Chapter Seven
The Soft Glow of Morning
A soft breath fanned the skin behind her ear and tickled her scalp through her hair, and the arm around her middle tightened as Spike shifted behind her. His body molded hers flawlessly, the persistent state of his arousal nestled into the curve of her ass. Buffy lay awake in his embrace for a long while before she dared herself to open her eyes. Before she allowed the peace that had guarded her through the night to face the chance of sabotage.
She was so terrified that she would awake and be in the castle. Be in the room Dracula had locked her in. The place that had been her prison for days that felt like years. That everything that had happened last night would be accredited to a dream, and the haven in which she had found refuge would be a place she had imagined in a fit of despair.
Spike’s arms tightened around her once more, and he murmured something unintelligible into her hair.
Four days ago, the possibility that she would sleep the night in Spike’s arms would have been a source of outlandish amusement and unspeakable disgust. That had changed somewhere between waking up under Dracula’s thrall and making the conscious decision to seek her former enemy for sanctuary. Last night, something had changed. Something she wanted to change. She had seen something in Spike’s eyes. Felt something in his embrace. She had come to him for help, and he had opened his arms for her.
Something had changed before that. Before she even saw him. Before she knew he would help her.
She had gone to him. She could have gone anywhere. She could have gone to Angel. She had given herself a thousand excuses why she shouldn’t. Being around people was the wrong move to make. She couldn’t trust herself around the dead; around her friends was absolutely out of the question.
There were other things, too. The bigoted hatred her friends—some more than others—expressed for vampires terrified her beyond anything. Giles loved her like a daughter, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t stake her for her own good if he had to.
She could have gone to Angel, but she hadn’t. And it wasn’t out of shame.
It was because she knew him too well, and knew what he would do.
Instead, she’d gone to Spike.
And Spike had helped. Spike’s arms were around her. His erection was pressed into her backside. He was rumbling incoherent nothings into her ear. He was the way she had gotten out. He was holding her in his arms now, and she felt safe and loved.
In the arms of her former enemy, she felt safe and loved. As much as she had in her life.
Something had changed.
Somehow between slaying vampires and becoming one, Spike had turned into the one person in the world that she could trust implicitly. The one who would help her without judging. Without screaming at how she could have let this happen. The one who would understand how much pain she was in. How badly she hurt.
She trusted Spike. Between slaying what he was and becoming what he was, she had placed all of her trust in the vampire that held her now. The vampire that had made the screaming stop for the first night in what felt like centuries. She had been dead for just over forty-eight hours, but she hadn’t been home in years.
She trusted Spike.
“Mmm,” he moaned into her hair, his hand sliding back until he was massaging her stomach softly. “Buffy…”
She froze.
“Spike?”
There was no intelligible response. He mumbled something and nuzzled her reverently. His hand slid northward until he was palming her breast, fingers pebbling her nipple through the material of her negligee.
Oh God.
Buffy drew in a deep breath and winced at the sharp pain that struck in retaliation. She honestly didn’t know what to do. Spike had not been coy with the fact that he wanted her the night before. He hadn’t done anything about it, but he hadn’t tried to hide his arousal. He hadn’t seemed particularly embarrassed, either. And he had said that she knew why he had come for her.
He was asleep now. He was caressing her. He had murmured her name.
“Buffy,” he gasped again, thrusting his hips into her backside. “God, Buffy…”
Vampires feel it more fiercely than humans, he’d said. There was absolutely no chance that Spike had gone to bed with a woman in the past hundred and twenty years without it being sexual. The fact that she was in his arms now, that he smelled her, that she had slept in his bed had his body feeling things stronger than a human would.
He was dreaming of her. He had murmured her name.
There was something pooling in the bottom of her stomach. A fire she barely recognized. Her skin was blazing. She felt a warm rush of fluid between her legs, and nearly gasped aloud. She had not thought to feel anything like this ever again. Not from him. Not from Riley. Not from Angel. Not from anyone. She was dead. She didn’t think she could feel alive when she was dead.
She didn’t think it could be Spike.
Spike.
At least she hadn’t until last night. Last night had changed things.
And now Spike’s hand was sliding down her abdomen, slipping under her nightie. She felt her thighs part instinctively to welcome his touch and had to bite down on the inside of her cheek when she felt the first tentative brush against her aching wetness. Buffy stifled a small sob of pleasure, lifting her leg to curl around his. She didn’t want to think right now. Didn’t want to allow the reality that surrounded her a chance to break through. She needed this. She needed escapism.
Spike.
His name rushed through her mind; a ceaseless mantra of recognition. It was Spike that was touching her. Spike whose cock was grinding against her backside. Spike whose caresses her body invited. She needed this. She needed to know that. She had died. She hadn’t lost her humanity. A vampire loses humanity, but she hadn’t lost hers.
