Warning: further implied rape, and reference to Seeing Red

SPIKE: Do you know how much blood you can drink from a girl before she'll die? I do. You see, the trick is to drink just enough... to know how to damage them just enough... so that they'll still cry when you... ‘cause it’s not worth it if they don’t cry.
        Never Leave Me


    Buffy's hands were still over her ears when he opened her closet door. His shirt was off, his hair was mussed, there was still a spot of blood on the side of his mouth. She felt sick, and hadn't been able to make herself stop crying. She tried to turn away when Spike touched her. "What's with you?" he asked, lifting her partially up and into his arms – not entirely ungently, but it wasn't romantic, either. "You knew this was going to happen."

    “Fuck off.”

    He picked her up properly, and she slapped him. “Did you want me to hit you back?” he asked evenly.

    “Get off me.”

    He tensed with anger. “You’re not making sense, pet. Is this where we are, now? Is this going to be the rest of it? Vampire and victim? ‘Cause that wasn’t how I wanted it.”

    “You are so fucking evil.”

    “You knew this when you came here,” he said. “You knew the sorts of things I do. Things like this, or worse than this, and I do them all the bloody time. What’s the difference?”

    “You tried to make me do it,” Buffy said.

    Spike stared at her, his blue eyes like ice. “Yeah,” he said. “But I didn’t.”

    He left it at that.

    She couldn’t. “I said no, and you still went and...”

    “I tried,” he growled. “I saved you. And you’re being right petty about it.”

    “About you murdering someone else because she wanted me?”

    “She’d have wanted someone whether you were here or not,” he told her. “She does this sometimes. It’s nothing to do with you.”

    He was probably right. Which made the whole sordid affair no more her doing than any of the other thousands of people Spike and Drusilla had killed in their hideous unlives. But she had been there... it had been hers to witness. She’d always known he’d done things like this. “You know what I am,” he’d told her once, back when he still had no soul. “You come to me all the same.”

    What did that make her?

    But seeing it felt so different from just knowing it. Buffy sagged in his arms in resignation. "Please tell me it's over," she said. "Just tell me she's dead."

    "’Course she's dead," Spike said.

    Buffy winced, but she was still so relieved. If she wasn’t dead, Buffy would have had to make another decision – trying to save her or not – and she wasn’t up to it tonight. She didn't want Spike to touch her. Unfortunately, he seemed keen to exercise his supposed right to, despite her tacit revulsion. He pulled her out of the closet and down onto the sofa bed with him. He held her, pulling her close to his chest so tightly Buffy knew he wasn’t going to let her struggle away.

    Buffy nearly retched. The sounds that woman had been making, the knowledge that it was Spike – or at least partially Spike – that was doing it made her want to vomit. She wanted to run away so badly. She wanted to be strong enough to fight him off, or even slay him. She wanted Spike – her own Spike – to acknowledge how terrible it was, tell her it was okay, and that it was over now. He'd gone through physical and mental tortures, he knew what it was to endure them. But this wasn't her Spike; this was Drusilla's Spike, and he was a monster.

    She cringed away as he started to kiss her, but he didn't let her go. He kissed her cheeks and her eyes over and over, gently, lovingly, until she realized he wasn't just establishing dominance, his rights over her. He was kissing her tears away.

    The realization made her open her eyes and gaze at him. "What are you doing?"

    "What's it look like?" he asked, and kissed her gently on the lips.

    She pulled away. “Don’t.”

    Spike looked wounded. "What’s going on, pet? You know I kill someone almost every night. You were watching me in CB’s, I felt you. You saw it. You stood and let me do it, and followed me home like a sodding puppy. You know I am a killer. I know you’ve had your knickers in a ball about it, but you knew. And I let you off the hook. I thought you’d be happy about that.”

    “I hate what you just did,” she said.

    “I let you off.”

    “And you want me to be grateful?” Buffy said. She shook her head.

    Spike’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah,” he said pointedly. “Actually, I do.”

