Chapter Nine

Spike’s deep, rich chuckle turned into a belly laugh at her indignant expression.

“What? Didn’t you think I was going to like it?”

“Oh, I knew you’d like it, Slayer. Jus’ didn’t expect you to be askin’ for more quite so soon.”

“Oh.” Her expression changed quickly to one of confusion and apprehension. “Should I not want to do it again? Does that mean there is something wrong with me?”

“Bloody hell, no,” he growled, pulling her on top of him as he rolled to his back. “It means you are responsive and passionate and the answer to every man’s wet dream, pet. Jus’ caught me by surprise, is all.”

“So we CAN do it again?” she asked hopefully. glaring into his laughing eyes when he couldn’t stop another chuckle.

“As often as you want to, luv. I promise. But don’t you want to know what else there is?”

“I know what else there is,” she said haughtily. “I paid attention in Sex Ed class…mostly…sometimes…and, anyway, I’ve seen lots of R rated movies.”

“Okay, Miss I Know it All, what else is there?” He relaxed onto the pillow and put his hands behind his head, grinning up at her expectantly. “Let’s see what you know, Slayer.”

“I know you have way too many clothes on,” she sniffed, still offended at his obvious amusement. “I guess I’ll have to do something about that.”

“Is that so?” he replied, his voice rising at the end as she shocked him by ripping his shirt open, popping buttons all over the room.

Although Buffy had seen him without his shirt before, she hadn’t really paid any attention to him while she was busy staking his family and saving him from burning up. And, at the time, he’d been emaciated from the months without proper food, all sharp edges and protruding bones. Now, after being regularly fed every day, his body was a sculpted vision in male beauty; his pale skin gleaming in the candlelight. Buffy’s breath caught in her throat as she ran her eyes over his torso. Almost without her volition, her hand reached toward the velvety skin in front of her and she stroked it gently down his body.

It wasn’t until she heard him gasp and glanced up to see the way his eyes had darkened that she realized that she could have the same effect on him that he did on her. With a small smile, she ran her fingers lightly around his chest, teasing his hardened nipples and trailing one hand down to the waistband of the low-slung pants. She leaned forward and kissed one nipple, smiling again at his hiss of pleasure and the following murmur of “Oh, yes, love, yes.”

While she kept her lips moving around on his chest, one hand was gently teasing its way down his stomach until she could feel the bulge straining at the thin fabric of the pants. Spike’s heartfelt groan when Buffy touched him through the cloth encouraged her enough that she began to squeeze gently, eliciting another groan. Her memory of what Angel had done to her made an unappreciated appearance as she mentally compared the size of what she was holding in her hand to what the older vampire had used to cause her so much pain. She paused, uncertainty over how she was going to accommodate Spike’s much larger cock, sending a stab of fear through her.

What if I can’t do this? It hurt so much before and he’s so big. He’s going to hate me if I tell him I’ve changed my mind. This was all my idea and now I don’t know if I can do it. Way to go, Buffy.

Ever perceptive, Spike noticed her increased heart rate and rapid, panicky breathing. Keeping his voice soft and controlling any tendency to complain, he asked carefully, “What’s wrong, love?”

Buffy met his puzzled frown with wide eyes that rapidly filled with tears.

“No…nothing…I just, it hurt so much…and you’re so big… and I’m afraid…and you’re going to hate me…and…”

Pulling her down onto his chest, Spike struggled to make sense out of what she was saying. When she put a tentative hand back onto his cock and squeezed it again, he pushed into her hand, causing her to let go quickly.

“Don’t stop touching me, love,” he pleaded. “Please. We’ll sort this out, I promise.”

“You hate me now,” she mumbled into his chest, even as her hand crept back onto him.

“Don’t hate you, pet. Never could. If you don’t want to do any more than what we’re doin’ now, that’s all right. If you want to stop right now, that’s all right too.” He tipped her chin up to look her in the eye so that she could see his sincerity. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do. You tell me now, and we’ll stop. But could you just tell me what happened to turn 'I want to do it again' into tears?”

“You’re so big,” she said softly, ducking her head back down in embarrassment. “I’m afraid it’s going to hurt…like before and I don’t want it to hurt.”

“So, you’re doing what? Comparing me to Angelus’ dinky little dick and thinkin’ because he hurt you, I will too?”

Buffy nodded against his chest, unable to keep from kissing the soft skin there, even as she was telling him she didn’t want to go through with what she’d started. Spike heaved a sigh, smothering the urge to grin at the comparison she had made between his grandsire and himself. He took one hand in his and said, “Do you trust me, Buffy?”

She gave an uncertain nod and felt him take her hand and move it down between her own legs. She tried to recoil at the thought of touching herself there, but he persisted and dipped her fingers into the copious moisture. When he was sure she had felt for herself how wet she was, he let go of her hand and put his arms around her.

