Spike discovered that he could move again.

The sun had set about an hour ago, and although his first instinct was to run out the door he turned around and approached the Guardian slowly. He could tell himself that there was no point in running; she would draw him back to her easily enough. Or he could start acting like a man - well, a vampire - and deal.

Over the hours he had spent standing in a corner of the room watching the Guardian struggle to breathe, he had discovered yet another feeling.

Guilt.

< Brilliant. Compassion, concern and now guilt. What next? An unrequited attraction to teddy bears? >

If this was the way his Sire felt all the time, it was a wonder Peaches hadn't taken a walk at noon by now. And Spike was pretty sure the guilt was a hundred times worse for Angel - him being ALL soul-having and all.

Reluctantly, Spike kneeled in front of the Guardian. Her eyes were closed, her arms still wrapped protectively around her ribs and he couldn't tell if she was conscious or not. Gently, he pushed her hair away from her face. She flinched but did not open her eyes. Her lips moved slightly. He inched closer.

"No more, no... more..."

Spike frowned but didn't back off. Instead, he leaned forward, took the Guardian securely in his arms and stood.

She was bleeding again.

He laid her down on the bed then went into the bathroom and started filling the tub with hot water. He went back to the bedroom and finished undressing Morghane. When he saw the extent of the damage he had caused, his heart twisted in his chest.

< Didn't even know an unbeating heart could do that. >

He got a damp washcloth and wiped away the blood. He felt his fangs drop but fought to keep a human face. Wouldn't do for the Guardian to toast him when she woke up because she found a vampire salivating over her naked form.

By the time he was done, Morghane was shivering and whispering softly in a language he didn't understand. Maybe old Gaelic.

He scooped her up once again and deposited her in the hot water of the tub. She stirred and her eyes opened to small slits.

"Spike?" she murmured, puzzled. "What... what are you... doing?"

"Shut up, Guardian," he growled.

He got a clean washcloth, dumped some scented bath oil on it and began working the lather against her skin cautiously.

Morghane closed her eyes again. She didn't have the energy to try and figure out what was going on. At least he wasn't trying to hurt her anymore. So she was naked and a demon was giving her a bath. So what? At least it was a new experience.

Her 1700 years had left her quite jaded that way.

She really was dying, and her mind was the first to go.

Spike washed her neck, then her shoulders, her arms, her hands - to the very tip of her fingers. When the washcloth brushed against her left breast she tensed, but he quickly steered away to concentrate on her stomach. Then he moved on to her feet, her calves, her thighs.

She relaxed. It felt good. It had been so long since another being had shown her such kindness, she refused to question it.

She was dazed.

When the washcloth hiked between her legs, she jumped. She tried to open her eyes, but her lids felt like lead. "Spike..."

"Look, Guardian," he grumbled, "I'm trying to show I'm sorry here and it's the only way I know how. I'm new at this guilt nonsense, so shut up and enjoy before I change my mind, okay?"

She didn't answer. All basic verbal skills went out the window. She felt detached, like she was still dreaming. Could Guardians suffer from shock?

Her reasoning skills went the way of the verbal ones when Spike's blunt teeth closed around a nipple. She groaned.

"Sorry," he murmured around her flesh, thinking he had hurt her. He used his tongue to soothe the hardening nub and she moaned.

Spike quickly realized that the logistics were proving too much of a challenge. He rinsed Morghane, picked her up and rolled her in a towel. She could barely stand, she was sleepwalking.

Which, in his opinion, was just as well. At least she wasn't talking.

He carried her to the bed and deposited her on the mattress. He divested her of the towel with a flick of his wrist and went back to suckling on her right breast without pause. Goose bumps erupted along her sides. He lavished attention on each nipple, teasing them to hardness until she lifted a weak hand and he understood that she could not bear any more. His tongue traced a languid path along the sensitive underside of her breasts while his hands softly massaged her hips. He kissed her navel, careful to stay away from the wound left by the Sepulcher. It was an angry red, the size of a dollar coin; the flesh was charred around the edges and it refused to heal. He laved the bruises covering her ribs with the tip of his tongue. She was trembling and whimpering under his ministrations.

He kneeled between her parted legs, nipping at the inside of her thighs, taking in mouthfuls of skin, working her flesh with tongue and teeth. When he reached her apex, she was shaking, murmuring incoherently again.

He lifted his head briefly to look at the medieval beauty of her face. Morghane stared at the ceiling, unseeing. Her cheeks were flushed - from her arousal or the fever she had been fighting all day, he couldn't tell. She obviously wasn't all there.

Fine by him.

Startled, he realized that he did not expect to get any release for himself. It was his act of contrition, his gift to her, a reprieve from the constant pain. That said, it didn't mean he wasn't enjoying himself. After all, it had been a while - < Harmony just doesn't bear thinking about > - and he never did get the chance to play with Angelus and work out some pent-up tension. This could be fun.

