Authors Note: Ahhhh ... Kindred spirits. All it took was for Mz. Nancy to say, "You know, there *is* something very erotic about vampires" as reassurance after my "Face of Trust" confidence flame-out, and I was off and running. And, of course, there's something very erotic about David Boreanaz, so this story is dedicated to him and also to that cool Paula Cole song.

Rated, ummmm, maybe PG-13, although you might not think so at the beginning. :-\ Consider this the second of the "Buffy's Bedroom" series.

He hesitated only a second, his protests exhausted earlier, before she drew him to her.

The breach of flesh was sweet, and she arched her back as the dull pleasure and sharp pain twined together inside her.

"Angel," she sighed. The pleasure built gradually, banishing the pain, and she turned her head to kiss the palm that cradled her face. She could sense the pleasure surging in him and stroked the back of his neck, an assurance of her trust in him.

It was over quickly--whether that was his usual style or whether guilt egged him on was unknown to her--and she mourned him as he moved away, doing what he could to help her compose herself. He drew back into himself and in an instant the "scary face" she had come to accept was gone, replaced by his usual, lovely dourness. Good. He was strong again.

She sat up in her bed, watching the battle between conscience and instinct play out over his features. She brought her hand up to her neck, and her fingers came away with nothing. Clean.

"It heals quickly," he responded to her unspoken question. "As long as you're alive, it heals quickly." He turned to the window.

"Well, that's good to know," she said, her voice a little too light. "You think hickeys are hard to explain--try fang marks."

"It's not funny, Buffy," Angel said harshly, turning back to face her. "Do you think I wanted to do that to you?"

She observed him for a moment, remembering how still he became after she offered her throat to him, and answered, "Yes. I think part of you did."

The rage was sudden and startling. With a growl, he turned and smashed his hand into the window frame. The sturdy wood beams absorbed the blow with little sound, but Buffy stood up, alarmed.

"Angel!" she hissed. "Quiet! My mom--"

"I don't care," he responded, but she noted that he brought his voice down to a controlled whisper. "Maybe she can put a stop to this."

"You were hungry. You weren't well ... "

"I've been too busy to make my blood runs to the hospital. That's my fault, not yours."

"It's my fault. You've been helping me hunt, that's why you've been busy. Why shouldn't I--"

"Let me drink your *blood*?! Buffy, don't you know how dangerous it is? I can already feel the desire for it waking in me. The taste, the smell of warm, fresh blood. Your blood. It's almost irresistible." He loomed large in front of her now, all darkness and danger, the same stranger she had caught following her long before. The same man who gave her the cross that now rested, discarded, on her dressing table.

"I'll take that chance." It was worth it to have him strong again. She ignored the sensation of lightheadedness--she could rest later.

"But what about me, Buffy? What about the chance that I have to take, that my soul will be overwhelmed by the need to have you again?"

She colored a little at his words but said firmly, "It won't be. I trust you."

"Why? Because I love you? I love you so much, it's like you're putting a stake into me every time I see you. But that doesn't stop--"

He cut off abruptly and reached out for her. Before she knew what was happening, he had pulled her to him and buried his face in her hair, his lips against her ear. She heard every word clearly.

"I could do it right now, you know, with your mother down the hall and Willow and Xander safely asleep in their houses. Drain your life's-blood from you and leave a shell to be discovered in the morning. Right now there's a part of me, small but *there*, telling me to do it."

"You couldn't." She was almost sure of it. She was tense, ready to fight, but his words brought a warm, answering response from deep within.

"It would kill me as surely as it would you, but I could do it, Buffy. God, the smell of you." He inhaled sharply, and her heart leaped.

"Don't ever ask me--don't ever *let* me do that to you again," he said, and, releasing her, he was gone.

While Willow researched, Buffy sparred with the Watcher. After unintentionally letting him make contact the third time, she knew she was in for it.

"You're off-balance, and you're weak," he observed, surprised and wary. "What's wrong?"

Willow looked up from the monitor with naked curiosity.

"Nothing. Nothing's wrong," Buffy answered. "I'm just tired." She set down the quarterstaff and unconsciously rubbed her fingers over the fading marks on her neck.

Giles paled, and, without warning, he reached his arm out and grabbed her around the back of her neck. She moved her arms to block him, but he simply said, "Don't."

