Fifteen

Robin closed her bedroom door and leaned back against it and let out a tired groan. It was the middle of the night and it had been a long time since she had lived with other people and she had forgotten how tricky it was to come in quietly while roommates are sleeping. As a consequence, she was tense and completely unprepared for the voice that comes out of the darkness.

"Welcome home."

Robin gasped and turned on the light. She smiled and pressed her hand against her chest. "I didn't know you were still here." She turned the light back off as Patrick reached for the bedside light.

"I was too traumatized to leave. I just crawled into your bed and curled up and began drooling," Patrick said dramatically, his arm bent over his eyes.

"What are you talking about? Was my father mean to you? Did he ask you about your intentions towards me again?" She teased as she walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed and let him snake his arm around her waist and pull her against him.

"When I came back upstairs I could swear your roommates were flirting with your father and he was flirting back. He told old spy stories all night." Patrick brushed some hair that had gotten loose from Robin's pony tail off her neck.

"I'm sure it was just hero worship."

"Until you walk in on them having sex."

"Ewwww." Robin scrunched her nose and closed her eyes. Then she sighed.

"Tough case?" he asked, his voice gruff with sleep.

She nodded. "I have to go back. We're going to start administering the drug combination in a couple of hours. He'll have been stable long enough by then." She snuggled against him, still on top of the covers. "Jeremy Gilmarten's parents got him a motorcycle for his nineteenth birthday. It was his first ride. He collided with a truck."

"Was he wearing a helmet?" Patrick pressed a kiss to Robin's hair.

"Yes. It saved him. You're so warm."

"Why don't you catch a nap before you go back?"

"I don't have time. I just came home to change and pick up what I need for tomorrow," she said, referring mainly to her HIV meds.

"Then take a shower at least. That I insist on, you'll be feel better." He sat up, the sheet dropping to his waist. Robin reached over and slid her hand up his naked chest. "And I'll join you." He smirked and pressed her hand against his heart. "I'll go get the water started. You get undressed. Or I'll do that for you too."

"Promises, promises," Robin rolled over and grumbled as he stood up and walked into the bathroom. She enjoyed the view of his firm, naked ass as long as she could.

"I thought you'd fallen asleep," Patrick said as he held the shower door open.

"Almost." Robin swiveled her neck, trying to stretch out the kinks from standing in the lab and preparing her drug combination.

"Here." Patrick put his hands on her shoulders and walked her into the running shower. He closed the door behind him and began to knead Robin's taut muscles as the water sluiced over her naked body and flattened her hair against her head and shoulders.

"That feels so good," she moaned. Her eyes were closed as she gave herself over to Patrick's TLC.

"You ain't felt nothing yet," Patrick promised.

"I can actually hear the leer in your bad grammar." Robin laughed and reached behind her and grabbed onto Patrick's hips as she pressed herself back against him.

Patrick breathed out his nose and licked his lips. He slid his hands from Robin's neck and down the slick, wet front of her to cup her breasts. She smiled and shimmied her hips, rubbing herself against him.

"I just suggested a therapeutic cleansing. It seems like you have different ideas," Patrick grumbled into Robin's ear, his quick breathes betraying the faux innocence of his words.

Robin reached over to the shower caddy in the corner and pushed the shampoo over and pulled out a hiding condom. "Just my idea?" she waved it in front of Patrick's face.

"Well." Patrick nibbled on her shoulder, his lips stretched into unrepentant grin. "I know how rambunctious you get in the shower."

Robin laughed and turned around and slid her arms around Patrick's neck and wrapped herself against him. "You naked and wet have that effect on me."

"Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you."

"Who knew we'd ever have so much in common?" Robin grinned before Patrick covered her lips with his own.

"I know how to take care of myself, Noah." Anna stood by the window looking out into the night sky over Port Charles. It was a damp evening and from Noah's brownstone apartment the city looked cleansed and comforting. She wished she could avail herself of the same experience.

"You think I don't know that or that I'm threatened by that?" Noah stood a few feet from her, his hands on his hips. Behind him, the unmade bed glowed in the moonlight coming in through the window. He was clad only in his hastily donned boxer-briefs, while Anna was wrapped only in the white silk sheet from the bed. They had just spent the afternoon into the evening making love, before Noah was called away to the hospital. He had just returned to find Anna studying surveillance photos of Lorenzo Alcazar that she had tried to hide when he returned.

In truth, Noah's manhood was somewhat threatened by the reality that Anna didn't need his protection, but not enough for him to throw away what they were building together. Or rather, what they had been building before Anna had coldly informed him tonight that they would have to continue to meet in secret or they would have to step back – not because of her concern over their children's reactions, but because of her work. More specifically, because she had to continue to get close to Lorenzo Alcazar.

It was his carefully worded question – "Will you be sleeping with him" that had tilted everything on its axis tonight.

