Chapter Four – Once More With Feeling

The Following Night…



Unable to resist, unable to release her image from his mind, Spike stormed from the manor house he’d called his own for the past five days in search of the vampiress he’d seen the night before.

Her magnificent, yet unknown scent which had, the moon previous, unfurled against his senses had remained with him for the rest of the night and all through the achingly long day, and now he was determined to seek it out.

To seek her out.

Never before had another being so completely plagued his conscious and unconscious being. He couldn’t get her out of his mind, literally. She had been his every thought, his every memory, his every consideration throughout the long, long hours of the Californian day.

Even at his most focused, even when planning to take on the bane to his existence – a Slayer – had he not retained this amazing focus. His personality was, by nature, one of impulse, of scatty thoughts and the need to be bouncing up and doing something. He’d eaten a psychiatrist once, but before he’d gotten around to the final bite the woman had managed to diagnose him with ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.

Naturally agitated at having never heard the abbreviation before, Spike had finished her quickly – unappreciative of the uncomfortable advantage she suddenly managed to hold over him. However, he had immediately ordered Dalton – the most book wormiest of Vampires under his then current command – find out everything on the disorder, and was amused to find it fit him as snugly as one of his tight black t-shirts. Her intelligent observations given the situation made him almost sad that he hadn’t turned her.

Almost.

Regret was never a good commodity for a Vampire to acquire – one lived for far too long upon which such matters could be infinitely dwelled over.

But moving back to the point, Spike reminded himself as he noticed how severely he had rambled off the point and he doubled back to get his coat. It was another bitingly cold night, but that was not what had made him turn. The coat made him look bad. Unapproachable. But sexy as hell.

It was about ten when he finally reached the cemetery he had seen her in last – where he’d witnessed that fight - and the other vampire’s last words, which Spike had conveniently forgotten until now, washed back over his memory cells.

It had been odd, he admitted, for a vampire – any vampire, male or female – to carry such a well fashioned stake so easily reachable and on tap. Especially since it hadn’t seemed like the fight had been planned or even remotely premeditated. The fight had contained no well thought out barbs or insults – no reference to a past misadventure – as most fights to the death, within reason, often did.

Also, the vampire’s parting words…

Spike growled quietly to himself, “It meant nothing.”

He genuflected that easily they could have been said simply in hatred towards the beauty that was killing him so professionally, and skilfully, and so, in his last moments, the fledgling had offered up the best traitorous barb that his puny brain could come up with.

Hell – it made the most sense.

With his delusions firmly in mind, Spike almost missed the vampiress walking but a hundred or so meters in front of him. He stopped in his steps, almost stumbling over himself both in his desire to not get caught, and his embarrassment over the whereabouts of his disorganised brain. He was here for a purpose, a mission to claim his mate for all eternity and for all to see.

Time apart from her presence had not dulled his desire for her, only heightened his determination that she should be his. Forever.

Purpose firmly back in mind, he followed her, as before keeping as far back as he could so that she would be unable to sense him. Again, she led him into a cemetery. And then another.

And another.

Odd.

Once again, he dismissed it as nothing, content instead to follow her delicious form wherever it took him. He wanted to find out more, all, everything about her.

And her scent. Oh, her scent.

It was something else, some indescribable – but he had tried to describe it….oh, how he tried. But then again, how can perfection be explained, how can beauty – real beauty – be bottled? It was impossible.

But how he wanted to.

Then suddenly, the scent that he had been so enthralled in, changed. Well, not so much changed as disappeared. And all of a sudden Spike found himself alone, no beautiful Goldilocks in sight or scent…and he was in the middle of a clearing.

Had his brain not been in a lust-addled mist he might have recognised it as the same clearing he had found his mysterious vampiress fighting in the night before. But, overly anxious for her touch, the feel of her skin, to be encased in her glorious scent, Spike was lost to the obvious for the first time in over two hundred years.

Shaking his head in a valiant attempt to clear it, he allowed his extended senses to try and take stock of the situation. Amber eyes surveyed the area as he turned in a complete circle, twice and slowly.

The air seemed to be blowing every which way, but he was unable to get a solid position on the beauteous scent he had been so locked on for the past hour or so.

Confused, but undaunted, he closed his eyes, extending his senses as he turned full circle once again. He smiled. She was there. He couldn’t pin-point exactly where.

Damn, she was good.

But, he knew she was there.

“Come out, come out where ever you are!” Spike sang in a sing-song voice into the eerily quiet woodland, as he opened his once again azure eyes to view the world before him.

He never saw it coming. Hell, he barely even felt it coming!

One second he was standing, an irritating smirk on his face as he prepared to circle around once again and deliver some witty line out to his beloved. The next, he heard a delicious growl that immediately made him as hard as nails and then he was flat on his back and a gorgeous weight was pressing directly down into his crotch.

