DREAMING OF YOU

PROLOGUE

Alone.

That had always been her defining characteristic.

Into every generation a slayer is born, she alone will fight the vampires.

No. That wasn’t right. She hadn’t been alone. She had had friends, family, a lover.

Right this moment Buffy would give anything to see one particular vampire and not to fight him, either.

Alone.

Everyone she ever knew, stripped from her life. Her mom, her dad too, she supposed; her friends. Everyone. Except…

Best not to go there.

Alone.

Captive.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 1

DREAMING

Sunnydale.

Buffy opened her eyes.

Rose petals.

Smooth, alabaster skin and rose petals.

She could taste blood.

She stroked the teeth marks on Spike’s neck, with her tongue, then moaned, as almost unimaginable pleasure shot through his body; caressing her nerve endings.

“What did you do?” Spike moaned, twisting his body against hers.

“Licked the bite on your neck.”

“Before that?”

“We bit each other. I don’t know what happened. I think we blacked out.”

Her body squirmed as he dragged the tip of his tongue across the mark on her throat.

“Somehow, we’re connected.” He purred, as the sensations she was feeling, fed back into his nervous system.

“Is it because of that spell the watchers did?” Buffy asked, when she was capable of speech.

“No. I think that this magic is all our own.” Spike said, gently trailing a rose petal across Buffy’s bite mark.

“Spiiiike?” Buffy moaned.

“Yes, pet?” He smirked, blowing cool air on her mark.

“We’ll never get out of bed again, will we?”

“Oh, I think we will. Don’t forget, we’re leaving for England, soon.” He kissed her, pressing his teeth, teasingly against his fang marks.

He tightened his grip on her as she squirmed and writhed under him.

“Please, Spike..” She panted, pressing her throat harder to his mouth.

“Please what, kitten?” He asked, his voice muffled against her skin.

“Anything…just please… stop teasing me.”

He slammed his blood-engorged flesh hard into her, screaming out as the sensations fed back to him. ‘God, is this what women feel?’ He wondered, as he fell, limp across her body, unable to move.

“Yeah, what’s the matter, can’t the big bad take it?” Buffy replied, giggling as she flipped them so that she was on top.

He writhed, helplessly beneath her as she rode him almost to oblivion.

‘Oh, God, oh God, oh God…’ His mind chanted, as his orgasm seemed to go on forever.

“Do vampires have a god?” Buffy asked, when they’d come down.

“I do, I worship you.”

“What’s happened to us?”

“I don’t know. You do realize that we’re hearing each other’s thoughts, don’t you?”

“Seriously?” Buffy said, propping herself up so she could look at his face.

‘Yeah. Seriously.’ Spike thought, deliberately keeping his mouth firmly closed.

‘That is so cool.’ Buffy thought back.

‘Know what else is cool?’ Spike thought.

‘What?’ Buffy thought back, adding an image of the two of them writhing together in the shower.

“You, are back to full strength.” He said, getting out of bed and heading to the little bathroom.

“How’d you know?”

“The way you flipped me and pinned me to the bed. The drug has definitely worn off.” He opened the bathroom door and looked over his shoulder at her. ‘Coming?’ He thought.

‘Is that a promise?’ She sent back, along with an image of her soapy hands, vigorously ‘cleaning’ a specific part of his anatomy.

“You minx!” he squealed, running back to the bed and picking her up, then carrying her, helplessly giggling, to the shower…

* * * * *

REALITY

The chains were long enough for her to reach, from the bed, to the lavatory and sink in the corner of the room but too short for her to reach the door. They were either too strong for her to break, or they were enchanted in some way. Whichever, she was trapped.

The ‘bed’ was a foam roll, of the type favoured by campers, laid on the concrete floor. Buffy supposed she should be grateful to RatBastardWatcher, that she wasn’t freezing her arse off on the floor but she wasn’t. Grateful. At all.

She examined the manacles on her wrists, again. She knew that looking for weaknesses was futile, she’d already tried but there was nothing else to do.

Her connection to Spike had been severed or masked with a spell or something. She could feel the loss like she had a gaping hole inside. Spike had been her last connection to the world, her best connection and she refused to believe that he was gone.

She heard footsteps and knew that RatBastardWatcher was coming. He’d either come to bring her food or to gloat or both.

“Back away into the far corner, Miss Summers.” He said, pointing his gun at her. Buffy obeyed and RatBastardWatcher, carefully put down the tray of food and slid it into her range; his eyes never leaving her face and the gun never wavering. He stood up, backed away, well out of Buffy’s reach, put the gun away and pulled a crystal out of his pocket. The crystal threw off a clear blue light. He set it down on a shelf, near the door.

“This crystal will change colour if either of us tells a lie.” He said, “The food and drink is not drugged or poisoned.”

