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Part One ~ As the Walls Tumble Down

Drusilla gave one last squeal of protest and slumped forward in his restraining arms. Spike scooped her up and headed for the garage and the waiting De Soto.

“Sorry, baby. Wish there was another way,” he mumbled.

Passing the doorway to the atrium with his precious burden, he caught sight of the Slayer on the ground, scooting backwards on her delectable ass as Angelus advanced, waving his sword lazily in her face.

“God, he’s gonna kill her.”

After watching the poof pontificate for a few moments, Spike shrugged. He had held up his end of the bargain. It wasn’t his fault if the Slayer couldn’t fulfill hers. It chapped his ass that Angelus was going to be the one to take down a Slayer that Spike himself had earmarked as his third, but certain sacrifices had to be made. His only concern was to get Drusilla as far away from Angelus as possible. South America was looking better and better.

Bouncing Dru into a more comfortable position, he resumed his trek to the car with grim determination.

In spite of himself, his footsteps slowed until he finally dragged his feet to a halt; his inner William nattering at the demon for leaving the Slayer to rot. He rolled his eyes in disgust and, with a stream of muttered curses, he propped Drusilla against the wall and turned back.

He arrived in time to see the Slayer slap her hands together over Angelus’ descending blade and spit out a defiant ‘ME!’.

Bloody good move, Spike cheered her inwardly. She was a sly little trick, that much was certain. He was forced to skitter out of the way when Buffy kicked Angelus back into the ceremonial chamber.

Her eyes met his as she barreled through in pursuit of her prey. She had been certain he and that dingbat of a ho-bag were long gone. Her surprise at his return was evident, but didn’t deter her from the task at hand.

Spike watched, completely entranced by the Slayer’s seamless moves and the steely determination on her small face as she whaled on his poncy grandsire’s ass.

He had been fully prepared to step in and help her, but she seemed to have the situation well in hand. He settled for keeping up a running commentary that he knew would annoy Angelus to no end.

“Mind his right side, luv,” Spike called out helpfully. “He always drops that shoulder. That’s it!” he cheered when she neatly sliced Angelus’ hand and forced him to drop his sword.

Buffy followed through with a high kick to the face that sent Angelus reeling into the statue and onto his knees before her. She stared down at her ill-fated lover, backlit by Acathla’s gaping maw.

Spike tensed as she drew back the sword and prepared to deal the blow that would send Angelus into hell. “Do it, Slayer!” he bellowed.

Baring her teeth, Buffy started to swing her weapon.

A sudden gasp and painful groan from the vampire stilled her sword. She looked on in amazement as his eyes glowed red for a moment and then faded.

“Buffy?”

Gone was the oily sarcasm that had coated Angelus’ voice and in its place was the hesitant, almost femininely soft tones of Angel. “What’s going on?”

Buffy darted a look of confusion at Spike as Angel stumbled to his feet and gathered her into his arms.

“I… I feel like I haven’t seen you in months,” Angel murmured.

Somehow, the great git’s soul had been restored to him.

The look of wild hope in the Slayer’s eyes twisted Spike’s gut. She didn’t yet realize that soul or no soul, she would still have to send her lover to hell.

She’ll never be able to do it, Spike thought. He tensed, preparing to leap forward and finish the job himself if she couldn’t.

Buffy hugged Angel joyfully, tears spilling down her cheeks as he kissed her passionately. A sudden rumble from Acathla drew her attention and she watched in horrified fascination as its mouth widened and a glowing red vortex began to swirl behind them.

Buffy knew what she had to do. She broke off what she knew would be her last kiss with Angel and stared into his beloved brown eyes. “I love you,” she whispered, her voice raw with pain.

“I love you,” he replied.

“Close your eyes.”

When he complied, Buffy stepped back and drew back her sword, an anguished sob shuddering through her.

No one noticed the now conscious Drusilla as she slipped in behind Spike. She watched with dismay as her beloved Daddy kissed that nasty Slayer. She wanted to howl her rage when she sensed Angel’s restored soul.

Ruined! All was ruined, and it was Spike’s fault! With a feral snarl, she flung herself at him.

Still not fully healed from his bout with paralysis, Spike staggered under her slight weight and they fell forward into Angel, pushing him away from the statue.

Unable to stop the momentum of her downswing, Buffy gasped in horror as the sword impaled the wrong vampire.

“Oh my God! Spike!” she cried.

Spike stared down at the sword and back up at the remorseful green eyes of the Slayer. He flung out a hand in protest as she stepped towards him. A pained caricature of a smile twitched at his mouth.

“Always knew I’d go out in a blaze of glory,” he quipped weakly while feeling the pull of Acathla’s vortex behind him.

Wracked with guilt, Buffy was completely oblivious to the other two vampires.

“Spike, I’m… God, I’m so sorry!” she sobbed.

Where he found the audacity to wink at her she would probably never know, but the fact that he did it meant more than she was willing to think about just yet.

“’S’alright, Slayer. At least one of us gets to be happy, yeah?”

He didn’t blame her. How could he not blame her for this? She should have been able to stop once she realized that Angel was no longer her intended target.

The shimmering vortex rushed forward hungrily to claim Spike. In an instant, the statue’s mouth slammed closed and the vortex disappeared, taking her unlikely ally with it.

William the Bloody was no more.

In the resulting silence, guilt and shame warred within Buffy. Her hands came up to cover her mouth and she turned away, narrow shoulders shaking with the force of her grief.

Drusilla bent sharply at the waist, a high pitched keening noise escaping her. Her grief was short-lived; a mere token of remorse before she snapped upright with a snarl and threw herself at the unprotected back of the distracted Slayer.

Her wild move was miscalculated.

Angel didn’t think; he simply acted. One moment Drusilla was sailing through the air towards Buffy, the next her remains were showering gracefully to the floor. With a cry of abject misery, he dropped the stake and sank back to his knees.

Buffy could hardly find it within herself to acknowledge his sorrow when she was finding it almost impossible to deal with her own crushing sense of guilt. Spike had gone completely against his nature to help her take down Angelus and save the world.

And now, through a bizarre twist of fate, he was no longer a part of it.

“Buffy.”

Angel heaved himself to his feet and approached her. When he made as if to put his arms around her, Buffy flinched away, unwilling and unable to accept the comfort he offered.

“Don’t! Just… don’t. I can’t…” Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears and more than a little self-loathing as she twisted away from his clinging hands.

While a part of her was ecstatic to have Angel back, she couldn’t shake the feeling that a grave injustice had been served. Her duty as the Slayer had been to take out Angelus and she had been completely prepared to send him to hell, thus averting the apocalypse. By sending Spike in his stead, she had meted out punishment to the one who deserved it the least, evil or not. She had condemned the one who had helped her save the world.

Irony was the biggest bitch there ever was.

Maybe she wouldn’t have felt so bad if Angel had even shown the slightest hint of remorse. After a few token sniffles over the fate of Drusilla, he seemed pretty much okie dokie with the fact that the last of his line had been decimated between the two of them.

“I have to go.” Buffy shook her head as if to clear it and backed away. She suddenly couldn’t bear to look at him for another second. “I can’t be around you right now.” That said, she turned and walked swiftly from the mansion.

Angel was both surprised and a little irritated by her reaction to him. Where were the ardent kisses and fervent thanks for his safe return? He had his soul back and Angelus was banished once more. Where was the gratitude?

He could have gone after her, but something told him not to push her just now. There would be plenty of time later for them to play catch-up.

With a brooding sigh of resignation, Angel set about righting the damage they had caused.

~*~*~

Slamming into Giles’ apartment for a third time, Buffy wasted no time in cornering the slimy little man, slamming him down on the sofa with one savage push before he could utter a peep.

“Tell me it wasn’t supposed to go down like that,” she snarled.

“It wasn’t,” Whistler sputtered. “But to the people that matter, one Aurelian vampire is as good as the next.”

“What?”

“Aurelian. Angel got his soul back. That left Spike as the Master of the entire line. Why else do you think Angel was considered worthy to open Acathla? It wasn’t because of his good looks and impressive fashion sense, doll. It’s all about the blood. Aurelian’s are the purest of the vampire lineage, and William the Bloody was a direct descendant of Angelus.”

Buffy planted her hands on her hips and glared at him. “This is wrong on so many levels; you know this, don’t you?”

Whistler shrugged. “All that matters is that the apocalypse was averted. Besides, I kinda figured you’d be a whole lot happier, seein’ that you got your Angel back.”

“You know what Spike did. You know that without his help I never would have been able to beat Angelus. He should have been rewarded, not punished!”

“There’s nothing I can do. Their minds are made up and everything stands as it is,” he said with an air of finality. “You did your job, kid. You should be proud of yourself; you saved the world.”

“Proud?” She stopped in the doorway and looked over her shoulder, lines of self-loathing etching her delicate features. “Funny. I feel anything but ‘proud’ of myself right now.”

Whistler flinched as she slammed the door behind her.

~*~*~

The early morning streets were washed with pale gold sunshine, promising yet another gorgeous spring day.

Buffy plodded down the middle of Revello, her exhaustion such that she was completely oblivious to the birds singing and the purr of some ambitious homeowner’s lawnmower. She was halfway to the front door before she recalled the words spoken by her mother at the height of her ire.

“You walk out that door; don’t even think about coming back!”

She paused, trembling fingers hesitating on the burnished metal of the doorknob.

Did she mean it? Some pretty unforgivable things had been said and done by both of them. Wasn’t there an unwritten rule somewhere that your mother would always love you, no matter how much of a screw up you might turn out to be?

Giving the knob a decisive twist, she stepped warily inside and closed the door softly behind her. The house was as quiet as a grave with no sign of her mom. Buffy crept through to the kitchen, noting that the spilled liquor and broken glass had been cleaned up. There was no sign of the scuffle between them that had culminated in her mother’s spiteful words.

I shoved my mother, Buffy thought dazedly. I pushed her into that counter and turned my back on her. She thinks I’m crazy. I wish it were that simple.

She moved to the refrigerator and found the orange juice. The glass she poured went untasted as she stared sightlessly at the immaculate countertop, trying to make the smallest bit of sense out of her chaotic thoughts.

Angel was back. Spike and Drusilla were gone. Life on the Hellmouth could go on as it had before the oddly matched duo had come crashing into town.

Only it couldn’t.

As happy as she might be that Angel was restored to his former, more amenable self, it would be both naïve and stupid of her to just pretend that Angelus hadn’t existed.

She was blindingly certain that her experiences with his soulless alter-ego had irreparably damaged the dynamics of their relationship. That his many cruelties and the senseless death of Jenny Calendar had forever banished the sweet innocence inherent in all first loves.

It was foolish to assume that she could simply forget the heartbreak that his presence had brought to her life. Certainly Giles and her friends wouldn’t be able to.

She dumped her untouched juice in the sink and dragged herself up the endless stairs to her room. The healing wound on her arm from Angelus’ sword itched and burned with every movement, and the urge to curl up in a ball in the middle of her bed and pull the quilt over her head was strong. Her hands were in fact stretching towards the coolness of the flowered cotton sheets when the faintest of noises behind her brought her up short.

Buffy turned to confront the tired, red-rimmed eyes of her mother, her chin lifting several notches as they stared each other down.

“I’m not crazy.” Her voice was clogged with suppressed tears as she confronted her parent. “I’m all that I said I am and I can prove it to you this time if you’ll just give me the chance.”

When Joyce made no reply to her impassioned speech, Buffy’s shoulders drooped and she ran a trembling hand through her tangled hair. “Or I can just grab a few things and go,” she muttered as she moved towards the closet.

“Buffy, wait,” Joyce cried out desperately. Her hands came out in supplication and she moved a few steps further into the room. “Please, sweetheart, talk to me. Help me understand.”

Moving hesitantly, almost fearfully, she joined her mother. Both of them perched uneasily on the edge of the tumbled bed, each unable to meet the other’s eyes.

Just when she thought she couldn’t stand the tension another moment, Buffy was wrapped in the near-smothering embrace of her mother’s trembling arms. A ragged sigh of relief shuddered through her as she breathed in the familiar, powdery scent that soothed her inner child.

In a voice that was flat and devoid of drama, she told her mother the whole sad tale, beginning with Merrick approaching her at Hemery and ending with Spike’s unintentional and untimely demise. She spared nothing in the telling, baring her battered soul to her quietly horrified parent. When she finished, she knew that she had quite effectively stripped every illusion about their life in Sunnydale from Joyce’s eyes.

“All this time,” Joyce muttered dazedly. “I let myself believe when they told me you were a discipline case. How could I have been so blind to what was really going on with my own child?”

