Chapter One

He was falling in love. It was so wildly inappropriate right now, with Buffy’s pain, and Angel’s soullessness, and the very real threat of death hanging over all their heads, and yet, there it was. Love.

He should have been thinking about vampires and research, and what Angel’s next move may be, but instead, all he could think of was Jenny... saying she was in love with him.

Jenny, who, right now should be waiting to meet him at home. He’d been half-hard since he left Buffy’s house and now, as he pulled up to the curb in front of his place, he could feel himself trembling lightly with anticipation. Desire, like a fever: shaking, shortness of breath, cold sweat, weakness settling around his joints and making his step a bit uncoordinated. Odd, really, he thought as he fumbled for his keys, that this was a condition people actually sought to be in.

Not that he was complaining.

His hand stopped with the key halfway to the lock when he looked up and actually saw his front door for the first time.

A single red rose was taped at eye level. He felt a grin cross his face as he took down the flower and held it to his nose. The familiar scent brought back soft, pleasant memories, of days as a youth in his family’s rose garden, and romantic dinners lit by candlelight.

He stepped through the unlocked door into a scene from a romance novel... candles, roses, champagne chilling. He called out softly and received no reply, but it didn’t worry him. A bone-deep contentment was settling in alongside the urgency, two forces that should have contradicted, but didn’t...

He took off his coat and then picked up the folded piece of paper that had been propped against the ice bucket.

“Upstairs”

A rush of fire swept through his veins.

Trading his glasses for the champagne bottle and two flutes, he made his way up the stairs to the loft, carefully stepping around the roses that had been left on each step. The heat was pulsing through his body now, coiling in his groin, and his heart was pounding.

He stopped at the top of the stairs, pausing for a moment just to drink in the sight of her... or as much as he could see without his glasses on, anyway. She was stretched out across the bed, atop the covers and still dressed, her head turned towards him.

For a moment, she was very still, then she pushed herself up on one elbow.

“Rupert.”

“Jenny,” he answered, a besotted grin spreading across his face. He crossed the room in a few easy steps and set the glasses and the bottle down on the night stand.

She reached up for him and he leaned down, her hand cupping his cheek and guiding him the last few inches to her lips. They kissed deeply, and then he pulled back a bit.

“You’re cold...”

She smiled.

“It’s a chilly night.”

She paused, then added, with a sexy quirk of her brow, “Want to help warm me up?”

His grin widened and he shed his jacket and flowed onto the bed, filling in the space she made for him and dropping a series of light, teasing kisses across her lips. His hand slid down to her hip and he tugged on it, urging her closer.

They kissed deeply for long, uncounted minutes, lost in the simple pleasure of touching and holding. Her body was a miracle... soft curves, gentle hands. He decided he’d be content if he could just spend hours exploring her, finding all of her secret places, the spots that made her sigh, and moan, and whisper soft, dirty words between his lips. He’d dreamed of this, but his dreams had never even touched the reality of it. Dreams were always too transient, too fragmented. The joy of this was in taking their time, reveling in the joy that finally, finally, they were really here.

Nevertheless, after awhile, she slipped one leg over his and wrapped them together, moving her hips restlessly, suggestively. He gasped and pulled her hard against him, and she threw her head back, inviting him to run his tongue along the long column of her throat. And he did so, tracing the small mole there, and then rolled them over, capturing her beneath him.

“Too many clothes, Rupert,” she said, the first real words either of them had spoken aloud since he’d joined her on the bed.

He smiled and reared back a bit as her fingers went to work on his tie, loosening it and then drawing it over his head and tossing it aside. His smile changed to a mischievous grin, and he ducked his head down to kiss her lips, and nose, and cheeks as she unbuttoned his shirt. Once, her knuckles brushed against his nipple and he shuddered with pleasure.

“Mmm, like that, do you?” she whispered, her voice husky.

In response, he lunged closer to her, nipping at her neck, then her earlobe, then stopping and sucking at the loose skin there.

She chuckled and slid one hand beneath the open flap of his shirt, her fingertips skating over his chest lightly before she laid her hand flat over his nipple and rubbed firmly with the heel of her palm. He gasped... partly from the pleasure of the touch, but also from the cold. Her hand was like ice.

He pulled away, looked down at her.

“Jenny?”

She frowned, small annoyed lines appearing between her brows. Her eyes... something... something wasn’t right.

“Jenny, are you-” he didn’t know quite where he was going with that sentence, until something caught his gaze out of the corner of his eye.

He turned his head, found himself staring into his own eyes... the mirror over the dresser. For a moment, he couldn’t figure out quite what was wrong with the image he was seeing.

And then, Jenny lunged up beneath him, flipping them both over with inhuman strength, and pinning him to the mattress.

No reflection.

“Oh, dear lord,” he whispered, and then her fangs were in his throat.

He’d never quite figured on the extraordinary helplessness. He’d always thought, rather disparagingly, actually, that if a vampire ever did get close enough to bite, he’d throw it off and run. But it wasn’t that simple, he saw now. He was defenseless. He had no cross or stake, wasn’t at a good angle at all to get enough leverage to shove her away, and her strength was startling, even though he’d faced many vampires before.

It was a helpless terror, feeling the slow ebb of blood from his body, and every second he became still more hopeless as he grew weaker.

Her hands were tight like steel bands around his wrists and her body was shifting rhythmically against his, a horrible parody of the lovemaking from a few moments earlier.

“Jenny,” he breathed, uselessly, as her hair tickled his cheek and nose, and her death-cold hands leeched heat from his arms. “Jenny, please.”

He was getting dizzy... the room, everything, seemed far away, muffled by unseen cotton. His breath and heartbeat seemed strangely loud, though, as did the wet sounds of her feeding. His feet and legs were tingling and his head ached. *Blood loss,* his mind supplied, unhelpfully. And then, even more unhelpfully, it added, *Oh God, Buffy. What about Buffy?*

And that thought was enough to make him throw all his remaining strength into one last ditch effort to escape.

All it amounted to was a weak tug against her restraining hands.

She stopped, though, and lifted her head. He could feel his blood trickling down over his shoulder, soaking into his shirt collar.

“Shh,” she said, looking down at him, shifting to her human face. Her eyes were dead, and her bloody smile did not touch them. “Everything’s fine. Just relax, lover. You’ll be fine. Jenny’s gonna make it all better.”

“Oh, God. No. No, no, Jenny... please!”

She pressed her lips to his, and for the first time all night they were warm, and he shuddered again, this time with nothing but revulsion. He could tasted his own blood, coppery and hot.

She dropped her head to his shoulder again, her cool, wet tongue lapping at the wound, coaxing the blood to flow. The world grew dim and quiet, and he began to understand why people talked about lights and tunnels as his vision narrowed down to a single point.

He felt only vaguely her moving away, and then, a moment later, the soft pressure of her wrist against his mouth. It was wet, and slick. He pressed his lips together, tightly. To drink, even one mouthful, would mean a fate far worse than death.

But then her fingers were pinching his nostrils shut, and even moments from death, his body couldn’t override the instinct to breathe. His mouth opened against his will. He felt the silky cool liquid, thick on his teeth and tongue. The taste, the smell: copper and salt, and a tinge of something he could only define as death.

He knew in that moment that he had failed. Failed his family, failed himself, and most importantly, failed his Slayer. His last thought before he died was, “Oh God, Buffy, I’m so sorry.”

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