Lost in YouHe stalked towards her, a slight smile quirking his lips and a predatory gleam in his ice-blue eyes. Caught in his gaze like a dear in headlights, she could do nothing but watch as he prowled towards her. Despite the bleached-blond hair, he reminded her of a panther, sleek and black. Slow and sure when need be, swift and silent when it suited, but always, always, a predator at heart.
Oh, she had no doubt that he would never physically hurt her. No doubts that he did, indeed, love her as he had so often professed. Her disbelief on that score had been settled on that terrifying night when she had been so desperate to find Dawn. He had said he loved her then, just like he had many times before. Only that time, it had been different. “I love you. You know it.” His words had been so matter of fact, as if he was past caring whether she believed him or not.
And crazily enough, at that moment she realized that she did believe him.
So, his love was now an undisputed fact. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about it, about having a big, dangerous, sexy vampire in love with her. The idea scared her senseless. He wasn’t like Angel, all dark and brooding in a whirlpool of pain at his deeds; no, Spike reveled in them. Just as she knew that he would never hurt her or her friends; would in fact do anything to help them; she knew that he also took great joy in the chase, the rush of adrenaline, and that final, lethal moment of death that filled him with a huge sense of power.
Could she deal with that? With knowing that if his chip was removed, he might start preying on humans again? Somehow, she couldn’t imagine him hunting just anybody anymore, her guess would be that he would turn to the derelicts of society such as criminals. A large part of him lived for the kill, and she didn’t delude herself into believing that he would give that up completely for her.
And, if she was completely honest with herself, she wasn’t really sure if she wanted him to. After all, wasn’t that part of his attraction? The leashed killer, held only by a very fine chain. Even if he did at least curtail his killing to those worthy of such a horrific end that still stabbed lightly at her sense of duty. After all, the Slayer’s creed didn’t come with a disclaimer stating that it only applied to the worthy, did it?
The thought of putting herself in such a precarious position, allowing herself to love someone who had such an overwhelming power to hurt her, just made her cringe. Hadn’t she been hurt enough in the name of love? Each time she gave her heart away, it was, without fail, handed back to her on a platter, slightly more broken than before.
She was afraid that if she gave her heart this time, trusted it in the hands of this incorrigible vampire, she might never get it back.
And when he walked away, like they all did eventually, she would be forced to go about the rest of her miserable life heartless, broken beyond repair. Unfortunately, no matter how hard she tried to fight it, she was starting to fear that it was too late. Did her heart already belong to him?
One of the things that scared her most about him was that, quite simply, she didn’t know him. Not really. She didn’t understand him.
Angel. Now he had been easy to understand. Everything he was, everything he did, was in the name of making amends for his terrible crimes in the past.
Not so for Spike. His motives, what made him tick, couldn’t be summed up with a couple words, a simple phrase. He was such a mass of contradictions that she was left feeling befuddled, and with a pounding headache, each time she tried to figure him out.
Even as he stated his love for a Slayer, he still readily admitted that he had killed two Slayers in the past. In fact, not only did he admit it, but he was immensely proud of it. In the memory of the rush of power the taste of their blood had brought him. And yet when they made love, he nibbled on her neck as gently as could be, making her skin tingle and her belly ache with want. One moment he could be funny and charming, the next he could be dark and dangerous, the killer showing in his eyes. He could go from witty banter to a brutally sharp intelligence in less than a second. He switched moods so fast, put on so many facades, that in the end she was always left wondering what was going on in his head. And she wanted, so desperately, to know what was going on in that gorgeous head of his.
And now he was in front of her, invading her space and making her feel overwhelmed by his size.
“So, um, what should I call you then?”
The sexy half-smile on his lips was nearly her undoing. As his scent, a unique blend of leather, tobacco, and male, began to invade her senses, the words Anything! You can call my anything you want, as long as you never leave me! echoed in her brain. The sentences were on the tip of her tongue before she even realized it, and only through sheer willpower did she keep the words from breaking free.
“Pet?”
He shifted towards her even more, filling her vision completely and allowing her to think of nothing but him. She longed to throw her arms around him, to cling to his solid strength and never let go. Maybe if she held on tight enough he’d never leave. Even now she could imagine the soft, slightly cool feel of his supple leather jacket beneath her fingers, the smooth feel of his blood-red silk shirt under her hands. She pictured herself unfastening the buttons, peeling away the unneeded fabric, and baring his exquisitely muscled chest to her view. She could see herself running her hands over the well-defined muscles, watching his washboard stomach ripple under her touch as her fingers skimmed down to the waistband of his jeans…
“Sweetheart?”
The words sounded oddly sweet on his lips, and the seductive curve of his lips, the heat in his eyes, served to put yet another dent in her self-control. She knew she couldn’t take much more before she would lose every shred of her dignity and fall on her knees before him, begging him to make the delicious ache in her stomach go away.
“My little Goldilocks?”
He captured a lock of hair in his fingers, his gaze caught by the way the golden strands gleamed. Fascinated by her hair, by the way it changed color subtly in the light depending on how he looked at it, by how silky it felt against his skin, the expression on his face became very intent.
“You know I love this hair.”
She felt herself beginning to give in, forgetting all of the reasons that she’d so carefully listed in her diary about why she should definitely not give into this temptation again.
“The way it bounces around-“
Holding on desperately to the miniscule remains of her self-control, she searched about wildly for a way to break the sexual tension between them. Her gaze landed on a spatula, and she snatched it up greedily, without even knowing what she intended to do with it. He guessed the violence behind the movement though, and to her fury caught hold of her hand before she could inflict any damage with the makeshift weapon.
“Ahhahh, this flapjack’s not ready to be flipped.”
The devilish smirk on his lips made her blood boil. If asked, she couldn’t have said whether it was from anger or lust. In the end, it didn’t really matter. Determined not to submit to her desire, she snapped back at him.
“What the hell’s that supposed to-“
The sensation of his hands sliding under her shirt, caressing her stomach and lower back, effectively silenced her protests. And as his hands continued to work their magic on her, she knew she was lost. Lost in the scent of him. Lost in the feel of his hands on her skin, of the unbelievably sexy expression on his face, the unhidden desire in his eyes.
And even as she felt herself going under, giving in to the pleasure his hands on her brought, a niggling voice in the back of her brain demanded that she put up at least a token show of resistance.
“Stop that.”
The words were said without any heat, any true force, and were belied by the heated demand in her eyes. She felt herself swaying towards him, giving up…giving in.
“Good Godfrey Cambridge, Spike…” Xander stood in the doorway, disgust and annoyance on his face. “You're still trying to mack on Buffy? Wake up already. Never gonna happen.”
And suddenly, the spell was broken and she was forced to face the real world once more.
~Fin~