SECTION 2 - ANGEL CITY

I got a buncha boys
We make a lot of noise
Little bit crazy
Playing with chemical toys
We're such bad ass dudes
I almost can't stand it myself
I wanna get the c**bs
In my elegant rags
Make my mom and daddy uptight
I wanna be an intellectual
Heterosexual, Angel City tonight.

(Motorhead, Album 1916)



Chapter 2.01
Monday, May 6th, 2002

Spike pulled off Buffy's boots dropping them into the foot-well behind him as he moved over to the other side of the car.

"Angel Investigations, we help the helpless," came the voice on the other end of the line.

Spike picked up the cell-phone from where it rested in Buffy's lap, moving it to the rear window ledge of the car so that the wire for the hands-free kit was no longer in the way of the buttons down the front of her blouse.

"Didn't that use to be hopeless, Cordelia?" Buffy watched the pale elegant fingers deftly freeing her breasts of their cotton confinement, as she spoke. She hoped Cordelia hadn't noticed that her breathing was already quickening and he had yet to touch her flushed skin.

"Buffy? Is that you? And yes." Buffy automatically leaned forward so that when he eased the material over her shoulders it simply drifted down and she had just to lift her hands to be rid if it.

"Tell me you didn't just let Angel know I'm on the phone. please." Punishing her for using Angel's name he leant forward and bit down gently on her nearest nipple, gradually increasing jaw pressure until she was just short of moaning her pleasure down the phone to the other woman. Talented fingers alternately stroked and kneaded at her other breast before using a circling motion so light it was almost as if he wasn't touching her to tease the nipple into a sharp hard peak.

"You're safe. There's only me and Groo, who you don't know, here. So if you don't want to speak to Angel, I hope it's me you want because Wes doesn't work here any more. And if you want to know that story then you're going to have to talk to tall, dark and broody because explaining what's happening round here to his ex is not part of my job description.

Neither is guarding a portal from an untold hell dimension so foul the powers that be don't actually allow portals to go there, but hey, we'll let that one pass."

Spike rolled the tip between his fingers before he gave a sharp twist, making her gasp in surprise just in time to make it sound as if she were drawing breath to continue as Cordelia finished. "Are you having your calls transferred or something?" 'Way to go with the inane comments,' thought Buffy, but then who in their right mind could expect her to think clearly while Spike was doing what he was doing.

"No, no. It's here, in the hotel lobby. But there's only been one really big scary demon come through so far and it's dead, so. what's with the phone call."

Spike's mouth moved to her other breast, suckling gently this time as if to make up for the earlier pain. His hands moved down to the tops of her jeans. This time before she spoke Buffy wove her fingers through the blond curls in front of her, pulling Spike's head back so she could meet his gaze. She let her eyes pass on the message that there was only one vampire she was thinking about.

"Okay, how is Angel?"

Spike gently traced along the line of her jeans using one cool finger until her stomach muscles tightened making it easier to deal swiftly with the zip and button holding the stiff fabric in place. He brought one knee up over her body wedging it between her and the seat back so that he straddled her just above her knees. His hands slid round behind her body pushing down the thick denim and flimsy white thong all in one movement and cradling her buttocks as her hips bucked up toward him

"Oh, you know, kinda preoccupied, busy, that long involved story it's really not my place to tell, let's just say family business and leave it at that," Cordelia responded with faux brightness.

His hands were already supporting her weight and one quick motion brought Buffy's pelvis level with his. Her eyes widened in surprise and he smiled his amusement as he nuzzled her neck and ground their pelvises together.

"Okay. I've got some personal news that I thought would come better if you two both heard it from me rather than anyone else. You could say it's family business too."

Spike nibbled, licked and kissed his way down the centre of Buffy's body as he moved back to his original kneeling position to remove her jeans. The soft silky fabric of his worn coat lining brushed against her legs and back, where he had spread it over the chill, cracked leather of the DeSoto's back seat. The leather scent from the coat was almost gone after so many years of wear and unless you were a vampire your nose would almost have to touch it to pick up on that element of its scent. It smelled of cigarette smoke, and spicy cologne and just the lightest undertone of bourbon.

"So spill. You finally stake Drusilla or what?" as always Cordelia spoke her mind.

As Spike finished pulling off her jeans, Buffy wriggled her arms into the sleeves of the oversized coat, inhaling the scents that permeated its make-up, conjuring memories of numerous times its perfume had enveloped her at the height of her passion. As he threw her jeans and underwear aside he realised what she had done and was unable to contain a possessive growl.