He hadn't said it out loud, but in his eyes she could see that he thought her quiet affirmation made her someone who had sex for a living. Or maybe, she thought to herself that was how she felt. She took a deep breath and tried to steel herself; it didn't work. Her heart still quivered in her chest. She had never given this kind of thing a second thought. Not even when she and Robert were involved and he knew what she had to do; not when she was involved with any other man who probably didn't. Why did she feel differently now.

She closed her eyes and swallowed when Noah's strong hand closed over her bare shoulder. She felt a tingling through her entire body. She had thought she was sated. She wanted him again. She could turn this all off and force it away and walk away if she had to. She felt his breath stir her hair. She didn't want to.

"Anna."

His gruff, melodic voice filled her up inside. She turned her head to look at him. "I can't say I have much experience with this kind of thing, but I'm willing to make it work." He paused and licked his lips. "Picturing you with him will make me want to kill him." He smirked. "Something I'm fully unqualified to do relative to you, mind you, but I'm not going to stop being concerned about your well-being. Life is too short to give up whatever it is we have between us." When she turned to face him he put his hand on her waist and leaned over her. "What do you want?"

"I want you." She shivered when she put her arms around his torso and let the sheet drop to the floor. "I want to lock myself up in here with you and for the first time in a long time I want to not be doing this job. But I have to finish what I started." She pressed herself against him. "With the job and with you."

Noah closed his eyes and stroked her hair and wrapped herself up with him. "I'm falling in love with you, Anna Devane." His quiet words were a powerful force inside that room and inside Anna. She knew he meant what he said and she knew what it meant to him. What surprised her was what it meant to her.

"I'm falling in love with you, too, Noah. That's why I need to protect you from this." She looked up at him. "And I need to let you protect me. I don't know when we can be together again."

"Right now. We'll make the rest work." He leaned down and lifted her up and carried her to the bed.

"Did you have a fight with the good doctor, Anna?"

Anna had heard Robert's steps coming up behind her on the docks, they were not the surprise, his words were. She turned around and faced her ex-husband and ex-partner, her expression deliberately bland. "Good evening, Robert."

"So formal, Ms. Devane." Robert's eyes sparkled as he leaned into Anna's personal space. "What happened with the lothario doctor, Anna? Did your mission get in the way of the budding romance?"

"Isn't it a bit late to be hanging out on the docks fishing?" Anna stiffened and raised her chin disdainfully.

"Noah Drake always did have good taste in women." Robert smirked. "I wonder what our daughter would think about you sleeping with her boyfriend's father."

Anna's grabbed Robert's sleeve and glared up at him menacingly. "Watch your step, Robert." His heart was pounding. No one could overhear her involvement with Noah. She should have resisted. "You're jealous delusions could put our daughter's boyfriend's father in danger."

"I would never do that, Anna." Robert put his hand over hers, his word conciliatory, but his expression concerned. "What are you really working on?"

"Stop making wild accusations in public places and I told you I'm here to visit my daughter." She pulled her hand away.

Robert sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Do you think I can't tell when my ex-partner is working on an assignment? You shouldn't be working alone."

"Go home, Robert." Anna made to walk past him.

"Lorenzo Alcazar has gotten in touch with some old acquaintances recently."

His words stopped her. She turned her head to look at him.

"He's not just dealing in arms now and he seems to have an attraction to not just one of my ex-wives."

"I know. Why are you here in Port Charles, Robert?"

"Like you I came to spend time with our daughter." Robert stepped closer to Anna again. "But I did get an interesting phone call a few weeks ago about something going on in my new backyard."

Anna and Robert communicated silently with their eyes.

"Mom? Dad?"

Robert and Anna turned their heads to see Patrick and Robin walking towards them.
"Hello, darling. Patrick." Anna leaned in and kissed her daughter while Robert had a few words with Patrick. "What are you doing out here so late?"

"I'm going back to work, Patrick is walking me there."

"Good, it's not safe to be wandering around here alone this time of night." Robert nodded approvingly.

Robin looked from her mother to her father and back again. "What are you two doing out here? Together?" she asked curiously.

"I was just telling your mother the same thing. I just left the Haunted Star when I ran into your mother here coming from….where were you coming from, darling?" He grinned evilly.

"You're father is always so nosy. Why don't you call me tomorrow and we'll make plans for lunch." Anna smoothed down her daughter's hair. "Come on old man, walk me home so that I don't hurt any muggers."

"Whatever you say, dear." Robert was still grinning evilly when he kissed his daughter on the side of her head and walked off with his ex-wife.

Robin watched them go and then looked up at Patrick. "You don't think that they're…do you?"

"I don't try to figure your parents out, Scorpio." Patrick put his arm back around Robin's shoulders.

"Good strategy." Robin shook her head and they started walking again.

TBC