There's nothing gentle about this. Nothing soft, or sweet. We tear at each other, hands and nails and teeth clashing in a whirlwind of sensory overload.
I grip his shoulders as tightly as I can, digging my nails into him, keeping his mouth pressed against mine.
His hands slide down my back, gripping my hips, driving me into him. We moan in unison, gasping into each other's mouths when I tilt my pelvis forward, seeking contact, deliberately rubbing myself against the bulge in his jeans.
Then he breaks our kiss violently, pulling away from me, looking down into my face with hazy, lustful confusion. His eyes are black, his chest heaving in time with mine.
"Bloody…fucking hell, what—"
No.
I put my hands on either side of his face and drag his lips back to mine, swallowing whatever it is he'd been about to say.
No talking.
I don't want to talk. Don't want to risk any logic breaking through the haze of primal lust, white hot desire that's clouding my mind now.
Don't want anything other than this.
His body against mine. His lips, his tongue, the taste and scent of him surrounding me.
I bite down on his lip and the hand he has in my hair twists automatically, pulls harder, just enough to hurt. I moan into him, the same whimper that's part pain and part pleasure passing between our mouths.
My skin is too hot. Too tight. Stretched over my muscles, sinew. Every nerve, every inch of me is reacting to him, calling out to him.
Digging more firmly into his shoulders, scratching at the leather with my nails, I use my momentum to swing us around, reversing our positions so that I'm pinning him against the wall now. I press my body closer to his, kissing him more urgently, with more aggression than before. He gives a little beneath me, letting me mold myself to him.
This is better. This is what I'd needed, this control.
I let my hands feel him. Really feel him, in a way I never would have allowed myself to before. A way I never let myself admit to wanting.
I let my fingers trace over his face, feeling his cheeks down to the hard line of his jaw. It's not a gentle exploration, but hurried, verging on violent, needing to feel all of him at once. Like I'm worried at any moment the spell will be broken and logic will return.
My hands move down his neck, over his shoulders, across the muscles in his chest, finally scraping my nails over his abdomen, reveling in the way they twitch under my touch.
When my hands finally come to rest at the waistband of his jeans, he pulls away from me again.
I open my eyes, blinking up at him. I'm about to say something, I don't know what, when he suddenly grabs me around my arms and spins us around once more.
He slams me back into the brick with enough force that I see him wince.
He doesn't give me time to catch up, to ask a question. Doesn't let me catch my breath before he's pulling at my coat, yanking the buttons open and shoving it away from my shoulders. It drops to the ground, a wool puddle at my feet.
It's cold. Too cold be standing out here in just my sleeveless shirt, the wall rough and cold behind me.
But then he steps toward me and wraps his hands around my upper arms. His stormy eyes meet mine, drop down to my parted lips, then over to his right hand. He focuses on it as he begins to drag both his hands slowly down my bare arms.
And I don't care.
I don't care how cold it is. I don't care that we're in an alley behind The Bronze. I don't care that he's Spike, or that I'm Buffy, or that there are a million and one reasons why I shouldn't do this. That this whole situation is ten tons of flashing, red light no.
He steps closer to me and I inhale, dragging in a deep ragged breath of the spicy liquor and cigarette scent and my head goes light.
Oh, God, I don't care.
"Is this it, then?" He asks lowly, ghosting his hands slowly back up my arms, still not looking at me. His eyes are glued to his hands movement, watching as his touch raises little bumps all along my arm.
I tremble beneath his touch, face growing hot, the blood in my veins beginning to boil.
His hands reach my neck as his gaze meets mine again, and he splays both sets of cool, long fingers against my throat. His thumbs come to rest over my wind pipe.
I swallow, keeping my eyes locked on his.
"Do you want it?" He asks me, his voice a seductive murmur.
The double meaning is still there, hidden in the honeyed tone. The promise of death just as sure as the promise of sex. But I know which one he's asking about now. Which meaning he wants me to hear.
He exerts the smallest pressure, the tiniest push with his thumbs against the sensitive skin at my throat.
I shiver.
It would be so easy for him, I realize. Even with the chip. So easy for him to end my life right here, now, in the back alley behind The Bronze. I'd never let him. He knows it, and so do I. Still, it's there. Everything he's said to me, everything about his other Slayers, their desire for what he could offer them, rings in my ears as I look at him.
