Author's Note - Hello everyone, here you go chapter 9... a few flashes to the night before and Mark's attempts of ignoring... correction, Mark's unsuccessful attempts of ignoring...

In the stillness that was surrounding them both, she barely heard his slowly uttered sounds. Everything was too loud around them, and she could hear her own heartbeat thumping in her ears, so whatever was coming out of his mouth, she couldn't recognize as coherent words. They were more of heavy gasps of breath, more of quiet half-moans, and the only thing she was able to do was clenching her eyes even tighter, as his weight pressed her against the leather of the backseat, his body molding against hers. She felt completely limp, as if all of her bones had melted away.

When she gradually opened her eyes, everything in front of her was too hazy, and at the same time too bright. So much of her sight. But what she could feel was his face buried in the crook of her neck and his warm breath ghosting over her skin. Too warm. Warm to the point she was almost certain it would leave some sort of burn mark on her skin, but she didn't even think of pulling her head away. She could also feel his skin, heated and dotted with sweat, and she darted to run her palm over his back.

…

"Hurry up, we're gonna be late!" Lexie hissed through clenched teeth to Nick, who was still changing in the interns' locker room. The space was... minus the two of them, completely empty, indicating that every other intern has been already where they were supposed to be. Unlike them. She hated being late. She hated waiting for people as well. And now... she ended up being in both situations.

"Just go without me, it's fine..." he muttered, his voice muffled, as his head was literally inside the locker, obviously searching for something.

Lexie sighed, checking her watch again. "Then you're the only one who's gonna be late, and for some reason I have a feeling that's gonna end even worse than..."

"Oh, thank God, here it is. Come on, let's go…" he cut her off, pinning his intern card to his white coat in a sloppy but a quick way, and then after slamming the locker door, they hurriedly rushed out of the locker room to the nearest elevator.

The elevator was empty and once they got inside, he leaned against one of the walls, tiredly rubbing his eyes. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear the first alarm at all. Or the second one..." he huffed, narrowing his eyebrows. "Or the third..."

A loud ding echoed through a small box as a reminder that they reached the required floor, and Lexie suddenly felt her stomach fluttering with excitement.

That morning, all interns were paged to the emergency room for some sort of lecture. And she wished that she had no reason to act like this, to feel so extremely nervous like this... and she tried to tell herself that this was just like every other case in the past. But that would be a lie. It was just another medical case.

But the man on the other side of the door, the man who paged them all, for her specifically was hardly the same man he was yesterday. The scratch marks on the side of her neck and shoulders from his kisses and him rubbing his beard on her skin were constantly reminding her of that. But Lexie really did try to not think about it, not right now… God knew she had other things to worry about. And the fact that they were late wasn't really a disaster, but certainly it was unneeded anyway.

"I also probably had more drinks that I should've last night soo..." Nick interrupted her thoughts before he reached the round handle but without turning it. Instead, he looked at her, an apologizing grimace on his face. "You really didn't have to wait... But hey, nothing as a 7 am meeting with Sloan to sober me up."

…

1:43

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Mark saw the blurred digital numbers on the display of the car, but then instantly closed his eyes as his lips found the skin of her neck, the place where her collarbone meets her shoulder. He kissed her skin and then sank his teeth in there, softly, just for a short moment, before his tongue darted out to soothe the faint marks that his teeth left in their wake.

Having her sitting in his lap again, this time completely naked, he tried his best not to think of how exhausted he was going to be the next morning because of this, but every single moment of it had been worth it.More than worth it. His hands had just been running over every single inch of her body, and he had been taking the time to memorize it. To memorize her.

Inhaling her scent, he whispered against her skin, "Can you tell me... What exactly are goosebumps?"

"Oh God… Aren't you tired of that, yet?"

He smiled, his hands warm on her bare thighs, and that seemed to inaudibly give her a stimulus she needed. "Well… they're the result of tiny muscles flexing in the skin..." she sucked in a breath when his lips scraped up to the corner of her jaw.

