Forward to Time Past by Unbridled Brunette

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Chapter 60

Author's Notes: Reviews make my heart go *squee.* :-)

The walk back through the woods was a nearly silent one.

Several times Spike glanced over at Dawn, hoping to draw some sort of response from her, but she never even looked back at him. She seemed uneasy in his company, which she almost never was, and even a little annoyed with him. He knew exactly what she was thinking.

Of course, that didn’t mean he understood it. What he was doing didn’t seem so very bad, although he wasn’t so foolish that he didn’t know Buffy would disapprove. But he wasn’t doing it out of malice or for pleasure; he was merely trying to help keep his girls afloat. It wasn’t as though he was directly hurting anyone. Spike had thought that Dawn, of all people, would have understood, and he felt a flash of irritation because she did not. He was doing his best. Why could no one see that?

“You know, Bit, you could stop sulking and just tell me what flew up your arse,” he said finally. Because, anything—screaming, crying, anything—was better to him than cold silence.

Dawn pulled up so abruptly, he almost passed her by. “You honestly mean to tell me that you have no idea why I’m upset?” she demanded.

“I know it has something to do with—back there.” He made a vague motion in the direction of the cave. “I just don’t know what. Is it the bloody breeder in her cage—?”

“It’s you!” She shrieked it so loudly he took a step back in surprise. “You’re wrecking everything, and you’re doing it on purpose! She’ll leave you—”

“God damn it, Dawn. We already went through this before we left the sodding place. I don’t think my argument changed much on the short walk over.”

“You’re doing it to pay the bills. Yeah, I get that. But don’t you think you’re being pretty stupid in the way you’re doing it?”

“Well, it’s not like I can apply to be a drive-through manager at Wendy’s!” He threw the empty fuel can he was carrying, bouncing it off a nearby tree with a satisfying clang. “If I could get money the usual way, I’d do it. But I can’t.”

“That’s the point, though. Maybe you’re not—”

“What is your fucking problem with it anyway? I’ve done a hell of a lot worse than this in the past. You’ve had them for bedtime stories and it hasn’t ever seemed to bother you before. At least now I’ve got noble intentions.”

“Yeah, and you’re going to wreck everything with them! Things are so great right now—everything’s finally good—and you’ve got your finger on self-destruct. You’re going to make her hate you.”

“And what’s the reason things are great now—” he began. But Dawn cut him off.

“I don’t mean money! I mean things with Buffy. Her being with you almost makes things seem like—like we’re a—”

Spike tilted his head at her.

“Like we’re a what?”

She looked away. “Nothing.”

There was an awkward silence.

Finally, Spike put a tentative hand on her arm.

“I’m not going to make her hate me, Bit. I’m not wrecking anything. I’m taking care of things, that’s all, and she doesn’t have to find out about it. She won’t find out about it if you keep your mouth shut.”

“Of course I’ll keep my mouth shut,” she said dully.

“Well, then. We’ve got nothing to worry about, do we?”

Although Dawn didn’t answer him—and she certainly did not seem to be reassured—she fell into step beside him as he continued down the hill. She didn’t speak to him again for almost twenty minutes, but Spike, lost in his own thoughts, hardly even noticed.

“Aren’t you coming home?” she asked eventually.

Spike looked over at her in surprise. Without his even realizing it, they had reached the division of the ways; left led to his crypt and right would take them to the cemetery exit. Dawn, of course, was going right.

“Home?” he echoed slowly. He would have given anything to call it that, but it wasn’t, not yet. Maybe not ever. The crypt was his home, and as far as Buffy knew, he had elected to spend the night there. He wasn’t sure how she would react to him traipsing into her house unannounced at three in the morning, but his instincts told him it probably wouldn’t be favorably.

Dawn’s mask of disapproval suddenly faltered, and she looked at him with something akin to sympathy. “Come on, Spike,” she coaxed, lightly touching his elbow. “You know she won’t mind.”

