Disclaimer: If you made it this far into the website, chances are you know durned well who owns the copyright on Buffy, Spike and the rest of the gang, and that it ain’t me. No copyright infringement intended. This is, as ever, fanfic impure and simple, or, as I like to think of it (due to the parallels to romance novel fiction) femfanfic. It is one (somewhat deranged and obsessed) femfan’s vision of the possibilities of the Buffyverse created by Joss Whedon.
Rating: NC-17. Completely and absolutely. If you somehow made it pass the screens and buffers while underage, you should STOP NOW! Come back when you’re legal.
All Too Human
part 2
They started by abducting Angel.
Buffy didn't even realize what was happening, at first. A message had been left to make her believe Angel was simply going underground for a few days to check up on some rumors. The car "accident" which took out her Watcher was so cleverly arranged Buffy did not suspect it was anything other than the tragic coincidence it appeared.
Giles death devastated Buffy, and she needed Angel, needed the comfort he could offer. She tried to track him down, but found no clue to where he had gone. And then, no more than two days after she lost Giles, Willow disappeared, making one too many coincidences for a place like Sunnydale. Buffy had to push her grief to the background, she couldn’t afford the distraction. She knew something was wrong, but not what. For once, her prophetic Slayer's dreams offered no clue. When she feel asleep, it was as if she sank into a lake of black fire, where no light, no dreams, no warning could come. Within twenty-four hours, Xander and Cordellia were gone as well, too quickly for Buffy to marshal her resources and fight back. Desperate for any clues she could find, she spoke to the parents of all her missing friends. Returning home, she discovered her mother's drained corpse on the kitchen floor. When Spike's henchmen came for her, she almost didn't have the heart to fight back.
Still, it had taken a dozen of them, demons all, to bring Buffy down.
Now, the whole world was going to be swallowed in darkness, and there was no one and nothing to stop it.
Spike held her captive in a desecrated church in the heart of Sunnydale. And once he had Buffy in his power, he was scrupulous about keeping her there. She was brought to him unconscious, but he wanted her awake to appreciate his vengeance.
Buffy came alert gradually, aware first of cold, and then of the bonds limiting her mobility. Reflexively, she sent her still-focusing gaze across her surroundings, scoping out the situation. It wasn't good. She was in an underground cellar --more a dungeon, really-- chained supine on a raised slab of granite. Her arms were taut above her head, her legs apart in the classic helpless, vulnerable position for a prisoner. She could move her limbs only slightly; not enough to get in a good kick or a wild punch. A few fierce tugs on the chains indicated that they were newly set, and finely tempered. No weakness was apparent, but she wasn't about to give up. And then something she had taken for darkness separated itself from the greater dark and stood forward in the meager light of the room's one torch.
"You never give up, do you?" Spike said conversationally. He hadn't vamped out, and looked like the inhumanly beautiful boy he must have been in life. Somehow, that made him more frightening, not less. "That's always been your strength. Now, love, it's going to be your undoing."
"What do you mean?" she demanded. He smiled, almost beatifically, and walked slowly around the slab that held her.
"What I mean is, you are going to continue to fight me. Even after I win. You'll fight me, and fight me because that's what you are made for. You're the Slayer, the Chosen One. You can't help it."
"In case you haven't noticed, if I fight long enough, I win." she said with more certainty than she felt. She gave her bonds another vicious yank, but there was still no give.
"Not this time, pet. This time, it won't matter."
"Don't be too sure."
"This time, Slayer, I'm more than sure. For once, I haven't underestimated you. In fact, I'm counting on you to keep fighting me."
Buffy didn't dare show it, but she was growing more frightened by the moment. She decided to try another tack.
"What have you done with Angel?" she demanded.
His smile, when it came, was malicious. She had asked the very question he'd hoped for. "Nothing yet. I wanted to wait until you could appreciate the little games I have in mind."
"Then where is he? Shouldn't we be getting started?" She was saying anything she could think of to buy time, to throw Spike off his stride. It wasn't working.
He laughed again. "Sooner than you'll like, pet. Never fear. But first, I wanted you to myself. I just want one moment to savor your defeat, with no one and nothing else to consider, to distract me." He bent over her, resting his hands almost casually on her chained wrists. Buffy could feel the strength of his grip, and realized that this Spike was different from the Spike she had faced before. He was calmer. Colder. More patient.