Of course there was also one very pissed of vampire with a stake pressed to his heart there as well, but hey – beggars, or fools in lust, couldn’t be choosers!

Buffy growled, her eyes flashing amber as she regarded her captured through narrowing orbs.

“Hello cutie!” Spike grinned up at her through a mouthful of fangs, his sunlight eyes full of glittering passion.

Buffy was not amused and her legs tightened around his waist and her fingers flexed warningly over the stake she held precariously against his heart. “Who are you, and why the hell are you following me?!” She demanded.

Spike rolled his hips up, allowing the vampiress to feel his impressive erection as he replied: “Why do you think I’m following you?”

He laughed; a free and jubilant sound that he had not heard in a long, long time, as her face contorted into a teenage mask of disgust and she sat up off him, obviously ruffled.

“Eww, gross!” She groaned, shifting further up his chest and as far away as possible from the impatient hardness that had been pressing up into her.

Noticing her apparent distraction, Spike took the moment as the perfect opportunity to turn the tables, so to speak, and he flipped her neatly on to her back. The stake flew from her loosened grasp in the surprise of the movement to land a few harmless feet away, bouncing lightly on the soft, dry grass.

Unlike Buffy, Spike had no compunction to lying wedged between her gorgeous thighs, and took the opportunity as it presented itself to him to ensure that almost every part of his body came into contact with her writhing one. He groaned, a deep and pleasurable sound drawn from the depths of his chest, as she rubbed, unknowingly, in the most seductive way against him.

“Fuck!” He whispered almost reverently, leaning down low to trail her unprotected throat with his nose, inhaling her glorious scent into his long dead lungs.

Buffy shivered, the movement virtually imperceptible, against the onslaught of foreign emotions that his touch made roar through her body. It had been so long….so very, very long since anyone had touched her in such a fashion.

Since anyone had really touched her…

But no – he was a vampire. And she, she was still the Slayer at heart, no matter that it no longer beat. She had her duty.

Her duty.

It was all she now had left.

With a frustrated growl, she flipped him off and over her head, not even waiting until he hit the ground behind her before she shot to her feet. A new stake found its way to her palm, the old one ignored in light of the need to survive against this obviously Master Vampire. Flipping her hair back from her face as it come loose in the tussle, she adopted a fighting stance and waited for him to get up.

Spike smiled sappily up at her, his body content from the infusion of her scent, and happy to just lie here for a while and savour the moment.

Irritated by both his annoying smile and his audacity at just lying there when there was a Slayer waiting to kill him, Buffy moved forward, kicking him in the side with one leather encased foot.

Oh, yeah, she was also kinda pissed at herself for reacting the way she had while lying under a dangerous demon.

“Get up!” She ordered, her voice as hard as nails even though internally she shook from the way he was looking at her.

Spike continued to stare, enthralled that even though her eyes flashed amber her face stayed in its smooth, beautiful human countenance. He couldn’t wait to see her vamp. She’d be just as beautiful, he knew it.

“Can’t you get up?!” She half-screeched at him, entirely uncomfortable with the situation. She just wished he would stop his damn staring!!!

“I have no problem with getting it up, pet!” He rejoined with a naughty grin.

The vampire was making sexual innuendoes with her! At her! Buffy couldn’t believe it and started to splutter out an answer, indignation making her unable to form words.

Yeah. Indignation. That was what it was.

Not lust. Never lust.

Fortunately, he saved her from further embarrassment by speaking again…

“Sorry, love – you’re gorgeous - can’t I stare my fill?” Spike winked at her, and even upside down it sent tingles over her skin.

…though not for long!

“No! Up!” Buffy blushed, or would have if she’d been able to, shocked at the teasing and over-familiar note in her voice.

Trying to block out the abomination of her responses in the past few minutes, she moved forward, intent on starting this fight even if he wasn’t going to!

In her blind madness, she had practically forgotten that this was a Master Vampire she was dancing with, and when she reached out her leg to kick him once more instead of it connecting like it had before, he grabbed it, hauling her down on to the ground with him so that she was straddling his lap.

Buffy gasped at the change of position, but when all he did was smirk up at her she finally remembered that she was the Slayer, and he had just put her in a very dominant position. Striking out with her fist, she’d forgotten that her hand still contained her stake and watched as the tip sliced a cut into his chiselled cheek.

Spike growled in shock, her sudden movement hadn’t been unexpected, he just forgotten for a moment that she thought she was gonna kill him – and with her in such an erotic position above him, all he could think was how much he wanted to sink his aching cock and fangs inside her supple body and plough her into the soft ground below. And he hadn’t thought of much else.

Growling again, this time in displeasure, Spike was about to throw her from his lap when he noticed her looking – no, staring – at the blood he could feel slowly slipping down the side of his face. The cut was healing, and fast since he was still full of Slayer-blood. But still it was bleeding, if only very slightly.

He realised, it was now she who was enthralled.