Actually, he did not know that. But the thought was so incredibly tempting, and he was too tired to resist it. Most nights in the cave, his tasks were mind-numbingly boring and took little effort to perform, but the strain of keeping them a secret was beginning to grow wearisome. There were too many nights of lost sleep when he worked, too many days when he refused to forfeit his time with her in order to catch up on it. Too much time spent worrying that she might find out about the eggs. He didn’t feel at all guilty about his means of making money, but he lived in dread of what might happen if Buffy discovered the truth about it. Now, he ached for the comfort of her body, the reassurance that what he was doing wasn’t as terrible as Dawn’s reaction suggested, and that Buffy wouldn’t hate him if she found out.

So, he went right.

Naturally, everyone was asleep when he and Dawn arrived at Revello Drive. Fearful of being caught, Dawn tiptoed up to her room immediately. Spike, however, hesitated in the foyer. There was blood in the refrigerator now—Buffy had seen to that earlier—and he was so hungry he could feel it in his bones, gnawing at his marrow and making him tremble. For just a moment, he thought he might eat before going to bed.

Then, he caught the faint, deliciously familiar scent of her, and like a switch flipping, his interest in food suddenly disappeared. Gripping the banister tightly to steady his shaking limbs, he took the stairs two at a time, covering the short flight in only a few bounds. He made no effort to be quiet—he forgot to—but it didn’t matter. Years of habit served him in good stead, and he loped down the hallway with the silent tread of a seasoned predator. There wasn’t even a betraying click when he closed her bedroom door after he slipped inside.

His girl was bathed in the dim glow of a quarter moon, her slender body curled with feline grace on the far side of the mattress, her small hands folded together beneath her chin. The very sight of her—the very smell—made his stomach drop. Hastily, he kicked off his boots and peeled off the black, collared shirt he wore over his cotton t-shirt. He started to pull off the t-shirt, too, but then he thought the better of it and decided to keep it on along with his jeans.

Then, after this seemingly endless preparation, he crawled into bed with her.

The heat of her body never ceased to amaze him with the way it seeped into his flesh, making his cool skin seem almost as warm as hers, as warm as life. Spike burrowed down into the bedclothes, carefully bending his torso to fit the sleek, curved line of her back. He buried his nose in the nape of her neck and breathed in violets and the dozens of other subtle aromas that mingled together to create the luscious cocktail of her scent. It eased the hollow ache that formed in his chest whenever they were apart. It made him feel whole again.

Buffy stirred a bit when he draped his arm over her waist, and although he knew he shouldn’t wake her, Spike couldn’t resist the urge to press his lips against the smooth ball of her shoulder rising above the blankets. He kissed the nape of her neck, nuzzled the silky hair that lay fanned across the pillow. She rolled over onto her back, and now he could see her eyes, her face, and the small, sleepy smile that graced her lips.

“Hey, you. I thought you’d gone home.”

“Came back,” Spike mumbled, kissing her ear, her neck, the corner of her mouth. He owned it all, and he felt a sudden rush of pride that he was doing such an excellent job of taking care of what was his.

“Yeah, I can kind of see that you did.” Her voice was low, playful, and he understood that she was making fun of him. Somehow, that didn’t matter. It was her eyes that mattered, the affection in them so profound it caught in his heart and made a straight shot for his groin. He breathed her name, shifting his pelvis across the mattress and over her hip, finally settling between the thighs that parted so readily for him.

“Oh, God. Missed you so much…”

Spike brushed his lips along the edge of her jaw, slowly working his way back to her mouth. That pretty mouth, curved into a smile. Dawn thought he was stupid because he forgot to eat, because he was always putting Buffy before anything else. But this was what he needed. Beyond anything else, just this. Her body underneath his own. Her mouth…he knew her mouth. He knew her lips and her teeth, her tongue and the delicate flesh that lined the insides of her cheeks. He knew the bony roof, the diminutive cave with its downward slope into her throat. He knew all the sweet spots contained therein, knew every conceivable way to make her squirm, and he was always confident of her eager response, the concrete evidence of her love.

