AN: So sorry for the wait. To apologize, I have written a nice, long chapter for you. Enjoy!
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Too restless to sleep, Michael passed the rest of the afternoon and evening wandering through the woods and suburbs of Haddonfield, wondering at how little the town had changed since his imprisonment seventeen years ago. Wondering at how blissfully ignorant the town remained to his presence now. This amused him; Loomis knew how dangerous he was. Surely the old man would have contacted the local police. In fact, it wouldn't have surprised Michael to see Loomis running screaming through the streets with his arms flailing and guns blazing.
He avoided his old neighborhood for one specific reason: Emory had asked him not to go there. The fact that he had decided to abide by her suggestion spoke volumes of his growing feelings for her. He could not deny them, these new emotions were strong and potent and intoxicating, and he was no more capable of controlling them than he was of speaking.
At least, not yet.
Around sunset, Michael returned to the hotel, climbing to the second floor balcony and letting himself into the room. His stomach growled angrily, but he ignored it. He could go days without food if he needed to; he'd tested his physical limits over the years, honing his strengths and taking note of any weaknesses. They were few and far between.
He sat on the bed, glancing at the bathroom. A smile lit in his eyes. He should really take a shower, he was filthy from trudging through the woods all day. So he stood and made his way into the bathroom, shut the door and pulled off his scrubs. After turning on the shower, he looked at his reflection. He did not see himself as handsome, he never had. He spent so little time thinking about himself as a man that he'd begun to imagine himself as nothing more than scrubs and a mask.
But he did look at his face. He wondered at how easily Emory could read him, how she could see his thoughts in his eyes, when so many before her could not. It was remarkable, how easily she had insinuated herself into his life.
Now, he looked forward to seeing her, enough that his heart rate increased when he thought about it.
Steam fogged the mirror, so he turned and stepped into the shower, and as soon as the water hit him, his mind snapped back to the memory of her. Black silk, pale skin, sweet lips. Autumn. Freedom. The memory was so intense he reached out to steady himself against the slick, tiled wall, eyes closed, head back. God, she was intoxicating.
The memory passed, and Michael opened his eyes. He half-expected her to be standing in the bathroom with that sly smile on her lips, but she wasn't there. He would have known if she had returned.
He finished his shower, refusing to think of the meaning behind the sudden, overwhelming memories that had slammed into him. If he didn't think about it, he wouldn't have to recognize what it meant.
The motel's towels were ridiculously tiny; he had to use three of them just to dry himself off. And then another to rub over his hair. When he looked at himself again in the steamed mirror, his features were blurred and distorted. He looked like a blonde ghost.
He put the dirt-stained scrubs back on, because the only other option was waiting around naked until Emory got back with more clothes. And as amusing as the idea was, he just couldn't bring himself to go through with it. So he sat on the bed by the window and waited.
-
When she pulled into the motel parking lot, Emory felt a wry smile curl her lips, a smiled mixed of joy and irony. The closer she got to him, the easier it was becoming to stifle that little nagging voice in the back of her head that told her she could not fall in love with Michael Myers.
She grabbed the Wal-Mart bags and the Bride of Frankenstein mask out of the back seat and locked the car. Her parking spot was as far from the road as she could get, but it was still easily within sight of anyone who happened to be looking for a 2007 silver BMW 335xi. It was not the most conspicuous car she could have gotten, but it was damn close. As she turned and headed up the stairwell, she cursed her undying love for BMW.
When she reached her room, she paused, trying to get her heart rate under control. It was no use; her heart wasn't interested in listening to reason. Not when the source of all its excitement was on the other side of that door.
She unlocked the deadbolt and walked in. The first thing she noticed was the smell of shampoo and water; he must have taken a shower while she was gone. The second thing she noticed was Michael, sitting motionless at the foot of the bed, watching her with solemn blue eyes. His hair was wet and tousled.
He was the most handsome man she'd ever seen.
Emory shut the door and locked the deadbolt, and walked towards him. He didn't look menacing, in fact, he didn't look threatening at all. And that wasn't just her Adaerexia talking. He looked… like a man. A quiet, thoughtful man.
