Chapter 25
Author's Notes: A/N: Thank you all very much for your reassurances in the previous chapter. A few of my readers sent me words of encouragement which led me to believe my Author’s Note was a response to criticism I’ve received, thus I feel I should clarify. My words weren’t directed at any one person or a response to an incident wherein I’d been accused of downgrading the importance of Spike and Buffy’s relationships with people that aren’t each other. Admittedly, I have stumbled across forums and ‘pet peeve’ posts where such has been the discussion, and I am incredibly aware of the mentality I bring to my fics. I was doing it, in my opinion, much more consciously in this story, and a bit more blatantly than I have in others. I’m not sorry for the way I’ve written those stories or this one. It’s the way I feel about Spike/Buffy, and I can’t be sorry for that.
Still, I thank you all so much for your reassurances, comments, thoughts, encouragement, and everything you gave me in the wonderfully generous response to the last chapter. It means the world to me. You are the best readers a girl could ask for. *hugs*
Chapter Twenty-Five
He loved the way she felt against him. Curled sweetly at his chest, her right leg hooked over his hip, the drum of her heartbeat thumping lightly against him, the hard perfection of her rosy nipple pressing into his skin. If he closed his eyes, he could almost believe they were a thousand miles and a couple centuries away. He could see them lying together in the cottage they’d once shared. The place he last remembered being truly happy.
Except now. This topped everything.
It was odd, knowing he’d once been truly happy. Happy before his birth to his mother and his newfound life under Drusilla’s fangs. He’d been happy before. After a hundred and fifty years of feigning bliss, he truly had it. And he had all along. In some closed off corner of his mind were memories of absolute perfection. Now that he was here, it boggled his mind that he’d ever gotten so thoroughly lost.
“Mmm…” Buffy murmured, her fingernails drawing soft, tantalizing patterns across his chest. “I never knew the floors of tombs could be so comfy.”
Spike grinned and brushed his lips across her brow. “You’re not lyin’ on the floor, love.”
An adorable pout depressed her mouth. “I kinda am,” she argued, wiggling against him. “The frozen cheek of my ass will testify as much.”
He was assaulted with lavish images involving his teeth and said ass; images his cock very much appreciated. “I could warm it up for you if you like,” he purred, trailing his fingers down her spine until he had her perfect flesh cradled against his palm.
“Bad,” she scolded teasingly.
“The baddest.”
Her fingers danced around his chest. “You have the most perfect man-nipples,” she said, leaning upward to tease his indicated nipple with her tongue. “I don’t think I ever told you that before.”
Spike tried to listen to her; he really did. But at the first caress of her mouth, his head slammed into the floor so hard he was sure he was going to be seeing stars for a week. “Fuck,” he gasped, digging his fingers into her skin. “Buffy…”
“Just saying. They’re all with the…nummy.” She emphasized her point with another lick.
He grinned and kissed her brow again, the hand at her ass making a steady trek up her perfectly firm body until he was holding her breast. “I don’ remember you bein’ so forward.”
“I was all virginal before. And it
was a different century.” She grinned, resting her chin against his chest. “Don’t tell me you don’t like forward-Buffy.”
“I love all incarnations of Buffy.”
“Yeah, you better.”
Spike smiled gently and raised his head, suddenly starved for her lips. As though he hadn’t spent the past few hours kissing her as much and as often as possible. “Guess I’ll jus’ have to double my efforts when I wanna see you blush, then,” he said. “Used to be I could jus’ comment on how much I enjoy nibblin’ on your pussy an’—”
While the thwap of her hand against his chest was oddly comforting, it was the pink in her cheeks that had him grinning like an idiot. No matter how bloody hot it was to be on the receiving end of a slightly more adventurous Buffy, he absolutely adored her innocence. How she would blush and look away whenever he said something teetering on the side of lewd. How the slightest innuendo could get her wiggling embarrassment.
God, he loved her. He loved her so much. It made his nerves tingle. This wealth of feeling he’d always had—this sense of completeness, the knowledge that he was more than he thought. Even when left in doubt, when mourning how alone the world made him feel, he’d known she was out there.
He’d known he belonged.
“It’s weird,” Buffy mused thoughtfully once her self-conscious blushes abated. “I feel like I’ve missed this all my life.”
“I know what you mean, kitten.”
