Let’s Get Lost

Chapter 4

She didn’t know if she’d been dozing or unconscious when she returned to herself to find she was still splayed against Spike’s boneless languid body. His arms clasped loosely around her waist, his cock, not exactly hard, but still long and full, inside her.

They were drenched, but she hadn’t felt this limp and comfortable since … since that night in Angel’s apartment.

Her mind shied.

Spike inhaled. “Never let it be said Slayer doesn’t know how to make it up to a fellow.”

His hand stroked lightly down her back.

“No more yet. Buffy tired.”

“You were magnificent just now.”

“Guess I’m learning.”

“You were really feelin’ it. Went for what you wanted.” He stroked her again, light, with the fingertips. “Had what you wanted, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did.” She shivered. “Is it better now? You, I mean.”

“I’m all right. Just you stay put. Keepin’ me nice ‘n’warm this way.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Her fingers brushed the soft hairs at the base of his neck. “I want … to be held.”

“I’ve got you, little lost girl.”

She let her eyes close again, cheek resting on his bony shoulder. Drifting, unthinking, easy.

After a while Spike’s cock stirred inside her, filling again.

“You’re insatiable,” she whispered.

“It’s your lovely pussy. No rush to do anythin’ about it.”

After a few moments, she said, “Is it?”

“What?”

“Is it … lovely?”

“Like compliments, do you, minx?”

“No, I just need to know, if I … am I really ….”

“As if by now you’re not sure.” His hand was moving again, lulling, exciting, hypnotic, up and down her back. She sighed. This was an aspect of her power–her woman’s power–she was only now getting a glimpse of. Her clit was beginning to throb, she loved how it felt to sit on his lap, on his cock, to be so full.

“You get me so hard,” Spike said. “Could hold a stake to my heart, an’ I’d still be hard for you. Would fuck you with a sword at my throat.”

“Don’t … don’t talk like that. I don’t want to hurt you. Let’s not be that way.”

“Not now, maybe.”

“Not now. Really. Spike …?”

His hand never stopped stroking. “What is it, Miss Anne?”

She contracted around him, watching for his eyes to go unfocused, for him to pull in a breath. When he did, she whispered, “Does this feel good?”

“Yeah, a bit.”

“A bit?” She squeezed again.

“You want it again, Miss Anne?”

“You.”

“Me. Want me?”

“Yes.” She raised her head to look at him. Spike’s hair was wild from her pulling. His neck was marked where she’d sucked the skin.

“Kiss us, then.”

She kissed his mouth, and sighed as he kissed his way down her jaw, tonguing at her throat. She offered her breasts to his lips; he mouthed the nipples, traced their roundness in wet lines, breathing her in. She bore down on his unfurling cock, pressing in on it in time with his licks on her right nipple, and when she came, small and neat and surprising from her breast, he looked up and smiled at her. “See what you can do?”

“I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t either. Glad to be finding out.” He eased her beneath him then, began to fuck her in tight little jabs, barely moving at all, but she was so sensitive now, as if her clit was opened out to encompass her whole groin. Every tiny move he made brought a moan out of her. “You’ll never forget this, will you?” Spike murmured. “Every other man you have, you’ll compare to me.”

Buffy hugged him closer. “Don’t worry about that. This is now. Let’s just be now.”

“This good, Slayer?”

“It’s good. Yes. Oh God. Spike–! Oh–there. There. There.”

***

Later, when they were lying bonelessly entwined on the floor, she said, “What you were talking about before. Do you really think you chose to be undead?”

“Need a better line in pillow talk.”

“I want to understand.”

“I think so, yeah.” Bitterness overrode his tone.

“I don’t see how. If you’re telling me the truth, that you didn’t know what was happening to you–“

“A strong man, in charge of himself … wouldn’t have let it happen. Any of it. Even down to … even down to the last moment.”

“Is that what you really think? Because I think that’s wrong. We are in charge of ourselves, I know that–but when your life is about to wink out–in that little second–I don’t believe you can control that.”

He got up on one elbow to regard her from above. “That what you need to be sure of, in order to be with me like this?”

“I just don’t think you have to make it any worse for yourself than it is. It was a misfortune, that you were murdered by a vampire. That’s all. I’m talking to you–the you that’s your soul. You’re suffering for what the demon did who took over your body and your memories and–“

“Angel liked you to think he was two separate entities, with an’ without. But that was a bit of a tall tale he told himself, so’s he’d be able to sleep. Know I’m same fellow I always was before the demon took up residence–‘cept the demon set me free. Everythin’ I feared and worried about, everythin’ kept me small and absurd, didn’t matter anymore, and I went in for what I fancied. It’s that simple, pet. An’ now I miss havin’ my way, an’ I feel the fires of hell at my heels … an’ I want my soul an’ my self parted again. That’s all.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Tellin’ you it’s true.”

“So you weren’t a strong man.” She paused. “Huh. How weak could you have been, if you–“

“If I what?”

“Well, I mean–to get along like that, in the slums, with–“

His sudden smile was mocking, ready to trip her up. She stopped.

“Right. Was plenty enough of a man to make my way. Real tough. ‘Til I had my moment of truth.”

“So you’re saying–“

“Leave it alone, Slayer.”

“You had things on your conscience before you died? Is that why you keep insisting you’re guilty just because you got turned? What were you–a murderer?”

“Big thug, me.”

She poked his shoulder. “You know, all of a sudden, I don’t believe a word of this. I think I’m all wrong about you. You were never some O.G. You were probably, what, a milkman? Chimney sweep? Stable hand?”

“Met my fate in a stable.”

“So I guessed right.”

“Whatever you like.”

“I like the truth. Tell me the truth, Spike.”

“Why should I?”

“I told you my truth.” A flush spread over her, one she knew he could see and smell and feel. “No one knows it but us two. You could make up for all the patronizing me you’ve done so far and at least tell me who you were when you died.”

Spike closed his eyes. Dropped back to the floor, and when he spoke, it was to the ceiling. “I was a gentleman, if you please. Member of a prominent City family. That’s City of London to you. My people had a banking house, goin’ back a century an’ a half from when I met my Dru. All that was most profitable an’ respectable. An’ dull. I was the youngest son, last child, an’ mother’s darling.” He looked at her then, his gaze boring into hers, daring her to laugh, or mock, or disbelieve. “Never had dirty fingers or a dirty thought in all my days. Least, not ’til I was let loose.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

He stared at her for another long moment, then sprang to his feet just as she reached a tentative hand towards him, grabbed up his jeans and put them on, and began to pace the room. “Not goin’ back to being that milksop, d’you hear me?”

“I hear why you trying so hard to convince both of us that you choose to be damned.”

“Yeah?”

“You hated yourself.”

“Clever girl.”

Buffy shrugged. “Hey, high school is full of kids who hate themselves. I know what it looks like.”

“I bet you do.”

“Spike … do you really think you’ll ever be the same person you were in eighteen-hundred-whatever? Why can’t you take what happened to you as a second chance?”

“Second chance for what? To bore myself to death?”

“To be a good man.”

He laughed. “What twaddle you little girls talk.” Dropping to his knees, he snatched her up by the shoulders. “Still a vampire, right? Creature of the night–blood-drinkin’ fiend. Not a man, not good. Got nowhere to go. Just like you, remember? We’re two bad peas without a goddamned pod.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“You don’t have to stay here, either. You could go home. Yet you won’t.”

“I think I’d like to swim a little before I go to sleep.” She got up, resisting the urge to cover herself up, and started with all her dignity for the door. If she ran into Reece in the foyer, she’d just have to streak.

“Yeah, you do that!” Spike called after. “Anythin’ to change the subject, when it comes back around. If I’m supposed to be so good, what about you?”

***

“Here.” Even as Spike opened his eyes, Buffy thrust the stake at him.

“Whoa! What’re you doing?” He scrambled out of the way.

“Wake up. We’re going to patrol.”

“We are?”

“I know you were out tangling with your kind before you ran into me.”

“Don’t have a kind anymore. That’s my tragedy.”

“You are tragic. Get dressed. I figure you know where the vamps play in this city.”

“I do.” He gave her a head-tilted once-over. “My my. What brought on this sudden attack of wantin’ to do your sacred duty?”

“Shut up. I want some exercise. There’s more to life than sex and sleep.”

“But not much more. All right, let’s have at it. I fancy a bit of a knees-up myself.” He took up the stake she’d dropped in the bedclothes. “Where’d this come from?”

“I made them. In the park. This afternoon.”

“What a pretty sight you must’ve been, too, lovely slayer girl whittlin’ beneath a tree.”

“Yeah, I’m always pretty. Let’s go.”

***

“So where are we going?”

The night was a little cooler than it had been, but still cloying. She had to hurry to follow his long strides up the block.

“You’ll find out.” He turned in at the entrance to an underground parking garage, whose attendent came forward with a smile, as if knew him. “They’ll bring the car out in a minute.”

“Why don’t we just take the subway?”

“Got reasons for not caring to take the subway with the likes of you.”

“And those reasons are?”

“You’ll like the car, the car’s all right.”

“I saw your car.” She remembered vaguely something long and black and sleek.

Which appeared in the next moment, driven slowly up from the bowels of the garage by the attendent, who seemed reluctant to relinquish it. Spike opened the passenger side door with a flourish.

She hung back. “Where are you proposing to take me?”

“Where there’s vamps for you to get your exercise on.” He gave her a shove; she climbed in, and cranked down the window. The interior was musty and smelled like tequila. When he slid in, she prodded his arm. “Those reasons about the subway are?”

“Never you mind.”

They sped along past the overhanging greenery of the park on the right, and the upright blank-fronted apartment houses on the left.

When they ran out of park, and she saw the tall equestrian statue and the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel, which held a vague schoolish association in her mind with something to do with F Scott Fitzgerald, Buffy said, “Did you sleep well?”

“Eh?”

“I said, did you sleep well?”

Spike turned slowly and blinked at her. “… yeah. Guess I did. Thanks. You wore me out good an’ proper. First decent kip I’ve had all summer.”

“Ha.”

“C’mere.”

She let him slip an arm around her. Even with all the windows down, it was warm inside the car. But Spike himself, in just a teeshirt, was slightly cool, his skin dry and smooth against hers. He cuddled her close, slipping fingers through her hair, and cut east, steering with one hand.

“Do you like me?” Buffy said, as they turned down second.

“Like you? Nah. You’re warm, an’ you smell good, is all.”

“Not even a little?”

“You wouldn’t want me to.”

She shoved away from him.

He gave her the eyebrow. “Don’t ask me questions you don’t want to hear the answers to.”

“I don’t believe you, anyway.”

“Thought I made it clear that whatever else I am, I’m not a liar.”

“I don’t mean that you’re lying. But I think you like me more than you want to admit.”

“What good’ll liking you do me? Already got my leg over.”

“I don’t know.” She sulked. Why had she started this conversation? And yet she really wanted to be able to think that he … was at least fond of her. They’d put in so much time together, and he was … he’d turned out to be kind of interesting. Much more than she’d have ever given him credit for, back in Sunnydale. So.

“Does it go the other way?”

“What? Do I like you?” She shrugged. “You’re not so bad. I mean … to hang with. In the present-tense. While you have a soul.”

“Cut it a bit finer, do.”

“I have to cut it fine.” She shifted back to lean against him. Spike hesitated for a palpable moment, then drew her close. When she put her mouth up to be kissed, he obliged her.

She’d come to like his kisses.

“Not gonna fall for you, though,” he said.

“Wouldn’t want you to.”

