CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

A Perfect Moment

** author's note**
My sincere apologies for the delay in this last update. Real life just gets in the way sometimes, what can I say. Much love and many thanks to my loyal readers…you all know who you are…and you're the ones that keep me writing. That said…. Enjoy!
**

The sounds of the celebration quickly floated away into the distance, except for an occasional errant burst of distant laughter or music dancing on the wind. Alexis and Sonny walked down the beach in silence. It was a comfortable silence, the quiet wordless kind that two friends can share, when their thoughts were shared, as so often Sonny and hers were. The only sounds were the whispering of the wind in the nearby trees and the rhythmic sighing of the dark ocean waves as they whispered softly along the sand and the occasional clink of the bottle of wine and the two glasses Sonny carried in one hand.

The heat the dance had kindled in her body was dying away, and slowly being replaced by a second kind of heat. A more dangerous, intense kind of heat. Not the kind that dancing can invoke, but the kind that creates its own melody, that pulses and throbs to its own beat.

Feeling the change taking place inside her, her eyes were drawn to him. Alexis slanted a quick glance at Sonny. It was like they were  in some alternate universe, where only she and him existed. In the pale blue-white moonlight, his eyes were dark, his profile unreadable, as were his thoughts. Alexis wondered what Sonny was thinking just now.  Her own thoughts were all in a jumble.  Overriding everything was her total awareness of him. Beyond the tropical fragrance of the night, Alexis could sense the scent of him, could almost feel the rhythm of his breathing, and she swore she could intuit the pulse and beating of his heart, knowing somehow that it beat in tandem with her own. She wondered if his thoughts echoed her own.

Like so many times before, there came proof that their thoughts were once more in perfect sync. "Right now, it feels like it's only you and me on this beach. And all I can see or think about is you." Sonny said, his voice a deep dark soft hush against the muted roar of the waves. Alexis felt his eyes as they glanced over at him."I know when you're quiet like this, you're thinking mighty hard. So, Alexis, tell me…what're you thinking about?"

         Alexis let the breeze caress her face for a moment before answering. "You." she said simply. She hesitated for just the barest fraction of a second then reached out and slipped her hand into his and was gratified to feel his fingers curling around hers in silent response.

"Just me?" Sonny's voice was lazily content.in the semi-darkness… "What about us?" he asked.

Alexis sighed aloud. "That's just it.." she said. "What are we? Is there an us?"

He didn't answer at first, but his grip tightened…Another pause of silence enveloped them until they came to a log half buried in the sand, a little ways above the tide line. At an inviting  gesture from Sonny, Alexis sat down and he sat beside her. "I don't know if there is an 'us'.  I don't know what possibilities an 'us' is as far as you and I go." She said.

Sonny didn't answer her. Instead, he handed her one of the glasses and  proceeded to pour the wine for the both of them.  Smiling at her as he placed one goblet into her hand, Sonny raised his glass to her and Alexis touched hers to his. She never could resist his smile in Port Charles. Here in the island, its power was sheer magic. The sound of their glasses touching silvered the air with a soft crystal chiming.

"And just what are we toasting to?" she asked.

"To us… and to the question of the day…what about us?"

"The $64,000 question." Alexis sipped at the wine before she answered, hiding the last of her confusion behind the action.  She watched Sonny as he drank deeply and then his gaze also turned to look out over the ocean as if entranced by the waves pulsing against the shoreline. He spoke again, without looking at her.  "I told you, this can take as long as you need it to be. We will happen, Alexis. But when, is all up to you."

         His words echoed her earlier thoughts. If this is what she wanted…then she could have it all…And as Sonny lowered his glass, Alexis made a choice. She leaned forward and kissed him full on the lips. His lips, cooled by the wine, quickly warmed under her kiss. Alexis allowed herself to lean into his body, savoring the warmth that came from being so near to him. She let her lips linger on his. The kiss was sweet, more intoxicating than any wine and when it ended, both of their breathing was a little ragged. 

"Mmm…" Alexis breathed. "So, what about us, Sonny? How did we get here?"  She asked, even though her heart was pounding with what she thought was true. But it wasn't enough for her to think it; Alexis wanted, needed to hear him say it.