He was kissing her so relentlessly, she finally had to grasp his hair and pull his head back so she could respond to his words. When she did, she was laughing.

“It’s only been—what? Six hours?”

Six hours might as well have been the century he’d spent without her. He didn’t miss her while they were apart, not the way normal people missed their lovers. He felt the mad longing of the obsessive, a feeling so strong it amounted to physical pain. He wasn’t stupid; he knew it wasn’t right. He knew that if she realized just how far around the bend he was for her, she’d probably be frightened by it. But he was afraid, too. He lived in the fear of her abandonment, and every time he saw her after an absence—every time she welcomed him back into her embrace—he felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude and relief.

And desire.

Driven by the latter, he grabbed her wrists and pinned her arms against the mattress above her head. It was something he loved to do, putting her into that position of mock submission. It was a game similar in vein to his other favorite, in which she handcuffed him to the iron headboard of her bed, toyed with him until he was half-mad, and then finally set him loose so he could have her. If anyone asked him, he would have been hard put to explain why he liked to do these things. All he knew was that when she was trussed up—when he was—it satisfied something deep in him, something that went far beyond the physical.

The delicious thing about what he was doing now was that he didn’t have to ask for permission first. He had a right to do it because she belonged to him, just as he had a responsibility to stop if she told him to because he belonged to her. It was a system he liked immensely.

He stared down into her green eyes, which still looked more than a little bit amused. “Didn’t you miss me, pet?”

“You know the answer to that, I think.”

Not what he wanted to hear. Spike’s eyes narrowed, his mouth falling into the lines of a pout. “Tell me you missed me,” he insisted.

She laughed.

“You silly, stupid, lovesick vampire…why do you even have to ask things like that when you know that I did? Of course I did. I miss you when we’re apart.”

Then, why do we have to be apart? Why the hell don’t you ask me—?

Spike had to bite his tongue to keep the words from spilling out. Much as he loved her, he wasn’t going to behave like a ponce; he wasn’t going to beg her for an invite to move in.

Buffy’s eyes were searching his, and although her arms were still pinned and she couldn’t touch him, she looked as if she would like to. She looked as if she would have done something very, very tender…something not necessarily connected with the sex that by now seemed inevitable.

“William,” she whispered, and he shivered at the name. “I love you. Don’t you know that?”

It was something she didn’t say too easily or too often these days, not the way she had in London. He knew it was difficult for her to put the feeling into words now, and he never complained about it. But he ached for them, and after hearing them for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, he wasn’t quite sure how to respond. He felt, briefly, like a man dead, like a man in heaven. Which was ridiculous, of course, since he was not technically a man and heaven would be the very last place he’d end up when he finally kicked it. Still—

He dropped his head against her shoulder, pressing his mouth against the warm ridge of her ear.

“You love me,” he rasped finally. “You love me, and you’re mine.”

You’re going to make her hate you.

The memory came unbidden—why in God’s name did he think of it now?—and so strongly that it completely drowned out her tender response. It left him agitated, that thought. It seemed like an ill omen to remember such a thing now.

“You love me.”

He could feel Buffy’s surprise as he said it again. Maybe it was the raw tone of his voice; maybe it was the way he shuddered when he said it. Or, maybe it was just the words themselves. She replied gently, “I do love you.”

Satisfied, if only for the moment, he nuzzled at her ear, then the tender line of her throat. Her jugular throbbed beneath the caress of his tongue, and he could hear her heart begin to beat faster. Not in fear, but in a desire he could suddenly smell on the air, a desire that heated her flesh so completely that his own began to burn, pressed against it.

“Pet—love—I love—” He pushed his aching cock against the core of her heat, ignoring the way his fly buttons dug into him as he ground down, drawing a cry of pleasure from that quivering, outstretched throat. His girl, all his. Just his.

