Pretending

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Summary: Just a short story set in Season 6 somewhere between 'Gone' and 'As You Were'.

Reviews: Yes please. Readers Rock but Reviewers RULE!

A/N: I seem to have a bit of post convention writer's block as well as RL being total Hell right now. Thanks as always to my incredible partner in crime, WayWard Childe. You absolutely rock, Hon.

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He always knew just when she started to pretend it wasn't him she was with. Foreplay was always fast and furious, barely kissing before she was sinking onto him or he was buried deep inside her. But there was always that one moment. That's the moment he dreaded. It happened each and every time she came to him to feel, to reaffirm that she was once again alive. He understood though. He'd spent a century as a substitute but for some reason this time it hurt worse than it had for all those years. He supposed it was because he knew that if she'd just let herself, she could care more for him.

He laid back and watched her lovingly as she rode him. His sapphire eyes were half closed in hopes that she wouldn't notice the adoration in his gaze. His slender hands caressed her thighs as she slid up and down his shaft. The candlelight cast flickering highlights in her golden hair as it swayed against her neck. Watching her face closely he waited until… there it was. The moment she let her imagination convince her that he was someone else. Someone larger, darker, more heavily muscled. Her green eyes fluttered closed and her movements grew more frenzied as she let herself get lost in the fantasy that he was someone she could love.

He should be used to it. But his unbeating heart ached when he saw that look in her eyes just before they shut him out. She gasped as she reached her satisfaction. Her grasping muscles pulled him helplessly along until he was lying spent beneath her. Her slender body sagged onto him for a moment before she realized where she was. He could always tell the instant she returned from her make believe world. Every line of her body tensed and she pushed away from him as if unable to bear one more second of contact.

Silently, she got angry if he spoke afterwards, he watched her pull her clothing on. He was getting good at it himself, he supposed. He watched her hurry to dress so she could leave and act as if it never happened or tell herself it was all his fault, that he'd made her do those things. She was a good teacher. He could almost make himself believe it didn't matter, that she wasn't rushing away to wash the scent and feel of him from her skin. He closed his own eyes and turned his head away slightly as the door slammed shut, wincing as the sound echoed in the stone building. He didn't know how much longer he could take it. Didn't know how much more he could ignore. It was destroying him, bit by bit.

But for now he'd take what he could get even if he could only get it by … pretending.

Finis