It was worse. Much worse.
Thankfully, Faith had opted out of patrol for the fifth night straight, which didn’t bother her as much as it should. The way Buffy was feeling, she needed as many vamps to dust as possible, if only to work off her stress. She needed the proverbial punching bag for all her frustrations. She needed time to think. She needed five minutes of quiet.
She needed to not run into Angel.
“Buffy.”
She needed to find out which specific Power thought messing up her life was so funny and beat it into submission. Angel popping up from behind a bush to trail after her was not an acceptable alternative to running into him.
She stopped short and sighed, her shoulders rolling back. “I’m not in the mood to talk tonight, Angel,” she said. “I just wanna dust some vamps and go home. So unless you’re offering yourself for dusting, I’d suggest staying the hell away from me.”
“You haven’t been in the mood to talk for three weeks. I’m worried about you.”
Buffy sighed again and crossed her arms, turning around slowly. He looked like a portrait right out of one of Giles’s reference books. Graveyard, ethereal moonlight, wounded guilt-ridden vampire. He had the full thing going for him, and yet the sight did little more than make her stomach turn. “You’ve also developed a nasty habit of not listening when I tell you to stay away from me.”
“You can’t keep brushing me off. As a friend, I want to help.”
She snickered unpleasantly. “Yeah. Friend.”
“Stop that.”
“Stop it? You’re here trailing me.”
“You’re avoiding me, and I’m tired of pretending that I don’t know why.” Angel stepped forward, his hands sliding into the pockets of his trench coat. And as much as it pained her to admit, the concern in his eyes was real. “Why won’t you let me help you?”
Because you’re a guy, and you’re not the guy I want.
Buffy sighed and glanced down. “I don’t need help,” she said softly. “Besides…this isn’t something you can help me with.”
“It’s Spike, isn’t it? Tell me what happened.”
She didn’t even want to know how long he’d known.
“What happened…it’s nothing.” She shook her head and met his eyes tiredly. “It’s nothing.”
“People don’t tend to get pregnant over nothing.”
Buffy’s eyes went wide. “Oh, come on!” she snapped, gesticulating wildly to the starry sky. “What, does everyone know now? Did I get it tattooed on my forehead? Is there such a thing as privacy anymore?”
“The guy who sold you the home pregnancy test was a ti’lyck demon. They’re a cousin of humans…so much that most can pass.” He took her arm and she had to fight the wave of very real nausea that stabbed at her insides. “Ti’lyck demons aren’t known for closed lips. So why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“Wow, Angel. You managed to keep from losing your head for a full twenty-four hours. Color me impressed.”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“That’s why I’m impressed.” Buffy raised her hands, jerking away from him viciously. “I swear, touch me again and you’re losing something. You think I’m bluffing? Look at my face.”
He stared at her for a second before breaking away with an incredulous laugh. “It’s almost hard to believe that there’s not something on your mind,” he said dryly.
“Yeah, well, what is or isn’t on my mind is no concern of yours. So back off.”
Angel shook his head. “Not if it concerns Spike. That makes it my concern. Plus…I love you. That makes it my concern, too. And I know that things can’t be the way they were between us, but that doesn’t stop me from loving you. I don’t like seeing you in pain. Not when I can help.”
The look in his eyes was genuine, and she felt a surge of panic when her legs refused to buckle at the utterance of those three little words that she’d fought to hard to earn last year. He hadn’t told her until the night he took her virginity, and then not again until she shoved a sword through his gut. Now he was saying them. He was speaking words that would have, just a few short weeks ago, reduced her to a blubbery mess of irrational female hormones. How often had she fantasized about curling in Angel’s arms, as though the past year was nothing but a traumatic nightmare? She’d fled Sunnydale to escape his memory. She’d neglected her friends, abandoned her duties, and punished her mother for her own sins. Her sins against the man standing in front of her.
Buffy looked at him now and felt nothing. A nothing that terrified her. She was torn between who she had been just a few weeks back and who she was now. And as much as she’d hated the forced distance and the awkward silences and the will we or won’t we tension between she and Angel, she preferred it over something she didn’t understand. Something that made absolutely no sense. Angel had wronged her, but it hadn’t really been him. Not really. Spike had wronged her, and while he had apologized, he had no evil counterpart on which to blame his actions. He’d wronged her. He’d made her feel weak.
It was possible, however unlikely, that she reacted adversely to men because of what had happened. Because the last time she was alone with a man, he’d taken advantage of her. He’d practically forced himself upon her. But as much as she’d like to believe it, that theory would hold a lot more merit if she could summon as much revulsion at the thought of Spike’s touch as she did at the thought of Angel’s.
The trouble was, the thought of Spike’s touch didn’t engender revulsion. She craved it. She craved it to the point that she rubbed his bite mark to orgasm nearly every night, and felt cheated when life intervened. She welcomed Ghost Spike into her bed, her shower, everywhere she went because, although the fantasy wasn’t much of a substitute for the real thing, it was the only way she could suppress her hunger.
