Buffy moaned into Riley's mouth, running her hands through his hair as his arms wound around her waist. Twenty whole minutes of making googly eyes at each other from across the frat house party had done nothing to quell the heat that seemed to be simmering in the air around them.
"Upstairs?" Riley breathed against her lips. "Five minutes?"
She nodded vigorously.
"Make it three."
He broke off with a chuckle, a last peck against her lips before rejoining the crowd.
Buffy grinned, straightening her top before slipping casually out of the alcove they'd been huddled in. Just keeping it cool, keeping it casual. She didn't need to broadcast to the entire party what they were clearly heading upstairs to do.
She lingered as long as she could before making a beeline for the stairs.
She was on the balcony, Riley's door in sight, when movement behind a slightly ajar door caught her eye. She would've ignored it and kept walking, except she'd seen the shape of someone moving in the shadows, and she knew that stupid ugly coat and the bleached hair on top.
It's not my problem, she tried to rationalize with herself, throwing a glance at Riley's door and all the promises it held on the other side. Whatever Spike's doing in there, it's seriously not my problem. Just keep it moving… just… keep…
Except…
Except what if he wasn't alone?
And what if his chip had spontaneously stopped working?
And what if he had some helpless victim trembling in his grip, his teeth about to sink into their neck, and—!
She huffed—rolling her eyes at her dutiful paranoia—and pushed the door open wider.
"You've got to be kidding me," she sighed deeply, glaring as Spike glanced unconcerned over his shoulder, tucking someone's wallet into his pocket. "Stealing from the Initiative frat house? How suicidal are you?"
He took the lit cigarette from his mouth, blowing out a noxious cloud of smoke.
"Look, luv. They stole my ability to hunt. This is just karma."
"Right. You're the universe's channel for retribution," Buffy sneered, closing the bedroom door behind her before someone spotted them alone in a dark room together and got the wrong idea.
"Damn right," Spike mumbled back, obviously not paying attention as he perused more belongings that didn't belong to him. He stubbed out his cigarette on the bedside table—-directly into the wood grain, leaving a singed black dot—and slipped a silver frame (complete with family photograph) into his pocket. It made a clink as it settled in amongst whatever else he'd stolen.
He moved to leave and Buffy blocked his path, crossing her arms.
"Empty your pockets."
He fluttered his eyelashes in a pretense of indignation.
"No."
He attempted to move around her and she stepped back in front of him.
"Empty them."
"Make me—"
The words were barely out of his mouth before her fists curled in the lapels of his jacket, slamming him bodily into the built-in closet encompassing one wall, one of its doors still half-open from his interrupted burglary.
In a flash, she had a stake pressed against his sternum.
"I was sorta hoping you'd say that," she said as he attempted to stretch away from the wooden point. Spike huffed under her hands, and the air seemed heavier for it. Oppressive, and weighted as her body pinned his, the air almost shivering in watchful attention—
Buffy ignored it and opened his coat with her free hand, reaching into the inner pocket.
She unearthed two more wallets, a penknife, and an ashtray she was more than positive he had no intention of using. She dropped the contents onto the floor.
The next inner pocket held a discman and a hip flask.
"Oi, that's mine!" he growled, attempting a bend to retrieve it off the carpet before she shoved him back against the closet door.
"Karma."
Her stake pressed again into his chest as she dug in the side-pockets, retrieving the framed photograph, some loose change, and a watch.
"You're so pathetic," she huffed, and without excessive amounts of forethought, shoved a hand into his jeans pocket.
"Hey!" Spike attempted to lurch away from her hand as she caught a clump of bills, what felt like loose credit cards, and a lighter. His fingers wrapped around her wrist. "You wanna get a hand down my trousers, pet, you can be a mite nicer about it."
"I'm just making sure all the stuff you stole doesn't burst into dust when you do," she bit back, letting the tip of her stake dig in slightly harder. He growled from the sensation but didn't release his grip.
"That's my rightful property, I'll have you know."
"I think we have very different ideas about what 'rightful property' means. Let go of my arm."
The hand around her wrist squeezed an atom tighter.
"Unclench that hand first."
Buffy glared, letting the stake's tip dig in even further.
