This next chapter is the longest, I've ever written and it's as close to Smut as I'm willing to go with a (T) rating, so I hope you all enjoy.
Chapter 25: Here with Me Now
Several hours later, Mark lay propped up on his left side caressing Lexie's naked back as she lay on her stomach, with her face turned away from him. Her alabaster skin felt different then he remembered; it was soft and smooth, yet cool to the touch like marble; just touching her brought him a jolt of pleasure like an electrical charge. Making love to her had always been mind-blowingly fantastic, but last night she had brought him so far over the edge multiple times that he had thought his body would explode. He still could not believe that she was here…..his little Grey was lying in next to him, but as much as he didn't want this moment to end he needed to know how? Especially after feeling the undamaged skin on her legs, which should have had scar tissue from her injuries in the crash; as a plastic surgeon he knew that her recovery wasn't possible.
"Lex, what happened at the crash site?" he asks softly after leaning over to kiss her shoulder.
Knowing that she can no longer stall his question, Lexie reaches down to pull up the sheet and cover herself before turning to face him.
"I wasn't dead, when you all left me under the plane." She whispers, no longer using her British accent and watches his shocked expression.
"No….I held your hand… there was no pulse." He whispered in shocked disbelief.
"Due to the cold, my core temperature had dropped and I slipped into a coma." She explained and cupped her hand to his cheek, trying to reassure him. "Without an EKG, you wouldn't have known, Mark."
"Oh God, Lex…we left you alone in the dark." He whispered huskily.
"Shh, it's okay. I don't remember it." She says, before continuing. "The night before you were rescued, they found me…"
"Who found you?" he interrupted.
"Mark, this is hard to explain…. There are rules…..secrets that keep us all safe; please just listen, Okay?" she says getting flustered.
"They pulled me out of the wreckage, but my body was starting to shut down and the only way that they could save my life was to change me….."
"Into what?" he interrupted again, not understanding why she couldn't just tell him the truth.
Frustrated, she jumps off the bed, grabs his dress shirt off the floor to cover herself up and begins pacing while trying to think of a way to tell him the truth without breaking the bond of secrecy held over her by the Immortal laws. Then it came to her, a simple way to explain it to him without directly telling him.
"Do you remember how we used to make fun of those old late night horror movies we'd watch with the weird names like "Nosferatu" or "The Count's Kiss?" She watches as he gives her a confused look, but shakes his head yes. "Let's just say that I'm not laughing now that I know those movies are not solely based on fiction."
What she's suggesting clicks in and he chuckles in disbelief, until he realizes that's she's being serious and sits up in the bed to stare at her.
"Just say it, Mark." She says sadly.
"Lexie, are you saying, they changed you into a Vampire?" he asks, still not believing what she was suggesting.
"We like to be called Immortals, but yes that's what happened." Then in a blink of an eye, she went from one side of the room to the next, and then sat down at the foot of the bed. His eyes bugged out slightly, but he remained still.
"Are you okay, with this?" she hesitantly asked, hoping that he wasn't afraid of her. He nodded yes, then no, but didn't move as his brain tried to processed what he just saw. 'Maybe it was a trick of the light', he thought to himself, still in denial.
Seeing the conflicting emotions crossing his face; Lexie knew that she had to continue, so that he could understand what had happened after the crash.
"I know this is hard to believe, but let me finish telling you what happened that night and then we can go from there, okay?" she asked. He nodded his head in agreement.
"Before I begin, let me just explain that we were all lucky that night." Mark looks confused by her statement but doesn't say anything. "Most Immortals that I've encountered would have taken the opportunity to feed on all of the survivors from the crash and left us dead, but the group that found us is different; they hate taking human life and only feed on animals." Getting off the bed again, Lexie began to pace again as she began retelling the events after the crash.
"So when they came upon the plane's wreckage and pulled it off of me, the leader of this family could tell by my injuries, which included partial amputation of my left hand and severe compartment syndrome of both my legs that I wouldn't survive the trip to the hospital. He decided to change me into an Immortal instead of letting me die and hoped that I would accept my fate to become a member of his family. Once they arrived home, they contacted the authorities and gave them the planes position so that the rest of you could be rescued, and then spent months helping me adjust to my transition." She stops pacing and looks at him with sadness.
