Chapter Twenty-Nine

The sound of the saw that Luke Holbrook was using to cut through the floor of the vault drove Angel out of the tunnels. He wasn’t surprised that Buffy followed him. Without actually discussing it they fell into step, side by side.

“Patrol?” she asked as they crossed the small playground where two children had been found a year ago, kicking off the Mother’s Opposed to the Occult incident that had nearly gotten Willow and Buffy burned at the stake by an angry mob. He had missed most of that and had gotten the denouement secondhand from Buffy and Willow on a night not unlike this one, only Willow had been on Buffy’s other side, occasionally breaking into an odd skip at a particularly exciting point in the narrative.

She had a very quirky and sometimes inappropriate sense of humor that made an awful kind of sense after he had met vampire Willow. If Spike turned her, Angel knew that he would make it his mission to hunt her and stake her. She would be entirely too dangerous to be left to make Spike rue the day he had come up with that bright idea.

“Patrol,” he agreed.

Buffy made a face. “It’ll be boring,” she predicted. “Post-apocalyptic demon activity is way down. The big battle at the high school thinned out the local demon population, I guess. It’s been quiet, except for Spike. Not that I’m complaining,” she added hastily. “Quiet is good.”

“How are you holding up?” he asked. She seemed preoccupied.

“Aside from feeling really stupid?” she asked. She had gone home at dinner time to check her email and the only message that she had was from Sara Engstrom, wondering if they had found Willow and if there was anything that she could do to help.

Buffy had composed a highly edited version of last night’s failed rescue mission with a postscript that she would keep Sara up dated.

Angel didn’t respond with a platitude about how it could have happened to anyone, or how they had all screwed up, or anything like that. He seemed to be thinking about something. though.

“Angel?”

He snapped out of it. “You aren’t stupid,” he said, and then realized that it sounded too prompted. “How do you see the exchange going down?”

She rolled the stake in her hand against her thigh. “It has to be face-to-face,” she said. “I’m not handing anything over to him without Willow being there.”

“What if he insists on a blind drop?” he asked.

She nodded, “Yeah, I thought about that, but I’ve got a hunch about this. I think he really means to make a trade,” she glanced over at Angel, wondering when he would disagree with her. “He said that he would stay out of Sunnydale after he made the trade,” she told him. “I think that he thinks he means it, which might not last more than a few months, but—“

“He kept his word for a few months after he offered to help you defeat Angelus,” Angel finished the thought for her.

“You think I’m being naïve,” she guessed.

He smiled down at her. “If you had said that you thought that his attention span would extend past a few months, I’d think you were naïve,” he corrected. “Willow said he made a similar promise to her.” They had been over both conversations a couple of times already, sifting through what was said for significance.

Angel’s theory that Willow was now on the road to actively assisting Spike had seemed a moot point to Buffy. Willow couldn’t be held entirely responsible for anything that she did under duress and Spike wouldn’t hesitate to use every weapon at his disposal to frighten her. She didn’t quite buy it either. Everything Willow had managed to do so far argued against her helping Spike in any way.

“You think he’ll make the trade and go on his merry way,” she concluded.

“No. I think that he’ll make the trade and start settling old scores and you and I are at the top of his list of old scores,” Angel told her. “But, I don’t think he’ll torture and kill all your friends. It’s not his style. Direct, to the point, and pretty much immediate.” Unlike Angelus who would have turned it into a big, hairy, evil production number.

Buffy nodded. “I can deal,” she insisted.

“I know,” he told her. He did know it. In the back of his head he had a few ideas rolling around about how to spare her all of this and deal with the responsibility that Spike was to him. There was a time, in China, a century ago, when he could have erased the worst of the legacy that he had visited on humanity by taking Dru and Spike out of the equation, and they would have never seen it coming. There were other times in the last century. He had always kept his ear to the ground for rumors about them, and it would have been so easy to have hunted them down.

He never did it. He never gave it a lot of thought, and every day or every other day, someone died somewhere for that. His desire to stop Spike now didn’t have anything to do with making sure Buffy was safe from him. It had everything to do with the responsibility he felt for what Spike did. What Angelus taught him to do. What he suspected that Spike was doing and would do in the future if he had decided that Willow was a nice, shiny bauble to play with.

“I don’t know if I can,” he admitted. “I’d do anything to bring her home for you—except set Spike free to do whatever he wants without any way to stop him.”

Buffy stopped. “There is no except,” she said. “There is no except. We did this before, and we found a way. We will find another way.”

She was waiting for him to agree with her, and he considered lying to reassure her. Forced to make a terrible choice once before, she had done the right thing, but not without cost. He had come to Sunnydale to help her bear those burdens, before he had ever really known her. Now he did know her, and he had seen her walk this fine line before without failing. The soul had given him many things, some of which were almost unendurably painful, but the purpose sprang from her existence and the hope sprang from her resolve.

“We’ll find a way,” he agreed.




There was a pay phone between the two restrooms. Willow had noticed it the first time she had come back to the ladies room by herself, and now she stared at it. She didn’t have any money. Did you have to have money to make a collect call? What was the point of making a collect call from a place that they were leaving anyway? With a sigh, she went into the bathroom. She really didn’t have to go, but she wasn’t sure when they would be stopping again, so she made herself go through the motions and then washed her hands and her face for good measure.

Her best ideas hadn’t worked out very well, which didn’t stop her brain from manufacturing more ideas. They sounded increasingly ineffectual and stupid to her. It was depressing.

There was a certain amount of stalling involved. Then she came out of the bathroom and stood in the open archway, looking into the restaurant and the convenience store. Spike was nowhere in the vicinity. She looked from right to left, moving out of the doorway, wondering where he was. When she felt his cool hand on the back of her neck, she gave a little yelp of surprise that made him laugh. He gave her a nudge. “Let’s go,” he said.

He had come from behind her? Vampires went to the bathroom? It seemed unlikely. She started to say so but when she turned her head, looking up at him she noticed the way he was licking his lower lip.

She looked around the restaurant, trying to figure out who was missing as the hand at the back of her neck pulled her along with him. It was her imagination. He hadn’t just killed someone. There hadn’t been time for it. Had there?

When they got to the car he walked her around to her side and opened the door for her before walking around to the driver’s side, looking like he was in no particular hurry in the glimpses she managed to catch of him through the streaks of paint. Once behind the wheel he looked over at her questioningly. “Seat belt?” he reminded her, and then smirked, “Unless you want to slide over here?”

She fastened the seat belt, half convinced that she was imagining things. She knew that he had been feeding all along, but without Georgia or a minion to baby-sit her while he was gone, she had no intention of making it easy for him to kill.

It wasn’t much, but it was something. The depression that she felt in the bathroom started to lift a bit. She could be a liability.

He lit his umpteenth cigarette and Willow rolled the window down on her side of the car. The fresh air hitting her face and the improved visibility were nice. “Where are we going?” she ventured to ask.

“South,” he sounded vague about it.

