Chapter Two

"So, the Bronze in half an hour?" Buffy said into the phone. "We can have a couple of hours of fun before I go patrol."

"Yeah, we can use the break," Willow’s voice came back. "Oh! What about Dawn?"

"She’s over at Janice’s. ‘Studying.’ And if you believe that, I have a bridge I wanna sell you."

They both laughed.

"Eightish then," said Willow. "Wear something sexy and slutty. You might pick up someone interesting."

Buffy grinned. "Sexy, yes. Slutty, no. I’m not that desperate."

‘Yet,’ she sighed, pulling on a black wrap-around skirt and a cream top that was like a bib, with no back and only spaghetti ties holding it on. ‘There y’go, Willow. An outfit that shows a lot of skin and comes off easy. Only, there’s not going to be anyone to take it off me but me. And, yeah, maybe I am getting that desperate.’

She was almost at the Bronze when her Slayer sense gave her that tingle that told her there was a vamp in the vicinity. She reached automatically for the stake in her purse, then stopped as a white-gold head came around the corner.

"Oh, it’s you, Spike." She gave him a suspicious look. "What are you up to?"

"Well, I was heading for the Bronze, but seeing that’s where you’re going, I won’t now," he retorted. He looked her up and down, brows rising. "Nice outfit. Hot date?"

"None of your business."

"Just trawling then." He leered at her suggestively. "I could be a hot date for you."

"As if," she snapped. Trouble was, he was hot, even if she tried to deny it to herself.

"Don’t know what you’re missing, Slayer."

"Ego much?" She yanked the stake out of her purse and poised it. "Just get out of my sight, Spike."

Oddly enough, he didn’t say another word, just shrugged and spun away.

She took another step and something hit her.

The next thing she knew she was lying on the floor of her livingroom at Revello Drive.

"Whaa...?"

She pushed herself up onto her knees and stared around her. It was her livingroom and it was not her livingroom. The couch was different and so were the curtains and the coffee table. The African artwork Joyce had put there had not changed, but a big screen TV and a truly impressive sound system had been added. ‘Am I in somebody else’s house?’ she thought wildly, staggering to her feet. But a picture on an end table showed Joyce and Dawn and herself, and there was another one beside it of all the Scoobies including Giles that had been taken a couple of months back, just after they had beaten Glory. The odd thing was that both pictures looked slightly faded.

Her glance fell on the newspaper lying on the coffee table and she almost fell over in shock. The date on it was June 11, 2010.

"No way," she mumbled and stumbled into the kitchen. The calendar on the wall was set to the month of June and the year on it was 2010. "A spell. It has to be a spell. I..."

She broke off at the sound of a car pulling into the driveway.

"Buffy, is that Xander?" Dawn’s voice called from upstairs. "It better be, otherwise I’m going to be late getting back to the dorm."

"Dawn. At least Dawn’s here." Then it hit her. "Dorm?"

The front door opened and closed, then Xander came into the kitchen. Except it was a slightly older Xander and he was wearing an eyepatch.

"Hey, Buffster," he said. "Dawn ready?"

"Uh..."

There was a flurry of footsteps on the stairs and Dawn flew into the room. A Dawn who was four inches taller than her, had her hair cut short to her shoulders and was like college age. Which made sense of the ‘dorm’ business.

Buffy leaned against the island in the kitchen because her legs were threatening to fold under her.

"Xander, you are so late!" Dawn exclaimed. "I’ve got to be back at the dorm in like five minutes!"

"What, do they have a curfew or something?"

"No, but I’m meeting someone." Dawn gave Buffy a significant look that meant nothing to her, but seemed to mean a lot to Dawn. Buffy smiled weakly and said nothing. Neither Dawn nor Xander seemed to see anything different about her, so she must look more or less the same.

The back door slammed open and Spike stamped in. He was carrying an axe stained with some pinkish fluid. The same fluid was splashed across his clothes, his duster covered with it and the front of his black T-shirt and jeans was darkened where it had gotten past the duster.

