Forethought

Everything suddenly became silent as they unconsciously moved closer together. Alexis looked into Luke's eyes, they were telling her to stop, to think. She was a rational human being. But it wasn't about rationality. Their lips brushed together softly, then intertwined, exploring each other's mouths with great anticipation. And it was one of those kisses. The kind that could ruin a perfectly good friendship.

After several cloudy moments of judgement, they both broke apart, although it didn't last very long. Their lips continued to meet over and over again in a series of breathless kisses. Luke pushed Alexis back against the couch, his lips never left hers as she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer to her.

Suddenly Alexis pulled away. "I think you've proved your point." she said, breathlessly.

Luke didn't respond, instead he captured her lips in his, kissing her thoroughly while his hands made their way down the front of her blouse, ripping the buttons open. His lips kissed down her neck and then down her chest. And Alexis didn't stop him, instead she encouraged him with the small moans that escaped through her parted lips.

Alexis found her hands pulling on either side of his shirt as he continued to manipulate her neck with his lips. All thoughts of sanity and reality had stopped on both their parts. They were no longer thinking. the consequences were the farthest thing from their minds. Lost in the moment and in time. Alexis struggled to find an ounce of sanity within her, but she was failing miserably.

When Luke sat up to remove his shirt, Alexis was finally hit by the reality. "Luke." she breathed.

"What's wrong?" he asked, just as breathless.

"We can't do this, it's not right."

Luke pulled his shirt back on his shoulders, he moved off of Alexis and began to button his shirt back up. "I'm sorry." he murmured, knowing things had went too far.

Alexis sat up, pulling her shirt together. "It's really alright, although, I think that we've figured out your problem."

"Yeah?" he asked. "What's that?"

She began to button her shirt back up. "Obviously, you're not obsessing over the Cassadine issue."

Luke grinned. "Well, I'm not obsessing over the intimacy issue."

"No, you're not obsessing over the physical intimacy." she assured him. "It's the emotional issue."

"Intimacy is intimacy." he mumbled.

"No, it's not." Alexis argued. "Luke if we would have gone any farther the only thing it would have proved is that you were ready and willing to take me to bed because you're not in love with me."

"What are you trying to say?"

"That maybe you're in love with Skye." she said, softly and slowly.

"No." he argued.

Alexis sighed heavily. "Well, it's not the Cassadine thing."

"Yes it is!" Luke objected loudly. "It's the damn Cassadine's."

"If it was, you would have pulled away from me just now."

"I don't think of you as a Cassadine."

"Un-huh, Luke, that's not going to work." Alexis told him.

"Well, I'm not in love with Skye."

"All right." she breathed. "I'm not about to argue with you."

"I'm gonna go." he told her, getting up and heading toward the door. "I'll see you later."

Skye sailed around the pool in a raft as Ric continued to try and impress her with his diving abilities.

"Wow, you are pretty good." she told him as he made his way over to the raft.

"You're never suppose to brag if you don't have something to back it up with." he joked, "but I guess that you already knew that."

"I'm just sorry that I don't have any diving abilities to show you." Skye joked.

Ric smiled that wicked smile. "That's alright, maybe you can impress me with something else."

"Impress you?" she asked. "Why would I want to do that?"

"So that you remain on my good side."

"Maybe you are as crooked as everyone says you are." Skye challenged.

Ric winked. "Maybe."

"I think that you're much softer than everyone says you are." Skye told him. "Other than your obvious hate for Sonny, which is well deserved I'm sure."

"I take it you don't like him either." he commented.

"That greasy little slim ball belongs in prison."

"I couldn't agree more." he told her, moving her raft back and fourth. "Why don't you hop off of here and take a swim."

"I already had one thank you."

"Don't make me flip you off this raft." he warned playfully.

"Did you ever think that maybe I didn't want to get wet?"

"Then maybe you should have thought about that before you put on your little scanty bathing suit and came out here."

"Scanty?" she laughed. "How did we go from getting wet to my choice in bathing suit apparel?"

"I have no idea." he said. "However, I'm sorry that I insulted your bathing suit apparel."

"You're such a smart ass, Ric."

