The Slayer leaned back in her chair, her fingers interlocked behind her head as she smiled to herself, looking around in satisfaction at her spacious, luxurious bedroom, only a tiny part of the huge, amazing house she now lived in.

After spending most of her life existing with next to nothing as far as material possessions, this was a *very* pleasant change! She had quite the little set up here, she congratulated herself as she thought of how well she had put her own personal philosophy into action over the past few months.

*Want…take…have.*

It was simple, really. As the Slayer, she had almost limitless power. If she wanted something, there was no one who could tell her it could not be hers, and actually back the words up with actions. Why should she do anything but exactly what she *wanted* to do? Her watcher had warned her.

Blah, blah blah, responsibility…blah, blah, blah, consequences…blah, blah, blah…

Bye-bye, Watcher.

No one was going to tell her what to do – especially not some British stuffed shirt with no sense of fun.

Why should she change anything she was doing, when she had all she wanted right here simply *because* of what she was doing? Anything in this town that she wanted was hers. People respected her…feared her. She had dozens of loyal minions who did her bidding without question, no matter what. That kind of loyalty was hard to find.

Well, except at the point of a stake.

It hadn’t taken Sunnydale’s rather large vampire population very long to realize that going along with whatever Faith wanted was their best option. This Slayer, in the opinion of most, was even scarier than the last, because she didn’t seem to play by any particular rules, and had a mean sadistic streak that found an outlet whenever one of them crossed her. Defiance was generally considered to be out of the question.

As for the idea of killing her, which would have probably occurred to any vampire at some point or another…that idea was driven from any foolish mind that might have held such a notion by the realization that a Slayer who allowed them to have a basically free reign over the town was infinitely better than whoever her successor would be. With Buffy no where to be found, they soon saw that it was in their best interest for this Slayer to be alive as long as possible.

*Yeah,* she thought, rising from her chair and pacing idly across the room toward her bed. *This town is mine!*

She heard the door open, and turned to face it, a slow, sexy smile on her dark red lips. *Among other things,* she mentally added as she unapologetically gave the vampire who had just entered an appreciative up-and-down look.

“Hey, hottie,” she flirted. “How’d it go?”

He approached her without returning her smile, without responding to her flirtations. He appeared to be in an extremely foul mood. “Not well,” he replied shortly, biting off the words with barely controlled anger in his voice.

It stunned him how quickly her mood seemed to change when she heard his response. When he had entered the room, she had seemed to be fairly content and in a positive frame of mind. The instant that she found out that she heard his answer to her question, however, her smile faded with the unusually good mood.

Faith frowned, anger and disappointment clear in her dark eyes and the slight pout that rose to her lips. “She’s still alive?” she said in irritated disbelief. He did not respond. “Why?” she demanded, and he could hear something dangerous creep into her tone.

*Careful,* he warned himself, well aware that dealing with Faith was always a perilous matter, but never more so than when telling her something she did not want to hear.

“Yes,” he said quietly, making sure that his own voice expressed his annoyance and anger at his own “failure”. “She’s alive.”

She waited, but he did not offer any further explanation. “So what happened, oh mighty Slayer of Slayers?” she demanded, her voice taunting, her hand resting on one swinging hip as she took a few casual steps toward him. “It was *your* idea to kill her in the first place! She too tough for you?”

God, how he hated her!

“As a matter of fact, yeah!” he snapped. “Seems our former Little Miss Sunnydale’s been training. Working out her slaying skills on a tougher breed of vamp on the mean city streets.”

“So what happened?” Faith pressed, and he could see the deep-seated anger that was ever-present in her as it rose to reveal itself in her eyes. She was still moving toward him.

He cautiously noted the diminishing distance between them, and her darkening mood, but he was weary of bending to her whims and moods and was in no state of mind to take anything from her at the moment.

Except maybe her life. He wouldn’t have minded taking that.