“Where are we stopping?”

“Haven’t decided,” he said, and then gestured to the glove box. “There’s a map in there if you want to pretend that there’s a plan and that you are participating in the decision.”

She tilted her head to one side. “You pretty much live in the moment, don’t you?”

He flicked ash out the driver’s side window. “Pretty much,” he agreed. “You are thinking, if I were a vampire—“

“No, I wasn’t,” she refuted.

He glanced over at her. “Sure you were. If I were vampire, I’d know exactly where I would be at dawn,” he mocked. “Except it isn’t that complicated. The world’s full of places to get out of the sun. You know this. You live in Sunnydale, and it’s a rabbit warren of tunnels, crypts, the mall, movie theatre, and so on. Stayed in a movie theatre once. Me and Dru. We went to a late show, and we stayed after it was over. Killed everyone but the projectionist and made him run the movies for us and then sold tickets and ran the concession stand for the matinee.”

It was an insight she could have gone without. “Who ran the concession stand?” She really could not see Drusilla waiting on people.

“Dru,” he said. “Sort of. She pretty much told people to take whatever they wanted, which, in retrospect, was a bit of a mistake, because that’s where the profit is at the movies.” He chuckled at the memory.

“What happened to the projectionist?”

“Probably killed him,” he said. “I don’t remember. What was the name of the cow you just ate a part of?”

She frowned at that. It probably was all the same from his point of view, but it reminded her of something that a farmer had said on a field trip that she went on in middle school when she was toying with becoming vegetarian. He pointed to a field of cows and said, “If you didn’t eat them, we wouldn’t breed them, and they wouldn’t exist.”

It didn’t change her mind about being a vegan. Bean curd accomplished that, but it did make her decide that there was more than one side to the moral issue of consuming animals.

People would still be there if vampires didn’t exist to eat them. And people would still die whether vampires killed them. Dying was inevitable. She had taken anatomy and physiology in her senior year and had been struck by how much the skeleton was like armor. It wasn’t just a piece of physiological architecture. Skulls and rib cages protected the most vital organs. Virtually every organ system had defenses that had evolved to meet the most common threats to survival.

These were not perfect defenses. People died of disease, old age, or from injuries. People died. Sometimes they were killed. People killed people. Living in Sunnydale, it wasn’t the most obvious thing, but it happened. People killed people. Vampires killed people. Why people? Angel survived on animal blood without any ill effect. Why kill what you once were? It was like a form of cannibalism.

He was right. If she were a vampire, she would have a plan. She gave Spike a sideways look. He had kind of not so vaguely alluded to the possibility that he could kill her and turn her. Then she’d be ‘make a plan’ second banana Willow to Spike’s ‘I do what I please’ live in the moment approach to things. Wow. No wonder Angel and Spike had issues. Angel was probably big on making lists and rules.

To give herself something to do, she got the map out. The glove box was the kind with a light bulb, so she used the open end of it to prop the map on so that it was enough in the light to read. She had to loosen the seat belt and wriggle forward to read it. After consulting the map and checking road signs and mile markers, Willow concluded that they really were traveling south and that they were approaching Fresno. She refolded the map and put it away, sitting back in her seat.

It didn’t mean that they were going to Fresno. “If I ask a question, are you going to tell me another story about killing people?”

He smiled at that, but didn’t bother to add the modifier. “What’s the question?”

“You aren’t going to Sunnydale, are you?”

“Right now? No,” he shook his head. “Though, I have lots of stories about killing people in Sunnydale. Like that night at your school—“

“I was there. Skip the replay,” she cut him off. “You said that you’d leave everyone in Sunnydale alone,” she plowed on.

He shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I said I wouldn’t kill your friends,” he corrected, “which is off if they are trying to kill me, but I don’t think we’ll make a trade in Sunnydale, if that’s what you are getting at. There was a time when I wouldn’t have said this, but Sunnydale is the Slayer’s territory. You don’t go into your enemy’s territory with something they want with anything less than an army.”

She pursed her lips. “No, that’s not what I was getting at,” she said. “Why not go to Sunnydale? This thing—the Gem of Amara? It’s there, isn’t it? Why not go there? You said it yourself, there are a lot of places to hide in Sunnydale, and,” her voice rose a bit, “no one would expect you to be there.”

“Where do you feature yourself being in this scenario? Hanging out with your good friend Spike in a vampire lair in Sunnydale?” he shook his head at that. “Nice try, pet.” He tried to remember when he had ever mentioned the Gem of Amara in front of her and couldn’t. Maybe when he was on the phone with the Watcher? He thought back. “How do you know about the Gem of Amara?”

“Angel told me. Gem of Amara. He said it would make you unstoppable—whatever that means, because Angel and Buffy haven’t been big with the stopping of you. They have the thwarting, but not the actual stoppage.”

His eyebrow lifted. “Don’t suck up, Red. I know I told you to go back to being harmless and helpful, but sucking up is beneath you. Your Slayer put me in a wheelchair,” he sounded grim.

“It was pretty much a bad year all around,” she put in. “Major trauma—I’m not sucking up. That’s true. You might have been in a wheelchair, but you got out of it.”

“Got out of it, beat the crap out of Angelus, lost Dru,” he summed up. “What’s your damage?”

She propped her feet on the dashboard, frowning. It was hard to explain, and it shouldn’t have been. Ms. Calendar was dead. Kendra was dead, and though she hadn’t known her nearly as well, she died trying to protect them. Well, mostly Willow, as she tried to complete the curse. In the immediate aftermath of the confrontation at the mansion, Willow had been sure that the curse had worked and that Buffy and Angel had been reunited. Days passed, stretching into weeks, and that confidence had crumbled.

“Knowing that even when you win, that the cost of it never really goes away,” she said after a long moment.

He glanced over at her, moderately surprised that she had an answer at all.






Harmony was more than happy to tell them what she knew; unfortunately, since she didn’t know what was important to tell them they were forced to listen to a blow-by-blow account of her adventures from getting ditched in San Francisco to her arrival in Sacramento.

Colin seemed patient, but for the death grip he had on the steering wheel as Harmony droned on, her chin propped on her arms resting across the back of the front seat of the Mercedes-Benz that Spike had left them with, mostly to spare himself the trouble of ditching the car. The lawyers had taken care of the license and registration issue. There were new plates on the car and the owner listed on the registration had been. Before they had settled the bill the female lawyer had a lot of questions to ask about Willow, and unfortunately Harmony had been there so she answered them.

Georgia now had her last name, home address, and the names of her friends, including the Slayer. She was embarrassed about letting Willow get the best of her, but that didn’t necessarily rule out her long-term plans.

The Gem of Amara was, from Colin’s reaction, a fairly big deal. How big a deal she would find out later. Colin’s reluctance to talk about it in front of Harmony meant that it was too important to discuss in front of her, and that Colin had decided that she was potentially useful, so talking in front of her and staking her later was not an option in the immediate future.