And somehow, she had recognized that Spike had never lost his, either. There was no creature on the earth that could look at her the way he had looked at her, care for her the way he had cared for her, and be completely void of compassion. He was a vampire; he was supposed to be a remorseless creature of absolute evil, but he was not.
It was the reason she had come to him. Because he was the only one she could think of that hadn’t hurt her. Not in the way that she got hurt.
She needed comfort, but she wanted him. And that knowledge shook her.
She wouldn’t use him. After what he had done for her, there was no way she would use him. She cared for him too much to use him.
Just in one night, she had come to care for him.
She felt she was centuries away from the girl she had known. The girl who had lived in her body for nearly twenty years.
“Buffy,” Spike moaned again, fingers slipping into her wet sheath. “So hot. So soft. My Slayer.”
Her vision blurred with tears, and she thrust her hips into his touch. His sleep-induced caresses was driving her out of her mind, exploring her gently, slipping in and out of her passage at a leisurely tempo. His thumb settled over her clit, rubbing her tenderly. Hot pinpricks of pleasure stabbed at her insides; filling her with warmth that she thought never to have again. The cold gone now for the fire he was stirring.
I should wake him up.
It was funny; the things one should do were usually the furthest away from what one desired. Her skin was warm for the first time in days. She could feel heat spreading through forbidden recesses of her body, a foreign pressure commanding her as he stroked her closer to the edge.
“Buffy…”
A muted cry tumbled through her lips as Spike jerked to wakefulness, and she felt his body tense behind her.
“Oh God, Buffy…I’m sorry. I din’t mean…” He was panting hard; his erection was still pressed against her ass. His thumb poised over her clit, frozen in the horror of wake.
Buffy gasped again and buried her face in the pillow she had cradled all night, lost somewhere beyond mortification. She didn’t know what was worse: losing the wondrous sensation sailing through her body or begging him to continue. Risking the chance that he wouldn’t. She needed this so desperately, but through it all she remembered that the one she trusted and cared about had no reason to feel the same for her. He had taken her in; that didn’t mean anything. She thought it did, but it didn’t necessarily have to.
“Buffy…oh fuck.” His fingers began moving again uncertainly, as though he needed her release as desperately as she did. He stopped once more when he realized what he was doing and withdrew his touch completely, rolling onto his back. “’m so sorry. I never…I shouldn’t have—”
“Spike!” she mewled before she could help herself. “God, please!”
He released a shuddering, barely controlled breath. “Please?”
Buffy welded her eyes shut. Her body was aching. For the first time in days, she ached with something that wasn’t pain. Something that was as wonderful as it was terrifying. Her chest was heaving with breaths that didn’t hurt.
She was as aroused as she had ever been. And God, she needed it.
“Please!” she gasped. “Touch me.”
If he denied her, she would stake herself. Better to face death than lose her sanctuary. Than have the kindness he had shown her drown out for mockery of what he would never willingly give her.
But there was no mockery when he spoke. His voice was filled with passion, clouded with arousal, and was easily the sexiest thing she had ever heard.
Her name rolled on his tongue like that…
“Buffy…” A gentle hand prodded her shoulder until she rolled onto her back, his azure eyes engulfing her flaming face. When he found whatever it was he was looking for, he drowned her in that look of raw astonishment and pressed a tender kiss to her forehead.
Then his hands were on her again. His left arm propping him up against her, cupping her breast and caressing her through the lace of her negligee as the other dropped to her center. “It’s okay, baby,” he assured her warmly, sliding two fingers inside her. “’m here.”
“Oh God.”
He brushed his lips against the corner of her mouth, then at the pulse of her throat, hesitated, and then tongued her nipple through the thin fabric separating them. “’S all right, sweetheart,” he said, eyes glued on her face. “’S all right.”
She didn’t know she was crying until he raised his head to kiss away a tear. His thumb slid over her clit once more, stroking her reverently. Watching her. Pressing his brow to hers.
It was all too much. His proximity. The softness behind his kisses, the wealth of awed feeling behind his touch…she felt herself tumbling as her cry touched the air. Somewhere between bliss and the other. The emotion she was too unfamiliar with to name. Too lost to explore. She just knew she felt it. There were tears running down her cheeks, some for feeling, some for this distant emotion that was arising within her. Pained with something other than hurt. Twisted with the need for something she could not see.
She was so lost. So hopelessly lost. Spike was all she knew anymore. The only peace she had. She knew this without having to know anything. And as the most intense orgasm she had ever thought to experience rocked through her body, she found herself latching onto that distant strand of hope. Hope without direction, but hope nonetheless. It was there. She felt it.
It was the sweetest joy she had ever known. And she couldn’t keep herself from weeping.
