Kindred

By Sweetprincipale

Set in early Season Five. When Dracula called Buffy 'kindred'', he was doing a bit more than just saying they had a lot in common. Hungry for knowledge of herself and her power, Buffy didn't realize what kind of connection he had forged with her until he left town, and the damage was done. Hoping to break his hold over her, Buffy requests help from Spike. However, the way you break the hold of one vampire is to let another one possess you more fully. But, it'll only be temporary, right? Simple business, that's all…

Author's Note: Kinky Smut Warning.

Author's Second Note" Thank you so much to all the lovely people who read and follow Kindred! I love seeing all the nice words when you write reviews, and I love getting the notices that you follow. Don't be afraid to PM or write more, it's brain food for the hungry writer!

Part XXVI

Joyce put out a third plate. How did this happen? Third set of silverware. How can a vampire come over for breakfast? Won't he burn up before we get to the quiche? Oh! The quiche! She scampered to save the concoction from the oven.

I'm making quiche for a vampire.

No, I'm not, I'm making it for Buffy, it's her favorite and I just happened to have too many eggs and frozen pie crust and… The cocoa on the stove is for the vampire.

Why is my daughter bringing the vampire with her for breakfast?

Because she loves him.

Joyce rested her head against the fridge. Another heartbreak in the making, maybe?

Give it a year. Boyfriends at this age seem to last a year.

Spike was with that unstable Drusilla person for years. Years and years.

Am I happy or sad about that?

The doorbell rang. If he hurts her, I'll just ask Rupert if I can borrow an ax…

Buffy stood on the doorstep."You can use your key, honey!"

"I thought I should ring the bell. 'Cause Spike was worried you'd be upset with him if you were in your bathrobe or something."

"Slayer." Spike's tone made it clear he hadn't wanted her to mention that.

"Come in before you catch on fire," Joyce said wearily.

"We got the dorm room set up. Mostly," Buffy began brightly. "Oooh, and when I get a minute, I'm going to swing by the bank, and guess what? No more me asking you for textbook fees! I'm finally getting paid for my job."

"About time," Joyce muttered, in unknowing near- unison with Spike, who grumbled, "About bloody time."

"Oh, look at that! You two are getting along already!" Buffy beamed. Spike looked hopeful.

"Quiche?" offered Joyce. She really wanted to demand specific details about why it should matter if she and Spike got along, but fancy egg pie was safer.


"Dracula… from the book? This is the same one? There's not a fictional one and the real one is less… here?" Joyce poured a second cup of cocoa for the vampire who seemed to have pulled out a whole different persona and set of manners, even a slightly softer edge to his accent.

"That's him, but he's not here at the moment."

She frowned. "How come there's a book about him? I thought real vampires avoided attention, from what Buffy and Mr. Giles said."

"He's an utter bloody tosser, that's why there's a book about him. He brags," Spike's refined accent vacated with a surly snarl. "He cheats at cards, he don't follow the rules of immortality, and he's a serial bigamist."

Joyce tilted her head. "And that's a problem to you? Murdering-pillaging-destroying-the-high-school-you?"

"I'm reformed," Spike said stiffly.

"Spike's heavy into monogamy." Buffy absently reached over and took the piece of quiche left on his plate.

Joyce watched this strangely intimate act, usually reserved for family members, close friends, or significant others, with wheels halting. They'd turned enough and the conclusion was now obvious. "What did Dracula do- exactly? No, I know what you told me, but he did bite you. He left you alive. Putting this mark on you and then you fighting him off… well, it caused you problems, I know. You need it broken, I understand, or he'll 'own' you somehow, make it hard for you to fight other vampires, and that's how Spike helps. Right?"

"That's right." That's not all.

"What did he intend to do? If you hadn't stopped him?"

Buffy paused in mid-crust. "You- uh- well… He still intends to do it, if possible. We stopped him for now, but it's not over."

"Right, you said there was a lot more going on and you needed Spike to defeat him. What is the 'it'? Specifically?"

"I don't want you to worry."

"You're not helping me not worry."

"He wants to add me to his collection of wives."

"Sod!" Spike sprang up and rushed to pound Joyce on the back. "Joyce, with all that build up, you should have known better to take a drink!"

Joyce blinked her streaming eyes. Orange juice in the sinuses is unpleasant. "What? You said attack! Wife? What?"

"It's an attack. I don't want to marry him! He bit me and got me to say some words back to him and that sealed the - the engagement. But it can be broken if another vampire is willing to take his place."

"As your husband?" Joyce gasped, still lighting some pulp out of her airway.

Buffy hesitated. "Not necessarily."

"Oh, thank goodness."

"But, the only way to lure Dracula out to where we can kill him for sure so that he can never try to reassert this hold on me is something huge. Something he would consider an insult to his pride. Something other demons would hear about and give him flack for."

"Soddin' great ego," Spike muttered.

"Like what?"

