Chapter Six

The moment she stopped breathing was the minute his commonsense kicked in. Spike was hurting the girl, perversely fighting the last instruction Dru had shot at him before she became so much dust. His sire's crazy cackle circled around his brain and he tore his fingers from the Slayer's skin, mesmerised by the emerging bruises even as he noticed that the rhythmic inflation of her diaphragm had stilled.

He'd killed his third Slayer and he felt a chill around his heart, rather than the celebration in his blood. Then it was blind panic that had him gather her in his arms and start the shaking, shouting as he tried to change the result of his loss of control. Spike felt sobs choke his throat and with an anger he had no chance at understanding, he shook her like a rag doll and didn't even wonder at the brutal jerks her neck was further sustaining and the hair that whipped him violently in the face.

Hysteria was a bubble he was trying to hold away for the time being, and then he was kissing her, throwing her back on the bed and slapping her face as tears ran streaks down his own. Dru's words goaded him to further confusion, and when he finally understood he wasn't getting a response—or at least one he'd belatedly decided he needed—he collapsed onto the pillow of her breasts, howling for all the grief the past two days had brought him. Raging for the loss of his sire—hating Angelus for both making the stupid bitch so insane she talked in riddles and took her unlife, as well as for taking his moment with Buffy away by killing her, infringing the lore that had seen them both through a century and more of vampiric existence.

He was completely lost to this world, everything ripped away from him that made sense, and well he was kicking himself for depriving his time of the last thing that made his loss bearable.

The Slayer.

Buffy.

She'd been his for a moment and in one wild act of petulance, he'd lost her too. Once he'd killed Angelus for breaking code, he would be entirely alone with no one to love him. No one to hold him. No one to need him.

He would be better off dust. What was eternity if you had to wander alone and heartsick?

He had journeyed so far into his grief that the slight tickle as his hair was swept through with heavy fingers was completely ignored. When the soft touch of a fingertip drifted over his neck he felt the slightly cooled sensation and held his breath, keeping his eyes tightly closed while he waited for more. Waited to see if it was a dream or a beautiful reality he shouldn't even hope for.

He was rewarded when the rapidly warming hand reached around his neck, and instead of squeezing him in an identical grip she tugged him up toward her mouth. Spike couldn't look into her eyes, couldn't see the lack of trust in this moment while his guilt was still chomping on his heart. He rested his cheek against hers and just breathed—in and out, slow breaths that hushed her ear even as he wanted to taste her again.

The slightest move and she'd captured him. Her face was dry but her lips were wet, hot and moist, giving strength yet asking questions his confused mind didn't understand. All he could grasp was that Buffy wasn't dead and he seemed caught in some tripe of a fairytale, kissing the princess awake. But then this made sense in the way that all of Dru's rambling predictions did. She'd sent him into a world of Brothers Grimm and he was stuck like glue, even as he felt his body move and settle half off the Slayer's as her arms seemed to strain to wrap around him.

Of course. He'd killed her. Might take a bit to come back from something like that. If the stories he'd heard about her short demise the previous year were correct, the chit was beginning a dangerous trend of expiring annually. Her arms seemed to hang without strength around his neck as she sucked his life from him by way of his tongue. And he was alright with that; was more than happy to play the gentleman that supported her while she gained power back in her limbs.

That concept of gentleman seemed to knock hard at the inside of his skull and he balked at what was happening. He'd almost killed this girl, and instead of trying to kill him back, or at the very least kick him away from her bed and out of her room, she'd taken possession of his lips even as she subtly shifted and allowed more of her body to be held to the mattress with the weight of his own.

Wasn't right. Felt off; felt like he was taking advantage of her lack of experience like he had the first time. Felt like he was pushing his need to assert her life with the feel of her hot flesh against his, and he needed to slow it down. Needed to stop it entirely, yet her needy hands were capturing him in places other than his mouth.

With a wrench that caused a heavy drop in his gut, he thrust her away and got to his feet, cringing at the purpling of the bruises around her neck. The horrified look in her eyes shouldn't have been a shock, but he felt pained that his thoughtless, plan deficient tantrum had brought them to this moment.

Spike felt the swell of that original fury, berating himself with the whole idiocy of the situation. What was his bleeding problem? He'd wanted this girl dead with a passion that had fuelled his visit to this godforsaken town. With the loss of Drusilla, that desire should have strengthened, rather than change course in the most upsetting of ways. God, he wanted to hate her and punish her, and so many things that suddenly morphed into images of fucking her, and loving her and he just couldn't bear it anymore. And there she was, watching him with misery inspiring the rush of tears from her beautiful eyes.

"I hate you," she whispered in a raspy voice and he felt again a foreign rush of guilt. Instead of enemy, now he saw a frail girl he'd been told to protect and yet she'd sustained two ferocious attacks on her life in such a short period. What kind of fuck-up was he that he was so incompetent in keeping this human alive when he'd held Dru's existence in his hands for a hundred and twenty years with only the smallest of problems until Prague? It had been a good wicket and he felt bloody stupid and useless now when he hadn't even gotten through a day of keeping Buffy safe. Not from himself. Not from Angelus. And now was his chance to keep them both safe and he was crumbling under her confusion.

