Banner by Vampkiss
Banner
by Vampkiss
Chapter 56
“Ran into a bit of trouble,” Alric murmured to Spike
while transferring Buffy into his sire’s arms.
“Sorry. Couldn’t be
avoided.”
“Angelus,” Spike muttered, having caught the scent of
the elder vampire on his childe. “You
alright?”
“Yeah. Not
too bright, your grandsire. Idiot
tried to take me on even after I had my sword out and pointed straight at
him.”
Spike snorted.
“Anyway, I knocked him out and left him there.”
At Spike’s quirked brow, he explained.
“Just a little love tap. Enough
to see us safely away. He’s
probably already awake and gone by now.” He
didn’t mention the fact that the Slayer hadn’t wanted him to dust the
overbearing vampire. “Anyway…
I’m sure Buffy is still dealing with the effects of the spell that brought you
both back and would like to get cleaned up.”
Alric refrained from wrinkling his nose at the foul odor staining both
his and her clothes. The sewer
tunnels, for all their smells and sludge, did afford their group daytime
mobility… besides, he’d smelled a lot worse over the years.
Spike nodded at the other vamp and glanced down at his
wife. She’d barely moved after
having been placed in his arms. The
agitation he’d sensed permeating her body when the pair had first shown up
subsided the moment the steel doors had slid shut, sealing them off from the
outside world. The tension coiled
tight within her petite frame melting away now that she knew she was safe.
And he couldn’t help but smile softly as she started to fall asleep
nestled against his chest.
“Come on, luv. Let’s get you cleaned up and in bed.”
She murmured something that sounded like an affirmative as
she dozed, and Spike moved off, leaving the others to seek their own beds.
Not surprised that the Slayer was too drained to even notice or question
her friend’s absence.
~*~*~*~*~
“Why am I so tired?” Buffy complained plaintively to
Spike while she stood unmoving beneath the hot spray, frowning because, unlike
her, he seemed to have already gotten over his malaise.
“Your body got the brunt of the spell.
Stands to reason it’s gonna take you a bit longer to recover,” he
explained, his hands continuing to lather her body with soap, running them over
muscles a little too tense for his liking. ‘Bloody
magicks,’ he grumbled to himself.
Rather than chance Buffy getting hurting in her weakened
state, he’d shed his clothes right along with the Slayer and climbed in shower
behind her, telling himself that he was just going to get her washed up, then
dried off and tucked into their bed. That
she was too drained from her watcher’s spell to do anything more than curl up
next to him and rest.
Just thinking about the spell caused his hands to tighten
about the Slayer’s arms. His eyes
sought the latest insult to the pale flesh of her neck.
The set of marks he’d given her were jagged and would take a bit longer
to heal than usual, but finesse had been the furthest thing from his mind once
she’d started to weave at the dinner table, rising unsteadily to her feet and
using both hands to clutch at her temples in pain. He’d
panicked as her complexion had gone paler than normal, the plaintive mewl forced
out through pursed lips something he could do without hearing for another
hundred years. Something had
triggered in his mind then, the reason behind his disappearance along with her
own, and he’d had only a few seconds to lunge towards her neck and bite deep
before they’d both been sucked into some type of vortex and disappeared.
The bursting kaleidoscope of colors that had happen next was blinding in
their intensity, causing both Slayer and vampire to pass out.
Coming to on the cold, cement floor inside the warehouse that had started
it all.
Spike could only imagine what his childer had gone through
at their abrupt departure from the dining hall of their
When the group had made the
In the beginning – just after they’d taken control of
the pirate ship, in fact – both he and the Slayer had taken great pains to
tell the clan all that they could remember about Sunnydale.
Even going so far as to write everything down in a journal to have some
record of it, if need be. But, as
the years became decades, countries and languages started to blur.
And Sunnydale, and everyone in it, became a distant memory.
Now, as he stepped beneath the spray, washing off the
artificially scented soap from his and the Slayer’s body, he couldn’t help
grieve for what they’d lost. For
what they’d been brought back to. Neither
he nor Buffy needed the reminders of what they’d left behind.
They’d forged a new life in the past, and being dragged back now… it
was going to force both of them to deal with things that were long since dead
and buried.
Not liking the direction of his thoughts, Spike spun the
Slayer around and pinned her against the wall.
