PART 13

Tell me something real, something true....

Everyone planned to work all night, but Michael kicked them out before midnight. He didn't want anyone working on this any later than that. Max left earlier to go the station to run a search for other crimes within the State of New Mexico that involved bloodletting. He returned an hour later, and stayed after the others left to talk with Sean and Michael. Maria left them drinking beer and discussing their case, to go take a bath.

Sean still looked too ill to drink, but he managed a full beer before Michael had to put him to bed. He had wanted to go spend the night at Michael's apartment again, but Michael took one look at him and decided that he wasn't in any shape. Max exceeded his personal limit of one-half a beer and fell asleep on the sofa.

"So, Guerin. I liked your apartment, but if I hadn't known you weren't celibate, I would've thought so, looking at the sparse decorations in your place. So, what's up? No money?" Michael frowned at Sean. He only had one beer, his speech was slurred, and he was waving on his feet.

"Neither. I'm not much into having a lot of clutter, but I had more. My last relationship decided to confiscate my entire house in payment for services not rendered." Michael said in fact.

"No sh-it! That is just cold." Michael opened the door to the bedroom to help Sean to bed. The room was still a wreck from the other night. Michael could still see empty bottles littering the floor, and piles of Sean's dirty clothes everywhere.

"Well, she was sort of a cold bitch. Look Sean, maybe you should take a shower or something."

"Naw! Fine, just peachy. I'm just wasted tired. Man, so is that what's with all the ice trays? The bitch was so frosty ya decided to make ice? So, is the Tabasco to warm her up? Don't get it...and what's with Max boy in there, hugging a bottle of beer. Man, what a lightweight..." Sean's voice became thicker and quieter as he fell asleep.

Michael went back out and noticed that Sean was right. Max hadn't even finished the one beer before he was drunk and out like a light. Taking the bottle from his partner and putting it away, Michael covered Max up with a throw from the back of the sofa. Turning off the lights and checking the doors, which immediately turned on the security alarm, Michael went upstairs.

"Hey!" Maria said looking up from her bath when he entered the room. She was still drinking hot tea. It felt like she would never get herself warm again. "I thought you copper types were going to talk over the case now that the civilians were gone."

"We did." Maria looked at him pointedly. "Okay, we sort of did. Max passed out from his beer, and Sean looked like a drunken sailor, so I tossed him into his bed and gave up."

"Michael, it was only about ten minutes." She watched him undress and moving forward she gave him room to join her.

"Yeah, well Maxwell is a notorious "cannot hold his beer" sort of guy, and Sean is looking way too sick to drink. He only made one beer before he looked like he was going to pass out."

"He felt feverish before when I touched him. I think that he needs to go to the doctor. If he doesn't go on his own, I'm calling mom." Maria leaned back against him as his arms came up to hold her. "I've seen him drink his body weight in wine, and also make a real dent in a bottle of liquor. This isn't like him at all, and he has been under the weather since the other night. It's probably his ulcer again. After Frankie...after...anyway he perforated his ulcer and spent time in the hospital with me. Mom's been trying to pressure him out of Vice for a long time, so this might be an opportunity."

"You’d do that? Sic your mom on the man when he's down?"

"Without a moment of hesitation. It'll take the pressure off Kyle to have mom taking care of Sean." Michael chuckled as he remembered the detailed description Maria gave him of the Valenti-DeLuca early warning system for getting Amy out of the way and distracted.

Later when they were in bed, Michael asked Maria softly. "Tell me something true." She was rubbing his back, and after they had gotten out of the bath, they turned off the lights in the bedroom and lit candles instead, to keep Max from waking up.

"Hmm, okay...something true." Maria thought about it for a moment. "I hate peas. I'm convinced they are not a vegetable but some type of weed masquerading to trick us. I hate the way they mush in my mouth."

Michael turned over, as Maria lifted up to let him, and then settled back down straddling him. "Okay, I can understand the peas thing, but now something true about your life."

