Chapter 5


“Well, now we know why he’s not eating people,” said Buffy.

“The soul holding him back without his even knowing it.” Willow set a fat white beeswax pillar candle on a saucer for lack of a proper holder and centered it on the coffee table. “Didn’t he ever wonder why he wasn’t killing people like the other vamps?”

“I think he did, but then he rationalized it. ‘I’m full and humans aren’t fun to kill’. But he knew it wasn’t the way vamps usually act. He just wouldn’t admit it, so he found another reason.” Buffy grinned wryly. “Nice seeing him living in Egypt for once. I saw you and Giles and Angel wading through books today while I was training the SITs. Have you been able to find out anything yet?”

She had been wanting to ask Willow that all day. But, knowing how acute Angel’s vamp hearing was, they had both been careful not to speak about the real problem anywhere in or near the College.

Willow shook her head. “Nada. But we’ve still got tons of books to plow through.”

“Did you tell them about...?”

“I didn’t say anything about either demon-Spikes or souls.” She stopped searching for the right page in the spellbook and looked up at Buffy. “Maybe we should tell them about him. Giles is beginning to give me funny looks because he’s noticed that the books I’ve been going through are more about soul-having than transfigurations.”

“Not yet, Will, please. Not until we have something more to tell them than just that he exists. We can’t be sure how they’ll react. Look at the way they’re already freaking about William and I can’t think of anyone more perfectly harmless. Tell them that there’s two of them and the other one’s a demon? Even the fact that he has a soul mightn’t keep them from going postal and dusting him.”

“I suppose. Here we go,” said Willow, finally finding the incantation she wanted. “You sure you want to disinvite Angel as well?”

“Yeah.” Buffy bit her lip. “I’ll have to find some way to keep him from finding out though. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

Willow was watching her thoughtfully. “But you don’t want to hurt the demon’s feelings either?”

Buffy flushed.

“Does a demon have feelings, Buff?”

“Well, if Angel can, Spike can,” muttered Buffy defensively. “Angel’s a demon too, isn’t he?”

“That’s not what you would have said before.”

“All those years of saying Spike has no feelings. Well, I was wrong, wasn’t I? We all were!”

“So now you’re trying to make up for that? He’s not Spike, Buff.”

“I don’t know what he is! Find out for me, Will!”

“And fast,” muttered Willow. She lit the candle. “Now then.”

She read the incantation aloud carefully. The faint, pleasant, honey scent of the beeswax suddenly seemed to expand to permeate every room of the flat.

“Fiat,” said Willow at last and blew out the candle. “There. It’s done.”

“Thanks, Will.” Buffy leaned forward and sniffed at the gauzy coils of smoke rising from the quenched candle. “I do love the way candles smell when they’re just put out.”

“Me too. Um. You do remember that the disinvite only keeps vamps out if you don’t invite them back in.” Willow grinned teasingly at her. “Maybe I’d better leave the book here just in case I need to do the spell again.”

“Willow.”

Willow laughed. “After all you might have to invite Angel in. So that you won’t hurt his feelings. I wasn’t talking about the other one.”

“Sure you weren’t.”

She went gloomily about her patrol, but saw no one, not even a regular vamp she could dust. Tried not to admit to herself that she wanted Spike to show, wanted to just look at him, talk to him.

Not Spike. Not Spike. The demon. Why couldn’t she remember that?

She slept badly that night and was heavy-eyed when she got up the next morning. William was coming down the stairs as she let herself out of her apartment.

“On your way to work?” he asked and she nodded.

“You too?”

“Yes. Er, did you find some lecture notes after I left the other day?”

“No, I didn’t. But I think I would have noticed a sheaf of paper lying around.”

“It would have been just one page. I had it folded up in my pocket and I can’t find it now. I must have dropped it somewhere.”

Buffy paused in the middle of locking her door. “Let’s take a look. It could have fallen on the floor and I didn’t notice.”

She led the way into her flat, then looked back in surprise when he hesitated at the door.

“William? Come on in. Is something wrong?”

He rubbed his forehead. “Felt a bit wobbly for a moment.”

“Can I get you something? A drink? At least some ice water?”

“You’re very kind. But no, thank you. I’m fine.” He smiled at her ruefully. “I’ve just been very tired recently.”