And much, much stronger.
Still keeping his visage human, he leaned closer to her, until his face was inches above her own. She stared into eyes black as the death of hope, eyes that revealed no mercy, no pity, no forgiveness.
"I had to feed and kill twice to make sure I wouldn't lose it and just rip your throat out," he confided now. "Because that would be too quick. And I don't want you to die quickly. I don't want you to die at all."
"What?" Buffy said uneasily, but he didn't answer. Instead, his face changed, vamping out, and with a bestial growl he dipped his head toward her throat. It was worse than when the Master had drained her the night of the Spring Fling. That had been an almost impersonal, ritualistic gesture, quickly completed. Spike relished what he did to her. He began by pressing his lips against her pulsing jugular in a parody of a lover's passion. Buffy tried to fling her head from side to side to dislodge him, but he buried his hands in her hair and forced her to stillness. His mouth parted and his tongue swept across her pulse, and Buffy shivered in reaction. Then she felt the pressure as he grazed his fangs lightly along the wet path forged by lips and tongue, and she shivered even more. God, why was he prolonging this? She had never seen a vampire play at feeding before. He continued to toy with her, nuzzling her neck, letting her feel his fangs, but not yet sinking them in. She was shaking with reaction and with something else she couldn't quite name, didn't understand, something that was neither fear nor revulsion, but which she could feel coiling low in her belly. Finally, the pressure on her neck grew firmer, more insistent, and then he broke skin and Buffy felt a dizzying rush as her life's blood was pulled from her body and into his mouth.
There should have been pain, as his fangs tore at her throat, like there had been when the Master killed her. But there wasn't. There was heat and fire, the draw of blood burning along the venous pathway and into his mouth. And weakness, treacherous, overpowering weakness as her blood was reft away. Buffy was losing her alertness, was sinking back toward unconsciousness when she heard him growl again, low in his throat, a deeply satisfied, animalistic, peculiarly male sound. Angel, she realized, sometimes growled the same way. When their kisses had gone on too long, had begun to lead toward other, forbidden things.
Spike spent long moments feeding, leaving her dizzy and enervated from the loss of blood. The chains binding her no longer merely restricted her movements, they weighted her limbs. Buffy wasn't certain she could move at all. Though she hadn't completely blacked out, she felt confused, disoriented. Spike hadn't killed her, and Buffy became terrified that he meant to change her while she still lacked the strength to stop him. But he made no immediate move to do so.
"You have blood like wine," Spike said to her as he lifted his head from her neck. "I could get drunk on it. The blood of a chaste, sweet girl." He laughed. "Angelus was a proper fool to play the gentleman with you. Still, I'm grateful. I could spend years killing you like this." And with her blood reddening his lips, he kissed her mouth.
Buffy had no strength to struggle, and tears --as much of frustrated rage as impotent terror-- began to course from her eyes down her cheeks and into her hair. He was forcing her mouth open, and she could taste her own blood now; a draught of salt, liquid copper hot against her tongue. Revulsion gathered in her stomach, dispelling the odd, coiling tension she had yet to name. Sensing it, he raised himself away from her, and she turned as far to the side as her chains would permit and began to retch. He stroked her hair back in a mockery of tenderness, until she was finished.
"Good girl," he said. "You are everything I hoped you would be. Now, get some rest. I want you at your best when I have Angel join the party."
That night, he forced her to watch him torture Angel with holy water and a cross. Buffy struggled until her chains chaffed her skin raw, but could do nothing, and began to weep at her helplessness. Spike again vamped out, draining her of just enough blood to weaken but not kill. If the chains binding her were developing any breaches, she didn't have the strength to exploit them. And the chains binding Angel weren't merely metallic. They were ensorcelled in some way that circumvented his vampiric nature, making him as vulnerable as any human.
Buffy wanted to speak to Angel, offer some comfort, but they were never given a moment for that. Every instant that they were together, Spike spent torturing them. He made Angel watch as he fed from Buffy, and afterward, kissed her. This time, prepared, she didn't retch at the taste of her own blood, and wondered if that wasn't perhaps worse. She could hear Angel's frantic struggles to free himself increase when Spike tormented her. But he was too well caught to escape.
