Disclaimers and A/N: Please see Chapter 1 for Challenges info and other details.

Reviews and comments – pro, con, in-between– encouraged and enthusiastically considered. I promise. Once again, thanks for stopping by.

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Winter's Chill

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XXV.

Max let herself in quickly and primed the alarm system behind her, her anticipation again tickling her nerves, making her tummy quiver a little. Not like heat at all, she thought suddenly, the idea pleasing and relieving her. When in heat, one quick and uncaring act quelled any desire she'd have had, and kept it 'quelled' for a few months at a time. But with Logan ... he raised the desire in her, not any internal calendar she might have ... and when he made love to her, he satisfied her and made her crave him all the more, all at once... not anything at all like being in heat...

Coming down the hall she noted, with a twitch of curiosity, that since she'd gone, Logan had pulled closed the sliding door to his workout room. She went further into the penthouse looking for him, past the now- tidied kitchen, but before she got much further she heard the divider slide open and turned to see Logan come out of the training room, sliding the door closed again behind him, with a small, self- conscious smile. As she stood unmoving, waiting for him, he came up to her and took the hand she offered to ask, "Mission accomplished?"

"Um-hmmm." She nodded, nearly done in – he'd managed to fit in a shower while she was gone, she could tell, and the scent of his soap and shampoo rewoke the butterflies she felt in her stomach the night before. Her smile for him widened...

"Intact, none the worse for its overnight stay in the bushes?'

"Perfect," she agreed. With the navy jersey he'd pulled on after his shower, his eyes shone like emeralds. She was weakening...

"Good," he smiled, dimples appearing. "And safely downstairs?"

Max nodded and slipped to one knee, close beside his chair, and, snaking her arms up around his neck, leaned close to tip her forehead to his. After a moment, she pulled back a little to look him square in the eye and murmured, "I always wondered how this would feel..."

Having almost begun to imagine, while she was gone, that he'd been dreaming again, Logan had melted in the first moment he'd seen her back in his penthouse, and, when she reached for him, he felt his pulse quicken as he realized that she really did want him, too. At her words, then, he immediately fell for her line, her mood infectious. "What's that?" he asked huskily.

"To walk in, like this ... Kiss you ... like this..." She leaned in to linger sweetly on his lips, gently running her tongue along his teeth, playfully, then pulled back to whisper, "and say ... 'honey ... I'm home ...'"

XXVI.

She'd crawled into his lap, right there and then, pulling him close, his scent making her crazy, so fresh and near, his hair and skin still damp. "God, Logan, you smell delicious..." She let her mouth trail down his throat, nuzzling into the 'v' of his jersey and moving her hands down to its hem to snake her hands up under it...

He shivered.

Max managed to pull back a little, realizing that her hands must be ice on his shower- and- fleece warned skin, especially there, where his sensation could be spotty or confused, even hypersensitive. "I'm sorry," she whispered, "cold?"

"No, I..." Max looked into the expressive green eyes and saw that he looked overwhelmed, the look of self-consciousness still there. He tried a smile but colored a little as he did so, and looked away. "I just wasn't expecting..." He laughed, joking awkwardly, "I figured you hadn't eaten for so long you'd be faint with hunger."

She bit her lip, avoiding his gaze. "I'm ... pushing too hard..." One of her old fears was proving true, then: she'd had no role models or guide to how to proceed in this, other than the hormone-filled rushes of the horn dogs at Crash, and the ero- sentimental fantasies of her room mates. Logan had not only had a decade more practice than she in the secret art of man- and- woman, but came to manhood in a world filled with sophistication and grace, elegance and perfection...

