Chapter Fourteen
I’m Longing To Linger Till Dawn
Buffy awoke at home. She was sure of it.
There were certain human-based instincts that so many people took for granted. She remembered the feel of waking in hotels on family trips before the divorce. Of spending the night with her girlfriends only to attempt futilely to find sleep on hardwood floors cushioned with the faulty support of a worn sleeping bag. She remembered waking in Angel’s apartment so many years before after having spent an awkward night torn between childhood and maturity. Riley’s dorm was the same. Hell, her dorm was the same. There was absolutely nothing like the call of home.
She was home now. She awoke feeling at home. Her arm was resting over Spike’s chest; his own entwined around her touch. Her right leg having crept over his left sometime after they fell asleep. Her head was pillowed at his shoulder, his left arm curled around her.
Buffy blinked and fought off a yawn, shifting slightly. The crypt was the same. The room had not changed. She was snuggled thoroughly into the side of the man she loved after having shared the most phenomenal night of her life. It was strange but thoroughly welcoming. As though she had rewound time to the night she had breeched this particular venue of womanhood, only it was Spike she had shared it with. As though she had regained everything the past few years had cost her, and she was a new woman for what he had given her the night before.
His words of love warmed her thoroughly, and she found she couldn’t keep herself from smiling.
God, how quickly things could change.
Buffy dropped a kiss across his shoulder, shifting further until she was astride his hips. He was sporting a morning erection that she found endearing. There were so many things about him that were thoroughly human; things she would never have accredited him with before her turning. He was a man first and a vampire second in her eyes. And he was thoroughly hers.
“Spike,” she murmured, nibbling gently at his throat. “Wakey, wakey?”
He whimpered slightly but did not stir.
“Humph,” she pouted, sliding down his abdomen, gasping when his cock brushed her folds but forcing herself to lower herself still. “And Mom calls me a heavy sleeper.”
Then, she mused to herself when she was nose to nose with his erection, on the other hand, this did have its benefits. And she planned to tell him so.
Later.
Curling a hand around the base of his cock, her eyes flickered once to his dozing face, her tongue poking out to play. She never thought that this was anything she would enjoy. Never. Parker had tried to get her to suck him off, and she had wisely refuted—though at the time it was more for the sake of her embarrassment at her inexperience. She had been so certain that she was repulsive to the male race during the months following Angel’s disappearance that she thought now she might have done anything to prove it otherwise to herself.
Granted, Parker’s similar dismissal hadn’t done much for her ego. And it made her feel all kinds of shallow to think that Riley’s presence in her life had been nothing more than a continuous stroke of her esteem. Someone who was so enthralled with her that all her faults were ignored for mediocre sex and the promise of her coveted normal.
With every day, she hated her former self all the more. What a sniveling weakling she had been.
Spike didn’t make her embarrassed. He made her feel cherished. Her only fear was displeasing him, though he assured her with every look that such was impossible.
She enveloped the velvety head of his cock with her tongue and drew him into her mouth, suckling sweetly at the drops of precum beading against his skin. Her hand squeezed him delicately, her other dropping to cup his balls. The whimpers spilling from his lips were becoming more pronounced. She smiled slightly around him, taking him further into her mouth as her hand became more boisterous.
And then he moaned aloud, and shot awake. The blue of his eyes drawing her in, and his hips thrust forward as a long, desperate gasp strangled his throat.
“Oh…oh bloody fuck.”
Buffy drew her head back, lapping delicately at his tip. “Morning,” she said cheekily, squeezing his sac.
“Christ,” he whimpered, thrusting into her mouth again. Unable to stop himself. “B-Buffy…I…how long have…I been…”
She slurped at him hungrily. “Missing out?” she asked, exploring his cock in long laps of her tongue.
He nodded furiously. “An’ here I was…plannin’ to…wake you up like this.”
“I just wore you out good, huh?”
“Best bloody…god, Buffy, I need you up here.” Before she could whisper a word of complaint, he had curled his arms around her shoulders and dragged her up the length of his body until her pussy was hovering over his erection. “Like this,” he whispered, seizing her lips as she sank onto him.
Her eyes fell shut and her walls squeezed around him. “Oohhh.”