"We don't have a lot of successful cases to look at," Buffy hedged.

Joyce cut through it. "How many? A number, Buffy."

"Um. One." She neglected to mention the successful escapee then dying. The escape part had worked. So really… there had been zero cases of complete success.

But they never had Spike before. As Buffy felt herself glowing with lovelight, her mother looked like she might be auditioning for the groom's side of the aisle.

Joyce was chalk-white. "So there's a very, very, very slim chance this could work and you'd win? A one in how many chance?"

Spike started muttering calculations. "Figure three wives at a time- some overlap. That Countess lady, there was a long stretch and-"

"There's a one in a lot chance, Mom. So, you see, we really have to go for it," Buffy explained nervously.

"Agreed, but what does that mean? You can't wage an all out assault on him, can you?" Joyce found her wrist held back firmly by Spike as she had prepared to take a steadying drink. "Jus' a minute, ducks," he whispered with a little shake of his head.

Buffy spoke quickly, "A wedding."

"A… wedding?" Joyce put her glass down.

"He's a possessive egomaniac who wants to fight dirty and tricky."

"I can't believe this! A wedding? That's the solution? How could you let him-" Joyce trailed off, horrified guilt crossing her features. "I did let him into the house, didn't I?"

"Wouldn't have mattered," Spike said staunchly. "He's a smooth devil, he'd have gotten to the Slayer somehow. She'd be his bloody crowning glory, his trophy wife of all trophies and all wives."

"Vampires can marry humans?" Of course they can. They can do whatever they want, they break rules all the time, she thought bitterly. What's a little ceremonywith rings and a cake- or blood and bones, compared to mass murder?

"They can," Spike said quickly, although privately only thinking of his own experiment with Buffy, "but that's not in his gameplan, no. Wants to turn his brides."

Another screeching question that could have been what or how or why, but it was so shrill it didn't make much sense, just a wave of upset noise.

Buffy hurriedly talked over the outcry, "Mom, the only time he ever let go of a bride was by killing her after she escaped- to marry someone else. He knows if he comes at me again, I'll be ready for him. He's playing it safe and waiting until I'm weak and distracted, or something like that. I can't spend my whole semester searching the globe for a guy who can turn into mist and teleport out of the city as soon as I pull out my stake. If we want him to come to us, we use a wedding to lure him out. It's apparently the only thing that's a big enough and serious enough blow to his legendary reputation to make him take a risk."

"A wedding? Yours?"

"Yeah. Mine." Buffy bit her lip.

Joyce's eyes traveled slowly to Spike. "To him?"

Spike's throat worked visibly with his hard swallow. He backed up slightly. "It's gotta be another vampire, Joyce, if we want his hold broken as well, and if we want to take the bastard out. It's me or Angel. Angel wouldn't play ball."

She was up from her chair, angry and unsettled and hating the entire conversation, even though, in her gut, she already knew the answers to everything she was going to ask. "Oh, but you? You'll play ball? Protect her? Help her?"

"I would die for her," Spike replied instantly. "Doesn't seem too much of a stretch to live for her, too," he shrugged, hoping he sounded appropriately casual without seeming disrespectful about the sacred state of union between him and his new bride.

"Live for- but it's a fake wedding? You're not really getting married are you?"

We already did that, Buffy wanted to say. "Um. Well, yeah. I don't want Dracula to crash our actual wedding. That would suck. But he has to think it's our actual one."

"Slayer…" Spike made a throat slashing motion as Joyce's eyes fluttered rapidly, her pale skin now tinged with gray.

"Your actual wedding? Yours, as in Spike's wedding to you. Your wedding to Spike?"

"Well- not right away. I definitely think I should finish the semester first."

"Shit!" Spike caught her before her head hit the sliced melon. "Slayer! You're gonna give your mum a heart attack! Poor thing choked, then she fainted! Joyce! Joyce?"

"Mom! Mom, are you okay?" Buffy ignored Spike in favor of attempting to revive Joyce.

"You tipped your hand, Luv. Tipped it all the bloody way, showed your cards down flat on the table. All that's left is you tellin' her we're already hitched."

Joyce's eyes opened blearily. "What did you say?" she asked groggily.

"Uh- we already planned to get hitched. The fake ceremony! We had the only source in the whole world who knows Dracula's secrets helping us out."

"Book?" Joyce asked in confusion, shaking cantaloupe off her fingers.

"His ex-wife."


"Look, Joyce, I know you aren't keen on the idea. I wasn't myself at first, but-"

"Then why did you agree?" Joyce paced in front of the table. Buffy was steadily working through the quiche as if she was starving. Spike perched on the edge of his dining room chair, elbows on knees, hands clasped nervously. Every so often, he shifted suddenly like he wanted to get up and plead his case or pace after her.

"Because the Slayer's not meant to be enslaved! Nor tricked, nor added to a collection. If a man were lucky enough to have her, she should be his end all, be all, his alpha and bloody omega!"

