Lessons Learned -A twisted_spuffy rewrite of School Hard
Lessons Learned
Darkness had fallen over the bucolic little town of Sunnydale. Families had retired behind the locked doors of their homes for the night, leaving only the swish of lawn sprinklers and the chirp of crickets to disturb the quiet evening. At a small park on the edge of town, the slides still held the warmth of the sun on surfaces polished bright by small bottoms and the swings stirred eerily in the faint breeze.
The roar of a powerful engine shattered the silence and with the squeal of rubber on pavement, the Welcome to Sunnydale sign was obliterated. The big car idled like some panting, futuristic beast surrounded by lethal splinters of wood.
Swinging open the door, the driver planted booted feet solidly on the street and emerged with a smug creak of treasured leather. He moved slowly and methodically, making his way towards the front of the car without sparing a glance for the desecrated sign. He paused and lifted his head, inhaling deeply of the night air before expertly flicking open his Zippo and delicately touching flame to the unlit cigarette clamped between his lips.
Ahhh. There it was, faint but still enough to tantalize his taste buds with the unique tang that whispered ‘slayer’. It was tainted by the heavier, musty odor of his grandsire. Spike made a face. So, the great mick was still hovering around the chit. Didn’t surprise him overly much. Angelus had always had a powerful yen for petite, green-eyed blondes.
Her signature was only a faint tickle along his spine, which told him it had been several days since she had passed through the area. No matter. Her heady fragrance was as familiar to him as the weight of the beloved leather resting on his shoulders. He would find her.
Sucking in a deep draught of nicotine, Spike gave a fangy grin.
“Home sweet home,” he drawled.
~*~*~
It was so hard, sometimes.
Take now, for instance. Willow was looking at her with her cute little quirky face and babbling about Angel missage, while Xander was flinging himself around the dance floor, a danger to himself and every other person brave enough to get close to him.
Sometimes, it was their very innocence that annoyed her to the point of screaming. And if it wasn’t her friends driving her crazy, it was a certain, dark-haired vampire. The one that hadn’t stopped pouting since she’d come back from her visit with her father in LA.
Absence certainly hadn’t inspired her heart to grow fonder. She was pretty much fed up with Angel’s whole mysterious vibe and the way he kept her constantly off balance emotionally. She was beyond frustrated with the way he kept avoiding anything remotely sexual between them.
Just last night they had been patrolling together. The more demonic denizens of Sunnydale had been out in force, and after one particularly grueling battle, Buffy hadn’t been able to resist. All that slaying had her motor revving. So, she had leapt into Angel’s arms and began kissing him passionately.
It had taken a few moments for her to realize that none of her ardor was being reciprocated.
At all.
In fact, Angel looked downright impatient with her actions as he pried her hands from his hair and plopped her back on her feet. After straightening his shirt and running a hand cautiously over his coif, he had proceeded to lecture her on being easily distracted and putting the both of them in danger.
To say she had been mortified by his casual attitude towards her advances was an understatement. Even now, the more she thought about it, the madder she got.
Dancing. Dancing was of the good. Dancing was just enough of a distraction from the evil inner Buffy moppet that Cordy claimed was in dire need of corporal punishment. The inner moppet that grew more and more frustrated as the days passed.
She was playing a part and it was wearing her down. They all thought it was dying at the hands of the Master for those few minutes that was bothering her, but the truth was it went back further than that. Back to a night at the Bronze just days after her arrival when a bleached blonde had paced a tight circle around her, the impudent flicker of his tongue rough against her throat as his smoky voice breathed harsh in her ear.
It was insanity. She had only met him once, had barely exchanged a handful of cryptic words with him, but she couldn’t banish him from her thoughts. She had dreamed of him that night and nearly every night after. Wicked, sinful dreams that left her panting with unfulfilled lust amid the damp, twisted sheets of her virginal bed. The finer details were blurry. She couldn’t remember the color of his eyes and hadn’t touched him at all, but the feel of him moving against her, of his plundering her untried body and his fangs at her throat was so vivid that she was unable to sleep for hours after.
Whenever Giles questioned her about slayer dreams, her mind would turn inevitably to the erotic porn-fest that her nights had become. She would become flustered and usually made some hurried excuse to escape his version of The Inquisition.
Buffy shrugged off her discomfiture and tried to lose herself in the beat of the music. Tonight was supposed to be about relaxing, forgetting about slayery duties and disturbingly erotic dreams and just being a teenager.
The maddening itch on the back of her neck soon told her different, and the likelihood of vampires in the vicinity was confirmed when a vaguely familiar voice demanded the phone to call the police.
“There’s some big guy out there trying to bite somebody.”
With a growl of frustration, she whirled away from her friends and started out the back door.
A girl just couldn’t get a break some days.
*~*~*
They were blue.
His eyes.
Crystal blue and sparkling with mirth at her obvious confusion.
He sauntered from the shadows, clapping in mocking approval of her performance. The sound of his hands coming together seemed too loud in the tense silence that bloomed between them in the alley.
“Nice work, luv.”
Ignoring Willow’s shrill ‘eep’ of distress, Buffy dared to take a few hesitant steps in his direction, her eyes greedily hoarding all the small details she hadn’t thought to seek out during their first encounter.
“Who are you?” she asked, fighting to control the quaver in her voice. God, he was too gorgeous. It should be illegal that something so beautiful had to be considered prey.
“You don’t remember me? I’m crushed, Slayer.”
Smug bastard.
Buffy was closer to him than her friends now, but her voice still dropped to a more intimate octave when she spoke. “Oh, I remember you. Still doesn’t tell me who you are or why you came back.”