"This isn't a bargaining situation, Spike. Hand. Off."
He opened his mouth to reply, but stalled. Footsteps were coming down the hall, and half-audible voices stopped just outside the door.
Buffy's head turned, the light creeping in underneath the door interrupted by the shadow of someone on the other side. The handle dipped ever so slightly as someone's hand rested on it.
Spike smirked.
"Reckon your boyfriend's not gonna be over-pleased to find you in here with me," he said smugly. "Think it just turned into a bargaining situation, luv."
Buffy's eyes hit the floor, taking in the paraphernalia of stolen items littering their feet.
And made a snap decision.
"What are you doing?!" Spike hissed as she pushed him bodily into the closet.
"I'm not being caught in an empty room with you! They'll think we were doing exactly what you were just doing!"
He leveled an unimpressed, entirely condescending look at her.
"That's not what they'll think we were doing, sweetheart."
"Just move!" she growled as she crushed in beside him, her back to his chest. It was tight; too narrow not to be pressed into each other. Spike growled as her elbow inadvertently connected with his ribcage, and she pulled the door closed behind her as the bedroom door swung open.
Whoever the owner of the room was, they weren't alone.
Two sets of footsteps made rasping shuffles on the bedroom carpet, accompanied by the frantic rustle of clothes being shed.
"Oh, perfect," Spike groaned into her hair as a low moan sounded from the other side of the door.
"Shh!" Buffy hissed under her breath as a soft gasp uttered from one half of the couple.
Buffy cringed, closing her eyes as though that would have any kind of effect on the noises infiltrating her ears, the tips of which were starting to burn.
Oh my God, this is so not happening, it's really really so not happening—
The closet was stifling. Airless. She could feel herself starting to pant in harmony with the couple on the outside. Another low groan accompanied by frantic breathing caused a fierce blush to fill her cheeks.
"I want you," growled a low voice, and the words sent a shiver down Buffy's spine like they were being bit out directly into her ear, raising her skin into goosebumps. "God I want you so bad—"
"We can't," whispered the girl in between the sussaration of lips moving over lips, hands over skin. "He'll find out…"
"I hope he does," her counterpart whispered back, low and dark. "You're mine. You should be with me."
Spike shifted uncomfortably behind her and Buffy swallowed, trying not to think about every part of her body that was pressing into his: his legs scissored between hers, his pelvis pressing into the curve of her ass, chest moulded to the slope of her back. His hand was pressed to the wall beside her, bracing himself to stop from sliding into a slump behind her—the silver rings on his fingers catching a glint of light that was filtering in through the slatted doors—and she focused hard on it in an attempt to ignore the noises coming through from the other side
Please be quick, Buffy silently begged the couple audibly locked in passion. Please…!
A weighted thump sounded as the couple hit the mattress.
"You're so beautiful," the male half of the couple murmured, and an aggravated sigh from Spike brushed her neck. "Open your legs."
Buffy cursed under her breath. It was bad timing—that's all it was—but her thighs were starting to ache from the half sit she was supporting herself in, trying to stop herself sinking back against Spike. She let out an involuntary whimper as a cramp overtook her left calf.
This is bad… this is so bad…
She was shivering, muscles quivering as she tried to keep herself upright. Until she couldn't anymore. Her leg buckled, and she sprawled at an awkward half angle across Spike's torso, her legs widened around his knees in an exceptionally compromising position.
She wriggled, righting herself off him as he grunted behind her.
His arm banded around her stomach and hauled her up, setting her on her feet, and she let out a brief sigh of relief.
But his arm didn't drop.
And she didn't bat it off, grateful for the bracing hold, despite herself.
It doesn't mean anything, she tried to persuade herself as Spike's chest swelled behind her. He held in a gasp as she fidgeted, trying to find a position she could bear to maintain. We're all… being enemies and… and he—
"You hate me," the girl breathed and Buffy froze as the thought she was about to frame was uttered on the other side of the door. Her eyes slid to the slats. "I thought you hated me."
"I do. And I don't," her partner whispered fervently, and Spike swallowed behind Buffy's shoulder. "I want you so bad it's driving me crazy."
