A/N: Ch. XXVIII (Anne of the Thousand Days) is also new today. Make sure
you've read it.
For sticking with me this far, you've earned this chapter.
Oh – and,
Heed.
The.
Rating.
I mean it.
***
XXIX. No Doubt
Spike jammed the comm. back in his pocket. His head pounded, anger and adrenaline coursing through his heart and out into his limbs. His whole body felt like it was too close to a fire.
She couldn't have meant it. She couldn't have meant what it sounded like.
He started walking toward Annie's again, but her words had mass, gravity. She'd asked him to come back.
She'd asked him to come back for the night.
There was nothing he could refuse her.
***
The soft knock pulled her pounding heart up into her throat, and she had to swallow it before she could call out, "It's open."
The latch clicked, the door creaked, and she heard the hesitation before he crossed the threshold, wondered if he could sense the parallel to that halting, strange conversation – another lifetime ago, when he'd saved her from drowning in her own mistake. She felt frozen to the couch, as though helpless to break from the pattern set that night, listening to his footsteps until he finally came into view.
When he saw her face, his hardened expression crumbled into tenderness, and then he was there, on his knees on the hardwood in front of her, familiar and dangerous, taking her hands in his own.
"I didn't mean any of it," he said, almost pleading.
She squeezed his fingers and swallowed her heart again. "I know."
"I'm afraid to say what I should have said."
"You have nothing to fear from me, Spike," she whispered.
He took a deep breath, leaning forward as though he could push the words out with the movement. "From the very beginning, Julia. From the first second. The second before I saw you, the way I remember it. I loved you." All in one long exhale.
"I know." Somehow, knowing did nothing to soften the impact of hearing it said, in his voice, from his lips.
He looked crestfallen at her response, watching her eyes, unconsciously stroking the back of her hand with a calloused thumb. "I thought it would get easier, but I'm all out of fight. I'm making it worse for myself." He opened his mouth to go on, and then shut it again, looking away.
Seconds ticked by, and she railed at herself for her cowardice, her desperate desire to answer him honestly, and the crushing weight of terror at what would come afterward, when excuses wouldn't hold back the momentum of the words being said.
He shifted as though to stand. She gripped his fingers tightly, holding him in place. "I have no other promises for you," she said, "but we're here, together. Alone." His face wavered like the surface of deep water, from resignation to hope and back again to sadness.
"I don't know what I'm doing." He almost looked sick.
"Please," she whispered, more to herself than to him, "there will be time enough for doubt afterward."
"No, I mean I don't know how to do this. What I think you're asking..."
She raised her eyebrows. "I have a feeling you do."
He blushed and let out a nervous laugh. "I just – you know me. I'm a point and shoot kind of guy. I don't know how to..." he trailed off again.
How to please you. How to show you my soul. She could hear it in the silence as though he'd said it out loud, and dove in to rescue him. "Have you fantasized about this?"
An audible click of his Adam's apple as he swallowed seemed affirmative.
"Point and shoot fantasies?"
He shook his head, wide-eyed.
"Do what you fantasize about before the shooting starts, then," she murmured. "The act is the end. When the doubt starts. Don't hurry to get there."
He looked up at her with those strange, barely mismatched eyes, and in the left she saw hope, shame and desire fighting for control. He sat back on his heels, long arms outstretched so his hands rested on her hips, and his attention moved down her body from her face, over her clothing, almost critically. But when his fingers lifted the edge of her shirt, he met her gaze again, unwavering as he freed each button from its buttonhole. Ever the master of his arts, he had memorized each step required to disrobe her in that brief examination, and if he wanted to see what he was uncovering, he wanted to gauge her reaction even more.
She didn't dare look away as the thin fabric of her blouse slid down over her shoulders; when he lifted the camisole over her head it was like the shutter of a camera, a brief intrusion that branded the expression on his face in her memory while she waited to see it again. He traced a line from below her ear, down her throat with those impossibly long fingers, and splayed them lightly over her collarbone. She heard his breath catch in his throat, felt the briefest hesitation, before the flat of his palm slid over her breast and gently cupped it, learning the weight. He rose slightly on his knees, leaned in, and kissed his way from her forehead down her nose to her mouth. He sighed when she parted her lips for his tongue, wrapping his other arm around her back and drawing her closer. It went on until they both needed air, and broke with rushed inhales.
