Logan luxuriated in the feel of warm skin next to his; soaked up the thrill of touching her, making her shiver with desire, shudder with need. He watched mesmerized as his hand trailed down the soft silky surface of her, traced the line of her cheek, her throat, down the curve of her waist and over her hip. Her lips parted as they moaned his name and he hovered over her a breath away from meeting her lips, his heart pounded in his ears and he whispered her name. "Rory."

Rory had come with a plan. She had in her possession an old bag of tricks; some talented accomplices and a few secret weapons that she only hoped would get her through the early maneuvers. Yet still she hesitated.

Most people had phobias of some kind she supposed, fear of the dark, fear of heights, fear of germs, fear of spiders or those monsters that you grew up half convinced lived in your closet...there was no rational accounting for ones fears... Rory Gilmore's fear had always been spontaneity. In Omnia Paratus, Carpe Diem, living in the moment, stopping to smell the roses; these ideas sounded alluring in the verse of Tennyson, the prose of Whitman, the eloquence of Austen and the inspirational desktop oration of Robin Williams but day to day she fell more in the seize tomorrow camp and preferred to leave the roses and the moments to people like her mother who were better suited by nature to following the whim of free-spirited impulse and the caprice of the poets. She was of a more cautious breed, she liked to process information, study all the angles, formulate a plan, prepare for every eventuality, run scenarios and then re-run them just to be sure she hadn't missed some critical gap in her reasoning.

That brought her round smartly to the current dilemma, the virtual impasse she stood at with a do or die mission. The problem lay before her quite literally... Logan Huntzberger and planning seemed to be mutually exclusive concepts, reason and love mortal enemies and somehow despite all her better instincts she was standing beside his bed in the dark at two thirty in the morning and even though her lucid analytical side was screaming and her heart was lodged in her throat she couldn't have moved from the spot if her life depended on it. She stood there stone still for a long moment sucking in deep calming breaths and watching him in the faint moonlight that managed to creep in stealthy tendrils through the curtains and spilled in luminous drops across the dark bed outlining the form that lay there in slumber. With all the color sapped from the room by the silvery sliver of light she felt for a moment that she was playing out a scene in one of those black and white movies from the 30's where all the images appeared so crisp and stark defined by the absence of lifelike color, a play of shadows and light, the black abyss of the room broken only by the tableau in the center of the room, the pale skin ghostly white against the ebony of the sheets.

She was pulled from her odd train of thought when Logan shifted in his sleep and his head turned towards her so that his face was fully illuminated in the faint light. She sucked in a breath in reaction. He was beautiful, this boy that had some how crept into her very soul and pushed her out on this limb that now creaked under her unfamiliar weight. It helped that his features seemed painted by the hands of angels into the perfect cherubic comeliness but it wasn't that portrait that had sucked her in, pulled her under, left her grasping for anything that would return some stability to her now topsy turvy world it was what hid behind that sexy smirk and those eyes that dared her to jump with every wicked glint. It was the spirit that had drawn her like a lodestone to metal, the spirit of a boy who was much more than that pretty face and that influential name. So much more than even he realized. He wasn't perfect but he was the one she wanted.

She was nervous though, she wanted to be here, to be with him but there was a part of her that was still scared of standing out on this limb all alone so she stood still, waited for some sign that she could not fathom.

He stirred and she was riveted breath caught in her lungs as she watched his eyelids flutter and then he whispered a name. Her name. The sound of it mumbled from the throes of oblivion like a supplication flowed through her in a warm thrill of pleasure that soothed her anxious heart like a balm, stilled the frenetic plan B making of her fatalistic mind and left her certain of her path.

She bent slowly to the bag at her feet and quietly extracted what she was looking for, she took one last breath and then swiftly struck the match and held it to the wick until it sputtered to life and burned bright dispelling the darkness like a magicians incantation. Restoring the light and movement to the silent screen until the room seemed awash in color, the golden light softening the harsh austere tones to midnight blues and burnished gold, the gutter of the flame melting the sharp edges and angles until life seemed to take shape in the rise and fall of rhythmic breathing.

Logan hovered there a hairsbreadth from the dream maiden that beckoned only to be pulled back from that brink at the last second. A disconcerting sound intruded on his focus at just that critical moment in the play and drew his attention from those trembling lips. He wasn't sure how his mind made the connection but he recognized the distinctive snick and spark of a match striking, caught a whiff of acrid phosphorous that burned his nostrils in a distinctly realistic manner and a flare of light that painted red toned pictures on the back of his eyelids.