"I don't know, I mean I thought the pea thing was a lot."

"Maria..."

"Okay, okay...something else true. Raisins are a conspiracy by the grape growers of America."

Michael laughed and shook his head no. "Maria."

"No really! Think about it. You grab a handful; toss them into your mouth, and poof! Gone. Now in your mind, reanimate the mummified grapes and you realized that you just consumed a small bushel of grapes in just a handful. It's dastardly. It's an obvious conspiracy to glut the world fruit markets and hold it hostage. You thought the OJ contingency was bad, but uh uh, not so, grapes...." Maria smiled as he laughed. "Don't even get me started on...cranberries." Maria gave a delicate shudder.

"Okay, okay, stop it. No, tell me about New Orleans and the "house of ill repute"..."

"Ah! The House of the Rising Sun!" Maria laughed. She should have known. "It had been the ruin of many good ole boys..."

"Maria!"

"Been bothering you, huh?" Maria couldn't stop laughing.

"Maria!"

"Okay, okay. I'll tell you, but then you'll have to tell me something, Detective. Quid pro quo."

Michael nodded. Fine. He could tell her something. "Agreed."

Maria smiled. "Well it's not too sad a story, and not as interesting as you would imagine. When I was sixteen, I was accepted to the University of New Mexico in the fall. Therefore, after I graduated early I had the whole summer to avoid getting into things with my family. First thing that happened that summer was my father began insisting I start dating "good boys" from other families, sort of a "coming out" party thing. He was pushing me to go to the local University, live at home, and date these "nice boys" as it were. I realized at once that meant he was looking to match me in an arranged marriage, and all the parties and dates were designed to show me off, like some kind of prized horse or something."

"So is that when you left?" Michael watched her closely remembering how disturbing it for him to imagine her alone in the world at sixteen.

"Yeah, pretty much. I told my father that I didn't want to be involved with these men, and staying home while in college wasn't part of the plan. My father and I fought, and my mother pleaded with me to stop, but I didn't. He told me that he wouldn't pay for my school or fund it in any way, that he would cut me off. I said fine, and he hit me, leaving a nice black eye. The only time in my life that he ever raised a hand to me." Michael was silent listening to her matter of fact telling of an event almost as if it had happened to someone else.

"That's when you left?"

"Yes. I told my mom that whalewatching reports would always be in the Classifieds in major newspapers, and she could always find out when the young calves were coming home, and I left." Maria kept rubbing his shoulders and arms while talking, spreading the massage oil along his skin almost methodically. "You think it would've been easy, but it wasn't. It was hard. Despite having to deal with Frankie, who was twenty at the time and for all intents and purposes had moved out of the house, I really loved my dad. He wasn't an easy man, but he was my father. Disobeying him wasn't easy, but I had only two options. Leave, or stay and marry some man who would treat me as he treated my mom. Even if I married in the life, I knew he would still protect me, but I couldn't stay there. It meant my mom would never be free, so I left."

"He didn't try to find you." Michael couldn't imagine Franco DeLuca, Sr. letting his beautiful daughter escape him.

"Not at first, but later, yes. He found me at the University, but for some reason he didn't tell Frankie, or force me to go home. I woke up one day with him sitting in the bedroom of my dorm room, watching me sleep. I remember feeling afraid and happy at the same time. It was hard to miss someone so much, and no matter how much he asked I wouldn't be able to tell him where my mom was."

"This is when you were at University, after New Orleans?" Michael asked.

"Yes. I saw him and we stared at each other for what seemed like a long time, until finally I jumped up and hugged him." Maria looked at Michael. "I know he was a monster, that he did bad things, but to me, he was my papa. I never knew you could miss someone so much. After that, he just left after visiting for a few days, my tuition was paid in full, and every month I had an allowance deposited in my bank account. I would call him, and we planned trips together on my breaks. Just him and me. We went home to Italy, and so many places. I loved my father. To me he was different. When he away from the family, it was like he could breathe, but he was always sad. As he got older, I think he became afraid of what Frankie had become. One day I picked up the paper and read that he was dead, that my papa was dead, and I didn't even know to go to the funeral."