She’ll leave you, Dawn's voice said abruptly. It was in the far reaches of his brain, sharp as a dentist’s drill and even more relentless. And it was painful. It was the source of all his nightmares, her leaving him. It was what kept him on edge, what made him abandon every other need of his body just so he wouldn’t have to waste a moment that might be spent with her. It was what drove him.

But she is not going to leave me, he tried to reassure himself. She’ll never leave me. I’ll never let her leave me. Because she’s—

“Mine.”

At first, he didn’t realize he had said it aloud. He thought the words were only in his head. Then, he felt her twitch beneath him, heard the dearest voice in the world whisper, “What?”

She was genuinely confused; she hadn’t heard him clearly. But something about her question made his chest burn. She shouldn’t be confused like that; she should know. She should know that she was his. All his. She should know he could never let her go.

“Mine!”

His voice was louder now, and uneven. What he really meant—what was really in his heart—was a plea for her not to leave him. But it wasn’t in his nature to beg, not really. Not anymore. And the first instinct of his desperation was to force it out of her, force her to give him the reassurance he craved.

When she didn’t, he became angry.

Say it, goddamn you. Say it! Don’t leave me—you can’t leave me. You’re—

“MINE!”

It came as a snarl this time, and he felt her flinch. Even with her arms pinned, she could easily have knocked him off. He wouldn’t have fought her even if he had been capable of it, and she knew that. But she didn’t even try.

Spike hadn’t realized yet that his fangs had descended. His head was pounding, and all he could think of was Dawn telling him that her sister would wind up hating him. She couldn’t leave him, though. Even if she grew to hate him, she couldn’t leave him. Not again. He had to keep her from leaving him.

Without premeditation—almost without comprehension—he opened his mouth against the thumping artery in her neck—

Mine.

Mine.

Mine—mine—mine—mine!

—and sank his eyeteeth in as deep as they would go.

Hot blood rushed into his mouth, and the world suddenly exploded in a burst of light and pain. And just before he lost consciousness, he heard her voice whisper to him, gentle and dim and very far away.

Yours.

It was impossible to tell how much time passed after that, but when he woke up, the room was gray with overcast daylight. He woke to hands in his hair, rubbing his sore head very gently.

“Sit up for a second,” a voice whispered. “Will you do that for me?”

Of course he would do that for her. But he was half-conscious and in pain, none too quick or graceful as he slid up the mattress, propping his back against the pillows at the headboard. Sitting beside him, Buffy was rubbing slow circles over his pounding temples, easing some of the pressure that made his head feel as though it were filled with rocks. Spike had to blink several times before his eyes could focus on her clearly.

She was fully dressed and a little pale, her long hair not quite concealing the bandage on her neck—a clean white bandage already blossoming with red.

I did that, he remembered in amazement. I bit her.

He had hurt her.

“Oh, bugger,” he cursed. “Oh, pet—Buffy—I’m so sorry—”

“I know, you are,” she replied calmly. “It’s all right.”

All right? He’d shown her his worst side—he’d bitten her—and she was telling him that it was all right? His brain couldn’t quite register the absurdity of that.

A tumbler suddenly appeared under his nose, the smooth glass edge bumping lightly against his teeth as she pressed it between his lips.

“Drink this.”

The scent of blood reached his nostrils in waves, and Spike felt a stab of pain deep inside his belly, reminding him just how hungry he actually was. After what he had done, there was a sharp sense of shame in his hunger, in wanting the blood so desperately. At first, he refused to take it. Buffy had to wrap his fingers around the glass, pressing down on them just slightly before releasing her own grip. Then, he was holding it all on his own, and he was confused.

“It’s all right. Drink,” she said.

When he didn’t, she put a finger on the bottom of the glass, tipping it toward his mouth. His lips parted—he couldn’t stop himself—and he took a deep swallow of what she offered to him. The blood was warmed to just the right temperature, but he was surprised to find that it had a coarse texture, a bland undertone that, at first, he couldn’t quite define.

