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Thank you so much to my betas: Holly, slackerace and Schehrezade. Your suggestions are simply invaluable.

Chapter Three


The hard part wasn’t scrambling up her tree and swinging up onto the roof. Nor was it prying open her window and slipping inside. Watching Spike follow with an incredibly sexy grace wasn’t so much with the hardship either, and nor was observing him shrug off his coat and drape it lazily over the back of her dresser chair. The hard part almost viciously slapped her in the face when Spike puckered up and stepped toward her.

Buffy jumped back so fast she bumped the back of her knees and toppled gracelessly onto her bed, her hair flinging around her head so that she couldn’t see anything around her.

“Smooth, Slayer. But I wouldn’t recommend that move in front of your mates.”

Buffy blew the hair out of her face furiously. Spike had ridden her nerves tonight almost past her breaking point, and he just never let up. “I’m not stupid enough to go with your recommendations, Spike. If I want to fall over backwards in order to avoid your lips, I totally will. I’m the Slayer, not…not…HARMONY!”

Spike chuckled. “Jealousy doesn’t suit you, luv. But if it warms you up at all, you kiss better than her. Now lay one on me.”

“You’re comparing me to Harmony now?” Could he be any tackier? She didn’t have to be told that she kissed better than Harmony. On a good day, Buffy could do anything better than Harmony. If she so chose, she could even out-bimbo the biggest of all bimbos, and nothing Spike could say would convince her otherwise.

“Well, not so much. Besides, in certain areas, you’d completely lose, Slayer. Now let’s get down to business.” Spike looked completely unrepentant of the insults he was laying on thick and fast and Buffy felt her anger swell toward a point of explosion.

“I’d lose? Why you…you chip-headed, bimbo-screwing loser. NO WAY would I EVER lose to Harmony.”

Spike blatantly stared at her chest and Buffy felt mortified beyond belief. How DARE he imply her boobies were less spectacular just because they didn’t bounce off her body and slap people in the face? He was so going to die. After she broke off this farce of an engagement—and after she’d made Willow die painfully for making her resort to this horror story in the first place—no one would even question why she’d done it with a stake to the groom’s blackened heart.

“Do NOT open your mouth.” Buffy held her finger up in warning, just daring him to tempt how far she was willing to let him go before she rid the world of him for good.

The bastard smirked at her, far too confident for his own good. “Don’t fret, Slayer. They did get in the way. Never believe a bloke when he says bigger is better. Bint always knocked things over. I’m willing to bet your little mouthfuls will taste like gold.”

Buffy almost squeaked. “There will be no mouthfuls of gold. NO mouthfuls, period. Keep your mind on the kissage and forget any other dirty, nasty little thoughts you might be having.”

And again with the strutting, Buffy too late realising she’d issued a challenge when she was ridiculously cornered on her own bed. Spike placed one knee on the mattress beside her and then she did squeak, her heart thumping in horror as another knee settled too close to her hip and his face took up all her vision.

Bile rose furiously in her throat and it took everything Buffy had to not throw up in his face. Still, slamming him in the chest and sending him flying across the room to hit her bedroom wall was totally a knee-jerk reaction to having his lips too close to her face.

Spike hit the floor on his ass, sweeping back to his feet and advancing back to her bed with a menacing tread that sent a thrill racing up Buffy’s spine. “What the bleeding fuck is your problem, bitch?”

“I-I didn’t mean to do that. Really, I didn’t. I’m sorry?” She cringed at how that came out, but the anger was back in seconds as Spike treated her to snarled contempt.

“What, you are sorry, or are you asking me if you should be?”

“I am sorry. I just…really don’t want to kiss you.” Buffy cringed as Spike completely stopped moving. The artificial breaths he liked to pretend he needed ceased and she suddenly felt like she was looking at a statue instead of the not-so-living vampire that she’d been cheated of killing all fair and square.

“Well,” he started slowly, “why didn’t you say so?” He causally backed up, grabbed his coat and started shrugging it over his shoulders.

Buffy watched enraptured. She was mesmerised by the way he moved—by the way he didn’t once look out of place, even though he was in a very girly bedroom that belonged to the executioner of his kind. It wasn’t until he swung a leg over the windowsill that she panicked, seeing her death at the hands of some over-zealous magician in what could be a matter of days.

“Wait!” She was on her feet and dragging him roughly through the window in seconds, not stopping until she’d thrown him onto her bed and slammed the window shut. “Did I say you could leave?” Buffy was panting, adrenaline fuelling her with all sorts of confident purpose.

Spike leaned up on his elbows and raised a brow. “The way I see it, I’m doing you a favour. If you’re just gonna toss your cookies in my face, I’ve got chairs I’d rather be chained to. Now make up your mind about what you want to do, and bleeding well do it.”

Buffy glared at him, balled her hands into fists, glared some more, and then wilted. What choice did she have? Conquering Spike’s lips was the only way to make sure she didn’t become the laughing stock of the demon world—she was going to conveniently forget the potential fodder for Xander jokes till the end of time—or vulnerable to any organised magic attack.