She was his. And nothing, or
no one, was going to change that.
He growled possessively; one hand grasped her thigh and
dragged it up along his leg so that she could grip his waist.
The sleepy look left her eyes, and her pink tongue darted out to trace
her lips in anticipation. It
surprised him sometimes, the way she looked at him.
Whether he reached for her, or vice versa.
Her eyes would lighten for a split second, then darken perceptively as
desire – never very far from the surface – took hold.
She’s stare at him like she was doing right now, as if she wasn’t
complete unless he was filling her, arms and legs entwined while their bodies
moved together to reach the pinnacle of pleasure.
And the look of love she bestowed upon him in the aftermath of their
mutual desire, the way she curled up next to his body, murmuring her love for
him….filled him with such peace.
Spike gasped a muffled oath that could have been her name
when her hand suddenly closed around his shaft and started pumping it from base
to tip and back again. Not that
he’d needed any further stimulus. His
cock had been rock hard from the moment she’d slipped out of her plaid dress
and stepped beneath the shower, the water having instantly drenched her hair and
then sliding in rivulets down her breasts, belly, and beyond.
His eyes closed, and he gave himself over to the pleasure
of her touch. The sensation,
something close to nirvana, as one hand worked his length while the other
reached down to fondle his balls. Rolling
them. Testing their weight. Slowly
driving him out of his mind. He
needed to be inside her. Filling
her. Possessing her.
Claiming her.
He needed….
“Fuck me, Spike. Make
me yours again.” She bit his
earlobe after voicing that demand. Her
body reacting to the sense of urgency she felt in him.
His need to reaffirm their bond, their commitment to one another, in the
uncertainty of being brought back.
Yeah. That’s
what he needed. Taking what she so
freely offered.
Spike braced himself to take her weight, then gripped her
other thigh and lifted her off the ground. He
spread her legs wide and shifted closer, nudging her core with the head of his
cock.
“Ready for me, Slayer?” he growled, and when Buffy
looked up at his face, her eyes softened for a second at seeing amber eyes
gazing down at her, uncertainty mixed with a need to dominate – his demon
desperate to demonstrate its ownership.
Buffy didn’t answer, just tilted her head meekly to the
side and bared her neck to his gaze, showing her husband without words to whom
she belonged. Her legs tightened
about his waist, drawing him closer, and a second later he’d rammed his way
home, the force of his entry driving her back against the tiles – forcing a
gasp from her. His grip on her was
punishing, his deep thrusts bordering on painful.
But, she wasn’t going to stop him.
Knowing that he needed this. Her
complete submission in the face of this new, uncertain reality.
That she was his one constant.
She heard his possessive growl and a second later his fangs
had sliced into her throat, and then he was drawing deeply.
Huge gulps of her blood that struck a cord deep within her pussy.
Driving her closer to climax.
Spike snarled against her throat as her muscles contracted
around his length. Combined with the
taste of her blood, he was soon roaring his release.
“Mine!” he growled around her throat, to which she
could do nothing but nod in supplication.
His demon finally appeased by her acquiescence to his
claim, Buffy felt him shudder against her, having managed to gain control.
Yet, he refused to lift his head from where it was buried against her
neck after having retracted his fangs and licking the wound closed.
“Sorry, luv,” he managed to whisper against her throat
after a time, unable to look at her in the aftermath of his brutal possession.
“Nothing to be sorry for, Spike.”
Her fingers threaded in his hair, drawing his head back and forcing him
to look at her. He stared down at
her, eyes full of remorse, their bodies still intimately joined.
“I love you.” She
caressed the ridges on his brow, smiling at the way he leaned into the touch,
his chest rumbling softly in appreciation. A
sound she never got tired of hearing.
The water grew cold and Spike reluctantly pulled away,
turning off the water, much to the Slayer’s disappointment.
She allowed him to help her from the shower and bundle her up in a towel,
sighing happily, if somewhat longingly, when he easily lifted her in his arms
and made for their room.
After he’d tucked her into bed, Buffy was set to curl up
against his side and sleep, but her husband seemed to have other plans.
Diving beneath the covers with the comment he had something to see to.
A second later, she felt his hands on her thighs, then the cool touch of
his tongue tempting her nether regions. And
she gave silent thanks that Spike wasn’t one to leave a lady hanging.
