Disclaimer: Not my characters, Joss Whedon’s. Never owned ‘em, never will. No copyright infringement intended. This is, as ever, femfanfic, impure and simple. I should note this was written in the early summer of 1998 after the events of Becoming, Part II but well before the premier ep of season three, Anne aired.

Warning: Not only is this not for those under 18, this is not for the fainthearted. "We’re talking…adult content here," as Buffy said in WTTHM. The warnings are meant to keep the underaged and those who might be offended from this page. If you somehow managed to circumvent the warnings before your 18^th birthday, or if you are uncomfortable with explicit material, Turn Back Now!

*******************

..on the Highway of...

or

Spike and Buffy Redux

part 2

Time: June 1998

She wasn't the most experienced woman in the world. Popular though she had been at Hemery, there had only been Tyler, whom she had never permitted more than a kiss. A few guys had managed other kisses during party games or the rare date that somehow she could never work up the enthusiasm to repeat. But she understood how meaningless those kisses were the first time she ever kissed Angel.

In one heartbeat, she learned the difference between kissing a boy and kissing a man. In the next, she learned that she wasn't kissing a man at all.

Over the course of the ensuing months, Angel taught her more than she had ever expected to learn about adult need and love and desire. Finally, on the night when they both faced death and the possibility of losing each other one too many times, she gave herself to him, without reserve and without question. Angel had taken her with the utmost reverence and tenderness, in an act which had consummated and sealed the love they could neither fight nor deny. An act which had cost him his soul. Angel had given her a moment of heaven, for which she paid with a slow decent into hell.

That could not happen here. Spike had no soul to lose, and whatever her feelings were toward him --an issue which had grown murky over the past few days-- they hardly involved love. Buffy moved slowly in toward Spike, and pressed her lips against his. For a moment, a fleeting memory drifted across her mind. There had been dreams....

Then delicious, hot reality intruded. The first thing she learned was that there was a difference between the way different men kissed, as well. Spike felt different, he moved differently, he tasted different. His mouth held the flavor of wine and tobacco --how odd that she could enjoy that taste when she so despised smoking-- covering something darker, sweeter. Something she remembered from Angel's kisses; the faint savor of blood...

As with Angel, this was not the hot blood of a recent kill, she knew. No one had died to keep him alive. So she could ignore the bloodtrace, and relish the whole texture and taste of Spike's mouth.

And, God help her, she liked it.

He wasn't Angel. No one would ever be Angel, would ever be able to fill that particular void in her heart. But Spike kissed her in a way that was, at least physically, eminently satisfying.

The moment he felt those soft, incredibly full lips against his own, Spike stopped fighting his own needs. He opened his mouth, forcing her lips to part beneath his. His tongue found hers, caressing it, tasting the slightly spicy, human warmth of it. He had given her a chance to back away, and she hadn't taken it. So he brought his arms up, pulling her in tighter, closer. After a moment, he felt her arms slip about his neck. Still locked to her mouth, he ground up against her, letting her feel his arousal, warning her exactly where this was going. She pushed back with her hips, matching his rhythm, and he growled deep in his throat.

The futon was too damned far away he realized, and began to bend her backwards, lowering her to the floor. She allowed that, but pulled her head away, gasping for air. He had forgotten such human frailties, not needing to breathe, himself. He smiled, and dipped his head toward her throat instead.

Buffy felt an instant's panic, as instantly relieved. Spike's tongue darted out, licking at the salt sweat on her throat, caressing the beating pulse of her jugular, but not doing anything more. Rather, he licked along her throat over her collarbone, to the concavity in the center, then down to her breasts, kissing the flesh exposed above the black cotton of her top.

Then, without removing her clothing, he fastened his open mouth on her breast, suckling her aureole into his mouth, feasting on it through the sweat-dampened cloth. Buffy felt cool moisture and the abrasive texture of the damp cotton against her sensitive nipples, and arched up into his mouth, her hands going into his hair, pressing him closer. Angel had never done that either. No one had ever done that.

A moment later, Spike did something else Angel had never done.

Releasing her breast Spike moved over her, kissing her ear, his tongue darting into the shell, making her squirm against him. But that wasn't what was new. Spike began to whisper to her, his voice low, heated, as he continued to move his lower body against hers.

"I'm not going to make love to you, baby," he said. It took a moment for her drugged senses to register his words.

"What?" Buffy said in a small voice, panicking. How could he not make love to her, after what he had started to do, what he was still doing, to her body?

"I'm not going to make love to you," he said, smiling, then kissing her in a way that convinced her he had to be lying. "It isn't love that's between us," he continued a moment later, moving his hands slowly, sensuously along the curves of her body, spreading teasing kisses over her cheeks, her brow. "It isn't love that you want from me. I'm going to fuck you, baby. Because I'll bet that you've only been made love to, and that no one has ever fucked you in your life."

She gasped, his words creating a stunning visual image that made her instantly wet.

"Oh, God," she moaned.

"Tell me that you want it," he said next, kissing her temple.

"What!" she said again.

"Tell me that you want me to fuck you. Or I won't." He pulled back, looking down at her, and she couldn't believe it. Despite the heat flaring in his eyes, Spike was utterly controlled. Although he still moved against her, taunting her body with his own, she knew that if she didn't do exactly what he wanted, he would make good on his threat. Buffy licked dry lips. She had never, ever used those words, had never, ever imagined using them in a situation like this. But she was too needy not to obey.

"I want you to...fuck...me," she said shakily. He smiled at her with masculine satisfaction, and rewarded her compliance with a particularly adept thrust of his pelvis against hers, making her moan again, and offer him her mouth once more. He took it, giving her a hot, open mouthed, long wet kiss, until she needed to break for air. He wouldn't let her, at first, forcing her to keep kissing him, pushing her beyond the limits she thought she had, to find how much more she was capable of. Eventually, he let her breath, and as she gasped in air, he spoke again.