"Oh, no, Max..." he urged softly, "you're pushing just about right." As she looked back up to him in question, she saw his warm smile for her ... and the look he held in his eyes for her helped her believe that maybe, just maybe, all the country clubs and galas weren't what he expected ... or wanted. He raised a knuckle to trace along her jaw tenderly and admitted with a sad chuckle, "you've just thrown me, that's all ... Knocked me on my ass, actually." He saw the lingering question, the thread of doubt there, and knew he might ease it if he explained. "In all the time I imagined us like this ... me holding you ... finding ways we could make love ... I guess I saw it all in variations of whether you'd ... flat out reject me, if you'd let me down easily or just laugh ... or if you might not mind it so much ... or might even enjoy it too ... but I guess I just hadn't allowed for the possibility that ... you'd want to initiate any of this, with me..."

Looking at him a little sadly, she sighed, "that's what I meant." Still wishing she knew how to be at least a little more like the girls ... like the women ... he was used to romancing ... still wishing she knew more of this world than she did, she admitted, "Not what country club girls do..."

"Max..." He shook his head in amazement, that she didn't see it. "You've got to know by now that I am relieved and ever grateful you're not a 'country club girl'..." The change in her eyes, the trust he saw returning, was reassuring ... and he went on, "It just never dawned on me ... In fact, when you came in, I had just started wondering what I'd do if you changed your mind ... and didn't come back." He reddened softly, shrugged, looking apologetically into the dark, dark eyes. But what he found there gave him strength he wouldn't have had twelve hours before, to continue, "ever since the chair ... I hadn't imagined that any woman would want to initiate anything with me ... but, you, Max, for you to want to do this..." his fingertips unfolded from along her jaw to trace up along her temple. "It's going to take me a bit of time to believe it all."

"Believe it." She whispered, fiercely, and found herself finally saying something she'd wanted to say, for a long time now. "You're not the chair, Logan." Her eyes were huge, sparking in her intensity, shining with sudden moisture. "It's become a euphemism we've both used, for your injury, your paralysis, for all of it: your being 'back in the chair'; your asking if it was easier for me with you 'in the chair'... It's a great piece of equipment, and you're lucky you could afford a good one, even a second one, especially for basketball. And yeah, it might even be what some people see first now, when they look at you. But it's a thing, Logan..." she breathed, "it's not you, it's not even a part of you. You're not the chair."

And at that moment Max had sealed his fate by giving him the greatest gift he'd ever been given in his life: permission to be human again ... Overwhelmed, he pulled her close, crushing her in his strong arms. "Max ... I love you..." he managed, fighting the emotions still rattling him.

And as Logan found his humanity again in her arms, Max began to believe in her own: if such an extraordinary man could love her, maybe she was more than just a science experiment, after all...

XXVII.

"...you must be starving..."

They'd held each other, long moments, in the hall; picnic forgotten, the only sounds their hearts, and lips, and occasionally gulped, emotional breathing. Logan was back, all of him, and Max had returned to him yet again; not a dream at all, she had proven to be corporeal, and finally, he relaxed into the freedom she'd granted him, to be a whole, feeling, caring man again, not merely equipment or programs or adaptive anything. Hell, he'd worn glasses for years without thinking it diminished him, he found himself musing ... how could this be so different?

At his words, Max had gulped a small chuckle and nodded, looking a bit contrite in her admission. Logan laughed warmly and let his lips trace across her hairline. "You'd better be. I have enough food in there to feed a family of four."

Glancing at the bare dining table, and having seen that the kitchen had been tidied, she smiled in slow anticipation, asking, "where, 'in there?'"

"Ah, well... I promised a picnic, didn't I?" He pivoted and moved them, Max still in his lap, back to the training room. He stopped in the hall before the closed door, apologizing, "I wish it could be in the bedroom, Max, but to get what I have here all the way back there..."

"Bedroom's for beginners," she whispered in his ear, then leaned back and smiled as she looked deep into the amazing eyes before her. "We're ready to broaden our horizons, aren't we?"

"I am if you are," his quick grin a relaxed, happy one, and he gently guided her up off his lap to lean over and pull back the dividing door. "Our own, private picnic – warm, dry ... and guaranteed ant-free."