“God,” Spike gasped, cautiously removing his fingers from her core. “You smell so sweet.” He drew his digits into his mouth and licked away her spendings, his eyes rolling up inside his head. “And, bloody hell, you taste like heaven.” His gaze met hers again, and dissolved at the sight of her tears. “Oh God, Buffy, don’t cry. Please. I’m sorry, I din’t—”
She launched herself into his arms before he could say another word, hugging him in some fleeting attempt to convey the wealth of confused feelings, even as her body wracked with sobs. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
Spike went still. “Buffy—”
She didn’t allow herself to think. Not about what he was going to say next.
Not now.
So instead, she pulled back, searched his torn eyes, and pressed her lips to his.
He was flavored with her taste. And she knew then, kissing him, that she was home. This was home.
And if it wasn’t, it certainly provided a good imitation.
“Buffy,” he moaned, pulling away. His eyes were storming with passion.
And she lost herself all over again.
*~*~*
He couldn’t have been more surprised if she had slapped him across the face.
The entire morning felt like a dream. He had spent the evening in her arms. Buffy had come to him. She had told him that he was the reason she had willed it in herself to escape. To do what she needed. That he had helped her without helping her at all.
And he had spent the night in her arms. Dreaming of her as though they did not have the invisible gorge between them. As though she was in his bed because she wanted to be, not because she felt she had nowhere else to go. And somehow, the fantasy had met reality, and he had awakened bathed in the rich scent of her arousal. Had awakened with his fingers exploring that intimate part of her he never thought to touch. Not like this. Not even if he had performed the rescue she was accrediting him with. Not even for how desperately he feared he loved her.
Any uncertainty he had about his feelings diminished the minute he saw her standing in his crypt.
And now he was swimming in the alluring fragrance of her orgasm. The orgasm he had given her just hours after she had buried herself in his embrace and begged him not to leave her through the night.
She had rolled over and was partially splayed over his body. Her fingers were dancing dangerously close to his denim-clad erection.
“Buffy,” he gasped when she lowered the zipper, his cock springing into her welcoming hand. “W-we shouldn’t—”
Bloody fuck, did he even listen when he spoke?
“I just…I want to…” With as blissful as it was being held by her, there was absolutely nothing compared to the wondrous sensation that scaled through his body when she began pumping his shaft with her heavenly touch.
He wasn’t going to last. He could barely grasp that this was actually happening; he wasn’t going to last.
“Buffy.” He mewled and thrust up into her willing hand. “Fuck, that feels so good. You…God, what are you doin’ to me?”
Her eyes met his uncertainly, and the doubt there all about broke his heart.
“Feels…so bloody good.”
Her thumb pressed into his aching head, caressing him with shy tenderness.
“Oh, fuck!”
He didn’t know what did it for him. He honestly had no clue. He wanted to accredit it wholly to the masterful stroke of her hand, but it was her eyes that owned him. That tentative, fear-stricken, hopeless, but impassioned look that broke his heart a thousand times over. His broken heart that was thoroughly hers.
He had never felt this for anyone, and she was with him now. And that knowledge sweetened his orgasm all the more. Like dying all over again. Like kissing the clouds of paradise before he fell back to earth.
He whimpered a small complaint when she released him, even though his body was screaming at the loss of her touch. “B-Buffy,” he gasped. “I…fuck, that was…”
There were no words for what that was.
Only she was no longer with him. She was in the bed beside him, but her mind was no longer with him. She was staring hard at the inches of mattress separating them, and her eyes were far away. Lost beyond lost. Somewhere where he could not follow.
Yet.
“Buffy?”
She jerked her head up, and something foreign crossed her face. Not regret. Not disgust. Not apathy; none of the things he would have expected after sharing that with her. With the Buffy he knew.
The Buffy he knew was wounded and terrified. And she was clinging to him out of something neither could name. She was burned with scars he could not see. Wheedling beyond the hurt she had suffered and finding sanctuary that confused more than it comforted.
God, it couldn’t be ruined with this.
“Buffy…luv, I—”
She rolled off the bed then and straightened her negligee. Her back to him, trembling as though she was seconds away from breaking again. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Sorry?”
He would give her anything if she looked at him, but she did not.
This wasn’t rejection. It was something else.
Something.
She was up the ladder that led to the first floor before he could implore again. Back to the place she knew. Back to the only room where the world made sense to her.
Spike expelled a deep breath and flopped back on the bed.
“Wanker.”
How could he help her if he couldn’t keep his hands to himself?
It wasn’t rejection, logic told him again.
It wasn’t. He didn’t know what it was. Only that she was hurting. She was broken and confused. But she was still here. She might be upstairs, but she was still here.
She was still with him.
If nothing else, there was that.
To be continued in Chapter Eight: There Will Be An Answer…
|
