He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. She’d been asleep for a little over an hour; every time he tried to convince himself that he should heed her advice—especially since she’d turned down a shag so that he could catch up on the rest he’d lost in worrying over her these past few days—her words floated back into his mind and rendered him sleepless.
She loved him. Buffy loved him.
God, was it even possible? He’d never thought it possible. Her love was something precious and fragile—something no man or demon deserved. The last time she’d given her love to someone, her life had been gutted, and she’d lost everything. Her friends. Her Watcher. Her mother. Her home. She’d lost any remnants of her childhood in her self-imposed exile in Los Angeles. Every shred of innocence she’d ever possessed had been contaminated, and all because she lost her heart to the enemy.
To a vampire.
Buffy was in his bed, curled into his side, and she’d whispered that she loved him. Buffy loved him.
It had been a pipe dream. A hope that he hadn’t even attempted to entertain. He’d realized how he felt over the weekend, and even then, it hadn’t been much of a revelation. The feelings stirring in his gut had been with him, it seemed, forever. Long before he found Dru snogging the Chaos Demon on that bloody park bench. These feelings were the reason that Dru had left him in the first place. And they had crept up on him so slowly that he hadn’t even realized he was in love until her life was in danger.
His love for her had slowly eaten away at his monstrosity, and he was too lost to care. He was with her. Something had brought her to him—the sodding spell, the whatever that had them lusting after each other. He didn’t know. Frankly, he didn’t care. He knew himself when he loved; after all, he’d spent most of his life crawling over hot ashes for one female or another. There was the misery that had been Cecily. Then it was Dru. Dru and the pathway to salvation. The pathway to Buffy.
But Buffy had given him something that no one ever had. For years, he’d fooled himself into thinking that Dru’s little sighs and her dance-around-words and her sodding riddles and mind games meant that she loved him. She’d played with the sentiment, sure, but she never said it. And he was becoming more and more convinced that her affection, particularly in their last few years together, had been more of a display of gratitude-wrapped-in-dependency.
Once he would have cared. He didn’t now.
Buffy loved him. God, Buffy loved him.
And he’d done absolute rot to earn it. He’d kidnapped her, forced his way into her body, stalked her, and abused her. Sure, saving her life earned him a few bonus points, but it in no way made up for everything he’d taken from her. Everything he could never repay.
Spike had figured, once he’d realized his love for Buffy, that he’d be fortunate if it didn’t dawn on her what an unworthy wanker he was, once the spell was over. If she let him stay in her life as her boyfriend.
Her boyfriend.
But Buffy loved him. She loved him. She’d come to him when he was in pain. She’d caressed him. She’d worshipped his body with her hands and mouth because she wanted to. Because comforting him was important to her.
He’d never had that. Not once. Never had a woman he’d cared about tended to him when he needed tending. Dru’s idea of healing his ailments was a quick pat and a comment about how the stars were arguing with Miss Edith.
Buffy had come to him.
Buffy loved him.
Spike sucked in a deep breath, his eyes clouding with tears. Buffy loved him.
“You realize you’re mine, now,” he murmured, brushing a lock of hair from her face. “I’m never letting you go.” His eyes fell to the chain around her neck, and a smile itched at his lips. He’d given her a ring for her birthday. Nothing particularly special—ostensibly—but it was something of a family heirloom. Something he’d never trusted Dru with.
Spike snickered, his fingers running along the expanse of the chain until he found the ring. He’d always wondered why he could never give it to Dru. He’d tried to make himself a thousand times. She loved jewelry, after all. She loved anything that sparkled for her, but keeping her interested in anything for any measure of time was a chore. If he’d given it to her, she would have lost it or tossed it the second that she found something she liked better.
When Buffy awoke, he was going to tell her everything. Everything. How he felt, that he didn’t give a bloody sod if they were under a spell; nothing could make him feel differently. There was no spell on the sodding planet that could fabricate feelings like this. He’d tell her that he loved her, and he wanted her, and nothing was ever going to change that.