He surfaced towards reality slowly, or at least he thought he did and his eyes fluttered open with her name still a half spoken prayer on his tongue.

His eyes traveled the space around him looking for the source of the distraction, the shape that didn't fit in the familiar shadowed landscape of his bedroom. The he saw it, a figure just in the line of his sleep dimmed vision but shrouded in moon bright dark, illuminated in silhouette by the flicker of candlelight that seemed to be emanating from a glowing number nine. Wait...a number nine? That was a strange subliminal twist to be sure and caused a bit of a mental loop.

He had nearly reached the conclusion that he was still in fact fast asleep in the slumberous realm of Elysium when the figure leaned in towards him. Her face was suddenly lit in clear relief inches from his face and he registered the curve of her lips and the twinkle of the candlelight in those deep blue eyes a spare second before she spoke.

"Oh, you're awake."

He wasn't sure if it was a question or a statement, wasn't sure quite yet whether she was really here or just a figment of his overly obsessed brain. Her breath felt real enough where it softly brushed his cheek as her blue eyes watched him. Her scent tingling in his nose seemed too tangible to be merely a replication from his subconscious memory banks. The satin of her skin felt solid enough when one of his hands rose of it's own accord to stroke itself down her cheek but his brain hadn't quite accepted her presence here as reality.

"Am I dreaming?" he asked it in that dazed soporific tone that implied he was trapped with one foot still in dreamland and didn't quite trust his senses to transmit truth.

"No." the answer was soft and simple. The glowing nine moved to the bedside table where that ethereal light flickered and wavered and made her seem all the more a quixotic hallucination summoned by unmitigated yearning, pure desire and that touch of insanity that came from too many restless dream dogged nights.

Her weight coming down on the bed next to him pushed him fully into wakefulness and he blinked a few times slowly in surprise when her visage did not melt back into the hidden realms of his mind from whence it had surely been conjured.

She smiled at him before her mouth descended towards his and hovered an inch away a near exact recreation of his previously interrupted dream sequence and her words whispered against his lips "I'm the one dreaming."

Her lips were soft at first, tender, searching as if asking permission for her presence here, for her interruption of his flights of fancy. His hands came up and wrapped themselves in the silk of her hair, cupping her head and pulling her down into him and deepening the kiss. A shiver of excitement raced over skin and bone and leapt the small gap between their bodies making pulses race, hearts stumble and oxygen ignite to burn clean in their veins leaving nothing but searing passion in it's path. The sensation sped from shiver to tremble and built to a quake in spare seconds.

The exultant euphoria gained on the vanishing mirages of illusion and air castles shattered and fell in the wake of a force they could not outdistance, reality surpassed the specters of utopia and built to unexplored heights as they raced to keep up.

His hands were restless playing out the tortured moments of the dream world as they brushed down petal soft skin and tangled in silken strands of mahogany hair. His fingers brushed lightly down the perfect smooth skin of her arms to her fingertips where they held her weight as she leaned over him.

With a quick tug he unseated those hands from their position causing her to tumble down on top of him more fully. She landed with her arms on either side of him and the brunt of her weight diagonal across his sheet-covered chest. She broke the kiss with a little giggle as she pulled her hands from his grasp and settled them across his chest so that she could prop her chin on them and look him straight in the eye.

"Hi." Her voice was breathy and soft but her eyes were dancing and appeared a hypnotic midnight blue in the mutable light from the candle. They held warmth and welcome and something all together more dangerous that caused a tingle of heat to shiver down his spine and pool in his gut.

"Hi yourself." He said with an enraptured smile twitching at the corners of his mouth letting his fingers play with the strands of dark silken hair that shimmered in the captured candlelight as they lay across his skin.

"I guess you're wondering why I'm here." Her tone had turned the slightest bit hesitant as if she were still a tad uncertain as to her welcome.

"Not really no. I try not to second-guess gifts from the gods. You know what they say about looking a gift horse in the mouth." The words were spilling from his lips of their own accord as his body absorbed the feel of her against him and his fingertips traced endless circles on her back until she felt in every inch of skin that delicious almost unbearable tingle.

"So I'm an army of one who is going to despoil you in the dark of night while you lay a slumber?" her tone was a little breathy as if she had run a great distance.

"God, I hope so." His smile had turned wicked as his finger traced down her nose and to her lips.

She considered for a moment with a teasing light in her eyes. "Okay, I can live with that. "

She pusher herself up with her hands and started to rise from the bed but he caught her by the wrist and pulled her to a stop "You can't think you're escaping my grasp now do you?"

