Minutes or hours could have passed but time to her had lost any sense of meaning as she waited patiently for him to open his eyes and return to her.

Her gaze wandered over his body, jealously checking for changes that she might have missed while they were parted. She wasn’t entirely surprised to notice that nearly all the scars she had memorized like a map, wounds telling the story of his warrior past were now gone, erased as though they’d never been.

The spell had done its work much better than it knew, he looked like a man that had never known the touch of violence, much less breathed it like air for a hundred and twenty years.

The only exception to the nearly total healing was the scar he still carried through his eyebrow, and even that didn’t surprise her. After all, it was a slayers blade that had marked him. That very same blade had put him on the path to her and ultimately to the battle in the Hyperion’s alley, and the spell to restore him.

His retaining of the scar only served to verify that the powers that be; as she had suspected, were behind bringing him into her life and now giving him back to her. To Buffy’s mind, the scar was their acknowledgment of who he was and how he’d changed. It symbolized his journey and gave her hope that his love for her had survived along with it.

She was so lost in studying him that at first she didn’t register the sound of her name.

“Buffy?”

Her eyes flew to his face, locking with the brilliant blue of his. Speechless, she could only stare at him as his brow furrowed before he scrambled away from her to press himself against the wall at the head of the bed.

“Slayer, what the fuck? How? Fucking hell, I’ll kill that Witch!” Snarling, he turned his face from the anguished gaze of the woman facing him, registering suddenly the fact that he was naked and apparently alone with Buffy.

Buffy couldn’t get her voice to work, her mouth kept forming the words but they didn’t seem to want to come out. Spike had turned from her, and the trapped and anguished look on his face wounded her like a stake to the gut, a feeling she remembered well.

As he shifted further away from her, all she could think about was the fact that she was losing him again, right before her eyes.

Oh my God, he doesn’t love me any more, he can’t even look at me, came the shocked thought. She tried moving towards him, only to have him scuttle away from her until he was out of the bed and across the room.

“Get away from me Slayer… just stay the fuck away!”

As Buffy advanced on him, Spike felt himself slip into gameface even as he tried to back up even further.

“P-please Spike, please j-just let me touch you, please Spike, don’t run from me.”

The words burst from her throat in ragged sobs as she threw herself towards him, wanting desperately to deny the emotions she could see even through his vampire visage.

Spike froze at her words, brow ridges smoothing and golden eyes fading back to blue. Before he could register her movement she was in his arms, sobbing into his chest as though her heart was breaking.

His arms came up to encircle her, holding her second nature. Even as his mind tried to deny that need, reminding him that she wasn’t his and never had been. She had moved on, she wasn’t part of his world anymore.

Unfortunately, the rest of his body seemed to have missed the memo.

Before he even had time to register what he was doing, his lips were on hers, and he was shocked to find his hands tangled in her hair, his rock hard erection pressed against her warm stomach.

“Buffy, oh God Buffy luv, Oh God you’re here… need you luv need you… missed you please Buffy please.”

Spike didn’t know what he was begging her for, couldn’t think with her warmth pressed up against him. His mind shutting down, his body took over, continuing to babble into her hair about how much he had missed her and how much he needed her.

With his words ringing in her ears Buffy found herself swept away by her own need, her hands roaming greedily across his naked chest, her mouth opening to allow his tongue to tangle with hers.

Before she had time to register what was happening, his strong arms had lifted her, and she felt herself slammed against the wall, her mouth bereft as his lips were torn away. Gasping in pleasure a moment later, when she felt the scrape of his human teeth on her throat.

Her back wedged against the wall she bucked wildly as she felt his hard length press against the seam of her jeans. Mind whiling with too many thoughts to comprehend, she moaned eagerly as seconds later she felt the denim ripped from her body.

Her cry of joy as he entered her was exultant, even as a part of her marveled at the fact that this was so very like their first time. Except it wasn’t. This time she wasn’t taking him in anger and despair, this time wasn’t motivated by her need to feel. No, this time she was welcoming her lover home, rejoicing in his possession of her, his need for her. This time it was about love.

Spike thrust into her warmth wildly, he was beyond thought beyond anything other than his need to be in her, surrounded by her, consumed by her.

He dimly registered her sobbing his name as she tightened her legs and thrust back at him, meeting and matching his loss of control with her own. However, it wasn’t until he felt her blunt teeth bite deeply into his shoulder that it became real for him and he realized that somehow he was alive and buried deep within the slayer.

“Oh Fuck Buffy!” Gasping, he tried to pull away from her, but her legs only tightened, as with his words her climax swept her over the edge.

Spike was lost. As her internal muscles gripped and fluttered with her release, he felt himself lose it, his demon surging to the fore.

Buffy screamed as she felt his fangs pierce her throat, even as a second orgasm rolled through her. Her slayer side screaming in anger, even as the Buffy side of her gasped out her pleasure, at an act that she once would have abhorred. Elated, she had made him lose it to an extent that he never had before.

As the first rush of her hot blood hit his tongue, Spike felt his own release wash over him. Withdrawing his fangs his mouth sealed over the wound, glorying in the taste of her life force flowing down his throat, even as he emptied his cold seed into her depths.

She felt his strong mouth pull another gulp of her blood and incredibly, she came again.

“Oh God Spike I missed you… please Spike… yes just like that.”

Buffy’s shriek as she climaxed for the fourth time was what finally brought the vampire back to himself.

With horror, he realized that his fangs were buried in her neck again, re-entering the puncture wounds that he had put there just moments before.

Tearing his mouth from her neck, he fought to free himself from her embrace as he realized that he had surely signed his death warrant. Not only had he fucked her, in an ironic parody of their first time, he had done the unthinkable and drunk from her, had in fact been only seconds away from claiming her.

As panic set in he struggled to escape her for a second time, knowing that it might be only seconds before she came to her senses and realized that this time he not only raped her body, but very nearly her soul.

His thoughts fragmented, as images of their first time in the abandoned house and flashes of the bathroom melded with his memories of the last few minutes.

He had taken her and drunk from her, he would have let his demon claim her binding her to him for the rest of her life, even knowing that she was not his, that some other man owned her heart.

He finally managed to pry her legs from his waist, at the same time grabbing her wrists and pulling her arms from around his neck. Sighing with defeat, he met her gaze, determined to offer himself up to her stake without fear.