Christmas in LA was cool, except I missed everybody, but it's good to have time with Dad. And I saw a couple of old schoolmates (I really can't call them friends, exactly, now that I know more about what friends really are) and that was all right, too, but I'm just glad to be back to Sunnydale. Somehow that looks really wrong on the paper, but it's true. If it weren't for the people here, for Mom, of course, and for Giles and Willow and Xander and especially Angel, I'd be a complete loser for wanting to be here. Or maybe I'd just be a Slayer. A lone Slayer. Like Kendra. Yuck. Her life has to suck, I don't care how smart she is or how she makes all that dedication to "duty" sound, it's just got to suck.

I was going to go right to Angel's apartment tonight, but something in me smelled vampire and I got that urge I get. I stopped by the cemetery on the way.

I flushed out three vampires and staked them. They went down like dominos. It had been weeks since I'd slain and I was feeling itchy for it. They were beautiful kills, everything went smooth as silk. I was having a really good night. Roundhouse punch, stake. A fakeout punch followed by a jump front snap kick to the head, stake. Turning back kick-hook kick combination, stake. It was so refreshing that I almost wished there were more of them. I heard a voice behind me, and I whipped around, but it was Angel.

"Wow," he smiled at me. He was leaning against a marble monument. "Sometimes it looks like you're dancing, almost,"

I flushed.

"Thanks," was all I could think of to say. I wanted to run right into his arms, but I just stood there. He was so beautiful I just looked at him. How can I always forget how beautiful he is?

"You get stronger all the time,"

"You think?" I brushed off my jacket.

"I know. Vampires and Slayers both get stronger as they get older,"

"Then you'd think there would be more retired Slayers around. Die, get CPR, retire to Florida and wear designer sweat suits. Not really all that bad an idea,"

He looked more solemn then, he didn't say anything.

"Except Florida...too many hurricanes," I said, "And alligators. Not my favorite swamp creature," I walked toward him. I was grinning and I couldn't help it. I was so happy to see him.

"I know it's hard for you," he said.

"Not everything about it's hard," I slid my arms around his neck. "Some things are a lot easier for me than other Slayers have had them. Like backup. What a concept,"

He didn't say anything, but his eyes were sparkling. He stroked my cheek.

"Please kiss me," I said suddenly, but he was already wrapping me tight in his arms and halfway into a kiss, I barely got the words out. I leaned foreword against his body, my hands slipped inside his jacket and up his back. I was starting to feel really relaxed, almost a little sleepy, but all of my nerves wake up any time he touches me, the skin all over me goes on alert. He stopped kissing me for a minute and held his mouth very close to mine, eyes closed, as if he were feeling the closeness as a different kind of kiss. I waited, and started to get antsy, I wasn't sure how he'd kiss me next and I wasn't handling the anticipation well. I pushed foreword, but he moved his face next to mine without touching, as if he were feeling the heat coming off my skin. I wanted to crawl inside his jacket with him. His lips touched mine and slipped back and forth, feathery-soft. It was tickly, but nice. His nipples came up under the thin cotton of his shirt, hardening under my fingers, and I breathed a gust of breath onto his face, I was suddenly panting. I couldn't keep my fingers off his nipples. I touched them like he was kissing me, just barely, tickling them with tiny motions of my fingertips. He moved his mouth over my cheeks the same way, a whispering touch, his lips barely brushed my neck, my ears. I moaned and he moaned an answer. I ran my fingers across his chin, down his throat into his shirt and found one nipple, naked under my fingertip now. He put tiny kisses over one of my ears. It was almost like a contest, to see which one of us would lose it first, which one of us could take more.

He kissed me for real then, my lips flattened under his. He mashed his mouth onto mine and we dipped our tongues together. Then I was in the air, he hoisted me up and carried me around the monument and behind it. There's a place back there where it's almost surrounded by cedars, there's a long marble tomb and some benches. He leaned me back against the marble. He was kissing my neck, first softly and then with more hunger, taking mouthfuls of my skin, biting lightly, and licking with rippling motions of his tongue. I was getting dizzy, I was starting to sweat.

He bent down suddenly and picked something up. It was a white rose, left over from a wreath, probably, but it was still fresh. He broke the stem off it and stroked it under my chin. The petals were soft and it felt really nice against my throat and under my ears. He lowered his head and kissed my chest and moved the rose over me very gently, stroking it deeper into the cleavage of my top, the scent of it was coming off my skin. He lifted the stretch fabric away from me and teased the rose across my nipple, it felt amazing, because it's just moist enough, silky and cool, it was like feeling his lips there. He must have know that, he pushed the rose against my nipple a little harder so that the tip of it was inside the petals, and he twirled it very slightly in a small movement, so the petals were tickling this circle around the edge of it, and then he took my other nipple in his mouth and I lost it completely. I was pushing against him and I was making way too much noise, and I had to really try to stay quiet, but it was impossible. I pushed my face into his shoulder and bit a mouthful of his shirt until I could get a grip. His arms went around me and he kissed me. I was still moaning into his mouth, and I could feel his lips curl under mine in a smile. I hung on to him until I had it together again, and he running his hands over me sweetly and whispering to me, whispering my name. He put the rose in my hand. He slid his hand into my sweats and stroked my belly and started kissing my neck again.

