips. “Wanna feel my cock inside that juicy quim of yours?”

Buffy mewled and nodded, her glassy eyes finding his before her hands dropped to the waistband of his jeans.

“You know how bad I want you, don’t you?” He fisted her sweats, grateful for the first time that she hadn’t adorned herself with a pair of designer jeans before leaving her home. The unimpeded fragrance of purely woman slayer had teased him mercilessly for the duration of the drive. Now he couldn’t be happier with her wardrobe; he didn’t have to bother with a fly; it was only a matter of seconds before her legs were free and the only thing keeping him from her drenched pussy was a thin strip of cotton. “You know what you’ve done to me from the very bloody beginnin’.”

“Spike…”

“You’ve known how often I laid awake at night, pullin’ at my dick an’ wishing it was you.” He turned his hands to the clasp of his jeans. “Wishing you were—”

His words were rewarded with a fresh wave of desire; it exuded from her. Her flushed face. Her small gasps. The way she clenched her thighs. The hazy look clouding her gaze. God yes, she was aching for this as much as he was. “Spike,” she whispered again, but she didn’t say anything else. She blinked with innocence which betrayed her. Her eyes were large saucers. A man could lose himself in those eyes—in the tumultuous storm raging within those endless depths. God knew he had.

“What?” she asked. He’d thought she’d be the type to attempt to shield her nudity, but her arms remained at her sides. Her glorious body was bare for his perusal, and Christ, it was impossible to look his fill.

The previous litany of crude references to how much he’d wanted her abandoned him. In a blink he was overwhelmed by her beauty. “You’re so gorgeous.” Words were cheap—she wasn’t just gorgeous; she was radiant. She was magnificent. Just knowing her luscious body was his—his to touch, his to fuck, his to cherish—made the demon growl in delight. He would never let her stray. After tonight, there was no going back. There was no returning to any embodiment of the way things had once been between them. Once he’d tasted her, he wasn’t letting her go.

Mine.

The demon snarled again in approval. Yes, she would be his. Spike licked his lips and raked his eyes down her body, focusing intently on the damp material clinging to her quim. “Take your knickers off,” he said slowly, popping the button of his jeans with measured intent. “I wanna see that delectable pussy of yours.”

Buffy stiffened but the air exploded with another wave of arousal. She was dripping for him, and he couldn’t wait to taste her honey. And while he saw defiance flash in her emerald eyes, it didn’t stop her hands—trembling now, much to his satisfaction—from seizing either side of her panties and slowly dragging them down her legs. His eyes followed the progression greedily, his own hands stripping himself of his jeans. He enjoyed the widening of her gaze as her eyes followed the enthusiastic bounce of his cock, almost as much as he enjoyed the breath she inhaled and the shimmer of juices along her inner thighs. Her pussy remained closed to him; he wanted to see her on her back with her legs spread. He wanted her to open up—to let his fingers and tongue explore every crevice of her womanly secrets. He wanted to taste everything.

And just like that, they were both naked. They were naked together for the first time. The knowledge was positively intoxicating.

If he were a gentleman, Spike reasoned as he took a pronounced step toward her, he would allow her one last out. One last escape hatch. One last chance to end the dance before it began. If he were a gentleman, he would remember the freshness of her loss and the soreness of her heart, and recognize a good rutting was likely not the antidote. But with Buffy standing before him, naked as the world had born her, he could not claim himself to be a gentleman. No, at that moment, he was very much a demon. A sinner. A creature of the devil who wanted nothing more than to devour her every inch.

Moreover, he was a man in love—a man in love who wanted to worship the woman he loved with his body. He craved her pussy like he’d never craved anything. He wanted to make her forget everything—Angel, her mother, the apocalypse, everything.

He wanted to make her love him.

“Spike?”

There was only question in her tone. The resounding echo of a girl too lost to be found. And if he allowed her a moment too long of introspection, he feared her sudden rush of bravado would vanish and he wasn’t strong enough to relinquish the promise of her touch.

“Back up,” he growled before he could stop himself, gesturing to the piece of furniture which housed the motel’s television set. There was a good two feet of space to the television’s left—providing her scrumptious arse with more than enough wiggle room. “Sit.”

“You’re not in control here,” she fired back, though her voice was shaking.

“No?”

“I want—”

“An’ you’ll get what you want. Lord knows I’ve wanted it long enough.” Spike wrapped a hand around his cock and stroked himself unabashedly for her widening eyes. “I want your pussy around me so bloody badly. I wanna taste every sodding inch. I wanna fuck you till you can’t stand.” He broke forward for her without a second thought, shoving her onto the stand and spreading her legs with his free hand. “You want me here, don’ you?” he rasped, uncaring he was repeating himself, his eager fingers parting her slick vaginal lips, drunk instantly when her honey ran onto his skin. “You want me to fuck your brains out.”

