“This is so not scary,” Dawn scoffed, standing beside Anya – just outside the door to Willy’s bar. “My sister comes in here all the time. It’s totally no big deal.”

“Dawn,” Anya pointed out in an overly patient, measured, calm tone, “the fact that your sister comes in here all the time does *not* make it safer for you. It makes it worse. It means that there are probably at least a dozen demons in there that think *you* look like a pretty great victim.”

Dawn swallowed hard, trying not to show how nervous Anya’s words made her. She took a step toward the door, then stopped, not opening it. “Anya, why did you have to say that?” she demanded, turning toward her in irritation. “Now how am I supposed to even go in there?”

Anya shrugged. “Well, that’s why I came with you,” she replied. “Because if anybody messes with you, I’ll just turn them into something even more disgusting than they already are, and a lot less dangerous. Like…a little bitty slug or something.”

Dawn actually did feel considerably better, and stepped toward the door again.

“Provided they’re not choking you or anything and you can actually speak to make a wish,” Anya amended.

Dawn froze again for just a moment, shooting a look of mingled fear and annoyance over her shoulder at Anya before drawing her shoulders back, putting on a stance that screamed attitude, and pushing the door open ahead of her.

Willy noticed her the moment she walked in the door, and Dawn noticed out of the corner of her eye, as she scanned the crowd with an arrogant look that she hoped was at least a little intimidating, that the little bartender was terribly unsettled by her presence. She tried not to notice the dozen or so pairs of eyes that were locked onto her, watching her every move. An odd quiet seemed to fall over the room as Dawn and Anya approached the bar.

“You shouldn’t be here, kid,” Willy told her, his voice trembling a little, running a shaky hand through his greasy dark hair. “It isn’t safe; you’re not exactly citizen of the year around these parts.” He paused, then looked up at her triumphantly, an idea just dawning on him. “You’re too young!” he informed her, pointing a finger at her. “Can’t serve alcohol to minors, you’ve gotta go!”

“Okay, most of what you serve isn’t alcohol anyway,” Dawn pointed out, rolling her eyes. Then she put on a very Buffy-like smile and stepped closer to the bar. “And I’ll get out of here when I get the information I need.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Willy muttered. “Look, kiddo, you’re no Slayer…”

“No. But my sister is. And I bet she’d be plenty mad if she happened to find out I was hanging out here, and you let me stay and served me alcohol…not to mention what she’d think of the fact that you never cut me off and I got staggering drunk and went home with some really cute random boy vamp and almost got killed.” Dawn’s imaginative little monologue was punctuated by a self-satisfied smile as she raised her eyebrows and looked at the bartender expectantly.

Willy sighed wearily, a defeated look on his face. “What do you want?”

“I’m looking for a demon named Arashmar,” Dawn said, leaning her elbows on the bar lazily, feeling smug and cocky from her small victory. “I heard he comes in here a lot. You seen him lately?”

Willy’s eyes widened in surprised apprehension. “Okay. We’re done here,” he informed her. “Your sister would be a lot angrier if I hooked you up with *that* guy.”

“*If* she finds out,” Dawn corrected, a little too quickly, afraid she was losing her advantage. “Which she won’t. The whole cute vamp guy attacking me and it’s all your fault thing, on the other hand…she’s *definitely* gonna hear about.”

Willy looked at her for a moment, muttering to himself in resentment. Then he finally said, “Fine! He comes here every Friday…should be in any minute now, actually. If you wanna wait a little bit, you should be able to catch him.” He turned away, shaking his head, as Dawn and Anya each took a seat at the bar to wait.

“What do you want with that guy, anyway?” Willy asked, turning back toward her for a moment, frowning. “He’s really hard-core, kid. Pretty dangerous. You don’t wanna hear the stories I’ve heard about humans who’ve tangled with him. Pretty gruesome. The stuff of nightmares.”

The Slayer’s little sister smiled a peculiar smile as she replied in a quiet, grim voice.

“Let’s hope so.”


Buffy walked back into the training room, carefully closing the door behind her before turning to look at Spike. He was leaning on the edge of a pommel horse, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his head bent downward, staring off into space, lost in thought.

His back was to her, and he did not see her come in.

She walked up behind him without saying a word, smiling to herself at the very sight of him. He was looking a lot better, she noticed. The black t-shirt he was wearing fit him well – which was in itself a good sign, he was putting on weight – and she could see that he was beginning to fill out a little again, now that he was getting enough blood and rest, and not consistently having what little strength he had sapped by frequent bouts of torture.

She slipped up to him and put her arms around his shoulders from behind him, pulling him close to her, thinking how grateful she was to have him back – and how grateful she was that that was beginning to be true in more than one sense.

Surprisingly to her, she felt his body tense under her touch, the moment before he reacted, springing into action. He reached up and caught her wrists, spinning around and twisting her around with him so that her back was to him and her arms were pinned, crossed across her chest.

He was breathing hard as he held her there, and she felt her heartbeat quicken with the memory of times past, the two of them in just such a familiar pose of challenge, and so many other similar ones. His hands on her wrists were firm and unyielding, but not painful, as he just stood there, holding her against him. She suddenly realized that she, too, was breathing hard, as she felt her desire for him rising up within her.

“Ought not to sneak up on a bloke like that, love,” he murmured in her ear, so close that she could feel the smile slowly forming on his lips as they brushed her ear. “Might mistake you for some nasty thing.”

Buffy didn’t know if he actually had mistaken her for a threat, and reacted instinctively to it, only realizing once he had pinned her that it was her – or if he was simply exercising his new-found confidence in this aggressive, seductive little scene he was building here.

Either way, it was a good thing, and she liked it.