He was tenderly stroking my belly, when he does that, below my belly button but above THERE, it's mind-bending, I don't know why. It makes me want him to touch me down there, so badly. I was soaking. After he had me almost crazy he slipped his hand lower and a million butterflies fluttered right through me, I gasped. His fingers were so gentle, so patient, slipping between my legs, and he pressed his cheek to mine and moaned. His other hand was on the small of my back, and he pulled me to him, close, and started whispering things into my hair, things I couldn't quite hear, because I was making too much noise. He was kissing my cheeks, murmuring, and then he slipped a finger almost in, and left it there, still kissing me, still whispering. I felt my legs go out for a second, and he clasped his arm around me, holding me up.

"I've got you," he said softly, "Just lean on me,"

I shivered and pushed my hips toward his finger and it slipped inside me a little. It's completely different from my fingers there. For one thing, his fingers are a lot bigger than mine, but for another, it's just electrical, it's so good, it's so good that I was really starting to lose my mind. I moved again and his finger went deeper. He didn't want to do that, himself, I realized, he wanted me to take it as I wanted it. He kissed my mouth, sweet, wet kisses, nibbling on my lips. I locked my arms around his neck, I was trembling so hard that I felt really unsteady, and then suddenly something inside me exploded and I was screeching into his mouth and driving my hips so that his finger was almost all the way inside me; he pushed another finger there, too, and slid it into me, and then all I knew was how good it was, and pushed my face into his chest and let myself yell about it. I was completely helpless, while it was happening. I couldn't have staked anything, I didn't even know where I was. All I could hear was my heart pounding, I was completely shattered. I started to come down and right away I felt so naked and on the edge of severe embarrassment, but the way he kisses me, I can't feel less than safe. He whispered, "Give me a rose petal," and I wondered what he was thinking, but I peeled a big petal off the bloom and he took it delicately in his fingers and then reached down with it and wrapped it over that one spot, that incredibly sensitive spot and started massaging me there with it, little motions. The texture of the petal was like buttered velvet, very soft, but it clung to the flesh...it was a completely new feeling, and it was really intense. I even stopped wondering about where he learned all this stuff. He was stroking me with the petal and his other hand slipped slowly down my belly and then lower, pushing my sweats down just enough and very gently pushing his fingers inside me again, and my body throbbed around his fingers and I was sure I was going to pass out. He started stroking me inside with his fingertips, curling his fingers under my belly, very gently, and he went down on his knees and took the petal off me and took that one spot into his mouth and started sucking on it carefully and then I saw black, because I was gone. It was almost like pain, the way it goes so deep into you and it just won't stop, it controls you, it....becomes you. Or you become it. It was the most intense thing that's ever happened to me. I was so wet that it was flowing down the insides of my thighs. My legs were trembling like I'd been doused in ice water. He stood up and put his hand on the back of my head and crushed my mouth with his. I could taste myself, which at first made me hold my breath a little, I wasn't sure about that at all. It was a metallic kind of taste, but almost sweet, too, so I was relieved.

His face was all moist, and he kissed me wetly. I felt my legs go out, and he knew, he was right there and he picked me up. He sat down on a bench with me in his lap and he squeezed me so hard that I almost yelped. I shivered in his arms and tried to get my breath, I was making sobbing sounds, I couldn't seem to stop, and I was hanging on to him as if we were twenty stories up on a ledge.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, "Was it too much?" His arms surrounded me, if he'd been a blanket I would have been wrapped up in him with only my eyes peeking out. His hands started moving over me again, as if he were saying hello to my arms and my neck and my hands, all of me. I finally relaxed against him and I started to feel really sleepy. I got my breath back and I buried my face in his neck to smell him: Ivory soap. I'm starting to love that smell. The parts of me were coming back together, like a puzzle, I started to feel like myself again. Suddenly I giggled.

"Miss me?" I said. I couldn't help it.

"Yes," he purred.

Home, sweet home on the Hellmouth. I have to admit it, though, it's a little hard. Because he's becoming more than just somebody I think about a lot, and it's not just the way he touches me. The way he touches me says a lot, but it says how he feels about me, and the way I feel about him....the way I missed him...it's more than just when people say they love somebody, it's more like he's part of me. He IS a part of me. He's more than somebody I'll be in love with for a while and then break up with and have more boyfriends and then meet the right guy some day. HE'S the right guy, but not even in a way I could ever explain to anyone else. The only person who would understand any of this is him. I know he feels it, too, I know he knows. No one else will ever know me like he does, ever. No one else will ever love me like this. I just know it. There's so much of me that only he will ever understand. It's scary, because it makes him so essential to me. I almost NEED him.

I don't know if that's a good thing or not. But it's true.

How can it be a bad thing, to care about somebody so much and feel so close to them? Is it wrong to love someone this much? It's like that feeling I had with him tonight, being high up...it's like standing out on a ledge and the rest of your life looks so small by comparison, so far away, like the way people look like ants if you're up high enough. Everything else shrinks, but it gives you a shivery feeling in your legs, and you think what would happen if you fell...

But I don't plan on falling. I plan on making the things he says come true. I'm going to keep slaying and I'm going to stay alive and have a real life.

And I'm going to love him.