You’ve got an ugly smirk that I miss sometimes. I find myself wishing you well. Does that make you laugh? I was remembering something you said to me; you saw it in my eyes when I returned to Manhattan after my first journey to the West coast, you said, "She must have been prettier than the last Slayer,". I’ve never heard of a Slayer like her, in strength or beauty. She is more extraordinary than you have the ability to comprehend, but your recipe was perfect.

What a thrill it had been to see her kill that night, though. I was so worried. I am subject to the some of the same prejudices I had as a human; she was very pretty, and very tiny, and very young. I truly thought she was going to get butchered. I should have known better. She was amazing. I can compare it to human experience in this way: have you ever seen film of a tiger kitten pouncing on it’s mother’s tail? The kitten is tiny, with rounded ears and oversized eyes, and it is completely unselfconscious. It acts on pure instinct. It is lethal and adorable at the same time. You can see the imprint of what it will be in it’s eyes; it is an exhaulted predator, a killer of immense strength and skill and beauty. That, in a nutshell, is Buffy. I was privileged to see her first kill. It compares to the privilege of observing rare animals in the wild. I will never forget it.

Many ancient shaman traditions have an interesting dichotomy: the animals regarded as healers are often the most formidable predators. That’s why tigers are dwindling, that, and the short-sightedness of humanity...but it’s true. The most ferocious hunters have the greatest healing powers.

Buffy has soft little hands with little painted nails. She can punch through a wall. She can kill demons. She can put you in paradise. Her hands touch with more tenderness than I remember my mother’s caresses did, when I was a child. Her touch always made me shudder to the core, shudder with longing and gratitude like a drug addict receiving that intoxication, that release, from the drug he craves. Safety, shelter, softness and warmth, all in Buffy’s hands.

The healing balm after Drucilla’s. I don’t blame her. Who made a monster out of her, out of a pure young girl with a spiritual gift? Who made her feel she was unclean? She was pure, Whistler....pure as Joan of Arc. Pure as the proverbial driven snow. She had enormous, startling, clear green eyes, eyes that halted men on the street, eyes that made good men follow her home. She had a heart full of love to be given, love that should have been given to a kind man, to several children, who could have received the gift from her and made the world a better place. Who knows what children of hers might have given to history, or even what she might have given the Church, as a mystic? She is only one of my walking sins, but she is the worst of them. She was a good, loving young woman with a rare talent. I dragged her through the muck of misery so many times that the clarity of her soul was dulled, like a pearl rubbed in gritty mud; she was so delicate, her nature so fragile to hold the gift she held, that redemption is forever stolen from her, the damage is too complete. Shakespeare said something so perfect about it, about a "fair maid divided from her senses" being the most tragic thing of all. For that alone I should have taken a walk at noon. To have her torture me was almost a relief, but not in a lustful sense. It lightened my soul just a tad. I owed her much more, but it took the edge off a small part of my debt. I had it coming.

Imagine that holy water is battery acid, and sunlight is uranium. You’ll have an idea of the shock and damage they can inflict on the undead. I’ve known others of my kind who were trapped in the sunlight and survived, but were driven mad by it. The shock to the system is profound, and lingers after the burns have healed. It’s a misconception that because vampires heal so completely, that they don’t feel pain. It’s a gigantic lie.

Ordinarily I would have found a dark, private place and slept until I was literally starving, in order to recover. Buffy would never have allowed it. She came to my apartment every day, sometimes twice, bringing clean bandages and ointments; I was moved. I never asked her for help, but she came, eyes full of concern and affection, to check my wounds, to change my bandages, to spend time with me, and most importantly, to touch me. The bandages represented something to her, but the thing that healed was her touch, pure and simple. I soaked comfort from her like the desert soaks up the winter rain.

I was growing stronger. I had never healed this quickly from injuries, and I’ve had my share. One evening she came to see me and she was preoccupied, something about her mother’s boyfriend. I didn’t know what to tell her, but I let her vent for a while until she was repeating herself and I was desperate for a kiss. When the body heals, even an undead body, the first sign of returning health is desire; at least, in the folk medicine of my country it was said. I was feeling much better.

"Kiss me," I said, and she did. She leaned over me and gave me her warm mouth. For weeks she had been kissing me very gently, small, contained kisses, but she must have felt my vitality reemerging, because her mouth opened and she slid her hot little tongue along mine.

I returned her kisses without thought, holding her face in my hands, sinking my tongue into her mouth, biting her lips, stroking her lips with my tongue, mauling her mouth. Weeks of gentle nursing had sharpened my appetite; I was ravenous for her. She twisted us neatly in a half-turn on the bed, pressing my head to her chest; I was suddenly lying with my face held to her breasts, listening to the music of her heartbeat. Her fingertips lingered on my face with a melting tenderness. She was wearing some sort of silk top without a bra and her breasts were so soft under it, they moved with every motion I made. They were softer than down feathers in a pillow, softer than water, ethereally soft. I was moving my face over them with abandon, drinking in the scent and the texture of her. Her nipples rose, responding, and a thrill shot through me, I answered them. I took one between my lips and held it , a small treasure of silk-covered flesh. She gasped and her entire body arched against me. I pulled on her nipple gently, clamping the silk against it and stroking up and down; my fingers went to her other nipple and trailed over it delicately. Her heart began to sing to a faster rhythm. Her hands went up and pulled the silk downward. I hadn’t been privileged to see her breasts, completely revealed, yet. She released them. I sprung up into a crouch over her and slipped my hands around them, feasting my eyes. She looked up at me, vulnerability creeping across her face.

