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*Warning: The violence in this chapter, though mostly implied, is fairly extreme.*
“Dance with me.” It wasn’t a request; the fact that Faith’s hips were already in motion, her feet already beginning a backwards trajectory from the table and onto the dance floor left him no choice but to rise and follow. Even so, it didn’t mean he had to make it easy for her.
“Don’t dance, wild one. You know that,” he smirked, one eyebrow cocked as he traced the curve of her waist with his fingertips, eyes raking over her legs, her dangerously brief outfit, and up to those dark eyes he loved, eyes that were currently flashing with a mixture of annoyance, affection, and arousal.
“Oh, you’ve got mad rhythm, Billy; it’s just too bad you’re not gonna get another chance to show me how good it is unless your ass is on that floor in less than the time it takes me to down that Jack,” she shot back, snatching the small glass out of his hand and knocking it back. She wasn’t surprised to feel his hands on her hips and his lean form against her back as she put the shot glass back on the table; her holding out wasn’t a threat he ever took lightly.
“You plannin’ on gettin’ out here anytime soon, or you wanna stand there tipplin’ like a lush?” he teased, nipping her earlobe with blunt teeth and laughing at her indignant snort. “C’mon then,” he urged, pulling her tightly against him and sliding his arms forward to band around her waist as he turned and moved her towards the dance floor.
“Somebody’s all kinds of excited,” Faith laughed appreciatively as she started swaying against him, shimmying her hips provocatively back against his erection before turning to face him and wrapping her arms around his neck. “See; knew you’d wanna dance with me.”
“Mmmm,” Spike grunted noncommittally even as he smiled at her, hands wrapping around her hips as he followed her rhythm and they began to move to the slow, sensuous beats in the background. His hands slid up to trace across the exposed flesh of her lower back, and he chuckled lowly as she bit lightly into his neck to muffle her moan.
“You look incredible, you know,” Spike murmured against her ear, and she looked up at him and grinned.
“You picked the outfit. Is this just some way of complimenting your fashion sense?” she asked flirtatiously, pressing her hips forward as her hands slid down over his shoulders to caress his chest.
“It’s not me wearin’ it,” he answered, leering at her playfully as his right hand drifted forward to tease the flesh of her bare abdomen, exposed by the knot in the red button-up in which she’d dressed. “Shirt’s never looked that bloody good on me.”
Faith laughed, low and husky, brushing her lips against his before darting her tongue out to tease his lower lip. Spike groaned, returning and deepening the kiss, refusing to stop until he felt her breath hitch. They broke apart, him smirking cockily as she panted to catch her breath, and she gave him a darkly playful look. “What’s that look for, vampy?”
“You always try to play that game, an’ you always fail. You’re never gonna beat me at this, wildcat; can kiss you all night and not lose m’self. Don’t have to breathe. Puts me at an advantage.”
“Not always. Quite a few nights it puts me at an advantage,” Faith remarked, batting her eyelashes innocently even as she ground her hips forward into his yet again, controlling the move so that she only applied the barest of pressure.
“Minx,” he growled, bending to nip at her throat before freezing and lifting his head to look down at her, all traces of teasing gone from his now-sober face. Faith was momentarily confused, a feeling that passed as soon as she realized that his hand had just brushed across the scar on her abdomen; the scar left by Buffy, enhanced by Drusilla, that had become a permanent reminder to both of them that each day they had together was far from a given. “Love you, wild one,” Spike whispered, face having lost every trace of teasing but still fierce with the strength of his feeling and devotion.
“Back at you, Billy,” she answered, smiling, pulling him to her and kissing him far more gently than was their usual.
The words were still hard for her to say; after all, he’d had a hundred years of practice verbalizing an emotion to which she was relatively new. It didn’t matter to him; she’d said them once, said them first, and he could be patient, say them enough for the both of them, until she was ready to speak them again. In a thousand different ways, large and small, she practically chanted “I love you” without ever making a sound; he knew what it meant that she went miles out of her way to bring him his favorite hot wings if she was out without him; that she knew by memory the hierarchy of beers that he enjoyed and managed to always have one of the top three in their refrigerator; that she had mastered both the iron and double-sided fabric tape in order to make all of their curtains thick enough to shield him from even the hint of harm; that she was always there when he awakened with nightmares of the Initiative’s experiments and Drusilla’s death, and that she followed his lead and either talked or just lay quietly beside him, never allowing him to drift into that dark dream territory alone. In the face of everything she did, what difference would be made by the repetition of three little words?
