Eighteen Days

Author:  Elen

Parts: 11 - 20

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~Part: 11~

Willow's day/night clock was out of whack. She wasn't sure what time it was when she had breakfast, so she ate the contents of half the box of chocolate with a diet Coke and brushed her teeth. Georgia showed up to give her a French manicure, reporting that Harmony was whining about not having a blow drier. Spike told her to brush her hair dry since she had nothing better to do. Now Harmony was trying to organize the minions into supporting her request for beauty supplies and a move to a more interesting and comfortable lair. Preferably in France.

Willow giggled. It sounded exactly like something Harmony would do. Cordelia could be mean, but she wasn't stupid or oblivious like Harmony. "Won't Spike be mad?"

"When I left he was offering to help her pack," Georgia said. "I think even Pete is getting tired of her. He found her in San Diego and couldn't believe his luck-"Georgia shrugged. "She is beautiful, anyone can see that. Too bad she opens her mouth and spoils it."

"One of my boyfriend's friends went out with her when we were still in high school," Willow said. "I think he thought she was kind of putting on a big front. Except she wasn't. I've known her since kindergarten. She's just Harmony."

"She's a little ray of sunshine," Georgia commented.

Willow thought about that and decided that it was an effective vampire put down. "It's interesting how perspective can change the way things sound. Ordinarily I'd think that was a compliment, but vampires, sunshine, they don't go together, so I guess it's not."

Georgia flicked a lock of her long honey blonde hair over her shoulder. "No, that was just good old fashioned sarcasm, sweet pea. Ever heard of a southern put down? It's when you say something nice about someone in a way that manages to be insulting," she explained.

"Where are you from?" Willow asked.

"Savannah," Georgia drawled. "Beautiful city." A tiny ripple of a frown marred her high forehead even as she smiled.

"Is that where you, uh, met Colin?" Willow wondered, examining her fingernails. "That's really pretty," she admired the neat white tips of her fingernails.

"Give me your foot. I'll do your toes too," Georgia offered. "You don't mind do you?"

"Uh-uh. Thanks for the books and stuff. Do you want a chocolate?"

"Maybe later," Georgia said, balancing Willow's foot on her knee. They were sitting on the floor. It was cooler near the ground. The back-up generator did not provide enough juice to keep the air conditioning running. Willow's legs were damp with sweat. "I met Colin at Spoleto, in Charleston," she said, looking thoughtful. "Going on twenty one years," she realized.

Did vampires celebrate anniversaries or birthdays? For that matter, what about the major holidays? "Are you going to do anything?" Willow asked.

Georgia glanced over her shoulder at her, looking puzzled. "Like, have ourselves a big ol' party?" she drawled.

Willow wondered if the innuendo was real or imagined. What was a vampire party like? Her parents had had a twentieth anniversary party last year. It had been a rather stilted cocktail party with a buffet in the dinning room and a lot of their colleagues and a few relatives, and presents. Willow had ordered a copy of the New York Times from their wedding day as a present. Her dad had enjoyed that. "Twenty-one years? You should get good presents," she said. Her Nana Rosenberg had given her parents eight more place settings of china for their twentieth anniversary.

Impressed by that reasoning, Georgia nodded. "Never thought of it that way," she admitted. "We should have ourselves a little anniversary party. A good ol' fashioned night out-with presents," she included Willow's contribution.

Willow craned her head to admire her toes. French manicured toes sounded silly, but they were starting to look good. "Pretty," she commented.

"You need a toe ring and a couple of tattoos," Georgia  told her.

Willow smiled at the idea of coming home with tattoos. "My Dad would love that," she said. "Maybe henna tattoos," she substituted.

"There you go," Georgia nodded. "Wash it off and start all over when you get bored,". She ran her hand over Willow's shin. "Want me to wax your legs?" she asked.

Willow hesitated. "Won't it hurt?"

"A little," Georgia allowed. "Maybe a lot," she said. "We could get some ice to numb your skin." She exchanged the foot she had been working on for the other one. "Sit still. They're still drying," she pointed out as Willow reached for her can of diet Coke. "Tell me about your boyfriend," she invited.

Happy to comply, Willow said, "His name is Oz.  He's a musician."

"How did you meet?" Georgia prompted.

Willow thought back. "Um . . . career day was the first time I talked to him. I saw him around. He was a senior. We started talking," she tilted her head to one side trying to remember the first thing he said to her. Was it canapé?

"He wasn't that interested in computers, he's just smart," she elaborated. "Oh, and he saved me from being shot by the Order of Taraka-they were trying to kill Buffy, and there was a stray shot, but he knocked me down and got shot instead."

The Order of Taraka? Good lord. Buffy? Good grief. The Slayer's name was Buffy. That just beat Jannen Leigh all to hell in the bad name sweepstakes, Georgia decided. When she was Willow's age she had been known as Jannen Leigh Dougherty.

"That tends to make an impression. Why was the Order of Taraka trying to kill the Slayer? Why is the Slayer still alive?" she asked.

"Spike hired them," Willow said, as if that explained everything. "He kind of got his ass kicked when an organ fell on him. It's a long story. But, yeah, it made an impression," she agreed. "Oz isn't like anyone else," literally. "Well, for one thing, he's a werewolf."

"Oh, damn," Georgia muttered. The little half moon swipe she had been applying to Willow's third toe was crooked. "A werewolf, huh? He hasn't bit you or scratched you has he?" she asked worriedly.

"No," Willow sounded shocked. "Oz would never do anything to hurt me," she said. "At least not when he's Oz. When he isn't? Tranquilizer gun," she said matter-of-factly. "He did sort of almost eat me once when he was just getting adjusted to the werewolf thing."

"Hmm," Georgia smiled to herself. "Of course he did. You'd make a yummy snack."

Willow's nose wrinkled, forcefully reminded that she was a food group to Georgia. "Uh, thanks, I think."

Georgia patted her leg. "Don't worry, baby girl. Spike's not going to let anyone nibble on you," Georgia thought he might be saving that for himself. "No more picking fights with the big bad master vampire, sugar. Colin is old and smart. Spike is older and ruthless, and smart," she warned. "He's wound pretty tight. You don't want to be in his path if he really gets pissed off."

"Duh," Willow said. "He's kidnapped me before."

Diverted, Georgia turned to look at her. "No way!"

"Way," Willow was glum. "I thought he was going to kill us. He beat Xander up pretty bad in under thirty seconds of not trying really hard while three sheets to the wind," she looked at Georgia cautiously, wondering if she should say anything more and decided not too. The things that Spike had said that night had been painful, for him, and personal. While she had been the more or less unwilling recipient of his confidences, she still felt the weight of keeping them to herself.

Georgia capped the nail polish bottles and reminded Willow not to move around before leaving the room. "I'll be right back." Willow leaned against the foot of the bed and picked up her book. She had started with Patricia Cornwell and was working her way through the second chapter.

Georgia came back with a waxing kit and an evil smile.

~~~*~~~

The leg waxing had hurt. A lot. Georgia kept telling her not to be a baby about it, but by the time she was done, Willow's eyes were running and her legs were splotchy. She had a cold shower and moisturized within an inch of her life, stealing one of Spike's razor's to shave under her arms before Georgia got any more diabolical ideas about depilation. Georgia was waiting for her with clothes when she came out of the bathroom. She had what looked like a short skirt, but was actually a pair of shorts that looked like a skirt, a mint green tank top, and a pair of black sandals that were a little big, but they fit. After Willow was dressed, Georgia insisted that they go downstairs where it was cooler.

It had to be a form of torture, Willow decided. She had been liberated from the Gideon Bible with fresh reading material and was denied the opportunity to read it in a sweltering, airless room, forced to join the other vampires in the cooler lower level of the motel. She crossed the threshold of the barely remembered lounge. The light in there was low. She spotted Harmony at once, sitting on the bar, eyes closed, with a Walkman on. The minions, as if on cue, their strings pulled by an invisible puppeteer, turned to her with glowing eyes from their positions in the room. A growl erupted from an enormous vampire with a thick black ponytail.

The girl who had stayed in with Willow the night before slapped him on the back of the head. "Knock it off," she said sharply.

"Brown noser," Georgia whispered, and Willow watched as the girl in question looked to Spike for approval.

Not that he noticed. He was studying what appeared to be a hand of cards, lounging in a banquet with Colin and Pete. Georgia nudged Willow along until they were standing by the table where the card game was playing out. She ran an affectionate hand over Colin's bald head. Willow had seen her do this before. She thought it was probably a version of her Dad's habit of pinching her mother's elbow and rolling the loose skin through his fingers, a kind of non-verbal hello.

He looked up at Georgia. Then at Willow. "Playing dress up?" he guessed.

Spike smiled slowly, glancing over at the girl. Red was a vampire Barbie doll. Some vampires had an atavistic grooming instinct. Georgia swung that way, he thought with a smirk.

Colin knew his part. "You're a miracle worker. A few days ago she looked like death warmed over and now she's all . . . adorable, Georgia," he complimented.

"Thank you," Georgia accepted the credit. "She is adorable."

Conflicting emotions played over Willow's face. Discomfort at being scrutinized. Distaste at being objectified. Disbelief and uncertainty at the positive reaction, which she instinctively analyzed for sarcasm. Embarrassment at the pleasure she felt in being admired, even in what she recognized as a crass and non-involved appreciation. All of this ladled on top of her discomfort in being in a room full of vampires with Spike and Georgia as the only people she could rely on to keep her from being turned into a meal. Her stomach churned. She was tired of it. She was tired of being afraid all of the time.

"I think we should have an anniversary party," Georgia told Colin. She grinned at Spike. "With presents," she added pointedly. "And I want to bring our baby girl along."

Spike shrugged. "I don't see why not," he said. It coincided with his plans to move. "Where?"

Spike had a watch set on the address of the house Willow was supposed to be staying in. For seven days it had been dark. No one had picked up the growing pile of newspapers. Now it was occupied according to Pete. He checked it out himself that night, lurking on the roof of the coffee shop until the occupants showed up around three in the morning. Four guys, all young, including one he vaguely recognized from the evening of his nearly fatal encounter with an organ.

Oz. The werewolf. Prowling around San Jose looking for his mate, no doubt. He figured that the Watcher and the Slayer would invest some effort in trying to find him, so he wasn't entirely surprised by this development. He watched as the boy's head snapped up, suddenly alert and wary. Probably catching his scent on the wind. Spike stroked his jaw and considered his options. Four humans versus one vampire? He could take them. The wolf was the only one who was truly dangerous, and even if he knew he was coming, he was just one, and out of phase for his transformation, which made him relatively helpless.

Killing him, however, might bring the Slayer, and he wanted her in Sunnydale, working diligently on the search for the Gem of Amara. They would move. Tonight, he decided. Anyone caught straggling in around sunrise would be left behind.

Georgia pretended to think. "The Temple," she said after a moment.

The Temple was in San Francisco. It was a Greek Revival church built at the turn of the century and sold when a more modern and conventional church was dedicated. It had been turned into a private club by a pair of enterprising vampires. The old sanctuary had been converted into a stage for shows. It was the only public part of the Temple. There were two subterranean levels that were strictly demon.

San Francisco was an hour away, and there were plenty of places that they could run to ground.

"What are we waiting for?" Pete asked. The Temple was well known up and down the coast.

Colin rolled his eyes. "Please!" he snorted. "They have to go shopping and get all tarted up," he frowned at Pete. Stupid American.

Georgia nodded, "And, don't forget, presents? Anniversary presents. Colin and me have been together for twenty-one years," she winked at Colin.

"A party!" Harmony had decided to take off her headset and join the conversation.

Georgia's lip curled and Pete grinned at her. "Can I give you Harmony?" he asked, sotto voce.

"I heard that!" she said, jumping down from the bar and stomping her foot. Willow watched her slink her way over to Pete. "I told you. No three way unless it's boy-boy-girl, or Charlise Theron,"

Wow. Way too much information. With her unerring instinct for sussing out the weakest person in the room, Harmony frowned at Willow. "Why do we have to take her? She's no fun," she insisted.

Willow tended to agree. "That's okay. I don't do tarted up, thanks. You go have fun. I don't want anyone to miss out on my account."

Spike laughed at that. "Right, Red. We'll leave you here, all by yourself, safe as houses. I'll just tuck you up in bed while you read improving literature like a good little girl," he teased.

That little girl crap was wearing on her nerves, but she confined herself to glaring at him. "Geek," she heard Harmony dismiss her.

"Vapid whore," Willow shot back before breaking eye contact with her kidnapper in chief. "I've been kidnapped. I've probably lost any chance of going back to my internship, which was for credit, and I'm way behind on my summer reading list," she said, sounding matter of fact to her own ears. "Yeah, that makes me a geek. What? Am I supposed to be insulted?"

"If you aren't insulted why are you calling me names?" Harmony demanded.

"I am a geek," Willow repeated with weary patience. "I thought we were playing a version of call it  as you see it."

Too subtle for Harm, but not bad overall, Spike decided. Georgia clapped. "Kitten has claws," she said, sounding amused. "What's the point of waxing your legs if you don't do tarted up?"

"Pain?" Willow took a wild stab at it.

Georgia grinned. "Oh, yeah. That was nice," she admitted.

~~~*~~~

Willow wasn't allowed to play in the sandbox. She stood a foot away, looking down at her feet, her fingers pleating folds into her t-shirt over her tummy. The end of her nose was red. Her hair was braided today, like yesterday. They had tried to put straws in it to make her braids more like Pippi Longstocking from the book Mrs. Gardner read at nap time, but it hadn't worked. She just had braids with straws sticking out of them. A dog barked and she flinched, looking up warily.

"C'mon, Willow," Xander  called. He was building a fence with Popsicle sticks forming the pickets in the sand. He had several take out Chinese containers of various sizes waiting to be filled with sand to form the buildings inside his fort. He looked down at himself. He was full sized in his dream. Willow was five.

"Not supposed to," she reminded him.

It was a stupid rule. Willow wasn't allowed to play in the sandbox. It had something to do with her shoes. She wasn't allowed to take them off either, which was another stupid rule. He could tell that she was thinking about it. Then he smiled. He was the grown up. He could change the rule.

"You can take off your shoes," he told her. "I'm in charge and I say you can."

She looked up from her shoes. They were brown oxfords, the scuff marks on the toes neatly covered with shoe polish. "They are double knotted," she informed him, looking discouraged. He got up and climbed out of the sandbox, kneeling down to pick the laces apart and untie her shoes. The shoes came off, and he felt a moment of fear as it occurred to him to wonder if the reason she had to keep her shoes on had something to do with her feet. Maybe there was something wrong with them that was hidden by the shoes.

She sat down on the side of the sandbox. She was wearing purple jeans printed with flowers. She took her socks off and he was relieved to see that her small feet were normal. She got in the sandbox. For a moment, she stood there, squishing her toes into the sun warmed sand, then she sat down, Indian style, looking very serious. She looked up at him for direction. "What do I do now?" she asked.

"We are building a fort," Xander told her.

She picked up one of the cartons and scooped sand into it, packing it down with the back of her fingers. He watched her play. It was no longer about him building a fort. It was about Willow playing. He would watch her play. He picked up her shoes and started filling them with sand.

She looked up at him. "I'm going to get in trouble," she told him, even though he was the one filling her shoes with sand. She looked sad.

~~~*~~~

He woke up with a start. He had fallen asleep on Giles' couch.

Buffy peered at him. "Hi," she said. She looked sleepy too.

Xander rubbed his face, wishing that he could go back to sleep and finish his dream. He wondered what made him think about Willow and the sandbox rule. He closed his eyes for a moment, yawning. "Had a dream," he  told her.

Buffy scooted down in the couch, propping the book she was reading against her raised thighs. She had her feet on Giles' coffee table. "Good dream or bad dream?"

"We were playing in the sandbox. Me 'n Will. Except she was a little girl." He smiled. "I never could get her in the sandbox."

Buffy's eyebrows rose and her forehead wrinkled. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

Xander shrugged. "Nah. No prophetic dreams here. It was this rule. Willow couldn't play in the sandbox. She couldn't take off her shoes," he knew he wasn't explaining it right. "She wore these shoes . . . like old lady shoes," he said. "She wasn't allowed to take them off, and she couldn't play in the sandbox with them on, because they'd get sand in them, I guess. I don't know what made me think of it."

"But, in your dream, she did play in the sandbox," Buffy concluded.

"Yeah. I was grown up. In charge. I changed the rule." He picked up the book that had fallen to one side. "Do you think she's okay?" he asked. "I keep thinking about how scared she must be."

Buffy tried not to think about that. "Willow's got the kidnapping thing down by now, don't you think?" she tried to joke. "She's been kidnapped by Spike, twice, and once by the Mayor and Faith, and there was demon robot guy," she reminded Xander. "She could give Spike pointers."

Xander got a mental image of Willow offering helpful suggestions on the finer points of kidnapping. They had been in tight spots before. They always managed to figure out a way to get through it. He was going to have to trust in that.

~Part: 12~

Oz spent the afternoon at the Mercury Sun paging through back issues of the paper for the last week and making notes. A murder robbery the day before caught his attention. A gang had knocked over an all-night chain drug store in Milpitas cleaning out the registers and killing the pharmacist, a counter clerk, and three customers, whose throats had all been ripped out. Smelled like a fresh vampire kill to him. Oz checked his map and was stunned to discover how near Milpitas was.

He made himself calm down and get organized. He marked the map in red with the date and kept reading. He had a system, in a manner of speaking. He was looking for assaults that could be vampire attacks. If they were clearly something else, he noted the locations in black. If vampire attack couldn't be ruled out, he made a note in blue, and for those that were highly likely to be vamp attacks, he used red. He worked all afternoon to get back to the day Willow disappeared and decided to work back two more days.

When he got back to Willow's the Dingoes were waiting for him in the living room. "We've had a band meeting," Dan reported, in spokesperson mode.

Oz had been expecting something like this. They had dropped everything so he could go to San Jose to look for Willow, who was still missing. That was his problem. He wasn't leaving without finding her, but the band didn't have anything to do except watch him scurry around and puzzle over his refusal to involve the cops further.

"And, we've made some decisions," Devon carried on. Dan's spokesperson moments tended to be short-lived. Devon never wanted to be the actual spokesperson until the talking began, and then he took over. He couldn't help himself. It was a front man thing.

Oz nodded. He had money saved up for his first semester at UC Sunnydale, and he could tap into that. "Yeah," he said. "You need the van, right?"

Chris frowned at him. "Slow down, dude. We've noticed, over the last year, some pretty weird things that go down around your friends," he said.

"Very weird," Devon agreed. "Your girlfriend is hot in leather," he threw in.

Vamp Willow's appearance at the Bronze had been witnessed by Devon, and Oz had told him that she was having some issues. He also suggested that Devon was a little stoned, so he might have misunderstood what he had seen.

Chris glanced over at Devon. They had all heard about Willow in leather from Devon before. They had also heard Oz mutter something about Devon's periodic overindulgences, which sounded more plausible than the idea of a slinky Willow Rosenberg.

"We've also noticed that weird things happen in Sunnydale," Chris said, in an attempt to get them back on track. "Very weird things," he stressed. "So, this is the deal. We want to help you, but you have to tell us what's really going on."

Oz looked at them. "Okay," he thought about it for a moment. "Vampires are real."

"Oh, man!" Devon smacked his forehead. "Willow is a vampire? Willow Rosenberg? She's so . . . uh . . . cute," he said, thinking that in a rational world vampires and cuteness should probably be mutually exclusive. "Man, nobody is that cute," he realized. "It's like a disguise, huh?"

"No. Willow isn't a vampire. Willow is a witch," Oz corrected.

"A witch?" Dan repeated, sounding skeptical. "Pointy hat? Warts? Or more like Sabrina the Teen Witch with the talking cat and the wacky spells gone wrong?" He looked around. "Hey, it could explain a lot," he pointed out. "Did she, like, make herself disappear?"

"A vampire named Spike took her. Kidnapped her," he clarified. "He's been in Sunnydale before. He used to live in the old burned out factory on the edge of town. You may even have seen him around. Bleached blond guy with a leather coat, British accent."

"Is that librarian guy a vampire too?" Devon wanted to know. "He's British."

"Uh, no," Oz said. That librarian guy? "Devon, we went to the same high school. That's Mr. Giles, the high school librarian," he reminded him. Devon, never having found the library, looked blank. "Right. Moving on. Do you remember the older guy Buffy was dating?" he asked.

"Yeah? He's a vampire?" Devon grinned. "Man . . . that's wild," he said. "And Buffy's like, his girlfriend?"

"Was," Oz confirmed. "They broke up. No future in dating the undead."

"So," Chris was pacing. "Willow's a witch, and vampires are real. And a vampire guy kidnapped her . . . because she's-oh, duh, she's a good witch," he was developing the plot, "and she fights vampires?" Chris said triumphantly. "I mean, come on, this is Willow we are talking about. She's got to be a good witch," he looked to see if Dan and Devon had caught up. "And her buds, that Xander guy and Buffy, they help her out?"

Oz sighed. "Close. Buffy is a-actually the-stress on the singular-Vampire Slayer. She hunts vampires and demons, and Willow and Xander help her," he re-ordered Chris's conclusions. "So does Mr. Giles, the librarian," he explained, "And Angel, Buffy's ex, because he has a soul. Spike and Buffy have had a long history of Buffy mostly kicking his ass without being able to dust him, and long story short, they kind of made a deal that Spike would leave Sunnydale."

Devon nodded, "He's in San Jose? And he runs into Willow, who is Buffy's best friend," he said. "Okay, I'm getting that. He kidnaps Willow," he concluded. "What does he want?"

Oz shrugged, "Some ancient artifact thing that is hidden in Sunnydale. He wants them to find it for him. He's going to trade Willow for it."

"Dude, the cops are never going to go for this," Chris surmised.

Dan looked at Chris. "Moratorium on 'dude.' Officially," he announced.

Chris and Devon exchanged resigned looks.

Oz nodded his agreement with the moratorium announcement. Dude was so over. "It's a problem," he said, returning to the topic of the clash of the criminal justice system with demons and the mystical forces of evil.

"Is that the whole thing?" Dan asked. "You're working with Willow's friends in Sunnydale to get this artifact thing-"

"Or find Spike," Oz interrupted. "He's not well known for sticking to a plan or keeping his word."

Devon looked at the others. "Good enough for me," he  decided. "What can we do?"

Oz took a deep breath. "Well, there is one other thing," he began. He had just outted Buffy, and that wasn't his secret to share. "About me," he began. "You might have noticed that sometimes I can't get together with you guys?"

They looked puzzled. "Well, you know, we all have stuff we have to do, and you've been busy helping your girlfriend and her buds fight vampires," Devon said, reverting to de facto spokesman for the band. "It's cool," he told Oz. "It's not like you are bailing on us without a good reason."

"I'm a werewolf. Three days a month I turn into the wolf at sunset," he said.

"Willow is a witch? Her friend Buffy is a Vampire Slayer? Buffy's ex is a vampire with a soul. You are a werewolf?" Dan ticked it off.

"It's a lot to take in," Oz agreed with his gift for understatement.

He called Giles to report in and told him that he had to let the guys in on the big picture, but that they had agreed to help out and they would be staying in San Jose for now. Angel was more or less in charge of the 'find Spike' sub-mission, so Giles put him on the phone. "What do you have?" Angel asked.

"A lot, actually," Oz told him. "I think there's a nest in the area, and it's organized. San Jose has its share of mystery murders, and they have drug related gangs operating in and around San Jose. The other night a pharmacy was hit, and everyone there was killed. The registers were cleaned out. The pharmacy cages were broken into," Oz said. "Okay . . . could be gangbangers? Except that every one of the victims' throats was ripped out."

"Vampires aren't that interested in drugs as a rule," Angel told him. "You can achieve some of the effects from taking drugs, but-"

"Right. They also stole cigarette cartons and booze, too. Look, people don't kill a store full of people to get a fix. They do it to get drugs to sell, because it is as good as currency," he hypothesized. "The local police are openly speculating that there is a new gang in the area and that the ripping out of throats is a kind of calling card-instead of shooting people in the back of the head."

Angel grunted. "Got it. I'm on board with you now," he said. "You think that Spike is still in the area?"

"Yeah, I do. Last night," he frowned, "I had one of those eyes on the back of my neck feelings. If they are converting drugs into currency, we can ask around in the local clubs. See who the source is for your quality pharmaceuticals," he explained. "Devon looks stoned most of the time, so we've got good cover for that."

~~~*~~~

Rule one in the handbook for kidnap victims. Do not cry while gagged with your head covered by a smelly nylon sack that may have once held gym clothes.

Willow had been roughly shaken into wakefulness by her kidnapper in chief and told she had ten minutes to get dressed and ready to leave. Recalling that Spike interpreted his own ten minute injunction as an expression, she pulled on a pair of jeans over the boxer shorts she was sleeping in and slid her feet into the black sandals Georgia had given her. She stuffed as many of the toiletries that she had collected over the week as she could into one of the many plastic bags that littered one corner of the room she shared with Spike.

When he came back with Georgia and the small, dark haired vampire named Jeanie in tow, she was more or less ready to leave. Georgia had a Polaroid camera. Spike advanced on her. "Pet?" he prompted. "Can't have you screaming your bloody head off," he told her.

Willow gaped at him. Screaming? Why hadn't she thought of that before now? Oh, right. The threat of harm to innocent civilians wandering around. Hello! "Can't we just stick with the normal, try to get help, and people die thing?" she suggested.

"Not this time. But, nice try," he told her. "Don't make me chase you around the room.  I'll win. You'll loose, and it won't be pretty," he warned.

What was he talking about? What was he going to do that was going to warrant running? He fished a roll of duct tape out of his pocket. "Hands," he prompted.

She still had bruises on her wrists from the handcuffs, so duct tape constituted an improvement. She gritted her teeth and stuck her hands out in front of her, hoping that this would satisfy him. He raised an eyebrow, but he wrapped her left wrist in duct tape and bound her right wrist to it with two additional turns. It wasn't cutting off her circulation, but her wrists were securely bound. He vamped out and razored through the trailing edge of the duct tape without difficultly.

He tore off a four-inch strip and Willow backed away from him. "Now, wait a minute," she began nervously. "This really isn't necessary," she said, trying to fend him off with her bound hands.

He slapped the tape over her mouth, catching some of her hair in it. He grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her over to a chair, forcing her to sit. The hair pulling made her eyes water. Georgia raised a Polaroid camera to frame the picture Spike wanted. Spike peered at Willow. She looked angry and a little teary eyed. He yanked her head to one side and ran his tongue over her carotid artery, smelling fear invading her scent. Much better. Terrified, angry, and teary eyed. He let her go and her head fell forward. Georgia continued taking pictures, handing them to Jeanie.

The bag over head indignity was reserved for the car. She found herself in the back seat of the Desoto sitting stiffly between a pair of the male minions. Spike was driving and the dark haired girl was in the front passenger seat.

Claustrophobia threatened, clawing at her fragile hold on herself. With nothing to distract her but her own growing panic and confused senses, Willow lost track of any real sense of time. They could have been in the car one hour or three. She was pretty sure it was less than three. She was flung over a hard, bony shoulder after she was dragged out of the car when they reached their destination. The bag over her head slipped down to her chin and she shook her head to try to get it off. That earned her a hard smack on her ass.

"Knock it off, Red," Spike growled at her.

She could feel him moving down a long, winding staircase. She registered cooler, damper air, and the sound of a door opening, then closing with a metallic sound. She was unceremoniously dumped on a mattress. She pushed the bag over her head. It was pitch dark, wherever she was. She heard the sound of water dripping somewhere nearby and smelled something dank and familiar in an unpleasant way. Mildew? Dry, dusty, ugh! Crypt. She shuddered. It was a crypt. No crying. Crying made her nose fill and she couldn't breath through her mouth.

Spike was busy giving orders. "Okay, people, fan out. I want a perimeter maintained," he ordered. "We are here until dusk, and then we move, so don't go getting comfortable," he told them.