He moved nearer, hips leading the way in the cockiest swagger she’d seen on a man to date. That annoying little smirk stayed in place until mere inches lay between them, then it melted away. He sucked in a deep breath and those beautiful eyes flickered topaz for an instant before he spoke.
“You want to know who I am? Ask your great hulking guard dog. If you want to know why I came back…you’ll find out on Saturday.”
“What happens on Saturday?” She could vaguely remember Giles babbling about some big vampire holiday thingie that was coming up, but of course she hadn’t really been paying attention to him. And guard dog? What…oh. Angel. Wait a sec. How did he know Angel?
Before she could ask, he crowded close to her, so close that she had to fight a wave of dizziness as his scent washed over her. Smoke and leather and a whiff of something earthy and wildly exciting to her.
“I kill you.”
It took a moment for his harsh words to register, and when they did she couldn’t hide the wounded look in her eyes. What the hell was wrong with her? Vampire, Buffy. Keep forgetting that and you’ll end up as his entrée.
She was so bemused by his threat that she didn’t even see him move. One second they were standing almost nose to nose, the next he had vamped and grasped her forearms with punishing force. He whipped her around and up against the metal doors she had bounced off of earlier, pinning her in place with a hand at her throat.
Xander’s shriek of fear rivaled her own surprised squeak of fright. Both he and Willow started towards them in a misguided attempt to rescue her. A savage growl and feral yellow eyes froze them in their tracks.
“Don’t, guys. Stay back,” Buffy rasped out. He wasn’t squeezing hard, but it was enough to alter her voice. She met those otherworldly eyes without flinching, but she couldn’t stop the shudder that clamored up her spine when he kneed her thighs apart and slid between them with practiced ease. Her loins exploded in a blaze of heat as he ground the hard bulge of his cock into her crotch. “Thought you said Saturday, big guy,” she managed to gasp out.
God, she hoped that long coat of his was doing a good enough job of hiding what he was doing from her helplessly gawking friends. The last thing she wanted to do with the rest of her evening was tell Giles why she had allowed what was obviously a master vampire to hump her.
“I did.” His answering chuckle vibrated right through her. With a barely audible grinding noise, the bumpies and golden eyes were gone and she was lost once more in an ocean of blue. The scarred eyebrow arched sardonically at the faint moan that escaped her. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t do this…does it?”
And then he kissed her.
Firm, cool lips closed over hers. The point of his tongue slicked aggressively over the seam of her lips and she sucked in a shocked breath, her mouth falling open under the onslaught.
Oh, God…his lips…and he was still thrusting steadily against her…undulating…hitting her just right…right there…that spot…again…and again…oh… oh yes…and she was gonna…gonna…
He tore his lips from hers and she caught a flash of gold in his eyes just seconds before he buried his face in her shoulder and sank his fangs into her vulnerable flesh. The world exploded in a shower of sparks and Buffy screamed out her release right before he slammed into her one last time and growled his own climax out around the teeth latched at her neck.
Aftershocks rippled through her as he pulled away just enough to lave the raw edges of the wounds with his tongue. He gave her only a few precious moments to calm herself before he released her and stepped back. She expected to see gloating satisfaction on his face when she lifted her eyes to meet his, but instead she found uncertainty and a nervous confusion that mirrored her own.
Mesmerized, she watched as he lifted a thumb and swiped a bit of her blood from the corner of his mouth. He stared at the blood-smeared digit thoughtfully before lifting it to his mouth and sucking it clean. His eyes rolled closed and the look on his face was pure ecstasy as he relished the taste of her. Buffy felt her thighs seize in reaction to his obvious pleasure.
He recovered much faster than she was able to, and the cocky mask was firmly back in place when he hauled her against him and gave her one last hard kiss before turning to leave.
“Until Saturday, luv,” he quipped as he swept down the alley in a swirl of black leather and attitude.
Buffy stared after him until he disappeared into the shadows, her body still thrumming from his touch. A delicate cough broke through her daze and she turned to find her friends gawping at her.
Great.
So much for keeping anything from Giles.
*~*~*
He’d left Dru in their room- hopefully eating the supper he’d brought her- on the pretense of joining the others for chanting and cleansing. Instead he found himself on the roof, sprawled out on his back and contemplating the constellations while chain smoking and knocking back whiskey like water.
His mind should have been on his dark princess and finding the ritual that would bring her back to him. Her moments of lucidity were few and far between these days, and she was steadily growing weaker. He had to practically force her to feed and she was driving him to distraction with her attempts to walk into the daylight to pick daisies that didn’t exist. It was even worse when she turned on him, spitting and clawing in a fit of rage, demanding to know why he was keeping her from her precious ‘daddy’ and ‘grandmum’.
Instead, he found himself reliving his encounter with the slayer.
Spike groaned as his cock surged to life. The whole purpose of tonight’s mission had been to find the girl, test her fighting abilities with that twit of a fledge, toss out a few threats, and then leave. Humping her like a rabid dog in a smelly alley certainly hadn’t been part of the plan, nor had he meant to bite her.
So much for his carefully laid plans.
He could lie to himself. He’d been doing it for years with Drusilla. Lay the blame on the fact that it had been years since he’d been able to slake his baser needs with his sire’s willing body. Which was true, but self-control had never been an issue for him until his trip to the Hellmouth last fall. Since then, the little slayer had become his private obsession. Might have known that rushing to do Dru’s bidding would end up fucking up his well-ordered unlife. Now his dreams were plagued by shiny golden hair and luminous hazel eyes grown slumberous with passion as he pounded his way between her smooth golden thighs and sank his fangs into the tender column of her throat.