Smiling thinly, Spike placed an openmouthed, wet kiss on her clit and she gasped. He moved away from her sex to lick the patch of velvety skin right above her soft curls. She smelled like jasmine, clean soap. And rain. Her muscles contracted under his lips and she raised her hips off the bed, longingly. He slipped a hand around her, caressing her haunches, tracing the cleft between the delightfully rounded globes and she mewled when he found the circle of sensitive skin there. Spurred on by her ragged breaths, the vampire lowered his mouth to her core.

She bucked against his face, arching her spine, bringing herself closer to his lips. He sipped the moisture off her silky inner lips, lapping unevenly - long strokes that started at the bottom of her sex and ended with a sweep of his tongue around the tight little mound of her pleasure. He could almost taste the blood pounding and flowing under the incredibly thin skin. Her clitoris throbbed with the desperate beating of her heart.

Making love to Drusilla in the good old days had always been a rewarding, if slightly frantic experience, but there was something to be said for the feeling of a warm, living body in his arms, under his mouth. The sex did not quite bring the same fulfillment as a good feed, but the mere whisper of the blood rushing in Morghane's veins to meet his questing tongue was enough to make him dizzy. In any other circumstances, Spike would have sunk his fangs in her soft thighs, or even better in the hot, wet flesh of her outer folds, drinking in both her blood and her dew before burying his hardness in her core to the hilt. The Guardian might even have liked it.

But he knew better than that. More than a century ago, Darla had entertained them with the tale of a young, starving vampire who had been stupid enough to choose the blood of a Guardian over death. The Guardian in question had lived to see another day, but the vampire, unprepared for the consequences of his act, had gone mad and met the rising sun. Spike had no intention of meeting the same fate. He wasn't THAT far gone over the edge yet.

Morghane contorted under his hands and Spike shook away his wandering thoughts. He attached his mouth to her left nipple and without warning thrust two fingers in her warm channel. She cried out as her inner muscles clenched around his knuckles. She was panting heavily, writhing on the bed. Small, agonized sounds escaped her parted lips when Spike added a third finger, thrusting in and out of her, his palm rubbing her clit with maddening roughness.

"Please..." she gasped.

In other times, Spike would have enjoyed the power he held over the Guardian and prolonged the cruel teasing indefinitely, denying her the sweet release. But dominating Morghane wasn't the point of this whole exercise and he knew she couldn't ride the wave of frustration much longer before pleasure became unbearable pain. She was too weak.

He increased the tempo of his fingers, pressed the pad of his thumb firmly on her clit and bit her nipple bluntly.

That did it.

Morghane jerked and arched off the bed, screaming, her honey flowed over his hand and her tight muscles trapped his fingers viciously. Keeping his mouth to her breast and his hand to her sex, he let her ride out the pleasure, bringing her back down slowly from the brink. Her legs shook. She trembled convulsively and he enfolded her in his arms, kissing the delicious patch of skin behind her ear softly.

Then she was still.

Spike lifted his eyes to her face. She had lost consciousness again. He sighed. She did that a lot lately.

With a groan he turned onto his side, refraining from grinding his painful erection into her thigh, and stifled the urge to steal his own release from her unconscious body. He would have to take care of it by himself then.

This virtuous-circle thing was no fun.

No fun at all.

 

 

All things considered, Angel was having a good night.

Doyle had been free of any visions in the last few days so they were case-free, the injuries inflicted by Marcus were mostly healed and he was sitting comfortably in the quiet of his office. Not even brooding, just reflecting. What more could a vampire need?

< You want a list? >

No. No self-pity, not tonight anyway. The memory of his first sunrise in two hundred years would be enough to sustain him for another lifetime, and Oz had called with the assurance that Buffy was safe and sound in Sunnydale.

No, really. What more could a 243-year-old vampire with a soul want?

Besides a closer look at Parker Abrams' insides.

Angel shook his head roughly.

No. He had no right to give into his darker urges simply because Buffy had done what he had told her to do. But he couldn't summon the strength to be happy that she was trying to move on. He had given so much already and he was so tired, he didn't know if he could give any more. And she had been hurt. Parker had taken her most precious gift and thrown it in her face. He deserved to spend forty-eight hours trapped in a torture chamber with Angelus for sole company to atone for this blasphemy.

The ringing of the phone pulled him out of his thoughts of blood and mayhem and he heard Cordelia's voice filter through the door.

"Doyle, get that. My nails aren't dry yet."

Angel felt a slow, closed smile spread across his lips. He was grateful that those two were here, that he didn't have to be in this alone. Sure they could be annoying sometimes. He wasn't used to sharing his personal space with anyone on a regular basis and he knew that he wasn't the easiest person to be around. But still they stood by him. It didn't make a difference that Doyle had been sent by the Powers That Be to assist him, or that Cordelia still clung to the charade that Angel Investigations was just a temporary, insignificant step on her way to stardom. They stayed because they cared.

When Angel had left Sunnydale, he was shattered. He was leaving Buffy behind, forsaking love, friendship and acceptance - renouncing the sun for the second time in two hundred years - and it was like taking Darla up on her offer all over again. Like being cursed. He had tried to prepare himself to return to his life before Buffy, an existence of low-grade misery and the constant ache of solitude.

