To Hell and Back (CC / Adult) (WIP)
Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 1:10 am
Winner Round 5
I know it's been forever, but I had promised that I would update this, and I finally finished the next part.
Here's the link to all the previous parts. I am sure you'll have to refresh your memory, as it's been quite awhile.
To Hell and Back Pro- Pt 29
I'm not really happy with this part, but it's been weeks of thinking about it, and sometimes you have to just bite the bullet, for better or worse.
So here it is, posted in two parts due to length.
To Hell and Back – Countdown to Confrontation
Part 30
Cal stood in the shadows fringing the parking lot of the hotel in the early hours before dawn. Smoke rolled from his mouth as he took another deep drag off of the cigarette, it’s smoldering tip the only thing visible in the darkness surrounding him. His stoic stance belied the sense of nervousness, of anticipation that had seeped into his alien bones. He was expecting anything.
The seal had melded itself, had become whole again. Something primal, wholly not human told him so. He had felt the rush of power in the very air around him, almost frightening in its intensity. His King was back.
His cell phone rang, and he took it out of his pocket.
“Langley,” he barked.
He stood silent, listening, stunned for a moment, for it was Max speaking on the other end of the phone.
His eyes narrowed as he listened to his King, healed and whole, confirming what he’d already felt an hour before.
The girl had accomplished what no one else could. She’d restored the King of Antar.
Maybe there was hope for all of them yet.
A small smile crept over his face as he listened to the kid give him an order. It didn’t irritate him as he thought it would. For the first time, Max was thinking with a clear head, with nothing clouding his judgment.
His power was restored. The seal was within him now, made stronger by his bonding with the human girl.
He was to go and keep watch over Isabel. It was she they would come after now, thinking her child had the seal. It was she that needed protection.
Max could now handle himself.
His eyes widened slightly, as Max spoke again, thinking for a moment that he hadn’t heard him right. But he had. There was no mistaking it.
“You got it kid,” he said, and ended the call.
Max had just offered Cal his freedom if they got through all of this alive. It was almost incomprehensible to him. He had been tied to the kid for almost 50 years, and the possibility of true freedom left him momentarily stunned.
If they defeated Khivar, he could choose to do as he wished. But accomplishing that was going to be a tough task.
Max was right. They would come for Isabel’s child. It didn’t surprise him, for he’d always known that Khivar would have done anything for the seal. Only now, they thought it lay with Isabel’s unborn child. Serena was keeping her watch outside of Isabel’s apartment, where she was shacked up with the Sheriff’s kid. But it wasn’t only Khivar they had to worry about now. Tess’s hatred for the boy he had come to call “The Brat King” had to be factored into this equation.
Now they had to be prepared for anything. But, for the first time, he really felt this group was prepared. He felt the bond between them strongly, something he had never anticipated.
Max was more powerful than he’d ever been, bolstered by the bond he had with the human girl.
When Max had come to LA and had found him the fall before, Cal saw a flailing King, one unworthy of his protection. He had single-handedly ruined everything Cal had worked fifty years to attain.
Cal threw the cigarette to the ground in disgust. He couldn’t taste it and received none of the effect from it that nicotine was purported to induce. Nothing...no taste, no calming of the nerves.
Outwardly, he knew he appeared as cool as a block of ice. But inside, his mind was trying to create every possible scenario for what could happen.
Everything rode on this. The fate of his old home and probably his own life rested on how this went down.
It was true that he had lost respect for his liege, but now he'd found it again through Max’s human mate. She was not any ordinary human girl by any means. He had not once in all of his years witnessed a human risk everything to save the life of their mate. Sure, sometimes the stories came out about some guy that had died pulling his wife out of a house fire only to end up crisped because he ran out of time. But that was different. People make rash decisions in the heat of the moment.
Liz fell in love with an alien. And she knew he was an alien. She knew the trouble it could cause her. She knew her life would never be the same. And yet she gave up everything to protect him. She put her own life in danger to protect his, something Cal himself hadn’t done in fifty years. Even after the kid turned to dust she didn’t let it lie. She risked her life again to bring him back from whatever purgatory Tess has thrown him in.
Liz was an enigma, the prophecy his people hadn't dared to believe in, and he had come to believe that if she found something worth protecting in Max then there had to be something redeemable about him, something he hadn’t seen in his time on Antar. Something the humanity mixed in his DNA had brought out in him.
The humanity softened all of them, save Tess. She had been raised by Nasedo and that explained a lot.
Michael was impulsive and temperamental. He always had been, even on Antar. But now it was tempered with his attachment to the humans who had broken through his walls.
Isabel had been untouchable, snobbish in her disdain for the people beneath her on Antar. It was only her attachment to the humans that softened the icy demeanor she had adopted.