“But I’ve only known…” She drew in a deep breath and shook her head, again resting her cheek against him. He loved the weight of her sweet head upon his chest. The warmth of her pressed into his side. The heat of her breast burning him up as her heart thumped soundly against his skin. He waited for her to complete her thought but silence settled instead. It was for the best, he supposed. If they started musing over lost time, it would eventually drive them crazy.
He much preferred to focus on the future they had now. The one certain thing in his life. Everything was in the air, but he was more or less accustomed to a complete lack of direction. His existence following the alley in London had consisted of not knowing if the home in which he slept tonight would be the same as tomorrow’s. Uncertainty was fine; he could live with uncertainty. He always had.
The only thing he’d ever been certain of was currently snuggled in his arms. And if he had a say, it was where she would remain until the world around them took its final bow.
“I don’t know what I would’ve done,” Buffy murmured gently.
Spike frowned and squeezed her shoulder. “What is it?”
“If you hadn’t remembered.” There was a long silence. “I mean…I prepared myself for it. I did. I’d…up until it…it happened, I told myself you were likely never gonna…but a part of me was clinging. I needed you to remember.”
He arched a brow. “I thought we covered this already, kitten.”
“We did.”
“Yeah, an’ you still don’ get it. You really think I couldn’t’ve loved you without my memories?”
“That’s not it.”
“Good, ‘cause that’s bollocks.” He smiled gently when she glanced up at him in question, clutching her ass again and gently coaxing her body onto his completely. He was too starved for her to not feel her flesh against his. To be lying with her naked and not touch her. To feel her wet pussy drenching his skin but not pulsing around his cock. He loved the way she looked astride him. A shy visage of a wanton goddess. She was sheer perfection and she didn’t know it. Even after all this time, she didn’t know it. “How could I not love you?” he whispered, eager fingers pinching her nipples, loving the way she gasped and gyrated against him. “I don’ give a rot what I do or don’ remember…well, no, that’s not true…but even if I hadn’t—”
She nodded, her eyes heavy with arousal. “I know, Will.”
It was hard to imagine why the name had inspired such anger a short twenty-four hours ago. Then again, forever had passed in a matter of a day. He was older now than he ever had been. He had more experience under his belt than he’d ever imagined having. While Spike had never entertained thoughts of his own mortality, especially as an immortal being, a part of him had similarly never expected to get this far in life. To see all he’d seen. To have done all he’d done.
But now the future seemed limitless.
Buffy drew in a gentle breath. “I just…I guess the idea of being the only one who knew…who remembered…”
This he understood. God, how he understood it. Had it been the other way around, had he known Buffy before she knew him, he would have been devastated at the history lost between them. At the knowledge of what they had shared—the wondrous beauty of what they had shared—being abandoned to time. And even if lightning struck twice and he managed to win her love a second time, he doubted he would ever completely recover from having lost such an essential part of who they were.
Now he felt whole.
“You know how it happened, right?” he asked her, abandoning one of her breasts to explore the renewed claim mark on her throat. A small thrill raced through his body the second his fingertips brushed the sacred skin. “This…”
“I know. You bit my tongue.”
“Sorry ‘bout that.”
“I’m not.”
Spike grinned. “Neither am I. I jus’ fancy warnin’ you before I’m about to bite.”
Buffy arched a perfect brow. “I don’t seem to remember that.”
“Sometimes my warnings are the nonverbal sort. I figure if you see fangs, you know what’s comin’.”
She gently ran her nails over one of his nipples, and he bucked slightly, eyes blazing with excitement. “And if I don’t wanna be bitten?”
“Tough.”
Her fingers pinched and he yelped, his hips bucking upward, his cock rigid and demanding attention. “Christ, Buffy…” He didn’t realize his eyes were closed until he felt her lean forward. Until her breasts were against his chest, her wet, heavenly tongue licking at the mark she’d given him.
There was definitely something to be said for Forward Buffy. He could easily learn to love this.
He thought for a minute she might raise herself above him and lock him inside her body again, and he honestly didn’t know whether or not to be disappointed when she instead rested against him.
Well, the demon knew what it wanted. It wanted its mate over and over and over again. The demon wanted the solace of her body. Wanted her screaming and drenching his cock with her spendings. Wanted to drown in the celestial pools of her eyes as she vibrated around him in pleasure. And while a good part of that was sentiment Spike more than shared, there was sweet comfort in simply lying with her. Comfort sex couldn’t provide, no matter how he hungered for it.