They had gone back to San Jose. Harmony’s new obsession was how to de-minionize herself. Apparently the older vampire they had encountered, who was almost certainly the infamous Angel or Angelus, had let Harmony in on the fact that she was a sire-less minion. Georgia thought it was one of those silly snobberies that you found amongst older vampires, but she had never been cast in the same position, so it was easy for her to dismiss it as a minor issue. Colin actually seemed a bit . . . not exactly sympathetic, but more willing to acknowledge that it was a big handicap.

A chipped fang was a handicap.

At least in San Jose it was possible to get away from Harmony, only she was actually starting to prove to be more entertaining than Georgia would have thought. Her plan was to put flyers up at a few demon bars advertising for minions. It was one of the dumbest and funniest things that Georgia had ever heard of. The whole interview to be a minion concept seemed to be largely based on an ex-boyfriend interviewing drummers and Harmony’s cheerleading career. She was poring over magazines to get an idea about how to build a more professional-looking wardrobe and she had her hand-lettered flyer designed and ready to go to Kinkos after she managed to build up enough money to get it done.

Georgia suggested that she go with the vampire retail model and just kill a late night Kinkos clerk, but Harmony had pointed out that she didn’t actually know how to operate a copier, and how could you argue with that?




They pulled off the highway on the other side of Fresno and Spike chose a run down hotel that from the shape of the raised letters on the painted over sign towering in the parking lot had once been a Hyatt Hotel.

“I don’t want to stay here,” Willow balked.

“What?”

She shook her head. “Nope. Let’s find another place,” she said firmly.

He turned to her, one hand on the steering wheel. “What makes you think that I care about what you want?”

Her eyes widened indignantly. “You did. You asked me what I wanted to do,” she told him, and then when he looked blank, she shook her head. “I knew it! You didn’t care about what I wanted to do—I mean, obvious! If you cared about what I wanted to do I wouldn’t be kidnapped. It was just a lame excuse to have sex on the bathroom counter and for those of us with body temperature who bruise—no, thank you.”

He looked at her like she had lost him a mood swing ago. “The jury is still out on the brain damage issue,” he muttered. “That was hours ago, and I asked you what you wanted to do, not what you didn’t want to do.”

She crossed her arms over her abdomen and then grimaced and wiggled away from the seat back with a small suction sound were the skin between her shirt and the waistband of her pants parted with the Naugahyde. “Fine. I want to go to an all-night drug store. Or Walmart,” she said. “I need stuff.”

“We went shopping earlier,” he pointed out. “What stuff could you possibly need?”

“Toothbrush, dental floss, mouth wash, a brush, deodorant,” she tried to limit herself to true necessities.

“For Christ’s sake,” he grumbled, realizing that she had had all of those things but since he hadn’t told her that they would not be returning to the Marriott, she hadn’t brought any of them with her when they left. A mental picture of Willow walking around with a plastic bag filled with toiletries and a fresh change of underwear made him smirk.

“Well, that’s a lesson to you to be prepared next time,” he told her.

“I’m human and sweaty. I ate a cheeseburger with onions,” she argued. “I don’t have your overdeveloped sense of smell, and by tomorrow morning—“she shook her head, “I mean afternoon,” she corrected herself, “I’m going to gross me out. And you’ll be stuck with me in the Bates Motel,” she gestured at the building in front of them.

It was a winning argument. He put the Desoto back in gear and pulled through the overhang outside the hotel while Willow developed her rationale for her aversion to the hotel. “It’s creepy looking and Hyatt Hotels are highly over-rated, and it’s not even a Hyatt Hotel anymore.”

“Shut up,” he growled at her. “We’ll go get the crap you need, but we are staying here,” he told her. “Be glad that it’s not a crypt or a cave or the former home of a nice family of five and their silly sodding little dog—because that can be arranged.”

Two interstate exits later he found a CVS that was open all night and followed Willow as she made a beeline for the dental products. She was quick about it. No wandering around looking for more crap that she didn’t necessarily need. He grabbed her elbow and steered her towards the medical supplies, tossing a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a tube of antiseptic ointment, a package of gauze and a roll of white tape into the plastic basket she had picked up at the door.

He paid at the register and let her carry the bag out to the car.

There was a Best Western a block in front of the interstate ramp and he gave up, glancing over at her to gauge her reaction. She was trying to look like she wasn’t noticing the change in plans. After they were checked in and the car was unloaded, Willow fled to the bathroom to take a shower. Deciding that she was safely preoccupied, Spike picked up the ice bucket and went to look for dinner. Despite being a public accommodation, a hotel room door was relatively secure. The fire code demanded that they be fireproof and while the locking mechanisms were no obstacle for a hungry vampire, they tended to leave definite signs of forced entry that would draw lots of unwanted attention.

The other hotel looked better for a late-night crowd. This one was quiet. Smiling to himself he spotted the sign for the ice machine and cocked his head, listening for a second. He picked a door near the ice machine and gave the doorknob an un-stealthy rattle before walking on. He filled the ice machine and went back the way he came.

A sleepy-looking woman in her late forties was standing in the open doorway, bending down to pick up her complimentary newspaper. When she saw his feet, she stood up, clutching the paper to her chest looking alarmed.

“Woke you up?” he guessed. “Bloody security guards checking the locks. It sounds like someone is trying to get in your room, you know? I’d call the desk and complain,” he told her.

She pushed a wave of frosted blond hair away from her forehead, relaxing slightly. “I will,” she said. “I hate sleeping in a strange place, and that doesn’t help at all.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Spike agreed. Too easy, and a little too old for his tastes, but that was the luck of the draw.



Getting ready for bed had not become less awkward. Willow brushed her teeth, flossed, and brushed her teeth again. The Best Western was not the sort of hotel that provided fluffy complimentary bathrobes. She had rinsed her undergarments in the sink and they were hanging on the towel rack to dry. That left her with the silky pink and white outfit she had worn all day that smelled like cigarette smoke to sleep in, or one of her new t-shirts and jeans, which was bound to be uncomfortable.

She put the Capri pants and top back on, leaving the ends that tied in front loose. When she came out of the bathroom, she found Spike sitting in a chair that he had pulled over to the foot of the bed, sorting out the first aid supplies he had added to the basket. He gestured to the foot of the bed. “Have a seat,” he said, getting up to go into the bathroom. He came back with a towel that was still folded into a compact square and he set it on the end of the bed.

“I can do it myself,” she said when he picked up the bottle of rubbing alcohol.

He ignored her. Big surprise there. She thought he would wet one of the gauze pads that he had laid out with the alcohol but he just dribbled it over her toe instead, holding her foot still with one hand. The excess alcohol was trapped by his hand. “Hold still,” he said, wetting both hands with rubbing alcohol before setting the bottle on the floor.

The coldness of the alcohol had made her flinch, but it wasn’t as stingy as she might have expected. He shifted her foot, slipping one hand under the heel of her foot to cup it in the palm of his hand and started rubbing the base of her great toe in a circular motion.