She sat her bags down on the table by the bed and pulled out a pair of charcoal sweatpants and a white long-sleeved t-shirt and tossed them over at him. He glanced down at them once and returned his gaze to her. She pulled out a plastic box and sat it down on the table; she'd gotten a roasted chicken from the Super Wal-Mart's deli. And then she pulled out a phonebook.
"Give me a minute," she said, and she sat down at the head of the bed and started flipping through the phonebook. She could feel his eyes on her like a physical force, a weight pressing down on her shoulders. She did her best to ignore it, focusing on her search through the waif-thin pages of the directory. Her heart was twisted with the beginning aches of despair.
It only took her a few moments to find them. Donald and Renee Strode. Same as the names she'd found on Bonnie's adoption records. Emory felt like she might scream. She didn't want to look up and meet his gaze. She didn't want to know and yet she did. This was what Michael wanted more than anything in the world. And now that he had it…
Would he stay?
"I found her address," she said softly, careful not to let her emotions seep into her voice. Finally, she looked up at him, found him stone-still, staring at her as if she'd just grown another head.
Emory slid the phone book over to him and pointed at their names. At their address. His eyes flickered down to the text, lingered there for a few seconds, and then dismissed it and returned his gaze to hers.
She dared let herself hope. She felt it swell within her, like some toxic and addictive drug. She wanted him to stay so badly she couldn't stand it. She wanted him to choose her over Bonnie. She wanted him...
Oh, God.
What had happened to her?
She really wanted him to stay with her. As if they could have a normal life. As if he was a normal man.
As her mind registered her emotions, and it realized that she was in serious danger of falling completely in love with him, her common sense snapped back to life within her.
Shit.
If she wanted him to stay it meant she was too far gone to save herself now. She was falling for this… this murderer. If he left, it would be for the best. If he left she would no longer be in danger of losing her heart to him. And her soul, and probably her life.
She had to make him leave.
"Go," she commanded, breaking the silence. "I won't try to stop you." He raised an eyebrow at her, both curious and amused.
But he did not move.
"Michael," Emory snapped, but she didn't get much further than that. Suddenly he was on top of her, and she was pinned flat against the bed, crushed beneath him. She glared up at him, as his hands found hers and pinned them above her head. His eyes were laughing at her. Was she that transparent? Or was he finally through with her? If she died, she would leave nothing behind but a psychopathic little brother and her parents' graves. She would not be missed.
And if she died, she wouldn't have to worry about being in love with him. She had nothing to lose. She was not afraid of death.
Whatever he saw in her eyes sobered his amusement instantly. His eyes narrowed, and he tilted his head down at her, and loosened his grip on her hands. She said nothing, just waited. For a kiss or a killing blow, whichever he chose. In all her life, she had never felt so incapacitated by her inability to be afraid.
In a flash, Michael hauled her up off the bed and set her on her feet before him. He towered over her, dark and ominous.
"Just go," she muttered, turning her head away from him to stare out at the dying sunlight. Fitting.
Michael reached out and caught her chin, gently turning her head back and forcing her to make eye contact. She frowned up at him, but she could no more answer the questions in his gaze than she could fly to the moon.
"I don't know what you want from me," she said tonelessly, reaching up to grab his wrist and pull away from his gentle grasp. She saw anger flicker in his gaze, cooling those pale blue eyes. He took a step towards her, then stopped. He glanced down at the phonebook, then back up at her, and the anger dissolved from his face to be replaced by understanding and sheer amazement.
Emory's heart sank. God, he was smart.
This time, he reached out and slid his hand around the back of her head, entangling his fingers in her hair, and pressed his lips to hers in a soft, slow kiss. He had made his choice.
He had chosen her.
Emory felt her heart break in her chest, filled to bursting with a potent mixture of joy and despair. Before she could stop them, tears fell from her tightly closed eyes. Michael hesitated, looking down at her with concern. After a moment he lifted a hand and brushed them gently away. Then he disentangled his hands from her hair and pulled her gently towards the bed.
