Chapter 18: Realities

He sniffed her up and down, turned her around and sniffed some more before declaring, “You’ll do. Now, you need to practice breaking the thrall until you’re quite good at it. You don’t want Anton to really have control over you – and you’ll only get the one chance to resist.”

“You may have missed this part – but I think he’s even more disgusting than you. If such a thing is possible, that is.”

“Fine. Let’s get to work.”

Moving forward slowly, Spike again held her shoulders between his hands, his false breath tickling her neck. He needed to be close to her to initiate the thrall. Needed to be touching her. He stroked her soft flesh gently until he felt her relax in his embrace.

“It may feel like this.” He kissed her lightly near the vein in her neck. Now that she was looking for it, she realized that she could feel his presence in her mind. It felt comforting, familiar, as if they had done this many times before. Was it supposed to feel like that?

“Or it may feel like this.” Tightening his hold on her mind and body until she was shaking, he let his fangs lightly pierce her neck until she convulsed around him. Despite her protests, she had been almost as turned on by what they had just done as he was. It took only the lightest of bites to push her over the edge.

With a visible act of will, Buffy physically and mentally shoved Spike away from her body. Buffy was trembling with both rage and passion.

“Bloody hell! That hurt!” He had already proved to Buffy that he could bite her without the chip going off, but her abrupt termination of the thrall had been nearly as painful. “Give a guy some warning, will you?”

Nevertheless Spike he smiled as he clambered upright and brushed off the pain. His girl was a goddess. Not one in twenty would be able to do what she had just done – not with any amount of coaching. “That’s my good girl. Let’s see if you can do it again.”

Spike’s smile widened as he strode towards her once again. That brief touch with her mind had told him something important. Despite her protestations, the Slayer was enjoying this game. The battle of wits, the violence, the intimacy of it. She’d probably die before she admitted it out loud, but she’d had a few fantasies of her own while he was jerking off in the bathroom.

“That’s my girl,” he purred. “Make me work for it.”

She broke his physical and mental hold on her again and this time sent him flying into the wall. The mental pain was staggering – he knew it would get worse each time she did it. And mental effort was starting to slow him down. He hadn’t told the Slayer, but his thrall had always been weak. It wasn’t something he really liked to do, and so he hadn’t used it often. He only hoped it was strong enough to give Buffy the tools she would need against Anton.

Smiling as he initiated the thrall again, he realized that he had found yet another way to re-awaken the Slayer’s hidden passion. She was enjoying the fact that she was able to break his hold over her. That she could hurt him.

It made her feel empowered, aroused. It was another element of her scent that had been missing. She wanted him, and this time he didn’t mean to leave her disappointed, even if he knew actual sex was out of the question. He was holding fast to the romantic idea that he wouldn’t make love to her until she was willing to admit to herself that she wanted it.

This time he came at her from behind. He wasn’t called a master vampire for nothing. He had learned at least a few tricks over the years. He held her tightly in his arms, his hands and lips still, while strengthening the bond between them. This time, his mind sought out the pleasure center in her brain.

At first Buffy didn’t seem to know what was happening. Spike was just holding her, but she could barely feel a whisper of him in her mind. Nevertheless, her body was reacting to his touch far too strongly. She could feel his erection as it pressed into her backside, and the pressure inside her mind and body increased until she was breathing harder, almost panting, and arching her head back against his shoulder. She could feel his hands slide up over her hips and abdomen, burrowing inside the dress to cup her breasts. Faintly, she knew she should protest, tell him to stop, but she didn’t want to. Deciding that she could always claim it was the thrall that made her do it, she allowed Spike’s hands to continue to roam over her body however they wished. Instead of protesting when he moved up under the hem of her dress, she moved to allow him greater access. Grazing across her dewy wetness a few times, he finally allowed one digit to slip inside her heat. She instantly began to spasm around his hand, and he braced himself to hold her as she nearly fell against him, her body climaxing hard.

While she recovered from the waves of pleasure pulsing through her, he still held her mind and body in a light thrall. Through the link, he could hear her thoughts plainly. ‘God, that felt good. I’ve been needing that for months,’ followed quickly by mortifiaction, ‘Oh my God! Did he just do that? Did I just do that?’

Spike was proud that he’d finally done what he’d set out to do downstairs. He had made Buffy cum. Not exactly the way he’d envisioned it, but it would do for a start.

