Spike stared up at Buffy for a long moment, his eyes wide and searching for some sign of uncertainty, of hesitation, any clue that she might not want to do this. He knew that if she had any doubts about allowing him to drink from her, if she felt threatened by it in any way, it could allow her to lose control of herself again.
And if the thing controlling her surfaced while he was feeding from her – there was a good chance it would be furious enough to finish him off completely.
But he was nothing in Buffy’s glistening green eyes but regret, sorrow, and a sincere desperation to make right all the damage she had done to him.
“Go ahead,” she whispered softly, sinking to her knees beside the bed, as her mother moved back to allow her nearer to him. Her free hand rose to gently stroke through his hair in a tender, affectionate gesture, as her thumb continued to move slowly and gently over her mark on his throat, flooding him with wave after wave of reassurance and comfort.
“It’s all right, Spike. I promise. Please do this; please take it. I want – I *need* you to get well!”
The rich, tantalizing aroma of her blood made his mouth water with desire, and he licked his lips without realizing he was doing it. He had lost so much blood, he was so weak, needed it so badly – he felt as if he were about to dust from starvation…
…but still he hesitated.
“Buffy,” he whispered. “I – I can’t – please…” His faint voice trembled with fear and uncertainty, mingled with a deep longing that showed in his eyes, coated with a sheen of tears to match those in her eyes.
“Shhh,” she gently soothed him, leaning in close to brush a tender kiss across his lips, before pulling back to meet his eyes. “It’s okay – it’s okay, I promise I’m not gonna be angry with you, Spike. I’m in control – I am – and I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
She glanced sideways at her sister and added with a smile, “You can thank Dawn for that…”
Spike followed her gaze to Dawn, who was still sitting in the chair beside the bed, watching anxiously. From the look in her eyes, he could tell that she desperately wanted him to accept her sister’s offer.
“I can bring her back if anything happens, Spike,” the girl assured him in a quiet, trembling voice.
When Buffy saw the flash of fear in his eyes at those words, she lowered her hand gently from his hair to his cheek in a tender caress, drawing his attention back to her face – forcing herself not to flinch in pain, when he tensed at the intimate touch.
“But *nothing’s* going to happen,” she told him in a quiet, firm voice, holding his gaze. “I promise you, Spike. I *want* you to do this. There’s nothing about this that would make me lose control anyway…I *want* you to.”
Her thumb was still moving slowly over her mark in a soft, reassuring motion that was slowly sending a sense of security and comfort and peace through the traumatized vampire. She edged the cut on her arm nearer to his lips, but stopped a couple of inches away, not wanting to push him.
“I want you to do this,” she repeated gently, gazing into his eyes intently and willing him to see that it was true. “but I won’t force you. I won’t do that to you, Spike. I don’t want to force you to do anything, ever again. *Please*. Please do this for me.”
Finally, the tenderness in her voice and her touch, the enticing, rich scent of the deep red fluid welling from the cut on her arm, became too much for him to resist.
Spike closed his eyes, leaning just slightly closer to her, his lips parted and trembling with his need, and the slight movement that was still an exertion for him in his badly weakened condition.
Buffy immediately responded, moving her arm to meet him the moment she knew that he was accepting her offer, going the remaining distance that he could not. She gently pressed the seeping wound to his cool, damp lips, already stained with the blood he had lost from his injuries – the injuries she had inflicted on him.
Tentatively, hesitantly, his cool moist tongue darted out to caress the wound, and a soft, barely audible moan left his throat at the rich flavor, and the deep emotional connection that came along with the act of drinking from his mate. The fact that his mate also happened to be a Slayer only made the experience that much more powerful and intense.
The potent nourishment of her blood had an immediate strengthening effect on the injured vampire, and he raised a weak, trembling hand to grasp her arm, clutching it closer to his mouth as his lips pressed gently against her arm on either side of the wound.
When he began to suck gently on her broken skin, Buffy was taken off guard by the sweet shock of pleasure that went through her, and she gasped, her eyes widening for a moment – then closing as she leaned her head back, overwhelmed with a sudden rush of incredible sensation.
Joyce’s eyes widened, with a bit of alarm, surprised by the unexpectedly intense reaction that both the Slayer and the vampire appeared to be having to the act they were engaged in. She was a relatively reserved woman and had not been in a relationship for a long time – but she *was* a woman, a woman who had had two children, and there was no mistaking the look on her daughter’s face – or what she had to be feeling.
