Author's Disclaimer: I own none of the characters in this story, nor the settings or particulars. This was written purely for entertainment.

Warning: This chapter contains a love scene, adult language and situations, and thus has been given an 'M' rating. Please don't read it if you take offense at the consummation of this relationship. While not explicit, it is what it is: suitable for mature readers who are seeking a solid romance. Feedback is cherished and appreciated!

Chapter Three

Take Back the Night

The farmhouse's interior was warmly cluttered with a mish-mash of plaid and gingham, worn but comfortable furnishings and trappings of a sweet and simple past. While Clark brewed a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen, Lois wandered around the family room, examining myriad photographs of a beautiful dark-haired boy flanked by a handsome, middle-aged man and woman.

"Where are your parents?" she called out, picking up a small brass frame containing a picture of a teenaged Clark in royal blue cap and gown.

He reappeared in the kitchen doorway. "My father passed away a few years ago."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't remember Clark—er, you—ever saying anything about that."

"I probably never mentioned it. I—Clark, that is, doesn't let people in anymore than he has to."

"I noticed that." Too quick a response, too defensive. They both knew she had never given Clark Kent much thought outside of office hours, and to her dying day, she would regret it. Now, looking at his broad shoulders, at his rich dark hair and piercing blue eyes, Lois was clobbered with disbelief all over again that she hadn't made the connection without Jason's unsullied perception. And there was so very much more she craved to know.

"Tell me about your dad."

Clark's smile came and went, faded by fleeting sadness. "He was a great guy. A good dad. I couldn't have asked for a better friend. He died too soon."

"I'm so sorry," she said softly, returning the photo to the console where she'd found it before following him into the kitchen. "And your mom?"

"She's doing just fine." He paused long enough to run the pot under the faucet, then added, "She's in Las Vegas."

"Las Vegas?" Lois's gaze followed the movements of his hands as he spooned coffee into the machine. "I thought she lived here."

"She does. She's only gone for the week. She…" He cleared his throat and closed the machine lid. "She's on vacation with her, uh, date."

A smile crept to Lois's lips as she read a son's reproof on his face. "She has a boyfriend, huh? Good for her."

"Ben's a nice guy. A long-time friend. He's not my dad, but he's good to her. And if she's happy—" He glanced up and met her eyes. "Then I'm happy."

They gazed at each other for a lingering beat before he went back to his task, grabbing milk from the refrigerator and a box of sugar packets from the pantry. "Are you hungry?"

She couldn't have presented a cracker crumb to her still-quivering stomach if it was the last morsel on earth. "I'm fine, thanks."

"You look a little tired."

Great. Just what a girl loved to hear.

"Nothing a quick smoke wouldn't fix," she muttered, smoothing her windblown hair.

Humor tugged at his mouth. "Still haven't beaten that mean little habit, huh?"

"For your information, I bought my first pack in five years when you flew back into town with no warning." Her chin crept up a notch. "Something about you brings back all my old weaknesses."

"Same here," he said low, but when her eyes flew to his, he was focused on pouring coffee into the mugs.

"We have a lot to talk about, Kal-El."

He gave a sober nod. "I know a good place. Follow me."

While she found a seat on the plaid sofa, he added logs to the fireplace until the radiant warmth banished the family room's vague chill.

Then, with steaming cups of coffee in hand, they sat facing each other, close, not close enough.

For once, Lois didn't do all the talking. The easy, low rumble of his voice lulled her into an enchanted silence where cynicism and witty rejoinders didn't exist, while his words—his truths—slipped around her heart and bound it impossibly closer to his. If she thought herself in love before, she was hopeless now.

He told her details that perhaps she'd once known but were lost to her now, and like a thirsty nomad emerging from a desert wasteland, she drank it all in: his alien origins, his human childhood, the years he spent in the Fortress of Solitude transforming into Superman, then splitting his identity between the super hero and the unremarkable, every-day-Joe reporter, until he had perfected the division to even the most discerning eye.

While the firelight cast a flickering chiaroscuro on his face, he told her all of it, and even as she listened, she found herself studying the intense blue eyes that saw too much of the world, the straight, regal nose, the expressive mouth whose vulnerability was so contradicted by the stubborn chin and jaw…and thought she'd never known a finer man.

She only stirred from her raptness when he reached the part about wiping clean her memory.

"You didn't have to do that," she said, straightening her spine when she realized they'd gradually leaned toward each other, victims to the gravitational pull of attraction.

"I did have to do that," he countered solemnly.

"I would have survived."