Willow picked at the duct tape covering her mouth, getting an edge of it up to grasp between her fingers. The sticky tape pulled on her skin painfully as she tried to separate it. Seeing that she was occupied in a way that would keep her busy and out of the way for a while, Spike went back to supervising their occupation operation. He had a packet of Polaroids to mail, threatening phone calls to make, and he set Colin to work on finding them a new place to call home. His presence in San Francisco wasn't going to go unnoticed for long.

~~~*~~~

"I've got it," Giles exclaimed. The painfully slow task of translating text had fallen largely on his shoulders. Further complicating matters, the text that Dalton had been working from was itself a translation, and it took Giles three days to realize that it was somewhat flawed. He had to work his way through some translation errors, consulting with colleagues as he worked out a few more common translation errors based on some speculation about the original language the text had been translated from.

"Where is it?" Buffy asked, abandoning the book she was reading.

Giles rechecked his calculations and started plotting them on a map. "We need to check this against a few landmarks that are rather cryptically described, but I believe that we are looking at a location roughly fifty feet underground here," he pointed at a spot near a major intersection.

Xander threw his hands up in the air. "Great. That'll be real subtle. No one is going to notice us digging there."

"We'll have to tunnel in," Giles conceded, looking for a copy of his maps of Sunnydale's extensive tunnel system, developed courtesy of the late mayor of Sunnydale and elaborated on by Sunnydale's demon population. "I think we can get within twenty yards of it, and then start digging."

"How long?" Buffy asked.

Giles had thought carefully about what to tell them. He had talked to Luke Holbrook at UC Sunnydale about excavation issues. Using picks and shovels Holbrook had estimated that a safe tunnel could be made without heavy equipment based on the soil and bedrock composition in the area with a team of four moving at approximately two feet per day, which was disheartening to say the least.

"A week under optimal conditions," Giles lied. Based on Holbrook's estimates it was more like a month. He watched Buffy and Xander exchange incredulous looks.

"When Spike was after that cross for Drusilla, he got to send a minion into a crypt," Buffy objected. "This is so not fair. A week? A week is too long."

"We've reached a point where we have to make a decision," Giles announced. He had not been pleased by Oz's unilateral decision to inform his band mates about their activities. It was done, and there was no use regretting it. It did suggest one manner in which they could double their manpower resources.

"What kind of decision?" Xander asked. He was with Buffy. Willow had already been gone over a week. Another week was out of the question.

Giles took off his glasses and started cleaning them. "We need to decide if we are going to continue looking for Spike, or if we are going to abandon that and work towards finding the Gem of Amara. If we can increase our workforce, double it in effect, I think we have a good chance of finding the crypt in a week or less. If we don't . . . it is going to take longer," he paused, his attention fixed on his Slayer.

"Conversely, we could simply abandon the search for the Gem of Amara. There are other issues that we haven't fully considered," he said carefully. "Oz has made some progress in San Jose. If we dedicate ourselves to finding Spike and rescuing Willow, we may be equally successful. Though, the risk to Willow is considerably greater should Spike conclude that we are no longer on task."

Buffy frowned. "Spill. What aren't you saying?"

Giles frowned. "We cannot let Spike have the Gem of Amara, Buffy. What we have learned of the Gem suggests that it would make him invulnerable. Impossible to kill," he elaborated. "Such an advantage in the hands of your mortal enemy is unthinkable."

Buffy stared at him. "You're starting to sound like Wesley."

It was not a compliment. Her former Watcher had ordered her not to trade the Box of Gavroc when the Mayor and Faith took Willow hostage for it. He exemplified everything she had learned to despise about the Watcher's Council before she broke off contact with them.

"I'm having deja vu in a bad way, Giles." Not bringing Willow home was so not an option. "We've been here before, and we found a way. Thanks to Willow," she reminded him. "So, if you are thinking that we aren't going to make a trade if it comes to that, then unthink it."

"Gotta say I'm with Buff on this, G-man," Xander put in. "Willow's priority one. We'll deal with the fall out, because . . . that's what we do. Deal. This is Willow. It's non-negotiable."

Buffy nodded. Since Willow had disappeared, she had spent way too much time deferring to Giles and Angel and worrying about Willow. She was worried about Willow. Being weak wasn't alleviating her worry. She had quit on the Watcher's Council after they had refused to help Angel, and she had averted another apocalypse. Great. That didn't mean that she was done. She was the Slayer because that is what she was, not because the Council made it so.

"Okay," she felt more centered than she had since Angel left Sunnydale the night she had graduated from high school. It was a good feeling.

"This is the plan. Everyone is now on Gem of Amara duty. We call Oz and tell him to get here because we need every able body we can get on this," she said, pacing. "In the meantime, we keep researching. We figure out what the Gem is, exactly what it does, how it works, and work on plans to either take it back or keep it out of Spike's hands," she rapped out. "We play for the endgame. That's the plan."

~Part: 13~

Willow woke up to unrelieved darkness and the feeling of being buried alive. She had had a nightmare that she was trapped in a crypt, and that she couldn't move. Her heart pounded and she felt a scream gathering in her throat. It escaped in a yelp of surprise when she heard Spike say, "Your heart is beating like a fucking drum. You think you could take it down a notch?"

Being startled out of her skin didn't help. It was so dark. She couldn't see anything. "Why is it so dark?" she managed to say, trying to cover her heart with her hands to muffled the sound.

He saw what she was doing and rolled his eyes, one corner of his mouth turning up in an exasperated smile. He lit a candle. "Better?" he asked.

Willow looked around. She was in a crypt. There was blood red marble on the walls and black marble columns with silver leaf capstones. She was open mouthed in astonishment at the small glimpses. "Yeah," she said slowly. "Wow," she breathed. "This is one fancy crypt."

Coming from a girl who actually knew her crypts, Spike thought.  "If there was more light you could see the ceiling. It's painted," he elaborated.

"Really?" she looked impressed. "Like Sistine Chapel painted?"

"It's a copy of 'Les Tres Riches Heures. Twelve vignettes representing the months of the year. The center of which is a representation of a calendar. That's not a copy. That's an interpretation of the arch motif from the original."

'The very rich hours' Willow translated in her head. 'Les Tres Riches Heures'. It sounded familiar. "I should know that," she said, trying to place the reference in her head. She felt thick and tired, and she no longer knew what day it was. The computer made her lazy in a lot of ways. She didn't have to remember things. She just had to remember how to look them up. She didn't have a computer here. She just had herself. She sat up, wrapping her arms around herself. It was cold. After being in the un-air conditioned motel, it was too cold.

"Cold?" he asked.

"Yes."

He shrugged out of his leather coat and dropped it in her lap. Willow picked it up, feeling the soft, broken-in leather in her hands. She settled it around her shoulders and looked up at him curiously. He was looming over her, holding a white candle. It was a particular type of candle, though that eluded her too. Her father used to get them at the hardware store and keep them in a drawer in the small entry from the garage to the house to be used in the event of a storm. Willow had used them last year to illuminate the walk to her parents' house on Halloween, putting them in paper bags that had been cut with various jack o' lantern patterns. That was the Halloween after Spike had hunted them when their costumes changed. Her parents had let her have a party that year, and had looked so surprised at the number of people who came.

It felt a little strange to be wrapped up in his coat. It smelled like him. Leather, and tobacco, and something else that she couldn't name but recognized as a Spike smell. She felt around in an inside pocket and found a wallet. She wondered if he had pictures in it. She continued her surreptitious investigation of the inside pockets and found a pair of handcuffs. She made a face. Her lips were still sore and dry from the duct tape, but at least she didn't have a new set of handcuff bruises.

"Thanks for not using the handcuffs again," she said after a moment.

"Figured your wrists were banged up enough," he admitted, hunkering down in front of her. "As soon as it is safe to move, we'll be out of here. Colin is finding us a new place. Crypt lacks a bit in the way of creature comforts."

"Such as?"

"Television?" he suggested. "And a bathroom, for you," he added, lifting her chin with fingers that bit into her skin. He ran his thumb over the slightly sticky, roughened skin the duct tape had covered and she flinched.

"Please don't," she tried not to cower.

"Don't what, pet?" he asked.

"Don't touch me like that," she said. "It's confusing," she went on, and then gave herself a mental smack. "Les Tres Houres Riche?"

"Les Tres Riche Houres" he corrected, but he didn't let loose of her chin. He could feel her humid breath flutter against his skin. Ah, more conversational sleight of hand?

"What is that?" she asked.

"Part of an illuminated manuscript, a famous example of a book of hours," he said softly. "It's in a museum in France. They have museums in France," he said with a crooked smile, reminding her of her conversation with Harmony the night Harmony had almost killed her.

She felt a bubble of mirth well up. "And shops," she added, her voice cracking.

He let go of her chin and patted his coat, which was on her, so it felt like he was roughly exploring her for a scary moment. He fished something out of a pocket and held it up for her to see. It was a small tin of lip balm. "Want some of this?"

She heaved a relieved sigh. "Yes, please," she let go of the coat, to take it from him. The top slid back under her exploring fingers and she coated the tip of her index finger and started applying it to her lips with a small sound of relief at the soothing sensation. "Where are the others?"

"Colin and Georgia are doing the pretty with the local grand poobahs," Spike surprised her a little by answering.

"San Francisco doesn't have a master. They have what amounts to a council, the heads of the bigger, more powerful vampire clans in the area," he explained. "They are checking in and making it known that we are only visiting, not planning on staying. The others are under guard. If the clans decide they don't want them here," he shrugged. "They won't have to make a hunt out of it."

"Why are we here?"

"Don't particularly want it known that I'm in San Francisco," his fingers traced her jaw. "Or you, mistaken for snack food or a gift. Safer this way. We'll be gone before anyone notices me, or has time to do anything about it," he added with a slight smile. "Gives us an opportunity to have a nice little moment alone. You, me. Candlelit crypt."

She coated her lower lip, frowning. That didn't sound good. His arm settled around her shoulders. She went absolutely still as he combed his fingers through her hair, settling in behind her ear. His finger traced the outer edge of her ear to the earlobe, rubbing it between his index finger and thumb. Oh, boy. This was bad. Don't panic, Rosenberg. He's probably just doing this to unnerve you. Points to Spike. It was completely working, reminding her of the way he had smelled her neck when he kidnapped her the first time.

She had backed him down before, she reminded herself. She shook his hand off, glaring at him. "Okay. Now you are scaring the crap out of me. Happy?" she asked. "Knock it off." He wasn't drunk this time. Was that important? People acted differently when they were drunk. Spike had been all psycho stalker ex-boyfriend with the 'do a love spell, make her crawl' business over Dru, threatening her with a broken bottle, and then he had been weepy and sad, and then just lechy and eeeew. When she called him on it, he had shrugged off the more demon-y impulses and was more or less reasonable in a terrifying way.

"I've thought about you a lot since then," he  admitted, unwittingly echoing her thoughts as he set the candle down on the marble floor.

She had thought about the night in the burnt out factory a lot. She had some bad dreams about it. She also thought about it in the revisionist sense of how she might have improved on her performance. She so lacked Buffy's quippy ease with the snappy comeback. Her best retorts sprang to mind hours after the fact. She had thought through variations that had her wielding a stake, a vial of holy water, or a cool spell that made a ball of light appear that she had read about in a D&D spell book that had been left out while she waited for Oz to wrap up band practice. Somehow, she couldn't imagine Spike wringing his hands about his actions, unless he had some issues about not getting around to killing them.

"Leaving survivors must make you feel out of sorts," Willow said tartly.

He laughed at that. "Oh, I don't know about that," he played with her hair. "Wasn't just thinking about killing you," his voice teased.

"Torture, then killing," Willow nodded. "Right. An off night for you?"

"I thought about you," he grinned at her efforts to distract him. "You were wearing a lilac sweater with a little pink number underneath it, and you smelled delicious. I remember that," he said reminiscently.

"It was probably Xander," she almost enjoyed the opportunity to needle him. "He was the one who was bleeding."

He remembered what she was wearing that night? It was months ago. She barely remembered what she was wearing and she had almost died in it.

"I'm not telling him. He'd have nightmares for the rest of his life." she said.
 
 

He tugged on her hair, hard enough to make her frown at him reprovingly. "More hair pulling?" she asked.

He wound the lock of her hair around his finger. "I like your hair," he said. "At night, under a streetlight, it's the color of blood," his tone was caressing. "Pet . . ."

"You're ruining this for me," she told him abruptly. "The only thing I've ever liked about you was that you were loyal to how you felt about Drusilla. This is just . . . icky," her lip curled. "You're no better than . . . Larry," she said with a hint of loathing that was checked as she remembered that Larry was dead.

Poor Larry. Once he came out of the closet, he was really nice, she recalled.

"He's dead now, since the Mayor kind of ate him during graduation, so I guess that wasn't very nice," she admitted, moving her hands in the air in a gesture of impatience. "Off topic, but still, you know, the whole lech-y demon guy is . . . beneath you, isn't it? Especially with me. I'm so not the kind of girl vamps go for."

That surprised him. The conviction in her voice. The idea that she liked anything at all about him was a little off-putting. Willow Rosenberg liked something about him? Christ on a crutch, she was an idiot. He wasn't exactly proud of the ass he had made out of himself over Dru. Was she inferring that he was some less soulful version of the Great Poof, or just delivering a version of insecurity about herself? That was ludicrous. Granted, he had seen her looking better now and again, but she was a pretty girl, any idiot could see that.

"You have got to be kidding," he said, distracted from the game of seducing her.

"What? About Larry? The Mayor really did eat him," she confirmed. "He turned into a-no, wait. You don't know Larry. You don't care about that," she told herself.

"Dru? What happened?" she asked, sensing that she had a chance to get him on the ropes. "You were going to go get her back," she reminded him. "Did you just give up?" there was a wealth of scorn in that.

"No!" he glared at her. "I didn't give up. I did get her back."

It wasn't the same. They were not the same together. There was too much between them that couldn't be washed away in blood, though they had tried. In Mexico Dru had caught up with the bloody Chaos demon again. Same song, second verse, and he was bloody tired of it.

"You can't make someone love you," he said roughly. "That's all I ever wanted. Love, and a little fucking loyalty. Is that too much to ask for? I planned my whole un-life around that ungrateful bitch, and she couldn't plan past her breakfast around anything but her damned dolls," he said bitterly.

'Great. Good job. Piss him off some more, why don't you,' Willow thought, wincing at the rage in his voice.

"I'm sorry," she apologized. "I didn't have any right to pry into . . . your personal stuff. You were scaring me, so I-" Why was she apologizing? He had been touching her in an all too personal way.

"You don't even like me," she said slowly. "You've told me that if I wasn't useful, you'd kill me. So, what's with the nice, cuddling vampire act all of a sudden?" she demanded. "It's a joke, isn't it? Like, later on, when you are hanging out with the other vampires, it will be, 'you won't believe she fell for this' won't it?" she accused.

He frowned at her. "What the hell are you ranting about?"

She snapped the tin of lip balm shut, squeezing it in her hand. "Just stop it, okay? I'm not falling for it. You may be bored, or whatever, but I'm just the kidnapee here. I'm not some kind of ninny that thinks you're misunderstood or romantic. You're dangerous and scary and evil, and you want me like you want your next meal," she scoffed.

"Dru's crazy? What's your excuse, mister?" she was working up a pretty good mad. "So, no cuddles and smoochies. We are keeping this on a strictly kidnapper to kidnapee basis."

"You duct taped my mouth shut," she reminded him. "Hello! What's the encore? You beat me half to death and expect me to have a crush on you? Candlelit crypt?" she rolled her eyes. "I may date a musician, and make out in the back of a van that smells kind of . . . yucky, but I've got standards," she exclaimed indignantly.

"Worked with Dru," he pointed out, amused. His lips twitched. "A van, huh?"

"I'm not Drusilla," she muttered. She refrained from pointing out that the torture route didn't exactly take. "An Econoline," she added with relish. No cushy, comfortable family van, but a real, honest to goodness metal floor, bare bones van, suitable for packing band equipment, band mates, or making out.

"No, you aren't," he agreed. "Okay," he sounded grudging. "Maybe I am playing with you a bit," he turned toward her. "No television, nothing better to do. I'm bored. You tend to be amusing when you're all riled up about something," he noted.

'Sheesh. Blame it all on me,' Willow thought.

"The fear is nice," he added, watching her grimace. He bumped her shoulder, "I like you. Told you that, already. I like you," he reminded her.

"Right, and you'll still like me while you drain me dry," she shot back. "Wow. I feel all warm inside. Does this mean that you're going to leave presents on my doorstep for Valentine's Day?"

'I'll just bet you are warm inside,' Spike thought, but he kept that to himself. "So, Red," he drawled. "Kidnapper to kidnappee, you really don't have choices here," he told her. "I am evil. I don't care if I hurt you-"he chuckled. "Well, that isn't entirely true. I might enjoy hurting you. You're more or less at my mercy," he dragged it out. "So, if I wanted to . . . kiss you. There's not a lot you could do about it."

Her nose wrinkled. "You want to kiss me? Why?"

"Pass the time," he said, grinning.

She looked confused. He was teasing her? Was that it? He was just teasing her? If he wasn't just teasing her, he was right. There wasn't a thing she could do about it.

"It's your funeral," she said, stalling. "Bad things tend to happen after kissing me," she  explained. "Take Xander, for example. He got a concussion and Cordelia broke up with him. Not good."

"Your wolf boy seems to have survived," he noted. "You have kissed him? Right?" he goaded.

"That's different," she  exclaimed. "We're in love," she said softly, looking down at her hands.

"Ah . . ." Spike rolled his eyes. She was a Hallmark greeting card of treacled sentiment. "In love." What did she know about love?

"In love . . . or in a lot of like," she admitted slowly, frowning. "I've never really been in love before. I thought I was in love. I love Xander. He's my best friend, so when we got older, and . . . I thought it was like being in love. But, it wasn't. Just because you feel jealous, or you want to kiss someone, doesn't mean you are in love. It's confusing, but I think with Oz it really is being in love. He's not very emote-y, but I think, maybe he loves me."

"Your wolf is looking for you," he told her, moving closer. "Cheer up, Red. He won't find you," Spike said. "But, he's trying. That's something, isn't it?"

She sat up straighter. "Really?"

"Really. Don't be ridiculous. You didn't think he wouldn't look for you, did you?"

"I didn't know."

Oz was looking for her. That was a nice feeling. Except that if Spike knew he was looking for her, then that meant he was in danger.

"Is that why we moved so fast? You didn't do anything to him?" she was alarmed. "You didn't, did you? Because if you did . . . I'll . . . figure out some way to make you pay," she said, her voice surprisingly low and fierce.

He laughed. "I didn't do anything to your wolf, Red, and don't make empty threats," he advised. "It makes you sound weak."

"It isn't an empty threat," she muttered. "I'd figure out something. You do it all the time."

She meant it. If she survived, someday she might even be able to back it up. "No, I don't," he said. "I've just got a helluva lot more time to make good on my threats."

~Part: 14~

“Hello, Joyce.”

Sometimes it was hard to remember that Angel was as old as he was. He had a way of ducking his head when he addressed her, like now, standing on the threshold of the front door, hovering there, uncertain of his welcome, that made him seem younger.

He had come back to Sunnydale to help find Willow, she reminded herself. “Hi, Angel. Please come in,” she invited. “Buffy is in the kitchen. We are making dinner.”

“Thank you,” he said.

It was probably a vampire thing, but he never took his welcome into her home for granted, and there was a certain relentless charm in his acknowledgement. Poor Buffy. She never stood a chance against this amazing creature.

He followed her back to the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe, preferring to hang back and watch. Buffy was cutting things for a salad, using the sharp knife she wielded with dexterity and speed. She had a remote look on her face. The task required no concentration, so she was off in a land of contemplation, removed to the part of her brain that broke down facts into a series of moves. Willow and Giles had similar skills, but they were more related to chess, full of if and then speculations. Buffy’s mind was clear of speculation, remaining firmly in the here and now of action that she could take.

To Angel, watching her, unnoticed for the moment, she personified a clarity so pure that it made him ache inside with longing and a tiny amount of resentment. Too be that young and that sure of himself . . . when he was her age and mortal, he had been a mess. With the soul to guide him, it had still taken eighty years, some conscious quaking backsliding, and a benign demon to give him a purpose in the world. Buffy had had all that bestowed upon her. The purpose, at least. The rest of it, the restraint she had learned over the years, came from the remarkable support cast assembled around her that kept her grounded.

She looked up from the tomato she was slicing and returned to the kitchen with a smile that acknowledged that she had been lost in thought. “Hi,” she said softly.

He nodded, gesturing to the cutting board. “Can I help with anything?”

Joyce gestured to the refrigerator. “I was going to have a glass of wine,” she said. “Would you mind opening the bottle? Buffy tends to pulverize the cork.”

He went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Riesling that was chilling next to a quart of milk. Joyce handed him the corkscrew and went to get glasses. “Angel?” She held up a second wine glass.

“Yes, thanks,” he said, gently extracting the wine cork.

Buffy rolled her eyes at him. “Eddie Haskell,” she hissed at him with a smirk.

It took him a minute to sort through two centuries of cultural references to figure out that he had been called a suck up. He couldn’t help it. Joyce brought it out in him. She had this way about her that made him want her approval. Hell, even Spike responded to it, he thought, recalling the night he had found him in the Summers’ kitchen having a cup of hot chocolate with Buffy’s mother. Drunk off his ass and seething with rage at them because Dru had left him with an opportunity for unholy vengeance staring him in the face, and he had, according to Joyce, done nothing more than unburden himself to her about his breakup with Dru and ask for marshmallows for his cocoa.

He had the impression that Joyce found Spike charming in a child-like way that seemed massively out of proportion to reality, except that he knew Spike, maybe better than anyone else, and there was a kernel of truth to that conclusion. When he wasn’t being the swaggering bad ass that Angelus had taught him to be, Spike’s impulses were dictated by mischief, curiosity, an underappreciated and undisciplined intellect, and a craving for acceptance that made him truly dangerous. He tended to go off the rails in a big way in the face of rejection, and nothing made him crazier than being on the outs with Dru.

Unlike Giles, he had no doubt whatsoever that Spike and Dru were no longer together. The fact that Willow had been alive to speak to Giles underscored the point. If Spike’s impulse control was poor, Dru’s was nonexistent. If she was with Spike, Willow wouldn’t have lasted seventy-two hours, and Spike wouldn’t have done anything to stop Dru. What Princess wanted, Princess got, and damn the consequences.

“Don’t bother to ask me if I want a glass of wine,” Buffy sniffed, bringing him back to the moment.

Joyce smiled, “I wasn’t going to.”

Dinner was a stir-fry dish vegetarian dish with the salad and freshly baked multigrain bread that smelled wonderful. Bakery scents had changed very little over the centuries since he was human, and they still held the implications of comfort and warmth in his sense memory. They stayed in the kitchen for dinner, with Buffy and Joyce eating at the breakfast bar while he worked his way through a second glass of wine.

“Eventually Shelia and Ira have to be told about Willow being missing,” Joyce said.

Buffy snorted. “Why? They don’t appear to notice minor things like that,” she said.

“Buffy,” Joyce’s tone was scolding. “You don’t know that. You don’t know what it is like to be a parent.”

Buffy looked across the breakfast bar at her mother. “Okay. What should we tell them? Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg, your daughter has been kidnapped by vampires. They don’t want money, so don’t bother to mortgage the house. They want an ancient artifact that may or may not exist. Oh, and even if we find it, they are completely untrustworthy . . .” she raised her eyebrows.

“You made a deal with Spike before,” Joyce reminded her, distracted by the implications of untrustworthiness. That couldn’t be good. “He kept his end of it, didn’t he?”

“This is different,” Angel asserted. “Buffy’s right. He can’t be trusted. The last time was different, because he had to follow through to get what he wanted. This time, getting what he wants is part of the big picture. Spike doesn’t want the Gem of Amara because it's rare or a neat trinket. He wants it because it will give him an edge over any other vampire, any demon, any Slayer.”

“And he knows that we know that,” Buffy added, the awkward phrasing making her frown.

Angel felt a smile coming on. “We’re very knowledgeable people,” he said, almost playfully.

Joyce glanced up, realizing that he was paraphrasing a quote from The Lion in Winter. She smiled at that. “What if they call?” she asked, getting back on topic.

Buffy frowned. She knew Angel and Giles had debated the pros and cons of getting the police more involved. The San Jose police hadn’t been very concerned about Willow going missing. Giles thought kidnapping would bring in the FBI, but again, what could they contribute? It wasn’t like they would share what they found out or understand how to deal with Spike.

“We lie?” Buffy said weakly. She winced, warding her mother off with her hands. “I know, I know, Mom. Bad answer,” she said.

“They have a right to know what is going on with their daughter, Buffy,” Joyce said.

~~~*~~~

Willow tried to explain about how the bag over her head made her feel, to no avail. Spike didn’t look even remotely interested. They were on the move again, only this time it was a much shorter trip and the destination was what appeared to be an abandoned office building. She was handcuffed to a metal chair covered with dark green naugahyde—Spike, the thoughtful kidnapper, left the duct tape on her wrist before snapping the cuff loosely around her wrist. She was provided with a bag of tacos and a soda. After days of packaged food, it was nice to eat something lukewarm.

Harmony came in and threw herself down on the couch, glaring at her before she picked up an old issue of Vogue. “This sucks,” she pouted.

Willow gave her a brief, incredulous look. The suckage was all on her part. She frowned at the thought, which didn’t come out right in her head. Her stomach churned a little at Harmony’s presence and she wondered if contact with vampires wasn’t giving her a bit of Buffy’s slayer sense. Then she remembered that Harmony had always made her feel this way. On the other hand, it could have come from the tacos. She rolled her eyes, forbearing comment.

Harmony saw it and glared at her. “I saw that.”

Willow’s gaze shot to the door. Where were the terrifying vamps when you needed them?

Harmony saw that too. She made a sound of disgust. “They are talking,” she spat with loathing. “I’m not needed. I’m not good enough to be in on the talking stuff. No one really talks to me.”

Willow sipped her soda. It was Coke. The syrupy texture and the sugary aftertaste made her feel a little sick. She never drank sodas with sugar in them. She grimaced at the taste.

Harmony flipped another page. “Georgia’s always hanging out with you,” she said in an accusatory tone. “Don’t think I don’t know what you are doing. It was the same thing with Cordy. You look all innocent and nice, but I know what you are really like. You just do it to make people like you,” she sneered. “We were best friends before you and Buffy came along and ruined everything.”

“Don’t forget about Xander,” Willow put in. She wasn’t taking the rap for Cordy. Their hate-hate relationship had advanced to acceptance and casual dislike. Xander was the one who had effectively separated Cordy from her in-crowd reign of teen terror.

Harmony’s lip curled. “Xander Harris. Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

Willow’s eyes filled. She missed Xander so bad it hurt. She wadded up the paper wrappers in her lap.

“This place sucks,” Harmony went on. “We’re the undead, you know? Like, we can have anything we want. Take anything,” she snapped her fingers, “and where are we? Are we someplace really cool that all my friends would be green with envy over? No. In fact, if they could see me now, they would laugh at me. Me! Hanging out with Willow Rosenberg in a . . . icky place that humans don’t even want to hang out in. What did I ever do to deserve this?” her voice trembled a little.

Willow frowned, looking down. She didn’t like Harmony, and that was more or less the well reinforced habit of a lifetime, and she also didn’t think Harmony as she was now would get it, but the truth was that she didn’t deserve what had happened to her. No one did.

“I’m really sorry,” Willow began. “About you being dead, that is,” it was a surprisingly awkward admission.

Harmony looked suspicious. She sniffed. “You didn’t even know that I was dead,” she accused. “No one noticed?” her china blue eyes were filling with tears.

Willow wondered if there was a way to excuse that lapse. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I guess we all thought that you had gone off for the summer to someplace . . .”

“Fabulous?” Harmony supplied hopefully. “I guess that’s alright. I really was going to go to France.”

“Yeah,” Willow agreed. “Cordy went to Los Angeles,” she told her.

Harmony looked over at her. “Really?”

Willow nodded. “She wants to be an actress.”

Harmony’s eyes narrowed. “You aren’t just saying that? I figured that she would, like, go to college and hang out with you guys and not even bother with Rush Week.”

Willow snorted rudely. “Yeah, right. Cordy, stay in Sunnydale, with us. I don’t think so,” she shook her head. “She thought we were losers.”

“You are losers,” Harmony told her, but the snipping was merely habit. She was starting to feel better. “At least I’m not spending the summer in Sunnydale, hanging out at the Bronze.”

“Cause that would suck,” Willow muttered, thinking that it sounded like exactly where she wanted to be.

Harmony’s lips pursed. “Yeah . . . though, I guess I had some good times there,” she said slowly. “But, now, its so high school.”

Willow unwrapped another taco. Now that they were going to college, assuming that she was going to college rather than continue being kidnapped into the fall semester, would the Bronze just be a former high school hang out? Would they find a new campus hang out? Oz played enough gigs around UC—Sunnydale that she had an idea that campus life would offer its own attractions, but she wasn’t sure if Xander would feel welcome hanging out with them on campus.

She frowned at the somewhat soggy taco. “What were you going to do . . . you know, before you were—uh, before you . . .”

“Became a vampire?” Harmony eyed her suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know,” Willow admitted. “I was just curious. We wrote all that stuff for the yearbook around Christmas, and I wonder how much it has changed already,” she said. “Like, I was going to go away for college, but I changed my mind. I’m going to go to UC—Sunnydale,” she elaborated.

Harmony thought about that for a moment. She really hadn’t had a plan per se. Her parents had insisted that she had to go to college, and she had narrowed her choice down to the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing. The application required submission of ten illustrations of various types of clothing, which seemed kind of stupid to Harmony. If she knew how to design clothing, then why go to college in the first place? Her parents had kept asking if she had finished the application, which she hadn’t, so in a way, the whole being dead thing had worked out for her.

“I was going to go to the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing,” she told Willow, since she might have done that.

That made sense to Willow. Whether you liked her or not you really couldn’t fault her taste in clothing. Harmony was very blend-y. Even now that she was a vampire, she hadn’t gone all leather, which was pretty clichéd. Willow nodded, “I can see that,” she said. “Fashion design, that is. You’d be good at that.”

Harmony leveled a semi-skeptical look at her. “I thought so,” she agreed. “I mean, I have ideas, about clothes, and shoes, and handbags.”

“People have to have clothes,” Willow pointed out, turning her head sideways to take a bite out of her taco. It was kind of drippy, but managing the taco and a napkin while handcuffed was beyond her.

Harmony picked up one of the napkins and stuck it in Willow’s chair tethered hand. The two girls exchanged a wary look. “Thanks,” Willow said, blotting her hand on the napkin.

“You're welcome,” Harmony sounded slightly less begrudging.

“So, what kind of ideas do you have about handbags?” Willow asked. “I’m a roomy, toss it over my shoulder sort of gal, but I’ve noticed that every purse I’ve ever had is missing something. Like, you have the little zipper compartment, which is a must, but it’s never big enough for all of your little things, so you’ve got stuff in the bottom all the time—like keys? Or they have the clippy thing inside the zipper for your keys and—“

“You break your nails trying to get the keys off!” Harmony finished. “I hate that!”

“Me, too,” Willow nodded.

“Magnet,” Harmony said. “Or, you know those leashes that you can get where you press a button and make the leash longer or shorter?”

“That would work,” Willow agreed.

Willow finished the taco and decided that she had had enough to eat. Harmony was preoccupied with her page turning exercise with Vogue, so Willow wiped her mouth off and decided to give the unlocking of the handcuff exercise another shot.

She cast a cautious glance at Harmony, and was satisfied that Harmony wasn’t paying any attention to her. The chair Spike had handcuffed her to was pretty roomy. She adjusted her position until she was sitting more or less Indian style. It was a comfortable position that she could relax into, and relaxation was bound to improve her concentration. She made herself work on relaxing her hands. She had noticed that lately she had a tendency to clench her fists, a sure sign of tension. She rested her arms on the armrests of the chair and rotated her wrists a couple of times to work out the tension.

The next step in her exercise was to work on her breathing. Steady, deep, even breaths, in through her nose, out through her mouth. She let her eyes drift shut. Sometimes it helped her get her focus.

“Are you praying?” Harmony asked.

She opened her eyes. “Uh-huh,” she went with it.

“You are praying after you ate?” Harmony raised an eyebrow.

Willow blinked at the imitation Spike expression. “I’m Jewish,” she  explained.

Harmony looked embarrassed. “Oh . . . Jewish. Sorry,” she made a ‘carry on’ gesture.

“Thanks,” Willow said, trying not to laugh. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

“So, are you going to like, pray in . . . . Hebrew?” Harmony interrupted.

Willow frowned, opening her eyes again. Hebrew, Latin, Swahili, ancient Sumerian, what were the chances that Harmony would know the difference? “No,” she said slowly, “but, my lips might move a little,” she conceded.

“Oh . . .” Harmony gave her one of her patented ‘you are so odd’ looks and shrugged.

Willow took another deep, cleansing breath, rolling her shoulders. Nothing to it. Just like floating a pencil, only slightly different and more difficult with the lack of visualization and . . . assuming that she got the handcuff off, then what? What was she going to do?  She was inside an interior room of a building that she had not seen. There were vampires in the building, and their precise location was not known. Harmony was sitting less than two yards away from her, and while not so bright, would probably get that there was a problem with her simply getting up and strolling off.

Crap. She had no plan. She could go with trying to unlock the handcuff and taking it as a sign of divine providence governing the rest of her escape attempt.

Her shoulders slumped. That wasn’t a plan.

“All done?” Harmony asked, reading the slumping posture.

Willow sighed. “Yeah.”

“No ‘amen’?”

Willow stared at her for a moment. “No,” she shook her head.

Harmony nodded. “You need to go to the bathroom or anything?” she asked, holding up the key to the handcuffs, “Cause Spike said I could let you go to the bathroom if you had to.”

Willow stared at the key dangling from Harmony’s fingertip. Spike knew that Harmony had the key, which meant that at least on some level he was already thinking about the possibility of her being un-handcuffed and free to move around. “Just for the bathroom, but not to eat?” she observed. “What? Was I going to stun you with a taco missile and then make a break for it?”

Harmony stared back at her. And here she was thinking that Spike didn’t like her very much. She glanced down at her pink cashmere twin set with its triple row of pale pink sequins at the hem, spared the awful fate of being decorated with thrown food. Cheap thrown food, at that. When she looked up, she was in game face. “Mess up my clothes and you are so going to be dead,” she warned.

Willow rolled her eyes at that injunction. She held up her wrist rattling her handcuff. “Do you mind?”

“Do I mind, please,” Harmony retorted, with the stress on the ‘please’.

She was just so irritating, and childish, and infuriating, and smug, and—Willow gritted her teeth. “Please?”

Harmony twirled the key on its small chain around her index finger, pretending to give the matter consideration. “I suppose so,” she agreed with a smirk, standing up to walk over to Willow’s chair to unlock the handcuff.

The bathroom was a two stall bathroom with a handicapped stall and no toilet paper. Suspecting something like that, Willow had kept a few of the unused napkins from lunch. Harmony followed her in and sat on the countertop while Willow went into the handicapped stall. With the door shut and latched behind her she took the time to take her jeans off to remove the bunched up sleep shorts that she had pulled her jeans up over when Spike told her to get ready to leave. After she used the bathroom, she gave her attention to the handcuffs, examining the locking mechanism as much as she could.

She heard the bathroom door open and jumped when a hand slammed into the door to her stall. “I’ll be right out,” she called.

Georgia laughed at the squeaky, startled sound of her voice. “Just messing with you, kitten,” she said. “You want to go shopping with us?”

Buttoning her jeans and flushing the toilet, Willow slid back the latch, giving the toilet an alarmed look as it made a weird noise.

“Air in the line,” Georgia told her. “The water’s been turned off for a while. We won’t be here long.”

“Shopping?” Willow repeated.

