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Buffy woke as she had every other day for the past week—encased in Spike’s strong arms, her naked torso pressed tightly up against his, one arm wedged against her side and the other looped lightly around his neck. Though this time, for the first time since that fateful night, she could feel some of the strength that had long been absent returning to her limbs.

The screaming pain that she felt the first morning she had rejoined the world of the conscious had receded to a dull throbbing feeling in her lower abdomen and she could tell the minor wounds on her face and arms had long since healed over.

She lay still with her eyes closed as her hand that rested around his upper body absently stroked the curls that rested against the base of his neck. She would have been dead by now if it hadn’t been for Spike. Either Angelus would have finished her off if Spike hadn’t jumped in at the last minute, or she would have bled to death on the stone floor of the mansion.

It had been a week. A week that the world hadn’t been sucked into hell and not once had her friends or Watcher even been by to check the mansion to see if she might have been there, alive but injured as she had been. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where she would have been by now if Spike hadn’t helped her.

Yes, she had made some mistakes over the past months—sleeping with Angel not being the least of them—but they were her friends, and despite the mistakes she had made she still thought they would have cared enough to at least check on her. It wasn’t everyday that a girl’s first love turned into a homicidal maniac on her friends. For that she took complete responsibility, even without ever being able to possibly know what would happen. But still, it hurt…

Buffy watched her small hand slide down from around Spike’s neck to rest over his chest, her fingers lightly brushing his nipple. She smiled slightly when she felt his arms give her a small squeeze in his sleep as he unconsciously pulled her closer. She felt the erection she always seemed to wake up to brush against her stomach and the leg that always found its way between her own nudge her mound slightly, but he made no further move to bring them together sexually.

He had cared for her better in the last few days than anyone else had ever done in the past. She was his mortal enemy turned reluctant ally, yet rather than kill her as he had always boasted he would, he had saved her, cared for her and treated her like she mattered. She couldn’t help but feel the tiny swelling of her heart for him. In fact she couldn’t think of a place she would rather be than in his arms at that moment.

“I can hear you thinking,” his voice rumbled out softly, and she felt her lips tug into a soft smile that she could do nothing to prevent. Sighing contentedly, she nuzzled further into the comfort of his embrace.

“Did I wake you?” She asked in the same quiet tone, the warmth of her breath fanning across his neck.

“No.” Spike dropped a small lingering kiss to her forehead and she sighed heavily as the perfect contentment she felt forced her to think about what was waiting for her: friends that didn’t care, a mother who didn’t want her and a life as a teenager who had been kicked out of the only school that would accept her after she had been booted from Hemery. Such was the life of a Slayer it seemed.

“What’s wrong, gorgeous?” Spike asked as his fingers gently trailed down the smooth curve of her cheek. Buffy’s brows furrowed as she thought about it. Spike pulled back slightly to look at her. “Slayer?”

“It’s nothing, it’s just…” Her eyes flicked up to meet his. “I’m almost completely healed now.” She watched and waited to see how he would react, rolling her eyes when after a moment he just continued to stare at her. “I’m almost well enough to be able to go home—well not go home since my mother kicked me out, but well enough to get out of your hair at least. I guess… I just don’t want to leave here, is all.” Spike frowned and pulled her back towards him, contemplating telling her about the claim he had placed on her. It had been weighing heavily on him to tell her about it for the past week, but every time a moment presented itself he shied away, telling himself she wasn’t well enough to worry about that yet. She was well enough now, though. By the time he had come to a decision, however, and opened his mouth to tell her, the moment had passed and she was speaking again.

“I know. I’m just being silly, right?” She said offering him a small sheepish smile even though he couldn’t see her face. “It must be driving you mad having the Slayer stuck with you night and day.”

Spike lent down and pressed a lingering kiss to the top of her head. “Stay with me then,” he whispered into her hair, but knowing that she would still hear it. Buffy’s eyes went wide at the statement.

“Stay with you?” She repeated lamely, causing a small smile to tug at his lips. If only she knew how much he wanted her around, how much she dulled the ache of loneliness inside him and gave meaning to his life again.

Spike nodded. “Stay with me. We can live here. We’ll redo the place to our liking, buy some new furniture and torch the old.”

He was talking. She knew he was talking but she couldn’t seem to move past the fact that he wanted her to stay with him. “You’d want me to stay with you? To live here with you?” she asked with such innocence that he had to smile.

“You don’t want to?”

“No, I do! I just…you really mean that?” Buffy asked, trying to keep the insecurity she felt from coming through in her voice.

“Of course, gorgeous.” She looked at him. Her face was so close to his own, her lips a mere breath away so that he would only have to lean forward a fraction of a millimetre to kiss her. And God how he wanted to, but he knew she still felt for the Poof. She was still mourning for him somewhere inside her and wouldn’t welcome his advances.

He though about the lack of mourning he had done over Drusilla, how unaffected he truly was by her passing that he could already be thinking of moving on barely a week after her death at his hands. Could a century of devotion to one person really amount to so little? Had he ever really been in love with her in the first place if he could remain so unmoved? What did that say about his person?

Yet he knew he felt the beginnings of true affection for the slip of a girl that he held in his arms. The antithesis to everything that he was and for which he stood. As always with him, who and what she was didn’t matter when it came to matters of the heart. He had always been the one to disregard rules and conventions when it came to love, blind to everything but the devotion he felt. He vowed that this time if he ever grew to love her, he wouldn’t let his feelings force him to turn a blind eye to what was really going on. He wouldn’t let it grow to the obsession he had ended up feeling for Drusilla, to the point that he didn’t care who she slept with as long as it was him to whom she came home.

