Betaed by: Goblin_Dae, Science, and Subtilior

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all recognizable characters, locations, and dialogue belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and the various writers. This is written purely for fun.

29.

"Harder."

Once upon a time, a man who wasn't quite young but hadn't quite crossed over the threshold of old, met a princess in an alleyway. He hadn't expected to meet her there, and he'd rather thought that she'd be a bit less mad, but he'd been hoping to find a princess, and he wasn't such a fool as to turn away from the first one to give him her favor.

Even if her favor really hurt.

She'd taught him many things over the years, his Drusilla. She'd taught him to enjoy pain: the taking of it and the giving of it. They'd been birthed in pain: he in the shattering of his heart and she in the breaking of her mind. Pain connected them—it bound them into a moment where he could love her to the depths of his being (although, admittedly, it was somewhat more shallow for being soulless), and she could experience a moment or two of utter clarity and release from the torment of her thoughts.

If he wished, sometimes, that love could accomplish the same, without pain, he learned to keep that wish to himself.

"Harder!"

Now he knelt on a dirty concrete floor, one eye blackening and blurring his vision, a smear of dust and stolen sweat streaking his chest, and snarled as he twisted his cock deeper into the girl folded before him. Sultans' slaves had never prostrated themselves so provocatively. One hand fisted in her sweat soaked hair and yanked, hauling her back on the steel rod of his prick, drilling it into her. The other hand obeyed her order and cracked like a whip against the rosy flesh of her upturned arse.

She cried out like a wounded bird, but her little hands scrabbled for purchase on the slick floor, her narrow hips slammed back into his, taking him in until he couldn't possibly cram another millimeter of himself into her. He was aware that he was growling somewhere deep in his chest, and that his lips couldn't hope to hold in a cascade of profanity.

"...fuck, tight, hot, so tight, squeeze me again you stupid bitch, that's it, gonna ream you proper, gonna rip you inside out, cunt, tease, sweet little arse all red and, fuck, fuck, bloody hell, yeah, like that, you like that, dirty isn't it, hurts, make it hurt, yeah, fuck ..."

Spike tuned out. Poetry, it wasn't.

Poetry had no place here, in the dark, in the dust and the sweat and the pain of this rutting. There wasn't another word for it. Not for this. Like dogs in the dirt, they were, clawing and biting and snarling at each other even in their frantic need. He'd mounted her, pinned her on her hands and knees, and slapped one hand against the back of her neck to hold her in place.

He'd have used his fangs, except for that damnable truce.

In his saner, quieter moments, moments when they weren't fucking like bloody animals—which came much fewer and farther apart as the days marched on—he wondered at his ability to hold onto that last shred: he would not bite her. Not for pain, not for pleasure, not even when she asked—which was due to happen any bloody minute now—not for any of it would he lay a fang on her.

The why of that still eluded him.

Maybe because they were still trapped. Maybe because he still needed her. Maybe because he knew that if he let his fangs slip into her, it'd break their fragile truce, and he'd be gone. She'd wash his dust from her hands as easily as she did the sticky remnants of their sex and violence. Possibly even easier. Maybe because ...

"Harder, dammit," she demanded, and he welcomed the distraction.

He was getting close, his orgasm building like a storm. His cock was a battering ram, and he was tearing down her walls with it. The Slayer, kneeling before him, raw and bruised and bloodied by William the Bloody. Determined, he hauled her nearly upright—they were still on their knees but now mostly vertical. He leaned back a little so that she was almost bouncing atop him, screwing herself down on his dick with all her considerable strength. His hands groped blindly—one to her breast, and one between her thighs, both to pinch and twist viciously. Her mouth made little soundless O's. Against his tongue, her shoulder was as salty as the Pacific. Tears streamed down her face.

Alive, he thought, in the tiny part of his brain still capable of forming words. So alive. Want. Need. Need. Alive. Buffy. Slayer. Yes.

"Spike," she whimpered, her hips churning atop him. "I need—"

"No," he growled in her ear, which only seemed to increase her desperation. If she wasn't careful she was going to tear herself on him. He could already feel her heat increasing and the convulsive fluttering of her ravaged passage; the wetness that smeared his length smelled coppery now. With a grimace, he realized she wouldn't be sitting right for the next day or so. It didn't seem to take her long to recover—Slayer healing proprieties being what they were. He wasn't even sure if he could have abused Drusilla so roughly—Dru had liked her pain far more refined.

"Spike—"

"No!"

