A/N: Okay, I have a small confession to make. No point in denying it, Riley is somewhat Mary Sue. Sorry, but it was just too darn tempting. I get that a lot of people don't approve of that sort of thing, and that's cool. Myself, I don't see what's so bad about a little vicariousness. I don't mind if a character I'm reading is Mary Sue so long as the story itself isn't crap. But then again, I also like Howard the Duck. Anyway, I'm having fun writing this, so I'm gonna keep going. Happy reading! (Or not.) Oh, and thanks for the reviews ;-D

Disclaimer: Human Target ain't mine. Ask anyone!

Guerrero was relieved to see Riley's mood improve rather quickly. Whether it was genuine or not, he didn't try too hard to figure out. He was just glad things would be ending on a high note.

They finished off the pizza and soon needed another condom. Riley joked that by tomorrow she'd be swaggering like a cowboy from an old western, to which an inspired Guerrero whistled the first few notes to the theme song for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, making them both laugh.

A comfortable silence settled between them. Riley lay with her head pillowed against Guerrero's shoulder as the two of them dozed. The quality of light outside the window gradually changed from burnt yellow-orange to faded silvery-blue. The old-fashioned alarm clock on the nightstand—the kind featured in movies and cartoons with the two brass bells set on top like a pair of mouse ears—ticked away the minutes. Riley's fingers toyed absently with Guerrero's chest hair as she roused a little from her doze. Her thumb brushed against a scar near his collarbone, a small circular patch she suspected was originally a bullet wound. She cracked her eyes open and stared at the pale lines and deep gashes that mottled his skin. Her gaze traveled upwards until she reached his face. Guerrero was awake, watching her watch him.

"You get all these from your work?" she asked.

Guerrero brushed a hand down his front as if wiping away a few crumbs. "Most of 'em I got when I was starting out. Before I figured out the right way."

"And what's the right way?"

He smiled and his face transformed into something sinister. "Track them to their homes where they feel safest, kill 'em in their sleep. Or if a client wants the target to see it coming, find the thing they love most and use it to take the fight outta them."

Riley felt a chill at his words and burrowed deeper under the blankets until only her head remained exposed. Part of her wanted to drop the subject, but there was also a morbid curiosity that compelled her to keep asking questions.

"Did you enjoy killing them?"

Guerrero, apparently oblivious to her discomfort, shrugged. "Just like any other job, I guess. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it isn't." He made it sound almost normal. "I don't just carry out hits, though," he continued, "Sometimes clients only want someone killed politically. You'd be amazed how easy people make it to hack into their computers. They use the most obvious passwords you could imagine: spouses' names, pets' names, their kids' birthdays. One guy actually used his own name spelled backwards." He snorted. "Took me, like, two seconds to figure that one out. Dude was seriously in love with himself."

Riley made a mental note to change her PIN number. "So, what're you gonna do now that you quit?"

He turned onto his side to face her, propped up on his elbow. "Guess I'll try going freelance for a while. I always liked the info gathering stuff more than snuffing people. Any idiot can cap a guy in his sleep or rig a car to explode, but tracking down the source of a hacker's signal or weeding out embezzlement scams from legitimate business transactions? That takes talent." He tapped the side of his head with his finger.

Riley couldn't help but grin at his boast. "Plus you get to piss off a lot of people in the process," she pointed out.

"One of the perks, dude," Guerrero replied smugly.

Riley laughed. Then her eyes wandered down to the scar on his stomach, its irregular edge peeking from under the covers. Guerrero noticed the focus of her gaze and pulled the blanket further up. It was a casual gesture, calculated to seem like he didn't care one way or the other if she looked at the scar. He could see the question lurking behind Riley's eyes, wondering why that particular scar bothered him more than the others, but she left it unvoiced.

Guerrero rolled onto his back and gazed up at the ceiling. He could still feel Riley's eyes on him. She can stare all she wants, he thought stubbornly, I'm not gonna tell her anything. A few minutes passed before he shot a quick glance at her from the corner of his eye. He frowned, took a longer look. Riley wasn't staring at him; her eyes were closed. Not dozing yet, but he could tell from her slowing breaths that she was working up to it. Guerrero turned his eyes ceilingward again and heaved a resigned sigh. "I got it in prison."

Riley's eyes opened in a series of groggy blinks. "Huh?"

