“Bloody hell, Slayer! What are you doing to me?”

Buffy laughed softly, a wicked, gleeful note to the sound, and slowly rotated her hips, pressing her body through the skirt that still covered it against his bare and highly sensitized manhood.

Spike gasped, his head falling back slightly, as she slid one hand between them, stroking slowly down the length of his member in a torturously gentle way.

“Oh, come on, Baby!” she teased. “Don’t tell me you’ve had enough *already*? I’ve barely even touched you! But you know – if you want me to stop…” He could almost see her careless shrug of indifference to match her tone.

“*No*!” the vampire growled menacingly in a mixture of frustration, and fear that she might actually do as she had suggested. “Don’t you bloody dare stop now, Slayer! You can’t just get a bloke all worked up and then quit on him!”

A disbelieving, challenging sort of huff left the Slayer’s lips as she replied, “Actually, Sweetie – I can! It’s my right to stop anytime I want to. Maybe you being evil and all, you wouldn’t know, but the whole ‘She got me so worked up I couldn’t stop,’ excuse stopped being acceptable about forty years ago. I mean, obviously *you* wouldn’t care, but still…”

It was a painful irony that a couple of years earlier, Spike would have taken offense, demanding that she take her words back, if she had suggested that he was *not* evil.

Now, however, her implication that he would not respect her rights to say no, hurt, worse than he cared to admit. He covered it the best he could with his usual, ready defense – a smart aleck response.

“Yeah,” he scoffed. “Like I need a lecture on what’s *acceptable* from the girl who’s got me in handcuffs and is sitting on me on her bed!”

“With your consent,” she pointed out, unfazed by his comment. “And *lying* on you on my bed.”

He frowned in confusion. He may have been blindfolded, but he knew his sense of direction and balance were excellent, and he knew that he was *not* lying down.

Yet.

“What…?”

Before the question could even leave his lips, Buffy shoved him forcefully down on the mattress, falling on top of him, cutting off any words of protest by emphatically kissing him breathless. Well – more breathless than he already was.

When she finally drew back out of the kiss, she noticed that Spike was shifting uncomfortably on the bed, pulling slightly against the handcuffs that held his hands between his back and the bed.

Before she could ask him what the matter was, he volunteered, grumbling, “Not too bloody comfortable, Slayer – my hands under me like this. You know there’s a lot of other ways to do the whole handcuff thing – can’t we try one?”

“You know,” she mused, her tone light and playful, as she slid down his body a bit to place a slow, lazy kiss on his chest. “Somehow, I’m not all that concerned with your comfort at the moment. Huh.” She kissed him again. “Go figure.”

*Yeah. Go figure,* he echoed sarcastically in his mind, not without a bit of resentment. *When has she *ever* been the least bloody bit concerned with my comfort?*

He almost asked the question aloud, but thought better of it. He was beginning to get the impression that it could be a really, *really* bad idea to make her angry right now.

So he settled for reiterating his complaint. “Seriously, love, I could think of a lot more interesting, less awkward ways to use these…”

She startled him into silence when she suddenly rose up and grabbed a handful of his disheveled blonde curls, pulling his head very close to hers, her grip rough and stinging, but not exactly painful – just enough to emphasize his vulnerability, and her control over him.

She leaned in close to his ear as she said in a soft, deliciously dangerous voice, “Are you gonna quiet whining – or am I gonna have to gag you?”

The playful note to her voice made the threat more exciting than frightening – though he had to admit that it was a little bit of both. And there was no concealing from he his reaction to her words – not with his eager member clearly showing its approval of the suggestion, pressing harder against her body as her mouth descended to kiss his throat.

She immediately pulled back, and he heard her laugh softly, as she trailed her free hand down his body to close firmly around the intrusive organ. He gasped as she began to rub slow little circles with her thumb, and a powerful sensation of pleasure coursed through his body at the touch.

She responded to the encouragement, increasing the pressure she was exerting, at the same moment tugging his head back slightly, with a little twist of her hand that caused just enough of a twinge of pain to heighten Spike’s pleasure.

“Buffy,” he moaned in feverish need. “God, *Buffy*!”

He struggled uselessly against the handcuffs that bound him, without even realizing he was doing it – simply desperate to touch her.

“Still uncomfortable, Baby?” Buffy’s voice was falsely sympathetic, as she misunderstood his restless movements. She pressed in closer against him, carelessly pressing his back down harder onto his hands, increasing his discomfort.

Or on second thought, he realized, through the *very* powerful distraction of her touch – probably not carelessly.

Probably more like *deliberately*.

