AUTHOR'S NOTE: hey all. I'm back from being an asshole and not updating. School, y'know… or maybe I'm just using that as an excuse. But hang in ther, I'm intending on finishing this story. Sorry about the shitty shoutouts as well, 'tis been a long day, and I couldn't stand waiting any longer to get the new chapter up. And it's short, still, but it's here.

SHOUTOUTS:
jsumptersgurl - ha. Well-ish. I'm not quite sure Maxwell takes anything well… so -ish is appropriate.
Alexandria Queen of Dreams - aww damn! Stop snuggling him! I want to!
Miss Loaf - cough well… ya get what ya get. ;D mmm MSN? Nope… I got AIM, tho (InABadMoodAllDay) and YIM (velvetshebang)
wiseupjanetweiss - I can't wait to get into trouble! Hehehe… well… I updated, finally. Sorry again it took so long
Roxy Eno - hmm well put. Lol I love how everyone knows my characters better'n I do
SiriusBlackfan5405 - ta! Thanks! Hope you like the new one!
Brownie/Melody - do I even have to talk to you? We've already gone over this… lol
Katatonia - YOU'RE FREAKIN' FANTASTIC! Hehe couldn't resist…
Valo - -luff- thanks for hanging in with us…
What Lurks In Shadows - damn. I guess there's gonna be trouble. Feel free to beat me, although I've already done it myself…

Chapter Seventeen

He went and curled up beneath the sheets, and I laid down beside him, and he didn't tense when I pulled him close to try and calm him down, show him I wasn't angry anymore. I stroked along his back, just next to the sharp spines down the middle and he purred softly, letting me although he didn't really move otherwise.

But I was curious about what that purr felt like, so without thinking I leaned in and kissed him, as I might have done to Brian, had he purred. And Maxwell paused to consider a moment, kissed back, and stopped purring. So I laughed.

-What?- he asked, pulling away and of course, looking insulted. But it was still funny.

"Nothing. You just stopped purring."

-Why's that funny?-

"'cause that's why I kissed you in the first place."

He looked at me strangely but started purring again, a really obvious kind of encouragement. So I kissed him again and this time he kept purring and it created this really nice vibration just like I'd expected it to, so I pulled him in closer and he wrapped a wing around me to stay there. Which was a bit freaky, let me tell you. You sometimes forget things like that, how powerful he was, even with just a flimsy-looking wing. But it didn't take too long to get used to, basically because I was distracted from it pretty damn quick.

Surprisingly, he hadn't done this before, not with Brian, or anyone as far as I knew. But he had an unusual talent for it, catching on alarmingly easily to what turned me on and how quickly and the best way to do it and when to use it. Things that had taken me years to feel like I really had figured out. And instead of being afraid or shy of any advances I made, he welcomed them quite readily, eager to learn.

And he didn't need to be told verbally what he was learning; it just seemed to hit him all of a sudden and his new knowledge would kick in not a moment later. It was mind-blowing, to say the least, being with him when there was that little uncertain pause, then the next moment you can hardly breathe.

Before I get too far into this, I might want to mention the whole thing with the claws and spines, since I'm sure somebody's bound to get all hung up on that. Well if you people would remember anything right, I'd already filed his claws down so that wasn't a problem. They grew out again, but he let me keep them reasonably blunted. As far as the spikes along his back go, that's a mechanics thing. You can just picture it yourself. Really, I'm not sure why I should have had to spell all this out in the first place; all I was trying to say was that it wasn't a big deal and you shouldn't be so damn worried about it.

The point is, he was amazing in bed. I'll be blunt about that. But he wasn't Brian. I never tried to pretend he was; don't accuse me of it. When it got down to it, he was better than Brian, but that's because he wasn't human. I'd come to forget that at times, but in the end, he wasn't. He was as close as you got, but you can never really replace a real living human person.

That had its advantages and disadvantages. For one, in the morning, I could almost always count on Maxwell to be right there where he had been in the bed beside me the night before. He had nowhere else to be. Brian I expected to hop from bed to bed and partner to partner as he saw fit and think nothing of it. We both did, really, before he died.

But with Brian, I could look into his eyes and be absolutely sure that despite all that, somewhere inside he did love me.

I could only hope Maxwell was even capable of such an emotion.

Which at times was unsettling. But in the end, I figured it out somewhat. It didn't matter if he could love or not. I no longer really knew how to be alone.