“You saw what I wanted you to see, Mom. Besides, look at how bad you wigged out when I did finally tell you the truth.”

Joyce smothered a laugh behind her hand as she recalled her earlier actions. “That young man probably thought I was the crazy one!” She shook her head, still bedazzled by the sensational truth of her daughter’s life. “I can’t believe I sat in the same room with a vampire,” she mused. “He was just so…”

Buffy nodded. “Handsome? Yeah, I know. Pretty hard to believe that he was over a hundred years old, isn’t it?”

Joyce frowned. “I was going to say ‘full of life’, but handsome works as well.”

A fiery blush stained Buffy’s cheeks. “Oh.”

“Well, regardless, I liked him. He was very polite and he didn’t make that first attempt to bite me.” Her gentle face hardened into implacable lines. “I don’t like, nor do I trust Angel, and believe me when I say that I felt this way about him before I even knew he was a two-hundred year old vampire pursuing my teenaged daughter. To me, that soul he claims to have is just a muzzle that keeps him from being what he really wants to be,” Joyce said firmly. “Apparently you feel the same, or you wouldn’t feel so badly about sending Spike to Hell.”

She reached out and grasped her daughter’s wobbling chin, forcing tearful hazel eyes to meet hers. “Just answer me this. Would you have left me alone in the living room like that with Angelus?”

Buffy shook her head mutely. It was true. For some unfathomable reason, she had instinctively trusted Spike more than the supposed love of her young life.

“I can’t forget his eyes, Mom.” Buffy sniffled and swiped at her wet cheeks with the edge of the sheet.

“Shh, baby. I have faith in you. You’ll find a way to make it right, no matter what those higher powers say.”

With all that was left of her idealistic young heart, Buffy wanted to believe her. The desire to right that which was wrong burned righteously within her.

But for now, her tired mind could no longer war with the confusion and misery that dwelled in her heart. She lay back against the fluffy, scented pillows with a weary sigh, bitter tears scalding her cheeks as she gave herself over to the soothing touch of her mother’s hand caressing her hair.

Joyce sat with her long after she fell into a fitful doze, the tenderness of a mother’s love keeping the demons at bay while her child slept.
tbc

Part Two ~ What Dreams May Come

Buffy snapped upright under the thin sheet, her eyes wide with horror and mouth open in a silent scream. Sweat ran in rivers down her body and her hair was soaked with it, wet strings clinging to her flushed face. She pressed a trembling hand to her pounding heart and gasped for breath.

Every night it was the same dream. Sometimes it came to her more than once, ripping her from a sound sleep and leaving her sobbing as it continued to play through her conscious mind as well. Each time it was a little different. She was just a little faster, her honed reflexes sharper, so that at the last second she might be able to stop the swords descent and avoid piercing the blond vampire’s stomach.

Nothing was ever good enough, though. In spite of her heroic efforts, she was doomed to relive the effortless slide of the sharp blade into his flesh, his gasp of shocked surprise echoing in her mind. And all the time that gentle, accepting look in those extraordinary blue eyes that laid no blame upon her, yet added bucket loads to her guilt and misery.

She shivered. Her sodden nightgown clung to the knees she drew up under her chin. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she rocked in an effort to calm herself.

For one heart-stopping moment, she had thought that this time would be different. She had actually been successful this time. Dream-Buffy had reared back at the last second and Dream-Spike had breathed a huge sigh of relief.

“Bloody hell, that was too close!” She heard him say. Just as they were sharing a smile of unadulterated happiness, strong arms closed around hers from behind and shoved the blade home. Buffy’s shattered scream of denial reverberated through the chamber and she turned to confront the malevolently grinning face of Angelus.

“Better him than me, right lover?” he snarled before whipping her head back and tearing at her throat with his fangs.

Pain.

Pain so real and excruciating that it had ejected her from the nightmare realm. She could actually feel his cold lips sucking her life’s essence from her body.

Why had tonight been so different? Dreams and portents and just plain ‘wiggy’ feelings had been a part of her life for so long that she felt fully justified in her fears that there was more to this than she was immediately aware of.

She needed to talk to Giles.

But talking to Giles would be an admission that things weren’t quite so hunky dory as she had been letting on.

Her first attempts at expressing the utter wrongness of how the Acathla situation had been resolved had been met with only slight concern. The Watcher seemed certain that whatever misgivings she might have had would lessen over time. Angel said the same thing, but on a slightly more pompous level. He hounded her incessantly about it; in fact, he often accused her of wishing her aim had been true that day.

Angel.

Angelus.

Buffy shivered once more and kicked the clammy sheets from her legs. With a sudden burst of desperate energy, she bounded up and began to strip the ruined bed linens from the mattress. She made a neat pile by the door and threw her damp nightgown on top. Finding fresh sheets and clean pajamas, she made short work of making up the bed once more and dressing herself in fuzzy, comforting flannel.

But once the distractions were out of the way, the same issues still waited to confront her. As she lay there and waited to greet the dawn, Buffy finally forced herself to admit the truth, to accept the cold fact that was staring her so ruthlessly in the face.

Angel had come back wrong.

~*~*~

Angel flung himself down in his armchair and glared at the ceiling.

He was, quite frankly, bored.

Before the recent loss and restoration of his soul, his life had been simple. He had been content with his books and the occasional stolen moments with Buffy.

Now he was aware of a vague feeling of dissatisfaction with his life and any moments with Buffy, let alone stolen ones, were few and far between. Lately she had been avoiding him and it was starting to piss him off.

A picture of the petite blonde slayer sat on the side table and he scooped it up, staring at it intently. In the photo she was breathtaking; her hazel eyes sparkling with life and a smile lighting up her face.

Angel made a scornful noise and tossed the frame to the floor, heedless of the sound of breaking glass. She sure wasn’t like that now.
The serious face and big, tragic eyes were really getting on his nerves. She needed to get past her weird obsession with Spike. Her guilt over the blond vampire’s fate was eating her up inside.

Personally, he saw nothing wrong. To him, it was a win/win situation. He got his soul back and Spike got a side-trip to Hell. Something he felt the peroxided pain in the ass had so richly deserved. It was deliciously funny the more he thought about it.

Angel picked up a bottle of whiskey and swilled half the contents in one gulp.

“Better you than me, Will, m’boy!” he slurred, hoisting the bottle high in a drunken toast.

Buffy backed away from the door and slipped silent as a wraith across the sunlit courtyard. Tears streaked her face and dripped from her trembling chin. She had almost given her presence away when Angel had callously tossed her picture to the floor, nearly drawing blood where she’d bitten her hand to muffle her cry of outrage.

All that she had seen and heard had both sickened her and affirmed her suspicions that Angel wasn’t quite himself. The Angel she knew rarely drank alcohol, yet now he was completely plastered at seven in the morning. He seemed… louder. Loud and coarse and abrasive. More often than not, he was short tempered and senselessly cruel. In short, he wasn’t the Angel she knew and thought she loved.

Instead of continuing on to school, she found herself back home. The thought of forcing herself to deal with classes and her friends and her Watcher was suddenly unbearable. Reaching the safe haven of her bedroom, she flung herself across the bed and buried her face in the pillows.

Something must have gone wrong with the restoration spell. That was the only reason she could think of for Angel’s bizarre behavior. She needed to talk to Willow and find out what could have possibly gone wrong.

But not now. Right now she needed a solid eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Maybe then she could face the train wreck her life had become.

~*~*~

“Seems a bit strange seein’ you in this place, pet.”

Buffy could barely breathe in the intense heat and her skin stung as stray embers lit on her arms and legs. Flames leapt and danced all around her and the ground was littered with bubbling pools of molten lava.

“Is-is this…” she gasped. Oxygen was definitely an issue in this place.

“It’s Hell. Well, your version of it, anyway.”

“Spike?” Buffy slapped at her arm and cried out in pain as another ember scorched her tender flesh. She knew it was his voice, and it sounded as though he were right beside her, but she had yet to find him in the glowing crimson cave. “Spike, where are you?”

He stepped out of the shadows behind her, moving quickly when a good-sized coal landed in her hair. The hand that grabbed her arm was unbelievably cool in spite of the raging inferno around them. He held her still while he swatted out the smoldering swatch of hair.

“Not exactly safe for a little thing like you down here, Slayer.” His deliciously cool hand slid down her arm to grasp her hand as he led her to stand under a protective shelf of rock.

Buffy watched in awe as a huge dragon flew over their heads. Flames belched from its gaping, razor-toothed maw, sweeping the ground before it and incinerating everything in its path. Hundreds of creatures that she thought must have once been human shrieked as they met their fiery deaths.

Hundreds of tiny black creatures swarmed over the smoldering carcasses left in the path of the dragon’s destruction. They were no bigger than a foot tall, with glittering red eyes and outsized mouths filled with row upon row of jagged, bloodstained teeth. Each held a miniature pitchfork that it used to stab viciously at the unmoving bodies in between bites of charred flesh.

EWWW!

“What are those?”

“Imps. Annoyin’ li’l buggers. They handle clean-up.” He winced as one of the not-quite-dead figures screamed in agony. “And torture.”

She shuddered and moved closer to the vampire, welcoming the strong arms that drew her in protectively and shrouded her in black leather.

“Why am I here? Is this my punishment for sending you here instead of Angel?”

“You think you’re being punished?” Spike laughed “No, Slayer. This is a dream. Your dream.”

A sharp pain in her ankle made her look down. One of the imps had found them and was chittering excitedly. It grinned evilly at Buffy and stabbed at her boot with its pitchfork. When it failed to pierce the tough leather, it started to clamber up her leg with teeth bared.

Buffy shrieked and leapt straight up into Spike’s arms. Working around an armful of panicked slayer, a fully vamped Spike snarled and drew back his foot. One good kick and the little creature sailed across the cavern and splattered on the opposite wall.

She looked over her shoulder and gave the neon-green smear on the far wall a speculative glance. “Good distance,” she muttered. “You do that a lot?” The wall was covered with other bright blobs.

Spike shrugged. “It passes the time. You ready to get down yet?” He made as if to set her on her feet and she flung her arms around his neck with a squeak of protest. “Guess not,” he choked out, throwing in a few exaggerated gagging noises for effect.

“Oh, cut it out,” Buffy snapped. “I can’t be choking you because you don’t need to breathe!”

“Yeah, this is exactly my idea of Hell. Forced to play nursemaid to the bleedin’ Slayer. Just fuckin’ perfect,” he groused. With a sigh of resignation, he found a relatively smooth rock and sat down, cradling her in his lap. In spite of his pissy attitude, the large hands that held her were astonishingly gentle.

Gradually easing up on her death-grip, Buffy leaned back with a slight frown. Her eyes followed her hands as they slid from his neck, across his shoulders and down over his chest. She could feel his hands skimming a path down her back and over the flare of her hips.

Lifting her eyes to his face, Buffy felt her stomach muscles clench. Spike’s eyes were closed and the expression on his face was one of complete rapture. Startled by such raw emotion, she snatched her hands back from the hard chest she had been idly caressing, nearly tumbling off his lap in the process.

Spike didn’t even try to stop the rumble of laughter that escaped him at her antics. “Don’t know why you’re fightin’ it, pet. It’s your dream, after all.”

He hauled her back up, this time to straddle his lap. His hands caught hers and laid them against his chest again, pressing down hard. A soft purring sound rumbled through him, tingling pleasantly under her palms and bringing an unexpected flood of warmth that left her gasping and kneading at his flesh like a kitten.

Letting one hand drift over his stomach, she lifted the other to his face, her breath catching in her throat as he shuddered and nuzzled into her touch.

“Oh, God. Yes,” he breathed. “Touch me, Buffy. Been so long for me.”

“How long?” she whispered. His skin felt wonderfully soft and inviting under her fingertips.

“Hundred or so. I’ve lost count.” His tongue snaked out and swiped at her fingers.

“Days?”

“Years,” he murmured. “Time is different here.”

The tears that burned her eyes weren’t only from the sulfurous fumes that rose around them. Both hands framed his face, thumbs stroking along his prominent cheekbones until his eyes opened to meet hers. Buffy found herself lost in an endless sea of blue.

“You don’t deserve to be here.” The moisture in her eyes overflowed and ran down her cheeks. “If only I had—”

One long finger pressed against her lips to quiet her recriminations. He leaned into her and replaced his finger with his mouth, his lips barely brushing hers as he spoke. “Shh. No one is to blame, Buffy. It just happened that way, so stop beatin’ yourself up over it, yeah?”