She leaned her head back against his shoulder so that her lips were a fraction of an inch from his, meeting his eyes with her bold, fiery gaze as she countered in a husky, seductive whisper, “Are you sure you’re mistaken? Maybe I *am* a nasty thing.”

His smile slowly widened, and she could see the smoldering desire in his blue eyes as they held her gaze. “Don’t look like it, love,” he whispered. “Perhaps you’d better show me.”

She smiled for an instant, then with a quick twist of her wrists, broke his hold and turned around in his arms to face him, putting one hand at the back of his neck and pulling him in for a deep, intense kiss that was nothing like the typically gentle ones they had shared recently, as the fingers of her other hand played teasingly just inside the low waistband of his jeans.

Neither of them was in the mood for gentle at the moment.

His arms snaked around her, running up and down her back in a constant motion, feeling unable to touch her enough, as he deepened the kiss, plundering her mouth with a desperate intensity.

She welcomed the aggression, her hand moving from the back of his neck to fist in the fabric of his t-shirt as she pulled him away from the pommel horse and blindly steered them toward the mat in the center of the room. She was surprised at the effect his sudden assertiveness was having on her.

She loved having the opportunity to cherish and nurture him, the warmth and affection of the love they shared. But she had missed this – the fire and passion that she had felt the need to check lately in order to not push him too far, to not confuse or frighten him.

He didn’t seem the least bit confused at the moment, and not at all frightened; he seemed very sure of what he wanted.

Buffy was sure, too. “Oh, God, Spike, I want you!” she gasped in an urgent voice, pulling him down with her onto the mat, on top of her. “I need you now!”

One of his hands rested at her shoulder, while the other slowly slid down her side to her hip, as his tongue urgently explored her mouth. Suddenly he pulled back a little, his eyes wide, as he glanced toward the door.

“The door?” he whispered questioningly, though his voice was low and raw with his need for her, and his lips quirked upward in a familiar, seductive smirk that said he really wouldn’t care all that much if the bloody door was standing wide open.

“Locked,” she gasped, breathless already, further excited by the look on his face and the thoughts it provoked, jerking him back down by his shirt to resume the kiss.

The thought of being caught somehow seemed to heighten their desire for each other; but the realization that there was no possible way they could be interrupted gave them the freedom to give in to those desires. It didn’t matter that they were in the training room behind the Magic Box – which happened to be open at the moment. At that moment, they were the only two people in the world, each of them rediscovering a part of the other they had thought was lost forever.

Spike’s hands slid back up her sides, slipping her shirt up and over her shoulders, and her hands reached up to allow him to remove it completely, then moved to return the favor before pulling him close to her again.

The shock of his cool, hard flesh against her skin made her gasp in pleasure. “Oh, Spike…” she moaned softly, her hands sliding around him for a moment and then back again between them as she unfastened his pants and worked them down over his hips.

His hands followed her lead and effortlessly slid the soft yielding fabric of the skirt she was wearing off her body. With nothing separating them, his cool, hard body against the hot, soft skin of hers, they lost themselves in each other and in the passion of the moment, with a desperate intensity.

“Buffy…sweet…want you…oh God, Buffy…” Spike whispered, his hands moving urgently over her body, his mouth covering hers.

She pulled back with a gasp of pleasure at his touch to moan softly, “Spike…I want you…take me…take me now…”

He was only too ready to comply, falling down upon her, into her, as her hands wrapped around him to pull him closer, deeper.

“I need you…” she moaned, one hand fisting in his hair as the other held him to her. “I need you…inside…I need…”

He looked up at her face in a momentary confusion, unable to understand what she was asking for, too lost in the moment to fully process her words. “What…what, love?” he whispered, in a gasping, shuddering voice. “What do you want me to…”

“I need...to be…yours…take me, Spike,” she gasped, pulling his head down so that his lips brushed her throat. “Take me…all of me…”

The intensity, the desperation of her plea, combined with the thought of the sweet ecstasy of pleasure and intimacy of what she was asking for drove him impossibly close to the edge of his release.

Suddenly, a strangled little cry rose in her throat, and he knew that the anticipation of what she craved, what she was practically begging him for, was having the same effect on her. “Now,” she rasped in a whisper. “Spike…I need….I love…you…take me…now…*now*!”

In an instant he had changed, revealing his true nature to her without hesitation, and plunging his fangs into her throat. She let out another cry at the exquisitely sharp pleasure of pain. He drank deeply, taking her life, her very essence into himself as she took him into her, until their bodies, their hearts, their very lives were combined into one in each other’s arms, and they were both lost in an uncontrollable rush of pleasure and passion.

Utterly spent, they collapsed in each other’s arms on the mat, trembling and panting, clinging to each other. As she watched, glistening golden eyes changed to the deep, sparkling blue she knew so well, boldly, openly, gazing into the fiery depths of her own emerald eyes.

There was something there she had not seen in a very long time. No, she corrected herself, searching the fathomless blue depths in wonder. She had *never* seen that look in his eyes.

Challenge…possession. That look said that she was his, and he knew she was his, a precious treasure that he had no intention of ever relinquishing to another.

She knew the feeling. She had longed for him for so long, missed him desperately and wanted him back in her arms just like this. Then she had found him, and her joy at having him back in her life had been overwhelming. Still, it had been tainted by the pain of knowing that a part of him was missing, driven out, lost to her.

But this very afternoon, something had changed drastically in him. He had managed, with a little help, to find that missing part that had been stolen away long ago. He had regained some of his confidence, his security, remembered who he was. The realistic side of her warned her that the journey was probably not over, and he still had a ways to go to return completely to his former strength and confidence.

But Spike had found his way, and if he hadn’t reached it yet, he was still steadily and surely making his way home.

And now that she really had him back, she knew that she would never let him go again.