Michael knew how he felt about missing his own father's funeral, how even though he was there, he was in a haze from the medication. It was one of the biggest regrets of his life.

"I wanted to go, but I knew Frankie was in charge now, that he headed the family. Without my father's protection, it was no longer safe, so I stayed away. My father never told Frankie or anyone where I was, or that he was seeing me. They all assumed that he was visiting a mistress." Maria smiled knowing that she had diverted from the story of New Orleans, avoiding it to tease and draw it out.

"So was New Orleans in your travels with your father?" Michael knew better because he knew the arrest date.

"No. It was after I left home. I had money, or at least money enough to make it to New Mexico. I had three months to kill, and at sixteen without a place to live. There was little I could do to support myself until it was time to start school. I had a full scholarship, so my tuition was paid, along with my room and board and a small stipend. I just needed to make it through the three months." Maria got off him and lay next to him real close to finish the story. "I made it to New Orleans, and the city was alive and fun. Too much fun! I found it easy to go through my carefully hoarded savings, and finally I was at risk of having not enough money to even make it to New Mexico. That is when I met the "madam" of the house."

"So, she offered you a job?" Michael was disgusted how people preyed on the young and defenseless.

"Yes, she did, but not the job you think. Now a madam of a house of "girls" you would expect would have some interesting name like "Ms Kitty" or "Madam Farge" or some other exotic name, but her name was Cerise. Just Cerise. She was nice, young, and she took one look at me and offered me room and board, and a job. At first I almost refused because if I wasn't going to prostitute myself to a rich man, a family wiseguy, why would I take less from strangers?"

Michael saw her point. "So you refused the job, but you still ended up in the house."

"Well yes I did. Cerise explained she wasn't offering to make me part of her stables, though I had great legs, great lips and killer eyes, and some of her clients go for...the young." Maria ignored the swearing from Michael. "But she didn't peddle young flesh, and only offered them girls "that looked young", but were of an age of consent. No she offered me a real job."

"How real?" Maria smiled at his suspicion. Always the skeptical cop!

"Real enough. I was like a houseboy, or a general gopher. I kept the books and appointments; I helped in the kitchen, ran errands, and helped with shopping and picking up dry cleaning, that kind of stuff, mostly. I did learn to give massages, but not to clients. Cerise was very careful to keep me away from her clients. She didn't want to have to refuse a customer my "services", but then again I wasn't serving. No, I learned to give the "girls" massages. Amazing how stressful their jobs could be, and tired and sore they got!" Maria laughed at his look of outrage. "God they told me some great stories, and oh lordy...the details. I think I aged ten years in three months. I was surprised I survived without having gray hair. Did you know that a woman could perform..."

"Maria!" Michael wasn't sure he wanted to hear any of the stories she was offering. Okay, maybe later... Laughing she took pity and stopped teasing him. "Just tell me about the arrest."

"Oh, couldn't find any details, huh?" Michael's face gave him away. He had tried to find the arrest report and details, but the file had been sponged, wiped clean. All that remained was the arrest on her record and the release. "There aren't any details to learn because the entire arrest was erased by the New Orleans PD."

"Erased? Why?"

"Well, the person who called in the raid was the Police Commissioner himself. He was a regular, mind you, and he and Cerise had a sort of tiff over something. What, I'm not sure. When the raid came I was swept up with the rest of the girls, processed, and detained. Due to my age, Cerise was looking at charges of "white slavery" and some other charges. She told me to not to worry, went into a room with the Police Commissioner. When she came out, we were all released, even me. That was the last of the trouble we had that summer, and I made enough to make a nice ticket to New Mexico, and some extra money left over. It was an interesting summer, and when Cerise put me on the train, all the girls came to say goodbye. I still go to visit them whenever I'm in the city."