And he's thinking the same thing. I can see it all over his face. The blood lust is there, just as strong as the other. The sexual undertone to the question, no matter which meaning he'd intended.
I remember dimly what I thought about earlier. The two being intertwined for him, inseparable.
"No," I say quietly, never looking away from his eyes.
It's the truth.
I think he already knew it.
As soon as the word leaves my lips, Spike's hands drop from around my neck, move to my shoulders. He spins me around with lighting quick speed, pressing my front into the wall.
My hands fly out on instinct to catch my weight before my face can hit the brick, palms scraping along the wall on either side of me.
Spike pushes his body flat against mine, his front to my back, every inch of him now pressed intimately against me.
I squeeze my eyes shut, swallowing hard.
"So it's not death you're after," he murmurs huskily, giving the lobe of my ear a sharp, quick tug. "What then, Slayer?"
My head is spinning.
I don't make a move to answer him, so he presses on.
"This?" He asks breathlessly into my ear, rolling his hips forward meaningfully. I gasp at the feel of him, his arousal, pressing into me. My eyes fly open, pulse racing.
Spike slides his hands sinuously from my shoulders to my wrists, encircling them with his fingers. "Is this what you want?"
I have to ask myself the same question.
Is this it? Is this what I want?
I don't know. Or maybe I do, but I'm still not ready to admit it. Not out loud.
Not to him.
How did we get here? I think, trying desperately and failing to remember why we shouldn't be doing this. All the reasons I have to shove him away from me, to leave this place.
But I can't. I can't move.
"Tell me," he urges headily, tongue darting out to flick my ear. "Is this what you want?"
There's no mistaking what he's asking. There's no double meaning this time.
Just one, crystal clear meaning. And I'm stuck, torn, unable to move from the spot.
A Master Vampire behind me, pinning me against the wall, his lips inches from my neck and I can't move. I don't want to.
I don't know what happens next. I don't know what happens if I say yes.
If I say no.
I'm still not even sure what the right answer is, what the truth is. My body is screaming one thing and my brain…well, my brain is sort of short circuiting, but I know its saying something to me, too.
But it's the Slayer in me. The darkness, the demon, whatever the hell it is that makes me what I am, that's the loudest.
The darkness in me that's drawn to what it sees, what it feels in Spike.
What it might have seen in Angel.
What it could never find in Riley, or Parker or Scott, or anyone else. Any man, any average Joe Normal.
It's match. It's equal.
And it's that part of me that finally makes the decision. Whether it's right or not, whether it's the truth or not.
When the word leaves my lips, it's barely more than a whisper.
"Yes."
The vampire freezes behind me, hands still locked around my wrists.
Whatever he'd been expecting to hear, I don't think that was it. It's quiet in the alley, nearly silent except for the thrumming beat of the music filtering out to us through the wall.
I'm beginning to think that maybe Spike hasn't heard me when he suddenly whirls me around again so that I'm facing him head on.
He stares at me, brow furrowed, looking like he's trying to work through something in his head. Some puzzle, some big decision that has to be made.
I wonder if it's the same one I had to make.
The silence stretches on between us. Neither of us moves for a long, breathless moment.
And then he lunges for me, putting his hands on the wall on either side of my head and capturing my mouth with his.
It's searing, this kiss. Wild and deep and open mouthed and my legs are starting to shake from the force of it, from the sin it's promising.
I grip the leather of his duster's lapels when I finally feel my legs start to give out, sagging into him. Spike responds quickly, hands coming to roughly grip the backs of my thighs, yanking me up off the ground in one fluid movement. My legs wrap around him instinctively, hooking my ankles at the small of his back as he pushes my back more firmly against the brick wall.
The friction he's creating between our bodies is dizzying, driving me insane, blinding me to anything and everything else around us.
I forget that we're outside The Bronze.
I forget that anyone might see us.
I forget about the wound in my side.
I forget who I am
None of it matters.
Spike nips at my bottom lip, sucks it into his mouth and rolls his hips up, rubbing his denim-clad arousal hard against my center.
I shudder in his arms.
"Oh," I breathe, breaking the kiss and pulling back just enough so I can see his eyes.
