Chapter Eight
Buffy remained flat on her back, still trying to catch her breath and control the trembling in her legs. Beside her, she heard the vampire chuckle ruefully.
“Now THAT, Slayer, was a claim,” he told her. He turned his head to look at her puzzled face. “Seems like my demon feels a little possessive about you.”
“You claimed me?”
“Didn’t mean to,” he said hastily, misunderstanding her question. “Just lost control when you bit me.”
“I bit you?” Her voice went up a little higher. “I bit YOU?”
In response he silently rolled toward her so she could see the deep teeth marks in his shoulder. Buffy’s eyes grew wide and she opened and closed her mouth several times before she could say, “Uh, sorry?” Her mind went back to the marks she used to leave on his smooth skin when their lovemaking was closer to fighting, and she bit her lip in distress.
“Don’t be sorry, love. That’s what brought out the demon and gave me back a few minutes of knowin’ who I am.”
Buffy looked at his now human face and said carefully, “You said a few minutes. Does that mean you’ve forgotten me again already?”
“Trust me, Buffy,” he laughed gently and pulled her closer to his body, planting a kiss on the top of her head, “I won’t be forgetting you anytime soon.”
“But you don’t love me,” she said softly. “You’re sorry you claimed me.”
“Wasn’t fair, was it?” He avoided the implied question. “Didn’t give you a chance to say “no. Demon just took advantage of the situation and—“
“I wouldn’t have said ‘no’,” she interrupted quietly, as she snuggled closer and threw one leg over his. “But if you’re sorry you did it, then I guess we need to try to find a way to fix it.”
“Is that what you want to do?” He kept his voice carefully neutral. “Do you want to make it go away?”
“Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying that…bloody hell, I don’t know what I’m saying. Demon clearly wants you forever. And god knows my body thinks it’s died and gone to a heaven I know I’ll never see. But without my memories, I don’t understand why they feel like that. And I don’t know why you would want to be bonded to a man who can’t remember why or even if he loves you.”
Buffy raised her head from his chest and said softly, “Because I remember why I love HIM. I remember how I grieved when he was gone. And I remember how much he loved me. You’re still him. Whether you remember me or not, my heart belongs to you. It always will.”
Spike looked back at her, his expression a mixture of awe and apprehension. Even without his memories, he knew that her words were something he’d waited for years to hear and he growled softly, frustrated that he wasn’t able to fully appreciate their import to him. He took a deep breath and cringed inwardly at what he was about to do.
“Okaaaay. Growling, frowning? So not the reaction I was looking for.” Buffy’s teasing words belied the hurt look on her face and Spike pulled her up his body so that they were face to face.
“I’m sorry, love. I know that if I remembered us at all, those words would have made me too bloody happy to hold still. I know that. I understand it. And I know my demon is gonna chew me a new arse for what I’m about to say, but…”
“But?” He felt her stiffen in his arms and without realizing what he was doing he tightened his grip, his body responding before his brain did. He nuzzled her neck, licking his marks until she relaxed and curled into him sighing.
“I told you before, I don’t doubt I could learn to love you again. Even more sure of it now than I was before.” He ran a cool hand down her back and stroked her flank, feeling her shiver at his touch. “But if I’m going to put a claim on you. If I’m going to tie you down to me like that…” He stopped her protest with a soft kiss and continued as though she hadn’t tried to speak, “if I’m going to do that, I want to do it with all of me. Don’t want the demon making those kinds of decisions for me, love. No matter how right the decision might be.”
He looked into her glistening eyes anxiously and asked, “Do you understand what I’m saying, pet? Not saying I don’t want you. I do. I do want you. But I don’t want to bind you to me like that unless I know it’s right - for all of me. Need to either remember loving you, or to be in love with you again. Any thing else isn’t fair. To either one of us.”
If he’d had breath to hold, the vampire would have been holding it then while he waited for her reaction. As little time as he’d spent in her company so far, he knew she had a lot of pride, and he suspected she’d already been more open and honest about her emotions than she was used to. He held her gaze, willing her to see the truth in his words. When she finally nodded slowly and said, “It’s okay, Spike. I don’t want you to feel trapped with me,” he let out a relieved breath.
“So, what do you want to do about it?” Buffy slid her body over his until she was lying fully on top of him and nibbling on his chest as she waited for his answer. She ran her tongue around one nipple, then kissed her way across his chest to the other one and took it carefully in her teeth, tugging gently. She could feel his cock as it grew against her hip and pushed up into her stomach, causing her to leave his chest and begin to kiss her way down his body.