Spike's chin brushed her shoulder, as if he had shaken his head ever so slightly. Almost pleadingly. Probably just moving her hair out of his face, but he seemed so rigid behind her, the breath held tight in his lungs.
"Can't stop thinking about you—"
Buffy's skin prickled as Spike let a slow, strained breath out through his nose.
"Picturing you…"
"Slayer," he whispered right into her ear. "I'm begging you. Stop. Squirming."
"...Just like this."
A slick, wet sound coupled with the girl's strangled gasp rippled the air. Buffy jolted. Her heart pounded, but not loud enough to drown out the noises making it through the closet door as the boyfriend in all but name let out a low, slightly muffled moan.
Spike's fingers curled into her side, holding her close, holding her still, and Buffy tried to stop panting. There was just no air in the closet; it was so hot and so close. The only respite was the cool of Spike's skin, his hand on the curve of her waist lowering her core temperature back down to just shy of boiling, his fingers brushing her side with every breath. She shifted against him, pressing into his chest as perspiration began to bead along her hair line.
He felt the way he had under their engagement spell. All hard and lithe; compacted strength.
The scent of his leather and cigarettes was fogging her mind, and beneath it the sweet musk of his skin. The hand around her waist was igniting a million nerve endings across her skin.
Touch me… touch me more…
She lurched away from that thought, blinking hard, trying to clear her mind despite the heat pressing in.
Riley…
I'm with…
I have to… have to get back to… to…?
But when she tried to conjure his face he was just a featureless lump. She urged her brain to focus, but his face morphed into Spike's; sharp lines, a cruel smile, and burning blue eyes.
"He doesn't get you like I do," purred the male voice as the girl's gasps turned fevered. "You're not yourself around him…"
"And I am with you?" his girl managed breathlessly.
"You know you are. You're so real with me."
Buffy's breathing ragged, trying to find oxygen where there was none.
"Spike—"
Spike's hand clamped suddenly around Buffy's mouth, suffocating the moan of his name beneath his palm.
"Quiet," Spike breathed in her ear. "Just be quiet, luv."
Buffy nodded, dizzy, unsure how she'd even managed to lose control of herself enough to utter his name out loud. Her hand wound around his wrist but she didn't pull him off.
It's so hot…
I'm so hot…
His fingers grazed from her waist to her hip, barely touching, just the lightest brush of fingertips across the long-sleeved cotton top that felt like a disastrous decision inside their sweltering prison, but the cool touch of his hand had her skin twitching. She shuddered in his arms, holding herself stiff lest she bowed into his touch, the thought of his skin over hers all she could focus on.
Please…
"I'm burning up," the girl on the bed breathed around quivering gasps.
Buffy whimpered into Spike's hand and he squeezed her jaw, shushing her as she panted beneath his palm. Everything was starting to feel warm and wet. Inside and out. It was like being trapped in a sauna, her clothes clinging to her skin. But worse still was the dampness between her thighs as the girl on the bed moaned louder, her groans and shrieks building in a crescendo.
Please.
If Spike's knees weren't between hers she would've pinched her legs shut to feel some sort of friction. Some sort of stimulation. But his legs were a barrier keeping her open.
Please!
She was struggling to breathe, her throat too thick to swallow around. She knew he sensed it, the tip of his thumb stroking ever so gently across her cheek the way he had done once when he'd cupped her face in his hands and kissed her so deep she thought she'd faint.
"I'm going to move my hand back a bit," he whispered in her ear, so quiet it was almost just his lips moving, barely any breath to give volume to the words. "And you're going to be silent. Agreed?"
Don't let go, Buffy pleaded inwardly. Please don't let go!
But she nodded cautiously, and he eased his hand out of the firm hold, loosening his grip but keeping his fingers across her mouth.
"Better, luv?"
Another nod, and she let her head pillow on his shoulder.
She'd be okay. If he would just touch her properly, she'd be okay… Every half-caress and light graze between them was building something unfathomable—she couldn't breath, couldn't move, couldn't even think straight, skin burning, heart pounding, breath panting!—but if he would just touch her—!
