Hey guys! It's been a long time, hasn't it? Sorry for the wait! Here's the newest chapter!

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Chapter 26

Lois woke to the wonderful smell of coffee. She unthinkingly started smiling before she opened her eyes... and found herself in a room that was not her own. Still drowsy, she blinked, amazed at the sight that offered itself to her. She was lying on her left side and she had a clear view of Metropolis' skyline. Her mouth felt dry as she swallowed.

She slowly rose into a sitting position as her gaze swept over the skyscrapers that looked like they were trying to touch the blue sky. Still, not many of them accomplished it quite as well as the building she was in, for she seemed to be higher up than most of them were able to reach.

Belatedly her head snapped around, her eyes settling on the empty space beside her. The blanket was still undone, but when Lois touched the mattress it felt chillingly cold. There was no lingering body heat, so her unlikely savior couldn't have left the bed all that recently.

Carefully, as if not trying to make a sound, Lois slipped out from under the blanket and shivered a little. She sighed and resisted the urge to crawl back into the soft, warm white covers.

Lois Lane was probably a lot of things, but a morning person she was not. She'd never quite understood how people could simply jump out of bed in the morning, leaving that comfortable warmth so readily. But now, in a stranger's home – and even worse, a stranger's bed –, she didn't exactly have a choice.

It was so quiet in the apartment that Lois winced when the white sheets rustled, but then she frowned. "Might as well let him know you're awake. You never know, he may just have super-hearing, too," she murmured, smiling a little. Super-hearing... yeah, right.

She walked over to the door that wasn't closed but slightly ajar and entered the living room. God, it seemed like an eternity ago that she'd sat right on that couch, talking to Clark Luthor about his alien heritage.

It was partly due to the fact that everything from last night felt surreal with the apartment now drenched in sunlight; it was so hard to believe that all of that had really happened. Lois felt different, too. She felt calm and composed and everything from yesterday seemed to have been taken right out of some bad movie.

If she'd woken up in her own apartment she would have believed it to have been a crazy night with too much booze and the weirdest and scariest dream of her life. But with her standing right there in Clark Luthor's apartment, she knew that it had been more than a party-gone-wild.

Lois followed her nose – and therefore the smell of coffee – to another door that wasn't closed and even before she'd reached it she heard a voice. "Come on in," it said and Lois entered the room with her eyebrows drawn together.

Clark Luthor sat at a – surprisingly - pretty normal looking kitchen table, a coffee mug in his one hand and the newest edition of 'The Daily Planet' in the other. Again, he was wearing a pair of black dress pants, but this time his shirt was a light blue whereas his neck tie was a considerably darker shade of the same color. He looked like the perfect businessman, all neat and proper. Except for his hair.

His thick dark hair, combined with that strong, hard jaw and chin, gave him a dangerous look that would probably make most brokers run away in fright. Especially since the dangerous aura was enhanced by his muscular build which was barely concealed beneath his shirt. When he lifted his gaze from the newspaper in his hand to look at her his movements were slow, almost lazy, reminding her of a sleepy lion.

"Make yourself at home. Do you want a cup of coffee?" he asked. Lois nodded, but before she could say anything his head snapped around, his eyes focusing on a small black radio standing on the kitchen counter that Lois hadn't seen before. She didn't know why it had suddenly grasped his attention, but he got up from his seat and walked over to the device. And then she heard it. So it had hit the news.

She listened to a man from the radio station talking about the 'accident' at 'The Daily Planet' and the fortunate news that noone had been injured. Her gut clenched when a man from the fire department said how lucky they'd been not to find any injured or dead people inside the building.

Lois glanced at Clark who opened a kitchen cabinet and took out a simple white cup that matched his own. Lois' cups back in her apartment were all different, some with beautiful pictures on them, some funny and some of them were reminders of her childhood or more recent past – like the 'White Snake'-cup that she'd gotten at a concert.

Yet again she felt like she was in a hotel as he offered her the undoubtedly expensive but impersonal cup and nodded towards the coffee machine in the corner, right next to the refrigerator. She accepted the cup, but otherwise didn't move. She was too tense as she listened to the news-report about her near death experience from last night dwindle to a 'we're lucky all is well'-close.

As soon as the reporter moved on to a different topic Clark turned down the volume until Lois couldn't hear a thing anymore. The quiet in the kitchen seemed deafening and Lois couldn't fail to notice Clark's thinned lips as he kept his gaze on the black device.

"So now it's official," she said to break the silence, but only a second later wished she hadn't. Her voice sounded hoarse, as if someone had used sandpaper on her vocal cords. Not so unaffected by nearly getting your bones smashed now, are we, Miss Lane?There went her calm and composed self. Great, it only took a few words from some guy at the radio station and she was back to the state she'd been in last night. Confused, cold, bewildered... scared.

Good thing that having the general as her father had resulted in her having a perfect poker face. It didn't matter that Clark Luthor had saved her life; she still didn't want anyone she barely knew to see her in such a vulnerable state.

"Yes," Clark said, answering her statement as if it had been a question and interrupting her thoughts, "Now Lionel surely knows that you are still alive." His gaze turned contemplative as he settled back in his chair at the table and he remained quiet for a few minutes. Then his eyes returned to her face as if he'd just remembered that she was still in the room.

"Don't you want coffee?" he asked and Lois realized that she was just standing there like a startled doe, coffee mug in hand. Instead of answering – since she knew she'd just utter something embarrassing anyway – she walked over to the machine he'd pointed to, only to realize that much like in the shower yesterday she didn't really understand this machine's many buttons either.

