Alright, I know some people were hoping for some passion fueled make up lovin in this chapter...but sorry, no such luck. As you may or may not (which I don't understand how you could) remember, Riley was just in a car accident. She isn't in the best physical position to be...getting in physical positions –waggles eyebrows and laughs at pitiful pun—sorry, I couldn't resist.

But anyway, look at the bright side, when they do get to make up...it'll be like thunder! In case some of you newbies haven't heard, to quote one of my reviewers on my other book... "Dude, you're probably the best ever at SHEER TORTURE!" Chuckles...see, all of my couples get tortured in the sex department one way or another...I don't play favorites...lol.

And just FYI, this is a really fluffy chapter...just lots of fluff, then some more fluff, and then...more fluff...but it starts out with some drama...(only because too much fluff makes me sick...blech!)

Okay, I'll stop now and let ya'll read this book...

Chapter 11

(Two mornings later)

Nick stepped out of the locker room after showering the decomp off of him. He tossed the bag of lemons and the clothes he had been wearing into the garbage by the door and started off down the hall to the stairs of the building. He still had problems going into small spaces such as elevators and closets.

He jogged down the stairs, and practically flew out the door, still uneasy even in the narrow staircase. He regained composure and walked out the front doors, and slid on his sun glasses to shield the sun from his sensitive brown eyes. He sighed and gripped his bag with other clothes and necessities for work tighter as he went to his car, climbed in, and drove out of the parking lot, towards the direction of his and Riley's usual diner for breakfast.

He pulled his car into the first empty space he saw and walked into the diner, pulling off his sun glasses as he did so. He spotted their usual booth, but it was currently occupied by a brunette with her back to him. He scanned the diner, looking for her, but saw her no where. He sighed and walked up to the counter, resting his hands against it as he did so. "Hey Nick." The familiar woman behind the counter greeted.

"Hey Trixie, have you seen Riley today?"

The girl smiled and shook her head. "Sorry Nicky. Can I get you something anyway?" She asked, a big smile on her face. Nick gave a polite smile and shook his head.

"No thanks. Have a nice day Trixie." He drawled and she blushed.

Damn that man is too cute for his own good...

She thought and waved goodbye. Nick sighed as he looked around, pulled out his cell phone, and dialed her house number. A familiar voice answered on the second ring. "Hello?"

"Hey, Kiersten, it's Nick. Is Riley there?"

"No...she hasn't been home since you picked her up last night." Kiersten answered and Nick bit his lip as worry began to rise within him. "Why? Is something wrong?"

He could hear the slight panic in Kiersten's voice and he shook his head even though she couldn't see him. "No. I'm sure everything's fine. She's probably still at the bar..." Though he wasn't quite sure why she would still be there.

"No, Deven and Jabari said she left as soon as her shift was over...that was almost six hours ago."

"Don't worry Kiersten, I'm sure she's fine. I'm going to look for her."

"Do you want my help?"

"Nah, she's probably drivin around." Nick drawled.

"In a cab? Her car is still in the shop..."

Uh oh...

"Just don't worry. I'll find her."

There was silence on the other end for a long time. "You better." She finally said and hung up the phone. Nick bit his lip again and practically ran to his car.

Almost four hours later there was still no sign of Riley. He had gone to the hospital, the lab, the bar, back to the diner, to her house, the auto shop, checked the hotels (having to flash his CSI ID and a nice smile for most of them), and anywhere else he could think of.

He was seriously considering reporting her missing, when he pulled into his driveway and dropped his jaw. "Riley?" He jumped from the car and ran to hug the red head on his doorstep.

"Uh Nick...I need to breathe." She gasped and he let up on the pressure, still not releasing her from his arms. "Damn, where the hell have you been? I was starting to get worried."

Nick finally pulled away to look at her. "You were getting worried? I've been driving around for forever trying to find you! Kiersten was about ready to castrate me for loosing you. I checked everywhere I could think of..."

Riley shook her head. "I've been here the whole time. I was going to surprise you." She stated and Nick sighed and shook his head.

"Well...I'm surprised..." He kissed her softly on the lips and she smiled.

"Kay, C'mon. I'm cooking you breakfast." She turned towards his door and waited for him to open it. Nick bit his lip and made no move to unlock it. "...Any time now." She replied not turning around. Nick chuckled and spun her towards him.

"We can't go in there."

"Well not until you unlock the door..."

"No, I mean...it's a mess."

"Nick, you are cleaner then any man I've ever met. Plus I live with like five guys...I can handle it, trust me."

"Um...no, I uh...I kinda tore the house apart after you left that day...after the bar fight."

"I already saw the whiskey, blood stain, and hole in your bedroom...how bad can it be?"

"Worse than you think..." Nick mumbled and unlocked the door. It swung open and she flicked on the light, gasping at what she saw.

