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Spike watched with a mixture of bemusement and arousal as Faith moved around the stage, stopping to spin around the pole, dipping low and coming slowly back to her feet, all in perfect time with the pounding beats that permeated the air. He couldn’t help but admire her, as he was left to do in all of these places—they found a new one each week, never staying in the same place for long, so he’d had ample opportunity to watch her work. She never failed to take his breath and make him hard, even with the slightest twitch of her hips or toss of her hair. He stared baldly, admiringly, catching her eye and shooting her a smirk she fought unsuccessfully not to return. She was glorious, all lush curves and firm breasts, sinuous grace and predatory sexuality packed into nothing but sweat-sheened skin, heels and a G-string. Little wonder she had every man in the place, including him, eating out of her hand.
When he stopped to think about it, in those rare moments that the whirlwind of their lives calmed enough to give him time for reflection, he was still stunned that she’d thought to take him along when she’d fled that hole of a California town. He remembered perfectly the moment that she had come to find him, running like hell itself was on her heels and desperate to get out, standing in the door of his crypt with her hair tangled, eyes wild, and chest heaving. “Renegades belong together,” she’d said, and he’d believed every word out of her mouth—including those that had been spoken by her through the mouth of another. Had believed them enough to follow her, at least, and to be the Clyde to her Bonnie as they tore up the road between Sunnydale and Los Angeles. His thought process had been relatively straightforward; staring dumbly at the desperate girl all but begging for his help, thoughts of warm champagne, full lips, and a warm, welcoming body had joined those of a cold bathtub and derision to make up his mind. Spike snickered to himself in remembrance; the choice hadn’t been very hard to make. He hadn’t done so badly with crazy brunettes in his lifetime, really, so what was one more to take at her word? And so a deal was born; he’d be the wheels, she’d be the muscle—at least until the chip was taken care of—and they’d keep the planning mutual. A 50/50 split had seemed heaven after being the kept vamp of a bunch of do-gooders, so he’d gone out on the limb, trusted that she’d do as she promised.
And kept her word she had; weren’t many who would’ve been so honorable in a deal that gave them precious little more than transportation, at least in the beginning. But she’d done right by him damn near all the way through; most significantly, she'd made the deal that got the chip out of his head, although thoughts of that deal still spurred a furious growl that he barely managed to keep below the sonic earthquake volume of the club’s dance music. Her attempt at killing Angel for Wolfram & Hart had gotten right bollocksed, but they’d still cleared more than enough of the lawyers’ cash for them to go on the run when they needed to hightail it out of L.A. in the wake of their semi-successful sojourn there. Despite his fears that he’d be little more than useless in the long run and despite his discovery of the deal she’d struck without his knowledge or his agreement, it had been Spike that had saved the day, him who’d managed to put it all aside and who had gotten them hidden long enough to get them the hell out of dodge. Those had been frantic days, lived on a razor’s edge between anxiety and hope. Days in which all he had known with any degree of certainty was that he had to get Faith away from there before the lawyers came looking for a refund and before the prat could get to her with all of his yammering about making amends. Angel only wanted redemption for others because he knew he’d never get it for himself; Spike knew that much about his bloody transparent grandsire, and he was damned certain he wasn’t signing this girl over to a wasted life to fulfill his grandsire’s quixotic dreams. She had weight enough on her shoulders without adding the poundage of Angel-level brooding to the scales.
So he’d become protector as well as partner, though he would never have used the former description in front of her. *Still wouldn’t,* Spike thought with a smirk, settling himself on the edge of one of the barstools, long legs stretched in front of him, somehow managing to be the very picture of both coiled aggression and extraordinary ease. But damn it, in his head and in no small part of his heart, that was his girl. He watched over her, made sure that the lawyers, the cops, the Council, the Poof, and the Scoobies got nowhere near her; he held her in their bed when the past caught up with her, and did what he could to shape a future that wouldn’t cause her to scream in her sleep; he was the one who planned meticulously how to best show her the world, one bit at a time. He was secretly thrilled by the wide-eyed excitement that oh-so-briefly broke through her tough façade when they rolled into a new city or country. For an instant, she was so childlike, and it was all so new; it made him feel like he was giving her something back that the world had taken away far too damned soon. He didn’t need or want to be a hero—had no bloody interest outside of looking out for her first and himself second—but that didn’t stop the joy from singing through his veins when a song of innocence managed a refrain through the symphony of experience that had been Faith’s status quo since birth.
Spike adjusted himself surreptitiously as he watched her execute another masterful spin around the pole before turning herself upside down and coming back to the stage in a flip that became a split. Gods but that girl knew how to work every gift the Powers had given her. He was fairly certain that Slayer muscles were never meant to hold someone perfectly inverted on a stainless steel pole, or to make every acrobatic gyration look like virtual sin, but as he watched her press her knees apart and stand slowly, sinuously up, he just didn’t bloody care. The look she gave him throughout the move, the heated eye contact she refused to break, told him more than any words exactly what she was feeling. Home was going to be a beautiful place tonight.
He didn’t exactly have himself a bad lot in this life, he mused as he watched her; he looked after her, but there was most definitely a reciprocity to that consideration. Took care of him good and proper, this one did; kept him in blood and fags, and the sex was exactly what she’d promised, what he’d always believed fucking a slayer would be—primal, elemental, sometimes brutal but always addictive. Yet underlying it all there was something more, something beneath the mating that went beyond the physical, that joined them on some deeper level that neither of them was fully ready to acknowledge. They’d decided early on that they’d be a package deal, and both he and Faith were content with that definition for the moment. Their lives were now made up of endless hours of actual friendship, of long periods spent losing themselves in the power of their need and their coupling, leaving the world outside to face the demons on its own. The two of them had demons enough themselves—shared now, in as much as that was possible, but it still left them with more than enough of a fight on their hands.