Julia cradled his face in her hands as she pulled back. She knew this was her move, that her compliance had to be clear or she'd be left with only the aching, unfulfilled potential of what this might have been. Taking a cue from him, she watched his face as she pushed off the bomber jacket and lifted the T-shirt beneath it up and over his head. He seemed reluctant to let go of her, but raised his arms to free them, and knelt there looking at her, all muscle and limb at angles, as vulnerable as the day she had undressed him while he lay unconscious in her bathtub. His scars gleamed in the light filtering through the window and she touched them with her fingertips, noting how smooth his skin was, how those visible marks would no doubt fade to near nothingness with time. She had taken less care with the stitches on the worst of his wounds, but even they seemed to defy their seriousness, looking as though months rather than weeks had passed.
"You save me," he breathed.
She knew if she looked into those eyes again she might lose her nerve, so she pulled him close, hooked her chin over his shoulder, and ran her hands down the flat plane of his back. The response was immediate - a low growl in his throat as he rose higher to meet her. His body was a furnace, and she realized he held back, felt the unmistakable straining of his arousal when he collided with her knees. Doubt be damned, she thought, and drove her hands between their bodies to fumble with the buttons on his jeans.
He nuzzled her neck and followed suit, gripping the waistband of her skirt and tugging at it without success. She waited until his jeans were free and she had pushed them, along with his boxers, down to the floor before she reached back to unclasp the hook at the small of her back. The movement thrust her breasts against him, and he growled again as he buried his face between them, open-mouthed. Hot breath left trails of gooseflesh in its wake as he dared to take a nipple between his lips, and then his teeth, carefully, testing. She let out a ragged gasp and he froze, but she spread her hand across the back of his head, fingers in that thick tangle of black-green, urging him on.
He had taken her advice with utmost seriousness. Though she knew full well what kind of pent-up longing he had to be inside her - knew it because she felt it in equal measure - his hands and mouth explored every inch of her torso, her neck, her face. He traced the lines of her ribs with his tongue while she shivered and writhed beneath the onslaught.
He slid the unfastened skirt down below her waist and kneaded the flesh of her hips, thumbs grazing close to her center but never touching. He ran his palms down the sides of her thighs as she lifted them off the couch, made her giggle when he reached the backs of her knees, and finally bowed before her to pull the skirt free, kissing the arch of each foot in turn.
When he straightened and looked into her eyes again, all hesitation had fled. The faint smile on his lips seemed innocent, but the set of his jaw gave it an edge. He drew himself up to his full height and stepped out of his clothing with no trace of self-consciousness.
"Help me," he whispered. "Tell me I'm not dreaming."
"I'm here," she whispered back.
She turned to lead him to her bed - the bed where Vicious slept with her, she knew in the part of her heart that broke when Spike kissed her the first time - and he did not move to follow. Dreading a confrontation, she turned slowly back to him, but the smile was still there.
"Go," he told her in that low, primal voice. "I want to look at you." And he stood, taking shallow breaths, while she crossed the distance to the bedroom lit by the ambient glow of moons and streetlamps. She did not hear him move, but as she placed a knee on the side of the mattress, he was behind her, arms wrapped around her waist, face buried in her hair.
"There is nothing more perfect in the universe," he mumbled into it. With steady hands, he turned her and laid her on her back, propped above her but too far away with his long reach. She gripped the back of his neck and pulled him down and off balance so that he fell against her, the puzzle of their bodies fitting together like time reversing, making them whole again.
He looked surprised by how easily he found his place inside. Years and distrust slid from his features, replaced by calm, and he closed his eyes as he let his face drop to her shoulder.
He moved like water. She realized she'd grown used to the way Vicious tried to conquer her body. Instead, Spike flowed, skin-to-skin with her, creating friction where his chest slid against her nipples, arching his back so the coarse hairs on his stomach tickled her belly. His handspan was so wide that he could stretch them across her back to meet in the center, and he cradled her shoulders, lifting her so her head fell back and he could kiss her throat.
He raised his head to look at her, searching her face. She tried to hold his gaze, but she was fading out, the rhythm of movement lulling her while her brain shut down all other thought to make room for the traffic in her nerves. She saw his eyes widen, felt him hesitate, and she whispered, "Let go..."
He relaxed a little, leaning in for a kiss, and when she responded hungrily – sucking on his tongue, refusing to let him pull back – he moaned low and deep, shuddering, driving against her so that she felt every tremble and pulse.