"You were crying like you wouldn't."

"Well." She sighed and glanced unseeingly at the crackling flames. "I don't remember crying over you even once until you flew off for five years, so I guess those memories you took from me are your burden now."

Immediately she wanted to take it back. It was a stupid, petty thing to say, when the truth was he carried the burden of the whole world alone, and their past relationship was hardly a blip on the screen.

Except for Jason, of course.

Clark looked at her for a long moment, his intelligent eyes obviously missing nothing. Then he drained his mug and stretched to set it on the coffee table. "Want to know why I left Metropolis on Thursday to spend the week in Kansas?"

Lois sighed. "Tell me."

"You broke up with Richard."

She stilled. "Who told you?"

"The entire office, pretty much."

Of course. The grapevine wrapped its gnarled fingers around every desk in that damned office.

"I did notice you'd left," she said, "but I didn't wonder why until Jason asked where you were. I told him you'd gone on vacation—I didn't know there was a connection."

"There was a connection," he said, dry humor edging his words. "I didn't think I could be in the same office with you knowing...thinking, anyway…that I was responsible for your broken engagement."

She shot him a fierce look. "Want to really know what happened to my engagement?"

"Do I have a choice?" he murmured, but she ignored it and barreled on.

"You kissed me on The Daily Planet rooftop the other night. I was so…confused, and hurt…and determined to put you behind me. And maybe I could have, if you hadn't touched me."

"Lois," he said, rubbing a hand across his brow, but she wasn't finished.

"When I got home after our little tête-à-tête, Richard was up waiting for me. He asked me what had kept me so late, and I lied so easily, I even impressed myself. And I realized then that he deserves more than I have to offer. Which is funny, really, considering I gave him everything. Except my heart."

"That is everything," Clark said quietly.

"Unfortunately someone else has it, whether I like it or not." Despite her ire, she stole a glance at him through her lashes. He was watching her with an intensity that sent a frisson of excitement down her spine. "Anyway, tuck away your remorse, Superman. I'm the guilty party, and everyone knows it. Richard didn't seem surprised when I gave him back the ring. I guess I'm pretty obvious when it comes to you."

He didn't respond, just shifted to stare into the fire, his profile troubled.

"I did the right thing," she added, softening her tone. "He so deserves to be happy. I think eventually he and I will get to a place where we can be friends again. At least for Jason's sake."

The mention of Jason brought his attention back to her face. "Does he know yet, Lois?"

She shook her head. "No. It would shatter him. I don't know when I'll tell him. Eventually he'll probably figure it out, if Jason continues to…" She faltered at the memory of her five-year-old shoving a grand piano into Lex Luthor's henchman hard enough to splatter him all over the yacht's map room. "He's your son in more ways than one, Kal-El."

"I know." He held her gaze, then looked away again. Silence drifted between them, broken only by the crackle of the flames.

"I'm sorry I stormed all the way out here to confront you," she said after a while, her shoulders curved beneath the weight of exhaustion and regret. "I should have waited and talked to you after you came back to Metropolis. You know..." she waved a hand. "Done something more… prudent."

"'Prudent' isn't a word I'd use where you're concerned," he said, flashing her an arid glance. "I would expect nothing less of you, Miss Lane."

She chuckled and wearily rubbed the back of her neck. "It's a bad habit, I know, but I always go tearing after what I want."

The declaration was meant to be flippant, but her choice of words was unfortunate and truth-baring. I always go tearing after what I want.

Christ on a cracker.

He didn't reply, but his all-seeing gaze dropped to her lips and lingered until she burned from the inside out. Then he gave a languid, shuddering stretch, the kind that encompasses every vital part of a man's body and draws a woman's attention like metal to a magnet.

"It's getting late," he said, rising to his feet and extending his hand to her. "Now that we've cleared the air, are you ready for bed?"

Lois had no idea what to expect as she followed him up the creaking staircase and down a narrow corridor. Her hyper imagination was working overtime, mental cogs spinning with reckless abandon, sending blood pumping to every inappropriate part of her anatomy. God, she wanted him. God, she was terrified of what he'd do next because he knew she wanted him, and in all likelihood, he wanted her too. His words from the other night—"I love you, Lois"—had played and replayed like a broken record in her mind for days.

And Superman never lied.

Stopping at the end of the hall, he pushed open a door. "Bathroom," he explained. Then, two steps to the right, "Guest room."

