E-MAIL: nynaeve1723@dnafan.com <mailto:nynaeve1723@dnafan.com>

RATING: PG-13

KEYWORDS: romance; Spuffy fic

DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere. Just drop me a line please so I can visit. Also all my work is
archived at my soap site: www.dnafan.com <http://www.dnafan.com>. Click on link for Nynaeve's fan fiction.

DEDICATION: Alyssa, Wen and Kris.

Moment

Spike can hear her on the stairs. Truth be told, he could hear her the moment she'd left the back
porch and crossed the kitchen. The tap of her nails on the knob of the basement door' had
sounded in his ears like a bell. He glances to the window and, with over a century of experience,
guesses the time based on the night sky. There are hours still until dawn.

Her scent drifts down toward him. She is the most intoxicating woman he's ever known. Sometimes
she wears perfumes that mask that, but as often as not, she hasn't had time to apply any. Tonight,
nothing hides the sheer power of her. Even Angel's scent is gone from her now, and there is
something new, something unadulterated. Spike feels his hand tremble as it washes over him: desire.
She wants him. Not because she hates herself and wants to punish herself. Not because she
wants some sort of physical relief. Not even because the world may end in a few hours.
If those things were all she felt, she could make sure Andrew didn't die a virgin. No, she wants
to be with *him*. Only him. He steps into the dim light.

She is at the bottom of the stairs. Her face is serious, but not somber. Her eyes meet his with a
full awareness of the charge in the air between them. She takes a breath. He can hear it shake.
She is trembling, though it is not cold. For a few long minutes they simply stare at each other. A year
ago he would have gone to her, caught her, held her, even if she struggled at first. She would have reminded
him it was nothing, and he would have nodded in acceptance. A few months ago she might have come
to him, assuaging the pain inflicted by the First. But now they come to each other as any man and woman
should. They come to each other as equals.

He takes her hands, feels the warm touch of her slender fingers in his cool ones. He studies the depth of her
eyes and smiles at the inviting curve of her lips. He loosens one of his hands from hers and reaches up to stroke
her hair. "Buffy," his voice is a hoarse whisper. Vocal cords that shouldn't hurt do. A heart that
shouldn't thud with anticipation seems to. A monster that shouldn't be a man is - and it's her doing.
"We don't have to-"

She puts a finger on his lips and then leans up to kiss him. When she breaks the kiss and settles
again on her feet, she says, "I want to. I want *you*."

His smile is hesitant. "After everything...."

Her smile is open. "Maybe because of everything."

"Just because the world might end tomorrow," he teases.

She thumps his chest. "Hey, I have a pretty good track record of stopping apocalypses."

"So I've noticed."

Her eyes grow serious. "But that's just timing. This is what I want. You're what I want."

He cocks his head. "For how long?"

She hesitates. "I don't know. Is that okay?"

He puts his arms around her waist and pretends to consider it. She smiles as she waits.
At last, he grins broadly. "Yeah. It's more than okay, Pet."

"If we survive tomorrow-"

Spike arches a brow at her.

She grins and continues, "Maybe I'll have a chance to be a normal girl, at last. Figure out who
I am, what I want to do with my life."

"Who you want to be with."

She nods.

He caresses her arm. "You've never had that chance." He gazes at her with something awfully close
to amazement. Even vampires - most of them - had that chance in their mortal lives. Slayers -
well, Slayers don't, and most of them die before they reach their twenty-fifth birthday. Few of them - any? -
have ever faced all the things Buffy has. Yet she's never given in.

Her voice is soft, delicate, edged with an ache so strong it nearly knocks him backwards. "Tonight
I want to be a normal girl."

He smiles at her, the expression spreading slowly across his face and blazing into his eyes. His hand
whispers along her hair until he cradles the back of her head in his hand and draws her mouth to his.

Tonight they will forget the world-in-peril outside their door, their own patchwork past of hatred,
self-loathing and recrimination. Tonight they will forget the First and her friends and Angel and Dru and
anyone else who might have come between them. Tonight they will forget that he is an unlikely creature -
a vampire with a soul - and she is a Slayer, destined to kill demons. Tonight they will be what this
time and place mean them to be: lovers in body and heart and even soul.

Her lips are soft under his, pliant, warm, sweet. He aches to take her, to crush her mouth to his,
to let the heat of her sear him, to make her blood pound with such force that it's nearly as if his
own blood flowed again. He knows what her body enjoys; he knows her strength, her stamina.
Images - memories - flit across his vision and the primal thing inside him claws at him to be free,
to make the girl whimper and moan and beg and yell and come like no mortal woman can, except
a Slayer. The primal thing inside him reminds him she can do the same to him and the temptation is
- fleeting.