"Keep going."

Lexie swallowed and bit her lower lip at his words, but eventually found enough air to continue, "Goosebumps are an involuntary reaction... And usually… they are caused by just feeling cold, but…" She nearly shivered as she felt his teeth nibbling at her ear shell, but managed to finish, "But they're also very often caused by excitement, overwhelming emotion, anticipation, sometimes even awe or fear…"

Moaning, she bit her lip again, what slightly muffled the beautiful sound of pleasure.

"Don't," he grunted, and her eyes flew wide open. She had no idea what he was suddenly talking about. But then he lifted his hand to her face and with his thumb, he freed her lip from her teeth. "Don't do that."

…

"Nice of you two to join us."

They both froze at the sudden and harsh greeting Mark Sloan offered them without a care, as they entered the already crowded emergency room. All the other interns looked at them, and Lexie couldn't help but notice that all of them looked like spooked rabbits, their bodies obviously emitted equal part horror and surprise, even though the cold scolding wasn't addressed to them. It was addressed to her.

"We're so sorry we're late." Nick was the first one to speak afterwards. And Lexie was super grateful for that. She had no words on her tongue to contradict his not so pleasant greeting. "It's my fault, actually... But again, we're sorry."

Not being able to think of absolutely anything to say, Lexie just slightly nodded in conformation, and the instant he caught her eyes, it was like he suddenly couldn't look away fast enough. He didn't even bother to reply anymore, he just huffed inaudible something under his breath and continued his explanation about the patient. No matter how many times she replayed the last night in her head, she had no idea why everything suddenly felt wrong.

"Whoahh, he is in a mood." she heard Nick whisper next to her. His musing was out loud and sincere, and he didn't sound surprised.

But she didn't answer to that either. It was like her ability to speak got cut off. Or maybe she simply had absolutely no idea what to say. She desperately tried to ignore his weird displeasure and rather concentrate on his voice and everything he had to say about the patient. But only because she was really interested about the case, and certainly not because his voice caused her to flashback to the previous night.

She took a step forward and glanced at the woman on the emergency bed. Trying to keep her face still and not make any sort of grimace, she glanced over the dark red, dry and leathery surfaces of the woman's skin, immediately recognizing third degree burns. A few other interns looked like they might vomit or faint. She just swallowed but without making a sound. It was hard not thinking about all the pain that this woman has been through, or thinking about all the possible situations that could've happened to wound her up like this.

She didn't speak even when he started asking questions. What could cause a third-degree burn? What are the symptoms of a third-degree burn?... Yes, she knew all the answers. But she stayed quiet anyway. And that fact kind was kind of scary. One outburst from him was enough to leave her paralyzed. Or maybe she was looking too much into it. After all, she really was late. But she definitely didn't expect that sort of reaction from him.

But despite her best effort, even though she kept her mouth shut, Lexie found it impossible to escape looking at him and looking at his eyes. It just seemed impossible to escape or ignore him.

It was hard not to be impressed by the way he was always carrying himself, expectably... there was arrogance, of course because it was him that there had to be arrogance. But for some reason, after watching him perform so many surgeries and observing the way he treated his patients, she hesitantly thought it was actually very well-earned.

He explained the incoming procedure in a few quick sentences, literally sounding like he would rather be anywhere but there, his voice even and oddly harsh. After that, he stormed off, walking right by her, and Lexie was actually surprised when she heard some sort of worried sigh escape his mouth.

"Hey, you're okay?"

Lexie sighed softly, feeling a terrible weight on her chest. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying desperately to clear her mind, completely ignoring Nick's question. Why wouldn't she be okay? Was it so obviously visible on her face that something bothered her? Something being someone, and that someone being well... hopefully that wasn't too obvious.

"Yeah, yeah... just getting a bit hot..." She frowned to herself because that was a horrible deflect, and she couldn't believe that she actually wasn't able to come up with some more convincing excuse than blaming the damn weather.