"Well thank you." he said, almost sincerely.

"You take the strangest things as compliments." she laughed.

"I've been told that before."

"By Alexis?" she asked.

"Yes." he answered, slowly. "So I've got a suggestion." he said, changing the subject.

"Yeah? What's that?"

"I say that we get out of here and go grab some lunch."

"The entire Quartermaine staff is at your disposal and you want to go out for lunch?" she questioned. "I can have Cook fix anything you'd like to eat."

"What if I'd like go out?" he interrupted. "I don't think it's healthy for you to sit here at your parent's house all day long and do nothing."

"Are you a doctor now?" she asked.

"No. Just come on Skye, let's just go out for lunch." Ric pleaded. "Are you afraid that you might have a little fun?"

"No."

"Then what's the problem? You don't want to be seen having lunch with high profile officer of the law?"

"Ric, you're so full of crap." Skye laughed. "But if it means that much to you then we'll go out to lunch."

"I thought you'd see it my way."

Twenty minutes later Skye and Ric were sitting at the Cellar. Ric shifted forward in his seat, leaning closer to the table. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

"How personal?" she asked.

"Very."

"You can ask, but it doesn't mean that I'm going to answer."

"Okay." he agreed. "Fair enough. I want to know about your relationship with Luke."

"Luke and I do not have a relationship." she said, painfully. "Luke can't let go of the past and I'm not about to force him to forget about Laura. I just don't want to be the woman he settles for because he can't have her. I don't want what happened with Jax and I to happen again."

"What happened with Jax?"

"We were in love, or at least I thought we were, maybe I was just kidding myself. That's not the point, the point is that we were doing great until his ex returned from the dead. His true love. If I would have realized that I couldn't have competed with her from the beginning I never would have tried. I ended up being the bad guy and Jax and Brenda were the perfect couple." Skye told him. "Now when I look back the only thing I think about is how I could let a man bring me down to that level of disgracefulness."

"You don't think you could find love with Luke?" he asked.

"No, that's just it, I know that I could. I mean all the signs are there, the one's that scream that heartache is up ahead. I just don't want to put myself in that position again. Because God knows that if Laura would walk through the door he'd be gone before I could blink."

"I don't about that. I've seen the way Luke looks at you. I think he loves you and I think that you know he loves you. He's just scared to admit it. Luke knows that you've been hurt in the past maybe he's afraid of hurting you again."

"You make it sound so simple."

"Isn't it?" he asked. "Sometimes life is just that simple, people just tend to make it complicated. More complicated than it ever has to be."

"Maybe so, maybe not. I know now that I can't give my heart over to Luke and expect him not to break it."

"That risk comes with every relationship." Ric reminded her.

"I'm just tired of Luke dancing around me. He made it very clear to me last night where we stand." she told him. "Luke wants to be friends with benefits and I can't go there again. I won't. I think the best thing for Luke and I both is to cut our losses and move on."

"Is that what you want to do Skye?" he asked. "You want to move on?"

"I don't have any other choice."

"You have more choices than you realize."

"Listen to me. I'm sitting here pouring my heart out to a man who sent me to prison. I don't think my life could possibly get any worse."

"Come on, Skye, I'm not all that bad."

"I guess not." she countered. "Why are you being so nice to me?"

"Let's just say that I've been there before. That I know what its like to be completely devoted to someone and have them blow you off. And no matter how many times you try to show them or try to prove to them how you feel it's just never good enough and eventually you lose hope, you give up or you do something to screw up."

"Screwing up is what I do best."

"Me too." he agreed. "Sometimes no matter how hard you try you just can't get it right."

"So now I have to figure out where to go from here." Skye told him.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"I'm going to subtly remove myself from Luke's sphere."

"Port Charles is a small town." he reminded her.

"I lived here for two years before ever running into him before and if not then I'll just leave and find somewhere new to start over."

"Running away is never the answer, Skye. Believe me, all your transgressions will eventually catch up with you, no matter how hard or how fast you run." Ric said softly. "And then one day it'll hit you, the one thing you've ran from is what you needed most in life and there may never be a way to get any of it back."