They're glazed, black and unfocused. Riveted on mine.
We watch each other for a moment, both of us breathing raggedly, before his hands slide around to grip my hips and he begins moving my body in time with his. Manipulating my movements, undulating my pelvis into his in slow, rhythmic circles.
"O-oh," I whimper again.
It's the only thing I can say. The only sound I can make are these breathless, heady mewls.
My brain is completely shut off.
"That's it," Spike murmurs, breath fanning across my lips, "tell me how good it feels."
But I can't tell him anything. I can't speak.
So I moan instead, wrapping my arms around his neck, sliding one hand into the platinum curls at his nape. Our mouths are so close, almost touching but not quite. Our lips barely graze each other's with every pulsing, upward movement of my hips.
I'm dizzy. Delirious with his nearness, the scent of leather, the astringent flavor of alcohol still burning on my tongue. There's this little fire he's stoking inside me, growing hotter by the second, higher and higher every time he rubs against me in just that way.
I twist my fingers hard in his hair, pull his head back, closing my eyes as I fight for more contact, more friction, just more. More of everything.
More of him.
Spike growls, and my eyes pop back open in time to see his, still dark, still dazed, flashing at me hungrily.
"Slayer," he murmurs huskily against my lips. It's almost a warning, but I don't know what for.
The rumbling vibration sends a shockwave from the back of my neck straight down to my core.
I jerk forward and smash my lips into his again, my free hand flying to the waistband of his jeans, to his belt buckle. I pull at it, blindly, unthinkingly, but can't get it with just my one hand.
Spike chuckles against my mouth, flicking his tongue out to run along the curve of my top lip. I whimper in frustration, tugging hard on the buckle.
For a moment I think he isn't going to help me, but then I feel him shifting beneath me. He brings one arm around, hooking it beneath my butt so he's supporting my weight with it, freeing his other hand to join mine.
Together, we get the belt buckle undone, and I pull my hand away from him so he can lower the zipper.
But he doesn't.
Instead, he reaches his free hand in between our bodies, right where our pelvises are crushed together, and pops the button on my pants. Drags the zipper down slowly.
I gasp loudly, dragging my lips away from his and staring into his face with wide, glazed eyes as I feel two cool, long fingers hooking beneath the elastic of my underwear.
I blink at him and he just smirks, gliding his fingers smoothly, easily through the wetness between my legs.
"So hot," he whispers, curling his tongue up as he twirls the tips of his fingers in a slow circle, barely touching the sensitive flesh. "So wet for me."
My body is on fire, aching for him, for more of him. For everything he can give to me, the truth behind all the years of innuendo and all the whispered seductions.
I wait for him to press forward, to push his fingers inside. My whole body, every muscle, every nerve is tense for it. Ready. Wanting.
Desperate.
But he doesn't.
Instead, he pulls his hand out of my pants and lets go of me, dropping me roughly down to my feet.
I'm stunned.
I glare at him, my cheeks going red with embarrassment. "What are-?"
Before I can finish, before I can even form the question, Spike's gripping the waistband of my pants and yanking them down over my hips.
Oh.
I help him get them down to my ankles and step out of them quickly, shakily, not even remembering to be upset that they're probably ruined because Spike's already lifting me up again, wrapping my legs back around him and pulling his own zipper down.
And one minute I'm pressed against him, the soaked cotton of my underwear the only barrier between him and I, and the next the barrier's gone. Ripped, shoved aside by his strong hand as he finds my opening and thrusts inside of me.
And it's so good. Oh, God, it's so good. He fills me up, stretches me, brings me to a delicious point I've never felt before. Hard and velvet soft, cooling the fire inside me and raging it higher all at once.
I cry out, voice suddenly hoarse, letting my head fly back and smack into the wall.
"Bloody fuck," He groans, nails biting into the bare skin at the swell of my back. I watch his jaw clench with the effort of holding still. He drags hazy eyes up to mine, and time stands still for a long moment.
I'm the first one to move.
Putting my hands on his shoulders for leverage, I shift back, lifting my hips up, pulling myself off of him and dropping slowly back down.
Spike gasps, his hands gripping me harder.
