When the Jeep rolled to a halt outside the house, Buffy was dozing on Giles' shoulder.

He leaned down and kissed her temple, which roused her from her contented slumber.

“We're here already?”

“Why? Did you not enjoy your evening?”

Buffy shook the weariness out of her brain. “Are you kidding? Not enjoy what was maybe the most wonderful night of my life? Duh. I just don't want it to be over yet.”

“You don't want to go inside?”

“No, I don't want to go inside,” she parroted, sliding her arms around his neck. “What I want is…” She finished the sentence with a kiss: seeking, passionate and evocative.

When they finally parted, breathless as ever, Giles grinned lopsidedly, looking more boyish than he ever had.

After a long moment, he finally cleared his throat. His voice was hoarse. “A-Are you sure…?”

Buffy nodded.

The green eyes darkened with passion. “In that case, I might have one more treat in store.” He picked up her cell phone. “Call Willow and tell her you don't know what time we'll be in. Possibly not until tomorrow morning…”

Her eyes lit up and her breath caught, but she just nodded as he put the car in gear.

By the time Buffy had made the call, talked to Dawn about helping Willow with the chores and listened to her excited chatter, Giles had driven them back across Sunnydale to the main street of Riverview, an adjoining but considerably more affluent, suburb.

He pulled the Jeep off the road and drove under the awning of a majorly expensive looking hotel, drawing to a halt in front of the big glass doors. An attendant opened Buffy's door for her. By the time she'd stepped out, Giles had come around and joined them. He handed his keys to the man.

“Just tonight,” he said easily, showing a driver's license and accepting a receipt. He offered a tip, receiving a contented grin and a nod in reply.

Buffy rubbernecked all the way inside and all the way across to the desk. The entire reception area was like a cathedral, with a giant water feature in the middle of it, made of glass, light and myriad streams of water falling from a great height into the peaceful pool at the bottom, where Japanese Koi drifted contentedly around.

Buffy craned her neck up while Giles talked to the concierge. So much glass, and gold coloured trim, abstract reliefs on the walls, and incredibly well behaved, perfect looking plants…not to mention the grand piano up half a level and right where all the glass coffee tables and big semi-circular arm chairs were.

“You've been here before?” She whispered to Giles.

For the first time, his tone was reluctant. “I met someone here for drinks, once,” he admitted.

Buffy's brows knitted, visibly jealous. “Who?” She asked baldly.

Giles accepted the key card and paperwork he was handed, put his wallet away and turned back to her.

“It's really not important.”

“No, it's not,” she agreed, struggling to do better, to be better, for him. “I just…”

Giles took pity on her, half-amused by the stormy, obviously jealous face, and annoyed and flattered that she felt so strongly about something so trivial.

“Her name was Cindy. Believe it or not, we met in a bookstore, fighting over the same book on a sale table.

“They don't sell real books about demons and vampires in bookstores,” Buffy said, still working on the name 'Cindy', her mind filled with visions of bubble dancers or blonde, Barbie doll types…She looked up, and saw herself in the mirrored fountain.

*Or not…*

“It was a poetry anthology, if you must know,” he said dryly. “And to relieve the flights of fancy that name has no doubt conjured in that funny little brain of yours, she was a teacher, here in Riverview.”

“English Lit,” Buffy muttered. “Figures…”

He tilted his head to one side, amusement again tugging at his lips. “Still jealous?”

“Did you see her much?”

The amusement faded. “Once more, at 'Philippe's' for dinner, in Sunnydale. There was a vampire, on the way back to the car. I…um…dealt with it.”

“And freaked her out even more?”

“Rather,” he agreed as the elevator doors opened and they stepped inside the plush-carpeted car.

“We're not exactly the king and queen of romance, are we?”

Giles pressed the button for their floor, then the 'door close' button, before anyone else could enter. He turned to her as they started to ascend, and took her in his arms.

