Summary: In a land divided and at war between man and demon, what happens when one does the unthinkable and falls for the enemy?

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy own the BtVS and AtS characters. There is no intention of copyright infringement or monetary gain in the borrowing of characters. They are used only for entertainment purpose.

Previously on Enemy Mine: Slayer Team and Specialists Team find out who bodyguards Angelous,making their mission that much more difficult. Willow finds out the consequences of the merge with Angelous. Angelous takes Willow to the baths.

Ch 8 Drowning in Fire

For the hundred time she wondered if she was dreaming. These things couldn't really be happening to her, could they? She wasn't really naked, right? I mean, it was preposterous if she thought about it. Okay, she wasn't sure - or at all - what vampires did when they were not killing. Maybe, in their spare time, they maimed and tortured. Oh God, no. This wasn't some type of sick and twisted way of torture was it? OhGodOhGodOhGod. . . What if it was? She couldn't defend herself. Couldn't even lift a freaking finger! This was definitely worse than her old suddenly-naked-in-class nightmares. Way worse!. . . She wasn't going to wake up soon.

Angelous stared at the sight before him. She was beautiful, all creamy pink, soft curves in a delicate frame. He took a moment just admiring the girl before him and in the back of his mind wondered where all his old predilections had gone to? On such an unspoiled and fresh canvas, he would have created masterpieces of blacks, purples, yellows, and lovely weeping reds. Such a thought now almost turned his stomach and a sharp pain in his chest where his long unbeating heart rested rose just thinking of anyone doing such a thing. He growled low in his chest, his demon angry at thinking of another touching what was his in any manner.

"Please," came her soft, trembling voice, the scent of fear rising from her body, "Please don't hurt me."

Angelous snapped from his thoughts and turned his undivided attention to her. Her jaw was clenched tight as well as her eyes and her colorless lips trembled. Her body had lost its rosy glow from her embarrassment and now was drained of color as if he had fed from her and drained her.

"Why do you fear me now?" he asked her, really wanting to know the answer when before she had stood up to him and had met him with courage even in her current weakened state.

When he received no answer, he went to touch her cheek but as his knuckles grazed her, she whimpered, "Please don't."

"What is it?" he asked softly.

When that got no response either, he proceeded to alleviate her current fear. "I won't hurt you."

Willow slowly opened her eyes, unwilling to trust but greatly hoping, and met his gaze with her own limpid one.

Angelous felt that strange sensation near the vicinity of his heart and on impulse softly kissed her lips by a mere quick brush before picking her up in his arms again. Her gasp barely registered as the sensation of her warm body pressed against his cold flesh swamped his senses. The feeling of that warmth was so exquisite that he almost considered the insane urge of staying in that spot forever, just holding her.

"I-I need clothes."

Willow's shy, soft voice intruded and his eyes refocused on her. Her neck and head were pillowed on his upper arm so he was able to look at her face. "Not yet."

"Huh? Wha-" began Willow but stopped short when she felt Angelous stepping down several somethings and then. . .oh.

Her toes were touching water.

Angelous slowly entered the pool, unsure of how a human would feel the temperature of the water. He did not want to cause her any unnecessary discomfort. And if that thought didn't anger him then he didn't know what would. Never before had he cared about a human. He was a vampire. Humans were nothing more than prey - food to the demon. They were easily expendable since they didn't hold much value outside of their life-giving blood. But this girl, this girl was different. His demon didn't see her as merely food. He saw her as something more . . .a part of himself that had been missing since his turning, maybe even before then.

At Willow's sharp intake of breath, he paused. "Are you alright?"

If she could turn any redder, she was sure that she would. How could Willow even explain to him that the feeling of her bottom hitting the cool water startled her. Goosebumps rose across her body at the temperature difference between the parts of her that were submerged and the part that weren't. "I-I'm fine. Just kinda surprised is all." Then she thought of something. "You're not going to d-drown me, a-are you?"

Angelous thought the action was beneath him but he snorted anyway. What she asked was preposterous. Even if he hadn't felt the strange connection with her, what would he want to drown her? A drowned human didn't hold much of an appeal. He preferred his food fresh.

"Not likely."

"Oh, okay. Just checking."

Angelous chuckled at that. She was a lovely but strange girl.

He made his way toward the edge of the pool where the supplies had been set down. There was a ledge wide enough for someone to fully stretch out comfortably.

He laid Willow there, the water depth covering half of her whole body.

Willow didn't know what he was doing, but once he set her down on a surface that felt like smooth, hard stone she forgot everything, even her name. Part of the cause might have been that the water reached her ears and just barely left her mouth, nose and eyes uncovered leaving her with a sense of languid detachment, but another was the fact that he had rubbed something on his hands - soap by the scent of it - and was now running them against her flesh.

He had started with one arm, picking it up and lathering it with a combination of short and long sweeps working his way up to her collarbone. She barely registered the light touches on her bruised neck, washing away some of the ache and any remaining blood that might have been left. He worked steadily, never changing his pace and by the time he was done with her other arm and he had moved over to her chest, she was in a highly sensitive state.

Willow's world condensed into one of pleasurable touch. There was nothing beyond the sensations the combination of the water and the vampire's hands created. She was so entrenched that she barely registered his hands moving lower and meticulously lathering the rest of her body.