Buffy sobbed and bucked against his hand, nodding desperately. “Yes,” she whispered, shuddering hard as though the word scandalized her. “Make me forget.”

Rage split through his body without warning and he didn’t know why. The head of his cock rubbed the length of her sopping hole, slathering him with her juices and driving him out of his bloody mind. “You wanna forget?” he snarled. “You want me to fuck his memory right out of you?”

Buffy’s eyes flashed and she met his with crippling understanding. “Spike—”

He didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to see her awareness. Didn’t want her to see the hurt she caused without knowing it.

She wanted to forget Angel.

By God, he’d make her forget.

Spike snarled and smashed his lips to hers, slamming his cock so deep inside her light exploded behind his eyes and he saw stars. He was suffocating in heat—surrounded by liquid velvet and squeezed so tight it was a wonder he could feel his dick at all. White hot pleasure crashed over every plane of his body. It was the most perfectly bittersweet moment of his life. He knew all at once he’d sold himself forever—he’d given into temptation and made himself more an addict for her. And in doing so, he’d lost her completely.

Knowing it didn’t slow his body down. Too soon he was sliding out of her pussy and slamming in again. Her body rocked hard against his, a heady gasp tearing through her throat as her lips tore from his and her head flew back. “Oh my God.”

“That’s right,” Spike growled, unable to quell his fury. Whether at Buffy or himself, he didn’t know, but at the moment it didn’t seem to matter. Logic intervened and told him plainly he had no right to be angry with her. Again, she’d asked for nothing. Nothing but a good fuck, which he could give her. Which he would give her over and over if it was what she wanted.

She was so tight. He’d never known a woman this tight.

She was tight because this was only her second time with a man. Her virginity had been intact not too long ago, and she’d given it to her precious Angel.

Spike roared, his neck snapping back, his hips pounding into hers hard enough to hurt. He wasn’t being careful and he knew he ought to be, but he couldn’t help himself. “Look at me,” he growled, seizing her cheeks and leveling her eyes with his. He was rocking against her with fierceness which almost terrified him. His cock pierced her soft flesh with ruthless intensity, dipping into her pussy over and over again so hard it was a wonder the wooden surface on which she sat hadn’t cracked beneath her. “Is this what you wanted?” he growled.

Buffy sobbed and nodded.

“Then look at me.” He bit at her lips furiously, possessively, marking her body for all she was worth. “I’m not him, Buffy. I’m not.”

“I know.” To her credit, her eyes didn’t waver from his. Their eyes locked and held, mingled pants lingering between them, his cock sliding between her soaking flesh, stroking her innermost parts as her molten walls molded around him. “Unh…Spike…”

It was all it took to melt his hard façade. Spike found his anger fading away, soaking her in and realizing for the first time this was truly happening. The dream wasn’t dissolving into a slow awake. Her heat was singing his skin, her small, timely gasps only serving to forward the eagerness of his thrusts. He loved the way her breasts flattened against his chest. He loved the way her body rocked with the sharp drive of his hips. He loved the ‘O’ her perfect lips formed, the cloudy haze storming her eyes, the way she gasped every time his cock sank inside her warm depths. She was perfection—she was going to burn him up and bugger if he cared.

“Oh Buffy,” he moaned, his eyes rolling back, fingers digging into her hips. “You’re so warm.”

“Nnuah,” she offered ineloquently, her hips attempting to meet his every thrust, even from her slightly disadvantageous position atop the television-stand.

“You’re so fucking warm. Christ, you feel good.” Spike’s mouth dipped to nip at her throat, slapping against her hard. “So…so bloody good.” He licked his way back to her lips, capturing her in a needy, desperate kiss. He needed her taste in his mouth. Needed her tongue entwined with his. “I’ve wanted you so much.”

Buffy mewled in protest.

“Wanted you…” Spike kissed her again, pressing his brow to hers. “Look at us, baby. Look at us.” His eyes were glued to the mesmeric sight of his cock, glistening with her juices, pushing rhythmically into her pussy. “Look at how well we move together.”

He felt her tremble beneath his fingers. Undoubtedly she’d never seen anything like what he was showing her, even if she had had sex before. Angel would’ve been a sodding prude; he wouldn’t have wanted her focused on their bodies as much, when in actuality, the union of their bodies was bloody glorious and not something to be disregarded as sloppy or sinful.

Though perhaps that was the lack of a soul thing talking; he just didn’t understand the human tendency to demonize an act so natural it was the very method by which life was created. Pleasure was similarly forbidden—and for the pleasure waving through him with every thrust, there was no question whether or not he would ultimately end up in Hell.