She wrapped her arms around him, fingers tracing circles across his back while he buried his face in the hollow where her shoulder met her neck. Slowly, his breath evened out, though she still felt his heart pounding against her breast.
Seconds faded away; traffic hummed outside. Julia felt a rush of pride and sadness when his body began to shake, and she could feel the hot trail of his tears against her skin. He sobbed without sound, still inside her, the movement pushing her relentlessly toward her own release. Later, it would seem a portent: he gave himself to her completely, laid bare; she understood in a moment of blinding clarity that she would die for him, and her whole body responded, pleasure flashing behind her eyelids like the slipstream, carrying her away from reality and into truth.
***
Unwelcome sunlight crept through Spike's slitted eyelids when he woke again, unsure how many times he had done so during the night; he felt wrung out and winded, his eyes filled with sand, after a week of stolen nights together crammed into the space of the past eight hours. It was the exhaustion of effort well spent, though, and apparently not terminal – his body responded obediently when Julia stirred and snaked a leg between his own.
"Hey," he whispered, and squinted against the light to look at her. She opened her eyes, and though she did not move, he caught the unmistakable flash of confusion when she saw his face.
After a split second's hesitation, she replied. "Hey."
"You look surprised to see me." He tried to smile.
She smiled back and wrapped her arms around him. "I thought I was dreaming. Then I noticed this." She slid her leg higher.
Somehow, daylight made all the difference. Her perfection was warm – no longer the ethereal goddess in moonlight, he could see where the flush of arousal spread ruddy across her skin, creeping up from her chest to her throat. He tasted himself in a quick, biting kiss, and then the aftertaste of her. Julia. Beneath him and around him, in his pores and his lungs. And in the daylight, real. Real enough that the betrayal was real, too. He pushed the epiphany back and shut his eyes tightly against it, wrenching a few final moments of joy from her wordless sounds of encouragement and the way her breath shivered out when she came.
"You were right," he mumbled, pausing to kiss her collarbone before he pushed himself up on his elbows. Her heart sank at the confusion on his face.
"Spike... I don't regret this." She turned to face him as he rolled beside her.
He tucked her hair behind her ear and trailed his thumb down her jawline. "Neither do I. But I regret what I've drawn you into."
"You haven't drawn me into anything. I'm not that easily manipulated," she replied, keeping her tone gentle.
"That's not what I meant. I can't believe my luck, but I believe you wanted to be with me."
"Want to. Not past tense. Not yet."
"I don't feel guilty on my account, or on Vicious'. He owed me." He clenched his teeth, looking past her to where a bar of pale morning sun divided the bedroom wall.
"What do you mean, he owed you? You're just collecting a debt?" Anger nearly overshadowed the feeling she had been kicked in the stomach, but he shook his head and pulled her to him, kissing her hair.
"Not at all. I don't know how to explain, but I'll try."
The smell of his skin – faint smoke, soap, the clean sweat of physical exertion, her own scent – touched some part of her memory from long past. She felt young, protected, the sting of his comment fading with the vibration of his voice in her ear.
"Vicious pursued you because I was indebted to him," he went on, speaking in short bursts as he tried to choose his words. "I don't mean out of sport. He wanted you more than he had ever wanted anything. He was not alone in that. I didn't try to make you choose, because I owed him. This runs between us so deep, and for so long. It is the basis of our partnership and our friendship. One after another, a long line of debts, and I don't leave my debts unpaid. When he asked me to keep you here or kill you, he broke the promise he made to me, that he would protect you above his own life, above anything else."
She shivered. "Please don't talk about that. It's over. No harm came of it."
"I won't talk about it, if you'll stop defending him."
She sighed. "I'm usually the one calling the shots, not the one being volleyed."
Spike pressed his face to her neck, lips moving against her skin. "I don't want you to think he loved you only because I wanted you as well."
"He doesn't love me," she replied as she moved back to look at him. "He never will."
He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Why stay with him, then?"
"Don't start this again, Spike. I haven't had a choice in the matter for far too long."
The fantasy slid through his brain like it was already a memory: the Jericho coming up in a practiced arc of the arm, Vicious off-guard, the recoil and the moment of deafness that followed the shot and the seconds stretching out like years while his body crumpled to the floor. And in its wake, the vision alone left guilt as palpable as if it were done.
"Why am I here, then?" He stretched an arm across her waist and drew her closer.
"Now I know what it feels like to be loved," she said, her voice steady. "And I've incurred a debt I don't know how to repay."
