Introduction from the author:

I started writing this story back in early 1999, when John was being a jerk and spending all of his time with Greta and Hope/Gina.  So this story is set somewhere around that time.  I have no idea why I was writing it (other than I was pissed off at John!) but evidently I stopped writing it once I started The Exchange Variation.  However a recent revisit of all of my fanfic meant I found this, re-read it and found myself inspired to write more.

There’s not much in the way of plot and if you like your Marlena pure and devoted only to John then please don’t read on.  However, if you’ve always seen a bit of MarBo chemistry and wondered what might happen under the right circumstances, then read on.  

I don’t have any clue what is going to happen at the end of this – although I do promise it’s not going to be another 100 chapter epic!  That Marlena has a mind of her own, we’ll just have to wait and see what she does with it…

Part Un

The story starts when it was hot, and it was summer
And, I had it all, I had him right there where I wanted him
She came along, got him alone, and let’s hear the applause
She took him faster than you could say sabotage
I never saw it coming, nor would I have suspected it
I underestimated just who I was dealing with
She had to know the pain was beating on me like a drum
She underestimated just who she was stealing from

Better than Revenge – Taylor Swift

Marlena was curled up on the couch reading when the doorbell rang.  Looking up, she raised her eyebrows in surprise.  She only hoped it wasn’t John.  He had called incessantly for the first few days after she had thrown him out and she had given up answering the phone, letting the machine screen her calls.  He had made the mistake of calling at the penthouse in person only twice and both times, he had the door slammed firmly in his face.  Lately though, the frequency of the calls had waned, much to Marlena’s relief.

Dropping her book onto the sofa, she wearily stood up and smoothed her clothes.  She really hoped it wasn’t John, his begging was becoming tedious.  When she got to the door, she unconsciously ran her fingers through her hair and then turned the handle.  She was surprised to find a distraught Bo standing in her doorway.

“Bo?” His face was drawn and his eyes red rimmed as he leaned against the door frame.

“I didn’t know who else to turn to,” he shook his head sadly.

“Come in.” She took his arm and led him to the sofa where he dropped like a lead weight.  Marlena sat beside him and watched him as he sank his head into his hands miserably.

“Bo honey,” her voice was tender, “what’s happened?”

The silence lasted long minutes before he finally answered her.

“Hope’s gone,” he said quietly.  “She left me and went to Europe.”

“She *left* you?” Marlena was stunned.  She had never expected in a million years to hear that.  “Why?” she shook her head, “why would Hope leave you Bo?”

He slowly looked up at her, his eyes full of empathy and she suddenly felt sick.

“Oh,” it was little more than a whisper.

“I’m sorry Marlena,” he sighed, “John and Greta came by the boat the other day and John told Hope you had thrown him out.  He said it had helped him make a decision.  He was going to Europe to search for his past and he wanted to know if Hope wanted to come.”  He shook his head defeatedly and looked up at Marlena with brightly pained eyes.  “She didn’t even *look* at me.  She just laughed and said yes.  She packed her bags there and then and barely said goodbye.  When I asked her when she was coming back, she said she didn’t know.”

“Oh Bo,” Marlena didn’t know what to say.  At least she had been the one to end her relationship.  Although despite his protestations it didn’t seem like it was bothering John too much.  She felt a sudden stab of pain and betrayal and her eyes filled with tears.  She didn’t have to imagine how Bo was feeling, she knew only too well.

“Well,” he shrugged his shoulders, “I guess at least I know where I stand now.”

“I don’t understand it,” she shook her head, her shoulders slumped.  “That’s *so* unlike Hope.”

“Apparently not.”  Bo just felt tired now, but at least he felt momentarily comfortable.  Marlena had always been able to calm him.  “I don’t know,” his voice lightened fractionally, “I guess you could say that neither of them have been acting themselves couldn’t you?  But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re here and they’re gone.”

“No it doesn’t.” Marlena allowed herself a flash of defiance.  She wouldn’t let herself be hurt over John’s actions again.  This was *exactly* why she had thrown him out and she was just going to be grateful she had done it before he had had the chance to tear her apart any further.

“Bo, do you want a glass of wine?”

“Why not?”  He shrugged.  He had nowhere else to go.

Marlena was on her third glass of wine when suddenly a memory hit her.  It was so vivid that she gasped, as though all the breath had been knocked out of her.  They had been talking about Aremid when suddenly she remembered waking up after John had saved her from Stefano.  He had been there and he had climbed into the bed with her.  She had thought she might die of happiness right there and then.

“Are you all right Marlena?” Bo leaned over and gripped her arm.  Looking up at him with huge, shining eyes, she burst into tears.

“Hey,” in truth, he had rather expected this to happen.  He had been there, so he had been practically crying over Hope when he arrived, and he had known it would hit her sooner or later.  “Hey, it’s okay.”  Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her to him.  He felt her tears wet against his shirt, and he rested his cheek against her soft, golden hair.

It was a moment or two before he realized the effect she was having on him, but when he did, it came in a rush.  His heart was pounding as the adrenaline raced through his body.  He shook his head.  He couldn’t be thinking like this.  It wasn’t right.  He heard Marlena sniff and she pushed herself away from him.  She looked up at him, her cheeks flushed and tearstained.  Her lips were scarlet and he had to struggle with every inch of self control he had not to kiss them there and then.

For Marlena’s part, she had felt the increase in his pulse through his shirt, and the warmth and musky smell of him had a similar effect on her.  Maybe she’d had too much wine but when she looked up at him, she saw what looked like lust in his eyes and she felt a tremor vibrate through her, setting all her nerves on fire.

You can’t, a voice inside her sounded insistently.  It’s just the wine.  He’s one of John’s closest friends.  He’s Roman’s brother.  He’s been a brother to you for more years than you’d care to remember.

A blush rose in her cheeks, and she jumped back, away from him.  Some distance between them would surely restore that sense of familial relationship.  

“Uh, uhm… do you want anything to eat?  Maybe, maybe we should have something to eat,” she stammered.

“No,” Bo stared at her, his gaze intense and she felt all her emotional defenses being stripped away.  

She tore her eyes from his and stood up, but the wine rendered her balance somewhat precarious, and Bo quickly sprang to his feet to steady her.  Completely against her will, she found herself toppling into him, his strong arms enfolding her, keeping her upright.

“Hey there,” he said, quietly amused.  “Maybe you could do with something to eat though?  Or at least slowing down with the wine?”

She stared up at him, fighting it with all her might, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his velvety ones.  His arms were still around her, but she felt one of his hands slide down to her waist and the simple movement sent a thrill through her.

But still, she could say or do nothing as their gaze remained locked, for what seemed like an eternity.  Every point where he touched her felt like it was on fire and she could barely remember wanting someone this badly.  In fact she could barely remember anything at all, she was completely consumed by her sudden desire.

It was Bo’s turn now to remind himself of their familial ties to try and turn down the dial on his sudden and unexpected lust for her.  God, man.  She was married to your brother.  You’ve known her since you were practically a kid.  She’s John’s….  What was she to John now?  John was in Europe, with Hope.  He’d left Marlena all alone.  But still man.  If he was to come to his senses and come back…

And Roman?  What would Roman say, to know that his little brother was having such *impure* thoughts about the women he had loved?  That he still loved, Bo knew.

“Um,” his voice was thick with desire, but he released his arms from around her and grasped her hands.  “You should sit down.  I’ll get us something.”

He turned, awash with guilt at the physical sensations that she was arousing in him, and he fled to the kitchen.

“Pull yourself together man.  It’s Marlena.”  Marlena who you’ve always fancied, a little devil on his shoulder spoke softly.  Marlena who is gorgeous and sexy.  Marlena who is quite, quite alone.

In the living room, Marlena splashed another helping of wine into her glass and gulped down several mouthfuls.  Screw the water, she was going to need more wine if she was to get through tonight without making a complete fool of herself.  What are you thinking, Marlena?  It’s *Bo*.  He thinks of you as a sister.

But does he?  Marlena had her own little devil whispering sweet nothings in her ear.  You’ve seen the way he looks at you when he thinks no-one is looking.  You saw the way he looked at you, just now.

For a moment he had looked like he’d wanted to tear her clothes off.  And for a moment, she’d really wanted him to.

“Oh God!”  The words were nothing more than a squeak and she pushed herself from the sofa, taking her glass of wine to the window to look out over her city.  A city which she found herself once again alone in.  

“I found some chips,” Bo tossed a sharing bag of Lays on the table along with a jar of dip.  “And I got you some water.”

He held the glass out to her.

“Just put it on the table,” she told him, her voice stilted.

“He doesn’t deserve you, Marlena,” Bo told her, incorrectly surmising that she was thinking about, and upset about John.  

“I know he doesn’t,” she agreed, turning back to face him.  “But it’s hard to turn off feelings that you’ve had for so long.  Emotions aren’t like a faucet; you can’t just twist the tap and they cease to exist.”

“I know that.”  Bo sighed.  He knew that only too well.  He could no more stop loving Hope than stop breathing.  But she didn’t love him or want him any longer.  She’d made that patently clear.

Marlena shivered, the breeze at the open door suddenly cool on her skin.

“Come back and sit down,” Bo said softly.  “I won’t bite.”  At least, not unless you ask me to.

Marlena smiled, the pink blush deepening in her cheeks, and she came back to the sofa and sat facing Bo, her leg tucked underneath her but making sure there was a good distance between them.

Bo, for his part, was torn between relief and disappointment that she’d opted to leave so much space between him.  He didn’t know whether he’d be able to resist the temptation of touching her, of kissing her, if she was right next to him but on the other hand, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to resist it, if it came to it.

“Where were we?” Marlena asked, taking another glass of wine and ignoring the pleasant buzz in her head and the heaviness in her limbs.

“Aremid,” Bo reminded her.  “I don’t know how we got onto that.  Wasn’t exactly the best of times, for any of us.”

“No….” Marlena thought of John in his jail cell and how she had believed in him and supported him and risked the danger of Stefano’s attention to try and find the proof that would free him.  She thought of how Stefano had knocked her out and tried to spirit her away and how John had almost died in the gas chamber but how he had finally gained his freedom and had saved her from the clutches of that madman.  She had woken in Aremid, safe and free and with his beautiful face smiling down at her.

She had thought then that he would realise how much she loved him, when he knew the lengths that she would go to in order to save his life.  But instead, he had gone back to Kristen.  And she had been left alone.  And now he had gone with Hope, and once again, she found herself without anyone to lean on.  Anyone to trust.

Almost from out of nowhere, she started to cry again, great, powerful sobs and Bo sighed.  Gently he took her wine glass from her and put it on the table and then he shifted along the sofa until he was next to her.  Against his better judgement, he wrapped his arms around her again and felt her lean into him, her tears damp against his shirt.

He stroked her hair and murmured meaningless platitudes to her.  He wasn’t even sure what he was really saying because every sense was filled with the way she felt against him.  Her scent, the sound of her muffled sobs, the feeling of her warm, damp skin on his.

Bo was in big trouble, and he knew it. 

After a while, her sobs slowed and then stopped all together.  But he noted that she didn’t pull away.  Rather, she stayed perfectly still and at some point, Bo wasn’t quite sure if he could breathe any longer.

Then she lifted her head and pressed her cheek, hot and damp, against his.  And then it was her lips, dry and warm against the stubble on his jaw before she pulled back and looked at him with open curiosity.

Marlena wasn’t even sure what she was doing.  Well, she knew what she was doing, and she knew she shouldn’t be doing it, but really, she was acting on pure instinct.  

She had felt the pounding of his heart through his damp shirt.  She had felt the tension in his arms as he’d held her.  She knew he was fighting a battle.  So was she.  A battle they both seemed to be losing.

Would it really be that bad? The little devil whispered insidiously.  I mean, who has to know, aside from the two of you?

She knew she should stop this, but she also knew she wasn’t going to.  

Bo tried to move his arm, to pull away from her again, but suddenly it was as though he was made of lead and there was no way he could move.  God, he wanted her so badly.  He wanted to know how she felt, how warm her skin was and what color it was where it was hidden beneath her lingerie.  He wanted to know how she smelt and how she tasted.  He wanted to feel her bare skin against his.  He wanted to possess her and be possessed by her.  And what was more, he could tell by now that she wasn’t completely averse to the idea herself.

But still he fought with himself.  He hadn’t come here for this reason.  He had come to tell her about John, to keep her company, to console her and himself.  And once again, she was Roman’s ex-wife.  It wasn’t right to want her this much.  But the more he argued with himself, the louder that little voice got.  The little voice that said Why not?  She’s beautiful, she’s desirable, you’ve always fancied her like mad.  What have you got to lose?

Then slowly, as though it had a life of its own, his hand lifted to her face.  He felt her shiver as he brushed his thumb ever so lightly over her lower lip and his hand traveled to cup her cheek.  Then with slow and infinite patience, he dropped his head and brushed his lips over hers.  A tiny moan emanated from her throat as she felt the soft swoop of his kiss, the warm sweetness of his lips as they met hers for the briefest of moments.  

That sound from her ignited something within Bo and he was lost.  There was no hope of stopping this now, if there ever had been from the moment he stepped through the door.

If it was possible, his desire for her became even stronger.  All thought of Hope had long gone and all he could think about was the way Marlena felt against him and how he knew he was going to give into this and what had been one of the worst days of his life would probably end in one of the best nights of his life.

Again he moved his lips past hers with the lightest of touches and instinctively Marlena moved with him, her lips capturing his in a soft, unhurried kiss.  Again their lips parted and Bo’s fingers twined in Marlena’s scented hair as his other hand flattened against the small of her back.  He felt her fingers slide around the nape of his neck as he bent to kiss her again, pressing his lips against hers.

His body almost ached with desire as he felt her lips part gently beneath his, inviting him to explore her a little further.  Pulling back slightly, he caught her lower lip between his own, nibbling it gently.  She moaned and he kissed her again and again, taking the time to savour every moment and every new sensation.

Then, gently, he slid his tongue between her lips, the intimate gesture immediately eliciting a reaction from her as she pressed herself closer to him.  She tasted sweet to him and he continued his slow deliberate exploration even as she began her own.

Only stopping for short gasping breaths, they continued to kiss, relishing each new sensation.  Almost unconsciously, Bo unentangled his fingers from her hair and his hand traveled leisurely down to her waist.  Placing a hand on either side of her waist, he lifted her effortlessly onto his lap.  He continued to kiss her as he ran his hands down over the soft curve of her hips and around to her rear.  He felt her arms slide around his neck as she let herself slip deeper into the kiss.

Marlena herself could concentrate on little but the way this was feeling.  John had been around so little lately and when he was, their lovemaking had been so perfunctory that this was almost a revelation.  She had almost forgotten that it could feel this good to be this close to a man.

This time, when she stopped for a breath, Bo continued.  Nipping her lower lip lightly, he continued down over her chin, and along her jaw, showering her with kisses and gentle bites.  She felt her toes curling as he drew his tongue up to her ear, teasing her lobe with the lightest of flicks.  She squirmed as he played with her, his tongue, teeth and lips working in unison to drive her crazy.

Her heart was pounding, the noise hammering in her ears as his soft lips drifted downwards.  She let her head drop backwards and a sensual sigh escaped her lips as he began to work towards his goal of tasting every inch of her neck.  His tongue was warm and wet as he dipped it into the golden hollow at the base of her throat and she felt it echo in the warmth between her thighs.  God she wanted him so badly.  She wanted to know how it would feel to have him touch her, to have him inside her.

But as his lips moved downward, she pulled back, asking him to stop.  Bo suddenly felt dreadful, as though he had taken advantage of her vulnerability and he sat back, his face red.

“Marlena, I’m sorry, I don’t know….” he shook his head.  “I didn’t mean to.  I mean, I thought you wanted this….  If you don’t, I’m sorry.  It’s okay…” She looked so beautiful sitting there on his lap he could hardly stand it but the last thing he wanted to do was ruin their friendship.  She’d been kissing him back, she’d been enjoying it, he was sure of it but suddenly he was scared he’d gotten everything wrong and blown one of the most important relationships he’d ever had.

“Bo,” a small smile curled her lips, “honey, it’s okay.  I *do* want it.  I just,” she paused, wondering exactly why it was she had wanted him to stop.  Because looking at him, she found she wanted him more than ever.  “I don’t want you to stop all together, it’s..,” she shrugged, “this is all so fast.  Maybe we could just slow it down a little?”

Bo couldn’t help the boyish grin the spread across his face.

“Okay,” he nodded his head slowly, “I think we can manage that.”  Circling one arm around her waist so that she wouldn’t overbalance, he leaned forward and picked up the wine glasses from the table.  With a sexy smile, she took hers from him and held it up.

“To new pastures,” she toasted mischievously.

“And may they be ever greener,” there was a clink as the crystal met and they both took a mouthful of the amber coloured wine.

“You know,” she said, several minutes later as she sat, still comfortably ensconced on his lap, “I never would have admitted it, but I’ve always had rather a curious streak when it comes to you.  Ever since the moment when we met and you laid that kiss on me, I’ve always wondered…..”

“You’re not the only one.” Bo told her with rather a shy smile.  “I used to have fantasies about you, about seducing my brother’s wife.  Not that I ever would have,” he added hurriedly.

“And just what form did those fantasies take little brother-in-law?” Marlena asked, the effects of the wine making her more daring than usual.  Her cheeks became even more flushed as he spoke.

“Well, sometimes you used to seduce *me*,” he teased her.  “You’d slowly strip off your clothes until you were wearing nothing but lacy white lingerie.  You’d take your time about it so that you’d drive me crazy with the waiting.  Then you’d come to me….” He drifted off, mild embarrassment hushing him.

“And then what would I do?” her voice was low and husky as she slid her arm around his neck, moving closer to him.  He could see down her blouse and combined with the warm musky smell of her and the way she felt against him, it was serving to drive him crazy.

“Hmmm,” he picked up the bottle and poured some more wine into her glass, trying to stall for time as he fought to retain his self-control.  “Well,” he finally said as she took another sip, “you’d ask me to take off your slip.”

“And how did you do that?” her voice was deadly serious and he couldn’t even look at her.

“I’d slide my fingers under the straps and I’d slip them off over your shoulders and your slip would just fall onto the floor.”

“Mmmm-hmmm?” she breathed.

“Then I’d pull you onto the bed with me and I’d kiss you.” He took a gulp of his wine, willing his heart not to pound quite so hard.  “And then you’d undress me, not slowly like you’d taken off your own clothes.  You ripped off my shirt and then pulled off my jeans and my….” He could almost see it in his mind, just as he had all those years ago, and sometimes since.

“Then what would I do?” Marlena wanted to know everything.  Everything she had done to him in his fantasy, and everything he had done to her.  Her breath was warm against his ear and he had to close his eyes for a moment and think of baseball.

“Uh, then you’d start kissing me,” he grinned.  “You’d start at my mouth and moved downwards.” His grin broadened.  “You kissed almost as good in my fantasies as you do in real life.”  Marlena giggled involuntarily even though his talk of kissing had her wanting to taste him again.  But, calling on her utmost self-control, she spoke again.

“And then what would I do to you?” she felt her breathing become slightly ragged as she asked the question.

“You’d move down over my chest and my stomach, kissing me and then you’d uh….,” he blushed as he looked up at her.

“Oh,” she couldn’t help the cheeky smile that dawned on her lips as she realized what he meant.  “I would, would I?” she looked at him from beneath thick lashes.  “And was I good?”

“Oh yeah,” he nodded enthusiastically.  “You were always *great*.”

“So,” she shifted on his lap, bringing her feet up so that she was leaning against him.  “Is that where the fantasy ended?”

“Not always,” he raised his eyebrows roguishly.

“Well, what happened next?” there was an unmistakable demand in her quiet voice.

“Next,” he dropped his hand onto her thigh and began to make lazy circles with his thumb on the stiff denim fabric that covered her inner thigh.  “Well, next you’d move up until you were straddling me, my stomach,” he corrected, “and then you’d ask me to take your bra off.”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” she nodded, staring at his lips, almost willing him to kiss her.

“So I would,” his voice was deep as he imagined how she might look now with no clothes on.  “I’d reach up and unhook the back of it and you’d slip it off and throw it behind you.”

“And then what?” she was so close he had to struggle with the temptation to throw her on her back on the sofa and tear her clothes off her there and then.

“You looked amazing,” he shook his head, “and I’d want you so badly that I couldn’t wait so I’d roll you over on the bed and I’d began to kiss you.”  She didn’t say anything, just flushed slightly and he continued.  “And I’d slide down the bed and begin to kiss your breasts.”  His hand on her thigh became a little tighter.

“Oh,” she said faintly, “I bet that felt good.”

“If I remember rightly,” he had a half smile, “you were pretty vocal about your enjoyment in all my fantasies.”

Marlena smiled and she began to play with the hair at the nape of his neck with her fingers.

“Did you use your tongue?” she asked breathily, highly enjoying this electrically charged game they were playing.

“And my teeth,” he nodded, noting that she was upping the stakes.  And if she was going to up him, he would enjoy seeing her.  “I would lick and bite you,” he continued, “and I could feel you getting damp through your panties.”

Marlena sucked in a breath, wondering if she was going to be able to make it to the end of this.  It was becoming a competition to see who could hold out longest and her strength was failing fast.  Taking another mouthful of wine to fortify herself, she continued.

“I was still wearing my panties?”

“Not for long,” Bo conceded.  “You would be moving against me, driving me crazy, so I’d remove them rather swiftly.”

“Mmmmmm,” she licked her lips rather deliberately.  “And how would I react to that?”

“Oh, you moaned,” her fingers were skittering over the back of his neck and it was distracting him, driving him almost as crazy as the memory of the fantasy he was relating. 

“Did I moan your name?” she asked with a smile, knowing the effect she was having on him.

“Mmmm-hmmm,” he nodded his head as he slipped his hand between her thighs.  Moving downwards he was rewarded by a shiver from her.  “Especially when I moved between your legs.”

Marlena had to close her eyes and swallow, she was feeling so dizzy.

“Ah,” she paused, trying to bring her breathing under control, “tell me how it felt.”

“You were soft and wet and incredibly warm,” God he wanted to kiss her so badly.  He wanted to do more than kiss her.  He wanted to undress her and make love to her over and over.  “And you tasted so sweet.  And you’d move your hips in this rhythm that made me want to take you there and then.”

“So what did you do?” she whispered against his ear.

“I’d just continue because I knew what I was doing to you.  And finally you’d give in and you’d make me stop.”

“I would?” she grinned.  “Now why would I do that?”

“Oh you had a pretty good reason,” he nodded a glint in his eyes as he lifted his hand to her lips and traced their outline with his finger.  “You’d tell me you wanted me.  That you wanted me to make love to you.”

“That was awfully ladylike of me,” she said in a dangerously teasing tone.

“Wasn’t it?” he raised his eyebrows as she caught the tip of his finger gently between her teeth and moistened it with her tongue.  “But I’d make you wait,” he said as he ran his wet finger along her lower lip.

“You would?” his finger was tracing her jaw line now.  “And did I like that?”

“I think you were frustrated,” he said as he watched his finger intently as it ran down the smooth skin of her neck and along her fine collarbone to the base of her throat.  “You would beg me to make love to you.”

“Was I still being ladylike?” she asked curiously.

“Not particularly,” he replied with a sexy smile as his finger traced the neckline of her blouse.  

Marlena trembled as the images he was creating in her head combined with what the merest touch of his finger was doing to her.

“So, you’d give in?” she asked shakily.

“Actually if I remember rightly, most of the time you took control of the situation.  You’d push me onto my back and straddle my hips,” she squirmed on his lap and it almost sent him through the roof.  If she dragged this out much longer they were both going to be in serious trouble.

“Oh,” she grinned as she swung one leg around so that she was straddling his thighs and facing him.  “Kinda like this you mean.”  Bo cleared his throat, trying desperately to restrain himself.  She was way too much to handle.

“Ah yeah.” He nodded his head, trying not to look down her blouse at her cleavage.  “Kinda like that.”

“And would I tease you back?” she asked wickedly as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Um, mmmm,” he closed his eyes as she moved her hips against him almost imperceptibly, “yeah, you, ohhhh,” he opened his eyes, “Christ Marlena, stop that!”  

Marlena grinned in triumph before she dropped her head to his, taking his mouth in a lustful kiss that had them both gasping for breath.  Bo reached up and buried his fingers in her thickly luxuriant hair and he brushed his lips across hers quickly before biting her lower lip.  She moaned as the pain transmitted fire through the nerves of her body.

Roughly Bo pulled her head back and began to assault the sweet flesh of her throat, kissing and sucking on the flesh, leaving small red welts behind as he went.  Marlena could do nothing but acquiesce to him as he moved further down, ravaging the exposed area of skin above her blouse in much the same way.  

Finally , her released his grip on her, sliding his hands down her back to her buttocks.  Marlena brought her head up to find Bo’s tongue dipping into her cleavage.

“Bo honey,” she whispered,  “take me upstairs.  I’m going to take you to bed.”

Bo looked up at her and he could only nod.  Cupping his hands under her rear, he stood, taking her with him.  Marlena in turn wrapped her legs around his hips and moaned as he kissed her.  Taking it slowly as he could barely see where he was going, Bo carried her up the stairs to the bedroom, pausing for slow, hot kisses as they went.

Finally, they reached the bedroom and Marlena twisted the knob for him to open the door.  He carried her in and finally they reached their goal, the bed.  Bo set her down on the bed slowly, so that she was on her back and lowered himself on top of her.

“I’d ask if this was what you really wanted but I think you already answered that question,” he murmured before kissing her again.

“I think so,” she said, her head swimming as his tongue once again collided with hers.  He moved on top of her and she could feel him hard against her.  “But I want you to just stay here a minute.”  She wriggled out from beneath him and he looked up in confusion as she slipped off the bed.

“Marlena, what-?”

“There was one thing you didn’t tell me about your fantasy,” she said as she stood facing him, “you never told me what I was wearing before I started to take my clothes off.”

He looked at her for a moment and blinked.  Then a slow smile dawned across his face.  

“Usually you were wearing whatever I had seen you in that day.”

“Well, that’s pretty handy isn’t it?” she bit the inside of her cheek to stop from laughing at his expression.  He looked like a boy who had just entered a candy shop with a thousand dollars in his hand.  “So tell me what I take off first.”

“Your blouse,” he managed to croak as he watched her, illuminated by the small lamp behind her.  With a mysterious smile she slowly undid the buttons one by one until the white cotton shirt hung open.  Then slowly, she reached up and slipped it over her shoulders, allowing it to fall to the floor.

“Sorry, no slip today,” she said with gleaming eyes as she stood there in jeans and a white lace bra.  “Now the jeans?”

“Mmm-hmmmm,” Bo managed as, taking her time, she unbuttoned her jeans, slipping each button slowly out of it’s hole and then lingering before repeating the movement.  When they were undone, she hooked her thumbs inside the waistband and worked the denim down over her curvy hips.   Slowly undulating her hips, she wiggled out of the jeans, finally kicking them away.

Slowly, she walked toward him.

“So what next?” she asked rhetorically as she stood in front of him.  Reaching up, Bo placed the palms of both hands on her shoulders.  Then slowly, almost as if he was worshipping her, he drew his hands down over her breasts, down to her belly.  The continued over the soft curve where her waist swelled into her hips and then he slid them around to her rear.  With a sharp tug, he pulled her down on top of him.

“You are quite something,” he whispered before he kissed her. 

Marlena ran her fingers through his closely cropped hair as he began to ravish her chest.  Rolling her over, he ran his tongue along the line of her bra, dampening the lace as he went.  She moaned and he responded by moving further down, sucking at her nipple through the thick lace.  She arched her back and held his head to her as he continued to explore her, experimenting with the way he could make her sigh or moan with each little movement.

Then he blindly moved up again over her reddened skin until he found he mouth.  They kissed as though they were both drowning, unable to get enough of each other.  Their lips met again and again in bruising, crushing, breathless kisses.  Marlena groaned as she felt Bo’s hips moving against her and she knew she had to take control or they would lose themselves before the fun really started.  Quickly, she pushed Bo with enough strength that he found himself on his back on the bed.  Marlena quickly swung her knee over him so that she was straddling his thighs.  Sitting back on her heels, careful not to touch anything but the side of his thighs, she looked down at him from heavy lidded eyes.

Bo had a sudden revelation as he looked up at her.  This was *Marlena*, his sister-in-law, a woman he had admired and loved since he had met her.  She was also a woman who he had secretly desired and had fantasies of bedding.  But he had never, in his wildest dreams imagined that it might actually happen, or that she would be quite so…. seductive.

He could see why this *shouldn’t* happen, he could think of a hundred reasons why it shouldn’t.  But he knew it would, and the main reason was this woman on top of him was so damn gorgeous and sexy that there was no way he could say no to her.  Even if he wanted to.  Which he definitely didn’t.  He was going to have her, and he was going to take her so hard that tonight she would forget that the moronic John Black even existed.  Tomorrow would be soon enough to deal with any repercussions.

His thoughts melted away as Marlena bent slightly and grasped the lapels of his shirt in her hands.  Then with a ripping motion she tore the front of the shirt open, sending buttons flying.  Pulling the shirt, she brought him into a sitting position from where he quickly shrugged off the ruined cotton.  Then she pushed him back down on the bed and sat on his legs, just above his knees so that she was pinning his lower body to the bed.

“I know you said I did this quickly,” she said breathily, “but,” she slid her hands up over his thighs.  But I want to savour this.   Bo gasped and panted as she brought her hand up over the hardness that was confined by the jeans.  She began to rub him ever so gently, smiling as he closed his eyes, his head rolling to one side.

“Feel good?” she whispered.

“Mmmmmm,” Bo bit his lip hard as his hips strained upwards almost of their own accord.  She was driving him crazy and if she didn’t stop that soon….

Luckily, she took pity on him and did stop it, and she carefully unzipped his jeans and worked them down round his hips.  Leaving them for a moment, she sat up on her heels again and leaned forward.  She cupped his jaw as he watched her, her thumb on one side and her fingers on the other.  She was on all fours as she leaned down to kiss him.  Her grasp was firm on his jaw and she was completely in control as she gently grazed his lower lip with her teeth before crushing her lips against his again.  Her tongue snaked into his mouth, demanding his attention as she plundered him.

Finally, she swept her lips away from his and across his roughened cheek to his ear.  She played with it momentarily, like he had played with her, flicking her tongue back and forth across his earlobe and dipping it into his ear.  He moaned as she gently bit his tender lobe and then continued to use her teeth down his neck and throat, torturing him with wet kisses and sharp nips.

She looked down at his chest and smiled.  He was different from Roman in that respect at least.  His chest had a covering of fine hair, not as thick or coarse as John’s, but he was definitely well covered.  She brought her fingers down over his well muscled pectorals and heard his heady whimper as she brushed over his nipples.  Leaning over his chest, she flicked her warm tongue over one.  She was rewarded by an agonized sigh and she took the small brown nub between her lips, sucking gently on it.  

Bo did nothing but lie there and make small noises in his throat as she teased first one and then the other nipple with her tongue and teeth.  She was becoming quite impressed with his staying power and she noted that the comforter on either side of them was becoming quite creased as it was caught up in increasingly tighter handfuls.

Bo, in fact was trying to think of baseball, blizzards, Kristen in her underwear, anything that might dampen the arousal he felt.  Because this woman was managing to elicit sensations that he had never even dreamed of.  Every movement she made, every lick, every bite set all the nerves in his body screaming so that he could feel *everywhere* she touched him and then some.  It was like he had parts of his body that he never even knew existed and she was firing them up with the simplest of touches.

Moving downwards, Marlena ran her tongue over the grooves of his tight abdominal muscles, loving the slightly salty tang of him.  Finally she was brought to a halt by the waistband of his boxers and she knew it was time to complete her task of undressing him.  With a little help from him, she pulled the jeans off his long, brawny legs, and then removed the boxers.

“Oh Bo,” she breathed.  She had expected him to be impressive, but he was absolutely beautiful without any clothes on.  The phrase a Greek God, as corny as it was, could have been coined for him.

“Marlena,” he was looking at her now, with a fierceness in his eyes, “I think you’d better skip the next part of the fantasy, because if you don’t,” he shook his head, his eyes wide, “it’s all over.”  Marlena looked slightly disappointed.

“Not even a little?” she asked.

“Not even *slightly*,” he shook his head, trying to rid himself of the image of this blonde goddess going down on him.

“Okay,” she nodded in acquiescence, making a mental note to store that particular fantasy away for future reference.  “Well then,” she moved up and threw her leg over him again so that she was sitting on his stomach.  He could feel that she was damp through her panties and he almost lost it.

Marlena waited for him to regain his composure before she made her next move.  Taking both of her hands in his, she lifted them up to her chest, laying them over her breasts, only the lace separating him from her warm flesh.  He immediately began to massage her through the fabric and she whimpered, arching her back and rolling her hips against his abdominal muscles.

“Take off my bra,” she commanded in between short breaths.  Bo obeyed immediately, undoing the small hooks at the back and allowing her to discard the bra.

“Oh boy,” he sighed as looked up at her.  “You are the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.”  It wasn’t a mere platitude.  He really never had seen anyone more beautiful.  Especially looking as she did now, like a fallen angel that was here just for him.  

He reached up and cupped a hand around each breast, rolling a nipple under the pad of each thumb.  Marlena barely heard him as she closed her eyes and pressed her lips together, allowing only a faint “mmmmm” to escape.

“Come here,” Bo pulled her down towards him so that he could get his mouth on her breast.  Kissing them first, he finally acceded to his own desire and took one of her nipples into his mouth.  He began to suck on it rapaciously, bringing forth a steady stream of moans from Marlena, as he became rougher in his treatment of her.

She was so caught up in the sensations that she was completely unprepared when he flipped her onto her back.  Her eyes flew open and he looked up her and laughed. 

“Don’t get too comfortable,” he teased her before he bent his head to her again.  As he said he did in his fantasies, he continued to use his tongue and teeth on her, whipping her arousal higher and higher.  Marlena held his head to her and almost unconsciously, she mimicked what he had told her earlier.  Wrapping her legs around his waist, she began to rock her hips, pressing herself against him in a slow, sensual rhythm.  And as he said he would, Bo unentangled himself from her and kissed his way over the soft curve of her stomach until he met the lace edge of her panties.  Hooking a finger in either side of the offending garment, he stripped them off her and threw them over the bed.

And then Marlena was totally naked, and lying on the bed, bathed in the golden light from the lamp across the room.  Bo grinned, and lifted one leg.  Starting at the inside of her knee, he kissed and brushed his tongue gently up the inside of one thigh.  She was trembling by the time he reached the top, but he extended her torture by repeating his procession up the inside of the other thigh.

It was Marlena’s turn to grip the comforter as he gently spread her legs and began to explore her.  She gasped as his tongue slipped easily inside her, tasting her, teasing her.  She lifted her hips slightly and his tongue moved deeper, seeking complete intimacy, moving in and out of her at a steady pace.

Then, suddenly, he withdrew and moved his aim slightly higher.  She let out an involuntary squeal as he hit his target and began to massage her with his tongue.  She whimpered deep in her throat and began to move her hips against his mouth.  Her hands held his head against her as her breathing shortened into shallow pants that were interspersed with wanton whimpers, but as Bo felt her building to a crescendo, he pulled away and she gave a frustrated moan.

He waited a few moments until he felt she had settled some and then he dipped his head back down and took her again with his mouth.  She gasped and her hips jumped instinctively.  Again, he teased her towards a climax, only stopping as she neared the edge, leaving her whimpering in frustration, knowing on some level that this was his revenge for how she had teased him earlier.

Part of her liked this unspoken competition, it was exciting and sexy and it promised much.  She would have probably liked it even more if she didn’t so desperately want to have him inside of her.

It was on the third time around that she managed to pull her thoughts into a coherent enough stream that she could push him away from her.  Her eyes were blazing with wanton lust as she looked down at him.

“Bo,” she demanded his attention through short breaths.  He looked up at her.  “Bo, I need you…”

“You need me to what?” he raised his eyebrows teasingly.

“I need you to make love to me.” She let her chest rise and fall with her breaths.  “I need to feel you inside me.”  Bo said nothing, only smiled and bent his head back down to her.  She tasted as sweet as she had in his dreams and she began to move against his mouth again, her hips rolling in a slow, sensual rhythm.  Her head turned to the side and she clutched the comforter in her hands.

“Dammit Bo,” she groaned before she panted for breath again.  “Oh Stop, stop.”

“What do you want, gorgeous?” he asked her in a silky soft voice.  “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“Oh God,” she was almost sobbing, “I want you.  I need to feel you.  Please.”  

Bo stopped his ministrations and slowly crawled up so that his body was covering, but not touching hers.  Taking her arms, he raised them above her head, effectively pinning her to the bed.

“Tell me what you want me to do to you, Marlena,” there was a quiet demand in his voice and Marlena knew what he wanted to hear from her.  She blushed slightly but then she felt his lips brush over hers with the lightest of touches and she knew she would do anything he asked of her.

“I want you to fuck me,” she whispered as his skin burned on hers.  It was years since she had talked dirty with a lover, it wasn’t John’s thing, but she had loved to do it with Roman.  Bo had more in common with his brother than he would ever know, she reflected in fragmented thought.

Bo rested his forehead against hers as he moaned softly.  Marlena allowed herself a small smile before she felt his body lower onto hers.

“Fuck me baby,” she begged quietly, lifting her hips to his, “I need to feel you inside me.  I need to fuck me, hard.”

Bo opened his eyes and found her golden ones staring back at him.  He wanted her so badly he could taste it, but he was suddenly afraid she would be disappointed in him.  Seeing the sudden hesitation in his eyes, Marlena reached up and took his face between her hands and gently parted his lips with her tongue.  Her eyes were still open and as he kissed her, he could swear he saw beyond her body into her soul.  She shivered a little and then she ran her nails down his back to his buttocks.

“Fuck me Bo,” she said firmly and he could no longer resist her.

Raising his hips a little, he moved until he could feel her moist warmth against the head of his cock.  Marlena gasped as she felt him and  she lifted her hips until they met his.

“Oh Bo,” she whimpered, “oh, oh…”  With a groan of his own, he pressed into her, eagerly sliding into her damp warmth.  Her throaty groan told him that she appreciated it as much as he did and  he swallowed, wishing he could capture this moment for eternity to replay it.  The whole evening had led up to this and only now did he realize how much he had always wanted her.  Everything about her was perfect, she was the most exquisite mix of angel and whore he could imagine.

Slowly, he moved out of her and then he thrust powerfully back into her.  She gasped and then moaned, her nails digging into his rear as he repeated the motion.  He felt her feet lift from the bed and her hands moved back up his back, her nails leaving red welts in their wake.  Then her thighs gripped his hips and she wrapped her legs around him, her ankles crossing over his rear.

Her body was moving with his as he thrust into her, their movements becoming rapid in a matter of moments.  They had wanted each other so badly all evening there was no hope of savouring the moment.  Instead, they moved together swiftly, the moisture from their bodies combining, skin sliding over skin, sighs and moans mingling in the still air.  Marlena could feel him inside her, pounding, thrusting, battering until she couldn’t even think.  Digging her fingernails into him, she began to emit agonized pants, whimpers that coincided with every thrust that Bo made and the feel and sound of her just about drove Bo crazy.  He wanted to make her come so badly he could hardly stand it.  He wanted to know how she felt, he wanted to see the pleasure he brought her, even if it was just for a moment.

“C’mon baby,” he whispered, “show me how much you’re enjoying this. I want to hear you when you come.”

“Oh God,” tears slid from the corner of her eye as she clung to him, “Oh God Bo…*Bo*….Oh…mmm,” he was filling her completely, possessing her as she came, the long wait intensifying the heady rush.  “Oh,….*oohhh*.”  It was as though her body was flooded by fire as she submitted to him completely, allowing the orgasm to utterly consume her.

Bo watched her as the first waves overtook her, her face transmitting the waves of agonizing pleasure, but it was her voice that brought him to his own orgasm.  The pleasure that flushed her velvety voice tripped something within him and with one final thrust, he came, deep within her, filling her with his own moist heat.

Trying to find her breath several minutes late, Marlena kissed Bo’s shoulder gently and pushed the short, damp hair off his temples with her fingers.

“I thought I was supposed to be the one who ended up on top,” she whispered contentedly.

“Maybe next time,” he managed an exhausted grin before he rolled off her.

“I think I like that idea,” she murmured as he tried to pull the corner of the comforter over them.  She giggled as it sprang back, and he looked at her with a grin.

“Just give me a few minutes okay?”

“Oh, after that little performance I’ll give you all the time you want, honey,” her smile was full of mischief and she edged up the bed, allowing Bo to pull back the covers.

“Well, if you have the time, I have plenty of ways to fill it,” he promised her with a glint in his eyes as he pulled the comforter over them.”

“Is that a promise?” Marlena yawned as she snuggled into his arms.

“It’s absolutely a promise, gorgeous,” he murmured into her hair as he tenderly brushed the damp bangs from her forehead and kissed the warm skin there.

By the time his lips left her skin, she was already asleep.

Part Deux   

I said, “No one has to know what we do”
His hands are in my hair, his clothes are in my room
And his voice is a familiar sound
Nothing lasts forever but this is getting good now

He’s so tall and handsome as hell
He’s so bad but he does it so well
And when we’ve had our very last kiss
My last request it is

Say you’ll remember me standing in a nice dress
Staring at the sunset, babe
Red lips and rosy cheeks
Say you’ll see me again
Even if it’s just in your wildest dreams, ah-ha
Wildest dreams, ah-ha

Wildest Dreams, Taylor Swift

Marlena’s eyes fluttered open, and she found herself staring into the honeyed brown of Bo’s eyes.

“Mornin’” he greeted her with an irrepressible smile.

“Morning,” she stretched languidly next to him, easing the stiffness out of her muscles.  He pushed a lock of hair out of her eyes, and she grinned happily.

“Sleep well?” he inched closer to her, wanting to smell her scent and feel the warmth of her skin next to his.  He had woken this morning expecting to find that he had simply dreamed last night.  But after several moments, all his senses had registered her presence and he had opened his eyes to find her sleeping next to him.  He had spent the following half hour just staring at her, trying to make the most of this sinfully sensual development.

“I slept *wonderfully*,” she replied truthfully.  She couldn’t remember the last time she felt this relaxed, or this satisfied.

“Well,” Bo lightly ran his fingers down her arm, watching the way they left gooseflesh in their wake, “I think…”  

His words were cut off by the shrill ring of the phone and Marlena rolled her eyes as she reached over to pick up the receiver.

“Hello?” she put her finger gently to Bo’s lips to ensure he didn’t say anything and give himself away to the caller on the other end.  Bo nodded and lay back on his pillow, watching her as she talked.

It was Abe on the line, and he told her he needed to see her.  What’s more, he would be around in fifteen minutes.  Bo listened as Marlena tried to put Abe off, she was obviously more interested in spending the day engaged in *other* activities, but he insisted it was important.  Eventually Marlena put down the phone and turned to Bo.

“It looks like we’re going to have company,” she said regretfully.

“I’m sure that I can hold out,” Bo told her with a sly grin, “just don’t make any plans for the rest of the day, okay?”

“Mmmmm, are you propositioning me Bo Brady?” she asked in a throaty voice.

“You bet,” he grinned again and reached out with his index finger, skimming it over her bruised and swollen lips.  She tried to repress her smile, but he drew it out as he dusted her nose with a light kiss.

“Mmmmm-hmmm,” she sighed as she ran her fingers admiringly over his chest.  “I’m going to have to try and get rid of Abe *quickly*.”

“Why don’t you,” he pulled her hand away from him and drew it up to his lips, planting a kiss in her palm, “hold that thought.”  He threw the covers and ushered her out of the bed.

As she showered and got dressed, Marlena was somewhere between delighted and horrified to find that her neck was a mass of bruises from Bo’s vigorous assault the previous night.  In return, she hadn’t been quite as brutal.  Although he did have a couple of tell-tale marks, they were under the collar of his shirt and easy enough to hide discretely.  She, however, was reduced to wearing a scarf around her neck and tucked into the front of her white shirt, to hide the hickies.  Still, Bo teased her mercilessly as they made their way down the stairs and she made a silent vow that she would pay him back in kind, and soon.

Their timing was impeccable, Abe ringing the doorbell just as the kettle boiled.  Marlena opened the door and invited him in, urging him to sit down and Abe was more than surprised to see Bo emerge from the kitchen, carrying a tray of tea.

“Bo came around to see how I was doing now that John has gone,” Marlena said by way of explanation.  It wasn’t strictly a lie, after all.  

Abe looked at her, and then at Bo, his expression betraying the fact that he was suspicious.  He knew Marlena well; he’d known her for more years than he cared to remember, and he’d known her when she was married to Roman and then John.  He’d interrupted them too many times not to know that ‘freshly-fucked’ look.  There was something going on here and it was more than a friendly, brotherly visit.  But really, he couldn’t dwell on that now.  He was here for a reason, and it wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation.

Taking a cup of tea from Bo, he turned to Marlena and began to tell her of the events of the previous evening.  

Marlena’s face paled as Abe grimly told her what had happened when Roman had confronted Kate with the truth he had learned about Franco’s murder, how Sami could not have pulled the trigger that fired the fatal shot.  She would have had to have gunpowder residue on her hands for that and the belated test results revealed that she did not.  Instead, Roman surmised, it was Kate’s own son, Lucas that had killed Franco when he threatened Kate.  In desperation, the unhinged woman had pulled a gun on him, warning him to stay away from her family.

Roman, furious that she would let *his* daughter go to jail, or possibly even to the gas chamber for a crime Kate’s son had committed, had reached for the gun.  But Kate had been faster, and she had fired, at point blank range.  Roman had been rushed to hospital but his wounds were horrific, and he had lost too much blood.  He had died in theatre several hours ago.

Marlena gasped in horror when Abe told her, and Bo was quick enough to catch her cup before she dropped it on the ground.  He slipped behind her on the sofa and took her hand discretely in his as Abe continued.

“That’s not all, Marlena.”  He frowned and looked down at his own cup.  It had been too weird for him to comprehend at first.  But then, this was Salem and Stefano, and the ISA were both involved.  He guessed anything was possible.

“What more could there possibly be?” Marlena didn’t know if she could cope with anything else.  

“Marlena, when they were doing the autopsy,” Abe paused and looked up at Bo.  He looked almost as distressed as Marlena.  Maybe it was as well that they were both here when he told them.  “Well, they came across something.  Marlena,” he put his cup back on the table, “that man wasn’t Roman.  There was no way he could possibly *be* Roman.”

“What do you mean?” Marlena’s voice was strained, and her eyes bore into him.  “How could he not be Roman?  Shane *told* us he was Roman.  There was no doubt.”

“Shane was misinformed,” Abe said as gently as he could.  “I don’t know what kind of game they are playing, but that man that died tonight was not Roman.  He was an imposter.”

“Why? What?” she was desperately searching for words, and she was grateful for Bo’s solid presence behind her.

“I don’t know,” Abe sighed and shrugged his shoulders.  “What I do know was when they did an autopsy, they found that he had some sort of computer chip implanted in his brainstem.”

“Abe this is *insane*,” Bo finally spoke, putting voice to the thoughts that had been running through both his and Marlena’s minds.  “How the hell are we supposed to believe them *this* time?  These people are playing games with our lives.  How are we supposed to believe anything they say?”

Marlena was simply stunned, and she leaned against Bo for support without even knowing it.  He slid his arm around her and held her as she looked at Abe again.

“Well, if *he’s* not Roman then….”

“I’m so sorry Marlena,” Abe shook his head, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep and grief.  “It *was* his body we buried last year.”

“So, all this time…” she shook her head, her eyes burning brightly.  “Is this someone’s idea of a sick joke?”

“I wish I knew,” Abe was exhausted, this was taking its toll on him too, mentally and emotionally.  He had been awake almost all night and he couldn’t see himself getting to bed any time soon.

“Do Mom and Pop know?” Bo asked suddenly.

“Yes,” Abe nodded, “I called on them as soon as we found out.  They tried to call *you*, but they didn’t get any answer.”

“We should go to them,” Marlena’s reaction was immediate, completely ignoring Abe’s intimation.  She had nothing to feel guilty about, after all.

“Do you feel up to it?” Bo squeezed her hand.

“I’ll be fine,” she managed a watery smile.  “I need to make sure they are all right.”

“Yeah,” Bo nodded.  “I think we should.”

They said their goodbyes to Abe, thanking him for coming over to break the news and ushered him out of the apartment.  Marlena closed the door behind her and turned back to Bo, her eyes filled with tears.  She didn’t say anything, just shook her head and Bo caught her up in his arms, hugging her to him with passionate grief.  He was just as devastated as she was and they clung together, both crying, for what seemed like endless moments.

Finally, Marlena pulled back and brushed at her cheeks with the back of her hand.

“I’m sorry Marlena,” he shook his head in disbelief.

“So am I,” she said softly as she wiped his tears away gently with her fingers.  “We both loved him, and we both wanted him back so badly.  It’s easy to believe when you *want* to believe.”

Bo looked down at her and her shimmering hazel eyes made his heart ache.

“I think we’ve both been guilty of being blind to the truth for too long now,” he said softly.  “About a lot of things.”  Marlena nodded and wrapped her arms around his neck, resting her head against his chest while she tried to gather herself.

It was an hour or so later that they finally made it to the pub, where the family gathered, wrapped in a numb, heavy silence.  If they were surprised when Bo and Marlena entered together, they didn’t show it.  They just stood to welcome and hug their family.

“Caroline, I’m so sorry,” Marlena shook her head, tears filling her eyes again.

“It seems too cruel to be true,” Caroline shook her head, “but then I don’t know why I expect anything else from the DiMera’s.”

“I don’t know why we weren’t more damn suspicious from the start!”  Shawn shook his head frustratedly.  He had had more than enough of his family being torn apart.

“I don’t have any answers,” Marlena sank into a chair and shook her head defeatedly.  “I really don’t.”  Carrie frowned and covered her stepmother’s hands with her own, sealing a temporary truce between them.

“I’m sorry Marlena,” she said softly.

“So am I, honey,” she nodded with a small smile.

Caroline looked around in confusion and then turned to Marlena.

“Where’s John, dear?” she asked.  “I would have thought he’d be here.”

“Well, you *would* think so wouldn’t you,” Marlena said, a mite bitterly.  “But no, apparently John has *better* things to do than spend time with a family that needs him.  He’s somewhere in *Europe* searching for *his* past.  I guess he didn’t feel it was necessary to inform me that he was going since we’re not together anymore.”

“You split up?” Caroline was shocked.  “And he left for Europe without telling you?”  Could this day possibly get any worse?  

“Correction Mom, he left for Europe *with* Hope.  And Greta.” Bo corrected as he sat down in the chair next to Marlena.

“With *Hope*?” Kimberley looked horrified, having seen the way that Hope was looking at John just a couple of days earlier.  Bo shrugged.  “Don’t ask me, sis.  All I know is John and Greta came over and Hope was only too happy to leave.  I wasn’t invited and nothing I could say would stop her.”

“Oh Bo,” Caroline shook her head as Bo’s meaning became clear.  As far as he was concerned, it was over between him and Hope.

“Hey well, I guess I kinda brought it on myself huh?” Bo tried to be philosophical about the situation.  “But I can’t understand John.  He always adored Marlena.  Nothing was more important to him.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Marlena looked mildly surprised.  “Actually, stepping back from the situation has made me realize that the only thing that is *truly* important to John, is *John*.”

“Oh, now Marlena, you know that’s not true,” Shawn’s tone was mildly admonishing.  

“Isn’t it?” Marlena looked annoyed.  “Oh, his words are all very convincing, but his actions have spoken louder time and time again Shawn.  And I am tired of seeing my children hurt every time their father puts something or some*one* else in front of them.  John can do anything he wants to as far as I’m concerned, as long as he doesn’t expect me to be there when he comes home.”  She looked around at the gathered faces and broke into a smile.  

“Oh, come on.  It’s not that bad.  Anyone would think this is the end of the world.”

“Well, it’s been rather a few shocks for everyone,” Caroline said slowly.

“I know,” Marlena nodded her head.  “I’m so sorry about Roman.  I can’t even begin to tell you.”  She looked thoughtful.  “But one good thing has come out of this mess.  That man, the one who we thought was Roman, he managed to prove Sami’s innocence, and that’s some *wonderful* news to celebrate.”  She looked around the pub.  “Where *is* Sami?”

“Austin has taken her to pick up Will,” Carrie said with a smile.

“We thought we might plan a celebration for her, but in light of all this bad news,” Caroline frowned.

“Oh, please don’t let John’s disappearance stop you,” Marlena replied earnestly.

“Or Hope’s,” Bo had a nasty suspicion where this might be going.

“No, no, no,” Shawn shook his head determinedly, “we couldn’t celebrate while the two of you are going through such a terrible time.  Maybe in a few days John and Hope will be back and we can celebrate *everyone’s* return.”

“I don’t think so,” Marlena said in a low voice.

“In the meantime, I think you and Shawn-D should come and stay with us for a few days,” Caroline told Bo.

“No Mom,” Bo shook his head, “we’ll be just fine on the boat.

“Bo, I think that boat holds far too many memories of hope for you right now.  I think you would be much better off here with your family to keep you company.”

“Mom I,” he looked helplessly at Marlena.

“That sounds like a great idea,” Carrie interrupted, “and Marlena, Sami and I will come and stay with you for a while and help with the kids.  At least until you get back on your feet emotionally again.”

“Sweetie, that’s really not necessary,” Marlena tried to argue, “I’ve been just fine for the last week….”

“No, I insist.”  Carrie wasn’t going to take no for an answer.  This was her way to make it up to Marlena for being such an ungrateful brat the past few months and she wasn’t about to let Marlena’s ‘do it alone’ attitude win out. “It’s the least Sami and I can do after everything you’ve done for us.”

Marlena’s eyes flicked to Bo’s, and they were met with a similar expression.  They were doomed.  The suffocating Brady do-gooders were going to put paid to any ideas of seeing each other.  For a while at least.

“Okay,” they finally nodded in unison.

“Good,” Caroline nodded in satisfaction, totally missing any undercurrent between her son and his sister-in-law.  The only one to pick up on it was Abe, who stood at the doorway.  After this morning, he had a very good idea what Bo had been doing at the penthouse, and he wasn’t at all sure how he felt about it.

The Brady family spent most of the day in the pub, talking, reminiscing and enjoying each other’s company.  At odd moments, Marlena would feel Bo’s hand on her knee, or his fingers entwine with hers under the table and she wouldn’t be able to help the thrill that ran through her.  Just his touch and the way he laughed was enough to make her want him, but whenever she thought of last night, she almost squirmed in her seat.

Shawn was blathering on about something completely uninteresting when Marlena couldn’t resist it any longer.  Carefully and unobtrusively, she ran her fingers up the inside of Bo’s thigh.  She smiled, ostensibly at Shawn’s boring story, but more at the fact that Bo’s face was slowly warming to a delicate shade of pink as she let her fingers wander over the hard bulge in his jeans.  She couldn’t help the grin as she realized he was just as frustrated at the situation.

Bo carefully removed her hand before turning and glaring at her.  With a sweet smile, she excused herself with the reason that she needed to use the ladies.  She had been gone several moments when Bo suddenly realized he needed something in the kitchen.  The rest of the family barely noticed his exit.

“Oh, I thought you’d never come,” Marlena murmured as he pushed her up against the fridge.  

“If you carry on like that,” he pressed himself up against her and she could feel how much he wanted her.  “Me coming is going to be the least of our worries.”  

He took her mouth ferociously, crushing and biting her lips as his tongue plundered the inside of her mouth.  His hands slipped behind her buttocks, and she could feel him moving against her.  Moaning against his mouth, she returned his kisses with equal passion, wanting to get as much of him as she could, barely thinking about the consequences.  Her fingers rifled through his hair and his day-old stubble was rough against her own, smooth skin.

With an alert ear, Bo heard footsteps nearing the kitchen and he pushed himself back from Marlena just before the door opened.  Bringing his hand up to her face, he pretended to look in one eye, praying that she had the presence of mind to go along with him.

“Nope, that must have gotten it.”

“Thanks Bo,” she nodded, her heart pounding.  “It’s feeling better already.”

Bo turned around to see Kimberley staring at them.

“Marlena had something in her eye,” he said glibly, by way of explanation.

“Uh-huh,” Kim didn’t look exactly convinced.  Neither of them looked particularly guilty, but Marlena’s mouth did look suspiciously red.

“Thanks Bo,” Marlena could barely suppress her smile as Bo looked increasingly uncomfortable.

“No problem,” Bo watched her walk out of the kitchen, the way her behind swayed making him distinctly uncomfortable.

“Well, I’d better get back in there too,” he tried to elude Kim.

“Not so fast little brother,” Kim blocked his way to the pub.  “Would you mind telling me what *that* was all about?”

“What, what?” Bo played innocent.

“You and Marlena,” Kim had her hands on her hips.

“She had something in her eye, and I got it out for her.”  It wasn’t that Bo really felt like he had anything to hide.  It was just that he knew that his family would probably feel uncomfortable about this so soon after John and Hope’s departure, and he didn’t really want them giving Marlena a hard time.  And after all, there might be nothing for them to know in a few days.  Once they got this out of their systems, whatever it was, they might go right back to their old familial relationship.  Or maybe not.  He didn’t know whether this was going anywhere, he knew it just felt good right now.

“Oh, come on Bo.  I’m not stupid,” Kim frowned.  “I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you, but it looks like a dangerous game you’re playing.  Someone will end up getting hurt, and I don’t want it to be Mom and Pop.”

“No one is going to get hurt, sis,” Bo said softly.  “It is really our business, but if it would make you happier, I’ll try and be a little more discreet.”

“Just….. be careful okay?” Kim sighed.  Of course, Bo was right.  It *was* his and Marlena’s business.  She might be able to appeal to Marlena’s sense of propriety, but Bo was going to do whatever it was that Bo wanted to do, she knew that.  But it was just such a potential minefield, given the family history.

“Always,” Bo smiled and pecked her on the cheek before exiting back to the pub.

Back at the table, one look at his face told Marlena that Kim hadn’t been fooled and that they would have to be more careful from now on.

Part Trois

All my flowers grew back as thorns
Windows boarded up after the storm
He built a fire just to keep me warm
All the drama queens taking swings
All the jokers dressin’ up as kings
They fade to nothing when I look at him
And I know I make the same mistakes every time
Bridges burn, I never learn, at least I did one thing right
I did one thing right
I’m laughing with my lover, making forts under covers
Trust him like a brother, yeah, you know I did one thing right
Starry eyes sparkin’ up my darkest night

Call it What You Want – Taylor Swift

Gina looked at John, her expression something akin to annoyance.  She had thought that getting John back to Europe would be instrumental in the return of his memories.  The memories that they shared together.  Instead, he seemed to be withdrawing from her more and more.  Right now, he was staring at a photo of the shrink and their brats with a winsome expression on his face.  Lord she couldn’t stand the way he got when he was around or even just thinking of that woman. 

 He should be looking like that at *her*.  *She* was the *Princess* after all.

She flounced across the room, her long skirt trailing behind her.

“John do you *have* to keep staring at that photo?  We are supposed to be here searching for our pasts.”

“Sorry,” John rubbed the pad of his thumb over Marlena’s face, as though the image might imprint on his skin and sink into him by osmosis.  He looked up to see Hope’s scowl and silently sighed as he slipped the photo back into his wallet.  “I guess I just miss them more than I ever thought I would.”

“Well, it’s a little *late* for that now, don’t you think?” Gina replied in a cutting tone.  “I mean, she *did* throw you out, did she not?”

“Yes.”  John’s tone was clipped.  He didn’t need reminding of that, least of all by Hope, who was starting to get on his nerves in a major way.

“Well then, what is our next move?” Gina was itching to get John out of this hotel before that whiny brat Greta made it back from the boutique.  She was so *tiresome*. Gina had decided there was no way she could be that mewling waif’s mother and had decided to ditch her accordingly.

John stood and went to the window, looking out over Lugano and sighed.

“I don’t know, Hope.  I just don’t remember anything.  I thought that being here….” He exhaled and threw the paper that he was balling up between his fingers off the balcony.  It disappeared into nothingness, and he rubbed his chin.  “Maybe this was a mistake.”

“How can it be a mistake, John?” Gina was using her best seduction voice.  It was smooth, like the purr of a cat.  “All we’re doing is looking for a past that was stolen from us.  If Marlena can’t understand that, maybe she’s not the right woman for you.”

“*Don’t* say that!” John whirled around on his heel and pushed Hope away from him.  “Marlena is the *only* woman I love…. will *ever* love.  I can’t lose her.”

Gina scowled.  This was becoming irritating to the extreme.  Well, if John wasn’t going to find his own memories, maybe she’d just have to find them for him….

*

Marlena faked a yawn.  “I think I’d better be getting home.”

“I’ve got to go and pick up some stuff from the boat,” Bo said innocently.  “Why don’t I give you a lift on my way over there?”

“Oh, it’s okay,” Sami said happily.  “Carrie is going to drop Mom and I off at the penthouse and go and get some stuff to stay for a while.”

“We thought, if it’s okay with you, we’d come by and pick up Belle, Brady and Will tomorrow when we’re settled in a little,” Carrie added for the benefit of her grandparents.

“That sounds fine,” Caroline nodded, “besides Bo, you have plenty of your own things here.  Certainly, enough to last you one night.”  She laughed and Bo tried to join in.  He was only moderately successful as he shot a look at Marlena.  She was studiously ignoring him as she gathered up her things.  It was just as well, he figured.  If he had to touch her to say goodbye it could be dangerous.

In the penthouse apartment, Marlena made sure that the girls were settled into the spare room before pleading tiredness and heading for the peace of her own room.  Her bed was still unmade, and the sheets were crumpled, and half strewn off the bed.  Bringing Bo’s pillow up to her nose, she breathed in deeply, catching a breath of his scent.

Frustratedly, she threw the pillow back down on the bed and lay down herself.  She could barely believe that she felt like this.  About her former brother-in-law.  It was insane.  But it was oh so sinfully sexy and God, she wanted him.  Just the thought of him made her tingle and when she remembered how his hot, damp skin had slid over hers as he had moved inside her, she could feel an echo of it in the warm tremor between her legs.

Running her fingers through her hair, she slowly relived last night, trying to remember the way he had felt, how he had touched her, how he had tasted.  She shook her head after a few minutes, knowing that this was doing her no good at all.

She slipped off the bed and shed her clothes on the way to the bathroom.  Turning the shower on, she waited until it was almost scalding and then stepped under it, hoping that the water would wash away her frustration along with the dirt of the day.   Finally, when the water ran cold, she turned off the faucet and towel dried her hair.  She brushed a second towel over her body and then liberally applied talcum powder to her skin.  She pulled on a thick, toweling robe around her body and then wrapped a towel around her hair before she walked into the bedroom.

She looked at the bed and realized that she was no better off now than she had been half an hour ago.  She had thought about Bo all through her shower, imagining it was his hands running over her slick body and the disheveled sheets on the bed only made things worse.

God, she couldn’t believe how absolutely obsessed she was with his body.  She had never wanted anyone this badly without being head over heels in love with them.  Always before for Marlena, sex had been wrapped up with love, it was the whole package that appealed to her and had never particularly liked the idea of a one-night stand.  But this was different.  She cared for Bo, but this obsessive wanting him, it was pure lust.  And she liked it.  A lot.

Throwing herself on the bed, she stared at the pile of books on the bookstand.  None of them looked in the slightest bit interesting.  She stared around the room and realized that she was not in the least bit tired, and there was nothing in here that might occupy her.  Maybe, she thought, the answer was to go downstairs and curl up in front of a good movie with a nice glass of wine.  Except that the wine was going to make her think of Bo.  And sitting on the sofa was going to make it worse.

She shook her head and rubbed her face with her fingers.  This was ridiculous.  She was a grown woman, a psychiatrist for goodness’ sake.  Surely, she could gain better control over herself than this.

She started as the phone on the nightstand jangled and she snapped it up off the receiver.

“Hello?” her heart was pounding.

“Marlena?” It was Bo’s voice on the other end, and Marlena prayed that neither of the girls would pick up the phone.

“Shhhh…” she waited, but there was no telltale click and she knew that they were all right.

“Bo,” she couldn’t suppress her smile. “What are you doing calling me at this time of the night?”

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” he said in a quiet voice.  “I just had to hear your voice again before I went to sleep.”

“You’re going to sleep?” Marlena sounded disbelieving.

“Okay, it’s doubtful at this point,” Bo admitted.

“We never made the bed,” Marlena said breathily.

“We didn’t think we’d need to,” Bo reminded her.

“Oh,” Marlena rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling.  “Gosh I wish you were here.”

“I wish I was there too,” Bo was in one of the small rooms above the pub, only a couple of walls away from his parents.  “I had all sorts of plans for you.”

“What sort of plans?” Marlena asked with a smile.

“Plans that will keep for another time so I’m not going to tell you.”  He rolled over on the single bed so that he was on his stomach.

“Oh, those sorts of plans, huh?”

“Exactly,” he nodded his head with a sexy smile.  “Hey gorgeous, tell me what you’re wearing.”

“What I’m wearing?” she sounded a little confused.

“I want to be able to picture you right now.”

“Oh,” Marlena twisted the cord around her finger and licked her lips.  “Well, I just got out of the shower.  I’m wearing a blue towelling bathrobe and I have a towel around my hair.”

“That’s all?” Bo sounded intrigued.

“Why,” her voice was breathy, “are you disappointed?”

“Not in the slightest,” he grinned at the image.  “It just means I have less to take off as I mentally undress you.”

“Oh,” she couldn’t help but feel slightly flustered.  She wanted his hands on her so badly she could almost feel it.

“Mmmm-mmmmm,” he rolled over on his side and closed his eyes.  “I bet you smell great.”

“If you like shampoo and talcum powder then yeah,” she laughed.

“Take the towel off your hair,” he said quietly.  “I want to imagine it, damp around your shoulders.”

“All right,” she pulled the towel off and her hair tumbled moist and fragrant over the neck of her robe.

“*Man*,” he sounded suddenly frustrated, “why did they all have to be so damn concerned?”

“Under any other circumstances we would have appreciated it,” Marlena didn’t sound entirely convincing.

“Do you have any idea how much I want you right now?” his voice had dropped to a whisper as he imagined her, lying there in her blue towelling robe.  In his mind it had fallen open to reveal one perfect thigh, and he could imagine his mouth, moving up the inside of that thigh….

“Oh Bo…” it was practically a moan.  She did have some idea.

“Sneak out and meet me,” he entreated.

“I can’t do that,” she sounded highly regretful.  “Not with Carrie and Sami here.  They might need me, with every thing that’s happened with Roman…..”

“You’re right,” Bo sighed, “I’m being selfish.”

“No,” she smiled, “you’re just being impetuous.  That’s one of the things I’ve always loved about you.  I need more of that in my life.”

“I just can’t stop thinking about you,” he breathed, and Marlena imagined she could feel the moisture of his breath against her ear.

“What are you wearing?” she asked a little shyly.  Bo grinned.

“The same thing I was wearing when you undressed me last night.  Except,” he grinned, “since you ruined my shirt, I’m wearing a red one.”  He had been wearing one of John’s but when he’d gotten up to his temporary room, he’d stripped it up, rolled it into a ball and thrown it into a corner.  Then he had pulled on an old, comfortable cotton shirt and lain on the bed  slowly and carefully reliving every moment of the previous night, his eyes closed and a smile curling his lips.

“Mmmm-mmmm,” Marlena loved him in those blue jeans.  They enhanced his considerable *assets*.  “I wish I was there now.”

“What would you do if you were here?” Bo asked mischievously.

“Hmmmm, well, I think I’d start with your shirt,” her voice was low and sexy.  “I’d unbutton it ever so slowly before I slipped it off your shoulders.  And then I think I’d kiss you and work down to your chest.”

“Yeah?” she could hear his breathing was becoming heavier and she could feel her own heart thump in her chest. 

“Yeah.” She adjusted her position on the bed so that she was laying on her back.  “Then I’d take my time unbuttoning and unzipping those jeans and if you were a really good boy….”

“Uh-huh?”

Marlena didn’t have time to answer before there was a knock on the door.

“Damn,” she cursed silently under her breath.

“What is it?” Bo asked.

“Hold that thought,” she said quietly.  Then she raised her voice.  “Who is it?”

“It’s me Marlena,” Carrie’s voice sounded behind the door.  “Can I talk to you?”

“Just a moment sweetie,” Marlena sighed.  “Bo honey, I have to go.  It’s Carrie.”

“Okay,” Bo nodded his head.  He didn’t know how much more of this he could handle anyway.  

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said quietly.  “Sweet dreams.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” there was promise in his voice.  “They’ll be sweet all right.  Night beautiful, I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”

“Oh, please do.” There was laughter in her voice as she said goodnight to him.  Hanging up the phone, she called to Carrie to come in.

“Who were you talking to?” Carrie asked innocently. 

“Oh, your uncle Bo,” Marlena wasn’t a good liar and she tried to avoid even white lies when she could.  “He just wanted to make sure that I was doing okay.”

“That’s sweet of him,” Carrie sat down on the edge of the bed as Marlena surreptitiously tried to straighten the covers a little.

“Mmmm,” Marlena nodded.

“I guess he must be the one who can most understand what you’re going through,” Carrie sighed.  

“I suppose so,” Marlena nodded. 

“I still can’t believe John walked out on you and the kids like that.  Do you really think that he and Aunt Hope have got something going on?”

“Well, he didn’t exactly ‘walk out’ on us Carrie.” Marlena reminded her.  “I asked him to leave.  It was just that he didn’t put up too much of a fight.”

“You hardly asked him to go to Europe with a woman who used to be his sister-in-law.”  Carrie argued.  “After everything you guys went through.”

“Carrie honey, I’d really rather not talk about this, if you don’t mind too much,” Marlena was tired of thinking about John, hearing about John and talking about John.  She was tired of wasting all this time on someone who had walked all over her heart, time after time.

“I’m sorry,” Carrie looked a little taken aback.  She hadn’t expected Marlena to be so calm about this.  “I was just worried about you, after the news about Dad and everything…” she shook her head, “you know, one minute your life is going along just fine and the next it’s tossed upside down.”

“I know honey,” Marlena smiled and slid over to where Carrie was sitting.  Putting her arms around her, she hugged the young woman.  “Unfortunately, we’ve had far too many opportunities to get used to that feeling.”

Carrie nodded and leaned her head against Marlena’s.  They spent the next hour or so just talking and when Carrie finally went to her own room, Marlena was tired enough that she slipped on some satin pajama’s and fell almost immediately asleep.

Part Quatre

Nice to meet you, where you been?

I could show you incredible things

Magic, madness, heaven, sin

Saw you there and I thought

“Oh my God, look at that face

You look like my next mistake

Love’s a game, wanna play?”

….

So it’s gonna be forever

Or it’s gonna go down in flames

You can tell me when it’s over (over)

If the high was worth the pain

Blank Space – Taylor Swift

The next few days were pretty much the same.  Solicitous friends overwhelmed them with concern and company, almost completely preventing Bo and Marlena from seeing, or even contacting each other, much less getting together for more ‘private’ activities.

It was Wednesday before Bo managed to sneak down to Marlena’s office, knowing that she had a half-hour break between patients.

“Hey beautiful,” he shut the door behind him and quietly turned the lock on the door.

“Hey there,” Marlena smiled as she slipped off her glasses.  “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“Mmmm, that would be *you*,” Bo moved behind her desk and cleared a space for himself so that he could perch on the edge of the wooden desk.  “I happen to know you have half an hour between patients.  And since I can’t get to see you anywhere else….” He gazed at the expanse of thigh that was revealed as her skirt rode up and a smile turned up one corner of his mouth.

“Oooh Brady, I like the way you think,” she looked at him appreciatively.  He was growing back his beard and she liked it.

“C’mere,” he swiped at her hand and pulled her into a standing position.  Sliding a hand around either side of her waist he looked up at her and grinned.  Marlena smiled her own mischievous smile as her arms met behind his neck.

“I’m glad you found the lock on that door,” she murmured as his lips drifted across her cheek, “although, you do realize that Hilary has a key.”

“I told Hilary that she could take an extended lunch break,” his words were almost swallowed as his lips brushed against hers, “cos you were going to be ‘otherwise’ occupied.”

“Oh, mmmmm…” she closed her eyes as she felt his warm mouth envelope her earlobe, “you’re a smart man.”

“I’m working on it,” she smelled gorgeous, all floral and musk as he trailed his tongue down the side of her neck.

“Oh,” one of his hands slid down over her rear and kept on going until he met the bottom of her skirt.  “Mmmm,” she could feel his hand moving up her thigh and his mouth moving downwards, and she could barely think of what to say next.  “You’re doing an admirable job.”

“I guess,” he had reached the neckline of the red jacket she was wearing, and he ran his tongue gently over the swell of one breast, “you must be rubbing off on me.”  He looked up at her and brought his hand up to her chest.  He moved his fingers up over the stiff cotton and then over the bare flesh they encountered.  “Maybe it’s kinda like osmosis,” he whispered as his hand traced a route up the side of Marlena’s neck until his fingers encountered her soft hair.  His thumb rested on her cheek as his fingers tangled in her beautiful golden hair. “Not only brilliant but beautiful and sexy too,” he said admiringly before he pulled her to him.  

Marlena could only let out a muffled moan as she felt his tongue venture into her mouth as his lips crushed hers.  Her own hands moved to cup Bo’s face between them, allowing her to pursue the kiss with equal enthusiasm.

Finally, gasping, she pulled back, and without a word, Bo grabbed her hand in his and pulled her roughly around the desk.  She wasn’t arguing as he pushed her onto the couch and shrugged off his own jacket.  He was half on top of her as he searched for her lips again, nipping them with his teeth before kissing her again with an even more lusty fervour.  

Beneath him, Marlena unconsciously kicked off her shoes and pulled his t-shirt from where it was tucked into his jeans.  Her skirt rode up her thighs as Bo moved on top of her and she felt his hand again caressing her stockinged skin.  She moaned as his mouth began to explore her throat and chest.  The bruises had finally faded from the other night, but it looked as though Marlena might be wearing scarves again for the rest of the week thanks to the brutal way Bo used his mouth on her.

Bo brought his hands up to unbutton her jacket and he fumbled with the buttons as he tried to slip them from their holes.  He had the first two undone when there was a knock at the door.

“Mom?” It was Eric’s voice.  “Mom, I need to talk to you.”  Bo looked up at Marlena disbelievingly and she put her finger to his lips.  There was a moment of silence and then Eric’s voice came again.  “Mom, it’s really important, I know you’re in there, I saw Hillary.  Please, I really need to talk to you.”

Marlena closed her eyes and let her head fall back in complete frustration.  Rubbing her forehead with her fingers, she looked up at Bo.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed.  Bo nodded.

“I’ll go wait in the bathroom,” he whispered.  Marlena nodded with quite some regret, and he helped her up.  

“I’ll be right there Eric.”  She handed Bo his jacket and he gave her a quick kiss before he whipped into the bathroom, quietly closing the door behind him. Meanwhile Marlena slipped on her shoes and buttoned up her jacket.  Straightening her hair, she went to the door and unlocked it.

“I’m sorry honey, I was in the bathroom,” she hugged her son.

“That’s okay Mom,” Eric was way too into himself to notice that his mother looked rather disheveled.  The fact that her lips were red and completely devoid of lipstick really should have tipped him off, but the fact was, Eric was a selfish brat, and he could have cared less about anything but his own problems.  Obviously, John had passed *something* on when he had been the twin’s surrogate father.

“What’s wrong honey?” Marlena led her son to the couch on which, if it was not for him, she would now be being fucked within an inch of her life.

“I don’t know Mom,” Eric shook his head, “I guess it’s this whole business with Dad not being Dad and being killed, but Dad was actually already dead.  And now this thing with John and Aunt Hope taking off together and….” He shook his head and sighed.  “I guess I just feel really confused.”

“I know you thought that man was your Daddy, we all did,” Marlena ran her hand over the back of his head, smoothing his bad haircut down so that it looked halfway respectable.  “It was just another of Stefano and Kristen’s evil tricks though honey.”

“But how can I trust anyone again?”  Eric’s blue eyes filled with tears.  “I mean, my relationship with Nicole is foundering because I just feel lost.  You and Bo have both been left by people who are supposed to love you, be your soulmates.  How am I supposed to have any faith after that?”  Marlena raised her eyebrows.  Thanks for the sympathy there, son.

“Can I be honest with you?” she asked without pause.

“Sure,” Eric looked a little surprised.

“I don’t think you *should* be trusting Nicole, and I *don’t* know why you are so hung up on her.”  Marlena shook her head.  

“I don’t know how you can say that Mom,” Eric looked more than a little surprised now.  

“I can say it because I don’t like the girl, and I don’t trust her motives.  I don’t know what you see in her.  She’s after something, I just haven’t worked out what it is yet.”  Or maybe I do know what you see in her.  After all, birds of a feather and all that…..

“Mom, I don’t know what to say,” Eric had come to his mother expecting sympathy and self-affirmation.  Instead, he had gotten a fairly frank assessment of his girlfriend.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Marlena patted his knee.  “Just think about it.  I’m sorry about your daddy.  I know you weren’t here when we buried him.  I think the rest of us did our mourning then and it hasn’t hit us as hard this time.”  Eric nodded, still a little stunned.

“Now if you don’t mind honey, I have a patient coming soon and I need to get some paperwork done before she arrives.”

“Sure,” Eric nodded his head slowly.  “I’ll just use the bathroom before I go.”

“No!” Marlena sounded almost panicked.  “I mean, there’s something wrong with the toilet.  I have to get maintenance up to look at it.”  She tried to smile.

“But you were just in there,” Eric looked suspicious.

“Yes, and that’s when I discovered there was something wrong with it,” Marlena explained patiently.  “There’s a bathroom just down the hall, you can use that, sweetie.”

“Ookay,” Eric looked like he didn’t quite believe her, but given the way their previous conversation had gone, he didn’t really think arguing with her was going to get him anywhere.  “I’ll see you later then.”

“Okay honey,” Marlena leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.  “You have a wonderful afternoon.”

“Yeah, okay,” Eric nodded.  He hugged his mother and then went to the door.  “Mom, are you okay?  I mean, with John leaving and everything?”

“I’m doing just fine,” Marlena nodded her head reassuringly.  How nice of you to ask.  “I have my moments, but I’m really doing okay.”

“Good,” Eric nodded, seemingly satisfied with her answer.  “I’ll talk to you later then.”

“Mmmmm-hmmmm, give me a call,” she smiled as he turned and made his way down the corridor and then she turned back to her office.  Closing the door, she turned the lock.  

A moment later, Bo opened the bathroom door and leaned against the doorjamb, grinning at her admiringly.  

“That’s my girl,” he winked at her.  “That kid needs to hear the truth.”

“Well,” she sighed as she walked toward him, “I think I’m just tired of everyone taking me for granted.”

“You know that people can only walk over you if you let them,” he met her in the middle of the room and surrounded her with his arms, pulling her to him.  “So don’t let them.”

“Hmmm, I wonder how Hope and Billie would feel to hear you talk like that,” Marlena raised her eyebrows as she looked up at him.

“Point taken,” Bo nodded as he tucked a lock of stray hair behind her ear.  “I guess I need someone strong to take me in hand,” he grinned wickedly.

“Well, if you get out of line, you’ll hear about it from me,” she said softly as she ran her hand up over her chest.  “But as for taking you in hand, darling I think that will have to wait until later, because I have a patient arriving any minute.”

“Ooh, don’t tease like that.  Can’t you cancel?” he whispered sexily into her ear.

“Mmmmm, I’d like to,” her fingers played with the feathery hair at the nape of his neck.  “But unfortunately, I can’t.”

“Okay,” Bo nodded, conceding defeat.  “But this is getting ridiculous.  I want you and I swear I’m going to have you.”  His brown eyes were so intense that Marlena shivered.  “Make some use of those daughters of yours and get them to baby-sit.  And then meet me at the boat tonight after Belle and Brady are in bed.”  He bent his head and gently dusted her warm lips with his.

“All right,” Marlena nodded her head.  She wanted him as badly as he wanted her and the thought of sneaking off to meet him was just too delicious.  “I can’t wait.”

“Nor can I,” he winked at her.  “Have a nice afternoon, gorgeous.  I’ll be thinking of you.”  He squeezed her rear as he gave her a sweet kiss that promised much more.  Then, with some effort he let go of her and walked to the door.

Marlena’s knees felt slightly weak as she watched him leave.  She didn’t follow him because she didn’t trust herself to let him go, and she really had to see the patients she had scheduled this afternoon.

“Bye,” she waved with her fingers as he reached the door.  Bo looked at her and shook his head.  Good Lord the woman was like sex on two legs.  He had to get out of here before he dragged her into the corner and ravished her to within an inch of her life.  He winked at her and then he was gone.  Marlena sighed weakly and went back to her desk, wondering how on earth she was going to concentrate for the rest of the afternoon.

*

It was after eight when Marlena finally got out of the penthouse.  Making an excuse that she was going to go and see a movie, she avoided questions and offers of company saying she needed some time to herself.  Pulling her coat closely around herself, she left her car at the dockside and hurried down to where Bo had the Fancyface II moored.  Gosh she couldn’t even begin to say how much she was looking forward to tonight.  She had caught herself daydreaming about making love to Bo even when she had been seeing patients.  She had it bad and she wanted it bad.

Awkwardly, she climbed onto the boat and made her way eagerly below deck.  

“Bo I’m sorry I..” she ducked her head down under the doorway but stopped short as she looked inside the cabin.  “Oh hi.”  Her smile was coloured by her surprise as she looked at Bo and Shawn-D.

“Hi Aunt Marlena,” Shawn-D seemed a little surprised to see her there, but not suspicious.  

“Hi Shawn-D,” she stooped to give him a hug.  “I just came down to see how your dad is doing.”

“Apparently Shawn-D’s grandma sent him down to fetch me home for dinner,” Bo could barely conceal his grimace.

“She was worried that you might be pining for Mom,” Shawn-D spoke candidly but he looked concerned.

“She doesn’t need to worry about that,” Bo stared at Marlena as he answered.  He couldn’t believe it.  They had been *this* close.  

Marlena felt herself flushing.  God, maybe it was wrong, but she wanted so badly to feel him inside her that she felt almost desperate. It was almost as if there was a conspiracy to keep them apart and she was beginning to wonder if they could ever manage to be alone again.

But the simple fact was that they were going to have to.  It was all she could think about.  She felt like she was completely obsessed and it was interfering with her work and her personal life.  She had to feel him inside her again or she would go crazy.

“Shawn-D, tell your granma I will be back at the pub later.  I need to talk to your aunt about something first.”  His eyes conveyed his message to her in no uncertain terms.  He needed to fuck her.  Now.

“Granma told me that you weren’t allowed to say no.”  Shawn-D shook his head.  “Can’t you talk to Marlena at the pub?”

“Well, it’s kinda personal son,” he ruffled Shawn-D’s hair, “it’s about your mom and John.”

“Well, you guys can sit in a booth at the pub.  We won’t disturb you,” Shawn-D shrugged.  “Granma will kill me if I don’t come back with you.”

Bo looked at Marlena helplessly and then shrugged.

“You two go on,” Marlena’s smile belied the frustration she felt.  “I’ll meet you back at the pub.”

“Okay,” Shawn-D smiled, happy at having fulfilled his granma’s bidding and he tugged on Bo’s jacket.  “C’mon let’s go!”

“Okay,” Bo’s hand brushed against Marlena as he past her and she felt her skin tingle where he touched her.  Then he was gone, and she was alone in the cabin of the boat.

“*Damn*,” she slammed her hand down on the table.  Seizing the nearest mug, she hurled it against the wall.  “*DAMN*!!!”  The mug shattered into smithereens, and she glared at the broken pieces of the mug.  If things carried on like this, she was going to break a lot more crockery before she was through.

Part Cinq

Our secret moments in a crowded room
They got no idea about me and you
There is an indentation in the shape of you
Made your mark on me, a golden tattoo

All of this silence and patience, pining and anticipation
My hands are shaking from holding back from you
Ha, ah, ah
All of this silence and patience, pining and desperately waiting
My hands are shaking from all this
Ah, ha, ha, ha-ah

Say my name and everything just stops
I don’t want you like a best friend
Only bought this dress so you could take it off

Dress – Taylor Swift

Marlena had made it to the pub, mainly for appearance’s sake.  Getting tired of being told that people were sorry about John, she had found it hard to spend time in the same room with Bo without being obvious that she was in complete lust him.   So, she had only spent half an hour there before heading back to the penthouse. 

Before she had left, however, Caroline had told her they were planning a party for Sami to show her how happy they all were to have her safe and free. It was going to take place at Tuscany the following night.  Marlena had barely been able to look at Bo as she had told Caroline that she would be glad to be there.

At home in the Penthouse at five the following evening she found herself with a sofa full of dresses she had tried on and still nothing to wear.  Finally, she had asked Carrie to keep an eye on the children and she had slipped down to Salem place.  Fortuitously, she had found exactly what she had been looking for right away.  It was a deep scarlet satin number, form-filling and slit up to the thigh on one side.  She selected some lingerie, making sure it didn’t peek out from under the low-cut neckline and took her purchases home.

Sami and Carrie were already dressing, Carrie in beautiful apple green silk and Sami in a dusky pink satin.  Marlena quickly slipped into her new gown and opened her drawer.  Taking a deep breath, she pulled out a jeweler’s box and opened it.  Inside, a necklace and earrings glittered with diamonds, a gift from John at Christmas.  A time when he had already been lying to her and taking her for granted.  

She sighed.  She didn’t want to think about John now.  That was the past and it should stay there.  But these diamonds were very much in the present and she hadn’t had a chance to wear them yet.  And they would look beautiful with her new dress.  With a shaking hand, she picked the necklace up out of the box and threaded it around her slender throat.  Admiring the effect in the mirror, she smiled and clipped the earrings to her ears.  With a final assured glance, she picked up her wrap and her bag from where they hung over the back of the sofa before slipping on her scarlet ‘dancing shoes’ and left the room.

“Wow Mom!” Sami watched her elegantly descend the stairs “You look beautiful.”

“Why, thank you sweetheart,” Marlena hugged her daughter when she reached the bottom of the staircase.  “And just look at the two of you!”  She ran her hand down Sami’s flaxen locks and looked proudly at her and Carrie.  “My, when did you both grow up to be such beautiful young women?”

“So, what are we waiting for?” Sami smiled the smile of one with a great deal off her shoulders.  “Let’s go party!!”

“Sounds good to me!” Marlena couldn’t suppress her excited laughter as she took Sami’s arm and headed for the door.  

Carrie watched them with a bemused frown on her face.  Something wasn’t quite right.  She could understand Marlena being relieved at Sami’s release, but her stepmother seemed almost *too* happy.  Too happy for a woman that had just separated from her fiancé at the very least.

“C’mon Carrie,” Sami turned around and beckoned to her sister.  “What are you waiting for?”

“Nothing,” Carrie gathered her jacket and bag with a smile, “nothing at all.”

When Marlena arrived at Tuscany, Bo could hardly keep his eyes off her.  It was almost as though she was avoiding him at first, barely uttering a hello before moving across the room to speak to Maggie.  Even so, he couldn’t help but watch the way her rear moved under the sheath of crimson satin, her hair swinging in time as she walked.

“You’re going to get into big trouble little brother,” Bo felt Kimmy right behind him and he tensed a little.  “This isn’t a game you know Bo,” she added tersely.

“Kim,” Bo paused, regretfully tearing his eyes from the blonde across the room and turning to his sister, “if this was simply a game, I wouldn’t be playing.”  His expression softened, “you know how I felt about Hope.”

“*Felt*?” Kim looked frankly surprised.  “Yes, I do Bo, and I know how Marlena *feels* about John.  That’s why this doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense,” Bo turned to look at Marlena again, his eyes drawn to her almost against his will.  She was looking in his direction and she smiled coyly before turning away.  “It just has to feel right.”

“I just don’t want to see either of you get hurt Bo,” Kim’s voice was soft.  “And it seems to me that you’re both rebounding from pretty big disappointments.”

“Kim, neither of us are kids.  It’s our own business, okay?”  Bo raised his eyebrows and then turned away, signaling the end of the conversation.

“Okay,” Kim watched him walk away with a frown on her face.  She had seen firsthand Roman’s devastation when he and Marlena had broken up, and she had seen John’s seeming unending obsession with her ex-sister-in-law as well.  Not to mention Stefano DiMera’s creepy stalking and fanatical pursuit of the woman he deemed to be his perfect match.  It seemed as if when Marlena got into men’s hearts, it was nearly impossible to get her out.  So, she wasn’t sure at all that Bo knew exactly what he was getting into.  But she also knew he wasn’t about to listen either.

For Marlena’s part, she could hardly look at Bo without wanting him so much that she felt moist.  She found herself staring at his back when he was talking to Kim, admiring the way his tailored suit jacket stretched across his muscled back and enhanced his gorgeous butt.  God, all she could do was stare at him and imagine feeling his hot mouth sucking her skin and his body moving over hers as he thrust into her.

Then he turned around and met her eyes with his and Marlena felt her knees weaken.  With the utmost self-control, she smiled at him and turned back to talk to Abe and Caroline.

When it was time for dinner, Marlena found herself sitting next to Bo and though she was thrilled about that, she was also wondering how on earth she was going to make it through dinner.

“Here,” Bo flashed her a dazzling smile as he smashed a liberal amount of red wine into her glass, “do you know what you’re ordering for dinner?”  Her eyes ran down the dinner menu.  But there was only one thing she was hungry for right now and it wasn’t food.

“Mmmmm,” she considered her options as she fingered the wine glass.  “I don’t know….I guess the rump looks good.”

“Look great from where I’m sitting,” Bo’s eyes sparkled, and Marlena had to bite her tongue as his hand grazed her behind.  She took rather a large sip of her wine, somewhat hoping it would give her some strength and then she looked up, her cheeks stained with a crimson flush.

Thankfully it seemed that only Bo had caught her reaction.  They all seemed to be engaged in conversation, to her utter relief.

“*Bo*!” her murmur was explosive as his hand slid, unhindered down her thigh.

“What?” he fingered the silky nylon of her stockings as he gazed nonchalantly around the table.  “How’s the wine?”

“Fine,” she seemed almost annoyed as she took another fortifying sip of the smooth scarlet liquid.  In truth she was annoyed, but at herself and her seeming inability to restrain herself around her ex-brother-in-law.

They were interrupted then by the waiter who took their order and Marlena subsequently found herself talking to Abe, who was seated on her left.

It was during dinner that she felt Bo’s hand on her thigh again, his fingers searching her skin and caressing it with deliberate, measured strokes.  She shivered involuntarily as his hand began an inexorable climb up the inside of her thigh.

“Marlena, are you cold?” Abe asked with concern.

“Mmmm, no.”   She tried to smile insouciantly.  “Just a small chill.  I’m fine really.”  She bit the inside of her lip as Bo’s fingers encountered the lacy top of her stockings and then met the bare flesh above it.  Marlena barely contained her whimper as his fingers continued their exploration of the warm skin of her inner thigh.  

However, it was Bo who was the more surprised as his fingers moved on upwards, encountering the moist warmth between her legs.  His eyes widened in surprise as he turned to her, and Marlena did her best to bite back a smile.  He hadn’t expected her not to be wearing any panties tonight, obviously.

As much as Bo had been aroused by the sight and feel of her before, now he was a thousand times over.  All he could suddenly think of was burying himself deep in that hot, sweet wetness and looking at her reddened face, her lips parted, only made it worse.  

Turning away, he found Carrie looking at him in puzzlement across the table.

“Uncle Bo, have you heard from Hope at all?” Sami asked from where she sat next to her sister.

“Uh, no” Bo shook his head, mentally groaning as Marlena picked this moment to exact her revenge in kind.  He squirmed uncomfortably under Carrie’s gaze, Marlena’s hand creeping up his thigh and over the bulge that strained against his pants.

“Do you even have any idea where they might be?” Sami pressed, unaware of exactly *how* hard pressed Bo was at that particular moment.

“Mmmm,” Bo’s voice broke into a squeak as he tried to answer.

“No, we have no idea where John and Hope have gone,” Marlena replied for him as her finger skillfully stroked his bulging erection under the table, “other than they went to Europe.”

“Haven’t they even called to check on their children?” Maggie asked, her expression quite horrified.

“Apparently they have more important things ohh….” Marlena gasped as she felt Bo’s fingers rubbing her.

“Mom, are you okay?” Sami’s face was the picture of concern.

“Ahhh, I’m fine honey,” Marlena’s startled expression belied her words.

“I still can’t believe John would *do* something like this,” Maggie shrugged helplessly, “you two were *so* much in love.”

“Uh,” Marlena couldn’t concentrate on the conversation any longer, thanks to Bo’s fingers, which were driving her crazy.  The way they were going, they were both going to come at the table, and there were things she would rather be doing when she came than talking about John.  “I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse me,” she managed to spit out.  “I need to go to the ladies.”

Throwing her napkin on the table, she pushed her chair out haphazardly and rushed from the table.  Assuming she was upset over the talk about John, Sami started as though to go over her.

“No leave her Sami,” Bo entreated Marlena’s younger daughter.  “I’ll go and make sure she’s okay.  After all, she and I are going through the same thing.  If anyone understands what she needs, it’s me.”  And if anyone can give it to her, it’s me.

“Are you sure?” Sami remained unconvinced, but Bo had already buttoned up his jacket and pushed his chair from the table.  Carrie watched him walk towards the toilets with a frown on her face.

Marlena was pacing the length of the bathroom when Bo finally showed up.

“Oh Bo,” he took her upper arms with his hands and pushed her roughly against the wall, “I….do they know you came after-”

“Shut up Marlena,” Bo demanded before crushing her lips mercilessly with his, leaving her breathless and wanting more.  Flinging her arms around his neck she moaned as he pressed her against the wall with his own body, the hard length of his cock pressing against her leg.  

“Oh God, I want you,” Bo breathed in between kissing her, his tongue plundering her mouth, snaking around hers, demanding more and more of her.  

“Oh Bo,” Marlena closed her eyes as Bo’s teeth and lips bit and sucked the exquisitely sensitive skin of her throat.  “Mmmm…” he was moving his hips in small thrusting movements against her, and it was driving her crazy.  Twisting her fingers in his hair, she clutched handfuls of it and kissed him wantonly and desperately.

Bo ravished her mouth with little prudence as his fingers searched blindly for the split in her skirt.  Groaning when he found it, he pulled it to the side with his left hand and slipped his right hand between Marlena’s thighs.  She let out a small yelp but it was smothered by his mouth as with his thumb he began to massage her clitoris again.  Then he slipped one and then two fingers into her warm, slippery depths.

“Oh,” Marlena’s arms tightened around his neck, and he found himself staring into her cleavage as she almost climbed the wall.  Grinning, Bo leaned his head down and plunged his tongue between the beautiful valley of pliant flesh, all the while thrusting his fingers in and out of her.  “Mmmm, oohhhh,” Marlena uttered the words in between laboured breaths as Bo’s fingers drove her towards orgasm.

Bo felt her tense and the beginnings of an orgasmic shudder, and he quickly withdrew his fingers.

“*Bo*!” she flared at him with frustrated eyes.  

“Let’s make sure we’re not disturbed.”  Bo pulled away from her, letting her skirt fall back into place like a crumpled curtain.  Pulling on her arm he led her into one of the stalls and locked the door behind him.  Pushing her up against the stall wall, he guided her hands to the waistband of his trousers.  Without words, she quickly unzipped the black pants and slid her hand inside.  Negotiating the folds of his satin boxers, she found his warm, hard penis and closed her hand around it.  Bo groaned throatily as she dragged her fingers over the silkily smooth skin before freeing him from the confines of the surrounding fabric.

Marlena felt Bo’s hand on her shoulders, pushing the straps of her dress downwards to reveal the sheer lace of her scarlet bra.  With no care for the delicate lace, Bo tugged a cup of the bra downwards, releasing one full breast.  He sighed happily and Marlena’s fingers tightened around him as he bent his head to suck greedily on her nipple.  She arched her back and whimpered with exquisite agony as he nipped her soundly with his teeth.  Freeing her other breast from the beautiful lace, Bo turned his attention to that one, all the time aware of Marlena’s hand as she moved her hand over him with long hard strokes.  In the back of his mind, he was half expecting someone to interrupt them in delicto flagrante, especially given the events of the past few days.  But in an odd way it added to the sexiness of the moment, knowing they could well be caught.  

Bo had never been one to err on the side of caution.

With urgent hands, he parted the satin of her skirt again as he looked up at her.  Her eyes were drowsy with lust and her lips were stained carmine to match her dress.

“God you’re gorgeous,” he told her in short breaths as he moved her hand away with his free one, “you’re gorgeous and you’re mine and I’m going to have you right here and now.”

“Just get on with it. Bo,” Marlena grinned headily, “I’m tired of waiting.”

“You want to feel me?” Bo pressed up against her, his cock grazing the soft warm flesh above the lacy stocking.  Marlena took a deep breath as she felt his hand move between her legs and hover there.  “Tell me what you want, gorgeous.”

“Ooh,” she closed her eyes and lay her head back against the cool wall as she felt Bo teasing her.  It must have been as much torment for him as it was for her, but he seemed to have incredible amounts of self control.  “Oh Bo, I need you,” she thrust her hips forward and felt herself collide with him, “Oh Bo, please.  Now.  I need you now.”  Her breaths were coming hard and fast as she moved against him.  “*Now*.”

Bo couldn’t resist any longer and planting a hand firmly on each buttock, he lifted her slightly and drove his painfully hard cock deep inside of her.  Marlena groaned loudly as she felt him explode into her, stretching her, filling her.  With her skirt around her hips, she wrapped one leg around Bo’s trouser clad thigh and wrapped her arms around his neck.  Using the resistance of his shoulders against his upper arms, she lifted her leg higher and then lifted the other one, wrapping them around his hips so that his thrusting moved even deeper inside of her.

“Marlena, Marlena, Marlena” Bo panted her name as he pounded into her, repeating it over and over again like a mantra.  Twining her fingers in his hair again, Marlena pulled back his head and plunged her tongue into his open mouth before crushing his lips below hers.  Bo drove into her ferociously, eliciting tiny breathless grunts as he propelled her back against the wall with each effort.  Marlena tightened her thighs around his hips as she broke the kiss and gasped for breath.

“Oh God,” Bo responded to her added pressure and his thrusting became almost frenzied.

“Mmmm, oh, oh,” Marlena moved with him as she felt the first tremors of her climax start to sweep through her.  “Harder Bo, fuck me harder.  I want you to come with me,” her voice was breathless, and husky and Bo couldn’t resist her.  He was possessed with a need for her that was beyond reason as he rammed his cock into her, surrounded by her sweet, sticky heat.  

He heard her voice call out his name as she tightened around him, and he thrust hard again, his solid cock cleaving her warm, wet flesh.  Then, suddenly he felt the liquid fire of his orgasm pour through him, washing away all thought as he exploded deep inside her, filling her, joining with her.

Marlena bit back a scream as her own powerful orgasm ripped though her.  Part of her was aware of Bo pounding into her, filling her with his own flood of heat as he came almost savagely inside her.

Neither of them was even vaguely aware of the person that quietly exited the bathroom a moment later.

Marlena panted deeply as she floated back to some semblance of normality.  She could feel Bo’s hot, damp cheek where it rested against her chest, his own heavy exhalations warming her breasts.  After a couple of moments, she realized that the feel of him simply against her was turning her on again and the last thing she wanted to do was to have to go out and sit through dinner.  Looking at her dress she realized it might not be possible anyway.  She was damp with perspiration and her dress was creased and slightly torn around the left strap where Bo had yanked it down.

Raising his head, Bo grinned like a naughty child.

“Wanna skip dinner?” he suggested.

“Great minds.” Marlena murmured as she leaned to taste him again.

“There’s more dessert where that came from,” Bo could feel himself already hardening slightly inside her.  She was like some kind of aphrodisiac to him, the more he had the more he wanted.

“Mmmm,” Marlena moaned slightly as she rolled her head back against the stall wall.  Bo was already moving downward with his velvety lips, tasting her, licking her, exploring her.  

“Let’s go now,” she sounded a little regretful as she unfurled her arms from around him.

“Okay,” Bo slid out of her and awkwardly helped her down.  “I’ll go and tell the family you’re not feeling well,” he ticked himself in and zipped up his pants.  “You,” he looked her up and down with a grin, “might want to clean yourself up.  I’ll meet you at the elevator.”

“Don’t forget my wrap and purse,” Marlena reminded him as she pulled her dress up and tried to tuck the tear out of sight.  “And for goodness’ sake *don’t* let anyone else insist on coming along to see how I am.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Bo grinned mischievously as he watched Marlena open the stall and peer into the bathroom.  

Satisfied that it was empty, she made her way to the mirror and groaned when she saw the mess that her once beautiful dress had now become.  And not only that, her lips were red and bruised looking and her neck and chest were covered in suspicious red marks.  

“Maybe you’d better bring my wrap back here,” she said hopelessly as she surveyed the disaster area.

“You look ravishing,” Bo whispered against her ear from behind her and then she felt his hand grab at her butt.

“I look *ravished*,” Marlena giggled in reply as she turned around, her eyelids lowered with desire, “I can’t wait to make love to you again.”

“Ahhhh… I’m going right now,” Bo kissed her roughly and then exited the bathroom, making sure that no-one saw him coming from there.

It took two full minutes to explain to the family that Marlena was not feeling well, she had developed a migraine and that Bo was going to see her home and make sure she was okay.  Everyone seemed highly concerned and Sami offered come home with them, but Bo told her that Marlena would be fine and she didn’t want Sami to miss her celebration dinner.  Besides Bo said, sometimes in this situation it was better to be alone.  After all, he knew better than anyone what Marlena was going through.  As he left, he didn’t notice the pair of eyes that swept his slightly rumpled appearance up and down and then traveled to the doors, where Marlena was now waiting.

Part Six

My mind forgets to remind me
You’re a bad idea
You touch me once and it’s really something
You find I’m even better than you imagined I would be
I’m on my guard for the rest of the world
But with you I know it’s no good
And I could wait patiently but I really wish you would

Drop everything now
Meet me in the pouring rain
Kiss me on the sidewalk
Take away the pain
‘Cause I see sparks fly whenever you smile
Get me with those green eyes, baby, as the lights go down
Give me something that’ll haunt me when you’re not around
‘Cause I see sparks fly whenever you smile

I’ll run my fingers through your hair and watch the lights go wild
Just keep on keeping your eyes on me, it’s just wrong enough to make it feel right
And lead me up the staircase
Won’t you whisper soft and slow?
I’m captivated by you, baby, like a firework show

Sparks Fly – Taylor Swift

“How lovely.”  Marlena stood in the middle of the penthouse living room and listened to the silence, “to have my place to myself.”  She smiled at Bo as he shed his suit jacket and loosened his blue tie so that it hung loose.  “That hasn’t happened since ….”

“Since the first night we……” Bo undid the top two buttons of his shirt and moved towards her purposefully.

“Mmmmm,” one corner of her mouth twitched upwards in a smile as she moved away from him to the credenza.  

He was behind her even as she reached for the decanter of brandy and his hands were massaging her buttocks as she poured two snifters of the amber liquid.  He watched her in the mirror in front of them.  She was beautiful, her face so expressive as she struggled not to react to the feelings he was arousing in her.

“Every time I see you,” he said in a low, throaty voice, “all I can think of is how it feels to fuck you.  I can’t stop thinking about you, Marlena.  I think I’m addicted to you.”  Bringing his hand up, he let his thumb drift over her shoulder, and he felt her shiver beneath his touch.  In the mirror, her eyes closed, and her cheeks darkened to a delightful shade of rose.  “I think of how you taste and how you smell and how you feel.  I dream about you.”  His fingers brushed her skin and moved up her neck.  Then he leant his head and flicked his tongue over the side of her throat.  Marlena moaned and dropped her head back against his shoulder as he trailed his tongue over the warm throbbing pulse in her throat.

Bringing his hands around to her front he began to massage her voluptuous breasts through the crumpled satin.

“Bo!” Marlena gasped as he leaned into her, delivering her the proof of his arousal against her left butt cheek.

“I’m going to fuck you in every room of this penthouse,” his breath was hot against her ear.  “I’m going to fuck you in your office, in my boat and at the Pub.  You’ll be lucky if you can still walk when I am done with you.”

She placed her hands on the sideboard and pushed her bottom back against the hard lump in his pants.  “Fuck me here,” she demanded, her cheeks flushed with lust.  “Here.  Now.  I want to feel you inside me.”  She wanted to smile but the feeling of Bo’s hot breath against her ear and the effect of his words in her groin make it difficult to do anything but breathe.  Their tryst in the bathroom at Tuscany earlier should have sated her appetite but instead, it had only inflamed it.  She couldn’t think about anything but the feeling of his hardness inside her and how it felt as he pounded into her.  From somewhere, she found her voice and the words to tell him what she was desperate for him to do to her.  “Fuck me hard, Bo.  Make me scream your name.”

Bo groaned at the delicious feeling of her ass grinding against him.  He felt almost dizzy as he fumbled at the zip of her gown, skimming it down the length of the crimson satin until he was able to peel the smooth fabric down, pushing the torn straps over her shoulders and pushing the slithering sheath of satin it over her hips before he let it fall to the floor.  She stepped out of it, and he kicked it away.  He drew a sharp breath in as he looked at her, red bra and sinfully high red heels, black lace top stockings and nothing in between.  Just her honeyed skin banded by splashes of red and black and that sweet, dark heat at the center of her.

He slid his hand between her legs, inserting his middle finger between her wet lips and then sliding it up to her clitoris.  She sucked in a shallow breath, and he felt her unsteadiness as he fingered her.  Slid his arm around her middle, holding her against him as he rubbed his finger against the sweet bundle of nerves.  She whimpered as he held her against him, his hips slowly rocking against hers as he circled the pad of his finger against her, enjoying the wetness of her and the sexy little moans as he found the right spot, again and again.

For her part, Marlena had lost the ability to string together a coherent train of conscious thought.  She threw her head back against Bo’s shoulder again and let out an “oh”, her breath coming in short, ragged pants as he slid his fingers inside the hot, moist depths of her.  “Oh God, Bo!”

He turned his head and, avoiding the glittering necklace which he knew was probably a gift from John, he nipped at her throat with his teeth before assaulting her again with his lips and tongue.  It was probably wrong of him, but he loved seeing the evidence of their physical encounters on her skin after they were spent.  He could hardly claim that she was his.  A woman like Marlena could never ‘belong’ to a man.  Not Roman, not even John, and certainly not him.   But still, he liked the physical visual reminders that she had chosen to take him to her bed, even if only for a little while.

He slid his fingers inside her, curling them just a little and experimenting with placement and speed until she let out a little yelp and dropped her head forward again.  “Oh,” she gasped.  “Oh, oh.  Oh, God.”  

“Not God, gorgeous,” he murmured against her shoulder before he sank his teeth into her again, leaving faint white teeth marks imprinted on her tanned shoulder.  “Just me.  Tell me what you want.  Harder?  Faster?”

“Ohhhh,” she arched her back and Bo could see her beautiful breasts straining against the scarlet lace of her bra.  He was going to lavish some serious attention on those later.   “Oh, Bo.  Harder.  Please.  Harder.”

 Careful to maintain the same pace, he increased the intensity of his thrusts and sliding his left hand down, he found her centre again, making small circles with his fingers in time with the thrusts of his right hand.

And then he felt Marlena tense under his touch, and he whispered against her ear.  “Come for me, beautiful.  Let me hear how good it feels.”

He watched and felt her intake of breath as her mouth formed a perfect O and then she was tensing, straining, pressing against his fingers and he could feel her move with him, riding a crest and a wave and a perfect rush of pleasure.  “Ohhhhhh,” it came out as a long, intense cry which softened into a sigh as they both slowed to a pause.

Marlena opened her eyes and met the dark, hungry pools of his gaze with her own.

“More,” she whispered, wetting her lower lip and then biting it hesitantly.  Innocent and wanton, all in one simple gesture.  “Bo, don’t make me ask you again.”

Bo felt his heart give an almighty thump and he withdrew his hands, wiping his slippery fingers on the dark rayon of his pants.  Marlena watched him as he fumbled with first his belt buckle and then the button and zip embedded in the stiff fabric.  She wanted to watch him this time.  At least, as long as she could, before she got swept away in her own pleasure again.

While he took the time to wrestle off his trousers, she gave her own visage an appreciative once-over.  She could see the tell-tale signs of bruising around the base of her throat, and she made a mental note to either scold or punish him later.  Her cheeks were red, and her lips were devoid of lipstick but still reddened and swollen.  She looked just like she felt, desirable and as sexy as hell.  However wrong this was, it was good for her.  She felt better about herself and happier than she had in a long time.  She had no idea what the consequences of this would be but right now, she didn’t care.  She was just going to enjoy herself.

Bo ran his fingers up over the bare skin of her back and buried them in her thick, golden tresses that fell about her shoulders, obscuring both the diamond necklace and the bruising above it.  He twisted it in his grip and pulled her head back.  “Are you ready?” he murmured against her ear.

“Oh my God.  Yes!”  It came out in a choked gasp.  She had been ready since they left Tuscany.  She’d been ready since they woke up in each other’s arms, what seemed like days ago now.  She was more than ready.

Bo retained his grip on her hair so that she was forced to keep her gaze focused on his in the mirror in front of them.  She felt him move against him and then felt his cock, hard and hot, between her legs.  “Oh, Bo!”  He was beautiful, his skin hot and moist against hers.  His hard, throbbing shaft pressing, sliding, forcing his way inside her.  And then he was filling her, and she could see the delight and pleasure suffusing him as she tightened around him.  

“Unnfff…”  Bo couldn’t help but close his eyes as he felt her envelop him.  God, she felt so good.  He felt like he needed to pinch himself, again and again to prove to himself that this was real; that this was really happening.

He held still for a moment, just inside her, pressed against her, her skin hot where his rested against it.  

“Bo,” Marlena’s voice came, throaty and insistent.  “Open your eyes.”

He did as she asked, knowing he couldn’t resist her demands.  Whatever she asked of him, he would give it, without hesitation.  

He released the tightness of his grip on her hair but instead of letting her go completely, he turned her head so he could access her lips.  He gave tiny inconsistent movements of his hips as he kissed her, his tongue entering her mouth and tangling with her own.  And then he let her mouth go and he was kissing her neck and her shoulder; and then her head was free, and one hand was on her shoulder and the other on her hip.  She turned her head again to gaze at him in the mirror as he positioned himself behind her and began to move with more purpose.

She flattened her hands against the wooden surface of the credenza, ignoring the way the liquid in the brandy snifters slopped against the sides of the glasses each time Bo thrust into her.  She watched his face in the mirror, his eyes losing focus as the sensations where their bodies joined overcame him.  For a moment, she was lost in the way his eyes darkened, almost to a burnt chocolate color and then, for another moment, she almost froze as she realized, once again, that it was Bo behind her.  Bo fucking her.  Bo making her feel so fucking good.

Bo Brady, Roman’s little brother.  Bo, her loyal friend.  Bo, her family.

Now Bo, her lover.  

This was wrong.  But it felt so, so right.  He felt so good, his calloused hand hard on her shoulder.  The coarse stubble on his face scratching her skin.  His big, hard cock, stretching, thrusting, filling her.  God, it felt sinfully good.  She didn’t care how wrong it was, whose brother he was, whose son he was.  She just wanted this.  She wanted him inside her and she wanted more of it, as much of it as she could get.

“Oh Christ,” Bo groaned.  “Oh Marlena, you feel so fucking good.”

“Harder Bo,” she took a deep breath and steadied herself.  She was close already and she knew he was not far away himself; she could see it in his face.  She could see it in the flush in his cheeks, in the redness of his lips.  She could see it in his half-closed eyes.  “Give me your cock, hard and fast.”

Bo’s groan was caught in his throat as he dropped his head for a moment, trying to retain some kind of control.  And then he twisted his hand in her hair again, pulling her head back as he pounded into her.

“Harder?” he asked her, a half-smile curling his lips.

“Harder,” she moaned as he filled her and then withdrew before pounding into her again.  “Harder!”

He was so deep inside her, she wasn’t sure how he could increase the force, but he did, and she had to raise one hand to the wall to steady herself.  

“Harder?” he demanded rather than asked of her this time; his voice harsh with the effort he was exerting.

“Oh God, Bo!” she couldn’t tell him harder anymore.  She couldn’t tell him anything.  She was just drowning in the sensations of him filling her and surrounding her and moving with her and she was rising and falling and cresting and ooooooh, and ahhhhhh and ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod….

And then she was coming, and she could feel him, hot and viscous inside her and she could hear her name on his lips, and she was calling his over and over again; and she was falling, and her forearms and her head were on the credenza, and she could feel his arms around her, holding her up as her legs lost all definition….

She didn’t know how long it was before he picked her up in his arms and carried her across to the sofa, laying her down on the soft brown fabric.  He collapsed next to her, his head against her breasts and she ran her fingers through his damp brown hair.

They didn’t say anything for what seemed like hours.  Her head propped up against a cushion, she listened to his breathing as it eased, moving from short, harsh pants to softening longer breaths which whispered warmly across the red lace and her cooling skin.  She stared at the night sky beyond the French windows, and she didn’t think about anything.  She just watched the scuddering clouds and listened to his breathing. 

Bo’s hand crept up over her breasts and his fingers traced slow paths across her chest, her collarbone, her shoulder and down her arm.  She shivered as he skimmed the inside of her elbow, tracing invisible pathways of desire down to her wrist.  When he reached her hand, he lazily traced a circle on the inside of her palm with his middle finger.  Marlena swallowed.  She couldn’t believe she was still hungry for this man.  That he could simply touch her, and she wanted him all over again.  She’d only ever felt like that with one man in her life and that was the man she was trying so desperately to forget.

So desperately that she would take her best-friend-brother-in-law to her bed.  To her bed, her couch, her desk and anywhere else he might have in mind.

She curled her fingers around his, ceasing his lazy exploration of her weak and all too willing flesh.

“Marlena?” he looked up at her, sensing her sudden mood-shift.  

“Bo, what are we doing?”  She asked the question quietly.  She thought she knew what she was doing, or at the very least, why she was doing it, but she wasn’t at all sure about Bo’s feelings or motivations.  She had tried very hard not to think about her reasons and it was easy enough in the heat of lust and passion to disregard painful truths; but lying here, in the penthouse that John had found for her, in a room where she had shared her life and her body with him, she couldn’t avoid the truth as easily.

“I don’t know,” Bo admitted.  He eased himself up so he could look at her, propping his head on his hand.  “I know it feels good though.”

“Yes, it definitely feels good.” She smiles wanly, her hand finding his face and her thumb brushing his cheek.  “But is that all it is?  Feeling good, I mean.”

“I’m not sure I understand.” Bo’s eyes narrowed.

“I mean, this isn’t…”  Her cheeks flushed.  She didn’t want to say the word.  That word meant a multitude of things to her, but this wasn’t it.  She didn’t want this to be it.  For either of them.  

“Spit it out, Marlena,” Bo could see she was embarrassed.  And, probably, that she was concerned about upsetting him.  Marlena was nothing if not caring, to a fault.

“Love.  This isn’t love,” she said softly.  

Bo said nothing for a moment.  He hadn’t expected her to say that, and it threw him a bit.  He wasn’t sure exactly what she meant or why she would ask such a thing.  He hadn’t even thought that far.  He hadn’t thought beyond how amazing she felt, how beautiful she was and how he couldn’t stop thinking about her.  *Did* he love her?  Or was he just hopelessly in lust with her?

“You’re still in love with, John.”  It wasn’t an answer, but it also wasn’t a question.  It was a statement of fact.  Like the sun would rise in the morning, Marlena loved John.  She always had, she always would.  Of course she was still in love with him.

Marlena dropped her hand from his face and looked away, the pain evident in her eyes.  Bo was her friend and her family, but she wasn’t ready for him to see so deeply into her heart.  She wasn’t ready to lay herself bare before him.  She could be physically naked, but emotionally?  John had broken something inside her and she wasn’t ready to let anybody see that.  Not anybody.

“It’s okay.” Bo twisted his other hand so where it had been enclosed in her fingers, now the situation was reversed.  “It’s okay.  There’s no emotions faucet, remember?”

“If Hope came back tomorrow and said she’d made a mistake and wanted you back, would you?” Marlena asked him.  She wasn’t sure what she wanted his answer to be.  She wasn’t even sure what her answer would be if the question was reversed.  She knew what she wanted it to be, but she also knew John was her biggest weakness.  He always had been.

Bo frowned and released her hand, sliding his fingers between hers and folding them over the back of her hand in a gesture far too intimate for her to feel completely comfortable, given the conversation they were having.

“Honestly?” he looked up at her.  “I don’t know.  I want to say no but then I remember how much I hurt her when I was with Billie, and I think I probably owe her.”

“I don’t think she’d want you to *owe* her, Bo.  I think she’d want you to do it because you wanted to.”  Marlena said softly.  “Because you still love her enough to try and make it work.”

“You’re asking me if I still love her?” Bo asked, releasing her hand, uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken.  He didn’t want to be lying here half naked with Marlena, thinking about or talking about Hope.  That wasn’t what *this* was about.  Was it?  

But he couldn’t stop now.  The words came tumbling out unbidden.  Words that surprised him with their intensity.  “Because I do.  I’m angry with her and I am hurt and humiliated, but God help me, I still love her.”

Marlena let out a breath that she hadn’t even been aware she’d been holding.

“Would you take John back?” Bo asked her suddenly, voicing the question she’d been trying to push away for days.

“I….” she wished he wouldn’t look at her in that way.  Like he knew exactly what she was thinking.  When she didn’t even know herself.  “I threw him out, remember?” She was hotly defiant.  

“That’s not an answer,” Bo shakes his head angrily, pushing himself into a sitting position.  “Look, I don’t know what this is, Marlena.  I don’t have any answers.  If you’re trying to say we should stop this because we’re still in love with Hope and John….” his shoulders slumped and he shook his head, his eyes glittering with the keen pain that he had mostly managed to bury beneath layers of denial and desire.  “Yeah, maybe we should.  It’s messy and it’s complicated and  it’s probably wrong, but to be honest, I don’t want to stop.  I don’t know that I can stop.”

He swallowed, looking at her inscrutable face.  He didn’t know what she was thinking.  He didn’t know why she wanted to have this conversation.  They’d spend the past few days trying to be alone, he’d been aching to touch her, to re-experience the bliss of sinking into her and feeling her skin on his.  And now they were here, alone, and they’d had great sex and what, she wanted to close it all down?  To deny herself the pleasure and comfort she was taking from him and he from her?  He didn’t want to give that up, not now.  Not yet.

“Is that what you want?” he demanded.  “Because if it is, I guess I’ll have to respect that but it’s not what I want.”

“No!” she cried out, sitting up herself and bunching the front of his shirt in her hands.  “Bo, no!  That’s not….”  she sighed.  “I don’t really know what I’m trying to say.  I’m confused.  I’ve never done anything like this before.”

Bo could see the confusion and the fear in her eyes.  John had hurt her badly, he knew that.  Like Roman before him.  But when Roman had left, Marlena had remained single and celibate, guilty about Roman and still hopelessly in love with the man that was forbidden to her.  She was not the kind of woman that takes random men to her bed to forget her pain.

“I’m not going to hurt you Marlena,” he told her softly.  “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not…” she sighed, letting go of his shirt and smoothing it against his chest.  She knew she was avoiding his eyes.  Like she was avoiding so much these days.  Maybe she was afraid of that.  She just didn’t know if she could take any more pain.  “I just don’t want to feel…” she looked up at him.  “I’m just tired, Bo.  Tired of feeling.  Tired of being hurt and disappointed.”

Suddenly, Bo realized what it was she was trying to say earlier.  To say, to ask; to reassure herself with.  Feelings.  She didn’t want them and neither did he.  At least not the ones she was referring to.  Not the ones that got you in trouble.  The ones that started off feeling so good but invariably ended up ripping your heart out.

“It’s not.”  He was gentle as he stroked his hand up over her shoulder and curved it around the back of her neck.  “It’s not love, Marlena.  It’s just two good friends who need to forget for a while.  Two friends that have discovered that they are really hot for each other.”

Marlena couldn’t help but laugh at that, even as her eyes filled with tears of relief.  “I don’t want to stop.”  She slides her hand down his forearm.  “This… you make me feel wonderful.  I need this.  I’m just…. what would the family say if they knew?”

“Kimmy already knows,” Bo shrugs.  “She doesn’t like it, but she’s minding her own business.  This is none of anyone’s business but our own.”

Marlena sighed.  She’d seen the way Kimberly had looked at her when she’d followed Bo out of the kitchen the other night.  She’d caught her looking again at Tuscany but most of her own attention had been consumed by Bo, by how he looked and smelt and by imagining what he might do to her if and when he got her alone.  And then he had gotten her alone and all rational thought had fled her.   

“What would the children say?” she whispered uncertainly.

“Why do they have to know?” Bo shrugged.  “And even if they do; Marlena, Carrie, Eric and Sami aren’t children anymore.”

“Belle and Brady are,” Marlena reminded him.  “And they’ve been asking where their daddy is.  How am I supposed to explain to them why he’s left us?  And why you’re here instead of him?”

“We’re not flaunting this, Marlena.  They don’t have to know anything about us.  What you choose to tell them about John?” he sighed.  “I don’t have any answers for you there.  Shawn-D is asking the same questions.  Why has his mom left us, where is she and when is she coming back.  What am I supposed to tell him?  She’s abandoned all of us and I don’t know the answers to any of those questions.”

Marlena saw her own pain reflected in Bo’s eyes and she felt a burst of anger at John and Hope and their selfishness at the way they had pursued their pasts with no consideration of what it would do to those that loved them in the present.  

“I don’t want to talk about… them,” she couldn’t even bring herself to say their names.  Certainly not in the same sentence.  She didn’t want to think about John and what he might be doing with Hope in Europe, or wherever they might be.  She didn’t want to wonder if he thought of her, if he harbored any regrets or misgivings about walking away from his children.  From her.  “Actually,” she slid her hand further along his arm and then took hold of his loose tie.    She leaned forward and used her other hand to tug the loose knot apart.  Pulling it from around his neck she tossed it behind her with a suddenly seductive smile.  “I don’t think I want to talk at all….”

Part Sept

Stood there and watched you walk away
From everything we had
But I still mean every word I said to you
He will try to take away my pain
And he just might make me smile
But the whole time I’m wishing he was you instead

Oh, holding my breath
Won’t see you again
Something keeps me holding on to nothing

Come on, come on, don’t leave me like this
I thought I had you figured out
Something’s gone terribly wrong
You’re all I wanted
Come on, come on, don’t leave me like this
I thought I had you figured out
Can’t breathe whenever you’re gone
Can’t turn back now, I’m haunted

Haunted – Taylor Swift

“John!”  John cringed internally as Hope’s shrill voice reached him from across the park.  He had escaped the hotel room a couple of hours ago, claiming the need for some fresh air and to clear his head.  Hope had been dragging him across Europe for the past few weeks, trying to uncover memories that he was starting to think were much better left dead and buried.  But several days ago, it had taken a very uncomfortable turn when Hope had sent Greta away for the evening and plied him with alcohol.  And then she had tried to seduce him.

He had pushed her away incredulously, reminding her that he thought of Bo as a brother and her as a sister.  She, in turn, had reminded him that they had something in common, they both had missing years and those years were linked to Stefano DiMera.  She’d told him she knew there was a connection there.  There had been a connection between John and Princess Gina.  And that maybe, just maybe, if they tried, they could invoke the memories of that connection and uncover more of the truth.

He hadn’t known what to say.  He had asked her to come with him and now he was regretting everything about this trip.  He was regretting the whole damn search.  The further this search took him into the past, the further it took him away from Salem and his present.  And the further it took him away from Marlena.  And what he had realized, with startling clarity, when Hope had tried to kiss him, was that Marlena was his everything.  She was his past, his present and his future.  Or at least, she had been before he had so stupidly thrown it away in pursuit of unknown ghosts.

He had told her in New Orleans that he would never be complete until he knew his past.  He knew now that had been the most stupid thing he had ever said, in a long, long line of stupid things.  Not complete without his past?  He was not complete now.  He had a massive hole where his heart should be.  His heart was back in Salem and right now he was going through the motions.  He didn’t want to be here with Hope.  He wanted to be back in Salem, he wanted to be curled up in bed with Marlena, listening to the sound of the rain hammering against the bedroom windows.  He wanted to bury his nose in her soft, floral-scented hair.  He wanted to trace the gentle curve of her neck where it met her shoulder.  He desperately wanted to hear her laugh and see the soft sparkle of her eyes as she watched the children run to her and fling their arms around her legs.

God, he’d been so short-sighted.  He’d been so careless with her heart; after promising her he would never take her for granted, he’d done just that.  And now he’s lost her and he’s not sure if she’ll ever contemplate taking him back.  He’s not even sure how he would explain and apologize for the stupidity that led him to this place.

“John!”  Hope’s voice cut above the everyday noise of the park, the hum of the traffic, the twittering of birds rejoicing in the spring sunshine.  John stared at the snow-capped mountains in the distance with a grimace and then reluctantly turned to see her stalking towards him.  “John, I was worried about you.  You said you would be back soon.  I did not know where you were.”

“I told you.”  His voice was hard and wiry as he fended her intended embrace off with stiff hands.  “I needed some space.  Some air.”

“But we need to pack,” Hope reminded him.  “Our train leaves for Berlin in two hours.”

“I don’t think I’m going to Berlin,” John’s mouth set in a thin hard line.  “I don’t think this search is going to uncover anything.  At least not anything I want to know.”

“Oh, but John!” Hope looked by turns shocked and distraught.  “I feel like we are so close.  Mrs. Faversham is sure that Gina and Father John met with this Herr Krause.”  

“Hope, I keep reminding you, you weren’t that Gina,” John raised an eyebrow.  Even if this Krause knew anything about what he had been doing in Berlin with the real Princess Gina, he didn’t see how that would help Hope.  Stefano had employed Hope’s version of Gina in a largely solo capacity in the time he’d had her living as the erstwhile Princess.  The real Princess Gina’s life was only an echo to Hope and was largely irrelevant as John saw it.

“I know, but as I keep reminding you, I must have had Gina’s memories.”  Hope gave him what she hoped was a seductive and winning smile.  “If I can unlock any of those memories, either the time I spent as Gina or the real Princess Gina’s memories, I just feel like it might trigger the rest of them.  And I can finally understand those missing years and put them behind me.”

“It might not be as easy as you think to put them behind you.” John warned her moodily.  Marlena had said much the same thing to him, and he was inclined to listen to her now.  Now that it was too late.

“But I will be forever restless until I know the truth,” Hope laid her hands on his forearm and tugged at it gently.  “Please John.  This search was your idea.  Please don’t leave me here alone.  I need your help.”  She arched one thin, finely shaped eyebrow and curled her mouth into a smile that she knew that John had not been able to resist in the past.  If she appealed to his sense of fairness and his protective instinct, she was sure she’d be able to convince him to stay.  “You’ve said yourself that if Stefano found out I was here he would not be very pleased.”

John clearly remained unconvinced.  “All right.  If we don’t find anything in Berlin, then we can talk about going home.  Would that be acceptable?”  She had no intention of going home or letting John go home, whatever happened in Berlin, but she thought the promise that this would only be a small delay might be enough to convince him to stay.

John stroked his eyebrow as he considered her plea.  Everything in him screamed that he needed to get back home to Salem.  He needed to beg Marlena’s forgiveness and pray that she would give him one last chance.  He might have completely blown it, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he tried.  But at the same time, Hope was right.  He had been the one to suggest this trip and this search, and he was concerned about what the old man might do if he should find out about their escapades.

“All right.”  He sighed, regretting his words as he said them.  “I’ll come with you to Berlin.  We’ll meet this Krause character.  But after that, I’m going home.  To Salem.”  To Marlena.  He didn’t say the words.  He didn’t need to.  They both knew what was in his head.  In his heart.   

However, Hope was determined to change that.  Before she was done, John Black would no longer care about his ex-wife, at home, all alone in her big apartment.

*

Marlena held Bo’s eyes as she slipped the buttons from their companion holes in his dress shirt.  Once all the buttons were undone, she slid her hands beneath the satiny white cotton and ran them up his chest and over his shoulders.  She pushed the shirt down his arms and licked her lips as he shrugged out of it, dispensing with it over the back of the sofa.

Bo smirked as he pushed her backwards onto the brown floral fabric.  Taking one hand he pushed it up over her head and then bent to take her lips with his.  Marlena let out a soft sigh of pleasure as his free hand found her other arm and brought it up to join the first behind her head.

While Bo kissed her, he reached for the tie she had tossed behind her and before she realized what was happening, he had deftly wrapped it several times around her wrists and tied it in a rolling hitch knot.  When she realized what he had done, she wriggled beneath him, her eyes wide.

“Bo!”

“Shhhh,” he grinned at her as he pulled the cushion she’d previously leaned her head against and placed it over her bound arms.  Pulling it down, he lifted her head so he could wedge it under, effectively pinioning her arms with the weight of the pillow and her own head.

The fantasy he had recounted to her the other night was the tamest of those he’d had about her over the years.  Roman had once let slip that his apparently straight-laced wife was far more uninhibited between the sheets than anyone might imagine.  When Bo had casually enquired what Roman might be alluding to, Roman had simply smiled, his brown eyes twinkling and commented that his police issue cuffs came in handy from time to time.   That had triggered a series of daydreams and fantasies that had almost gotten Bo in serious trouble on occasion, and he’d come up with all sorts of scenarios which had kept him company on many a lonely night.

“Just relax, gorgeous.  I promise I won’t hurt you.”

“Bo…” Marlena’s voice was suddenly smoky with desire.  She swallowed heavily, pulling at her arms, feeling the weight of the cushion and the weight of her own head holding them down.  She squirmed, feeling an intense rush of pleasure between her legs.  She didn’t want to know how Bo knew this was one of her kinks.  She spent so much of her life being in control, being the consummate professional.  Everyone came to her and expected so much of her.  She helped friends and family and patients, gave good advice and was eminently thoughtful, kind and sensible.  So, it was understandable that sometimes she just wanted to hand over control.  To be at someone else’s mercy.

In the early days it was Roman.  More latterly it was John.  She had never trusted any other lover enough to reveal that kind of vulnerability, lest they use it against her.  But it seemed that Bo knew; whether it was instinct or because Roman or John had been imprudent enough to reveal such an intimate secret about her, which was more likely to be the case.  

She should have been annoyed but the reality was that she was far too turned on to care. 

“Is this okay?” Bo was pretty sure, from the expression on her face, which was one of heavy-lidded desire, that it was.  But he had to check, nonetheless.  He wasn’t going to do anything she wasn’t one hundred and ten percent onboard with.

Marlena bit her lower lip and nodded, her cheeks reddening to a deep rosy hue.

“Good.”  Bo trailed his fingers down the skin the inside of her upper arm that was still exposed, uncovered by the cushion.  “We’re going to take it slow this time.  And you’re going to do what I tell you; do you understand?”

Marlena’s hips bucked involuntarily, and she swallowed, her throat tight.  “Do you understand, Marlena?” Bo demanded, more insistently this time.

“Yes,” she said breathlessly.  “I understand.”

“Good girl.”  Bo’s fingers continue their journey down over her shoulder and along to trace the outline of her collarbone.  

He dipped his head, taking her mouth with his again, his tongue hard and insistent against hers.  Marlena kissed him back eagerly, loving the way his stubble burned her skin as he plundered her mouth.  He left her gasping as his mouth traced a route over her jaw and down her neck, his lips and teeth leaving a trail of reddened skin in their wake.

And then his hands were toying with her lace-covered breasts.  He looked up at her with a smile that was both mischievous and almost worshipful before his attention reverted to the soft, warm mounds of flesh partially hidden by the gloriously sexy bra she was still wearing.  His fingers smoothed soft paths over the curves of golden skin above the scalloped edge of lace.  He bent to follow that line with his tongue and Marlena squirmed again beneath him, her body tensing and her back arching so that Bo ended up with a mouth full of warm, fragrant flesh.

“Easy there,” he chuckled as he pulled back and looked at her face.  Her eyes were a dark mossy green as she stared back at him, all the hunger she felt contained in her wanton gaze.

“Bo,” she started but he held up his hand and shook his head.  

“Uh-uh.” He told her firmly.  “We’re doing this my way, at my pace.”

“But…” she moved her body, straining towards him but he was still lying to the side of her so she was unable to make any contact with him except for where his leg lay, warm and strong against hers.

“No buts,” he gave her a stern look and moved both hands away from her, holding them up.  “Behave yourself and I’ll give you what you need.  If you don’t, we can just lie here and look at each other.”

Marlena bit back a smile.  She was pretty sure Bo was as physically incapable of lying there and not touching her as she was at the moment, or at least as much as she would be if she wasn’t so deliciously restrained.

“So, are you going to play it my way?” Bo raised his eyebrows and was gratified and immensely aroused as Marlena bit her lip and nodded.  “Good.”  He returned his attention to her magnificent breasts, cupping one of them in his oversized hand.

Marlena whimpered as he flicked his thumb across one nipple, bringing it to a peak beneath the red lace.  And when he dropped his head to her and bit her through the thick fabric, she groaned and pressed herself against him again.

Bo slid his hand up her side and over her the impossibly soft skin of her inner upper arm.  “You are so incredibly sexy,” his voice was low and thready as he stared into hazel eyes bottomless with lust and need.  “God, woman, I am going to make you scream.”

Marlena gasped, her whole body tensing as he kissed her.  God, the things he was doing to her left her helpless with desire.  The last time she’d had a “new” man in her bed, it had been John, when she’d believed him to be Roman.  It had been a profound experience then, discovering each other’s bodies, learning the sweet spots, the sounds, actions and the words that elicited particular responses.

It had been so long, she had all but forgotten the intensity and uncertainty of discovering a new lover.  The unfamiliar was both terrifying and glorious.  Different fingers moved differently, applied different pressure.  A different tongue and different lips stroked, licked and teased differently.  The sensations were strange, her skin reacted differently, and she found herself wondering where he would go next.  

John’s lovemaking was comfortable and familiar.  He knew what she liked, he knew all the sweet spots, knew how to tease her to intensely erotic peaks with what seemed like impossible ease and regularity.  But this, this was different.  If she could, she might guide him, tell him to bite just here and just this hard.  To suck just there and lick that spot and oh, just a little harder Bo, just a little…. oh that’s right, just right there.

But he wouldn’t let her speak and she was fine with that.  It was just as intensely erotic to watch and feel him exploring her body, taking her unspoken cues, her whimpers, the involuntary contraction of her muscles as signs that he was hitting the right spots or that he needed to pinch harder or flick his tongue that little more insistently.

He pinched the lace-bound nub between his thumb and forefinger and rolled it with gentle pressure, listening for the soft sigh that came as he experimented with different pressures.  He imagined the colour of her nipple beneath the lace and satin, imagined taking the rosy peak into his mouth and sucking on it.  Imagined her cry of pleasure as he teased it with tongue and teeth.  He heard his own moan, mingling with hers and thought maybe it was time to compare his imagination to the real thing.

Gently, he pushed the cup of her bra down, revealing a glorious expanse of smooth pale skin.  He released the whole globe of flesh from the bra cup, tucking it underneath the lower curve of her breast and he feasted his eyes on the beauty revealed therein.  

She genuinely had the most beautiful breasts he’d ever seen.  He would spend hours worshipping at the altar of her breasts if she would only let him.  He looked up at her, awestruck.  “Do you have any idea how fucking hot you are, Marlena?” he asked her incredulously.  “Jesus Christ, I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

Marlena said nothing.  She wasn’t sure what she would say even if she’d felt like she could speak.  But Bo had made it clear that was not her part in this role-play.  He was in charge, she just had to lie back and enjoy.  And that she could, and was.  Being told she was intensely desirable wasn’t exactly bad for her ego which had suffered somewhat over the past few months with John’s increasingly wandering attention being diverted in the direction of his unknown past as well as Hope and Greta. 