Perhaps his ultimate sin would be dragging Buffy with him. One glance at their thrusting bodies, and she couldn’t stop staring. Her eyes were glued to his cock, to the way her flesh folded around him, her pussy welcoming him with every plunge. “Ohhh…” she whimpered, sinking her teeth into his shoulder. “Spike—”

His eyes widened and his hips bucked madly against her. God, she had no idea what she was playing at. “Buffy!”

Then something happened that he couldn’t have predicted. Her hands found the smooth planes of his chest and before he could blink, he’d been shoved clean out of her body, cock bouncing against his stomach as his legs hit the edge of the bed. And before he could raise his voice in protest—though to scream or whimper he didn’t know—Buffy shoved him onto the mattress completely and straddled his waist, her eyes gleaming with intent.

Spike inhaled sharply, his chest heaving with breaths he knew he didn’t need. He’d never breathed so much as he had around her. “Buffy—”

“I don’t want you to be him,” she growled, and though it was a belated reaction to an earlier assertion, it hadn’t lost its punch. “I just want you to fuck me.”

The word smacked him hard. In Buffy’s voice, it sounded so raw, so taboo—it was a word he never thought he’d hear her say. Not in anger. Not in bed. Not in anything. And for the life of him, he didn’t know if he was pleased or distressed.

As for the implications surrounding the word in question, his mind closed and refused to consider it. Buffy had his cheeks in her hands the next instant and was ravaging his lips with hers as he slid a hand between them to position his cock at her sopping hole once more.

Then she sank down and the stars exploded. Spike’s jaws fell slack, a strangled moan catching in his throat. Holy fuck, she was such a goddess. A warm, wanton goddess. Her pussy clamped hard around him, sucking him so deeply into her he truly understood the old adage of not knowing where he ended and she began. She was soaking; God, she was perfect. And he’d dust before letting her go.

“Buffy,” he gasped, his fingers digging into her thighs. But she didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to; her body did all the talking.

The sight of her lifting off his aching cock only to welcome him back into her wet heat was mesmerizing. He could watch himself sink inside her pussy all bloody night. He was completely split apart; bliss ripping through his body and burning every black stain marring his past into a euphoric baptism of absolution. Buffy’s head rolled back, and he felt her stretching around him, her body adjusting to the heady strain of control. Spike was certain she’d never steered before, and knowing he could provide at least one first—one thing no one else had shared with her or ever would—sent a purely masculine jolt of pride through his pleasure-riddled bones.

“Oh yeah,” he growled, licking his lips as his eyes flicked from the wet-suction of her pussy swallowing him to the bounce of her small, perfect breasts. He tightened his hold on her thighs, arching his hips upward every time her vaginal walls pulled on the skin of his dick. “You’re burnin’ me up, baby.”

Buffy moaned and bit her lip, her right hand closing over her breast. The ecstasy crashing over her face shook him with gut-tightening awareness; it was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen. Buffy teased her nipple as she bounced mercilessly on his cock, moaning unintelligible words which sounded like his name but could have just as easily been a number of things. Spike clenched his jaw, his balls tightening as he reigned in control—pressure built and warred for supremacy, but while he longed for release, there was nothing stronger than his need to prolong this moment. This wonderful first-time inside Buffy.

“You love this, don’ you, you dirty minx?” He flashed a grin when her eyes shot open. “You love riding me.”

Her lips parted, heat crashing over her face. The thrusts of her hips became more demanding, as though to answer him with her body if not her words. “Guh,” she managed to cry. And that one little nonsensical word meant more to him than anything she could have otherwise conveyed.

“You love driving my cock into that sweet li’l cunny of yours.” Without warning, Spike hauled himself off the bed, pressing a hand to the curve of her ass and subtly encouraging her to keep bouncing, even as he speared himself deeper inside her. “You feel that, Slayer?” he whispered when his mouth was at her ear, her nipples rubbing his chest and driving him out of his sodding mind—though from the feel of her or the heady moans reverberating through her body, he didn’t know. “You feel how your juicy li’l pussy sucks me right bloody back inside you every time you—”

“Oh God!”

“Fuck yes.” Spike covered his mouth with hers and flipped her onto her back, consuming her whimper when the move jerked him hard inside her. “I love the way you feel.”

“Spike…” Her nails scratched at his shoulders, her legs wrapping instinctively around him as he began to pound into her. She was so soft. So soft and warm and wet and his. God, she was his. He was going fuck Angel’s name right out of her vocabulary. Never again would he find himself standing across the room from the woman he loved as she wrapped herself in another bloke’s embrace.

Never.