There was something twisted about denying her his fangs—especially because what he wanted to give her was something else entirely. Two weeks, now, she'd come to him at night and ridden him into oblivion. Two weeks of their attempts at research being abandoned in favor of filthy fucks on the basement floor. Two weeks of half-hearted patrols that ended in dark alleys or even the middle of the bloody street, with one or both of them totally starkers and his cock hilt deep in her somehow. When they were finished, they were both bruised and bloody, and damn it hurt so good.

Still, she rarely let him take his time, despite their having it in abundance. Rarely ever let him go slow and tender. It was as if she could speed up the clock, the faster they went. As if the more it hurt, the dirtier it was, the more she liked it.

Which struck him as wrong somehow, but he wasn't exactly equipped to suss out why. It had been a long time since he'd had a handle on the whole right and wrong buisness.

Buffy's voice was now little more than a mindless mewl of frustration and desire as she impaled herself repeatedly on his cock. Her legs were spread impossibly wide, giving him total access to everything. His prick stabbed deep, and he knew he had mere moments before he gave in.

Snarling, he shoved his fingers up into her, his thumb grinding on her clit.

"Come for me. Now, sweetheart."

Had the town not been spelled to sleep, he was certain their combined screams and roars would have awoken the living and the dead.

Afterwards she slumped off him, letting him slither out as she slid to the floor. He could see, now, the evidence of their crime: the wetness that gleamed on her thighs and arse, the telltale smears of red, the welts he'd raised across her flesh. He'd left corpses in better condition.

Leaving that thought in the dust, he lowered himself until he was beside her, until only her face filled his field of vision. Whatever it was that drove her to him, that made her clutch and claw and crave the pain he could give her—it was gone for now. Her face was utterly relaxed, at peace, the soft wings of her brows no longer scowling, the lines etched around her eyes gone. She was beautiful like this. So beautiful that it made his chest ache fiercely, as if his long-dead heart was trying to beat again. Her eyes fluttered open, briefly, still glazed with pleasure and release. A soft smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and he wished—not for the first time—that it would take up residence there permanently.

If he could, he'd keep her this way—no matter what it took to get her there.

Somehow, that frightened him more than the threat of dust.

***

Blood tinted the water pink where it swirled down the drain, only this time it wasn't from scratches or contusions or ... that. No, this was the result of scrubbing herself raw. She felt that dirty. Deep down bone dirty.

Moreover, Buffy felt like she deserved it.

This, then, was to be her punishment. Once upon a time, she'd fallen in love with a vampire, and it had distracted her from her duty and calling. It had destroyed her chance at love. She might have been okay, had she simply loved him, but she'd wanted more, needed more. Her hormones had done the talking and too many people had answered for it with their lives.

Now she was trapped, relieved (for the most part) of her responsibilities, and stuck with a vampire who didn't love her, no, but who would take care of those pesky hormones gladly, eagerly in fact. He didn't love her—how could he, soulless thing?—but he could mimic it, sometimes.

He could make her forget.

It was afterwards that she hated herself. Hated herself for being weak and giving in to him, hated that she needed his touch, hated the things they did and the things she let him do to her.

Like tonight, for instance.

Buffy scrubbed harder, as if she could erase the feel of him from her skin if she just dug deep enough—and when had Spike gotten so deep into her? Oh. Right. Right about the same time that she'd decided that naked-vampire wrestling was the thing to do. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

If Angel ...

Well, Angel wasn't here to know, and he wouldn't be, as long as things stayed the same. And if they broke the spell tomorrow, Spike would go away and she'd just ... not tell Angel about this. Ever. Or anyone else.

Who could possibly understand?

***

"Do you?" asked Tara. "It would be okay, if you did."

Buffy wasn't sure that someone whose shirt was covered in blood and who had a massive bullet wound through her chest should be talking about things being okay.

"What? I'm using him, what's okay about that?"

"It's not that simple," Tara said.

"No, it's not. Why do I feel like this? Why do I keep letting Spike do those things to me? He's everything I hate. He's everything that ... I'm supposed to be against. But the only time that I ever feel anything is when … There's something wrong with me."

Tara smiled a sad, wistful smile. "There's nothing wrong with you. You're the same Buffy ..."

"There must be, can't you check again?"

"I'm sorry," Tara said. She touched one hand to the wound in her breast, but the blood didn't stain her hands. They stayed white and clean. "There wasn't time ... But it's going to be fine, now. You just have to trust."

"Trust in what?"

"Your heart." Tara pressed her hand against the center of Buffy's chest, and Buffy realized that she had a wound too, just there. Why hadn't she realized it before? Her entire being felt engulfed by pain, it radiated from the wound in huge waves.

Yet, somehow she felt distanced from it. Apart. As if she'd lived with it for so long she'd managed to get used to it.