Weetabix.

And Dawn wondered why he was willing to risk everything for this woman.

The question remained, however. Why was she doing this? Why was she being so kind when he had done something unforgivable?

He wanted to ask her, but after not eating for two days and eating only sporadically before that, Spike was so hungry he couldn’t stop himself. He downed the entire glass in two more quick swallows. When she pulled the tumbler away, he thought that was it. Then, he heard the soft splash of liquid and realized she was refilling it from a pitcher on the nightstand.

“’s okay. I don’t want—”

What he really wanted was to talk, but she pushed the glass to his lips again.

“Yes, you do. You need to eat,” she answered.

One of her hands—the left one, the one not in his hair—crept to the waist of his jeans. She popped the top button free from its slot and dipped her hand into the loosened waistband. There was nothing suggestive about the way she ran her fingers across his abdomen, examining the firm plane of muscle and the slightly concave area where he’d lost weight. Her fingertips traced the sharp projection of his hipbones, which had grown even more pronounced as of late, and two small frown lines appeared between her eyes. Spike thought he knew why.

“Buffy, that’s not it. That isn’t why I—”

“Shh—” she reached up to tilt the glass again “—I know.”

Did she, though? Did she understand what he had done to her? That, out of a possessive need and irrational fear, he had irrevocably tied her to him? That, despite his guilt, he didn’t exactly feel sorry that he had done it?

The pitcher held five tumblers of blood, and he drank them all. Every time he tried to stop, every time he tried to talk, she would gently force him back to the glass.

The entire time, she was stroking his belly.

His eyes followed her movements when she finally placed the tumbler beside the empty pitcher on her nightstand. “Pet, you’ve got to let me explain. The bite—the reason I did it—see, I was—”

“I know why you did it,” she broke in, placing an insistent hand across his mouth to quiet him. “Spike, I know exactly what that was, and it’s okay.”

“Okay?” he echoed disbelievingly. Maybe he had a concussion—maybe he was hallucinating—because none of this made any sense.

It made even less sense when she threw her leg across his waist and straddled his lap.

The dart of arousal that followed was immediate, as intense as ever, but he felt too stunned to do anything about it. Anyway, he had a feeling he wasn’t meant to do anything.

She pressed down against his semi-reclining body, her breasts flattening against his chest, her heart beating just next to where his did not. Even when she clutched a handful of his hair in one fist, carefully drawing his head back to expose his throat—even when she kissed the hollow between his collarbones and bit lightly on his Adam’s apple—even when she teased her way to the place on his neck that made him squirm—he knew, somehow, that it wasn’t supposed to lead to sex.

“You—it’s—why do you say it’s—” Spike couldn’t seem to form a coherent thought, let alone put it into words. He would have liked to believe it was just because the chip had fried the greater portion of his medial temporal lobes, but he knew better than that. It was what always happened when she was especially loving toward him; he would revert to type. How could he do otherwise?

“You were trying to take what you’ve already got,” she answered quietly, breathing the words into his skin in a way that made him shiver. “Why did you do that? What are you so afraid of?”

She’d hit too close to home with that—entirely too close to the secrets he was keeping from her—and the anxiety that followed made him irritable. He pulled his head to the side, avoiding the caress of her mouth.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” he muttered stubbornly. “Don’t know why you’d think…I mean, what I just did…it’s what vampires do, Buffy. It’s what we do when we lo—when we want—”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes held his for a moment longer, but Spike looked back steadily, obstinate in the face of her skepticism.

“Okay,” she said finally. Her voice was almost a whisper and not frustrated at all. In fact, he thought she almost looked pitying. Her fingers dipped back into his hair, stroking through the short, tangled locks, smoothing the stiff curls.

“You look tired, Spike. Are you tired?”

