PART 4

When Liz finally located the address to Maria’s home, she was shocked to find herself in the newly renovated and fashionable, west side brick town complexes. Five years ago the old industrial downtown region underwent an urban renewal fueled by the increase in population and revenue. Old brownstone buildings, factories, and warehouses were renovated creating a new shopping community full of restaurants, live music, and expensive shops with specialty groceries and an open square farmers' market. Along with this renewal came the renovation of old warehouses into large condo and loft complexes for the upper class yuppies and young contemporary rich. Liz hadn’t realized that a University Professor made enough money to be able to afford someplace so plush.

Liz, feeling underdressed, conspicuous and out of place, reluctantly knocked on the door. The man that answered it left her speechless and astounded. He was wearing only a pair of worn jeans, unfastened, and his face was covered with a slight bristle of a morning beard while his curly hair was in disarray. “I’m sorry...um...I must have the wrong address.” Liz tried to retreat quickly from what looked to be a young starving artist or something of that type.

“Whoa! Wait there, brown eyes. Who you lookin' for exactly? If you already woke me up, it’s not like you should just scamper away before letting me help ya out.” Sean smiled in the flustered woman’s face, peering closer. She looked familiar to him somehow. “Do I know you?”

Liz quickly shook her head no, mortified that she woke him. “I was just looking for Professor Maria DeLuca’s home. I’m so sorry...”

“Well, don’t apologize, you found it. Come on in. I didn’t know M was home.” Sean move aside to let the young woman in, but not very far aside, so Liz was forced to slide past him, brushing up against his bare chest.

“Stop teasing her and put some clothes on!” Both Sean and Liz looked up at the stairs and saw Maria standing there observing them.

Liz was surprised. She thought Maria and Guerin were, well, sort of an item. But here was Maria living with a man. Glancing up at Maria, Liz was silent and her thoughts numbed by the sight of Maria. The young professor didn’t look very good. There were no signs of crying, but her face was bleached of all color, her hands had a fine tremor, and she wore no expression, almost like a real emotion would break her face. Next to her, the man swore, as he too noticed Maria and her lack of expression.

“Dammit, M, what's going on?” Sean went and ran up the stairs grabbing Maria by the shoulders and pulling her near. Liz couldn’t understand what they were talking about, but she could tell that the man was alarmed as his back stiffened and he made some comforting remarks to Maria. Liz was stunned when Maria turned and went back into the darkened upstairs loft area without talking to her. The man slowly came down the stairs.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.” Sean rubbed his forehead as he looked at the girl. “If you’re one of Maria’s students, I’m afraid you’ll have to come back or call later. Professor DeLuca isn’t up to receiving visitors.”

“No, I’m not. That's why I came...or I mean, I was sent to....by the Detectives to...” Liz stopped talking or trying to talk when the man held up his hand.

“Okay, just one thing at a time, slowly,” he paused for a second, “but not that slowly. Who are you?”

Liz blushed, but gathered her wits trying to look at his face only and not his almost nude body. “I’m Liz Parker from the Roswell PD.”

Sean smiled. That was where he saw her, or sort of saw her. Parker from Forensic was a slippery customer, scurrying through the halls of the PD practically overlooked by most people working there. “Of course, I knew I knew you from somewhere.” Sean held out his hand to shake hers. “I’m Sean DeLuca from Vice.”

“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t know, or I mean, of course I’ve heard of you, but your last name and Maria’s didn’t register. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that you lived here,” Liz actually swore under her breath making Sean smile even wider at her ramblings.

Liz rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. “Of course you live here. What I meant was I didn’t realize that Maria was married.” Mortified at what she said and how it might sound, implying that Maria didn’t act married especially considering her actions with Michael Guerin, Liz stammered even more. She was so embarrassed that she missed Sean’s startled look.

“No-no! No! Chill, Parker, you’ve got to breathe! Maria isn’t my wife, God rest my black soul. No sir, that little filly is my pain in the ass cousin. I’m only mooching a place to stay.” Sean quickly led the young woman to a place to sit. “Do you need some water or something, maybe a brown paper bag to breathe in?”

Liz became indignant at that. “I’m not having a panic attack, or hyperventilating. I’m not. It’s just that I didn’t know...that I was told to...” Liz looked at the twinkle in his eyes and swore under her breath again which made Sean laugh out loud. Angry, Liz stood up, and pulled her clothes down, straightening them. “Well, I was told to come stay with Maria by Max Evans, but since you’re here, I’ll go and report.” Liz tried to walk off in a huff, but Sean quickly grabbed her arm and pulled her back down on the sofa.

“Not so fast, Liz Parker from Forensics. Why does my cousin need a babysitter? A keeper, yes I can buy, but a babysitter?” Sean moved away from her to give her space, because as charming as she was, all flustered and stuttering, he really needed to hear this information, and he suspected Liz Parker would respond better if he wasn’t cluttering her personal space.

“Let me get a shirt.” Sean quickly went to the spare room under the stairs to grab something to cover up. Maybe if Liz didn’t have to avoid looking at his manly chest, she could find a way to calm down enough to spit out all the grisly details.

Liz looked around the loft apartment liking the room, amazed at the colors, because what she would’ve sworn shouldn’t go together, somehow worked. The place was light and airy with the upper loft area fully covered in shades that could be opened or closed with an electronic switch. Currently the area was dark because the shades were closed to keep out the sun, but the rest of the place was open and light with what looked like an atrium and garden behind a glass door. The kitchen was open and big, with large appliances and a cafeteria style refrigerator with sliding glass doors.

When Sean came back in he was not only dressed, but he went into the kitchen and put on a pot. Liz silently watched him work as he quickly assembled some sandwiches and made hot tea, adding wedges of fresh lemon, cream and sugar. Picking up the tray, he went to the glass door and stood there looking back at her.