“You don’t want to tape up your toe and trap a lot of dirt under the bandage,” he explained.

She had stopped noticing how sore her foot was from trying to stay off the toe, but the soreness was being massaged away and it felt so good that a moan escaped her lips. Her eyes flew to his face and the corners of his lips twitched a little with a suppressed grin. Smacking him wasn’t an option, so she closed her eyes instead and tried not to moan again when he started working on the underside of her toe. The alcohol felt cool and dry. Periodically he paused to add more, not stopping with her great toe, but working around all of her toes and the ball of her foot while the hand cupping her heel rotated.

She leaned back on her elbows, a little stunned by the fact that he was doing this, and not completely sure that his motives were purely philanthropic. She was sure they weren’t. It was a reduction of foot pain seduction technique, and God, didn’t that sound weird in her head. It was going to work, but then the awkwardness of getting ready for bed was solely in relationship to the probability that once she was in bed they were going to have sex and it was going to be a lot better than it ought to be.

When he was finished with the alcohol foot rub, he dabbed antiseptic ointment on her toe and wrapped it in gauze before taping it up tight enough to be secure without cutting off her circulation. She wiggled her toe experimentally while he swept the supplies back into the plastic bag.

Then he stood up and started undressing, which she took as a signal to retreat to the other side of the bed. She didn’t get much farther than rolling over on her hands and knees to crawl over to the other side of the bed when he caught her ankle and tugged her back. “Where do you think you’re going?”

She looked over her shoulder at him, feeling her heart speed up. He sounded amused, but he wasn’t smiling. Uh-oh.

His hand left her ankle and he finished taking his t-shirt off. She shifted one knee forward, inching away from him. “I wouldn’t if I were you,” he told her, unfastening his belt. He drew it through the belt loops, folding it in half in his hands. “What do you think is going to happen if I don’t feed?”

She closed her eyes, cringing inside when she felt the doubled-over belt move over the curve of her ass, her mind a great big blank.

He tapped the leather against her ass. “That was a question,” he reminded her.

“I don’t know,” she tried not to panic.

“That’s not an answer,” he said patiently, sounding almost like her father for a moment. I don’t know was not an acceptable answer to her father. He wasn’t mean about it and her parents did not believe in any form of corporal punishment, but the patient phrase made her stomach knot with tension. Her parents never hit her, but sometimes, after a marathon family meeting, she wished that they had.

“Tell me what you think might happen,” he purred.

“No,” she shook her head vehemently, scooting across the bed, the slippery silk pants sliding on the quilted polyester bedspread. Her goal wasn’t specific. Away from him pretty much summed it up. His arm went around her waist and she found herself sliding backwards, the stupid silk Capri pants provided no traction on the quilted polyester bedspread. For some reason it reminded her of one of those movies from the sixties with Doris Day shamelessly mugging for the camera as she was forced to do something stupid for the sake of a bad script.

“I’m not playing the vampire version of twenty questions with you,” she told him. “If you are going to hurt me, then just do it, but don’t you dare think that I’m going to cooperate while you hurt or humiliate me.”

He gave a mirthless chuckle, but he dropped the belt, which was a huge relief until she found herself pulled back against his body, one arm snug around her waist.

“Right then,” he seemed to come to a decision. He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head back and to the side. “A healthy human can feed a single vampire for days,” he told her. “Angelus kept one alive for three weeks once,” his upper lip curled. “Lot of trouble if you ask me. The secret is in the diet. You have to feed a little bit of the blood back to them. Inevitably, they die. Anemia, disease, heart failure,” he rattled off a short list of the causes of death. “But before that happens it’s like they get everything human sucked out of them until there’s not enough left to turn.”

The whole time he had been talking she could feel his lips hovering over her neck and she tried to pry his arm away from her waist, using both hands and as much leverage as she could get by simultaneously pushing her shoulders into him while she arched her back trying to break his hold on her. When she felt his tongue on her throat she shuddered and clawed at his arms with her fingernails.

She wasn’t aware that she was the one chanting a litany of “No, no, no,” in rising pitch and volume until he gave her a slight shake to get her attention. “Scream, and I kill anyone who decides to be nosy,” he told her.

Figuring that he had finally gotten through to her, he gave her a little shove that sent her sprawling to the bed.

Her foot lashed out and caught him in the stomach. It hardly registered.

Blood oozed from a half dozen small scratches on his forearm. He licked it off. She tried to kick him again and he batted her foot aside effortlessly, laughing a little at her expression. If looks could kill, he’d be a big pile of dust.

She stared at him for a moment. One part of her brain was processing the implied threat. He couldn’t think that any power on earth would induce her to drink blood. Or that she was going to say, now that you’ve explained it, go kill someone and have a nice night. The other part of her brain was registering the fact that he thought this was amusing. A more primitive part of her brain saw him licking the blood off his arm and was deeply satisfied to have drawn it.

She should have been properly cowed, down for the count, but he could see the resolution firming up in her face. He had frightened her, he had no doubt of it. The whole time he had held her against him he could feel the frantic beat of her heart and the way that she was breathing in hard gasps. She was furious about being frightened. It was one threat too many, and if she could have backed it up, she would have kicked his ass. It was just her bad luck that she was badly overmatched.

He met her when she launched herself at him with a low cry of pure rage. She was smart enough to go for his eyes, the somewhat chipped French manicure that Georgia had provided her with, stained with blood from where she had gouged his arm. A single hard punch to her chin would have snapped her out of it, but he found that he really didn’t want to hurt her. He grabbed her wrists and used his weight to take her down, straddling her hips to keep her from kicking him again. The slippery silk worked for her at first, and he waited for her to figure out that she was losing, but the way that she was twisting under him to throw him off of her was extending her chest and neck in a way that was making the prospect of her hurting herself all too inevitable.

He sat up, releasing her arms. She swung at him wildly, and he blocked her with one arm. “The deal is off then?” He made it sound like a conclusion based on her behavior.

It didn’t register at first, but when it sank in, she stopped struggling, staring at him in furious disbelief that slowly faded as the import of the statement reached her.

He felt something. It wasn’t pity exactly. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it made him shake his head. “Oh, don’t!” he scolded. “I’m a vampire, you silly bint. A little pre-shag fight is like foreplay,” he joked. “I just wanted to get your attention before you hurt yourself.”

Her chest was rising and falling unevenly. He hoped it wasn’t the harbinger of another crying jag. She wasn’t particularly dainty or tragic about it when she was crying. She was all hiccupping sobs and a runny nose.

When he was sure that she had calmed down enough not to resume hostilities, he eased his weight off her hips, rolling to his side next to her. “You fight like a girl,” he told her, fondly contemptuous. “You do better when you aren’t angry. Taking Pete and Georgia down with a sneak attack? That was brilliant. Made me proud of you,” he said propping his head on his folded arm.