Max was captivated by the scene before her. Walking in slowly, she saw the room transformed, the effort to which Logan had gone to make their picnic special making her breath catch, audibly. She saw why he'd set everything up here; he'd pulled out the large, thick mat Bling used for some of their work, and had laid it opened across the floor, covering it with a soft quilt, then laid a smaller tablecloth off at the side, tossing extra blankets and pillows nearby. He'd arranged the plates of food across the cloth and had a bottle of wine cooling in a silver wine sleeve at one end, crystal stems nearby, linen napkins and silverware at the other. And surrounding their quilted island, he'd managed greenery, which Max soon saw were several pots of trailing vines like ivy and similar plants lovingly tended and now trailed along the floor... the natural light still entering from the skylight was soft, and the candles he'd lit and put on the tables safely nearby were more scent than light...

"Oh, Logan, it's beautiful..." she breathed, finally looking back to him. He'd done so much in the brief hour she was gone...

"I was on a pretty short schedule, to get things out. And Mrs. Moreno came to the rescue–she let me borrow her plants..." Max saw that he'd been waiting, anxious for the 'picnic' to be something special, and he watched for her reaction with a boyish, hopeful look. "You like it?"

"It's perfect." She wavered, turning to look at the room again, and admitted, back to him as she spoke, low, "no one's ever done a picnic for me, before..."

At that moment, there was no sign of the streetwise, cocky secret soldier, but only a woman, touched by the caring and kindness of the man who loved her, still wondering what was real and what would be stolen from her, still wondering if she'd find herself back in the harshness of the streets below even after the world he'd given her in these hours. He came up behind her and spoke softly, raising a hand to thread fingers through hers. "Max..." he crooned...

She turned and her face lit again for him. Not all of the ghosts were gone yet but belief was there, her faith in him. "It's perfect," she repeated, and gracefully sunk to her knees beside him, her arms seeking his. For brief minutes she rested there in his arms, feeling a safety and comfort she'd never known anywhere else... until her tummy rumbled. The perfect comic relief made each of them laugh, and her ghosts were banished for the day. Max gently touched Logan's scruffy jaw, sweetly, then stood again, turning to cross back to the edge of the quilts. Leaning to pull off one boot, then the other, Max set them aside and knelt on the soft, inviting surface before her. Again turning to the man who'd created all this for her, she reached out a hand and urged, "C'mon, Logan, come join me."

"I was hoping you'd ask," he teased. "Go ahead, get started – we can't have you swooning in hunger..." Moving up to the edge of the quilt-covered mat, Logan locked his brakes and smoothly shifted to the floor, his movement up onto the mat's center making him far less self-conscious than had his transfer into bed only hours before. What a difference she's made, he thought fleetingly, when she's shown me so perfectly that this just doesn't matter...

As he settled closer to her, mid-quilt, he watched as, sitting forward on her knees, she daintily peeked into all the bowls and platters, then lifted a plate toward him. "For you?"

"You go first. I'll catch up." He leaned back on his arms and watched her, appreciatively. She's had so little... and had to fight all her life for every small thing she's managed... she's lived on the run, underground ... and yet this beautiful, sensitive woman has grown from all that... she deserves some peace, some comfort ...

"It's fantastic, Logan; come have some."

The chocolate eyes had turned back to him and nudged him back to the present, and he grinned, taking the plate she offered, but setting it down first, reaching toward the glasses. "Did you want some wine? It's light; I know it's still early..."

"Not so early," she laughed, "nearly dinnertime by the clock – we just got a late start, what with the morning..." she twinkled, reminding him of the several hours in bed they'd spent. "I'll get the wine but you get some food... I'm still in charge of your recovery, you know..."

"Ah, so that's what all this is," he nodded, broadly. "So I have to run off the road, on a regular basis, to get this kind of attention? It's not going to be as believable next summer..."

"Don't you dare," she turned back toward him and planted a fast, decisive, noisy kiss on his lips before turning back to her food. "I don't like what worry does to my appetite."

His eyebrows lifted. "You were worried about me?" The question came out quickly, in that brief moment when such a thought was still new and surprising. As quickly, though, Max turned back to look at him with an expression that raised another self-conscious grin from him, and she rolled her eyes.