The song changed, the bass remaining a constant, heavy drumbeat, though thrumming faster as the tempo of the music increased. Spike smiled as Faith’s heartbeat picked up in response, bringing his hand up to place it on her chest. “Usually takes me some work to get you rabbitin’ like this,” he said affectionately, and her smile went from merely happy to predatorily lustful in seconds.
“If you’re volunteering,” she replied, drawing his head down to hers and reclaiming his mouth. Tongues tangled for long seconds as his hands slid back around her hips and down to cup her ass, pulling her up against him. She groaned into his mouth, maneuvering until her legs wrapped around narrow hips and she was able to grind herself against him, to force him to acknowledge just how needy she was.
“Wanna fly, pigeon?” he asked as the kiss ended, and the look in her eyes was all the answer he needed.
“Outta here now, Spike, or some small-town eyes are gonna get one hell of an opening,” she panted, unwrapping her legs and sliding back down his front until her feet touched the floor. She was well aware of the disapproving glares their antics were receiving, but couldn’t really be bothered to care—not under normal circumstances, and most definitely not when Spike was nipping at that spot just below her jaw that turned her knees to water and made rational thought all but impossible.
A low, husky chuckle was her only response, and within seconds Spike had thrown two bills on their table to cover their tab and was urging her towards the door, his arm around her shoulder and her body held close. He held the car door for her, a gentlemanly gesture to which she’d long since become accustomed, and then crossed around the hood, his hand caressing the metal in a gesture so overtly affectionate that Faith couldn’t restrain her snicker.
The moment his door opened, she looked at him and gave him a teasing grin. “So how does it feel to have your baby back?”
“Now, now,” he snarked back, “’s not becoming to get all jealous. She was mine long before you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she snorted, rolling her eyes as she curled herself into him, thankful for the wide bench seat in the front of the DeSoto. The DeSoto whose garage had been their first stop upon their return to the States, prompting numerous cracks from her about separation anxiety and men who used cars as a means of compensation, words he later pleasurably tortured her into retracting. “Still can’t believe the money we spent on storing this thing.”
“Oi! I pay good money to keep you in nice places; ‘m not doin’ less for the car,” he objected, nipping the tip of her nose in reproof as he shifted the car into reverse. “So where to?” The innocent look on his face was completely ruined by the mischievous glint in his eyes, and she decided that she was perfectly capable of giving as good as she got.
“You have to ask?” Her hand slid slowly up his thigh, veering off at the last possible moment to brush up his hip and dance across the waistband of his jeans. She laughed as his jaw tensed and a sound between a growl and a moan broke from his throat, bracing herself for a bumpy ride as he slammed the car into gear and tore off down the road.
*Guess I should be happy for the big back seat too,* she thought to herself as Spike veered off into a field, coming to a stop well away from the roadway before turning towards her, amber flecks glinting through the cobalt of his eyes.
“You have ‘til I count to five,” he growled, pressing a forceful kiss against her lips before yanking open the door handle.
By the time he’d said “two” and opened the back door, she was waiting for him, skirt gone, his shirt, untied and unbuttoned, her body’s only covering. The crimson of the fabric against the faint bronze of her flesh and the rich brown of her hair… he thought he’d never again see anything more beautiful.
Faith knew exactly what the sight of her little tableau would do to him, was, in fact, counting on it. There was nothing quite like the buzz that she felt when he gave her that worshipful, smoldering look; it was a kind of power and euphoria that had no peer. Smirking at him as he stood momentarily frozen, his hand paused at the button of his jeans while he stared down at her, she raised an eyebrow, crooked her finger, and said simply, “three.”
They didn’t make it to four.