"I hate J’Havren demons," he growled and flung the axe back out through the door where it fell with a thud onto the back porch

"Also called a Pepto-Bismol demon?" grinned Dawn and he gave her a sour look as he ripped his duster off.

"I wish." He tossed the duster on the floor, ripped off his boots and left them by the duster, then went over to the sink and began washing his face and hands, scrubbing hard.

"That’s supposed to be blood, huh?" Xander said. "And from the amount of it, I’m supposing you killed the thing."

"Oh, yeah, mate, it’s gone," Spike said with satisfaction, then whipped around as Dawn bent to retrieve his duster. "Whoa, Niblet! Don’t touch!"

"But..."

"Don’t get that stuff on you. ‘S like super itching powder. Think poison ivy’s bad? That stuff’s a hundred times worse."

"Good thing it wasn’t you who ran up against it, Buff," said Xander. He grinned at Spike. "You just keep trying to prove that you rate that Champion label, don’t you?"

"Sod off," said Spike, but he was smiling.

That interchange was puzzling, but Buffy was more in shock over how friendly the two of them seemed to be.

"Gotta go!" exclaimed Dawn. "I am so late! Is that stuff washed off your face, Spike?"

"Yeah, but I’m covered with it everywhere else."

"Right."

She caught his face in her hands and kissed him on the corner of his mouth, being careful to curve her body so that she didn’t touch him anywhere else where the blood might have landed. Buffy nearly fell over in disbelief, not only because Dawn was kissing Spike, even if it was just on the cheek, but because Xander wasn’t having a cow about it, just grinning benevolently as he watched.

Dawn descended on her for a hug, then danced back, caught Xander by the hand and dragged him towards the front door. "Bye, Buffy. See you in a week."

Buffy watched them go, her mouth open in shock, leaning against the kitchen island for support.

"What’s the matter, luv? Demons don’t usually faze you."

She looked around to see Spike leaning on the other side of the island, directly opposite her.

"I...uh..."

He leaned over the island, took her face in his hands and drew her gently forward.

"Sp..."

And then his mouth was on hers and her whole body seized up. His lips moved sweetly on hers, sucking at her lower lip, and his tongue moved so smoothly along the line of her lips that he was inside her mouth before she knew it. She would have expected a kiss from Spike to be harsh and demanding. Instead it was soft and sweet and leisurely and oh so thorough. His mouth tasted not unpleasantly of cigarettes and whisky. It took possession of hers, tenderly, unhurriedly, his tongue exploring every corner of her mouth, slipping along and around and under hers, sliding across the roof of her mouth, teasing her.

"Mmm," he purred, a vibration against her lips, into her mouth. "Been too long. A whole three hours."

He kissed her again, softly, lingeringly; and her brain had stopped working, her whole body had gone liquid, her bones had gone to water, and if it hadn’t been for the island holding her up, she would have gone straight down to the ground. ‘God,’ she thought blankly, ‘I could come just from his kissing me.’

She realized that he had let her go and had stepped backwards to where his duster lay on the floor. She leaned heavily on the island and stared at him dazedly.

"Gotta get out of these things," he muttered. "That blood’s driving me crazy. Gotta wash it off."

He was pulling his T-shirt off, dropping it on top of his duster. Her lips parted stickily, but she had no voice. ‘Oh my God, look at those abs!’ She had never realized quite how ripped he was. Grecian statue time. Skin pale as marble, copper tinged nipples, an utterly lickable sixpack...

"Whuh..."

He had stripped out of his jeans and tossed them on top of his T-shirt and duster. Naked! He was naked! She had totally lost her breath, thought she might pass out from pure lack of oxygen. Commando. And why hadn’t she expected that of him? Hung like a Percheron. ‘All that suggestive innuendo and he really had something to back it up with!’ Put Angel and Riley to shame, for all that they were taller and beefier than he was. And pretty. Lord, he had a pretty cock, all rose and ivory...

The totality of him was beautiful, no bulk, just perfect definition; and he moved all easy and lithe, completely unselfconscious, as if...as if he had been naked in front of her a thousand times.