He was dizzy more than anything, and his head ached so badly that even the dim light hurt his eyes. He didn’t want to tell her that for fear she would say he needed quiet—that she would leave—so he said instead, “Just a bit knackered.”

“You can close your eyes if you want,” she said, as if reading his mind. “It’s all right…”

He tried not to, but it proved impossible. His temples were throbbing, and she was petting him in exactly the right way. Not giving him enough to get him started, just enough to make him feel extremely good. He gingerly dropped his head against the pillows and sighed.

“…time is it?”

“Almost eight.” She trailed her fingers through his hair, grazing his scalp with her fingernails so that he shivered. “Don’t worry about that though; you can sleep as long as you want.”

He didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to lie there, drowsy and content in spite of the pain. He wanted to let her bleed from him the stress of what felt like a thousand nights. He was sick of taking care of the goddamned eggs, sick of stealing about trying to hide the truth from her, sick of worrying that she would find out and hate him. Everything would have been fine if it weren’t for the fucking money problem.

But he didn’t have the energy to think about that right now.

He was just on the edge of sleep when Buffy leaned her head into the crook of his shoulder. The sharp, metallic scent of the blood beneath her bandage made his nostrils flare with sudden interest. Not in the desire for more, but something else—a feeling of satisfaction that had been diminished by guilt and almost forgotten about during his conversation with her. A small smile tugged at the corners of his bloodstained mouth, and from far back in his addled brain, a voice purred with avid pleasure.

Mine.

There had been some kind of commotion in Buffy’s room earlier, shouting so loud it had woken Dawn even before daybreak. The voice obviously belonged to Spike, and although Dawn couldn’t hear what he said, she thought he sounded angry. Things had been quiet since then, and as Dawn stood at the kitchen counter, slicing a banana into her Cream of Wheat, she felt uneasy. Buffy had been downstairs only briefly; Spike, not at all. She wondered if he was okay, if Buffy might have hurt him in the midst of an argument and that was the reason she took him blood. She wondered if Buffy had found out about the eggs.

When she heard the front door bang, she assumed it was Willow and Tara; they hadn’t been home all night. But the footsteps in the hall were too heavy to be a woman’s and too deliberate to belong to Xander. By the time he arrived in the doorway, Dawn already knew who it must be. However, the question wasn’t who as much as why. Giles hadn’t spoken to Buffy in over a month, not since their argument in the Magic Box, and as far as Dawn knew, a truce hadn’t been declared. She had no idea what he might be doing there at nine a.m. on a Saturday morning.

“Hi,” she said with false brightness. “Uh, long time no see. I’ll get Buffy—”

She was hoping to slip out the door and avoid the awkwardness of being alone with him, but Giles held up his hand in a motion for her to wait.

“Actually…it is you I was hoping to speak with.”

He seemed intent on surprising her this morning. Dawn opened her mouth and then closed it, uncertain of what to say. Finally, she joked lamely, “Let me guess. You want to borrow my new Britney Spears CD.”

He didn’t crack a smile.

“Not quite. Rather, I was hoping you might tell me where you got the means to buy that CD.”

Was he accusing her of shoplifting? Dawn started to ask him, but he cut in before she could even get started.

“According to the others, your father resurfaced recently…and he has been most generous to you and to Buffy.”

Her stomach dropped; already she could anticipate where this was headed.

“Well, he owes us child support. For me, I mean. He’s way behind.” Her voice sounded hollow even to her own ears. Giles raised his eyebrows.

“Isn’t it interesting…isn’t it fortunate…that he should finally assume his responsibilities at this time, just as Buffy needed it most.”

“I called him,” Dawn said quickly. “I called him because we needed money. I told him—”

“How did you find him? He is a hard man to pin down.”

“His secretary told me.”

“Yes?”

He was trying to trip her up, that was all. Dawn thought that if she just stuck to her original story—the one she and Spike had concocted together—then everything would be okay. Still, she stumbled over the words in her nervousness.