~*~*~*
They left the field considerably more slowly than they’d entered it, as though Spike had only now realized that there were ruts and furrows in the ground. Faith was having a hell of a time taunting him as he cursed under his breath at every sharp bounce of the car on its shocks while he steered gingerly towards the road. “Guess you should’ve paid attention on the way in, blondie; you know, used the brain that actually works?”
“So bloody amusing,” he responded through gritted teeth, hands tightening around the wheel as the car climbed the ledge of the pavement. It gave the back end of the car a sizable jolt, but at least they were back on asphalt again. “’sides, wasn’t hearin’ a lot of complainin’ from you in between all the screaming.”
“And I’m not the one bitching now,” Faith answered affably, laughing at the half-amused, half-annoyed look he was shooting her out of the corner of his eye. Really, it was just too damn easy to wind him up sometimes.
Faith put her head back against the seat, a pleasant sort of exhaustion having taken over her body in the wake of their coupling. The road was nearly deserted, only the occasional set of headlights passing by in the opposite direction; that was the beautiful thing about towns as small and off the beaten path as this one.
They were just passing through—had no intention of staying in a tiny Oklahoma town for longer than a night—and had originally planned to do nothing but get a room, sleep the day, and head for greener pastures come the next night. Ultimately, however, the lure of going out, even if it was to a far-too-small dive bar filled with overly-prying eyes, proved too strong, and they had journeyed out into the night. Places like this made feeding a difficult proposition for Spike; it was hard to avoid suspicion when everyone knew everyone else, and kept a close eye on every goings-on. Nights like this couldn’t be avoided, however, and he’d just had to make due with her blood. *Oh, he’s so very noble,* she laughed to herself as she thought about the effect drinking from her had on him.
The darkness and the muted rumble of tires against pavement were lulling her into a light sleep, aided along by the lovely floaty feeling that she always had after Spike had fed from her. His fingers drumming against the steering wheel to some song playing in his head added just another comfortable element to the already cozy situation, and her eyes drifted slowly closed.
Spike heard her breathing and heart rate slow and knew that she’d fallen asleep; taking his eyes off the road long enough to look at her, he smiled to himself when he noticed the placid look on her face. Neither one of them was ever peaceful—not really—but they’d somehow managed to find more calm in each other than they’d ever have managed alone. Taking one hand from the steering wheel, he reached over and brushed a stray lock of hair out of her face, letting his fingers linger briefly against her cheek before returning to his task. “Guess it’s time to get you home,” he murmured quietly, pressing the gas just a little bit harder. After offering herself up as an entrée, she at least deserved a bed, he mused wryly.
~*~*~*
Faith felt the car slowing down and began to rouse from her nap, instantly recognizing that they were pulling in to the motel lot. She arched her back, stretching lightly, and had just glanced over to look at Spike when a vicious snarl echoed through the car. Mystified, she looked from him to the road, taking note of the dilapidated truck that had just passed through Spike’s line of sight. Her confusion only grew when Spike wrenched the car into a sharp turn, getting back on the road and tearing down the asphalt in pursuit.
“What the hell?” she asked, eyes narrowed as she watched him measuringly.
“Unfinished business,” he growled in response. Everything about him spoke of fury; his body was rigid, muscles taut as if poised to strike, and she could see that he was only barely holding back the shifting of his features.
Whatever was in that truck—whatever had set him off—was in for a world of hurt.
They caught up to the truck in a matter of moments, and Spike veered into the oncoming lane, barely passing it before yanking the car back into the right-hand lane in a move calculated to force the other driver off the road. The DeSoto was moving ridiculously fast, but even so, Faith managed a glimpse of the driver and understood in an instant exactly why Spike had reacted the way he had.
*Oh fuck,* she thought to herself as the car lurched into park. She grabbed for her door handle in near-perfect synchronization with Spike, determined not to miss the show. This promised fireworks of a deeply satisfying sort.
The other driver wrenched to a stop and stepped out onto the shoulder, already beginning a rant that quickly died in his throat as Spike and Faith exited their car. A positively feral grin distorted Spike’s now-demonic features, and the slow deliberation with which both vampire and Slayer were moving had him backing up in an attempt to get back into the truck. He hadn’t counted on Spike’s speed, however, and found himself pinned hard against the ancient metal in a matter of seconds.