…

The windows were steamed, and the car was filled with grunts and moans as she kissed him, her fingers laced behind his neck. He was greedy, fiercely kissing her again and again, as his hands run up and down the sides of her body.

"Don't stop," he managed to gasp between passionate kisses, and she shook her head, not able to form words, as his fingers dig deeper into her thighs.

Mark tried to keep his eyes open. He tried to keep watching her, as she moved her hips against his, slamming down on him over and over again. He couldn't look away from her.

When her hand reached up to palm his cheek in the indescribably tender way, Mark couldn't help but to close his eyes. His head fell to rest on her shoulder as he tried to figure out how the hell he went from "not being able to look away" to "being too frightened to look". It really fucked with his head. So many thoughts, so many feelings, leaving his mind fuzzy and confused, as if she broke something around him, something that has been surrounding him as a shield, protecting him.

It was way too much too soon. She was everywhere, and he couldn't breathe, suddenly gasping without stopping, and when his hyper-awareness of her lose its edge, he groaned a mixture of curses and incoherent words into her neck, his hips raising to meet hers in a rhythm.

Afterwards, Mark wished she had remained silent, because the words she'd breathed out managed to mess with his head even more.

"You are incredible..."

And for some reason, he got an impression that she wasn't talking about sex itself, because the way she had looked at him in that moment and the way she had whispered those words, it had his stomach knotting. What she meant was that she'd found him incredible.

He wasn't sure how he recognized that, but he did. And it scared the shit out of him.

…

Mark wasn't a freaking idiot. He really wasn't. He could tell when something he was so used to was different.

Back at the emergency room, he noticed the way her hands anxiously ran over her white coat, smoothing out the imperfections that apparently only she could see. Because he definitely couldn't. And she's been utterly quiet. Almost as if she pretended she wasn't even there.

But there was a satisfaction. Satisfaction with an even slight hint of mischief was radiating from his body when he managed to get out that room in his classic cold and unbothered way, but once he was out of there, he became a jumbled mess again. Jumbled and heated and chaotic and overwhelming mess. His thoughts and feelings were all over the place, every single one of them at its superior state. All mixed in, disorganized and unpredictable.

Mark really gave his best to stop looking for her around every corner, in every room and every hallway. He'd already got to know this woman, he'd seen her and he'd had her in the way he desperately wanted to, so now he really tried to convince himself that his still active curiosity was unfounded. And definitely unneeded. But it was still there. Need and want for more. That was the main reason he had been trying to escape her the entire day. He just wanted to deny it, to push it all away and put his walls back up.

And it was unbearable. Despite all his attempts of avoidance, and self-convincing that he what happened last night should stay in the past, it was unbearable. It's been already bad enough that he'd showed her one of his favorite places in New York and then slept with her at the parking nearby, but then he actually drove her home.

Mark had been avoiding seeing her and talking to her because he couldn't stop thinking about last night. He couldn't stop thinking about her hands on his skin, about her lips against his, about the way she was whispering things to him and the way she was actually listening to him. About how amazing she felt, how hot and tight...

He even pretended not to see her from the corner of his eye as he stood at the nurses' station, filling his patient's chart and getting ready for the surgery. He pretended not to see her, but he definitely did see her, just standing there, obviously wanting to say something, and he had a few really good guesses what that something could be.

"Soo… why won't you look at me?"

It was his time to freeze at the sudden question. Almost an entire day had passed and those were the first words Lexie said to him.

Mark's eyes immediately snapped as he turned around to actually and literally look at her. "I am looking at you." he scoffed, in a half-pretend friendly manner that Lexie didn't buy.

"Listen, I'm not saying that..."

"No, you listen." he cut her off dryly and clicked on his pen, returning it to the front pocket of his navy blue scrub shirt, before giving her a knowing look. Lexie gulped as she waited for another snarky comment to be sent her way, but it never came. What somehow felt even worse. He either didn't know what to say to her or either didn't care enough to say anything at all.