He pulled the blanket down just enough for her to see it. "This scar. I got it in prison." And that's all I'm going to say about it, his tone implied.

Riley wondered if she should say something, then thought better of it. Anything she said would probably just sour the mood between them. Better to let it lie. Wait until the strained silence between them passed. Still, she found herself trying to imagine the circumstances that led to such an injury. It was old, so Guerrero was probably a much younger man at the time. Perhaps he was just getting started in his illicit career. Like most people, Riley knew the horror stories of prison life: gangs, rapes, corrupt and abusive guards. A man of Guerrero's slight build would no doubt have been seen as an easy target. And with his strong opinions and independent nature, he probably made enemies more easily than he did allies.

Guerrero suddenly spoke, voice barely above a whisper, "I hated prison. The day I got out I swore to Christ I wasn't ever going back. Not even for an instant."

Riley slid closer to him. She kissed his shoulder just above a patch of tissue that looked like the remnants of a burn. Guerrero let out a long exhale through his nose, then turned towards her. "Your turn."

She frowned. "For what?"

"Well, I just shared something pretty damn personal. Only seems fair that you reciprocate."

"Like what?" Riley asked.

"I dunno." He shifted to his side and propped his head up with his hand. "How 'bout you tell me how old were you when you lost your virginity?"

Her eyes widened a little. "What! That's private!"

He smirked. "You do realize we're both naked right now. I think we pretty much eliminated the concept of privacy."

Cheeks flushed with embarrassment, Riley sighed in resignation. "I lost it two years ago, when I was thirty-four."

Guerrero's eyebrows rose. That certainly explained her inexperience. "Somebody special?"

"No," she groaned into her pillow, blush spreading to her ears, "He was a magazine salesman. He just knocked on my door one day and the next thing I knew I had a one night stand with the guy and a subscription to Reader's Digest."

Guerrero didn't say anything. He was too busy laughing.

Riley rolled her eyes. "'Kay, then. How old were you your first time?"

Guerrero settled down enough to answer flippantly, "Thirteen."

"Thirteen!"

"Yep." He grinned at Riley's gobsmacked expression.

"Thirteen," she repeated in a dazed voice, "You and a girl had sex when you were barely out of grammar school?"

"No, I had sex barely out of grammar school," he corrected, "She was twenty something."

Now it looked as if her jaw had come unhinged. "You can't be serious!"

"I'm totally serious, dude. I had this part time job after school at this little mom 'n' pop store. Me and this older chick did pretty much everything except work the register. Guess the owners didn't trust us to handle the cash for some reason." He smirked. "Anyway, I caught the older chick smoking a joint in the storage closet and threatened to tell the boss unless she fucked me."

Riley's face was a strange mixture of shock, disgust, intrigue, and a faint trace of amusement. "You're unbelievable."

"I know," Guerrero replied modestly.

She shook her head. "Blackmail."

"Hey, she was hot! Besides, if people behaved themselves, or at least took better precautions against getting caught, they wouldn't have anything to be blackmailed for," Guerrero pointed out quite reasonably. "Husbands cheat on wives, wives cheat on husbands. The greedy skim from company profits, and the perverted download underage porn. It's human nature to do stupid things they'd rather not have other people know about."

"I've never done anything I felt the need to hide."

"Except sleep with a magazine salesman," Guerrero grinned. Riley laughed in spite of herself. Then her eyes wandered over to the window and her expression sobered. Outside there was only darkness. She looked at Guerrero. He reached out to stroke her hair. "Want me to stay 'til morning?"

She bit her lip. "No. I think it'd be better if you left while I was asleep. Make it seem more like, I dunno, a fairytale or something." She lowered her eyes. "Think that's silly?"

"Yeah."

She snorted, amused by his blunt response.

Guerrero leaned in to kiss her, his hand tangled in her hair. "Y'know, we still got one more condom left. Be a shame to let it go to waste."

Riley didn't say anything, just grinned and pushed him flat on his back. She kissed her way down his chest, pausing to suck on his right nipple, her thumb flicking against the other. Guerrero's breathing grew heavier. Riley could feel his pulse against her lips. She continued kissing downward. When she reached the scar on his stomach, she ran her tongue along its length. Guerrero shuddered, and she looked up at him, wondering if what she did bothered him.

"The hell're you stopping for?" he growled.