"It's broken," Buffy said, fingering the ragged edges of the wound.

"Good thing you've got those Slayer healing powers, huh?"

Buffy grimaced. "You know a lot about me for someone I've never met."

"Yet," Tara said, cryptically.

"Yet," Buffy agreed. "Was it you? Who cast the spell?"

"No, I'm dead, at the moment. Kinda got a big hole in me."

"You should fix that. Maybe see a doctor or something."

"Don't worry about it. You're on the case. And you always win, Buffy. I may not know you yet, but I do know that." Her smile brightened a couple of notches, and she looked away toward something Buffy couldn't see. "You might want to wake up, now. Your vampire is getting antsy."

Buffy felt the wound in her chest throb, sharply. "If you knew me at all, you'd know that he's not my vampire."

Tara grinned. "Sorry, Buffy, but he kinda is."

***

A door slammed, jarring Buffy awake. She sat up, and stretched to work the kink out of her neck. That's what she got for falling asleep on the sofa.

"Spike?" she asked. "What are you doing?"

"I'm out of bloody smokes!" came from the kitchen. Cabinet doors banged, and then Spike came prowling into the room in a slash of black and leather, carrying his boots. She tried not to laugh at his white toes peeking out of the holes in his socks.

"What?" He scowled at her.

"Nothing," she said. "It's daylight. Where are you going?"

"To find some fucking cigarettes," he said. "Where did you think, princess?"

"Don't call me that," she said. She hated how he always said it like it was a bad word. Most of his other pet names for her, infuriating as they were, at least were said like he meant them. But she knew that 'princess' was only one clompy Spike-step away from 'bitch.' "And where do you think you're going to get another carton of cigarettes?"

He stopped in the act of tying his boot laces to look up at her in surprise. "What?"

She shrugged, rolling her neck to try to get rid of the cramp in it. "No stealing," she reminded him.

"No stealing?" Huh. She hadn't known Spike's voice could climb that high. "What the bloody hell have we been doing for food for the last four months?"

"That's different," she said. "You don't need cigarettes to survive. You don't even need air. I do, though, and I'm sick of your stinky habit polluting it."

"Too fucking bad," he said. "Besides, I'll just get them where I usually do."

She frowned. Where had he been getting his cigarettes? Surely he'd finished that first carton ages ago.

"Where's that?" she asked, eyes narrowed.

"Go dust a few vamps and take their stashes. Or demons. Bound to turn up something." He tapped his nose. "Not technically stealin' if they're dead to begin with, yeah? More like payment for a community service."

Buffy made a face. "You're disgusting, Spike," she said. He just didn't get it. He treated their patrols like a joke or a job or a chore. He didn't even feel bad about killing his own kind to get what he wanted.

"What?" he said, looking confused. "'S not stealing."

"It's still gross and wrong. Besides, it's daylight, and we have research to do—"

"Research? Oh, please. You're saying I can't go?"

"I'm saying that we have things to do, and you're not supposed to go wandering on your own," she said.

His eyes narrowed dangerously. "Wouldn't want to interrupt your precious doodle time," he said, with a sneer. "And where were you, your highness, after Christmas when I was patrolling on my own? Didn't have any objections then. Or to leaving me behind in the high school so you could have a strop."

"I don't even know what that is," she said, glaring.

"Have a look in a mirror, sometime. Only time you're not having one is when you're screamin' my name."

"Shut up."

"Make me," he said, his lashes dropping to shadow his eyes and his tone dropping to match. A shiver went through her. A little warning voice piped up in the back of her head, and since it was still daylight, she did her best to listen.

"We need to research," she said, hoping that a subject change would derail the train of badness that Spike was attempting to start. "And you can't smoke in the house anyway, which just means standing around in the sewers."

He scowled, but settled himself back in his chair and crossed his arms.

"Fine, research then," he said, and waited for her open a book or jump him. She could tell by the look on his face that he was certain she'd opt for door number two. And why shouldn't he, she wondered. It's not like she hadn't caved before. Two weeks of Spike sex had turned her into an addict, and he knew how easy it was to make her crave his touch, even if it made her hate herself afterward.

She had her rules, of course: absolutely no sex upstairs, no kinky stuff in the main part of the house, and ... there had been a third rule, she was sure, but it probably had been obliterated the first time he'd stripped her naked during a "patrol" and had her over the hood of a parked car in the middle of the street.

He splayed his legs, adjusted the crotch of his jeans, and leered a little. Part of her, the part that she'd taken to calling Lusty Buffy, starting drooling a little—but with the sun out and the books in front of her, and her dream still lingering in her mind (your vampire ... sorry, but he kinda is), she managed to dredge up a shred of Responsible Buffy and instead reached for a book.