She flinched when his hand came near her face, but he ignored it and pushed her still damp hair off her brow. “They were probably thinking that I’d lost it, not being able to keep one small human from being a pain in the ass.“

Colin’s views on the subject flashed through her mind. Her own mixed feelings about her captivity settled like a weight on her chest. She turned her head slightly to look at him. “I don’t understand you,” she said.

He smiled at that. “You’re a bit of a puzzle to me,” he told her. “What don’t you understand?”

“Colin said that I ought to be kept on a diet of bread and water and—“ the rest of what he said had to do with being fed on regularly and used as a sex partner, only the way he said it was a bit more crude, and that wasn’t really something she wanted to put out there between them.

He could fill in the blanks. He traced her hairline, smoothing his thumb over the widow’s peak that gave her face a sweetly heart shaped aspect. “Yeah,” he sighed, making a face. “Not really my thing, pet,” he told her. He started to tell her that she was either food to him or she wasn’t. There was not a lot of middle ground for him in that determination, but he was pretty sure that she wouldn’t get it. He leaned over and kissed her, feeling the tension creep back into her body.

The strong taste of cinnamon flavored mouthwash almost completely obscured the taste of her to him. He took her lower lip between his, tracing it with the tip of his tongue until he got used to it, exploring the contours of her face with his fingertips. He wasn’t being entirely honest with her. The idea of her on her knees at his feet had a certain appeal, but he recognized that he had pulled back from that on more than one occasion with her. He felt her breath fluttered against his upper lip as her mouth became more pliant under his, lips parting. The tip of her tongue brushed his, and retreated. He didn’t chase it, switching his attention to her upper lip with its crisp bow shape.

She was—he liked her the way she was. She didn’t quit, she didn’t know how to quit. She’d give in, but she never entirely gave up and when it was all said and done, when she went back to her life in Sunnydale to fight the good fight—and he recognized now that he probably would see to it that she got home—she would never know that not giving up had made a difference to him.

Georgia was going to have her nose out of joint about that.

His hand left her face. She could feel it touching her almost randomly, his thumb moving over her and then under the opening of her top as his hand cupped her shoulder. His thumb rested briefly in the slight notch between her arm and her collarbone before slipping out as his hand moved down her back, and it was impossible to say if it was his hand turning her to her side or if it was her turning into him until she laid her hand on his side, feeling his rib cage under her hand.

The lack of movement from breathing was disconcerting, but at the same time it made her aware of the subtle play of muscles under his skin. The smallest movements of his arm changed the aspect of the muscles under her hand, and she tentatively explored the shape of him.

When he started kissing her she had closed her eyes out of instinct. Her eyelids drifted up while he kissed the corner of her mouth. In the confined space of her field of vision she saw his cheek, the faintest shadow of beard stubble and then she closed her eyes again, kissing him back, not nearly as well or as creatively. He moved the arm folded under his head to curl it around her head, moving her hair away from her neck.

Distracted by the gooseflesh inducing stroke of his fingers over her neck, she lifted her head a little, drawing back from him, trying to gauge his intentions.

“Are you going to bite me, beat me, hurt me?” he voiced her fears.

Feeling like he was mocking her again, Willow pulled her hand off him.

He caught her wrist and dragged her hand back to his mouth. There was blood drying under her fingernails from where she had scratched him. She noticed it about a second later than he did and curled her hand into a fist, trying to hide her fingertips. He gave her wrist a small shake. “Oh, come on,” he pouted. “It’s mine,” he pointed out, bringing her hand to his mouth, his tongue tracing the seam formed between the base of her thumb and her palm and then the exposed underside of her pinkie, trying to loosen her grip.

His blunt teeth delicately grasped her pinkie, tugging on it until she uncurled her finger the slightest bit and he took it in his mouth, curling his tongue around it while he held her gaze, steady and sure, teasing her finger with his tongue, letting his teeth lightly scrape the underside of her finger, sucking on the tip. The pull of his mouth on her pinkie had loosened her grip. He moved on to the next finger, making a small sound of pleasure when he found a trace of his blood on her finger.

Willow shivered and closed her eyes, and behind her closed eyelids, the lamplight in the room was almost like sunlight. She could almost pretend that she was lying on the lawn outside of the high school, under a tree, with Oz. It occurred to her then, in an odd moment of recognition, that Oz liked her hands. He hadn’t ever said it, but sometimes when they were curled up together, he would slip the back of his hand under her palm and lift her hand up, opening his fingers for hers to slip in between. When they were in the library, researching, he would find her hand under the table and run his fingers over the back of her hand.

But he had never done anything like this, and she wished that he had as Spike reached her third finger, pausing to nibble on the base of her thumb and to nuzzle her damp fingers before gently biting the tip of her middle finger, his tongue flicking over her fingertip in a caress that she recognized that made her squeeze her thighs together. Her eyes flew open. Spike was no longer holding her wrist. His hand was resting lightly on her rib cage, his thumb moving back and forth over the silk top, molding the fabric to the underside of her breast.

Belatedly she understood what he was doing. He was seducing her. She could see it in his eyes. Patience, and intent wedded to a slumberous desire and a hint of amusement. It stung a little, that he thought she was so oblivious.

“You must think I’m stupid,” she said.

He snorted, shaking his head around the finger that he was sucking on like it was a candy cane. “Hardly,” he contradicted when he let her finger slip from between his lips. “I think you are amazing,” he told her with a small smile. “One small, clever, not-so-harmless girl.”

He leaned in to kiss her mouth. His hand moved from her rib cage to the small, flat buttons that held her blouse closed, undoing them one at a time between soft, lip biting kisses. When the blouse was open he slid his hand inside without pushing it out of his way, lightly stroking her skin with his fingertips, absorbing impressions of her warm, downy skin pebbling lightly with gooseflesh at the almost teasing lightness of his touch. He watched her eyes, curious about how she would react, and took her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, pinching it, careful not to pinch too hard and bruise her.

A tiny frown puckered her brow as she tried to process the sensation. His fingers relaxed, sweeping around her breast before tightening again and tugging on her nipple.

“What are you doing?” she asked, sounding wary.

He smiled, kissing her again. She was clever, and it was the third or fourth best thing he liked about her. “What’s it feel like?” he asked.

She blinked a couple of times, obviously having a hard time putting it into words. “It feels like you are conducting a survey,” she said.

He laughed at that. “That’s good,” humor and approval warming his tone. He twisted her nipple, making her gasp. “I’m figuring out what you like,” he said. “You like that, don’t you?”

“It's better than being beaten with a belt,” she conceded resentfully.

He took her chin in his mouth, sucking on it while his fingers tugged and twisted her nipple with gradually increasing force until a pained sound escaped her and she tried to shift away from him. Immediately he stopped, pushing back the fabric covering her and bending his head to her breast to lave her abused flesh, a soft, soothing sound rumbling in his throat.