Jealousy split him again and Spike roared before he could help himself. He knew he had no right—the git was dead and the matter was done with, but he couldn’t stand the idea of competing with his grandsire’s ghost. He intended to keep Buffy forever. Forever. He didn’t want to worry about who she saw when she slept. If she was thinking about someone else when he touched her. He wanted her with him. Always. Always.

He fisted a handful of her hair and tilted her head back. “Look at me,” he growled over the noisy slaps of their bodies.

Buffy’s eyes were wide but void of fear, and she didn’t question him. Instead, she merely held his gaze, her hips arching off the bed in time with his desperate thrusts.

“My name. Say it.”

There wasn’t a second of hesitation. “Spike.”

“Who’s fucking you, Slayer?”

“Spike…”

He sighed hard and dipped his head, nipping at her lips with his teeth before consuming her in another desperate kiss. He mauled her tongue with his, sucking her so deeply into his mouth he’d be tasting her for weeks. And that was just the way he wanted it. He would make it his prerogative to never awake without Buffy in his mouth ever again.

“Feel so good,” he murmured when their lips parted, brushing a kiss over her cheek with a sudden rush of gentleness. He released her hair and scaled his hand south, slipping between their thrusting bodies and finding her clit with a purr of satisfaction. Buffy jerked and gasped, arching into his hand, her vaginal walls tightening hard around his cock.

“Ohhh!” she cried. “What…what are you…”

“Wanna feel you come. Drench me, baby. Lemme feel it.”

“Oh! Oh my GOD!”

Then she was squeezing him with intensity he’d never felt before. Squeezing him with muscles he didn’t know existed. Squeezing him with desperation unlike anything he’d experienced, as though attempting to lock him inside her with each slippery slide from her wet pussy. As though to make it impossible for their bodies to ever part. And every wonderful squeeze had his eyes crossing and tortured growls ripping off his lips. Spike pinched her clit and howled, the pads of his fingers quickly setting to rub her out of her mind. His fingers were wet. His balls ached. Buffy was thrashing and mewling beneath him and reason blinked out the window.

He needed her. He needed this to be forever.

He needed to ensure she never left him. Not for a second. Dru’s infidelity had hurt, but Buffy leaving him would render him dust. He couldn’t let her go. Not now. Not ever.

And as his demon finally roared free, fangs descending as his blue eyes glowed amber, he knew what he needed to do. He knew.

He needed to make her his.

Thus before he could stop himself, Spike buried his face in the crook of her neck, his incisors piercing her flesh, and as the warm ambrosia of her blood flowed into his mouth, he knew he’d arrived home.

Buffy screamed and clenched hard around him, soaking his cock as her body exploded into a series of spasms that had him spilling himself inside her the next second. It was the purest release he’d ever known. Thrusting hips determined to take as much of her as she’d give him, her blood bathing his tongue and the singularity of intent clearing his mind.

“Mine,” he growled against her flesh. “You’re mine, Buffy.”

She sobbed in pleasure. “Yes. Oh God, yes.”

The skies parted and something within him locked. And when he realized what had happened—when the fog faded and reality set in—he found himself battling tears. His. Oh God, it was final. She’d said yes. She’d told him yes. He’d asserted a claim on her and she’d agreed. Buffy was his. She was really his.

There truly was no going back.

“Mine,” he said again, this time proudly and not possessively. His long tongue licked at the mark he’d given her, trembling when she did. “God Buffy…you’re mine now.”

There was nothing for a long minute.

“No,” she whispered, shattering him with alarm a split second before her teeth sank into his shoulder. “You’re mine.”

Spike’s eyes fell shut and his already hardening cock grew fully erect in a blink. “Oh yes. Yes.”

No sense arguing with the truth. He was hers. He was completely hers. He always had been.

So overwhelmed with belonging, he didn’t consider asking her if she knew what had just transpired. Beyond their panting bodies, beyond the fingers at her clit stroking her still as he began thrusting inside her again, the significance of what they’d just done remained in the haze.

Tomorrow, he thought. We’ll talk tomorrow.

He was too much in need of her to talk now. Tomorrow, when the gritty edge of his desperation was at least fleetingly satisfied, he would tell her.

Right now, he just wanted to make love to her. Over and over and over again.

The rest could wait until tomorrow.

She’d never before awakened in a bed with a man, and the sensation filled her with a devastating rush of warmth and alarm. The arm around her middle tightened almost immediately as though sensing her unease, the chest pressed against her back rumbling a soothing purr as Spike subconsciously drew her nearer to nuzzle her hair. Buffy lay awake for a long time, staring mindlessly into nothing. Trying hard to put to right what had happened last night in the jumbled mess of her mind. What she’d done in the mindless aftermath of complete devastation.