"I'm searching for redemption, Ric and I'm running out of places to look."

"Did it ever occur to you that you're looking in all the wrong places?"

"Sometimes you just have to walk away, no matter what the cost." Skye said softly. "What about you Ric, you like Alexis don't you?" she asked, changing the subject.

"Alexis is..."

"Beautiful. Intelligent. Successful. Uptight." she named off. "I could go on and on."

"Alexis is all that and more."

"So what's the problem?"

Ric sighed. "She's Alexis, she's different from any woman I've ever known. It's just that she gives me mixed signals, she confuses the hell out of me and then gets upset and flies off the handle when I take things the wrong way. Alexis doesn't know what she wants out of herself, much less anyone else and I don't know where to go from there."

"Sounds like Alexis and Luke would make the perfect couple or in their case the perfect non couple. They could spend forever just dancing around each other and never really getting anywhere. That would be heaven for Luke because he's terrified of commitment and happiness and Alexis because she just so uptight about absolutely everything."

"They would make the perfect match, why don't you give them the heads up?"

"Maybe they've already figured that out." she suggested. "Maybe they're together right now." she joked, not knowing how close to the truth she had actually been.

"The thought of that doesn't bother you?" he asked.

"The thought of what?"

"Luke with another woman."

"Oh.' she breathed. "I told you I was moving on. What about you Ric? What did you do that was so completely horrible that Alexis went running in the other direction?"

"I made Alexis dinner the other night. I thought we were having a really great time, she left to get home to Kristina, but then she came back."

"Then what happened?" she asked.

"I suggested the idea of sex and she went on a rant and then walked out."

"You should have taken things slower with her."

"I don't know how much slower I'm suppose to go, I've been dancing around her since May and here it is September and it fells like we're still in the same exact spot we were months ago."

Skye laughed. "Try waltzing with Luke since last fall."

"Almost a year." Ric pointed out. "I guess you're entitled to give up on him on now, hell you were entitled to give up on him six months ago, but there was something that made you stay. Something that kept you two together."

"Yeah, the murder of a Detective." she laughed. "Luke likes living on the edge and I just can't handle it, not the way he can anyway. And besides now is a perfect time to cut my losses."

"You wanna know what I think?"

"Not really."

"I'm going to tell you anyway." he told her. "I think that you're in love with Luke and I think that when he pushes you away it only makes you love him more. You like challenges and it's clear to me that Luke is a huge challenge for you. You think that you might be able to tame him, to make a husband and potentially a Father out of him. You're a dreamer, Skye and maybe you can, maybe you can help Luke settle down. Or maybe you're just setting yourself up for a failure you already know is there."

"Are you trying to talk me into having a relationship with Luke or are you trying to talk me out of it?" she asked, slightly confused. "Because you've contradicted yourself."

"I'm just laying the options out in front of you, that's all." he said softly. "And besides there are plenty of eligible men in Port Charles just dying for there chance with you."

"There are no eligible men in Port Charles."

"There's Jax."

"Been there, regretfully done that."

"There's... no, wait, you're related to Jason, there's...no you're related to Justus too and Dillon, although that didn't stop you from pursuing Ned."

"Hey!" she interjected. "Ned's a great friend."

"Okay, let's see who else, there's that new doctor, Steven Webber, Lorenzo Alcazar, Lucky."

"Lucky is Luke's son." Skye pointed out.

"I just thought it would add a little spice to your life." Ric commented.

"I think I'll pass."

"What about Sonny?"

"Not even if he were the last man on earth and human reproduction depended on it." Skye laughed. "I think you should keep your day job. Matchmaking doesn't seem to be your strong suit."

"There's always me." he said rather slyly.

Again she laughed. "I don't think so, Ric."

"Why not?" he asked, seriously.

"Have you forgotten about Alexis?" she asked. "The one you were sulking over."

"Alexis keeps making it clear to me that things aren't going to work out between the two of us."

"You don't know until you try.' she offered. "Alexis may be the best thing that's ever happened to you."

"I'd like to believe that." he said with a weak smile. "Although I know it's not true."