"Don’t touch those, kitten," he was saying. "I’ll run them through the wash after." He grinned wickedly at her. "Wanna come up and scrub my back?"

"Uh..."

He was heading for the stairs. She drifted after him, as if hypnotized. Watched that really beautiful back and flat ass as he took the stairs two at a time.

He was turning on the shower when she got up to the bedroom. Shower stall, a new addition, that, from her day. It was the main bedroom, the one that had belonged to her mother. New king-sized bed, new bedding. She opened a closet warily. Her clothes, but beside them, his. All cozily together, cheek by jowl. Drawers, the same. It really began to dawn on her that they were living together, that they were lov...that they had a...relationship.

"Come and scrub my back," he coaxed from the shower. The bathroom door was open and she could see him clearly through the transparent shower door, turning and twisting under the stream of water. "I’ll make it worth your while." His voice had dropped into a low, deep, sexy purr that went straight to her core.

God, she was wet between her legs. She could feel herself all buttery and throbbing.

"I’ll, uh...I’ll wait for you downstairs."

She had to process. It had begun to sink in that this really was the future, or some alternate dimension. It was definitely some kind of spell. So she had to be careful what she learned, because when she got back, she might mess up her timeline. Things that Giles had talked about, but to which she hadn’t really paid attention, were starting to come back. Mustn’t look at the TV or the newspaper. Should she tell people what had happened? She’d gone forward, not back, so nothing she could say would mess up their timeline. Besides, she needed help getting back. She was the Slayer. She slayed things; she didn’t fool around with magic, didn’t have a clue about that. Were Giles and the Magic Box still here? What about Willow and Tara? They were the ones she needed.

She called the number that she remembered, but it was disconnected. That meant that they had moved. She would have to ask this Spike for their number. Which meant that she would have to tell him. Right. Let’s start with that. Okay, find a way to explain that wouldn’t make her seem totally out of her mind.

Her train of thought derailed itself as Spike came into the livingroom. He was wearing a fresh pair of black jeans and a black silk shirt open and unbuttoned, flying behind him as he moved forward at his usual fast pace, even more silent than usual because he was still barefoot. Her brain hung itself up on the flexing of his stomach muscles as he moved. She wanted to put her hands on them, wanted to run her mouth all over his body. And she could. The Buffy of this world did. It wasn’t a forbidden thing, the way it was in her world. She could...

Oh, God, she was insane. She shouldn’t be thinking these things, wanting these things.

Then Spike was dropping down on the couch beside her and then falling back so that he was lying with his head in her lap. She stared down at him in a kind of frozen shock. He caught her hand and pressed her palm against his mouth. She felt first his lips and then his tongue slide over her palm and had to repress an involuntary shiver of pleasure. Her voice had gone missing again, as it was seeming to do constantly whenever she was around this Spike.

His other hand brushed the material of her top. "Haven’t seen you wearing this in years, pet. Not since college. Found it at the back of your wardrobe, did you?"

"You remember what I was wearing? Even from back then?"

He smiled, a real genuine smile, not the mocking smirk that she usually saw. It was beautiful, a long dimple slashing down his cheek, his eyes lighting up. Gas flame blue eyes, vivid and adoring. Her breath caught.

"Of course I remember. Loved you a long time. Loved you forever. Remember everything about you, I do."

"Lo..." She stopped. Finally remembered how to breathe. "When...when did you start l-loving me, Spike?"

He laughed, a breath against the heel of her hand, then rubbed her palm back and forth across the hard line of his jaw. He had a lovely jaw. Her fingers curled involuntarily around it.

"You like my telling you about that, don’t you? Must have told you about it a hundred times."

"Tell me again."

He kissed her thumb, then sucked it into his mouth and ran his tongue around it. She shuddered and he smiled.

"Wanted you the first time I saw you. Dancing in the Bronze with Willow and Xander. Arms above your head, body moving to the beat. Got a hard-on right away. Desire, right from get go. Not love, not yet. But every time we fought, every time I even watched you fighting, Christ, I’d get such a hard-on. The way you move, the force in you. Irresistible."