"I'm engaged."

A beautiful naked woman who had just announced her commitment to him lay in front of him, wearing only his ring and his coat, which reeked of his scent. Her arousal was evident to his sensitive nostrils and he could barely wait to stake his claim to her one more time. Instead he looked straight into her eyes and mouthed the words 'I. Love. You. I. Want. You. Forever.'

"Congratulations. I'll be sure to tell Angel when there's a suitable moment. Is this the army guy or is it a new one?" Cordelia conveyed the message that in her opinion a personal visit or even phone call was unnecessary, just avoiding sounding brusque.

Spike moved Buffy until she was lying on her side resting against the seat back.

"Not the army guy," Buffy said dryly, as Spike moved from his kneeling position between the front and back seats to lie next to her, squirming against her almost naked body to get maximum contact. Holding her tight he rolled onto his back. He wanted to watch his leather-clad angel move above him.

"Too damn right, cheerleader," growled Spike into the microphone that dangled near the hollow of Buffy's throat.

There was a slight gasp at the other end of the line. "Buffy, that sounded like."

"When I said it was family business I didn't just mean my family." Spike's hands slid under the coat, one tracing patterns on her back with his fingertips. The other stretching over the curve of her bottom so that a fingertip teased her moist entrance as she lay atop him.

"You're engaged to Spike!"

He worked his way between her outer lips and slid up to his first joint inside of her, easing her drenched muscles ever so slightly looser before bringing the finger to his mouth and sucking it clean. His gaze stayed on her face the whole time, her eyes darkening as she followed his actions.

"Now you see why we'd like to come up there and try to break the news gently. Spike seems to think that as soon as Angel hears he's going to regress straight back to all the macho vampire dominance crap. So, I figure we might as well come visit and get it all over and done with. Not that there's anything short of sending Spike home in a dust-buster that he can do to change my mind and if he does that he'll have one pissed off slayer on his hands."

Buffy sat up slightly, resting her elbows on Spike's chest as she tackled the buttons on the front of his shirt. Spike moaned low in his throat at the delay. Soon, however her hands slithered down between their bodies, working loose the fastenings on his jeans that were strained even tighter than normal.

"Right now, I'd say he's a little preoccupied," Cordelia commented in reference to Angel.

Buffy's hands worked on freeing her lover's throbbing erection from the denim encasing it.

"Not the only one," muttered Spike.

"This business, I don't suppose it would be important enough that some extra help might persuade him not to start a fight with Spike?" Buffy tried to see a way around this conflict.

The vampire frowned slightly at the suggestion. It felt wrong that so valuable a prize could ever be his without conflict. Surely Angel would never surrender his claim uncontested. Not unless the Poof had finally got over his feelings for Buffy, but if five hundred years in hell hadn't made any difference he doubted a couple of years in LA would. Either that or whatever was going on was big with a capital B.

All such thoughts vanished however as Buffy held his dick in her hand nudging his jeans down just far enough to rest his balls in her other.

"I don't honestly know."

Vampires were supposed to be able to sense family members and identify them by scent. Would the same apply to kin who were conceived rather than made? If so, Spike could be useful if they were still trying to track Connor tomorrow. The question was whether Spike would be able to defend himself if he found the teenager. Willow had long ago filled in Cordelia about Spike's little trip to the vet's.

"We'll take our chances. We'll come up tomorrow after I finish work. We should get there about nine. I'll leave it up to you how much you think you should tell him before we get there. It might not come as such a shock to him if you can pave the way a bit. Hope nobody has to take a swan-dive off a tower to shut your portal.

Family emergencies not withstanding it'd be nice to see you again."

"You too, I think, but I'm not so sure about Spike."

Buffy yanked the cable loose from both the phone and her ear throwing it on the back windowsill of the car. Then she folded the phone in half replacing it in the pocket of the leather coat. Aware of Spike's gaze she took the time to flick the hem of the coat to fan out behind her before bending forward to claim his mouth, making up for lost time on the phone.

Spike's hands roamed without pattern or reason underneath the supple leather desperate to touch as much of her as possible, to make every inch his and his alone. However, Buffy was moving down his body further out of his reach as she explored his bare chest with her hands and then her mouth, sucking and nibbling each nipple until, like hers, they were almost painfully hard. Her tongue traced a trail almost to his navel before cramped conditions prevented her from moving further down past Spike's upraised knees. Spike pushed against the car door with his booted feet straightening his legs until he sat with his back against the other door.