    “Go to hell.”

    He swallowed. “This has been hard, girl. You have no idea how hard. You have no sodding clue how much I’ve been controlling myself around you. You don’t make sense, bit. You’re treating me as if I weren’t a bloody vampire, when you know better. You know what I am. You've been just fine with every other depravity that's come through these doors."

    "I'm not fine with it," Buffy told him. "I just know it's going to happen, and there's nothing I can do about it. Not now."

    “But you’re okay with it.”

    “I hate it.” She closed her eyes in misery. “I hate it,” she whispered.

    “So if you hate it so much, why are you all right with me touching you?”

    “Who says I am?” Buffy asked, annoyed.

    “You have,” Spike said. “Until just this moment. Every day, every night. You’ve been willing and open and smiling.”

    Buffy sank her head. She had been. And she was entirely twisted up about it. She’d been making love to the man inside him and pretending the evil didn’t own him. He couldn’t tell the difference, though. It was all one to him.

    “Why have you been all right with it, when it’s me?”

    She couldn’t explain. “Because it is you,” she said. “God, don’t make me try to explain.”

    “I’m the most prolific killer in this house. Compared to the boys, to Dru, I’m nastier. I’m hungrier.”

    “So?”

    “So, you know that, and you’ve been okay with touching me. And yet you freak out at a doll that I wouldn’t have allowed to hurt you.”

    “He’s evil.”

    “He hasn’t killed near as many as I have. And he’s the one who makes you tremble with revulsion?”

    “He’s a willful killer.”

    There was a long pause. “I’m a killer,” Spike said quietly. “What’s the bloody difference?”

    “You’re a vampire,” Buffy said.

    “And?”

    “You’re a demon. You were made to kill, it’s your nature, it’s a need that was born in you the moment Drusilla turned you.” Spike looked startled again, and Buffy realized she’d just revealed she knew another truth about him. No matter now. “The demon ripped out your soul and turned you into a creature of darkness, and now that’s what you are. The rules of humanity, of morality, of good and evil... they placed you on one side, and it would take a miracle to make any difference. But that... thing in there... that beast that was born a man has no such excuse.”

    “I thought you accepted the killing,” Spike said, his voice dull. “I thought you wanted me, the warrior, the murderer. I thought you understood that.”

    “I accept that,” Buffy said. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I hate that you kill. I hate that almost every night someone, somewhere, is going to die at your hands. But that’s what you do. That’s not you.”

    “It is me,” Spike said, sounding angry. “I thought you grasped that. I am the killer, the killer is me. I bloody love it. I revel in it. I bathe in it, in joy and exultation. Nothing’s ever going to change that.”

    “Maybe not,” Buffy said. “But Spike, you’re evil because you are a vampire, and as a vampire... were you really left with a choice?”

    Spike stared down at her. “What do you mean?”

    “Think about it,” she said. “Think about when you were human. Is any of this what you would have wanted?”

    “I never think about that.”

    “Why not?” Buffy said. “You see? It hurts, doesn’t it?”

    “No!” Spike said.

    “Think of yourself as that person, and then look and see what you are.”

    “That person,” Spike said, “wasn’t me.”

    “I know it wasn’t,” Buffy said. “Because he was murdered.”

    “And now I am the murderer,” Spike said. “And I revel in it. That is what I am.”

    Buffy’s head sank into his shoulder. “Why can’t you see it?” she said. “I know you remember. Why can’t you remember how it felt?”

    “I do,” he said. “I remember how it felt. It felt weak, and scared, and lonely. I wasn’t alive until I was killed.”

    “And now killing is the only thing that makes you feel alive?” Buffy asked. “That’s it, you know. The difference between the doll, and you. The choice to be only yourself was taken from you, blasted by bloodlust and the need to kill. You were made into a monster. He chooses to be.”

    “I choose to be,” Spike said.