“We’re going out tonight,” Georgia reminded her. “Now, Spike says that I’m supposed to tell you that shop keepers and shoppers stay off the menu as long as you don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself. It goes against everything I believe in to shop retail, but I have my orders.”

~Part: 15~

Willow had lost track of all that she had had to drink. Tart, tangy cranberry juice with vodka. Yummy shots of something chocolate that made her forehead feel slightly numb. It was all good. The alcohol took the edge off the pure terror. She was in a fear free zone, and the absence of fear after so many days of being on the edge made her feel like she was unfettered, floating in the unreality that was a demon bar in San Francisco.

Just the notion of getting out of the series of stale, depressing, dusty motels, crypt and abandoned office building had made her feel giddy and reckless.

She had gone shopping with Harmony and Georgia at a mall after dusk. Georgia got nostalgic over the presence of a Talbots, though trailing in her wake, Willow had a hard time reconciling the notion of Georgia dressed in preppy southern day or evening wear. Harmony found a pink tafetta dress on the sale rack. An hour later, Willow was cheering her former mortal enemy’s shopping instinct, fast and deadly, swooping in on the taffeta in less than twenty minutes, Harmony knew exactly what she wanted. She could size up an entire shoe department in less than ninety seconds with a sweeping look. It was impressive.

The mall was closing when Georgia was finally satisfied with her selections and Willow found herself changing into a dress in the Nordstrom’s dressing room, tags and security buttons removed.

Thoughts of a suicidally daring escape tingling in her head as they sped down the highway. She hadn’t been quite desperate enough to do more than think of throwing herself outside of the Desoto doing eighty down the highway. Apparently just thinking it had been evident enough that before they reached the first ramp, slowing to a less death defying speed, Spike had hooked his arm firmly around her neck and dragged her to the center of the front seat.

He had kept her tethered to his side since they had entered the city. “Misbehave, and you will pick my next meal, pet,” he warned her in that special way he had when he was threatening to kill people.

She tried to resist the threat with logic. He was going to kill someone anyway, but seven vampires backed him up and the description of Prague from the Watcher’s Diary was fresh in her mind. She and Buffy had stolen the Watcher’s Diaries to find more information about Angel in more innocent days. The knowledge that Giles had tried to protect them from was a two edged sword.

Inside the club, she did not need to be told to stay close to Spike. She expected something like Willy’s—not that she had ever been there, but she had heard Willy’s described by Buffy and Xander. Floors sticky with God knows what, the reek of blood and cheap alcohol, dimly lit with cheesy décor. Evil went for low rent banality in Sunnydale.

The Temple reminded her of parts of the mansion on Crawford Street that she had seen. Impressive architecture and spare luxury furnishings. Aesthetically pleasing until you noticed the odd note that was a pair of manacles on a short chain dangling from a ring bolted into the wall that was emphatically not a decorating eccentricity. Only at the Crawford Street mansion it was an odd note. At the Temple, it was a fully developed decorating theme. The flagstone floors were appropriately dungeon-y, and even in the dim light, Willow picked up enough of the wall hanging theme to think of an Applebee's done up for the S&M crowd.

It was mostly vampires, she deduced as a banquette and several tables between the banquette and the dance floor were appropriated for their use. She could almost pretend she was at the Bronze on Friday night. Spike avoided the banquette, choosing to sit on one of the bar stools. He kept her standing by putting his hand on the back of her neck and keeping her next to him. Her first drink, courtesy of Georgia, came in a shot glass and tasted of chocolate.

The corners of Spike’s lips turned up as she sipped it, like it was sherry, instead of tossing it back. Georgia had done her up in a pretty little slip dress. She had pulled Willow’s hair up into a twist in the back that was maintained with a couple of strategically placed hairpins. One long lock of hair had been left to swing free, curving around her face. A dusting of pale green eye shadow played up the color of her eyes, and a sparing use of eyeliner, at the corners, emphasized the almond shape. No blush. Her pallor wasn’t vampiric, and because of that it was too exotic to spoil with artificial color. She was wearing lipstick that was close to her natural lip color.

After she nursed her way through a third shot, she had started to lean against his thigh and he no longer had to keep his hand on her to remind her to stay put. “Friday night,” she said over the music. “No live band. No vampire bands?” she guessed.

Even drunk, or getting there, she was the little social anthropologist. If she had any idea how much the center of attention she was, she would have been terrified.

“There are a few,” he told her. “There’s a great swing band that plays in a club in New Orleans.” He didn’t bother to mention that entertainment in vampire clubs tended to run to more exotic acts than music.

Her eyes lit up as she recognized the song cued up. “This is a great song,” she said. She sang along with the Bosstone’s ‘Someday I Suppose’

“There was a place
And the name of the place escapes me
When I can't remember
It irritates me
Could be I can't remember
Could be I choose to not,
Let's move the song along
And try to find the plot”

A small, amused smile played on her lips.

“There was a girl and I don't know her name either
She gave me love and I swore I'd never leave her
If I did I'd come back someday and find her”

Her eyebrows lifted in a pantomime of skepticism as she sang along. She threw in a shrug, grinning, and followed along with the lyric.

“Maybe I will I should write down a reminder”

And shouted the next line with the singer. She had had all of three drinks, and she was loosening up to a surprising degree. Spike watched as eleven days of fear and tension went on holiday.

“One day! One day who knows
Someday I suppose”

Georgia joined them, drawn by the minor spectacle of Willow enthusiastically singing. She waved a waiter over with another round of drinks, draping her arm around Willow’s shoulders and singing with her.

“There was a verse that I was gonna write I haven't yet
But there's still a chance I might An open book
That I still want to close I'll find the time
Someday I suppose A place and time,
I wanna be and spend a storyline
That's happy in the end Plans are made
with promises so certainly uncertain
I can't wait to set things straight
before they close the curtain”

The next chorus was joined by a few more voices, and toasts to the song.

“One day! One day who knows
Someday I suppose”

Following Georgia’s example, Willow tossed back the shot she was given, feeling a little silly when she realized that the little chocolate drinks weren’t sipped the way she had sipped the others.

“The more I sort things out
The more it gets distorted
I sort of think I'm better off just leaving it unsorted
The more I try to change it's course
the more off course it goes
Of course I'll reach my destination someday I suppose
Sort it out,
Get distorted
One day who knows
Hide behind,
Someday I suppose”

The alcohol hit her system with a vengeance, and she felt almost dizzy in a pleasant, warm sort of way. Dimly, she realized that she was kind of petting Spike’s thigh, and she made herself stop, frowning at him for being attached to her armrest. It was his fault, after all, that she wasn’t sitting in her own seat and not leaning against him.
Georgia insisted that she dance to burn off the alcohol she had consumed. Dancing was good. Willow liked to dance.

The music changed to the Clash, ‘Rock the Casbah’. Georgia was swaying sinuously. It reminded Willow of Buffy’s sexy dance with Xander when she had been trying to get Angel’s attention. She backed up to give her more room and bumped into Harmony who was dancing with someone other than Pete who snapped into game face and grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Hors d’oevres,” he growled. Before she could scream or defend herself, Spike was there.

“Back the fuck off, mate,” he growled right back.

She was released so promptly that she almost fell, and Spike’s arm around her waist caught her. He spun her around towards Georgia, who caught her. Hands on her hips, never really breaking her own rhythm as she guided Willow’s body. Then there was someone behind her, his hands on her body, joining Georgia’s. She knew that it was Spike, even as he moved closer, bringing her closer to Georgia. She felt a pang—of something that could not be jealousy—as they shared an open mouthed kiss with her sandwiched between them.

She knew she looked good. The dress Georgia had picked out for her was a sea foam green slip dress, sparkly with beadwork. The thin straps meant she had to wear it without a bra, which made her uncomfortably aware of the silky material of the dress. She never went without a bra, though she didn’t need the support so much. The fitted fabric of a bra kept her clothes from rubbing against her sensitive nipples, a problem that could have been solved by more fitted clothing, but then her nipples would be more visible, and that had always made her feel too exposed. She remembered being teased about her small breasts and protruding nipples in middle school when she had finally started developing.

Georgia’s purchases—or acquisitions—had included a pair of lacy panties that matched her dress, stockings that made her aware of the bare expanse of her upper thighs above the grippy lace banding at the top of the stockings, and a pair of low healed fabric pumps. She was wearing a choker made out of stretchy velvet with pale green and gold glass beads. When she had seen herself, all dressed up, with her hair pulled up in a sleek French twist, one long lock left free to curl at the end under her chin, she had been surprised and strangely gratified at how grown up and pretty she looked.

If only she had had Georgia to help her get ready for prom, she thought wistfully. Her last minute upswept hairdo for prom had looked messy and made her face look round, but she had fussed so much with the last minute changes to her prom look that it was too late to do anything else but pose stiffly for the pictures that her father had taken of her with Oz before they left. Her parents had made a point of being home for her prom night, and she worried that they were disappointed with her for picking out a dress that was low cut after she had been trusted to buy a prom dress on her own.

Georgia was beautiful. She looked like a fashion model, tall and thin. She was wearing a black dress that looked like it had been poured on and she had a long strand of pearls, wound once against her throat, the length left to hang down nearly to her waist. As Georgia and Spike kissed, it occurred to Willow to wonder where Colin was. Did vampires get jealous? Spike did. She remembered how furious he was about Dru and her cheating.

Georgia caught the trailing lock of hair from Willow’s temple and let it slide through her fingers as if to include her in the kissing. Her gray eyes shone as she tore her mouth free from Spike. “So pretty,” she purred. “Isn’t she pretty, Spike?”

Pandering? Spike turned his attention to the girl. Her eyes were huge, pupils blown. He could smell the alcohol on her breath and in the sweat that made her skin look dewy under the club lights. He found himself unable to resist sampling a mouthful of her warm, damp, slightly salty shoulder, running his tongue under one of the thin straps anchoring her dress. A little bit of fang and he could have easily rent the strap.

To Willow’s shock, Georgia kissed her. It was totally unexpected. The first touch of another woman’s lips against hers was a revelation. Her lips were so soft. Sticky with lipstick, flavored by lemons and whiskey. At the same time, Spike was kissing her shoulder, mouthing her skin in a way that sent sensations rippling down her chest, his cool tongue stroking her skin. Shock and sensory overload held her as much as the press of bodies. She felt one of Georgia’s stocking clad legs between her own, and a slight friction of nylon. Her head fell back under the pressure of the kiss as Georgia’s tongue invaded her mouth and she felt Spike’s hard shoulder behind her head as someone’s hands rode up, under her breasts.

By the time the song finished, she was breathless and trembling. Georgia stroked her face. Confused tears filled her eyes as the danger she was in reached her. With a small smile, Georgia took her hand and led her off the dance floor. That was good. She needed to put some space between herself and the two vampires. Maybe get a drink. Something cold. Ice water. Her whole body tingled like she had been dipped in something cold. Spike said something to a passing waiter as they wove through tables off the dance floor.

The opening piano chords of The English Beat’s ‘I Confess’ felt like they were playing in the pit of her stomach. The croon of Dave Wakeling’s voice burrowed in her brain. “Just out of spite, I confess I've ruined three lives. Now don't sleep so tight. Because I didn't care till I found out that one of them was mine,” he sang.

Oz had introduced her to bands like The English Beat. Like a connoisseur, he had pointed out the complexities of so many instruments combining, picking out the ska and jazz influences. The words reached her. The story in the song that wasn’t quite complete that teased her brain. Georgia was leading her into a small room, away from the main floor of the club, with Spike behind her, leaving her no escape.

“Night after night time after time.
Done too much of both types of whining.
Still wasn't right fight after fight
Till "Get out of my life get away from me get away from that gun"

This was a really bad idea, she thought, turning back to the dance floor, and running into Spike who was right behind her. “Um . . . The English Beat. And your English,” she added helpfully. “We should dance, right?”

He laughed. “Sure, kitten,” he said, dancing her through the door, kicking it closed behind him.

The sounds of the music were muted as a door behind her was closed and a drink, another drink in a slim column of a shot glass, was placed in her hand. Georgia pushed the drink to her lips. “Drink up,” she invited, playing with the lock of Willow’s hair that was left free to swing against her jaw.

She wanted to resist. Her hands were resting on Spike’s chest, holding him off the tiniest bit. His hands were on her waist, keeping her close. She looked around the room, stalling. It was little more than an alcove, the walls hung with heavy drapes that fostered intimacy in the space. The floor was covered with thick, hand carved rugs and pillows in jewel toned colors and luxurious velvets, silk, shiny taffeta. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, almost low enough for her to reach, black, with branches like an elegant spider web holding candles that flickered and glowed in the gloom.

"No it's not a joke it's cards on the table time
Yes I could have phoned
I could have wrote”

Willow was almost surprised to hear her own voice joining the singer’s as she finished the verse with him. Not really dancing, just swaying slightly without much coordination inside of the narrowing universe encompassed by Spike’s hands on her waist.

”But how to break the news without breaking your heart
Being dead don't hurt,
No only dying
Cards on the table time,
Sometimes it's right to say goodnight."

“You should have been there,” Georgia said, watching her. The only music Harmony knew was atrocious bubble gum pop, boy bands, and Brittany Spears. Willow was obviously familiar with The English Beat. Georgia had started un-living in the late seventies and had spent countless nights in CDBG’s in New York as the punk, ska, and new wave bands played the venue, a whole new world laid before her enhanced senses. She had been parted from an all too ordinary existence living paycheck to paycheck without skills, haunted by hunger for more than a hand to mouth existence.

Colin had changed all that. Georgia knew that he had been a little bored when he had turned her, finding in her something young and curious, and eager to see the world and make it all new again for him. On the twenty-second anniversary of her death, she fully appreciated that as she looked at something young and curious, and she felt a little grateful to Colin for picking her without all of this girl’s obvious advantages. She was smart, and it was obvious that she had been brought up right.

There was a discreet tap on the door and the waiter Spike had waylaid came in, laying out a champagne bucket and tall flutes on a sideboard. A platter with crackers, cheese, and fruit around a silver bowl filled with crushed ice, a shallow dish of caviar nestled in the ice was placed beside the champagne bucket. He released her to supervise the operation and Willow found herself laughing, reminded of her own ridiculous attempt to seduce Oz, only she had filled her parents' ice bucket with two chilling bottles of soda. Hot tears slid down her cheeks and she tossed back the shot in her hand, feeling sick inside.

“You’re smearing your mascara,” Georgia said, wiping the tears off Willow’s face with her fingertips. “Your eyes are so pretty.”

Oz said things like that, and it had meant so much to her that he thought it.

Georgia took the shot glass from her nerveless hand. After her stomach stopped churning, the fresh infusion of alcohol began to seep into her. She was starting to feel numb again. Almost sleepy. She flinched at the sound, like a shot, of the champagne bottle being uncorked. Georgia went to set the shot glass down on the sideboard. Willow made herself concentrate on the muted sounds of the song playing. She stumbled a little, having lost track of the song while Georgia had been touching her face.

“Out like a light,
Another boy who's given up trying,
Blinded by fright,
He screams my life's not open,
Please get out,”

Then her favorite part. She sang it with a certain amount of angry satisfaction, “I know I'm shouting, I like to shout.”

Georgia and Spike exchange glances. “I know what I want for my present,” she told Spike.

He raised an eyebrow at that. “No sharing with Colin?” he made it a question. There would be no sharing with Colin, that wasn’t in question, but whether Georgia was interested in doing this without Colin was.

She grinned. “That’s his present to me,” she said wickedly.

Spike nodded, filling a fluted glass, frothed to the rim. Georgia dipped her index finger into the caviar scooping a taste on her fingernail. She brought it to her lips and grimaced at the saltiness.

“It's not a joke it's cards on the table time
It's not a joke it's cards on the table time
I could have phoned
I could have wrote
But how to break the news without breaking your heart
Being dead don't hurt,
No only dying
Cards on the table time,
Sometimes it's right to say goodnight."

She had a good voice. That was not that surprising. Her speaking voice was nice, soft, resonant, and a little throaty. Knew all the words to a song that hadn’t even been a hit on this side of the water twenty years ago. Her eyes were half closed. Spike knew she was a little more than drunk. She was drunk, frightened, and lost. Poor little girl. Georgia came up behind her, sliding her arm around Willow’s waist, her lissome figure swaying to the music, which was much less muted to their hearing. She was placing little kisses on the back of her neck.

”Always searching for paradise,
I'll admit that I'm good as blind
Darling I confess yes I've ruined three lives
And didn't care till I found out that one of them was mine.”

She knew it was Georgia kissing her from the moistness of her lips. Would she have lipstick prints there from the wicked, blood red slash of color on Georgia’s mouth? She felt the zipper down the back of her dress parting and squeezed her eyes shut. She kept singing, pretending this was not happening. There wasn’t a thing she could do to stop it.

”I confess
I deserve some type of punishment
I confess
If it's all the same to you I'll stay indifferent.”

The weight of the beading made the front of the dress sag as one thin strap was lifted off her shoulder and eased down to lay tensionless on her upper arm. She felt a cold hand slip inside, between the dress and her skin, drifting over her ribs as Georgia swayed against her like they were dancing.

Her voice cracked. “I confess I confess I confess . . .”

The other strap was released. The arm that had been loosely wrapped around her waist was gone and Willow’s arms came up to hold the dress to her in a futile attempt to shield her nakedness. The song was almost over and it hadn’t saved her from the awareness of what was happening to her. Georgia’s hand cupped her breast, her fingers finding her nipple. She made a purring sound, and Willow felt a sense of shame because she knew Georgia was reacting to the fact that the nipple she was pinching lightly was already hard.

She felt the beading on the dress scraping her hands as the garment was tugged out of her grasp, sliding down her waist. It fit loosely, and she had liked that. When Buffy had talked her into ‘come as you aren’t’ for Halloween, the tight, skin baring crop top and skirt had made her feel too exposed to enjoy the overall effect of the outfit. The loose fit of the sparkly dress made her feel pretty. It was so loose that there was nothing to catch on as it slid to her waist, the straps catching on in the crook of her elbows.

She tried not to look down at herself, half naked, but both of her breasts were being cupped and she got a glimpse of her small breasts in pale, long fingered hands tipped with scarlet fingernails as Georgia pinched and lightly tugged on her shamefully hard nipples.

“Oh, stop that,” she scolded herself.

Georgia nibbled on her earlobe, laughing softly at the fretful sound of her voice. “No,” she said, thinking Willow was talking to her. “You’re skin is so soft and warm,” she told her, rolling her peaked nipples between thumb and forefinger.

Duh. Willow mentally smacked herself. Instead of scolding her body for reacting, or trying not to react, she ought to be trying to free herself from this embrace. Was she going to go down with a whimper like a ninny, or at least put up a fight—that she couldn’t possibly win—but that would at least afford her the satisfaction of knowing that she had fought. That she hadn’t just allowed herself to drink too much, be dressed up and used.

Spike saw down to the second when Willow decided to put up a fight. Right now she was more scared of what Georgia was doing to her than she was of being hurt. She moved her foot to get her bearings, and then raised it, swiftly, probably with some idea of bringing it down hard on Georgia’s toes. Only Georgia was faster, snaking her leg around the leg bearing Willow’s weight, and pulling it out from under her. She lost her hold on the dress and her balance all at the same time, going down in a clumsy fall with the dress falling below her hips and tangling in her legs. She half sat up, reaching for the dress to pull it back up, but Georgia leaned over her, pushing her back with one hand loosely gripping her throat as she shook her head at Willow. “No,” she said firmly.

Spike swallowed a mouthful of champagne. “Remember your lessons, pet,” he admonished coolly. “You hit, you get hit back.”

She was breathing hard, feeling panic set in as Georgia loomed over her. The pearls Georgia was wearing swung free, glowing coldly. She didn’t look mad. She looked like she would enjoy whatever she was planning to do whether Willow fought or not. Spike sounded unconcerned. So far, he had been her bulwark between the harm that the other vampires represented. No one had touched her, or abused her, if you didn’t count Harmony’s lame attempts to insult her. He wasn’t going to stop Georgia, she realized. In fact, he was probably going to watch whatever Georgia planned to do to her.

That made her furious, burning off some of the drunken stupor. Okay. Her brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders, but she wasn’t going to tamely submit to some vampire version of seduction. Unfortunately, Georgia was a lot stronger than she looked. Willow’s attempt to sweep her legs out from under her was blocked when Georgia simply straddled her hips, her fingers tightening warningly on Willow’s throat. She just looked amused.

Spike dropped a fat strawberry into an unclaimed champagne flute, refilling his own glass, before he strolled over to where Willow was unsuccessfully trying to dislodge Georgia. Splashes of pale pink mottled her skin from her exertions. The trailing end of Georgia’s long pearl necklace caught on the tip of one crisply erect pinkish brown nipple. He handed Georgia the champagne flute with the strawberry resting in the bottom and she took it as he stretched out on the floor, arranging a fat pillow under his armpit to support his weight. He toasted her silently, appreciating the picture they made, the sweetly flushed, distraught, half naked girl, and the tall blond goddess controlling her effortlessly. Dru would have spoiled the fun. She would have drawn blood by now, or used her uncannily effective gift for thrall to take all the fight out of the girl.

Georgia sipped the champagne. Every furious heave of Willow’s hip rocked her soft abdomen against her already wet cunt with just enough pressure to tease. She considered holding the girl’s wrists down and kneeling over her, legs spread in an open invitation for Spike to mount her from behind and fuck her with Willow under her. Her gaze drifted from Willow to the deceptively relaxed vampire watching them. He was in his usual costume of red shirt, unbuttoned, over a black t-shirt, and jeans. He had taken off his boots and was barefooted. She smiled at the telling stress of the denim over his crotch. It would be more fun to tease him.

She caught the strawberry from the bottom of the glass between her lips.  She almost tossed the empty glass aside, but at the last minute she changed her mind and upended the flute, letting the last few drops of champagne the glass held drip on Willow’s bare chest, watching her small, firm breasts bounce as she squirmed delightfully. Spike took the flute from her, not wanting to distract her from her little game.

She sucked on the strawberry, pressing the fruit between her tongue and upper palate until the flavor was squeezed out of the berry and into the recesses of her mouth. She swallowed it automatically. Some vampires ate for the sheer pleasure of having food in their mouth. Georgia was not one of them. Food had never quite tasted the same to her after she was turned, and the strawberry was a pale imitation of the berries she remembered from visits to Florida when she was a child, sun ripened, warm strawberries, small and dark red, tart, sweet, and full of juices running down her throat. Only blood tasted that good. Her eyes flashed gold. She wanted to bury her fangs in the girl’s throat, drink her one mouthful at a time. The pulse beating under her fingers called to her.

Spike saw the change coming. “No biting,” he warned.

Georgia heard him. Old and powerful, his will compressed into two words, forcing her to heed him. The girl heard him too. The warning made her eyes get wide, as it occurred to her that Georgia wanted to bite her. Fear flooded her scent.

Georgia took her hand off her throat, leaning forward, capturing her wrists when Willow put her arms up to fend her off. She pinned them effortless to the rug beneath them and nibbled on the girl’s jaw line following it to her ear as she turned her head sharply to the left. The lingering flavor of the strawberry went well with the taste of her skin. “I’m going to kiss every pretty inch of you, sugar,” Georgia whispered.

Willow didn’t know what to feel. With Georgia’s weight across her hips and her hands on her wrists, she was maddeningly aware of how helpless she was. Her ears and neck had always been sensitive, and now they seemed more so. Her skin was hot with exertion and Georgia’s lips and tongue were too cool to ignore, and what she was doing felt . . . it just felt. The coolness of the pearl necklace rolling against her skin brought up gooseflesh.

She wasn’t even sure when Georgia had stopped holding her wrists down until she was touching her breasts with feather light strokes of her fingertips. Now that her hands were free she tried to get her elbows under her to try to worm her way out from under the woman. Georgia shifted positions, no longer straddling her, no, she had shifted around until she was lying between Willow’s legs, her abdomen pressing against the juncture of her thighs where her dress had been forgotten. Then Spike was behind her, slowly dismantling her French twist, his hand in her hair, tugging her head back so that more of her waist rested on her elbows, effectively trapping her in that position.

He said that he wanted to kiss her, and she had hoped it was a joke. He took her lower lip between his, sucking on it as Georgia brought her lips to one nipple, taking it into her mouth. The sensation of two equally cool mouths working on her sensitive lips and nipple made her close her eyes. Her head was spinning.

Spike’s tongue invaded her mouth, teasing her with fleeting caresses as he explored the inside of her mouth and Georgia nibbled and sucked on her nipples, moving from one to the other almost at random. His hand snaked down and his fingers tugged on a nipple wet from Georgia’s mouth as she nibbled on its mate. The weight between her legs lifted, and to her horror she felt it as a loss, moaning into Spike’s mouth.

Georgia tugged her wrinkled dress down over her hips and Willow felt her sliding her shoes off. She was very ticklish. The few times she had had sex with Oz, he had inadvertently distracted her from her pleasant state of arousal by accidentally tickling her. Her flinches always made him stop to reassure her. She woke up from her daze and turned her head sharply to escape Spike’s all too effective assault on her mouth.

She couldn’t escape his gaze. Blue eyes, heavy lidded, nearly slumberous with arousal bore into hers. “This is going to happen, pet,” he told her, his fingers gripping her jaw, holding her face. “No choice, in that,” he informed her without a shred of remorse. “If you fight, I’ll hold you down,” he smiled.

Georgia’s thumbs hooked the lacy sides of her panties, easing them down over her hips. Willow felt the slight scratchiness of the rug on her tender bottom as Georgia pulled her panties down. She grimaced at the sensation and at the humiliating position she was in, loosely restrained by the physical presence of the two vampires, pinned like a butterfly by Spike’s cool stare and the intimidating knowledge that he was holding himself in check, not actually hurting her, but more than willing to if she made an issue of it.

She gritted her teeth as Georgia pushed her legs apart, tensing. She felt her hands on the insides of her thighs, silky and cold over the stockings and then on her bare upper thighs, pushing her legs further apart. Spike’s hand moved over her abdomen as Georgia kissed the inside of her thigh, rolling one stocking down to lick the skin beneath the irritating band of elastic that had held the stocking up. His fingers tightened in her hair, dragging her attention back to him as he licked and sucked on her kiss swollen lips. She felt his fingers drift through the soft curls between her legs and tried to close them. Georgia laughed, holding her legs apart easily.

“Oh, baby, we are going to make you feel so good,” she said as Spike’s fingers parted her.

“No,” she moaned, eyes closing, humiliation closing her throat as the touch of his cool fingers brought home the fact that she was wet. She could feel it spreading with his touch, his fingers stroking her open like a flower, circling the slick gulf of her vagina, moving upward in a long stroke to the sensitive bundle of nerves jutting out slightly. His tongue swept inside her mouth as he rubbed her clitoris.

“Pretty, pretty kitty,” Georgia breathed. “With her sweet, pretty pussy.”

Willow stopped breathing as Georgia’s tongue swiped over her from anus to clit, dueling with Spike’s fingers. He pinched her clit, and Georgia’s tongue flicked over it. The sensations made her gasp and Spike released her lips to let her breathe. Spike’s fingers left her, and Georgia moaned, seizing Willow’s clitoris with her lips, tugging on it, sucking. Spike ran his hand through Georgia’s long hair, tugging on it to get her attention. She lifted her head and smiled at him, her lips shiny with the girl’s juices. She levered herself forward, her hands on the inside of Willow’s thighs. Spike met her halfway, tasting Willow on her generous lips, a little residual warmth and the sweet honeyed taste of her wet cunt on Georgia’s lips and tongue combining deliciously with fruit, whiskey, and champagne. Delicious.

The pearls from Georgia’s necklace brushed against Willow’s cunt. He found them there when his hand returned to explore her while he kissed Georgia. He eased one finger into her, feeling her involuntary movements as she felt his finger penetrating her. With his other hand still in Willow’s hair, he drew her up until she was half sitting, so Georgia could kiss her. His finger moved in and out of her roughly, enjoying how tight and hot she felt wetly gripping a single finger. He hooked the trailing end of the pearl necklace with his thumb, rubbing the smooth, round pearls over her clitoris. Georgia stopped kissing her to watch what he was doing, making an approving sound as he started pushing the pearls into Willow.

Willow was slow to realize what he was doing. Georgia was kissing her way down her abdomen, as Spike eased her back down on her back. When it reached her that he was finger fucking her with Georgia’s necklace wrapped around his finger, the idea bloomed in her head and she bucked against his hand, fruitlessly, still held down firmly by Georgia who was now tethered to her by the slack in the necklace. A pillow was shoved under her hips just before Georgia’s tongue slid over her clit again, and Willow arched her back moaning at the tormenting feel of the pearls shifting inside of her as Georgia sucked on her clitoris.

Spike yanked his shirts over his head, standing up to unbuckle his belt and take off his pants. For a moment, he stood over them. Willow’s fingers were digging into the rug on either side of her hips, her eyes tightly closed, her face contorted in the throes of passion. Soft, desperate moans wept from her throat. Georgia no longer had any reason to hold her legs apart, and her hands were on the girl’s breasts, plucking at her hard little nipples as she writhed under Georgia’s mouth. When she started to come, Georgia tugged on the necklace, and Willow’s back arched like a tightly strung bow, her legs shaking with the force of the orgasm Georgia was literally tugging out of her. Her voice broke on a long, mewling whimper of pleasure.

Looking up at Spike, Georgia licked her lips and afforded herself one last lingering lick, tasting Willow’s fresh climax. “Who do you want to fuck first?” she asked him, sure that he wanted the girl first.

“Her,” he said. “Get undressed,” he added as she moved from her post between Willow’s legs.

Coming down from her stunning orgasm, Willow heard them, and her heart slammed in her chest. She still could not believe that she had had an orgasm. What was wrong with her? A girl, a vampire girl had gone down on her and she had come harder than she ever had in her entire life. It meant something, didn’t it? She had never thought about having sex with another girl before. She hadn’t been thinking about having sex with Georgia because this wasn’t sex. This was . . . rape. Rape wasn’t about sex. It was about power and control and humiliation. It was not sex. But it made her come.

Too late, she tried to roll away and pull her legs together, but Spike was kneeling between her legs, and he just brought her back to her former position, pushing down on her hips, angled steeply from the pillow under her.

Georgia moved to one side to get a better view. She unwound the pearls from her neck, dropping them on the floor and kicked off her shoes. She paused before tugging the stretchy, supple knit dress over her head to admire the two naked bodies before her. Willow was almost as pale as a vampire, but with freckles sprinkled over her milky skin and a flush of color. Her auburn hair was fanned out around her head, damp with sweat. Spike’s hands were moving from her hips over her long, lean torso to her small, perfect breasts. They had tasted so sweet with the champagne.

He wasn’t as big as Colin. Actually, he wasn’t as tall as she was in heels, but Georgia knew that they would be almost perfectly matched. He was all lean muscle and intriguing angles. Naked, she strolled over to the sideboard, pouring another glass of champagne. She watched a kneeling Spike grasp his cock, his hips jerking as he thrust into his hand. Willow was pushing back, looking panic stricken and overwhelmed. Poor baby. She was trembling, and tears stood in her eyes. The look on her face was forlorn and full of the depths of her betrayal. She had, without meaning to, gotten used to thinking of them protecting her.

Georgia walked back over to them. “My turn,” Georgia told him, after all it was her party, and she had had the girl and was less interested in her at this point. She handed Spike the champagne flute she was carrying and pushed him back into the only chair in the room with a predatory gleam in her eyes.

He had left Willow in a sweaty, boneless heap on the floor and she had rolled over on her side, hugging her knees to her chest, probably crying soundless tears of mortification at her winning performance on her back. He toasted the smooth expanse of said back, rubbed raw from rolling on a rug. As fucking with your enemy’s head experiences went, Red was top shelf. He felt pleasantly buzzed with lust.

She was probably comforting herself with the notion that this was a one-time, never to be forgotten, object lesson in the dangers of drinking and playing with the immoral undead. She would be wrong. He had every intention of improving on Georgia’s performance with lots of variations. What better way to while away his idle hours until the Slayer made the trade?