Buffy looked at him with shining eyes.

Joyce looked at him with narrowed ones. "A fake wedding? How will Dracula even know if he's not around?"

"We have to give it enough time to make its way through the demon gossip chain," Spike said.

"Plus, Giles, Willow, Tara, and Anya have to do this really hard spell from a book that looks like it was made from a dragon, seriously, that can hold him still while Spike and I- ccck." Buffy mimed twisting off a head.

"Juice oranges?" Joyce winced.

Spike enlightened her. "Decapitate the bastard. And don't ask any more questions about the precise nature of this attack, Joyce. The more you know, the bigger a liability you are."

"Spike!"

"She is, Luv!"

"You can't call my mother a-"

"D' you think I can live with myself if your mum gets taken as some sick sorta pawn in exchange? Worst son-in-law ever!"

Joyce stopped pacing and watched the two of them now, voices raised and arms flinging.

"So you just don't tell her stuff!"

"But she hates that!"

"Yeah, well, she's alive to hate it!"

"Look, Slayer, I know about the dangers of keeping mothers in the dark or bringin' 'em in too bloody deep!"

"It's our wedding! Dracula would know it wasn't real if my mother wasn't there. We have to tell her this much." Buffy had realized that unpleasant fact days ago, but she didn't want to admit it to anyone, not even herself. She was sure Giles had figured it out. She wondered about the rest. It was something everyone might know, and no one ever said. Just like they all knew she and Spike were sleeping together. In love.

"What about your dad, then?"

Buffy was jolted back to the unpleasant present. "Oh, God." She put her head on his chest with a groan.

"Can I say something?" Joyce was leaning against the wall, knees shaky. Her breakfast wanted to come back up. She just wanted to say her piece before it did.

"Of course," the blondes said as one, both looking oddly sympathetic, both breathing hard.

"Once he finds out, what's going to stop him from getting you earlier? Swooping in the day before? You don't know how fast word will reach him. He could be in the next town over. How do you know where he is?"

Buffy shook her head. "We don't. The Council is looking into it, but they haven't got anything useful. Riley was supposed to check, but again, useless. Useless with a side of psychotic. Joy. Why do all my boyfriends go nuts?"

"Well, I'm not gonna," Spike grumbled mulishly. "Unless it's crazy over you."

"Awww."

"A-hem. Problem?" Joyce wasn't even going to point out how extremely obvious it was now. She was a world-class denier and she'd have to have her ears and eyes removed to miss the significance of that little exchange.

"Right. Well… Angel's people could work on it. He found the Countess, he could find him, too. I guess." Buffy winced.

Spike hesitated. "Sometimes you can tell if your sire is nearby. Not all the time, but if you'd been hitched, been kindred for a handful of centuries…" he gave her a meaningful look

Buffy licked her lips. "The Countess? How will we get her to agree to this? How will we get her over here?"

"Who the hell is the countess- oh. Count Dracula. Countess Dracula?"

"Close enough. Mom, we have to go do a lot of stuff. Suddenly. In a hurry. That I don't want you to know about."

"But you want me to quietly agree to a wedding to a vampire old enough to be my grandfather?"

"Better than one old enough to be my great-great grandfather." Spike tried to smile winningly. The lady wasn't buying.

Joyce rubbed her hands briskly and spoke in a very firm, unnaturally bright voice. "Well, since I'm the mother of the bride and you want my blessing on this unholy matrimony- fake though it is…"

Buffy began to sweat. Was it her, or did her mother just hit the word fake with invisible quotation marks?

"What can I do? A proper ring? Ask her father's blessing?"

Joyce's eyes flickered dangerously. "You don't ask him. You ask me. I raised her through the hardest years of her life, I'm the one who never missed a dance recital or a skating performance. And… I suppose you'd better ask Rupert," she said grudgingly. "Since Buffy seems very particular about her groom wanting the 'Slayer' side. You can skip the proper ring- unless you think Dracula will be skulking around the local jewelry shops to ask if a bleached goth guy has been looking at diamond solitaires. No, you'll be coming around here for dinner and my daughter will be sleeping under my roof until the dorms reopen."

"Mom, they already-"

"Officially reopen, as in the first day of the semester."

"Yes, Mom," Buffy said meekly.

"No." Spike shook his head. "Joyce, you swing a mean ax and all, but it's not safe. Not safe to be kippin' here, not full time. The deeper you are, the greater the odds that you end up hurt or killed and Buffy's in tatters. I can't let that happen to her."

Joyce was silent, thin-lipped. Buffy was thin-lipped, too, her face doing some complicated jaw gymnastics.

Spike is right. I just try to make everyone happy, and I want Mom to like him, like us, but… he's right. That's annoying. "Mom, look," she began heavily.