“Fuck yeah,” he gasped in agreement, hands settling on her hips. His eyes took in the sight of her. Her body cast over his. Atop his. Her thighs imprisoning him—and he the willing captive. “Ride me, baby. Ride me to a bloody gallop.”
Then her eyes were on him, wide and uncertain. And he understood.
“Lean back a bit,” he whispered, doing his best to contain his shock when she complied. That was something he would never get used to. Buffy not arguing him for the sake of arguing. Buffy with him because that was what she wanted. He was buried inside her; he was sharing with her a sacred union. Touching places inside her he had only previously imagined. Finding her warm even in death.
“Bleedin’ hell,” he gasped as she squeezed him again, his hands trailing up her sides until he was cupping her breasts, pebbling her nipples between his fingers. Watching her move over him was one of the most breathtaking scenes of his unlife. His eyes were trained on the hungry, glistening sight of her pussy swallowing his cock with every thrust. In all his years, he’d never seen anything that affected him like that. “You’re so fucking gorgeous.”
“Ohhh…”
“You know what you do to me, don’ you?” he whispered, his voice a rough hiss that barely elapsed the sound of their bodies moving together. He thrust into her with a needy, heated frenzy. This wasn’t going to be a long, drawn out lovemaking. He needed to feel her come around him. Needed to hear her scream her release into the formerly lonely silence of his bedroom. Needed to reach that with her now. “Make me so hard I can’t think of anythin’ but you. How good you feel. How delicious you are. How wet you get for me. Your mouth on me…you drive me insane.” One hand dropped to where they were joined and began massaging her roughly. “Need that hot, tight li’l quim of yours. Need to taste you. Lap at you with my tongue.”
“Spike…”
“You feel so good,” he mewled in agreement. “So fucking good.”
Her shyness was gone. Her uncertainty was completely eradicated. She was slamming into him, her muscles strangling his cock. The ecstasy flashing across her face only served to feed his own need. He needed her to feel it now. Needed to watch her as she came.
He was stroking her clit furiously, drinking in the hard sobs of pleasure erupting from her mouth.
“Oh God!” she gasped, throwing her head back. “Ohhhh…”
“Need to taste you,” Spike growled, hauling himself up, suckling intently on the proud bite mark he had given her the night before. “God, Buffy…”
“Please!”
That was all he needed. His fangs elongated and sank into her milky flesh, and she exploded around him. Her head thrown back, her eyes overwhelmed with rapture, riding out the throes of her orgasm with the most harmonious cry that had ever touched his ears. Her blood pouring into his mouth. Her body coming hard around him. He growled into her and flipped her over, thrusting into her with a frenzy that he had nearly forgotten over the years.
She had awakened something in him that had been dead for longer than even he had acknowledged, and he would never stop worshipping her for it.
Then he felt her fangs pierce his throat, and he was coming hard. Her muscles milking him for everything he had to give her. She held him soundly as the world came tumbling back. Spike panted against her, burying his face in her throat and hugging her to him.
It was amazing. He had been alive for so long, but had never experienced this sort of intimacy. Had never felt this close to someone, and have the sentiment returned. She gave him everything.
Purring with satisfaction, he pulled back and kissed tenderly.
“Hi,” she said after their lips parted, enchanting him with her blush.
He grinned. “Hey.”
Buffy settled back against his pillows, her shyness dissipating again. “How are you?”
“Bloody blissful.” His head dipped to nuzzle her throat delicately. “An’ you? Am I squishin’ you?”
“Not possible.”
“Good, ‘cause I’m never movin’.” In direct contradiction to his words, he rolled them over again so that she was sprawled over his chest, his cock slipping from her warmth, inspiring a joint moan of protest. “You bloody well blow my mind away.”
“I woke up very horny.”
“Not complainin’. Point of fact…” He nuzzled her with another small growl. “Any time you wanna jump my willin’ body, don’ let anythin’ stop you.”
“I don’t plan on it.”
A warm chuckle rumbled through his chest. “I love you,” he murmured, brushing a kiss across her temple. The words hadn’t been spoken today, and the minute they escaped his lips, he immediately clamped down in apprehension, daring fate to take yesterday’s gift away. Daring the love that had been there to have been the fabrication of wishful thinking.