Georgia knelt in front of him, and he obligingly opened his legs to make room for her. Her lipstick was mostly gone, and he grinned at her, admiring her mouth, well aware of where this was going. She wanted to play. “Miss me?” he teased.

Her fuller breasts pressed into the inside of his legs. She grinned. “We should have gotten a video camera,” she told him. “You’ll look good together,” she elaborated, her fingers cupping his balls. His cock twitched.

He took a deep, completely unnecessary breath as Georgia took his cock into her cool mouth, hungrily licking pre-cum from his shaft. He leaned back, sipping his champagne, stroking Georgia’s bobbing head, and watching the girl. He saw her stiffening up as the unmistakable sounds of the blow job Georgia was administering reached her. If anything she curled up more tightly into herself, as if she could hide from what was happening.

Sensing that he was distracted, Georgia scraped the underside of his cock with her teeth and his hand tightened in her hair momentarily as he growled at her, and then purred as her tongue laved his abused flesh. Almost casually, he used his fingernail to open a small wound near the base of his cock and she whimpered lustfully, taking more of him into her mouth to reach the blood that smeared his cock. It wasn’t hardly anything, just a taste, but—she moaned as the rich, coppery tang hit her tongue, trying hard to control her true face, feeling her fangs elongate fractionally. Male vampires were notoriously sensitive about having their cocks sucked by a vampire with a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, though it was one kink Georgia had seen indulged in. Line of Aurelius. Blood of the line of Aurelius, she thought wildly. At that moment, she would have done anything for him for giving her such an intimate gift of blood.

No need though. He wasn’t a domineering prick like some masters she had heard of, accepting sex and blood as tribute without giving anything back but abuse. He was much more generous than that, and soon he was pulling her up into his lap, kissing her mouth and throat as she positioned herself over his cock, his thumb stroking and pinching her clit as she rode him hungrily.

Willow buried her head in her arms, vainly trying to block out the sounds of Spike and Georgia having sex. Oh, God. She had had sex with both of them, in this room, one watching the other as they . . . had her. She had a flash of memory, holding Spike off with her foolish ‘there will be no having, of any kind, with me,’ and she had been so proud of herself for backing him off like that. As if that would have stopped him. She had been so stupid. How could she have been so stupid? Her fisted hands struck her head, at too close a distance to hurt, but it got her attention, and her heart sped up.

They weren’t paying any attention to her, from the sounds of it. She opened her eyes and saw her dress, crumpled in a heap on the floor. Moving carefully, she uncoiled herself and made herself reach for the dress, pulling it on with hands that shook so badly that the zipper seemed beyond her and for a moment she was blinded with tears of frustration at how useless she was. Her only thought was to get out of the room, get as far away as she could from what had happened here. Outside. She had paid attention to where she was most of the night, hyperaware of her surroundings. She was in a city. A big, crowded city, full of people, and police, and phones. Oh, God. Phones. She had to get to a phone to tell Giles where she was, because they would come, they would come get her.

She looked for her panties and shoes, and mentally slapped herself. Underwear would have been nice. She could feel the sticky fluids from oral sex on the insides of her thighs, but this was for her life. She could not afford to hesitate. She needed to go and go fast before they noticed that she wasn’t lying on the floor in post debauchery shock like the besmirched heroine in a cheap novel. Get a grip, Rosenberg, she told herself, resolve face snapping into place without an appropriate audience to appreciate it. Inwardly she wondered where that had been before she had started rolling around on the floor with Georgia and Spike.

With what she prayed was noiseless stealth and speed she stole to the door and threw caution to the winds, jerking it open and shooting through the space. She had just enough presence of mind to thumb lock the plate button, hoping that it would lock the door, before she pulled the door shut behind her and started walking as fast as she could for the nearest exit, her heart pounding so hard that she was sure everyone would hear it. She got no more than ten feet before her resolve slipped a notch and she ran, silently damning the panic that would draw attention to her. Someone was bound to notice the human that had slipped her vampire leash.

Spike had seen her moving out of the corner of his eye and had tensed. She retrieved the dress and was struggling to get back into it—complete waste of time, since he planned on having it off when he was less occupied, but no need to tell her that. She was shaking so badly that it was a wonder she didn’t fall down. Georgia demanded his attention, leaning in for a brutal kiss. She used her fingernail to open a wicked gash above her breast, and at the scent of blood, his game face slammed into place. He didn’t bite her—she belonged to Colin by her own preference, and he respected that, but he wasn’t going to turn down such a pretty offer and he nuzzled and sucked on the oozing wound, the little girl forgotten for the moment as Georgia’s movements became increasingly urgent.

Distantly he registered the door opening and closing in rapid succession, but blood was under his lips, and he was so close. He opened his eyes as Georgia started keening, grinding herself down on his cock. He gripped her hips, giving back as good as he got. ‘Why couldn’t he go for a hot little number like Georgia?’ he thought ruefully, feeling his balls tighten. A fun, smart, sane, leggy blonde who sucked cock with all the enthusiastic efficiency of a Whitehall prostitute and shagged like a Goddess. He really was an idiot.

He came with a hoarse shout and like the team player she was, Georgia followed him right over the edge.

Unable to believe that no one had stopped her, Willow scrambled up the cold marble steps, winding a turn and a half. She hesitated only a second. Freedom was on the other side of two demon types and a black door that Spike had pushed her through only a few hours before. Okay, there was an alley to get through with God knows what lying in wait, but it was only a half block to the street. She had no money. These were problems with solutions, and she had gotten this far.

The two demon bouncers turned to stare at her, obviously surprised to see her unaccompanied. There had been some kind of conversation at the door when they came in about the inadvisability of bringing a human into the lower level club. Something casual had been said by one of the bouncers to the effect that they would not guarantee her safety. She hurtled up the last step. Panic she had in abundance, so she went with it. “They’re killing each other,” she blurted out, pointing down the stairs.

Almost expecting something like this, the bouncers started towards the stairs with thoughts of property damage and pandemonium. Before they thought about stopping the girl, she was out the door, and not really their concern in the first place. The blond vampire who had brought her in could deal with her, providing that whomever he had provoked hadn’t already dusted him.

Spike’s eyes snapped open at the unnatural quiet. He had gotten used to hearing Willow’s heart beat, and it was gone. Belatedly, he remembered hearing the door open and shut. “God damn it,” he swore. “I’ll beat her feet until they bleed for this. Teach her to run away,” he snarled as Georgia scrambled off him. He grabbed his pants and pulled them on swiftly, then his boots. Forget the shirt. She had a helluva head start. Stupid, stupid bitch. Wandering around alone in a demon bar full of vampires. Even the stupidest fledge would smell them on her and tread warily with her, but she didn’t know that, did she? She just lost her head over doing something she sure as hell had enjoyed and ran.

He reached the door and found it locked. Disbelief. He thought she was stupid? He took a half step back and kicked the door in, moderately grateful that he had stopped long enough to put on his boots. Points for locking them in, he thought grimly as a few vampires and demons wisely made an opening for the half naked, enraged vampire in game face stalking across the club trailed by a disheveled blond smoothing her dress down and hopping from one foot to the other as she put her shoes on.

A youthful looking vampire with brown hair gallantly offered his arm as she struggled into her shoes and she shot him an appreciative if distracted smile and an accented “thanks, sugar,” before she hurried after her companion.

Where was she? Her scent was fading fast in the bar. He reached the table that they had staked out earlier, finding only three glum, drunk minions left to their own devises and grabbed his coat. “Find the others. The girl is on the loose,” he snapped at them. “We’ll be picking lazy, stupid bastard out of the ceiling for weeks if I don’t find her in the next five minutes,” he added.

“You’re paying for the door,” one of the club bouncers caught up to him, concluding that whomever had started a fight, had lost it and was probably going to be swept up with the trash in the morning.

Spike pointed at Georgia. “Deal with this,” he ordered. “There’s a girl I came in with,” he reminded them. “The first stupid git that touches her dies hard. I want her found. Now.”

“Then you better get moving. She didn’t look like she was slowing down when she went through the door,” the bouncer sneered. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Georgia digging through a handbag, producing a wad of cash.

Before she could hand it to him, Spike kicked him hard, finding the universal pain center with unerring instinct. Prick. Who the hell did he think he was talking to? “Feels like you want to puke or die, doesn’t it?” he observed. He snapped the demon’s neck with a wet, popping sound and looked around. “Did I stutter?” he demanded. “Move. Find her. Now.”

~~~*~~~

She stubbed her toe on a curbstone, and the pain brought fresh tears to her eyes. She had to keep moving. On some level she was finding it hard to believe that she had gotten this far. A hand holding couple sidestepped her nervously and she stumbled past them. She had no idea where to go now. Any concept to the geography of the city from the interstate off ramp to the club was lost with the change in orientation from the moving car to the sidewalk. Lost was not altogether bad. Lost was okay. If she could just loose herself in these streets so thoroughly that Spike couldn’t find her, then she had a chance. She had to stay lost or in a crowded place, as public as possible, until dawn.

No. Not crowded. People. What had Spike told her? Misbehave, and you’ll pick my next meal. She would be putting other people in danger. For a moment, for one awful moment, she didn’t care. She was more afraid of being found, being alone, of what would happen to her, than of anything that would happen to anyone else. She pressed her fisted hand against her mouth to keep from screaming. No screaming. No drawing hapless people into the circle of her disaster. Move. Move. Move. Don’t stop. Don’t think. Find a phone.

She rounded a corner and made herself run across the empty street, feeling the pavement sting her bare feet. About two blocks away she saw the neon lights of a Shell sign and concentrated on it, hurrying toward the sign. The gas station was, not surprisingly, closed. She hovered uncertainly outside the door. She had hoped to find a payphone, and she could see one. On the other side of the glass door.

“C’mon, Willow. Think,” she admonished herself, looking around for anything that might be used as a weapon. In a world full of junk, where was a pointy stake when you really needed one? There was an old fashioned pedestal ashtray next to the door that she could probably pick up and swing at Spike if it came to that, but it wasn’t exactly practical for walking through the streets. Probably get her arrested on general principals.

Crazy girl, barefooted, with a makeshift ashtray cudgel—her eyes widened. Arrested. Holy crap. Now, that was a workable plan. She needed to be arrested. The last of her alcohol daze evaporated. Ashtray. Glass door. Gas station. Hello. Get arrested.

She picked up the ashtray by the slender metal rod that held the tulip shaped receptacle. It was heavier than she thought, but she could do it. She took a step back and swung for all she was worth, releasing at the last moment. Her ashtray missile cracked, but did not shatter the heavy plate glass door. She stared at it in amazement for a moment, and then she got mad. God damned door. She couldn’t even break a God damned glass door. Pathetic, is what she was. She picked up the ashtray again and swung it like a bat.

“I-“ the crack widened, “don’t” she felt her second swing up to her elbows and a spider web of cracks began to show, “do,” she hit it again, “pathetic,” she screamed at the still intact door. It hung together for fifteen seconds and then collapsed in a tinkling shower of glass.

She waited for the wail of an alarm system, and started laughing when it didn’t happen. No alarm. No way! I pick the one gas station in America with no alarm system, she thought. Didn’t that just figure.

What the hell. She went to the door. Most of the glass was inside on the floor. This was going to hurt. Then she stopped, and looked around again, back tracking to the service island. There was one of those squeegee things for cleaning your window and a paper towel dispenser with the special blue paper towels only found at service stations. Armed with a fat wad of blue paper towels that made her hand feel sticky and a squeegee, she pushed as much of the glass as she could out of the way and stepped into the jagged hole in the glass, ducking under the metal bar that bisected the door. Once inside she saw a service counter with a phone and her knees almost gave out.

Squeegeeing her way to the phone and out of the range of the glass she went around to the back of the counter and pulled the phone off the counter, sitting on the floor. There wasn’t enough light to actually see the buttons, but she wasn’t risking a light or being out in the open. Running her fingertips lightly over the buttons she forced herself to visualize the position of each number on a keypad. She picked up the phone and a sob broke from her lips at the dial tone. She dialed the Sunnydale area code and then Giles’ home phone number, holding the receiver to her ear, cradling the bulky shape of the phone as she drew her knees up. She listened to it ring once, twice, a third time, and then she heard a man’s voice, a little scratchy, a little annoyed at being called so late, but still polite enough for, “Hello?” And not Giles.

Willow rocked herself, biting her lower lip. Had she dialed the wrong number? “I—I think I have the wrong number,” she managed to get out. She felt like she could not breath.

“Willow,” the voice on the other end of the phone sharpened. “Willow?” he strained to hear her.

She hadn’t dialed the wrong number. She had dialed Rupert Giles number and got Angel because he was staying there. Rupert had been asleep less than an hour, and he had answered his phone because, well, he was awake and the Watcher was exhausted. She sounded frightened. The harsh sound of her breathing was full of tears and hysteria.

“Where are you?” he asked. Was this some new form of torment Spike was inflicting on them? Hurt her, put her on the phone, and then threaten them some more. “Don’t answer if he can hear you,” he said hastily, afraid that she would say something that would put herself in greater danger.

“I got away,” she whispered into the receiver. “I’m in San Francisco.”

He snapped on a light hearing the Watcher stir above. “Okay,” he said. “Where in San Francisco?”

It suddenly struck her that she recognized his voice. “Angel?” she asked slowly.

“Yes, Will, it’s me,” he confirmed, trying to sound reassuring. He heard Giles on the stairs and looked up at him. “Pick up the extension in the bedroom. It’s Willow,” he hissed.

That woke Giles up, and he turned and went back into his bedroom. “Where in San Francisco, Will?” he tried again.

“I-I don’t know,” she stammered. “What are you doing at Giles?”

“Willow!” he groaned. “You’ve been missing for twelve days. I’m trying to help,” he said. “I need you to focus.” Giles had picked up the other extension, but he had wisely refrained from muddying the waters by trying to speak to her. “Where was the last place where you knew where you were?”

“The Temple,” she responded to his steady questioning. “It’s a demon bar, I think, I don’t know the street, but we got off the 101 on 5th Street.”

“That’s okay, Wills, I know where the Temple is,” Angel assured her. “Where are you right now?”

“In a gas station. A couple of blocks away,” she was trying to keep her voice down.

“What kind of gas station? An all night place?”

“No,” she told him. “It’s closed. It’s a Shell. I saw the sign,” she said. “Angel?”

“What, Willow?”

“I broke in,” she confessed. “I broke the glass in the door.”

Giles made a small sound, suspiciously like a groan at the sound of her guilty, little girl voice. Angel nodded. “Well, yeah, it was closed,” he pointed out as if this was entirely reasonable. “It’s okay, Willow,” he assured her.

“No, it's not,” she contradicted, her voice steadier. “I’m not nearly far enough away and the door is all broken and that can’t look normal, and there isn’t an alarm, so no one is coming. Except, Spike. He’ll be coming, won’t he, Angel? I don’t know what to do next. I keep thinking of new things, but I’m afraid of what happens when I run out of ideas,” she admitted.

“Hang in there,” Angel said. “You’re in the city,” he reminded her. “It’s probably a silent alarm,” he improvised. “Willow? Can you drive?” he asked, while he took out his cell phone and keyed 911.

“Of course,” she gasped indignantly. She was eighteen and about to go to college. Of coarse she could drive.

“Right,” he had never seen her drive anywhere. He knew Buffy had never gotten a driver’s license. “I need you to look around, okay. See if you can’t find a peg board or something with keys on it. Check the service bay if you have to,” he instructed.

“Willow,” Giles understood where Angel was going with this. She needed to put some serious distance between herself and Spike as quickly as possible. “Do what Angel says, now, child,” he told her.

“Giles?” her voice rose hopefully. “Uh, okay.”

She had to put down the phone and cross in front of the glass front of the gas station, but she peered carefully out across the quiet street before she made a dash for the service bay. To the right of the door was a peg board with keys, each position numbered.

The local 911 operator answered the phone, “Please state the nature of your emergency,” he said.

“Assault in progress. It’s in San Francisco. I need the San Francisco police,” Angel stressed.

“Transferring you to San Francisco County 911,” the operator stated, as if he received local calls about crimes in jurisdictions four hundred miles away all the time.

The phone rang and was answered, almost identically, “911. What is the nature of your emergency?”

“Assault in progress,” Angel said. “My friend is calling from a Shell Station in San Francisco. It’s near a club on Canal called The Temple. She’s hiding from a guy who has beaten her up,” he improvised. “She’s really scared. She broke in to try to get arrested before he finds her. This guy is really dangerous. He’s threatened to kill her.”

“Please try to keep her on the phone with you,” the dispatcher said.

~~~*~~~

Willow took off the keys in order, hooking them over her left index finger before starting on her middle finger, and then she hurried back to the phone, a soft cry escaping her when she stepped on a bit of glass. She got back to the phone safely and picked it up. “Angel? Giles?” she said, heart pounding.

“Angel is on his cell phone with the police in San Francisco, Willow,” Giles told her. “Are you hurt?” he asked. He had heard her cry out.

“I cut my foot,” she said in a small voice, hoping that Giles wouldn’t ask why she was barefoot. “Are the police coming to get me?”

“Yes,” Angel said quickly, listening to the dispatcher organizing things. It sounded like they were dispatching four squad cars to converge on the area with lights and sirens. Lots of attention. That would back Spike off.

The dispatcher returned to him. “Okay,” she said. “We’ve got help coming. Now, you need to tell your friend that she needs to stay quiet and let them come to her. They’ll have to take her into custody. She’s broken into a private business,” she pointed out. If this was some stupid tiff with a boyfriend, this girl had bitten off more than she could chew, she thought, but she didn’t say that. “I need a description of the girl,” she added.

“She’s about 5’4 and she has red hair,” Angel said.

“What is she wearing?” the dispatcher asked.

“Willow? What are you wearing?” Angel asked her, going back to the land line.

“A dress. It’s green. Sparkly,” she said.

Angel shook his head. Right. Spike had taken her to The Temple. She was dressed to be a cute little vampire accessory. “Green dress,” he told the dispatcher.

“Got it,” she was typing the description. “We need a description of the assailant,” she prompted.

“5’10, 160 pounds, short bleached blond hair,” Angel described. “He’ll be wearing a lot of black, and a long black leather coat,” he said. “English accent.”

In his other ear he could hear Giles telling Willow that everything would be alright, and she shushed him. “I think I heard something,” she whispered. The top half of the glass door finally gave in a shower of glass. “Never mind,” she dismissed as she peered over the counter, sounding relieved. “It’s just the rest of the glass. It fell.”

“You know this guy? Is he a boyfriend or something?” the dispatcher asked, smelling domestic dispute.

“God, no,” Angel was vehement. “He’s a stalker,” again with the half-truths, all in the service of rescuing Willow. “He’s been after her for weeks. He’s threatened to kill her,” he added, which was true. Spike had not out and out threatened to kill her, but that was the general idea.

“Tell her to hang on. She should hear us any second now,” the dispatcher said.

“Willow,” Angel spoke to her. “They are close. You should—“ he heard distant sirens wailing over the open phone line. “Willow?” he couldn’t hear her breathing. “Willow?” he shouted.

~~~*~~~

“Search the alley. Every car, every fucking corner,” Spike was not underestimating her anymore. She had slowed him down with the lock, and then with some quick thinking about claiming that there was a fight in the club. It was a dead-end alley with a solid brick twelve foot high wall that he ruled out her being industrious enough to climb. That meant she headed for the street. He walked out, cheekbones hollowing as he breathed in air trying to pick up her scent.

He scanned the street. Left took her back towards the club, and she would be trying to get away, so he would go right. The little dark haired girl he had trusted to keep an eye on Willow from time to time was at his elbow, trembling with dread over his palpable anger and the pleasure of hunting.

“Go left, two blocks, doorways, alleys, both sides of the street,” he ordered, fishing his keys out of the pocket. “Then come back, get the car. I’m going east,” he said. Georgia joined him, followed by Colin.

“What the living hell happened?” Colin asked. He had been pulled out of a highly profitable card game.

“She’s taken off,” Spike said. “Industrious little chit,” he nodded in the direction he planned to take. “We move. Now. San Francisco’s going to be too hot,”
Colin’s arm circled Georgia’s neck in a light embrace. “I’ll round up the children, then,” he agreed. “Where are we going?”

It was closing on three thirty in the morning with dawn coming in two hours. “Find us a haunt,” he ordered. “The little dark haired bird’s got the keys to the Desoto. I’ll find the girl,”

He could see that Colin wanted to argue, but he watched the other vampire work out the improbability of winning. He shrugged. “I’ll follow her,” he said. “D’you want to go with Spike?” he asked Georgia.

She understood what he meant. Do you want to go with Spike or do you want to stay here with me and wait until he’s gone and then drive as far and as fast away as they could get. Easy going and lazy, was her Colin. “Sure,” she said. “Better chance of finding her.” She made a face, smudged lipstick stained lips pouting. “Poor baby. She’s probably scared to death,” she looked up at Colin. “Find us someplace nice, please?”

He kissed her cheek and released her, patting her on the ass. He accepted her decision for both of them. He knew she was trying to tell him that it wasn’t just Spike holding her here, though he suspected that it was mostly Spike. He had plans and he was onto something big, and Georgia got a kick out of that, and she smelled of both of them. She was interested in the meek little human girl. You didn’t get to be unliving going on twenty years without developing a yen to taste and turn something truly tender. He would probably hear the details later.

~~~*~~~

Georgia prowled down the street a few steps behind Spike before crossing to the opposite sidewalk. Where would Willow go? She had no money. She was barefoot. Frightened. Possibly pissed off. It was always possible that she had flagged down a car and gone off with a stranger, which would make it impossible to find her before sunup. She didn’t want to think about what Spike would be like if they didn’t find Willow. Georgia used her senses to get a bead on her. The empty streets helped but the wind blowing in from the bay stirred up a confusing stew of smells. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Spike squat down in front of a curb. He waved her over and Georgia crossed back to him. “This way. She cut her foot,” he said quietly.

There wasn’t a lot of blood, just a small, almost imperceptible smear, but she would be hurt. Looking for a place to hide. He was relatively certain that she would shy away from people right now. They reached an intersection. Decision time.

“Go right,” he told Georgia. Stick to a pattern. He took the left, damning city blocks. If she went straight he was loosing time.

His block offered no hiding places. There was just one big, solid, darkened brick building the length of the block. He was starting to regret his decision to check the side streets. Shit. She had probably run on a straight path until she collapsed in an effort to put as much distance between them as possible. She wasn’t familiar with cities. What would she recognize in the streetscape that would offer sanctuary? He had already considered the idea that she might have flagged down a driver, but after her last attempt to escape had almost gotten her rescuer killed, he thought it was unlikely. She would have to slow down to think through how much of a lead that she had and how hard it would be for him to catch her the way he had the first time, and she was running.

“C’mon, Red,” he muttered to himself. “I’m not going to kill you all at once,” he said grimly. He was at the next intersection, another four-way decision, when the Desoto pulled up to the curb next to him. The girl behind the wheel looked like she needed a phone book to sit on. “You’re on a quarter tank,” she informed him when he stooped to the open passenger window. “There’s a Shell ahead. You want me to fill up?” she asked.

Helpful and cheerful minion, wonderful. He was in hell. “No, you silly bint. I want you to find my fucking girl. Are all you people brain dead?” he snarled at her. Then his head snapped around. Big assed neon sign. Shell. Familiar. Gas station. Ladies room. Phone. Shit! He walked over to the driver’s side and shoved the girl over, adjusting the seat. He drove within sight of the gas station. It was closed. And the front door was smashed all to hell. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “You—helpful chit—what’s you’re name?”

“Jeanie,” she said, looking at him in that hungry way fledges had.

Christ on a fucking crutch. He wasn’t a God. It annoyed him, but she had, in a way, led him here, so he was prepared to be charitable. “Take the wheel, pet,” he said. “I want you to go back, pick up Georgia, and then hit the Shell parking lot. Engine running. Got it?”

“Yeah,” she nodded vigorously. “I can do it,”

Of course you can. It’s not bloody complicated, he thought. “Good,” he said, getting out of the car.

Within ten feet of the building he could smell her and hear the frantic beat of her heart as well as the muffled sound of her voice. Got to a phone? He went through the lower half of the door and his coat snagged on something, bringing the rest of glass down. He heard her moving about, and stepped back against the wall, expecting her attention to be directed to the door. Her head appeared from behind the service counter.

“Never mind,” she spoke into the phone.  If she turned her head just a bit to the right she’d see him. “It’s just the rest of the glass. It fell,” she sounded relieved, her head dropping forward.

Gotcha. Spike glided across the small room and his hand covered her mouth before she could make a sound. He pried the receiver out of her hand and set it on the counter. Her eyes were wide with shock. He let his true face emerge and pulled her towards him, sinking his fangs into her jugular, feeling her go stiff with the pain of being bitten, a pitiful little cry of defeat trapped behind his hand, vibrating in her throat under his greedy mouth.

For the first time in Willow Rosenberg’s largely terrifying acquaintance with William the Bloody, she fainted.

His head came up, and he went utterly still. He caught her slumping body before it hit the floor, retracting his fangs. He licked the bloody wound, almost as an afterthought, though he found himself, savoring the taste he had of her.

He could hear sirens, faint, but closing fast. There was the sound of a familiar voice on the phone he had set on the counter, and for a moment Spike hesitated.

It was Angel. She had called the great poof? Who knew that Willow and Angel were on so close of terms that she called him first? His lip curled at the repellent notion. He wasn’t sure why it was repellent. It just was. The one thing Angelus and Paingel had in common was their precious little girls. Dru. Buffy. Adding Willow to the list? Bastard. He considered picking up the phone and saying something just to take the piss out of him.

On the other hand, he rather liked the notion of leaving him to rage like an impotent wanker on an open line.

The Desoto was pulling into the service station, making his decision for him. He gathered Willow’s limp body and kicked the metal bar that was all that was left of the door, making it fly open. He went through the open door and strode purposefully to the car like a poncey git on the cover of some idiotic bodice ripper, carrying the swooning virgin off. Only with Red’s stupid luck—astonishingly bad luck, even from his point of view—he was not heroic or misunderstood. He was just an evil bastard with a plan. The small girl driving hopped out and ducked into the back seat while Spike tossed the girl in, relying on Georgia to fend for herself versus an armful of unconscious girl.

He got in. Adjusted the seat again, growling softly at the fresh annoyance, and put the Desoto in gear, driving at an unrecognizably sedate pace away from the Shell station. He even politely pulled to a complete stop at the curb as a police car came roaring up behind him. Glancing over at Georgia for a moment he saw her cuddling Red, stroking her head and rocking her like she was a little lost lamb.

Lost lamb, indeed. Georgia just wanted another go at her. Caught coddling the girl, Georgia gave him a sly smile. “Did I remember to thank you for my present?” she asked.

“Sod off,” Spike retorted.

~Part: 16~

The ever-resourceful Colin had managed to help Pete ditch Harmony and find a cozy hideout. They were checked into not a human motel but a demon one, owned by a law firm in LA that Colin’s mum had business with. Spacious, roomy, with all the comforts of a Hyatt Hotel including a stock of bagged blood for the vampire too lazy to shift for a meal.

Visions of Willow, shackled ankle and wrist to the bed danced through his head. She was lying on the bed where Georgia had put her. She looked a mess. Torn stockings, bloodied feet, bruises on her thighs, visible where her limp and wrinkled dress had ridden up, his bite livid on her neck, smeared with dried blood, her hair a wild tangle around her head. Out cold. Georgia had fretted about her failure to regain consciousness. Spike thought it had less to do with blood loss than having no reason to wake up. She had a hangover, terror, and guilt to look forward to, and it could wait.

Not that she was faking. He was on to that trick. He watched her for a few minutes and then, with an annoyed twist to his lips, went into the bathroom. He found himself standing in front of the sink, fingertips in the flowing tap water, waiting for it to warm. And why? So he could wet a wash cloth and clean her up a bit. It was ridiculous. He was going to play lady’s maid to an aggravating little chit who was taking his injunction not to cause him more trouble than she was worth to the absolute limit.

His eyes narrowed. When he’d caught up to her, he had been furious. When he threw her in the car, he had been angry. The ninety minute drive to Sacramento had taken the edge off his temper and he had started putting things in perspective. Her flight was, actually, his cock up. He had pushed her past her limits, and then he had gotten too distracted to pay attention when she was getting away. She had bloody well walked out of a room he was in, which was a bit embarrassing for him, but not entirely her fault. Beyond that, a combination of good timing, luck, and quick thinking had gotten her out of the club. He had underestimated her. She had managed well until her luck changed, and that was all it was. Dumb luck. One careless comment ignored, and he would have turned around and started down the street in the opposite direction and she would have been home free.

She was valuable, he reminded himself, shutting off the water in the sink. He turned the water on in the tub and set the stopper to allow the tub to fill. She was the lynchpin of one of his better schemes with a potential payoff that could only be described as priceless. He could do better, he reminded himself, than wandering off on some tangent about shagging her and sending her back to her do-gooder pals.

What? Was she supposed to kill herself because she was ruined for ordinary mortals? That kind of thinking belonged to another era. Aside from which it had fuck all to do with him getting what he wanted, which was not the guilty squirming of an inexperienced eighteen year old girl. It was the Gem of Amara. That was what he was in the game for. He had to keep the Slayer focused on finding the Gem, and not on hunting him down because she thought he was going to kill the girl in a fit of anger.

He sat on the side of the tub and examined several small bottles neatly arrayed there. Shampoo, conditioner, bath gel. He uncapped the bath gel and let it drip out into the churning water below the faucet. The scent of honeysuckle filled the room. It was a scent that had been out of fashion for forty years, and it was almost exotic because of that. With a sigh, he got up and returned to the bedroom, mentally unshackling the girl. There was a set of iron manacles, a memento from his years with Dru, tucked away in the boot of the Desoto—the Desoto, which he realized grimly, would have to be ditched. Angel knew the car too well and he’d have the police looking for it as well as Red. Bugger all. He scooped her up and carried her into the bathroom.

She started to come around while he was wrestling her out of her dress, which she seemed to find disturbing. “No, no, no, no, no,” she chanted, trying to push the dress back down as he lifted the hem. He gave up and set his hands in the top of the dress and ripped. The silk gave and split down the center, bead work flying. Ignoring her protests, he put her in the bathtub and she hit a new key. He checked the water, and swore under his breath, turning up the cold. Great, he’d scald her. He reached for her to get her out of the tub, and she fell back away from him fearfully, loosing her balance. He managed to catch her before she hit the side of the tub or exposed any more of her skin to the too hot water.

He put her down and tossed her a towel since she seemed unnerved about being naked. “It’s too hot,” he pointed out. “Give it a minute, and then you can have a bath,”

She wrapped the towel around herself and looked at him like he was insane. A not entirely unjustified surmise. Her hand went to her neck. He was guessing it hurt like hell. He wasn’t a sloppy eater, unlike that stupid bint Harmony, but he hadn’t been going out of his way to keep from hurting her either.

Cuddling Willow in the front seat, Georgia had run her fingers over his bite mark and cast a questioning look at him. It was an odd thing to have done. Vampires bite humans to feed or claim. Period. There was something about the way he had bitten her that was nagging at him. Something Georgia had noticed right away but had kept quiet about while he was getting a grip on his temper.

 “When you get in the bath, soak a washcloth and put it over it,” he said. “I’ll get some ice for you, for later,” his voice was even.

“I know how to deal with a bite,” she said shortly. “What are you going to do to me?” she asked.

Fear was a wonderful thing, he reflected. He sat on the side of the tub, letting his fingers trail through the water. Still a bit too hot, he noted. “Keep a closer eye on you, I suppose, pet,” he said after a moment.

He looked at her. Dark circles under her eyes. She was exhausted, and she didn’t look like she believed him. She certainly did not trust him. There were infinite levels to that, he was guessing. He had assailed her fragile belief that he wouldn’t let anyone hurt her—but she was depending on her definition of hurt, not his. To his thinking, no one had gotten hurt tonight, and aside from her cuts and bruises, he included her in that estimate. So, she had had a little too much to drink, and had let her hair down a bit? A fucking glorious bit, with her head thrown back and her skin all flushed and hot. It was just sex. Nothing to get all bent out of shape about. He thought about telling her that as he checked the water again.