She didn't have to finish. Joyce held up one finger. "You stay here tonight. We talk about a few things- not anything that makes me more of a 'liability.' I throw a little engagement party this weekend, at the gallery. It'll look nice and I've been thinking that the back show room would be nice to rent out for private parties, cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, nothing big."

Spike's jaw dropped. Buffy's set. "We'll stay here tonight."

"We? No. I just meant you. No offense," Joyce shook her head. "No offense," she added grudgingly, nodding toward Spike.

"None taken."

"None taken, but still no," Buffy insisted.

"Spike can let you be alone for a night," Joyce crossed her arms.

"I know he can, but I'd feel better if he was here. He's in just as much danger as I am- maybe more, and I can throw a punch at anyone. He can't."

Spike made a groaning sound. He wished she hadn't brought that up in front of Joyce. What sort of husband was he gonna be if he had to cower in a corner while Buffy did all the heavy work?

Buffy didn't care. "We protect each other!" Buffy's arms crossed, mirroring her mother.

Spike watched them, and his minor dismay vanished. He chuckled delightedly, a low sound that didn't escape either of the hellcats in front of him. "I like bein' in this family." He shrugged, unable to wipe the grin off his face.

"You're in the guest room." Joyce stormed off- then stormed back. "I give my blessing- if you get her out of this alive. If she dies… Well, there are lots of axes in the world." She marched upstairs.

Buffy paused, then slowly wrapped her arms around Spike's middle. "Still like being in this family?"

"Yep," he answered hoarsely.

"We have to call Giles. Or Wesley. Giles, then Wesley."

"I don't wanna be in the bloody guest room," Spike whined under his breath. "Don't wanna be away from my beautiful bride."

"Just until she's asleep. Then you'd better come and perform your husbandly duties. Quietly." She kissed him in a way that was the opposite of softening. She bit back a moan as hardness bumped her stomach. "Spike, not now…"

"Can we go back to the dorms after those phone calls? Or make 'em from there?"

"But we just left."

"I gotta practice bein' quiet, don't I?" He pulled her rear closer, meaning the hard bulge of his jeans was pressed tighter between them as well. One hand came down to lightly rub between her thighs, earning an instant cry in the silent house. He shushed her with a kiss. "You have to practice, too."


"There has to be a spell we can use to alert us to his presence." Giles put the phone under his chin and paced his shelves.

"Aren't we going a little spell-heavy? A binding spell to hold him in place, the numbing spell, the elemental melting spell and removing spell to get the chip out, not to mention the pendant Spike is wearing and the secret-keeping spell. Not to doubt the stalwartness of your magic, but isn't that a LOT of magic at once? Is that safe? Are there like- spell interactions, like when you mix cold meds?" Buffy bit her lip. Her husband was practicing on her already. He might not have known it, but he was shirtless and making up their little bed in the double dorm room, muscles rippling, back a canvas of little indents that were almost totally healed. Five-finger love marks. She remembered holding onto him, feeling him inside of her and-

"-could be a bit risky," Giles was concluding.

Dang. "Do you think the Countess lady would come here?"

"She doesn't know us. Her memory of Angel's kidnap and the truth spell are gone, a necessity to prevent her from running back to Dracula and informing him that she betrayed his most closely guarded secret."

"What about Wesley? He was going there to spend a couple of days observing her lifestyle, right? What if he- like- returns the favor and asks her over the weekend? I'll pay to put her someplace. The Council would reimburse travel and lodging, right?"

"We could ask him to see how it goes. If she proves hostile to a mere visit, then she should not come over here. A spell is more in our control… unless it weakens the magical energies needed to perform that tar spell."

"Tar?"

"It's got a long title. Tar is shorter. Never mind. As for how you're getting him over here-"

"I told Mom. About the wedding."

"Wedding?" Giles spluttered.

"A fake one. You know? So he'd get all enraged and show up and we stake him?"

"I'm tired but not yet senile," Giles muttereed testily.

"Give 'im 'til the end of the year," Spike chuckled, plumping up the pillows and stealing the other two off the second bed. He put them halfway down the bed. Buffy's curious eyes met his and he made a deep thrust with his pelvis.

"I heard that, Spike." Giles was no longer even mildly surprised to find the two of them always together. Which would make this next part easier. "Have you had any contact from Dracula? Dreams or visions? Racing heart? Foggy brain?"

"Nope," Buffy said complacently. "Nothing in the past couple days. I want to say Spike won, but I don't want to say Spike won, you know?"

"I do indeed." Giles paused. "Dracula is tricky."

"No! The whole getting engaged to me without my knowledge or consent, sneaking into my house by following my mother, and refusing to die when I staked him made me think he was totally boring and dumb."

"No need to be snarky. You've been hanging out with Spike too much."

"Oh. Yeah. Well, classes will start soon. I'll have to spend most of the day away from him." Buffy shrugged, turning away from the blue sapphires looking at her with concern.