***

Buffy looked up and down the midway, with its rows of skeeball booths and four-shots-for-a-dollar, and just beyond it the big Cyclone wheel turning. It was all lit up like Christmas, but everything was grubby and rusty and lopsided. The air smelled like cotton candy and piss, and more faintly, of the ocean. “Wow, Coney Island is kind of a dump. Not quite what I imagined.”

“Yeah. Nothin’ like when we first saw it. Was enchantin’ then.”

“When was this?”

“Nineteen four. First year of Dreamland. Luna Park was new too. Was a gaudy glowin’ vision, Dru an’ me thought it was better’n anything we’d left behind in Europe. All those lights just intoxicated her. An’ those places were just an all-we-could-eat buffet–constant roiling crowd, people arrivin’ by train an’ boat every minute, gettin’ separated from their friends in the crush, careless an’ off their guard. No vamp came away hungry from Coney Island.”

“If it was such a free-for-all, how’d you hide the bodies? How’d you get away with killing all those people without word getting out?”

“Mostly didn’t kill ’em. Fed an’ let ’em go–the crowds were huge, we could sample a dozen a night, sate ourselves. No bodies, an’ the authorities were in no hurry to publicize complaints about vamp attacks–anyway, there’s no such thing as vampires.”

“No bodies.”

“We don’t always kill. Leastways, not once we’ve been at it long enough to get wise. Vamps who live long learn to get along.”

“So you want me to believe you’re not guilty of mass murder.”

“No. Just cluein’ you in to how things really work.”

“It doesn’t make it all right.”

“Not claiming it does!” He turned his back, started to walk away. “Know it doesn’t. Always killed when I knew I could get away with it.”

His bluntness still had the power to startle. She followed him towards the boardwalk. Three different kinds of tinny music came at her, along with the eerie sound of canned laughter. There were plenty of people around, mostly young, all different colors. Spike stood out for being so white and blond, and for his purposeful stride. She caught up to him on the boards. The wide beach was dotted with people too, and far away she could see the edge of the surf. The air was curiously still. Cooler than in the city, but not by much.

“So where are they?”

“Could start by checkin’ under this.” He tapped the boardwalk with his foot. “C’mon.”

***

She followed Spike under the planks, where the darkness was slatted with thin streaks of orangey light from the lamps that lit up the boardwalk. The air was salty, tangy, with overtones of things rotting, of fish and feet. Three different hip-hop tracks booming from ghetto blasters competed with the muffled skirl from Astroland and shouting and laughter from up above. The boards overhead resonated with footsteps. Clumps of young people dotted the sheltered sand, often made semi-belligerant by beer or drugs–some shouted come-ons or insults at her as they passed, but she noticed that everyone gave Spike a wide berth.

He was unaccustomedly quiet, giving her a lot of space.

When they’d been walking for a while, she came up close to him. “Hey. It’s … well, it’s not okay, but it’s okay. For right now. All right?”

“Coherent as always, Slayer.” But he sounded mollified.

“You know, I’ve been thinking. Today, while I was making the stakes in the park. I figured some stuff out, and I wanted to tell you–“

Before she could begin, a muffled cry and a scuffle broke out in the dark distance, and they took off towards it.

The vamps came at them like a hailstorm–just a couple at first, then more and more, finally tapering off to a couple of stragglers she picked off easy.

Almost two hours later, emerging onto the open beach couple of miles beyond where they’d gone in, Buffy took a deep long breath of the night sea air. Coated in sweat and sand, she was all tuned up, the blood zinging in her veins.

Relieved.

“That was beautiful,” Spike said, slinging an arm around her shoulders, “Can take the girl out of the hellmouth, but can’t take the hell–“

A tremor of misgiving ran through her, that made her pull away. “Y’know, praise from you, not so much.”

“Not so much what?” Spike demanded.

“Not so … praisey.” She didn’t want to admit how in sync they were in the fight. How natural it felt. Or how all through it she’d been stoked by his enthusiasm, the fierce light in his eye, how he chuckled when she made a particularly agile move.

“Who better to praise your slaying skills than a master vampire? Connoisseur, here.”

“Please. You’re not a master vampire.” She snatched at the slimmest excuse to steer him off.

Spike stepped in front of her, so he could see her face. His own was completely serious. “How d’you reckon, Slayer?”

“You’re–you’re just not. I mean, come on.”

“What kind of answer is that? Do you know how old I am? If I’m such a slouch, why didn’t you ever slay me?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Why?”

“We had a deal.”

“Before that.”

“I would have–“

His eyes lit, and his lips curved into a nervy grin. “Was it because you secretly fancied me all along?”

She gave him a shove, hard, against the railing. Spike stumbled, then, laughing, sprang at her; they tussled, whirling from one railing of the boardwalk to the other; she pushed him off again. He caught her, pressed her down on a bench.

She let him bend her back, opened her mouth to his. She was laughing now too. It was easier to just laugh and smooch than to pick her every last feeling apart. A brisk wind passed through her, blowing everything loose. She’d rid Brooklyn of a dozen vampires, which somehow put her firmly in the right now, out of the shadow of past and future. In the right now, she was tuned up. She was getting kissed, and groped, and in a second she’d yank her hands free and do some groping of her own.

He broke the kiss before she was ready. “He was one, an’ I’m another. No good kidding youself, Miss Anne. You’ve got a taste for fang, an’ no new-born will do for you. You need a demon with a history to scratch your itch. Only the best–meanin’ the worst–for you.”

“No.“

“Do you think you’re the only one? Plenty of slayers have done the dance with a vampire or two! That’s what it is. Passion–compulsion–desire. For sex. For death.”

“You always do this. Whenever we start to have a moment, you–“

“You make a virtue of bein’ ignorant. Does you no good. Do you even know the name of the girl who came before you?”

She didn’t. It had never occurred to her to wonder, though she’d had plenty of nights of wondering why me?

“Thought not.” Spike sneered.

“Why do I need to know that?”

“Why do you need to know anything? Because stayin’ innocent keeps you a child. An’ any girl fucks like you do is way past bein’ a child.”

Buffy turned away from his penetrating gaze.

He wasn’t even as old as Angel, and he was often, even mostly, a momentous jerk Yet she had to admit that now she knew him better, Spike often seemed like more of a grown man than Angel had. Not just grown up, but tired out by existing for so long.

Spike took out a cigarette, and lit it. She wished she could have one too; envied him the way he could busy himself with the pack, the lighter.

“Okay,” she said. “Maybe you have something there.”

“Damn right I do.”

He smoked, and she listened to the distant surf and brushed at the sand stuck to her legs.

Finally Spike slapped his knees and rose. “All right, Slayer. Want to take a spin on The Wonder Wheel, while we’re here?”

“Not really. Could we just drive? Not back to the city, just somewhere.”

“Could do. Come on.”

They set off the way they’d come. After a while, she slipped her hand into his. Spike squeezed and held on. Her throat went tight. She wished she hadn’t said that, about him not being a master. She wished he’d kept his mouth shut too. He was okay when he wasn’t mouthing off at her about heavy stuff.

Angel had been so much more circumspect. He’d seldom made a point of tweaking her with his idea of home truths. Spike could never stop, even when speaking out interfered with his pleasures.

The wind kicked up, blew her hair around her face. At first his silence felt heavy, and she searched frantically for some remark she could make to break it, to get him chatting. But by time they reached the car, she was glad for the quiet, which had begun to feel companionable, as his hand, closed in hers, had begun to feel warm. When he let her go to open the car door, it was all she could do to keep from grabbing it again.

As he drove off, she rolled down the window, let the wind catch and pull at her hair.

Spike turned on the radio. After a moment she reached over and shut it off.

“Listen. I was thinking today, while I made the stakes. About what we were going to do.”

Whittling stakes was the kind of activity that just naturally led to sorting out one’s thoughts. No matter how much you wanted to avoid yourself, you couldn’t really stop yourself, when you were sat there with just a knife and a a bunch of tree branches.

Apparently slaying wasn’t something she could just quit. It wasn’t just a duty–it was a need. She needed to do it, and the more she put it off, the more the urge, the itch, pervaded her thoughts and sang through her sinews, to the point where she thought she could understand what it was like to have St Vitus dance or maybe the kind of DTs that made you run around waving your arms and gnashing your teeth.

So okay, just because she never could or would go back to Sunnydale, she’d still slay. Freelance, under-the-radar. It was what she’d been born for.

That was relatively easy to settle her mind about. The other looming issue that twined in and out of it like a writhing serpent, was more confusing and depressing. What Spike had thrown in her face before–the question of her goodness.

She was sure she’d left good–the comfortable, rock-solid sense of being all right with everything–behind a while ago. It didn’t feel like she’d ever be able to pick it up again–it was just gone, like being eight years old and living in Los Angeles was gone. But that wasn’t the same as embracing being bad. She had to figure out how to live.

How to live when her only companion was Spike. She was sort of responsible for him … it was due to her that he had a soul.

She had no intention of leaving him, even though, on the Scales of Big Right And Wrong, leaving Spike would almost certainly put her down on the side of Right. But she didn’t think she could bear being alone anymore. Alone, unfucked, unteased, untalked to, unheld.

Unappreciated.

Spike appreciated her, and that might not be as good as love, but it was a whole lot less complicated. And dangerous.

So, she was going to become the Morally Ambiguous Entirely Freelance Slayer, and Spike would be her … not sidekick. Not partner. Certainly not friend, boyfriend, lover.

She didn’t know what. He’d be her Souled Vampire Companion. With benefits. Together they’d … manage. When the weather got cool or when Mr Vaux came back they’d leave New York and head south to where it was still warm. Maybe they could go to New Orleans, which was supposed to be packed with vampires and mild in the winter time. They could get work and some little place to live and patrol every night and fuck afterwards; no one would ever find her there, and it would be an okay way to be since she was never again going to be the way she was back home.

This felt like a workable, if not joyous, scheme. Anyhow, it wasn’t like, as the slayer, she had to figure out a whole lifetime. There was never going to be a college degree, a career, a marriage, kids. Her luck would run out, as Kendra’s did, she’d die fighting, some other girl would be called. The end.

She still didn’t want to die, but it was kind of a relief to not have to worry about grades or graduating or pretending to her mom that she was going to forge a full and fruitful adulthood. She supposed she’d never feel good and right again, so it was probably better not to obsess about it too much. She’d just try not to be bad and let that be enough.

She sketched it out for him, mentioning the heading south and finding work and keeping up the patrols, and leaving out most of the rest about what they’d be to each other, and her mother’s expectations, and how soon she expected to be dead. By now they were speeding along a mostly deserted highway with the water on their right. Spike kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road.

“So what do you think?”

“Think it’s time for you to go home.”

“I don’t have a home, remember? We’ve been over this. I’m not that person anymore. That’s done with.”

He slowed a little, lit another cigarette.

“Well then, I say stay away from New Orleans, Slayer.”

“What’s wrong with New Orleans?”

“You can’t just go in there an’ start taking out vamps willy-nilly. There’s a reason it’s pretty much always been a free-fire zone for demons. You go there, you won’t last a week.”

“That’s a vote of confidence.”

“Not sayin’ you wouldn’t take plenty down with you, but the facts’re the facts. You could look it up–you’ll see they’ve always kept the slayer out of that neck of the woods.”

“I’m not going to look it up.”

“Just sayin’. It’s no place for you. Goin’ there wouldn’t do anybody any good. If you won’t go home like a sensible girl, I say head to Mexico. It’s cheap an’ cheerful, weather’s good, and you’ll find work an’ vamps aplenty.”

“Mexico, huh? Maybe. I do like tacos.”

“Sure you do. Mexican riviera’s a fine place.”