That fear vanished the next second. “I love you, too,” she whispered.
A wide grin spread across his lips. “An’ I’m never gonna get tired of hearin’ that.”
She smiled, settling against his chest. “This is nice,” she said redundantly.
“Understatement of the bloody year,” Spike agreed. “’m so…I’d half convinced myself that I’d dreamt up last night.”
“I woke you up.”
“From a very pleasant dream.” He smiled. “Then I woke up, an’ she was still here.”
“You are so lame.” Buffy flushed in spite of herself. “But you’re sweet.”
His smile melted into a scowl. “I mean it.”
“I know.”
He wedged a hand between them and tweaked her nipple. “An’ don’ be callin’ me lame.”
She giggled. “Sorry.”
“You are not.”
“Well, you’re awfully adorable when you’re lame.”
A mock growl tumbled through his throat. “I bloody well am not adorable,” he snarled, bumpies bursting through his human pretense as the basis of his demonhood was threatened. “’m a bad, rude, crude man.”
“Uh huh.”
He rumbled in disapproval. “Need me to prove anythin’?”
“No,” she replied, slithering a hand between them and wrapping her fingers around his cock, her mouth finding her proud bite mark on his throat and lapping at him delicately. Instantly, the demon receded inward and Spike threw his head back with a long mewl. “I don’t think proof is necessary.”
“God, baby…”
She smiled. “We better stop,” she said regretfully, removing her touch.
“Why?” he nearly whined, thrusting upward needily.
“Because if I stay here, I’m gonna make love to you again.”
Her brazenness while using even the gentlest language sent a rush of lust straight to his erection. “Not really a problem here,” he gasped, bucking into her again. “Fuck, what you do to me.”
“Not a problem,” she agreed. “Except I’m hungry.”
He grinned a little at that. “Well then,” he said, sitting up. “Let’s go see what’s in the fridge, right?”
“So we can come back and make with the sexcapades?”
Spike’s gaze heated. “Sounds like a plan,” he agreed fervently.
Now it was just a matter of getting out of bed.
Successfully.
*~*~*
“What’s gonna happen?”
Buffy glanced up from where she sat on the corner sarcophagus, sipping on the gently cooling blood that he had handed her in one of Giles’s purloined ‘Kiss The Librarian’ mugs. The sudden sense of solemnity in his tone worried her. “When?” she asked softly.
“When you meet your mates.”
A chilled breath rolled off her shoulders. “I…I’m not there yet.”
Spike nodded and stepped forward. “I know, sweetling. But you’re gonna be.”
“I’m not.”
He met her eyes and held. “But you’re gonna be,” he said again. “An’ I guess…luv, I know things are different now. Believe me, I know it. But what happens when your mates try to…when they—”
“Try to take me away from you?”
A wry grin tickled his lips. “I doubt they’d get very far in makin’ you do anythin’ you don’ want to do.”
“Hence the ‘try.’” She smiled wryly and heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I think…if I sit down and talk them through it, it’ll be okay. Will, Tara, and Anya…they’ll understand. Maybe even Giles.” She paused. “Xander won’t. Not at first.”
A silent beat settled between them.
“An’ Solider Boy?” Spike asked softly. “How does he fit in?”
“He doesn’t.”
That obviously surprised him. “Not at all?”
“I don’t want Riley. I’ve never…” Buffy glanced down, ashamed. “Riley…he’s nice, in that big ‘aren’t I just the gosh-darndest best thing on two legs’ type of guy. And I wanted to feel…something with him. I really did. And I really, really tried.”
He winced. “I remember.”
“I don’t want him. I want you. I love you.”
He held up a hand and smiled softly. “I know, pet,” he said. “I jus’…he’s not gonna take this lightly. Captain Cardboard’s already President of the Let’s Stake Spike Club. When he finds out about us…”
“He won’t care.”
“I find that rather unlikely.”
“I’m a vampire, Spike. He won’t care. And it’s all the better, really. He’ll bow out and that’ll be the end of that.” She shook her head. “I’m terrible. I don’t want to hurt him, but I also…I don’t want him to be here. Around you…us. I don’t want to have to worry that he’s going to do something crazy in what he’d think is protecting my honor.”