Scarcely a night went by now that he didn’t bolt upright in the bed he shared with his sire, eyes wild and body screaming for release. It was a bloody miracle his hand hadn’t been melded to his dick as much as he’d taken to wanking off to relieve the pressure brought on by his slayer-induced nightmares.
How in the hell was he supposed to resist when he was dizzied by the scent of her arousal and captivated by the lush curve of her lips? The moment he’d laid hands on her tonight he’d been hopelessly buggered. One touch and he’d been panting after her like a hound chasing a bitch in heat.
A snort of disgust escaped him as the warning itch of the rising sun joined the throb in his loins. He flung the empty whiskey bottle over the edge of the roof with a snarl and then reached down to undo his belt. His cock sprang into his waiting hand, rock hard and nearly purple with his need.
Might as well get this over with, he thought bitterly and began to move his hand with practiced ease.
*~*~*
Tattletales!
Buffy sat on the edge of the table, shoulders curled defensively inward and a mutinous pout on her face. All three if them were staring at her with varying expressions. Giles was buffing his glasses to a blinding sheen. Willow was still an alarming shade of crimson and there was an annoying twitch at the corner of her mouth. Every few minutes, Xander would give an all-over shudder and then make the most irritating noise she’d ever heard.
“Uh-buh-buh-bub. Ubbah.”
There. He was doing it again. Buffy was giving some serious thought to getting up and gently snapping his neck when Giles cleared his throat in a brave attempt to break the stunned silence.
“Perhaps he went by another name in…times past.”
William.
Buffy wisely kept this bit of information to herself. The explanations about how she’d come by this bit of knowledge would be long and involved. All she wanted to do was get out of here, do a quick patrol, and then head home to her bed.
“Well, whoever he is, we’ll need all the help we can get come this Saturday,” Miss Calendar chimed in. Buffy found it odd that the computer teacher was the only one that wasn’t looking at her like she’d sprouted a third head and cloven hooves.
Strange.
“Well, he can’t be any worse than any other creature you’ve faced,” Giles ruminated aloud, popping his glasses back on his nose.
“He’s worse.”
And my night is complete. Buffy fought the urge to roll her eyes as Angel continued. Yay for Mr. Cryptic Guy.
“Once he starts something he doesn't stop until everything in his path is dead,” Angel intoned with a dramatic air of foreboding.
“Hmm. So, he’s thorough, goal-oriented.”
Letting Xander’s quippy reply to Angel’s comment sail right over her head, the slayer made sure her hair covered the raw bite marks on her neck and turned to face the dark-haired vampire. She couldn’t help but wonder how much of their conversation he had overheard while he hung back, lurking in the shadows.
“We were at the Bronze earlier. Thought you said you might show?”
Angel’s facial expression barely flickered. “You said you weren’t sure if you were going.”
“I was being-” Her intended lecture on the intricacies of dating in the 20th century was brutally cut-off by a madly grinning Xander.
“Hey, don’t sweat it, dead-boy. The Buffster found herself another fangy pet to swap spit and bump uglies with,” he gloated. “Sorry, dude. You snooze, you lose.”
“What?” Wounded puppy-dog eyes turned in her direction. “Buffy, what does he mean?”
Her glare alone should have fried him to a crisp, but Xander played oblivious to Buffy’s frantic shushing motions. It wasn’t every day he got to lord it over the undead competition for the slayer’s favors. He was enjoying himself immensely at Angel’s expense.
“Yeah, this new guy- Spike, is it? He seems to be quite the stud. Had our little Buffy up against the wall and panting just a few minutes after they met.”
“Xander!” Buffy’s humiliated screech was followed by a ringing slap upside the boy’s head.
Giles rolled his eyes, completely fed up with their actions. “Uh, we do have slightly more important matters to discuss.”
Ignoring the pleading looks Angel was sending in her direction, Buffy struggled to calm herself and concentrate on the subject at hand. “Yeah, like keeping my mom away from Principal Snyder tomorrow night?”
“And not dying on Saturday.” Miss Calendar offered a sympathetic smile when Buffy gave her an irritated scowl.
Giles was paging through one of the dustier tomes in his vast collection. “Angel, do you know if this Spike fellow goes under any other name?” he queried.
Silence greeted his question and the library doors swished shut behind the departing vampire. Xander rubbed his aching head and muttered about collars and bells while Buffy fought the urge to chase Angel down. She knew instinctively where he was headed and the temptation to follow him was strong, but she managed to show admirable restraint and return to her perch on the table’s edge.
“So, Giles,” she said, her narrowed gaze daring any of them to comment on Angel’s swift departure. “Got anything else on this vampire rave I’m supposed to bust up?”
*~*~*
He had been beyond pissed. Pissed and in some major pain from the huge lump on the back of his head, courtesy of the girl’s tigress of a mother.
“You get the hell away from my daughter!”
Beating a hasty retreat had seemed the wisest choice at the time. Didn’t mean he had to be happy with said choice. He had been close…so bloody close that he could almost taste all that powerful elixir pouring down his throat once more. It was a drug, her blood. One taste and he was an ardent junkie.
After exchanging a heated glance with the stunned slayer, he’d made his ignominious exit through the broken window and high-tailed it back to the factory to nurse both his wounds and his battered pride.
Drusilla’s attempts to comfort him were appreciated and went a long way towards soothing his irritation, but that still hadn’t stopped him from grabbing the evil little midget and stringing him up in a cage to meet the sunrise. Lay down his life for that little pisser? Not bloody likely!