"Did she blackmail him?"

"Honestly? I haven't a clue. Blackmail, bribe, or sexual favor right there in the room, none of us knew or even asked. Cerise was a real class act. She just came out of the room, smiled at the officers, and asked them to please have her girls sent outside to the limo when they were cleared from booking. She personally led me out of the building with her, sat me next to her in the limo, and gave me a glass of champagne. I always wanted to be that calm and self-assured. Nothing ever seemed to phase her."

"That's the story? The whole story?" Michael was suspicious of the smile around her mouth, the glimmer in her eyes as she nodded.

"Your turn...and make it something "true", Detective."

Michael thought of it for a moment and then smiled. His smirk quickly fading he took on a real serious look. "I hate peas, too." Maria just looked at him and then suddenly jumped him.

"Brat!" Michael grabbed her and rolled around on the bed stopping when finally he had her subdued under him. Looking down at her, suddenly serious, he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her deeply. Maria's arms came up around his neck and pulled him fully onto her. Before she let it take them out of control, she pulled back and whispered to him. "Are you going to cheat?" Michael shook his head no, and Maria smiled slightly. Michael was many things, but mostly he was fair, or tried to be. "Then tell me something true, something real."

Michael kept looking at her, running his hands through her silky blond hair and watching the strands slide along his fingers. "I worked Vice for five years. In truth, three on the street that were bad; the last two were the worst. The first year of the last three my dad, Mikey was still alive. I was younglooking, able to pass for less than my age, so undercover, I could be a runaway or a person looking for connections and a break. I started as a runner for a minor numbers operation, but since all my runs were protected and I moved fast, I was promoted to bigger operations. After a while, after the first year people knew me, and I just blended into the scenery."

Maria smiled at that. "I would've thought you're very noticeable. Michael, you're very large, hardly something to overlook."

"Well, there's a trick to it. When you blend into a space, become part of a scenery, slouch or remain unobtrusive people stop noticing you. You become background noise, almost blending into the wallpaper. It was important. It put me places that no one noticed, and I heard things-lots of things." Michael closed his eyes as she moved her hands up to softly stroke his face. Reaching up, he took her hand and sucked her fingers into his mouth, liking how she gasped and held her breath. It excited him. "I was a real asset to the Department, and my commander wanted me on the streets 24/7. That was until my dad died."

"What happened?" Maria breath was leaving her body in short gasps. His mouth was incredibly hot.

"He died, and I didn't. I held him after a young urban punk, high on designer drugs, pumped him full of lead. He bled to death on me, and it was as if I could feel his life slide away, the energy and heat. One minute he was my dad, and the next, he was gone."

Maria pulled him close and kissed his lips. She knew that. She lived it in a flash, felt his pain. "I'm sorry, baby. So sorry!"

"It was the drugs they gave me for shock that did most the damage. I walked in a haze, disjointed, unable to feel anything, and they made me hallucinate. I went back on the streets after the funeral, and literally didn't come in from the cold for two years, not until Max dragged me back." Maria frowned. That didn't sound right.

"I don't understand. Why would your Department allow you to go out that long, or even return to duty before you were ready?" Maria felt anger at the obvious abuse. She had seen some of what he lived through, saw it in a flood of running colors, but the feeling was still there.

"Technically, they didn't order me out. In a drug haze, when Max wasn't watching, I walked out the door, and two weeks later my commanding officer found me living on the streets in an alley with other homeless. I recognized him, gave him a report, turned over and went back to sleep. The information I gave him led to one of the largest drug busts in the history of the Department. As a street person, I was even more invisible than I was a numbers runner. The homeless are ignored, avoided, and people practice not seeing them. So instead of bringing me in, he left me there."

"Oh Jesus!" Maria couldn't believe the abuse, how very wrong that was. They had used him.