"I need my weapons in order to launch my secret attack." She gave him an arched eyebrow look that hinted at naughtiness and he thought that another time and place he would dearly love to find exactly what her 'weapons' entailed. Not tonight though, tonight was meant for romance.

He let his hand slide down to intertwine his fingers with hers "Leave the battle plans 'til later Ace, you don't need them tonight."

She glanced down at the bag and then back at him and he saw the beginnings of that stubborn set to the chin. "But I had a plan, I was going to make it special, romantic, I had candles and music and fortune cookies..."

He tugged again until her eyes rose back to his he couldn't help a little quip "Burning number nines and fortune cookies...now there's an unconventional take on romance."

She gave him a little pout "Hey, I was trying to be spontaneous, it's not my fault that the only thing my mom has that would qualify as romance paraphernalia are old candles from the seventh time we celebrated her 29th birthday and naughty fortune cookies that Sookie gave her. It was the best I could do at one in the morning okay."

Her tone was slightly injured and he swallowed back a chuckle with a wink "Hey, I never said I didn't like naughty fortune cookies. I just pointed out that they aren't exactly what you see in the movies. They are different...like you. I like that. I like you." He pulled her back towards the bed "I like that you are here at two in the morning and I am carefully ignoring the fact that you somehow got into my room without my knowledge.'

She grinned a little sheepishly at that "Well, I did have help."

"I guessed as much." He shook his head but then patted the bed next to him. "No worries though, waking up to the vision of you was well worth a little breaking and entering. Now I'm guessing that you didn't commit that little lawbreaking fopaux just to spend the night trading quips so come over here and stop arguing."

"But..." she seemed ready to continue the debate so he sighed in resignation and exerted some force on the hand he gripped.

He pulled her down to the bed again and shushed her with a soft kiss before he looked into her eyes and let everything he felt, everything he wanted and needed from her lay there naked and unadorned for her to see "Rory all I need is you."

All resistance melted from her body as she let him pull her towards him and they fell into the sort of mind-bending kiss that they spoke of in hushed tones in the annals of history.

Rory felt herself falling under his spell, sinking deeper into the sheer overwhelming sensation of his touch, deeper into him.

She had liked kissing before, enjoyed the thrill of her heart dropping to her feet and then rising slowly back to its rightful place in her chest but this adrenaline driven bliss was way beyond her previous experience. She craved him. She needed him the way normal people needed oxygen to breathe.

He pushed her upward following her until he was half sitting facing her and his mouth never left hers, never ceased its tender worship. When his mouth trailed down her neck and over the spot between her neck and shoulder that was bared by her shirt she whimpered at the loss of his kiss and then moaned at the new sensations that raced through her.

She was dazed as his hands flowed down her torso and then explored the curve of her back. They traveled to the edge of her shirt which he whipped up and over her head without a seconds hesitation and then they stilled as the pad of his finger traced the line above her pale pink bra and he looked at her with a lopsided smile "Pink...sweet, delicious, delicate...it fits you."

She felt the heat of his gaze on her bare skin like the warm prickle that you felt when you came into contact with static electricity and she suddenly didn't want to be sweet or delicate she wanted to a part of that electric sizzle that his eyes brought to life in her. Wanted to savor that verge of abandonment until she could stand no more of the charged air she breathed in. Her head fell back as his hands grazed her sides and the sensitive skin of her abdomen and she felt the sizzle of her nerve endings. She felt his mouth on her upper chest like a million tiny darts of fire that scorched her to her trembling center. One desire burned bright in her drowning mind, she wanted to give him the same, to make him feel what she was feeling, the surge of sensation that pulled at her and threatened the threads of her sanity and pulled at all her tightly wound inhibitions until she was left naked and unhidden for the world to see. She wanted to make him burn, to push him close to this fiery edge she stood on.

She leaned back and watched him with solemn eyes that looked like pools of inky blue in the sparkle of candlelight and then in an impulsive move she shackled his wrists with her hands and pushed him back, placed his hands back down gently to his sides before she spoke. Her gaze was a little shy "Let me... I want to touch you... to make you feel..." she left the implication dangling not knowing how to put this heady lust into words.

He looked up into her blue eyes now stained dark with desire and felt his heart catch in his chest. She dazzled him, all that vulnerability and unrehearsed sensuality seared him to the core as he turned his hands palm up within her loose grasp and held them out to show his supplication to her, his lips curved as their eyes met "I'm all yours Ace, your wish is my hearts desire."

It was a gift he gave her that he soon came to regret as she inundated him with exhilarating sensation.

