He surfaced into hunger and fire, remnant of some irretrievable dream coloring the edges of his consciousness even as he discovered what he was doing.

Taking.

As his fangs sank in and the first deep pull filled his mouth with hot liquid life.

Beneath him, she was in motion, thrumming, mewling, struggling, her body beating up against his.

He was buried in her, canted, deep in her pulsing heat.

She shuddered hard, shaking against him, sucking in air with a whoop, expelling it on a frantic cry.

He had to stop. He tried to stop.

She was crying. Hands tearing at him.

He tried, but he couldn't control himself.

His name sawing out from her throat, Spike, Spike, and Oh God.

Her fingers against his face, prodding at the seal his lips made against her neck. "Oooh-kay ... getting a little whoozy now ...." Prying him off. "Good—! Yeah—! I'm so close, Spike! Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

That was what this was?

A fuck?

He didn't know how it began. He shuddered with the terror of not-knowing, of being high on her blood, and not knowing not knowing not knowing.

Rolled off, his cock going soft, the tight hard tingle in his balls backing up, a harsh ache.

"Hey—what—"

She was looming over him; he shoved her aside.

What was going on here? What was he doing?

His clothes were torn. Trousers just rent open, loose threads where the buttons had been.

"Spike?"

He sprang up. "What'm I doin'?"

She was all pink, cheeks and forehead and chest. Dribbles of blood running down from her throat, around the apple of her breast, hair in a dense tangle. She opened her mouth a couple of times. The rest of her motionless, arrested. "We were having a really really good time. I ... thought."

You ... you wanted—"

"Spike, you were giving me what I asked for. Don't you remember?"

He shook his head. Tears backing up behind his eyes, that felt at the same time dry and hollow in their sockets as something moldering in a tomb.

"Woke up, an' I was on you ...."

"Woke up? You were awake! Uh ... weren't you? We were only doing what we wanted."

"Maybe I don't want to bite you. Maybe that makes me feel like a slaverin' bloody beast!"

She shifted now, closing her legs, hiding her breasts. Almost cowering for a second, before she tossed her hair back and looked at him straight-on and clear. "How could I have known you weren't wide awake? You ... you didn't speak, but your eyes were open, we were connecting ...."

"Christ. What's wrong with me?" He squeezed his temples; maybe given enough pressure, his hidden memories would pop, he'd be put right like a TV when you kick it.

He kicked the corner of the bed. "This what we used to do? You said you'd been in a bad way—that how you played Russian roulette? Gettin' me to feed while I fucked you—easy way to make me lose my head an' finish you. Suicide by vamp."

Her expression iced over. "No, actually. Just now was our very first time doing that. Before, I wouldn't have wanted it, and you never tried it on."

"Didn't I? That a clue, d'you think, about my nature?"

"Your nature—?"

"Don't want to feed off the woman I love there. Maybe there is something wrong with you. Twisted. Perverse."

Her anger was banked now, like storm piled up behind a mesa. "Maybe there is. Most slayers don't sleep with vampires, much less fall in love with them. I guess I'm that one in a thousand who's just abherrent." Fists clamped tight. "This is really odd, see, because you were the always the one who had no limits, who pushed me to do this that and the other. And just now I thought I was giving you the ultimate pleasure. I know you were making me feel good. No, great. Really great." She pouted. "There was never any danger that you were going to overwhelm me—you were on top but I was in control. You know ... I'm much stronger than you are. There's really nothing you can do to me that I can't stop if I don't want it."

"An' who's to stop you?" The words slipped out before he could repress them.

She went chalky. Fury clouding the clearness of her eyes. Humiliating her, a mistake. He hadn't meant to. "Spike, I didn't know you were still asleep."

"Dunno that I was asleep. Dunno where I was."

He could feel his whole body battening on the power in her blood. It surged through him, warm and alive. The charred muscle and skin knitting itself in the bandages, tingling hard as it palpably mended. As he thought of it, the potency of what he'd fed on, his cockstand returned. He grabbed up the first thing he could reach, to cover himself, one of her teeshirts left on the bed.

Buffy crawled towards him. "Don't do that." Her tone different; conscious effort to reject the anger that boiled through her. "Please—take off your clothes and come back to me." She gestured. "Don't let's have shame between us. There used to be so much, it was hateful. You didn't hurt me, and I'm sorry you're freaked out, but we're both okay."

"Dunno what I'll be a minute from now."

"Well, who does? C'mere. Finish what we started. Start again. I want you in my arms all day."

Shucking his ruined clothes, letting her draw him back down, into the salty musky aroma of her body, the disordered sheets, the tang of her still-oozing blood, felt like a descent into bottomless depths.

"God, you are so beautiful. Lie back, let me just ogle you for a minute, okay?"

Under her scrutiny, his erection wilted again. She sat up on her haunches. "Spike, I didn't know you weren't really with me. I know how important consent is—look, I promise—next time you wake up all ready to roll, I'll get you to tell me how much is the square root of forty-four and who the Prime Minister is before we get busy, okay?"

"Glad it's just funny to you."

"Oh Spike. No, it's not funny. But what's the point in punishing yourself for something that wasn't wrong in the first place? Is it really so terrible that I'm hot for you, that I want you up inside me in every possible way? C'mon ... things keep cropping up, taking us away from each other, and ... I need you, Spike. I need this."

"You need to get yourself off by bein' half drained."

She stiffened. "It was nothing I couldn't spare. I'm strong, remember, I'm the slayer. I didn't know how good it would feel ... how arousing ... and there's nothing I want to deny you."

"Didn't think you were. Just ... didn't know it was to be that."

"You were very willing. I didn't have to force you."

He turned his face away. "No doubt."

"Are you afraid I'm going to ask you to turn me? I won't. Never."

"You say so now."

"Never." She threw up her hands. "Do we have to fight now? Isn't it a waste of time?"

He jumped up again, stumbling away across the room.

"Be careful—there's broken glass on the floor!"

He could've laughed at that. "You say there's nothin' I can do to you. But what about the others? Your little sis hasn't any special powers, has she? An' what about the locals? Can't even go down the pub for a pint if I can't be trusted not to light into some punter's neck."

"So ... for a little while, you can stay in the castle, while this shakes out. Have your pint with the girls. Visit with Dawn when I'm around, or one of the other slayers, or Willow, she's powerful enough to freeze you on a dime. Spike—I think this incident has to mean you're getting better. Things are—shifting around in there."

"Or I'm gettin' worse. More black-outs, more frequent. You don't know, do you? All we know is when I disconnect, I'm dangerous. An' this isn't the first time."

She'd been reaching for him with both hands, but now she let them drop. Keeled slowly over, to bury her face in the pillow. Then, with a long God-give-me-strength breath, raised her head again. "For the record, please note: I invited you to bite me. I urged you. I took your head in my hands and guided—"

"Buffy. Missin' my point."

"Oh God." She thrashed at the pillow. "You aren't wanting Willow to hex you?"

"Might be ... might be time to try that."

She drummed her fists against her thighs, blows he felt against his own chest, where he suspected she imagined them falling. Frustration and fear brought out a bloom of sweat on her body, enhancing her aroma to the point where he could practically feel it, in his sinuses, in his barely-retracted fangs. She was such a presence. He was a magnet, she his True North.

"Look, can we—I'm not downplaying what you're saying, your fears, I get them. But can we just ... can we just give it a few more days? I mean ... I just got back, and here we are alone together at last, and I just want some us-time. Please? Sweetheart?"

When she called him that, in just that tone of voice, it was as if she was reaching inside him with her little fingers and plucking at his heart.

She reached out again, hand starfishing. He let her pull him back down beside her.