“Is that – I mean – are they – all right?” she asked in a small, uncertain voice, as Anya moved to stand beside her. “I mean – is that normal?”
“Oh, yes,” the ex-demon assured her matter-of-factly, seemingly unfazed by the scene before them. “It’s perfectly normal for vampires. It’s because of the claim.”
“The claim?” Joyce echoed blankly, her eyes still focused on her daughter, who was now breathing hard, her eyes closed and her head thrown back, a look of intense pleasure on her face.
“Yes,” Anya nodded. “See, the claim gives her blood a greater potency for Spike. It’s even stronger than his sire’s blood would be. Because of her being his mate.”
“What do you mean ‘stronger’?” Joyce asked with a frown of confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, for a vampire, the blood of their sire has healing properties, and it’s also possible to share emotions and thoughts and things like that through the blood. It’s also an incredible aphrodisiac. And – well – when a mating claim is performed, it completely overrides the sire’s rights, and all the effects of the sire’s blood pass on to the mate’s blood – only – well – stronger.”
She completely missed the troubled look that Joyce gave her before turning her eyes back to Buffy and then heading toward where her younger daughter still sat beside the bed, eyes wide and transfixed with wonder.
“Not to mention the fact that blood-sharing is an intensely erotically stimulating experience as it is…” Anya went on, though no one was really listening to her anymore.
“Dawnie,” joyce said a bit anxiously, her eyes still focused on Buffy and Spike, who were utterly lost to the others around them. “I don’t think you should be in here…”
“I *have* to be,” Dawn replied without hesitation, still staring. “If something goes wrong, I’m the only one who can stop her.”
Joyce opened her mouth to speak, but realized with dismay that her youngest was right. There was really no way that Dawn could leave Buffy alone with Spike, not until they had a better understanding of what was going on; and that would not happen until Spike was well enough to tell them all of what he knew; and *that* would not be until he and Buffy were finished with – whatever it was that they were doing.
For the Slayer and her vampire mate, for the moment, the rest of the world seemed to have fallen away.
Spike’s fangs never descended – he never even changed his face – as he gently drank from the self-inflicted wound on her arm, savoring the sweet, heady flavor of her blood, and the flood of bittersweet emotions that it carried to him.
His fear of her changing and hurting him had vanished with the first sip of the sweet substance, as he had simply *known* that whatever the thing was that had been hurting him, it was buried and very much under control at the moment. He could taste none of the violent fury or jealousy or possessive rage in her blood – only concern, and affection, gratitude that he was accepting her gift – and painful regret.
But as the soft, intimate movements of his mouth on her increasingly fevered skin had intensified, he had felt the pain, the guilt and sorrow ebb away, engulfed in an overwhelming feeling of pleasure, as the experience had heightened for both of them.
The pleasure, the physical and emotional ecstasy, took the Slayer by surprise. She had only been bitten once before, by Angel – and that had been nothing like this. His bite had been desperate, rushed, as he had been nearly out of his head with sickness – and once he had bitten her, his bloodlust had taken over, with his need for the cure she alone could provide.
The experience had actually been painful, and terrifying – and had nearly resulted in her death.
This was infinitely different.
Perhaps it was the fact that Spike was her mate – or perhaps, it was the sweet, gentle care he was taking with her. The thought flooded her with a renewed warmth of affection toward the vampire, as she realized that even now, *she* was his top priority.
She had hurt him so badly that she had nearly drained him, leaving him near the point of death. She knew that his need for her blood was every bit as desperate as Angel’s had been – and yet, he took his time, not even biting her, just gently, almost reverently accepting her offering, as an awesome gift of which he felt himself to be unworthy.
She wondered for a moment why Angel’s bloodlust had been so consuming, nearly claiming her life – and Spike’s was so under control, even though she knew he had to be desperate for sustenance.
As his tongue gently caressed over the cut, she felt a shudder of pleasure go down her spine at the slight stinging sensation that was almost painful, but not quite.
But then, to her surprise, he removed his mouth, and as the cool air moved across the damp spot on her arm, she was startled at the bereft, empty feeling of loss that she felt when his mouth stopped touching her.