    “No,” Buffy said. “The way you are, the killing is all but forced on you. You woke poisoned by a lust for blood, the feeling that bad was good, and a complete disregard and contempt for humanity. You kill and you feed, because that’s what... what god or fate or the devil made you do, not because you wanted to.”

    “No one makes me do anything.”

    “Maybe. But you’re a chess piece in a supernatural war of good and evil, turned into a wicked creature, and separate from the laws of man. He’s a man – or he should have been.”

    “And that makes him better?”

    “No. It makes him a hundred times worse. You have no soul, you have no conscience, both have been stolen from you. You didn’t abandon them or corrupt them on your own. His soul is drenched in depravity and blood.” She shook her head. “The rules of the demon world and the human world are different. You can’t help what you are. He should be able to.”

    Spike regarded her. “And what the hell are you?” he asked. “What about your soul, your precious conscience? You think they stay so clean, when you willingly crawl into bed with a murderer?”

    Buffy sank under the twisted logic of it all. She couldn’t tell him that he was a vampire with enough heart to grow the tiniest hint of a conscience, enough to make choices beyond evil, enough to choose to earn back his soul. A miracle that no other vampire had managed – Angel had been forced into it. She couldn’t tell him that she was making love to his past, only because she knew his future. She also couldn’t tell him the real reason: that her own soul was also tainted by demonic energy. She’d had violence and death burned into her soul from the time her dreams had started as a potential, before she was even called as a slayer. She too was a killer... she was just more discriminant.

    “This is where I need to be,” she said instead. “I know you’re a killer. I have to accept that.” For now, she didn’t say.

    He was silent a long time. "So you accept that,” Spike said. “So what started this?" He kissed each of her eyelids in turn.

    “Because what you did was terrible.”

    Spike regarded her. “She wasn’t hurt much.”

    Buffy threw up her hands in frustration. “That doesn’t make it better!”

    “Wouldn’t hurting her have made it worse?”

    “Yes, but...! Oh, god, Spike, I am so talking to an empty void. It was rape, and it was death.”

    “Yeah, but it was gentle.”

    “And you couldn’t hear her screaming?” Buffy groaned. “No, of course you could, you liked it. I can’t do this.” She made to get off the bed.

    “No. Explain it to me. You begged me to tell you she was dead, and it was over. You watched me kill before, and followed, you didn’t pull away then. If it wasn’t the death that was the problem, and it wasn’t pain, then...?”

    “Spike, what you just did was pure evil!”

    “So is just killing. Why is there a difference?”

    “God. Spike... to be held down and forced like that is one of the most horrific things that can happen to anyone.”

    “I don’t know if I agree.”

    “You don’t have to agree! Just believe me, I know, okay? Personally.”

    Spike regarded her. “You’re saying that’s what I’ve been doing to you.”

    Buffy sagged. She was probably the only real person in the world to him at the moment. Accusing him was the worst possible thing she could do. It would turn him completely evil in his own eyes, and destroy all the progress she’d made.  “No.” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “I came here with... whaddyacallit, informed consent. I knew what I was getting into.” She looked down. “That was something else.”

    He was gazing at her with concern. “What?”

    Buffy swallowed, and then decided, what the hell. Might as well tell him the truth. Or part of it, anyway. "I was nearly raped once," she said. "It was... horrible. And I know what she... I couldn't help but think... remember... what that felt like... when I thought you’d make me... and as I listened to what was going on in there." That had been harder to say than she’d expected. “So, yeah. I know personally, okay?”

    Spike looked at her. "Grabbed in an alley?"

    "How many rapists really lurk in alleys like vampires?” Buffy asked.

    “So you knew him.”

    She wouldn't look at him. "It was a friend of mine,” she said. The memory of it was confused, with darkness on both sides of the equation. It was no longer traumatic to recall, but it was dark and pained. She knew how much the moment, and the situation itself, had tortured both of them. “More than a friend, actually. Someone... someone I'd once tried to love. And for a lot of reasons, I wasn’t... prepared to love him. Some of it was him. Some of it was me. But I couldn’t love him properly, not as things were. He loved me a lot, and I’d... hurt him by leaving. Hurt him a lot more than I meant to. He couldn’t accept my decision... felt he needed me back. He thought... for a brief moment there... that he could make me love him." She swallowed. "He betrayed me."

