Chapter Eight:

"Christ. . .Spike. . .you're gonna kill me. . ."

He looked up at her, eyes sparkling with the manic glee he usually reserved for mortal combat and Dark Shadows re-runs. He made no reply, but his mouth curled into an absolutely filthy smirk before he bent his head again.

As a vampire, Spike breathed only for emphasis. And like most of his breed, he was obsessive, orally fixated, and utterly without mercy. This combination currently had her clawing like a catamount at the satin sheets.

It was his damned undead senses letting him do it: He could hear the frantic racing of her heart, feel the hot rush of blood beneath her skin, probably taste how close she was to climax. Again and again, he'd brought her right to the brink and left her there, until she was sure she'd go mad from sheer frustration.

He'd been so wrong about her all those years ago. She was the begging kind, after all. It just took the right pressures to bring it out.

Like the pressure of that merciless mouth of his right. . .there. . .

"Spike. . .PLEASE. . ."

With a hoarse chuckle she felt as well as heard, Spike ended her torture at last, bringing force to bear where it was so urgently needed. Digging her nails even further into the much-abused sheets, Buffy came with an unearthly yowl, the orgasm exploding through her in a series of sharp, bright bursts, like strings of flashbulbs popping. After a minute or two she recovered enough to open her eyes and, looking down, realized she'd actually ripped right through the bed linens in the heat of the moment, gouging deep furrows in the mattress below.

Still wearing that lurid smile, Spike slithered up her body, wrapping himself around her like an amorous boa constrictor. "I'm not gonna have a stick of furniture left come daybreak," he said, sounding rather winded. Which was odd, considering the whole respiration thing was optional for him.

"Serves you right for teasing a girl," Buffy wheezed. "That was really mean, Spike." Her fingers and toes were tingling in a stunned sort of way, like she'd just experienced a low-grade electric shock.

"How many times I got to remind you that I'm evil, pet?" he said, his voice low and rough in her ear. The noise sent mini-shivers down her back, like little cat feet walking on her spine.

"Oh, one more time at least," she said, arching against him, feeling the hard, heavy strain of his erection pressing into the curve of her backside. Her lower half was still vibrating like a tuning fork.

Another raspy laugh. "That's my girl." He shifted them into a true spoon position. "And now for something completely different," he murmured. He started to enter her again slowly, slowly, pushing her right knee up to open her wider to him. She was so sensitive by now that it was even more intense than usual, every inch of him feeling like two. When he was nearly there, Buffy instinctively thrust back at him, and the intensity abruptly turned to pain. She cried out sharply, and Spike froze. "Do you want to stop?" he said softly. An emphatic shake of her head. "Do you trust me?" A small hesitation, so brief he probably missed it, and then a slow nod. "Then let me do the driving this time." She could hear a thread of laughter weaving through his hushed tone. "And breathe, love." Buffy sighed deeply, letting out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding, and tried to relax.

He began to move inside her gently, more a rocking than a thrusting motion, so slight that under normal circumstances she would barely have felt it all. But in her current condition even this easy movement fell just--and only just--on the right side of too much. Buffy took another deep breath, slow drops of sweat slipping down between her breasts as she waited for him to stray over the line, but Spike was sure-footed. Whether by his ungodly senses, or just way too many years of practice, he kept them dancing on that heady border between pleasure and pain without breaking rhythm for what felt like endless minutes.

And then, something amazing began to happen. The almost-too-muchness diffused into a spreading warmth, radiating out from the center of her in glowing waves that curled and crested with every stroke he took. Buffy moaned, melting into him like warm taffy, all anxiety forgotten as the feelings flowed over her. His hands were suddenly everywhere at once, gliding over the curve of her hip, sliding up the damp shoal of her belly, skating around the tight peaks of her nipples. Wherever he touched, little purple sparks flashed out to that radiant pulse at her center, like flares in a plasma ball. Now she was breathing all right, nearly panting as his touch quickened the waves into a throbbing current of heat. It surged and swelled, surged and swelled, until she was shuddering from head to toe with the force of the flux. "Spike. . ." she sighed, his name half-plea, half-caress. One sweat-slicked hand found his restless one, clutching onto it like a life preserver.

He pulled her closer, closer, holding her so tightly against him that their skins seemed in danger of fusing together. He was sheathed deep inside her now, so deep it should have hurt, but all she could feel was that steadily rising torrent rushing between them. "God, I love you, Buffy," he said rawly, cool irony deserting him as it always did at moments like this. "Never anyone else, never, never--" he cut off, climaxing with a low, feral cry that made the hairs at the nape of her neck stand at attention. Then she was coming too, this time not with a burst but with a flood, her orgasm a hot tide of sensation that gushed through every synapse, leaving her soaked and gasping in its wake.