“Wait a second–you keep saying ‘you’. I was saying ‘we’.”

“So you do. It’s a pretty story, Miss Anne.”

“Huh? What’s a pretty story?”

“You an’ me takin’ off together. It’s sweet.”

“It’s not a story. It’s what we’re going to do.” She sighed, and gathered her blowing hair into her fist. “Why do you have to quarrel with me about everything? Aren’t we getting along all right? We agreed we were going to keep each other company.”

“Don’t believe you mean it.”

The road they were on was perfectly straight, with grassy dunes on either side. The wooden street lights burned orange, and once in a while, a rabbit sped out into the headlights, eye glowing like a bike reflector, leaping for the other side.

Spike turned the radio on.

She slapped it off. “I mean it. I need you. Okay? I know I need you.”

He veered off suddenly, bringing the car to a smooth quick stop. When he cut the engine, the chirruping of insects filled her ears. Equidistant between two pools of orange light, Spike’s face and hands were a pale gold. He turned in his seat to look at her.

After a moment she put her hands out, and took hold of his. “Listen to me. I’m telling the truth.”

He studied not her face, but her hands, rubbing her fingers softly with his thumbs.

She waited.

“Will you let me take care of you, then?”

Her first instinct was to assert that she could take care of herself. But she knew what he meant, and hadn’t she just said she needed him? By now there was no one else who could give her anything, no one else she could stand to be around.

“You’ll have to do all the driving because I don’t have a license, but I’ll let you pick the radio station.”

She felt him hesitate, the tension of his misgiving. Understood how much he wanted what she promised–the wanting so full that his doubt was almost too heavy to overcome. Her hands went moist in his.

At last he looked up. His gaze was clear and calm, and she knew she’d won her way.

He pressed a kiss into her palm. “Will keep you alive,” he murmured, “for long as I can.”

***

In three more hours, they ran out of road. At Montauk, with the open ocean spread out on three sides, Spike parked by the beach.

“Gotta find ourselves a room soon. Sun’ll be up before we know it.”

“This is pretty though. Thanks for taking me.”

She averted her gaze, embarrassed at her own gratitude, but not quite in time to see Spike’s almost equally embarrassed look. They’d barely spoken while they tooled along, rock and roll on the radio. They’d paused at a Burger King drive-thru, where she loaded up on french fries and an enormous soda.

When she returned from the comfort station, Spike was sprawled on the hood of the car. She climbed up beside him. The metal was warm but not too warm. A snapping breeze blew. The stars out here were bright and sharp, and so many more than she could ever see in the city, even in the middle of Central Park.

She felt for his hand, and once more he gave it a firm squeeze.

“We’ll have to stay here all day.”

“I don’t care. What time is it?”

“Bout three-thirty.”

How romantic this ought to be, she thought. She wanted to reimagine this scene–the ocean, the huge night sky, the car hood, with Angel’s hand wrapped around hers. Why hadn’t they ever done anything like this? The sweet memories they’d made weren’t enough. They felt too small now.

Spike had decades and decades of memories of Drusilla.

Probably he’d done this very thing with her. Probably he was thinking about her right now.

“Once went on a walkin’ tour in Wales, an’ there was a night when we stayed out, on the shingle of a deserted beach, an’ did nothin’ but watch the sky wheel round, ’til the sun come up.”

“How could you have done that?”

“Was long ago, pet. When I was a student. Perfectly able to wait up for the dawn, ‘cept I’d been so ringed in by governesses an’ prefects an’ so on that I’d never done it before. Sky went from black to dark blue an’ then a pinkness crept into it, an’ the air that all night smelled of the sea went fresh an’ grassy. I’ve never forgotten that. Was the freest thing I ever did while I lived. We were giddy on that air.”

“We who?”

“Was there with my friend.” When she glanced at him, he was smiling a small, nostalgic smile. “Haven’t thought of that trip in ages.”

“Did you … did you kill him, after you were turned?” As the words came out, she winced; why did that have to be the first thing she thought of? Or at least … why did she have to say it out loud?

She expected a sharp reply, but Spike only sighed. “I had no true friends when I was turned. Jolyon died the spring after that foray into Wales. He’d always been a delicate fellow with a weak chest. Got pneumonia and never got over it. That was in our last year at Cambridge. I’d known him since we were little fellows. Missed him terribly.” He paused. “Won’t pretend I didn’t kill a good deal of my acquaintance … but I know I’d have let Jolyon be, if he hadn’t already been gathered to his Fathers.”

“If you were so close to him, wouldn’t you have wanted to turn him?”

“Pretty certain the answer to that’s no.”

She got up on one elbow to see his face. She expected Spike to get angry, or at least want to change the subject, but he remained amiable. “Why?”

“Tried it and found it didn’t answer.”

“Tried it with–who?”

A strange expression passed over his face, and then he was up on his elbows too. Frowning, he stared out at the gleaming ocean.

“Spike,” she whispered. He’d said he never made another vampire, but she knew now that it wasn’t true. Not so much a lie, as something he kept back even from himself. “Who did you turn?”

He curled forward, hugging his knees. She imagined her query making him smaller and smaller, like a salted snail.

“Forget I asked. Really.” This chat wasn’t going to go anywhere from here, and it was time to find somewhere to stay.

She was sliding off the hood when he said: “My mother.”

She froze, half on, half off. She would’ve said that nothing could shock her anymore, but this did.

“Didn’t want to be parted from her, and thought she’d never want to lose me either. Was a mistake. Never tried the like again.”

Before she could reply, Spike sprang up, wrenched open the driver’s side door. “Like they say, you can’t go home again.”

“I … I know about that.”

He squinted at her across the car roof. “You think you do. But I expect you’re wrong.”

“We should really get moving.” No way did she want this to come back around to her mother.

The first couple of motels they tried were full up.

“Beach resort in August,” Spike grumbled. “Keep your eye out, don’t fancy spending the day in the trunk.”

A few miles back they found a lit up Vacancy sign and swung into the parking lot of an old motel, pink stucco cottages strung out around a gravel parking lot. Spike went into the office; she waited outside, scuffing a toe in the pebbles, trying to imagine the truth of what he’d intimated. Turned his mother. Didn’t want to be parted from her. That suggested affection, not anger … so it couldn’t have been anything like what Angel admitted to doing to his family. How had it gone wrong?

She wouldn’t ask. Surprising enough that Spike confided that … she was certain he’d never told anyone. Maybe even kept Drusilla in the dark about it.

She didn’t know whether to feel sorry for him or disgusted, or what.

Good thing they wouldn’t talk about it anymore.

Spike emerged from the office, tossed her a key on a ring. “Go on–it’s last one on the left. Be with you in a little bit.”

The cabin smelled of must, and like everything that night, salty. She flipped on the air conditioner, looked around–there wasn’t much–dresser, bed, bathroom, table, chairs, TV. Yanking down the bedspread, she was seized with a sense of deja vu. The first night in the new house in Sunnydale, her mom had come up to her room with her, and pulled the covers down just that way. Saying she knew Buffy was too old to be scared of going to sleep in a new place, but she wouldn’t mind if she put her to bed, like when she was little? They’d sat up late talking, Buffy under the quilt and her mother perched at the foot of the bed, a hand on her ankle.

She’d kissed her good night three times before she finally left the room.

The tears came fast. She hurried into the bathroom to drown them in a rush of cold water, and ended up in the shower, letting the weak stream of warm water course over her face until it started to run cool.

When she came out Spike was in bed, the blue TV light flickering over his white chest and face, sipping out of a flask. He held it out to her.

“I think we should sleep for a while. It’s almost dawn.” She went to the window, but he’d already adjusted the drapes.

When she crawled between the cool rough sheets, he stretched an arm out, and she slid in close to him, her wet hair splattering his skin. His shoulder was as cool as the linen. He turned off the TV, and she was out.

***

In yesterday’s clothes, and perilously sans sunscreen, Buffy shambled along the weedy road-side towards the strip of stores she’d been told was a couple of miles west. Mid-morning it was already hot, the tarmac starting to melt under her sandal soles. She was roaringly hungry, sweat was beading ticklishly down her back, she’d lost track of the day and date, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so light-hearted and pleased with herself.

Back in the dark chilled room, Spike was still asleep. She’d slept well herself. Everything felt new and fresh. Absolutely no reason why it should, but on the other hand, why not? A hot breeze kicked up, stirring the tree tops, turning the light sides of the leaves up, driving grit against her legs. She broke into a run. Some boys shouted at her from a passing Camaro. She gave them the finger. They didn’t know anything about her, and they never would.

The shabby strip had a dollar store where she chose fresh underwear, shampoo and some playing cards, and after rejecting a series of badly-screen-printed teeshirts and stifling-looking velour sweat pants, got a white terry sun suit. At the deli she scarfed down a fried egg on a roll right there, then bought sandwiches and bottled water and a six-pack of beer–only thinking afterwards about how odd it was that she wasn’t carded. She must look older. Experienced. A grown woman who could hold the interest of a really experienced older man like Spike. She noted the phone number of the pizza place–not open yet–for later.

There was no place to get any blood.

Walking back in the nearly-noontime sun, she carried her purchases in one hand and licked a popsicle in the other, tossing the orange-stained stick away as she turned in at the gravel parking lot.

She let herself in, closing the door quickly to keep the chilled air inside. She put the heavy bag down quietly. Spike didn’t stir.

He’d kicked off the sheet, and was stretched, pale and naked, diagonally across the bed, his arms wrapped around the pillow where his face was buried.

He had, as he’d probably call it himself, a nice little bum. Switching on the light over the table, Buffy looked at him. She hadn’t asked to get into this situation, but now … now she couldn’t help the sort of greedy fascinated satisfaction that welled up around being in possession of such a virile … lover. (Someone you slept with repeatedly, whether you loved them or not, was a lover, this she was pretty sure of, though there was no dictionary handy.) She wasn’t going to get tired of sex with Spike, not any time soon. As piggy and irritating as he was on his feet with his clothes on, he was something else naked and lying down. There was nothing he’d done to her she didn’t like. Some of it was, yeah, weird at first … but there was no bad.

She hadn’t realized before how much she was going to like fucking. How necessary it was going to be. Now it was hard to believe she’d made do with just her hand all summer. Of course, she’d been sad all that time, which didn’t make her less horny–she needed to come most nights before she could fall asleep, despite how hot and sticky it was the un-airconditioned apartment. But the sour whirl of regrets she’d contended with since leaving home kept down any other kinds of feelings, and in the weeks before Spike turned up, she’d just been numb.

Numb was over with now.

Spike groaned, and rolled over. She thought he must be waking, but once on his back he lay still, and when she crept closer, she could see his eyes moving back and forth beneath the lids. He groaned again, his features gathered in a grimace.

“Hey.” She put a hand out, touched his shoulder. He sprang up with a cry, but seeing her, the fear dispersed into a self-conscious smile.

“Thanks for gettin’ me out of that.”

She wondered if he’d want her to ask about the dream, but decided not. Taking her hand, he tugged her down beside him and kissed her. “You taste like ice lollies. Don’t suppose you brought me one.”

“It would’ve melted. It was kind of a long walk. I’m all sweaty and yick.”

“I like you in a lather.” As if to prove it, he raised her arm and pressed his lips into the moist pit, licking the soft stubbly skin. She giggled and tried to pull away, but he held her down. “Let me.”

She’d never really thought of her arm pit as a very exciting place, but in a few moments he had her writhing. He reached up her skirt, his fingers tangling in the elastic of her panties. She kicked off her sandals, pushed the panties down.

Spike slid off onto the floor, kneeling between her thighs.

“Ask for it, Slayer.”