“I think it's safe for you to get in the bathtub now,” he told her.

“Where are you going to be?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

He shrugged, “You want to be alone? Be my guest,” he stood up. “Leave the door open. You fainted and you were out for a couple of hours. If you fall asleep you could drown,” he pointed out.

There was nothing in this logic to rail at, but she wanted to. God. She wanted to rail and rage. He bit her. He had sex with her. Not intercourse precisely, but his fingers had been inside her, and he had pushed a pearl necklace inside her. It was easier to deal with by calling it sex. He watched Georgia have sex with her. He bit her. Now he was being . . . nice to her? Fat chance. It was all some game to twist her into knots. He was manipulative, amoral, cruel, and an utterly unconscionable killer. And she had had sex with him. He walked out of the bathroom pulling the door half closed for privacy, but leaving it enough ajar that he would be able to hear.

She wanted to refuse the bath, but at the same time the idea of being in her own skin a single moment longer repulsed her. She dropped the towel and got into the tub. The water was still almost uncomfortably hot. She shut it off and reached for the washcloth folded into a neat triangle with a thin bar of soap tucked into a fold. She soaped the washcloth and set about washing every inch of her body as if she could scrub away the entire night. When there was nothing else to wash, she sat in the tub with her legs pulled up to her chest and buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

She had been so close to getting away. That was the worst part. She hadn’t tried hard enough before. She hadn’t been daring enough, or ruthless, and she didn’t know when she would be brave enough to try again.

~~~*~~~

With the witch in the bathroom, busy scrubbing herself back to pristine, Spike dug up his purloined cell phone and rang the Watcher. It annoyed him that Willow had called Angel. Spike didn’t think Angel saw the girl beyond her connection to his one truly nauseating love. That was what made it so funny that Willow had been the one to broadside Angelus, not once, but twice, though reprising the curse that gave Angel his soul could be thought to cast her un-invite parlor trick into the shade.

She called Angel. Maybe she was just smart. Given a choice between the Slayer, the Watcher and Angel, aside from the irritating do-gooder poofiness, Angel was the steadiest in a crisis. He would stay focused, save the girl, and worry about evening the score latter—and only if he could really get it done. Angel didn’t go off half-cocked or do anything halfway. The Slayer was a damn good fighter, with the emotional ballast of a hormonal teenage girl. As for the Watcher—well, as fun as it had been to watch the old sod take a mace to Angelus, it was a suicide mission, and it smacked of poor judgment, in Spike’s view.

Not that he cared who Red fancied in the role of knight in shining armor. He kicked the unoffending leg of the desk, staring at the phone blankly for a moment before remembering to key the talk button.

The Watcher’s phone was answered almost at once. It wasn’t the poncey librarian. It was Americanized Angel. Red had called the Watcher. Angel was there. Mystery solved. “You sound like a bloody weatherman,” he told Angel after missing a beat in following up on the obligatory ‘hello’. “All manly mid-western accent. Next thing you know you’ll be saying ‘please’ when what you really mean is ‘what the fuck are you on about?’” Spike complained.

“Spike,” Angel’s voice was tight with anger and repressed emotion.

Spike grinned. “That’s right, mate. Your old pal, Spike,” he chuckled, “the bug up your ass,” he added sweetly. “How’s tricks? Making desperate cow eyes at the blonde chit, are you?”

“Where is Willow?” Angel asked.

He sat back in his chair, settling in, “Having a nice, relaxing soak in the tub, last I checked,” Spike reported. “What’s it to you?”

“I want to speak to her. Now,” Angel insisted.

“Hmmm. I don’t think so. Imagine she would object, strenuously, if I go barging in there while she’s all naked and steamy,” he smiled to himself. “Perhaps I could be persuaded,” he mused. “She is naked—“

“Spike!” Angel interrupted. “You know how this works. We want proof that she is still alive,” Angel said.

“Maybe later,” Spike countered. “You want? When you’ve got something I want, bore me with what you want,” he advised. “She’s alive. I don’t fancy having to kidnap Xapper, though no doubt he is spectacularly useless to the team effort. Making lots of lovely progress, I trust?” he got to the point.

By the time the police reached the Shell station, Willow was gone. Faced with a lot of awkward and unanswerable questions, Angel had hung up on the dispatcher, who probably had his cell phone number. It remained to be seen if the police would pursue it further, but Angel thought it was unlikely. He knew in his gut that Spike had her, though what shape she was in at this point was less certain.

“Take your time organizing a thought,” Spike invited. “She might pop out if you drag it out long enough, but if you’ve nothing to say, I’ll just hang up.”

“Ever heard of star 69?” Angel retorted.

“Ever heard ‘does not work in the o-f-f position?’” Spike fired back. “Please tell me you have made some progress. I want the Gem of Amara. I can settle for the girl,” he said consideringly. “All that luscious red hair . . . hmmm? She’s a fetching little thing,” he went on. “You should have seen her tonight. Glowed like a bloody jewel given a proper setting. Wonder what she would be like if I made her like us? Fancy a witchy great-granddaughter, Angel?  You always did like ‘em young,” he taunted.

“You won’t,” Angel predicted. He was not going to let Spike provoke him. Spike had never been one for turning humans. Minions? That had been Dru’s work, or other vamps in their train. Not Spike. No true childer for Dru or Spike in the hundred years since they had been together he was willing to bet. Spike was too damned selfish.

“Never went in for it,” he admitted.

“And you aren’t going to kill her,” Angel added.

Spike smiled. So predictable, was he? “Of course not. She’s valuable,” he agreed.

Angel’s eyes narrowed. “We’ve made some progress. May start digging this week,” he allowed.

Now they were getting somewhere. “Good,” Spike drawled.

“How did she manage to get away from you?” Angel asked, since they were almost being civil.

Spike laughed softly. “Walking out of a demon bar? That’s a neat trick,” he said, knowing Angel would appreciate it. “I’m sure you’ll be busy figuring it out,” he added, just to let Angel know that he was on to their efforts to track him. “Stands to reason, mate. You’re wasting my time looking for me. I’m not going to kill her, Angel, so the next time you think about dividing your efforts between finding my bloody Gem and finding me, you just think about all the things I can do without killing her and the time you are giving me to enjoy them. Christmas is coming early this year, Angel,” he said with quiet menace.

“You know I’m going to have to kill you,” Angel pointed out.

“It would disappoint me if you didn’t try. I’d start thinking you didn’t care,” Spike mocked and keyed the end button, achieving the last word.

He listened for sounds from the bathroom and heard what sounded like weeping. He reconsidered. Messy sobbing. He ran his fingers through his hair, thinking for a moment, then nodding to himself as he got to his feet. He checked the small refrigerator and found orange juice and a few yogurt cups. He set the improvised breakfast items out and went to the bathroom door, pausing there. “Red?” he called out.

There was a long, sniffling pause. “What?”

He pushed the door open. She was sitting in the center of the tub with her knees pulled into her chest, mostly obscured by collapsing layers of bubbles from the bath gel. She was washing her hair. “Poof says hello,” he told her.

She didn’t have any response to that. She knew he meant Angel, and that meant he had called them in Sunnydale. Probably to gloat.

She closed her eyes, hoping that he would go away. She could feel him sitting there, inches away from her as she worked the shampoo into her hair and scrubbed her scalp with her fingernails. Was this what he meant about keeping a closer eye on her? It wasn’t like she could escape from a window-less bathroom. He was probably just doing this to unnerve her, and it was working. Or maybe this was his way of making the point that he had already seen her naked and that there was no going back from that.

Was there? What did she have to negotiate with? If she offered not to escape again, would that give her something to bargain with? So far he had been one step ahead of her, but she had come close this time. He had no reason to believe that she would keep her word if she did promise not to escape—hell, she didn’t believe she would keep her word.

She had nothing. On the other hand, maybe it was a typical Spike moment. Spur of the moment, too much to drink, following Georgia’s lead. It might have nothing to do with her and everything to do with Georgia. Maybe it was Georgia he wanted, as a replacement for Dru. That thought was reassuring on so many levels.

He watched her for a moment. The way she was using her fingernails on her scalp he half expected her to draw blood. His gaze shifted to the shower configuration for the bathtub. The shower head was attached to the wall by a slack length of flexible hose. He came the rest of the way into the bathroom and took it down for her so she could rinse her hair without leaving the warmth of the water.

“There isn’t any coffee, but there is juice and yogurt. You should eat something.”

She took the showerhead from him warily. His voice was studiously neutral. Her lip curled. She wasn’t going to talk to him. No more talking. Talking had made her regard him almost as a companion, albeit one that had to be kept amused and relatively pleased with her at all costs. He wasn’t a companion. He was her jailer. No more talking to Spike or Georgia.

Taking in her uneasy silence, the corner of Spike’s mouth twitched. She was being childish, and she had picked a lousy battleground to fight him on. Keeping her mouth shut was not her strong suit. She would probably explode given her tendency to babble. She closed her eyes and rinsed the shampoo out of her hair.

Once her hair was soap free, he shut off the water again and took the showerhead from her to return it to the cradle.

“There is a bathrobe on the back of the door.”

To her intense relief, he moved a pair of towels closer to her, setting them on the side of the tub, and left the bathroom, pulling the door shut behind him. She opened the drain on the tub, wrapping one towel around her wet hair before she stood up in the draining water to dry off in the tub.

A stabbing pain shot through her foot, though she had the presence of mind of mute her cry of pain. The last thing she wanted was more attention from Spike. She lifted her injured foot off the bottom of the tub and continued to dry off, balancing on one leg. Through trial and error getting out of the tub she discovered if she kept her weight on the toes of her right foot it wasn’t too painful.  The great toe of her left foot was throbbing unpleasantly and under quick examination Willow discovered that her toenail was torn into the nail bed, and turning shades of blue and purple from bruising.

She put on the robe, feeling her other aches and pains clamoring for attention. Her neck throbbed. The insides of her thighs were mottled with finger sized bruises from Georgia’s none too gentle grip. Her head and chest ached, the former due to a headache that seemed to be getting worse. She pulled the robe tight around her, pressing it into her chest as if she could squeeze the tight sensation out of her chest. There was the insistent hurt of it, inescapable, that made her feel like she couldn’t breath. They had done things to her that she hadn’t really been able to stop. She wasn’t stupid. She knew that Spike or Georgia could overpower her or kill her without a lot of effort. By their standards, what they had done probably passed for restraint or gentleness, but it had been done to her and she didn’t like it.

The memory of how she had reacted to it tormented her.

She stayed in the bathroom. There was a cosmetic type bag on the vanity and she found that it contained a toothbrush, sample sized toothpaste, a wide toothed comb, and sample sized moisturizers, perfumes, and premium brand cosmetics. She brushed her teeth, eradicating the lingering, stale taste of alcohol from her mouth and sat on the toilet seat to comb her hair, trying to make her mind a blank.

It didn’t work. She closed her eyes. Disoriented by the ache in her head and the lingering alcohol in her system, random images and sensations played behind her eyelids and rippled through her nerve endings. She touched her tongue to her lower lip and phantom sensations that she recognized from Spike kissing her made her heart race and brought up gooseflesh that made her nipples harden. Worse than anything, was this stew of sensory confusion. Her only conclusion was that she was attracted to him. Just wetting her lips made her think about him kissing her, and her body was tingly from the thought in a weird, hot and cold way. Kissing Oz had made her feel good, in a warm, safe way. Kissing Spike made her feel like she had been dipped in cold water and needed to press every inch of her skin into something.

There was something fundamentally wrong with her, Willow concluded. Maybe it was the same impulse that had made her respond to Xander the first time they kissed. She had known it was wrong. Kissing Spike was beyond wrong. It was badness squared to an infinity full of wrongness. It would have been better to force him to hit her, to have at least the fragile dignity of having defended herself to cling to, she thought sadly.

~~~*~~~

He had settled in to watch a bit of television, discovering that the hotel offered a wide variety of cable television stations. All was quiet in the bathroom, where the witch was no doubt cowering with her tattered virtue. He smoked a cigarette and was almost ready to go in after her when she finally emerged, moving stiffly, gingerly keeping her weight off her left foot.

She made her way slowly to the table. There was a bottle of orange juice there, with a cup of yogurt and a heavy, ornate spoon. She sat down, ignoring him, and grimly applied herself to the task of consuming what had been provided for her like a good little soldier. She had learned on their little three-day jaunt around northern California to eat and sleep whenever the opportunity presented itself.

After she ate, she pulled her injured left foot up into her lap examining it with her fingertips. He watched as she dug a sliver of glass out with her fingernails and dropped it on the table, pressing her thumb against the open cut. His threat to beat her feet until they were bloody flashed through his mind. It made a certain amount of sense to him. It would put an end to her increasingly successful escape attempts, but at the moment it was overkill. She didn’t have clothing and she’d have hell’s own time figuring out how to get out of their present accommodations.

She finally made her way to the other side of the bed and got in, turning her back to him to face the wall. He lit another cigarette and watched television, aware of the tension in her that was thick enough to cut with a knife. In a way, the evening remained incomplete for him. Georgia had distracted him. He had been so close to taking her right there on the floor. His mind wandered that path for a moment, his body responding to the mental picture of her, on her back, her head thrown back, exposing her throat, her hair fanned around her face. It had surprised him. She had surprised him. She wasn’t voluptuous or exotic as Dru or Georgia, but he hadn’t been disappointed or thinking about Dru when he was kneeling between her thighs.

He crushed out the cigarette. He ought to let her sleep. She was exhausted. Anyone could see that. He sat up and divested himself of his t-shirt and shirt, dropping them on the floor. He heard her breathing change. He unfastened his belt and opened the fly of his jeans, pushing them down and kicking them off to land on the floor. The sound made her flinch.

Naked, he straddled her body, forcing her to her back. Through the terry cloth robe and the blanket on the bed she was a female shape in a dense shroud, hard, shallow breaths escaping. Bracing one hand on the mattress, he parted the collar of the robe, running his finger down over her breastbone, absorbing the softness of her skin and the heavy beat of her heart. He found the terry cloth belt she had tied and worked the knot loose, watching her face. Her eyes were open. “You didn’t think we were done, did you?” He wondered how she would react.

She looked confused. Done with what, exactly? Done with sex? Done with running away? Done with the retaliation for running away? She had not thought they were done. She hadn’t thought about what came next much at all. She was still back on what had happened, and not catching up fast enough, apparently. She felt the belt digging into her ribs loosen and then he pushed aside the wings of the robe. Cool air bathed her skin, dredging up gooseflesh. He seemed to be expecting an answer.

“No,” she said after a long moment, closing her eyes as a wave of angry despair rose.

He peeled back the edges of the robe like he was unwrapping a present. His hand slid behind her neck, between the collar of the robe and her skin, feeling the lingering dampness from her bath as he lifted her head from the pillow, his fingers threading through her hair. The heavy robe parted company with her shoulders, catching on her upper arms as the weight of the fabric made it sag. She wasn’t fighting him, but she wasn’t helping either. She was holding herself as still as possible. The dark circles under her eyes made her eyes look bruised.

He kissed her, avoiding her lips, his found the softness between her nose and cheekbone, beneath her eye, where her skin was thinnest, nearly translucent, nerve rich. He tested it with his lips and the tip of his tongue. He nipped at the small space between where eyebrows began, a small notch formed there when she frowned, and he felt the muscles in her face trembling under his lips. Her humid breath came soft and shallow against his skin as he continued his leisurely exploration. His fingers stroked her cheek down to her jaw, resting briefly against her throat, dipping lower to explore the hollow inside her collarbone.

For Willow, this passed beyond strange. She had expected a resumption of the early part of the evening with violent retaliation folded in. She did not expect the unhurried, graceful, controlled way he was exploring her face. She had closed her eyes instinctively when he kissed her below her eye, in a place no one had ever kissed, even accidentally. His lips were cool and dry with the counterpoint of the tip of his slightly cool, damp tongue. It took her a few moments to realize that this was a simulacrum of tenderness and sensuality, designed to effect a response, and even then, knowing that he was manipulating her, she wanted to know what came next.

The curiosity was purely clinical. She was tired, but impressed by his effort to wring a response out of her as his lips drifted over the apple of her cheek, placing a small kiss in the slight hollow proximate to her ear, his tongue slipping out to trace the shape of her ear down to her earlobe, drifting back to the corner of her mouth. Wow. Simple and effective, this variety of manipulation.

“Let me know when I can go to sleep,” she said, surprised at how tired and emotionless her voice sounded.

He grinned at her tone of voice. He heard the flattened inflection, but he wasn’t imagining it, there was a little catch in her voice, barely perceptible, but it was there. He nibbled on her full lower lip, feeling it tighten under his lips as her lips compressed. His attention shifted to her stubbornly set chin and he took it in his mouth, sucking on her skin before ducking his head to kiss the triangle of flesh under her chin, forcing her head back into the cradle of his hand.

“Go ahead,” he invited, painting her throat with his tongue. “I’ll wake you up when we get to the important parts.”

~~~*~~~

“Enjoy your party?” Colin asked.

Georgia prowled around their room. “This is more like it,” she said. “How did you find this place?” she wondered.

“It belongs to a law firm Mum’s done business with,” Colin told her.

The lodgings were an upgrade. There was a small amount of light in the room from a pair of soffits that bracketed the room. Stained glass panels in abstract geometric designs were hung at regular intervals between the soffit and the ceiling and backlit. It took her a moment to recognize that the colored light filtered through the stained glass combined across the ceiling in a larger work of art, a modern abstract ceiling painted in light on the irregular plaster surface of the ceiling.

The bed was huge. King sized and extra long, and the sheets were expensive. Egyptian cotton, she guessed, dyed a deep red and layered under with a herringbone weave blanket in a complimentary shade of red, and a matelasse spread, also in red. A heavier mink blanket was pooled at the foot of the bed.

The bed wasn’t a standard issue hotel bed, with the headboard bolted to the wall. The headboard that was bolted to the wall was an iron gate that could have been mistaken for the gates of hell, complete with a leering gargoyle at the center where the gate would have opened had it been properly hung. Four wrought iron posts from floor to ceiling with the bed between the posts created the illusion of a massive four poster bed.

The bedside table closest to her, on her left, was a rock, irregular in shape, flat to form a table top and polished to a high gloss showing a striated ring formation in purple, frosted on the edges with crystals. The floors were wood. It wasn’t a real wood floor. It was some kind of composite material that looked like wood and was sealed. It felt different underfoot than real hardwood, spongier, and it was sound deadening. The walls were plastered and painted a neutral and non-reflective white. There were no mirrors. The walls were hung with drapes and tapestries on iron rods.

There were three doors. One she knew led to the bathroom. There was a double door to her left and a single door to her right that led to the hallway outside the room. She went to the double door and opened it to see where it led. The room beyond the double door was dark, but there was enough light for her to see the three steps down into a chamber that was surrounded in brick, paved in stone, arranged as a lounge, and complete with a delightful variety of instruments of pain that were hung on the walls. Wasted on Colin, unfortunately. He tended to regard torture as work rather than fun. Came from his misspent youth, she supposed, turning back to the room.

“Ended too early,” she said of the evening, with a moue of disappointment, advancing on him.

“Doesn’t have to,” he said. “Tell me everything,” he invited as her arms curled around his neck. “Did you learn anything more about what Spike is up to?” he asked. The three blokes who had been sitting in the bar when the girl took off had been dusted. They had regrouped at a rest stop outside of San Francisco that had started off like a team meeting with Spike playing with them. Asking in a deceptively calm way what had gone wrong.

He had gone through two minions before the quality of the answers started to improve. Colin suspected that the thinning the herd activity was deliberate. Spike had little patience with minions. Once they became too much of a bother or expense to put up with, he was done with them. Jeanie was the only one who survived his temper, and was settled in with Pete now that he had managed to lose Harmony.

“No,” she said. “Busy fucking, not talking,” she added wickedly.

He could smell the girl and the older vampire all over her. “But, you will find out?” he guessed.

“Eventually,” she agreed, rubbing against him.

“And what about the girl?” he asked.

Georgia licked her lips. “She’s delicious. Can we keep her?”

He cocked his head to one side. That depended on Spike. “Have I ever denied you anything?”

She chuckled. It was why they made such a devoted couple. “Never.”

~~~*~~~

He didn’t hurt her. He didn’t add to the bruises she already had. If not for the insistent pounding in her temples, she might have relaxed enough to have gone to sleep while he explored her body and Willow let the numbness settle in. The weight of it was comforting. He didn’t talk. She felt oddly grateful to him for that. She didn’t want to know what he was thinking or feeling.

By the time it was sex, actual intercourse with corresponding parts fitting together, she was sufficiently well prepared to receive him that it didn’t hurt. There was a distinct lack of urgency in it, on his part as well as hers. She could have gone to sleep, lulled there by the gentle rocking of his body against hers, light years away from anything like an orgasm, or feeling beyond the resentment of being kept from sleep for this. She was grateful for that too. Whatever bizarre thing had happened in the club, alcohol induced lack of inhibition, it wasn’t being repeated.

It was also taking too long.

A muscle in her cheek quivered. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes to look at him. He was on his elbows, keeping his weight off her chest. She kept her gaze fixed on his shoulder, where it joined his neck. His skin was as pale as hers, but more translucent. She could see the fine tracery of blue veins under his skin. It made him look oddly fragile.

Despite their many advantages, vampires were fragile creatures. A vampire that had belonged to Angelus had walked into a classroom during their junior year to deliver a message to Buffy. Already smoldering when she entered the classroom, she burst into flames when she flung off the blanket she had used to protect herself from the sunlight pouring in through the windows. A life, or as Spike put it, an unlife, casually disposed of. No one to really trust, not even the vampire who made you. Vulnerable to stakes, holy water, decapitation, and direct sunlight. Advantaged by strength, speed, and immorality—the lack of moral qualms seemed to be more an advantage than not, even if it did seem to be connected to a lack of discretion that was ultimately self-destructive.

His fingertips came to rest lightly on her face. His thumbs stroked her jaw bones. Heaving an inward sigh, she forced herself to meet his gaze. He looked amused.

“Waking up yet?”

His fingertips massaged her temples, soothing away some of the ache.

He had picked up some of her body heat, but the distinctions in their body temperatures were still sharp enough to be noticeable.

It came to her slowly, that she could finish this. In a purely mechanical way, her body understood what to do to bring the act to completion. If she tilted her pelvis just so, and arched her back a little, maybe tightening up her abdominal muscles, and made the appropriate noises, she could draw this to a conclusion and go to sleep at last. Pay him back in his own manipulative coin.

He saw exactly the moment that she figured it out. He wasn’t going to get tired or go away until he got what he wanted, though Spike wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted at the moment. He knew that, physically and mentally, she was completely spent. There had been something about that shoulder, turned to him when she got in bed that made him start this. He didn’t want the tired, distant girl she had become after she had been forced to wake up in the bath. He wanted the girl that he had nearly shagged on the floor of the club, the one who had panted and moaned under Georgia’s mouth. He had stroked her honeysuckle scented skin with his hands and his mouth until she was sufficiently aroused to fuck, and she had accepted this with a passivity that had been a little creepy, even for him.

She reminded him a little bit of Dru, who wasn’t always all there when he was inside of her. In some of the semi-lucid moments his princess struggled to hold on to, she would lay quiet in his arms, neither accepting nor rejecting him, letting him practice his considerable skills on her until she was moved to respond.

But Dru had never gotten that calculating look on her face. Purely feminine, knowing, and resigned. She had a completely different set of expectations. If she wanted to stop him from having sex with her, she’d tell him in no uncertain terms to get off of her and go away. She felt no responsibility for his orgasm unless she had instigated sex, and even then, she might loose interest before he did.

He was curious about what she would do with it.

Even as much as she loved Oz, sex with him had not been a grand mystical experience that made sense out of the big deal that sex was supposed to be. Sex was, in her opinion, pretty much what it seemed to be if you broke it down into the unthreatening descriptions in ‘Changing Bodies, Changing Lives’ that her mother had presented when Willow started eighth grade.  Sex was less hearts and flowers than a bead of sweat rolling off your boyfriend’s heaving shoulder and nailing you right between the eyes. Funny, and weird, and mostly nice, but not actually as nice as the feeling of being pleasantly tired and snuggly afterward. The first time they had had sex it had been a little awkward and fervent, with the impending doom factor weighing in. It went through stages, becoming less awkward, and a little more knowing as you figured out what worked and what didn’t.

In short, she had been here before, and she knew how to deal with it, so she let out a sigh, shoved aside the moral arguments, and bent her knees to get some leverage, thinking something along the lines of ‘let’s get this over with so I can go to sleep’.

The little roll of her hips didn’t catch him by surprise. He had seen her come to a decision about her non-participation. He knew she wasn’t thinking about much more than getting him off to get him off of her. Her first little sigh of pleasure was so patently fake that he almost laughed. He drew his knees up under him, his hands moving to her hips to guide her to him until she got the idea and matched his rhythm. He let his hands rove over her flat abdomen and breasts, cupping them, rolling her hardened nipples between his fingers while he watched her face.

Her eyes were squeezed shut and the muscles of her face were tense with concentration. She looked . . . disgruntled. He nuzzled her throat, seeking out the abused flesh he had sunk his fangs into. She lost her place when he did that, tightening up as she tensed in fear. He restricted himself to sucking lightly on her broken skin, picking up the faint impression of blood against the flat of his tongue while his hands stroked her sides and he moved a bit more insistently in her.

She felt a little odd around his cock. Too warm. It bordered on uncomfortable. Until she had started moving with him, she had felt . . . tight, but uncoordinated. When she shifted her hips into him, he had felt the muscles in her cunt grab at him. Much better. Almost there, he thought, letting his hands drift back to her breasts when she settled down. She hooked her leg around his hips, the muscles in her inner thigh tightening and he snaked an arm under her, his hand squeezing her ass as he supported the increased arch of her back. Under his lips he felt her throat vibrate with a startled sound he instinctively recognized.

Before she could analyze it and screw up a perfectly good, if not spectacular, shag, he slid his hand down her sleek belly to find her clit, using his thumb to rub it, alternating the pressure to squeeze it flat against the bone before dragging his thumb over it. She bucked under his hand like he had introduced live current to a flagging battery. Her eyes flew open in surprise. She brought her hands up to grab his arm, but for strength she was badly outclassed, and when he dragged his thumb over her clit again, thrusting more deliberately, her fingernails dug into his arm as her hips rocked into him, riding his cock and his hand.

He could feel her shaking as she got closer and closer, exhaustion competing with arousal. With a wail that was almost as despairing as pleasured she slammed into him, just the signal he had been waiting for. He drove into her harder, riding her orgasm until his own arrived, long delayed and extended deliciously in spasms that made him growl.

~~~*~~~

He enjoyed a long delayed post coital smoke while she scurried back into the robe and then to the bathroom, no doubt to purge herself of their mingled body fluids. She came back, staggering a little, glaring a lot, and settled herself back down as far as she could get from him on the bed with her back to him.

He regarded the glowing end of his cigarette for a moment. “Not bad for a first shag,” he said, wondering if he could get a rise out of her.

She huffed a little. “I liked your hand better,” she said snidely.

~Part: 17~

Oz had been given a version of the previous evening's events by Angel, who wanted him to go to San Francisco and see if he could pick up a trail before heading back to Sunnydale. Buffy and Giles were going forward with their plan to launch a no holds barred excavation to recover the Gem of Amara. Devon and the guys helped him pack up Willow’s things—Oz couldn’t bring himself to leave without taking the things that he thought meant the most to her. He sat in the passenger seat of the van, letting Devon drive, holding one of her sweaters in his lap while a million thoughts swirled through his head. She had almost gotten away. God, he was proud of her for that. Not surprised, and proud. Spike had found her before she got away. The thought made him shudder. What would he do to her?

Angel had seemed confident that he wouldn’t risk his trade by hurting her, but Oz didn’t believe that for a moment. He had seen what Angelus had done to Giles, and was afraid that Spike would do something similar to Willow for no other reason than to discourage another escape attempt. His hands tightened on her sweater. His stomach lurched at the mental images that he couldn’t avoid. What would he do to her? Cut her? Hit her? Angelus had broken Giles’ fingers, one by one.

Oz closed his eyes, seeing her hands. Her hands were beautiful. Her fingers were long. With their palms resting against each other, his palm was larger, but her fingers were longer. He had noticed it early on, and kind of envied her those long fingers, imagining the span that they could achieve. Her hands were so smooth compared to his, battered by guitar strings. Other than a spot on her index finger from her slightly odd grip on a pen, she didn’t have any calluses. The fingernail on her left pinky was always a little short from her habit of nibbling on it while she was mousing with her right hand, and there was a small scar on the base of her thumb from falling out of a tree when she was seven.

It wasn’t the first thing he had noticed about her. He remembered seeing her at the Bronze in her Eskimo costume, her face turned up so that the fur from her hood framed her face like dandelion fluff, and he had thought she had the sweetest face, the sweetest smile he had ever seen.

Would Spike see that? Would he see that and would it make him stop? Or would the idea of bruising something that guileless and beautiful just egg him on?

Devon cast an anxious sideways glance at him once they were on the highway. Chris and Dan were quiet, not really knowing what to do or say.

Devon cleared his throat. “What’s on the sweater?” he asked. “Flowers? Kittens?”

Oz’s eyes opened. He blinked a couple of times and took a deep breath, looking down at the sweater. It was an older sweater, the yarn wear softened. Willow kept it next to her bed, and if she got cold at night, she put it on. He made himself look at it. “Bears,” he said with a slight hitch in his voice that made Chris blanch.

He held it up, “See? Bears.”

And sure enough, the sweater had little bears all over it. Row upon row of them in every color you could think of, marching in horizontal lines. “Oh, that’s, uh . . . cute,” Devon managed to say.

Oz looked at him like he was crazy. “It’s . . . cute?”

Devon looked at him uneasily. “Well, I’m not an expert on cuteness, but yeah, I guess it could be considered cute,” he said cautiously, refraining from pointing out that Oz was the one with the death grip on the sweater.

“I think it’s hideous,” Dan piped up. “Are you sure it's Willow’s? She wears some funky shit, but that’s just silly looking.”

Chris kicked him. Willow wore some pretty silly shit, too. ‘Shut up’ he mouthed at Dan.

“Yeah, it’s hers,” Oz breathed in her scent, lingering in the yarn. “She wears it to sleep in sometimes.”

Devon found himself biting his lower lip, hard. “So, that’s like, Willow Rosenberg lingerie, huh? You are a freaky little monkey boy.”

There was a long pause, and then Chris started snickering.

Oz looked down at the sweater and started to smile. “Dog boy,” he corrected with a mock disdainful sniff, aware that Devon was trying to distract him, and grateful for it.

~~~*~~~

They had no trouble finding the Temple with Angel’s directions. It was a little after two in the afternoon and the club doors were open. They went in and Devon asked to see the manager about booking the band. That was the cover story they had all agreed on. If they got a good lead on Spike, it would give them a reason to be in the club that evening if they had to stick around. They were shown into a lounge where, to Oz’s surprise, and Devon’s dismay, they found a pale, weary looking Harmony Kendall sitting at a table in the back.

Her eyes widened in surprise.

It had not been a good night for Harmony. She had been looking forward to the opportunity to get dressed up and go out for the evening. Georgia had even let her go shopping with her and they had killed a security guard and gone shopping at a small boutique, after hours. Harmony had been annoyed at being forced to bag her own purchases, but she had walked off with an armful of new clothes and had spent the evening before they had gone out having a little fashion show for Pete, who had not been much help.