Once the runt had been dealt with, Spike had taken it upon himself to ensure that his new minions knew who their new master was. Only a few had dared to protest his presumptuousness, and they had been quickly and brutally dealt with. When the dust had settled, the rest had surrendered with embarrassing speed and pledged their fealty to him. Too wound up to sleep, he had spent the day whipping them into shape and making sure that there was always someone tending to Dru.
Now it was dusk and his temper was much improved. He was feeling downright jaunty as he left the lair and set off to find a meal. If he happened upon the slayer during his wanderings, so much the better.
*~*~*~*
Several hours later, he dropped the cooling corpse that was his dinner behind a handy dumpster. He licked his lips clean and started off once more, intent on finding a nice, plump drunk for Dru. She’d become quite the finicky eater, his girl, and while she often complained that they smelled bad, the added bonus of the alcohol in their blood helped sedate her somewhat.
His meandering path took him down another dank alley and he halted as a wave of familiarity swept through him. The fates must have been guiding his footsteps tonight, because he found himself in the same alley where his confrontation with the slayer had taken place.
To his delighted astonishment, she was right there in front of him, leaning back against the same metal door he’d pinned her to just a few days before. Cool green eyes assessed him as he sauntered closer, a self-satisfied smirk twisting his lips.
“Figured you’d show up here sooner or later,” she murmured, not in the least bit threatened by his proximity.
“Hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long,” Spike replied. His hand lifted to brush back a lock of her wispy bangs, wanting his view of her gorgeous eyes to be unhindered.
Buffy shrugged but made no move to dislodge his fingers from her hair. “Not really. I had to ditch someone first. Thanks to someone spilling all the juicy details of our little groiny episode, he’s been kinda overbearing and protective.”
Spike chuckled. “Angelus, I assume.”
She gave him a stern frown. “Angel,” she corrected. “And what the heck is it with you two? How do you know each other? Every time I ask him about you, I get the look of death and he storms off.”
“You mean he hasn’t dished up all the family dirt? I’m crushed. Really.” A pale, well-shaped hand splayed across his chest and he affected a wounded pout. She flicked a sleek eyebrow at him and he sighed. “Not buyin’ that, are you?”
“Not even.”
“That’s a fairly long tale, sweetness. Sure I can’t talk you into a quick snog beforehand?” he evaded hopefully, daring to move in just a tiny bit closer.
Her hand landed on the same place his own had rested, but with slightly more force and a pointy piece of wood to back her up. “Not unless you want to be on very intimate terms with the street sweeper come morning,” she denied him airily, tickling his breastbone with the stake.
He leaned forward until the lethal point pressed deeply into his flesh, eyes hooded and a smirk on his lips. “Can’t say I came here to chat about Angelus, luv.”
“So why are you here, then?”
With a few lightning fast moves, the stake clattered to the pavement and her arm was twisted behind her, forcing her up high and hard against his body. His very hard and extremely aroused body.
“Take a guess, Slayer.”
Even with the proof prodding insistently at her belly, Buffy refused to give him the satisfaction of a struggle. She held herself taut, her eyes sliding closed as he slowly bent his head and nuzzled the healing bite mark from the other night. His soft laugh sent a burst of cool air over flesh dampened by his wayward tongue and she couldn’t help the tremor of reaction that rushed over her skin. Her inner slayer might be going haywire over the fact that a vampire was lipping his way up and down her neck, but her teenage hormones were doing a helluva job of beating it down.
“I came here…for you,” he clarified. The rough promise in his voice sent delicious chills racing over her skin.
“To…ah! To kill me, right?” she countered, a breathy sigh escaping her as he found the hot spot behind her left ear. A slow burn had started low in her belly and it intensified with each stroke of his tongue. He still held her to him with her arm behind her, but his grip had loosened and his free hand was busy undoing the buttons of her blouse and pushing it aside.
“Yeah.” But there was more than a hint of uncertainty coloring his voice. He tried again, more decisively this time. “Yeah, that’s the plan.”
“So, why haven’t you yet?” she breathed, rubbing his jaw caressingly with the point of her chin. “Right here at my throat, ya know. What’s stopping you?”
Spike heaved an impatient sigh and finally left off teasing the highly sensitive line of her throat. “Gee, I don’t know,” he drawled. “Maybe your incessant yapping is distracting me?”
Her hand slid over his hip and curved around the bulging denim to give him a firm squeeze. “You’re a really crappy liar,” she chided with a confident smirk of her own.
A harsh groan rumbled through him at her touch. Lifting his head, his eyes met and held hers for a beat and then he was kissing her, his mouth ravaging hers with devastating skill.
There was nothing reticent about him. Nothing the least bit shy or genteel. His lips and tongue were rough as they plundered hers with raw sensuality. There was none of the frustratingly hesitant overtures that she had come to expect from the few times Angel had deigned to reward her with kisses. The faint tint of blood from her abused lips only spurred him on, and Buffy willingly lost herself in the urgent motions of his body undulating against hers.
Spike finally realized he still had her arm pinioned behind her and let go of her wrist. Breaking off the kiss, he left her gasping for much needed air as his lips swept an icy-hot path over her collarbone to her lace-bound breasts. In a move reminiscent of their first encounter in this very alley, he crowded her up against the wall, hands gripping her thighs with bruising force as he guided them around his hips.
A door burst open behind them and the last of the Bronze employees piled out into the darkness, their loudly complaining voices startling the entwined couple into wary stillness. Too distracted with their bitching about rude customers and their slime ball of a boss, the group never noticed the blonde couple as they headed for home.