She could barely summon the effort to nod her head, lost as she was in the softness of those plush lips rubbing over hers in a kiss that wasn’t quite a kiss. Blind instinct led her to slide further down onto his lap and grind against him. He growled, his answering upward thrust dragging a harsh, needy cry from her.

After an endless, wanting time, his lips covered hers with a ragged moan. Buffy wrapped her hands around his neck and fell against him in complete surrender.

Kissing. Kissing Spike. She was dreaming of kissing Spike and oh, God, were they kissing! He bent her back over his arm, his lips plundering hers as his cool tongue slipped inside her mouth to twist and mate with hers.

She was enthralled. Mesmerized... Never before had she felt such fire and intensity. The taste and scent and feel of him assailed her senses.

Buffy was panting when he pulled away and buried his face in her neck. Hot prickles raced up her spine to end where his blunt teeth closed over her jugular, nipping and sucking fervently.

“Spike, please!” she begged. Her fingers tunneled through his hair and held him against her throat, body tense in anticipation of his bite.

With one last hard suck, he lifted his head, eyes midnight dark and nostrils flared as he dragged in air he didn’t need. “When the time is right, Slayer,” he said cryptically. “Be ready for me.”

He kissed her again and she knew she was lost. His fingers gripped her hips with bruising strength as she began to ride him once more. The friction of his hard cock against her engorged sex was pure heaven, even through two layers of denim. The tension in her belly rose to almost unbearable levels.

Spike must have sensed how close she was. His hands moved around to grip her ass, pressing down as he arched upward with a harsh growl. She cried out his name as her release exploded within. Feeling as though she were being sucked into a whirlpool of darkness, Buffy fell.

~*~*~

Her earlier dreams had catapulted her into wakefulness with her heart pounding with fear, but not this one. This one had her surfacing from her restless nap with a ragged moan and a heart that was racing with desire rather than fear. An all over shiver wracked her body and residual tremors radiated from her sex.

She pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the bed. Dragging a hand through her tangled hair, she blew out a huge breath before pushing herself to her feet and making her way down the hall to the bathroom. Once there, she ran the cold water and splashed it over her face. Grabbing a towel from the rack, she buried her face in its folds and dried off.

Tossing the towel into the hamper, she picked up her brush and lifted it to her hair. That’s when she saw it. Mouth gaping in disbelief, she pulled her hair away from her neck and leaned in closer to the mirror.

There, directly over the faded scar the Master had left on her throat, was a huge purple hickey.

Part Three ~ Man in the Mirror

Her talk with Giles hadn’t offered any clarity for her muddled thoughts. A highly edited version of the Spike dream and a quick flash of the bruise on her neck had sent the watcher into frenzied research mode, muttering about the subconscious manifestations of Slayer dreams. He was in such a tizzy of disjointed phrases and polishing of glasses that she decided to leave off voicing her concerns about Angel for another time.

Tonight she was determined to put aside her disturbing thoughts and be ‘normal’ Buffy. A few phone calls and a quick trip home to change her clothes and she was all set to meet her friends at the Bronze.

Buffy spotted Willow and Xander immediately. She carefully adjusted the mock-turtleneck of the red tank top she wore, thankful that it covered the still prominent mark on her neck perfectly. Sucking in a deep breath, she made her way over to their table.

“Hey, guys! What’s the what?” she called out cheerfully.

Were her eyes playing tricks on her or did the two of them look the tiniest bit guilty as they jumped apart? A quick glance showed her that Cordy and Oz were conspicuously absent from their usual Saturday night gathering. Maybe they were just running late.

“Buffster!” Xander’s eyes were just a little bit too innocently wide and his voice was a little too loud. Willow looked like she’d swallowed a live squid and her lipstick was the exact same shade as the glaringly obvious smudge on Xander’s mouth.

Okay. Maybe Cordy and Oz weren’t running late.

The thought of confronting them with her suspicions made Buffy squirm uncomfortably. Was it even her place? Making a great show out of digging through her purse for her wallet, she gave them the time they needed to get rid of the lipstick smudge and shake off the guilty looks.

“Who’s having what? I’m buying,” she told them with a vapid smile. Xander eagerly offered to go fetch the round and took off like a scalded cat, leaving her alone with Willow.

“I’m looking in to a de-lusting spell,” the redhead offered before Buffy had a chance to voice her thoughts. “It’s okay, Buffy. I know you saw us.”

“What’s going on here, Will? I know you used to have a crush on Xander, but I thought that was over once you met Oz?”

Willow looked ready to burst into tears, struggling bravely with her quivering bottom lip. “I do! Love Oz, I mean. And I know Xander is wild about Cordelia. It’s just a weird attraction thing and once I find the right spell, things will take care of themselves. I hope,” she finished desperately.

“Isn’t a spell kind of drastic, Will? I mean… maybe it’s real.” Says the girl who is having erotic, other-worldly dreams about the vampire she’d sent to hell, Buffy thought caustically.

The other girl shook her head vehemently. “No, it’s not real. I love Oz. I do! I’ll do the spell and everything will be like it was.” She stared longingly at Xander as he made his way back to the table with three drinks. “Just don’t say anything to Xander about the spell. Please?” she begged.

Buffy sighed. “Sure, Will.”

Nearly spilling the drinks as he slammed them down, Xander gawped at Buffy. “You aren’t gonna believe what I just saw! Heck, I don’t believe it and it was right in front of my face.”

“What the heck are you babbling about, Xan?” Buffy shared a look of confusion with Willow, who shrugged.

“I can’t find the words to explain it. Just look at the dance floor.”

Buffy turned on her stool until she faced the dance floor, and froze.

He looked rather yum-worthy in those leather pants and loose silk shirt, but the effect was completely spoiled by the way he was flinging himself about on the dance floor in a way that rivaled Xander at his most goofy.

“Angel?” Willow gasped. “I’ve only ever seen him slow-dance with you, Buffy. Is he possessed or something?”

“Or something, I think.” Buffy groaned and covered her eyes. It was just too embarrassing to watch. When she lifted her head again she wanted to slide through the cracks in the floor. Angel had spotted them and was dancing his way over with a toothy grin.

No, it wasn’t Angelus; but in no way, shape, or form could this be considered normal behavior for the normally taciturn vampire. When he reached the table he smacked Xander in the back of the head, tweaked Willow’s breast, and commenced grinding his dick into Buffy’s ass.

Xander yelped in pain, Willow ‘eeped’, and Buffy whirled around and grabbed him by the throat with murder in her eyes.

“Put that thing near me again and it’s coming off!” she bit out through clenched teeth. “And I don’t mean in an oozy, yummy, sexy way.”

From the smell that was wafting off of him, Angel was well and truly soused. He blinked at her myopically and tried to peel her fingers from his neck. ‘C’mon, baby. Don’t be mad. Come and dance with me?”

Without waiting for her reply, he grabbed her wrist and dragged her out into the middle of the floor.

Not wanting to make a scene, Buffy allowed herself to be pulled along behind him and then wrapped in suffocating arms, her face squashed into his chest. Thankfully, it was a slow song. Maybe she could talk some sense into him.

“Angel, what’s gotten into you?” she hissed as she fought to extricate herself from his overbearing hold. He held her tighter in response to her struggles and began to grind against her.

“Oh, come on, Buff. You’re my girl. You’re supposed to be making me happy, right? SO, make me happy!” he demanded, trying to slide his hand under her top.

She jerked away and slapped at his chest. “Are you crazy? You know we can’t do anything like that!”

“Aw, baby, I’m sorry. I forget how innocent you still are. After all, we only screwed once, didn’t we?” His fingers dug into her hips as he yanked her back.

Buffy shuddered as he leaned down and licked her ear. Surely he didn’t seriously think his behavior was turning her on? Most of the people that cluttered the dance floor were blatantly staring at them. She was completely mortified.

Mistaking her stillness for acquiescence, Angel bent to whisper in her ear. “C’mon, Buffy. Come back to my place and I’ll lick that pretty little pussy of yours ‘til you scream my name.”

Slamming both of her hands into his chest, she shoved hard and sent him sprawling across the floor. Not bothering to hide her disgust, she moved to stand over him.

“I can’t believe,” she spat, “that you would even suggest something like that to me after everything that has happened.”

“Still mourning your dead hero, huh?” Angel snarled as he struggled to his feet. “Well, I hate to tell you, sweetheart, but your perfect Spike would do the same thing; he’d fuck you ‘til you bled- right before he ripped your throat out.”

Buffy shot him a look of disdain. “You’re a pathetic drunk, Angel. Consider this a warning; you come near me or any of my friends in this condition again and I won’t hesitate to drive a stake through your heart.”

He watched, dumbfounded, as she stalked back to her table and gathered up her friends.

“Buffy!”

“I mean it, Angel. Stay away.” She didn’t even bother to turn back, just tossed the words over her shoulder as she followed Xander and Willow out the door.

~*~*~

Willow was in complete agreement with Buffy’s theory that Angel had come back wrong and vowed to research the restoration spell more extensively.

She walked them both home before deciding on a quick patrol before she found her own bed for the night. Unfortunately everything seemed to sense her bad mood and steered clear of her, so she was still cranky as she climbed the short flight of steps to her front door.

The figure that detached itself from the shadows beside the porch seemed vaguely familiar. Buffy leapt back and dropped into her fighting stance.

“Who the hell are you and what are you doing skulking around my front door?” she snarled.

“Ease off, dollface. You really gotta work on those anger issues of yours.”

She relaxed with a groan. Unfortunately she knew that voice. “Whistler?”

“In the flesh. Well… sorta,” the demon quipped.

“Every time you pop up like this, you risk getting beat down. You know that, right?”

Whistler sobered at her steely tone. “So, you figured it out yet?” he asked.

Buffy rested her weight on one hip and crossed her arms across her chest, a wary expression on her face.

“Figured out what? Do you mean Angel suddenly acting like an ass or the freaked out dreams I’m having where he goes all ‘grrr’ and bites me?”

“You forgot to mention the dreams you’ve been having about another vampire. Blinding white hair? Black leather? Ringing any bells yet, Slayer?”

A rush of embarrassment heated her face. “God! Is nothing sacred with you people? What-- are the Powers making me have these dreams for some twisted reason?”

He shook his head. “The dreams are your own. They’re slayer dreams, but that’s all I can tell you until the bosses upstairs see fit to inform me different. No. I’m here to talk to you about Angel.”

Breathing a huffy sigh of relief that she was to be spared the humiliation of revealing any details of her dream of Spike, Buffy turned her attention to unlocking her front door and leading the smelly demon inside. Tossing her keys on the hall table, she allowed him to precede her into the living room.

“So, what can you tell me about Angel? Why is he acting this way? At first I was afraid that the spell didn’t take and he was still Angelus.”

She perched on the cushions of the sofa and watched him carefully as he made a circuit of the tastefully decorated room. When his nosiness was satisfied, Whistler joined her on the sofa.

“No worries there. The spell took. Angel is all souled back up. Only problem is this- your little redheaded witch didn’t just curse him with a soul. She cursed him with the original soul.”

Buffy’s mouth fell open. “Huh? Say that again.”

Whistler had to stifle a smile at her dazed expression. He’d seen the extensive damage that this petite girl could do. No way was he gonna laugh at her. He might be immortal but he could still feel massive amounts of pain if administered by a pissed off Slayer.

“Okay, I’m gonna skim thru the cliff-notes version. Any questions, you just ask. Ya with me? Good. Angelus was sired by Darla in 1753. Before that he was known as Liam, the wastrel son of a prominent Galway family. By wastrel, I mean that he was a disgrace to his father. He gambled, he drank, he whored. Basically a completely worthless pile of shite. Ol’ Liam Senior had to bail him out of many a scrape; mostly situations where he forced himself on the young daughters of the local farmers. Not a nice guy, our Liam, nor one to ‘fess up even when he knew he’d been caught red-handed.

That’s what your boy was like with his soul. Before Darla got her fangs into him. Hell, the night she nailed him, his father had thrown him into the streets ‘for the last time’. Liam became Angelus, one of the most vicious and bloodthirsty vampires in history.”

Buffy sat quietly contemplating his words. “So what you’re saying is that the soul of the person who is turned determines the kind of vampire they’ll be?” she asked. A skip in her heartbeat had her cautioning herself to stay calm. If that were the case she had a lot more questions for Mr. Whistler that didn’t concern this particular vampire.

“Always knew you were a smart little trick. Exactly. Now, when that band of vengeful gypsies cursed Angelus, they weren’t at all picky. Any random soul was good enough to do the job. Your little friend, being the over-achiever she is, got specific and cursed him with the original soul when she did her mojo. Liam’s soul; which wasn’t any great prize to begin with, ya know?”