"Do you really want me to fuck you, baby? Then tell me what else you want."

"I...," Buffy couldn't force the words out. She knew what she wanted him to do, but she couldn't believe he wanted her to say it.

Seeing her confusion, remembering just how inexperienced she was --Angelus had eventually bragged to him about that-- Spike relented enough to reassure her.

"It's all right, pet. You can let go. There's no one to pretend for, to behave for. Didn't you know that men --and, well, demons who used to be men-- like it when women--especially good, sweet, decent women--talk dirty to them?"

"Um, no," Buffy said, her eyes huge.

"Well, you are the Slayer, and that's about as good, and sweet and decent as a woman can get. So hearing you say you wanted me to fuck you made me hotter and harder than I had been just from sucking on your tight little nips through that damned blouse." He was still moving against her, and Buffy wanted to strip off her pants, and his and get closer to him. But she was beginning to understand. Because his words were making her hotter and wetter than she had been just from having him kiss and fondle her.

"But if you aren't ready to tell me what I want to hear," he continued, "then let me tell you what I want to do. I want to suck on your breasts until your nipples are hard and tight. I want to take that top off of you and drink the sweat off your skin. Then I want to undo the tie of your pants with my teeth, and pull them down until I can see your hot, wet pussy. Did you know I can feel how hot and how wet you are, even through your pants?" Buffy flushed. Aware how soakingly wet his words made her, she was not surprised that he could tell. And yet his words, so bold, so uncompromising, not only aroused, they shocked. Spike saw her confusion, her innocence, and smiled. This was going to be so good, he knew. He went on.

"I'm going to eat you, baby, not the way we both always thought I would, not with my fangs in your blood, but with my tongue on your clit. God, this past week, I've been starving for you! I'm going to fuck you with my tongue, pet. I'm going to find out what you taste like, and how you smell, and I'm going to find out if you scream when you come."

She almost screamed for him, right then and there.

"And then, if you are very, very good, and if I think you deserve it, I am going to take my cock and I am going to drive it into you and I am going to fuck you until you think you're going to come, but I won't let you. And then I'm going to fuck you harder, until you are begging me to spill, but I won't.

"Because I want to fuck you until you are mindless for me. I want to fuck you until you can't think and can't speak and can't breathe. I want you clawing at my back and screaming for me, baby. And then, when you think you'll die if I don't stop, I'm going to make you come for me."

"Spike," she begged, unable to say more.

"Now, baby, do you want me to do those things?"

"Yes! Please, yes," she managed.

"Good. Then tell me. What do you want?" It took her a moment to gather the words, and the courage to say them.

"I...want to feel your mouth on me," she began, her voice barely above a whisper, at first, growing stronger as she went on. "I want you to take off my clothes...no I want you to rip them off, and I want to feel you inside me, your tongue tasting me and then your cock filling me. But if you don't hurry, I am going to die."

He smiled. "Well, I wouldn't want that," he said, aware of the irony.

He obliged her in the matter of ripped clothing. Spike had her upper body bared in seconds, vampiric strength more than a match for wet cotton. True to his word, he fastened his mouth on her naked breasts, each in turn, suckling the nipples until she was writhing in sensual abandon, and they were pebble hard against his tongue. He moved down her ribcage, drinking the clean, salt sweat from her flesh. The knot on her sweat pants was basic, and his teeth made quick work of it. He stripped pants and panties from her body in a few seconds more.

"Open you legs for me, baby," he growled in the most sensuous voice she had ever heard, "I'm hungry."

Buffy parted her thighs. Spike settled between them, inhaling the rich female scent that had been driving him mad for days. She was trembling slightly, and he moved in a bit, slowly, not wanting to rush. "When I put my mouth on you, I want you to tell me what it feels like. Or I'll stop."

"Ohhh," it was almost a wail. He smiled and leant forward, using his hands to gently pull back the edges of her outer lips, exposing the erect little bit of tissue that he intended to devour whole. She was glistening wet, spicy female moisture dripping from the tight furls of her inner flesh. He felt his cock stiffen further with almost painful pleasure.

She had only been taken once, nearly half a year earlier, he thought. She would be virginally tight, but it would be better than taking a virgin, because he wouldn't have to deal with her maidenhead, or maiden expectations and fears. He wouldn't have to be gentle. And if he wasn't careful, he was going to spill before he even got inside her.

Spike bent closer to her intimate core, breathing in the scent of her arousal. He blew gentle puffs of air teasingly across the quivering, ultra-sensitive flesh.

"Spike?" Buffy began, her voice quavering uncertainly. "What I feel. If you don't put you're goddamned mouth on me right now I am going to use that goddamned quarter staff as a goddamned sta---" she lost the ability to speak when he sucked her entire clit into his mouth, and gently closed his teeth over it. She screamed, instead. He rolled the tender flesh ever so slowly, easily between his teeth, rewarded by her whimpering cries. Her hips lifted toward his mouth, offering him more. He accepted the gift, easing up on her clit so that he could thrust his tongue into her near-virgin depths. Buffy moaned again, hips rising against his mouth.

He growled warningly, and Buffy remembered that she was supposed to tell him what it felt like. Whatever inhibitions she had were dissolving under the heat of his tongue and teeth. Buffy closed her eyes, concentrating on her feelings and began to feed them back to him, in verbal images.

"You make me so wet, I feel like I'm flooding," she began. "I love the way your teeth closed on me. It hurt a little, but it hurt more when you stopped, until you put your tongue inside me, because that felt soooo good.