She settled on a pink strapless dress that she knew she looked good in. Pete had made a comment about her looking like she was going to a prom that she had taken as a compliment. The club was a let down. Full of vampires listening to awful music that hadn’t been popular in her lifetime. She had wandered upstairs to the club filled with humans. A pair of demon bouncers had locked her into an old meat locker and she hadn’t been let out until well after dawn, effectively trapping her in the club until sundown. Pete was gone. The people in the club had given her icky tasting blood to drink and waved crosses in her face and threatened to stake her, which was just rude.

She was leaning toward blaming Willow. Nothing had gone right since she had seen Willow in San Jose. She had to live in a run down motel for days with a bunch of minions who laughed at her when she tried to order them around. Being a vampire sucked. With a look on her face that was almost wistful, she realized that the best time she had had recently as a vampire had also been with Willow. Between almost killing her, and talking about handbag design, and shopping, Willow had been almost okay and pretty yummy tasting, too.

She couldn’t believe it when Devon and Oz walked in with two boys she vaguely remembered from being in their band. Seeing someone she knew was a relief.

“Harmony?” Oz said.

“I can’t believe it,” she blinked at them. She ignored Oz. “Devon!”

Devon looked uncomfortable. He had dated Harmony for a while during her senior year at Sunnydale High. “Uh, hi, Harmony,” he said. “This is . . .”

“Unexpected,” Oz filled in.

Devon accepted the ad-lib. “Yeah. Unexpected,” he echoed.

“I can’t believe it,” she repeated. “Just when I was ready to give up, you come walking through the door,” she was looking at Devon like he was the answer to her prayers. She got up and walked toward him, looking a little bedraggled, but pretty good, Devon had to admit before reminding himself that he had broken up with her because she made him want to pound his head into the nearest wall.

The hair on the back of Oz’s neck prickled with a sensation he had come to recognize. It was the wolf in him sensing a threat. He sniffed, suddenly alert and wary. Just before Harmony reached Devon, Oz grabbed his t-shirt and pulled him back. “You’re a vampire,” he said, flatly.

Harmony pouted. “I’m still a girl. I’m still me. And I want to go home,” she wailed.

“She’s a what?” Devon had nodded his way through vampires, vampire slayer, and werewolf, but being confronted with the reality in the shape of an ex-girlfriend was a bit of a shock. She didn’t look any different.

“She’s a vampire,” Oz said again. “Blood sucking—never mind,” he shook his head. His attention was focused on Harmony, and his hand was wrapped around a stake. He showed it to her. “That’s close enough. Don’t make me use this,” he warned.

“Everyone is so mean to me,” she wailed, her face crumpling in a mask of misery. “My boyfriend left me here. I’m stuck here until sundown. I don’t have anywhere to stay,” she whined. “It's not fair. I didn’t do anything to deserve this. I’m beautiful and . . . I was a cheerleader!”

“She seems like the Harmony we know,” Devon commented.

Unnervingly so, Oz was inclined to agree. “You were here last night?”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Los Angeles? Willow said—“

Oz seized on that. “You’ve seen Willow? Did you see her last night?”

“Sure,” Harmony sniffed. Willow. It figured. “She came with us.”

The club manager walked in, looking annoyed to see their unwilling vampire guest chatting with the band who had come in inquiring about bookings. Should have staked her, he thought for the third or fourth time that morning. He took in Oz’s defensive posture and stake. That was different.

“Are you sure that you are a band?” he asked warily.

Harmony answered for them, “Dingoes Ate My Baby. Isn’t that a stupid name?” she observed. “It's not very catchy, you know, like Backstreet Boys, or N’Sync.”

Devon made a gagging noise, and Dan laughed nervously while Chris muttered a disgusted, “Oh, geez. You dated her, man,” to Devon.

The manager considered them for a moment. Having a band that actually was clued in as to what went on above and below stairs at the Temple was an intriguing notion. “You got a CD?” he asked.

~~~*~~~

Buffy answered the phone at Giles' when Oz called to check in. Xander, Angel, and Giles were in the tunnels armed with pickaxes to start digging. She was on phone duty since Angel expected Oz to check in. The story he had to tell was bizarre even for the Hellmouth. He had gone to the Temple and found Harmony, who was now a vampire, and she had seen Willow as recently as twelve hours ago, though she had no idea where she was now. Oz was bringing her back to Sunnydale with him in the event that more useful information could be coaxed or coerced out of her.

“Sounds dangerous,” Buffy said, thinking of an eight-hour road trip with a vampire in the back of the van.

“Yeah,” Oz agreed. “We’re stopping at Home Depot to get some chains to keep her from getting any bitey ideas,” he admitted.

Vampire Harmony? “What’s she like?” Buffy asked.

“Pretty much the same Harmony,” Oz told her.

Thinking of an eight hour road trip with Harmony Kendall, Buffy winced.

~~~*~~~

Willow woke up to the sound of rain. Or it seemed like rain to her. For a moment, she thought she was back in her bed in her room, listening to rain hit the French doors. She kept her eyes closed, snuggling into her pillow, warmly wrapped up in soft terry cloth and softer sheets. The rich aroma of coffee teased her. It wasn’t ordinary coffee. It was expensive coffee that carried a hint of hazelnut. When her parents came home from a trip, they brought presents like flavored coffee, or bags of pink cinnamon candies, chocolates, and chewy, dense bagels from New York delis.

Her stomach rumbled. Starvation threatened. Sleep beckoned. Difficult choices loomed ahead.

The air was cool and dry. After days of waking up to the scents of cheap, harsh detergent, stale cigarette smoke, and air heavy with dust and dry rot it felt wonderful in her nose. She recognized the cool dryness of central air conditioning. Nothing to compete with the faded scent of honeysuckle, the aroma of coffee, the bakery smell with cinnamon, and the not unpleasant musky odor of sex.

The rainy sound was cut off. Half asleep, Willow felt the muscles in her neck tightening. Rain didn’t just stop. She opened her eyes.

She was alone in a room that she recognized, though she hadn’t spent much time last night taking in the change of scenery. A pair of chrome light fixtures flanking the closed bathroom door provided the only light in the room, illuminating a wall that was painted dark red with a finish that looked leathery. Just about as far from her soft white walled bedroom as she could conceivably be, she noted with a heavy feeling in her chest.

She sat up after a moment, realizing that she was alone in the room. She rearranged the robe that had loosened a bit in her sleep and looked around for clues as to where she was. She was guessing some kind of hotel room though there were no windows, which was odd. It was the hallway door, with its peephole and the heavy hardware of the doorknob and the ball and hook mechanism that substituted for a chain guard on the door that tipped her off. It was the kind of door found in your better hotels, minus the framed recap of the room rates.

There was an armoire, slightly off center to the bed that held a television. She flipped the covers back and got out of bed, still feeling a little stiff from last night. Her left foot throbbed, but the pain was tolerable under the circumstances. She looked for a telephone. Hotel rooms had phones. Where was it?

There was a tray on the table with a gleaming carafe of coffee, coffee cups, and a plate with a domed cover. The small shape of a cell phone caught her eye, and she made her way over to it, dropping the cell phone into the pocket of the robe. Spike’s leather coat was draped over the back of a chair. She had worn it once, when they were pretending to be civil. She had a mental map of the pockets and quickly started to go through them looking for the keys to the Desoto and money, in that order.

Keys, check. She gripped them, feeling the sharp edges bite into her fingers, reminding her with sharp regret of the keys she had taken down from the pegboard in the Shell station. If she had had any guts, she would have grabbed the keys, hung up the phone on Angel and Giles, and taken the first working car she could find in the lot and gotten the hell out of there. Instead she had allowed herself to be tethered to a phone, waiting for someone else to save her instead of going with what had been working for her all along. Seizing every opportunity that presented itself and going with it to put more distance between her and Spike. She would never make that mistake again.

Wallet. She dropped it into the pocket of the robe, feeling a surge of triumph as she darted to the door. She stopped herself. The gloating satisfaction of a well-timed escape was usually the prelude to disaster. What had she forgotten?

Weapon, she reminded herself. Looking around, she spotted Spike’s lighter. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. She wasn’t strong enough to break one of the chairs to improvise a stake. She went to the door, hearing the lock disengage with a sharp twist of her wrist. She jerked the door open and found herself facing a bored looking Pete, sitting in a chair opposite the door with his hands folded over his stomach and his legs stretched out in front of him.

He didn’t look surprised to see her there, or alarmed. He looked amused.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

She flipped the top of the Zippo back, and thumbed the wheel to light it, tossing it at him. The Zippo landed on his chest, above his folded arms. Realizing what she had done, and being highly flammable, the vampire jumped to his feet with a snarl, game face springing into place as he slapped at his chest. Willow got about three feet into the otherwise empty corridor before she was brought up short by the collar of her robe.

It was Spike, wet from the shower, with a towel loosely slung around his waist who had snagged the robe.

“Lighter?” he drawled. “Now, that was inspired, pet,” he said as Pete lunged forward. He jerked Willow back, out of the enraged vampire’s path. “Ah-ah-ah,” he scolded. “Told you to be careful, didn’t I?” he reminded a growling Pete, hooking his arm around Willow’s neck as he backed them both into the room. “I’ll take it from here,” he dismissed the younger vampire, letting the heavy door shut in his face.

Willow tried to elbow him in the gut, and connected, but he seemed unimpressed with her effort. His forearm tightened around her neck.

He searched the pockets of the robe with his free hand, retrieving his wallet and cell phone. She was getting better at this. Much more organized. She kicked him, and he shook her.

“This is the way the game is played, Red. Twitch, and you loose the robe,” he told her, sounding cheerful. He felt her heart pounding through the thick terry cloth that separated her back from his chest. His fingers stroked the side of her neck, feeling her pulse pounding under his fingers. She flinched when his fingers brushed the bite mark he had left.

He figured that she had gotten the message, and released her. He reached around her to throw the deadbolt on the door and she scrambled away from him.

Fed up with being treated like she was a minor inconvenience, and determined that they were never going back to her complying with his wishes, Willow shifted the keys in her grip until the sharp ends were free. She put every bit of bitter temper and humiliation into a backhanded swing when he turned back to her, ready to gouge his eyes out.

When he turned back she came at him with the car keys. He jerked his head back fast enough to keep from loosing an eye. Dropping the wallet and cell phone to deal with the more immediate threat she posed, he seized her wrist in a brutal grip and pried the keys out of her hand, hearing her make a sound that was less pained than frustrated and enraged. It should have been pained. Had he squeezed her wrist much harder, bones would have cracked, and she was going to have a nasty bruise. The teary eyed kitten was gone. Her narrow green eyes glowed with fury. She looked like a pissed off alley cat. It was an improvement over the sniveling, he decided before he grasped a handful of the robe.

“Fancy spending the day naked, do you?” he sneered at her, shaking her like a rag doll. “I’m going to give you a second chance at this, pet. I strongly advise you to take it. You hit, I hit back. You provoke me one more time, and I’m taking the robe and handcuffing you to the bed, where you will stay until I feel like letting you go. Do you understand me?”

She closed her eyes, blocking him out. He had used appeals to reasonable self-interest to control her from the start, and it infuriated her that her resolve was crumbling in the face of the familiar tactic.

“No bathroom privileges,” he taunted. “Nothing to eat or drink,” he ticked off the deprivations in store for her. “And if you didn’t like having me smack your ass a couple of times with a belt, just imagine me beating you until you can’t move, which is starting to appeal to me right now.”

They were engaged in a contest of wills that he could not afford to loose, and as usual he was handicapped by her limited concept of exactly how much harm he could do to her.

“Do. You. Understand. Me,” he ground out, vamping out.

Her eyes opened and she lost her nerve. A primal scream was trapped in her throat as he jerked her closer to him, his hand in her hair yanking her head painfully to one side. The implicit threat of being bitten, again, reached her as nothing else had. “Yes,” she managed to say.

Amber eyes glowing, he released her, and she stumbled on legs that were shaking. His gaze raked her contemptuously. “I thought you were smarter than this.”

She needed to sit down. Keeping her eyes on him, she made her way over to the table and collapsed into one of the chairs.

He shook off the game face. “We don’t have to do this, you know,” he said, annoyed with her. “I think I’ve demonstrated that I’m willing to treat you reasonably well.”

She stared at him in appalled fascination. He had to be kidding. He had kidnapped her. He had had fairly unpleasant sex with her, orgasm notwithstanding. Where was the reasonably well in that?

“I need you breathing,” he said, breaking it down to the lowest common denominator for her. “Hell, not to put too fine a point on it, I don’t even need that. I just need them to think that you are still breathing. I could kill you and turn you.”

It wasn’t a new thought. He had mentioned it to Angel last night and now it was back again, tickling his sense of humor. He could turn her, and deliver her back to the Slayer on a silver platter, forcing her to stake her best friend. Now, that was an idea with merit. Of course, the unmentioned deterrent in this plan was that they had Angel on board, and Spike knew, even over a phone line, that Angel would pick up on the subtle signs that she was no longer amongst the living.

Willow felt dizzy. She heard him at a distance. She felt like she was looking at him through a tunnel. She could feel herself balanced on a precipice with her life, literally on the line. She had thought, when she was in the coffee shop, and seeing Spike sitting across from her that she understood that she was in danger. She had thought when she tried to slip away from Georgia and Spike in the club, to get back to the dance floor, that she understood that she was in danger. Her grasp of that had never diminished over the last week and a half, but it was brought home to her in a terrifying way that she hadn’t understood the full scope of her peril. There were worse things than dying. Infinitely worse things.

She didn’t want to die. She really didn’t want to be turned into a vampire.

Spike thought that she looked like she was going to pass out. He had gotten her attention, at last. He smirked. “Just an idea, Red,” he told her, not bothering to tell her that it wasn’t one he had discarded. She would figure that out when the time came.

“I’m just letting you know where I’m coming from. You’ve played a shitty hand so far, and come out in one piece. If you want to stay that way, you better put your outraged virtue in perspective. No one has done anything to you that is worth you dying over.”

She shuddered, hugging herself, wishing that he would go away and leave her alone with her queasy stomach and the buzzing in her ears.

Impressed with his success, Spike decided to back off, so to speak. He had seen Angelus at work. Cruelty followed by kindness. He strolled over to the table and poured her a cup of coffee. After an assessing look at her stricken face, he loaded it up with sugar and cream, figuring that she needed it to counteract the shock.

“Have a cup of coffee. You look like you could use it. You’re really not completely with it this morning, or you would have worked out how stupid that was, right, Red?” He pushed the chair until the arms were under the table, effectively trapping her there.

He pulled the other chair over at a right angle to hers, and sat in it, picking up his cigarettes from the table. His Zippo? Where was it? He got up, collecting the wallet, cell phone and keys from the floor where they had been scattered, setting them on the table. He opened the door to the hallway to look for his lighter. Pete had vacated his position outside the door, which was more or less expected. Spike found the lighter lying on the hallway floor and picked it up. He hadn’t gotten across the room fast enough to see the expression on the other vampire’s face when Red had tossed the lit lighter at him, but he was willing to bet it was startled.

Humans taught to fight back were a novelty away from the Hellmouth. Adrenaline, fear, and an instinct for self-preservation occasionally trumped the whole vampire package, and the human won, but that was mostly through carelessness and stupidity on the vampire’s part.

When he came back to the table Willow had her hands around the coffee cup and she was sipping the coffee, still looking a little glassy eyed. He lit a cigarette, positioned a heavy cut glass ashtray within range, and lifted the lid on the plate. A pair of cinnamon rolls slathered with thick white icing rested on the plate.

Not hungry? He eyed her thoughtfully, leaning forward to pick up her injured foot. She did not like that at all. Her eyes narrowed and she stiffened up, but she didn’t try to remove her foot. The damage to her great toe probably looked worse than it was with the way the nail was torn and split down into the nail bed. He glanced at her face and then at her hands.

Her grip on the coffee cup had changed enough that he figured she was thinking about throwing it at him.

He let go of her foot and leaned back into the chair. “You might as well say it,” he invited. “You throw a cup of hot coffee at me, and . . . I’ll break one of your fingers?” He gestured with the cigarette. “Burn your skin, right under your left eye,” his specificity was deliberate. It advanced the deliberate inflection of pain from a threat to a plan. ”That ought to hurt like hell.”

He watched her carefully set the coffee cup on the saucer, her gaze fixed on it with a determination that suggested that she was paying attention. He took a drag on his cigarette, gesturing to her with it. “So, instead of sitting there, keeping your tongue between your teeth, and letting your emotions lead you places where loosing leaves a mark, you might as well get it out.”

She picked up the coffee cup with a hand that shook only slightly and brought it to her lips to take a dainty sip.

The silent treatment. How novel. Effective too. He didn’t like being ignored. It irritated him. It made him want to get her attention. Before he acted on the thought she broke her self imposed silence, which hadn’t lasted very long.

“Are you really going to go through with this?” she spoke. “Are you going to make a trade with them? A real trade, with no tricks,” she specified.

Spike’s eyebrows rose. “Do you think I’d go to the trouble of keeping you alive for any other reason?”

Prevarication, Willow thought. He answered a question with a question that gave nothing away. She could count on him to lie. He either didn’t know the answer to the question, which was highly likely given the fact that he seemed to drift towards impulsiveness, or he planned a double cross, like turning her into a vampire before giving her back. Either way, she had absolutely nothing to loose.

Her lip curled. “No, then,” she concluded.

He didn’t like that. She was right, and points to her for not letting her fear of the outcome keep her from seeing where this was headed, but he didn’t like her thinking she had him all figured out.

“Careful, Red. We shagged. I’m not your fucking boyfriend. Don’t even pretend you know what I’m thinking.”

“Did I say that?” She was direct. “And don’t flatter yourself. I have a boyfriend.”

He leaned back against the back of the chair. “Remembered that, did you? Before, during, or after we shagged?”

She didn’t flinch. “During,” she said curtly. She managed to look down her nose at him, an impressive feat given her lack of inches, devout inoffensiveness, and propensity for guilty musings. He had read her scribbles in her notebook.

“Coffee, cinnamon rolls . . . what? No flowers? And, you, the closet romantic. I’m disappointed,” she said, dripping sarcasm.

Her hand was steadier on the coffee cup as she lifted it to her lips again. He watched her, fascinated by the change in her. He figured she would collapse, like sponge cake, molded into any shape he chose given sufficient pressure. She had, from the start, gone to what probably worked best for her dealing with other people. Helpful, harmless, cheerful, and child-like. Scratch that away, and she was unexpectedly astringent. A hell of a lot more tough minded than he expected her to be.

“It’s going to happen again, pet,” he told her. “You, me,” he smiled wickedly, “maybe Georgia, too, rolling around in bed together. Count on it.”

Her only sign of distress was in the way her lips thinned and her gaze wavered. A little color crept into her cheeks. He could tell she was struggling for a comeback and failing. She expected to fail. She wasn’t good at this, and deep down, she knew it.

He crushed out the cigarette. “And you’ll like it,” his voice was pure velvet.

She looked around the expensively decorated room, taking in the coffee service, and the lounging vampire. She wasn’t blind or stupid. She didn’t need to look at him to be reminded of what he was. From the first moment he had walked into their lives she had recognized him—or at least she had seen what he seemed to be most of the time. A beautiful boy with a tinge of something exotic that came from the cheekbones, the accent, and the knowing look in his eyes. A visitor from a land of cool that Willow could only recognize. The idea that he ever noticed that she existed as a person, rather than an appendage to Buffy was so remote that she didn’t think he saw her in any other way, even now.

The idea that he was simply a beautiful boy had been shattered in less than ten minutes. He had lured Buffy out of the Bronze simply to study her fighting technique. After that, he had been categorized and studied. Species, vampire. Name, Spike, aka William the Bloody, childe of Dru, childe of Angelus, killer of two Slayers. Smart, dangerous, deadly, and so far, unsuccessful at killing Buffy, though that was a two way street. Buffy hadn’t managed to dust him either.

And she was Willow Rosenberg. Her wildest daydreams ran to being moderately well liked, having a boyfriend, and being regarded as someone with a small but useful gift. She felt a surge of irritation at him and at herself.

“Well, duh,” she said in response to his taunt that she would like having sex with him or Georgia. Aside from it being a more or less established fact, they were gorgeous and sexy, and they probably knew more about sex than she did about computers, which was saying something. If she were a boy would it even come into question? If this was Xander and not her and his choices ranged from abuse and torture to relative comfort and weird sex with the undead, she would have shrugged off weird sex as the lesser of two evils.

It wasn’t that simple. If she survived, she was going to have to deal with what happened and how she felt about it. The thought of anyone else knowing about what she had done in the last twenty-four hours made her feel queasy with fear and guilt. The thought of what it meant, what it said about her, was something that made her flinch. She was not sharing that with Spike. She knew that kind of weakness was something he would not hesitate to exploit.

He blinked back surprise, schooling his features to keep from showing how taken aback he was. As comebacks went, duh, lacked for glib wit, but there was enough derision in it to make up ground. She had recovered her composure enough to start eating. Her small fingers tore off a piece of the cinnamon roll and she ate it. Her cheeks were flushed with splotchy color and she looked angry and determined. He took another drag on his cigarette and swiped her saucer, flicking ash into it, to give his hands something to do.

He refilled her coffee cup, watching her cut her eyes at him. She looked unimpressed by the implied courtesy of the gesture. If she kept this up, he was going to work himself up to a crush, he decided.

~Part: 18~

Gem of Amara.

The pickaxe Buffy swung impacted with the heavily packed soil. Soil exploded. Not as satisfyingly as concrete, but there was a puff of aerated dirt where the pickaxe bit into the soil and a few heavy chunks of earth parted from the tunnel face. She got in a couple more blows before standing aside to let Xander shovel the dirt into a waiting wheel barrow.

Two feet a day, my ass, Buffy thought. Giles had finally shared his grimly pessimistic estimate with them. Buffy was having none of it. With her bare hands and a nail file, she would do better than two miserly feet a day.

Xander stepped out of her way and she attacked the face of the tunnel that they were digging to the probable location of the underground crypt. Angel and Giles had taken the first shift. They had broken through the concrete and brick tunnel where the excavation had been started just before she and Xander arrived to relieve them. She was determined to give Giles his two feet and then some, maybe double it, before he and Angel returned. They would be bringing lumber to reinforce the tunnel they were making. It would do no one any good to have a tunnel that collapsed around them before they recovered the Gem of Amara.

The translation Giles had labored over hadn’t given them a description of the Gem of Amara, but they had a basic grasp of what it was purported to do for a vampire. Render them invulnerable was the upshot. Impervious to stakes, holy water, holy symbols, and sunlight. Not that Buffy considered that unkillable. Would Spike die if she cut off his head? She had just the sword for it, she thought. Would he be alive once his head was separated from his body?

Maybe they could take him apart piece by piece. Angel could keep his head on a book shelf. They could put him on the top of the tree at Christmas. She paused to share these ideas with Xander as he removed the fresh pile of debris. Giles might have looked disapproving at her glibly blood-thirsty notions. Xander elaborated on them. He was trying not to look as tired as he was. They had been at this for hours, and he didn’t have her advantages. She didn’t say anything about it. The last thing Xander wanted to be reminded of now was that he wasn’t up to this, and she understood that.

Admired it. Her friends had none of the Slayer attributes. This wasn’t their destiny, or their duty. They got hurt more often than she was comfortable with, and still, they kept coming back for more. It wasn’t just loyalty to her. They believed in what they were doing. This time it was personal. It was more than just fighting the bad things the Hellmouth attracted. It was about one of their own.

~~~*~~~

“I’m hungry,” Harmony whined.

Devon was driving. Dan was in the front passenger seat playing navigator, though it really wasn’t necessary. They were going home. Oz was in the back, facing Harmony with a small crossbow at the ready.

The crossbow, a couple of stakes, and a bottle of holy water had been the parting gifts of the manager at the Temple, who had been relieved to have Harmony removed from his club and skeptical about the wisdom of traveling with her in daylight. Oz had fixed a tarp up over the rear windows leaving Harmony effectively trapped in a small zone of darkness.

Harmony was the last person who had seen Willow, therefore, she was coming with them back to Sunnydale. If they got lucky, Spike might be willing to trade Willow for her. Or she might be able to tell them something useful. There had to be a good reason for bringing her back to Sunnydale. There had to be a good reason to justify eight hours in a van with Harmony Kendall.

“Want some Doritos?” Chris asked, holding up a half empty bag.

“Uh . . . no!” Harmony huffed. She rolled her eyes. “Doritos? Not even when I was alive.”

Oz felt a headache coming on. “You do get the concept? Vampire? Drinks blood?” he hinted to Chris.

“Oh . . . right,” Chris looked at the Doritos. “Ix-nay on the Doritos,” he concluded.

“You can’t just starve me. You’re violating my rights,” Harmony argued.

“You’re dead,” Oz reminded her. “You don’t have any rights to violate.”

“When my boyfriend finds out how mean you have been to me, you’re going to get it,” Harmony predicted darkly.

“Right,” Oz nodded. “And your boyfriend is?” he prompted.

“A vampire. A really powerful vampire. With minions, and stuff,” Harmony tossed her hair. “He’s going to tear you limb from limb when he finds out what you’ve done to me.”

“Who is this boyfriend of yours Harmony?” Oz asked.

She examined her fingernails. “You wouldn’t know him,” she scoffed. She wasn’t about to admit to a big loser like Oz that her boyfriend was kind of a minion. She wasn’t totally clear on Pete’s position relative to the other vampires, but it was lower than a list of more than three, which didn’t sound very impressive to her.

Oz decided to try a different line of questioning. “How are you connected with Spike kidnapping Willow?”

Harmony gave the question due consideration. She rolled her eyes. “Willow. It’s always Willow. This is her fault. Everything was going great until she showed up. We were going to France, and then it all changed. And Spike was like, mean to me. Really mean. He hit me! Me!” she was outraged.

“He hit you?” Devon was outraged on her behalf. “That’s messed up!”

Oz considered another review on the nature of vampires and considered his audience. Okay, maybe not so important. He saw Harmony’s expression brighten as she realized that she had at least one sympathetic listener in Devon.

“I don’t have to take that,” Harmony asserted.

“No, you don’t,” Devon’s gaze flicked from the road to the rear view mirror. The fact that he couldn’t see Harmony in it didn’t faze him.

Oz studied her thoughtfully, wishing Angel was there. His insights on the dynamics of vampire relationships might have shed more light on what was going on. “Does he, has he hit Willow?” he asked, unable to keep the tremor out of his voice.

Harmony caught the slight tremble and cocked her head to one side, recognizing it as an appropriate response. Oz was Willow’s boyfriend, and he was obviously worried about her, which was exactly what he was supposed to be. She gave a spare shake of her head, deciding that biting Willow was definitely something she ought to keep to herself.

“No,” she said. “She’s okay.”

Oz took a deep breath, nodding. “You’re better off with us,” he told her. “Spike is going down. This is personal, you know? He took Willow.”

Eying the crossbow, Harmony nodded slowly. “I’m getting that,” she confirmed. He was kind of small and unassuming, and that hair—but, he was getting all of this right. She squinted at him and tried to imagine him in khaki trousers, tassel loafers, and a polo shirt, an outfit Pete had embraced before Spike showed up to make fun of him. If his hair was thinned out, he would almost look like a younger version of her Dad.

She set aside her own role in Willow’s abduction, which had really been incidental. She wouldn’t have kidnapped Willow. That was all Spike. He was the bad guy here. What loyalty did she owe to a vampire who wouldn’t even provide her with the most basic beauty supplies? She would have just killed her—she was awfully yummy—Harmony recalled wistfully. Spike had stolen her kill, and the way she saw it, Harmony had dibs on killing Willow. She had known her since kindergarten. Willow was almost like family, and she had the distinct impression from some of the things that Georgia and Colin had said that killing members of your family was a vampire rite of passage that she had been deprived of.

“Yeah,” she nodded, eyes glowing amber. “It is personal. He stole Willow. Our Willow. Who does he think he is?”

~~~*~~~

The van that Giles had rented to transport materials to their dig site was backed up to the covered loading dock at Home Depot. Angel stayed inside the van, accepting the banded stacks of two by fours that were guided in from the loading dock. If anyone thought this arrangement was odd, they didn’t say so. He had offered to help pay for the rental and the supplies, but Giles had simply looked at him for a long moment and then declined.

After the van was fully loaded with the supplies that had been purchased, Giles came around to the driver’s side, careful to disengage the door before opening it, giving Angel plenty of time to find a position that would not expose him to the direct sunlight coming in from the driver’s side door. He sat on the floor of the van between stacks of lumber, a relatively safe position.

Giles started the van, turning back to him to say something, and then stopping. He shook his head. “I’m so accustomed to the children, that I almost asked if you wanted to stop at a drive thru to get something to eat,” he admitted as he pulled away from the loading dock, making a minute adjustment to the sideview mirror. “We should stop, to get something for Buffy and Xander, don’t you think?”

“No,” Angel said. “Send Xander. It’s his thing, getting the food, and he’ll need a break, but he won’t take one unless it’s for a good reason. Like feeding Buffy.”

Impressed by this reasoning, Giles nodded. “You’re right. Xander has been . . . he’s very concerned about Willow.”

Angel rested his arms across his knees, letting his hands dangle.

“How concerned about Willow are you?” Giles asked.

Angel stared at his hands. “If we don’t talk to her in the next three days, I’m going to start thinking that it is because she is dead,” he said.

“Why?” Giles asked. His eyes automatically went to the rear view mirror before he remembered that he would not be able to see his passenger.

“Controlling his temper isn’t Spike’s strong suit. He may have killed her last night,” Angel pointed out. “We don’t know otherwise. He also hinted that he was thinking about turning her,”

“And, you think he might?”

“I think he’s thinking about it, or he wouldn’t have said it,” Angel made a disgusted sound. “Jesus,” he muttered. “I forgot to ask him about Dru,” he admitted. “He had me rattled, which was half of the reason he was being coy about Willow.”

“Why three days?” Giles asked.

“Assuming that he killed her last night or sometime today, it will take that long for her to rise and get any control over her demon,” Angel explained. “Most fledges have trouble maintaining any control over their features, and talking around fangs takes some practice, and all the electronic noises that clutter a phone line? It’s too distracting. After that, with some work and a lot of feeding, he might be able to make her convincing enough to fool me.”

Normally Giles would have been fascinated by these insights, and there was the trained Watcher portion of his brain that was storing this information away to be examined later.

They left the interstate at the exit near the University. There was a hand made sign posted on the exit ramp directing students to a locally owned college bookstore. For a moment his vision blurred, as it suddenly hit him that it was quite possible that Willow would not be buying books for her first semester of college in a few short weeks.

“Damn it,” he swore softly. “She left a public place with Spike. Why? Damn it! Why would she do something so unforgivably stupid?” he demanded.

Angel frowned. “We still don’t know what happened in San Jose,” he pointed out. “It’s not her fault, Giles.”

“I bloody well know that!” Giles exclaimed. “Once he has the Gem of Amara, it’s Buffy he will come for next,” he predicted.

Angel didn’t doubt that for a moment. “Buffy, you, me, Xander if he’s anywhere around. I don’t think Spike will remember to get him if he isn’t around being . . . Xander,” Angel’s tone was unintentionally humorous. “He’ll settle scores first.”

“I can’t permit that to happen,” Giles admitted tightly. “Buffy will not listen to reason—and I’d hardly expect her to be reasonable about this,” Giles said. “God! I’m a bastard. I’m as much a cold, bloody-minded bastard as that prat Wesley was.”

Angel frowned at that. “You didn’t agree with Wesley when he veto’d the plan to trade the Box of Gavroc for Willow.”

“No, I didn’t,” Giles agreed bitterly. “I was too busy relishing the fact that my Slayer wouldn’t work with another Watcher,” he stated with self-loathing. “But, he was right. Every life we lost graduation day was a life that paid for Willow’s, and I watched them die and did not regret it even for an instant. Principal Snyder—hardly a loss there. Harmony Kendall? Spoilt, self-absorbed twit. Larry—“ his voice cracked.