~*~*~*~*~
Angel snarled as he paced back and forth in his living
room, waiting for the sun to set. He’d
debating returning to Drusilla’s side to try and glean more information from
his crazed childe. She had, after
all, been correct in guiding him back to the warehouse in time for Spike and
Buffy’s reappearance. Her
incoherent babblings about returning to the place had taken him a while to
decipher, but the moment she’d started talking about light and where it all
began, he’d known. But, even his
childe’s special ability to “talk to the stars,” as she was wont to call
it, wouldn’t keep him from tearing her head from her shoulders in his
frustration over the situation with Buffy. Just
seeing how she’d rested so comfortably in the arms of a killer was shocking
enough, but for her to claim the vampire as her own?
Jealousy and rage were fighting for equal dominance of his
emotions.
Never mind the fact of how easily he’d been beaten by the
younger-looking vamp.
True, it had been stupid to attempt to take him on when
he’d already been holding a weapon, pointed towards the ground, yet no less
threatening. But, his rage and
astonishment had prevented him from realizing his age.
That the vampire was a Master in his own right, and not one of the
numerous fledglings flooding the Hellmouth.
His thoughts to disarm the bastard had met with an embarrassingly easy
dressing down on his part.
Another thing to add to his list of grievances.
He stilled suddenly as the weight of the situation hit him.
They had a new player on the Hellmouth, one obviously involved in some
way with the Slayer.
He had to get to Buffy’s watcher.
And fast.
~*~*~*~*~
With a snort of disgust, Giles pushed away the book he was
reading. He’d been staring at the same page for so long that the print had
started to blur. He didn’t know
why he was bothering with Vampyric History, A Watcher’s Tale, but put
it down to trying to make a better impression on the newest Slayer.
After all, watchers researched, right?
But his mind wasn’t on his task.
No, his thoughts were consumed with his own Slayer, not the one making
use of his spare bed upstairs. Something
in Buffy’s manner wasn’t sitting well with him.
It wasn’t anything specific she’d said, discounting the foreign
sounding mumblings when she’d first reappeared, sprawled on the warehouse
floor. Rather, it was the way
in which she spoke that had him stumped. Her
lack of teenaged colloquialisms and slang that was so much the norm in her
conversations.
The tea he’d been drinking suddenly wasn’t strong
enough libation for his contemplations, and he stood up from the small table and
crossed to the kitchen to pour himself a health dose of whiskey.
This he knocked backed in one gulp, then poured himself another, sipping
at it more leisurely as was intended with fine liquor.
With one hand firmly around his snifter, he used the other to draw his
glasses off, unconsciously sticking one of the ends of the frame in his mouth as
he silently ruminated about his Slayer’s condition.
As he paced about the lower levels of his apartment, he
went over every aspect of his encounter with Buffy.
From the moment she’d reappeared, up until he and the two children had
departed her mother’s home. Every
word, every gesture, was fodder for his silent deliberation.
The sun dipped on the horizon, not that he noticed, as he
replayed each event over and over. And,
two things stuck out in his mind. The
first was that Buffy had, indeed, seemed to almost struggle with speaking.
The second, and he’d only just now realized it, was that she seemed
almost stiff in their presence, like she wasn’t exactly sure of her place with
them.
Giles drew up short, went to take another swig of his
drink, and realized that it was empty. He
started towards the kitchen to add another two fingers to his glass, but the
sudden pounding on his door diverted his attention.
Replacing the spectacles on his nose, he started for his front door,
placing his empty glass on the table along the way.
The pounding continued; someone was obviously very intent
on seeing him, and his pace increased to reach the front portal before it could
be knocked off its hinges.
When he opened the door, he drew back in surprise.
Angel was standing there, and he looked none to pleased.
“Angel? What—”
“It’s Buffy,” the brooding vampire interrupted,
indicating with a tilt of his head, a desire to be let inside.
“What… oh… do come in…”
Giles stepped back out of the doorway to allow Angel to enter.
~*~*~*~*~
“Well, that didn’t take long.” Adam eyed the TV monitor that showed the watcher’s front door. He stood up from his chair and moved off towards the bedrooms. It was time to rouse the others and plan their strategy.