“Working too hard?”

“I suppose. The faculty keeps making jokes about my burning the candle at both ends. But I haven’t been going out, just staying home correcting papers and researching my lectures. It’s just that I keep falling asleep over my work for no reason at all.”

“I’ve been having a hard time sleeping too recently. Maybe it’s the weather. Oh!” Buffy caught sight of a slip of white showing under the end table beside the couch. “I think this may be what you’re looking for.”

The folded sheet had been kicked almost under the couch with only the corner of it visible. She pulled it out and handed it to him.

“This is it,” he said with relief after unfolding it and scanning it over. “Thank goodness. That’s saved me several hours of work I can ill afford.”

“I’m glad...” She stopped abruptly, seeing through the open front door Angel coming down the hallway. She moved swiftly to block the door before he could try to enter. She didn’t want him finding out that he couldn’t. “Angel? Why are you here? Has something happened?”

“I just thought you might like a ride to the College.” He frowned at the sight of William behind her. “It’s a bit early to be calling.”

“Or a bit late,” murmured William with malice aforethought.

“Say what?” said Angel sharply, his frown deepening into a scowl.

William ignored him and smiled at Buffy as he stepped past her into the corridor, crowding Angel a little so that he was forced to step back.

“I have to be going. Thank you for everything.”

“What everything?” growled Angel, watching William head down the hall to the stairs. “And what did he mean, a bit late?”

Buffy gave him an exasperated look as she locked her door. “He didn’t spend the night, if that’s what you’re thinking, Angel. And it’s none of your business if he had.”

“I wasn’t thinking that!”

“Sure you weren’t.” She swept towards the stairs. “You have no call to sound so disapproving. It’s insulting to both him and me. But I suppose he’s the one who put it into your head with that crack of his. And that does surprise me. It wasn’t a very gentlemanly insinuation and that’s not like William.”

“You know him so well after only a few short days?” Angel was looking like a thundercloud again. Buffy wondered with amusement at what point brooding turned into sulks.

She shrugged lightly. “William’s an open book.”

The other one wasn’t. The other one was one huge question mark.

And kept on being one. Research was coming up empty despite all Willow, Giles and Angel’s efforts. Even Wes, back in L.A., had to confess that he couldn’t find anything in Wolfram and Hart’s books either.

She hadn’t even seen him the last several days. She had thought that he would be constantly in her face every night and had in fact been looking forward to it though she knew she shouldn’t. But he was nowhere around. At times she thought she felt his vibe while she was on patrol and would turn quickly to follow it up, but it was always gone before she was sure whether she wasn’t just imagining it. The only vamps she saw were a couple of usual ones, easily dusted.

She felt just like a violin string being wound tighter and tighter to the breaking point. ‘All these shoulds and shouldn’ts that we demons never have to worry about,’ mocked Spike in her head. Yeah, they had it easy, didn’t they? What would it be like to just do what she wanted?

She heard William going up and down the stairs a couple of times, but didn’t go out to speak to him. William was not who she wanted and it wasn’t fair to encourage him.

The weekend came. Willow and Xander wanted to go clubbing and, since Buffy felt like some frenetic activity right at the moment, she went along. So did Angel, though she knew he hated the noise and the crush. It wasn’t his scene, hadn’t been even back in Sunnydale; he was making a special effort just for her. She thought ruefully of how much she had wanted that those first couple of years of their relationship, how she had constantly looked for him at the Bronze. Now she didn’t really care.

He danced a few of the slow dances with her and she sat out the other slow ones at the table with him, sipping at a drink and making light conversation, trying to keep things easy between them. He knew something was going on and she didn’t want him looking too deep.

The fast dances she threw herself into without him, needing the frantic action and the pulsations of the too-loud music with its bass turned up high and the vibration of the rhythm pounding through her like the beat of her heart, her hair whipping around her face. She lost Willow and Xander in the crush, but she didn’t need them, didn’t want a partner though the men jostled each other to dance close to her and try to get her to respond to them. But she didn’t really see them, caught up in motion, whatever male body that happened to be in front of her becoming only an unneeded adjunct to her movement.

Fast dance turned to slow and she began to work her way back across the dance floor to the table, still moving languidly to the deep, sensuous beat. Some guy stepped towards her, wanting to ask her to dance this with him and she started to shake her head, explain that she was on her way to join her friends. But then he stepped back suddenly, his gaze going past her.

