The wonderful banner is by Julie A.

Chapter 3


Buffy woke up quietly and profoundly happy. Her cheek lay on Spike’s chest, her arm about his waist. She was lying half over him, her leg between his thighs. She smiled and tightened her arm about him, holding him closer. It was a wonderful way to wake up, having him with her. She had never allowed that in the other dimension, had always leaped to her feet and fled in shame after the sex was over, had never permitted either of them the afterglow.

It was sweet, painfully sweet. She had missed him so much that his presence here in her arms hurt her heart, brought her perilously close to tears. She turned her head a little and breathed in the scent of his skin, pressing her cheek into his chest.

Her whole body felt rich and heavy, languorous with fulfillment, completely exhausted and utterly content. They had worn each other out last night, unable to stop, taking each other again and again. She laughed a little, a breath against his cool flesh.

“What?” he asked.

She had known that he was awake. He was breathing steadily, which he hardly ever did when he was asleep. She tilted her head to look up at his face. He was watching her, his face very still and thoughtful, his lids down so that from this angle all she could see of his eyes was a flash of blue behind the thick, straight lashes.

“I think we broke every record there is, even the ones we set in my dimension.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised.” His scarred eyebrow tilted in sardonic amusement. “That’s an odd feeling. Having to compete with myself. How do I compare?”

“You’re Spike, so of course it’s the same.”

“I’m not the same man, Slayer. Not the one you seem to know.”

“Yes, you are. Whatever makes you a unique individual, the personality, the likes, the dislikes, the...” she grinned and licked his nipple and felt him shiver, “the responses. They’re all there. The only difference is that you don’t love me.”

“That should be a big one,” he said dryly.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“You were dead, Spike. You were dead and now you’re not. Nothing matters beside that.”

He frowned. His lids had lifted and she could see things moving behind his eyes, but couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“That sounds serious.”

“Doesn’t have to be,” she said quietly. “Can just be fun. Not asking anything of you, okay? Not laying anything on you. You enjoyed last night, didn’t you?”

He grinned crookedly. “Yeah, I enjoyed it. You’re something else in bed, Slayer. Thought my balls would turn inside out.”

She giggled involuntarily. “Sweet talker.”

They both laughed.

He rolled her over suddenly so that she was on her back and he was leaning over her, looking down at her, his eyes narrow and dangerous. It was the look she saw when they were locked in combat. That deadly, give-no-quarter, leopard look.

“We’re enemies, Slayer. We might be fucking, but we’re still enemies.”

“Adds something, doesn’t it?” she mocked and he grinned .

“Yeah, it does.”

“Gives you a thrill, huh? Wondering whether I’ll suddenly decide to stake you instead of fucking your brains out?”

He laughed involuntarily. “Got that last part right. You did fuck my brains out. God, those Slayer muscles! I thought you were bragging when you talked about them before. But you weren’t.”

She looked at him, puzzled. “I talked about them? When?”

“Couple of months back. When that psycho Slayer was here.”

“Faith?” She frowned. “What did sh... I say?”

“Something about your having muscles I’d never even dreamed of, that you could squeeze me until I popped like warm champagne and begged you to hurt me just a little bit more.”

“God, what a ho!”

He grinned. “Gave me a hell of a shock, you saying that. Always seemed such a stick-up-the-ass before. Got me thinking though. Got me wondering what it’d be like.”

Looked like Faith had done her a favor without meaning to, putting ideas into Spike’s head way before he had ever even thought of falling in love with her.

“Turned you on, did it?”

“Yeah. But you were hot right from the beginning, Slayer. Turned on? Got turned on the first time I even saw you, dancing at the Bronze.”

She smiled. “Really?”

“Yeah. Dru even...” He broke off abruptly.

“Dru even what?”

His lids dropped, hiding his eyes. “That truce we had back during that Acathla business freaked her out. But then she went even more mental than usual.”

“About what?”

He shrugged a little. “Saw this maybe.”