For sticking with me this far, you've earned this chapter.
Oh – and,
Heed.
The.
Rating.
I mean it.
***
XXIX. No Doubt
Spike jammed the comm. back in his pocket. His head pounded, anger and adrenaline coursing through his heart and out into his limbs. His whole body felt like it was too close to a fire.
She couldn't have meant it. She couldn't have meant what it sounded like.
He started walking toward Annie's again, but her words had mass, gravity. She'd asked him to come back.
She'd asked him to come back for the night.
There was nothing he could refuse her.
***
The soft knock pulled her pounding heart up into her throat, and she had to swallow it before she could call out, "It's open."
The latch clicked, the door creaked, and she heard the hesitation before he crossed the threshold, wondered if he could sense the parallel to that halting, strange conversation – another lifetime ago, when he'd saved her from drowning in her own mistake. She felt frozen to the couch, as though helpless to break from the pattern set that night, listening to his footsteps until he finally came into view.
When he saw her face, his hardened expression crumbled into tenderness, and then he was there, on his knees on the hardwood in front of her, familiar and dangerous, taking her hands in his own.
"I didn't mean any of it," he said, almost pleading.
She squeezed his fingers and swallowed her heart again. "I know."
"I'm afraid to say what I should have said."
"You have nothing to fear from me, Spike," she whispered.
He took a deep breath, leaning forward as though he could push the words out with the movement. "From the very beginning, Julia. From the first second. The second before I saw you, the way I remember it. I loved you." All in one long exhale.
"I know." Somehow, knowing did nothing to soften the impact of hearing it said, in his voice, from his lips.
He looked crestfallen at her response, watching her eyes, unconsciously stroking the back of her hand with a calloused thumb. "I thought it would get easier, but I'm all out of fight. I'm making it worse for myself." He opened his mouth to go on, and then shut it again, looking away.
Seconds ticked by, and she railed at herself for her cowardice, her desperate desire to answer him honestly, and the crushing weight of terror at what would come afterward, when excuses wouldn't hold back the momentum of the words being said.
He shifted as though to stand. She gripped his fingers tightly, holding him in place. "I have no other promises for you," she said, "but we're here, together. Alone." His face wavered like the surface of deep water, from resignation to hope and back again to sadness.
"I don't know what I'm doing." He almost looked sick.
"Please," she whispered, more to herself than to him, "there will be time enough for doubt afterward."
"No, I mean I don't know how to do this. What I think you're asking..."
She raised her eyebrows. "I have a feeling you do."
He blushed and let out a nervous laugh. "I just – you know me. I'm a point and shoot kind of guy. I don't know how to..." he trailed off again.
How to please you. How to show you my soul. She could hear it in the silence as though he'd said it out loud, and dove in to rescue him. "Have you fantasized about this?"
An audible click of his Adam's apple as he swallowed seemed affirmative.
"Point and shoot fantasies?"
He shook his head, wide-eyed.
"Do what you fantasize about before the shooting starts, then," she murmured. "The act is the end. When the doubt starts. Don't hurry to get there."
He looked up at her with those strange, barely mismatched eyes, and in the left she saw hope, shame and desire fighting for control. He sat back on his heels, long arms outstretched so his hands rested on her hips, and his attention moved down her body from her face, over her clothing, almost critically. But when his fingers lifted the edge of her shirt, he met her gaze again, unwavering as he freed each button from its buttonhole. Ever the master of his arts, he had memorized each step required to disrobe her in that brief examination, and if he wanted to see what he was uncovering, he wanted to gauge her reaction even more.
She didn't dare look away as the thin fabric of her blouse slid down over her shoulders; when he lifted the camisole over her head it was like the shutter of a camera, a brief intrusion that branded the expression on his face in her memory while she waited to see it again. He traced a line from below her ear, down her throat with those impossibly long fingers, and splayed them lightly over her collarbone. She heard his breath catch in his throat, felt the briefest hesitation, before the flat of his palm slid over her breast and gently cupped it, learning the weight. He rose slightly on his knees, leaned in, and kissed his way from her forehead down her nose to her mouth. He sighed when she parted her lips for his tongue, wrapping his other arm around her back and drawing her closer. It went on until they both needed air, and broke with rushed inhales.
