Author's Note: Okay, so I said I was only going to have one M-rated scene in this tale, but my muse had other ideas. Thanks to everyone who has been following this story and many, many thanks to Sheila for being my constant sounding board and extra set of eyes.

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Lee was soundly sleeping spooned against his fiancée' when he felt a jolt and heard her scream, "LEE!"

"Amanda, I'm here," Lee said softly as he held her tightly, cradling her trembling body against his, brushing light soothing kisses against her neck and shoulder.

"Oh, Lee, you're here," she whispered, turning in his arms as she tried to get her ragged breathing under control.

"I'm here," he repeated as he softly stroked her hair. "I'm right here and I'm not going anywhere." He placed a tender kiss to her lips. "Now, that I got you to agree to marry me, you're not getting rid of me," he added in a jesting tone to ease her fears.

Amanda chuckled softly and then said, "I'm sorry I'm shaking so badly."

Brushing a lock of hair out of her face, he replied, "I didn't notice. We must be..."

"...shaking together," she finished with him.

"Yeah. He smiled at her. "You really do remember everything."

Amanda nodded, "Yeah, I do."

"Huh. Quidd kept insisting that one of the problems with your recovery was memory loss."

"Mm-mm," she shook her head. "I kept telling him that I remembered it all; that was never the issue. I was just having trouble sorting out what was real and what was hallucination and, not only that, but picking out what order things happened in." Lee nodded in understanding. "I pictured you showing up to rescue me so many times, in so many different ways that by the time you got there, I-I...I felt like I was still dreaming."

"Speaking of dreaming, you wanna' tell me what your nightmare was about?" His anger at Quidd flared again as he learned more and more about his treatment of Amanda, not listening to her, not believing in her, not letting him in to see her. He could have straightened this out a day ago if he'd been allowed to see her and had known what the real problem was.

"Who said I had a nightmare?" She hedged.

"Amanda, come on, this is me you're talking to."

She sighed and explained, "It was the same one with B-B-Birol and the gun. He-he shot you in the face right in front of me and I...I didn't do anything to stop it. I was too scared to move, just hid behind you and let him k-k-kill you," she stammered tears flowing down her face by the time she finished. "I-I-I'm a t-t-terrible partner."

"Is that was this is about? You think that you're not a good partner because you hid behind me?"

She nodded. "I-I-I was so weak, so scared and y-y-you...if that chamber hadn't been empty, he-he-he would have killed you and I would have let him. I was so worried about our baby and I-"

"Amanda, stop," Lee admonished her. "He didn't kill me and in case you forgot or it's not clear, you didn't start out hiding behind me. I stepped in front of you to protect you. If anyone's the terrible partner, it's me for letting you get taken in the first place."

"No, Lee, you...you were my hero," Amanda argued then correct herself, 'you are my hero."

"I'm no hero," Lee countered. "You're the real hero. You kept your wits about you; never blew your cover and even when you broke down and pleaded with him not to hurt you, it wasn't for you, it was for the baby. That's what a real hero does. They think about others before themselves."

"That makes you a hero too, for stepping in front of me," she took his hand and laid it on her abdomen, "of us, protecting both of us."

"But you're my hero too, Amanda. Don't you remember the first case that we ever worked together? If you hadn't figured out what Mrs. Welch was up to, hadn't gone in there after me, I'd be a dead man. Do you have any idea how brave that was going in there with no weapons, no training, no backup, putting your own life at risk to save me? I don't know any seasoned field agents who would do that and you did it after only knowing me for a few days. You saved my life that day and you've been saving my life in more ways than one ever since then. That makes you MY hero." He lightly pressed his lips to her and whispered, "I love you."

"I love you," she answered and kissed him, tugging on the back of his head in an attempt to deepen the kiss, teasing his lips with her tongue.

As much as Lee enjoyed the attention from his fiancée, he was beginning to enjoy it too much. He pulled back from her, saying, "No, not tonight, Amanda."

"Lee, please," Amanda whimpered, her voice taking on a pleading tone. With the events of the past few days and her fears of him dying, of her dying, she needed very much to feel that they were both still alive. She nipped at the tender skin just below his ear as she trailed her fingers across his bare chest.

"You need to rest," Lee protested weakly, but couldn't help the arousal building at her touch. No woman had ever set him on fire with just a simple touch the way that she did. He pulled back from her to keep things from going too far. "You've got about three days' worth of sleep to catch up on. In fact the doctor prescribed you a sedative in case this happened, in case you had trouble sleeping."

Amanda shook her head. "I know something better that'll help me sleep," she whispered suggestively as she slipped her hand inside Lee's boxers.

"Amanda," he groaned at the contact. "Please, don't do this to me, not when I'm trying to be strong here so you can get the rest that you need to heal."

Amanda brushed her lips against his and murmured against him. "What I need right now is to feel you, to know that this is real, that we're both really here and alive." She pushed on his shoulder to roll him onto his back as she began trailing soft kisses down his neck to his chest while softly caressing him, delighted to feel him growing hard in her hand, at hearing him groan under her touch, taking satisfaction that for all of his experience, she could garner that reaction from him.

"Oh, Amanda, you don't play fair," He tugged on the back of her head to look at her.

"Lee, I missed you so much, missed this, missed us..."