“So the stupid, rude behavior is what he was like as a human?” Buffy shook her head with a short, bitter laugh. “Great. Just when you think you know a guy…”

Whistler sat forward, his elbows on his knees. “This whole sitch has thrown a monkey-wrench into all those plans the Powers had for Angel,” he commented. His seemingly random remark irritated the slayer.

“Well, don’t whine to me. I tried to get them to change how things went down, but noooooo! The all powerful Powers know best, don’t they?” she said scathingly.

He glared at her. “Why you got to bring up old shi- err stuff, Slayer?”

“It’s my right as a female. And quit trying to talk hip. Quite frankly it’s scary and I feel like I’m on Springer.”

Holding out his hands in a placating gesture, Whistler sought to appeal to her better nature. If such a thing exists, he thought sourly.

“No one is throwing around any blame, here. Trust me, they’ll figure out something to make it right. It’s kinda what they do,” he assured her.

Buffy shot out of her seat, eyeing him warily. “Why does that not make me feel any better? Oh yeah! It’s because I’m usually the one that gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop when the Powers start sticking their noses in.”

She had a point.

Whistler sucked in his cheeks with an annoying smacking sound. “All they’re asking of you right now is to cultivate a little patience when you’re dealing with Angel. And whatever you do, no more smoochies!”

Her glare could have burned the slime off a Chaos demon. Before Whistler knew what was happening, Buffy had him by the scruff of the neck and high-stepping it to the front door. She bounced him deliberately off of the door frame, breaking his nose. He was still squealing in pain as she tossed him out into the front yard and slammed the door shut.

“I’ll call you, Slayer. Maybe we can do lunch,” he quipped nasally as he pinched his nose to stop the bleeding.

Damn, but she was so touchy!

Part Four ~ Someone to Watch Over Me

Word from Willy the Snitch had it that there was a new nest of vampires in the burned out warehouse that had once been home to Spike, Drusilla, and later Angelus. Willie could be a traitorous liar, but with the proper incentive- such as a hard right to the chin- he occasionally came through with some truthful info.

It was nearing sunrise as Buffy stepped carefully through the window and onto the catwalk that circled above the main floor. It was a decent-sized nest. She counted twelve vamps, most of them fledglings. The leader, a female with stringy red hair and an extremely loud and obnoxious voice, wasn’t very old herself.

Staring down at them as they snapped and snarled and fought amongst themselves, Buffy made a eww face. The differences between these vampires and those from the Aurelian line were mind-boggling. She wondered idly what Giles would have to say about that.

The fighting was settling down as they all began to find places to sleep away the daylight. She decided to give them an hour and then she would get with the staking. Sleepy vampires equaled dust. It was the best way she’d found to take out a nest. Not that she couldn’t handle a dozen fledglings on her own, but why over-exert herself if there was no need?

Buffy stifled a yawn and blinked her eyes rapidly to clear the grittiness from lack of sleep. Her night had been a long one and she was more than ready to get the job done and find her warm bed, dreams or no dreams.

Dreams.

An all-over blush prickled her skin and she fought the urge to squirm. She knew she should be seriously wigged by the fact that she’d had the next best thing to sex with William the Bloody while she slumbered, but she couldn’t find it within herself to be even the slightest bit squicked by it all.

Angel’s spiteful comments about Spike had unnerved her, but obviously not enough to change her body’s reaction to her erotic sublimations.

There was no denying the fact that she’d been attracted to the brash, blond vampire from their first encounter in the alley behind the Bronze. With the looks and the leather and that delicious accent, he was every good girl’s fantasy of bad boy sex, even if he was a vampire. But she’d loved Angel and it was more than obvious that Spike was mad about his Drusilla, so she had firmly banished such thoughts from her mind.

Everything had gone to hell with the consummation of her relationship with Angel. The loss of his soul had sent him back into Drusilla’s faithless arms, leaving Buffy and Spike out in the cold and desperate to reclaim the loves they had lost. Was it any wonder they had found each other and hammered out that ill-fated truce?

The silence from below broke through her introspections and she moved cautiously to peek over the edge once more. All quiet on the soon-to-be-dusty front. It was time to get to work.

Buffy made her way down to the floor, her trainers not making a sound against the concrete as she crept up on the sleeping vamps. Her slayer senses were clamoring like a bitch, the ‘tinglies’ at the nape of her neck fiercer than usual, but that couldn’t be helped since she was in the presence of so many of them.

*Thump* poof! *Thump* poof! She worked her way from the outside in, fighting to keep from sneezing from the effects of so much dust.

Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twel-.

The stringy-haired female vamp leapt down on her from a pile of rusty machinery. Buffy cursed as she rolled with the impact, bringing her legs up and pushing the snapping creature up and over her head. Her stake clattered to the concrete and spun away tauntingly.

Dammit!

She jumped to her feet in time to avoid having her head smashed by a twisted metal bar. What the hell?

Where the thirteenth vamp had been hiding she had no clue, but he was there now. Big as life and twice as ugly as his mate, the obvious leader circled her and gnashed his teeth.

“Slayer! You’ll pay for destroying my dynasty!” he roared.

“Dynasty? Gimme a break! Who do you think you are, the Master?” she taunted. “Talk about delusions of grandeur.”

The female was trying to circle around behind her and Buffy moved quickly to keep her back to the soot-smeared wall. Miss Overachiever decided to give it a shot anyway and ended up with ‘Nike’ stamped on her forehead as she slammed into the slayer’s raised foot.

Enraged, Big Ugly rushed her and she somersaulted neatly over his head. While he was looking frantically around for her, Buffy ran and slid across the oily floor. Palming her lost stake, she climbed nimbly up the pile of machinery the female vamp had jumped from earlier.

She hadn’t taken into account the oil that caked the soles of her shoes. Her feet slipped and there was just enough time to squeak ‘oh shit!’ before she fell, landing heavily on her back and knocking the wind completely out of her. The back of her head hit the concrete, causing stars to dance behind her eyelids.

Struggling to stay conscious, Buffy felt Big Ugly leap triumphantly on top of her while the female grabbed her arms and held them down over her head.

“Who has delusions of grandeur now, Slayer?” Big Ugly hissed as he neared her throat.

Globs of saliva dripped from his yellowed fangs onto her skin. Buffy shuddered and bucked frantically in an attempt to dislodge him. God! she prayed desperately. Don’t let me go out like this!

“Hey! Save some for me, baby,” purred the female, her yellow eyes gleaming as she stared down at their captive.

“You got her hands, stupid,” he scoffed. “Bite her wrist. We’ll both suck her dry.”

In spite of her determination not to react, the pain of the dual penetration of their fangs ripped a scream from Buffy’s throat. Oh, God, this is it! she thought as the darkness whirled dizzily around her.

A blood-curdling howl of outrage filled the warehouse, startling the two vampires from their kill. Both looked up in time to see a pale blur coming at them before it slammed into them, knocking them from the supine form of the slayer.

They never had a chance.

The female was first, her head simply twisted off. Big Ugly made a valiant attempt to fight back, but his efforts were wasted on the enraged creature that tore into him with fists and fangs.

Buffy’s vision faded in and out as she fought to sit up. Between the two of them, she had lost a lot of blood very quickly and she was so weak she could barely lift her head. She tried to force her eyes to focus on the two combatants but all she could see was a vignette of blurry white laced with ribbons of blood red.

The frantic screams of pain from the big vampire finally stopped. Buffy flinched back as the remaining figure approached her and knelt with preternatural grace at her side. She could feel him sniffing at her and heard the confused growls that rumbled forth.

Strong hands lifted her and her head fell limply back to expose the ragged holes in her throat. The puzzled growls turned to savage snarls. Another vampire then, she thought woozily. Must have come to finish the job. She tensed, bracing herself for the pain of that final bite.

Instead, she felt the cool roughness of his tongue as he lapped at her torn flesh, carefully tending her neck before moving to her wrist. An odd purring sound burst from him as he laved her wounds; the sound both soothing and disturbingly familiar.

Buffy gathered her scattered wits and lifted her head, forcing her heavy eyelids up. His face swam into focus. In spite of the ridged brow and golden eyes, she knew that face. A harsh gasp tumbled from her lips, giving breathless voice to his name before the darkness claimed her.

“Spike.”

~*~*~

The bed coverings were musty and smelled strongly of soot, but the pillow beneath her aching head was soft. In spite of her short nap, she still felt sluggish and weak. Buffy moaned softly as she tried to sit up.

A soft, warning growl floated out of the shadows at her movements and she glanced around warily, hazel eyes wide as she sought to pierce the darkness surrounding the bed.

Had she been hallucinating? Extreme blood loss had a way of messing with a person’s mind. No. No way possible. It couldn’t be. There was no way she could have seen… Whatever she thought she saw before she passed out. It had to be a vision. A mirage. Or plain old wishful thinking spurred by the intensity of her dreams of a certain blond vampire.

Then who had saved her? Who had brought her here, deep inside the belly of the burned out warehouse, and laid her out on this bed? She could feel eyes on her and the tell-tale signature that screamed ‘vampire’ itching furiously at the base of her neck.

She tried to quash the tremor of fear that tripped up and down her spine. She was alone in the dark with what was obviously a feral vampire, feeling limp as a dishrag and without even a stake for comfort.

The growling had ceased when she stopped moving around on the bed and now the only sounds she could hear were her own strained respirations and the panicky thumping of her heart. Keeping her movements slow, she cautiously edged her way to the side of the bed facing away from where she’d heard the earlier warning noises.

The instant that her toe touched the floor, she blanched. This time the growls were harsher and came from right behind her. With a startled cry of fright she threw herself back into the middle of the bed and whirled to face her would-be attacker.

He stepped from the stygian darkness, an isolated beam of diffused light from some broken window high above them creating a deceptively angelic halo around his white blond hair.

“S-Spike?” Her voice sounded unnaturally loud. In truth; it was the barest whisper of breath that she struggled to force over her taut vocal chords.

Not a stitch of clothing hid the marble perfection of his hide as he stood proudly before her. The tawny eyes that met hers unflinchingly did so without a spark of recognition in their depths. His demon never flickered, the heavily ridged forehead, slightly snubbed nose, and wicked sharp fangs keeping to the forefront as he glared at her distrustfully.

He prowled silently forward until he stood right beside the bed, his sleek muscles tensed to leap if she made the slightest movement that could be construed as aggressive.

Being confronted with so much naked male flesh was disconcerting to say the least. Buffy tried to keep her gaze fixed intently on his face, but the temptation was far too irresistible. The tip of her tongue darted out to moisten her lips as her eyes drifted downward.

Gah!

The man was hiding some serious muscular definition under all that black leather! No wonder he was so lethally graceful when he fought, there wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t honed to perfection. Her eyes flitted from broad shoulders and defined pecs to the rippling muscles of a truly mouth-watering abdomen. They lingered on the tasty indentation of his naval before following the faint dusting of curly hair that pointed the way to his…

Ohmigod...

Her one night of passion with Angel hadn’t allowed for a lot of mutual exploration of their bodies, let alone up close and personal knowledge of his body below the waist. She’d seen pictures before, of course, but nothing compared to her first sight of the real thing.

Even at rest she found it beautiful. Pale as a slice of moonlight in a nest of honey brown curls. She studied him carefully, eyes widening as it seemed to feel the weight of her gaze and began to visibly stir and lengthen. A low, purring sound, so obviously different from the others he’d made, rumbled through his chest.

Buffy blushed every shade of red on the spectrum and lifted her eyes.

She waited with nervous expectation for him to spout some typically smart-assed Spike-ism that would result in her complete and utter humiliation.

Nothing. Only that same, almost suggestive purring sound once more.

“Spike?” she queried nervously. “Are you… in there?”

His head tilted at the sound of her voice, saffron colored eyes narrowing as he leaned over her. He made a harsher noise of reprimand when she shied away from him. His hands found her arms in a bruising grip as he buried his face in her hair and inhaled a deep, deliberate breath of her scent.

Okay, major wigginess with all the Buffy sniffing. Maybe she was a little slow on the uptake, what with the massive blood loss and all, but something was seriously wrong with the former bane of her existence.

“Do you know who I am, Spike? Slayer? Ringing any bells?”

Judging from the reaction she got, he at least knew what that word meant. His head jerked up and he snarled in her face.

Things to remember; don’t remind feral vampire of her status as killer of his kind.

In spite of her fear, Buffy softened her voice cajolingly. “Hey Spike. It’s Buffy. Remember; Buffy?”

More grunts and growls. He was obviously getting impatient that she couldn’t understand him.

