Chapter Four

        Spike was asleep when Joyce climbed carefully down to the lower level of the crypt.  She smiled at the sight of him sprawled on the big bed.  She'd been so relieved when she first learned he didn't sleep in a coffin, Bela Lugosi style.  It was also nice he neither needed "native earth" nor showed any tendency to take the form of a bat and hang upside down during the daylight hours.

        Yes, it had been a very pleasant surprise the first time she'd found him lying in that bed in an almost tastefully decorated cave. 

        And he didn't wrap himself in a cape while sleeping, either.  Or anything else, for that matter.  Nudity was a fashion statement Joyce approved of, at least where Spike was concerned.

        He was lying on his stomach, and she took a moment to admire the graceful curve of his back as he lay motionless against the sheets, one hand flung up over his head, the other lying by his side.  His face was turned away from her, and she reached out to touch the slightly disarranged blond curls, but pulled her hand back as another idea struck her. 

        Smiling mischievously, she kicked off her sandals and climbed up on the bed next to him.

        "Ow!" Spike howled, coming to full consciousness immediately, swiveling around, hands coming up to fight, his features starting to change—until he realized who his attacker was.

        "Balls, Joyce, be careful.  I could have—"

        She was laughing.  "Sorry."

        "Bloody right you should be sorry."  Spike rubbed his ass angrily.  "I'm supposed to be the one that bites!"

        "You'd never bite me," said Joyce calmly.  "But I couldn't help myself.  It was just there, and so—inviting.  And I'm sure I didn't break the skin."

        "I'm not," muttered Spike.  "Besides, don't you know any better than to wake a guy up at 2 o'clock in the afternoon?"

        "If you're quoting Bogie, you're not really mad," she said, wriggling closer to him.  "Come on, roll over and let me look."

        He pulled away with a suspicious look.  "Why, so you can bite me again?"

        "No more biting," she said primly.  "I promise."

        Muttering darkly, he complied, and she touched him, with gentle fingers this time.  "Just as I thought.  No skin broken, and I'm sure the marks will fade in a minute or two."   His skin was taut as steel, though.  Her hands moved up to the small of his back, leaning into him and rubbing with firm fingers.  "I'm sorry, Spike," she said again, in as contrite and sorrowful a tone as she could manage while touching that sleek, pale flesh.

        "Well—" He propped his chin on his hands and appeared to consider her apology.  Since I'm getting a back rub out of this—"  He glanced at her over his shoulder.  "I am, ain't I?"

        She rolled her eyes in mock dismay, and continued massaging him, her hands moving up his back little by little.  His skin was remarkably unscarred and smooth.

        "What happened after I did a bunk last night?" he asked eventually.

        "You didn't do a bunk, if that means running off.  I didn't need your silly whistling to know you were lurking out there.  And nothing much happened.  They read lots of books and talked for hours."  She shifted her position to reach his shoulders, but found it awkward to lean over him.  He muttered as she pulled away, but gave a pleased sigh when he realized she'd merely paused to slip off her panties and climb astride him, pulling up her skirt and rubbing her pussy against his ass as she pummeled his back with her fists.

        "So the Scoobies are busy scratching their heads and trading witticisms again?" he asked after a few minutes.  "I'd say that lot has the devil's own luck to survive most of their battles, but I'm sure it's not the devil that's providing the luck."

Joyce kneaded the hard muscles in his back as best she could, and was rewarded with a grunt of satisfaction as she felt them relax a bit under her hands.  She'd need fingers of steel to give a really effective massage to one of the undead, but at least she'd loosened him up a bit.

        He rolled over and smiled at her, stretching luxuriously and looking as if he expected to be wholly satisfied very, very soon.  "That was lovely, Joyce.  But there's another bit of me that needs a tension reliever.  Really could use a good massage."  His expression was serious; only his eyes laughed.

        "Oh?"  She could play at being serious too.

        "Yeah," he said, taking her hand and laying it on his cock.  "Right here.  Desperately in need.  Got a terrible cramp."

        "Oh," she said again, drawing her eyebrows together in mock dismay.  "That's too bad.  Because my poor hands have gotten very, very tired."

        "Sorry to hear that," he said hoarsely.  "Was really hoping you could help me with my problem."

        "Well, I don't want to disappoint you," she said, bent over him, her lips skimming his as she breathed the words.  "Maybe you wouldn't mind if—"

        "If what?"  His lips followed hers, seeking to keep contact as she pulled back and away from him.