With his tongue, he opens her lips softly. She sighs, and her body melts against his, his arm
around her waist bearing most of her weight. She clings to him, one hand in his hair, the other around
his shoulders. Their tongues meet, gently, almost tentatively. Buffy's knees tremble.

Spike pulls away and can't help but grin at the hurt look she gives him. Her eyes are unfocused
and her lips moist with their kisses. Her breath is coming harder as her blood quickens its pace.
He doesn't say anything, just tightens his arm around her waist and, bending slightly, slides the other
under her knees. He lifts her into a cradle, his left arm sliding to her shoulders. He watches her
swallow and leans down to drop feathery kisses on her throat.

She moans as her head falls back and the expanse of her pale skin is open to him. His lips graze the
column of her throat making her shudder with longing. Her hands, laced around his neck, clutch together
reflexively. Her heat is intense, engulfing.

It's only a few steps to the pallet serving as Spike's bed. He crosses them with ease and lowers her
with a tenderness only she knows onto the makeshift mattress. Her hair shimmers against the pillow, spilling
in a spray of honey-colored silk. She sighs, the happiness in the sound tugging up her lips into a smile
of anticipation.

He kneels on the floor, one hand trembling over the cascade of blond hair. His fingers dip down and
slide through the strands. He breathes her name, reverent, hesitant almost. He is afraid to test the
moment, to wander beyond the pale of the spell binding them.

She reaches her hand toward his cheek and brushes her knuckles against his cool skin. He leans into
the caress. His eyes bore into hers, asking silently, finding her answer without words. He leans down
as she cranes her head up. The kiss explodes between them and the slow tenderness is consumed
in their fiery need of each other.

She raises herself into his embrace. His hands find the hem of her top and begin tugging it over
her head. She shrugs it off as he draws the garment down her arms. Her own fingers grasp his shirt and
it joins hers on the floor. His hands grasp her arms as her nails trail lines of desire across his back He kisses
her until she gasps for air, her body aflame for his, her heart beating fiercely enough for the two of them.
She pants his name and slides toward the wall.

He joins her on the bed, pressed against her, holding her as his lips find her neck again, as he
presses kiss after kiss against her soft skin. Her hands are flat against his chest, roving with wanton
eagerness, sending bolt after bolt of need through him until every nerve ending in his dead body is
singing with want of her.

Her fingers slide to places that make him bite back full-throated cries of desire. She is gentle and
commanding at once. He surrenders to the sensations she stirs in him. His hands roam her back, her
arms with no purpose so lost is he in her touch. Undressing him with deft fingers, she finishes the task, eager
yet enjoying the pace of their foreplay. Her lips join her hands in their work, calling
forth a muted symphony of passion from his lips. Her name punctuates his utterances, broadening
her smile, deepening her own desire.

Outside, the moon meanders lazily across the sky, its thin light falling on the amulet, cast aside,
forgotten even as it glitters with the hope it brings. Between them tonight is a promise deeper than
even saving the world, and nothing will intrude on that.

For an eternity - or so it seems - her fingers and lips and mouth, her breath, even the fall of her hair
against his skin push him toward an inevitable edge. When he can take it no longer, Spike catches
at her hands, pinning her wrists in his own iron grip. She looks at him with eyes dark with lust
and an emotion he wants to believe is love. She nibbles one corner of her bottom lip and then
grins at him, playful, excited.

He leans over her and takes that corner of her lip into his teeth, mimicking her own nibbling. So
gentle it is a tickle, nothing more. But that tickle sends lightning through her. Her eyes shut.

He looks down at her. She opens her eyes. At the same moment, they burst into laughter.
He releases her lip, but keeps his mouth nearly pressed against hers. Buffy says what they
are both thinking, "Willow's spell!"

Spike replies in a voice that rumbles with a growling desire, "That pouty lip. Gonna get it. Gonna
get it."

They laugh together for a few heartbeats and then the sound subsides.

She whispers, "I don't think I ever would have believed..."

"I know I wouldn't have," he tells her.

Her voice is more serious, the longing reasserting itself. "Spike lips. Lips of Spike."

He smiles softly. "I've still got Buffy taste in my mouth."

"Still?" She arches a brow, sounds disappointed.

He chuckles. "Doesn't mean I don't want more."

"Oh, good. I was worried for a moment."

"Never fear, Luv. I'll always want more."

A flash of pain shows on her features. "And if I can't give it?"

"Then this memory will keep me going." He smiles again and conjures another moment from
their past. "Until the end of the world."

She nods and, cupping his face in her hands, pulls his mouth back to hers. Words end for them.
Memories echo around them, ghosts of the past, and they whisper that there may not be a future.
It doesn't matter. All that matters is the present. All that matters is this moment.

END