“Well, I’m sorry that I don’t speak ‘grrr’!” she huffed, losing what little patience she possessed.

Without any warning, he snagged the hem of her top and whisked it over her head.

“Hey!” Buffy couldn’t stifle the shout of indignation as the shirt went flying without regard over his shoulder.

“Spike!” she shrieked as he broke the front clasp of her bra and dragged the straps from her shoulders. “What the hell are you doing?”

She swatted at his tenacious hands and aimed a punch at his jaw that he dodged easily. Her strength was coming back, but she was nowhere near being a match for him. She was suddenly truly afraid that he might finish the job the other vampires had started.

Ignoring her ineffectual slaps, he bound both her small hands in one of his. Climbing up on the bed, he pinned them above her head and quickly subdued her kicking legs by flinging a heavy thigh across them. Once he had her fully restrained he merely lay there, waiting patiently for her to tire herself out.

Which didn’t take long. By the time she gave in, she was drenched with sweat and tears streaked her flushed cheeks. The fear in her eyes was palpable as she stared up at him.

For the first time since she had awakened in his presence, he allowed the demon to fade away and reveal his human features. A frown drew his eyebrows together and he shook his head slowly. He leaned down, nuzzling and purring into the softness of her neck until his lips came to rest against the shell of her ear.

“Shhh.” The sibilant whisper against her ear made her skin prickle pleasurably. His free hand was in her hair, petting her; the long fingers sifting through the tangles until it framed her face in shades of gold.

Spike kissed a path from her ear to the corner of her mouth, his tongue coming out to tease at the trembling seam of her lips until she opened her mouth to its invading coolness.

All of her fear evaporated in the face of that steamy, toe-curling kiss. A tug at her still imprisoned wrists brought immediate release and she brought her hands up to curve over his shoulders.

He kissed her with the same fervent intensity he’d shown in her dream, pausing only to allow her a quick gasp for much needed air before launching his assault on her senses once more.

When his hand found the waistband of her track pants, she made no move to impede him; instead she lifted her hips from the mattress to aide in their swift removal. Another quick sweep of his hand down her legs and her white cotton thong joined them on the floor.

Giving her no chance to shield her nudity, his mouth left hers to nibble a path to her breasts. He nipped and nuzzled at them almost playfully before drawing one hard peak into his mouth. Lips, teeth, and tongue all came into play as he worried at one taut nub before moving to the other.

Buffy arched into his mouth, tiny sounds of frustration tumbling from her lips as she dug her nails into his hard shoulders and left red half-moons to decorate his pale skin. He obviously enjoyed the sting as she dug in, groaning his pleasure around a mouthful of her nipple and grinding his cock into her hip.

His hand swept over the soft skin of her tummy, fingers tracing her belly button before sliding down to tangle in the soft curls shielding her sex. When she instinctively tightened her thighs against him, Spike lifted his head and narrowed his eyes at her with a domineering grunt.

She couldn’t say how she understood what he wanted of her, no more than she could explain why she was lying here with him and not fighting like a wildcat to be free. Her body understood that imperious tone, though, and responded accordingly as she spread herself submissively beneath him.

Spike purred his approval of her actions and bent over to claim her lips in another deep, wet kiss as his fingers probed her cleft and spread the copious moisture up and down her slit before finding the hard nub of her clit and rubbing it with firm but lazy circles.

Gasping against his devouring mouth, Buffy lifted her hips eagerly upwards, seeking more from those talented fingers. He didn’t disappoint. His thumb continued to swirl around her clitoris as he slipped his two middle fingers inside the dripping heat of her tight sheath.

“Spike!” Buffy cried out his name as the unexpected intensity of her first orgasm slammed into her, making her body twist and dance beneath his. It had barely abated when another was upon her and they continued in an endless wave of pleasure.

He kept at it, refusing to stop until she collapsed bonelessly back into the musty mattress, her breath a harsh rasp in her throat. She opened passion glazed eyes to see him kneeling between her sprawled legs; one hand smoothing the top of her thigh with a feather light touch as the other slowly stroked his burgeoning erection. He stared at her expectantly, his eyes almost black with desire as he waited.

Buffy was aware of her body once more giving in to his unspoken demands as she let her head fall to one side, willingly baring her neck to him. She didn’t flinch as he moved over her, his lips and tongue eagerly tracing her pulsing jugular while he used his hand to stroke his dick up and down the length of her pussy, coating it with her creamy moisture. He aligned himself with her entrance just as he found the fading purple blemish on her neck.

His demon surged forth once more and cock and fangs slid simultaneously into her. Buffy screamed as the consuming pleasure-pain swept her away, her body quaking beneath him.

Spike held himself still within her as her blood flowed over his tongue, grunting ecstatically against her flesh. After taking a few shallow pulls, he lifting his head and staring down at her. When Buffy turned her stunned eyes back up to his, he spoke his first word.

“Mine.”

Part Five ~ That Old Black Magic

“Oh my God…”

‘Mine.’

That single word had her tensing herself to throw him off. She wasn’t as oblivious to vampire customs and mating rituals as her watcher believed her to be. What he had refused to stammer out when she questioned him, she had discovered on her own or with Willow’s help in the many dusty tomes that lined the shelves in his office at the library. Ancient, dusty books that held her enthralled as they revealed their dark secrets to her devouring eyes when her interest had been sparked by an entirely different vampire than the one holding himself braced over her.

He held himself in check, his body unmoving where it was intimately joined with hers. Her efforts to arch away only served to drive him further inside, his rampant girth stretching her virtually untried body to uncomfortable limits that had her instinctively lifting her legs to his hips in an attempt to ease the incredible pressure.

Sensing her fear and uncertainty, he frowned down at her, the obvious concern in his eyes confusing her even further. His behavior was completely at odds with what she had anticipated as he leaned down and sniffed delicately at her neck.

Anxious moments passed as he lingered there, his tongue coming out to trace over where he had bitten her before he pulled back and deliberately puffed currents of tepid air over the damp trail he’d left on her skin. He repeated this action several times until she found herself relaxing under its soothing effect. Moving until their bodies were melded from chest to toes, he continued to nuzzle and purr against her, alternating between gentle nips and flicks of his tongue along the smooth column of her throat.

Buffy lay completely boneless and submissive beneath him by the time he closed blunt teeth over his mark. It wasn’t painful in the least, but it was just enough to prove himself the dominant partner in this unexpected joining; his demon asserted its control over the slayer in her. Holding her firmly with his teeth gripping her neck, he began to move within her using slow, steady strokes.

Nothing in her previous experience had prepared her for the sheer intensity of sensation his measured movements were eliciting from her body. The discomfort of his invasion was quickly forgotten as she writhed beneath him. One trembling hand came up to grip his head, holding him at her neck, while the other found the flexing muscles of his backside, fingers sinking deeply into his flesh to urge him on.

His free hand skimmed down her side, following the indentation of her waist and the flare of her hip before coming to rest on the knee that gripped his hip. He pushed upward, opening her further. Buffy gasped heatedly as he sank even deeper inside her, reaching places she’d never dreamed existed.

Spike wrapped his arm around her upraised leg, holding it to his side as he quickened his pace. He leaned over her, his face inches from hers as he caught and held her wide green eyes within a prison of blue.

Before she lost herself completely in that swirling cerulean vortex, Buffy fisted both hands in his hair and dragged him down, smashing her mouth to his in a bruising kiss. A growl of approval rumbled from Spike as she nipped and sucked voraciously at his lips. The last vestiges of her docility were cast aside as she arched up to meet his forceful thrusts.

What little control she had left was diminishing rapidly, swept away by her body’s reaction to his touch. The hand gripping her knee had slid up to tease and fondle the sensitive tips of her breasts while the hand above her head twisted in her hair, tilting her head and baring her throat to him.

He tore his mouth from hers and buried his face in the curve of her neck. The instant he bit down, the tension that had been building within her womb seemed to explode, flooding her entire body with such a powerful glut of sensation that she actually blacked out for a moment. It went on, waves of intense pleasure coursing through her electrified nerve endings, only fading when he released his hold on her and lifted his head.

Buffy shivered but wasn’t sure if it was in reaction to the mind-shattering orgasm or the predatory gleam in the golden eyes staring down at her.

His body continued to rock against hers, his still-throbbing cock sliding deliciously in and out. The hand that was tangled in her hair tightened almost painfully as he guided her mouth to his throat. When she protested and tried to turn her face away, he barked out some foreign sounding words in a harsh, commanding voice.

“No!” she cried out, bringing her hands up to push against his shoulders.

The second her denial burst from her, he released his hold on her hair and leaned back to give her an obvious glare of irritation. Grateful that he wasn’t going to push the issue of her returning his claim, Buffy urged him back down. She found the faded scar on his throat and gave it a good lick before drawing the skin into her mouth and sucking as hard as she could, careful not to bite down and draw blood.

Spike lunged against her with a guttural moan, his hands grabbing at her hips to hold her beneath him as he came hard, hips still thrusting as he filled her with his thick spendings.

She pulled her mouth away as he slumped across her body with a groan of repletion. He wasn’t still for long, though. He rolled off to the side and drew her to him, her back against his front as he cuddled her close and purred into the scented tangle of her hair.

Buffy only meant to rest her eyes for a moment. She really needed to try and make Spike understand that she had to leave for a while, but that she would be back.

Lulled by the vibration of the vampire’s chest and the soothing circles his fingers were brushing up and down her hip and thigh, she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

~*~*~

She woke a few hours later with a raging thirst, pinned to the mattress by a sleeping vampire. Buffy scooted stealthily to the edge of the bed, carefully sliding her pillow under the arm that Spike had draped over her waist in his sleep. Gathering her scattered clothing, she dressed quickly in the darkness.

It was while she was searching for her shoes that she found the chains under the bed. Making as little noise as possible, she inched the restraints out and weighed them contemplatively. He was going to be seriously pissed when he woke up to find himself bound to the bed, but her choices were severely limited. Spike was a killer and his feral state only served to make him even more unpredictable. There was no way she could risk him roaming free.

It would take a miracle and a lot of fancy maneuvering to get him hog-tied, but they just might be strong enough to hold him until she could get back this evening with some blood.

The fates were smiling down on her for a change. Either he was exhausted or he simply didn’t sense that she might be a threat to him, because he didn’t wake up. There were a few tense moments when she’d had to roll him over onto his back to attach the chains on the far side of the bed to his arm and leg, but she finally managed to finish restraining him.

Once the chains were in place, she couldn’t help but admire the view. He really was divine. She had thought so from her first glimpse of him outside the Bronze, but that attraction alone wasn’t responsible for her earlier actions. Something deep inside her had responded without restraint to his dominance and she just couldn’t bring herself to be disgusted by what had come of it.

Before she realized what she was doing, she leaned over and pressed a tiny kiss on his sleep-softened mouth. Spike stirred restlessly for a few moments, causing Buffy to nearly pass out as she held her breath until he relaxed once more.

Chiding herself for her stupid whimsy, she gave the still figure one last look and made her way out of the warehouse, bound for home. It was too much to hope for that her mom hadn’t noticed her absence. Joyce had finally accepted the truth of her daughter’s destiny, but still found it difficult to treat her as anything but a teenaged girl.

Buffy heaved a sigh of relief when she reached the house and saw that her mother’s SUV was gone from the drive. Not that she was dense enough to think she was in the clear. The inevitable confrontation was just postponed.

Letting herself in, she took the stairs in several impatient leaps. She felt a powerful urge to get cleaned up and be gone before anyone showed up looking for her. The phone rang constantly while she showered and dressed, and when she checked the caller ID it was filled with calls from Giles and Willow.

Her responsibility to her watcher and friends warred with the inexplicable need she felt to get back to Spike. One hand was hovering indecisively over the phone when the front door slammed open and Joyce stormed in.

“Buffy Anne Summers! You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, young lady. I want to know where you’ve been for the past—” Joyce glanced at her watch. “Twenty hours!”

~*~*~

Buffy slouched in the passenger seat of the car; arms folded tightly and pout firmly in place.

Valuable time had been wasted arguing with her mom over her insistence on driving Buffy back to the warehouse with Spike’s blood. No matter which argument she used, Joyce had shot it down, refusing to give an inch.

“I can be just as stubborn as you, missy. Now, get in the car.”

So she was pouting. What good were supernatural powers when you had the eminent threat of being grounded over your head? The Powers That Be and the Council of Watchers had it totally wrong. They didn’t need a Slayer. All they needed was one massively overprotective mother on a mission!

Joyce cast her daughter an impatient glance as she parked the car in the shade of the warehouse.