Buffy exhaled slowly. "Why do all the men in my life want to grab me?" she said, casually trying to shrug him off. But it was no use; Giles moved her hair aside.

"Hmmm. Is that some type of makeup you've used to hide the marks? Clever girl." The last word was a curse, said in those clipped British tones with a nastiness Buffy never would have expected from her Watcher.

"Giles--it's not what you think ... " she began earnestly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Willow stand up and approach them. Giles released her and crossed his arms, but he continued to glare at her.

"Let's see ... Did he tell you that all the girls are doing it? That if you loved him you'd do it? And, of course, that it was perfectly safe?"

Buffy raised an eyebrow. "Impressive use of sarcasm, Mister Giles, but it's not like that. He was unwell. He needed to feed. He took what he needed."

"You let him ... bite you?" Willow asked, astonished. Buffy attempted to glare at her but couldn't maintain anger at Willow's obvious concern.

"It's not like that," Buffy insisted.

"So the Slayer puts herself at risk to preserve the health of a vampire?" He shook his head, laughing mirthlessly. "Somehow that goes against--let's see, yes--*everything* I've taught you."

"It's no worse than giving blood, Giles. He took a pint, maybe a little more." She felt fine today--maybe just a little bit shaky, but fine.

"And that's why you're off-balance today? That's why I was able to trip you up? Buffy, I don't want you giving blood, either. You can't afford to be off by one second. You can't afford to have slow reflexes."

He paused for a moment, removing his glasses to rub his eyes. "And, my God, Buffy, you can't afford to be pursued by a vampire with blood lust for you."

Buffy paused. Blood lust. Angel had said something about it, but he was weak and easily persuaded.

"Blood lust," Willow repeated. "Sounds serious ... " At Buffy's look of pointed betrayal, she mouthed, "Sorry."

"It is serious," Giles intoned. He stepped over to a nearby bookshelf and, looking for a moment, pulled a dusty volume out of the collection. Giles didn't really need the books, Buffy had realized a while before, but he found their presence comforting in times of stress.

Sorry, Giles, she thought. She found she had a knack at increasing his stress level.

He didn't even go through the motions of opening this particular book, however. He only held it for effect as he lectured Buffy.

"Vampires only have two goals when they choose a victim: to drain the individual's blood for food or to turn the individual into a vampire. In almost every case, one of these two is the inevitable outcome, though, in fact, they rarely do it to create new vampires. Death is the usual result."

Buffy and Willow both had seen enough ashy corpses to know that for the truth.

"However, sometimes the feeding is interrupted," Giles continued. "When that happens, usually the vampire has been stopped by a third party, someone walking in who is able to drive it off. Sometimes, however, the creature is possessed enough to play with its victims before the final kill."

She bristled at his use of the word "creature" but let it pass as she remembered the Master only taking enough blood to incapacitate her and then leaving her to drown in a pool of water.

"When the vampire and its victim are separated, a link develops between predator and prey. It has been described as being almost ... sexual in nature, with as much desire emanating from the living target as from the vampire."

He paused for a minute, leaned up against the edge of a nearby table, and appraised her. "Does any of this sound familiar, Buffy?"

She ran her fingers through her hair and twisted it up, beyond caring now whether her friends saw the faded vestiges of the wounds. She linked her hands on top of her head. "Maybe." Willow's answering smile was sympathetic; Buffy got that smile from Willow a lot, it seemed. "What can I do about it?"

Giles looked at the floor for a moment and then met her eyes again. "Would it be beating a dead horse if I lectured you again about letting him do it in the first place?"

"Yeah." Buffy released her hair, and it fell around her shoulders.

"Buffy, Angel will be able to find you wherever you are. It's like a homing beacon, to draw him back to you for the final kill and to confuse you so you welcome him back. The pull will become stronger and stronger ... until one of you is dead."

Willow made an unhappy noise. "Is that all you can tell her?"

"I'm afraid so." He sighed uselessly. "Buffy, Angel may have a soul, but he's still a vampire. He has been a valuable ally, but that time is now over. He must do what it is that his kind does.

"And you must do what your kind does. You must live. No matter what."

"Sooo ... What was it like?" Willow asked before Buffy had even had a chance to get settled.

