--


She leaned close.

“I know, given the chance, you’d bite me.”

He met her gaze head on but didn’t say anything; his eyes gave Buffy all the answer she needed.

With an almost triumphant glare, she turned, and walked away. Before she got three steps, Spike stepped after her and slid his arms around her waist from behind. Before she could protest, he pulled her against him and leaned down to whisper in her ear.

“I know, given the chance, you’d let me.”

Her eyes widened and she froze as the truth of his statement settled in the warm night air.

--


“Spike,” she said softly as his eyes flickered back and forth between the door on the other side of the room and the bloody wound in her arm. He began panting slightly in uneven, unnecessary breaths.
He licked his lips and looked down.

“I’m trying, Slayer.”

He went to turn away, but she stopped him, extending the unwounded arm and grasping his wrist. He threw her a nearly panicked look.

“What are you doing?”

She knew it. Despite all his confidence about her willingness to let him sink his fangs into her, he was hesitant to attempt or accept it.

His eyes flickered gold to blue to gold, then remained gold. She met them steadily and drew her gory arm up to head level.

Spike looked toward the door again, his demon involuntarily fully coming forth at the heady scent of her blood.

Buffy clenched her fist around Spike’s wrist, sensing that he was on the verge of bolting. Her knuckles were beginning to turn white. If Spike had been human, the circulation to his wrist would have been distressingly cut-off, but he wasn’t so there was no problem.

“Slayer...”

Her hand left its hold on his wrist and quickly traveled up his arm until it rested at the nape of his neck. Winding her fingers into his hair, she raised her bleeding arm to her own face and ran her tongue over the bloody outskirts of the wound. Keeping its warm substance on her tongue, she pulled his mouth to hers before he could glance toward the door again.

The shock of her kiss and the alcoholic taste of her blood mingling between them was enough to push Spike over the edge. The kiss grew harder, more brutal, as his tongue stole every remnant of blood from her mouth.

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. His ravenous demon tore his lips away from her kiss and flew to her arm; the scent and taste of Slayer blood overwhelmed his senses.

A volt of arousal sent crackles straight to her centre as he started to lick and suck at the blood.

His hands held her arm still, and she gasped in some air. She shifted forward slightly so she slid onto his lap, a leg on either side.

When one of his hands released its grip and his arm wound around her waist, she looked down and was met with his vivid, yellow eyes peering up at her.

His licks had become gentler now, less ravenous as his lips and tongue caressed and cleaned her wound.

“Want more?” She said with a coy smile and she tilted her neck sideways, her hair shimmered off her shoulders.

“You’re like a drug,” he said with a chortle.

Sitting up, he drew her in for another blood-laced kiss.

--


Afterwards, little ropes of uncertainty tied themselves in bows around her mind. She knew that their relationship had changed somehow. It was one thing to simply be having sex with him; it was pleasurable, just physical sensations and nothing else (for her anyway). But to have willingly let him feed from her...that implied trust, and something deeper to be shared between them.

She looked down at the sleeping male curled around her; his hair spiked up in all directions on his head, which was comfortably nestled between her breasts; one of his arms around her waist; their legs entwined. She absently ran her hand up and down his arm as her thoughts did hopscotch around her brain.

He was a vampire, and she had proven herself to be a good match for white-hat vampires, though Spike was nothing like Angel.

Her arm stopped moving when she thought of Angel. What would he think of her now? Now, with Spike’s arm around her waist, his bite-marks entrenched in not just her neck.

Frowning, Buffy reached up slowly to gingerly feel her neckline. He had. He had bitten her so that the scar left by his fangs would cover the odd pattern left by Angel’s mark and Dracula’s slightly lower one.

She closed her eyes and grit her teeth, annoyed at Spike for a few minutes before remembering that she had /offered/ her neck. What had she been expecting? But still...having that scar made it seem like Angel and her relationship hadn’t really vanished forever. That scar had given her hope that maybe someday...

And now that love scar, the voluntary bite-mark on her neck, belonged to Spike. Buffy realized with a pinch of guilt that she had given Angel’s claim away to a monster in a fit of lust.

Did she really still think of Spike as a monster? He couldn’t be. Maybe once, but not anymore. Even if by anyone else’s standards he was. What was her definition of monster? Easy enough: soulless, violent, heartless. Sure, Spike was soulless and he loved violence. But he wasn’t out of control, if anything he was almost the complete opposite. And he definitely wasn’t heartless. But technically, he still didn’t have a soul, yet somehow he loved her. At first it had been simple obsession, but it was clear to see now that it was real.

Then she thought, if a monster could love--real love, good love--what was wrong with loving him back?

--


She rested her head on his cool chest and lay still in the aftermath; the taste of her blood lingered in his mouth, the licked clean puncture wound was beginning to heal on her neck.

“I’m going to leave now,” she told him.

“Liar,” he said quietly with a sardonic half-smile.

She was draped over him and didn’t move from her position of contentment.

“I mean it,” she protested, even as she snuggled more into him like a cat.

“I’m going,” she said half-heartedly with her eyes closed.

His eyes closed too.

“No you’re not.”

She forgot to argue, and lay still.