    She couldn't see his eyes, but she could feel the weight of his stare. "Want me to kill him for you?"

    The black humour of his blunt question made Buffy laugh aloud. She was actually touched. She almost started crying again.

    "I mean it. If he's in New York, he'll be pretty easy to find. Phone books are wonderful things. I can even bring him here and kill him in front of you, if you want." He ran his finger down her cheek. "Make sure he knows why he's dying." His tone was both dark and seductive, and she knew he meant well. In his sick, soulless way. “I can do it really, really painfully.” He sounded like it would be a sexual treat.

     "No," she said. "In a way, you already killed him." Or you will have, she thought to herself.

    Spike grunted, almost disappointed. "One of the CB crowd? Sorry. Probably wouldn't remember, I kill a lot of people."

    "No," Buffy said. "You wouldn't remember."

    "Is that why you came to me?" he asked softly. "Because of that?"

    "In a way," she said. She looked up at him, finally. Another two tears escaped her eyes, and Spike gently kissed each of them away. "Why are you doing that?" she asked. It was an uncharacteristically gentle gesture – or uncharacteristic for this version of Spike, anyway.

    He shrugged. "I like to. I've always liked to. That's why I make girls cry." He stared at her through half hooded eyes. "Tears aren't blood, but..." He ran his lips along her skin. "I like to take it from them anyway."

    Buffy was stunned. "You make girls cry because... you like to kiss it away?"

    "Yeah," he said. He leaned back against the pillows and gazed at her, propping her against him so he could run his fingers through her hair. "Learned it from a mate of mine. He used to have ideas about the best ways to kill, came up with really inventive death games. He liked to take a bunch of girls – he'd use a whorehouse, if there was nothing else available, but he preferred garden parties, reading or sewing clubs. Virgins, ideally. He'd lock 'em up, start raping and feeding, while the others watched, screaming in terror. He got off on how their terror fed into itself. But you know, you get full if you take a whole victim, so he'd take part of a girl, and then leave her while he turned to another. I started out just taking one of them, and watching, but his leftovers looked really appealing. Pale and crying and tragic, and... it got to the point I'd come up after him and just take them in my arms."

    His eyes were distant then, almost wistful, as he fondled Buffy's hair. "I'd pull them up real gently... kiss all those tears away, and then just take away their pain. They were so glad to see me. They were so grateful, they’d just fall into me. Some clung to me like they’d been drowning before I came to them. It was wonderful to be wanted like that. I'd kill them so gentle..." He glanced down at her. "Ah, well, but you know what that's like."

    Buffy was amazed. "You... Angel tortured them, and you'd... rescue them?"

    Spike's eyes narrowed. "You know Angelus?"

    Buffy shook her head. "Not really," she said, rather than try and get into details she'd have to keep vague anyway. "I just know you."

    "Yeah, well. Dunno if you'd call it a rescue, I was killing them."

    "But you did it gentle," she said.

    Spike shrugged. "I enjoyed it," he said. "Loved feeling all that pain and terror just disappear in my arms. The way they'd give themselves to me, completely, just to escape." He glanced down at her chuckling fondly. "There aren't a lot of victims who'll do that." He brushed a strand of hair out of her face, his eyes remarkably soft. "Not naturally." He gazed at her for another long moment, confusion and questions in his eyes, which they both knew she wasn't going to answer properly. "Finally he realized what I was doing, and asked why I waited for him. Told me I didn’t have to. So I do it all myself now. Make 'em cry, and take it away. It's nice."

    Buffy stared at him. "You are so twisted."

    Spike smiled a bit. "Hey, evil, pet. What did you expect?"

