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Chapter 5
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"There he is!" Buffy grasped Willow’s upper arm in a near painful tug.

"Who and where?" Willow asked with a grimace of pain. "And can your answer be more of the talky and less with the pully? Not all of us have super duper healing powers."

"Sorry, Will. Sometimes I forget my own strength," Buffy said, properly chagrined. "See the guy over there in the food court? You can’t miss him. With the sun hitting that platinum hair, he nearly glows." Buffy got a bit dreamy-eyed as she took in Spike’s appearance. "Maybe he’s a REAL angel--you know, a kind of guardian angel for slayers? He did dust Darla and she was too tricky for me to kill."

Willow looked at the man that Buffy had been rhapsodizing over all morning before their trip to the mall. She had to admit that if she weren’t already madly in love with Xander she might be attracted to all that compact manly goodness herself.
"I see what you mean, Buff. He’s like a ten or even a twelve on the hotness meter." Willow looked at Buffy and could see how interested her friend was in the stranger.
"Sooooo, why don’t you just go up and introduce yourself?"

"God, I couldn’t do that! He looks like he’s probably in college or maybe even works here in the mall. He’d think I was some silly, googly-eyed teenager with a major crush on an older, just slightly older, guy!" Buffy looked wistful even as she spoke.

Willow snorted, drawing Buffy’s eyes away from the walking portrait of salty goodness in black and white. "What’s so funny? You were the one who decided I needed a boyfriend. You were even making lists!"

"What’s funny is that you would really think that any guy wouldn’t be all over you if they thought they’d had half a chance!" Willow rolled her eyes and grinned. "Don’t you even have a clue just how hot you are, Buffy? You walk into a room and Xander doesn’t even know anyone else exists. And he’s not the only one. I’ve seen half the basketball team walk into walls when you pass by! Even a couple of the teachers can’t keep their eyes off of you. And can we both forget I just said that before I spoil the mood with the ick factor?"

"Forgotten," Buffy promised. "Thanks for saying that, Willow, but I can’t really imagine it’s true. You’re my friend and you see me through flowery glasses or whatever. I only had a couple of boyfriends back at Hemery and one of them was too much like Owen, that is if he wore leather and rode a Harley. Pike was turned on by the slaying thing more than he was by me. Just how hot can I be if it’s all about my being able to beat a demon to a pulp or dust a vamp?"

"You must have been Cleopatra in a past life, ‘cause I’ve never met anyone so deep in the Nile," Willow teased. "Really though, I wish I had half your sex appeal! Xander would be at my feet wearing a collar and leash right now."

"Yet another visual I could live without, Will," Buffy smiled at her lovesick friend. "We’re Scoobies kinda like the cartoon, but I don’t really want to see Xan as the actual dog!"

"I might have more of a chance he’d notice me if he were. I kinda have animal appeal," Willow said with a sigh. "But back to you. I think you should go check this guy out. Really, you have a sacred duty to do it!"

"What do you mean a sacred duty?" Buffy asked hoping Willow would come up with a logical reason for her to approach this totally yummy total stranger.

"Well, you did say he dusted that vamp Darla, right?" At Buffy’s nod, Willow continued the thought. "That means he knows about vamps at least and as the slayer you should find out how he knows and how much he knows. He might be some demon hunter or something like that and you’d need to know, since this is your territory and all."

"Good point. Guess I just have to go talk to the cutie before I lose my nerve." Buffy headed across the mall towards the man in the black duster.

Xander walked up just as Buffy neared Spike. He had his hands full of hot pretzels and ice cream dots and was in a bit of a huff that the object of his worship had abandoned him and his yummy treats for some Billy Idol wannabe.

"So what’s up with the Buffster? She develop some weird fetish for leather all of a sudden?" Jealousy caused his normally handsome face to twist into an ugly mask of thwarted desire. "I mean what’s that guy got that I don’t have…aside from attitude, confidence and a certain sinister attraction?"