“Yeah. I—I kept calling her. Every day, nearly. You know…until she finally gave me his number. I called him, and—and told him about the money. I yelled at him.”

“I see.” He paused. Then, “And where is he?”

“Huh?”

“You said you spoke to him on the telephone. Where is he now?”

“LA. He hasn’t given me an address; the envelopes just have his name.” It was what Spike had taught her to say.

Giles took off his glasses and began polishing them on his shirttail. “What fascinates me,” he began slowly, “is that you said your father has been in Los Angeles during this correspondence. Yet, I spoke to him yesterday afternoon. According to the telephone number, he is in Barbados. Where, apparently, he has been living for the past eleven months.”

“I didn’t mean he lived in LA,” she backtracked. “I meant that’s where the money is coming from.”

Frowning, Giles dug into his back pocket and produced a thin stack of crumpled envelopes, which he then handed to her.

“These are what your father sent to you?”

She looked down at them, recognizing them immediately. They were the envelopes Spike used to mail Buffy the bank receipts. But he had been so careful about typing everything so that his handwriting couldn’t be traced; surely, Giles couldn’t be using them as evidence of dishonesty.

“Where did you get them?” Dawn knew she sounded defensive, but she couldn’t help it. She was becoming genuinely fearful now. It was obvious that, evidence or not, Giles knew she was being dishonest.

“Not by theft, I assure you. Actually, they were resting on that small table just inside the front door.”

Dawn felt like cursing. She was angry at Buffy—and herself—for not throwing those envelopes away. She could feel her knees beginning to shake.

“Yeah. And—?”

“Look at them.” He extended his hand. “Not a single one of these envelopes has been postmarked.”

She swallowed.

“So?”

“That means they have not been processed by the postal service. They were never actually mailed. But you already know that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” she insisted with a longing glance at the door behind him. If she could only get past him…

Giles sighed. Although his voice was very soft, she could detect a hint of impatience underneath, and he began to press harder.

“The story you told me is that you spoke with your father, and he began to send you money. However, we have just established that these envelopes have not only not been mailed by your father…they haven’t been mailed at all.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that I—” His voice quickly overpowered her own, but it didn’t really matter. Dawn had no idea how she was going to finish the sentence anyway.

“Since you have told me otherwise…since you have been perpetuating a lie…I can only presume that you know where the money actually came from.”

He slipped his glasses back on and gazed at her in the manner of a weary father.

“Let’s make this as painless as possible, shall we?”

When Spike woke up again (his head on her thigh, one arm slung across her knees), the room was much brighter with sunlight filtering through the closed curtains. Buffy was sitting razor-straight, her back not even touching the mound of pillows behind it, and there was a fresh bandage on her neck. Her pretty forehead was furrowed in concentration as she read from a thin booklet with the Sunnydale University emblem stamped on the front.

“Something must be pretty interesting,” he mumbled. A little sulky, because even when he rose up on his elbow, she hadn’t looked at him.

Buffy placed hand on his head, caressing him as if he were an attention-seeking puppy, and did not look up from her reading.

“I’m thinking about 19th Century Lit,” she said, as if they had been in the middle of a conversation. “I mean, I read a bunch of those musty old books of yours when I was in London. How hard can it be?”

He blinked at her. “Huh?”

“Spring semester. I thought that with my dad helping out now, I might go back to school. You know…grab a degree so I won’t be so completely helpless about finding a job.” She glanced down, saw his face, and hastened to add, “Not full time. I learned my lesson there. Full course load plus slaying equals tired, bitchy Buffy. But—”

“Love, I think it’s a great idea,” he interrupted. The slightly uneasy expression melted away, and suddenly Buffy looked as lighthearted and happy as every twenty-year-old had a right to be.

“Really? You think so?”

Spike sat up slowly, struggling to ignore the lingering stabs of pain behind his eyes.