He pulled her hand down over his throat, rubbed it back and forth over his chest and naked stomach. She felt his bare skin silken under her hand, his nipple hard as her palm brushed across it, the muscles of his stomach flexing as her hand was pressed over them. The tips of her fingers brushed the soft line of hair leading down under his low-slung belt buckle. She found herself trembling.

"Dru knew. That’s why she left me. Told me you were all over me, told me she saw you floating all around me."

Even back then, she thought in astonishment.

"Didn’t want to admit it," he said. "Didn’t want to admit that I wanted, that I loved the Slayer. Didn’t know why I kept coming back to Sunnydale when there were so many other places I could have gone, could have been safe and happy. Dreamed about making love to you one night, woke up the next morning and truly realized what had happened to me. That I loved you."

His breath hitched for a second in his throat.

"Knew I was screwed. Knew it was wrong. Hello, vampire here. Evil, soulless thing, right?"

His mouth twisted and this time she knew what it meant, saw the pain in his eyes.

"I..."

"Hey, no." He pulled her palm back to his mouth, kissed it again. "Water under the bridge, love. Yeah, it was bad, that time, the time after Glory, when I knew I loved you and you wouldn’t admit any vampire could love. But we do, y’know. Loved Dru a hundred years. Will love you forever. That time...I was so down, I swear I almost dusted myself at one point. But then..."

His eyes blazed wide with love and tenderness and adoration. She found herself falling into them, losing herself in them. He caught her head and pulled it down and kissed her passionately, devouringly, over and over again. She had never known kisses like this before, not even with Angel, so intense, so eloquent of everything that he was feeling. She was drowning in his mouth, in him. It was like being hit by a tidal wave—one minute safe on dry land, the next fathoms deep and drowning.

She had to tear her mouth away to be able to breathe. She gasped for air, her whole body shaking, incredibly turned on. Their breaths were ragged with passion, even his, though by rights he shouldn’t need to breathe. Still, she felt his breath shuddering through his open mouth as he slid it down her throat, across the slippery material of her top.

"But then you loved me," he murmured, and his voice shook with awe and wonder. "Bloody miracle. Went from hell to heaven in one leap. Been there ever since."

His mouth closed over her right nipple, sucking at it through the cloth. Buffy made a gasping, choking sound she had never made before and her hands clutched involuntarily at his head, holding him to her breast. Her whole body felt liquid, utterly boneless. She fell backwards, melting against the couch back, and he leaned over her, his hands sliding over her body, leaving trails of fire, and his mouth working on her nipple, suckling and pulling at it through the cloth. She was panting harshly, unable to move even to stop him as his hands went to the ties of her top and pulled them apart. The whole top fell away and his hands were kneading her bare breasts and his tongue was licking around and across her nipple, sucking at it, pressing it against the roof of his mouth.

She could hear herself moaning, and was too far gone even to be amazed by it.

"God, I love your breasts," he muttered. "I could spend hours playing with them."

"They’re too small," she protested unthinkingly.

"Anything more than a mouthful’s a waste," he said and opened his mouth wide and sucked in as much of her breast as he could.

Her head hit the back of the couch and she keened, arching up to that wicked, knowledgeable mouth that was driving her insane. This was crazy, crazy, and yet she couldn’t push him away. His hands were sliding up her thighs and she realized that he had unfastened her skirt and flipped open the edges like wings on either side of her. This was the day she had to choose to wear a wrap-around, and even while her mind was trying to tell her that this was a bad thing, her traitorous body was rejoicing.

She realized that he had twisted off the couch and was now kneeling on the floor, between her legs. She was spread out for him, naked except for a minuscule thong, and his mouth was sliding down her stomach and his hands up her inner thighs.

"Spike..."

"God, you’re so wet for me," he said in a exultant voice. "I love it."