They just lay there for a minute, both of them trembling with the aftershocks of their mutual satisfaction. Buffy sagged against him blissfully, savoring the feel of their arms and legs intertwined like sluggish serpents, their bodies still joined together into a single Vishnu-limbed creature. But just as the last of the serious tremors started to fade, Spike, moving almost as slowly as an actual 120-year-old man, began to withdraw from her. Buffy grimaced as she felt him go, less from pain than from the strangely empty feeling he left behind. Then, suddenly, the cool, solid wall at her back was entirely gone.

Buffy flipped over to face him, giving in to a sudden, irrational impulse to make sure he was still there. He was, but turned away from her, stretched over the side of the bed, scrabbling for something in the flotsam littering the floor. The flickering candlelight had warmed his pale flesh from alabaster to amber, highlighting the sleek curve of his spine, picking out the small, sinuous muscles of his back and shoulders in sharp bas-relief. Buffy felt her throat tighten--she'd always had a yen for the side of him that didn't habitually gibe at her. Even in the days when she wouldn't let herself notice anything else about him, the sway of his shoulder blades under smooth black leather had regularly made her hands itch. But maybe she'd been a little too enthusiastic in the scratching of that particular urge tonight, she realized with a guilty little wince: scores and bruises covered the entire span of his back like fierce calligraphy. She scooted closer, touching the mottled skin gingerly, but touching all the same, giving in again to that same absurd impulse, which now demanded tactile as well as visual proof of his existence.

He reacted almost instantly at her touch, rolling back up from his explorations to meet her uncertain gaze. She wasn't sure what all was showing on her face, but his eyes softened at the sight of it, and he reclined back on the shredded sheets, pulling her close to him again. Buffy nestled into him, running her hands down the marred breadth of his back like a blind woman reading Braille. Deciding to add lingual data to her evidence, she ran her tongue lightly over the hollow of his collarbone, growing a little puzzled at the taste, which was sharper than usual. Then she realized, with a small strange thrill, that she was tasting herself--her sweat on his skin, the pungent remains of what they'd just done together. She wanted more of it: bending her head, she began following the salty trail down, down, the thrill deepening as she reached the area where the flavor would be most concentrated. As she approached, she could feel him, still rigid and ready against the soft swell of her breasts, and she smiled to herself. You had to love the vagaries of vamp physiology, which didn't seem to understand the meaning of the term "refractory period."

Big Spike, however, wasn't viewing the situation nearly as optimistically as Little Spike. "Five minutes of respite, Slayer, I beg you," he groaned, gently pulling her back up to eye level. She now noticed that said eyes had deep, bluish circles underlining them, and the cold fingers gripping her shoulders were trembling slightly.

Buffy couldn't help pouting a little. "I thought vampires were insatiable."

"Insatiable, yes. Unbreakable, no," he said, a shade of amusement coloring the fatigue in his voice. "If you value me with all my parts intact, we'd best take a breather." His right hand slid down over her hip lightly, appraisingly, like a collector checking a Ming vase for cracks. "'Sides, you were feeling a mite fragile yourself, there."

"I'm fine," Buffy replied pointedly. "The unbreakable Buffy Summers, that's me--" She was cut off mid-sentence by a yawn wide enough to split her face in two.

"Yes, that is you," he said soothingly, smoothing the damp strands of hair away from her flushed face. He placed a light kiss on her forehead, then sat up. "Back in a sec."

Buffy rolled over and followed him with wide, hungry eyes, watching the wavering light play across his lean cat's muscles as he disappeared into the shadowy area that led upstairs. He was going for cigarettes, of course. Spike kept them stashed around the crypt the way arctic explorers leave hoards of food stowed along the frozen tundra, but he never seemed to have them to hand when he wanted them. If he was searching the wreckage above, they might be in for a lot more than a five-minute break. She scowled at the thought, feeling rather bereft, before losing the expression to another gigantic yawn that brought her back to reality. Here she was, barely able to keep her eyes open, so sore that one more go-round might very well cause some sort of vital rupture, sulking over losing half an hour to Spike's nicotine addiction. Can't help it, she thought, stirring restlessly against the rumpled sheets. With him, too much never seems to be enough. It didn't seem to matter how many flavors of orgasm they taste-tested, she wanted more: more of his hands on her, more of his skin sliding against hers, more of his fingers and tongue and cock filling all the empty places inside of her. She felt like the child in the fairy tale who gorged himself on enchanted candy, and became more ravenous with every bite he took.