On the tray was two bread rolls and a glass of milk. Knowing that she had to eat to keep her strength up, Buffy made a start on the bread.

“Are you ready to be reasonable, yet, Miss Summers?” He asked, sounding extremely reasonable, himself, considering the circumstances.

“That depends, are you ready to let me go?”

“Now, you know that I can’t allow you to leave, not while you are allied to the beast.” He replied, gesturing to the bite mark on her neck.

“Beast?”

“William the Bloody, Spike, the vampire that you have joined with. It really does no good to pretend that you don’t know. You’re not the first slayer to pervert her existence, this way.”

“Not?” Buffy said, gulping milk to wash down the mouthful of bread.

“You Americans, so arrogant. Did you really think that you were the first?” He looked at her, intently, disgust evident on his face. “Tell me, Miss Summers, what does it feel like?”

Buffy looked blankly at him.

“You have elected to share your immortal soul with an evil denizen of hell. What does it feel like?”

“Spike hasn’t been evil in a long time.” She said, looking the watcher in the eye. The crystal didn’t waver.

“Oh please; I crossed his path in the 1960s, he and that insane sire of his were slaughtering an orphanage. That is to say,“ He added, as the crystal flickered red, “he was doing the actual killing, his sire was watching and laughing.”

“She was a bad influence on him.” Buffy murmured, “She’s gone now.”

“Yes. The slayer sent her to hell; a happy side effect of neutralizing Acathla.”

“No, Spike did and ‘neutralized Acathla‘. I made up that Kendra did it.”

RatBastardWatcher looked startled for an instant and tried to cover it by removing his glasses from his pocket and rubbing them with a cloth. The lenses were thick and, when he put them on, made his eyes look too big for his face. With them off, he looked more normal - like someone’s grandpa but there was a coldness in his eyes and an edge to his voice. Buffy found herself thinking of Giles but in his ‘Ripper’ moments. He stared at her as though she was a bug.

“Were you and he bonded at that time?”

Buffy thought for a while.

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘bonded’.” She said, at last.

“Oh come now, Miss Summers, you’ve been through a vampire bonding ritual, you have the bite mark to prove it. Do you expect me to believe that you don’t know when it happened?”

Buffy absently touched the mark on her throat. Despite her slayer healing, Spike’s bite had left a scar. Despite Spike’s vampire healing, Buffy’s bite had scarred him.

“That happened on my eighteenth birthday.” She said.

“Before or after the cruciamentum?”

“After.”

“Why did Travers think you were dead?”

“Kralik attacked me, I was unconscious; I guess Travers was mistaken.” Buffy said, carefully wording her reply so as not to set off the crystal and wishing he would talk more about the mysterious ‘bonding’ of a previous slayer.

“What happened to Travers?”

“I don’t know, he was gone before I woke up.” Buffy said.

“Did Spike force you into the ritual?”

“To my knowledge, there was no ritual and Spike has never forced me into anything.”

“Do you deny that you are lovers?”

“No.”

“You’re not even ashamed.” He spat.

“No.”

“There’s a mystic barrier around this place, keeping you and the vampire apart. Eventually the separation will kill you both; slowly, agonizingly. Tell me where his lair is and I promise you a quick, painless death.”

“He will find you and he will kill you. He might spare your life if you undo the forgetting spell you performed.” Buffy responded, looking RatBastardWatcher in the eyes, with all the hatred she was feeling.

Without a word, he turned and left.

* * * * *

Their cabin, on the ship, was luxurious. Dalton had acquired passports for them in the names of William and Elizabeth Winters and booked them the honeymoon suite. He had carefully explained that the groom suffered from Porphyria, a sunlight intolerance and made sure that any windows had thick, blackout curtains.

The trip had been idyllic, days spent in bed, taking full advantage of their new ‘togetherness’. Evenings in the plush dining room, eating together and smiling at the indulgent winks of fellow passengers.

Their midnight strolls were becoming legendary on the ship. The way they would watch the moon sparkling on the inky water, hands clasped, in cosy silence. Never had anyone seen a honeymoon couple more involved with each other.

If only they knew.

Their abilities were just waiting to be discovered, each one a new source of delight. The way it tasted - to Buffy - when Spike took tiny sips of her blood, as he climaxed. The way that it was impossible for just one of them to experience orgasm. All the sensations fed back - one to the other - until neither of them knew which one of them it was happening to.

‘Spike, do you think we could die of pleasure?’ Buffy thought, one afternoon, resting in his arms.

‘Already dead, pet.’ Spike replied and Buffy could feel him smirking, inside his head, ‘you’ve probably had it, though.’

‘Can just one of us die?’

‘Probably not, love.’ Suddenly, he ‘felt’ serious. ‘One goes, we both go, I reckon…’