Bo turned back to her breast and stroked his thumb over her nipple again.  She sucked in a sharp breath and jerked as Bo took the reddened peak between his thumb and forefinger, gently rotating it so the pad of his thumb moved over the top of it in rhythmic circles that were intensely pleasurable. 

Marlena pressed her lips together, trying to suppress the moans that threatened to stream forth.  She pulled again on her arms; her wrists tightly bound together by Bo’s tie.  She was both frustrated that she couldn’t touch him and incredibly turned on by the same fact.  She was completely at his mercy, and she loved it.

Bo could feel her as she tensed, trying to move her arms, tentatively seeing if she could unbind her hands.  If she’d really wanted to, she would have been able to free herself, he knows that.  The hitch knot he’d used would come free with enough pressure, but he could tell that Marlena was enjoying this and any pretense at trying to free herself, to escape his ministrations, was just that, a pretense.

“Behave,” he reminded her, and he waited until she stopped moving before he dropped his head to her again.  This time, he flickered his tongue across her naked flesh, teasing her throbbing bud until she could almost scream with the wanting of him.  She wanted him everywhere at once.  She wanted his mouth on her skin and her breasts and her mouth and she wanted his hands stroking and pinching and penetrating her.  And most of all, she wanted his cock inside her.  She wanted him to devour her until she disappeared inside him and he inside her.  She wanted to make it to that place where she was no longer able to have a rational thought, that place where she was just all sensation and delightful pain and pleasure.

She cried out as he bit down and then sucked her nipple into his mouth, using his tongue to massage it as he sucked on it.  

“Oh!”  The sound came from her involuntarily as he feasted on her, sucking and licking and biting first one breast and then the other, even as he used his hand to minister to the creamy flesh he was not currently worshipping with his mouth.  “Oh, God!”

Bo let that one go.  He was enjoying the fact that she could barely control herself.  He could feel the way she was straining against him, the shudders that rippled through her body as he changed the pressure of his mouth or when he gently bit or sucked on her nipples or just her gorgeously soft skin. 

When he decided he’d teased her enough, he trailed the fingers of his right hand down over the lower curve of her breast and down over her torso.  Her skin was hot and damp with perspiration.  He lifted his head from her reddened skin to follow the route of his hand as it skimmed over the soft and incredibly sexy curve where her waist flowed out to her hip.  His fingers brushed the outer curve of her incredibly fine ass cheek and he stroked down her thigh, tucking his fingers into the top of her stocking and tugging it down her leg.  She lifted her knee, allowing him to remove the flimsy item.  Once it was gone, his fingers continued a path up the inside of her thigh until they crossed over to the thigh that was pressed against his groin, the lace top of the stocking doing criminal things to his turgid cock.

He delved his hand under her thigh, pulling it up and away from him so that he could both remove the second stocking as well as adjust his own position.

“Spread your legs for me,” he ordered her as he scrambled up onto his knees.  He noticed her eyes drift to his large erection, and she licked her lips.  He was more than ready to take her, and he knew that was what she was expecting but he knew that once he did, he wasn’t going to last long, and he wanted to be sure she orgasmed before he did.  He hadn’t always been the most considerate lover but these days he felt it a much more pleasurable experience to be sure his lover was completely satiated before he took his own pleasure.  This was so new for him but already he knew there was nothing that brought him more joy than watching Marlena’s face as she orgasmed.  That he could do that for her, bring her such intense physical pleasure, was such a turn on and he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to get enough of it. 

Marlena did as he commanded, her toes curling as he positioned himself between her thighs.  She couldn’t help but stare at his proudly erect penis.  She wanted to feel that magnificent cock between her legs, pushing into the sweet, hot depths of her.  She wanted him to fulfil his promise to make her scream.  She wanted him so badly she almost thought she might climax if he as much as touched her right now.

But she felt mildly disappointed as he placed his hands either side of her upper body and he lowered himself to kiss her.

She whimpered in frustration as he kissed her and she hooked her right calf around his thigh, trying to get purchase so she could grind herself against his thigh.

Bo groaned as he felt her rubbing against him.  She was so wet and slippery he almost lost it for a moment.  With the utmost effort, he pulled back and glared at her.  “Marlena!”

“Bo, please!”  She was not too proud to beg.  And she figured he’d probably like it, anyway.  Her breaths were coming in short, sharp pants.  She could barely remember how to breath, let alone create cohesive, comprehensive sentences.  “Please, honey.”

Bo reached back and unhooked her leg before he sat back on his heels.  His own breathing was shallow and ragged.  The beseeching look she gave him was almost his undoing and when she thrust her hips upward it took everything he had not to just bury himself in her and fuck her, and himself, senseless.

But that’s not how he wanted this to go.  With supreme self-control, he curled his hands into fists and then flexed them, repeating the gesture several times as he took deep breaths.

“You need to be patient, Marlena,” he told her, stroking down the inside of her thigh.  “But you can speak now.  I want you to tell me what feels good.”  He edged back and stroked one finger down the hot, wet lips of her vulva.

“Oh, god!” she bucked her hips as she felt his fingers lightly brushing over her heated flesh.  She wanted him to touch her, to lick her, to fuck her.  She wanted everything, every part of him inside her.  She wanted…

“Tell me, Marlena.”  His lips traced the same route as his fingers down the inside of her thigh until the rich musky scent of her filled his nostrils.  She smelt like sex and he wanted desperately to bury himself in her but he wanted her to guide him.  She couldn’t use her hands to do it, so he wanted her to tell him.  He wanted her to let go of her inhibitions and speak all her lust and desire in language that would turn them both on.  “Tell me what you want me to do to you.  Do you want me to touch you?  Do you want me to lick you until you scream?”

She groaned, her hips lifting off the sofa.  Bo took the opportunity to slide a thin cushion under her buttocks so that he had a better angle to pay lavish attention to her.

“Lick me,” she felt him push on the back of her thighs so that her knees were up around her elbows.  She felt so out of control, so vulnerable, that for a moment she almost panicked.   

What the hell am I doing?  With BO?!

Nothing about this made sense, she knew.  Nothing except that she trusted Bo.  He’d always been there for her; he’d never deliberately hurt her and now he was taking care of her in the way that she absolutely needed.  She needed to feel desirable, to be wanted and touched.  She needed this connection so badly, this intimacy.  And she just needed to surrender herself, to stop thinking and rationalizing.  She needed to stop feeling.  She needed to get out of her head and into her body and just let herself be taken over by the physical sensations sweeping through her.

She could feel Bo’s hands on her thighs and his warm breath on her skin and then she could feel his tongue, gently caressing at first, gliding over her slick, swollen folds, brushing over her clitoris so that she jumped with the glorious shock of it.  She wrenched at the bonds around her wrists, her arms still heavily pinioned by the cushion.  She wanted desperately to touch him, to bury her fingers in his hair, to hold his head against her while she ground against his perfect mouth.  She couldn’t even lift her hips to thrust against him, his grip was tight on her thighs, holding her down against the throw as he tasted her musky sweetness.

“Bo, harder,” she rasped, needing more from him than he was giving her.  “Make your tongue….  I want to feel your tongue inside me.”

Bo looked up at her and grinned.  With a nod, he dropped his head again, this time using a firm tongue to dip into the soft, wet valleys of flesh.  She tasted so sweet as he slowly explored her, his probing tongue first detailing the outer folds and then finally finding the entrance to the moist, tight core of her.

With his fingers, he spread her swollen lips and then he plunged his tongue into her.  Her cries of pleasure made his rock- hard cock twitch and he had to still and gather himself for a moment.

“Oh, Bo, more!” she begged him.  “Please, don’t stop.”

He obliged, slowly fucking her with his tongue as he lifted his gaze to watch the waves of pleasure washing over her face.  

“Higher,” she gasped after a few long moments.  His tongue felt amazing, but she wanted to come.  She wanted to orgasm so badly she almost hurt with the need of it.

Bo nodded and adjusted his position.  He could feel it in the trembling of her body, in the barely restrained desperation conveyed by her voice.  She needed release and he was going to give it to her.  But not quite yet.

“You’re not allowed to come until I tell you that you can.” His voice was firm and brooked no argument.  “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” a single tear trickled from Marlena’s left eye and rolled over her cheek, marking a glistening trail down to the base of her ear.  Bo had a moment of misgiving.  “Are you okay with this?” he asked gently.  “We can stop, do it differently if you want.”

“No!” her response was swift and sure.  She wasn’t upset, she was just frustrated.  But she was enjoying this far too much to change anything.  She wanted to be told what to do.  She wanted to just surrender herself and not have to think, to just react.  “No.  I’m fine.  Just… make me come Bo.  I need this.  I need you to do this for me.”

Bo nodded, sliding his hands under her hips, lifting her closer to him.  “Tell me what to do,” he said softly.  “Tell me what feels good.”

“Lick me, gently to start with,” she told him.  She was beyond feeling vulnerable or embarrassed.  “I don’t like sucking.  Just apply some pressure.  Let me do the rest.”

Bo dropped his head and did exactly what she had described.  He ran his tongue across her clitoris, gently at first, listening for the hitch in her breath as he hit the right spots.  Then slowly, he applied a little pressure and massaged the incredibly sensitive nub in small circles.  Marlena let out an “oh” and then a soft, drawn-out moan.  “Oh, that’s it,” she pressed herself upwards against his tongue.  “Oh, just there.  A little bit harder.”  

He held her, cupping her fine ass in his large warm hands as he continued to stimulate her, adjusting his tongue with each cue she gave him, both verbal and non-verbal.  And then he was barely moving, he was just holding his hard tongue against her as she rotated her hips, grinding herself against him in a precise dance which synchronized with her symphonic chorus of moans and melodic oh’s and oh God, Bo’s.

And then he lifted his head and returned to her impossibly wet slit, lapping at her juices as she shuddered and relaxed against his tongue.  She gave a growl of frustration, another tear slipping from her eye as she surrendered herself to the feeling of his tongue entering her and then withdrawing again.  She wanted so badly for it to be his cock, large and hot; stretching and filling her.  Demanding her compliance, her submission.  She wanted his weight on top of her, to feel him thrusting all his need and desire into her.  

Her wanting was so intense it was almost blinding, and she was consumed by the pleasure of what was happening and the anticipation of what was going to happen.  

“Bo,” she practically sobbed.  “Please, please fuck me now.”

“Not yet,” his voice was strained with his own desire for her.  He could feel her own need almost as badly as he felt his own.  Every muscle was straining with the control he was having to exert.  This was heaven and hell, two sides of the same coin.  He was sweating and his corded muscles were twitching with the waiting, but he knew it would be worth it.

He moved his tongue back to the tiny bundle of nerves at the core of her and resumed the pressure, firming his tongue and massaging the tiny tip slowly until she groaned and took up her own motion again.  He felt the movement of her hips against his hands and the pressure against his tongue and he felt her back arch as she pushed herself against him again and again.

“Oh, Bo!” she felt like the world was about to explode inside her head.  “Bo, I want to come.  Please let me come.”

“Not yet,” he repeated his earlier words, and he heard her sob in frustration.  “Next time,” he promised her.  “Just be patient for a little while longer, honey.”  

He kissed the delicate inside of her thigh and then moved back to inhale the sweetness of her, his tongue dancing over her heat, sliding inside her, teasing, flickering, adoring her.  She moaned her pleasure and her need, nothing more than pure sensation dancing through her head, across her skin and in the blood pulsing through her.

“Bo,” she whispered, and he lifted his eyes to hers, dark and hooded with lust.  She wordlessly held his gaze.  She was ready.  More than ready.  She wasn’t sure how much longer she could contain herself, just the mere touch of his lips, a swipe of his tongue could be the thing that sent her over the edge.  He nodded.  

“Okay,” his words vibrated across her skin, sending eddies of pleasure through her.  He flicked his tongue across her clitoris before giving her the permission she so desperately wanted.  “You can come for me now, Marlena.  Tell me how good it feels.”

“Oh, god!” Marlena ground herself against his tongue, her hips creating small circles, alternating pressure against the hands that still held her against him.  Her consciousness was reduced to a pinpoint where his tongue rubbed against her body.

“Oh Bo… there.  Just there.  Don’t… oh god, don’t move.”  She could feel it approaching, like a wave that was going to crash over her and obliterate everything in its wake.  “Oh Bo, I’m going to….  Oh, oh. OH.”

Bo squeezed her ass and flicked his tongue against the tiny nub that held the key to her physical pleasure and that was just enough to finally send her over the edge.  Everything exploded inside her and she rocked against his mouth, cries coming endlessly from her as he continued to massage her with his tongue.  And the waves crashed over and over and over, and she cried his name until all that was left were small tremors echoing through her body and the tiny whimpers that issued forth from her as he lessened the pressure and slowed to a final stop.

He released her and climbed up her body until he was lying on top of her, the weight of his body supported on his left forearm while he used his right hand to brush tendrils of damp hair from her forehead.  She looked dazed and while he didn’t want to wait any longer, he wanted to make sure she was okay before he continued.  While he waited, he delved his hand under the cushion and pulled one end of his tie undone, freeing her wrists.  He unwound the tie and brought her left arm out from under the cushion, massaging her wrist with his fingers before he pressed a kiss to the base of her palm.

She sighed, her focus returning as she rolled her hands into fists and then flexed them.

“Feel better?” Bo asked her, his mouth curled into a lopsided smile.

“I feel amazing.” Marlena smiled.  She curled her right hand around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss.  She could taste herself on his lips and tongue and it was incredibly erotic.  And she could feel him, rigid against her thigh which was even more of a turn-on.  It was time to let him have his fun.  Not that she didn’t think he’d been having fun already, but the boy needed a little release.  “Are you going to fuck me now?” 

“Uh, yeah.”  His voice was hoarse with the effort of controlling himself.  “If that’s okay with you?”

“I’d be offended if you didn’t,” she wrapped her arms around his neck and brought her knees up again, rubbing herself against him.  “Fuck me, Bo.  Fuck me with that big, throbbing cock of yours.”

“Uuuhhhh,” Bo’s eyes rolled back in his head.  Jesus, what this woman did to him was insane.

Marlena reached down between them and took him in her hand, stroking his shaft with firm, expert fingers.  She knew what she was doing, she didn’t need him to guide her.  She could read him like a book.  She tugged gently, guiding him down to where she was waiting to claim him and rubbed his head against her hot, moist slit.  She watched his face, his eyes tightly closed as he felt the tight, welcoming heat of her.

“Oh, God Marlena, I’m not going to last long,” he warned her.  “I’m… Jesus, I’m so close.”

“It’s okay baby,” she moved against him, providing the pressure for the head of his penis to penetrate her.  She moaned softly as he took up the movement, slowly pushing himself all the way inside her.  “You come when you need to.”  She kissed him softly.  He returned the kiss but with more pressure as he began to move, withdrawing slowly and then filling her again with infinite care.  Marlena rocked her own hips in contradiction to his, increasing the pace of the filling and emptying.  She felt incredible.  So velvety, so tight.  So wet.  He wanted to completely disappear inside her.  “Marlena,” he panted.  “You need to… slow down.”

She didn’t want to slow down, she wanted to feel him pound into her.  Hard, deep, frantic.  She wanted to be consumed by him.  But she did slow down, because he asked.    Because she wanted to bring him as much pleasure as he was bringing her.  She wanted to make him happy.

Bo all but stopped moving, opting just to stare at her for long moments.  She returned his gaze although she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the naked intimacy of such a moment.  This was what she and John used to do, just stare at each other and allowing Bo to see her deep into her in such a vulnerable moment felt both dangerous and a betrayal of her love for John.  Although why she should care about John and any comparisons between the two men, she wasn’t entirely sure.

When she couldn’t bear it any longer, she looked away.  Her fingers traced the curve of his shoulder and her eyes followed down to his bicep.  “Kiss me,” she heard herself say.  She couldn’t look him in the eyes again.  She was afraid he would see John there and she didn’t want to hurt him.  

Bo could feel the conflict boiling within her, but he opted to put it to one side for the moment.  It was a conversation that belonged to another day, another time.  They’d already spoken enough about their concerns and their fears.  And their pasts.  (If they were their pasts.)  But right now, it was the present he wanted and the beautiful woman in his arms.

He took her bruised lips with his own, their tongues tangling again, her moans sweetly vibrating against his lips and skin.  He began to move again, sweet and slow at first, reveling in the feeling of her surrounding him, gripping him with a gentle friction.  She felt her nails score light grooves down his back as she took up the pace he set.

“Oh Bo,” she threw her head back and he attacked her throat, sucking at her skin like a man possessed.  Her back arched and he felt her heels digging into his backside as she encouraged him to pick up the pace.  “I’m close, baby.”

“Faster?” he asked her.  He wanted that now.  He wasn’t sure how much he had left in the tank, and he was more than ready, if she was.

“Faster,” she nodded, clinging to him.    “Oh fuuuuck.  Oh, you feel so good, Bo.  That’s it, fill me up, baby.  Make me come, hard.”

Bo groaned.  She could talk to him like that forever if she wanted.  

He increased the pace of his thrusts, but it wasn’t even like it was conscious anymore.  She was wrapped around him, and she was moving with him, against him, around him.  She was hot and sticky and he was melting into her and then she was calling his name and surging and tensing and she was hard and soft, and he was falling, falling, falling and the orgasm ripped through him so powerfully he saw stars as he erupted inside her.  He came, calling her name, filling her, kissing her as she contracted around him. 

When he finally became aware of his surroundings once again, he realized that she was softly crying beneath him.

“Marlena?” he scrambled off her.  “Are you okay, did I hurt you?”

She gazed up at him with haunted eyes.  “No, no it’s nothing like that.”  She tried to smile but it didn’t reach her eyes.  “You were wonderful.  This was wonderful.”  She wiped away the tears.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to-” Despite herself, she began to cry again.  She shook her head and looked away, ashamed that she was ruining what should have been a lovely moment.

“It’s okay,” he told her gently.  “This situation is complicated.  Our feelings are complicated.  You don’t need to apologize.”

“But I do!” she sobbed.  “I hate feeling like this.  I hate that I’m ruining our time together because I can’t get him out of my head.  I hate him for what he’s done to me.”  She looked at him now and he could see the devastation and pain in her beautiful golden eyes.   “You’ve been so considerate and so kind, and this was absolutely amazing, but here I am ruining it by crying over him.  You don’t deserve this.”  She struggled to get out from underneath Bo, but he refused to let her go, instead opting to gather her into his arms.

“It’s okay.” He told her again. “I understand.  And I’m here.  Cry, scream, tell me how much you love him, how much you hate him.  You don’t have to pretend with me, Marlena.  You don’t have to be strong.”

She searched his eyes for any hint that he was being disingenuous, but she couldn’t find it.  He wasn’t disappointed in her, he wasn’t hurt or angry.  He just cared.  He just wanted to be there for her.

“Oh, God!”  She wept even harder, and he pulled her against himself, feeling the agonizing warmth of her tears as they dropped onto his chest and he vowed to himself that when he got his hands on John Black, he would make that idiot pay for the all the pain he had caused, and continued to cause, this incredible woman.

He would make John Black rue the day he ever walked away from Salem.

Part Huit

I can’t decide if it’s a choice
Getting swept away
I hear the sound of my own voice
Asking you to stay
And all we are is skin and bone
Trained to get along
Forever going with the flow
But you’re friction

This slope is treacherous
This path is reckless
This slope is treacherous
I, I, I like it

Treacherous – Taylor Swift

“I hope Mom’s feeling better,” Sami threw her napkin down on the table.  “Carrie, I think we should head back to the penthouse and check on her.”

“Yeah,” Carrie looked at her watch.  It was almost ten o’clock and she was worried about Marlena.  Maybe not quite for the same reasons Sami was, but she was concerned, nonetheless.

“I wonder actually, if it might be a better idea to let Marlena have some time to herself?” Kim suggested carefully.  “I mean, she might appreciate just a bit of peace and quiet if she’s not feeling well?”

“We can be quiet!” Sami looked slightly offended.  “We’re not going to bother her if she does need quiet, but we can be there if she needs anything.”  She pulled her purse from where it hung on the back of her chair and stood up.  “I hate to think of her being there alone if she’s not well.  I mean, she doesn’t have to be alone now, you know?”

“I agree,” Carrie nodded.  She followed Sami’s lead, pushing her chair back from the table and standing.  “Marlena’s had to spend far too much time alone.”  She was referring to the time after Roman had walked out on his marriage to Marlena, leaving her alone and distraught.  Isolated and vulnerable.  What had followed had almost destroyed her beloved step-mother and half the town with her.  Carrie was damned if she was going to let Marlena suffer alone again.

“You know girls, I wonder if Kimmy might be right,” Caroline frowned, smoothing her crumpled napkin against the tablecloth.  “Bo did say Marlena had a migraine.  Maybe she would just like some space.”

“Again, we can give her space,” Sami’s jaw set in a familiar, stubborn line that Caroline recognized only too well.  Both of her parents were ridiculously stubborn, and Sami had inherited a double dose, making her the most stubborn grandchild that Caroline had, and probably the most stubborn person that she knew.  “I’m not going to hover over her, but I am pretty sure she’ll appreciate us being nearby if she is unwell.” 

“Don’t count on it,” Kim muttered under her breath.

“Sorry?” Sami turned on her aunt, unsure that she’d heard Kim correctly.

“I said, I know she can count on you,” Kim covered her faux pas quickly.  She didn’t want the girls to catch onto what was going on between Marlena and her brother, but she also didn’t want to risk them walking in on anything either.  “But Bo took her home.  I’m sure if she needed anything, he will have helped her out.”  Yeah, I bet he’s helping her out, all right.

Kim had known exactly what was going on earlier before Marlena had excused herself all in a fluster and Bo had run after her.  It had been written all over both their faces and Kim was furious at them for being so obvious and for putting her in such an awkward position.

But at the same time, she couldn’t help but understand and feel sorry for the pair of them.  Marlena was clearly in denial about how much pain she was in after the breakdown of her relationship with John.  Kim knew that for Marlena, denial was a stopping place that she frequented a great deal, especially after trauma, and this time was no exception.  Except now her brother was joining his ex-sister-in-law there and they had found themselves unlikely, but very willing bedfellows.  Kim knew it was all going to end in disaster, these things always did, and she needed to find some time to get Marlena alone and help her figure out what she was doing and why she needed to stop it.

But for right now, she just needed to make sure Marlena’s children didn’t accidentally witness anything they shouldn’t.  She couldn’t even imagine what would happen to Sami’s already fragile psyche if she walked in on her mother and her uncle having sex.

“But Marlena is not going to want to put Uncle Bo out and she’s not going to want him hanging around the apartment, especially if she’s not feeling well.” Carrie pointed out.  Like Sami, she didn’t understand why Aunt Kim was so fixated on Marlena having some space, especially if she wasn’t well.  That was why Carrie and Sami were staying with her, after all.  To keep her company and to help her when she needed it.

“Carrie, Sami….  Girls, I really think perhaps you should just come back to the pub and stay with us tonight.”  Caroline was insistent and she looked worried.  “I mean, if whatever Marlena has is contagious, you don’t want to go catching it and spreading it to Belle and Brady, do you?”

“We don’t know that she does have anything and anyway, we were with her earlier on tonight so if anything, we should stay away from Belle and Brady rather than the other way around.” Carrie frowned.  “What’s going on here Granma?  Why are you and Aunt Kim so dead set against us going back to the Penthouse?”

Kim looked sideways at her mother.  She wanted to know that too.  Caroline seemed as concerned as she was, and she had a horrible feeling that it wasn’t anything to do with Marlena’s potential contagiousness.

“We’re not dead set against it, we’re just thinking of your mother and also the two of you,” Caroline smiled, trying to lighten the mood.  “It’s probably been a lot for her to take in the past few weeks and having extra people in the house, even when it’s your own children can sometimes be a little… overwhelming.  If she has a migraine, maybe just let her have this time to herself.  Hopefully she will be feeling a bit more herself tomorrow and then you can spend some quality time with her.”

Carrie looked at Sami who was suddenly looking uncertain.  She really didn’t understand but if both their grandmother and aunt thought that their mom would be better off spending the night by herself then they probably had to accept it.

“Okay,” Carrie nodded.  “Okay, if you think that it’s best for Marlena then we’ll come to the pub.”

“Hey now,” Shawn could see that the girls were still worried and not one hundred percent convinced that this was a good plan.  He wasn’t sure he understood why Caroline was so adamant that the girls not go back to the Penthouse either.  Surely it would be good for them to look after their mother.  After all, everything she had been through over the past few months had knocked her for six.  She really needed the support of her children now, more than ever.  But still, he couldn’t contradict his wife.  She was far wiser than he was when it came to the family and people’s feelings.  He trusted her judgement, but he still wanted to offer something up himself.  “Perhaps ye can give your momma a call when you get to the pub.  Check on her?”

“Yeah.” Carrie nodded thoughtfully.  “Yeah, we’ll do that.”

“Good,” Caroline nodded with relief.  “I think you’re making the right decision.”  She stood up, picking up her own purse from the table.  “Do you girls want to come back to the pub with us?”

“No, we came in my car,” Carrie smiled and squeezed her grandmother’s hand.  “We’ll meet you back at the pub, okay?”

It was only when they were outside and walking to Carrie’s car that Sami finally spoke again.  “Are we really going straight back to the pub?” she asked, disbelievingly.  She couldn’t say why, but she really felt the need to be near to her mother right now.  Their past was a long and complicated story, but whatever had happened between them, Marlena had never faltered in her belief in Sami and had always been there for her.  And now Marlena was having to endure yet more pain in the form of the man she loved walking away from her again, Sami wanted to be there for her.

“No, of course we’re not.” Carrie turned to her sister and looped her arm around Sami’s shoulders.  “We’re going to go and check on Marlena, and then if Granma and Aunt Kim are right and she does want some time to herself, then we’ll go to the pub.  Okay?”

“Okay,” Sami nodded and smiled at her sister.  She was glad Carrie was on the same page.  Their mother needed them, and they were going to be there for her, come hell or high water.

*

When Marlena had finally cried herself out, Bo gently reached around and unclasped her bra, helping her slip her arms from it so he could drop it on the floor.  Then, slowly, he unwound his limbs from hers and reached for the throw which had fallen to the floor when he had laid her on the sofa earlier.  Shaking it out, he pulled it over their naked bodies and settled himself down next to her, propping his head up on one hand so he could look at her.

Behind them, the rain, which had started sometime during their lovemaking was drumming at the windows, echoing the thrumming of his heart which had yet to completely return to normal.  He wasn’t ever sure it would again, at least not while he was in the same physical space as Marlena.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked in a velvety soft voice.

“Not really.”  Her voice was low, still saturated with the pain and grief she was trying so hard to wish away.  

“Okay.”  He nodded.  “But if you change your mind.  I’m right here.”

“I don’t think-” she stopped herself from completing the sentence.  I don’t think that’s really appropriate, do you?  But maybe it was appropriate.  Who was she to say?  She didn’t really know any more.  She didn’t know anything about much of anything at all.  She knew this felt good and it felt bad and everything in between.  She knew she felt angry and guilty and ashamed and sexy and so good it felt sinful.  She didn’t understand John or Hope, but mostly, she didn’t understand herself.  She can only imagine what Roman would say if he knew.  If he had still been alive.

She almost started crying again at the thought of Roman, buried in an unmarked grave in St Luke’s graveyard.  When Kristen had come home with the false Roman, they hadn’t known what to do with the grave of the man that they had thought to be Roman.  The man that now it turns out, was Roman.  The family had opted to remove the scribing on his gravestone proclaiming him to be the beloved son of Shawn and Caroline Brady and loving father of Carrie, Samantha and Eric Brady.  The gravestone had been blank ever since and she had passed it, thinking little of the body that lay below the ground.  And now it turned out that was Roman, and she just didn’t know how to feel about that.

Oh Roman.  What am I doing? 

Roman would have been appalled at this turn of events.  He would have thrown fists at Bo, would have tried to pummel his little brother senseless.  She knows that as sure as she knows the sun will rise tomorrow.    He had forgiven her for John, he had even given them his blessing.  But now here she was, letting John walk away and instead, taking Bo to her bed.

But what would Roman have thought if he’d seen how John had turned away when she had needed him so badly.   How he had put Greta and Hope above the family he said he loved so much.  Lately she didn’t feel like she even knew who John was any more.  He certainly wasn’t the man who had promised to always be at her side.  That was so protective of her that he made her crazy.

No, this John wasn’t the same John at all.

“Earth to Marlena,” Bo drew his fingers across her cheek and then wound them into her hair so that she was forced to look at him.  “Listen, do you want me to go?”

She frowned, the skin between her eyes folding into furrows.  “Go?” She was confused.  Where would he go?  Why would he go?  

“The kids will probably be coming home soon,” he reminded her softly.  He didn’t want to go anywhere.  He wanted to lie here on this sofa with her, exploring that glorious body of hers and eliciting those whimpers and moans that made him so hot for her.  If he went back to the pub now, he’d be stuck somewhere between his painful memories of Hope and his blistering desire for Marlena and that was not a place he wanted to be.  He didn’t want to be tortured by the inevitable comparisons and the questions that would surely follow.  

Marlena had made it clear she didn’t want to think about any of this.  She just wanted to act.  Thinking was too painful, too restrictive.  Thinking meant you had to think about everyone else’s feelings and then invariably think about your own.  Thinking about feelings meant that you ended up feeling them.  And neither of them was ready for that.  

He understood how seductive it was to want to just forget about everything else and just lose yourself in the physicality of sex. 

“I don’t want you to go,” Marlena whispered plaintively, her hand smoothing across his pecs so that his nipples stood to attention.  “I don’t want to be alone tonight, Bo.”

“But what if your girls come home?” Bo couldn’t help himself as he found his head dipping towards hers.

“I have a lock on my bedroom door,” she murmured, as her eyes fixated on his lips.  She wanted him to kiss her again.  She desperately wanted him between her legs, making love to her again.  “They don’t have to know anything.  You can leave in the morning before they wake up, can’t you?”

The way her voice raised at the end in a desperate query sent a shiver through him.  All night alone with only his thoughts and fantasies for company, or a night touching, tasting, fucking this glorious creature.    There really was no choice to be made.

“You’re very convincing,” he swooped in to kiss her and a small “mmmmm” slipped from her as she hooked her arm around his neck, the back of her hand pressed against his warm hair.  He couldn’t believe the effect she had on him.  He really couldn’t get enough of her.  But something about this didn’t feel right.  Didn’t feel like a wise choice.   “But honey, are you sure?  We just got done talking about not wanting people to know about us.  Isn’t this too risky?”

“For God’s sake, just shut up and kiss me” she demanded.  She didn’t want to think about any consequences.   They would retreat to the bedroom, lock the door and shut out the world.  She’d done it before.  He could leave early in the morning, just as she had suggested.  There was no reason no-one ever had to know anything.  She just knew she couldn’t be alone tonight with her thoughts and her feelings and this…. unbearable pain.  Anything was preferable to that.  Anything.

*

“Momma?” Kim had waited until Shawn had made his way out to the bar to help clear the remnants left by the last, straggling patrons of the Brady Pub.  “Is everything okay?”

“Yes.”  Caroline busied herself with putting away the lunch dishes which had been left to air dry on the draining board.  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I…” Kim didn’t quite know how to ask if her mother knew that her youngest son was fucking her oldest son’s ex-wife.  If Caroline didn’t know, then Kim didn’t really want to burden her with that knowledge.  But if she did then they probably needed to discuss it.  But how was she supposed to broach that subject?  “Um, I was wondering why you were so insistent that Carrie and Sami come back to the pub.”

“For the same reason you were,” Caroline turned to spear her daughter with a knowing glare.  “Marlena is grieving.”  She sighed, putting down the saucepan in her hands on the kitchen table.  “She probably hoped when she told John to go that he would realise what he stood to lose and that he would stand and fight for her.”

“He broke her heart,” Kim pulled out a chair and sat down heavily.  She had been so concerned about the implications of Bo and Marlena’s liaison that she had barely stopped to think how heartbroken Marlena must really be.  Even if she was in complete denial, which was more than likely given it was Marlena, it was going to hit her, sooner or later and she was going to be a complete mess when it did.

“Yes, he did.”  Caroline’s expression was dark.  “And on top of that, the news about Roman.”

“I think…” Kim was thoughtful as she spoke, careful not to be too overt but at the same time trying to see if her mother would pick up on the hidden meaning in her words.  “I think she’s avoiding it all.  I think maybe… she’s in denial.  And she might be…” she pursed her lips, carefully picking her words, “…making bad choices.”

Caroline stared at Kim for a long time before she picked up the saucepan and turned away, bending to put it in a spacious cupboard under the sink.  

Kim frowned, wondering whether she should just throw caution to the wind and ask her mother if she knew about what was going on between Bo and Marlena.

“Kimmy, I think you should stay out of it for now,” Caroline’s voice emerged from the darkness before she stood up and closed the cupboard door behind her.  “Neither of them will thank you for interfering.”

“But Momma-” Kim blinked in surprise.  That was not the reaction she’d expected from her mother.  She’d expected shock or anger, but not what seemed like quiet acceptance.

“I’m tired, Kim.”  Caroline’s tone brooked no arguments as she picked up a crumpled tea-towel and smoothed it out before she hangs it over the back of a chair.   “Tell your father I’ve gone to bed, will you?”  

*

“Oh, Jesus, Marlena,” Bo groaned as she kissed him again and again.  He was putty in her hands.  Her very, very skilful hands.  Shortly after she had begged him to kiss her again, she had snaked her free hand down between them, had curled those long, slender fingers around his dick and had slowly started to tease him back to life.  Right now, her thumb was stroking gently up the underside of his shaft as her tongue and lips teased him mercilessly.

“Shall we talk a little bit more about your fantasies, honey?” she murmured quietly before her lips whispered along his jawline to his ear.  “Do you want me to get down on my knees and suck you off?  Do you want to come in my mouth, baby?”

“Oh God,” Bo’s eyes rolled back in his head.   He wanted to… what did he want to do?  Stop h…?  No… God, no, he didn’t want her to stop.  Jesus, he wanted her to do everything she was suggesting and so much more.

But the kids…!

“Marlena, I…” he 

“Shhhhh.”  She removed the fingers that were lazily playing with his nipple and placed them against his gorgeous, full lips.  With her other hand, she softly flicked her thumb up and over the head of his stiffening cock so that he shuddered.  “There we go,” she grinned.  “That’s my boy.  Let’s see what else turns you on.”

You.  You turn me on Marlena.  Everything you do, every look you give, every word you utter, every little moan that slips from that unbearably sexy mouth.

Bo was thinking all of this, but he couldn’t articulate it.  He was too lost in the sensations of her fingers and her palm sliding up and down his rapidly swelling dick.

“Mmmmm, you like that, don’t you?” she whispered against his ear, and he groaned at the combination of the moist hotness of her breath and the vibration of her voice against his skin and the sweet friction of her hand as she pumped it up and down his length.  

And then her hand was gone, and he opened his eyes, searching for her, begging for her to continue.  “Sit up, big boy.” She nudged the top of his thigh and as he swung it off the sofa, she straddled his lap, the throw slipping down to swathe her hips.  Bo’s eyes were immediately drawn to her breasts and whatever rational thought was left to him completely disappeared as he dropped his head to take one luscious globe in his mouth.  Marlena sighed and held his head to her, throwing her head back and revelling in the feeling of his mouth as he suckled on her hot, hard nipple.

Bo’s hands circled her waist, and he pulled her closer to him, so that the soft hair at the apex of her thighs brushed against his engorged dick as she rocked against him.  He knew there was something he should… there was…  oh my God… there was her hand again, sliding between them, silky smooth on his skin… sliding, gentle at first, fingers loose and feather light and then tighter and so… Jesus, so fucking good.

His mind flashed to her earlier words – Do you want me to get down on my knees and suck you off?  Do you want to come in my mouth, baby? – and he groaned against her skin, biting her sensitive nub as he thought about it.  God, yes, he wanted that.  He wanted to watch her, flushed cheeks and red lips, swallowing him whole.

And as he was thinking this, he felt her shift her weight and she was pulling away from him and then she was pushing his legs further apart and slithering down between them until she was on her knees in front of him, looking up at him with a wicked smile and he was completely lost.

*

Carrie pulled her car into the carpark below Marlena’s building and turned off the headlights and the windscreen wipers.  The drive back from Tuscany had been unexpectedly difficult, the rain was torrential, and Carrie had barely missed a car that had spun out of control, aquaplaning on the sheets of water that streamed across the road.

“Are you okay?” she asked Sami after the pair of them had sat in silence for what had to be five minutes or more.  

“Uh, yeah.  Are you?”  Sami twisted her hand in the dusky rose satin of her skirt.

Carrie exhaled heavily.  “I really thought that car was going to take us out.”  She lifted her hands from steering wheel and stared at them.  They were shaking and she gasped and grabbed the wheel again, trying to slow down her wildly beating heart.

“But it didn’t.” Sami said slowly.  “Carrie, it’s okay.  We’re okay.”  She looked across at her older sister.  Carrie stared resolutely ahead.  “We’re going to be okay.  Aren’t we?”

Carrie bit her lip and then looked around at Sami.  They had been through so much over the past few years.  She couldn’t deny she was still incredibly angry at her sister but with everything Sami had been through over the past few months, Carrie’s attitude to her had softened.  She could see glimpses of her baby sister beneath the armour plating, and she wanted nothing more than to see that kind, sweet girl emerge once more.  She wanted nothing more than to promise that everything would be okay, but unfortunately, she knew Sami too well to be able to be sure about it.

“I hope so Sami,” she sighed.  She didn’t want to get into it all now.  Not after such a near-miss.  “Let’s go and check on Marlena.  Hopefully she’ll be okay with us staying.  I really don’t like the thought of going back out in that rain.”

Sami nodded, a little crestfallen at what felt like a brush-off from Carrie.  She sighed and nodded and opened her car door, trying not to get her dress too wet and dirty as she exited the vehicle.  She followed Carrie and they were at the elevator when suddenly she realised her hands were empty.

“Carrie, sorry I need to get my purse.  I left it in the car,” she frowned.  Carrie nodded and tossed her the keys to the car.  “Don’t wait for me.  I’ll follow you up.”

“Okay, see you in a few minutes.” Carrie stepped into the elevator and watched Sami’s retreating form as the door slid shut.

On the top floor, she stepped out and looked at the closed door to Marlena’s penthouse apartment.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, she felt a flutter of misgiving.  What if her grandma and aunt were right and Marlena didn’t want company?

She thought about her confusion at Marlena’s high spirits earlier on in the evening before they’d left for Tuscany.  And then she thought about Marlena at the dinner table and how she had been so flustered before she’d practically fled the table.

And then Grandma Caroline had gone to check on Marlena and she had come back, her face pale and said Marlena was fine but they should leave her be for a while.

But Bo had said she was sick.  Marlena had a migraine.  Carrie shook her head.  

She’d never known Marlena to have a migraine in all the years she’d known her.  

But if Marlena wasn’t sick, then why would Bo say she was?  Why would he take her home?

No….

Bo was her uncle.  He wouldn’t.  Marlena wouldn’t.  Would they…?

*

Marlena sat up on her heels and took Bo in her hand again, looking up at him from under darkly fringed lashes.  Her eyes blazed with the unspoken question she wanted him to answer.

Do you want me to get down on my knees and suck you off?  Do you want to come in my mouth, baby?

Bo’s heart pounded in his chest, in his throat, in his ears.  Dear god, this was really happening.  This thing that he had fantasized about since he was practically a kid.  

“Marlena,” he croaked out her name.  “Jesus….”

“No,” she shook her head with a throaty chuckle.  “’Just me.”  She leaned forward, her breasts soft and warm against the inside of his thighs.  Her fingers whispered over him again and her thumb swept the collected moisture from the head of his cock.  She brought it to her mouth with a dirty smile and swiped it with her pink tongue before she enveloped it with her lips.

Bo was torn between wanting to watch her tease him and wanting to feel those lips wrapped around him and sliding up and down his impossibly stiff shaft.

The need to feel her won out and he laced the fingers of one hand in her hair.  

“Suck me,” he demanded, his voice low and hoarse with the strain of keeping himself in check.  “Suck my cock.  Show me what you can do with that gorgeous, filthy mouth of yours.”

Marlena smiled a lazy, sexy smile up at him before she bent her head and swirled her tongue lightly across the tip of his penis.  Bo sucked in a harsh breath and despite himself, urged his hips upwards towards her.

“Slowly, baby,” Marlena stroked her hand up and down his length several times as she held his eyes.  His face was a picture of pleasure and frustration.  Slowly, she licked the underside of his dick, feeling it twitch under her tongue as she slid it slowly upwards, over his slick skin, reveling in the texture, the feeling of the veins under his skin that coursed with blood.  

“Mmmmm,” she hummed as she reached his head again and this time, she closed her lips around him and slid her tongue softly along the tiny slit.  Bo gave a strangled moan and tried to resist pulling her head down.

Marlena slid him out of her mouth and blew a soft, warm breath across his wet skin so that he shuddered. Then she looked up at him.  “You taste so good, honey.  But you need to let go of me now.  You made me wait, you’re going to have to let me go at my own pace, okay?”

Bo swallowed and nodded, unwinding his fingers from her hair and burying them instead in the throw which was now crumpled at the side of him.  Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back.

“Good boy,” Marlena cooed.  “Now, where was I?”

*

Carrie paused at the door to the Penthouse, listening, wondering, trying to convince herself that her suspicions were wrong.

Uncle Bo and Marlena?  That was just crazy, wasn’t it?

Maybe Marlena did have a really bad headache.  Maybe she should just be really quiet and peek in and check that everything was okay, that Marlena was okay and then she and Sami should go back to the pub as they had promised Kim and their grandma that they would.

But what if Marlena wasn’t sick at all?  What if she…?  Carrie shook her head.  She couldn’t think like this.  Marlena loved John.  As hurt as she was, she wouldn’t….  She hadn’t when Roman had walked out on her all those years ago.  She had tried to make a life on her own.  Carrie couldn’t imagine her ever looking at any other man than John.  The thought that either of them could survive without the other was just insanity.  They needed each other like they need oxygen to breathe.  And sooner or later they would both realize that and then they would find their way back to each other.  As they always did.

So, she would just make sure Marlena was okay and didn’t need anything and then she’d be on her way.

Silently, Carrie pushed on the door handle and pushed the door open.

Part Neuf

‘Cause we break down a little
But when you get me alone, it’s so simple
‘Cause baby, I know what you know
We can feel it

And all the pieces fall
Right into place
Getting caught up in a moment
Lipstick on your face
So it goes
I’m yours to keep
And I’m yours to lose
You know I’m not a bad girl, but I
Do bad things with you
So it goes 

So it Goes – Taylor Swift

Silently, Carrie pushed on the door handle and pushed the door open.

It took her head a few moments to make sense of what she was seeing but when she did, she turned around and exited the Penthouse, closing the door silently behind her.

Her cheeks flaming, she stabbed at the elevator button and silently tried to scrub what she’d seen from her mind.

When the door slid open, she was confronted by her sister.

“Carrie?” Sami questioned uncertainly.  She had thought that Carrie would be in the apartment speaking to their mother by now.  But instead, Carrie was bodily pushing her back into the elevator and hitting the button for the parking basement.    “Carrie, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” Carrie’s answer was too sharp, too panicked.

“Carrie?” Sami was suddenly suspicious.  “What’s going on?”

“Nothing is wrong, Sami!” Carrie snapped, closing her eyes.  But as soon as she did, she could see them again.  Her uncle Bo, naked, on the sofa.  Marlena…. her step-mother… on the floor.  Oh my God!  She gave a silent moan and then opened her eyes to find Sami staring at her.

“Marlena… she was sick.  But she was… she was vomiting.  I don’t want you to get any kind of bug and take it back to Will and the kids, that’s all.”

“But won’t she need our help?” Sami was concerned. “Carrie, if she’s being sick, she’s going to need us there to make sure she stays hydrated and stuff.  And maybe… clean up.”  Her face distorted as she thought about what that implied.  She struggled enough to clean up after Will when he was being sick, and he was just a kid.  Being around vomit always made her want to be sick herself.

“Uncle Bo is still there,” Carrie’s voice was hoarse.  “He’ll help her.” Oh, he’ll help her, all right.  Carrie felt sick herself.  Suddenly she was starting to appreciate exactly what Sami had gone through that night that she had seen Marlena and John in the conference room at Titan Publishing.

But then, she reminded herself, Marlena had been married to their father and in love with John.  Now she is married to no-one.  But she’s still in love with John.   Carrie desperately just wanted to break down and have a good cry.  In the matter of a few days, she’d found out her father had been killed but the man hadn’t been her father.   And in truth, her father had been dead for a good two years.  And then Marlena and John had split, and John had gone to Europe with Hope who had likewise split from her uncle Bo.

And now, Marlena and Bo.  Marlena and Uncle Bo…. Marlena giving….  Carrie wasn’t a child.  She had an active sex life.  She knew exactly what Marlena was doing.  What she didn’t understand, was why.  Bo was part of the family.  He was Roman’s brother.  He had been Marlena’s brother-in-law.  So why the hell was she having sex with him?  Why was she giving him a blow job?  In the living room, of all places, when she knew Carrie and Sami would be coming home from Tuscany.

“But…  Uncle Bo won’t want… Mom surely won’t want Uncle Bo having to clean up after her?” Sami frowned.  She knew that Marlena and Bo had been good friends for years but that was a pretty gross and intimate thing to expect of someone, even if they were family.

“Sami, just leave it!” The elevator reached the basement level and the door slid smoothly open.  “She’ll be just fine.  But I’m tired and now I have a headache so can we just go back to the pub so I can go to bed, please?”  Carrie didn’t wait for a reply from her sister, instead she stalked towards her car, her apple green silk skirt billowing after her.

Sami watched Carrie and then looked back at the open door of the elevator.  There was definitely something Carrie was not telling her.  And she was going to find out what it was.

“Sami!” Carrie shouted at her from the car.  “Leave it!  Please.”

Sami took a deep breath and pursed her lips.  There was something that Carrie didn’t want her to know which really made her want to go back up to the Penthouse and see what had so rattled her sister.  But she also knew that the attempts she’d made to plaster over the ravines in the relationships with Carrie and the rest of her family were very fragile and she didn’t want to put the small steps she’d made towards reparations at risk by ignoring Carrie’s plea.

Sighing, she turned away from the elevator and began to walk to the car.

*

“Oh, God, Marlena,” Bo groaned as he felt Marlena’s expert tongue swirl around and around the tip of his shaft even as her hand stroked him slowly and deliberately.  

“Open your eyes, Bo,” her invitation was lazy and sultry, and Bo couldn’t do anything but obey her.  “Good boy,” she gave him another one of those impossibly dirty smiles and he sucked in a deep breath.  He was in deep, deep trouble and he knew it.  “I want you to watch me as I go down on you,” her voice was breathy and so fucking sexy he could hardly stand it.  “Trust me, you want to watch me suck this beautiful cock.” her tongue swiped over the tip of his dick again and Bo’s hips bucked involuntarily.  He thought for a moment that he might just come from watching the lascivious smile and glimmer in her eyes as she looked down at the gift in her hands and then back up at him.

“You ready, baby?”

Bo nodded frantically.  God, yes, he was ready.  He’d been ready for half his life, it seemed.  “Yes.”  he croaked out at Marlena’s raised eyebrow and she smiled.  

And then her tongue took another round across the head of his penis, cleaning off the moisture that was gathering there, the precursor to the orgasm that was surely going to explode inside and out from him all too soon.  And then her reddened lips were enveloping him, sliding down his length and he was enclosed in the soft, wet warmth of her mouth.  He groaned, the sound emanating from deep within his belly.

God, she was good.  She glanced up at him from under thickly fringed lashes, her eyes golden and haunting.  When she was satisfied he was still watching, she went back to her work, her mouth moving up and down his thick, throbbing pole as her hand stroked him in concert.  His left hand gripped the throw, trying to resist burying his fingers in her hair again.  He knew if he did that, he wouldn’t be able to resist trying to thrust himself deeper into her mouth and throat.  

But it was so hard to control himself, and he thrust his hips up almost without thinking, his cock hitting the back of her throat.  She withdrew, her hand tightening around the base of his shaft, applying enough pressure to stop the immediate urge to thrust mindlessly.

“Behave yourself, Bo,” she warned him and the commanding tone in her voice was almost his undoing.  Suddenly he was assaulted by a whole slew of new images, new fantasies.  Marlena in her suit behind her desk, removing her glasses, telling him he’d been bad and needed to be punished.

He shuddered and she gripped him harder.  “Don’t come yet,” she whispered.  “I’m not done with you.”

“Marlena…” he panted.  “I’m not sure how much longer I can hold out.”

She said nothing, just smiled as she bent her head to him again and he felt her mouth and her lips and her teeth scraping him lightly.  And then her fingers were tickling his balls and her lips were sliding down, down and then up and then down, down, so far down…

And he reached his hands out to pull her off him so that he could stop but then she did something with her tongue and her lips and everything was wet and hot and tight, and he couldn’t stop it and he was falling over the edge and his cock was pulsing and ….  Oh God…. oh, dear GOD…

Everything inside him erupted and shattered and he was coming and coming and Jesus she was still sucking him, taking him and swallowing him as she continued to stroke him, milking every last drop of his orgasm as it came, wave after wave until finally he was spent, collapsing sideways cross the low back of the sofa.

Marlena held his velvety dark brown eyes with her own as she pulled away from him and cleaned her lips with her fingers, deliberately sucking the moisture off every last one and then she smiled wickedly at Bo.  She was good at a lot of things, but she knew she was particularly good at that.  The first time she had ever sucked Roman’s dick, he hadn’t been able to speak for an hour afterwards.  Early on, John had proclaimed her a world champion at oral sex and she’d loved to go down on him in the most unexpected places.  John might not be the dirty talker that Roman and his brother were, but he loved the frisson of the risk of being caught in a compromising position and it had almost gotten them in to trouble any number of times.

She blinked and shook her head, trying to rid herself of the image of John that suddenly assaulted her.  John after sex, stroking her face, looking into her with those dark blue eyes of his, laying her bare.  He used to touch every part of her.  Making love to John was a physical, emotional and spiritual experience.  At least, it was at one time.

The last few months, not so much.  The last few months he had been distant, distracted, unemotional.  The last few months she had felt more alone than she had done since Aremid.

She had felt more alone in the dark, unspeakable times of her life.  In the months after Roman left.  When she had been lost and adrift and had fallen into the orbit of Stefano’s obsessive madness.  And worse…

But this time she didn’t have to feel alone.  Now she had Bo’s arms to help ward off the darkness.

*

“Samantha?” Shawn Brady turned to his younger granddaughter as Carrie brushed angrily past him and stomped up the stairs.  

“I don’t know, Grandpa.”  Sami shrugged her coat off and threw her purse on the table.  “I didn’t do anything, I swear.”

“Are you sure now?” Shawn stopped wiping the bar and leaned on it, considering Sami.  He knew she wanted to believe that she was blameless, the victim in all her fractured relationships but he also knew only too well the way she was able to push her sister’s buttons.

“Of course, I’m sure!”  Sami was indignant.  “Things have been really good the past few days but we almost got into an accident on the way to Mom’s and then-”

“You went to your mother’s?”  Shawn looked askance at Sami.  “I thought your grandmother told you that was a bad idea.”  Shawn himself couldn’t see the harm in it, but Caroline had been adamant, and he trusted her judgement.   If Caroline thought the girls going back to the Penthouse was a bad idea, then he could only trust that it was, indeed, a bad idea.  He didn’t really need to understand the why’s and wherefores’ but he knew how stubborn the women in his family were and they did need to understand, which is why he was disappointed, but unsurprised, that his granddaughters had ignored their grandmother’s advice.

“Yeah, we thought we could just check on her before we came back here and make sure she was really okay and didn’t need anything.”  Sami sits down in a booth and starts pulling barrettes out of her hair, letting her long golden locks fall around her shoulders.

“And was she?”  Shawn asked.  “Okay, I mean.”

“I don’t know.”  Sami said slowly.  She was still confused and more than a little suspicious.  “I never saw her.  Carrie went up to the Penthouse ahead of me.  Carrie said she was being sick.  But that doesn’t make sense to me.  Surely, she’d need taking care of if she had a stomach bug or food poisoning.  Surely she’d want her daughters there with her and not Uncle Bo.” 

Shawn frowned.  It did seem odd.  But he’d given up a long time ago trying to understand women and why they thought or did the things they did.  It was easier just to accept that he couldn’t predict what any of them would do and to not ask any questions.  He kept his own counsel and he was happy enough in his life despite being surrounded by headstrong women, so he figured he was doing something right.

“Sami, darlin’, if there’s anything you need to know, I’m sure Carrie will tell you when she is ready.  Don’t worry your head about it until then.  There may be nothing at all to worry about, after all.”  He turned back to the bar and resumed his wiping.  Sami watched him and shook her head.  She was pretty sure there was something to worry about.  Carrie’s moods could be mercurial, but it was usually something Sami had done that would set her off.  And Sami was pretty sure right now that it wasn’t anything she had done this time.

So, what was bothering Carrie so much?  Because whatever it was, it couldn’t be anything good.

*

Bo finally came around to find Marlena pulling on his shirt.

“Where are you going?” he asked with a smirk, pulling her down into his arms.

“I’m hungry,” she kissed the top of his head.  “I thought I’d go and rustle us up some food.”

“Why don’t I do that?” Bo pushed himself up from his dazed, semi-reclined position and tapped her on her nose.  “You get your cute little butt upstairs and I’ll bring us up some food and something to drink.”

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t intending to cook,” Marlena laughed, her voice light and melodic.  “I know my way around the kitchen.  Probably better than you do, despite my lack of competency in it.  And I think you should get yourself upstairs in case the girls show up.”

“Aren’t they going to question why you’re wearing my shirt?” Bo raised his eyebrow.

“I’ll tell them it’s John’s,” she shrugged carelessly. “If they ask.  If they turn up.”  She looked at the clock.  It was almost midnight.  “Oh, my goodness.  I would have thought they would have been home by now.”

“Just as well they haven’t come home!”  Bo had the grace to look slightly horrified. He pushed himself off the sofa and went over to the pile of clothes on the floor.  Grabbing his pants, he shook them out and pulled them on quickly.  He collected the rest of their clothes in a pile in his arms and turned to look at Marlena.  

She had a sexy little smile curving her lips, her cheeks were flushed and her golden hair framed her face like a golden halo.  She’d buttoned his shirt unevenly and one shoulder was bared where the shirt had slipped off.  He could see the soft curve of her breasts, lightly hidden by the cotton and her long, slender legs seemed to go on forever.  

“What?” she asked.

“You are just…” he shook his head with a sigh.  “Jesus, you are so fucking sexy, Marlena.”

“Oh,” she laughed, slightly embarrassed.  “Go on with you.  I’ll be up in a minute.”

She watched him go, admiring his tightly muscled back as he climbed the stairs.

Then she turned and made her way into the kitchen.  She pulled crackers from the cupboard and found some cheese and hummus in the refrigerator.  She put them all on a tray and turned back to the fridge to see what else she could find.  

It was then that she saw the strawberries.  

She stared at them, her heart pounding.  Why were there strawberries?  She knew that she hadn’t bought them.  She wouldn’t have, it was too painful.  So why?

Her hand shook as she pulled them out and she stared at them for a long moment.

Then she angrily dumped them in the garbage can.

Grinding her teeth together, she took a deep breath.  She needed to purge this apartment of John.  Everywhere she looked there were reminders of him and while part of her felt like she should keep his pictures up for Belle and Brady, the larger part of her just wanted to take everything that was his and everything that reminded her of him and burn it all.  

She placed her hands on the cold marble of the counter-top and sucked in another deep breath.  She was shaking and she was fighting the tears.  But there were too many memories.  Suddenly she was overwhelmed by all the times that she had been in this kitchen with him.  Raiding the fridge during marathon sex sessions.  Joining him when he’d snuck down in the middle of the night for water and ice-cream.  Helping him cook dinner.  Watching him make pancakes for the children.

The pain crashed over her in a wave, drawing all the breath from her body.

“No,” she whispered to the many ghosts of him.  “Leave me alone.”

He turned and smiled at her, and he caressed her face, and he kissed her, and he made love to her, right there on that counter and she couldn’t bear it.  Was it true that he would never do those things to her again?  She would never see him smile like that.  Never feel his lips against hers, soft at first, brushing tenderly as he held her face in his strong, sensitive hands.  Never feel his tongue searching for hers.  Never feel the warmth of his skin as he spooned up behind her in bed.

“Oh, God!” Her knees buckled and only her hands gripping the countertop prevented her from collapsing in a heap on the cool tiled floor.

Instead, she sank to her knees, folding her arms around her middle.  The whole center of her being felt as though it might be splitting apart or exploding, fracturing, shattering into… into what?  She didn’t even know anymore.  Who was she without loving John?  If she let it, this pain would obliterate her entirely.

“Oh, oh, oh God.”  The tears came then, and she rocked backwards and forwards, sobbing, mostly noiselessly as the surge of grief overtook her and washed away everything.

Bo found her like that about ten minutes later, illuminated by the soft blue light of the open refrigerator.

“Oh, Marlena.”  He sat down beside her and pulled her into his arms.  She buried her face in the crook of his neck and wept.  He stroked her hair and said nothing as he let her break apart in his arms.  He couldn’t take her pain away, he knew.  He couldn’t stop her tears.  He could only sit with her in this agony and just be her friend.  The way she was and would be his when he needed it.

When he felt her shivering against him, he eased himself away from her and picked her up in his arms.  She was so slender it was barely any effort to carry her up to the bedroom.  He made himself a mental note to make sure she started eating properly.  Even if he had to engage the help of Carrie and Sami.  Marlena needed to start taking better care of herself and if she wouldn’t or was unable to then they would have to take care of her until she did.

In the bedroom, he gently placed her on the bed and sat down beside her.  She had stopped crying, but her body trembled as she emitted tiny hiccups and she would not look at him.

“It’s okay,” he told her softly.  “I know.  I know how hard this is.  I know how much you love him.”

She shook her head, fresh tears lacing her wet lashes and she brought jittery fingers to lips that struggle to contain the emotion inside her.

“I’m going to go and get us that food.” His voice was low and impossibly gentle.

“I’m not…” she flicked the tears away and looked away from him, towards the bathroom.  A tiny hiccup shook her.  “I’m not hungry.”

“Maybe, but you need to eat,” he laid a hand on her arm.  “There’s nothing of you, Marlena.  You need to start taking better care of yourself.”

“I’m…” she was interrupted by another unwanted hiccup, and she gave a frustrated little growl.  “I’m fine.”

“Maybe you are.” Bo pulled a blanket around her shoulders and then stroked the back of his fingers down her cheek.  “And maybe you aren’t.  But I’m going to go get that food, because I’m hungry, even if you aren’t.”  

Hoping both that she would be okay by herself, and that Carrie and Sami wouldn’t suddenly come home while he was in the kitchen, he went back downstairs and threw a few more things on the tray.  Considering the extensive wine cupboard, he pulled out a bottle of champagne and tucked it under his arm.

When he arrived back in the bedroom, he found Marlena seemed to have gathered herself together.  To the point that she had shed his shirt and instead she was wearing a lacy white negligee.  If he was honest, Bo was slightly disappointed that she had taken his shirt off because she’d looked damned sexy in it.  But on the other hand, she was an absolute vision in what she was now wearing, and he’d take the exchange and be grateful for it, especially if she was smiling again.

“I’m sorry about before,” she apologized, not bothering to hide her embarrassment.  “I didn’t mean for you to see me like that.”

“I meant what I said.”  Bo put the tray on the bed and handed her the champagne.  “It’s okay.  I get it.  I get all of it.  I don’t want you to think you have to hide it from me.  If anyone understands, I do.”

Marlena inclined her head and looked at the bottle in her hands.  “Where are the glasses?” she asked.

“We need glasses?” Bo shrugged.  “Isn’t that just more washing up?”

Marlena looked at him and then laughed, despite herself.  He was right, they had just shared a far more intimate act than drinking from the same bottle.  She handed the bottle back to him with a nod and a grin and started to unwrap crackers and cheese while Bo handled popping the cork.  He took a swig of the sparkling wine before handing the bottle to her.  She put the top of her open bottle to her lips and took a couple of gulps.  The bubbles fizzed upwards, tickling her nose and she coughed and then laughed. 

“Mmmm, that’s good,” she giggled, before taking another mouthful and letting the golden liquid effervesce in her mouth and throat.

“John’s an idiot,” Bo reached out and tucked loose golden strands of hair behind one small, delicate ear.  “You’re incredible.  While I’m at it, something I’ve always thought but never said… Roman was an idiot too.  Anyone who could walk away from you needs their head examined.”

Marlena said nothing, just looked down with a half-embarrassed smile.  After a moment, she looked up at him, her eyes smoldering.

“I’m not perfect, Bo.   I’m stubborn, I’m opinionated. I always think I’m right…”

“So, tell me something I don’t know,” Bo chuckled.  “But usually you are right, so there is that.”

“There is that,” she nodded with a smile but it didn’t last long.  She lifted the bottle to her lips again to cover her misery but Bo didn’t miss the glitter of the tears in her eyes.

“What is it?” he asked softly.  “Was it something I said?”  

She swallowed the wine and then shook her head, wiping away the tears that had escaped.  She thought about it and then took another slug of the champagne before handing the bottle back to Bo.

“I just…” she sighed and swallowed back a sob.  Lifting her hands, she pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to gather some semblance of control over her emotions.

Bo frowned and wondered if he should say or do something.  But as she’d just pointed out, Marlena was nothing if not stubborn.  He knew her as well as anyone outside John and Roman and he knew that she wasn’t a woman who let herself be vulnerable in front of many people.  If he pushed her too hard, she would just as likely close down, and he didn’t want that.  She needed someone she could trust, someone she could let her defenses down with, when she was able to.

Marlena took a deep breath and dropped her hands into her lap.  She didn’t look at Bo, she couldn’t.  She felt more naked and vulnerable than she had when they had been lying together on the sofa earlier.  

“I…” her eyes strayed to her empty wedding finger.  She had taken her rings off the day she had told John to leave, and she had shut them in a little box in the back of her dresser.  She hadn’t dared to take them out and look at them since, lest her resolve falter.  Lest her heart shatter.  “I find myself wondering… what’s wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Marlena.”  Bo reached out with his free hand and curled his fingers over hers.  “And it makes me angry to think he’s done that to you, made you think this is somehow your fault.  You’ve done nothing wrong.  I’ve done nothing wrong.  We just loved them, that’s all.  This is all on John and Hope.”

“It’s not all on John and Hope.” Marlena reminded him softly.  “Stefano started this.  He set the dynamite and he lit the fuse.”

 “That doesn’t absolve them.”  Bo was angry now.  “They chose to open that Pandora’s box, knowing full well it could be disastrous.  They knew it could hurt them and hurt us and they did it anyway.”

“Yes.  They did.”  Marlena felt tired and defeated.  She had fought so hard and so long.  Fought her own guilt, fought Kristen, fought Stefano.  And she’d finally let herself believe that she could have a life with John.  That they could raise their children and be a family.  Together.  That they could just love each other without reservation and be happy together.  Grow old together.  

But that hadn’t been enough for John.  The promise of a future with her just hadn’t been enough, he’d had to know about his past as well.  And as that past had beckoned to him, he’d turned away from her.  He’d chosen not to see or to ignore her pain.  He had chosen to support Greta and Hope and leave her alone while she fought her terror at the prospect of losing another child.

And then, when she had told him to go, finally; he had made half-hearted arguments, but it hadn’t taken him long before he had turned and walked away.  He hadn’t fought for her or for their future.  He had turned towards the past, and all of that darkness; he had taken Hope’s hand and walked away from her and their children without a backward glance.

“It wasn’t enough for him.” She voiced the thoughts in a small, trembling voice.  “I wasn’t enough.”

Is that true, she wondered.  Wasn’t she enough?  Or was she too much?  Too demanding, too controlling, too needy?  Wanting too much from him.  Wanting him to understand her, to know her in the way he had always known her in the past.  

She didn’t understand what had happened between them.  He had always seen her, always seen right through her armor, right from day one.  He had always cut right through her bullshit and had torn away any attempt she had made at any kind of game playing.  He knew her soul and he knew when she was angry, when she was hurting and when she just desperately needed him to touch her and hold her.  

Or at least he had until six months ago.

“You are enough,” Bo interrupted her reverie.  “You are everything, Marlena.”

“Not to him, I’m not,” she said plaintively.  “Not anymore, anyway.  He doesn’t want me.  I just have to face that.”

“Fuck John Black!” The words erupted angrily from Bo’s very core.  “He doesn’t deserve an incredible woman like you.  If he was here right now, I would tear his head from his shoulders for making you feel like this.  There is nothing wrong with you.  You are gorgeous, you are the most intelligent woman I think I’ve ever met; you are kind and sexy and yeah, you’re stubborn and opinionated and annoyingly right all the time….”  He thumped the champagne bottle in his right hand down on the bed next to him to accentuate his point and Marlena couldn’t help the wan, teary laugh that his words and gesture elicited from her.

“Are you going to drink that?” she nodded at the bottle.  She was tired of thinking about John.  She kept thinking it, kept saying it and it was true.  She didn’t want to think about him anymore.  If she had to, she would drink and fuck herself senseless until she obliterated all memories of John, how he used to make her feel and how he made her feel now.

Bo took another large mouthful of the champagne, using the back of his wrist to wipe the spillage from his lips and chin before he handed her the bottle.  He still held her fingers in his and he stroked his thumb across the back of her hand as she tilted the bottle and took a good long drink of the champagne.

She was breathless when she handed it back to him and he rolled it around, noting the scant two inches left in the bottom of the bottle.  Marlena chuckled.  “Sorry.  I think we might need another bottle.”

Bo shrugged, emptied the bottle into his mouth and threw it on the floor.  Then he crawled up the bed, forcing Marlena back against the pillows, covering her mouth with his.  Forgetting her desire for more champagne, she curled her arm around his neck and whimpered as he kissed her again.

“Forget the wine,” he murmured against her mouth.  “I meant what I said, Marlena.  You are so fucking hot, and I am going to spend all night showing you exactly how sexy you are and how much any man in his right mind would want you…”

Part Dix

Now you’re out in the world, searchin’ for your soul
Scared not to be hip, scared to get old
Chasing make-believe status, last time you felt free
Was when none of that shit mattered ’cause you were with me

But now that we’re done and it’s over
I bet it’s hard to believe
That it turned out I’m harder to forget than I was to leave
And, yeah, I bet you think about me

I bet you think about me, yes
I bet you think about me

I Bet You Think About Me – Taylor Swift

John’s head was pounding as he fought his way out of the fog of sleep… or unconsciousness… or where-ever the hell it was that he had been.  His mouth was impossibly dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth as he tried to open it.

He tried to think of the last thing he could remember.  He had gone with Hope and Lilli Faversham to meet with Herr Krause at the Hotel Adlon in the heart of Berlin, and which he had been informed had been rebuilt and reopened two years previously.  They had dined in the hotel restaurant and Hope had been eager to cross-examine Krause and find out how much he knew about Gina and “Father John”.  Unfortunately, as John had suspected, it had been another dead end with Krause detailing several meetings with Gina and Father John but being unable to furnish much further in the way of information about what they had been doing in Berlin or who they had been doing it for.  He had, however been able to give them a name of a woman who lived in Madrid who, he thought, used to be friendly with Princess Gina.

John had been immediately suspicious of Krause upon meeting him, in fact he had been suspicious long before meeting the man.  The drip-feeding of useless information and names around Europe was becoming an all too familiar pattern and he had the distinct impression that someone was playing a game with them.  With him.  He just wasn’t sure whether it was Stefano or whether it was someone closer to home.

John remembered, under sufferance, dancing with Hope who had made a show of being annoyed, at first, that Herr Krause had been unable to give them anything personal that might elicit Gina’s memories.  Or more accurately, he surmised from the way she was probing as they danced, Father John’s.   And then she had started talking about flying to Madrid, which is where he had cut her short and reminded her that he had agreed to go to Berlin with her, but no further.  His only intention now, was to travel back to Salem.  Back to the woman he loved, to try and win her back.

But that was the last thing he could remember.  Dancing with Hope.  Dancing and then going back to the table…  Damnit, why couldn’t he remember anything else?

He groaned, his back strangely stinging, as he rolled over and forced his eyes open.  And he was greeted by Hope’s smiling face.

“Good morning, lover.”  She extended her hand out to stroke the side of his face, but he pulled back in shock, almost falling out of bed as he did so.

“What in the hell?” he demanded, both angry and more than a little bit scared.

“Not hell, John,” Hope purred, reaching out again and this time, stroking her fingers down his bare chest.  “Decidedly, not hell.  In fact, I hope it was as heavenly for you as it was for me.  I see now why Gina was so enamored of you, you are quite the lover…”

*

It was just before dawn when Bo slipped through the back door of the Brady pub, into the family kitchen.  Marlena had finally succumbed to her emotional and physical exhaustion in his arms somewhere around four am and he had been content just to watch her sleep for a while before he had regretfully pulled on his clothes and silently snuck out of the Penthouse apartment.

“Where have you been, Bo?” He started at the voice that came from the armchair in the corner of the darkened room and he narrowed his eyes as a lamp suddenly flared into life.

“Ma!” His heart was pounding as he slapped his hand to his chest.  “You damn near gave me a heart attack.  Why are you awake?”

“I’ve been worrying about you,” Caroline took in her son’s disheveled appearance and pursed her lips.

Bo gave a half-hearted laugh as he threw his jacket on the table.  “You don’t need to worry about me Ma, I’m a big boy.  I can take care of myself.”

“Where were you?” Caroline persisted, although she knew perfectly well where he had been.

“I was…” Bo hadn’t prepared a lie.  He hadn’t expected anyone to catch him coming in at this hour.  He’d thought he’d be able to claim being back at the pub and in his room, even before the family made it home.  So, he hadn’t thought about needing an alibi.    “Uh, I was at the boat.  I dropped Marlena home and then went to the boat to do a couple of jobs.  And I guess… I fell asleep.”

“Don’t lie to me Bo,” Caroline didn’t even bother detailing how nothing about his story made sense.  Not that he was wearing the same creased dress clothes after ‘doing jobs’ at the boat; not that he was creeping into the pub at five am and not just going back to sleep in his berth on the Fancy Face II.  And certainly not the fact that he smelt of Marlena’s perfume and sex.  “You’ve been with Marlena.”

“I… uh,” Bo’s brow creased in feigned confusion.  Or maybe it wasn’t feigned.  His mother was unnervingly close to the truth.   “Yeah, I dropped her home.  Stayed a while to make sure she was okay.  But then I went to the Fancy Face II.”

“Bo,” Caroline stood stiffly and walked to where he stood at the table.  She ran her fingers over his shirt collar which bore the traces of red lipstick, the shade Marlena had been wearing the night before and she sighed heavily.  “I love Marlena, but I don’t think she’s making good choices right now.”  She didn’t bother to add that she also thought Bo’s choices were questionable.  “She broke your brother’s heart because she loved John too much.  I don’t want to see her break yours too.”

“Ma…”  Bo shook his head, trying to find some way to convince his mother she was wrong

.

“Bo, I was there,” Caroline said softly, cupping his cheek with a maternal hand.  “At Tuscany.  I went to the ladies to check that Marlena was okay.  I heard the two of you.”

“Oh shit!”  Bo pulled back in shock.  His mother had been there?  While he and Marlena had been going hot and heavy in a toilet stall.  His cheeks flushed in the half-light, and he turned away, unable to look his mother in the eyes.

“How long has it been going on?” Caroline asked.  There was no anger or censure in her voice.  Just weary concern for her youngest son.  She loved Marlena like a daughter, but Bo was her flesh and blood, her baby, and he’d already been dealt a heavy blow by Hope. 

Bo sighed, turning back to his mother.

“It’s okay Ma.  You don’t need to worry.  We’re just… both of us need this right now.  It’s nothing… serious.”

“Nothing serious?”  Caroline quirked one eyebrow and then shook her head.  “What happens when John returns home, Bo?  Or Hope.”

“You’re assuming they’re going to come home,” Bo remarked bitterly.  “I haven’t heard from Hope since she left.”

“Of course she’s going to come back.”  Caroline could feel Bo’s pain as though it were her own.  “Bo, sweetheart, you’re not thinking straight.  When they come back, Marlena is going to go back to John and Hope will be terribly hurt.  You are playing with fire.”

“What about us?” Bo demanded.  “We’ve already been hurt.  Marlena’s heart is in pieces.  I don’t know that she would go back to John again.  Not this time.”

“You’re fooling yourself if you think anything else is going to happen,” Caroline sighed and shook her head.  She frowned and pulled out a chair and indicated that Bo should sit down.  He thought for a minute about disobeying her and just going upstairs to get away from this conversation, but one look at her face convinced him that was not the correct course of action.

He sat down and watched his mother pull out the chair at the end of the table and sit with him.  She took his hands in hers.  “Bo, I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Marlena needs someone right now, and so do I,” Bo’s mouth set in a hard line.  “What we’re doing, we’re not hurting anybody.”

“Not yet,” Caroline raised her eyebrows at Bo’s assertion.  He was living in the moment with no thought for the consequences.  She had done the same in her time, and she had seen it end in disaster.    “But if I walked in on you in the bathroom at Tuscany, Sami or Carrie could just have easily done the same thing.  If we hadn’t talked them into coming back to the pub after dinner tonight, they could have walked in on you at Marlena’s apartment.  And it’s not just that Bo.  I saw what it did to Roman to lose her.  And John was never able to get over her.”

“Yeah, okay, I know you’re worried but I’m not in love with her, Ma.”  Bo sounded far more assured than he felt on this score.  He’d told Marlena this wasn’t love and he kept telling himself that.  But there was a nagging little voice whispering in his ear.  A voice that pointed out the fact that every time he thought about her, he got a fluttering in the pit of his stomach and a pounding in his chest.  A voice that kept reminding him that he kept thinking about her and not much else.  A voice that whispered how beautiful she was when she smiled and how he should spend as much of his time as possible putting that smile on her face, making her laugh and just being with her, listening to her, touching her and making love to her.  He kept telling that voice that it was just lust he felt, that and the love one feels for a good friend, but he wasn’t convincing the voice any more than he was convincing his heart.

“Aren’t you?” Caroline asked sadly.  Her son’s face said something entirely contrary to what his words were espousing.  She had seen that look on his face before.  When he’d been confused about his feelings for Hope when he had been with Billie.  Bo had the best of intentions, but he wasn’t the most self-aware of her children.

“No.” Bo told her firmly.  “Look, this is a completely different situation to what happened to Roman.  She told John to leave.  But if he comes back and she takes him back then…”  What would he do, he wondered?  Be happy for her?  Hardly, when he knows John will just turn around and break her heart all over again.  Accept it grudgingly?  Beg her not to risk it?  Or…  

“Then what?” Caroline asked.  “Because John isn’t a man who likes to share, Bo. If he comes back and finds you and Marlena together, he won’t be forgiving.”

“I’m not afraid of John Black,” Bo snarled, his hand curling unconsciously into a fist.  It was a gesture that his mother noticed, and her heart sank.

She sighed and covered her face with her hands.  Bo wasn’t going to listen to her, that much was clear.

“Okay, listen, we’ll be more discreet,” Bo reached out and laid his hand on Caroline’s shoulder. “You’re right.  We should have been more careful tonight.  I’m sorry you had to walk in on us like that.  But I’m not turning my back on her Ma.  She needs a friend.”

“You’re not being a friend,” Caroline told him angrily, her mouth setting in a thin line.  Outside, the sky was lightening to a murky gray, and she could hear the rumble of the garbage truck as it stopped to empty the overnight waste of the popular pub.  “This isn’t helping her.  Marlena’s in denial.  She’s been through so much in the past few years-”

“Yeah, she has,” Bo interrupted.  He didn’t want to hear what his mother had to say on Marlena’s state of mind.  She hadn’t seen Marlena crying her heart out on the floor of her kitchen, illuminated only by the light from the refrigerator.  In denial?  Marlena knew exactly what had happened and she was facing it head on.

“And she got through it.  She made it to the other side, and she thought she was going to have a future with John but then he decided his past was more important than his future with her and the kids.”   Bo scowled.  He was so angry at John; he could barely see straight.  Part of him was almost hoping John would come back and find Marlena in his arms.  In his bed.  John deserved that after the way he had made her suffer.  Not to mention his encouragement of Hope to pursue her own past.

“So, however she chooses to get through this, she needs and deserve the love and support of her friends and family.”

“Yes, her family, Bo.”  Caroline was frustrated that Bo was not listening to her.  Not listening or choosing not to listen.  She was only trying to protect him.  She was only trying to prevent her family from being torn apart again.  “Marlena is part of our family and so is John.  If this comes out, how do you think your children are going to feel?   Have you even thought about what your father will think?”

“It’s no-one else’s business Mom, no-one has to even know.”   Bo was starting to lose his patience with his mother.  She was absolutely convinced this was a disaster in the making and she wasn’t listening to anything he had to say.  He was an adult, and this was his decision.  It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already considered all the things that Caroline was saying.  It was just that he didn’t really care about them.  He didn’t care about John finding out.  He didn’t even care about what the family might say.  What he cared about was how it felt when he was with Marlena.  How warm her skin was.  How her lips felt on his.

“Bo -”  

“NO Mom,” he held up his hand.  “Look I know you’re worried, but things are just fine.  And if they’re not, Marlena and me, we’ll deal with it.”

Caroline’s lips set into a thin line.   In her turn, she was irritated and frustrated with Bo.  He was being intransigent; he wouldn’t see sense and she could see catastrophe looming.  This had the potential to cause cataclysmic upheaval and damage within the family and unless she could convince Bo or Marlena to stop this foolishness, then disaster was inevitable.

“Bo, if you continue with this madness, someone is going to get badly hurt,” she tried one last time, knowing in her heart even as she said it that her pleas were falling on deaf ears.  Bo was under Marlena’s spell, and he wasn’t going to listen to anything anyone said.

“No-one is going to get hurt,” Bo said blithely.  “Look, I promise we’ll be more careful, okay.  No-one will find out.  Don’t worry so much.”  He stood up from the table and dropped a light kiss on her head.  “Now, I’m wiped so I’m going to get a few hours shut-eye before work.”

Caroline watched the door to the pub swing several times before it settled back into the frame, and she sighed heavily.

*

“Gina, I…” John watched as she sat up, not bothering to hold the crumpled sheet against her naked breasts.  He averted his eyes in embarrassment.  “How… what happened?”

“What happened?” Hope laughed, tossing her head.  “John, we made crazy, intense, passionate love, that’s what happened.  And it was amazing.“

“No!” Johns shook his head in disbelief.  He can’t remember anything beyond dancing with her at the Adlon.  He remembers telling her he wanted to go back to Salem and try and make things right with Marlena.  And then … nothing.  It’s all a big blank space until he’d woken up in this bed.

He looked around him for the first time.  It was a hotel room, but it was not his, or Gina’s.  In fact, he didn’t recognize the room at all.  Their clothes were strewn across the floor from the door to the bed.  An empty bottle of champagne laid on its side on the coffee table.  He looked back at Gina (when did he start thinking of her as Gina, he wondered), horrified.  He scrambled from the bed only to realize that he was naked, and he looked desperately around for his boxers.  Snatching them from the floor, he felt the burning and pulling again across his back.  Ignoring it for the moment, he pulled them on and then looked back at Hope, or Gina, or whomever the hell she was now.  She had an amused smile on her face.

He couldn’t have slept with her.  He couldn’t have.  He wouldn’t have done that to Marlena, he wouldn’t have betrayed her like that.  

“I don’t believe you,” he ground out the words, over what felt like gravel in his throat.  “I love Marlena.  I am going home to Marlena.”     

“You weren’t saying that last night, John,” Gina raised one eyebrow and swept the sheet back, revealing her perfectly naked body.  “Last night you were burying yourself between my legs and telling me how good I felt and how you wanted more of it.  Much, much more.”

“You’re lying!” John found his trousers and wrenched them on, buttoning them and doing up his belt without looking at Gina.  He couldn’t even stand to look at her face.  Searching the room, he found a mirror and moved to it, inspecting his back.  There, he found three, deep, parallel scratches across his right shoulder blade.  On the left side of his back were more scratches, lower down.  He felt sick.  He wanted to throw up, but more than that, he wanted to get out of this room and put as many miles between himself and Hope(Gina) as he could.

“John, are you trying to hurt me?” Gina pulled on a flowing satin robe in deep purple and tied it loosely around her.  She watched John pull on his creased shirt and then moved across to him and folded her arms around her neck, pressing herself to him.  “You need to accept that she is your past.  I am your future.  We will be so good together, once again, just you wait and see.”

“Never!” John forced his hands between them and violently pushed her away from him so that she staggered back.  “Whatever the hell happened last night, it’s never happening again.  Do you hear me?”  He jabbed his finger in her direction.  “I am going home, and I am going home to the woman I love.  The only woman I will ever love.”

“She won’t take you back, John.” Gina was furious.  She had been counting on John waking up to realize he was in the one place he belonged.  “She threw you out, remember?  She doesn’t want you anymore.  But I want you.  And if you just face your feelings for me, you will realize you want me just as much.” 

John looked at her in disgust and then he buttoned up his shirt.  Picking up his shoes he turned and swiped his wallet from the table before he bolted from the room.

“John!” Gina ran to the door, but he was already disappearing into the elevator, and she thumped the door in annoyance as she watched him disappear from view.

John barely registered the plush lobby of the Adlon Hotel as he staggered through it, bare-footed and his shirt half-buttoned.  His head was swimming, a fog of words and images.  Herr Krause telling them how he had sold them information about the security arrangements at the Alte NationalGalerie, furnishing them with the name and address of Gina’s friend in Madrid.  Dancing with Hope, or was it Gina, the room spinning around him until he felt dizzy.  Gina and Lilli plying him with champagne when he got back to the table….

Ignoring all the concerned glances, he fell through the revolving door and stumbled down the red carpet the lined the stone steps.  The street was bustling, the sun bright in his gritty eyes.  He couldn’t even remember the name of the hotel they were staying at so there was no point in hailing a cab.  Not yet, anyway.

He looked left and then right.  The traffic provided a cacophony of sound and he was too confused to know what to do next.  He just knew he had to get away from the hotel before Gina followed him.  Pausing only to jam his shoes on, he turned left and made his way down the pavement, along the vast expanse of the newly reconstructed hotel.  

He hadn’t quite reached the corner when he was felled by a blow to the back of his head and his wallet was snatched from his hand.  

His last thought, as he hit the pavement, was of Marlena.

 *

Marlena rubbed her temples as she stared at the case file in front of her.  A colleague in New Jersey had transferred the case to her and she needed to read the case file and make notes before the patient arrived for his first session early the following week.  But right now, she couldn’t concentrate.

She had woken in the early hours on Monday morning to find that Bo had left, true to his word.  But unexpectedly, there was still no sign of her daughters.  The fact that she was completely alone had left her more unsettled than she would have liked.  She’d tried to get back to sleep but instead had found herself revisiting the hours she’d spent with Bo, both at Tuscany and at the penthouse.  The memory of him tying her up and bringing her to orgasm with his fingers and his tongue had her touching herself and unexpectedly, she had found herself climaxing yet again as the sun rose beyond the bedroom window.

Finally, she had regretfully accepted that the hope of any further sleep was going to prove completely elusive, and she had slipped out of bed to take a hot shower and wash the scent of Bo from her skin.

But her concentration at work had proved similarly elusive that day and the days since, and now it was late afternoon on Wednesday, and she had barely made a dent in the work that had been piling up since John had left.  

What with that and the revelation about Roman and now her dalliance with Bo, she hadn’t exactly been ‘in the game’ at work and she felt like she was slipping further and further behind.  And she’d hardly been giving the best of herself to her patients.  Tired and distracted, she’d found her mind wandering more than once in the past week and she’d had to ask several of her patients to repeat themselves in session.  It was hardly professional, and she knew she had to do better, be better.  The people that came to see her deserved her full attention and the best care and help she could offer them.

She slipped her glasses from the bridge of her nose and put them down on top of the file in front of her.  Leaning back in her comfortable leather chair, she sighed and closed her eyes.

She hadn’t seen Bo since he’d retreated silently from her apartment that morning.  That was due in part to their work schedules and Bo working late shifts, but also the return of Sami and Carrie with the children on Monday night.  She’d barely had time to catch Bo for a brief conversation on the phone in the past couple of days, let alone find a way to snatch some time with him alone.

She felt like she was sleepwalking her way through the days.  The girls were helpful, although Carrie had been very quiet.  Marlena had tried to find out if there was something wrong, but Carrie had been evasive.  She could only imagine that things between her and Austin were still tense.  Carrie’s friendship with Mike was still a problem and with everything else piling on top of it, the truth about Roman, John’s sudden and unannounced departure for Europe and of course, having to share a room with Sami at the penthouse, it was hardly surprising that she was distracted and unhappy.  Marlena wished she had the right words to reach Carrie, but Carrie didn’t want to hear her advice, even though it came from a place of bitter experience. 

Marlena could only hope that Carrie would come to her if there was really something she needed to talk about.

 A knock at the door roused her from her thoughts and she exhaled heavily.

“Come in,” she called out.

The door opened and Kimberly poked her head around the corner.  “Hi,” she smiled a little too brightly.  “Hillary said you didn’t have any patients for an hour or so.  I,” she shrugged, “I was wondering if we could have a chat.”

“Actually Kim, I have a lot of work to catch up on,” the last thing Marlena wanted to do was to listen to Kimberly analyze her.  She’d done it when Marlena had grown increasingly close to John in the aftermath of being thrown in the warehouse basement by Stella Lombard.  Kimberly had counselled that she should keep her distance from John.  And she had been right, of course.  She had seen the inevitable trajectory that being trapped and almost dying together had launched the two of them on.  She had seen how intense their feelings for one another were, even if they couldn’t admit it themselves for weeks.

And Marlena was fairly sure that Kimberly would be full of insight now about her feelings for John and how she was in denial and using Bo to distract herself from the crash that was just around the corner. 

 And the thing was, on some level, Marlena knew that she was right.  It’s just that she didn’t really care right now.  She didn’t want to hear all the good reasons why she should stay away from Bo.  She didn’t want to be told that she had to face the pain, sit with it, and let it have its way with her.

The thought of that was just… too much.  She was feeling too much of the pain as it was and when it hit her it felt like a tidal wave crashing over her, tossing her about until she wasn’t sure in which direction or even how to emerge from the roiling surf of emotions.  Bo was her saving grace right now, mostly keeping the pain at bay but also holding her upright when the storm threatened to engulf her completely.     

“It won’t take long.”  Kim stepped inside Marlena’s office and closed the door behind her.

“Kim.” Marlena sighed.  “Really, I don’t think-”

“Marlena.”  Kim’s voice was firm.  “You need to hear me out.”

“No, I really don’t.” Marlena’s eyes flashed, her voice hard and flat.  “I appreciate your concern, Kim but it’s really none of your business.”

“It’s my business when it affects my family.  And Bo is my brother.”

“Bo is a big boy, and he can make his own decisions,” Marlena told her angrily.

“Bo is not making good decisions at the moment, and, quite frankly, neither are you.” Kim moved from the door, where she had been standing and sat on Marlena’s office couch.  She hoped that by sitting down, the conversation would feel less confrontational to Marlena.  She didn’t want to upset or hurt her ex-sister –in-law.  Her friend.

“I don’t want to hear it, Kim.” Marlena crossed her arms across her front.  “I don’t have to explain or defend myself to you.  Bo and I have talked this through.  We know what we’re doing and why.  This isn’t a great, tragic love affair.  I am not going to break his heart.”

“Aren’t you?” Kim asked quietly.  “I know that’s not your intention but-”

“Bo is not in love with me,” Marlena couldn’t help her chuckle.  She picked up a pen, needing something to occupy her hands and keep her steady.  “He’s in love with Hope.”

“It’s possible to love more than one person at a time.”  Kim reminded Marlena.  “You know that.  And I know Bo.  I see the way he looks at you.  I’ve been watching him and yes, I’m worried that you’re going to hurt him.  When John comes back and decides that he wants you back and you waltz into his arms… then what?”

“Who says John is coming back?” Marlena could feel the tell-tale twinges in her chest.  The ones that started small and but that end up feeling like her heart was being compressed in a vice.  The ones that left her breathless and aching with loneliness.  She tapped the pen against the blotter on her desk.  “And if he does….”

“If he does?”  Kim’s expression conveyed all the sympathy she felt for Marlena.  “Honey, you and I both know you can’t stay away from that man.”

“This time is different Kimmy,” Marlena’s voice softened, her eyes glittering with tears.  She slapped the pen down on the desk again.  She didn’t want to be having this conversation, it felt dangerous.  Her real emotions were too close to the surface and all Kim had to do was scratch at the right place and she might fracture on the spot.   “This time he really hurt me.  I’m not sure I can forgive him for walking out on us like that.  Not when I needed him so much.”

“And what if it turns out that there was a good reason for that behavior?” Kim asked gently.  She could see Marlena was teetering on the edge and she didn’t want to push her too far, and yet she was so close to getting her to see some kind of sense, she had to carry on.

“What kind of excuse could there be for him acting so callously?” Marlena demanded, the anger surging back full force.  It was far easier to be angry than to be vulnerable.  Far safer.  “He *raised* Samantha.  He thought she was his daughter for six years.  And then he just turns his back on her for a stranger from his past?  A girl he doesn’t remember, who’s story doesn’t quite add up?”

“Well, exactly.”  Kim raised her eyebrows and nodded.  She picked up one of the cushions from Marlena’s sofa and hugged it to her middle.  “None of that sounds at *all* like John.  He absolutely *adores* you and he loves those kids.  I can’t understand why he’s behaving so unlike himself, but I would lay money on the fact that Stefano DiMera has something to do with it.”

“I thought he loved me, but now I wonder.” Marlena pushed her chair back and stood up.  Crossing her arms, she walked over to the window of her office and looked out over the grounds of the hospital.  She couldn’t look Kim in the eyes any longer.  “What could Stefano have done?  John still remembers me, still remembers everything about our life together, his life with Sami, Eric and Carrie.  He just lost interest, that’s all.”  Her lips thinned as she steeled herself against the encroaching pain.  She thought about Bo holding her in bed as she cried, and she found the strength to turn back to Kimberly.  “I am not going to put my life on hold for John Black any longer.  Not on account of some vague hope that Stefano can be blamed once again.  Blamed for what?”

Kim frowned, her brow folding into lines of frustration.  “I don’t know, honey.  I really don’t but it’s Stefano.  Who knows what he is capable of, what kind of mind games he’s been playing with both John and Hope?”

Marlena looked at Kim for a long moment.  Part of her wanted to grasp hold of what she was saying.  Like it was a life preserver, thrown to a drowning woman.  That maybe John hadn’t just abandoned her.  That maybe there was a reason for his hurtful behavior, for his disinterest.

But even if there was, could she trust John again?  It wasn’t just this latest betrayal.  She had reserved her heart for him, and she had watched him squander her devotion as he lavished all his love and attention on Kristen DiMera.  Kristen had engaged in deception and plotted with Stefano to keep Marlena from John and her children and John had blithely missed it all.  

Marlena had lived in constant fear of what Stefano would attempt next and she was still traumatized by her periods of captivity, first in Paris and then in the bowels of the DiMera Mansion.  She had been so desperate to get home to her children that she had almost let Stefano have the one thing he wanted above all others, her body.  She had almost consented (although consent through coercion was not consent at all) to let him have sex with her, only withdrawing at the last minute when she thought she had felt John’s presence telling her not to give in.

Now she wondered if that had just been wishful thinking, that intangible connection with John simply a figment of her own overwrought imagination.

Wearily, she shook her head, a single tear tracing its way down her cheek before she flicked it away with graceful fingers.

“I can’t do it,” she whispered.  “I can’t wait and hope any more.  I told him to go, and he did.  He just left Kim.  It doesn’t get much more final than that.”

“I still think there’s more to it.”  Kim sighed.  She could see she wasn’t getting anywhere with this approach.  “I’m not asking you to wait for him, Marlena.  But you and both know you are not moving on.  You’re in denial.  You are using Bo to avoid thinking about John, to avoid the pain you’re going to have to work through once you start to face it.”

“Kim.” Marlena’s tone of voice held a clear warning.  Leave this alone.  Leave it now because you are not going to like my response if you insist on pushing it.  

“Honey, I am not here to judge you.  You do whatever it is that you need to do to get through this.  Just leave Bo out of it.  I don’t want to see him in any more pain than he already is.”

“What about my pain?” Marlena asked in a shaky voice, despite herself.  She hated herself for this moment of weakness, but she couldn’t help it.  “Why doesn’t anybody care about my pain?”

“Oh Marlena, of course we care.  We all care.” Kim pushed herself off the sofa and approached the woman she had thought of as a sister and friend for so many years.  “But you have to let us in so that we can show you.  So that we can be there for you.”

Marlena gave a short, bitter laugh.  “No-one really wants me to be honest about my feelings, Kim.  You all want me to be the strong, honorable, perfect Dr. Marlena Evans.  My honesty, my vulnerability would be far too messy.”  She turned her back on Kim, not wanting to see the pity on her face.  Her eyes searched the clear blue sky beyond, wishing for a moment that she could vanish into it.  But she couldn’t.  She was stuck here, in Salem with all these feelings and nothing was going to change that.   “None of you would have the first clue what to do with my rawness right now.”

“Why don’t you try me?” Kim challenged, a little thrown by Marlena’s sudden candor.

“No, I don’t think so.”  Marlena turned back to her one-time sister-in-law.  Her eyes were cold and her voice even colder. “I appreciate your concern and your… insights but I’m handling things just fine.  Please don’t worry about me.”

Kim sighed.  “And Bo?  Do I need to worry about him?”  This wasn’t going at all how she’d wanted it to go.  But it was probably going about as well as she’d expected it to, if she was honest.

“Bo can make his own decisions,” Marlena reminded Kimberly.  “Perhaps it’s Bo you should be talking to, rather than me.  If you’re so worried about him.”  She pushed past Kimberly and strode to the door of her office.  “Now if you’ll excuse me?”

“Marlena, please don’t be like this,” Kim bit her lip.  “I didn’t come here to upset you.”

“You haven’t upset me,” Marlena’s tone was even and unemotional.  “But if you’ve said what you came to say, I have a lot of work to do.”

“I…”  Kim wasn’t sure what else she could say that wouldn’t make things worse.  Talking to Bo was out of the question, there was no-one more stubborn and intractable than her little brother and he was like a bee around a honeypot where Marlena was concerned.  She had hoped she could appeal to Marlena’s better nature and her natural concern for the wellbeing of those around her, but she could see now that wasn’t going to fly.  Marlena was too lost in her own trauma responses to even hear what Kim was saying, let alone make the right choices to protect herself and those around her. 

“Please, just at least think about what I said.” Kim entreated.  “I don’t want to see anybody get hurt.  Not Bo, not you, not your kids….  This is so messy.  It has disaster written all over it.  I just want you to think about what you’re risking.  It hurts right now, I know, and I know Bo is helping you to not feel some of that pain.  But if this blows up in your face, if John and Hope come home and find out about this, if your kids find out… it could get so much worse, Marlena.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” Marlena opened the door to usher Kim out.  Kim stopped before her, her expression softening.  She wanted to tell Marlena that she was wrong, that none of them needed her to be perfect.  That she was still family and that she could lean on any of them, not just Bo.  But she knew Marlena wasn’t ready to hear that.  Not right now.  

Instead, she laid her hand softly on Marlena’s arm.

“If you change your mind and you do want someone to talk to, you know where I am.”

Marlena forced a smile and nodded.

Kim pressed her lips together and shook her head sadly.  “I’m so sorry Marlena.  I hate that he’s hurt you like this.”

Marlena said nothing, just waited for the other woman to leave.  When she’d finally exited the office, Marlena closed and locked the door behind her.  With a weary sigh, she went back to her desk and sat heavily in her chair.

Chewing on the inside of her lower lip, she considered Kim’s words.  She didn’t want to, she wanted to just ignore everything that Kim had said.  But the reality was that Kim had raised possibilities that she hadn’t wanted to consider.  

Did Stefano have something to do with John and Hope’s strange behavior?  Was there a chance that they would both come home with an explanation for the pain and heartache they had caused?  

And how would Bo feel if Hope came home to find him taking comfort in her arms?  Would that destroy any chance Bo and Hope had of finding their way back together?  And what of Kim’s insistence that Bo was developing feelings for her?  If true, that made things, as Kim described, very ‘messy’.

Marlena pressed her fingertips to her temples again and applied pressure in small, rotating circles.  As bad as her headache had been before, it was so much worse now.

Sighing, she picked up the phone and dialed a number she knew almost better than she knew her own.

“Hi, is Detective Brady available please?  Yes, it’s Dr. Marlena Evans.”

She waited, listening to the background bustle of the police station as the officer who had answered the phone went and looked for Bo.

A couple of minutes later, he came on the line.

“Hey Marlena, this is an unexpected pleasure.”  She could hear the smile in his voice and her heart sank a little.  “How can I help you?”

“Um, we need to talk, Bo.”  Her voice was low and laced with pain.

“Oh boy, that doesn’t sound good.”  Bo’s voice became somber on the other end of the line.  “Okay, I have a break coming up soon.  Are you at your office?”

“Yes, but I have a patient at three.  Can you delay your break?  I’m sorry but I’ll be done by four.”

“Yeah, no problem.”  Bo sighed.  “Marlena, whatever it is, it’s going to be okay.”

“Sure it will.”  Her reply conveyed very clearly that she didn’t think it would be okay.  Not in the slightest.  “I’ll see you soon.”

Part Onez

Fever dream high in the quiet of the night
You know that I caught it
Bad, bad boy
Shiny toy with a price
You know that I bought it

Killing me slow, out the window
I’m always waiting for you to be waiting below
Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes
What doesn’t kill me makes me want you more

And it’s new, the shape of your body
It’s blue, the feeling I’ve got
And it’s ooh, whoa, oh
It’s a cruel summer
It’s cool, that’s what I tell ’em
No rules in breakable heaven
But ooh, whoa oh
It’s a cruel summer
With you

Cruel Summer – Taylor Swift

“Hey Marlena,” Bo leaned against the doorframe, his eyes examining her face for a clue as to what was wrong and what she wanted to talk to him about.  “Hillary wasn’t at her desk.  I wasn’t sure whether you had anyone with you, but you said you’d be done by four.”  He looked at his watch, confirming that it was indeed, after four pm.

“Hi.  Come in and close the door.”  Marlena put down her voice recorder and slid her glasses off the bridge of her nose.  She placed them on her desk next to the electronic device and looked up at him again as he approached her desk.

“What is it?” he asked gently.  “You sounded upset on the phone.  Has something happened?  Have you heard from John?”

“No, no it’s nothing like that,” Marlena sat back in her chair.  “I just… I’ve been thinking.  Bo, I don’t think this is a good idea.”  The words stuck in her throat as she tried to force them out.  She knew that this was right, that Kim was right, but she didn’t want to do this.  Not to Bo.  Not to herself.  But she had to do what was right.  For him and for the family.  “This… us together I mean.”

Bo said nothing for a long moment, just stared at her.  She wouldn’t quite meet his eyes and he knew this wasn’t coming from her.  Not completely.

“Who was it?”  He demanded angrily.  “Someone’s gotten to you.  Who was it?”

“It wasn’t…” Marlena shook her head and adjusted the lapel of her fitted pink suit jacket before finally lifting her eyes to his.  She internally flinched at the pain and anger she saw there.  “Bo, this is too… it’s too messy.  Too risky.  I knowyou love Hope.  If she came back and found you with me, she would be devastated.”

“Would she?” Bo gave a short, bitter laugh.  “I really don’t think she’d give two hoots to be honest.”

Marlena paused, studying Bo’s face, seeing the pain that lingered there as he thought of his ex-wife. 

“Oh honey, maybe not Hope as she is right now, but you and I both know Hope hasn’t been behaving like herself for quite some time.”  She frowned but it was a thoughtful kind of pause.  Kim was right about that.  Neither John nor Hope had been themselves for some time.  “What if there’s a reason for that?  What if she does come back and has a reason for her behavior?” She looked uncertain, unconvinced by her own words, and yet still feeling as though there was some merit in raising the possibility.  Stranger things had happened in Salem, after all.

“You’re reaching, Marlena.”  Bo rubbed his hand over his face, his chin rough with day old stubble.  “Who put these ideas in your head.  Was it Kimberly?”

Marlena was silent and he had his answer.

“Dammit, why can’t she mind her own business?” he slammed his fist down on the surface of Marlena’s desk and she visibly jumped.  He stepped back and collected himself, looking at her.  “Geez, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You… you didn’t scare me,” she tugged on the bottom of her jacket, trying to make herself look more ordered than she felt.  She felt adrift, completely untethered.  She just wanted to feel like herself again, but she wasn’t even sure she recognized herself in the mirror anymore.   “Bo, I…”  She swallowed painfully.  The idea of going home to her empty bed night after night after this conversation was enough to take her breath away.  Sucking in an uncertain breath, she smothered the beginnings of a sob and she looked away.

“Marlena,” Bo moved around the end of her desk so that he was next to her chair, and he sat on the edge of her desk.  Reaching out, he took her chin in his fingers and forced her to look at him.  In those few short seconds, she had managed to get a rein on her emotions and her face was devoid of tears, her jaw set in a firm line.  “Is this really what you want?” he asked softly, knowing absolutely that it wasn’t what she wanted.  She was just being Marlena, trying to do what was best and “right” for everybody else and martyring herself in the process.  It was frustrating as hell, but he couldn’t fault her for wanting to protect everybody else.  He just knew he sure as hell wasn’t going to let her do it.  Not when it felt so damn good when they were together.

“I…” Marlena pushed her chair back, trying to put some distance between herself and Bo.  He smelled too good, looked too sexy in those tight blue jeans, white t-shirt and black leather jacket.  “It’s too messy.  We’re too interlinked.  I was married to your brother, for God’s sake.  You’ve been like a brother to John.”

“I don’t see John here, do you?”  Bo looked around and then shifted so that he was on the desk directly in front of Marlena.  Her powder pink skirt rode halfway up her thighs and he hardened as he thought of the soft, wet warmth hidden between those glorious long golden limbs.  “Listen, we talked about this.  Why are you putting everyone else’s needs above your own?  Why do you always do that, Marlena?  What about what you need?”

“I…”  She wished she had an answer for him.  It was her first instinct, to protect her children, her family.  John.  But she was so tired.  So tired of feeling like she didn’t matter.  That none of them really saw her.  Sure, they saw their mother, their friend, their doctor, but they saw what they wanted to see.  They saw past her, saw through her as though she was a two-dimensional cypher.  They never really saw her.

“Tell me what you feel,” Bo raised his eyebrows.  “Not what you think you should do.  Not what the ‘right thing’ to do is.”  He leaned forward and brushed his fingers over one of her thighs.  “What do you feel when you think about me walking out of this office and never touching you again?”

The blush rose in her cheeks, echoing the soft pink of her suit.  The warmth of his touch left her leg tingling.  “I hate it,” she admits finally.  “Bo, I hate it.  Some days I feel like I’m drowning and then I talk to you, or I just think of you, and I feel like I can breathe again.  But, I have to think about the children.  I have to think about the family.  I have to be responsible, Bo.”

“Why?” Bo demanded.  “Where has responsible and sensible gotten you in the past, Marlena?  Why are you letting Kimberly guilt trip you into denying yourself the comfort and pleasure you need and deserve?  And, by the way, I also need and deserve.”  He reached out and took her hands and pulled her into a standing position.  “I don’t accept this.  I don’t accept that we should end this because my sister thinks everyone else’s comfort comes before what makes usfeel good.”

“Bo, I’m a mess,” she finally admitted.  He was right, this did make her feel utterly glorious, but Kimberly was also right, she was using Bo to avoid her feelings about John.  To run away from her pain.  And that wasn’t fair. “This isn’t going to end well.  Not for you, not for me.” 

He dropped her left hand and moved his right to her waist and pulled her to him.  “Yes, you, Marlena Evans, are a hot, glorious mess, but here’s the thing.  I am not going to let you walk away.  I want you too much.  I crave you every moment of every day.”  He slid his hand slowly up her back until he reached the nape of her neck and sliding his fingers under the warm cascade of hair, he wrapped them around the slender column of her neck and pulled her head to his.  “I won’t let you do it.  I know you want me as much as I want you.”

“Oh Bo,” she moaned as he took her lips roughly with his own.  His thighs tightened around hers and he slid his free arm around her waist, pulling her hard against him so that she could feel the bulge of his hard cock against her thigh.  

“I know it’s going to end badly,” he murmured against her cheek.  “Of course it is.  But this is worth it, don’t you think?”  He crushed his lips against hers again and he heard her heady whimper.  Then he felt her arms curl around his neck, and he knew he had her again.  At least for now.  He tangled his fingers in her hair and pulled her head back so that he could attack her throat.  “I want you,” he murmured against her heated skin.  “I want you, right here, right now.”

“Oh, God!” his lips felt like fire against her skin, and she felt like the core of her was melting.  

“Sit down.”  He stood up, pushing her backwards and then down into the chair.  He knew this was risky, anyone could walk in, but he was desperate to taste her.  To claim her, to make her come, hard and fast so that she couldn’t deny how good they were together and how much she wanted and needed him.

“Bo, we can’t-” 

He kneeled in front of her and roughly bunched her skirt up her thighs towards her hips.

“Bo-” her attempts to discourage him were weak, even to her own ears.

“I need to taste you,” he slid his fingers under the sides of her panties and hooking them over the lacy band at the top, he pulled them roughly down her legs.  Despite every rational thought telling her that she shouldn’t be doing this, she shifted, letting him pull her underwear off and push her skirt further up.    She watched him, her heart pounding as he curled his hands behind her knees and pulled her towards him.  

“Tell me you don’t want this.” He challenged her, a lazy smile curling his lips.  He knew she wanted it.  He could see it in the way her eyes had darkened to a deep mossy green.  He could smell the scent of her, rich and beckoning, the moisture already pooling deep between her thighs.  And he could hear it in her shallow, fast breaths as her chest rose and fell.  “Didn’t think so.”  His smile turned into a grin as he dove between her legs, his tongue finding such ample evidence of her arousal that it was pointless for Marlena to lie to him.

“Oh… oh God,” she lifted her hips, pressing herself against his probing, exploring tongue.  This was crazy, she shouldn’t be doing this here.  This was completely unprofessional, but she couldn’t find the will to make him stop.  She craved him in just the same way he craved her.  The chemistry was undeniable.  She only had to look at him and her body felt alive in a way it hadn’t in months.  And when he touched her, she was lost.   Rational thought was not something she was capable of in these moments, it was just instinct and sensation and the feeling of his tongue sliding, circling, flicking.  And then his fingers.  Oh, god, his fingers…

“Marlena?”  Marlena felt Bo freeze and withdraw his tongue and she slowly became aware of a knocking on the door and a familiar voice.  “Marlena, are you in there?”

Marlena looked at Bo horrified as he lifted his eyes to hers.  “Did you lock the door?” she whispered.

Bo’s eyes widened and then he shook his head.  Immediately, without prevarication, he backed under her desk and pulled her chair so that her bottom half was no longer visible. 

“Marlena?  I really need to talk to you.  Can I come in?”  The voice came again through the closed door and Marlena closed her eyes, a pained expression on her face.

“Uh, I’m a bit-” She didn’t have the opportunity to finish her sentence as the door swung open and Vivian Alamain stood in the doorway.

“Ahhh, Marlena, there you are!”  Vivian strode into Marlena’s office, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she hadn’t been invited in.

“Actually Vivian,” Marlena rolled her hand into a fist as she felt Bo’s breath on her thigh.  “I don’t really have time for this.  If you need to see me, please make an appointment with my secretary.”

“Oh, my dear.  It’s nothing like that,” Vivian gave a short, excessively forced laugh.  “I need to get in touch with my nephew John, and I thought maybe you could tell me where he is.”

“John is…” Marlena sighed, picking up her glasses.  “Somewhere in Europe, but as to exactly where, I am afraid I can’t help you there.”  She bit her lip as Bo’s hand crept up the inside of her leg and she swallowed heavily, aware of the flush creeping up her cheeks.

“Oh, but surely you have talked to him recently?” Vivian wasn’t unaware of Marlena’s discomfort, and it made her curious.  Marlena was usually so well put together, so composed and unflappable and yet here she was, unfocussed and almost disordered.  Vivian couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she was intrigued.

“No,” Marlena gave a little unprompted gasp before she gathered herself.  “Actually, I haven’t spoken to John for weeks.”

“You haven’t spoken to your fiance, in weeks?” Vivian probed, one eyebrow raising of its own accord.  

“Listen Vivian, I really don’t have time to discuss this with you.”  Marlena knew that if she told Vivian that she and John had separated that Vivian was going to either pepper her with all kinds of questions or feel it proper to offer patently insincere condolences on the end of the relationship.  Either way, it wasn’t a conversation Marlena wanted to sit through, especially with Bo’s hands caressing the skin on the inside of her thigh, his fingers creeping dangerously higher and higher.  “I’m afraid I can’t help you reach John; you’ll have to find another way to find out where he is.”  As Vivian opened her mouth to disagree, Marlena’s tone sharpened.    “Vivian, please just go.  I’m sure you can see yourself out.”

“Well!”  Vivian mustered her most indignant expression and glared at Marlena.

Marlena said nothing further, just stared back, challenging Vivian to argue with her.  She was well aware that Vivian Alamain was not the kind of person to make an enemy of.  But she didn’t have the luxury of being able to pander to Vivian’s gargantuan ego.  Every minute Vivian spent in this office was a further risk that she would discover the impropriety that she had interrupted.

Beneath the desk, Bo pushed her legs further apart and slid his lips and tongue further up towards his goal.  Marlena reached under the desk and tried unsuccessfully to push him away.  Her cheeks flushed as she felt his fingers caress the dark, wet center of her and it was only with a supreme effort that she was able to school her expression so that the shock and pleasure she felt at his incursion was not reflected on her face.  Or at least, she hoped to God it wasn’t.

Vivian took a further moment, regarding her nephew’s… whatever she was, then she pursed her lips and turned on her heel.   With a show of exasperation, she marched from the office, slamming the door soundly behind her.

Bo pushed Marlena’s chair back from the desk and emerged from the tiny space, unfolding his limbs with a relieved groan.

“Bo Brady!” Marlena was embarrassed and furious with him.  “I can’t believe you put me in that position.”

“Oh relax, gorgeous,” he leaned forward and tried to kiss her, but she turned her head to the side, unwilling to release the anger and anxiety she felt.  “It was just Vivian.  And she had no idea why you wanted to get rid of her.”

“No thanks to you.” Marlena glared at him.  “What the hell did you think you were doing?” She wrenched her skirt back down her legs and pushed Bo aside as she stood.  Stopping to kick off her shoes, she made her way to the office door, made sure it was really closed and twisted the lock. 

On the other side, Vivian Alamain stood with her back to the door, her eyebrows raised as she heard Marlena’s raised but muffled voice and then the voice of someone else.  Someone who had obviously been in the office with Marlena when Vivian had entered.  Someone who was male and definitely not her nephew.

Back inside the office, Marlena turned back to Bo, who had the good grace to look chagrined. 

“I told you…” His tone was less cocky now, less certain.  “I can’t keep my hands off you.  And I was down there and I just couldn’t help myself….”

“Bo, I have a certain standing in this hospital,” she told him, trying to make him understand why she was so upset.  He rounded the end of the desk and came towards her, but she put up her hands, trying to fend him off.  “I have to be seen as professional.  I have to uphold the standards that are expected of all staff and especially senior staff.  Being caught having sex in my office during working hours…. with my brother-in-law can’t exactly be considered professional in any respect.”  They were face to face now and she pulled on the bottom of her suit jacket once again, trying to bring some order to her appearance.  Some semblance of the professional doctor she was trying to pretend to be. 

“It didn’t seem to bother you the other day when Eric almost walked in on us,” Bo reminded her sulkily as he backed her up against the bookcase.

“Yes, well….” she swallowed, her breath suddenly coming in short, shallow intakes.  Her head was swimming with the nearness of him.  Her heart was pounding, and it was echoing in the wetness between her legs.  “Maybe I should have been.”

“Maybe?” Bo slid his palm under the hem of her skirt and forced it back up her thighs.

“Bo-” She laid her hands on his chest, fingers splayed against the white cotton of his t-shirt, but she didn’t push him away.  “We shouldn’t do this.”  Her voice was low and trembling and didn’t hold an ounce of conviction.

“You’re right,” Bo agreed with her before he dipped his head to claim her lips with his.  He wound the fingers of his left hand in her hair and as she parted her lips, her tongue welcoming him, he slid his right hand up over her exquisite ass.  He felt her arms wrapping around his neck and she pressed herself against him as she gave herself over to the lust that was sweeping away all rational thought.

When they finally came up for air, he slid his lips across her jaw to her ear where he murmured, “but we’re going to do it anyway.  Because it feels too damned good not to.”

Marlena whimpered as he eased her skirt up around her hips and then slid his fingers between her legs.  He groaned her as he cupped her with his palm, his middle finger sliding along the wetness of her.  “Oh god, you’re so wet.  You feel so good, Marlena.” He swiped his tongue over her earlobe, and she moaned, grinding herself against the heel of his palm.

“Oh,” she gasped as he slid two fingers inside her, “oh, Bo…”

She closed her eyes and rocked her head back as he attacked her throat while he slowly moved his fingers in and out of her.  She rocked slowly against his hand, as he established a rhythm.  She was tight around his fingers and he wanted so badly to be inside her, but he knew he didn’t have time for that.  He had to be back at the station soon but he wanted to leave her with a memory that would ensure she’d come back for more.  He couldn’t lose her now.  Not to her misguided sense of propriety, of responsibility.   He didn’t care what was right or wrong or even who might get hurt.  He just wanted more of this.  He just wanted to kiss her and hold her and wrap himself in her scent.  He wanted to make love to her over and over again.  He wanted to see her lazy sexy smile and hear that deep, throaty laugh.  He wanted to l…

“Mmmmph,” she groaned.  “Faster, Bo.”

He laughed and captured her lips with his again, increasing the pace of his thrusts into her.  She nipped his lower lip before she brought her own lips to his ear.  “Fuck me, Bo,” she begged him.  “Please.  Please, fuck me.”

“I don’t have time, baby,” he redoubled his efforts, making her cry out in pleasure ….  “But later.  Come to the boat later and I’ll do anything you want to that sexy body of yours.”  In reality, he was so hard and he wanted her so badly he was not sure how he’d make it through an interminably boring afternoon at the station.  But he wanted to remind her of how good it felt to take her pleasure.  He wanted her to want more.  He wanted her to not be able to get enough, just like he couldn’t get enough of her.

He could tell she was close as he fucked her with his fingers against the bookcase, her golden hair falling from the pins that held it in a French twist and cascading around her flushed cheeks.  Whimpers and moans spilled from swollen, reddened lips and her crumpled pink suit rode up around her hips and revealed tantalizing flashes of the cream satin and lace which covered her full, luscious breasts.

He would have given anything to just toss off work and stay here with her in this office and fuck her senseless.  But if he did that this afternoon then he would do it every afternoon and that was not going to do much for her “professional standing”, or, indeed, much for his police career.

“Come for me Marlena,” he whispered against her ear.  “I want to hear how good it feels for you.”

“Ohhhhh,” she grabbed a handful of his hair and rocked against his palm, each thrust hitting just right against her clit.  “Oh God.  Harder.”

Bo re-doubled his efforts and then he felt her hands tightening in his hair, her arms pulling him close and then her walls tightening around his fingers.  And he could hear her moans and cries and her calling his name as she convulsed against him, her wetness coating his palm, the scent of her enveloping him.  For a moment, he was almost as dazed as she was as she clung to him.    

“Oh, Marlena,” he growled against her neck.  “Jesus.”  He was so hard now that it was painful.

“Be late,” she entreated him.  “Tell them you you got tied up.”  She looked at him with large, luminous eyes and then gave him a cheeky, sexy smile.   “I could tie you up and then it would be the truth.”  She reached down for the hand he’d slid from inside her and lifted it to her mouth.  Darting her tongue out, she swiped it around the tips of his fingers, tasting herself on him.  Bo groaned and another smile flickered across her lips before she sucked his fingers into her mouth.

“You don’t play fair.”  He watched her lick and suck her own juices from his fingers, and he shuddered.

“Says the man who sat under my desk and fingered me while I was talking to Vivian Alamain!” She laughed throatily as she attacked his belt buckle.

“Yeah, well…” he placed his hands regretfully on hers and removed them.  “I really have to go, gorgeous.”

“Bo!” She pouted and he reflected once again, just how utterly fuckable she really was in every mood that crossed her beautiful face.

“Honestly,” he lifted her hands to his mouth and kissed the curled fingers of each one.  “Abe is already suspicious enough.  I keep making stupid mistakes and getting caught zoned out while I’m daydreaming about you.  I don’t think being an hour late back from a half hour break will go down particularly well.”  He looked at his watch and exhaled frustratedly.  “I’m already late as it is.”

“You shouldn’t start something you can’t finish,” she said accusingly, pulling her hand away and stroking it up over the bulge in his jeans.  “Are you even going to be able to make it back to the station with that physical impediment, Detective Brady?”  She grinned as she saw him exhale, the red blush rising in his cheeks.

“I’ll have to manage, somehow.”  He pushed himself away from her and moved back behind her desk where he retrieved his leather jacket which was sprawled on the floor.  He held it in front of him as he neared her again.  “You’ll come over later?  To the boat?  My shift finishes at nine.  I can be there by half past.”  He backed her up against the bookcase for a second time.  “I’ll finish what I started then.”

“I…” she stared into his buttery brown eyes.  She knew she should tell him no, she couldn’t meet him.  That this was insane and doomed and she simply couldn’t see him again.  But she also knew she wouldn’t.  She had fallen for Bo Brady’s swagger and cheek, the twinkle in his eye, his cocky self-assurance and his perfectly hard and handsome body.  And all the good and sensible reasons in the world weren’t going to keep her away from him. 

“I’ll be there,” she told him as she pulled his mouth to hers for a searing kiss.  “God help me.  God help us both, Bo. I’ll be there….”

Bo kissed her back, tongue colliding with hers before he pulled back grinning at her.  With a wink, he skipped lightly to the door and unlocked it.

“See you then, beautiful.”  He left the office, closing the door behind him.  But down the hall, half-hidden around a corner, Vivian Alamain watched him leave.

“Well, well, well,” her pursed lips eased into a smile as she contemplated this development.  She had heard enough to know that Marlena and her erstwhile companion were not engaging in a “talk” therapy session.  Indeed, from the sounds coming from the other side of Marlena’s closed and locked office door, there was quite a different kind of therapy going on.  

“Marlena Evans, I never knew you had it in you.  And your brother-in-law, to boot.  I wonder what dear Johnny would have to say about that…..” 

Part Douze

Third floor on the West Side, me and you
Handsome, you’re a mansion with a view
Do the girls back home touch you like I do?

Long night with your hands up in my hair
Echoes of your footsteps on the stairs
Stay here, honey, I don’t want to share
‘Cause I like you

This ain’t for the best
My reputation’s never been worse, so
You must like me for me
Yeah, I want you

We can’t make any promises
Now can we, babe?
But you can make me a drink

Delicate – Taylor Swift

John opened his eyes to find Gina looking back at him, her grey-green eyes ringed with kohl.   Her expression was one of concern, but he couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t genuine concern for him, but more concern for herself and her plans.

“John!” she exclaimed, her eyes widening.  “Oh, thank goodness you are awake!  We were so worried.”

“Father John,” Greta came into view over Gina’s shoulder.  “How are you feeling?”

John frowned and eased his head across the pillow, looking around the room.  It was plain that he was in hospital, and he wondered how long he’d been out.  He took an inventory of his body, of all the aches and pains that he could detail.  His head pounded and his neck was sore.  One elbow felt like it was bandaged but aside from that, he appeared to be intact.

“Where am I?” he asked, his voice dry and croaky.

“Franziskus-Krankenhaus Hospital,” Gina told him, taking his hand in hers.  She flinched as he pulled his hand back from her and scowled.  “You were mugged outside the hotel.  They stole your wallet, so no-one knew who to contact.  We only found you because Greta heard the hotel staff talking about a man having been attacked on the street outside.”

“How long have I been here?” John closes his eyes, desperately wishing it was Marlena here by his bedside instead of this Gina cypher inhabiting Hope’s body.

“About eight hours.” That was Lilli Faversham’s voice coming from the other side of the bed.  “We came as soon as we found out about the attack and where they had taken you.”

“Ahhhh, good, our patient is awake.”  John opened his eyes at the new, unfamiliar voice in the room.  The new entrant was obviously a doctor, a German man, maybe in his forties, white coat clad, with a stethoscope around his neck.  “How are you feeling, Mr. Black?”

“Fine.”  It wasn’t the truth, he felt like shit, like he’d been hit by a dump truck, but he needed to get out of here.  He needed to get away from Gina and her manipulations back to Salem, back to Marlena and his children.  

Jesus.  Marlena.

His eyes widened as he remembered her face when she told him it was over between them.  Over?  What the hell!?  What the fuck had he been thinking!?  What on earth was he doing here?

It was suddenly as though the fog that he had been operating under, the miasma that had been plaguing him for months has been lifted.  What had been invisible for so long, and was blurry and unclear recently, had now been thrown into sharp focus.  

“Mr. Black?” The doctor tapped him on the arm.  “Mr. Black, are you with us?” 

“Sorry?” John shook his head.  He’d been so lost in his own thoughts and his own realizations that he hadn’t heard the doctor talking to him.

“I was explaining that when you were brought in with a head injury, we did a CT scan to make sure there was no significant damage and we found something strange.”   

“Something strange?” The skin folded into furrows between John’s eyes.

“Yes, there was some kind of foreign body embedded in your brain stem, although when we got in there, it had seemed to have worked its way loose.” 

The doctor withdrew his hand from his pocket and held out a plastic vial.  Inside the vial was a tiny metallic looking object.  John took the vial from him and held it up to the sunlight coming through the window.

“It appears to be some kind of computer chip,” the doctor seemed to be bemused.  “Do you have any idea of its function, or how it may have come to be inside you?”

“No idea at all,” John continued to study the object.  He knew exactly who had put it there, although when was a different story.  He wondered if this was the cause of his strange behavior over the past few months.  Where everything had been so fragmented, so uncertain, where he hadn’t understood his own thoughts or motivations.

Certainly, everything was much clearer now. 

Especially his inexplicably idiotic behavior when it came to Marlena. 

What the hell was I thinking?

Well clearly, he hadn’t been doing the thinking. Probably, this chip had been doing the thinking for him. Muddling his thoughts. 

He felt Gina’s claw-like hand on his arm, and he shuddered as the memory of waking up in her bed that morning suddenly came back to him. How was he going to explain any of this to Marlena? Was she really going to believe that none of this was his doing? That he had been controlled by a microchip in his brain? That was patently ridiculous.

He recalled again the pain in her eyes when she had told him to go. She had taken off her engagement ring and quietly laid it on the table in front of him.

I can’t do this anymore John. I can’t watch as you charge to the rescue of yet another damsel in distress. I need you. Sami needs you and you’re not there. So go be there for Greta. Help Hope. Find whatever it is in your past that will make you whole again. I hope, for your sake, that you do. 

Her golden eyes had flashed with muted anger but that had quickly been subsumed in sorrow. He hadn’t known what to say. He wasn’t sure he’d wanted to say anything. The all-consuming passion he had once felt for her was dulled. He was numb. He wanted something but he didn’t know what it was. 

He didn’t think it was Gina. It was… knowledge? Ah fuck, whatever it was, it didn’t matter any longer.  It wasn’t him.  And Marlena wouldn’t care what it was or even why, unless he could find some real explanation.  And now, now he was divorced from the chip in his head, his passion for Marlena and his life with her was returning full-force.  He had to find some way to prove it, some genuine provable reason that he’d been such an utter dickhead.

“Could I have that, Doc?” he held out his hand and the doctor nodded, handing it to him. “And, uh, could I speak to you, in private?”

“Of course.” The doctor turned to Gina who was still clutching at John’s arm, “could you please step outside ladies?”

Gina looked for a moment like she was going to argue but then Lili’s hand on her shoulder seemed to still her and she nodded with a small, tight smile.  “I am so glad you are all right, John.”  Her hand migrated down to his and she clutched it tightly for a moment.  John said nothing, just looked her directly in the eyes.  He was absolutely sure now that this woman was Gina and not the Hope he knew and loved as a friend.  For sure, it was Hope’s body, but it wasn’t Hope’s mind or Hope’s desire to learn about her past that was leading this wild-goose-chase of a search.  That was all Gina von Amberg

Him ending up in her bed last night hadn’t been a chance occurrence, it had been a well-executed plan.  He doesn’t doubt she put some kind of drug in his drink.  The only question is whether, in his addled state, he had submitted to her machinations.  He can’t bring himself to believe that he would have.  Surely, even in an intoxicated state, the John Black who has been asserting himself more of late (maybe as the chip was working its way loose) would not conscionably have sex with Gina/Hope.  He loved Marlena.  He had always loved Marlena.  He thought Marlena was the most beautiful, intelligent, bewitching creature that had ever walked the earth.  What use had he for Hope Brady?  Or Princess Gina von Amberg?  Or any other woman, for that matter?

All of this filtered through his aching head as he held Gina’s gaze and slowly lifted one eyebrow.  That single gesture imparted a multitude of thoughts, accusations and truths.  In return, Gina raised her own eyebrow and then turned and swept from the cubicle, Greta and Lily following her with much less assurance.

“Doctor,” John kept his voice low.  “I believe my friend Hope may have one of these chips inside her head also.  Is there any way that you can do a scan on her and find out?”

“If she consents, then of course,” the doctor nodded.  “Although there would be a charge, and she would have to discuss with her insurance company as to whether they would cover it.”

John sighed.  There was no way on God’s green earth that Gina would agree to such investigations.  That personality was not going to willingly be evicted from Hope’s brain.  She’d burrow herself as far into Hope as she could, like the parasite she was, and she’d do anything and everything she could to ensure she wasn’t uncovered or removed, forcibly or otherwise.  He’d have to find another way because her consent was not going to be forthcoming.

“She won’t agree to any scans,” John said to the doctor.  “If this chip is what I think it is….” he shakes his head, deciding not to say anything further.  His theory would sound insane to any reasonable person.  Any reasonable person that didn’t know Stefano DiMera and his cadre of mad scientists and other strange and disturbing minions.

“And what do you think it is?” the doctor asked.

“I’d…. rather not say.” John threw the small plastic tube up in the air and caught it, closing his fist around it.  “So, when can I get outta here, doc?”

The doctor explained that as he’d just had surgery that potentially may cause swelling near his spinal cord, they were not willing to release him for a day or two, at least until they were assured there were no significant ill effects from either his mugging or from the surgery to remove the chip.   

John had silently nodded, having no intention of staying any longer than he absolutely had to.  Hope was out there, being controlled by DiMera and Marlena was at home, alone and distraught, thinking he had abandoned her without a backward glance.

“Could you ask my friends to come back in?  And any chance I could get hold of a phone?  I have a few calls to make,” he asked with a smile that gave no indication how important his request was.

The doctor assented and left the cubicle to source a phone.  But reaching the door, he scanned the corridor beyond it and turned back to John with a frown on his face.  “Your friends,” he shrugged.  “They’ve gone.”

~

It had been dark for hours when Marlena reached the pier where the Fancy Face II was moored.  Unable to face the barrage of questioning from Sami and Carrie, she had opted to retreat to her bedroom early.  Then, her heart pounding, she had snuck out of the penthouse like an unrepentant teenager when they were both in the kitchen, cleaning up the mess from dinner.

And now she was here, pulling her coat close around her, the damp river air clinging to her the nearly bare skin of her legs.  She shivered with anticipation as she looked at the boat before her, the fairy lights strung around white picket boarding twinkling welcomingly.

After Bo had left her office, she had tried to concentrate on work, but it had been a hopeless task.  Especially when she’d realized that her silk panties were missing.  She’d tried very hard to be angry at Bo, knowing full well that he’d probably stuffed them into his pocket and taken them with him but every time she thought about him and thought about him taking those panties off her, she had felt the echo of her desire for him throbbing between her thighs and she had shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

Eventually she had given it away for the evening and had walked the halls of the hospital to the elevator feeling particularly vulnerable but also incredibly horny.  Mike Horton had stepped into the elevator at the last minute, and she had ridden down to the hospital carpark with him in uncomfortable silence.

At home, Sami had been talkative, Carrie morose, and Belle and Brady had been bundles of sugar-fuelled energy so she hadn’t had much time to dwell on Bo’s promises and what pleasures the night might bring.  But when the two small children had been put to bed, she found herself staring out the window, thinking about the way Bo’s velvety brown eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, about how light and soft his hands were when he stroked them over her skin.  How his voice sounded when he called her “gorgeous”.  About how his mouth felt when he sucked and probed and flicked.  How he groaned when he tasted her.  How silky he felt in her mouth.  About how hard and thick he was when he entered her.  About how it felt when he thrust that beautiful cock of his inside her, her cunt wet and tight around him, gripping, throbbing, squeezing him until he….

Sami had interrupted her train of thought and she had asked if Marlena was okay.  Marlena had flushed, although in truth, she was already suffused with lust and blushing as a direct result.  Carrie had stood back near the stairs, silently glowering at her stepmother, but Marlena had been so caught up in her own imaginings and embarrassment for being disturbed by her daughter in such a state that she had completely missed Carrie’s growing bitterness.

And so, shortly after nine, she had silently crept out of the penthouse, praying her daughters would not decide to check on her, but leaving a note claiming she’d had to go into work, in case they did.  

And now she was here, in front of Bo’s boat, knowing that she shouldn’t be here; that all sensible, rational, sane reasoning dictated that this was the worst decision she had made in a long time but also knowing that she was powerless to stop herself.  That all Bo had to do was flash her that hundred-watt grin of his and she would do anything he asked.   

She bit her lower lip as her head momentarily warred with her heart.  And then he was emerging from the cabin onto the deck of the boat, and he was beaming, and she couldn’t help her answering smile or the pounding of her heart.

“There you are,” he jumped lightly from the boat onto the wooden pier and came towards her, wrapping his arms around her when he reached her.  And then his hand was on her face, guiding her lips to his and they were kissing, and it felt so good that she forgot all her misgivings and just melted against his warm solidness.  “I’m glad you came,” he murmured against her lips as he caressed her face.

“I said I would,” she smiled as he took her hand and pulled her towards the boat.  “I haven’t been able to think of anything else all evening.”

“Me either,” he lifted her up onto the boat and climbed up beside her.  “But then, I don’t think about much else besides you right now anyway.”  He cupped her face between his hands and brought his lips to hers again.  She hummed as he brushed his lips against hers, his tongue flickering back and forth, tasting her, teasing her.  “You smell wonderful,” he whispered before he kissed his way along her jawline to her ear and inhaled the combination of the floral perfume she wore and her natural sweet and earthy scent.

“Mmmmm,” she looped her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him, only taking the time to kick off her shoes as she did so.  Dipping his head, he stroked his tongue down across her collarbone, delighting in the sweet, salty taste of her.  She really was quite something.

“I brought you something,” she said in a quiet, husky voice.  He looked up at her, her golden eyes twinkling like the waters of the river behind her.

“Mmmmmm?” he brushed the hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ear.  “You’re quite enough, gorgeous.”

“Well, it’s kind of along those lines,” she gave him a ravishingly sexy smile and then stepped back from him and unbuttoned her coat.

His eyes widened as she slipped it off her shoulders and let it fall to the deck.  Underneath she was wearing just a short black negligee with lace trim around the cleavage and with black lace-top stockings below it.  Her hair was messily pinned up with strands escaping and curling against her slender neck in the damp evening air.

“Oh.  Wow.”  Bo shook his head.  He reached back for the railing and leaned against it, just wanting to feast his eyes on her.  She was exquisite.  “Wow.”  He was, quite frankly, lost for words.

“I’ll take that as a compliment?”  She tacked on a little question mark at the end of her statement.  His face told her it was, but she couldn’t help but enjoy it when men noticed her.  She had spent too many years pining after John and ignoring the attentions of the interested men around her.  And then John had given her so little to go on for so long, at times she had wondered if she even had it in herself to feel attractive anymore.  When he had finally extracted himself from Kristen’s clutches, she had finally remembered how it was to feel beautiful and desired.  But then more recently his interest had waned again, and she had wondered if she was just getting past it, whether she was just getting too old to really be considered beautiful.  

Marlena wasn’t unaware of her attractiveness; she’d have to be a fool not to recognize that the woman she saw in the mirror had been blessed with some incredibly good genes.  But her self-confidence had taken a battering with John’s inconsistent attentions, and she had genuinely started to question whether it was that he just didn’t like what he saw when he woke up in the morning anymore.

But Bo had put paid to those insecurities and worries.  His face, his words, his attentions made her feel beautiful again.  The way he looked at her, the way he touched her face, her body, the way he kissed her, his endearments, they all combined to make her feel sexy and desirable and she wanted to enjoy that while she could.

“Yeah,” Bo grinned, looking her up and down.  “Yeah, that’s a compliment.  Damn.”

“Thank you.”  Marlena smiled and then crooked her finger, beckoning him to her.  She reached out and pulled his white t-shirt from the waistband of his jeans.  Diving under it with her hands, she skimmed them up his sides and he lifted his arms so that she could pull it up over his head.  She dropped it on the deck and then slid her hands over his well, sculpted chest, threading her fingers through the soft hair that covered his pectoral muscles.  Bo slid his hands around her waist.

“You are beautiful,” he told her, understanding what it was that she needed right now.  “You are breathtaking, Marlena.  Don’t ever question that.”  He lifted one hand to her face, caressing his thumb across her beautifully defined cheekbone and then trailing his fingers down the side of her neck and along her shoulder.    She looked up from where she was studying his gorgeous chest and locked eyes with his soulful brown ones.

“Make love to me, Bo,” her voice was low and throaty with a tiny sliver of desperation.  “Take me downstairs and make love to me.”  She pressed her lips to his, her tongue sliding into his mouth and tangling with his. 

Not breaking the kiss, Bo picked her up and moved across the deck to the hatch to the cabin.  It was a moment before he could tear himself away from her glorious mouth and ease himself down the small ladder.  Marlena followed him, her stocking-clad feet gingerly feeling for each rung of the ladder until she was far enough down that he could sweep her off the ladder into his arms.  She giggled, folding her arms around his neck and letting him kiss her again.

He took her through the galley and into the bedroom which was lined with flickering candles. Here he deposited her gently on the bed, leaning her back against the pillows that were piled up against the wall.  And then it hit him, how incongruous she was here, in this place.  Marlena Evans.  Sexy and elegant, gorgeous and intimidatingly intelligent.  And she was here, in his boat.  

The boat he’d bought for the woman he’d wanted to make his wife again.   

“Would you like something to drink?” he asked her, almost nervously.  It was one thing to have sex with her at her place, in her office, but quite another to make love to her here, in a home he had shared, albeit ever so briefly, with Hope.

“No.”  She took his hand and tugged his hand, pulling him so that he sat down on the bed.  She had noticed his subtle change of mood; his sudden distraction and it brought a touch of reality to her perception of the situation they were in.  “Bo, honey, are you okay?”

“Yeah, of course.”  He smiled to cover his sudden uncertainty, but it was faltering at best, and it didn’t reach his eyes.

Marlena studied his face and saw the pain and weariness that lined it.  Sitting up, she gently put her hand to his face and stroked her thumb across his forehead.  “It’s okay,” she said softly.  “I understand.  I can go if-”

“Go?” Bo frowned, unsure of what she meant.

“Honey, you need to be honest with yourself and with me.  We both know this isn’t a good idea.  If you’re having doubts, then that’s okay.”  She gave him a tiny, regretful smile.  “I’ll understand.”

Deep creases appeared between Bo’s eyes as he tried to fathom what she was saying. For a moment, he just couldn’t make sense of her words but seeing her sad smile, he suddenly understood, and he shook his head vehemently.  “Oh. No.  No Marlena.  Hell no.”  