"I love feeling you fuck me with your tongue," she said, her hips rocking up to add emphasis to her words. "You're so cold but you make me so hot. And your coldness feels so good against my heat. I wish you could keep eating me when you drive your cock into me, because I want to come in your mouth, I want to flood you. You have to... Oh!...you have to... " Buffy moaned, the ability to think clearly, to articulate anything, deserting her. His tongue was so deep inside her, cold, stroking, finding nerve endings that were sensitive, responsive, reducing them to quivering, palpating need. She writhed against him, reaching down, burying her hands in his hair, pressing his face even closer to the intimate center of her body, which he was ravishing so skillfully. The growl Spike gave this time wasn't of warning, it was pure male satisfaction at her response to him.

His tongue licked out of her sheath, and trailed up into the folds of skin protecting her clit. He lazily circled in on his target, moving his fingers, inserting one to take over the stroking motion inside her that he had begun with his tongue. Buffy was beyond coherent speech, only capable of making tiny, breathless, inarticulate cries. He closed his teeth over her again, a little more forcefully than he had before. She cried out, grinding her pelvis against his skillful mouth, and when he forced a second finger inside her, when he filled her untutored body that exquisite bit more, he found out exactly how delicious she tasted, how enticing she smelled, how good she felt and how sweetly she screamed when she came.

Her climax was so intense, her upper body bowed up off the floor, and collapsed back. And it wasn't ending.

Spike kept up the stroking pressure of his fingers, the swirl of his tongue, the nipping of his teeth. God, she tasted so good! And her living heat was so damned sensual against his own cold flesh. Just because she had reached fulfillment didn't mean he was ready to stop. He wanted to taste more. He wanted to see how much, how hard, how long he could keep her screaming.

Buffy didn't think she could take any more, and she tried to pull away. He wouldn't let her go. She sat up, pounding on his shoulders, but he ignored her. She was reduced to pulling his hair, trying to force his head away, and that didn't work either. Not until she had collapsed back to the floor, until she was sobbing from an excess of pleasure, did he relent.

With a last, long, loving caress of his tongue along the sweet folds of her most secret flesh, Spike pulled away from her. He smiled down at her in male triumph, pleased to see the woman who had so often defeated him reduced to trembling, feminine need. Spike moved just far away enough to speedily divest himself of his remaining clothing. Then he moved over her again, taking her mouth once more. He let her taste the hot, salty, delicious flavor of her own cravings on his tongue as he plunged it into the wet open cavern of her mouth.

Buffy moaned and lifted her arms to circle his neck, pulling him closer. The taste of her own essence being given back to her in Spike's kiss was shocking and arousing at once. This was absolutely nothing like making love to Angel. This was violent, unadorned, animal sex.

This was exactly what she needed, what they both needed; flesh and forgetfulness, if only for the moment.

Buffy sucked Spike's tongue into her mouth, twining her own around it. Without breaking the kiss, she opened her thighs to cradle him, reaching down to find his manhood, and guide it into the lush wetness of her body. Spikes hands found purchase on her hips, and he lifted her slightly to ease his way.

She was virgin-tight, and he moved slowly, as much to savor the sensation of entering her as to spare her any discomfort. He had forgotten how good it felt to sheath himself inside a warm, living girl, had forgotten the gorgeous contrast to his own cold flesh. That was one thing Dru had never been able to give him.

Spike pushed inside Buffy, feeling her inner core yield around him, welcoming his invasion, gloving him so tightly he could almost explode from that exquisite pressure alone. He broke the kiss, lifting up so he could look down at her beautiful face, her full lips parted, her huge eyes, pure green at the moment, slumberous with satiation.

"Tell me how it feels," he whispered withdrawing slowly, only to thrust deeply once again. Her hips lifted to meet him, giving back hot, wet, sensual friction for the cold, hard friction he gave her.

"It feels...," she whispered, "so hard, so full. Like I can't get you deep enough, close enough. I want more." She thrust upward, taking him deeper, yielding more. Spike smiled broadly, her words, her voice as arousing as the knowing, instinctive rhythms her body followed. She learned very quickly, but then, she was a Slayer, and he expected nothing less.

"Do you like fucking, baby?" he demanded hotly. "Do you like being fucked?"

"I like being fucked by you," she said with an answering heat, and Spike lost all interest in conversation, kissing her ravenously, driving harder inside her. She had already crested once, when he ate her, and he almost hoped he could make her peak again soon, because he wasn't at all certain how long he himself could last. Not with this wonderful heat, this delectable moistness, this yielding, sensuous flesh responding to him so completely, so unreservedly. And yet, he wanted to keep his promise to her, wanted to delay her release until he could make it even better for her.

But Buffy herself was drowning in sensation, and realized that she couldn't take much more. She began moaning again, wriggling against him, arching up and closer, wishing she could just open him up and fold herself right into him, get so close there was nothing between them at all.

"Harder," she whispered, and he complied. "Faster," she demanded and he obeyed. "I'm going to...I'm going to..." she began, and he could tell that he was about to push her over the edge once more. So he thrust once again, deeply, to the hilt, burying himself into her as tightly as he could get...

And stopped.

Buffy's eyes, which had been closing as she felt the pleasure building within her again, opened wide. His sudden inaction startled her. Spike's face was a mask, and she could see that he was fighting for control. She had no idea why. An inarticulate little wail escaped her, and she tried to shift herself, tried to find again that sweet, building pressure. He held her ruthlessly still.

"Easy, love. You have to wait until I think you're ready."

"I...are you mad?"

"Out of my mind," he agreed. "But...trust me." She lay quiescent beneath him, hoping he knew what he was doing, because she had no idea.

Spike fought back the urge to move inside her again, to just thrust into her until he spilled and she shattered and it ended for both of them.

He wasn't ready to let it end yet.

So he waited until he felt the trembling in her inner flesh quiet, until he himself was a little less mindless, and then he smiled down at her again and moved in to kiss her slowly, languidly, and to start once more.