She didn't know exactly where to start on this delicious journey of tactile exploration so she began at the top running soft fingertips over the fragile skin of his eyelids and down the straight bridge of his nose. She discovered that his lips were soft and his cheeks were slightly rough from a fine stubble that sent a delightful stirring through her when she rubbed her lips against it. She watched him, her eyes intent on his every breath and shiver and observed with rapt fascination as his eyes darkened to the deep brown of molten dark chocolate under her ministrations.

Logan held himself as still as he could manage letting her wander, explore and learn the taste and feel of him and died a little with each warm breath that shivered over his skin. Her adventurous fingers trailed over the ridge of his shoulder and down his toned chest leaving exquisite sensations in their wake, a conflagration of desire that raged on in her path and had his hands clutching at the sheets in search of control. He had been with a lot of girls, most more experienced than she was but her innocent exploration, her curiously erotic touch was like having a trail of pure flame burned over your skin leaving a lasting mark to chart it's course down his body. She followed those trailblazing fingertips with her mouth and he arched and shuddered a little when her tongue and her teeth explored his abdomen and licked into his belly button. She was driving him slowly and surely towards that maddening brink.

She uncovered him inch by inch peeling back the silky soft cotton of the sheet from his body as she worked her way south and she felt a little like Magellan on his first cruise discovering new lands, new experiences. She was fascinated by the way the muscle bunched and released under her touch, the velvet softness of the sensitive skin just above his hip that felt tingly on her tongue and elicited a hiss from him as her mouth passed over it. This was a new feeling this power to create sensation, to elicit response, to be so closely linked to him that every shiver elicited a matching response and stirred her blood to an equal frenzy.

He felt his heart pounding as she teased and caressed her way down his body and he thought it likely that he was going slowly insane inch by excruciating inch. Her mouth was driving him to distraction, the laving circles she drew with it like some mystical symbols etched into his flesh that enchanted him, made him a slave to her whim, had him seeing that fey light in her eyes that spoke of mystery and magic and promised earth shattering ecstasy.

By the time she had inched the sheet below his hips they were both mindless, all thought beyond the give and take of sensation singed beyond recognition by the conflagration between them. For all his vaunted control Logan didn't think he could survive another second of her touch, her nearness, without simply fracturing into a billion tiny pieces.

She kissed him then, in the hollow where his leg met his hip and he thought he would surely explode at the tiny touch of her tongue. He grabbed her by the upper arms and all but dragged her up his body causing them both a great deal of agonizing pleasure in the process. Once they were face to panting face he tumbled them over and they rolled together until he was on his side leaning over her, their mouths met and there was nothing tender about this kiss, they ravaged each other, took everything they could get and still wanted for more.

He pulled away slightly and shoved away the flimsy cotton that separated them, tore at the slips of fabric that still covered her as his mouth devoured hers. When they were free of entanglements their bodies came back together and they shared a groan of satisfaction as heated skin met.

He met her eyes and something incendiary flashed between them.

"My turn. " he all but growled it as his eyes raked down her delicate form. He was desperate for her, driven to push her to the breaking point where he stood, to ignite a twin flame in her that matched the one blazing like an inferno in him. He let his hands roam her skin delighting in the pleasure that played helplessly over her features. His every stroke over tender nipples and down the trembling expanse of her abdomen was pure idolatry. Adoration incarnate.

She arched her back off the bed in a plea for deliverance when his tongue branded her breast and trailed lower across her abdomen. She bit her lip to keep from crying out in protest when he skipped over that yearning center and let his tongue and mouth travel up from her ankles, over her thighs in a lazy path while his clever fingers played with the tight silky curls at the apex of her thighs tempting, teasing but never quite assuaging that ache he created in her. Then a finger slid down her silky folds, once, twice with such exquisite slowness that she felt the quivering of each heartbeat, the surge of blood in her veins like time had slowed to a near crawl. When she thought she would surely die of shaking anticipation that skilled finger drifted up to lightly graze her clitoris and her eyes popped open at the jolt of flame that zinged every nerve ending in her body causing a spasm of sensation.

"Oh...god...don't..." she wasn't sure if she wanted him to continue this exquisite torture or end her suffering and she teetered there on the brink for a second before he rose to his knees and crawled back up her boneless body. They watched each other blinking slowly in the wavy haze of passion as he reached one hand over towards the drawer in his bedside table. Without breaking that hypnotic gaze he retrieved a condom and laid it on the bed beside them, she watched him wide glazed eyes as he settled back on his knees between her legs.