*Sadistic little chit!*

Her lips brushed against his ear, her hot breath a tantalizing caress on his skin as she whispered in his ear, “I think I can make you forget all about it…”

And just like that – he already *had* forgotten about it.

The enticing promise in her words made his entire body tingle with anticipation, as she slowly raised her body up off of him, lowering her lips to tenderly kiss him on the mouth once more, taking her time and slowly, thoroughly caressing his mouth with hers – the sensation intensified by the fact that she was no longer touching him anywhere else at the moment.

He did not think that she had kissed him this much before, in all the time they had been seeing each other. Usually, Buffy would not allow things to reach such a level of intimacy and affection. If it went beyond overwhelming, primal passion, to something deeper, a tenderness, a caring that was too much for her scarred, scared heart to handle – she would quickly shut things down.

But that intimacy, that tenderness – that “something deeper” – was what Spike craved.

He drank it in desperately, like a man dying of thirst.

When she drew away, and he felt the slight depression of the mattress beside him as she got up off the bed, he tried to suppress the sudden, unreasonable sense of pain, the ache of loss, at losing contact with her. Most times, he could keep her there with him at least briefly, hold her close to him, whisper words he knew she did not want to hear – but *needed* to.

This time, he was prevented even from touching her.

“Buffy…” he whispered, in a voice that trembled and broke over her name, his need for her unmistakable in the single spoken word. Instinctively he tried to rise, to follow her – but an instant later, felt her soft, strong hands push him back down on the bed.

“Did I say you could get up?” she whispered in his ear, her tone somewhere between taunting and affection, as she ran her hands lightly over his shoulders, massaging them gently from where she stood beside the bed.

“Relax,” she advised softly. “Just let me do this, Spike.”

*Let her do *what*?* he wondered with a bit of apprehension, troubled by the hint of sadness he heard in her soft voice.

Something had made her relent for the moment, giving him back the affection she almost always withdrew the moment she realized she had given it. The tenderness, the warmth with which she was treating him, once again set loose a jumbled confusion of emotions in his heart.

On the one hand he wanted to allow himself to simply enjoy the rare treasure that was Buffy’s gentle touch, tender kiss – simple kindness and affection. He so seldom got the chance to experience it at all, and he craved it, needed it desperately. The sensitive, broken-hearted poet in him wanted to cherish every fleeting moment of it for the brief time that he knew would be all that it would last.

But a part of him could not help but be very apprehensive and a bit fearful of Buffy’s unusual behavior. She had obviously planned this night out very carefully, preparing for it, making sure that everything would go as she intended it to. The question was – just what exactly *did* she intend?

He kept getting the rather frightening feeling that he had agreed to something that could end up hurting him terribly in the end.

He was not stupid. He had not spent over a century as a master vampire for nothing. He knew – had known from the moment she had first put the blindfold over his eyes in the graveyard and repeated his fateful question back to him – that she was planning something, and that if her treatment of him thus far meant anything, the end result would likely be as heart-breaking as every other encounter he had ever had with her.

But he also knew that if he refused to accept her challenge, or backed out of it now, he would only be giving her the excuse she needed to walk away from him forever.

And no matter what happened to him – he could not let that happen. He was not too stupid to realize the emotional danger he was placing himself in by playing along with her little game.

He simply loved Buffy too much to care.

He obediently tried to relax under her touch, trying to focus on the deep, soothing motions of her hands on his shoulders, slow, even movements designed to relax him and put him at ease, rather than the doubts and insecurities and outright fears struggling for dominance of his emotions.

Or his desperate but thus far sorely neglected cock, for that matter.

The next time he felt Buffy’s hands leave his body, he forced himself to stay put, though he felt all the tension she had just carefully worked out of his muscles immediately return, with his apprehension.

He had no idea exactly where she was or what she would do next.

Whether it was through the use of magic, as her lack of scent before – or through her own well-honed Slayer skills, Buffy was absolutely, perfectly silent.

For all he knew, she may not even have been in the room anymore.

Here he was, blindfolded and bound and naked, lying across the bed sideways with his legs and painfully swollen erection hanging off the side of the bed – just *waiting* for the *Slayer* to do whatever it was she had in mind to do with him – and for all he knew, she might have just left him altogether.

Maybe *that* was her plan for his utter humiliation.

And how bloody pathetic was it, that *that* was the most terrifying thing he could imagine that Buffy could do to him?

He was mentally berating himself for his perpetual state of wankerhood that always brought him into these situations of emotional or physical helplessness to sadistic, insane bints who took his love and used it to torture him – when the Slayer reassured him of her presence in a most unmistakable way.

He nearly came off the bed again at the searing, wet heat that suddenly surrounded just the very tip of his manhood.