Angel had an icy feeling that crawled up his spine when he realized that Giles knew the names of every person that died the day the Mayor ascended and that their names and faces and the small details of their lives lay on his conscience. “Stop it Giles,” he said quietly, forcefully. “People died, but without Willow we wouldn’t have known how to stop the ascension, or when it was going to happen,” Angel reminded him. “The pages Willow stole from the Books of Ascension were the key to taking him down.”

“Well, we didn’t know that then, did we? We just put our own concerns ahead of everything. We risked the fate of this town to save one person.”

Angel understood exactly what he was saying. Xander or Buffy would have reacted to this with an optimistic, ‘well, yeah’. He hadn’t been saved when the world was in the balance, and he hadn’t expected to be. His heart broke for Buffy, for what she had been brought to, but he was proud of her, so proud that she had found the strength to do what had to be done. He frowned. It wasn’t the same. The circumstances were not as dire. She didn’t have to sacrifice anyone this time.

She couldn’t. His eyes widened a little as it reached him. She couldn’t do that again. It was too cruel to expect it of her. He sucked in a hard breath to ease the ache in his chest, suddenly understanding why Giles sounded so angry at Willow.

~Part: 19~

“I love this guy,” Georgia gestured to the television with the remote control she had commandeered upon entering the room. She was watching QVC. “David Venable,” she added dreamily. “His voice is practically hypnotic.”

His voice was nice, Willow had to admit. Otherwise he looked pretty ordinary. He was talking about a Chalcedony ring. It was a square cut stone flanked by open galleries set with diamonds. It looked pretty and feminine in his fingers as he turned it in the studio lights.

After her post breakfast nap of sheer exhaustion, what appeared to be a bell hop, or a freakishly short person with a snout and stubby horns in a bell hop uniform, dropped off clothing for her. Willow was wearing a pair of black cargo pants that were too large in the waist until she discovered two small tabs that allowed her to cinch the waist tighter. They were still too long, bunching around her ankles. She wore the pants with a greenish gray tie-dyed t-shirt delivered with the pants. No underwear, but she was no longer stuck in a robe. She was still barefoot. Once she was dressed and had had another cup of yogurt for lunch, Spike had parked her in what appeared to be a lounge with Georgia for company.

He had gone out, probably to find a meal.

There were books in the lounge. She had picked up a copy of Robert Massie’s biography of Peter the Great to read, but she was having a hard time concentrating on it. Colin was sitting on the couch, with his feet up. She could feel him watching her. More than once she had looked up to catch him at it, though he hadn’t seemed disturbed by being caught, and she had been the one to look away.

She hadn’t seen Harmony or any of the other vampires other than Pete, and she still had no idea where they were. There was a pad of stationery on a desk with a green glass banker’s lamp positioned at one end of the room. There was an embossed crest, blood red against heavy cream colored paper, and a single word, Hermitage, printed in parallel with the crest. They could have been anywhere.

“Where are we?” she asked.

Georgia glanced at her, momentarily diverted from her viewing. “Does it matter?” she asked.

“Sacremento,” Colin answered Willow. “No. She can’t get out of here. The elevators are key locked,” he told Georgia.

Willow filed that away. She had seen the outside of the door of the room she occupied with Spike. It had a credit card type key lock mechanism. She would need to find one of the keys if she was going to get out of there. Thank you, Colin for the helpful escape tip.

She went back to pretending to read her book.

Georgia walked over to her. Willow was sitting in an oversize armchair covered in a tapestry fabric. She sat on the arm of the chair, tilting her head to look at the cover of the book. “Looks boring,” Georgia commented. She picked up a lock of Willow’s hair and played with it idly, her eyes drifting over the more threatening elements of décor.

Willow tried to ignore her.

“What did you and Spike do?” Georgia asked, a small, knowing smile playing on her lips.

“Nothing I’m planning to talk about,” Willow said. Ever, she added to herself.

Georgia chuckled. “Discreet,” she teased. “A mortal who survived being William the Bloody’s bedmate,” she looked at Colin. “Your Mum would pay a fortune for her,” she said.

Colin’s mother ran a brothel and prided herself on satisfying a wide variety of tastes ranging from the exotic to the banal. Willow was in the later category. She couldn’t absorb the damage that a vampire, were, or some of the humanoid variants of demons could. She was just mortal, more pretty than beautiful, and she had a footnote to her recent history that made her intriguing. Spike wasn’t known for leaving survivors. Colin had been thinking along those lines. He acknowledged it with a small nod of agreement.

Willow wasn’t sure what they were talking about. Well, she had an idea, and she was equally certain that she didn’t want it confirmed. Georgia cupped her chin, forcing her head back. She leaned over, breathing in. Smelling her. She leaned over, rubbing her lips over Willow’s. She felt the same little shock that had plucked at her insides the first time Georgia had kissed her. Her lips were so soft. Georgia’s thumb rubbed in circles on her jaw. “Open your mouth for me,” she whispered against Willow’s lips.

She frowned, glaring at the vampire, feeling acutely uncomfortable.

Georgia lifted her head, meeting her eyes. Gold flashed for an instant so fleeting that Willow might have imagined it. She found herself searching Georgia’s blue-gray eyes for it, her mind going blank. The hair on the back of her neck stood up.

Colin watched with interest. Thrall. He could see the girl resisting the pull of it.

“Open your mouth, baby,” Georgia crooned.

Her lips parted. Georgia slid down in the seat with her, pushing the book out of Willow’s grip. “That’s my good girl,” she crooned, sliding her arm around the girl’s shoulders. She kissed her hungrily, nibbling on her slack lips, one hand cupping her unbound breast, supporting the weight of it in her palm. Her tongue slid inside the warmth of her mouth, caressing her tongue, coaxing it out to play. “Come on, baby, kiss me back,” she encouraged.

Colin saw the girl blink. She was already starting to shake it off. Her hands curled into fists, driving her fingernails into her palms and she stiffened up, awareness returning. That, in itself, was impressive. He had seen mortals drained to death without ever breaking the hold a thrall had on them. Georgia didn’t have that kind of power. Willow would have bolted out of the chair if Georgia hadn’t read the change in her posture fast enough and thrown a long leg over the girl’s lower body to keep her in place.

“Please don’t,” she gritted out, sounding confused and furious.

Georgia tried to catch her eyes, but Willow seemed to be on to that trick and averted her gaze, unselfconsciously submissive. She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Georgia’s thumb circled her nipple through the t-shirt. She rubbed her cheek against the girl’s hair, making a purring sound. “You smell delicious,” she said. “You smell like honeysuckle and Spike. He fucked you, didn’t he? Did you like it? Did it make you come?”

Hot color rose in her cheeks and her eyes brightened with tears and anger. “No, I didn’t like it,” she said in a tone that was full of resentment.

“But it made you come, anyway,” Georgia guessed. She laughed softly, kissing her temple, feeling a vein throb against her lips. “That’s my sweet girl. Everything naughty and nice all in one pretty package.”

Willow felt the hand on her breast move down, swiftly, between her legs, rubbing her almost roughly. The seam of the cargo pants was rubbed against her clitoris as the heel of Georgia’s hand massaged her. She squirmed, trying to close her legs against the intrusion. She looked across the room to see Colin calmly watching them. For some reason she wasn’t afraid of him.

Georgia saw her looking at Colin. “He likes to watch,” she explained with a grin. “Don’t you, sugar?”

Colin’s eyebrows rose. His beautiful golden girl getting it on with another girl. He felt nostalgic, remembering the first time he had seen her, bent over a gaudy fuchsia colored costume that she was tacking netting to for a production of ‘As You Like It’. Frustrated not so much by the boring task as at the realization that she wasn’t going to be the girl in the dress, on the stage, saying the lines, and getting the applause. He had known instantly that he was going to assign her a staring role in his life.

What was not to like in watching her? He sought and found no corresponding attraction to the girl Georgia was toying with. That might change in time. In a way he was relieved. If Georgia had her way about it, the girl was going to be with them for a long time. When she was newly turned, she would occupy a large share of Georgia’s attention, but Georgia was his childe, and nothing could come between them. She would remain in the place he assigned her, and she had chosen a girl, not unlike the one he had chosen. There was, in Willow, a hint of longing to be the center of someone’s attention that reminded him of Georgia.

“Watching you is what I do,” he said comfortably.

“Aside from killing people,” Willow muttered, as much for her benefit as theirs. I am a food group to them, she chanted in her head.

Colin yawned. “Uh, huh, aside from that,” he agreed. He looked almost kind. “It's okay, Willow, isn’t it? We know we kill people, and since we aren’t people, and people are the best to eat, that’s okay with us. You aren’t going to offend a vampire by reminding them that they kill people.”

“I’m people. It offends me,” she asserted.

“Does it, now?” Colin looked thoughtful. “Because, you are special, seeing as how you aren’t dead, nor worse off. Coddled and petted, as you are. You aren’t the first human a vampire has kept around because they are useful. I wonder how much fight you’d have left in you if you were drained of a pint regularly, kept on a less generous diet, and only allowed the privilege of sleeping in a bed after you had shown yourself to be trustworthy and accommodating. Or if you had been used in ways that a vampire would enjoy with all the consideration that a nice spot of pain and fear would warrant. Half the fun of something as tender and soft as you is breaking the skin slowly,” he grinned. “Sort of like nibbling the chocolate off a candy bar to make it last longer?”

Willow, who preferred candy bars given to that kind of disassembly, shuddered at the mental image and wondered if what she heard in Colin’s voice was disapproval.

Georgia nuzzled her neck, taking in a deep breath through her nose. “You are special,” she said, licking Willow’s neck. “You smell delicious,” she breathed.

Colin knew that an equal part of what drew Georgia to the girl was the way Spike treated her. By not abusing her or allowing her to be abused, he had in effect raised her status. On her own merits, the girl wasn’t that extraordinary. She was just an eighteen year old girl who was relatively smart, resourceful, and a bit more knowledgeable about vampires than most humans. Pretty enough, but not the sort of girl who would have ever been turned for her looks alone, like Harmony. She would be a handful if it came to that, he realized. Not for the first time, he regretted having gotten involved with Spike and one of his crazy schemes.