“Ask for what?” Prodded his shoulder with her bare foot.

“Can smell how wet you are. Been thinkin’ of me.”

“Yes.”

“Ask.”

“I want your mouth on me.”

“Where?”

She rolled her eyes. “You know, I’m not going to be one of those girls who talks dirty. That’s really just going to have to stay your department.”

“You like it. When I talk about your twitchy little cunny. Gets you all randy.”

“Yeah … but I’m not gonna say stuff.”

“You will sooner or later. Lookin’ forward to it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You want me to lick you out? Gonna hump my mouth ’til you get off? That it, Miss Anne?”

He moved to bury his head between her thighs, but a flicker of misgiving made her twist out of the way. “Wait a minute.”

“What?”

She wriggled forward to hold him, cool and smooth, between her knees. Now they were face to face. “There’s time, right?”

“Stuck in here all day.” His expression was puzzled, a little suspicious.

“What would you like us to do?”

“Thought I was gonna lick out your pretty cunt.”

“Is there something you’d like from me?” Goose-flesh rose up on her arms as she spoke. “If there’s anything you want … want to teach me … or do with me … we can.”

Spike’s eyes lit with surprise. He chuckled, tracing his fingers down her flanks. “What brought this on?”

“I just … I’m not really a totally awful selfish person.”

“Who said you were?”

“I don’t want to be.”

“Made it up to me already, for leavin’ me shackled up the other day. That’s over with.”

“I hope it is. Only ….”

“You think I don’t like going down on you? Can you really be that silly?”

“No. I just don’t want you to think that I think you’re always supposed to … to you know ….”

“What? Service you like the cunt-struck fool I am?”

She blushed. “I don’t want to act like I think I’m better than you.”

He gave her a long solemn look. “Slayer, you are better than me.”

Oh God, she thought, if we go there, we’ll never get back to this. “You’re deliberately not understanding! I mean–when we’re in bed … I want to be as good for you as you are for me.”

He showed her an off-kilter smile. “You mean you’re worried that you’re not suckin’ my cock as much as you should be.”

The blush turned into a burn. “Okay, you know, we can stop this chat any time. I think I’ve made my point.”

“Can have at me any time you like.” He said, tumbling her back and pushing up her knees. “An’ that’s my point. So yeah, end of chat.”

***

When she reminded him later, that she was willing to do something he wanted, she expected him to describe something perverse. Super-kinky. Maybe something humiliating for her. Or painful. She was prepared, if not to just completely give in, to negotiate. Depending on what it was. The secret desire of this old and jaded vampire.

He regarded her with an expression she couldn’t read. She began to be nervous.

“Just want you to look at me while we fuck.”

“You mean like I just did? Twice?” He’d made her forget her bones. She was boneless. Filet of Buffy. And he looked pretty well boned too. They’d boned each other’s bones out. Hee.

“You’re a little imp when you laugh.”

“I’m not laughing at you. You know that right?”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“I just meant–is that all? That you want? Because ….”

“Like to see that you like it. Kiss me while we do it, that’s good too. Hold onto me a while afterwards.”

“Uh … like I am right now?”

“Yeah. Aren’t we getting along?”

“Yes, but ….”

“What’re you fishin’ for? You want to be tied up? Be called filthy names? Maybe you’d like me to fuck you in the ass while you pretend you’re afraid you can’t take it?”

“Is that what you want?”

“We’ll get around to everything, if we stick to it. But what I like best is just–“

“For me to look at you. Like I just did. Like I am.”

“You wouldn’t at first, would you? Blotted out my face, an’ then your own. But you’re over that now.”

“I am.”

He passed a finger down her nose, brushed her lips. “Know what surprised me, ’bout you?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Turns out you’re just the opposite of what I imagined you’d be. You’re easy.”

“What?”

“Easy to get you hot. Easy to make you come. Don’t frown, that’s a wonder.” He brought her hand to his mouth, bit gently on her fingertips.

“I don’t like easy.“

“Loose.”

“Loose! Is worse!”

“You’re not hearin‘ me. Tellin’ you you’re a treat. Not difficult to please. I look at you, touch you, an’ you’re all excited.”

“Well … okay. Yeah. Is that … so mysterious?”

“Fierce an’ moody little queenie that you are, I never expected that.”

It wasn’t until she got up to go to the bathroom, that it occurred to her that Spike was telling her something about his experience … that maybe he might not have realized he was revealing.

Maybe the sex with Drusilla wasn’t always so satisfying. Maybe Drusilla was hard to please, and frustrating. Maybe the amazingness of the sex with her was really about her, and not just about sex. Or even sex with a slayer.

She regarded herself in the mirror, all wild hair and love bites and reddened cheeks. Me. He gets off on me. On me getting off on him.

Up until then, she’d just assumed that Spike was like that all the time.

Which, even though the thought of him doing that with Drusilla was all yuck, was still … a very interesting revelation.

***

“You really like cock, Slayer. That’s admirable.”

I do, she thought. It is.

Spike sighed. He was splayed on his back like a sated tiger, and she was splayed on top of him, giving him what he called a good view, and convenient access to her pussy, which he caressed with wet languid fingers as she played her tongue and lips and teeth on him. A drop of liquid oozed from the tip. She licked it up, took the spongy velvety head again into her mouth.

“No rush. Take your time. I’m all right for a bit.”

He’d come twice in the last hour and he was hard again. It could make a girl dizzy. It made a girl–her–feel stupidly lucky, because she’d come a whole bunch of times and wasn’t tired yet. With some other guy she might feel like her desire, her capacity, was too much, but Spike was right there with it. Spike had what she needed.

The crazy sexual potency was a vampire trait. Angel would’ve been the same way, if they’d had time to …. She shoved the thought away. Couldn’t keep dragging Angel into every single experience she had. And she wasn’t going to dwell on what Spike said about her craving vampires. Just because she’d slept with two vampires … and with no real live guys at all … didn’t mean she had a thing. It was just how life was unfolding, that’s all. She wasn’t going to obsess. That way lay madness.

Whereas in front of her lay–stood, actually–Spike’s erection, all glistening with her saliva.

He imparted some suggestions about what would feel good, about what she might like to try.

After a while though, it started to sound, like he knew a lot about sucking guys off.

She craned around at him. “You’ve done this.”

He raised his head to make eyes at her. “Well, yeah.”

“Is there a good story to this? Because I wouldn’t mind hearing a good sexy story about you. As long as it doesn’t involve brutality or–“

“Leave it alone, Slayer. I’ve sucked cock, took it up the arse, done all sorts. All you need to know. Let’s have your sweet tongue back to work.”

“Where was Dru while you were doing … this?”

“Sometimes she was there an’ sometimes she wasn’t.”

“Did you do it a lot?”

“Why?”

“It’s just … kind of exciting. To think of you like that.”

“Oh, is it?”

“Yeah. I don’t know why. I never … really thought about that kind of thing before.”

“Always liked it all right, but it’s a nice cunny such as yours I think of when I let my mind wander.” He flexed his fingers inside her, his thumb bearing down on her clit so she gave a little jump. “Go on and finish me, there’s a good girl.”

Afterwards, when she lay in his arms, he said, “Of course it was Angelus who first put me on my knees.”

“What?” The name, when Spike said it, always sent a quiver through her. She raised her head.

“Angelus taught me to service him. Angelus fucked me in the arse to teach me my place. Me an’ Dru both were pretty toys to him, for a long time.”

She sat up. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because it’s–“

“Not nice? Well no, sometimes it wasn’t. But other times it was very nice indeed.”

“I wasn’t going to say nice. I was going to say it’s hostile.”

“Hostile.”

“You keep doing that. Prodding at me whenever we start to have a good time. Like you don’t want us to get along.”

Spike rolled over, punched the pillow. “We’re each other’s natural prey. What’s unnatural, is us billing an’ cooing in bed together.”

“We are not billing and cooing. Besides, you put an awful lot of energy into seducing me if that’s how you feel. And you claim lots of vamps and slayers have done it.”

“Done it yeah, but then they have it out to the death after. That’s proper.”

“You have a soul. I guess that’s not natural either, but it’s the only reason I’m here with you at all.”

“I know it.”

“And you still wish you didn’t. You think I don’t have a problem with that? But we made plans, right? You’re not backing out, are you? We’ve got an arrangement.”

He squinted at her. “Ah, Slayer. When you decide a thing, you decide it.”

Now she was the one who thumped the pillow. Why did they keep having to get so heavy? She liked it when she could just course along on a sex high, let her skin and muscles do the thinking, be in the now. But he wouldn’t let her. “I have to do something. We have to do something. We agreed.”

“We did, yeah.”

“So why do you keep trying to piss me off? Didn’t I just show you a very nice time?”

“Not tryin’ to piss you off. An’ yeah, you did. But can’t turn myself off, can I? Can’t stop bein’ myself. Bloody soul makes it all more so.”

She was on the verge of saying she wouldn’t sleep with him anymore if he couldn’t keep a lid on the uncomfortable truths, but she realized that it was a threat she wouldn’t carry out. Good sex, now she had it, felt as necessary as food and showers; punishing him by withholding it would be too hard. She couldn’t be with Spike and keep her hands off him. He’d have to make her angry enough to leave him altogether. Which she doubted he’d do. He needed her companionship more than she needed his.

But she needed his. The idea of separation shot a bolt of preemptive loneliness through her. She’d been so lonely before he turned up. Even if she’d had anyone to talk to … she could never tell a new acquaintance the truth about who she was, what she’d done, lost, run away from. But he already knew, and understood.

Getting along with him was about more than sex.

“I guess we both keep having to make our peace with this. It doesn’t really stay made, does it?”

“An’ it won’t, long as we’re both so out of our elements.”

“Because, like you said, it’s not really … natural.”

“Look at you, all insightful.”

“Am I? I suppose.”

“Fucking agrees with you. Tunes you up.” Spike turned back to her with a rueful smile. “Not tryin’ to drive you off, you know.”

He put out a caressing hand. When he stroked her hair, she shivered, with animal pleasure, and a kind of reluctant gratitude.

“So … you and Angel.”

“You think you know all about Angelus–you think you know the real him. Just can’t help pointin’ out that I can say the same, an’ with more to go on.”

” … okay. I also get that it bugs you that I feel about him … stuff I’m not going to feel about you.”

He paused before he answered, his gaze disconnected from hers. “Manner of speakin’.”

“… don’t fall for me, Spike. If we fall for each other, we won’t be able to do this. We’re good together, as long as we … don’t get sloppy.”

“Fall for you? Couldn’t happen, pet. You keep a look-out over your own heart, if you’re worried.”

She opened her mouth to tell him there was no way she’d ever be in love with him, but decided there was no need to say it. It would fall into her own category of hostile remarks. And he knew, he knew full well, that he was never going to get that from her.

He wouldn’t want it. It wasn’t that long ago that he’d nearly punched her ticket, just for kissing him on the mouth ….

***

The knock on the door made her jump straight out of a doze to her feet, heart hammering.

But it was only the maid, wanting to make up the room. Buffy was going to send her away, but Spike said, “Let her come. Could use fresh sheets.”

There was a deep overhang outside, with old metal porch chairs lined up affording a view of the gravel-strewn parking lot. Sprawled in one, drinking a beer, squinting against the bright reflection of the late afternoon sun off a nearby windshield, Spike might’ve been a real live man, taking his ease in the shade on a hot day. Except for the exceptional paleness of his bare chest, and his bare feet emerging from the dark blue jeans.