“Did you feel that, pet? Did you feel how wet you are?” Without waiting for her embarrassed nod, he went on. “That’s what it takes to be able to make love without it hurtin’. That’s what Angelus wanted me to do to you so that he wouldn’t have to work so hard to get his little dick into you. He wanted me to make you wet for him. As long as you want me; as long as that wetness is there, it won’t hurt you. Might take a bit of time to get used to me, but it won’t hurt. I promise you, love. The last thing I want is for this to be another painful or degrading experience for you. If I thought that would happen, I would never have said yes.”

Buffy lay against his unmoving chest, rubbing her nose against his skin and inhaling his unique scent while her hand traced her name around his nipple. When she flicked the hard tip with her fingernail and felt him twitch and hiss, her courage came back and she was soon kissing her way around his torso, gradually working her way down to the faint trail of soft hair leading into his pants.

This time, instead of feeling him through the fabric, she unfastened the button and unzipped him, freeing his erection to bob against his stomach. She gulped involuntarily as she took in her first close look at a man’s fully erect penis. Spike held perfectly still as she touched the head, ran her fingers down the ridged side and gently cupped his balls. When she leaned forward and blew her warm breath softly across the tip, he let out a strangled “Bloody hell” but remained still, allowing her to set her own pace for exploring his body.

By the time Buffy was comfortable touching him everywhere she could think of, his pants had joined her clothes on the floor and the vampire had given up trying to be silent. Instead, he was encouraging her every move with hisses and curses intermingled with the occasional “Like that, love; there’s a good girl.”

When her warm mouth covered him and she began to bob up and down with inexpert enthusiasm, he had to grip the sides of the bed to keep from bolting upright. It wasn’t long before her attentions, as unskilled as they were, were sending him perilously close to exploding in her mouth, something for which he was sure she was not ready. He reached for her head and stopped her motion, smiling reassuringly when she looked at him with puzzled eyes.

“Doin’ that just a bit too well, love,” he said in a husky voice. “Come on back up here and let’s see what we can do about the next step, yeah?”

Obediently, Buffy dropped a final kiss on the tip and then moved back up until she was lying on him, the hard column of his erection pressed between their stomachs. He pulled her up a little further, allowing his cock to nudge against the tops of her thighs until she opened her legs and let it slip between them. Their matching gasps brought a giggle from the Slayer and she got a wry smile in reply.

“All right, love, here’s the way this is goin’ to go. I’m leaving you in the driver’s seat. You decide when, where, and how quickly this happens. Understand? I’m just here for you. Are you ready?”

Biting her lip, Buffy nodded, then, just as he put his hands on her hips to lift her up, she blurted, “Wait!” Smothering a groan, he paused only to find her lips suddenly fastened on his. While Buffy immersed herself in the kisses that she had already figured out could make her forget anything else going on around her, Spike eased her hips up and poised them over his throbbing cock. Buffy slipped her knees to either side of his slim hips and slowly lowered herself until the head of his cock was just pushing against her entrance.

Reluctantly letting go of his mouth, she sat up and let gravity pull on her until she could feel herself beginning to stretch around his width. Squeezing her eyes shut and screwing up her face as though she was forcing down a doze of medicine, she settled down on him, feeling him slide, as promised, into her thoroughly lubricated walls with minimal discomfort. Letting him fill up her up slowly, she felt herself trembling at the sensations coming from her pelvis. It wasn’t until he was completely inside her and she was sitting flat against his pubic bone that she opened her eyes and let out the breath she had been holding.

“You all right, love?” Spike could barely speak for the effort it was costing him to remain still. Only the fear that he would hurt or scare her if he started moving too quickly kept him from slamming up into the enticing warmth surrounding him.

In reply, Buffy tentatively squeezed her already tightly stretched walls, giggling when his eyes rolled back in his head and he growled, “I hope to hell that means ‘yes’.”

“Now what do I do?” she asked softly, unconsciously beginning to move her hips against him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Whatever you want, Slayer,” he gasped. “You do what feels good to you and let me worry about what I want.” When she frowned at him with disappointment, he elaborated, “What I want right now is to stay like this until I’m dust, pet; so it’s up to you what comes next.”

“Come on, Spike,” she said with a touch of impatience. “You’re supposed to be teaching me things. You’re making me do all the work.”

Before she had quite finished speaking, she found herself flipped over onto her back with a very aroused vampire on top of her. He captured her mouth with his and began to kiss her again as his hips began to rock against hers in a timeless rhythm. As she became more used to the motion, he allowed himself to slide almost all the way out before pushing back in, each thrust a bit harder than the one before. When he added a little twist of his hips, touching on his first try the spongy bundle of nerves that he was seeking, she wrapped her arms and legs around him and began to meet every thrust with growing enthusiasm. It didn’t take long before she was gasping his name as she clenched around him, pulling him into release with her.