Darkness had fallen over the bucolic little town of Sunnydale. Families had retired behind the locked doors of their homes for the night, leaving only the swish of lawn sprinklers and the chirp of crickets to disturb the quiet evening. At a small park on the edge of town, the slides still held the warmth of the sun on surfaces polished bright by small bottoms and the swings stirred eerily in the faint breeze.
The roar of a powerful engine shattered the silence and with the squeal of rubber on pavement, the Welcome to Sunnydale sign was obliterated. The big car idled like some panting, futuristic beast surrounded by lethal splinters of wood.
Swinging open the door, the driver planted booted feet solidly on the street and emerged with a smug creak of treasured leather. He moved slowly and methodically, making his way towards the front of the car without sparing a glance for the desecrated sign. He paused and lifted his head, inhaling deeply of the night air before expertly flicking open his Zippo and delicately touching flame to the unlit cigarette clamped between his lips.
Ahhh. There it was, faint but still enough to tantalize his taste buds with the unique tang that whispered ‘slayer’. It was tainted by the heavier, musty odor of his grandsire. Spike made a face. So, the great mick was still hovering around the chit. Didn’t surprise him overly much. Angelus had always had a powerful yen for petite, green-eyed blondes.
Her signature was only a faint tickle along his spine, which told him it had been several days since she had passed through the area. No matter. Her heady fragrance was as familiar to him as the weight of the beloved leather resting on his shoulders. He would find her.
Sucking in a deep draught of nicotine, Spike gave a fangy grin.
“Home sweet home,” he drawled.
~*~*~
It was so hard, sometimes.
Take now, for instance. Willow was looking at her with her cute little quirky face and babbling about Angel missage, while Xander was flinging himself around the dance floor, a danger to himself and every other person brave enough to get close to him.
Sometimes, it was their very innocence that annoyed her to the point of screaming. And if it wasn’t her friends driving her crazy, it was a certain, dark-haired vampire. The one that hadn’t stopped pouting since she’d come back from her visit with her father in LA.
Absence certainly hadn’t inspired her heart to grow fonder. She was pretty much fed up with Angel’s whole mysterious vibe and the way he kept her constantly off balance emotionally. She was beyond frustrated with the way he kept avoiding anything remotely sexual between them.
Just last night they had been patrolling together. The more demonic denizens of Sunnydale had been out in force, and after one particularly grueling battle, Buffy hadn’t been able to resist. All that slaying had her motor revving. So, she had leapt into Angel’s arms and began kissing him passionately.
It had taken a few moments for her to realize that none of her ardor was being reciprocated.
At all.
In fact, Angel looked downright impatient with her actions as he pried her hands from his hair and plopped her back on her feet. After straightening his shirt and running a hand cautiously over his coif, he had proceeded to lecture her on being easily distracted and putting the both of them in danger.
To say she had been mortified by his casual attitude towards her advances was an understatement. Even now, the more she thought about it, the madder she got.
Dancing. Dancing was of the good. Dancing was just enough of a distraction from the evil inner Buffy moppet that Cordy claimed was in dire need of corporal punishment. The inner moppet that grew more and more frustrated as the days passed.
She was playing a part and it was wearing her down. They all thought it was dying at the hands of the Master for those few minutes that was bothering her, but the truth was it went back further than that. Back to a night at the Bronze just days after her arrival when a bleached blonde had paced a tight circle around her, the impudent flicker of his tongue rough against her throat as his smoky voice breathed harsh in her ear.
It was insanity. She had only met him once, had barely exchanged a handful of cryptic words with him, but she couldn’t banish him from her thoughts. She had dreamed of him that night and nearly every night after. Wicked, sinful dreams that left her panting with unfulfilled lust amid the damp, twisted sheets of her virginal bed. The finer details were blurry. She couldn’t remember the color of his eyes and hadn’t touched him at all, but the feel of him moving against her, of his plundering her untried body and his fangs at her throat was so vivid that she was unable to sleep for hours after.
Whenever Giles questioned her about slayer dreams, her mind would turn inevitably to the erotic porn-fest that her nights had become. She would become flustered and usually made some hurried excuse to escape his version of The Inquisition.
Buffy shrugged off her discomfiture and tried to lose herself in the beat of the music. Tonight was supposed to be about relaxing, forgetting about slayery duties and disturbingly erotic dreams and just being a teenager.
The maddening itch on the back of her neck soon told her different, and the likelihood of vampires in the vicinity was confirmed when a vaguely familiar voice demanded the phone to call the police.
“There’s some big guy out there trying to bite somebody.”
With a growl of frustration, she whirled away from her friends and started out the back door.
A girl just couldn’t get a break some days.
*~*~*
They were blue.
His eyes.
Crystal blue and sparkling with mirth at her obvious confusion.
He sauntered from the shadows, clapping in mocking approval of her performance. The sound of his hands coming together seemed too loud in the tense silence that bloomed between them in the alley.
“Nice work, luv.”
Ignoring Willow’s shrill ‘eep’ of distress, Buffy dared to take a few hesitant steps in his direction, her eyes greedily hoarding all the small details she hadn’t thought to seek out during their first encounter.
“Who are you?” she asked, fighting to control the quaver in her voice. God, he was too gorgeous. It should be illegal that something so beautiful had to be considered prey.
“You don’t remember me? I’m crushed, Slayer.”
Smug bastard.
Buffy was closer to him than her friends now, but her voice still dropped to a more intimate octave when she spoke. “Oh, I remember you. Still doesn’t tell me who you are or why you came back.”