“Oh.” She thought about that. Dru might have, with those psychic abilities of hers. “Do you think that’s why she dumped you?”

“Maybe.” His lids lifted. His eyes were dark and confused. “Said I was covered in you. Said she could see you floating all around me.”

Her eyes widened. Had it started even back then? Had it started right from the beginning and neither of them had noticed?

“Listen,” she said suddenly. “This me. This one’s not going to stake you. You may be my enemy, but I’m not yours. If...”

“Why not?” He was frowning at her.

She didn’t want to bring the L-word into this. Not right now. Maybe not ever. If he was not aware of it...It was in fact better if he were not aware of it, if he never became aware, if they were just fuck buddies rather than lovers. But her hands couldn’t help flattening on his shoulderblades, pressing him to her.

“Just not. If the risk gives you that extra thrill, I’m going to have to disappoint you. There’s no risk. I’m not going to stake you.” She reached up and stroked his face helplessly. “I’m enjoying this too much.”

The caress made his brows flick together, eyes darkening even more.

“Might rip your throat out. Have you thought of that? Never gonna get a better chance.”

“To bag your third Slayer? Go ahead. Why don’t you?”

“Enjoying this too much,” he said in his turn and they both grinned tightly. “Might though. Get tired of you and I will. You’ll never see it coming.”

“You won’t do that.”

“Why not? Think you’re that irresistible, Slayer?”

“No. Think you fight fair.” She laughed as his mouth twisted wryly. “I know you, Spike. You’ll give me warning. You won’t kill me in my sleep. I can trust you.”

His face went abruptly still.

“You’re a bloody fool, Slayer!” he said violently. “Trust? I’m a demon, remember? I’m evil!”

“You still fight fair.”

There was a silence. She could feel the tension in his body, see the conflict in his eyes, see him resisting the deeper implications that he didn’t want to acknowledge, shutting them out. Then his forehead dropped against the pillow.

“You don’t,” he growled. “You don’t fight fair at all.”

She laughed and kissed his neck and felt his hands tighten on her upper arms in involuntary response.

“Listen. What I was trying to say before...This me. I don’t know how long I’ll be here. Might be a couple of weeks, might be a couple of years. However long it is, it’s only temporary. The PTB will be working on getting things back the way they should be, with the right Buffy in the right dimension. Sooner or later, they’ll send me back and bring the other Buffy home.”

“Make the most of it, is that what you’re saying?”

“No. What I’m saying is that if...when she comes back, I want you to leave Sunnydale. You don’t need the grief.”

He turned his head on the pillow to look at her, his brows lifting in surprise.

“But that would change things.”

“Yes!” she said intensely. “It wouldn’t go the way it did in my dimension. You wouldn’t die. If I’m still here, I’d be able to prevent it. Prevent a lot of bad things from happening. But if I’m not here, they’ll happen, Spike. You’ll die. And she’ll let you die. I don’t want that to happen again.”

“What did happen?”

“An apocalypse, what else? Another Big Bad—name’s the First Evil. We had to destroy the Hellmouth to defeat it. You did it. There was this amulet. You wore it, powered it. It brought the place down, but it took you with it. You...” She swallowed hard. “You burned.”

He was looking at her intently. “You cared about that.”

“I cared.”

“But she’s you, isn’t she?”

“Not at this point in time. And maybe she never will be. Who knows how things will go in this dimension? The future is always in flux. No event is guaranteed until it happens. I know how I was at this point. Hung up on Angel, damaged by Angelus, hooking up with dullo-boy Riley because I thought he was normal and I wanted to be a normal girl...”

“Sod that. You’re a Slayer. Of course you’re not normal. You’re bleeding special!”

“Didn’t feel special. Felt like a freak.”

“Buffy...”

“Dumb, huh? Did I ever have issues! And it just gets worse. Things are going to happen that’ll send this dimension’s Buffy off the deep end. And if you’re here, you’ll get the brunt of it. I’ve been thinking. I’m going to write everything out, what could happen and what can be done to prevent it. Leave it somewhere where Giles and the other Buffy will find it. Trouble is, I don’t know whether she’ll have the sense to do what she should. There’s too many things that could go wrong. Too many variables. I want you out of it.”