And Max...Max had been controlling and obstinate. He had loved his King enough to take an oath to protect him with his own life, but his initial disappointment in the boy’s actions here on Earth had made him doubt his decision. Now to his amazement he realized that Max was a better man than he ever was on Antar.
It was his love and respect for Liz that had nurtured the gentleness he now saw in his King. It was the human girl who balanced him out.
Cal loved humanity more than he would admit out loud to anyone. He had grown to love this world more than his native one. Serena had more loyalty to their old world than he had. If they could free Antar in the process of all of this, then it would be an added bonus.
And he would be free....
He got into his car and called Serena, telling her he was on his way and would explain everything when he got there.
Khivar and Tess would have no idea what hit them if they came here to kill Max first. They no longer had anything to hold over his head, and he was more powerful than he had ever been.
He could almost forgive Max for the trouble he’d caused him the fall before. Almost.
*************
“What did he say?” Liz asked, as Max settled in next to her on the bed once more, putting Liz’s cell phone on the table next to the bed.
It had been hours since Cal and the others had left. She had no idea how long the two of them had been wrapped in the healing of the seal, but it had long ago grown dark.
“Not much,” Max said, with a touch of disbelief. “It was almost like he already knew.”
“Well, he is your protector,” she said, stroking his cheek.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “But I still expected some sort of argument.”
“Um...I don’t think even I would have argued with you, the way you were speaking,” she chuckled. “It was different. I don’t know how to explain it. You’re different.”
But then her smile faded and he knew she was sensing the unease that had been creeping up on him for the past half-hour. For a time, the emotion of feeling fully connected to her finally, had swept everything else to the background.
He knew the both of them had changed, but she didn't know that the confidence he had projected when talking to Cal was not completely real. But it was the one thing he knew he could control.
What he couldn't control was the unwanted apprehension over what was inevitably going to happen between he and Liz.
How could he be so unbelievably happy and so scared at the same time?
He knew that physically, there was nothing to worry about. Michael had told him that nothing unusual had happened with Maria.
But his only comparison he had was what had happened between he and Tess, and he was desperately trying to push those memories away. He didn't want anything to mar what he had waited for his whole life.
He wasn't going to let it happen. He wasn't.
"What's wrong Max?" Liz asked, a worried frown crinkling her brow.
Max shook his head, determined not to let something he wanted more than anything to forget come between the two of them.
“Everything I thought was true was a lie,” he said softly. “Who would have thought that would make me the happiest I’ve ever been in my life?”
He turned to her, pushing her hair away from her face.
“It was because of you. Everything I thought was true wasn’t. Everything except you...how you feel about me. How you’ve always felt about me,” he said. “I have something to fight for now, the people I love. And for the first time I can do it on equal footing. Cal and Serena will protect Isabel, and I can protect the group now. We can fight them together.”
She smiled at him and nodded.
His eyes roamed her face, hungrily drinking in her unguarded expression, something he hadn't seen in so long.
“I love you so much,” he whispered.
He hadn’t needed to say it, because Liz could feel it bathing every cell in her body, but hearing those words fall from his lips once again caused her brown eyes to moisten with tears.
He smiled, as she blinked back her tears.
"Don't cry," he whispered.
"I'm sorry," she said, her voice trembling. "Just...seeing you smile, I..."
He could sense her feelings, impressions. He could sense her happiness. He knew that his smile was even more beautiful to her now that she knew that she had come so close to never seeing it again. That thought made everything more precious; the sparkle in his eyes, the husky music of his voice, the silky texture of his dark hair as she ran her fingers through it.
The feeling of his body pressed against hers, the safety of his embrace, the fire of his lips on her own. The healing power of his hands, the warm caress of his breath on her neck, the whispered words of adoration, and the powerful connection they once again shared. But most of all, it was the love she felt crashing over her, something she hadn’t felt in its purity for so long.
He shifted to lie over her, his elbows supporting most of his weight. His fingers framed her face, caressing with reverence. She wanted him to make love to her. She wanted him to complete what had been started the day she'd been shot in the Crashdown.
“I’d always dreamed this moment would be different,” he said wistfully. “I wanted it to be in some perfect place, without any of this hanging over us.”
She shook her head as her eyes met his.
“Don’t you know me by now?” she asked. “I don’t care where we are. As long as I’m with you, it will always be perfect.”
He wished that he knew that would be true, but he was afraid of what she would see in his heart, the anger he felt toward Tess for what she'd done to him, the helplessness he felt.
He glanced around the room, looking to change it, looking for a diversion.
“Don’t,” she said in a soft voice, and his eyes met hers.
“I just think this should be real. It should be what it is. I don’t love you because you can make things beautiful with a wave of your hand. I love you just because you’re Max,” she said.
“That’s all I ever wanted. The rest of it is just a bonus,” she said.
His eyes roamed her face for a long moment, and then he pulled himself up, reaching for her hands pulling her up until she was kneeling at eye level with him.