He’d never hurt her. Not again. Not if he could help it.
Only he wanted her so much that it was difficult to remember that he didn’t breathe. She’d tossed the plan for him. She’d come here and touched him in ways that definitely qualified as off-limits. And now she was in his bed, half-naked. There was no sodding way that he was going to walk away from this now.
Spike released a trembling sigh, his lips wrapping around one of her pert nipples, stroking her other breast. He loved the feel of her in his hand, how the small weight of her filled his palm. The softness of her skin beneath his touch did him in every time. She was so warm—so warm where he was cold. He could feel the reverberation of her heartbeat under his fingers. The delicious rush of her pulse made his skin hum to life.
The thoughts had been with him for weeks now. The way his demon growled and insisted that Buffy was his. He’d felt it the night that Buffy snogged Angel. Hell, he’d ripped the graveyard apart because he’d felt that his girl was with another bloke. And when he’d seen her later that night, it was because his girl was in pain. His girl was hurting. And his girl had needed him.
The thoughts had been there; now the thoughts were backed with knowledge. Buffy was his. Her warmth. Her softness. Her heart. Everything. She belonged to him. She belonged to him almost as much as he belonged to her.
“I love you, too.” Spike licked her nipple with a contented purr. The hand occupied with her other breast slowly slid down the taut stretch of her stomach. He circled her bellybutton with his index finger before settling on the clasp of her jeans. “An’ I’m fairly certain,” he murmured. “That I told you to wear nothin’ but skirts.”
To be fair, she’d likely intended to change before their routine patrol non-date—something that he felt should be upgraded to gratuitous-bouts-of-violence-complete-with-victory-shags, but he wasn’t about to suggest that without feeling her out first. And even though she had come to him—even though she had been the one to break the rules—he knew well enough to not assume that meant that she wouldn’t reconstruct the walls she’d broken down once she awoke. She’d only whispered that she loved him when she thought he was asleep. Perhaps she didn’t want him to know. Perhaps she was only saying it because she needed the words to know life. There was every chance that he had a ways to go before he convinced her that his feelings weren’t the product of some sodding spell.
There was every chance, but he wasn’t a quitter. He wasn’t about to give up. Buffy loved him.
A silly grin tickled his lips. “You smell so sweet,” he purred, brushing a kiss across her belly, then moving his mouth lower. He hooked his fingers around her belt loops, sitting up to drag them down her legs. “So bloody good.”
Buffy moaned and shifted, rolling completely onto her back, her legs parting further for him.
Spike arched a brow, his lips fighting a grin. “I think baby’s awake. You playin’ possum, sweetheart?”
“Uhhh…”
His grin stretched into a devilish smirk. He slid back up to her, slipping his arms under her thighs and lifting her clothed pussy to his mouth. Spike inhaled deeply, burying his face between her thighs. “Christ, pet,” he gasped reverently. “You make my mouth water.” He slipped his fingers under the elastic lining at the crotch of her panties, bunching the intrusive fabric aside and baring her sweet, pink flesh to his hungry eyes.
“You better wake up quick,” Spike observed, his head dipping and his tongue taking a much coveted lap up her slit. Buffy moaned and gasped a little, her pelvis arching upward. He grinned again, wrapping his lips around her clit. “Else this is only a li’l fun.”
Another long whimper tore at her lips and her thighs opened even wider.
“Faker,” he teased, pulling his head back to enjoy the view. This was perfect. There was nothing in the world that could rival this. His eyes slowly trailed to her pussy again and he licked his lips. “You li’l…”
Spike paused and frowned, cocking his head. “What…”
No. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t supposed to be there. It had to be a trick of light. He blinked rapidly and shook his head. Little good it did. When he opened his eyes, it was still there.
And he was transfixed. He couldn’t tear his gaze from her. From it. From the thing that didn’t belong. He kept expecting it to vanish, but it did not. And he couldn’t stop staring. His eyes were glued to the two puncture wounds that marred the otherwise flawless skin of her inner thigh.
A vampire’s bite.
To be continued…