Ridiculous, asinine, complete-and-total dismay bolted through her. What had she expected? He was Superman, for crying out loud! The flannel shirt and faded jeans and work boots didn't change that fact. Truth, justice, and the American way, all the way. No one said anything about romance, seduction and every desired fulfilled. Once upon a time, they'd both been naïve enough to waver at the edge, but it hadn't worked. Now they—especially he—had grown wiser. And looked better than ever from every angle, she thought as she paused behind him and noted the way his jeans, faded in all the right places, hugged his muscular backside.

Entering the room ahead of her, Clark turned on a bedside lamp with a bell-shaped shade, illuminating a tidy, if somewhat sterile, bedroom. He opened the top drawer of a nearby bureau and produced a toothbrush still sealed in its package. "One of those things you came without," he said, laying it on the night table. "There's toothpaste in the bathroom medicine cabinet, fresh soap and towels under the sink." He paused, and to her consternation, reached out to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. "Anything else you need? I want you to be comfortable."

She wanted to snort. 'Comfortable' wasn't a word in her vocabulary when it came to him. Try 'Tortured' or 'Sexually-Frustrated.'

"Maybe something to sleep in," she said, beyond sheepish. "Got an old tee-shirt I can borrow?"

He motioned for her to wait and disappeared down the hall. When she peeked around the doorframe, she saw the light come on in the room farthest from hers. His footsteps thudded on the wood floors as he moved about, and she waited, noting how loud the ticking sounded from the alarm clock on her nightstand, and how her pulse raced madly ahead of its metronome beat.

When he returned with shirt in hand, she was sitting on the side of the bed. "It's a 2X," he said. "I don't really have anything to fit you."

She took it from him and held it up for inspection. University of Iowa. Had he gone to college there? She'd never thought to ask him before. She'd never much thought to ask Clark anything about his past.

"Perfect," she said, her voice husky. "Thank you. For everything."

"I'm glad you're here." He hesitated at the threshold to give her a long, searching look. Then he drew a breath and stepped into the hall. "There's only one shower, but you take the bathroom first. I need to feed the dog and do some stuff before I can turn in."

Lois gave him a helpless look. He was being so brisk, so efficient, so polite. It broke her heart. She wanted him dark and hungry and out of control, the way he'd been on the roof of The Daily Planet mere days ago.

We're doomed to this, she'd told him then, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe he'd come to his senses. And part of her silently thanked him, because someone had to stop the madness.

"Let me know if you need anything," he added. "My room's just down the hall."

She swallowed against the emotion constricting her throat and forced a smile. "Okay. Goodnight, Clark."

"'Night, Lois."

A hot shower washed away the day's stress, and Lois lingered beneath the gentle pummel of the water, reveling in the delicious, familiar scent of the soap as she slid the bar over her skin. She'd smelled it on him many times, the well-scrubbed fragrance mixed with a singular sweetness that he alone exuded. It hadn't occurred to her that Superman had to buy soap, or that he lived somewhere with regular, every-man fixtures. In some ways, she'd been as negligent about the little things in his world as she had with Clark.

After toweling off, she slipped the soft tee-shirt over her head and drew it down her body. It nearly reached her knees, so she eschewed panties, handwashed them, and hung them in an inconspicuous place to dry.

She found a plastic hairbrush in the medicine cabinet, along with the toothpaste, and knew it belonged to him. Drawing it through her damp hair, she felt a little depraved at the pleasure she experienced from such an intimate thing as sharing his brush. The wayward girl in her slid into a silly fantasy of life as Superman's wife—the simple minutiae of marriage, like sharing a hairbrush, a bar of soap, a tube of toothpaste. Then sliding, clean and warm, between soft, sun-dried sheets and into his waiting arms.

She'd want for nothing ever again.

The night crept by with excruciating slowness. Long after she climbed into her cold bed, she lay awake, listening to the thud of his boots on the downstairs floor. Something in her knew he was waiting for her to fall asleep before he came up, and probably he was smart to do so. What he didn't understand, though, was that she would never be able to sleep this night.

And when at last he climbed the stairs, moved gingerly past her bedroom door and closed himself into the bathroom, Lois came fully alert, every muscle in her body electrified.

It was a decidedly sensuous thing, she discovered, to lie awake and listen to the sound of a man showering. First the thump of boots discarded, then the rustle of clothing removed, the drumming spray of the showerhead, the metallic slide of curtain rings on the rod.

She flung an arm over her eyes and followed every move he made in her mind, until her heart threatened to fling itself from her chest, until heat suffused her body and she kicked aside her covers in a fit of frustration…until the bathroom door squeaked open again and his bare feet thudded down the hall to his room.

