sanj."You know, I could have told you that obsessing over a witch--not so smart." In Willow's mild voice, the words were like leaves shaken from a tree, dropping lightly, drifting across him. "Oh wait," she added, a cute twist. "I did tell you."
Buffy and Xander talked like that, too, from what he remembered. All funny turns and sudden swerves, the chatter of clever children who'd been forced to think fast because at any moment they might have to talk down some demon, beg for their soft little lives.
"Yeah, you told me." Spike opened his eyes. "Right before you turned me into a rat for three," sodding, bloody, buggering, "very long years."
Willow ran a fingertip down his nose. "You were a cute rat."
"Not even a vampire rat," he said in disgust.
"Poor Spikey."
She was amused, gazing down at him fondly from under a wing of red hair, and he scowled at her. He wasn't so amused. That whole episode still smarted and yeah, okay, she'd unratted him at last, which she didn't have to do--strange whim of hers, that--but it didn't take the sting out entirely.
"And now it looks like I'm to be the Big Bad Witch's handy boy-toy. Have I got that right?" He stretched his arms above his head as he mocked her, showing off just what she'd conjured for her pleasures. Not exactly warm and pink and fuzzy any more, was he. "Surprised you couldn't get any volunteers, Red. You've still got the stuff."
He ogled her naked tits for a deliberate second or two, and her eyes flashed in warning. "I can have any man I like." Head dipping closer, lips curving in a cruel way, she said almost gently, "I like you, Spike. You're so convenient and...helpless."
Bitch. For a moment Spike's head hazed into a red, vicious rage, and before he could stop himself he went for her throat, his old, miserable love for her rebelling at this treatment. Magic forced him back and he arched with a shout of pain that he quickly stifled; the pain itself didn't stop though, and tears gathered in the corners of his eyes as he writhed on the bed under her watchful attention, like a bug on a pin. She ran light fingers over his stomach, down toward his prick, which was currently not at all interested.
"Bad dog," she reproved, false tender sympathy in her eyes, then released her hex.
As Spike regained a pretense of dignity, he worked his jaw and tasted blood. She was so very good at what she did, so deliciously nasty. He'd always known she could be so--and she didn't even have a demon in her. And oh, he was pathetic, wasn't he, because when he met her eyes his entire unsouled being longed for her. He would dangle on her string, obey every command, accept the snap of her fingers when she tired of him. Back in his cage he'd go, but he'd wait for her to want him again, until the day when he figured out how to get the upper hand. Then he'd make her pay.
And they'd live happily ever after.