“Okay, I can do this.” Buffy narrowed her gaze and wondered if it would matter if Spike was bleeding from a couple of really prominent places before she placed her precious lips on his gross ones. He wasn’t moving, and Buffy swallowed down the nausea that wanted release as she tried to crawl up his body without touching him. When his lips were within reach, Buffy scrunched her eyes shut, screwed her face up in revulsion while pursing her lips and pushing them out, and waited.

The second Spike’s cool lips touched hers, a rapid white heat seared her flesh and she jerked back in shock.

Spike hissed loudly in annoyance. “You need to put more oomph into it, Slayer. At your Watcher’s, you were all over me. Your hot little hands delving into places they really shouldn’t have been. You were a firecracker.”

“I was not!”

“You bloody well were.” Huffy Spike bordered on cute and Buffy was so not having him divert her with flirty tactics.

“It was a spell!” she protested confidently. “There is nothing in real life that could possibly induce me to love you like that stupid spell forced me to do. Everything from now on is acting—honest-to-goodness drama theatre of the highest calibre, and you’d better put in the show of your life or it won’t be worth much by the end of this.”

Spike’s jaw ticked, savage anger just humming on the edge of his control. The only thing holding him back was that chip. What he wouldn’t give to dive for her throat right now. He could smell the blood that taunted him just far enough away to be safe, and his fangs stung his gums in desperate need to pierce her skin. He sneered at her as she was suspended over him, hardly believing the comedy hour that had brought him to this. “You know what? There isn’t anything remotely enticing enough for me to continue trying to help you and be abused for it. Not even your wonky promise of getting the chip out. Take me back to the Watcher’s right now.”

Okay, the constant threats to make him dusty? So not the best way to get him to agree to this joke of an engagement. As much as they had still managed to snark at each other under the spell, no one was going to buy it if he was always bruised and bloody around her. And now that she’d had time to step back and consider the consequences of letting people know she’d succumbed to Willow’s will, the more terrified she became at being someone’s magic monkey bitch in the future. She needed Spike and she needed this kissing thing to work.

There was no holding back the pleading look of desperation as Buffy resolved to be good. Whatever it takes! Whatever she had to do to gain Spike’s cooperation, it was a done deal as far as she was concerned.

“Let me have a taste.”

Ewwww! Okay, so maybe not quite a done deal. “Are you completely suicidal?” It suddenly occurred to Buffy that she was still stretched over Spike and that he’d been eyeing her neck. Oh no! She wasn’t going there again. Saving Angel’s life—while almost at the cost of her own—so did not come even close to paying Spike the debt she’d owe him for just a few kisses and some hand-holding.

“You want me to do this thing, then there has to be something in it for me.” His eyes shone uncompromisingly and Buffy shivered. Determined Spike was quite powerful—how could she have forgotten?

“There is something in it for you—the chip goes bye-bye. And that has nothing to do with you hanging from my neck.” Hey, she could be just as stubborn and scary. “I’ll get you some quality human blood from somewhere. I’ll even drain some of mine into a mug, but you are so not sticking your filthy fangs into my flesh. Who knows where they’ve been?”

Spike smirked knowingly—though Buffy was unsure of what exactly he thought he knew—and suddenly jerked up, his crotch connecting with hers and knocking her off balance. Before she could scream, before she could yak all over him and her bed, one of his hands curved vice-like around her skull and hauled her in for a kiss.

The second their flesh met, Buffy lost her breath.

Reason evaporated into thin air and she existed as nothing solid but sensory cells, being fed and nurtured by lips that were soft, plush, tasty and sensuous. Her lids dropped closed and she forgot everything as the tip of Spike’s tongue traced a line along her bottom lip. Sucked gently between both of his, her lower lip tingled and her body went molten with heat. Flittering memories made an effort to remind her why she shouldn’t be enjoying this so much, but Irrational!Buffy blocked them out and lost herself to pleasure.

Her body felt his hand at her waist but her brain blocked it out. Anything that was remotely good feeling and connected to Spike was being intentionally ignored until she decided she didn’t need his kisses anymore. Until her body remembered it had its own life support system and Spike’s mouth was just really, really clever at convincing her otherwise.

By the time Spike poked his tongue into her mouth, she was incoherent and lying flush against his body, obscene bulges and all. He smoothly played over her teeth, enticed her own tongue into this mysterious dance of desire—of seduction. What they were doing now was shared and Buffy found, for one fleeting second, that she was drawn back into a world where the spell was her reality and she was truly in the arms of the man that meant to marry her and treat her forever as his beloved.

It was a beautiful fantasy, and not one that was quick to fade even as Spike dragged his lips away and stared into dazed, confused eyes, his body flush and warm underneath slayer weight.

“Is that enough practise, pet?” His eyes glittered as he searched her expression hopefully.

If she’d required proof before that this whole plan was insane, all she needed was the galloping beat of her heart and the searing heat scarring against every point her body met with his.

Her fingers twisted his stiffened curls, her lips already puckered and prepared, and Buffy unconsciously lowered her voice to a husky whisper she’d never even heard before. “Not even close.”





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