Buffy had never thought of herself as the kind of girl who liked older men. Back at Hemery she and all her friends had been in agreement that it was gross and tacky to crush on a teacher, most of whom were guys in their thirties or forties who wore suit jackets over khakis. There'd only ever been one exception agreed on by her group, a twentysomething math hottie with blue eyes and a lustworthy bod, whose gaze could fry and glaze you like a donut.
College guys were okay, of course. College boyfriends were coveted and bragged about. But they weren't *old* old.
Angel was old, though. Bicentennial old. What living thing was that old? Trees and sea turtles maybe. But he wasn't living, though he was sort of treelike. Tall and big-trunked and sturdy with the kind of limbs you could swing on. She told herself that wanting him was a terrible thing--he'd killed thousands of people. But now he had a soul; he'd dusted his ancient girlfriend without a qualm, to save a slayer. It wasn't the act of a normal vampire. And aside from lurking in graveyards at night and wearing black, he wasn't much like vampires in any other way.
She'd let him stay in her room the other day because he'd said, "I want to see you when you come home. I don't want to wait." But she hadn't hurried back to him; not so much playing hard to get as playing it cool. She'd thought about him all day, in all her classes--what was he doing right now, this moment, in her bedroom? Lying on her bed, examining the contents of her panty drawer? It had been a gesture of trust, leaving him there. She'd actually thought it a bit weird, but she'd stored that thought away, because she hadn't dated that many guys; she had no weirdness scale for guy behavior. For demons, yes, for guys no. So when he said he'd hid in her closet while her mom was visiting her room, she hadn't let that register. Maybe it was a romantic thing, a guy hiding in her closet.
But he wasn't a guy, really. He was a demon. During their first kiss, she'd noticed the coolness of his skin, had a fleeting thought that he might be nervous. But no. He was dead. How cosmically Romeo and Juliet was that?