Now, every inch of Angel's skin had been boiled away, the underlying muscles cut and burned and scored by the cross. Buffy knew that no vampire could long survive such abuse, and she was desperately frightened. Spike considered the exhausted, mortally injured vampire hanging from his chains the way a sculptor might consider a statue. "Yes, this is coming along nicely. I do believe we're ready." He signaled to his henchmen, who left. Then he turned his back on Angel and returned to the slab on which Buffy still lay. She didn't know where the knife came from, but she almost hoped that he meant to use it to kill her. As if he read her mind, he laughed. "You can't think I'd let it be that easy, pet." One of his henchmen returned then, wheeling in a contraption that looked like one of Buffy's own cross bows with a long thong of leather trailing behind it. This crossbow held a large wooden spear, however, instead of an arrow, the tip sharpened to a deadly point. Buffy's heart began pounding. It had to be meant for Angel. But if she could just get one chance...
"Yes, I think we're ready," Spike said again. The henchman bowed and left. Spike's face returned to its more human appearance. Buffy was alarmed, rather than reassured, by that. He put the knife down at the edge of the slab, stepped back...
And took off his coat. Buffy stared at him uncomprehendingly as he began to peel off the red shirt he always wore, and the black T-shirt beneath it, tossing them carelessly onto a convenient ledge. She licked suddenly dry lips as he began to unbuckle his belt. Was this part of some bizarre ritual? She didn't understand what he was up to.
Angel did. "You...son of a...bitch," he managed to rasp out through cracked and swollen lips. "Don't...touch her!"
"Or what, mate?" Spike chuckled as he began to undo the fly of his black jeans. "You're going to stop me? When this is all presented for your viewing pleasure?"
Cold shock hit Buffy as she realized what Angel feared. Somehow, she hadn't connected the kisses Spike had forced on her with any intent other than to frighten, repel, and humiliate her.
"You don't want to do this," she whispered tremulously to Spike. "You loved Drusilla--"
"And you took her from me," he said in a voice of lethal rage. "And you are going to spend eternity making up to me for her loss." He discarded pants and shoes in a few smooth, economic movements. He didn't wear undergarments. Buffy didn't want to look at him, but as the true horror of her plight began to dawn on her, she found herself frozen, disbelieving. She stared at his face, but could not avoid seeing all of him. He had the body of a young athlete, his muscles as firm and well defined as those of statues from antiquity, or Michaelangelo's masterpiece of the male form. How old was he? One century? Two? Buffy couldn't remember. But he had spent his unlife as a fighter, and it showed. The one flaw he had, the odd scar on his right eyebrow, actually enhanced his physical perfection, making it seem less remote, more accessible, more...human. He walked toward her, his cock rising thick and erect from a nest of golden curls and he looked like nothing so much as a Greek god freed from the bonds of myth and come to earth. For no good purpose.
Spike picked up the knife again, looking at the Slayer. Her green-brown eyes were huge, and despite her weakness, she struggled anew. Even the desperately injured Angel was making a valiant effort to come to her rescue.
"Stay...away... from her!" Angel growled. Spike glanced at him, amazed the other vampire could still speak.
"Tried that. Didn't work. She wouldn't leave well enough alone." Spike moved the point of the knife a hair's-breadth above Buffy's face, as if tracing the line of her jaw. "The die is cast, old son. She took out Dru, I'm going to take you out. And make her pay forever." Angel surged forward against his chains, but they held. Spike saw the anguished looks the two lovers exchanged. His pleasure in their despair felt every bit as good as he had known it would.
Not wanting his enemy to miss a thing, Spike was careful not to obstruct Angel's view. Abandoning the knife for the moment, he walked toward the foot of the slab. He didn't merely pull off Buffy's shoes and toss them aside, he caressed each of her bared feet as he revealed them. His hands on her warm flesh were chill, colder than the air of the dungeon; the icy hands of a man dead for more than a hundred years. Buffy tried to pull away from him, but it was impossible.