Except without the rats and the filth - that he couldn't take again.

He knew he wouldn't last long and couldn't quite bring himself to care. He did not possess the shield of a hundred years of deliberate starvation for human contact any longer. Buffy had ripped that away from him, stripped him bare. He was supposed to go back to a life of isolation and perpetual guilt naked, unarmed, exposed, divested of the protective distance he had cultivated for years, reduced to the basic remnants of his self, raw. It was Buffy's blinding gift to him, this rediscovery of who he was, who he could be under the layers of pain and regret, who he had become under her gaze and in her arms, basking in her love. And it was his damnation too. He could not go back to the insensitive wraith he had been for so long before her; yet the only thing that he could ever hope to feel again was the uncaring embrace of loneliness.

And the stark understanding that he would be denied the completion his soul hungered for until the day he finally turned to dust.

His best friend. His lover.

Then Cordelia and Doyle came along and it wasn't only about misery and despair anymore. Yes, his arms still longed for Buffy, his mouth was still tingling with the taste of her and he missed her with brutal agony sometimes, but he had also gained two friends and he was free to luxuriate in the sweet display of their unwavering loyalty. In Sunnydale, he had found love but also friendship, for a short time, and he missed that too. Family. Friends. Suddenly, it didn't matter that a few months back Cordelia wouldn't have crossed the street to give him the time of day or that he still ignored everything about Doyle's past. Angel wasn't alone and he felt like weeping in gratitude. At some point he realized that maybe being away from Buffy could bring its own rewards. He would find out more about who he was in the shadows, away from her all-encompassing light, and he would become worthy of her love. Even if he never found a way to get rid of the curse, he would strive to deserve her respect. And if some day she decided that her life was better with someone else by her side, he would learn to be happy for her. After all, that's what he had always wanted for his Slayer.

His soul howled in anguish at the thought.

But he would learn. He would. He had started with the destruction of the Gem of Amara. He had renounced the sun a third time. There was a lot of sound, practical reasons why getting rid of the ring was the only viable option, but the truth was, he couldn't lie to himself about his own nature. He would have, before. Not anymore. He was what he was, dreadful as it sounded, and he wasn't about to surrender all sense of responsibility to a piece of jewelry. He wanted to believe that he was a better man than this.

Out of the blue, his sensitive hearing picked up something really strange coming from the outer office.

Complete, undisturbed, perfect silence.

No keyboard sounds, no Cordelia bitching about this or that, no Doyle trying to sweet-talk her into going out with him for a beer.

Nothing.

And then, a strangled gasp.

"Angel!"

He was on his feet in an instant and threw the door open. Then froze in his tracks.

He felt his face shift and growled.

"Spike."

His Childe was standing nonchalantly in the frame of the open front door, a smirk twisting his lips. He was looking at Cordelia in amusement - which was somewhat brash since she held a crossbow aimed at his heart - and his scarred eyebrow was raised doubtfully.

"Watch out, luv. You gonna hurt someone with that thing."

Cordelia's aim did not waver. "That would be you, Bleachie. Because I'll be damned before I let you get anywhere near Angel ever again, you sadistic bastard."

She wasn't joking.

Doyle stood steadfastly by her side, stake in hand, and his expression made quite clear that he shared Cordelia's anger and then some.

Angel inserted himself quickly between his Childe and his friends before Cordelia and Doyle lost it in their touching haste to protect him. He forced his face back to its human disguise and took a threatening step towards the younger vampire. "What are you doing here, Spike? If you've come back for the Gem, I destroyed it days ago."

Spike shook his head mournfully, then surprised them by sighing.

"No, Precious. I'm not here for the bloody ring. I have something much more important to show you."

"Yah, right," interrupted Doyle. "Like he's gonna go anywhere with ye. Ye really are slow, ain't ya?"

Spike snarled.

Cordelia's index tightened around the trigger.

"You can all come along for all I care, but time is of the essence here so if you could PLEASE move your collective arses to the car, I would be most grateful... That polite enough for you? I'm parked in front of the door."

With that Spike disappeared, leaving three very stunned people in his wake.

Angel hung his head in resignation and heaved an unnecessary sigh. Why tergiversate, he was going to follow Spike anyway - if only to make sure that his wayward Childe wasn't in L.A. to cause any-more trouble. Ignoring Cordelia's gasp of surprise, he went out the front door and descended the few steps to the De Soto parked along the sidewalk.

Spike was leaning over the back seat of the car. When he turned around, Angel recognized the figure huddled in his arms and he roared.

"What did you do?!"

Spike backed away, trying to extend a placating hand while still holding the Guardian against his chest. "Now, now, Peaches, let's not get carried away, okay? I didn't do anything. Why would I bring the Guardian to you in the first place if I wanted to hurt her? Besides, you think I could up her in a fight even if she wasn't trying to defend herself?"

Angel took a deep breath. Spike actually made sense.

< What are the odds? >

But Spike and his explanations were not what mattered right now. The sight before him made Angel shudder with dread.

"Bring her inside," ordered the older vampire.

Without comment, Spike did as he was told.