The air was thick and hot, and smelled like weeds and motor oil. Wandering up and down in the shadow of the overhang, walking off that jolt of adrenaline, she unwrapped one of the sandwiches she’d bought that morning and began to eat. Hunger roared up to meet the first bite.

On her third pass, Spike pulled her down onto his knee. She’d put her dress on, but wore nothing underneath. She was all wet, her juices soaking into his jeans, but she knew he liked that. She smelled her own sex, and fresh sweat, drying now she’d calmed down. It felt silly, to worry that she was going to be caught. Who’d find her, all the way out here?

Spike smelled like sex too, mostly hers.

“Why don’t vampires smell bad?”

“Some do.”

“Most don’t. Believe me, I’d notice. The ones that do, it’s like they’ve deliberately rolled around in something nasty. You never seem to sweat, even when we … and you barely smell like anything. Even your upside-down places.”

He laughed. “My upside-down places? What a coy maid you are.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Oh, I do. An’ someday I’ll teach you to say what you mean. As for your question, dunno. We can smell each other well enough, but then vamps can smell everything. Ought to smell dead, you’d think.” He pulled her closer, his arms going around her waist, and took a deep breath of her. “You, on t’other hand, have a lovely funk when you’re all het up.”

The urge to contradict him, to tell him that was gross, had become vestigial; she let it pass.

“I also don’t get why you have no pulse and yet you get erections. How does that work?”

“Nary a clue, but would be a good deal duller if it was other way ’round.” He offered her the beer. She took a polite sip. Music poured from the open windows of a passing car; Spike jogged her to the beat until it was gone. When he stopped she continued to wriggle on his leg.

“Oh ho. You greedy little thing. That’s it. Work yourself off. Let me see you. God, you’re a sublime bitch. All on fire for it. That’s it. That’s it. Sweet little cunt.”

Aware that the maid might come out at any moment and see her, or that anyone might be watching her from one of the parked cars, or the other rooms, she writhed harder, her toes curling against the cement floor, all her muscles tensing, urging towards release. Spike watched her intently, as if she was giving him a lesson that required considerable attention, his lip curled in a half-smile. He brought her hand to the bulge in his lap; she cupped and squeezed it and shuddered and came, sucking her lip, repressing a cry. The maid emerged; Spike sprang up, waltzing her through the door, slamming it behind her. The next moment she was pressed up against it by the full force of his rippling body, all muscle and supernatural strength despite its slenderness. Her toes caught on the bunched denim of his jeans, as he lifted her thighs, opening her to his jutting cock. She slid down on it with a hiss and a sigh–she was sore, but it felt so so good to be filled up again, pressure once more applied to the unstanchable itch. Her back sawed up and down the door, her breath sawed in and out in big gulps, as he fucked up into her. She hung on his shoulders, eyes screwed shut, everything flexing and clenching around him. Spike’s face was in her hair, in her neck. She heard herself babbling, plaintive mewing pleading nonsense. Her body shook in a long rushing spasm; she hit her head against the door, and for a moment saw stars even as he went on stroking hard, up and in, up and in, up and in, grinding against her clit, uhn uhn uhn.

When she could see again it was his game-face that came into focus. Eyes bright orange in the room’s dark, the grinning fangs below registering like an afterimage following a bright flash. When their eyes met, he went for her neck, mouth burrowing through hair, finding skin. She shuddered, grabbing for the back of his neck.

“Spike–no.”

He froze. It was only then, pinned by his hardness, everything completely still except for her racketing heart, that she heard her words’ echo.

She’d immobilized him with nothing but a whisper.

“Want to taste you.”

“Please, no. Not that.”

He stood transfixed for another few seconds that stretched into an unknowable distance as she held her breath. Then, gathering himself, he began again slowly to fuck. Astonishment bloomed through her, a hot flush. She drew his face around, found his mouth with hers. She’d kissed Angel’s fang-face, but not deep like this, recognition, reward. Aware of the sharp cutting fangs so close, risking them at any event with her tongue. The lips were leathery, taut, but went soft under hers with the transforming crunch she felt against her cheek. He pressed back into her kiss, a low needful keening in his throat. She made sure she wasn’t the one to break it.

A little while later, when he set her down and she clung dizzily to his shoulders, finding her balance again, he murmured, “You angry at me, Slayer?”

“No.” She’d left that type of hot indignation with him behind, she didn’t know when. On her unsteady way across the room, she switched on a lamp, then caught herself on the bathroom doorjamb. She was wobbly as a toddler.

Wow.

“It’ll be dark soon,” she said, “we’ll get you some blood.”

“Yeah. Wasn’t … wasn’t just to feed, what I wanted.”

” … I know.” Glancing back, she caught his soft blue look, a look that didn’t entirely conceal a yellow yearning glint.

***

“I guess we’re going back to the city?” They were in the car, the windows rolled down all around, the darkening sky overhead still shot through with pink.

“Don’t have to. Could stay another night.”

“What, more frantic noisy sex in a stinky anonymous motel room? I don’t know if I could stand it.”

“You think it stinks, ought to smell it with my sniffer. Leastways by now we’ve got it smellin’ like you, mostly.”

“I don’t even know the name of this place.” She inhaled the soft dark air, redolent of stirring leaves and the more distant tang of the ocean. “I like that.” She laid an arm along the window edge, rested her head on it. The wind took her hair. As they got closer to the shore, traffic picked up. They were caught in a tangle of expensive foreign cars, slowed to a creep. “I am getting kind of sore down there, though. You’re going to have to be gentle with me, for a while.”

“You’re makin’ me all rampant, just thinkin’ of how quiet an’ easy I can make it for you. Will slip into your gossamer cunny smooth as glass. Your pleasure’ll just flutter on you like a butterfly.”

Oh God. Her new panties were already wet. Better change the subject.

“Where’d all these cars come from?”

“If I told you, you’d know where we are.”

“No no. Don’t do that. Let’s stay lost.”

The people in the next car were listening to some kind of smoky late-night jazz, like she’d heard in old black and white movies that she’d watch sometimes when she came in from patrolling and couldn’t get to sleep. She gave herself to it now, and to the play of fresh air on her face, letting her eyelids droop.

“Where are we going to get blood.”

“I know where.”

“Please tell me you’re not going to drain somebody’s dog in somebody’s back yard.”

He didn’t answer. She was almost dozing, just minimally aware of their starts and stops. Until they turned, and speeded up. When they stopped, she saw what might’ve been a low rambling shack of unpainted weathered grey boards, set amongst marshy reeds, except that there was a beer sign in one of its dark windows, and some vehicles parked around it–mostly, she noticed, pick-ups and older domestic cars. None of the fancy kind they’d gotten in among before.

“They sell blood here?”

“In a manner of speakin’. So I’m told.”

“So this is Willie’s-By-The-Sea?”

“Not quite. You could just wait in the car.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but then waiting out here in the soft scented air, amidst the rustle of the reeds, didn’t seem like a bad idea, compared to going in and standing around, while Spike made his purchase, being stared at by dubious characters.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll play the radio.”

“You won’t.” He snatched the keys out of the ignition. “Run down the battery, that’s no joke.”

“Okay, okay. Go. Hurry up. I want to get dinner.”

She stretched out on the car’s long black hood, to gaze up at the stars. They appeared, at first one by one, and then as her eyes adjusted and her concentration deepened, more and more, a twinkling field. The marsh behind the bar gave off the chig chig chig of insects; from inside she heards The Allman Brothers playing out of tinny speakers. That and the breeze lulled her for long minutes together, so she was content in her body, relaxed against the warm metal, aware of her easy breaths of the salty air, of her pleasant recessive arousal.

For the first time since leaving Sunnydale, she was feeling free.

When five long songs had played out, the Allmans turning into Lynyrd Skynyrd, Spike still wasn’t back. Her stomach was growling now.

How long could it take to buy a bottle of blood? She slid off the car hood.

It was dark inside, the only light coming from the beer signs, none of which seemed to be working right, flickering or half-dead, supplemented only by a few light bulbs smeared with black paint. The stagnant air smelled of beer and also like a butcher shop. Her senses immediately pinged the presence of vampires. The booths against the wall were mostly occupied by shadowed couples, hugged together as if they were whispering secrets. She glanced around, searching for the white shock of Spike’s hair that made him visible even in near total darkness. She didn’t spot him.

Then a shriek of girlish laughter drew her attention. There were more booths tucked off to the other side, and in the one furthest away from the light, and the door, a young woman was giggling, and being hushed. A stray whispered syllable reached her–pet. She started forward.

“Spike? What’s going on?”

She felt and heard, rather than saw, the girl move; her eye-whites gave off a low gleam for a second as she rose, then Buffy saw Spike’s pale hair like a lick of phosphorescence in the cave of dark.

“Looks like you have another taker,” the girl said, lumbering out of the booth. “Bye bye, Sugar-tooth. That was fun.” She sounded drunk and pleased with herself, and stumbled against Buffy as she tried to pass. Steadying her, Buffy realized the girl had a hand clapped to her throat. She spun out of the way, giggling again, and disappeared.

“What the hell is going on here?”

“Keep your voice down, not the place for you to be mixin’ it up. Anyhow, I’m done. Let’s go.” He grasped her elbow to draw her towards the door. She wrenched free.

“What did you do to that girl? I have to see if she’s all right.”

“She’s fine. She’s right where she wants to be. Don’t you get it?” Spike blocked her, steering her bodily towards the exit. “Out.”

He was able to make himself strangely large while she was trying to dodge him. Before he hustled her outside she noticed a few pairs of yellow eyes in the murky gloaming, watching the progress of her exit. Then the door slammed and when she turned, the winking lights she saw were fireflies in the weeds.

“Let go of me. What the hell was that?”

“That was a consensual barter of goods’n’services ‘tween consenting adults. Get in the car. We’ll get you fed next.”

“What? You bit that girl–“

“You really still so naive, Slayer? Do you really not know this goes on all over? She wanted it. That’s why she was there. I feed, she gets her big thrill. Both got what we come for.”

“No. I didn’t know.”

“Well, you live an’ learn.” He was in the car now, starting the engine. She climbed in slowly. He might as well have picked her up by her ankles and shaken her around.

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s people who get off on bein’ bitten. Makes ’em feel light, high. Sometimes it’s mixed up with sex, an’ sometimes not. But they like it, an’ they come to crave it, an’ they’re willin’ to pay for it.”

“Wait a minute–she gave you money?”

“Which I will now use to treat you to dinner.”

“Stop. Stop the car!” She had the door open and jumped out while the car was still moving, stumbling, skinning a knee against the warm blacktop. They were on a narrow stretch of marshy road, and when Spike cut the engine, there was nothing to hear but that chig chig chig.

She went around to his side. “You can’t do that. Don’t you know you can’t do that?”

“She asked me to. Didn’t hurt her.” He swung his legs out and gazed impatiently up at her in the faint moonlight, elbows propped on his knees. “Could’ve snuck into the local hospital an’ stole, would you’ve preferred that?”

“You shouldn’t be drinking human blood anymore.”

“Says who?”

“In the city, you were–“

“You think that wasn’t human because it came in a neat bottle? Silly girl.”

“It’s wrong. Why can’t you drink animal blood?”

“Listen to you–you’re not even a vegetarian.”

“I don’t eat people!”

“An’ neither do I, anymore. Not so’s they die. Not so’s they’re hurt. Nor terrified, though that’s when they taste best. Makin’ my compromises, aren’t I?”

“As compromises go, it doesn’t feel very compromisey to me!”

“Do you think that your precious huggybear of a boyfriend back in Sunnyhell was subsisting on animal blood? Happen to know he was not. He bought it, stead of stealin’ it, an’ wouldn’t feed off anyone alive ’cause he thought that’d make him fall off the wagon. That’s straight from the blood-flecked lips of Angelus, by the way. Told me an’ Dru the whole tale of what he called his Degradation by Soul An’ Slayer.”