"Holy fuck Nick...and after you made a mess did a tornado come through here?"

"I warned you..."

"Jesus...what the Hell..." She held up her ankle sock. "Is this mine? And what did the couch do to you that you had to beat the shit out of it?"

"Uh, yes it's yours...and, it's not necessarily what the couch did to me...as to what we did on the couch..."

"Then I don't want to see your mattress or anywhere else in your room..."

"Good. Cause I wasn't gonna show you..." Nick bit his lip and looked at her nervously. He felt like a little kid getting in trouble for doing something he had done a long time ago, that his mother wasn't yelling at him for...but giving him 'the look'.

She saw the stain on the wall and furred her eyebrows. "Is that wine?"

"Yeah, I chucked the bottle that we bought on our '2 months'..."

"Okay, change of plans..." She said, taking in a breath.

Oh shit...here comes break up #2...

"We're going to go grab breakfast at the diner, because I'm sure you're as hungry as I am, then we're going to Home Depot for stuff to fix this place up with, then we're going to buy cleaners and paint..."

"I already got most of the stuff from Home Depot. And you are not helping me fix this. This is my mess, not yours."

"Well it's my fault."

"No it's not. I was angry. This isn't your fault. Some of this had to do with cases from work and a bunch of other shit that's been buggin me." He drawled and she sighed.

"Well it is my problem because we're together...what's mine is yours what yours is mine. That's how it goes." She explained and pecked him on the lips.

"Did the doctor say you're not allowed to a lot of manual labor?"

"Yes...but I won't tell him if you don't..." She grinned deviously and Nick shook his head.

"No uh. Doctor's orders...and doctor said no."

"Well fine. I'll make you do all the physical stuff."

Nick gave her a cheeky grin and pulled her close to him. "You just wanna see me flex my muscles." He said next to her ear, in a deep throaty voice, his lips brushing her ear slightly.

"Damn straight." She chuckled and ran her hands along his back, gripping at the muscles she loved so much through his shirt.

He bent his head down to her neck and kissed her, trailing kisses along her neck and shoulders. "Say, did the doctor say you couldn't..." He waggled his eyebrows. "Do it?"

She laughed and swatted his arm playfully. "Yes actually he did."

Nick's face fell and he rolled his eyes. "Damn doctor." He cursed and kissed her neck again. "He doesn't know what he's talkin about..." He ran his hands slowly down her arms, then up the front of her shirt to cup her breast. She chuckled and pulled his hands away.

"Oh no you don't Mr. Stokes, doctors orders." She replied and pushed him away playfully. "Think of it as a cruel irony..." Nick moaned and she tugged on his hand, leading him out the door. "Now...feed me." She ordered and Nick chuckled, closing the door behind them as they left.

Three hours later, Nick and Riley stepped back into the disaster that was Nick's house. Riley sighed. "Okay, first things first, we clean up." She handed him a garbage bag and took one for herself. As she made a move to go back towards the bedroom and hallway the photograph of them that Nick had broken immediately flashed to his mind, and Nick quickly stopped her.

"Um, how about, I'll take the bedroom, hallway, and back of the house, it's the messiest. You can have the living room and front of the house." Nick replied and she nodded.

Almost twenty minutes later Riley walked back to Nick's room, holding a very broken mini radio. "Um..." She began and held up the radio and Nick looked up at her, a guilty expression covering his handsome face. "I think we need to head over to House, Home, and Living after this...you need new things Nicky." She held up the radio, a smirk on her face despite the situation. "What did your radio ever do to you?"

Nick bit his lip and scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably. "I um...when I was still angry I figured music would help me calm down..."

Riley shook her head sadly, "No, no, no...International Rules of Breaking-Up Rule #4, never listen to the radio when suffering a break up...that's when all the love songs begin to play."

Nick chuckled, "Well...it was more like songs describing what I was going through..." He chuckled uncomfortably. "Yeah, I was a little pissed at the radio..."

"Oooh...that's why when you're angry you're supposed to hang out with friends. No television, no radio, and no shopping."

"Why no shopping?"

She smiled. "Cause you'll blow all your credit cards on shoes and gallons and gallons of Ben and Jerry's...girls are not allowed to enter any stores until they are emotionally stable. Instead, they sit at home with their best girlfriends and eat low fat ice cream and pancakes while wearing their comfy pajamas and slippers, and cuddling up to a favorite blankey or a stuffed animal..."

"So...that's what you and Kiersten did after we broke up?"

"Nah, ya think I listen to the rules? Hell no, I went shoe shopping." She chuckled and Nick smiled and kissed her forehead. "Okay, okay...quit bein all smoochy, we've got work to do." She joked and pushed him away playfully. Nick smiled and shook his head.