He leaned forward to brush his lips against hers. It was a kiss filled with promise, laced with tenderness, and filled with love.
He had only been kissed by one other girl and he'd been helpless against it. It made him ill to think that she had forced herself on him from the beginning. From the moment she had arrived in Roswell, she had caused them all nothing but trouble.
His fingers rested on her neck over her pulse, close to her jaw, and she felt the warmth that radiated from them through her entire body.
Liz lifted her hand to cover his while his other hand snaked around her waist, pulling her closer.
Again he caught a glimpse of Liz's emotions. He could feel that she thought that there was and would never be anything to compare to being in his arms. Before Tess, it had never mattered what had been going on around them. The moment she'd felt his touch or the strong cadence of his heartbeat against her ear, she’d always somehow known that he would never let anything happen to her. And he wouldn't have. He would have fought with his last breath to protect her.
For him, this moment was a dream he had almost believed would never happen. In fact, he’d been resigned that he would never again feel her in his arms.
He hadn’t fully grasped everything that had happened to him, and he still wasn’t completely sure it was real.
The feeling of Liz’s velvet lips against his, the brush of her tongue rolling against his own lit a fire within his body, one that he had felt only for her. It was always Liz.
Liz, who had never asked anything of him, who until a few years ago had seemed impossibly out of his reach.
She trusted him completely. She trusted him with her life and with her heart.
Her warm lips moved to his neck, making his pulse race as she nipped at his skin. His body responded in kind and he gasped, her desire rolling at him through their connection.
Her hair teased the top of his hand at her waist, silky and light.
Her body was pliant in his hands. His fingers slipped beneath her tank top, sliding against her smooth warm skin.
She was just...she was perfection. But he had known that from the moment he had seen her all those years ago.
She sighed as his fingers followed the curve of her spine, pulling back to span her ribcage.
She was so pliant, so trusting that he wouldn’t hurt her. She had made a choice, to give herself to him, something he hadn’t had when Tess had followed him to the observatory that night.
In an instant, that feeling of unease again swept over him, the aftermath of his memory of the nightmare he’d lived in the observatory prickling his mind.
Liz stilled, and he knew she was sensing his turmoil. She pulled away from him slowly, cupping his cheek.
His lungs were expelling his harsh breath rapidly his desire mingled with fear, and it made him angry. He was disgusted with himself for letting thoughts of the most horrific night of his life to invade these precious moments with Liz.
“Max, maybe we shouldn’t...maybe you’re not ready for this,” she whispered, concern filling the mink depths of her eyes.
He shook his head violently.
“No,” he said in a fierce voice, “I’m not letting her ruin this too.”
Max could see her heart in her eyes, and it made him want to weep. The pad of her thumb stroked his jaw.
"It's not a question of ruining anything, Max," she said gently. "It's a question of whether you're ready. You've been through a lot. But you have a choice now. You'll always have a choice with me."
Max blinked back his tears as his eyes drank in her features. How he loved this face. She leaned back, lying back on the bed, and he lay down beside of her, resting his head against her chest.
"I used to dream about this," he whispered. "Every night, before you were shot, I wondered what it would be like to know you, to really know you. I never expected you to love me back."
"How could I not love you, Max?" she asked. "You are everything I had ever dreamed about. Knowing that you could feel that way about me, that you risked everything for me, sometimes it just didn't seem real. But I know what we have is real, and nothing can touch that. No one can touch that."
He lowered his head, unable to meet her eyes.
She lay back on the bed, taking his hand.
"Max," she whispered, and he raised his eyes to meet hers.
"I love you," she said, and a strangled sob burst from his lips.
She took his hand and placed slid it under her tank, letting it rest against the soft skin of her stomach.
"This is where you healed me," she said. "You saved my life. You need healing now. We'll do it together."
Her hand dropped from his to her side, leaving his fingers pressed against her skin.
His fingers caressed her silky skin.
"I'm afraid, he said in a broken voice. "I'm afraid of what you'll see. I'm afraid of how I'm feeling about what happened with her."
"You're angry," she observed in a quiet voice.
"I don't know what I am anymore," he said with a shaking his head in torment. "For months, there was nothing else for me to do but think about it. I never thought I could hate someone so much. I never thought that someone could be so...evil."
"She made you feel powerless, Max. But you're not powerless anymore. You're not," she said meaningfully.
"I know," he said, his throat tightening as he looked down at her.
There was a short silence between them, and he leaned over to press his lips against hers. He pulled away slowly, his eyes following his hand with uncertainty as his fingers traced the skin of her abdomen.
He felt the sharp stab of her desire at his touch, and started to pull his hand away. She reached up and grasped his fingers, bringing them to her lips, pressing soft kisses against them, before dropping her hand again to her side.