By the time he was done kissing her, Buffy had revised that thought to the past tense.

Since they had no bags to carry when the doors opened, Giles swept a squealing Buffy off her feet and carried her down the hallway.

She sighed contentedly as he slowed, her head against his chest. “What are you doing?”

“You carried me twice.”

“You de-thorned me,” she reminded him, “and carried me home.”

He chuckled. “Then perhaps I just…wanted to.”

She kissed his jaw. “I can live with that.” Then she looked around. After the splendour of the lobby, the hallway almost looked shabby by comparison.

“Why isn't it pretty here?”

Giles set her down and looked up and down the corridor as he fished his key-card out of his pocket.

“Probably because they spent all their money on the lobby. It seems to be normal practice.”

He swiped the card and opened the door.

Buffy's eyes widened. She'd never been in even a two or three star hotel before. This had to be at least four. The room was gorgeous.

She crossed over the beige coloured carpet, past the glass breakfast table and the royal blue sofa, to the window, and looked out at the lights of the city while Giles put down his wallet and bits and pieces on the bedside table.

Somehow, from so many floors up, something that seemed so prosaic in the daytime and so dark and empty when she was patrolling it, now looked like a fantasy wonderland, making her adventure all the more special and exciting. She turned back and looked at the pale wooden TV cabinet and cupboards, the expensive lamps that filled the room and the faux-marble tiles and gold trim of the bathroom visible through its open door.

“It's a long way from sleeping on a bed of leaves and catching your own breakfast,” she said softly…then fell silent.

The silence lingered, then Giles stirred from his thoughts and came to stand behind her, circling her with his arms.

They stood silently like that for a surprisingly long time: just…together. Then Giles kissed her head and turned her around.

“We're still the same as we were,” he said gently. “Only the backdrop has changed: I did try to tell you…”

She half smiled, trying to shake that feeling of loss. “I know. It's just…we weren't…it was just us.”

He nodded. “Now we're back, and there's Dawn, and a whole world of responsibilities…and distractions all crowding in on you.”

She nodded. “Not just the slaying…everything.” She reached up and touched his face. “I thought I'd lost you. It just…it felt like the universe was saying: 'you don't deserve him', because it's true. I don't. Those things you said, when you were angry before: they're all true. And when I thought you didn't want me, it seemed like I was finally paying for every stupid one of them.”

“And now…when you should be happy and enjoying yourself, you're suddenly not sure you should be rewarded for those transgressions?”

Buffy's brows rose, her eyes wide. “How did you…?”

He smiled ruefully. “We aren't so different, you and I.”

She looked up at him and despite the immediate and humorous thought that a mirror would make a lie of that quickly enough, she understood exactly what he meant.

“Don't sell yourself short, there,” she teased. “This is me we're talking about, here, after all.”

He smiled at her. “I'm not,” he told her, and made her believe it.

Then he was turning her around.

Buffy held her breath as he lowered the zipper on her dress, his knuckles brushing the smooth skin of her back. When it was all the way down, he gently pushed the dress off her shoulders and undid the hooks of her bra, sliding the straps off as well, so that it fell forward with the bodice of the dress.

He ran his hands very slowly down her arms to her waist, and then her hips, encouraging the dress to slip silently to the floor.

When he drew her back against him, Buffy groaned a little. His hands were exploring her curves, her hips; the soft flesh of her belly and the firmness of her thighs. She shivered as they passed by her blue lace g-string and back up to luxuriate in the softness of her now arching body.

Not until she made a small, demanding noise did his strong fingers slip up and caress, like feathers, the curves of both her breasts.

Buffy groaned softly and arched back even more.

He continued, finding it difficult, himself, not to groan. He had not only been given permission to touch her as he'd never touched her before, her lovely body was pressing against his, the soft, delightful curves of her bottom making themselves felt in a myriad of ways, with the most spectacular of consequences.