“This dance is mine,” purred Spike’s voice behind her.

Her heart leapt. She looked back over her shoulder and there he was, barely an inch from her, just the slightest hint of fang showing in his tight smile, lids down over smouldering, dangerous eyes. In full predator mode. The blue-eyed white leopard and just as deadly. No wonder the other man backed away.

“They’ll see you,” she muttered, casting a glance at the table on the far side of the dance floor, where Angel was sitting and Willow and Xander were joining him. But in the crush and the dark and the strobing lights, they might not be able to make out either her or who she was with.

“I should care?”

“I don’t want them to see you.”

“Who are you afraid of? Them or me?”

She started to move away and he drew her back with light fingers on her upper arms. Barely a touch, but she stopped. Couldn’t help it.

“I...hoped you’d left Rome.” She bit her lip, furious at her own reactions. “Where have you been for the last few days?”

“Around. Did you miss me?”

“No! Did you do it on purpose?”

“Maybe. Absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder. Or at least turn up the heat.”

His fingertips slid lightly and caressingly down her bare arms. She shivered involuntarily.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Why not? You like it.”

“Angel’s with us. He’ll smell you on me.”

“Let him.” He pulled her back to lean against him.

She found herself relaxing against him, wanted to melt into him. They were both still moving to the music, bodies rubbing sensuously against each other. He bent that beautiful head, cheekbone cool against hers, parted lips brushing the corner of her jaw.

He felt so good, all that hard muscle against her back. Maybe if Angel smelled him on her, he would think it was William she had touched, she thought wildly, and that the vamp vibe was from someone she had dusted. He wouldn’t be expecting Spike to be around, so surely he would think the scent was from two different things, not one. She could explain it to him that way if he asked.

“Are you trying to protect me?” he asked, amused. “I like that. But I can take that wanker.”

And then again, Angel might clue in. She turned to face him, holding him away from her by her fingertips against his stomach. He pressed forward against them, smiling.

“Maybe. But a crossbow can take you.”

“Too chicken to fight me fair, is he?”

“No. But Giles and Xander will use crossbows.”

“They’re human. I’m a vamp. I move too fast.”

“Not if you don’t see it coming.”

“Are you afraid of that or are you afraid of this?” His fingertips ran lightly down her spine.

“Spike. Stop.”

He raised his hands, smiling, held them palm out at his shoulders. But his head bent and his open mouth was not even a fraction of an inch away from hers and his breath shook against her lips with his laughter. She was so aware of him that just that tiny stir of air was enough to make her feel as if he had actually kissed her, to vividly bring back the inner shape of his mouth and its taste. Her Slayer senses had gone on alert with his vamp signature and she was attuned to everything about him—the coolness and solidity of the ripped muscles under her fingertips, the familiar scent of leather and cigarettes and his own clean flesh beneath, that beautiful face filling her vision, the throb of the music stressing the rich sensuality that had suddenly sprung up between them.

“Heat,” he said. “Don’t you feel it?”

“No.”

“Liar. Denying it doesn’t make it go away.”

“Spike, step back.”

“Not touching you, Slayer.”

And he wasn’t. His open mouth was sliding down the side of her face, along her throat, across her collarbone, but moving always a fraction of an inch away so that only his breath feathered her skin. His hands slipped downwards over her breasts to her waist to her hips. Shaping the air. Not touching. But anticipation of his touch was almost more intense that the touch itself would have been.

“Dammit, Spike!”

“You want me to touch you.”

His lips pressed for just a second on her bare shoulder, cool lips that burned. She shuddered violently, wanting it so badly.

“See? And I want you to touch me. Why is it wrong, Slayer?”

“You’re not...”

“What?”

It took the last of her resolve to pull away. “They’re looking for me.”

She could see Willow and Xander craning their heads as they looked around for her among the crush of bodies.

“How long can you keep running?” he asked, amused.

Not that much longer, she thought bitterly. “Go away.”

“I’ll go. To your flat. You’re not getting off that easy, pet. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“That won’t do you any good,” she snapped. “I had Willow do that disinvite spell. You won’t be able to come in.”

“So there,” he mocked with that vivid, gorgeous smile. “I’ll be waiting for you anyway, Slayer.”