He moved nearer, hips leading the way in the cockiest swagger she’d seen on a man to date. That annoying little smirk stayed in place until mere inches lay between them, then it melted away. He sucked in a deep breath and those beautiful eyes flickered topaz for an instant before he spoke.
“You want to know who I am? Ask your great hulking guard dog. If you want to know why I came back…you’ll find out on Saturday.”
“What happens on Saturday?” She could vaguely remember Giles babbling about some big vampire holiday thingie that was coming up, but of course she hadn’t really been paying attention to him. And guard dog? What…oh. Angel. Wait a sec. How did he know Angel?
Before she could ask, he crowded close to her, so close that she had to fight a wave of dizziness as his scent washed over her. Smoke and leather and a whiff of something earthy and wildly exciting to her.
“I kill you.”
It took a moment for his harsh words to register, and when they did she couldn’t hide the wounded look in her eyes. What the hell was wrong with her? Vampire, Buffy. Keep forgetting that and you’ll end up as his entrée.
She was so bemused by his threat that she didn’t even see him move. One second they were standing almost nose to nose, the next he had vamped and grasped her forearms with punishing force. He whipped her around and up against the metal doors she had bounced off of earlier, pinning her in place with a hand at her throat.
Xander’s shriek of fear rivaled her own surprised squeak of fright. Both he and Willow started towards them in a misguided attempt to rescue her. A savage growl and feral yellow eyes froze them in their tracks.
“Don’t, guys. Stay back,” Buffy rasped out. He wasn’t squeezing hard, but it was enough to alter her voice. She met those otherworldly eyes without flinching, but she couldn’t stop the shudder that clamored up her spine when he kneed her thighs apart and slid between them with practiced ease. Her loins exploded in a blaze of heat as he ground the hard bulge of his cock into her crotch. “Thought you said Saturday, big guy,” she managed to gasp out.
God, she hoped that long coat of his was doing a good enough job of hiding what he was doing from her helplessly gawking friends. The last thing she wanted to do with the rest of her evening was tell Giles why she had allowed what was obviously a master vampire to hump her.
“I did.” His answering chuckle vibrated right through her. With a barely audible grinding noise, the bumpies and golden eyes were gone and she was lost once more in an ocean of blue. The scarred eyebrow arched sardonically at the faint moan that escaped her. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t do this…does it?”
And then he kissed her.
Firm, cool lips closed over hers. The point of his tongue slicked aggressively over the seam of her lips and she sucked in a shocked breath, her mouth falling open under the onslaught.
Oh, God…his lips…and he was still thrusting steadily against her…undulating…hitting her just right…right there…that spot…again…and again…oh… oh yes…and she was gonna…gonna…
He tore his lips from hers and she caught a flash of gold in his eyes just seconds before he buried his face in her shoulder and sank his fangs into her vulnerable flesh. The world exploded in a shower of sparks and Buffy screamed out her release right before he slammed into her one last time and growled his own climax out around the teeth latched at her neck.
Aftershocks rippled through her as he pulled away just enough to lave the raw edges of the wounds with his tongue. He gave her only a few precious moments to calm herself before he released her and stepped back. She expected to see gloating satisfaction on his face when she lifted her eyes to meet his, but instead she found uncertainty and a nervous confusion that mirrored her own.
Mesmerized, she watched as he lifted a thumb and swiped a bit of her blood from the corner of his mouth. He stared at the blood-smeared digit thoughtfully before lifting it to his mouth and sucking it clean. His eyes rolled closed and the look on his face was pure ecstasy as he relished the taste of her. Buffy felt her thighs seize in reaction to his obvious pleasure.
He recovered much faster than she was able to, and the cocky mask was firmly back in place when he hauled her against him and gave her one last hard kiss before turning to leave.
“Until Saturday, luv,” he quipped as he swept down the alley in a swirl of black leather and attitude.
Buffy stared after him until he disappeared into the shadows, her body still thrumming from his touch. A delicate cough broke through her daze and she turned to find her friends gawping at her.
Great.
So much for keeping anything from Giles.
*~*~*
He’d left Dru in their room- hopefully eating the supper he’d brought her- on the pretense of joining the others for chanting and cleansing. Instead he found himself on the roof, sprawled out on his back and contemplating the constellations while chain smoking and knocking back whiskey like water.
His mind should have been on his dark princess and finding the ritual that would bring her back to him. Her moments of lucidity were few and far between these days, and she was steadily growing weaker. He had to practically force her to feed and she was driving him to distraction with her attempts to walk into the daylight to pick daisies that didn’t exist. It was even worse when she turned on him, spitting and clawing in a fit of rage, demanding to know why he was keeping her from her precious ‘daddy’ and ‘grandmum’.
Instead, he found himself reliving his encounter with the slayer.
Spike groaned as his cock surged to life. The whole purpose of tonight’s mission had been to find the girl, test her fighting abilities with that twit of a fledge, toss out a few threats, and then leave. Humping her like a rabid dog in a smelly alley certainly hadn’t been part of the plan, nor had he meant to bite her.
So much for his carefully laid plans.
He could lie to himself. He’d been doing it for years with Drusilla. Lay the blame on the fact that it had been years since he’d been able to slake his baser needs with his sire’s willing body. Which was true, but self-control had never been an issue for him until his trip to the Hellmouth last fall. Since then, the little slayer had become his private obsession. Might have known that rushing to do Dru’s bidding would end up fucking up his well-ordered unlife. Now his dreams were plagued by shiny golden hair and luminous hazel eyes grown slumberous with passion as he pounded his way between her smooth golden thighs and sank his fangs into the tender column of her throat.