“You know, the past year an’ change I’ve been thinkin’ how much you an’ I need to have a man to, well, pitiful excuse for a man discussion, an’ here you are, dropped in my lap all gift-wrapped,” Spike said menacingly, his demon rejoicing at the involuntary tremors of the other man and the utter stink of fear emanating from his prey. “So how ‘bout it, lawyer boy? Wanna have a chat?”
For the first time ever since his tenure at Wolfram & Hart had begun, Lindsey McDonald knew fear. And as he was tossed back into the cab of his truck and shoved over so that the vampire could drive forward into the abandoned field, with instructions for Faith to follow, the fear grew into terror.
~*~*~*
"Y’know, have to hand it to you. You’ve lasted a hell of a lot longer than I would’ve thought,” Spike remarked casually as he stepped back, head tilting as he observed his handiwork. The boy lawyer had had a hell of a tuning up at Faith’s hands before Spike had even bothered to get involved; he figured that she’d earned first jabs, and besides, it did him good to watch her work. She was nothing if not gloriously violent when provoked.
Lindsey had more than seen better days; his nose and left cheekbone were broken, his jaw swollen and discolored, his torso littered with purpling bruises, long thin blade slashes, and the occasional deeper gouge. More than one tooth littered the ground beneath his feet. Spike had also taken no small amount of pleasure in slowly, torturously retracing the scar along Lindsey’s wrist with the blade of his pocketknife, keeping the depth of the cut shallow on the inside of the wrist but forcing the knife nearly into bone on the outside. Lindsey’s shirt had long since soaked through with blood and been discarded; the upper portion of his denims had suffered the same crimson-drenched fate, although they were still in place.
“See, what I just can’t figure is why you thought touching what wasn’t yours was a good idea in the first place,” Spike continued, conversational tone still in place, although his eyes were cold and steely.
“Didn’t… know… she was yours,” Lindsey wheezed, managing to inject as much venom into the words as was possible in his breathless state.
“But you knew she was hers, didn’t you?” came the rejoinder. “Didn’t want fuck-all to do with you, and yet you wanted in, an’ did whatever it took to get you there. Was it worth it, boy?”
Faith looked up from her examination of her own bruised knuckles to arch an eyebrow at Spike, who had to force himself not to chuckle at her mildly offended look. He did spare her a short shake of the head, which mollified her somewhat, though it was clear that he’d be made to pay later for that particular remark.
Lindsey had picked up on what he thought was the implicit insult as well, and seized on it as a possible means of distraction. There wasn’t much left to him; his energy had been sapped from the beating, and the blood he had lost meant it wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon. If words were all he had left… well, he’d made a living off of them, hadn’t he?
“Doesn’t seem like he thinks too highly of your skills, there, Faith. Maybe you’re just more impressive when you’re using it as currency,” Lindsey spat, chuckling cruelly at the momentarily stricken look that crossed her face before she hardened her expression again.
“Oh, I don’t have a bit of trouble with her skills,” Spike snarled, stalking towards Faith and pulling her against him, plundering her mouth voraciously before letting her go. His eyes gave away the tenderness he was having to hide in front of their audience, and she gave him a grin that told him she knew exactly what she was doing before she slid her hand searchingly against the fly of his jeans.
“Doesn’t feel like my skills are lackin’ at all, there, pardner,” Faith said. “Then again, Spike’s… talents aren’t exactly lackin’ either. You, on the other hand…” she trailed off, clucking her tongue in mock disapproval. “Well, you could use some schoolin’. I’d almost be inclined to give you a show; that is, if I thought you’d make it long enough to use any of what you’d learn. But…” she finished, giving him a shrug and a faux-regretful look that had him mentally recalculating desperately in an effort to figure out exactly how he might still make it out of the situation alive.
Whether it was the blood loss, the dawning realization of the hopelessness of his situation, or just frustration, fury, and exhaustion, the words that Lindsey chose were more than wrong—and sealed a fate that had been, up to that point, uncertain. “How do you think he’d respond to you, Faith? Any slut can get a man hard. Takes even less of one to do it to a vampire. You think that makes you special? Maybe you’ll finally get it when he’s long gone and you’re giving truck stop blowjobs for five dollars and a ride to the next exit.”