She heard another sound—the scrabble of a dog's claws, the low murmur of his voice as he talked to the animal. She'd noted the dog hanging around the barn when she first arrived, a gentle-eyed yellow Lab whose gaze followed every move his master made.

The click of the door ended her reverie, but Lois was too far gone. She waited, her gaze glued to the alarm clock's green glow, watching the crawl of the second hand while audacity born of desperation grew, and grew, and grew.

Maybe an hour had passed, or maybe mere minutes, when she got up, cracked open her door, and peered down the hall. His lamp was still on; it cast a sliver of golden light beneath the door and across the worn runner.

It was now or never.

She managed to traverse the distance from her room to his in silence, but when she reached his door, a soft, snuffling woof from the dog inside heralded her presence.

Criminy.

Tapping softly, she winced at the way the sound shattered the viscous quiet. She felt like an intruder, an ungainly bovine in a crystalline fortress. Turn your fool self around and go back to bed.

Before she could move, Clark opened the door.

"Hi," she said, when she'd recovered from the sight of him standing there in nothing but pajama bottoms, his dark hair mussed, his fair skin glowing in the dim light of the bedside lamp behind him.

He opened the door wider and stepped back in silent invitation. Shivering, she moved into the room.

It was a child's small dormer room, modest, with faded cowboy wallpaper and a spindle-post twin bed whose covers were disturbed, as though Clark had climbed from beneath them to answer her knock. The yellow Labrador watched Lois from the foot of the mattress with a sleepy, bleary gaze that made her feel guilty for intruding.

"That's Shelby," Clark said, following the direction of her stare. "She's an institution around here."

Shelby, who had lifted her head to study Lois, laid her snout on her paws again and sighed.

"This is quite a room," Lois said with a trembling smile.

He released a huff of laughter. "I always figured Mom would turn it into a sewing room when I moved out. It must be the cowboy wallpaper that scares her away."

Books and various trophies filled the simple wooden shelves mounted to the wall beside the door; on the antique maple dresser a clutter of photographs sat in haphazard arrangement. Lois hugged herself and studied them from where she stood, feeling like an invader as she took in the snapshots of his childhood and memories. Football buddies, various sports teams…

Girlfriends.

Why that surprised her, she didn't know.

She startled when a soft afghan settled around her shoulders.

"You're cold," he said.

Lois clutched it around her and turned to face him, ready with the poetic proclamations she'd invented when tossing and turning in the guestroom. What came out instead was, "I want to know what it was like."

His dark brows lowered. "What what was like?"

Oh, hell. Can't I even get this right?

She made a helpless gesture beneath the afghan. "The night we slept together. I want to know what it…what it was like."

There. The truth was out in all its bald, mortifying glory. And it didn't go away. In fact, the brash words hung between them like a noisy third party…and Clark did nothing to ease her agony. He regarded her with an unreadable expression, the only hint of emotion in the slight hitch of his breathing.

Heat crawled up her neck to her ears, flooded her cheeks. She was such a dolt, barging into his life like this, standing here in his personal space where she wasn't invited and didn't belong—

"It was incredible," he said, the words so soft, she wasn't sure he'd uttered them.

She swallowed hard, her pulse trip-hammering in her veins. "You should have left me with that one memory, you know. Just that one."

"I know." He stepped closer, the floorboards protesting under his weight. "I make a lot of mistakes when it comes to you." His wording indicated he saw no end to the mistake-making anytime in the near future, either, something that both frustrated her and filled her with inexplicable relief.

"You could make it up to me," she said lightly, shivering beneath the blanket from sheer fear of rejection.

She thought he might smile again, but the sparkle of humor so often present in his blue eyes when he regarded her was gone, replaced by something darker, richer.

Intent.

The shivering spread to her knees, which threatened to fold beneath her. "I'm making a fool of myself here, aren't I."

"No," he said with a slow shake of his head. "Not at all."

God, how she loved him.

"Kal-El," she whispered, letting the afghan slide from her shoulders and down to her feet, "You could give me back that one memory. Give me back the night."

He stood staring down into her eyes so long, and the anticipation was so painful, Lois thought she would dissolve, body and soul, and drift away like dust before he delivered an answer.

At last—mercifully—he moved, murmured a command to the dog that brought Shelby from her warm place at the foot of the bed and out into the hall, where she collapsed with an old-dog groan on the carpet runner. Then he quietly closed the door, leaned his back against it, and fixed his eyes on Lois. "Come here."