He seemed to be waiting for something and she blushed a little but could not help but let her gaze fall down his body, tracing the outline she now knew with such detailed clarity that she could close her eyes and see the image etched there in her mind. She felt her eyes drawn to that part of him that she had avoided touching before and it was a new fascination. He ceased to breathe as her hands snaked out and tentatively slid down that hardened length, she was caught up in the wonder of feeling that velvet wrapped steel in her hand and rolled it experimentally in her palm and then squeezing lightly to the tune of a strangled gasp from him. A powerful tremor of need flashed through him leaving him quavering in its wake. The limpid look of awe in her eyes combined with the satiny touch was his undoing. He had wanted to give her time, to let her experience this long slow slide into feverish exhilaration but it was too much, he couldn't hold on to the shreds of his control any longer and knew that he was close to tumbling over that precipice. More than anything he wanted her to be with him when he fell.

He grabbed her wrist none to gently and pulled her up towards him until they knelt facing each other in the center of the bed. They shivered in tandem not from chill but from the flow of all consuming hunger.

"Rory... are you..." his voice was raspy and rough as it fell on her ears and it twisted something in her heart that even now in the throes of passion he thought of her comfort.

She stopped him with gentle kiss to brief to slake the lust that ran rife in her system. "I'm ready. " she whispered in a throaty voice.

She picked up the condom before he could and tore it open quickly. She rolled the condom down his hot length never breaking eye contact with him and then she scooted back to sit a foot from him and pulled him towards her with a solid grip on his arms until his weight settled over her. She let her hands fall down his body to the object of their quest and guided him to her.

He eased into her, feeling the hot depths of her clamp around him tight as a velvet fist and slowed trying desperately to hold onto his raging need with both hands. He wanted to be gentle and struggled not to overwhelm her with his urge to possess. Rory writhed beneath him desperate to hurry him, going mad with the painful anticipation that seemed to be already tearing her apart at the seams. She lost her patience after a long drawn out moment of this slow sinking and bucked up against him seating him deep inside her in one motion.

He squeezed his eyes shut in a paltry attempt to hold back the raging sensation that threatened to engulf him as that heat surrounded him. He shuddered with the effort and stilled, holding every muscle, every cell rigid. He sucked in a breath through his teeth in a vain attempt to beat back the waves of pleasure that threatened to engulf him clinging to that edge of release with his fingertips. Time was suspended until she took matters into her own hands.

His eyes snapped open when she moved, throwing one leg up over his hips and driving him deliciously deeper. Sex always felt good, it was the nature of the beast, but this went beyond good, way beyond great all the way to heart shattering. He shook with suppressed desire as he met her eyes for a tingling second and then they were moving. Sliding, grinding, racing their way up this wave that carried them ever higher.

All thoughts of control, of mastery or disparate experience were washed away by the force of the blood pounding in their veins. They were equals joined in that endless dance of sensual pleasure. They rolled and careened towards that peak grasping at the edges of heaven as it glittered and reflected in each other's eyes. They were mindless, pure combustible energy for that brief moment at the shivering paroxysm of ecstasy and then they screamed in unison as they plummeted from that peak.

They plunged together into the depths and then knew nothing. Their bodies met and melted into boneless surrender as gravity returned to muscles made momentarily weightless by elation. No sound, no movement intruded on that utter stillness that followed the shattering of barriers. They might has well have been three hundred feet deep in that bottomless sea of sensation blind and deaf to the world outside their embrace.

They floated lazily to the surface, buoyed by the returning feelings of tingling nerve ending and the stir of lungs and hearts that despite the onslaught fought to return to the mundane functions of life. Hearts beat slowly, drunkenly at first and still they did not stir wrapped in each other and cocooned from the world.

It was only long moments later that they separated rolling apart so that they lay staring up at the ceiling, the flickering shapes and shadows that danced there for their viewing pleasure.

They lay there sucking in deep oxygen laden breaths allowing their breath to return to normal slowly until finally the world righted and they recalled that they were not in fact floating on a cloud. Rory finally turned her head with a lazy roll so that she could look at him, this boy who had just showed her the stars.

"Wow." A lot of words might have seemed appropriate in the moment but none came to her still floating mind.

He smiled a lazy sated smile still staring up at the dancing ceiling and then turned his head slowly towards her "No fair, you stole it."

She wrinkled her brow slightly in confusion "Stole what, your word?"

His arm flexed and brought their joined hands to his lips as his eyes warmed her from head to toe with the embers of the fire that had recently blazed between them. His voice was a soft and wondrous whisper when he spoke "No, my heart."