"All business and paying hard-to-get...me likey." He waggled his eye brows and grabbed her arm, yanking her back to him. She chuckled as he backed her up and pressed her gently against the wall as he devoured her with kisses. His hands roamed down her body, exploring the well sculpted form he had missed so dearly, and he dipped his fingers inside the sides of her baggy jeans and tugged them towards his own body. He smiled mischievously, "Darlin...only you could make baggy jeans sexy."

She chuckled and replied in a throaty voice, "You should see me when that's all I'm wearin."

Nick moaned and grabbed her ass, and lifted her up so she could wrap her legs around his waist. She chuckled and pushed him away and slid back down the wall. "Nicky, there isn't anywhere we can do this...you beat the shit out of your bed...and the couch...and the floor is a mess."

"What about the shower?"

She chuckled as he continued kissing her neck and exposed shoulders and collarbone. "No...I'm not even supposed to be doing this when I'm lying down, what makes you think I can do it in the shower."

Nick groaned and pulled away, removing his hands from the sides of her hips, and pressed them to the wall on either sides of her head. "I think I'm gonna go kill your doctor."

"So long as you dispose of the evidence and hide the body where no one will ever find it. I just got you back...I don't think I could handle if you were sent to prison." She commented and ducked under his arm to get back to work. He chuckled and tied up the garbage bag he had filled with ruined items in his room.

"I'm done in here...what next?"

Almost four hours later they had patched up the holes in the walls, cleaned up the house, and all of the ruined furniture sitting on the sidewalk waiting to be picked up, and they were now laying down the tarp so they could paint the walls. Riley had changed into a pair of baggy jeans and a tiny white T shirt. It already had several oil stains, paint stains, and a few rips in it.

She had opened up the main color for the walls, it was Chinese Green. "Are we painting all the walls or just the ones we fixed?"

"...Which is all of them...so yeah. Every wall but the ones in the kitchen and the bathroom..." He answered and she nodded and began stirring the paint.

"I love painting...its fun." She stated absently and he smiled and shook his head.

"I think you like inhaling the paint fumes..." He teased and she threw a stirring stick at him.

"No, that would be Shaun...and Kiersten...and Pot Roast...and everyone else I hang out with..."

"Including you." Nick teased, taking comfort in the fact she couldn't hit him with anything else...WRONG. She took the stick with paint on the end, and swung it at him, splashing him with green paint. He yelped in surprise and she laughed at his reaction.

"Nice scream...it wasn't very manly." She joked and he flung some of the Valley Blue paint at her. She gasped in shock and threw some more paint at him. He threw some back before finally holding up his hands.

"Okay...we gotta stop or we're not gonna have any paint left to paint with." She smiled mischievously, but sighed and began piling her freshly 'painted' hair up on her head. She turned around and began pouring the paint into the tin when Nick noticed the mark on her neck. "Hey...what is that...? Is that a tattoo!" He asked and walked over to brush hid fingers over the small, black, Chinese writing.

"Yeah."

"Hm...I knew you had one on your hip...which is what again...?"

She chuckled and stood up from her position on the floor. She turned to face him and pulled down the jeans slightly to reveal the tattoo of the Zodiac sign for Scorpio in black, with a dragonfly behind it. "My zodiac sign..."

"Ah...now what's the one on your neck? I still can't believe it took me almost three months to realize it was there..."

She smiled. "It's the word 'friends' in Chinese...Kiersten has the matching one, the word 'best' in Chinese on her neck...we got 'em for our sixteenth birthdays..."

"Your parents didn't care?"

"Well, my Dad did..."

"I figured your Dad would...he's a hard ass." He replied and Riley laughed.

"Hell yeah...and I'm just like him...but my mom was like a hippy/hillbilly/redneck...so...she thought it was awesome...got one herself..." She laughed. "Then she got my dad drunk and took him out to get one so he'd quit naggin us about ours." She drawled and Nick laughed.

"Let me guess...the getting him drunk and inked was your idea wasn't it..."

She smiled deviously and looked away. "Maybe...he was so pissed at me...I got grounded for a month..."

"What are their tattoos?"

"My mom's says 'Keith' in a fancy writing with a rose wrapped around it. And my dad's says 'Hope' with a pair of wedding rings looped together underneath it. And they were my idea...so I at least get some good credit comin my way..."

"Did he get it removed?"

"Nah...he's still got it...then we talked him into getting another one. It's on the same place on his other bicep, but it's the head of an eagle. He said it made him look tough, so he went out and bought a Harley and a leather vest and became a real hard ass..."

"Whoa."

"Then my Uncle Larry got a huge tattoo on his back...you'll never guess what it was..."

"Um...a Harley?" She shook her head. "A giant cigarette?" She shook her head. "I give up."

She laughed. "A bottle of Jim Beam, a full bottle of Jim Beam."

"No he didn't!"