“We fought. I lost. End of story, pet,” he sighed impatiently. The fewer false details he had to come up with for her, the better. “It *was* my idea, wasn’t it?” he reminded her, unable to keep a slight edge from his voice, despite the fact that he knew better than to deliberately push her. “Don’t see how it much matters to you, then.”

She was facing him, only a couple of feet between them by now, and she stood there for a moment, a slow smirk coming across her face as she dropped her gaze as if giving in. Suddenly, she took his arm and shoved him, hard, back against the wall, her body pressed against his, her head lowered and dark eyes glittering up at him as she spoke in a voice of amusement, but mingled with hints of both menace and seduction.

“I’d be careful, Baby. You just lost a fight with a Slayer and lived to tell about it. You might not wanna start another one. You just might be due some *bad* luck, so you probably don’t wanna try yours!” The anger and lust in her dark eyes belied her light tone.

He could see the dangerous gleam in her eyes, could sense the suspicion that her voice did not betray, and knew that to push her much further would be taken as a challenge. If worse came to worse, he knew that he could handle himself in a one-on-one fight with the Slayer and at least have a strong, fighting chance of beating her.

Problem was, he knew better than to think that the fight would *stay* one-on-one any for any longer than she was winning. At any point if she thought she was *really* going to lose, she would call in her minions to help her. He was confident, but he was not so daft as to risk taking on an enraged Slayer *and* a dozen or so of her vampire gangster types.

He had seen what had happened to the dozen or so hapless vampires over the past few months who had thought that they could take the new Slayer down. A lucky few had been dusted in the attempt. The others were *still* suffering in the basement beneath the old mansion, where Faith held them captive, as punishment, as an example to others who might follow, but mostly for her own personal amusement.

He remembered that basement very well.

But during his own time spent as a prisoner there, he had developed a plan to make this Slayer pay for what she had done, to him – and to Dru. He had offered to go into her service, employing every skill of persuasion he had, using every convincing turn of phrase he could think of, to get Faith to accept his offer.

Then, he had managed to work his way into her inner circle, all the time subtlely planting suspicions in her mind about the others in the small group of vampires she had placed a small amount of trust in.

Before he knew it, they were dust – and he *was* the inner circle.

Faith told him things about her plans that she didn’t tell anyone else, even going so far as to ask for his advice on some things, and she made sure that the others treated him with respect. They saw him as her second-in-command.

Still, she made it very clear to everyone that *no one* was above punishment – not even Spike.

No, he would not “try his luck” today. He would wait for his chance – his “one good day” – and this was not it. The Slayer was in a foul mood, ready to fight and looking for an excuse to beat someone down.

“Maybe there’s a reason why she didn’t dust me,” he forced a light tone with a disarming shrug as he made a point of meeting her eyes. “A ‘higher purpose’, maybe?” He was joking, trying to lighten her mood, maybe even make her laugh, somehow distract her from the bloodlust he saw raging in her eyes, just looking for a victim.

Or maybe that was just *regular* lust, he thought as she dropped her gaze to give him another slow, suggestive once-over before meeting his eyes again. “Maybe so,” she said with a predatory smile, as her hands somehow found their way to his hips. Her eyes glittering wickedly, she suddenly yanked him forward against her, and slightly off balance from the unexpected motion.

“I think I found it,” she smirked, gripping the back of his head and pulling him into a kiss so forceful that it would have bruised a mortal man. But Spike just returned it, equaling her intensity easily. His enhanced vampire senses revealed to him just how badly she wanted him right then.

He was very grateful that she did not have the same senses to reveal to her how very much he did *not* want her.

From the very first time she had approached him like this, a week or so after he had started working for her, he had instinctively known that to deny this very unstable Slayer would be seen by her as rejection, an insult – and would probably result in serious physical harm, and at the very least, the loss of his relatively elevated status.