“I don’t believe you.” She turned her head away, hoping to hide her blush, hoping to hide the sullen fact that she did believe him. The way Angel had looked at her in the band room in the school, when he came back to himself in the midst of their kiss … the revulsion with which he’d pushed her away … she had no choice but to believe it.

” … I keep the worst of the demon down, Slayer. Keep it down best I can, but I won’t starve. I won’t live on rats an’ filth. Got my self-respect.”

“Self-respect!”

“Can’t feed a wolf on bloody cabbage. Soul or no, got my hunger to assuage. My strength to keep up.”

“God, Spike. You’re not a wolf, you’re a–“

“Not a man. That’s what you’re makin’ your ongoing efforts at peace with, remember?” Grasping her wrist, he pulled her down suddenly into his lap. She slapped at him, pulled away.

“Not my problem if you’re too childish to take in the truth.”

“Is this because I wouldn’t let you bite me before?”

“No. Was because I was hungry. Just like you are, right now.”

Her stomach was still growling; she willed it to be quiet.

Spike stood up and stretched. When he came close to her, she stood her ground.

“That girl back there, she walked up to me. She paid her money, an’ got satisfaction good as she gave. No crime to feedin’ the hungry, is there?”

She heard it again, the young woman’s happy giggling. She’d called him Sugar-tooth. She’d looked and sounded so satisfied.

Jeez. Every time I think I’ve seen it all ….

“Just because she asked for it doesn’t mean it’s for the good! Junkies ask for heroin!”

“Takin’ a pint out of a girl’s nothing like shootin’ her up. She wasn’t using anything, either. I’d have tasted it.”

“I still think it’s wrong.”

Spike’s eyes gleamed in the moonlight. “Well now, Miss Anne, what’s it to be? Shall I send you home at last, where you belong? Or will you stay with your wolf, knowin’ he is a wolf, an’ will never wholly be tamed?”

“Wolves mate for life.” The words slipped out past her intention–she’d meant to scold him for bringing up home again like a broken record. She winced, but it was too late.

His eyes flared yellow. “You feelin’ a little sorry you refused me earlier?”

“I am not.” She shivered, reliving that moment when he’d fanged out, and how she’d been able to stay him with a whisper.

His self-control at her bidding was … impressive. A burning flush ran through her. She forced herself not to squirm. “Look. If–if–if you’ll promise to stick to animal blood, which you will purchase, then … I’ll let you bite me. At an interval to be determined later, but not exceeding, uh–” She touched her neck, the sharp stinging pressure of his bite back in the city uneasily recurring, “–maybe once a week. Twice at the most.”

Spike cocked his head and stared at her, a stare that went on past the point of comfort. With a calm shrug, he said “No thanks.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Spike–“

“When I bite you, Miss Anne, there won’t be any poncy haggling about it, no bargains an’ compromises. It won’t be about me needin’ a pint to keep my strength up, either. When I next taste you it’ll be for the real reason, that you want it, which you know right well though you’re pretendin’ you don’t. Meanwhile, I’ll wait. Expect it won’t be long.”

Spike’s head spun back off her snapping fist. She couldn’t answer his words, his smug smokey leer, with anything but a blow. She went into him sharp and hard, left, right, right, and a kick that brought him low. He was up at once, they circled, silent, watching each other. Fuck you, Spike, fuck you. She couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. Any more than she could bring herself to say out loud that she was buying his arguments.

Of course, if she was still a good slayer, she wouldn’t be putting up with any of this. If she was a good slayer she’d never have left her post, never hooked up with a vampire again. She’d be alone in her narrow solitary bed, answering to her mother, answering to Giles. But the Buffy who’d been that pure and simple was long gone.

She was used to Spike now. She was … let’s not call it fond …. Caught up. She was caught up with him, caught up in him. He was all there was between her and complete solitude, celibacy, walking as a stranger in the world, with no one to tell her secret to.

After he got in a jab to the body that made her gasp, she spun an elbow into his face with a crunch that sent him down. She pinned him with one knee to the chest.

Spike dropped his fists, and the gold from his eyes. His blue ones were fixed on hers, as the seconds slipped by. The argument, the slugging, his expression, all had her razzed up past eleven. She knew he knew it, too.

She was in too deep. She couldn’t walk away.

Spike’s hand slid up her leg, cool and ghostly. “Feel better?”

“I’m gonna be watching you. This is not over.”

“Like you just said, pet, you an’ me, we’re for the long haul.” He sat up, caught her shoulders to keep her close. “Give us a kiss now?”

She thought, You don’t deserve to be kissed, but her mouth was already opening against his.

***

They fucked, hot and frantic and sloppy, in the back seat. Spike gnawed at her neck with blunt teeth as he rammed into her, rocking the car on its shocks; she pulled his hair and scratched and came hard twice before he finished, seizing up with a harsh prolonged groan. When they’d both collapsed into a boneless goo, an SUV was approaching, its bright beams lighting up the interior of Spike’s car as it passed at rubbernecker speed.

Buffy thumped him. “Get up. We can’t stay here. It’s almost morning.” When she shoved him he didn’t move on his own, just toppled off onto the floor, laughing soundlessly like he was stoned.

“… magical cunny … can shag a fellow out of his senses ….”

She tugged at his arm. “C’mon. The sky is getting pink–you have to drive us back to the motel.”

Logy and sloe-eyed, Spike did up his fly and poured himself into the front seat. While she pulled herself together and scrambled after, he sat motionless, except for his shoulders still shaking with mirth.

“Earth to Spike?”

“You’re something else, Miss Anne. You’ve got talents an’ abilities ….”

“Start the car. Come on.”

He turned with a robotic slowness, to look at her. His smile was goofy. He waggled his tongue at her, then pulled her in, his fingers in the tangle of her hair, for a probing, possessive kiss.

She probed and possessed too, for a few seconds, then pushed him back. “Are you high? Spike–it’s time–“

“All sweet an’ spoony too, you are, after a good bout.” His voice was teasing, velvety. Like there was all the time in the world.

She gave him a sharp prod. “I just prefer you don’t ignite, okay, since I don’t know how to drive this car. When we’re in out of the light, I’ll be sweet.”

“Will you?”

The engine turned over with a roar. They shot forward.

She grabbed the dashboard. “Spike, jeez!” Of course there were no seatbelts.

“Will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Be sweet to me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You just said you would. Were you fibbing?” Doing sixty on the narrow leafy street, he gunned around a corner onto the main drag and went even faster. There was little traffic–the whole town was mostly still asleep.

“I … no. Just now … was really … really …” She didn’t know how to describe what sex was like with him. It kept getting more and more–more. It wasn’t just physical. Every time they came together, she became less and less certain that he was alien to her. Less and less certain that being with him was a wrong turn, an anomaly. “But the sun is coming up.”

“Still got time to get you fed.” He swerved off into a McDonald’s drive-thru lane. Buffy listened with half an ear as he ordered an enormous amount of food and coffee; she was keeping an eye on the gradually lightening sky, and allowing herself, while his attention was elsewhere, to reverberate with the after-effects of her resounding orgasms. No wonder he was acting all spazzy–she doubted she’d be able to walk any time soon. When they got back to the motel she just might have to wriggle on her belly from the car to the room. She’d never known she could feel this way. Never known how much she’d need to.

Handing her the fragrant bags, he pulled out again at whiplash speed.

“How?”

“How huh?”

Laughing, Spike snapped his fingers under her nose. “Pay attention, Slayer.”

She couldn’t wait, and was already inspecting his purchases, cramming hot hash browns into her mouth with her left hand while fumbling the wrapper off an egg sandwich with her right.

“How will you be sweet to me?”

“”I … I don’t know.”

“You’ll think of something, I expect.”

She nodded, mouth full.

The sandwich went flying out the window when he screeched into the parking spot in front of their door.

“Hey!”

“Miss Anne.”

“Darn! I was eating that! There better be another one of those, with the biscuit.” She rooted around in the bag.

“Miss Anne.”

“You can stop calling me that anytime.”

“Miss–“

“Okay.” When she gave him her attention, she found that Spike was regarding her with a wholly serious, intent expression. She struggled to match it, even as she was still distracted by the burgeoning dawn, and her own famished appetite.

“I’m not like him. You got that now, yeah?”

“Like–oh.” She could’ve told him that now he was the one who was being all obsessive about Angel. But yeah, they’d been talking about him just a little while ago, before their wild fuck that had practically erased her mind. A little while ago, when she’d told him that she was going to keep an eye on him.

Right. Because it ISN’T over.

“I get it. So?”

“So, want to know you remember that.”

“Uh, yeah. I do. Let’s go inside. I want to drink this coffee while it’s hot.”

He squeezed her arm. “‘Cause I said I’d look after you. An’ I keep my promises, yeah? He didn’t treat you right, but I’m not like him.”

“You can maybe let this go now.”

“Right. Forget him. He’s gone.” Spike’s solemnity cracked, and he laughed again as he got out of the car, came around and grabbed the bags of food. It was a laugh that got her giggling too. He winked at her over his shoulder as they went inside.

“Gone gone gone. S’just Spike an’ the Slayer now. Just you an’ me.”

***

Against the low steady hum of the air conditioning unit, and the baffle of the drawn drapes, Buffy could feel the stifling heat and stark light of the rising morning outside. She’d taken a long shower, expecting Spike to join her, but when she was done and opened the door to let the steam escape, she caught him at the door of the room, handing out money and accepting a paper bag from someone on the other side.

Now he was in the shower. She snooped–whoever it was had brought a filled ice bucket, a bottle of Jack Daniels, and a couple cold Diet Cokes from the machine. She sipped one while her wet hair dripped down her wet breasts, and the TV chattered, then opened the bottle of whiskey and swallowed one burning mouthful.

Miss Anne Winters, this is your life. She wouldn’t use her real name anymore. While they traveled, and wherever they ended up. In case they were looking for her. She’d be someone else from now. The Freelance, Under-The-Radar Slayer with the Vampire Consigliere.

Yeah. She smiled at that. Never mind that she wasn’t sure how to pronounce consigliere, she didn’t think Spike would want to be called that anyhow, so she’d keep it to herself.

It struck her how something like a hot shower, a nap, a fuck, a car trip, could almost wipe the slate. Whatever happened before it receded so quickly she had to make an effort to keep up with the continuity. She’d been outraged at Spike. She’d promised him their argument wasn’t over. And before that … back in the city … back in the remote past of the day-before-yesterday … so much had happened. Already she was starting to run it all together. Elide it. She hadn’t seen or talked to anyone else in such a long time. She’d let him become her world. So being angry at him, or remembering the limits she set on him–she’d never feel with him the way she did with Angel–became just another part of the washy stream of sensations.

Maybe this is what it’s like for grown-ups. Everything runs together? It was the kind of question she might once have asked her mom … except that before right now, she didn’t think she’d ever have thought to ask it. Does this mean I’m a grown-up now? She wouldn’t ask Spike. First of all, he’d laugh at her. Second of all, what did he know about being a grown-up? And third of all … she suspected if you had to ask, the answer was no.

She shut off the television, and toweled at her hair.

Spike appeared in the bathroom doorway, wet and naked.

“We should go back to the city tonight,” she said. “Get started with our plans.”

“Plans, right. Was just thinkin’ that myself. Hit the road.”

He was looking at her with a hungry intensity. She came up to him, aware of his nudity, and her license to take hold of him, even as she folded her hands behind her back.

