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Limits by Sigyn
 
Limits
 



    Buffy had scraped her shoulder. That was how it started. She’d been tied up against the rock wall with the silk scarf she’d been wearing when she came over, Spike behind her, his thrusts almost crushing her, and she’d scraped her shoulder against the rough stone. It wasn’t the first scratch or scrape she’d gotten while they were fucking – far from it – but most of the time she was too excited and filled with lust to even really know what was happening to every part of her. She wouldn’t have even noticed this time if they hadn’t been almost finished. They cried out with mutual release, and Spike untied one hand so she could fall down onto the bed with him. She’d fallen onto her back, and he’d collapsed beside her.
 

   They were gasping and panting, and Buffy moaned with how good she currently felt, when she looked down and saw the blood. Spike had noticed it – of course he’d noticed it – and before she even had time to register he’d kissed the wound, his tongue lapping up the slight trickle like a salt lick. She paused, almost frightened, almost disgusted, but he wasn’t vamped up, and the bleeding stopped quickly. He finished up with a gentle kiss on the spot. He’d done it tenderly, but very matter of factly, as if it were perfectly normal. Buffy was surprised. The scrape didn’t even hurt anymore. “Is that the first time you’ve done that?” Buffy asked.

    “No,” he said. He lifted up her arm where a healing scab from two days ago was nearly ready to come off. “Here,” he said, touched a spot on the edge of her back. “Here. We’re pretty rough, love. You get a lot of scratches.”

    “You didn’t ask permission.”

    He shrugged. “Didn’t think I needed it. You were bleeding anyway. It’s only a drop.” He smiled at her seductively. “Just a taste. It’s no more than a touch, really. You usually don’t notice.”

    That really did surprise her. Why wouldn’t she notice such a thing? “Why doesn’t it hurt? I mean, I’ve got bruises down my front, abrasions on my wrists, I feel all that... I don’t even feel the scrape.”

    “You’re surprised I can kiss it better?” he asked. His head tilted on the pillow, and his eyes were soft. “You didn’t know this, pet? Your watcher never gave you the lowdown?”

    “On what?”

    “On vampire bites. They don’t have to hurt. Well, much.”

    “Don’t they?” Buffy was confused.

    Spike looked almost concerned. “I can’t believe you didn’t know this. I mean you and Angel–” His eyes flickered to the scar on her throat.

    Her voice was quiet as she said, “Angel hurt.”

    Spike’s eyes narrowed in anger. “Of course he did,” he growled. “I should have guessed. Angelus liked it to hurt,” Spike said. “He never perfected the gentle kill.”

    “I’d forced him. He was sick.”

    “No excuse,” Spike said. “I could do it so you wouldn’t even feel it. Not beyond a second, a brief hard kiss. After that you’d love every moment of it. It can hurt you if we want it to, – often enough, most vamps do, we kinda get off on screams – but remember Riley? Why do you think those people kept coming back for more? Our saliva has a sort of... anesthetic. It doesn’t affect your skin, but once it gets into the blood.... We can suck it out, keep it hurting if we like, but if we give and take... you’d get sleepy, and sort of stoned. Kind of float away. You’d want nothing more than to just stay there with me. Forever, if I did it right.”

    His voice had taken on the seductive purr that she loved. Buffy stared at him with a kind of wonder that amused and excited him. “How do you think we feed in public?” he said, his bedroom voice heady. “Can’t eat someone on a dance floor if they’re screaming. It takes longer to drain a victim, of course... hours, sometimes. It can be worth it.”

    Buffy was trembling. It did explain what Dracula had done to her, why she hadn’t minded much. It seemed very exciting. “Do it to me,” she said.

    Spike smiled, laughed, and then sank deeper into his pillow. “Oh, god, slayer, say that again.”

    Buffy rolled over and stared into his face. “Bite me, Spike,” she said seductively. “Drink. Feed on me.”

    Spike licked his teeth, a huge smile on his face. “No,” he said. “But ask again any time you like, I could live on you just saying it.”

    Buffy was disappointed, and deeply surprised. They’d done just about everything. He’d bitten her throat so hard she had bruises and bite marks – hence the scarf she’d been wearing tonight. She’d let him tie her up in chains, bent herself in ways she hadn’t thought possible. Every bizarre and perverted thing he’d come up with she’d eventually allowed – chains, whips, candle wax, just about everything bar broken bones and scat play had been on the table, in both directions – including all the times they’d done it on tables. And clearly, he’d been tasting her blood regularly, probably since the first night in the broken house. It was the first time either of them had asked for anything physical that had been answered with a flat no.

    “Don’t you want to?” she asked.

    Spike sat back up and kissed her sweetly, once, twice, three times. “More than anything. Not going to.”

    “Why?”

    He shook his head. “I don’t dare.”

    “You just said it wouldn’t hurt. I wouldn’t resent you for it.”

    “It wouldn’t hurt. And I know you’re asking. I still won’t.”

    “You afraid you’ll go too far? Take too much?”

    “Nope,” he said. “I’m no fledgling, love. I have way more control than that. I could keep you alive for a month. Glass of orange juice and a steak dinner could fix you right up again. Even if I was...,” he reached under the sheets and caressed her, weaving his fingers intricately between her legs. She gasped, tensing around him. “Distracted,” he finished. “I don’t lose control that easy, pet. Still won’t do it.”

    When she could find her voice in amongst the sound of her wildly beating heart, she gasped out, “So you want to. You can. You could – ngh! – control it. I’d be letting you...” she groaned softly, “letting you....”

    “Yes, you would,” Spike said. “And you’d love it. I’d love it. Curl you up beside me like a little kitten and knock you right out. You’d be begging me for more, my pet.”