"I'll pretend that you didn't just say that... otherwise I'll have to call Sam and tell him that your brain was frosted after all, that you've developed amnesia and have forgotten everything that's happened, oh, over the past year..."

"Max..." he tried his best apologetic smile, endearing and as sincere as he could make it look. "It must've justbeen the hunger talking..."

"That's better." Max grinned, lifting his plate back to him. "The dip is perfect, by the way. I'd recommend it."

"I'll try some." Logan stretched toward the makeshift buffet and filled his plate too, accepting a glass of wine from Max and setting it on the floor nearby, a sturdier surface than the mat. As she ate, Max watched Logan and, realizing that he wouldn't be all that comfortable if he was forced to use one arm as a prop for stability there on the floor, offered, "Hey, want something to use as a back rest? I could probably find something..."

As she was looking around, Logan grinned a little and admitted, "Don't need it – Bling's had me working on a new trick." Setting his plate off to the side, Logan shifted to draw one leg, then the other, in a sort of cross- legged position before him. Lifting and shifting a little, he carefully adjusted, then smiled broadly and lifted his hands, showing her the result. "I've got to learn to just trust that Bling is always right – but I swear when he was showing me this, I had no reason to think I'd need to be sitting on the floor." Workouts and pressure reduction notwithstanding, Bling had shown him that "broadening his base" would let him sit more stably, helping compensate for abs not as dependable as they'd once been. Not only did he think he'd not need it, but he was certain he'd never show Max how he got into the position, dragging his feet up under him – but things change. Damn it, Bling, he smiled to himself yet again.

"That's good," she grinned as he balanced his plate in his 'lap,' turning back to her own food, unconcerned.

I stew and worry about what she'd think if she saw that, what she'd make of it being so awkward – and she barely stops eating. That's how it should be, Logan marveled yet again at Max's ease with it all. With a loud, contented sigh, Logan set about stuffing the roast, veggies and dip on his plate into one of the pitas, and grinned as he saw Max watching that action with far more curiosity and interest than she had his pulling into position. "Here's the real way to eat all this..." Drawing the bread around the bulging contents as best he could, Logan managed a big, ravenous bite of his creation and found it was the best thing he'd tasted in many, many months...

XXVIII.

The 'picnic grove' had lost its natural light some time before, and the lovers lay back, wrapped in soft quilts in the candlelight, sated with food and wine and lovemaking, now comfortably cradled in each other's arms. Max sighed, wanting time to stop, wanting everything outside Logan's inviting penthouse to disappear.

"This has been the best weekend of my life, Logan, despite the terrible way it started."

"Not so terrible," his voice was velvet, soothing, as his fingertips gently traced along the curve of her back. "It all worked out ... and it's been even better than the ones I dreamed – and that's saying a lot..."

She smiled softly against his chest, again nuzzling the soft blond hairs there. "I don't want this to ever end," she admitted, sounding a little lost. "Now I know what you were feeling, that first night... it almost feels like if I leave ... I'll have imagined this, and we won't be the same..."

"Then stay..." He pulled back a little to look into her eyes. "Max, you can stay here, as long as you like, you know that, don't you? Anything you want ... anything I have, is yours; if you want to stay right here, with me, like this ... I can't think of anything I could want more..." He let his lips brush hers, pausing there for sweet, long moments, then pulled back to say, "I don't want to push for anything you're not ready to try. But anything, Max... you know you don't need to stay at Jam Pony any longer than you want to ... you don't have to go back to your apartment if you don't want to stay there..." He nuzzled her a little and smiled, "and that's for whenever you want – you say the word, tomorrow, next week... now ... no hurry or pressure or whining from me, I promise ... just ... any of it, all of it, yours to chose ... whenever you say..."

Max smiled widely, touched yet again by Logan's generous spirit and the love she felt for him. "Logan Cale, where did you come from?" She burrowed into his strong arms, and, as she drew a deep, contended breath, made her decision...

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