He instinctively knew if he let her walk out of here tonight, that would be the end of their… whatever it was.  Their dalliance?  Affair?  Relationship?  None of those seemed to capture just what this was between them.  Maybe because he wasn’t yet sure what it was.  This was heat and chemistry and need and desire and…. and maybe there was no future in it…. but then again…   Now he’d held her in his arms and kissed her… really kissed her… now he knew what she smelt like beneath her signature scent… now he’d experienced that sweet wet warmth as he slid into her… he wasn’t sure how he could give her up.  If he could give her up.

He brought his hand to her face, cupping her cheek, stroking his thumb over her perfect cheekbone.  Her eyes glittered emerald green in the candlelight.   “You, gorgeous, are not going anywhere.”  He brushed his lips against hers and she whimpered, lost again in the sensations that he evoked in her.  “No doubts,” he whispered, kissing her mouth and then the tip of her perfect nose and then her chin. “Absolutely no doubts whatsoever.”

His fingers tangled in her hair as he pushed her back towards the pillows.  Her arms snaked around his neck as he peppered kisses around her mouth and jaw and she arched her back, dipping her head back and giving him access to her throat as he continued his exploration of her sweet flesh.  

After a moment, Bo felt the awkwardness of leaning across her and he climbed onto the bed beside her.  Marlena rolled slightly onto her side and traced her hand over the warm skin of his arm, her fingers curling and flattening over the curve of his bicep and down over his forearm.  She held his gaze as she wove her fingers in between his and then leaned in and kissed him.

Bo breathed deeply as she followed a similar path to his, kissing him, trailing her lips across his smoothly shaven face and then flicking her tongue over the soft, slightly salty skin at the base of his throat.  

“I’m glad,” she said as she drew back.  Her voice was sultry and sent shivers of desire coursing through Bo.  “I want you so badly, I don’t know if I could have left.”  She took his hand and unwinding his fingers from hers, she drew his hand up between her legs and pressed his fingers against her damp panties.

Bo closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, allowing the scent of her to swim around him as he hooked a single finger around the lacy edge of her panties and slid it, knuckle deep into her warm, slippery sweetness.  “Oh god,” his whole body stiffened involuntarily as he felt her hands unbutton his jeans and wrestle the stiff zip into an open position.

Withdrawing his finger, he opened his eyes as he lifted it to her mouth.  He wanted a repeat of that incredibly sexy move this afternoon and she didn’t disappoint as she drew the tip of her tongue up the underside of his finger and then sucked it into her mouth.  “Fuck, Marlena,” he shook his head.  “Do you know what you do to me?”

“I have an idea,” she stroked him through his jeans and gave him her patented little sexy smile, the one that drove him crazy.  “But why don’t you show me, honey?  Show me how much I turn you on.”

Bo didn’t need any further encouragement, he pushed her onto her back and rolled half on top of her and kissed her again, his tongue sliding into her mouth, delving, seeking, digging out sweet moans and mewls from the siren beneath him.

His right hand caught up a handful of her golden tresses as his left played with the strap of her sexy black negligee, hooking his finger under it and running it up and down so that the back of his finger brushed against her soft skin.

After a couple of minutes of this, he pulled it over her shoulder and pulled back, his eyes sweeping her face.  Her lips were pink and swollen from his attentions and her cheeks were beautifully flushed.  Her eyes followed his as he drank her in.  He smiled at her, and she smiled back, a secret, unspoken communication between them.  She lifted her fingers to his face and drew them across his lips and then traced the curves and planes of his face.  

“This is crazy,” he chuckled.  

“Yes,” her eyes twinkled.  “It is.”  She was beyond caring about the consequences.  She just wanted to feel him moving inside her again.  She just wanted to be swept away by the sensations he elicited in her.

Bo stroked the soft, golden skin below her collarbone and trailed his fingers down her chest over the subtle curves of her ribs and then to the soft rise of her beautiful breasts.  He wanted to take it slow tonight.  So much of their sex had been hurried and interrupted, against walls, bookcases and desks.  Even when it had been on softer surfaces, sofas and beds, he’d still had to steal away like a thief in the night afterwards.

The hurried desperation to get enough of each other has been its own aphrodisiac but tonight he wanted to really take his time, to lavish all the attention and adoration on her that she deserved.  He wanted to make sure she really understood how special, how spectacular she was.

“Did I mention that you’re beautiful?” he asked as he continued to explore her, skimming his fingers over her warm skin, the nerves in his fingertips and his eyes memorising every curve, every dip, every freckle, every tiny mark, scar or blemish.  She had a tiny smallpox vaccination scar on her right upper arm, and he circled it with his fingertip as he caught her eyes with his.

“You might have done, yes,” she smiled, her eyes glowing in the soft candlelight.  “You are beautiful too.” She raised her own hand to his face and brushed short chestnut locks from his temple.  “I’ve always thought so.  Ever since I met you that very first time.”

“When I kissed you,” he stroked his hand down her arm and captured hers, pressing her palm to his lips and depositing a kiss there. “I honestly thought you were one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen.  I was so jealous of Roman.”

“You hid it well,” she watches him kiss each of her fingertips in turn.  “I have to say, didn’t know what to make of you.  You were so cocky, so sure of yourself, for one so young.”

“It was a bit of an act,” he admitted.  “You know Roman pushed all my buttons.  But I wasn’t about to give him the pleasure of seeing that he bothered me so much.  So, I pretended.  That swagger was mostly dumb bravado.”

“Well, you pulled it off very well,” she gave him a soft, loving smile.  “I don’t know that I ever really apologised for being so hard on you after Roman died.  After we thought he died,” she amended.  Her fingers traced a line from his collarbone to the curve of his shoulder.

“Yeah, you did.” He started to pull the slides from her hair, one by one, watching, fascinated as locks of it tumbled down to hit her shoulders.  “You’ve always been one to own your mistakes.  Not that it was a mistake.”  He could still remember her tear-stained face as she tore strips off him for leaving Roman’s body lying on that beach.  “You were right.  And I knew it.  You didn’t need to apologize, but you did and that meant a lot to me.”  He studied her face for a long moment.  He’d loved that face for almost two decades.

“We’ve been through a lot, you and me.”  He loosened the last of her hair clips and ran his fingers through her soft curls.

“You and I,” she corrected his grammar with a cheeky smile.  “Yes, we have.”  Her hand drifted down over his chest, fingertips tracing the outlines of his muscles.  “You’ve always been there for me.”

“You’ve always been there for me.”  He pursed his lips, holding back a smile.  “Remember when Roman, I mean, John, brought you to see me at the boat.  After you came back to Salem?”  He grins, thinking back to the shock and elation he had felt, seeing her beautiful face emerge from behind his then brother.  “I couldn’t believe it.  I couldn’t believe you were there in front of me.  I thought I might be dreaming.”

“I remember,” she laughed, cupping his cheek with the palm of her hand while his drifted down her body, following her gentle curves.  “It was so good to see your face.  I’d seen friends and family from a distance, but after John, you were the first person that I came face to face with.  The first one that knew who I was, that is.”  She’d seen Sami and Eric, of course.  She hadn’t been able to stay away from her children, but they hadn’t known that it was their long-dead mother resurrected and returned to them.

“Still think that was a dick move by Ro… by John, leaving you in that damn roach-infested motel.” Bo quirked his lips to one side, showing his disapproval.  His hand was still moving over her, tracing the beautiful curve where her waist became her hip.

“He was confused,” Marlena sighed, curling her hand around the back of his neck.  “He’d just asked your sister to marry him.  And then his dead wife shows up on the doorstep.”

“Nah.”  Bo shook his head.  “He was a dick.  He was married to you.  He loved you.  I loved Isabella, she was my sister, but he should have been straight with himself and straight with her.”

“I seem to remember someone else who found himself in a similar situation with a returned-from-the-dead wife and who made a few bad choices himself,” Marlena cocked her head and raised her eyebrows.  

“Touche,” Bo had the grace to look shamefaced.  She was right, he could hardly point the finger at John when he had tried to marry Billie with Hope in the pew behind him.  But he at least had the excuse that they didn’t know it was Hope.  Even though she had looked like Hope and sounded like Hope.

“John loved me, but he loved Isabella too.  And that was closer and fresher than what he felt for me.  I’d been ‘dead’ for five years, remember.  He’d had the time to get over me.”  Marlena shrugged with a self-deprecating expression.  “He’d moved on.  I hadn’t.”  

“John never ‘moved on’ from you.”  Bo shook his head.  And he never will.  He didn’t say it, but he knew bone deep that it was true.  Marlena wasn’t a woman you ‘moved on’ from.  And John never had and never would.  Whatever was going on with him right now, he would be back, and Bo’s mother was right.  John would come back for Marlena.  Bo knew that as surely as he knew the sun would rise tomorrow.  “He tried to replace you.  But none of them ever measured up to you.  Isabella was as close as anyone got but I don’t know that their marriage would have gone the distance had she lived.”

“John married Isabella.  He loved her.  He would never have turned his back on her.”  Marlena looked shocked that Bo would even suggest such a thing.

“Yeah, well…” Bo frowns.  “There was a time when I thought that you and Roman were forever, but things change, don’t they?”  He looked at his hand resting on her hip.  Her hip.  His hand.  Her body in his bed.  What the hell in their past, in their lives, did make sense?

He had to ask it now.  The question which had always lingered half-formed in the back of his mind.  “If John had turned Isabella loose all those years ago and taken you back into his heart without any doubt, if he had taken you back into his bed, would you have gone back to Roman when he came home?”  He had always wondered how different their lives would have been if John had made different decisions when Marlena came home.  Would they have even found Roman on that Caribbean Island?  

“Isabella was pregnant,” Marlena reminded him.  

“Yeah, and?” Bo shrugged.  “The heart wants what the heart wants.  Your heart wanted John and deep down, his heart wanted you.  You tried to ignore that and look what happened.”

Marlena flushed and rolled onto her back.  “Why are we having this conversation?” she rubbed her hand across her forehead.  “What might have happened is irrelevant.  John didn’t welcome me back with open arms and here we are.”  The truth was, she had asked herself the same questions over the years.  She had been so desperate to get home to her husband and her family but when she’d returned, she’d found no place for her anymore.  She had just wanted to love John, to have him enfold her in his arms and tell her that he loved her, that he still felt the same way about her as she did about him.  But he hadn’t done that.  He’d left her in that damn motel, and he’d gone home to Isabella.  And when he finally had re-introduced her to Salem, to her family and friends, he had kept her at arms-length.   She had ached to be near him, but he had looked at her with that sad smile on her face and then he had turned away.

“It was, what did you call it?” she asked him.  “A ‘dick’ move?” Her voice was small and the threads of all the long-repressed pain were woven around her words.  “It really hurt when I came back, and he wouldn’t make a choice between the two of us.  I loved him so much.”  There was an ache in her chest that carried through to her voice and it made Bo shiver.  “I don’t know what would have happened if he had loved me the way I wanted him to.  I don’t know what decisions I would have made.”

That was a lie, but she wasn’t about to admit it to Bo.  If Isabella hadn’t been pregnant and John had wanted her, chosen her, Marlena knew she have run into his arms and never looked backwards.  It would have broken Roman’s heart, but maybe it would have been a cleaner, less devastating break than the one she had eventually inflicted on him.  But Isabella had been pregnant, and John hadn’t chosen either one of them.  In the end, both John and she had done what they felt was right and fair.  But it hadn’t been what she’d wanted.  Not deep down.

Bo tucked his hand under her shoulder and pulls her over so that she’s facing him again.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he brought his face closer to hers.  “I shouldn’t have brought it up.  And I’m sorry that he’s hurt you so much over the years.”

“I hurt Roman,” she reminded him, her eyes glistening.  “So, I’m not blameless here.  I’m just as capable of making terrible choices and mistakes that hurt people.”

“I never said you weren’t,” he waved his hand around.  “I mean, case in point.”  He winked at her and gave her a twitch of a cheeky smile.  “Actually, I’m kind of glad we both make bad decisions.”  He leaned in and kissed her softly, his left hand sliding around to her back and splaying between her shoulder blades, pulling her tight against him.

Marlena couldn’t help but respond.  While the conversation had dampened her mood, all he had to do was touch her again and all her nerves fizzed and jumped.  Her hands found his face and she pulled him even closer, devouring his mouth with hers.  

His right arm slid beneath her neck and replaced his left while his left hand found her thigh and the hem of her sexy, silky negligee.  He moved his hand under it and slipped his fingers between her lacy panties and the warm, soft curve of her ass cheek.  She broke for a breath and moaned as he squeezed her behind and then curled his fingers down the back of her thigh before pulling it up over his.

“Oh Bo,” she wound her fingers in his short hair and kissed her way across his smoothly- shaven face.  “Do bad things to me.”  Her whisper was hot in his ear.  “Tie me up.  I’m a bad, bad girl and I need to be punished….”

Part Treize

My heart, my hips, my body, my love
Tryna find a part of me that you didn’t touch
Gave up on me like I was a bad drug
Now I’m searching for signs in a haunted club
Our songs, our films, united we stand
Our country, guess it was a lawless land
Quiet my fears with the touch of your hand
Paper cut stings from our paper-thin plans
My time, my wine, my spirit, my trust
Tryna find a part of me you didn’t take up
Gave you so much, but it wasn’t enough
But I’ll be alright, it’s just a thousand cuts

I get drunk, but it’s not enough
‘Cause you’re not my baby
I look through the windows of this love
Even though we boarded them up
Chandelier’s still flickering here
‘Cause I can’t pretend it’s okay when it’s not
No, it’s not
It’s death by a thousand cuts (You didn’t touch)

It’s Death by a Thousand Cuts – Taylor Swift

“Oh, fuck!” Bo rolled her half on her back and ground himself against her while he bit her jaw.  She yelped and gasped, digging her fingers into the muscles of his arm.  He pulled back, shaking his head as though to dislodge the visual that she had implanted in there.  He had wanted to make love to her tonight.  Sweet and slow.  He had wanted to worship her but here she was making it hot and dirty and fucking hell she turned him on so much he couldn’t resist her.  The idea of having her bound and submitting to him was almost more than he could cope with.

“Is that what you want?” his voice was strangled.  “You want it rough?”

She bit her lip and nodded.  “I want you to make it hurt.”  She didn’t want sweet and slow and gentle.  That would make her ache inside.  No, she wanted the kind of pain that would take her out of her head and situate her directly in her body.

“Marlena-” he held her eyes, transfixed by the way the colours shifted in the flickering candlelight, shimmering from moss-green to gold and back again.

“Please, Bo.” She took his hand and moved it back to her warm satin-clad ass.  “Spank me,” she pleaded with him.  “I told you, I’ve been a naughty girl.  I need to be taught a lesson, Detective Brady.”

Bo’s breath caught in his throat.  How could he turn her down?

Slowly, he pulled her back onto her side, and with deliberate slowness, he pushed the edge of her nightgown up over her hip.  It settled against the glorious curve of her waist, and he skimmed his fingers over the lace edge of her black panties.

“Yes, you have.” He agreed with her, biting back a smile.  “You have been a very, very bad girl.”  He slid the lace down over her ass and tucked it under her cheek.  Then he began to caress her with the palm of his hand, warm, dry and smooth against her skin. 

Without warning, he lifted his hand and brought it down, tapping her lightly with his fingers.  Marlena moaned softly.  “Harder,” she whispered.  Bo smoothed his hand over her skin again and again, he lifted his hand but this time he slapped her harder.  She cried out and stiffened, her arm once again around his neck and her fingers clutching at his hair.  “Again,” she panted.  “Harder.”

“Nnnnggghh.” Bo squeezed her ass and then slapped her again.  This time the crack of his hand hitting her flesh echoed throughout the cabin of the boat, followed by her cry of pleasure and pain.  He didn’t need her to tell him to do it again.  She was burying her head in his neck and sucking and biting him as he brought his hand down against her heated flesh again.  She cried out once more and let out a guttural moan as she ground herself against his thigh.

“More,” she begged him.  “Oh God, Bo.”  

He was beyond needing encouragement from her.  Roughly, he pushed her thigh off him and wrenched her panties down her legs.  She kicked them off and pulled him back to her.  Pulling his hand towards her, she thrust it between her thighs and pressed it against her swollen folds.  She was absolutely soaking wet and slippery.

“See how wet you’re making me?” she said in a low, throaty whisper.  “Do you want to fuck me, Detective Brady?”

Bo closed his eyes and tried to resist sliding his fingers inside of her.  Instead, he removed his hand and lifted it to his own mouth this time to taste her.  “I am going to fuck you,” he told her in a voice that was much stronger than he felt.  “But first…” he rolled over onto his back and pulled open a drawer.  Out of them, he pulled a pair of police regulation cuffs and dangled them in front of her.  Her golden eyes flashed, and he saw the flicker of a smile curl her lips.

Knowing he wanted her naked and that would be difficult to achieve once she was cuffed, he slid the strap of the nightgown off her left shoulder and brought her left arm through it so that the strap was left dangling by her side.  Then he clicked the loop of one cuff around her left wrist.

She swallowed as he fixed her with his gaze, wordlessly enquiring if this was really what she wanted.  Her heart was pounding, echoing in the throbbing of her sex.  She slid her own arm out of the other strap and presented him with her wrist.  With a nod, he took it and snapped the other cuff closed, the metal cold and hard against her skin.

Lifting her arms up over her head, Bo clipped the heavy-duty chain links into a stainless-steel spring-loaded fender hook which was attached to the cabin wall over the bed.  Marlena’s arms were still bent but when she jiggled and pulled on the cuffs, she realised she was securely attached and there was no escaping him.  Not unless he wanted to let her go.

“Now,” Bo slid off the bed and shrugged his already unzipped jeans until they hit the ground so that he was clad in just his boxers.  Marlena’s eyes were drawn to the outline of his cock, hard and ready for her.  Bo followed her gaze and couldn’t help his smile as she licked her lips appreciatively.

“Not yet,” he told her as he folded one leg under him, sitting on the bed next to her.  He drew his fingers down over her chest, cupping the pliant mound of her right breast and stroking his thumb over the warm, fragrant skin.

“Bo,” she gasped as he pinched her nipple through the lacy fabric.

“Turn over,” his voice was heavy with lust.  It just so happened that Marlena had tapped into a particular kink of his with this request.  It wasn’t one that he shared with Hope.  While she indulged him from time to time, their relationship and their sex-life when it was existent was more a battle of wills than anything else.   That wasn’t a problem, per se, but being willingly ceded control like this was a novelty and the fact that Marlena was clearly getting off on it too and was more than willing to be compliant and submissive was a total turn-on.

For Marlena’s part, she had similar feelings about the position she found herself in.  It wasn’t something John was into; in fact, he found the idea of bondage and pain traumatic, either taking or inflicting it.  Marlena had accepted that and completely understood it, given his history.  And so, it wasn’t something they had pursued in the bedroom, or out of it, despite it being something she enjoyed and missed.   So, when Bo had unexpectedly bound her wrists the other night at the Penthouse, she had found herself flooded with excitement and a longing to explore this further.  She spent so much of her life in control, being good, kind, thoughtful… perfect… that the ability to be able to give up any control, even if for just a short while was seductive and arousing.

“I said, turn over.”  Bo repeated his words, but it was definitely a command now, rather than a request.  

Marlena swallowed.  Her mouth was dry, the little moisture that she could summon, sticking in her throat.  Her breathing was shallow.  She stared back at him, stalling, daring him to take things a step further.  

Bo waited and then pushed himself from the bed.  He went over to the chest of drawers and pulled open the top drawer.  He pulled out a long, slender piece of wood, around the same thickness and with as a ruler, but longer.  Edging the drawer closed, he turned back to her.

“You are a bad girl,” he didn’t smile, but his eyes glittered dark brown pools of desire as he walked back to the bed.  “Turn over.  I want you on your knees.  It’s time for your punishment.”

Marlena was trembling, she could barely contain her excitement as she rolled over so that the chain of the handcuffs crossed where it was attached to the wall of the cabin.  She tried to use her elbows to gain leverage so that she could get on her knees, but the fender hook was slightly too high and the cuffs bit uncomfortably at her wrists.  

Realising that she was struggling, Bo helped her up and then placed pillows against the bedhead so that she had somewhere to rest her elbows.  This left her derriere in the air and Bo skimmed the nightgown up and over it so that her already pink ass was left ready and waiting for Bo’s attentions.

Bo just watched her for a long minute, barely able to believe what was happening.  He knew for sure that if Roman was still alive and had an inkling of what Bo was about to do to the woman that he adored, Roman would beat seven bells out of him.  Bo wasn’t sure he would blame him.  He was equally sure that John would probably kill him if he walked in on this little scenario.

He shook his head and vowed to put his brothers (literal and figurative) from his mind.  For good, if that’s what it would take to keep Marlena playing games like this with him.

Silently, he smoothed one palm up a silky thigh and over the sinful curves of her incredible behind.  Marlena let out a long, hungry moan as his fingers disappeared under her lacy negligee and softly traced the ridges of her spine.  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the paddle which appeared to be around fifteen inches long and fashioned from bamboo.  Clearly from the placement of the fender hook and the fact that he had this little number stashed away, this was something he had some experience with.  For a moment she reflected on the fact that Hope was one lucky woman and yet, a stupid one, to walk away from this man.  Then she reminded herself that she was the lucky one now.  The one that got to have sweet, caring, sexy, kinky, dirty Bo in her bed and in her life.

She gasped as she felt his hand crack against her butt cheek, and it brought her back to the here and now.  Back into her body and the stinging, throbbing flesh of her behind.

“Do you need more?” he asked, already knowing the answer.  

She couldn’t even vocalise her response.  She just nodded her head, her breathing ragged. 

Bo picked up the long bamboo implement and tapped it against his hand.  Marlena wiggled her behind and moaned in anticipation.

Bo lifted the stick and brought it down sharply against her ass and she cried out, as much in pleasure as in pain.  He lifted it and watched a narrow strip of skin darken before he brought it down again.  “Oh, god.”  Marlena dropped her head and panted, gasping for breath as the pain flared across her flesh.  The handcuffs cut painfully into her wrists as she tensed, waiting for the next measure of agonising bliss.   “P- please.”

Bo lifted the paddle and struck her again, this time at a different angle, further down her rear and she bit back a sob as her skin started to throb and smart in this new place.

“Marlena?” Bo was suddenly concerned he’d gone too far.  Maybe the please had meant please stop.

“Again!”  She welcomed the pain.  It was immediate and intertwined with her need and lust and it stopped her thinking of John and how his hands felt on her skin.  How he could set fire to her with just a touch.  Sometimes simply a look.  

Bo brought the paddle down against her, hard and twice in succession before throwing it on the ground.  He couldn’t wait any longer.  He was so hard it was painful, and he had to fuck her.

Marlena couldn’t help the tears which were now trickling down her cheek.  It really hurt but the pain felt so good.  She felt Bo’s hand, cool on her flaming, bruised skin and she let out a yelp as he squeezed her ass.  Then his fingers were sliding between her legs, probing her wet, slippery folds, seeking out her oversensitive, swollen clitoris and gently rubbing it.  

Her orgasm hit hard and fast, before she was even ready for it and she ground herself against his hand, her loud cries filling the small interior of the boat. As she sagged against him, Bo flipped her onto her back and then stripped the black lace number from her trembling body.

Everything felt like it was on fire as he kissed her and she hungrily accepted his lips and tongue, like a woman drowning in pleasure. Her orgasm still echoing in little convulsions deep inside her, she whimpered headily as he bit at her jaw and then licked and sucked his way to her earlobe. He was still wearing his boxers as he manoeuvred himself on top of her. The handcuffs bit and chafed her wrists as she arched her back, wanting him inside her. She could feel him through the cotton of his boxers, his hardness nudging at her.

“Bo,” she gasped, squeezing her thighs against his. 

Bo had no more words, he’d lost the power of speech as she’d come against his hand, the sound of her cries reaching deep inside him and grinding everything to dust.  He slid down her body, biting and sucking her skin and the swell of her breasts until he found one of her hard, swollen nipples. He flicked it mercilessly with his tongue, bringing forth more cries and moans and then he took it in his mouth, sucking it hard. The cuffs rattled and Marlena writhed beneath him.

“Ah, ah, ah, mmmmmph,” Marlena was helpless beneath his lips and teeth. She was a flailing, chaotic mess of sensation as he bit and sucked first one nub and then the other, swapping his mouth and fingers between each until she was crying with frustration. 

Bo could feel her against his upper belly, hot and slippery as she rubbed herself against him, desperate for release again. He lifted his head from her chest and looked at her beautiful face. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips red and swollen and her eyes, deep green and hooded with desire.

Please. The word was not vocalised, she simply moved those gorgeous lips. Begging him for what she wanted. His cock deep inside her cunt, pounding into her, firing all her nerves, bringing her to another shattering orgasm.

“You still need to be taught a lesson,” he pinched the nipple between his thumb and forefinger hard and she gasped loudly. “Dirty girls like you need a good fucking, don’t you?”

“Oh God, yes,” she panted and licked her lips unconsciously.   “Please. I need to be fucked.  Hard.”

Bo grunted and wrestled his boxers down over his thighs, discarding them quickly before he lowered himself back between her long, graceful legs. Taking his shaft in his right hand, he watched her watching him as he stroked himself. Then lowering himself to her, he guided himself to her swollen, slick folds. He pushed against the natural resistance she offered up until the tip of his penis was swallowed by her moist, sweet darkness.

She was tight around him as he pushed into her, and he felt her thighs lift, tilting her hips so that he could slip deeper into her.

“Oh, God.” It was his utterance now as he buried himself as deep as he could inside her. He could feel her rocking gently against him, her eyes closed as she lost herself in the feeling of him, thick and throbbing, filling her, cleaving her, impaling her. “God, you feel so good. Uuuunnnggghhh.”

“Fuck me, Bo.” Her breath was hot and moist against his cheek. He turned his head and captured her lips with his. Their tongues engaged in a sensual tussle as he slowly withdrew and then thrust into her again. She groaned into his mouth, and he felt her heel against his butt cheek.

He did it again, never breaking the kiss, just slowly drawing out of her and then forcing himself deep inside her, harder this time. Marlena arched her back, pulling on her restraints as she ground her pelvis against his.

It was slow at first, this dance they engaged in. Back and forth, in and out. Bo slid his forearms under her shoulders and gathered her into him so that they were pressed together, their sweat slicked skin sticking as they rocked together.

He kissed her mouth, her jaw, her ear, her neck as he continued to fuck her slowly and deliberately.  Her little moans and whimpers were driving him wild, and he struggled to control himself.  Marlena was lost in the sensations of having him on top of her, inside of her.  She wanted so desperately to touch him, to feel his skin, his muscles jumping beneath her fingers.  She wanted to dig her nails into his fine, fine ass and pull him even deeper into her.  But she was still chained to the wall, and she had no control and that was also as erotic as hell.   Unintelligible words and sounds just spilled from her as he continued to build his momentum.  She brought her other foot up and used it to caress his butt cheek as he momentarily slowed his movements.  He moved his left arm from under her and slid it down over her hip and then squeezed her still sore and aching ass cheek.  She yelped in pain and Bo raised his hand and spanked the exposed part of her ass and she groaned and dug her teeth into his shoulder.

“Kiss me,” he demanded as he slapped her again and she sucked in a deep breath before submitting to his deep, probing kiss.  The cuffs rattled as she pulled at them in frustration.  She wanted to be on top of him, she wanted to touch him… there was so much she wanted, but she also wanted this.  It was hot, the wanting and the not being able to have.  The being told what to do.

She nipped at his lower lip, catching it between her teeth and drawing blood as he pulled it away.  He grinned at her and then spanked her again.

“Harder,” she said slowly and deliberately, holding his gaze with hers.

Bo raised his eyebrows and then his hand.  

She flinched this time, her eyes filling with tears.  “Again,” she demanded, her voice hoarse.

Bo brought his hand down against her flesh with a resounding crack and a sob tore from her.  “Oh God!”

“Marlena?!”  Bo was suddenly panicked; he brought his hand up to brush away the strands of hair that were stuck to tears that were trickling down her cheeks.

“I need to come now,” she told him, sniffing and trying to stop the tears which were still falling.  She wasn’t even sure why she was crying other than this was all wrong and was also all right and she was so confused that she couldn’t even figure out which way was up.  “It’s okay, just… I need you to fuck me now.”

“Are you sure?” Bo’s big palm cupped her cheek, everything about his expression betraying his concern.  

“I’m sure, I’m sure.”  She nodded and used her heels to rock against him.  “Please.  I need some release.”

He studied her face for a moment and then, obviously convinced by what he saw there, he kissed her.  The kiss was gentle at first but became more and more demanding and then he was moving again, his hips moving, thrusting.

“Oh Jesus, Marlena!” he still had one arm under her, but the other was on her shoulder and then sliding around the back of her neck as he increased his pace. 

“Yes,” her eyes closed, she rocked her head back as his fingers tangled in her hair.  “Oh yes, Bo.  That’s it.”  She could feel every beat, deep within her.  Every thrust hit the right spots in the right way.  Just not hard enough, or fast enough to bring her to orgasm.  Not yet.

“More,” she dug her heels into him to increase the intensity of her own movements and she pulled on the cuffs, trying to find some way to bring him deeper inside her.  “Deeper.  Faster.  Mmmmph.”

Bo was moving on pure instinct now.  He was so close to his own orgasm it was painful.  He lowered his hand and grabbed her ass again as he pounded into her, her thighs tight against his hips her head thrown back as she met him, stroke for stroke.  

“I want you to come now,” he whispered, his voice commanding.  “Marlena, it’s time.  You can let go, baby.”  He squeezed her ass and then he felt it, the tightening of her vaginal walls around his cock.  The pressure was intense and then she was crying out and sobbing and calling his name and he gave one final deep thrust into her and then he was following suit, releasing himself into her as he whispered her name over and over, burying his face in her hair as he thrust and thrust and thrust and she tightened and loosened in endless contractions around him.

When they were finally both still, she rattled the cuffs, and with a tiny hitch in her voice asked Bo to undo them.  Bo withdrew the keys from under his pillow and moving as little as possible, he unlocked each metal ring and helped her ease her arms down to the bed.

She took a moment to rub her wrists but then pulled Bo back down on top of her and wrapped her arms around him.  She gently stroked the side of his face and his hair with slightly numbed fingers.  “It’s okay,” she whispered against his cheek.  “I’m okay.  You didn’t hurt me.  Not any more than I wanted to be hurt.”

“Marlena, I…” he lifted his head to find her eyes but hers were resolutely closed.

“Can we not talk about it?” she asked softly.  “Not right now, anyway.”

“Well, yeah.”  He sounded unsure, like his yeah was really a no, I need to talk about it.  Now.  “I’m a bit confused, that’s all.”

Marlena shifted, her left arm wrapping closer around his neck, her right hand tracing feather-light paths down his back.  “I know.  I’m sorry.”  

What she didn’t tell him, couldn’t tell him, was that she was equally confused.  She’d wanted the pain and she wasn’t sure why that was, why she’d kept insisting on more and more until it had brought her to tears.  Or maybe she did know, she just didn’t want to admit it to herself, and certainly not to her lover.

She’d warned Bo this afternoon that she was a mess.  A fucked up, emotional minefield was probably more accurate.  

“I… I just hate seeing you cry,” he said softly, nuzzling the side of her face.  “It’s bad enough when it’s because of John.  To think I made you cry…”

“Oh honey, it wasn’t you.” She put her fingers to his lips, shushing his immediate contradiction. “Bo, it was amazing.  It was exactly what I needed.  I needed to let go like that.  I’m sorry I scared you, but I am just fine.”

It wasn’t true but he didn’t need to know that.  In fact, she didn’t even need to admit it to herself. 

Bo tipped his head back to look at her.  She could tell that he didn’t really believe her.  Not surprising as she didn’t even believe herself.  But she knew he wouldn’t push it.  Like her, he was too invested in this… whatever it was.  He wanted to avoid thinking about Hope as much as she wanted to avoid thoughts and memories of John.  In that way, they were both using each other.  She had no problems with that.  She didn’t think he did either.

Bo lifted his hand and pushed several loose strands of hair behind her ear.  Leaning closer, he kissed her with infinite gentleness.  “Marlena.  I think I might be f-”

“Don’t say it!” Her reaction was swift, her eyes bright with tears as she pushed him away a little too roughly.  “Don’t, Bo.  I don’t want to hear it.”

Bo looked at her and she could see the hurt registering in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, looking away.  “This is already too complicated.  I can’t cope with anything more right now.”

“Okay,” Bo breathed gently.  “Forget I said anything.”  He rolled off her and pushed himself out of the bed.  “Do you want anything to drink?”  His voice was flat and heavy, and she knew she’d hurt him.

“Just some water, please.”  If she started drinking now, she might not stop and then she would say things she would really regret.  

When Bo came back into the cabin, he had a bottle of beer and a glass of water which he handed to her before sitting on the edge of the bed.  Wincing, she eased herself up against the pillows and sipped at the water as they awkwardly avoided each other’s eyes.  Finally, Bo’s gaze alighted on her wrists which were chafed and already darkening with bruises.

“Jesus, Marlena!”  He reached out and ran a finger over the worst of it where the skin was torn.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t know.  Why didn’t you say something?”  He looked so awkward and embarrassed that she immediately softened.

“Come here.” She patted the empty space in the bed next to her.  “I didn’t say anything because it felt good.”  Bo looked uncertain so she leaned across to put the water on the bedstand and then she captured his arm in her hands and pulled him towards her.  “Come here.  Come and hold me.  Please?”

That seemed to be the incentive he needed, and he gave her a small smile and eased himself onto the bed next to her, pulling the covers over their cooling bodies.  Marlena sighed as she eased herself down into his arms and laid her head on his chest.  He folded his arms around her silently and kissed the top of her head.  

And between and around them, the unspoken words swirled.

~

Marlena awoke several hours later to a darkened room.  Most of the candles had burnt out, leaving just a few, flickering, guttering ghosts of light, dotted around the room.  

She closed her eyes, trying to find sleep again but it was hopeless.  Beneath her head, Bo’s breathing was deep and regular.  Hers wasn’t.  Her heart was pounding, and she wondered if she’d been dreaming and what it was that she’d been dreaming about.

Not that she had to ask herself that question too hard.  John.  Stefano.  Gina.  Roman.  She took a shaky breath.  Greta.  Kristen.  Rooms in cellars.  Giant cages.  Gas chambers.  Dungeons.  Hell.  The list was too long.  She wondered how far she had to go back before she ran out of trauma.  Samantha’s murder?  Losing her baby?  Trapped in Bayview?

She ran her hand over Bo’s chest, her fingertips toying with his soft hair.  His muscles provided welcome curves that contrasted with the sharper planes of his abdomen and his arms.  She concentrated on the feel of him under her touch.  His soft skin.  The softly puckering flesh around his nipple as she teased it to life.  He moaned and shifted under her, and she lifted her hand momentarily until he fell back into stillness.

And soon enough, her thoughts drifted back to earlier.  Her buttocks still throbbed, and she found herself moving to try and find a more comfortable position.  She was both physically discomforted by the pain and also by the fact that she had sought it.   She wasn’t sure why that was.  Only that maybe she’d hoped that the physical pain would overwhelm the emotional pain that was holding her hostage.  Maybe, she thought, her subconscious had decided that if her outsides hurt, her insides might not hurt so much.  Or at least she could focus on the physical pain to the exclusion of what was going on inside her head and her heart.

She sighed and rolled onto her back, whimpering softly as the pain flared momentarily.  All that had happened was now her outsides matched her insides.  It hadn’t solved anything; it had only made things more awkward and complicated.   

She didn’t have a problem with what they had done, per se.  It had felt good; until it hadn’t.  Kim had accused her of being self-destructive and she was starting to realize that assessment was more than a little accurate.  She was doing things she would never normally do.  She was being careless and taking risks.  She thought back to how many times she and Bo had either had sex a little too publicly or had almost been caught by someone they cared about.  Kim in kitchen.  Eric at the office.  Shawn-D here at the boat.  Vivian at the office earlier on today.

And then there was their exhibitionism at Tuscany and sex in the living room at the Penthouse, knowing the girls could come home at any moment.  It was almost like she wanted to get caught.  Like she wanted someone to tell her that she was being stupid and careless and that she needed to sort her shit out.

Except when Kim had actually called her out on it, she had been defensive and had denied everything.

What she was doing was not healthy.  And if she was honest, she never reacted healthily to trauma.  She just pretended it hadn’t happened and she carried on carrying on.  Because that was what she did, and it was what everybody else expected of her.  She didn’t have the luxury of falling apart.  She had a career and children and people depended on her.  So, she walked out of each trauma, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of her life’s disasters; but somehow each time, she sleepwalked into an even worse situation.  

She had returned from captivity, reunited with ‘Roman’ and then found he wasn’t really Roman and her ‘real’ husband had claimed her back.    And, she had carried on as everybody around her had expected, the perfect wife and friend and mother except that inside she’d been slowly dying.  And then she fallen (or been thrown) into a pit in a deserted warehouse.  She’d made it out of that alive (only just) and then she’d fallen (or thrown herself) into John’s arms and decimated her family and her marriage.  

Roman had left and she had somehow welcomed Stefano into her dreams, simultaneously reviling and welcoming the escape he promised her.  From that she had lurched literally into a hellscape that had lasted for months and had impacted her family and friends forever.  

After John had saved her, she’d been in denial about her feelings for him and so lost in her guilt over Stefano’s injuries, she had pushed him into Kristen’s arms and literally invited her mortal enemy into her own home.  And so, it went on.   A litany of bad decisions which had led to even worse consequences. 

Even when she had escaped the secret room in the DiMera mansion and all Kristen’s lies and schemes had come crashing down around her ears, even then she had just pretended that it was all normal.  To be held captive by the woman engaged to the man she loved.  To fear for her life and her freedom as she waited for Stefano to spirit her away.  She wondered idly how many hours, days, weeks, months of her life had been spent behind metaphorical bars.   

She had listened to John tell her he loved her, and she had been so grateful to be free and to be able to be honest with him about her feelings that she hadn’t actually been honest.  She hadn’t said all the things that she should have said.  Like how could you have been such a dunderhead?  How could you not have realized how evil she was?  How did you not see how much I loved you every time you looked at me and held me and kissed me, ‘like a friend’.  How could you not have seen how it was destroying me to watch you with her?

They had ignored all of the problems and all of the pain that had gone before.  They had either pretended it hadn’t happened or that it didn’t matter.  When the truth was, it mattered more than anything.  

That past had come between them.  She had needed him to prove again and again that he loved her and that he wouldn’t leave her.  But she hadn’t told him why.  She hadn’t admitted to herself why.

That she didn’t trust him with her heart.

Through the whole “Roman” returning debacle, he had stuck by her, and he had waited until she was ready to be with him again.  But still, something inside her had been waiting for him to walk away.  And when he had started spending so much time with Greta and with Hope, that something inside her, had snapped.  She had ended it with him, waiting to see how much his professions of love and devotion really meant.

It turned out they hadn’t meant all that much.

And here she was, once again, trying to pretend that nothing was wrong.  Except this time, she was not doing such a bang-up job.  This time, she was acting like a sex-crazy teenager, taking stupid risks and not considering consequences.  In short, she was acting out and Kimberly was right.  If she was not careful, someone was going to get hurt.  

She sighed and uncurled Bo’s arm from around her.  With care and trying not to make any noise, she climbed over him and out of bed.  Opening a drawer, she selected one of Bo’s folded plaid flannel shirts and slipped it on, buttoning it across her breasts. 

Her feet soft on the wooden boards of the deck, she made her way out to the galley and pulled open cupboard doors until she found the booze stash and she pulled out a bottle of Bushmills Irish whiskey.  There was a tumbler upside down in the sink and she ran a cursory stream of water over it before she put it on the table before her and unscrewed the top of the whiskey bottle.  She poured herself a large measure and gulped it down.

Her eyes watering, she poured herself a second measure in the tumbler, this time filling half the glass and she slid onto the bench and regarded the glass.

“What are you doing, Marlena?” she asked herself softly.

There was no answer, but she didn’t need one.  She was making a mess of her life.  She was falling apart and the one person who had always been there to catch her when she did that, was nowhere to be found.

She didn’t know how she was going to survive this.

She took a mouthful of the whiskey, letting it swirl around her mouth before she swallowed it down, the liquid hot and bitter against her tongue and throat.

She was a psychiatrist, and she didn’t know what to do.  She was so lost inside this mess that she couldn’t see the way out.  She knew she wasn’t going to find it at the bottom of the whiskey glass and yet she took another mouthful, emptying the glass for a second time.  

This time the whisky was less hot and more mellow as it went down, and she felt a pleasant heaviness settle in her limbs.

She knew she should stop now.  She should stop and she should put her coat on and go back to the Penthouse.  And she should tell Bo that she was done.  That they were done.  She should make an appointment with Laura or another therapist, maybe in Chicago.  She should take some time out; she should cry and feel and scream and talk it out.

She should...

She reached for the bottle and poured herself another glass of whiskey.

She stared at the glass and then drained it in a single long draught.

She looked around the cabin and saw some paper sitting on top of a few dusty paperback books on the bookshelf beside the bedroom door.  She retrieved it and scrabbled around in a drawer for a pen.  Going back to the table, she slid back onto the bench and smoothed out the paper on the chipped wooden surface.

Picking up the pen, she set it to the paper, starting a letter in her attractive, looped handwriting.

Dear Bo,

I’m so sorry to leave you like this.  I would wake you but… quite frankly, I can’t face you.

We can’t do this anymore….  

I can’t pretend it hasn’t been ama-

She dropped the pen as her tears splashed onto the paper.  With shaking hands, she reached for the bottle and poured herself another glass of the tannic liquid.  She cried as she rolled it around the glass and she cried as she swallowed it down, desperately wishing for it to numb her pain.

Her hand reached for her writing, the paper crumpling as her fist clenched around it.

“Oh God!”  It was a plea, a question, a desperate admission that she was probably going to do none of the things she knew she should do.  And continue to do all the things she knew she shouldn’t.

She wiped the tears from her face and with a deep breath, she pushed herself from the bench and made her way back to the bedroom.

Her head swam slightly as she climbed across Bo and nestled back into the space she had vacated earlier.  He was warm and he sighed softly as she laid her head against his shoulder.  Her smile was watery as she felt his arms reach for her and he rolled against her as he folded around her.

“Oh Bo,” she whispered.  

A few more hours in his arms.  That was all she wanted.  A few hours to pretend all this was fine and disaster wasn’t looming.

She felt his semi-erect cock, against her leg and she smiled again.  Reaching down, she stroked him with her fingertips.  In his sleep, he groaned and rolled onto his back.  Suddenly feeling horny again, Marlena closed her fingers around him and softly drew her hand up the length of him.

He smiled in his sleep, and she smiled too, her expression stronger and more genuine this time and she set about teasing him to life with nimble fingers.  Twice he stirred, and almost awoke.  Once he moaned her name and she silently wondered what he was dreaming about, although she thought she could make a pretty good guess.  Each time, she stilled her movements, waiting for him to settle back into his sweet dreams.

When she judged he was hard enough, she scrambled to her knees and straddled his hips.  Taking him in her hand again, she guided herself down until she felt the head of his dick parting her lips.  And then she sank down onto him, taking him inside her, enveloping, swallowing him up in her sweet, wet tightness.

“Ohhhhhh.”  He felt so good inside her.  So fucking good.  

She leaned down and kissed him, gently at first and then as he began to wake, she teased him with her tongue, sliding it between his lips as he opened his mouth to utter a slightly confused moan.

Bo came to full consciousness in the most delightful way, to find Marlena astride him, teasing him to wakefulness with her lips and hands and her hips.

“Hi handsome,” she murmured as his eyes fluttered open.  “Glad you could join me.”

“Hmmmm.  I see you started without me though.”  He gave her a slow, appreciative smile as she sat back up, her golden hair tumbling around her shoulders, her eyes a smoldering dark ivy green.

“Couldn’t help myself.”  She placed her hands on his chest, running the fingers of one hand over his beautifully defined muscles.  Her smile was sexy and beguiling.  “You were just lying there, looking so appealing.  Just turning me on.  What was I supposed to do?”

“C’mere!” He reached up, slipping his hand around the back of her neck and pulling her down for another kiss.  This time, he was awake enough to smell and taste the whiskey on her and as he let her go, he gave her a look of concern.  “Marlena, have you been drinking?  Are you okay?”

 “Sorry,” she bit back a smile.  “I couldn’t sleep.  So, I had a couple of shots.  But it didn’t really help.”  She looks down to where her thighs embrace the sides of his torso.  “Obviously.“

When he didn’t say anything, she laughed, the sound dancing musically around the small space.  “I’ll replace your whiskey.”

“You know that’s not what I’m worried about.” Bo raised his eyebrows.  This Marlena wasn’t at all the Marlena he knew.  She was unpredictable and messy, and he had no idea at all how to handle her.  Other than just to be here for her.  Be here with her.

“Oh honey, I’m just fine,” she lied effortlessly.  And when he raised his eyebrows even higher, she rolled her eyes and bent down to kiss him again, her hands on his face, her lips and tongue tempting and teasing and obliterating all sense of reason and concern.

She continued to kiss him as her left hand slid down his arm and encircled his wrist.  Lifting it, she placed his hand on her thigh and slowly guided it up and over her hip until it was caressing the curve of her waist.  She did the same with his other hand so that both hands were holding her against him.

Sitting up again, she gave him a devilish smile and unbuttoned the single button that was holding his shirt closed.    

Bo grinned as his shirt fell open like the curtains at a theatre, revealing the magnificence of her bountiful breasts.  “Damn!” 

She moved then, her body undulating like a wave on top of him and he groaned.  He was already hard, and he knew she done that to him in his sleep.  He’d been dreaming of her while she’d been stroking him to life and now he was inside her and he could feel her tensing and relaxing around him as she rocked her hips backwards and then in circles and then back and forth again.

He let go of her hip and reached up with his right hand to cup one of her warm, heavy breasts in his palm.  One side of her mouth curled into a sexy smile, and she leaned down so he could take her in his mouth.  He kept his eyes on hers as he flicked his tongue across the hard, tight bud and every nerve in him responded as she shuddered and moaned.

He swapped his attention to her other breast and was rewarded by a breathy groan as her nipple pebbled under his insistent licking and sucking.  He continued to alternate his fingers and mouth on her breasts as she moved slowly atop him.

He was completely hard now, and he could feel the little insistent movements of her hips as she tensed and swayed against him.   He reached up for her neck again, pulling her down for a long, insistently deep kiss.  He wanted to taste her, to plumb her depths.  She was such a contradiction.  

She was so restrained and in control in public and yet in private, in moments like this she was wild and unpredictable, and he knew there was chaos deep inside her that she tempered and barely held in check. 

And he also knew that it might break free at any moment, a potentially untamable tempest that none of them would have any hope of containing.  

But somehow, he didn’t care.  She was an enigma and he wanted to see her unfold.  He wanted to see all the brilliant, burnished angles and planes, the softness, the steel and the brittleness that she had tucked away inside her.  He wanted to know all the infinite sparkling facets, like so many tiny explosions that she held shut away in her mind and in her heart.

He got glimpses of them at times and he found it, and her, addictive.  He simply couldn’t get enough of her.  He just wanted more and more.  And more. 

She sat up again, biting her lower lip as she placed her hands on his chest.

Bo’s hands found her hips again as her movements became more deliberate, more intense.  Bo watched her as she leaned her head back, her hair a golden waterfall around her shoulders, her golden skin gleaming in the flickering candlelight.

His hands tightened as he began to move with her, rolling his own hips upwards as she rolled hers forward.  She caught her breath and then let out a long “mmmmmm” as she dug her fingertips into him.

They moved in concert, the sounds of sweat slicked skin, heavy breathing and whispered moans filling the space between them.

“Oh, Bo,” Marlena pulled one of his hands from her and interlinked her fingers with his and then did the same with the other so that they were palm to palm.  “Oh.”  She used the strength of his forearms to lift herself off him and then bring herself back down.  And then again, and again.  

Bo moved with her, thrusting as she dropped back onto him and then withdrawing.  She was tight and wet, and she gripped him and then let him go before she enveloped him again, tight and slick around his throbbing length

“Marlena,” Bo closed his eyes, trying to control the inevitably cresting wave.  “Jesus, Marlena.  I’m gonna… Oh my God, ohhhh…”

And then despite himself, he was coming, spurting hot and sticky deep inside her and she continued to ride him, her eyes closed, a smile on her face.

When he was done, she slowed down to a stop.  “Sorry,” he said, slightly embarrassed.  “You’re just so damned sexy, I couldn’t…”

“I seem to recall that you’re pretty good with those fingers and that tongue,” she winked at him.  “So, all is not lost.”

Bo grinned and with practiced ease, he wrapped his arms around her and flipped her onto her back.

He kissed her, his tongue exploring her mouth again, never able to get enough of the way every single bit of her tasted.  Then easing himself down her body, he kissed her breasts, her stomach, the soft curve of her belly until he finally lowered himself between her legs, swiping at her clitoris with his tongue.

“Mmmmm,” Marlena buried her hands in his hair and adjusted his head so that he was just at the right position.  “Oh, yes.  That’s it.  Right there.”

He lapped at her, flicking his tongue across the super-sensitive bundle of nerves as she ground herself into his mouth, looking for release.  His fingers sought her opening, sliding into the sweet, sticky mess that dripped from her.

“Oh, fuck!” She bucked as his fingers hit her g-spot, and he groaned against her.  The noises she made were such a turn-on, and he felt his cock twitch into life again as she cried out again.  And then he was thrusting his fingers into her, harder and faster and his tongue was teasing her to a crescendo and she was encouraging him with yes’s and Bo’s, oh honey’s and I’m so close’s.

And he could feel her closeness as her thighs tensed and tightened around his head and she was tensing, thrusting herself into his mouth, her hands tight in his hair and then she was bucking and crying his name and she was convulsing, impossibly tight around his fingers, their mingled juices gushing over his hand and wet in his mouth.

When she was finally spent and her convulsions had subsided into periodic, spasmodic ripples, Bo gently slid his fingers out of her and wiped them on the hem of the shirt that she still wore. 

Her eyes were closed, a blissful smile on her face as he crawled up beside her.

“Was that, okay?” he asked, still slightly self-conscious about his earlier lack of control. 

“That, was much, much more than okay.”  She opened her eyes and rolled onto her side, cupping his face, now rough with stubble.  “Baby, that was top class.”

Bo smiled and leaned in, kissing her forehead as he curled his arms around her.

Her smile suddenly became regretful.  “I really should go,” she told him.  “I need to get back before the girls know I am gone.

“Not yet,” he breathed against her hair, pulling her closer to him.  “Just let me hold you for a while first.  Just let me enjoy having you in my arms.”

She looked up at him and found love and contentment in his velvet brown eyes and she found herself unable to deny his request.  “Just for a few minutes,” she said sleepily, nestling herself beneath his chin and snuggling against his now-familiar, comfortable, warm body.  “Just a for a little while….” 

Part Quatorze

You stand with your hand on my waistline

It’s a scene and we’re out here in plain sight

I can hear them whisper as we pass by

It’s a bad sign, bad sign

Something happens when everybody finds out

See the vultures circling, dark clouds

Love’s a fragile little flame, it could burn out

It could burn out

I Know Places – Taylor Swift

“Marlena!”  Sami forced her heavy eyelids open as the dualling sounds of Belle’s crying and Carrie calling for her mother roused her from what had been quite a pleasant dream.

Groaning, she threw back the covers and pushed herself into a half sitting position.  She looked around her, noting Carrie’s empty bed, the sheets crumpled as though she’d vacated it in a hurry.  Sami yawned as she heard Carrie’s voice calling for their mother once again and she pushed herself from the bed, stumbling out into the hallway.  

She followed the sound of the voices to Belle’s room where Carrie was holding a fretful, crying Belle in her arms.  Brady was on the bed next to his sisters, murmuring childish reassurances.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.  “Where’s Mom?”

“Good question,” Carrie said peevishly.  “Belle has a fever.  I woke to hear her crying.  Go and wake Marlena, will you?  She’s Belle’s mother, she should be looking after her daughter.”

“I don’t understand why…” Sami turned to look at the open doorway.  Why wasn’t her mother in here with Belle?  The noise coming from this room should have roused the dead.

“Go and get her Sami,” Carrie snapped irritably.  The sun hadn’t even risen yet and she was tired and frustrated.  Sleep had proved elusive last night as it had done every night recently and probably would continue to be until she confronted her stepmother about what she’d seen.

And now here she was, comforting and tending to a child that was Marlena’s responsibility and where was she?

Carrie had her suspicions.  After all the lectures that Marlena had delivered on the dangers inherent in her friendship with Mike and her responsibilities to Austin, she couldn’t believe the hypocrisy that she was exhibiting in sleeping with Bo.

Bo Brady.  Carrie’s uncle.  Roman’s brother.  One of John’s best friends.

Of all the people she could have chosen, Marlena had chosen Bo.  And she wasn’t even being subtle about it.

In her arms, the hot and restless child let out a large sob and squirmed uncomfortably.

“Shhhhh, it’s okay Belle baby,” she rocked the little girl in her arms, stroking her hair tenderly.  

“S’okay Belle.   Momma be here soon.” Brady patted Belle’s arm.  

“She’s not here, Carrie.”  Sami came back waving a handwritten note and looking confused.  “She left a note saying she’d been called into work, but I just called the hospital, and they haven’t seen her since yesterday.  They said they’d dial her pager but then I heard something vibrating and I found it in her purse on the sofa.  Mom went out without her wallet or her pager.”

She frowns, her expression moving through confusion into worry.  “Why would she say she was going to work and then not turn up there?  They knew nothing about her being called in.”

Carrie sighed wearily.  “Will you take Belle while I get dressed?  I’ve got an idea where she might be.”

“You do?” Sami took her little sister in her arms and winced as she felt Belle’s hot skin against hers.  “Hey little Belle.  You don’t feel so good, huh?”

Belle shook her head.  “I want mommy,” she moaned softly.

“I know sweetie,” Sami swayed back and forth.  She remembered all too well being small and wanting her mommy and her mom being nowhere to be found.   Her grandmother and her aunts and John’s steady stream of Marlena replacements had done their best, but it hadn’t been the same.  It hadn’t been her mother’s safe, reassuring, ever-loving arms around her.   “I know.”

It’s a few minutes before Carrie came back, hastily dressed in a navy suit, her hair brushed and piled into a messy ponytail.  She was stuffing a bag with a selection of cosmetics into her oversized purse, and she frowned as she held out her arms to take Belle from Sami.

“I’m going to take her to Grandma at the pub.  You’ll need to take Brady to school.  I’ll leave a message with Marlena’s service so when she finally gets in touch, she knows what’s going on.”  She smooths away the hair which is sticking to Belle’s sweaty forehead.  “Okay honey, let’s get you sorted out.”

~

“Shane, I don’t have time for twenty questions.”  John ran his fingers through his hair, letting his frustration at the situation get the better of him.  He was still stuck in the hospital, the doctors unwilling to release him until they were assured that there were no ill-effects from either the blow to the head or the operation to remove the rogue microchip.  “I already told you everything I know.  I need to get back to Salem, as soon as they’ll let me out of this damn hospital bed.”

“John,” Shane sighed on the other end of the phone.  His agent was there at the hospital with the microchip in his possession and his orders had been to bring John back on his release so that the ISA doctors could give him a full physical and see if they could work out where and how the chip had been implanted in his brainstem and how it had worked.  But John was being typically recalcitrant and refusing to accompany the agent.  “John, we need to make sure there are no lingering effects from this chip.  And we need to find Hope and you’re the best chance we have of tracking her down.”

“I already told you, I have no idea where she might have gone.”  

When the doctor had exited John’s hospital room in Berlin the previous night, Hope, Greta and Lilli had been nowhere to be seen.  Subsequently, when he’d called the hotel looking for them, there had been no answer from their rooms.  

John had been in touch with Shane during their sojourn around Europe and had been relaying his concerns about Hope’s behavior had immediately put in a call to the ISA to alert them to “Hope’s” disappearance and his suspicions about her character change and the probability that she had been similarly implanted with one of Stefano’s sci-fi tech devices and that Stefano was using this to convert her into the long-dead Princess Gina von Amberg.

He knew how insane it all sounded, but then which of Stefano’s schemes wasn’t insane?    He’d used Hope to steal art and he’d kept Marlena in a giant birdcage.  The man was a lunatic, through and through.

This morning, he’d been informed by Shane’s agent that the three women had checked out of the hotel late the previous night before the ISA had been able to mobilize their agents on the ground.  Gina was clearly onto the fact that he was onto her and had chosen to flee Berlin rather than be forced to undergo any kind of rigorous examination.

He’d known, of course, when he made the call last night that this would be how it would play out.  Gina wasn’t about to give up her existence without a fight.  And the ISA weren’t about to let their key witness fly off back to America without doing their best to waylay him, examine him and interrogate him.  

John knew that they would want to pick over his brain, both figuratively and probably literally to gather as much information as they possibly could.  But he wasn’t willing to wait a minute longer to return to Salem.  He had to see Marlena.  He had to try and explain to her that he’d not been fully responsible for the things he’d done or said over the past few months.  He had to apologize and beg her forgiveness.  He had to do whatever it took to win her back.  Whatever it took.

He’d thought about not calling the ISA, of course.  A big part of him was angry with Hope for pursuing such a disastrous course.  That part of him was willing to just leave her to her fate, whatever that might be.  But the part of him that was still a Brady and still loved his family knew that he couldn’t do that.  Too many people loved Hope.  Bo and Shawn-Douglas deserved to know what had happened to Hope and to have the chance to save her.  If she could be saved from Stefano’s machinations.

And a small voice inside him had said that this was his responsibility.  That he had aided and abetted Hope in this course of action when he could have discouraged her.  That he should find her and bring her back to her family and friends.  That he should have the ISA force her to undergo the required medical examinations and surgery if it was needed.  That he should be the one to bring her back to Bo, whole and healthy once again.

But he couldn’t do it.  Something inside him was telling him he had to get back to Salem and he had to do it fast.  He’d walked out on Marlena and that was unforgiveable.  It was a well-justified fear that she wouldn’t forgive him and the longer he waited to explain and ask her to understand, the less likely she was to ever look at him with anything other than utter contempt.  

But also, it was more than that.  He couldn’t have said what it was, just a niggling, unsettled feeling that something wasn’t right.  Something more than his entirely comprehensive stupidity.   

“John, you’re the one who has spent the past few weeks with her.”  Shane sounded impatient on the other end of the line.  John understood that impatience.  Shane was as attached to the Brady family as he was himself.  Once you were part of the family, there was no real hope of extracting oneself.  Shane cared about his brother and sister-in-law and he was worried about how Hope’s disappearance was going to impact on the family.  Especially on top of the terrible news about Roman.  Which was another reason John needed to get home to Marlena.    “You may not realize how much you actually know.  When we debrief you, there might be something that you remember that will tip us off as to where she might go next.”  

“Shane, listen.  I already told you.”  John rubbed his fingers across his right eyebrow.  “I can’t fly to London right now.  I need to get back home.  Have your doctors and your shrinks and whatever else meet me there if you have to.”

“John, it’s easier if you come here.  Easier and quicker.”   Shane knew this was a pointless conversation.  No-one had ever been able to convince John Black to do something he didn’t want to do.  Especially not when the alternative choice involved the beautiful Marlena Evans.  “The sooner we can debrief you and get what you know about Hope, or Gina, down on paper, the sooner we’re likely to find her.  And we have all the equipment here.  To run tests on you and on the microchip.”

“I understand the urgency,” John growled.  “And I’ve handed over the microchip to your guy here.  You can run those tests as soon as you want.  But Shane, you gotta listen to me.  I’m not coming to London.  I’m sorry man, I have my own problems to deal with.  Gina might have gone to Madrid, but I doubt it.  If she overheard me asking the doctor about getting her scanned for a chip, which she must have to disappear as quickly as she did, then she’ll heading in the opposite direction to anywhere I might be able to pinpoint.  I really will be no help to you in that respect.”

“John-” Shane sighed but John could almost hear the shrug in his voice as he gave up any pretense at trying to talk John around.  “Okay.  Do you have a flight plan logged yet?”

“My pilot will do it as soon as the doctors let me get out of here and I can head for the airport.”  John nodded pointedly at the stocky ISA agent who stood by the door.  “So as soon as I can.  Tell your boys I’m free to go and I’ll meet you and whomever you want to bring with you, back in Salem.”

 “Okay.  In the meantime, we’ve issued an APB for Hope and the other ladies with Interpol.  Hopefully we’ll get lucky.  Unless Lilli has access to someone who can falsify their passports, they won’t be able to get too far.”

“Yeah, sure.”  John wasn’t too sure that was correct.  The women had checked out of the hotel within an hour of returning from the hospital and he suspected they were already hundreds of miles away.  But he couldn’t be concerned about that now.  Not when he had to get home and talk to Marlena.

~

“Where is she?”  Carrie thrust a tearful Belle at Caroline and looked angrily around the empty pub.  Belle had cried for her mother the whole way from Marlena’s penthouse to the pub and Carrie had become more and more furious with every minute that had passed.  Marlena was being irresponsible, hypocritical and unfair to everyone and Carrie wasn’t going to let it go on a moment longer than she had to.

“I’m sorry dear?”  Caroline curled her arms around Belle, easing the little girl’s heated head to her shoulder.  She heard the door to the kitchen open and she looked across to where Kimberly poked her head through.  

“I said, where is she!?” Carrie let out a frustrated growl and then silently chided herself.  Marlena would hardly be down here advertising her presence to all and sundry.  If she’d spent the night with Uncle Bo, as Carrie was sure she had, then they were probably still holed up in Bo’s room.  “Never mind, I know exactly where she is.”

She headed for the stairs, taking two at a time and storming down the hallway.  When she reached Bo’s room, she stopped for a moment and took a deep breath.  And then, steeling herself, her jaw set in a hard line, she flung the door open.

“Mar-” She stopped short, surprised as she found an empty room with a neatly made bed.

“She’s not here.”  She felt a hand on her shoulder and spun around, stumbling backwards into the room.  “I assume you’re looking for Marlena.”  Kimberly stood in the doorway; a look of sympathy etched on her face.

“I…” Carrie looks around her, lost.  She had been sure Marlena would be here with Bo.  

“I think we need to have a talk, Carrie.” Kimberly reached out and took Carrie’s hand in hers and stepped forward into the room.  Lifting her other hand, she cupped Carrie’s cheek, her eyes shining.  “What happened?  Obviously, you know something.  Maybe you’ve seen something you shouldn’t have seen?”  

“I don’t…” Carrie’s eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head, furiously trying to shake loose the image of her stepmother on her knees in front of her uncle.  

She couldn’t talk about this with her aunt.  As angry as she was at Marlena, she felt like she was betraying her if she told someone else what she had seen.  At least until she’d given Marlena a chance to explain herself.  Although what explanation there could be that would justify what she was doing, Carrie, couldn’t possibly imagine.

“Carrie,” Kim’s voice was soft and full of empathy.  She could see Carrie was angry and hurting but she also understood the pain Marlena was in and she needed to find some way to bridge the gulf between her niece and her dearly loved friend before that bridge was burnt forever.  “Honey, you need to understand, Marlena is not in a good place.  With John leaving and then the news about your Dad… she’s…-”

“I don’t have time to talk about this,” Carrie pulled her hand from Kim’s, her voice brittle.  “I’m sorry Aunt Kim but I have to get to work.  I…. I….” She swallowed and looked around the room.  “Please tell Grandma I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean…” she shrugged, suddenly looking defeated.  “I’ve left messages with Marlena’s service to let her know Belle is sick, but I have to work today and so does Sami.  With Chelsea being away… well Belle is Marlena’s responsibility, and she should be looking after her, not leaving it to us.”

“That was why you offered to stay with Marlena though, wasn’t it?” Kim reminded her gently.  “To help Marlena while she was going through this crisis?  Look Carrie, obviously something has upset you; don’t you think it would be better if you talked about it?”

“I can’t right now, Kim.  Honestly,” Carrie looked at the gold watch on her wrist and shook her head.  “I do have to get to work.  I have a mountain of emails to get through.”

“Okay then,” Kim nodded.  it was obvious that Carrie was going to resist this intervention; but Kim knew she couldn’t outrun the distress she was in forever.  If she left the offer open, then maybe Carrie would come around to realizing she needed to talk about whatever it was that she’d been privy to.  “Later on?”  Kim raised her eyebrows hopefully.  “Carrie, please?”

Carrie sighed.  It was obvious that Kim somehow knew about Marlena and Bo, and she also knew that Carrie knew what was going on.  Maybe if Carrie at least admitted that she knew something without giving Kim any of the embarrassingly gory details, her aunt might be able to give her some perspective.  Or at least some advice on how to speak to Marlena about this without feeling like she wanted to scream at her.  “Okay.  I’ll come by after work.”

~

Bo awoke to the sound of seagulls overhead and footsteps and muffled speech on the pier next to the boat.  The next thing he became aware of was the warmth of the woman still somnolent and heavy in his arms.

He took a deep breath, inhaling the fragrance of her as he dipped his nose to her hair.  She hummed and shifted in his arms, draping her arm across his abdomen and hooking her leg over his, her knee nudging down between his legs.  He felt himself hardening in response to her presence, her scent, the feel of her skin against his.

He feathered his fingers down her arm and smiled.  He could get used to this, waking up next to this goddess every morning.  Going to bed with her every night.

He studied her face as her eyelashes started to flutter against the high curve of her perfect cheekbones.  Her nose was incredibly sculptured, her pink and still slightly swollen lips perfectly kissable.  He wondered if she had any clue how absolutely gorgeous she was.   How intriguing.   And how easily she slipped under a man’s skin.

He stroked her arm again, hastening her emergence from the blanket of sleep that had fallen over them in the depths of the night.  

“Morning beautiful,” he said gently as her eyes flickered open and he met her deep, hazel gaze.

“Mmmmmm,” she allowed herself a little smile and stretched in his arms, feeling the warmth of his skin where her body was draped across his.  “Morning.”  Her eyes widened a little as she said it and realized what she was saying and what it inferred.

“Oh gosh, I fell asleep,” she pushed herself to her elbow.  Her head pounded and her mouth felt like sandpaper, but she did her best to ignore it.  She had worse things to worry about than a hangover.  “What’s the time?”

Bo brought up his arm so that they could both see his watch.  It was already a quarter to eight.

“Oh no!” Marlena’s eyes widened.  “No, no, no!”  She sat up and yelped as the bruised flesh of her behind protested her sudden movements.

“You okay?” Bo put his hand on her arm, watching in concern as her head dropped, her blonde tresses covering her face as she tried to recover her composure. 

“Fine,” she breathed through the discomfort.  “But I’m supposed to drop the children at school and be at work by nine.  I was supposed to be back at the penthouse before anyone ever knew I was gone.”

“You said you left them a note saying you’d been called into work, right?” Bo reminded her.  

“Which is fine unless anybody actually tries to call me at work,” she pulled the sheet up to cover her breasts and then shook her head at the ridiculousness of the gesture.  What she and Bo had done last night… have been doing for the past two weeks precluded any thought of modesty.  He’d seen everything she had to offer, and he’d sampled it a multitude of times.

“Ohhhh,” she breathed in as the room swam in front of her.  She felt awful.  “I have to…” she cast her eyes around and found the discarded negligee on the floor.  She looked in vain for her coat before remembering she’d shed it up on the deck last night and it was probably soaking wet with the moisture coming off the river.

“Bo, I can’t wear that home!”  She threw her hands up and nodded hopelessly at the discarded scrap of satin and lace.  “What on earth was I thinking?”

“You were thinking about how much you wanted me, how smoking hot I would find you and how much you would turn me on,” Bo gave her a sexy smile, but her glare wiped it from his face in short order.  “Okay, okay.  Not appropriate.”

“What am I going to do?” her eyes filled with tears.

“Hey, hey.  It’s okay, Marlena.  It’s not the end of the world.”  Bo pulled her into a hug, smoothed his hand down one side of her face and kissed her gently.  “I’ll find you something to wear.  Call work and let them know you’re going to be late.  You can call the girls and tell them you had to go and see a private patient.   Ask them to take the kids to school.  And then you can go home and get changed and get that cute tush to work.”

“Cute, sore tush,” she corrected him with a small smile.  Taking a breath, she looked into his eyes.  “Thank you.”

“What for?”  He grinned, trailing his forefinger along her jaw and then down her throat to her collarbone.  He knew he should stop touching her.  Touching her only made him want to touch her more which ultimately led to him wanting to kiss her and undress her and make love to her.  And as much as he wanted to do that right now, he knew she wouldn’t appreciate it.  

“For stopping me mid-panic,” she pressed her lips to his.  “For offering sensible suggestions.”  She kissed him again and then again.  But when he started to respond, she regretfully pulled away.  “And for caring about me.  For not pushing me.  For putting up with my messiness.”

“I happen to rather like your messiness,” he smiled and tapped her perfect nose.  “Now, before I completely lose all my composure and ravage you right here and now, let’s find you something to wear.”

 She watched him appreciatively as he pulled his boxers on and then pulled out some sweatpants and a tee-shirt from the bottom drawer.   He threw them at her, and she held up the t-shirt speculatively.  “A bit small for you,” she noted, not sure how comfortable she was wearing Hope’s clothes.  Which, she reflected, was a bit silly, since she clearly had no problem sharing a bed with Hope’s ex-husband.

“You’d be swimming in my sweats,” he grinned at the thought of her with his t-shirt and not much else on that gorgeous body.  “I didn’t think you’d want to make the walk of shame look that obvious.”

“Mmmmm, thanks for that,” she raised her eyebrows but gave him a little smile.  He pulled a hooded sweatshirt from another drawer and took it back to the bed.  Sitting down next to her, he wove his fingers in her hair before he kissed her again, her lips, soft and pliant against his, her tongue warm and wet in his mouth.

“Do you want help getting dressed?” he murmured as he slid his fingers over her shoulder and down her arm.  She hummed as he dropped his head and pressed his lips to his shoulder.  “Or help not getting dressed?”

“I really have to go,” she sounded as regretful as he felt.

“Will I see you later?” he asked before he kissed his way back up the side of her neck and found the sensitive spot just below her ear.

“Oh,” she squirmed as he sucked her gently and then enveloped her earlobe with his lips and nibbled it.  “Oh, stop.  Oh…” she let the sensations wash over her as he folded his arms around her and ran his fingers lightly down her spine as he continued to kiss and bite and suck lightly at her skin.  “Oh, don’t stop.”  She threaded shaking fingers in his hair.  He pulled her against him and sought her mouth with his.  He could feel her skin warm against his, the softness of her breasts against his chest and he felt himself growing hard.  God, the things she did to him.

Her tongue in his mouth and her hands in his hair, she moaned as he ran his hand over the soft swell of her rear.  The ache of her bottom under his hand was enough to rouse her from the fog of lust that had fallen over her senses, and she stopped the kiss, gently pushing back from him.   She brought one hand to his forehead and flittered her fingers through his short-cropped hair. “Honey, I really do have to go.”

“I know you do,” he sighed.  “Sorry.  I just… you’re sitting there looking so gorgeous and I get carried away.”  He unwrapped his arms from around her and peeled himself away.  “I’ll let you get dressed in peace.”

Marlena watched him pick up his own clothes from the floor and make his way out of the bedroom.  She took a deep, shaky breath, waiting for the swimming of the room to settle before she pulled the t-shirt over her head.

She was as dressed as she could be in Hope’s clothes when Bo reappeared in the doorway.  “You decent?” He had a large glass of water in his hand, and he handed it to her.  “You might want to drink this.”  His concern was evident as he watched her take several large mouthfuls of the water.

“Are you okay, Marlena?  You said you had a couple of whiskies last night.  Looks more like you had half the bottle.”

“Sorry.”  Her voice was quiet.  “I didn’t mean to.  I just… there’s a lot going on inside me at the moment, y’know?”

“I know.” He took the glass from her and put it down before he pulled her into his arms.  “I want to help; I just don’t know how to.”

“I know you do,” she tried to let herself feel comfort in the strength of his arms around her, but the feeling of his embrace was too familiar and too foreign all at once.  They weren’t his arms.  They would never be his arms again.  She pressed her face against the place where his neck gave way to the curve of his shoulder and the cotton of his t-shirt became damp with her tears.  “You’re helping just by being here.”  It was true.  And it was also a lie.  She didn’t even know any more which was more accurate.  Whether he was making it better or worse.  Whether she was in denial or moving on.  Whether she was wholly alive and experiencing all the highs and lows life had to offer or whether she was slowly dying moment by moment.

“I need to call the office,” she sniffed, wiping the moisture from her cheeks as she moved away from him.  “Can I borrow your phone?  I left mine in the car.”

He nodded, dug his cell phone out of his pocket and handed it to her.  She gave him a weak smile and dialed the numbers she knew better than her own birthday.

“Hi Hillary,” Marlena greeted her secretary.  “I’m going to be late into the office this morning.”

“Oh, thank goodness you called,” Hillary sounded breathless on the other end of the phone.  “Carrie and Sami have both been trying to get hold of you.”

“Why?” Marlena’s voice sharpened and Bo put his hand on her shoulder to steady her.  “Is something wrong?”

“It’s Belle,” Hillary explained.  “I don’t think it’s serious but she’s running a temperature and Carrie has taken her over to Mr. and Mrs. Brady’s.  Carrie thought you would want to know.  She thought you were here.”

“I uh…” Marlena scrambled to recall the excuse that Bo had furnished her with earlier, “I was called out to see a patient.  How long ago did Carrie call?”

“Maybe an hour ago, last call?” Hillary didn’t sound entirely sure.  “The service took her calls.  She called a few times.  Sami is taking Brady to school if you want to go to the pub and see Belle.  I’ll cancel your morning appointments.”

“Thanks Hillary.  I’ll see you later.”

Marlena rang off the call and handed the phone back to Bo, her face suddenly deathly pale.  “Belle is sick.  Carrie’s taken her to your parents.  Damnit!  I should have been there.”

“Hey, you weren’t to know.” Bo squeezed her shoulder gently.  “This isn’t your fault.”

“I’m her mother, I should have been there,” Marlena reiterated, somewhere between anger and tears.  “I have to get to the pub.”

“I’ll come with you.”  Bo tucked the phone back into the pocket of his jeans as Marlena shook her head vehemently.

“No!”  She bit her lip.  “No, that’s not a good idea.  We can’t arrive at the pub together.  I may as well just take out an advert if we do that.”

“Would it be so bad?” Bo challenged her.  He reached out and stroked her cheek with his forefinger.  “I mean, people knowing about us?  Would it really be so bad?”

Marlena just looked at him incredulously and shook her head and then she turned and left the tiny cabin, crossing the galley in three paces and then climbing the ladder with her still-bare feet.

Bo sighed and looked at the quarter full whisky bottle on the table.  After a moment, the crumpled paper beneath the table caught his eye and he bent down to retrieve it.

He smoothed it out on the table and stared at the elegant, looped handwriting.

Dear Bo,

I’m so sorry to leave you like this.  I would wake you but… quite frankly, I can’t face you.

We can’t do this anymore….  

I can’t pretend it hasn’t been ama-

Bo sighed.  So, this had been what she’d been doing when she’d been downing whisky in the middle of the night.

Obviously, she had thought better of it, and she had come back to bed and made love to him again.  But he wondered how long it would take her to flip again and decide that they had to end this.  Especially now that she was going to blame herself for not being there when Belle had fallen ill.  

She was right, he reflected.  She was a mess.  And his mother was right, this was a disaster in the making.  But he couldn’t stop it, even if he wanted to.

What he’d been about to say to her last night before she stopped him was true.  The thing that he had denied to her, denied to his mother and denied to himself up until she’d been so ridiculously sexy and fragile and vulnerable in his arms last night.  Before she had fallen apart again, and he had gathered her fractured pieces up and held her together as she’d cried.  He was falling in love with her.  He had fallen in love with her.  

And he wasn’t about to let her walk away without a fight.

Part Quinze

I think he knows
His footprints on the sidewalk
Lead to where I can’t stop
Go there every night
I think he knows
His hands around a cold glass
Make me wanna know that
Body like it’s mine

He got that boyish look that I like in a man
I am an architect, I’m drawing up the plans
It’s like I’m 17, nobody understands
No one understands

I Think He Knows – Taylor Swift

Marlena crossed the weathered wooden planks that formed the piers and boardwalk that led from where Bo’s boat was moored, to the Brady pub.  Her coat hung damp over her arm and her canvas tennis shoes rubbed against her bare feet, but she ignored the incipient blisters as she hastened to the front door of the pub.  

Shawn Brady stood behind the bar, polishing pint glasses while the younger Shawn-Douglas Brady sat on a bar stool, eating breakfast before he left for school.  “Shawn, where’s Belle?  Is she okay?”

“She’s upstairs, so she is.  Caroline is with her.” Shawn waved to the stairs.  “Where’ve y’been lassie?  We’ve been worried about you, so we have.”

“I ah, I got called to see a private patient.”  Marlena offered the hastily concocted lie.  “My phone was turned off.  I’m so sorry I worried you.”

“It was your girls more than anything,” Shawn raised his eyebrows.  “You be going on up and seeing Belle.  She’s fine, but she’ll be glad to see ye.”

“Thanks Shawn,” Marlena smiled gratefully.  She laid her damp coat over the back of a chair and headed for the stairs as Shawn-D watched her go, a troubled expression on his face.

Upstairs, Marlena hurried to the living quarters where she knew Caroline would have Belle curled up on the sofa with comfy blankets, juice and The Little Mermaid on the television. 

Sure enough, when she entered the living room, she was greeted by a laughing Belle and Caroline with twinkling eyes.

“Momma!” Belle turned her head almost immediately on her mother’s entrance, like she had simply sensed Marlena’s presence.  She wrestled herself out of the cocoon of blankets she was nestled in and ran into Marlena’s arms.

“Oh, baby girl!” Marlena hugged her fiercely, picking her up and spinning her around before pressing relieved kisses to her forehead.  “I was so worried about you.  I’m so sorry I wasn’t there this morning.”

“She’s fine,” Caroline smiled reassuringly at her almost-daughter.  “I gave her some ibuprofen and her temperature has already dropped.  And we’re having a lovely time watching Ariel, aren’t we sweetheart?”

“Thank you, Caroline,” Marlena carried Belle back to the sofa and sat down, cradling her youngest child in her arms, rocking her back and forth, as much to comfort herself as Belle.  “I’m so sorry Carrie had to bring her over here.  I…” she opened her mouth to offer the prepared story but found she couldn’t lie to Caroline’s face.  “I should have been there,” she said softly.  “There’s no excuse.”  She placed her hand on Belle’s forehead, reassuring herself that her baby girl’s temperature had come down to an acceptable level.

“Marlena,” Caroline sighed, placing a comforting hand on Marlena’s arm.  There was so much she wanted to say.   She knew Marlena so well and she could see all the pain and confusion that the younger woman was trying so hard to hide.  But her words stalled as she saw the chafing and bruising on Marlena’s wrist.  “Marlena dear, are you alright?”

“Oh.” Marlena followed Caroline’s gaze and with embarrassment, she pulled the sleeves of the borrowed sweatshirt down over the telltale injuries.  “I’m fine Caroline.”  Her cheeks reddened.  “Listen, I know it’s a lot to ask at such short notice, but Chelsea is away, and I really have to go into the office.  I have appointments this afternoon that I simply can’t reschedule.”

“Well,” the furrowing of Caroline’s forehead betrayed her deep uneasiness.  

“Please.”  Marlena’s smile was faltering, and she was fighting tears now.  Caroline’s tender concern was enough to evoke a tidal wave of shame that was threatening to engulf her.  The situation she’d gotten herself into was becoming impossible and she had to extricate herself before it became completely untenable.

“Of course we’ll have Belle, darling,” Caroline patted Marlena’s arm.  “But Marlena, we really need to talk about what is going on with you.”

“Oh Caroline, I’m fine, really I am.”  Marlena pressed a kiss to the top of Belle’s head.  “Sweetie girl, Momma has to go to work now but I’ll be back after work to pick you up and take you home, okay?  Then we can have the evening snuggled up together, what do you say?”

Belle nodded her head in approval of her mother’s plan.  “Can we have chocolate ice-cream with sprinkles?” she asked hopefully.  

“We sure can,” Marlena gave her a squeeze before shifting her back to the sofa.  “Sounds heavenly.” 

She stood and looked quickly at Caroline, without quite meeting her eyes.  “Thanks again, Caroline.”

“Marlena,” Caroline started to make moves to stand but Marlena waved her down. 

“Honestly, I need to go.  I’m already late for work.  Please, just stay here with Belle.”  She tried to ignore Caroline’s pointed glance.  “I’ll speak to you later, okay?”  She hoped that would be enough to mollify Caroline, but she didn’t give her enough time to respond one way or the other before she headed for the door.

The moment she stepped outside of the door, she felt a hand close around her upper arm and found herself face to face with Bo.

“What are you doing here?!” she demanded in a strangled whisper.

“I was worried.”  He pulled her down the hallway to his room and pushed her inside, shutting the door behind him.  “I was worried about Belle, and I was worried about you.”

“I’m fine.” She said angrily, wrenching her arm away from him and making for the window, trying her hardest to breathe normally.  “Why do I have to keep telling everybody that I’m fine?  I’m just damned fine.” 

Bo came up behind her.  Her hands were on the windowsill, her head against the windowpane and she was taking slow deep breaths, but he knew they were barely controlled.  She was barely in control of anything right now.

“How is Belle?” he asked gently, putting his hands on her shoulders.

“She’s okay,” Marlena sniffed.

“Good,” he murmured against her tousled blonde hair.  “You left without this.”

“What?” she turned her head, and he gently used his hands to bring her to face him.

“This.”  He bent his head and kissed her tenderly.  

She gave a tiny sob as his hands found her face and he caressed her cheek, deepening the kiss.  She knew she should resist him.  She should tell him to stop.  Not here, not now.  Not ever again.  But she couldn’t.  She needed this like she needed oxygen.  

She let herself sink into him, one arm around his neck, the other finding his face, grazing the rough stubble of his cheek with her fingertips.  His tongue was in her mouth, his fingers in her hair and his palm against her back, pulling her closer and closer until he was the air she was breathing. 

“What the absolute FUCK?”

Eric Brady had been looking for the DVD he’d lent his uncle the previous week and he’d assumed from the commotion earlier when Carrie had been here, and she and Kim had been in this room, that Bo had already gone to work.  So, he hadn’t bothered to knock before he’d thrown the door open.

 Now he was sincerely regretting that choice.  Bo was most certainly not at work.  Unless having his tongue down Eric’s mother’s throat counted as police work these days.

Marlena’s hand rose involuntarily to cover her mouth as she saw her son in the doorway of the bedroom, a look of shock and utter confusion on his face.

Bo, looking more defiant than shocked, curled his arm around Marlena’s shoulders in an almost protective gesture.

“Eric-” Marlena reached out to her horrified son, stepping forward as though somehow reaching out to him would draw him to her.  But it didn’t.  Instead, he stepped back out of the room.

“I don’t want to know,” he shook his head hastily as though to dispel the image he had just seen from his head.  “I really don’t want to know.”

Marlena watched as he turned, as though in slow motion, and disappeared from view.  

“Eric!” she called out his name, but Bo caught her hand, preventing her from running after him.

“Just let him go,” he suggested gently.  “He’s not ready to hear what you have to say right now.”  Bo knew that if Marlena went after Eric right now, Eric would let his temper get the better of him and he would say things that were deeply wounding, and Marlena wasn’t in a place where she could deal with that.

“I have to try!” Marlena was only thinking about Eric and the look on his face as she pulled herself from Bo’s grip and ran after her son.

“Marlena, wait!” Bo sighed.  His mother had been right.  She’d been so, so right.

Shawn-D watched first Eric, and then his Aunt Marlena, run through the mostly empty pub.  He was still confused as to why Marlena was wearing his mother’s sweats, and now in addition his father had turned up, Eric was completely pissed off and Marlena was distraught.  None of that added up to any kind of end sum he wanted to contemplate.

“Eric!” Marlena shouted her son’s name breathlessly as he dashed away from the pub.  “Eric, stop.  Please, let me explain!”

“Explain what?!” Eric swung around, his hazel eyes, so much like his mother’s, flashing in the bright morning sunlight.   “He’s dad’s brother.  You could at least have the decency to mourn dad for, oh, I don’t know, a couple of weeks before you jump into bed with his goddamn brother.” 

“Eric,” she neared him slowly, trying to pick her words carefully.  “That man was not your father.  I mourned your daddy two years ago.”

“That’s not really the point, Mom,” Eric said angrily.   He generally thought his mother was the greatest person on the planet.  Except for when it came to actual relationships.  For someone who was supposedly such a great psychiatrist, she made some really dumb choices, and she was really shit at communicating at times, too.  “I mean, what about this great love you supposedly have with John?  The one you were at great pains to remind me about over and over again.  What the hell happened to that?”

“I…” Marlena shook her head, her eyes glittering with tears.  What could she say?  What would make sense of this for her child, when there was nothing about it that made sense to her?

“Uncle Bo?” Eric shook his head disgustedly.  “I mean, I guess you couldn’t wait to get laid and all, but Uncle Bo?”

Marlena pressed shaking fingers to her mouth.  She couldn’t believe this was happening again.  

“That’s enough!”  Bo’s furious voice cut between them as he came up behind Marlena.  “You will not speak to your mother like that.  If you can’t speak to her with a civil tongue in your head, then go away until you’ve calmed down and you’re ready and willing to treat her with the respect she deserves.”

Eric glared at his uncle and then at his mother.  

“What your mother does and who she chooses to do it with is actually none of your business, kid.”  Bo’s jaw was set in a hard line as he came up to stand beside Marlena.  He wasn’t about to let another one of her entitled bratty kids excoriate her again.  

“She’s my mother,” Eric argued angrily.  He wanted to tell Bo to butt out, that this was none of his business.  But it clearly was his business.  “Where’s the loyalty?  Where is her giving a shit about any of us?”

“Loyalty to who?” Bo gives a broken laugh.  “To your dad, who walked out on her?  To John, who took her for granted and broke her heart?”

“Bo,” Marlena held up a hand, but Bo pushed it down, shaking his head as he looked at her beautiful, anguished face.  

“No.  You are one of the very best people I know and one of the most loving and loyal.  You don’t deserve this.”  He takes the hand which is still against his and curls his fingers around hers.  “Marlena would never deliberately do anything to hurt any of you.  But this isn’t about you, Eric.  Not everything is about you.  This is about your mother needing someone who is on her side, for a change.  Someone who has her back.  Someone who will consider her feelings.  Maybe if you all were a little more loyal to her, she wouldn’t need to turn to me.”    

Eric glared at Bo, two bright red spots appearing on his cheeks.  He hadn’t missed the hand-holding gesture and he hadn’t missed how his mother‘s posture had changed when Bo had come to stand by her side.  How she had gone from looking ashamed and defeated to standing a little straighter, a little more self-assured.

And he didn’t want to admit it but somewhere deep inside him, Bo’s words found their target. 

Eric chewed on his lower lip for a moment and then shaking his head, he turned and walked away.

Marlena let out a hiccupping sob and turned to collapse against Bo.  Bo wrapped his arms around her and murmured gentle reassurances against her warm, fragrant hair.  

“He’s just angry,” he said when she pulled back.  “Listen Marlena.  This is not the same as what happened with Sami, you know that right?”  

She looked up at him, the misery shining in her eyes.  “Bo, he hates me.”

“No, he doesn’t.  He’s just had a shock”  He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and then gently wiped the tears from her cheeks.  “What have you done wrong?  You’re not cheating on anyone.”

“You’re their uncle.”  She shook her head, the tears glittering on her cheeks in the early morning sunlight.  

“SO?” he asked again, wiping the tears gently from her face.  “You’re a free woman.  I’m a free man.  We’ve known each other for a long time, and we trust each other.  What we do is our business and we’re not hurting anyone.” 

He sighed as he considered Sami and Eric and their endless selfishness when it came to their parents.  He understood that they’d missed their loving and compassionate mother in their formative years, but they’d had a father who had loved them dearly and an extended family that had rallied around them and they hadn’t wanted for love or much of anything else.  And yet, they insisted on maintaining this fiction that they’d had a terrible childhood, deprived of their ‘real’ parents and that somehow having a mother plus father parental unit now they were adults would make up for all of that they’d missed out on.

“Those twins of yours are certainly their father’s children,” he said irritably.  “They have the same damn sense of entitlement he had when it comes to you.  The expectation that your entire existence should revolve around them, and you shouldn’t be allowed a life of your own.”

“Bo, that’s not fair!” Marlena exclaimed.

“Isn’t it?” Bo looked frustrated.  “Used to drive me crazy at times, the way he treated you.  Especially after he came back.  Like you should have been just waiting around for him to come back from the dead.  You.  I mean, look at you.”  He was still incredulous that Roman could have thought that a woman like Marlena should have stayed celibate and lonely for the rest of her life, pining after a dead husband.  Especially a husband like Roman, who didn’t even really respect her.  “Like your job wasn’t as important as his.  Like everything he wanted was important and everything you wanted was secondary.  The truth is, Marlena, you were too good for him.  Hell, you’re too good for most of us.”

“Bo-” she shook her head, embarrassed by his words but at the same time, recognizing the truth in them, especially as far as Roman was concerned.

“No, it’s true.  They need to grow up and realize that you’re a human being who has emotions and needs of her own and you’re not just there to pander to their desires.  It’s time they stopped being so selfish and started realizing just how lucky they are to have you in their lives.”

Marlena turned to look at the space where Eric had been and then turned back to Bo.  She was reminded of how much pressure Eric had placed on her to get her to reconcile with Roman.  How much he hadn’t cared about her feelings, only his own, and the feelings of the man he thought was his father.  

No, she reflected, he hadn’t even really cared about ‘Roman’s’ feelings or he never would have wanted him with a woman who didn’t love him any longer.

“You need to stop worrying about what other people think and start worrying about what’s going on in here,” Bo put his hand on her chest, above her heart.  “And in here.”  He touched the fingers of his other hand to her temple.  “Start listening to what it is you want.  What you need.  You deserve to be happy, Marlena.  Really happy.  So, stop putting everyone else’s feelings and needs ahead of your own.”

His hand slid down to cradle the side of her head and then he was kissing her, right out there, in front of the pub.  And she was responding, her arms around his neck, her lips seeking and meeting his, her tongue soft and eager in his mouth.

“You should go home,” he said finally, his breath warm against her cheek.  “Go home, take a warm shower and get changed.  Then go to work.  I’ll find you later.  We need to talk about what happens next.”

Her hazel eyes met his bottomless coffee-colored gaze and she nodded slowly.   He was right.  She didn’t have a clue what was going to happen next, she only knew things couldn’t continue as they were.

And inside the pub, Shawn-D touched his fingers to the glass of the window as he watched his father tenderly kiss his aunt again.

~

John settled back into the leather sofa and closed his eyes.  It’d taken him a few hours, but he’d finally convinced the doctors at the hospital to release him, on the condition that he didn’t do anything too strenuous, and that he would seek the advice of a doctor if he felt any dizziness, headaches or other symptoms that might indicate there was a problem with his head.

He wasn’t sure they would have agreed to him hopping on an eleven-hour transatlantic flight, had they known, but that was exactly why he hadn’t told them.  Upon signing the release papers, he’d called his pilot, Paul, and told him to file a flight plan and then he’d taken a taxi back to the hotel where there was a fat envelope of cash and a new credit card waiting for him, courtesy of his PA and accountant 

And then the rain was coming down in sheets and he was headed for Berlin Brandenburg Airport where his jet was fueled and waiting on the tarmac for him to board.  Paul was running pre-flight checks now and they’d be in the air within half an hour.  

John looked at his watch impatiently.  It was almost 8pm CEST which put it at about 2pm back in Salem.  Marlena would be at work now.  He had tried to call her earlier, the phone at the penthouse and her cell both switching to answer phone.  He didn’t want to leave a message.  What he had to say to her had to be said in person.  He had just wanted to hear her voice, and even the snatches of her on the answering machine were enough to bring a lump to his throat.

He didn’t know what he would do if she didn’t accept his apologies.  He didn’t know what the hell he would do if she didn’t want him back in her life.  He’d once told her he’d take her on any terms she asked.  That was still true, and he still couldn’t fathom how any part of him had been able to walk away from her, even if there was a fucking microchip in charge of the greater part of his brain.

He turned to look out of the window and his mind drifted to another wet and windy night on another plane almost exactly six years ago.  He had tried so hard to do the right thing then.  He had tried to walk away from her.  Not because he wanted to, but because he wanted to protect her from the pain that he knew loving him would bring.  But he’d failed.  Both in the walking away and in the not hurting her.

And now here he was.  Having hurt her, over and over again.  But still, on a plane running back towards her, because she was his center.  His home.  The one place where he knew exactly who he was, and who he wanted to be.  She was a beautiful, incandescent flame and he was a moth, always drawn to her light.

His fingers strayed to the empty space on his left ring finger where it waited for a wedding band.  He was such an idiot.    

I’m past that, Doc!  I’m freefalling!  With just the idea that I am never going to see you again.  That I am never going to hear you laugh, I am never going to smell your perfume and I am never going to touch you….

He closed his eyes and exhaled heavily.  What if it was really over?  What the hell was he going to do?

~

“Hey baby,” Kimberly placed her coffee on the table at Dot Com and sat down opposite Carrie.

 “Thanks for meeting me,” Carrie toyed with a teaspoon which she’d been using to stir sugar into her latte.  “I uh, I knew Marlena would be coming back to the pub to pick up Belle and I just couldn’t…” she shook her head unhappily.  “I just can’t face her at the moment.”

“Do you want to tell me why?” Kim laid her hand on Carrie’s arm, ignoring a young woman who rudely pushed past her, banging the table so that coffee slopped out of her cup and into the saucer.  Kim carefully took her saucer and poured the spilled coffee back in the cup while she waited for Carrie’s reply.

“You know about her and Uncle Bo.”  It was more of a statement of fact than a question.  A glance at Kim’s eyes told Carrie all she needed to know.

“How did you find out?” Kim asked gently, taking her hand and wrapping her fingers around Carrie’s.  It was late afternoon, and the café was busy with shoppers, businesspeople taking casual meetings and teenagers utilizing the internet offerings.  The steady bustle and hubbub were enough to mask anything that Carrie might say from any nearby observers so she wasn’t worried that anybody might overhear anything embarrassing.

“Ugh.  You don’t want to know.” Carrie stared down at her lukewarm coffee, the foam curdling on the surface.

“Probably not,” Kim’s mouth flickered into a smile that was little more than a grimace, “but I think you probably need to talk about it.  It’s clearly upset you.  A lot.”

Carrie sighed.  She’d promised herself she wouldn’t tell Kim what she’d seen.  The details, while salacious and upsetting, weren’t important.

“I saw them… together.”  She frowned looking at Kim’s concerned face.  “After the dinner at Tuscany.  I know you told us not to go back to the Penthouse, but Sami and I were worried about her.  Turns out I needn’t have worried.  Marlena wasn’t really sick.  That was just a cover story so she could go back and fuck Bo while Sami and I were out of the apartment.  But then, you knew that didn’t you?”

“Oh Carrie.”  Kim closed her eyes.  She’d been afraid of this.  “I suspected there was something going on between them, yes.  Does Marlena know you saw… no,” she stopped short, thinking of her conversation with Marlena in her office yesterday.  If she’d know Carrie had been privy to her sexual escapades with Bo, she suspected the conversation would have played out quite differently.  “No, she doesn’t know.”

“No,” Carrie took a mouthful of her coffee and wrinkled up her nose.  It was too cold and far too sweet now.  She put the cup down and pushed it away.  “No.  I… they didn’t see me.  I opened the door and when I saw what was going on, I closed it again and left.  Before you ask, Sami doesn’t know, and she’s not going to know.”

“Okay,” Kim nodded thoughtfully.  Around them, conversation bubbled in fits and starts.  “Shall we talk about how you feel about it?”

“How I feel?” Carrie shook her head, her ocean blue eyes flashing angrily.  For a moment, she watched a young mother trying to negotiate a bulky stroller between tables and chairs.  After a moment, she took a deep breath and looked back at Kim.  “I’m furious.  She’s given me such a hard time about Mike then….  How could she do this?”  She threw up her hands in frustration.  “He’s Dad’s brother.  Her marriage to Dad fell apart because she loved John so much.  She’s loved John forever and now what, it’s suddenly over and she’s moved onto Uncle Bo?  It doesn’t make any sense.  What the hell does she think she’s playing at?”

“I don’t think she’s doing much thinking,” Kim sighed and moved her chair slightly so that an older gentleman sporting a cane could get past.  “Carrie, I know it seems sudden and … I don’t know… weird.   But Marlena’s been through so much in the past few years.  And although John was with Kristen, he was always her safe harbor.  He was the one she trusted… with everything.  But he let her down.  He hurt her one too many times.”

Carrie sighed, trying to understand what her aunt was saying.  “I don’t understand.  What did he do that was so bad?”

“I can’t tell you that for sure,” Kim shrugged.  “It might not have even been one thing.  I’m guessing that Marlena just reached her limit.  I mean, do you think she’s ever really dealt with the hell she’s been through since she returned from the dead?”  

She started to tick Marlenas trauma’s off on her fingers.  “Coming back from the dead and having no idea what happened to her for five years, your dad coming back, being held prisoner in that warehouse by Stella Lombard, being held prisoner by Stefano in New Orleans, your dad leaving, being actually possessed by a freaking demon…” she took a breath and then continued counting on her other hand.  “John almost being executed and being kidnapped by Stefano in Aremid, being kidnapped and held prisoner by Stefano in Paris, being emotionally manipulated and blackmailed by Kristen to keep quiet about how she felt about John, being held prisoner by Kristen in that awful secret room, knowing Stefano was coming to spirit her away again and then, that man we thought was your dad showing up when she was just about to marry John. “ 

“And then there’s the multitude of different kinds of hell that Sami has put her through.”  Carrie mused quietly.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody as strong as Marlena or anyone who’s had to deal with as much shit as she’s had to deal with, but as a therapist, I really don’t know that she’s actually dealt with a lot of it.” Kim took another mouthful of her coffee.  “I know I wasn’t around for a lot of the time John was with Kristen, but I have my thoughts on that whole situation and how I know I would have felt if it was me.”

“John was an idiot,” Carrie affirmed with a nod.  “He let Kristen manipulate him and I know he thought Marlena just wanted to be friends but honestly it was obvious to anyone with half a brain how she felt about him.  And she was just typical Marlena, trying to do the best by him and everyone else, ignoring her own feelings to protect what we all thought was his baby.  And it turned out there wasn’t even a baby to protect.”  She rolled her eyes.  

“But that’s why this is so, so out of character for her.  I don’t understand why, when she waited for John to come to his senses for so long that this time she would turn around and jump into bed with someone else.  And why that someone else had to be Bo.”

“Honey, I really don’t know either.  Anything I said would be mere speculation.” Kim drained her coffee and placed the cup back on the saucer where the dregs of the spilled coffee were now drying and crusting on the porcelain.  Then she put her hand over Carrie’s again.  “She won’t talk to me about any of this.  I don’t think she’s talked to anyone.  But you said it, this is out of character.  All I can think is that the one person she has trusted and leaned on for the past decade is nowhere to be seen.  She must feel very alone.  So maybe she’s turned to Bo.  Because she trusts him.  And because she’s feeling things that she’s not ready to feel; and getting physical is distracting.”

“But he’s like a brother to her,” Carrie shakes her head, not really wanting to consider that Marlena might be feeling so isolated.  And even less that she might think sex with Bo was the answer.

“Had she ever actually said that?”  Kim pursed her lips thoughtfully.  “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard her say it quite like that.  Maybe there’s always been an attraction there, how are we to know?”  

She’d thought about this quite a lot.  She’d never found Steve attractive, and she’d thought John her brother for so many years that when they’d found out he wasn’t, she hadn’t been able to even consider him in that way.  But her own ex-husband had hooked up with her sister, so she knew it was possible.  That such an attraction could exist and never be expressed until the opportunity presented itself.  And after all, Bo had always used gorgeous and beautiful as endearments for Marlena, so he had never exactly been blind to what she had to offer.  “I mean, they’re both very attractive people, right?  And they find themselves in similar positions…”

“You sound like you’re trying to justify what they’re doing.” Carrie frowned, her brow furrowing.  She didn’t really want to think about her uncle in that way.  And while it was hard to ignore how astonishingly beautiful her stepmother was, Carrie tried hard not to think about any of her parents or otherwise parental figures as fully sexual beings.  It was just weird to think about them… like that.  

“I’m not justifying it; I’m trying to understand how it might have happened.  I tried to talk to Marlena yesterday, and she wouldn’t discuss it.  But I can say that emotionally, she’s wrecked, Carrie.  I’ve never seen her as brittle as she is right now.  Not even when John was about to leave Salem back when…”

“Back when they ended up having the affair.”  Carrie finished her sentence for her.

“All I’m saying is, she’s not in a good place.  At the moment, she probably feels like the ship has gone down and she’s clinging to the wreckage.  Bo’s in a similar place.  Maybe they’re just life preservers for each other right now.   It doesn’t make sense to us, but we are not where they are.  We might think they’re not thinking rationally, but maybe they are just doing what will keep them afloat?”

“And what happens when John and Hope come home?” Carrie asked.  She was starting to feel glad she’d agreed to talk to Kimberly.  She was still upset but Kim’s explanation of Marlena’s behavior made sense and it made Carrie feel more sympathetic towards the woman who had been a far better mother to her than her own mother.  But she was still scared that the fallout would cause more chaos than any of them could handle.  “Because you know they will.  What happens when they come home and find Marlena and Bo are sleeping together?”

“Honestly?”  Kimberley gave an exaggerated grimace.  “I dread to think.  All hell is gonna break loose.”

“Maybe we can talk some sense into them before it gets that far?” Carrie suggested.

“Like I said, I already tried talking to Marlena, but she wasn’t having a bar of it.”  Kim ran her fingers through her wavy hair.  “But I am thinking if we approach it from a different angle then maybe she might listen.”

“A different angle, like how?” Carrie asked.

“Like, I think she needs to not feel so alone.”  Kim leaned back on her chair, thinking about Marlena’s words in her office yesterday.  None of you would have the first clue what to do with my rawness right now.  She doesn’t trust them to catch her if she falls.  She doesn’t trust them to gather her up if she falls apart.  “She thinks she needs to be strong for all of us.  That we can’t cope with seeing the mess she thinks she is, deep down.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Carrie knows it’s a lie as soon as she says it.  Marlena has always been the strong one.  The one they’ve all turned to.  The moment she showed real weakness, when she had broken down and acted on her passion for John, (when she had been terrified that he would leave Salem forever), they had turned their back on her. 

“Doesn’t matter how true it is, or isn’t,” Kimberly pointed out, although quietly she thought that Marlena was pretty astute, and they had all shown their cards at one time or another.  The Brady’s were apt to close ranks when they felt threatened, and Marlena had probably found herself on the outside of that huddle on the few occasions she had really needed to be inside.  “That’s how she feels.  Like she can’t trust us with her truth.  With her vulnerability.”

Carrie exhaled slowly.  It was starting to make some kind of awful sense now.  “I’ve been so angry at her.  She’s been lecturing me about my friendship with Mike and my responsibilities to Austin and then she went and did this, and I thought she was being a total hypocrite.”

“She’s probably scared you’ll make the same mistakes she made.  She doesn’t want to see you get hurt, Carrie.  She’s trying to give you the benefit of her experience so that you don’t have to go through the pain that she’s been through.”   Kim played with the sugar container.  Like Carrie, this conversation had helped to crystallize some ideas and realizations.  She had tried to be there for Marlena in the past, but she knew however much she had tried to support her sister-in-law, nothing she did could ever repay Marlena for how she had supported individual and collective members of their family over the years.  And now she was feeling like they’d let her down.

“I feel awful,” Carrie sighed.  “I just…. I take her for granted, y’know?  I forget about all the awful things that have happened to her.  She’s so strong and I admire her so much, but I forget she’s just a human being too because most of the time, she appears just about as close to perfect as you can get.  And it’s just so hard to live up to the standards she sets, so sometimes I resent her too.”

“Kinda makes it harder to accept when she does fall off the pedestal, doesn’t it?” Kim frowned.  “I wish she’d realize that she doesn’t need to be quite so perfect.  That we’d love her just as much if she was just a regular ol’ messy human like the rest of us.” 

“Maybe she needs to hear it.” Carrie looked thoughtful.  “Maybe she doesn’t know that because none of us have told her.  Maybe she thinks she has to be perfect because that is what we expect.  And maybe it’s time we start expecting something different.”  She picked up her purse from the table and rummaged around in it, eventually pulling out her cell phone.  “And I think I have an idea how we start making that happen….”

Part Sieze

Untouchable like a distant diamond sky

I’m reaching out and I just can’t tell you why

I’m caught up in you, I’m caught up in you

Untouchable, burning brighter than the sun

And when you’re close, I feel like coming undone

In the middle of the night when I’m in this dream

It’s like a million little stars spelling out your name

You got to come on, come on, say that we’ll be together

Come on, come on, little taste of heaven

Untouchable – Taylor Swift

“You guys need to work on your debriefing techniques,” John leaned back in the uncomfortable metal chair and stretched out the kinks in his back.  “This feels more like an interrogation than an ‘informed conversation’.”

“Sorry John.”  Shane yawned, took a mouthful of his tea and grimaced.  “Ugh.  What is this shit?”

“They call it tea but it’s really lukewarm dishwater,” Agent Fitzpatrick, the very blonde Irish woman who sat next to him wrinkled her nose and pushed away the cup in front of her.  “I fall for it every time I come to this godforsaken country.”

John had stepped off his plane in Salem a full twelve hours after he’d left Berlin, but given the time difference, it was still the middle of the night in Salem.  And yet, Shane and several other ISA personnel were waiting there for him.  They’d bundled him in a car and brought him to this undisclosed location where they’d run a number of medical tests and scans before, and while, giving him a sound grilling about his jaunt around Europe with an extremely narcissistic Princess, resident in Hope William’s body.

John wasn’t exactly sure how much sleep any of them have had, other than not enough.  He’d tried to sleep on the plane on the way over, but it had proved elusive, to say the least.  Every time he’d closed his eyes, he’d seen Marlena’s face the day she’d told him to leave.  The anger as she’d told him to go and then the pain as he’d turned and done just that. 

He felt nervous and worried and sick to his stomach at the prospect of seeing her again. It had only been a matter of weeks, but it felt like months since he had last touched her.  Held her.  Heard her laugh.

Maybe it had been months.  Time seemed elastic right now.  It seemed to drag and also pass in the blink of an eye.  Like so much of everything, time wasn’t normal when Marlena wasn’t by his side.  It felt out of control.  As did he.

“What more can I tell you?” he shrugged, turning his wrist to look at his watch.  It was almost noon.  He hadn’t been particularly bothered when the ISA had dragged him off the tarmac at a little after two am.  After all, he was hardly going to go and bang on the Penthouse door in the middle of the night (not that it hadn’t crossed his mind, and he’d found himself briefly considering it before tossing the idea by the wayside).  But that was almost ten hours ago and now he was tired and irritable, and he just wanted to go and have a shower and then find the love of his life and beg for her forgiveness and one more chance to prove himself to be the man that they both knew he could be.

One of the junior agents came in with a box and tossed it on the table.  Inside were sandwiches, a box of donuts and several cans of soda.  “Boss said you might want some lunch.”

John pulled out a sandwich and looked at it with distaste.  Shane and the three other agents in the room didn’t even look at the food, although Fitzpatrick did pick out a Coke and she snapped the tab before taking a long chug of it.

“Is there any further info on the chip?” Shane asked the agent sitting closest to the door.  The microchip had been shipped to London while John had been on his way back to the US.  The tech needed to decipher the meaning and content of the chip was there in London and they had started work on it the moment it had arrived at headquarters.  The young man shook his head but when Shane glared at him, he sighed and pushed himself out of his chair and departed the room.  “Check with the doctors while you’re at it!” Shane called after him.  

“Shane, this is getting really old.”  John was getting more than frustrated now.  There seemed to be no good reason for them to keep him here any longer.  “Can I go now?”

“You can go when the doctors say you can go,” Fitzpatrick’s Irish brogue was short and curt.

“Am I being detained?” John snapped irritably.

“Of course not,” Shane rushed to reassure his old friend.  “We just want to make sure there are no ill effects from that chip being in your head.  If you left here and something happened, it would be a dereliction of our duty of care to you.”

“You have no duty of care,” John growled.  “I don’t work for your bosses anymore, remember?”

“Nevertheless,” Shane raised his eyebrows, “if you suddenly dropped dead, I’d have a few questions to answer.  Not least from Kim.  And Marlena, I am sure.”

“Does Kim know you’re here?” John had a reason for asking.  News travelled fast in Salem.  If Kim knew Shane was in town but holed up in some locationless base, she or another member of the family might put two and two together.  He wanted to find Marlena before she had the chance to wonder why he was in Salem and hadn’t yet been in touch with her. 

“Not yet,” Shane shook his head.  “I’m going on over to the pub when we’re done here.”

John nodded.

“You?” Shane didn’t have to elaborate on his question.  Where are you going?  And what are you going to do when you get there?  John had alluded to his split with Marlena in an earlier phone conversation from Europe, and Shane gotten the feeling from Kimberly several days ago that things were far from well with Marlena here in Salem.  He only hoped that the two of them could work it out now that John’s odd behavior could be somewhat explained.

“Doc will be at work, so I’ll go to the loft and have a shower, I think.  I’ll see if I can catch up with her after she finishes for the day.”  John stretched and groaned.  “I guess it depends on when your ‘doctors’ give me the all-clear.” He imbued the word with as much sarcasm as it warranted.  ISA doctors seemed to have a very tenuous grasp on the tenets of the Hippocratic oath.  He wasn’t sure a number of them wouldn’t inflict harm in the pursuit of knowledge.  But then it went with the territory of working for the ISA, he supposed.  Shane seemed to be a rare specimen within the organization.  An agent with actual integrity and care for his fellow man.

He had thought long and hard about how he was going to approach Marlena.  He didn’t want to give her the opportunity to shut the door in his face the way she had the few times he had called on her at the Penthouse before he’d gone to Europe.  He also didn’t want to wrong-foot her so much that she was angry at him for confronting her in public.  So, he had decided to go to the hospital and wait for her to finish work for the day.  He hoped he could catch her in her office, or failing that, on her way out and he could convince her to have dinner with him.  He didn’t know that this tactic would work any better than trying to stick his foot in the door at the Penthouse, but he had to try.

~

“No Hillary.  Tell him I’m busy.  I’ll call him later when I have some free time.  Yes, thanks.”  Marlena put down the phone and dropped her head into her hands.  She’d been ignoring his calls to her cell and Hillary had been screening her calls at the office, but Bo was not giving up.

He had tried a couple of times the previous afternoon and then several times to her home and cellular phones in the evening after she had collected Belle and Brady from the pub.  It had turned out that both Sami and Carrie had plans for the evening, so she had been left to feed and bathe the children alone which had suited her quite well.  They had spent the evening curled up on Marlena’s bed watching television and eating chocolate ice-cream with sprinkles as per Belle’s request.  

In the morning, she had dropped the children at school, ignoring three more phone calls as she went and then she had asked Hillary to hold all calls while she dictated some case notes and generally cleaned up her backlog of work.  Hillary had done as she’d asked until Bo had become particularly insistent and then she had asked if Marlena wanted her to put Bo’s call through to her.

She had every intention of talking to him, eventually.  But she needed to figure out what it was that she was going to say first.  He had told her she needed to listen to her heart and her head, and she knew he was right, but the problem was, she couldn’t hear what they were saying.  Or maybe it was that they were saying different things.  She could hear all the ‘shoulds’ and she could hear the ‘want to’s’ but she couldn’t delve down under those to the core of her soul.  

What was it that she really wanted?

On some level, she knew if she dug down deep enough, she would scratch the nucleus of truth within herself.  That she just wished the past twelve years had never happened.  That she and ‘Roman’ had just lived happily ever after with Carrie and their twins and maybe another two or three children.  She would never wish away Belle and Brady, but she could wish away all the pain of Roman’s return and the subsequent nightmares that had unfolded.

If she was brutally honest, she wished they’d never gone to San Christobal.  She wished John was still Roman and she wished they still lived at Sycamore Street, and they had a perfectly ordinary life with their perfectly ordinary family and perfectly ordinary jobs.

But she couldn’t undo the past.  She couldn’t will John back.  She couldn’t just be Bo’s once sister-in-law any longer.  Not even if she wanted to.

And again, if she was honest, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.  Bo loved her.  She knew that’s what he had been about to say last night and what he was saying in a roundabout way this morning when he had faced off with Eric.  He loved her and he was good to her.  

But he was not John.  He’d never be John.  And maybe that was a good thing.

But John.  Her heart ached and tears slipped down her cheeks.  God help her, it was John’s arms she wanted around her.  John’s lips she wanted to be kissing.  Bo was wonderful but he was just not John, and he never would be.

So where did that leave her?  Was it fair to Bo to let him love her, knowing she could never love him back in the same way?  Because her heart would always belong to John.  

Or did she deny herself that love?  Did she learn to be alone once again?  Steel her heart, build absolute walls, and let no-one else in, for fear she would destroy yet another good man?

She was so tired, and she felt desolate.  

She just wanted some time to think about it, to sit with it and let it settle into her so that she could weigh her heart and her mind and figure which of them was speaking the truth.  But now that Eric had seen them, she supposed everyone would know, soon enough.  In fact, the sudden absence of her daughters the previous evening probably indicated that they already did.

Judging by Kim and Eric’s reactions, none of them were going to like it.  And they would want to make their opinions known and pass judgement and tell her that she was in denial, and she was using Bo and that she was selfish and disloyal and the one hundred and one other insults they’d want to fling at her.  

And she would have to tell them that yes, they were right; and that she would walk away from the only comfort, the only light she had in the long, joyless days that stretched in front of her. 

And she would have to watch Bo shatter and his eyes harden, and then she would be completely alone.

Maybe she deserved that.

But then again, maybe she didn’t.  Maybe she could tell them that for once, her happiness mattered.  Even if it didn’t matter to them, it mattered to Bo and it mattered to her.  She could tell them that she needed this.  That she deserved to be loved and that she would accept what happiness she was offered and be grateful because this life was too short and there were too few guarantees to turn away such grace.

Maybe that was what she deserved.

Her stomach growled and she was reminded that she’d only had time for coffee before taking the children to school.  She pushed herself away from her desk and gathered her purse and her phone before leaving the office, calling back to Hillary that she was taking a break for lunch.

She wandered down the hall, heading for the cafeteria, lost in her own thoughts as she checked her phone.  Five missed calls from Bo.  She frowned.  She hated doing this to him.  But she needed the space.  The moment he got her into a room, she knew, she was putty in his hands.  She couldn’t think straight when he was around, and she needed to think through this situation and work out what it really was that she wanted to do.  Not just what her libido was telling her to do every time he was near.

She gasped as an arm came out of nowhere and grabbed her, pinioning her left arm to her side and restricting her right considerably.  A strong hand covered her mouth.

She struggled as her assailant dragged her into the nearby relative’s lounge and slammed the door behind him.

In that moment, she managed to get some leverage with her right arm and aimed an elbow into her attacker’s stomach.

“Ow!  Jesus, what was that for?”

The arms released her, and Marlena spun around to find herself face to face with one Beauregard Aurelius Brady.

“Bo!” Her immediate concern was whether she’d done him any damage but despite his hand rubbing his side, he didn’t seem perilously injured.  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

“Trying to find a way to get you to talk to me.”  Bo glared at her.  “You don’t answer my calls, Hillary won’t let me in your office.  What the hell else was I supposed to do?”

“Wait until I’m ready to talk to you,” Marlena gave an “oooh” of frustration as she shook her head at her erstwhile kidnapper.  “Honestly Bo, you just about gave me a heart attack!”   

“Sorry.”  He looked a little crestfallen.  This wasn’t what he had intended at all.  “I didn’t mean to scare you.  I didn’t think.”

“Obviously.” She stared at him for a long moment and then exhaled, trying to calm her pounding heart.

“What do you mean, ready to talk to me?” he asked plaintively as he wandered across the room and slumped into an armchair.  It was as though all his self-assurance had dissipated, like the mist off the river in the morning sunlight.

“I mean,” Marlena sighed.  She followed him across the room and lowered herself onto the sofa across from him.  “I mean, if we’re going to talk about what happens next, shouldn’t I have some clue what I want that to be, first?”

“You don’t know?” Bo’s expression betrayed the pain her question caused him.  He wanted her to want him as much as he wanted her. 

“I don’t know,” she replied quietly, unable to quite meet his eyes.  “Bo, I’m so confused.”  She pushed herself from the sofa and rounded the end of it, going to the window.  “Everyone seems to think they know what’s right for me.  Everyone except me, that is.”

“Does what I want figure at all?” he asked quietly.  He knew he’d told her that she had to figure out what it was that she wanted but he’d not so secretly hoped that she would recognize that he made her feel better.  That she could trust him and that she could rely on him.  Not to mention that the sex was incredible.

“Of course it does!” she cried, turning back to him.  “But what you want and what is good for you might be two very different things.”

“You don’t get to be the one that decides that,” he told her, a little testily.  He stood up and paced across the room to the door and then back towards her.  He pointed at her angrily.  “You don’t get to walk away and tell me it’s for my own good.  If you walk away, that’s for you.  That’s your fear talking, not mine.”

“You’re making assumptions.” Tears were in her eyes, and she crossed her arms in front of her, trying to shield herself a little from his frustration and fear.  “I never said that I was going to walk away, Bo.  I never said anything like that.”  They both knew though; it was what she had been thinking.  If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have avoided his calls.

“I have to make assumptions,” he threw up his hands, his lips drawn into a thin line, “because you’re not telling me anything.  You won’t even talk to me.  Are you really that afraid of what they’ll all think?  Are you really going to let them control you like this?”

She said nothing but leaned back against the window, raising her eyes to the ceiling.  She couldn’t do this.  Not here.  Not now.

“I found the letter you were writing on the boat.”  His voice was low and shaky.  “I know you think that the right thing is to end this now.  I know you Marlena, but I’m telling you, you’re wrong.  This is good.  We’re good together.  We need this.”

“Bo-” She let out an exhalation that came from the depths of her soul.  She could feel the desperation unfurling from him and it hurt, almost as much as her own did.

“I need this.”  Tears filled Bo’s eyes and as much as he tried to fight them, they started to trickle down his cheeks.  He choked back a sob.  “I can’t lose you Marlena.  I lost Hope, I can’t lose you too.  Loving you is the only thing that’s keeping me upright.”

She was crying now too.  His tears were enough to shatter any kind of fragile defenses she had concocted.  He had been so strong, so solid for her, when the truth was, he was just as broken as she was.  

She brought her head down and found his drowned chocolate gaze.  It was true, she knew.  He needed her, just like she needed him.  

Stepping forward, she took his face in her hands and pressed her lips against his.  He didn’t move, just stood still, the tears dribbling down his cheeks.  She drew back slightly and looked into his eyes.  “I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered.  “I’m here Bo.  I’m not going anywhere.”

Bo’s mouth trembled as he looked back at her, clearly needing further reassurance. 

“Oh honey,” she wiped the tears from his cheeks with her fingers.  “I’m so sorry, I’ve been so wrapped up in myself, I haven’t been there for you.”

“You have,” he attempted a smile, but it wavered, the gesture shattering into a look of abject misery.  “I’m just…    I guess we’re both running from the pain, but it helps when we’re running in the same direction.  When you wouldn’t take my calls, I just… I got scared.  You make this bearable…  you make it more than bearable.  You make me happy.  I don’t want to give that up.”

“Shhhh,” Marlena touched her fingers to his lips.  “Shhhh.”  She didn’t want to promise what she wasn’t sure she could give him but then she wasn’t going to break his heart when she wasn’t sure she wanted it to be over either.  In truth, she didn’t want it to be over, at all.

“Kiss me,” she whispered against his mouth.  “I need you to kiss me, Bo.”

Bo didn’t need any more encouragement.  He crushed his lips against hers as his arms slid around her, one around her shoulders, his fingers caressing the back of her neck.  His other arm slipped around her waist and pulled her into him.  She continued to caress his face as he kissed her, open mouthed, his tongue seeking out hers.

“Oh,” she tipped her head back as he kissed her chin and her jaw and then found the sweet, tender spot beneath her ear.  “Oh, Bo.”  He pushed her backwards until she felt the coolness of the glass against her upper back.  Bo found her mouth again and attacked it with renewed vigor.  His hand was in her hair, taking it in great fistfuls as he kissed her.  He pressed his pelvis against her, and she could feel the beginnings of his arousal.  Almost immediately she could feel the familiar flutter in her belly which fizzed downwards and exploded between her legs, the way it did every time he started touching her.  She could feel herself getting wet and almost reflexively her mind sought spaces and places.  Ways she could make him stay.  Ways she could escape everything except him.

She didn’t know who she was trying to kid.  This was the only place where everything felt right.  With his lips on hers, him between her legs. Where the rest of the world no longer existed, it was just her and him, his mouth, his touch and the way he made her feel.

He unbuttoned the top two buttons of her navy suit jacket and slipped his hand inside.  Her satin camisole slid against the satin of her bra underneath his fingers.  Her nipple puckered and hardened as he flicked and pinched her, and she cried out in abandon.  And then his hand was gone, and it was at her skirt, pushing it almost to the top of her thighs before his fingers disappeared into the valley of her sex, his fingers sliding, stroking, pressing against her panties.

“Oh God,” she ground into the heel of his palm as he probed her, seeking out the folds of her beneath the damp scrap of silk.  She was undone.  The stress of the last few days, her uncertainty, his desperation had unmoored her.  This was all she had; all she could think of.  It was all she needed right now.  “I need you.  You have to fuck me.  Now.”  

Bo groaned as she started to fumble with the button on his jeans.  Somewhere in the dim recesses of his mind, something was telling him that this was not a good idea.  Not here.

“Your office,” he panted between licks and bites of her jaw.

“Mmmm?” she forced the stiff zip down between the panels of denim.  She didn’t know what he was saying, it was just so much noise.  Her hand slid inside, negotiating the folds of his boxers until she found wiry hair and hot, silky skin.

“Oh, fuck!”  Bo bit her neck, sucking on the tender skin there.  They weren’t going to make it to her office.  They weren’t going to make it anywhere except the back of that sofa, and him bending her over it, if she carried on doing that with those beautiful, practiced fingers.

“Hrr-hmmm!”  It took a repeat for the clearing of the throat to register with the couple plastered against the window.

When it did, Marlena froze and Bo swallowed, whipping his hand out from between her legs and pushed her skirt down and back into place.

“Marlena, I need to talk to you about a patient.”  Laura’s face was impassive as Marlena opened her eyes over Bo’s shoulder and faced her best friend, a deep flush on her cheeks, her hair messy.  “Detective Brady, if you could excuse us?”

Marlena flicked wide eyes to Bo and saw the panic in his and felt the need to reassure him.  “It’s okay,” she whispered.  “I’ll find you later.  Are you working?”

He shook his head.  He had called in sick this morning, unable to concentrate on anything except the emptiness he felt and the obsessive need to see her and understand where her head was at.

“I’ll call you.” She pressed a soft kiss to his mouth.  “I promise.”  And then again, because she knew he needed it, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Bo nodded, unable to trust his voice but he backed away from her, rearranging his pants and zipping up his jeans as unobtrusively as possible.  He gave her one last, lingering glance before he turned and exited the lounge, avoiding Laura’s eyes as he went.

“You might want to tidy yourself up a little.” Laura said curtly to Marlena as she went to the door and closed it carefully.

Marlena said nothing but blushed again as she buttoned up her jacket and smoothed down her skirt.

“Your hair is a mess.” Laura came over to her and proceeded to rearrange Marlena’s hair so that it fell in its usual soft bob around her face.  “That’s better.  Now, do you want to tell me what all that was about?”

“I…” Marlena swallowed, her mouth sticky.  She still ached to feel Bo inside her and she wasn’t sure she was up to having this conversation with Laura.  Pushing past the other woman, she went and poured herself a glass of water with hands that were shaking.

“What’s going on with you?” Laura asked sympathetically.  “Bo Brady?  Really?”

“Laura, I really don’t have to explain myself to you,” Marlena lifted the glass to her mouth, but she could barely get the water past her lips without spilling it everywhere she was shaking so badly.  She put the glass back down on the counter with a bang.  “What I choose to do and who I choose to do it with is my business.”

“Not when you do it in a public lounge in the hospital it isn’t.” Laura crossed her arms.  This wasn’t like Marlena at all.  The denial was, but everything else, the taking up with Bo, the obvious desperation to run away from her pain, the carelessness of her actions… it wasn’t the woman that she had known and loved for so many years.  “Marlena, you’re lucky it was me that walked in.  What if it had been a nurse.  Or God forbid, a relative of a patient?”

Marlena said nothing, her hands curled over the edge of the low office cupboard, which held the coffee cups and various other accoutrements for providing refreshments for the relatives who waited here for news, both good and bad.  Her knuckles where white, her breathing labored.

“Marlena,” Laura’s voice softened.  “I asked you when John left if you were all right.  You told me you were, but I knew then it was a lie and that’s even more obvious now.  Why didn’t you come and talk to me?”

“I…” Marlena finally turned to Laura, her eyes glassy.  “It just happened, Laura.  Bo came to tell me that John and Hope had left together, they’d gone to Europe… and…”

“And what, it was an accident?” Laura looked skeptical.  “You fell onto Bo’s lips and then all your clothes magically fell off?”

“Well, kind of.” Marlena bit on her lower lip, thinking about how, a couple of wines down, she had stumbled against Bo.  How the feeling of his warm, hard body had made her think thoughts she’d never allowed herself to think before.  About how it had felt the first time she had kissed him and the thrill that had run through her.  How she’d sat on his lap, and they’d flirted and teased each other, he’d told her his secret fantasies and then she’d told him to take her upstairs to bed.

“Marlena.”  Laura didn’t have to say anything else, the chiding tone of the single word enough to convey everything she was thinking.

Marlena sighed, picking up her water and going back to the sofa where her purse and phone still lay, abandoned while she’d been consumed with, and by, Bo.  Sitting down, she stared at the glass in her hand and then took a mouthful.

“We were both feeling pretty low.  We had a few glasses of wine and I started crying.  Bo comforted me but it…” she looked away, embarrassed by her own vulnerability, both then and now.

“One thing led to another?”  Laura came around the end of the sofa and perched in the armchair where Bo had previously been sitting.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” Marlena had the grace to look ashamed as she looked up at Laura.  “I’d never really thought about him like that.  I mean, he’s cute and I’m not blind, but he was Roman’s brother.”

“Indeed,” Laura raised her eyebrows, not without sympathy.  She had her own experiences of brothers and of loving people that she shouldn’t.  She was hardly one to throw stones.  “I’m guessing he’d thought about you like that before.”

“It was me that initiated it,” Marlena didn’t bother to deny Laura’s assumption.  “I kissed him.  I was so angry at John and so hurt; and Bo was there, and he was holding me, and he was looking at me like… Laura, I could hardly breathe.  Suddenly, it was all I could think about.  And he made me feel good.  I mean, really good.”

Laura chuckled, despite herself.  “Well, that is fairly obvious, given what I just walked in on.”

“Oh god.”  Marlena shook her head and covered her eyes with one hand.  

“I know you’re in pain but you’re self-medicating Marlena.  With sex.  With lust.”  Laura had never been one to pull any punches.  Part of her might have applauded Marlena for taking a hot younger man to her bed to bury her pain, but the other part of her, the psychiatrist part, the good friend part knew that it wasn’t a healthy response to a painful situation.

“That might be true,” Marlena was too tired to deny what Laura was saying.  She knew it was true.  She had admitted as much to herself the other night.  “But I could be using alcohol,” she conveniently neglected to mention the half-bottle of whiskey she had consumed two nights earlier.  “Or worse.  In the great scheme of things, is sex really that bad?”

“It wouldn’t be if other people’s emotions weren’t involved.”  Laura was sympathetic but she was pretty sure that Marlena was operating on pure instinct right now and hadn’t even started to think through the consequences of what she was doing.  “But have you considered Bo’s feelings?  Hope’s?  John’s, when he finds out?”

“Bo wants this as much as I do.”  Marlena’s expression hardened.  She’d considered it.  She’d done little else since this had started.  But all it was doing was confusing her further.

“Of course he does.”  Laura did everything but roll her eyes.  “He gets great sex.  He must feel like he’s won the lottery.”

“That’s not fair, Laura.”  Marlena pushed herself up from the sofa and putting her glass on the small occasional table, she walked across the room to look out of the window.  “He loved Hope.  He’s absolutely shattered by what’s happened.”

“I’m sure he is,” Laura sighed.  She hadn’t missed Marlena’s use of the past tense when referring to Bo’s feelings for Hope.  She didn’t really think Bo had resolved his feelings for Hope, but she knew only too well how complicated those twin feelings of love and lust were.  “And that’s another reason to be concerned.  Honey, I know you think you know what you’re doing, but I really don’t think you’ve thought through the consequences.  What happens when John comes home?  What happens to Bo then?  What happens to John?”  And then, more quietly.  “What happens to you?”

Marlena turned her hands on the windowsill, her back to the glass.  The sun shone through the window, outlining her in silver and gold.  “John’s not coming home,” she said simply.

“Of course John’s coming home,” Laura scoffed.  “If there’s one thing I know to be true in this world, it’s that that man is absolutely crazy about you.  He will be back, sooner or later.”

“Well, if that’s true, he’s got a damn funny way of showing it,” Marlena said angrily.  She didn’t want to hear about John’s feelings for her.  His recent actions had already disproven Laura’s theory.  “He’s called the children a sum total of twice since he’s been gone and neither of those times, he’s cared to speak to me beyond a cursory hello, so I really don’t think he’s in a hurry to rush home and declare his undying love for me.”

“Whatever reason he’s got for behaving the way he’s behaving, and mark my words, there is a reason; sooner or later, he will come home.” Laura cocked her head, wondering how this had bypassed Marlena.  She knew John better than anyone.  She had to know there was something wrong with him.  “And when he does, you’ll have to face him, and you’ll have a decision to make.  If it’s not too late.”

“You’re reaching, Laura.”  Marlena frowned but she was clearly shaken by the certainty of Laura’s prediction.

“And what if I’m not?”  Laura pushed herself off her seat and walked across the room to where Marlena stood, her emotional armor fragile and whisper thin.  “Marlena, honey, you’re playing with fire.  Bo is a mess, but he’s obviously besotted with you.  That’s got to be clear to anyone with eyes in their head.  If John comes back and finds you in Bo’s arms, he’s going to maim him.   You’ll go back to John because honey, that’s what you always do.  And poor Bo’s heart will be broken.  Do you really want that for him?”

Marlena’s eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head.

“Sweetie, you need to sort your shit out.”  Laura took Marlena’s delicate hands in her own and schooled her face into a neutral expression as she saw the healing grazes that were revealed as the sleeves of Marlena’s suit rode up over her wrists.  “Let’s schedule in some appointments.  We can work through everything together.  If you still want to be with Bo after we’ve done that, I won’t say a word.  I’ll support you one hundred percent.  But honey, you can’t carry on like this.  Someone is going to get hurt and I really don’t want it to be you, okay?”

“Okay,” Marlena nodded and let Laura pull her into a hug but silently the tears slipped down her cheeks.  She had the horrible feeling that it was already too late, and someone was going to get badly hurt.  

She just wasn’t sure who that someone was.

Part Dix-Sept

Clover blooms in the fields
Spring breaks loose, the time is near
What would he do if he found us out?
Crescent moon, coast is clear
Spring breaks loose, but so does fear
He’s gonna burn this house to the ground

How’s one to know?
I’d live and die for moments that we stole
On begged and borrowed time
So tell me to run
Or dare to sit and watch what we’ll become
And drink my husband’s wine

Oh, goddamn
My pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand
Taking mine, but it’s been promised to another
Oh, I can’t
Stop you putting roots in my dreamland
My house of stone, your ivy grows
And now I’m covered in you
And I’m covered in you

Ivy – Taylor Swift

Hillary was not at her desk when John arrived at Marlena’s office.  

The ISA doctors had finally offered their assessment and had given John the all-clear health-wise and he’d been driven back to Salem in the early afternoon.  He’d done exactly as he’d told Shane he would, dropped his bag on the living room floor of the loft and stepped under a hot shower.  Afterwards he had lain on his bed in the vain hope that he might snatch an hour of sleep before going to find Marlena.

But it was a pointless effort.  Thoughts and images of Marlena had looped endlessly around his head, sweet, painful and hot.  Marlena sitting next to his cot in the dungeon at Maison Blanche.  Marlena arguing with him, Stefano behind her in a wheelchair.  Marlena unconscious on the floor of the secret room in the wine cellar of the DiMera mansion.  Marlena at Smith Island in the middle of a devilishly hot heatwave, sliding an ice-cube seductively into the crevice between her breasts.  Marlena, stunning in purple taffeta standing… laying…. Marlena in the rain outside St Lukes.  Marlena holding Belle.  Marlena standing in defense of him in Aremid.  Marlena risking her life for him in Paris.  Marlena sobbing on a plane, touching him, kissing him… making love to him….

He’d groaned and finally given away the idea of sleeping.  He wouldn’t be able to sleep until he’d seen her again.  Until he’d spoken to her.  He needed to touch her, to smell her, to kiss her.  He needed her like he needed oxygen.  He was suffocating without her, and he just had to be near her.

He’d done then what he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do, and he’d gone to the Penthouse.  He told himself it was because he thought she might be there but in reality; it was because he wanted, just for a little while, to be near her.  To be in a place that was totally and utterly her.  He needed to center himself before he saw her, needed to temper his desperation.  And so, he had let himself into her apartment and he had gone up to her bedroom and just breathed her in.

The bed was unmade, strewn with the children’s pajamas and her satin nightgown.  He had picked it up and breathed in her heady fragrance as he had looked around him.  It was so familiar and yet… it felt like it had been months since he was here.  During the whole time the mercenary was sharing his brain he’d been walking around in a daze.  Not really seeing where he was or who was there with him.  He hadn’t seen how much she had needed him or how, when he dismissed her requests for support, she had turned away from him, bit by bit.  He hadn’t seen the disappointment, the pain dulling her honeyed gaze.  He hadn’t seen her smile waver and grow brittle as he’d stroked Greta’s hair and been solicitous towards Hope.

He’d deserved everything she’d hurled at him when she threw him out.  He deserved more, if he was honest.  She had been measured; she hadn’t let her pain drive her to say things she might regret.  She had just told him she wanted and needed more from him than he was willing or able to give.  She deserved better than what she was getting and if he couldn’t be the man she’d fallen in love with, the man that loved her back, heart and soul then she would rather be alone.

He had touched every surface he could, trying to imbue himself with the sense of her.  He wanted to surround himself with her, wrap himself in her very presence. He picked up her hairbrush and pulled strands of gold from it and wrapped them around his fingers.  He picked up her perfume and opened the lid.  It wasn’t the first time he’d done this.  There were times, when she was living at the DiMera mansion, when everyone had been out, that he had stolen into her room like an emotional thief, desperate for little slivers of her.  Thinking he would never be able to feel her lips on his, her skin, sizzling against his.  He had been starving for any little taste of her.  He had felt guilty every time he had done it, like he was encroaching on her boundaries, invading her personal space but he hadn’t been able to help himself.

He felt like that now.  Like he was snatching at fragments of the woman he loved, watching as the pieces fell through his fingers.  Feeling like she was a mirage, there but just out of reach.  He was a drowning man, and she was his lighthouse.  He could only hope he didn’t dash himself apart at on the rocks at her feet.

He had eventually left the penthouse and come straight to her office.  He knew he was early; she probably wasn’t due to finish work for another hour or two, but he couldn’t wait any longer.  He’d wait there if he had to, until she was free.  Damnit, if he had to, he would wait all night until she came into the office in the morning.  He would wait as long as it took until she would see him.  Listen to him.  

Heart pounding, he knocked on Marlena’s door.  It was unlikely there was a patient with her if Hillary wasn’t keeping guard.  He waited but there was no answer from the other side.  He knocked again and waited.  But still, her office remained silent.  

He tried the door handle and found it locked.