    “Ung!” Buffy said as his thumb swirled round her clit. A moment later he pushed up against her, and she pulled her leg over him, drawing him inside. His still moist hand slid up over her hip and held her tight. “Then why... oh, god... I want to feel it....”

    “I know,” he whispered. “You want to feel everything I can do for you. You want all of me, to fill that hollow space inside you. You have my mind, you have my flesh, you’ve had my heart for years.” He whispered in her ear before he bit her, bruising her with his human teeth, but he let go long before he drew blood. “You can have my pain, love. You can have my pleasure. But I’m keeping this.”

    Buffy rolled over on top of him and held him down. “Why?” she hissed, almost angry with him, with herself.

    “I want it too much,” he said fondly, arching himself into her. “I have your body. I have your hunger.” He shook his head, and his voice sank to a whisper. “But that’s your life, Buffy. I know you don’t cherish it much right now, but it’s too important to me. I’ll taste it, I won’t take it – not even to leave it there for you when I’m done. Congratulations – you found my limit.”

    “Limit,” she said, grinding over him. She was angry now, and she used it on him. “Since when do we have limits? I’ve done just about everything, and you reject this?”

    He closed his eyes for a moment at the feel of her. “I’m not rejecting you,” Spike said. “I’ll take it, and gladly one day. I’ll give you everything. I’ll make your throat my chalice, pour pleasure through you, into every drop of your blood. There’s nothing I want more.”

    “When?” Buffy snarled.

    He stared up at her, his blue eyes soft and mischievous. “When you admit it,” he said, “and let yourself love me.”

    Rage flashed through her, and she flinched over him, forcing her weight down on his balls, making him grunt. She made a sound, almost a scream of frustration. How dare he! Her scarf was still tied around one wrist. The impulse rode on her hatred. She grabbed the end of the scarf and wrapped it round his throat, pulling tight with both hands as she rode him hard, forcing pleasure into her flesh because he would not give it to her blood.

    He let her choke him, no struggling, his eyes fixed on hers without judgement. His hands found her legs after a while and clenched them, hard, then harder, bruising her calves with his vampire strength. Those blue eyes were like glass, like ice, like the ocean, and he would not look away. And still he wouldn’t struggle, still he let her ride him, as his vampiric flesh went pale and his eyes finally closed. She told herself to stop. She told herself it was wrong. But she wanted him more than she could understand, and she wanted to die, and if she could pour her life into him and float away, even for a little while, it would be everything she longed for. It was as if he had offered her another taste of heaven, and then snatched it away. Because she couldn’t love him. She wouldn’t ever love him. And she wouldn’t lie about it, either.

    She didn’t know how long he’d been still before she finally came, forced herself into orgasm, but Spike’s hands had gone slack. Buffy came back to herself a second later, her momentary insanity – it had to be madness, this couldn’t be her – passing away like a tide. She released his throat, afraid. She knew she hadn’t killed him. Vampires were hard to kill, right? Without fire or stakes or decapitation. There was no dust. But he was so still.

    She leaned over him, touching his cheek. Her hand trembled wildly. “Spike?” she whispered. “Spike?” She couldn’t have killed him. He didn’t need breath, he didn’t have circulation, the only thing she could have done was pinch out a nerve or something, right? Right? But he seemed the perfect cold corpse.

    He was so still.

    It felt like an eternity before he took a breath. He opened his blue eyes, and turned them on her. She expected accusation, pain, anger. All she saw there was such love and such sympathy that she started to cry.

    “Buffy.” He reached out for her, but she pulled away.

    “I have to go,” she said. “I have to go, I have–” She fought back the tears and dragged on her clothes.

    “Buffy,” he said. He sat up in bed.

    “Where are my shoes?” she asked. She got down and reached under his bed.

    “Buffy. It’s all right, pet.”

    “No!” she snapped. “No, it is not all right,” she said. “Look what you’ve done to me, you bastard. You’re the killer here, not me. You’re disgusting. I can’t believe I offered–”    

    “I love that you offered,” Spike said quietly.

    “Fuck off,” Buffy said.

    “I wasn’t rejecting you,” he said again.

    “You think that’s what pissed me off?” she asked.

    “Yes.”

    He wasn’t wrong. “I have to go.”

    “Yes,” he said. “I think you probably do.”

    She looked up at him. His tone was not the usual resignation he had when she ran off after their liaisons. It was sympathetic. Loving.

    “You don’t know anything,” she snapped.

    “I know you were tempted,” Spike said. “That’s why you’re angry. It’s all right, love. It’s good to find the edges.”
    She finally realized that his voice was husky – and it wasn’t him trying to be seductive. She’d bruised him. She was horrified at herself.

    “I’ll take your life to hold when you’re willing to hold mine,” he said. “Not before.”

    “I pretty much did just take yours,” she snarled, wrestling on her shoe.

    “You already have my death, love, you knew that,” he said. “I said to hold. And you’re nowhere near ready for that.”

    “And you are?” she growled.

    He stared at her. “I’m not your whore. I’ll let you treat everything else like garbage, throw it away at the end of the night until you think you want it again. Not that. It’s too important to me. I’ve only shared that with those who gave me their lives in exchange. If I ever think you’ll actually cherish it, it’s yours. Until then, that one’s mine.” He glanced down her body in a way that made her tingle. “No matter how sweet you taste.”

    She swallowed, still trembling with rage, speechless.     

    “Bye, love,” he said with a smile. “Walk home safe.” He rolled over to go to sleep.

    Buffy left his crypt still angry, with him, with herself, with the whole damn world. She couldn’t believe he’d demanded love in exchange for what was basically a drug hit. Those other sleezebag vampires would do it for money. Why couldn’t it be so easy? It annoyed her no end.

    Because truthfully... even with what he’d demanded... she had been tempted.