The tears she’d cried weren’t for Angel. Not entirely. While she knew she would never forget the betrayal in his eyes or the way his hand had reached for her, she’d reconciled with what she’d done almost immediately. There hadn’t been a choice—Angel himself had made sure of that. It was sacrifice Angel or lose the world, and after everything they’d suffered through, the world definitely deserved the most weight.

Angel didn’t know why he’d died. Why she’d run him through with a sword. Why she hadn’t returned his declaration of love. Why anything which had occurred in the last moments of his life had occurred at all. It was something she couldn’t change; something she’d just have to live with. Something she’d done to save the world; something she couldn’t regret.

It wasn’t losing Angel which had broken her; it was everything. It was this. It was lying in an unfamiliar bed in the suburb of a city which hadn’t been her home for two years. A city where she’d left as a child and was returning to as an adult. It was lying in bed beside a man who touched her in ways no man should—her worn, beaten heart was bleeding, and she’d willingly tossed herself into another arena. She was broken all over, and she’d hoped Spike would fix her.

She didn’t know why she’d thought sex would make it better. Lying in the calm beside him, the idiocy of her actions glared with unforgiving scrutiny. She’d used him. She’d tapped into the feelings she knew he had for her and used him in order to feel something other than hollow. She’d used him and she was disgusted with herself.

Namely because despite all her efforts, turning off her own feelings was impossible. She’d thought she could ignore what she felt for Spike in the aftermath of something so brutal. She was wrong. God, she was wrong. But that didn’t make things better.

No. It made things immeasurably worse.

And she hurt. God, she hurt. She hurt for Spike. For the tender way he cuddled up behind her. For the gentle purrs he released into her hair and the loving way his hands caressed her body, even in sleep. He gave her so much without asking for anything, and while last night had been one of the most explosive nights of her life, her bruised heart was prepared for another crushing blow.

I can’t do this.

There was nothing left to give. Nothing left in her whatsoever. No want of love to give. No want of love to receive. Nothing but an ugly scar where there had once been warmth—a scar which ached with resounding freshness whenever her treacherous mind wandered into the forbidden territory she’d crossed last night. In everything that had happened, she’d never suspected this would be the fallout. She hadn’t known what she’d thought would happen, but complete isolation was about as far down the line as one could feasibly travel.

Spike hadn’t been coy in his intentions or desires. Since the beginning, since the sinful kiss they’d shared in the halls of Sunnydale High, he’d been as forward and blunt in his wants as any man she’d ever known. He’d rocked her foundations and wheedled his way into her heart. He’d defied everything she knew about conventional vampires in how unconventional he was. He’d been her friend and confidant when she felt at her loneliest.

She’d wanted him so much before what had happened at the mansion. Before the totality of her loss came crashing down and she realized the consequences of everything which had occurred since she awoke that fateful morning.

She’d lost her home. She’d lost her friends. She’d lost her Watcher. She’d lost her mother. She’d lost her first love. She’d lost everything.

She’d lost everything but Spike, who refused to allow himself to be lost. Spike had rushed her away at her request. Spike hadn’t pried her for conversation. Spike had fed her, cared for her, and wouldn’t have touched her last night had she not been the one to jump him. Had she not been so desperate to feel something beyond the cold that she was willing to do anything or use anyone in order to fulfill her needs.

Even someone she cared about.

At once, Buffy felt old. Very old. She’d just barely crossed the boundary of her seventeenth birthday and she felt decades had passed overnight. She’d used someone she cared about and there was no taking it back. There was only the hurt she’d cause him in the afterward. The knowledge she had nothing she could give him. Nothing of the words he’d whispered or the caresses he’d given her. There was absolutely nothing.

Sex without love was something she couldn’t abide. Not after what she’d had. A part of her had hoped Spike would fuck her cares right out of her, but he hadn’t. He couldn’t. Instead, he’d been convinced he was fucking Angel out of her when there was no way he could. Not when Angel wasn’t the source of her pain. Angel was far removed from her; she hurt for him but not because of him. Not because of what she’d done. Killing Angel was necessary. She’d known it going in, and she knew it now.

It just didn’t happen the way she’d wanted it to happen. Losing Angel hadn’t crushed her, but it had been the final straw.

And now here she was. Lying beside a man who cared for her—a man she cared for in turn—but there was nothing more between them. Nothing she could part with; nothing her broken soul could entrust into his bloodstained hands. He was a vampire; a vampire whose moral boundaries were about as set as the devil’s in paradise. He said he wanted her, and she believed he meant it, but what would his promise be worth in a month? In two months? What would it be worth to him when he realized how broken she was? What would it be worth to him after the excitement was over and it became painfully clear she couldn’t stomach being with a man who regarded morality with the same casualness that others might regard the weather.