“Are you sure this is the right place? It looks unsafe to me.” She reached down to open her door and winced as Buffy’s hand closed over her wrist in a painful grip.

“What are you doing? You are NOT getting out of this car, Mom. You’re gonna sit right here and wait on me, remember?”

“I’ll do no such thing…”

Unfortunately for Joyce, Buffy had anticipated this argument. In seconds the hand that still clasped the steering wheel was wearing a bulky silver bracelet while its mate was snapped around the steering wheel itself and a triumphant slayer was waving the key under her mother’s nose.

“You evil, unconscionable child!” Joyce sputtered as Buffy made sure that a bottle of water and a bag of Fritos were within easy reach. “And do I even want to know why you have a pair of handcuffs?”

“Sit tight, Mom. I’ll be back as quick as I can,” she informed her indignant parent gleefully. She grabbed the sack of blood and jumped out of the car, slamming the door on some pretty impressive cursing.

The warehouse was pleasantly cool after the heat of the California midday. Buffy entered cautiously, her eyes searching every shift in the shadows. Once her eyes had adjusted to the change in light, all she had to do was follow the outraged growls.

Oh yeah. He was pissed. Morbidly so.

As soon as he caught her scent, he went wild; snarling horribly and lunging at his restraints to get to her. There was just enough leeway in the chains for him to get to his knees, and as he strained towards her, the iron links creaked alarmingly.

Buffy held back for a moment, busying herself with lighting the few candles she could find and studying him carefully as she tried to decide the best way to approach him. When he refused to settle down, she shrugged and walked right up to him, her right cross leading the way.

Spike flew backwards from the impact of her fist against his jaw. The back of his skull cracked against the headboard with a hollow thud and he dropped heavily to the mattress. He lifted his head and shook it dazedly before his eyes rolled back and he blacked out.

She rubbed her bruised knuckles with a heavy sigh before making her way around the bed and tightening the chains. When she finished she leaned against one of the tall posts, her eyes drinking in the sight of all that naked skin.

His nudity was the biggest reason she hadn’t wanted her mother to follow her inside. The thought of anyone else seeing him in all his glory filled her with searing jealousy. Even in repose the muscles of his chest and abdomen looked rock hard and her fingers itched to familiarize themselves with all that yummy goodness. Instead she contented herself with gently trailing her fingers over his face and forehead in an apologetic caress.

When he started to stir, she stepped back quickly and went to get the first bag of blood.

“C’mon, Spike, I know I didn’t hit you that hard. Wake up and drink your dinner,” she sang cajolingly as she waved the bag under his nose enticingly.

His eyes popped open, sparks flaring in their golden depths as he glared, first at her, and then at the packet of pig’s blood. He gave an offended snort and turned his nose up at it.

Buffy huffed indignantly. “Oh, come ON. You’ve gotta be kidding me! Whoever heard of a finicky vampire?” She tried once more, shoving it close to his mouth and getting snapped at viciously for her trouble.

“Hey! Watch it, mister. What the hell is wrong with you?” she demanded.

Spike continued to glare at her, his expression similar to that of a sullen two-year-old minus the impressive show of fangs. He spat something at her in the same strange sounding dialect he’d used earlier and turned his head stubbornly away from her.

“Stop being an ass about this, Spike. I don’t have time to baby you right now, so eat!”

When he continued to resist, Buffy lost what remained of her temper and flung the blood across the room in a fit of pique. The quick look of approval from the contrary vampire only served to piss her off even more.

“Look what you made me do, you ingrate! Now I only have one bag left and that was supposed to be for tomorrow. What, you think the only thing I have to do with my time is run around town finding blood for your sorry ass?” she ranted, stomping back to the table and snatching up the spare packet. Struggling to rein in her temper, she tried again to coerce him into biting through the bag.

This time she didn’t get the chance to toss the offending liquid after its predecessor. The chain holding his left hand broke with an ominous clank and he ripped the bag away from her with a disgusted snarl.

Before she could blink, the far wall was a dripping red canvas and his hand was latched painfully around her wrist. Spike twisted sharply, wringing a pained cry from her as he dragged her down on top of him.

Buffy scrambled to put some distance between them, wincing as the small bones in her wrist ground together alarmingly. She squirmed in his grip, her breath rasping in and out as she fought to mask her rising panic with full blown temper.

“Great! Just great! Am I supposed to let you starve to death? Fine. That’s fine. It’s no skin off my ass if you wither away to nothing, you ungrateful jerk!”

He frowned at her ferociously as he struggled to keep up with her virulent tirade, his narrowed eyes focused intently on her pink lips as she fussed at him.

Her pause for breath was her downfall.

The punishing touch at her wrist was transferred with lightening speed to the back of her neck. Panic skipped through her brain; a warning of things to come that she just wasn’t prepared to handle as he hauled her down and covered her mouth with his.

Part 6 What’s Mine is Yours

It should have been alarming, the ease with which she surrendered, sparing only a cursory thought for the mother she’d left imprisoned in the safety of their car before losing herself in the bliss that was Spike lips ravishing hers.

The chain holding his right arm screeched in protest as he wrenched it free, his hand moving immediately to the waistband of her pants. Before she could form a coherent thought and kick out in protest, the stretchy fabric was skimmed down her legs and pitched over the side of the bed.

Spike yanked at her thigh impatiently until she hovered over his lap and with a sinuous twist of his hips, he slammed into her with barely controlled ferocity.

She flung her head back, mouth stretched in a silent scream as her body detonated around his throbbing length. He granted her no reprieve, working her over mercilessly, barely allowing her time to draw breath between intoxicating kisses as his hands flashed from each pleasure center to the next.

Her own hands were never still, nails cutting into his shoulders and dragging thin trails of blood red down the alabaster smoothness of his chest and belly. Buffy was appalled at her wanton response but helpless to resist his dark temptation.

A shudder ripped through her as his thumb found her clit and circled it, his rapacious touch driving her to the brink of insanity. She clenched around him, every muscle tensed to fling herself joyously into that endless void.

He sank his fingers into her hair and wrenched her head back sharply to expose the long line of her throat. The burnished glow of his eyes fixed on the pattering tattoo of the pulse at the base of her neck and the nearly healed marks there. Growling softly, he moved in.

Buffy caught her breath as his lips and tongue worried at his earlier bite, the resulting surge of anticipation causing a flutter of weightlessness deep in her belly. She moaned, low and frustrated as he taunted her, barely scraping her sensitized flesh with his fangs.

Vampire foreplay, she thought dazedly. And God, he’s driving me crazy with it!

She couldn’t control the exultant shout of his name as he bit down, sending his sharp canines deep into her throat. The pleasure-pain of the bite and the first deep pull he took of her blood sent her careening over the precipice. Each softer, subsequent tug at her flesh only intensified the effect in a mounting maelstrom of sensation.

Her entire body shuddered with the force of her orgasm and she clamped down on him as tightly as she could with her inner muscles. His answering roar of repletion made her ears ring, but her hearing wasn’t so hindered that she didn’t hear the possessive words that burst from his lips as he found his release.

“Slayer. Mine!”

It took a monumental effort, and even then her legs were refusing to cooperate with her brain when she attempted to lift herself off of him, but she finally made it off the bed and on her feet. Thankful that the shackles on his ankles still held, she moved to put some much needed distance between them before she confronted him.

“You have got to stop doing that,” she insisted hating the tremble of her voice. She located her reasonably unscathed pants and fought to get them on. Where her panties were she had no clue. She couldn’t even remember him tearing them off of her.

“No.” The harshness of his tone drew her eyes back to him. He was glowering fiercely at her as she nervously set her clothes to rights and then fussed with her hair in an attempt to hide the glaring, puffy-looking brand he’d gifted her with.

“No. Slayer mine,” Spike repeated his voice harsh from disuse.

She was ready to tear her hair out in frustration. “No, Spike. Not yours. Bad idea. Very bad idea,” she insisted. “No more of the…the uh… um… what just happened. And no more with the bitey-claimy stuff, either!” No matter how big of a happy it gave her.

The blue eyes that followed her every move were brimming with amusement as they took in her flushed cheeks and evasive eyes, and a ghost of that familiar cocky smirk curved his lips.

“I’m glad you find this so amusing,” she snapped. “I’m already in deep shit with my mom over this-this… God I don’t even know what this is or why you’re even here, but…”

“You,” Spike said, that single word effectively interrupting her tirade.

Buffy swallowed hard, suddenly very nervous as she met the intensity of his gaze. There was a clarity there that had been missing before, but he still had to struggle to express himself coherently.

“Me?” she prompted keeping her voice deliberately soft, moving closer but careful to stay out of reach. She’d quickly come to the conclusion that she lost all control once those wicked, wicked hands came into contact with her skin.

“You,” he repeated. He shook his head with an impatient growl, frustrated with his inability to convey his thoughts. When he finally found the words, they seemed to reverberate in the silence of the small room. The same words he had spoken in her dream.

“Be ready for me.”

~*~*~

She fled like the hounds of hell were nipping at her delectable little backside, spurred on by both his words and the strident blaring of a car’s horn from somewhere outside.

Spike threw himself back against the mattress with a growl of frustration, cursing his uncooperative tongue. For some reason, his attempt to tell her of the dream that had been his salvation during his stint in hell had sent her running for the hills instead.

The dream. Him and the slayer, bound together in what seemed like a child’s version of hell, complete with dragons and annoying little imps. Even more fantastical had been the vision of her tight little body writhing on his lap while her succulent lips sucked the evil right out of him.

That fanciful little delusion had been the only thing he’d had to cling to in the nightmare that his life had become the minute he’s been sucked into that portal instead of Angel.

Angel.

Angelus.

At one time the younger vampire had adored the alpha male of their little quartet. Had strived constantly to emulate his elder’s evil and sadistic ways, no matter how much his actions had offended the faint essence that somehow remained of the shy, romantically inclined William.

Nothing had ever been good enough. The cruelties he had endured, both great and small, had all been for naught. Angelus had thrived on building him up and then methodically tearing him down time after endless time.

The smallest transgression often resulted in hours of senseless torture. Memories plagued him of his bloody and broken self lying in a heap while his grandsire had pressed a careless splinter of wood to his heart with ominous intent.

“You came back wrong, Will. Dusting you would be a mercy killing in so many ways.” That hateful, sibilant whisper echoed in his mind to this day.

In the beginning there had been a part of him that wished for Angelus to leave off the taunts and drive the intricately carved stake home. The constant inner battle between his demon and the tattered remnants of the man he had been was enough to drive him as starkers as his beloved sire. Only the demon’s rapacious will to survive had saved him from a dusty oblivion, ruthlessly beating the more tender facets into submission.

It had been the demon that had taken everything that Angelus could dish out and thrown it back in his pompous face, grinning all the while and knowing that one day he'd get his chance to chop him down to size.

Maybe he had come back wrong, but whose fault was that? Only so much of the blame could be laid at Drusilla’s feet. After all, who had forsaken his twisted creation, leaving her to roam the dank alleys in despair while he sank his miserable excuse for a cock into Darla’s diseased crater? Angelus was just as much at fault for the botched turning of William the Bloody Awful Poet as Dru and her fractured little mind was.



Spike lay back on the rumpled bed and allowed the tears to flow as he grieved for his sire. He knew his dark princess was lost to him with the same certainty that told him that the slayer hadn’t been the one to do her in. He'd seen the grief in her eyes as he was sucked backward into hell. She’d had no time for thoughts of Drusilla.

That left Angel and his bloody pompous soul.

He seethed with hatred for his grandsire. It festered inside him like some noxious boil, ready to spew forth its ichors. It didn’t matter what face he wore, Angelus or Angel; it was past time for him to atone for his sins. Their day of reckoning was coming, Spike was sure of that.

Spike shot up with a snarl, glaring balefully at the blood-splattered wall in front of him. While he was grateful to be back from a hell he still couldn’t think about without having to bite back horrified screams, something told him that vengeance against the souled poof wasn’t the main agenda. Higher powers were definitely at work here.

He didn’t know how. He damned sure didn’t know why. All he remembered was feeling weak and dizzy, free-falling through time and space until he landed with a jolt. There were vague memories of stripping and crawling into the familiar bed. While hovering on the edge of sleep, the sound of fighting had called to his demon.

He remembered the blood. Remembered slashing and tearing until the miserable creature had begged for the death he so obligingly provided for the one that had dared to touch his property.

His slayer.

The demon had been in total control, but even in his feral state it recognized the girl for what she was. Knew it and felt compelled to claim her anyway; had rejoiced in the act, in fact.

