Someone was calling her name and, lost in a daze of ominous memories, Brenda had no idea who it was. Maybe if she could remember where in the hell she was, she could catch a clue. It was dark and there was a chill in the air that made her cheek tingle. However, the rest of her body was so uniformly warm that the only reasonable deduction was that she was in the bed. Knowing that made her original inquiry perfectly clear.

Jasper Jacks touched her cheek, a soft graze just below the bone. Brenda rolled her head in his direction and murmurred. The blankets fell from her shoulders, cotton sheets sliding thickly over her skin. Jax spoke her name again and it was a wonder how she could be so lost in anything as to not know she was beside her muscular blond Aussie.

"I wondered if waking you were a good thing or bad."

She grinned and gave a low moan. "And what did you decide?"

"I think…" Jax pressed his lips against hers in a gentle kiss. With their lips touching, he grinned and said, "…it can be a very, very good thing."

Jax pressed her down against the bed. The side of his dimpled shoulder brushed her face as she laid back. He kissed her again, harder and with greater passion this time. Brenda's arms wrapped around him. She threw her right leg over his lower back, then pushed him to the side.

Their bodies rolled and stopped with Brenda on top. She looked down at Jax and for a second, wondered why men with light eyes attracted her so easily. From a high school crush on Jason Quartermaine through to the present, eyes that contrasted with her dark brown orbs had managed to send her into a frenzy.

Her hair fell into her face and she pushed one side behind her ear. She pressed down and kissed him lightly, then asked, "Why did you wake me?" She nuzzled his neck and muttered, "Besides the obvious, of course."

Jax chuckled at the tickle in his neck. He ran his middle finger along the top of her spine, just below the nape of her neck. "You were dreaming and it didn't see the sort of thing a beauty such as you should have in her head." And as he spoke, Brenda's body went rigid.

She crawled along the floor of the small apartment, huddled against herself. She had taken the time to put on her robe and it stuck to her freshly showered skin in wet patches. Her forehead was still smudged with blood. She shook violently and hertremorshad nothing to do with the cool air or her wet skin. She was afraid, and though the voices in her home were familiar, they still made her want to hide in a corner.

Brenda stopped at the edge of the bathroom and clutched the door frame. Shaking and crying, she peeked out into the bedroom. There were police, but they had mostly trickled out. She could hear Benny, distinctly, and she thought she heard Lorenzo, but the one voice she didn't hear was Luis.

In her present state, afraid and confused, she fell into laughter at the idea that she could tell the voices apart. In the past, she had mistaken one on the telephone for the other. With blood rushing in her head, through the pounding in her ears, she could tell that the Alcazar that spoke loudly, moving police out of his brother's apartment, was not the Alcazar that should have been there. He wasn't the Alcazar that she needed.

And then, suddenly, he was there. She heard him call out to her, his voice growing louder as he drew closer, but she couldn't move. She held onto the side of the door, crying and wondering why no one had yet said anything to her. She was the one at home when the shooting happened. She was the one who could have died. It was possible that Lorenzo had kept them from her, but if he had, she didn't remember it. She only remembered seeing no one until Luis was suddenly in front of her face.

He grabbed her arms and pulled her from the floor. She jerked away from him, but he wouldn't let her go. She screamed at him. "They could have killed me!" Her body flailed and gyrated in a rhythm that couldn't be matched by the most barbaric and passionate sexual rites. "I was in the shower, Luis! The shower! And you weren't even here!"

"Brenda!" He jerked her hard and pulled her close to him. She still fought, but his arms stayed wrapped tightly around her. "I'm sorry, mariposa, but I'm here. Just… stop crying!"

Luis alternated between screaming and muttering soft, Spanish words of comfort. She had never known him to be particularly soft, but at the time, it meant a lot to her that he could at least try. It meant that he cared, and if he cared, then someone was going to pay. Unfortunately, as she huddled against him, they would pay too late for her to avoid being traumatized.

"Brenda?"

She shook her head and looked down at Jax. She ran her hand down the side of his face and smiled softly. There were plenty of things she had to worry about with Jax. Whether he would have to go off on a moment's notice to steal a company out from under some poor, unsuspecting tycoon. If his jealousy would flare when they ran into Lorenzo in public and, just for a moment, Brenda was thrown back by his face and wanted him to be Luis. Whether jetlag would be an issue or not because he had taken her off to some distant locale for lunch. However, the one thing she knew she would never have to worry about was being shot at while she tried to take a shower. Or gunfire coming her way at all.

Jax was the safe one. He was the resident knight in shining armor, though sometimes Brenda thought his armor to be somewhat tarnished. He had, after all, abandoned more than one woman, claiming that as much as he cared for them, Brenda was the one he loved. He would drop anyone when he knew her to be available. Jax would never admit that he was as dangerous to the heart as those he condemned, but she knew the truth. But, since she was the one that he always came for, it didn't really have an effect on her. It was selfish, she knew, but it was also the truth. She never had to worry about Jax leaving her behind with only a note and one last night of lovemaking to remember him by.

Brenda let her muscles relax, then sag. She lowered herself until she laid prone atop Jax's body. She kissed his lips, then moved down enough to plant her lips against his chest. She rested her cheek against his chest and Jax ran a finger along her cheek. "Brenda?"

"Hm?"

"That dream… Is it something we need to talk about?"

She sat up, propping her chin up on his chest. Brenda reached up and grabbed either side of his face, her fingers splayed wide. She used his head as a buoy to pull herself to the surface. "No," she whispered. "We don't need to talk about it." She kissed him softly and let him roll her over onto her back.

Jax was most definitely not Luis, and right then, she could say that it was a good thing. It was a safe thing. But, she couldn't help but worry as she thought more and more about her South American lover, if she would do to Jax what he did to so many others should Luis ever return to Port Charles. And then, she put that out of her mind, because if he hadn't come back by now, he wasn't coming back at all.