To tempt her to invite him in. And she would be tempted.

“It’s just not fair,” she muttered under her breath.

He heard that. She heard him laugh behind her as she wove her way through the crowd. Some man in front of her was holding a drink. She managed to bump against his elbow and felt liquid splash onto her thin top and down one leg of her leather leggings.

“Scusi, signorina!”

“È colpa mia. Non importo.” She hoped she had said that right.

She went on, smiling, flicking at the spill lightly with her fingertips. The alcohol should mask any lingering scent of Spike on her. It seemed that it did because Angel looked up at her with no suspicion at all when she reached the table.

“Not dancing anymore, Buff?” Xander asked.

She smiled weakly. “Wore myself out.”

“I’m not surprised.” Xander grinned at her. “Must be a Slayer thing, having that much energy.”

Not a Slayer thing. Just a female-in-heat thing, she thought bitterly. Her nerves were all on edge and her skin felt tight and hot and sensitive. If someone had laid a finger on her, she probably would sizzle.

She was on edge the rest of the evening, at once wanting it to end and wanting it to go on forever so that she wouldn’t have to face him when she got back home.

They drove back to her apartment first because the rest of them were all going back to the College. When Xander stopped the car in front of it, she scrambled out as fast as she could to prevent anyone from joining her.

“I’m sorry not to ask all of you up for a nightcap,” she said hurriedly as Angel began to climb out too, “but I’m kinda tired.”

“I am too,” said Willow, glancing at Angel. She probably thought Buffy just didn’t want Angel to find out about the disinvite on the flat. “Let’s just call it a night.”

She waved them off and saw Angel frowning out of the back window. He knew something was off. Slayers didn’t tire that easily. But what was she going to say? ‘I don’t want you all to come up because I’ve got a demon waiting for me on my balcony’?

Which was exactly where he was, sprawled in a chair at the balcony table, smoking a cigarette.

“Took you long enough,” he said and grinned when she didn’t step out of the door, but stayed inside the flat where he couldn’t enter. “Trying to avoid temptation, Slayer?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Cute trick that, making that guy spill his drink on you. I take it that the alcohol fumes covered my scent.”

“Yes.” She was embarrassed that she had been forced to resort to a trick like that.

He gave her an up-from-under look. She hadn’t turned on the living room lights and his face was in shadow, only the sharp curve of his cheekbone and the platinum of his hair etched out of the dark by the moonlight. He drew on his cigarette and the light from the coal glowed red on his face for a second, turning it predatory, and lit hot sparks in the blackness of his pupils. For a moment, he looked all demon.

“Ashamed of me, are you?”

“It isn’t that!”

“Isn’t it?”

She just didn’t want to see him dusted. “Go away, Spike!”

“Can’t. There’s something tying us together, Slayer. Don’t you know that? Some invisible cord. I can feel the pull.”

“There’s nothing connecting us. Leave Rome, Spike.”

“Well, I did, y’know. Went to Venice last weekend. Pretty city, Venice. But here I am back again.”

“Stalking me.”

“Is that what you call wanting to be around you, Slayer? You underestimate your attraction. Moth to the flame, I am.”

“Yeah, right.”

He laughed. “’S true. Shoulda seen me rushing through things in Venice just to get back here fast. Went without sleep for forty-eight hours straight to get things done quick. Was I ever knackered! Funny, really. But I couldn’t stay away.”

She tried to ignore that. “Why were you in Venice anyway?”

“Little job for the Master. Oh, get that look off your face, Slayer. You’d have approved of this one.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Buffy muttered.

“You have a suspicious nature.” He grinned and flicked the stub of his cigarette over the railing in a shower of sparks. “Remember that Immortal git, the one that got so scared of you he cut and ran? Big mistake, that was. Seems that when he took off he forgot all about the couple of chores he’d been doing for the Master and they got messed up. The Master wasn’t happy about that at all. And he took offense that the wanker was more scared of you than of him. Lèse majesté. So he slapped a bounty on the git’s head.”

“Which you collected.”