“Are you going to get this door for me Parker?” Liz blushed again, but quickly went over to open the door. Sean smiled and thanked her on his way through it, setting the tray down and pulling a chair out for her. Liz looked around the open garden with admiration and something close to envy. “Before you think my cousin is a gardening wiz, I’ve got to admit that most of this was done by my Aunt Amy. M? She kills the hardiest plant with just a stare. But Aunt Amy? It’s like they grow just to please her.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, it is that. My Aunt had some hard times in her life, and it seemed that making this place come to life, to create a world of green, and sunshine was the only way she could find a reason to survive, and to make Maria want to go on. So this secret garden was built and created for Maria. It’s her sanctuary, and God forbid she should ever try to tend it. The girl knows cars, but plants? Those she thinks are only for eating .” Liz was intrigued by the brief glimpse into Maria’s life. There was so much she didn’t know, so much that remained a mystery, and for some reason she felt like she wanted the chance to know Maria better, to have her as a friend. “So what happened today, with Maria’s old Professor friend, was it bad?”

Sean watched shadows move across Liz Parker’s face as he passed her a cup of hot tea and some small sandwiches. His Aunt Amy told him that to offer a person nourishment was the first step to disarm them enough to relax around you. Liz looked down at her hands, and the plate and just nodded. Looking up in Sean’s eyes she said, “Bad, very bad.” Sean leaned back and looked up at the darkened windows of the second floor, worrying about the sleeping Maria, and what she had stepped into this time.

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It took some time for Michael and Max to head over to Maria’s place. After they closed the newest crime scene on the University, they returned to the precinct to report to Valenti and file their reports. Preliminary forensic reports came back from both the Delaney murder and the Kovitch. Michael had been correct in his assessment that there was some blood missing from Kovitch. According to the preliminary reports, about a pint of blood was missing, and from stains on the manuscript, it appeared that after the first onrush of blood, a container was set on the table to catch the blood, and then removed. The etching in the skin was still an unknown, and Forensics was searching the FBI databases for known occult symbols resembling the etching. Whatever it was, it was old, and it told a story.

They stopped at the hospital and found Kyle was still sleeping. For a moment they stopped to talk to Maria’s assistant, Tess Hardy. She had stayed all day at Kyle’s side, and didn’t look to be moving anytime soon.

“How is he?” Max asked staring at the young woman, feeling a need to actually move into her space, to search her face closer. The woman stared back at him equally perplexed by his regard, and a sense of unease as familiarity washed over her. She had been sitting at Kyle’s bedside reading a magazine, watching him sleep when suddenly she felt something, a prickling of her skin almost as if the hair on the back of her neck was standing up, and she just knew she was being watched. Turning, she was caught in the unwavering stare of two men, the same two men who had visited Maria two days before. When she first handed the dark-haired one the coffee’s she could have sworn that she felt an almost electrical movement up her arm, but that soon passed.

“He's woken up a few times, but he’s in lots of pain so they keep giving him injections. They’re making him loopy and keeping him asleep. I don’t think he even knows I'm here.” Tess smiled at them and then looked back down at Kyle. “He was my husband’s best friend all through high school, and mine. He was Jack’s best man at our wedding.” Tess tried to control the need to cry again. “I never thought there'd be a time when we’d wouldn’t all be together. It’s so easy when you’re young thinking you’ll live forever.” Tess looked at the two men confused why she would tell them things, personal things that she never talked to anyone about but Maria.

“Maria was coming by after work, but there was an incident at the University, one that forced us to have her go home.” Michael didn’t tell her any more about the murder of Professor Kovitch. The young woman already looked like she was struggling to handle Kyle’s injury. Michael paused looking at the girl. She felt--well to him--she felt like Isabel. Somehow lost and badly traumatized by what life had already dealt her in her short life. But unlike Isabel, Tess seemed to be learning to survive, to go on. “Tell Kyle that Guerin and Evans came by to see him, and that we’ll be back, and we’ll bring Maria with us next time.”

Tess only smiled and nodded at the two men as they slowly retreated, both of them occasionally glancing back at her. After they left, she couldn’t place why or even what made them different, but they were. Looking up at Kyle finally she noticed that he was awake again.

Smiling at him, uncertain, her smile wavered. Never once in her life would she have imagined that Kyle Valenti could make her feel unsure, a stranger to him. But after a year of silence, that was what they were. “Hi, handsome, are you in pain? Should I call the nurse?”

Kyle just shook his head no, as he continued to watch her. She looked sad and tired, but still the breathtakingly beautiful Tess he remembered. “I thought I died and went to heaven when I saw you.”

“Kyle...”

“No, it’s okay. I’m glad you’re here.” Kyle looked down to where she held his hand tight in hers. “I’ve missed you.” Tess reached over him and gently hugged him tightly to her being careful of his shoulder and IV lines crying her relief that he hadn’t died.

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Michael and Max noticed a prim and proper Buick sedan parked outside Maria’s loft. They guessed it had to be Parker’s. Michael wasn’t looking forward to telling Maria about her friend, but he had to. She'd already guessed that it wasn’t good news, but the details weren’t something he was wanting to share with her, and if he didn’t need her help, he’d have done everything in his power to make sure she never found out any details at all.

They were both surprised to hear gentle laughter on the other side of the door as it was opened to them. In front of them stood a bright-eyed smiling Liz Parker, whose face completely shut down when she saw them. She moved aside to let them in and Max closed his eyes and almost moaned when he realized that he forgot to call first and let her know they were on their way.

“Hey, Lizzie, do you think I should toss both types of olives in or just the black ones?” Asked Sean as he came around the corner to see what was keeping Liz. They thought the door was the delivery they ordered from the local market to have supplies for supper delivered. Instead it was the detecting team of Guerin and Evans. Sean noticed how thunderstruck Liz appeared, discreetly looking at Max under her lashes, and he swore under his breath. Great, just great. Hooking an arm around her waist, Sean pulled her back against him to give the other two a chance to come in. Coming up behind Michael and Max was the missing delivery boy with two bags of groceries. Sean reached for his wallet as Max grabbed a bag and Liz the other.