Spike had wanted to fuck the boy up beyond the telling of it, to make sure that he remembered the lessons administered in that field until he drew his last breath. Somehow killing him had seemed—well, banal, really. But the look on Faith’s face when Lindsey spewed his vitriol sparked something inside him, and he was back in front of the former lawyer with his knife drawn before either of the humans had even registered that he’d moved.
“You will shut your gob, and you will apologize to the lady,” Spike hissed, fangs inches from Lindsey’s throat.
“I will not,” Lindsey blustered. “Drain me. Watch me give a fuck.” Bravado was all he had left, and that was beginning to slip.
“I wouldn’t taint my mouth with the likes of you, ‘specially not after the ambrosia I had earlier,” Spike responded, face shifting back to human as his hands came to the waistband of the other man’s jeans. Rending them easily, he slid the knife just below the man’s testicles, watching the horror dawning in the eyes just inches from his own. “Death is too good for you, you son of a bitch. Maybe I’ll just dress you up a bit—make the outsides match the insides. Fancy bein’ as lackin' in balls where all the world can see as you are in there?” he rumbled, the hand not holding the knife tapping directly over Lindsey’s heart.
Lindsey felt the knife slide through sensitive skin and tried but failed to hold back the scream that ripped from his lungs. The last thing he saw before blackness overtook him was Spike’s furious face before him, and Faith’s equally irate visage to the side.
He came to at the feeling of a sharp slap glancing off of his cheek, and swam into consciousness and an agony that forced him to immediately void what was left of his stomach’s contents. Hearing the sound of metal against metal, he raised his head long enough to see Faith crossing from where he lay to the DeSoto, keys dangling from her hand, and Spike opening the driver’s door of the truck.
“You can’t leave me here,” he managed to groan, barely loud enough to be heard.
“Why’s that, now?” Spike asked disinterestedly.
“Not you… her,” Lindsey clarified, turning to meet Faith’s eyes as she glanced back over her shoulder. He hadn’t expected to find them so cold, hadn’t expected that she should be as unaffected by what had happened here as she was.
“And what makes me all special-like now, Lindsey? I’m just another dime-a-dozen whore, so what is it that would make me so all-fired concerned for your welfare that I’d drag your sorry ass back out to the road?”
“You’re a Slayer.”
“And you’re an asshole. Your point?” Faith asked, shooting Spike a bemused look as she turned back towards the ground she’d just left behind.
“You can’t just leave me out here. You have a duty somewhere down in there—you have a soul.” Even as he said the words, Lindsey knew he was grasping at straws, but the pain wracking his body wouldn’t let them go unspoken.
“Guess you have a soul, too—unless you sold it to that firm of yours. Doesn’t make you any less of a whore, no matter whether you keep your clothes on or not. Doesn't make you any less of a bastard, selling people and things out at whatever the going rate for your retainer is. Didn’t stop you from what you did to me, and god only knows what else you’ve done,” Faith answered, walking back towards him. “But let me just fill you in on something. Being a Slayer doesn’t mean that I have to care—just that I should.” She stooped next to him, her lips inches from his ear. “And when it comes to you, I don’t. So I’m going to turn around and get in that car and leave you here to rot, and I’m going to go back to the motel and climb in bed and not lose a damn minute of sleep over you. That’s what’s going to happen here.”
“I’ll die if you leave,” Lindsey answered, hating that the words sounded so pleading, and feeling the truth of them even as he said them aloud.
“Maybe,” Faith shrugged, turning from him and walking to the DeSoto. “But then again, Lindsey, something tells me you’re kinda like a roach. So come on now—chin up. Who knows, Mr. McDonald? Maybe you’ll surprise me this time.”
The last flicker of hubris faded from his face when his own callous words to her were thrown back in his face. Too weak to stand, Lindsey McDonald lay in a pool of his own blood as he watched the lights of his only chances at survival fade into the distance, his own sins echoing in his ears and his mind as the darkness crept nearer.