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Never Alone by Lilachigh
 
Chp 15 Echoes
 
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Never Alone by Lilachigh


Chapter 15 Echoes

Safely back in Spike’s room, deep in the basement under the shopping mall, Buffy closed the door gently on Clem’s happy wrinkled face, as he thanked them over and over again. “We’ll be fine, don’t worry,” she said. “You look after Tosh. We just need some rest.”

Spike had thrown himself face down on the bed, dropping his boots and duster on the floor. Buffy found a bowl in the tiny shower room that led off the bedroom and filled it with warm water. Spike hardly stirred as she bathed the feet that the jagged rocks had torn so brutally. He winced a couple of times and, as Buffy glanced up, she noticed his hands were clenched into fists, gripping the pillow with a deathly grip.

“Sorry!” she said. “Trying not to hurt.”

“Don’t fret, Slayer,” he mumbled. “Soon mend. Are you okay?”

“A few burns from flying lumps of Hellmouth,” she said and he rolled over abruptly and sat up, almost sending the basin of water flying.

“Let me see.”

“Spike, it’s nothing. Your feet - ”

“Will recover.” He pulled her arms out in front of her and inspected the burns The worst one was on her cheek. She could feel it stinging. “There should be some sort of burn cream in the bathroom cabinet,” Spike said. “No use for it myself, of course. If I burn, I’ll go all the way!”

Buffy shuddered. In her mind she could see him in the Hellmouth, the light streaming from the amulet, burning up from the inside. It was a picture she knew she would see in her dreams for ever.

Spike swung off the bed and fetched the tube of ointment. He smeared some on his finger and beckoned to her. “Hold still and I’ll put this on you.”

She tensed as he touched the cream to the small burns on her arms. Every time he came this close, the tension in her body soared. She knew he didn’t remember her and that if she made any advance towards him he’d think she was just a girl who fancied a bit of rough sex. But, oh god, it was so difficult when he was this close, not to reach out and touch him....

“Right, now for your face - ”

“I can do that myself. I’ll look in the mirror - ”

She stopped and bit her lip. Glancing up at Spike, she realised he was trying desperately not to laugh. “Not got a lot of call for a mirror, pet, owing to lack of reflection, blah de blah. Just give me the cream and stand still, Slayer. I won’t bite you! Yet!”

He tilted her face upwards and with feather light touches, soothed the ointment over the burn. Buffy felt her legs begin to quiver. His lips were inches from hers, she could count his eyelashes. Height-wise they had always been such a perfect match.

She could feel her breath coming in shorter and shorter gasps. Her nipples were aching and pressing so hard against her T shirt, she knew he must be able to see.

The dark blue gaze connected with hers and for a very long minute they stood, staring at each other. Buffy ran her tongue over her lower lip. She mustn’t make the first move again! That had been so wrong, earlier in the tunnels. Because this man didn’t remember her! To him she was the Slayer, a woman called Buffy Summers. No history between them, no hatred that had warmed into liking and then into love. This man had died for her and the whole world - and the world had repaid him by making him forget.

His tongue copied hers, flicking across his that lower lip, promising so much. Without warning, she felt the warm rush of fluid between her thighs. His nostrils flared immediately and, instantly his mouth covered hers, his hands clenched on her shoulders and he fell backwards onto the bed, pulling her down on top of him.

He tangled his fingers in her hair and held her head still as he kissed her deeply. No one kissed like Spike. He made it into an art form. Lips, teeth, tongue - sensations raced through her body and Buffy felt her control slipping away. Perhaps, just once more, then she would be strict and say no.

“You’re an amazing woman, Slayer,” he muttered as he broke contact and dropped little butterfly kisses along her collar bone and up her neck to her ear. “What you did out there for little Tosh - for a demon child - ”

She shut her eyes and let herself imagine they were back in the old Sunnydale, back in Spike‘s crypt, buried under a pile of carpets or spread eagled on the satin sheets of his bed. And he loved her, and she was still denying her feelings. Stupid, stupid Buffy. If she could only have known what lay in front of her, she’d have barricaded the crypt door and refused to come out ever.