It had been that way since their first kiss hours earlier. One taste of him, the salty-cindery tang that was essential Spike, and she'd been consumed by a furious craving unlike anything she'd ever known. Slamming him down onto the cold stone, she'd peeled off his worn jeans like a starving woman tearing the wrapper off a loaf of bread, shucking her own scant clothing almost as an afterthought. He'd lain back and let her work, serene as a seraph carved on a gravestone except for his eyes, which had burned into her with a look that was anything but angelic. When there was nothing but skin left between them she'd paused, running her hands down the undulating line of his torso. The silky slip of flesh beneath her fingertips had stoked her inner friction until she was bearing down hard enough to leave scratches, ten black-red marks of possession reaching from his nipples to his groin. Mine, a voice sly and primal as a crocodile had whispered in her head as she'd climbed on top of him. Mine.

With that thought she'd been lost, the reptile part of her brain completely taking over. Details were a little hazy right now, but she didn't think those long cracks marring the sarcophagus lid had been there before tonight. And, she had the feeling Spike was going to be scouring the dump for a new refrigerator door come sundown tomorrow. Maybe a new chair as well, since the green one by the TV wasn't ever going to be the same. While he was at it, he could also start scavenging nearby crypts for another pair of doorway urns, since they'd broken the other one in his set a few hours in.

Not long after that, they'd become contused enough to perceive the need for flatter, softer surfaces and made their way down here. Slightly less collateral damage had ensued from that point on, even if the wooden coffin next to the bed hadn't proven nearly so sturdy as the stone version upstairs. They had managed to leave the four-poster more or less intact, though she wasn't sure how much luck Spike was going to have getting all that candle wax out of his dry-clean only comforter. . .

Buffy felt something cold and wet touch her face, and she opened her eyes to see him bending over her, a glass in one hand and, unsurprisingly, a pack of cigarettes in the other. She sat up and stretched, realizing she'd fallen half-asleep in the short time he'd been gone. Focusing in on the glass, she saw that it was full of clear water, so cold it was already beading droplets of condensation in the humid cavern air. It wasn't until that moment she noticed that she was painfully, desperately thirsty. She snatched the glass of water from his hand like it was about to dissolve into a mirage, downing it so quickly that half of it ran down her chin and chest in icy rivulets, splashing onto the sheets puddled at her waist. The worst of her thirst slaked, she glanced up at Spike, who was watching her with a bemused expression she'd only seen once before, during that ill-fated experiment when he'd tried to teach her how to drink whiskey like a man. "Thanks," she said, a little embarrassed at her sloppiness, which was pretty funny when you thought about it, given that they'd just spent untold hours doing things way sloppier than that.

Spike pulled a cigarette out of the crumpled pack. "No bother," he said casually, bending over and lighting up on one of the fat pillar candles sitting on the makeshift nightstand. "Knew you'd be a bit parched right about now." He crawled back onto the bed, moving with the slinky grace which always made her stomach do that funny little flip. Settling down beside her, he stretched out and began contentedly blowing smoke rings at the root-veined ceiling.

Just like I knew you'd be out of bed soon as you could stand up looking for those Camel straights, Buffy thought as she finished the last sip of water. The connotations probably should have disturbed her, but either the endorphins had permanently addled her brain, or she was growing philosophical in her old age. She wasn't nearly finished having him yet. Might not ever be. May as well get used to his post-coital quirks now rather than later. At least the smoking had a certain retro charm to it. Riley had been into push-ups, yikes.

And it wasn't exactly like she had to worry about lung cancer anymore.

Buffy leaned over him and set the glass back on the bedside table, realizing as she did so that it was one of the green hobnail tumblers her mother had picked up on sale at Target a couple of Christmases ago. She briefly considered taking him to task over it, then decided to let it go for now. One post-coital quirk she didn't want to get used to was their fatal tendency to devolve from afterglow into pitched battle. She did make a mental note to keep a running total of pilfered items-- it was hard enough budgeting for the monthly demon rampages at Revello Drive without keeping Spike in housewares, too. There was definitely going to be a settling of accounts over this someday soon.

But not today.

Both hands now free, she lay down next to him again, snuggling close and resting her cheek on his chest, tangling her legs with his slightly longer ones. Taking one last drag, Spike pitched his half-smoked cigarette away and put both arms around her. The feel of the vampire's permafrosted flesh was wonderful--he was so cold and she was still so overheated, she was surprised there wasn't steam rising up where their bodies touched. Now that the frantic activity of the last several hours had halted, she felt limp and wrenched all over, as if every cell in her body had been wrung out and hung up to dry. But it was a blissful sort of slackness, like the boneless giddiness you feel after several shots of really strong liquor, that blessed state right before the nausea and weepiness set in.

