CrossingShadowRiver 25 by dutchbuffy2305

Rating: R

Timeline: About ten years after season 5 of AtS; sequel of sorts to Crossing into UnchippedTerritory

Author's note: Thanks to my dear betas, ayinhara & mommanerd.

Author's website: http:home.planet.nl/dutchbuffy2305

Feedback: Yes, please, to

The latchkey makes its dry snicking sound and Buffy shoots up, fully awake again. What time is it? Spike said he'd be off for a couple of hours, back before the next feed probably. Well, he must have left at about eight, when it was just getting dark, and now it's half past two. Thanks, Spike, just what I needed, a little worry garnish on top of my fun cake of misery and heartbreak. She's half poised to leap off the bed and give him verbal hell, but when her fuzzy brain has woken up and reinstated the memories of the past weeks she sinks back down into the pillows and counts to ten.

Be mellow, smile, forgive. This is not the time to nitpick over his nocturnal habits. Spike's step, now that she's calmed herself down, is kind of uneven and halting. He's hurt.

She's back in full leap mode and hurries to the door in two silent strides. The hall light catches Spike's bright hair, oddly speckled with dull dark spots. Blood. Spike's leaning against the wall with one hand, swaying on his feet.

"Spike!"

The squeaky alarm in her words annoys her. She forces herself to take another breath and lowers her voice, deepening it to another register,

"Need patching up, honey?"

Spike smiles, and there's blood on his teeth as well. "S not as bad as it looks, Buff. Bit pissed, you know. "

He means drunk, she reminds herself. Great. He might even snore. Maybe the guestroom would be a good place for a drunken, snoring Spike.

She walks up to him and sees his flayed and tattered hands. "Ouch, Spike, your hands. What happened?"

Spike holds them up interestedly, with the exaggerated slow movements of a drunk pretending to be in control. "Well, Bert broke one, and then some kind of demons I never saw before had very sharp shiny spines all over and we had to kill them."

Buffy has no clue what he's talking about. Isn't Bert the guy who drugged him? Does he mean him when Spike says 'we'?

His body language is loose, with more than just drunkenness. He can hardly stand but he's seizing her up with his eyes in that smiling, sexy way he used to have before life turned him into a tight, controlled guy, containing his anger and planning detailed capers. Buffy likes this relaxed, swaggering Spike a lot. He slings his arm around her neck and pushes off from the wall. His weight hangs heavily on her but she doesn't mind. It's kind of sweet, her woozy Spike leaning on her and trusting her to tend to his wounds and not jostle him or drop him. She can do that. He cops a clumsy feel and sniffs her neck with relish. Oh yeah. This is her wild, reckless boy, who knows he's sexy and who knows what to do to her.

Buffy lowers him gently onto the bed and he sinks down docilely, giving over the reins completely. She puts Phoenix into the cot next to their bed so she has more room to work with Spike. Their kit with First Aid stuff is well stocked, even though it's been months since she's gone slaying.

Spike lies very still, his eyes closed and she starts with his face, gently wiping off the blood. It's not as bad as it looks; it must have been a nose bleed mostly. His eyes will blacken and he has a cut on one cheek. Nothing much for a vampire. Buffy swabs it delicately with disinfectant and Spike relaxes further into the pillow with a deep sigh, obviously enjoying her touches. Buffy's hands tremble. She wants to kiss his lips, sweet and pink again now that she's wiped off the blood, but she doesn't. There have been scattered moments of intimacy, but it has felt forced and premature so far.

She leans over him and adjusts the lamp so it doesn't shine into his face anymore. It feels good to be doing this for him, wifely and intimate. She peels off his T-shirt. It's his usual black and won't show blood or most other stains, but she doesn't like the demon and cheap Scotch reek that comes off it; it's for the bin.

The skin of his chest is cream against the white sheets, unmarked and almost gleaming in the yellow lamplight. Buffy lightly trails her fingers over his side, as if testing for injuries, and Spike sighs deeper, almost moaning. He arches faintly into her hand. Her heart jumps in her throat and sets her pulse hammering. To touch him again after so long, she couldn't stop if she wanted to. She bends forward to press a kiss on one pink nipple and Spike's hand comes up and grabs her neck through her hair. She feels him twitch when the cut skin touches her but he holds on.