Buffy shifted down his body again, parting his legs as far as his jeans would allow using her knees, so she could kneel between them rather than straddling them. With just the tip of her tongue she traced the ridge that ran up the front of his cock, travelling all the way up his length before using her whole tongue to swirl round the top. She took him deep into her mouth, before sliding back up and using her tongue to spread fresh pre-cum mixed with her saliva over the tip once more. She repeated this pattern several times, alternating licking his full length and taking him into her mouth, one hand cupping his balls, gently fondling them until he moaned first at the pleasurable sensation and then begging her to stop, his hands clenched over the seat backs to either side.

"Please. gotta stop. can't hold it any longer. want to be inside you."

Buffy straightened up moving onto his lap and he swung round in his seat and sat slightly forward. Raising herself up on her knees Buffy used one hand to guide him into her wet vagina, lowering herself onto him a fraction of an inch at a time. Spike repressed the almost overpowering urge to close his eyes and watched her face instead as his thick shaft stretched the muscles of her hot tight core little by little. As she finally reached the end of that first stroke she took his face in both her hands. She watched his eyes and whispered, "I want you. I love you. Forever."

Her words stole the last of his self-control. As he came inside her in a cool white rush, his blue eyes turned to gold and his visage changed to that of the demon. With a growled, "Mine!" his teeth sank into the flesh of her neck, high up above the coat's collar. He managed to make the bite a clean one resisting the urge to tear at her flesh, but she bore the marks of all his teeth, not just his fangs though most of the marks were shallow. His involuntary movement inside her as he came, and more especially his gentle suckling at his bite and the knowledge he had dropped that last vestige of control brought her to a trembling climax in his arms. As he withdrew his mouth from her neck, her forehead came to rest against his. "Yours. forever," she whispered.

'Shit!' thought the vampire. Nevertheless, he nicked his tongue on his fangs so that his blood and hers mingled as he lapped patiently at the wound until the bleeding stopped. 'How the hell am I going to explain this?' he thought as he resumed his human form once more.

He held her tight until her trembling finally stopped and then stroked her back through the leather in reassuring circles. As her blood had hit his mouth he had hardened again inside her and the feel of being enveloped in her hot wet grip was intoxicating but before he could even think about satisfaction he had to tackle a rather difficult subject.

"Buffy, do you know what happened there? Do you understand the significance of it."

"You bit me, I assume that means you claimed me and since you said you weren't going to do that until I was ready to call you husband, I guess that was like a vampire wedding then."

"Not really. I meant to explain all this to you before anything like this happened. For it to be a marriage, you would have to claim me, the same way I've claimed you, and I would have to acknowledge your claim over me.

Once the claim is reciprocated, if we were both vampires we would have an empathic link. If we were close enough, unless one of us made a conscious effort to block the link we'd be able to pick up on each other's emotions. Nothing overpowering, just an awareness of what the other is feeling. Regardless of distance, we'd also know if the other was killed or seriously hurt.

When two vampires bond and one is stronger than the other, then the weaker one's abilities tend to improve. If a vampire has the ability to reform after being staked, like Drac, the bond isn't broken when they're dusted. I don't know whether that means the bond goes beyond death or not.

It's rare for a vampire to take a human mate, more often than not the human is turned first, but I think it has happened occasionally. As far as I know, it's never happened between a vampire and a slayer, but then that's the sort of thing the Council of Wankers would work very hard to cover up. There's no way to know what effect there would be if you reciprocated my claim, which is why I intended to see if Giles could dig up anything before we got this far."

The vampire looked into her face making sure she could see the truth of his next words.

"Buffy, I never intended to have this happen as anything other than a mutual thing. I fully intended to let you know all the facts and have you speak to Giles and then come to an informed decision and if you wanted to then I thought we'd do it together.

I definitely expected it to be something a bit more romantic than a quick shag in the back of the car. It's just when you said what you did, bye-bye self-control. I'm sorry, pet. You can shag me seven ways from Sunday and I'll happily keep myself in check, but you can't expect me to be all self-restraint when you take me in to the hilt, look me in the eye, and tell me you love me. Even what I did wouldn't make a claim if you hadn't said you were mine.