“I thought we were having a conversation here, pet,” he groaned as her warm, wet mouth worked its way down his chest and past his navel. When he could feel her warm breath on the head of his throbbing cock, he gasped and arched up toward her waiting lips.
“I’m listening,” she said cheerily, kissing the swollen head and poking her tongue into the slit on top. She moved her tongue back and forth lightly, causing the vampire to moan and hiss in pleasure.
“Talk to me, Spike. Tell me what you want to do about claiming me…” Buffy’s words were muffled as she slipped her mouth over him and opened her throat to allow his full length to slide in. As she began to swallow around him, he once again allowed his demon out and immediately she could tell he knew her again.
“Bloody hell, Buffy. You know what that does to me. Don’t stop, love. Feels so good. Like that, love. Missed you so much. Love you, Buffy. You make me…gonna come, love. Love you. Buffy!” His shout of release coincided with the cool feeling of his spendings hitting the back of her throat and she continued to swallow until she had milked every drop out of his now flaccid cock.
As before, when his demon receded, so did his memory of having experienced her mouth before and he lay trembling as he tried to recover his voice and his poise.
“Buggering fuck, Slayer! I hope I don’t regret asking this, but where the hell did you learn to do that?”
“You taught me,” she said softly. “You taught me how to make you come with my hands and my mouth and my—“
“Dammed if I didn’t do a fine job of it,” he gasped. A familiar-looking smirk crossed his face as he ventured, “Maybe I should open a school. It would be a public service, sending slayers out into the world able to--”
One look at the Slayer’s narrowed eyes and he backpedaled quickly. He didn’t need his memories to recognize that look.
“Or maybe not,” he said quickly. “Nope, definitely not. Only one slayer’s mouth getting near these body parts. Come on, love, don’t you know a joke when you hear one?” he continued, getting slightly worried about the sudden lack of affection in her gaze.
“Is that why you want to get rid of the claim so fast?” she asked, coldly. “So you’d be free to—“
Acting purely on instinct, the vampire pulled her up his body until he could capture her lips in another bone-melting kiss. He didn’t relax until he felt her soften in his arms and begin kissing him back, then he let out the mental breath he’d been holding. He left her mouth and began working his way down her body, leaving wet open-mouth kisses and murmuring against her skin, “Don’t want to be free. Not if it means losing this. Never want to be anywhere else.”
He worked his way down past her breasts, pausing to suckle briefly on each nipple. With every swipe of his tongue, tactile memories seeped into his brain until, by the time he got to the source of the scent that was tormenting him, his brain had completely accepted the familiarity of her body and he buried his face between her legs in a joyful surrender to sensation.
Buffy’s whole body was thrumming with anticipation and with the first swipe of his cool tongue up her cleft, Spike sent her hips lifting off the bed. He grinned against her mound and placed his hand on her abdomen, holding her in place while he allowed his body and his demon free reign. While the slayer mewed and whimpered, he used his muscular tongue to tease and torment her; thrusting it in and out of her clenching vagina, curling it up and licking her interior walls.
When she was keening his name over and over and clutching the curls on his head, he took pity on her and moved up to suck her clit into his mouth. In spite of the care he was taking to keep his fangs away from her flesh, she managed to nick herself on one tooth when she moved in response to her sudden orgasm, and his mouth was once again bathed in her blood.
Before she had stopped trembling, he was upon her, thrusting his way inside her tightened channel and triggering another wave of shivering ecstasy at the same time as he emptied himself into her depths, roaring her name as he did so.
This time, he remained in vamp face, allowing his demon to continue nuzzling at the slayer’s throat and lick the already closing marks from the claiming bite. As long as he let the demon control his actions, he found that he remembered everything – not just Buffy, but Dawn, Sunnydale, Dru, Angel. The memories came at him so fast he became dizzy and he clung to Buffy as though to a life preserver.
She kept her arms and legs wrapped around him tightly, hoping that by holding him close she could keep the memory of what they were to each other from slipping away with the demon. Tears slid from the corners of her eyes as he whispered, “I love you, Buffy”. When he tried to roll off and allow her more breathing room, she whimpered and clutched him tighter, squeezing with her vaginal muscles as well as her arms and legs in an attempt to keep him inside and part of her. Exhausted both emotionally and physically, slayer and vampire fell into a restful sleep, still intimately joined together and the vampire still wearing the demon’s face.
When Buffy gradually awakened, she found that he had rolled them over as one so that she lay on top of him where she could breathe more easily. She opened her eyes slowly and raised them to meet the tender blue gaze now gracing his beautiful human face.
“Spike?” she asked tremulously, her own eyes anxiously searching his for some sign that he had not reverted to the souled vampire who didn’t remember loving her.