    "I didn't say evil. I said twisted. You're right – it is nice. It's disgusting and vile and horrifying, and kind." She touched his cheek. "God, what did they do to you? You must have been the sweetest man in the century when you were human."

    "I was weak," Spike snarled, but his anger was only on the surface, she could tell. "I was pitiful. Now I'm a bloody god." Then he grabbed her by the hair and lifted her, painfully, dragging her up so he could stare into her eyes. "I'm your bloody god."

    "I'm your pet," Buffy said softly, trembling again. She would have given anything to be a slayer again, to be able to win against him with strength and agility she didn't have. All she had was what she knew of him, and her love for him, and the hope – the slim hope – that both of those things might soften his heart long enough for him to show her mercy, for just ten minutes.

    "Then don't insult me," he said.

    “I wasn’t trying to insult you,” Buffy whispered. “I was just trying to find you.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “Your heart,” she said. She reached forward, even though it pulled at her hair, and kissed his hollow cheek. “Your blood,” she added. “The reason you didn’t make me go into that room when I begged you. No matter how... twisted... your offer was.” He released her hair, and she climbed over him, straddling him, kissing at his throat, his face, wishing that she could magically transform him into her tender, loving Spike as she did it. “All the things that make me love you. The warrior...” she kissed along his heated, blood tainted skin, “and the poet. The hunter and the lover. The rebel vampire.”

    He lay still beneath her. “The poet. How did you know that?” he asked without inflection. “How did you know what I was?”

    “Spike...” She looked up at him. “William. Haven’t you figured it out yet? I know you. I love you. What does it matter how?” She reached down and unbuttoned his jeans. His cock, when she found it, was sticky and soft in her hand. Oh, god. Buffy nearly retched. He was examining her reaction with his face neutral. “You raped her too, didn’t you,” Buffy said quietly.

    He only stared at her. They both knew the answer.

    Crossroads. He’d told her, years ago, what he’d done to girls before the chip, before the soul. He’d told her, and she’d taken him to her bed all the same. Thirty years in the future, she’d accepted he had done this. Now she was here, when he had. So. Could she accept his past, or couldn’t she?

    No. She didn’t have to accept it. She only had to know it, and move on.

    So move on.

    Buffy climbed off him and pulled away. “No you don–” he began.

    He was about to drag her back when she caught his hand. “Come with me.”

    “What?”

    “Come. Please.”

    “I am not your dog to come when I’m called.”

    He was hot with the blood and high on the evil. She had to be patient. “No,” Buffy said. “But you live a life drenched in blood and screaming, filled with people you need to lie to and manipulate and torture and force. Have I been any part of that?”

    He didn’t answer. Buffy pulled on his hand to make him sit up, and this time he let her. “Let me clean that stuff off you,” she said. She shouldn’t have to snuggle up to it, after all. She touched his cheek, avoiding the spot stained with the girl’s blood. “Give yourself one thing in this world that’s pure. Just for a few more days.” He stared at her, and when she pulled again on his hand, he stood up with her.

    As if in a daze, Spike let her lead him into the bathroom and turn on the shower. She turned to him to strip him down. There were blood spots on more places than his lower lip. She did not want to think about all he had just done to the girl. She knew that in thirty some years, when he looked back on this moment, he himself would be horrified by what he had done to the girl. That thought was the only reason she was able to keep going. She kept her thoughts focused on his future. That girl... she’d been tortured, raped, and killed, all of it without her consent. And Spike had just been made to torture, rape, and kill... and ultimately, it was without his own consent, either.

    Somewhere out there was a stripped soul, who would look back on this evening and scream with the horror of it. Deep in his heart, echoing in the hollowness where his soul should be, William the romantic poet was just as trapped and horrified and tormented by this whole thing as she was, and refused to let himself look at it. Two prisoners of circumstance. He’d been able to deflect the worst of it from someone he cared for tonight, but that was the current limit of his strength. It would take thirty years and more for that prisoner inside to grow strong enough to break out. He had needed help to do it. He’d needed time and healing and reasons beyond himself. He had needed an electronic leash to help him get off the addictive human blood long enough for his mind to clear.