When their breathing had begun to approach normal rhythms, he rolled off to the side, smiling at her protesting whimper when he pulled out as slowly as he had gone in. Buffy snuggled into his side, one leg across his muscular thigh and her head on his shoulder. Spike’s arms were around her tightly, as though he feared she might spring up and leave at any moment.

This might be the dumbest thing I’ve done in a long time. How in bloody hell am I goin’ to be able to leave her now? Can’t stay here. She’d never have a boy friend – I’d tear them apart before I’d let someone else near her. I am so fucked…

“What are you thinking?” Buffy’s quiet voice interrupted his internal monolog and he dropped a kiss on her head as he answered truthfully.

“I was thinking that I am well and truly buggered,” he admitted.

“Huh?”

“Never mind, pet. Nothing you need to worry yourself about.” He smiled down at her and tipped her chin up for a kiss. “Was jus’ thinkin’ that I’d probably just had the best shag of my life and it kind of sucked the fun out of the thought of the next hundred years.”

“You mean we aren’t going to do it again?” Buffy’s aggrieved tone brought another smile to his face and he squeezed her tightly as he assured her they were “a long bloody way from being done here.”

“Oh good,” she breathed. “ ‘Cause I think I liked that too.”

“Glad to hear it, sweetness. Because I intend to do it until you can’t move.”

“Humph. I’m a Slayer, Spike. I don’t get tired.”

“I’m a vampire, love. Neither do I.”

He leered at her then buried his head between her breasts and blew a raspberry on the sweat-slicked skin there. She shrieked and squirmed, digging her fingers into his ribs and laughing with joy when he turned out to be ticklish. They rolled back and forth, laughing and tickling each other until Spike grabbed her hands and pinned her beneath his body. Their laughter dwindled as their eyes met and darkened with renewed passion.

Buffy’s legs fell apart and she moaned as Spike’s hips dropped between her thighs and his once-again ready cock nudged at her. Meeting her eyes with complete seriousness he asked, “May I come in, Slayer?”

“Come in, Spike,” she answered with equal seriousness, sighing when he slide easily into her waiting depths. “That feels so good,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “It feels like you belong here, inside me. Like you’re a part of me.”

“Want to be a part of you, love. Want to stay inside you forever.”

His whispered response was as close as he was willing to come to telling her how he felt about her. He knew he had her trust and affection, but he had no reason to think that her emotions were at all similar to the overwhelming devotion he had come to realize was his own painful feeling for her.

As they rocked together and felt the pressure building in equal measure, Spike found that his demon was demanding that he somehow mark this woman as his. He fought it as long as he could, but when Buffy clutched him tightly and bit down hard on his shoulder as she ground into him, he lost the battle and allowed his face to shift. As he emptied himself into her again, he slid his fangs into the ragged scar on her neck and took two deep pulls of her blood, sending her spiraling into another orgasm. Pulling his teeth out carefully so as not to make the scar worse, he licked the tiny wounds and murmured, “Mine.”

He rolled to his back, pulling her with him and allowing her to remain draped bonelessly over his body. He held her in place with one hand, while he pulled the quilt up over her bare skin with the other. She murmured her thanks into his neck, too relaxed to bother raising her head. As she lay on top of him, her breathing evened out and he realized she had gone to sleep, still intimately connected to him. With a tired and happy sigh, he closed his own eyes and reveled in the closeness and the feeling of contentment they were sharing.

When Buffy stirred and opened her eyes, she found that she was lying beside Spike, who was staring down at her and running one hand gently over her face.

“Did I fall asleep?” she mumbled, not quite awake yet.

“You did,” he answered softly.

“Oh,” she struggled to sit, giving up when he pressed her firmly back into the bed. “I’m sorry. What did you do while I was sleeping?”

“I watched you sleep,” he said quietly, pushing a stray strand of hair out of her face.

“Sounds exciting,” she grimaced apologetically.

“Exciting can be over-rated,” he smiled down at her. “It made me happy.”

She shook her head at him with a smile, then fingered the tiny scabs on her neck and frowned.

“Did you bite me again?”

“I did. Sorry I didn’t ask for permission, love, but when you clamped down on my shoulder, the demon wouldn’t be denied. I bit you and I marked you.”

“I would have thought that gaping hole you left in my neck when Angel yanked you away would have taken care of any marking you needed to do,” she said with a shudder. “It’s not like I’m losing that scar anytime soon, even with my Slayer healing.”

Her grumbling sounded sincere and he hastened to answer her complaint.

“You know I didn’t do that on purpose, love. You hardly felt it until that wanker pulled me off,” he grumbled back. “This is different.”

“Splainy?”

I claimed you. Marked you as mine. I’m hopin’ it will give other vamps something to think about if any of ‘em get close enough to think about biting you.”