Furthermore, there were too many things in the air they needed to discuss before they lost themselves to carnal satisfaction.
And something told him Buffy was on the same page. After everything she’d been through in the past couple of days, she likely needed verbal comfort more than anything.
“We think your slayer-killer history was claim-linked,” Buffy said. “I…well, it was something I was kicking around for a while. Giles pretty much confirmed it.”
There was no condemnation in her voice. Nothing like he would have expected. He was a vampire lying naked with a slayer—a vampire who had the blood of two slayers on his hands—and she wasn’t angry. Not in her voice, and not in what she was subconsciously sending him through their blood link.
Her conclusion was one Spike had already reached, but there was some measure of gratitude in hearing it from someone else. In hearing it from
Buffy. “Yeah?” he murmured, brushing her hair over her shoulder.
“Your…your inner vamp…the demon knew it was supposed…ummm…”
“The demon’s linked to you, pet. No shame in sayin’ it.”
Buffy nodded. He grinned at the image of her head bobbing up and down against his chest. The feel of her golden hair rustling against his skin made him absolutely glow with adoration. Most men knew they were goners when the small things made their hearts swell. In his case, he’d been a goner from the bloody beginning.
“Same here,” she said.
“Your demon’s attracted to slayers?”
She glanced up, her nose wrinkling and her eyes narrowing. “Haha, funny man.”
“Jus’ clarifyin’.”
“Well, I meant the vampire thing.”
Spike froze inexplicably. “What vampire thing?”
“Well…with Angel.”
The idea alone of them doing anything remotely intimate together had his chest roaring with fury and his will hardening with the sudden need to find the vamp in question and rip his limbs off. How his voice remained tempered, he would never know. The contrast to the screaming in his head had him nearly deafened. “You…an’
Angel?” A truly bewildered look fell over her face. “I…I thought you knew?”
“You said no one’d touched you.”
“There has been no touching!” she insisted, but her eyes were already digging up a memory that she couldn’t hide from him. In seconds, she winced and clarified. “Okay, so there was some kissage, but that was
way before you even got to town.”
It was amazing his head didn’t pop with how hard the demon screamed. Buffy’s lips—her precious lips—in contact with the one prat who’d done more to make his life a living hell than the Christians had the Jews…the visual was too bloody much.
“Spike?”
“The wanker’s not comin’ near you again.”
She had the audacity to roll her eyes. “Oh, come on…”
“I mean it. I so much as sniff him near us, an’ he’s gone.”
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
“No, I’m
reactin’. An’ he doesn’—”
“Hello! I gave you a pass about the whole
Dru thing.” Her eyes darkened in a way that had him both twitching in remorse and dancing in delight. While he hated causing her pain—while he hated the knowledge that his hands hadn’t remained faithful to her, his lack of memories notwithstanding—there was a certain sense of satisfaction at being someone to inspire jealousy in the first place. It was an ugly part of him, one he didn’t want her seeing, but a part of him nonetheless. “I gave you a pass,” she said again, shivering in disgust. “And you guys did a lot more than make with the smoochies.”
“I din’t remember you!”
The argument was weak, but it was the only one he had.
This wasn’t lost on Buffy. “Uh huh,” she said.
“’ve already used up that excuse, pet,” Spike insisted feebly. “’S off the table.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I can’t believe you snogged that git.”
“It was only the…twice.” Buffy eeped when he glared and wisely buried her face in his shoulder. “But…point. Giles said it was because my inner moppet wanted you. Angel was the only vampire who didn’t lunge for my jugular, so said inner moppet kinda…set sights on him.”
He was clutching her shoulder so tightly, he was afraid he’d leave a bruise. “An’ what is your inner moppet sayin’ now?”
“Spike is good. Buffy loves Spike. Buffy stupid for kissing Angel.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Yeah, well…from now on, the inner moppet only lusts for you.”
There was something about hearing the word
lust in her voice that had him positively purring. “Everythin’ of yours better only lust for me.”
“Hey! Same goes.”
“Don’ need to tell you that which goes unsaid, pet.” Spike kissed her brow again. He wanted to kiss every inch of her golden body, but he was satisfied with her brow for now. “Your watcher helped you figure all this out?”