    And he had needed Buffy to help him. Through pain and pleasure and trust, both honored and shattered. She’d demanded he be held accountable, and he had needed her strength to find his own. And he had. He would. He would fight this demon, and ultimately defeat it, though he himself admitted he’d never really be free of it. And once he had, there would be almost perfect equality between him and her, but until that time, he was still trapped. She loved the man he would become inside the horror. She reached for the tortured prisoner inside his own flesh.

    She removed his clothes slowly, letting the steam from the shower fill the room. Then she removed her shirt and showed him into the water.

    Without a word she rubbed him down, using the stream of water to caress him as much as her hands. She lathered him with soap, sliding down his arms, lacing her fingers through his, letting the slippery bubbles wash away the blood and sweat and whatever else he was covered with.

    She cleaned the blood taint away with her own hands, his face, his arms, his chest, his cock, touching every part of him, sliding down his legs and lifting his feet, cleaning every drop of blood and slime and filth away from his cool flesh. He closed his eyes and let his hand lace through her hair, resting over her scalp. The warm water poured over her head, dripping down her jaw line, trickling along her breasts and down her torso, eventually soaking the edge of her jeans.

    He made a deep noise and stepped back in the shower, pulling her with him. His wet hands reached down and pulled the jeans down off her hips – they were loose enough on her that he didn’t actually have to unbutton her. They fell around her ankles, and Buffy stepped out of them as she let him pull her into the shower with him.

    She wondered if he was going to try and have sex with her. She wasn’t sure she was ready for that yet. But that didn’t seem to be what he was after. Spike closed the shower door and stepped back from the stream of water, pulling Buffy directly under the shower. He went down to his knees with her and gazed at her, his head tilted, confusion and awe stark on his face. The water fell around her shoulders, soaking her hair, and he reached out to touch her cheek. “Is this pure, for you?” he asked her. “Is this clean?”

    His eyes were very bright in the steam, and he searched her face. “Yes,” she said.

    He didn’t seem like he believed her. “I haven’t forced you?”

    Buffy shook her head. “You may have meant to,” she said. “But I knew what I was getting into. I walked in all the same.”

    “I’ve hurt you,” he said. “I’ve bitten you, painfully. I’ve chained you up and held you down, and none of that felt forced to you?”

    Buffy shook her head. “Some of it has been troublesome. But I came to you willingly.” She touched his cheek. “William, look at me. I am not one of your sins.”

    Spike stared at her. Then he closed his eyes, as if in pain, or ecstasy, and he hissed with something she couldn’t decipher. Then he looked at her again. “And all this killing and corruption... you hate it.”

    Buffy held his eyes with hers. “I am not like Dru’s doll,” Buffy said. “I’m not here to be corrupted. I am here to love you. That’s all.”

    He searched her eyes for a long moment, and then reached for her. He pulled her into his lap as if she were a little girl, and then gently lowered his mouth to her throat. The bite was gentle, and he gave back immediately, killing the pain and sending her down. The warm water cascaded over both of them. He was breathing hard, as if in the throes of wild passion, but his movements were all deliberate and very gentle. Buffy realized he was shaking, slightly. He pulled her down quickly, the bite drawing her deeper and deeper into the lethargy. Little sounds of desperate pleasure escaped his throat, and she gasped. The feel of him against her as the warm water poured down her back and over his legs, the hard tingling sensuality of his bite, it all felt so right just then. It was a link of death, but right then, it was sacred.

    Just like it used to be.

    It was so perfect, and she felt so lost. She wasn’t a slayer. He had no soul. This wasn’t slayer and vampire, the perfect yin and yang. This wasn’t kindred souls gripping to each other against the sea of the world’s confusion and pain. This was just Spike and Buffy. It didn’t make sense. And it was still perfect.