Giles kissed her ear, and Buffy strained to his caresses. Her breasts were soft and full, and almost more than he could bear. He simply held them for a moment. Then, once again his hands were roaming, stroking and caressing her whole body, until they were both almost trembling with desire.

And then she was turning, stepping lightly out of the dress and reaching up to push his jacket from his shoulders. He could see how flushed she was, how much her body had responded to his touch. The coat fell to the floor and she pulled his tie, so that the knot came undone. He felt it slide off tantalizingly slowly before she started undoing the buttons of his vest.

When she got to the second button of the shirt, Buffy stopped to look up at him again, both of them lost in each other for what seemed like an eternity.

Then she slid her arms around his neck, Giles taking the hint and bending his head to kiss her again, pulling her to him and bending her head back a little with his ardour.

For Buffy there was exquisiteness in the power and the danger she sensed in him, the very real sense of him controlling it and channelling it into loving her, instead of… She immediately shut out the bad memories and lost herself in the sensuousness of his kiss, his scent, his skin, chest hair, the fingers caressing her back….

Then she was unbuttoning the shirt, pleased there was nothing under it but the still-tanned chest and the chest hair she'd come to love. When she reached his belt, she unbuckled it slowly and undid the hook and the button on his trousers, before sliding the zipper down and easing the shirttails out.

Then she stopped again, for just a beat. Somehow, that one moment was more intimate, more personal…more real than any relationship she'd ever known. Then she was sliding her hands under the shirt, running them up his torso, exploring, feeling, absorbing every contour of him, from his belly to his still-hard chest, pausing for a moment to run her fingers through the soft, tawny hair.

She felt Giles shudder as she continued, heard the changes in his breathing and the sound of his pleasure, and wanted to keep hearing it. She pushed the pants off his hips and the shirt off his shoulders, so she could see him. He was wearing the black ribbed briefs she'd given him, even though it was evident from the only other underwear she'd ever seen him in, that he preferred shorts.

For a long moment she drank him in: the proximity of him and the comfort of the intimacy she'd missed so much from when they were lost.

He was watching her, too, his green eyes dark and burning with desire, yet gentle as they watched her flushed face.

“I'll never be thirty again, Buffy,” he said gently.

Her blue grey eyes rolled up to meet his. “And this is important because…?” she retorted equally as gently, and moved closer to trail a hand down his torso, flattening it against his belly, fingertips down, and letting it slide under the elastic of the briefs.

She heard his indrawn breath, felt the shudder go through him as it discovered the evidence of his desire, undisguised as it was by the contour-fitting underwear. He was almost painfully aroused, which in turn fired her own passion even further than the blaze already started deep inside her.

Buffy pushed the underwear down, but Giles caught her elbows before she could move any further.

“Not yet,” he said in a desire blurred voice, and slid his hands down to cup her bottom and lift her, so that he could pull her hard against him, her legs curling around him so that her g-string pressed even harder against his erection.

Buffy shuddered at the sensuality of it and threw herself into the passion of his kiss, her fingers raking through his hair as he plundered her mouth and arched his hips in response to her deliberate movements against him.

The erotic lovemaking continued unabated, and grew in intensity until Giles had to lay her on the bed before his arms gave out.

It was almost painful for him to look at her lying there, breast heaving, moving the soft, tender peaks as her breathing raced; hair loose on the pillow, and her creamy, tanned cheeks flushed with passion: passion for him. It was almost impossible for him to conceive of a reason why he deserved to be so happy. It had been so long, and the road had been so bloody hard and painful…now he was almost afraid to reach out and touch the joy…lest it be a shadow and gone before he could truly believe it was his…

As though sensing something, Buffy sat up and slid over to the side of the bed. She touched his chest, trailed her fingers down to his stomach.

“I love you,” she said simply, breaking the long silence.

He shuddered. “Buffy…”

Her fingers had reached his groin, and were stroking his arousal in a way that was as natural and as familiar as though they'd been together forever.