He stopped and Willow opened her eyes, clearly wanting to tell him to continue, but before she could inadvertently speak out her desires, she was lifted up again in his arms.

For his part, Angelous was in a highly aroused state. He was holding himself in tight control. He didn't think he had ever wanted something more than he did at that moment.

Not knowing how but making it so, her skin screamed to his. He felt that she was his just as he was hers, a part connected that compelled to be joined. He wanted to take, to possess, as his demon demanded the claim that was felt - needed - to be officially and irrefutably created.

But he couldn't. Not yet, but soon. So he called upon the rigid control he exerted while he led countless of vampires under his command and sketched out a plan to follow. For now, he needed to see to his girl's comfort. Her skin had regained her flushed look as he worked the soap over her body. Every stroke of his hands felt the rising heat in her body temperature. In fact, he had ignored the deep desire to linger over her flesh and thoroughly explore the planes of her body when her body began to almost burn him with its increasing heat. There was also a charge in the air, quite similar to what had happened before in his bedchamber but, here, now, it was only a promise of what that charged air could become.

He needed to cool her quickly. He wasn't sure what would happen if he didn't but he would take no chances until he knew better the whats and whys of her body's reactions.

Angelous moved to a shallow part of the pool and sank down, the water reaching halfway to his chest as he sat. He positioned Willow's lax body on his lap and removed the arm that held her legs, allowing her lower body to sink down and rest on him. She was cradled against him while the water covered from her chest down. With one of his hands free, he used it to wash away any lingering soap, trying really hard not to let his baser impulses intrude.

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"Will you hold me, my dark knight?"

Spike looked pained for a moment as he contemplated his dark princess' request. "Dru, you know I can't."

"Please," she begged prettily as she clutched her porcelain doll to her chest, "you're not the only one that dreams, you know. If you stay with me and keep my sleep, I'll guard your dreams, my Spike."

Spike only dithered a moment. His assent was inevitable since he had never been able to refuse Drusilla anything. "All, right, pet," he told her as he went to her bed and reclined next to her. He wrapped her in his arms, her doll pressed between them. "Go to sleep now, luv."

Drusilla was facing Spike, their faces only inches from each other. She looked at him and captured his gaze with one of her rare somber ones. "You must sleep as well."

"Dru. . ."

"Sleep, my sweet William, my Spike. Nothing will intrude in your rest, for Miss Edith and I will not let anything enter my poor boy's head. My gift to you, for the rest you so desperately need."

Spike was unsure. He truly did need to sleep. He had been going for long amounts of time awake for years now, only succumbing to slumber when his body forcefully claimed it.

He did not know how it had started or why. For a long moment he thought that he might have been cursed just like his Sire but his form of punishment made no sense. He didn't have his human soul but what haunted him burned just as bright and lethal into his mind.

She came to him while he slept. In the beginning, she had no shape or form. She was pure emotion that twined around him until every inch of him was covered in her. She whispered soft words to him that he could not understand. He could feel her in every part of his exposed skin and if he used his useless lungs, he breathed her in until she filled him completely. It was ecstasy and it was torture. He was drowning in her, choking in her until she burned right through him.

As the years progressed, so did her form and he was able to catch brief glimpses of a blond strand of hair, a small golden hand or a flash of green eyes.

She was steadily but surely driving him insane. At times, he felt as barmy as his Sire Drusilla and at others he felt like what surely his Sire Angelous was going through with his cursed soul.

It had been many years before he had stepped out of the castle's protected parameters, having found out early on that she - it - haunted him even awake outside them. He could not hunt, could not feed without her intruding. As it was, he did not hunt anymore - humans at least. And he barely fed. If it weren't for Dru in the beginning, he would have stepped into Council territory and met the uncovered sunrise. It had gotten so bad that he had been practically a living skeleton, emaciated from lack of blood. Drusilla saw what was happening to him and fetched him with a contingency of Aurelian soldier guards. She caught up to him before he stepped into uncovered Council territory and practically forced him with her mind tricks to return home. She fed him her own Sire's blood and soothed him with touch and murmured words until he regained his full strength.

It was during that time, under his weakened delirium, that he told her of what was happening to him, of his haunted dreams. Drusilla tried to help him but she could only do so much. Spike wasn't sure what she did do or how but she had the castle's magical protection re-enforced for his sake.

Now, only asleep, while he was the most vulnerable could she intrude. Being in her presence was what he could equate to Heaven, wonderful but deadly for one such as he, a demon, a vampire, a creature of the shadows. She was steadily chipping away pieces of him, remolding him into something he did not want, could not understand, and undeniably feared.

"Rest, my Spike," Dru told him, passing her hand over his eyes and making him close them. "Trust Mummy, and sleep."

And Spike did, he fell unwilling into a sleep that pulled him under into stillness.

Dru stroked her boy's hair. "Rest and grow strong. I see it, the stars have shown me and the pixies have told me. Don't worry, for soon she will come and you will be able to confront her and be free . . .one way or another."

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To be continued: Ch 9 Pale Light of Day

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A/N: I would like to take this moment to sincerely thank littlesilverflower and Lady Draculea for reviewing. As for the rest of you . . .shake head.

Review please:-)