“Yeah. Nice little nestegg I’ve got now. Money for old rope, it was. Immortal twit thought he’d gotten away clean, but it just happened I knew it was Venice he’d buggered off to. His own minions caved when I told them who wanted him. The Master’s one sod you don’t piss off. Older than Rome, he is, and meaner than a spitting cobra. Minions sold the Immortal down the river fast as they could. It was surprisingly satisfying taking him down,” he said thoughtfully. “Don’ know why.”

“Well, I was going to dust him myself, so I don’t mind that you did.” She was relieved that the conversation had taken this turn. The neutral subject was a gift, hopefully distracting him from the other.

“Didn’t actually. The Master wanted him alive. But the Immortal’s probably wishing I had dusted him. The Master’s not known for his kindly nature. Immortal might not be so pleased with his immortality now that it means having his guts pulled out inch by inch for a few centuries. Or even eternally.”

“Uh...”

“You’re not gonna shed tears over him, are you? Way I hear it, it’s only what he deserves.”

She thought that over. He was right. Vamp internal affairs were not her problem. The Master, however...

“Who’s the Master, Spike?”

“Yeah, heard you were hunting him. Don’ know his name, don’ know his whereabouts and wouldn’t tell you if I did.” At her reproachful glare, he shrugged. “He’s old, Slayer. He’s seen history flow past him like a river. You’re a mayfly to him. He might brush at you like he’d brush at a gnat pestering him, but he doesn’t really care if his minions fail to wipe out your baby Slayers or your College. He can wait you out, you see, just like he’s waited out any other calamity that’s rocked the Eternal City these last two millennia. But kill him and you’ll see blood running ankle-deep through the streets of Rome.”

Buffy frowned. “Say what?”

“There’s an equilibrium between life and death in Rome right now, Slayer. The Master’s interest is not in killing Romans in their hundreds of thousands or in bringing hellgods across dimensions to turn this planet into a hellworld. Apocalypses don’t interest him. All he cares about is his own comfort, to live in luxury forever and hold onto that power it’s taken him centuries to accumulate. He’s entirely self-absorbed. He doesn’t want change and he doesn’t want war. He wants a balance of power and he’s the only thing holding his minions back. Kill him and the power struggle that will erupt after he’s gone will be like nothing you’ve ever seen. Added to that, whichever vamp comes out on top will be younger, which means far less wise and far more bloodthirsty. Ask yourself if it’s worth it.”

“But the deaths...”

“Go ahead and prevent them. Save all the victims you can. Dust all the minions you like. He won’t care.” He looked at the dissatisfaction on her face and laughed a little. “Evil’s always there, Slayer. You can never eradicate it. If you could, you’d get heaven on earth. But that’s not gonna happen. You Slayers, you’re like cops. And like cops anywhere in the world, all you can do is hold back the tide, not make it go away.”

“That is the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard,” she muttered.

“Or the most heroic.” He let a beat go by for her to think about that, then shrugged. “Talk to your Watcher about it.”

“Damn right I will.”

There was a little silence. He was leaning back in his chair, watching her with lazy sensuality, his eyes heavy-lidded and dark. It had been foolish to hope that he would forget his real purpose. All throughout their conversation, there had been that undercurrent of heat and demand. Tomcat on the back fence calling. That insistent, primal pull of passion and desire.

Not love, just lust. But it was oh so compelling anyway.

“Who do you see when you look at me?” he asked suddenly.

“No one!”

He was leaning forward now on his forearm on the balcony table. A cat about to spring.

“This doppelgänger? I looked for him, y’know. Couldn’t find him.”

But William was just one floor up. Buffy was relieved that Spike hadn’t located him, because who knew what he might do? But still it shouldn’t have been that difficult.

“Who is he, Slayer? This good twin. I’m the evil twin, aren’t I? Does he make you feel the way I make you feel?”

She shook her head involuntarily and he smiled.

“Didn’t think so. Opposites attract. The darkness calls you. Just as the light calls me. Danger adds spice.”

He was out of the chair in one fast rush, a predatory leap forward, that cat spring. His hands slammed against the doorposts. Even though she knew he couldn’t pass the door, she jumped and caught her breath in a gasp.

“See?” he purred. “Your pulse is racing, Slayer. I can sense the blood beat. It’s a thrill, isn’t it? Walking that tightrope, aware of the abyss below you, wanting to fall.”

Outside that invisible barrier, he was only an inch away. She could feel his breath upon her lips, smell the scent of him, see the blaze in those blue eyes looking down at her.