He felt nothing for her but sheer disgust, and hated kissing her, touching her – hated the feeling that really, he had no choice in the matter. After all, this Slayer took what she wanted – and what she couldn’t have, she destroyed to keep anyone else from having it. He did not want her, but he had learned how to make it appear that he did, how to make his body respond to her advances and deceive her into thinking he was anything but repulsed by her.

All he had to do was imagine the painful, bloody ways in which he could kill her.

She felt his arousal against her, and perceived it to be evidence of his desire for her. She gripped the lapels of his duster and slung him around so that his back was to the bed, then slammed him down onto it beneath her, not sparing her strength.

Faith liked to be on top.

As he went though the motions that would secure his position of influence for a little while longer, allowing him the nearness he needed to the Slayer to eventually destroy her, he closed his eyes and drifted into his memories, drawing out the image of his lost love.

*Dru,* he thought, his throat constricting with sorrow at her memory, seeing her clearly in his mind’s eye, her dark eyes accusing and full of tears. *I’m sorry, love. It’s all for you, I swear, love. I’m sorry. I love you. I’ll always love you.* he pleaded in his mind for her understanding – but she was only a memory to him now.

Because of Faith.

She had stolen his Dark Princess from him, reduced her to nothing but ashes and memory. If only they had never come back to Sunnydale at all! But Dru’s visions had told her of the Slayer’s disappearance, and that a great darkness was about to fall over the Hellmouth. For whatever reason had struck her fancy, she had insisted that they return to Sunnydale.

Whatever dark power inspired Drusilla’s visions, it failed to warn her about the new Slayer, and the fate that awaited her on the Hellmouth.

He would kill Faith one day. He had sworn it to himself, and to Dru – no matter what sacrifices he had to make in order to keep that promise.

A metallic snapping sound drew his attention out of his memories and back to the sickening present. He glanced up, only slightly surprised by the sight of the handcuffs that bound his wrists to the bedpost over his head. He had been so caught up in his memories that he had not even noticed what she was doing – until it was done. He lowered his eyes to meet her cruel smile.

Faith liked to play rough.

She leaned down over him with a deadly, seductive smile, and said softly, “Remember what I said about luck, Baby?”

He nodded slowly, his expression calm. “Which sort of a turn did mine just take, love?” He backed up his light tone of unconcern with a lascivious grin, boldly meeting her gaze without fear.

“You’ve been a very bad boy,” she said, lowering her voice, and it was not clear whether the threat in it was playful or genuine. “I’m gonna have to punish you,” she informed him as she unbuckled his belt and yanked it free with a single powerful pull.

The tone and demeanor did not match his memories, but the words reminded him again of Dru, and the games that *they* used to play. This sort of thing could be very enjoyable, he knew, when done with someone whom you trusted, who was your entire world. But this was nothing like that had been, not in the least.

Faith did not love him.

He hated her.

And neither of them really trusted the other at all.

If only, just once, she could summon the trust in him to reverse their roles in her little game, to allow *him* to be in control – it would be all he would need to reveal his true feelings about her, and wreak his vengeance upon her. Sometimes he pictured that scenario during these times with Faith, and it only helped make his performance that much more convincing.

But Faith did not trust anyone that much – certainly not him. One time, when she had gotten out the handcuffs, he had caught her by surprise and cuffed *her* to the bed, thinking that this was his chance – Faith was going to pay. She had immediately called on her minions, who rushed in to restrain him and free her.

She had been furious, but he had managed to convince her that his intentions were absolutely the purest intentions that anyone could have when chaining someone else to a bed – that is, that he had not intended to hurt her – before she had been able to do him any serious damage.

Faith never stopped watching her back, never allowed herself to trust anyone. She even kept a stake on the nightstand beside her bed while they were sleeping together.

So he just waited. All he needed was one moment in which she let down her guard, turned her back…and he would take his chance and punish her. Still, he knew it would never be enough to make up for what she had taken from him…

The love of his life, his world…his everything.