Confused, he looked at his watch.  It was definitely still early.  Half-past three.  He wondered where she could be.  Somewhere else in the hospital, consulting on a case?  

He turned around and saw Hillary returning to her desk with a coffee in her hand.

“Mr. Black.”  She looked surprised to see him.

“Hey Hillary,” he smiled uncertainly.  “Dr. Evans.  Is she working today?”

“Um, she finished early.  She said she had some errands to run.”  Hillary was pretty sure, after all the frantic phone-calls from Detective Bo Brady, that it wasn’t errands that her boss was seeing to, but she wasn’t about to tell Mr. Black that.  Dr. Marlena Evans had a spectacularly interesting and dramatic personal life, but Hilary had kept her job for a long time because she was discreet and knew when to keep her mouth shut.  This definitely qualified as one of those occasions.

That didn’t, of course, mean she that didn’t keep notes.  One of these days she was going to write a book that would blow people’s minds.

“Any idea exactly what kind of errands?” John asked.  “I mean, where she might have gone?”

Hillary shook her head innocently.  “Sorry.  Have you tried calling her on her cell phone?  I mean, I could page her if it’s really urgent.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”  John shook his head.  He was sure he could find her.  He’d just start with the usual places.  The pub would be a good starting point.  If all else failed, he would have to go back to the penthouse and wait for her there.  “I’ll catch up with her later.  Thanks Hillary.”

Hillary watched her boss’s ex walk away.  There was something in his bearing that told Hillary that he sensed that there was drama ahead.  Hillary shook her head, her curly auburn hair bouncing against her shoulders.  Oh boy, if she was right, it would be more like fireworks than simple drama.

~  

Marlena sat on the wooden bench and looked out over the water.  She pulled her coat closer around her, it was still cold, despite the spring weather.  She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting here.  She wasn’t even sure what she’d been thinking.  

Well, yes, she did know.  The same thoughts that chased themselves through her head all day, every day.  

Bo vs John.  John vs Bo.

Bo was here, John wasn’t.  John had hurt her, Bo hadn’t.  Bo was great in bed.  John was even better in bed.   Bo loved her, John… well, once she would have bet everything she owned on the fact that John Black would love her to eternity and back.  But now?

Could she be happy with Bo?  Should she even be thinking about a future with him?  The rational psychiatrist part of her knew it was crazy to even be thinking like this.  How could she think about the future when the present was such a god-almighty mess?  But the potential of what might happen in the future would dictate the choices she made in the present, so these were questions she had to ask herself.  Weren’t they?

Laura seemed so sure that John would come back eventually.  But even if he did, would she ever be able to trust him again?  And was she willing to wait around for him once again?  Was she going to sacrifice the comfort, pleasure and laughter Bo could offer her for long, cold, empty nights waiting for a man that might never come to his senses?

Laura wanted her to stop and think.  To work through her pain.  To make an informed decision.  But she didn’t have time for that.  Because of her own carelessness, her family knew exactly what she’d been doing and with whom.  On the other hand, Bo was making it clear what he wanted and now she knew his heart was involved, she had to be doubly sure of her choices.

She knew what her family wanted.  She knew what Bo wanted.  She even knew what Laura wanted.  The only question was, what did she want?

Taking a deep breath, she dug around in her purse for her phone.  Scrolling through her contacts, she found Bo’s name and pressed the call button.

~  

“John!”  Vivian Alamain called after her nephew as he walked through Salem Place.  “John Black.”

John grimaced and considered pretending that he hadn’t heard Vivian, but her piercing voice continued to follow him, and he was forced to slow his walk to a stop.

“Aunt Vivian,” he turned around, a forced smile plastered on his face.  “Nice to see you.  How have you been?”

“Annoyed,” Vivian regarded him closely.  “You know Stefano went to Europe without me?”

“I did know, yes.” John raised one eyebrow in patented ‘John Black’ fashion.  He really had no idea what was going on between his aunt and Stefano DiMera but he was relieved that Stefano seemed to have dropped whatever nefarious scheme he had for Vivian while he pursued Princess Gina’s doppelganger around Europe.  “To be honest, you’ve had a lucky escape there, Vivian.”

“Mmmmmm.”  Her lips twitched.  It wasn’t Stefano she wanted to talk about, not directly, anyway.  “I wanted to talk to you about some business matters.  I went to ask Marlena how to get in touch with you and she was quite rude to me.”

“Uh.”  John frowned.  “Marlena and I… we kinda split up before I went to Europe.  It’s all a big mistake,” he hastened to add.  “It’s temporary.  I just need to talk to her.”

“Well… if you’re looking for her, you might want to ask Bo Brady.” Vivian gave him a smile that was a little too bright and had a slightly malicious edge to it.

“Bo?”  John was confused.  Why would Bo know where Marlena was?

“I believe he just might know where she is, that’s all.”  Vivian patted John on the arm and turned to the ever-present Ivan Marais, who was lurking in his usual creepy and obsequious fashion.  “Come Ivan,” and then to John, “it was lovely to see you, John.  I will call you and we can talk about those business matters.”

John nodded as he watched her go, still confused, both by the conversation and why Vivian should be so insistent that Bo might know where Marlena was.

~

Carrie sat at the table in the pub and looked at her phone.  She had composed the first version of the text message half an hour ago, but she had deleted it and rewritten it three times since.

“Oh, for God’s sake, just send it already!” Sami huffed.  

“I don’t want her to get the wrong…” Carrie sighed.  “But at the same time, I want to make sure she can’t ignore it.”  She deleted the message again and then sighed, throwing the phone on the table.  “Why is this so hard?”

“Because she’s supposed to be the adult?” Sami suggested, swinging her long blonde hair over her shoulder and playing with it.  

“Because we all love her,” Eric slapped Sami lightly on the arm.  “Because some of us are really good at making things worse, rather than better.”

“Speak for yourself,” Sami turned to her twin with a withering look.

“Actually, I am.” Eric cocked a sardonic eyebrow, reminiscent of his one-time father.  “But let’s be frank.  You, sister of mine, are the queen of making things worse.”

“You brat!” Sami squealed with laughter and battered her brother with both hands.

“Will you two shut up!”  Carrie had a headache.  One moment her twin siblings were treating this situation with all the seriousness it deserved but the next they were like this.  She didn’t even really know whether they were both on-board with the approach she and Kim had outlined.

They said they were, but she didn’t really trust them.  At least Sami.  Sami was liable to go off half-cocked and do the complete opposite of what they had agreed.  It wasn’t as though she could script Sami’s input, she just had to trust that her sister would keep her counsel and not make this chaotic, the way only Samantha Brady could.

She and Kim had met with Sami and Eric the previous evening at Tuscany (the pre-scene of the crime) and Carrie had broken it gently to her brother and sister that their mother was currently having carnal relations with their uncle.

Eric had winced and said he already knew.  He had accidentally walked in on them this morning and they weren’t exactly behaving like brother and sister(-in-law).  Carrie had gone pale and asked what he meant but he’d just remarked that if Detective Bo Brady was looking for perps, he wasn’t going to find them down Marlena’s throat.

Sami, on the other hand, had just shrugged and said she was glad that her mother had found a good man at long last, and that Uncle Bo was a helluva better choice than John Black.

“Okay, okay!”  Eric held up his hands, realizing that Carrie was really stressed about the prospect of confronting Marlena.  He’d already done it once and he figured it probably couldn’t go any worse.  But then again, Sami ‘Hurricane’ Brady was here so it probably could.  “Why don’t you just get it over and done with Carrie?  She’s probably going to read it all wrong anyway so just send it and get her here.  The sooner she gets here, the sooner we can say what we gotta say.”

Carrie nodded, let out a labored breath and tapped a message into her phone.

Marlena, I really need to talk to you.  I know about you and Bo.  I saw you the other night at the Penthouse.  Please come to the pub as soon as you can.  Carrie.

Finding Kim’s eyes, she waited for Kim to nod.  When she did, Carrie nodded back, took a deep breath and pressed the send button.

~

John jumped down onto the pier where Bo’s boat was moored and looked at it askance.  This had been his last stop on his way out of Salem.  He had collected Greta and then he had come here and invited Hope to leave Salem and all her loved ones, including her fiancé and her son.  And she had laughed and told him she couldn’t be more delighted and then she had walked away from this boat without a backward glance.

Vivian seemed convinced that Bo might know where Marlena was, but John was not sure that Bo would want to see his face, let alone tell him anything about Marlena’s whereabouts.  In fact, Bo would be well within his rights to clock John the moment he saw him.

But, if he wanted to find his wife then he had to follow the leads, and this was the best one he had right now.  He had already called the station to check whether Bo was at work, but he’d been told Detective Brady was not working today.  So, since this had been the last place he’d seen Bo, he had thought he’d start here.

John climbed carefully up onto the boat and moved across to the hatch that led down to the interior of the boat.

“Bo?” he called out, not wanting to surprise his friend.  If his one-time brother was going to punch his lights out, then he should probably do it for the right reasons, not just because John had snuck up on him unawares.

There was no answer, so he rapped sharply and called out Bo’s name again.  There was still no answer, so he tried the hatch, and to his surprise, he found it unlocked.  He wasn’t to know that Bo had left the boat this morning, so frustrated and distracted that he had forgotten to lock up.

John climbed down into the cabin of the boat and said Bo’s name for a third time, already sure that Bo wasn’t here.

Deciding to do a cursory once over of the boat, in case there was some clue as to Marlena’s whereabouts, as per Vivian’s suggestion, he walked into the bedroom.  

It was empty, but as he was turning to leave, something stopped him.  Later, he couldn’t have said what it was that made him stop and look twice.  Had he already seen it, or had her fragrance been lingering so subtly that it only registered in his subconscious as he stirred the air when he turned around?

Whatever it was, he stopped, and it caught his eye.

The it was a puddle of black satin and lace, half hidden by the crumpled bedclothes,

John swallowed, his throat suddenly tight and sticky.  He reached out and touched the garment, like it was a snake, rearing and ready to bite.

He fingered the fabric.  It was possible that Hope had one of these.  It was possible, but Hope was in Europe.

Maybe Bo was missing Hope, he reasoned.  Maybe, like John, he reached for the things that had touched the skin of the woman he loved, holding them close, as though touching the clothing that had embraced her body was the next best thing to touching her.  Maybe Bo brought those confections of silk and satin and lace to his nose and breathed in the scent of the woman he loved.

Except this didn’t smell like Hope.

This negligee, just like the one Marlena had worn for him, maybe six months ago, this negligee smelt totally and utterly of Marlena.

~

Marlena felt her phone vibrate in her purse, indicating that she’d received a text message.  She thought for a moment about ignoring it, but she reasoned it might be Bo and there might be a problem, so she had better read it.

She fished the phone out of the depths of her navy purse and opened the text messages.  She was greeted by Carrie’s name and with misgivings, she pressed the button to open the message.

One sentence in particular jumped out at her, and she reddened as she read it, her heart pounding.  

I know about you and Bo.  I saw you the other night at the Penthouse.

The last time she and Bo had been at the penthouse together was the night that they had come home early from Tuscany.   The night they had made love several times in a rather graphic and noisy fashion.

All of a sudden, it all fell into place.  The girls’ absence the next morning; Carrie’s sullenness and avoidance of her.

“Oh shit.”  She looked around and then looked at her watch.  She couldn’t be in two places at once.  She could either meet Bo as she’d arranged, or she could go and find Carrie.

She held the phone in her hand, metaphorically weighing her options.

Finally deciding, she switched off the phone, tucked it into the pocket of her coat and continued towards the Salem Inn.

~

Vivian Alamain watched from behind tortoise-shell rimmed sunglasses, a delighted smile on her face.  She didn’t have to wait long, as it was only a little more than ten minutes before Bo Brady turned up, looking furtive as he walked across the square towards the Inn.

“Follow him, Ivan,” Vivian instructed her man Friday.  “See if you can find out what room he’s going to.  But don’t,” she waggled her finger, “let him see you.”

“Yes Madame.” Ivan bowed his head and scampered across the square in pursuit of Detective Bo Brady.  He had no feelings one way or the other about what he was doing.  He only existed to serve his Madame and anything she asked him to do was neither moral or amoral.  It just was.

He pushed through the front door of the hotel and located Bo who was approaching the desk.  Ivan ducked behind a potted palm tree and listened.

“A friend said they’d leave a room number for me.” Bo said to the clerk behind the desk.  “Name’s Brady.”  

Marlena had wanted to meet somewhere where there was no risk of anyone bursting in on them.  Nothing was going to happen, she said, but she didn’t want anyone to misconstrue their meeting.  And she wanted to be able to talk to him, without interruption.

She had said she would book a room at the Inn where they could talk and that she would leave the room number for him at the desk.  He’d suggested using a fake name, but she had laughed and said that was ridiculous, they had nothing to hide.  They weren’t doing anything wrong, after all and they wouldn’t be doing anything but talking.

Bo had agreed with that, but it was a half-hearted “Uh-hmmm,” not a full throated, “Of course we won’t be, Marlena.”  He knew as well as she did that when they were together in a room, alone, there was only one way it would end.  He wondered if she was trying to fool herself that it was otherwise, or whether she was just giving lip service to such a crazy idea.

“Of course sir, Room 337.”  He handed Bo a key card and Bo turned and headed for an elevator.  

Ivan slithered easily from his place behind the potted palm and left the hotel, a triumphant smile on his face.

~

Shane quietly entered the busy pub, the tinkle of the brass bell lost in the general noise and bustle of the late afternoon clientele.  He stepped to one side and surveyed the room.  Shawn Brady was behind the bar, as usual, polishing glasses.  

Lisa, the waitress, was carrying a tray of coffees and Shane’s eyes followed her to where Kimberly sat with her mother and with Carrie.  They sat in a huddle, their heads down, conferring about something they clearly thought deeply important.  

Almost as if she could sense his presence, Kim lifted her head from her conversation and looked him straight in the eye.

He gave her a faltering smile and lifted his hand in a gesture that was half wave, half shrug.

“Shane?” Her voice was uncertain and a little curious as he neared their table.

“Hey Kimmy,” he said softly.  “Good to see you.”

“Uncle Shane!” Carrie slid her chair away from the table and got up to hug him.  “What are you doing here?  I didn’t know you were in Salem.”

“I uh, I’m here with the ISA,” Shane’s heart sank as Kimberly looked away, her luminous green eyes clouding at his words.  “Um, I was looking for Bo actually.”

“Bo’s not here.”  Caroline was quite aware of her daughter’s discomfort at the presence of her ex, but she also couldn’t imagine what Shane would want with Bo, unless it was to do with Hope and her increasingly bizarre behavior.  “What did you want with him?”

“I uh,” Shane was not sure what, if anything, he should say about John’s revelations, about the chip or about Hope’s transformation into Princess Gina Von Amberg.  “John has made us aware of some information regarding Hope.  We’re hoping that Bo might be able to shed some light on where Hope might be heading next.”

“Wouldn’t John know where?  I mean he’s with her.” Carrie pulled out a chair and indicated that Shane should sit down at the table with them.  Shawn left his place behind the bar and came to stand behind his wife, tea towel slung over his shoulder.

“No, John’s back in Salem,” Shane shook his head.  “Hope has disappeared with Greta and Lilli Faversham.  We’re trying to locate her now.”

“John’s back in Salem?” Kimberly asked.  Her tone was seemingly casual, but Shane didn’t miss the glances between Kimberly and her mother upon his mention of John’s location.

“Yes.” Shane nodded slowly, aware of the sudden tension generated by the information he had just imparted.  “Is there a problem?”

“Could be,” Kimberly bit her lower lip.  “Yeah, definitely could be.”

“I don’t understand,” Shane looked from Kimberly to Carrie who had paled and who was looking at her grandmother, obviously waiting for some kind of reassurance.

“It’s Marlena.”  Caroline sighed.  “She and Bo are… we’ll they’ve been…” her voice faltered, unable to say it out loud.

“They’ve been what?” Shane was confused.  

“They’ve been at it like rabbits, apparently.”  Sami’s voice came from behind him.  Shane turned his head, a little too sharply to find Sami and her brother standing behind him.  Sami gave him a smile which invited him to challenge her.

“Sami!”  Shawn Brady admonished his granddaughter angrily.  

“What?” Shane thought he must have misheard Sami, although her smile said everything.  “I thought you said-”

“You heard right,” Sami said gleefully.  “My mom and Uncle Bo are having wild, hot monkey sex.  With any luck, John will find them and walk in on them.  It would serve him right if he did.”

“Sami!” Carrie’s eyes were bright with pain and embarrassment.  Both with Sami’s obtuseness and the prospect of such an occurrence.   “You can’t mean that.”

“Oh, I mean it.”  Sami crossed her arms and smirked.  “It’s about time John Black knew what it feels like to see the woman he loves in someone else’s arms.”

“Sami, that’s enough!”  Shawn had had about enough of his granddaughter.  When Caroline had filled him in last night about the latest ridiculous drama in his family, it had just about blown his mind.  All the unspoken concern, tension and anger that had been swirling between the women-folk in his family suddenly made sense but the actual news that Bo and Marlena had embarked on some kind of secret … well, he couldn’t call it an affair as neither of them was married or even in a committed relationship any longer… but whatever it was, it didn’t feel right, and it didn’t make any sense to him.  

Marlena was like a daughter to him and Caroline, and John had been like a son for almost thirteen years.  Heck, for five of those years, they had thought him a son.  Hope herself had been part of their family for almost as long as Marlena had.  And here now was Marlena, taking up with another Brady brother.  With John and Hope nowhere to be seen, seemingly having abandoned the people that loved them so much.  He couldn’t understand any of it.  So, he had just promised to follow Caroline’s lead and hope that they could all find a way out of this mess.  But he wasn’t about to stand for Sami creating more drama

“Granpa I-” Sami looked shocked at the rebuke from her grandfather.

“I mean it Samantha, I don’t want to hear any more, so I don’t.”  Shawn was so angry, he was shaking.  “John Black is a good man.  I don’t understand why any of this has happened, but we need to do our best to help all of them.  This thing is a mess, so it is.  And we don’t need you making it any worse.”

Sami blinked in surprise.  She was used to being reprimanded by Carrie and her grandmother but to hear it from her grandfather had stopped her in her tracks.

“Carrie, I think you should call Marlena, dear.” Caroline said softly.  “She should know that John is back.”  

Carrie nodded and looked at the phone in her hands.  Then, pushing several buttons, she put it to her ear.  After a moment, she shook her head.  “It’s going straight to voicemail,” she exhaled.  “Let me try Uncle Bo.”  A moment later, she frowned.  He was also not answering his phone.

“This can’t be good.” Eric voiced the thought that they were all thinking.  “What if John finds them together?  He’s going to completely lose his shit.”

“Oh no,” Kimberly said, shaking her head.  “Oh, no, no, no.”

~

John sat down heavily on the bed, staring at the black lingerie in his hands.  His brain couldn’t parse it.  It didn’t make any sense.  What would Marlena’s negligee be doing on Bo’s boat?  Had Marlena lent Hope this?  No, that couldn’t be.  Hope was in Europe.

If you’re looking for her, you might want to ask Bo Brady.

Vivian’s words and her cunning, greedy smile came back to him, and he shook his head as though to dislodge the idea that was starting to germinate there.

“Nooo…” He tightened his fist around the fabric.  He couldn’t…. 

Marlena wouldn’t.  Marlena, his beautiful, loyal Marlena who had been so patient and steadfast.  Marlena who had waited years for him to come to his senses.  Marlena, who you took for granted, a little voice spoke inside his head.  Marlena who watched you walk out of the Penthouse and out of Salem without so much as a backward glance.   

Still, she wouldn’t.  She had never so much as even looked at Bo twice.  Not in that way, anyway.  But you’ve seen Bo look at her like that.  When he thought no-one was looking, he’s definitely looked at her like that.  

The times he had caught Bo, his gaze lingering a fraction too long, he had found it mildly amusing.  After all, Marlena was spectacularly beautiful, and he couldn’t fault any red-blooded man for looking twice and appreciating everything she had to offer.  

He had never thought Bo an actual threat.  

But then Marlena had been with him, and then with Roman.  Bo had been with Hope, then Carly, Billie and then Hope again.  But John had taken Hope with him, and they had exited stage-left.  They had left their heart-broken lovers in their wake, like so much flotsam.

What if Marlena had turned to Bo?

John shook his head.  No, she wouldn’t have.  Marlena’s heart belonged to him.  It had always belonged to him; from the moment she had shaken his hand that day in Shenanigans. Despite Roman’s return, despite Sami, Kristen, Stefano, and even the Devil himself, Marlena had always had eyes for only one person.

But the whisper of satin between his fingers told a different story.

John shut his eyes and raised his countenance to the roof of the cabin.  An image materialized behind his closed eyelids.  Marlena, sinfully beautiful, the soft slopes and curves of her body barely covered by the transparent lace and sinuous satin.  Marlena, her hands in Bo’s hair, kissing Bo’s lips.  Bo sliding the straps off her shoulders, kissing the light dusting of golden freckles that she hated but that John loved so much.

John shook his head, trying to rid himself of the tortuous image.  With a growl, he stuffed the garment into the pocket of his jacket and ran his fingers through his dark, wiry hair.  He had to get out of here, he suddenly felt like he was suffocating.

As he pushed himself from the bed, he happened to glance to his left and he saw the handcuffs dangling from the fender hook attached to the wall.  

“What the hell?!” His voiced was muffled in the constricting space of the cabin.  He was even more confused now.  Handcuffs?   What kind of sick game was Bo playing here?  He swallowed, his heart pounding, his head swimming with thoughts and images that were confusing, disturbing and distressing.  

He remembered Marlena had asked him once, many years ago, if he would tie her up.  He had responded viscerally.  He hadn’t known why at the time; he hadn’t been aware of the torture he had been through at the hands of Stefano DiMera.  He had just known he hadn’t wanted to do it.  He loved Marlena, he cherished her, and he hadn’t wanted to do anything that would, in any way, compromise her safety and comfort.  She had had smiled sweetly and told him it was fine, and she had never mentioned it again.  Sometimes, sure, he liked to take control, pin her hands above her head with his own and she certainly seemed to like that.  But handcuffs?  He couldn’t imagine… he didn’t want to imagine that she might enjoy that.  

No, this was all Bo.  

If Bo had hurt Marlena in any way, John thought, he was going to kill him. 

Feeling sick, John turned away from the harsh metal contraption and made his way back through the boat.  

He was on the deck when his phone vibrated in his pocket.  Pulling it out, he saw that he had a text message from an unknown number.

Room 337, Salem Inn.  You might just find what you are looking for.

His heart pounded as he tried to make sense of the jumble of words in front of him.  Find what he was looking for?  

He recalled his encounter with Vivian in Salem Place.  Where he had told her he was looking for Marlena and where she alluded to the fact that he might find her with Bo.

Room 337, Salem Inn.  This smelt like Vivian.  He didn’t know what she had to gain by this, but he also knew he couldn’t ignore the text.  

A muscle in his jaw twitched and jumped as he jammed the phone into his jeans pocket and jumped off the boat onto the pier.

~ 

Bo took a deep breath as he stood outside room 337.  When she’d called earlier, Marlena had just asked him to meet her, but she hadn’t given him any indication as to where her thoughts were at.  She had promised him at the hospital that she wasn’t going anywhere, but that was before she’d talked to Laura.  Talking to another shrink was just as likely to have induced another volte-face.  He wasn’t sure how much more he could take of her mercurial moods and her constant changes of heart. 

But then, what was the alternative?  He walked away?  Turned his back on her?  That wasn’t a realistic option.  She needed him and he needed her just as much.

Steeling himself for an argument, he knocked at the door.  When there was no answer, he took his key card and slipped it into the slot above the door handle.

“Hello?” He slipped inside the room and closed the door behind him.

“I’ll be out in a minute.”  Marlena’s voice came from the bathroom.  

For a moment, Bo had the mad, wild thought that she was going to come out in some sexy, flowing silky number and she was going to suggest they skip the talking and just get to the action.  

But disappointingly, she came out of the bathroom still dressed in the smart navy suit that she had been wearing earlier in the day.  In fact, it looked impossibly impeccable, as though she hadn’t worked two-thirds of a day and had half a fumble in the relative’s lounge.  Her make-up and hair were still perfect, and he desperately wanted to mess all of it up.  He imagined her tousled and breathless on the bed between them, and he unconsciously clenched his fist, trying to control himself.

He understood that she wore her flawlessness as a kind of armor.  It was the perfectionist part of her, the part that you had to crack before you saw all the messy imperfection beneath.  Before you saw her depth and her very humanness.  That was the Marlena he craved, not this controlled, professional, sensible Marlena.

“Hi,” she smiled cautiously at him, unaware of the thoughts that roiled beneath his placid exterior.  “Are you okay?”

“Are you?” he asked, pointedly.

“Me?”  She was nervous, he could tell.  

“C’mon Marlena.  Laura?  I was there, remember?” He lifts the corner of his mouth in a half-smile, but it turned into a gesture of concern and reproach.  Her face remained impassive, and it broke him, just a little bit.  “You can’t keep shutting me out.  I can’t live half-way in and half-way out the door.”

Marlena’s eyelashes fluttered and she closed her eyes, trying to find her composure again.  Trust Bo to cut to the chase.  To unmoor her just as she was beginning to find her equilibrium.

“That’s not what this started out as,” she reminded him, her own fists curled up by her sides.

Bo shrugged.  She wasn’t wrong.  But things moved on.  Feelings developed when it wasn’t intended.  Those things happened and to pretend otherwise was pointless.  “It’s what it is now,” he said simply.

“Laura thinks I need therapy.”  Her voice was almost nonchalant as she walked to the water jug and poured herself a glass of water, her back to Bo.  It was as though she were chatting about the weather.   “She says I’ve been through a lot, and I haven’t dealt with half of it.  She thinks I should sort through everything and then make a decision about the future.”

“The future?”  Bo pursed his lips and jammed his hands in his pockets.  He was damned if he was going to let her be so off-hand.  “You mean, make a decision about you and me.”

Marlena turned around, her hazel eyes luminous.

“What do you think?” he asked her.  He ignored her look of discomfort as he shed his jacket, throwing it on the chair behind him.

 “Carrie texted me,” she avoided answering his question, he noted.  Classic Marlena tactic, changing the subject.  “She said she wants to see me.  And she said she saw us at the Penthouse the other night.”  Again, her tone was marvelously unaffected and even, as though she was talking about a movie she had seen last night, rather than the devastating event of her daughter walking in on her having sex with her ex-brother-in-law

Bo said nothing, his mind going back to the marathon they’d had in the Penthouse living room after they’d escaped Tuscany.

“Oh shit,” he said finally.  “That’s probably why she called me just before.  I ignored her call.  We have to sort this out between us before we talk to any of them.”

“Yes, we do.”  She took a mouthful of the water and then put the glass down.   “So now Eric knows, Kim knows, and Carrie knows.”

“Mom knows too,” he added sheepishly.

“Your mother knows?” That was enough to rattle her, and her fragile composure started to disintegrate.  She turned away from him again, looking slightly nauseous.  “How?”

“Um, you’re going to really hate this,” he screwed up his face as he tried to think of the best way to break it to her.  “She kinda… walked on us in the bathroom at Tuscany.”

“She what?” Marlena spun back around, impaling Bo with a glare that made him take a step backwards.  “Tuscany?”  She could still taste the desperation she felt that night.  Denied the release of sex, for what had felt like weeks, she had let him push her up against the wall.  She had let him push himself inside her.  She had more than let him, she had encouraged it.  And she had loved every moment of it.

“Yeah.”  Bo nodded.  He felt slightly ashamed, both that his mother had been subject to that and that he hadn’t told Marlena as soon as he’d found out.  “She told me the next morning.  When I tried to sneak into the pub at five am.”

“You don’t think that maybe you ought to have, oh I don’t know, told me that she knows?”  Marlena demanded scathingly.  She thought back to her conversation with Caroline the previous morning, Caroline’s obvious concern and the look on her face when she had seen the bruising on Marlena’s wrists.  “Oh, god!”  She covered her eyes with her hand.  She couldn’t believe this was happening.  It seemed like the only person who didn’t know what was going on, was Samantha.  Although, it was inevitable that she knew by now.

“Listen,” Bo felt a bit like he was taking his life in his hands as he stepped towards Marlena and put his hands gently on her shoulders.  Catching her amber eyes with his, he cocked his head on one side.  She was trying to look angry, but he could see past that to the scared and confused center of her.  But she was listening to him and that was something.  “You’ve been worried about what would happen if they found out.  Well, they know now.  We can’t avoid that scenario by not being together anymore.  We have to deal with the fall-out.  If you wanna go and tell them this was all a big mistake, then… I can’t stop you.”  He stroked a finger down her cheek.  “But I don’t think it’s a big mistake.”

“Bo,” she sighed, lifting her hand to his and wrapping her fingers around his wrist.  “This is so complicated.  I know you… have feelings for me… and that was never supposed to be what this was about.” She pulled his hand away from her face and walked across the room, trying to put some space between them.

“No, but you can’t turn feelings on and off like a faucet, remember?” Bo’s lips twitched into a small smile.  “I know it wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did.  I don’t think either of us planned this out in great detail, Marlena.  It just felt good and then, for me, it felt even better.”

“And what happens when it doesn’t feel good anymore?” Marlena asked, her voice cracking.  “If I end up hurting you?  Because Bo, that’s what I do.”

“That’s bullshit,” Bo shot back.  

“Roman died because I broke his heart.”  Marlena let the tears fall.  She was tired of holding them back.  She was tired of being strong and stoic and so goddamn perfect.

“Roman left because he wasn’t man enough to let you walk away and be happy with someone else.  He died because the ISA put him in a dangerous situation, and he let them.” Bo crossed the room and gathered her into his arms.  “That is not your fault.  That is not on you.”

“And what about you, Bo?” she looked up at him, the light glimmering on the trails of moisture on her cheeks.  “Could you let me walk away?  If there was an explanation for John and Hope’s behavior?  If they came home, what would happen then?”

Bo didn’t say anything, just searched her face. 

“Laura thinks John is going to come home and he’s going to have an explanation for the way they left, and she thinks I’m going to go back to him.”  Marlena was shaking.  She wasn’t sure why, whether it was her desperation for Laura’s words to be true or whether it was Bo’s proximity, the warmth of his skin against hers, the thoroughly masculine scent of him.

“I don’t know,” Bo murmured, staring into her eyes, mesmerized by the color shift in them from brown to green as she became aroused.  “But I’m willing to take the risk of that happening.”

“Bo-” She wanted to push him away… no, she didn’t want to.  She felt like she should push him away, but she found herself just gazing up at him.  Concentrating on the way his arms felt around her. 

“Are you going to make yourself unhappy, just so you can save them a bit of discomfort?” Bo murmured.  “They won’t even be happy.  Because it’s done.  We did it.  We can’t go back.”

“We could stop doing it?”  Her cheeks were red.  She didn’t know any more.  Bo’s words were convincing, but they were just words.  Like Laura’s words.  Like all the words she had said over and over again, her whole career long.  

Words didn’t change feelings.  Words didn’t ameliorate actions.  Words could wound and they could start to heal but words couldn’t change emotions.  They could shape them or describe them.  They could dissipate them, moving a person from one emotional state to another.   But they couldn’t fundamentally alter the emotion itself.  Anger was still anger; joy was still joy.  Confusion, still confusion.

They had the power to explain the past and sometimes change the future.  But in the absolute present, words could not change the way she felt right now.  And the way she felt was lost, hurt and confused. 

“Bo, I just don’t know where I am, one day to the next.  I’m a mess.  I’m hurting and I’m angry and I’m trying to forget all of it, but I can’t.  It keeps coming back.  It intrudes when I least expect it.  I see his face when I should be seeing yours and I hate it and I hate myself for it.”  Her brow creased, her distress finally breaking over her face, like a wave on the shore.  “I’m confusing myself and I’m confusing you and that’s not fair.”

“You’ve been through a lot,” Bo said gently.  “I know that.  And I’m trying to be patient.”  He gently touched her hair, curling a strand of it around his fingers.  “I know you still love him.  I know you’re always going to love him.  I know you’ve been hurt really bad, and I know there are no guarantees.  I know John and Hope could come home and I know it could be really messy.”  He sighed.  He didn’t even want to contemplate it, if he was honest.  That was a level of convolution he wasn’t sure he could handle.  “But in the meantime, maybe we could make each other, if not happy, then at least we can bring each other some comfort?”  He slid his hand underneath her hair, curling it around the back of her neck where it was warm and smelt like magic.  “Marlena, I just want to be with you.  It’s that simple.  It doesn’t have to be as complicated as you’re making it.”

Marlena lifted her hand and touched her fingertips to his forehead, tracing the fine lines there.  He was so open, so earnest.  She had loved him for more years than she cared to remember, and she was tired of fighting him when he was just offering her a small taste of happiness.  She was tired of being told by everyone that feeling good was wrong.  That she should marinate in the misery that John had left in his wake.  Maybe snatching little fragments of joy was not ideal, but maybe it was enough for now.

She searched his face for a long moment.  Bo thought maybe he couldn’t breathe, like all the air had gone out of the room while she debated with herself.  And then, “Alright,” she nodded finally.  “I can’t promise you the future… but I can give you right now.  If that’s enough?”

“That’s all I’m asking for,” he bent his head and gently kissed her.

Marlena slid her arms around his neck, surrendering herself to the kiss, her resistance to him, to what was happening between them finally melting away.

What the future might hold was unknown, unwritten but she could embrace the present and live in and for the moment.  And her family would have to deal with it.

~

John strode into the lobby of the Salem in, his fists clenched and his jaw tight with anger.

He looked at the front desk but then disregarded it, knowing they wouldn’t give him any information about who was in Room 337, citing privacy policies or whatever other bullshit they wanted to come up with.

He’d have to find another way.  

His nostrils flared as he made his way to the elevator and stabbed at the up button.  After a moment, the doors of the elevator slid smoothly open, and he stepped inside.  It seemed to take an eternity to arrive at the third floor and when he did, he stepped out and looked around him.  The service elevator was just down the hallway and outside it was a housekeeping cart.  John walked casually past it and pocketed a keycard which he figured was probably configured to open most the rooms on this floor.  He made a mental note to have a word with the management of the Inn, this was careless at the least and he thought they probably needed a security overhaul.  

And then, walking back past the elevator he had just exited, he headed towards Room 337.

Part Dix-Huit

I can see you starin’, honey
Like he’s just your understudy
Like you’d get your knuckles bloody for me
Second, third, and hundredth chances
Balancin’ on breaking branches
Those eyes add insult to injury

I think I’ve seen this film before
And I didn’t like the ending
I’m not your problem anymore
So who am I offending now?
You were my crown
Now I’m in exile seein’ you out
I think I’ve seen this film before
So I’m leavin’ out the side door

Exile – Taylor Swift

“Bo,” Marlena said breathlessly as Bo kissed his way down her neck.  “I um… I think we should go and speak to the family.”

“Yeah,” Bo undid the top button of her jacket for the second time that day.  “We should.  Sure.”  He found her lips again, soft and warm.  He had no intention of going anywhere.

He continued to kiss her as he slowly undid the remaining buttons of her jacket.

“Bo,” she murmured, against his mouth again her hands on his waist, clutching at his belt, looped through the stiff denim of his jeans.  

“Mmmmm?” He pushed the wool blend navy jacket off her shoulders and dropped his lips to her neck before he kissed his way across her collarbone, to where the straps of her periwinkle blue camisole and bra lay against her golden skin.

“I uh…” she let go of Bo so that he could push the jacket down her arms.  “We, um…. Carrie?”

“Carrie can wait,” Bo maneuvered her towards the bed.  “I can’t.”

She felt the rough fabric of the bed covers against the back of her legs and Bo’s hand in the small of her back.  She felt his lips on hers and his tongue, insistent and searching inside her mouth.  

“I’ve been waiting for this since lunch-time,” his hand threaded through her hair, cradling the back of her head and then he was pushing her and she was falling onto the bed, him on top of her.  She gasped and then laughed.  

That laugh cracked Bo in two.  It was deep and throaty and so, so sexy.

“God, I want you!” He attacked her mouth his hand desperately pulling the satin camisole out from the waistband of her skirt and then burrowing under it, finding the soft, warm skin of her stomach and then the lush, yielding swell of her breasts.

Marlena kicked off her shoes and squirmed beneath him as his lips and hands unerringly found her sweet spots one by one.  Her lips, her jaw, her throat, her nipple.  His hand left her breast and hitched her skirt up as he inserted his thigh between hers.  And then his hand was sliding between satin and skin again, brushing, flicking, pinching and she was moaning and crying out against his mouth, his cheek, his hair.

~

John was standing outside the room, debating whether he should knock or just burst in when he heard Marlena.  He heard her cry out, and rage descended like a curtain of white fire.

Taking the key card, he inserted it in the slot and flung the door open.  

Bo was on the bed, Marlena pinned beneath him.  Bo’s hands were on her, under her clothes, in her hair.   

John’s anger condensed into a pinpoint spear of fury as he laid his hands on Bo’s shoulders and bodily pulled him off Marlena.

“Get the FUCK OFF MY WIFE!”  

He didn’t give Bo a moment to recover, he was still staggering back towards the open door when John’s fist came flying out of nowhere and connected with his face.

“JOHN!”  Marlena’s scream came from somewhere behind him, but John barely heard it in the maelstrom of white noise that had invaded his head.

“She’s not your wife.” Bo lifted the back of his hand to his mouth which was throbbing from the impact with John’s hand.  A smear of blood came away as he wiped it.

“FUCK YOU!” John’s fist flew again and this time it landed further to the side and closer to Bo’s eye.  A third punch pummeled Bo in the jaw and he rocked back, his head ricocheting off the door which bounced against the wall.

“JOHN, STOP!!” John was dimly aware of Marlena’s hands on his arm, dragging it down as he went to hit Bo again.  He wanted to hit him hard but Marlena’s weight on his arm made it impossible.

“STOP!” She repeated and it was the sound of her sobbing that pierced the veil of rage that had fallen over him.

“He was on top of you Doc, he was…”  He shook his head, trying to get the visual out of his head.  It was even worse than his imagination had conjured.  “I couldn’t let him hurt you.”

“John, he wasn’t going to hurt me.”  Marlena ducked under his arm and stood in front of him, one hand still on his arm, the other palm against his chest.  Her expression was incredulous.  “What you walked in on was entirely consensual, John.  Bo would no more force a woman than you would.”

“Yeah, she wants to be with me,” Bo sneered, wiping his throbbing mouth again.  He wasn’t about to let John get away with his thinly veiled accusation.  Not after what he’d done.   “What the hell are you doing here anyway?  You’re the only one that’s hurt her here.”

“You sonofa-” John launched himself at Bo, drawing another shriek from Marlena as he pushed her aside.  “I’m gonna kill you!”  He grabbed handfuls of Bo’s shirt in his fists and slammed him back against the door.  Bo vented his own fury, pushing back at John, trying to get his arm and fist free enough to take aim at his one-time friend and brother.  He managed a fist to John’s jaw, but it was moderated by John’s arm which still held him against the door and John’s head rocked back for a moment but the only real effect it had was to inflame his outrage.

“STOP!”  Marlena’s voice was anguished as John’s hands found their way upwards to wrap around Bo’s throat.

“Stay out of this Marlena!” John snarled, his only focus on obliterating Bo.

“John, stop!” She sobbed, pulling at his arm.  “Don’t hurt him!  Please don’t do this.”

John said nothing but let go of Bo with one hand to push her away.  Bo took the opportunity to shove him backwards and in the melee that followed, Marlena found herself overbalancing and landing heavily, sprawling on the floor with a shocked gasp.    

“Marlena!”  Bo was the first one to see her and shoved John away, hurrying to where Marlena was easing herself up, gingerly rubbing her wrist.  “Honey, are you okay?” he crouched down and touched his fingers to her face.

John stood back, shaken.  Appalled at the fact that he had caused her to fall and at war with himself over Bo’s tender concern for Marlena and the use of such an intimate term of endearment.  As much as he wanted to believe that this wasn’t Marlena’s choice, all the evidence was converging to prove entirely the opposite.

He watched her rub her wrist and winced as he saw the yellowing bruising and the chafing.  Putting his hand out, he groped blindly for the wall as he watched Bo help her to her feet.  He didn’t hear what was being said, his eyes just drank in Marlena, and for the first time since he’d burst into the room, he really saw her.  Saw how pale she was, how slender and fragile she looked.

“What are you doing here?” Bo demanded again, rousing him out of his dazed reverie.  He had stepped in front of Marlena, as if to protect her and John was stunned.  Surely neither of them thought he would hurt Doc?  “You walked out on her.  You have no right to barge in here throwing your weight around.”

“Bo.” Marlena put a gentle hand on Bo’s arm and looked around his arm, up at his furious face.  Her hip ached and her wrist throbbed, but she put them out of her mind as she focused on Bo’s battered face, his split lip and his rapidly swelling eye.  She had to get the two men separated before they lost their tempers again and one of them did a real injury to the other.

“There’s a lot that you don’t know, Bo.”  John growled.  He didn’t feel the need to explain himself to Bo Brady, of all people.  not after what he’d just walked in on.  The only person he was interested in talking to, was his…  Dammit Bo was right, she wasn’t legally his wife, but she was, in his heart.  He had married her back in 1986 and despite Isabella and Kristen, his heart had never really let go of those vows.  She was the only woman he wanted; or would ever want.

“Yeah well, there’s a lot you don’t know.”  Bo spat back.

“Don’t push me, little brother,” John said, pointedly, his voice low and threatening as he took a step towards Bo.  “You really need to get out of here right now, so I can talk to my w… to Marlena.”

“You really are an asshole,” Bo extricated himself from Marlena’s hold and stepped forward to meet John, nose to nose.  “If you think I’m leaving you alone here with her, you have another thing coming.”

“I’m warning you, Brady,” John shoved Bo backwards.  “Stay out of this.”

“Can’t do that,” Bo’s lips curled into a contemptuous smile.  “Whether you like it or not, I’m right in the middle of this.”

“Bo!” Marlena was exasperated now.  Bo was goading John and while John was doing his best to keep his cool after his initial explosion, she could see he was skating close to the edge.   She needed to get one of them out of here and she knew that the chances of John going and leaving her alone here with Bo were about a trillion to one.   “Bo, honey, you need to go.  Let me talk to John.”

Bo turned to look at her, his expression crumbling from a disdainful bravado to concern and fear.  “I don’t want to leave you alone with him,” he said, his voice low.  

She caught his hands in hers.   “He’s not going to hurt me.  John would never hurt me.”  She said it gently, softly so that John could barely catch what she said.  “Please trust me.  Go to the pub.  I’ll come and find you when I’m done here, okay?”

His brow creased into deep furrows, betraying his uneasiness at her request.  He knew as well as she did that John wouldn’t hurt her.  Not physically anyway.  But that wasn’t his concern.  His concern was her emotional state and what John was going to say to fracture that even further.  His concern was that John would say something that would turn everything that had happened in the past few weeks on its head.

Part of him already knew that he was losing her.  But he was damned if he was going to make it easy for John to swoop in here and take her back.

“Please, Bo?” She held her palm to his cheek, her thumb brushing the congealing blood on his lip.  “It’ll be better this way.”  She flexed her calf muscles, propelling herself onto her tiptoes and then she pressed a soft kiss to his bruised lips.

Bo sighed and nodded.  Marlena’s gaze flicked to John who was glowering at the pair of them.  She narrowed her eyes momentarily and then limped across to where Bo’s jacket lay across the back of the armchair.  “I‘ll be there as soon as I can,” she handed him the jacket.  Bo nodded and then looked at John.  Seeing that John was watching them, he took the opportunity to kiss Marlena again, both hands cradling her face, putting all his feelings for her into the kiss, trying to remind her of what they had just agreed and what she stood to lose.

“See you soon,” he told her giving her a small, pained smile.  And then he was gone.

Marlena watched him walk down the hall and then took a deep breath.  Closing the door, she turned around and leaned against the cherry wood panels.

She regarded John for a long moment.  He just stared back at her, his face impassive.  She’d always been able to discern what he’d been thinking but now he was like a stranger to her.

“How dare you,” she challenged him, her voice low, each word enunciated with pinpoint clarity.  But although her words were underpinned by anger, there was a coldness to them that chilled him.  “What gives you the right to burst in here and throw your fists around like some kind of possessive neanderthal?”

“I-”  He wanted to say the fact that he loved her gave him the right.  He loved her now, he had always loved her, and he would love her until the stars faded into oblivion.  But he knew even that didn’t give him the right to invade her privacy like this.  She had told him to go, and he had walked away.  He had no right to anything when it came to her.

“Why are you here?” she demanded of him.  “And how did you know I was here?”  Her hip had started to ache again, and she flinched as she tried to find a comfortable position in which to stand.  Realizing that there wasn’t one, she hobbled to the armchair.

“Doc, you’re hurt,” John rushed forward to try and help her, but she stopped and held her hands up, her golden eyes flashing angrily.

“No thanks.”  She reached the armchair and lowered herself into it gingerly.  The air was cool around her shoulders, and she suddenly felt vulnerable, half-undressed in front of the man she loved.  The man that had broken her heart.  “Could you pass me my jacket, please?”

John picked the crumpled garment off the floor.  Any other time and he would have curled it around her shoulders, helping her into it before he kissed a tender kiss to her forehead.  But now he just handed it to her.  She said nothing but shrugged it on and buttoned it up.

“I asked you question.”  She looked up at him.  “How did you know that I was here?”

“Vivian Alamain.”  He shrugged.   He wasn’t going to explain all the details.  It was probably just enough to say Vivian’s name.   “I believe you upset her recently.”

“Ah.”  Marlena nodded and looked down at her hands.  Seeing the remnants of the bruising, she pulled the sleeves of her jacket down over her wrists.  The gesture was not lost on John.

“You also asked why I’m here,” he said carefully.  

“I did.”  Her words were clipped and precise.  They were sharp, like razor blades.  They were designed to be defenses that he would not be given permission to slip behind.  He knew her so well.  But he had never before been on the exterior when this side of her came into play.

Maybe once.  Once when they had acted out of love and desperation.  Once when they had crossed a line they couldn’t walk back.

But even then, her coldness had been tempered with the white-hot fire of the passion that she had kept barely controlled.  And sometimes, hadn’t.

But this, this Marlena was ice and barbed wire.  She didn’t have to say anything to him for him to feel the walls she had constructed in his absence.

“Doc, while I was in Europe-”

“I didn’t ask what happened while you were in Europe,” her words had a sharp steel edge.  Her hands were tight around the arms of the chair she sat in.  He could see the effort it was taking her to stay calm and focused.  “I asked what you were doing here.”

“I needed to see you.”  He said quietly.  “I need to explain.  I need to apologize.”

“I don’t need or want to hear your explanations,” Marlena replied curtly.  The truth was, she couldn’t let herself hear them.  She didn’t trust herself to stand strong in the face of his reasons and his pleas.   Laura was right.  He would break her, and she would go back to him.  That was what she did.  

Being in the same room as him was enough to make her pulse race and her head swim.  And she couldn’t let herself go down that same path again.  She couldn’t open herself up to that kind of hope.  Someone had once said, it’s the hope that kills you.  And in this case, she knew it was true.  She would let herself trust him again, she would lose herself in the elation of loving him, the overwhelming rush of dopamine and oxytocin.  And then, at some point, he would destroy her all over again.  

Her heart couldn’t take that.  Not again.

“If you want to apologize, then I’ll accept it with as much grace as I am able.”  She turned her wrist to look at her watch.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get to the pub.”  She pushed herself out of the chair and picked up her purse from the top of the chest of drawers.  She looked around for her shoes and saw one half-under the bed.

“No, Doc, you need to listen to me.” John caught her arm, trying to transmit the urgency of his message through his touch.

“You don’t get to tell me what I need to do,” she rasped angrily, pulling herself out of his grip.  “I said we were over, and you left, John.  You have no say in my life any longer.”

“Marlena.  Honey.”  His brow furrowed between his eyes.  “Please.  Something happened in Europe.  I have to… it explains my behavior.  It wasn’t me doing those things.  Well not the me I am now.  Not the real me.”

“I don’t want to hear it, John.”  She threw her purse angrily on the bed.  “You left.  You’ve been away for weeks.  You show absolutely no interest in the children, in me and then, when I’ve moved on, you suddenly turn up here again with some kind of ‘reason’, some kind of explanation.  There’s always a reason, isn’t there?  Always something to explain away your stupidity, your blindness, your contempt.”  She bent over to fish her shoes out from under the bed.  “Well, I don’t care.  I’m moving on.  I thought that’s what you were doing with Hope in Europe, so I suggest you go back to her and get on with it.”

“You’re moving on with Bo?” John asked incredulously.  He couldn’t believe she meant it.  He couldn’t believe she’d turned to Bo of all people, and he couldn’t believe that she seriously thought that there was a future in what was obviously a quick and distracting roll in the hay.  “Seriously, Doc?”

“Bo is a good man,” she slipped her feet into her shoes, not meeting John’s eyes.  “He’s been there for me when you weren’t.”

“Marlena, Bo loves Hope,” John reminded her.  “They belong together, just like we do.”

“I used to think that” Marlena shrugged, looking up at him now.   His blue eyes were glacial lakes that she had always loved getting lost in.  Now they felt like danger.  Like they would draw her in and trap her beneath their icy surface and suffocate her.  She turned away, unable to risk being drawn in by his gaze for more than a moment of breathless bewilderment.  “And then you and Hope walked out on us, and I discovered there was an alternative to being ignored, being taken for granted.  Bo makes me feel good.  He cares about me.”

“You don’t love him, Doc,” John shook his head, refusing to believe her coldness was symptomatic of how she really felt.  He knew her too well.  He knew she couldn’t stop loving him any more than he could stop loving her.  Bo was just a passing fancy, a way to fill her empty nights.  “You can’t be serious about this.”

“I am deadly serious.”  She glared at him.  “I’m with Bo now, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from us.”

~

Caroline was the first to see Bo as he lurched into the pub.  She was out of her seat and at his side almost before the rest of the family knew what was happening.  

His eye was almost swollen shut, and he could only smile with one corner of his mouth.

“Should see the other guy.”  He croaked as he let Caroline help him across the pub to the table where the family were still congregated, and he dropped down into a chair that Shawn had pulled up to what were now two tables placed together. 

“I assume the other guy was John?” Shane commented dryly.

“Shane, hey man,” Bo nodded at his ex-brother-in-law.  “Um, guess the family has been filling you in.  You knew John was back in Salem?” he looked at Carrie curiously through his one good eye.  “Was that why you called?”

“Yeah,” Carrie nodded looking alternately discomforted and worried.  “Shane came looking for you and told us he was back in town.  I was trying to find you or Marlena so that I could warn you.  But um,” she cringed as she looked at Bo’s battered countenance.  “I’m guessing he found the two of you together?”

Bo sighed and took the ice-pack that Caroline handed him and pressed it against his eye.  “Yeah.  He wasn’t thrilled, to say the least.”

“Oh, Bo.”  Caroline shook her head as she sank down into the seat next to her son.  

“I know, Mom.  You warned me.  I wouldn’t listen.”  He shrugged. “The thing is, though, I’m not sorry.” He gave her a lovestruck smile, or as much of a smile as he could manage with his mangled mouth.  “About any of it.”

“Where is Mom now?” Sami demanded.  “Please don’t tell me you left her there with John?”

“Sorry Sami, yeah I did.”  Bo grimaced.  “Believe me, I didn’t want to, but she was insistent.  I think she was afraid we’d kill each other.  I didn’t want her to get stuck in the middle of it.  She already took one spill, and I didn’t want to risk her getting really hurt.”

He had argued with himself all the way back to the pub, turning several times and starting back towards the Inn but each time he had revisited her pleas for him to leave and to trust her.  And he knew he had to.  The more he tried to interfere, the more she would resent him.  He had to just let her do whatever it was she needed to do.

She had asked him, less than an hour ago, whether he would be able to let her walk away, should it come to it.

He wanted to think that he could.  John was her past and he was her present, but the future was in her hands.  But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to fight to convince her that he was the right choice for that future, if it came to it.

“Mom fell?”  Eric spoke for the first time, and he looked angry and upset.  “What?  How?  Is she okay?”

“John and I were at each other’s throats.  Your Mom tried to intervene, and I don’t really know what happened but next thing I saw, she was on the floor.  But yeah, she was okay.  Just shaken up.”

“And you left her there?  With that animal?” Sami was beside herself.

“Sami, right now, he’s not my favorite person in the world,” Bo touched his fingers to where his mouth was tight with congealed blood. “But even I know that John would never hurt Marlena.  Not physically, anyway.”

“John would never hurt her in any way, not if he was in full possession of himself.”  Kim clarified.  She was surer than ever that there was some explanation for John and Hope’s bizarre behavior and that assurance had only increased with Shane’s appearance.  While she had been initially disappointed that he wasn’t here to see her, after seeing his reaction to the news about Bo and Marlena, she had started to think that maybe it was a positive development.  If the ISA were involved, then there was something serious going on.  Hope’s disappearance had to be part of it, but the strange changes in personality exhibited by both John and Hope surely also had to factor in somehow.   

“Well, you all might trust him, but I don’t!”  Sami turned, her blue eyes flashing.  “Where are they?  I’m gonna go and make sure she’s okay.”

“No Sami girl,” Shawn interrupted.  “You let your mother and John sort this out between them.”

“But Granpa-”

 “No buts Samantha!” Shawn shook his head and he put his hand on his grand-daughter’s shoulder.  “You let your mother do what she needs to do.”

“But he might hurt her!”  The words sounded false and hollow to her own ears and even she didn’t believe them.  As much as she hated John, and she did hate him (although deep down she loved him too, and that was really confusing and something she hated to think about, so hardly ever did), she knew he would never lay a finger on her mother.  He worshipped the ground she walked on and again, if Sami was honest, she didn’t understand why he had left Salem so abruptly.  Not when he finally had what he’d wanted for all those years.  Anyway, the idea he would hurt Marlena was absolutely absurd, so she held her hands up and nodded with a frown.  “All right, all right.  He won’t hurt her.  But he might convince her to give him another chance.  Do we really want that?”

“Yes!” Carrie and Kim responded in unison.

“Sorry Bo,” Kimberly reached over and squeezed Bo’s hand.  “But you know it’s inevitable.  They belong together.”

“No, I don’t know that!” Bo threw off Kimberly’s hand and pushed his chair away from the table, suddenly feeling like an outcast in his own family.  “I don’t know that.  John broke her heart.  I’ve been trying to help her put it back together.  I don’t want to see him break her all over again.”

“Bo,” Caroline said softly.

“No Ma,” he pushed himself up from his chair and threw the damp cloth on the table.  “I don’t want to hear it.  I know you warned me, and I know this is exactly what you said was going to happen, but I can’t help it.  I can’t help what I feel.”  He didn’t wait for her reply but went across to the bar and slipped behind it.  He pulled a bottle of whisky off the shelf and unscrewed the cap.  “Anyone else want one?” he turned his head and grimaced as his skin pulled tightly across the swelling flesh around his eye socket.

“Sure,” Shawn nodded.  “Bring it over here, son.  Lisa, get us some glasses.”

Bo poured himself a large helping and gulped it down, thinking of Marlena in the boat the other night.  Then he poured himself another large shot before he took the bottle and put it on the table.  Lisa followed with a tray full of glasses, but Bo didn’t wait to see who else partook of the whiskey.  Instead, he took his glass and went and found another table at the back of the pub.  A table where he could be alone with his thoughts.  And his fears.

~

“Doc, I’m not gonna let you just walk out of here,” John skirted around her as she turned for the door so that he was between her and the doorway.  “Please, just hear me out.  If you still want to go after I’ve said what I need to say, then… I won’t stop you.”

“John,” she sighed wearily.  “Please, just let me go.”

“It was a chip, Doc,” he put his hands out, curling them around the top of her arms so that she was forced to look at him.  “I had some kind of computer microchip implanted in the base of my brain.  I was mugged in Berlin and the hospital found it when they did a scan.  They think it had been working its way loose for a while.  But I think Stefano put it there and I think he’s been using it to control me.  I think that’s why I was behaving so unlike myself before…” he tried to smile but it came out all wrong and he cringed when he saw the flash of anger in Marlena’s eyes.  “Well, you know.”

“Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?” Marlena hit him in the chest with her purse and then stepped back, pulling herself from his loose grip.  “A computer chip?  In your brain?”  As she said it, a little flutter inside her head made her stop for a moment.

“..they did an autopsy … some sort of computer chip implanted in his brainstem”

She frowned.  Who had said that to her recently?

Shaking it off, (she didn’t want to think too closely about anything that might corroborate John’s ridiculous narrative), she continued.  “You could at least try and come up with something vaguely plausible.”

“It’s true Marlena,” he assured her, his voice low and intense.  “I think that Hope has one of those chips too and I think it’s turned her into Princess Gina.  At a guess, it’s how Stefano controlled her back in the day, how he made her do those things she did when she was Gina.  But when she knew I was onto her, she fled.  The ISA is trying to track her down now.  They’re also investigating the chip.  You can ask Shane, he’s here.”

“Shane’s here?” Her certainty that this was all an enormous ploy on John’s part was suddenly punctured.  If Shane was in Salem, there must be some truth to this crazy story.

“He’s here.  In fact, he’s probably,” he looked at his watch, “at the pub right now.  We could go and talk to him if you like?”

Marlena said nothing, just looked at him.  Looked at the face that she had loved for more years than she wanted to count.  The face that had whispered so many sweet words on the pillow next to her.  The face that had smiled and cried at their wedding.  The face that had saved her from Stefano and from Satan (although weren’t they almost one and the same?). The face that had made love to Kristen in the wine cellar of the DiMera Mansion while Marlena had been so desperately in love with him.  The face that had been oblivious to the depth of her feelings for so many months even when he had been face to face with her every day.  The face that had run after his past instead of walking into his future, by her side.  The face that had turned away from her and left Salem, holding Hope’s hand.

“I don’t think so,” she shook her head.  Her own expression was impassive.  Even if he could decipher the depth of emotion in her eyes, she was damned if she was going to let him read it all over her face.  “I told you, I don’t want to know the reasons.  They don’t interest me.  You abandoned me when I was faced with one of the most devastating events of my life.  I thought we were going to lose our daughter.  And you just turned and walked away from us.”

“Marlena, you threw me out.” John reminded her gently.

“And what a perfect opportunity for you to prove that you really did care.  To stick around, for Sami.  To just be there.  For her.  For us.  But you didn’t, did you?”  Her nose twitched and her mouth trembled.  “You couldn’t wait to waltz off into the sunset with Hope Williams or Gina von Amberg or whomever she feels like being this week.”

“I didn’t…” he shook his head.  She could see the anguish on his face.  But she’d seen him in pain before.  It hadn’t stopped him making stupid decisions.  It hadn’t stopped him from hurting her.  “I wasn’t in full control of my faculties Marlena; you have to believe me.  I would never have left Salem if I’d been… me.”

“I have to believe you?  Why?”  She laughed then but it was a frigid, broken laugh, one that held shards of ice between the high, ringing peals.  “Because you say so?”

“Because I need you to believe that I never meant to hurt you.”  He rolled his hand into a fist.  He desperately needed her to believe him.  The thought of watching her carry on her life in Bo Brady’s arms was anathema.  He couldn’t watch her with another man again.  He’d done that once and it had almost killed him.  “That I have spent the last couple of weeks deeply regretting what I did and trying to work out how I can make it up to you.”

“The last couple of weeks?”  She smiled and shook her head sadly.  “John…”  She didn’t even know what to say to him.  There was so much she could say but ultimately, it was all pointless.  She couldn’t do this again.  She couldn’t bare her heart for him.  She wouldn’t take that kind of risk again.

“I need to go.”  Her voice was cold and hard again and John blinked.  For a moment, he had though her softening.  He had seen a flicker in her eyes.  She’d wanted to believe him.  Maybe part of her did believe him.  And then it was as though the shutters had come down again and the light behind her eyes had disappeared.

“Doc-”

“Please don’t call me that.” She said quietly.  “Not anymore.”

She tried to push past him, but he shifted so that he was in her way again and put his hands on her shoulders and then cupped her face between his oversized palms.

“Please don’t do this.”  Her voice was steady, not betraying the pounding of her heart at the feel of his hands on her.  “You said that if I heard you out, you’d let me go.  Please, stay true to your word.  In this, at least.”

“Doc.”  He said it deliberately.  “Baby, I love you.  With all that I am.  Everything before, it was just a big mistake.  A big DiMera trick.  Please.”

“Let me go, John.”  She wouldn’t look into his eyes so he used his hands to lift her head so that he could capture her gaze with his.  So that he could see the smoldering amber that haunted his dreams.  She fought him at first and then, after a moment, gave up, meeting his eyes with a defiant, unrepentant stare.  Her jaw was set firmly, her nostrils flaring so minutely he could barely see the fractional movement as she breathed as steadily as she was able.

“Can’t do that Doc.”  He dipped his head and pressed a tiny kiss to her lips.  She didn’t respond and he tried again, brushing his lips gently across hers.  Still, she was immobile, and he feathered his lips against hers yet again.  She didn’t move a muscle.

“Are we done?” she asked as he finally pulled away, her expression curiously blank.  “Can I go now?”

John frowned, the skin between his eyes folding into furrows as all the pain he felt transformed his face.  He knew, on some level, he deserved this.  If he was honest with himself, this is why he hadn’t slept on the plane or at the loft.  Because he had known, deep down, that this time he had really and truly blown it.

Taking a deep breath, he nodded slowly and stepped aside, letting her walk from the room.  He turned on the ball of one foot and watched her go, all his hopes and dreams encapsulated in that one perfect human being who was just slipping through his fingers like so much mist.

Part Dix-Neuf

Clear blue water

High tide came and brought you in

And I could go on and on, on and on and I will

Skies grew darker

Currents swept you out again

And you were just gone and gone, gone and gone

In silent screams and wildest dreams

I never dreamed of this

This love is good, this love is bad

This love is alive back from the dead, oh-oh, oh

These hands had to let it go free, and

This love came back to me, oh-oh, oh

Oh-oh, oh, oh-oh, oh

This Love – Taylor Swift

Marlena sat alone, looking out over the water.  The sun was sinking now, down below the hill beyond the river.  The sky was a symphony of color; dusky pinks and corals bordered by gold which faded into an icy blue which gradually darkened into indigo.

Across the water, lights blinked on, one by one.  They glittered in the liquid darkness.  Beneath her feet, she could hear the lapping of the water around the piles of the pier.  Pier 29.  The place of homecomings, of truths revealed, of joy and heartache.

When she had left the hotel room, she had slipped backwards along the hallway and waited around the corner, knowing John would follow her as soon as he had regained his equilibrium.  She had waited for him to leave, which he had, almost sooner than she anticipated.  When he had disappeared down the stairs, she had slowly, with her awkward, pained gait, made her way to the elevator.

Outside the inn, she had prevaricated for a moment, not knowing where to go.  She wasn’t ready for the pub yet.  She wasn’t ready to face all those people.  She wasn’t ready to face Bo again.  She needed some time to digest what had just happened and the things that John had told her.

So, she had let her feet move without too much thought and she had found herself where she always did when she was lost.  A place where she had tried to find her way home, more than once.

The moment she had arrived here she had realized that she was a little disappointed that she was alone.  She berated herself for the thought, for the very real longing.  Part of her, she knew, wanted him to prove himself to her.  That their connection still existed.  that he would know her well enough to know that she would come here, and not go to the pub like she had told Bo.

But he wasn’t here.

“Marlena?”  The soft, familiar voice roused her from her thoughts, and she looked around to find Abe looking at her with curious sympathy.

“Oh, hi Abe.”  She wiped the tears from her cheeks with a graceful flick of her fingers.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.  How are you?”

“Never mind me, what’s wrong?” he pulled his trench coat closer around him and sat down on the bench next to her.

Marlena shook her head and looked away, erupting in a fresh bout of tears.  She didn’t deserve Abe’s sympathy.  She’d thoroughly messed everything up and she didn’t know how she was going to fix it.

“Hey, c’mon now,” Abe’s voice was like warm honey washing over her.  She felt his hand take hers, comforting and familiar and she dropped her head, her tears darkening the navy wool of her coat.  “It can’t be that bad.”

She shook her head, unable to say anything.  She felt so lost, so unable to put all her confused, painful feelings into words.

“Is this about you and Bo?” Abe asked when he realized she wasn’t going to offer anything in response.

Marlena lifted her head and looked at him, the surprise registering in her eyes.  “You know about me and Bo?”

“Marlena,” he smiled gently as he covered her hand with his so that he was holding her cold, delicate fingers between his warm palms.  “I knew the morning I came to tell you about Roman… about the guy we thought was Roman.”

Marlena’s forehead creased as she tried to make sense of what he was saying.  “You knew?”

“I could tell that there was something going on between the two of you.  Something more than Bo just coming to check on you.  You forget how long we’ve been friends.”  

“Oh.”  Her cheeks bloomed pink and Abe bit back a smile.  

“Bo acting like a lovesick teenager at the station over the past couple of weeks only confirmed it for me.”

Marlena’s blush deepened and she pulled her hand away from Abe, her embarrassment dictating that she couldn’t accept his kind sympathy.

“What must you think of me?” she whispered miserably.

“I think you’re my dear friend and you’ve been through a hell of a lot these last few years.”  Abe leant his elbows and forearms on his thighs and bent forward, trying to catch her eyes.  “Marlena, I’m not judging you.  I am worried about you though.”

Marlena’s eyes flicked to the water and then back to her hands which were now balled in her lap, her thumbs bent over cold white fingers.

“I was so lonely.  And so hurt,” she said after a long pause.  “I wanted him to fight for us.  For me.  But he didn’t.   And then Bo was there, and…. it just…. it just happened, Abe.  I didn’t mean for it to happen.  I wasn’t thinking about the future, about what everyone would think.  I just wanted it to stop hurting so much.”

Abe looked thoughtful and nodded slowly.

“And then it just snowballed.  I knew I should stop; we should stop but I just… I couldn’t.”  She shrugged and finally turned to look at Abe.  “And then people started finding out and Bo started having feelings and it suddenly got real messy, real fast.”

Still, Abe didn’t say anything, just looked at her with his intense chocolate eyes, waiting for her to continue.

“And then… John… came home.”  She finally said it, her words interspersed with sobs and hiccups.  “John came… and Vivian told him…. where we were….  And he found us, Abe.  He found us, together.”

“Oh Marlena,” Abe wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into him and cried into his coat.    

~

John entered the pub and took a quick visual sweep of it, looking for Marlena.  Looking for her golden hair, her graceful, slender figure.  Listening for her mellifluous voice.  Almost before he was done looking for her, he knew she wasn’t there.  He had the ability to sense her even as he walked into a room, to place her exactly in a crowd just by feeling her presence.  As there were invisible strands binding them together, threads which hummed and vibrated every time she moved or laughed or tossed her head just so.

She wasn’t here and he realized he had known she wouldn’t be the moment he’d left the Salem Inn.  

A few moments after she’d left the room, he had gathered his wits and raced after her, knowing he couldn’t just let her go without a fight.  He wouldn’t walk away this time.  If she needed him to prove himself, then he would do that.  If she needed him to say a particular combination of words, then he would keep talking until he found the string which unlocked a way behind those walls.  He would do whatever it took to win her back and he would keep doing it for as long as it took to convince her that he was not going to let her down again.  Even if that took forever.

But there had been no sign of her.  He had raced down the stairs, hoping to overtake her riding the elevator down but when he had reached the bottom, she was not there.  He had exited the inn and crossed the square and still there had been no trace of the woman he loved.  He had known, by the time he reached the pub that she had not come here.  If she had, he would have overtaken her, especially with the injury she had sustained in her fall in the hotel room.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”  Bo had seen John walk in, and a thousand things had gone through his head.  Where was Marlena?  What was John doing here when Marlena wasn’t?  She’d said she’d come and find him here.  Did that mean she’d changed her mind?  Had John come to break the news to him, that Marlena was choosing to go back to him?

It had been a moment before he had absolved himself of that thought.  Marlena might be a mess and she might be liable to do just about anything right now, but there was one thing she wasn’t, and that was a coward.  If she’d chosen John, she would be here to tell him herself. He had no doubt about that.  

Add to that, John’s eyes searching the room and the look of confusion and concern on his face told Bo that he had as little idea as Bo did where Marlena was.  

And Bo hadn’t been able to help himself.  

Nursing his whisky and a banging headache, he had been slowly working himself into a sullen rage, thinking about John busting into the hotel room and assuming that Bo was trying to force himself on Marlena.  As if he would.  

And then, he had seen John walk into the pub.  And that rage had propelled him out of his seat and into a confrontation with the man who had, until recently, been his friend but was now his adversary.  His competition.

John’s expression hardened as Bo emerged out of nowhere.  The last thing he wanted was Bo Brady getting in his face.  Being sanctimonious.  Boasting about how Marlena had ‘chosen’ him.  As if Marlena had ‘chosen’ him.    John didn’t know what the story was behind Bo and Marlena’s fling, but he would lay money on the fact that Marlena hadn’t ‘chosen’ anything.  She had been seduced into it or she had fallen into it when she had been hurting and fragile and vulnerable.  

“Back off Brady,” he growled.  “I’m looking for Marlena.”

“She’s not here,” Bo ‘s lip curled up contemptuously.  He was emboldened by the fact that Marlena had obviously left John without a resolution.  Or at least, not one he was happy with.  “Why don’t you give it up now man?  Go back to Europe.  Find your past.  Do whatever it is you need to do, just stay the hell away from us.”

“Us?”  John laughed scornfully.  “There is no us.  Marlena loves me, Bo.  Whatever this little thing is you’ve got going on here, it’s gonna be over as soon as she accepts the truth.”

Bo’s lips tightened, despite the pain it caused his bruised face and a muscle twitched madly in his jaw.  “You walked out on her.  You broke her heart.  I don’t care what you think the truth is, you don’t deserve her.”

“Oh, and you do?”  John knew he was stepping over a line, but he no longer cared.  Bo had destroyed whatever friendship they’d had the moment he had climbed into bed with the woman John loved.  “I bet this was what you wanted all along, wasn’t it?  I’ve seen the way you look at Marlena when you think no-one is looking.  I bet you would have helped Hope pack her bags if she’d asked.”

“You sonofabitch!”  Bo launched himself at John, his fist slamming into John’s jaw, sending him staggering backwards against an upright which bordered a booth.  A woman behind him shrieked as Bo dragged John back and sent the next shot straight into John’s gut.  John doubled over.

“BO!”  The scream came from behind him, and he couldn’t have said who it was, although he would have laid money on it being his mother.

“C’mon now!”  He felt his pop’s arms around him, pulling him back.  Shane was likewise restraining John who was now upright and struggling to take another pop at him.  “That’s enough from the pair of ye!”

John chuckled, his tongue snaking out to taste the blood on his lip.  “Looks like I hit a sore spot.”

That was enough to send Bo over the edge.  While he was conflicted about his feelings for Hope in the wake of her departure; the inference that he was happy to see her go was more than he could stand.  The pain exploded anew and with it, his fury.  He tore himself from Shawn’s grip and launched himself at John, sending both him, and Shane behind him, crashing back into the upright again.  

Pulling John off Shane who had been momentarily winded, Bo spun him around and wound his arm back to take aim at John again.  But John was quicker, and his fist connected with Bo’s face, followed by another to his midsection that sent him staggering backwards.  He crashed into a table behind him and toppled over, ending up face first on the floor. 

~

When Marlena’s crying had finally slowed to soft and intermittent hiccups, Abe found her chin with his fingers and lifted her head.  “When you say that John found you and Bo together, were you… you know…?”  He nodded, trying to put across his meaning without having to say the words.

“Oh, no.  Thank goodness.” Marlena’s eyes widened as she considered how much worse it might have been, had John been fifteen minutes later.  “No, we were… kissing.  But it was bad enough.”

“I assume John didn’t take it well?” Abe couldn’t imagine a universe in which John wouldn’t have had an absolute meltdown seeing Marlena in another man’s arms.  Let alone the arms of Bo Brady.

“Ahhh, no.”  Marlena managed a weak smile and shook her head.  “There were fists.  You can probably imagine.”

“I am sure I can.”  Abe exhaled and nodded.  “I can’t believe you left them to it though.  What happened?”

“I made Bo go to the pub.”  She thought about Carrie’s text message.  At least some of the family would be at the pub when John arrived in pursuit of her.  She only hoped they would be able to intervene between the two men better than she had been able to.  “John stayed to…” she looked away, her eyes searching the inky river again.  Like it would offer up some answers.  Like it could tell her what to do with her ridiculous, chaotic life.

“Stayed to what, Marlena?”  Abe’s heart ached for all of them.  He remembered another time when Marlena had been torn between a Brady and John Black.  He only hoped this didn’t end as disastrously for all of them.

“He had some crazy story about being mugged in Berlin and the doctors found that he had some kind of microchip device implanted in his brain.”  Abe could hear the pain in her laughter.  It had a sparkling sharp edge, and it made Abe wince.  

“It might not be such a crazy story,” he said carefully.

“What do you mean?” Marlena turned to him, suddenly looking warily alert.  “Do you know something?”

“All I know is that when we autopsied that guy who we thought was Roman, he had a chip implanted in his brainstem.”  Abe had told her this on the day he’d come over to her penthouse with the news that Roman (or notRoman) had been shot by Kate.  But he supposed she’d been in shock over the fact that the man was dead, and he hadn’t been Roman, not to mention distracted by the situation with Bo.  And then, of course, given subsequent events, it was understandable she had forgotten about this piece of, what had seemed at that time, unimportant information.  

“The doctors didn’t have any explanation, but if John had something similar in his head, it seems reasonable to assume DiMera had something to do with it.  Especially since it was Kristen who was responsible for bringing that guy to Salem.”

“Oh.”  Marlena searched his face.    There was no guile there, not that she expected there to be.  Abe was probably the most honest and uncomplicated person she knew, and if he told her something then it was going to be one hundred percent true.

“Did John say why he thought the purpose of the chip was?” Abraham raised his eyebrows.

Marlena exhaled a long breath, thinking through the implications of what she was about to say.  Both for her and John, as well as Bo and well, yes, even Hope.  “He said he thinks Stefano was using it to control his behavior.  He also said he thinks Hope has one too and that Stefano has used it to transform her into Gina again.”

“Do you believe him?” Abe knew that he did, even without talking to John.  It explained so much.  But it would be a bitter pill for Marlena to swallow if it was true.

Marlena said nothing.  She didn’t know what to say.  Did she believe him?  And if she did, was it because she wanted to believe him, and not because any of it was, in any way, plausible?

“Would it change things? If it was true, I mean?”  Abe asked and he saw the recognition of the importance of this question alight in her eyes.

Would it change things?  If John wasn’t responsible for walking out on her?  If his dismissal of her, of Sami, of their family, wasn’t something he had chosen?  If by some means, Stefano had made him sleepwalk through his life, and then actively walk away from it?

Would that simple fact reconstitute her shattered trust back into something whole and unspoiled?  

Somehow, she didn’t think so.  There had been fractures in the fragile bond between them before this had happened.  If there hadn’t been, she never would have accepted his behavior as a genuine act of his own free will.  The fact was, she didn’t trust him, and she hadn’t trusted him before all this happened.  At least not with her heart.

“I don’t know.”  Her voice was mournful as she looked out into the darkness.  “Abe, there’s so much more to this.  There are so many things from before that we never resolved.  From when I came back, from when I was with Roman.  From when he was with Kristen.  Our relationship… we never talked about the things that really mattered.  And now I’m afraid it’s too late.”

“You never had the opportunity to work through all those terrible things that happened to you both, did you?” Abe covered one of her hands with his and felt it relax slightly under his touch.

“Oh, we had the opportunity, we just chose to ignore it.” She gave a half-hearted laugh.  “We were intoxicated with love.  With being together.  It was heady.  I was so happy; I didn’t want to come down from cloud nine.  I thought it could wait.  But the thing is, when you put off tackling the problems, you never find the right time.  There’s always a reason not to do it.”  She looked regretfully down at where Abe’s hand covered hers.  He had always been there to comfort her when she needed it and she was so grateful for his unstinting friendship and his genuine willingness to take her as she was, and not judge her for her choices or her mistakes.

“So we didn’t.  And then we were getting married and then Roman was here and…” she sighed and shrugged.  “Well, here we are.  All the problems are still here.  And I’m not sure I can separate out what is John and what is Stefano’s mercenary and to be honest with you, I am not sure I want to.  Even if I accept that this wasn’t his choice and that he couldn’t fight this mind control or programming, or whatever it was… what’s to say that it won’t happen again?  Who’s to say Stefano won’t find some other way to control him?  And even if he doesn’t, how can I trust that he won’t do this of his own accord next time?”

“I don’t have the answer to those questions, Marlena.”  He wished he did, but he knew she was right to ask them, and to seek her own answers.  “But you know,” Abe thought back to her earlier comment about when she had come back.  When she had been with Roman.  “There’s something about all that you can learn from.  And not just that you need to confront some of the mistakes that you and John have made.  I remember we were here once before,” he reminded her.  “You were torn between two men you loved with all your heart, and you made a choice that you thought was best for everyone concerned.  But you didn’t listen to your heart, Marlena.”

“Abe, I loved Roman.”  She shook her head.  He was wrong.  She’d chosen the only option available, and she had loved Roman.  He was the father of her children and he had been taken away from them all. How could she not have loved him?

“You loved Roman.  You were in love with John.” Abe leaned his head to one side slightly.  “You saw how much pain Roman was in and you knew John had Isabella, so you sacrificed your needs.  Your love.  But you couldn’t keep it suppressed forever.”

“What are you saying, Abe?”  Her tear-filled eyes glittered darkly in the gathering gloom.

“I just don’t want to see you making the same mistake all over again.”  Abe said simply.  “You know I love both of them.  John is my best friend and Bo is like a little brother to me.  I don’t want to see anyone lose here.  But someone is going to.  One of them is going to be hurt, that’s inevitable.  But the pain for all of you will be much worse in the long run if you make the wrong choice now.”

“You obviously have an opinion as to which is the right choice.”  She wanted him to say it.  She needed someone to tell her what to do.  Whether she’d actually do it was another matter, but she wanted to hear his name come from Abe’s mouth.

“That’s not for me to say, Marlena.”  Abe knew she wanted to hear him say it, but he also knew she had to come to the decision herself.  Him telling her that her future was with John wouldn’t necessarily push her into John’s arms, in fact, if she wasn’t ready to hear it yet, it could have the opposite effect.  He had to just trust that given enough time, and enough patience and perseverance from John, they would find their way back to each other.

“Abe!”  Her frustration got the better of her and she threw off his hand and pushed herself up from the bench.

She immediately regretted the quick movement as her hip protested painfully and she sucked in a quick breath between her teeth.

“Marlena?” Abe was up at her side in an instant and could immediately see that she was favoring her right leg.  “Are you hurt?”

“I um…” she tried to put some weight on her leg, but the twinge was enough to make her yelp.  “Oh gosh, I was silly enough to try and get between John and Bo earlier and I ended up taking a fall… But I’m fine.  It’s nothing really.” 

“Do you think you should get it looked at?” Abe wondered how she’d thought she was going to get home by herself in this state.

“No,” she shook her head with a small, grateful smile.  “I don’t think I did any serious damage.  I think it’s going to be sore and stiff for the next couple of days but I’m tougher than you might think.  In that respect, anyway.”  She sighed.  “Abe, what am I going to do?”

“Right now, you’re going to get somewhere inside, somewhere that’s warm.”  Abe raised his eyebrows.  “And then, you’re going to take your time.  You don’t have to make any decisions right now.  Not tonight, not tomorrow.  It doesn’t matter how much pressure John or Bo puts on you.  This is your decision, and you need to make sure you get it right.”

Marlena smiled and nodded her head.  “Thanks Abe.”  She leaned over to him and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek.  “Thank you for being such a good friend.” 

“Always,” he smiled at her and then put out his arm so that she could lean on him.  “Now where are you going?”

~

 John stood panting as he watched Caroline and Kimberly rush to Bo’s aid.

“How could you?”  Carrie snapped at the man she had always considered a second father.  She had tears in her eyes as she regarded him.  

“He started it,” John said coldly, his eyes never leaving Bo.

“You started it.”  Carrie stomped over to where John stood, forcing him to stop watching the Brady’s flocking around Bo and to actually look at her. 

“I found him on top of my wife.” John’s words were quiet but laden with all the fury he felt.  He would never forgive Bo for this.  Never.

“She’s not your wife and you left her.  You left all of us when we needed you so badly.”  Carrie railed against him, her tiny fists pounding ineffectively against his chest.  “What was she supposed to do?”

“She was supposed to realize that I never would have walked out on her if I was acting of my own free will.” John caught Carrie’s wrists in his hands and studied her face as the tears dribbled down her cheeks.  She was so like Marlena in so many ways, even though she wasn’t biologically her child.  In her sensitivity and her compassion for others, she was so much more Marlena than she ever had been Roman or Anna.  He pulled her into his arms and looked around at Sami and Eric’s faces.  They were both angry and accusatory and he realized suddenly that Marlena wasn’t the only person he had hurt with his blasé and nonchalant departure from Salem.  He hadn’t just walked out on her.  He had walked out on all his children.  Sami had potentially been facing the death penalty for Franco Kelly’s murder and he had just, how did Marlena put it, waltzed off into the sunset with Hope.

No wonder they were furious with him.  He owed them just as much of an explanation and apology as he did Marlena.

“I’m so sorry.”  He directed this completely to Sami, even though he had Carrie still wrapped in his arms.  “I never should have left.  Sami, if I’d been in my right mind, I would have been here with you every step of the way.”

“But you weren’t, were you John?” Sami’s icy blue eyes flashed with all the hurt and anger she felt towards her one-time father figure.  “You weren’t here.  That guy who wasn’t even my dad was here.  But where were you?”

“I wasn’t…” John felt Carrie struggle in his arms, and he loosened his hold on her, allowing her to step back and look up at him with her accusatorial grey-green eyes.  “It’s hard to explain but I wasn’t completely in control of my actions when I left Salem.  And not for the few months before that.”

“Well, isn’t that convenient for you?”  Bo’s sarcasm was unexpected and unwelcome, and John’s expression hardened as it flickered across to where Kim and Caroline had helped Bo off the floor and seated him in a chair.

“No, actually.”  John’s nostrils flared as he spat the words in Bo’s direction.  “You really think I want any of this?  To have hurt Marlena?  To have hurt you kids?  I wish to hell none of it had happened.”

“How were you not in control?” Carrie asked, her voice shaking.  She really wanted to understand what John was saying.  What possible reason he could have for hurting Marlena so badly that she would behave so recklessly.

“I had some hardware wired into my head.”  John looked across to Shane who nodded in corroboration.  “I don’t know when or how but someone hooked some kind of microchip device into my brain.  My money is on Stefano DiMera and I’d also lay plenty of money on Hope also having one in her head.”  He looked across at Bo now.  The youngest Brady sibling looked as though he was trying to decide whether John was blatantly lying to save his own skin or whether he had just gone stark raving mad.  “That’s why Shane’s here.”  He looked across at Shane Donovan who nodded in corroboration. 

“I don’t know if any of you remember, but when they autopsied the guy who had been masquerading as Roman, the pathologist found a similar thing in his head,” Shane explained. “The techs who have studied the two devices have said the one in that guy was a more advanced version of what was in John’s head.  One theory is that Stefano has been using it to control the actions of John, Hope and the Roman doppelgänger.”

“I know it probably seems like small comfort when I wasn’t here when you needed me, but I really didn’t know what I was doing,” John gave Carrie a small smile.  It seemed like she might be the most open to hearing his truth than either Sami or Bo.

“It’s no comfort at all.”  Sami crossed her arms and tapped her foot against the wooden floorboards.  “I hope Mom didn’t buy this bullshit.”  

“Obviously not, or he wouldn’t be here without her,” Bo’s nose and mouth twitched.  “So, supposedly Hope has one of these ‘chips’ in her head and you’ve what, just left her over there in Europe?  Alone and at DiMera’s mercy?”

He’d thought he couldn’t despise John any more than he already did, but apparently, he’d been wrong in that regard.

“Hope’s not alone, she’s got Greta and Lilli Faversham.” John was dismissive of Bo’s concerns.  “But when the doctors discovered and removed the chip, Hope, or Gina, as I believe she is now, disappeared.  By the time I got out of the hospital, she was long gone.  The ISA is trying to trace her now.”

“You were in hospital?” Caroline spoke for the first time, concerned at this development.

“I got mugged in Berlin,” John nodded wearily.  It was purely adrenaline and his growing concern for Marlena that was keeping him upright.  “That’s when they found the chip.”  He turned to show them the stitched incision in his hairline.  He suddenly wondered why he hadn’t shown it to Marlena.  He supposed he had just hoped that she would believe him without needing any tangible proof.  He rubbed the wound and grimaced.  Everything was starting to hurt now.  He staggered backwards and Carrie reached out to catch his arm.

“Sit down,” she said, both her expression and her tone gentler now.

“I don’t believe any of this,” Sami looked across to her uncle who looked similarly distrustful.  “You’re such a liar.  Why should any of us believe anything you say?”

“I’m not lying Sami.”  John didn’t have it in him to argue this with Sami.  If he was going to persuade anyone, it had to be Marlena.  And he couldn’t do that if he didn’t know where she was.

“Sami, I wouldn’t be here if none of this was true,” Shane interjected.  He really felt for the Brady family and the turmoil they were going through right now.  He had been watching Kimberly closely since he had arrived, and he had seen how worried she was about both Bo and Marlena and now how torn she was between Bo and John.  It was obvious that Bo’s feelings for Marlena had gone well beyond friendship and John was as obsessive about the beautiful Dr. Evans as he had ever been.  Kimberly was right to be concerned.  And Roman’s children were reeling from all the disruption and uncertainty to their lives.  By all accounts they had created enough of their own chaos to at least need some stability from their parents and wider family.  But they were getting none of that.   “As much as I am sure you are angry at John, I really think you have to give him the benefit of the doubt here.”

“I don’t have to give him anything.” Sami was defiant.  She’d never let anybody tell her how she should feel about John, and she wasn’t about to start now.  As far as she was concerned, he’d proved he couldn’t be counted on.  He’d run out on them all when they had needed him, the same way he’d run out on Eric and Sami when her real dad came home from wherever Stefano had been keeping him captive.  The fact that Stefano might have had something to do with it was irrelevant.  When did Stefano not have anything to do with anything?  Her family’s dysfunction was marinated in Stefano’s malignant influence.  But that didn’t abdicate them from the responsibility for their actions.  Saying it was Stefano’s fault didn’t automatically erase all the pain and anguish their actions had caused.

“You hurt my mom and I don’t have to believe that you didn’t mean to or that you’re sorry about it.  As far as I can see, you’ve hurt her over and over again and this was just the last straw for her.  I’m glad she’s finally seen sense and dumped you.  Uncle Bo is a far better man that you’ll ever be, and he’ll take care of my mom, he won’t hurt her the way you have!”

“Sami’s right,” Bo pushed himself out of his chair and went over to stand beside his niece.  “Marlena is done with you.  You’ve hurt her one too many times, man.  Just let her go.  Let her be happy.”

“With you!?” John scoffed.  “You’re not man enough to love a woman like Marlena.  Roman couldn’t hold onto her and he was married to her, what makes you think you’ll be any different?  She’ll always come back to me.”  

John regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth.  They were true but they sounded arrogant and boastful even to his own ears and he saw them hit their intended target as Bo snarled and launched himself forward again.  

This time, the amalgamation of his head injury, the lack of sleep and Bo’s earlier assault all combined to dull his reactions and he found himself on the ground with Bo on top of him, pummeling him.  With a roar and a superhuman effort, he rolled Bo across the floor so that he was on top of the other man.  “I’m going to kill you, Brady, I swear to God!”

He raised his fist to punch Bo, but he felt himself being bodily lifted off Bo and he struggled in the grip of Shawn and Shane.  Once again, Bo was helped off the ground but this time it was by Eric and Carrie.

And then, across the pub which was now unusually silent for this time on a Friday evening, came the voice that froze them all in place.  The voice that was the cause of all of this and the only voice that had the power to bring any kind of resolution.  Marlena Evans, with Abraham Carver at her side.

“What on earth is going on here?”

Part Vingt

People like you always want back the love they gave away
And people like me wanna believe you when you say you’ve changed
The more I think about it now the less I know
All I know is that you drove us off the road

Stay
Hey, all you had to do was stay
Had me in the palm of your hand
Then why’d you have to go and lock me out when I let you in?
Stay
Hey, now you say you want it back
Now that it’s just too late
Well, could’ve been easy
All you had to do was stay

All You Had To Do Was Stay – Taylor Swift

Marlena didn’t even really know why she was asking.  She had walked in to find John provoking Bo, and his egotistical certainty that she would return to him had been painful even to her ears so she could hardly fault Bo for losing his cool.  Certainly not given what she had put him through the past few days.

Bo leaned heavily on Eric, his face bearing all the markings that John had inflicted back in the hotel room and more besides.  John, likewise, had swellings that were new to her eyes.  The doctor in her assessed each man with a quiet detachment and found nothing immediate to be concerned about beyond their obvious hostility towards each other.

She hated that she was the reason for that, but it was done, and she couldn’t undo it.  She didn’t think she could even try to fix it, not in her own fractured state.  The best she could do was try and manage the situation.  If she was even capable of that, and not just making things worse.

“Mom!”  Sami was at her side quickly, flinging her arms around her.  “You’re okay!”

Marlena hummed an assurance to Sami even while trying to hide her silent grimace at the pain that still plagued her.  “Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked with a shaky smile when Sami had released her.

“I was just worried,” Sami’s brilliant blue eyes examined Marlena’s face.

“I’m okay baby girl,” Marlena exhaled and shifted uneasily on her feet.  Abe surreptitiously took more of her weight and murmured that she should sit down.  She barely heard him as she looked from John to Bo and back again.  There were some few stragglers still lingering in the pub, curiously watching the unfolding drama, but most of the patrons had exited when the altercation between Bo and John had reached its peak.  Marlena ignored everyone except for the two men that she was balanced precariously between.

“I asked what was happening.”  Her accusatorial tone was directed at John.  “I asked you to stay away from us.  This family has already been through enough, don’t you think?”

“Doc, baby, we need to talk,” was all John could say in response.  The moment she had walked into the pub, it was as though everyone else had disappeared.  It was just her and him and the gulf between them.

“John… please…”  She couldn’t stop the way her heart lurched or the way her eyes filled with tears at the tenderness in his voice.  She couldn’t just let him slip behind her defenses with pretty endearments and the pull of that intoxicating cerulean stare of his.

“I think that’s your cue to leave, Black.”  Bo ground out the words through his aching jaw.  He was emboldened by her reference to an ‘us’.  She may have meant the family as a whole, but he was hoping for more.  He was hoping for less, for the reference to shrink and encircle just the two of them.

“I am not going anywhere.  Not before she hears me out.”  John didn’t look at Bo.  He couldn’t bear to.  And anyway, his eyes were only for Marlena.  He drank her in like a drowning man.  He couldn’t get enough of her.  It was only when he was away from her, when he was denied her, that he realized how desperately he needed her in his life.  She was his center, his moral compass.  She was his reason.  For everything.  He couldn’t let her go.  He’d never be able to let her go.

“John, I’ve already heard you,” Marlena clutched at Sami’s hand.  She needed the strength of her family to stand up to John.  

“You listened, but baby, you didn’t hear me.”  John dragged himself from the hands that held him in place.  He needed to get closer to her.  He needed to smell her, touch her.  He needed to make her understand.  “You don’t believe me, do you Marlena?”

“I heard you, John.  And I think I believe you.  I just don’t know that it makes much of a difference anymore.”  The sadness in her voice was crushing.  John turned around desperately to Shane.  

“Tell her Shane.  Tell her it’s all true.  The chip.”  He was begging, but he didn’t care.  She could think him weak.  They all could.  

“Hi Marlena,” Shane’s beautifully modulated English accent floated across the room.  “It’s really good to see you.  I wish it was under better circumstances.”  He gave her a cautiously sympathetic smile.  “What John is saying, is the truth.  He did have a chip in his head, just like the Roman replacement.  It is true.”

“And Stefano was controlling his actions?” her voice was tense and distant.

Shane paused before he answered, trying to work out how best to frame his answer.  “We don’t know the exact purpose of the chip.  The ISA is still running tests.  Trying to establish the purpose, but it’s a reasonable assumption given John’s description of the effects.”  He knew it wasn’t the answer John was hoping he would give but they had no definitive proof that there was anything in these chips which would cause their bearers to act in any certain way.  He wasn’t sure they would ever be able to establish that with certainty.

“So, we still only have John’s word that this chip was responsible for him and Hope leaving Salem,” Bo clarified with an ill-concealed snort.

“So help me God, Bo, if you don’t shut up…” John shot him a filthy look.

“What, you’ll hit me again?  You’ll try and kill me like you threatened before?”  Bo’s eyes flicked to Marlena.  She was pale and he could see only too well that she was struggling to keep herself together.  He sighed.  He couldn’t do this to her.  He wanted to wipe all John’s arrogance and smugness off his face, but he couldn’t make this any worse for Marlena than it already was.  “John, just go man.  Let Marlena be with her family.”

“Be with you, you mean?”  John’s tone was supposed to convey his disdain both for Bo and for the idea of Marlena being with him.  But somehow the scorn disappeared beneath the genuine anguish he felt.  

“No.”  Bo shook his head wearily.  “I meant her family.  In case it bypassed you, her family is here.  They’ve been here for her since you walked out on her.  She needs them.”

“I….”  John wanted to say that he needed them too.  That he was as alone as he’d ever been.  Marlena, and the family he had forged with her over the past eighteen months, was the center of his universe.  Without them, he didn’t know who he was, and he was completely adrift.  He needed her.  He needed his children.  Hell, he needed the children he shared with her and Roman Brady.  And he needed the Brady’s.  He needed that family, the one that had taken him to their breast and who had kept him there, even when he had been proved a cuckoo in their midst.  Even when he had betrayed them by taking Marlena to his bed.  They had never turned their backs on him.  He didn’t think he could bear it if they did now.

He took a step backwards as though he’d been physically struck.  Shawn gently caught him and nodded at Shane who pulled over a chair.  Shawn settled John down in the chair and went to pour another whiskey.  He handed it to John who swirled it around in the tumbler and then he walked across to Marlena.  

“Come and sit down darlin’,” he invited her across to the tables where the rest of the Brady party were either standing or seated.  Marlena looked uncertain but Abe squeezed her elbow, and she knew it was either sit down or leave. 

She studiously ignored both John and Bo’s eyes as she limped to the table.  She immediately saw Eric’s concern and she turned a sunny smile on him.  “It’s okay baby,” she said quietly.  “No real damage.”

“Who did it?” he asked, trying to gauge who it was he should be really pissed at.  Bo had been vague so either he didn’t know, or he thought might have been him.  He can’t imagine Bo would protect John in this situation if it had been John’s fault.  But then, he didn’t really expect an honest answer from his mother either.  She would protect both of these men from the judgement and righteous anger of their family. 

As expected, she wasn’t forthcoming, just shrugging.  “I don’t know.  Does it really matter?”

Eric sighed.  It mattered to him.  He was torn.  He wanted what was best for his mother, he just wanted to be sure what that was.  He wasn’t sure she was capable of making that decision.  But he also knew he couldn’t make it for her, so maybe in that way it didn’t matter.

“I love you,” he wrapped his arms around her.  He hated seeing her in so much pain, so uncertain.  It was one of the reasons he had stayed in Colorado so long.  He adored his mother; he was a mommy’s boy through and through.  He just found it so painful to see her so uncertain, so lonely.  Both he and Sami, he recognized now, had a real problem with seeing their mother as anything but completely together and perfect.  And that was as damaging for her as it was for them.   “I love you so much, Mom.  I’m so sorry for yesterday.”

“I’m sorry too baby,” she lifted her hand to his face and stroked it, looking into the hazel eyes that were so familiar.  She had spent the earliest part of her life staring into eyes just like those while she shared a crib with Samantha.  A crib at first, and then they would tumble into one or other of their twin beds and whisper in their unintelligible twin language, their cinnamon eyes crinkling at the corners with laughter and tears.  She still missed her sister every single hour of every single day, even after all these years, but it was such a comfort to see echoes of her in the twins, both in appearance and in gesture.  “I don’t mean to hurt any of you.  I am so very sorry that I have.”

She turned to Carrie, her voice soft and full of remorse.  “Honey, we need to talk but I don’t think this is the time or place.”

“It’s okay Marlena,” Carrie stepped forward, thinking of her resolutions in the wake of her conversation with Kim.  She certainly hadn’t expected John to materialize today, and she hadn’t really wanted Bo to be here, but in a way, it was just as important that she said this while they were both present.

“I want you to know how terribly sorry I am,” Marlena said softly.  “I can’t even…”

“It’s really not important.”  Carrie took Marlena’s shaking hands in hers.  “I was angry if I’m honest, but then I talked to Aunt Kim, and she made me see some things.”

Marlena said nothing.  She was unsure what Carrie was trying to say, so she just let her stepdaughter speak.  She was not about to put words in her mouth.  She’d had enough of John and Bo trying to do that to her, she wasn’t about to do it to anyone else.

“I think you think we’re all… angry at you… for what you did with Uncle Bo,” Carrie said, stilting at first.  And then slowly, she gained some assurance, some strength underlying her words.  “We’re here to tell you we… we love you.  We just love you, Marlena.”  She stroked her thumbs across the back of Marlena’s fingers.  “Whatever you do, whatever choices you make… we just love you.  We want you to know, we’re here for you.  To support you.  Whatever you’re going through.  We need you to know how important you are to us.”

Marlena’s confusion was clear as she waited for the next part of Carrie’s lecture.  The one where Carrie told her that while they loved her, her behavior was completely unacceptable, and she needed to see sense and behave like the eminently responsible adult they all believed her to be.

It wasn’t like any of this was news to her.  She knew they loved her.  She knew they supported her, within reason.  But she also knew that they didn’t approve of the choices she’d made.  The way she’d behaved.  How could they?  Bo was their family and Roman’s brother.  And here she was, creating chaos within their family once again.  So, she waited for the inevitable string of judgements.

But they didn’t come.  Carrie just continued to hold her hands and to look at her with love and compassion.  Beside her, Eric nodded his head.  “She’s right Mom.  We love you.  We don’t tell you that enough.”  

Marlena looked across at Kim, confused.  Kim raised a glass of whiskey in her direction and also nodded.  

“I don’t…” she surveyed her family, both biological and adopted by her heart. “I don’t understand,” she said weakly.  

“I’ve been thinking a lot about you.”  Kim put down her glass and came to her, face and hands gentle.  “After we talked the other day.  I couldn’t stop thinking about the things you said.  About how we weren’t ready or able to deal with your realness.  And I realized you were right.  We haven’t been fair to you.  We love you honey, and we are here for you.   You need to be raw?  You need to be real?  We’re here.  We can handle it.”

“I….”  Marlena was not prepared for this.  She didn’t know how to accept this.  Maybe it would be easier if she thought she deserved it, but she was struggling to understand what this really meant and whether it was really genuine.  They might be saying they were there for her but were they really?  Were they ready for messy, broken woman she really was beneath the beautiful, flawless façade she had perfected over so many years?

She felt Bo at her back, his familiar warmth, the musky scent of him.  His hand on her elbow.

In his chair, John threw back his tumbler of whiskey and looked away.  She turned to find Bo’s soulful brown eyes.  Well, one of them.  The other was swollen shut and she lifted her hand to his bruised face, the whisper of her fingers almost but not quite cool against his skin.  

“Do you want me to go?” He asked her quietly.  He didn’t want to leave her here with John, but he wanted to show her that he would give her the space if that was what she needed.  She had her children.  She had Kim and Abe and Mom and Pop.  He was so proud of them for handling this in the way they had.  This was what Marlena needed.  

In a way it scared him because if she had them, did she even need him?  But more than his own desires, he wanted to see her rebuild herself.  He hated that she was in such pain and that felt that she had to be so strong for everyone else that she couldn’t break down in the embrace of her family and trust them to put her back together.

Marlena knew what he was asking, and why, and she was so grateful for his thoughtfulness.  Slowly, she shook her head.  “No.”  

She wasn’t really sure what she was doing.  No, that wasn’t true, she knew exactly what she was doing.  She just wasn’t sure why she was doing it.  Was she testing her family?  Was she trying to provoke John?  Was she trying to keep Bo close, keep him happy?  Or was she just listening to her heart?

She didn’t want to make a decision between these men that she loved but she knew any choice she made now would be interrogated by both of them, and by her family.  Any move would have consequences.

“You should get some ice on that.”  She touched his swollen cheek again.  She could feel John’s eyes on her back, hot and angry but she ignored it.  He had chosen to stay; he would have to deal with what he saw.

“I iced it already,” he waved off her concern.  “What about you?” he surreptitiously brushed her sleeve up and checked her wrist.  As he thought, it was swollen, possibly sprained.  “You should get that checked out,” he murmured.

“It’s fine,” she pulled her hand from his and dropped her sleeve back down.  She didn’t want to draw any more attention to her injuries than she had to.   Things were complicated enough.

Bo leaned his head on one side and studied her.  She was such a paradox.  She seemed at once more assured than she had earlier but underneath he could sense the contradictions that were tearing her apart.  The ever-present sense of duty and care for everyone else.  Her worry for her children, both small and grown.  Her confusion about her feelings for John and his new revelations.  And her feelings for him.  Which were…  intangible to him.  She hadn’t promised him anything.  Anything except for right now, but that was before John had crashed back into their lives.

And yet… he couldn’t help but hope.  Hope that she felt something more for him than lust and misplaced friendship.  He wanted to see that sparkle in her eyes again.  He wanted to be the one to put it there.

She gave him a small smile and then turned back to the family.  “Where are Belle and Brady?” she asked.  Chelsea was due back the following day and it had been Sami’s turn to pick the children up from school.

“They’re upstairs with Shawn-D.” Caroline spoke up.  “They can stay here tonight dear.  They’re perfectly happy up there.”

“Thank you, Caroline.” Marlena sighed and swayed slightly, suddenly feeling utterly exhausted.  It was Eric that caught her first, but John was on his feet and at her side before anyone else could say anything.

“Doc, why don’t you let me take you home?” he asked softly. “We need to talk this through.”

“Let her sit down, John.” Sami, voice was hard and unforgiving as she yanked on John’s arm, forcing him to step back.  “Just give her some space.  You owe her that, at the very least.”

John swallowed heavily.  His instincts to be close to her, to stay where he could reach out and touch her, were warring with his common sense which said that her family were closing ranks around her and if he pushed her too far, they could push him out completely.  

Somewhat like Bo, he was happy to see the family embrace Marlena.  She had lived with the guilt of their betrayal for too many years, and she had worked immensely hard to rebuild the trust and faith her family had in her.  He knew she had never stopped blaming herself for what she saw as letting them down.  It was a matter of some pain to him that she regretted their affair so deeply, that she saw it as such a moral failing on her part.  He could never regret those acts, borne out of a love so passionate and profound that it could not ultimately be denied.  He would forever be grateful and feel blessed that she had chosen him in those brief snatches of time, even if she herself considered herself weak for that choice.  He wished with all his heart she had been able to reconcile those wonderful moments and see them for the inevitable declaration of the love they felt for each other.  A love which could not be denied then.  And he had to have faith would not be denied now, when all was said and done.

Marlena looked up at him from where she was now seated and gave him a sad little shake of her head. 

“John,” Caroline intervened, trying to alleviate the tension that was growing once again between John, Marlena and Bo.  “Why don’t you come up and see Belle and Brady?  I’m sure they’d love to see you.”

“Thanks Caroline, but I really just want to talk to Marlena.”  John couldn’t tear his eyes away from her, but she wouldn’t look at him now.  She just held her purse in her lap and fiddled with the strap.

“Oh, come on man!” Bo exploded furiously, squaring up to John again so that he placed himself between John and Marlena.  “When will you get it through your thick skull that she doesn’t want you here.  None of us want you here!”

“What you want doesn’t interest me in the slightest,” John spat angrily.  He was sick of Bo Brady inserting himself into this situation.  This was between Marlena and him.  Bo was just a temporary interloper and if anyone should leave, it should be him.  “If Doc wants me to go, she can tell me herself.”

“She already did tell you!” Bo took a step forward, his body language threatening again.

“Bo!” Marlena pushed herself up from her seat.  She was exhausted and this wasn’t going to end until she put a stop to it, she realized that now.  “Bo, honey.”  She put her hand on his arm and squeezed it imperceptibly.  “Bo, this is getting us nowhere.  Will you take me home, please?”

“You have to be fucking kidding me!” John exclaimed incredulously behind her.  The rage and resentment were simmering beneath the surface, barely checked.  “You can’t seriously be telling me you’re going home with that clown!”

“John, stop it!” Carrie begged him, tears in her eyes.  “Please!”

“Doc!” John was miserable in his entreaty as he watched Bo fold his arms around Marlena.  He glanced desperately around the gathered family.  “You can’t let this happen!” he begged them.  “We belong together, you know that.  I love her.  Doc, I love you,” he added hopelessly.

Bo shot him an unimpressed look, his nostrils flaring.  “Yeah well, I love her too.” 

Marlena felt the words vibrate in Bo’s chest as he held her to him.  The words that she’d stopped him saying the other night.  The words that complicated everything even more than it already was.  And there they were.  Out there in the world.  Out there for the family to hear.  

Those words were like a sucker punch to John.  Bo was in love with his wife.  No, not his wife.  He had no claim on Marlena.  Not like that.  But he had a claim on her heart.  Surely he had that.  Bo might well have fallen in love with her.  John could hardly blame him for that.  But he couldn’t believe that Marlena felt the same way.  Marlena loved him.  Marlena had always loved him.

“She loves me, Bo.”  His words were low and full of absolute certainty.  “You might love her, but goddamn it, Marlena loves me.  And if you care about her at all, you’ll step away and let us sort this out.”

In Bo’s arms, Marlena tensed angrily.  How dare John presume to tell anyone how she felt?  And what was best for her?

“John, I asked you to leave us alone.”  She felt like crying but she was too angry and too tired to tap the well of tears which was stoppered inside her.  Instead, his words set a light to an incandescent rage that had been simmering inside her ever since he had walked out of her door all those weeks ago.  Pushing Bo’s arm away, she turned sharply, ignoring the pain that lanced through her hip as she moved.  She maintained her hold on Bo’s arm, using it to steady herself as she spoke.  “I asked you not to follow me here and I asked you to leave when I arrived.  If you’re not going to go, then I am.  And yes, I am asking Bo to come with me.  Because unlike you, he has been here for me.  He has been holding me together while you went searching for a past that only takes you further and further from your family.”

She felt Bo’s left hand curl more snugly around her waist, and she took strength from his closeness.  There was nothing premeditated about her actions or her words, they just came unbidden.  She’d just had enough.  Enough of John and his presumptions, enough of everybody else telling her what she felt, and what she should do.  She’d just had enough.

“I don’t know how else to get through to you, John.  I don’t want to talk about why you left.  I don’t want to talk about how bad you feel about it.  Do you even care about how bad I feel?”  She could feel the pain radiating out from the center of her chest.  The pain that she’d been trying to contain since he had walked out on her.  The pain that she’d, for the most part, successfully staved off with a potent concoction of denial, work and sex.  There were moments where it had broken through, where it had threatened to drown her, but Bo had been there with his soft words and his hands and mouth, and he had kept the pain at bay.  But now, faced with John, and his demands for her to hear his reasons, his regret and his needs, she was cracking wide open, and she could barely breathe.  She felt dizzy with it, with his demands and her pain.

“Do you care about how I cried myself to sleep every night after you left?”  There was a raw edge to her voice as she broke in front of them all.  “Do you care about how much it hurt me every time Belle or Brady asked where you were and why you hadn’t called?  Do you have any idea how unloved and uncared for I’ve been feeling for months now?  Does it even matter to you?”  She was crumbling now, the apparent strong façade flaking into so much dust.  “Or is it just your feelings that count?  Your need to unload and justify yourself and prove just how hard done by you are?”

“Doc I…” John’s mouth was open as he shook his head.  Her anguish was palpable.  He could almost reach out and touch it.  And the worst thing was, she was right.  He had been so busy thinking about how he was going to explain his appalling behavior, he had barely stopped to think how much it had hurt her.  He had thought that if he could just make her understand that it wasn’t his choice that somehow, all the pain would go away.  

Now he realized that wasn’t a possibility.  Her pain was etched in her heart.  He had hurt her deeply, whether that was purposeful or unknowing, that hurt was not going to be erased by a computer chip or a heartfelt apology or anything else.   This wasn’t a hurt that could be erased.  It was a trust that had been shattered and needed to be rebuilt.  If that was even a possibility.

“Just go.  Please.” Her voice had filtered down to a tortured whisper and the tears that she had been holding in place all this time finally began to fall, trickling and sliding over her ghostly pale cheeks. 

The family stood around the warring trio, almost as if they were frozen in place, paralyzed by the naked suffering on display.  

Finally, moving slowly, as though her feet were suddenly shod with lead, Kim eased herself away from her place between her mother and Shane and she stepped between John and Marlena.

“John,” she said gently as she took his hands.  “I think you should go.  This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

He didn’t answer her, didn’t even look at her.  His eyes were still fixed on Marlena’s face which wore a haunted expression.

“John.”  Kim’s voice was firmer as she took his chin in her hands and forced him to look at her.  “I know you want to fix this, but you can’t right now.  You need to go.  Let us look after Marlena.”

It was a moment before John nodded.  He searched for something to say to Marlena.  Something that would make things better.  That would reassure her that he understood his transgressions and that he would make them right.  But right now, he knew his words would do nothing but make things worse.

Right now, the only thing he could do was do as she asked.  Turn around and walk away from her.  He would have to leave her in Bo’s arms and hope to God he could find some way to fix this.

“C’mon buddy,” Abe stepped up to his friend and put his arm around his shoulders. His voice was rich with sympathy as he surveyed the devastation before him.  “Let me walk you out.” 

“Abe.” John clutched at Abe’s arm. He didn’t have to say anything. Abe understood. 

“I know.” He put his arm around John’s shoulders and gently turned him away from where Marlena still stood, with Bo’s arm around her waist.

“Abe, I….” he glanced from Abe to Kim. “Kimmy?” His blue eyes held oceans of confusion and pain.

“It’s going to be okay, honey.” Kim nodded. She dropped her voice so that only John and Abe could hear her. “You just need to go right now. Nothing is set in stone, all right? We’re going to look after Marlena and she’s going to be just fine, and you can talk to her in a few days when everything has calmed down, okay?”

“Listen to Kim,” Abe said in an undertone that was equal to Kim’s. “Just come with me now. You have to just trust that everything is going to work out, okay?”

John looked from Kim to Abe and then back again. And then slowly, he turned to look at Marlena. 

She had turned back to Bo, his arms wrapped around her slender, frail shoulders. Her head lay against his shoulder but as he looked at her, she turned, her cheek against Bo’s shirt and her smoky amber gaze found his.

For a moment, it was as though they were the only two people in the room. He could feel her heart beating, feel her warmth, her breath on his skin. And he could feel her pain as if it was his own. Her pain, her fear and her love. They were all bound up in a cluster of emotion that was almost overwhelming.

He blinked and she turned away, burying her face in Bo’s neck. The moment couldn’t have been more than just that, a moment, a second or so but it felt like it had happened in slow motion. The connection between them reinforcing and strengthening, even as she swore it was shattering.

He turned back to Abe and nodded. He and Kim were right. He had to trust in the love he had for Marlena and the love she had for him. To the naked eye it was in tatters right now, he knew that. But he also knew their history and he knew Marlena. He knew her heart. He knew that despite her usual, careful deliberateness, she could be rash and impulsive when pushed to breaking point. But he also knew her heart would always bring her home. And he was her home, as much as she was his. He had to just remind her of that. He had to be patient and he had to light the beacons that would guide her back to him.

Part Vingt Et Un 

I used to think one day, we’d tell the story of us 

How we met, and the sparks flew instantly 

And people would say, they’re the lucky ones 

I used to know my place was a spot next to you 

Now I’m searching the room for an empty seat 

‘Cause lately, I don’t even know what page you’re on 

Oh, a simple complication 

Miscommunications lead to fallout 

So many things that I wish you knew 

So many walls up, I can’t break through 

Now I’m standing alone in a crowded room 

And we’re not speaking 

And I’m dying to know 

Is it killing you like it’s killing me? 

Yeah, I don’t know what to say 

Since the twist of fate when it all broke down 

And the story of us looks a lot like a tragedy now 

The Story of Us – Taylor Swift 

It was when she finally heard the tinkle of the bell that signaled John’s exit from the pub that the stress of the confrontation finally overwhelmed her.  Marlena sagged against Bo, her eyes rolling back in her head as her body went limp. 

“Marlena!” Bo exclaimed as he tightened his arms around her, taking her weight.   

“Mom!”  Sami and Eric leapt forward to help Bo lower Marlena to the cluster of chairs.  He sat down next to her and curled one arm around her shoulders, stroking her face with his free hand. 

“Hey, c’mon baby, it’s okay,” he murmured.  “You’re safe now.  He’s gone.  I got you.” 

“Mmmmm.”  Her head was swimming as she came to, Bo’s fingers warm on her face, her children hovering uncertainly. 

“Give her some space,” Bo said quietly.  “She’ll be okay.” 

“No thanks to John,” Sami grumbled peevishly.  “Why can’t he just butt out of our lives?  Why can’t he see he’s not wanted?” 

“Speak for yourself, Sami.”  Carrie snapped, with uncharacteristic sharpness. 

“You might have forgotten that he walked out on us while I was facing the gas chamber, but I sure as hell haven’t.”  Sami scowled at her older sister.  They had never seen eye to eye on John and they probably never would.   

In truth, if Sami was honest, she would admit that she was jealous of Carrie’s relationship with John.  She’d been that much older when John had been their stand-in father, that much more self-aware and they had built a special relationship as Carrie had reached her teenage years.  Sami, on the other hand, had to share her father with her twin brother and a succession of women that had been John’s way of trying to erase the loneliness that he felt in the wake of Marlena’s death.  And she had watched and waited for those moments with John, but they had never come because by the time she was that age, John was gone and a stranger had replaced him.  A stranger that she grew to love as her father, but that didn’t make up for what she’d lost when John walked out of their lives. 

“Girls!”  Caroline handed Bo a glass of water and pulled Sami back from where she stood in front of Bo and her mother.  “Just give it a rest, will you?” 

“Here,” Bo lifted the glass to Marlena’s lips.  “Drink this.” 

“I’m fine.” She pushed his hand away weakly and then rubbed her hand across her forehead.  “I just want to go home.” 

“O-kayyy.”  Bo nodded uncertainly.  He wasn’t sure whether he was still part of that equation or whether she had just asked him to come with her to protect herself from John’s assumptions.  Or even worse, whether she’d done it purely to hurt him.  He didn’t think Marlena had it in her to play games, but she was so unpredictable now, and he knew it was because she was operating on instinct.  And that instinct might drive her to strike back at the person who had the power to really hurt her. 

“Do you want Eric to take you home?” he asked quietly. 

“Eric?”  She looked confused.  “No, I want you.” 

“I thought…” he shook his head with a small smile, his split lip still throbbing, and she raised her eyebrows.   “Never mind.  It’s not important.”   

“I’m sorry.” She took his hand in hers, relishing the warmth and solidness of him next to her.   She wasn’t sure what she was sorriest for.  Whether it was getting him into this situation, her inability to make him any promises, or that she couldn’t just let him go, despite the fact that this was destroying his friendship with John and creating havoc in his relationships with his family.  And then there was the physical damage. 

“Don’t apologize,” Bo squeezed her closer to him.  He was only too aware of the family hovering around, listening to their conversation.  He wanted to spare Marlena any more grief if he could.  She’d had more than enough today.  “None of this is your fault.” 

Marlena shot him an incredulous look that said of course this is my fault.  This is all my fault. 

“Shhhh.”  He dropped a kiss against her hair.  “C’mon.  Let’s get you home.” 

“Bo, you can’t drive with that eye,” Caroline said, her voice hard and cold. 

“So, we’ll get a cab.” Bo shrugged. 

“Bo.”  Caroline exhaled heavily, her disapproval evident in her expression and the steel edge to her voice.  “Do you really think this is a good idea?  Marlena, can’t you just leave Bo out of this?  Aren’t things complicated enough?” 

“Ma.”  There was a warning note in Bo’s voice as he saw the look of guilt cross Marlena’s face. 

“Just look at yourself Bo!” Caroline was exasperated.  Her son was being bullheaded as per usual, but she wasn’t about to stand by and watch him be decimated by Marlena’s foolishness.  “John is your friend.  He’s been as good as a brother to you for so many years.  And now you’re at each other’s throats.” 

“Ma, we talked about this!” Kimberly tried to intercede. 

“That was before John came home and explained what’s been going on!”  Caroline had been ambivalent about Kim’s suggested approach to this intervention as it was.   

When Kim had initially brought it up on the night that they had all been to Tuscany, the night Caroline had walked in on Bo and Marlena’s urgent tryst in the bathroom, she had been inclined to leave it.  She had been shocked, but she had tried to tell herself it was a flash in the pan, a foolish, drunken fumble, and it would burn itself out.  However, in the grey early morning light, she had not been able to sleep for thinking about her youngest son, her dead oldest son and her surrogate son, John Black; and the woman that seemed to bewitch them all.   

The more she had thought about the implications of Marlena taking Bo to her bed, the more concerned she had become.  And so, she had approached Bo, but that had only amplified her worries.  Bo had assured her he wasn’t in love with Marlena, but Caroline knew her son and she knew that he was in over his head.   

And how could he not be?  Marlena was a beautiful woman, and more than that, she was kind and intelligent, feisty and stubborn.  And she was vulnerable.  In the wake of John’s desertion and the man they had thought to be Roman’s death, she was in pain, and she was fragile.  Again, Caroline knew her son.  He would want to protect Marlena; he would want to ease her suffering.  It was a potent combination, her beauty and her pain.  And Bo had fallen for it, hook line and sinker. 

“This is a mess!” Caroline continued.  Now she’d started, she was going to have her say.  “Marlena, you’re not thinking straight.  If you were, you would know this was going nowhere.  You’re just going to end up hurting Bo.  Do you want that?  Because I don’t want to watch it happen when I know there’s something I can do to stop it.” 

“Ma, don’t you think it’s a little too late for this conversation?” Bo demanded angrily.   

“I tried to talk to you before, but you wouldn’t listen!”  Caroline grabbed the soggy tea towel off the table and shook it at her son.  “I told you would John come home.  I told you this was a disaster in the making.  You told me you weren’t in love with her,” Caroline pointed at Marlena.  “But now you are, and this is chaos.  She is tearing this family apart again and I am not going to stand by silently and pretend that I am okay with any of this.” 

“Momma!”  Kimberly was despairing.  None of this was helping.  All this was going to do was push Bo further into Marlena’s arms. 

“No, it’s okay.” Marlena let go of Bo’s hand and pushed herself away from him.  “I should go.”  She stood stiffly, trying to keep a rein on her turbulent emotions.  Although in truth, after everything that had happened today, she was more numb than anything.  But she could feel the emotions pressing in from all edges.  Guilt, anger, hurt and profound loneliness.  She felt more bitterly alone that she ever had.  She had to get out of the pub before all of those sharp-edged feelings crashed through her whisper thin defenses and brought her to her knees.   

She looked at Caroline, her face deathly pale.  Caroline stared back at her, no compassion, no empathy in her eyes.  She was furious, and rightly so.  “Caroline, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean… I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.  I didn’t mean to bring all this to your door.” 

Marlena wrapped the strap of her purse around her hand as she stood, tightening it so that the pressure on her hand kept her focused.  “I’ll be back in the morning to pick up the children.  If they’re still welcome here tonight, of course.” 

“Belle and Brady are always welcome here.”  Caroline’s confirmation was stiffly formal.  As though the unspoken corollary was that Marlena herself was not, any longer. 

Marlena’s eyes filled with tears, and she nodded.  Bo stood up behind her. 

“Let’s go.” He said, furiously eyeing his mother as he took her arm again. 

“No.” She shook her head, and looked towards the door, unable to face him.  “Your mother is right.  You should stay here.” 

“What? No!” He pulled on her arm so that she had to turn and look at him.  “Marlena.   Don’t listen to her.  This is bullshit!” 

“How can I not?” she demanded.  She was close to tears, but she refused to cry, to let Caroline see how close to completely falling apart she was.  “She’s right.  This is all my fault.  You can’t love me, Bo.  It’s not right.  I should never have done this; I should never have dragged you into my mess.” 

“You didn’t drag me anywhere!” Bo reminded her angrily.  He was fuming at Caroline for this outburst.  Carrie and Kim had both at least been somewhat supportive but now here was his mother, lighting the fuse on Marlena’s emotional dynamite.  “We’re both consenting adults and I chose this just as much as you did.  I knew there would be consequences.  Mom just said.  She told me what would happen and I did it anyway.  Because I chose this.  I chose you.  This is not your fault.  We did this together.  And I don’t regret a thing.” 

“What about Hope?” Caroline was more than frustrated.  She as much as anyone understood the power of attraction, of love and pain and how they confused one’s thinking and decision making.  Marlena was traumatized, she knew that.  Kim had explained it to her, and it made sense.  The woman was in so much pain and she needed something to cling onto.  Caroline just didn’t see why that had to be her son.  Roman’s brother.  She had to make the pair of them see that this could not continue.    “This isn’t just you two and John.  She’s out there somewhere, thinking she’s Gina von Amberg.  Are you just going to ignore that?” 

“We only have John’s word that this chip was controlling him.”  Bo scowled as he looked back at his mother.  If he was honest, he was more than a little unnerved by John’s claim that Hope thought she was Gina again and that somehow her choice to leave Salem was not Hope’s, but Gina’s.  If he was honest with himself, it explained a lot about the past couple of months.  But it also left a lot of questions.  Questions that he wasn’t ready to ask, let alone answer.  It was safer and easier if he chose to treat it with the skepticism such a claim warranted.  Computer chips?  Controlling human beings?  Giving them other people’s memories?  It sounded insane.   

But then, this was Stefano DiMera they were talking about.  When did he ever do anything that wasn’t insane? 

“That’s true Bo, but like I said, it stands to reason.”  Shane chipped in with his opinion.  “We haven’t been able to determine what information the chip holds or its purpose.  We might never know either of those things for sure, but I’ve been speaking to John since he and Hope arrived in Europe and the conversations I’ve had with him lead me to believe it’s likely that his claims are genuine and that the chip has exerted some influence over his behavior and choices.  Hope’s too.  And if he’s right and she thinks she’s Gina von Amberg…” 

Marlena listened to Shane silently.  Her heart was pounding, and she felt dizzy.  Could it really be true?  Could it have been Stefano’s pawn who walked out on her and not John?  And if that was true…  If that was true… what difference did that make?  If any? 

“I have to go.”  She broke from the cluster of family, a family that she had betrayed once again and walked falteringly towards the door.  She couldn’t stay here any longer.  Assailed by questions, by judgements.  She felt as though it was coming from all sides, and she couldn’t breathe for the feeling that everyone was expecting something from her.  And all of them were expecting different things.  She needed to escape, she needed fresh air and space.  She needed to breathe and absorb everything that had happened in the past few hours. 

But Bo was at her heels and stopped her as she reached the door.  

She knew she should tell him that he had to stay, that she didn’t want him coming home with her.  She should give herself the space to feel whatever feelings were going to come up.  To understand what it was that John’s claims meant to her and how she really felt about his reappearance.  She should end this here and now.  She should insist.    

Later, she would admit to herself that her suggestion was less than determined.  When she was hard on herself, she would say she was weak, and she didn’t want to think about John or his excuses or reasons.  She didn’t want to give credence to the reasons everyone thought she should forgive him and just walk back into his arms.  In more forgiving moments, she would reason that she was overwhelmed with information and feelings and that she just needed to feel safe, and Bo provided that.  Whatever the truth, she found herself being equivocal.   

“Bo, you should stay.”  

“Nuh-uh.  I’m coming with you,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.  “If you’re not welcome here, then neither am I.  We did this together.  We face the consequences together.” 

Marlena searched his damaged face and felt a surge of love and affection for him.  He really was such a good man.  She lifted her hand to his swollen cheek and nodded with a small, sad smile.  Bo lifted his own hand and captured hers.  “Let’s go.” 

She looked past him to where Caroline and the rest of the family stood.  Caroline was angry, Kim and Carrie concerned.  Shawn, with his arm around his wife’s shoulders was clearly upset and Shane’s eyes flickered with sorrow.  Eric, bless him, just looked devastated.  Sami was the only one with a smile on her face.   Marlena knew that alone should concern her, but there was nothing she could do right now.  Her course was set. 

“I’m so sorry,” she told Caroline, her voice wavering with emotion.  “I know I’ve let you all down.  I only hope that one day you can forgive me.” 

“Marlena-” Carrie started but her voice was swallowed up in the distance between them and the sound of the door opening and then closing behind Bo and Marlena. 

~ 

“John.  John!” Abe pulled on John’s arm as his friend looked at Marlena through the window of the pub and watched her melt against Bo.  Watched Bo’s arms curl around his wife…. no not his wife… his… his everything.  “John, you can’t go back in there, you’re only going to make things worse.  They’re already bad enough.” 

John felt the tugging on his arm, heard the alarm in his friend’s voice.  But he also saw Marlena, overwhelmed, vulnerable.  Needy.  And Bo there, taking advantage of that.   

“I can’t… Abraham….”  He turned to Abe; his eyes red-rimmed.  Blood was crusting on his lip, a bruise slowly emerging along the edge of his jaw.   

“Walk away.  Right now, you need to walk away.”  Abe slapped his hand on John’s shoulder and pulled him around so that he could no longer stare through the window.  “Marlena is not in any state to listen to you at the moment.  Come with me.” 

John’s shoulders slumped and he nodded slowly, following Abe away from the Brady Pub.   He jammed his hands in his pockets as he trudged dejectedly behind his best friend.  He kept blinking, trying to expel the image of Bo holding Marlena, Bo kissing Marlena from his mind’s eye.  He wasn’t even aware of where they were headed until he realized that he was descending the steps to the pier. 

He shivered, pulling his jacket closer around him.  The fog was rolling in from the river.  It reminded him of the night he had come here more than seven years ago.  That night he had been drawn here by some unknown force, by that thread that connected them.  He had felt her, in the depths of his soul, he had felt her calling him here.  And then, there she was, walking out of the mist like a vision.  For a moment, he had thought he was hallucinating.  He had seen her with his own eyes, and he had heart her voice, but it wasn’t until he had touched her, until he’d felt her warm skin against his, smelt the warm, earthy, magical scent of her that he had actually believed.  And yet, at the same time, he had known.  She had walked towards him, and he had simultaneously known and yet refused to believe the evidence of his own eyes.  He had wanted to believe so much that he couldn’t.  It hadn’t been the first time he’d thought her alive only to be disappointed.  Now he knew that all those times when he had been tempted by signs of her continued existence were because on some level, he had known she was still out there.  Still alive.  That one day she was going to walk out of the mist and into his arms. 

“John?” Abe’s voice intruded on his reminiscences. 

“What?”  John shook his head and looked across at Abe.  “Oh, sorry man.  Just thinking.” 

“I know this is…” Abe sighed.  What was it?  Impossible?  Crazy?  Or a completely understandable development, given everything that John and Marlena and Bo and Hope had been through in the past fifteen years.  Abe could see as plain as day how everything had happened, and he couldn’t blame or fault Bo and Marlena.  They were victims of circumstance, of DiMera’s unholy schemes.  They all were, John and Hope just as much, if not more. 

“She’s sleeping with Bo, Abraham.”  Just the words hurt.  What was worse were the images that his mind conjured.  Marlena kissing Bo.  Naked in his arms.  Bo’s hands on Marlena’s body.  Bo’s mouth, exploring her, tasting her.  Marlena whispering her passion in Bo’s ear, making those insanely hot little whimpers and moans that she couldn’t help in the throes of lovemaking.  Her beautiful limbs wrapped around Bo as he thrust into her.  Around Bo Brady. 

John spun around and attacked a pier support behind him, striking it hard with his fists. 

“Hey, John!” Abe knew that John needed to express his anger and frustration, but he was afraid his friend would do himself some real damage with the force he was using against the immovable structure in front of him.  “John!” 

He put his hands on John’s shoulders and pulled him bodily back from the wooden poles which now wore bloodstains from John’s knuckles. 

“Buddy, I know you’re angry, but man you gotta rein it in.  Hurting yourself physically is not going to make this any better, you know that.” 

John grunted as he pulled himself from Abe’s grip.  His hands throbbed but Abe was right, the physical pain wasn’t detracting from the very real emotional agony that was cascading through him.   

“I don’t understand how she could do that to me.”  His face screwed up as he tried to understand how Marlena could watch him walk out the door and then jump straight into Bo’s bed. 

“I don’t think she was doing it to you,” Abe said gently.  “I think she was trying to find a way to handle the pain she was feeling.  I think she saw Bo feeling the same kind of pain and I think they just gravitated towards each other.  I don’t think she thought about what she was doing or how it was going to affect anyone else.  I think it probably just happened.” 

“But… Bo?”  John pressed his palms to his temples, squeezing his head between them, as though it would relieve the throbbing ache that was centered in the front of his head.  Like it would make the images that haunted him disappear.    

“Hope walked out on Bo too,” Abe reminded him.  “At your suggestion.  Bo went to tell Marlena that you and Hope had left Salem.  They were both in a lot of pain.  I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but I can understand how it happened.  They trust each other.  They’ve been through a lot together over the years.  It’s messy but I understand why they turned to each other.” 

John’s eyes narrowed, his brow furrowing as he stepped back and looked at Abe as though he had grown a second head. 

“You understand?”  His heart pounded in his chest.  “He’s her goddamned brother.” 

“He was her brother-in-law.  Once upon a time.”  Abe walked away from John to the edge of the pier and stared at the black water.  “John, Marlena has been through so much.  You know that better than anyone.  In the past, she’s always had you to turn to.  You were her rock, even when you weren’t together.  But then you weren’t.  Sami was facing death row, Roman was killed and you weren’t there.  When you left, she needed something.  Someone.  And Bo was there.  Right there.  Whether it was your choice or not, you weren’t there.  She needed you and you were gone.  You can’t blame her for turning to Bo.  He was there when she had no-one else.” 

He looked up from the oily blackness of the water below him, his eyes moving to the lights that danced on the opposite shore.  From darkness to light.  He could only imagine how Marlena had felt when John had taken Hope and left for Europe.  She hadn’t shown it, of course.  She had been stoic and accepting and so, so strong for all the family.  She had kept them all buoyed and reassured but Abe knew her so well.  He knew she wasn’t always as strong as she appeared to everyone else.  She was strong, incredibly so but even the strongest person needed some help, something or someone to lean on. 

“You’re going to have to come to terms with this, John.  Whether you can accept it right now or not, it’s happened.    You’re going to have to find some way to forgive her for this.  And Bo too.  If you keep threatening Bo, if you keep reacting with this anger, you’re just going to drive them closer together.” 

“You sound like you’re telling me this was all my fault, and I should let her go.  Let her be with him.”  John shook his head, following Abe to the edge of the weathered wood, where it stopped suddenly, frigid water lapping at the pilings that held it up.   “She doesn’t love him.  She loves me, Abraham.  She loves me.” 

“I’m not saying anything of the kind.” Abe said sympathetically.  He knew this was impossibly hard for John.  He knew how the guy felt about Marlena.  She was his life.  Anyone who knew John knew that his leaving Salem had to be some kind of trick of DiMera’s.  They had all been shocked when Marlena had told them and none of them had been able to figure out what had really happened.  This computer chip story, although conceptually outrageous, explained an inexplicable situation.  Unfortunately, it didn’t take away the pain that it had caused. 

“This is just a terribly unfortunately situation that you all need to find your way through.  I know that Marlena loves you, and you know that.  Hell, I’m absolutely sure Marlena knows that.  But right now, she is very scared and confused.  And your fists flying at Bo aren’t helping.”  Abe turned to John and sighed.  John had to see sense.  He had to understand how important it was that he back off right now or he could do irreparable damage to his relationship with Marlena.  Abe was pretty sure she could and would forgive him, if only he would give her the time and space to realize how she really, truly felt.  “She’s not thinking straight.  She needs some time to digest what you’ve told her and work out how she feels about it.” 

“So, I’m just supposed to wait and hope that she comes to her senses?”  John shook his head angrily, balling and flexing his hands in and out of tense fists.  “Can’t do that Abe.  Not while Bo is sniffing around her.” 

“You have to trust Marlena.” Abe told him with no small amount of frustration.  “You have to trust her love for you will win out in the end.  You keep demanding and pushing and you’re going to push her away.  You can’t make her do anything; you can’t make her feel anything she’s not ready to feel.”   

“I can’t just do nothing, Abraham.”  John argued.  He was a man of action.  He couldn’t just sit by and not do anything.  Not say anything.  The idea of having to watch Marlena with Bo, day after day, was not an option.  He’d done that once.  Watched her make a life with another Brady brother and it had just about killed him.  And back then he hadn’t really known how she felt about him.  He hadn’t been fully aware of the lies they were both telling themselves.  

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t do anything.”  Abe sighed.  He felt like John wasn’t really hearing him.  He was too focused on what he wanted and not focused enough on how Marlena felt and why she was reacting the way she was.  “Right now, man, Marlena doesn’t trust you.  And that’s partly because you left but there’s other stuff going on there.  You need to show her that she can trust you.  That you’re not going to do anything to hurt her again.  That you are here for her and your children, no strings attached.  Be the man she fell in love with.  The rest will happen with time.” 

“I don’t… Abe I explained why I left.”  John was at a loss.  “I didn’t choose that.  It wasn’t something I had any control over.” 

“She didn’t know that at the time.”  Abe walked back towards the bench, the self-same bench he had sat on with Marlena earlier.  He wanted so badly to be able to help his friends navigate through this storm.  They had both, individually and together, done so much for him over the years.  But he knew that he had to tread a careful path.  Marlena did trust him, and he didn’t want her to feel like she couldn’t talk to him because she feared he would pass it on to John.  She needed to be able to keep the friends she had close, she needed that more than ever right now. 

He sat down on the bench and indicated to the space next to him.   John dejectedly followed him and slumped into the seat next to him.  

“Listen, she still experienced all the pain and hurt of you leaving.  That doesn’t just disappear because you say it wasn’t you that did that.  And” he paused, trying to figure out how to put it so that he wasn’t betraying Marlena’s confidence, “that’s not the only problem you have.  That’s only part of it.  You leaving with Hope is not the only thing she’s hurt and angry about.” 

“What?”  John was confused for a moment until he recalled that Marlena had entered the Brady Pub with Abe.  “You talked to her,” he surmised.  “Why, what did she say?” 

“John, it’s not my place to tell you what Marlena said.” Abe knew that Marlena would be mortified if he shared their conversation with John.  It was frustrating, this was not the first time he had been privy to information from one or both of his friends that the other person would be better off knowing.  But he was a man of integrity, and what was said, had been in confidence and he wouldn’t break Marlena’s trust in him.   “This is something you need to talk to her about.”   

Abe wanted to tell him that maybe that’s what the pair of them should do more generally.  Talk.  Not just paper over the cracks in their relationship with their intense physicality.   

Everyone and anyone who knew them, who had watched them for any amount of time knew that was how their relationship operated.  The air was electrically charged when the two of them were together and whether they were in good place or a not so together phase in their relationship, there was one thing you could depend upon.  They would still be touching each other, their hands, their bodies, their lips drawn together as though by some invisible force.    

But what that seemed to mean was that often they bypassed talking for connecting physically.  Sexually.  And that meant that sometimes they didn’t talk about the things that were really causing issues between them.  And that only worked for so long.  As they were finding out. 

“How can I talk to her when she won’t listen to me?” John demanded stubbornly.  What Abe was telling him was all very well but right now, Marlena didn’t even want to be in the same room with him, let alone hear what he had to say.   