"I was suffering from, I don't know...hallucinations, both visual and auditory. I saw things that felt like memories or something, but they were too whacked. Like voices in my head they were driving me insane."

"What things?" Maria took her other hand and rubbed it along his back in comfort, letting even more of his weight rest on her.

"Weird sh-it. Real weird. A place, very bright and red, with two suns and three moons. I heard the destruction, saw the battles and war. It was like a flash of blood and the people...I knew them, felt them, but their bodies weren't like ours, and what I felt, I had no words for it. It was like I was sensing energies and reading them as life forms. I was high on some psychotic drug that took months to clear my system, but somehow it opened up these flashbacks, almost like freaky sensory memory flashes."

"You were tripping."

Michael laughed without humor. "Oh yeah! Major trippin', like acid flashbacks, and it was scaring the people around me. They called me Rathman. Maybe it was Wrathman...who knows. I would trip, and the next thing they knew I was yelling and screaming, freaking out, tearing down old mortar walls or some other whacked sh-it. People on the street learned to stay away from me, all except the children. The largest percentage of the homeless is children. They're our dumped and abused unwanted. The children learned to sleep behind me, to hang with me. They knew I would watch over them and protect them. At night when the street runners and gangs would roam the alleys, the children would sink into nothing behind me, and I would sit stone cold with my gun ready to defend them. Once the danger passed, everyone would relax."

"Michael..." Maria wanted him to end the story, to stop it. It was too much for him, too much misery.

"I used to take the children to the soup kitchen, and forced people to let them go first, so the kitchens wouldn't run out of food. The drunks and winos had their chance at life, it was the young and the old forgotten that needed it most." Michael snickered again. "By the last year, or what I think was the last year, my name changed again. They started calling me Ratman. It was strange, but did you know that street people, the reason they wear so many clothes is that when they sleep the rats come out, and if any part of you, especially soft parts like your face are exposed, they will bite you and eat you. So the street people learn to sleep with their bodies covered from the rats, and their faces all bent up and hidden."

"Michael, please..."

"One night, I was tired, real tired, so I slept. I woke to the sound of a child crying. It was a young girl, her mom left her just for a few moments to check out a dumpster outside a restaurant that dumped its old food at the same time every night. A rat had crawled up on her, and it was eating her face. I picked up a rock and nailed the bastard, and then I rushed the baby to the emergency room. They didn't want to touch her...and by the time they saw her, it was too late. She bled to death in my arms, just like my dad." Maria held her breath at the empty look, the emotionless way he talked. "So after that night, I sat up all night with a pile of rocks at my side, and threw them at the rats. I was good. I played baseball when I was younger. That's when they changed my name."

"Max got you off the streets? Made you come home?" Maria thanked Max Evans sincerely and wished that wherever Michael's old commanding officer was now, he rotted in hell.

"He found me, after he got us jobs in Roswell. He told me he needed me to come home, that Isabel, his sister was in trouble, and we needed to move someplace for her to start new. I had to leave for Isabel's sake, so I came in, and the next thing I knew we were in Roswell, and the dreams went away. I only have them now when I get really tired."

"So you're close to Max's sister. Isabel?"

"Yeah, she's like my sister. That close." Maria just nodded. She knew how she felt about Kyle and Sean. Sometimes friends were closer than family. They were the family you chose. "Roswell was a new start for each of us, a chance to get away from the big city of Albuquerque, and all the violence, drugs, and crime. So far, Roswell has been...interesting." Michael specifically looked at her.

Maria laughed. "Oh, and what does that mean? You met me and everything makes you wonder if you exchanged one type of hell for another? You poor baby!"

Michael let his voice drop to almost a whisper sounding woe begotten. "I really should be compensated..."