“Even if that screws up this dimension?”

“It’s already screwed up, isn’t it?”

“How would it go if I weren’t around?”

Buffy thought about that. This dimension’s Buffy would never learn to love or have Spike. She would lose him. But she had lost Spike anyway. He had died. This way he wouldn’t. And this dimension’s Buffy would never even know what she had lost. She honestly didn’t know whether that was better or worse. The only thing she did know was that Spike would be alive.

“A lot of shit happened. And a lot of it hurt you. You don’t need to go through all that pain. Save yourself the grief, Spike. Just get out while the getting’s good. Don’t need to die. Angel can wear that frigging amulet. Let Angel go poof if it’s needed.”

He laughed involuntarily. “Never thought I’d hear you say that!”

She laughed too. “Not too happy with him. One way or the other, he plays us all. For our own good, of course.”

“Of course.”

They exchanged sardonic glances.

“He’ll come back. The PTB have some kind of interest in him. They’ll bring him back just like they did when I sent him to Hell. You’re the one at risk.”

“No sodding hero here, pet. Not gonna immolate myself for anybody’s bloody good. That other Buffy comes back, I’m outta here. Guaranteed.”

She let out a little breath of relief. “Good.”

He gave her a sideways, mocking glance. “Couldn’t look into getting this chip out of my head as well, could you, pet? Might make things easier for me in Brazil or wherever.”

“God! You never know when to quit, do you?” But she couldn’t help laughing. It was so like him to push for everything he could possibly get.

“No harm in asking. Little lightheaded here. Kinda hard to get my lobes around all this. The goodwill and all the Slayer tail.”

She hit his shoulder and they both laughed.

“Who knows how long it’ll last?” she growled. “So this time I will say make the most of it.”

“Oh, I plan to.” He twisted to settle himself between her thighs, pulling her legs up around his hips, rubbed himself deliberately against her. “Like right now.”

“One of your better plans,” she purred and arched against him.

***

He came with her on patrol that night. The only time she had allowed him to do that before was during that last year when she had taken him along to help train the Potentials, show them what a vampire was like, what one could do. Previous to that, she had always flatly rejected any attempt he made to join her. It was another example of how blindly prejudiced she had been, refusing to utilize a resource as valuable as Spike when it was offered. She felt like kicking herself.

She had always felt so alone and lonely on patrol, but the times that the Scoobies joined her had been unsatisfactory because she always had to keep an eye out to make sure they weren’t getting into trouble. She didn’t have to do that with Spike. He was a superb fighter, an asset not a liability, and he loved fighting. Patrol gave him an outlet for all that pent up energy and he was enjoying himself completely. They made a marvelous team.

“Glad you suggested I come along,” he said, grinning after they had taken out a pack of Grathar. “This is fun!”

“You realize that you’ve just become a traitor to demonkind.”

“Yeah, but it’s so good to be able to kill things again!”

They both laughed. Then Buffy remembered something and gave him a rueful look.

“You’re going to get beaten up for it.”

“By demons?”

She nodded. “At Willy’s.”

He gave her a mocking, sideways glance. “I’ll just tell them I’m the Slayer’s boyfriend. That’ll give them another think.”

“Well, you are. But I’m not sure that’ll make them think.”

“Might.” Then he laughed at the sight of her worried face. “C’mon, pet. Bunch of lame ass demons aren’t going to take me. Must have got me by surprise over in your dimension. Know to watch out for them now that you’ve told me. They’re gonna get their asses handed to them. Only one who could ever take me is you and even that’s debatable.”

“Oh, yeah?”

He ducked the punch she threw at him, threw one back. “Yeah.”

They battled back and forth across the cemetery, laughing. They were evenly matched, equally fast and deadly, and it was pure exhilaration for them.

Then Buffy caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. “Shit!”