“I know. Weird, huh?”
“’S a nice, bloody change.” He paused, a dark thought shuddering through him. It was amazing how much hatred could be inspired by of the memory of a man about whom he hadn’t thought in three hundred years. “Don’ s’pose you know what happened to Travers, do you? I’d fancy an’ ending full of pain an’ suffering but I guess it’s too much to hope.”
There was a long, deadly pause, and his breath caught in his throat.
“Buffy?”
Spike waited a long beat. Still nothing.
And then, seconds later, he felt it.
Trembling. She was trembling.
Hard.
“Sweetheart…”
“I killed him.”
Strange how one could feel the world stop moving, even while lying down. Every living component of his body seemed to freeze at once—and for one who considered himself more or less dead, it was a rather bizarre sensation. Darkness beyond darkness clouded his heart, a wave composed of unadulterated guilt crashing over his astonished bones.
Buffy couldn’t hurt anyone. Not a living, breathing being of her own species. He’d seen her. Christ, he’d known her. The light of her soul was what had drawn him to her; it was one of the many reasons he’d fallen in love with her. Her purity. Her innocence. Her…glow.
And now…this. This unreality of reality. He ached to think of it.
She’d killed a man. The man who had betrayed her, robbed her of her childhood, kept her isolated, friendless…made her so the world was her prison and not her playground. The man who made her less than human in her own eyes.
The very same man from whom she couldn’t break away. Because of her duty. Because of her
purity. It was something of which he’d thought Buffy wasn’t capable: the murder of a human being, no matter how he’d betrayed her. Kenneth had been the only thing she’d known before he’d come along. And no matter what he’d done…
“Oh God,” he murmured, his arms tightening around her. “Buffy…”
“It’s okay.”
“The claim’s what did it. Fuck—”
“No. I…it’s okay. It wasn’t like that.” Buffy shifted, resting her chin against his chest, her green eyes swallowing him whole. “I didn’t go after him or anything. It was an accident. After you…” There was a long pause, and when he felt her tremble some part of his heart broke. “After you…were gone…I stayed in the room…a long time. I couldn’t leave.”
“Oh God…”
“But I did. There was this…my mind kept with the…I had to get you back. And Kenneth was the only connection I had.” A beat. “Well…the immediate connection. I know I could’ve found something else…someone else…but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t wait. I knew he had access. I knew he had books. So I went back…and I found them…and he came in.”
She paused again, and Spike just waited. There was nothing to do or say. He wanted to reassure her, but he didn’t know of what. His death. What she’d gone through. What her life had been like when he left her.
These were things he remembered thinking as he watched her weep for him, his heart so full of love for her, he couldn’t feel fear. He couldn’t feel anything but her pain and sorrow, and his regret for being the cause of it.
What Buffy had gone through in the time following was something he didn’t wish to consider.
“There were…words. Words in which he…well…let’s just say he pissed me off, and considering I was a slayer on the edge, it was a stupid move on his part.” Buffy sighed and inched upward, brushing a tender kiss across his lips. “Oh, and by the way, he told me what you did.”
Spike frowned. “Huss’at?”
“Kenneth. He told me.”
“What I did?”
“Yeah. The whole dying thing. You know…when the cure was sobbing her eyes out and begging you not to leave her?”
He winced and his guilt compiled. “Oh right. That.”
“Jerk.”
It was a tempered insult compared to what he felt was coming—so tempered it made him nervous. There wasn’t even any malice in her tone. There was nothing but a slight pout one might hear from a child. “Buffy…I couldn’t let you die for me.”
“But dying for me was all with the cool?”
“Kitten, I—”
She pressed her index finger to his lips, a sad smile tugging across hers. “No. It’s okay. I understand.”
“I’m sorry—”
“No, you’re not. And I wouldn’t be, either. If it’d been me, I would’ve done the same thing.” Buffy kissed him again before resting her cheek against his chest once more. “So you’re off the hook. I did most of the cursing of your name between burying Kenneth and finding the right book to use. It didn’t make me love you any less. If anything…I think it ultimately had the reverse effect.”
“You love me more for makin’ you suffer?”
A short, humorless laugh bubbled off her lips. “In a weird way, yeah.”