He took her nipple into his mouth, sucking on it and then releasing it. She found herself watching as he repeated the action, eyelids drifting closed, his face a picture of rapt concentration and pleasure that was as arousing as the sensations his mouth was creating. She knew with a sense of bewilderment that her body had started preparing itself for what would come. He eased her over on her back, kissing his way down her abdomen to the waistband of her pants, slewing around at the waist, going to his knees, his half undone jeans slipping down his hips as he rubbed his cheek against the front of her pants, his chin grazing her clitoris. The silk clung to her because she was wet there and he did it again, much more deliberately this time, pressing a small kiss to the slightly damp spot that was forming while he found the button over her left hip and the zipper, releasing both and pushing the fabric out of his way.

He sat up then, no longer playful. Grabbing the open sides of her blouse, he pulled her up to sit and then pushed the blouse off her shoulders. It fell to her elbows and he would have left it there, trapping her arms as he pulled her pants off her legs, but she finished taking it off, drawing her knees up to her chest when she was naked. The air conditioning in this hotel room didn’t run as cold as the one at the Marriott had or the room wasn’t sealed as tightly. There was a hint of humidity in the air.

She wrapped her arms around her legs as he sat in front of her, his legs open on either side of hers, bent at the knee. She could have used his knees for arm rests and found herself looking down at one of his feet, curving in, almost touching her hip. Oz had feet like a duck, with a narrow heel and a wide instep and toes that were almost pretty. He had let her stencil piggies on his toes once in the pre-Xander betrayal phase of their relationship.

Spike’s feet were longer and narrow with a well-developed arch. His second toe was slightly longer than his great toe. He was still wearing his jeans. That figured. She was naked. He was not. Not that she wanted him to be naked, but equally naked. It was an issue of parity, not nakedness.

He picked up her injured foot to make sure her toe didn’t get squashed under him. “What are you thinking about?”

“Feet,” it was a more neutral topic than equal nakedness.

“Feet?”

She nodded. “Your feet aren’t hideous. No obvious deformities. No bunions. No disgusting toenails. Feet. The humble and unattractive body part.”

She shot him a quick, uneasy look. “Don’t say anything.” It was the sort of conversation that she might have had with Oz or Buffy or Xander and she felt odd and stupid about starting it with Spike, like she had inadvertently opened the drapes on something private.

She looked a little sad and a distance had crept into her eyes that had a lot to do with the fact that she was avoiding his eyes and anything else she deemed unwise to look at.

His hands cupped her ankles. “It won’t be much longer,” he speculated. “They’ll find the Gem of Amara and we’ll meet somewhere to exchange barbed comments and precious artifacts,” he leaned forward, lifting her hair to check the bruise on her forehead. “Let’s make the most of it. We can consider it a holiday.”

She looked skeptical. “A holiday?”

“Sure,” he found himself subject to her scrutiny.

“Isn’t your whole life pretty much one big holiday? It’s not like you have a job you need to get away from,” she pointed out. “Which explains Angelus wanting to destroy the world. He has that in common with Angel. Needing to have a mission and a job. Destroy the world, save the innocent. It’s all the same quixotic quest thing that is the unifying theme.”

He didn’t gape at her. He was a vampire, and evil, and not easily surprised—and how the fuck had he not noticed that? She was right. Good or evil, Angel made a job out of everything. He grinned. “That must be why he hates me so much. No work ethic,” he shifted his hands up her calves and watched her squirm a little as the back of his hands brushed the back of her thighs. It was a ticklish squirm. “What do you want to do?”

“Sleep in my own bed. Meet Buffy for mochas. Go to the beach and sit under a big umbrella with a book. Go to the Bronze,” she shrugged.

“Oh, come on,” he urged. “You can do better than that,” he coaxed. “What do you want to do?”” His hands returned to her ankles, gripping them lightly before tugging one ankle up, disturbing the modest arrangement of her legs. Scooting forward, he moved her ankle to the other side of his hip.

There was a flash of consternation on her face as she worked it out in her head like a series of moves on a chess board, calculating precisely when she would be sitting face to face with him, nearly in his lap, with her legs open wide enough to give him unimpeded access to her. The corners of her lips turned down and color climbed into her cheeks.

He ran his hand up her leg to where her arm was still wrapped around it just below her knee. Her pale upper arm was dappled with light brown freckles. It was hard for him to imagine her in sunlight. With her coloring, she probably burned easily. In the dark she had an ivory and pink glow that was distinctively human but no less attractive in contrast to the bluish whiteness of his skin. He dragged his fingernails over the underside of her arm, not hard enough to scratch her, but enough to dredge a reaction that spread down her rib cage to her breasts, judging from the way she hunched her shoulders.

Smiling to himself he moved her other ankle, forcing her arms to loosen their grip on her legs. It was more or less exactly what she had anticipated and for a moment her arms lifted, hovering uncertainly, trying to figure out some position that would support her posture and make her feel less exposed. She let her arms fall between her knees, crossing above the wrist, her hands bracing on her shins.

He grinned at her. “I thought you weren’t a circus performer,” he said, mocking her contortions.

She was too pleased with her solution to do anything but shrug her shoulders. “I’m comfortable.”

He lifted up and scooted a bit closer. With her arms laced through her open legs, there wasn’t a lot of anything she deemed important that was at his disposal, but her sides were unprotected, and she was very ticklish.

A wicked gleam lit up his eyes and Willow wondered what he was up to.

A second later she figured it out when his hands came to rest on opposite sides of her rib cage. For a moment his hands simply rested on her. Then he tilted his head to one side and his fingers started moving, very slow, and sometimes fast, just grazing her skin. She reacted instinctively, starting to draw her arms in and then she stopped when she realized what he was doing.

She gritted her teeth, concentrating on the increasingly smug smirk on his face when she twitched as his fingers found a particularly sensitive spot.

He flexed his fingers and she sucked in a startled breath, flinching. He laughed. Bastard. In a way, he wasn’t very good at it. Xander could have reduced her to breathless laughter and pleading in less than ninety seconds. His swirly, feathering, fingertip technique wasn’t laughter inducing, but it was making her skin prickle and the sensation was spreading, like an itch, working its way up her chest, making her close her eyes, gritting her teeth as the sensation crawled up her spine, to her scalp.

“Argh!” she let go of her legs, wriggling as she pushed his hands away from her.

In the next second she was on her back with the quilted polyester bedspread under her, which she took advantage of by moving to rub her goose pimpled skin against the bedspread. Spike loomed over her, settling his weight partially between her legs and making an appreciative sound that made her open her eyes and glare at him. He moved his hips suggestively and one of the buttons from his half undone jeans pinched her.

“Ow!” she complained, loudly, putting more into it than the actual discomfort that was felt. The goosepimply feeling was doing odd things to her. The weight of him pressing down between her legs made her want to wrap her legs around him. It was a horrifying thought.

He was holding both of her wrists in his hands, on either side of her head. He leaned forward to nibble on the underside of her arm. “Faker,” he sounded amused. “You get pitchy when something really hurts,” he told her. His eyes drifted over her naked chest, lingering on the small scabs on her breast where he had bit her a few days ago.