"Becoming an Immortal was the most painful thing I ever experienced, both physically and emotionally. Physically it caused my body to rapidly heal from the damage caused by the crash within 72 hours and even though I was sedated…it felt like I was being burned from the inside out." Lexie is quiet for a moment before huskily continuing, "The emotional pain is still ongoing. They have laws, you see….to protect them from discovery and from what I've been told; the consequences of disobeying them can be harsh for both the Immortal and the people who learn the truth. So to protect the people I love…Meredith….my Dad and you, I had to leave the country and give up my old life to become Allison Scott." Feeling the sun rising, she turns away from him and wipes the tears from her eyes as the sun's rays light up her face.
His breath catches as her face begins to shine as if she is covered by a million diamonds and a memory re-surfaces of him waking up in the hospital, with an angel leaning over him.
"You came to the hospital to say goodbye before you left." He whispers, then reaches down to the side of the bed to find his pants and pulls them on before walking over to her to take her back in his arms. To him it doesn't matter what she is now…. This woman is his Lexie; The love of his life.
"Yeah, I did." She mumbles against his warm chest, inhaling his scent. "I couldn't leave without knowing you and Meredith were going to be okay."
"I was dying, but you saved me. How?" he asks and cups her cheeks so she is now looking up into his eyes.
"Some people when changed gain abilities and I found that mine could help heal people. When I found out that you were going to be removed from life support, I came back to help you." She answered and stroked the stubble on his face.
"I don't understand; if I was dying, why didn't you just change me? Then we could have been together."
Pulling away, she walked over to the bay window and looked out into the trees before answering.
"Oh God, you have no idea of how hard it was for me to not change you and then leave you behind! But this life isn't something I wanted for myself and I couldn't justify doing the same to you, especially when you had a beautiful baby girl that needed her daddy. I love you, Mark! But it's all about choices and I wanted you to live."
Coming up behind her, he wraps his arms around her waist and nuzzles her neck. Feeling her relax back into his body, he takes her earlobe between his teeth, and then releases it to whisper. "Thank you for my life, Lexie. I love you too." He continues sucking on her ear, until he reaches up with his left hand to pull down one side of his shirt to expose her shoulder and begins licking his way down. She moans, clearly turned on as much as he was, but pulls away.
"Not now," she whispers huskily, "there's someplace special, I want to take you." He gulps, when she removes his shirt causing the sun glistens off of her amazing body, then sighs when she hands it back and begins pulling on her clothes. Going downstairs, she gathers a few things and puts them in a duffle bag to wait for him by the door.
"Where are we going?" he asks and she just smiles seductively and hands him the bag before leading him outside.
"Care for a piggy back ride?" she asks.
"What?" he asks in surprise.
"Mark, where we're going, we can't get there by car. Just trust me and get on my back." she giggles and watches him shrug in agreement. Putting the duffle bag over his shoulder, he comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her neck and long legs around her tiny waist. 'This is embarrassing,' he thought to himself, then yelped when they took off at such an amazing speed that he had to hold onto her tighter. The trees flew past and his stomach lurched like he was on a roller coaster ride when she began leaping over hills and streams; this was the moment that he finally accepted that she was no longer human, but something far more special. Ten minutes later, he could hear rushing water and gasped as she stopped in front of an small waterfall surrounded with thousands of wildflowers.
"Wow." He whispers and drops the duffel bag on the ground so he can pull out a large blanket to lie on the grass. He heart skips a beat when Lexie once again gives him a seductive smile and begins removing her clothes until she is standing there gloriously naked.
"I've wanted to show you this place ever since; I found it 5 years ago. Care for a swim?" She laughs at his lusty expression and jumps into the pool. Quickly stripping his clothes off, he makes his way to the side of the pool and moans upon seeing her back arched over a large boulder letting the waterfall crash down over her body like an erotic shower. Jumping into the pool, he's surprised at how warm it is and makes his way to her side so that they are now facing each other. Reaching up he takes her face in his hands and looks deeply into her amber eyes.
"I love you so much, Lexie." He says his voice filled with emotion, then kisses her lips and begins to make his way down until he is suckling her breast. Holding his head there, she closes her eyes in ecstasy and moans, "I love you too, Mark.
