Buffy all but growled as she shoved Spike over the threshold of the first empty classroom she saw. She did her best to ignore the way her fingers tingled from where she’d touched him, just as she did her best to ignore the amused leer on his face; the one that informed her that he was enjoying the manhandling way too much. Noticing the parts of Spike that were less-than-grotesque, especially since he’d literally caught her in the middle of her Spike-made-me-feel-like-a-woman musings, was a definite no-no.
Something told her, from the spark in his eyes, that he wouldn’t mind making her feel like a woman right now. Against the wall. Or maybe bent over the teacher’s desk. And while the idea had her shivering in all the right places—had her mouth aching for another sinful taste of his—she clamped down forcibly and glared at him.
“Well?” she demanded, crossing her arms.
Spike’s brows flickered and a smile itched at his lips. “Well?” he echoed impetuously, indulging in a long puff on his cigarette.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you, too, kitten.”
“You can’t do this!”
He blinked innocently. “Do what?”
“Just…come in here and be all in the…here and…dammit, why the hell are you here?”
Spike wasn’t paying attention to her. He was staring at her lips.
“Hello?” Buffy waved and rocked on her heels. “Earth to mortal enemy?”
“You have the most gorgeous mouth I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, that…” She frowned, flushed, and shook her head. Her insides flooded with heat and her legs, suddenly, weren’t as sturdy as she’d thought. “That is…very nice, but really not the point. The point…” Did she have a point? She was certain that she’d had a point. “That’s nice.”
Spike domed a brow and grinned at her, tossing his cigarette to the ground and stomping it out with his boot. “You said that already.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah.” He inhaled and took a step forward, and oh God, did he smell good or what? It wasn’t fair. Spike was a vampire. He was of the dead. Why was it that he smelled like a walking dish of man candy? “I told myself I wasn’t gonna touch you.”
Buffy blinked and realized that she was slowly walking backwards. Her back soon collided with the wall. “Oh? Well…it’s not like I have…slayer cooties or something. I’m actually quite clean.”
Oh. My. God. Was there any way she could be a little more pathetic, because that wasn’t quite pathetic enough. What the hell was wrong with her? One little possession of star-crossed ghosts and she’s all with the schoolgirl crush on Spike? There weren’t enough ways to spell disaster for this. He was Spike. Spike as in the guy that tried to kill Angel to save Dru…which, in retrospect, would have saved a lot of lives and some heartache. But then she would have killed Spike for killing Angel and that would have rendered it impossible for him to be here right now. Looking at her like a man fresh off a failed vow of celibacy.
“I shouldn’t touch you,” he said softly. “You’re the Slayer.”
“I’m the Slayer,” she repeated, nodding, her eyes wide.
He nodded as well, though it was more than obvious that the words hadn’t served as the bucket of cold water they’d intended. “I just gotta wonder…”
“What?”
“If you’d taste as good now as you did last night.”
And then, in a blink, he was on her, his hard, male body pressing her against the wall. Her breasts flattened against his chest, her arms—raised, of course, to shove him away—somehow wrapped around his neck. The second that his lips touched hers, the floor beneath her feet vanished, as did the wall at her back, and she was lost to an endless sea of pure heavenly delights. The world blinked away. Everything blinked away. Reality stepped aside, and the world was left to Spike. Just Spike. Just Spike and those lips that could thaw any frozen heart. He tasted dangerous, and the more her mind willed her to pull away, the more her body and her mouth clawed at him, refusing to let him go. His tongue belonged in her mouth, wrestling with her tongue. His arms belonged around her waist, holding her against his all-too-male body that her very female body responded to in ways that would surely see her locked up in Rehab for Slayers before this was over. But that didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Spike was holding her, exploring her mouth with that sinful tongue of his. His lips formed lyrics as he kissed her, giving her wordless poetry. Filling her veins with more of that delicious femininity that the past few weeks had been sorely lacking.
He kissed her, and she ceased being a girl. He kissed her, and she was a woman.
A woman pressed very intimately against a dangerous, soulless vampire. A woman who was so not rubbing herself wantonly against his denim-clad erection.
Spike sighed into her, his teeth lightly scraping against her lips. “You taste divine,” he murmured. “Like a slow drink of whiskey.”
Buffy trembled. “Whiskey?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I taste like alcohol. That’s not good.”
Spike chuckled. “Would bloody explain why I’m suddenly drunk on you,” he mused thoughtfully, nipping at her lips again. “I was wrong, then. Definitely not the ghosts.”
Not the ghosts. Buffy didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Ghosts meant that her reaction to him was on a purely supernatural level. It meant that Spike-when-possessed-by-dead-teacher-woman kissed like a god. That would have made things a whole lot simpler.
Spike as Spike, though, didn’t kiss like a god.
He kissed like the devil.
He made sinning so delicious, it was a wonder anyone wanted to be good.
