I finally saw him. It's been almost two weeks. The original plan, I guess, but I was so glad to see him, I had to keep calming myself. I wanted to throw my arms around him. I was glad I made him wait, but I think he suffered enough.

He was leaning against a tall tombstone, looking up at the moon. I came up behind him as quietly as I could, trying to sneak up, but a leaf crunched under my foot. He spun around as gracefully as a cat, ready to fight, and then he smiled at me.

"Hey,"

"Hey," I said, "You hunting?"

"Thought maybe you might be,"

"I'm in patrol mode," I said, "You looked like you were pretty deep in thought there,"

He smiled wider, "Not too deep, trust me,"

We stood there and for a minute and it was really awkward. We were both shifting our feet and fidgeting.

"You OK...after the other night?"

"Yeah, fine. Ruined my shoes...reptile blood stains,"

"Oh," he said, "Nice job on the demon, though,"

"Thanks," I had to smile. It's nice to have a compliment once in a while.

"So...you wanna have coffee with me?"

I was in full grin now. I loved the way he didn't waste any more time.

"Yeah. Sure. When?"

"How about tomorrow night?"

"It's a date," I said, and then I realized what I'd said.

We stared at each other.

"I mean..." I said, "...Right?"

"Yeah," he said, his eyes were locked into mine, "It's a date."

Then we were walking together. I'm not sure who started walking first but we were walking together. I looked up at him and watched the shadows moving across his face and I thought about how I feel around him, lighter, I actually feel light and a little giddy, almost. I'll have to watch that.

"So. What were you thinking about, when I walked up?"

I sat on a bench and he came down beside me.

"Penny for your thoughts," I said.

He chuckled. "Do you like English much?"

"It's my native language,"

"I mean, literature,"

"Some of it," I said, "You mean, like poetry and stuff?"

"Yeah. Poetry and stuff,"

"Well, I carried around a book of Emily Dickinson once. Of course, Slaying interfered,"

"You don't have much downtime," he said.

There was a small silence.

"So-don't leave me hanging here. What about poetry?"

"Some things are better said in that form, that's all. Of course it depends on the poet,"

I slid over closer to him. "So-who do you like?"

"I used to have a real thing about Byron,"

"You should read me some, sometime,"

He looked up at the sky. "'He thought about himself, and the whole earth, of man the wonderful, and of the stars,'" he stood up, still looking, and stepped away a little, "'And how the deuce they ever could have birth;'" he turned slightly on one foot, "'And then he thought of earthquakes and of wars, how many miles the moon might have in girth,'" he glanced at me with a little smile and continued, "'Of air balloons and of the many bars to perfect knowledge of the boundless skies,'" he lowered his chin and leveled his eyes at me, "'And then...he thought of Buffy's eyes,*'"

My breath caught for a second, but he was laughing at himself.

"Corny, hunh?"

I wasn't thinking that. "But my name isn't in that poem," I said, actually half-hoping that it might be.

"No," he said. "The name in the poem is Donna Julia. But it wasn't her eyes I was thinking about,"

I went to him and put my arms around him. A breeze came up and the trees were hissing above us. His hands moved up my back and around me. He can almost wrap his arms around me twice. I looked up at him. He kissed my nose and pressed his forehead against mine. We swayed together, just looking into each other. All that had happened, all the things we'd done to each other, suddenly became clear, fell into place. I knew why he'd avoided me, what he was afraid of. He knew why I had acted out, why I was always pretending that he wasn't that important to me. It was all there when we looked at each other. We didn't say anything. I've never been able to look into somebody's eyes that long before, I always get uncomfortable after a while, but it's different with him. It's almost like we're talking, it's a conversation, sort of. Without having to think of anything to say. It's just all there.

But I wanted a kiss.