        "Well, if it wouldn't be too much of a disappointment, I could use my tongue instead.  And my lips."

        "I'll deal," he said, with a joyous laugh, reaching for her.

        But she pulled away again, slipping down to nibble at his throat and run her hands along his chest.  Slowly, she kissed her way down his torso, taking first one nipple and then the other between her teeth as she teased the tips with her tongue.

        "Ow!  You're killing me," he complained, but she ignored his whining.  Even if she hadn't known perfectly well that he loved this, the sensation of his cock stiffening against her belly as she moved over him would have reassured her.  She continued to play until he was fully erect and muttering wildly.  She was enjoying the game almost as much as he was, sneaking looks at his face, noting that he'd caught his lower lip between his teeth and that his eyes were closed, his expression intent.

        Grinning, she slipped off of him to crouch by his side on the mattress, hearing him moan when she moved away.  One of his hands dropped down to stroke her hair, and she could feel his whole body quiver in anticipation.  Then he lay still, and she knew he was deliberately restricting his breathing, focusing his feelings, concentrating on her touch.  She let her hands, lips and tongue wander everywhere and anywhere—except one place.  He tolerated it at first, then drew in air so he could begin gasping and groaning but still not insisting, until she worked her way down to his thighs without ever addressing her attentions to the bit of him that he'd particularly requested she "massage."  He put out his hands to guide her, but she shook him off, slipping her own hand under one leg and running it up and down from ass to knee until she felt his muscles twitch beneath her fingertips.

        "Bloody hell, woman, where are you going?" he demanded.  "Seems to me you're missing the crucial spot." 

        A laugh escaped her parted lips as her mouth moved up his body again, but only to concentrate on the soft crease where hip met thigh. 

        "Balls!" he bellowed.

        "No need to shout instructions," she replied.  "I'll get there in a little while. If you're a good boy."

        He swore vehemently, and she said sternly.  "Now that was naughty," and her mouth moved further up, towards his ribs, where there was an old scar that always fascinated her.  She'd long since noted that most of Spike's scars were on his chest, testaments to his preference for meeting trouble head on.

He was particularly sensitive, if not downright ticklish, at that particular scar, and a moment later he was bawling with mingled frustration and laughter, complaining that she was torturing him, dragging him through hell, she was a bitch, a witch, a siren, a worse demon than he was.  He ended the rant with a final, desperate, "Please!"

        She sighed. "Well, since you've finally remembered the magic word . . ."

        "Oh, Spike, I almost forgot," said Joyce.  "I need you to do me a favor."

        Freud had the wrong question.  Spike was convinced of that.  That Austrian pillock shouldn't have kept asking, "What do women want?" but "Why do the bitches always get us to do what they want?"

        Because Spike was about to cave on something.  He didn't know what it was yet, but he knew Joyce was going to ask him to perform some stupid labor of love and he was about to agree.  Just as he always had with Drusilla. 

Well, just as he had most of the time with Dru.  He'd been able to distract his ex from her craziest desires.  After a few decades of practice, he'd gotten pretty good at keeping her from burning things down or randomly killing their allies.  But then, he'd needed that skill with Dru.  She'd been barking mad.

        Joyce could be amazingly daft at times, but she wasn't actually crazy.  On the other hand, Spike had only had a few months practice in saying "no" to her, and so far he hadn't gotten very good at it.  Of course, it wasn't as if she was about to ask him to bring about the apocalypse, or kill everyone on the street who happened to be wearing red, or to track down some poor sod of a demon that she needed for her own insane purposes.

        "I want you to find a demon for me," said Joyce.

        Well, so much for that theory.  Spike sat up in his bed and stared at her. "You want a demon?" he said. 

        "Not just any demon," she said calmly, pulling her blouse on.  "Besides," and she smiled happily at him, "I just had one demon, and very nice it was too."

        Spike stretched back out on the bed.  Another difference between Joyce and Dru.  Joyce didn't pout or whine to get what she wanted.  And she didn't withhold sex either—although she certainly knew how to tantalize.  He stretched a little more luxuriously, remembering certain details of their lunchtime tryst.  He had the distinct impression that finding him asleep in his crypt had distracted her from the original purpose of her errand, and that she wasn't regretting the distraction in the slightest.   Neither was he.  Her method of awakening him had been both rude and pleasant.