After several more rounds of lovemaking, they are now lying on the blanket while the warm sun dries their naked bodies. Fascinated by how soft and silky her long hair is, he twirls it around his fingertips, as she lays sprawled across his chest unwilling to move until his stomach suddenly growls and she begins to giggle.
"Well, I guess that's our queue to leave; apparently I've ravaged you enough to the point of starvation." She smiles up at his face and he chuckles. "Yes, well. I'm only human." He jokes in reply and sees her smile disappear.
"I know." she whispers, then stands up and begins pulling on her clothes.
"Lex…. Babe….it's okay." He says and gets up to pull her back into his arms, but she pulls away.
"Let's head back for showers and get you something to eat." She says giving him a sad smile, knowing that their time away from reality must end. Nodding, he gets dressed and they return back to the house.
An hour later, Mark pulls his car up to a restaurant in downtown Forks and they leave the uncomfortable silence of the car. Sitting down together, the waitress comes to take their order and stands there talking to them, since she knows that they are the Doctors who helped out at the Free Clinic the previous day. Finally leaving, Mark sighs at Lexie's silence and asks.
"Back at the house, you said you had to leave to protect us. Why did you come back, Lex?" he asks softly.
Lexie turns to look at Mark and knows that he deserves the truth, so she answers his question.
"I wasn't planning on coming back, Mark. But when I saw Doctor Webber at my boards, I began to wonder how everyone was here in Seattle and it made me realize that it would look strange if I declined the hospitals fellowship interview; especially since it has one of the top ranked Neuro programs in the country. So I arranged for an appointment and hoped that most of the people I knew 5 years ago had moved on or didn't remember what I looked like. I mean I knew you, Mere and the rest of the attendings would see the similarities but I thought if I just showed up, did the interview and left no one would have time to figure it out." She stops her explanation when the waitress comes back with his order before continuing.
"I should have left right after everything calmed down from the Mall explosion, but it was just like old times when we all used to work together. The drama was the same, the nurses still gossiped and everyone was using the on call rooms for other things besides sleeping. I missed that…I missed being around the people who loved me….I missed seeing my sister have two more beautiful kids…. But most of all I missed you. There hasn't been a day that's gone by that I haven't wished things could have been different; that we had both stopped being stupid and admitted our feelings before that plane fell out of the sky." She gives a mirthless chuckle, "Well fate is a fickle bitch and here we are 5 years later, finally admitting how much we love each other. But we both know that what we did last night and again today can't continue because it's too dangerous and I'm not willing to risk your life…. Not for me."
Taking her hand in his, he feels overwhelmed with sadness, when he realizes how much she has sacrificed for the people she cares about.
"Well I for one am happy that fate put you back in my lonely life, because losing you almost destroyed me, Lex. After, I woke up; I made Julia leave because she wasn't you and then two weeks later, they gave the search for your body. At the memorial service, it finally hit me that you weren't coming back and I became so depressed I couldn't sleep or eat, until Derek forced me to go to see a grief counselor. It took a while and then one day Sofia climbed up into my lap, put her hands on my face and said with her sweet baby voice, "Wuv you, Daddy." She melted my heart, Lex and I promised to always be there for my girl." Putting her hand to his lips, he kisses it before continuing. "She has been the only woman in my life since then; Callie, Arizona and I still remain co-parents and friends, but I haven't been in a relationship since the crash. Don't get me wrong, I've dated….but when I was with them…. It just didn't feel right because they weren't you. So let me just make one thing clear, this time you don't get to decide what's best for me or my life. You own half my soul, Lexie and there is no way in hell, I'm going to let you leave without putting up a fight. And if it's dangerous, then so be it, because every moment with you in my life is worth the risk. "
"Mark…"she begins trying to argue, but he stops her.
"Shh, we've got a few more days to figure things out before you head back to England and I plan to spend every free moment of those days holding you in my arms." He gives her his famous Sloan smile, until she finally nods her head in agreement before continuing. "Now that this discussion is temporarily settled, why don't you let me finish eating so I can prove to you just how much more this human can handle being ravaged."
She smiles back at his cocky attitude and picks up a French fry to pop it into his open mouth, then follows it with a kiss to his lips.
"Then I guess you'd better hurry." She smirks and he feels his heart jump as the blood rushes down to his groin, looking over his shoulder; he raises his hand and yells to the waitress.
"Check, Please!"