She closed her eyes, random thoughts scudding across her tired brain like errant clouds, the drip-drip of water in the distant tunnels lulling her towards sleep. She sighed, wishing some of it would drip on her--even with Spike drawing the heat off like a giant ice pack, she was still burning up. Maybe, if she got really lucky, the ceiling would start to seep--caverns sometimes did that, didn't they? Or Spike could go get another glass of water and she'd just splash all of it on herself this time. No, that would require him getting up again, couldn't have that. Where had he gotten the water, anyway? She'd never seen him drink anything that wasn't 80-proof. Did he keep a bottle of Evian around in case she stopped by for an impromptu marathon boink-fest? Nope, he wasn't that much of a planner. Probably tapped into the nearby water lines. He already had electricity and better cable than she got--running water was definitely do-able.

Faucets rigged up, possibly a shower, Buffy thought lazily, burying her face in the chill curve of his shoulder. He always smelled so good--had to wash up somewhere. Vampires didn't sweat so they wouldn't reek like humans, but those who skipped basic hygiene altogether gave off a rank mildewy stench, like old, sour laundry. Spike's clothes were clean, though--smelled like the same fabric softener she used, probably lifted from her laundry room, thieving thing. Did he have a washer and dryer stowed around here, too? If so, he could jolly well start doing a load for her once in awhile as payback for all the stuff he'd pocketed. Had to know some sort of super-secret vampire voodoo for getting things April fresh: he wore the same clothes year after year, while she was constantly throwing stuff in the incinerator. Maybe he could even salvage what she'd had on last night--it'd be a shame to lose yet another thirty dollar J. Crew tank top to occupational hazards. Just what had he done with her clothes, anyway?

Buffy didn't realize she'd muttered that last sentence aloud until Spike answered her.

"Why--you're going?" His tone was neutral, but the arms encircling her tightened perceptibly.

Buffy blinked a few times, rousing herself from her reverie. "What? Huh? No." She glanced up at him, grinning in what felt like a pretty good imitation of his best teasing leer. "Though sooner or later, I'm gonna have to put on something besides this great big smile."

Spike's taut hold eased. His eyes roved over her bare body with a slow, hot gaze that set her fingers and toes tingling all over again. "Don't know. I think this is a good look for you."

Buffy trailed one finger thoughtfully down the rippled plain of his stomach, pursing her lips as if really considering the suggestion. "Hmmm. Ya know, you may have something there. Faith told me this great story once about slaying a group of vamps naked. She got surprised when she was sleeping, and being Faith, of course, was just too cool for Nick 'n Noras. Said it was one of the best diversionary tactics ever: their eyes stuck out that far when they got a gander at a slayer in her birthday suit. She took out five of them in like five seconds--guess they couldn't keep their dirty little demon minds on the battle. So next time I'm really outnumbered--hey, back-up plan."

Spike gave another one of those throaty little chuckles, a move that made the muscles of his abdomen jump in a really intriguing way. "Much as that picture fulfills certain long-cherished fantasies of this dirty little demon mind, don't think I'll be stocking up on the camcorder batteries just yet."

"Why's that?" Buffy said absently, having reached that tempting hollow where his stomach melded into his hip. Little Spike, who had apparently decided to catnap during their brief pause for station identification, was showing promising signs of wakefulness.

"Judging by what I saw in the cemetery, you won't be needing diversionary tactics to handle the local fauna. Or just about anything else, for that matter," he replied, sounding greatly pleased by the prospect.

Buffy's resuscitation efforts stopped short. "I'm not really unbreakable, Spike, " she said quietly.

He took her still hand in one of his own. Carefully avoiding her bandaged knuckles, he began slowly tracing the outlines of her fingers, feeling the play of bone and muscle under the skin with wary discernment, like a warrior testing a newly sharpened blade. "Sweetheart, last night you tore one of the most ferocious creatures known to this reality into fiddly bits using nothing but these lily-white hands. Do you have any idea what kind of force that takes? I've never even heard of a slayer with that level of power before, and I've done some research into the subject."

Buffy fidgeted anxiously. "Last night was. . .weird. I don't think I could do that all the time."

"This time last year you couldn't have done it at all," he persisted. "And you're just getting back in the game, now. Who knows what you'll be able to do this time next year?"