Sighing in defeat she turned to ask him to show her how to get what she wanted, but he was already right next to her without having made a single sound. "I'm sorry," he said as he took the cup from her hands and pressed one of the many buttons. "I normally don't have anyone else in this apartment, so I'm not used to company."

Lois shot him a surprised glance. Had the man who'd been decreed a playboy by many a magazine just told her that he didn't usually take women to this apartment? So this wasn't his let's-get-horizontal place? Interesting... Lois shook her head. No, girl, focus! You have way more important things to deal with than the sex life of Prince Charming here!

"What are we going to do now?" Lois asked, getting her mind back on track. She felt a certain attraction for the man, an attraction she didn't want to question too much at the moment, but she wasn't stupid – or suicidal – so she knew her priorities. She followed Clark back to the kitchen table when her coffee was ready and sat down across from him. He watched her pour milk and sugar into her cup as he spoke.

"Well, luckily I know how Lionel operates. He'll hire someone to find and get rid of you, but he'll soon notice that you're not coming to work or living in your apartment..." Lois interrupted him.

"I'm not quitting my job!" Lois' heart throbbed at the thought. She loved working as a journalist and 'The Daily Planet' was the best newspaper in Metropolis. Besides, Perry White was maybe sometimes a bit pushy, but he did a marvelous job as an editor and she loved the older man like a second father. Clark Luthor frowned, apparently not too happy with her reaction.

"Think about it, Lois! Your life is at steak here. My father is not someone you can just dismiss when you've made an enemy of him!" Lois' lips thinned. She knew the dangers, but... she shook her head.

"I can't do it. I'd feel like the worst coward for the rest of my life if I chickened out of such an important part of my life. I get that I can't go back to my apartment, since I'd be vulnerable when alone, but at 'The Planet' I'll be surrounded by people non-stop."

Clark was shaking his head before she'd finished speaking. "You won't be safe, no matter how many people are surrounding you. Hell, it could actually be more dangerous than you just wandering the streets. My father could very easily get someone to infiltrate 'The Daily Planet' and get that person to poison you or stab you..." He just left those words hanging for a moment, silently telling Lois that the list was much longer than just those two possibilities.

"Maybe he wouldn't even have to make someone from outside do it. A bribe, a family in a desperate situation... sometimes that's all it takes to corrupt people," Clark Luthor's voice turned bitter, "Trust me, I know."

For a second Lois wondered who had betrayed the man across from her to make him sound so much older than his years, but then she wasn't so sure if she actually wanted to know.

Lois had listened to him with pursed lips and now an uneasy feeling formed itself in her stomach. The thought of someone inside her office – her coworkers, partly even friends – trying to kill her made her sick. How twisted her life had gotten only because of one single galactically stupid choice...

"I don't want to lose my job...," Lois said, pain clearly audible in her voice and Clark wondered what it'd be like to love something like she apparently loved her work at 'The Daily Planet'. To love something so much that one can't stand the thought of giving up on it? He'd never cared for anything that much and it made him feel... lacking.

That feeling in itself was a novelty to Clark. Yes, he'd been afraid of his father as a child, had wanted to please him, but at the same time he'd never coveted anything that Lionel had. But now Clark Luthor, the billionaire with the good looks and the superhuman abilities, envied a woman who was currently on probably more than one hitman's To-Do-List.

That realization angered and intrigued him at the same time and he was startled by the thought that came at the heels of it. I want to be happy. Because that was really what this was all about. He didn't want her job at 'The Daily Planet' or any other part of her life, but he wanted to experience the contentment and the happiness that it seemed to bring her. Maybe she can teach me...

Clark shook his head, fleeing from the thought. He was a proud man and he most certainly wouldn't lower himself to ask anyone for anything.

"You don't necessarily have to lose your position at 'The Planet'. I'm sure you can tell your boss that you caught a cold or something of the sort. It will give us a few days to either solve this problem or think of another way out of your... dilemma," Clark told her, his heart squeezing when relief visibly changed her features, making her seem more relaxed.

"Why didn't I think of that?" Lois half-sighed, half-laughed, making it look like a great burden had just been lifted off her shoulders. Clark's heart clenched in response to the smile that suddenly lifted the corners of her lips. It was perhaps the first real smile he'd seen from her and her eyes warmed with it, making her whole face radiate with an unmistakable glow of happiness. And right in that moment Clark knew that he'd never seen anything more beautiful.

"I'll call Perry and...," she trailed off when she slid her hand down her side, apparently expecting to find the pocket of the pair of jeans she'd been wearing the day before. When her hand touched her bare thigh the loveliest shade of pink flooded her cheeks. She cleared her throat and then met his amused gaze with a slightly hesitant look.

"Well,... I'll get my phone," she said, rising from her chair. Clark didn't say anything, but only watched her leave the room instead. He'd been surrounded by beautiful women all his life as they tried to get him to fall in love with them. All the while Clark had always seen that glint in their eyes that told him that they didn't even see him, but rather the cash and power his family name had to offer.

Lois was different. She was beautiful, yes, but there was more to her than just her pretty body and face. What was most important however was that, as her gaze flickered toward him once more before she lowered her eyes and walked through the door, he had the feeling that she was actually seeing him.

Clark leaned back in his chair, taking a sip from his cup. A smile tugged at his lips as he made a decision. It would complicate things, yes, but frankly he didn't care enough to rethink his choice. The benefits would outweigh the possible drawbacks.

He was going to make Lois Lane his woman.