Blair assured the apologetic manager who answered the elevator's emergency phone that they would be fine for twenty minutes until the elevator technician had arrived and worked his magic.

"Speak for yourself," Todd muttered. He had turned away from her and pressed his forehead into the corner.

"You don't think Irene did this, do you?" Blair queried.

"No," said Todd without moving his head. "I think I did this."

"Okay." Blair leaned against her side of the elevator to await what she assumed would be a classic Todd Manning explanation. "How?"

"By being too happy."

"Sorry, Todd. You don't get to win the most pathetic contest on your wedding day. If you try, I'm going to be offended."

"I'm serious!" snapped Todd. "I should have known it was a bad sign when everything seemed perfect. You actually wanted to marry me enough to set up that whole wedding without me even knowing."

"I wanted to marry you every time we got married," Blair said quietly. "I wanted to be married to you every time we got divorced, too."

"All the kids were there," Todd continued. "Starr's still my Shorty. Hope and Sam have gotten to know me. Even Jack is coming around. No one was there to say we shouldn't or we couldn't or we weren't good enough. No secrets. There's nothing hanging over me that I haven't told you. I haven't stood in front of you with everything on the table since before I went to Ireland. You know everything and you wanted me."

"And when this elevator gets unstuck, I won't want you any more?"

"Think about it! We were going to go upstairs to... do things. There's a reason fate stopped us."

"Fate stopped us from making love?"

"That's such a cheesy expression. What are you, twelve?"

"So sorry, Mr. Professional Writer, who just called it 'doing things.'"

"I'm a media mogul. I'm not a writer."

"I always thought you looked sexy when you wrote," Blair told him honestly. "Especially when you'd pull your hair back in a ponytail because you were concentrating. Thinking. Putting things together." She crossed the elevator and pressed herself against Todd's back to whisper in his ear. There was nothing like a little tease before the main event. "Fighting. Scheming. Taking care of us and telling the world. Very sexy."

Todd spun out of the corner so quickly that she barely knew that he had touched her before he had them on opposite sides of the elevator again. "Don't."

"Why?" She looked at her watch. "We've got time." It was starting to occur to her that, in fact, they had exactly the right amount of time. Todd might be right about fate being involved. Fate might be telling them to do something a lot more fun than making lemonade out of lemons.

"Because," Todd said tightly. "Because I was ready for us to go upstairs."

Blair couldn't help laughing. She was eager, too; the aching inside her was getting hard to ignore. Now she had the perfect, magnanimous justification for starting early. If they were on an elevator repair-induced deadline, Todd could brush off any rustiness as a need to get things finished before their rescuer appeared.

"It's not funny," Todd told her.

"I agree," Blair said as calmly as she could. Todd still wasn't watching her as she slipped her panties down her legs and into her purse. The panties weren't especially good honeymoon ware, anyway. She hadn't risked donning more exotic lingerie when the ocean breezes might have flipped up her skirt in the presence of her young sons. Then she placed her purse on the floor gave herself a final once-over in the mirror. Everything looked to be in order.

"Todd," she directed, "Turn around and face me."

The sound of her own heart pounding filled her ears when he obeyed. Slowly, she raised her right leg off the ground and balanced it over Todd's shoulder. The air felt cool as it slapped her between her legs as if to announce that she was offering her body to Todd. He already had her heart and soul.

Todd closed his eyes and inhaled sharply; his face flushed and the cords of his neck tensed. Blair didn't think he needed any more convincing, but she ran her fingertips under his shirt and over his stomach, down towards the buckle of his belt. "Blair." Halfway between a groan and a whimper, her name had never sounded so good.

"We've still got fifteen minutes," she told him. "There's a lot of things we can do in fifteen minutes."

"Yeah," Todd gulped. "I mean, no."

"You can't think of a way to spend fifteen minutes?" Blair asked innocently.

"Our first time is not going to be in an elevator." Todd's body spasmed as if he meant to move away from her. Blair grabbed onto him to hold her balance, and the result was Todd's pelvis crushing into hers. Even with the fabric of his slacks and underwear between them, the brief contact sent butterflies into Blair's stomach and numbness into her hands. A tremor shot through her body as it demanded more.

"Not our first time," Blair pointed out. "We've been in stables, and limousines, and airplanes, and-"

"I remember that," Todd growled. His hand was inching toward his belt as if of its own volition.

"Love isn't all hearts and flowers. We don't have to plan everything. We didn't plan to be together that night you sat next to me in Rodi's. Sometimes things just happen."

"Anyone could walk in." His hand was on his belt now.

"Not if you hurry up." She hadn't meant for her words to come out as a breathy pant, but it was enough. Todd, with his hands shaking hard, unzipped his fly. "Now!" she commanded. She was hot and wet and achy and it had been too long.

