Even before her dreams dragged her to break the surface of sleep, they were about nothing but thirst and the hot pressure of her bladder. Reluctant to turn on a light or even open her eyes, lest she lose the cottony warmth that would lead her back into slumber. Buffy found her way to the bathroom, feeling her way in the incomplete darkness, finding, with hands dabbing the air, the toilet, the faucet, the plastic tooth glass.


Slipping back into bed, she caught sight of the red numbers floating near her, the clock on the bedstand. It was early—she'd only been here a couple of hours. Scooting back to swing her legs in, she encountered Spike's outreaching hand. His whisper, groggy, aggrieved. "You there? Went an' took all my warm away."


She gave herself back to him, let him tug her in, his body a cool bolster she fitted herself against. He exhaled, his breath tickling through her hair. "Need you close, pet."


She scooched nearer, entwining their legs. His feet, even under the quilt, were icy. Already she was dropping away again.


The next time she roused, the clock said 6:50. Her mouth was once more ashy. Spike was gone. "Great, Buffy, you broke the land sleep record." Her body felt like it weighed two hundred pounds as she dragged herself out of bed. Everything hurt like she'd been pummeled.


Funny how that worked. How one little gun trained at her heart could cut her down to the same size as any other terrified woman.


She looked for Spike. Her first instinctual fear was that he'd bolted. Maybe taken the car and just lit out. But she saw out one window that the car was where she'd left it. And then out another, she saw him. Behind the house was a wide patio, with a kidney-shaped swimming pool set into it, whose underwater lights cast up an eerie blue shimmering on his white body. He was sitting on the end of the diving board, legs dangling. Hair and skin glistening—wet. He'd taken off her carefully wound bandages. From her high vantage, in the strange light, his bruises were invisible, and she could see only one of the wounds, a black nickel-sized dot, high on his back. Leaning on his taut arms, planted on the edges of the board between his thighs, he thrust his head a little forward, as if he was listening for something, or taking in some aroma on the air. Then little by little he leaned back, propping his arms behind him, then letting himself down on his elbows, and finally his back. Drew his knees up, feet side by side on the board. He lay there, motionless, exposed, one arm crooked over his face, like a sun-bather. Moon-bather.


Then he touched himself.


The patch of hair in his groin was the only dark thing on his pale body, except for the bullet holes. He'd spit in his palm, brought his hand into languid motion. Peering through the inch of parted drapes, eye pinned there, Buffy froze. Her nipples went hard, clit squirmed; the tremor of her thighs made her realize how tightly she was holding herself, like any movement would betray her.


She shouldn't watch.


She didn't know this man, he was dependent on her, he didn't know he was being observed. Those were just three reasons why it was wrong. And what had happened last night, the cuddling after the trauma was over ... physical comfort she'd been too addled and tired to resist. Nothing wrong with that, but nothing to presume on. Especially not as an excuse to spy on him taking another kind of comfort.


Buffy pulled herself away, careful not to jostle the drapes. Retreated to the master bathroom, where she ran the shower as hard as it would go.


Tried to think of anything but what she'd just seen—and everything she could so easily conjure from memory—as she brought herself off with soapy fingers, once, twice, a third time, until her knees buckled and she lay in the tub, legs open to the falling stream, lips parted to gasp.







She knew he was in the kitchen. She hesitated. What to say? It seemed important to say something, and to say it briskly, calmly, briefly. Something that would let him know that his embrace, his company in her bed, while completely acceptable and appreciated—at the time—shouldn't make him feel she expected anything more, or that she would offer any kind of continuation. Above all she must be firm, but kind, kind, kind. He was dependent on her, she reminded herself again, who knew how long this situation would last, she'd already turned him down and the reasons were no different now than they'd been two days ago.


The kitchen door swung open. "What you doin' loitering out here? Made coffee."


His smile was smooth, boyish, refreshed. Amazingly, his bruises were less; his hair, still moist, shone as if it had been newly blonded; his blue eyes sparkled. "You were quite the sleepin' beauty. Must be ravenous now. There's not much here. Could ring for a pizza, maybe?"


As if he had a string attached to her navel, she moved forward as he beckoned, through the swinging door, following him halfway across the spacious kitchen floor. He was wearing jeans, and the white towel slung over his shoulder hid the wounds. "Feelin' better? You were busy dreaming nearly all day."


"I don't remember any dreams." This wasn't at all what she meant to say. "How do you know I was dreaming?"


He shrugged. "Scent. Could feel the vibration of your eyes movin' in their lids."