Michael walked passed Sean and said, “Hope you bought bread.”

By the time Sean paid for the groceries, Liz was unpacking them along with Max. Quickly taking his place back in the kitchen beside Liz, Sean boosted Max out to take a seat next to Michael at the bar. Watching Michael glancing up at the dark upstairs Sean knew Michael was reluctant to wake Maria, to tell her about her dead friend. He had heard some of the details from Liz, enough to call in that night and stay close to home.

He tried to call his Aunt Amy, but according to her friend Caroline, Amy was out organizing a rally to protect wild hungry bears from uncertain death. Amy hadn’t heard about Kyle yet, but Sean was certain that once she did, Hurricane Amy would be back in town causing more havoc than help. Amy DeLuca had to be the greatest mother and aunt alive.

Sean didn’t like the way Liz shut down and became quiet again, but he kept her cooking with him while he asked Michael and Max details about the murder. Finally Liz seemed to realize that it was getting late, and with all the men in the house that she was probably no longer needed to stay with Maria.

“Sean, thanks for the company. I guess I could have left once I knew you were staying home tonight, but now I really should get home.” Liz turned to talk to Michael, to make sure it was okay for her to leave since he was in charge of the case and she had been ordered to watch over Maria, which amounted to nothing but talking to Sean while Maria slept. Michael just nodded at her noticing how Max’s eyes were watching both Liz and Sean and their interactions.

The room was silent after Liz left, and Michael continued to watch Sean cook. Cooking was a mystery to him, since his idea of cooking was opening up a can of soup and heating it. He attributed his love of Tabasco to the lack of discernible taste buds. It seemed that everything he actually knew how to make was at best, bland. “What are you making exactly?”

“Old DeLuca recipe. It is fresh Chilean Sea Bass cooked in olives, capers and fresh tomatoes. I like to serve it with a tortellini stuffed with ricotta and Romano cheese. I made the tortellini fresh earlier, with Liz’s help.” Sean discreetly looked up under his lashes at Max, as he mentioned Liz’s name. The man’s reaction made Sean smile wryly to himself. Yeah, he thought so.

“How’s Maria?” Michael finally asked.

“She took some medicine for her migraine and has been sleeping.” Sean looked at Michael sharing another moment of understanding. “Maybe you should go check up on her while Max and I finish dinner.”

Sean knew that Michael was needing to go upstairs, but he was resisting the need. The constant movement of his eyes to look at the darkened room was enough to clue Sean in. Without making a comment or saying a word, Michael quickly climbed the stairs to the room he spent last night in. He needed to know she was okay, that she was still alive and breathing. He hated not knowing what was going on, and how Maria figured in it. But something inside told him not to let her out of his sight, not to leave her alone and unprotected.

“I’m not asleep you know.” Michael sat down on the bed where he sat the night before. “He’s dead, then?”

Michael nodded his head, but then realized that she couldn’t see that in the dark. “Yeah, he’s dead.” He didn’t like the hollow sound of her voice, the lack of emotions or even tears.

“Natural causes or murder?” Maria held her breath, but she knew. If it had been Janhie dying of natural causes he would’ve told her immediately, and he wouldn’t had ordered her home under the watchful eye of Liz Parker.

“Not natural causes.” Michael didn’t like the emotionless state she seemed in at this time. Maria DeLuca was anything but emotionless. This was wrong. “Why don’t you come downstairs and eat some food? Sean’s cooking something strange with olives, but it smells good.”

Maria slowly got up from the bed and came over to stand in front of him. Reaching down, she leaned into him and liked how he put his hands around her, hugging her close to his body while she ran her fingers through his hair and kissed the top of his head. “You go. I’ll be down in a few minutes. I want to shower real quick.” Michael wanted to suggest he come with her, but somehow it seemed like she needed to be alone to gather herself from the knowledge that her friend had been murdered. Besides if he joined her in the shower there was no way that it would be in any way quick.

Michael left her alone and walked down the stairs. He saw the both Max and Sean were eating and discussing the complexities of the case, all the unknowns and the dead ends. When Sean saw him coming he quickly served up another plate for Michael, not even bothering to ask him if he liked fish. Max pushed the Tabasco sauce over to Michael as he sat down and took a bite. It wasn’t bad, not at all.

“How is she?” Max asked. Michael just shook his head and ate yet another mouthful.

“Not good. I don’t get it. She would feel better if she cried, and in truth I expected that she would cry, but instead she went to take a shower, so maybe she’s doing it in there.” Michael didn’t know why the thought of Maria crying bothered him, but it bothered him more that she wasn’t.

Sean said softly, not looking at either Michael or Max, “Maria doesn’t cry, not ever. The only time I've seen her cry in the last few years was when she was totally disarmed and out of control, or pissed so much she could've spit. Otherwise, Maria doesn’t cry, not even a little.” Michael frowned at the information and wanted to ask Sean more questions, to unearth the seriousness of his eyes, the knowledge he held, but refused to divulge. But it was more than a little obvious that Sean wasn’t saying more than that.

The three men looked up when she came down the stairs, none of them saying a word or uttering a sound. Maria was dressed in a short tight leather mini with a large belt and a tight small shirt leaving her midriff exposed, swinging a leather jacket over her shoulder. Looking at them she headed straight for the garage door. “I’m going for a drive.”

Maria didn’t even wait for their reactions. The three men stood and tried to formulate or even justify a way to demand that she remain indoors with them, safe from murderers and rapists. The problem being that Maria was an adult and the decision was hers to make. Pausing at the door, she looked back and said to Michael. “Well? Are you coming?”