“We still have to talk.”

“Got plenty of time to talk. Can talk in the car.”

In the car. Right. The drive back to the city would take three hours. And then there would be all those nights in the car on the way down to Mexico. Hours and hours to argue with him. She’d get him to agree, eventually, to quit human blood. She’d find the reasoning that would make him really see.

He touched her breast, curled his hand around it. Instantly, her nipple went warm and hard, standing up against his palm. “You little cunt,” he whispered, his smile wicked, gloating, “you’re really mine now, aren’t you? In heat for me. All I’ve got to do is touch you, an’ there you are.”

Instead of protesting and pushing him off, she seized one of his nipples and gave it a sharp pinch. “Like you could walk away.”

Spike’s eyes went hazy, his lips parted. Encouraged, she pinched again, harder, leaning into him, opening her teeth against his shoulder. He shuddered, and now his cock was hardening against her belly. Gnawing at the sinews of his neck, she backed him up against the wall.

She went up on tiptoe so she could whisper in turn to him. “I think you’ve got it backwards,” she whispered. “You’re my dog. Isn’t that right, Spike? You just think about me, about my touch, and you’re all crazy for it.”

He peeled her hand away, squeezing a gasp out of her. “I’m no one’s bloody dog.”

“But feel how hard you get when I say you are.”

“Bitch!”

“It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you, getting to be with the Slayer, right? You can’t believe how lucky you are.”

“Stop it.”

“You don’t even care anymore about getting rid of your soul–you just want me. Admit it.”

“When you admit how you’d cry without my cock.”

They tussled their way across the room, thumping at each other, not real punches, not a real fight, but struggling for the upper hand. Spike’s fingers went everywhere, taking possession; instead of defending her own body, she did the same, handling him as she liked, ungently. They spilled across the bed. He began to laugh again, calling her a bitch and a cunt in a tone that brought her out in answering giggles.

Once in a while … he could be fun.

They both gave way at once, subsiding into chuckles. His hands went slow and caressing on her flank, down her leg. They stilled, mutual concentration centered on his erection, on the parting of her thighs, and their spiraling desire.

He slid his hand between her legs, taking gentle hold of her congested sex, weighing it.

“This is it, yeah,” he whispered, “cock an’ cunt, the great mystery of things. Works even here, ‘twixt demon an’ slayer.” His murmur seemed to wrap them up in a warm contented cocoon.

Buffy wrapped a hand around his prick. “Yeah. This happens, and … we get all … and then it’s all screwy.” It makes everything that’s supposed to be one way feel another way. And that’s all I’m gonna think about that.

“Sometimes wish I had a reflection. Would like to watch us in a mirror.”

“That would be cool, but look.” She inched closer, up on her knees, throwing a leg across his body. Arching over him, so he could see, when he gathered her hair out of the way, past the points of her breasts and the slope of her belly, where she began to take him in. Just the proud head, enfolding it, squeezing it with the inner muscles before sinking down bit by bit and back up in a slow sweep. Spike sighed. Her long muscles trembled, skin hot, pebbling in the wake of his wandering hands.

“C’mere,” he whispered, sitting up, gathering her around him. “Let’s kiss you.”

“Kiss me.” Her hair fell over her eyes, so she could only feel him, the bulwark of his arms and chest, his long thighs beneath her ass, his mouth firm against hers. They rocked very slowly. Everything was as slow and syrupy as, in the car before, it had been frantic, tangy. “You feel huge this way,” she confided. “I’m all full. It’s good.”

She wondered if she’d have gotten to this point with Angel, if they’d had time. But she didn’t wonder for long. As when memory confronted her with thoughts of her friends, and her mother, and home, she pushed that away. The past was the past.

She thought of what he’d said, about the mystery. He was supposed to be her enemy, he still was really, but she’d come to rely on him. He’d simultaneously acquainted her with her own previously unroused appetites, and satisfied them. He’d shown her her own powers of satisfaction, which dizzied her to contemplate–how she could make him rampant, how she could roll him flat. She couldn’t imagine going back to her old girly, daughterly life anymore. This powerful male creature she could dominate and concede to, punch and pinch and handle, his cock and his muscles and his fresh mouth, his fresh remarks, were necessary now. It was necessary to have the freedom of him, the freedom of herself. They’d find some other hellmouth down south, she’d slay every night, and every night afterwards there would be this.

Spike was whispering into her hair, into her ear, dirty words that thrilled her like his cool breath against her neck. She rippled around him, beginning to pant, listening for the catch in his throat as he narrated what they were doing between sipping kisses.

“Slayer. Cunt. Hot slick cunny. So good. Fuck, Slayer. Fuck me.”

A memory flashed into her mind, of the time she’d emerged from a spell to find him at her throat. He’d been nearly as close to her then, just as intent, not for their pleasure but for her death. She’d never imagined then or any of the other times she’d fought him that they would ever come to this.

“Do you remember–” She didn’t mean to speak, bit the sentence off on a groan, buried her mouth against his neck, hoping he wouldn’t take it up.

“Remember every tussle we ever had? Every time I almost did for you? Course I do. Makes us hot, don’t it, Slayer?”

“It was different then. We were different.”

“Different, right.” He was holding her now, his hands splayed wide around her ribs, supporting her, restraining her from going faster. She shook her hair back, looked at him.

“You didn’t think of fucking me then.”

“Not exactly. Did you?”

“No. I only–” Again she stopped herself. There was nothing else to offer–she’d never hated him, he wasn’t scary or important enough for hatred, though she was pretty sure she had hated Drusilla. She didn’t love him, because there was no space in her for loving anyone but Angel, and that would never change.

“Didn’t know me,” he said, as if to dismiss her doubts. “That’s changed a bit now.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah … you think you know me now.”

“Not … not everything.” Even in the midst of an exquisite fuck, every bit of her lit up, she was trying to be fair to the truth. “But … more than … more than I used to.”

“You don’t know everythin’.”

“No. Oh God. Spike–there. Oh there. Oh–please. Please. Please.” They’d changed the rhythm somehow, she wasn’t sure if it was her or him, but suddenly the bulk of him rubbed her inside so she writhed.

“Beg. Yeah. Beg for my cock.”

She pressed her mouth to his to shut him up. They were moving now in short hard stabs, she was on the verge of exploding. Spike was rumbling, a choked triumphant laugh that made her want to hit him. Instead she worked to bring him to where she was, so he’d remember she wasn’t the only one who needed this.

Not the only one who was going off like fireworks.

“Don’t look so smug. This is me, my power. My body, my orgasm. Zums. As in more than one.”

“Right, because comin’ like you just did was old hat to you ‘fore we started up.”

Okay, he had her there. She’d have said she was doing fine with her own hand before, but she hadn’t realized. What she was going to be capable of. The heights she’d scale. With … with the right partner. “I’m maturing. I’m at the age where that happens.“

“Right.”

“Tonight, when we get back to New York.”

“Eh?”

“This is me changing the subject. Tonight, when we get back to New York. We’re going to find something big and horrid, and we’re going to kill it. We’re going to save some innocent lives. Where would we go for that, in Manhattan?”

“Know a place or two where evil lurks.”

“That’s what I want to do. Something large and statement-y, before we leave for Mexico.”

“Mexico. Right.”

“You didn’t forget about Mexico?”

“You just made me about forget my name, pet.”

***

Spike was asleep, one hand loosely curled against his chest. His cock in its thatch of pale brown curls lay across one thigh, similarly relaxed. He didn’t move, or breathe. He was handsome that way, his face free then of sneers and wickedness. She watched him for a few moments, feeling possessive. Not possessive in a that’s my man way, but in the way she felt about her powers. Something that was hers, special to her, for her use. This came with a twinge of conscience–he may not be a real man, she recognized, but he was a sentient being, and not really evil anymore, more Evil Lite, or even … even less evil than that. The girl in the bar, she had consented. It was wrong, for her to go around doing that to herself, but Spike hadn’t forced her. Spike didn’t do that kind of thing anymore. He was … he wanted to be … a person. That was why he’d agreed to fight at her right hand.

Well, he also wanted to be in her pants.

But she wanted to be in his too, so it was fine. Getting ‘regular seeings to’ as Spike called it, was going to make her a better slayer.

And since she was the slayer, destined to snuff it young, she’d have her pleasure while she could.

After another quick shower, she put on the terry sundress she’d rinsed earlier, and slipped outside into the late afternoon. The air was still and shimmery, smelling of weeds and grass and the melting tarmac, the sky overhead a heat-washed blue. There were a few cars in the motel lot, but no one around she could see. She did some stretches, some moves. It was time to get back in training–she wasn’t sure how she’d do that while they were on the road, but she’d make a point of it–a couple of hours a day, before or after patrolling. She was going to kill vampires every night, all the way to Mexico.

She felt a plump sense of future accomplishment. It was good and grown-up of her, to get back to being what she was. Slaying wasn’t just a calling it was in her.

And she was okay with that again. Life wasn’t going to be what it was ever again. But she’d been away from her life so long now that it didn’t really feel like hers anymore.

This one, now, was what she had.

***

She stayed outdoors, getting a slice of pizza, taking a long walk, imagining the road trip they were about to undertake, the states they’d pass through, all those places she’d never been before, until the shadows were long, and the air starting to get cool.

When she came quietly back into the room, Spike was still asleep. His arms flung out on either side, a pleased little smile at the corners of his mouth. He had an erection now.

His eyes opened as she stood at the foot of the bed, taking him in.

“Mmmm, Slayer.” He arched into a stretch, then relaxed, taking himself in hand. “Let’s see your pretty tits.”

“Looks like you were sleeping really well.”

“Can’t complain.” He stripped his cock, showing himself off.

“When we first got together you couldn’t sleep at all. Now look at you.”

“Now look at me. Yeah.” His eyes flickered gold. “You do a fellow good.”

“Do I?”

He sat up, lunged to catch her before she could dance back, and pulled her down beside him. His fingers traveled under her hem, up her thigh, and went slow and gentle against the sensitive overworked flesh, stroking her again into flickering arousal.

Seizing his wrist, she pried him off. “Do I?”

“What?”

“Am I making you … good? Really? I mean, is it helping?”

His gaze, intense and challenging, burned her; she had to force herself not to look away. “What do you think?”

“I … I don’t know yet.”

“Have to see, yeah? Proof’s in the pudding an’ all that.”

She wanted him to say something more definite, more passionate, committed, about how being with her had already changed him.

He eased her backwards, pulling off her panties.

“I really am kind of sore.”

“Just give you a bit of tongue. Light as you please. You’ll like that.”

“Don’t tell me what I’ll like,” she groused, even as her clit twitched and she opened her legs.

“Want the taste of you on my lips all the time we’re ridin’ back to town.”

***

In the car she was all set to start a serious conversation, hash out some things about their trip, and what they were going to do and how, as soon as they got onto the highway. But the next thing she knew she was opening her eyes, with a crick in her neck, and they were in a tunnel.

“We’re here already? Why did you let me sleep all this time?”

“Catch me wakin’ up the Slayer when she’s got her little paws made of fist.”

Her hands were balled into fists. Do I always do that in my sleep? She struggled to remember a dream, and then to remember how she was used to sleeping, but nothing came to her. The cool fluorescent light in the tunnel was eerie and headachey. They weren’t going very fast, there was lots of traffic.

“C’mere.” Spike held an arm out, and tucked it around her neck when she scooted in close to him. He pressed a kiss into her hair. “Been a good time, this.”

“Yeah.” The part of her that would’ve instantaneously gainsaid him was still, apparently, taking a nap. She was starting to think about Mr Vaux’s house again–the bathtub, the swimming pool. She wanted to get a little more use out of both between patrolling and lighting out for the southlands.