He broke the kiss so she could breath, moved his hands from her hips to her thighs, and, while still buried as deep inside her as he could get, coaxed her into closing her legs, bringing them together between his own. She obeyed, not understanding until he withdrew and thrust again, making her gasp at the sensation. Somehow, the new position made it feel like he was even deeper inside her than before. Buffy moaned her appreciation and pulled him down to kiss again.

There was nothing gentle or languid about this kiss. It was a devouring, consuming kiss, a kiss that was about passion and anger and hunger and need. A kiss that matched the ruthlessness of the sex he gave her now; torrid, hot, hard, angry, sex; sex that asked for and gave no quarter. Buffy was glad he was being this rough because she needed the cleansing roughness of his passion. This wasn't about love, he had said, and he was right. But it was about need. She needed to forget love and friendship and betrayal and duty. She needed to forget that she had condemned the one man she would ever completely love to an eternity of torment, and take the brief moment of solace that might, just, save her life.

She needed to find a reason to go on and somehow, she was finding it here, now in the violent passions Spike unleashed upon her and within her. Because Buffy found she could be as hard, as ruthless as Spike himself.

He devoured her mouth and she ate him back; he thrust into her mercilessly and she met each plunge; he caressed her body with his hands and she moved hers over the sleek muscles of his arms and shoulders, his back and buttocks. He whispered erotic, intimate, appalling things into her ear and she whispered back things that were every bit as salacious and bold. His cold flesh burned inside her, and she felt, once more, the tension coiling inside her, the pressure building, until she became once more inarticulate with longing.

But Buffy gradually became aware that Spike was keeping her climax just out of reach, that he was deliberately pushing her to a particular point and keeping her suspended there.

Spike was tireless, and Buffy began to fear that he would keep her in this frenzy without finding his own release, without spilling inside her, and letting them both rest. Convinced that she couldn't handle that, that no merely human woman could sate such vampiricly fueled needs, she whispered into his ear.

"I want to feel you come," she told him, before licking into the temptingly close passage of his ear. "I want to feel you thrust into me even harder, want to feel you shake out of control, want you to pour your cold seed into me until I can't hold any more. Spill inside me, baby."

He gave a satisfied growl into her ear, but in this he did not oblige her. It was brutal and unfair and it drove her mad. She began to lose coherence and thought again, no longer able to speak rationally, reduced to one word, "please", murmured over and over as she begged him to bring them both to completion.

But it wasn't the completion he wanted. It didn't go far enough, didn't consume enough.

Spike eased back a little, pulling away. When she realized what he was doing, Buffy protested and tried to pull him back. He was too strong, easily resisting her, but only for a moment. Not fully withdrawn, still hard, Spike reached a hand over for his pants, swiftly folding them into a square of fabric. Using one hand to lift her hips, he shoved the makeshift pad beneath them. He reached for her sweat pants next, and did the same thing.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

He smiled down at her. "You'll see. No. You'll feel." Then he moved his position slightly, once more bending to take her mouth.

And when he drove into her again, with absolutely ruthless power and torturous slowness, she did, indeed, feel exactly what he had done.

Buffy gasped, almost weeping because by raising her hips on the cushions he had changed the angle of his penetration into her body, making an exquisite difference that she was sure was going to kill her.

Spike had absolutely no mercy. It was almost as if he was taking vengeance for every victory she had won over him, every humiliation, every defeat. He fucked her until she was mindless for him. Fucked her until she couldn't think and couldn't speak and couldn't breathe. She was clawing at his back and screaming for him, and then, when she thought she would die if he didn't stop, he slipped a hand between their bodies, and gently caressed the hidden bit of flesh he had brought to pleasure before.

"Come for me, baby," Spike whispered in her ear, plunging harder, stroking his knowing fingers more firmly.

And she shattered for him, pleasure overloading every nerve and making her writhe, scream, tremble and contract. The glove-tight fit of her body around his cock pulsed in delicious rhythms of satisfaction that brought him to his own release, forcing Spike to thrust into her even harder, shake out of control, and pour his cold seed into her hot, liquid depths. His mouth locked to hers, their tongues battling, tasting, consuming, they endured a vortex, a maelstrom of pleasure that shattered through them, held them, redefined them before it finally let them go.

Buffy drifted back into awareness to find her arms yet draped around Spike's neck, his still, unmoving weight pressing her to the floor. Her own breathing was ragged, he didn't breath at all. Their bodies were still joined. She turned her head slightly to look at his face. It was inhumanly beautiful, even the scar on his eyebrow accenting, rather than detracting from, his physical appeal. She knew that most of the time, vampires were made from unsuspecting victims. But there were exceptions, those who walked into that existence willingly and knowingly. Looking at Spike's face in repose, Buffy began to understand why some girls might let their lives be taken by such a monster. She had almost let him take hers. She moved one hand to gently caress the scar on his brow.

Spike kept his eyes closed against the pain of returning memories, as the ensorcellment he had been under was lifted. Then he felt a touch skim feather-soft against his old scar. He opened his eyes to find Buffy watching him, her expression grave, yet tender. He ruthlessly pushed back his own pain, and gave her a small smile before dropping a light kiss on her mouth. Withdrawing from her body, he stood up, leaving her chilled and empty, but not for long. Reaching a hand for her, Spike drew her to her feet and back into his arms for another light kiss, before sliding an arm beneath her thighs and carrying her over to the futon. Drawing the covers over them both, he settled her against his chest, stroking the hair back from her face, in a gesture that was, she thought, almost affectionate.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

She laughed dryly. "Machismo much? You can't have missed it when you made me come, so don't--"

"I'm not talking about that," he cut her off. "I'm talking about how you feel. About having," he wanted to say made love, remembered that he couldn't and changed it, "had sex with someone who isn't Angel. About having had sex with someone who's been trying to kill you for damned near a year and to whom you've done your damnedest to return the favor."