Julia cradled his face in her hands as she pulled back. She knew this was her move, that her compliance had to be clear or she'd be left with only the aching, unfulfilled potential of what this might have been. Taking a cue from him, she watched his face as she pushed off the bomber jacket and lifted the T-shirt beneath it up and over his head. He seemed reluctant to let go of her, but raised his arms to free them, and knelt there looking at her, all muscle and limb at angles, as vulnerable as the day she had undressed him while he lay unconscious in her bathtub. His scars gleamed in the light filtering through the window and she touched them with her fingertips, noting how smooth his skin was, how those visible marks would no doubt fade to near nothingness with time. She had taken less care with the stitches on the worst of his wounds, but even they seemed to defy their seriousness, looking as though months rather than weeks had passed.
"You save me," he breathed.
She knew if she looked into those eyes again she might lose her nerve, so she pulled him close, hooked her chin over his shoulder, and ran her hands down the flat plane of his back. The response was immediate - a low growl in his throat as he rose higher to meet her. His body was a furnace, and she realized he held back, felt the unmistakable straining of his arousal when he collided with her knees. Doubt be damned, she thought, and drove her hands between their bodies to fumble with the buttons on his jeans.
He nuzzled her neck and followed suit, gripping the waistband of her skirt and tugging at it without success. She waited until his jeans were free and she had pushed them, along with his boxers, down to the floor before she reached back to unclasp the hook at the small of her back. The movement thrust her breasts against him, and he growled again as he buried his face between them, open-mouthed. Hot breath left trails of gooseflesh in its wake as he dared to take a nipple between his lips, and then his teeth, carefully, testing. She let out a ragged gasp and he froze, but she spread her hand across the back of his head, fingers in that thick tangle of black-green, urging him on.
He had taken her advice with utmost seriousness. Though she knew full well what kind of pent-up longing he had to be inside her - knew it because she felt it in equal measure - his hands and mouth explored every inch of her torso, her neck, her face. He traced the lines of her ribs with his tongue while she shivered and writhed beneath the onslaught.
He slid the unfastened skirt down below her waist and kneaded the flesh of her hips, thumbs grazing close to her center but never touching. He ran his palms down the sides of her thighs as she lifted them off the couch, made her giggle when he reached the backs of her knees, and finally bowed before her to pull the skirt free, kissing the arch of each foot in turn.
When he straightened and looked into her eyes again, all hesitation had fled. The faint smile on his lips seemed innocent, but the set of his jaw gave it an edge. He drew himself up to his full height and stepped out of his clothing with no trace of self-consciousness.
"Help me," he whispered. "Tell me I'm not dreaming."
"I'm here," she whispered back.
She turned to lead him to her bed - the bed where Vicious slept with her, she knew in the part of her heart that broke when Spike kissed her the first time - and he did not move to follow. Dreading a confrontation, she turned slowly back to him, but the smile was still there.
"Go," he told her in that low, primal voice. "I want to look at you." And he stood, taking shallow breaths, while she crossed the distance to the bedroom lit by the ambient glow of moons and streetlamps. She did not hear him move, but as she placed a knee on the side of the mattress, he was behind her, arms wrapped around her waist, face buried in her hair.
"There is nothing more perfect in the universe," he mumbled into it. With steady hands, he turned her and laid her on her back, propped above her but too far away with his long reach. She gripped the back of his neck and pulled him down and off balance so that he fell against her, the puzzle of their bodies fitting together like time reversing, making them whole again.
He looked surprised by how easily he found his place inside. Years and distrust slid from his features, replaced by calm, and he closed his eyes as he let his face drop to her shoulder.
He moved like water. She realized she'd grown used to the way Vicious tried to conquer her body. Instead, Spike flowed, skin-to-skin with her, creating friction where his chest slid against her nipples, arching his back so the coarse hairs on his stomach tickled her belly. His handspan was so wide that he could stretch them across her back to meet in the center, and he cradled her shoulders, lifting her so her head fell back and he could kiss her throat.
He raised his head to look at her, searching her face. She tried to hold his gaze, but she was fading out, the rhythm of movement lulling her while her brain shut down all other thought to make room for the traffic in her nerves. She saw his eyes widen, felt him hesitate, and she whispered, "Let go..."
He relaxed a little, leaning in for a kiss, and when she responded hungrily – sucking on his tongue, refusing to let him pull back – he moaned low and deep, shuddering, driving against her so that she felt every tremble and pulse.
