Author's notes: This One-Shot picks up right after the events of A Wolf in The Twilight, Chapter 12 – Breathe. Due to the mature themes, this is being presented as a 'Bonus Chapter' and just serves to further develop the characters of the main story. If you have not read A Wolf in The Twilight, please feel free to give it a shot! I would so appreciate your thoughts! The actual progression of the main story will pick up again in the next chapter of A Wolf in The Twilight.

April 9th, 2006

A Continuation of The Evening

The darkness. It became an almost welcome escape from the merciless sight of herself. The darkness of his hotel room was a thick drape blanketing the truth of the night...that it had happened...that she had done those things...

And the worst of it, that the wolf in her had taken pleasure in the kills.

A shudder involuntarily tremor'd up her spine. Leah stood in the shower, turning the water to hit her with its fullest, angry blast. A shock to the skin. She caught her breath but didn't turn away from it. She didn't deserve to feel good about the things she felt and maybe a bit of physical discomfort would help to rouse her from the odd stupor that had taken over. There was a horrid numbness to it all. As if killing had been just another part of her change to be accepted. Leah bowed her head to the wash of chill, willing the shower to remove the stains of the night. But it didn't. Her shoulders rose and fell with deep breaths beneath the cold caress of the water but there was no relief. The memory clung to her like the blood in her hair. The abject indifference in the rending of flesh from bone. She scrubbed at herself but the blood wouldn't come off. It couldn't be reconciled.

You are not a monster...

She didn't hear him enter the bathroom and only barely registered his presence when the temperature licking at her skin slowly began to change as he silently dipped to turn the shower handle, adding a semblance of warmth. Like Owen, Leah was not a soul of poetry. If so, maybe the sentiments of that subtle change, the layers it spoke, might have been recognized...and held...and cherished...

But for a woman like Leah Clearwater, nuances in life and love could so easily go unnoticed. Not for any lack of internal depth but for the simple reality of character, of who she truly was inside.

An uncomplicated warrior, through and through.

The wolf.

And it was like at some fundamental level, he understood this about her. He knew that it was not some pretentious mask of poeticism that would speak to her in those moments. No words, even, that could hope to articulate the truth of things. He spoke her language in the gentlest touch.

I'm here.

He stood behind her. His fingers spread, gliding across the aching, knotted muscles of those tight shoulders.

Such sweet silent assurances...

You're not alone.

Leah leaned back, falling easily into his caring attention. His hands made sense. Expert...dominant...there was a certain strength in the way he navigated the planes of her back, kneading and knowing every point in need of pressure. The intoxicating sense of senselessness had returned. The same feeling of slow, slipping control. For a woman constantly grounded in self-command, it felt near-euphoric to tease the absence of it.

Eyes sealed. She bit at her lower lip.

He had made her feel this way before, days ago, at her house. The day he had thrown all caution aside and come to her home after their missed appointment. Why was that again? Through the daze and haze, it was difficult to remember why she would ever willingly pass up his hands on her body. Their powerful, guiding grip. It slid up and down her back, smoothing away the mess of blood; his touch making clean what had been so wrong…

But Leah was not poetic about it.

Her own hand lifted, her own touch begging more as her fingertips slid back through his hair. She pressed back against him. A rumble in his chest. Leah could feel it and the sensation sent her heart skipping a few beats. The groan deep in him communicated an easily interpreted want for more...that desire for more.

She answered.

Those fingers in his hair tightened upon the soaking, golden locks. Her other hand drifted to light upon the curve of his bare hip. Just the softest caress there. Her nails gently scratching at the skin. And she knew she had him. Leah knew control was not something either of them would easily own that night.

His arms were strong. Far stronger than she could have guessed by the way they slipped about her body, wrapping her up in his embrace. She could feel the muscles swelling. Everything swelling...urging...insisting…

Leah let it happen.

A simple arch of the hips and she brought their worlds colliding together. He pressed back into her and there came a moment's hesitation, a sort of pause of time and their individual universes as the phenomenon of closest, deepest intimacy resonated throughout their bodies. This was theirs to share; this escape into one another. And then the slow, testing rhythm of new lovers, together.

It was surprising how gentle and right it felt…

So unlike her.

Other lovers had been but passing things to be used and explored. Simple sexual experimentation. Leah's last had come and gone as a horrible, hurtful betrayal. And then nothing for so long.

Until him.

Until that moment, there in the dark beneath the wash of water. The wrap of his arms. The glide of his hips. It numbed the mind. Boiled her senses. Everything about him.

A small hitch of a moan escaped Leah's lips. God, she wanted more of him and less of the world. She wanted to forget. And so her foot found the lip of the bathtub. Leah released him and braced her hands against the walls of the shower, one at the side, the other in front of her. A dip of her torso was all it took. His hands naturally fell to her flanks. She thrust back against him and it took all the fight in her not to cry out at his sudden depth. And Leah was not alone in the heady rush of things. His groan met the tempting of unspoken boundaries.

How far was too far? How much was too much? Especially on a night that had yielded such trauma. Or maybe that was the point of it all?...Purest escape; a cheating of the wrecked feelings that had burned deep into their hearts. The victim and the beast. Only time would tell if this was simply two people using one another to temporarily avoid the hurt. Who cares. It doesn't matter. That's what Leah promised herself as she demanded more of the euphoria in the angles she allowed him to reach. This was good pain, she promised herself, in the forceful pound of their thighs.

Like a drug.

No control. No more thoughts of the night. Nothing but that tempo of raw sex to layer the bad in reckless abandon. Sex like some corrupt echo of the damned night. She wanted the violence of it. She deserved it, didn't she? To feel the punishment of her sins in this intoxicating new language of theirs.

It was so much easier…

Owen Reid would come to surprise Leah many times in their short time together before the end.

And when she thought back upon the circumstances that led to his death, the thread always managed to trail back to that night...their first night together…the night he refused to let her limit herself…

He drew her up, led her around to face him...the softest drift of fingertips down her cheek...and then he kissed her...

Leah would never forget that kiss. The promise it spoke.

You are worth so much more than you know…

They made love beneath the wash of the water. And then again in the bed. And for the first time since her change and the passing of her father, Leah Clearwater felt a glimmer of hope for the future. Maybe this would all somehow work out? Maybe he would stay…

They ended the night tangled together in a mess of limbs and sheets. She watched Owen slip into the most restful sleep as she idly stroked his hair. Such sweet contentment. Leah shifted ever so slightly to kiss his eyes, those sightless eyes that seemed to see so much more than so many others.

"I'm yours," she whispered to his dreaming self. "And you're mine. And I'll never let anything happen to you…"