Buffy forced herself to meet his gaze squarely. His amazing night-black eyes were full of so much; uncertainty, concern, and the embers of a fire that was only banked, not doused. But he was right. Within minutes of her climax, it had all rushed back in on her: who she was, where she was, what she had just done. And with whom. Spike's eyes, his expression, even the unwonted gentleness with which he held her, told her he was serious, told her he was concerned, demanded her absolute honesty. She gave it to him.

"Okay. I'm not all right, Spike. But then, if I were all right, you wouldn't have had to rescue me from that park bench," her tone had grown slightly ironic, and that comment surprised a snort of laughter out of him. "I don't know how I feel," she went on more quietly. I haven't sorted it all out yet." She sighed, trying to put what she did know into words.

"I don't feel like I betrayed Angel's love, because we didn't make love. You were right, it was sex." Spike accepted and absorbed the unintended blow she dealt him as she returned to him the words he had spoken while under the spell of forgetfulness. She needed to deal with this and, now, he needed to help her deal with it. So he ignored his own pain and listened as she went on. "But I feel like I betrayed Angel, himself, because he is in Hell and torment and I just took some of the most intense pleasure I've ever had in my life. So I'm conflicted." He nodded his understanding, saying nothing, knowing there was more.

"As for you being the one, we covered that earlier. It's ironic, but I trust you. You helped me save the world, once, and you saved my life at least twice. And as long as you don't kill anyone else while you and I are...whatever we are, then I can deal. Does that answer your question?" She smiled wryly. "May I go to sleep now?"

He smiled back, but shook his head. "No. Not just yet. Listen to me." He was quiet for a moment, weighing how best to say what she needed to hear. "Angel. He loved you. And I know a thing or two about love." Most of it learned from you, he thought but could not say. Instead, he went on.

"When he was back with us, Angel told me how, the first time he got his soul back, the memories took a few minutes to start to come back, that it was days before he remembered everything. If that happened this time, then Angel remembers what happened after he lost his soul, everything he did to you, and why you had to send him to Hell." She stirred restlessly, not wanting to remember. He pulled her closer, soothing her.

"The demon in him can tolerate Hell, baby, and I wish I could tell you that his human soul will be okay, too, but we both know that isn't true." He could feel her tears where her face pressed against this shoulder.

"Spike, I can't--" she began, trying to pull away. He wouldn't let her.

"Shhh," he said. "I know baby. But you have to understand. There's something else that's true. Part of the torment he endures will be the fact that you are in torment over what he did, over what you were forced to do to him. And he wouldn't want that. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes," she managed, still weeping.

"Then trust me, he wouldn't begrudge you any solace you could find. And in his current, penitent state, I don't think he'd begrudge me, either." He might even pity me, if he knows everything, Spike thought.

She was sobbing by the time he finished, more silent, helpless tears. He held her while the latest storm rocked her, offering what comfort she would accept. Finally, she stilled once more.

"You do seem to have all the answers," she said then. "Just one thing, answer guy. How do I make it stop hurting so much?" Her voice, so wistful, so fragile, her eyes drenched with tears, her sadness all combined to break his heart.

"God, pet, no one has the answer to that," Spike said, wishing desperately that he had something better to tell her. "The best either of us can do is just try to live through it."

"Okay," she said, slowly. "You're on." She moved closer to him, burrowing into the comfort of the cool, solid wall of his chest. Eventually, safe in his arms, aware that he was watching over her, she drifted off to sleep.

Spike waited until he was certain that she was unconscious, then dropped a kiss on the top of her head, slipped his arm from under her and left the bed. He grabbed the ashtray, a book of matches and the wine from the kitchen table, dumped the ashes into the trash, found a steak knife that was sharp enough, and an old shopping list, then moved to the farthest corner of the apartment. Words that had been denied him for weeks returned to his mind. He poured the wine into the ashtray, muttering the purification ritual, before tossing the wine away and shredding the shopping list to serve as fuel. He added more wine, struck a match, and when it caught, nicked his wrist with the steak knife, letting a few drops of his blood feed the flames as he gave the final invocation.

She was not long in coming, and her entrance was quiet. She was a black flame burning in the form of a princess of ancient Sumer. Lilith, Mother of Demons, appeared to her supplicant, favorite demon son.

"So you have remembered," her voice came into his head.

"That was the deal," he acknowledged. "Take away the memories, but only until I could either stand them again, or until Buffy was dead, and I wouldn't have to face the fact that she didn't remember..."

A millenium in an earth made Hell, in which Spike ruled as a Prince Infernal and Buffy was his captive bride. Until he fell in love with her, and she with him, and he could no longer stand the suffering he caused her. Spike had called back time, undoing the fabric of reality, returning the Earth to where it had been when the path had begun to diverge. And only he, and Lilith, knew what had been.

"So, you can stand the memories again?" she questioned.

"When I have her back? I can stand anything but her pain," Spike said. "And, lord, she has enough of that. Was that what you meant, when you said their love would either save or destroy the world? That she had to send him into Hell?"

Soft laughter, and the scent of myrrh. "Not at all. That hasn't happened yet." Spike rocked back on his heels.

"Ah, Mum? You do recall that our boy Angelus is in Hell, now? Kind of puts him out of the game, doesn't it?"

"Not necessarily..." She whispered secrets into his ear.

*****************

Over the course of the next week, Buffy regained strength rapidly, and began to achieve an emotional balance as well. Spike introduced her to life in the underground. As a fugitive from justice, that was the life she would have to lead, at least until they found out if her name had been cleared in Sunnydale, and certainly until she decided where she was going to go.