"Ughh I can't deal with this right now." She heard him saying as he walked away, and her expression was one as if his sentence had just slapped her across the face. "I have surgery. So I need you to just back off." And despite his pseudo calm tone, Lexie knew there would be hell to pay if she'd braced herself to say something more. To stop him from walking away again. From ignoring her again. She just kept staring at the space in front of her, the space he had been occupying till one second ago, as if he was still there.

…

Mark heard the knocking on his office room door hours later, but he ignored it. The surgery went well, and he was about to go home. But he couldn't gather strength to move. Who would say that just ignoring someone could be so exhausting... To the point that he didn't even have the energy to move or speak.

The lights were off, the door was locked, and he laid on the couch in the dark, his arms crossed over his chest, and he stared up at the ceiling, ignoring the constant knocking, knowing that it was her.

It had to be her.

But he didn't want to see her. He didn't want to see her and listen to her as she tried to come up with explanations for everything that had happened in the last 24 hours. And she was understanding and tolerant person. She would understand this as well. Why he was acting like this.

The knocking stopped. About time. Mark heavily sighed, pretending that it wasn't his own stubbornness that now left him fighting with suddenly unbearable silence.

Ignoring the annoying sting on the back of his neck, he tried to come up with some explanation for himself. What was that? Guilt? Absolutely not. He didn't feel guilty at all. Why would he? Regret? No way in hell! But how would he even explain it? Well, it felt like a want to ram his head against the nearest brick wall. Because whatever it was, whatever he was feeling, it didn't seem like going away any time soon.

But he remained lying there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling as if there was actually something interesting about it. What the hell was wrong with him? On what planet was the damn white ceiling more interesting than a young, beautiful brunette?

He had developed a certain, and maybe not so envious reputation around the hospital ever since he started working there, but giving women this kind of obsessive treatments in his mind was definitely not what that was built on.

He squeezed his eyes shut, taking deep breaths as she tried to concentrate on anything, anything but her. He tried focusing on the wind outside battering against the window. On the surgeries that he had scheduled for tomorrow... But it seemed like any logical thoughts disappeared from his mind.

The truth was that he missed the feeling of her hands on him. Deep down, he knew he craved more. Proof of that was right there in front of him, because instead of getting ready to go home, there he was, lying and envisioning the soft skin of her thighs. Again.

The truth was that Mark didn't want it to be a one-time thing, despite everything. Despite the fact he was rarely up to more than one-time thing things.

The truth was that he hoped she would start knocking again.

…

Already changed out of her scrubs into blue jeans and black sweater, Lexie sat on the bench in the hospital lobby, her legs crossed, straw of juice box between her teeth and her phone by her ear as she listened to Molly, like she did almost every day after work. The unfortunate thing was, that this time, Lexie had no idea what she was supposed to say at her sister's usual how was your day question.

"I think I've done something stupid." She didn't know a different way to say it. She didn't know if she supposed to say at all. But some rational voice in the back of her head had told her that sharing what had happened with someone could actually help her sort all of her thoughts and feelings out. And Molly was across the ocean, so it wasn't like she could judge her or anything.

"Stupid as you've said something before thinking about it stupid or stupid as you've made a mistake at work and killed someone stupid?"

Lexie stared at her feet, her body stiffening. "Stupid as..." she tried to come up with the decent way to say it. She hadn't thought much of it. "...he's over 6 feet tall, a bit older and kind of my boss who I once almost run over stupid." Her cheeks flushed bright red the instant she thought of him. Not that she hasn't been thinking about him the whole day...

What she needed from him was not to explain himself. She just needed to know that she wasn't the only one who was so deeply affected by it.

"What the hell are you talking... Oh my God!" Lexie didn't even have the time to stutter her explanation because of Molly's apparently pretty delighted reaction. "Well, I always knew that you couldn't possibly be able to make rational decisions about everything."

Lexie exhaled another deep breath, and it sounded too shaky to her ears. "Lately I'm not making rational decisions about anything."

"Maybe... But rational or not, it doesn't mean they're wrong tho... Especially when it comes to you."