You think you know. What's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

"NO," Buffy said a little too loudly. She was suddenly squeezing his hand so tightly she'd have cut off his circulation, if he had any. "Tara said I have some additional protection, but--"

Spike interrupted her with an incredulous snort. "You're gonna listen to one of the people who botched the spell in the first place?" he retorted, beginning to sound truly irritated. "Your friends are amateurs, children mucking about with forces completely beyond their ken. They don't want to face how you've changed, because that would mean facing what they've done. Worse, what they nearly did. But you are changed, Buffy. I've seen it--hell, I've felt it." Disentangling himself from her grip, he cupped her face in his hand, that gentle gesture which so often accompanied his most overwhelming insights. "You are an immortal slayer," he said softly, a glow akin to awe in his indigo eyes. "The thing that could take you now doesn't bear imagining."

She stared back at him wide-eyed, his words reverberating like a giant gong striking in her head. Her first instinct was furious denial, her second to punch him in the nose, distilling fear and confusion into anger and violence, as she so often did. But the impulses died almost as soon as they were born, smothered by the look in his eyes and that yellowing bruise on his temple. He was right, after all--she was nowhere near what she had been. If her own inner barometer and Tara's adverse reaction to her aura weren't enough to convince her, there was plenty of proof lying in pieces all over the cemetery ground. And if there was anger to be felt or blame to be laid in the situation, it wasn't fair to focus on Spike. He wasn't the one who'd performed a spell potent enough to rip her out of paradise and threaten the life of every being in this existence, without bothering to read all the fucking footnotes.

Buffy's musings were rather painfully interrupted by the feel of Spike's fingers on her jaw, clamping down hard enough to have left bruises on someone who bruised more easily than she did. She focused back on him with a start, and saw the glow in his eyes had dimmed, leaving them the dull, frigid blue of polar ice. "That doesn't mean this thing doesn't exist somewhere, in some dimension, " he said, his tone hardening. "I want your word you won't go looking for it again."

All of a sudden, she was having a great deal of trouble meeting that frozen gaze. "What?" she said stupidly, thrashing around for a more compelling response and coming up with zilch.

"You know perfectly well what I'm talking about," Spike said steadily, keeping those wintry eyes fixed on her. "S'pose I should be flattered, you thinking I still had the teeth to take my third slayer, and an immortal one at that." He didn't look very flattered, though. His features had gone rigid with a cold, desperate fear she recognized.

I don't want to be death. Not to you.

Buffy swallowed hard, her throat thick with the same murky guilt that had nearly choked her last night.

"That won't happen again," she said huskily, and meant it. She reached up to him, stroking his cold face with hot, shaky fingers. "I'm sorry, Spike."

At her caress, something vital thawed in his eyes, and he relaxed his deathgrip. He ran his thumb gently over her lips, as if testing the truth of her words by touch. "It's all right, love," he said, his voice soft again.

Then his face cleared, one corner of his mouth twitching up in a low-wattage version of his usual sly smirk. "Given your present state, probably couldn't have done much more than make you dizzy, anyway."

Buffy wasn't so easily comforted, however. She sat up, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. The warm, loopy feeling had rushed out of her like air from a punctured balloon. "I didn't know what I was doing. I must have been crazy."

"Probably," Spike agreed cheerfully. "So I won't hold it against you." He sat up too, keeping his gaze level with hers. "No need to go fetal with remorse, pet," he said, taking in her new penitent posture with a benign tilt of his head. "The immortality thing's not an easy dose to swallow. I've seen plenty of my kind who couldn't stomach it."

"I thought you said being turned was a profound and powerful experience," Buffy said, curious enough to uncurl a little.

"It is. So profound and powerful most can't survive it." He regarded her with a sage, serious look that reminded her, strangely enough, of Giles in full-on Watcher mode. The contrast with his bruised, bed-headed nudity was odd, to say the least. "Think on it--how many mature vamps have you met in your time?"

Buffy couldn't help smiling a little at that, despite her deflated mood. She glanced pointedly at the messy piles of punk CD's and DC horror comics stacked on the shelving unit across from them.

"Define mature," she said drily. It was hard to take his listen-well-my-young-Padawan demeanor very seriously, especially when she strongly suspected Xander's much-missed White Stripes disc was stashed somewhere among the clutter.

He dismissed her sarcasm with an impatient sigh. "I mean those that have exceeded the limits of a normal human lifespan. That have lived longer than they would've done if they'd never been turned in the first place. A dozen, maybe? Out of how many thousands? Let's be honest--most of your time's spent taking out infants, by demon reckoning," he concluded, tossing the wry smile back at her.

"Sure, in Sunnydale. The older ones usually have enough sense to stay away from here," Buffy said defensively, her eyebrows drawing together. Infants, indeed.

Spike held up his hands in a placating gesture. "With all due respect to your fearsome renown, pet, it's not just a Sunnydale thing. I've been to every hotspot known to inhumankind, and it's the same everywhere. Whether or not there's a slayer extant, a vamp who's seen the half-century mark is a rarity."