Spike had whispered pretty words, but pretty words couldn’t save her.

Buffy shivered hard and sighed. She knew her conclusion wasn’t fair. She knew it, but she couldn’t help herself. The bottom line remained: Spike was still a vampire, and no amount of poetry or promises could change his nature. Spike was a very soulless vampire. Spike could destroy her without hurting a hair on her head.

If Spike gave her a reason to kill him as Angel had, she wouldn’t survive. And she didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out if he would.

There was nothing left in her. Nothing left at all. If she stayed with Spike, she would end up destroying him. She couldn’t keep giving her body without giving her heart, and her heart was too battered to be given away. She couldn’t trust herself with another vampire, knowing he might one day give her reason to kill him. She couldn’t stay with Spike until she was healed because the blackness inside her would rip them both apart.

Buffy sniffed hard and slowly wiggled out of his embrace. She expected the arm around her middle to tighten at the first hint of movement, but Spike offered little more than a yawn and turned over in his sleep. She threw her legs over the side of the bed, wincing when her sore muscles complained under the movement. Her thighs were tender, and her pussy ached. Spike had nearly broken her at first; his anger and outrage at what he thought was holding her back.

Then the night had turned on her, and the fury in his eyes washed into bone-melting awe and wonder. He’d stroked her face with his fingertips, pumping sweetly into her body and whispering words against her lips which would have crushed a lesser woman. He’d claimed her as his own. His fangs had pierced her body and her blood had flown into his mouth. He’d murmured words and proclaimed her as his. She supposed it was the truth.

She did belong to him. She just couldn’t have him, and he couldn’t have her.

Her vision blurred as she raised herself to trembling legs. She ignored the dull ache attacking her muscles with every step she took, just as she ignored the cold air stinging her skin and the resounding pang which struck her heart the further away from him she walked.

She couldn’t stop herself, however, from glancing wistfully over her shoulder at the man she’d left on the bed. Her eyes were soft and her heart was sore; there wasn’t an inch of her which didn’t hurt.

Somehow, Buffy made it to the bathroom without collapsing. She flipped on the light and winced as her tear-filled eyes blinked in adjustment. A long violent sigh rolled off her shoulders, and before she knew what she was doing, she was standing under the shower nozzle, her face turned upward as water cascaded over her aching body. It always seemed to work in movies. The cleansing power of a good scrub-down. The purity of water to wash away the night’s sins. She hoped the dirt and grime staining her flesh would carry with it the weight holding her down, but she received no such satisfaction.

She could bathe and scrub all she liked. Her problems weren’t going anywhere. She was still far from home. She was still quaking with the aftermath of Spike’s passionate lovemaking. She was still breaking because she knew she wasn’t programmed for this. For any of it. For the softness in his eyes or the way he touched her like she was cherished. For feeling like she ought to give him something when she had to keep whatever she had left. Whatever feeling beyond the cold had to be preserved, else she’d truly be left with nothing.

It was because of that, she couldn’t stay with him. At all. She couldn’t hand herself over to reckless abandon and allow him to fuck her concerns away. She couldn’t do last night again. Never again. She couldn’t have sex when love wasn’t in the equation, and though she felt closer to Spike than anyone, there was no love. There was the want of love, but wishing could not make it so. She couldn’t love when she was broken.

And even if she could, one resounding truth refused to waver.

No more vampires.

Buffy sniffed again and wiped at her eyes. A useless gesture, of course, but needed nonetheless.

I can’t do this.

There was no reason to believe Spike would make any of this easy. A part of her had expected him to join her in the shower, and she was not disappointed. Buffy honestly didn’t know how much time passed before the shower-curtain rattled and his presence consumed the small space surrounding her. Her body rejoiced even as her heart broke down sobbing again. She stood motionless, facing the showerhead, trembling and waiting for him to make a move.

And God when he moved, the walls came tumbling down. Spike’s arms wrapped around her middle, his strong chest flattened against her back. His cock, hard but undemanding, settled provocatively against her ass. And he held her for long minutes without a word.

He was going to crush her.

“It’s all right, kitten,” he murmured, and she realized with a start she was crying again. Spike didn’t pressure her; didn’t ask why or plead with her to stop. She’d seen men come undone at a woman’s tears and wasn’t sure whether or not to be grateful that he didn’t demand she cease sniveling for his benefit.

It didn’t matter; she couldn’t stop. It wasn’t all right.

“I’ll take care of you.” His lips innocuously brushed the bite mark he’d given her the night before. The one proclaiming her as his to the world. Buffy trembled and gasped, an unwanted but sorely-needed rush of lust making her already-wobbly knees even weaker. To her surprise, Spike didn’t purr in delight. Instead, he merely kissed the mark again and nuzzled his face against the curve of her neck. “I’ll take such good care of you.”