The lack of manipulative behavior was all jolly and good.  But Spike noticed Joyce wasn't actually asking him to perform whatever little chore she had in mind.  She was just assuming he would. 

        He forced his eyes away from the sight of her wiggling her bottom into her respectable business suit and stared at the ceiling.  "So, just who is this other demon, and should I be jealous of the bugger?"

        She giggled.  "Of course not.  It's whoever ordered that nasty Chac Mol in my gallery.  After Giles showed us those pictures last night, it occurred to me that my missing special order client may be the demon who conjured up that jaguar.  Although I suppose he could be some kind of nasty human and not a demon at all."

        "Wouldn't think you'd like any dealings with a nasty man, pet," he remarked.

"No," she agreed, completely missing the irony in his tone.  "But I still have to find him.  So I can make him stop before Buffy gets hurt by that jaguar."

        "You want me to help the Slayer," he said levelly.

        "Yes, of course, I want to do this for Buffy," she said, picking up a mirror from the table furthest from the bed and propping it up so that she could brush her hair and fix her makeup.  And just when had he started keeping a mirror around here for her convenience?  He was damned if he could remember.  But it was the kind of thing she would expect to find someplace where she slept—or, at least occupied a bed—occasionally.

        And now she expects me to stick my neck out for the Slayer.

        "Joyce, love, you do remember what I am, don't you?" he asked, as near to exasperation as he could get with her.

        "Of course."  She looked up, startled.  "I mean, you live in a crypt.  It makes it hard to forget."

        "But you do realize—the things I've done?"  Even as he said it, he cursed himself, wondering what bloody-minded impulse was making him remind her of things that could lead her to reject him.

        "I know what you were," she said, stowing her things away in her purse and looking around for her shoes.  "I hit you with an axe the first time we met, remember?"  She smiled, as if it were a fond memory.

        She says that she knows what I was.  What the bloody hell does she think I am now? A housebroken puppy?  He remembered her lack of fear whenever he changed to game face, and the way she'd woken him, not even considering it was risky to attack a sleeping demon, however playfully.  Surely she realizes that the sodding chip isn't a complete protection to her.  She lets me so close to her—I could drink her or snap her neck, before the chip had a chance to activate.  But she acts as if she doesn't even remember the chip's existence.  As if she knows that I wouldn't do it.  With or without the chip.   He remembered the night over a year ago when he had shown up drunk on her doorstep, crying about Dru.  There had been no chip in his head then.  Joyce had made him hot chocolate, and he—he hadn't even thought of biting her until Angel came along.  Even then, it had been a game with him, teasing Angel, not really meaning to hurt Joyce, even before the Slayer barged in.

Joyce had found her shoes and was smiling at him again.  It wasn't the sort of smile a woman gave to a puppy.  It was the sort of smile a woman gave to— 

Never mind.  He decided he didn't want to know what she thought she was sleeping with.  Because he'd have to tell her she was wrong, of course.  And that could mean no more wild sex in this bed, or upstairs on the sarcophagus, or in her silly little gallery, or in the park at night, or in every room of that too-perfect, middle-class house of hers, or—

        It could also mean no more nights laughing together over old movies and pizza.  No more long talks about nothing.  No more—

        Never mind what was going on in that head of hers.  Some things a demon was better off not knowing.

        "So," Joyce said, smiling with complete assurance, "you'll find this guy for me.  I figure you can ask around the demon bars and places like that."  Her smile grew wider.  "You'll investigate for me.  Like Sam Spade."

        No, it wasn't a request.  That was good, in a way.  It saved him from admitting he was giving in to her.  He sighed.  "Give me the bastard's name and address."

        "The phone's disconnected and there's no one in the apartment now."

"Never mind."  He propped himself on one elbow and reached out his other hand to her.  "It'll give me a place to start looking."

She handed him the information on a sheet of notepaper.  One of those fancy notes, with artwork on them.  In this case, Georgia O'Keefe flowers.  Great, bloody vulvas of flowers.  He'd never seen anything more feminine.  He glanced up at Joyce. Well, on paper, that was.

He watched her slip on her sandals and head for the exit.

        "Is that it, love?  Don't I get a kiss goodbye?" he called after her.

        "If I kiss you, I won't say 'goodbye,'" she called back down, with a throaty laugh that wiped away his resentment.  Almost. 

        "I'm playing the sap for you, sweetheart," he muttered as he reached for his jeans.

Chapter Five

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