"Buffy, do you know how beautiful you are?" my words came out in a whisper. I hadn’t meant them to, but my mouth was suddenly dry. I licked my lips.

She couldn’t seem to answer.

"You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen," I said. Trite, maybe, but the absolute truth, and truth tends to ring through in words. I met her eyes with mine. I slipped my fingers over her breasts, I cupped them in my hands and gazed at her. I bent my head and kissed every inch of them. I wanted her to know that she was beautiful. If she had any doubts they would have to be erased. I looked into her eyes again.

"Do you know?" I asked her, my voice still husky , "Do you?"

Her breathing was ragged. She felt shy, she didn’t want to answer me. I didn’t want her to feel this way. I wanted her to look down at her body and revel in her own beauty, I wanted her to know what a gift she was. She felt exposed and judged. It wouldn’t do. I wrapped my arms around her and held her tightly against me. She pulled away from me and sat up. I was deeply disconcerted; I had done something wrong.

She was holding her top against herself, looking away. I had to struggle to keep from panicking.

"Buffy, please, talk to me. What’s wrong?"

"Nothing," she said in a small voice.

"I went too fast. We don’t have to go so fast. We don’t have to-"

"Angel-" she interrupted me, "It’s just that I know- I know they’re not that good,"

"What?" I was appalled.

"I’m not stupid," she was looking away, "I know what the standard is and I know you’ve had a lot of women-"

I seized her by the shoulders and turned her to face me.

"Tell me what the ‘standard’ is," I demanded.

She looked down.

"I’m-I’m sorry-it doesn’t matter,"

"It matters," I said, "It matters more than anything how you feel. Nothing matters more!"

She was blushing deeply. Where did all this come from? Was it shame? Shame on Buffy was like graffiti on the Mona Lisa.

"They’re not-they’re not very big and they’re not-firm like they’re supposed to be,"

I grabbed her hands and held them. I made her look me in the eye. I knew exactly what was going on, but it wouldn’t be any help to say it, it wouldn’t help her to put off her feelings to fear or to male arrogance. She already knew about that, and she already knew that she was beautiful, it was impossible that the boys hadn’t followed her around school like wolves in heat. This wasn’t about that. I made her look me in the eye.

"Will you do something with me?" I asked her.

"What?"

I put my hand in hers. "Put my hand on your shoulder," I said.

She did. "Do you know what that feels like to me?" I said.

"What?"

"You feel like the sun, when I was human," I said, "I’ll never see the sun like that again, but I remember it. You’re not like other girls and you’ll never be like other girls. You’re the Slayer, for one thing. The heat coming off your skin isn’t like any other sensation I’ve ever had," she was looking down again, "You have to look at me, Buffy. You have to look at me and if you think I’m lying then you have to tell me,"

She looked at me and her eyes were moist. "I know you’re not lying," she whispered.

"This is important Buffy, " I said, "We’ve got to clear this up,"

"O.K.,"

"Now, put my hand against you," I said, looking at her chest, "And don’t look away from me,"

She pressed my hand to her soft breast and I sighed, shaking a little, like I always did. "Do you know what that feels like to me?" I asked her.

"No,"

"Softer than clouds. You’re so soft and warm that I want to fall into you, I want to press my face against you and never have to see anything else again,"

Her heart was moving faster, her eyes had cleared.

"You don’t have to show them to me," I whispered, "Until you want to. They belong to you, but I love them so much, I wish I could show you how beautiful they are,"

She slowly and demurely lowered the silk. I was shaking. It was such an amazing sight, her big, dark eyes fixed on mine while she revealed herself, that my hardness sprung up, almost violently. I tried to calm myself. Her breasts were very slowly emerging. I gave her my hand again. She pressed it onto her breast and I moaned, I couldn’t help it. I took her hand in mine, I placed it gently on her other breast.

"Look at this curve," I said, and I traced the curve of her, moving her hand with mine so she was doing the same. "It’s so round and full, perfectly round," her breathing was accelerating now, her eyes glimmered, never leaving mine. "Feel how soft you are? You’re skin is so supple, and when you flush like this, you shimmer, I can see the blood in your skin dancing," I lifted her breast slightly in my hand and guided hers to do the same. "Feel the slight weight of that? It’s delicious to me, I love the way your breasts move, there’s nothing else like that, I think about the way you feel in my hands when I’m sleeping, when I wake up, while I’m next to you talking I’m thinking about it," her nipples were standing up almost painfully. "When I look at you," I said, my eyes locked on hers, and then I lowered them to gaze at her breasts, "When I look at you," I caught her eyes with mine again, "I want you to know what I see, I see a place where I wish I could spend eternity, I see a beautiful, soft, warm world right here. You’re like the moon, I need to see the moon, just to know it’s there, I love the shape of it and the way it looks on different nights, I love waiting for moonrise, I love the glow of it. You glow, Buffy. Not like other humans. Not like anyone else. I’ve never seen anyone like you,"

Her eyes had softened and her chest was moving unevenly.

"What do I taste like?" she whispered.

I was flooded with joy; I bent my head and pressed my lips to her collarbone.

"You taste like life,"

Her hands held my head; she guided me lower, she held her breast in her hand and guided her nipple to my mouth. I slid my tongue obligingly in a slow circle around it. I reached for her other hand and guided her fingers to the same nipple, encouraging her to stroke the same one I was licking. She gave a long gasp and a crooning sound as she joined me, caressing herself. I closed my lips over it, gave it back, traced the same caresses she was giving herself. She swayed and reached out to hold my shoulder and pulled me down with her on the bed, her hand slipped quickly up my thigh and seized my raging sex in her hand. I cried out; I hadn’t expected it.