Spike barely managed to catch it before it whacked him in the face.

"I research, you research, remember?" she said, and opened her own book.

***

Four hours later, she was seriously contemplating dusting Spike.

He'd given up on research and had settled for pacing the floor like a caged animal, roaming from room to room restlessly. Every so often he'd pause and pick up something, fiddle with it until he got bored or broke it, and then put it down in order to resume pacing again. She might have been able to deal with that, except he wouldn't stop watching her. His eyes sought her out constantly, and his mood seemed to shift with mercurial swiftness between seductive intent to hatred to something she hadn't found a name for yet.

Finally he'd disappeared into the kitchen, where she could hear the familiar sounds of him heating up his blood. He came back a few minutes later, leaned against the doorjamb, and proceeded to down the entire nasty business while glaring at her over the rim.

So he was pissed at her for the cigarette thing. Whatever. Buffy was sick of dealing with his stupid temper tantrums—although this one hadn't even made it through the warm up stage.

And was she totally sick for being turned on when he watched her like that?

"Knock it off," she said, trying to look at him without looking like she was looking at him.

"What?"

"You know what," she said. "You're doing it on purpose."

"Haven't the foggiest idea what you're on about, Slayer," he said, but he smirked. "Gonna have to be more specific."

"I really hate you, you know that?"

"So you've said. Last time you were riding my face when you said it, so forgive me if I don't quite believe you."

She stood, pencil clutched in her fist. He grinned, tongue between his teeth. "We gonna have a bit of rough and tumble now, pet? Not quite sunset yet, but we can get a jumpstart on the evening's main event." One teasing hand slid down his torso to cup his erection, and her eyes helplessly followed its path. The numbness that had settled over her skin after her shower began to evaporate as her hormones went on a low simmer.

"We have things to do."

"They can wait," he said, voice dropping to a husky purr. "C'mon, Slayer. Know you'd rather be doin' me instead."

"I'd rather be staking you." Buffy advanced on him, pencil raised.

"That so?" He set his mug down on a nearby table and spread his hands. "Prove it."

That stopped her in her tracks. Prove it? He wanted her to ...? That infuriating smirk pulled at his lips, and then his hands dipped to the hem of his shirt and slowly stripped it over his head. Lusty Buffy took notice, with a grunted Vampire Pretty and an eloquent GUH. He dropped the shirt on the floor and sauntered closer, left thumb hooked in the button fly of his jeans, pulling it lower as his fingers played over the bulge just beneath. His right hand, however, drew a heart on his chest. "Right here, Slayer. If you can."

"Spike ..."

Closer now, though she wasn't sure which of them had taken those few steps.

"Love it when you say my name like that, pet," he said, and she felt his words vibrate up from the soles of her feet, slither up her legs, and curl between her thighs.

"I'm not joking," she tried.

"Neither am I." They were close enough to touch, now, only he still seemed to be standing in the doorway, and she'd somehow crossed the room. His fingers came up to trail pathways of sensation down her arm. It barely registered when he closed his fist around hers and dragged the pencil over his heart.

"Spike ..." Her fingers tensed on the pencil, and she wasn't sure if it was in anticipation to stake him, or to drop it and jump him.

"You make it hurt so good, Slayer," he said on a groan.

Angrily, she jerked her hand away. "This isn't funny."

"No," he said, curling his tongue behind his teeth. "It's bloody hilarious."

"Creep."

"What are you gonna do about it?"

"Kick your ass," she said. Maybe she meant it, this time, she thought.

"Not a chance," he said, which made her frown. He grinned, suddenly. "You'd have to catch me first."

Before she had a chance to figure out what he might mean by that, he'd spun on his heel and dashed for the door, tearing out into the twilight. Somehow, she'd missed the sunset. For two seconds she stood, undecided.

Then she dropped the pencil and blazed out after him.

By that time he was already a black-and-white streak at the end of the street, heading past the streetlamps. Putting on speed she went after him, fury and frustration, desire and anger fueling her stride. Jerkface, she thought, when she realized he wasn't even making any attempt to hide from her, yet. Just leading her on a chase through Sunnydale's streets. Her sneakers pounded against the pavement, and her breath burned in her throat. How long had it been since she'd had to run like this, she wondered. Clearly, she was getting out of shape. Giles would be ...

A wave of numbness threatened to drown her, and her steps faltered.

"What's the matter, Slayer? Can't keep up?"