    As the darkness flooded through her, she wondered if he really was about to kill her this time.
    

***
    
    She woke curled up in the bed, with Spike’s arms around her. Still naked, her hair still damp. Something smelled different. She realized he’d washed her hair while she was out, just as he did for Drusilla. She was still a little high on the bite, she could tell. She snuggled in close to his chest, and he caressed her damp hair. “Back?” he asked.

    “Mm-hm,” Buffy hummed.

    He let them snuggle there for a long moment before he said, “You can’t redeem me, you know.”

    “I know.”

    His voice was very low, very calm. “I’m not only steeped in sin, I am made of it,” he said. “I am a vampire. There is no redemption for a demon.”

    “No one would think so,” Buffy said neutrally.

    “I cannot be made clean. No matter how you try to cleanse me. No matter how pure and unsullied your gifts are, no matter how freely you give them, they are placed at the feet of a monster. All I can ever do is corrupt, or kill.”

    “I know that.”

    There was a long, long silence before he spoke again. “I love you,” he said then.

    Buffy sank her head into his chest. She had missed his voice, and those words. It felt so good to hear it, and she knew it had to be a lie. “You don’t have to lie to me,” she said. “I know I’m only a pet.”

    “Yes, you are,” Spike said. “I didn’t say I loved you like I love Drusilla. I am going to kill you one day. But I don’t think I’ve ever had anything pure before. Not since I was a man.” She could feel him shake his head in bewilderment. “You’ve up and made me love you,” he said. “Bloody hell.” He kissed her forehead. “I could almost hate you for it.”

    Buffy smiled. “I know that feeling.”

    He kissed her face, over and over again, and then his hand slid down her side, over her hip, until it slipped in between her legs. He manipulated her clit with his first two fingers, and she gasped, her legs spreading automatically. He slid down, moistening his fingers with her, and then sliding back up to tickle around her clit, over and over again, sliding up and around and over the swollen nub as if he were dancing with it. She hummed and moaned and bit her lip, letting every nuance of pleasure pass across her face, which he stared at as he worked her.

    He took nothing for himself, just stared and tried to pleasure her. She was so tired it took a long time, but he didn’t seem to get bored with her. She got so close to coming so many times, and each time the sensation plateaued and faded again without the final shudder of completion. She kept expecting him to give up, but he just lay there, working her with his fingers, seeming to enjoy playing with her, until one of those plateaus lingered... and lingered... and lingered... lulling her into a peaceful, blissful state, which quite suddenly exploded, leaving her whimpering, then moaning, then eventually screaming under his hand. When her pleasure had reached the point of pain he let her go, and she lay there gasping, still whining like a whipped puppy as every pulse seemed to start another spasm.

    She looked up at him, and his eyes held such wicked pleasure that she grinned. She’d have laughed, if she had the energy, but she was still suffering aftershocks. Mischief shining in his eyes, he raised his two fingers to her mouth, half forcing, half inviting her to taste her own juices. She opened her lips and he slid his fingers in. She tasted of salt and sex, and just the hint of their shower. She bit down on his fingers, and he hummed with pleasure at it. For a few moments he slid his fingers sensuously around her mouth, as if they were making love to her, and she sucked and bit and played with them as they danced round her teeth and tongue. After a bit he pulled his fingers away and replaced them with his mouth. He kissed her passionately for a few moments, and then pulled away to look at her. “I do love you,” he said.

    Buffy knew what this was going to do to him, if that was true. “I’m sorry.”

    “You will be, you little bitch,” he said, his voice very fond. “It means I’m going to kill you very slowly.”

    “Looking forward to it,” Buffy said. She was already half asleep again.

    Spike bent to her neck, but he did not bite her again. He kissed and sucked on the wound he’d inflicted earlier. It probably didn’t give him much in the way of blood, but it went numb, and probably did send her back into a high. She closed her eyes and let him do whatever he wanted to her.

    What he actually did was let her sleep.