The first place he took her to was a beauty parlor that seemed to cater to strippers and hookers, and the occasional fashion-minded vamp. The cops were looking for a blond, he reminded her. Buffy acknowledged that. Being a blond had lost its appeal, anyway, something that seemed to be more appropriate to a carefree, or careless, girlhood than the life of a fugitive. But her spirits had revived enough to make her take an interest in how she looked, so she had the beautician perm her hair into large, tight ringlets, each soft brown curl highlighted with a dramatic streak of deep red. Spike whistled appreciatively when he saw the effect.

"Nice," he said, handing the beautician her fee and a sizable tip.

Clothing was next. There were thrift stores that kept late hours, and Buffy was able to replace the top Spike had ruined, as well as pick up a few things more suited to L.A.'s hotter climate than what she was currently wearing.

The store had a tinny music system, and an eclectic mix of sounds. It was while she was trying on a pair of white shorts that a cut from the 1950's cast album of "Damn Yankees" came on. The lyrics caught her, making her go still as she buttoned the shorts.

The song was ironic, not joyful, and it so perfectly captured the truth of her odd relationship with Spike that she had to laugh. Uneasy, unhappy laughter, but laughter none the less. She bought the shorts.

Back at their loft, Spike got her out of the shorts almost as quickly as she had gotten into them, bracing her up against one of the room's large columns, lifting her slightly, to accommodate his greater height, and wrapping her slender legs around his waist. He drove into her with, quick, hot, hard, force, bringing her to a swift climax, then stopping just long enough to let her recover so that he could start again. He made her come three times, made her scream and rip his back to bloody ribbons before he joined her in a final release. After the two of them slid to the floor, still embracing, Buffy recovered enough to ask, "Do you think sometime we could try sex in a bed?"

Spike laughed. "Why?" he asked her. She had no real answer.

They practiced hand-to-hand and weapons for an hour or so each night. Before they showered off, together, and had hot, torrid, loveless --she thought-- satisfying sex, sometimes in a bed, sometimes not.

Once, during the heat of the day, with the shutters fastened against the sunlight and the room, large as it was, still becoming too hot for comfort, Buffy had tried to cool off with a cold bath. Spike was still sleeping when she came out wrapped in a towel, her hair piled up on her head. Not wanting to disturb him, she riffled through his books until she found something she thought she might enjoy; a collection of science fiction stories in a paperback nestled between copies of the collected works of Edgar Allen Poe and the poetry of Sylvia Plath. She curled up in the overstuffed chair, turning the lamp on to low.

The stories varied, some of them humorous, some dark, some well written and intriguing, some merely workmanlike and forgettable. She was deciding whether to bother continuing with one of the latter when she felt her towel slipping. Grabbing for it she realized that it wasn't slipping, but being pulled away.

"Keep reading," Spike, kneeling before her chair, invited her as he tossed the towel aside, and gently nudged her thighs apart. "Try the story on page 141," he suggested, tugging her hips forward to the chair's edge.

"What are you--" she ended on a gasp as his tongue caressed her clit, and she became instantly wet and responsive for him. Spike lifted each of her legs over his shoulders, and placed his hands beneath her buttocks to lift her to the most appallingly vulnerable, open, convenient angle for his ministrations. She began to whimper, when he stopped, looked up at her with a smoldering grin, black eyes gleaming, and repeated, "Page 141."

The story on page 141 concerned a space vampire who needed sex, not blood, to sustain his eternal life. Spike made her read one of the hotter passages aloud as he continued to eat her, knowing that the imagery in the story, combined with the feelings his wickedly knowing tongue evoked would bring her to heated readiness. Buffy read as long as she could, but what he was doing to her felt too good, and she couldn't keep the concentration necessary. Eventually, the book dropped away unheeded as she dug her hands into his pale blond hair, holding him closer, lifting her hips against his hands and offering him more.

It was when he stopped being gentle, when he stopped using his tongue and closed on her with a firm nip, rolling her aching flesh skillfully between his teeth that she began to shatter, coming in deep, uncontrollable waves of pleasure, crying out her release.

Gasping, Buffy stared down helplessly at the sight of Spike's white-blond head between her thighs. He wasn't stopping, even though she had peaked for him. She was still peaking. And if he didn't stop soon, she would die. She tugged at his hair, and for once he acceded to her demand, pulling away. But only so he could draw her out of the chair and roll her under him, and plunge into her still quivering depths until he had made her scream again, until he spilled his cold seed inside her once more and both of them were satisfied.

Another time, she woke up to find that he had found a new addition for their apartment, a freestanding, full length mirror, one that could be tilted so that she could see herself from different angles. Understanding how much vampires disliked mirrors, in which they could not see themselves, she was touched that he had thought to bring her one.

"Well, my motives weren't entirely pure," he said with a rueful smile, reaching for her. She threw off the covers and came into his arms, naked, as she always slept with him now. He drew her forward until she faced the mirror, then left to search for something beside the bed. He came back with a pair of her highest platform heels, and told her to put them on. She raised a brow, but obeyed while he grabbed both of the wooden kitchen chairs and placed them on either side of her.

"Brace yourself on those, pet," he instructed. She cast him an odd look, but did as he said. She had learned that there was always a method to Spike's madness and she was curious to see what it would prove to be this time. He stripped off his shirts as he came around behind her, disappearing from view. She heard the rustle of his clothing and the thunk of his boots as he removed everything else he wore, and she could feel him behind her, but according to the mirror, she was, except for the shoes, a naked woman in an empty room. She could see the rumpled futon mattress a few feet behind her. It was unnerving to know that Spike was mere inches away from her, and yet invisible.

And then she felt his hands caress along her back, and she gasped and leaned back into the solid, cold, palpable wall of his iron-hard body.

"Sometimes people like to watch what they're doing," he whispered into her ear as his hands gently stroked her shoulders and arms. "Men like to watch their cocks disappearing into their girlfriend's cunts, like to watch their own performance." He emphasized his words with stabbing licks into her ear, making her writhe against him, and flaunt her buttocks enticingly against his fully aroused manhood.