"You should! Look, I know that many things we do are just playing... I, ohh --" She wasn't sure she knew what she wanted to say. But for once she didn't want to take the important stuff, the emotional stuff, and walk over it, leading them back to just f-ucking. "I don't want to play games with you...make you think this means nothing...dammit!" Maria hadn't noticed him moving at first, but the body that slid up against her back as he turned her was most definitely, emphatically naked-- naked and smooth and hot, hot, hot ! He turned her fully in his arms and was touching her in so many places that Maria couldn't distinguish them one from another.

"It's not a game..." Michael mouthed against her shoulder.

"I know, I know..." Maria gasped, squirming under his tongue when it traced her shoulder blade. She could give him that much at least.

"Do you?" Michael asked, and Maria felt that tongue slip down her back, a wet warm stripe that made every hair on her body stand on end. The nuzzling scrape of his night beard rasped against her skin pulling it deliciously, but it was the gentle nipping of his teeth followed by his hot mouth sucking on her skin that pushed her over and made all thought drain from her brain.

"Oh my God...you feel good..." Her voice sounded faraway now, dreamy, and yeah, apparently Michael was back in that mood of wanting to do things to her , and that was something she felt willing to do. They both were having a long hard day, and between losing Dianne, and their own pasts catching up to them, all they really had for comfort was each other. Here and now.

This, she realized with a slow birth of awareness as a touch or taste of energy hit her, was Michael wanting her. His desire. It was becoming a living tangible thing. She could feel desire soaking into her from his touch, overwhelming for being coupled with such control. Michael was wanting, absorbing, sensing her, and climbing inside her. She could feel it almost like an intrusion, but with him, she no longer had any barriers. It made her shiver harder, even more turned on by him. It made her make one last-ditch effort to be on the giving end, knowing as she did so that the offer was paltry at best. "I... you want... what should I..."

"I'll let you know," Michael replied said softly as he turned her under him and took her nipple into his mouth, and Maria surrendered.

Warm, strong hands traveled everywhere, turning her over and the slick-hot-sharp bite of tongue and teeth at her shoulders, waist, down her spine jolted and soothed her at the same time, drawing all sensation up to scattered fierce points of pleasure that made her hiss. Maria needed him all over. The only thing in the whole world that was wrong with it was that she couldn't kiss him with him moving all over the place, too fast for her to keep track. The bedding was surprisingly abrasive on the exquisitely sensitive skin of her body despite being silk. Her body felt overly sensitive, overheated. At some point, she thought she moaned about that convincingly, but if she did, Michael took no notice; he simply kept on. Pushing her even higher, ignoring everything but her.

When Michael suddenly came up her body, and stroked the hair back from her temple with a touch that spoke to her of tenderness, Maria had to shut her eyes. She had to. He moved too deep inside her, farther than physically, and it was hard to lose all her protection at once from him.

"Go ahead and tell me whatever you want. I won't stop unless you tell me to. I'll give you anything you want." Maria had no answer, not a single word to say about that, because it left her breathless. Maria couldn't even understand how people like Liz Parker could ever think him unkind. He was everything...perfect.

His hands parted her shaking thighs, finding a place between them, running his hands down her legs. Michael's tongue streaked wet fire from the back of her calf on up, and up, and up towards her ass and then her body arched into it all by itself his hands came to her waist to hold her firm while he continued to move lovingly up her spine. Stretching his body heavy along her back, his one arm moved up hers and joined their fingers together over their heads, his mouth finding the back of her neck.

Maria sucked in one huge whoop of dizzying air even while the rest of her started melting gently, rolling bonelessly on waves of voluptuousness that went deeper and lower and sweeter until all she could hear were her own stunned, ecstatic, disbelieving moans. She wasn't even shaking anymore, but now she seemed to be shaking inside . Her internal controls had just gone right off the scale, because while all of this had been new to her, this was the first time that someone just tore a hole in her heart and made themselves a home there. Maria would have cursed at him, angry that he moved in without her having any real say, but she did have a say, and despite her fears, she invited him anyway. Nothing would ever feel that risky or fearless again.