Her feet moved of their own accord, tiny steps that sent bolts of galvanized awareness through her as she drew nearer to the source of all her pleasure and pain. When she stopped, close enough to touch him but half-frozen with trepidation, he said, "That night, Lois…it started like this."

He slid an arm around her waist and drew her gently into him as though she would balk, startle and run. Instead she came forward without reservation, never more aware of the unearthly fever and strength of his body, or of his power, over the world, over her. But it wasn't Superman holding her as he dipped his head and brushed his lips over hers, once, twice, in tender exploration. This man was no Clark Kent, no superhero, no alien.

He was hers.

Breathless, she slid her hands around his waist, reveling in the unbearable intimacy of touching his sleek, bare skin, marveling at the finely honed sinew beneath it, before letting her hands roam the naked expanse of his back. "And…" She had to swallow to continue. "And then…?"

"Something like this." He cradled her head in his hands and opened his lips over hers, the hunger of his kiss stealing her breath and replacing the need for oxygen with sheer desire. In blind response she caught his jaw between her palms, guiding it as he took her mouth again and again in that same fervent, hungry way, until utter weakness forced her arms around his neck and his caress slid beneath the oversized tee-shirt, burning a path from her backside to her shoulder blades and back again.

"Oh," he whispered into her mouth. "You're naked under this."

"I told you I came here with nothing useful," she mumbled, and he said, "Good," before he caught her lips again.

Lois shivered violently, but it wasn't the chill of the old farmhouse that sent waves of goose bumps over her skin. The heat of his body burned her, yet she couldn't get close enough. The wild drum of his heartbeat matched her own, yet he seemed so sure in his actions, so deliberate, so skilled.

They were old lovers, yet poignantly new.

After a moment he grasped the hem of her shirt and skimmed it up and off, leaving her as bare as her heart. But this was no place for shyness or modesty, this humble, long-ago child's room with the narrow twin bed awaiting them. This was an enchanted sanctuary meant for the realization of dreams and desires.

"And then?" she managed.

Jaws clenched, he caught her hand and brought it to the muscled plain of his chest, let her feel the drumbeat of his heart, then led her palm down his torso to his hard, flat stomach, where her fingertips brushed the strings of his pajama bottoms.

Somewhere between tugging those strings loose and sliding the pants down his strong legs with deliberate, determined hands, she stopped trembling, and the golden assurance of a woman well-loved washed over her as he stepped free of the bottoms and drew her against him again, skin to naked skin.

Questions about tomorrow fell away as easily as clothing, inhibitions, uncertainty. Neither spoke again except to whisper the breathless accolades of lovers, and when he drew her to the bed and led her down into its easy yield, nothing existed for Lois except each searing moment that rose like ocean waves and washed over them: each touch, each shiver and sigh, each fantasy brought to fruition.

He wasn't a practiced lover, but the rawness of his desire held its own kind of poetry, and Lois found the innate innocence of him more arousing than any silver-tongued words or practiced caresses. He knew instinctively, and perhaps from memory, how to touch her so that she came apart in his reverent hands, and when at last he followed, she slid her fingers into his thick hair and held his face in the curve of her neck, counting the shudders that rippled through him, soaring with the realization that she alone knew him in this sacred moment, and that such a glimpse of vulnerability from him was her secret alone, her secret to cherish.

They lay with limbs entangled in the narrow bed, replete and floating in languid silence. Lois thought he might be asleep, but when she rose up on an elbow to examine his face, he was looking back at her, his dark lashes shuttering his sentiments.

"Are you sorry?" she whispered, because she didn't know what else to say.

His gaze searched her face, left to right and back again, methodically overturning all her hidden feelings. "No," he said at last. "Are you?"

"Never. No matter what happens tomorrow, I'll never regret sharing this with you." No matter how shattered her heart would be, come morning. No matter how long the rest of her life stretched before her with the world standing between them. No matter how many nights she would cry herself to sleep after this, missing the warm press of his body against hers, the solemn intensity with which he looked at her, the tender way he found her hand and laced his fingers through hers, his thumb drawing lazy circles on her palm.

"I love you," he whispered.

"I love you too," she tried to say, but the words unexpectedly caught on emotions she'd thought well-restrained, and when tears welled in her eyes faster than she could blink them back, he rose up and kissed them away, kissed her forehead and each cheek, quieting her, soothing her like he would a wild, fearful creature, before settling his mouth hotly on hers.

He took her like that, in that sweet, piquant limbo between grief and pleasure.

And in the final taking, gave her back the night.