Not that he had any regrets now that he was reasonably coherent and almost back to what passed as normal for him. The attraction--the all-consuming lust—for the little golden morsel had always been there. The demon had merely taken advantage of the situation. Her presence had danced its way through far too many of his fantasies since the night she had been pointed out to him at the Bronze, and in spite of his devotion to Drusilla, his demon had been enraged by the knowledge that his prancing arse of a grandsire had been the object of the tiny blonds affections.

But Angel had made one glaring error. During their one night of unrestrained passion, he had neglected for whatever reason to claim the slayer as his own.

A mistake Spike’s demon had been careful not to duplicate.

He was confident that she would be back in spite of her fear and confusion. He’d taken her blood three times now, and each time he did so it strengthened the claim he’d placed on her.

The restorative properties of slayer blood were renowned. He could feel it coursing through his body, practically sizzling as it raced to his extremities, healing his broken mind and spirit as well as his battered limbs.

Casually, almost disdainfully, he reached down and grasped the chains that bound his legs. With one powerful tug the links snapped, leaving him free to lever himself from the bed in search of his clothes.

Once dressed, he sat back to explore his options. Going out wasn’t even remotely possible. Not only was the sun shining, but he was nowhere near ready for the inevitable confrontation with his grandsire. As soon as the ponce caught his scent all over Buffy and got a gander at the nifty little scar he’d gifted her with, Spike had no doubt he’d be seeing a side of Angel that he never had before.

Because this time, he might have had the girl first, but in the end, she belonged to Spike.


 

Part Seven ~ Burn One Down for Me

She watched him from the shadows, heart pounding and body taut with the effort to hold herself back from rushing in to confront him. She wanted to bury her hands in that supple leather and shake him until the answers she needed spilled from his lips.

It didn’t surprise her that he had broken loose. The chains had been strong but she knew from past encounters that he was far stronger. He had also found his clothes, she noticed. He was sprawled in the only chair in the room, head resting against the high back, eyes staring contemplatively at the ceiling.

“Might as well come out, luv. I sensed you the minute you walked into the bloody building.”

After nearly two days of nothing but grunts and growls, the rich timbre of his voice sent a frisson of chills down her spine. Buffy clenched and unclenched her hands a few times before wiping her damp palms on her jeans and moving into the muted candle light.

“I expected you earlier,” Spike commented, rolling his head to watch as she crept forward, his eyes caught up in the way her small white teeth worried at her full bottom lip.

“I had to wait until the fourth drink,” she replied cryptically.

He frowned. “Fourth drink?”

“My mom. After the fourth drink, she passes out and I can sneak out my window.”

Her words painted a mental picture of this slip of a girl, the most feared being of vampires everywhere, shimmying her way down a convenient tree. Spike grinned at the image and a soft chuckle rumbled forth.

“I’m glad to see you acting so much better. More like yourself, I mean,” Buffy said.

There was a sudden flare of heat in the eyes that met hers. After a heart stopping moment they dropped to linger almost caressingly on the bite marks he’d left on her neck.

“Yeah.” This time the smile was slow and darkly seductive. “I only had to wait on the third drink,” he murmured softly.

Buffy had to stifle a gasp as her body once again reacted to the power of his voice. Primal, feral Spike suddenly seemed easier to deal with than this Spike. This Spike’s penetrating blue eyes seemed to delve into her soul, glittering with all the fierce intelligence that had been missing before.

Aside from the heated looks and the subtle sexual inflection in his voice, he hadn’t made a move towards her. Maybe now that he was in control of his thoughts and actions, he wouldn’t’ be making with the pounce-y, growly sex. Which was good, right?

“W-we need to talk,” she stammered refusing to meet his eyes.

“Right.” Spike leaned his head back once more and loosed a gusty sigh. “Just don’t ask me how or why I got here, luv. I haven’t got a bloody clue.”

Buffy went to work on her bottom lip again, small white teeth gouging the tender flesh and drawing blood. She refused to ask the one question that was whirling through her chaotic thoughts. How did one even broach such a subject? ‘Oh, by the way, Spike, I know you bit me. Kind of expected it, with you being a vampire and all, but why did you claim me?’

“I might not know the how, but I’m pretty sure I know the why,” she told him warily. “H-how much do you… remember? About where you were, I mean.”

Spike flinched from the painful lash of memories and the eyes that met hers were dark with remembered pain. “All of it.”

Before she could ask him to elaborate he was out of the chair and pacing to and fro in agitation, his body practically vibrating with leashed energy, his demeanor much closer to that of the Spike she remembered.

“Can you--”

“No.”

“But--.”

“Leave it go, Slayer,” he bit out.

Buffy persisted. “Look, Spike, we need to--”

All she saw was a blur before he was on her, his eyes like molten gold, fingers digging into the soft flesh of her upper arms as he snatched her up and held her aloft.

“I said. Leave. It go!” he snarled, his nose nearly touching hers.

She flinched, turning her head to avoid his enraged countenance. “Put me down, Spike.” She shivered in spite of her efforts to quell her rising panic. “Please.”

Hearing the quaver in her voice and smelling her fear should have appeased him, but instead he dropped her like she had scalded him and quickly backed away, keeping his back to her as he struggled to regain control.

Buffy stumbled against a scorched armoire, barely catching herself on the edge to keep from falling.

“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. We can talk later. Why don’t I just get out of here and leave you alone?” she murmured, her voice softly placating as she inched back towards the door.

Running away went against everything she stood for. She knew she should stake him. Her hand even found its way behind her back to the reassuring presence of wood tucked into her waistband.

But one glaring fact stayed her hand. She had been gone for quite some time because her mother’s wrath over the handcuff incident had burned for hours. While he was obviously not completely healed mentally, physically he was as fit as ever. There had been nothing and no one to stand in his way if he decided to cut a bloody swathe through the unsuspecting town, yet he was still here and had clearly been waiting for her.

She decided to try one last time to get through to him. If he refused, the next time she faced him would be the last for one of them. She could only compromise her morals so far.

“Look, I know I haven’t had it nearly as bad as you have, but it’s still been pretty rough. I want to know what’s going on here as much as you do, but how are we going to figure it out if we don’t talk about what’s happened to both of us?”

Her softly spoken words were directed at his stiffly held back. He was so tense she wondered if he might break if she touched him. Buffy was just about to give up when he turned his head infinitesimally in her direction.

“We do this; there are limits to what I’ll tell you. I won’t lie to you, but don’t expect me to tell you every soddin’ detail, either. Agreed?” he asked harshly.

“Agreed.”

Spike motioned for her to take the chair while he continued to pace. It was distracting for her, but perhaps that’s what he intended, so she said nothing.

She had no idea where to begin. Apparently he had no such qualms. “Why did you run earlier?”

Her face flamed. It would be so easy to use her mother as an excuse, but if he was going to be honest with her she owed him the same courtesy, didn’t she?

A quick glance showed that he had stopped the ceaseless pacing and was staring at her with narrowed eyes as he waited for her answer.

“What you said? It kinda wigged me out,” she admitted. “What made you say that?”

“First, tell me why it scared you,” he countered.

“I’ve had some pretty intense dreams about what happened that morning. Different scenarios, but the end result was usually the same; I end up skewering you anyway and Angelus rips my throat out just before I wake up screaming.”

Buffy couldn’t repress the shudder that last image evoked. “The last few nights they were different. In this one, it’s just you and I in what you tell me is my version of hell.”

She didn’t miss the sudden tightening of his features at her mention of hell and rushed on. “We talked for a little while. I can’t remember what about. And then I… You… We-”

“Had the same dream.”

“We huh?” she squeaked. “No way!”

Spike had to smile. Even slack-jawed and bug-eyed, the slayer was just too cute for her own good. The smile was quickly followed by a ferocious frown. His demon should be howling with rage over the softer feelings its host was evincing towards the girl. Instead, the faithless creature was practically rolling over and waving metaphorical paws in the air like a hound begging for a tummy scratch. He faced her with a resigned sigh.

“Right. Went a bit like this…”

In seconds he’d picked her up and taken her place in the chair, dropping her down to sit astride him, her knees digging into the chair beside his hips. His hand at the small of her back nudged her forward until the moist warmth of her cleft cradled his straining erection, her heat searing him through the layers of their clothing.

Buffy let loose a startled gasp, a little shocked at his manhandling, but all thought of protest fled her mind once he settled her on his lap. She sat there in stunned anticipation of what his next move would be.

His mouth covered hers, swallowing the breathless moan that burst free as the hand at her back pushed her down harder into him while the other tangled in her hair, angling it to deepen the kiss.

Buffy responded without hesitation. He had that effect on her and she was helpless to fight against it. There had never been any mention of Spike having thrall in anything she had read about him. Maybe all vampires had it to a degree? Or maybe it was just the way he was. She more than suspected the latter.

His tongue coaxed hers out to play, to mesh and tangle with his in an erotic dance that sent shivers down her spine and curled her toes. Her hands fluttered up to rest on his shoulders before sliding up to sink into the soft hair at his nape.

She gasped as his mouth left hers to trail a damp path across her cheekbone to her ear, and from there down the long line of her throat to where the healing marks of his earlier bite itched and tingled unbearably, begging for his attentions. Her head fell back and her body arched, gliding back and forth in a steady rhythm across the fly of his jeans.

“I remember this part the best,” he panted needlessly against the soft skin of her neck, his cool tongue burning a path over firm, resilient flesh. “The part where you begged for my fangs. For my bite. Your body remembers, doesn’t it?” 

She nodded, knowing her voice wouldn’t hold strong enough for a coherent reply. Impatient hands divested her of the light jacket and tight little tee she wore, then moved down to the crotch of her silky lounge pants. The delicate material gave easily, shredding between the strong fingers that were soon delving under the lacy scrap of her underwear and shoving them to the side.

One hand busied itself parting her slick folds, finding her needy clit with unerring accuracy while the other wrenched open his jeans and freed his pulsing sex.

Buffy threw her head back, a soundless scream shaping her mouth as he pulled her down onto him, his cock filling her so completely she was sure she would burst from the incredible sensation. Her nails scored down his chest, shredding the material of his tee shirt and leaving angry red welts in their wake.

Spike’s demon howled in lusty appreciation of her reaction to his invasion and he growled, burying his face in the lush curves of her breasts. The diamond hard tips brushed over his lips and he latched on to one and then the other, sucking and nipping in turn with hedonistic gusto.

She couldn’t stifle her cries of pleasure as they rocked against each other. Close. She was so close and only he had the power to tip her over the precipice and into the beckoning darkness beyond. Her hands left off kneading the hard muscles of his stomach and came up to frame his face, her fingertips digging in lightly as she tilted his head back and kissed him wildly, devouring him with lips and tongue.

Their mouths parted and their eyes locked, his flashing amber with the intensity of the moment. A slow, cunning smile curved her lips as she tilted her head invitingly to the side, her eyes never leaving his as she dared him to take what he had laid claim to.

Irresistible, he thought as his demon burst forth in response to her coquetry. Baby had a bit of the dark side in her that was just begging to come out and play, whether she believed it or not.

His hand on the back of her neck dragged her down, her body flush against him as his lips and roughened tongue worried over the scars.

“I told you to be ready for me, didn’t I, luv?” he rumbled the rich decadence of his voice sounding like pure unadulterated sin. “Are you ready for me now, Buffy?”

The sound of her name on his lips wrung a shudder from her highly sensitized body. Reservations were flung to the four winds as she arched ever closer, baring her throat to him in supplication.

“Now, Spike,” she breathed in a dark, sensual voice in no way recognizable as her own. “I’m ready for you. Want you, now.”

Who was he to deny what she begged for so sweetly? Spike sank his teeth into the ripe succulence of her neck, moaning as her indescribable, spicy essence flavored his tongue. He pulled another mouthful, savoring what he had been unable to appreciate in his more feral state.

Buffy screamed as she reached that elusive edge and plummeted over, the muscles of her passage clenching around his girth as her body quivered from the intense rush of her climax.

Spike threw his head back and roared his release to the rafters, bruising fingers at her hips slamming her down as his cool seed flooded her womb.

After what felt like an eternity, he slumped back in the chair, arms moving to encircle her limp warmth as she sagged against him.

“You’re mine, Buffy.” The words were whispered into the soft cloud of her hair as it fell across his face, cloaking him in her fragrance.

She turned her head on his shoulder, burying her nose in his neck with a sigh that warmed his skin before sleepily mumbling words that jolted the heart that hadn’t spoken in over a hundred years.

“Yes, Spike. Yours.”