She liked riding like this.

Why hadn’t Angel had a car? He should’ve taken her driving. On the Pacific Coast Highway, during the full moon.

Everytime they were stopped in the tangle of traffic, Spike kissed her.

By time they’d progressed, inch by inch, as far as 40th Street, she was rubbing the bulge in his jeans.

But when she starting undoing his buttons, he peeled her hand back.

“What? I’m offering to blow you and you’re stopping me?”

“Keep it for me, for later.”

“I might not feel like it later.”

“You will. Just lay your head on my shoulder, meanwhile.” He was talking in his kind-and-reasonable tone, so she decided not to argue. In a little while he murmured, “Like the smell of your hair.”

The traffic let up when they cleared midtown, and it was just a few minutes before they were turning off Third Avenue.

At the corner of Madison, he pulled over. “Get out here and go on in. Gonna put the car in the garage.”

“I’ll come.”

“Reese’ll have some supper waitin’ for you. I’ll be along in a little while.” He reached across her to open the door.

She didn’t want to get out, didn’t want this cozy drive to end.

But they’d be setting out again tomorrow, driving and driving for many nights. They’d build up even more between them that was secret and just their own.

She grabbed his jaw, dragged him close to kiss, opening his mouth with her tongue, making him grunt.

“Okay. See you in a little while.”

“Count on it, Miss Anne.”

Buffy trotted up the block, up the steep flight of steps to Mr Vaux’s tall dark door. She hadn’t thought about Reese at all since they’d left, but now she recalled that they’d had a little tiff. Well, she’d just face him down. She gave the bell pull a sharp tug. Her heart started thrubbing so hard she had to swallow to keep steady. As the bolt clicked, she threw her shoulders back and tipped up her chin. Reese would be polite, and she’d just be polite right back, so there. This was, after all, the last 24 hours of Reese in her life.

The door opened. Reese wasn’t there.

“Oh thank God,” Joyce cried, snatching her in, “Buffy, I was so worried!”

“Mom? What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to find you! Buffy, are you all right?” Her mother drew back, framing Buffy’s face in her hands, then clasping her shoulders, arms and hands, doing the head-to-toe inspection before pulling her close again. “Sweetheart, it’s so good to see you! I was afraid you were gone forever!”

“How–how did you know–” The heart-beaty thing she’d started on the stoop, at the prospect of seeing Reese, was now in a whole other league. She could barely breathe. It took a few moments to recognize that this was due to the thundering rage building up in her, a physical force that made her tremble to keep from lashing out. And at the same time it was so wonderful to be in her mother’s arms, she could scarcely believe it. Her ears went hot, tears sprang into her eyes.

She held on until Joyce drew gently back to regard her with that helpless querying expression that haunted her conscience.

“I got a call. Yesterday. A man, claiming to be that vampire you had in the house–Spike.” The way she said vampire implied she still wasn’t convinced they were real. “He said I should get on a plane to New York, and that I’d find you here this evening. He gave me this address and hung up before I could ask him any questions. It sounded crazy but of course I got on the first flight I could. And when I got here there was a man who let me in and said he expected you soon … I’ve been waiting here about an hour. Oh Buffy, I’ve been absolutely frantic all summer! The police said they were trying to find you, but there’s so little they can do about runaways, and after the first couple of weeks I really think they stopped working on the case altogether! What happened? Where have you been? Are you all right?”

Her mind curled up like a salted slug at the prospect of explanation. “I … I’m fine. We … we just went away for a few days, that’s all. To, you know, the beach. He dropped me at the corner just now and went to park ….” Her head was spinning. Spike. Spike. Had called her mother. How could he? Why? She couldn’t believe he wanted to get rid of her … not after the last few days. They’d made a plan. He’d been so solemn when he kissed her hand and promised to look out for her.

He couldn’t have meant this.

The heat under her anger jumped up a few notches, from severe to intense. She’d been played.

“Who is ‘we’? Have you been with that man all this time? Did–did he kidnap you?”

“Kidnap? No! We met up here–I mean, we came across each other in the city, just … a couple of weeks ago, I forget. Totally by accident. I … I came east by myself.”

“Is that true? You can tell me the truth.”

“I am!”

“You sound so scattered. I don’t know what to think anymore! You’re not on anything, are you?”

“On? Mom, I’m fine. Slow down, okay?”

“Slow down? Buffy, for the last three months I didn’t know if you were alive or dead!”

“I … I thought you wanted it that way. You told me not to come back–“

At this, Joyce froze. “Oh Buffy. All summer I was afraid you thought I meant it. Of course I never did. I’ve been furious at myself for saying that. I was angry at you, you were being willful and disobedient but I never ever should have said– I blame myself.”

Somewhere in the midst of her mother’s outpouring, Buffy pulled her close again. The familiar mother-smell, mingled with anxious sweat and the staleness of lengthy travel, clung to Joyce’s hair and skin. She breathed it in, her heart catching in its race. All this time she hadn’t let herself dwell too much on the memory of this, the exquisite comfort of being up close to her mother. And now all that longing tumbled out of the mind-closet she’d packed it into.

Plus, when they were hugging, Joyce wasn’t flailing her with questions. Buffy held on as long as she could.

But Joyce couldn’t stay silent for long. “Buffy, please tell me–“

“Mom, it wasn’t just you. That made me have to leave.”

“I should never have said it. I know I shouldn’t.” Joyce sagged, and Buffy realized how exhausted she must be.

“Let’s sit down. I’ll get Reese to make you some tea. You haven’t slept since you got the call, have you?”

“I’m not sure I’ve slept since I realized you’d run away.”

Buffy led her into the front parlor. She saw that Reese hadn’t in fact neglected his charge; a tray of tea things was set out, with some little sandwiches and a plate of cookies, untouched. Of course Joyce had been too nervous, waiting, to eat or drink.

Her mother looked around with beseeching unseeing eyes. “What is this place? What you doing here?”

“It’s kinda Masterpiece Theater, right?,” Buffy said, trying to sound light, to put Joyce at ease. “But it’s okay. I’ll get us some fresh hot water.” She steered her mother to a sofa, then went to ring for Reese. Ringing for a servant had become second nature to her, she realized. Here, anyhow. She hadn’t thought about it while they were in the motel. Now she was glad she didn’t have to leave Joyce to go to the kitchen.

Reese appeared with his usual calm promptitude, apparently unfazed by this new visitor. Buffy asked for more boiling water, and a pitcher of ice water. Joyce stared palely from sofa as these instructions were given, then started up. “Buffy, we’re not staying here. Get your things together. We’re going now.”

“Going? Where?”

“Well … I suppose to a hotel. Then we can fly home in the morning.”

Whoa whoa whoa.

“I can’t just leave.”

“School starts next week. And I can’t leave the gallery closed more than a couple of days.” Joyce’s expression gave way from practicality to uncertainty. “I assumed–it never occurred to me that you wouldn’t want to come home now.”

Where was Spike? Not that this would be any easier if he was here. She had plans for punching him until his nose was pulp, and then maybe … maybe punching him some more.

Duh. He was keeping away on purpose. He’d put all this in motion, and … she still couldn’t believe this meant he was abandoning her. After she’d promised not to abandon him.

And after the groove they’d gotten into over the last week, the ease of their companionship, the absolutely amazing effect they had on each other in bed. How could he just walk away from that?

Was this because she didn’t want him biting people?

It couldn’t be. This didn’t make sense.

“Who else knows I’m here?”

Joyce blinked. “Who else–?”

“Did you come alone? Did you bring Giles?”

“I didn’t tell anyone. Who is Gi–oh, the librarian at your school. Why would I tell him?”

“He’s my watcher.” How could she expect her mom to know any of this? She’d never had a chance to explain. “Or he was. I don’t want him to know where I am.”

“Buffy, what is going on?”

She could do it again. Just walk out. Disappear once more into the big city, the big country. Her mother wouldn’t be able to find her, and Spike … Spike, apparently, was through with her.

Joyce rose and came to her, taking her hands again. “Buffy. He said you’d be this way.”

“Who said?”

“That … Spike. He said you wouldn’t like it, but he didn’t like thinking of me not knowing where you were.”

Oh, I could kill him. “What else did he say?”

“That’s all. I told you–he didn’t let me ask questions. What were you doing with him?”

You’re never gonna find out, if I can possibly help it. “Just … hanging out. Like I said, I wasn’t planning to run into him.”

“What were you planning?”

She couldn’t answer. Couldn’t tell the truth, and wasn’t ready for the big interrogation to start. “Mom–“

“I still don’t understand what it all means. About you being the slayer. I don’t know how to find out, unless you tell me. I’m ready to listen.”

She could bolt out of here. Get back to what she’d been doing before Spike turned up to completely shatter any trust she would ever have in men ever again ever ever ever.

But her mother was drawing her gently towards the sofa, was looking at her with such tenderness, such fiercely repressed dread. A hot flush ran all through her, sending spots dancing in her field of vision. She wouldn’t be able to do it again, wound her mother like this a second time.

Even as she sank down beside her, she was listening out for the door to open. Maybe Spike would come in. Maybe he intended to help her break it to her Mom that she wasn’t in fact going back to Sunnydale anymore. Maybe he’d tell her how he’d sworn to take care of her daughter, and … and ….

Joyce took her chin gently in her fingers, lifted it so their eyes met. “Sweetheart, you can tell me anything. I’m not going to punish you for leaving, I just want you back where you belong.”

Shit.

Her bout of rebellion and perfect freedom was over.

***

Walking into the old familiar house again felt supremely strange–it seemed so much smaller, and every little thing Buffy laid her eye on embarrassed her, even the newel post and a library book her mother had left on the stair. That night she lay wide awake in the narrow girlish bed she’d sworn she’d never return to, staring at the ceiling, breathing quietly in and out around a sensation that her tongue was heavy as a huge barbell, impossible to shift.

She’d answered her mother’s questions half the night in the New York hotel–most of them were about being the slayer and things that had happened at home, Joyce tacitly admitting that she didn’t want to know too much about what Buffy had done all summer on her own. After that, and the trip back to California which included a slaying incident in the ladies room at LAX, they’d run out of much to say to each other, and made the drive from Los Angeles to Sunnydale in near silence, except for a few brief remarks about shopping for back to school.

The doorbell rang while they were eating a first breakfast in the sunny kitchen, the radio’s cheerful chatter making up for their mutual reticence.

“I’ll go,” Buffy said. No one should know she was back, but even so she dreaded seeing Willow or Xander or worst of all, Giles on the doorstep.

And it was far far too bright, at 8:34 a.m., for it to possibly be Spike, though she was disgusted at the surge of excitement that accompanied the thought. If it was him, he’d be saying hello to both her fists, and her boot heel too.

A postman held out an ExpressMail envelope requiring the signature of Buffy Summers. Sent from New York City.

She tore it open with fingers that were suddenly stiff and unsteady.

Hello Miss Anne,

Thanks for fixing my little soul dilemma.

Thought you might twig to it that you’d put me right, but seems you’re not all that clever when you’re in heat.

Meanwhile I’m on to all your fighting moves and tricks. And I know your heart.

So I advise you to train yourself up. Get strong, and sleep with one eye open. I’ll be keeping my promise. I mean to come back soon, and take good care of you.

“Buffy, who’s there? Oh,” Joyce said, spotting the envelope on the floor, and the note in her hand. “What is it?”

She crumpled the paper and shoved it into her pocket before her mother got close enough to see. “It’s nothing. Just Spike writing to say goodbye.”

~END~