Michael looked at the other two men, and quickly grabbed his jacket and followed her. She already had the garage door open, and the GTO was already gunning loudly, almost as impatient as its mistress to have free run of the road. Michael realized that technically he should give her a speeding ticket for what she was about to do, but he knew, just knew that if he could get behind her wheels, he would let it run wild too.

Michael watched her in the darkness with the light of the dash playing on her face. She was beautiful, absolutely beautiful! Just when he thought there was no way in hell he could find her more attractive and intriguing, she did something so unexpected and there it was again. The movement of her hands on the steering wheel told him that this run was her way of getting back some control, that she was finding it hard to keep from losing herself in the grief. So he sat back in the back corner, by the door and watched her and the machine eat away the miles at blinding speeds, admiring the control she exerted over the tons of metal and horsepower.

The smell of the car was rich in leather with the soft roll back top of the convertible looking new and in good condition. She could have put the top down, but for now they were running fast into the quiet of the night. Suddenly she stopped, dead center of the road, and sat breathing hard, looking ahead at the disappearing yellow line running fast down the middle of the road. That damned yellow line! No matter how hard or how fast you raced towards it, it kept winning, being just ahead of you as far as sight would permit you to see. It was like life--an endless run into a darkened night where nothing was certain but uncertainty.

Maria suddenly turned the car around in a U-turn, and headed back to Roswell, to murder, and the reality of living the rest of her life without some lost friends. As Michael saw the lights of Roswell, suddenly Maria took a turn down a dirt road leading into the desert, and after a few moments she came to a stop on a hill overlooking the city lights. Turning off the engine they sat there in the silence watching life race on undisturbed by the events of the last few days.

“It doesn’t really matter does it?” She asked softly. Michael spent so long in the silence watching those lights that her words startled him.

“What? What doesn’t matter?” Michael kept watching her, seeing her shadow in the darkness with her hands firm and hard on the steering wheel.

“This. All of this. It doesn’t matter. You could race towards the end of the world without stopping, but sooner or later you would be right back where you started, no better off for the effort.” Maria turned to look at him. He watched her silently as she stared at him. “I’ve run this race a thousand times, and it doesn’t change, or matter whether you run and hide, or standstill and fight. It finds you. I used to think that, if I could stay ahead of the sun, that I would be okay, that it wouldn’t find me. But I was wrong. It finds you and finds you, and makes you pay.”

“What are you running from Maria? Who?” Maria laughed a soft bitter laugh.

“The same person you run from Michael. Myself.” Moving across the benched seat, she leaned towards him and hooked a finger in the open lapel of his shirt.

“Aren’t we a pair, raggedy man? You, the c-ock of the walk, and me, the peahen. We talk a good game, walk the walk, but deep inside we’re looking for that same taste of redemption, that one lost soul that will bring us peace. Maybe if we can save the next one or lay them to rest, then maybe, just maybe we can find ourselves.” Maria leaned forward and rested her forehead on his chest whispering soulfully, “Maybe we can find enough grace for God to finally care enough to stop letting bad things happen to us. It’s like being born cursed and not knowing, never knowing why.”

It was true, and he found it easy to hate her for that.

Maria with her Liz Parkers and Tess Hardys finding them something inside that they had lost or just never had. Even him. She had found him a moment of peace when he was standing at the edge, uncertain he could pull it back together and go on. It was like Maria needed to heal things in others just to learn how to heal herself. What wounded her was part of another mystery, because she was the farthest thing from a victim Michael knew. He didn’t feel the need to save her, to find all that was wrong and fix it, because somehow he knew that she needed the strength that came from saving herself. The protectiveness he felt towards her was different, because Maria DeLuca didn’t know how to live life as a victim? Or perhaps she just stubbornly refused to?

Michael’s responsibilities were different and in a crushing way, the same. He helped the victims, the defenseless and abused. They were all that mattered, all he could see. If he could save one of them and find some justice, perhaps he could learn to save himself, to mend. It was such a long road this one they walked, needing to find a way to go on, and yet too damn stubborn not to give up. What he found so refreshing about her was she seemed like him, unsure at times. But suddenly like the wind, she changed. It was like she shook it off and refused to live in the shadows because the light was all she wanted, and whether she deserved it or not, she was damn well going to live there. Whereas, Michael only saw shadows, and the light was merely an aspiration, his greatest desire.

“Maria...”

She put her finger to his mouth to stop him from talking, to keep him from trying to make it better. “Shush, it’s okay. I know. I just know. Even if you traveled ahead of the chaos, ahead of the path, sooner or later you come back to the beginning, and by running you did nothing, nothing but spend time, worthless time, wasted. I’m tired of running, but I have to believe that it’s not the ends that are important. I’ve got to believe that the journeys are where the real importance is, and it’s not the winning that matters as much as how you fought.”

She moved into his lap and turned to face him, to straddle him, reaching her hands up to frame his face and run her fingers into his hair. She moved forward and her lips came to rest against his, and he could feel the small flicker of her tongue and she tasted his lip and then pulled back. “Journey with me, Detective...”

Michael’s heart sped out of control. “For just a short while. I’m not asking for forever. Help me forget that I’m watching a man who never deserved to die being buried tomorrow, and a few more days I’ll do the same for a sweet old man who survived the hell of a concentration camp and Hitler to die in his office, slaughtered.” Maria didn’t know the details, but as she lay in her bed fighting off a headache, she could hear the talking of Liz and Sean, and though the details were never told her, the horrified whispers of Liz Parker spoke louder than anything else could have done.

Maria needed to feel him, to feel the echoing pants of his breath struggling out of his lungs, to feel the rush of his blood beneath his skin and her teeth. She didn’t want to hurt him, at least not much. The need to feel again was wrapped up in him, in the taste and smell, the singeing slow burn of pain left by his not so gentle hands, as they shaped her to him and the bite of his teeth as he slowly nipped his way down her body, touching her with the fire of living, walking on the edge of ecstasy and pain.