“Bein’ in a relationship with me is that bloody self-deprecatin’?”
“In his world, yes. And I know it, because it was my world not too long ago.” A trembling sigh spilled through her lips, and she shook her head. “Everything I’ve ever done to you, and you still—”
Spike was at her side the next minute, tilting her chin upward from where she had subconsciously averted her eyes to the ground. “’S a two way street, sweetling,” he murmured. “I’ve done things to you that are bloody well unforgivable.”
“Not really.”
“Well…said things, in any regard.”
“I’m past that.”
He nodded. “So am I.” A brief pause. “But Buffy, your mates aren’ gonna sit around an’ twiddle their thumbs forever. We’re bloody fortunate we haven’ stumbled across them on patrol jus’ yet. Eventually they’re gonna get tired of waitin’ an’ come for you. Then what?”
“I thought you told Giles we’d leave town.”
“’F that’s what you want, you bloody well better believe it. I’ll take you wherever you wanna go, kitten. Jus’ say the word.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Doesn’ change what you’re gonna have to face, though. You love your friends. You’ll wanna chat up Red ‘bout some girly flick you wanna see. Or maybe strike up conversations with Demon Girl on the virtues of earth-shakin’ orgasms.” He waggled his brows, inspiring a cool flush against her pale skin. “’S gonna happen, though. Don’ doubt it.”
“I don’t. I just…” She looked at him pleadingly. “I’ve tried though, right? I’ve tried going near people. I’ve accepted that I need blood and every time I drink, I just want more. I need a chip…or something. You think Riley could hook me up with an Initiative chip?”
Spike’s eyes darkened and he growled lowly. “That git’s not gonna touch you. You think I’d let him knock you out an’ put you under the knife? Are you—”
“No, of course not.” Buffy smiled humorlessly. “Bad joke.”
“Oh.”
“But I…I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
“Well, for starters, luv, you din’t ease yourself into feelin’ round the humanly types. You went to the single most popular place in town. Of course you felt your control slippin’.”
She shook her head. “But it shouldn’t be like this. I just…God, I don’t know.”
Spike studied her for a few seconds, then muttered an oath and took her into the protective circle of his arms. She curled around him instantly, nuzzling her face into his chest, quivering with the weight of the world that seemed so adamant on cutting into her happiness. Happiness founded in pain, but had served as the one thing that kept her from falling completely apart.
“Vampires aren’ meant to bag it, darling,” he murmured into her hair. “’S against your nature. A part of eatin’ blood comes from the kill. The violence of it. The rush. Achievin’ two of the three essentials in one swoop is…well, what we’re made for. ‘S one of the reasons why bringing fangs into our sex life is so bloody unbelievable.”
The tremors wracking through her body intensified. “I’m not letting myself kill anyone,” she swore. “It’s not happening.”
“I know. I know.” He brushed a tender kiss to her forehead. “We’ll think of somethin’.”
And he was determined at that. Determined to think of something that would appease her need for the hunt and the need for blood. Satisfy the demon so the woman wouldn’t suffer. He’d walk through fire to spare her pain.
There was more to it than that. The demon wanted to claim her. Badly. Every time he slid his fangs inside her, the ritualistic words, in all their simplicity, surfaced for the intrinsic need of being voiced. He loved her so much, but was so bloody terrified that something out there would still swoop in and take her from him. He had already achieved the impossible with gaining her love. He had already broken barriers.
She had asked him time again and time again about the claim. How it worked. What needed to be said. What it meant for those under its power.
Distant hope was better than none. He was nearly sure if he asked her, she would say yes, but it still seemed far too premature to presume. Like popping the question after the first date. At least marriage offered the luxury of divorce. Claims were forever; and one didn’t just rush into forever.
Spike knew what forever felt like. She didn’t. To suppose she would feel the way he did for the rest of eternity was a hard gamble. He would love her until the world ended. He was almost sure she felt the same—felt that degree of love…but almost wasn’t good enough. Not for forever. And he never wanted to be one of her regrets.
He would ask her, though. The promise of true eternity in her arms was worth any risk.
He just needed time and courage. He would steal the rest.
To be continued in Chapter Fifteen: A Moving Target…
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