The Watched rubbed his aching neck, sore from hours of bending his head over texts. "That's not what I wanted to say. I'm sorry. We're all on edge. Your day yesterday was particularly hellacious."

"With a capital hell, yeppers," Buffy laughed weakly. "Yours wasn't a basket of roses. I know you're doing all you can to help, you're going through it with me, Watcher-Mine." He didn't respond. That usually earned some sort of noise from him, sentimental or scoffing. "Are you okay?"

"I'm worried that Dracula will hear that your plan to wed isn't genuine, or that you and Spike know his secret. The only way he would find out is if someone in our close inner circle talked. Or…"

"Or he got back in my head? He did know about Spike and I, about Spike trying to 'win' the battle for Buffy's brain." She bit her lip. "That couldn't happen now, though, right?"

"I… He's very strong."

But Spike and I are really married in the vampire way. The real claiming. The true meaning of Kindred, big K, heart and soul and stuff. We are one flesh, one blood, Biblically and bookishly! That's what Buffy longed to say, the words fairly bursting from her lips. She held back, words coming carefully. "What should I do?"

"I hate to say this, not that I think you'll mind, but if there's anything you can do to strengthen a bond with Spike, I'd say do it. Not anything you're not - not anything-"

"Don't sleep with him?"

"That. You don't have to do that." He released an anxious breath.

I want to do that. I love to do that. "Okay," Buffy whispered.

"He cares for you. You care for him, I know that." He removed his glasses and rubbed his gritty eyes. "I would say that I would research it, but I imagine you could simply ask Spike. He wouldn't hurt you." Giles laughed tiredly. "How odd it is to say that. I know he physically can't hurt you, bow I mean it on a deeper level. He'll look after you, for which I am truly grateful. I hate to tell my Slayer to put herself in a less than desirable position, yet it's all I've ever asked you to do…"

"Giles, stop. This is a good position. A really safe, good position." Spike's eyebrows arched, but when he saw her face was tremulous, not amused, he came and put his arm around her.

"It's wrong to tell you to let yourself be dragged in, consumed more and more," he hissed, gritty eyes suddenly wet under the heel of his hand.

"I'm not losing myself when it's with Spike. I swear. I oath it." She grinned weakly. "I find myself more and more. I'm my own best weapon. I know more ways to use that weapon. I'm not losing myself, I'm finding new parts, okay? Now, stop getting weepy. You save that for the wedding. I'm gonna- what? Spike wants to talk to you."

Spike took the phone, sniffing softly, smelling salt in her skin, fresh tears headed to the surface. "Watcher?"

"Spike?"

"Would you give me your blessin' to marry this girl? This amazing and wonderful girl? I will protect her and help her and serve her, always. Faithfully."

That sounded like a truce. It should only be a truce. "Would you love her?"

Spike gripped the phone harder. It was a short, dangerous walk they'd taken together and there was no turning back now. The Watcher knew it. Crafty bastard. "Yes. I would love her until the end of my days."

"If this were real," Giles added.

Spike was silent.

"Blessing is a stretch. Consent, however, is tentatively granted."

"You won't regret it," Spike said fervently.

Giles hung up. I don't know. I think I might. Broken bonds and shattered hearts in the offing when this is over. Or perhaps it continues, something so strange I don't understand it, even though I see it.

Unbidden, he remembered another sight. Dracula's brides clawing at him. He couldn't recall features, pale, seductive, beautiful- hungry. Hungry for touch and to feed. Was he starving them? Neglecting them? Which one of those three would die or be cast off if he chose Buffy instead? And how long until it was Buffy, so alienated from herself, so cold, lifeless, and hungry, that she was clinging greedily to any warm body? How many centuries before he threw her out into the sun as well? Did he want her torment to be short or her existence to be long? Giles swallowed hard over all the frantically tumbling questions that he had no answers to. The end result would be the same. His child would die, some shell of herself.

I might regret this. But I know I'd regret that.


"We spend as much time together as we can," Spike stroked her hair as she nestled under his chin, curled up on his chest across their dormitory bed.

"I should just tell him we're married. Consummated. Mated. Those words- are they sharing a Greek root thingy? Because mated and consummate go together, right?"

"Right. Sort of." He was frowning. "You can tell him. They'll think it's too fast and they'll flip their collective lids when they realize you've traded one undead hubby for another. Old man'll have a stroke, go begging to Angel to get your out of mine as soon as Dracula is done."

"He wouldn't dare!" Buffy cried, sitting up slightly. Her anger was fleeting. "He really wouldn't dare."

"You're probably right." Naughty little ideas were twiggling around in his otherwise sincerely thoughtful brain. He could think of ways to be physically closer, more intimate.

"What are you thinking about?"

"How do you know I'm thinkin' about anything?" Spike asked, far too quickly.

"One, you're always thinking about something. Two, if I was just guessing, I'm positive now. What is it?"

"We've done a lot together, of the physical sort. M-maybe we could do a bit more?" Had he just stammered? God…

Buffy looked up startled. "Did you just stutter?"