Buffy was almost certain he’d left town. She’d seen neither hair nor hide of him since the night at the Bronze. And while she knew she should rejoice that he’d finally listened to her, she couldn’t help the ache in her gut anymore than she could explain it.
She wet her lips and sighed. “Spike came back to town almost a month ago.”
Angel nodded understandingly. “I’m guessing the night that Giles left for that retreat,” he said. “The night you didn’t show up?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
Buffy glanced down again. She didn’t want to tell him what happened. Because as much as it had terrified her, it was a private thing. An I-only-share-this-with-my-best-friend thing. She was not about to start chatting up a non-Spike male about her time with Spike. She was not about to spill anything that intimate with an ex-boyfriend, especially Angel. He had another thing coming if he thought otherwise.
“What happened doesn’t matter,” she replied breezily. “He…”
“No, I think it matters quite a bit.”
“Have you ever noticed how you think a lot of things that are completely wrong?”
“Buffy…” Angel took hold of her arm again, his face a mesh of concern and determination. “You can’t shut me out. You can try, but it’s not going to work. You need to know that you can talk to me.”
“You need to learn what piss off means.”
“Did he hurt you? You’d tell me if he hurt you, wouldn’t you? No…no, of course you wouldn’t.” Angel shook his head furiously. “Spike might be a sadistic son of a bitch, but if he hurt you, I know it wasn’t planned. He doesn’t like torturing girls. If he hurt you, he was drunk or out of control, and I’m not making excuses for him. I just know Spike. And as much as I will dust him the second I see him if I learn he hurt you, I know that whatever he did to you wasn’t on purpose.”
Buffy shoved off a shiver and nodded stoically. “Thank you, Angel, for that bout of divine wisdom. If you don’t mind, I have some slaying to do.”
“He didn’t…please tell me, he didn’t…God, I’ll kill him. I swear to—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish his thought; her fist was too busy connecting with his nose. Watching his legs fly out from under him as the giant toppled to the ground was almost funny. Almost funny, but not quite enough to make up for the way she was trembling with the burden of what he’d nearly said.
If Angel tried to kill Spike, he was signing his own death warrant.
“If you value your unlife, Angel, you’ll stay the hell away from Spike.” Her eyes flashed dangerously. “I mean it. I killed you once, and I loved you then. Imagine how easy it would be for me to kill you now. You go near him, and I guarantee you’ll find out. Do you hear me?”
She took perverse pleasure in looking down on him. After the hell he’d put her through, knowing she could make those chocolate brown eyes fill with incredulous fear was one of the headiest sensations she could ask for.
Angel dabbed blood off his face. “Let me help you,” he said softly. “Buffy…this isn’t you.”
“No. It is. Get used to it.”
And with that, she spun on her heel and practically sprinted in the other direction. She was genuinely afraid that if she stayed around, he’d say something else equally inane and her impulses would overpower commonsense. Staking Angel was not what she wanted—not now, not in a thousand years—but if he kept blabbing, she feared she wouldn’t be able to control herself.
It didn’t matter how much he pissed her off; Buffy didn’t want him dead. And although he was succeeding in annoying the crap out of her, none of what he’d done warranted death. He’d already paid for his sins with his unlife—he’d spent centuries being tortured in some hell dimension.
But as fast as time seemed to have moved for him, she was still fighting to catch up. It was amazing that he could be so well adjusted, having suffered what he’d suffered. But that didn’t mean she owed him anything. Not for sending him to Hell.
Perhaps she could wait this thing with Spike out. Perhaps, eventually, the nausea from another man’s touch would go away, and she’d be back to normal.
Perhaps.
The twist in her gut said otherwise. All she wanted to do right now was wrap up patrol, go home, draw a bath, and see how many times she could get off by rubbing Spike’s bite mark.
I’m sick.
But at least she was enjoying herself. If she was going to be a sick pervert, she might as well enjoy herself.
“I’m okay,” she told herself, balling her hands into fists. “I’m okay. I’m really okay. I’m so okay that I’m talking to myself, and as we all know, that’s the universal sign of okay. Yeah, I’m gonna stop talking to myself.”
“Good idea, pet. You wouldn’t want the new-bloods to think you’re at all unhinged.”
She was certain that her gasp could be heard from miles away, almost as certain as she was that her neck pulled a full Linda Blair when she jerked her head up and met his azure eyes.
So gorgeous.
A hoarse, near reverent gasp tore through her throat. “Spike!”
And that was all she got out before walking directly into a mausoleum wall and promptly being thrown flat onto her back.
“Okay…ouch.”
Of all the effects Spike had on her, this klutz thing was definitely her least favorite.
To be continued