Spike took his time about freeing her from her clothes, letting the knife slice through the denim of her pants with almost languid slowness. Her skin was warm and smooth, the feel of firm muscle beneath the flesh enhancing his excitement. On a whim he ran his fingers lightly, caressingly, along the vulnerable back of one knee. She shuddered in revulsion, but still couldn't free herself. Spike pulled the ruined cloth out from under her, and tossed it aside. Her blouse was next, then her bra. She flushed in humiliation, blood adding a becoming tint to her sunbronzed skin. Her breasts, he realized with satisfaction, were beautifully formed, perfect plump hemispheres of tanned flesh surmounted by rose-bronze nipples. He leaned over her to set teasing kisses along their sensitive undersides, where her breasts rose from her rib cage, then flicked his tongue along the same path. He kissed his way upward, opening his mouth over one nipple, sucking it into his mouth, laving it with his tongue. Buffy cried out, distraught, but that bit of flesh stiffened deliciously in his mouth. He restrained the urge to bite it. There would be time, later, for rougher play.
"Oh, she is sweet, mate," he lifted his head to tell Angel. "Did you know how responsive she would be?" The older vampire's eyes promised murder and retribution, but he was in no position to act on his desires. Spike smiled at him. "Just think. If you hadn't been such a gentleman, she could have had the memory of your lovemaking to sustain her through my little amusements. But she won't."
"Let...her...go," Angel growled. Spike had to respect the menace Angel had managed to inject into his voice, especially under the circumstances. But he could tell the other vampire was at the end of his resources.
"Don't worry. I promise you won't have to watch this for very long." Spike disposed of the rest of the clothes he had taken from her, and moved toward her final garment, the last barrier to her modesty. Panties in girlish pink cotton. The knife sliced through them in two quick strokes, and he discarded it and the scraps of cotton cloth.
He didn't move to touch her immediately, knowing that merely gazing on her nakedness would humiliate her further. But stripped of the cheap, tartish clothes girls her age seemed to cultivate in their headlong rush toward adulthood, her beauty struck him forcibly. Naked, Buffy retained a purity her clothing belied. She was, he saw, deceptively tiny and perfectly formed; deadly, supernal strength in an almost fragile package of flesh and blood. Her breasts had already delighted him. Now, he noticed that her limbs were slender and graceful, her waist small, her hips generously curved. Her belly, though firm from more than a year of martial arts workouts and nightly battles, was lusciously rounded, retaining a slight, exquisitely feminine swell. Her legs, also as a result of her incessant combat training, were well muscled and beautifully shaped.
Vengeance was suddenly enhanced by pure lust. In planing how he would bring the Slayer down, Spike had decided that the symmetry of having her take Drusilla's place, until he tired of her, was most appealing. Not only because of her responsibility for killing Dru, but because of her love for Angel. Spike had never forgotten that Angel had been first with Dru. And then, with his soul restored, Angel had betrayed Dru. Taking Buffy in front of Angel, being first with the woman Angel loved, as Angel had been first with the woman beloved by Spike, had its own poetry.
Now, Spike was conscious of a new element. He had always been aware of Buffy's appeal, but his passion for Dru had made him immune to it. But looking at her --helpless, naked, vulnerable--Spike found that he wanted her for reasons that had nothing to do with retribution. Spike let his glance rest on her long legs, wondering if he would succeed in having them wrap willingly around his waist on the first try. But no; he hadn't left enough slack in her chains for that.
Buffy felt Spike's gaze run over her body as if he had placed his hands on her flesh, and shivered as if chilled. Whatever form of torment she had expected when she found herself in his power, it was not this. If there was anything Buffy knew about Spike, it was how deeply he loved Drusilla. It was inconceivable to Buffy that he would want to do anything other than kill the woman who had caused his lover's death. But she couldn't possibly mistake his intent, could only try, once more, to fight her way free. She renewed her struggles, ignoring the pain as the metal of her chains scraped against her skin. She was the Slayer, her bruises would heal quickly; escape was more important than discomfort. But escape wasn't possible. Buffy's wrists and ankles began to drip blood, but the chains still held. Spike bent over one slender wrist and licked the crimson drops away.