“Bloody right I do. You’re too bright not to go to University. And if you need help with the rest of it…if you need a night off…I’ve been known to kill a demon or two.”

She smiled at him gratefully and kissed his ear.

“I know you have, Spike…and thank you.”

He marveled at the affectionate look in her eyes, at her seemingly sunny disposition.

How in the buggering hell can she look at me like that? She’s looking at me as if I’m some type of sodding hero, and she’s got those wounds on her throat because of me. She ought to be pissed off.

Of course, only a complete prat would have risked asking, and he wasn’t that stupid.

“Are you hungry?”

The question startled him as much as the expression that accompanied it, but he tried not to let it show. “I think I had plenty of that earlier, love. I wouldn’t say no to a drink, though. Got a bit of a headache from—well, a drink would be welcome.”

“You left a half-bottle of vodka on top of the television downstairs,” she reminded him, bending over her catalogue again.

That was true; he had. Careful not to move too quickly and make himself dizzy, he eased out of bed and into the jeans he couldn’t remember taking off the night before. Ditto his shirt. He looked around for it, but it must have been tangled in the sheets or pushed underneath the bed. In the end, he decided it didn’t matter much. His todger was covered, and there should be no cause for complaint from the roommates.

He’d hardly rounded the edge of the doorway when Dawn grabbed him by the elbow.

“I’ve got to talk to you,” she hissed, completely ignoring his naked chest. She tugged on his arm, and he followed along obediently, padding silently on bare feet until they had reached her bedroom. She not only closed the door behind them; she locked it.

“Why all the secrecy, Bit?”

She didn’t even bother with a preamble.

“Giles knows—he knows!”

“Knows about…?” Spike was bewildered.

“The money!” she snapped, rolling her eyes. “He knows it isn’t coming from my dad. He showed up this morning and started grilling me. I basically had to shove past him and run out of the room just to get away, and even then it took him forever to leave—”

He grabbed her arm so roughly the chip went off, but his head already hurt so much it hardly made a difference. “What did you tell him?”

“Nothing! I didn’t tell him anything! He figured it out on his own. One of the others must have mentioned the money—assholes—and he figured it out on his own. He started calling around and looking for my dad—”

Spike groaned.

“—and he found out that he’s in Barbados. Add to that the fact that Buffy left the envelopes lying around so he could see there were no postmarks, and he didn’t really need me to say anything.”

“Shit,” Spike muttered. Then louder: “Shit, shit, shit!”

He grabbed a book from her shelf and heaved it across the room and against the wall. Dawn immediately threw an ineffectual punch across his back.

“Stop it! She’ll hear you!”

“Does he know it’s me?” he snarled, turning back to Dawn. “Is he going to tell her?”

“I think he knows it’s you, but he doesn’t really know it’s you. I mean, he doesn’t have any proof. Yet.” She was alarmed to see him vamp, a low, lion-like growl rumbling in his throat as he began to pace the room. He looked like an animal, caged and restless.

“So, you’re telling me I’m on borrowed time then.”

“No, you’re not. Spike, if you quit now he won’t be able to get any proof, and Buffy will never have to know. It’ll be okay.”

His yellow eyes suddenly became hazy. Quit now? How could he do that? What about the money? Buffy had a little set aside in the bank account. But what about—

I thought that with my dad helping out now, I might go back to school.

The happy look on her face when she said that, as lighthearted as every twenty-year-old had the right to be…How in the hell could he take that away from her now?

He slowly shook his head, his fangs receding as quickly as they had descended.

“It’s only a few more weeks.”

“Spike!” Dawn’s voice was panicky, but somehow it sounded as if it were coming from a great distance, far away from his plans.

“Get five thousand more at the end of that—”

She jumped on him like a cat, clawing his arm. “Don’t be stupid! They’ll find out—”

Spike looked at her, his eyes suddenly attentive and very sad.

“I know, Bit, but it’s what I’ve got to do. I have to take care of her.”

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