"No! Well, yes. A bit."

"This is probably really bad." Buffy whispered. At the hurt in his eyes, she retracted it instantly. "I meant for old, boring, timid Buffy. Not married-to-a-sex-god Buffy. What are we going to try?" Her stomach tightened, but in a good way.

There were all sorts of things he could try with her, but marriage and trust went both ways, didn't it? Make her more connected than ever to him, put her properly in charge of things, her in the lead, her in control… And that didn't suit them. They were about partnership.

"You can just tell me. I trust you. I promise we can try," Buffy whispered. Connection would be about intimacy. There was nothing more physically intimate than sex with love involved, more intimate than sharing blood, more mentally intimate than trusting each other with secrets and being in each others dreams, the ending to one anothers thoughts, sacred words and promises that didn't exist outside of each other. "I love you. Anything," she swallowed, "anything you want to do together is okay, Spike, because it's us."


When he put on soft jazz music on the radio and towels on the bed, she thought about drops of blood. The inexplicable weight on her ring finger throbbed when she thought about connecting to him again. Then he started rummaging in the box full of her towels and toiletries. "What are you doing?"

Spike jumped. He was unaccountably nervous and told himself he had no reason to be. Only, if she didn't like it, he'd feel perverted for mentioning it. In the old days, he would have given himself bonus points for blowing raspberries on the Slayer's uptight virtue. Now, he just wanted his wife to enjoy everything with him. "I'm lookin' for lotion. Oil. Slippery bits," he said gruffly, not turning to her.

"I have baby oil and shea butter. I don't have a lot in that box." Her stomach tightened again. Right. Lube. So, backdoor things. He'd touched her there. It felt good. It was definitely new and intimate, a way to give him one sort of virginity, so she guessed it would fit the bill of adding layers of intimacy and bonding, layers of trust. But- "I know biting feels good with you now, but - and no offense- isn't this going to hurt a little? Just at first?"

"No, your fingers are little."

Wait. Both of them stared at each other.

"What's going where?" Buffy asked in a mildly uncertain voice.

"What did you think I was going to do?" Spike also looked a bit puzzled and a little miffed.

"Well, slippery things. You're big, I'm little. And never did it before so I-"

"Oh! Oh, Luv, no. That won't be in a dorm in the middle of the day. That'll be in our new flat or a posh hotel, with tons of candlelight, roses, wine and poetry, bathtubs and massages… you should have all the time in the world to decide if you want that once we get started and it should go so slow that it feels as good as the other sort of sex, only different. Different but equal, right? I wouldn't do this without asking you if you wanted it and it felt right. I guess I should ask about the other bit. Figured it might be easier once we started if I just told you what to do in the middle. More natural like."

Buffy nodded, temporarily having trouble forming words. First off, what Spike described sounded romantic and wonderful, special and intimate. Apprehension was replaced with eagerness and wondering when they could next sneak off and get a hotel room. "So, we're playing with fingers?" The thought of him penetrating her with something smaller was better and more enjoyable to her at that moment.

"Mmhmm. You love my hands, don't you, Baby?"

"All of them. All of you." She walked up close and pulled on the top button of his jeans. She reached past him as they kissed and retrieved the half-empty bottle of baby oil. "Let's get comfy." She wriggled her clothes off while he was still cross-eyed from the kiss.

"That mouth…" he shucked his jeans off and prowledup her. He left kisses on her calves and knees, on her outer thighs and fluffy mound, then head butted her gently like a curious cat to make her lay back, knees apart, pussy open to devour her, lips in to center, then center back to folds. At one point, his forefinger came into contact with the tight little pucker that he hoped would one day welcome him. She shivered and shuddered. "Like it?"

"Yeah," she breathed.

"I do, too." He licked his lips and left her flower with one last pull of her nectar, one last swirl of his tongue on her bead.

She reversed positions easily, only she began at the top. His lips, his chin, his wedding mark, leaving him a silently cursing, harshly panting mess as her tongue flicked it and tapped it, her teeth tugged it and pulled it. She stopped short of drawing blood, leaving him whimpering. "Poor baby. I promise, before we finish."

"When you're in me," he gasped, nodding, claiming her lips one more time before they kept heading south.

She kissed over the ridges of muscle and over hip bones before nuzzling the short, stiffer hairs, dark, unlike the white-gold on top. Buffy was beginning the delicious descent from crown to root when something clicked. "When you're in me?"

"Yeah, Luv? What do you want me to do?" he moaned eagerly, keeping his voice low.

"No, you said that. When I'm in you. You said you want me to bite you when I'm in you. Ohhhh." Her fingers. She blushed. "Fingers."

He didn't blush, but some of his usual sexual swagger was dampened. He'd told her before she could penetrate him and she had nodded and they had moved on, a tangle of need and lust and denial of the ultimate physical boundary. The boundary had been removed. This was different. This wasn't him doing it for the sake of pleasure and satisfaction. "You never, right?"