She flung herself on Spike, knocking him to the ground just as a crossbow bolt flew at him. It flashed over their heads and embedded itself with a thud into a tree.

“Xander, no!” she yelled.

She didn’t know what they were doing here and this was not the time to ask. Angel was leaping at Spike, Xander was struggling to reload his crossbow, and Giles was aiming his. None of the three men were listening to her. As usual.

The greatest danger was Giles with a charged crossbow. Buffy was over the intervening space in a second, then kicked it out of his hands. It flew up into the air and didn’t even reach its maximum apogee before she turned on Xander and ripped his bow from his hands. Giles’s crossbow clattered onto the ground just as she broke Xander’s across her knee.

Behind her, Angel and Spike were tearing into each other, Angel snarling and Spike grinning widely with satisfaction.

“Buffy, are you insane?” Giles was gasping. “Why are you stopping us? His chip’s not working! He’s a threat again!”

“His chip’s working fine!”

“He hit you!”

“We were sparring! Xander, stop that!”

Xander was scrabbling after Giles’s intact crossbow where it lay on the ground. Buffy stepped onto it with one foot and ripped out the bowstring with the other.

“Are you crazy?” Xander screamed at her over the ruined crossbows. “Why did you do that?”

“Enough with the hysterics! Listen to me for once! There is nothing wrong with Spike’s chip!”

“Then why can he hit you?” Giles shouted.

“I’m the only human he can hit. There’s something a little different about me, that’s all. Oh, for Pete’s sake!” she exclaimed as Xander, struggling to get a stake out of his pocket, tried to run over to where Angel and Spike were battling it out.

She tripped Xander up, then put a foot in the middle of his back when he fell and held him flat on the ground as she bent and yanked the stake away from him.

“Giles,” she said, holding the stake up pointedly. “Sit down on that tombstone or get perforated in some place not deadly but extremely painful.”

Giles thumped down on the tombstone.

“And you,” she said to Xander, taking her foot off his back, “go sit on the one next to him.” She glanced over at the vampire slugfest. “They need to work off some steam, so we’ll let them be as long as they play nice.”

“Buffy...” Xander staggered to his feet, gaping at her.

“Sit.” She shoved him down onto the tombstone that she had indicated. “Listen to me, the two of you. In the simplest language possible. Spike’s chip still works except on me. He is no threat to anyone human. I am slightly different, which is why he can hit me. But he won’t hurt me because he doesn’t want to. We were just sparring. Got all that?”

“But...” said Xander.

Buffy sighed. “Still too many big words? Okay, let’s make it even simpler. You hurt Spike, I hurt you.”

“Buffy!”

“Shut up.”

She was watching Angel and Spike intently. Both of them were bruised and bloody by this time since they were both trying to damage each other as much as they possibly could. But it seemed to her that Spike had the edge. He was grinning happily while Angel was grim and furious as they slugged it out.

“Uh-oh. Naughty.”

Angel had yanked out the crossbow bolt that had been embedded in the tree. Buffy took two running steps forward and kicked. The toe of her boot struck Angel’s wrist hard. The bolt flew out of his hand and described a parabola into the bushes. Her foot came down, then left the ground again as she leaped. Both feet impacted in a solid dropkick on Angel’s chest. Then Buffy landed neatly in a crouch and Angel thudded back onto his ass on the grass some ten feet away.

“Just when we were having fun,” Spike complained, swiping at the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. “Party pooper.”

“Call that fun?” Buffy growled in exasperation. Both he and Angel were battered. They had meant every punch.

“Hey, we didn’t even go into gameface. Just working off a hundred and twenty years’ worth of steam, pet.”

“Figured that. Until he tried to dust you.”

Angel was clambering back to his feet, bent over a little from where Spike had got a boot into the pit of his stomach. He was looking shamefaced. Buffy guessed that he hadn’t even been aware of what he was doing by reaching for that bolt. He had just been so angry that he had grabbed at whatever weapon was at hand.

“This time you get a pass, Angel, because you didn’t succeed in hurting Spike,” she said coldly. “But the next time you try that, you’ll be blowing in the wind.”