Another burst of fury gave her a second wind. This time she stopped thinking about her breathing, about the ache in her calves and the burn in her thighs. Instead, she focused on the laughing vampire and her tingling Slayer senses. Somehow, Spike had woken them again, and for the first time in months she felt her senses stretching along with her muscles.

This, she thought. This is what I missed.

The flight, the fight, the sense of vampire just ahead. Buffy gave in to centuries of predatory Slayer instinct and ran with it, giving herself up to the chase.

The streets, the houses, the lights became a blur as she focused on Spike's nearing form. Another few yards and she'd be on him—

He veered sharply to the right, vaulted on top of a parked car, and used its roof to propel himself up and over the iron fence that surrounded Restfield cemetery. Without thinking, she followed, loving the sound of her sneaker as it dented the metal roof and the whisper of wind as she flipped over the fence to land on the other side in a laughing crackle of winter leaves. Pausing, she scanned the area, trying to figure out where he'd gone.

Just the breeze and nothing more ... but her Slayer senses tingled, that special little Spike prickle on the back of her neck, and she followed. She stalked him between the trees and then among the taller headstones.

"Never gonna catch me, luv," he mocked from somewhere ahead of her. "You've gone soft."

His voice echoed between the marble statuary and mausoleums. Trying to pinpoint it, she held still and waited. It didn't take long for him to run his mouth again.

"What are you gonna do if you do catch me?" There, just beyond the weeping angel statue. "Stake me? Shag me? Haven't done it in a graveyard, yet. Think I might like to take you here. Bent over Dearly Departed David's headstone, that sweet little quim of yours dripping down the granite. Think he'd like that? Watching you get yours while he sleeps below? Bet you're dripping now, aren't you, my filthy girl?"

She was, but she wasn't going to admit it. Instead, she was going to give him a dose of his own medicine. In a minute, she'd come around the back of the crypt that was hiding him—she'd pounce, and then she'd bend him over something Spike-height and make him beg for mer—

"Oh!"

Buffy crash-landed face down among the leaves, her foot tangled in something that had lain hidden in the dark.

"What the ...?"

Carefully, she tried to sit up—only her hand landed on something warm and solid and definitely not a pile of leaves ... or a horny vampire.

The moon chose that moment to come out from behind a cloud, shining a little more light on the scene. "Spike," she called, as her eyes darted from one sleeping figure to the next. "Spike! Get over here. I found something … weird."

Leaves crunched under no-longer-silent feet. "Weird? What are you on about?" He came around the corner of the crypt.

"What is this?" she asked. "Are these … are they all human?"

Several shadowy figures lay on the ground, surrounding a large, snoring, yellow demon. From what she could see, they wore dark camouflage pants and shirts, dark vests, and ski masks.

"All but Big Bird there," he said, frowning. He knelt beside the demon. "Trussed up like a Christmas turkey. What the hell?"

Buffy rolled one of the sleeping humans onto his back. Something fell out of his hands to rest near her foot. She picked it up. "Cattle prod," she said, pressing a button. Nothing happened. "Rain must have shorted it out."

"Look at this," Spike said. He plucked a small syringe with a long, dart-like tip from the demon's hide. "Tranqs. And they've got him bound up with zip ties."

The human at her feet gave a slight snort in his sleep. "This looks like ... army stuff," she said, examining the military style vest. There were holsters at his hips. Curious, she reached out and pulled the stocking cap off his head. Human, definitely, and ... familiar.

"I know you," she murmured, studying the sleeping man's features. Spike joined her and immediately began a light-fingered examination of the man's pockets. He pulled out an ID case and flipped it open.

"Special Agent Riley Finn. Looks like a total git—hey!"

Buffy snatched the case out of his fingers and squinted at the ID in the low light. "Riley. I know this guy. He's my TA in Psych 101." Dimly she recalled a broad, handsome smile and a semi-Teutonic personality. "I dropped some books on his head once. I thought I'd killed him."

"Should have tried harder," Spike muttered. He moved on to the other men, pulling off stocking caps and rifling through pockets. "This is all military issue crap," he said.

"What would the military want with a demon?" she asked, still staring at the ID in her hand.

"Can think of a few things," Spike said. "None of them involves a cuppa and a chat, though." He stood and scanned the area nearby, sniffing at the air. "Trail's gone cold, but it can't be too far."

"What?" she asked, confused.

He nodded at the demon. "You and I together might be able to lug that one a mile or two, but they wouldn't make it a block. There'll be transport around somewhere."

"Transport?"

Spike raised a brow. "What, you thought they tied it up and tranq'd it to make killing it easier? No ... they wanted it for something." Spike's gaze met hers. "I'd like to know what."