"No, I never." She didn't want to think of any other lover right now, but she could just picture the utter horror or shock or shock and horror of said former lovers if she'd suggested such a thing. And they sure as hell never would. No spirit of adventure there.

"So… in a way, I could be your first at somethin' physical. I said it felt good an' I meant it. If you like it, I can return the favor another day."

"Or now, right?"

He looked shocked. "Whenever. You call the shots."

"Nuh-uh. Kindred." She traced her neck, then his, scooting up him, hips above his cock. "We're in this together. What is it you said?" Her hips dipped slowly moaning as she took him in her tight pink pussy, swollen from hours of attention that even Slayer-healing couldn't compete with, and it was the good kind of swollen, anyway.

"I say a lot of things- oh, fuck!" He hissed as her warm thighs landed firmly on his cool ones. He didn't think he could last for long so deep in her, and her hand massaging the place where she'd marked him, the other hand coming out to tease his small, tight nipple.

"I believe it goes, 'She in me and me in she. Let the circle be unbroken'. Just another ring." Her eyes closed as he moved inside her, taking her deeper to a place where there weren't words, just sounds and feelings. His own eyes closed, jaw clenched, head back. Didn't notice the faintly glowing crimson streak on the skin of their hands. Another ring indeed.


"You'll tell me if it hurts?"

"It won't hurt. Go slow." He told her that more for her comfort than his.

She was slippery on her right hand, not on her left. That hand was working up and down his length, alternating with her mouth. She didn't want oil in her mouth, ergo, her hands were dividing and conquering. And it wigged her a tiny little bit. She sucked, then stopped. "But what if I hurt you?"

"Oh God, I promise you won't!"

"But… you do like this, right? It's not just to give me a chance to 'be the guy' so to speak?"

"I don't like doing this with people of the male persuasion," he said stiffly. "But if you happened to suddenly sprout that piece of equipment, Luv, you could put it right in, okay? I love you, you don't hurt me, I don't hurt you."

That was somehow the oddest, hottest, and sweetest thing she'd ever heard. She had no idea why her pussy throbbed so hard suddenly. It leaked a wet drop of juice and cum down her thigh. "You want me to… finger you?"

"If I didn't, I'm sending one hell of a mixed message. If you're squeamish or worried-"

"I am! Not squeamish, but worried. I love you so much. I would hate me if I took something of yours, something you're letting me have, giving me a gift and I screwed it up." She suddenly wished Riley or Angel had been the adventurous type. Then she'd at least know what the hell she was doing.

"You're so sweet. My wife, she's so incredibly sweet and delicious. And excited. And brave. Going to take such good care of her Spike, isn't she? We always help each other. You just keep givin' me those wonderful kisses and see if your hand gets braver." He winked.

So she kissed and licked and slid her hand around him when she wanted to look up and watch his rapt face, his little spasms and squiggles, the way his eyes couldn't stay open. During one of her visual excursions, her fingers started massaging under his sack, finding a little cluster of drawn in flesh. His eyes flared open, then squeezed shut, breathing going erratic. His hands came down and massaged her hair. "Good, Baby?"

"So much."

"I love you."

"I love you. Mmm. Oh, fuck, Slayer, push?"

Damn, her pussy did that weird thing again, the extra hard buck without anything to buck against. "If we do this, can you do me a favor afterward?"

"Anything," he swore.

"Fuck me really, really hard?"

His eyes flew open. His nostrils quivered almost imperceptibly. Oooh. Sweetlet gets hot on helping her man out in this particular fashion. Taboo treats for the good girl. "I will fuck you until you beg me to stop."

She shook her head, pushing around the ring without sliding in. "Sorry, can't do that. We'll miss our own fake wedding if I did that."

"Well, then, until you ask me to stop for the sake of appointments and familial dinners and oh- oh, holy shit, fuck!"

"All I did was go in a little?" Buffy asked in awe.

"Then go in more! Please?"

"Impatient vampire," she sucked on his cock until she felt the hard pulsings in his shaft and realized his fists were making a shredded mass of towels. "That good?"

"Push. Up. In and up," he managed to say.

Buffy obeyed, the tunnel inside of him smooth and cool and slippery with oil. It swallowed up one little finger and she considered adding a second. "Would two be-"

"Oh, God, yes."

"You didn't know what I was going to say!" She nipped his sack and got buffetted by his thigh.

"Sorry," they apologized together.

"You can put two in. You can prolly put three in, but not tonight. I want it nice and easy and ohhhh, if you keep doing that you have to move your head."

"Why?"

"I'll cum all over your hair."

"Not if your cock is in my mouth," she pointed out reasonably.

"Did I mention that I love you utterly? So utterly, completely, irrevocably… oh goddamn fuck, Slayer!"

