Chapter Thirty-One

 

Buffy opened her eyes and instinctively knew it was time to get up, despite the remaining darkness in the room.  She searched groggily for a source of light- hopefully sunshine-but came abruptly back to earth when the lack of windows reminded her where she had fallen asleep.  She frowned a little at the continual darkness she seemed to be in these days, and then grimaced guiltily when she thought what the result of light would be.  Crispy Fried Spike!  She yearned so much to go out in the sun with him, but the Gem of Amara was a risky thing to give to any vampire.  It wasn’t so much that she didn’t trust him- or believe he would go all Angelus with it- but what if another vamp stole it off him?  She had torn it easily enough from his hand.  It could be disastrous.  So, the Gem would have to remain in hidden, until she worked out what they should do with it.

 

A masculine groan made her smile and she rolled over to again be encased in strong arms, burrowing her head into his shoulder.  A mischievous finger traced his collarbone and she shivered once she got into muscle territory.  It had only been a few weeks but already she knew his body as well as her own, and she adored every cell of it.  He was so pale, and cool, like the purest marble shaped into the most beautiful form a body could assume.  He was toned to perfection and she marvelled at the quality of his muscles, the ridges of his abdominals, the curve of his shoulders and chest, the cords down his back.  She knew there had never been a vampire like him.  Even Angel had not looked and felt like this, and suddenly she felt unfaithful even thinking of her one time with him.

 

She resumed her gentle exploration, focusing as if forced on the smooth skin of his lips and the craving kicked in.  She couldn’t look at them without knowing them; their intimacy with her body, with her own mouth and she felt tears rise in her eyes as she felt her love begin to overwhelm her.  It was so confusing, these feelings.  They were so intense, so full, that she sometimes found herself questioning her belief in their visions of the future.  The quality of feeling she had experienced then was so much the opposite of now, at least on the surface, that she felt afraid of herself.  How could the current Buffy be so filled with feeling, with love, when the Buffy of the future was pulled apart in torment?  The only thing she felt comfort in was that she had always been drawn to him.

 

The moment she had set eyes on him in the alleyway at the Bronze, just two years before, she had felt a tremendous surge of disappointment to find that he meant to kill her.  She had felt a connection in his challenge, some undercurrent that allowed her a little relief in the guilt associated with not being able to kill him.  Sometimes she had felt that the only way she could survive him was to repel him, to be cutting, forcing him to stay away from her town.  Even though he had no soul, her heart made extra beats for him.  Even then the glimmer was there, the need to see him, and when she saw him she craved their inevitable fighting, just so that she had an excuse to touch him.  Even his gameface had never turned her away from her fascination with him, and he wore it often.  A medal of honour.

 

When he came back and found the Gem she had hoped, almost prayed, that things could be different, but first chance he got was not to bask in the sunlight, but to seek her out and capitalise on her second of humiliation.  That night she had cried herself to sleep, not for the sake of Parker, but for the futility of Spike.  She felt betrayed by him.  He had sought her out for a truce against Angelus, then stepped up his efforts to kill her.  As the memory-induced tears dripped onto the chest of her lover she felt lost in the past.  Until his chest rumbled under her ear and she realised he was awake.

 

“I did it to be around you, too.  I couldn’t stay away.”

 

“What?” she raised her eyes to his, befuddled that he seemed to know what her thoughts had been, and met cerulean blue flashing fire and knowledge.

 

“We renewed the claim last night.  Our connection is stronger now.  I could see your thoughts.”  His gaze was steady as her own eyes widened in alarm.  “You were in my mind all the bloody time.  I could never forget about you.  It’s the real reason Dru left me.  Said I tasted like ashes and that you were all around me, laughing.  Not sure about the laughing bit, but she got the ashes right.”  His humourless smile had her jumping up in the bed, her horrified face unaware that she was exposed from the waist up.

 

“You mean, she knew what would happen to you?  That it would be my fault?”  The tears were falling heavier now and she began to shake as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her hair.

 

“It wasn’ your fault.  Nothin’ ‘bout it was your fault.  Silly girl!  Why would you think that?  Anyway, not goin’ to happen this time, is it?”  His smile was hopeful and she swallowed, the fear rising, not falling.  Her body flashed cold as she trembled in his arms.