“Fall, Slayer. I’ll catch you.”

That’s what she was afraid of.

“You’ll be safe. Not gonna rip your throat out. That’s not what I want. Just want us to pleasure each other. Where’s the harm in that?”

There was harm. He didn’t love her and she couldn’t allow herself to love him. He wasn’t Spike, anymore than William was, just the other side of the coin—human one way, demon the other.

“Buffy!” he said intensely. And that was Spike, the very sound of him.

Those eyes burning down at her—she had seen them before. That darkness and that vulnerability had been there whenever they had taken each other, from the first time in that abandoned house they had brought down around them and every time since.

It was Spike. It wasn’t just the demon. Or if it was, the demon was what had made love to her. The soul had come later.

And the soul was here in this Spike, she remembered with a shock. She could see it. Behind the passion of those eyes, that softness.

“Oh, my God!” she whispered.

Not demon or human, but the combination that was Spike, who had been both, retaining so much of his humanity. Who had loved her even without the soul. Stripped of his memory now, not loving her or remembering anything about his history, but still Spike.

He wasn’t just the demon. Somehow, impossibly, he was Spike. More than the demon and more than the human. That combination of the two that she had yearned for. Back here in front of her again. And once again, out of fear, she was throwing it away.

Not this time. Her hands reached out to him.

“Yes, give in to it,” he said in a breathless rasp and kissed her, sweeping her up against him.

She kissed him back feverishly, desperately, realizing only dimly that he had pressed right through the barrier. Maybe her unvoiced consent had been enough or maybe Willow’s spell had failed or never taken hold. She didn’t care.

It was Spike in her arms again. Spike kissing her with raw urgency. Spike’s body hard and demanding and intoxicating against hers. She held him fiercely, losing herself in the sense of him, in taste and feel and scent, in the rightness of it.

They kissed and kissed again, mouths twisting together devouringly, bodies locked together and rubbing against each other greedily. She had been celibate too long, wanting no one but him, even when she had not known she loved him. And here he was.

She wasn’t even aware of shoving his duster off him, was aware only the feel of his body beneath the soft cotton of his tee under her hands as she rediscovered the familiar planes and angles of muscle and bone. Aware of him as she had never been aware of him before when he had been only an instrument to give her sensation, like some dildo or vibrator. Aware now not only of his body, but of the person making love to her, that unique, particular being that was Spike whom she had never allowed to truly reach her before.

She saw him now, this gift that she had previously thrown away, was aware of nothing else, wanted nothing else.

He tore his mouth away and she felt his chest and stomach heave against her as he gasped for breath, caught up in the storm as much as she was. Cool lips burned down her throat.

“Which..?”

She knew what he meant; they were on the same page of need. “Second door...”

Her arms wrapped around his neck as he scooped her up, swept her through space. The next moment he was tipping her onto her bed.

The room was dark. He could see with his vamp sight; she couldn’t. She reached out to snap on the bedside lamp.

He looked up, amused, from where he was pulling off her high, strappy sandals. “And here I thought you’d be the shy type and want the lights off.”

“Want to see you,” she said and he smiled.

“Like what you see?”

“So much.”

She had never allowed herself to really see him before, see his beauty. Now she couldn’t stop looking, her gaze lingering on him, moving over him like a caress.

“Like what I see too,” he muttered. “Bloody hell, Slayer, just looking at you is driving me insane, never mind the rest.”

He was peeling her leggings off her, leaving her only in her black thong. She caught at her top and yanked it over her head, flung it away together with her strapless bra and heard the harsh rasp of his breath in his throat as he looked down at her naked breasts.

“God!” he said and folded abruptly down on top of her.

His mouth sucked in most of one breast. She gasped involuntarily as his tongue rasped over her nipple. That tongue was different, sandpaper rough like a cat’s. Her nipple went painfully hard in a second, her whole body arched, pushing her breast into his mouth, her hands clutching his head to hold it to her. The sensation was unbelievable, shockingly erotic.

His head lifted to move to her other breast and she caught a glimpse of his eyes. His irises had gone gold, his vamp nature coming to the fore. She had never allowed that before, had always hated that it was a vamp she was fucking. And he had repressed that side of himself, knowing that to remind her of it would be to break the spell of lust that had brought her to him and would repel her into a flight from which there would have been no returning.