On the other hand, he imagined introducing his mum to his grand-childe. She routinely dismissed Georgia as a bit of fluff, but if she had really disliked her, she would have staked her without a second thought. She wasn’t the sort who got caught up in the idea of establishing a bloodline or any other silly vampire snobberies. She was a good deal more pragmatic than that, but she liked strong, smart women. He had a feeling that she would get a kick out of the redheaded girl who even now was stubbornly refusing to give in to Georgia’s playful petting.

~~~*~~~

Sacramento was a little off the beaten trail for Spike. He snacked on a warm little morsel of a chubby brunette spiced with Sambucca chosen for her connection to a roomy late model Mercedes-Benz with tinted windows. He drove around in his new ride for a while, buying a carton of cigarettes, bottled water, and a pre-packaged salad with the cash from the dead girl’s purse. The credit cards would be passed on to Georgia to use.

The part of town where the hotel was located was nice. Cobblestone streets, turn of the century Victorian buildings, lots of boutiques and the odd sidewalk café. The Sacramento River was a comfortable walk away and there was a pier. Unlike a lot of American cities, the downtown area wasn’t deserted after dark, which made it good hunting territory.

He drove the car back to the hotel and found the room he shared with Red empty. The bed had been remade with fresh linens. He went in search of Georgia, finding her with Colin and Red in the lounge that connected to their room. They looked very cozy and domestic. Colin was on the couch with Georgia curled up beside him. Red was on the floor, on the other side of the coffee table, playing backgammon with Colin. The musky undertone of arousal reached him before he even opened the door. Georgia turned her head when he came in and graced him with a smile.

He looked at Red. She looked okay.

Georgia stroked Colin’s thigh. “Dinner time?” she suggested.

“Let me finish this,” Colin said of the game.

Spike tossed Georgia the purse he was carrying. “New car and credit cards,” he told her.

Georgia opened her purse and rummaged through it. Distracted, Willow stared at the discarded contents of an undoubtedly dead person’s life until Colin snapped his fingers at her. “Your move, Willow,” he reminded her.

She rolled her dice and stared blindly at the board, trying to make sense of the game. She had to recheck her roll twice before it sunk in. It was a good roll. Useful. She could fill in her points and box Colin out to go for the win. Except maybe that wasn’t a good idea given that he was a vampire and probably didn’t like loosing. Her hand hovered for a moment. So what if he didn’t? What was he going to do? Torture her? She filled in, and sent one of his unprotected pieces to the center of the board.

He grunted. “That was quick,” he commented. “Game over. Let’s go eat,” he rose from the couch, reaching for Georgia who slid her fingers into his hand and wrapped her free hand around his thick wrist, letting him pull her to her feet.

Willow winced. She was an idiot. She could have drawn the game out more. Not that it would really change the outcome. They were going out to kill people now or later.

“Want to come with?” Georgia asked her, letting go of Colin’s wrist to run her finger’s through Willow’s hair. “We’ll do a little after hours shopping.”

“Maybe another time,” Spike declined on her behalf, while Willow was working out the likelihood of getting away from Colin and Georgia versus the strong probability that she would be forced to watch them kill.

Georgia and Colin left and Spike walked around the side of the couch and sat down across from her. He started setting the backgammon board up for a new game. He looked over at Willow seeing the stubborn set to her mouth and defiance in her eyes. He licked the last traces of blood off his lower lip and grinned.

“You’re just dying to tell me that you aren’t going to play board games with my bad self, aren’t you?”

She nodded slowly, a flash of uncertainty appearing. She looked over at her abandoned Robert Massie biography of Peter the Great. “I was reading. I’ll go back to that,” she kept her tone studiously neutral. No ‘please’ voiced or implied.

She was, he realized, avoiding his eyes. What was that about? “Red? What’s got your nose out of joint?”

She uncurled herself from the floor and walked over to the armchair, sitting in it and tucking one foot under her thigh as she picked up the book. “You want the short list?” she asked.

He waved one hand in a circular motion, “Kidnapped, deprived of your book list, and the doing of good deeds,” he paraphrased an earlier rant on the subject. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

“No,” she replied curtly. “I’m fed and watered at regular intervals.”

He leaned back into the couch. “And petted. Someone ruffle your fur in the wrong direction?”

There was a wealth of meaning in that question. Willow gritted her teeth and stared doggedly at page 22 of her book. It was a big, heavy book and the subject matter was sufficiently outside of her general knowledge that she had to concentrate on it to understand what it was about. The author was giving a brief history of Imperial Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church, the boyars, the court during Peter the Great’s minority, and its relationship with Western Europe. Loosing herself in books was one of her unheralded talents. It was one of the reasons that she was a good researcher. No matter how terrible the threat, she could hit the books and relax enough to get sufficiently lost in the subject matter to find the weird sixth gear in her mind that sifted and sorted through facts with the analytical efficiency of a computer.

“Georgia did something to me,” she said, addressing the book.

Splotchy color appeared in her cheeks. Her lips were compressed in a thin line. Anger, embarrassment, and fear competed for a hold on her. He rolled his eyes. Georgia did something to her? He smirked. “Damn. What did I miss?” he asked.

Her lip curled. That figured. He would think it was funny or titillating. “She did something that made me feel like . . . I couldn’t . . . make myself do anything but what she told me to do.”

Spike’s eyes narrowed. “Be specific, Red,” he ordered.

She looked up from the book, but not directly at him. “Like I was trapped inside my head,” she elaborated. “And, I couldn’t make myself stop doing what she told me to do.” She shuddered at the unpleasant memory.

Thrall? Georgia, you cheater, he thought with a barely suppressed grin. “How long did it last?” he queried, curious about how far she had taken it.

“Long enough,” Willow was creeped out. She wished she hadn’t brought it up. They had enough weapons already. Last night it was alcohol, exhaustion, and the threat of violence. Add to that some freaky hypnotism thing and she was outclassed again.

He got up from the couch and walked over to her. He forced her to look at him by cupping her face in her hands and holding her head still when she tried to jerk her head away. He studied her eyes until she hastily squeezed them shut.

He snorted. “Open your eyes, Red. I’m not going to hurt you,”

“Uh-uh,” her face pinched as she shook her head. “No way,” she said. “That’s what she did.”

“Well, I’m not going to do that,” he told her. “No point in it. I might handcuff you to the bed and shag you rotten for fun—“

Her eyes flew open, outraged. He was laughing!

He avoided the foot that lashed out, chuckling. “Knock it off, Red. I didn’t come over here to play,” he commented, studying her eyes. Her pupils were reacting normally to light, he decided. He let go of her and walked over to the sideboard to investigate the bar.

“Do you want a drink?” he asked, pouring a glass of whiskey. It was an expensive, small batch, Kentucky bourbon. Sometime in the early 80s he and Dru had gone to Kentucky for the Derby. Dru had a hat she wanted to show off, and the city was lousy with drunk tourists. The night before the race they had wandered through the streets around the track, closed to traffic, full of people out to enjoy a street party, blissfully unaware of the menace that walked amongst them.

He remembered singling out a redheaded girl sitting on the curb. Not as pretty as his Red, but a lot more adventurous given the way she had looked up at him like he was something extra delicious that she wanted to get a taste of. She had been drinking lemonade, the kind made at fairs all across America, with a half of a lemon, a fourth of a cup of sugar, and water, shaken up in a plastic cup. Spiked with cheap whiskey from a bottle she had in her purse. There had been an older girl, probably her sister, who had found them chatting and pulled her away with a sharp word and an angry glare, seeking the safety of the crowded street.

Handcuffs, sex, blood play. It was all starting to sound appealing, but it was early. Plenty of time for that later. No one was going to show up and save Willow from him.

Willow watched him warily for a moment. Right. She was going to drink with Spike? Not likely. “No thank you,” she answered, going for vehement and hearing it spoiled by her inclination to be conciliatory.

“Are you sure?” he asked, just to mess with her. “It’ll loosen you up.”

The look she shot him was deadly. “Not just no, but hell no, sums it up,” she said. “I do not intend to loosen up around you ever again.”

Her hand went to her throat, a nervous gesture, or a deliberate reminder of the threat he posed to her? She was wound up tight tonight. Boredom had something to do with it. She had endured nearly two weeks of confinement. She was also in a state of deep denial about what the change in their relationship meant. She was determined to treat it as an aberration. A one-time thing that could be avoided. Kidnapping wasn’t exactly a form of entertainment for him. Well, there was the spot of emotional torment inflicted on the Watcher and the Poof that amused. She had made it more interesting with a few escape attempts that had been countered. Otherwise, it was a dull business, and he wasn’t about to give up his newfound game of seduction and sex.

His mind wandered back to their early morning shag. He had held back. That had been interesting. She hadn’t been up to it. Passivity in his lovers didn’t excite him, but the silent battle with her passivity and stubbornness in the balance had piqued his interest, and the slow shag had built into an orgasm that had been pleasantly intense, spiced with her weary capitulation. Angelus had brought home countless humans to keep around as pets back in the day. He and Darla would literally fuck them to death. It hadn’t interested Spike. Drusilla had brought home men and women, using her gift to disappear for a few hours inside their deepest desires. It always ended in death for the victim.

He couldn’t kill Red. Not yet. That created a challenge.

“So, we can skip the boring preliminaries?” he smiled crookedly.

He was stuck with babysitting his captive. Board games didn’t appeal. Watching her read didn’t interest him. She might have held him off with a decent conversation, but she was too pissed off to talk to him. That left him to circle back to hand cuffs, sex, and blood play. The whiskey and the fresh kill warmed him.

Willow felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle. She kept her gaze trained on the book. “Less than six months ago I dusted a vampire with a pencil,” she said, keeping her voice as even and steady as possible.

“A pencil?” Spike’s eyebrows rose. She was, he decided, trying to make a point. The unwitting pun in his mind made him grin.

“From a drawer, across a room,” she looked up briefly.

He poured more whiskey, giving her a sideways glance, wondering where she was going with this.

“You need me alive to make your trade,” she pointed out. “I don’t need you alive for much of anything.”

She was too new to this to make an effective threat. There was a fine thread of uncertainty that trembled in her voice, and she was afraid. It was her bad luck that he knew it.

“Wrong,” he said, mocking her. “Georgia and Colin don’t know what I’m trading you for. They could care less. Do you think they are going to let you go? Colin would drain you in a second, but Georgia? She wants to keep you around, pet. The only road home is through me, Red.”

Her forehead tightened as she processed this information, blinking several times, her stare hovering in the middle distance above the pages of the book she was pretending to read. As usual, he seemed to have the upper hand, and she couldn’t help but wonder if she had just given up a strategic advantage. Her best defense was appearing defenseless. That had always been true. She had extremely limited options when it came to going up against vampires. She lacked the reflexes, speed, stamina, and strength that Buffy had. She had given up any element of surprise that she might have had, if Spike took what she implied seriously, and it was impossible to tell if he had.

She looked up from her book. “I’m eighteen years old and I’ve been doing this for four years, Spike, on the Hellmouth. I’m still alive, unlike you, and you can think that it is dumb luck, or Buffy, or whatever. I don’t really care what you think.”

He sipped the whiskey, savoring it. He didn’t know what to make of her in truth. Just when he was ready to count her out, she managed to surprise him. He went with instinct on this. Fear wasn’t necessarily a weakness. It demonstrated intelligence and provided adrenalin while prodding the survival instinct. The crucial thing was how well developed her survival skills were. No matter how smart she appeared to be, when it came to split second decision-making, smart didn’t count. Habit took over. He suspected that she was in the habit of believing herself to be badly over-matched. There was a degree of desperation in her maneuvering that reinforced his conclusion.

He walked over to her, running his fingers through her hair, winding the bright strands around his finger. “I’ll make a deal with you, Red,” he offered, patiently waiting until she met his eyes. He smiled, a slow, ruthless twist of his lips, blue eyes intent and amused. “I’ll make a fair trade,” he promised. “In exchange for that, for not killing your mates and turning you,” his eyebrows lifted, silently acknowledging that it had been his plan all along, “you and I are going to be lovers.”

“Lo—what?” Her nose scrunched up, and a look of disbelief flashed in her eyes. “You have got to be kidding,” she spat.

Possibly. He was throwing it out there to see what she would do with it, and possibly to make a deal, depending on what she did with it. He shook his head at his own impulsiveness. Nine times out of ten, it bit him in the ass, but the one time in ten that impulsiveness won the day, the payoff was usually worth it.

“You’re the smart one, pet. I’m giving you some bargaining room. Just a suggestion? You should take it. You can’t stop me from taking what I want, but,” he shrugged, “I’m willing to give up something for it. That is to your advantage. Otherwise, same result. Fighting isn’t going to put me off in the least, or change the outcome. In fact, it’s more likely that you’re going to get hurt. If you have to give it up, you might as well get something out of it, hmm?”

He was taunting her, Willow decided. “You aren’t serious are you? If I said yes, you would just double cross me and enjoy every minute of it, wouldn’t you?”

He chuckled. “That is an appealing notion, but . . . I’ll keep my word. You sacrifice your high morals and pretty body, and I’ll make a fair trade when the time comes. I’ve kept my end of a bargain before,” he reminded her. “I kept my deal with the Slayer.”

She pushed his hand away from her hair. It was too distracting. “Is this deal exclusive?” she asked.

He cocked his head to one side, watching her. “What do you mean?”

Color flooded her face, but she kept it together. “Is this just for you, or does it apply to anyone else?”

Enlightenment dawned. “Are we negotiating?” he prompted.

She glared at him. Oh, God, she was negotiating. She felt queasy for a moment. Then her resolve hardened. “I want to go home. I want you to leave us alone. So, if that is on the table, then yes, I guess we are.”

He licked his lower lip, his eyelids drifting down for a moment. He managed to school the satisfied smirk off his face. He nodded. “Yeah. It’s exclusive. You don’t have to let anyone else touch you.”

She thought about that for a moment, concentrating on what he said, the precise wording of it, searching for a loophole that he might exploit. She hadn’t ‘let’ anyone touch her last night, not that it had made the least difference.

“Not good enough,” she said decisively. “You have to promise me that you won’t let anyone else touch me.”

“Red,” he practically purred, amused and impressed by her quick thinking, “I didn’t know you cared.” Georgia was going to be a bit put out with him over that, he thought and then cheerfully shrugged off her probable annoyance.

“Deal,” he agreed with a curt nod.

Willow shuddered as she realized what she was agreeing to. How was she going to explain this to Oz? “Not so fast,” she snapped nervously.

She didn’t have the nerve for this. She was going to pile on rules and caveats until he backed down. “Witch? Don’t push you luck,” he warned.

Her hands had grown damp. She realized that her fingers were making impressions in the pulping paper under her hands as she gripped the book she was holding.

“This is between us,” she said. “It stays between us. No taunting Oz. No telling my friends. If you ever, and I do mean ever, tell them, I’ll . . .” she thought desperately for a threat so severe that he would take her seriously, “I’ll curse you with a soul.”

He briefly considered wrapping his fingers around her throat and throttling her. Curse him with a soul? Bloody hell. The second she was out of his control, she could do that and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop her.

“What’s to stop you from doing that anyway?” he snarled.

Willow’s eyes widened as she realized that she had stumbled into a strategic error of vast dimension. “Uh . . . nothing, I guess,” she conceded, wincing. “I’m taking your word on faith, so it only seems fair that you do the same.”

She nodded to herself. “And, let’s think about this for a second? Who is more likely to keep their word? You? Or Me?”

He didn’t dignify that with an answer. Only Red would think that he was breaking his word by planning to kill her stupid mates and turn her after he got the Gem of Amara. He had never said that he wouldn’t do that. He had offered to trade the witch for the Gem, and he planned to keep his end of that deal. Once he had the Gem . . . well, that was different. Not part of his original plan, but it wasn’t his fault that she made herself too damned interesting to walk away from.

He turned away from her, pacing. How could he have forgotten about the curse? She had managed to re-soul Angelus, so it wasn’t a stretch to think that she could do the same to him. The idea of crawling around in guilt and self-loathing the way the Poof had made his skin crawl. It would be ‘his’ soul. The way his luck ran? He’d be buggered up with the soul of William, the bloody awful whining pathetic poet. Before Angelus was turned he had been a drunk, a womanizer, and a layabout. Not exactly a stellar example of humanity. The man Spike had been had been a weak, sniveling fool that Spike had spent a century separating himself from with a vengeance.

His eyes narrowed. She didn’t know that. He gave a short bark of a laugh. “Princess, I hate to disappoint you, but history is full of the evil deeds of the soul having. Just because Angel turned into a self flagellating do-gooder, doesn’t mean I will.”

She closed the book. “If you keep your end of the deal, that argument becomes academic, doesn’t it? Or is that what is bothering you? You don’t think that you can do it?” She smiled sourly. “After all, your impulse control issues are pretty well established.”

He acknowledged that with a crooked smile. “I can keep up my end of it,” he retorted with a derisive stare that hinted that she would cry off before they got down to doing anything worth trading for.

Lesser of two evils, Willow reminded herself. He was right about one thing. He really didn’t have to trade anything. He was more than capable of taking anything he wanted without giving up anything in exchange. Still, she felt her stomach lurch, and swallowed hard to keep from throwing up.

“It isn’t a good deal on your end,” she blurted out. “Whatever it is that you think I can do, or, know how to do, is kind of limited by the fact that I haven’t actually done it that much, if at all, assuming you want to do stuff I haven’t done, which is pretty likely since I haven’t done all that much in the first place,” she babbled.

She had a point. He had traded off taunting the Slayer and her crew about shagging their witch before killing them all in exchange for an inexperienced and congenitally up tight nineteen year old girl. Bloody hell.

“We could just go back to fair trade and never seeing each other again, which also works,” she suggested.

He finished his drink. “Doubt it, Red.” He set the glass down on the sideboard. “Impulse control issues, remember?”

“Oh . . . right,” she looked down at the floor, chewing on her lower lip. “So . . . what . . . do you want me to . . . uh,” she winced at her stammering. “Do you want to—“

“Seal the deal? Do the deed? Shag?” he supplied, enjoying her squirming.

Willow winced. This was insane. He had just started down this little conversational road on a hypothetical to torment her. He was probably enjoying this immensely. He was not serious.

“No?” she breathed, hopefully.

He let his gaze wander around the room. There was a pretty display of toys on hand, a riding crop hanging from a small hook on the wall being the tamest object at hand. He ran his finger over the finely braided leather and shrugged. He was bored.

“Nothing better to do,” he decided.

Willow’s eyes widened as she watched him. She was positive that she had not agreed to let him beat her. In fact, the whole point of this little bargain was that she wasn’t going to be beaten, wasn’t it? Otherwise, why bargain?

He turned back to her and hid a smile at her horrified expression. “Come along, pet,” he said, gesturing to the door. “If we stay here you’re likely to have an audience at some point, and I don’t think you want that.”

The riding crop stayed where it was, she saw as she rose on legs that shook. Beyond the double door was the hallway outside of the room they were sharing. The hallway wasn’t empty. Down the hall there was a housekeeping cart pushed by an older woman who looked up at them briefly before going back to work. It was a little slice of normalcy that made Willow feel surreal. Spike used the key card to unlock the door and he gave her a small push to get her moving through it. He started to shut the door, and then put the plastic ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the other side of the door before shutting it behind him.

~Part: 20~

Right, Willow thought to herself, feeling a strange urge to giggle. She’d gone from sex in the back of an Econoline van with a boy she loved to sex with Spike in a vampire version of a Hyatt Hotel. It was beyond disturbing. Hysterical giggling was all the moment required.

He sat down on the side of the bed and set to work removing his boots while weirdly inappropriate thoughts like ‘vampires, socks, foot odor?’ ghosted through her head. She knew exactly what Oz’s feet smelled like, a not unpleasantly musty scent tangled up with cedar from his closet. She remembered Xander’s puberty foot odor, a smell so strongly associated with parmesan cheese that she couldn’t smell parmesan without thinking feet.

She was not going to watch him get undressed. She fled to the bathroom, quashing the impulse to ask for his permission, which had become something of a habit over the last two weeks. Once she was safely shut into the bathroom she turned on the hot water tap to give herself something to do, and started her little pre-bedtime rituals. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and ran a brush through her hair, taking a little more time over these things than usual because there was nothing usual about any of this. She half expected Spike to interrupt her, but she heard nothing from the other room.

When she ran out of things to do in the bathroom, she came out. Spike was sitting against the headboard, smoking a cigarette, barefooted and bare-chested. He had left his jeans on, and she said a silent thank you for that in her head.

He watched her shift her weight from one foot to the other. “Red?” he patted the space beside him on the bed. “Come over here,” he ordered.

He was betting she didn’t have the nerve to go through with this, which suited him. If she couldn’t keep up her end of their deal, then he didn’t have to keep up his. He smiled at the thought. Either way he won.

She didn’t miss the smile, and it wasn’t hard to figure out what was behind it. She made herself walk over to the bed, belatedly realizing that she should have approached it from the unoccupied side. To get to the spot he had indicated she was going to have to climb over him, or walk around the bed. She started to go back as he crushed out the cigarette, but he caught her wrist.

“This is good,” he said, reeling her in. Feeling the slight tension of resistance in her as she hung back, he paused, eyebrows lifting in inquiry. “Change your mind?”

He looked smug. There was a small amount of glee in his tone. Every instinct told her that this was wrong, dangerous, and unbelievably stupid of her. He could not be trusted. He had always managed to be one step faster, one step ahead of her.

“N-no,” she stammered. “I was just going to go around to the other side,” she let him pull her closer.

He rested his other hand on her hip. “Don’t bother,” he said, his thumb making little circles on her stomach through the t-shirt. He pinched the fabric between his thumb and forefinger, tugging it out of the loose fitting waist of her pants. His thumb slid under the t-shirt, moving over her skin. The coolness of the pad of his thumb against her skin was noticeable.

The hand on her waist tightened, silently urging her closer. Her right leg was already pressed against the side of the bed. The hand holding her right wrist pulled. She understood that he wanted her to join him on the bed, and summoned the resolve to put her left knee on the bed, realizing that she was going to have to crawl over his lounging body. When she swung her right knee over his hips, his hand left her wrist, resting on her waist, keeping her there, straddling his body, urging her down. Through the rough cotton pants she was wearing she could feel his denim covered erection press against her. For a moment she sat there, resisting the impulse to fling herself off him. He sat up a little, adjusting his position, the small movements of his hips creating a fleeting impression of friction against the tender flesh between her legs.

The clothes had been delivered without underwear. The seam of the pants she was wearing was pressed against her, and it made her want to find a more comfortable position. It was odd how naked she felt fully dressed, without underwear. His hands moved down, over her hips, briefly cupping her ass before grasping her ankles, on either side of him. His cool hands moved over the soles of her feet before returning to her waist. He grasped the hem of her t-shirt, watching her with a small smile, anticipating a protest or a demur. Her arms moved, an involuntarily defensive reaction that she checked before it was completed.

He gave her a second to reconsider, and then tugged the t-shirt over her head. She had to lift her arms for him to remove it, and when they came down, she crossed her arms over her bare chest, her gaze directed away from him to a spot to the right of his left shoulder. Splotchy color painted her cheeks.

His hands cupped her elbows, squeezing lightly to get her attention. “The novelty of your not-so-virginal modesty is wearing off, Red. I’d like to see what I’m foregoing the pleasure of killing your pals for, if you don’t mind.”

The only reason he wasn’t calling her on her apparent resistance was that he thought the modesty was exactly that. She was shy about her body, and straddling him half naked was a bit of a stretch for her. She lowered her arms, chewing on her lower lip, looking ridiculously self-conscious as his hands moved down her arms to her small hands. He held them lightly, his gaze moving over her. Objectively, he had to concede that there wasn’t anything about her that would drive anyone over the edge with lust. She was wholesomely pretty, all pale skin and freckles, and a little too thin for his tastes. Despoiling innocents had been Angelus’ game. He had always preferred his partners to be a little more knowing, aware, and eager. Her small breasts sat high on her chest, nipples puckering with cold or dread. He knew she wasn’t aroused. She was too nervous and frightened for it.

Still, his hands itched to touch her. The memory of her skin under his hands was fresh. There was a hint of baby fat, a slight but noticeable cushion under her skin, and it was soft and warm in a way that was pleasantly exotic. Her face was a mask of tension and apprehension. She knew he was looking at her and she didn’t know how to react to it, so she was trying to ignore it without much success. His gaze drifted back down, lingering on the pulse point in her throat that was throbbing in an attractive way. Moving over the fine collar bones and her breasts, where her skin was pebbled with gooseflesh, down the midline of her abdomen to the belly button, half hidden by the waistband of her pants, the black cotton standing stark against her skin.

His hands loosely held her wrists, and he picked them up, watching her eyes fix on him skittishly as he carried her wrists to his shoulders, forcing her to lean forward a bit.

“If I wanted an audience, I would have stayed in the other room. I expect participation,” he warned her.

Consternation flashed in her eyes. Her hands rested lightly on his shoulders for a moment, and then she forced herself to do something with them, tentatively sliding her hands over his skin with an uncertain look on her face. To Spike, it felt like she was petting a dangerous animal on a dare. He snorted, rolling his eyes.

Stung by the implied criticism, Willow frowned. It wasn’t like she hadn’t done this before. She had. With Oz. With Xander. She could pretend it was Oz. Or Xander. She heaved an inward sigh. She should probably stick with Oz. There was no point in further confusing the issue with Xander musings while she was trading smoochies with the undead. She closed her eyes. Oz. If this was Oz, and she was sitting half naked on him, what would she do? She took a deep breath, willing herself to concentrate, to ignore how un-Oz-like Spike was. She flattened her hands on his shoulders, feeling the unyielding muscles under her hands and the coolness of his skin.

That wasn’t working. Buffy had never mentioned how different the undead felt. The details she had shared with Willow were more about great kissing and sparkage, not the weirdness that was a twenty degree temperature difference or a body that was lean, hard, and . . . unnervingly perfect. When your boyfriend is a vampire, chances were that he didn’t ask you to pop a zit on his back.

“Earth to Red?” Spike interrupted her internal monologue.

“I’m thinking,” she stalled. “I can’t help it. It's what I do. I think.”

“For the love of hell,” he muttered, his hands moving to her head, fingers threading through her hair. Her eyes opened as he unwittingly pulled her hair and a startled, “Ow!” emerged from her lips. “No more hair pulling!”

He pulled her closer, “Right. No more hair pulling,” he agreed. “Any more conditions you want to work out before we move on?”

She flashed back to him fingering the riding crop. “Uh . . . well, there is, I mean . . . there’s the no hitting thing? You hit me, I hit back,” she quoted. “Coming from me, not big on the threat factor, so can we go with I don’t hit you and you don’t hit me?”

He paused to consider that. Threats of violence tended to keep her in line, and he wasn’t willing to give them up that easily.

“I’ll try to restrain myself,” he conceded, smoothing her hair behind her ear. “You try to keep from provoking me, and I think I can manage not to beat you.”

It wasn’t a unilateral agreement, but she figured it was as close to one as she was going to get.

“Okay,” she nodded.

He grinned at her. “You’re a piece of work, pet,” he drawled, leaning in, cocking his head to one side, his gaze lingering on her lips. “Now?”

She swallowed hard. “Um . . . I could kiss you? Do you want me to kiss you?” she asked.

He bit back a choice remark, feeling her pat his shoulders again. This had to be one of his worst ideas ever, he thought. A night of rolling around with a tediously shy, inhibited girl wasn’t his idea of entertainment. Then again, he had seen her when she wasn’t inhibited, and if he could have that girl, it might be worth it.

“Yeah,” he pinched her earlobe between his forefinger and thumb, tugging on it lightly. “Kiss me, Red.”

Sitting on him made her nearly eye level with him. Willow leaned forward, darting a nervous glance at him. Something about the way he was watching her made her feel a fit of nervous laughter bubbling up. Except that her nervous laughter tended to come out as babble. Her fingers tightened on his shoulder and then she relaxed her grip. Just do it, she urged herself. Her lips brushed his lightly as his hand settled on her waist. She felt it there, fingers splayed, his fingertips just under her breast. She paused, looking down as his other hand moved, his fingertips skimming over her neck, her chest, and the upper swell of her breast, chipped, black fingernail polish standing out stark against her skin, reminding her again of Oz.

She froze. Guilt and pain filled her eyes. He knew she was thinking about her wolf. It was perversely erotic, knowing that she was thinking about the boy. It was the loyalty, he supposed. He hadn’t been bullshitting when he told her that he liked her, even if he had played with the idea to make it less stomach churning. He liked her pragmatism as well as her loyalty, even now when they were in direct conflict. He figured the game was up. She really couldn’t make herself do this.

Then she gave a spare shake of her head, shaking it off, a determined look firming up her chin. The hands on his shoulders shifted to slip over his shoulders as she returned to his mouth. Her eyelids drifted downward and he felt her lips brush his again, and then fasten on his lower lip.

His lip tasted of whisky and tobacco. Instead of reminding her of Oz, she was reminded of the other night in the club, when he had kissed her so thoroughly while Georgia’s hands and mouth had explored her. That alone should have frightened or disgusted her, but instead, it made her want to make him feel as helpless and overwhelmed as she had felt. It was startling, the burst of anger, the weird desire to force him to feel something that made the kiss more aggressive. Her fingers slid into his hair, tugging his head back as her tongue entered his mouth.

So bloody much for no more hair pulling Spike thought, as her fingers tightened in his hair. Participation in the kiss was turning into a battle. His instinct was to take control of it, but when he tried to, she changed her focus, from his tongue, to his upper lip, and then, her small, warm, wet tongue drilled into the corner of his mouth. With an inward shrug, he let her have at it. Control was overrated. She bit his lower lip, sucking on it like it was a piece of candy.

He was too experienced to mistake it for passion or enthusiasm. It was anger. He could work with that. His hands moved over her skin. It was as soft as he remembered, with that oh-so-tender cushion of lingering baby fat. His hands spanned her ribcage, feeling it expand and contract under his hands even as he tasted the humid breath that panted from her parted lips. His hands moved over her back. She felt small and delicate. At the same time, he absorbed an impression of lean muscle lying under the softness, over the delicate bone structure, and it conformed to his understanding of her. She was a little tougher than she looked. He felt her shiver as his hands moved over her back, one hand sliding up to cradle the back of her neck, the other tracing the column of her spine.

He had become almost passive under her lips. She could feel his fingers on her neck, under her hair, the coolness of his hand like a compress, shocking her into awareness. His fingers traced her spine, making her arch her back. Her nipples grazed his chest. She mashed her lips against his, cutting her lower lip on her own teeth. The sudden, sharp pain and the taste of blood in her mouth made her pull back, and she raised a shaking hand to her lips. His eyes dropped to her mouth, a small smile turning up the corners.

Her lips were swollen and damp from kissing him, and a drop of blood welled and was smeared under her fingers.

Hysterical weeping seemed imminent. “Going all grrr on me, Red?” he asked. “You’re full of surprises, pet.”

She looked confused for a moment, and then she just looked sad and lost. He kissed the back of her hand and the fingers pressed to her lips, bending his knees to support her back. His fingers kneaded the back of her head. He wanted to rip her fingers away from her bruised, bleeding lip. He settled for nibbling on her fingertips and working his tongue under her fingers, pulling two of them into his mouth to stroke with his tongue, keeping his eyes on her face. He let her fingers slide out of his mouth, feeling them on his lips, resting there briefly before she snatched her hand back. Her eyelashes fanned delicately against the thin, nearly translucent skin under her eyes, above her flushed cheeks. She was breathing unevenly.

He kissed the corner of her mouth, imitating her own kiss. Her eyes opened when she realized it, solemn and wary, a tiny frown appearing. “I liked that,” he admitted. “What made you think of it?”

He didn’t think she would answer. She looked like she didn’t want to, but she also looked less close to crying.

“I’ve done this before,” she said. As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized how preposterous it sounded.

Spike grinned. “Have you now?” he teased. “Really, I’m shocked, Red.” His hand made lazy circles on her back. He kissed her jaw, following the shape of it with his lips. He took her earlobe between his lips, sucking on it lightly.

He ran his fingers through her hair, feeling it run over the rough skin of his hand like foam. “I like this spot too,” he whispered, kissing her neck, below her ear, his tongue stroking her skin.

“You shouldn’t put too much stock in all of this,” he said, feeling her shiver and then tense as she fought her reaction. He paused to look at her, kissing her mouth when she tried to avoid his gaze. “It’s nothing but nerve endings and hormones.” He shrugged. “It feels good? But like you said . . .” he frowned, pretending to think about it. “What was it? Some bratty Americanism?” He grinned. “Oh, yeah, the so eloquent, ‘duh’.”

She closed her eyes. “Don’t be nice to me,” her voice was tight with resentment.

His eyebrows lifted. “I’m not,” he denied. The demon inside of him was howling over this pansy-assed seduction. The emotional torment of an eighteen year old girl bargaining with her body to save her pals just wasn’t what it used to be. “What was the duh for if not that?”

She knew. The color in her cheeks had intensified, and was spreading over her chest. Curious, he laid his fingers on her cheek to see if it was warmer. He thought back to what they had been talking about, and then nodded to himself. “Ah. We’ll have sex, and you’ll enjoy it?” he remembered.

“Yeah, and here we are. You maneuvered me back into your clutches.” Her eyes flew to his, her expression indignant, but he forestalled comment by running his thumb over her abused lips. “And I have done this before,” the hand resting on her lower back held her while he shifted his hips against the weight of her body, bringing his erection into unmistakable contact with the center of her.

She would have bit her lip, but his thumb was in the way, sliding into her mouth. His pale blue eyes were relentless. “Don’t take it so hard, pet,” he said, sounding almost sympathetic. “No one will ever know, except me, and I’m not going to think worse of you for it.”

His thumb left her mouth and his hand moved down to her breast, cupping it lightly.  The same thumb, wet from her mouth, circled her nipple. He bent his head to it, kissing the upper curve of her breast, near her breastbone. He rolled her over on her back, settling his weight over the juncture of her thighs, his tongue working the skin on the margins of her breast while his thumb abraded her nipple. He moved against her sinuously, his abdomen rubbing against her as he tasted her skin, avoiding her nipples for the time being. He was in no particular hurry.

Willow concentrated on the ceiling, determined not to close her eyes. It would be too easy to get lost in the sensations he was creating behind closed eyelids. It was hard enough just realizing that she wanted to press up against the weight centered between her legs. The more she resisted it, the more aware she was of the growing sensation centered there. The cotton pants were starting to stick to her dampening folds.

Spike etched a damp circle around her neglected nipple, feeling her trying so hard to hold herself still. He smiled to himself. That wouldn’t last forever. He took the nipple between his lips, alternating between sucking lightly on her skin and flicking his tongue over it. Like most women with small breasts, her nipples were acutely sensitive. When he tugged on her nipple he heard the soft, involuntary sound trapped in her throat and he felt the muscles in her abdomen ripple in response. He followed the center line of her abdomen, shifting his weight away from her, his hands moving down to her legs to pull her knees up and apart. Through her pants, he nuzzled the juncture of her thighs, smelling her arousal. His blunt teeth scraped over her through the pants and her hips bucked. His fingers worked the button fly while he nibbled on her through her pants, sucking on the fabric that was becoming saturated with his saliva and her musky juices.

He skimmed the pants over her hips. As soon as they cleared the soft nest of cinnamon curls between her legs, he parted her labia with his tongue, stealing a taste of her that had her arching off the bed when she felt his tongue on her clit.

He yanked the pants down, freeing one leg completely, and the other down to her knee. She started to sit up, pushing herself up on her elbows. He took advantage of the position, sliding one hand under her ass to lift her. His tongue swept over her from anus to clit, lingering there to take the tender bud between his lips. Her legs jerked. Her heart was racing, shallow breaths coming fast and hard. Giving the flesh his mouth was working a though, lingering lick, he raised his head to look at her, taking the route up her body to her wide and frightened eyes.

“It's okay,” he reassured with a half smile, feeling like he was in the odd position of soothing a startled fawn. He cocked his head to one side, easily imagining her amid fallen leaves, like some woodland creature taken down by a predator. “I’m feeling magnanimous,” he told her with a smirk. “Give me an excuse to restrain you, pet, and I won’t claim it as a forfeit. Rather like the idea of you tied up,” he admitted, kneeling between her legs, his hands stroking the inside of her thighs.

Willow couldn’t look away. A muscle trembled in her cheek, and she chewed on the inside of her cheek to distract herself from it. She had never felt more naked in her life. His hands moved in slow strokes on the insides of her legs, exerting just enough pressure to keep them apart. His hands were starting to pick up some of her warmth, but they remained cool enough to add an extra dimension to the caress. She couldn’t look down. She knew that she would see what she felt, her legs spread wide enough that she had no secrets. His lips glistened wetly. Wet from her. While she kept her eyes on his face, he licked his upper lip, and she felt something loosen inside of her in a rush of liquid heat that seeped from her.

His eyes narrowed fractionally, coolly clinical in his assessment. “Do you want me to tie you up?” he asked, eyebrows raising. “Will that help you pretend that you don’t want me to have you?”

The sheer arrogance of him gave her a much-needed burst of irritation. “Amazingly, I don’t really care about what you want,” she retorted bravely.

His thumbs came to rest, bracketing her cunt, moving in circles that sent a subtle variety of sensations through her as the slight shifting of his thumbs parted her dampening flesh.

“No? You don’t care what I want?” his gaze shifted, wandering back down her body. “What do you want, Willow? My mouth on you? My fingers fucking you? My cock, filling you? Last night, when I was inside you, I could feel you, wanting me to come.”

“I wanted to go to sleep,” she told him, on the terra firma of her recollection of the tepid sex that he had forced on her.

He smiled at that. “You aren’t sleepy, now, are you, Red?” His fingertips moved over her, gliding over her clit, the sleek wet folds of her sex, the weeping opening of her body.

Her jaw clenched. The muscles in her legs flexed as she fought the moan tightening her throat and instinct that demanded that she respond or take flight. She felt his fingers tracing the inner folds of her cunt, finding her wet, carrying that moisture until the only thing that distinguished his touch was the sensations that her nerve endings flooded her with, something more intense than a tickle or an itch, and infinitely more pleasant. His thumb brushed over her clit, slowly circling, applying pressure, then releasing it, coming back to make another pass. Her legs trembled with the effort of not arching into his caress.

He breathed in the scent rising from her body, admiring the view. Her cunt was like an open flower, glistening wetly in shades of pink and dusky purple, like some kind of exotic orchid. His middle finger explored the opening of her body, feeling the roughness created by the sphincter of muscles that had gripped him so tightly last night.  He glanced at her face. Her eyes were closed, her face was set in a grim mask of resistance. Without any warning, his finger penetrated her, sinking in to the last knuckle in a hard stroke that made her lips part as a startled yelp escaped her.

His free hand moved over her hip, lingering briefly, before moving up her side, tracing the swell of her hip to the indentation of her waist, moving over her rib cage as it expanded in a shaky breath, to her breast. His hand cradled it, his thumb moving over her nipple in an echo of the way he was fondling her clit. His finger stroked her hot, slick channel, teasing the muscles to life. He bent his head to her abdomen, circling her bellybutton with his tongue, and she broke with an involuntary sound that made his cock jerk.

“That’s it, baby,” he breathed against her skin, tasting the salt of her sweat. “Show me what you’re made of, Red,” he encouraged. “You’re so pretty,” his tongue laved her quivering abdomen. “You taste so sweet,” he pinched her hard nipple, tugging on it lightly.

Praise. The spirit craved it, and she was more susceptible that most to its lure. There was an awkward child locked in her head that was greedy for approval, and not choosy enough about where it came from.

He ignored the insistent demands of his body, and concentrated on hers, scattering open mouthed kisses over her abdomen, using his thumb to push her clit up to flick his tongue over it. Feeling her fall back on the mattress as her shaking elbows gave up their purchase and her hips rose under him.

“You taste so sweet,” he muttered, the flat of his tongue laving her clitoris. He added a second finger, feeling the way her cunt clutched at the intrusion. His free hand left her breast to cup her cheek, his thumb stroking her lips until they parted for him, her warm breath bathing his thumb as she panted, moaning as his tongue rewarded her with a lavish caress.

Her hands fisted in the bedspread. He looked down at her, and thought that she was everything that he had told her she was. Sweet, and so pretty, with her hair fanned out around her creamy cameo face, contorted with lust and anguished guilt, her hips moving in an awkward, uncoordinated counterpoint to his fingers, slowly fucking her. He grasped her chin, wanting her to open her eyes, content for the moment when her lips parted. He slid his index finger inside her warm mouth and felt her tongue caress his finger as her lips clamped down on the digit.

His thumb worked back and forth over her clit in a light, deliberate rotation that kept her building up to an orgasm without letting her go over the edge. His fingers stroked the slick walls of her cunt, feeling her muscles loosen as her body adjusted, as well as the subtle play of movement within her as her abdominal muscles tightened and fluttered.

He pulled his finger out of her mouth, letting it slide over her lower lip. He used his freed hand to brace himself over her, leaning in to kiss the corner of her mouth. She turned her head to him blindly, one of her hands sliding into his hair as her lips parted under his.

The feel of his hair under her hand brought Willow out of the haze. For endless moments, she had gotten lost in the overwhelming sensations that she was experiencing. In some ways it was a replay of what had happened in the club, only it was just Spike, touching her, tasting her. Breathing her. She had felt the light tickle of his completely unneeded breath against her thighs and stomach and heard the wet sounds of his fingers and mouth against her, the only sound other than her uneven breathing in the quiet bedroom. She could almost pretend that this wasn’t really happening to her.

His hair was unexpectedly soft, despite the peroxide abuse heaped on it. She had a quick mental picture of it, disordered from her hands, the neat furrows he habitually combed into it when he was just out of the shower, disturbed to reveal a tendency to curl. His tongue swept over her lower lip, soothing her torn lip before he sucked it into his mouth, biting down gently. Touching him at all was a concession of such magnitude that she felt like she had waived a white flag, and then she was kissing him back, her other hand finding the wrist of the hand between her legs, gripping it. She felt the play of muscles beneath her skin, and arched into his plunging fingers, her hand covering his, pressing down to urge him on as she tasted herself on his lips.

“More?” he asked, nipping her upper lip. “You want more, Red?”

She could say no. She didn’t have to claim any of this. It was more than he had any right to reasonably expect by the terms of their deal.

“Please,” she whispered against his lips.

His head lifted. He turned it to kiss the inside of her forearm, sucking her skin into his mouth, his tongue caressing the vein there.

“So polite,” he teased. “Hang on, pet,” he said, and it sounded like a warning and a promise as he unfastened his belt and unbuttoned the fly of his jeans. Pushing the jeans down one handed as his fingers left her heated depths and cupped her, the heal of his hand rotating over her clit, held there by her smaller hand. He twisted his hand to twine his fingers with hers, using his longer, stronger fingers to press her fingers into her cunt, hearing her moan as she felt how wet she was. His fingers pressed over the opening of her body until he felt her fingers curling to reach the slick gulf.

One of his fingers and one of hers slid inside her, and she bucked against their joined hands, her lower lip caught between her teeth. He kicked his jeans off and used his superior strength to half pick her up, half roll her over, without breaking contact with her flowing cunt or hand. With his arm snaked over her hip, he pulled her back against him while she tried to get her arm beneath her to push herself off the mattress.

He paused for a moment to admire the picture she made. Her heart shaped ass was thrust up, her thighs parted, two fingers pumping into her cunt. He growled his approval, pulling her hand back as he guided the head of his cock to butt up against her. He nudged her thighs further apart, adjusting to the angle and depth. Lined up, the head of his cock slipping inside of her, he sank into her in one hard thrust.

She had given herself to him, and he would show her no mercy. All of his more peculiar fair fight ethics demanded it. He wasn’t going to have her thinking that he was something he was not. A boyish grin, and the minor effort to be charming, had lured more than one unsuspecting victim to their death. That was just feeding on the great herd that was humanity. To his enemies he showed his true face. It was a matter of respect, though he doubted that Red would get that.

When he drove into her, the breath left her body in a gasp and she felt a dull ache that she instinctively tried to escape. She switched from trying to get her arm under her to push herself off the mattress to throwing her arm out to claw at the edge of the bed to pull herself away from him. Spike’s hand clamped down on the back of her neck, pinning her to the mattress as he continued to slam into her body, moving her closer to edge of the bed with each hard thrust as he held her down.

“No, please, no,” she moaned. The position was humiliating, and she knew that what he was doing was wrong. She didn’t have that much experience, but the discomfort as he hit bottom in her, the stab of pain as his cock pounded against something inside of her that felt bruised, had to be wrong. Her eyes filled with tears as she realized the kind of danger she had put herself in.

His hand left the back of her neck, seeking and finding the arm stretched over her head. His fingers tightened on her wrist as he stretched out over her, his mouth moving over her shoulder until it was inches from her ear. The weight of his body forced her hips down, trapping both of their hands beneath her body. He made a rumbling sound deep in his throat that she connected to the sensation of fullness between her legs. The change in position had her squeezing the hard cock inside her, and her heart slammed in her chest as she imagined without effort how bad it was going to hurt when he roughly pounded into her again.

To her intense relief, he slowed. “You’re so bloody tight like this, love,” he crooned to her, pausing to nibble on her damp skin.

“Feel me,” he breathed. It was not a question. His hand, under their bodies, pressed hers into the hot, wet, juncture of her thighs until she felt his cock against her fingertips as he moved in and out of her, slower and harder, making her shudder when he hit that slightly uncomfortable spot inside her.

“Not stopping,” he told her. “I’m not your boyfriend. That isn’t the deal. I’m your lover,” his voice dropped to a whisper. “You can have anything you want. Pain. Pleasure,” he licked her neck up to her earlobe and bit it lightly. “Decide, pet,” he warned softly.

She pressed her forehead into the mattress, making a small sound full of distress and conflict. He was always forcing lousy choices on her. Pain. Her mind and body quailed from it, the small taste of it enough to convince her that she did not want to be hurt. Pleasure. She gritted her teeth, the memory of his tongue on her clit, the shocking, savage rush of sensations that had made her forget everything and just feel.

His clever fingers stroked her clit, and she opened her legs wider, pushing back against his body, meeting and matching his rhythm. He rubbed his cheek against her hair, nudging her head until she turned it to face him, reluctantly opening her eyes.

“Is that what you want?” he asked. “No one will ever know.”

His seductive voice burrowed into her brain.

She compromised. “Please don’t hurt me,” she managed, and she winced inside at how pathetic that sounded.

He looked amused. “Don’t hurt me,” he mocked. “So soft, so tender, so innocent. Such a short life in front of you, and so much time wasted on it as you chose neither this or that, trusting to . . . good intentions? Fate? Or a right bastard like me? To deliver what you leave unsaid.”

“You must be accustomed to disappointment, Red. You seem to have a knack for blundering into its clutches.”

Her unfocused eyes cleared, sharpening with chagrin and a flash of irritation, like sunlight glancing off deep water.

The emotions resolved in resentment. They were having a conversation, now? His coherency infuriated her. While she was reduced to bleating pathetic pleas and sounds that made her cringe inside, he was waxing philosophical about her shortcomings and ambiguous reactions. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her breathing.

“Are we having a conversation?” she demanded. “Because, my hand is getting squashed here,” she huffed.

He grinned at her sulky expression and complaining tone. Did she have any idea what pursing her kiss swollen, deliciously reddened lips did to him?

“Yeah? I went with this,” his fingers stroked her clit, “because you said you liked my hand better.” He made a slight adjustment to ease some of his weight off her smaller body, his hand leaving her clit to lift her up. He kept up the slow motion of his hips, watching her eyes widen as the position allowed some air to circulate under her, making her aware of the dampness that had wet her inner thighs.

The awareness of the extensive proof of her arousal didn’t shock her, frighten her, or turn her on. Her nose wrinkled. It took him a second to work it out. She was fastidious. The dampness on her thighs didn’t shock her, she just wanted to be rid of it. For some reason, he found that fascinating. Her eyes started to drift shut as he continued to slowly fuck her while stimulating her clitoris. He used the arm he had kept pinned down above her head, to control her upper body, making her turn more toward him, changing the angle of his penetration as her hip rose against his abdomen.

“I’m not a circus performer,” she muttered as he picked up the pace of his thrusts. The strain on her spine had increased and she felt each thrust in the small of her back.

Her protest made him chuckle. He sat up on his knees, releasing her wrist, letting his hands wander over her warm body as he withdrew from her. The relative coolness of the air on his cock, warmed from being nestled in her body, made him shudder pleasurably.

“On your back, then,” he ordered.

She rolled over, drawing her legs up to swing her hips around. Instinctively, she brought her thighs together, and he grasped her ankles, making it impossible for her to straighten her legs out.

He moved her ankles to either side of his hips, his arms slipping under her knees. He released her ankles and ran his hands down the back of her thighs to her ass, lifting her effortlessly as he moved between her legs, feeling her soft, warm skin against his flanks. Watching her face, he rocked his hips forward, the head of his cock sliding against her cunt. So far, he had just played with her, gauging her reactions, discovering her tolerances.

Willow felt his cock moving against her. She tensed, expecting him to thrust into her in the brutal manner that he had entered her from behind, but he . . . missed, and the head of his cock slid upward, pushing against her clit. He retreated, and tried again, more forcefully, just missing the target. She felt her heart beating harder. He had presented her with a choice that she had sidestepped, and she wasn’t sure if he meant to retaliate in some way for that. Each time his cock stabbed at her, and then slid more forcefully against the folds of her sex to her clit she held her breath and then released it as the velvety, slick hardness of his cock slid over her clit.

Willow knew that he couldn’t keep missing, and if he pushed into her with the force that he was applying, it would hurt. She pushed her hips down into his hands to avoid that, and the head of his cock rubbed over her clit. She pressed her lips together to hold back the moan she felt vibrating in her throat. His eyes narrowed dangerously, silently communicating his awareness of her small attempts to avoid his body and before she could stop herself, her hand shot out, her fingers wrapping around his cock to keep him from entering her.

A wickedly pleased smile turned up the corners of his mouth. His hips twisted as he thrust into her hand. For a moment, she froze in surprise that had as much to do with the fact that he appeared to enjoy her touching him as the shock of actually touching him. He was sticky from being inside her and hard, but the skin under her fingers was unexpectedly soft, the natural lubrication making him slide easily against the palm of her hand.

He threw his head back, with a low moan, twisting his head sharply. Vertebrae popped, and he gave an all over shiver, blue eyes moving over her body to meet her eyes, glowing with lust.

“Do it,” he urged.

She understood what he wanted. He wanted her to guide him into her, and she felt an unexpected sense of power. He was conceding this small amount of control to her.  Almost experimentally, she guided the head of his cock to her, watching his face to see if he would take it back. With her hand on his cock he entered her shallowly, the muscles in his jaw tightening, his eyes darkening. She pushed her hips down into his hands and his cock slid out. He took a quick breath, lips tightening with disappointment, and she guided the head of his cock over her cunt to her clit, rubbing it over her clit.

It felt amazing. She adjusted her grip on him, feeling the head of his cock pushing against her palm as she rubbed him against her clitoris. His hands squeezed her ass, and that subtle direction made her arch against the pressure being applied to her clit. Her feet pushed against the mattress, and she felt muscles inside her tightening, heightening her awareness of the empty feeling between her legs, as well as her anticipation of having that feeling replaced.

She used the hard cock between her legs to stimulate herself, letting him slide into her, and then stopping him, rubbing his cock over her, working herself towards an orgasm. He had started panting, growling softly when she twisted out from under him, and she was well aware that this game could end whenever he chose. There was something about having control that made her forget that the only reason she had agreed to this was to save her friends' lives. It had become something else, something that she would probably regret, but for the moment, she was caught up in her impending release.

Spike felt like he could snap at any moment. She was working herself up to an orgasm, using his cock like it was her own personal fuck toy. Her hair was damp with sweat and falling around her face as she bucked and quivered. Her free hand had moved to her throat, fluttering over her chest, before she took the initiative to cup one of her firm breasts. She was rolling her nipple between her fingers, pinching it. He wondered if she was even aware of what she was doing. Her eyes had closed, and she was moaning as she rocked her hips to increase the movement against her clit. If just watching her wasn’t unexpectedly stirring, he would have yanked her hand off of his cock and shagged her until she was boneless. Restraint had gotten him to this, but it was on the verge of slipping, and if she didn’t move this along, he was going to.

She guided him back into her again, holding him there, shallowly inside her as her hips rose, and that was it for him. He pulled her hand off his cock, bringing it to his mouth to lick her wet fingers, and she made a mewling sound, hooking the leg he was no longer holding around his hips to pull him into her. He sank into her, feeling her cunt clutching around him.

“Oh . . . my . . . Goddess,” she whimpered as he thrust slow and hard, feeling her tighten around his cock as she started to come.

His arm slid up under her arching back, supporting her body, holding it as he bent over her to take her unattended nipple into his mouth, biting and sucking on the cockled tip.

The weight of his body pressing her down, between his arm and his chest, the demanding way he was moving inside of her, and his mouth on her breast, sent her over the edge, and she ground herself into him, crying out incoherently. He didn’t stop or slow down, and the feeling of his cock pushing against her spasming cunt made her feel like she was dying as her orgasm extended, or restarted. It just seemed to go on and on until she saw flashes of color behind her eyelids and felt the burning that seemed to extend down to the soles of her feet.

She panicked and brought her hands up to push him away from her, but he caught her wrists easily, holding them down over her head. His body moved with increasing urgency, nearing his own orgasm while his lips moved over her face.

“One more, I think,” he said hoarsely. “Wrap your legs around me.”

She shook her head, but she complied, and gasped as he drove into her harder, deeper, with no discomfort, just the pleasure of his cock sliding against the walls of her cunt while his public bone slammed against her clit. The bedsprings groaned and squeaked under them. She heard the harsh sound of her own strained breathing and a guttural groan rumbling in his chest.

The sound was her undoing. Using his body for leverage, she met his as he sped up, twisting her hips to increase the friction.

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