She bit down a moan as the fingertips of his right hand came to rest over the waistband of her skirt, the fingers of his left momentarily tightening across her mouth again to stifle the sound.
Buffy shifted restlessly, the anticipation starting to become a physical strain.
For both of them it seemed. He was hard. She could feel his cock digging against the base of her spine. He was starting to pant as much as she was, something she'd only seen him do when they were caught in a full brawl.
God, please just touch me! Please! PLEASE!
"Do you want me, baby?" purred the man outside the closet, as whatever he was doing to the girl made her gulp down a groan. "Just say yes." Spike's middle finger dragged across the barest amount of exposed skin between Buffy's skirt and her top and she thought she might scream. "Be mine, and say yes."
She felt the ripple of Spike's throat as he swallowed, nuzzling into her hair. "Say yes."
"Yes!" Buffy whispered against Spike's hand, at the same time the girl cried it out.
Spike's hand flattened over her stomach, the fingers that had been pressed over her mouth now cupping her jaw, her chin in his palm as he angled her head, lips scoring down the column of her throat before his mouth latched to the base of her neck.
Buffy gasped—loud enough that she definitely would have been heard if the unrestrained screams and groans from the outside of the closet hadn't been masking all other noises. She bowed into his touch, arms up and fingers locked around his head as tongue and teeth seared her skin.
His fingers stroked patterns across her stomach, over her stomach, fully cupping her ribcage beneath her shirt before the other hand dropped to the curve of her waist. Both hands dug in, thumbs pressing into tender pressure points flanking her spine, eliciting a yelp she barely managed to keep down.
"Touch-starved little Slayer," Spike whispered behind her, the barest hint of a leer in his voice, and Buffy clamped her lips closed around a whimper.
She wasn't. Touch-starved definitely wasn't a thing she had been lately, but her trysts with… with… with Whoever hadn't felt like this. This was different. Ecstasy was already building from the lightest touches. Barely more than his hands on her and she was struggling not to scream, her core melting as the fire inside her built to an unfathomable inferno. It was unbearable. Uncontrollable. Addictive.
Maybe she was starving for this.
One arm wrapped fully across her waist, holding her tight as the other dropped to her thigh, lifting the hem of her skirt with scratching drags of his fingers. Skin bare to him, he squeezed the flesh of her thigh, coaxing her to spread wider around his legs.
"Give me another 'yes'."
Buffy tried to breath, but she was trembling so hard and his hand between her legs was all she could focus on, the pads of his fingertips resting over the impossibly sensitive skin of her inner thigh. Not even a half-inch away from where she was slick and wet and all but aching to be touched.
She closed her eyes, gripping the back of his head, his hair curled inside her fist.
"Yes."
His teeth grazed the shell of her ear, making her shiver uncontrollably as his fingers swirled closer, brushing just shy of where she wanted him. Obscene groans from the couple on the bed had her pressing back into him, physically begging for more as every muscle wound tight.
When his hand finally slipped beneath the waistband of her underwear, spreading her folds as he touched a fingertip to her clit, Buffy screamed and jolted with such force Spike's back hit the wall of the closet. Not that it mattered—their unsuspecting jailers likely wouldn't have heard a bomb drop, but Spike's hand was back around her mouth in a bruising grip.
"Are you trying to get caught with my hand in your knickers?" he hissed, but all her attention was honed in on the light circles he was stroking across her clit, so soft in contrast with his tone. "I'll get you off, luv, just be bloody quiet."
She tried. She really tried; torso rigid, legs straining not to buckle, she tried to swallow the moan before it made it to her mouth as he slid his finger lower, down to her soaking core and back again. Again. Again, until her folds and his fingers were soaked.
A barely suppressed groan vibrated his palm as he added his index and ring fingers, stroking her in a figure eight, his middle digit every so often grazing her clit, making her jerk in his grip.
"Shh-shh-shh."
Unable to nod from the angle he was keeping her head tilted at, she squeezed the hair still in her grip in acquiescence, her panting an inaudible plea for more as her hips swayed, riding his hand. Liquid heat was pooling in her core, boiling in her gut.
Her throat was aching from every moan suppressed. Her walls were beginning to hurt from clenching around nothing, the emptiness keeping her down off that final summit.