Max held his fingers to her lips for another instant and then trailed them lower, down her chin, to the erratic pulse throbbing in her throat, the tips of his fingers finally resting over her heart. He took a deep breath, his body hardening despite his trepidation, knowing that its rapid beat was because of him.
He glanced up and saw that she was watching him. She smiled shyly at him, and a quick flash of the two of them making out in the back of his jeep flashed through his mind.
A smile flitted across his face. Those stolen moments seemed like a lifetime ago, and yet only yesterday all at the same time.
They'd been so innocent then, and their fight had been with the FBI, not one of his own. Their frantic, naïve touching and kissing had been frustration and sheer bliss all at the same time. He remembered Liz's shy, eritc blush as he'd tentatively touched her breast for the first time. He'd been nervous, but it had been a different kind of nervous. It was nervousness of the unknown, the naivete of an inexperienced boy. An inexperienced alien boy.
When she'd touched him back then, he'd thought his whole body was set afire. Looking at her now, he felt the stirrings of the same burning, consuming desire for her. His need for her had always been a battle against his own will, because it had been so hard not to take things too far, out of fear for her safety. He wished now that they had taken that chance, that he would have had that memory to obliterate the nightmare of Tess' manipulation.
"You can touch me Max," Liz whispered in a husky voice.
He couldn’t not touch her. With shaky fingers, his hand moved to her breast covered by the soft cotton of her shirt. His hand outstretched, he traced his index finger over the soft swell of the underside, feeling the peak stiffen instantly through the material as he brushed across it. She drew in a deep breath and he felt another sharp pang of need through their connection, but she was holding it in check. His finger paused there, his pants suddenly becoming uncomfortably tight against his growing erection straining against them. She didn't move, remaining completely still, though she never took her eyes off of him.
A white-hot burst of desire rolled through his body, and Liz gasped, her pupils dilating. He looked at her in wonder. She was feeling what he was feeling, and he could feel the slow burn in her body that she was desperately trying to harness, for his sake.
His finger traveled downward, grazing across soft cotton until it once again met the warm bare skin of her abdomen.
He trailed his finger over her navel, watching her stomach flatten as she drew in a deep breath. He could see what she couldn’t, and his eyes widened as he saw the glowing trail his touch left behind, just like that night in Michael’s apartment.
“Liz,” he whispered in awe. “You’re...glowing.”
She lifted her head slightly to see, and smiled when she saw the golden trail his touch was leaving behind.
She laid her head back on the bed and sighed.
“Only you can do that to me, Max,” she whispered.
“I always wished that I could do the same to you. What was it you said to me? That you glowed on the inside?” she said with a shy smile.
“I did,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Always. No one could ever make me feel like you do.”
And in his own words he found the truth. No matter what Tess had done, she couldn’t touch his heart, his soul like Liz Parker could, with a mere look, a simple touch. Tess could never touch that part of him, the most secret place inside of him that Liz had always owned.
He looked at her lying before him, her skin flushed with desire, her love for him shining in her eyes, and he realized that nothing that could happen from here on out could break the bond that was between them. Nothing but death could ever take them from each other, for the truth had been laid bare for the both of them to see, and in it they had found their way back to each other.
His hands spanned her waist, his thumbs stroking her velvet skin, before he lifted them to move to the button on her pants. She nodded at him, reassuring him, and he freed it, pulling the zipper down carefully.
Sliding his hands under the fabric, he moved the flaps down, exposing the soft material of her panties. His fingertips stroked the material, his eyes focused on them.
A soft sigh fell from her lips at his touch, yet still she remained unmoving, her hands on the bed at her sides.
He leaned over, his hands at her waist to press a tender kiss to the sensitive flesh near her navel, then rubbing his cheek against the smooth skin.
He felt her desire rise and ebb through the connection they now shared, as her back arched slightly pressing her skin closer against his cheek.
His hands slid her pants down further, her hips rising slightly from the bed to accommodate him. He drew a deep breath, his palms sliding against the smooth skin of her thighs.
Sliding up on the bed, his hands framed her ribs, pulling her tank up and over her head, discarding it on the bed beside her.
He had almost forgotten to breathe, seeing her lying before him, her hair fanned across the pillow, her chest rising and falling in ragged pants, her breasts creamy expanses, punctuated by rosy nipples stiffening as the air hit them.
It was the first time he’d ever seen her like this. The stolen moments they’d had together had always been in the jeep, in the dark, in the cramped backseat, but those moments paled in the light of this one, with nothing between them, no deceptions, no concerns for what might happen, nothing diminishing their connection.
She was perfect, from her glorious hair, to the soft flare of her hips, the shapely vision of her legs.
“You’re so beautiful, Liz,” he said, and her cheeks flushed a deeper pink.
His hand rested on her hip as he stroked her hair, looking into the fathomless depths of her eyes. In them, he saw promise for the future, the hope he hadn’t dared to dream, the love that he hadn’t the courage to believe could still exist. But it did. It had never gone away.