Her eyes were wide and glazed, her luscious lips slightly parted. It was hunger, in her gaze.

---

Buffy didn’t know what to think, it had all happened so fast – too fast. She knew she should move, knew she should get up and run as far away as possible from these alien feelings she was suddenly experiencing. But something was holding her here.

Oh. She shivered.

Oh, the scent of his blood. It was divine. There was something there, something familiar, but she knew that she had never met this vampire before tonight – not counting the night before when he had starting tailing her.

God – she wanted him! This was so wrong…but still, she couldn’t move. Couldn’t draw herself away…

….couldn’t bare to.

---

Slowly, unable to resist binding her to him in some way, any way, Spike carefully reached up, drawing his thumb over the cut on his cheek as he collected his own blood from his skin.

Cautiously, oh so very gradually, he brought his hand up to her lips. He noticed she was panting in anticipation of an act she couldn’t bring herself to stop – and Spike found that so was he.

Harsh, short, sharp, unneeded breaths caused her black silk and lace enhanced chest to rise and fall harder and faster. Her nipples puckered, and it took all Spike was to stop himself from leaning forward and drawing one of those tight nubs into his mouth.

Spike groaned low in his throat when his skin finally met her parted lips, and when she opened them wider to accept his blood to her tongue he growled.

For a moment, a minute, a millennia, time seemed to stand still, and all there was, was them. Spike, and this beautiful stranger, who had, as of yet, been unable to grant him the simple pleasure of the knowledge of her name.

Just them.

But all too soon reality crashed down over the perfection sitting a top of him, and he watched as the shutters fell down around her and she thrust his hand far away from her lips.

Her own hand rose to her mouth, as if in belated defence against the invasion that had just been perpetrated.

---

With a cry of unholy agony at her own actions, Buffy sprang from his lap, still panting heavily as she tried to removed the scent and taste of him from her mind, all the while staring down at him in abject horror.

But she could not.

The scent of his skin, the taste of his flesh… they were still on her lips. The taste of his blood, it was still in her mouth, and she could feel it coursing majestically through her undead veins.

Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes, but she continued to stare down at him coldly. Frustration at her reaction, frustration at how right it had felt to be in his arms…

Frustration at how she knew she had to resist – how she knew she had to kill this beautiful, deadly creature lying below her.

Deadly being the operative word, she harshly reminded herself as images of a bloody past flashed to the forefront of her memory.

“Stay away from me. You come near me again, I’m going to end this. This isn’t over.” She threatened, her voice thankfully strong even as she cursed herself for such a nonsensical threat, before sprinting in a Vampire/Slayer blurringly fast movement as far away from him as possible, kicking up grass as she went.

Spike still lay there, one hand in his lap, the other bent behind him, keeping his back at a forty-five degree angle from the ground.

Stunned.

What was that about?! Sure, he had expected a little chase, but the girl seemed seriously spooked by her reactions to him. She was resistant, reluctant…which he had expected, but there was more. She was horrified.

Horrified by her own actions, rather than being – what?

How had he expected her to react, what had he expected her to do?

Spike sat up and shook his head in order to try to centre his thoughts – she was new, he rationalised. It was obvious she was just a baby vampire, probably only been turned a few months: still a little shaky on her new legs, like a new-born colt. And there were no other vampires around her – she was obviously alone in this world.

Alone…

Just like him.

Possibly unused to contact, unused to vampiric affection – despite being the obvious cutie that she was. It was obvious that she desired him – in that, he was certain. If she hadn’t, no matter how much he wanted her, he would have walked away; forcing oneself, on anybody, wasn’t Spike’s style. She was probably just a little fearful of this desire – why, Spike had no idea, but he was determined to find out. To save her from whatever demons that were plaguing her – be they internal or external.

He’d give her a little time – well, as much as he was willing to anyway – but he couldn’t wait to fight her again, couldn’t wait to feel her body against his; couldn’t wait to claim her as his forever. She was a glorious equal – finally one worthy of him.

He slowly sunk back down in to the ground, satisfied.

And still partially aroused from the infinitely erotic sensations of having his future Mate wrap her sublime lips around his body, even it was only his finger, and draw his blood into her body.

With slow, purposeful actions, Spike lifted his free arm, drawing his own thumb into his mouth, savouring the taste of her on his tongue.

He was in her now.

This wasn’t over.

It would never be over.

Spike thought back to her parting words. This isn’t over.

She’d meant them as a threat – for whatever reasons, Spike wasn’t sure. But he could only take them as a promise, and one that he was sure he was going to fulfil.




TBC ASAP in..........Chapter Five :: A Kiss Bestowed


A/N: Just wanted to say a big thanks for my lovely reviewers vladt and dragontiff!

I hope everyone enjoyed this next part. I'm afraid I'm without internet access for a little while, but as soon as it's back I'll be back with hopefully a swift update!