Michael watched as Maria reached over and turned on the ignition and pushed a button after first releasing the latches in the front by the window shield. The soft rolled top moved back, opening the convertible to the open skies, and with hundred of thousand stars twinkling down on them and the lights of Roswell below, she turned off the car and rested over him.

Pushing herself up on her knees where she sat over his hips, his mouth was level to her stomach, and he rested back against the seat watching her as she ran her hands up her torso to unbutton the three buttons of her shirt and slowly peel it away. Moving forward he licked the salt from her skin at her belly button and then moved upward with his hands resting hard at her waist. Maria leaned into him to drop her discarded shirt onto the back seat, and then framing his face she pulled his mouth away from her skin and reached down to take his mouth in a long sucking kiss that had her tongue moving roughly in and out of his mouth, f-ucking him. Michael moved under her trying to find some relief from the pressure in his groin.

Michael moved his hands to wrap them around her legs, and as she continued to intensify the kiss leaving him breathless and disoriented, he moved his hand up her legs pushing the leather skirt up high to gather at her waist. He groaned loudly and swore against her skin as he realized that she was wearing no underwear. His finger went straight to her core, moving inside to feel the tight silky walls grasp him, not in the least bit surprised to find her already wet and ready for him.

She moaned heavily in his mouth and pushed herself harder against his fingers and hand, wanting more. Maria took f-ucking really seriously, not really thinking about her partner as much as just living in the moment, in the feeling and taking him along for the ride. He could appreciate that type of selfish self-interest because it was how he lived his life. Michael was more than happy to let her use him anyway she pleased because from where he was sitting under her body, the benefits were more than a little compensatory.

Michael slid his hands up into her body, stroking the smooth skin inside and out enjoying the movement of the firm muscles, feeling the ripples and twitches his touch generated. Maria's hands got busy moving down the front of his shirt, opening the buttons and removing it from his body, and then sliding downward to work on the buttons of Michael's jeans, rubbing the straining c-ock that was outlined against the worn fabric. Michael groaned against Maria's mouth as those incredible fingers delved in and freed his c-ock, warm skin on his heated flesh, cool air rushing against him. Her thumb smoothed over the tip, probing at the tiny fissure, spreading the moisture that had already leaked out.

Michael couldn’t open his eyes, didn’t want to. There was a lightshow inside him, moving light flashing behind his eyes. He was definitely dick-oriented lately with all his thoughts and energies originating there and concentrating on where he could put it, namely anywhere in Maria. Max would’ve chided him over thinking with his littlest head, but in truth, what options did he have since that was where all the blood in his body seemed to reside?

"Yeah, touch me like that...just like that, Maria..." Her mouth came back to his, hard and sucking, pulling his tongue inside to gently bite it.

"Like me touching you?" Maria murmured as she released his mouth to rest against Michael's chest, nuzzling into hard nipples.

"Yes..." The fingers stroked, caressed, cajoled, drawing breathy gasps and moans from Michael. He felt Maria smile against his chest. "Keep touching...don't stop, don't stop...oh, sh-it, I need your mouth on me!"

"Where do you want my mouth?" Maria whispered huskily, slowly licking his nipple, rolling it between her teeth and tongue, and then gently biting it as his chest moved upward and he pushed himself harder against her mouth. One of his hands came to entangle in her hair, holding her mouth tight against him. It wasn’t until he felt her moving downward, her mouth leaving sucking marks on his skin, that enough sense came back to stop her, to pull her upright again.

"No..." Michael pulled Maria back and shoved his face hard into her stomach tonguing her belly button. "I want to taste you...drink you. Then I want to f-uck you until you can't see straight."

"Oh," came a faint voice above him. He could feel her excited breath moving through her lungs as her hands came to rest on his shoulders and her fingers played with the hair resting at his nape. “Then you should get busy.”

Michael moved her backwards and lifted her, holding her weight with his head resting against her stomach. Maria moaned when she felt the leather interior of the dash against her ass and the edge of the windshield against the back of her neck. Leaning forward she let her body rest against his while he moved forward in the seat placing her feet on the seat on either side of him, pushing her knees farther apart. Oh god, she was wearing high heels! That almost lost it for Michael right there, and gulping deep breaths of air harshly into his lungs he regained some control.

The leather skirt was bunched around Maria's waist, and Michael leaned in to take his first taste of Maria, licking gently across the swollen bunch of nerve endings and breathing in the smell of her body, the sweat and leather. He reveled in Maria's gasp as her fingers grasped him, bruising. Flavors and scents exploded across his taste buds. She tasted of heat. Heat, salt, sweat and a slightly sweet flavor; a delicious combination that exploded in his mouth. He swallowed her again, rubbing his tongue deep inside, tasting the soft silky walls while her breath rushed out of her in a deep groan. He pulled back, enough to give himself a little maneuvering room, pushing his finger back in her, feeling her internal muscles grip him hard, he sucked her clitoris hard into his mouth, running his tongue all across the top of it. His other hand holding her firm as her hip bucked into him, pushing herself deeper into him, wanting more than his mouth and fingers.

"God, Michael..." Hands clutched at his head, fingers scrambling for purchase. “I hate you.” Michael smiled against her. Good. He’d rather have her heated emotions than her soft ones. He couldn’t afford to have her crumbling before him. He needed her tough, hot and hard. He hated her too. He hated everything about her that made him want to love her forever and endlessly because those were emotions he couldn’t understand, couldn’t even imagine controlling or dealing with. Hate he could do. Love left him scared.