I know it's been forever, but I had promised that I would update this, and I finally finished the next part.
Here's the link to all the previous parts. I am sure you'll have to refresh your memory, as it's been quite awhile.
To Hell and Back Pro- Pt 29
I'm not really happy with this part, but it's been weeks of thinking about it, and sometimes you have to just bite the bullet, for better or worse.
So here it is, posted in two parts due to length.
To Hell and Back – Countdown to Confrontation
Part 30
Cal stood in the shadows fringing the parking lot of the hotel in the early hours before dawn. Smoke rolled from his mouth as he took another deep drag off of the cigarette, it’s smoldering tip the only thing visible in the darkness surrounding him. His stoic stance belied the sense of nervousness, of anticipation that had seeped into his alien bones. He was expecting anything.
The seal had melded itself, had become whole again. Something primal, wholly not human told him so. He had felt the rush of power in the very air around him, almost frightening in its intensity. His King was back.
His cell phone rang, and he took it out of his pocket.
“Langley,” he barked.
He stood silent, listening, stunned for a moment, for it was Max speaking on the other end of the phone.
His eyes narrowed as he listened to his King, healed and whole, confirming what he’d already felt an hour before.
The girl had accomplished what no one else could. She’d restored the King of Antar.
Maybe there was hope for all of them yet.
A small smile crept over his face as he listened to the kid give him an order. It didn’t irritate him as he thought it would. For the first time, Max was thinking with a clear head, with nothing clouding his judgment.
His power was restored. The seal was within him now, made stronger by his bonding with the human girl.
He was to go and keep watch over Isabel. It was she they would come after now, thinking her child had the seal. It was she that needed protection.
Max could now handle himself.
His eyes widened slightly, as Max spoke again, thinking for a moment that he hadn’t heard him right. But he had. There was no mistaking it.
“You got it kid,” he said, and ended the call.
Max had just offered Cal his freedom if they got through all of this alive. It was almost incomprehensible to him. He had been tied to the kid for almost 50 years, and the possibility of true freedom left him momentarily stunned.
If they defeated Khivar, he could choose to do as he wished. But accomplishing that was going to be a tough task.
Max was right. They would come for Isabel’s child. It didn’t surprise him, for he’d always known that Khivar would have done anything for the seal. Only now, they thought it lay with Isabel’s unborn child. Serena was keeping her watch outside of Isabel’s apartment, where she was shacked up with the Sheriff’s kid. But it wasn’t only Khivar they had to worry about now. Tess’s hatred for the boy he had come to call “The Brat King” had to be factored into this equation.
Now they had to be prepared for anything. But, for the first time, he really felt this group was prepared. He felt the bond between them strongly, something he had never anticipated.
Max was more powerful than he’d ever been, bolstered by the bond he had with the human girl.
When Max had come to LA and had found him the fall before, Cal saw a flailing King, one unworthy of his protection. He had single-handedly ruined everything Cal had worked fifty years to attain.
Cal threw the cigarette to the ground in disgust. He couldn’t taste it and received none of the effect from it that nicotine was purported to induce. Nothing...no taste, no calming of the nerves.
Outwardly, he knew he appeared as cool as a block of ice. But inside, his mind was trying to create every possible scenario for what could happen.
Everything rode on this. The fate of his old home and probably his own life rested on how this went down.
It was true that he had lost respect for his liege, but now he'd found it again through Max’s human mate. She was not any ordinary human girl by any means. He had not once in all of his years witnessed a human risk everything to save the life of their mate. Sure, sometimes the stories came out about some guy that had died pulling his wife out of a house fire only to end up crisped because he ran out of time. But that was different. People make rash decisions in the heat of the moment.
Liz fell in love with an alien. And she knew he was an alien. She knew the trouble it could cause her. She knew her life would never be the same. And yet she gave up everything to protect him. She put her own life in danger to protect his, something Cal himself hadn’t done in fifty years. Even after the kid turned to dust she didn’t let it lie. She risked her life again to bring him back from whatever purgatory Tess has thrown him in.
Liz was an enigma, the prophecy his people hadn't dared to believe in, and he had come to believe that if she found something worth protecting in Max then there had to be something redeemable about him, something he hadn’t seen in his time on Antar. Something the humanity mixed in his DNA had brought out in him.
The humanity softened all of them, save Tess. She had been raised by Nasedo and that explained a lot.
Michael was impulsive and temperamental. He always had been, even on Antar. But now it was tempered with his attachment to the humans who had broken through his walls.
Isabel had been untouchable, snobbish in her disdain for the people beneath her on Antar. It was only her attachment to the humans that softened the icy demeanor she had adopted.
And Max...Max had been controlling and obstinate. He had loved his King enough to take an oath to protect him with his own life, but his initial disappointment in the boy’s actions here on Earth had made him doubt his decision. Now to his amazement he realized that Max was a better man than he ever was on Antar.