-
When he kissed her, his mind stopped working. It was a terrifying feeling, to be so blank and open. There was nothing else in this entire world that could do that to him. It was more than just lust, now. Lust could not erase all thoughts from his mind and leave only raw emotion and desire. Lust could not make him forget about Bonnie and all the injustices of the world.
Only Emory could do that, now.
He laid her down on the bed and crawled on top of her, letting his eyes wander almost reverently over every inch of her body. And then, once he was satisfied that she was absolutely perfect, he began to undress her. This was not the same blind, half-mad rush to get naked as it had been the first time, in the shower. No. This time, it was slow and erotic. This time Michael was in total control. But as he unbuttoned her shirt, he met her eyes, and the look he saw there told him he might not be in control for much longer.
His lips twitched, aching to smile.
As he slid a lacy black thong down her legs, tossing them carelessly across the room, he looked down at her, naked beneath him, and his heart clenched in his chest. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
And she was smiling a smile that was meant only for him. When she sat up, she slid her hands beneath his shirt, over his chest, through soft blonde curls there. Her touch stilled his heart. He had never been touched like that before, it was so very intimate. At first he didn't like it; he shied away from that intimacy. But then she slid his shirt over his head, and her fingertips danced over his skin to rest at his waist, where she began slowly untying the knot in his scrubs.
And then, finally, blessedly, his pants were off, and he was crawling towards her, pressing her down into the soft bed, bathed in the glow of the dying sunlight. She wrapped her legs around his waist, hot and wet beneath him, waiting. Begging.
He entered her slowly, so that he could feel every inch envelope him as he pushed inside her. Emory's pale, colorless eyes burned straight into his gaze, unblinking, and only when he was embedded completely within her did she close her eyes and let her head fall back. Pure bliss was written in her expression. Michael saw strands of his hair fall around her face, mingling with her own ebony curls. Light and dark, good and evil. The irony of it startled him. Shouldn't he, the murderer, be the dark-haired one?
Emory wrapped her arms around his neck and drew him down into a deep kiss. All thoughts of irony flew out of his head. She bit gently on his lower lip, and he responded with a growl, soft and low in his chest. A smile curled her lips. Little tease.
He could play that game, too.
He withdrew from her, painfully slow, and paused, and just before she could snap out an angry curse, he thrust hard back inside her. Emory gasped, digging her nails into his back. But she couldn't hold him there, he pulled away again, just as slow, just as torturous, and slammed into her once more. Fury glinted in her eyes, but she didn't need to say anything. He was on the edge of a knife, his body screaming to take her hard and fast, his mind empty of all thoughts. He couldn't fight it any longer.
The last shred of his willpower dissolved when she sank her teeth into his neck, not hard, but not soft either. With another guttural growl, Michael lost control and began pounding into her, wildly, uncontrolled and unrestrained. He felt her grip tighten on him, and he pressed down against her, as the world around them disappeared and all that was left was her.
Ecstasy crashed down over him as Emory screamed his name, and he buried his face in black silken curls so that she would not see the open, vulnerable expression in his eyes. He would one day show her, let her see past his mask. He would talk for her. He would cry out her name. One day.
But not today. This was still too new to him.
So he steeled his expression and lifted up on his elbows to look down at her. She was watching him, and in her eyes he saw the exact expression that he had just hidden from her. His heart skipped a beat. Too new. He didn't know how to handle this. A sliver of fear slipped into his mind. He had never wanted to speak so badly as he did right now.
Emory smiled, as if she recognized the fight going on within him. She pushed gently on his chest and rolled him over onto his back, drawing the blankets over them. Without a word, she slid her arm over his waist and laid her head in the hollow of his shoulder. Michael watched her with a smile in his eyes, and when her breathing finally slowed and he knew she was deeply asleep, he let that smile curl his lips. Within him, he felt his possessiveness of her evolve into something more complex and protective. He didn't dwell on it. No good would come from dwelling. He just closed his eyes and fell into the first truly peaceful sleep he'd had in a very long time.