It's addiction and he's still psych major enough to see it, but that’s why he stays in the abandoned hut at jungle’s edge and lets the hostile drain him, ounce by ounce, every nerve ecstatically afire, until the day this woman Sam walks in, shoots his hostile goddess faceless, and saves him.

He loves her now, that’s not in question, and he never loved the vampire whore, neither of which explains why the eerie whispers of gallant dark knights lost to electricity and Slayers in throes of shadow have sent him back to Sunnydale, just to check. Just to see.