“Have you considered that maybe it’s you that should be listening?” Abe raised his eyebrows.  “John, buddy, you need to give her space.  She’s hurt and she’s scared.  She needs to trust that you’re going to hear her when she starts talking.  And John, this is her choice.  You can’t make it for her.  You need to trust that she will give you the opening, when she’s ready.” 

“Abraham, I can’t just sit around and wait.” John couldn’t believe Abe would ask that of him. 

“That’s exactly what you are going to have to do.”  Abe felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and he pulled it out and checked the screen.  “Listen, I have to go.  I was supposed to be home an hour ago and Lexie is wondering where I am.”  He clapped John on the shoulder.  “Think about what I’ve said, man.  Don’t do anything rash.  Don’t take your anger out on Bo, or Marlena.  If you need someone to talk to, you know where I am, right?” 

“Sure.  Sure thing,” John nodded slowly.  He knew Abe was trying to help him.  He knew he was probably giving good advice.  After all, Abe never went around getting himself into fist fights with the men sleeping with his wife.   

But then Abe had never been targeted by Stefano.  He had never been chained up, tortured, brainwashed or turned into a killing machine.  He had never been sent to supplant another man’s life and ended up falling in love with that man’s wife and raising his children.  He had never had that life snatched from underneath him and been left flailing on the edge of oblivion.  He had never had to watch his wife in someone else’s arms, he’d never had to pretend to be happy that she was happy, while he slowly collapsed inside.  He had never had DiMera play with his head, manipulate him psychologically, take everything away from him again and again and he’d never had DiMera plant a chip in his brain to take away his very identity, and with it, the only things that really mattered.  Marlena and their children.  His family. 

And Abe’s wife, while Stefano’s daughter, had never been the focus of DiMera’s sick, possessive obsession. 

He had never thought a man to be his brother, only to find his wife in his arms. 

Abe might mean well, but he wasn’t really qualified to give advice in this situation. 

He quirked up one side of his mouth in a poor attempt as a smile and accepted Abe’s handshake and quick manly backslap and then he watched him go.   

Breathing heavily, he turned back to the water.  What the hell did Abe expect him to do?  Just go back to the loft and sit there, waiting for Marlena to come to her senses?  Spend his days, wandering through Salem Place, hoping to bump into her as she walked through, hand in hand with Bo fucking Brady? 

Was he supposed to see her unexpectedly and just, what, smile and engage in trivial chit-chat?  Was he supposed to hand their children over to her at a pre-arranged time and place and tell her to have a great afternoon with her new boyfriend and their children? 

His jaw tensed as his eyes searched the darkness for some kind of answer.  Some kind of guidance.  But there was nothing.  Just the lonely ringing bell of a buoy and a few, lonely, flickering lights. 

John sighed and turned back, heading for the stairs.  But instead of heading for his car, he found himself retracing his steps, being drawn back to the pub. 

As he neared the building that he had helped build for the people who were more parents to him than anybody had ever been, he stopped and ducked around a corner as the door opened.  He exhaled softly as he saw Marlena emerge, Bo behind her.  She looked beautiful but unbearably sad as she turned to look back at the pub.  John saw Bo curl his hands around Marlena’s upper arms and lean over her shoulder as he spoke to her, but he couldn’t hear the words that passed between them.  All he could hear was the pounding of his heart in his ears as Marlena turned to look up at Bo. 

The expression on her beautiful face was one of uncertainty and regret, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she looked up at him. 

They spoke in low murmurs and John could only hear snatches of words as he watched Bo frame Marlena’s face in his hands and then kiss her.  Softly.  Gently. 

He felt as though he might vomit as he watched them.  There could no longer be any doubt in his mind.  Marlena wanted this.  She had invited Bo into her bed and Bo made her, if not happy, then at least he’d brought some light back into her eyes. 

John wasn’t sure when he’d last seen that sparkle.  It had dulled in the last few months.  As the mercenary in him had ignored her, had turned away from her, she had grown quiet and distant, and she had stopped laughing.  But now, as he watched her, he saw something in her he hadn’t wanted to see before.  Or maybe he hadn’t seen it because it died when he walked in the room. 

And that scared him. 

~ 

Marlena could feel Bo’s warm hand on her back as they stepped out of the pub.  She winced as she heard the door close behind them.  It felt as though something was ending.  The end of her relationship with Roman had caused a rift with the Brady’s but they had eventually forgiven her and brought her back into the embrace of the family.  This time, she was afraid, it was more final.  The look in Caroline’s eyes had decimated her.  It was possible that Caroline would not forgive her this transgression.  That she had lost not only John, but her family into the bargain. 

She turned for one final glimpse of them through the window and stifled a sob. 

“Hey,” Bo wrapped warm, bruised fingers around her upper arms and leaned his head over her shoulder, looking at the family along with her.  “It’s going to be okay,” he reassured her.  “She’s angry but she’ll get over it, you’ll see.” 

“I don’t know,” she bit her lip as she turned and looked at Bo, her eyes full of doubt.  “I’ve really messed up this time, Bo.  I don’t know that she can forgive me.” 

“You didn’t do this alone, remember?”  He lifted his hands, gently cradling her face between his palms.  “Mom has a fiery temper and she’s very protective.  But she loves you.  It’ll be fine.  I promise you.” 

Her skin dipped into furrows between her eyes as she looked up at him.  “Will it?” 

“Yes, it will.”  He dipped his lips to hers and kissed her gently.  And then he said it.  There was no-one else but them, and it couldn’t be misconstrued.  His eyes said it as much as his bruised lips.  “I love you, Marlena.  I won’t let them hurt you anymore.” 

“Bo-” She started to speak but he put his finger to her lips.   

“Listen.  My saying that doesn’t require a commitment from you.  I don’t need you to feel the same way.  I know you don’t.  I just want you to know.” 

“But… Hope.”  Despite her unwillingness to listen to John’s excuses, it struck her that if this was true, Hope was out there somewhere, with someone else’s thoughts in her head.  And that someone else was potentially dangerous, if not to herself, then to other people.  She took his hands in hers as he dropped them from her face.  “Bo, if what John says is true…” 

“Let’s not go there.”  Bo didn’t want to think about it.  There were too many questions, too many what ifs.  They had no proof what John was saying was true.  And even if it was, how on earth could he hope to find Hope if she had Gina’s thoughts and Gina’s memories and she didn’t want to be found?  She could be anywhere in Europe.  If the ISA couldn’t find her, then what chance did one man alone have? 

“Bo, she could be in trouble.” Marlena said softly.  She could see the conflict in his eyes, and she knew however much he didn’t want to admit it, he was still deeply in love with Hope.  How could he not be?  A person didn’t just stop loving the love of their life just because that person broke their heart.  However much they wanted to.  However much they tried to bury the pain and move on. 

“If the ISA find her, and it turns out what John is saying is true then…”  Bo trailed off. 

“Then what?” she asked him.  It was the million-dollar question.  If Hope needed him, would he go to her?  She was pretty sure she knew the answer to that question and if it came to that she hoped she could let him go with a smile and a wish that he would find Hope and make things right with her.  

“I don’t know.”  He shrugged.  He would cross that bridge when he came to it, if he ever did.  “But there’s a lot of ifs before we get to that point, Marlena.  They might never find her.  If she doesn’t want to be found…. Europe’s a big place.” 

“But Greta and Lilli are with her.” Marlena reminded him, squeezing his hand.  It was clear he was in just as much denial as she had been about John coming back.  But she had been proven wrong and they had to consider the possibility that Hope would be found and it would be sooner, rather than later.  “I doubt the three of them can stay off the radar forever.” 

“Marlena…” Bo sighed in frustration.  She was asking questions he did not have the answer to.  Questions that he hadn’t even had the chance to even ask himself.  John had come bursting through the door and thrown an emotional hand-grenade along with his fists and Bo hadn’t yet had a chance to pick through the shrapnel.  His immediate concern was the woman in front of him.  Everything else could be dealt with later.   “Can we just not think about all that right now?  I don’t know about you, but I could do with a couple of painkillers and an icepack.” 

“Oh honey, of course.”  Marlena released his hands and touched her fingers to his lips.  “Does it hurt when you kiss me?”  She gave him a cute, sexy smile and he gave her a lopsided grin in return.  

“Kissing you is a panacea to all the pain.”  He slid his hands around her waist and pulled her to him.  Her arms encircled his neck, and she pressed her lips softly to his. 

“Mmmmm,” he murmured, the sound deep in his throat.  “More please.  I think your lips might be magic.” 

Marlena laughed softly and the sound made his heart dance.  

“Marlena.”  John’s tortured voice came out of the darkness behind Bo.  Marlena froze in Bo’s arms and withdrew her own arms from around his neck, almost guiltily. 

“Please don’t do this.” John came from around the corner, where he had obviously been watching them.  “Please.  Don’t go home with him.  Let’s just go somewhere and talk.  You and me.” 

“John…”  She sighed wearily.  She couldn’t believe he was back here again.  Before he’d left Salem, it had felt as though she couldn’t get him to even notice that she existed.  Now she was his sole focus, and it was exhausting.     

“Please, Doc.  Please don’t throw away everything we have together.  I love you.  I’ve always loved you.”  He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to figure out what else he could say that would convince her that he was sincere and that the only option was for them to sit down and work this out.  They had a past.  They had a family.   They had a wonderful future, if only she could see it. 

“I’m too tired for this, John.”  She stepped carefully in front of Bo, lest John lose his temper again and lash out at the man he had once called brother.  “I’ll talk to you when I am damn well ready to.  You’ll have to wait.  If you’re capable of doing that.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” John demanded, a little too defensively. 

“Why don’t you see if you can figure that out.  Should give you something to do while you’re waiting,” Marlena suggested unkindly.  “C’mon honey.”  She tugged at Bo’s hand.  She knew that she was deliberately trying to hurt John now and she was ashamed of herself for it, but she was angry and hurting and she was frustrated that he wasn’t getting the message.  She didn’t know how much more clearly she could say it. 

“Marlena!” John caught her arm as she tried to push past him.  “Don’t do it, I’m warning you.” 

She turned to him, shocked.  “I’m sorry?”  She stepped backwards, everything about her tense, defensive and angry.  “Are you threatening me?” 

“No!”  John released her arm in surprise and held up his hands, his palms facing outwards in a gesture of surrender.  “No.  God, no, of course not.  I just….  I can’t stand the thought of you going home with him.”  His voice broke as he spoke, quiet and desperate.  “Marlena, please don’t do this.” 

“You don’t own me, John.  I am going home with Bo, and you need to deal with it.”  Marlena’s lips thinned and her jaw tensed as she glared at John.  But the expression on his face modified some of her anger, transforming it into confusion and sorrow and she immediately regretted her words and harsh tone.    

Her heart was pounding as she tried to look away from him.  He was so close she could reach out and touch him.  She could put her hand on his chest and feel the beating of his heart.  She wondered dizzily if it was as frantic as hers.  She could hear his pain; she could feel it coming off him in waves.  It was confusing and distressing and she wanted to turn and just walk away but she couldn’t tear her eyes from his.  They were bottomless oceans of azure and in them she could see so much regret and love and pain and it left her breathless. 

Unaware of her sudden mood change, Bo slid his arm deliberately around Marlena’s shoulders.  With gentle pressure, he moved her forward and away from John.   He felt her resistance for a moment and noted the way she held John’s eyes until she couldn’t any longer.  it was only then that she allowed him to steer her away from the pub. 

Impulsively he paused and looked over his shoulder at John who was still staring possessively at Marlena.  A muscle in his cheek twitched and then, remembering that it was him that was going home with Marlena, he smirked at John.    

“See ya!” he said dismissively but it was clearly meant to be provocative, and he was rewarded with an angry scowl from John.  He grinned and tightened his hand on Marlena’s shoulder as he turned back to the path away from the pub and John Black. 

Part Vingt-Deux 

Our coming-of-age has come and gone

Suddenly this summer, it’s clear

I never had the courage of my convictions

As long as danger is near

And it’s just around the corner, darlin’

‘Cause it lives in me

No, I could never give you peace

But I’m a fire and I’ll keep your brittle heart warm

If your cascade, ocean wave blues come

All these people think love’s for show

But I would die for you in secret

The devil’s in the details, but you got a friend in me

Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?

Peace – Taylor Swift

Marlena groaned as she kicked her shoes off and stretched her aching body.  Bo shut the door quietly behind him and leaned against it as he watched her shed her coat, throwing it across the end of the sofa.  She hadn’t said a word to him since they had left the pub and he knew she was, if not furious at him, then at least she was heartily annoyed.  

In truth, he knew he shouldn’t have done it.  It was a childish act from an adult who should be well beyond such provocations.  And yet, he hadn’t been able to help himself.  He had been asking himself all the way back in the taxi what had driven him to behave the way he had.  The answer, when he really got down to it, was that he was jealous of John.  

Marlena still loved him, that was clear from the way she reacted when he was near.  The way her breath hitched in her throat when he spoke.  In the light rose flush of her cheeks and the darkening of her lips as he caught her golden eyes with his intense dark blue stare.  Marlena Evans was still obviously crazy about that man, and damn, that hurt.

But more than that, Bo was still hurt and furious at the man he’d once called brother, for the way he had swept Hope up and out of Salem.  Flying her to Europe on his private jet, flying her out of Bo’s orbit.  Bo had lost Hope to John Black and now, it seemed, he was poised to lose Marlena to him as well.  

Marlena unbuttoned her suit jacket and shrugged it off, throwing it on top of her coat.  She circled her tense shoulders and lifted them, rolling her neck so that her head pressed back on the tight, bunched muscles.  

Then she turned to look at Bo.  “Do you want ice for that eye?”  Her tone was efficient and guarded and Bo’s heart beat a little faster.

“Perhaps we should talk about it first,” he suggested softly.  She said nothing and her expression did not change, not even a smidgen, and he could tell she was waiting for him to elaborate on what the ‘it’ was. 

“I mean, why you’re upset with me.  What… the way…”  He sighed.  “I know I was an ass, Marlena.  I shouldn’t have said that as we were leaving.  I know I shouldn’t have.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” she agreed, her voice tight and controlled.  Everything about her was tense, zinging with nervous, exhausted energy.  “Don’t you think the situation is already bad enough?”

 “Yep.”  He nodded and then shrugged.  “He was just so… he acts like he owns you and it pisses me off.”

“I was going home with you, Bo.  You didn’t need to rub it in.”  She sighed and lowered herself to the sofa, grimacing at the aches and pains that settled in as her body came into contact with the soft cushions.  It reminded her of the altercation in the Salem Inn earlier.  When John had burst in on Bo with his mouth on hers, his hand inside her camisole, his fingers skimming her skin, pinching and flicking her nipple.  She dropped her face into her hands, wondering how she had come to this place but knowing that it was fully down to her own choices and refusal to face the complicated reality she had created.

Bo had the grace not to mention that she’d done a good enough job of rubbing it in herself.  She hated the way she was behaving.  Lashing out at John and trying to hurt him.  The things she had said today weren’t the words of an emotionally mature woman.  Of an experienced and well-regarded psychiatrist.  She knew better than that.  It just hurt so damn much.  

And yet, when he was close, she just wanted him to touch her.  To kiss her.  To make the pain recede with his magical hands and lips.  She knew she was weak.  She knew it as he kissed her in the Salem Inn and she had fought with everything she had to stop him seeing the way her body reacted to his touch, to the closeness of him.  It had taken everything in her to control her breathing, to stop her chest from rising and falling the way it always did when he was close.  The nails of both hands had dug deep grooves in her palms as she willed her lips to stay slack and still as he had pressed his mouth to hers.  It had been almost impossible.  She didn’t know how he hadn’t heard the pounding of her heart or smelt the scent of her desire as it pooled between her legs.  As she had left the hotel room, outside the door, she had steadied herself against the doorframe, gasping for air and trying to stop her hands from shaking.

She knew that sooner or later, if she let him get close to her, she would give in to her body’s intense craving for him.  So, she kept him at a distance, the only way she knew how.  By hurting him.  

“I know.”  The sound of Bo’s voice dragged her out of her reverie as he sat down on the couch opposite her.  “I regretted it almost as soon as I said it.”  That wasn’t entirely true.  He had quietly enjoyed the anger and pain on John’s face.  It was only in the taxi and in the face of Marlena’s silent iciness that he had started to regret his hot-headedness.  “I’m sorry.  I don’t know what else to say.”

She lifted her head and regarded him.  Her elbows propped on her knees, the fingers of her hands lacing together.  Between her upper arms, her periwinkle blue cami framed the soft swell of her breasts.  “Say you won’t do it again,” she suggested.

“I won’t.”  He shook his head.  “I promise.”

“Oh, Bo.  Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she sighed.  She could see only too clearly how this would go.  John and Bo, vowing to behave like adults but continuously needling each other like jealous teenagers until one of both of them cracked and took their frustrations and insecurities out on each other.  Or, unintentionally, on her.

And why did she expect it to be any different?  She wouldn’t engage in conversation with John for fear that he would win her over with his sweet words and those gentle, demanding hands and lips.  And then she would be back at square one, still not having solved the problems between them and waiting for him to break her heart all over again.

And then there was Bo.  She wouldn’t make any kind of commitment, but she also wasn’t able to let him go.  He was in limbo until she sorted her feelings out.  Of course he was jealous and insecure.  Of course they hated each other.  Bo had her body, but John had her heart.  Until she gave her whole self to one man, or withdrew herself from both, they would continue this dance of jealous opposition and she would be poised between them, bearing the brunt of their mutual antagonism.

Bo watched her roll her shoulders again and rub her forehead with her beautiful, slender fingers.  She looked exhausted.  She looked wrecked by the events of the day, and he felt like a total dick for making things so much worse for her at every turn.  That hadn’t been his intention, but that was how it had turned out and he couldn’t be more sorry.

“I can keep that promise.”  He moved across to sit next to her and he took her hand in his, folding his other hand around it.  “I’m sorry.   I was a complete idiot.  You’re right.  Things are bad enough.  I won’t make them any worse.  Cross my heart.”  He drew a cross over his chest with his finger and tried to grin through the wreckage of his swollen mouth.  Marlena couldn’t help the smile that flickered across her own face.  Sometimes Bo was just a big kid and sometimes that was annoying but sometimes it was a good thing.

 “Ice?” she asked again, lifting her fingers to his face.  

“I think it’s probably too late for that,” Bo tucked a loose strand of gold behind her ear.  “Alcohol and your mouth, not necessarily in that order.”  He dropped his lips to hers and pressed gently as he smoothed his fingers across the soft, warm skin of her neck and threaded his fingers in her hair.  Marlena moaned against his mouth and wove her fingers through the fingers of the hand that still held hers.

She held his eyes, deep soulful pools of velvet brown for a long moment before closing her own and sinking into his kiss.  She could feel the familiar thrill in the pit of her stomach, trickling down to her thighs and collecting and nestling in the soft, swelling depths of her.

And then she could hear John’s anguished voice and she could see his eyes, impossibly blue ice chips in his beautiful weather-beaten face.  And the feeling of his lips against hers.  Desperate.  Demanding.  

She yelped involuntarily and pushed herself away from Bo.

“What is it?” he asked, and she could sense the hesitation in his question.

“It’s… I’m sore.”  It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t an honest answer to his question, either.  She could see him searching for the truth in her expression and she turned away deliberately.  “I uh… I think I could use a drink.  Will you open a bottle of wine?  There’s beer in the fridge if you would rather…”

She indicated the stairs.  “I think I’m just going to go and find some painkillers and something more comfortable to wear.”  She needed to get away from him, just for a few minutes.  She needed some space to breathe.

Upstairs in her room, she unbuttoned and unzipped her skirt and let it drop to the floor.  She groaned with the discomfort of stripping off her stockings but then stopped short as she turned and saw herself in the mirror.  She had a bruise that ran from her hip to midway down her thigh and disappeared under the blue satin of her panties.  She searched her memory for the moment that she had fallen.

John had his hands wrapped around Bo’s throat and she had tried to intervene, tried to pull him away from Bo.  He had released Bo to push her gently away from their struggle, but Bo had shoved him backwards.  She had been moving towards them to try and step in between them to do whatever she could to de-escalate the situation, but John had staggered back and clipped her with his shoulder.  She had lost her balance and gone down heavily on her right buttock and hip; trying to break her fall with her hand had jarred and possibly sprained her wrist.  So, when Eric had asked her whose fault it was, she was really being honest when she said she didn’t know.  Was it John’s fault for starting it or for accidentally knocking her down?  Was it Bo’s fault for pushing John into her path?  Or was it her fault for getting them in this whole damn mess in the first place?  

She ran her hand over the darkening bruises.  She was certainly sore, but she was pretty sure nothing was broken.  Nothing was really damaged except her pride and her relationship with the family.  

And John.  

But wasn’t that relationship already broken beyond repair?  She had told him to go and… who’s fault was that?  She had started today with so many questions, but not nearly as many as she was ending it with.

Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at herself in the mirror.  She wasn’t at all sure she liked the woman staring back at her.  Physically she was thinner than she’d been in a long time.  Since John left, she’d not been eating properly and while Bo had done his best to insist that she ate actual meals, their time together had been more about satiating her sexual appetite rather than her desire to quell whatever hunger for food she had.  Not that she could remember the last time she was truly hungry.

But it wasn’t her physical appearance that really bothered her.  It was knowing what lay underneath the beautifully perfect exterior.  She hated that she was so uncertain, so insecure.  So frightened.  She had always thought of herself as strong but at this moment she felt so fragile.  As though just a tap in the wrong place would send a crack along predetermined fault lines that were marked into her soul by a lifetime of being hurt.  Of being left.

She swallowed as she eyed herself.  Was she really any better than Sami in that respect?  Doing everything to protect herself from being abandoned, yet again.  Including pushing away the people that loved her the most.  Turning her fear of being alone into a self-fulfilling prophecy?

She was so tempted to just crawl beneath the duvet underneath her thighs, to pull it over her head and just shut out everything.  But she couldn’t do that.  She had children to look after, she had patients to see.  She had a life that demanded her attention, even when she had none to give.

Everything ached as she slipped off the bed.  Her footsteps were uneven as she crossed the carpet and then the marbled floor of the bathroom.  She swung open the door of the cupboard that held the medicines she kept.  Gentle painkillers for the children.  Cough syrup.  Indigestion remedies.  Tylenol and Advil.   And… she pulled out the bottle of Vicodin, prescribed for John last year when he’d injured his foot while out running.  He had only taken two and refused to take any more, citing the fact that he didn’t like “the way they make me feel.”

She shook the container.  It was almost full.  She could take two and no-one would ever know.  it would numb the pain.  And not just the physical.  She stared at the tiny bottle in her hands.  Mr. John Black.  He hadn’t taken it when he’d packed and left her.  Why would he?  He’d left half of his clothes.  They were still hanging in his wardrobe.  She had just closed the door and left them there.  HIs presence was still all over this penthouse.  Just like it was inside her head.  And her heart.

She exhaled and popped the lid of the container.  She knew she shouldn’t be doing this, but it seemed to happen of its own accord as she shook two of the tablets into her hand and washed them down with a handful of water.  Then she slipped the bottle back onto the shelf and palmed the Advil bottle, taking it back into the bedroom and throwing it on the bed.  

She paused in the middle of the room and looked around her.  She could feel him here.  His presence.  Almost as though he was right here in this room with her.  Or maybe like he had just left it.  She picked up the champagne-colored satin nightgown that was crumpled on top of the bedclothes.  She had been running late when she’d left this morning and she hadn’t tidied the room before she’d left to drop the kids at school.  She hugged the slippery fabric to her chest.  This nightgown had ended up on the floor more times than she could count.  In fact, it had probably spent more time pooled on the carpet or on flung over the back of the loveseat than it had actually made it to the morning still on her body as she lay warm and sated between the sheets, John’s arms around her.

Shaking her head, she bundled it up with the children’s dirty nightclothes and threw everything in the washing hamper.  Then she went to her drawers and pulled out a t-shirt and some sweats.  She dropped the sweats on the messy bed and pulled the t-shirt over her head and dropped it down over her body.  It hung loosely on her frame, and she grimaced at herself in the mirror.  She hurled her sweat-top at the reflected image with a small shout of vexation.  She was so tired of herself; she wasn’t sure why anyone else would want to be around her.  

She flung open the French door that led onto the bedroom terrace and stepped out into the chill of the night air.  The breeze had picked up and a gust sucked the breath from her throat as she stood, looking out over Salem.   Her eyes searched for the river and the neighborhood where John’s loft was located.

The ache she felt wasn’t just the physical pain from her fall.  It wasn’t just the emotional pain from the situation she found herself in.  It wasn’t even just from the fracturing of her family or from the antagonism between Bo and John.  It wasn’t only from John’s leaving and the echoes of departures throughout the years.

No, this ache was the emptiness deep in her soul.  Part of her was missing.  She’d been trying so hard to fill it with Bo, but seeing John today brought everything into sharp relief.  He was woven into the fabric of who she was.  She could no more unthread him from her life than she could her children.  And that emptiness hummed and vibrated inside her.  It was an emptiness that was almost alive in its obviousness now.  An empty, yawning void that begged to be filled.

But filled with what?  If she couldn’t fill it with him, was it just destined to stay there?  A hollow scooped out of her heart which would just ache forever?

She leaned her forearms on the terrace wall and bowed her head, trying to breathe.  Trying not to panic.  

“Marlena?” She gradually became aware of Bo’s voice and then she felt him draping a throw around her shoulders.  “Come inside.  Please?”

She felt the warmth of his hands as he pulled her back from the edge of the terrace, and she suddenly realized that she was frigid and shivering with the cold.

She let him lead her back into the bedroom and watched as he closed and latched the door behind him.

Bo said nothing, just came to her and pulled her into his arms.  He’d waited for her to come back downstairs, and he’d made it through half a bottle of beer before he’d gotten worried about her continued absence.  He’d found her standing at the edge of the terrace, shivering and unresponsive.  In fact, she’d not even heard him as he had tried to reach her.  

He’d felt how cold she was, and he’d begged her to come inside but she’d given no answer.  He had retreated into the bedroom and found a blanket to wrap around her.  It was only as he was nearing her for the second time, he had seen the bruise on her thigh and his heart had twisted painfully.  

He’d placed the throw around her shoulders and repeated her name until she had blinked and turned her head, to look at him with unfocussed eyes.

So now he just held her and tried to infuse some warmth into her as he wondered what the hell was going on in her head.

It felt like forever until she finally stopped shaking and relaxed against him.  He exhaled and loosened his arms slightly, pulling away so that he could look at her.  “Marlena, I’m worried about you,” he said softly as he brushed her hair back from her face.  Her eyes were glassy as she swayed against him and the throw fell to the floor, revealing her bruised leg again.  “I think maybe we should go to the hospital and get you checked out.”

“No!” she shook her head vehemently, suddenly seeming to become aware of him.  “No hospital.  I’m fine.”

“Honey, you’re not fine.”  He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and forced her to look at him.  “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you less okay.  And I’ve seen you very ‘not okay’ at times over the years.”

Marlena’s eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head.  “I just need… to rest.  I just need you to hold me.”

“But your hip….” he looked down at her leg.  “I really think you need to maybe get an x-ray.”

“I haven’t broken anything.”  She gave him a small smile.  “I took some painkillers.  It’s not so bad now.”  And it wasn’t.  She felt like she was floating two feet above the floor.  It wasn’t necessarily a feeling she liked.  But then, she wasn’t hurting so much anymore, and that was a blessed relief.  

Bo pursed his lips, his jaw set firmly and stubbornly.  “Marlena-”

“Please, Bo.”  She interrupted whatever it was he had been about to say.  She didn’t have it in herself to have yet another argument.  Her head was swimming, and she was through arguing.  At least tonight.  “Alcohol and your mouth.”  She wound her arms around his neck with a sexy, inviting smile.  “Not necessarily in that order.”

She pressed her lips to his and she felt his resistance falter.  Her tongue flicked the crusted blood where John had split his lip with his knuckles.  “I’m so sorry he hurt you,” she whispered as she feathered her fingers through his hair.  “Let me make it up to you.”  She ground her pelvis against his as she kissed him again and she heard the groan he swallowed deep in his throat.  

Bo knew that this wasn’t right.  There was something off about Marlena.  Well, if he was honest, there were a lot of things off about her right now.  Her volatile and changeable moods.  The way she’d been lost inside herself out there on the terrace.  The sudden seductiveness that served to act as a distraction from the real issues at hand.  Her pained body and her broken heart.

But he was weak, and he couldn’t resist her.  Her hands and her mouth.  That velvety depth to her voice when she wanted something.  The way her body felt against his, her soft breasts, unsupported under her powder-pink t-shirt.  He hardened inside the stiff denim of his jeans.  He knew what she was doing, and he knew he should stop her.  But her tongue was inside his mouth, searching, digging, just like her fingers, one hand clutching at his hair, the other making crescents in his back where her nails dug exquisitely into his twitching, jumping muscles.

“Marlena,” he grunted, pushing her away.  Her gaze was vague, and she swayed so that he was forced to gather her in his arms again.  “What painkillers did you take?”

“Just the Advil,” she lied, waving her hand airily in the direction of the bed before she looked back at him from heavy-lidded eyes.  “Bo, baby, don’t you want me?”  She reached down and found the growing evidence that he did, indeed, want her and she smiled, licking her lips as she rubbed him.

“Jesus, you know I want you.” He pulled her hand away from his crotch and the tumescent bulge straining beneath the zippered denim.  “I’m just not sure that what you want is what you actually need at the moment.”

“You’re overthinking things,” she flung her arms around him again and rubbed herself against him.  His respondent groan elicited a throaty chuckle.  “Little Bo down there isn’t overthinking things, is he?”

“Marlena!”  Bo was getting exasperated now.  He was caught between the absolute lust he felt for this woman (and the desire for her he’d had to temper and tame on and off all day), and his growing fear that she was literally falling apart in his arms.  It felt wrong to act on his desire for her when he wasn’t sure that she was really in any fit state to know what it was that she wanted or what was good for her.  “You need to slow down.”

“Don’t tell me what I need!” she shouted at him, her anger suddenly flaring uncontrollably.  “I’m so sick of everyone telling me what I need to do.  How about what I want to do?  How about you all mind your own business and let me decide what it is that’s good for me?”

“Are you even capable of that right now?” Bo shot back angrily.  He pointed at the now-closed French door.  “You just stood out there half naked in the freezing cold for fifteen minutes lost in your own little world.  You really think I should trust that you’re making good decisions right now?”

“Now you’re starting to sound like your judgmental mother,” Marlena snarled, pulling away from him and wrapping her arms around herself.  “If you don’t want to be here with me, you can go.  GO!”  She flung her arm out, waving her hand at him in a gesture that far less aggressive than her tone of voice.  “I’m not forcing you to stay.”

“I don’t want to go.”  Bo sighed, his voice dropping and his anger with it.  “I’m just really worried about you.  I love you.  You know that.   I want to do the right thing by you.  And I’m not sure that this” he waved his fingers to indicate the space between them, “is it.  As much as I am desperate to make love to you right now, I am just not sure it’s the right thing for you.  Or for me, for that matter.”

His quiet vulnerability disarmed her, and she found his gaze too intense to hold for more than a moment.  She turned away, blinking.  Her eyes were curiously dry and gritty as she reached out for the bed, steadying herself.  

“I’m not trying to tell you what to do or to hurt you anymore.”  He came up behind her and put warm hands on her shoulders and pressed his lips to her hair.  “I just don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage of you when you’re so… after everything that’s happened today.”

Marlena said nothing but she leaned against him and closed her eyes.  He felt so good, and she knew his words made sense.  Or they would if she could put them into any kind of logical order.  The light-headedness came in waves, and she wished she could just disappear into it for a while.

But she knew she couldn’t.  That way lay madness.  

But even so…

“Did you open some wine?” she asked in a whisper.  

“Downstairs,” Bo said into her hair as he exhaled a little of the pent-up tension that was in his shoulders.  “Shall we get these on you?”  He picked up the sweatpants from the end of the bed and shook them out.  Opening one leg, he kneeled down in front of her.  She stepped into first one leg and then the other before he pulled them up and over her hips, being careful not to brush the deepening bruise on her thigh.   “Are you sure…?” he asked as he saw the injury up close.

“I’m sure.” She combed her fingers through his hair.  “I’m sure.”

 Without words, he stood, picked up the hooded sweatshirt and helped her into it before pulling the zipper up.  She held his eyes this time and she lifted her hand to his face.  “You’re such a good man,” she drifted her fingers across the swelling around his eye.  “I wish…”  She wished a million things.  But most of them could never come true.  She couldn’t turn back time.  She couldn’t make Hope stop looking for her past.  She couldn’t undo what she’d done with Bo.  She couldn’t stop being who she was or feeling what she felt.

“I know.”  Bo nodded.  He knew exactly what it was that she wanted to say.  They both knew it, but he didn’t want her to say it out loud.  Once one of them voiced it, it was out there, and it couldn’t be taken back.  And he wasn’t ready for that yet.  He wanted to hang onto this for a little while longer.  He wanted to hold her in his arms and bury his face in her hair and inhale her sweet scent

He wanted to lose himself in her mouth and between her thighs and he just wanted to pretend that this was forever.

“C’mon.”  He tugged on her hand, and she followed him out of the bedroom.

Downstairs, she picked up the glass of red wine on the coffee table and eased herself down onto the sofa.  Bo opened himself another bottle of beer and sat down next to her.  She sighed and leaned against him, taking a large mouthful of the wine.  In the part of her mind that was still rational and in control, she knew that alcohol on top of painkillers was not a wise idea, but she tamped down that thought and enjoyed the light-headedness that intensified with each mouthful of wine.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Bo murmured into her hair before taking a large swig of his lager.

“Which bit?” she asked with an irony-laden chuckle.  

“Any of it.”  He shrugged.  “It’s been a hell of a day,” he acknowledged.  “Where did you go?  After… before you came to the pub?”

She shrugged.  “I needed some space.  I went down to the pier and ran into Abe.”  She took a large mouthful of her wine and gulped it down.  

He was silent, waiting for her to tell him more but she either wasn’t ready or it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about.  

“I’m… I don’t understand why Mom is being this way,” his face screwed up as he thought how cold his mother had been towards Marlena.  “I mean, why she’s angry at you and not me.”

“Because you’re her child and she’s protective of you.”  Marlena leaned forward and picked up the bottle of wine, splashing it into her glass until almost half the bottle was gone.  “Because I broke Roman’s heart and then he went and got himself killed.”  She took another large mouthful of the wine.  “Because she’s afraid I’ll do the same to you.  I can’t really say I blame her.”

“No, we talked about this, Marlena,” Bo said firmly.  “What happened to Roman was Roman’s fault.  You tried to fix your marriage.  You never gave up on him.  Not until he gave up on you.”

“I cheated on him, Bo.  It just hurt him too much.  He couldn’t forgive me.”  Marlena turned to him.  “I appreciate that you’re trying to help, and maybe you want to talk about what happened today, but I really don’t want to.  Not right now.  it’s too…” she waved the glass in her hand around so that the wine slopped dangerously close to the rim of the wine glass.  “I don’t want to talk about it.  Any of it.”  She took another large mouthful of the wine and concentrated on the warmth of it slipped down inside her.  She thought about the last time they lay on this sofa together.  And the first time they sat on the sofa and drank wine.  Right before he took her upstairs and fucked her senseless.  Her heart was thrumming in her ears, and she felt like she was flying.  “I didn’t ask you back here so that we could dissect everything that happened this afternoon.”

“Why did you ask me back here?” Bo knew he was going to regret asking.  Or maybe he wouldn’t regret it.

“You know why.”  She leaned closer to him, the hue of her beautiful hazel eyes darkening to a woody green.  “I want you to take advantage of me.”  She pressed a small kiss to his lips and then swiped her tongue across his lower lip.  “I want you to fuck me real hard, Bo.  I want you to fuck me until I can’t think about anything else but the way your cock feels as you thrust into me.”

“Jesus!” Bo jerked involuntarily, his penis stiffening as her hand brushed across his crotch.  She took another couple of mouthfuls of her wine and watched him as he battled with his conscience.  Then she put her glass down on the table and slung her leg across him and used the lapels of his shirt to pull herself onto him so that she was straddling his thighs.  Her hip and leg ached vaguely but the Vicodin was well and truly doing its job and she was dissociated from the pain.  Well, from pretty much everything, if she was honest.

“Bo,” she pushed her pelvis forward so that it ground against his cock.  “Tell me you don’t want this.”  She unzipped her hoody and shrugged out of it, dropping it on the floor at Bo’s feet.  Then she took one of his hands and cupped it over the mound of one breast, her own hand on top of it.  She could feel her heartbeat everywhere.  In her throat, in her ears, between her legs.  She was drunk and she was high, and she was as horny as hell.  And she was determined to get what she wanted and what she wanted was to get fucked, good and proper.

“Do you want this, Bo?”  She rocked against him again and he groaned.  “Of course you do.”  She slid his hand down to her belly and lifted the hem of her t-shirt.  Bo closed his eyes and breathed unsteadily as she pushed his hand up between the cotton and her bare skin.  She gasped and moaned as his fingers came into contact with her nipple.  It was already hard and tender and when he pinched it, electric currents flickered from her breasts down into her groin.

“Oh god, Marlena!”  Bo was lost as he used his right hand to squeeze and fondle her warm, supple flesh.  His left hand spanned her lower back, digging into the waistband of her sweats, his nails scraping the top of her buttocks.  His face was buried in her neck as he licked and sucked her warm, fragrant skin.  

She smelled of lavender, red wine and regret and he knew he shouldn’t do this, but he knew he was going do it anyway.  Because he was powerless.  He couldn’t say no to her, any more than he could stop breathing.

Marlena writhed on top of him, riding the lump in his pants through their clothing.  “Uh Bo, you…”  She couldn’t vocalize her thoughts.  She couldn’t even think them very clearly.  A hard man is  …. good and fine, was it?  She chuckled throatily at herself.  Marlena, you’re a drunk, horny mess!

Bo heard her laughter and pulled back, looking at her curiously.

“Priv… private joke,” she giggled lushly.  And then, “you’re a hard man!”  She broke into peals of drunken laughter and Bo couldn’t help smiling at her.  She was adorable when she was drunk.  She’d been tipsy the first night they’d slept together, and he’d found her simultaneously sexy and very cute.  And then when they’d been in bed, she had just been incredibly hot. 

“Good to be hard,” she told him, giggling.  The room was spinning around her now, but she felt on top of the world.  “Hard and fine…. or is it find?  I dunno.”  She shrugged carelessly.  “You are fine though.  AND hard.”  She wriggled about on top of him, and he sucked in a breath.  The things she did to him were criminal.

“You’re drunk,” he grinned, despite himself. 

“And you’re ….”  he pinched her nipple again and she moaned, her body convulsing.  “Oh god, Blo.”  She stopped again, realizing what it was she’d said and after a lengthy pause, she shrieked with laughter.   “Shall I, honey?  Blow you?”

“Marlena-” he stopped.  He wanted so badly to give in to her, to give her what she wanted but now she was drunk on top of her emotional breakdown earlier.  This didn’t feel right.  While she was enthusiastic enough, he felt like the consent part of it was dicey.  While he was pretty sure that when she had asked him to come back here with her tonight, this had been her intention, he couldn’t be entirely sure.  

“Don’t Marlena me…” She fumbled with his belt buckle, the wine and Vicodin making her fingers numb and clumsy.

He caught her wrists and fastened his fingers around them.  “I don’t think we should do this.  You’ve had too much to drink.”

“I’ve only had two glasses!” Marlena argued.  “I’m fine.”  She giggled again.   “I’m fine, you’re fine.  So where were we?”  He still held her wrists clamped between his fingers, but she ignored that and leaned forwards so that her breasts pressed into his chest.  Her mouth was hot against his ear.  “I think we were at, ‘I want you to fuck me and I’m not taking no for an answer’.”  She sucked his earlobe into her mouth, nibbling at it with eager teeth before she traced the folds of his ear with her hungry tongue.  “Don’t you want to feel how hot and wet my pussy is for you?”

Bo groaned and squirmed beneath her.  It was like a light switch flipping on in his brain when she talked dirty to him.  It was impossible for him to resist her when such filth slipped from her perfectly demure mouth.   Her insistence that he was ‘hard’ was certainly based in fact and she wasn’t helping that by the way she was rubbing herself against him.

“Marlena, please stop!”  His words sounded hollow, and they lacked any real conviction.  If he was really honest, he didn’t want her to stop.   He wanted to ride this wave of Marlena’s desire, to let her convince him that burying his hardness in that warm, moist piece of heaven between her legs was the only logical way for this night to end.

“You don’t want me to stop.”  Her eyes glittered, glassy with lust and wine as she pulled her arms from his grasp and divested herself of her t-shirt, shaking her hair so that it bounced against her shoulders and her beautiful breasts jiggled in front of him.  “You want to fuck me.  Isn’t that right honey?”  When he didn’t answer, she took one of his hands in hers and dug it between the waistband of her sweatpants and her lacy knickers.  Bo’s eyes fluttered closed as his fingers brushed against the lace, seeking and finding the crotch soaking.  His hips strained upwards he hooked a finger beneath the sodden satin and lace, and he encountered the swollen, slippery folds of her sex.  

She inhaled and hummed as her hands cupped the back of his neck and she dropped her head back, lifting her pelvis to give him better access to the places where she ached for him.

“Oh.”  She drew in a sharp breath as he pushed the scrap of lace aside and used his middle finger to trace the line where her lips would part for him.  He wanted badly to taste her, to slide his tongue and his fingers into her.  He wanted to cleave her there with his stiff, throbbing penis.  He wanted to push into her and feel her, gloriously hot and wet, at first resisting and then taking him in as he pounded into her.  He wanted to feel her tensing around him, contracting and squeezing him until he had no option but to empty himself inside her in wave after wave of mind shattering orgasmic pleasure. 

He opened his eyes to watch her as he curled his finger, dipping it into her sweet, honeyed depths.  She swayed and moaned.  God, she was so beautiful.  Even bruised, drunk and half-broken, she was beautiful.  Maybe even more so.

He slid a second finger inside her and pushed them deeper and she moaned loudly.  He lifted one hand and cupped the underside of one of her incredible breasts.  He lifted it to meet his mouth and he lapped at her nipple and blew at it, watching as it hardened into a rosy nub, her areola puckering and darkening around it.

“God, you’re so sexy,” he murmured as he took her into his mouth, suckling her as she curled her fingers into his hair and held him to her.  She raised herself on her knees so that he could sink his fingers deeper inside her and she whimpered his name.  The sounds that leaked from her as she rode his fingers were incredible, each one of them wild and urgent and so fucking hot that he thought he might come just from the sound of her and feel of her, tight and warm and wet around his fingers.

And then she stopped.  “I want to come with you inside me,” she said, her voice hoarse and shaky.  His mouth still on her breast, he nodded breathlessly and slipped his hand from inside her.  She voiced the loss of him with a small cry and a shudder.

“Stand up,” he said gently, and she climbed off him, wincing at how stiff she was. 

“Marl-” 

She covered his mouth with her hand.  “Please?” she asked, desperation threading through her words.  “I can take it.  I just need this.  Please don’t make me beg you.”

He swallowed and nodded again and slid his hands under the waistband of her sweatpants and skimmed the clothing down over her hips, dropping it to the floor.  She stepped out of them and kicked them away and then pulled him up so that he was standing in front of her.  

“You do yours too.”  She nodded at his belt buckle.  She wasn’t coordinated enough to wrestle with his jeans, so she just watched his beautiful hands as he undid them and dropped them to the floor.

Her heart pounded in her ears, and she licked her lips as she slid her hands beneath the elastic of his boxers and over the well-defined curves of his muscular buttocks, she squeezed them, pulling him close and tipped her head back.  “Kiss me?” she asked sweetly.

Bo was lost in her.  He had been ever since she’d climbed onto his lap.  In truth, he had been ever since she had climbed into his lap all those weeks ago.  His brain was glazed with lust and all he could think about what how she felt in the multitude of places where she touched him.  How soft she was, how pliant her curves felt underneath his hands.  And how her lips were warm and gentle, her tongue demanding.  How she tasted, how she smelt.  She might be drunk, but he was drunk on her.  Utterly intoxicated.  She was everything and he was just her fool.

He bent his head and acceded to her request, feasting himself on her mouth, his tongue demanding her submission.  His hands were all over her, on her face, in her hair, splaying across her lower back and pulling her against him.

“I need you,” he whispered against her mouth.  “I don’t think I’ve ever needed anyone as much as I need you right now.”

“Take me,” she begged him.  “Use me, Bo.  Make me forget everything else but how good it feels when you’re inside me.”

Bo groaned, involuntarily thrusting his hips against her, grinding his aching cock against her belly.

“I don’t think… I don’t want to hurt you.” He gritted his teeth as he tried to control himself.

“I don’t want gentle,” she told him as she nipped his lower lip so hard that she drew blood from where John’s knuckles had split it.  “I want it to hurt.  I want you to fuck me so hard I can’t think of anything else.”  

She didn’t have to say it.  What she was trying to forget.  Or who.

Who’s using who?  It was a fleeting thought and one Bo squashed immediately but it would haunt him in days to come.

Instead, he stripped her of her panties in one single, fluid movement and then removed his own underwear.  He took her hand and helped her back down onto the sofa, but instead of laying on her back, she turned over, her bruised buttock and thigh staring him straight in the face.

“Are you sure-”

“I’m sure,” she told him, her beathing heavy and erratic.   She didn’t want to look at his face as he pounded into her.  She didn’t want to see the damage that John had wrought.  It was bad enough to feel it deep in the flesh of her own body, marked in vivid violet and gold.  It was bad enough that it was scored in her own bruised heart.  She didn’t want to see the evidence on him too.  She didn’t want to look into his eyes and see the truth of what she was doing.  Using him to erase the feel of John’s hands on her.  Of his mouth on hers.  Bo was her drug of choice, and she was going to obliterate everything that was John, with him.  “I’m sure.” 

She reached around behind her and took Bo’s hand, guiding it between her legs, pressing his fingers against her clit.  “You won’t see it once you’re inside me,” she told him before she sighed as his fingers began to gently rub against her.

Bo was silent.  He could taste the coppery blood still seeping from the cut on his lip.  He could smell her, the distinctive smell of her arousal, and the swollen, glistening pink folds of her pussy, inviting him to dip in and taste her.

“Please?” she whispered again, almost whining with her insistence for him to give her what she needed.  Sex.  Pain.  Oblivion.  

He closed his eyes.  She was moving as he fingered her, and her breathing was harsh, peppered with tiny moans and whimpers.  He swallowed and then opened his eyes.  He ached to be inside her.  He’d come to her earlier in the day because he’d needed to feel her.  He’d wanted to tell her how much he needed her.  How he craved her, how he was addicted to her.  How she was all he thought about.  

That was still true.  Whatever else had happened today, his feelings for this woman had not changed.  In fact, if anything, they were even more intense.  He wanted her.  He couldn’t stop wanting her.  He had to give in to her.  He had to give her what she wanted, even if she wanted it for all the wrong reasons.

Drawing his hand away from her clit, he used the fingers of both hands to spread the lips of her pussy and he slid the tip of his tongue down her slit, seeking the little nub of nerves at the base.  Marlena gasped and bucked her hips against him.  She lowered herself to her forearms, her face buried in the cushions, her buttocks high in the air.  

He began to lick her, slowly and deliberately, giving her clit small flicks of his tongue on each upward stroke, digging his tongue deeper inside her with each downward journey.

“Oh, Bo.  Mmmmph…”  She thrust back against his tongue, his face.  It was nice but she wanted more.  She wanted him deep inside her.  Hard, thick, fast.   She was desperate.  She had to stop.  Stop seeing.  Stop feeling.  Stop him uncoiling inside her heart.  Stop him echoing inside her head.  Her lips blistered where he’d kissed her.  Her hand burned at his touch.  She couldn’t breathe.

“Please,” she moaned.  “I need more.  I need you.  All of you.”

Bo feathered his tongue deeper inside her and pressed his fingers against sensitive center, rotating them in small, hard circles, just the way he knew she liked it.  A sob slipped from her as she thrust back against him.  She wanted him to fuck her, but this felt so good.  His tongue dipping, circling, sliding in and out, his fingers rubbing, slipping, flicking.  And then she was cracking, falling and it was his hands and his tongue and her cries and just sound and light.  

After some time, she felt the outsides of his thighs up against the insides of hers which were now quivering like jello.  His palm was splayed against her belly, holding her up as she convulsed.  

“Do you still want it?” he asked.

“Yes!” her voice was harsh and raspy.  “God, yes!”

Bo took his cock in his hand and pumped it several times, although in truth, he was already so hard he could barely stand it.  He rubbed the head of his penis up and down her slit and she bucked and moaned loudly.  The sound of her pleasure, her desire, almost made him come.  The anticipation of being inside her, of feeling her hot and tight around him made him groan loudly.

Marlena reached back to grasp him in her hand and guided him forward so that he was pushing into her.  She could feel the head of his hard, throbbing dick forcing its way into her and she whimpered several yes’s as he drove into her.  She felt every inch as he slid into her, impaling himself inside her tight tunnel.

“Jesus,” he panted as he drove himself deep inside her.  She was arching her back, pressing back against him, urging him deeper with her moans and grunts.  He pulled back out of her until he was almost completely unsheathed and then slammed back into her, hard and deep.  “Uh, Marlena.”  He closed his eyes and did it again.  He wanted her to feel him and only him.  He wanted to fill her, to remind her how good they were together, over and over and over.  He wrapped his fingers around her shoulder, the tips of his fingers digging in deep above her collarbone and drove into her again and again.

She cried out and gasped each time he slammed himself deep inside her.  It hurt everywhere.  Her thigh, her hip, her ass.  Her heart.

Her eyes were closed, and she could see John, she could see his dark indigo eyes, searing right through her.  She could see his agony and it pierced the shield of anger she had wrapped so righteously around herself.  He filled her consciousness with his pain as Bo filled her body with his hard, hot desire.

Her eyes flew open.  

“Harder,” she urged Bo, her throat tight and raw with unexpressed anguish.  “Please.”  She wasn’t sure what she was asking for.  For release?  For absolution?  For it all to stop, to stop the feelings, the games, the pain.

Her body quaked as Bo pounded into her.  Her thigh screamed with the pain.  She was exhausted.  But she was so close to the edge.  So close to flying into that sweet oblivion.  

She reached down between her legs and touched herself.  Just the same way John touched her.  With just the perfect pressure and flick of her fingers, it was there, that leap into the sweet release of orgasm.  But he wasn’t there with her.  Instead, it was Bo folding himself around her, pulsing into her, emptying himself inside her and suddenly the tears were coming, and they wouldn’t stop.  She collapsed onto the sofa, burying her face in the soft brown florals, soaking them with her tears.  Her body quivered and jerked with orgasm, but it didn’t feel like she needed it to feel.  Instead, it felt like hollowness.  It felt like betrayal.

On top of her, Bo slowly became aware that the shaking of her shoulders wasn’t simply the remnants of her orgasm.  Instead, he realized with slowly dawning alarm that she was sobbing.

“Marlena?” he withdrew carefully from her and climbed off of the sofa so that he was on his knees beside her.  “Honey?”  He tried to lift her shoulder so that she would be forced to look at him, but she kept her upper body stiff and clamped to the surface of the sofa as she hid her face from him.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked gently, trying to stroke the damp wavy hair from her face.  She whimpered and shook her head, indicating that he hadn’t.

“Marlena, you’re scaring me.”  His hand shook as he touched her shoulder.  He had tried to give her what she wanted, what she’d said she needed but he’d known deep down that it was wrong.  It wasn’t what she needed.  What she really wanted, what she really needed, was John Black.

He turned his back on her and sagged against the sofa, dropping his head into his hands.   If he had any self-respect, he would get up, get dressed and walk out of here now.  He should tell her to call John and work it out with him.  He should go talk to Shane and see what he could do to help find Hope.  This whole situation was a complete mess.  Marlena was a mess.  He was a mess.  

He should have listened to his mother when she had urged him to step away from this madness.  For madness was what it was.  It wasn’t Marlena’s fault, but she had this effect on a man.  His brother had been toppled by it and he had run away and gotten himself killed.  John was lost to it from the moment she had smiled at him, and he had never even wanted to escape her orbit.  It had sent a wildly unstable Stefano completely around the bend.  

And now him.  Now here he was, addicted to her, a little bit obsessed with her, and wanting so desperately for him to love him and only him and knowing that was never going to happen.  John was her end-game.  He always had been.  And the reality was, Bo was just a station on the way to her destination.  

And yet, he couldn’t walk away from her.  Her gravitational pull was just too strong.

It was a moment before he felt her fingers, soft and tentative on his shoulder.  He turned around to see half of her tear-stained face turned up from the sofa cushion and looking at him.  Even red and blotchy, mid-cry she was incredibly beautiful, and his heart twisted as he saw the misery etched on her face.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“It’s okay,” his lips twitched into a small smile, meant to reassure her.  “What do you need?”  He looked around and found one of the throws.  He shook it out and spread it over her.

“Could you…” she made a tiny noise that sounded like a combination of a sob and a hiccup.  “Could you maybe… h…. hold me for a little while?”

Bo nodded.  “You want to stay down here or go up?” He looked up the stairs towards her bedroom.

Marlena shrugged.  She was too tired, too emotionally wrung out to care.  No, she did care.  She didn’t want to even be here.  John was in every inch of this penthouse.  He was ingrained into the very fabric of it.  She couldn’t escape him, even if she wanted to.  And oh god, she wanted to.  But whatever she did, there he was.  An indelible presence in her home.  In her heart.

She closed her eyes and felt Bo picking her up in his arms.  She felt light-headed and sick.  She felt drained.  She felt heartbroken.

She pressed her face into the crook of his neck and fought the hot tears that leaked from her eyes and squirreled their way into the curves where their skin met.

In the darkened bedroom, she let him deposit her on the bed, pull back the covers and climb in beside her.  She didn’t want him there and yet she did.  She let him curl his arms around her and she cried quietly against his chest.

She felt so scared and so lost, and she didn’t know how to find her way back home, or even if she could.  

~

She’s cold and it’s dark.  Her head aches.  There’s music playing but she can’t make out the melody.  

She’s scared.  No, she’s terrified.

“John?”  

Silence.  

She feels around her.  Coarse woolen blankets on a cot.  Damp walls.

There is clanking and she realizes there are chains around her wrists.

“John?” she weeps but there is still no answer.

“I am playing this music especially for you Marlena, because I know that it’s one of your favorites.  Yours and Roman’s.”  She freezes at the voice.  It’s him.

“How do you know that?”  She asks, her voice shaking.  She can hear the music now and she knows it so well.  It’s the song Tamara sang at their wedding, all those years ago.  

“Because I know everything about you.  And the Brady’s.  And I thought perhaps that it would remind you of” his voice comes closer and he emerges from the gloom, “happier times.” Stefano leers at her.

She knows this.  She’s been here.  Except not here.  This didn’t happen in a dungeon.  This is wrong, this is all wrong.  Not that it was ever right, but…

“Oh you lousy son of-” John appears, his bearded face gaunt.  He is sitting, half naked on a cot, his wrists manacled.  His eyes are alive with pain, with love for her.  He has been starved and tortured and yet she is the source of most of his pain.  The fact that Stefano has used him to lure her into his evil grasp.  The fact that Stefano is using John’s love and fear for her to control him.

“Of course, all of that is in the past now.  Because Roman believes you are down here, having a wonderful time with John, perhaps hmmmmm… a lover’s tryst?”  Stefano reaches out and strokes her hair possessively and she shudders.

“He can’t think that.”  She knows he does think that.  He thought that.  This happened already, but not like this.

“Well what else could he possibly think, Marlena?  He knows that John would never have you come down here if there were danger.”  Stefano smirks as he lowers himself to the cot beside her and places his hand possessively on her knee.    She wants to tell him to stay away from her, she wants to withdraw from his touch, but she can’t move, she is pinned in place by the chains around her wrists, by his hand, by John’s eyes.  

She feels Stefano move and some kind of device with flashing lights appears in his free hand.  He presses a button, and she sees something change in John’s face.  His impossibly bright eyes suddenly darken and dull.  His pain transforms into something else.  Something which sends fear trickling down her spine.

“He doesn’t know that I didn’t send for you.” John tells her.  His eyes are boring into her, and he can see the way Stefano is touching her, but he says nothing.  Does nothing.

“John, your soup is getting cold.”  Stefano says, his smile, his pleasure coloring his tone of voice.

A spoon appears out of nowhere and John raises it to his mouth.

“John don’t do it.  Don’t let him take your memory from you, don’t let him do it.”  She hears the words spill from her own mouth, but this is all wrong.  The place is wrong.  John’s face, the way he looks at her is so wrong.

“I can give you everything you want Stefano, and I will.”  John’s smile is crooked and full of cunning, and Marlena thinks she is going to throw up as he takes another mouthful of the soup and then another. 

“John… John?  Oh god, what have you done to him?”  she whispers.  John leers at her as Stefano pulls her bodily to him…

She awoke panting, her skin layered with a light sheen of sweat.  Bo lay next to her, deep in his contented slumber.  His leg was hot against hers, his large hand splayed across her belly, damp where his skin touched hers.  

Her heart was pounding, her head ached, and her stomach roiled.  She was not sure whether it was the wine or the nightmare.  Either way she knew she was going to be sick.  

Gently, she moved Bo’s hand off her and froze as he moved and mumbled something unintelligible, but that might have been don’t leave.  When he had settled back into quiescence, his breathing, deep and steady, she slipped from under the covers and stumbled to the bathroom.  She closed the bathroom door behind her and barely made it to the toilet before she emitted the meagre contents of her stomach in several spasms of retching.  

She crouched down, shaking, pulling her lank hair from her face as she vomited out all the wine and fear and grief.  She had, she realized, not eaten anything since breakfast.  It was hardly surprising she’d succumbed so heavily to the drugs and alcohol.

Marlena, what the hell is happening to you?  How could you be so stupid?

She tipped forward onto her knees and slumped against the cold porcelain.  Her dream came back to her, John’s face swimming in front of her, his eyes cold and dead.  She recognized those eyes.  The same eyes he had turned on her at times in the months preceding his departure from Salem.  She shivered uncontrollably.  How long had that chip been in his neck?  Why hadn’t Stefano just utilized it in Maison Blanche if it had been in there for all that time?  Why hadn’t Stefano used it in any of his assorted incursions to snatch her from her family.  Why hadn’t Kristen used it?

If it hadn’t been there until more recently, then when had John been under his control for long enough that his doctors could undertake such a delicate procedure?  Brain surgery was hardly a two-minute job.

And if Stefano had done that once, what was to say he couldn’t do it again?  How would any of them even know?  How could she ever trust John again?  If she took him back, would she spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder, waiting for him to transform into Stefano’s mercenary at the flick of a switch.  Every time he said a harsh word, every time he was careless, every time the argued, would she be wondering if this was the moment?  If this was really John or was it his lurking evil twin.

She turned her head and vomited again, although there was nothing left in her stomach to expel but bitter bile.   This truth of John’s, this explanation, just left her with more questions than it offered answers.  It scared the hell out of her and made her query everything she thought she knew.

She wrapped her arms around her and swallowed a sob.  She didn’t know where to go from here.  Losing herself in sex and alcohol, even had it been a healthy coping mechanism, clearly wasn’t working.  But she wasn’t strong enough right now to talk to John.  To hold him at arm’s length and have the conversations that needed to happen to resolve whatever there was left between them.  She didn’t know how she could ever trust him again, but she didn’t know how to walk away from him either.  

It was a moment before she realized her teeth were chattering.  Where she’d woken hot and wet with sweat, now the marble tiles beneath her and the porcelain against her skin had sucked all the nightmare-fueled heat from her and she was icy cold.

Groaning, she picked herself up off the floor and reached into the shower to turn it on.  She needed to wash away the mistakes of the day.   There were so many of them.

She waited until the water was piping hot and then stepped under the steaming stream.  It felt like needles against her chilled skin, and she tipped her head back to let the water sluice through her stringy hair.   She couldn’t help but think of the showers she’d taken after some of the more traumatic times of her life.   Alone and vulnerable in a fleabag motel after she had seen John (then Roman) on the pier for the first time in five years.  A brightly lit bathroom after being trapped in that hellhole pit by Stella Lombard.  Guiltily washing John’s touch from her body after they had made desperate love on the Alamain jet.  John handing her soap before a ‘returned-from-hell’ shower at his loft.  

Showering away the grime, smoke and desperation of Maison Blanche.  Sluicing off Stefano’s touch in subterranean Paris.  Washing off the hopelessness of the Dimera secret room and the sight of him making love to Susan/Kristen….

So much pain.  So much fear.

No wonder she was traumatized and lost.  Everything was converging.  For so long, she had clung to John, trusting in his presence, in his friendship and his love to keep her safe.  He had kept her demons at bay, both figurative and literal.  But now?  Now that trust was in tatters.  Now she didn’t feel safe anymore.  Now she felt more alone than she ever had.  More vulnerable.

The water from the shower head melted into the tears that came now as she keened into the white noise of the water that beat against her and against the glass that surrounded her.  She gasped for air between the howls that ripped from her body.  She wanted John so badly.  She was rupturing and she needed him to wrap his arms around her and hold her together.  She needed him to whisper his gentle words of love and reassurance until she felt safe again.  She needed him to fit all her shattered pieces back together and fuse them with his touch, with his tongue, with his searing, dazzling love.

She tried to brace herself against the wall, but it was hopeless. She had no more strength.  Nothing left within her to keep herself upright.  She sank to the floor of the shower, the water, now cooler, still beating against her skin as she buried her face in her knees and let her broken heart finally express all the pain she had been holding at bay for so long.

Part Vingt-Trois

My only one 

My smoking gun 

My eclipsed sun 

This has broken me down 

My twisted knife 

My sleepless night 

My winless fight 

This has frozen my ground 

Hoax – Taylor Swift

Kim bounded down the stairs, Shane in her wake.  “Ma, where are Belle and Brady?” 

Caroline stopped polishing the glass in her hand and looked up at her daughter.  She had a sparkle in her eye that Caroline hadn’t seen for the longest time, and she could only attribute that to Kim’s debonair ex-husband who had arrived back at the pub early that morning, asking Kim to breakfast with him.

“John was just here,” she replied, her tone far more casual than her pounding heart might suggest.  “He wants to spend some time with them, so I let him take them.”

“Oh Mom.”  Kim stopped short, her eyes widening in surprise at Caroline’s words.  “Momma, what have you done?”

Caroline thought back to her conversation with John an hour or so previously.

“Oh John, I don’t know.  Marlena was expecting to come and pick up the children this morning.” Caroline held Belle on her lap while Brady had his arms wrapped around his father’s neck, a broad smile on his sweet little face.

“Well, she can pick them up from the loft when she deigns to put in an appearance.”  John couldn’t help the scowl on his face.  “Caroline, they’re my children too.  I have every right to see them and spend time with him.  Marlena and I have no formal custody arrangement.  You can’t really stop me taking them.”

“I wouldn’t stop you,” Caroline hugged Belle to her.  She was in a no-win situation here.  She didn’t agree with Marlena’s actions and choices, and she felt John’s pain keenly, but if she let John take the children, it would force another interaction and maybe a confrontation between the pair of them, possibly this time when the children were present.  That might be just what they needed, but it could also be disastrous for the children if they couldn’t keep the animosity dialed down when Belle and Brady were present.  

“I just don’t want to see the children become collateral damage in whatever is going on between you and Marlena.  I didn’t agree with it when Roman tried to use Belle to hurt Marlena and if I think either of you are trying to do that, I will put a stop to it.”

“Ma, I wouldn’t do that.” John said softly.  “I would never use my children as pawns.  I plan to work everything out with Marlena just as soon as she’ll talk to me.  But in the meantime, I’ve really missed these little guys and I’m desperate to spend some time with them.  And I think they want to spend some time with me, don’t you two?”

Brady had squealed with delight and John had tickled him with a chuckle while Belle had nodded her head vigorously in agreement.  And Caroline hadn’t been able to deny the man that was like a son in her heart, or the children she regarded as her grandchildren.

“He’s their father,” her lips tightened defensively.  “What was I supposed to do?”

“Call Marlena?” Kim propped her hands on her hips.  “Ma, John left those kids and went to Europe.  Whatever the reason he did it, he still left them with Marlena without a backward glance.  And she was planning to come back and pick them up this morning.  Don’t you think she should have at least been consulted?”

“Marlena and John don’t have any kind of formal custody arrangement,” Caroline quoted John at her daughter.  “I don’t need Marlena’s permission to let him take his own children.”

“Well, I guess I need to call Mickey and sort that out then.”  Marlena’s strained voice came from the open doorway of the pub.  She had been dreading this visit to the pub to pick up the children.  She was already feeling broken and the last thing she needed was another argument with Caroline.  She loved and respected the Brady matriarch so much and the knowledge that Caroline was so angry at her was tearing her apart inside.

Not to mention the physical toll this was taking on her.  She wasn’t sure how long she had been huddled in the bottom of the shower in the night before she had finally found the strength to stand again.  She had emerged, her tears finally spent, and wrapped herself in a large fluffy white bathsheet.  Sitting on the side of the tub, she had contemplated just how much she had screwed up that day.  And not just that day.

She couldn’t face this alone; she knew.  She had her first appointment booked with Laura on Monday, she just had to make it through the weekend in something that appeared like one piece, even if she was cracked and crumbling inside.

She had eventually dried herself off and crawled back into bed next to a still sleeping and oblivious Bo, but she had curled herself into a fetal ball at the edge of the bed and had stared into the darkness, finally drifting into a disturbed and fractured sleep as the sun was rising.

Bo had been sweet and solicitous on waking.  He had brought her painkillers for her hangover headache and had tried to encourage her to eat something to calm her queasy stomach.  But she hadn’t been able to face anything he had placed in front of her, waving away his efforts and concerns with a feeble hand and a papery-pale face.  When he had tried to touch her, she had shied away from his touch, almost shrinking into herself and Bo had cast worried and hurt eyes over her before he had turned away.

On the way to the pub, she had been silent and even more withdrawn, and he had given up trying to elicit any kind of response from her, choosing instead to look out of the window of the taxi and wonder what was going on inside that distantly beautiful head of hers.

And now there she was, facing a stone-faced Caroline Brady.  And John had been there before her, snatching their children out from under her, forcing her to do the one thing she didn’t think she could do today.  

Face him.

“Marlena-” Caroline sighed.

“I heard,” she said stiffly, steeling herself against the tears, although she was never sure at the moment if they would fall when she expected them to.  Right now, she felt as though she was all cried out.  Dehydrated by all the tears she had shed, dry to the bone.  She wasn’t even sure she had the energy to feel everything that she had in her to feel, but she knew it was still there.  All the pain and doubt and guilt.  

“He is their father.”  Caroline was wary and Marlena could feel her defensiveness, but she didn’t have the patience for it.

“And I am their mother.  The mother that has loved them and cared for them. The mother that has dried their tears and reassured them in the weeks since he walked out on us.”  She dared Caroline to point out that she wasn’t Brady’s biological mother.  She loved that child like he was her own.  She had loved him since he was born, she had raised him alongside Belle while John had been taken up with Kristen and she would fight to the death to keep him.  She didn’t care what anyone else thought, he was hers in her heart, biology be damned, and she was determined he would never think otherwise.    

Caroline obviously knew better than to challenge her on that.  Instead, she took John’s point of view.  “He didn’t choose to leave them Marlena.  He didn’t choose to leave you.  He has missed them, and they’ve missed them.  They wanted to spend time with their daddy.”

And what about what I want? she wanted to say but it was a hollow plea, she knew.  She was ostensibly getting what she wanted in taking Bo to her bed and raising Caroline’s wrath.  But she wasn’t even sure she wanted that anymore.  She didn’t know what she wanted.  Other than peace.  Other than to not feel this anguish that flooded her constantly.

“Mom, you didn’t have any right-” Bo could feel how tense Marlena was beside him.  He was aware how badly she’d slept, how she had disappeared to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  He had wanted to go and give her the comfort she needed but he knew he was part of her pain.  He wasn’t sure if he was doing more harm than good by trying to comfort her, by trying to give her the succor she craved in physical touch and sex.  And this morning, she had been anything but physical, withdrawing her body and her thoughts from him.  She reminded him almost of a hedgehog, recoiling into a ball, physically and emotionally spiky, repelling any attempt at care and comfort he tried to offer her.

“I didn’t have any right to stop him taking them.” Caroline pointed out.  “And the children wanted to go with him.”

“You could have called us.”  Bo growled.  “You know Marlena’s not up to dealing with John at the moment.”

“Marlena, you need to speak to him.”  Caroline said, with as much sympathy as she could muster.  

She was furious with the younger woman right now, that was true.  But what was also true was that if it had been anyone other than Bo that Marlena had set her sights on, Caroline would have been the first one to offer sympathy and gentle words.  She could see how deeply Marlena was suffering. She could see the toll this was taking on her, how drawn she was, the way her collarbones were so sharply defined, the dark bruising under her eyes which spoke of sleepless nights.  

In truth, her appearance reminded Caroline of that terrible time after Roman had left Salem and Stefano had invaded Marlena’s dreams and invited forth literal hell.   “Darling, you can’t avoid him forever.  You need to come to some arrangements about the children, if nothing else.”

Marlena’s hands curled into fists at her sides.  “I’ll talk to John when I am ready,” her voice was steel-sharp.  “I don’t appreciate being manipulated like this.  Not by John and not by you.”

“And I don’t appreciate being spoken to like that,” Caroline replied, angry at the vehemence with which Marlena had pushed away the olive branch she was attempting to extend.  “You’ve put me in a terrible situation with your insistence on carrying on this disastrous liaison with my son.  I love those two babies like they were my own grandchildren, but if you can’t sort things out with John… I’m afraid I can’t have them anymore.”

Marlena stared at Caroline, red spots burning high on her cheeks.  Kim stood at the end of the bar, Shane’s hand reassuring on her shoulder as she stared at the confrontation between her mother, Marlena and Bo.

“Momma!”  Kim exclaimed, her heart pounding.  This situation was degenerating into an unmitigated disaster.  “Marlena, honey she doesn’t mean that.”

“I most certainly do mean that.” Caroline was red-cheeked now too.  

“Why are you being like this Ma?” Bo demanded furiously.  He stepped in front of Marlena to shield her from his mother’s ire, as he directed his own at Caroline.  “Marlena hasn’t done anything wrong.  We’re both consenting adults, this was my choice, just as much as hers.  In fact,” he pointed his finger at his mother angrily, “she tried to break it off.  More than once.  But I wouldn’t let her.  I pursued her.  Not the other way around.  So why the heck are you taking this out on her?  She doesn’t deserve this.  Not any of it.”

“She was married to your brother.  She was one of Hope’s best friends.  You and John were brothers for years.  I simply can’t believe that neither of you can see what an insanely stupid thing this was to do.”  Caroline shot back bitterly.  She felt under attack.  She wasn’t the one who’d done something wrong.  “I know Marlena is grieving, but of all the men in Salem, she had to choose you to ease her pain.”

“I am still here.” Marlena stepped out from behind Bo, her eyes flashing.  If Caroline wanted to be so callous, she could at least do her the courtesy of saying it to Marlena’s face.

“I’m aware.”  Caroline glared at her.   “Marlena, you’re still hopelessly in love John.  It’s obvious to all of us, even if Bo refuses to see it.  So, it’s only a matter of time before you give in to the inevitable.  But in the meantime, you insist on holding onto my son.  You’re using him to what, hurt John back?  Or are you in such denial that you think that sleeping with Bo will make all the pain you’re feeling just go away?” She pursed her lips critically. “Because I can tell, just by looking at you, my dear, that it’s not working.”

“How dare you.”  Marlena’s voice was low and full of rage.

“Your weakness for John drove my son to his death,” Caroline’s nostrils flared as she stared down Marlena.  She hadn’t felt this way for years.  When they had been told Roman had been killed, Marlena had blamed herself and Caroline had been the one to hand out absolution.  She had accepted that Marlena had been in an impossible situation and that she regretted hurting Roman.  And then they had thought Roman returned from the dead and it had been a moot point.  He had still been in love with Marlena, but in time, he had come to accept her love for John as an immutable fact.  

But now she was grieving her son all over again, and now Marlena had climbed into bed with her youngest son.  She was a one-woman emotional tornado where the Brady men were concerned, and Caroline couldn’t help the anger that spilled from her as she thought about Roman’s pain.  And the pain that she knew was in store for Bo.  “You tore Roman’s heart out; you really think I’m going to stand by while you destroy Bo too?”  She sighed and shook her head.  She wasn’t one for ultimatums, but she couldn’t think of another way to make Marlena and her son see how serious she was about this.  “Marlena, until you end this ridiculous charade, you’re not welcome in my pub.”

“I didn’t….” Caroline’s words were like a body blow to Marlena and the retort that came to her lips faded away as she was flooded by shame.  She reached for Bo’s arm to try and steady herself but then snatched it back as she realized how that must look to Caroline.

 Bo looked across and saw the look of mortification on Marlena’s face and he turned back to his mother, his bruised lips tight with fury.

“Marlena made a mistake but Roman was the one that walked away from her.  From his family.  She tried everything she could to fix their marriage but Roman bailed because he couldn’t accept that she was human.  His damn stubborn pride is what got him killed, it’s not Marlena’s fault that he couldn’t live with the fact that she’d changed or that she and the kids had moved on without him.  That we all had.”

“Bo,” Marlena reached out tentatively and touched his arm, her voice shaking.  “I need to…” she looked towards the door in desperation.  “I have to go.”  A tear trembled on the precipice of her lower lashes, and she dashed it away before she shook her head sadly.  Looking back at Caroline, she opened her mouth to say something, but it was forestalled by a gulping sob that erupted from her.  Slapping her hand over her mouth, she ran from the pub.

Bo turned back to his mother, his battered face still conveying the full force of his anger and resentment.  “You have no idea what you’ve just done.”  His lips curled in an angry scowl.  If his mother was going to force the issue, then she wasn’t going to like the outcome.  “If she’s not welcome here, then neither am I.”  

With that, he spun on his heel and stormed from the pub.

Caroline turned to where her daughter and Shane were staring at her, open-mouthed.

“What?” she demanded, throwing her tea towel down on the bar.   Thinning her lips, she glared at them and then turned and stomped through to the back of the pub.

~

Marlena was rushing blindly across the square, her vision blurred with tears when she banged into someone.  Everything was chaotic inside her head, and she was barely aware of what was happening as warm hands grabbed her upper arms and steadied her.

“Marlena?”  She could hear his voice, but it was as though it was coming from a distance.  She felt dizzy, her hands were tingling, and her breaths were coming in short, harsh pants.

“I can’t-” she shook her head, trying to breathe.  It was getting harder and harder and dimly she knew what was happening, but she couldn’t think what to do.  

“Marlena!”  This time it was Bo’s voice and she tried to pull herself from the stranger’s grip.  She couldn’t face Bo now.  She couldn’t face anyone.  But she didn’t have the strength, she could barely stand up.  She could barely breathe.

“Marlena, come over here.  Sit down.”  The voice was calming, familiar and sympathetic and she let herself be led over to a bench where her rescuer gently lowered her to the seat.  She could hear him murmuring to someone nearby, (she could only assume it was Bo), before he seated himself on the bench next to her, taking her hands in his.

“Can you hear me, Marlena?”  She managed a small nod.    “You’re okay.  You’re just having a panic attack.  You’re going to be just fine.  I just need you to concentrate on my voice, okay?”

She nodded again, a sense of relief flooding her.  Of course that was what this was.  She’d suffered panic attacks in the wake of her rape thirty years ago and again after Samantha had been murdered.   But it had been a good fifteen or more years since she’d had one.  Despite all her years of counselling patients who had them regularly, she had become somewhat removed from the personal effects, almost forgetting how debilitating they could be.

“Close your eyes and I’m going to count to five and while I count, I want you to breathe in, slowly and deeply through your nose.”  His voice was gentle and reassuring but still she found her numb hands clutching onto his for dear life.  “Then I’m going to count to five again and I want you to breathe slowly out of your mouth.  Can you do that for me?”

“I don’t-” she gulped in a short, pained breath.

“You can do it Marlena.  You know this will work.  You just need to trust me, okay?”

“Yes.”  It was all she could say between gasps.

“Okay.  One… Two…”  She breathed in slowly through her nose as he’d instructed.  It wasn’t a deep breath, she couldn’t manage that, and she shook as she did it, but she made it to five and then exhaled as he counted to five again.

“Good.  That’s really good.  Let’s do it again.”  He started over again, counting to five and this time her breath was more controlled and deeper.  When she had exhaled the second time, he squeezed her hands and encouraged her to do it again.  

She wasn’t sure how long they sat there, him counting and her breathing in and out before she finally felt something approaching normality.  Her racing heart had settled to a somewhat regular pace, she could feel his warm hands against hers and she was able to open her eyes.

Mike Horton looked back at her, his eyes awash with concern and relief.  “There you are,” he said with a careworn smile.  “Told you you could do it.”

“Thank-you,” she gave him a wan smile before she passed her shaking hand over her face, wiping away the remnants of her tears and brushing her hair back from her cheeks.  “Mike, I’m so sorry-”

“No!” He held up his free hand.  “You don’t need to apologize Marlena.  Not at all.”  He squeezed the hand he still held in his.  “I am, obviously, worried about you though.  Do you want… should I call my Mom?”

“No!” Marlena shook her head, her embarrassment reflected in her eyes.  “No, I’ll be fine Mike.  I have… I’m seeing Laura on Monday.  That will be plenty soon enough.”

“Are you sure?” Mike’s face betrayed his concern and his disbelief.  He knew a little of what had been going on from Carrie who had turned up at his door last night after the confrontation between John, Marlena and Bo at the pub.  She hadn’t gone into a great deal of detail but what she had told him had been concerning.  Marlena had been his friend for more years than he cared to remember, and he could see the strain of this situation in every line etched on her face.  He could see it in the dark circles under her eyes and the nervous tension that hummed throughout her body.

“I’m sure.”  Marlena nodded, straightening her back, casting her eyes about nervously. “I uh, I don’t know what happened.  I haven’t had… one of those for years.”

“Do you want me to stay, keep you company until you’re feeling a little better?” Mike threw

 a sidelong glance and Marlena turned to see Bo lurking a small distance away.  He was staring at her, his warm brown eyes full of worry and pain.

“No,” she shook her head.  “I’m going to be just fine, Mike.  Please don’t worry about me.”

“I’m your friend,” he said softly.  “Of course I’m going to worry.”

“Honestly,” she flicked her eyes around the square again.  Now she was in full possession of her faculties, she was mortified she’d created such a scene.  And in the middle of the town square, of all places.  Thankfully no-one seemed to be looking at her, at least not now.  “I’m… I have to go and pick up the children anyway.”

“If you’re sure…” Mike was uncertain.

“I can take it from here, Mike,” Bo stepped across to where Marlena was sitting and laid a hand on her shoulder.  It was only the tiniest of movements, but Mike saw her flinch and it gave him pause.  It wasn’t fear; he couldn’t read that on her transparent face, but she had definitely felt some kind of discomfort when Bo touched her.

“Look, why don’t I just call Mom.  I’m sure she’d want to move up your session if she knew you needed it,” Mike offered hopefully.

“I don’t need it.” Marlena knew that Mike had seen her momentary recoil when Bo had touched her, and it made her feel infinitely worse.  Bo didn’t deserve that; he hadn’t done anything wrong.  It was her that was all wrong.  It was her that couldn’t make anything make sense.  It was her that couldn’t stop feeling all the uninvited, unintended feelings that were flooding her.

Deliberately, she lifted her hand and placed it over Bo’s fingers.  “Honestly Mike, it’s passed now.  I’m fine.  And we really need to go and pick up the children.”

She stood and awkwardly pulled down the hem of the cream sweater she wore over her faded jeans.  

“As long as you’re sure.”  Mike stood too and there was a moment where no-one quite knew what to do next.  Chewing on the inside of his mouth, Mike took the initiative and leaned forward and hugged Marlena.  “I’m here if you need anything,” he said quietly, so that just she could hear.  “Just call me, okay?”

Marlena hugged him back and gave him a subtle nod with a grateful smile.  She wouldn’t be calling him, of course.  She was already highly embarrassed that he’d seen her in such a state.  There was absolutely no way she was going to spill all messy details of her life to him.  He was, after all, strictly speaking, not just her friend, he was also her boss; so telling him the details of her disastrous love life was hardly appropriate.

“Thank you, again.”  She managed a tight smile and then turned and nodded at Bo.  He said nothing as he took her hand again, but he did turn and cast a troubled glance in Mike’s direction as they walked away.

Mike sighed as he watched them go and then he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and scrolled through his address book.

“Hi Mom?” he greeted Laura as she picked up her home phone.

“Hi honey,” Laura greeted him with a smile in her voice.  “This is a nice surprise, what can I do for you?”

“Uh, just wondering…” he sighed.  He shouldn’t really be doing this.  He’d asked Marlena twice if she wanted him to call Laura and she had said no.  But he couldn’t, in all good conscience just ignore the fact that she was clearly in such deep distress.  What kind of a friend, what kind of a doctor would he be if he didn’t try and ensure that she got some care?  “Have you seen Marlena lately?”

“Actually, I saw her just yesterday,” Laura said carefully.  “Why?”

“I just, well, I ran into her in the square just now.”  Even though his mother was a doctor, they both had to be careful about what they revealed about a patient’s medical condition.  “She was…” he sighed.  “Let’s just say, I think she could use a friend right about now.”

“A friend?” Laura asked.  “Or a doctor?”

“If you’re asking me that, then you know the answer.”  Mike considered his next words carefully.  “Carrie came over last night.  She told me John came home yesterday and there was a confrontation at the pub.  It sounded like it was really… messy.”

“Oh no.” Laura’s voice conveyed a world of concern.

“Yeah,” Mike nodded.  “So, perhaps you could give her a call?”

“Of course I can honey,” Laura nodded.  “I’ll call her right now.”

“She said she was going to pick up the kids, so maybe later.”  Mike sighed.  “I asked her if she wanted me to call you and she said no.  So maybe just don’t mention that I went against her expressed wishes, okay?”

“Okay,” Laura gave a little chuckle.  “Understood.  Thanks for letting me know.  She’s lucky to have you as a friend, honey.”

“Thanks Mom.” Mike nodded.  “Talk to you later.”

He clicked end on the call and slipped his phone back into his pocket.  His eyes traced the direction where Bo and Marlena had left the square.  He still felt uneasy, like there was something more he could do, but short of stalking her, he didn’t really have many options.  He could only hope that neither Bo, nor John would make anything worse.

Unfortunately, he was pretty sure they could, and that somehow, they probably would.

Part Vingt-Quatre

Remind her how it used to be, be, yeah-yeah
With pictures in frames of kisses on cheeks, cheeks
Tell her how you must have lost your mind, ooh-ooh
When you left her all alone
And never told her why, why

And that’s how it works
That’s how you lost the girl
And now, you say

I want you for worse or for better
I would wait forever and ever (Ever and ever)
Broke your heart, I’ll put it back together
I would wait forever and ever

How you get the girl – Taylor Swift

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Bo stepped into the elevator after Marlena.

“I’m sure.”  She tucked her phone back in her purse.  The conversation with Mickey had reassured her.  John had walked out on his children and left the country without a word.  That alone would not look good to a judge.  Not to mention all the time she’d taken care of the children (in between various kidnappings and other assorted traumatic events), particularly when John had been taken up with Kristen, and living at the DiMera mansion.

Kristen, for all her protestations of wanting to fully experience motherhood, had only ever paid fleeting attention to Belle and Brady and had enacted any maternal attention as a mere performative spectacle for John’s sake.  Marlena had known exactly what she was doing, and Kristen had known that she’d known.  

But John had been oblivious to it all.  To Kristen’s true nature, to the animosity between the two women, and to his children’s confusion as Kristen switched her sickly-sweet mothering performance on and off, at will.

Maybe John would have seen glimmers of the truth if Marlena had let the children spend more time with him.  With Kristen.  But she had been reluctant to allow the children any more time in the junior DiMera’s company than was absolutely necessary.  Kristen had been corrupted by Stefano’s mere presence, Marlena wasn’t about to allow the same thing happen to her precious babies.

The upside to all this was that Mickey assured her that she had ample evidence that John, while by no means was a neglectful parent, might be considered an ‘inconsistent’ one by the court.  And that meant that, while Brady was not her biological child, a judge would still likely consider her the primary parent and award her at least partial custody, based on that fact alone.

She wished with all her heart that she had pursued adopting Brady when she had first considered it, once she and John had reunited.  But then Roman had returned and their lives had become a maelstrom of confusing half-truths and snatched moments.  And somehow, she had always thought there would be time.  Until there wasn’t.

Still, she considered, there was time, if she could get John to agree to it.  She was the only mother Brady had ever known and he was her baby just as much as any of her other children.

They spent the elevator ride in silence.  She knew Bo was watching her.  He was worried and he had every right to be.   He’d seen her completely fall apart several times in the space of 24 hours and she wasn’t comfortable with that fact.  Not that it had happened at all, nor that he had been there and seen it up close.  

There weren’t many people left in Salem who had seen her at her lowest, but the truth was that Bo had seen her in a similar state before.  She had been angry and lashing out in the days after Roman’s ‘first’ death and back then he and Shane had borne the brunt of her recriminations.

But this was different.  Then, she had kept him at arm’s length with her anger and blame.  This time she had invited him inside.  Both figuratively and literally.  And in doing so, she had let him see the very real, unvarnished truth.  The completely untogether mess she was underneath all the make-up and coiffing, the too-bright smiles and the bravado.

Over the years, Salem, Satan and Stefano once and again had stripped layer upon layer of her defenses until she was raw and bleeding.  And yet, from the moment John had arrived in her life, he always been there to provide a shield for her to armor herself up again.  

But now, he was the one stripping her of any shred of strength and dignity she had left, and Bo was witness to it all.  And that made her angry, scared and defensive.  She had felt it from the moment she had awakened this morning.  When he had tried to talk to her, when he had gone to touch her, she had folded into herself.  Then, becoming aware she was doing it, she had tried to relax but it had been an ongoing battle she had fought all day.

And now they were on their way up to John’s loft and he was like a cat on a proverbial hot tin roof.  She had almost told him not to come up with her, to wait in the car for her to come down with the children but the truth was, she didn’t trust John.  

No, that wasn’t the truth.  The real truth was, she didn’t trust herself around him.

She didn’t want to fight with him in front of the children, she equally didn’t want to break down in front of him.  But mostly, she didn’t want to give in to his heartfelt pleas, his impossibly blue anguished eyes.  She didn’t want to succumb to gentle entreaties or sweet, soft caresses.

She couldn’t take his tender touch, the love in his eyes as he swept her, head to foot, with his gaze.  She’d be lost to him if she let him see the cracks in her defenses.  She was terrified that if she let him widen those cracks, she would shatter, exposing her tender, disintegrating insides.  She would spill herself all over him and the children and everyone else in close proximity.

She couldn’t afford for that to happen.  She had to keep herself protected, she had to keep her walls so high, he couldn’t even hope to see over the crenellations.  She couldn’t let him see how much she desperately wanted him to win her over.

She needed him.  But she couldn’t let herself have him.  Because once he had her, would he still want her?  Once the drama and the longing were gone, once he knew he had her in the palm of his hand once again, would he really still want her?  Or was this just a case of him wanting what he couldn’t have?

And even if he did still want her, even if he loved her with everything he had; what happened the next time Stefano decided to play God?  The next time he decided to tear their lives apart?

She couldn’t open herself up to that kind of pain again.   It was bad enough this time around, but to trust him again and have her heart ripped out a second time (or was it a third, fourth or fifth?  she was losing count) would kill her.

“You really want to do this?”  Bo was pretty sure this was, if not the worst idea Marlena had ever had, or even the worst decision in the past twenty-four hours, still not a fantastic one.  She was clearly walking a tightrope when it came to her mental health, and anything could tip her over the edge.  And seeing John was likely to be just the kind of anything that would make her go into complete meltdown.

He had managed to get her back to the car before their discussion about what to do next had erupted into a full-scale disagreement.  She had wanted to come straight here and pick up the children.  He had argued they would be fine with John and perhaps, given what had happened yesterday and last night and just now in the square that she would be better off listening to Mike and calling Laura.  She had said absolutely not.  She was fine now, and she would be even better when she had her children back.  

Besides, she had argued, she didn’t want John to think he could get away with just snatching her children away from her.  He couldn’t just walk in and disrupt all their lives and just expect them all to accept it.

Bo had done his best to convince her that leaving the children there overnight would not hurt them, or her, and that perhaps confronting John was not the best option right now.  But she was determined and as he’d found many times over the years, a determined Marlena Evans always got her own way.

“Yes, I really want to do this,” she nodded her head, but he could tell she really wasn’t sure at all.  She sighed deeply at his look of consternation.  “Do you think you could at least try to be a bit supportive, Bo?”  She turned as the door slid open.

So, it was a reticent Bo who followed Marlena from the elevator, not sure that she should be here, or that he should be here with her, adding fuel to an already smoldering fire.  But, here they were, for better or for worse.  

Just keep your head about you, Brady.  Don’t lose your damn temper and make things worse.

He caught Marlena’s arm and stopped her before she got to the loft door, gently turning her back to him.  With a small half-smile that still pulled at his bruised face, he slipped his hand around the back of her neck, his fingers weaving into her warm hair.  “I’m sorry.  I guess I’m not helping.”

“You’re not helping.  This is hard enough.  I need you on my side.”  She gazed up at him, her almond eyes glistening.  “I can do this.  But I can’t fight you too.  It’s too much.”

“I’ll do better,” he murmured, dipping his mouth to capture hers.  He felt her tense and then relax into his arms, and he slid his arm around her waist as she sighed.  

“Just try and behave yourself,” she whispered, trying to ignore the fact that John was just on the other side of that door.  “I don’t want to have to get in between the two of you again, okay?”

“Message received, loud and clear.”  He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.  “I promise I’ll hang back here, and I won’t say anything.”  He kissed her again and then turned her back to the big grey metal panel that served as a door to John’s loft.    “Let’s get this over with.”  

Marlena took a deep breath and walked to the door.  Trying to still her pounding heart, she pulled awkwardly at her sweater and then lifted her hand and rapped sharply.

On the other side of the door, John heard the knocking and he looked up speculatively.

“Do you think that might be your momma?” He asked Belle with an expectant smile.  She beamed up at him and nodded her head.  “No, you stay there, baby girl,” he instructed her as she went to get up from where she sat on the floor.  “We’ll see if she can visit with us for a while, shall we?”

He stood and made his way to the door, taking a moment to compose himself.  He was nervous about how she was going to react to him taking Belle and Brady, but more than that, more than anything, he just wanted to see her again.  He wanted to touch her, to feel her warm skin under his fingertips.  He wanted to hear her voice and smell the beautiful scent that was so, completely her.

He took a deep breath and slid open the door.

“Doc!” He took a moment to pretend a look of surprise but then he let a smile curl his mouth.  Lifting his arm, he placed his forearm against the doorframe and leaned forward.  “What a pleasant surprise.”  It was, of course, not a surprise.  And the fact that Bo Brady was hovering behind her like a big, dumb, overzealous guard dog was definitely not pleasant.  Still, he wasn’t going to let that detract from the pleasure of seeing her.  Of being so near to her.

“I’m here to collect the children.”  Marlena felt faint from the closeness of him.  He was wearing a blue button-down shirt, open at the neck and the sleeves rolled up, exposing his muscular forearms.  She could smell the musky invitation of him and when he cocked one eyebrow and gave her his best I can read your every thought and desire, Marlena Evans smile, she felt a fluttering deep in her belly.  She wondered though why it was that he hadn’t been able to read her every thought and desire all those long, lonely years when she watched him with Kristen.  The way he stood here now, was so familiar, so reminiscent of all times she had come to see him at the loft, some innocent, some more desperate.  Some, accompanied by a hunger for him that was so intense it might have consumed her.  

“I was just about to give them their lunch.”  He lifted one eyebrow innocently.  “Perhaps you’d like to stay?”  He lifted his head and nodded at Bo.  “Just you though.  Not Tonto here.”

She swallowed heavily, feeling Bo shifting behind her.  She could feel the animosity rolling off him in waves and all she could do was pray and silently beg him not to bite as John baited him.

“No, thank you,” she said stiffly.  His blue eyes twinkled, and she felt a flash of ire that he could be so amused by this painful tableau.  “If you can just put their things together.  I will feed them at home.”

His smile faded.  “Doc, I just want to spend a bit of time with them.”  

“Right now… is not convenient.”  She tightened her grip on the door frame so that her knuckles were white with the pressure.  “Please, John.”  She silently berated herself for the slight whine that inflected her voice.

“Why, what’s so important that I can’t spend a few hours with my children?” he demanded, a little more angrily than he intended.  The idea that she wanted to take his children so that they could spend time with Bo fucking Brady instead of him was a little more than he could handle right now.

“That is actually none of your business,” she replied defensively.

“Doc, they’re my kids.  I have a right to spend time with them.  You can’t keep them from me.”  He pushed himself back from the doorway now, all his casual humor deserting him as he turned to look at Belle who was looking back at her parents with wide eyes.

“I wasn’t suggesting you couldn’t see them.  Just that now is not a good time.”  She sighed softly.  “John, it’s disruptive.  They need stability and you swooping in and taking them from the pub when they didn’t expect it… it’s not fair on them.”  It’s not fair on me.  She didn’t need to say it, it hung in the air between them.  “I didn’t even have the chance to explain to them that you were home.”

“They were happy to see their old man, weren’t you kids?”  Brady had appeared in the room at that very moment, but he looked more confused than happy.  He wasn’t sure why his dad had brought them back here to the loft and not back home.  In fact, he didn’t really understand anything that had happened over the past few weeks, why their dad had disappeared, why Mama seemed so sad all the time, or why Uncle Bo was here and looking really cross.

“Momma?” he asked cautiously.

“It’s okay, baby.”  She beckoned to him, and he crossed the room and flung his arms around her waist, burying his face in the soft wool of her sweater.  

“You should have called me and asked if you could have the children,” she said in a low voice.  “Taking them from the pub was just…”

“Oh, you would have taken my call?” John’s eyes flicked to where Bo glared at him, his cool momentarily deserting him.  “Marlena, they are my children.  I don’t need your permission to see them.”

Marlena felt her heart starting to quicken and she tried to control her breathing.  She held Brady to her and squeezed the doorframe even more tightly as she tried to stay in control.

“I called Mickey,” she said faintly.  “I’ve asked him to draw up a custody agreement.  That way we all know where we stand.”

“You what?” John stared at her incredulously.  This was not what he had intended.  He had just wanted to see her, and he’d wanted to see his kids.  Picking them up from the pub had seemed like a good way to kill two birds with one stone.  He’d get to spend time with his babies and he’d get to see her, either when he dropped them off at the Penthouse, or when she came to pick them up.  But now she was talking about drawing up a damn custody agreement?

“You told Caroline we don’t have a custody agreement,” Marlena wasn’t ready for the shock or the very real distress in his eyes.  “I thought maybe we should just get that sorted out as quickly as possible.  That way we don’t put anyone else in the position we put Caroline in today.  And the children will know who they are supposed to be with, and when.  I am sure Chelsea will be happy splitting her time between my place and here, if that’s what you want.”

“That’s absolutely not what I want!”  John was close to shouting, but he saw the look of something approaching fear that crossed Marlena’s face and he immediately dialed it back.  “Doc, can’t we talk about this?”

“Not right now.” Her voice was little more than a whisper and Brady looked up at her, his blue eyes (so like his father’s), wide with apprehension.

Bo saw her lean against the door frame and noted the rise and fall of her shoulders and he immediately knew it was happening again.

He had barely any time to weigh his options.  Get Marlena out of there and leave the kids?  Would she even allow that?  Try and force John to let the kids go but potentially have them witness an argument and Marlena spiraling into a full-blown panic attack?

“John, Marlena needs to sit down.”  He tried to school his voice into complete neutrality.

“What?” John turned blazing cerulean eyes to Bo.  “Stay outta this Brady.”

“I’m not trying to interfere.”  Bo stepped forward, holding his hands up so that John could see he wasn’t on the attack and wasn’t about to put his hands on Marlena.  The only problem was that she was seriously struggling to stay upright now, and he was afraid he was going to have to catch her.  “Please.  I’ll explain.  Just get her to the couch.”

John looked at Marlena and immediately saw what Bo was trying to tell him.  Something was wrong with her.  Her breathing was labored, and she looked like she might faint at any moment. 

“Doc?” he closed his hands around her upper arms, and she sagged against him.  “Hey baby, it’s okay, I got you.”  He curled one arm protectively around her and helped her walk to the couch where he settled her down.   Turning to Bo, he raised an eyebrow.

“Hey kids,” Bo said, a little too loudly.  “You wanna go get pizza?”

Both children looked uncertainly from their mother to their father who scowled back at Bo.

“Good.”  Bo ignored the fact that no-one had answered in the affirmative and he didn’t break eye-contact with John.  He didn’t trust the other man, but he also didn’t have very many options right now.  But that didn’t mean he was going to turn his back on his competition and risk being clocked by John’s fist again.   “Why don’t you go wait by the door while I talk to your dad here and then we’ll go get something to eat, okay?”  

There was a momentary silence, but it was overlaid by Marlena’s fiercely strained breaths and John knew he had to surrender to Bo’s suggestion.  He had to know what was going on to understand what it was he needed to do.

“Do as your Uncle Bo says,” he directed the children who obeyed, all the while staring at their mother, wide-eyed.  

Bo nodded and drew John off to the side so that the children couldn’t hear him.

“She had a panic attack in the square earlier.  Mike talked her through it.  I think she’s having another one now.  I don’t think she’d want the kids to see her like this.  I’m guessing you know what to do?”  He had no reason to think that John had ever seen Marlena through one of these before, but he did know that John had spent enough time with Marlena to probably have seen her counsel someone else through one.  “Mike got her to breathe in and out, slowly, to a count of five.”

John looked back at Marlena who sat on the couch.  He had never seen her like this before.  He had seen her traumatized and scared, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen her unable to hold it together in front of her children and it made him suddenly simultaneously guilty that his actions had brought her to this place and but also wildly protective of her fragility.

“Yeah, I know what to do,” he said gruffly.  “Thanks.”

He knew that Bo was doing this for her and for the children.  He was protecting all of them in way John hadn’t.  And in that moment, John understood how much Bo loved Marlena and he felt a strange kind of kinship with him.

“Take care of her,” Bo said seriously.  “Don’t make things any worse than they already are.”

“I won’t.”  John nodded.  “Kids, you go with Uncle Bo.  Mom will be fine; I’ll take care of her.”

Brady looked at his mama solemnly and then nodded at his dad and took Belle’s hand.  Belle was more reticent to leave her mother and unexpectedly, she tore herself from Brady and raced across the room, flinging herself at her mother, wrapping her little arms around Marlena’s hunched body.  “Love you Momma,” she whispered before she allowed John to unentangle her and gently propel her back to Brady and Bo.

John sat down next to Marlena as Bo took the children and closed the door behind him, taking one last worried look at Marlena before she was lost from his sight.

“Hey baby,” his voice was low and soothing.  “I’m here.  I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.  I’m not going to hurt you.”

She had her arms wrapped around her and she was rocking slightly, shaking while she struggled for breath, and he tried to think back to how she’d dealt with Laura in a similar situation.  “C’mon Doc.  I need you to breathe.  Deep breaths.”  What had Bo said?  Mike had counted to five while getting her to breathe.

“Okay sweetheart, I’m going to count to five and I need you to breathe in slowly.”  He dug his fingers beneath one of the hands that was clutching tightly at her own upper arm, and he pried it away, wrapping his warm hand around her frozen fingers.  He started to count but he could see that she was lost within her own hell and not working with him, so he moved in front of her and used his hands to frame her chin so that she was facing him.  “Look at me, Marlena,” he said, gently but firmly.  “Baby, I need you to open your eyes and look at me.”

She shook her head almost imperceptibly and he sighed.  At least she could hear him now though.  “Okay, just listen to my voice then.  I need you to breathe with me, Doc.  I’m going to count and you’re going to breathe in.  Do you understand?”

This time, there was a tiny nod, and he squeezed her hand.  “Good girl.  Let’s do this.”  He counted again and this time she was more attuned to him, breathing in a shallow, shaky breath in time with his count.  “You’re doing great, Doc.  Hold it for five,” he counted to five, slightly faster this time, “and now breathe out on five.”  He counted again, conscious of her hand curling around his, gripping him tighter as she breathed out.  “Beautiful.  You’re doing really great.  Let’s go again.”  He repeated his count, watching carefully as little by little, she started to get her breathing under control and her shoulders relaxed slightly.  When he finally judged she was mostly recovered, he squeezed her hand.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked simply.  “Water, or tea, maybe?”

She finally opened her eyes, but she wouldn’t look at him.  She couldn’t look at him.  She was too vulnerable, too embarrassed.  She didn’t want to see the concern or the pity in his eyes.  She didn’t want him to think less of her, although she wasn’t sure why.  “Water would be good.  Thank you.”

He watched her fiddle with the fringing of a cushion as he filled a glass, but he said nothing as he handed her the water.  She was still shaking as she took the glass from him, and she could only take a sip of the water.  Wrapping both her hands around the glass to still them, she exhaled as steadily as she could.

“How long has this been going on, Doc?” his voice was infinitely tender as he sat down next to her; but now she was more aware of him, she felt herself tensing at the closeness of him.

“It hasn’t.” She still wouldn’t look at him.  She was afraid of what she would see in his face if she did.  She was so mortified that if she could have curled up into a ball and pulled the throw over her to stop him studying her, she would have.  But instead, she steeled herself for his questions.  “I… today is the first time in… a long time.  The last time I had a panic attack was…” she paused, thinking.  It was after Roman had died, wasn’t it?  Or after that whole mess with Richard Cates – a time in her life she would much rather forget.  “Well, it was before I met you.”

John thought of all things she had been through since he’d come to Salem.  Both before and after she had been snatched from her family and held a comatose prisoner for five long years.  She had been through hell, but somehow, she’d always risen above it, gloriously unscathed.  Or so it had seemed.

So why now?

The answer seemed almost too obvious.  Because this time he’d done it to her.  This time he hadn’t been the one standing beside her, doing his best to protect her and help her through whatever it was they were facing.  This time, he was the one hurting her.

“Doc, I’m so sorry,” he had softly.  “I had no idea…”

“Why would you?” she shrugged a little too casually.  It wasn’t just a question; it was an accusation levelled directly at him.  He hadn’t been there to know.  He hadn’t cared enough to know.   

John suddenly felt like a total asshole for taking the children the way he had; for making her come here.  He knew that Caroline was angry with Marlena.  He’d been able to tell that much just by the tone of her voice when her name came up as he’d picked up the children.  

And still he’d forced Marlena into a confrontation with the woman he knew she considered another mother, an emotional and familial support.  And then he’d made her come here when she clearly wasn’t able to cope with the emotional strain this whole situation was putting on her.  

“I’m really…. I shouldn’t have taken the children.”  His voice was low.  He wasn’t used to admitting when he was wrong.  Not without her forcing the issue.

“No, you shouldn’t have.”  She shook her head and then wiped her hand wearily over her pale face.  She looked exhausted, as though she had barely slept, and he wondered if that was the case.  And not for the reason he might have initially assumed.

For her part, the thoughts that fluttered through Marlena’s head were largely fragmented and inconsistent in their content and emotional impact.  In one moment, she found herself angry with him for his assumptions and his careless words and actions.  In another, she feared that maybe they would never have the sort of closeness again that she craved almost constantly, and it made her heart flutter with panic. 

 And weaving through all that was the physical effect that he had on her, the scorching intensity of his gaze.  The heat of his thigh next to hers.  The electricity that came off his skin that made hers tingle, even when he wasn’t touching her.  His magnetism filled the air, and it stole her breath and made her heart run wild. 

“We can sort all this out honey,” he tried to take her hand, but she snatched it away, her breath catching as she did so.   “We can make it better.”

“How?” She turned to look at him now, her beautiful hazel eyes haunted.  She didn’t understand how he thought that this could be fixed.  Words couldn’t fill in the cracks between them.  His kisses wouldn’t make her pain disappear, no matter how much she wished for it to be so.  “Can you make the past go away?  Can you make Stefano not exist?”

“No.”  He shook his head sadly.  “I can’t do that.  Neither of us can.  But we can talk.  We can deal with all the problems.  I know there’s more going on than just me leaving…” he saw her flinch and he quickly added “although that’s bad enough.  I understand that.”

“You don’t understand anything,” she said with unutterable sadness.

“Then tell me!” He begged her desperately.  She was scaring him with her desolate pessimism.  This wasn’t her and he wasn’t sure how to break through the hopelessness she wore like a protective cloak.   “Baby, you can’t carry on like this.  It’s killing you.”

“John, I can’t do this right now.”  Tears pooled in her eyes.  She wasn’t strong enough for this.  She couldn’t bare her soul to him, not when she wasn’t even sure what was buried underneath all the layers she’d heaped over her pain for so long.

“You can’t keep running from it, Marlena.” His brow furrowed as he studied her beautiful face.  The dark smudges under her eyes, her deathly pale skin, the fine new lines which he would swear hadn’t been there two months ago.  Even so, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes on.  He couldn’t believe he’d chosen to walk away from her, even if that choice had been manipulated by that evil monster, DiMera.  “Please, just talk to me.” 

“Don’t push me, John!  I can’t take it!” She shoved the glass at him, and he accepted it as she stood up and walked away, trying to gather herself together.

“Okay, okay,” he said quickly, holding up his hands in surrender.  Abe had counselled him to give her time, to wait until she was ready to talk.  He’d thought Abe wrong but now he realized his friend was far wiser than he himself was.  

He and Marlena were opposites in that respect.  He wore his heart on his sleeve and if he wanted something, he went out and got it.  He didn’t waste time thinking about it, much less talking about it.  He knew he and Marlena belonged together, so he didn’t see the point in wasting time in questioning or rehashing the past.  

But that wasn’t the way Marlena worked.  Thinking was her thing.  Feelings were her thing.  And he knew she felt all the feelings.  Deeply, painfully and joyously.  It was one of the things he loved so much about her.  She felt every moment that she lived, and she never took anything for granted.  When she was sure what, or who, she wanted, she was completely and demonstratively open about that.    Once she had decided on something, God help anyone who got in her way.

But when she was confused, or she wasn’t ready to admit to her feelings, she became guarded and defensive.  She was like a delicate flower; she needed the right kind of environment to open and bloom.  She needed the space and the light and warmth.  And she needed the time.  Trying to force her into admitting she felt a certain way or to make a decision she wasn’t ready to make was impossible.  All that happened was that she closed in on herself even more tightly.

And that was what she was now, a bud protected by tightly sealed calyces that he couldn’t peel back by force.  Not without damaging her even more.  

“I’m sorry, baby.  I’ll stop trying to force the issue.  You’re not ready, I get that.”  He watched her as she walked over to the window and leant her forehead against it, and he ached for her pain.  “You need time.  Listen honey, I’ll give you all the time you need.  You take as long as you want to work through whatever it is you need to work through.  When you’re ready to talk to me, I’ll be here.”  He saw her shoulders rise as his words sunk in and she turned slightly to look at him, as though to gauge the veracity of his words.

It struck him when he saw the disbelief that crossed her face, that she didn’t believe him.  She didn’t trust that he would be there.  

“Doc, is that what you think?” he asked her plaintively.  “You don’t think I’ll stick around because things are hard?”

She stared at him for a long moment, and he saw the truth in her beautiful golden eyes.  He saw all the loss she’d suffered and the fear that she might experience more, and that next time it would absolutely be the end of her.  She closed her eyes and turned back to the window so that he couldn’t see the pain that crashed through her in waves.

“Baby, what have I done that would make you think I would walk away from you?  After everything we’ve been through?”  He heard her quiet, tired sigh and it twisted his heart.  This was the thing she didn’t want to talk about.  Or one of the things.

He recalled her comment outside the pub last night.  

You’ll have to wait.  If you’re capable of doing that.

He had been wracking his brains ever since, trying to work out what had she meant by that.  When had he not waited before?  After she came back?  After their affair?

A conversation he’d had with Abe on the pier years ago came to mind.  It was after he and Marlena had made desperate, passionate love on the Alamain jet when he’d been preparing to abandon Salem forever.  Although he hadn’t known about the interlude on the plane, Abe had become aware of John’s deep and reckless love for the woman he still thought of as his wife.  Despite her supposed death and despite his short-lived marriage to Isabella, it had always been Marlena that had occupied the largest part of his heart.  It had been Marlena that haunted his dreams and brought him sweaty, sleepless nights.  It still was.  

It always would be.

Abe had gleaned correctly that John was still hopelessly in love with Marlena, and he had told John that if he wanted to move on and get over her, he had to consider what had helped him ‘move on’ last time.  And that was finding another woman to love.  

In 1991 when Marlena had come home with Roman hot on her heels, Isabella had already been waiting in the wings, pregnant with his child and desperate to make a life with him.  Feeling like it was the only option open to him, he had accepted her love, even while knowing that what he felt for her didn’t hold a candle to what he felt for the blonde beauty that he’d been forced to walk away from.  

And making his little family with IzzyB had served to distract him from his feelings for Marlena.  At least until they had been thrown together in that damned warehouse pit and they had faced down death in each other’s arms.  It had been intense and profound, and in the wake of those few days, they had been unable to deny their suddenly brutally exposed feelings.  It had been as though someone had ripped a bandaid off an open wound for both of them and they had been drawn together again and again, yearning looks and touches that lingered a little too long.   

And after long weeks of dancing around the issue, they had finally succumbed to their long-denied love and desire.

After their affair, after he had relentlessly pursued her and laid her on a conference table making a love so intense that the world had faded away, and after she had repeatedly and vociferously pushed him away, he had taken Rebecca Morrison to his bed.  Following her, there had been a brief interlude with Tori Simpson, a young Japanese woman who had worked for Stefano for a short time.  Marlena had been newly pregnant, they thought with Roman’s baby, and John had been trying to do anything he could to stop fantasizing about her.  He’d never told Marlena about Tori, he’d figured she didn’t need to know and he was a little ashamed of how he had used the young woman to provide some escape and relief from the dreams he had of Marlena at all hours of the day and night.  And then he had fallen heavily for Kristen Blake, later to become Kristen DiMera.  

Looking back, he knew that his single-minded pursuit of Kristen and determination to prevent her from marrying Tony and to make her admit her love for him wasn’t so much a consequence of his great ardor for her as it was a means to distract him from thinking about Marlena.  From falling back into orbit around the woman that would consume her every waking moment if he let her.  

Her marriage had been disintegrating then and Stefano had lured her to Maison Blanche, using her to force John to submit to his brainwashing attempts.  She had risked everything for him, she had ultimately sacrificed her marriage, almost sacrificed her dignity and later, her soul.  And he had been prepared to give up everything for her, even his very self.  He had been willing to hand his conscious mind over to Stefano to secure her safety.

In the wake of the hell they had gone through together, what she had risked for him and what he had been willing to give up for her, he had known he loved her beyond anything else.  And he had sworn he would do everything in his power to protect her from any more pain.  

Roman had left Salem but John had kept his distance, knowing that her guilt over their affair was eating her alive and that any attempts on his part to rekindle their relationship would only cause her more pain.  So, he had settled for loving her from afar, and for being the best friend he could, as much as she would allow him to be.  

In time, he had buried his love for her beneath his foray into the priesthood and a burgeoning relationship with Kristen.  And he had convinced himself that Marlena only saw him as the great and dear friend he professed to be.  Because the idea that she might love him back even half as much as he loved her was just too painful. He couldn’t even allow himself those kinds of thoughts, that kind of hope, for that way lay madness.  That way lay long, painful, sleepless nights.  

And now, after all this time, when they had finally given truth to their feelings for each other, when they were able to be happy and free in their love he had, what?  Run off with Hope Williams?  At least, that was obviously what it had looked like to Marlena.  He had turned to Isabella, to Rebecca, Kristen and now Hope?  

For her, it had only ever been him.  There was Roman, of course.  In the wake of their reunion, she had told him that her attempt at resuming her marriage had been more out of a sense of obligation than a deep, passionate love for the man that had once been her husband but who had changed in those long, tortuous years when he had been lost to her.  As she herself had changed.  

John knew that she had loved Roman, and she had wanted to make up for all the years that he had lost to DiMera’s diabolical schemes, but in the wake of their reunion, she’d whispered to him in the darkness of the night more than once that it was him that she had been in love with.  His hands she had wanted on her body, him she had wanted in her bed.

So, Roman had gone from Salem and she had spent long years alone, being his dearest friend and watching him play house with Kristen.  Not knowing that had she given him the merest hint that she still loved him that he would have turned his back on Kristen in a hot minute.

He’d thought they’d moved past all that when they’d found their way back together.  When he’d explained that he had tried so hard not to hurt her by letting her know how he felt.  How he’d brought her such pain through their affair that he couldn’t risk hurting her again.  He had kept his feelings secret and he hadn’t seen the truth of hers because it was too dangerous, too painful.  In her usual graceful way, she had smiled and told him that it was okay because she had kept hers from him too and that they should just be grateful that they now knew the truth and that they could hold and love each other at long last.

Now he wondered how really ‘okay’ she had been about it.  Maybe there were deeper feelings that she hadn’t articulated; that she had left buried in the hope that they would one day fade.  Feelings that had been unearthed and refreshed by his imprudent pursuit of his past and his mercenary alter-ego’s disinterest in his Salem life and family. 

On reflection, of course she had turned to Bo.  To distract herself, to ease her pain.  How could he blame her when he had done the same thing over and over? He absolutely hated that it was Bo, of all people, but Abe’s words last night were finally making some horrible kind of sense.  Marlena had needed someone she could trust, someone who would catch her if she fell.  Bo completely footed the bill.

“Doc.”  He started to say something, to address the thoughts that were running through his head.  To tell her he understood but she had to know that he would never turn to another woman again.  That she was the only one he wanted from now until forever.  But he thought of Abe’s admonishment that he needed to stop talking and start listening and he stopped himself.  However right he might be about his inner revelations, she was obviously not ready to talk about how she felt.  She was barely holding herself together.  He needed to give her time.  

Giving her that time might mean that he had to suffer watching her with Bo, but then maybe he deserved that.  Maybe she’d had to bear witness to much worse, living in close quarters with him and Kristen.  Maybe this was part of his penance.  To watch her in another man’s arms… Bo’s arms, and to swallow it and say nothing.  Because she needed to know that he wasn’t going anywhere.  She needed to know she could trust him again and that he would stick around when things were tough.

“Marlena, I’ll be here,” he said simply.  “I’ll be waiting for you, when you’re ready.  And I won’t give you hassle about Bo.  I don’t like it; dammit, I fucking hate it.   But I won’t cause you problems.  I promise.”  He watched her as she lifted her hand to the glass, tracing the outline of a cobweb on the other side of the window.  He was offering a lot here and he had to ask for something in return.  He was scared she would say no, but he had to try.  “I’ll do that as long as you can promise me one thing in return.”

At first, she said nothing, and he wondered if she’d heard what he’d said.  But then her voice came in a shimmering whisper, muffled against the dirty glass of the window.  “What’s that?”

He had to be closer to her when he said this.  He had to make her understand how important it was.  How much he wanted to make this right with her.  How much he wanted her to heal and for him to be part of that healing.  

So, he pushed himself from the couch and went to where she stood at the window.  It took everything within him not to touch her.  He inhaled her scent as he stood next to her, side by side.  He looked at her while she looked out of the window, across rooftops to where the river ran silently like a glistening ribbon through Salem.

“Promise me that when you’re ready, you’ll come and talk to me.  And you’ll tell me everything.”  He put the emphasis on the word everything.  If they had any hope of fixing this, she couldn’t hold anything back this time.  He had to hear it all.  They both had to own all their mistakes, or they were doomed to repeat them over and over.  

And he couldn’t hurt her like this again.  He would rather watch her from afar forever than cause her this kind of pain ever again.  “Everything deep inside you.  All those feelings you’ve been holding onto for so long.  You won’t varnish the truth to make me feel better.  Can you do that for me?”

He could hear her swallowing, her throat painfully dry.  And he waited.

Slowly, she turned her head and looked at him, and he was gratified to find surprise and curiosity in her eyes.  He just waited and it felt like an eternity.  Then slowly, she nodded.

He let out a relieved breath.  “Okay, good.”  He lifted his hand, as if to touch her arm and then dropped it again.  “I’m gonna make some tea.  Want some?”

“Um… sure.”  She sounded tentative and unsure, but he’d take it.  He’d take anything that kept her here and safe for a little while longer.   He went to the kitchen island and busied himself making tea, aware that she had turned from the window, and she was watching him.

“Doc?” He started as he let the tea steep.  

 “Yes?” She had crossed her arms in front of her and the sun coming through the window threw a halo of light around her.  She was breathtaking.  But then, she always had been.

“Do we really need to formalize things?  About the kids I mean?  I don’t…”  he sighed as he saw her shoulders tighten again.  “Their home is with you, obviously.  I wouldn’t want it any other way.  You’re an amazing mother, they belong with you, of course they do.  I just want to see them.  But I’m happy for you to dictate when that happens.”  He picked up the mugs and walked back to her, turning it so she could take the handle and not burn her hands.  “You just tell me when is good for you and I’ll pick them up and drop them off.”

“I…” she wasn’t prepared for that, and she was certainly in no shape to talk about it now.  Her natural instinct was to give into him.  But to do that, she would have to trust that he would stay true to his word.  She knew how quickly things could change.  The past twenty-four hours had reminded her of that, if she’d been in any danger of forgetting it.  A formalized agreement would protect her and the children.  It would make things clear and equitable.  But it felt so… clinical.  So final.  They didn’t have a marriage to dissolve so there was no divorce to draw a line between them.  But discussing custody of their children… it felt like an ending.

Was she really ready for that?

It had been a kneejerk reaction after her confrontation with Caroline to call Mickey but now she wasn’t sure.  

“I’m not sure.  I need to think about it.”  She wrapped pale, cold fingers around the cup and lifted it to her mouth, taking a sip of the hot liquid as she turned back to the window.

John nodded.  It wasn’t a yes, but it also wasn’t a no.  He wouldn’t push her.  He hoped that before she decided she did want an agreement drawn up they would be back together, and it would be a moot point.

“John,” she said suddenly.  “I was thinking.”  She didn’t look back at him.  It was easier to talk to him if she didn’t have to see his face.  See the marks from Bo’s fists.  See the way his eyes shone when he looked at her.  He was looking at her like he used to look at her and it was unnerving.

“Yeah?” He came up behind her and she tensed.  She couldn’t concentrate when he was this close. His physicality was overpowering.  He wasn’t touching her and yet he may as well have had his hands all over her.  Her belly clenched and she could feel her need for him pooling between her thighs.  This was crazy, one moment he was causing her panic attacks, the next she wanted nothing more than for him to touch her, to skim his beautiful hands up her neck, cup her cheek and kiss her like his life depended on it.

“I… uh….” she had to get away from him.  She stepped sideways and skirted him and moved around to put the couch between them.  

“Spit it out Doc,” his lips curled in a knowing smile.  He knew the effect he was having on her.  She was having exactly the same effect on him.  He couldn’t be in the same room with her and not gravitate towards her.  He couldn’t be near her and not want to touch her, thread his fingers in her silky hair and claim those delicious lips with his own.  She could be fresh off a dozen sleepless nights and wearing a garbage bag and he’d still think she was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen, and he’d still want her desperately.

“I was thinking, I want to adopt Brady,” she blurted out.  ”It’s just, I’m his Mama.  I’m the only mother he’s ever known, and I can’t bear the thought of you marrying someone else and taking him away from me.  I need to know he’s mine.”  Her eyes filled with tears.

“Oh Doc.”  John was stunned.  Not that her first thought was of Brady and how much she loved him, but rather that she could envision a future where he would marry someone else, and he would take Brady from her.  It broke his heart that she could believe that he would do that to her.  And to their child.  “Of course he’s yours.  But baby, there’s never going to be anyone else.  It’s just you.  It will always be you.”

“You can’t say that for certain.”  A single, large tear trickled down her cheek.  

“Yes, I can.”  He placed his mug down on the desk and came to where she stood.  Reaching out, he used the pad of his thumb to wipe the tear from her cheek.  “I love you.  Nothing will ever change that.  No-one else will ever hold a candle to you, don’t you know that?”

She gazed into the cerulean pools of his eyes, transfixed by their depth.  By the seeming sincerity in them.

“I don’t…” she shook her head, but the words were gone, lost as her eyes traveled from his to his mouth.  To those lips.

“Oh Marlena.”  Her name on those lips sounded almost like a prayer and his warm hand as it cupped her cheek and then slid around to hold the back of her head as he guided her head towards him, felt like a benediction.  Her heart pounded and her head grew light as he whispered his lips past hers, once and then twice.  Everything was on fire, every sense, every nerve.  His lips found hers, his tongue slipping between them, meeting with hers, twining, searching, demanding.  His arm curled around her shoulders as she melted into him and without thinking, she anchored herself, her arm around his neck.  He leaned into her, tipping her back in his strong embrace and it was at once, so familiar but at the same time, so alien.  She felt like she was drowning in him, in her need for him.  She could feel the effect that he had on her, coursing through her.  Her skin sizzled, her stomach curled in on itself and her core became liquid heat.

The moment he broke the kiss, she came to her senses and tried to push herself away from him, but she was still unbalanced, and she staggered back so that he had to grab her.

“Don’t!” she batted away his hands, her face flushed.  “Don’t!”

“Doc, I…”  John was as surprised as she was, that wasn’t what he’d intended at all but when he’d touched her, all logic had flown out the window.  It was as though his hands had moved of their own accord.  Muscle memory, was that what she’d called it all those years ago?  The way your hands and other parts of your body just found their way to where they belonged.  Knew the right spots to touch, the right amount of pressure.  The way everything just felt so right.

“You just got done saying you’d give me time!”  Her eyes filled with tears.  “I can’t… I can’t do this with you.”

He watched, open mouthed as she spun on her heel and snatched her purse from the table where Bo had put it and fled from the loft.  

It took him a moment before he was able to collect his senses enough to realize what had happened.  When he did, he cursed.  

By the time he reached the open door of the loft, the door of the elevator was closing.

“Doc!” he called but he heard the grinding of the elevator, and he knew he had to catch her.  He couldn’t let her leave like this.  He took the stairs two at a time and arrived in the lobby just as she was stepping out of the elevator.

“Marlena, wait!” he caught her arm, trying to stop her from storming out of the building.  “Honey, I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have kissed you.  I just… I couldn’t help it.”

“Let go of me!” Her eyes were blazing with anger as she rounded on him.  She wrenched her arm from his grasp and pointed at him.  “I’m not falling for it.  Not again!  You say all the right words, but you don’t really mean them.  You think that you’ll win me around with pretty endearments and that I’ll just fall into your arms, and everything will go back to normal.”

“No, that’s not it at all!” he shook his head desperately.  “Doc, I meant what I said, I just got carried away.  I can’t help it when I see you, when I’m this close to you.  You drive me crazy, I want you so much.”

“I don’t need this kind of pressure!” she cried, her eyes filling with tears again.  “I don’t want your kind of normal.  You turn my life upside down and when I’m around you, I can’t even think straight.  I can’t live like that.  I need some stability.  I need to be able to breathe.”

“You think Bo is gonna give you stability?” He asked incredulously.  

“This isn’t about Bo.  This is about you and me.  This dizzying, obsessive need that over comes me when we’re in the same room.  It’s not healthy.”  Tears streaked her face now as she backed away from him.  “We’re not good for each other.”

“No, baby, we’re great for each other,” John argued passionately.  “Yeah, it’s intense.  It always has been, but we can find an equilibrium.  We had it once, we just have to find our way back to that place, Marlena.”

Marlena shook her head, sadly.  “John.  I… I’m sorry. I don’t think I want to.”

With that, she turned and walked out of the building, leaving John staring after her in utter dismay.  

Part Vingt-Cinq

‘Cause you could be the one that I love
And I could be the one that you dream of
A message in a bottle is all I can do
Standing here hoping it gets to you
You could be the one that I keep
And I could be the reason you can’t sleep at night
A message in a bottle is all I can do
Standing here hoping it gets to you

Message in a Bottle – Taylor Swift

“Ohhh, I am beat.”  Marlena came down the stairs, brushing her hair from her eyes and yawning.  It had taken significantly longer than usual to get the children to bed, buoyed by the unusual events of the day and the mountains of soda and ice-cream that Bo had treated them to at lunchtime.

She had taken a cab and met them at Lou’s Pizza Parlor across town.  Slipping into a booth next to Bo, she had pasted a smile on her face and tried to act as normal as she could for the children.   Bo had ordered her pizza, but she had merely picked at it while she watched Belle and Brady compete to see who could make the most mess as they devoured ice-cream sundaes and ice-cream floats.  She had let Bo take her hand underneath the table and she had smiled at him as if she was perfectly okay and her heart wasn’t in danger of shattering into a thousand little pieces.

Back at home, the children had roared around the penthouse all afternoon, keeping Bo occupied enough that he hadn’t been able to press her for details about what had happened at John’s, or how she was doing in the wake of everything that had happened today.  Every time he had tried to catch her alone, she had found a reason to evade his concern, a call from the children or a snack that needed to be produced or cleared away.  Her laughter was crisp and dangerous, and Bo had the impression that it could slip all too easily into hysteria. 

“I made you some tea,” he pointed to the cup on the table.  “You wanna come and sit down?”

“I should just clean up the kitchen a little bit first,” she flashed him another one of those smiles, the ones that didn’t reach her beautiful hazel eyes.  The ones designed to stave off concern and questions.

“I did it already,” he told her.  “Come and sit down.”

“Bo, I…” she looked towards the kitchen and then back at him.

“You can’t avoid me any longer,” he told her softly.  “We need to talk.”

At that very moment, the phone rang and with a look of relief, Marlena picked up the receiver.

“Hi honey,” her heart sank as Laura’s voice sounded on the other end of the phone line.  If there was anything she wanted to avoid any more than talking to Bo, it was being grilled by Laura Horton.  “I, um, I wanted to check and see how you are doing.”

“I’m fine, Laura.”  Marlena could hear the sharp edge to her own voice as she glanced across to where Bo sat.  He looked away and she knew instantly it had been him that had called Laura, probably when he had been at the pizza parlor with the kids.  After he had let her in pieces with John, investing some kind of perverse trust that John could somehow put her back together.

“I heard John came home.”  It was said matter-of-factly, like that one event hadn’t exploded her life and her emotional core to smithereens

“Who called you?” Marlena asked pointedly.

“Does it matter?” Laura said carefully.  She wasn’t about to tell Marlena she’d been the recipient of several worried calls, not only from her son, but from Bo and John both.  Bo had wanted advice on how to handle the situation with Marlena and how to support her.  He had stopped short of going into explicit detail about the events the night before, but she had gleaned enough information to grow evermore concerned about how Marlena was dealing with this situation.  Or not dealing with it, as the case may be.  John had just been desperately concerned about Marlena’s state of mind, spending a little time to expound on the regret and guilt he felt, and to offer Laura a brief explanation for his disappearance from Salem.

“It matters to me,” Marlena told her curtly.

“Why?” Laura asked.  “Because you were going to try and avoid telling me how bad it was?  Because you were going to cancel our session on Monday and pretend everything was fine?  Honey, clearly everything is not fine.”

“Laura, I’m not…” Marlena sighed.  “I can’t talk about this right now.”

“If you hang up on me, I’m just going to call you right back.” Laura’s voice was tight.  “Marlena.  Sweetie, you need help.”

“I’ll be there at your office on Monday.”  That was as much of a concession as Marlena was willing to make.  “I’ll be fine until then.”

Laura sighed.  She had known that Marlena would not respond well to what she saw as interference.  She wasn’t good at admitting she needed help, even worse at asking for it.  For a woman who was such an internationally renowned psychiatrist, she was remarkably bad at self-analysis.  Or maybe not the self-analysis exactly, but definitely the step before that, in knowing and admitting she wasn’t coping and that she needed support.  “Monday seemed soon enough on Friday before John turned up.  I think things are a little more pressing now.”  

“Laura.”  Marlena frowned.  “It’s not convenient.  I have Belle and Brady here.  They’ve already had their week disrupted enough.”

“Caroline will have them, I’m sure,” Laura offered the most obvious solution.  She wasn’t about to suggest that John have them, but Caroline seemed like a safe choice.

“No, that’s not an option.”  Marlena’s voice was tight as she looked at Bo.  He was staring back at her now, frowning at her obvious reluctance to take Laura up on her offer of help. 

“Okay…”  Laura paused, picking up on Marlena’s obvious reaction when Caroline’s name was mentioned.  She wondered what exactly had happened at the pub last night.  She could only imagine that Caroline wasn’t thrilled about another one of her sons being pulled into Marlena’s often disastrous life.   “Well, what about one of your older kids?  I’m sure Carrie would help out if she knew you needed it.”  In matter of fact, she was more than sure of it.  She knew how Carrie felt about John and how she felt about John and Marlena being together.  Laura was sure that Carrie would be only too happy to help out if she knew it was in service of helping her beloved mother find her way back to the man she thought of as her father, in her heart.

“Laura, I appreciate you’re trying to help but-” Marlena tried to fend off Laura’s well-meaning concern.  She knew, but didn’t want to admit, that Laura was right.

“No buts honey.  You need my help.  I can hear it in your voice.” Laura’s voice dropped so it was lower and softer, more intimate and caring.  “You forget how well I know you.  I know how you feel about John.  I know how hurt you were when he walked out.  This situation has to be tearing you apart.”

“I…” Marlena turned away from Bo so that he couldn’t see her pained expression.  “Laura, I really can’t talk about it right now.”

“Is Bo there with you?” Laura guessed correctly.

“Yes.” Marlena was helpless to stem the tears that pooled in her eyes. 

“You’re not okay, are you?” Laura was infinitely gentle now.

“No.” Marlena choked out the single word.  It was as much as she could manage right now.  She felt stuck between Bo and Laura, suffocated by their concern but also crumbling under the attention they were focusing on her.

 “Oh honey, why didn’t you call me?” Laura

“I thought I could handle it.  I thought…”  She slapped her hand over her mouth to stop the sob which threatened to spill forth.  And then her voice dropped to little more than a whisper as she finally admitted it out loud.  “Laura, I can’t.  I’m falling apart.”

“Oh sweetie.  I can come over now if you want me to?”  It was heading into a Saturday evening and Laura had a hot date with a devilishly handsome attending doctor who had recently started at Salem U Hospital, but she was prepared to cancel it for her best friend.  Marlena had been there for her time and again and she wasn’t about to let her down for a mere man.

“No!  No, it’s okay.  It can wait until tomorrow.  I’ll be… I’ll manage until then.”  Marlena swallowed and gathering herself together, she briefly flicked the tears away with her fingers.  

“I’ll come over about ten then.”  Laura told her.  “But if you need me before then, you just call me, okay?  I’ll drop everything and be there as quickly as I can.”

“That won’t be required,” Marlena assured her.  “I’ll see you then.”

They said their goodbyes and Marlena put down the phone and turned back to Bo.

“You called her.”  It wasn’t so much a question as a statement of fact.

“Yes.”  Bo nodded.  “I did.”

“It wasn’t your business to call her,” Marlena said angrily.  While she knew rationally that Bo had been trying to help, she also felt ambushed by him discussing her behind her back with her best friend.

“Of course it’s my damn business.”  Bo exploded furiously and Marlena took a step back involuntarily as he pushed himself up from the sofa.   He stalked over to where she stood, her hand on the credenza to steady herself.  He stopped short of her, leaving yards of open space between them.  He didn’t know whether he could touch her now.  He was so confused.  By her, by the situation, by his own feelings.  He knew what was happening, it was almost like this thing between them was crashing and burning in slow motion and yet, he couldn’t bring himself to walk away.   “I can’t help you, Marlena.  Do you expect me just to stand by and watch you disintegrating?  I love you but I don’t have the right…”  He sighed, looking for the right words.  “I don’t know how to help you.  You wanted me here last night and then look what happened.  I don’t know whether I’m making things better or worse.”

Marlena had the grace to look embarrassed.  “I’m really sorry,” she offered quietly.

Bo ignored her apology as he continued.  He needed to get this out.  He needed to say it.  “You won’t talk to me about what you’re thinking or feeling.  I’m totally in the dark.  I needed to talk to someone.  Did you think about that?  Did you think about what it’s doing to me, having to watch you go through this?”

Marlena bit her lower lip and shook her head.  She’d been so wrapped up in herself, her own tumultuous emotions that she had failed to really consider what this might be doing to Bo.  He had his own uncertainties to deal with.  He had to be wondering where Hope was and what had happened to her.  He had to be asking the same questions she was about this microchip story.  About the validity of John’s claims.  About whether this disappearance of John and Hope’s was really manufactured by Stefano.  And whether it made a difference, if so.

And then there was that word.  The word that Bo kept using that not only complicated things, but it made Bo so much more vulnerable and open to confusion and heartbreak at her hands.  She had her own shattered heart to contend with but in the process of falling apart over John, was she inadvertently scarring Bo?  If so, then she needed to answer for that.  That was on her, and her selfishness.  

And then there was the question that she wasn’t even willing to ask herself.  What, if anything, had happened between John and Hope in Europe?  She pushed the thought away before it even had time to take solid shape in her head.  

“Yeah, didn’t think so.”  Bo let out a whoosh and shook his head.  “This is a mess.  We are a mess.  This was supposed to be fun.  Well, it’s not fun anymore.”  He turned around but Marlena caught his arm.

“Bo,” she said softly.  Her fingers slid down his bare forearm and encircled his wrist and he stopped.  His hand was warm and damp where hers touched it.  This was taking it out of him.  He was holding a lot back, she knew.  Bo was nothing if not passionate and hot-tempered.  She wondered what exactly he would shout at her if he wasn’t afraid of puncturing her already fragile defenses.  “Bo.  What… what are you saying?”

She knew what he was saying, and she knew he was right.  She’d said it before now.  But the thought of him walking out that door right now terrified her.  It shouldn’t make her feel that way, she knew.  She wasn’t in love with him, she wasn’t dependent on him.  It was embarrassing and pitiful that she’d let herself get to this place.  She should let him go.  She should walk him to the door, apologize to him for her bad choices, kiss him on the cheek and let him go.  Sooner or later, he would go and find Hope and with luck and some hard conversations they would put their lives and their love back together and he would be happy again.  He deserved that.

That was what she should do.

He sighed.  “I’m saying that I think we should end this.  It’s not working.”  He twisted his hand, catching her slender fingers in his.  “Marlena, this is hurting both of us.”

“That isn’t…” she shook her head, the tears blurring her vision again.  “I never wanted that for you.”

“I know you didn’t,” he said gently thinking of how they had started, the flirtation, the laughter and the magnificent, addictive sex.  “Oh Marlena…” he shook his head.  He hated this.  He just wished they could go back to when it was fun and easy.  Not that it had ever been fun and easy, but it had felt that way for a short, magical time.

“Is this what you really want?” she asked wistfully, a tear trickling over the soft, pale curve of her cheek.

His heart lurched.  He wanted to wipe away her tears.  He wanted to kiss them away.  There was so much he wanted and even more that he didn’t want.

“No, it’s not what I really want, dammit.”  He spun away, unable to look at her beautiful, miserable face any longer.  This situation really was impossible.   “It’s not what I want.”  He turned back to her, his heart grieving for what he would never have.  “I want you to love me.  I want you to feel about me the way I feel about you.  But what I want isn’t going to happen.  It’s not on the table.”  He sighed wearily.  “Mom’s right, you’re going to go back to John and I’m gonna have my heart broken.”

“How do you know that’s going to happen?”  A little anger bled into Marlena’s voice.  She was so tired of the way that everyone assumed that they knew what was going to happen.  The way they all knew the decisions she was going to make before she did.

“Because I see it happening already.”  He looked at her with sadness in his warm, brown eyes.  “I tried real hard not to see it, but I’d have to be damn well nearly blind not miss it.  I see it in your eyes when you look at him, the way you respond when he’s nearby.  Dammit Marlena, you can’t even hear his name or be around him for ten minutes before you go into a tailspin.”

Marlena said nothing but her cheeks reddened.  She hated that she was that transparent.