She bit her tongue to keep from screaming when his fingers probed her to make sure she was ready. She'd been ready. She didn't need him to drag his finger back and forth, now a little deeper, now a little to the left, now tracing circles toward the top like he was the one seducing her.

Then, in a swift, hard movement that belied any of her concerns about rust, both of his hands were encircling her waist and he was inside of her.

She was suddenly stretched and full, like Todd was touching parts of her that hadn't been touched since he'd vanished almost nine years before. She only managed to last a few thrusts before bringing her leg down from his shoulder and wrapping it around his hip instead. Todd kissed her and laughed against her mouth. "Good. Don't be a hero."

"That a challenge?" she murmured as she tugged at his shirt to get her hands on his bare back and sides.

"No. Not saying I wasn't impressed. You can show me more about how flexible you are later."

He was still teasing her.

Two could play at that game. From her newly stable position, it was easier for her to rain kisses over his mouth and cheek and up to his ear. She sucked the lobe into her mouth; in response, he hissed and slid deeper and faster into her. Every time he slid out, she was bereft; every time he slid in she was closer to losing her mind.

Perhaps she should not have talked Todd into this, she reflected hazily. Perhaps the doors would fly open and she wouldn't care that they had an audience because she couldn't feel anything but the burning where too much wasn't enough. If the doors opened, she'd throw them both down on the floor so she could feel his whole body against her.

He had his hand between her legs to accentuate what the rest of him was doing, and when he stopped suddenly she almost protested. Then she saw his face, taut and melting and powerless. An instant later a hot stream shot into her; her body spasmed in a response more of relief than ecstasy.

They had just enough time to straighten their clothes and hair before strong hands forced the doors open from the outside.

Blair managed to accept the apology in a cordial sort of way before they scrambled frantically for their room.

She tore at Todd's shirt, mindless of the buttons that broke in protest while he pulled her dress over her head. They staggered toward the bed, tumbling onto it in a mix of laughter at what they'd just done and a mind bending need to do it again. Todd let Blair remove his pants and underwear to leave them equally naked, but then he pushed her to the edge of the bed and fell to his knees beside it. His hands and tongue went straight between her legs, touching her everywhere but there, where she needed it urgently.

She twisted her hips to move his fingers to the right place, but he responded by removing his hand and straddling her.

He was (still? again? she hadn't gotten a good look yet) aroused, and this time when he entered her body exploded almost immediately. She barely came back to herself enough to kiss him deeply and roughly before his second release.

They lay side by side on the bed until their breathing returned to normal. Todd chuckled and tugged the quilt out from beneath them so they could crawl into the soft, silk sheets. "That wasn't how I meant this to be," he told Blair ruefully as he traced his hand around her breasts, caressing the soft curves and teasing the nipples.

"I thought it worked out pretty well for both of us," Blair reflected. She felt content and safe, boneless and satisfied, stretched and exhilarated. His hand was on her stomach now, stroking it softly.

"I missed your body. Every bit of it." He leaned over to kiss her collarbone. "I want you to feel that."

"I did feel it." It was absolutely true. "We'll go slow next time," she promised. She played with the hair on his chest. "Do you still think fate is punishing you for being too happy?"

He pulled her closer so that she was almost on top of him and could feel his chest vibrate as he spoke. "It's hard not to worry. When everything is this good, there's no way for it to get better. It can only get worse."

Blair caressed him with the silk sheet and with her lips. "I'll show you how it can get better. Slowly."

They began their third round of lovemaking, this time getting in all the kisses and caresses they had missed.


Todd couldn't do much but bask in the feeling of exhausted emptiness. He had been too lonely for too long. His fear and pain and shame had vanished. Blair had taken away everything that was bad and given him everything that was good. The very blood in his veins felt like it was cleaner and more free-flowing.

His stomach growled. It felt empty, too, but less pleasantly so than his nether regions.

"Want to order nachos and beer and sit in that stupid tacky hot tub and eat them?" Blair asked.

Blair was full of good ideas.

"I love you," he told her.

"You love anyone who offers you beer."

"Not true. While John McBain will always have a special place in my heart for giving me my first beer after I got back to Llanview, I can honestly guarantee that I will never get naked in a hot tub with him."

"That's the sign of true love?"

He kissed her. "Yes, it is."

The food turned out to be complementary because the hotel felt bad about the thing with the elevator, even though Todd told them that it had been no problem at all.

The hot water did wonders for the parts of his body that ached either from Irene's beatings or his recent, more pleasurable exertions. He reflected that they should probably have sex three times a day for the next twenty years or so to make up for lost time. After that they could reduce it to twice a day.

He nodded to himself, decision made.

"What were you just thinking about?" Blair demanded.

"The rest of our lives," he told her.