The feel of him inside me, slipping away from me, recapturing him in my heat...it's not like anything I've ever felt before.
But it's not enough.
He's not moving. Not matching his body to mine, and there's not enough leverage, enough friction.
"Move," I tell him, voice breathless. I dig my nails into the tender skin at the back of his neck. "Move with me."
They must be the magic words, because a second later Spike growls and braces one hand against the wall beside me, begins moving his hips. Slow at first, excruciatingly so, sliding himself sensuously out of me, thrusting hard back in.
But it doesn't take long before our pace quickens, the pounding rhythm becoming erratic.
It's too much.
The sensation of him inside me, beneath me. The flavor of him, his tongue as he captures my mouth again and again, nipping and tugging at my swollen lips. The sounds we're making. The words he's saying.
It's too much, and still not enough.
Too much, not enough, and everything in between.
"Is this it?" he asks me, voice strained as he slams into me, knocking me back hard into the brick with each thrust. "Is this what you wanted?"
I don't have an answer.
I can't think, can't form a coherent thought other than yes.
Yes, yes, yes. Repeated over and over again in my mind, growing more manic by the second.
Spike keeps his eyes locked on mine, our lips almost touching as he continues to drive his hips into me with wild, bruising force.
It's verging on painful, but it's good. So good.
And it should be. Painful. There's no room for tenderness. It isn't what I'd wanted.
This, right here, what's passing between us. This is what that feeling is, the one I felt when I'd first kissed him. The one he'd described tonight, how he'd felt after killing that Slayer.
This is what it means. How it manifests itself. Blood and violence and sex, all connected.
Dangerous. This is so dangerous.
And I'm so close.
So close, I can feel my inner muscles beginning to clench and spasm around him. Spike can feel it, too. I can tell by the way his pace quickens, the way he's gripping me tighter and tighter, pushing me harder with each thrust.
"That's right," he whispers hotly, his words coming out in time with his thrusts, "Come for me, Slayer."
And I do, a moment later. Directly on the heels of his whispered command. My eyes flutter closed and I throw my head back into the brick, convulsing in his arms. His name the only coherent word in the keening wail that tumbles passed my lips.
Spike follows me over a second later with a roar, leaning forward and burying blunt, human teeth in the tender skin at the base of my throat.
My eyes snap open, sudden, wild fear gripping my chest. The haze vanishes.
I put both my hands in his hair, now mussed and completely free of the gel, and yank his head back from my neck with as much strength as I can muster.
Spike lets go of me immediately, dropping me to the ground at the same instant I put one hand on his chest to shove him roughly away.
He stumbles back, separating himself from me, watching me with confused eyes. Suddenly hyper aware of my near nakedness, I turn from him, lean over and snatch my coat off the ground, scrambling frantically, using it to cover my bare legs.
When I chance a look back to him, he's glaring at me, looking angrier by the second, wiping a small drop of blood from the corner of his lip.
My eyes widen. Is it his or mine?
My neck.
Oh, God, did I actually let him bite my neck?
My hand flies up to the spot his teeth had just been, the skin still throbbing painfully. I check for puncture wounds and don't feel any.
But when I pull my hand away, there's the tiniest crimson stain on my fingertips.
I turn my wide eyes back to him, see him buckling his belt with a harsh flourish as he whips his gaze up to mine. His chest is heaving, still glaring at me with a deadly expression.
"You mind tellin' me what the hell is goin' on?"
I blink at him, stunned, and everything…everything hits me all at once. With all the subtlety and force of a Mack Truck.
I suck in a deep breath, feeling light headed.
What have I done?
"Well?" he growls, jaw ticking, eyeing me with thinly veiled rage.
I have to go.
I reach down and grab my pants, stepping into them as fast as I can on shaking, unsteady legs. When I go to fasten them again I realize the button is gone, the waist band torn. Now that the lusty haze is starting to fade, I remember to be upset that they're ruined.
And then I remember the reason they're ruined. That I'm standing out behind The Bronze, staring breathlessly at the very soulless, very evil reason they're ruined.
My stomach twists.
"I-I have to go," I say, out loud this time.
Now. Right now.
I start to move, take a couple steps forward toward the alley's exit, but Spike isn't having it. He steps in front of me, blocking me in, staring down at me with a look that I can't read.