When she didn’t respond immediately, he couldn’t help the question that crossed his lips.  “What do you want, Marlena?”

Her hand curled into a fist as she took a deep breath, steadying herself.  “Honestly?”  He nodded in   response, and she frowned as she considered his question.  She knew what she didn’t want.  She didn’t want to hurt like this, and she didn’t want anyone else to hurt like this either.  “I don’t know what I want, Bo.”

Bo gave a short, pained laugh.  “Marlena, you’re lying.  If you’re not lying to me then you’re definitely lying to yourself.”

“That’s not fair!” Marlena said furiously.  “I’m so sick of everyone telling me how I feel.  What I think.  You’re not inside my head.”

“You can say that again!” Bo shot back hotly.  “I have no idea what’s going on inside your head.  How could I when you never talk to me about it?  You’re impossible, woman!”

“I’m impossible!?”  Marlena glared at him.

“Yeah,” Bo pointed at her.  “Yeah.  You’re so frustrating!  I feel like I got whiplash trying to keep up with your moods.  I want to know where the Marlena is that I fell in love with.  I don’t know this one.”  He balled his hand into a fist and pounded it down into the air between them a couple of times.  “I hate that he’s done this to you.  Made you so… unsure of yourself.  Made you so… needy.”

Marlena took a step back in reaction to his words.  They were like a slap in the face.  Was that really how he saw her?  As needy?

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly as he saw her reaction, the shock that flittered across her face.  “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Is that really what you think?” she asked him, still trying to process his words.  “That I’m needy?  Am I needy?”

“I think…” he sighed.  “Look, it doesn’t matter what I think.  What I want doesn’t matter.  Not unless you want the same thing.  And I don’t think you do.  Otherwise, I think you would have told me what happened at John’s.”  He gave her a sad, regretful smile.  He didn’t need to know all the details, but she’d told him nothing except that she was okay, and he needed to know more than that.  His self-respect dictated it, if nothing else.

Marlena chewed the inside of her lower lip trying to formulate her reply.  She’d been debating on what to tell Bo and she hadn’t been able to come up with a satisfactory answer.  Now she was going to have to wing it.  

“John tried to… he tried to persuade me that we could make it work again.  The two of us, together.   And I told him… that I don’t think I want to.”  She shook her head and let out a frustrated sigh.  She definitely didn’t want to tell Bo about the kiss.  Or about how much John’s words had confused her.  She didn’t want to do that to him, it wasn’t fair.   

“Bo, I don’t want that.”  She searched for the right words and recalled the words she’d said to John.

This isn’t about Bo.  This is about you and me.  This dizzying, obsessive need that over comes me when we’re in the same room.  It’s not healthy.

“What John and I had… it wasn’t healthy.”  She breathed in deeply trying to choose her words with care.  Words that would convey how she felt to Bo without revealing too much of what lay deep within her.  Without hurting him too carelessly.  “You’re right about what he does to me.  I… I hate the way I feel around him.  I hate how out of control he makes me feel.  I don’t want to feel like that.”   She looked embarrassed.  This wasn’t something she had considered until recently, but it felt more and more true.  Especially after today, after her extreme reactions to him.  “It’s not healthy.”

“It scares you.” It was more a statement than a question from Bo.  He was trying to work out the veracity of her words.  Did she really think their relationship was unhealthy or was she just scared of the intensity of emotion and getting swept away by it?

He knew something about that, of course.  He’d been there himself, with Hope.  When she’d apparently been plunged into that vat of acid and he thought he’d lost her forever he had been utterly devastated and when she’d reappeared at Maison Blanche years later, he’d refused to believe it could be her.  The thought of loving and losing her again had been too much to bear.

It still was.  He was as confused as Marlena was.  Maybe more, because he of the feelings he still felt for Hope.  And because of the feelings he had for Marlena.  

They were different, of course.  The way he felt about Hope and about the woman who stood in front of him.  If someone had asked him to put it into words, he would have struggled.   But with Hope, it was a deep and passionate, abiding love.  It was opposites attracting, it was friction and antagonism, passion and laughter.  She drove him crazy, but he loved that about her.  She’d hurt him badly this time, but he knew as surely as day followed night that he would always love her.

With Marlena, it wasn’t the same.  He had loved her forever, but it was a love that was borne of respect and admiration and not a small amount of lust and longing.  Being allowed inside her walls, being trusted and seeing her vulnerability had fanned those flames into a wildfire.  Making love to her, seeing her in her most intimate moments had turned the wildfire into a raging inferno.  But he couldn’t help but wonder if the fire would burn itself out as quickly as it had ignited.

“It… makes me uncomfortable,” Marlena said carefully.  “I’m a psychiatrist.  It’s my job to help people have functional relationships.  And I can’t seem to maintain a steady, healthy long-term relationship to save my life!”  She gave a broken laugh.  “Pathetic really.  Sometimes I wonder about the poor fools who want me as their psychiatrist.”

“Hey, that’s not fair.” Bo flashed her a half-grin.  “I’m sure not all of them are fools.”

Marlena gave a chuckle which turned into a choked sob.  “Are you really going to go?” she asked plaintively.

Bo sighed.  He should go, he knew.  Laura had told him to go.  For the sake of his sanity, for any future he might have with Hope, he needed to go.  He had argued that Marlena needed him, and Laura had told him he wasn’t doing her any favors.  She was distracting herself from the very real soul-searching she needed to do, and she was using him to do it.

Who’s using who?

The truth was, there was a large part of him that didn’t care if he was being used.  That was how this had started out, after all.  Neither of them had pretended anything else.  They were both hurting, and they both needed distraction.  It had been only too convenient that it turned out they could distract each other.  Just because his feelings had grown into something else (or maybe they were a little bit of something else to start with), that didn’t mean he could expect that hers would too, or he could be angry that they hadn’t.  The reality was, he wanted to be with her, for as long as he could be with her, no matter how much of a mind-fuck she was presenting him with.

“Marlena, I…”

She came to him, laying her hands on his chest so that she could feel his heart through his thin green t-shirt.

“Don’t go,” she whispered.  “Please don’t go.  I know I’m not being fair, but I can’t bear the thought of it ending like this.”  She lifted her hand to his cheek.  She knew she was being selfish and part of her berated herself for it, but the words came anyway.  “I don’t want last night to be the last time we….  I don’t want that to be the memory that you take with you.”

Bo stared at her for a long moment and then lifted a hand to her hair.  He twirled it around his fingers and held her gaze.  “There’s no future in this,” he told her.  “I either get my heart broken now, or in a few days time.  Either way, it’s the same outcome.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she played with the hair at his temple.  “Not at all.”

“I know you don’t,” he sighed as she slipped her free hand around his neck.  “Does seem to be inevitable though.”

“Is it?” she leaned into him as he encircled her with his own arms, slinging them around her waist.  “I don’t know that.”

“That’s cuz you’re in denial, gorgeous,” he said with a half- smile.

“And you’re not?” she asked. “How do you know so much about what I’m going to do?”

“Been watching you for fifteen odd years,” he reminded her.  “You still think I’m that wild, impulsive kid who came to Salem, don’t you?  I’ve grown up a lot since then.  We’ve both been through a hell of a lot.”

“Yes.”  She didn’t say anything else.  She just gazed at him.  For a moment, John wasn’t in her head, she just saw Bo.  She saw their long history; all they had been through together and she felt safe.  She felt loved and safe.

“I’ll stay on one condition,” he said finally.  “You tell me what happened at John’s today.”

She dropped her head, pressing her forehead against his shirt.  She felt his warmth and she felt his heart beating.  Why, when she’d finally banished John from her head, was Bo insisting on bringing him back into the room?  

“I need to know,” he told her gently.  His hand in her hair, he pulled her head away from him and looked into her beautiful hazel eyes.  They were so full of suppressed emotion, he thought maybe he could get lost, get caught in their honeyed depths never to escape.  Maybe he already was, he mused.  Maybe that’s why he couldn’t seem to walk away from her.  “I need to know where we stand.  All of us.”

She pressed her palm to his cheek.  “Alright,” she conceded.  “If that’s what it’ll take.”  She tilted her head up invitingly.

“It is.”  He let himself get drawn into her kiss.  Because God, the woman knew how to kiss.  Soft, teasing, sweet and liquid heat.  She kissed him and he tingled.  He could feel it everywhere, his lips, his skin, his nerves.  His groin.  He could definitely feel it in his groin.  He groaned and pushed her away.

“Talk first,” he said breathlessly.  “Then we’ll see what happens next.”

Marlena gave him a rueful smile.  It had been worth a try.

Taking his hand, she let him to the couch.  They sat with a little space between them, Marlena’s leg tucked up underneath her as she reached for her tea.  Bo sat facing her, his denim-clad knee touching hers.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“What he said to you,” Bo admitted.  “What had you so rattled when you got to Lou’s?”

“I was not rattled,” she snapped in annoyance.

“Oh, c’mon now, Marlena.” Bo rolled his eyes.  “Should I have specified that you tell me what happened with John and you’re honest about it?”

“I don’t want to talk about John!” Marlena said petulantly.

“Right.  Well, I’ll go then, shall I?”  Bo moved as if to get up from the sofa.

“No!” Marlena slapped her hand on his thigh.  “No, don’t.”  She sighed and he settled back down, her eyes drifting to the tea-cup balanced by her left hand on her knee.  “He was… he was very patient with me.  He sat with me until I came out of …”  She stopped as she recalled being lost in her panic attack, norepinephrine flooding her body until she was locked in a dizzying hell of breathless disorientation.

“I’ve never seen…” Bo chewed on his lower lip.  “Is this a new thing?”

Marlena looked up at him.  “No,” she replied, a little embarrassed.  “I had them…” she stopped as she looked at Bo.  She couldn’t remember whether he knew about what had happened with Kellam.  It was long before he came to Salem. It was possible Roman had told him, but somehow, she doubted it.  

It wasn’t really something she wanted to go into now.  She wasn’t ashamed of it, but Bo didn’t need to know that level of detail about her life pre-Roman.  The only people that could remember that far back were Alice Horton, Maggie and Mickey Horton.  And the only other person she’d told was John.  (John.  It always came back to John, sooner or later, didn’t it?)

“I had them after Sam was murdered,” she admitted.  “And then after Roman died.”

“You did?”  He frowned.  “I don’t remember that.”

“I mainly had them when I was alone.  And by then I could feel them coming on and if I was around the family I’d go and find somewhere quiet.”  She thought back to that time, to being strong for the family.  For Caroline and Shawn who had lost their son.  For Kim and Kayla who had lost their brother.  For her children, the twins and Carrie who had lost their father. And for Bo who had watched his brother die and who could not save him.  She had been strong beyond what should have been expected of a woman who had lost the love of her life and had children and a family to hold up.  She remembered retreating to bathrooms, to empty bedrooms to breathe through the waves of dizzying panic as she wondered how she was going to go on in the world alone.

And then John had walked into her life, and she hadn’t been alone anymore.  Through all those long years they had been apart, still she hadn’t been alone.  He had been there at her back, at her side.  He’d been her friend, her protector, her lover.  He had been there.

And she’d never had another panic attack.  Until today.

“Anyway, it’s been a long time.”  She toyed with the rim of her cup.  “So long that I didn’t even realize what was happening in the square earlier.”  She gave a self-deprecating chuckle.  “Some therapist I am, not recognizing the classic symptoms of a panic attack.”

“I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” Bo said quietly.  He had seen both times how lost she was, the terror unfolding deep within those beautiful eyes.  

“Anyway, John counted me through it.  I don’t know how he knew what to do.  I’ve never…” she looked up at Bo.  “No-one has seen me like that in a long, long time.”

“I told him how Mike helped you,” Bo told her simply.  “And I figured that maybe he’d seen you deal with someone else in that state.  I could have stayed but I didn’t think you’d want the kids to see you like that.  And I thought maybe us both being there was part of the problem.  And the likelihood of getting John to leave was pretty minimal so I…” he shrugged.  “I hated leaving you there, for the record.”

“You were right, the children didn’t need to see me like that.  They’re unsettled enough as it is.  I don’t want to scare them.”  She swallowed.  “I know it must have been hard for you.”

“What did he say to you?” he asked again.  “After you’d recovered, I mean.”

“I don’t know that I did recover,” she mused.  “Not completely.  I was… he wanted to talk.  I wasn’t… I couldn’t.”  She shrugged.  “I don’t even know what there is to talk about.”

“Now I know you’re lying,” Bo reached out and laid his hand over her forearm.  “We’re both sitting here pretending that we don’t want to ask them a million questions.  We want to know if this chip crap is real.  We want to know if they chose to walk away or if DiMera manipulated them into it. “

“Do we?” 

He noticed her hand curling into a fist, and he covered it with his own.  “It’s okay, Marlena.  I know how you feel.  If anyone knows, I know.  You don’t have to protect me, I’m a big boy.  I can take it.”

“I just don’t know what difference it makes anymore!” she cried.  “I’m tired of asking myself the same questions.  He’s careless with my heart.  With the children’s.  Why would I want to put myself through that all over again?  Even if he didn’t mean to this time, he comes and he goes and he gives so much of himself to everyone else that sometimes I wonder if there will be anything left for me at the end of it all.”  She dropped her head and curled her hand across her eyes.  “Oh, I shouldn’t be telling you this.  It’s not fair.”

“I asked,” Bo reminded her, frowning as he did so.  While they were in the same boat now, they had been in quite different positions a few years ago.  She had escaped DiMera and come home to John and turned his life upside down.  And Bo had encountered John’s self-same quandary a few years later when a woman had turned up in Stefano’s ‘care’ wearing his dead wife’s face but with a different name and no memory of her past.  In retrospect he had been an idiot to ever doubt that it was her, but he had felt committed to Billie, in the same way John had been committed to Isabella.  The only difference was that Hope had no long-dead husband to come home and claim her.  The only difference was that John had known Marlena was his back from the dead wife, while Bo had stubbornly resisted the truth for more than a year before he had accepted that Gina really was Hope Williams Brady, a walking miracle, returned to him from a gruesome death before his eyes.

“I feel like Hope could have said those same words about me before all this went down.”  He rolled his eyes at his own idiocy.  “I’ve hardly been Mr. Consistent.  All that back and forth between her and Billie.  It really did a number on her.  At least John believed you were you from the get-go.”

“You had good reasons to believe that Hope wasn’t… Hope,” Marlena reminded him as she took a mouthful of her lukewarm tea.  “You can thank Stefano for that.”

“We can thank Stefano for pretty much all of our twisted, fucked up, confused mistakes and bad choices,” Bo grimaced.  He’d made far too many himself.  So had Marlena.  The irony was, if the chip story was true, John had probably made less bad choices than the rest of them.  Or at least he’d made them for more honorable reasons.  “Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the pain we’ve endured, or caused, any less real.”

“I only have to look at Sami to be reminded of that,” Marlena’s voice was quiet and pained.  “Bo… are you sure you want hear this?  I really don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have.”

“I told you I did,” Bo reminded her softly as he put his hand on her knee.  “I want to know what’s going on inside your head.  It helps me if we talk about it.”

“I’m not sure you want to be inside my head,” Marlena said, looking up at him.  “It’s a confusing place to be right now.”

“Outside your head is a pretty confusing place too, if I’m honest.”  He gave her a brave smile.  “I know what’s coming, Marlena.  And it’s okay.”

“You do?”  The tears filled her eyes again.  “That’s surprising, because I’m damned if I do.”

“I’m just…” he sighed and looked down.  “Honesty time.  I’ve been thinking a lot about Hope today.  About… if she’s Gina and that’s why she left.  It makes it….” He felt her golden eyes appraising him and he suddenly felt emotionally naked in front of her.  He was so confused by his own feelings; he wasn’t sure how to put them into words so that she would understand them.  But that was exactly what he was asking her to do, wasn’t it?  Didn’t he need to reciprocate with the same kind of honesty in return?

He shook his head, unable to meet her eyes and he pushed himself up from the sofa and went to the French doors that looked out over the city.  It was just past dusk, the sky was dark, and the first stars of the night twinkled happily, oblivious to the pain below them.  The black above filtered down to indigo and a lighter blue above the hills beyond the city.  It all painted a beautiful picture if you could forget the pockets of pain that lived in certain quarters of the city.  Drugs and gang violence left ugly scars on parts of Salem while familiar heartbreak, grief and depression visited individuals and families across the cityscape, some more than should be right or fair.

“It makes it what, Bo?” she asked, putting her cold tea on the table and turning to watch him stare out the window.  She could see the tension in his back.  It had been a tumultuous twenty-four hours for them both.  He hadn’t wanted to think about Hope last night, much less talk about her but obviously that had changed at some point.  She shouldn’t be surprised, and really, she wasn’t.  She was just having so much trouble processing her own thoughts and emotions, she hadn’t found room to wonder how Bo was doing with his.  After all, John’s claims impacted him just as much as they did her.  Maybe even more, because Hope’s whereabouts and mental state were such an unknown.

“It changes things.”  He chewed on his lower lip.  “I love her, Marlena.  And she’s out there somewhere not even thinking about me.  Maybe not even caring that we were ever married.”

“If that’s true,” Marlena said carefully, “you have to trust that the ISA will find her, and they will bring Hope back to us.”

“And what if they do?” Bo turned to look at her.  “What then?  What if she still doesn’t want me?  You’re going to go back to John, and I have no guarantee that Hope will be… my Hope when all this is said and done.”

“I’m not…” she shook her head.  “He wants me back, but I don’t… Bo, he always felt safe before.  Like… if I fell, he would always be there to catch me, no matter what was going on in our lives.  No matter who we were with.  I’m just not sure he’s that safe place to land any more.  Stefano messing with his head, it’s messed with mine too.”

“He loves you, Marlena,” Bo said with resignation.  “Even I can see how much he loves you.  I sure as hell don’t want to see it, but it’s written all over his face every time he sees you.  And you love him.  How can I compete with that?”

“I just don’t know that love is enough anymore,” Marlena wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.  

“Don’t let Mrs. H hear you say that.”  Bo gave her a rueful smile.  “But yeah, I think I know what you mean.”

“He told me he would wait for me,” she said, picking at a flaw in a throw that was hanging neatly over the back of the sofa.  “He said he would accept you and me, that he didn’t like it, but he would wait on the proviso that when I’m ready, I will talk to him about everything.  Everything that happened and all of my feelings.”

Bo raised his eyebrows.  “Magnanimous of him.  What did you say?”

“I said I would.”  She didn’t tell him how John’s words had made her feel dizzy, as though she was floating three feet off the ground.  She didn’t tell him how, as John stood next to her and told her that he would wait for her that she had felt waves of electricity course through her.  How the mere touch of his fingertips on her skin had made her tingle in places she’d almost forgotten existed.  Not just physical places, but places within her head, within her soul.  He was awakening parts of her that she’d closed down months ago.  His whispered words peeled back invisible layers, laying her emotional body naked before him.  He touched her with his words, with his breath and it was like his hands were on her skin, skimming delicate shimmering lines of love across the surface of her, raising goosebumps in their wake.

She didn’t tell Bo any of that.  Instead, she said, “And I told him I want to adopt Brady.”

“How did he take that?”  Bo wondered.

“He understood but he seems to think it’s unwarranted because he says there’s no risk I’ll lose Brady to any other possible mother.”  She sighed.  “But Bo, I see how he operates, even if he doesn’t.  I can’t trust that he won’t do it again.  I won’t let anybody else be Brady’s mother.  I can’t risk another Kristen situation.”

“I know how much you love that kid,” Bo’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he considered what he had seen of Marlena with Brady over the past couple of months.  She was wonderful with the little boy.  Bo was eternally grateful that Marlena had made it her business to become a mother to his nephew.  Anyone who saw the two of them together and didn’t know the biological truth of Brady’s parentage would naturally assume that Marlena was his birth mother.  She was just as loving and maternal with him as she was with Belle.  He was her child in every sense of the word.  And she had done her best to keep him safe and protected through the whole Aremid nightmare as well as the interminable drama with Kristen in the wake of John’s almost execution.  She was such an incredibly loyal friend, mother and partner.  They were all so lucky that she was part of their lives and Bo was no exception.  He just wished… oh, how he wished it was all different.

“I do love him,” she smiled now, the first genuine smile he had seen from her since the children had gone upstairs with her for their bedtime ritual.  “I love him so much.  It’s breaking my heart to see how confused he is by all this.  He’s such a sensitive little soul.”

“He’ll be fine, he’s got you to take care of him,” Bo came back to the sofa and sat down, closer to her.  “You always seem to know what to say to the kids.  Isabella would be so grateful that you love Brady in the way you do.”

“I hope so,” she said softly, “although I’m not sure she’d be at all impressed with all the other goings on.” She shook her head, her eyes shining brightly with a hint of the tears that were always lingering nearby lately.  “Bo, I don’t know what to do.  I’m so confused.  I know I should just tell you go and find Hope.  I know I should be strong and trust that I’ll be okay by myself.  I have been alone before, and I survived.”

That was true.  At least, pre-John, she had survived.  She’d become emotionally embroiled with a crooked cop, but she had survived that, some would even say she was thriving when John Black appeared in her life.  But in the wake of Roman’s departure a few years ago, could she, hand on heart, say that she’d survived?  She’d existed for a little while before being sucked into a vortex of evil at the hands of Stefano and then… much, much worse.  She would not have survived that, had it not been for John’s deep love and his willingness to sacrifice his own life and soul to save hers.

So, it was not surprising, she reflected, that she was a little afraid to be alone.  To trust herself, to find that strength that had seemed to crumble in the guilt that had engulfed her when Roman had turned his back on her.

“You shouldn’t just be surviving, Marlena,” Bo said sadly.  “You deserve to be gloriously happy.  Everything you’ve been through… you deserve so much more than just getting through the day.”

“Honey, that’s not the way life works,” she managed a small regretful half-smile.  “Doesn’t matter what you deserve.  Life just throws at you what it throws at you.  Doesn’t matter how good you are, how well you treat other people.  I’ve learnt that over the years.”

“I’ve never…” he frowned.  “I didn’t think you were that pessimistic.  The Marlena I know always had her glass half-full.”

“Maybe…” she shrugged wearily.  “Maybe I just got worn down.  Fending off Kristen and Stefano and…”  She shivered and she didn’t need to say it.  Bo knew of her own personal battle with hell.

“C’mere.”  He pulled her into his arms.  “You don’t have to send me away.  I don’t want to go anywhere.”

“He kissed me,” she whispered into his shoulder.  If he was going to stay, then he should have the whole truth, she felt.  “At the loft.  He’d just got done telling me how he wanted me to tell him everything and he would wait as long as it took for me to be ready…  And then he undid it all by kissing me.”

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Bo growled furiously.  Suddenly Marlena was on her own on the sofa again.  Bo was up on the balls of his feet, dancing around, trying to control his rage, albeit poorly.  “I told him not to make things any worse.  I fucking knew he couldn’t be trusted.  Imma gonna go over there right now and -”

“Bo!” Marlena stood quickly and caught his hand in hers.  “Bo.  Don’t.  Please don’t exacerbate the situation.  For what it’s worth, I don’t think he planned it.  He got carried away.”

“Yeah well, maybe my fists will get carried away into his miserable face again!”  Bo wrenched his hands from Marlena’s and spun away.  And then, putting pieces together, he turned back to her, almost accusingly.  “That was why you were so upset when you arrived at Lou’s.”  

“I…” She could barely meet his eyes and she felt her cheeks reddening.  She didn’t want to admit to him how much the kiss had affected her.  How John’s mere presence did things to her body that she couldn’t control.  “I was upset,” she said finally.  “He says all the right things but how can I believe him?  He thinks I’m going to be wowed by his sincerity and sweet words and just fall helplessly into his arms again.”  She chewed on the inside of her cheek as she thought about John, about the mistakes she’d made before and that she refused to make again.  “Bo, I can’t do it.”

“No-one says you have to do it Marlena,” he went to her and cupped her cheek with his hand.  “Least of all me.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.  “I shouldn’t be telling you this.  I should… I should be stronger than this.”

“Enough with the shoulds.” Bo’s fingers found their way into her hair. And his other hand wound around her waist, pulling her closer to him.  He didn’t want to hear about shoulds.  He knew all about the shoulds.  He’d heard them from his sister and his mother.  He’d heard them from Laura.  He’d heard them echoing in his head in Hope’s voice.

And there were times when they made sense.  But then he saw those beautiful amber eyes, he felt the warmth of her skin and smelt the delicious scent of her and all the shoulds went out the window.

“Please don’t go,” she pleaded quietly, hating that her voice sounded so weak and girlish but unable to help herself.   She felt like she was being manipulative, and she hated that too. She knew the right thing to do, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.  “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

“I already said I wasn’t going anywhere,” he reminded her.  “I know what I said earlier, but to hell with that.  I love you.  I’m not going to split just because the going has got a little tough.” He grinned with a certainty that he did not feel and stroked his thumb down her cheek.  “You just tell me what you need.”

“Just kiss me,” she whispered.  

“Can do!”  He inclined his head and met her lips, so soft and willing.  He couldn’t help thinking that John had kissed those same lips earlier, but he was determined now that he wasn’t going to roll over and let John just walk in and take her away.  Not when it wasn’t what it seemed that she wanted.

Marlena sighed and gave herself over to the kiss.  She too thought of the kiss she’d shared with John earlier, the way her knees had almost given way, the dizzying intensity of the emotions and the physical sensations he aroused in her.  The way she felt so out of control.

This was better.  This was manageable.  She wasn’t swept away on a tsunami of emotions with Bo, it was nice, and it was sexy, but most of all, it felt safe.  He wasn’t going to walk all over her heart, because she hadn’t given her heart to him.  He didn’t have that power over her, and he never would.  Not like John. 

“Will you just come to bed and hold me?” she asked, tucking her hand into the back pocket of his jeans and leaning against him, pressing her lips to the soft dark hair and warm skin exposed by the vee of his t-shirt.

“Anything you want, gorgeous.”  He kissed the top of her head and then took her hand, letting her lead the way.

In the bedroom, she slipped a lacy white silk nightgown over her head, allowing it to skim her curves as Bo watched.  The bruising had deepened to a deep violet and it was sore but she ignored it as she climbed into bed and kissed Bo as he wrapped his arms around her.

Her hands found his face, his stubble rough against the pads of her fingers where she traced the lines of his jaw, wandering up to his still swollen mouth.  She watched him curiously as she floated her fingers across the warm curves of his cracked lips and she noted the sharp intake of breath as she touched his mouth.  Saw the way his brown eyes widened as she nudged her satiny leg between his, brushing against his hardening cock.

His adams apple bobbed as she nuzzled her own face into the space between his chin and his collarbone.  Her mouth found his coarse skin, and she licked him, loving the musky, salty tang of him.  She bit him softly and sucked on the softer flesh below his ear and smiled as she heard him groan.

“Marlena…” he was breathless and she could feel him, hard against her thigh.

“I’ll stop if you want me to,” she murmured, her breath hot against his ear.

“I just…” he closed his eyes as she sucked him again, flickering her tongue against the sensitive skin under his jaw.  “This wasn’t a good idea last night,” he groaned as she rolled her pelvis grinding herself against him momentarily.  “Oh Jesus!”

“I wasn’t in a great place last night, admittedly.”  She slid her hand down over his pectoral muscle, trailing her fingers through the soft hair and she was rewarded with a soft hiss as she brushed his nipple.  “But I’m in full possession of my faculties now.  I know what I want.”  She brought her lips near his.  “I want you,” she whispered against his mouth.  “I want to make you happy, Bo.”

Bo found his hand moving down her back and cupping her glorious ass and pulling her closer to him.

“I love you,” he said before he kissed her.  “God, I love you, Marlena.”

Marlena tugged at the waistband of his boxers, and he stripped them off for her quickly.  She took him in her hand and wrapped her slender, graceful fingers around him, stroking him slowly as she continued to kiss his neck and the top of his chest.

He closed his eyes and sighed, a mixture of pleasure and confusion at the continued quixotic moods of this woman he was so intoxicated by.  He couldn’t control the flow of her tides; he could only hope to stay afloat within the maelstrom that was her emotional madness.  His mother was right to be worried; but he, for the moment, had to give up being afraid for himself and just give himself over to being swept against the rocks by her unseen currents.

Her hand tightened around him, and he groaned and jerked.  He opened his eyes and found her looking at him, her topaz eyes glazed with lust.  “Kiss me,” she commanded him, and he obeyed.  He took her face between warm, dry palms and took her mouth with his.  He ignored the pain from the still fresh wounds and contusions.  Instead, he drank in every facet of her.  The smell of her.  The silky softness of her hair as it rustled between his fingers.  The warm slipperiness of her tongue as it collided with his, searching, digging against his own.  The sound of her small mewls and gasps as his fingers brushed the strap of her nightgown from her shoulder and his fingers danced over her golden skin.

He was committing her to memory.  Every sense on high alert.  If this was the last time he was able to be with her like this then he was going to make it count.

“I love you,” he told her once again.  He didn’t expect anything back from her.  He just wanted her to know.   Over and over again, he wanted her to know.  He wanted her to remember what she was giving up if that’s what she chose to do.  Someone who loved her and who would not hurt her the way John Black had.

“Show me.” She took his hand and moved it down to her thigh.  He gathered the silk, bunching it between his fingers before he slid it up over her hip.  And then his fingers found the soft flesh of her thighs.  She hummed her approval as he cupped the underside of her thigh and brought her knee up over his hip.  Then his fingers were delving, diving into the hot, slippery heat of her.  

She inhaled sharply as he slid his fingers between her wet folds, gently rubbing her as he curled his fingers inward, sliding first one and then two inside her.

“You feel so good,” he told her as he kissed her again.  She moaned and arched her back as he plunged his fingers into her depths.  His lips found her throat and he nibbled and kissed the tender flesh as he snaked his fingers in and out of her and she ground herself against the heel of his palm.

“Bo,” she gasped.  “Make love to me.  I need you.”

He pulled her nightgown roughly down so that her left breast was exposed, and he took her in his mouth, teasing her with his tongue.  Her nipple, already raised, hardened with the demanding pull of his mouth and she coiled her fingers in his hair, holding him to her as she panted her pleasure in small, incoherent whimpers.

She rocked against him, seeking more pressure, more stimulation as he ministered to her body.  One of her hands still curled around him but she had ceased stroking him when he had slid his fingers inside her.  Now, she tugged on him, pulling him closer, towards her center.

“I need you,” she repeated breathlessly.  She wanted all of him, his hands, his lips and his steel hardness filling her, driving into her.  She wanted his skin against hers, the weight of his body as he bore down into her.  She wanted to consume him and be consumed by him.  “Please, Bo.”

He lifted his head from her bountiful breasts and looked at her.  Moonlight refracted through the glass splashed across the bed, catching her with fragments of silver across her beautiful face and tousled golden hair.  Her eyes were dark amber pools of longing, her lips pale in the moonlight, slightly parted in expectation and supplication.

He shook his head with a smile, still, at times, unable to believe that he was in bed with this goddess of a woman.  He withdrew his hand from her, and she whispered her disappointment but only briefly as he skimmed the other strap of her nightgown from her right shoulder and then slithered the fabric down over her curves and planes until she was naked.  

He discarded the garment and stroked his hand back up her body, from her lower leg, up over her thigh and her hip.  Splaying his fingers, he continued over the soft curve of a warrior’s belly that had borne four beautiful children and then up over one exquisite breast.  His hand continued its journey over the golden skin of her décolleté and floated delicately over her throat.  He traced the line of her jaw and then buried his fingers in her thick, fragrant hair.

“I want you so bad,” he murmured before he kissed her.  “Are you sure you want this?”

“I want you,” she assured him.  “I’m aching for you.  I need you inside me.”

As if to confirm her words, she felt another gush of sticky warmth between her legs and she moaned in anticipation of the feeling of Bo’s cock pressing up against her, parting her lips and forcing its way deep inside her.

“Oh god, I’m so ready, I’m so wet.”  She spread her legs and brought her own hand to her center.  She was warm and viscous and she coated her fingers with her own liquid before wrapping them around Bo.  He froze and groaned loudly as she used her own secretions to lubricate him.

“Shhhh,” she lifted her fingers to his lips.  “The children.”

He curled his fingers around her wrist and sucked the taste of her from each of her digits in turn.  

“I love you,” he said once again as he shifted his body so that he was between her legs.  “I’d do anything for you, you know that.”

“Just make love to me,” she said softly.  She lifted her knee, opening herself up to him and sighed as she felt him pressing up against her.  And then slowly, he was opening her up, forcing himself inside her, filling her.  She arched her back and exhaled with a small whimper as he sheathed himself inside her fully and she wrapped her arms around his neck, her nails scoring small crescents in the skin at the top of his back.

“Oh god, yes!”  Her eyes fluttered closed as Bo began to move, short slow withdrawals and gentle thrusts back into her.  She rocked her hips in time with him and he watched her as the pleasure played across her beautiful face with each in and out-stroke.

It was slow and sensual.  Neither of them had any sense of urgency, they just enjoyed the sensations as their bodies moved together, slowly and deliberately.  Bo held back as much as he could.  He didn’t want this to end too quickly.  Truth be told, he didn’t want this to ever end.  If he could be here, inside her forever, that would suit him just fine.

Marlena let go of everything.  All conscious thought evaporated, she just let the sensations wash over her.  She clung to Bo and let her body find a rhythm that matched his.  There was no questioning, no fear, no regret, no pain.  She just was.  It was a perfect meditation of physical sensation, the rise and fall of her need with each stroke.  The building pleasure, the damp friction of his skin rubbing against hers, the sweet whisper of his lips against her skin, the slow swirl of his tongue searching inside her mouth.

It was everything she needed.  She felt safe, she felt loved, she felt exquisite.

But as the urgency grew, as it is wont to do, John began to creep into her mind.  Where Bo’s chest hair rubbed against her breasts, it became John’s.  Bo’s hands on her skin, in her hair were John’s.  His breath, hot against her skin, the forceful pumping of his loins as he ground into her were John’s.

And it was John’s name that fell from her lips as she sailed into oblivion, the waves of an intense orgasm crashing through her and sweeping her away until there was nothing, no Bo, no John, no her.  Just the white-hot fire freefalling into bliss, her back arching, her hands pressing against floral padding and her mouth forming words and names she was not even vaguely aware of.

Bo was aware, however.  He came, hard and hot inside her as she called John’s name and he felt his heart crack.  He buried his face in the space between her shoulder and her neck and shuddered as she convulsed around him, bringing forth copious emissions of his own.

He said nothing as she moaned and whimpered, and it was a long moment before he realized she wasn’t even aware of what she’d done. 

Finally, she became aware of his stillness and silence on top of her.

“Bo?” she asked carefully, suddenly feeling like something was wrong.  She relaxed her limbs and brushed her fingers through his hair.  “Bo, what is it?”

He silently withdrew and rolled off her with a sigh.

“Honey?” she was starting to get worried.  She rolled onto her side and leaning on her elbow, she put her hand on his chest, feeling the thudding of his heart echoing against her palm.

“It’s okay,” he stared at the ceiling.  He couldn’t look at her, he knew she would see the hurt in his eyes, and he didn’t want her to know.  He should have expected it, he should have been prepared for it.  He knew he came a distant second to John in her heart.  He knew that John had kissed her this morning and he knew in his heart that she had wanted that kiss.  And she had reacted to it the way she always reacted when John Black kissed her.

He was crazy in love with a woman who was crazy in love with someone else and it was his own damn fault that he was going to get his heart broken.

He took a deep breath and pasted a smile on his face and pulled her into his arms.  “I’m just… it’s been a tough few days, that’s all.” He kissed the top of her head.  “Just let me hold you.  That’s all I need.”

“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Marlena had a nagging feeling she’d done something to upset him, but she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what.  In truth, it was an impossible situation.  He was right, it had been a hellish few days, and he was suffering as much as she was, if not more.

“Yeah.  We both just need some sleep, right?”  He tightened his arms around her, knowing it was nothing more than an illusion.  

She wasn’t his.  She never had been.

“Mmmmmm,” she hummed sleepily.  “Bo?”

“Yes, beautiful?”

“Thank you for staying.” She pressed a kiss against his chest.  “I care about you very much, you know.”

He sighed silently and buried his nose in her hair as her breathing slowed and her steady exhalations became warm and damp against his chest.

“Oh, Marlena,” he murmured sadly. There was only one way this could end, and it wasn’t going to be happily.

At least not for him.

Part Vingt-Six

And the saddest fear
Comes creeping in
That you never loved me
Or her, or anyone, or anything
Yeah

I Knew You Were Trouble – Taylor Swift

“Hey Laura,” Bo greeted Laura with a suspiciously too bright smile as he swung the door of the penthouse open.

Laura just stared at him; one eyebrow raised.

She had specifically told him when he’d called her the day before that he needed to give Marlena some space. That as difficult as it was for him to hear, Marlena was using him and their physical relationship to avoid dealing with the issues she needed to confront. And that the best thing he could do for her right now was to force her to face some of the problems she was so actively using him to run away from.

He had agreed with her, in principle, although he had said that he was worried about her state of mind and the idea of leaving her alone. However, Laura had reassured him that Marlena would be fine and that some space to fall apart would only benefit her in the long run.

And yet, here he was. Still at Marlena’s side, still providing her with ample distraction from her problems.

Laura sighed.

“Laura! Hi.” Marlena came down the stairs, dressed in sweats, her freshly washed hair piled into a messy ponytail. The smile on her face seemed genuine as she slipped her arm around Bo’s waist as she reached the door. “Bo was just leaving, weren’t you?”

“Yup!” He pecked her on the cheek. “Got some paperwork to catch up on at the station so gonna head over there. You wanna hook up later?”

“Sure. How about you call me when you’re done, and we can pick up the kids from Carrie’s and take them for some food?” She avoided Laura’s glare as she tipped her head up and pressed her lips against his.

“Okee doke will do.” He gave her another kiss, almost in defiance of Laura’s disapproval. “See you later, good-lookin’.”

“See you later.” Marlena laughed despite herself and followed Bo to the door, closing it behind him.

“Right,” she turned back to Laura with a smile that, like Bo’s, was a little too cheery. “Can I get you something? Tea? Water?”

“What was he doing here?” Laura gestured at the door.

“Uh….” Marlena’s cheeks flushed. “He stayed. We are consenting adults, Laura.”

“Oh Marlena,” Laura sighed and shook her head. “Honey, what are you doing?”

“Same thing I was doing yesterday? And the day before that?” Marlena shrugged, turning away from Laura. She didn’t have to justify herself to her friend. This was an impossible situation, and she was doing what she needed to do to get through each day. If Laura didn’t like that, then it was her problem.

“Sweetie, I thought we talked about this on Friday?” Laura said softly. “You can’t keep using Bo to distract yourself from your problems. You’re not doing yourself any favors, and it’s not fair to Bo.”

“Bo is…” Marlena looked down at her hands, already curled into fists. She wasn’t sure she could do this. “Bo understands. And I feel safe when he’s here.”

“He might understand, but honey, his heart is mixed up in this now. He’s falling in love with you and the longer you let this linger on, the worse he’s going to hurt when you call it quits.” Laura walked up quietly behind Marlena and put her hand on Marlena’s shoulder. Marlena flinched at her touch, but Laura ignored it and carefully wrapped her arms around Marlena’s upper arms, resting her chin on Marlena’s shoulder. “Marlena, I know you’re hurting. I can see that. And I know you think Bo is helping you hurt less. But I think you know deep down that it’s just going to make the hurt last longer. It’s all still there under all the avoidance and distraction and it’s coming out in ways that you can’t control. You need to deal with it, and you need to deal with it now before you’re really out of control.”

Marlena took a shaky breath, thinking of her spiral two nights previously. The potent combination of her pain, painkillers, alcohol, and sex had ultimately felt destructive. She hadn’t felt like she was managing anything, rather that she was spiraling out of control. It had felt as though the pain was in charge of her, rather than the other way around.

“I feel like I’m already out of control,” she admitted in a whisper, tears in her eyes. It was easier to talk to Laura if she wasn’t looking at her. “Laura…” This was hard to admit but she had to do it. Pretending that she wasn’t crumbling inside wasn’t going to help her tackle things. “I don’t even recognize myself at the moment. I’m doing things…” She stopped and took a deep breath. “I know I’m not being fair to Bo, but I can’t seem to find the strength to let him go.”

“And at a guess, he’s not making it easy for you.” Laura let go of Marlena and skimmed her hand down Marlena’s arm, covering her bunched fingers with her own hand. She could feel the tension in every inch of Marlena’s body, and she knew it was bad. These admissions didn’t come easily to someone like Marlena who was the center of her family and the rock that everyone else looked to for stability and strength. She was going to have to be careful about how she teased this out, so as not to set Marlena on the defensive and make her close down. “Come and sit down, honey.” She pulled on Marlena’s hand and led her to the sofas. “Bo’s not really the problem here, is he? He’s just one of the most obvious symptoms.”

Marlena let herself be led to the sofa and she sat where Laura indicated. Laura took a seat on the sofa opposite her. She knew Marlena well and knew her friend would need her own space as she started to unravel the threads of the tangled mess that was currently her life. But she stayed close in case Marlena started to come undone.

“Okay, where do you think we should start?” Laura asked her, as she pulled out her notepad, noting the way Marlena’s hand reached for a cushion which she brought to her middle as though it was a shield from Laura’s questions.

“I don’t know,” Marlena shrugged defensively. She didn’t want to talk about any of it, so how was she supposed to know where to start? “I mean, my life is hardly a closed book. You know as well as I do the things I’ve had to endure. Where do you think we should start? Yesterday? Last week? John leaving? Roman leaving? Stefano? Satan?” She made a strangled sound that was halfway between a hysterical giggle and a sob. “It’s no wonder I’m such a mess.”

“It’s not surprising at all,” Laura agreed gently. “Although I’d hardly call you a mess, Marlena. You are probably the strongest, most resilient woman I’ve ever met, but even a strong woman will get blown around by a storm and need to recover. And I’m not sure you’ve ever given yourself adequate time to recover from the things you’ve been through. You’ve always just soldiered on through, which might seem commendable, but you and I both know the kinds of trauma you’ve been through have to leave their mark, one way or another.”

“I always just…” Marlena still wouldn’t meet her eyes. She fingered the fringing on the cushion uncomfortably. “I wanted my life to be normal. I wanted to be a normal wife, a normal mother, a normal doctor, and life wouldn’t let me be any of those things. And I resent it. I just keep trying to crawl back to normal and every time I think I’ve reached it, life smacks me back down. Stopping to recover and process everything was an admission that nothing was, has ever been, normal.” She looked up at Laura, her eyes luminous with sorrow. “I’m so tired of it. I’m tired of missing husbands and brain chips. I’m sick of Stefano’s never-ending obsession with me and with John. I’m tired of having to live my life looking over my shoulder, waiting for the next drama. The next trauma.”

“That’s completely understandable.” Laura reflected that she had approached the recovery from some of her own personal trials in a similar way. “It’s a very common reaction to trauma. But then, you know that.”

“I do.” Marlena frowned. “I thought… you know, there were times in the past few years that I thought I was handling everything so well. Now I wonder if I really actually handled anything.”

“What makes you say that?” Laura brought her legs up and curled up on the sofa, making herself comfortable. She laid her notepad on her knee and placed her pen on top of it, her fingers laid over it, keeping it in place.

Marlena looked over at her and a look of distress flickered across her face.

“I never got you a drink,” she said suddenly. “Did you want tea?”

“Stop trying to avoid my questions,” Laura said, without malice. “Why are you questioning how you handled things? Or if you did?”

“I….” Marlena could feel the thumping of her heart against her ribcage. “I’ve been having dreams… well, nightmares really.” Her palms were clammy as she recalled the dream that had awoken her just before dawn that morning.

She had been there, in the penthouse but she hadn’t been herself. John had been with her, wearing a black shirt and a priest’s clerical collar and she had been trying to seduce him. She, or rather, the demon within her, had spoken of her feelings for John, and she had touched him and kissed him, trying to convince him that his ‘vows’ were meaningless. She had seen in his eyes the truth of his feelings for her and the strength of his physical reaction to her proximity. He had been so close to giving in, to allowing his passion for her to consume everything, his self-control, his vows, his very soul.

She had woken from the nightmare, frightened, aroused, and confused. She wasn’t sure whether it had been just a nightmare, or whether it was actually a repressed memory. There wasn’t much that she did remember from that time period, but she wasn’t sure whether that was a subconscious choice on her part. Why on earth would she want to remember terrorizing the people she loved? Why would she seek knowledge that would not serve her in any way, other than to torment her and saddle her with even more guilt and sorrow?

“How long have you been having nightmares?” Laura asked, her emotional reaction completely neutral.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Marlena shrugged. “Maybe since John left? Maybe before. I couldn’t really tell you.”

“Do you want to tell me about them?” Laura prompted. “Is it the same one every time? Or variations on a theme?”

“No,” Marlena shook her head. She didn’t want to detail them. There were too many and they were too disturbing to recount. “They’re all different. Except that they’re all somehow linked to things that have happened to me. Sometimes it’s Stefano. Sometimes it’s Roman. Sometimes it’s something that actually happened but something is different, or things are out of order. It’s like my brain is jumbling things up or changing how they happened. Or sometimes, it changes how things ended. Sometimes the dreams end horribly, and I wake up crying. Sometimes…. I wake up screaming.”

“How often do you have them?” Laura frowned. That would explain the dark circles under Marlena’s eyes and how tired and fragile she looked.

“Most nights,” Marlena admitted. She didn’t mention that some nights she got several in a night. And some nights she was scared to go back to sleep. “Sometimes when I’m with Bo, I don’t get them. Although lately, they’ve been coming thick and fast, even when Bo is here.”

“You must be exhausted,” Laura exclaimed sympathetically.

“I am,” Marlena took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, trying to calm her racing heart. “So, I guess, like I said, all the stuff I thought I had processed and put away is coming back to haunt me.”

“I can prescribe you something to help you sleep if you think that would help you cope with things a little better?” Laura suggested carefully. “You’re not going to be able to deal with this current situation particularly effectively if you’re exhausted.”

“I…” The thought was tempting but Marlena wasn’t sure that it was a wise choice. Her slip the other night with the Vicodin was enough to make her wary about taking anything. She wasn’t against medication; obviously, as a doctor, she knew it had its place. She just wasn’t sure that it was right for her at this particular moment. If she was using Bo to escape the pain, she didn’t want to substitute one emotional crutch for another. “I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”

“Okay,” Laura picked up her pen and made a note regarding Marlena’s hesitation, her reaction to the thought of meds. There was something there that Marlena wasn’t telling her. At least not yet. She filed it away in her pile of mental notes to investigate later. “Perhaps we can come back to the dreams later. First, I want you to tell me what happened on Friday.”

“What do you mean, what happened?” Marlena asked. She knew perfectly well what Laura was asking but the last thing she wanted to do was recount all the awful, humiliating moments she’d lived through on that day.

“With John.” Laura prompted. “All I know is that he came home to Salem. I don’t know any of the details and I want you to fill me in. Then we can talk about how you feel about it and what it means for you and your future.”

“Oh, that.” Marlena tried to smile but failed miserably. She didn’t want to think about John’s appearance, about the confrontation at the pub, it made her feel sick to her stomach. “Laura…”

“You can’t run away from it, Marlena,” Laura reminded her, her voice decidedly less sympathetic. “You’re right at the center of this storm. You can’t avoid John. You share children with him. You need to find a way to work through whatever it is that’s happened, and you need to make some decisions about how you’re going to handle the future. At the moment you’re just running and you’re reacting and it’s not serving you. You know that. I know you don’t want to admit it, but you do know it.”

Marlena’s lips thinned and she looked away in annoyance. One of the problems with accepting therapy from Laura was that Laura knew her only too well. Marlena couldn’t fool her, and she couldn’t fob her off with excuses or claims that things weren’t nearly as bad as they might appear.

“I don’t know why I agreed to this,” she snapped as she felt the adrenaline flood her system. “You don’t understand how hard this is. You don’t… you haven’t been through what I’ve been through, Laura.”

“No, I haven’t.” Laura agreed. “I don’t think anyone could understand a lot of what you’ve been through, honey. But I sure as hell won’t understand if you don’t tell me what happened and why you’re so anxious about it at this moment.”

“Laura, I can’t…” Marlena’s hands were tingling again, and her breathing was becoming erratic and labored.

“Yes, you can,” Laura uncurled herself, dropped her notepad on the sofa next to where she’d been sitting, and scrambled across to where Marlena was rocking ever so slightly on the couch. “You can do this. You just need to slow down and breathe, okay?” She took Marlena’s hands in her and spoke in a slow, soothing voice. “I want you to focus on my voice. I’m here with you, you’re safe and you can do this. You need to breathe. Slow down and breathe with me.”

She patiently counted Marlena through her breathing until she was satisfied that she was able to talk again.

“Feel like you can talk about it now?” she asked gently, holding Marlena’s hand in hers.

“No.” Marlena shook her head, tears in her eyes.

“Must have been bad,” her voice was quiet and gentle now, coaxing the truth out of Marlena. “What happened, sweetie?”

“I….” Marlena focused on Laura’s hand, holding hers. Her skin was warm and dry. Her nails were expertly painted with a beautiful French manicure. Marlena reflected that she hadn’t had her own nails done for weeks. She’d had other priorities and she’d neglected certain facets of taking care of herself that she never would have done in other circumstances. She sighed heavily. She had to do this. Laura wasn’t going to let up and she had to get it out. She had to talk to someone, she felt like she was going crazy with all the thoughts and questions and feelings that were chasing around her head and her body.

“After our talk, I decided that I needed to talk to Bo. I was going to tell him about our sessions and that as you suggested, I needed some space to work through how I felt about everything. But given that we kept getting interrupted wherever we were, I decided that we should have the conversation in private, so I booked a room at the Salem Inn.”

“A room at the… where now?” Laura’s eyes widened. She was genuinely surprised by that choice on Marlena’s part. “Didn’t you think that would send Bo the wrong message?”

“In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the wisest choice,” Marlena sighed and shrugged. She had debated the wisdom of her decision to meet him at the Inn, but things had been so complicated with people walking in on them at the most inopportune moments. She’d thought some privacy to have what was potentially a painful conversation was the best option. Now she wasn’t sure there wasn’t more at play.

“I don’t know Laura,” she frowned, “maybe subconsciously I wanted him to persuade me that it was the wrong decision and that we should carry on this… whatever this is.”

“Maybe?” Laura made a supreme effort not to let too much sarcasm bleed into her voice. In fact, she decided it was time to go back to her notepad and place on the other sofa, and give Marlena the space to continue with her retelling of Friday’s events. Picking up her notepad, she made some more notes as she waited for Marlena to continue.

“Okay.” Marlena shrugged wearily. “Obviously I was trying to sabotage my own decision. And it played out that way. Except that Vivian somehow knew where we were, and she told John.”

“Oh my god!” Laura gasped, laying down her pen and staring at Marlena. “What happened? How did Vivian… why did Vivian…?”

“Why does Vivian Alamain do anything?” Marlena shook her head wearily and rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know how she knew what was going on or where we were. I do remember I upset her a few days ago. She… there was a …” She sighed again. All this was so embarrassing. Embarrassing to tell Laura, embarrassing to have been reduced to such careless silliness. “Bo was in my office with me, and we weren’t exactly… being professional.” Laura raised her eyebrows, thinking of the scene that she had walked in on in the visitor’s lounge, Bo with his hand up Marlena’s skirt, Marlena’s hands similarly occupied down his jeans. She can only imagine what was going on behind closed doors in Marlena’s office. “Vivian barged in, but Bo managed to … stay out of sight.”

“I don’t even want to know,” Laura said dryly and bit back a smile as Marlena blushed.

“Anyway, I was rude to Vivian because I wanted to get rid of her and maybe she figured out something was amiss. I don’t know how she knew where we were on Friday, but she primed John to find us.” She brushed her hair off her face and blew out a long, slow breath as she remembered John bursting in and pulling Bo off her.

“We weren’t doing…” she paused. It was easy enough to say that they hadn’t been doing anything, but the truth was, they had been well on their way to doing something. Her skirt had been halfway up her thighs and Bo’s hand had been intimately exploring her upper torso when John had unceremoniously yanked his one-time brother off her and thrown his fists at his face. “We were kissing,” she amended. “We were on the bed, kissing and I have no idea how John got into the room but when he saw us, he went crazy. He attacked Bo and when I tried to get in the middle of them, I ended up on the floor.”

“Oh, honey.” Laura looked concerned. “Were you hurt, are you okay physically?”

“Just a bit bruised and shaken up.” Marlena blew out a long, controlled breath. “But they were at each other’s throats. I honestly thought if I just let them go at each other uninterrupted that one of them would end up badly hurt, or worse.”

Laura contemplated the scene. She knew John, even in his right mind, verged on possessive and jealous, and the sight of Marlena and Bo together would have been like a red rag to him. Bo, on the other hand… Bo was impulsive and hot-tempered and would have no patience for John’s posturing, especially since he’d left Salem with Bo’s ex-wife. It was a recipe for chaos. And Marlena had been caught in the middle of it all.

“Oh honey, I’m so sorry.” Laura shook her head. “Damn Vivian Alamain. What the hell was she thinking?”

“It’s not Vivian’s fault,” Marlena said quietly. “It’s mine. I got myself into this position. I’ve only got myself to blame.”

“That doesn’t mean Vivian has to go and make things ten times worse,” Laura snapped. She’d never personally had any run-ins with Vivian and, in fact, Vivian and Kate were sworn enemies and the enemy of her enemy was generally her friend, but she was angry that Vivian had put Marlena through this. Marlena, who had never done anything but try and be a friend to everyone, including Vivian. Of course, what more could she expect from a woman who had been party to locking Marlena in a secret room in the DiMera wine cellar so that Stefano could come and spirit her away from under their noses?

Marlena bit her lip and looked away. She didn’t have the energy to argue Vivian’s culpability in this whole thing. Blaming Vivian for pointing John at the Salem Inn didn’t change what had happened. It didn’t change the decisions Marlena herself had made. It didn’t change the way she felt, all the confusing, turbulent emotions that kept stopping her in her tracks, hour after hour.

“Okay, well I guess Vivian isn’t important,” Laura corrected herself, seeing Marlena’s reaction. “Do you want to tell me what happened next? I mean, Bo’s still here so John didn’t strangle him.”

“No,” Marlena can’t find it within herself to smile at Laura’s attempt at trying to lighten the mood. It wasn’t a laughing matter to her. None of it was the slightest bit funny. “I persuaded Bo to go. I knew John wouldn’t leave me alone with Bo, and I knew the two of them in close proximity was just going to result in bloodshed so I asked him to go back to the pub and told him I would meet him there.”

She continued the narrative, telling Laura about John’s excuses and explanations and the fact that he had tried to kiss her. She gave Laura the cliff notes version of her stop at the pier and her conversation with Abe and then she told Laura about walking in on John and Bo at the pub, the family’s reaction, and Caroline’s ongoing displeasure at the fact that the ex-wife of her oldest son now had carnal knowledge of her younger son.

“Wait a minute,” Laura held up her hand pausing her. “You’re telling me that Caroline knew about you and Bo before yesterday?”

“Apparently most of the family knew,” Marlena looked away, embarrassed. “That’s why they were all there. Carrie had sent me a text asking me to meet her at the pub. They were staging an intervention.” She blushed as she considered how ridiculous it was that her family should think that she, of all people, would require an intervention. But then, weren’t they right? Wasn’t she being reckless with her own emotional well-being, and with Bo’s? Wasn’t she being careless about who this affected and how they felt? They were right to want to talk to her about it, she just wasn’t sure the tack they’d so clearly chosen to take was the right one.

“Caroline walked in on Bo and me in the bathroom at Tuscany. Carrie walked in on us at the Penthouse.” Marlena still didn’t know exactly what Carrie had seen and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. The possibilities were either embarrassing, humiliating, or downright mortifying. “Eric caught us kissing at the pub…” she sighed. “Ironically, Sami was the about the only one who didn’t know what was going on.”

“Oh, Marlena.” Laura shook her head. “Honey-“

“Don’t start with me, Laura.” Her tone was terse and brooked no arguments. “I already know. You don’t need to tell me.”

“I…” Laura held up her hands and shrugged. She was partly horrified for Marlena but also couldn’t help but be a tiny bit amused at the naivety of her friend. The way she clearly thought she was being so discreet when she and Bo were all over each other in just about every location in Salem. She was starting to understand why it was that Marlena had chosen a room in the Salem Inn to meet with Bo. Alas, she hadn’t reckoned on Vivian Alamain intersecting with John’s return to Salem.

“Kim and Carrie were trying to be supportive,” Marlena rubbed the heel of her palm over her forehead, trying to erase the headache which was building behind her eyes. “I know they meant well but it…,“ she sighed. “It felt like… they were so earnest, like they were trying to say the right things, the things they thought I wanted to hear… But I didn’t feel like they really meant it. Neither of them want to see me with Bo. It’s all too messy. It was almost a relief when Caroline spoke up and made her feelings clear.”

“How did that make you feel?” Up until now, Laura had just let Marlena recount the events of the evening and hadn’t pressed Marlena on her feelings about everything that had happened. She wanted to understand what happened before she delved into the deeper insights, but Caroline seemed like a less upsetting place to start with unpacking Marlena’s feelings than to start in directly with John.

“Caroline is… justified in the way that she feels,” Marlena gripped the cushion in her arms a little more tightly.

“I didn’t ask about Caroline’s feelings or whether she right to have them, or not,” Laura pointed out. “I asked how you feel about her reaction. How does what she said to you make you feel, Marlena?”

“I think… I’m glad she was honest,” Marlena knew she was avoiding Laura’s real question and she also knew Laura was going to keep pushing until she got the answer she was looking for. She just wasn’t sure she was ready to admit how deeply it hurt that Caroline was seemingly ready to cut her out of the family.

“Again, I didn’t ask what you thought.” Laura was patient. She could do this all morning if she had to. She was fully prepared for Marlena to avoid all the difficult questions, but she wasn’t going to let her get away with it. “How do you feel? It’s okay to feel hurt and angry. You know that. It doesn’t make you a bad person Marlena, it just makes you human. Normal. You know, that thing you’re trying so hard to get back to all the time?”

Tears filled Marlena’s eyes. Sometimes she hated that Laura knew her so well. She could hide all her messy imperfections from her family and her friends. But not Laura. Laura knew it all.

“It really… h..hurts,” she admitted with a hiccupping sob. “I love Caroline and respect her so much. And her disdain cuts deep. I know…” she sucks in a shaky breath. “I know she has every right to be angry with me. I know that if it was Eric, I would feel exactly the same but I…” she flicked at her tears with her fingers, “Laura, you know she’s been more of a mother to me since I’ve been in Salem than my own mother has. I mean, you know I love my Mama, but she’s always been all tied up with Daddy and she’s never really been there when I needed her. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times they’ve been to Salem…” She took a deep breath, noting that Laura was scribbling on her notepad as she nodded sympathetically. “Caroline… she’s always been there for me. Even after Roman…” She pressed her lips together, trying not to sob uncontrollably. One hand curled into a ball and she made the effort to control her breathing. “Even after Roman left, even after he died, she was there for me. She was the one who persuaded me that it wasn’t my fault that he’d been killed. Now, it seems, she thinks differently.”

“She’s shocked and she’s grieving. She won’t stay angry at you forever,” Laura was gentle and reassuring.

“It got worse yesterday when we went to pick the children up,” Marlena confessed in tears. “She insisted that if I didn’t end things with Bo then I was no longer welcome in the pub and that she wouldn’t be looking after the children.” She covered her face with her hands. “Laura, I know this is a mess. I know all the logical reasons I need to cut Bo loose. I just can’t do it right now. I can’t do it.”

“Oh honey,” Laura got up from the sofa and went in search of a box of tissues. Bringing them across to Marlena, she sat down next to her and slid her arm around her waist as she offered her the box. “I know this is hard. I know you don’t want to face any of it. I can’t say I blame you. But you and I both know that none of this is going away. Not the situation, not the feelings, and not others’ reactions. We need to get to the bottom of why you are holding onto Bo so hard. What you’re so scared of.”

Marlena took several tissues and wiped her eyes. “I’m scared of being alone, she said quietly. “I’m scared of the nightmares. I’m scared of Stefano. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life, Laura.”

“But why?” Laura took one of Marlena’s hands in hers. “Why now?” She knew the answer. She knew Marlena knew the answer, deep down, but she needed to get there herself, to verbalize it so that she really understood and believed it. So that she could understand what she needed to do to address it.

Marlena didn’t answer. She couldn’t.

Because it was John. It always came back to John. He had always been there and now he wasn’t. Or rather, he was nearby, but he wasn’t where she needed him to be. There was a chasm of hurt and misunderstanding separating them, and she wasn’t sure if they could bridge that gap. She wasn’t sure that if she tried and she fell, she could trust him to be there to catch her. She wasn’t even sure she could trust herself to be there to catch him if it came to that.

“Do you want to tell me what happened after you left the pub?” Laura gently prodded. She knew Marlena had asked Bo to come back to the penthouse with her, and in their conversation yesterday, Bo had alluded to the fact that Marlena had been ‘out-of-control’ when they had returned home. She had pressed him on it, but he had been unwilling to say more, other than to say she had scared him, and he’d felt that he’d made things worse rather than better. Laura was more than a little curious to understand exactly what had happened and whether Marlena’s problematic choices were extending beyond her compulsion to sleep with Bo Brady.

“Not really.” Marlena pulled her hand from Laura’s and pushed herself up off the sofa. She paced across the room to the French doors and looked out over the rooftops. “God, isn’t anything sacred?”

She knew Bo had told Laura something. She could tell from the way Laura was looking at her. She just didn’t know what level of detail Bo had felt the need to go into. If he’d told Laura about the alcohol and … well, just about everything that had happened was humiliating. She might just decide to kill him if he’d felt the need to blab about all of it.

“Listen, I’m not here to judge you, honey,” Laura told her. “I’ve made more than my fair share of stupid decisions. I’ve abused medication, I’ve drunk too much, and I’ve had inappropriate relationships. There’s probably nothing you can tell me that I haven’t already done at one time or another. You understand that these are just trauma responses, yes? They don’t make you a bad person.”

“I…” Marlena covered her mouth as she stared out of the window. She understood what Laura was saying in the detached, professional part of her mind, the one that thought logically and applied all those assessments to everyone else. But she held herself to a higher standard. She knew better. She should have recognized the trauma for what it was, she should have dealt with it healthily and she definitely shouldn’t have tried to manage it through drugs, alcohol, and sex. How incompetent was she? How could she expect anyone to take her seriously as a therapist if they knew she’d sunk to such lows?

“What happened, Marlena?” Laura pressed. Marlena’s cheeks were red, and her hand was wrapped around her middle as though to protect her from Laura’s intrusion. “Bo said you were out-of-control. I’m guessing that it wasn’t sex. Or at least not just sex.”

“Laura,” Marlena moaned. “Please don’t. I’m too embarrassed to talk about it.”

“That’s exactly why you need to talk about it,” Laura told her. “If it’s arousing this kind of shame response then you need to get it out. No one else will ever know about this, you know that, right? Do you trust me? Confidentiality absolutely applies here.”

Marlena’s mouth trembled as she turned back to her friend. “I don’t want you to think less of me,” she whispered. “I respect you as much as I respect Caroline. I don’t want to lose you too.”

“Oh honey, you’re not going to lose me!” Laura let her surprise show plainly on her face. “You’re my best friend. I love you and didn’t I just get done reminding you of all the foolish things I’ve done. Did that make you think any less of me?”

“No,” Marlena shook her head. “You know it didn’t. You were…” she sighed. “I understand what you’re saying, Laura. It’s just real hard for me to admit that I’m…”

“Anything less than perfect?” Laura raised her eyebrows.

“Oh, I’m certainly not perfect,” Marlena gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Far, far from it.”

“I know that.” Laura reminded her. “And I don’t need you to be perfect. In fact, it’s much easier for the rest of us to relate to you when your halo slips just a little,” she said with a smile.

“Oh, Laura.” Marlena looked a little embarrassed. She hated that people viewed her as some kind of paragon, and difficult to live up to when the truth was that she was a tormented mess. And it was only because she was kind and tried to think of and take care of everyone she cared about that those around her were fooled into thinking she really had it all together. If only they knew.

“What happened?” Laura asked again.

“I…” Marlena turned to look out of the window again. The sky was grey today, matching her mood and it looked as though the heavy, sullen sky was settled in for the duration. “I was… we came back here, and I couldn’t… Everything hurt Laura. I’d fallen and I was bruised, and seeing John and hearing his reasons for leaving… Everything was raw. He tried to kiss me in the hotel room, and I could barely breathe. Every time he’s near me I feel like… all my nerves are on fire. It scares me how out of control I feel when he’s around and I just wanted… I wanted it to stop hurting. I wanted to stop feeling confused.” She swallowed and wrapped her arms around herself, gathering the hems of the sleeves of her sweatshirt between her fingers and her palms. “It was too much. My wrist and my hip and thigh were aching from the fall so I went to get some painkillers but then I saw some… there was some Vicodin from when John injured himself last year. And I knew I shouldn’t take it, I knew I shouldn’t, but it was like… I think I was disassociating and next thing I knew, I had taken some without even consciously thinking about it.”

Laura said nothing, just nodded, and indicated that she should continue.

“And then the next, next thing I know, I’m out on the terrace, half-naked and Bo is wrapping a blanket around my shoulders because I’m freezing. And I couldn’t even tell you how long I was out there or what I was doing or thinking about. I’m just… it’s blank.” She shakes her head in frustration at just how foolish she’d been. “So, what did I do then?” She turned and looked at Laura, almost demanding an answer. Wanting Laura to tell her what an idiot she’d been. “Not what I should have done which is go to bed and sleep it off. No, I went downstairs and drank half a bottle of red wine and talked Bo into having sex with me because all I could think of was John and I wanted to think of anything but John. And I thought if I slept with Bo, if I lost myself in the physical sensations, I would stop… thinking at all, I guess.” She turned back to the city, unable to take the empathy and concern in Laura’s eyes.

“Did you?” Laura asked, knowing the answer even before she had articulated the question.

“No.” Marlena could feel the tears trickling down over her cheeks, but she didn’t even make an effort to wipe them away. She shook her head slowly. “No. I was out of control. I kept telling him… I wanted it to hurt, Laura. Physically. I thought the physical pain would supersede the emotional pain, but… he was there. John was there, like a ghost. The harder I try to drive him away, the more present he is. I ended up… when we were done, I couldn’t stop crying because he wasn’t John and I just felt so lost and so empty.”

She turned to Laura; her face streaked with tears. “Oh Laura, what am I doing? “

“Trying to avoid the pain and causing yourself even more,” Laura replied. She pushed herself up from the sofa and walked over to where Marlena stood. “It’s okay, Marlena. We’re going to fix this. It’s going to take some work and you need to be willing to be open and honest with me but honey, I promise you we can fix it.”

She held out her arms and Marlena walked into them and sobbed against her shoulder. “I’m so… it just hurts so much Laura. I love him so much, but I’m so hurt by what he did, and I don’t trust him anymore. And I don’t trust myself around him.”

“I know… I know…” Laura rubbed Marlena’s back, soothing her. “And it’s okay. Everything is going to be okay. We’re going to get you back to a place where you trust yourself and your own feelings, okay? And then we’ll go from there.”

“How can I?” Marlena pulled back from her embrace. “How can I trust myself when I let him kiss me, and all I want is for him to just take me to bed. It doesn’t matter where we are or that I’m with Bo. He just touches me, and I’m lost. I feel like I’m addicted to him.”

“We’ll address that,” Laura promised her. “But first I want to talk about what you did last night. You know that it’s bad and it can’t happen again, right?”

“I know,” Marlena nodded miserably.

“That’s a dark path and I don’t want to see you heading in that direction,” Laura said softly, lifting her hand to brush away the damp strands of loose hair that had stuck to Marlena’s face. “So, before I go, I’m going to get that Vicodin and any other painkillers you’ve got stashed away and I’m going to take them and dispose of them. Agreed?”

“You don’t need to go that far.” Marlena lifted her closed fist and pressed it against her lips. “It was a slip, Laura. An honest mistake. I’ve learned my lesson. I don’t want to feel that out of control again.”

“I believe you,” Laura said evenly. She at least believed Marlena believed what she was saying. But she also knew how insidious the lure of losing one’s self in a drug-induced numbness could be. She didn’t want to leave that temptation in front of her friend. Not when she could just as easily remove it and be sure that Marlena would avoid any future stupid choices if she hit another emotional rock bottom. “But I would just feel better if I got them out of here. For my peace of mind, if nothing else.”

Marlena nodded. There was no good reason to keep the painkillers around if she didn’t intend on taking them so there was no good argument to make. Just the fact that she didn’t want Laura to take them told her that it was probably better that they were gone.

“Good.” Laura reached out for her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “And I want you to promise me that you’ll stay away from alcohol for the time-being too. Okay?”

“Yes.” Marlena thought back to the other night on Bo’s boat. That could all too easily become a habit if she let it. She needed to keep her head clear, this was all hard enough without adding to her own problems.

“Okay, I think maybe we should pause and gather ourselves and maybe have that cup of tea now, what do you think?” Laura suggested

Marlena nodded gratefully and caught Laura’s hand in hers squeezing it. “Thank you,” her mouth curved into a shaky smile.

“Any time, sweetie.” Laura smiled. They had a long way to go but at least Marlena was on board at the moment and was finally opening up. Laura just hoped she’d stay as willing to be honest once they started talking about John.

Part Vingt-Sept

I know I’m probably better off on my own
Than lovin’ a man who didn’t know what he had when he had it
And I see the permanent damage you did to me
Never again, I just wish I could forget when it was magic

Better Man – Taylor Swift

While Marlena busied herself making tea, Laura scribbled some quick notes on her pad and considered how to tackle the question of John Black and Marlena’s feelings for the man.  Feelings which quite clearly, had not dissipated.  Not that Laura had any expectation that they had, or indeed, ever would.  

Marlena Evans was quite clearly a one-man woman.  

Despite the unfortunate hitch of the real Roman Brady’s return to Salem, it was clear to Laura that Marlena had loved John Black almost from the moment she’d met him.  And despite everything that had happened since, including the surprise return of her former husband, she had not and would not ever be able to stop loving John.  She could no more stop loving him than she could stop breathing.  And Laura believed that whatever had gone on with Stefano, Hope/Gina, and this “brain-chip” device, John’s feelings for Marlena were equally as permanent and unfailing.

She just had to help Marlena reach that same conclusion.  

She knew it wasn’t her job to lead Marlena, her friend had to come to that realization on her own.  But Laura knew that was inevitable.  It might take some time, but she had faith that John and Marlena were meant to be together and neither of them would be genuinely happy until that happened. 

Marlena brought the tea out and placed the mugs on the table between the sofas before she sat down, clasping her hands together, her knuckles white as she leaned forward.  “Laura, I want you to know how much I appreciate you coming over today.  I know you didn’t have to.  I know I try and push you away and I’m not the easiest… subject in the world.”

“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” Laura quoted Alexander Pope as she leaned forward for the cup of steaming tea.  “I just want you to be happy honey.  You deserve that.”  She gave Marlena a radiant smile.  “I’m just glad I can help.  And doctors always make the worst patients… but honestly, you’re by no means the worst.  Far from it.  Now, where were we?”

She consulted her notes and then nodded.  “Okay.  I want to go back to what you said about John.  You said that you love him, but you don’t trust him.  Why don’t you expand on that for me?”

Marlena took a deep breath.  She knew exactly what she meant but when she thought about how to put it into words, it seemed so unreasonable.

“You’re going to think I’m being ridiculous,” she said defensively.  

“I’m not going to think any such thing,” Laura looked slightly offended.  “Please.”

“I feel…”  Marlena stopped as she turned the words over in her head.  Then she started again, the words coming slowly, seeming somehow traitorous coming out of her mouth.  “It seems like he falls in and out of love so easily,” she said, her voice low and uncertain.  “Sometimes I feel like I’m just one of any number of women that he’s loved and when he’s done with me, he’ll just move on to the next one.”  She sighed, thinking of walking in on John and Hope together at the Penthouse several months previously.  “That’s what I thought was happening with Hope.”

“What makes you feel that way?” Laura picked up her mug and blew at the steam rising off the surface.  “Anything in particular?”

“Isabella, Rebecca, Kristen,” Marlena counted them off on her fingers.  “Before Isabella, by all accounts, there was Diana Colville and several more women when I was ‘dead’.  And now Hope.  Or Gina, if that’s who she thinks she is.”

“Do you really think he was in love with all those women?” Laura asked.  She knew the answer to that, and so did Marlena.

“I think… he wanted to be in love with them,” Marlena replied.  He’d loved Isabella and he’d loved Kristen.  Beyond that, she hadn’t been in Salem pre-Isabella.  And Rebecca Morrison…?  Well, her own antipathy for the woman and her complicated feelings for John meant that she wasn’t the best judge in that particular case.

“By all accounts, he didn’t love Rebecca,” Marlena blinked at Laura’s assertion.  She shouldn’t really be surprised that Laura was following her train of thought.  That’s where she was directing her, after all.  “Rebecca, from what I’ve heard, was a means to an end.  He had to move on from loving you and she was a warm body in his bed to distract him from his feelings.”  Laura didn’t point out the parallel to what was happening in Marlena’s bed right now.  She didn’t need to.  “To that end, I’m pretty confident when I say his feelings for Hope don’t stray beyond friendship.”

Marlena considered Laura’s words.  She knew it was true.  She knew John had used Rebecca in the same way she was using Bo.  At that time, John had been trying so hard to stay away from her, to respect her desire to recommit to Roman and her marriage.  So, he had chosen the abrasive, ambitious Rebecca Morrison to provide him company and diversion.  A woman who couldn’t have been more different from Isabella and from Marlena herself.  And then almost as quickly as she’d appeared, Rebecca disappeared.  John had slipped easily from his marriage bed into Marlena’s and then just as easily into Rebecca’s.  And before she knew it, there was Kristen Blake, taking center stage in John’s life and almost as quickly, in his bed.

“That’s just as much of a problem for me though,” she admitted, at last.  “John’s inability to stay single for five minutes.  Sami’s referred to the succession of women he had through the house after I disappeared.  And then he went from Isabella to me, to Rebecca to Kristen.  Then from Kristen’s bed, straight back to mine.  And now… Hope.”  She chewed on her lip and looked away.  “I know he wants me back now, but who’s to say that in a few more months he won’t get bored again and take an interest in the next attractive woman that comes along?”

“Oh honey, he is never going to get bored of you!”  Laura laughed at the absurd irony.  “You know the one thing all those other women had in common?”  Marlena shook her head, genuinely unsure what Laura was going to say.  “Honey, they weren’t you.  It’s always been you for John.  He desperately tried to fill the massive hole you left when he thought you were dead and then when you came back and he had to watch you move on with Roman, he did his best to try and whitewash his feelings for you with other women.  But honey, he’s crazy about you.  He has been for thirteen years, and I don’t see that changing.”

“Then how do you explain Hope?” Marlena demanded petulantly

“I rather think John has explained that quite adequately,” Laura pointed out.  “He didn’t choose to leave you, Marlena.  He didn’t choose to hook up with Hope, if indeed, that’s what he did.”  Laura still wasn’t sure, from what Marlena had said, whether John and Hope had been together, in the biblical sense, when they’d been in Europe, but she would get to that in the fullness of time.

“No, it was Stefano’s machinations, if John is to be believed.”  Marlena still sounded skeptical about the whole story.  “But even if it’s true…. There’s never a moment that I can trust that Stefano won’t come in and take John away from me.  I don’t know when he got this chip or how… how will I ever be able to be sure of and trust that John’s choices and behavior are entirely his?”

“So, because of something that might, or might not happen, you’d choose to spend your life alone and miserable?” Laura challenged.  “Because you’re afraid that he might hurt you again?”

“I don’t have to be alone,” Marlena pointed out.  “I have Bo.”

“For now.” Laura raised her eyebrows and tried, but failed, to keep the disapproving look off her face.  “Oh, look Marlena.  Bo is a really great guy and all, but you don’t love him.  You love John.  And Bo might have feelings for you, he might even love you, but Hope is out there somewhere, and he has been in love with her for most of his adult life.  Are you telling me that when she comes home and wants him back, you think he won’t go back to her?”

“Maybe he will,” Marlena shrugged carelessly but Laura’s question stung to a degree that she was not comfortable with.  “But Bo’s not the only good man out there.”

“Right.  So, you find another body to keep your bed warm?  To distract you from your feelings for John?”  Laura’s remarks were laser-sharp, and they hit Marlena hard.  “Now, where have I heard that before?”

“Laura, that’s not fair!” Marlena started.  

“Isn’t it?” Laura raised her eyebrows again.  “If you believe it’s not the same, then fine.  But I’m just calling it as I see it.”

Marlena’s jaw clenched as she tried to control her emotional response to Laura’s accusations.  She was simultaneously shocked, hurt, and angry.  She hadn’t meant it like that.  She hadn’t.  Sure, she couldn’t claim to love Bo, or at least be in love with him.  But that didn’t mean that there were no other men out there that she was capable of loving.  John didn’t have a stranglehold on her heart.

He didn’t.

“What did you expect John to do?” Laura asked, still laser-sharp in the way she zoned in on the gaps in Marlena’s logic.  “When he found out he wasn’t Roman, when he lost you and his children… his job and his identity.  Was he just supposed to sit around and pine after you while you tried to make things work with Roman?  He was just supposed to be alone and miserable while you moved on with your life?”

“No, that’s not fair either, Laura.” Marlena’s cheeks flamed.  She’d said Laura would think she was being unreasonable, and Laura had assured her that she wouldn’t.  And now it seemed like that was exactly what Laura was saying.  “I didn’t want him to be alone.  I’m so glad he had Isabella during that time.  I was so… it was so very unfair that he lost her.  But he did lose her.  And then Roman left me.”

“And you were still pining after Roman even though he’d left town.” Laura reminded her.  “You let your guilt take over and close you off to the possibility that you could have something with John.  You gave him no reason to think that you wanted him back because the feelings of your children and Roman’s family were more important to you than your own happiness.  But I’m pretty sure that if you’d given him even the slightest indication that you were interested in more than just friendship, he would have dumped Kristen so fast her head would have spun.  You can’t really blame John for just trying to be happy when you weren’t prepared to be the one making him happy.”

Marlena stared at Laura.  She really wasn’t pulling any punches.  She was too stunned to be upset or angry.  She was just numb.

“Sweetie, I’m not trying to say you don’t have a right to be upset but I think you need to own your part in the decisions that John made.”  Laura reached for her tea and took another mouthful.  “But the thing about that is that you’re playing a different part now and Stefano’s intrigue not-withstanding, John doesn’t have any reason to take any interest in any other woman that comes along because he’s got the only woman he’s ever really been interested in, right in front of him.”

“I was right in front of him for months when I was living at the DiMera mansion,” Marlena pointed out to Laura.  “It didn’t stop him from cavorting all over the place with that woman.”

“Yes, well….” Laura had a harder time explaining away John’s stupidity after they had all returned from Aremid.  It had been clear to everyone how Marlena felt about him.  Everyone, that is, except John himself.  

They had engaged in a painful dance of each trying to protect the other from being hurt by uncontrolled feelings being revealed and sweeping them away again.  Marlena had become aware of her undimmed love for John when he had been facing a death sentence in a dingy cell below a pub in Aremid.  John, likewise, had realized the truth of his own feelings while facing down that death sentence.  And then Marlena had risked her life to find the truth that would save him from the gas chamber.

And yet, somehow, despite everything they had been through and everything they had risked for each other, they had missed the opportunity to be honest about their feelings.  And they had fallen back into old safe and familiar patterns, both longing for each other but thinking they were the only one that felt that way and in seeking to protect their own hearts as much as each other’s, they had remained silent. 

Until Marlena had found the letter John had written the night before his near execution.  The letter that Kristen had found before her and had hidden.  The letter that had ultimately changed everything.  It had sent Kristen over the edge into psychopathy and when Marlena had found it, it had made her determined to tell John the truth about her feelings.  And it had set Marlena and Kristen on a crash course which had resulted in Marlena ending up in a giant golden cage in the catacombs of Paris and then latterly locked in a secret room hidden behind the DiMera wine cellar.

Laura could understand how frustrated Marlena felt that John had been so unaware of her feelings.  And that he’d not been able to see through Kristen who had been so hell-bent on destroying Marlena, the woman he really loved.

“I know it’s hard for any of us to understand where John’s head was at for all those months,” Laura frowned.  “You did talk about it after he found you in the secret room though.  You told me you did.”

“We skirted the issue,” Marlena admitted.  “I was so grateful to be alive and safe, and in his arms, I didn’t want to spoil it by rehashing what I thought was all over and done with.  He said he was so afraid of hurting me again, after everything that happened after our affair, he couldn’t admit his feelings.”

Laura nodded and then seeing the conflict in Marlena’s eyes, she asked “you don’t believe him?”

“We always… we’ve always had a connection, Laura.  It’s like, I can walk into a room and know where he is the instant I step through the door.  I can be across the room and feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck and I just know that he’s looking at me.   But I don’t understand… where was that connection when we were living in the same house, and he didn’t have a clue how I felt about him?”  Marlena could feel a deep ache inside her.  She loved and respected John so much, and she’d made an abundance of excuses for him to explain away his insensitivity and ignorance as Kristen had flaunted their relationship in front of her.  The malevolent woman had manipulated the both of them day after day with her lies and her expertise at playing on their moral convictions, and the need each of them had to protect the other.  But now, after he had flown to Europe with Princess Gina von Amberg in the guise of Hope Williams, there were things she couldn’t explain away any longer.  Things she was struggling to accept and to forgive.

“More than him not knowing how I felt… Laura, I was missing, he thought Stefano had me and he still went ahead with Kristen’s wedding plans.  He damn well married the woman he thought was Kristen, while I was only yards away and he had no idea.  He said he loved me, I heard it on the monitors and yet he went through with a wedding to Kristen.  And I think about all that and I wonder if I’m just fooling myself about how special our love is.  It makes me question everything about us and about him.  Maybe I could more easily accept all the rest of it if it hadn’t been for those eighteen months but after he put up such a poor fight when I ended things and immediately left town with Hope, I’m just having a real hard time with it.”

Laura shook her head sadly.  “I went through all that with you Marlena.  I know how hard it was on you and I was equally as shocked that John went through with that farce.  But you know he thought he was already married to Kristen, and he was trying to keep her happy.  I know it’s not really a good excuse but…” she shrugged.  “I think this is a conversation that you need to have with John, honey.”

“Oh, what’s the point?” Marlena demanded, throwing up her hands in frustration.  “What could he say that would possibly justify him marrying Kristen while he thought Stefano had me?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.” Laura shook her head.  “But I did see him while you were missing, and he was frantic with worry about you.  Maybe he just didn’t have the time or energy to deal with Kristen and argue with her when he was so worried about you.  Maybe it was the path of least resistance for him.  Honey, you really need to ask him.  If it’s bothering you so much, you need to ask him why he thinks he did it.  You need to let him know how much it hurt you.  I can come up with a dozen possible explanations but really the only explanation that matters, is the one that John can give you.”

“And if it’s not good enough?” Marlena asked weakly.  “I’m almost scared to ask.  If I don’t give him the opportunity to come out with a pitiful excuse, then at least I can fool myself into thinking there might be a good one.”

“That’s the risk, I guess.”  Laura’s voice was soft and soothing.  “On the other hand, what if he can explain it in a way that you can understand, and you don’t give him that opportunity?  Marlena, there’s one thing I can say with absolute certainty.  That man has never loved anybody else like he loves you.  That’s why the endless stream of women when he thought you were dead, or he thought he couldn’t have you.  He was trying to keep his mind off what he’d lost.  Maybe it wasn’t the way you’d prefer he did that, but are you telling me that if you really had died, you would prefer that he spent the rest of his life alone and mourning you?”

Marlena shook her head almost immediately.  She knew for sure she wouldn’t have wanted that.  John had so much love to give that she couldn’t have borne the thought of him spending the rest of his life grieving her.  It would have been a life half-lived.  She had even written him a letter during her time with Orpheus, urging him to celebrate her life, to never forget her but also not to grieve her too long, and to find another woman to love.    

“What if this time, it’s the time that he really understands what it is he’s got and how close he’s come to losing you?  But because you’re hurt, you don’t give him the opportunity to show you how much he loves you and how steadfast and honorable he can be?”  Laura asked.  “Because I know that about John and deep down, you know that about John.  He is deeply honorable and deeply loyal, which is why he stayed with Kristen so long, even though he had realized that you were the woman he really loved.  And I am sure he never would have done what he did this year without interference or manipulation from Stefano.  Honey, you need to get back to the place where you believe that in your heart and you can stop doubting him and his love for you.  And just as importantly, you stop doubting yourself and your love for him.”

“Oh Laura,” Marlena pushed herself from the sofa again and paced across the room.  “I thought I’d got past all this.  I thought I was done with the whole Kristen thing but this last go-round with Hope has just re-opened old wounds and I just don’t know if I can get past it, whatever explanations John can come up with.”

“What actually happened between John and Hope in Europe?” Laura raised an eyebrow.  “Has he offered any details?  Have you even asked?”

“Well, I…”  Marlena stopped mid-pace, wrapping her arms around her middle as she stood at the base of the stairs.  She wracked her brain.  He hadn’t said anything at the loft yesterday and he hadn’t said anything about Hope when they’d been at the Salem Inn, other than to say how much he regretted leaving with her.  And she was pretty sure there had been no discussion of John and Hope’s intimacies at the pub.  She’s pretty sure Bo would have actually strangled him had that happened.  

She had, she realized, just assumed that he and Hope had become lovers in Europe, if not before they’d left Salem.  It had been an assumption she’d made almost as soon as Bo had told her they’d left Salem together, and one that had helped propel her into Bo’s arms, she realized in retrospect.  She looked up at Laura, the surprise registering on her face.  “I don’t… I didn’t ask him.  I just assumed and he hasn’t said anything that would lead me to think anything different.”

“Don’t you think you should be sure before you rush to judgment?”  Both of Laura’s eyebrows lifted expressively.   “If your anger at him is because he went from Kristen’s bed to yours to Hope’s, don’t you think you should be sure he actually did climb into Hope’s?”

Marlena felt confused.  She had been so sure in her mind that John and Hope had slept together, that she had hardly given it a second thought.  But now… now the thought had been unleashed inside her head, she was assaulted by images she did not want.  Images that made her feel physically sick.  John touching Hope.  His fingers in her hair, his lips brushing against hers.  The thought that John could have touched Hope in the same way he touched her was excruciating.

“What difference does it make?” she demanded angrily, her hands clutching at her upper arms tightly.

“I think it makes a big difference, looking at your reaction.”  Laura leaned her head on one side.  “It really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it damn well bothers me!” Marlena snapped uncharacteristically.  “He’s my-” She stopped short.

“He’s your what, honey?” Laura suppressed a smile.  She had a fair idea of what Marlena had been about to say.

“He’s… he’s the father of my children,” Marlena replied defensively as she turned away from Laura.  She didn’t want to see her friend’s knowing look as she saw through Marlena’s flimsy lie.

“If you feel like that, just thinking about him with Hope, what do you think it did to him, seeing you with Bo?” Laura pointed out.  “Maybe you need to know about him and Hope because maybe you can put his reactions to you and Bo into a different context.”

Marlena reached out for the banister of the staircase to steady herself.  Her head was swimming.  Laura was right, of course.  She had just made assumptions and she had acted, in part, on those assumptions.  What if John hadn’t slept with Hope?  She hadn’t actually asked, after all.  And his shock and anguish at seeing her with Bo was making her wonder.  If he had slept with Hope, wouldn’t he at least have a smidgen of guilt and regret at driving her into Bo’s arms, rather than just this wild jealousy and anger?

What would that mean?  Would it make a difference?  Would Stefano have wanted John to sleep with Princess Gina?  She had no idea at this point what Stefano’s game was, but she was sure that Gina herself had designs on John.  Of that, she had no doubt.  And if John had declined her attentions, if he had fought Stefano’s manipulations, did that change things?

Maybe, she thought, with a little hope in her heart for the first time in weeks, maybe it just did.

“Marlena, you need to talk to John,” Laura leaned over the back of the sofa with a speculative air.  She knew Marlena so well and she could see the spark of something within her.  As though a door had opened a crack and a trickle of light was filtering in.  “You need to ask him what happened in Europe.”

Marlena thought of John’s impassioned speech in the foyer of his building yesterday and her heart fluttered nervously.  No baby, we’re great for each other…   She couldn’t put herself in that position again.  She couldn’t make herself vulnerable with him.  He knew all her fault lines and he knew how to widen them.  If she let him, he’d split her asunder, and then she would be forever broken, like the proverbial Humpty Dumpty.

“I can’t…” she said haltingly.  “I can’t talk to John.  Laura, I can’t do it.”

“Of course you can,” Laura shook her head disapprovingly.  “I don’t believe for a moment that you can’t find a way to ask him what happened.  He’s your best friend.  He’s the love of your life, Marlena.  You can talk to him.”

“I can’t!” Marlena cried.  “Laura, when I was there yesterday.  I… I thought we were doing okay.  We were talking.  He told me he wanted me to come and talk to him when I was ready, and he was being… he was being John.  The John I fell in love with all those years ago.  Honestly, I was… it was…” she sighed.  She couldn’t put it into words.  There was a disconnect between what she needed emotionally right now and the way their bodies naturally reacted when they were in the same space.  

She needed him to respect her space, her autonomy, her sense of self.  And yet, when he was close, she found herself enmeshed with him, unsure of where he ended and where she began.  He had a magnetic pull on her and that magnetism seemed to empty her head of logic and rational thought and her reaction to him happened on a purely physical level.  She couldn’t risk that right now.  She was already too shattered, she needed to focus on putting herself back together, not let John Black take her further apart.

“Take your time,” Laura was so gentle and reassuring.  The empathy and love conveyed in her tone almost reduced Marlena to tears.  

“I want to talk to him.  I want to sit across from him and tell him everything.  But I can’t.  I don’t trust him to hear me.  All the things he said yesterday, they were all the right things.  But then he got too close.  Physically I mean.  I was crying and he brushed away my tears and the next thing I know, I’m in his arms and he’s kissing me and… Laura, I can’t stop him.  It’s like I get hypnotized and that sounds stupid and completely like I’m abdicating all responsibility for my own actions.  I’m not.  I’m consenting.  I’m one hundred percent consenting and that’s the problem.  I should be able to control my own reactions to his advances and I just can’t and it makes me appalled at myself and it makes me angry at him for making me feel that way.  I’m so tired of it.  Feeling that way, I mean.”

“What way, exactly?” Laura pressed.  “Let’s talk about this.  Your feelings about John.  You said you love him.”

“Yes,” Marlena couldn’t deny that.  She’d said it clearly earlier.  There was no point pretending her feelings were anything other than what they were.  She loved John to distraction and that was part of the problem.  “Laura, you said it yourself.  I’ve loved John since I thought he was…” she shook her head.  It had started way before that.  Before she thought he was Roman.  Before they’d been on the run in West Virginia when she thought he was Stefano.  Before she’d suggested he move into Roman’s old apartment.  Before the hospital rapist and that damn sign-in / sign-out sheet.  Hell, she’d probably loved him since the moment he’d saved her from that would-be mugger at Shenanigans and she’d shaken his hand.  She can still remember that moment, those bluer than blue eyes and his warm, firm handshake which had sent crackles of electricity fizzing through her, to pool between her thighs.  “I’ve loved him since the moment I laid eyes on him,” she amended

“And honestly, it’s probably worse now than it’s ever been, the intensity of my feelings for him.  I had to wait such a long time to get him back and it was such a mess when Kristen brought Roman… or that guy we thought was Roman, back to Salem.  We were finally together and then we were denied that.  And then finally I thought it had all come together, and then he just… lost interest.”

Tears filled her eyes again.  Even though there was potentially an explanation for it, that he wasn’t the ‘John’ she loved, his slow turning away from her still hurt like hell.  She wasn’t an insecure woman; at least, she didn’t think she was.  But it had made her wonder what was wrong with her that his attention had strayed in the direction of Hope Williams, of all people.  And why it was, as a renowned psychiatrist, well versed in human behavior and now well into her forties, she was still seemingly unable to hold down a successful, healthy relationship.

“I just don’t understand why, when he’s hurt me so much that my feelings for him are still so overwhelming.  I don’t understand why I can’t just walk away from him.  I know none of this is healthy so why do I insist on hanging on to every word he says?”

“Have you considered that your perspective may be skewed because of the trauma you’ve been through?” Laura suggested gently and she patted the sofa next to her.  “Come back here and sit down, honey.”

Marlena looked askance at her as if she was asking something completely impossible, but Laura held her gaze, challenging her to change her position, her stance.  She was not immutable.  Her point of view was simply that.  A point in space and time.  A way of looking at things that might not quite convey the whole truth of the situation.

“Come and sit down,” Laura reiterated.  “I’m not saying you’re wrong to see things the way you see them.  I’m just saying that maybe your view is a little distorted by everything you’ve been through. Quite frankly, how could it not be?  You’ve been through hell and that’s bound to make anybody cranky, at the very least.”

A small smile twitched the corner of Marlena’s mouth upwards at Laura’s words and after a moment, she found herself moving back to the sofa where she had been sitting.  But Laura patted the seat next to her.  “Sit here.” She suggested.  “Sometimes we just need a slightly different perspective, hmmm?”

Marlena paused and then sat next to Laura and let the other woman take her hands.  “I think there’s something about the way you see John right now.  You’ve suffered so much pain over the past decade that you’re preparing yourself for more pain.  And understandably you’ve set John up as the figure that is going to deliver this pain, because he’s the one who you know can do the most damage.  So, to protect yourself you’ve designated him that part in the story you are telling yourself.  You have set him up to be the antagonist in your story, the figure that is set to trample all over your heart.  And maybe he’s not that at all.” She gave a small shrug that seemed careless but was anything but. “Maybe he’s just a victim of circumstance, and the DiMera’s of course, in the same way you yourself are.  Maybe he’s made mistakes, because he’s a human being and that’s what we human beings do, as you and I both well know.”

“Are you saying I’m being paranoid?” Marlena asked.  She wasn’t entirely sure whether to be offended or amused.

“I’m saying you’re running scared, and you have every right to be, given what you’ve been through.  But I’m concerned that you see everything as a threat right now and that’s not good for you physically or mentally.  Your judgment is off, Marlena.  And instead of looking at your reaction to John as you being out of control because he’s a threat to you, perhaps you need to consider that you feel like that because you’re meant to be together.  Because you’re two parts of a whole; soulmates, if you will.  And maybe, just maybe, your future together could be everything you’ve hoped for if you could just find a way to trust him again.” She squeezed Marlena’s hands.  “I know that’s not something you can contemplate right now.  Trusting him, I mean.  He’ll need to earn your trust, I understand that, but can you at least think about what I’ve said and consider if there might be a small iota of truth in it?”

Marlena took a deep breath.  Her head hurt.  There was too much to think about. Laura had turned everything upside down in a matter of less than an hour.  Nothing had changed and yet…  She wasn’t sure she could see a way through it, she wasn’t sure if she was less or more confused than she was yesterday.  But she knew Laura had a point.  Her head and her heart were saying different things.  And maybe her head was overreacting, and she was letting a lifetime of hurts get in the way of what was real and true.  And then again, maybe her head was protecting her for just and valid reasons.  All she knew was that she was still tired and scared.

“I’ll… do my best,” she said slowly.  It was all she could offer right now.

“That’s all I can ask,” Laura smiled.  “Okay, I think maybe that’s enough for today.  What do you think?”

Marlena nodded gratefully.  She didn’t think she could take any more right now.  

“Listen, I’m going to finish this cup of tea and then relieve you of that Vicodin and then I think perhaps you should have a rest or even a nap before you go and pick up the kids, what do you think?” Laura suggested as she sat up and picked up her cooling tea.

“You’re not going to tell me I have to tell Bo it’s over?” Marlena asked in surprise.

Laura gave a chuckle.  “Marlena, honey, I’ve already figured out that it’s pointless to tell you what to do where Bo is concerned.  I can see that you need the safety and security that you feel he provides right now and while I don’t like it, I understand.   There will come a time when we need to have that conversation again, but we’ll do it when I think you’re ready, okay?”

“Thank you,” tears filled Marlena’s eyes again.  She had been anticipating a battle with Laura over her continuing liaison with Bo and she was unspeakably relieved that she didn’t have to have that argument yet again.

“I just need you to be okay honey,” Laura told her lovingly.  “Please, please promise me that you’ll call me if you need me.  If anything happens that makes you feel uncomfortable or upset.  Any reason at all, just call me.  Day or night, okay?”

“Okay.”  Marlena nodded with a soft and grateful smile.  “Laura, you are such a good friend.  Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me too quickly.”  Laura grinned.  “Because I’m going to give you some homework.  Before I see you again you have one task.  I want you to talk to John and ask him what happened in Europe.”

“Oh Laura,” Marlena looked crestfallen.  “I can’t.  I already told you I can’t.”

“You can Marlena and you will.”  Marlena could tell from Laura’s tone, and by the steel glint in her blue eyes that she wasn’t going to put up with any arguments.  “I’m just asking you to do this one thing.  I know you can do it.  I know you’re strong enough to do it.  You don’t have to see him if that’s what you’re concerned about,” she said, knowing that was exactly what worried Marlena.  “You don’t even have to be in the same room as him.  There are these things called telephones.  You can dial a number and talk to another individual.  Imagine that!” 

“Alright, smarty pants!” Marlena couldn’t help but laugh at Laura’s wicked smile.  

“You can do that.  Pick up the phone and call him.  Just ask him what happened.  Then you’ll know and we can figure out what comes next, okay?”  Laura leaned in and cupped Marlena’s cheek with her palm.  “Do you trust me, Marlena?”

“I do,” Marlena nodded, feeling inordinately lucky to have this woman as her best friend.  She would trust her with anything.  She would trust her with her life, and it felt rather as if she was doing that at this moment.  But if Laura said she could do this, then she knew she could.  Even if she didn’t quite believe it, knowing Laura had faith in her gave her the confidence that she could.

“You can do it, sweetie.  I have every faith in you.  We’re going to get through this.  I’m with you every step of the way.”  Laura flipped the top of her notepad closed and clicked the nib off her pen.  “Right, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Marlena looked confused for a moment.

“We still have a scheduled session tomorrow.  I want you to keep it.  We have a lot of work to do and the sooner we get on with it, the sooner you’ll feel more in control and able to deal with this whole situation,” Laura reminded her as she stood.  Marlena stood with her and followed her to the door.

“But if you want me to talk to John before I see you again that doesn’t leave me much time!” Marlena suddenly felt panicked.  

“It’s not until mid-afternoon so you’ve got more than twenty-four hours,” Laura reminded her.  “I think that’s more than ample time.  And hey, no time like the present, right?”  she shrugged.  “You know where I am if you need anything.   I’m just a phone call away, I can be back here inside thirty minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” Marlena suddenly looked lost and uncertain.  

“It’s going to be okay, honey.  Please trust me.  Even if it feels like the world is upside down and everything is a disaster, it’s going to be okay.”  Laura pulled Marlena into a hug.  “Oh, before I go, where are those meds?  Let me get them out of your way and we’ll both feel better.” 

Marlena directed her to the bedroom ensuite and left her to it, wandering instead to the doors that opened onto the terrace, this time stepping out into the fresh air.  It was still gray overhead and the air felt full of moisture, but she ignored the few small splashes of rain to stand by the railing and look out over her adopted home, the city of Salem.

She had so much to think about, to mull over.  Was she really allowing her view of John to be tainted by a decade (or more) of trauma?  She had reflected on this when she had sat alone with a bottle of whisky the night she’d spent with Bo at the boat.  She had known then she was making bad decisions and allowing all the collected suffering she’d endured to shape her thoughts and reactions.  Was it really too far-fetched to say that her pervading anxiety and fear were coloring her perceptions of John and his actions?  Was she really self-sabotaging to the extent Laura was suggesting?  And if she was, was she at risk of turning her back on the best thing ever to happen to her with no real good reason?

All she had were questions and no actual answers.  All she had were these confusing feelings and no real way forward.  And all she could do was take things moment by moment and hope to God she didn’t screw things up any more than she already had.

Part Vingt-Huit – Coming Undone

He can’t see the smile I’m faking
And my heart’s not breaking
‘Cause I’m not feeling anything at all
And you were wild and crazy
Just so frustrating
Intoxicating, complicated
Got away by some mistake and now

I miss screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain
It’s 2 AM and I’m cursing your name
I’m so in love that I acted insane
And that’s the way I loved you
Breaking down and coming undone
It’s a roller coaster kind of rush
And I never knew I could feel that much
And that’s the way I loved you oh, oh

The Way I Loved You – Taylor Swift

It was after three in the morning when Marlena slipped out of bed and pulled a satin robe around her shoulders, wrapping the pale blue sash around her waist.  She stopped and watched Bo for a moment, his chest rising and falling evenly as he slept.  After Laura had left, she had tried to nap, as Laura had suggested but every time she had closed her eyes, her imagination had run riot.  She had not been able to rid her mind of the image of John and Hope together.  Dancing, John holding her hand against his chest.  Kissing, John caressing her face, running his fingers through her hair.  Making love, John moving on top of her, Hope’s thighs cradling his hips as she cried his name in elation.

Marlena had found herself shedding frustrated tears and eventually she had dressed and called Bo, suggesting that they collect the children and get some lunch as she had suggested when he left.  He had cautiously questioned her about her session with Laura but when she had said she didn’t want to talk about it, he had left it alone and not questioned her any further.  Part of her had wanted to ask him if he thought anything had happened between John and Hope.  But he had no way of knowing anything more than she did, and she knew he would find the thought of it tortuous, so she had chosen to say nothing, not wanting to expose him to the misery she was currently suffering.

But she had been subdued for the rest of the day and evening and Bo had known something was wrong.  To his credit, he had told her that if she wanted to talk about it, he was there but he wasn’t going to push her.  She had smiled wanly and nestled into his arms as they’d watched TV with the children.  And then, after the bedtime routine when Belle and Brady were both fast asleep in their beds, she had suggested that she needed an early night.

It had only taken a few half-hearted kisses from her for Bo to realize her heart really wasn’t in it and he had kissed her and told her that it was okay if she really did want an early night.

The problem was, that he had fallen asleep quickly, but she had lain there for hours, her session with Laura bouncing around inside her head.

What actually happened between John and Hope in Europe?  Has he offered any details?  Have you even asked?  

If your anger at him is because he went from Kristen’s bed to yours to Hope’s, don’t you think you should be sure he actually did climb into Hope’s?

…. don’t you think you should be sure?…. don’t you think you should be sure?…. don’t you think you should be sure?….

Pick up the phone and call him.  Just ask him what happened.  Then you’ll know and we can figure out what comes next, okay?

She had sighed and rolled over and looked at Bo who had been sleeping so peacefully and she had reached out, fully intending to wake him so that he could put these thoughts out of her head.  But then she had withdrawn her hand as she remembered the look of utter shock and bewilderment on John’s face as he’d burst into the room at the Salem Inn.

Her heart had pounded as she had lain on her back in the bed she’d shared with John, and she had stared into the darkness.

She wouldn’t have any peace until she knew, one way or the other.  The truth might cause her just as much unrest, but she still needed to know.  Until she knew what had really happened between John and Hope, she was stuck in this limbo, unable to make any headway in working out how to deal with her feelings for him, or indeed figuring out whether there was any place for him in her future.

And so there she was, in the middle of the night, slipping out of a Brady brother’s bed to wrestle with her confusing feelings for John Black.  The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.  She had a certain kind of déjà vu and she felt guilty and angry at herself, both for doing this and for feeling so responsible for Bo’s feelings and John’s.

She padded across the dark room, pulling the bedroom door closed behind her.  She checked first on Brady and then on her darling Belle, kissing each of them on the forehead in turn as she turned their night-lights down.  Then she descended the stairs, her bare feet muffled against the plush carpet.  

She crossed the short distance to the desk and picked up the phone receiver. 

She stared at it for a long moment.  She shouldn’t be calling John now.  It was the middle of the night, for god’s sake.  What kind of message would it send him to know that thinking about him was keeping her awake at all hours of the night?

She put the phone back down and looked around the room.  Her eyes were drawn to the wedding picture that sat with the rest of the family photos. She had wanted to put it away when John had moved out, but Belle had been insistent that it stayed.  She had a particular love for the headdress Marlena had worn and spent hours trying to craft a similar concoction out of headbands and pipe cleaners.  So, Marlena had relented and had left it sitting among the smiling faces of her children.  Sami, Eric, Carrie, Belle and Brady.  She was so blessed.  She picked up a picture of Carrie and Austin and took a deep breath as she thought of Carrie’s lovely, worried face at the pub.  And Eric as he’d held her close, wanting to protect her from the naked pain he could see in her eyes.  She knew that it was her chaotic life that had kept Eric from Salem for so long and the last thing she wanted to do was to drive him away again.  She needed to sort herself out because she owed it to her children, if nothing else.

Putting down the picture of Carrie, she picked up the wedding photo.  She’d thought him Roman, but really, she had married John Black in her heart, that day.  The mistaken belief that he was Roman had made it easier to accept that she had fallen so fast and so hard for a man she barely knew.  It had helped her rationalize what she felt in her soul.  That this man was the love of her life.  That she was totally and hopelessly in love with him.  Before she’d seen the photo of Roman attached to John’s file, she had fought the intense attraction she was feeling for him.  It wasn’t just that she thought he could be Stefano.  It was simply that he wasn’t Roman, and she felt guilty for loving someone who wasn’t her beloved husband.  She felt guilty for loving him more than she’d loved Roman.

The explanation that he was Roman had allowed her to dispense with that guilt and embrace her love for him wholeheartedly.  And the day she had married him, she had been on top of the world.  She had never felt like that before.  Not with Don, not even with Roman in his previous incarnation.  When she looked at John, she felt a peace and a completeness she’d never experienced before.

She ran her fingers over his face.  So young and so in love.  They had felt like they could take on the world and win every battle.

Life had soon disabused them of that notion.  Orpheus had destroyed their life together and Stefano and Kristen had one after the other, and at times in concert, conspired to keep their lives separate.  

And now, what?  Now was she the primary architect of her own downfall?  Were her own emotional responses so distorted by all the pain and loss she’d suffered that she was closing herself off to the possibility of finding that love again?  Of being loved by John and letting him catch her when she fell?

She sighed.  She had to know.

She put down the picture and went back to the phone.  Picking it up, she dialed the number for the loft.  It had long-since disappeared out of the speed dial.  After all, John had been living with her, and prior to that at the DiMera mansion, so it hadn’t been needed.  But even so, she remembered the number like it was inscribed on her heart.  She didn’t even need to think, her fingers just dialed it automatically.

She waited, her heart beating raggedly as the phone rang.  And then John’s voice came sleepily through the earpiece.

“Hello?”

She couldn’t say anything for a moment.  Just the sound of his voice left her discombobulated.

“Hello, is anyone there?” he repeated, this time a little more awake.

“John, it’s Marlena,” she whispered.  It felt like her heart was in her throat.  Her mouth was dry, and she felt dizzy.

“Doc!” He was suddenly on high alert.  “What’s wrong, is it the kids?”

“No, no!” she said quickly.  “Everything is fine.  The children are safe and well.  You don’t need to worry.”

“I… I don’t understand.” He replied.  “Is it you?  Are you alright, baby?”

“I…” she wished he wouldn’t call her that.  It made her feel weak.  When he called her baby, it made her heart thump and her stomach fizz.  It made her want him to thread his hands in her hair pull her face close and kiss her as if his life depended on it.  “I’m okay,” she managed to spit out eventually.

She took the portable receiver across to the seating and sank down on one of the sofas, pulling a throw across her lap.  “I just, I need to ask you something.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”  He didn’t sound like he was complaining, more that he was concerned.  “Must be an important question, honey.”

“It….”  She pressed her lips together, trying to hold herself together.  She opened her mouth to speak but the only sound that came out was a hiccupping sob.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay sweetheart.  Take your time.”  He was quiet but she could hear the rustle of his bedclothes and she knew he was climbing out of bed.  “Are you at home, Doc?”

“Yes.” She looked back across at their wedding photo.  “I’m downstairs.  I couldn’t sleep.”

“It’s really great to hear your voice,” he said softly.  She could hear the creak of the floorboards now and the soft sound of his footsteps against the wooden stairs of the circular staircase.  “When you left the way you did the other day… I was worried you weren’t going to talk to me again.  I’m so sorry I got carried away.  The very last thing I wanted to do was to upset you any further.”

“I didn’t call for an apology,” she said tersely and then felt guilty for being so short with him.  It was her that had called him in the middle of the night, after all.  

“I know,” he said gently.  “I need to say it anyway.  I’m so sorry, Marlena.  It won’t happen again.  Not until you want it to, that is.”

Marlena swallowed.  Her body was reacting at the mere sound of his voice.  All he had to do was say her name and things started happening inside her.  Her heart beat a little faster, her cheeks flushed her breathing quickened and her lips tingled.  All she could think about was how it felt when he had kissed her and how much she had wanted him to touch her in all the places he knew she liked to be touched.

“I need to ask you this question,” she said breathlessly.

There was a small pause on the other end and then John’s voice came, low and intense.  “Ask away.”

“I need to know… what…” she sighed.  “You never said what happened…” She paused again, trying to put her thoughts into words trying to find a way to ask a question, the answer to which had the power to destroy her.  Finally, she decided there was nothing for it, she just had to spit it out.  “You and Hope. John, I need to know if you slept together.”

“Doc!” John was simultaneously shocked that she would need to ask him such a question and appalled at his own naivety that he hadn’t figured out that she would be wondering.  

On one hand, deep down, he felt hurt by her obvious lack of trust in him.  On the other, he could concede that his behavior over the past few months had hardly done a lot to solidify her belief in him.  A belief that had obviously been more fragile than he would like, that had been shaken by his own stupidity as he ignored what was right in front of his face and instead chased after Kristen DiMera.

And after all, she had fallen into Bo’s arms.  She obviously had thought there was a high probability that he and Hope had done the same.  Was that what had pushed her towards Bo, he wondered?  Was it revenge?  

No, that wasn’t Marlena’s style at all.  If it was the thought of him and Hope together that had propelled her into Bo’s bed, then it was more likely to be distress rather than anger that was the underlying emotion.

Marlena was silent on the other end of the phone.  Her hand clutched at the receiver as she waited wordlessly for his answer.

“I would never,” he said finally and with as much intensity as he could muster.  “I would never sleep with Hope.  I would never sleep with any other woman.  Honey, I love you.  My body, heart and soul are yours and yours alone.”

“You didn’t?” Her voice was surprisingly small and child-like.

“No.” He shook his head.  “That’s not to say she didn’t try.  She was quite determined to get me to remember our past together.  Or at least my past with the original Princess Gina.  I think she thought she could unlock all the memories in my head by getting me into bed.”

He thought briefly about telling Marlena how Gina had drugged him on their last night in Berlin, but he decided it was irrelevant.  It would just confuse and complicate matters.  He might have no memory of that night, but he knew he hadn’t slept with her.  He knew the way his body felt the morning after sex, and he hadn’t felt like that.  All he had felt was disgust and like he had somehow been violated by this woman who had been his trusted friend for so many years.

“Oh.”  It was the answer that Marlena had so desperately wanted to hear but now she had it, she wasn’t sure what to say.  She felt intensely relieved, but she also felt sad and somehow angry that he hadn’t thought to tell her this before now.

“Baby, I’m so sorry you thought I would ever do that to you,” he said quietly.  

“When you called… to speak to the children,” she said haltingly.  “You were so cold, so distant.  I thought…”

“It wasn’t me,” he said gently.  “That person, he wasn’t me.  I was trying to break free, and I think the chip started coming loose while I was there, because the longer I was there, the more I wanted just to get back to you and the kids.”

“Well then, why didn’t you?” she asked, the pain surfacing in her voice.  “If you wanted to be here with us and not there with her, why didn’t you come home?”

“I thought…” he paused, thinking of Gina and her endless insistence that the next meeting, the next person and then the next would provide all the answers.  “I don’t know, Doc.  Maybe I felt responsible for her being there.  If I hadn’t suggested that we go to Europe, she would have been here safe in Salem but instead she was…” 

“She’s not your responsibility,” Marlena’s voice was low.  “You have a family here.  They’re your responsibility.  We needed you.”

“You kicked me out,” he reminded her softly.  “Baby, if I’d been in my right mind, I would have been back here in heartbeat.  I would have been fighting for you with every bit of love, every bit of strength I have.  Hell, I never would have left.  Certainly not while Sami was going through what she was going through.  Not while you were having to support her through that.  I never would have left you to face that alone.”

“You did though, didn’t you?” Marlena flicked angrily at the tears that trickled over her cheeks.  “I needed you.  Where were you?”

“Fighting to get back to you, Doc.” He replied simply.  “I know you’re having a hard time believing it, or understanding it, but it’s true.  Hell, even I don’t understand it.  How can I when we don’t even know what the chip was for or how it worked?  I just know that somehow, I was in there, buried beneath whatever Stefano had done to make that chip control me.  I don’t know if I was like Gina, if I had a completely different personality.  I don’t know who Stefano’s ‘Father John Black’ was or what he did.  I don’t want to know.  I don’t want to remember my past anymore, Doc.  I remember everything I need to remember in order to be happy.  Do you know what my first real memories are?” he asked, forcing her to focus on those early days.  The first moments when she was so intensely attracted to this stranger with the blazing blue eyes and the intensity so fierce, she could have drowned in it.

She didn’t answer.  She didn’t need to. 

“They’re of you. Your beautiful, caring face.  Your touch.  I don’t need to know anything else.  I just want you.   You make me happy; you make me whole.  I was an idiot to ever think I needed anything more.”

“John…” she didn’t know what to say.

“It’s okay Marlena.” His voice was velvety and reassuring.  It wrapped around her like a blanket.  Soothing but also excruciating because it made her so very aware of how much she missed him and how much she wanted to hold him in her arms.  “I know you’re not ready for all this.  I know you need time. I just need you to know how I feel.  I miss you.  I miss you so much I ache for you.”

“I…” she couldn’t tell him the truth.  That she ached for him too.  That she thought of him, and she had an ache in her chest.  That her hands reached out for him in her sleep.  That she dreamed of him, almost every night.

“Sweetheart?” he whispered.  

Her heart pounded.  “Yes?”

He paused.  He wanted to tell her so many things.  He loved her.  He missed her.  He wanted her.  She was everything to him and having her by his side was the only way his life made sense.  But he’d already pushed it too far.

“I just wanted to tell you, I meant what I said yesterday.  I’ll be here.  When you want to talk.  If you ever want to talk.  When you’re ready to tell me.  Anything.  Everything.”  He stared out of same window she had looked out of the previous day.  The moon was a bright silver disc in the sky with small clouds scuddering by.  He wondered if she was looking at the same moon, if it was illuminating her astonishingly beautiful face, casting shadows across her smooth skin.

She was silent on the other end of the phone, and he was scared that she was going to hang up.  So, he kept speaking, hoping to keep her on the other end of the line.

“Where are you?” he asked.  Weaving in and out of his thoughts was the question of whether Bo was there with her right now.  He wanted to ask but he didn’t dare.  He wasn’t sure how he would react to an answer in the positive, and more than that, Marlena would think it was none of his business.  And maybe it wasn’t except that in his heart, she was his wife.  They had said vows and he had meant them and nothing that had happened since, not Roman Brady, not Isabella, not Kristen really changed that for him.  In his heart, she was his wife and the idea of her giving herself to another man was tearing him into pieces.

Instead, he had to console himself with the knowledge that, even if Bo was there, he was upstairs while Marlena was downstairs, talking to him in the middle of the night.

“I told you.  I’m downstairs.” Her voice was soft, but he could tell there was no challenge in it.  She didn’t want to end this phone-call any more than he did, he realized.

“But where exactly?” He was insistent.  He wanted to be able to visualize her, wherever she was.  He wanted to be able to see her, the moonlight illuminating her skin, painting individual strands of her golden hair a silver hue.  He wanted to imagine the soft lines around her eyes crinkle as she smiled at something he said.

“I’m sitting on the sofa,” she indulged him.  “The one closest to the terrace.”

“What are you wearing?” he knew this was a step too far, but he couldn’t help himself.  The words fell from his lips before he could stop them.

“John-“  She wasn’t at all comfortable with the turn this conversation had taken.  It was becoming far too intimate, and she felt herself becoming aroused by the soft urgency in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly.  “I shouldn’t have asked that. It’s just…”  There was silence on the other end of the line, and he felt emboldened by the fact that she wasn’t shutting him down.  Not yet anyway.  “Baby, I can’t just stop wanting you.  I want you so badly it hurts.  I wake in the middle of the night, and I ache to touch you.  You have no idea of the power you have over me.”

Marlena’s heart beat painfully and she swallowed.  Her throat was dry, but she could feel the warm viscous moisture between her thighs and the throbbing of her pulse in the same.  The evidence that she felt exactly the same way he did.  

She needed to close this conversation down before it got out of control.  Before she sent him messages that he would misconstrue.

“I… I’m wearing my blue satin nightgown,” she found herself saying.

“The one I bought for your birthday?” the question was low, intense, full of longing.

“Yes.”  

John heard the hitch in her voice, the sharp intake of breath and it turned him on even further.  He could imagine her sitting there in the pale silver light, her exquisite curves caressed by the ice-blue satin.  He could see her hair, tousled from sleep, glistening with silver.  The thought made his heart pound, and his muscles tighten.  He palmed his uncomfortably hard cock through his boxers, trying to get some relief and he groaned audibly.  “I fucking love you in that,” he rasped.  “You look so fucking sexy.”

“John-” Marlena shifted uncomfortably under the throw.  She wanted to stop this conversation now.  Well, part of her did.   The other part was electrified.  She longed for him, longed to feel his mouth on her, his hands.  She was consumed by the memory of him nudging, digging between her thighs with his fingers, with his rock-hard cock.

John exhaled deeply, trying to get some control of himself.  “Doc, I’m sorry.  You just have no idea what you do to me.”

“I do?” she asked, despite herself.

“You do,” he growled.  “Only you, Marlena.  It’s only ever been you that makes me feel this way.  I think about you all the time.  Day and night.   I wake and I ache to touch you.  Baby, it’s always been you.  It’ll only ever be you.”

Marlena choked back a sob.  This was her John.  The John that she had fallen in love with all those years ago.   Her love and need for him ran like fire through her veins.  Was Laura right?  Was she letting her trauma making her see shadows where there were none?  Was she ascribing him undesirable motives and characteristics that were undeserved, thanks to her (admittedly understandable) paranoia and anxiety? 

Climbing off his own sofa, John went to the window that Marlena had been looking through a day earlier and he wrenched it open, looking for some fresh air, for some relief from the heat that suffused his body.

“I love you,” he whispered.  “And… honey, I really think we should hang up now.  Before I say or do something I’m really gonna regret.”

Tears filled Marlena’s eyes as she nodded.  He was right and she was both relieved and bereft at the thought of having to say goodbye to him.

“I’m never going to regret telling you I love you.” He clarified.  “Or how you make me feel.  But I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.  I don’t want to push you.”

“I know,” she whispered. 

“Are you angry with me?” he asked, and she could hear the uncertainty in his voice.

“No.” She swallowed.  “But I think you’re right.  I think we should say goodnight.”

“Alright then.” He leaned his forehead against the dusty glass.  “Goodnight, pretty lady.”

“Goodnight,” she bit her lower lip.  Her automatic instinct was to tell him that she loved him and missed him too.  But she needed to keep him at arm’s length.  For now, anyway.

“Doc?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“It was really, really great to hear your voice,” he said.  “Thank you for calling.”

“Thank you for being honest,” she said carefully.  “I… I’ll call you about having the children, okay?”

“Okay.”  He might have hoped for more, but that was enough.  The promise of another phone-call.  Maybe seeing her in passing as he picked the children up or dropped them off.  It would have to be enough for how.  Until she came to terms with her feelings.

“Goodnight John.”  Marlena’s cheeks flamed hotly.  She knew she should hang-up now.  There was no reason to draw this out.  But she found she couldn’t push the disconnection button on the cordless receiver.  

“Goodnight Marlena.”  John clicked off the phone-call and stared out over the city.  He knew he was going to have to do something to effect some release of the sexual tension he felt, or he was never going to go back to sleep.  Although he wondered whether it was a realistic ask at all.  He was pretty sure he was going to spend all night staring at the ceiling thinking of her, reliving her words, the sound of her voice and the image of her in that goddamn sexy nightgown all alone in the moonlight.

In the penthouse Marlena stared at the receiver in her hands.  On the mezzanine landing above her, Bo Brady watched as she put the phone down on the couch and stood, the ochre throw slithering to the floor from her lap.  She wandered to the French door and pushed it open, stepping onto the terrace.

He watched her lean against the railing and bow her head, bathed in the cool, glistening light from the moon.  He didn’t have to wonder who she’d been talking to.  Who else would she leave her bed for in the middle of the night?  

Sadly, he turned away and padded back to the bedroom.  

Fifteen minutes later, Marlena came silently into the bedroom, not noticing that the door she had closed so quietly behind her was now open.

She shed her robe, laying it over the back of the loveseat and slipped into bed next to her lover.

“Where have you been?” his voice came quietly but she started at the sound of it.  She looked across at him and he was on his side, looking at her.

“I uh…” she wasn’t sure what to say.  She had been so lost in her own thoughts, in her replaying of the conversation with John that she hadn’t even thought about Bo, sleeping upstairs.  And she certainly hadn’t expected him to be awake on her return to the bedroom.  “I was just… I was thirsty.  I needed some water.”

“Uh-huh.”  Bo’s reply was neutral, but her reply was all the confirmation he needed.  She’d been talking to John, alright.  And she didn’t want to tell him.

Bo wondered if this was how it had felt for Roman, when he had returned.  To know he had her body in his bed, but not her mind and certainly not her heart.  It was hardly surprising he had been so frustrated and why his attitude towards John had become so implacable.  Bo had thought him unreasonable at the time but now, in hindsight, he felt for Roman.  His brother had never stood a chance in the face of Marlena’s overwhelming attraction… no, her love for John Black.

“Are you okay?” he asked.   He wasn’t even sure why he was asking, other than to give her an opening to tell him what was going on.  To tell him it was over.  He could smell her arousal; he could see the desire stained in the blush on her cheeks and the fullness of her lips.  He didn’t even want to imagine what their conversation had been about, to do that to her.

“I’m fine,” she said softly.  “Go back to sleep, Bo.”

He said nothing but watched her roll onto her side, her back to him.  And he reached out to touch her but then pulled his hand away.

He rolled onto his own back and stared at the ceiling despondently.

Across the city in a brick loft, John Black stroked himself and came with a frustrated howl.  He wasn’t sure how long he could take this, but the reality was, he had no choice but to take it as long as Marlena was going to dish it out.  He would have to do this for weeks, or months if it was required.

He would have to do it until she was ready to let him back into her life, and her bed.

If she ever was.

Part Vingt-Neuf

You said it was a great love, one for the ages
But if the story’s over, why am I still writing pages?

Death by a Thousand Cuts – Taylor Swift

Marlena

It’s been more than a week since my first session with Laura and my late-night phone conversation with John.  I’ve seen Laura four more times since.  

The sessions have been hard.  She’s forced me to be more honest with myself than I have been for years.  Maybe ever.  I’ve shed a lot of tears.  I’ve admitted a lot to her, a lot to myself.  We’ve touched on so many things, I can’t even recount them all.  We’ve talked some about John and about Bo, but there’s so much more we’re uncovering and so much yet to uncover, I realize that now.

I’ve had therapy over the years, every good therapist should have a trusted counsellor of their own.  I guess the thing is, I’ve never had anyone I trusted that much.  No-one but John, that is.  And John, for all his strengths and skills, is not a therapist.  He doesn’t know how to peel back the layers of scarring to dig at the rawness beneath.  And no-one else has ever cared enough to, or known how to, uncover the unvarnished Marlena Evans that lives beneath the layers of protection and emotional scar tissue.  Beneath the careful perfection.

I hid her so well beneath all the well-cultivated layers, all the strength and confidence, all the kindness, that I rather forgot that somewhere in there is a young girl who just wants to be loved.  Who had a father who was salt of the earth; a good father but a father who spent too much of his time concerned about what others thought.  A father who worked hard, had high expectations and wasn’t always present, or gracious with his children.  And a mother who lived for her husband, who spent all her free time doing good works and presenting an acceptable face to the community.  I was the good daughter who garnered attention by getting good grades, by never acting out.  I craved attention and love but the love I got was conditional on my behavior.  Sam, Sam was the child that created their headaches, who could never live up to her sister.  Sam resented the approval I won; I resented the attention she got.

If I thought I had dealt with all this when I was younger, I was wrong.  Maybe I did, in one way.  Maybe I recognized it and accepted it.  Maybe I felt guilty for resenting my family, who, while they weren’t perfect, were good people who did their best with the tools they’d been given.

I have better tools, for sure.  I have all the knowledge and training of my chosen profession and yet I still can’t claim to be the perfect wife, or the perfect mother.  So how can I blame them for being a product of their generation, of wars, of the Depression?

The truth is, I don’t blame them.  But I failed to recognize the effect it had on me, the perfectionist drive I inherited from my father, the tendency to revolve around my love, an unwelcome gift from my mother.

Laura suggests that I cede control to the men in my life as I am perpetually trying to curry favor with a father that has been emotionally absent for forty plus years.  And just plain absent for more than twenty.  I don’t know what this says about me.  Nothing good, I imagine.  

I try and deny all these facts as Laura pulls them out of me, thread by thread.  Slowly unweaving the tangled tapestry of who I am.  But they are facts.  And they hurt.  They were good people, and they did their best, but their best damaged me.  Their best damn near destroyed Samantha.  And I let them raise my twins.  My babies.

Am I any better a parent than they are?  I look at Samantha Gene and can only admit, probably not.

And now I am forced to confront that while I had accepted my parents’ imperfections, I have fought to deny my own.  To admit how indelibly their distant and inconsistent love of me has shaped my life and the foolish choices I have made because of it.

I am not a bad person.  I am, by most measures, a good woman, but one who makes terrible choices.  Maybe not even terrible.  Maybe I just characterize them as terrible because I am so good at tearing myself down in private.  Maybe they are, as Laura is so fond of saying, just human mistakes.

But I don’t want to make the same mistakes with Belle and Brady that I made with Carrie, Sami and Eric.  I owe them a better me.  I owe me a better me.  

Maybe I even owe John a better me.

I’ve seen John once since we talked on the phone.

After Bo fell asleep, I lay there horny and frustrated, reliving John’s voice in my ear, telling me he wanted me.  I knew why he asked where I was and what I was wearing.  He wanted to see me.  To imagine me.  Just as I was imagining him in his loft, black silk boxers and nothing else, the phone against his ear.  I could see him, licking his lips, his voice hoarse with longing as he told me how much he wants me.  

I want you so badly it hurts.  I wake in the middle of the night, and I ache to touch you

My heart pounded and I ached for him to touch me too.  Noiselessly, I rucked my nightgown up my thighs and let my fingers creep between my thighs.  I exhaled as I felt my desire coat my fingers and I slid them up inside myself, imagining they were his.  I imagined his lips against my throat, his tongue teasing my nipple and I rubbed myself until I came, hard and fast, with a yelp and a whimper.

I froze as Bo moaned and rolled over and I waited to see if I had disturbed him; but after long, silent minutes punctuated only by his soft breaths, I concluded that he was still sleeping.  Shaking with the force of my orgasm, I slid out of bed and retreated to the bathroom to clean myself up and gather myself together.

I called John from my office on Thursday, ostensibly to suggest that he could pick the children up on Saturday and keep them overnight if he wished.  Although to be honest, it was as much about hearing his voice as it was to offer him time with Belle and Brady.  

The sessions with Laura are starting to have a beneficial effect where my feelings for John are concerned.  That’s not to say I am any less confused about my future.  Laura has been gently trying to prepare me to say goodbye to Bo, but so far, I feel no closer to being able to let him go.

I would say, how crazy, loving one man while trying so hard to hold onto another.  But haven’t I been here before?  Am I doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again?

Every morning I wake up and think, this is the day.  This is the day I will give Bo his freedom, this is the day I will smile sadly and tell him to go and find Hope and live happily ever after with her.  And every night I climb back into my bed, and he is either curled up around me or I am waiting for him to come back, smelling of oil, paperwork and stale donuts.  

There were two nights where he had to work late.  Stakeouts that turned into drug-busts.  Paperwork that needed to be filed before custody limits were exceeded.  Those nights, my bed was profoundly empty without him there.  I lay awake, thoughts chasing through my head.  Thoughts of John followed by thoughts of Bo.  And unexpectedly, memories of Roman.  When I did sleep, the inevitable nightmares found me thrashing under the bedclothes, waking with a start, bathed in sweat and wild-eyed with fear.  I was so thankful when he came home and slipped into bed next to me.  When he wound himself around me and stroked my skin.  I made love to him with a little desire and a lot of desperation.  I don’t want him to go.  I am too scared of what my mind will do to me when I am alone.

I am not in love with him.  I love him, of course.  He is one of my best friends.  He has known me forever and he loves me despite everything.  I don’t deserve his love and his loyalty, but I am grateful for it.  I hate that I am going to hurt him because it seems inevitable at this point.  I am not in love with him.  I am in love with another man, a man who has held my heart in his hands for over a decade.  Whether I will be with John in the future, I don’t know.  But I know I won’t be with Bo.  His future is out there somewhere, wearing a tiara and a name that is not hers.  One day soon, he will go and find her, and he will find his happiness.  At least, I hope he will.

And me?

The phone-call with John was perfectly cordial, discussing mainly the children and maybe the weather and the three-day conference I am due to attend in May when I suggested he could have the children.  Neither of us dared mention our previous late night telephone rendezvous, it was dangerous territory that might lead us into situations we weren’t prepared to defend.

I found myself eagerly awaiting his arrival on Saturday morning and a tremor ran through me as I had opened the door to find myself staring into china-blue eyes.  He smiled with a twinkle in those gorgeous peepers, and he had handed me a paper bag.

“Croissants,” he said with a conspiratorial smile.  “I know how much you like them for breakfast.”

I’d had breakfast a good hour earlier, but I smiled like a besotted teenager and thanked him, a flush rising to my cheeks.  He reached out and curled his hand around my upper arm, stroking it gently down my naked flesh until he reached my hand.  I don’t even know if he was aware he was doing it, but I was.  His skin against mine triggered explosions of want in my body.  I could feel my heartbeat everywhere and my breathing grew shallow as he squeezed my fingers.

Before either of us could say anything, Bo came bounding down the stairs, calling Belle and Brady’s names to tell them their daddy was here.  John dropped my hand and Bo made a show of slinging his arm around my shoulders and greeting John with all the sarcasm he could muster.

Embarrassed, I pulled away from Bo and went to help the children with their shoes and their coats.  Both of them were thrilled to be spending time with their daddy and I found myself looking after them longingly as they stepped into the elevator, Belle in John’s arms.  John caught my gaze as the door closed and the sadness in his eyes made me reach for the doorframe for support.

And Bo?  Bo is Bo.  Impetuous and brash.  He means well, but he lets his jealousy get the better of him.  And he is completely justified.  I am with him in body, but not in spirit and I am sure he knows it.  He should call me on it, he should tell me he deserves more.

He does deserve more.  He’s one of the best, is Bo Brady.  Sometimes I look at him and I fool myself into thinking maybe I am in love with him.  Sometimes when he says it to me, I am tempted to say it back.  Maybe, I think, saying it will make it true.

It didn’t with Roman though, did it?

But then, in the next moment, when I think of John, I know it’s not true.  I know it will never be true.  John is it for me.  Now and always.  Whether or not it’s healthy, it just is.  Whether or not we will ever be together again, I don’t know.  I do know I will never love another man the way I love John Black.

It’s a simple and incontrovertible fact, and one I need to learn to live with.

John

I’ve spent the past week trying (and failing) to stop thinking about Marlena.  

I’ve never wished I had an actual job more than I do right now.  I still have responsibilities in Alamain Industries and The Toscano Foundation, but years ago I hired more than competent staff to manage my affairs and interests in relation to both organizations.  I mean, who has time for business when you’re busy trying to dodge Stefano’s endless attempts at brainwashing.  Or being a (fake?) priest and battling Beelzebub for the soul of the love of your life.  Or saving her from giant cages or secret cellar lairs where she’s been sequestered by a madman or his delusional daughter.

Normally, I’m too busy with just the drama that is my day-to-day life to be bothered with actual work.  I am lucky to be independently wealthy enough to not need to.  But this week, I could have done with it.  Corporate mergers are mind-numbingly boring but at least they might provide a little distraction.  I’d even take a week at the cop-shop over this endless wondering and wanting and longing.  Actually, scrap that, I’d much rather a week at the cop-shop than deal with corporate mergers.  

But I digress.

What I really want, is to be with Marlena.

I ended the phone-call that night because one of us had to.  If I hadn’t, I’m not sure what might have happened.  Phone sex?  Declarations of undying love?  Me, somehow pressuring her, I’m pretty sure, and she doesn’t need that.  She’s made it clear that she needs some space and I have to give it to her.  I have to give her anything she asks for right now.

That’s not to say it was easy.  Damn, it was hard hitting that button.  And I was hard.  Hard with need for her.  To feel her.  To taste her.  To hear her little sighs and moans as I slide my fingers into her sticky-sweet heat.  Jesus, I’m getting hard just thinking about it now.  But that night, it was impossible.  The desire in her sweet, throaty voice was undeniable.  She might be with Bo Brady, but her heart is still mine and her body craves me.  She can lie to Bo, and she can lie to herself, but she can never lie to me.  I know her too well.  I know the tremor in her voice, I know the flush of her skin.  I know the sharp catch in her breathing as her need overcomes her.

She wants me as much as I want her and it’s only a matter of time.

But I don’t want her to give into her physical desires before she’s emotionally ready for it.  Until she can admit in her heart what’s true.  We did that once before and it almost destroyed her.  I won’t hurt her like that again.  If it means I have to stay away completely until she’s ready, then that’s what I’ll do.

But in the meantime, I can’t stop wanting her.  I can’t stop being turned on by the mere thought of her.  I could see her that night.  Sitting in the cool moonlight that poured in through the penthouse windows, long shadows falling across the room, across her beautiful face.  I could see her in that sexy pale blue nightgown, my ice-goddess.  Except she’s not ice, she’s all fire.  She’s hotter than any woman has any right to be.  She’s too hot for the likes of Bo Brady to handle.  Hell, I’ve burnt my hands once or twice before now, trying to contain her fire.

My God, I love her.

I rang off that phone-call and I reached into the folds of my black silk boxers and stroked myself with a practiced palm and fingers and imagined it was her hand wrapped around my dick.  I closed my eyes and lay back on the couch and her face came to me, her sparkling amber eyes, those beautiful, kissable lips.  That incredible throaty laugh.

I came quickly and forcefully with a strangled cry so loud I’d be surprised if my neighbors didn’t hear it.  After I had sorted myself out, I went up to the roof-top to get some fresh air.  As Marlena once pointed out, I get hot after sex.  The truth is, I get hot during sex with her.  I get hot when I think about having sex with her.  She makes me feverish with the need of her, with the feeling of her sweat-damp skin against mine.  The feel of her lips and tongue as she nibbles and sucks the places that sing only for her.  The moist warmth of her breathing against my ear, the eager little moans, the way my name falls from her lips.

I sat on the roof-top and thought of her and soon enough, I was pulling on my cock again.  It’s a scene that has been repeated nightly over the past week and a bit.  I wake in the middle of the night from a dream, and I am hot and twitching and aching for her.  It is frustrating as hell.  

Before, when I was with Isabella, Rebecca, Kristen… I wouldn’t let myself think about her.  At least, my desire for her was kept at bay by the physical relief they offered.  I would convince myself that my desire was for them and not for the one and only woman that haunted my dreams.  For dream of her, I still did.  I told no-one, certainly not them.  Not even Marlena when we finally reunited.  It was my guilty secret.  By day I was partnered with these other women, in my dreams, I was hers and hers alone.