It was his love and respect for Liz that had nurtured the gentleness he now saw in his King. It was the human girl who balanced him out.
Cal loved humanity more than he would admit out loud to anyone. He had grown to love this world more than his native one. Serena had more loyalty to their old world than he had. If they could free Antar in the process of all of this, then it would be an added bonus.
And he would be free....
He got into his car and called Serena, telling her he was on his way and would explain everything when he got there.
Khivar and Tess would have no idea what hit them if they came here to kill Max first. They no longer had anything to hold over his head, and he was more powerful than he had ever been.
He could almost forgive Max for the trouble he’d caused him the fall before. Almost.
*************
“What did he say?” Liz asked, as Max settled in next to her on the bed once more, putting Liz’s cell phone on the table next to the bed.
It had been hours since Cal and the others had left. She had no idea how long the two of them had been wrapped in the healing of the seal, but it had long ago grown dark.
“Not much,” Max said, with a touch of disbelief. “It was almost like he already knew.”
“Well, he is your protector,” she said, stroking his cheek.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “But I still expected some sort of argument.”
“Um...I don’t think even I would have argued with you, the way you were speaking,” she chuckled. “It was different. I don’t know how to explain it. You’re different.”
But then her smile faded and he knew she was sensing the unease that had been creeping up on him for the past half-hour. For a time, the emotion of feeling fully connected to her finally, had swept everything else to the background.
He knew the both of them had changed, but she didn't know that the confidence he had projected when talking to Cal was not completely real. But it was the one thing he knew he could control.
What he couldn't control was the unwanted apprehension over what was inevitably going to happen between he and Liz.
How could he be so unbelievably happy and so scared at the same time?
He knew that physically, there was nothing to worry about. Michael had told him that nothing unusual had happened with Maria.
But his only comparison he had was what had happened between he and Tess, and he was desperately trying to push those memories away. He didn't want anything to mar what he had waited for his whole life.
He wasn't going to let it happen. He wasn't.
"What's wrong Max?" Liz asked, a worried frown crinkling her brow.
Max shook his head, determined not to let something he wanted more than anything to forget come between the two of them.
“Everything I thought was true was a lie,” he said softly. “Who would have thought that would make me the happiest I’ve ever been in my life?”
He turned to her, pushing her hair away from her face.
“It was because of you. Everything I thought was true wasn’t. Everything except you...how you feel about me. How you’ve always felt about me,” he said. “I have something to fight for now, the people I love. And for the first time I can do it on equal footing. Cal and Serena will protect Isabel, and I can protect the group now. We can fight them together.”
She smiled at him and nodded.
His eyes roamed her face, hungrily drinking in her unguarded expression, something he hadn't seen in so long.
“I love you so much,” he whispered.
He hadn’t needed to say it, because Liz could feel it bathing every cell in her body, but hearing those words fall from his lips once again caused her brown eyes to moisten with tears.
He smiled, as she blinked back her tears.
"Don't cry," he whispered.
"I'm sorry," she said, her voice trembling. "Just...seeing you smile, I..."
He could sense her feelings, impressions. He could sense her happiness. He knew that his smile was even more beautiful to her now that she knew that she had come so close to never seeing it again. That thought made everything more precious; the sparkle in his eyes, the husky music of his voice, the silky texture of his dark hair as she ran her fingers through it.
The feeling of his body pressed against hers, the safety of his embrace, the fire of his lips on her own. The healing power of his hands, the warm caress of his breath on her neck, the whispered words of adoration, and the powerful connection they once again shared. But most of all, it was the love she felt crashing over her, something she hadn’t felt in its purity for so long.
He shifted to lie over her, his elbows supporting most of his weight. His fingers framed her face, caressing with reverence. She wanted him to make love to her. She wanted him to complete what had been started the day she'd been shot in the Crashdown.
“I’d always dreamed this moment would be different,” he said wistfully. “I wanted it to be in some perfect place, without any of this hanging over us.”
She shook her head as her eyes met his.
“Don’t you know me by now?” she asked. “I don’t care where we are. As long as I’m with you, it will always be perfect.”
He wished that he knew that would be true, but he was afraid of what she would see in his heart, the anger he felt toward Tess for what she'd done to him, the helplessness he felt.
He glanced around the room, looking to change it, looking for a diversion.
“Don’t,” she said in a soft voice, and his eyes met hers.
“I just think this should be real. It should be what it is. I don’t love you because you can make things beautiful with a wave of your hand. I love you just because you’re Max,” she said.
“That’s all I ever wanted. The rest of it is just a bonus,” she said.
His eyes roamed her face for a long moment, and then he pulled himself up, reaching for her hands pulling her up until she was kneeling at eye level with him.