"Because we were friends, Alexis, and now…"

         "And now?" Her voice was a half-whisper, as though afraid to give full voice to what she was feeling. If her heart had been pounding before, now it was a pile driver in her chest, drowning out all sense of rhyme or reason, especially reason. Nothing was left -  nothing but truth. Alexis didn't look at him directly, but instead chose to look back out over the waves, out towards the endless horizon. Somewhere beyond the waters, Port Charles waited. But tonight, nothing existed, but the truth. He was here, with her tonight, because he wanted to be. And so was she. That was the truth…. "And  -  and now, everything has changed. Because of you, and how I've come to care about you. I don't know how it happened, or even when, but it's happened – it's here and it's now and it's real. At least it is for me… " Her voice dropped as a tiny shiver of doubt rippled through her. She was presuming a lot, just on a night of music and dance…


         The soul-searching voice of a guitar echoed by the plaintive sounds of a saxophone rippled over the ocean waves, filling the fragrant night air with a whisper of sound in definite counterpoint to the steady throb of the silvered ocean waves.

         "Don't…" Sonny reached out suddenly, bringing one hand to her face, caressing the fine long line of her cheekbone. His strong fingers cupped her chin and then turned her face to fully face him.

"Don't do that Alexis, don't doubt yourself and what your feeling,…don't doubt me…don't doubt us. Don't you think it's the same for me?" His words were quick; his voice low and intense. "Don't you think I'm feeling everything you are right now? Everything."

As her gaze met his, Alexis suddenly realized that he was just as afraid as she was. And as thrilled and as terrified and as attracted. But he wanted to be with her; she realized.. somehow, never mind how…he wanted her as much as she wanted him. That knowledge poured thru her like a rush of falling rain; drowning the last of her fears and prompting her to action. And with that knowledge, what came next seemed so naturally. Alexis leaned forward again to capture his lips with her own. He surrendered to her at once, letting her dictate the measures of the dance her mouth and his had begun.

         Sonny found himself held motionless, unmoving in a haze of pleasurable shock, as Alexis' mouth moved over his. Warm and pliant, they moved softly against his own, tasting him. Briefly, her lips separated from his.

"Michael…." His name was a caress upon the air, one that Sonny thrilled to. His senses responded as though that single word had been an actual physical touch and he lost his breath in a silent gasp; his breathing deepened, muscles quivered and tautened and his heart… his heart leapt in his chest.

  In the moments before she returned to the kiss, Alexis found herself gazing deeply into his eyes, sensing his reaction. She'd surprised herself, saying his name.  I wonder when was the last time anyone called him Michael?  With all her crazy, jumbled thoughts, this one pierced her to the heart in the very moment it was born. In a heartbeat born of shared pain, her own heart actually ached for him even in the midst of her own feelings of pleasure and emerging passion. How lonely it must be, to never hear your name…to know that there is no one to speak the name you were given at birth.  She knew that pain, she owned it…. She could easily clam it as one of her own.  Just like never hearing her own name, Natasha Kristin Alexandria Davidovitch Cassidine. Or even more simply, Natasha. Not said with mocking affection, like Luke Spencer was prone to do, or loathing, as Helena did, but with care, with genuine compassion. This thought traveled through her between one blink and the next. Now her eyes willingly, eagerly gave themselves over to Sonny' dark gaze. She could see the passion growing in his and knew it was mirrored in her own.

Without words, yet another invisible thread of connection was created; weaving them closer to one another. This is how it had always been for them…one strand of common interest… of shared thoughts and emotions and then another and then another, until the thought of him not being a part of her life – and hers for him – became all tangled up together -- and unimaginable.

         And for once in Alexis' life, this was a perfect moment. The night. The moonlit skies, spangled with stars. The sounds. The rush of the ocean waves echoing the beats of their hearts. The scents. The mingled fragrance of fire and wine and ocean and flowers and desire.  

The man.

Sonny.

Perfect.

The look in Alexis' eyes, her growing awareness and acceptance of his desire for her, beckoned Sonny closer. Giving in to his own desires, he took over possession of the kiss. His hands swept the length of her body, pausing gently but insistently, at her waist, from wrists to arms to pull her closer, and then they were tangling themselves into her hair, sweeping up into the pinned up mass of her hair, fingers sliding into it, instinctively finding the pins binding her hair and freeing it, bringing her hair tumbling down into his hands. He took ownership of her lips, her mouth, her senses, her very sense of self.

Without ending the kiss, Sonny shifted his body, until he was kneeling before her in the sand. His arms swept around her body, pulling her against him. And surprise of surprises, Alexis sank down into the sand with him with hardly little more than a murmur of desire.  Sonny didn't trouble himself to question it; the sense of rational thinking was swiftly unraveling as Alexis' lips parted eagerly under his. It didn't matter that they couldn't hear the music anymore; the song their bodies were sharing now was the only melody they needed to hear.