Now I think maybe I should have told her.  Maybe it would have reassured her.  But maybe it would have made it worse.  To acknowledge that I knew all along that I coveted her.  That she was always the only one; and yet, I chose to love these other women in some kind of limited way, for fear of being alone.  For fear of landing on her doorstep in the middle of the night when I was driven to distraction by my desire for her.  For fear of embarrassing myself or her.  For fear of destroying her life all over again.

She called me on Thursday, caught me on the hop.  I’d just come in from a run.  I’m doing a lot of running.  Spending a lot of time at the gym, boxing and lifting weights.  Hoping that the physical exertion will exhaust me into a deep and dreamless sleep.  No such luck.  

She’d been nervous and tentative when she suggested I pick up the children and take them overnight. I was eager and stupidly thankful.  Both for her suggestion and just that she had called me herself.  Our late-night call had pushed me close to the edge, and I suspect, her too, so I was a little worried she’d choose to make contact through Chelsea or one of our friends or family.  But she was sweet, if a little wary on the other end of the line, chatting a little too casually about the weather and then mentioning a conference she is due to attend next month, and do I want to have the children while she’s gone.

When we were done, I went and stood under a cold shower for a good thirty minutes trying to expunge the image of her at her desk, wearing a primrose yellow suit, her skirt riding up those heavenly thighs and those insanely sexy glasses perched on her adorable nose.

The cold shower didn’t work, by the way.  Never does.  At least not when it’s Marlena I’m thinking about.  I brought myself some temporary relief, stroking myself as I imagined bending her over that desk, pushing her skirt up over her amazing ass and fucking the good doctor as her patients waited outside. 

I toweled myself dry and wondered what to do with the rest of the day when there was a knock on the loft door.  

It was Carrie, sporting a pot of chowder from the pub along with a nice bottle of wine.  Grateful for some company and appreciative of her thoughtfulness, I asked her to stay and share the wine and food.  I’m pretty sure that had been her aim as she accepted almost before I was done with the invitation.

She was full of questions, as my sweet, thoughtful Carrie always is.  She wants to understand this situation, how we got here and whether there is any chance of mending what is broken.  I told her I thought… I hoped it could be fixed, but that it would take time.  Marlena has taken a lot of hits over the years.  More than any one woman should be asked to withstand, and she needs some time and some safe, quiet spaces to heal.  She needs her family; she needs her children to support her.

Carrie is clear that she thinks Marlena belongs with me.  She was apologetic if it seemed like she was supporting Marlena’s choice to stay with Bo.  I told her I understood, and I was grateful she is supporting her stepmother, whatever it looks like to anyone else.

My darling, sensitive girl cried then.  She’s tired.  Tired of the drama in her family.  Tired of seeing the people she loves hurting.  Tired of being hurt herself.  Tired of losing the people she loves.  She just wants everyone to be happy.  What kid doesn’t want their parents to be happy?  Not that she’s a kid anymore but underneath it all, she’s still my little girl.  My princess, putting on a brave face while her heart breaks.  So much like her mother.  Her real mother, not her biological mother.  You could hardly call Anna DiMera a mother, in most senses of the word.

At some point in the week, I forget when, I stopped in at the pub to see the family.  Really, I wanted to speak to Caroline, to see if I could persuade her to soften in regards to Marlena.  I don’t know what happened between them, but I gather it wasn’t good.

But Caroline had been stubborn.  Protective of her youngest son and insistent that Marlena is being deliberately obtuse and careless with Bo’s feelings.  I tried to be gentle, understanding the defensiveness of a parent seeing their child about to be emotionally destroyed, but I was as insistent as she was that Marlena is being none of those things.  Marlena is just trying to stay afloat and much of the wreckage around her is my fault.  

I reminded Caroline of what had happened the last time the family had turned their backs on Marlena.  How we had almost lost her in the worst way imaginable and while that was not likely to ever happen again, Marlena is fragile right now and needs all the love and support she can get.  And that, while Caroline is Bo’s biological mother, she has been a mother to both Marlena and me for many years now, and that we count on her love and support more than she can ever know.

She looked thoughtful at that and a little embarrassed and she stared to speak, but in his usual ill-timed manner, Bo flung the front door of the pub open and come striding in, all antagonism and bravado.

We glared at each other across the pub, and I could feel my anger rising and my hand itching to curl into a fist.  But I have given Marlena a promise.  I will accept her and Bo, for the time-being, while she works through whatever it is that she needs to work through.  And that means putting up with Bo and all his egotistic bluster and immature needling.   I know that it’s me that Marlena loves, and Bo Brady knows it too.  That’s why he’s insecure and wants to remind me at every turn that he’s the one in Marlena’s bed now.

For now.  But not for long, sucker.

I wonder if he knows about our little late-night interlude.  Part of me wanted to mention it, to wipe the smirk off his ridiculous face.  But for Marlena’s sake I remained silent.  Let him parade around like a vain cockerel.  I can be patient because I know I’m her endgame.  I know that woman’s heart and soul like I know the back of my hand.  Bo doesn’t have the first clue how her mind works.  Roman didn’t either.  

Caroline greeted Bo but he ignored her, disappearing to the back of the pub in search of, I don’t know what.  She looked hurt, and I took the opportunity to suggest, once again, that she change her tack on dealing with Marlena and the idea of Marlena and Bo together.  Reminding her that Bo is a grown man and making his own choices, even if they do fly in the face of all sensible advice and reasoning.

Her mouth set into a thin line, the way it does when she is annoyed because she knows she is in the wrong and she doesn’t want to admit it.  I left her with those thoughts, giving her a hug and a kiss on her carrot-colored head.  

I didn’t see Bo again until Saturday when I went to Marlena’s to pick up the kids.

She opened the door looking sexy as fuck in a pair of blue jeans and a white t-shirt that pulled tight across those incredible breasts of hers.  I could tell immediately that she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath the simple white cotton, and I could see the outline of her nipples.  I wondered if it was for my benefit and felt my cock twitch in response.

She smiled, those beautiful hazel eyes twinkling as she held the door open and let me step over the thresh-hold.  I’d stopped and picked up some croissants on my way over because although I know she’d probably already had breakfast, I wanted to remind her that I know her.  I know everything about her.  Even though our actual time as a couple has been limited, we have still been best friends for forever and most of the time I don’t even have to think about it to know how she’s feeling or what is in her head.

She took them with a smile that lit up her gorgeous face and I couldn’t help myself.  I had to touch her.  I stroked my fingers down her arm and I’m pretty sure my heart was thumping in time with hers.  Her cheeks flushed and time slowed down as my fingers navigated the crook of her elbow and skimmed her forearm.  Every second was deliberate.  I could have lived inside that moment forever.

I was transfixed by the play of emotions across her face as I touched her.  I tried not to let mine show.  Tried to play it casual so that she might wonder if I was even aware of what I was doing.

Oh, I was aware.  I was there, present in every millisecond my skin was in contact with hers.  I have never wanted her more in my life.  I have never loved her more, my sweet, fierce, fiery forever love.

I finally found her fingers, silently squeezing them with my own.  I thought she might say something, she looked poised to, and then Bo fucking Brady interrupted us.  Calling to the children from the top of the stairs and then galumphing down them with his size twelves to insert himself into our transcendent moment, crashing through the threads of magic that had woven around us as we had touched.

Ignoring what was quite clearly going on in front of him, he threw his arm possessively around Marlena’s shoulders and had grinned like the big fucking idiotic clown he is.  His voice dripped sarcasm as he greeted me and said he hoped I’d have a nice visit with the children.  And that he and Marlena were looking forward to some down-time.  Just them.

Fucking asshole.

Marlena, bless her, looked mortified and went to help the children with their shoes as they hit the landing, after noisily tripping down the stairs, looking all for the world like they were going to tumble over each other like Jack and Jill.

I ignored Bo pointedly, watching Marlena as she gathered the children together, kissing each of them as she entreated them to be good for their daddy.  She sent them over in my direction, avoiding my eyes as she stood and thrust her hands in her pockets.  I ruffled Brady’s hair and picked up Belle, nuzzling her sweet little face.  It was so good to see my babies again.  I told them to say goodbye to their Momma and left the apartment without catching her eyes again.

But when I reached the elevator, Belle on my hip, her little arms tight around my neck, I turned back.

She stood in the doorway, a shaky smile on her face, but the sadness in her eyes was almost unbearable.  

I want to fix her.  I want to gather up all the broken pieces of the girl I love and painstakingly fit them back together, sealing them with kisses and reassurance and a gentle, permanent love.  I want to rebuild us and center her in that temple; to bring her flowers and sunshine that will heal her soul.  I want to kiss the tears from her eyes and replace her sorrow and her pain with joy.  I want to be everything she needs me to be, and more. 

Bo

I know I’ve lost her.  I can feel it a little more every day.  She has shut me out.  Maybe she thinks this way she’ll hurt me less when she ends it, but it hurts a little more moment by moment.  I don’t know what she’s thinking.  I can guess but she tells me nothing and reveals even less in her actions.

Sometimes I catch her looking at me and I can see her, trying to figure out what to say to send me on my way.  To let me go, graciously.  

I’m not gracious.  I’m a fucking putz is what I am.

That night that she slunk away to call John Black in the middle of the night… I felt her next to me when she came back to bed.  Felt her fingering herself.  Heard her ragged breathing.  Felt her tense and shudder right next to me as she came with a muffled whimper as she imagined John fucking Black touching her.  John Black fucking her.

Despite knowing she was fantasizing about John; I was still horny as fuck knowing that she was touching herself like that.  As she quietly orgasmed, I couldn’t help the groan that escaped me, and I rolled over in hopes that she would think I was still sleeping.  I didn’t want to embarrass her. I didn’t want to embarrass myself.

She froze and waited as I lay there, trying to make my breathing low and regular.  So stupid.  I should have just been honest.  Told her I know she’s in love with John and that she should go and fucking be with him because they obviously belong together.

But I didn’t.  

I have a newfound empathy for Roman.  Poor bastard.  How humiliating to come home and find his wife hot and horny for another man.  She thinks she hides it.  But the look that comes over her face at the sound of his voice says it all.

The worst of it is that John Black is genuinely a Good Guy^TM.  With all the capital G’s.  In the early days after his return, Roman did his best to convince himself, and us, that John was a menace.  A deep undercover killer just waiting for a trigger before he unleashed his special brand of hell on us all.  It was easier for Roman to deal with than the truth.  That John really was… is… Mr. Perfect.  A white knight, just waiting for an excuse to come in and rescue his lady love.

He got that when Stella Lombard imprisoned Marlena in that warehouse.  Roman, jealous and pig-headed had been convinced that Marlena had abandoned him and her children.  Because… why?  Because he couldn’t accept her independence?  Her absolutely razor-sharp intellect and the fact that she was… is… incredible at what she does.  Roman lost seven years of his life but came back even more of a dinosaur than he was when Stefano took him prisoner.  And Marlena wasn’t willing to put up with it anymore.  And why should she?

Especially when she had Mr. Wonderful waiting in the wings.

Roman couldn’t accept what was staring him in the face, so in a vain effort to try and hold onto her, to corral his family into something that was solely his (instead of graciously sharing it with the man that had taken care of his children for seven years) he became overbearing and controlling and he said things he never should have said.  He all but drove her into John’s arms.

And I feel so damn sorry for him because even if he hadn’t been that condescending ass he became, he still would have lost her.  And she was it for him.  There never was anyone else and had he lived, there never would have been.  That guy that came here wearing his face and bearing his memories sure as hell hadn’t gotten over her.  The real Roman never would have moved on.  I know that for sure now.

I’m not Roman.  I can see what’s staring me in the face.  I’m not demeaning her or trying to control her.  I’m not even really actively trying to hold onto her.  I just don’t quite know how to let her go.  How to say goodbye.

Do I blame her?  

Kim asked me that.  Not in the slightest, was my answer.  I thought about it afterwards and if I’m really fucking honest, part of me is angry at her.  Although I am not sure why.  She’s not leading me on.  She’s made it perfectly clear that she doesn’t feel the same way about me that I feel about her.  I’ve given her every opportunity to tell me she feels something for me.  Anything.

The most she can offer is that she cares for me.  Fucking cares for me.  A great deal.  Or something to that effect.

And me, the chump that I am, hoovers up the crumbs she drops me and pants for more.  

But is that her fault?

Maybe.  Maybe not. I mean, I am a grown man.  I am capable of saying, enough.  I am capable of saying I deserve more than this.  I deserve to be loved.

And yet I come home after a long shift, after working late on paperwork or a stake-out and she stretches against me, warm and pliant.  She whispers her desire against my ear, her lips soft against my stubble-rough skin.  And I convince myself that it is really me she wants because it is my name she whispers as she wraps herself around me and convulses, pulling me back into the whirlwind that is her need, her pain and her tumultuous emotional wreckage.

I know it’s a lie, but I tell myself that it’s true because what other choice do I have?

I saw Kim when I went to the pub at the end of last week.  I went to see Shane.  He wanted to tell me that they have a lead on Hope.  Gina.  Whomever she thinks she is.  Gina, Greta and Lilli Faversham.  Slinking around Europe, trying to evade notice.

The ISA think they know where she is.  Or at least, where the three of them have just been.  Shane is getting prepared to fly back to Europe.  To Nice, specifically.  I went to the pub because he called me, and John was there.  

Because of course John was there.  Asshole.

I walked in and he gave me death daggers across the room.  He was talking to my Mom.   He’s probably the reason why she was so unreasonable last week with Marlena.  I should have known.  I gave him a mutinous glare back and ignored Ma as she tried to engage.  But I made it clear last time.  While she continues to give Marlena the cold shoulder, I’m not interested.   Marlena isn’t perfect but she doesn’t deserve to be vilified like Mom seems to think.  She needs love, she needs support.  And if Mom and the rest of the family can’t or won’t give it, then it’s down to me.  

Stupid really that Ma can’t see that.  I think Kimmy and Carrie do.  I have to be there for her.  She needs her friends.  She needs her family.  And we’re her family.  Without us, what does she have?  And yes, I know that’s fucked up.  I’m her brother AND her lover.  But hey, it’s Salem.  We do incestuous fucked-up family relationships.

When Shane was done, Kim cornered me and asked what was going on and how I was doing.  What could I say?   It’s too complicated.  I tried to shrug her off, but she wasn’t having any of it.  She’s worried about Marlena and about me and who can blame her?  I’m guessing she’s worried about John too, but she wouldn’t admit that to me.

I told her that Marlena is seeing Laura for therapy and that I’m doing just fine.  Just being here for Marlena.  Except that I’m not really fine, am I?  I’m all in pieces over this and I’m not even sure why. 

Kim thinks I’m using my feelings for Marlena to avoid making a decision about Hope.  Fair call, I guess.  While I’m avoiding the end of this thing with Marlena, I’m also actively avoiding the situation with Hope.  While there’s potentially something with Marlena, then I don’t have to face that there might never be anything with Hope again.

But that suggests that my feelings for Hope are bigger, deeper and more permanent than my feelings for Marlena.  And they are.  I’m sure they are.   But Marlena is here, and she is now, and she is… she is so much more than I ever expected.

Kimmy is… she just wants everyone to be happy.  Which, let’s face it, is a bit of an impossibility right now.  She means well but it’s just pressure I don’t need.  She’s all full of those shoulds.  Bo, you should think about Hope.  You should let Marlena work out what it is she really wants.  Don’t you think you should maybe let Marlena go before you get really hurt?

Maybe Kimberly should focus on whatever it is going on with her and Shane because he’s been here a lot longer than he should have been, as far as I can tell, and there’s only one reason that would be and it’s not me and it’s not Marlena.  It’s not even John Black.  

I left the pub, not knowing what to do next.  Shane’s news and the conversation with Kim had bewildered me, and I wandered through the square, lost in thought.   Until I saw Laura Horton heading toward me.  Being already all about face thanks to Kimberly’s cross-examination, I turned to avoid her.  The last thing I needed was someone else telling me that I was chasing an impossible dream by pursuing this thing with Marlena.  I already know it, everybody else pointing it out is getting goddamn tiring.

But she saw me before I could evade her and next thing I knew, she was in front of me, that damned irritating smile on her face, asking how things were going with Marlena.

Exasperated, I told her that she probably knew better than me since Marlena wasn’t really telling me all that much these days.  However, she was still fucking me, which was better than nothing.

Laura didn’t turn a hair.  I have to credit her for her composure, to be honest.  I guess that’s one of the things they get trained in, shrinks.  How not to give away any kind of emotional response.  Marlena is certainly fucking expert in it.

Jesus.  I really need to pull myself together.

Laura did her best to talk me down.  She suggested that we go and get a coffee and talk, but I didn’t want to talk.  At least, I didn’t want to talk with her.  There was only one woman I want the truth from.  Although do I really want the truth?  If I really wanted the truth, wouldn’t I push for it?  As long as we don’t talk, I can fool myself that she might suddenly realize she has feelings for me.  As long as we don’t talk, she can’t say the words I don’t want to hear.  Goodbye Bo.  I care for you, but I’m not in love with you.  

Because if she says that, then I have to go and find Hope.  And while I’m less certain of the words Hope would say to me, my fear is that they would be much the same.  And then what would I have left?

So, does that make me pathetic?  Afraid to be alone?  I should respect myself more, right?  I should have more self-respect than this.  But seriously, would you walk away from a woman like Marlena?  Would you?

Well, even if you could, I can’t.  Not gonna apologize for that.  So that night, I went back to the penthouse and made love to her.  Fucked her twelve ways ‘til Sunday.  Well, ‘til Saturday, really, when John came to collect the kids.  

Heard the knock on the door and came to the landing to see him touching her.  His hands were all over her and she wasn’t telling him to stay away.  She was staring at him like she was a drowning woman, and he was a life preserver just out of reach.  And he was looking at her like he wanted to devour her whole.

Fuck this.  Fuck him.  

She’s mine.  

At least, she is, right now.  I’m here with her.  I’m the one that she invites into her bed at night.  I’m the one that kisses those incredible lips, I’m the one that cups those fucking amazing breasts in my hands and sucks on them until she moans my name.  Her hands are in my hair.  Her legs wrap around my hips.  She’s mine.

I bounded down the stairs and pulled her into my embrace, grinning stupidly while I challenged John to do something foolish that would make Marlena resent him.

But that didn’t happen.  Instead, she went to help the children get ready while John glowered at me, his fist clenching.  But instead of hitting me, he pulled Belle into his arms and guided Brady towards the door.  

I didn’t follow them, I left them to it and turned back to the living room.  When she eventually closed the door, Marlena went to the stairs.  She looked at me for a brief moment and then, shaking her head, she climbed the steps and retreated to the bedroom, leaving me alone to contemplate my own stupidity.

Laura

It’s been an intense week with so many sessions with Marlena.

I am tired but I think we’ve done some good work and she appears to be more stable.  She seems to have her panic attacks under control, and she’s been more willing to open up to me about her family and her feelings about them.

In that first follow-up session, she told me she’d talked to John on the phone as I’d tasked.  She was coy about how and when, but I eventually drew it out of her.  She’d called him in the middle of the night.  It makes me laugh how uncontrolled and impulsive the perfect Dr. Evans is when she’s under pressure.  I gather there had been some intense flirtation.  If you can call what they do, flirtation.  I’ve never seen two people with more chemistry than the two of them.  The intensity when they are focused on each other is overwhelming.  

I think the outside world stops spinning for them when they’re like that.  If it’s intense for those around them, what must it be like to be them, I wonder?  I can’t say I’m not a little jealous.  Marlena is quite insistent that it’s not healthy, the dependence they have on each other and part of me can see what she means.  But the bigger part of me… I mean, who the heck wouldn’t want that?  To have a man look at you the way John looks at her?  Like all his Christmases have come at once.  I mean, he looks at her like that every time she walks in the room.  Like she’s a seven-course banquet and he’s a starving man.

While the idea of soulmates is decidedly unscientific, the romantic in me can’t help but want it to be true.  That for all of us, maybe there is that one person that is the other half of a whole ‘us’.  And if I look at John and Marlena, they provide overwhelming evidence in the positive for that theory.  I have never seen two people who were meant to be together more than the two of them.  They’ve had to traverse unimaginable hurdles to find each other and then fight their way back to each other, again and again.  No matter what life, good and evil has thrown at them.

I would never say this to Marlena, but I refuse to let Bo Brady and Hope Williams, of all people, be the thing that finally comes between them.

Not on my watch.  Absolutely not on my watch, my friend.

Unprofessional, but there you have it.  I happen to think Marlena’s best interests are served by being with John and I am going to do everything I can to make sure that’s where she ends up.  I don’t think John is at all the careless womanizer she seems to have invented in her head.  I absolutely understand why she’s done it, but he’s not that man.  Having talked to him on the phone when he called me, so concerned after she’d broken down at the loft, I am more sure than ever that John knows exactly what he is on the verge of losing and how distraught he is at the thought he has hurt her so much.  Honestly, I think Marlena’s trust issues extend far beyond John and he is just the most immediate threat to the fragile grasp she has on her emotional wellbeing.

It turns out that contrary to the picture Marlena usually paints of her family, her parents aren’t quite the glowing paragons of virtue she might wish to picture them as.  I had wondered.  In all the time I have known her, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times they have visited her in Salem.  She has been back to Colorado, of course but her visits are fleeting, and she keeps her discussion of her parents to a minimum.  What she has shared in session has been revealing and explains much about why she is like she is.  Constantly trying to win the approval of those around her.  A perfectionist in every sense of the word, wearing her perfection like armor to shield her from the disapproval of a privately demanding, critical father and a mother who would rather take her husband’s side than that of her daughters.

She, of course, loves her parents and feels guilty when she suggests that they were perhaps not good parents.  People can be good people but still be lacking when it comes to their ability to be competent parents.  I am sure that the Evans’ are good people but quite honestly, from what I have been able to draw out of Marlena, they were shitty parents.  It’s no wonder Sami is such a mess.   Marlena herself is strong and has been able to rationalize her parents’ treatment of her but she largely fails to see the damage it did to the child she was, and the resulting scars she’s borne into adulthood.  She’s starting to get it, but we still have a lot of work to do.  And that’s before we even get to John.

She was exceptionally relieved to learn from John that nothing had happened between him and Hope.  I was relieved too.  Not because I thought he would, in a million years, knowingly hurt Marlena by sleeping with one of her best friends, but because it’s always hard to know what might happen when Stefano DiMera is involved.  What he might make people do, either through manipulation, threats or blackmail.  Or indeed, mind control it now seems.

Anyway, it seems like that assumption on Marlena’s part was, thankfully, incorrect.  That fact has helped put our session on Sunday into some context and she seems to be more amenable to my suggestions that she should question her interpretations of John’s behavior.  I am sure, and I say so, that they are being shaped by decades-old wounds that have travelled through the years with her.  Not only that, but they have gathered further scar-tissue thanks to the blows dealt by ex-husbands, murderous acquaintances and obsessive madmen.  Sometimes I am astounded that she has held up as well as she has under the immense amount of drama that has swirled around her and her family.

The only thing I haven’t been able to do thus far is get her closer to the idea that she needs to free herself of this entanglement with Bo.  She needs to do that so that she can concentrate on doing the hard work that will bring her to a place where she can see her future with John in it once again.  But when I try to broach the subject, however subtly, she closes me down with a ‘not now’ or a ‘not yet, Laura’.  She is expert at shifting the focus of a conversation and every time we get close to talking about Bo, she finds a way to divert me.  If I really felt the need to push it, I would.  But I am not sure she is ready yet.  In fact, I am quite convinced that she is not.  

She thinks she is doing much better, and she has even suggested that we reduce our sessions to once a week.  I am equally adamant that she is deluding herself and in actuality her fragility is still bubbling beneath that very beautiful and perfect exterior.  She is, in short, out-Marlena-ing herself.  

It wouldn’t take much to pierce this delicate shell of recovery that she has started to craft around herself and for all Bo’s faults, he will be there to catch her if she does fall.  Because he does love her, that much is clear to me.  

I ran into him in the square over the weekend.  He was coming from the pub, I gather.  He was lost in thought, and I caught him before he could make a clumsy escape.

I hadn’t talked to him since he’d called me that same day John had called me.  Confused, upset and desperate for advice on how to help her.  How to handle her.  He had mentioned the panic attack Mike had been privy to, and the subsequent one at John’s loft right before he called me.  He also mentioned that she had been ‘out-of-it’ the previous evening after the confrontation in the pub.  When I asked what he meant by out of it, he said she was acting out of character, out of control.  I don’t know that he knew about the drugs, but I think he suspected.  He didn’t say as much but I took that impression from the conversation and it’s what prompted me to remind Marlena of my own indiscretions when it came to over-medicating.

So, when I appeared in front of him in the square, I asked him how things were with Marlena.  He, in return, curtly told me that I probably knew better than he did since she was barely telling him anything.  But at least, he said cuttingly, she was still fucking him, so there was that.  

Well of course she’s still fucking you Bo, I wanted to tell him.  Talking means she has to think about it, fucking you means she doesn’t.  That’s the whole reason she’s with you; she’s trying to fuck away her pain.  But it’s not working and sooner or later she’s going to realize that.  And when she does…

I didn’t say any of that though.  He is already hurting; it’s written all over his face.  He’s fallen in love with the one woman who’s heart he can absolutely never have, his family is tearing itself apart over it and he is stuck in the middle, powerless to do anything but walk away.  But walking away is the one thing he can’t bring himself to do.

Well, it’s Marlena, isn’t it?  I mean, look at her.  I don’t lean that way obviously, but objectively speaking, she’s a stunner.  And not just in her looks.  She is genuinely one of the best people I know.  She’s fiercely intelligent, she’s an incredible doctor and she cares about the people around her to a fault.  She might be a little too serious at times but she’s wickedly funny when she wants to be.  If I was a guy, I would totally fall for her.

So, in summation, Bo is screwed, and I really feel for him.  I told him we should go and get coffee and talk.  Maybe I could help him make some sense of his feelings.  He said thanks, but no thanks.  I should stick to helping Marlena, it would probably create a conflict of interest if he talked to me too, he said.  He had people to talk to.  And anyway, he was doing just fine.  Thanks.

He’s lying to himself almost as much as Marlena is.  They make quite a pair.  Which is why it’s worked for them so far.  Although has it really?  I don’t think it has.  They’re both more screwed up now than they were before they went into this ill-advised relationship.  

What an absolute mess.

Carrie knows it’s a mess too.  She has been over to see Mike several times this last week.  She is less concerned about a conflict of interest as she seeks my advice on how to best support her stepmother and John.  And Bo, because he is her uncle, and she loves him.  But she also knows he is heading for heartache.  She fears they all are.  

She tells me she went to see John at his loft last Thursday.   She thinks he is lonely and lost without Marlena.  He tries to hide it, she said, but she can see how hard this is on him.  How guilty he feels for hurting Marlena.  

She asks me how Marlena is.  None of them, she says, have seen or heard anything of her.  She has taken the blows of John’s return and the family’s reactions and she has gone into hiding.  Carrie has told me more detail about that night at the pub.  The night John returned and the confrontation at the pub.  She has also told me what she has heard about the argument the following day between Caroline and Marlena and Bo’s reaction.  

She is, she says, treading on eggshells.  Marlena won’t take her calls.  Caroline will not discuss the situation with anyone, much less reconsider her ultimatum.  Eric has gone silent and moody and is spending as little time around his family as possible.  Sami is predictably gleeful about the situation and using it to her advantage to antagonize select members of her family as she sees fit.  Nothing changes there then.

Carrie has an ally in Kim but that is of little comfort given that their planned intervention with Marlena blew up so spectacularly in their faces.  I reassure Carrie that their intentions were sound and that it might have worked, had John not so poorly timed his return and had Vivian Alamain not so maliciously interceded, slashing through a delicately poised web of complex and messy relationships.

When I asked Marlena in our latest session if she’s seen any of her family, she skipped right over the question, talking about long workdays, making up the time for these sessions and spending time with the ‘babies’.  Like that somehow explains why she won’t even pick up her phone for her older children.  The ones that can ask her difficult questions and quite rightly expect an answer.

When I pressed her, she blushed a delicate shade of rose and admitted she was avoiding them.  Carrie in particular, as it had been Carrie that had walked in on them in the penthouse and she’s too embarrassed and ashamed to have that conversation.  She doesn’t think she can take Carrie’s disapproval on top of everything else.

When I asked why she thought Carrie would be disapproving, she hedged again.  Said she didn’t want to talk about it.  Carrie’s friendship with Mike and … well…  She couldn’t say it, at least not explicitly, but I gather she thinks Carrie caught her and Bo in sexual congress.  You would think she’d learnt her lesson after the Titan conference room debacle but apparently that woman’s sexual appetite starves her brain of oxygen from time to time and she doesn’t take appropriate precautions.

Oh my god, I hope she does take those kinds of appropriate precautions.  The last thing we need is a mini-Bo popping out screwing everything up even more than it already is.  I should ask her.  Would she consider that an interference too far?  Oh hell, screw it if she does.  I mean, I am sure she has already considered the possibility and has taken appropriate steps, but it won’t hurt to check.

But getting back to Carrie.  I gently alluded to this in one of our conversations and she blushed and said it wasn’t a problem.  She didn’t really want to talk about it, but she didn’t want Marlena to feel bad. She and Kim and talked and she thinks she understands why Marlena is doing what she’s doing but that she (Carrie) is one hundred and ten percent sure Marlena doesn’t love Bo and she’s just being avoid-y.  (That’s how she termed it, I quite like it as a description, I’m going to try it out on Marlena the next time she tries to evade one of my more probing questions.)

That is what they were hoping to achieve, she says, by staging the intervention.  If Marlena needs someone to lean on, someone she can trust not to turn on her when things get difficult then she needs to know Bo is not the only option.  But that all backfired when Caroline saw her son’s face covered in bruises.  When she saw John walk in the door, grim and desperate.  When she saw Marlena, caught between her sons, in love with one but not able to trust him and unwilling (or unable) to set the other free.  

Carrie thinks, quite rightly, that Marlena loves John and she’s going to be drawn back to him, like a moth to a flame.  She sees Bo being hurt, Marlena feeling guilty, John hating himself for hurting her and hurting Bo and the whole ridiculous cycle will start once more.  She’s not sure Marlena would make it through that again.  I think she’s right to be worried.  She’s perceptive, she understands people, understands what makes them tick.  She loves Marlena and she loves John.  They are the parents she would choose if she had to.  She wants them to be happy.  Don’t we all?  (Well, most of us).

That is why she asks me what she can do.  How can she convince Marlena, she will not judge her, will not turn on her if she won’t even take her calls?  I tell Carrie she should force the issue.  Go to the penthouse.  Go to Marlena’s office.  Refuse to leave until Marlena hears her out.  Marlena will not choose to address any of this of her own accord.  Not yet.  But she won’t shut the door on her children, of that, I am sure.

Go see her, I tell Carrie.  Tell her what you’ve told me.  Tell her how much you love her and that you see her pain and her mistakes and her avoid-y-ness and you love her anyway.  Just tell her you love her, no matter what she does.  She doesn’t need to earn your approval.  She has it, always, no matter what.

Carrie

I’m so worried about Marlena.  I’m worried about John too but at least he’s talking to me.  I went to see him last week and we shared some wine and some chowder while we talked about this situation.  I felt awful after the altercation in the pub last week.  I was worried he thought I wanted Marlena with Uncle Bo like Sami obviously does.  

Sami only wants that because it hurts John.  I had thought after everything she’s just been through that she might have grown up a little.  For a split second, when we were staying with Marlena, I thought saw the pre-affair old Sami but since the news broke about Mom and Uncle Bo, she’s reverted to the more recent diabolical old Sami.  

Sami is such a pain in the ass and I’m pretty sure that deep down she doesn’t want this.  I’m pretty sure she’s confused and hurting.  I have to admit, I’m still kinda angry at Marlena too, for doing this to us.  I know I shouldn’t be.  I understand why on a rational level.  But still.  It’s messed everything up.  Sami, Granma, John, Bo.  Everyone is hurting.

I’ve been spending quite a lot of time with Mike.  Marlena disapproves of this, of course.  At least she did when she was still willing to talk to me.  I can’t help but think it makes her a bit of a hypocrite.  But Aunt Kim says she just doesn’t want me to make the same mistakes she’s made.  I guess I can accept that.  Except she’s still making them.

Austin is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.  Sami has him wrapped around her little finger and he’s never there when I need him.  Even when he is, he doesn’t have any useful advice.  Mike is supportive and tries to help me see things from differing points of view.  And Laura has been amazing.  I know she’s seeing Marlena.  She hasn’t come right out and said it, but I know that’s why Marlena needed me to have Belle and Brady the Sunday before last.

I’m glad she’s getting some help.  She obviously needs it.  I’ve never seen her like this before, not even when Dad left.  Back then, to be sure, she was held together with coffee, Belle’s kisses and John’s friendship.  Now?   Now, she still has the first two, but John has broken her heart.  Not purposefully, I believe him when he says, that but she is heartbroken, nonetheless.  He was her bedrock and losing him has decimated her.

I asked John how I could help.  He wants to fix things; he is devastated that he has hurt her so much.  He hates that she is with Uncle Bo.  He didn’t say much when I asked him how it made him feel but I know him pretty well and the scowl on his face said it all.  He tried to hide it, tried to wave it away but he hates it, for sure, and I’m pretty sure he hates Bo for being with Marlena.  

I tried to tell him that Bo is hurting too, that maybe they’ve just held each other together through this disaster.  That maybe Bo was familiar and safe and at least with him, we knew she was safe, right?  Bo has been there for her.  Bo has at least, kept her intact.

Kind of.

John said he knew all that.  It was a grudging admission.  It has to hurt that Bo could do something for her that he couldn’t.  That he still can’t.

He did tell me that he was grateful that I was supporting her and if it looked like I was all for her and Bo, he could live with it.  If it meant that Marlena had places she could turn.  People she could trust.

That made me cry.  She doesn’t trust me, does she?  If she did, she’d take my calls.  I know she’s embarrassed.  Heck, I’m embarrassed.  What I saw that night is still emblazoned on my memory.  I mean, you don’t want to think about your parents having sex, right?  So, imagine walking in on your mom giving your uncle a blowjob.  I think I might need therapy when all this is over, just to deal with that delightful image.  I mean, it was horrifying.  Even Sami, when she finally managed to get it out of me, looked suitably nauseous.  I know I shouldn’t have told her but honestly, I had to tell someone, it was eating a hole inside me and of everyone, I knew she would understand.   But it was a stupid thing to do, and it just made Sami even worse.

Anyway, John was so sweet.  He always is though, isn’t he?  He’s as much a father to me as Dad ever was.  Sometimes I wish he really was still my father.  He’s a better father than Roman was.  He wiped away my tears and told me that it was okay and that it wasn’t my responsibility to fix Marlena or them.  They are adults, he reminded me and while I was an adult too now, I couldn’t take it all on myself.  Marlena is a psychiatrist and if she can’t get things together, and say and do the right things, what the hell hope do the rest of us have?

He said it with a smile to make me feel better but he’s right.  Marlena should know better but as Laura keeps reminding me, she’s only human and she’s been through things that would destroy most other people.  And she keeps on smiling and burying her own pain and being there for everyone else.

I love her so much.  I just wish I knew what to do to help her.

Well, I guess I do.  I know what to try, anyway.  Laura told me.  I need to go and see her.  Insist that she hears me out.  Laura promises me that she’ll be there as a safety net if anything goes wrong.  After I’ve seen Marlena, I can call her, and she will follow up and make sure Marlena is okay.  That way I can say what is in my heart without worrying that I’ll say it wrong.

I’ve decided I’ll do it later today.  After work, I’m going to go over to the penthouse and I’m not going to leave until she hears what I have to say.

Kimberly

I can’t work out whether I am deliriously happy, incredibly frustrated or just plain sad.  Maybe I am a bit of all the forementioned.

Shane I are… well I’m not entirely sure what we are but I do know we are growing closer.  It’s tentative but I see him light up when I enter the room and I do the same when he is around.  I never stopped loving him.  He is my Oh-Tee-Pee as the kids say.  I don’t know if there is any future in this but he is single, and I am single so we are just going to go slow and see where things take us.

Except that now he needs to hop on a plane and fly to the south of France to try and track down Hope (or apparently Princess Gina von Amberg, as she thinks she is).  He asked me to go with him, but I really don’t feel like I can leave Salem with the family in the shambles it is.  Carrie and Eric need some support.  And Bo needs a voice of reason, one that will keep reminding him that Hope is his life and the other half of his OTP.  That loving Marlena will only ever lead to misery.  I keep telling him and I know he’s getting sick of hearing it but until he really hears it, what else can I do?

I love my little brother but honestly, he is one stubborn lunkhead.  He knows this whole thing is futile.  He knows Marlena will eventually come to her senses and go back to John.  He knows he’ll get his heart broken.  He knows he’s being pitiful.  Where’s your self-respect, I ask him angrily, trying to get him to fight back.  I figure if I can raise some anger in him, some kind of heated response, that he might realize that he can’t justify this ongoing madness.  That he’ll realize that his anger is misplaced.

But all that happens is he tells me he knows I’m right but that he can’t leave.  She needs him and he loves her, he says.  I try and tell him he’s not helping her; he’s just prolonging her agony and he tells me Laura has told him the same and yet he’s still there.  It’s excruciating, watching this, like a slow-motion trainwreck.

I try to talk to Momma, and she won’t engage.  Tells me it’s no good, she has made up her mind.  Marlena and Bo have made their choice and she won’t back down from her ultimatum.  I warn her she is going to lose her son and her lips thin and says then she’ll have one more thing to be angry at Marlena for.

And Marlena?  Marlena has gone into hiding.  Marlena won’t take my calls.  Won’t take Carrie’s calls.   Carrie’s seen John and I stopped by the loft over the weekend, but he wasn’t home.  I contemplated waiting for him or leaving a note, but I would rather see him in person.  

I still think of him as my brother, even after all these years and my heart is breaking for him.  I know how much he loves Marlena.  I know that even though this isn’t his fault, wasn’t his choice, he’ll still be feeling guilty.  He’ll still be trying to work out how to actively put everything right.

I want to tell him he can’t fix this.  He can’t put the pieces back and expect everything to look the same as it did before.  

This has exposed all the hairline cracks in their relationship, in our family’s interwoven dependencies and it has forced fractures along many of those lines.  Rather than fix this, he needs to build something new.  We all do.  We need to re-evaluate the way we relate to each other, the way we co-exist as a family.  We need to put the ghost of Roman Brady to rest, we need to accept John and Marlena (and Bo and Hope) for who they are and not who we want them to be.

And we need to all give each other a little more grace.  We need to stop judging and start loving each other better.

John needs to figure out what it is Marlena needs (although, good luck there my friend when she won’t even talk to any of us!) and then work out how to be that or give that to her.  And Marlena?  Well, I won’t even start to pretend to know what’s going on in Marlena’s head.  

Carrie says she’s getting therapy from Laura which is literally the best news I’ve heard all week, but I don’t think it’s going to be a quick fix.  John will have to be patient.  As will the rest of us.  

The problem is, Marlena is the glue that holds us all together.  She’s not a Brady by birth, but by God, she’s a Brady in every way that counts.  She is the best of us and along with Ma and Pa, she keeps us from scattering in the wind.  If she’s gone for too long, I’m not entirely sure what will become of us.  And I don’t really want to find out.

Caroline

This has, quite honestly, been some of the worst few months of my life.  Firstly, Roman was killed.  By Kate Roberts.  Except he wasn’t Roman.  So, we were grieving but somehow it felt wrong to grieve a man that was not my son.  But he had my son’s face and his memories so apart from having the wrong DNA, he was my son, wasn’t he?

In the same way that John was… is my son.  He is in my heart and has been since Marlena told us thirteen years ago that he was Roman returned to us from the dead.  I don’t blame her for that, I never have.  She truly believed he was Roman, and we believed because she did.  Because we all wanted to.  He had some of Roman’s memories, some of his mannerisms… and he was such a good, kind man.  Marlena was deeply in love with him, and it had happened so fast.  It could only make sense if he was Roman.  At least, that’s what we all told ourselves.

So, we lost Roman, whether it was two months ago or two years ago, he is still gone.  And now, I am losing my younger son.  Kimmy warns me that I will lose him if I continue to take this line with Marlena.  And I fear she is right.  He walked in the other day when John was here, and he wouldn’t even look at me.  I tried to greet him, to welcome him home but he is still full of righteous fury, both at John and at me, so he ignored both of us and went in search of Shane.  

John tried to comfort me, but he was insistent that I am unfairly vilifying Marlena and in doing so I am risking both her safety and the stability of my own family.

I know both he and Kim have a point.  Don’t think I haven’t mulled over this night after night.  Shawn is not as devastatingly direct as Kimmy, nor as zealous as John but he too thinks I have overstepped the mark and I’m being too extreme in my anger at, and treatment of, Marlena.

I am torn.  I love Marlena as much as anyone else.  John reminded me that both he and Marlena think of me as a mother.  Well, I think of them as my children.  Marlena and Hope are both daughters of my heart.  That’s why this hurts so much.  This is tough love; it is as hard on me as it is on her.  

I see her lining up another son in her sights, set to destroy him.  I know that is not her intention, but it is inevitable.  I am not trying to hurt her; I am trying to shock her back into her senses.  I am trying to make her see that although she is wounded, she cannot pull others down while she is drowning.  Rather she needs to stop, tread water and wait for rescue.  Because it will come, if she’ll only let us reach her.  We have a lifeboat right here, waiting for her.  I want to fold my arms around her and soothe away her pain.  I want her to know she can cry and rail and fall apart and I will still be here, and she will still be my daughter, even if she is not the perfect Marlena Evans that she tries so hard to be.

But John and Kim don’t think that tough love is the answer.  Neither does Carrie, although she is more subtle in her messaging.  She talks with Kimberly when she knows I can hear, relays her conversations with Laura.  Tells Kim the advice that Laura has given her.  A message of acceptance and love.  Marlena needs approval, Carrie says.  She tries to make herself perfect to get it.  But what happens when she fails?

At night, I look in the mirror and ask myself, would I trust me to be there for her if I was her?  

Regretfully, the answer is no.

Maybe John is right.  Maybe I have let my anger and my fear override what I know to be true.  That all my children deserve love and acceptance, whatever mistakes they make.  Whomever they hurt.  Bo is a grown man and making his own decisions.  Stupid decisions, but they are his stupid decisions.  Maybe all I can do is be here for him when he gets his heart broken.

Maybe I need to help Marlena heal hers.

Gina

This is so tiresome.  Trying to stay one step ahead of the Interpol people.  Seeking answers without being seen.  Being silent when all I want is to tell the world that I am Princess Gina von Amberg.  And I will have what is mine.

After I overheard John tell the doctor that he wanted to have me medically tested, I hurried Greta and Lilli back to the hotel in Berlin and we quickly packed and were on a train to Milan within the hour.  

Lilli chose Milan as our destination.  She has some contacts there, ones that could furnish us with new passports in utilitarian names and book passage to our next destination.  

Our next destination turned out to be an encounter with Stefano.  He had been following our traverses of Europe with some interest and he was thrilled to know that I was his Princess once again.  As eager to keep us from the prying eyes of the ISA as we were to keep from them ourselves, he spirited us from Budapest to a château near Nice.  Which is where we’ve been holed up for this past week.

I am itching to move on.  We cannot stay here forever.  Even now, I fear we are being hunted down like rats.  We need to disappear into the woodwork if we are to evade capture.

But first, I have a small gift for John’s beloved ‘Doc’.

Stefano tells me John has returned to Salem but that his return has not been greeted with the open arms he might have wished.

Apparently, the good Dr. Evans has been rather busy in his absence and has bedded Bo Brady of all people.  

Well, as the good bard said, misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

Stefano is furious.  I am… bemused.  I am not sure what she has to offer that has all these men so enthralled.  I mean, she is quite attractive, I suppose.  If you like that kind of thing.  But she is dull.  She is a big fish in a very small town.  She would be lost in European society.

John, however, is still smitten with her.  It is superficial.  He needs to realize his future with her would be as dull as she is.  She cannot offer him a fraction of the sparkling intellect and witty repartee that I can.  She cannot introduce him to princes and dukes.  She cannot love him like I would love him.

Like I will love him.

So, I wait, and I watch.  Stefano has eyes and ears all over Salem and when all is said and done… when my gift is delivered, I shall know the outcome.  

And we shall see who ends up with the prize, shall we not?

Part Trente

Or that moment again he’s insisting that friends
Look at each other like that
When the words of a sister come back in whispers
That prove she was not
In fact what she seemed, not a twin from your dreams
She’s a crook who was caught

It’s Time to Go – Taylor Swift

Marlena closed the door behind her, throwing her bag on the desk, kicking off her shoes and sighing as she pushed her hands into the small of her back.

She’d been working long hours, trying to make up for the time she was spending in session with Laura. Often, it was not just the time spent in session, it was the hours afterward where she had to try and put herself back together before she was able to see another patient. She made sure to schedule two or three hours, ostensibly for paperwork, after each session but more often than not she found herself with a wadded-up ball of tissues in her hand as she stared out of the window. Or when particularly in need of air, she would find herself at the pier, looking out over water as murky as her mood.

“Hey beautiful,” Bo said from the landing above her. “You’re home late. I expected you an hour ago.”

“Sorry,” she rubbed the heel of her palm against her forehead, using it to push her hair out of her eyes. “I know I said I wouldn’t be so late tonight, but I got a call from a patient in crisis just after I called you. I had to talk him through it.”

“And that’s why you’re the best doctor there is,” he reached the bottom of the stairs and put his hands on her shoulders, using his fingers to test the tension in her muscles. “But you’re working too hard, Marlena.”

“He was in crisis, Bo.” She lifted her hands to his face and framed his cheeks with slender, graceful fingers. She wasn’t going to argue with him. Not tonight. It had been a long day and she had come home with the intention of finally saying the words she’d been trying to drum up the courage to say all week. But instead, what she said was, “do I get a welcome home kiss?”

“You bet,” he grinned before he dropped his mouth to hers. She sighed quietly as she melted into his embrace and let him kiss away the stresses and strains of her day. She knew that he knew as well as she did that this was going nowhere. She could feel it in the forced cheerfulness he greeted her with, the kisses that were a little too desperate. Like each one might be the last and he was trying to commit them to memory before she evaporated into his past. She hated that she was doing this to him. She had promised herself on the way home that today would be the day. That she would take whatever vituperations he wanted to (rightly) throw at her before she pushed him out of the door and toward his future.

Laura had told her this afternoon that Shane and the ISA were hot on Hope’s trail and thought they might soon be able to apprehend the truant trio who were thought to be somewhere in the south of France.

Marlena had felt a flutter of panic at that news. She wondered if Bo knew and if so, why he hadn’t told her. If they found Hope and were successful in removing her chip, surely, she would want Bo. Surely Bo would want to be there with her. Wouldn’t he?

But he was still here in her home. In her bed. What did that mean?

While she was trying to prepare herself to say goodbye to him, was he preparing himself to do the same?

She had taken some time after seeing Laura to shake these thoughts from her head. To convince herself that whatever Bo was doing or wasn’t doing should have no bearing on what it was that she needed to do. And what she needed to do was be strong enough to stand on her own. She needed to face down her demons and she couldn’t do that while she was wrapped around Bo, letting him help her force her pain down to a level that was (barely) manageable.

But here in his arms, with his lips on hers, all sensible thoughts fragmented and faded away. It felt good in his arms. It felt safe.

Another day wouldn’t hurt. She would let him take her to bed and she would kiss him and wrap her legs around him and he would touch her and drive into her and she would forget all about Hope and her patient and Laura. She would forget about it all (liar!) and just slip into that space between consciousness and bliss where she didn’t have to think about anything. And then she would fall into semi-sleep nestled in the crook of his arm until she was woken by a nightmare at 3 am. And then she would let him kiss away her tears and make her come all over again.

“Kids are upstairs,” he interrupted her train of thought and she blinked as she looked at him. “Chelsea is bathing them,” he explained. “Why don’t you take your cute ass up there, give them a kiss and then slip into something a little more comfortable.”

She raised one eyebrow at him, and he chuckled. “I legit meant, more comfortable. Our dinner awaits, I just need ten minutes to finish up.”

“You haven’t eaten?” she was concerned.

“I was waiting for you. It’s okay, I had a late lunch,” he tapped her on the chin and kissed her. “Go on, go see those beautiful babies of yours.”

“Mmmm, okay.” She kissed him again and smiled as he turned and made his way towards the kitchen.

Sighing, she unbuttoned the gold buttons of her cream silk suit and then rolled her shoulders. She turned to pick up her shoes so she could take them upstairs with her, but as she did, she saw the pile of mail sitting on the corner of the desk.

Later, she wouldn’t be able to say what had made her pick up the letters and shuffle through them. Maybe it had been of habit. Maybe it had been the size and shape of the envelope halfway down the pile. Maybe it had just been an intuitive feeling, a foreboding that had been quietly gnawing at her gut since she’d seen Laura earlier that day.

Whatever it was that made her pick up the envelopes, she had flicked through them, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Anything that wasn’t a bill, a circular, or an otherwise regular piece of mail.

She found it almost halfway down the pile. It was a larger envelope, A5 in size. It was cream, edged in gold, and looked luxurious. It had no return address, but it had a French stamp and postmark. Marlena did not recognize the handwriting on the front, but it was a decidedly feminine curling hand.

And it was addressed to her.

She placed the rest of the mail on the desk and, her heart pounding and her cheeks flushed, she picked up the letter open and neatly slit open the top of the envelope.

Bo heard the cry from the kitchen, and it made his blood run cold.

Dropping the knife in his hand, he grabbed a tea towel and wiped his hands on it as he ran to the living room.

Marlena was on her knees on the floor, a discarded envelope on the floor beside her. She rocked backward and forwards slightly as she stared at the wad of papers crumpled in her fist. Her mouth was open, and she was silently crying.

He went to her and crouched beside her, extracting the offending documents from her hand as gently as he could. He was about to place them aside, to help her up from the floor when he glanced at the top page.

Or the top photo, as it was.

He toppled forward onto his own knees as his head tried to make sense of the shapes. As they resolved into the figures of John and Hope. In bed together. A butt naked Hope, astride what looked like an equally naked John, a sheet strewn just across the bottom of his legs.

Bo thought he might be sick. He moved the photo to the bottom of the pile and looked at the next one. Hope leaning over John, her platinum-streaked brunette hair obscuring both their faces. It was clear though what they were doing.

The third photo was Hope on top of John again, his hand on her thigh, his head thrown back. Hope was clearly also in ecstasy as she leaned back her hair cascading down behind her, exposing one breast to the camera.

Bo couldn’t even look at the rest of the photos.

“Fucking BASTARD!” he crumpled the photos in his fist, deepening the fold that Marlena had already made. “I’m going to fucking KILL him.”

“He promised…” Marlena moaned. She wasn’t looking at him, just staring blankly at the carpet in front of her.

“Yeah, well he’s a fucking liar,” Bo snarled furiously. “He’d say anything to get back into your pants. To take you away from me. I swear to God I am going to fucking KILL HIM.”

He stumbled to his feet, grabbed his keys from the desk, and practically sprinted out of the penthouse, slamming the door behind him.

“Bo!” Marlena’s cry was too late and too feeble to catch him as he left. She knew it was useless even as the sound left her throat.

She wasn’t even sure she really wanted to stop him.

She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

She wrapped her arms around her middle and gasped for breath as she rocked backward and forwards. The world around her receded, growing fuzzy at the edges as she tried hard to keep upright. Part of her wanted to sag, wanted to let the darkness claim her. Then she wouldn’t have to keep seeing those images swimming before her eyes.

The images of John and Hope. Together. In every sense.

She groaned. She was going to be sick. She pushed herself up and staggered to the bathroom, emptying her stomach of coffee and bile. She was shaking as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and leaned back against the beige tiled wall.

He had promised. He had sworn to her that nothing had happened between him and Hope. He had told her she was the only one he wanted, and she had believed him. Like the idiot she was. She had wanted so badly to believe him that she had let everything else fade away. She had let Laura lull her into a false sense of security and she had called John and let him sweet talk her, weaving his smooth, mendacious spell around her. He was a LIAR. She should have known better. He’d left with Hope, and she had wanted just one thing. And clearly, she’d gotten it.

Marlena’s heart pounded and her vision swam as tears pooled in her eyes. She felt as though the room was closing in on her. Struggling for breath, she scrambled up from the floor and leaned on the counter. She sucked in several deep lungsful of air; her head bowed as she tried to gain some kind of control over her chaotic emotions.

Finally, she looked up. She didn’t recognize the stranger that looked back at her from the mirror. Her face was all sharp, haunted planes and deeply scored lines of pain and grief. With shaking hands, she splashed cold water on her face and then used a wipe to remove the smudged mascara from under her tired, reddened eyes.

She straightened up and walked stiffly back to the living room. There, she stopped, almost breathless with the weight of him. He was in every corner of this penthouse. Every crevice. She looked to where she kept the spirits and found herself momentarily tempted. It would be so easy to submerge herself in alcohol. To pour herself a glass and then another and another until she forgot why she was pouring them.

NO!

The muffled voice sounded in the back of her head. It sounded a little like Laura Horton. And a little like the part of herself she seemed to have lost when… when? When did she become this person she no longer recognized?

She looked around the room, her gaze vacant. She had no idea what to do. She felt numb with shock but in some vague corner of her mind, she knew that wouldn’t last forever. That soon the pain would lance through her like a serrated blade, devouring her whole if she let it.

“Chelsea?” she called. “Chelsea, I need to go out. Can you stay with the children?”

She buttoned up her jacket and found her shoes. She was slipping them on when Chelsea came to the landing.

“I’m sorry Dr. Evans,” she shook her head. “I can’t stay. I told you yesterday, I have to go back and see my mother. She’s getting out of hospital, and I have to be there to settle her back into her home.”

Marlena stared at her blankly. She didn’t remember that conversation. She didn’t remember much of anything except for how Hope’s hair hung over John’s face as she kissed him. How Hope’s slender body arched atop John’s as she rode him like a prize-winning jockey.

I would never sleep with Hope. I would never sleep with any other woman. Honey, I love you. My body, heart and soul are yours and yours alone.

The pain lanced through her like a bolt of lightning, and she gasped with the intensity of it.

“Dr. Evans?” Chelsea looked concerned. “Are you okay?” She was pretty sure Dr. Evans was not okay and had not been okay since she’d come back from her last visit home a couple of weeks ago. She’d seen a lot of weird shit in her time in Marlena Evan’s employ but this latest go-round with Bo Brady really took the cake in her view. She wished Mr. Black would come back and sort things out with Dr. Evans because the children were very unsettled, making her job ten times harder. The irregular hours and unexpected disappearances of her employers were bad enough. Now she had to try and explain why their uncle was here in the morning and not their dad. If they weren’t so darned nice and didn’t pay her so well, she would have left years ago. But here she still was, feeling guilty because Dr. Evans couldn’t dump on her at the last minute once again.

“I…” Marlena looked up at Chelsea, her face betraying her agony. “But I have to go out.”

“I’m really sorry,” Chelsea shrugged helplessly, “If there was any way I could stay, you know I would, but I have a flight to catch-”

They were interrupted by a sharp knocking at the door. Marlena looked at it in confusion, as though she didn’t understand what was happening or why.

“Maybe whoever it is can watch the children?” Chelsea indicated the door. When Marlena made no move to answer it, Chelsea’s misgivings grew. “Perhaps you should get the door?” she suggested, more gently now.

Marlena blinked as the rapping came again. And then from the other side of the door came Carrie’s muffled voice. “Marlena, are you there? Marlena, I need to talk to you.”

Marlena shook her head as though it might shake the images of John and Hope loose. Taking a deep breath, she pulled open the door.

“Carrie!” She tried not to look as desperate as she felt as she pulled her stepdaughter into the apartment. “Thank God you’re here. Can you look after the children for me? Chelsea has to go. I have to….” She shook her head. She didn’t really know what she had to do. She just knew she couldn’t be here a moment longer.

“Marlena, I…” Carrie was shocked at Marlena’s appearance. Her face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed and the sense of despair that emanated from her was palpable. “Is everything okay?”

“Uh-huh,” Marlena nodded, turning to look for her purse. “I just… I have to go. I’ll be back … as soon as I can.”

“Marlena,” Carrie caught her arm. “I’m worried. I came to talk to you. You won’t take my calls, you won’t-“

“Carrie, honey, I really need to go.” Marlena felt herself close to tears again. She couldn’t break down in front of Carrie. If she lost it now, she wasn’t sure she could ever put herself back together again. What she needed was space. Space free from children and questions and memories of John.

She pulled her arm from Carrie’s grip and ran from the apartment, taking nothing but her purse and her keys.

“Marlena!” Carrie called after her, but it was a pointless exercise. Sighing, she looked up and found Chelsea watching her from the mezzanine landing. “What happened?” she asked.

“Beats me,” Chelsea shrugged again. “Mr. Brady was here making dinner, but I guess he’s gone now. I was bathing the children, so I don’t know what happened.”

“Okay.” Carrie pursed her lips thoughtfully and nodded in response to Chelsea’s unspoken question as she spied the discarded envelope on the floor. “I’ll watch the children until she gets back, Chelsea.”

“Thanks. I hope everything is okay,” Chelsea offered.

“Me too,” Carrie nodded as she picked up the envelope and saw the French postmark on the front of it. “Oh God, me too.”

~

John was sitting at the bar talking to Kimberly and Caroline when Bo flung the pub door open with such force that it hit the wall behind, causing it to shake in the frame.

“You fucking sonofabitch!” He stalked across to John and flung the papers in his hand in John’s face before he launched himself once again at his erstwhile brother-cum-best friend. “I swear to God, I am going to murder your ugly face once and for all!”

John rocked backward on his stool as Bo went for his throat, but he managed to get his knee up in between himself and Bo and launched Bo backward before he could do any real damage. He slipped off his stool as Bo came at him again and caught Bo’s wrist before his fist could connect with John’s face. Bo lashed out with his other hand, the flat of his palm connecting with the side of John’s head, knocking him slightly off-kilter so that he released his grip as he flailed for his balance.

“Bo!” Kimberly screamed. “For God’s sake!”

Bo grappled with John but lost his footing as he slid on one of the photos which were now underfoot. He fell sideways, hitting his head against the bar and Caroline cried out. Shawn came rushing from the back of the pub just in time to see Bo hit the ground.

“What the hell happened here?” Shawn demanded.

John held up his hands, palms up to indicate his confusion as Caroline, with Shawn’s help, lifted up a dazed Bo and deposited him in a now-empty booth.

“I’m going te have no customers if this keeps up,” Shawn muttered in annoyance. “I thought ye boys had sorted this out.”

“I wouldn’t say we’d sorted it out Pop,” John said tightly as he rubbed the side of his face where Bo had smacked him. “We’ve agreed to be civil, that’s about it. But I’ve got no idea what this,” he waved his hand in Bo’s direction, “is about.”

“Ummmm,” Kimberly stood, dusting off the photos in her hand, her cheeks reddening as she pressed her lips together. “I’m guessing it might have been about this.”

She handed a crumpled photograph to John, biting the inside of her bottom lip as she did so.

John looked at her curiously and then down at the picture in his hands. His face drained of color as he realized what was represented on the paper he held in his hands. He and Gina, in a bed. Gina on top of him, his hands on her thighs, his head thrown back.

What the actual FUCK?!

His skin grew chilled as his heart pounded and the world around him receded so that only this moment, this image was present, like a pinpoint. A fulcrum on which disaster was turning.

He didn’t recognize anything about the picture, not the room, not the moment. The occupants, the subjects however were clearly him and Gina. His hand shook as he studied the picture.

“There are more,” Kimberly said quietly. “John, there are more of them.” She had gathered up the offending images and smoothed them out on the counter of the bar. She didn’t know where to look. The pain and embarrassment on John’s face were palpable. The anger and jealousy on Bo’s almost unbearable.

“I didn’t…” John swallowed painfully. “I don’t understand.”

“What is there to understand?” Bo snarled furiously. “You thought this was your dirty little secret. You thought you could have your fun and then forget it ever happened. Thought you could lie to Marlena, and she’d never find out that you fucked another woman. My wife.”

John didn’t bother to correct Bo. At least about the wife bit.

“A bit like you did mine?” He scowled at Bo. “Don’t be a hypocrite, Brady. You expect me to feel sorry or guilty for this?”

“Should have known you’d have no shame,” Bo slammed his hand down on the table. “The great John Black, working his way around the women of Salem.” He gave a sharp, pained laugh. “So, who’s going to be next to anoint the great man’s dick? You must be running-”

“Bo.” The warning tone in Caroline’s voice was enough to stop Bo in his tracks and he sighed.

“I just don’t get how Marlena is not enough for you. That woman would have done anything for you. She waited around for you for years and this is how you repay her?”

“I didn’t,” John shook his head. “This…” he waved the photograph in his hand at Bo. “This is a lie. I didn’t sleep with Hope. Or Gina.”

Bo shot him a look of profound disbelief and one that conveyed the fact that he either thought John was an idiot or that John thought that he was. Either way, it didn’t make sense. “Have you actually looked at those pictures?”

“Look, I don’t know how to explain this,” John looked down at the photo in his hands again and then across at the crumpled pile sitting on the bar. “But I don’t remember this. I don’t remember…” he groaned.

“What?” Kimberly laid a gentle hand on his arm. “What is it, John?”

“I…” He looked back down at the photo. Yes, it could be that same room. His memories were hazy, addled by the shock of waking next to Gina, whatever drugs she had plied him with, and the subsequent blow to the head that had landed him in hospital. But it made sense.

“Gina drugged me,” he said, his voice low and rough. “I told you I ended up in hospital because I was mugged?”

Kimberly nodded and he looked over at Caroline and Shawn who followed suit. Bo just glowered at him.

“It’s … I’ll be honest, nothing is clear in my head. We met with a contact in the Hotel Adlon the night before I was mugged. He supposedly had information about Princess Gina and Father John Black but when we got there it was another dead end. I’d already told Gina that Berlin was the end of the road for me. Krause gave us the name of some woman in Madrid who might know more, but I was done. It felt like we were on a wild goose chase, I just wasn’t sure who was responsible for the journey. Whether it was Stefano or Gina herself.” He ran his fingers through his hair, staring at the photo, trying to work out how it might figure into the events he did recall from that night.

“She was doing her best to try and lure me into bed. She kept insisting that if we kissed, if we got physical, it would trigger memories… but I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. It was Hope and … “  He looked despairingly at Kimberly. “She’s like a sister to me. Nothing more. Having sex with her was the last thing on my mind. I just wanted to get back to Salem. Back to Marlena.” He flicked Bo a look of pure resentment.

“Anyway, I remember that night I was dancing with Gina, and I told her I wasn’t going to Madrid. I told her I thought she should come home with me. And then… I don’t know. I felt dizzy and the room started to swim.” He sighed. “I don’t remember anything else until the next morning. Until I woke up and I was in bed with Gina, and we were naked.” He looked at Kimberly again, his expression begging her to believe him.

“Kimmy, she drugged me. I swear to God, I did not do anything with her. To her. If I did, it’s because I was out of my mind with drugs. But I honestly don’t… the next morning… it didn’t…” he recalled the pain as he stretched his back picking up his shirt from the floor and how he had seen the three parallel gouges in his skin from Gina’s nails and he felt nauseous. “I can’t have. I wouldn’t have. I had no interest in Hope or Gina. All I felt the next morning when I opened my eyes and saw her next to me was disgust. I gathered up all my things and left the room as quickly as I could. I was mugged outside the hotel. The next time I saw Gina was in the hospital.”

“This all sounds very convenient,” Bo sounded disbelieving. “But the pictures tell a different story, John. Looks like you were very much an active participant in whatever happened. Find that hard to believe if you’d been drugged.”

“I swear to God!” John felt exasperated at Bo’s casual assessment of what, if true, amounted to rape in John’s eyes. “I don’t…” He couldn’t help but think about waking up in bed with Marlena, his body delightfully sore, his muscles tight with the exertions of the night before. “I know what I feel like in the morning after I’ve had sex. I didn’t feel like that. I don’t care what the pictures say. I did not sleep with Gina.”

“Well, the fact that there are photos,” Kim said slowly. “Kinda says you were set up, doesn’t it? I mean, what, she had a photographer in the room with her? Doesn’t make sense if it all happened naturally and organically.”

“YES. Thank you!” John threw his hand up in relief. Of course, Kim was right. Gina had planned it all out. She had drugged him, gotten him undressed and into bed with the help of some unknown person or persons, and then… He looked closer at the photograph in his hand and then shuffled through the crumpled pile on the bar. In not one of them could you see his whole face. And in all of them, his eyes were closed.

“These are faked,” he said with certainty.

“Whatever!” Bo scoffed loudly from his seat in the booth.

“No, I mean it. I mean, yes, I was there but I wasn’t conscious. Look at them.” He waved the photo in his hands in Bo’s direction. “My hands, where they’re on her, they’re not gripping her body, they’re just laid on her. And there’s not one of these shots where my eyes are open.”

Bo’s nostrils flared angrily as he pushed himself from the booth and stalked over to where Kim had piled the photos on the bar.

“What about that one?” He picked one out of the pile and thrust it at John. John’s own bare buttocks stared back at him, Gina’s thighs embracing his hips. Her hands were on his back, her fingernails digging deep gouges in his shoulder blade. “You’re on top of her. You mean to tell me she posed you like that?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” John growled. “This was her insurance policy. She had Lilli or Krause, or whomever, help her get me into these positions and then take photos. She knew I was planning on coming back to Salem. Back to Marlena-“

Bo’s words suddenly came back to him. She waited around for you for years and this is how you repay her?

“Marlena,” he repeated, the bottom suddenly falling out of his gut. “Has Marlena seen these?”

“Well, yeah,” Bo still wasn’t willing to totally believe John’s story, but looking at the picture in front of him, he had to admit John had a point. He flicked through the photos again as he spoke, not really heeding his own words. “They were addressed to her. She opened them when she got home from work.”

John swallowed again, a sudden sense of dread sweeping across him. “She’s seen them, and you left her there. By herself?”

“She’s not alone,” Bo looked up at John, suddenly realizing the enormity of what John was asking. “Chelsea and the kids are there.”

“You fucking stupid, impulsive idiot!” John exploded furiously. “You know how close to the edge she’s been lately. This is likely to tip her right over!” He pulled out his cellular phone and dialed the number for the penthouse. “So help me God, she’d better be alright Bo, or I am going to wring your fucking neck!”

~

The heels of Marlena’s shoes echoed in the gloom as she walked toward the edge of the pier. She hadn’t known where to go when she had left the penthouse. And she had found herself here. Where she always found herself when seeking comfort. But there was no comfort to be found this night.

She had thought that maybe the clean air of the river would clear away the detritus in her head. That maybe it would help her reason away the pain. There were so many counterpoints to her distress. It wasn’t Hope, it was Gina. Neither John nor Hope had been in control of their actions. And she, herself, had slept with Bo, so how could she be angry, how could she be hurt?

But no matter how much she applied logic to it, she still came back over and over again to the bare facts. John had slept with Hope, and he had lied to her about it.

My body, heart and soul are yours and yours alone.

He had been playing her, and once again, she had fallen for it.

She had come here with the pain locked deep inside her heart. And she had thought if she had the space and the air, she could keep the pain contained. Locked away, banished to a vacant corner of her psyche. She could take deep breaths and will it away and no one would be any the wiser.

Now, she realized that was a terrible mistake. John was as imbued in this pier as he was in her home. He was in every inch of this town, and she could not escape him. And the space where she was holding her pain was starting to crack. The pain was leaking through widening fissures, and it left her breathless.

She looked around desperately. There was no Abe to save her this time.

Taking out her cell phone, her hand shook as she scrolled through her address book and selected a number.

“Hello?” Laura’s voice sounded on the other end of the line. Marlena said nothing, frozen in place by her pain. She couldn’t face it now. She couldn’t talk through this. She didn’t know how to exist with this agony gnawing at her insides. It would swallow her whole if she let it. “Hello? Who is this?” Laura sounded concerned on the other end of the line and Marlena stifled a sob before she hung up.

She couldn’t do this. She had to get away from here. Consumed by her thoughts, overwhelmed by everything, she began to walk.

Lost within herself she couldn’t have said how long she had walked or in what direction. She only knew when she saw the sign to the small hole in the war bar that she had finally found where she needed to be.

And ignoring all the voices in her head which were screaming at her to stop, she pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Part Trente Un

A string that pulled me
Out of all the wrong arms right into that dive bar
Something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire
Chains around my demons
Wool to brave the seasons
One single thread of gold tied me to you

Invisible String – Taylor Swift

“Thanks, Punkin’” John nodded. “Of course, as soon as I hear anything. You’ll be the first to know.” He hung up on the call and glared at Bo. “Carrie’s at the penthouse with the kids. Chelsea had to go so Carrie is holding the fort. Marlena split the moment she got there.” Even as he spoke, he was dialing the number for Marlena’s cell. Like the penthouse, he knew the number by heart, and it was quicker to dial it than to scroll through his address book looking for it. Waiting as it rang, he tapped his foot impatiently. “C’mon Doc, answer your phone. Answer it, dammit!”

His not-so-silent prayer went unheeded as her line clicked over to her messaging service. “Marlena, it’s John. I need you to call me, as soon as you get this. I know you saw the photos, but I can explain honey. It’s not what you think. I didn’t lie to you, I promise. Just call me, I can explain everything.”

Finishing the call, he thumped the bar with the side of his closed fist.

“What the fucking hell were you thinking, Brady?” he demanded furiously of Bo.

“I… I wasn’t thinking,” Bo admitted, embarrassed and more than a little ashamed. He had seen how upset Marlena was and yet he had just blown out of there, focused on his own pain, his own anger. He had left her there, kneeling in the middle of the floor in the penthouse, absolutely distraught.

“Of course you weren’t.” John scowled. “That’s typical of you. Hot-headed, impulsive. When are you gonna grow up, man?”

“You can fucking talk,” Bo grimaced, all his resentment spilling out. “Tipping up and talking Hope into going to Europe with you. You can blame me all you want, but this is all on you, man!”

“I don’t have time to argue with you on this,” John was in equal parts angry and weary. While he would love to get into it with Bo, right now, Marlena had to be his priority. “I gotta find Doc.”

“She could be anywhere,” Caroline pointed out as John strode toward the door. “How will you know where to look?”

“I’ll just have to trust my heart,” John said with certainty. And then pointing at Bo, “call Abe and get him to put an APB out on Marlena.”

“Do ye really think that’s necessary?” Shawn asked. He knew what John’s answer was going to be and he knew John was right, but he felt someone should ask anyway. But it was Bo who spoke up.

“Pop, she’s a mess right now. She’s vulnerable and she could be out there getting into any kind of trouble. John’s right, I never should have left her like that.” He looked at John apologetically. “I’ll call Abe, but I want to help you look for her.”

“You can help by going back to the penthouse and watching the kids,” John replied gruffly. “Carrie has to fly out for a conference in the morning so she can’t stay late.”

“Can’t Kim go over?” Bo asked petulantly.

“Bo, I need you at the penthouse in case Marlena goes back there,” John said. The truth was, while Bo might be able to help him find Marlena quicker, he didn’t trust him not to make things worse if he did. The last thing he needed was Bo Brady blundering in, finding Marlena first, and messing with her head even more. “We don’t even know where to start looking. Go back to the penthouse and start by calling her friends. In fact…” he flipped his phone open. This time he scrolled through his contacts and selected one.

“Hello?” Laura’s voice sounded on the other end of the line. John didn’t waste any time with the pleasantries.

“Laura, have you heard from Doc tonight?” he asked, his words rapid-fire.

“John?” Laura asked.

“Yeah. I just need to know if Doc is there or if she’s called you.” John reiterated.

“No… well… come to think of it, maybe.” Laura hedged uncertainly. “I had a call, maybe a little over half an hour ago. Whoever it was didn’t say anything, they hung up almost immediately. But it could have been Marlena.”

“What makes you think it was Doc?” John asked. He didn’t want to set off on a wild goose chase if there was a chance it wasn’t Marlena who had called Laura. The chances were good that it was her. He just needed a shred of confirmation.

“I don’t know.” Laura sounded thoughtful. “I couldn’t say for sure but maybe whoever it was made a noise. It was all so fast; I couldn’t really tell you for sure and I didn’t really think anything about it until just now but…” she paused. “Has something happened, John? Should I be worried?”

“I hope not,” John said but he knew his tone conveyed anything but assurance. And then he sighed. “Yeah, something happened. She received some photos from Gina. They made it look like Gina and I had sex. We didn’t,” he hastened to add. “But Doc doesn’t know that. She thinks the photos are genuine. And I need to find her and explain before she does something foolish.”

“Oh, John.” Laura’s voice was grave. “This is not good. This is really not good at all.”

“I know. Believe me, I know.” John pursed his lips and rubbed his forefinger and thumb over his eyebrow in a habit that betrayed his concern and deep discomfort. “Listen, did you hear anything, any background noises that might give me a clue as to where she might have been when she called?”

“You’re assuming it was her,” Laura reminded him.

“I have to assume it was. It’s the only lead I’ve got right now.” John admitted. “Please, Laura. She could be in trouble. I have to find her.”

“Okay,” Laura was silent for a moment, trying to recall the ever-so-brief mystery call.

“Anything?” John prompted impatiently.

“It would be easier if you weren’t talking when I was trying to remember,” Laura remarked acerbically. “Honestly John, I don’t know. The call was so short I can’t remember that there was anything that I heard that would give me…” she stopped short suddenly, recalling the smallest of noises she’d heard. “I can’t be certain, but I think there might have been a bell.”

“Like a church bell or a…” John stopped. He knew exactly where Marlena had been when she’d called Laura. “Never mind Laura, I got it. Thanks.”

“Call me when you find her. If you need help.” Laura told him. “John, the state she’s in, she could do something really stupid.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” John nodded. “I’ll let you know when I find her.” He hung up and turned back to the family. “Call me if you hear anything.”

Caroline nodded. “Good luck John. When you find her, tell her…“ Her concern and love for Marlena were written all over her face. All thoughts of anger were momentarily abandoned. “Tell her we love her.”

~

Marlena sat alone at the bar and downed her fourth double Jack. “Another one,” she waved her empty glass at the bartender. He nodded and sloshed another double shot in the glass. She knocked it back and slammed the glass on the counter. “Another.”

She stared morosely at her phone while he filled her glass again. Four missed calls from John, two each from Carrie and Laura. Nothing from Bo. She gave a fractured half-chuckle. Why would Bo call? He hadn’t even looked in her direction once he’d seen the pictures of John and Hope. He’d been so consumed by his own anger and jealousy; he didn’t have any room for hers.

And why should he?

Because he said he loves you.

She laughed again but the sound was laced with agony. Didn’t they all say that? Didn’t they say they loved her and then they walked away when things got too hard? Too real. When she made mistakes. When she wasn’t perfect.

She swallowed another mouthful of her bourbon and stared vacantly at the array of spirits on the bar before her. This wasn’t her usual kind of haunt. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in a bar this seedy. Maybe when Carly had taken her to the Cheatin’ Heart and they’d played pool when Bo was being held prisoner by the Torres crime syndicate and Roman was undercover trying to rescue him. Then again, she thought looking around her, even the Cheatin’ Heart had a certain kind of grim charm. This place was just grim.

Still, she wasn’t here for the ambiance, she reflected. She was here to get hammered. She wasn’t thinking about consequences. Consequences be damned. That was for future-her to worry about. Present-her just wanted to get obliterated so that all these thoughts and all these damn feelings might drown beneath the weight of the alcohol.

She knocked back the last of her glass and indicated that the bar-keep should refill it. He looked at her dubiously and she gave him her patented Marlena Evans glare which made him think twice and he poured an extra measure into her glass.

“Hey doll-face, haven’t seen you around these parts before.” A rough voice sounded next to her. “Don’t usually get pretty ladies like you in bars like this.” The possessor of the voice slid onto the bar-stool next to her and held out his hand. “Name’s Harvey.” He must have been late thirties but hard drinking had aged him. He had sandy-colored hair which hung in loose curls and a thick sand-colored mustache. His eyes were a washed-out blue, like all the drinking and hard living had faded them like denim. He reminded her a little of Roger Lombard, pre-sobriety and the thought chilled her. “Friends call me Harv. You are?”

“I am not in the market for new friends,” Marlena said, her voice blurred with bourbon. “I’m ma-” She looked at the bare third finger of her left hand. No matter how much her head tried to convince her, her heart couldn’t let go of the idea that she was still married. “I’m with someone,” she corrected.

Harvey dropped his outstretched hand and looked around him. “Don’t look like you’re with no one. Looks like you’re drowning your sorrows. Your man done you wrong?” He grinned, revealing a mouth full of surprisingly white teeth. “That’s a damn shame, a fine woman like you.”

Marlena sighed. “Look. I appreciate your… concern, but I really just want to be left alone.” She took another mouthful of the bourbon and looked at her phone. “I am…. my …. friend is late, that’s all.”

“Well, how’s about I keep you company then?” Harvey smiled again, with all the sincerity of a ferret. “Let me buy you a drink. Jeter,” he waved at the bartender who was watching the exchange intently. “Pour the lady another Jack.”

“No!” Marlena said quickly, putting her hand over her glass. “Please. It’s very kind of you but I really just want to be alone right now.”

Jeter stepped forward. “You heard the lady, Harvey. Time to get yourself gone. Don’t be a pest.” He raised his eyebrows meaningfully and nodded back at the group of men at the side of the room who were watching proceedings intently. “She asked you nicely.”

“Okay, okay,” the other man lifted gnarled hands and nodded. “I was just trying to be friendly.” He nodded at Marlena’s glass. “I sure hope the lady will still accept a drink from an admirer?” Marlena nodded, relieved that he was going away and not wanting to offend him any more than she already had. “Great. Enjoy your evening, ma’am.” He smirked and slipped off the barstool.

Marlena studiously ignored his retreat to his friends, but she breathed out a soft sigh of relief as Jeter poured her another triple measure of Jack Daniels.

“Thank you,” she nodded at him.

“He’s harmless enough,” the bartender’s eyes shifted uncomfortably, and Marlena got the feeling that perhaps Harvey wasn’t all that harmless after all. “He’s just… we don’t usually get dames like you in here. You’ve livened up their week.” He nodded over at the group of men and Marlena glanced in their direction. Harvey raised his glass and grinned but the malice she thought she saw behind the smile chilled her.

“You got someone to come get ya?” Jeter lifted one eyebrow. “You don’t want to be walking around these parts by yourself. Especially after dark.”

“I uh…” suddenly she felt drunk, not in control, and a little bit scared. Her head was swimming now. She wasn’t sure even if she got off the barstool she’d be able to walk in a straight line to the door. A sudden clarity hit her as the buzzing in her head abated momentarily. She had no idea where she was, she was drunk, and she had no way of safely navigating herself out of this situation.

Laura’s voice sounded in her head. What the hell are you doing, Marlena?

“I’ll call my… uh…” she waved at her phone. “He’ll come get me.”

“You should probably do that,” Jeter said, casting a sideways glance at Harvey and his pals. This chick was like a honeypot and all the bees were going to come swarming around it sooner or later. Probably sooner, the way the patrons lining the wall were looking at her. Jeter didn’t want any more bother. After the last go-round, the cops almost closed him down. Any more trouble and he’d lose his license for sure. And this bird looked like trouble. With a capital fucking T.

~

John stood at the edge of the pier and ran his hand over his face. There was no sign of Marlena here. Not that he really expected that she would still be here. On the phone, Laura had said it was at least half an hour since she’d received the call which may or may not have been Marlena. John had come directly to the pier. Pier 29, the one he considered ‘their’ pier, but there was no sign of her. He had called Abe who already had every available officer on alert keeping an eye out for Marlena but, as yet, there had been no sign. Bo had called to let John know he was back at the penthouse but there was no word there from Marlena. Her car was gone though, he said so perhaps if they could locate that, they’d have a starting point? John knew he already had the starting point. He felt it in his gut. He just had to work out which direction she’d set out in.

He tried to put himself in her head. She’d been starting to open up to him again. He’d felt it that night on the phone and he’d seen it in her eyes when he picked up the children on Saturday. She had believed him when he told her nothing had happened between him and Hope/Gina. But he had been stupid enough to neglect to mention that he had woken up in bed with Gina. Naked.

No, he hadn’t neglected to tell her. He had deliberately chosen not to mention it. Thinking she didn’t need to know, that she wouldn’t find out.

But he should have known better than that. He should have known Gina had an agenda when he’d woken up in her bed. She had deliberately set out to entrap him, strategically maneuvering him into a compromising situation by plying him with drugged champagne. Of course she hadn’t left anything to chance. That was Gina all over.

And now Marlena thought he was a liar and a cheat. It physically pained him to think of what she must have thought as she slid those photographs out of the envelope. He could imagine the look of disbelief on her face as she flipped through them and then the dawning horror as she realized what it was that they depicted.

If she was as broken as he imagined she was, where would she go, he wondered? He looked around him. Closing his eyes, he listened to the beating of his own heart and waited for his intuition to nudge him. When it did, he opened his eyes and headed along the pier.

~

Marlena stared at her phone, her hands gripping tightly the greasy brass railing which bordered the bar. She was trying to decide who to call. Carrie was with the children. Laura was… Laura would come but it wasn’t fair to ask Laura to come and collect her from a dive bar after dark. That was above and beyond the call of their friendship. And it wasn’t safe. The bartender had told her that. If it wasn’t safe for her, it wasn’t safe for Laura.

Bo? Bo was the obvious choice but… but Bo had deserted her, leaving her achingly alone in her misery. Bo was all caught up in his own grief, she didn’t want to ask him to share hers. Hers was hers. Private. Even though he was the person who would best understand, she didn’t want to share it with him. Not now.

Sighing, she picked up her phone and dialed.

“Doc?” His voice came strained and worried on the other end of the line. “Doc, are you okay? I’ve been so worried.”

“I…” her heart pounded, and her eyes swam with tears. She had thought she could do this. But maybe she’d been wrong. “Why did you lie to me?” Her voice was small and plaintive. She hadn’t been intending to ask him that. She had meant to tell him she was alone and frightened, and could he come and get her but instead all she could think about was Gina’s legs wrapped around his body and Gina’s mouth on his.

“Baby, I know what you’re thinking, I know what it looks like, but I didn’t. I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t sleep with her.” John spoke quickly, desperately.

“I saw the pictures,” her voice was muted and husky with alcohol. “I saw them.”

“Doc, baby have you been drinking?” John’s heart skipped a beat. “Listen honey, I’m going to explain but I need you to tell me where you are, right now!”

“How can you explain away that!?” The tears started to fall, and she turned away so that the other patrons of the bar couldn’t see her distress. “John, you lied to me. You slept with her, and you lied right to my face.”

“Marlena.” His voice was steel sharp. “Listen to me. I need you to focus. We’ll discuss the pictures but right now I am really worried about you. Can you tell me where you are?”

Something in his voice made her blood run cold and she suddenly remembered why she had called him in the first place. “I…” she looked around her. “I don’t know where I am.”

“Okay, honey, I need you to concentrate.” John could feel his heart pounding in his throat. “Are you in a bar?”

“Mmm-hmmm,” she nodded her head, properly looking around her for the first time. “But I don’t really…. John, I don’t know where it is.”

“Do you remember the name of the bar?” John asked urgently.

“No.” She could remember seeing the sign and she could remember walking in but she’d been too lost inside her own head to remember any of the details that might help John locate her.

“Okay, ask the bartender what the bar is called, can you do that?” John suggested.

“I….” she looked around helplessly. Jeter the bartender was nowhere to be seen.

“Okay, I’m assuming you started at Pier 29,” John told her. “Do you know what direction you went in from there?”

“No.” She shook her head helplessly. “I just started walking and I don’t know how… I just walked and then I saw the sign for this bar and I … God, I’ve been so stupid.” She wiped the tears from her cheek and ran her fingers through her hair as she looked around the bar again. Harvey was watching her from the booth against the wall. Several of his friends were eyeing her equally speculatively and she swallowed. “John, I’m scared. The bartender said this isn’t the kind of place to be walking alone. I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t know how to get home.”

“Don’t panic baby, I’m gonna find you,” John said, as soothingly as he could manage under the circumstances. “You’re going to have to describe this place to me. Maybe I’ve been there before.”

“I don’t know, John,” she cried. “It’s just a bar. It’s like the Cheatin’ Heart, but worse.”

“Wooden walls?” he asked. “Wooden floor?”

“Mmmm-hmmm…” she nodded.

“Pool table?” He continued. “Jukebox?”

“Jukebox, yes, but no pool table.” She scoured the room for objects that might single this particular bar out in John’s memory. “There’s a neon sign hanging over the bar. It’s got…” she squinted. “It looks like an anchor with a mermaid on it.”

As she was speaking, the jukebox blared to life, muffling John’s reply. She looked across to see Harvey’s white-haired friend scrolling through the jukebox selections. Harvey was still watching her intently as she pressed the fingers of her right hand to her ear, trying to hear what John was saying.

“What was that? John, they’ve put some music on, I can’t hear you. I’ll have to find somewhere quieter.” She gathered up her purse, left her half-empty glass of bourbon on the bar, and walked unsteadily towards the sign that pointed to the bathrooms.

On the other end of the line, John was frantic. “No, Doc, NO. Just stay where you are, I’m only a few minutes away, I’m coming to get you, baby!” She said nothing and he wasn’t sure if she’d heard him. He could hear the muffled music coming from the jukebox though, and he recognized it. It was Van Halen’s Drop Dead Legs and it sent a chill through him

Drop dead legs, pretty smile

Hurts my head, gets me wild…

“Doc! Don’t leave the bar!” he said desperately.

“What? I can’t hear you,” she repeated. “Wait just a minute. It’s quieter out here.”

You know that you want it, baby

When the night is through…

“Doc!” His heart was pounding and his throat tight with fear for her as he began to sprint in the direction of The Anchor.

“What?” She asked again as she pushed the door and stepped into the small space that led off to the toilets. “Okay, now tell me what you-“

She was too busy concentrating on John and her reflexes were too dull for her to react to the presence behind her before he slammed her bodily against the wall. She screamed and the force of the impact jolted her phone lose from her hand, sending it skittering feet away.

Outside, John heard his worst fears being realized as he heard Marlena cry out and a jumbled clatter of sounds.

Then her phone went ominously dead.

“Fuck, Doc!” He palmed his phone and put on a final burst of speed. “Hang on baby, just hang on for a couple more minutes!”

Part Trente Deux

Past me
I wanna tell you not to get lost in these petty things
Your nemeses will defeat themselves
Before you get the chance to swing
And he’s passing by
Rare as the glimmer of a comet in the sky
And he feels like home
If the shoe fits, walk in it
Everywhere you go

Long Story Short – Taylor Swift

“Hey blondie,” Harvey’s breath was hot and wet against her ear.  “Just you and me now.  Nice and cosy, like.”  He spun her around, pinning her against the wall, his forearm across her throat and his hand on her hip.  “I was just tryin’ ta be friendly before.  But dames like you, you think you’re too good for the likes of me, donchya?”

Marlena shook her head, her eyes wide with terror.

“C’mon now blondie,” he grinned lewdly.  “Be honest with me.  Your friend isn’t coming, is he?”

“He is… he’s on his way,” she choked out.  “Please.  Please don’t.”  Tears welled in her eyes.  

“Nuh-uh,” Harvey leaned in close.  She could see the blocked pores in his alcohol-reddened nose and the sandy whiskers that covered his poorly groomed chin.  “Just you and me now.  And we’re gonna have a party.”  She turned her head away and squeezed her eyes closed as he sniffed at her throat.  “You smell real good, sweetheart.”  His hand scrabbled at the hem of her skirt, his thick fingers clawing at her thigh and in the back of her head, she heard a voice begging her to fight.

She knew she should, but there was nothing in her with which to fight.  She was frozen in place.  The terror, the alcohol, the pain all dovetailed to incapacitate her.  And in the back of her head, a counterpoint to the voice urging her to fight was another voice.  It didn’t work with Kellam.  He just hurt you more because you resisted.

She choked back a sob.  This was all her fault.  If she hadn’t been so stupid as to walk in here in the first place…

“You’re real pretty,” Harvey was saying, his fetid breath hot against her cheek as he wrenched her skirt upwards.  His erection was impossible to ignore as he ground against her.  “I bet you taste just as sweet as you look.”

“You’ll never have the chance to find out, pal!”  Marlena’s hands flew to her throat as John bodily wrenched her would-be attacker away and slammed him head-first into the opposite wall.  John held him there, his face white where it met the wall.  

“You will never so much as lay a finger on a lady again without her express consent.  Do you understand me?”  Harvey grunted and John leaned closer.  “And you never, EVER, come near this lady again.  I see you anywhere in her vicinity, I will kill you, do you hear me?”

“Yeah.”  Harvey ground the word out through teeth that were clamped together between the wall and John’s hand.  

“Good.”  John scowled.  “I’d better not see your ugly mug again.  Ever.”  With that, he pulled the other man around so that he was facing him, reeled his fist back and let it fly.  Harvey slumped to the floor and John whirled back to Marlena.

“Doc!  Are you alright?  He didn’t hurt you, did he?” he peered at her, tentatively brushing strands of tousled hair from her face.  She shook her head wordlessly.  “Oh God, baby, you scared me so bad,” he pulled her into his arms, and she collapsed against him, crying soundlessly into his leather jacket.  John’s hand found the back of her head and he cradled her against him, crooning words of comfort to her.  “It’s okay baby.  I got you.  You’re safe now.  It’s going to be okay; I promise.”

A groan behind him refocused his attention away from the woman in his arms and he turned his head to look at the man on the floor.  The door to the bar opened at that moment and Jeter poked his head through. 

“Uh, everything okay here?”  He had seen John tear through the bar moments before and realized that both the pretty blonde lady and Harvey were nowhere to be seen and he had audibly groaned.  With misgivings, he had followed John, and now he kind of wished he hadn’t.

John looked around him and saw an ancient blind half askew against a nearby window.  

“Stay here for just a moment,” he told Marlena gently as he leaned her back against the wall.  She whimpered and he caught her reddened eyes, giving her a look that insisted that she needed to trust him.  “Just a minute, I promise.”

She trembled but she nodded, and he released her.   He stalked over to the blind and tore at the pull-cord, bringing the whole blind clattering to the ground.    Dragging the useless blind behind him, he took it across to where Harvey was mumbling incoherently on the ground and used the cord to bind Harvey’s hands behind his back.  

Looking up at the bartender, John pointed at Harvey.  “Call the police and ask for Commander Abe Carver.  Tell him John Black said to arrest this piece of scum for attempted sexual assault.  Tell him I’ll call him tomorrow, and Marlena and I will make statements then.”

He stood and taking one look at Marlena’s devastated face and her creased skirt, he swept her into his arms.  She looped her forearms around his neck and pressed her face to his shoulder.  “You got a back way out of this dive?” he demanded.  The last thing he wanted to expose Marlena to more of the lecherous stares and comments that this asshole and his ilk had visited on her.

Jeter pushed past him and opened a staff only door at the end of the corridor.  It led into another dingy corridor but there was a fire exit at the end, and he waved John towards it.

When the couple had gone, the bartender turned to Harvey who eyed him sideways out of the eye that was not swollen shut.

“Nice work, Harv.”  Jeter grimaced.  He looked at the man for a long moment.  Harvey was one of his best customers and he really could do without the trouble.   Sighing, he crouched down and unpicked the knotted cord around the groggy man’s hands.  Unlooping the string, he helped Harvey into a sitting position.  “You need to git gone.”  He glared at Harvey.  “I don’t want to see you around here for at least a couple of weeks, you hear me?  At least until things have cooled down some.”

“Yeah,” The sandy curls bounced as Harvey nodded his head.  “Thanks, man.  I owe ya.”  He pushed him up and staggered back into the bar.  Jeter looked around and saw the pretty lady’s purse and phone on the ground by the wall.  Shaking his head, he picked them up and took them back to the bar.  

Looking around, he stealthily slipped the billfold out of the purse.  With practiced fingers, he rifled through it and pulled out some folding notes.  Raising his eyebrows and wondering why a dame who carried fifties was frequenting a dump like this, he slid them into his back pocket.  Then he slid the billfold back into the expensive white purse, stuck the phone in there too and dropped them all into the trash.

~

“Almost there, baby,” John murmured against her soft, golden hair as he reached his car.  He had carried her the whole way from the bar back to the car without a single word.  It wasn’t that he had nothing to say to her.  More that there was too much.  He wanted to berate her for being so foolish. He wanted to thank the heavens that he had found her before anything serious had happened.  He wanted to explain the photos and reassure her that he had not slept with Hope, or Gina.  And he wanted to soothe her hurt and her fears and promise her that he would never let anyone hurt her again.  That he would never hurt her again.

But he knew she wasn’t ready for any of that.  She was drunk and traumatized, frightened and angry.  He knew her so well that he could feel the hurricane of emotions swirling inside her.  Both numbed and magnified by the effects of who knew how much bourbon.  Marlena didn’t even drink bourbon.  She had always said she hated the taste of it.  So, what had driven her to a sleazy joint like The Anchor so that she could drown herself in booze that she couldn’t stand? 

Stupid question really.  He had.  Him and his own carelessness.  

And it was not just the recent stupidity.  This wasn’t just Gina.  This was much, much more.  This was Kristen and Roman and Isabella and Orpheus and the ISA.  This was secret rooms and cages, dungeons, and pits.  This was losing him, losing Roman, losing Samantha, losing Don and even losing DJ.  This was Kellam fucking Chandler.  This was Stefano and his never-ending obsessiveness.  This was year after year of trauma.  Of kidnappings and demons and madmen.  This was a lifetime of suffering that she had bravely endured.

Most of all, this was him.  She had trusted him.  He had promised her she could trust him and then he had broken that trust.  And in doing so, he had broken her heart and he had broken her.

Now, he had to figure out how to put her back together again.  Or at the very least, help her figure out how all her pieces fit together now.

“Can you stand, baby?” he asked her gently as he reached the car.  She nodded softly and he set her feet on the ground.  But he still held onto her as he fished in his pocket for his car keys.  Finding them, he unlocked the car and lifted her into the passenger seat.  “Okay?” he asked as he settled her down.  She said nothing and he took that as assent.  He reached across her to fasten her seatbelt and started at her sharp intake of breath.  

Pulling back, he tried to catch her gaze, but she looked away, refusing to meet his eyes.

Frowning, he closed the door and moved around the front of his SUV.  By the time he had climbed into his own seat, she was resting her head on the cool passenger window, staring into the distance.

John watched her for a moment.  “You okay, Doc?” he asked gently.

“Sure,” she replied acerbically.  “Just peachy.”

He thought for a moment and then started the car.  He couldn’t take her back to the penthouse in this state.  A drunk and argumentative Marlena in combination with a jealous Bo Brady and their small children was not a scenario he wanted to contemplate.

He dug in the pockets of his jacket, looking for his cell.  Both pockets were empty, however, and a quick pat-down of his jeans told him that he’d lost his phone somewhere in his mad dash for the bar to rescue Marlena.  Sighing, he realized Marlena’s phone was likewise lost.  He’d have to call the family from a landline.

~

“What are we doing here?” Marlena asked again as he pulled the loft door open.  She stumbled slightly and he caught her arm, steadying her before he led her into the loft.  

“I don’t think the children should see you in this state,” John said mildly.

“This state?” she glared at him.  “I’m fine.”  She tottered momentarily on heels that were far too high for her intoxicated ankles and John caught her.  “I’m fine,” she reiterated, pulling away from him and then collapsing onto the sofa.

“Fine?” John raised his eyebrows as she kicked off her scuffed white heels and rolled her head against the back of the seat.  “Doc, honey, you’ve been drinking bourbon in The Anchor.   That’s one of the worst bars in Salem.  You are clearly not fine.”

“And who’s fault is that?” she sniped back.  “I can have a drink if I want a drink, John Black.  You’re not the boss of me.”

John sighed as he shrugged off his jacket and threw it over the back of one of the bar stools.  Getting into an argument with a hammered Marlena wasn’t high on his bucket list if he was honest.  “How about I get you a coffee?” he suggested gently.

“How about you piss off,” she snapped back angrily.

John said nothing but set about filling up the coffee machine.  He filled a glass with water and took it across to where Marlena was now sitting, her legs curled up under her.  He held out the glass to her, but she glared at him mutinously.  He shrugged and put the glass on the table.

He was on his way back to the kitchen when her voice stopped him.

“I want a drink, drink.”  She padded past him in her stockinged feet.  “Where do you keep the alcohol in this dump?”

John caught her arm.  “You’ve had more than enough alcohol,” he said firmly.

“Let go of me!” she wrenched her arm from him but stumbled backward and he had to catch her.

“Doc, go and sit down.”  It was like talking to a recalcitrant child when she was like this.  Although he wasn’t sure he could ever remember her being quite like this before.

“No!”  Her mouth set in a stubborn line, and she reminded him so much of Belle that he had to bite back a smile.  “I want a drink!”

“Marlena!”  He sighed.  “You’ve already had way too much.  Baby, did you forget what almost happened to you back there?  If you hadn’t called me… If I hadn’t gotten to you when I did…”  He shuddered, thinking about how badly the situation in The Anchor could have ended had she not made that call.  “God, Marlena.”  He had been so busy concentrating on getting her back here safely that he hadn’t let the enormity of the situation hit him until now.  Suddenly he was shaking, and he pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly against him.  “Don’t you ever do that again; do you hear me?”

For her part, Marlena had been doing her best to forget what had almost happened to her in that bar.  Her head was spinning but the remembered fear threading through John’s words brought it all back.  The feeling as she hit the wall.  The terror that flooded her.  His breath hot against her neck.  His voice, hoarse and raspy.  We’re gonna have a party.

His fingers scrabbling at her skirt, her thighs…

“Oh, God!”  She clung to John, her knees giving way as the echo of her panic flooded through her, turning her insides to water.  “John, John!”

“It’s okay, I got you, baby,” he took her weight as she collapsed into him.  He half-carried her back to the sofa and collapsed onto it, pulling her onto his lap.  One arm around her, he gathered her legs up onto the sofa and then held her to him, burying his nose in her hair which smelt of lilacs, cigarettes and booze. He could only thank God that he had reached her in time.  “You’re safe now.  He can’t hurt you.”

“John, I was so…” she sobbed into his shoulder, her tears soaking into the cotton of his shirt.  “I was so scared.”

“I know baby,” he said soothingly.  “I know you were.  I was scared too.  I was so scared when I realized where you were and what was happening.”  He stroked her hair and pressed a kiss on the top of her head.  “I don’t know what I would have done if…”  He couldn’t even voice the thought.  

He’d tried to live his life once without Marlena in the world and it was only a life half-lived.  She was the other half of him.  He didn’t care how long it took.  He would wait forever for her this time.  He would stand by and watch her and protect her and take care of her, even if she didn’t so much as cast a glance his way.  

“I was so…” she choked back a sob.  “I was so stupid.  I know better than that.  I know better than that.  What am I doing?”    

“Shhhh baby,” he rubbed her back, trying to soothe her.  There was a large part of him that wanted to agree with her.  She had been incredibly stupid.  But he knew in the cold light of day, she would punish herself plenty enough for this transgression.  He didn’t need to add to her guilt and self-recriminations.  “It’s not your fault,” he murmured against her hair.  “Don’t you blame yourself.”

“But it is my fault!” she shuddered again as her hand went to her throat. 

“Doc!” he pushed her back slightly so he could look at her face.  He used his thumb to wipe the tears from under her eyes, even as they continued to fall.  “It wasn’t your fault.  Do you hear me?  You didn’t ask for that.  You are not responsible for what that bastard… was going to do.  The only thing you did was drink too much and that’s all on me.  If this is anyone’s fault baby, it’s mine.”

“Yours?”  She looked confused and then understanding dawned on her face.  Slowly, she pushed herself back, studying his face.  And then she tensed.  “Let me go,” she said in a low voice.

“Honey, I can explain.”  He could, although he wasn’t sure she was in any fit state to understand or believe him.

“Explain what?” she demanded.  “How you screwed her or how you lied to me about it?”  She climbed off his lap and stumbled across to the kitchen counter, feeling for it behind her back, her fingertips clutching to the solidity of the structure as though it would stop her from being swamped by the oncoming wave of anger and grief.

“I didn’t,” John said simply.

“What?”  She looked at him disbelievingly.  “You didn’t what, John?  Screw her, or lie to me?”

“I didn’t have sex with Hope or Gina or Hope as Gina.  And baby, I didn’t lie to you.”

“Stop calling me that!”  Marlena shook her head and strands of her golden blonde bob stuck to her damp cheeks.  “I am not your baby.  I am not your anything.”

“You’ll always be my everything,” John told her leaning his head a little to one side.  His expression was so gentle and understanding and full of love, it made her want to weep.  “Listen.  There is something I didn’t tell you and I should have done.  It was a mistake not to.  I thought it would confuse things but not telling you…” he sighed.  “Gina drugged me.  In Berlin.  Before I was mugged.  She slipped me a mickey in my champagne.  We were meeting a contact and I told her I was coming home and the next thing I remember, I was waking up in a bed with her next to me.  But I swear, I didn’t do anything.  I didn’t have sex with her, I didn’t even kiss her.  I love you, Marlena.  I was coming home to you, and she couldn’t have that.  She set up that ‘photo-op’ like I was a fucking mannequin or something.”

“I saw the photos,” Marlena snapped back.  “Did you?  Because I’m telling you,” she gave a tight laugh, “they looked pretty convincing.”

“Yeah, I saw them,” John nodded.   “She did a bang-up job of setting me up, all right,” he said bitterly.  “But as Kim pointed out, the fact that there are photos raises the question of how and why?  You think I was having sex with her while there was a photographer hovering around snapping sweet memories?”

“How am I to know what kind of kinky stuff Father John Black was into?” Marlena said caustically.  “And I’m pretty sure Gina is vain enough to want permanent evidence of her conquest.”

“Nah.”  John shook his head.  “Look, Doc.  I… the photos are at the pub.  Tomorrow, I’ll take you and show you.  They look convincing at a first, maybe a second glance.  But they’re faked.  I wasn’t conscious when they were taken.  But right now, and I know it’s difficult, you need to trust me.  I didn’t cheat on you.  I didn’t lie to you.”  He paused and took a breath considering his next words.  If these didn’t convince Marlena, nothing would.  “I promise on our daughter’s life I didn’t lie to you, Marlena.”

“John!” Marlena was shocked and she felt so dizzy, that she had to turn and grip the counter harder.  In a second, John was by her side, his arm around her waist.

“Come and sit down,” he said softly.  “The coffee is ready.  I’ll get you a cup.”

He led her back to the couch and settled her down so that he was sure that she was comfortable. She curled her legs up under her again and pulling a cushion into her lap, she watched him as he went and pulled two cups from the cupboard and splashed the strong, black coffee into them.  Into hers, he spooned two helpings of sugar and splashed some creamer.  His own, he left black.

She was trying to make sense of her thoughts and feelings, but it was difficult.  The room kept spinning at various intervals and she would lose the thread of her thoughts in the middle of what seemed like an important realization only to wonder what it was she’d been thinking about.

She was still upset and angry.  But now she was also confused.  If there was one thing she was sure of, it was how much John loved his children.  She was sure he wouldn’t swear on Belle’s life unless he was absolutely one hundred percent positive nothing had happened with Gina.

She wanted to trust him as he asked, but she was too tired, too burnt, too drunk to be sure of anything.  

No, not quite anything.  She was sure she could still enjoy the aesthetics of watching John moving around the kitchen.  He was still the most handsome man she’d ever seen.  She watched him undo the cuffs of his shirt and roll them up, revealing his beautifully defined forearms.  And when he flexed his shoulders and rolled his neck around, revealing his tension and exhaustion, she admired the ripple of muscles under his shirt.

She sucked in her lower lip and bit it as she realized she was getting turned on.  

Stop it, Marlena, you’re just drunk!  She scolded herself as she shifted uncomfortably.  But look at him! the little devil on her shoulder told her better angel.  He came when you called him.  He came and he rescued you.  He promised he would be there, and he was there.  When you needed him, he was there.  And he is so, so fine.  And he makes you feel so good.  Don’t you want to feel good?

What about Bo?  Asked the rapidly fading, somewhat responsible voice in her head.

What about Bo? The little devil responded.  Where is Bo?  Where was he when you needed him?  And you want John, not Bo.  John’s the one who just has to look at you to make you wet and horny.

John turned with the coffee cups in his hands to find Marlena staring at him speculatively.  He could sense the change in her almost immediately.  In truth, he had felt it before he even turned around.  Her eyes were glazed, and she was biting her bottom lip.  He knew that look, and he knew it was trouble.  To be fair, it was the kind of trouble he really wanted to get into.  But he knew he couldn’t.  She was inebriated, she was confused, and she was traumatized.  If he let anything happen now, he would be taking advantage of her and he refused to do that to her.  He refused to do it to himself.  As much as he wanted her, he was a better man than that.  When they came together again, it would be because she wanted it.  Because she actively chose him.  Because she was enthusiastically consenting, not because she was drunk and grateful.  

“Here you go,” he put his own coffee on the table and turned hers so that she could take the handle.  

She took it without a word, but her eyes didn’t leave his.  He moved around the coffee table and sat at the other end of the sofa, putting a little space between them.

“You didn’t sleep with Gina.”  It was a statement rather than a question, but he chose to answer it anyway.

“No, honey.  I didn’t have sex with Gina.  I have absolutely zero interest in Gina, Hope, or any other woman for that matter.  Only you.”  He raised his eyebrows, conveying his sincerity and Marlena felt her core turn to liquid. 

Suddenly all she could think of was how his lips would feel on hers and how she wanted to run her tongue along the grooves of his abdominal muscles and taste the sweet, salty tang of him.  She viscerally shivered and some of her coffee slopped over the cushion on her lap and onto her white jacket.

“Oh shit!” she thrust out the coffee cup at John who grabbed it and watched as she tossed away the cushion and unbuttoned her jacket.  Shrugging out of it, she flung it in John’s direction.  “It needs soaking before it stains.”

“Yes ma’am,” he smiled.  This was as close to normality as they’d touched for months.  

But when he returned from immersing the viscose fabric in water, he stopped short.  She’d shed her silk blouse and above her waist, she wore only a lacy white bra and a sexy smile.

“Hi sailor,” she smiled suggestively.  “Come and sit down?” she patted the sofa next to her.

Despite his serious misgivings, John found himself unable to resist her invitation and he seated himself next to her.

“Thank you for coming,” she hiccupped and giggled, “coming to rescue me.”  She laid her hand on the front of his chest so that she could feel his warmth and the beating of his heart under her fingers.  

“I’ll always come,” he told her in a low, thready voice.  “I’ll always be there when you need me, Marlena.”

Her own heart beat in time with his and she stared at his lips as she fingered the top button of his shirt.

“You didn’t fuck Gina?” She wanted to be absolutely sure.

“I did not,” he confirmed.  It hadn’t even crossed his mind to want to fuck her.  But by God, he wanted to fuck the woman in front of him.  He wanted it as badly as he ever had.  Maybe more.

“I want you to kiss me,” she said breathlessly.

John couldn’t say anything for a long minute.  Her cheeks were a delicate shade of pink, her lips red where she had been biting them.  He wanted to kiss her.  He wanted to kiss her so badly that he could already taste her on his tongue.  He could feel the way her silky hair wrapped sweetly around his fingers as he tugged on it.  He could feel the warmth of her throat as he sucked on her skin.  He could hear her delicate whimpers as he bit her jaw.

He shook his head, trying to dislodge the thoughts.  “I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”  His voice was rough with desire as he caught her wrist in his fingers and guided her hand away from his body.

“Isn’t that what you want, John?” she asked, looking down at his fingers wrapped around her wrist.  She knew the things those fingers could do to her, and she felt a rush of moisture between her legs as she imagined him sinking those fingers deep inside her.

“You know it is,” he growled.  “But I also told you I wanted to wait until you’re ready.  We need to talk first.  About all of it.  We need to talk about all the things we didn’t talk about last time.”

“I don’t wanna talk,” Marlena leaned forwards so that his eyes were drawn to the soft swell of her breasts where they spilled up and out of her lacy bra.  “I wanna…” her free hand crept along John’s thigh and lightly squeezed the rapidly growing bulge in the crotch of his jeans.

“FUCK,” John swore loudly.

“Yeah, exactly,” she lunged for him and captured his lips with her own.  John groaned as she climbed onto his lap, straddling him as she attacked his mouth.

Marlena wrapped one hand around the back of his neck and carded her fingers through the short black hair as she slid her tongue into his mouth.  John released her other wrist and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her to him.  The slightly sour taste of bourbon lingered on her lips, but aside from that, everything was just as he remembered.  She tasted like candy floss and salted caramel.  She felt like heaven.  She wriggled against him and moaned, and he panted her name.

Her skin was hot where he held her, and her hair felt like silk between his fingers.  He wasn’t thinking.  He couldn’t think.  His body just reacted when hers was next to him.  She was everything.   She was his whole world and his whole world had just shrunk down to a pinpoint of sensation.  Her tongue digging in his mouth.  Her lips, fierce against his.  Her fingers stroking the back of his neck.  The softness of her breasts pressed against his chest.

The sound of her.  Oh god, the sounds from her.  He knew he could touch her just there at the curve of her waist where the waistband of her skirt rubbed against her skin and… yes, there it was, the throaty whimper that drove him crazy.  His fingers whispered over the delicate fabric as he sought the sweet curve of her ass.  He squeezed it and he was rewarded by a gasp, and he swallowed her moan with his mouth.

She rocked against him, and his world spun.  He found her jaw and then the soft flesh of her throat.  He’d been craving the taste of it since he’d returned to Salem.  No, practically since he left Salem.  It was roses and salt and cream.  He kissed her and licked her and sucked on her flesh until she cried out.  She held his head to her and tipped her own back.  “John,” she whispered.  “John.  Mmmmph”

She took the hand on her behind and lifted it to her breast.  “Touch me,” she begged.  She wanted to forget the feel of dirty fingers digging into her thighs.  She wanted to banish the memory of hot, stinking breath against her ear.  

John obliged, fingering the lace of her bra, and then gently squeezing her breast.  “Ohhhh,” she dropped her head, resting her cheek against his warm hair as his tongue tracked a warm trail of saliva down to the familiar swell of flesh rounded up and out of lace.  He mouthed it, sucking her in, dampening her flesh with his tongue.  He could devour her whole and she would let him, he knew.  He knew this body; he knew everything about her and yet every time, it was all new.  Her breathing grew ragged as his tongue traced the line where her flesh disappeared beneath the lace.  

His fingers sought and squeezed the already tight bud beneath the fabric, and she groaned loudly, feeling another gush of the hot sticky liquid between her legs.  “More,” she gasped, pulling down the cup of her bra so her breast was exposed to his wandering mouth.  He groaned in kind and mindlessly, he wrapped his fingers around the supple globe and snaked his tongue out to taste her.

It was like an electric shock, the swipe of his tongue across her nipple.  Her body was on fire.  Her head was filled with him.  She wanted his hands everywhere.  His mouth on her most sensitive places.  “John!” she clutched a handful of his hair as he swirled the tip of his tongue around her areola and then blew on it, making her flesh pucker into tiny pink crests.  He teased her with his teeth, listening for each mind-blowing whimper, feeling for every imprint of her fingers, each squeeze of her thighs. 

He sucked the hard pebble of her nipple into his mouth, tongued it, and then let it go with an audible ‘pop’ and Marlena yelped.  He did it again but this time he didn’t let it go.  This time he sucked it deeper, letting his tongue roll across the tip of it.  

“Oh, fuck baby, that feels so good,” Marlena purred as she ground herself against the large bulge in his jeans.

John froze momentarily as reality broke through.  As he wondered if Bo had touched her and tasted her in this way.  If she had said those words to him.

Abruptly, he lifted his head, bringing him face to face with her.  She was devastatingly beautiful, her lips red and swollen, her cheeks pink and her eyes hooded with desire.  He would burn down the world for this woman if he had to.  

But this was wrong.

“Why did you stop?” she asked, swaying slightly in his embrace.

“Because you’re drunk, and this is a really, really bad idea.” He told her.

“It’s the best idea,” she tapped his lips with a sly smile.  “This is what we do best, isn’t it?  Fight and then fuck?  I want you to fuck me, John.  I want you to fuck me so hard I see stars.”

The harsh desire in her voice, the lewd words spilling from her pretty lips, and the intimation that she wanted it rough and fast all combined to just about tip John over the edge.  His head was swimming, with the scent of her, with the feeling of her in his arms.  With the taste of her on his lips as he licked them.

“Don’t you want me?” she asked him, knowing very well that he did want her, just as much as she wanted him.  Her hand drifted to his tented jeans, and she smirked.  “Your dick says you do.”

“You know I want you,” he growled as he pushed her slightly away from him.  “I always want you.  But now is not the right time.”

“Now is very much the right time,” she reached around to her back, and with a practiced hand, she unclipped her bra.  With a smile, she slid the straps off her shoulders and discarded it behind her.  “I want to thank you.” She lifted his hand to her breast once again and he moaned.  Her skin was so warm and soft.  Despite himself, he ran his thumb across her nipple, and she inhaled sharply.

She lifted her own hands to his shirt and began to unbutton it with surprisingly deft fingers for a woman who was seven bourbons down.

“Thank me for what?” he asked hoarsely, looking into her amber eyes.

“Rescuing me,” she undid the last of the buttons on his shirt and then pushed it back off his shoulders.  Sliding the tip of her tongue over her lower lip, she ran her fingers lightly over his pectoral muscles, intent on the way they bunched and rippled under her touch.  “For loving me.”

“I do love you, Marlena.  That’s why,” he caught her hand in his, “we can’t do this right now.”  This was probably the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, resist her in this way.  But he knew it was the only right thing to do.  He couldn’t live with himself if she regretted it in the morning.  He would rather she was angry with him and regretted not having sex than feel as though she’d been taken advantage of.

“John!” she whined, struggling to release her wrist from his iron grip.   Her expression turned from seductress to hellcat in the blink of an eye.  “What the fuck?  You want me, I know you do.”

“Like I said, I always want you.  But not like this.  You’ve been through too much today, baby.  You’re drunk, you’re traumatized.  What you need is a good night’s sleep and to sober up,” he told her gently.

“You didn’t want me a few months ago,” she reminded him furiously.  “You left me for that hussy.”

“You,” he shrugged out of his shirt and pulled it around her shoulders.  “I wasn’t myself and you kicked me out.  Rightfully so,” he added.  “But even then, I still wanted you.  I just…” he sighed as he struggled to get her arms into the sleeves.  “I wish to God I knew why I did what I did.  I didn’t want to hurt you, Marlena.  But I was hurting you.  I remember that.  I could see the pain I was causing you, but I was powerless to stop it.  At least by going to Europe I could…”  He stopped.  He hadn’t protected her from any pain.  If that had been his intention, he’d been an abject failure.  He had abandoned her when she was faced with losing her child.  When she most needed him.  “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t!” she struggled from his lap, unable to breathe.  She stumbled away and then spun around to look at him.  “Stop!  Do you think that I wanted you to go?  I wanted you to leave me?”

“No!” he shook his head.  “No!  That’s not what I was trying to say.  Not at all.”

“I want to go home,” she said petulantly as she struggled to do up the buttons of the shirt she wore.  His shirt.

“You can’t go home honey; you’re not sober enough to be around the kids.”  He watched her fumble with the buttons and then, despite himself, he stood and moved towards her.  Gently he removed her hands and slowly, he slid each button through its corresponding hole.  She looked up at him from beneath her lashes, looking dangerously kissable.

He heard the hitch in her breathing as he pulled the fabric across her breasts, and he felt himself harden in response.  She lifted one arm and draped it around his neck.  “John?”  It was a question.

“Yes?” He swallowed hard.  His throat, his mouth was unspeakably dry.

“Can we just forget about all that?” she asked him before she caught her lower lip between her teeth.  She knew that turned him on when she appeared sweet and innocent.  “Can we just go back to how things were?  Before Gina?”  She slid her hand up over his chest.  “I want you so bad.  I want you to just make all the pain go away.  You can do that,” her hand found his face and she touched his cheek and then his lips.  “With these.  And with,” she brought her other hand to where his fingers struggled with the button between her heaving breasts.  “These.”  She leaned in to kiss him and he submitted to her mouth, letting her lips flit across his, her tongue darting, licking.

He lifted one of his own hands to her face, threading his fingers in her hair, the heel of his palm against her cheek and he kissed her.  He kissed her as if his life depended on it.  He put everything into that kiss, all his pent-up love, all his longing, all his fear, and then he pulled back, capturing her gaze with his blazing blue eyes.

“Oh baby, don’t you understand yet?” he asked softly.  “Sex isn’t going to stop the pain.  Honey, it’s just going to make it worse.”  He sighed and turned his head to kiss the palm of her hand where she was still touching her face.  Then he caught her hand in his and lowered it to her side.  “Sure, it might pause it for a little while, maybe you’ll be able to forget for an hour or so, but tomorrow I’ll still be me and you will still be you, and all that’s between us, all the hurt and the sorrow and the anger will still be there.  And you will just be even angrier at me for letting this happen.”

“No!”  She shook her head, trying to deny the truth of his words.

“Yes, you will.  You’ll wake up in the morning, and you’ll be sober, and everything will feel different, and you will regret this, you will.”

“I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!” She had tears in her eyes.  “John, please!” 

“Baby, just trust me on this,” he cradled her face tenderly between his hands.  “In the morning, you’ll thank me for this.  If you don’t, then that’s fine.  At least then you’ll know what you want.”

“I know what I want now!” she cried desperately.

“No,” he shook his head.  “You wanted to drink a quart of bourbon at The Anchor.  You’re not the best judge of what you want now.  Or at least what you need.  We can talk about it tomorrow, okay?”

“No, not okay.” Marlena stamped her foot and he was reminded again of their feisty young daughter.  “If you don’t want me, then take me home.”

John sighed.  He wasn’t going to argue with her.  Not about whether he wanted her, which he absolutely did as evidenced by his massive hard-on, which was currently digging into her hip.  Or about why he wasn’t taking her back to the penthouse tonight.

It wasn’t just about the children, although that was definitely a factor.  They did not need to see their mother in this state.  But more than that, he didn’t trust her with Bo.  He didn’t trust her not to come on to Bo in the same way she’d been coming onto him for the past hour.  Because while he was sure she hadn’t initially slept with Bo in a fit of petty revenge, he also didn’t put it past her, when she was in this condition, to fuck Bo out of pure spite because he’d turned her down.

And then there was Bo.  He definitely didn’t trust Bo around her.  Not when she was like this.  He’d like to think Bo wouldn’t be so careless as to give in to her faultless seductress act, but he had to admit, it was almost impossible to resist her when she was like this.  And Bo, for all his 40+ years was sometimes still that big dumb, impetuous kid.  And if he thought he was putting one over on John and getting revenge thanks to any lingering suspicions that John had slept with Hope… well then, he probably wouldn’t think twice about bedding a very willing Marlena, despite her inebriation.  In short, John didn’t trust Bo not to hurt her further and he wasn’t about to take any chances with Marlena’s wellbeing.

“No.”  It was that simple and his tone allowed for absolutely no further argument.  “You’re staying here tonight.  I want you where I know you’ll be safe.  Where I can keep an eye on you.  I’ll go up and get the room ready.”

He turned to head for the circular staircase that led to the bedrooms, but he was stilled by her hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t leave me alone,” he could hear the tears in her voice, and he turned back to her.  Her cheeks were wet and the expression on her face wrung out his heart.  “Please,” she whispered.  “I keep seeing his face and hearing his voice and I can’t… I don’t want to be alone.”

“Oh baby,” he pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her.  She pressed her face against his chest and inhaled his scent.  Sweat and spice and just John.  It was familiar and calming.  It made her feel safe. 

Safer than she had felt in months. 

“I won’t leave you, sweetheart.  I’ll never leave you again, I promise,” he said softly.  

It was a promise he intended to spend the rest of his life keeping.

Part Trente Trois

I, I, I see how this is gon’ go
Touch me and you’ll never be alone
I-Island breeze and lights down low
No one has to know

In the middle of the night, in my dreams
You should see the things we do, baby
In the middle of the night, in my dreams
I know I’m gonna be with you, so I take my time
Are you ready for it?

…. Ready For It? – Taylor Swift

“Here you go,” John shook two painkillers out of the small bottle and held his hand out. “Just wait there, I’ll get you some water.”

“John,” she looked uncertain.

“I’ll just be a minute,” he promised her. “You’ll be okay for just a minute, won’t you? You’re safe here, Marlena.”

He dodged out of the bedroom to get the water and she sat down on the bed, her head pounding. The room was still spinning but she was starting to sober up and she didn’t like the way she felt. She could barely look John in the eye when he came back with the glass of water.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“I’ll put another couple out on the bedside table,” he motioned to the beechwood cabinet next to where she sat. “You’ll need them in the morning.”

She had looked at him sideways when he’d led her to his own bedroom. It had never even occurred to him that she should sleep anywhere else. He needed to be near her in case she woke in the middle of the night and didn’t know where she was. Or in case she had flashbacks to, or nightmares about, what had happened earlier on at The Anchor.

The truth was, he just couldn’t let her out of his sight for more than a couple of minutes. He couldn’t stop thinking how close he had come to losing her earlier on in the evening and he had to be near her for as long as he could to reassure himself that she was safe and that she stayed safe. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her to stay put. More that… okay, so he didn’t trust her. She had proven herself completely incapable of making sound decisions this evening. Probably at all, for quite some time, if truth be known. He wasn’t going to take any chances where her safety was concerned. None.

“Stand up,” he told her when she’d swallowed down the pills. She obliged and he lifted the hem of the white shirt she wore. His shirt. Dammit, she was so fucking sexy when she wore his clothes. It really turned him on. But there was nothing for it. He would just have to ignore the painful evidence of his arousal and get her settled. He could sort himself out once he had her safely and comfortably in bed and sleeping.

He hooked his fingers under the waistband of her skirt and skimmed them around until he found where the ends of the waistband were hooked together. She looked up at him as he undid the clasp. His heart thrummed in his ears as he watched the way her eyes roamed his face, alighting on his lips as he slowly pulled the zipper down.

Her breathing was shallow, her breasts rising and falling below his shirt which hung loose and oversized on her shoulders, and she bit her lip again as he pushed the skirt down over her hips. The edge of her panties almost went with her skirt, and he just caught them, smoothing them against her gorgeously rounded ass as he dropped her skirt to the floor.

She swallowed, searching his face for a clue as to what might happen next. All she wanted was for him to slip his fingers inside her panties and feel how wet she was for him. But she was pretty sure that was not going to happen. Not after his speech earlier. And besides, her head really hurt now, and she wasn’t entirely sure she was capable of taking the kind of pounding that she had been hoping John would give her earlier.

“Get into bed.” His voice was hoarse with barely restrained lust. He leaned over and pulled back the covers but the hand on her ass didn’t move. Okay, maybe it slipped a little lower. Maybe it cupped one ass cheek and applied a little gentle pressure as he encouraged her to climb into bed. She looked at him uncertainly and he nodded at her. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ll be here. I won’t leave you.”

She climbed into bed and let him rearrange the covers on top of her. He sat on the edge of the bed next to her and just watched her for a long moment.

“John?” she asked as he brushed at a loose strand of hair where it had looped over her forehead.

“Mmmmm-hmmm?” he responded.  When she didn’t say anything in return, he started to look concerned. “What is it, honey?”

“I….” tears filled her eyes. “Would you… Would it be okay if you held me? Just for a little while, I mean. I promise I won’t try and ….” She looked embarrassed now. “I won’t try and seduce you, John. I’m just…” she trembled, and he brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek.

“Of course I will, baby,” he said softly.

He got up and turned off the main light, leaving the low light in the corner shining mutedly. He didn’t want her to wake up in a completely dark room, not knowing where she was. As he walked back to the bed, he saw that she had thrown back the covers so that he could crawl in beside her.

“Take off your jeans,” she said, her voice heavy with the exhaustion of the day. “I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself, but I need to feel your skin next to mine.”

He paused for a moment and then unbuckled his belt and undid the button and zip. His jeans hit the floor with a thud, and he kicked them away before he climbed into bed. He pulled Marlena close, folding his arms around her and tucking her head beneath his chin. She sighed and nestled against him, one of her legs nudging between his so that she could hook her calf around the back of his leg. It was familiar. It was also driving him a little bit crazy.

He stroked her hair and closed his eyes, relishing the familiar and yet profoundly new feeling of having her back in his arms. He couldn’t believe how quickly he’d grown to take her for granted once not!Roman had finally stepped back. He could curse himself for being so stupid. Instead of spending every day being goddamn grateful he had this glorious goddess in his life and in his bed, he had lost himself in a pointless, meandering search for his past. A search that had only caused pain to those he loved. A search that had risked his very future.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered sleepily against his chest. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

“It’s okay, baby,” he took a deep, cleansing breath, trying to ignore how his skin burned where hers rested against him. “Go to sleep now, okay?”

“Hmmm,” she wrapped her arm around his torso and danced her fingers across the plane of his shoulder blade where he wore a phoenix scored in black ink. “John?”

“Yeah, baby?” He held back the sigh which threatened to slip from his mouth. He really needed for her to go to sleep now.

“My head really hurts,” she moaned and pressed her hand against her temple.

“I’ll bet it does,” he smiled and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Just be still, the painkillers will kick in shortly. Sleep is what you need now.”

She murmured her assent and then she was quiet and still.

He figured it was about twenty minutes later when her breathing was steady and deep that he unwrapped himself from around her and quietly slipped out of bed. He stood and watched her for a long moment. The shadows from the lamp in the corner stretched long across the bed but the golden light illuminated her face and she looked beautiful and serene. He only hoped it stayed that way.

He moved quietly to sit in the armchair in the corner of the room. He couldn’t lie next to her all night. His willpower was strong, but not that strong. He watched as she stirred in her sleep. Obviously too hot, she kicked back the covers. His shirt had ridden up her body and her white lacy knickers peaked out from under the white cotton. He groaned and pushed down on his cock, trying to relieve his discomfort.

It was impossible to be so close to her and not be turned on. Everything about her made him want her. Her incredible body, her beautiful face. The way she smelt and the way she laughed. The way her eyes lit up when she saw her children. And not just that. He was aroused by her intelligence and by her sense of humor, sometimes dry, sometimes dark, sometimes goofy. He loved the way she knew him, how she could sense just what he needed at the end of a long day. Whether that was silence, or her touch or to talk it out. Secretly, he loved that other men looked at her, that they envied him for having her. She was a knock-out, every head turned when she walked into a room.

And she had chosen him. Of all people, she had chosen the man without a past, a walking enigma. And she hadn’t tried to mold him into something he wasn’t. (Unless you counted the years spent as Roman Brady, but that wasn’t really her fault). She just accepted and loved him. She put up with the madness that had turned out to be part of the package of him. And she had waited for him. Patiently, she had waited for him to realize, to admit he loved her. She had put him first, put his children first and she had always, always loved him.

He adored her. Nothing that he could ever find in his past could be half as important to him as she was. Marlena and his family. They were the things he needed to focus on. The past was the past, whatever it was, and he didn’t need to know any of it to know he had the best part of his life in this room. In his bed.

Marlena flung her arm out and murmured something in her sleep and he sat forward, shifting uncomfortably around his massive hard-on. He was really going to have to take care of this. His mind danced to the feeling of her on his lap and he growled deep in the back of his throat. She was impossible. But she was the kind of impossible that would always keep him on his toes. The kind of impossible he couldn’t live without.

He eyed the crease where her thigh met her buttock before it disappeared beneath white satin. He imagined his fingers skimming the smooth skin at the back of her leg, curling around to finger the warm, incredibly soft skin of her inner thigh. And then, at the apex, where the scrap of white satin hid untold wonders. His hips jerked as he imagined how she might feel. Swollen and wet. Slippery. Warm. He would use his finger to trace her folds, dip it into her liquid heat. He closed his eyes. He could feel her, tight around one finger and then two. He could feel that tiny jewel of pleasure against his tongue. He could taste her salty sweetness.

He swallowed as his breathing became uneven and rasping. He pushed at his cock through his boxers. It wouldn’t take much. It wouldn’t take long.

Standing, he passed by the foot of the bed. When he was at the door, he heard her stir and then, “Don’t leave me,” she pleaded, her voice husky with sleep.

He looked back over his shoulder, aware that if he turned that she would see how incapacitated he was by her mere presence in his bed. “I’m just… I need some air. Go back to sleep, honey.”

“Please?” Her face was in shadow, but he could see the glitter of tears in her eyes and his heart constricted as though it was in a vice.

“Okay.” He sighed. “I’ll stay. But you need to close your eyes young lady and go back to sleep.”

“You promise you’ll stay?” she sounded scared. “I can’t sleep when I’m alone. I have nightmares.”

His heart twisted in his chest. Damn. Nightmares? How long had that been going on?

“I promise, I’ll stay. If you close your eyes.”

She nodded and gave him a smile so sweet it almost shattered him. Then she closed her eyes.

He moved back to the bed and pulled the covers back over her and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll be right here,” he whispered. She nodded and hummed her approval as she nestled her head into the pillow beneath her.

John went back to the armchair and took up his vigil. His relief would have to wait a little longer.

As he sat there, he thought of the last time they’d been at the loft together. After he had finally rid her of the demon that had almost taken her life and soul. He had known then that he loved her more than life itself. He had been willing to sacrifice himself, give his soul for her life. Like now, he hadn’t been able to let her out of his sight. For days he had stuck close to her side. Wanting to touch her, just to prove to himself she was really real, that she was really safe. That she was his. Except, she wasn’t his, just as she wasn’t his now. And yet, hadn’t she always been his? Hadn’t they always belonged to each other, body and soul?

It seemed so stupid now, that he hadn’t had the courage back then to tell her how much he loved her. How much he was hers forever and ever. In those months the demon resided inside her, it had inspired dreams and fantasies, had made him want to take her body, to lose himself completely inside her. But the truth was, those dreams and fantasies had always been there. For a small time, between the start of things with Kristen and those months where the demon had a stranglehold on Marlena’s soul, he had managed to shut them away. He had locked them into a corner of his mind, and he had convinced himself that they were just friends. That he wasn’t hopelessly in love with her.

And then the demon unlocked that door and flung it wide open. Releasing all his fantasies, both chaste and unspeakably filthy. God, the number of ways he had wanted to fuck her. The places, the positions. And the tighter he had clung to his vows, the more lewd and degrading the fantasies had become. He was ashamed of some of the images that had kept him company on those long, dark nights when he was battling for her soul.

In the two years that followed her possession, he had relived those fantasies over and over. In bed, next to a sleeping Kristen, he had stroked his tight, throbbing dick as he imagined Marlena, her hands tied behind her back, her magnificent tits exposed as she sucked him off in the elevator on the way up to the Penthouse Grille. Or grabbing her at the pub, bending her over the bar, pushing her prim and proper pencil skirt up over her sweet ass, and fucking her right there, in front of their friends and family. Or his all-time favorite, tying her to the bed, just as she was when they exorcised the demon, and teasing her until she begged him to fuck her, all while Roman was standing there watching.

And he was ashamed of the fact that he still sometimes pulled them out when he needed a quick release. Usually when he was away from her, like on a business trip. But since they’d been separated, he was revisiting them on an all-to-regular basis.

He stared at her and rubbed his palm over the stiffness in his boxers. He couldn’t think like that with her lying in his bed. It was vulgar. She would be horrified if she knew.

An image of handcuffs dangling above the bed in Bo’s boat floated to the top of his mind. Under most circumstances, thinking about Marlena in Bo’s bed would be as good as pouring ice-cold water directly on his erection. But not tonight. Tonight, all he could think about was how Bo had fastened Marlena’s dainty wrists into those circles of metal. All he could think of was Marlena lying there helpless, wanting to be fucked senseless, and God help him, it made him insanely horny.

And suddenly he wondered if she would be horrified. Maybe if, no, when, she finally asked him to come back to her, he would sound her out, share some of his tamer fantasies with her and see how she reacted.

Just thinking about it made him groan. He froze as she rolled over, kicking back the covers once again. Now the shirt was up around her waist, exposing her hips, that lovely, rounded belly, and the vee between her legs that drove him absolutely batshit crazy with lust. God how he wanted to crawl in between those beautiful legs and feast on her.

His breath came out as a shudder as he grabbed his cock through his boxers. He was so hard it was fucking painful. If he didn’t do something soon, he was going to come right here in this chair, just looking at her. Standing, he made his way once again along the edge of the bed. He looked at the door of the bedroom and then looked at the bathroom door.

He didn’t want to leave her. He didn’t want her to wake and find him gone. If he just used the bathroom and left the bathroom door ajar, he would be able to hear her if she called him.

Once in there, he pushed the door almost closed. There was just a small sliver of golden light that threaded across the floor where the door stood slightly ajar. There was enough light in the room thanks to the waning moon, which was still silvery bright, even though it was half in shadow.

Crossing the room, he pushed open the window and inhaled the cold night air. His naked skin peaked into gooseflesh where the cold air hit him, but it didn’t provide any relief. Nothing would provide relief but to bring himself to orgasm. It wasn’t going to be difficult to achieve that, the way he was feeling.

Digging his hand into his boxers, he pulled out his cock, and his body spasmed with the need and desire running through him. He pushed his boxers over his hips and let them drop to the floor and then he leaned forward, placing one heated palm across the cool tiles of the bathroom wall as he spread his legs for stability.

He groaned deep in his throat as he wrapped his palm and fingers around his thickness and imagined it was Marlena’s hand as he stroked slowly down his length.

“Oh, God. Doc!” He drew up the memory of her on his lap earlier. Grinding herself against his confined cock. Lifting his hand to her breast. I want you to fuck me, John. I want you to fuck me so hard I see stars. Oh GOD, how he wanted to fuck her.

He wanted to sink his cock deep into that sweet pussy and fuck her like his life depended on it. Because maybe it just did. He wanted to push her thighs back, drape her calves over his shoulders, and pound into her until she screamed his name with complete abandon. He wanted to make her eyes roll back in her head with happiness and pleasure and absolute exhaustion. He wanted to make her forget Bo Brady ever even existed.

“Marlena.” He choked out her name again and again. His pace increased as he tightened his grip and closed his eyes. Throwing his head back in the moonlight, he imagined her on her back in his bed, those handcuffs around her wrists, his cock thrusting into that hot, slippery paradise between her legs.

And then, finally, he came. He came with a strangled cry and an OhgodDocohbabyohgodohfuuuuck falling from his lips as he spilled his seed all over his hand and his bathroom floor.

Panting, he lowered himself to the closed toilet seat and took a moment to recover. Then quickly, he cleaned himself and the bathroom up, flushed away the evidence of his selfishness, and washed his hands. Pulling on his boxers, he padded back to the door and pulled it open.

Marlena was still asleep, but now she was sprawled half on her side, one leg drawn up so that he had a perfect view of her perfectly gorgeous satin-clad ass. He closed his eyes and breathed in a deep breath. He could smell her from across the room. Cigarettes and perfume. Bourbon and lust.

He had to get out of this room, even if just for a few minutes or he was going to get himself into the same state all over again.

Quietly, he crept to the door. This time, she didn’t stir, and he slipped out silently, barely disturbing the air in the room as he went.

As he pulled the door to behind him, Marlena opened one eyelid.

When she was satisfied, he was gone, she rolled onto her back and closed her eyes again.

She had woken from her fitful sleep when he had groaned in the chair in the corner of the room. She hadn’t been sure exactly what had woken her, but she had heard it again and she had known. Part of her had wanted to speak up, to tell him she was awake but another part of her was frozen in place, curious as to what he would do next. Yet another part was so fucking turned on by the thought of him touching himself as he watched her sleep that she could hardly stand it.

She had felt his eyes on her, on her exposed stomach, on the white lace that barely covered his favorite playground. And then she had heard him exhale like he was in pain and then he was up and moving. Moving to the bathroom.

He had closed the door behind him, but she had been too curious to stay put. She had climbed out of bed and gone to the door, and she had watched him.

He was standing in the moonlight, in front of the open window, his feet planted wide apart on the ground. He leaned against the wall, his palm flat against the white tiled wall, his fingers splayed, bending and straightening with the exertion of bringing himself to completion.