Spike well knew how he was starting to feel about her, how he had felt about her since those first few nights, if he was being totally honest with himself; what was more, he had heard her whisper, in the light of day when she thought he was asleep, things that indicated that she felt the same. Neither had the words just yet, but what were words when the way they lived spoke just as clearly to how they felt? How the world had spun, he thought with quiet amazement and no small amount of gratitude. From one slayer’s reluctant care to sharing the life of another—seemed Dru had been right. A Slayer was all around him; she just hadn’t guessed the right one.
He raised a brow when one of the drunken rowdies, up to this point content with lewd comments and somewhat grabby tipping, lurched forward and made what had become an all-too-typical invasive grab for parts of Faith not on the menu for touching, sliding a far-too familiar hand up that lean, tanned thigh to brush against the scrap of fabric shielding her pussy from prying eyes. Spike kept his growl down, but only just, and watched with a sinister smirk as her eyes flickered to his in the instant before she rose and delivered a kick that the man couldn’t possibly see coming. Spike knew what her gaze meant, just as she knew he’d have been watching; he was there to catch the man before he hit the wall, and looked over the drunk’s head to give her a teasing leer as he manhandled his drunken cargo towards the alley door. Faith gave him a wink in return, darting her tongue out to briefly trace her lips before returning to her routine as if nothing out of sorts had happened, casting surreptitious glances over her shoulder to make sure Spike had made it out the door without interference.
“Who in the fuck do you think you are? Touchin’ a girl you don’t even know in a very naughty place,” Spike taunted, tone low and threatening in the now-quivering man’s ear. “Word of advice, mate—not that you’ll ever be able to use it. Don’t ever touch the talent; you really don’t wanna risk brassin’ off her bodyguard,” he growled, shifting the terrified dead weight in his arms in order to wrench open the alley door. The second the door slammed shut, Spike’s features shifted, and he sank his fangs into the man’s neck, draining him in long gulps, glorying in the futile kicks and twists that the man seemed, rather pitifully, to believe had a chance of saving him. Satisfied that his meal was well and truly dead, Spike picked him up by the collar and dropped him into a nearby dumpster, swinging a few of the stray rubbish bags from the alley in as cover. The rather oblivious garbagemen, never too eager to find what was in the bin of a not-quite-reputable club, would unwittingly take care of the rest of his clean-up after sunrise. No matter the city, they always did.
A bit buzzed from the fear and the booze he’d just taken in along with the blood, he jerked the door open again, prowling like a shadow back inside to resume his watchful position by the bar, waiting for the next man to cross the line that would mean his certain death. That was the whole reason for this job, really—they’d made a pact, and this was the easiest way of smoking out the prey that they had agreed upon. Of course, the job also had as a rather delightful side effect the violent, possessive sex afterwards, couplings that kept them awake well into the next day, reasserting claims with their bodies that they were both still too fearful to declare with words.
Of their own volition, Spike’s eyes drifted to the clock, and he gave silent thanks for the fact that only a quarter of an hour was left of her shift; the promise that her gaze had held earlier, the promise held in every single well-timed and expertly-choreographed move she was making now, had lodged firmly in his cock, and his erection had long surpassed painful. With the infusion of fresh blood, he was lucky to be bloody walking. A wicked grin crossed his face as he met Faith’s gaze across the distance, and he promised her silently that come the morrow it would be her who would be blessed to be mobile.
His grin twisted from lustful to overtly predatory as he watched her jump nimbly to the floor, following the first beckoning finger pointing her way and, after a brief delay for what Spike knew to be heated negotiations, beginning a lapdance. He loved watching her move like this; of course, he much preferred when she practiced her routines on him, but there was something about watching her in this element, passionate and graceful and intimidating as hell, that made him appreciate her all the more. *Couldn’t’ve been more made for me,* he thought as he watched the play of her muscles beneath smooth, perfect flesh, all the while remembering what had brought them here. She was the perfect little combination of sin and sex and well-hidden vulnerability, aggressive but still so very eager to please… *Bugger… she’s just bloody like me.*
The dance, of course, couldn’t last forever—and in fact, this one lasted far less time than most, ended swiftly when a quick forward snap of Faith’s head connected in a headbutt with the meaty college boy who couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her ass, or from traveling to even more off-limits areas. Spike’s eyes locked with Faith’s, and she raised a curious eyebrow at him as she gave a slight nod towards the oaf she was straddling. Spike was at her side in a flash, forcing his tongue into the heat of her mouth, kissing her violently and leaving her breathless and smiling before dragging his second course towards the alley.
He didn’t bother trying to hide the smug grin that shaped his lips even as his features shifted. Oh, he definitely had the right Slayer now. This one kept him happy, kept him warm, kept him sated, kept him in blood good and proper; none of that pig swill served to him in a novelty mug. Not anymore. He tossed the frat boy into the same dumpster, hiding this body in the same manner as the first. No, this Slayer was without a doubt his, he thought to himself as he turned to reclaim his girl for the frantic drive home—and he’d definitely be keeping this one around.