“He was going to kill you!”

“No, he wasn’t. We were only sparring.”

“Just playing,” shrugged Spike. He dropped his forearms onto Buffy’s shoulders and pulled her back to lean against him, then grinned at the enraged expression on Angel’s face.

“Sparring? He may have fooled you, but he doesn’t fool me, Buffy! The minute he gets through your guard, he’ll tear your throat out!”

“Yeah!” said Xander with total conviction.

“Won’t kill her,” purred Spike. He dropped his head and bit lightly at the side of Buffy’s neck with his blunt human teeth. “Having too much fun screwing her.”

“Hahrgh!”

Angel went into gameface, fangs flashing. Xander and Giles jolted to their feet.

“Everybody stop!” yelled Buffy and put up a foot to shove Angel away as he flung himself at Spike. “My choice!”

“You can’t...!” gasped Giles.

“I can do anything I like. Free agent here.” She twisted in Spike’s grasp and slapped him lightly upside the head. “Troublemaker. Had to put it in the worst possible way, didn’t you?”

He was grinning. “Couldn’t resist.”

“You’re not...! You can’t be sleeping with him!” Xander wailed despairingly.

“Told you. We’re lovers in the other dimension. We’re lovers here. That’s the way I want it and that’s the way it’s gonna be. My life. My decision. All of you, butt out.”

“Buffy!” three voices chorused.

“No,” she said flatly. “Deal with it, the bunch of you. Ever since I’ve known you, all three of you have been pushing me around. That stops here. This Buffy decides what she wants to do and none of you have the right to tell me otherwise. I like sleeping with Spike, I’m going to continue sleeping with Spike and if anyone of you harms him for it, they’re gonna wish they were never born.”

There was a dead silence.

“If you don’t like it, take it up with Whistler. The other Buffy might fold under all the shit you keep dumping on her. I won’t. Good example is right now. What are the three of you doing in Restfield? You never volunteered to patrol before. But suddenly here you are. Making sure I’m doing my duty? Checking up on me?”

Giles and Xander turned red and Angel avoided her eyes.

“Yeah. Thought so. Where are the girls? Hiding behind a tree?”

“They’re back at Giles’s place,” Xander mumbled. “Didn’t want to come along.”

“They always had more sense than the three of you.” She slid an arm around Spike’s waist. “Let’s go tell them what the situation is. I don’t trust the Three Stooges here not to twist things around so that Willow and Tara are tricked into using their mojo the wrong way.”

Spike dropped an arm around her as well and they walked along comfortably linked together. He turned his head to grin tauntingly over his shoulder at Giles, Xander and Angel following with scowls on their faces at the sight of Buffy being so intimate and easy with Spike. The whole thing was just way too much fun.

He was enjoying himself hugely. Twisting everyone’s tails like this just couldn’t be passed up and fucking the Slayer was turning out to be amazing! A hundred and twenty years of the cold, deliberate, twisted games that constituted vamp loving had never taken him to these heights, never made him feel the way Slayer made him feel.

He’d never had sex with a human before. They were too fragile. Couldn’t really cut loose without hurting them and, unlike Angelus, he didn’t get off on inflicting pain. Wasn’t a sadist, didn’t enjoy the pre-show, didn’t even like playing with his food more than what was necessary to cut them out of the herd and get them someplace private where he could drain their blood. No fun when one had to be careful of one’s strength and hold back all the time. But he was starting to understand what the attraction was.

The heat! Vamp skin was cool, room-temperature. He wasn’t used to the heat, wasn’t used to the intensity. But that intensity was the Slayer. It wasn’t because she was human; it was because she was the Slayer. The heat was human; the strength that matched his was the Slayer; the combination irresistible. Slayer muscles battling his, clenching upon him, milking him...He really had almost turned inside out, his climaxes had been so shattering.