He ignored everything but his driving need for this and plunged a little further down on the hot, engorged mound, sucking the heat, feeling the energy of her empty into his mouth, giving her life to him. The reaction was electric. Maria groaned low in her throat and shoved upward against him, forcing the rest of herself into Michael's mouth. He grunted and swallowed, taking it all in. He sucked Maria voraciously, like a starving man, needing to taste her, to own her.

He could feel the striations in the skin under his tongue, the silken movement of skin; felt and heard the thundering pulse racing through her veins carrying heat across his tongue and tasted the salt of the skin itself. Her hips rolled beneath his lips and his mouth as he slid his other hand to her hips moving them frantically up and down, working her harder and harder against his mouth. Maria moaned above him, hands caressing his head. When she thought he sucked her so dry that she couldn’t give anymore, he made her come again. Bastard. Michael reached a point where living in her was all he cared about, all he wanted, and realizing he had stepped into a trap, a place that scared him, he finally let her go and moved backward from it, a low cry from her hanging in the air as she came again.

"Michael?" Maria's voice sounded shaky, breathless as he left her hanging there alone.

"Hang on, baby..." Michael said thickly as he reached down to push his jeans past his hips, to spread his legs, and then he reached for Maria, shifting her forward back into his lap to straddle him again so her legs lay on either side of him. He buried his face in the moist spot between Maria's neck and shoulder, inhaling the scent before turning to place a kiss deeply along her neck, sucking her skin between his teeth to bite hard, just short of breaking the skin. He could feel the heat of her blood rushing under his tongue, and the heat of her skin as he left his sucking bite mark on her.

A line of kisses was drawn from under Maria's ear to the hollow of her throat where he could hear a groan vibrate as it was released from her mouth, then down to her beautiful breasts. Michael shifted her again, sliding his hands around Maria's hips, cradling her ass in his hands. He spread her apart and positioned her just barely above his straining c-ock, gently rocking her back and forth teasing her with just the head barely in her, rubbing her as he rocked her body, controlling her.

"Please, Michael...don’t be a bastard, don't tease..." He laughed gently against her skin, loving her cussing at him, demanding he pick up the pace, to end the torment. Her hands were clutching at his head again. He drew back slightly, listening to be sure they were still relatively alone, then returned to his task. He swirled his tongue round and round her nipple sucking it hotly into his mouth, pressing the tip of his penis a little more into her, but still stopping, controlling her hips with his hands. Maria moaned incoherently, arching into his hand, pressing against his body.

Michael whispered to her, “It’s not teasing if you have every intention of following through.” With that said he pushed her hard down on him, rearing up to have her take him inside in one swift thrust. Pushing her legs apart even more he forced her to down on him, deep and hard. She hissed in pain at being stretched too much, but then groaned her relief. Michael realized that her thighs had to be sore from earlier in the morning. He was far from being a small man, and she was so incredibly tiny and tight, but he laughed aloud when she didn’t even hesitate taking him on.

He could feel the muscles of her abdomen straining as she rode him hard and fast, gripping his shoulder and then the back of the seat behind him. Leaning back and enjoying the ride, he watched emotion after emotion race across her face. Good. He hated the emotionless expression she wore earlier this evening, this one he could handle. Maria DeLuca was her best all pink from exertion, her mouth red from his kisses with teeth marks on her lip from where she bit herself trying to keep from screaming. Michael closed his eyes and moaned as she moved over him, sucking the life out of him with the best ride of his life.

Maria's body suddenly arched into him, straining as the tension burned and she spasmed on him. Her cry was cut off abruptly as she reached over and bit him hard on the shoulder, making Michael’s overheated body jump up yet another degree. He had planned to ride her hard through her orgasm, to abuse her oversexed body for a long time, but the bite from her sent him over the edge as thick hot liquid shot from him, and he filled her again and again grunting her name, refusing to stop until he had his fill.

Maria convulsed on his c-ock, her body stiffening and contracting as Michael rode their mutual orgasm to the end. He thrust hard into the willing body, and then holding his thrust as Maria's body tightened around him, her muscles clenching, milking his orgasm. He shuddered for long moments, shaking from the intensity as muscles contracted around him, over and over. They were both spent, and they sat there unmoving, Michael still buried deep within Maria, both of them panting and shaking from the intensity of the sensations and the emotions that they both would deny. Sex. It was just sex. It had to be, because anything more scared them both.

As she lay wasted against him, over him with her shirt completely gone, and her skirt pulled up around her hip, she rested breathing hard. She had walked out of her house that night with the need to drive fast and far, to find life in the power under her, and to ride him just as fast and hard pushing him before her. Michael should’ve felt something about how easily she was able to push and manipulate him, but for the life of him he couldn’t summon up an ounce of care to give a damn. He wanted and needed it, just as much as she did, and in a time or place where it might have been important to wonder about those softer conflicting emotions that clouded men and woman’s lives, this was a healing force in itself, because all it was about was pure unadulterated life giving f-ucking. This was something he could easily promise to do for her over and over again, endlessly.

“Enough?” He asked hoarsely in her hair and he held her tight to his body feeling his pounding heart echo of the wall of his chest and into hers.

She pulled back and looked at him hard, a glint in her eye, with a smile that was in no way nice, “Not. Hardly.”

Michael let it go, let the demon that rushed through his blood have purchase, to chase away anything nice inside. With a smile, he grabbed her hard against him with bruising hands, and flipped her to lie on the long bench seat of the car, liking the sight of her beautiful blond hair spread out before him, her body opened for his touch. Moving his hand he found the lever under the seat and moved the front seat back a few notches. He wanted more room to maneuver, this was going to take some time, a long time and it wasn’t going to be pretty or drenched in platitudes. He wanted her screaming under him, begging with her nails embedded in his skin. When he finished, if he ever finished, he wanted to leave her bruised and sore, with shaking thighs and the feel of him burned inside her. It wasn’t enough to see his marks on her body, on her skin, he needed to brand her inside as well, to mark her as his so deep that it could never be removed.