“It's all right,” she said softly, and bent her head.

Giles threw his own back, trying not to cry out as her lips touched him, their coolness exquisite against his heat. And he continued to struggle to not vocalise too loudly the pleasure she was giving him, the utter sensory ecstasy of what she was doing… *for him*

… And then he had to stop or he wasn't going to be able to…

Buffy found herself lifted very gently and eased back onto the bed until she was lying curled in his arms.

“God,” he said with feeling and kissed her hair.

Buffy stifled a giggle. “Good God, or Glory kind of god?”

He looked down at her, squashing his chin against his chest. “The 'oh, dear lord,' kind,” he told her dryly.

She grinned contentedly and kissed the point of that chin. “Cool.”

“Cool,” he muttered. “It was vastly more than cool.”

And then Buffy found herself beneath him, his tawny head bent to allow him to taste her soft flesh, to caress her breasts with his breath, his lips, his mouth…and to listen to her small cries and groans as he found all her special places, especially when he moved down, following the lines and contours of the lithe body until he reached the tenderness of her groin and gentle hands removed her g-string.

And then it was Buffy's turn to find out that Giles knew more about women than all of her previous lovers combined. She had no compunction about crying out as he drove her senses to distraction, knowing unerringly how to please, how to pleasure. *God, how could he know every…how could he know what she wanted, even before she did…*? She gasped then moaned again and lifted her hips as he brought her perilously close to ecstasy.

Then she was touching him on the shoulder before it was too late. He looked up. When he saw the need in her eyes, he smiled and moved over her, pausing to brush her cheek and caress the stray strands of hair, as he seemed so fond of doing, off her face.

The brilliant green eyes searched hers, looking for any sign that she wasn't ready, that the dream might yet be an illusion…and found only a level of adoration to rival his own amid the smokiness of her desire.

He reached out then, and took something from his wallet. Buffy heard the rattle of something tearing and felt a surge of desire when she realized what it was.

Then Giles was sliding his hands down to her hips and lifting them to himself. Buffy wrapped her legs around his and cried out, a gasping, pleasure-filled groan, as he took her, barely able to control her reaction to the eroticism of their joining…so incredibly aroused had he made her already. The waves of pleasure were so strong that for the first time ever, she bit her lip to give herself longer. Then, when she had some semblance of control, she rose to him, shifting to make their union deeper, stronger, and to increase her pleasure threshold even further as he moved more and more powerfully inside her.

Above her, Giles was also biting his lip. He was determined not to spoil this night…of all nights…for her…for either of them, but she was so wild and free in her passion and so incredibly aroused that her movements, the sounds of pleasure she was making and the sense of absolute possession, were driving him beyond any threshold he'd ever known.

“Giles, please!” Buffy finally cried out, unable to wait any longer.

It went through him to his toes, her cries and the convulsing of her orgasm around him exploding into a cascade of pleasure that made him forget everything, except roaring in unadulterated ecstasy as she arched to him and he spilled gloriously into her, until both of them came to an exhausted rest.

After a few moments with his head rested on her shoulder to gather his wits, Giles reluctantly drew himself out and secured his protection before getting up to take it to the trashcan in the bathroom. He was back in moments, slipping in beside her and smiling when she immediately wriggled over to bury herself in his arms.

“My mighty Slayer doesn't want to go to sleep on her own, replete and victorious?” he teased.

Buffy lifted her head long enough to kiss him on the nose. “Your mighty Slayer is mighty tired of being on her own…and couldn't bear to not be touching you right now. It…it is okay for me to stay?”

Giles turned sideways, so that they were facing each other. “Forever, if you want to,” he confirmed tenderly. “I was only teasing you.”

She half smiled and kissed him tenderly, responding when he kissed her back just as lovingly.

He drew her back into his arms. “Do you think Saint Valentine would approve?” he asked softly, resting his cheek against her hair.

She grinned sleepily.

“Mm. But not nearly as much as me.”