He leaned forward to brush his lips against hers. It was a kiss filled with promise, laced with tenderness, and filled with love.
He had only been kissed by one other girl and he'd been helpless against it. It made him ill to think that she had forced herself on him from the beginning. From the moment she had arrived in Roswell, she had caused them all nothing but trouble.
His fingers rested on her neck over her pulse, close to her jaw, and she felt the warmth that radiated from them through her entire body.
Liz lifted her hand to cover his while his other hand snaked around her waist, pulling her closer.
Again he caught a glimpse of Liz's emotions. He could feel that she thought that there was and would never be anything to compare to being in his arms. Before Tess, it had never mattered what had been going on around them. The moment she'd felt his touch or the strong cadence of his heartbeat against her ear, she’d always somehow known that he would never let anything happen to her. And he wouldn't have. He would have fought with his last breath to protect her.
For him, this moment was a dream he had almost believed would never happen. In fact, he’d been resigned that he would never again feel her in his arms.
He hadn’t fully grasped everything that had happened to him, and he still wasn’t completely sure it was real.
The feeling of Liz’s velvet lips against his, the brush of her tongue rolling against his own lit a fire within his body, one that he had felt only for her. It was always Liz.
Liz, who had never asked anything of him, who until a few years ago had seemed impossibly out of his reach.
She trusted him completely. She trusted him with her life and with her heart.
Her warm lips moved to his neck, making his pulse race as she nipped at his skin. His body responded in kind and he gasped, her desire rolling at him through their connection.
Her hair teased the top of his hand at her waist, silky and light.
Her body was pliant in his hands. His fingers slipped beneath her tank top, sliding against her smooth warm skin.
She was just...she was perfection. But he had known that from the moment he had seen her all those years ago.
She sighed as his fingers followed the curve of her spine, pulling back to span her ribcage.
She was so pliant, so trusting that he wouldn’t hurt her. She had made a choice, to give herself to him, something he hadn’t had when Tess had followed him to the observatory that night.
In an instant, that feeling of unease again swept over him, the aftermath of his memory of the nightmare he’d lived in the observatory prickling his mind.
Liz stilled, and he knew she was sensing his turmoil. She pulled away from him slowly, cupping his cheek.
His lungs were expelling his harsh breath rapidly his desire mingled with fear, and it made him angry. He was disgusted with himself for letting thoughts of the most horrific night of his life to invade these precious moments with Liz.
“Max, maybe we shouldn’t...maybe you’re not ready for this,” she whispered, concern filling the mink depths of her eyes.
He shook his head violently.
“No,” he said in a fierce voice, “I’m not letting her ruin this too.”
Max could see her heart in her eyes, and it made him want to weep. The pad of her thumb stroked his jaw.
"It's not a question of ruining anything, Max," she said gently. "It's a question of whether you're ready. You've been through a lot. But you have a choice now. You'll always have a choice with me."
Max blinked back his tears as his eyes drank in her features. How he loved this face. She leaned back, lying back on the bed, and he lay down beside of her, resting his head against her chest.
"I used to dream about this," he whispered. "Every night, before you were shot, I wondered what it would be like to know you, to really know you. I never expected you to love me back."
"How could I not love you, Max?" she asked. "You are everything I had ever dreamed about. Knowing that you could feel that way about me, that you risked everything for me, sometimes it just didn't seem real. But I know what we have is real, and nothing can touch that. No one can touch that."
He lowered his head, unable to meet her eyes.
She lay back on the bed, taking his hand.
"Max," she whispered, and he raised his eyes to meet hers.
"I love you," she said, and a strangled sob burst from his lips.
She took his hand and placed slid it under her tank, letting it rest against the soft skin of her stomach.
"This is where you healed me," she said. "You saved my life. You need healing now. We'll do it together."
Her hand dropped from his to her side, leaving his fingers pressed against her skin.
His fingers caressed her silky skin.
"I'm afraid, he said in a broken voice. "I'm afraid of what you'll see. I'm afraid of how I'm feeling about what happened with her."
"You're angry," she observed in a quiet voice.
"I don't know what I am anymore," he said with a shaking his head in torment. "For months, there was nothing else for me to do but think about it. I never thought I could hate someone so much. I never thought that someone could be so...evil."
"She made you feel powerless, Max. But you're not powerless anymore. You're not," she said meaningfully.
"I know," he said, his throat tightening as he looked down at her.
There was a short silence between them, and he leaned over to press his lips against hers. He pulled away slowly, his eyes following his hand with uncertainty as his fingers traced the skin of her abdomen.
He felt the sharp stab of her desire at his touch, and started to pull his hand away. She reached up and grasped his fingers, bringing them to her lips, pressing soft kisses against them, before dropping her hand again to her side.
Max held his fingers to her lips for another instant and then trailed them lower, down her chin, to the erratic pulse throbbing in her throat, the tips of his fingers finally resting over her heart. He took a deep breath, his body hardening despite his trepidation, knowing that its rapid beat was because of him.