Jeez. Remind me never to be a vampire. Too much information. "Listen, Spike—I mean." She stopped, overwhelmed by a hot flush of chagrin. "Sorry. Will."


He was pouring coffee into two mugs. With a glance over his shoulder, he said, "You're gonna tell me last night was just about you bein' so scared, an' me so ripped up. Don't bother. I know."


This was exactly what she'd been going to say, so why was she suddenly scrambling to backpedal? "No. No. No."


"Here." He extended the mug. She stepped to take it, he drew back at once, keeping his distance.


Why was this so confusing?


She wondered—if this wasn't Spike, would it be different? Really not Spike—some other man, with a different body, with no shared history however lost to him. Some other man she'd been assigned to protect, while he was under a spell maybe, or on the run from some vengeful demons. Would it be wrong to take advantage of him? If it seemed to be what he wanted?


She didn't know.


God, she didn't know. The question just whirled around her head like a flock of starlings, the twittering filling her up with confusion and embarrassment.


Spike was looking out the window, into a stand of firs that obscured the ocean horizon. Sipping at his coffee, he said, "You feelin' more tranquil now?"


"I'm all right. I'm used to ...." You never got used to it. Not really. Not to guns pointed at you.


"What are you supposed to be doing right now? I mean, if not for me."


"Could be almost anything. Training the new slayers. Or—traveling somewhere to fight some local threat. We try to monitor demon activity worldwide, and when we find some hot-spot, I go in with a team."


"So I'm keepin' you from your important work."


"I'm sure if there was anything that took priority, my phone would be buzzing."


"So I could lose you anytime."


Don't say 'lose me'. 'Lose me' is the wrong nomenclature here! "It's kind of hard to plan much of anything in advance, when you're a slayer. But don't worry."


""An' now we're here in this beautiful place—well posh it is, been down that long long staircase to the sea, an' saw what a big piece of ground we've got here, all walled off to keep the nasties out—or in. Now we're here, what's supposed to happen?"


"You're going to rest, and try to relax, and maybe that'll do the trick for you. And I'm going to get Willow—she's our chief mage—onto the situation in the alley. If there's something there, she'll find out what it is. And maybe that will help you."


He went on staring out, watching the fir branches stir in the ocean breeze, the coffee cup pressed to his lower lip. She found herself staring at his profile, at that lip, that she used to lick and suck in between her own, and kiss. The dismay was back, congealing in her ... why did it have to be like this? She hadn't had any of these lewd revisitings in the last year. Yet now, back in his presence again, she couldn't stop her thoughts from swooping in on him from all sorts of oblique angles, all coming back to the one place, this greedy knowing nostalgia for his body, his ways of touching her, tasting her, fucking her. It was nothing to do with love, it was something far more base. He'd become for her the model, the reference point, of arousal, of release. The stock figure of her physical fantasies. And none of those fantasies came without an accompanying flare-up of gross unease.


"Haven't touched your coffee."


He was right next to her all of a sudden, his fingers wrapping around the forgotten cup in her hand. "S'cold now."


For a couple of seconds they endured a minor tug-of-war over the cup. Spike won.


"Help me. Yeah." He dashed the cup into the steel sink, where it broke, splashing onto the counter. "Tell me just one thing, Buffy Summers. If it's such a bloody mistake, why'd you sleep all day in my arms, with your lips 'gainst my throat, an' bathin' me in such a scent of contentment? Why'd you give me that for nothing?"


She had no answer, only an overwhelming irrational sense of his unfairness—she'd resisted observing him, but he'd taken in every one of her private secrets! Her heart threatened to explode, even as the pressure in her throat, a bolus of pique, resentment, embarrassment, threatened to choke off her next breath.


"Spike's not here," he said. "I'm Will. Why won't you deal with me?"


"It's not like that. I can't just pretend—"


"Spike's been wiped."


"He's inside you! I can call you whatever you say, but you are Spike!"


"All right, so I'm bloody Spike--do I deserve this from you?"


Shame pulsed through her like a drug released into her bloodstream. "You don't," she murmured. "That's the point."


"You act like this every time some fellow just wants to take you to bed? Like a bloody traffic cop—come on, then stop. Maybe you get off on denyin' yourself! No wonder you don't have a boyfriend, teasin' bitch."


"That ... that really isn't fair."


He gestured at her—fatigue, disgust. "Tttcha. Know what you'd better do? Better recruit someone else to mind me. This here's not workin' out for us."


He might as well have driven a fist into her face. She couldn't look at him anymore. "I'll make some calls," she whispered, and fled.