"Buffy…" he says, and his low voice, a little scuffed around the edges from drink and tiredness, reverberates in his chest against her lips. So good.

He sniffs her again and licks her neck over the artery. Secretly Buffy likes this, but Spike tends to do it only when he's drunk or sleepy, as if not wanting to acknowledge the vampire-ness of this overt tasting.

His hands slide under her pajamas, seeking her breasts, and her breath catches. He better not have any hidden injuries, because she's rapidly losing interest in caring for them. She tugs off his jeans, seeing him wince, but discovers only bruises and scrapes. His boots. The laces are too tightly knotted and she breaks one in her impatience.

"That's my girl," Spike says, laughing in his throat, almost growling. "Hungry for me, are you?"

"Oh, yeah," she says and yanks off his socks.

His feet are pale and perfect and they're never sweaty. Buffy tickles the soles, knowing that it drives him crazy.

"Get up here, Slayer. There's other parts of me need attention more than my feet," Spike says, and she obeys him slowly.

She makes squishy sounds when she moves, she's that ready for him, and she'd be embarrassed if it wasn't Spike.

His smile is lustful and lazy and Buffy wonders that one night of fighting and consuming quantities of booze can make this big a change in him. She gets some of it; she's aching for a good slay, and plans to take off the next night herself. Well, at most she can get in an hour of slaying between feeds, if she takes a cab to the cemetery.

Spike is trying to get her top off with slow, uncoordinated fingers and Buffy lets him, determined not to be hurried about it. He's so eatable as he's lying there, creamy skin and reddening member sticking straight up, blue eyes gleaming between half-lowered lashes. In fact, a bruise or two suits him, takes the edge off his perfection. She bends over to his nipple again, deliberately ignoring his needy cock. His growl makes her shiver deep inside and she takes him inside, unable to wait any longer. Spike closes his eyes and quivers from top to toe. He stretches his arms and legs like a cat, before becoming lazy and utterly relaxed again., seemingly content to let her do the riding.

Buffy's very conscious of her breasts bobbing up and down. They're heavier than they've ever been, full of milk, and Spike's eyes fasten upon them hungrily. Where his eyes go, his hands follow, and the twisting and pulling he does feels different too, more urgent. She bends over to present one nipple to his mouth and he sucks hard, almost angrily, in weird contrast to his boneless position on the bed. The urgency from his mouth travels through his whole body, and Buffy feels her pleasure doubled. Now he's tensing his stomach and leg muscles and she cries out when her next thrust hits them. Spike makes a sound deep in his throat and flips her over with such ease and speed that it leaves her breathless. He leans on his wounded hands, leaving red smears on the bedding and pounds her hard.

Buffy starts coming immediately and shifts her legs to get maximum contact against her clit. This is so good, it's been so long, being taken by her vampire, her wild animal. Automatically she turns her head, presenting her neck, and then freezes in shock when she realizes what she's doing. Her skin breaks out in goose bumps and her heart twinges sharply. Don't think about the other vampire, this is the one she loves, not the one she hated. She doesn't know if Spike's noticed, he gives no sign of it, but every now and then bends over to nip her neck. If he wanted to bite her she'd let him, she knows that. She'd have let him long since but he never seemed to want it. Maybe she should ask him one day, because talking, that thing she always forgets to do, talking's good.

She looks into Spike's eyes, hazy and dark with approaching orgasm and forces all thoughts out of her mind other than sex, and Spike, and coming now.

"I love you, Spike," she gasps. Talking's good.

"Always love you, Buffy," he forces out between clenched teeth, obviously trying to delay coming.

"Don't work it, Spike, let it out, it's all good. There's time."

Spike groans into her neck with long, exhausted shudders and then collapses on top of her. He flinches when she grabs his cut hand but doesn't pull away when she licks the cuts.

TBC