Scratching her forehead, Lexie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I don't know what that means." She could imagine her sister rolling her eyes at the nervousness in her way she sounded. "Lex, come on. You rarely make wrong choices."

"Yeah..." The raising panic made her voice high-pitched and rapid. "But when I do, they're like immeasurably and irreparably super super super super extra wrong."

"Ohh Jeez..."

Lexie opened her mouth to respond, originally planning to defend herself and her rambling, but then she shook her head slightly, "And this feels like it... Well, now." she added after a second. It really didn't feel wrong last night. But after today... it started to bug her that it was wrong from the very beginning. "Now it feels like it didn't mean anything."

"Ouch..." A sudden low voice spoke behind her, and startled, she jumped off the bench, instantly spinning around. After ignoring her the entire day... he had to happen to be right behind her now... in this very particular moment...

"For the love of..." Her heart skipped a beat in shock, and her hand instinctively went to her chest, as if in fear that it could jump out of her rib cage. "You can't sneak up on people like that." After that, Lexie just stared at him, not saying anything further, except quietly stuttering I'm gonna call you back to Molly and hanging up.

Mark Sloan stood there, his hair was slightly mussed, as if he had been continuously running his fingers through it the whole day. But as an opposite of that, he was still glaring at her in that overly confident and now very familiar way of his.

Lexie did give her best not to look too breathless or too ecstatic, and she hated her heart for speeding up. Blinking at him, she bit down on her lower lip, but then straighten her lips in a thin line as soon as she became aware that he was still watching her.

"I'm glad I did tho." he told her truthfully all of a sudden, his eyes never leaving her face, so the flush on her cheeks couldn't escape him either. "I didn't exactly plan on... Well, on overhearing your conversations, but I'm glad I did." he spoke with what she assumed was a slight hesitation, but he managed to say it anyway. "It would be awkward for me to tell you it's foolish to try to convince yourself that it did mean something."

Lexie huffed out a breath, narrowing her eyebrows at him. "And I know that it did." she told him rather bluntly, shaking her head. The dull grimace on his face disappeared to make room for a frown of confusion. But he stayed silent for a moment that seemed to last too long, and in that span of time, Mark felt his mortification grow. He still didn't speak as he watched her standing up from the bench and picking up her coat.

A brief spark of what could be the mix of fear and embarrassment spread through his body as she looked at him. "You're trying too hard to pretend like you don't care..." She sighed, as if in giving a second thought to what she was about to say. "So if you're really going to think of me as one more of your night-stands... I don't think it's necessary for you to put that big of an effort in avoiding me."

Stunned because of her boldness, he bluntly exclaimed the first thing he could think of. "It is when you're so hard to avoid."

She shot him an offended glare, intuitively throwing an empty juice box that was in her hand at him. It quickly bounced off his chest and he caught it with one hand, holding it in front of him, as he frowned down at her, shocked, having absolutely no idea what to say to that. "Did you just throw a juice box at me?"

"Did you just imply that you've found me annoying?" Lexie asked as if she hadn't even heard him.

"What? No." he shook his head almost immediately at her accusation.

"Well, that's what you said." she shrugged, her voice coming out as an airy laugh.

"If I've found you annoying, I wouldn't bother spending more than a minute with you." he spoke in a whisper, taking a step towards her. "And I've spent a lot more than that."

She laughed again, a bit louder this time, and it made him smile. Probably for the first time that day. Her laugh was light and familiar, fluttering over him. It felt good to hear her laugh again. It also felt good knowing that he was the reason for that laugh.

"So…" she widened her eyes at him in a silent wonder what's going to happen next.

"So…" he repeated, throwing the juice box in the trash can nearby. "Maybe I would like to spend some more." Honestly, it unnerved him the way she was looking at him with anticipation as the words fell off his tongue. He didn't know a different way to put it though, he didn't know which words would be right to placate her and at the same time let her know what he wanted. But then he remembered. "Ever been to the Central Park?"

I hope you enjoyed... Always happy to hear what you think!