Alexis walked in the main room on the Haunted Star. It was very quiet and why wouldn't it be, it was only three in the afternoon. She thought that Luke might be here, that maybe they could talk a little more about what he had came to see her about. That and she wanted his opinion, a male opinion on what to do about Ric.

"Luke?" she called out. "Luke, are you here?"

Faith came walking out. "Luke's in his office, he said he doesn't want to be bothered."

"What's wrong with him?"

"He's upset." Faith told her, fixing herself a drink. "Would you like a drink?"

"No thanks." she answered. "What's he upset about?"

Faith shrugged. "I don't know, if I had to guess I would say it's something to do with that little tramp he calls a girlfriend."

Alexis sighed. "Skye?"

"Is there anyone else?"

Alexis made her way down the hallway, she walked down toward the end of the hall and stopped in front of Luke's closed door. "Luke, it's me, can I come in?"

"It's open." he mumbled.

Alexis pushed the door open and walked in. Luke was lying on the couch, a bottle of whiskey in his left hand.

"What can I do for you Natasha?" he asked.

"I wanted to talk to you." she said, shutting the door behind her.

"Haven't we done this before?" Luke asked feeling that sense of deja-vu

"Somewhat." Alexis admitted. "I just think that if you confessed what you were feeling that you would feel a lot better."

"You want me to feel better Alexis?" Luke questioned. "Is that why you tracked me down, so that I can get this weight off my chest?"

"Luke, I just want you to understand that I'm trying to help you out."

"I don't take charity." he yelled.

"It's not charity, Luke, I'm you're friend and I don't want to see you hurting like this." she explained. "Please, please don't turn me away."

"I'm just a little confused right now. I need time to sort some things out before I go and see Skye."

"Okay." she agreed. "If that's what you want. I just hope it isn't too late when you've finally made up your mind. Women like Skye, they don't wait forever and she tends to get bored fairly easily."

"There you go defending her again."

"I'm not defending Skye, I'm just telling you the information I've gathered from being around her. Deep down I truly believe that she's a good person and I think you already know that. She needs to know how you feel about her, it's only fair. I'm sure she's told you how she feels about you."

"I can't handle the way she feels for me." he confessed. "It's scary and the last thing I want to do is hurt her, I've already caused her so much agony with trying to cover up a murder and look where it got her."

"Thanks to poor, Luke, right?" Alexis said, annoyingly. "You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and find Skye before it's too late."

Luke got up off the sofa and walked over to where she was sitting on the edge of his desk, he took her hands in his. "I think it's very sweet of you to come all the way down here just to give me a kick in the pants."

He fell silent and just at her remember the events earlier in the evening. "I want to apologize for what happened before. I was out of line and I never meant to do anything to make you uncomfortable." he said softly, "I'm really sorry."

"There's no reason for you to apologize." she said just as softly. "You shouldn't regret this afternoon. I don't."

Luke stepped closer to her, closing in the space between them. He didn't know how or why but his lips seemed to brush against hers. "I guess I'm not sorry then."

Alexis' lips willingly met his. She came to the Haunted Star thinking of their earlier incident as just something that had gotten out of control because their emotions were both running into overdrive. But now she wasn't so sure. Maybe somewhere along the way things had changed.

"I've never seen this place quite this empty before." Ric commented, looking around the Haunted Star.

"I've seen it this way too many times." Skye answered softly.

"Are you disappointed that Luke's not here?" he asked.

"Yeah and a little relieved." she admitted. "Although I did work up all this courage to tell him how it's going to be and now I'm not so sure that I can go through with my original plan."

"I'm not about to tell you what to do." he told her. "Because you need to do what's best for you and only you can decided that. I just don't like that look in your eye."

"What look?"

"The look of hopelessness." he told her. "You're eyes are so memorizing it's a shame to see them filled with such sadness."

"Well, thank you, Ric." Skye replied softly.

Ric stepped closer to her, his hand gently touched the side of her face. "I think that Luke Spencer is a damned fool not to want you."

"And I'm an even bigger fool to ever believe one word he said to me." she confessed. "But I can't help it. I love him."

TBC......

Sorry for the delay. I'm trying to balance school and writing. Thanks for the reviews.

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