Again she wrenched her mind away from his grasp. This thrall had been more subtle, but much deeper this time, and the pain was blinding, worse than the chip at its strongest. While he staggered from the force of it, she punched him in the gut, hard, but his anguish at the loss of her mind’s touch was so great he barely even felt it.

“How could you do that to me?”

Sputtering, Spike considered his answers. He knew that Slayer wasn’t really asking him how, although it was a fair question. What she wanted to know was why. Weighing the choices, he discarded ‘cause I wanted to’ and ‘ because you needed it,’ and went instead for the pragmatic.

“Because Anton might,” he coughed. “You need to be prepared. Need I remind you that it would NOT be a good thing if he had you under so deep that you couldn’t break free?”

Her reply was instant, although it was a phrase he hadn’t heard her vocalize for quite some time. “You’re a pig Spike.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, Slayer,” he coughed. “Besides, now you finally smell right.”

“What? You can smell…it? I mean, I know vamps can smell sex, and you claim to be able to smell when someone is aroused...”

He shrugged. “It’s a physical change – we can smell orgasm, male or female. Even if you had tried to hide it, I would have known.” He grinned up at her. He was obviously pleased with his efforts. “Want to try it again?” He waggled his eyebrows. “Breaking the thrall gets just a little bit harder each time – it’d be good practice.”

“No. Never again. You are not to do that to me EVER again Spike. I mean it.”

Smirking, he asked, “That just apply to the thrall? I’m an old-fashioned kind of vamp myself. Prefer doing things the hard way, if you catch my drift.”

“You are so disgusting. I feel violated here.”

“You’d feel a heck of a lot more violated if Anton gets his claws on you. Or had you forgotten the actual purpose of this little exercise?”

“Of course not,” she blushed. “I mean, it’s why we’re here in the first place. I’m fine. I mean, I’ll be fine. I mean, I understand what to do – and I don’t think I’ll have any trouble keeping that disgusting slug Anton out of my mind. I mean, he is way more revolting even than you.”

“I think I’ve just been insulted. And after all I’ve done for you. None of this was my idea, if you remember. Well, not all of it at any rate. And it was necessary…”

“Somehow I’m starting to have my doubts. I think we’d better start making some concrete plans. Meet up with Willow. Make sure of our escape route.”

“Right then,” Spike snorted. “Back to business it is. My first choice would be not have to escape at all. Anton’s probably got his place guarded like a fortress. It might be possible to make some kind of an arrangement with him, that’ll let us get away without a fight. Of course we’d double cross him and take Tara before he could consummate the deal.”

Spike had been thinking? When had he had time to think? Buffy hadn’t been thinking at all. Well, at least not about their plan.

“But just in case he doesn’t go for it,” Spike continued, “I think we should re-establish the thrall.” At her angry stare, Spike qualified, “Just a light one, is all. Means we’ll be able to communicate without speaking – and that’s more or less it. Once the sale actually goes through, the link will be transferred to Anton. I don’t know if you’ll still be able to sense me or not.

“Once that happens, he’ll be able to feel you through the bond, Slayer. And he’ll expect you to be scared. May even expect you to have plans to escape him. Just don’t fight the link until we’re alone. I’m guessing that it won’t be long. No doubt he’ll want to get you to himself immediately – if he can force you to fuck him, it helps cement the thrall. I’ll try to make some excuse to have Tara present somewhere nearby. You give me the signal by breaking the bond, and I’ll back you to the hilt, Slayer. I’ll make sure you and the little Wicca get home safely.”

Just then there was a loud pounding on the door. Luckily it had a magically reinforced lock, or it might have broken in. like the door to the props room.

“Once you’ve broken the bond,” Spike continued, “you’ll have to dust Anton in those first few moments when he is disoriented and unable to defend himself. So you’ll have to stake him quickly. He’ll be trying to re-initiate the thrall, and if he does that, it’ll be more difficult to break.”

Silently Willow slipped the key in the lock and slipped back into the room. “Slight change of plans, guys. Seems the Auctioneer has changed his mind about holding the auction without you actually being on stage. He says that Buffy needs to go downstairs and onstage for the auction.”

The vampire swore, “Bloody fucking hell! Think Willow. What exactly did that little weasel say – does she have to ‘go downstairs and onstage,’ or did he say that she has to ‘go down on stage?’”

“What’s the diff?” Willow began before she turned bright red. Buffy was already as pale as a sheet.