"Are you trying to make this better for me, love?" he taunted her. "Because I didn't think you could, but you are." Buffy drew one unsteady breath and turned her head away from Angel. She couldn't bear to have him see what was happening to her. But Spike was offering her no respite. He licked the blood from her other wrist, then moved around her granite bed to stand at her feet. He lifted an ankle to the limit the chains allowed, and drank the blood that had spilled there. His tongue swept slowly across her abraded flesh, his eyes fixed to her expressive face, noting her startled reaction. He finished, then turned to her other ankle, and from there let his tongue travel upward along her body.
How could flesh so cold generate such heat? Buffy wondered in dismay. Why did her skin burn where his tongue touched? She was crying openly now, helpless sobs that Spike knew, with deep satisfaction, were tearing Angel apart. Spike smiled as he licked his way upward to her thighs. Her warm flesh, so unlike the marble cold perfection of Drusilla's, aroused him further. He licked along her hipbone, up to the soft swell of her belly, dipping his tongue into her navel. She tried to buck him off, but her struggles were negligible against his enhanced strength. He took his time suckling at her breasts, raising each nipple to a firm, tight rose-bronze bud that invited further attention, attention he was only too happy to pay. Buffy tried to twist away from him. Uselessly. He tasted his fill and then moved upward once more. He kissed her, forcing her head still and her lips open so he could plunder the soft cave of her mouth with his tongue. She was too frightened, too shocked --too virginal-- to respond, but even that only made things better. Spike lifted his head to gaze down at her mockingly.
Her green-brown eyes were huge, wounded, brilliant with tears, her full mouth trembled. God, she was beautiful, he thought. Tragic, hurt, vulnerable in a way even Dru had never been vulnerable to him. Something unexpected clenched around his heart, something he refused to examine too closely but which unaccountably sweetened the moment further. He bent forward, savoring with lips and tongue the salt path of moisture trailing from her eyes down her cheek.
"Even your tears taste good to me, pet," he whispered into her mouth as he plundered it once more. He had planned to draw out the torment, but it no longer seemed necessary. Spike positioned himself against the secret entrance to her body, but realized at once that she was too dry to accept him easily. And he knew he could torture Angel more exquisitely by his next act.
Spike kissed, nibbled and licked his way back down to the tops of her thighs, to the feminine core he had carefully avoided the first time. She was still crying, still not aroused so much as terrified, devastated. He intended to change that.
Because his vengeance wouldn't be complete if he couldn't.
He felt the change in her with the first long, wet brush of his tongue against her most secret flesh. A shudder of shock and dismay as an intimation of pleasure burned its way, unwanted, along the tantalized nerves of her body. A few more slow, deliberate strokes forced a moan from her, and he cast a glance at Angel to make sure his enemy was suffering as he wanted him to suffer.
One look assured him that he was. That though Angel didn't want to watch, he couldn't stop himself. Spike continued to ravish the Slayer. He laved the defenseless, untried pearl of flesh between her thighs until she was weeping with despair. And the pearl was stiffening, swelling beneath his lips and tongue. She tasted like honeyed wine, something a man could get drunk on, could drown in. Spike moved his hands in caressing strokes down over her hips to cup her buttocks and lift her toward his ravaging mouth. Her cries of denial stirred him, and he kept up his tormenting play for long moments. He heard the subtle change in her cries, and knew that she herself didn't realize what was happening, that she was beginning to yield to him.
But Angel did. Spike lifted his mouth from her, raising his head briefly to contemplate the other vampire. Angel stared back at him with unutterable loathing. But spells, and cold iron, and physical trauma kept him from doing more. Their gazes were still locked in implacable hatred when Spike drew one hand from beneath the Slayer, deliberately moistening one finger, and gently, slowly insinuated it inside her virgin sheath. Buffy writhed away, as Angel gave a last surge forward. Spike drew in his breath, not at Angel's futile gesture, but at the sensation of wet heat, at the involuntary, seductive contraction of the Slayer's beautifully toned body around his intrusive finger. Then he smiled and dipped his head back toward her damp, heated flesh, and proceeded to forget about Angel. For the moment.
Buffy fought Spike, fought herself. She tried to remain indifferent to the sensations his skilled tongue and fingers and lips evoked, but she was an untutored innocent, and he had become practiced in lovemaking more than a century before.