“Spike,” Buffy whimpered, her hand falling to his where it rested against her abdomen. Their fingers intertwined without hesitation. As though this was what they were built for. As though every move was purposefully synchronized, and her body knew it in spite of her head’s confusion and her heart’s objections.

His left hand fell from her waist, his right maintaining a possessive, near reverent clasp on hers. Perhaps subconsciously, his hips had begun a seductive dance against her backside, the sensual length of his cock rubbing her ass into a new kind of crazy. She had no idea how it was possible to collapse with desire with her heart and mind at such war—especially with her body sore and overly tender from last night’s lovemaking. But God, at the softest touch, her insides liquefied into molten desire. She was at once aching and consumed with need. Wetness slicked the flesh between her thighs. Sparks of arousal had her every fiber blazing. Her conviction, fresh and painful as it was, surged and died. She knew then she wouldn’t be able to walk away without one more taste.

Without knowing exactly what she was leaving behind.

Buffy wasn’t accustomed to being so easily manipulated. So effortlessly aroused. Not once had Angel left her burning like this. His touches had always warmed her, made her feel precious and cherished, but similarly kept her dressed in pure white without any move to soil the ideal of her untainted innocence. While his kisses had done their part to ignite an inner fire, Angel had never pursued her arousal. Not until the night she gave him her virginity.

Spike didn’t just pursue her arousal—he hunted it down. He craved it. He drove her out of her mind and made no small noise about the magnitude of his rejoicing when his pursuit was met with success. Spike wasn’t the type to be content simply building a fire. No, he would caress her until her insides were burning, then encourage the flames to a roaring explosion.

The determination housed within her bones began to waver. How was she supposed to think about leaving him when he touched her so lovingly? Her set mind blanked completely as his free hand dipped between her thighs, nimble fingers caressing her tender folds with flippancy which made the strokes seem almost accidental. Raw emotion spread through her body like a disease, and she sagged against him, weakened and powerless to fight.

Allow me this. God please, allow me this.

“Are you sore, baby?” Spike asked, sucking her earlobe between his teeth and giving it a seductive tug. “I wasn’t exactly gentle with you last night.”

Could he feel her indecisiveness? Did he know she was too much of a coward to stick this out? Did he know she was slipping away from him? Did he know she wouldn’t be with him this time tomorrow?

Tears threatened to spill down over her cheeks again. Buffy’s eyes fell shut and she trembled, her legs spreading in silent welcome for his addictive touch. He didn’t question or allow her time to second-guess the invitation; he captured her clit between his thumb and forefinger, his mouth dropping again to the mark on her throat. His arm tightened around her middle when she gasped.

“Answer me,” Spike pleaded softly, his voice tight with need. “I want to be inside you so bloody badly, but if it’s gonna hurt—”

“I am a little sore,” she confessed, regretting the words immediately for the way he inhaled sharply and began to withdraw. The decision she’d made was unmovable—her intentions undeterred. But she’d be damned if she didn’t leave him with memories of warmth and tenderness to coincide with the cold solace he’d provided her with the night before.

She’d need memories of this to keep her warm when she was alone.

“I don’ wanna hurt you.”

Alarm seized her insides. No, she needed this. She needed him one last time. Before she sent herself into a self-imposed exile, she needed Spike. She needed to know exactly what she was leaving behind. She needed to try and convey everything she didn’t want to feel through touch—and in doing so, everything she wanted to give him. “Please.”

“Please?” he echoed, his teeth gently scraping the bite mark. “Please what?”

“Please, Spike…”

Spike squeezed her hand and tugged her against him so that her back was resting completely against his chest, her weight supported by his entirely. “Please what?” he echoed. “Hurt you? Sorry, sweetheart, no can do. I’m not angry now. I hurt you enough—”

“You didn’t—”

“An’ I’m not gonna.”

Buffy shook her head, hot sparks blazing across her skin. “Don’t hurt,” she managed between gasps, coherency mingling with desire. “Just…just love me.”

For a second she thought she’d said something to upset him; Spike went rigid, breaths crashing against her wet, trembling flesh and his body quaking so hard against hers she honestly didn’t know where he ended and she began. Perhaps she’d gotten ahead of herself—not that it mattered, of course. It wasn’t like she was going to see him again. Today would be her last with Spike. She was spiraling down a dark path where even he could not follow. She didn’t need any more demons whispering in her ear. She didn’t need another vampire lover.

Not when she couldn’t allow herself to love him.

The silence around them broke on a reverent gasp. “Oh Buffy,” Spike moaned, twisting her at once in his arms. And the thin veil keeping reality from fantasy shattered; he was there, drowning her in the crystal tide of his endless eyes, preventing her from hiding herself from the veracity of the world around her.