"How can someone with such a good vocabulary go so four-letter word heavy so fast?" Buffy mused, shaking her head and humming against the underside of his cock.

"There's a- button in me- like there is in you. Male G-spot, okay? D'you get that?" he said a little more harshly than he meant to, her finger having grazed the edge of said spot and the wandered off just as he was about to push down and find that sensation he had seldom experienced and never experienced in this way, with someone he truly loved and wanted, feeling loved and cherished right back.

She didn't mind the sudden harsh edge. That explanation she understood. "Why didn't you say that!?"

"Well, I told you it felt good!" he nearly whined, a high-pitched, pitiful sound that was clearly protesting that the object of his affection was centimeters away from paradise and she had stalled out. "Please, Baby?"

The little drip-drip-drip of her sweet, rosy center turned into a steady river. Spike is begging me. The way I beg him. I can do things for him that make him go wild in all new ways. Very vulnerable, private, never-shared ways. Screw wanting some experience. She was glad she was a virgin at this. She was glad she hadn't ever suggested this with the others. They wouldn't have let themselves lose control (not that Spike was losing anything but his coherent speech and muscle control) and let her lead, not like this.

"Of course, Baby. Just like this?" Her hand moved tentatively, but the confidence was growing. She left slow kisses and hard bites on his inner thighs, worrying the skin a little as her finger nudged up. Her head lifted enough to watch his eyes bulge, then shut, and his hips flexed down, then seemed to try to capture her hand. She soothed him the same way he soothed her, little murmurs. "Good, Spike? Is that what my sexy, naughty Spike wants from his wife?"

"Best. Wife. Ever." The world was swirling down to a single bright spot of pleasure, Buffy and pleasure, his wife and pleasure, the sun in human form, but it didn' burn, it was soft and gentle and then- ohhhh fuck. "Come up soon?" He tapped his neck.

She tapped hers teasingly in response. "Who says we just have to do this once?" Her fingers gained skill, a stroke and curl, a tickle and pull, dancing gently at first, then harder, in the smooth hollow on the upper wall that seemed to be connected to his cock, not only connected, wired. Electric shocks and pulses made him jump and leak in her mouth between fervent sucks and kisses, punctuated with praises for him and his deliciousness, his smoothness.

"Gonna cum," he cried out, a broken hiss after several minutes of unintelligible growls.

"Give me all of you. Put you in my system," she whispered, caressing him inside and out before sweeping her lips and tongue down over him.

He remembered at the last second that they were supposed to be quiet. Not that he'd been quiet, but he hadn't been unforgivably, obviously loud. Right now, he thought his lower lip was bleeding from not screaming, and honestly, he could never recall that happening, not ever, not in the good way.

Buffy found herself unceremoniously and somewhat sloppily pulled up in shaking arms, exchanging a fairly messy kiss that didn't feel odd or icky at all. This is my person. My other half. My Kindred. "My love."

"My love," he said thickly, trying to get the synapses in his brain back to firing. "Oh. We might not need the wiccas after all," he suddenly said in a dazed voice.

"What? Why?" Her head jerked off its place on his pectoral and stared into his unfocused eyes.

"I think you melted my bloody hardware," he finally said. "And my knees."

She chuckled, unable to prevent herself. She felt proud. Not smug in a bad way, in a good way. My hubby is a fantastic lover and I just made him feel as good as he makes me feel. Then, doubt came up over her, tiny but prickly, like stepping on a splinter too big to ignore. "Do you like that better than being in me?" Buffy hoped she didn't sound selfish.

"Not even remotely. It's entirely different. Nothing beats being inside of you, because then both of us can have our bloody brains flyin' out in a cloud of orgasmic bliss." It was his turn to feel a little sheepish. "You weren't having me on, were you? You've never-"

"No! Couldn't you tell?"

"No, you were - you were the best I've ever… not that there was more than one other, but it was more times and it never- it never felt like that. Everything about you makes everything better." There was a split second flare of hatred and annoyance, aimed at himself for sounding so lovestruck and simpering, especially at someone far more inexperienced and younger than he was. At Buffy Summers, the Slayer with the stupid name and the stupid sunshine hair and the stupid little … everything. Everything he loved. "Fuck, I am in love with you and I'm never gonna stop." He couldn't wipe the smile off his face.

"Ditto. Minus the swearing. What the heck, with the swearing. I love you, too. And fucking you. And mutually doing that thing. I believe I promised more than once and I was promised a renewal of our vows," her fingertips slid across her cleavage.

"We're not going to get any unpacking done, are we?" Spike muttered into her kiss.

"Nope."

"Did you say something about a phone call?"

"We'll make it later."

To be continued...

Thank you so much for reading, guys! The third part of Vampire In VEgas: Third Act (the final book) is done and out on Amazon under the name S.C. Principale! I hope all of you will like it! Also, thank you again to those of you who have become Pat-reon (no hyphen) supporters of S.C. Principale!