It wasn’t his hand but his mouth on her inner thigh now, nibbling and biting at her flesh as he moved higher, the little pinpricks of his bite telling her that he was in gameface now, using his fangs, which should have worried her but somehow only added to her arousal. She felt his mouth at one side then the other of her pelvis, heard something snap. He had used his fangs to slice through the sides of her thong. Then even that was being pulled away and she was laid fully open to him.

"So beautiful," he said in a low, raspy growl that made her shiver with desire. She knew she should stop him, but her body was aching with need and she couldn’t have stopped him to save her life.

His tongue ran over the crease between her thigh and her torso, and she suddenly realized where he was heading.

"Oh...no...don’t..." No one had ever done that to her. She had read about it, but had never experienced it, and it was at once shocking and embarrassing to her.

"You love it. You know you do," he said against her mound. His fingers were spreading her labia apart, opening her to him.

"No, I...Oh!"

His tongue was sliding across her clit, his lips were suckling at it. Her whole body bucked at the lightning stroke of pleasure that flashed through her.

"Oh my God, oh my God!"

She could feel him smile as he worked at her. Her body thrashed under him and he had to put a hand on her stomach to hold her down.

"It gets better."

How could it possibly get better? she thought, but was beyond the point of coherent speech.

Two long fingers slid into her, pumping slowly, searching for, then finding that one spot of sensitive tissue inside her.

"GOD!"

‘Don’t know what you’re missing, Slayer,’ he had said to her and she had retorted, ‘Ego much?’ She hadn’t remembered that he had a hundred years of sexual experience behind him, that he would be an absolute master at sex play.

She couldn’t even think any more. Her mind had completely gone to lunch. There was only sensation. Nothing but this agonizing pleasure that was so intense that it was close to pain. She could only feel. And whimper and thrash and moan under him as his knowledgeable fingers stroked her G-spot and his mouth worked her clit, driving her higher and higher.

"OhmiGod, I..."

"Come for me, baby," he whispered. "Come for me."

Her orgasm hit her like a thunderbolt. Her whole body seized up and she fell for miles, seeing stars before her eyes, suffused by utter bliss.

She came back to herself to find him leaning over her, one arm cradling her to him, the other hand stroking her hair. His eyes were soft with pleasure at her pleasure.

"Hey," she whispered and he smiled, bent to kiss her mouth and eyes and temples and chin, covering her whole face with light, soft kisses. She kissed him back, her lips trembling and her body utterly limp in his arms. "That was...incredible."

"You’re incredible," he murmured. "The way you respond to me. Incredible."

She became aware of his erection pressing hard against her hip. "Oh, but you..."

He stood with easy grace and swept her up into his arms. "We’re not done yet, love. Haven’t even started."

"Oh, my God." Her head dropped onto his shoulder as he carried her up the stairs. "I don’t think I can."

He laughed against her hair. "Slayer stamina, remember. Oh, yes, you can."

He laid her down on the bed and she lay still, luxuriously limp, as he stripped out of his shirt and jeans. The lamplight washed gold down the planes of his body, emphasizing the sculptured musculature and she thought, ‘How could I have missed how beautiful he is? He’s so gorgeous. How can this be wrong? Clearly, it’s not wrong for her. For this world’s Buffy.’

Then he was settling himself over her, his weight on his elbows on either side of her. He looked down at her, smiling, the long dimple back, creases fanning out from the corners of his eyes over those supermodel cheekbones. Her hands rose without volition to grip his shoulders and she felt the length of him covering her, chest and stomach and hips pressed to hers. He made an odd sort of movement, a kind of side to side wriggle of his hips, settling himself between her thighs, making himself comfortable.

It felt wonderful. He felt wonderful. Her body arched involuntarily against his.

"Oh, yes," she said.

She felt his erection hard against her. ‘So big,’ she thought. ‘So big. How is it ever going to fit?’

His head came down and his mouth brushed hers, distracting her.

"Let’s bring you up to speed," he said.

Then his mouth and hands were all over her and he was driving her insane. She gasped and gasped again, helpless under his touch, breathing, "Oh! Oh!" into his mouth as her fingertips stroked his face. His eyes burned down at her, the brilliant blue darkened almost to black by his widening pupils, his eyelids heavy with passion, half-closed.