"Now, I can't do that exactly, but I can watch you, and you can watch how responsive you are to what I do to you. So look in the mirror pet, and watch how much fun you're having."

As ever, his heated words had their desired effect, making Buffy very hot, very willing to go along with whatever he had in mind. She looked in the mirror, at the slightly flushed, dazed girl who stood trembling between two wooden kitchen chairs, clutching their backs to keep from falling while she balanced on the suddenly erotic high heels. The girl was moving her hips in a slow, sensual rotation against the groin of an invisible lover; a lover the mirror swore wasn't there. Buffy knew better, but she could almost believe the mirror's lies.

And then she felt Spikes hands caress slowly up her body, starting at her waist, and she leaned back to give him greater access, and watched as his hands moved up to fondle her breasts. Except that she couldn't see his hands. But she could see her breasts as they compressed and were lifted and grew turgid, the nipples peaking beneath the play of those invisible hands.

Buffy drew in a shaking breath as Spike flicked his thumbs over her nipples, making them harden into tight little buds. Her breasts were always so sensitive; she could never bear to let him play there for very long. Tonight, he seemed disposed to take exception to that, determined to taunt them for a long time. He captured each nipple between the thumb and forefinger of his two hands, and Buffy cried out softly, watching in the mirror as her nipples were tugged outward and then released, with excruciating, gentle slowness, and then tugged and released again. Her body knew that the hands of her lover were upon her, but the mirror claimed her body acted on its owns.

Buffy was floodingly wet, and her legs were trembling.

"I don't think I can stand too much longer," she whispered to Spike.

"There's nobody here, baby, nobody for you to talk to," he whispered back. "Look in the mirror. It's just you and your hot, responsive little body. But you can stand, because you have the chairs to grab onto. And there's no one to make you fall."

Buffy groaned, the image his words created having their desired effect.

"You're all alone, baby," Spike whispered into her ear again, still manipulating her breasts with skilled slowness. "You're lover isn't here, but you are so hot for him, so wet, that you're going to take care of yourself. Its stupid of him to leave you alone when you're so heated, but what can you do? Look at your breasts in the mirror. They are aching to feel his hands on them, so they are just pumping for him, remembering how he feels…"

"Spike..."

"Spike isn't hear, cutie, just you and the mirror. Now watch."

His hands moved slowly down her body from her breasts, trailing down her rib cage, over the swell of her belly, coming slowly nearer the nest of curls at the apex of her thighs. She watched her reflection in the mirror as her outer lips parted, seemingly of their own accord, and the succulent bit of flesh that Spike adored fondling was revealed. Her eyes huge, her lips parted, Buffy watched as that bit of flesh was raised higher, drawn out. She felt Spike's fingers caress and stimulate her, but saw that it all happened on its own.

"Look how stiff your little clit is," Spike said to her. "You're lover is a fool to leave it alone when it's so hot for him. You remember what he likes to do to you and your clit is pulsing for him, just waiting for him to stroke it, to lick it, to bite it."

"Please," she breathed.

"Sorry, baby. He isn't here. So you're poor little clit will just have to struggle and strain on its own. Look at it moving."

Buffy could feel Spike's fingers stroking her, drawing sensuous circles around her clit, but the mirror told her that her body's responses were to nothing more than her own fantasy of a lover who clearly, according to the mirror, was a phantom of her mind. The woman in the mirror began moving her hips not back, into an invisible groin, but forward, onto invisible, knowing, skilled fingers. Buffy whimpered with need.

"Oh, you do miss him, and he is a fool," Spike said to her. "Watch what happens next, sweet. You miss him so much that you're hungry little body is going to open just as if he were sliding into you, just as if he were standing behind you, taking you."

Buffy felt him behind her, felt every delicate, intoxicating touch. But she couldn't see it. She could see her inner lips in the mirror, could see them parting and straining as Spike positioned himself, then pushed into her from behind. She gasped at the exquisite feeling. She watched, fascinated, as her labia opened wider around the thick, invisible cock that was driving into her, making her feel aching full. She watched as her body thrust backward onto, the mirror claimed, nothing more solid than her own imagination.

"Now, baby, you are going to get your revenge on that fool for deserting you. You're body is going to satisfy itself so thoroughly that when that idiot returns, you'll be too tired to bother with him. That'll teach him to leave you alone," and he thrust into her forcefully, lifting her onto tiptoe to accommodate him, wrenching the first, high, whimpering cry from her lips.

The woman in the mirror was being rocked and shaken, her skin was flushed, her eyes were wide and dazed, her breathing was uneven. The fantasy that she was alone and responsible for her own pleasure increased the eroticism of what Spike did to her with his cock, with his hands, with his mouth on her neck when he wasn't whispering sweet, compelling images into her ear. Buffy strained back against him, bringing her hands onto him, caressing against his hips, needing the solidity of his flesh to hold her upright, no longer willing to trust to the fragile support of the chairs.

Spike thrust inside her and she sent her hips backward to meet him, impaling herself fully, taking him as deeply into her tight, hot sheath as she could get him, wanting him to drive harder into her until she was mindless for him. And all the while she watched the solitary figure in the mirror caught up in her sensual solo dance.

As ever, Spike seemed to know just how long he could prolong her pleasure before it became pain, taking her just to the edge, before giving her a shattering, soul-shaking release.

Buffy saw the woman in the mirror convulse helplessly in the throes of ecstasy, her skin pinkening, her mouth opening wide on a cry of pleasure, her breasts pouting and full, all of her body strained and attentive to the vortex centered inside her. Spike drove into her, and brought her release, but he was never satisfied if he could only make her come once, so, as she had known --had feared-- he would, he merely held her upright, as she sobbed for breath, braced against his body, until she calmed just a little, and then he began again.