"How come?" Buffy asked, stretching out and propping her head in one hand, genuinely intrigued. This was one aspect of vampire culture Giles had never seen fit to clue her into, perhaps because most of the Watcher's Council sourcebooks seemed far more concerned with all-star nosferatu like Nest and Angel and, yes, Spike, than the multitude who didn't make the cut.

"'Cause living forever is bloody hard," Spike said emphatically. He turned, drew another cigarette out of the pack on the table and lit it, his movements even more agitated than usual. "When you're human, the world changes, and you change with it. And before it can change too much, your time's over. But those who become immortal are frozen in time. The world keeps changing, we don't. Eventually, everyone and everything that defined reality for us--people, places, ideas--has melted away, or morphed into something else."

He took a deep drag and exhaled, shrouding his features in a moody cloud of cigarette smoke. "And it happens so goddamned fast," he said pensively. "You'd be amazed how quickly you can lose your balance when everything is rushing past, and you're standing still."

"You seem more or less upright," Buffy said uneasily, less amazed than she would have liked to be, thinking of the long gray days since her return.

"That's 'cause I work at it." He nodded meaningfully at the crowded shelving unit. Buffy just looked at him, puzzled. "What, you thought all this hard-earned cultural savvy was just some cunning pose?" he said, sounding somewhat offended. She raised one cynical eyebrow at him, and he capitulated, the serious expression lightening into his usual sardonic smirk, though she wasn't sure if the irony was aimed at her or at himself. "All right, well, it is a bit, but it's also a very necessary survival tactic. Vamps that don't keep up with the times don't survive very long. They lose touch with reality--everything fades to shades of grey. Except for the blood," he said reflectively. "That always keeps its color, for some reason." He paused, throwing her a knowing look that made Buffy flex her hands self-consciously.

"So that's all their lives become about," he went on after a moment. "Hunting, killing, marking territory. They're little better than animals, really. And like most wild beasts, sooner or later they get into a scrap with something more ferocious, and wham!" He slapped his hand down on the table with a force that made the candles splutter. "Fade to black. A nasty, brutish, and short life altogether."

"So, what you're telling me is that you've survived 120 years because of loud music, bad television and junk food." Buffy said, incredulous. The Celestine Prophecy his theory was not.

"That's a goodly part of it, yeah," Spike answered, shrugging carelessly as he tapped ashes into the hobnail glass. Buffy frowned at that, mentally adding dishwashing onto her list of domestic reparations, before turning her attention back to the conversation.

"Angel seemed to do okay, and he didn't even have cable," she pointed out.

The vampire stiffened a little, the way he always did when his grandsire's name was mentioned, but he answered her in a relatively blasé tone. "He was more with it than you think. You never saw him walking around in knee breeches and a periwig, did you?"

"A per-what?"

"Never mind. Point is, he adapted. Most vamps are piss-poor adaptors. They can't even be bothered to update their wardrobe, much less their world-view." He stopped and took another one of those deep draws on his cigarette. "Of course, in Angelus's case, having Darla chivvying him along for the first 150 years or so aided the process considerably," he added off-handly. But she could see a spark of the old teasing malice gleaming in his eyes even through the obscuring smoke.

"What did she have to do with it?" Buffy snapped, stung despite her best efforts not to take the bait. Even after all this time, she could never hear Angel's sire mentioned without feeling a pang of bitter dread. Which was stupid, since the blonde vampiress's evil influence on his life was long over, had been over since he'd reduced her to a pile of dust in a deserted club all those years ago.

Spike sat back against the headboard with the satisfied air of a marksman whose arrow has hit its target. "She had everything to do with it, just like Dru had everything to do with the fact that I'm not fertilizing a rose bush somewhere." He cocked his head at her, sharp features suddenly sincere. "Enduring eternity's not just keeping up your Entertainment Weekly subscription, love. It's about finding something real to hold onto in a world that's swirling around you like a bad dream. And the best thing by far to catch hold of is someone else." His eyes softened with a sad, sentimental glimmer she hadn't seen since his sire's disastrous homecoming last year. "Another face as unchanging as yours, another pair of eyes reflecting the years back at you, another mind that's known a world no one else remembers. Gives you a stable space, makes it possible to enjoy the whirl without going mad from the vertigo."

"Yeah, I'm sure Drusilla was quite the anchor," Buffy said waspishly. Someday, she might find a lover whose primary female attachment hadn't tried to kill her at one point or another. It would be a nice change of pace.