So, we have several options. We could leave things as they are, but I think that might be a bit unfair on you." Spike blew gently on the healing bite wound on the side of Buffy's neck. Her reaction tightened both her stomach muscles and also the muscles in her vagina pulling him deeper into her. "As you could probably tell, the bite mark becomes like a sort of super erogenous zone, which is fine when turn about is fair play, but puts you at a disadvantage when I can have you wettin' your knickers with the slightest touch. Actually that probably does just about make us even 'cause I get a hard-on pretty much whenever you walk in the room anyway."

Buffy smiled at him. "It's kinda hard not to notice especially in this position. And who says you weren't on a level footing before?" Buffy gave him a soft kiss on the forehead.

"We can wait and see what Giles says when he gets back to us, however long that may take. We could even ring him back later tonight and try to catch him before he leaves for work in the morning and tell him what a balls-up I've made of things. See if that gets his arse in gear.

Or we say, bugger it. We can't go back so we might as well go forward and we do this properly, make things mutual now, without waiting to see what Giles has to say. As far as I know there are no adverse side effects, strengths are shared not weaknesses but there aren't any guarantees. And no matter what Giles finds, in the end it's going to be an individual case."

She searched his face, trying to find the clues she needed. "You want to do this, don't you?"

"Buffy, it isn't my choice. It has to be yours. I want it. It's a stronger bond even than marriage, but I'm also scared for you. I don't expect it to work that way, but what if you began to be affected by sunlight? Just because I've only ever heard of sharing strengths doesn't mean there's not a chance you'd end up with my weaknesses."

"What time is it now in England?" Buffy asked.

"Eight hours later than it is here, somewhere around midnight. and, love, not that you can go, but I think you're supposed to be starting work about now."

"Wh-what?"

"Your neck, it's a bit obvious. You're either going to have to phone in sick or at the very least make some sort of excuse for being late so you can put a bandage on it, cover it up somehow. The barbecue fork excuse is not going to cut it."

"Great. Nice one, Fang Face." Buffy scrambled off his lap none too carefully, and started hunting through her gym bag till she found her make-up case, which held a small compact.

"Hey, I was kinda hoping we'd both have some use for that in the future. Try to leave it attached!" Spike whinged.

Buffy meanwhile tried to angle the mirror to see the extent of the damage, not aided by the dim light in the car's interior. "Shit. You don't do anything by halves, do you?"

Spike stuck his hand into the pocket of his coat rummaging around despite Buffy's protests until he found his cell-phone. Once he had it in his hand he flipped it open and pressed a button. The phone gave a small beep, and Spike held it up to his ear.

"Hell on earth," he spoke into the microphone. A series of different notes followed and then she heard a ring tone, which was finally answered by Lorraine's voice.

"Double Meat Palace, how can I help?"

"Hello, I'd like to speak to the duty manager, please." Spike's voice lost all of its normal roughness, becoming a model for well-mannered charm.

"Speaking, this is Lorraine."

"Hi. I'm calling on behalf of my girlfriend, Buffy Summers. I'm afraid she's not going to be able to make it in today for her shift."

"Oh, will she be okay for the rest of her shifts this week or should I arrange cover?"

"I couldn't say for sure. She's been attacked by some sort of animal, and she's lost some blood, but the bleeding seems to have eased off now. I think she might be going into shock though, so I was just going to take her home, put her to bed and get someone to have a look at her."

Buffy didn't know, whether to laugh or hit him and steal the phone and try to repair the damage, which was of course impossible anyway.

"Ahhh." Spike guessed that maybe the manager had picked up on Sunnydale's brand of animal attacks. "It sounds potentially serious, maybe I should make some provisional arrangements for cover."

"That could be for the best. Buffy's a very determined girl and she makes up her own mind about these things, but I know I'd be happier if she took some time to recover.

The fact is that Buffy was intending to hand her notice in today, anyway.

You know that she's her younger sister's guardian?"

"No, I don't think I did. It may have been discussed when she originally started work here, but I only recently transferred to this branch."

"Yes, well, the hours and working evenings and weekends have tended to mean she has very little time with her. Let's just say the situation at home has forced her to consider looking for something more appropriate. With what's happened today, it wouldn't surprise me if she didn't make it back at all, but as I said before, you can't predict what she'll do.

I'm sure she'll be well enough to speak to you herself tomorrow and let you know whether she'll be in for the rest of the week."

"Yes, well, thank you for calling, Mr."

"William, just William's fine."

"Well, thank you, William. I hope Buffy's going to be okay."

"I'm sure a day or two in bed will have her feeling a lot better," said Spike with a wicked smirk before he closed the phone.