He glanced up and saw that she was watching him. She smiled shyly at him, and a quick flash of the two of them making out in the back of his jeep flashed through his mind.
A smile flitted across his face. Those stolen moments seemed like a lifetime ago, and yet only yesterday all at the same time.
They'd been so innocent then, and their fight had been with the FBI, not one of his own. Their frantic, naïve touching and kissing had been frustration and sheer bliss all at the same time. He remembered Liz's shy, eritc blush as he'd tentatively touched her breast for the first time. He'd been nervous, but it had been a different kind of nervous. It was nervousness of the unknown, the naivete of an inexperienced boy. An inexperienced alien boy.
When she'd touched him back then, he'd thought his whole body was set afire. Looking at her now, he felt the stirrings of the same burning, consuming desire for her. His need for her had always been a battle against his own will, because it had been so hard not to take things too far, out of fear for her safety. He wished now that they had taken that chance, that he would have had that memory to obliterate the nightmare of Tess' manipulation.
"You can touch me Max," Liz whispered in a husky voice.
He couldn’t not touch her. With shaky fingers, his hand moved to her breast covered by the soft cotton of her shirt. His hand outstretched, he traced his index finger over the soft swell of the underside, feeling the peak stiffen instantly through the material as he brushed across it. She drew in a deep breath and he felt another sharp pang of need through their connection, but she was holding it in check. His finger paused there, his pants suddenly becoming uncomfortably tight against his growing erection straining against them. She didn't move, remaining completely still, though she never took her eyes off of him.
A white-hot burst of desire rolled through his body, and Liz gasped, her pupils dilating. He looked at her in wonder. She was feeling what he was feeling, and he could feel the slow burn in her body that she was desperately trying to harness, for his sake.
His finger traveled downward, grazing across soft cotton until it once again met the warm bare skin of her abdomen.
He trailed his finger over her navel, watching her stomach flatten as she drew in a deep breath. He could see what she couldn’t, and his eyes widened as he saw the glowing trail his touch left behind, just like that night in Michael’s apartment.
“Liz,” he whispered in awe. “You’re...glowing.”
She lifted her head slightly to see, and smiled when she saw the golden trail his touch was leaving behind.
She laid her head back on the bed and sighed.
“Only you can do that to me, Max,” she whispered.
“I always wished that I could do the same to you. What was it you said to me? That you glowed on the inside?” she said with a shy smile.
“I did,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Always. No one could ever make me feel like you do.”
And in his own words he found the truth. No matter what Tess had done, she couldn’t touch his heart, his soul like Liz Parker could, with a mere look, a simple touch. Tess could never touch that part of him, the most secret place inside of him that Liz had always owned.
He looked at her lying before him, her skin flushed with desire, her love for him shining in her eyes, and he realized that nothing that could happen from here on out could break the bond that was between them. Nothing but death could ever take them from each other, for the truth had been laid bare for the both of them to see, and in it they had found their way back to each other.
His hands spanned her waist, his thumbs stroking her velvet skin, before he lifted them to move to the button on her pants. She nodded at him, reassuring him, and he freed it, pulling the zipper down carefully.
Sliding his hands under the fabric, he moved the flaps down, exposing the soft material of her panties. His fingertips stroked the material, his eyes focused on them.
A soft sigh fell from her lips at his touch, yet still she remained unmoving, her hands on the bed at her sides.
He leaned over, his hands at her waist to press a tender kiss to the sensitive flesh near her navel, then rubbing his cheek against the smooth skin.
He felt her desire rise and ebb through the connection they now shared, as her back arched slightly pressing her skin closer against his cheek.
His hands slid her pants down further, her hips rising slightly from the bed to accommodate him. He drew a deep breath, his palms sliding against the smooth skin of her thighs.
Sliding up on the bed, his hands framed her ribs, pulling her tank up and over her head, discarding it on the bed beside her.
He had almost forgotten to breathe, seeing her lying before him, her hair fanned across the pillow, her chest rising and falling in ragged pants, her breasts creamy expanses, punctuated by rosy nipples stiffening as the air hit them.
It was the first time he’d ever seen her like this. The stolen moments they’d had together had always been in the jeep, in the dark, in the cramped backseat, but those moments paled in the light of this one, with nothing between them, no deceptions, no concerns for what might happen, nothing diminishing their connection.
She was perfect, from her glorious hair, to the soft flare of her hips, the shapely vision of her legs.
“You’re so beautiful, Liz,” he said, and her cheeks flushed a deeper pink.
His hand rested on her hip as he stroked her hair, looking into the fathomless depths of her eyes. In them, he saw promise for the future, the hope he hadn’t dared to dream, the love that he hadn’t the courage to believe could still exist. But it did. It had never gone away.