Her heart hammered hard against her chest, making her knees rattle and her bones shake. And when his lips fluttered over hers, a dam inside broke. His kiss was so soft. So tender. His tongue stroked hers, savoring her, his small whimpers rumbling against her mouth. He tasted so good—the perfect embodiment of the ever-proverbial forbidden fruit. Buffy could kiss him forever and not want for anything. He was all male. He was danger personified. Yet in his arms she felt safer than she had in all her life.

It was false security, she knew. The hands which caressed her had caused endless amounts of pain and suffering. How many mothers had wept over dead sons and daughters as a result of these hands? How many husbands had lost their wives? How many children had been left orphaned? How many times had Spike licked his victims’ blood off his fingers? How many tears had he left in the past?

Those were the sort of scars which could never be healed. Not with time. Not even with death. And she knew it wasn’t really Spike’s fault. Spike couldn’t be held accountable for being what he was; for doing what was natural to him. She couldn’t hate him for being a vampire. But she couldn’t lose herself in another killer’s arms. She couldn’t—not when she was still scrubbing Angel’s dust off her skin.

She couldn’t risk choking on darkness. Spike had already wormed his way deep into her heart; she hadn’t thought of what would come of it in the aftermath of slaying Angel. Perhaps, had Angel not come back in those fateful final seconds, she wouldn’t feel this way. She wouldn’t have been reminded of the prevailing responsibility on her shoulders. The calling she was fleeing from but could never escape.

Once the emptiness subsided she knew she would have to pick up the pieces. Her sense of duty would return. And if she stayed with Spike now, if she allowed their relationship to deepen even more, and if he one day betrayed her, there would be no recovery.

It was a dangerous supposition, she knew—living her life based on what ifs. She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t trust herself with anything absolute. As long as Spike was a demon he would always be evil. Always. He could promise her the sun and moon and stars and mean every word; it didn’t matter. His nature demanded blood and violence. Spike had no ties to her beyond the forged alliance they’d formed over the past few days and the passionate night they had shared together. She’d employed him for solace, and God she hated herself for it.

Vampire or not; she cared for Spike. She truly did. And she hated knowing she’d used him. Even if Spike had known he was being used.

He had, too. He’d known he was being used. Last night it had angered him. He didn’t seem angry now.

“You taste so good,” Spike murmured into her mouth, hiking her legs around his waist, the head of his cock rubbing along her aching slit. “So warm an’ sweet.”

Buffy mewled against his lips, thoroughly hating herself. She wanted to shut her mind off completely.

He stroked her clit almost lazily, his mouth breaking from hers to whisper small kisses down her throat. “You’re mine, you know,” he whispered, his teeth again grazing the bite mark he’d given her. “This here? This makes you mine. Forever.”

The words made her stomach tighten but Buffy didn’t reply. She merely tightened her arms around him and rubbed herself against his hand.

“Say you’re mine, Buffy. Say it again.”

Her eyes blinked with new tears. “I’m yours,” she said, but the words rode out on a long, strangled sob as his cock sank deep inside her pussy. Her vaginal walls clamped hard around him, her body attempting to suck him in deeper than biology would allow. Tortured bliss spread through her veins. The water hitting her skin had long gone cold, but she didn’t care. Between the cold at her back and the cold body of the vampire moving inside her, she was surprised she hadn’t melted with heat.

Nothing in her life made sense. Nothing.

“Again,” Spike begged, burying his face in the crook of her neck. “Say it. Please, baby…”

Her heart wrenched. “Yours.”

Deeper and deeper. Buffy couldn’t keep herself from crying. Spike didn’t question her. Didn’t do anything but caress her face and kiss her lips as his cock slid rhythmically in and out of her body.

She wanted to freeze this moment. To forget the pain ripping her insides apart. To forget the world which defined them by what they were. She would never have this again. This was a moment she would bottle and carry with her. This would be a moment to take with her wherever she went.

Because, with Spike or not, she was his. Somehow she knew she was his.

She just couldn’t stay.

“It’s all right,” Spike murmured, kissing her shoulder. “It’s all right.”

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t.

And try as she might, even as he made love to her with his words and his lips and his body, Buffy couldn’t stop weeping. She just prayed he didn’t look into her eyes. If he did, he’d know immediately this was their last time together. And he’d hate her for it. For using him. For making him believe something. For making him think she could give him something she didn’t have.

He’d be within his right to loathe her. God knows she loathed herself enough.

The very thought, however, left her feeling colder than before. And Buffy knew without question that she wouldn’t survive it. Even if she never saw him again, she couldn’t abide the thought of Spike existing in the world…and hating her.

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