Enthralled

One


Buffy’s mind was a whirlwind of confused and contradictory thoughts.

She looked across the pool table at her opponent. Her enemy. Her nemesis. Her own personal pain-in-the-ass. Spike. His blond hair glinted in the bright lights over the pool table, contrasting sharply with the black clothes he wore, the black leather duster that was as much a part of him as his skin. She bit her lip as she watched him line up another shot, then snapped back to reality when she realized what he was saying to her.

“You got off on it,” she said, disgusted. Then another voice invaded her memory. Faith. Faith had said that slaying made her hungry and horny. She had been surprised shocked even, that it didn’t have the same effect on Buffy. She never thought twice about it since.

“I suppose you don’t,” he said, and she stopped in her tracks. All the hunts, all the stakings and slayage, all the demons… all the demons… she never felt…satisfied afterwards.

“No,” she mouthed, as he circled the pool table. The blood pounded in her ears, her heartbeat fluttering in her chest as he slipped closer to her, still talking. Shock paralyzed her as she felt him whisper into the curve of her ear, “One. Good. Day.” The feeling of his breath on her ear, her neck, moving wisps of her hair sent a thrill down her spine. The puzzling reaction of her body drowned out anything they were saying to one another, but he quickly regained her attention when he poked her side. She gasped in pain, and grabbed her injury, satisfied somehow that he was writhing with a migraine.

They went into the alley, then, conscious of the myriad of eyes watching them. “So, the second one, in New York. How did you kill her?”

They played at sparring as he spoke. Punches thrown and easily dodged, throws and kicks that seemed too easy. When she heard him call it a dance, she outwardly scoffed, but in her head, and her heart, she knew he was right. They were dancing. Every time they met, every time they tangled from the very first time in the school, they did this…dance…and she realized, in that moment, exactly what they were dancing around.

They weren’t dancing a dance of death. There was no hunting in his posture, no slaying in hers. Her body thrummed with adrenaline, and she felt arousal coursing through her entire nervous system, centering on one spot throbbing in the center of her groin.

No, her mind screamed at her. Vampire. Vampires can’t love. Only sex and death, that was their thrill. Not love. Not desire.

She looked down at him where he kneeled in front of her. She couldn’t tear her eyes from his face, his eyes boring holes into her.

“I wonder if you’ll like it as much as she did,” he said.

But to whom was he referring? Had he done this dance, this mating ritual, with someone else? A hot spiral of jealousy curled in her gut, and she mentally stamped it out. She was not jealous of the bloodsucking fiend and his sluts.

He taunted her, daring her to hit him. Her hands fisted at her sides, teeth gritted. She nearly did hit him, then, but for some reason, held back. Her hands relaxed of their own accord, lips parted.

“Give it me good, Buffy. Come on, Slayer.” He moved toward her, closing the distance between them.

He touched her, took her arms, and she instinctively knew that he wasn’t closing in for a bite. She was horrified by her desire for him to complete the distance, and that horror reflected in her eyes. She knew, in her gut, that if he kissed her, she would be lost—completely undone.

She did the only thing she knew to do to stop him. Kicked him away like a dog, and said, “You’re beneath me.”

She saw the hurt fill his face, flooding those expressive blue eyes with pain. She turned and walked quickly away to keep herself from the apology that leaped into her mind. That look, and his words, haunted her the entire way home.

*

You’re beneath me.

The words echoed in his mind. He looked at the money scattered around him. So, that’s all he was to her. All this time, all the hopes he’d harbored…. Cold tears coursed down his cheeks, his heart breaking at her coarse rejection, and instead of giving in to the pain, he channeled it into his demon. His demon roared within him, fed by his pain and anger, and he jumped to his feet and turned in the direction of his crypt. He would show that bitch, once and for all.

*

Buffy sat on her back porch, her head on her lap, sobbing out her fear and confusion. She heard a noise, and raised her head, tears shining in the moonlight, to see Spike standing in front of her. It didn’t even register at first that he was holding a gun. “What do you want now, Spike?”

She wasn’t looking at his face, so she didn’t notice his eyes soften at the sight of her. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Can I help?”

The question, coming from him, shocked her, but less than his actions. He sat next to her on the deck, and awkwardly began patting her shoulder.

Strangely, his touch comforted her. She sat there next to him, pain radiating from her skin, and began to talk in a slow whisper about everything--Joyce’s health, her relationship with Riley, her feelings of academic inadequacy—it all came pouring out of her, into the waiting ear of the one person she thought would revel in her misery, the peroxide blond next to her.

As her litany grew longer, she shifted uncomfortably, unconsciously moving closer to the source of her comfort. Spike’s arm snaked around her shoulders, and she leaned against the strength of his muscled body, drained of any strength of her own. She rested her head against his shoulder, exhausted and spent, and they sat together quietly, crickets chirruping around them in the cool California night.

Spike started to speak several times, but swallowed the words before they could escape. He was beneath her—she had said it herself. She didn’t want the opinion of a nothing, a nobody such as he.

She suddenly thought of the horrible things that she had said to him outside the Bronze in the alley. “Spike?” she said, touching his chest. “I’m…sorry…about…outside the Bronze….” She trailed off, knowing she needed to apologize, but unsure of what she was apologizing for.

“F’get it, pet. ‘S only words—they don’t kill you.”

“No, Spike. They can kill you. Only, a little bit at a time.” She sat upright, and turned to face him, her knees pressed against his. “I was deliberately cruel, and nobody deserves that kind of treatment, not even you. I’m sorry.”

He looked down at her, then quickly away. “Okay, pet. No need to get your knickers in a twist.”

“And that thing you were saying? About the dance? I think that I understand what you meant.”

He stared at the top of her head while she studied her twisting fingers in her lap. “I…I thought about it on the way home. We do dance, you and I. In a lot of ways. We always have, haven’t we?”

His mind reeled at her words. She had thought about him? She knew they danced? Did she realize exactly what they danced around? He doubted it, in his heart, but he went ahead and decided to go deeper into the breech. “Mmm…. Well, yeah, I ‘spose you’re right ‘bout that, Slayer.”

“You weren’t going to bite me, in the alley. You were going to kiss me, weren’t you?”

He froze next to her, utterly still as only a master vampire could be. She looked up at him, hazel eyes shining with starlight and tears, open and vulnerable, and said again, “You were going to kiss me. Weren’t you, Spike?”

He tried to shy away, and found that he was pinned by her penetrating gaze, and couldn’t. “Yes, pet, I was.”

Her next words rattled him to the core. “Do you still want to kiss me, Spike?”

She watched the muscle move in his jaw, unsure of his unsaid answer. He raked his free hand through his hair, and gritted out, “Yes. God help me, yes, Buffy. I still want to kiss you.”

“Then, why aren’t you?”