I slipped my arms around his neck and tilted my head, closing my eyes. His mouth came onto mine softly . I opened my mouth and curled my tongue under his. He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me, the kind of kiss I hadn't had in literally weeks, that deep, hungry kind of kiss, and I actually stumbled because my knees went out from under me. He lifted me in his arms and then stood there for a minute, looking around. He turned in a circle, searching. It struck me as funny and I giggled. He finally sat me on the top of a big, thick tombstone that was high enough so we could kiss. He stood right up against me between my legs and planted his mouth on my mouth and my hands slid up his chest. He felt so good, solid and cool, he smelled very faintly of some kind of a spice but I couldn't figure out what it was. I love to run my hands up his stomach, over his chest and under his arms, feeling the curves and dips of his body. He took my chin in his fingers and thumb and put his lips against mine and paused, just resting there. I waited, wondering what he was doing. I breathed a little puff of breath onto his face. He moved his head back and forth so slightly it was almost hard to feel, but our lips were moving against each other, and I could feel his warming from touching mine. He nudged his mouth a tiny bit harder against me. A kind of wave moved over me, I tried to pull him closer, but he kept the same distance between us. One of his fingertips rested on the edge of my lower lip. He pulled my lip a tiny way down and touched the tender inner side with his tongue and slowly stroked his tongue across in a fluid motion, then back, then across again, then again. I could actually feel it in other places when he did that. I made an higher sound than I've heard myself make before, a trembly one. I ran my hand lightly over him and my fingers brushed across his nipple and I could feel it standing up. I panted onto his face again. He nibbled at my lip very gently. I was caressing his face with my fingers, tracing his cheekbone. He dipped his tongue into my mouth and I took it, stroking it with mine.

I took one of his hands and put it just under my throat, on my chest. I knew how foreword that was but I also knew that I was dying for him to touch me. He left his hand there for a time, just moving his fingertips on the skin under my throat. I took his hand and moved it down, so it was resting on the upper curve of my chest. He sighed and pressed his cheek to mine.

"Buffy," he said, and I could feel it, that he was overwhelmed for a minute. He leaned against me, shivering, his other hand holding my face and pressing it to his. He kept holding me like that. We rocked together. Sometimes it seems like he wants every little moment to go on forever. I thought about that for a minute and it calmed me. I thought, if I were him, I'd probably want that, too. I moved his hand a little lower and pressed it against me. He moaned. I held his hand on me, stroking his fingers with my thumb. He cupped me in his hand, so gently, for a long time, then his hand began to circle, just moving around the curve, he was looking at me and his eyes were full of something like awe. He kissed my cheek, gazing at me, and his hand circled again. I was starting to get warm. I felt my nipples stand up, and I know he saw them, but he just traced the shape of me, leaving them alone. His hand felt graceful and it moved so smoothly, I looked at him and he was lost in it. I shifted under him, I wondered if he was going to touch my nipples and I was starting to want him to, badly. He didn't, but his fingers moved in tightening circles around them, feather-light, until he was almost tracing them. He lifted his hand, taking mine, and kissed my palm.

He slipped his hand around my back and crushed me against him. We held each other.

"So," I said, pulling away a little, I was dizzy, "When was Byron all the rage?"

He lifted me off the tombstone and set me on the ground. We were walking together again.

"He was big around the time I was changed-early 19th century,"

"So...which period of history did you like the best?" I asked.

"They all had redeeming qualities. It depends on what I was doing. It's not the world so much, it's what you do in it,"

"So which did you like doing better?"

"I liked being human," he said, "Most of the time. I liked Ireland. I loved Ireland. I can't remember any time as a demon as something I liked, even though at the time, I did. I had no conscience, so everything I remember from that time is marked. It's all bad,"

"And-America?"

"I came here to get away from everything I'd done in Europe, and other places. It was newer then, you could get lost here,"

"You can still get lost here,"

"Not like then. Everybody had a new name, everybody was starting over. It was different," He stopped walking and looked at me. He ran the back of his hand over my cheek. "This has got to be boring you to tears," he said.

"Not," I said.

"Anyway, the best part-" he stopped.

"Was what?"

"Is..." he stopped. His smile started at one corner of his mouth and crept across, "I'll tell you all about it sometime,"