She didn't stand a chance. Ultimately, her moans became breathy, needy. Although she tossed her head from side to side, saying "No," over and over, her hips bucked to meet the thrust of his tongue and fingers, not avoid them. She was still far from orgasm, but no longer able to deny her body the satisfaction it instinctively craved. As her flesh turned traitor to her will, flooding her inner tissues with honeyed warmth, Spike drank in the taste of her. He could stay here forever, teasing her, devouring her. Spike wondered if he could get her to climax the first time just from his lips and tongue. But his own need was growing, raging, and he ended his play. Buffy was wet for him, now, the tight passage of her body sleek and bedewed by an unwanted, inevitable desire. As Spike moved over her, he spared one last thought for Angel.
Not taking his eyes from the helpless beauty beneath him, he said, "She tastes... oh, incredible. A man could drown in her. You were a damned fool." He took her mouth again, settling his weight fully over her, pressing once more against the core of her. This time she wasn't dry. Despite her virginal tightness, and the struggle she still made, he slid his large, pulsing cock deep into the liquid, heated softness of her body. Encountering the barrier he had expected, he thrust through it with merciless power. He felt the barrier tear, smelled the coppery tang of her spilled virgin’s blood, felt the rush of it around his prick. Lust burned through him. Buffy cried out her pain into his mouth and shuddered against him. How Angel reacted, Spike no longer either knew or cared.
Buffy felt so good to him, impossibly good, her muscles tightening around his shaft in reaction to his invasion, her soft breasts crushed against his chest. She began to struggle anew, but that only helped him seat himself deeper, further, stretching her untried passage to the limit. Buried to the hilt in her resisting body, Spike held himself perfectly still, his mouth yet capturing hers. Eventually she quieted beneath him. The initial pain, he knew, was subsiding. Her humiliation and despair would not. Not yet. She continued to weep her bitter, useless tears.
God, he was rock hard and rigid. He couldn't ever remember being this hard in his life, or unlife, no matter how good things had been with Dru. But Dru, like him, was unliving, and had no heat to offer. Buffy was a furnace, a fire he wanted to be consumed by. Spike stopped kissing her, raising his face so he could look down at her when he began his next assault. Her eyes were closed. Was she so naive that she thought he was finished? Oh, but she would learn! He moved within her, a slow, almost languorous stroke. Her eyes flew open. He caught her gaze with his own. And held it as he moved within her again, judging by the nuance of her expression, the reaction of her inner muscles, exactly where to press inside her to make her feel a rapture she would sell her soul to avoid.
Buffy couldn't look away from his eyes. Beneath the scar, they were black pools, infinitely deep, pulling her upward, toward him. He withdrew from her, and she felt herself move to recapture her loss, heard his pleased gasp as she met his thrust. She couldn't believe she had done that, couldn't stop herself from doing it again. Couldn't pull herself free of the pool of his eyes.
God, he was cold! His body defined the limits of her own, colder than the air of the dungeon surrounding them, colder than the chill granite upon which she lay or the steel chains, which bound her. Cold flesh invaded her, pierced her, stroked her intimately and unrelentingly. How could anything so cold warm her so? How could her veins feel such fire and her flesh such heat? How could anyone she hate so much force her to such exquisite sensation?
In the end, she couldn't win. He would withdraw with aching slowness, only to slide into her with deliberate tenderness, soothing away the pain of his initial thrust with ruthless skill. Her will resisted him, but her body did not. He felt her inner core tremble around his shaft. Smiling in satisfaction, he took her mouth again.
She wasn't easy. She kept fighting him. But he knew when to change the depth or speed or angle of his stroke into her sheath. He used his own hips to force her thighs wider apart, to open her yet more for his invasion. He reached an arm down, caressing along one leg, bending her knee slightly and lifting her leg to the limits the chain allowed him, opening her farther still. He surged into her more deeply, touching the mouth of her womb.
Buffy's moans once more became cries of need, as much as of denial. This time he would see that need fulfilled. Spike thrust into her more quickly, more powerfully. She yielded around him like a citadel offering surrender to a conqueror. And conquer he would.
"You feel like heaven, pet," he whispered to her. "If I had known you'd be this wet for me, that you'd give me this heat, I'd have taken you the first time we met."
"I hate you," she said, her eyes running tears, but her hips rising to meet his.