She saw where his attention had drifted and squirmed to shift herself out from under him, using her feet on the mattress for leverage. The seams of his half-unbuttoned jeans rubbed against her, applying friction where the lower half of her body craved contact. He bent his head to the spot and kissed it, running his tongue over the scab, chucking when she shuddered in fear and revulsion.

“Calm down,” he ordered. “I’m not going to bite you,” he lifted his head. She had her eyes squeezed shut and her head was thrown back as she tried to work her way backward, away from him.

His little lecture on the feeding habits of vampires might have been too effective, he decided. He meant to scare some good sense into her, but he had just scared her. He frowned, relaxing his grip on her wrists. With an inward shrug, he adjusted his position to let his elbows take most of his weight and let go of her wrists. The tempting curve of her neck beckoned, and he started kissing her throat. That got her attention.

Her hands went to his shoulders to try to push him away from her. He lifted his head to look at her. “Despite your efforts, pet, I’ve fed and I’m not feeling particularly hungry, so you are safe at the moment,” he told her.

Wary skepticism, a flash of something, like she had an idea of when he had fed, and he was only confirming her surmise, and a hint of relief followed by appalled recognition of the relief, worked their way across her face. She was so easily read that it should have been boring, but he found himself fascinated by the expressiveness of her face.

“I knew it,” she said, sounding resigned.

He wondered what she thought she knew. Her eyes had gone unfocused, and he thought that she was probably going back over the evening to when she thought that he had fed. He cupped her cheek, touching her lower lip with his thumb to loosen the grim line of it. He thought about asking her when and who she thought he had eaten. It was like sharing the kill, savoring it all over again, but she wasn’t a vampire and she wouldn’t be able to appreciate it. It was probably better if she didn’t know.

Her eyes were getting a little glassy. She was going to start crying again. He slid his hand under her neck, his fingers making small, soothing circles at the base of her skull. Telling her that she made him work for it was not going to make her feel better. He kissed the corner of her mouth and went back to her neck. It was a pretty neck. He worried at the scabbed-over bite mark on her neck with his lips and tongue, feeling the tension in her body increase with her heart rate. It was going to leave an unmistakable scar. He had mixed feelings about that. He really didn’t care for the notion of some human walking about with a bite mark of his making on their throat. Especially a bite mark like this one. He had bit her with only one real thought in mind—to subdue her.

That was part of how vampires kill. That first hard bite usually was enough to put a victim into shock, punching through an artery to use the natural processes of the circulatory system to get them to bleed out into your mouth. It wasn’t complicated, though when he was first taught to hunt, he made a mess of it like Harmony had. If he had meant to kill her he would have bit her again, seeking the artery that he had missed and it would have been quick.

A sobbing breath vibrated in her throat near his lips and he stroked her face and her hair, blindly. “Sssh,” he soothed. Yesterday she had been different. He hadn’t had to do anything to get her to cooperate with him. He showed her what he wanted when she faltered, moving her hand to the base of his cock and showing her how to stroke him when she took him into the warm cavern of her mouth for what was possibly one of the most inept blow jobs he had ever participated in. His hands had supported her upper body and guided her uncertain rhythm when she climbed on top of him.

He hadn’t given a lot of thought to her mood or what prompted her to be more aggressive. He had taken it at face value. Now he wondered what had been going through her head. What had made her so different yesterday and how much was it bothering her today? It made him want to stop and talk to her, which was such an odd impulse that he found himself frowning, annoyed with himself and her.

He lifted his head to look at her. She wasn’t crying. She was staring at the ceiling with a blank expression, from the look of it, trying to ignore what was happening. That wouldn’t do.

He sat up, looking down at her until a flicker of emotion crossed her face. Impatience? Her gaze shifted to him. Ah. Curiosity. Her arms moved, cautiously. She was testing the idea of covering herself somehow, to see if he would stop her. He finished unbuttoning his jeans, pushing them down his hips, removing them one leg at a time to kick them off the end of the bed while she got her arms under her and carefully pushed back away from him, feeling for the edge of the bedspread behind her with one hand.

Her gaze left him for a moment to look over her shoulder at the arrangement of linens half untucked around the flat pillows from their earlier rolling around on the bed. She bent her left leg at the knee to push against the mattress, nearing her goal.

Ignoring her odd behavior, he grabbed a handful of the bedspread on his side and tugged it down. The sheet was tucked in tightly under a thin blanket and he loosened that too. That got her moving. She slid in between the sheets with a sound that he could only classify as relieved. He got into bed beside her, turning off the light on his side of the bed, leaning across her to turn off the light on her side.

She rolled over on her side, near the edge of the bed, twisting the pillow under her around to pin it between her shoulder and her neck, drawing her knees up towards her chest. He frowned at her, trying to figure out how to interpret her behavior. He knew that he had frightened her. That had been the idea. It was either frighten her or beat her and he thought the later would create more trouble than it was worth, but seeing her huddled up like he had beaten her made him wonder if he hadn’t been wrong about that.

He lifted the sheet and blanket a bit to resettle them over him and the scent of her inside the sheets reached him. Clean from her bath earlier and slightly musky from arousal. He pushed her legs apart under the covers, feeling her take a deep breath, shivering a little as his hand moved over the back of her legs. When she started to clamp her legs together, he slapped the back of her thigh, just hard enough to sting.

She froze, tensing. He ran his hand over her thigh, eyes narrowing in the dark. He could see perfectly well. Her face was in profile to him, slightly behind her shoulder. When he slapped her, her eyes flew open and her lips parted, a soft sound slipping out. A little intrigued by the reaction, he nudged her legs apart, maneuvering his knee in between them. His hand slid between her legs to press up, his fingers spreading her open. He closed his eyes, resting his forehead on her back as he concentrated on how she felt to him.

She was wet. Not just damp, but ripely wet. No wonder she had been so anxious to dive beneath the covers. He found her clitoris and rubbed it, working his fingertips back and forth over it, feeling her arms tighten around the pillow she was hugging, feeling her fight her reaction to him.

He pushed her legs further apart, kneeling between them, one arm curving around her waist at the edge of the bed to keep her from falling off while his fingers found her clit, the other massaging her ass as the head of his cock butted up against her.

Experimenting with a theory that was slowly forming, he slapped her ass and pushed the head of his cock into her at the same time. She pushed back against him and he chuckled. “Aren’t you full of surprises,” he marveled. “Been wanting it a little rough?” he crooned to her rubbing her ass where he had slapped her. “Want me to do it again?”

“I hate you,” she muttered resentfully. “I really, really hate you.”

“Uh-huh,” his hands moved to her hips, holding her still as he deepened his penetration, eyes almost closing as he arched his back, taking a deep, unnecessary breath at the feel of her all warm around him. Her knee started to slip off the edge of the mattress and he caught it. “Shift over a bit,” he instructed.