Scarcely a night went by now that he didn’t bolt upright in the bed he shared with his sire, eyes wild and body screaming for release. It was a bloody miracle his hand hadn’t been melded to his dick as much as he’d taken to wanking off to relieve the pressure brought on by his slayer-induced nightmares.
How in the hell was he supposed to resist when he was dizzied by the scent of her arousal and captivated by the lush curve of her lips? The moment he’d laid hands on her tonight he’d been hopelessly buggered. One touch and he’d been panting after her like a hound chasing a bitch in heat.
A snort of disgust escaped him as the warning itch of the rising sun joined the throb in his loins. He flung the empty whiskey bottle over the edge of the roof with a snarl and then reached down to undo his belt. His cock sprang into his waiting hand, rock hard and nearly purple with his need.
Might as well get this over with, he thought bitterly and began to move his hand with practiced ease.
*~*~*
Tattletales!
Buffy sat on the edge of the table, shoulders curled defensively inward and a mutinous pout on her face. All three if them were staring at her with varying expressions. Giles was buffing his glasses to a blinding sheen. Willow was still an alarming shade of crimson and there was an annoying twitch at the corner of her mouth. Every few minutes, Xander would give an all-over shudder and then make the most irritating noise she’d ever heard.
“Uh-buh-buh-bub. Ubbah.”
There. He was doing it again. Buffy was giving some serious thought to getting up and gently snapping his neck when Giles cleared his throat in a brave attempt to break the stunned silence.
“Perhaps he went by another name in…times past.”
William.
Buffy wisely kept this bit of information to herself. The explanations about how she’d come by this bit of knowledge would be long and involved. All she wanted to do was get out of here, do a quick patrol, and then head home to her bed.
“Well, whoever he is, we’ll need all the help we can get come this Saturday,” Miss Calendar chimed in. Buffy found it odd that the computer teacher was the only one that wasn’t looking at her like she’d sprouted a third head and cloven hooves.
Strange.
“Well, he can’t be any worse than any other creature you’ve faced,” Giles ruminated aloud, popping his glasses back on his nose.
“He’s worse.”
And my night is complete. Buffy fought the urge to roll her eyes as Angel continued. Yay for Mr. Cryptic Guy.
“Once he starts something he doesn't stop until everything in his path is dead,” Angel intoned with a dramatic air of foreboding.
“Hmm. So, he’s thorough, goal-oriented.”
Letting Xander’s quippy reply to Angel’s comment sail right over her head, the slayer made sure her hair covered the raw bite marks on her neck and turned to face the dark-haired vampire. She couldn’t help but wonder how much of their conversation he had overheard while he hung back, lurking in the shadows.
“We were at the Bronze earlier. Thought you said you might show?”
Angel’s facial expression barely flickered. “You said you weren’t sure if you were going.”
“I was being-” Her intended lecture on the intricacies of dating in the 20th century was brutally cut-off by a madly grinning Xander.
“Hey, don’t sweat it, dead-boy. The Buffster found herself another fangy pet to swap spit and bump uglies with,” he gloated. “Sorry, dude. You snooze, you lose.”
“What?” Wounded puppy-dog eyes turned in her direction. “Buffy, what does he mean?”
Her glare alone should have fried him to a crisp, but Xander played oblivious to Buffy’s frantic shushing motions. It wasn’t every day he got to lord it over the undead competition for the slayer’s favors. He was enjoying himself immensely at Angel’s expense.
“Yeah, this new guy- Spike, is it? He seems to be quite the stud. Had our little Buffy up against the wall and panting just a few minutes after they met.”
“Xander!” Buffy’s humiliated screech was followed by a ringing slap upside the boy’s head.
Giles rolled his eyes, completely fed up with their actions. “Uh, we do have slightly more important matters to discuss.”
Ignoring the pleading looks Angel was sending in her direction, Buffy struggled to calm herself and concentrate on the subject at hand. “Yeah, like keeping my mom away from Principal Snyder tomorrow night?”
“And not dying on Saturday.” Miss Calendar offered a sympathetic smile when Buffy gave her an irritated scowl.
Giles was paging through one of the dustier tomes in his vast collection. “Angel, do you know if this Spike fellow goes under any other name?” he queried.
Silence greeted his question and the library doors swished shut behind the departing vampire. Xander rubbed his aching head and muttered about collars and bells while Buffy fought the urge to chase Angel down. She knew instinctively where he was headed and the temptation to follow him was strong, but she managed to show admirable restraint and return to her perch on the table’s edge.
“So, Giles,” she said, her narrowed gaze daring any of them to comment on Angel’s swift departure. “Got anything else on this vampire rave I’m supposed to bust up?”
*~*~*
He had been beyond pissed. Pissed and in some major pain from the huge lump on the back of his head, courtesy of the girl’s tigress of a mother.
“You get the hell away from my daughter!”
Beating a hasty retreat had seemed the wisest choice at the time. Didn’t mean he had to be happy with said choice. He had been close…so bloody close that he could almost taste all that powerful elixir pouring down his throat once more. It was a drug, her blood. One taste and he was an ardent junkie.
After exchanging a heated glance with the stunned slayer, he’d made his ignominious exit through the broken window and high-tailed it back to the factory to nurse both his wounds and his battered pride.
Drusilla’s attempts to comfort him were appreciated and went a long way towards soothing his irritation, but that still hadn’t stopped him from grabbing the evil little midget and stringing him up in a cage to meet the sunrise. Lay down his life for that little pisser? Not bloody likely!