On a downward stroke, the tip of Spike's finger slid in just to the first knuckle, and she bit the fleshy base of his thumb to stop from howling.
"Christ, you're gonna be the death of me."
He took his fingers away from her mouth, and Buffy hauled air into her lungs as he slipped his hand between their bodies, unbuckling his belt.
"Please," she gulped as his fingers hooked her underwear to the side. She bowed her hips towards his hand to make room. The head of his cock slid tantalisingly across her wet folds, briefly meeting his fingers, before notching at her core. "Spike—"
He pulled her back onto him, entering with one seamless thrust, straight to the hilt, and Buffy held the scream in her mouth. She clenched tight around him, walls fluttering. He didn't move—there was barely enough space to do so—but as she attempted to grind back against him. He stayed her with a hand on her hip.
"Hold still," he growled, sounding wrung out already. "Just be nice and quiet for me."
Buffy bit her lip. Without his hand across her mouth, being any sort of silent felt like an impossibility. Still quivering and squeezing his cock with every sweep of his fingers, she could feel her blood starting to fizz in her veins, his fingers still working her in those loose, teasing circles as the instinct to sway with the movement became unbearable.
She could feel the full length of him twitching in response to every clench, the head of his cock pressing into a pressure point that would have had her screaming had there been a single thrust of his hips, her walls split open around him, begging for friction. The stillness was making it worse, making the need for it impossible to ignore as his fingers teased that over-sensitive bundle of nerves.
Oh God, I'm going to come—
Spike's going to make me come—!
"So close," she whispered as quietly as she could as his index and middle fingers rolled her clit in tight circles. "Spike, so close—"
He pinched her, and the sudden pressure threw her fully into a crash landing of a release, the air knocked out of her as the muscles in her body tightened to painful rigidity.
"Bloody hell—!"
His hands reached out to brace himself against the closet wall. His cock ever so slightly rolled over that pressure point and this time she did scream, bucking back into him as he gripped her hips under her skirt.
"You're so wet," he growled, his forehead slumped on the back of her neck as he thrust into her. "Christ, Buffy…so tight… If I'd known you'd feel like this I wouldn't've asked for the sodding ring back."
"Keep touching me," she begged as his fingers dug into her waist. "If you're not touching me, it feels like I'm going to go insane…"
His thrusts were shallow, but they were liquifying her bones all the same, hands flat on the wall of the closet but her nails dragging down the wood grain, a second burning wave starting to crest low in her belly.
"I'm going to—" she breathed as he groaned into her hair. "Spike, I'm going to—!"
She clenched painfully tight as he swelled inside her, breaking against her as his arms wrapped fully around her torso, hugging her tight as she rode him through a second orgasm that robbed the strength from every muscle.
She slumped against him.
And as he did the same they lost balance.
Spilling out of the closet and onto the floor.
"Oh God!"
Buffy's head jerked up, expecting to see two bewildered (and probably equally disheveled faces) staring down at her.
But there was no one there. Not even a crease in the perfectly made bed.
Buffy blinked, and then as though resurfacing from a dream her ears tuned into the screaming—and occasional moaning—coming from beyond the bedroom door.
It burst open, a flashlight dazzling her eyes. It dipped, revealing the sneering face of Riley's brother-in-arms, Forrest.
He took in the scene with a barely hidden sneer of smug disdain.
"Uh," Buffy managed, righting herself on the carpet as Spike raised himself onto his elbows. "This… isn't what it—"
"We've got a bit of a paranormal situation," he stated, cutting coldly across her barely formed denial. "Full evacuation. You two lovebirds might wanna cut datenight short."
He left, closing the door as Buffy struggled to her feet.
"Buffy—" she heard Spike call after her, the rustle of him raising himself off the floor, but she was out the door without a look back.
Paranormal situation.
She breathed hard, running her hands through her hair.
That's all it was… just a… a paranormal situation.
Something had ignited when she'd pinned him against the closet. She'd felt it, but hadn't given it even a second thought. She got all sorts of weird tingles when Spike was in the same room as her, it didn't mean anything. Vampire/Slayer dynamics were loaded with weird stuff. Like an overactive Spidey sense. It didn't mean anything, it didn't!