“No,” she let go of the pillow to grab the mattress. “I’m not participating in this,” she announced, sounding a little breathless.

“Oh, you aren’t?” he snorted. “Just going to lay there, and take it? What’s wrong, Red? Why don’t you close your eyes and pretend that it’s dog boy doing you?” he taunted. “He’s probably all ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when you really want him to tell you to get on your knees, so he can fuck you harder.”

“No!’ she gasped, flinching as he smacked her ass again and then thrust into her deep, hitting bottom in her with enough force that for a second she stopped breathing as her abdominal muscles cramped.

“No?” he mocked, “I thought that was what you did when we fucked. Close your eyes and think about—“

“Stop it!” her voice cracked a little.

He withdrew from her, looming over her, one hand fisting in her hair. “No,” he spat, an inch from her face. “Quit playing the martyr. It doesn’t suit you. It’s none of my fucking business what you are thinking about, or what you care about, or why you do what you do. Tell me to sod off or go to hell. Grow a spine.”

She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to block him out. “Just do what you are going to do and leave me alone.”

He frowned at her, gentling his grip on her hair. “Too wordy and not very convincing,” he critiqued. “Try again.”

He had a tiny bit of warning in the way she tensed and then she let loose with her elbow catching him right below the collarbone. It probably hurt her worse than it hurt him but it didn’t slow her down in the least. “Don’t you ever mention him again,” she hissed at him.

He smiled. She was so much more appealing when she wasn’t cringing. “That’s better,” he allowed, grabbing her around the waist when she almost fell off the edge of the bed. He flopped over on his back, taking her with him. Now that she was mad she was ready to follow up, and was pushing away from him. It bore very little significant resemblance to fighting from his perspective. Fending her off with one hand, he made himself comfortable sitting against the headboard.

He gave her a slight push back and reached for the open beer bottle that he left on the table. It whipped across the table before he could grab it and shattered against the wall. “Bloody hell,” he sighed, frowning at her in annoyance. “Christ. I should have just let you cringe.”

The bedspread was half off the bed and Willow grabbed a piece of it to cover herself, pushing her hair out of her face.

The scowl was slightly softened by a hint of a smile as he watched her trying to catch her breath. He got up and went to the mini-refrigerator to get another beer and a soda for her. He came back to the bed and used a corner of the sheet to open the twist top beer, gesturing with it to the space beside him. “Come here,” he said.

Her eyebrows lifted in an expression of almost comical disbelief. He took a swallow of the beer and held up her soda. “Come here, Willow,” he repeated.

When she didn’t move, he shook his head and set the beer and the soda down. “Don’t even think about it,” he warned her. She was sitting on the bedspread. He grabbed two handfuls of it and tugged it and her across the bed, wrapping his arm around her neck before she could scamper off.

“Settle down,” he scolded. “Feeling a bit more back to normal?” he asked as if nothing had happened.

“No,” she blustered. “This isn’t normal.”

“I beg to differ,” he handed her the soda. “This is more direct. That little performance—beat me, because I’d rather be beaten?” he rolled his eyes. “Please. If you’d rather be beaten, we could have gone that route and I wouldn’t have given up a bloody thing or considered it a loss,” he tapped the bottom of her can of soda with his beer bottle in a toast. “And, I’d have been wrong,” he added.

She fumbled with the tab top of the can, looking confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“No, you probably don’t,” he concluded with a small smile, using the arm around her neck to settle her in under his arm. He kissed her forehead. She was warm and a little sweaty. “Can’t explain it. I don’t understand it myself, but—“ he shook his head, smoothing her hair back. “Hurt you a bit, did I? I felt you flinch,” he tilted his head to look at her face. “I suppose I should be more careful,” he offered.

It was sort of an apology. Willow stared at him for a moment and then reached out and pinched one of his nipples hard, twisting it. “That hurt too,” she told him.

He started laughing around a mouthful of beer. “Do it again,” he invited, wiping his mouth off on the back of his hand. “Harder.”

“Uh—no!” she took refuge in her soda, trying not to feel completely freaked out by his reaction. She had been more or less at the beginning of a catalog of rotten things he had done to her. “But if I had duct tape and the handcuffs—“

“Tease,” he complained. He slanted a look at her and sighed. “I know,” he said in a tone that bespoke dire consequences, “payback is a bitch, sweetness.”

“I could leave you handcuffed to a chair, with your mouth duct taped, and I’d cast a glamour on you to make you look like a circus clown and I’d leave you at a party with small children and, and puppies!”

He shook his head, disappointed in her. “That’s not payback, that’s just ridiculous,” he said, and then frowned. “I don’t dislike small children and puppies just because I’m evil.”

“Circus clown,” she repeated.

His lips twitched. “I’ll give you the clown part. It’s moderately creative and humiliating.”

“Or, it could be a pimple, like on your forehead, or some other place like that, and kind of gross, and see at first, you wouldn’t even know it. You’d just notice that the other vampires would be staring at it, but you can’t see your reflection, so you wouldn’t be able to figure out why.”

He kissed the top of her head. “That’s my girl,” he lifted his knee to drape his wrist over, holding the beer bottle lightly by the neck. The Best Western color scheme was brown and tan. Fake walnut veneers and fake Remington prints. It was a little bit too much a part of the mortal world for him. Things that people abandoned were more interesting to him. He tried to imagine it a bit more faded and moldy. He drew a bit of her hair between his fingers. “Here’s an idea that has probably never occurred to you,” he gestured to the room. “You are the prettiest and most interesting thing in this room.”

She looked around. “Wow. I beat the television?”

He tilted his head towards her. “It’s not on, is it?”

She nodded. “Good point,” she toyed with the tab top on her soda with her thumbnail. “We are having another one of those moments? Where the cartoon characters step out of the frame and takes a break, waiting for the cartoonists to draw the next story board?”

He nodded, “Something like that,” he agreed. “What are you planning to study?” He looked over at her and saw that she wasn’t following the topic change. “College, pet?”

“Oh,” she looked mildly startled that he would ask. “I don’t know. Computers? Maybe something in the sciences because I’m good at that. I thought that I might want to teach. After our computer teacher was killed, I taught her class, and I think I was pretty good at it.”

He finished his beer and set the bottle aside, finding her watching him warily. He took the soda can from her and set it on the table next to the bed with his empty bottle. “No flying objects, no fighting?” he proposed.

She gave him a slight nod. He turned to her, lifting her chin with his fingertips. “It’s not all bad, and I expect that bothers you more than anything else. But, I do think that you are amazing and that you’ll tuck all this away because it was never as important as why you did it,” he closed his eyes for a second. “And they’ll never know what you had to do or how hard it was, but I will.”

His eyes opened and she saw something there that made her throat go tight. “I’ll know, and I won’t forget,” he promised.

The idea that he wouldn’t forget should have been awful, and she knew that he was wrong. She would shove this to some dark corner, and like all monsters in dark corners she would feel its eyes on her.