Wasn’t going to give that up. Not until the other Buffy came back. He’d get the hell out of Dodge then, like he’d promised this Buffy. But as long as this Buffy stayed around, he was going to take advantage of the best sex he had ever had in his unlife.

The three girls were at the Watcher’s pad. So was Captain Cardboard, with his good buddy, what was the sod’s name, oh, yeah, Graham, at his side. Spike tightened his arm around Buffy’s neck, pressing her head into the curve of his neck and shoulder, and watched with amused satisfaction as Finn turned an interesting shade of magenta when Buffy showed every sign of enjoying it.

“What the hell are you doing with him?” Finn yelled and Buffy sighed deeply.

“Everything she possibly can,” purred Spike and snickered into Buffy’s hair.

She whacked his chest. “Shut up, Spike,” she growled, but her eyes were laughing.

“Buffy!” Willow whispered. “You can’t be s...sl...”

“Sleeping with Spike? Yes, I am.”

“He’s a vamp!” yelled Riley.

“Is that a fact?” Buffy gave Riley a scornful glance. “What that means to me is that I can finally get off in bed. You never did it for me, Riley. I always had to hold back just in case I bust you somewhere, which meant I never really got off. Don’t have to hold back with Spike. He’s really satisfying in bed. The best.”

Spike laughed helplessly while Riley looked like his head was going to explode. “Thanks, pet. Appreciate the assessment.”

“Humans don’t really cut it, do they?” remarked Anya sympathetically. “I remember that back when I was a demon. They don’t have the strength or the stamina. You might discuss that with our Buffy sometime, Riley.”

“I never thought you’d cheat on me, Buffy,” said Riley bitterly, not listening. “And not with him!”

“Who’s cheating? In my dimension, you dumped me, Riley, after screwing around with vamp hos. I’m not your girlfriend, Riley. Your girlfriend went poof. This Buffy is Spike’s girlfriend.”

“Not for long,” snarled Riley, heading towards Spike.

Buffy stepped in between and shoved him away. “Do you really want me to smack you around some more, Riley?”

“Bet you wish Engelman had set the chip to kill me when it went off instead of just giving me a headache, huh, tin soldier,” Spike mocked. “Too late now, with all the Initiative sods being pulled out. Blew a real good opportunity there.”

Riley looked at him with hatred.

Buffy looked around at all the frowning faces. “I want to make things perfectly clear. Spike and I are lovers. That is my choice, my decision. And none of you have the right to interfere. I don’t know how much mojo you and Tara have, Willow. But I’m warning you. Don’t use it on either Spike or me.”

“We wouldn’t!” exclaimed Tara and Willow at the same time.

“You might have been talked into it. The reason I’m telling you this is because Giles, Xander and Angel have discovered that Spike’s chip doesn’t go off when he hits me.”

“What!” exclaimed Riley in horror.

Spike happily went into full gameface, leaned forward and bit Buffy’s neck in demonstration. It was a light bite, but his fangs deliberately broke the skin and let a small amount of blood trickle free.

“See? No pain,” he said smugly, then licked the wound to seal it and sucked the blood off her skin. “Whoa. Slayer blood. Real rush, pet.”

Buffy glanced warily around. Willow and Tara were looking stunned, Anya amused, Giles and Xander horrified, Angel furious and Riley appalled. Graham in the background had a set, expressionless face.

“Never know when to stop pushing, do you?” she muttered to Spike under her breath and he laughed.

“But how?” exclaimed Willow.

“Another one of your spells gone a little off, Will. Tara said it’s like a deep tropical cellular tan that confuses Spike’s chip so that it doesn’t work on me. But the chip still does keep him from biting any other human. So none of you have any excuse to dust Spike because of it.”

“But if he can hurt you,” Willow said and Spike laughed.

“Why should I? Having too much fun fucking h...”

“Spike!” exclaimed Buffy too late once again and he smirked at her. She looked at the expressions on everybody’s faces and sighed. “That could have been put a little less crudely, but it does sort of cover the situation.”

“Buffy...” Giles began.