Riley grinned and bit down on the skin just below his navel, hard enough to leave toothmarks. Guerrero let out a loud moan. Riley worked her way still lower, pulling back the covers as she did so, until she encountered his erection jutting upwards like a pole. She hesitated. "Um, I'm not sure how good I'll be at this."

"Never know 'til you try," he grinned, gently nudging her head.

Riley smiled and wrapped her hand around him. The flesh was hot and smooth. She stroked up and down his length, pleased by the low groan she heard. She lightly kissed the tip, then slowly drew the head into her mouth.

"Oh, shit," Guerrero grunted, eyes squeezed shut, jaws clenched. The muscles of his body tensed as Riley began to experiment, swirling her tongue around the head of his cock, flicking it against the slit at the tip. Her teeth just barely grazed his skin, causing him to shiver convulsively. Her hand glided along the length of his shaft while her mouth continued to work the head. Guerrero's hips suddenly thrust upwards, forcing himself deeper into her mouth. She gagged in surprise. Guerrero froze. "You okay?"

He was still inside her mouth. She breathed out, "Uh-huh," and Guerrero moaned in response. She started to continue where she left off, but Guerrero took hold of her head and pulled her away. "Stop."

She looked at him in concern. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Just the opposite," he smiled, "Keep it up and I'll be done before we've even started."

"Well," she moved to straddle him, "we certainly don't want that."

Their mouths connected. Guerrero tasted that clean Riley taste with a faint undercurrent of something he realized was himself on her tongue. She ground herself against him and he felt the heat and wetness of her on his erection. He quickly reached for the nightstand and fumbled blindly for the little box with the last condom in it. His fingertips grazed the edge of the box and he stretched to hook his fingers over it, dragging it across the nightstand towards him. Without breaking the kiss, Riley took the box from him and extracted the condom. She tore away the wrapper, then slowly unrolled the condom down the length of his penis. Once it was on, Guerrero took hold of Riley's hips and guided her over his erection. She steadied it in her hand as Guerrero slowly lowered her onto him. He could feel the heat of her engulf him even through the latex barrier. Riley gripped his shoulders as she began to move up and down. Guerrero broke away from her lips to kiss his way down the side of her neck. Riley tilted her head back, soft moans escaping from her parted lips. Guerrero reached her collarbone, nipping and licking her skin. His hands wandered up from her hips to cup her breasts. He kneaded them in time to her thrusts, thumbs circling her hard nipples. Then he squeezed them together and brought his mouth to them. He alternated between her two jutting nipples, licking, sucking, biting gently. The sounds emerging from Riley's mouth grew louder as her pace started to quicken. Her pleasure rose despite the ache between her legs and the protesting muscles in her thighs. Guerrero's hands left her breasts to cup the cheeks of her ass. His mouth continued to pleasure her breasts while his hands guided her movements, thrusting her hard against him. Riley's hands tangled themselves in his hair. Her voice rose higher, louder, her hips moving more rapidly. She could feel the tingle building in her core, spreading outwards to her limbs, her fingers and toes. She was nearly there, she was so close. Then Guerrero slid one of his hands away from her ass around to her front, slipping between their bodies until he reached the place where they joined. A questing fingertip found the pearl-sized bundle of nerves. One flick was all it took to send Riley tumbling over the edge. She screamed, her entire body tensed. She was dimly aware of Guerrero crying out as he too climaxed. Then all the energy drained from them and they collapsed against the bed, limp and sated.

A few minutes later, while Guerrero disposed of the condom, Riley set her alarm clock for the morning. Tomorrow was Monday, the start of another work week. It was a surreal concept for her, going back to her ordinary job and her ordinary life after all she's experienced these last twenty-four hours. The feeling would fade over time, she knew. Once Guerrero left, things would settle back to the way they always were. Riley knew she could be content with that, so long as she didn't forget any of this.

Behind her the mattress dipped as Guerrero returned to the bed. His arm slid around her waist and their bodies spooned together. Riley's eyelids were growing heavy. Once she slept she would not wake until morning, and by then Guerrero would be gone. She felt a tightness in her throat at the realization, but resolved not to repeat her mistake and make him deal with her emotional behavior. She wouldn't even say goodbye to him. He would vanish from her life as if he were a dream. Without a word, Riley's arm stretched out to switch off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.