Rating: PG-13 (heck...I dunno...)

Disclaimer: I own no rights to Dark Angel...you know that and I know that.

A/N: I'm feeling romantic tonight, and everybody loves a good shipper piece (myself certainly included). This is a stand-alone piece, just to get a little gooey romance out of my system. As always, this is M/L.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet: 1.5.188-9.

Glow

The night was sticky, even high up above the sweaty city in Logan's penthouse. He was laying on top of the covers in a pair of green and yellow boxers, which stuck to his backside every time he rolled over. Sleep had been drug away from him by the heat, and he'd spent at least an hour mulling over things in his mind. Mostly, he thought of Max: the one woman he loved, and the one woman he could never have.

Raking a hand through his hair, he closed his eyes and tried for sleep one more time.

At least, he supposed, he was consistent. Max never was far from his thoughts. She hadn't been since that fateful night when she'd dropped down from the rafters into his life.

He wanted to touch her badly, ached to feel the simple brush of her hand without having to be rushed to the emergency room. She was intoxicatingly beautiful and she was deadly. Yet, the time they had spent together rested firmly in his mind and dreams. He dreamt of her often, couldn't recall a night in the past year he had not thought of her at least once.

This night, he realized, was no different.

He rolled over, his boxers clinging.

She invaded his thoughts the moment his eyes closed. The scent of her, surrounding him and making him dizzy. Her dark hair, smelling sweetly of a fruity shampoo, ran between his fingers like a sleek river. He could make out the lines of her face, elegantly shaped and near to his own.

Logan wasn't sure any longer whether he was dreaming or simply lost in an elaborate fantasy, and truth be told he didn't particularly care. All that mattered was her presence, not its form.

He kissed her, their lips coming together gently at first, hardly brushing. She tasted sweet, distinct, and he couldn't get enough. So, he kissed her again and buried his hands deep into her thick, warm hair. Shadowed by her thick lashes, her eyes slowly closed. The world tilted awkwardly in the wrong direction, then righted itself only to fall in the other. Logan had to steady himself, but never relinquished his hold on Max. He dug his fingers further toward the back of her head until they met one another.

"Logan..." she sighed when he broke away to look at her. Breathlessly, she rubbed a thumb along the stubble covering his jaw line. The darkening of her eyes and tremble of her full bottom lip clearly conveyed to him the pleasure she took from touching him. Her thumb sojourned along the length of his jaw and then backtracked to pause at his mouth. A light smile crossed her face and she leaned forward to press a light kiss to his waiting lips.

After running her tongue lightly along the corners of his mouth, she bent her head and ran a string of warm kisses down his neck to his collarbone. She was, he decided, a masterful lover. Teeth, tongue, and lips all worked at him in perfect harmony to one another, bringing him down to a desperate man. The yearning was a sweet sort of torture, a welcome one when it could be quenched. Max was doing her best to fan the flames, and they were burning like an inferno inside of him.

There was no possible way for Logan to hold her close enough or long enough. The heat was forgotten and utterly replaced by another as she tucked naturally into his embrace. Even in the midst of the sun, he wouldn't be able to resist her waiting arms.

"I love you," Logan whispered, the phrase torn from the depths of his soul. There was a sort of freedom that accompanied the three simple words, and he repeated them over and over again in rocking rhythm until she stopped their flow with a few of her own.

"I know," she smiled, easing away from him.

He grabbed for her as she stepped away, the loss of contact almost physically painful. The brush of his fingers across her arm sent a shiver up his back, and with a teasing and sexy grin, she took yet another step away from him.

"Max," he pleaded, wanting more than anything to have her lips pressed up against his skin again. "Please." The word broke in his mouth, shattering into a million pieces of emotional shrapnel, and she stopped to look at him with shock written on her face. Her teasing was in good nature, but Logan was in no shape for a bit of horseplay...he needed her and had to know that she needed him as well.

"What is it?" she asked, puzzlement and concern working through her voice.

"I want to touch you."

He felt daft immediately after the words left his mouth, sounding like those of an overgrown five year old. Max, however, didn't see them in such a harsh light. She let her head fall to one side and favored him with a low smile that washed over him and clung like honey.

Moments later, she was back in front of him, leaning in for yet another kiss to bring down the very stars in the sky. Logan closed his eyes, waiting to feel her blissful onslaught.

He waited...waited...but the feel of her lips never came.

"Logan?"

His eyes flashed open. She was right in front of him, but seemingly not so. And, as he grabbed for her, she somehow eluded him without trying. Her mouth fell open wide, and she gaped at him. Logan's heart leapt into his throat, and he grabbed for her again and again.

Max shook her head, confused. Over and over she reached for Logan, burning to touch him and crawl back into his life forever. Through the wire rims of his glasses, his blue eyes ran up and down the length of her. With a wild, drumming insanity she wanted him and with desperation sprung from deprivation sprung at him. The world lunged about her, and in a flash Logan was inexplicably gone.

She sprang up out of bed, her body covered in a thick sheen of sweat and heaving for air. The afterglow of the love she'd been ready and willing to make still humming in her blood. She listened to the sound of her breathing, coming in and out raggedly and reached up with a hand to brush her fingers across her lips.

He'd kissed her reverently, hadn't been able to tell her that he loved her enough times. Choking for a moment on her heart, Max tried to calm her nerves and slow the hot blood tearing through her veins. In a moment filled to the brim with a sentimentality she didn't often feel or admit to, she pushed herself up off her bed and walked to the window. The night was uncomfortably warm yet, even though the sky was inky black. Somewhere, she reflected, out in that darkness was the man she loved, but could never have.

Still, she would have been hard pressed to believe that the darkness concealed an equally sweaty Logan, peering through the sheer pane of his window in nothing but a pair of boxers running his own hand across his lips and wondering, not for the first time, if his dreams would ever rise from the dust of their afterglow.