“It’s going to keep vampires from biting me?”

He shrugged and answered honestly, ”I don’t know for sure. At worst, it will slow them down, give you some time to get away. At best, they’ll respect the claim and leave you alone. It marks you as belonging to a master vampire and they have to worry about me takin’ revenge if anything happens to you.”

“So I’m what, a human minion?” Her voice took on a chilly edge and he felt her stiffen in his arms.

“No, sweetheart. Not a minion. A highly valued…bollocks! I don’t know how to explain this.” He growled in frustration, then took a deep breath and tried again. “I don’t want anything to happen to you when I’m gone. Marking you as mine, as something- somebody- I care about…that should be respected by other vampires. It won’t protect you from demons, but I hope it keeps you safe from other vamps.”

“There’s another way to keep me safe,” she said quietly, relaxing against him once more. “You could stay here and fight beside me.”

“We’ve talked about this, Slayer,” he growled. “It won’t work”

“I don’t want you to leave,” she whispered against his skin. “I don’t want to give this up.”

The vampire made a sound somewhere between a groan and a growl.

“Don’t make this harder than it already is, Buffy.”

“If you think I’m going to make it easy for you to leave me, you really don’t know me very well.”

In a frantic effort to change the subject, he pushed her onto her back and began to kiss his way around her body.

“Gonna know you a whole lot better, once I get through here,” he said, his voice muffled by the flesh under his lips. “Gonna know enough about you to make you come just by touchin’ you.”

True to his word, by the time he was satisfied that he had found and identified every erotic zone on her body, Buffy was so close to coming that she was pleading with him breathlessly to “stop his dammed teasing” and give her a “happy.” With a self-satisfied smirk, he ducked his head between her spread legs and with a flick of his tongue he sent her into a small orgasm, which was quickly followed by another, much stronger, one when he began to suck on her clit as he thrust two fingers inside her, curling them up to hit the spot he seemed to find so effortlessly.

While she was still shaking and arching her hips off the bed, he slid up her body and into her still-clenched walls, growling softly as he forced his way into the tight passage. He began to shake himself as, instead of relaxing, the slayer-strong muscles surrounding him began to clench and release in a steady rhythm that had him babbling things they both chose to ignore. His “oh, baby, my darlin’, my beautiful Slayer, my golden goddess” had evolved into “my love, my sweetest love, love you forever,” and other, equally unsettling murmurs of endearment that he tried desperately to keep unsaid.

When a final lingering squeeze brought him to his release, roaring her name as he spasmed into her, he once again let the demon out to take another deep pull of her intoxicating blood. This time, his “Mine!” was much louder and more emphatic than the first time and as Buffy reacted to the sensation of having his mouth on her throat by reaching her own orgasm she responded with a cry of her own.

“Yours!” she gasped as she shook around him. “Yours, Spike.” She was holding him to her, powerful arms and legs locked tightly around his body as though to hold him in place while she rocked against him in a seemingly endless orgasm. Once again, he was reminded of how powerful the slender girl under him actually was and he worried about her ability to control her strength when she was with a human.

The snarl that ripped from his throat at the thought of anyone else touching her, surprised them both and he hastened to explain.

“I’m sorry, love. That wasn’t aimed at you. Was jus’ thinking about how you’re gonna have to be careful you don’t hurt a human…lover…and the demon over-reacted a bit to the idea of anybody else touchin’ his prop—you.”

Choosing to ignore the obviously swallowed “property” that she vowed mentally they were going to discuss before the night was over, Buffy asked anxiously, “You mean I won’t be able to let myself go like that with another human? What did I do?”

“Nothing wrong, sweetness. ‘S jus’ that you’re very strong and if you hold on to a human the way you hold on to me, you might…you’ll just have to keep in mind he isn’t me. That’s all.”

“Well, since at the moment, that’s a hypothetical person, I don’t think it’s a big problem,” she said wryly. “Anyway, I can’t imagine doing this with anybody else. Human or not.”

“Maybe not right now, you can’t. And I hope you don’t. Not for a long time.” He failed at his attempt to suppress a resigned sigh as he continued, “But someday you will. You’ll meet some bloody wanker and fall in love and you’ll want to…” He swallowed hard. “You’ll want to enjoy each other the way we’ve been enjoying our bodies tonight. All I’m sayin’ is, you’ll need to remember how strong you are. Not sayin’ you shouldn’t let yourself go and enjoy it, just keep that in the back of your mind.

“Now I’m done talkin’ about you makin’ lo- havin’ sex with anybody else. Don’t want to--“ His growl was cut off by Buffy’s fingertips on his lips.

“You can say ‘making love’, Spike. Isn’t that what we were doing?” Her eyes searched his for the answer she wanted to hear.

“One of us was, pet,” he answered gruffly. “Don’t ever doubt it.”