"Yes, love," he said to her, "Show me how much you hate me." He drove into her mercilessly, increasing his pace yet again, offering her no respite from sensation.
Buffy was utterly in the power of her worst enemy, and he was making her feel things she could never have imagined. It was cruelly unfair, soul-destroyingly unfair. How could she believe in God, or goodness or mercy when everything she had wanted to share with Angel was being forced from her by Spike? She hadn't known such feelings existed, such passion and fire. She didn't want to want this, but couldn't stop herself. His body invading hers should have repelled her, not given her this intoxicating satisfaction. But it did, and she was helpless to resist. Then, dimly, she became aware of a difference in the quality of the sensations. Something was building, something that sang along every nerve in her body and surged through her veins. Something she was not sure she could survive.
Spike saw her eyes widen in surprise when it began, when the intimate center of her body began to tighten rhythmically around him, and the first sweet wave of ecstasy approached. "Yes," he said in male triumph as she began to surge against him, her breathing reduced to gasps, her body now arching into his, pressing her closer. He thrust into her tirelessly, concentrating on her pleasure, determined to have the final triumph of her complete capitulation.
She gave it to him. And gave. Orgasm ripped into her, the start of a shattering, soul-stealing climax that left her unthinking and utterly responsive. Spike felt her body tighten deliciously around his shaft in deep contractions of pleasure. Her breathy gasps became soft cries as she began to find release. This was what he had waited for. Spike stopped holding back, allowing his own desire to peak and let him spill his cold seed into her heated depths. The treacherous thought came to him that even Dru had never given him this wonderful heat, but he suppressed that idea, reaching instead for the final, crowning touch to his revenge, the leather thong of the catapult. As Spike found his own release, the cresting wave of pleasure he forced upon her took her, drowned her, shattered her. Her soft moans became deep, helpless cries, the unmistakable sounds of a woman utterly satisfied. Her pleasure intensified his own satisfaction. Spike's cries joined hers and it was then that he pulled on the leather thong and released the mechanism that sent the wooden stake hurtling through Angel's heart.
The last thing Angel heard was the sound of the woman he loved brought to her first fulfillment...in another man's arms.
Buffy hadn't realized what was happening. Helpless in the throws of rapture, she called out the one thing Spike hadn't expected.
Shocking him as much as herself, Buffy called out Spike's name.
Spike brought his mouth down on hers again, and this time her tongue met and mated with his as the last of the compelling ecstasy blazed through her. He held her as her climax reached a pinnacle, held her as she remained suspended, for long moments, at the height of rapture, held her as the cataclysmic force rocked her, remade her, then ebbed away. Held her as she returned slowly to the world, stroking her back soothingly, brushing aside her hair tenderly. He shouldn't feel tenderness, he thought absently. He should only feel triumph, and animal gratification. But the warm girl in his arms had been too responsive, too delicious. He had just sense enough not to let her know that he had softened toward her at all.
Buffy came to herself slowly. It was worse, of course, than when she had first regained consciousness. Her treacherous body was heavy and languorous with satiation. Spike was still sheathed inside her, though quiescent for the moment. She was being caressed by the monster who had destroyed her friends and family, and murdered countless innocents.
And who had taught her a passion at which Angel's kisses had only hinted.
Angel. Her gaze flew to where he stood chained against the wall.
To find empty, dangling chains, a fallen wooden spear, and a drift of ashes.
"No," she said quietly, pain and grief sweeping over her. "Please, no." Spike's unwonted tenderness evaporated. The woman he had just brought to her first passion was grieving for another man. Another traitorous memory rose within him. Dru, no matter how much she gave to him, had always pined after the same man. His rage returned, allowing him to lie cheerfully.
"I'm pretty sure the last thing he heard was you. Calling my name. Even I hadn't planned on that, pet." He kissed her once more, with brutal thoroughness, then withdrew from her.
Buffy's pain had moved beyond the point where she was capable of tears. As Spike left the granite slab, and began, unhurriedly, to dress, she turned on her side, curled as tightly into a ball as her chains would permit, and shivered in reaction to all that had happened. She understood Spike's vengeance, understood the satisfaction it must have given him to kill Angel just at the point when Buffy yielded herself. But why was she still alive? With Angel dead, there was no one left who would care what happened to her. And with Angel dead, there was no one left for her to care about. Why didn't Spike just kill her?