She joined the crowd lingering on the lawn staring up at the house as Initiative soldiers ordered people back, and strung up warning tape around a perimeter.
Those same prickling tingles ignited at the base of her neck and she turned, finding Spike watching her from the other side of the street, before disappearing into the shadows.
She took a long slow breath in. And out again, and hoped that no one else heard the way it sounded like a sigh.
It meant nothing…
It was two weeks before she saw him again. The frat house was exorcised and her relationship with Riley seemed to have survived intact. Forrest's sneer alighted on her more than a few times if she ever joined them in the cafeteria, but he seemed to have decided that trying to take her down for something that happened under paranormal influence would only blow back on him. She'd by no means been the only one affected by what Giles had loosely termed a 'poltergeistic surge' powered by some unidentified catalyst.
Buffy had a hunch about what that catalyst had been, but she kept it to herself. Ghosts were an easy-to-believe cause. But if she thought about all the heated words that had filled the air in that closet, she could too easily persuade herself that they'd been pulled out of their heads, not the other way around.
Those strange Spike-centric prickles of electricity didn't seem to want to dwindle. The heat still dwindled across her skin. Between her legs, the cool patterns he'd drawn with his fingertips still tantalisingly present—
She shook herself out of it.
No, it was just vamp-sense. That's all it was. That's all it was… Maybe as she'd pushed him across the closet door she'd felt the muscles straining beneath her grip, the grunt he let out already half-sexed up, but that didn't mean she'd been spiraling towards those types of thoughts all on her own. It didn't mean she'd liked it!
The denials she was swaddling herself back into were easier to believe when she was patrolling. Pushing Spike to the back of her mind with force.
But he was still wrapping around her subconscious, and it was becoming impossible to ignore…
"So, you want to take East?" Riley asked as they trudged through Restfield, startling her out of her thoughts. "And I'll meet you at West?"
"Uh…" Buffy's mouth opened and closed, trying to find a tactful way to say he should stick by her and not go bounding off into the vampire infested graveyard solo.
She needed to keep an eye on him.
You need him to keep an eye on you, rephrased the voice in her head.
But he was already off, charging towards a shambling figure shedding grave dirt. Buffy watched, but Riley had the clear upper hand, the fledgling still disoriented and weak from climbing up through six feet of dirt.
She turned at the sound of a branch cracking under foot, her eyes scanning for movement. Nothing but a large mausoleum framed by trees.
She circled around to the back of it, stake raised as the sounds of Riley's fight continued; huffed grunting filling the air.
A hand closed around her mouth and she stiffened, fingers gripping the wrist pressed over her collarbone, but she didn't scream. She didn't need to scream.
Soft fingers combed the hair back from her face—the nails painted black, silver rings catching the light—and she sank back against him, eyes already closing.
"God, I want you so bad—" Spike growled, lips pressing against her neck as his hand slipped from her mouth to her jaw, tilting her head. "I want you so bad it's driving me crazy."
"Spike," Buffy whispered, for a moment thinking to struggle out of his grip, shaking her head as his arms snaked around her waist. The guy… the soldier guy, the… whoever she was with, was in the last bout of the fight, his foe audibly starting to take more hits before the finishing blow. Minutes away from searching for her… "We can't. He'll find out…"
"I hope he does," he whispered back, low and dark. "You're mine. You should be with me."
AN:
A very merry Christmas season, to all of you! Apologies there's no winter wonderland in this month's one shot! And I'm such a grinch, giving you all a cliffhanger ending (and a Riley-smooched beginning, ugh, sorry sorry). Rest assured I'm sure I'll get nothing but coal for my troubles!
Thank you ENDLESSLY to RavenLove12 for beta-ing and Em_Kayelle for beta-ing and also being way way too gentle with me when I presented her with the first edit but with a completely slip-shod half-baked ending. Next time just crack the whip and tell me to get back to it, babe!
And to Claire, Claire, my banner extraordinaire. You are such a talent it crushes the life out of us. Thank you so incredibly much for the accompanying work of art!
Happy holiday season everyone!
See you on the next one x