“No, Giles,” she said firmly. “This is the way I want it. Deal. Okay, Spike and I are going to go back on patrol, then we’re going home. We’ll see you all tomorrow.”

Giles frowned. “Are you both staying at Revello Drive? I didn’t think your mother was quite so open-minded.”

“She’s not.” Buffy grinned at him. “We’ve got our own place. Where exactly we’re not telling you, for obvious reasons.”

“But what if we need to make contact with you?” Giles protested.

“Buffy’s gonna get a cell and she’ll give you its number once she has it,” Spike said. “Until then, she’ll call you every now and then to check. ”

He was grinning as the two of them walked out, their arms around each other’s waists. The seething hostility in both Riley and Angel was immensely satisfactory and the stunned helplessness of the Scoobies was icing on the cake. They’d asked for this. He’d even warned them and they hadn’t listened. This was payback on a scale he hadn’t even envisioned and he was enjoying every minute of it.

Slayer in his bed though was the best part of it. He shucked his duster and toed out of his Docs the minute they shut the flat’s door behind them. She laughed when he reached out and pulled her against him, but her eyes were soft.

“Shafting the Scoobs turns you on?” she mocked.

“You know it,” he grinned. “But I already had an appetite.”

She leaned against him, smiling, pulling his T-shirt out of his jeans. “When don’t you?”

They kissed slowly, luxuriously—long, slow, drugging kisses. He pulled his tee off when she pushed it up, tossed it away. She stroked him delicately as they kissed, fingertips sliding over his body, across his face again and again. Something inside him responded to that, to the gentleness, the tenderness in her touch. Something long buried and unacknowledged.

He tried to shove it back down, tried to repudiate it. It was a weakness. He had always been gentle with Dru, hadn’t been able to help it, a hardwired response that she had made use of but never appreciated. Twisted by Angelus, Dru had liked pain. But his gentleness and care had meant safety, so she had allowed it. She had never given it back though, never really valued it, just as she had never really valued him, fixated on Angelus as she had been.

But the Slayer...This other-dimension Buffy Summers. The way she touched him, hands gliding delicately, lingeringly over him, mouth responding to his, lips sliding along the line of his jaw, down the cord of his neck, along his collarbone. The little sharp catch of her breath as his hands moved over her. As if it mattered, his touch, her caresses; mattered deeply. As if he mattered.

What had happened in that other dimension to bring this kind of a response? What was it in her eyes when she looked at him?

He didn’t want to know. He understood sex. The driving games of it. It was simple, basic. An urge, like feeding, easily satisfied and easily forgotten. But this was something else, something more, and he didn’t want to understand what it was, feared it because it touched things in him that he had deliberately pushed down and dismissed, vulnerabilities that he had hidden for a hundred and twenty years.

“What are you doing to me?” he said harshly against her mouth and felt her smile.

“Only what you want.”

He did want it. He shut that thought out angrily, picked her up and dropped her onto the bed. She lay there, her arms above her head, waiting for him, her gaze smiling and soft. Knowing. She knew him too well. Four years more of knowledge that he didn’t have a clue about.

“You know too much,” he muttered, yanking off her boots.

“Can’t help that.”

“Don’t like it.” He undressed her swiftly and she let him, arching lazily to his hands.

“There is an obvious solution.”

He frowned down at her as he stood by the bed, stripping off his jeans. “What?”

“I could leave.” But she reached out and ran her hand up his naked thigh, pressed her palm into the hollow of his pelvis. His cock responded even though she hadn’t touched it and she laughed.

He laughed too, an angry, exasperated sound. “No. Don’t want you to leave.”

“Not yet anyway, right?” she murmured as he folded down on top of her.

He found himself wanting to say, ‘Not ever,’ and that was another concession, his defences going down before her one by one.

“Dammit,” he muttered instead and kissed her painfully hard.

She kissed him back as fiercely, her arms closing about him, her legs coming up to grip his waist. The sole of her foot slid across his ass and down the back of his thigh. His hands tightened demandingly on her.