It wasn’t just sex. It was lovemaking. She felt it in the way he was worshiping her body, saw it in his face, his eyes, the way his body shuddered against hers. She was shaking, but he was shaking too, surrendered to her. Her hands clenched on his shoulders.

"Oh, please. Oh, please." She couldn’t stand any more. The pressure building up inside her was almost painful.

Then he was moving into her in one long, smooth stroke. She cried out, her head falling back on the pillows, her whole body arching and clenching about him. He filled her to the point that she thought she was going to split in half, and yet it was exactly enough, exactly right, there had never been so perfect a fit.

"Oh, God, yes!"

"You’re so tight," he gasped against her throat. "You’re always so tight. God, Buffy!"

He was pistoning into her now, going as far as he could go, then a little further, hard thrusts that were initially slow, then rapidly speeding up, his hips twisting at the end of every stroke, each thrust hitting every sweet spot in her body. She writhed under him, her nails gouging holes in his shoulders, her knees coming up to grip his sides, her sheath clenching with Slayer strength upon his cock at every thrust. This was the point where Riley would protest, unable to take the pressure, and she would have to hold back. With Angel, she had not known enough to respond this way, virgin and naive as she had been, almost passive. With Spike, she didn’t have to hold back. She could let herself go, grip him as forcefully as she liked, and he just groaned with delight, flinging his head back, eyes closed in ecstasy, mouth open and gasping as he rammed into her.

"Oh, God, I’m going to..."

"Yes..."

His head dropped so that he could watch her as she came, her nails digging into his shoulders, her whole body convulsing in an orgasm so shattering her brain whited out and she thought her heart would stop.

She came back to herself just as his hit. His body seized up and his cock pulsed within her. He was beautiful when he came, his face utterly open and vulnerable, surrendered to her, to this moment of pleasure so intense that it bordered exquisitely on pain, his eyes squeezed shut and his lips parted on a harsh, helpless groan of expelled breath.

His whole weight came down on her and his forehead hit the pillow beside her head. She felt his breath shuddering against the curve of her shoulder, held him tight to her, her cheekbone pressed against his. They lay there, spent, for a few minutes, spinning down from the high, then he moved to lift himself away.

Her hands tightened on his shoulders. He was soft within her, but she still did not want him to leave her.

"No, don’t..."

"Too heavy..."

He pulled out of her and they both groaned at the loss. He rolled onto his back, pulling her with him so that she lay half over him, her head on his shoulder and her leg between his thighs.

"God, that was amazing," he said breathlessly. "And we didn’t even..."

"Didn’t even what?"

"I didn’t even bite you." He smiled against her forehead. "Well, except for the little nips that don’t count. Bite you anyway, shall I? Make you come one more time?"

‘He bites me?’ she thought incredulously as he pulled her head back and sideways, exposing her neck. He pushed her hair away from her neck and she tensed, her hands coming up, ready to shove him away.

Instead, it was he who jerked away, recoiling to the other side of the bed.

"Who are you?"

"What?" She sat up in shock, abruptly became conscious of her nakedness and pulled the sheet around her.

He was out of the bed now, grabbing for his jeans. "Who the bleeding hell are you?"

"I’m B-Buffy," she stammered. This was not the way she had meant him to find out.

He had his jeans on now, zipping them up. "No, you’re not. You look like Buffy and you smell like Buffy and you even taste like Buffy. But you’re not Buffy!"

"I am Buffy," she said weakly. "Except..."

"Then where’s the bloody claim mark?"

"What?"

"The claim mark." He flashed to her side and pulled her hair back from her neck. "I’ve got mine. Where’s yours?"

"You’ve got yours?" She looked to where his hand had gone to the left side of his neck and saw what she hadn’t noticed before. On the pale skin was a white, slightly raised scar in the shape of human teeth. "She claimed you? She let you claim her?"

"She?"

Oh, boy. She drew a shaky breath.

"I’d better explain."



TBC