“Bloody soddin’ *hell*!” he gasped, thrusting almost reflexively up toward the source of the sudden, shocking heat against his cool, over-sensitive flesh -- Buffy’s mouth – which immediately drew back at his response, leaving him longing and more achingly hard than he had been moments before – more so than he had thought possible, in fact.

“Unh-uh,” Buffy said in a quiet, teasingly stern voice, and by the sound of her voice he could tell that she was kneeling in front of him, between his spread legs. She raised one hand, placing it low on his stomach, directly above his throbbing erection, and pressing him down firmly against the mattress. There was a hardness to her voice that only served to intensify his own…er…*hardness*…when she spoke again.

“Don’t make me tell you again not to move.”

He did not know which thought was more arousing to him – the knowledge that he was bound, virtually helpless, spread out and exposed for the Slayer to do with as she would, completely at her mercy…or the fact that said Slayer was currently kneeling attentively on the floor at his feet, ready to attend to the need she had been creating in him.

He fervently wished the blindfold away; *that* was a sight he would give just about anything to see.

While Buffy was not opposed to pleasuring him with her mouth, and actually did it quite often, she never -- *never* -- did so on her knees, as she was now. In bed was one thing – but although she could not possibly make herself more physically vulnerable than she had made herself during the heights of their passion, she refused to give herself to him in that way, refused to lower herself to that level, he supposed.

He didn’t really think it was about *physical* vulnerability, actually – judging by the fact that the one time she had ever done it in that way, on her knees in front of him, had been while she was invisible – and he could not…see her…

Understanding came to him in that instant, in the midst of his desire and need and the rampant, desperate sensations coursing through his body – as he understood that particular little foible of his Slayer.

It was all about power.

This whole thing had started because her friends had stolen away any sense of control she might have had, dragging her back from the most important choice she had ever made, making her feel unspeakably helpless and vulnerable and more out of control than she ever had in her life.

But with Spike – Buffy was in control.

She knew how he felt about her. She knew that because of how he felt about her, she could get him to do just about anything she wanted.

*Case in point, mate,* he reminded himself grimly.

Of course Buffy didn’t mind getting him off with her pretty, hot little mouth – so long as he could not in any way see her as submissive to him because of it.

*No chance of that,* he thought dryly. *A bloke can’t get much more helpless than…*

His thoughts were cut off when he suddenly felt her forefinger and thumb close around the head of his erection firmly – not painfully – but very, *very* close – and sending a wave of powerful sensation through his body.

“I don’t think you were listening to me, Spikey,” Buffy said, her voice calm and mild, but with a tone of false hurt, as she squeezed just slightly, eliciting a moan of intense mingled pleasure and pain from the vampire’s throat. “Listening now?”

“Yeah!” he gasped out, his back arching as he struggled to focus on what she was saying. “God, yes, Buffy…I’m listening…”

“I *said*…” Buffy went on, a bit over-dramatically, easing her hold on him and sliding her fingers idly down his shaft on either side, then back up again to the tip, back and forth, up and down as she spoke.

How the bleedin’ hell did she expect him to actually *listen* to her?

And yet he did.

He knew better than to not.

“…don’t…move…” Buffy went on, her voice hushed, barely over a whisper, as she continued the cruelly slow, intense motion of her hand on his sensitive skin, driving him ever nearer to the edge.

“…don’t speak…” she continued, whispering now, as her warm fingertips slid under his erect member to lightly caress the sensitive, rarely touched flesh there, and he moaned, his body shuddering with his desperate efforts not to move.

“…and whatever you do…” she whispered, leaning down close to him, as she slowly slid her thumb and forefinger back to their original position, emphasizing her final point with a pinch that was harder than before, hard enough to draw a desperate, strangled whimper from the vampire’s throat as his back arched again.

But he managed to keep himself still for the most part, under her hand.

Her voice lowered even further, taking on a commanding intensity as she whispered, “…don’t….*come*…until I tell you you can!”

Now that was just bloody cruel!

The command itself, the dark, sultry tone of her voice, the danger and excitement of the whole scenario, did more to push him toward disobeying her command than anything she had done to him so far.

But he *didn’t* disobey. There was one thing the Slayer had taught him so far this night.

He had been wrong.

A bloke could get a *lot* more helpless than he had been before.

As Buffy finally released him, returning to kneel in front of him again, and taking him into her hot, hungry mouth, drawing him cruelly toward an intensity of pleasure that she would not yet allow him to fulfill – Spike had the feeling that before the night was through, the Slayer would have a lot more to teach him – but he was not afraid. In fact, he relished the opportunity.

He had quite a bit he wanted to teach *her*, too.