"Gee, I miss your puppy dog brown eyes, Xan," Willow said sadly. "They’re so much prettier than green."

~~~

Spike had honed in on the conversation taking place across the mall between Red and the Slayer. Seems his getting rid of Grandma had worked in his favor after all. Buffy was strolling towards him, trying her best to look as if she just happened to be headed that way. It was cute really.

It was even cuter when she pretended to accidentally bump into him a moment later. "Oh, sorry!" She managed to look startled even though Spike knew better. "I guess I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. Did I hurt anything?"

"Take a bit more than a little bit of sweetness like you to hurt me, luv." Spike smiled at her with his most engaging expression. "How ‘bout you? You all right? You collided pretty hard and I think my elbow may have bruised you." Spike looked every bit as solicitous as he once would have been in sincerity as William.

"No, I’m fine. I’m tougher than I look too. Good thing since I’m kind of a klutz today." Buffy looked up at Spike through her lashes, flirting mildly. He had to stop himself from chuckling at her youthful inexperience with the fine art of the flirt. Spike supposed it worked quite well on the young pups, but she had a way to go to reach the levels he’d seen her hit in his own timeline.

"No one as lovely as you could ever really be a klutz." Spike tilted his head and gave her a small heart-melting smile that seemed to convey that he couldn’t see Buffy as anything but perfect. "My guess is that your mind was just on something else. A boyfriend, maybe?" He quirked a brow in interest. If he remembered correctly, Buffy was heart whole at this time.

"No, I’m kinda between boyfriends at the moment." Buffy beamed up at the handsome stranger. "Still not gonna win a graceful award any time soon though." She had a slight pout that had always caused the opposite sex to melt a bit and Spike was not immune.

"Nonsense! Saw you dancing just last night at that club. Never saw anyone move like you do, pet." Spike was surprised to realize he meant what he said. "You were physical poetry out there, makin’ that music live inside you."

Buffy blushed slightly, struck dumb with the knowledge this hottie had noticed her too. She hadn’t seen him even look her way last night.

"Thanks." She nearly stuttered in her sudden shyness. "I saw you there too…at the bar."

Spike raised a brow and grinned at the innocent girl, his tongue curled behind his teeth showing through his slightly parted mouth. "That right? Well seems we’re not really strangers then, eh? Name’s Spike."

At Buffy’s startled look, he decided that THIS Buffy might not be ready to hang about with men calling themselves Spike. "Actually, it’s William, but that sounds too much like a librarian or a member of the chess team. Spike kinda goes with the look, yeah?"

"Well, that much is true. You have a kind of dangerous look with all the leather and attitude," Buffy agreed.

"Think it’s too much?" He pretended to be concerned about her reaction to the whole "Spike" package. "I’m really kind of a pussycat when you get to know me. Doesn’t hurt to look like you mean business though in the real world." He dropped a hint about the scene in the alley that Buffy had been witness to the night before. Spike had heard Willow’s suggestion of opening the demon hunter subject and it sounded like a right fine idea to him as well.

"Maybe I should explain what you think you saw in the alley," Spike said in a whisper. "Don’t want to scare you, but don’t think a pretty girl like yourself should go out all unprotected like either."

"I know about vampires," she noted Spike’s raised eyebrow and look of surprise. "I know about demons too and all kinds of things that go poof in the night," she grinned.

"Mighty brave of you to go out in the alley like that, specially knowin’ the way the world works and all. Little bit of a girl like you could get hurt and I’d hate that." Spike’s honeyed voice poured over the enraptured girl.

"Like I said, I’m tougher than I look," Buffy simpered. As he spoke quietly, her body had begun to lean in towards Spike’s of its own volition. Mere inches of electrically tingling air stood between them. Buffy could swear the hairs on her body were vibrating with the intensity of the charge.

"Well, I’ll have to watch myself then. Be a perfect gentleman and not play the bad boy, if that’s the case," Spike teased.

"I think you’ll be safe with me…er, from me. I meant from me!" Buffy blushed brightly at her gaffe. She decided to cover her slip with humor. She evoked a rigid stance and mimicked an alien from every Sci/Fi B movie she’d ever seen, "We come in peace. We mean no harm to earthlings."

Spike laughed with her, finding himself oddly charmed with this unseen side of the Slayer. The girl could be a real delight when she wasn’t out to ram wood in a bloke’s heart. She was downright playful in a shy way and Spike found this side of her enthralling. He was as mesmerized as he had been when chained in Giles’ tub while she flaunted her lovely neck at him.

"Glad to hear it, pet." Spike upped the ante with a push to further the acquaintance. "You haven’t told me your name though. What do they call you on your home world?"

"Buffy. Buffy Summers," she offered. "They give us weird names on my world." She was so used to the reaction of others to her somewhat silly sounding name she wanted to beat this cute guy to the punch.

"Buffy," Spike repeated in a voice so soft and low it dripped like hot caramel and coated the word with a sweetness she’d never heard when someone spoke her name. Suddenly it didn’t sound silly at all, it sounded nearly erotic! "Buffy," he repeated, making it a caress of infinite tenderness and promise. "Lovely, just like you."

Buffy froze with her mouth slightly parted, a glazed look in her eyes. Spike could tell her reaction to his carefully chosen intonation with every one of his heightened senses. Her heart rate was racing, her body had heated up and the moistness that had coated her panties smelled delicious. All that and her completely befuddled expression combined to tell him he had struck a direct hit. Time to leave while he was ahead.

"Well, Miss Buffy Summers," he kept the same seductive tone, "I can’t tell you how I hate having to be somewhere right now. Is there any chance I might see you again sometime, maybe even dance with you?"

"Uh-huh," Buffy muttered, amazed at her good fortune in actually attracting this glorious hunk of manly goodness. She snapped out of it in time to keep from looking like a completely uncool teenager and turning him off. "I mean, I’d really like that. I’m dying to know how you know about the supernatural world."

Spike grinned and gave a low rumble of a chuckle. "Don’t have to die to find out, pet. You’d be surprised at all the things I know." The look he gave her implied far more than just knowledge of demonkind It spoke of experience in all the best parts of the so-called natural world as well. Buffy wanted to sign him up as her tour guide to that world before it was too late but feared scaring him off.

"I hang out at the Bronze most evenings. But I’ll be glad to give you my number if you’d like. Especially if you’re new in town." Her words began to tumble willy-nilly from her mouth in a rush of attraction mingled with a healthy bit of nervousness in the face of an older, more sophisticated guy. "Well, even if you aren’t new in town, I am. New in town, I mean. Wow, now I’m a verbal klutz too!"

Spike laughed in genuine amusement. "Not at all, luv, and yes, I’d like your number. I’d hate to lose you to someone else without having a chance to charm you myself." Spike thought of his grandsire as he said the words. If all went according to plan, the old boy would be out in the cold before he even had so much as a handshake!
Buffy quickly wrote her home number in the small journal-like book that Spike handed her and they smiled their good-byes.

Across the mall, Xander fumed and Willow glowed, imagining a burgeoning career as the neighborhood matchmaker!

Xander spoke a bit more loudly than needed in hopes the older male would hear and that it would matter. "Come on, Buffy, we need to get those shoes for tomorrow’s HIGH SCHOOL field trip to the zoo!"

Willow elbowed the boy and gave him her best no nonsense glower, lips pursed in annoyance. "Subtle much, Xander? Why don’ t you just scream out ‘cradle robber’ while you’re at it? He’s not that much older than we are. Besides, I think Buffy likes older guys."