Maria had no control, no connection with her own body left. It seemed like she was floating above it, seeing herself so utterly lost in him, seeing Michael holding her gently. He put an arm around her waist and pulled her up with her back to his front. Michael sat back on his heels and moved her into his lap to move into her from behind without much effort. They both moaned as they moved forward a little to place their joined hands on the railing and hold tight. They were connected there to each other, locked together with a depth of passion that made even Maria want to give more than she already had, as he slid into her. Devotion. It felt like devotion that Michael was offering to her, the devotion his uninhibited, uninhabited body soaked up as if he'd been waiting forever, waiting always with a distant kind of longing for someone, for Maria, to find him, to give him this. To give him her very self.

Something deep inside pulled at her and then Maria slammed back into awareness, unprepared for it. How could anyone really be prepared for this? She didn't think she ever could have been prepared for this, for this terrifying keenness and connection! The moment she felt his body, all the sensations seemed to be rolled up on the next huge wave of pleasure and an explosive need. Maria still was not ready for any of it, and definitely not ready for the exquisite clarity of feeling of finding herself fluttering and spasming around Michael, crying out with an unrestrained need for him. Michael smiled against her back and her skin when he felt her come, riding the wave, and the rush of her feelings, all wrapped up in confusion. He made her confused, and that he liked. It was like getting back part of himself.

"Don't be afraid." Maria only nodded at his words. What was the use anyway? They already had made a connection that scared the hell out of both of them. The time to escape or be cautious seemed long since gone.

"I don't want to feel..." Michael turned her head and kissed her hard on the mouth. Too late. Michael whispered her name to her, just so she knew exactly who she was, affirming that her name wasn't one he was going to forget, ever. Michael didn’t like to surrender any more than she did, but if he had to let go, so did she, and they might as well deal with it together.

Michael held her tight as he felt the wave run hot through her body, and when she was finally breathing again he moved, pushing deeper, longer strokes inside her. Maria's eyes hurt, aching from being squeezed so tightly. She paid no mind to the aching need in her body, but just kept her eyes shut, closed tight against everything while Michael stroked her, slowly stretching her insides, pulling out, and finally easing back into her with killing gentleness. He made her wish there was more pain somewhere, something else to focus on, something to take the edge off the ecstasy of having him move inside her. F-ucking was easy to take, easy to work around, but this? He was making her need him too much, want him too much, and coming to depend on him.

Michael drew it out, playing her body with exquisite sweetness, pushing her to the edge and holding her there. The first time he went deep and hard, she came again. Throbbing and moaning out the suffering long moments as Michael waited so patiently, soothing her with soft kisses behind her neck, her ear. He was hard and needful inside her but waiting anyway, waiting for her while he buried his face into the softness of her hair, not trusting any words that might escape them now.

Michael took her for an eternity, a slow measureless stretch of forever and somewhere in there his hands came around her body so that the next time Maria came Michael was everywhere around her, around and inside and totally surrounding and pervading her, taking everything she was except for the little bit closed off behind her eyes. And it was good! Deeply, staggeringly good with Michael inside her like that, but it was no longer only her experience. Because even while she came apart she could feel Michael being patient again, now shuddering fiercely and dripping with sweat but still so controlled, still waiting, still locked into this give and take, as if he was calmly trying to make her understand something about them.

Much later, at the end of it, all she could hear was his voice telling her who he was, and yes, she knew who he was, and knew Michael was finally, finally coming inside her, and knew they were both loving it ... Idiot! Like she could ever forget his name!

And in the midst of it, over her heartbeat and under her skin, as she lay lax, absorbing the strength of him, the weight of him, the heat of him inside, slowly falling asleep with him still joined to her, all she could think was that Michael had been right. Michael was right .

Whatever they were doing, they weren't playing. Whatever this was, it sure didn't feel much like a game, or just f-ucking...

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