Reaching down, he unzipped her leather skirt and removed it to toss over the seat, and then kicking off his shoes, he removed his jeans the rest of the way. The cool desert night air moved over the skin of his back, but he still felt warm, real warm. Moving to rest his forehead against her bare stomach just above her navel, he breathed in the smell of them both on her body, opening his mouth he tongued open mouth kisses up her body while moving her one leg against the back seat up to hook it over the back seat, and the other leg on the outside to wrap high on his hip, tight. Leaning over her with one of his hands bracing himself above her head by holding onto the door where the window was rolled down, he asked her, “How do you want me?”

She reached up to run her hands under his arms and then up over the back of his shoulder to pull him down on her, letting his body weight crush her into the leather seat. “Hard, nasty and cruel. I need you real dirty...” Michael growled deep in his throat, entering her in one hard violent stroke, without mercy. Her screams echoed in the dark night as she demanded more and more of him, not asking for mercy or gentleness even once, craving nothing but fierce passion. When he thought he had given her all he had, she pulled him back to her and summoned even more. God help him, she was a woman he could love...

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Sean turned over in the bed and buried his head in the pillow. He hadn’t realized that he had been waiting, listening for Maria and Michael to come home. But the sound of two sets of feet climbing the stairs to the loft finally let him rest. Tomorrow he needed to get up early and go talk to Jim Valenti. It seemed that Vice was going to have to do without him for a while, because until this was over, he was requesting a temporary transfer to Major Crimes.

Across town a pair of gloved hands in the dark searched through a stack of invoices and delivery receipts. The invoice was there, already numbered and accounted for, but the delivery receipt was missing. The hands searched the stack yet again to find it was still missing. Wherever the missing item was, it wasn’t here, but here is where it should have been. It must have been taken by another. Quietly leaving the building, the dark figure kept to the shadows to open the locks on another building. Moving down the ramp into an older part of the building, the appropriate door was found and quickly opened. It took a long time to locate the receipt, follow the description and make it sure it was the correct item. It was getting too late in the game to make more mistakes. At the bottom of the receipt was the signature of the person who had it. Tess Hardy.

********************************************************************************

Michael turned on the shower and adjusted the shower head to accommodate his taller frame. Moving into the hot water, he reached out and pulled Maria inside with him, leaning back to let them both rest against each other and against the wall, while the hot spray of water washed away the fatigue, sweat and sex. Running his hands over her beautiful hide, he held her close and let the warm water bring some warmth back inside. It wasn’t the cold desert air that chilled him as much as the lights of Roswell and the feeling that some great unknown was going to steal her from him. Like she said earlier, they were cursed.

They both moaned as they settled into the mattress letting the tiredness seep from their bones into the bed. Michael noticed the nice clean feel of silky sheets against his skin, along with the long silky feel of her on his body as their legs intertwined together, and his hand rubbed up and down her back. Maria’s finger was gently brushing the hardened nipple on his chest, circling it, and then leaning over to kiss him. He couldn’t believe his body was responding to the ministrations, but it was. It didn’t matter, he had nothing left to give. When she once told him that she would take him on a ride he’d never forget, she wasn’t lying.

But as much as she seemed to need to keep touching him, he strangely felt the same way. His fingers gently traced the lines of her hip, stroked down the long lean lines of her powerful thighs, and then back up again to sink themselves into her. She was still hot and wet. Slowly stroking her, gently masturbating a soft moan from her throat from where her head rested on his chest, he slowly tried to ease her into sleep. He was becoming erect again, but he was getting used to being in that condition, and he felt no urgency to relieve himself of it. The slight ache was comforting in a way. Moving his fingers from her body at her soft meowing protest, he sucked them into his mouth, still tasting a combination of the two of them. The sweeter taste of her and a slightly bitter one from him.

He had come so hard and long in her today, not once but many times, starting in the early morning light, and too many times to count in the front seat of the GTO under the darkened desert sky. As he sucked the taste deep into his mouth he reached over to kiss her hard on the lips, sharing the experience. All he wanted was to do was to drop between her legs and suck her dry, swallow all of her until she begged him to surge into her and fill her up again. Michael paused in kissing her as his thoughts registered, as the implication came from the fuzzy background of his brainstem and moved to the full frontal lobe. The sheets. The sheets that confused him this morning, made him frown.

“The sheets,” Maria looked at him confused at his choked voice, “they were dirty.”

“Yeah, I know. I changed them when I got home.” Maria tried to pull him back to her, but he held back.

“Maria, they were dirty, really dirty.” Maria just stared at him trying to understand what was making him hold back, what was so damn important about a set of dirty sheets. “They had mixture of spills from both you and me.”

“I was there. I know.” Maria sat up to look down at him, not liking the dark tone of his voice, not now, not after what they did earlier. “What’s your point? We had sex. We came. The results are wet spots. Sheets get dirty. It’s not a hard process to understand. I’m more concerned about how to clean the leather front seat in the GTO.”

“I didn’t wear a condom. There should’ve been no spillage from me, and I sure as hell didn’t use one in the GTO.” Suddenly Maria understood his concern. Some detective he was just now cluing into how in heat they were, how reckless.

Michael moved his head to rest against her as he pulled her back down on the bed to rest on him. This never happened to him before, not even when he was a teenager with raging hormones. He never lost himself in a woman so much that he forgot to use protection. All the lectures he gave Isabel about the dangers of unprotected sex came rushing back at him. It wasn’t just one lapse, but numerous lapses, over and over again and all within a twenty-four hour period. And god help him, the thought of him f*cking her raw, natural, and without latex was making him hard again! Somehow thinking of anything, even a simple condom coming between them, making a barrier between feeling her, really feeling her, offended him. He was one sick pup.