“But I—”
“You devastated me? Kinda, yeah. But hey. I bounced back. I bounced all the way to Kenneth’s…where I wanted to kill him, but I didn’t. Not at first, at least.” She swallowed hard. “I had him at my mercy…and then I got with the mercy…and he tried to kill me, but he wasn’t fast enough.”
There had never been a moment in his life wherein he’d gone from one emotion to the next with such rapidity. One minute he was saturated in guilt for what he’d put her through, and the next he was ready to beat his chest and rip the stuffing out of the first git he came across who even somewhat resembled Kenneth Travers. At this point pretty much anyone would do.
“I swear to bloody—”
“Swear to no one. I killed him dead.”
“That wanker tried to
kill—”“—me. I know. And twice. But he’s dead. He’s dead as in way and he doesn’t need to be killed again.”
“I think I’ll be the judge.”
“Will—”
“He—”
Buffy silenced him with her lips. “Is dead,” she whispered again. “Very. And we’re here.”
It was amazing what she could do to him with that mouth of hers. He was ready to spill blood one second, and the next he was melting fast. “We’re here…”
“And despite whatever tricks Paimon tried to pull—”
Spike blinked and pulled back, his brow furrowing. “Paimon?”
“The demon. The one I…with the…the one I made a deal with.” Her eyes dropped again and she wiggled against him in a way he knew she didn’t mean to be interpreted as sensual. His cock didn’t get the message. “Heard of him?”
At that moment, he really wished he had. “Sorry, love.”
A dark shudder rippled through her body. “He’s an ass.”
“Demons tend to be.”
“He tried to keep us apart. I gave him…well…I gave him something of the huge, and he tried to keep us apart.”
Spike shrugged. “Din’t take. I’ve loved you all my life.”
She arched a brow. “You only remembered that you loved me four hours ago.”
“Semantics,” he argued. “I still loved you. My night angel…I always…you got me through it. The disaster that was this life. I was bloody miserable…but at night I was loved. You were always with me…an’ you loved me.”
He loved the way her eyes brightened when she smiled. “I’ve always loved you,” Buffy whispered.
“Loved you first.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Nuh uh.”
A wide grin split his lips, and his hands were suddenly itching to feel her warmth. “Yeah huh,” he argued, coaxing her upward so he could tease her breasts.
A move which proved to be disadvantageous. The second her hands were free to roam, they began exploring him in ways no woman beforehand ever had. Ways which made him squirm the way no woman ever made him squirm.
“Need I remind you how ticklish you are?” she asked.
“It’s a chance I’m willing to—”
Wrong choice of words. The tomb bellowed with the piercing ring of his giggle. And if he remembered anything, once the tickle onslaught began, it didn’t stop. In seconds he was bucking hard beneath her merciless fingers, his hands abandoning her breasts and fighting to find her wrists.
It didn’t work. It never did.
Not with the Slayer on top.
“You—” Giggle. “—li’l—” Squirm. “—wench.”
“Oooh! You taunt me with your words.”
“’ll do…somethin’…to…you, all right.”
“I can’t wait.”
And with the way she was moving over him, waiting wasn’t an object. With a triumphant growl, he seized her wrists and utilized his grip to tug her to his chest, shutting up that gorgeous mouth of hers with a kiss which would put the stars to shame. He didn’t know how he’d survived this long without the feel of her tongue caressing his or her moans ringing in his ears…how he’d lived without her warmth…without her devouring him as though he was the anecdote to every ill she’d ever suffered…as though he were the answer to life itself.
He didn’t know how he’d made it this far without piecing it together. The love exploding in his heart; the love he’d always known didn’t belong to Drusilla. How he’d never known before this. Before the simple act of tasting her blood.
Buffy had risked everything to save him, and she had.
He only hoped he could save her in return.
“What was it?” he asked between hungry kisses, loathing to deprive his mouth of hers even for something he knew to be important.
She whimpered and made a sound which he decoded as, “Huh?”
“The…what you…bargained.”
Spike didn’t know what he expected; an evasion, a fight, a pun. He didn’t expect her to fork over the answer so quickly.
Just as he didn’t expect the answer to chill his veins. Just as he hadn’t expected the blissful world he’d rediscovered tonight to spin so quickly out of control. Just as he hadn’t expected to deafen with the shrill of panic.
It seemed the night was full of surprises.
TBC