She wrapped her arms around him, fingers tracing circles across his back while he buried his face in the hollow where her shoulder met her neck. Slowly, his breath evened out, though she still felt his heart pounding against her breast.
Seconds faded away; traffic hummed outside. Julia felt a rush of pride and sadness when his body began to shake, and she could feel the hot trail of his tears against her skin. He sobbed without sound, still inside her, the movement pushing her relentlessly toward her own release. Later, it would seem a portent: he gave himself to her completely, laid bare; she understood in a moment of blinding clarity that she would die for him, and her whole body responded, pleasure flashing behind her eyelids like the slipstream, carrying her away from reality and into truth.
***
Unwelcome sunlight crept through Spike's slitted eyelids when he woke again, unsure how many times he had done so during the night; he felt wrung out and winded, his eyes filled with sand, after a week of stolen nights together crammed into the space of the past eight hours. It was the exhaustion of effort well spent, though, and apparently not terminal – his body responded obediently when Julia stirred and snaked a leg between his own.
"Hey," he whispered, and squinted against the light to look at her. She opened her eyes, and though she did not move, he caught the unmistakable flash of confusion when she saw his face.
After a split second's hesitation, she replied. "Hey."
"You look surprised to see me." He tried to smile.
She smiled back and wrapped her arms around him. "I thought I was dreaming. Then I noticed this." She slid her leg higher.
Somehow, daylight made all the difference. Her perfection was warm – no longer the ethereal goddess in moonlight, he could see where the flush of arousal spread ruddy across her skin, creeping up from her chest to her throat. He tasted himself in a quick, biting kiss, and then the aftertaste of her. Julia. Beneath him and around him, in his pores and his lungs. And in the daylight, real. Real enough that the betrayal was real, too. He pushed the epiphany back and shut his eyes tightly against it, wrenching a few final moments of joy from her wordless sounds of encouragement and the way her breath shivered out when she came.
"You were right," he mumbled, pausing to kiss her collarbone before he pushed himself up on his elbows. Her heart sank at the confusion on his face.
"Spike... I don't regret this." She turned to face him as he rolled beside her.
He tucked her hair behind her ear and trailed his thumb down her jawline. "Neither do I. But I regret what I've drawn you into."
"You haven't drawn me into anything. I'm not that easily manipulated," she replied, keeping her tone gentle.
"That's not what I meant. I can't believe my luck, but I believe you wanted to be with me."
"Want to. Not past tense. Not yet."
"I don't feel guilty on my account, or on Vicious'. He owed me." He clenched his teeth, looking past her to where a bar of pale morning sun divided the bedroom wall.
"What do you mean, he owed you? You're just collecting a debt?" Anger nearly overshadowed the feeling she had been kicked in the stomach, but he shook his head and pulled her to him, kissing her hair.
"Not at all. I don't know how to explain, but I'll try."
The smell of his skin – faint smoke, soap, the clean sweat of physical exertion, her own scent – touched some part of her memory from long past. She felt young, protected, the sting of his comment fading with the vibration of his voice in her ear.
"Vicious pursued you because I was indebted to him," he went on, speaking in short bursts as he tried to choose his words. "I don't mean out of sport. He wanted you more than he had ever wanted anything. He was not alone in that. I didn't try to make you choose, because I owed him. This runs between us so deep, and for so long. It is the basis of our partnership and our friendship. One after another, a long line of debts, and I don't leave my debts unpaid. When he asked me to keep you here or kill you, he broke the promise he made to me, that he would protect you above his own life, above anything else."
She shivered. "Please don't talk about that. It's over. No harm came of it."
"I won't talk about it, if you'll stop defending him."
She sighed. "I'm usually the one calling the shots, not the one being volleyed."
Spike pressed his face to her neck, lips moving against her skin. "I don't want you to think he loved you only because I wanted you as well."
"He doesn't love me," she replied as she moved back to look at him. "He never will."
He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Why stay with him, then?"
"Don't start this again, Spike. I haven't had a choice in the matter for far too long."
The fantasy slid through his brain like it was already a memory: the Jericho coming up in a practiced arc of the arm, Vicious off-guard, the recoil and the moment of deafness that followed the shot and the seconds stretching out like years while his body crumpled to the floor. And in its wake, the vision alone left guilt as palpable as if it were done.
"Why am I here, then?" He stretched an arm across her waist and drew her closer.
"Now I know what it feels like to be loved," she said, her voice steady. "And I've incurred a debt I don't know how to repay."