“Hey,” she said and rolled him over suddenly onto his back, leaned over him, smiling. “What’s the hurry?”

He was in a hurry, wanting to bury himself in her, forget thought in sensation. The heavy golden waves of her hair fell like a curtain about his head as he looked up at her, blocking out the world so that there was nothing but her and that strange tenderness in her face and that expression in her eyes he didn’t want to understand.

“Where have you gone?” asked Buffy. The face looking up at her was remote, resistant, its strong bone-structure suddenly very visible and hard, like something carven out of alabaster, eyes half-lidded and dark, lips closed and still. She had never seen him like this before: Spike’s thoughts and emotions had always been clearly visible on his face, even when she refused to see them. This cool, intransigent stillness made him a stranger.

“I won’t be what you want me to be.”

“Don’t want you to be anything but what you are,” she said and bent to kiss that closed, resistive mouth and felt it soften and open under hers. “Be what you like.”

“A vamp?” he mocked.

“No problems with that.” Not any longer.

“Really?” His thumb came up to feather lightly over the shallow bite mark he had left on her neck, already fading with her Slayer healing. His gaze was derisive. “Did I drink from you in the other dimension then? Did a Slayer allow a vamp to take her blood? Don’t think so. Your good buddies would have freaked, same way they do here.”

“Yeah, they would have freaked,” she agreed. He had never bitten her in the other dimension, had known that she would never have let him. “Had a lot of issues then. I’ve grown out of them. Slayer blood. Is that what you want?”

He laughed harshly. “Yeah, sure. Doesn’t every vamp?”

“Take it then.”

He stared at her. “What?”

“Anything you want.”

It was like being hit by an explosion. All of a sudden she was on her back and he was leaning over her, in full gameface, eyes golden and dangerous.

“I will.” It was a snarl, angry and threatening. He wanted her to resist, was fighting her somewhere deep down.

She wrapped her arms around his sides, pulling him down upon her, her hands flattening over the sharpness of his shoulderblades to press him to her. “Go ahead.”

He made a furious, frustrated sound in his throat, then suddenly bit. She felt his fangs slide into her neck. It should have hurt. It didn’t. Instead a singing, heated rapture began under the draw of his fangs, an electric current shuddering through every cell of her body. She gasped in helpless pleasure, understanding now how Riley could have become addicted in her dimension and why humans would be drawn obsessively to the vamps in the bite shops.

“God, Spike!”

He was shuddering himself, his body tensing and vibrating upon her. Slayer blood, an aphrodisiac to vamps. She could feel him impossibly hard and urgent between her thighs. The draw of his fangs slowed and his hands moved to knead her breasts, thumbs rasping across her nipples. She arched involuntarily to him.

“Ohhh...!”

She had never felt anything like this before, even in those three months when they had been all over each other. But then she had never let him take her blood before. He was stretching out the draw, that unbearable rapture building and intensifying for both of them the longer it went on, his hands kneading and sliding demandingly over her breasts and belly and thighs, just as she was clutching at him, writhing helplessly under him.

“Oh, God, Spike, come on!”

His knee pushed her thighs apart. She felt the broad, silken head of his cock press against her entrance, felt him come into her with one hard, smooth thrust, clenched upon him involuntarily with all her Slayer strength and heard him groan with pleasure against her neck. Then she was lost in the driving rhythm of his body pistoning into her, straining against him, her hands clawing down his back, her mouth gasping against the side of his head, feeling his breath hitch and shudder around his fangs in her neck.

It went on unbearably forever, that draw of his fangs fueling them both beyond thought, beyond reason, beyond what was humanly possible. Pure sensation, exquisite, excruciating. She thought she would die before his body seized up and he jolted within her. Her lungs, heart, brain stopped, shorting right out.

“Again, Slayer,” he rasped against her face as she struggled back to herself.

“OhmiGod, I’m so wiped...You’re out of your mind...”

He laughed breathlessly. “Not half done yet.”

Slayer blood. She laughed too, groaned as her whole body responded to his, caught him to her helplessly.


TBC