She knew better now, realized now that she had cheated herself by not letting him be what he was. Cheated him too. And this time it wasn’t just fucking.

“God, Spike!” she gasped as that raspy tongue worked her and that demanding mouth drew on her in strong pulls that went straight down to her core so that she arched and writhed uncontrollably.

But it wasn’t just the sensation she wanted, the way she had before, closing her mind to everything but the raw sexuality, shutting him out. This time he was what she wanted, his person, his being.

Impossible to explain.

“Want your skin,” she muttered, pulling at his tee. “Want your skin on mine.”

She heard the thud of his boots hitting the floor as he kicked them off, but was too occupied with pulling his tee over his head to pay any attention. He twisted, his hands yanking at his belt. She felt him shoving his jeans off hurriedly, kicking them away, but was too busy caressing his face, his body, to think of anything else.

“Slayer,” he whispered, an oddly strangled sound, as her open mouth ran down the cord of his neck, sucked along his collarbone, as her arms clenched about him and her hands slid cherishingly over his body. “Slayer. What aren’t you telling me?”

“What do you mean?”

She felt him shiver against her, saw his eyes half-close as his forehead fell against hers, saw the helplessness and the vulnerability in them.

“This...It’s something more. It’s...”

“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s what it should have been.”

“What are you doing to me, Slayer?”

“Loving you.”

“Oh, God.”

Something moved, intense and painful in his eyes, some deepseated response. She didn’t know whether it was memory or whether it was something fundamental ingrained bone deep in him. But she felt him surrender to her. The way he had always surrendered to her, even though she had always held herself apart, kept herself essentially untouched. He never had. He had always given himself totally, nothing held back, and even though she had tried to deny it, tried not to see, she had known it. And here he was doing it again without even knowing what he was doing, that reflex so basic to him, as much part of him as his vampiric nature.

“I’ve been such a fool,” she muttered and wrapped him tightly in her arms, felt the shuddering fierceness of his response.

So much more than it had been before, now that it mattered so much to her. Every touch felt so intensely that it bordered on pain. A tidal wave of feeling. He was skilled, a hundred and twenty years of practice behind him, and knew exactly how to drive her mindless with passion. But she knew him intimately, knew just where and how to touch to give him pleasure too.

She saw his eyes glaze, heard the gasping pant of his breath, and her heart hurt her, seeing his pleasure and getting so much pleasure in return as his hands and his mouth and his body moved on her, the two of them twisting and coiling about each other, driving each other higher and higher.

Every touch so desperately wanted, every slide of skin against skin blazing like wildfire along their nerves, friction building an agonizing spiral of exigent desire. Her nails clawed his ass, her teeth sank into his shoulder, his fangs pricked constellations of tiny bite marks over her breasts and belly and thighs. But those slight stings were only an even more arousing stimulation, thrust them even deeper into that passionate frenzy.

“Oh, God!” she gasped. “Can’t take it anymore! Spike...!”

Her thong snapped and was gone.

“Yes,” she breathed as he moved over her with intent. “Oh, yes. Ohh!”

He was always a little too big; her Slayer muscles were a little too tight. That first thrust was always an excruciating rapture. She cried out in exultation, clenched hard upon his thickness within her and heard him groan in shock and delight. He didn’t remember what it had been like before between them, but she did and to have him within her again, stretching her the way he always did, was ecstasy.

He was whispering things as he hammered into her, words of praise, of encouragement, telling her how she made him feel, how glorious it was. He always had—when did Spike ever stop talking?—but always before his words had been muffled against her skin because he had known she didn’t want to hear them, and always before she had never wanted to say them back. But now she wanted to say them back, all those endearments, had to clench her teeth not to say the love words that would only startle and disturb him this time.

Driving each other up that agonizingly rapturous climb, moving faster and faster until they reached that bright, sizzling, accelerated rush. Beyond words now or gentleness, eyes blind, bodies racked with pleasure, lost in savage, exigent sensation that went on and on, the world and time lost in this eternity of delight. Until mind and body could bear no more.

She felt him jolt and pulse within her, felt her own brain fry right out in the waves of pleasure that battered into her, in that shattering climax that no one else had ever been able to give her.



TBC