Suddenly she realised the kisses had stopped. She opened her eyes and found Spike gazing up at her, frowning. He rolled her off him and propped himself up on one elbow to gaze at her. “You’ve gone away somewhere in your head,” he said quietly. “It worries you, this feeling, doesn’t it? You want to make love with me, I can tell. But - you’re holding back.”

Buffy sat cross-legged and plucked at the edge of a blanket where the stitches were fraying. “Doesn’t it worry you, making love to a Slayer? Don’t you feel you should be killing me instead?”

A puzzled look crossed Spike’s face. “Well, bloody hell, yes, of course it worries me. One part of me thinks it’s the sickest thing I can think of doing and, believe me, I can imagine some pretty sick things. But there’s another part of my brain that tells me it’s okay, that it was meant to happen. You told me we were once friends - but that wasn’t all, was it?”

“What do you mean?”

“We were lovers, too, weren’t we? My body knows that somehow, even though my head doesn’t.”

Buffy reached out and touched the new scar that cut through his eyebrow. “Lovers? Well, we had sex a lot. Then we - broke up. Then well, things happened, got wild. You went off to get a soul. When you came back - life was weird. We were fighting the First, here on the Hellmouth. You closed it, you died. I went away. And you came back and never told me!”

Spike looked up sharply at the agony in her voice. “Why not?” he asked quietly.

Buffy sighed. “I’ve no idea. You were with your Sire, a vampire called Angel?”

She looked at Spike but there was still no reaction to the name. For some reason this pleased her enormously.

Spike reached out and pulled her back into his arms. She tensed, waiting for the onslaught of mouth and hands, but to her surprise, he just held her, rubbing a long, gentle finger up and down her spine. She felt the coiled springs inside her begin to relax and the wriggled closer, shutting her eyes, glorying in the feel of his T shirt under her cheek.

“I hurt you by not making contact.” His voice was a deep rumble inside his chest.

Buffy hesitated, but there was no point in lying or prevaricating. “Yes, you did. Badly. And what makes it worse is that I’ll never know why. Not when you don’t remember.”

The finger continued to gentle her tension away. Her eyelids felt so heavy. Surely, at long last, she could sleep. A great well of exhaustion was waiting to swallow her up and all she wanted was to dive into it, knowing that Spike’s arms would hold her safe until the morning as they had done once before, not far from this very spot.

“Bloody hell, Slayer, perhaps I was just being evil. Still vampire, I remember that.”

“I...I can’t believe - it’s so hard to think that to you I’m a stranger. That you don’t recall anything of all those years we spent here in Sunnydale. How must I seem to you? A woman who throws herself at a guy for sex?’

Spike gazed down at the unruly blonde curls spread across his chest. His new scar was throbbing again, violently. It made him want to vamp out, to bite something, someone, to kill and keep on killing to deaden the pain.

But, somehow he knew now that the pain was the barrier he had to cross. The pain was keeping him from remembering. On the other side of it he could sense were all the answers to the questions that were haunting him.

“You seem like a bloody incredible woman to me. You’re brave and kind and tenacious. I won’t deny I didn’t enjoy the sex, pet,” he murmured. “It felt - wonderful. And what was weird was that I knew what you wanted from me. I could feel the knots inside your body that needed to be untied. And I seemed to know exactly how to do that.”

Buffy couldn’t help it - she giggled. “Fancy yourself much, why don’t you!’ she said, lifting her head and gazing up into his dark blue eyes.

Spike grinned. ‘If I remember correctly, it wasn’t a one sided transaction, luv. You knew exactly what tune to play on me. In fact, come to think of it, you had an unfair advantage. You remember what we did before.”

Buffy sighed and dropped her head back onto his chest. They had come full circle - the problem was still there, she remembered the past, Spike didn’t. She loved him and he -
“Do you even like me?” she asked curiously.

“Sometimes,” he replied, wincing as the scar bit into his forehead.

‘Do you trust me?”

“Never - ” he got out. But the pain in his head ate him up in a swirl of red mist just as the door to his bedroom crashed open and two long, stinking black tentacles flailed their way towards the couple on the bed.

to be continued

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