No, if he loved this girl he would make sure she knew damn well that it was all or nothing.

Buffy closed her eyes as he lent up and placed a kiss against her forehead. She had been so sure that he was about to kiss her just now. But instead he had bypassed her lips completely. She tried to hide the disappointment she felt over his rejection.

Buffy though about the years he had spent with Drusilla, loving and caring from her when it was clear from the vampiress’ actions in Sunnydale that she was willing to forget everything he had ever done for her in the face of her devotion to her maker.

The loss of the love of his life had to be near crippling. She had thought that the loss of Angel would break her, in reality though the thought caused her far less pain then she would have once believed. Angel had been her everything once upon a time, she would have denied her very existence if she though it would please him. Despite that, everything he had done as Angelus he had done with a smile while wearing the face of the man she had once loved. Did she really expect to be able to love him again in the all consuming way that she had before if he had had his soul returned though? No.

But, yes.

In some ways, no matter what he had done, he was Angel—the vampire who she had loved and who had loved her in return. Her first love. She suspected that she would always have a place in her heart for him—a place where she would keep the memories of their stolen moments together. But they could have never been together as they were. She couldn’t look at him with the same childish love in her eyes and pretend that what he had done didn’t matter. Angelus was always going to be a part of the Angel she knew. He was always going to look like the monster that tormented her, killed her friends and tried to end the world.

“And she’s gone again,” Spike teased her gently, bringing her out of her thoughts. “Sure it’s not dangerous you doing all that thinking, love? Your brain can’t be used to it.”

Buffy looked up into blue eyes that were glinting with amusement. Could they really make living side by side in the same house work? Sure, it was a large house, and they had already managed a week without killing each other, but she had been in bed for much of that time. She had no idea what he had been doing when he hadn’t been with her, for all she knew he could have been out snacking on Sunnydale’s populous. If they lived together, did he expect her to still let him hunt? She was still the Slayer and she still had a duty to protect the citizens of Sunnydale. She didn’t think he cared much about the other vamps and demons in the town, but what if he expected her to stop killing off his friends?

There were so many things to consider, and not just demony things. They had normal everyday domestic things like money and food to think about. How were they meant to pay for everything?

“We’ll figure things out, kitten. I can see the wheels turning in your head,” Spike assured her as he brushed her hair back out of her face.

“I can’t let you keep killing, you know that right?” She blurted out before she had time to feel scared about asking.

Spike stared at her.

“I’m the Slayer, Spike. You can’t honestly expect that just because we live together I will turn a blind eye to your eating habits?” Buffy asked seriously.

Spike frowned, “I have a rep to maintain, kitten. I can’t be seen out buying my blood from the sodding butchers!”

“I think living with the Slayer will shoot any reputation you might have had to hell anyway, the fact that you’re buying your blood won’t have a chance to do any damage.”

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” Spike agreed. “But the fact that I have the Slayer living under my roof, seemingly under my control, is a power boost if anything. Buying my blood would imply that it’s you keeping me, not the other way around.”

“Under you control?” Buffy asked incredulously with growing anger.

“I said ‘seemingly’.”

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter. If you refuse to stop killing then this isn’t going to work. I was stupid to have even thought it would to begin with,” Buffy said as she started to roll away from him and slip from underneath the covers of the bed.

“Slayer, stop,” Spike said as he reached out to grasp her arm. She shook him off and stood up, slipping on one of his black t-shirts in the process to hide her nudity.

“No, I don’t want that guilt on top of what I am already feeling. I may have slipped once, but I refuse to do it again. I’ll give you the chance to leave town now. I find you after and you’ve been feeding then I’ll dust you.” The hard light that had entered her eyes told him she was serious.

“Buffy,” he said sliding out of the bed as he stalked towards her, “you’re not even willing to try and work something else out? I don’t have to kill the people I bite! I don’t even have to hurt them! There are these places, like vampire whorehouses, I guess, where humans pay vamps to bite them. What if I found someone who liked it, who agreed to feed me a little bit of blood each day? I promise you, they wouldn’t even feel the effects of blood loss.”

Buffy frowned and looked away from his probing gaze. “I can’t let you bite other people, they probably don’t even realize how dangerous their addiction is. It’s my job to protect them, I just…I can’t.”

Worry creased his brow as he stepped forward and took her into his arms. “Slayer—”

“I can’t, Spike…” Buffy frowned as he turned his face away from her and began to lower his arms. She had seen the hurt that had flashed across his face and she felt its echo deep within her. Touching his face gently she turned him back to look at her, “but if I let you drink from me like that? Would that work? Could you take what you need from me instead of hunting?”

“You’ll let me feed from you?” Spike asked in disbelief.

“If it means that you will stop hunting?” Spike gave her a small nod. “Then, yes.”




AN: Wow! Just wow! You guys completely blew me away with your response to the prologue of this story! Thank you all so much for taking the time to review! *hugs you all tightly* I hope this chapter has lived up to your expectations and that you enjoyed it as much as the first.

A big thank you also to Andrea for beta’ing my stories for me. I doubt they would be readable without her input ;) So thanks.