She opened her eyes, slightly hazy and unfocused with the overwhelming sensations that were slowly fading away from her, to give him a questioning look.
He was sitting up slightly on the bed, and she suddenly realized that she was sitting on the edge of the bed beside him, with one arm around his shoulders behind him, helping to hold him up.
*And when exactly did that happen?* she wondered, as she shifted the pillow behind his head and gently helped him to lean back against it, never breaking eye contact, her green eyes wide and wondering.
Spike’s own eyes of crystal blue focused on hers with a sincere look of adoration and gratitude. “It’s enough, love,” he said softly in answer to her unspoken question. “Wouldn’t want to hurt you.”
If she had not been able to hear the genuine emotion in his voice, to see the serious look in his eyes, she might have thought he was being bitterly sarcastic – and she would not have blamed him a bit. Suddenly, she could no longer hold his gaze, as she felt the beginnings of her guilt returning. Her eyes fell to the cut on her arm, without really seeing it, as she thought back over the events of the past couple of hours.
“It’ll heal up now. I sealed it to stop the bleeding,” Spike explained quietly, seeing the direction of her gaze and not realizing that her small cut was the least of her concerns at the moment.
She looked back up at him, her eyes shining with tears, her hand rising again to caress down his face as she offered him a weak smile that was an attempt at encouragement.
“How do you feel?” she asked him quietly.
“Better,” he nodded, looking down a bit shyly. “Be good as new before long, pet,” he assured her quietly, before glancing back up at her, uncertainty in his eyes as he whispered, “Thank you.”
He might as well have driven a knife through her heart, and twisted it hard.
All she could picture was herself, slamming her fist into his face, throwing him to the ground and kicking him until she had damaged him so badly that he had nearly lost his life – and all because he had committed the *offense* of trying to keep her from killing her own baby sister.
And he told her “thank you” for giving him what he needed to live.
Before Spike or Joyce or anyone else in the room knew what had happened, the injured vampire had a lapful of sobbing, distraught Slayer, as Buffy lowered her head across his thankfully uninjured legs, clutching them and shaking as she cried.
“I’m sorry, Spike! Spike, I’m so sorry!”
Spike stared at her for a moment in surprise, before his expression softened with compassion. “Hey, come on, now, pet,” he murmured softly, as he automatically laid his arm across the Slayer’s shoulder, his hand gently stroking her back in a comforting way. “There, now, love – all’s well, now…no harm done…”
His comforting words, the forgiveness and acceptance in his voice, only made the Slayer cry harder.
Spike looked up at Joyce with a pleading expression in his sapphire eyes, sparkling with tears of his own at his mate’s pain.
Joyce nodded slightly, understanding, as she put her arm around Dawn’s shoulders. “Come on, Honey,” she said softly, gesturing with her hand for Anya to come as well.
“But, Mom,” Dawn protested, her voice hushed in consideration for her sister’s obvious emotional state. “if Buffy…”
“She won’t.”
Dawn looked back at Spike in surprise at the quiet, steady sound of his voice. The solemn gaze he fixed her with was confident, certain – and suddenly, she felt a lot better about the idea of leaving the room.
But still not sure.
“Call us if…if you need us,” Joyce said pointedly, her eyes meeting Spike’s, but her words more for Dawn’s benefit. It seemed fairly clear that Buffy was not going to become a threat at the moment.
Spike nodded slowly, without a word, as Joyce, Dawn, and Anya headed toward the bedroom door.
“Joyce,” he said quietly, just as they reached it, and she turned to face him with a questioning look. His voice and expression were serious, and stronger than before, as he said with a quiet air of authority, the automatic authority of being the only person in the place who had any idea what they were dealing with.
“Make sure everyone is ready to meet in a few minutes...there’s some things you all need to know…”
Joyce frowned, uncertain. “Are you going to be – okay, by then?”
Spike’s glance down at his mate said plainly that he was more concerned about whether or not Buffy was going to be ready for a Scoobie meeting, than his own physical condition. Truth be told, her potent blood was starting to take effect, and he was feeling much stronger already.
“ ‘M already okay, love,” he assured the older woman. “And we don’t have any bloody time to waste.”
He looked up at Joyce again as he added in a heavy voice that sent a chill down her spine at the sober note of fear it held.
“We may not have much time left at all.”
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