~*~*~

Far above the slumbering lovers, shrouded by the shadows that mirrored the darkness of his soul, Angel fisted his hands and fought the urge to swoop down on the pair and brutally expose their perfidy. He ached with the need to rip and tear at both of them, to flail the skin from their bodies until their treachery flowed forth like the blood from their veins.

Instead, a rare smile bloomed in an expression that would have chilled the hearts of anyone who might take note of it. It might rankle to let it go for now, but he had to be patient.

Revenge would be so much sweeter for the wait.

WARNING!!!

Before reading any further, please understand that this chapter deals with non-consensual sex and is EXTREMELY graphic.

 Part 8 ~ I've Got No Soul to Sell

She tapped her beautifully manicured acrylic nails on the table impatiently, fathomless dark eyes simmering with irritation as she watched for him.

How dare he stand her up? And this was the second time in a week!

Who in the hell did Xander Harris think he was? Her inner rant continued until she spied Harmony Kendall and her herd of sheep flocking towards her. Wonderful. Expressive brown eyes rolled with dramatic precision. Now she would be forced to endure their sly innuendos and bitchy comments about her choice in boyfriends. Her crappy night was complete.

Cordelia snatched up her tiny handbag and slid off her stool. She’d show him. Xander Harris was about to learn that Cordelia Chase waited for no man!

“Hi, Cordy.”

Except maybe this one.

Although technically he wasn’t a man. Well, not a living one, but compared to what this town had to offer, he was a definite step up. Pasting on her patented cheerleader smile, she turned to face him.

“Angel.” Her voice was a sultry purr as she sidled a little closer. Xander who? She though bitterly. She was perfectly aware of her boyfriend’s hatred for the dark haired vampire and planned to capitalize on it.

“Waiting for the others?” he asked casually. One strong hand clasped her elbow lightly as he led her back to the table she’d just vacated.

Cordelia made a big show of blinking in confusion. “The others?”

“You know. Xander. Willow.” The faintest pause. “Buffy maybe?”

A trill of forced laughter bubbled forth. “Why would I ever be waiting on those losers?”

Angel frowned. “I thought you and Xander were…”

She leaned forward and laid a soft, pampered hand on his muscled forearm. “So over that,” she advised him with a coquettish wink. Cordelia’s heart leapt when he smiled at her and laid his hand over hers resting on his arm.

“Why are you here? Waiting on Buffy?” she probed with studied carelessness.

“Buffy is… busy tonight. I decided I needed some…me time,” he said, his soft voice sending a curl of lust up her spine.

Mmm. Buffy’s loss, Cordy thought smugly. Hadn’t she told the blonde that when it came to men, she was the slayer? She sighed. They never listened.

“Would you care for a drink?”

“Sure! Evian is fine,” she told him, bumping up the wattage on her perfect smile.

Cordelia watched him as he made his way to the bar, fully aware of the expressions of stunned surprise on the faces of Harmony and her friends. Take that, you bitches!

Angel was back and slid a glass in front of her. Cordelia frowned as she stared down at it in disbelief. That was not Evian water. She picked up the tall stemmed glass and leveled a look at the normally broody vampire over its rim.

“What is this?” she demanded, her charming façade slipping the slightest bit.

He shrugged. “It’s a mimosa. Champagne and orange juice. I figured a classy girl like you would know that.”

“I know what it is; I meant why did you get it for me? You do know I’m only seventeen, right?” For the first time, she noticed the large tumbler filled with golden liquid he held. “I didn’t know you drank alcohol, Angel.”

Angel leaned forward, one large hand covering hers where it rested on the table and giving it a gentle squeeze. “Ahh, darlin’ girl,” he whispered. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

Flirting. Angel was flirting with her. And where had that lilting accent come from? God, what a turn-on!

Feeling suddenly overheated, Cordelia gulped down half of her drink before she realized it. She wasn’t too worried since she’d had champagne before with her parents. The funny aftertaste she blamed on the orange juice.

He bought her several more drinks over the next few hours. They talked and he even danced with her to a couple of slow songs, stealing her breath when his hands seemed to drift accidentally onto sensitive places. And then he kissed her.

It was good. Not Xander good, but good enough that she didn’t protest when he suggested they step outside for some air. Her head was swimmy and she giggled helplessly, feeling curiously weak as he led her out the back door.

He had her behind the malodorous dumpster and up against the wall before the door closed, his mouth voracious as it devoured hers. She gasped in pain as his lips smashed hers, splitting the soft flesh until the coppery tang of blood coated her tongue.

“Hey!” Shocked and outraged, Cordelia tried to push him away from her. “Angel, stop it, you’re hurting me! W-what the hell is your problem?”

Hard hands bit into her shoulders and he slammed her back so hard her head cracked into the brick wall. He thrust his leering face close to hers, his soft, chilling laugh turning her blood to ice.

“A-A-Angelus?” she stammered, her eyes wide with terror. “Oh God, no…”

That low, wicked laugh again. “No, sweetheart, but I’ll be sure to tell him you said hello,” he assured her silkily. One of his hands pinned both of hers above her head, the small bones of her wrist grinding between his meaty fingers. The other swept up the side of her thigh, the delicate lace thong offering no protection as he ripped it away and dropped it carelessly to the ground.

Cordelia panicked, kicking and thrashing against him and turning her face away in disgust as he tried to kiss her again. He chuckled, running his tongue up the side of her face.

“Ahh, I do so love the taste of a fresh, young virgin,” he drawled. “So hot and sweet, you are… And the smell of you!” He buried his face in her neck and breathed deep of her scent. “I can’t wait to bust that tart little cherry of yours, Cordy lass.”

His mocking words renewed her struggles, her choked sobs and whispered pleas only inciting him further.

“I slipped a little something in your drink to make you more… agreeable, so don’t waste your energy fighting me, darlin’. You’re gonna need it when I start fuckin’ that hot little quim of yours.”

Angel braced her thighs open with his knees and shoved two thick fingers into her virginal channel, smothering her pained scream with his mouth. She bit his lip savagely and he jerked away with a snarl.

“So much for foreplay, I guess.” His free hand fumbled with his pants to free his hard cock. “Wanna see what I got for you, Cordy?” he jeered.

“Oh God. Angel, please don’t do this,” she begged, a mixture of tears and make-up spoiling her pretty face. “You’ll lose your soul again if you do this.”

Her pitiful attempts to reason with him made him roar with laughter. “No, I really won’t,” he scoffed. “I’d have to care about you to lose my soul, Cordy m’ girl. You’re a nice wet gash to bury m’ prick in, nothing more.” He drove his fingers into her once more, twisting them viciously within her until she cried out. “Well, maybe not wet, but I can work around that.”

Cordy winced as he held his hand up in front of her face; certain he was going to slap her.

“Spit,” Angel ordered. “Don’t look at me like ’m daft. You’re dry as the desert and I need some lube. Now, spit.”

A smidgeon of her bitchy nature surged forward and a feral smile curled her bloody lips. Rearing back, she gathered as much spit as her mouth offered and sprayed it across his face instead.

Angel grimaced. “Cordy, Cordy.” He shook his head as he wiped his face clean with his shirt sleeve. “I guess we do this the hard way.”

Eyes flashing yellow, he brought his demon forth, smiling at her through a mouthful of lethally sharp teeth. Holding her horrified gaze, he bent his head to her chest.

Slashing at her silk dress with his fangs until it hung in tattered ribbons, he sank his teeth into one of her plump breasts, tearing at the satiny flesh until her blood flowed in crimson rivers.

Cordy bit back her screams, refusing to give him the satisfaction. She turned her head into her shoulder as he swiped his hand through the blood.

“You’re gonna bleed anyway; what’s a little more gonna hurt, huh?” he crooned as he stroked his bloody hand over his cock.

She tried to summon the strength to fight him off. She did. But whatever he had slipped in her first drink was now in full effect and she could only hang limply from his punishing hands as he shoved her quivering thighs apart with his hips.

Crushing her slim body into the bricks, Angel released her hands to fall lax at her sides. Grabbing her knees, he forced them high and wide. He still wore his vampire guise and she caught his fangy grin as he bent over and spat a blob of saliva on her trimmed pussy and rubbed it around.

Without warning he plunged his blood smeared cock into her, tearing her delicate flesh and bursting through her maidenhead with no regard for her untouched status, reveling in the pain he caused her.

There was no one to hear her pleas for help as he pounded her against the wall relentlessly. The monster that wore Angel’s face mocked her as she cried bitter tears.

“Why do you cry? I’m doin’ you a favor, lass. Getting’ you all broken in for your little boyfriend. Think he’ll want to fuck you after you’ve been with a monster?”

He pressed an incongruously soft kiss to her wet cheek, his tongue lapping at the salt of her tears as he tasted her humiliation, laughing as she cowered away from him with a mewl of disgust.

Trying to block out his hateful spiel, choosing instead to concentrate on Xander’s sweet, dopey face and warm brown eyes, Cordy cursed herself. Stupid. Spoiled and selfish and stupid, stupid, stupid.

Staring down into the deformed face of the demon bent on her destruction, Cordelia Chase knew that if she managed to somehow survive his attack, she would never again be the bitch-queen of Sunnydale High. Would never again look down on others from her pretty pedestal of superiority. Angel had broken that golden pedestal as sure as he had broken her body.

He kept at her, his feral grunts and groans rising in volume as he savaged her with cock and fangs. She felt as if he were splitting her in two. Her crotch burned with pain and she could fell the steady drip of her blood as it coated her thighs. It flowed copiously from the bite marks that now littered her shoulders and breasts.

A look of horror dawned across her face as he reached between them, wetting his thumb in her virgin’s blood and sweeping it roughly over her clit.

“No!” she screamed. “No, no, no!”

This was familiar to her body, a part of the innocent love play that she and Xander had indulged themselves in rather than going ‘all the way’. For Angel to force her to find any kind of pleasure in this heinous act was the ultimate defilement of her innocence.

“Oh, yes!” His maniacal laugh rang out in the stygian darkness. “Can’t leave you wantin’, now can I?” he chortled as she thrashed against him, glorying in the hatred that poured from her flashing eyes.

“You fucking bastard,” she hissed as she fought her body’s reaction to his ministrations. She gritted her teeth against the onslaught of her unwilling orgasm. “Nooooooooooo!”

“Oh, it just gets better, baby,” he taunted. Grabbing a fistful of her long hair and yanking her head to the side, he sank his teeth into the vulnerable artery.

Cordelia shuddered with the strength of the climax that swept over her.  The guilty pleasure that suffused her was at war with her feelings of filth and shame that he had been successful in making her come, that the body she thought she knew so well could betray her in such a way.

Angel roared as his own release followed close behind hers and he ground against her with each burst of dead seed that coated her womb. He continued to suck greedily at her neck.

Her long eyelashes drifted closed and she could feel her heartbeat stutter alarmingly. Cordelia was seconds away from death when she heard the soft murmur of a familiar voice and the scrape of footsteps coming towards them.

Angel jerked away with an enraged snarl, yellow eyes alert as he peered into the darkness. A quick sniff of the air told him who was approaching. And who she was with.

Stepping back, he let her fall to the ground, smiling as she fought for control of her rubbery legs enough to stand, her eyes spewing her contempt for him.

Allowing his demon to finally recede, he fastened his pants and smoothed his hair.

“Not bad, Cordy m’ darlin’. Give me a call if Xander doesn’t hit it right.”

Blowing her a kiss, he quickly disappeared into the darkness, the off key song he was singing floating back to her, burning her ears with its coarseness.

“Oh Cordy, well you came ‘cause my dick got you shakin’, then I threw you away, oh Cordy…” 

~*~*~

The insidious weakness of shock and blood loss seeped through her limbs and fogged her vision. The voice came again, closer this time and there were two of them now; one the deep bass rumble of a man. Desperate to reach them, whoever it was, she forced herself to move.

Cordy whimpered and began dragging herself from behind the dumpster he’d ravaged her behind. An inch at a time, her fingernails snapping off at the quick as she scrabbled for purchase against the crumbling asphalt of the alley.

Bits of broken glass and sharp rocks shredded the soft flesh of her forearms and knees as she pulled herself along. Just a little further…

“Slayer.” The deeper, accented voice reminded her of Giles. “Might want to get your ass over here, pet. This doesn’t look good.”

A pair of worn black boots stepping into her path brought a halt to her efforts and she collapsed to rest her cold, bloody cheek against pavement still warm from the heat of the day.

Another pair of boots, also black but with a stylish, chunky heel joined the first.

“Oh my God. Oh, Cordelia…”

Her red-rimmed eyes lifted to meet the horrified hazel eyes of the slayer and she sagged with relief into Buffy’s arms. She could rest now.

Cordelia had never felt so safe.