Riley laughed and nodded...he brought the bottle of Jim Beam with him to the tattoo parlor to numb the pain, the family tradition, but he couldn't decide what to get...eventually he decided on the bottle." Riley relayed and Nick shook his head laughing.

"Ya'll are all nuts." He declared.

She laughed. "And then my sister, Paige, she got the words 'Tommy's Girl' on her lower back, Tom is her husband, and then when she got drunk, she got a picture of a cigarette on her ankle."

"Wow...ya'll get drunk a lot...and then decide to get tattooed...hmm..."

"Don't even think about getting me drunk then getting me inked again..." She replied and Nick held up his hands in surrender. "Then each of my brothers got drunk and tattooed for their 21st birthdays..."

"So...is everyone in your family tattooed?" She nodded. "What about all your friends...besides Kiersten?"

"Um...Shaun has a pot leaf on his shoulder, Pot Roast has a pot roast on his back, um...Marty has the words 'Fuck You' in Japanese on his neck, Joey has the words 'Sex Machine' in Japanese on his neck, Jon has a riffle on his arm, and Deven has the word..." She stopped before she could finish it, finally realizing her mistake. A small smile spread across Nick's face and he raised an eyebrow.

"Has the word...Riley?"

She shook her head. "No, he's got BRAT in big black letters with a red rose between his shoulder blades..." Her spot. Whenever she hugged him, or comforted him, her hands always found their way to that spot...much like in the hospital.

Nick nodded and dipped the paint roller in the paint. "Shall we start?" He drawled and she smiled.

Riley wandered over to Nick's wall that he had finished painting and inspecting. "Hmm...you missed a spot."

"Where?" Nick asked.

She quickly put a dab of paint on his cheek and took off running. "There!" She called over her shoulder as Nick chased after her. She squealed as he gained on her. They ran in and out of rooms, around the furniture, and she jumped over the counter in his living room, only to land back in the living room. He tried to do the same, but ended up falling down, to which he grabbed her arm and pulled her down with him.

He crawled up her torso and pinned her to the floor as she squirmed and tried to get away. "Hey! No rough housing! Doctor's orders." She teased and Nick gasped and began to tickle her.

"You started it!" Nick claimed and she winced in pain.

"Ow."

Nick immediately stopped and let her get from underneath him. "Oh God Ry...I'm sorry baby. Oh Geez I didn't mean to..." An evil smile spread across her face and Nick gasped in shock. "You little liar!" He pulled her back over to him and pinned her down once again. "That wasn't nice...I felt bad."

"Aww..." She said while laughing. "I'm sorry baby...want me to make you feel better?"

"No! You'll only end up turning me on, then leave me alone..." He accused and she chuckled. "Which by your smile I'm guessing was your plan...you're not very nice to me." He accused and she smiled.

"Yeah, I know...but then I make up for it by being really nice to you."

"That's true...are you a little slutty Ms. Turner?" He teased and she swatted his arm.

"No! I'm adventurous...and only with you baby." She cupped his face and kissed him softly. Nick deepened the kiss and lifted her up so that she was pressed against him. Nick felt her nipples tugging against the material covering them, and Nick's hand slowly went from her back to the front of her shirt, and over the sensitive mound.

She gasped and Nick pulled his hand away, afraid that had been too much for her, but she pulled his head back down to hers to devour his lips with hers. Nick gently laid her down on the tarp and began to massage her breast, tweaking her nipple between his thumb and pointer finger. She moaned into his mouth and slowly ran her hands down his muscular back, gripping at his muscles.

Nick's lips traveled down her neck, when he suddenly pulled away. He moaned in misery and looked into her arousal filled eyes. "What...? What is it?" She asked, her voice thick and husky, only stirring his arousal more.

"We can't Honey..."

"Aww...come on..." She pleaded. "I won't tell the doctor..."

"No Darlin...I don't want to risk hurting you or stressing your body too much."

"You won't. It's a well known fact that sex relieves stress." She argued.

"But I don't have any more protection..." She moaned and let her hands drop from him and she pouted. He smiled apologetically. "Sorry...come on, before the paint dries..."

They had finished painting all of the walls green, with a blue trim and ceiling. Riley sighed and looked around. "Okay...I think that's enough for one day...we can finish this tomorrow. C'mon cowboy, you're stayin at my place."

Nick laughed. "Alright...but no trying to seduce me." He joked and she chuckled.

"Alright...but if you fall for my innate 'hotness', tackle me to the bed and screw me through the mattress...I cannot be held accountable." She replied and Nick laughed.

"I'll try to keep my hands off you."

"Eh, it's not the hands I'm worried about..." She teased and Nick swatted her butt as they walked out of his house.

Okay...fluff...Yay fluff... :) Now, review...it makes me happy...and I can't write if I'm not happy... (hint hint)

-Chella Belle