Spike gave another one of those careless shrugs, pitching the half-smoked butt into the long-suffering water glass. Buffy was beginning to wonder if he smoked cigarettes more for dramatic effect than anything else: she'd never yet seen him finish one. "Dru might've looked like she was ready to float away with the fairies at any moment, but there were times she tethered me to earth when nothing else would," he said composedly.

"Is that why you went all flighty when you guys broke up?" she asked, remembering with a slight chill his chaotic self-destructiveness during the Harmony period, when he'd practically jumped up and down on her front lawn waving his arms and wearing a bulls-eye painted on his chest. If it hadn't been for the intervention of top-secret military technology, she almost certainly would have taken serious aim, sooner or later.

"Too right. Didn't know which way was up for months afterwards," Spike answered, shaking his head ruefully. "The scrapes I got into, and the places I got into them--sheer insanity, all of it. Wouldn't have lasted a year if I hadn't come back here." He smirked at her again, the mockery definitely aimed towards himself this time. "Ironic, innit? Getting chipped by the government and whipped by the Slayer saved my wretched hide." He looked down at himself, surveying the assorted Slayer-inflicted scratches and bruises and bite marks peppering his pale skin with speculative amusement. Then he glanced up at her, and Buffy flinched involuntarily, waiting for his satire to shift directions and zero in on her like a SCUD missile.

Spike's next comment, then, was the last thing she was expecting.

"Of course, said hide may still end up nailed to a wall, if your mates find out I'm not just your whipping boy anymore," he remarked. His amused expression didn't change, but there was a tenseness beneath the teasing that told her he wasn't really joking.

Buffy blinked at him bewilderedly. "What? No. Things are different now--aren't they? I mean--you worked with them all summer," she sputtered, flustered. Another creeping chill, more intense this time, had crawled down her chest and curled up in the pit of her stomach.

"No, I worked for them--that's a big difference there," Spike corrected her coolly. "I was a convenient tool they made use of, just like the Bot. And if the hellions had ripped me to pieces instead of her, they'd have shown about the same regret." She caught a glimpse of something injured in his eyes, quickly submerged into his surface detachment. "Trust me, this situation's not getting sorted any time soon."

"I'll sort it," Buffy said tightly, her jaw clenching. "I'll make them understand."

Spike shook his head, still maddeningly calm. "They'll never understand, love. They can't even face what you are--how can they face what you need? Or who? No, they discover you're carrying on with yet another vamp, one who doesn't even have your ex's get-out-of-hell-free card, and their first instinct's gonna be to perform an intervention of the dusty variety." He said all of this in the most matter-of-fact way, as if they were still calmly discussing life philosophies rather than debating his brutal destruction at the hands of her loved ones.

"Shut up! That won't happen," she said angrily, beginning to grow really provoked. The sick chills had multiplied, tightening her stomach into a cold, oily ball.

"Why? Because you say so?" Spike retorted, bitter derision breaking into his voice, shattering his illusion of indifference to the situation.

"Because you're MINE!" Buffy almost shouted. With a fast, fluid motion, she was on top of him, thighs caging his hips, hands gripping his shoulders and pinning him against the headboard. Spike said nothing, just lay there quietly beneath her, his face gone utterly still. They looked at each other for one long, silent moment, the only audible sounds her anxious breathing and the drip of weeping water in the distant caves. Then slowly, carefully, Buffy began moving her hands down the pale marble of his chest, fingers lightly tracing over the countless bites and scrapes and bruises she had carved there, every one a mark of possession, a measure of assurance. She brought her hands back up to his arms, feeling the hardness of the muscles, digging her fingers into the sure steeliness that was Spike, the one creature she couldn't ruin and she couldn't drive away.

The one who would rather die than live without her.

"You're mine," she repeated, her voice breaking a little. "And they're not taking anything else from me."

But in that moment, Buffy knew with fearful certainty that they would. They'd take him away, with the same loving, careless arrogance that they'd taken heaven away. And once he was gone, once all this lust and care and devotion were scattered to ashes, they'd retreat, back into their normal lives and petty problems, leaving her alone in the dark. They would break her, out of an ignorant sureness that they could fix her, and not even stay to pick up the pieces. Buffy could feel the chills spreading out from her stomach, slithering down her arms and legs, until she was shivering all over with an icy, terrified rage.

She leaned down and kissed him fiercely, urgently, wanting the taste of him sliding down her throat, searing across her senses, filling her up so there was no more room for all this freezing fear. But it wasn't enough. Nothing ever seemed to be enough. She burrowed her hands even further into the stony muscles of his biceps, knowing she was probably leaving more marks but not caring, needing to reassure herself that he was still there, that he was still hers. He seemed so solid, as cold and firm as the ground below them, but it was all an illusion. One well-aimed splinter and he would dissolve to dust, leaving behind darkness and silence and emptiness. Leaving her with nothing. Forever.