Once the runt had been dealt with, Spike had taken it upon himself to ensure that his new minions knew who their new master was. Only a few had dared to protest his presumptuousness, and they had been quickly and brutally dealt with. When the dust had settled, the rest had surrendered with embarrassing speed and pledged their fealty to him. Too wound up to sleep, he had spent the day whipping them into shape and making sure that there was always someone tending to Dru.
Now it was dusk and his temper was much improved. He was feeling downright jaunty as he left the lair and set off to find a meal. If he happened upon the slayer during his wanderings, so much the better.
*~*~*~*
Several hours later, he dropped the cooling corpse that was his dinner behind a handy dumpster. He licked his lips clean and started off once more, intent on finding a nice, plump drunk for Dru. She’d become quite the finicky eater, his girl, and while she often complained that they smelled bad, the added bonus of the alcohol in their blood helped sedate her somewhat.
His meandering path took him down another dank alley and he halted as a wave of familiarity swept through him. The fates must have been guiding his footsteps tonight, because he found himself in the same alley where his confrontation with the slayer had taken place.
To his delighted astonishment, she was right there in front of him, leaning back against the same metal door he’d pinned her to just a few days before. Cool green eyes assessed him as he sauntered closer, a self-satisfied smirk twisting his lips.
“Figured you’d show up here sooner or later,” she murmured, not in the least bit threatened by his proximity.
“Hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long,” Spike replied. His hand lifted to brush back a lock of her wispy bangs, wanting his view of her gorgeous eyes to be unhindered.
Buffy shrugged but made no move to dislodge his fingers from her hair. “Not really. I had to ditch someone first. Thanks to someone spilling all the juicy details of our little groiny episode, he’s been kinda overbearing and protective.”
Spike chuckled. “Angelus, I assume.”
She gave him a stern frown. “Angel,” she corrected. “And what the heck is it with you two? How do you know each other? Every time I ask him about you, I get the look of death and he storms off.”
“You mean he hasn’t dished up all the family dirt? I’m crushed. Really.” A pale, well-shaped hand splayed across his chest and he affected a wounded pout. She flicked a sleek eyebrow at him and he sighed. “Not buyin’ that, are you?”
“Not even.”
“That’s a fairly long tale, sweetness. Sure I can’t talk you into a quick snog beforehand?” he evaded hopefully, daring to move in just a tiny bit closer.
Her hand landed on the same place his own had rested, but with slightly more force and a pointy piece of wood to back her up. “Not unless you want to be on very intimate terms with the street sweeper come morning,” she denied him airily, tickling his breastbone with the stake.
He leaned forward until the lethal point pressed deeply into his flesh, eyes hooded and a smirk on his lips. “Can’t say I came here to chat about Angelus, luv.”
“So why are you here, then?”
With a few lightning fast moves, the stake clattered to the pavement and her arm was twisted behind her, forcing her up high and hard against his body. His very hard and extremely aroused body.
“Take a guess, Slayer.”
Even with the proof prodding insistently at her belly, Buffy refused to give him the satisfaction of a struggle. She held herself taut, her eyes sliding closed as he slowly bent his head and nuzzled the healing bite mark from the other night. His soft laugh sent a burst of cool air over flesh dampened by his wayward tongue and she couldn’t help the tremor of reaction that rushed over her skin. Her inner slayer might be going haywire over the fact that a vampire was lipping his way up and down her neck, but her teenage hormones were doing a helluva job of beating it down.
“I came here…for you,” he clarified. The rough promise in his voice sent delicious chills racing over her skin.
“To…ah! To kill me, right?” she countered, a breathy sigh escaping her as he found the hot spot behind her left ear. A slow burn had started low in her belly and it intensified with each stroke of his tongue. He still held her to him with her arm behind her, but his grip had loosened and his free hand was busy undoing the buttons of her blouse and pushing it aside.
“Yeah.” But there was more than a hint of uncertainty coloring his voice. He tried again, more decisively this time. “Yeah, that’s the plan.”
“So, why haven’t you yet?” she breathed, rubbing his jaw caressingly with the point of her chin. “Right here at my throat, ya know. What’s stopping you?”
Spike heaved an impatient sigh and finally left off teasing the highly sensitive line of her throat. “Gee, I don’t know,” he drawled. “Maybe your incessant yapping is distracting me?”
Her hand slid over his hip and curved around the bulging denim to give him a firm squeeze. “You’re a really crappy liar,” she chided with a confident smirk of her own.
A harsh groan rumbled through him at her touch. Lifting his head, his eyes met and held hers for a beat and then he was kissing her, his mouth ravaging hers with devastating skill.
There was nothing reticent about him. Nothing the least bit shy or genteel. His lips and tongue were rough as they plundered hers with raw sensuality. There was none of the frustratingly hesitant overtures that she had come to expect from the few times Angel had deigned to reward her with kisses. The faint tint of blood from her abused lips only spurred him on, and Buffy willingly lost herself in the urgent motions of his body undulating against hers.
Spike finally realized he still had her arm pinioned behind her and let go of her wrist. Breaking off the kiss, he left her gasping for much needed air as his lips swept an icy-hot path over her collarbone to her lace-bound breasts. In a move reminiscent of their first encounter in this very alley, he crowded her up against the wall, hands gripping her thighs with bruising force as he guided them around his hips.
A door burst open behind them and the last of the Bronze employees piled out into the darkness, their loudly complaining voices startling the entwined couple into wary stillness. Too distracted with their bitching about rude customers and their slime ball of a boss, the group never noticed the blonde couple as they headed for home.