"I know," Lee replied as he softly caressed her face, mindful of the still-healing bruise and said, "but are you sure it's safe with all you've been through? I...um...I don't want to take a chance of hurting you."

"You tell me," She countered with a knowing grin stopping what she was doing for the moment. "You're the one who read all that paperwork from Dr. Kelford. Did it say anything about it not being safe or did he say it wasn't safe?" She knew what the answer would be because contrary to Dr. Quidd's treatment of her as if she were practically a vegetable, Dr Kelford had listened her and believed her when she'd told him that she wasn't really feeling all that bad anymore than she did during her pregnancies with Phillip or Jamie. Granted, she was tired, nauseated from time to time and a bit lethargic, but she'd been told that could be the residual effects of the zap gas, the sleep deprivation and the starvation adding to her pregnancy symptoms.

"Okay, no," Lee conceded. There had been a lot of stuff about how to prevent dehydration, signs of miscarriage, signs that she might be getting dehydrated again, but nothing in it said that she had to refrain from having sex and Kelford hadn't said to abstain either. "But-"

"No buts, Lee," she nodded toward the clock. "Look, it's 2AM. We went to bed at eight. That was six hours ago so I've had some sleep, you've had some sleep..." She flattened her body against his and kissed him, again teasing his lips with her tongue, urging him to respond.

"All right, you win," Lee said with a defeated sigh as he reached for the bottom of her nightgown bunching it up and when Amanda raised her arms to accommodate him, he pulled it over her head and tossed it aside. Once done, he grasped her hips and rolled her beneath him capturing her lips in a fiery kiss as he ran his hands down her sides. He then began to trail soft kisses down her neck, her chest and down to her stomach, pleased by hearing her soft sighs in response as he did so. He paused in his exploration for a moment, lightly ran his finger over her abdomen, looked up at her and whispered reverently, "I'm gonna' be a dad," the knowledge really just fully sinking in for the first time and everything that meant. "We're gonna' be a family."

Amanda softly stroked his hair and replied with a smile, "Yes, we are."

At seeing the loving smile on Amanda's face, any doubts he had that this was what she wanted vanished. He then continued what he'd begun, hooking his fingers into the sides of her panties and sliding them down her long legs. He then placed a tender kiss on the inside of each thigh, then each hip, another to her stomach, delighting in her wriggling beneath knowing that his teasing was getting to her.

"Lee, please," she hissed.

He looked up at her again, gave her and impish grin and replied, "Please what?" When she gave him an incredulous look, the one that said "are you kidding me?" without her ever saying a word. He chuckled softly and dipped his head between her legs, snaking his tongue out to taste her.

"Yes," she sighed, throwing her head back, sliding her fingers through his hair as he devoured her. Even though it has only been a week since they'd last made love, the events of the past few days had made it feel like years. She soon found herself tumbling over the edge, crying out his name as he brought her to her peak. "LEE!" she screamed, this time not out of fear.

Lee trailed soft kisses from her hips up her body until he was finally eye-to-eye with her again. "You're shaking again," he commented with a mischievous grin as he hovered above her.

"In a good way this time," she replied with a grin of her own as she slid her hands down his back to rest on his bottom.

Lee linked his right hand with her left, nodded toward her ring and said, "You know, this looks good on you too, even better than the robe did."

"I love you," Amanda gushed as she pulled on his hips.

"And I love you," Lee replied as he slowly guided himself into her, taking it easy as he didn't want to hurt her.

"Lee." She sighed again as she used one hand to tug on the back of his head to pull him down to her for another scorching kiss. She raised her hips up to meet his hooking one leg over his back, her fears and her confusion about what was real a distant memory with the reality of holding him inside her, feeling his fingers linked with hers, their lips crashing together repeatedly as they moved in sync together driving them both toward the completion that they could only find together.

They lay wrapped together for a long time afterward, sharing long, slow kisses as they came back down to earth, Lee having rolled them over so that he wouldn't crush her, Amanda cradled against him. He was the first to speak as he ran a hand through the dark curls framing her face, "Feel like you can sleep now?"

"Mm-hmm," she answered contentedly as she lazily trailed her finger across his chest. "I definitely don't need that sedative the doctor prescribed."

Lee laughed heartily, Amanda joining in his laughter. "Good," he replied and couldn't help the grin that wouldn't leave his face. After the stress of the past week, it felt good to laugh with her again. He planted one more kiss to her lips. "I love you."

"I love you too," she replied as she snuggled down into the covers and they drifted back to sleep together.

Lee was the first to awaken the following morning. He lay awake watching his bride-to-be with a heady smile that she was finally sleeping peacefully, her breathing deep and even with no signs of another nightmare plaguing her. After a moment of watching her, he carefully slipped out of bed so as not to disturb her, reaching for his robe. As he cinched it around his waist, he took one last glance at her sleeping form before padding barefoot to the kitchen.

Once there, he got to work filling a teakettle, starting a pot of coffee and while waiting for both, cleaned up the remnants of last night's makeshift dinner, washing, drying and putting away the dishes. He had just poured himself a cup of coffee, doctored it with cream the way he liked it and was about to take a sip when a knock sounded on his door. With a heavy sigh, wondering who would be at his door this early in the morning, he made his way out of the kitchen, through his dining room and living room to the front door. Upon opening it, his irritation only grew. "What do you want?" he said tersely.