 

“What if we can’t?  What if I still die from Glory, or something else?  What if Willow still tries to bring me back?  And Tara dies?  And my mom dies?  What if I can’t prevent all that from happening?”  Her sobbing grew in volume, his murmured pleas for her to calm having only minimal effect.

 

“What is it you are really afraid of, Buffy?  Come on luv, tell me.”

 

Her sudden stillness frightened him, but he held on, feeling exactly what it was she was terrified of, but knowing she needed to verbalise it.

 

“I’m afraid,” she stumbled over the words, her voice quiet and husky as if from years of non-use.  “I can’t ever lose you.  What if we have to face the same thing again and the only way to beat it is to sacrifice you again? Spike, I felt her- I mean me- when you thought I didn’t mean what I said, when you turned to dust.  In the end, it was you that was there for me, you who made me.  Oh God, the pain of not having you anymore.  I can’t do it.  I can’t be without you.  How could I be true?  How could I be me?”  Again she was sobbing in his arms, the steady dark seeming to consume her and darken her emotions so that she had trouble dragging her sunniest parts back to the surface.

 

‘How the bloody hell did this happen?’  Spike was frustrated and angry.  He knew she had gotten an awful shock the night before, the arrow shot by one of Finn’s commando buddies bringing his not-so-immortal existence into focus, but he had tried hard with his tongue and body to erase such gloomy thoughts from her mind.  It had worked, too, until she woke up and started thinking about their spectacular history together. 

 

He could only agree with her though; every emotion and thought she had ever felt about him, he had reciprocated.  Dru had known before he did.  He had loved her down deep inside from the moment he saw her move.  It hadn’t been her hair; it hadn’t been her looks, or her smart mouth.  All of those things combined to offer him one hell of a package. 

 

But that wasn’t what had captured him, what had led to their bizarre association and finally his soul.  It had always been the way she moved.  Her body sang to him, her action called always to his heart, to his soul.  Everything about her made him want to tear himself into tiny inconsequential pieces just to be worthy of falling at her feet. 

 

He still couldn’t believe that he had her love; that he could wake and see her face in rest, beautiful and serene and alive.  He knew what she meant.  He had suffered through the torment of existence when she had died too, and though he had a small sense of duty in his affection for Dawn to drag him through the days till she returned, duty didn’t make him live.  Only she could do that.

 

His body reacted to the information sifted from hers- his bite of claim doing its job to make them one-and he followed her into despair.  His own eyes flooded to the brim with moisture and overflowed, tear tracks making way down his face.  Desperation had him drawing her away so he could capture her lips, his hands caught around her neck and holding her steady. 

 

Thought disappeared as they allowed sensation to take over, frantic to rid themselves of the panic.  As his tongue entered her mouth, she tore the sheet away and covered his body with hers.  He fell back against the pillows, holding her hard against him, one hand wandering down to capture hers.  They were so close as they tasted and sipped courage and warmth from the other.  As she raised her body to kneeling, she allowed his hard cock to push against her needy entrance and he was inside, their lips never letting go but groaning into each other’s mouth the bliss of their togetherness.  Pulling away a little she followed a steady rhythm of up and down, the slick surface of her passage tingling with the contact, heat bursting and devouring her sense.  Sensation overload had her sliding forward, the tips of her breasts rubbing frantically against his raised palms, breathing heavy and desperately as his cock steadily stroked the spot inside her that fired up her whole body.  With the feel of a gong crashing violently up against her face, she screamed, her whole body shaking and shuddering like it had been caught in a hurricane.  His hands grabbed her hips in a bruising crush as he surged into her, caught in his own slide of delicious. Her arms and legs renounced all feeling and movement and she collapsed against him, kissing soft “I love you’s” against the chest she desired so much and she fell quietly to sleep.  His arms surrounded her and he sniffled into her hair, holding her close in heart and body.

 

“I’ll never let you go, kitten.  You’re mine for keeps.”  And he closed his eyes and allowed them some sleep time from the emotional exhaustion of knowing too much about their own future.