“It’s me, sweetheart. I think you shagged the memory right back into me.”
“Really?” she ignored his crude description of what had happened. “So you’re all done with the non-Buffy-loving Spike?”
“I think so,” he said cautiously. “Are you ready to give it a try?”
“No,” she said with a small pout, “but I guess we have to sooner or later.” Dropping a kiss on his shoulder where she’d bitten him the first time, she slowly rolled off onto his waiting arm, whimpering in loss when his cock finally slid out of her. He turned immediately and wrapped his other arm around her lightly so they lay face to face, their legs still tangled together. With their faces only inches apart, they looked into each other’s eyes, once again eerily mirroring the way they’d spent their last nights together in Sunnydale.
This time, the devotion and confidence that shone out of the vampire’s bright blue orbs was reflected back to him from the slayer’s own green flecked eyes. Although the words were almost superfluous by this time, Buffy held his gaze as she said clearly, “I love you.”
He swallowed hard and nodded, never looking away as he whispered, “I know you do, love. I believe you. And I love you too. Always have. Always will.”
They basked in their first true post-coital afterglow; the first not ruined by Buffy’s refusal to allow herself that pleasure, or by an impending apocalypse. Eventually, so much time without talking or movement began to wear on both hyperactive beings and with matching rueful smiles they exchanged a last kiss before sitting up and stretching.
As Buffy reached for her clothes, she looked back over her shoulder at the still stretching vampire and said cheerfully, “When all this happiness wears off, I’m going to kick your ass for never telling me you were alive. You do realize that don’t you?”
“I’m countin’ on it, pet,” he said with a grin and a swat on her bare bum as she stood up.
Her only response was a glare that somehow didn’t carry any menace in it at all, and he laughed as he picked up his jeans, pulling them on swiftly and reaching for his shirt. When they were both dressed again, Buffy carefully looked away from him as she tried to be casual.
“So,” she said calmly, “What are you going to tell Anne?”
“The truth, I guess,” he sighed, shoulders slumping. “She deserves to hear it. And, from me,” he added firmly, wondering if the slayer was going to insist on some sort of payback for Anne’s attempt to separate them. “I think she’ll understand once she realizes I have my memory back. She knows how badly I wanted to remember things. And that it was a possibility that I would sooner or later.”
Buffy stared at him, her desire to march back into the shelter with Spike attached to her like a leech warring with her better nature which reminded her of how she’d felt watching him with Anne when neither of them were aware of her feelings. As badly as the vengeful slayer in her wanted to rub the other woman’s face in it, the sated and happy lover would not allow her to knowingly cause someone else that kind of pain and she nodded her understanding.
“But, you’ll tell her, right?” she asked anxiously. “Right away? You’ll tell her you remembered that you love me. That you can’t stay with her?”
The worry and uncertainly on Buffy’s face spoke to Spike’s heart in a way demands and ultimatums could not have and he swiftly crossed the room to hold her tightly.
“I’m going to tell her straight away, love. I promise you. Just don’t want to hurt her any more than I have to, and her seeing you with me…”
“I know,” she said, her words muffled by his shirt where she’d buried her face to hide her fear. “She’d feel like I did when I saw you with her.” She raised her eyes to stare into his. “I don’t think I want to do that to anybody else,” she said softly, leaning into the apologetic nuzzle he gave her face. “Even if she was trying to steal my vampire,” she finished in a mutter as she looked away again.
“She was trying to keep what she thinks is hers, pet,” he said soothingly, smiling in spite of himself at her possessiveness. “What would you have done in her place?”
“Thrown her through the window,” she growled, only half-kidding. “It’s a slayer thing,” she sighed when he raised his eyebrows at her. “It’s the only way I know how to deal with pain. On the plus side,” she said more cheerfully, “Did you know there are almost no vampires left in Rome? If you’d stayed dead, I’ll bet I would have cleaned out Europe within a couple of years.”
His rich laugh shook them both and he squeezed her tightly saying, ”Bloody hell, I love you, Buffy Summers. Love you so much.”
“I love you, too,” she whispered. “Do you believe me now?”
“I do, sweetheart. I do and I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am that I didn’t come looking for you as soon as I could. Think of the vampire un-lives I could have saved,” he finished, chuckling when she swatted at his chest.
“Very funny, fang face. Speaking of vampires, I guess it’s a little late to do a patrol now…”
As she spoke, her stomach growled and he began to lead her toward the door.
“It is, but we have time to get you something to eat before I have to worry about the sun. Let’s go get you fed, pet.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
It's safe to look again, folds. No more Anne! LOL