“Tell me you’re on the pill?” Michael said against her skin, wanting to know they were going to be okay.

“I can’t. I’m not.” Maria moved her hand over his back in comfort knowing how he must be feeling after her mini meltdown earlier that morning. “I will be in about two days.” Michael looked up at her in confusion.

“I sort of remembered this lack of latex earlier this morning and called to get a prescription. Then I stopped on my way home from the hospital and stocked up on supplies.” Maria felt some of the tension leaving his body. “Lucky for you Detective, you jumped me during an infertility period. In about two days I'll be avoiding you like the plague.”

Michael breathed a sigh of relief, not too concerned about the other needs for condoms besides pregnancy. He knew he was clean, and from his knowledge of Maria, he didn’t doubt that she was too. “You don’t have to avoid me, you know. There are other things we could do.”

He smiled at her soft voice with a lifting quality to it. “I know.”

Michael gave a quiet laugh. “I was hoping for something that involved swallowing.” Maria’s soft ah huh and clicking purr in her throat made him laugh hard and out loud. She joined him and they laughed trying to overcome the unexpected humor of the situation, but in truth most of it was in relief. It was blind dumb luck that caught them during an infertility period. It could have been different, and they would’ve both been to blame.

Michael settled down letting himself to relax when curiosity was too great to resist. “What exactly are these supplies you’ve mentioned?” Maria reached over to the bedside table and pulled out a large bag from the bottom shelf. Michael’s eyebrow went up at the size of the bag as Maria moved away from him and dumped it on the bed in between them. He sat up a little to look through the impressive stack of supplies. The lubricating gel made him smile, birth control pills were appreciated, the large tube of contraceptive jelly was confusing, the massage oil was not, but Michael couldn’t stop the look of amusement from spreading over his face as he picked up the box of condoms. He looked at her, his eyebrow going up. “Planning for an invasion?”

Maria reached over and pushed his shoulder making him fall back on the bed laughing while plucking the box from his hand to gather it up with the rest of the stuff back in the bag and dropping it over the side of the bed. “Hey, laugh it up! So maybe I panicked a little, but these are economy size, extra protective, extra large, and dripping in extra spermicidal agents. I’m risking my body here with potential mutagens just because...well...” Maria actually stopped and Michael whooped out loud. Maria DeLuca was lost for words and blushing. His Maria was blushing! His laughter increased at the flood of cuss words leaving her mouth belying the fact that she looked like an angel. “Shut up! I can’t help it if I think you look far too virile. I have no doubts that your little boys can easily swim across a sea of infertility as wide as the English Channel and knock up one of my eggs hard against the wall!”

Michael couldn’t stop laughing, actually he had to hold his side from the pain. Another first for him! No woman he had ever been involved with actually had the ability to just make him laugh. She was fast knocking away every idea he had, involving relationships and redefining them. “A woman has the right to protect herself.” He said trying to be serious for a second despite the twinkle of mirth in his eyes.

Maria nodded her agreement, glad that he was so perceptive. Leaning back into him, liking this smiling version of him almost as much as the others, she kissed him gently, closing her eyes and rubbing her head into his body almost like a cat. Michael didn’t notice that he returned the same gesture, enjoying the feel of her washing over his body. “No offense, Detective, but I have no desire to find myself carrying your child. Not that I don’t think you would make perfectly beautiful babies, but not with me, not right now. I think children should be planned for, wanted and cherished by parents who waited for them and plan to never leave them. I don’t want to have a child until I’m settled in a relationship or marriage that comes with a lifelong commitment. My children deserve that much consideration.”

Michael had to agree with her. Knowing her for a little over thirty-six hours was hardly enough time to find himself tied to her for life. He also had no doubt that Maria DeLuca, pregnant with his child, would reduce him to a walking babbling fruitcake with mush for brains, spewing so many terms of sickly sweet endearments that even Max wouldn’t recognize him. Not going to happen. Not now, not any time soon. He couldn’t see it in himself or in her, not at this time in their lives. There was no way he would ever allow some nameless forgotten woman to raise his child alone across the city or another state from him. That was why he had always kept a real close eye on where his sperm was sleeping. So once again Maria DeLuca was proving to be an exception, because not only did he know her name, shouted it a few times and even remembered chanting it like a mantra, but he deposited a few million sperms in her and left them without supervision.

But he had to agree, that when he thought of a child, his child, not that he thought about it much if at all, he knew that nothing would ever take his child from him. Nothing. The sense of possessiveness he felt towards his potential offspring frightened him. It was dark and ugly, raging, with potential beastlike intensity. He would kill a person touching or threatening his children, and that knowledge was only more horrifying by the knowledge that this sense of possessiveness extended two-fold to his mate, the mother of his children.

Michael looked down at the blond head resting against him and knew he was in serious danger of falling down that hole with her. She already had wakened so many primitive latent feelings in him, the least not being possessiveness. He could handle this overwhelming unmitigating lust as it raged through his body leaving him feeling like he was in heat, but love? He couldn’t even mutter that word, not to her, not now, and especially not to himself. Michael closed his eyes and tried to rest. He wasn’t ready for these thoughts, didn’t want them or welcome them. It was better to just repress them back deep inside until a time that he could better cope.

He held her in the night waiting for rest, hoping that by chasing demons earlier they tired her sufficiently to let her find some peace before the morning came and she walked out the door to bury the dead. An hour later, still moving his hands gently over her flesh, stroking her in comfort, he knew she wasn’t asleep. Without speaking or moving, he just knew. The situation was eating at her, making her worry that there were things she should know, dangers untold. And that because she missed them people were dying, and more would too. Michael understood the guilt that refused to abate, to let her finally sleep. It was the same guilt he carried in every tough case. This was the first time he had a bedmate to share the endless night and the dark worries of not being strong enough or smart enough to find the solution before more died. It was as if they were walking in death’s shadow.

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