At least, she thought, Angel's torment was over, and his penitent soul had been freed. But then Spike knelt by the ashes, and began carefully sweeping them together.
"What are you doing?" she asked him.
"Just a bit of tidying up," he said. "Doesn't do to let the old dungeon become a refuse heap." There was more to it than that, she knew. Spike was examining the chains, brushing the slightest speck of ash from them into the container he carried in his hands.
An exquisite porcelain bowl, which Buffy remembered Angel telling her dated to the Ming dynasty.
"Why?" she forced the word out, fear of what she would learn constricting her throat. "Why are you gathering his ashes?"
"Well, now, that's something of a tale," Spike began. In a few brief sentences, he told her about the Mother of Demons, the source of his enhanced power. "Seems Lilith keeps the old maternal eye on us vamps even from Hell. She was a bit put out with our boy Angelus, you know. I mean, as a demon, he was brilliant. His ability to find new and totally depraved ways to torment the living was rather awe inspiring, actually. She loved that about him. You can imagine how this bit about restoring his soul really, really bothered her." He had finished his task, and stood up. Walking to an alcove she could barely see, he came back to show her that a lid had been fitted over the bowl.
"Lilith's come up with a plan that I think is quite neat," he continued. "See, with all the other Slayers dead --I mean the ones who normally hunt demons or lamia or the like-- and with you as our prisoner, her power is strong enough to let her bind Angel's soul to his mortal remains." He gently hefted the bowl, turning it this way and that. Buffy could hear the gentle whisper of ashes brushing against the porcelain interior.
"If these ashes ever get scattered, he'll be free. But I wouldn't want you to miss your Angel, so I'm going to see that he stays near you. In here. Always."
He placed the bowl, almost reverently, in a niche above the granite slab holding her, out of reach, but not out of sight. Buffy found that she was not beyond tears after all. Spike saw and his expression turned gloating.
"They never will get scattered, love. That would just be, well, wrong."
Buffy turned away once more, the smooth curve of her back to him, shaking with sobs. Again, her vulnerability got to him, arousing more than desire. He realized she'd be cold in the dungeon, and suddenly the idea of inflicting additional physical discomfort on her lost its appeal. Spike wanted to laugh at himself. God, he was a fool. Instead, he stripped off his leather coat once more and draped it protectively over her trembling body. He stood looking down at her for a moment, a rueful smile twisting his mouth. Then he turned and walked away.
Spike left specific orders with his followers, designating three of the female vamps to see to Buffy's physical needs. He caught the surprised glances they surreptitiously exchanged, but didn't bother to explain himself. His recently augmented strength ensured that they wouldn't challenge his decision openly.
Satisfied that his orders would be obeyed, he returned to the rooms he had made his private quarters and found a metal ashtray, dumping its contents into the trash. Grabbing a bottle of wine, he splashed some into the ashtray and swirled it around, muttering a few words in a language forgotten before Latin was first heard in the world; words taught to him by Lilith. The purification ritual complete, he spilled out the remaining wine, tossed a handful of cedar wood chips into the ashtray, lit a match, and with another invocation, set the wood burning. Then he took out the silver knife and let his own blood drip into the flames.
They turned black in an instant, but Lilith herself did not appear. Her voice, however, whispered in his mind.
"Well, my beloved child," that voice asked, "are you pleased with my gifts to you?"
"Pleased. Yeah. Everything's just ducky," Spike said. In the silence, dark laughter gathered, echoing in his mind.
"You do amuse me," Lilith admitted. "But why have you called me forth?"
"It's about the ceremony, the one to bring you back into the world."
"Yes?"
"You said that one of the ways we could accomplish that was to turn the last living Slayer into the creature she or he was chosen to slay. And that if I wanted to keep Buffy, it would make sense to let her be the last one, and to make her a vampire."
The voice in his head agreed. "So that, when Hell triumphs on earth, and time has no meaning, she will be yours throughout eternity, utterly in your power. In fulfillment of my promise."
"Oh, yes. She is in my power, and I think I'll need eternity to truly enjoy that. But I want to talk to you about...options..."