There's anger, yeah, but there's confusion, too.
And the lust is still there, just below the surface. Barely disguised behind the rest.
I look up at him, steeling my gaze.
"Get out of my way," I say, sounding more pleading than the demanding I'd been going for.
He narrows his eyes, squares his shoulders. "Or what?
Nothing. Or nothing.
"Spike-" I start to say, as threatening as I can manage, but he cuts me off.
"So you can run off, spend the next week avoidin' me like the bloody plague and come crawlin' back to me when you need to get your rocks off?" He scoffs, a low, mocking laugh. "What? Captain Cardboard not gettin' the job done?"
I wince, sucking in a deep breath.
It's no worse an insult than normal. Nothing I shouldn't be used to hearing from him. It's not even directed at me. It feels different, though, in the wake of everything that's just happened. The fact that Riley isn't around anymore doesn't matter. It's the venom in Spike's tone that bothers me. There's the usual bitterness, the mockery, but there's an edge of something else, too, that makes me feel very small.
I glare at him, directing all my misplaced anger and all my embarrassment into the words, "You're disgusting."
Spike sneers at me.
"You just let me shag you up against a back alley wall," he says, lips curling into a cruel smirk. "Don't think you're in any position to be throwin' stones, pet."
There's that word again. Let. Allowed.
I let that vampire get close enough to stake me.
I let Spike…
But I didn't. I didn't let him do anything. He hasn't seduced me, hasn't manipulated me into this. I'd wanted it. I'd told him I wanted it. I'd been an active participant.
Very active.
My stomach twists again, and I shake my head, coming back to myself.
Determined to get out of here, to put as much distance between the bleached vampire and myself as I can, I put my hand on his chest and push, shoving him back so I can step around him.
But he's faster than me right now, and he's gripping my wrist in a vice-like grip and spinning me back around to face him before I can even get two feet away.
My cheeks heat again, looking up at him.
"Let me go," I hiss, gritting my teeth.
Spike's eyes narrow and he twists my arm around, pinning it against my back. He hauls me forward and presses me against him, dark eyes burning into mine.
"Don't think so, Goldilocks," he murmurs, "not until you tell me what's goin' on here."
I could break his grip easily if I wanted to.If I wanted to.
But I don't, I realize. Standing here, our chests pressed together, looking up into his face. Into his dark, flashing eyes and the furrowed brow and the impossible cheekbones.
I don't want to break his hold on me.
At least, there's a part of me that doesn't. The part that wants him to push me, keep pushing me, until I tell him what he wants to know. Everything he wants to know.
Why I kissed him. Why I came to him tonight. Why what happened tonight...
I squeeze my eyes shut against the temptation to tell him, to explain everything. To get all of this off my chest, out of my mind, lay the burden at someone else's feet so I can think straight again. Breathe again.
Focus on the things that matter.
I open my eyes to find Spike leaning away from me, his dark brows drawn together. The grip on my wrist loosens a little, just enough for me to wrench free of him and spin out of his hold, staggering out of his reach.
"I have to go," I tell him again, turning on my heel to run from him, to flee without giving him a chance to get the last word in. The same way I have every other time since the dreams first started.
But he grabs for me again. "Hold on a bloody-"
I whirl around, bringing a curled fist up and smashing it, hard, into the side of his face.
Not hard enough to send him flying, to cause any real damage. But hard enough that he stumbles back, his hand coming up to press reflexively against the skin that's already starting to swell.
My stomach drops, but I refuse to let myself think about why.
"Don't ask me again," I say, my voice a tense whisper. My fists are still curled, shaking at my sides.
I don't know what he sees now, looking at me. It must be something different, something other than the loathing and disgust I'm trying so hard to convey, because Spike opens his mouth like he's about to say something, pauses for a long second, and then snaps it shut again.
He doesn't even try to get in the last word.
He doesn't have to. Doesn't need to say what he's thinking. I can see it, plain as day.
I've never met anyone, anything, with a more expressive face than Spike.
The look on his features is dark now. Expression cloudy. Eyes raging. And it's there, the unspoken promise. The same thing he'd said that first night, under my window.
This isn't over.
I turn and walk away from him, desperately hoping that he's wrong.