I'd had this fic up on my other account, but I decided to tinker with a few things, and it made more sense for me to have everything I'm working on in the same place. It's going to be a somewhat strange thing, with a few characters questioning reality, and I'll be fudging the timeline/episode order quite a bit. Yes, there will be some moments of passion (starting with the end of this chapter), but it's not going to be every chapter or the main part of the story.
This story starts during the episode, Sam, I Am, and Cole is pondering a question that was posed to him by a seemingly unremarkable woman.

"What is it about her that holds you so enthralled?" she had asked him with her soft English accent.

The question lingered in his ear. It had been days since their encounter at that dive bar, and she could barely have been called a beautiful woman, but he found he couldn't forget her.

Phoebe Halliwell had been the woman he loved beyond reason, and she no longer wanted anything to do with him. His love for her was slowly driving him insane.

Or maybe it was all the demonic powers coursing through him that was wreaking havoc on his sanity.

It would be easy enough to create an illusory world where they were still together, but he knew he'd still be able to see through the charade. He wanted more. He wanted that sweet little witch to love him again.

Cole Turner did not lose.

Was that it? He couldn't admit failure? Was that what kept him holding on to that old dream?

Perhaps there was another way to win.

He crossed over to the wet bar and poured a drink. "Hello, Cerise," he greeted without turning.

She shimmered onto the sofa a moment later, a smile on her cherry-red lips. "Hello, Cole. Have you thought about what I said?"

He handed her the whisky he had poured. "Of course. It was a good question." He sat beside her and made himself comfortable. "There was a part of me - a rather large part - that wanted to believe I was really still in love with her. Over the past few weeks, though, I've come to a painful realisation."

She arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow as if to ask what it was.

"I was clinging to an idealised image of what we once had. We were good together, Phoebe and I, for a time . . . but we were never meant to be. I was meant to kill her or corrupt her. If not for my attempts to change, to be good for her sake, I wouldn't have lost my demon half. Maybe it took an unbiased look to help me see that."

"Ah, but, had Belthazor not been vanquished, you might not have become the Source. We wouldn't be sitting here now."

He brushed a lock of dark auburn hair back from her face. "Had that part of me not been extinguished, might we still have crossed paths?"

"You were an upper-level demon, part of an elite brotherhood. I sow discord in my wake. I wasn't even a blip on your radar in those days, was I? But I remember hearing of your exploits. Oh, we were all fascinated by you." She grinned at the memory. "What do you have planned now?" she asked.

He lifted a shoulder and admitted he wasn't sure. "But I think they'll be coming for me soon. I sort of sent a Tracker after the family."

"How devious! He could take out Leo. Or Paige. Or her father." The mere idea of the Charmed Ones being but a memory was enough to thrill her.

"Or all three. But that's not really why I sent him. I wanted to show the sisters how easily I could rid myself of them." He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. "What are you doing the rest of the afternoon?"

She chuckled, soft and low. "I'm all yours."

Cerise gasped as he lifted her off the sofa, yelped when he divested the both of them of their clothing with the licks of flames, screamed when he thrust himself into her. Being trapped between the wall and his tall, muscular body sent shockwaves of pleasure through her. The taste of his skin was intoxicating.

Every movement had him grunting and moaning. He flung her onto a glass-topped end table and thrust harder, deeper, faster until she was writhing and crying out beneath him. She clawed at him, leaving fleeting rivulets of blood along his skin, whimpering and begging for release.

He could have dragged that moment on forever, tortured her with his maneuvers, but he, too, desired that deliciously explosive moment. They were so close to the edge, they could reach out and touch it. Welts formed where he clutched her to him. He buried his face in her neck as he finally spilled himself within her.

No one had made him feel so truly and utterly wanted since he couldn't remember when. The way her fingers ran through his hair, the look in her eyes as she gazed up at him, the sound of his name on her lips . . . It was enough to make him feel like a king.

And he knew he'd taken her past the point of ecstasy to that place where pleasure and pain meet and mingle.