Buffy had lost all interest in her reflection, reduced to sensation alone. She thrust back against Spike's hips, reaching her hands back farther, stroking his buttocks, pulling him closer and tighter and harder against her undulating body.

She shattered for him again in moments, but she was unable to stand any longer, so he moved with her to the floor, but when she tried to roll onto her back, he wouldn't let her. Instead, he raised her to her knees, her head cradled in her arms on the floor, and moved over her, entering her, once more, from behind.

The new position, though, allowed him to penetrate more deeply than he had before, and Buffy was whimpering as he plunged into her. Spike was as ruthless as he always was, as ruthless as she needed him to be, plunging into her welcoming flesh with forceful strokes, making her open herself to him farther, more completely, until he was touching the mouth of her womb and she was keening her pleasure. But he would not let her climax, would not take his own pleasure, until she was mindless and needy and screaming for him. Only when she had yielded everything she had and everything she was would he allow her the last, completing, stunning ecstasy.

And later, when she had come back to herself, and had allowed him to carry her back to the futon and collapse next to her, when he held her in his arms, she allowed herself to give him a long, slow, drugging kiss before she drifted back to sleep.

She woke not long after, aware of something delicious happening. Buffy had been rolled onto her stomach, her head cradled on her crossed arms. Spike was kneeling astride her, massaging her shoulders, his cold hands firm and sensuous against her heated flesh. Then she felt something else, and realized he was using some sort of lotion or oil, and had just squeezed a thin stream down her backbone. She sighed and wriggled against him.

"This is nice," she said.

"It'll get nicer," he promised.

"Not possible," she told him. But it was. Spike continued kneading the muscles down her back, paying close attention to the small of her back. She giggled when he shifted position, kneeling beside her, and moved his hands down to her buttocks, but it felt so good, she didn't protest. He coaxed her thighs slightly apart, and after a moment, she felt a thin stream of oil being poured onto her intimate center.

"Spike!" she half protested.

"Shhh," he said soothingly, and rubbed his fingers along her outer lips. With a sigh, Buffy parted her thighs a little further, moaning softly when he slipped a finger inside her, still continuing a gentle, massaging motion. She relaxed, all too willing to let him amuse himself this way.

And then fire kissed her shoulders, where the oil had been spread.

"Spike?" she questioned, her tone uncertain. Heat was spreading along her muscles, down her back, everywhere his hands had been.

"I told you it would get nicer," he said. And then fire licked up inside her, burning her sensitive flesh, heating it and tightening it against the finger he had pushed into her. Buffy wailed, sensation flooding her. Spike drove another finger inside her, also covered with oil. Buffy's silken walls accepted the intrusion, tightened around him. Heat spread from her inner core to every nerve ending in her body, centered on the stroking motions of his taunting, seductive fingers. Another finger, also oil covered, found her clit, making her moan. He ground it against her, until she was sobbing with pleasure, and when the fire struck there, she climaxed for him, her thighs clamping around his hand, trapping it, abetting the pressure and force he used against her.

Later, he used the oil on his cock, and the fire burned for both of them; hot, high and hard.

Their nights quickly assumed a pattern: they woke at dusk and had sex, bathed together and had sex, practiced combat and had sex, ate meals, had sex, went into the night, reconnoitering the area, hunting vampires if she found them, engaging in combat if they needed to, before heading back "home" for more sex before they slept away the day.

Buffy had almost entirely recovered her lost martial skills. When they practiced, Spike still wasn't fighting for his life, but only because she wasn't fighting for hers.

Eventually, Spike's underground connections reported that between them, Rupert Giles, Willow, Xander and Cordy had been able to convince the Sunnydale police that Buffy had not been present when the attack in the library occurred, that she and Kendra were good friends, and that Buffy had no possible motive to kill her. Sunnydale's finest had been disposed to keep out a warrant for her on the charges of resisting arrest, but Giles had managed to persuade them that, as an underage youth, confronted with the death of one friend and serious injuries to several others, she had probably been too frightened to act rationally. Neither Spike nor Giles could know that it was the desire of the mayor not to have Buffy Summers returned to his town for any reason that forced the police to drop even that charge.

But she was still a legal minor, and a runaway, so the I.D. Spike got his connections to forge for her was that of one Buffy Winters, aged twenty-two. Twenty-one was too predictable, and he knew that, these days, she could pass.

She took to her new life fairly easily. Survival skills were, after all, her forte. Within a few days she had landed a job assisting the bartender at a fairly rough bar in a fairly rough area. The bartender, while knowing the pretty young brunette would be a real draw, was a little concerned about how she would handle some of his more persistent customers.

But then her old man had come in, a punked-out Brit who had taken a casual look around the bar, given her a casual hello, and pulled her up against his chest for a hot, open mouthed, devouring kiss. That kiss branded her as absolutely his possession, and told everyone present that she was not to be approached. Letting her go, the Brit had sent another casual, almost friendly glance around the bar, but no one was fooled. If you lived on the streets long enough, you knew deadly when you saw it, and this Brit was as deadly as they came. Buffy Winters was, after that kiss, as safe in the bar as a nun in a sanctuary.

Buffy was also somewhat amused. She needed protection only slightly less than Spike himself. But she didn't need the distraction of fighting off some oversexed bikers when she should be saving her efforts for the undead crowd, so she appreciated the gesture Spike had made.

The undead crowd was a lot thinner in L.A. then it had been before she burned down Hemery High's gymnasium, just over two years before, but it was there. Spike didn't exactly help her seek them out, but he didn't hinder her, either. She understood, and respected, his need to be neutral. She wasn't ready to go hunting for them, anyway, contenting herself with practice runs on the occasional vamp unlucky enough to cross her path. Gradually, that would change, but for now, it was enough to be back in training, and back in form.

Previous              Home                Next