Spike’s eyes twinkled in a way she’d never seen. Granted, the past twenty-four hours had shown her many sides of Spike that she’d never seen. Particularly the side that was all with the not-killing-her and more with the kissing-her-boneless. “Oh trespass sweetly urged,” he murmured, those lady-killer lips brushing hers once more. “Give me my sin again…”
Buffy frowned and pulled back before the Lips of Good could tempt her into further distraction. “No. We can’t.”
He pouted. God, the man had the audacity to pout. “Why not?”
“Why? Why? Need I really go through the laundry list of reasons why this is a bad idea?”
“There’s a laundry list?”
“Spike!” Buffy flattened her hands against his chest—ohh, sturdy—and shoved him away. “Giles is gonna come in here with a hack-saw in like two minutes if we don’t get back before then. You show up on my turf after the weirdness that was last night to, what, play tonsil hockey?”
He offered a lazy shrug. “Seemed like the thing to do.”
“Why are you here?”
“I woke up with the desire to snog you.”
“To what me?!”
The smile on his face ought to be illegal. No one should ever look that self-confident. “Snog you. See if your mouth was as delicious as I remembered.” He licked his lips. “Mmm. You’re better when you’re not under the influence, love.”
Buffy snickered. “Thanks.”
There was a long pause.
“So?” Spike asked expectantly.
“So?”
“Back to snogging, then?”
The idea of losing herself in another one of his silken kisses had her eyes a little glossy and her heart doing somersaults. Gah—it wasn’t fair that he had such influence over her. For crying out loud, before the stupid school got possessed by equally stupid ghosts, Spike was barely a blip on her radar. An admittedly devastatingly sexy blip, but totally of the blip-nature, nonetheless. What right did he have to stroll in here like he owned the town, kiss her to the point where she could barely remember her name, and then casually ask if they could please continue making out when she had a murderous ex-boyfriend to slay?
A soulless, murderous ex-boyfriend. Angel would never come in here, sans soul, and kiss her like Spike had. He’d rip her throat out.
They were equally soulless, right?
Buffy groaned inwardly. She’d already had this debate. It was easier to think about when the object of her musings wasn’t staring her down with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Or licking his lips and making her envy his tongue.
A few kisses and she’d reverted completely from slayer to schoolgirl. No happy medium. Spike wasn’t fighting her, which was weird, but she wasn’t fighting him; equally weird.
“You said that you’d told yourself you wouldn’t touch me,” she reminded him, attempting to step backward as he stepped forward, but going nowhere due to the wall pressed at her back. Walking through walls was not a slayer ability, but for the way Spike was looking at her—hungrily, and not in a blood-lusty way—she was beginning to wish it was.
Namely because the woman in her hadn’t felt so excited in weeks.
“I tell myself all kinds of rubbish. None of it ever pans out.”
“Why are you here?”
“You gonna keep askin’ that?”
“Well, until I get an actual answer that doesn’t involve your tongue down my throat.”
Spike smirked. “Din’t hear you complaining.”
“It’s insane.”
“Yeah. That’s what makes it so much fun.”
Right. Insanity. Fun. Thus described his fascination with screws-for-brains. Buffy rolled her eyes. “Look, I don’t have time for this. I have to, you know, stop you and yours from the big evil thing you’re planning. And I don’t wanna have to stake you here, especially because your lips have this numbing effect on my brain that I probably should’ve kept to myself because I’ve just given you an unfair advantage and now it’s out there and I just realized that I’m still talking, which is never good, so I’ll stop now, and you’ll start.” She paused, focused on a spot on the floor while trying desperately to ignore how hot her cheeks were. “Okay…so, talking isn’t my strong point.”
“No, you’re doing just fine.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
Buffy scowled, raising her eyes to meet his once more. “You’re here. And you’re with the…non-fighty, yet again. And I thought last night you said that you’d try to kill me next time we met.”
“Yeah, well, that was last night.”
“Ugh…”
“What? A bloke can’t change his mind?” Spike held her gaze for another long minute, then sighed and combed his fingers through his hair. “Look, it’s not easy for me to be here, all right? When I came to see you last night, it threw me for a bloody loop.”
She frowned. “What did?”
“You did. I had a plan, an’ you had to go bugger it up with your sodding ghosties. An’ now I can’t get you outta my head, which makes fuck all in sense, but it’s the truth.” He sighed again. “I want to stop it.”
“Then stop it. I mean, don’t get me wrong…I like kissing you, but it’s really beginning to wig me out.”
A ghost of a shadow crossed his face at that. “No, love, you’re not hearing me. I want to stop Angel.”
Everything fell deathly still. Even the dust particles froze. She couldn’t have heard him right.
“What?”
“I want to stop Angel.” An ironic smile tickled Spike’s lips, and just like that, she knew it wasn’t a joke. God, it wasn’t a joke. He was completely serious.
Only he couldn’t be, because the words didn’t make sense.
And if those words didn’t make sense, then what Spike said next surely meant that doomsday was near.
“I want to save the world.”
TBC