"I know, Kitten. An' you should. I'm the Big Bad."

Just like that she started to sob, throwing less than cautious looks at him while she begged him to make her understand this craving to have him near, to have him in her bed, have him swelling inside her when she couldn't bear the thought of him.

It was the imagery that did it; the idea of his cock sliding against her slick heat that brought him back to her side, enfolding her in his arms and making him forget all the pain that either of them were in. His shock at feeling her hands on the flesh of his back was short as he succumbed to the pleasure, recalling every detail of how glorious she'd felt naked under his body while he initiated her to sex. Violent, beautiful, meaningful shagging that he suddenly realised he could never give up with her.

His mind shut down and his fingers found fastenings, ridding her of the clothes that covered her from neck to ankle. A little hiss of pain brought him back from whatever haze had drawn him to her side and he bounced away, trying desperately to pull his eyes from her body.

"No," she refuted heatedly. "Stop pulling away from me. Do you not want me? Am I ugly?" Her uncertainty compounded with a huge attack of compromised confidence and she covered herself with hastily gathered bedding, shame and grief tearing her voice to shreds as she pleaded with him through blurring eyes.

"We shouldn't be doing this, Buffy. I almost killed you."

"You did kill me!" she shouted in a fury that seemed to come from nowhere, even as she kneeled on the bed, pushing herself closer to where he had retreated closer to her door. "You can't keep doing this to me. I don't know why I do, but I want you. I need you to touch me and if you don't fuck me right now I'll scream this house down."

He could visibly see the edge she was barely balancing on, could almost taste the blood that was pushing to her surface as she built herself into a larger frenzy of emotion. When she finally tipped, clawing and moaning, he grabbed her and tossed her on her back, almost tearing his own clothes to get free and give her what she'd demanded.

He couldn't see straight till he'd rammed his cock hard up into her, revelling for a moment her cry of pain as he felt the tightness of her pussy suck him into a mental breakdown. Her legs curled over his hips hesitantly, and as her hands showed the same amount of uncertainty in touching him, he remembered why he'd initially thought they shouldn't be doing this.

And he was apologising with kisses, feathering her with gentleness on her discoloured neck, licking her lower lip and whispering words of sorrow against her mouth. Her heavy breathing was against his ear and it moved him so much, made him begin to cry like the royal poof he had strived to never be. He started to lick up her tears, grasping her hand and linking their fingers together as he finally started to move inside her, feeling the massive surge of emotion all the way through himself and his partner as he pulled against her suction, pushed against her fluids. God, it was the most incredible sensation he'd ever felt. He was buried in heat, trying so hard not to let loose too soon. He felt a need to reassure her first, to do something to repair some of the damage their association had caused to both of them the past forty eight hours, and a kiss was the only way he could think to do it.

As he slid his tongue against Buffy's bottom lip, he slipped passed her meagre resistance and brushed over her teeth, feeling his fangs piercing his own gums in readiness to burst forth. All control was gone when he smelt the sweet scent of her, tasted the lust on his tongue. One hand tight in her grasp, another twined in her hair and his pelvis gyrating against her pussy in a frenzy of a pounding so essential he wasn't sure of his name, he pulled back and prepared to take her neck.

Existing bruises infuriated his demon and he quickly changed course, finding the spot where previously he'd marked her breast and sucked the straining globe into his mouth, sinking fangs deep into her flesh. Only small spurts of blood greeted his gentle intrusion this time, and while he was glad to not be hurting her so much, the lack of her essence was frustrating. He soothed his inner beast with the slow thrust of his cock in her depths, feeling the glorious effects of power as she moaned beneath him and held onto his hand tightly.

Her release was accompanied by sobs, and again he took to licking them away, finding that the coolness of her tears soothed the pain in his own heart. In a grand sacrifice the likes he'd never known, he pulled himself free, still hard and raging for the final claiming thrust that would bathe her walls with his come. He settled his bestial fury with a slide down her body, burying his head against the hot flesh, sensitive already and slippery with completion.

Her taste was something he knew he wouldn't be able to live without, and suddenly those words of hate hurt him; his actions of the night wounded him. As he licked her pussy lips and flicked her clit, his remorse took shape and his feelings began to slide differently.

As she shuddered around him again, covering his face with moisture he was glad to have wrought from her, he smiled sadly. Everything was changing in the blink of an eye and he had no way to stop it.

When he looked back up, he couldn't avoid her eyes. They shone with something different to the hate she'd proclaimed and instead of hoping, he blocked it from his heart and just lay by her side, hands still clasped as they re-enacted the naked repose that Angel had violently interrupted last time.

Buffy kissed him gently, releasing him for a moment while she went and covered her window, climbing back to be beside him, looking at him. Their eyes locked and held, communicating silently all the jumbled up emotions that kept them electrified and in each other's presence.

Neither looking away; they waited for sleep to give them respite from trauma, having no clue but many worries about what tomorrow would mean.

What was forever changed.