Buffy smiled a little at Willow's curiosity. She had suspected for some time that Angel had usurped some of Xander's space in Willow's heart, or at least in her imagination.

"Weird," Buffy admitted. "I don't know. Now I realize why he was fighting me when I first suggested it--"

"*You* suggested it?!" was Willow's shocked reply. "Wow. You didn't tell Giles that."

"No, I didn't," Buffy said strongly. "And neither will you ... I hope."

"Oh, I won't." It was the understood answer.

"It wasn't like what you would expect--" At Willow's perplexed frown, she began again. "Well, it wasn't what I expected, since I've already been the lucky recipient of one bite." Buffy shuddered and Willow wrinkled her nose at the memory of the evil, shrivelled Master. "I expected the pain and fear ... but it wasn't the same.

"Willow, it's like what Giles said. I can feel him. Kind of in the back of my mind. And if I think about him at all, I feel all weird inside."

Smiling, Willow suggested gently, "Kind of like how you felt in that dream when he was, you know, doing stuff?"

"Yeah," Buffy chuckled at their often-used euphemism for sex. "Willow. It's like ... I want him to do it again."

"But you don't really, do you?" Willow provided the question as its own answer.

"I can't. That's all. But ... I want to see him again."

"It's the blood lust," her friend replied, half-whispering the word "lust" as if to diminish its power. "Buffy, what are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

It was 11 on the third night, long past her mother's bedtime, when the light in front of the house went out. It was their signal--he used an old glove to unscrew the hot bulb in the decorative outdoor lamp, alerting her to his presence and lowering the chance that passers-by would observe him approaching her window.

She didn't need the warning tonight, though--the warmth that continued to grow in her body was enough of a signal. The knock on the window was an electric-charged confirmation. And when she saw him ...

"Don't open it." His voice was muted by the window, but she heard the desperation in his tone. She knelt by the window, peering into his face. As long as she didn't open the window, she couldn't invite him in, and without an invitation, he couldn't enter her home. He perched on the overhang outside her window, obscured from the street by the large tree that he used to get to her.

He couldn't come in, but nothing could stop him from pulling her out. She left the window closed.

"Angel," she breathed, her body overcome by relief that he was finally here and frustration that he was unreachable. "What are you doing here?"

"I had to see you." The need in his own voice matched her own, and she leaned closer to the window. He was tired, she could see that, but healthy. The stress lines on his face betrayed the same internal struggle she had suffered for three nights. But he was still beautiful--

She inhaled sharply as she felt the desire threaten to overtake her senses. She watched him look at her, knowing when his eyes lingered on the cross around her neck. She usually removed it when she knew he was coming.

"You found out, didn't you?" he asked.

She nodded, letting her gaze drop to her fingers as they traced the seam where wood met glass. "Giles found the marks. He told me what happened. About the bond."

Angel shook his head. "It's a wonder he hasn't come to kill me himself."

Buffy let out a long, shuddering breath. "I guess, in hindsight, I could have offered to help you find a hospital. Stolen the blood myself, maybe."

"In hindsight, I could have explained it all to you." The strain of holding back was evident in his tight words. "But I was so tired, and when you offered yourself to me--you were right, Buffy. You were giving me everything I had to admit that I wanted. And I still want it."

A sudden thrill surged through her body, and her fingers clenched on the window.

"Why can't you come in?" she asked, not surprised at the change in her voice.

The intensity of the struggle radiated off him. He leaned closer. "You know why."

They stared at each other through the glass panes. A minute went by, maybe two, and when Buffy pressed her hand to the glass, Angel mirrored it with his own.

"I have to go," he said, and immediately she knew that he didn't just mean to leave her house. He meant to leave Sunnydale. She looked at where his fingers almost met hers on the other side of the window.

"Will it fade?" The sudden sadness warred with the longing, but when his eyes met hers again, the desire seared her again. He had to go.

"Maybe. Probably. But it takes time."

His eyes told her not to hope, but she did anyway. "How much time?"

"Time," he insisted. "I don't know."

He started to rise, and she pulled her hand away from the window.

"Buffy, if you see me again ... " he warned darkly. "Don't assume anything. Don't trust me. And don't let your guard down. There are only two ways this can end, now."

Only two ways. Either he would be dead, or she would be.

He disappeared into the night, and it would be a long time before she saw him again.

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