I won't exist without you again.

She felt a sudden, savage hatred for the chip, that tiny piece of plastic that had assured her present, but could tear such an enormous hole in her future. All the strength and savvy in the world wouldn't save him, if someone human decided to destroy him. And then how long would it be, before she was destroyed as well? How long would it take her to fall into an abyss so much more terrifying than the one that had taken her before, to start heading down that long dim tunnel where everything faded except that deadly red rage? Not long, Buffy thought desperately. Not long at all. Her kiss deepened, becoming harder, almost brutal, her tongue a lash in his mouth, her teeth tearing at the cool, tender flesh of his lips. In her absolute panic she'd have bitten off pieces of him and swallowed him down, if it would have kept him with her.

I won't exist. . .

Throughout all this frenzy Spike had remained perfectly silent and still, as always the sure, stable wall she could hurl her fear and rage against. But part of him must not have been as calm as he seemed, must in some way have been excited by her furor, because she could feel him now, rigid and ready against the damp, trembling flesh between her thighs. Straightening up, she released his mouth and with one quick, cruel thrust impaled herself on him. She began moving fast, furious, no thought for finesse this time, no thought for anything but having him inside her as deep as he could go, as hard as she could take it. And it hurt, dear God it hurt, like being cut in two by a cold, keen blade, but that was okay, pain was okay, was the only feeling that kept her real when everything was dissolving to shadows around her. Up and down, up and down she went, steeling herself against the sharp stabbing ache, until suddenly she caught a familiar coppery smell, felt a thick stickiness between her thighs that had nothing to do with arousal.

"Buffy. . ." Spike's voice was soft, but the hands now grasping her hips were strong and stubborn, attempting to check her. Buffy struggled against him, still moving, trying to find that raw rhythm again.

"BUFFY!" his voice louder, sharper this time. Buffy ignored it, fingers clamping down on his, using all her strength to tear away his restraining hands, and then everything was tilting and she was on her back, pinned against the thick mattress by that inexorable grip of his. He'd withdrawn from her in the tumult, and the loss of him hurt so much worse than having him did.

She lay there, shuddering with pain and anger and arousal, looking directly into blue eyes that were already halfway to yellow from much the same mix of emotions. The rest of him, however, was still very human, features shadowed with a blend of confusion and concern.

"This is hurting you. We have to stop."

"I can't," Buffy whispered.

"What is it that you need, baby?" His voice was very gentle.

"I need. . ."

Something powerful. . .something profound. . .

". . .to feel you."

Something beyond the weak and selfish love of human beings. . .

"I need you, Spike. . ." She faltered, again at a loss for words when it came to the agonizing tangle of want he always aroused in her.

"You have me. You know that."

"Not enough. It's never enough." She said, her voice rising to an anguished wail on the last word.

"What do you want from me, Buffy?" he said in that same quiet tone, even as gold continued to flicker across the dusky blue of his irises, like sunlight shimmering on a bottomless lake.

It was the same question he'd asked her hours earlier, and she hadn't replied then, bewildered by her own guilt and confusion and fear. But now, as looked into those changeling eyes, saw him strain against that part of himself he'd held back all night out of concern for her, she finally knew the answer.

And realized that he'd known it, too.

I hear what your heart cries out for, Slayer.

Slowly, hazily, like someone moving in a dream, she brought her right hand up and shifted the long, wet tendrils of hair away from the bend of her neck. "I want all of you," she said softly.

"Slayer. . ." he murmured, and she couldn't tell if his tone was a warning or a plea. He looked down at the damp curve of her throat almost fearfully.

"You won't kill me. You'll save me." Reaching up, Buffy caught his face in both hands, pulled him to her and kissed him again, more softly this time. She felt him relax a little, his mouth opening to hers. She slid her tongue against his, moving in a long, liquid exploration, until she found the points of his canines, already sharp with his incomplete transformation. She pressed forward, felt a brief prick of pain, and then she could taste her blood in his mouth, wild and rich and dark. Spike made a soft, keening sound deep in his throat. She kept on, rolling the salty metallic taste between them, until his bones shifted and sharpened against her skin, and her slayer siren was shrieking down her spine.

She drew back, looking deeply into his eyes. There was nothing human in that golden gaze now. Nothing. Just pure animal need.

Yes, she thought serenely.

"Keep me from falling this time, Spike," she whispered, drawing his head down as slowly and sweetly as a mother about to nurse a child. She closed her eyes, silencing that inner alarm once and for all as his teeth sliced into the tender flesh of her neck like a sword through silk.

Buffy screamed, and the world dropped away.

********

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