His back was to her, and she couldn’t see him pulling on his cock, but she could see the way his muscles moved under the phoenix tattooed on his shoulder. She could see the smooth, oiled motion of his bicep and tricep as he moved his hand backward and forwards along his length. She could see the way his buttocks clenched as he thrust his hips forward. She wondered if he was imagining that he was thrusting into her.

She was so fucking turned on that her pussy ached. She was desperate for him to fuck her, even more so now that she’d seen him masturbating, but he’d made it clear that wasn’t going to happen and now she was a little more sober, she knew he was right. It wasn’t the right time or the right situation. When they eventually came together, it would be because they both were one hundred percent sure that it was what they both wanted. And when that happened, nothing would be in their way and he would fuck her until she saw stars, she knew it. It just wasn’t going to be tonight.

Her breaths came trembling, shallow and fast and her fingers crept to the cleft between her legs as she watched him. She pressed down on her clit, trying to dull the intense throbbing ache that had blossomed there as she watched him.

And then she heard her name come from him, like an invocation. Over and over, low and husky. Marlena’s and Oh baby’s like he was praying. Like he was begging. She wanted to know what was going on in that beautiful head of his. She wanted to see through his eyes, know all the dirty fantasies he had about her.

And then it was fast, sharp tugs and all his words bled into each other and he tipped his head back and he came with a cry that cut her to the core.

As he bowed his head, she crept away from the door and climbed back into bed, and arranged herself carefully. Part of her wanted him to come to her now, to be so overcome with his desire for her that he forgot himself. Part of her hoped he didn’t. Part of her wanted to know he was her John. The John that she had always thought him to be. The John that put her needs above her own. The John that knew her needs better than she did. That knew she needed him to be decent and honorable and to wait until she was absolutely ready.

She was torn. She almost moved, tucking herself under the covers but then he opened the bathroom door, and the decision was made.

And he had looked at her for a long moment and then left the room.

And now she was here, alone and so fucking needing to be touched that she could have cried.

Exhaling unsteadily, she pushed her panties down her thighs and slipped her feet out of them, kicking them to the side. Her stomach clenched as she brought the image of John in the moonlight to mind. Her fingers slid down between her legs and she groaned at how wet she was.

She dragged her fingers through the slippery folds of her sex and gasped at the sensitivity. She was already so close to the edge; she knew it wouldn’t be long. And she knew she couldn’t be long. There was no telling how soon John would be back. She didn’t want to embarrass him. She didn’t want to embarrass herself. But she had little other choice. If she didn’t come, she was going to lie awake here all night. Either that or she was really going to humiliate herself and beg John to make her come and neither of them wanted that right now.

Although, both of them did, too, she knew.

She slid the middle finger of her left hand down the seam and then curled it so that it slipped inside her. She moaned, her core clenching again as she imagined John’s fingers, John’s tongue penetrating her. Her forefinger joined her middle finger and she dug them deeper inside her as the slippery fingers of her right hand started to rub her clitoris in tiny circles. Lightly at first and then harder and faster as she recalled John’s elbow pistoning backward and forward as he ran his palm and fingers down his magnificent length over and over.

“John,” she moaned. “Oh, my god, John. John.”

She could see him, his head tipped back, the moonlight glistening on the plane of his cheek, the muscles corded in his neck as he came, calling her name. And her body throbbed and tensed and went rigid and then she came, her own cry a muted as she convulsed around her fingers, tensing and then curling her body as she rode out the crests of a self-generated wave of absolute pleasure and relief.

Finally, when she was done, she sighed with relief, and curling herself into a ball, she pulled the covers back over her half-naked body and promptly fell asleep.

John found her like that fifteen minutes later.

As he entered the room, he could smell her desire. He knew that scent. That sweet, sticky musky scent of her arousal. Of her completion. It made his pulse race, made his stomach knot. Made him hard with the wanting of her. He groaned internally as he saw her lacy panties, crumpled and discarded on the floor. She’d been awake when he left the room. Did she know what he’d been doing so furtively in the bathroom? Had she heard him? Had she watched him? He hated the circumstances that had brought them to this. Unable to be together, to touch each other. To bring each other the deeply fulfilling pleasure that they created when they came together.

And yet, he couldn’t deny that he was profoundly turned on by the idea of Marlena watching him as he made himself come, thinking only of her. Calling only her name. And of her being so aroused by that that she’d done the same in her turn. Touching herself. Sliding her fingers through that sweet, slippery heaven between her thighs. Whimpering and calling his name as she came.

He knew he was going to get himself into trouble, get himself into the same state he was before he relieved himself in the bathroom, but he needed to be close to her. She looked so peaceful lying there in the half-light, her golden hair tousled and splayed across the white pillow.

He rounded the end of the bed and climbed on top of the covers and lay there, looking at her. Just drinking her in. God, he loved her. He loved her so much that he couldn’t even fathom how the last few months had happened. Sure, he’d fought his way out of the fog eventually. But how could he have forgotten how this woman made him feel? How could he have lost that sense of being grateful every morning for waking up next to her?

There was no point to this without her. Sure, there were his kids, and he loved his kids. His kids were everything to him and they gave him a sense of stability. A sense of belonging. They were his anchor. But Marlena? Marlena was his bedrock. She was the foundation he was built upon. He needed her in his life as surely as he needed oxygen to breathe. And he needed to be able to touch her, to feel her, to make love to her to know that he was really alive.

He’d lived that half-life without her for too long. Smiling, kissing other women. Curling around other warm bodies in his bed. But it was only with Marlena that he felt truly alive. Truly a whole man. Truly at peace.

He reached out and traced the curled digits of her relaxed hand. They were still slightly damp from where she’d brought herself to the heady heights of orgasm. He moaned quietly and closed his eyes as he imagined her rubbing herself, curling and flexing, her little mewling whimpers as her pleasure crested and then the stiffening of her body, the way she cried his name as she fell into the white-hot fire of her climax, her body convulsing, riding out the waves of pleasure until she stilled and eventually sighed in her sleepy abandon.

Swallowing and clenching his jaw, he opened his eyes. His heart was pounding. Her lips were so close, so red and so dangerously kissable.

Groaning, he rolled away, adjusting his boxers as he pushed himself from the bed and staggered to the chair in the corner.

It was going to be a long, long night. 

Part Trente Quatre

So it goes
He can’t keep his wild eyes on the road
Takes me home
Lights are off, he’s taking off his coat, hmm, yeah
I say, “I heard, oh, that you’ve been out and about with some other girl, some other girl.”

He says, “What you’ve heard is true but I
Can’t stop thinking about you,” and I
I said, “I’ve been there, too, a few times.”

Style – Taylor Swift

It was a little after six in the morning when John finally gave up trying to sleep.  The sun was just edging its way over the horizon when he rolled away from Marlena.  Swinging his legs off the bed, he sat up.

Earlier, in the armchair, he had eventually dozed for a few hours, but he had been woken at around four by Marlena thrashing under the bedclothes and crying out in panic.  He had gone to her and gathered her in his arms, feeling her forehead hot and sweaty against his chest as he soothed her.  She had refused to tell him the content of her dream, had only wept quietly, until eventually she had fallen back asleep.  

Still finding it too tempting to hold her, to be close to her for too long, he had untangled himself from around her and retreated to the safety of the chair, only to wake again shortly before five as she gasped for breath and cried out his name.

This time, he had stayed close to her, enfolding her in his arms and whispering solicitous reassurances into her hair.  Telling her quietly how much he loved her, how much he was sorry for ever hurting her and how he was going to protect her from Stefano, from all the Harvey’s of the world, all the Kellam Chandler’s.  All the Kristen’s and the Gina’s.  Hollow assurances, he knew.  Short of spiriting her away to a deserted island, he couldn’t guarantee nothing would ever hurt her again.  But he murmured the platitudes, nonetheless.   It made him feel less powerless.  Less wretched.

Now he propped his elbows on his knees and ran his fingers through his hair.  He needed some air and some coffee.  Not necessarily in that order.  He was exhausted and he really needed sleep, but he wasn’t going to get any while Marlena was in his bed.  And while he was still so worried about her.

What had happened last night was so out of character for her he wasn’t sure what to think.  Obviously, she’d been struggling to cope with the events of the past few months anyway.  And before that, the past few years.  He had never known a stronger woman than Marlena.  But she was not superhuman.  She had to have her breaking point.  Maybe this was it.  In a way, he hoped it was.   Could it get worse than this?  Getting plastered in The Anchor of all places?  

He shuddered and turned to look at her.  He wondered how much of last night she would remember when she awoke. Part of him hoped none of it.  But then, if she didn’t, he would have to tell her.  And he didn’t relish the idea of that any more than he did her remembering it and blaming herself for being so foolish as to almost become the victim of a sexual predator.

“Oh, Doc,” he whispered, reaching out to run a finger across her cheek.  She stirred and he withdrew his hand quickly.  He didn’t want to wake her.  She needed sleep even more than he did.

He leaned over and pressed a feather-light kiss to her forehead before he pushed himself from the bed and padded silently from the room.

Yawning, he made his way down the spiral staircase, jumping off the bottom step to land lightly on the balls of his feet.   In the living room, he collected Marlena’s silk blouse from the floor and laid it over one of the bar stools.  Her jacket was still soaking in the sink, but he figured she’d probably want to trash the whole suit, given what had happened last night.  In any event, she certainly wouldn’t be wearing it home.

As he turned around to make his way to the kitchen, he saw the light blinking on the answering machine.  His hand rose unconsciously to run through his hair as he contemplated it.  In all the drama of trying to handle a very drunk and highly strung Marlena, he had completely forgotten to call the family and let them know he’d found her and that she was safe.  He was sure Abe would have filled them in after making the arrest at The Anchor, but he had promised Carrie.  And Laura was bound to be worried, and he wasn’t sure the news would have made its way around to her yet.

He pressed play on the machine and listened as he made his way into the kitchenette to put the coffee machine on.

John, it’s Carrie.  I’m just calling to say I’m home now.  Uncle Bo is with the kids at the Penthouse.  Can you please call me with any news?   Beep.

John poured water into the coffee machine and put a filter into the cone.

John.  Dammit man, why aren’t you answering your cell?  I’m going crazy here.  Call me when you get this.  Beep.

I’m going outta my mind here, man.  Just fucking call me, would you?  Beep.  

John scowled as he dumped six scoops of coffee into the filter and jammed it back into the machine before switching it on.  Bo could wait until he was damn well ready to call him.

John?  John, it’s Laura.  I’m so worried I can’t sleep.  Please tell me you found Marlena.  I called her cell but it’s going straight to messages, and I called her place, but Bo doesn’t know anything.   Please, please call me.  Beep.

John.  I’m really worried now.  Please, man.  Call me and tell me you found her.  Beep.

The coffee machine gurgled as John took a mug out of the cupboard and placed it on the counter.  Then he turned and looked at the machine.  He was starting to get confused.  Why did Bo keep calling?  Surely Abe would have called him as soon as he’d gotten back to the station.

John, I called Abe and he said no-one’s heard from you for hours.  They found Marlena’s car down by the docks but no sign of her or of you.  As soon as it gets light, I’m calling Kim to watch the kids and I’m coming out to look.  If you get this, please call me.  Beep.

John frowned as he looked at the window.  The sky beyond was vibrant reds and pinks.  Why was Bo still calling?  Where the hell was Abe?

John, it’s Carrie again.  You haven’t called and I’m getting really scared.  I have to leave shortly for the airport, but I’m not sure if I should go while I don’t know if Marlena is okay.  Can you please call me?  Beep.

He jumped as there was a loud banging on the door.  He looked at the door and then at the machine.

“Black, I saw your car downstairs.”  Bo’s voice was muffled behind the sliding steel, but John could hear the barely restrained fury contained in his words.  “If you’re there, open the damn door.”

John sighed and stalked to the door, yanking it open as Bo began pounding on it again.

His fist raised mid-bang, Bo stared at John with equal parts anger and confusion.

“What the fuck, man?” he demanded, stalking into the loft.  “Everybody has been trying to get hold of you and then Abe called me and said your phone was found down at the docks and we thought something terrible had happened to you.”  He turned around and looked John up and down.  Dressed only in boxer shorts, John looked tired but perfectly safe.

Bo blinked.  If John was here then where was…

“Where is she?”  he looked around, desperately, looking for a sign of Marlena.  “Please tell me you found her.”  He stopped himself, realising what he was saying.  This was John.  There was only one way he would ever give up looking for Marlena if he thought she was in trouble.  “Well of course you found her.  You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t found her.”  He wasn’t at all sure whether he should be pissed or relieved but after a moment, he opted for the latter.  Being pissed off could come later, as soon as he knew Marlena was okay.  “You should have called, bro. We were so worried.”

John held up his hands in reassurance.  “It’s okay, it’s okay, Bo.  She’s fine, she’s safe.”  He frowned again.  “I thought… I thought Abe would have told you.

Bo’s brow creased, his eyebrows gathering close together as he tried to make sense of John’s words.  “I don’t understand, John.  Told me what?  Abe’s just as in the dark about all this as I am.”

John blinked and then the pieces fell into place.  

“Fucking asshole!” he growled angrily.

“Um, excuse me?” Bo started, feeling more than a little affronted by John’s sudden outburst.

“No, not you.”  John shook his head and then took a deep breath.  His eyes felt heavy and gritty.  “Let me just get a coffee and I’ll explain everything.  You want one?”

Bo nodded his assent to the coffee and waited while John poured the hot black gold into two mugs.  But as he did, he spotted Marlena’s blouse on the stool, and he felt a prickling at the back of his neck.  It was not lost on him that she was obviously upstairs.  And that John was clad only in his boxers.

Bo picked up the blouse and shook it at John as John tried to hand him the mug.  “Care to explain this?” he demanded angrily.

For a moment John was tempted to let Bo think that he and Marlena had slept together.  It would serve him right for what he’d done to Marlena yesterday, abandoning her like that when she had needed someone to lean on.  Someone to save her from herself.  But Bo hadn’t been that person.  Bo could never be that person.  He was too selfish, too hot-headed.  Marlena was too good for him.  

But then Marlena was too good for most of them.

The moment passed as John thought about how upset Marlena would be if she realized he had misrepresented her spending the night here.   So, while he was tempted, and while Bo damn well deserved it, he couldn’t do it to her.  It was going to be hard enough for her to accept the truth about what had happened last night.  Both what had happened to her and what she had tried to do to blot out her pain.  He wouldn’t add to that if he could possibly help it.

“Nothing happened,” he said calmly as he took the blouse out of Bo’s hand and put the coffee on the breakfast bar in front of him.  “Marlena was very drunk, but nothing happened.” 

“Marlena was….” Bo frowned, remembering the night on the boat when she’d downed a third of a bottle of whisky in the middle of the night.  And then the other night at the penthouse.  He felt a little sick.  Should he have seen this coming?  He picked up his coffee and stared guiltily into the dark brown contents of the mug.

“She called me.”  John took his own coffee and went across to the sofa where he sank heavily into the cushions and sat forward, his elbows on his knees again.  He blew across the hot black liquid, trying to cool it enough that he wouldn’t scald himself taking a mouthful.  “Laura said something that made me think Marlena had called her from the pier, so I headed down there.  I was trying to work out where she might have gone when she called me.”

Bo glowered at him but said nothing.

“She was in The Anchor,” John winced, recalling his absolute panic when he’d realized where she was.

“She was-” Bo stopped short, wondering if he’d misheard John.  The Anchor was one of the worst bars in Salem.  “I don’t think I heard you right.  I thought you just said she was in The Anchor.”

John raised his eyebrows and shrugged.  “You heard me right, Brady.  Honestly, she was in such a state, she didn’t know where she was or how she got there.  I had to get her to describe the place.  She was six sheets to the wind.  She was drinking bourbon.” He yawned as he ran his fingers through his hair again.  “You know what a lightweight Doc is.  I don’t know how many she’d had before she called me, but she was smashed.”

Bo looked horrified.  “But The Anchor’s a dive.  Marlena would have stuck out like a sore thumb.”  He suddenly felt even more nauseous.  He picked up his coffee hoping it might calm his stomach some.  He took a mouthful as he imagined his gorgeous girlfriend propping up the bar at the grungy Anchor.  “A really fucking pretty sore thumb.”

“Well, yeah.”  John scowled now.  “I don’t know what she was thinking, honestly. And how she didn’t know what was going to happen to her once she was drunk and good and vulnerable.  I just… thank fuck I got there in time.”  He looked away for a moment, trying to get a grip on himself as the tears threatened.  He sniffed and then cleared his throat before he looked back at Bo.  “They put the jukebox on while she was on the phone with me so she couldn’t hear what I was saying.  She went out to the toilets and one of the fuckers from the bar followed her out there.  He had her bailed up against the wall, his arm across her throat, his hand up her skirt when I got there.”

“Jesus!” Bo’s hand was shaking, and he had to put the mug back down on the counter.  “Was she okay?  Is she okay?”

“Yeah,” John nodded his reassurance.  “Physically she’s fine.  But she was shaken up, and like I said, she was really drunk and messed up emotionally.  I didn’t want the kids seeing her like that, so I brought her back here.”  He stood up and paced across the loft, wondering what had happened after he left the bar.  “I left the bartender to call the police.  I told him to call and ask for Abe.  But I’m guessing since you didn’t hear anything about it, he didn’t call.”  He frowned.  Part of him had wanted to fucking kill that lowlife scum for even thinking about touching Marlena.  If he hadn’t been so worried about her, if he hadn’t felt the need to spirit her away from that shit-heap then he might just have done it.

It was probably just as well, he reflected.  He wasn’t going to be able to convince Marlena of his love and sincerity from a jail cell.  He wasn’t going to be able to protect her if he was locked up in Statesville. 

“There’s been a lot of trouble at The Anchor recently,” Bo seemed to be reading his thoughts.  “The commish threatened to have them closed down if they didn’t start cleaning up their act.  They had every reason not to call the cops in for this.”

John took a deep breath and nodded.  “Unfortunately that means that low-life is still wandering around out there.”  He shook his head.  “He’d better hope I never catch sight of his miserable face ever again.”  He looked at Bo.  “That explains why Abe didn’t let you know.”   He sighed again, rubbing his fingers across his forehead, trying to ease the ache that was gathering behind his eyes.  

“I would have called you from the car, but I guess I lost my cell when I was trying to get to her and hers is still somewhere at the bar.  By the time we got back here, Marlena was….”  He ran his fingers through his hair again as he thought of how volatile Marlena had been.  One moment she’d been angry, then terrified and then…

He couldn’t tell Bo that she’d tried to get him to have sex with her.  She’d never forgive him for that.  While it was the truth, it would embarrass her and add to the guilt and culpability she would already inevitably be feeling.

“I was what?” Marlena’s voice came from the bottom of the stairs.  They both turned to look at her and John caught his breath.  She was still wearing his shirt, but it was hanging off one shoulder, while riding up on the other side to reveal those sexy lacy panties that she’d obviously retrieved from the floor.  And it revealed her long, slender legs in all their sheer perfection.  Her golden mane was tousled, and she looked confused, innocent, and sexy, all at the same time.  John thought she’d never looked more beautiful.

“What the actual fuck?!”  Bo spat out.  The sight of her dressed in John’s shirt was too much for him and it provoked a flash of jealousy and anger so intense that for a moment he barely knew what to do with himself.  Then, his hot-headed instinct kicking in, he marched over and grabbed her by the arm.  “Enough!  You’re coming with me.”

The roughness of his grip triggered a panicked response and she pulled away from him, backing up against the iron railings of the staircase.  “Get your hands off me!”

When Bo showed no sign of releasing his hold on her, John stood up.  He could see the fear flashing in Marlena’s eyes and he felt the tension and fear emanating from her.  “Brady, you heard her.  Get your hands off her.  Now.”

The quiet intensity of John’s voice combined with the barely contained panic flitting across Marlena’s face suddenly brought Bo back to himself and he dropped her arm and stepped back, shaking his head.  Marlena crossed her arms in front of her body, rubbing her forearm, more confused than ever.

“Look, I know what this looks like, but nothing happened,” John held up his hands.  “I swear to you.” He didn’t really know why he should be defending himself to Bo Brady, of all people.  Not when Bo had swooped in and seduced Marlena the moment John had left town.   But looking at Marlena, he knew why.  She looked confused and upset, and he couldn’t bear to make things any worse for her.

“Then why the fuck is she half naked?” Bo snarled angrily.  He didn’t know what to think.  In the space of ten minutes, he’d found out Marlena was safe, at John’s, she’d almost been assaulted and now here she was, dressed in John’s shirt and very little else.  And by the look on her face, she was confused and scared.  He just wasn’t entirely sure what it was that she feared.

“She spilled some coffee on her suit, she was upset, and she needed some sleep.”  John explained, calmly and patiently.  He needed to defuse this situation for Marlena’s sake.  She’d already been through enough.  The last thing she needed was the two of them at each other’s throats again.  “I gave her my shirt to wear, and she went to sleep upstairs.  By herself.”  It wasn’t, of course, entirely true.  It was leaving out a lot.  But it was a lot that was largely irrelevant right now.  At least, to Bo Brady.

“I am right here you know.”  Marlena reminded them tersely.  She wasn’t going to be talked about like she wasn’t in the room.  She’d woken with one hell of a headache in John’s bed, and she’d had no idea how she’d gotten there, or why she’d been wearing John’s shirt.  Or, indeed, what else might have happened in between getting home to the penthouse and waking up here.  But despite all that, she wasn’t about to let them fight over her as though she couldn’t speak for herself.  

Pushing clumsily past Bo, she put her hand out and used him to steady herself as she addressed John.  “How about you tell me what happened instead of speaking to Bo?  I would like to know why I’m here.”

John sighed.  He didn’t really want to have this conversation right now.  Not with Bo here.  He wanted to tell her gradually.  Maybe with Laura’s assistance.  But it looked like he wasn’t going to get that option.  “You don’t remember anything about last night, Doc?”

“Noooo.”  Marlena didn’t like the look that came over his face as he asked that question.  The pounding in her head and the uncomfortable rolling of her stomach were enough to tell her she probably didn’t want to remember, and John’s face did nothing to dissuade her from that notion.

John looked at Bo.  Bo looked back at him and shrugged uncomfortably.  Marlena’s hand was still on his arm but he may as well not have been there for all the attention she was paying him.

“What’s the last thing you do remember?” he asked, not as gently as he might have intended.

Marlena turned, her eyes cinnamon dark in her beautiful, pale face.  She looked at him and then looked at her hand, clutching at his forearm.  Her eyes widened and she let him go, stepping backwards.  There were a swirl of emotions seated in her chest and her stomach and she couldn’t even identify them all right now or the effect they were having on her.  She just knew she felt dizzy, and her head ached.  “I got home from work.  You were…” she paused to suck in a laboured breath.  “You were making tea and I was going to go…” she stopped as she remembered the pile of envelopes on the corner of credenza.  She remembered pulling out the cream envelope with the gold-embossed edges and slitting it open with the letter open.  Her face blanched even more, and her hands started to tingle.  “Oh.”

She turned back to John, tears welling in her eyes.

“Baby, it’s not what you think.  I promise.” He took a step towards her, but she held up her hands as though she was warding him off.

“How could it be anything else?” she asked in a shaking voice as she struggled to breathe.

“Marlena,” he said in a calm voice, recognizing now the signs of the onset of a panic attack.  “You need to breathe, baby.  You’re having a panic attack, so I need you to listen to my voice and breathe in slowly.”

Bo stepped forward and put his hands on her upper arms to support her, but she violently shook off his touch with a squeal and John glared at him.  Bo held up his hands and stepped back, his mouth turning downwards into a sulky pout as he watched John turn his attention back to Marlena.

“It’s okay, Doc,” he said soothingly.  “Look at me, honey.  You’re safe, you just need to breathe.”  He was grateful when she looked up, seeking his eyes with her own.   “I’m going to count, you breathe,” he told her gently.  “You with me?”

She nodded and breathed shakily as he counted to five again and again until she seemed calm again.  

He reached out to touch her but stopped short, aware that she had shaken off Bo’s approach and she just might not be up for being touched by anyone right now.  “Do you want to sit down, Doc?” he asked softly.

“No, I want to know what you have to say about those photos,” she said irritably.  She hated this.  She hated feeling so shaky and vulnerable.  She hated not knowing what had happened to her.  She hated feeling so at sea and so trapped all at the same time.

“I explained last night,” he told her gently.  “It was a set-up.  Gina set me up.”

“I don’t believe you.”  Tears spilled down her face as she wrapped her arms around her body.  “You lied to me.”

“Let me take you home, Marlena,” Bo moved up behind her again and tentatively touched her shoulder.  “We can talk about it back at the penthouse.”

“She’s not going anywhere with you,” John said angrily.  He wasn’t about to let Bo fill her head with his petty jealousy.  He had to make her see that Gina had entrapped him.  He had to make her understand what she’d instinctively understood last night.  That he would never cheat on her.  That he’d never choose another woman over her.  That he loved her with everything he had and everything he was.  Now and always.

“Well, she’s not staying here with you.” Bo snarled, draping his arm possessively around Marlena’s waist despite her earlier reactions.  “Look at how upset she is, look at what you’ve done to her.”

“You’re the one that blew out of there when you saw those photos and left her all alone.” John reminded him scornfully.  “This is as much your fault as it is mine.”

“Stop!  Just stop it!”  Marlena shook off Bo’s arm and moved away from him as she brushed furiously at the tears that dripped from her jaw to the soft cotton of John’s shirt.  “The two of you don’t own me.  You can’t tell me what I have to do or where I have to go.  I get to decide where I’m going to go and what I’m going to do.”

John frowned.  He wasn’t about to let her walk out of here.  Not with Bo.  And not until he’d made sure she wasn’t going to do anything else stupid.  “Mmmm, yeah.  In theory, Doc.  But that didn’t turn out so well last night, so perhaps not right at the moment.”  

“What do you mean?”  The skin between Marlena’s eyebrows creased, signalling her confusion which damped down her irritation.

“I’ll explain, but maybe you should get dressed first.”  John suggested.  He was hyper aware of Bo standing there, Marlena still being half-naked under his shirt and the fact that she was going to feel incredibly vulnerable if, or rather, once, she started remembering the events of last night.

“Yeah, get dressed and I’ll take you home.” Bo instructed tersely.  He was getting more and more pissed off with this situation, with John’s interference and the fact that he might as well not have been here for all the heed Marlena was paying to him.  He didn’t need her attention, but it was almost as though she hardly even knew that he was there.  And he was about done with it.  “The kids will be wondering where you are.”

“I’m not going home.”  Marlena didn’t even look at him.  She didn’t like the way he was making her feel.  Like he thought he had ownership over her.  Like he was trying to keep her away from John.  She’d been here once before, with Roman, and she wasn’t standing for it again.  And as for John…  Her head told her that he’d cheated on her and he’d lied to her about it, but her heart was saying something entirely different.  Her heart was telling her that she should trust him.  That as insane as it was, what he was saying was true.  She wanted to know why that was and she wasn’t going to find that out if she went back to the penthouse with Bo. “I’m staying here.”

John didn’t move.  Her eyes hadn’t strayed from his face for a moment as she’d talked.  As she’d clearly turned over her options, considered what she wanted and decided that she wanted the truth.  Silently, he sent up a prayer of thanks.  

“What do you mean you’re staying here?”  Bo demanded, the frustration getting just too much.  He knew he was being demanding and jealous and possessive.  He knew he was pushing too hard, expecting too much.  If she wanted to be with John, he couldn’t stop her.  But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to fight for her.  He was sure if he could just get her to come back to the penthouse, they could talk through the photos.  Make it make sense for both of them.

“I want to hear what John has to say.”  Marlena turned to look at Bo.  There was a strange look in her eyes, one that was unfamiliar to him of late.  The uncertainty of the past few months had all but vanished.  This was a different Marlena to the one that had so desperately taken him to her bed for the past few weeks.  This Marlena was self-assured.  This Marlena knew what she wanted, even if she wasn’t consciously aware of it yet.   “I want to hear why he says those photos aren’t what they seem.  And I want him to tell me what happened last night.”

“Marlena, I don’t think that….” Bo started.

“Bo, please respect my decision,” Marlena asked quietly but firmly.  “I need to know what happened last night.  And I need to know what happened between John and Hope.”

“All right then,” Bo said slowly, his mind in overdrive.  There was obviously no arguing with her on this.  “I’ll stay too.  We can hear what he has to say together.”

“I don’t want you to stay, Bo.  This is between me and John.”  She laid her hand on his arm, her voice soft but firm.  “Go home.  Look after the children.  I’ll be home later.”

“I’m not your babysitter, Marlena!” Bo snapped.  “And this concerns me too.  Hope is my wife.  I have as much right to know what happened as you do.”

“You know what happened, Bo,” John growls.  “I told you last night.  So back off.  Marlena has asked you to leave.  Don’t make her say it again.”

Bo’s mouth tightened, reminiscent of Caroline when she got really angry, and his jaw set in a stubborn line.  

“What are you saying, Marlena?” he demanded resentfully.  “I’m good enough for you to take me to your bed but not for me to support you now?  Now John’s run to your rescue, you want him again, despite everything he’s done to you?”

“You were the one that walked out on her when she really needed support,” John reminded him caustically.  “Maybe she’s just seeing you for the irresponsible, impulsive jerk you’ve always been.”

“John!” Marlena’s tone was short and held a warning.  She was tired, her head hurt, and she didn’t have the energy either to assuage Bo’s injured feelings or to mediate another one of Bo and John’s childish arguments.

“John is the only one who can tell me what happened last night, and he is the only one that can explain those photos,” she said to Bo.  “But quite frankly, I can do without the bickering between you two right now.  So, yes, I’m asking you to go.  Nothing is going to happen.  I’m going to get dressed, John and I are going to talk and then I’m going home to the penthouse.  If you want to be there when I get back, then we can talk then.”  She paused, frowning.  “Who is with the children?”

“Kimberly,” Bo said sulkily.  “And no, I don’t think I want to go back to the penthouse right now.”  He pursed his lips as he thought about what he was saying.  He knew that he was being childish.  But he wasn’t going to wait around in her house looking after her kids so she could come home and tell him it was over.  If she was going to tell him that, she could come find him and tell him.  “I’ll go to the boat.  You can call me when you want to see me.”

“Alright.”  Marlena felt inexplicably relieved at his decision.  Whatever happened here today, whatever John had to tell her, she knew she was going to need space to digest it when she got home.   “Fine.  I’ll call you.”

“Sure.”  Bo’s reply conveyed his hurt and Marlena sighed.  

“Bo-”

“Marlena, it’s fine,” he held up one hand dismissively.  “I get it.”

“It’s not like that,” she shook her head.  “Bo, honey…” she closed her eyes as the pounding inside her skull threatened to derail her.  As bad as she felt for upsetting him, she really didn’t have the energy to soothe his bruised ego.  “I really can’t get into this with you right now.  I need you to understand that I need to do this.  This isn’t about John, or about you.  This is about me.  This is about what I need.  There are things I need to understand, and I need some space to understand and process what’s happened recently.  And I’m sorry if that hurts you, that’s not my intention.”

“Doc, you don’t need to explain yourself to him,” John said irritably.  He hated that she felt the need to reassure Bo, when his little brother was being an absolute dickhead.  Bo knew what she’d been through, knew she was hungover and vulnerable.  Stroking his fragile man-child ego was the very last thing she needed to be doing right now.

“John, just stay out of it,” Marlena sighed wearily.  The needling jabs were too much.  She wasn’t sure whether the constant provocation or the passive aggressiveness was more irritating.  She only knew she couldn’t take much more of it.

“It’s okay,” Bo said miserably.  “He’s right.  You don’t need to explain.  I’ll go.”  He reached out to touch her face but dropped his hand before his fingers connected with her pale skin.  “I’ll be at the boat if you need me.”

Marlena nodded and followed him to the door of the loft.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly as he pulled the door open.  “I just need to do this.”

Bo frowned and nodded unhappily.  He didn’t know what to do.  This situation was impossible.  He hated leaving her here.  Not knowing where they stood.  And not really knowing what had happened between her and John last night.  He was pretty sure there was more that had happened than John had been willing to tell him and the thought of John’s hands on her, of her lips on John’s was driving him crazy.

He didn’t trust John.  Did he trust her?  

If he was honest, not really.  She’d cheated on Roman, and she’d been married to him.  She’d loved him, or so she’d said at the time.  But Bo couldn’t even claim that from her.  Professions of love were not part of their equation, at least not on her part.  So how could he be sure of anything?  She’d promised him nothing, after all.

“I hope you get what you need,” was all he said before he turned and walked towards the elevator. 

Marlena stood and watching him, tears filling her eyes as he turned around and stared at her as the elevator door closed.  And then he was gone, and she covered her mouth with her hand and let the tears tumble over shaking fingers.

“Hey,” John’s voice was gentle as he put his hands on her shoulders.  “He’s going to be okay.  He’s a big boy.  He knew what he was getting into when he got involved with you.”

“I’m not sure he did,” she let John turn her around and guide her back into the loft.

“You’re not responsible for Bo’s feelings,” John told her, using his thumb to wipe away her tears.  “You’ve got enough on your plate without worrying about Bo Brady.”

“Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t be feeling,” Marlena swatted his hands away irritably.  Having him this close felt too familiar.  Too comfortable.  Too dangerous.  “You know nothing about my relationship with Bo.  So don’t presume to tell me how to handle him or how guilty I should or shouldn’t feel about this.  He just found me half-naked in your loft for goodness’ sake.  I at least owe him an explanation.”  She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair in frustration wondering how she could explain something she didn’t even understand herself.

“Okay, okay.”  John held his hands up.  “Let me get you a coffee.  Then I need to call Laura and let her know you’re okay.  And then I need to let Carrie and the rest of the family know.  Because I thought they did, but apparently not.”  He walked into the kitchen.  “Did you take those Advil I left next to the bed?”

Marlena nodded her head.  She had woken to the sound of banging which she now realised was Bo pounding on the door of the loft.  She’d been disoriented and for a moment she couldn’t discern what was the banging downstairs and what was the thumping on the inside of her head.  She had looked around her, momentarily at a loss to place herself until she realised that she was at the loft.  In John’s bedroom.  In his bed.

The bedclothes were crumpled, and John’s jeans were in a pile on the floor where he had stepped out of them.  She had groaned and then seen the two tablets and full glass of water and gratefully taken them.  She had no idea how she’d ended up in John’s bed or what had happened once she was in it, but she was wearing John’s shirt which made her think that maybe it wasn’t quite as bad as she might think.  But in the next moment, seeing her panties on the floor next to the bed had her re-thinking that assumption.

After she’d downed the pills, she had listened to the sounds of John and Bo’s voices floating up the stairs and she had cringed internally.  Bo was clearly angry, and she was sure he had every right to be.  While she hadn’t committed to anything more beyond the “now” of last week, she at least needed to end it with him before she jumped into John’s bed.  Not that she wanted to jump into John’s bed.  Honestly, she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if she had done.  She wasn’t sure she would be able to forgive John, come to that.

“Good,” he poured her a coffee and splashed some creamer into it before dropping several cubes of sugar into the mix.  When she wrinkled her nose delicately, he shook his head.  “You need the sugar, and you need the caffeine.  And then you need something to eat.”

She shook her head, feeling immediately nauseous.  “I don’t think I could keep anything down,” she said huskily.  “How much did I drink last night?”

“Too much,” John shrugged trying to downplay the seriousness of the situation.  “I don’t know exactly how much.  You were pretty drunk when I found you.”

“You found me?” Marlena wrapped her hand around the coffee cup and looked uncertain.  “You found me where?”

“Listen, I’ll tell you what you want to know but I think maybe we should get Laura over here before I do.”  It wasn’t that John felt he needed the back-up when telling her about what had occurred the previous evening.  More that, once he did, and once she remembered what had happened at the bar and afterwards, he wasn’t sure she’d want him to be the one comforting her.  He wasn’t sure she’d want him around at all.  And Laura would know what to say, how to reassure her that none of this was her fault and that she shouldn’t be blaming herself for what had happened to her.

“No,” Marlena shook her head emphatically.  “I don’t need Laura to hold my hand, John.  I just need to know what happened last night.  Obviously, I didn’t handle things very well,” she sighed and looked down at the creased white shirt that barely covered her naked breasts.  Looking up at John, she shook the hair out of her eyes with a confidence that she did not feel.  “You need to explain what you mean when you say you found me.  You found me where?  And how did I get here?”

“I will tell you Marlena, but I really need to call the family,” John waved in the direction of the phone.  “And Laura.  They’re all worried about you.  And I think, honestly, you should get dressed.  While you look gorgeous as fuck in that shirt,” he cleared his throat uncomfortably and she blushed, “it’s somewhat distracting for me, if I’m honest.”  

“Okay,” she blushed, “but you said I got coffee on my suit.”

“I’m sure I can find something,” John beckoned for her to follow him.

Back in his bedroom, he pulled open a drawer and rifled through a few folded items until he found what he was looking for.  Pulling out a set of mushroom-coloured sweats, he handed them to her.

She looked at the clothes in her hands and then looked at him curiously and he had the grace to look slightly embarrassed.

“I don’t know if you remember, but a few years ago, you stayed here for a few weeks while you were recovering from …” he paused.  Marlena frowned and then all of a sudden, she understood.

“Possession.  You can say it, John.  It happened.  I was possessed.”  She said it more harshly than she intended.  It wasn’t something they had ever really talked about.  Like so much that had happened to them, and she was starting to realise what a problem that was for both of them, and for their relationship.

“I know,” he said, his voice husky with emotion.  “It’s just… It was such a confusing, awful time, Doc.  What the demon used your body to do.  And how scared I was that I was going to lose you.”  He turned away from her and walked to the bed, pulling the covers up and smoothing them over the lip of the pillows.  He couldn’t look at her.  Even now, almost four years later, it was still raw.  That fear.  That feeling of failure.  That suffocating grief when he’d thought she’d died.

“I’d already lost you once.  I’d lived without you for all those years, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it happening again.  And the thought of not saving your soul…” he let out a huge, shuddering sigh that held a sob within it.  “I still have nightmares,” he admitted, his back still to her.  “Do you know how many times I went back to the morgue?  I kept going back and checking.  I couldn’t accept that you were dead.  I kept having to see you, to touch you to convince myself that you were actually gone.  That I was never going to see you again.”

Marlena hugged the sweatsuit to her as she listened to him document his pain.  He didn’t have to say it all.  It was in the hunch of his shoulders.  In the anguish that seeped through his words.  What the demon used your body to do.  She knew what he meant.  Not only the physical desecrations.  But the way the demon had used her body to entice him, to seduce him.  He hadn’t told her much after her recovery, he certainly hadn’t gone into detail, but she could remember snatches of it.  Red dresses with plunging necklines.  His lips on hers.  The heat of his body as he rolled on top of her on that very bed.

“Nightmares,” she repeated softly.  “John, I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t want you to know,” he turned, tears in his eyes.  “Not then.  I knew if I talked to you about it, you’d know immediately how I felt about you and I didn’t want to burden you with that.  Not after everything you’d been through.”

“Oh, but if you had,” Marlena sighed.  But if you had, we wouldn’t have wasted all those years….

“I know that now.  I didn’t then.” John looked miserable.  “I thought you were over me.  I thought you just wanted to be friends.  And you were dealing with all that guilt and then….” He shook his head again.  Then she had taken on the responsibility of Stefano’s rehabilitation, he had gone to Aremid and it had all gone to hell again.  “Listen, we don’t need to talk about that right now.”  He managed a tight smile as he pushed away the tears with the back of his wrist.  “It’s in the past.  But that’s why I’ve got your sweats.  You left some things here when you moved back to the penthouse.”  He gave her a slightly embarrassed smile.  “I’m sorry Doc, I should have returned them to you.”

“You kept my things?” she hugged the sweats a little tighter to her.  It was overwhelming.  There was so much to understand, to unpack.  They were both harbouring trauma on trauma, she realised.  There was so much they hadn’t discussed, hadn’t dealt with.  In trying to protect each other, they had failed each other.  They hadn’t dealt with the emotional fall-out of half of the things that had happened to them.  There was a lot they needed to talk about. 

“Yeah,” he nodded, his voice low and intense.  “It helped to have a bit of you close to me.  I couldn’t have what I wanted but I could have a piece of you, and I thought that was enough.”  He smiled ruefully, shaking his head.  “It was never enough, Doc.  I always wanted more.  I still do.”

“I…” she looked around uncomfortably and saw the open bathroom door.  “Is it okay if I have a shower?”

“Of course,” John nodded.  “Take your time.  I’ll go and call Laura and Carrie.  And Caroline.”

“Caroline?” Marlena turned back to look at John.

“She told me that when I found you, I should tell you that they love you,” John said quietly.

“Oh,” Marlena looked abashed.  

“They were all really worried about you, honey,” John said.  “They’re going to be so relieved that you’re okay.”  He smiled, suddenly realizing all over again that she was okay.  She was safe and unhurt, and she was in his home and willing to listen to him.  It could have ended so differently, but it didn’t.  He had so much to be grateful for.  “Go, have your shower.”  He waved her toward the bathroom.  “I’ll be downstairs when you’re done.”

She watched him turn and leave the room and then she inhaled deeply.  She could smell him all around her.  In the shirt that she wore, the clothes cradled in her arms.  Leaning her head on one side, she contemplated where she found herself.  A week ago, she had been desperate to avoid talking to him, frightened that in the same space she would succumb to her overpowering physical desire for him.

And now here she was, in his home.  In his bedroom.  Wearing his clothes.  And completely adrift as to what had happened to put her in this position, or indeed whether she had done the very thing she feared.

Biting her lower lip, she dropped her sweats on the bed and pushed open the bathroom door.  As she did, she was assaulted by a memory.  

She clutched at the door handle as she remembered watching John as he stroked himself to completion.  He had looked so beautiful in the moonlight, his head tipped back as he had moaned her name.  As he had drawn his fingers up and down his length.

She felt her cheeks flare as she pushed forward into the bathroom.  She stripped off John’s shirt and then her now-damp cotton panties.  She opened the shower door and leaned in to turn on the water.  John had been standing just there.  Two feet away from where she stood now.  She closed her eyes and drew her tongue across her lower lip, her breathing shallow and strained as she recalled the muscles rippling in his back.  The way the moonlight illuminated and defined the muscles of his shoulders.  His phoenix tattoo had dissolved into shadow, but she had seen the shape of it, moving backwards and forwards as he palmed that magnificent cock of his, stroking out his frustration and desire.

Her stomach clenched as she dredged up vague memories of straddling his lap.  Of kissing him.  Of feeling his hands on her breasts.  She leaned back against the tiled wall and let the water cascade over her as her fingers sought her core, sliding through wet, slippery folds.  She found her clit and moaned as she rubbed her fingers over the sensitive bud.  She closed her eyes and reached for the wall, stabilizing herself as she thought of John pleasuring himself.  As she did the same.

“Oh, God.”  In her imagination, John turned and saw her, saw her want, her need.  His hand still on his throbbing dick, he stalked towards her, indigo eyes feral and possessive.  She backed up from the doorway, but he reached for her, curling his arm around her neck and pulling her in for a kiss which made her head spin.  He bit her lip, her jaw, her earlobe.  She could feel his length, hard and insistent against her belly.  

In the shower, she groaned, her hand blindly seeking something to hold onto.

Hooking her fingers over the shower head, she imagined John throwing her on the bed, looming over her with his beautifully defined muscular torso.  He tore her shirt open and swiped his tongue across one erect nipple.  

“Oh, John,” she murmured, her whispers and moans drowned out by the white noise of the shower.

“Oh, God, I want you to fuck me.  I need you.”

Suddenly, without warning, she sensed him and opened her eyes to find him staring at her from the doorway, his face flushed.

She froze for a moment, unsure what to do.  John gripped the doorway, his knuckles white.  His eyes roamed her body, and she couldn’t fail to see the physical effect she was having on him.  She couldn’t pretend, she realised, that she was doing anything other than what she was doing.  With a tiny smile curling one side of her mouth, she bit her lower lip and began to move her hand again.

She saw John’s gaze drift to where her fingers slid over that little pebble that brough them both so much pleasure and she saw him groan.  She closed her eyes and leant her head back against the wall.  Then she bent her right leg, foot planted against the wall, and slid her fingers between her thighs, delving between the slippery folds.  

In the doorway, John watched her wordlessly.  His heart was pounding, his dick hard and eager inside his boxer shorts.  

The water cascaded over her beautiful breasts as she dipped her fingers into the soft, tight passage that he craved so badly.  What the fuck did she think she was doing to him?  He knew on a logical level that she hadn’t expected him to catch her.  She’d left her coffee downstairs and he had expected her to have closed the bathroom door before she climbed into the shower.  He certainly hadn’t expected to find her pleasuring herself.

It wasn’t lost on him that she had likely seen him in much a similar situation last night and he wondered if that was what had triggered this episode, a stray memory.  A surge of need in response to what she had seen.

She was so near.  So fucking sexy.  He watched her slide her fingers into her pussy and he groaned.  He wanted to be in there with his head between her thighs.  He wanted to feast on her, to slide his tongue between those sweet, swollen lips.  To taste the salty, musky sweetness of her.  To feel her calf slung over his shoulder, her heel digging into his back.  Her fingers wound in his hair, clutching, kneading, pressing him closer as he worshipped her with his lips and his tongue.

He moaned as he watched her fingers move back to her clit, rubbing it in small circles.

Closing his eyes, he swallowed and turned away, stumbling from the bedroom, his breathing ragged.

Behind him, Marlena climaxed with a fierce cry.  

Opening her eyes, she found an empty space where John had been standing.  Pressing her lips together, she took a deep breath.  She should probably feel guilty, but she found that she didn’t.  He wanted her, that much was obvious.  Whatever had happened with Gina, whatever had happened before she’d left for Europe, he still wanted her.  He was still turned on by her.

And she wanted him.  Despite herself, despite everything that had happened, despite the photographs of him and Gina and despite her uncertainty about his long-term intentions, she still wanted him.  She would always want him.  He was her beginning and her ending. 

She wanted him and she loved him.  And pretending otherwise was just getting her deeper and deeper into trouble and hurting her and everyone around her. 

Tipping her head back, she let the water stream over her face and through her hair.  She didn’t know what she was going to do but doing nothing wasn’t working.  So, she had to do something. The only question was, what?

Part Trente Cinq

With your face and the beautiful eyes
And the conversation with the little white lies
And the faded picture of a beautiful night
You carried me from your car up the stairs
And I broke down crying, was she worth this mess?
After everything and that little black dress
After everything I must confess, I need you

The Other Side Of The Door – Taylor Swift

Half an hour later, dressed in her sweats and her wet hair falling in loose curls around her shoulders, she descended the stairs for the second time that morning, an empty coffee cup in her hand.  John was in the kitchen, frying some bacon and there was a second pot of coffee gurgling away.

She walked to the counter and put her empty cup on the surface, clearing her throat as she did so.  John tossed her a look over his shoulder, but she noted that he did not meet her eyes.

“I’m making brunch,” he said tightly.  “You want one egg or two?”

“Uh, I’m not sure I’m up to eating quite yet,” she said quietly.  “But I’ll take another coffee if it’s on offer?”

“You need to eat something, Doc,” this time he didn’t even make a pretence of looking at her.  “I’m guessing you didn’t eat anything last night.”

“I guess not.”  She shrugged.  “John, we need to talk.  About what you just walked in on.”

John swallowed.  That was the last thing he wanted to talk about.  He was doing everything he could to get it out of his head.  It had already been bad enough, his obsessive wanting of her.  Now he had seen her naked, touching herself in his shower, he could barely control himself.  He couldn’t even look at her right now.  If he did, he was afraid he’d push her up against the counter and attack her mouth, one hand in those delicious damp curls of hers, the other, seeking out the damp curls between her legs.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice husky with shameful desire.  “I was bringing up your coffee, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“Don’t you want to know what I was thinking about?”  She hadn’t meant to ask that, but it came, unbidden.  She was still horny, she still wanted him.  She knew she was being unfair to him, and to Bo, but somehow, she couldn’t seem to stop herself.  Maybe it was the aftereffects of whatever she’d been drinking last night.  Maybe she was still a little intoxicated.  

Or maybe it was just that she was tired of being scared, tired of trying to deny what her heart wouldn’t let her forget.  That John Black was under her skin and in her blood.  For now, and for always.

“Marlena, I can’t do this right now.”  He still had his back to her as he set his palms on the counter and took a deep breath, bowing his head.  

“I was thinking about you.”  Her voice was throaty with need.  “I walked into the bathroom, and I remembered…  I remembered last night.  I woke and I… you were in the bathroom.  You were…  I watched…”  She stopped as she saw him tip his head back, running his fingers through his hair.  “Please, don’t be embarrassed, John.”

“How can I not be?”  He turned to face her now, his face red.

“Do I look embarrassed?” she shrugged.  In truth, she was a little embarrassed, but she chose to let the bravado mask her vulnerability.  She wasn’t yet prepared to let him see her as she was.  Scared and confused.  And needy.  

I hate that he’s done this to you.  Made you so… unsure of yourself.  Made you so… needy.

Bo’s words came back to her.  They still stung.  Mostly because she had to admit that he was right.  And it wasn’t who she wanted to be.  Not anymore.

Across from her, John wasn’t thinking about her neediness.  He didn’t see her as needy.  He knew she was fragile right now, but he also knew she was the strongest woman he’d ever met.  But right now, he wasn’t thinking about that, even.  All he was thinking about was how goddamn sexy she was.

No, you don’t look embarrassed, you look fuckably sexy with those red lips and messy curls.  

“You called my name,” she reminded him, choosing to press on, despite his discomfort.  “My name.  Not Gina’s.  Not Hope’s.”  She gave him a small, sexy smile.  “I was very turned on.  I still am.”

“Doc-” he winced as his body reacted to her words.  His stomach clenched, his cock twitching in his boxers.  “Baby, you’re not being fair.  I haven’t made any secret of the fact that I want you.  But last time you were here, I kissed you and you ran a mile.  I’m just trying to… you’re not ready for this.  Neither of us are.”

“I know,” she agreed regretfully.  “I do know that.”  He was right, she wasn’t being fair.  She was already aware of that.  And she knew that emotionally, she wasn’t ready for anything more.  But her body… her body always reacted to him, to his proximity.  Her body betrayed her, and it was dragging her heart and her head along with it.  And she was tired of fighting.  Tired of being confused, of second guessing.  Tired of not knowing what the hell was going on in her own life.

“Why am I here, John?  Why am I here and why did I wake up in your bed with a jackhammer inside my skull and wearing only your shirt?  And why did I find you so turned on that you were masturbating in the bathroom?  Help me understand.  Please, I need to know what happened to me.  What I did.”

“Please don’t do this, Marlena,” John begged her.  After seeing her in the bathroom, after watching her touch herself, he had found himself on the rooftop again, looking for cool air and relief from the torment of his desire for her.  When he had finally delivered it himself, he had come back down to the kitchen and called Laura, appraising her briefly of the events of the previous evening.  Laura had advised that he be gentle and careful in relaying what had happened in the bar.  And that he needed to take Marlena’s actions afterwards and even this morning with a pinch of salt.  Even if she didn’t consciously remember, her body and her mind was reacting to a traumatic situation.   That, combined with the after-effects of the alcohol, might cause her to do and say things that were out of character, and she might not know what was good for her right now.

She had offered to come over but given that Marlena had said she didn’t want Laura there, John had turned her down.  He was starting to regret it now.

“I need you to tell me John,” Marlena pushed him.  She knew what had happened in the bathroom.  She even remembered some of what had happened down here.  She remembered kissing him and him touching her and she remembered him telling her she’d regret it in the morning.  She was still not one hundred percent sure of the accuracy of that prediction, but she appreciated it, nonetheless.  

But she still didn’t know why she was here and why she was so drunk.  That was the piece of the jigsaw puzzle that would help the rest click into place.  Or so she hoped.  And she was curious to hear John’s explanation.  Curious as to what he had made of her drunken and clumsy seduction attempt.  

“What happened?” she asked again.

John sighed.  She was really going to do this.  He flicked his eyes to hers and then away again.  Turning, he went to the coffee machine and poured out two fresh cups of coffee.  Once again, he splashed creamer and dropped sugar into hers.   Handing the mug to her, he turned back to the bacon smoking in the pan.  He took it off the heat and then turned back to her.

“You should sit down,” he told her. 

Marlena said nothing, but did as he asked, sitting carefully on the sofa.   

John leaned on the counter across from her, careful to keep plenty of space between them.  To keep the barrier of the counter between them so that she couldn’t see how her presence affected him.

Chewing on the inside of his lower lip, he considered how best to tell her what had happened.  He decided to stick to what he knew and not what he surmised.  “Bo found me at the pub,” he said slowly.  “He had some photos.  He said they’d been sent to you.”

“Photos of you and Gina,” Marlena nodded slowly.  The thought of them made her nausea briefly flare.  She didn’t want to think about the photos, she didn’t want to think about what they meant, but she had no choice.

“Yeah,” John nodded.  “But you need to know right now that those pictures…. I know what they look like at first glance, Doc.  But they weren’t…” he exhaled heavily.  “Gina drugged me.  She knew I intended to leave the following day to come home to you and she slipped me something into my champagne.  Next thing I knew I was waking up in her bed, but I swear to God nothing happened between us.”

“John,” Marlena shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together.

“No, let me finish,” John pleaded.  “I know what they look like.  I saw them too.  I understand why you’re so upset.  But baby, I promise you, they’re faked.  I wasn’t participating; hell, I wasn’t even conscious, Doc.  If you look close at them, I’m not even awake.  In any of them.  Doc I’m-”

“John,” Marlena repeated his name softly.  “It’s okay.  I believe you.”

“You do?” he looked confused.

“I do.”  She wasn’t entirely sure why she believed him, but she did.  She didn’t need to look at the photos again to know what he was saying was true.  She just knew.  This was her John, and he wouldn’t lie to her.  Just like he wouldn’t have sex with Hope, much less Gina in Hope’s body.

“Okay,” he smiled, his relief palpable.  “Doc, baby, that’s great.  You don’t know what a relief it is to hear you say that honey.”

“That doesn’t mean I forgive you for going away with her, for getting yourself into that situation in the first place,” she clarified, holding her hand up.  “It doesn’t mean we’re okay.  Not yet.”

Not yet.  His heart jumped at those two little words.  That meant not yet, no.  But at some point, maybe, yes.  Or at least, that’s what he hoped it meant.

He could have reminded her that he wasn’t in control of his faculties when he’d left Salem, but this wasn’t the time for that.  There were more important things to discuss.

“I understand,” he nodded his head.  “We have a lot to discuss and a lot to resolve.”

She said nothing, just looked at him intently.  Then, lifting the coffee to her lips, she blew across the surface of it.

“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?” John looked across at the bacon cooling in the pan.

Marlena shook her head.  She wished he’d get on with it.  The reticence with which he was greeting telling her about the events of the previous evening was making her ever more nervous.

“Okay,” John sighed.  He couldn’t delay this any longer.  And the sooner he told her, the sooner he could get her home and he could be away from the temptation she presented every time he looked at her.

“You were at the pub,” she prompted.  “And Bo turned up.  With the photos.”

“Yeah.”  He nodded.  “When I realized you’d seen them and that he’d left you there at the penthouse, I tried to call you, but I got Carrie.”

Marlena frowned, remembering Carrie’s arrival and her desperate need to escape from the oppressive atmosphere of the penthouse.  Poor Carrie, she had been confused and worried, but Marlena had spared no time for her in her frantic dash from the apartment.

“Did you call her?” she asked in a small voice.  “This morning, I mean.  While I was… upstairs.”

John nodded with a small smile, remembering Carrie’s effusive relief at hearing that Marlena was safe.    “She was very happy to hear you are safe.  She asked me to tell you she loves you.”

Marlena’s eyes glistened with tears as she nodded her acceptance.  She didn’t deserve Carrie’s concern and love, but she was grateful for it.

“No-one knew where you were, Doc.”  He took a deep breath.  “I set out looking for you.  I thought you might be at the docks, so I went down to Pier 29, but there was no sign of you.  I didn’t know what to do.  I was really worried about you,” he looked away for a moment, trying to control the emotion which was threatening to break through as he recalled the panic that had rolled through him as he had stood on the old wooden planks and tried to decide in which direction she might have set off.  “With good cause it turns out.”  He took a mouthful of his own coffee and swallowed down the dark, bitter liquid.  “You were in a bar down at a seedy part of the docks, and you were drinking.”

“A bar?” Marlena frowned, putting her coffee on the table and wrapping her arms around herself.  “What kind of bar?”  She had a flash of a grubby wooden floor and a grimy bar.  She’d been drinking in a bar at the docks?  What the hell?  It was one thing drinking on the Fancy-Face or in her own home with Bo nearby.  But seeking out a seedy bar at the docks and drinking by herself?  That was stupid and self-destructive.  That was dangerously irresponsible.

“Not a particularly respectable one,” John raised one eyebrow this time.  “Not the kind of bar a classy woman like you should be seen anywhere in the vicinity of, let alone drinking alone in.”

We don’t usually get dames like you in here. You’ve livened up their week.

Marlena shivered.  She felt the shape of it, if not the detail.  She felt the danger and the susceptibility and the fear.

“Doc?” John saw the shadow cross her face and he was immediately concerned.

“What happened?” she whispered.  “What happened at the bar?”  Images and emotions flashed through her head.  Sandy curls.  Annoyance.  Bloodshot pale blue eyes.  The smell of bourbon.  Terror.  Stubby fingers digging into her skin.

“Nothing.  Nothing happened, baby.”  He crossed the floor in three steps and caught her hands in his as he sank down next to her.  “I got there in time.  He didn’t hurt you.  I would never let anyone hurt you like that.” He squeezed her hands.  “It’s okay, Doc.  You’re safe now sweetheart.”

She closed her eyes and shuddered as she recalled the feeling of his arm across her throat.  His stubble rough against her face, his stinking breath hot against her ear.  His filthy fingers scrabbling at her skirt, her thigh.

Just you and me now.  And we’re gonna have a party.

She pulled her hands from John’s and pushed herself from the sofa, spinning away from the comfort and safety he offered.  She slapped her hand across her mouth, mostly to stop herself from screaming.  

Screaming at how stupid and careless she’d been.  Screaming at how very near she’d been to getting herself raped and God only knew what else.  At how she’d done the very thing Laura had cautioned her against.  Drowning herself in substances to try and numb the pain instead of facing it head-on.

“Marlena,” John came up behind her but stopped short of touching her.  “Please don’t blame yourself.  This wasn’t your fault.”

“Of course it was my fault,” she retorted, her blistering anger directed only at herself.  “What did I think was going to happen?  A bar like that, late at night, by myself?”

She turned away from him.  She couldn’t bear to see the sympathy in his eyes, or the guilt that she had been driven to this point.

“Honey-“

“No!” she wrapped her arms around herself.   She couldn’t imagine what she had been thinking.  Had she been trying to punish John, or punish herself?  Had she been hoping John would rescue her?  Or had she just finally been so tired of all the bullshit that she had no longer cared what happened to her?  “No, John.  I have children, I have responsibilities.  Walking into that bar, ordering those drinks was sheer reckless stupidity.  What was I thinking?”  

“I don’t think you were thinking,” John told her gently as he came up behind her.  “I think it was just too much.  You’ve had to deal with too much, Doc.  What happened yesterday was just a reaction to one trauma too many.”  He tentatively put one hand lightly on her shoulder.  When she didn’t react and shrug him off, he tightened his fingers trying to reassure her.

“You’ve been talking to Laura,” she couldn’t help the little smile which curled her mouth at Laura’s words coming from John’s mouth.

“She’s a clever lady,” John acknowledged with a small smile.  Thank God for Laura.  “She knows her stuff.  I’d almost say she was the best shrink I know; except I know this certain gorgeous blonde who has her beat, hands down.”

“I don’t feel very clever at the moment,” Marlena frowned and turned around to face John.  She said nothing as she studied his face.  He took the opportunity to just be close to her.  His fingers found their way into her hair, and he twirled one of her curls between his thumb and forefinger.

“You saved me,” she said finally.  He had, as he always did.  She had been at the mercy of that drunken predator; she had let fear freeze her against the wall as he clutched and dug at her.  And then, like magic, John had been there.  John had stopped it all, he had taken care of her assailant and then he had taken care of her.  He had carried her from the bar, and he had been loving and solicitous.

“You called me,” John gave her a small smile.  “And I found you.  Thank God I found you before anything could happen.”

“I called you because I knew you would find me,” she nodded, accepting the truth.  He always saved her.  He saved her even when she didn’t know she needed saving.  This time though, she’d known it.  This time she’d been free-falling, and he’d caught her just before she hit rock-bottom.  “Thank you.”

“You don’t need to thank me, baby.  I’ll always be there to save you.  I love you.”  He tightened his fingers where they were wound in her hair, and he slid his palm to cup the back of her neck.  He said nothing else, but his eyes said volumes as they searched hers.  

She stared at him, her heart pounding. 

“So, you brought me back here…?”

“Because you were upset and drunk and argumentative and I didn’t want the kids to see you like that.  And I didn’t think you’d want the kids to have seen you like that, at least once you’d sobered up.”  He gives her a rueful smile as he loosens his fingers in her hair.  “You were pretty hammered.”

“Ugh,” Marlena ran her hand over her still-tender forehead.  “Don’t remind me.  I’m so embarrassed.”  She averted her eyes from his and glanced across to where her coffee sat cooling on the table.  

“You don’t need to be embarrassed, sweetheart.”  His voice followed her as she slipped around him and went for the coffee.  But as she did, she was struck by more memories

She’d straddled him on the couch.  Touched him.  Kissed him.  

Touch me.  

She’d unwrapped herself like a Christmas present and presented herself to him and begged him to touch her, to fuck her.

She groaned and put her hand over her eyes.

“Doc?” John came up behind her, but he didn’t touch her.  He was so close that she could feel the heat of his body behind her but still, he refrained from making a physical connection.  He understood her so well.  She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten how it felt to be so seen.  “Baby, are you okay?”

She nodded, her hand sliding down her face, her fingers pressing against her mouth.  She wrapped her other arm around her middle and nodded again.

“I tried to seduce you,” she said in a husky voice.  She had been desperate for him to touch her.  To take her to the heights that she knew only he could.  She’d wanted to drown out the memories of the bar, of the photos, of the pain she’d felt when he’d walked away.  She’d wanted to forget everything and if she couldn’t use alcohol, she’d use his body instead.

Sex isn’t going to stop the pain.  Honey, it’s just going to make it worse.   

“You did,” his voice was gentle.  “You made it pretty damn hard to say no.”

“But you did say no,” she remembered that too.  He’d known what she hadn’t at the time.  That she would regret everything in the morning, all her stupidity and selfishness.

You’ll wake up in the morning, and you’ll be sober, and everything will feel different, and you will regret this, you will.

“I did,” he confirmed.  “You were drunk, and you were obviously upset by the photos and what had just happened to you.  You weren’t in any fit state to know what you wanted.  I respect you way too much to take advantage of you like that.  I love you way too much.”

Marlena felt her the hot pricking of tears in her eyes.  She turned to look at him.

“You saved me,” she whispered.  “You saved me from the situation at the bar and then you saved me from my own drunken idiocy.”

“It wasn’t idiocy,” he reassured her.  “You’ve been in a lot of pain for a long time, Doc.  I didn’t realise how much.  I’m so sorry.”

He lifted his hands and used each of his thumbs to wipe the tears from under her eyes.  She was devastatingly beautiful in her vulnerability.   His heart pounded as he looked down at her.  Her eyes were a dark hue of amber as she gazed up at him.  He wanted so desperately to kiss her, to use his mouth and his fingers to ease her pain.  But he knew it wouldn’t work.  Not this time.  

This time, she needed to heal herself.  

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.  “For last night.  For earlier.  I was terribly unfair to you.  I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You don’t need to apologize, honey,” he swept the damp hair back from her forehead and tucked it behind her ear.  “Listen, I can’t pretend that the last couple of weeks haven’t been hard on me.   But I’ll gladly take everything you want to throw at me if it means that at some point, we can get things back on track.  In fact, I’ll take it anyway.”  He stroked one finger down her cheek.  “I just want to see that beautiful smile of yours again.  I can’t fix you, Marlena.  But I can be here and hold space for you and keep you safe while you fix yourself.  If you’ll let me.”

“John Black, who’s the shrink now?” she asked with a rueful smile as she blinked back the tears.

“I learned from the best.” John told her with a smile.

She shook her head miserably.  “What kind of a doctor can I be, how can I give advice and expect my patients to take me seriously when I’m making such terrible choices myself?”  She choked back a sob.  “John, I’m such a mess.  How can you still love me?” 

“Oh baby, don’t do this to yourself,” John begged her.  “You are the strongest, most brilliant woman I’ve ever known but baby, you’re not superwoman.  You don’t have to be perfect.  I don’t expect, I don’t want you to be perfect.  I’m sorry if I’ve ever given you that impression.”

“You haven’t.”  She shook her head.  “Oh John, you haven’t.  I’ve never felt that from you.”  It was true.  He had always seen beyond the surface, the front of perfection that she wore as though it was armour.  Unlike Don and Roman, who had seen what they had wanted to see, until she had disappointed them by not being the perfect wife and mother they had fallen in love with.  Unlike Bo who saw… she wasn’t even sure which version of her Bo saw.  He certainly didn’t see the perfect Marlena, not anymore.  But she wasn’t sure he liked the Marlena he saw right now, any more than Roman or Don had liked the imperfect her they’d seen when the rose-coloured glasses were finally torn from their eyes.

John though, John had always seen her for who she was.  A multi-faceted woman who tried to do her best, who loved intensely but who had flaws.  Through all the hell of her return, of Roman’s return, of their affair and the fallout, he had been there.  She had tried to turn him away, she had pushed and pulled him, unable to give him what he wanted but unable to let him go.  And still, he had loved her.  Still, he had been resolute in his desire to look after her, to protect her when she needed it. 

And even when she had succeeded in making him stay his distance, he had still been there for her.  

He had fought for her safety and her life.  He had battled untold darkness for her very soul.

He had loved her despite her weaknesses.  Until, she thought, he hadn’t anymore.  It had almost destroyed her, losing him.  She realised that now.   Not just his love, but his friendship and his strength.  Now he stood here, professing his love for her again.  Now he’d saved her once again, she could finally admit what she hadn’t been able to for so long.  That she needed him.  That without him, she couldn’t be grounded or truly herself.  That without him, her life was only shades of black and white.  She had once told him, she wanted him in her life.  She needed him.  That was still true.  Now, more than ever.

“Doc,” John interrupted her train of thought.  “Would you let me hold you?  Just for a minute.”

She loved him for that.  For asking her.  Any other time, he would have just pulled her into his arms and wrapped himself around her.  But this morning, today, he knew she needed to be asked permission.  

“Please,” she nodded her head.  Truth was, she wanted him to do more than just hold her.  She wanted him to reassure her with sweet feathering kisses, with nimble fingers and gentle lips.  But she also knew that now wasn’t the time.  So, she let him pull her into his embrace and sighed silently as he wrapped his arms around her and buried his nose in her hair.  She slipped her arms around his waist and pressed her head against his chest and just breathed in the scent of him and felt the way the beating of his heart vibrated against her cheek.  This was where she belonged.  This was where she felt right and at peace.  This was home.

Finally, John unwound his arms and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Go finish your coffee and I’ll finish making us breakfast.”

When she opened her mouth to argue, he shook his head.  “No, Doc.  No more arguing.  You need something to eat.  And once we’re done, I’ll take you home to the kids.”

Still on the verge of arguing, she saw the determination in his eyes.  She took a deep breath and then exhaled and nodded her head.    He was right.  She hadn’t eaten anything substantial for days now.  She was going to have to take better care of herself if she wanted to sort herself out.  And she did want to sort herself out.    She was tired of all the uncertainty, the fear and the chaos that she felt swirling within herself.

She didn’t have to live like this, she realised.  She had a choice.  No-one was in control of her life but her. 

she just had to stop procrastinating and make some decisions about the mess she found herself in.  A mess that she had largely created for herself.  

Picking up her coffee, she walked to the window and stared out over the rooftops as John set about finishing up making brunch.

Part Trente Six

It was the best of times, the worst of crimes
I struck a match and blew your mind
But I didn’t mean it
And you didn’t see it
The ties were black, the lies were white
In shades of gray in candlelight
I wanted to leave him
I needed a reason

“X” marks the spot, where we fell apart
He poisoned the well, I was lying to myself
I knew it from the first Old Fashioned, we were cursed
We never had a shotgun shot in the dark

Getaway Car  – Taylor Swift

“Oh, Marlena!  Honey, I am so relieved you’re okay!”  Laura flung her arms around Marlena’s neck and hugged her.  “You are okay, aren’t you?”

“I’m fine,” Marlena extracted herself from Laura’s embrace.  “Laura, what are you doing here?”

“I had to see for myself that you were safe and that everything was okay.”  Laura pushed past Marlena, wordlessly inviting herself into the penthouse.  She threw her purse on the desk and shrugged her coat from her shoulders, laying it over the back of the chair before Marlena could say anything.  

Marlena closed the door and leaned against it, momentarily bemused by Laura’s appearance.  Then it all fell into place.  When John had brought her back, she had invited him to stay and spend some time with her and the children.  He had politely but gently declined, citing her need for some time to process what had happened to her.  As a follow-on, he offered to take the children for a few hours to give her some time to recover and have a nap if she needed one.  If she felt like she wanted them back at any point, she just had to call him at the loft, and he’d bring them straight back.

 “John called you, didn’t he?” she asked wearily.  “That’s why he took the children.”

“Yes, he did.  He felt you needed to talk but he thought he might not be the best person to comfort you right now.”  Laura raised her eyebrows.  “And given what he told me about what happened last night, I think he’s probably right on the money.”

“What exactly did he tell you?” Marlena’s cheeks colored.  So much had happened and she knew Laura was not going to let any of it go without picking apart her motivations and her feelings and she wasn’t ready for any of it.  Not yet.

“Oh, he was a perfect gentleman and he left out all the juicy detail.”  Laura gave her a knowing smile as she took Marlena’s hand.  “But he told me enough.”  Her smile faded then.  “Honey…”

“Oh Laura, you don’t need to tell me,” Marlena turned away from her friend, unable to meet her eyes.  She felt ashamed of her behavior, ashamed of falling so short of what everyone clearly expected of her.  She pulled her hand from Laura’s grasp and made her way over to the seating area, digging her hands into the soft mushroom pockets of her sweat top.  “Believe me, you couldn’t be any harder on me than I’m being on myself.”

“What do you think I was going to say?” Laura asked gently as she followed Marlena.  She watched Marlena sit down on the sofa and curl in on herself.  Pulling a throw from the back of the sofa, she wrapped it around herself, shivering, although it wasn’t in any way cold.

Laura sighed internally as she kicked off the heels that matched the coral pink suit that she wore.  She smoothed down her skirt before she sat down and faced her friend.

Marlena said nothing for a moment, but she bit her lower lip, and her eyes grew glossy with tears.

“You were going to tell me how inexcusably irresponsible and stupid I was getting blind drunk in a dive bar.  And how unconscionably I behaved towards John after he so gallantly rescued me from the mess I’d gotten myself into.”  Marlena fiddled with the pull that hung down from the hood of her sweat top.  “And you’re right, so you can spare me the lecture.”

“I wasn’t going to lecture you, honey.”  Laura leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her fingers interlaced, curling and flexing.  “You’re absolutely right, it was very foolish, but I had a feeling you were going to get yourself into some kind of trouble, so I don’t mind admitting, I was awfully worried about you.  I didn’t sleep a wink last night.”

“Oh Laura, I’m so sorry,” a single tear spilled down Marlena’s pale cheek.  “I didn’t mean to scare anyone, really, I didn’t.  Please don’t be angry with me.”

“I know you didn’t,” Laura said gently.  “And of course, I’m not angry with you.  But I am desperately worried about you.  Do you want to tell me what happened?  I know John’s abridged version, but I’d like to hear yours.”

Marlena pressed her eyes closed and more tears tumbled over the chalky planes of her cheeks.  It was starting to sink in now and she felt… she wasn’t even sure what she felt.  But that was why Laura was here, wasn’t it?  Because John had known and Laura had known that when she was left alone, the events of the previous evening would sink into her bones and into her psyche.  And the shock that she had so artfully avoided by first arguing with, and then trying to seduce, John, would finally catch up with her.

“I don’t know where to start,” she admitted.  “I don’t even remember all of it.”

“Start at the beginning,” Laura suggested softly.  “What happened after our session yesterday?  You intimated you were going to talk to Bo.”

Marlena took a deep breath.  “I intended to.  Really, I did.  I actually thought I was going to tell him it was over, but I got home late from work, and he had made me dinner and I just… I couldn’t.”  She covered her mouth with her hand remembering the way she had surrendered herself to Bo’s kisses and decided one more night wouldn’t hurt.  She had to admit that despite Laura’s encouragement, she hadn’t really been ready to cut Bo loose.  

“You couldn’t or you didn’t want to?” Laura asked pointedly.  

“I never promised I was going to,” Marlena reminded her.  “I only said I would talk to him.”

“And I never said you needed to,” Laura nodded her head.  “At least, not right now.  It was you that just said you were going to tell him it was over.  You didn’t even tell me in session yesterday that’s what you’d decided.”

Marlena pursed her lips irritated with Laura’s pickiness.  “After we talked, I felt like I should.  But really, I didn’t want to, okay?” she snapped.  “I know there’s no future in it, but I care about him.  I don’t want to hurt him.”

“So you’ve said,” Laura quirked one eyebrow.  The last time they’d had this conversation, she had pointed out to Marlena that Bo’s feelings being involved meant that he was going to get hurt whatever happened.  Because it was clear that their fling, or whatever Marlena wanted to term it, was not going to last long-term.  (Relationship was overstating it in Laura’s opinion.  Good sex, even a lot of it, didn’t really equal a relationship if there was no communication involved.)  And now Bo had developed feelings for his beautiful one-time sister-in-law, Marlena was only putting off the inevitable.  If indeed it was Bo’s feelings she was worried about.

“Well, anyway.  That’s not why I got drunk,” Marlena’s irritation was burgeoning in the face of Laura’s quiet confidence.  Laura never let her get away with anything and it was immensely irritating.

“Okay, so why did you get drunk then?” Laura asked, almost casually.

“Ugh, you’re impossible,” Marlena’s lips thinned as she pulled the throw closer around her.

Laura said nothing, just waited for Marlena to get over her flash of frustration.  She knew exactly what Marlena was trying to do, even if her friend wasn’t consciously aware of it.  Attack was the best form of defense.

When the silence finally grew uncomfortable, Marlena let out a sigh.

“John told you about the photos, I take it?” she said irritably.  

“He told me you received some photos that were sent by Hope,” Laura said blandly.  “They made it look like John had had sex with her.”

“Gina,” Marlena corrected.  “It wasn’t Hope.  It was Gina von Amberg.  Who currently appears to be living in Hope’s head, courtesy of Stefano.”

Laura raised her eyebrows.  That was the first time Marlena had positively attributed either John or Hope’s strange behavior to Stefano’s interference.  That was an interesting and encouraging insight.

“So, Gina sent the photos here?” Laura asked.

“They were addressed to me,” Marlena said quietly.  “I opened them while Bo was in the kitchen.  I must have….” She couldn’t really remember what had happened.  It was all muddled in her hear.  Or rather, there was a blank spot between where she was opening the envelope and when Bo had stormed out of the penthouse.  One moment she was flicking through the photos, trying to understand what it was that she was seeing and then next thing she knew, Bo had the photos and was swearing murderously that he was going to kill John.  And then he was gone.  And she was alone.  

“So, he knew you were upset?” Laura asked, clearly slightly perturbed.

“I guess?” Marlena shrugged.  “I don’t really remember how it played out, Laura.  I was in shock.  Honestly, for a moment it just felt like my world had been blown to smithereens.  It sounds like a stupid overreaction…”

“It doesn’t sound like an over-reaction at all,” Laura reassured her softly.  “All that work we’d been doing to try and reframe John’s behavior, and then you received something that underlined everything you’d previously been thinking about his honesty and loyalty.  That must have been terribly traumatizing.”

“I don’t really remember,” Marlena said carefully.  “I…. I think I… I don’t think I felt anything.  I don’t know that I thought anything.  It all just seems, really distant.  Like it wasn’t really me experiencing it.  Like I was watching someone else go through all that.”

“You were dissociating,” Laura diagnosed.  “Seeing those photos triggered a dissociative episode.”  It was exactly what she had feared and expected when John had called her last night.  It was why she had been so worried.  “What do you remember about what happened next?”

“Only bits and pieces,” Marlena admitted.  “I guess… I think I left Carrie looking after the children.  I don’t even know why she was here.”

“I’d been encouraging her to come and talk to you,” Laura explained.  “She was very upset by the fact that you wouldn’t take her calls.  She felt like you were shutting her out.  I told her she should come and talk to you about it.”

“Oh,” Marlena looked down at the table.  She felt like that should make more of an impact, but she just didn’t have room for it right now.  “I guess I should talk to her.”

“Not right now,” Laura wasn’t willing to get sidetracked.  “Carrie and her feelings can wait.  What’s the next thing you remember?”

Marlena’s eyes darted backwards and forwards as she tried to make sense of the jumble of images and feelings inside her head.

“I don’t really know,” she admitted.  “I guess I went to the pier?”  She paused, thinking, trying to sort through flashes of images.  “Did I call you?”

“You did.”  Laura nodded.  “I didn’t realize it was you until John called looking for you.  You didn’t say anything.  That was when I really started to worry, after John’s call.”

“I don’t know what I was…” Marlena shivered again, as though she was standing on the damp pier, the mists from the river seeping into her bones.  “I just felt adrift.  Lost.  I knew the pain was just about to crash over me like a tidal wave and I didn’t want to… I couldn’t feel it.  I couldn’t let myself feel it.”

“So, you decided to numb it instead?” Laura’s expression conveyed her sympathy.

Marlena closed her eyes, for a moment, unable to take the understanding she saw in Laura’s eyes.  “I’m so tired, Laura.  So tired of feeling hurt and angry and afraid.  I just… he hurt me so much when he left and went to Europe, and I couldn’t let myself get hurt like that again.”  She threw up her hands in frustration.  “So, what do I do?  The moment he smiled that goddamn gorgeous smile of his and charmed me with all those sincere sounding words, I stupidly went and let my guard down.”

“Was it stupid though?” Laura asked.  John had been adamant that the pictures were faked.  She wondered if Marlena believed him because Laura certainly did.  “Do you still think he lied to you?  Do you believe he slept with Gina?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”  Marlena sighed wearily.  His explanation had made sense earlier.  Now she wasn’t sure what made sense anymore.  “I did earlier when I was with him but then, he knows what to say.  He knows how to get under my skin.”

“Or maybe it’s the truth and you know that because you know him, and you know when he’s telling the truth.  And you’re only second-guessing yourself now you’re home, and you’re letting your fear get the better of you.”  Laura gave a little shrug.  

Marlena said nothing, just stared down at her hands as she absently stroked the finger where her engagement band should have been.

“How did John find you?” Laura noted the way the color drained from Marlena’s face as she asked the question.  She looked tired, like she’d barely slept.  Laura wished she could spare her revisiting this pain, but she knew that the only way Marlena was going to get over this was to go right on through it.  And Laura would be beside her, every step of the way.  If Marlena let her.

“I called him.”  Marlena recounted what she recalled of the dodgy bar and the creepy guy who had started trying to chat her up.  “He was just… there was something about him that made me feel uneasy.  And I got scared.  I guess I had a moment of sobriety and realized I’d gotten myself into a dangerous situation and I wasn’t sober enough to get myself out of it.”

“So, you called John.”  Laura stated.  “John, not Bo.”

“Bo left me here alone.”  Marlena waved at the space where she had been kneeling when Bo had so unceremoniously swept out of the penthouse, bent on confronting John with his own personal grievances.  Completely oblivious to her suffering.  Oblivious or indifferent.  “I couldn’t call him.”

“You could have.”  Laura corrected her.  “You chose not to.”

Marlena paused, considering Laura’s words.  She could have called Bo.  She even made a pretense of thinking about.  But Bo was never going to be the person she called when she was in trouble.  Not while John was around.  “I chose not to,” she agreed slowly.  

“How does that make you feel?”  Laura asked.  “That he left you here, I mean?  He must have known you were upset.”  Personally, she was furious that Bo had deserted Marlena like he had.  It was the only reason she hadn’t insisted Marlena cut him loose since they’d started sessions.  Because she’d expected that when push came to shove, if Marlena broke, Bo would be there to catch her.

But instead, he had focused on himself and his own aggrieved sense of betrayal to the exclusion of everything and everyone around him.  Laura felt like she shouldn’t really be surprised and yet she was.  More than anything, she was disappointed.  It wasn’t that she didn’t expect Bo to be angry, he had every right to be angry, but she had expected him to have more consideration for the woman he claimed to love.  A woman that had been there for him as a friend time and time again.

Marlena lifted her gaze to meet Laura’s.  “I feel hurt.  I don’t begrudge him his anger, really, I don’t.  He had as much right as I did to think those photos were real and to feel angry and betrayed.  But Laura, he just grabbed the photos and left.  I know he doesn’t owe me anything, but I would have least…” she flicked at her tears with fingers that shook ever so slightly.  “Am I being unfair?  

“Oh sweetie,” Laura pushed herself from the sofa she sat on and took the few steps it took to locate herself beside her best friend.  She took Marlena’s trembling hands in hers.  “You have every right to feel hurt.  But this is Bo Brady.  He’s hotheaded and impulsive and sometimes he’s self-absorbed and selfish.  This wasn’t about you.  This was about Bo being Bo.”

“I know.”  Marlena’s chin trembled.  “And I know under any other circumstances he would have been there for me.  But this was Hope.  And she’s the love of his life.  I understand that.”  

“Doesn’t mean you felt any less alone,” Laura said sympathetically.  

“He’s not my…” Marlena pulled one hand from Laura’s and pushed her messy curls back from her face.  “Like I said, he doesn’t owe me anything.  This… us… is not… there’s no commitment.”

“But he’s one of your best friends.  And he told you he loves you, honey.  I would have expected better from him, and I think you did too.” Laura was not going to let Marlena justify away her pain and her anger.  She needed to feel it.  She needed to be honest about Bo’s shortcomings just as much as she did John’s.  “It’s okay to be hurt and angry.  That’s your problem, Marlena.  You never let yourself feel.  You’re so busy seeing everyone else’s point of view and understanding their feelings that you never take the time to feel your own.”

“Oh Laura, that’s not fair,” Marlena snapped.  Suddenly feeling claustrophobic, she pushed herself from the sofa and pulling the throw close around her shoulders, she walked towards the French doors.  “It’s my job to see everyone’s point of view.  I can’t just switch it off because I feel a bit hard done by.”

Laura frowned.  “Marlena, honey.  I’m not asking you to switch it off.  I’m just asking you to consider what it is you feel before you worry about everyone else’s feelings or telling yourself you’re being unfair.  Your emotions don’t care about being fair.  So, feel them.  Yell and scream if you need to.  And then be fair.  Otherwise, they come out at times and in ways you are less able to control.  Like they did last night.”

Marlena was silent, her face impassive as she stared out of the window, not seeing the clouds that skated across the sun.

~

John’s feet hit the pavement rhythmically as he tried to outrun his stress and weariness.  On leaving the penthouse with the kids, he had found Kim waiting for him.  She had taken one look at him and offered to come back to the loft and continue to watch the children while he took some time to try and get some sleep.

He had gratefully accepted her offer, being just about dead on his feet, but when he had crawled into a bed that smelled of Marlena, he had been unable to sleep.   He’d been assaulted by memories that came in no particular order.  Moments from the night before… and from this morning.  

Marlena in his shower.  Marlena with that low-life scum clawing at her clothes.  Marlena, caged like a beautiful exotic bird.  Wearing satin and lace as he sucked at a spoon of poisoned soup.  Walking down the aisle towards him when he thought he was Roman Brady.  Marlena desperate and needy on that fateful stormy night when he had planned to leave Salem.  In the rain outside St. Lukes.   Beckoning him with that damn sexy come-hither smile.    

He had buried his face in the pillow and breathed her in and he had ached with love for her.  She was everything.  In all her brokenness and fragility.  In all the ridiculous reserves of strength she had to withstand all the shit life kept throwing at her.  In her love for her children and her family.  In her efforts always to do the right thing, the best thing for everyone around her.  In her incredibly accomplished career as a highly respected psychiatrist.  In her love for him, the man without a name and a past.  Her quiet acceptance of all the chaos that surrounded him.  Losing her was unthinkable.

Eventually he had given up on sleep and he had pulled on some shorts and a t-shirt and told Kim he was going out for a run to clear his head.  She had nodded her acceptance and told him to take his time, she had no other plans.  And that if he wanted to talk when he came back, she was happy to listen.  As far as she was concerned, she said, he was still her brother and she was here for him, whatever he needed.

He’d been touched by that and had promised that if he felt the need, he would unload on her later.  And then he had found himself running aimlessly, thinking of everything and nothing at the same time.  He wanted to do something.  But Laura had confirmed that there was nothing he could do for Marlena right now.  He had done everything he was able to do.  He had found her and had thankfully been able to ensure her safety.  Now it was up to her.  The ball was entirely in her court, and it would have to stay in her court until she was in a place that she could decide what to do with it.

He just had to trust that when it came down to it, she knew his heart enough to know he would never deliberately hurt her.  She had trusted him enough to know that he would find her and save her.  Now he had to trust that she would listen to her heart for long enough to let it overrule the head that was trying to protect her from being hurt again.

Turning onto the docks, he let his feet lead him without actively thinking.  Running was like a meditation in a way.  It quietened the voices in his mind and gave him the means to channel all the nervous energy which would otherwise be ready to spill over into unwise and impulsive actions.

Which was usually great except that this time it had subconsciously channeled him to the very place where Bo Brady’s boat was moored.

As he stared mutinously at the boat, Bo’s head appeared, rising from the hatch.  Looking up, he stared straight at John.  John came to a stop, and they regarded each other for a long, silent moment, the space between them crackling with unspoken resentment, jealousy and a bitter rivalry.  

“Whaddare you doin’ here?” Bo demanded, not bothering to temper his hostility.

“Just passing,” John ground out through clenched teeth.

“Yeah, well.  Keep on going.” Bo scowled as he put his bottle of beer down and hauled himself up onto the deck of his boat.  “I’ve already seen enough of your ugly mug today and I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

John stared at him, about to say something.  Then he shook his head and turned away.

He got about three steps before he turned around.

“You might not have anything to say, but I do,” he growled.

“Well, I don’t want to hear it,” Bo sneered at him as he turned away.  John paused and then, making a decision, he jumped up onto the boat.

“You say you love Marlena,” he challenged the man he still thought of as a brother, even after all these years.  He knew Bo’s faults, but he also knew he was a good man who loved well.  If he did truly love Marlena, he would at least listen to what John had to say.

In front of him, Bo took a deep breath and closed his eyes.  In his minds eye, he saw Marlena at the loft, white cotton, messy hair and pale face.  Her beautiful wide amber eyes filled with fear and confusion.  His heart twisted in his chest.  He couldn’t deny it and he wouldn’t deny it, especially to John.

“I do love her,” his voice was hoarse.  He wished he didn’t.  He wished he’d never embarked on this ill-fated affair because now he loved her, he wasn’t sure he was ever going to be able to stop and what did that mean for a future without her?  Or a future with Hope?  

“Well then, we need to find a way to co-exist without being at each other’s throats all the time because it’s not helping her,” John said over the lump in his throat.  He had to fight not to think of Bo touching Marlena, kissing her.  The thought that this man here, next to him, had parts of the woman that he loved so intensely that he couldn’t have right now, was enough to send him a little insane.  The idea that he might never be able to hold her and kiss her and make love to her again was too much to bear.

Bo turned and glared at him, his eyes narrowed, and his mouth pinched in anger.  He could barely spit the words through clenched teeth as he spoke.  “If you’d stop trying to butt in and just leave us alone, there’d be no need for any co-existence.”

“Marlena and I share children.  We all share family.  We’ll always need to find a way to be in the same space,” John pointed out with as much calmness as he could muster.  He was torn between feeling sorry for Bo and for wanting to punch the self-righteousness out of him.  Bo had to know how this was going to play out.  It was only a matter of time. 

“They’re my family, not yours,” Bo said angrily.

“That didn’t work for Roman and it’s not going to work for you,” John couldn’t help his flash of temper.  “Shawn and Caroline were my parents for five years and they still treat me like their son.  I love Carrie, Sami and Eric as much as I love Belle and Brady.  They are my children in my heart.  And Kim told me earlier she still thinks of me as a brother.  Goddamn it, I still think of you as a brother, so you can try and stake your ownership as much as you want, but I am a part of this family, whether you like it or not.”

Bo’s anger softened into embarrassment as he recalled how he had thought much the same about Roman’s unwillingness to admit that John was part of their family only days before John had returned to Salem.  He couldn’t deny John was correct.  Bo’s falling for Marlena didn’t suddenly exclude John from the family that had continued to embrace him even after they had discovered that he wasn’t theirs by blood.  Bo knew he was being petty, and possessive and he knew he was better than that.

“All right,” he said grudgingly.  “What do you suggest?”

John shrugged.  He was finding it harder than he had imagined to be conciliatory with Bo.  He wasn’t sure how he was going to keep this up for any period of time if Marlena did do the unthinkable and choose to stay with his rival.  

“I don’t know.  But we’re going to have to find a way to deal with the fact that we’re both in love with her and we both want her, without wanting to kill each other every time we’re in the same room.  It’s not good for her and it’s not good for us.”  He quirked one dark brow over a piercing indigo eye.  “I do still think of you as a brother.  I still care about you.  I hate us being at odds like this.”

Bo frowned and then nodded slowly.  “You should never have left her.”  He offered as he looked out over the water.  “You’ve been a fucking idiot, you know that?”

“I do know that.”  John nodded his acceptance of Bo’s diagnosis.  “Terminal stupidity on my part.”  He chose not to mention that Bo had been similarly stupid and was in danger of being utterly stupid once more.

“I told her you were a dick for leaving her holed up in that rat-trap motel all those years ago when she came back to Salem.”  Bo scowled.  “She defended you, but it was a dick move and she knew it.”

“It wasn’t that easy Bo,” John slipped into his usual worn defense.  Not that he’d had to defend his decisions or his behavior over the years to anyone other than himself.  But truly, it was a series of events and choices that he had turned over and over in his head ever since Marlena had appeared to him on that pier.  As such, he had a well-worn internal dialogue which he moved through to justify choices he quietly regretted.  “I’d just asked Isabella to marry me, for God’s sake.”

“You were married to Marlena,” Bo reminded him spikily.  “At least you thought you were at the time.  She was your wife.  She’d been missing for five years, and you left her in a shitty, stinking motel with paper peeling off the walls to go home to your girlfriend.”  He was still pissed about it.  Sure, Isabella was his sister and the situation had been complicated, but John had handled it fucking poorly, to say the least.

“Remind me again how you turned Billie loose as soon as we found Hope at Maison Blanche?” John replied acerbically.

“That was different, and you know it.  We didn’t know that she was Hope,” Bo was on the defensive.  He knew John had a fair point, but he wasn’t about to admit that now.  This wasn’t about Hope and Billie.  This wasn’t about his own poor decisions.

“It’s not that different.”  John felt his anger swell but then an image of Marlena flashed through his head, and he managed to pull back from the words which had been about to spill from his mouth.  Words which would bait and enrage Bo.   But while that might make him feel better in this immediate moment, it wouldn’t help Marlena.  And doing what was best for the woman he loved was why he was here.  So instead, he took a deep breath and held up his hands.  “Look, we could argue about this all day but you’re right.  I was wrong to leave her in that motel room.  If I could go back and do all that differently, I would.  There’s a hell of a lot I would do differently.  But I can’t.  Just like you can’t change things with you and Hope and Billie.  And we can’t change this situation we’re in now.  But we can try and handle it better than we have been.”

Bo looked thoughtful and then nodded.  Picking up the bottle of beer, the neck between his middle fingers, he offered it to John.  John shook his head, declining the offer.  

“Thanks, but no.  I wanna keep a clear head right now.  I’d take a coffee if it was on offer though.” 

~

“Do you want to tell me what you’re thinking?”  Laura watched Marlena lean against the terrace railing.  The mid-afternoon sun was growing in intensity and Marlena had finally shed both the throw from around her shoulders and her sweat top, leaving her in just sweatpants and a white t-shirt.  She was still pale and reticent to share much of what she was thinking or feeling but Laura was sure that as long as she kept chipping away, Marlena would crumble eventually.

Marlena shook her head silently and Laura exhaled and put down her glass of orange juice.  “Honey, you can’t keep on shutting me out.  There’s no point in me being here if you don’t at least make a bit of an effort.”

“I didn’t ask you to come over,” Marlena hunched her shoulders as though to ward off Laura’s words.

“No, but you agreed to have sessions with me, and this warrants an emergency session, you know it does,” Laura tried not to let her irritation bleed into her voice.  “Honey, I cancelled patients to be here with you.  I need you to at least meet me halfway.”

At the railing, Marlena stared out over the city.  She knew she could tell Laura to go, and Laura would do as she asked.  Or she could stand here and continue to block Laura’s best attempts at encouraging her to open up.  But neither of those things was going to help her in the long run.   She had decided in the shower at John’s that she needed to do something to change the trajectory of her current situation.   Continuing to do the same things and expecting a different outcome… well she knew what that defined.  She had decided that she had to try something different.  So why was she fighting Laura’s help now?  Why did she feel like honesty was only going to make things worse?

“Sweetie, if you could fix yourself, you would have done it a long time ago,” Laura seemed to pick up on her train of thoughts.  “You know you need this, why won’t you let me help you?”

Marlena swallowed and turned around; her eyes large.  “I’m afraid,” she admitted.

“Of what?” Laura had shed her own suit jacket and the collar of her cream silk blouse fluttered in the breeze.

“I don’t know,” Marlena’s shoulders rose and fell in a tiny shrug.  “That it will make things worse?  That I’ll try and nothing will get better?”

“Why would that be the case?” Laura gently probed.  “You know therapy works.  You know that giving voice to feelings helps to lessen their power over you.  You know that working through those feelings and letting someone else help you make sense of them will enable you to make sense of the situation and help you make decisions.  How would any of that make things worse?”

Marlena nodded.  She knew on a logical, intellectual level that Laura was correct.  That was her experience of working with others.  She was skilled at drawing out other’s feelings and helping them make sense of messy experiences and situations.  But it hadn’t always been her own experience.  “That wasn’t…. it didn’t work when I was younger,” she said softly.  “Talking about my feelings I mean.”

Laura thought through what she knew of Marlena and deduced that she wasn’t speaking in a professional capacity any longer.

“You mean, when you were a child, or a teenager?” she asked gently.

Marlena shook her head, crossing her arms in front of her.  “Sam… Samantha would… she was difficult, you know that.  And she would do things that would…. She would manipulate me until I got scared or angry and lashed out and then I would be the one that got into trouble.  When I tried to tell my parents what had happened or how Sam was, I was met with uncomfortable silences or indifference.  Or worse.”

“Worse?” Laura figured she knew what the worse was, but it was worth getting Marlena to spell it out.

“Sam would accuse me of lying and they would take her side.”  Marlena chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, recalling an incident when she was a teenager where Sam had broken Marlena’s bedroom window climbing back in after a night out with a local boy and had blamed Marlena for it.  When Marlena had indignantly argued her innocence and in a fit of anger told her parents what her twin had really been up to, Samantha had convinced them that Marlena had been the one gallivanting around after dark, and Marlena had been grounded for a month.  After that, she had learned to keep her mouth shut and she had developed a way of dealing with Sam and with life’s inevitable pitfalls without sharing her feelings too openly.

“Oh honey,” Laura stood and went to her friend and wrapped her arms around her.  “You know I’m not Samantha and I’m not your parents, right?  This is therapy and I’m not going to use your feelings, or your vulnerability against you.”  She released Marlena and stepped back.  “I’m not going to call you a liar or get angry with you.  I’m here in a professional capacity and I am also here as a friend who loves you very much and only wants the best for you.”  Laura frowned and shook her head.  “Sam wanted the best for Sam and your parents wanted the best for them which was to look good in front of all their friends.  I can’t pretend to understand how a parent can do that to their child, but you have to know that they took the path of least resistance and punished you because they knew you would take it.  And that’s on them, it was not your fault for wanting justice or approval or someone to care that you were hurting.  You were owed all those things and they failed you.”

“Maybe that’s why I became a psychiatrist,” Marlena said slowly.  “To try and live up to their expectations of me.  They were so proud when I graduated medical school,” she said in a voice that held long-suppressed yearning.  “They showed me off like a prize cow.  But I think when my life got so messy after I moved to Salem, they were embarrassed.  They’re still embarrassed.  We never talk about any of it.”  She looked embarrassed as she looked up at Laura.  “I think that’s why they never come here.  When I go home, they can pretend that I am just the well-respected psychiatrist they tell their friends I am.  We never acknowledge any of the messiness.”  She frowned.  “In some ways that is a little respite, I can pretend my life is normal and perfect for a few days.  It’s easier to pretend to be what they want me to be than to admit the truth.”

“While I think there’s an element of truth to that, I think the larger truth is that you became a psychiatrist because you’re sensitive.  You see and you feel other people’s pain and you’re drawn to helping people in a way that no-one had ever helped you.  And you are incredibly good at it, no matter how messy your life might feel.”  Laura took Marlena’s hand.  “So, I’m asking you to please let me help you now.  You’ve spent your life helping other people.  Let me give you what your parents didn’t.  Let me in, honey.  Trust me with your burdens.  Even the ones that you think make you look bad.  I won’t judge you for them, I won’t use them against you like Sam and I won’t punish you or tell you you’re wrong.  Let me help you, we can make this better together if you do.”

“Oh Laura,” Marlena brushed away the tears that were trickling down her cheeks.  “I’ve made such a mess of things.”

“No, you haven’t,” Laura lifted a hand to tenderly tuck the loose curls behind Marlena’s ear.  “But you had a wake-up call yesterday.  And I think you know that you need to sort yourself out.  You can’t carry on like this, Marlena.”

“I know.”  Marlena brushed the tears from her face.  “I’m sorry.  I know I’m being obstructive.  I know… I know…”

“It’s okay,” Laura gave her a gentle smile.  “You’re not the worst client I’ve ever had, honey.  But let’s draw a line under that.  Promise me you’ll work with me from here on out.”

Marlena gave her a grateful smile and nodded.  Laura took her hand again and drew her back towards the seats on the terrace.  “Sit down,” she told her.  “And tell me what happened after you called John from the bar.”

~

John yawned as he sat on the deck of the Fancy Face II and nursed his coffee.  Bo took another mouthful of his beer and waited for John to speak.

“I know I’ve fucked things up with Marlena,” John started slowly.

“Can say that again,” Bo grunted.

John pressed his lips together and suppressed the surge of irritation he felt at Bo’s continued pettiness.  He took a deep, slow breath as he considered his next words.

“I know this mess isn’t of Marlena’s making.  Or yours.”  That wasn’t entirely true.  John felt that Bo had played a large role in this situation.  He had known Marlena was vulnerable, and he had taken advantage of that.  Maybe Marlena felt like it was a choice she had made, and maybe it was.  But it was a choice she had made in the wake of a long series of hurts and not one that John believed she would have made had she not been lonely and in a great deal of pain.  

However, blaming Bo wasn’t going to get him anywhere right now.  If they were going to find a way to come to an understanding, he had to appeal to Bo’s better nature, not the part of him that felt aggrieved and vengeful.

“Your point?” Bo was struggling to control his own irritation.  He knew John was trying to temper his words so as to not inflame the situation, but it just felt like he was being condescending at this point.  He wanted John to say whatever it was that he wanted to say and get it over with so that Bo could get back to brooding over his beer.

“My point is… “ John stared at the coffee cup in his hands.  He turned it around slowly as he talked.  “Marlena didn’t go into this thing with you with the intention of it being a long-term relationship and now she knows I didn’t leave of my own volition…” he looked up at Bo.  “You have to know that things have changed.  At some point she’s going to have to make a decision about who she wants to be with.”

“She already told you she doesn’t want you.” Bo snarled angrily.  “She told you at the pub.”

“I know that, but all our emotions were heightened that day.  She thought I’d left Salem and cheated on her with Hope.  I’d walked in on you two and … well…”  He had the grace to look embarrassed.  “But she’s had time to digest everything since then.  She knows I love her, and I want her back.”

“You really do have a fucking ego on you, don’t you?” Bo gave a tight, furious laugh.  “You think you just have to click your fingers and she’ll come running back to you.  You think she can’t resist you when you ride in on your white horse and rescue her.  Tell me the truth John, isn’t that really why you didn’t want me to help you look for her last night?  So you could be the one to ‘save’ her?”  He held up his bottle as if to make a toast.  “Has it occurred to you that maybe if you’d let me help look for her, we might have found her sooner and then she wouldn’t have been traumatized like that?  Has it occurred to you how fucking lucky you were that you did find her in time?  And that if you hadn’t, anything that happened to her would have been on you?”

John said nothing.  It had occurred to him.  In fact, it was one of the questions that had haunted him overnight as he’d watched her troubled sleep.  Whether his own need to be the one to save her had been the thing that had almost gotten her hurt.  

“Yeah, thought so.” Bo scowled.  “You’ve got a fuckin’ nerve man.  You want me to believe that this is all about Marlena and her feelings, but you’ve got an agenda.  If you think I’m gonna step back and hand her over to you, you got another thing coming.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” John said angrily.  “Marlena is not a prize we’re fighting over.  She’s not there to be won.  I’m not saying she’s gonna choose me but I’m saying that whatever she wants for her future, it is her choice.  She could just as easily tell both of us to take a hike and if she does, we’re going to have to accept it.  The choice is hers and hers alone and what I’m proposing is that we make that easier on her by not pressuring her and by accepting whatever it is that she decides with good grace.”

Bo glared at him sullenly.    “You saying that if she decided she wanted to pursue a relationship with me then you’d step back?  You’d accept it?”  

John was silent for a moment.  He had told Marlena he would accept Bo’s presence in her life, but he had meant accepting it as a passing fancy.  Something she needed until she no longer needed it.  Until she realized where it was that she really belonged.  But what Bo was asking was a different proposition.  Could he really accept it if she decided it was absolutely over between them?  Could he watch her be happy with Bo?  But that was exactly what he was asking Bo to do, after all.

“I won’t pretend it wouldn’t hurt like hell.  But I know I’ve hurt her.  And I love her so much that if she thought she was going to be happier with you then… yeah.  I’d try and accept it.”  

He didn’t add that he had tried to do that with Roman and failed miserably.  But then, she hadn’t been happy with Roman.  She had tried to be happy.  And he had tried to step back and let her be happy.  

But she hadn’t been happy at all.  As much as she’d tried to convince Roman, as much as she had tried to convince her family and friends… as much as she had tried to convince herself… she hadn’t been happy, and he had known it.  He had seen it in her eyes and in her body language.  He had known it in the way her body reacted when he touched her, in the way her eyes followed him when he entered the room.  In the way she had tried to avoid his eyes when he met hers.

He had tried to stay away from her but his love for her and his knowledge that despite her attestations to the contrary, she was desperately unhappy, had drawn him to her time and time again.  And she had been just as unable to stay away from him.

But if she was genuinely happy with Bo?  Could he stand by and watch that?  He wasn’t at all sure he could.  But then, could she be happy with Bo?  John didn’t think so.  He knew what Marlena needed, and it wasn’t something Bo possessed.  Marlena needed someone to meet her on her level, someone who was her equal and who saw her as their equal.  She needed stability laced with excitement and she deserved someone who absolutely understood and appreciated her fierce intelligence and independence.  Someone who understood what an exceptional woman she was and how lucky he was that she chose to be with him.

And while he knew Bo was a good man, he absolutely was not Marlena’s intellectual or emotional equal, and she would find his impulsivity and hot-tempered recklessness wearing thin after a while.

“Listen…” he said slowly, “there’s something else I wanted to say.  Have you thought about what happens when the ISA finds Hope?  When they remove that chip, and she wants to know where you are?  What happens if she wants you back, Bo?  What if Marlena has chosen you, and you’re stuck between her and Hope?”

Now it was Bo’s turn to be silent.  He had been trying not to think of it.  But John was right.  It was one thing if they were still in this silent, awkward limbo where he and Marlena were together but without any real commitment.  But if she decided that she wanted to be with him… if she came to some kind of resolution and chose a future with him… he couldn’t walk out on that, could he?  

But then he would be turning his back on everything he and Hope had shared.  He would be turning his back on a possible future with the mother of his child.  With the woman he had loved most of his adult life.

He stared at his beer bottle, picking at the edges of the label.  

John said nothing, just took a mouthful of his coffee and then regretted that he had.  It was bitter and half-cold and he grimaced as he swallowed it down.  Marlena definitely couldn’t be happy with someone who made such appalling coffee.

“I do love her,” Bo said quietly.  “I wish I didn’t.”

“Marlena?” John raised his eyebrows and Bo nodded.  John exhaled.  “She is very easy to love,” he reasoned.  “She’s as frustrating as hell, but by god, she is something special.”  He put the cold coffee on the deck and pushed it away with his foot.  “Cards on the table here Bo.  I have loved Doc for as long as I can remember.  And I don’t want to see her get hurt again.  That’s the reason I’m bringing it up.  It’s not for me.  This isn’t a plea on my behalf.  This is for Marlena.  She’s been hurt too much already.”  

Bo looked up and John nodded in acceptance of his unspoken accusation.  “A lot of it my fault, I know.  But you could really add to her pain here and I can’t stand by and not say anything.”  He ran his fingers through his hair wearily and pushed himself up from the wooden slatted seats and walked to the edge of the boat.  He stared into the oily water for a long moment before he turned around.  “You and I, we both love her, but for me there’s no-one else.  She’s it.  She always has been.  And I’ll do anything in my power to protect her.  If that includes fighting to make you see sense about Hope, then I’ll do that.”  He raised one eyebrow in patented John Black fashion.  “Because you and I both know a large part of your heart belongs to Hope.  The way Marlena’s belonged to me when Roman came back.  And I don’t think you’ll ever be happy with Doc if you know Hope is out there unhappy and alone.  Which in turn means Marlena will be miserable.  I don’t want that for her, and I don’t think you do either.”

Bo stared at him silently for a long moment and then quirked an eyebrow of his own.  

“Are you done now?” he asked tersely.  “Said what you came to say?”

John’s heart sank a little as he regarded his one-time brother.  He had hoped he could get through to Bo and make him see that carrying on this liaison with Marlena was only going to hurt everybody involved.  Himself included.  But Bo, being the stubborn bonehead he was, didn’t seem inclined to listen.

“Yeah, I guess so.”  He ran his fingers wearily through his hair.  “Can we at least agree to try and not argue in front of Marlena?”

Bo frowned but nodded before taking another mouthful of his beer.  “You can go now,” he offered finally his nostrils flaring in indignation.

John sighed and shrugged.  “Can’t say I didn’t try,” he said, as much to himself as to Bo.  And then, “if you hurt her, Brady, you’ll have me to answer to.”  With that, he swung around and jumped off the boat onto the pier.   

Bo took another mouthful of his beer and watched him go, scowling. 

~

“I remember thinking I should fight,” Marlena’s eyes shone brightly with unshed tears.  She had been walking with Laura through the fractured memories of that night, of her admirer turned attacker.  Certain impressions were burned into her mind.  The feeling of his fingers digging into her thigh.  The rasp of his voice as he impressed on her that she was at his mercy.  The redness of his face, the way his stubble tore at her skin.  “But I was frozen.  There was no fight or flight.  I was just paralyzed.” 

“That’s completely natural,” Laura reminded her.  “None of us know how we will react when faced with a situation like that.”

“But I didn’t…” Marlena’s gaze dropped to her hands which were tangling nervously in her lap.  

“You didn’t what, honey?” Laura prompted gently.

“This isn’t…” she sucked in a deep breath.  Kellam Chandler had been relegated to a simple and largely harmless memory for so many years that it was shock to find out that he still had the power to scare her.  Her heart pounded and her palms grew sweaty as she tried to find the words to explain.  “It happened before.”

Laura nodded slowly and put her hand on Marlena’s knee.  She, in fact, knew about Marlena’s ordeal at the hands of Kellam Chandler.  While she wasn’t in Salem at the time, after Marlena had agreed to go into therapy with her, Laura had studied both her medical file as well as all the newspaper clippings she could find about her dear friend’s somewhat checkered personal history.  So she knew all about what had happened with Don, Chandler and the fall-out.  

But admitting what had happened to her all those years ago was something Marlena needed to do, right now.  To make the connection between the trauma of that attack and her reactions this time.

“Tell me.” She took Marlena’s hand and stroked the back of it with her thumb.  She had been there too.  She knew what it was to survive such a violation.  It really never left a person unscarred, no matter how good they were at moving on.  “You’re safe with me.  He doesn’t have the power to hurt you now.  None of them do.”

“I was raped.”  Marlena exhaled a shaky breath.  “It was long, long time ago.  It was just after Don and I split up.”

“Oh, honey,” Laura squeezed her hand comfortingly.  “I’m so sorry you went through that.  Last night must have brought up a lot of feelings then.”

“I couldn’t…” Marlena clutched at Laura’s hand as though it might stop her drowning in the memories.  “I remember thinking I should fight, and then I thought about how I had fought Kellam and how that had only made him more violent, and I… I froze.  All I could think was that it was going to happen again, and it was all my fault.”  A tear trickled down her cheek as she struggled to contain the sob that hovered close to the surface.

“It was not your fault,” Laura needed to disabuse her of that notion as quickly as possible.  “A woman should be able to walk into a bar and get a drink without getting assaulted, Marlena.  There’s only one person at fault here and that’s the low-life asshole that attacked you.”

“But I shouldn’t have-” a second tear spilled down Marlena’s face as Laura held up her hand.

“There are a lot of reasons you shouldn’t have gotten drunk, I do agree with that, but it still does not make it your fault that a man thought he had a right to take advantage of your vulnerability.”  She pressed her lips together, and her brow furrowed in pain for what her friend was going through.  If she could magic it away, she would in a moment.  “Oh honey, you must have been so scared.”

“I was terrified,” Marlena whispered, her voice cracking.  And with a broken sob, she came undone, her carefully constructed façade finally fully crumbling.  Laura wrapped her arms around her friend and pulled her close.  Marlena buried her face in Laura’s shoulder and wept uncontrollably as all the stress and anger and fear of the previous few weeks caught up to her.  

Laura said nothing, just let her cry, stroking her back and her hair intermittently until finally her sobbing finally petered out into quiet sniffles.  Finally, Marlena pulled back, her eyes red-rimmed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

Laura regarded her, her expression full of empathy.  “I think you badly needed that,” she said gently.

Marlena couldn’t even look at her for a moment but slowly, her eyes drifted upwards to meet Laura’s and she nodded.  She couldn’t say anything for a moment, too scared that just opening her mouth would bring more tears spilling forth.  

“I wish you hadn’t had to go through that,” Laura pulled a box of tissues from the table and offered them to Marlena.  “Not all those years ago and not last night.”

“Me either,” Marlena’s voice was husky as she pulled several tissues from the box and used them to dry her face.  “But you’re right, it was a wake-up call.”

“Do you want to tell me about that?” Laura asked.  “In what way?”

Marlena sat, thoughtful for a moment as she considered how to put it into words.  “I know I need to change things.  I can’t keep on pretending this thing with Bo is a decision I’ve made.  It not.  It’s the absence of a decision.  It’s hurting him, and its hurting John.” She paused and considered her own words.  Why was she always the bottom of the list when it came to considering everyone’s feelings?  “Who am I kidding?  It’s hurting me.”

Laura nodded, relieved that Marlena had finally come to that conclusion on her own.

“What does that mean in practical terms?” she asked.

Marlena opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again.

Laura inclined her head and then looked up at Marlena from beneath her lashes.  Her friend was almost there.  Almost ready to say it.  Almost, but not quite.

“Okay, then tell me what happened after John rescued you.  What happened when you got back to his loft?”

Marlena closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to combat the headache that had been released by her tears.

“I threw myself at John,” she said eventually, looking embarrassed.  “I mean, I practically stripped myself naked and handed myself to him on a platter.”

Laura bit back a smile.  She hadn’t often seen Marlena tipsy, but she imagined she would be a force to be reckoned with when she was drunk and insistent on getting her own way.

“How did John react?” John hadn’t gone into detail on the phone, but he had obliquely alluded to Marlena’s inebriated seduction attempt and given the fact that Marlena had done the same thing to Bo on John’s return, Laura had immediately understood what it was he was getting at.

“He was very honorable, and he said I was too drunk, and I would regret it in the morning,” Marlena admitted.  

“So, you didn’t have sex?” Laura raised her eyebrows.

Marlena shook her head.  

“And how did you feel about that last night?”

“I was upset that he turned me down.  I wanted to forget about what had happened.  About the assault.  About the photos.”  Her own voice echoed in her head.  This is what we do best, isn’t it?  Fight and then fuck?  I want you to fuck me, John.  I want you to fuck me so hard I see stars.  Marlena shifted uncomfortably the echo of last night’s desire throbbing between her legs.  “I made it real hard for him to say no.”

Laura’s eyes twinkled.  “I’ll just bet you did.”

Marlena blushed and looked down at her hands again.  She was embarrassed to admit to her bad behavior.  “Laura, he put me to bed, and he was so determined that he wouldn’t take advantage of me.  I was horrible to him.  I yelled at him and then I practically tried to tear his clothes off and have my way with him.  And the whole time he was so patient and respectful of me.  Even this morning when…” she trailed off, her already pink cheeks darkening as she remembered John’s face when he had stumbled upon her in the shower.

“When what…?” Laura asked, intrigued.  When she’d spoken to John, he hadn’t mentioned anything that had happened this morning.  He had seemed very disconcerted about Marlena’s conduct after they had returned to the loft, but she had assumed that had been due to Marlena’s oversexualized behavior in the wake of the attempted assault at the bar.  But, she remembered, he had asked if she would continue to exhibit out of character reactions as time went on.

“I….”  Marlena bit her lip, trying to decide how much to tell Laura.  How much of what had happened was too mortifying to share with her best friend.  And how much of it would embarrass John if he knew she had told Laura.  But he had been the one to call Laura and ask her to come here now.  He had to know that it was possible that this would come up.  

“Tell me, honey.”  Laura wanted all the salacious details.  Not just because she was curious, which she was definitely, given the delicate shade of scarlet that Marlena had turned.  But also, because it might help her point Marlena in the direction she needed to go.

“He uh…” Marlena felt her cheeks flare and the familiar ache between her thighs as she thought about what she had seen in the bathroom in the early hours of the morning.  “I had trouble sleeping.  I woke and saw John go into the bathroom.”  She swallowed, her heart pounding as she recalled his palm against the wall, fingers tightening and flexing against the tiles.  “I followed him and watched him…”  She blinked, hoping Laura would get the drift without her having to spell it out.

“Watched him what?” Laura asked a little too innocently.

Marlena glared at her.  Was she really going to make her say it out loud?  Laura said nothing, just continued to wait for Marlena to explain, her eyes wide with expectation.

Marlena exhaled loudly.   “He was…” she bit her lip again, “he was… he made himself come.”

“He was masturbating?” Laura couldn’t help the sly grin which curled her mouth.  Marlena was clearly still aroused by the image of her once-husband bringing himself to orgasm while she watched.  “I bet that was hot.  Did he call your name while he did it?”

“Laura!” Marlena exclaimed.  This was uncomfortably close to gossiping about something so incredibly intimate, and she felt a little like she was betraying John by discussing it with Laura.

“I won’t tell anybody, honey,” Laura couldn’t help her delighted smile.  “But let’s be clear here.  You came onto him, and he turned you down.  But then he masturbated in the bathroom because he was obviously so turned on.  You can’t tell me that didn’t turn you on, just a little.”

“It turned me on a lot!” Marlena couldn’t help the tiny smile that turned the corners of her mouth upwards as she thought about her own fumble in John’s bed once he had left the room.  “And to answer your question, yes, he called my name.  It was definitely me he was thinking about, not Hope or Gina.”  

“He still loves you,” Laura said, with a warm and joyous certainty.  “You can’t deny that now.”

“He still wants me,” Marlena corrected.  She wanted to believe that John loved her, that his actions were evidence of that love, but she was still a little too scared to completely trust him.

“He loves you, Marlena,” Laura insisted.  “He was frantic when you disappeared.  He called me looking for you and he was… he would have moved heaven and earth to find you.  He knew you were in trouble, and he found you.  He found you before anything serious could happen to you, thank God.”  She took a deep breath and nodded.  “He still wants you, sure.  But it’s because he loves you.  The man that hurt you and left you was not John.  Not the John you know and love.”

Marlena’s heart pounded as she turned over Laura’s words in her mind.  She wanted to believe her.  She wanted to believe John.  She wanted… she wanted to not hurt any longer.  

“How did you feel about it this morning?” Laura asked gently.  “How did you feel when you remembered what had happened.”

“I didn’t… at first I didn’t remember,” Marlena admitted.  “Bo turned up and he was so angry at John and… it felt like he was angry at me, and I didn’t even know why I was there, let alone whether he should be angry at me.”  She paused realizing that when it had come down to it, she was the one most in the wrong in the situation at John’s loft.  She had tried to seduce John and then she had been dismissive of Bo’s feelings and his fears.  She had cheated on his brother, after all.  With John.  Bo had every right to feel insecure and irritated at her indifference.  

She groaned and covered her face with her hands.  She had told him to come back here and look after the children, like he was… hired help.  And he had been rightfully angry and mercurial in his reactions.  She had been incredibly insensitive and although she knew she shouldn’t really feel guilty about that, given the situation, given how he had left her alone; still, she did.

And John?  John had been… everything she had needed him to be.  Even though she hadn’t known it at the time.  He had been sweet and sensitive to her trauma-driven reactions.  He had ensured that her well-being was his first and foremost concern, no matter how difficult she had made it for him.  He could have so easily given into her hyper-sexualized demands, as Bo had the night she had gotten drunk and high on Vicodin.  He could have gotten frustrated or angry with her.  Instead, he had been patient and reassuring and firm in his incredibly healthy and thoughtful boundaries.  

“I love him,” she said, her eyes filling with tears as she was finally able to find the words to express what was in her heart.  “I love John.  I love him so much.  He was everything I needed him to be last night and this morning.  I know I’m scared.  I’m scared because of Kristen and Roman and everything that happened before, but last night I felt safe and understood and seen.  I felt loved.”

“Oh honey.”  Laura let her widest smile curl across her face.  “I’m so glad you feel like that.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to take him back!” Marlena held up her hand forestalling any assumptions Laura might be ready to jump to.  “I’m not ready for that.  Not yet.”

“I think that’s a wise decision,” Laura nodded thoughtfully.  “You’ve still got a lot to sort out yourself.   But it seems like you’re finally admitting what it is that you actually feel and that can only be positive.”

 “Is it?” Marlena asked.  She was thinking of Bo’s face as he left the loft.  Her admission that she still loved John could only mean one thing.  That she had to end things with Bo.

“Yes,” Laura nodded.  “But even if you’re not ready to take John back, you still have to do something with that, and I think you know what that means.”

Marlena sighed and placed her hands on either side of her face.  Leaning back, she looked at the ceiling far above her, and blew out a long breath.  Laura remained silent as Marlena processed everything they had talked about over the past hour.

Finally, she lowered her head and looked directly at Laura.  

“I have to talk to Bo.”

Laura raised her eyebrows.  Committing to talking to Bo wasn’t enough.  Marlena needed to remove that particular complication from her life so that she couldn’t avoid all the other unpleasant and icky feelings that she had been trying so desperately to ignore.

“Stop being avoidy, Marlena,” she said pointedly.

“Avoidy?” Marlena asked with a confused smile.

“You can thank Carrie,” Laura laughed.  “But seriously.  You know what you need to do.  You said that things had to change and that continuing this thing with Bo was the absence of a decision.  Tell me what it is that needs to change.  What do you need to do?”

Marlena’s expression slid into one of resignation.  “I need to end it with Bo,” she said in a quiet voice.  “I know I do.”

Laura nodded, relieved that they had finally reached the kicking off point.  Once Marlena had untangled herself from Bo, she could start the real work of sorting out her own head and her heart.  

And she could finish her journey back to where her heart really belonged.  

With John Black.  

Part Trente Sept

Salt air
And the rust on your door
I never needed anything more
Whispers
Of “Are you sure?”
“Never have I ever before”

But I can see us
Lost in the memory
August slipped away into a moment in time
‘Cause it was never mine
And I can see us twisted in bedsheets
August sipped away
Like a bottle of wine
‘Cause you were never mine

August  – Taylor Swift

Bo Brady dawdled down the steps of the pier, heading for where his boat was moored.  The air smelt like salt, algae and the warm mustiness of summer.    The weather was close, the humid heat of early July making him break out in a sweat.  

Although it wasn’t just the heat.  The conversation he’d just had was just as much to blame.  

He was lost in thought as he jumped up onto the boat and he only looked up when he heard a subtle clearing of a throat.

Her throat.

“Hi,” she said, almost shyly.  She was sitting on the port side of the boat, her feet dangling over the side.  Her slim bare legs topped by the hitched skirt of a pale blue sundress that enhanced the golden color of her skin where it revealed shoulders scattered with freckles, her forearms resting on the railing.  He wondered how long she’d been there.

“Hey,” he didn’t know what to do.  If he should go and sit next to her.  Or invite her down below deck.  So, he stood there, uncertainly, waiting for her to speak.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come over sooner,” she turned, bringing one knee up onto the deck and crossing her right thigh over her ankle, covering her left leg with the soft cotton of her skirt.  “I’ve had a lot to think about.”

Bo nodded.  It had been three days since he’d left her at John’s loft.  Three days of silence.  At first, he had been angry and his conversation with John hadn’t helped matters in that respect.  But then, as the silence from her had lengthened, the lack of word from her had eaten away at him, and he had started to worry.  

Not about whether she was going to end it.  He was pretty sure that was going to happen.  Probably sooner rather than later.  But rather, he was worried about her state of mind in the wake of what had happened the other night.  Both the revelation of the photos and the events that followed.

He had thought about that night over and over.  Asking himself how he could have walked out and left her there, the way he did.  Sitting in the middle of the floor, broken into a thousand pieces.  It hadn’t even occurred to him to be concerned about her reaction.  At least, not until John had demanded to know where she was and had read him like filth for leaving her alone.  It made him wonder what kind of person he could be to leave someone he loved in such distress to satisfy his own wounded pride.

His concern had intensified when he had run into Laura yesterday in Salem Place.  She had glared at him when he asked if she’d spoken to Marlena, and she had told him curtly that she couldn’t discuss Marlena with him, being that she was officially a patient, but that she could suggest that he give her all the space she needed right now.  And that he should be well versed with that concept as he seemed to be good at it.  It was a cutting remark, and her intention was clear.  She wanted him to stay away from Marlena because in her eyes, it was his fault she had fled the penthouse and almost gotten herself attacked.

And Laura was right.  He had been the worst kind of idiot.  She had clearly needed him and what had he done?  Gone off half-cocked, intent on revenging his own butt-hurt feelings.  

“Are you okay?” he asked carefully.  “I mean… physically… emotionally.  After the… what happened the other night.”

“After I got blind drunk and almost got myself sexually assaulted, you mean?”  She looked uncomfortable.  “I’m okay, I guess.  I’ve got a bit of PTSD.  Or maybe you could say it’s added to my PTSD, because we both know I wasn’t exactly stable even before the other night.”

“Marlena, I’m sorry,” his words were rushed, as though if he didn’t get them out now, he wouldn’t be able to get them out at all.  “I’m so sorry for leaving you alone like that.  It was selfish and thoughtless of me.”

Marlena said nothing for a moment, as though she was considering her response.  She looked away over the water and frowned.  “I won’t pretend I wasn’t hurt,” she said carefully as she looked back up at him.  “But I also know that you were upset and angry and you acted impulsively.  That’s who you are, Bo.”  She shrugged.  “Honestly, I had no right to expect you to do anything else.  You don’t owe me anything.”

“I do.  I owe you an apology.”  He came nearer to her now and lowered himself to the deck next to her.  Although she was facing him, he dangled his own legs over the side and mirrored her pose from earlier.  Leaning his forearms on the railing as she had, he turned his head to look at her.  

“Over and above everything, we’re friends.  We’ve been friends forever.  And friends look out for one another.”  He shook his head.  “But I didn’t do that.  I knew you were struggling and that you’d been….” He had a guilty frown now.  “I knew you’d been doing self-destructive things to deal with your pain.  I knew that, but I was too caught up in my own feelings to think about yours and what you might do.”

“You’re not responsible for my stupid choices.” Marlena said quietly. “I was the one who put myself in that situation.  If it’s anyone’s fault it’s-”

“No.”  Bo shook his head again, determinedly this time.  “You’re not going to blame yourself for this.”

“No-one forced me to go into that bar, Bo,” she said angrily.  She appreciated that he was trying to make her feel better.  As John and Laura both had.  But there was no getting away from her culpability in the whole mess.   “No-one held me at gunpoint and forced me to drink half a bottle of bourbon.   I was stupid and careless.  What if something had happened to me?  What if my children had lost their mother because I was feeling so sorry for myself, I got blind drunk and unable to look after myself?”

“Marlena, if you were counselling a patient and they said this to you, what would you say back to them?” Bo asked, far too casually for it not to be completely deliberate. “Would you tell them, ‘yes, it was absolutely your fault that you got attacked.’?”

“No, of course I wouldn’t,” she replied indignantly.

“Okay, so you wouldn’t say it.  Of course you wouldn’t, you’re a shrink.  You don’t victim-blame, I get that.  But would you quietly think it was their fault?” he asked, without any malice.  “Would you think they deserved to get attacked, to maybe get raped, because they were upset and had a few drinks to try and deal with their pain?”

“Nooo, Bo.”  Her eyes filled with tears.  She knew what he was doing, and she couldn’t help but love him for it.  Even as she was annoyed and frustrated.  “Of course I would never blame anyone in that situation.  No-one deserves to be violated.  But I put myself in that situation.  I have to take some responsibility for walking into an unsafe situation and making it worse for myself by drinking.   I should have known better.  I did know better.”

“If you’d consciously known better at the time, you wouldn’t have done it.  You wouldn’t have deliberately put yourself in that situation.  You’re the most sensible woman I know.  But you weren’t consciously thinking at all, were you?”  He reached over and took her hand and squeezed it.  “We were both in the same frame of mind, so I know exactly how you were feeling and what was going through your head.  You were on autopilot.  You weren’t thinking at all.  Your feet moved and you found yourself somewhere and you acted on instinct.  Just like I did.  My instinct was to find John and beat him because I felt angry, hurt and betrayed.  Your instinct was to outrun the pain and the only way you knew how to do that at that exact moment, was to drink it away.  Whatever happened after that was the fault of the low life in that bar.  The one that took advantage of your pain to get what he wanted.  He tried to violate you because he’s scum, and he saw an opportunity.  It was not your fault.  You are not to blame here.”

He edged closer to her and reached up and wiped the tears from under her lashes.    Her eyes were flecked with gold, and they sparkled in the warmth of the setting sun.  He watched her look out over the river, as she contemplated his words.

“You’re right,” she said finally.  “I don’t even remember how I got to that bar in the first place, or what crazy impulse prompted me to go in there.  I mean, I don’t even drink bourbon.  I hate the taste of it.”  She sighed and looked at him.  “None of it makes any sense to me.  It’s almost like it was another version of me.  One I don’t know and don’t really want to know.”  

“I shouldn’t have run out on you and left you alone in the penthouse in the first place.” He smiled sadly and wiped his hands on his jeans.  “John was right about that.  I’m really sorry Marlena, can you forgive me?”

“Like you said, you were running on instinct, and you weren’t making conscious choices.  So, if it wasn’t my fault, then it also wasn’t your fault.  You don’t need to apologize and there’s nothing to forgive.  But…. thank you for saying it, all the same.”  She reached out and put her hand softly on his arm.  “I also need to apologize.”  Bo raised his eyebrows and she nodded.  “For how I treated you when you came to the loft.  I know you were worried and then you were confused, and I know how it must have looked to you.  You had every reason to be angry with me.”

“I wasn’t angry with you,” Bo demurred.  It was a lie, of course.  He had been angry with her at the time.  He wasn’t now.  Now that he’d had time to think about it.  “And I’m sorry I grabbed you. I don’t know what I was thinking.  I knew what you’d just been through, and I should have been more sensitive to how you were feeling.  I was just so scared and then I was…” he paused, inhaling and exhaling a deep breath.  He turned and looked out over the water.  “I saw you in his shirt and I was so fucking insecure and jealous.  I just lost my mind a little bit.”

“I understand.”  She swallowed anxiously.  She turned again, back to slip her feet over the side of the boat so that they sat side by side.  She looked out over the water.  The sun was slipping down low in the sky and pools of gold glittered on the languidly moving surface of the water.  “I know what it looked like, honey.  But John was telling you the truth.  Nothing happened.”

“I bet he wanted it to happen though,” Bo couldn’t help the snide tone that edged his voice as the words slipped out before he could stop them. 

“If you’re inferring that he tried to seduce me, you couldn’t be further from the truth.” Marlena turned to look at him.  She thought about adding that it had been her doing the seducing, but she didn’t want to hurt Bo any more than she already had to.  “He really did just make sure I was okay.  He tried to sober me up and then he put me to bed to sleep it off.”

Bo said nothing but she could see in the twitching of the muscles in his jaw that he was struggling to control himself and the words that wanted to spill out.

“I understand why you’re upset,” she said softly.  “You have every right to be angry.  And I didn’t help matters.  I’m sorry I was so dismissive of you.  I was just… I was very confused.  At that point, I didn’t remember much of anything that had happened the night before and I needed to understand.  I was hungover and I woke up in John’s… loft.  I knew something bad had happened, I just didn’t know what.  And I didn’t want to have to arbitrate an argument between the two of you in order to get the truth from John.”

Bo nodded.  He laid the side of his head on his crossed arms again and looked at her.  “Did he explain?” he asked.  “About the photos I mean.  And do you believe him?”

“He said Gina drugged him.  And set up the photos.”  She nodded.  “And yes, I believe him.  I can’t really…” she stopped as his words came back to her.  I promise on our daughter’s life I didn’t lie to you, Marlena.  “I’m absolutely sure he was sincere, Bo.  He was as shocked as we were about those photos.”

“So, they really didn’t sleep together.”  Bo nodded.

“I guess not.”   She shrugged.  She still wasn’t sure how she felt about that.  Whether it made her feel better because John, (in whatever incarnation) hadn’t been physical with Hope, or worse because she had assumed they were, and partly on that basis, had slept with Bo.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, looking out over the water.

Then Marlena took a deep breath.  “Bo I-”

“Marlena, there’s something I need to tell you,” Bo interrupted her his words tumbling out in a breathless rush.  He looked at her.  Her cheeks were red, her beautiful amber eyes wide.  “Shane called me this morning.  That’s where I’ve been.  Talking to him.  The ISA found Hope.”

“Oh.”  She nodded slowly, waiting for him to continue.

“Yeah.  She was staying at one of Stefano’s properties in the south of France.  They’ve taken her into custody and are flying her to London to take out the chip.  Doug has given permission as her next of kin, since Gina obviously won’t give permission herself.”

Marlena waited for him to continue, but he was silent.  

“You’re going, aren’t you?” she asked quietly.

There was a beat before Bo nodded, his expression filled with sadness.  Shane had told him that Doug and Julie were stuck in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on a cruise and couldn’t make it back to London to be with Hope as she recovered, but they had asked that Bo fly out and be there with her until they disembarked and made their way there.  He told Shane he would think about it and let him know as soon as possible.  Shane, understanding his dilemma, had quietly told him time was of the essence, and that he needed to make up his mind quickly.

On his walk back to the boat he had been mulling it over, Doug’s request and John’s words from the other day, along with his feelings for both Marlena and Hope.  He hadn’t known what to do until he’d seen her sitting on the side of his boat.  Truly, he hadn’t known until this moment.

He nodded again.  It was the only thing that made sense.  

Marlena’s heart belonged to John.  And it would always belong to John.  However much she tried to fight it, she would always be drawn into John’s orbit.  It was as natural as breathing for her.  And John, whatever he said, was never going to stop fighting to get her back.

When Shane had told him that they had found Hope and that they would be taking the chip out in a few days’ time, he had felt his heart flutter in his chest and he knew that whatever he felt for Marlena, as she was tied to John, so Hope would always own a large part of his heart.  And he knew that if he didn’t take this opportunity, he would always wonder what would have happened if he had.

In truth, it wasn’t a decision he needed to make any more.  He had known it the moment he had set eyes on Marlena.  She was here to say goodbye.  She had finally made her decision and it wasn’t him.  He wanted to make it easier for her.  He wanted to make it easier for himself.

“I think it’s for the best,” he said, his throat tight with emotion.  “Hope… she needs me.  She’s going to be confused and upset.  She needs someone there who cares about her and can be with her through this.”

“You don’t need to explain,” Marlena said softly.  “I understand.  It’s the right thing to do.”  She gave him a soft, caring smile.  “You’re a good man Bo Brady.  Hope is a very lucky woman.”

“I….”  He frowned, trying to hold the tears at bay.  “Are you going to be okay?”

“I’m going to be just fine,” she smiled bravely, her own tears clinging tenaciously to her lashes for the moment.  “Don’t you worry about me.”

“I’ll always worry about you,” he gave a quiet, choked laugh.  It wasn’t a lie.  She would always be in his heart, and he would always want the best for her.  “You came here to tell me it was over, didn’t you?” he asked.  Part of him didn’t want to know.  He wanted to be the one with the power, the one to walk away.  But that wasn’t fair on her.  She deserved the chance for closure too. 

“I did, yes,” she gave him a brief, faltering smile.  It had taken her three days to gather the courage to come here and have this conversation.  When she’d arrived and found the boat deserted, she had almost abandoned her purpose, struggling with the temptation to flee back to the safety of the penthouse.  

Instead, she had pulled out her phone and called Laura, asking her to remind her of all the reasons she had to do this.  Laura had been gently encouraging and had reminded her of her own admission that she still loved John and that it wasn’t fair on Bo to keep him hanging on when she could never offer him the kind of love and commitment he deserved.  Her resolve fortified; she had thought about calling him to see where he was.  But every time she had gone to dial his number, something had stopped her.  She wasn’t sure what it was, whether it was her reticence to hurt him or whether 

It was her lingering fear of ultimately being alone and having to deal with all the feelings that were finally bubbling to the surface.  Whatever it was, she had sat here, watching the sun sink in the sky, her stomach gurgling with hunger as she awaited his return.

And now here he was, and she hadn’t even needed to say it.

In a way, it was a relief.  In a way, momentarily it had been frustrating.  Roman (or the man she had thought to be Roman, at least) had taken away her agency when he had ‘let her go’ to be with John.  Although truly that had been her fault for taking so long to be honest with him.  She’d had reasons, good reasons to be sure.  But she had waited until “Roman” couldn’t fail to see what was in her heart and then he had done the deed for her.  And here she was again, and for a moment she had thought Bo wouldn’t give her the opportunity to make her feelings known.  And she needed to.  There were things she needed to say, amends she needed to make.  For her own sake, as well as his.

“I think it’s the right time now.  I have some things I need to sort out.”  She watched the light glittering on the water below her feet.  The therapy sessions with Laura were starting to unpack a lot and while her instinct was still to run from the painful truths that were being revealed day by day, she also knew that if she wanted to move forward and give her children the best mother she could, then she needed to do the work.  She needed to stop running away.

She turned her head to look at him again.  “I do love you, you know.”  She wanted to give him that, at least.

Bo felt his heart leap momentarily but then he settled into the realisation of what she meant.  “But not like that, right?” he looked for her confirmation. 

“No, not like that,” she said softly.

“Because you love John.”  Bo stated the obvious.

“Not just because I love John,” Marlena corrected him.  “You’re one of my dearest friends and I love you because you’re a wonderful person.  But I’m just not in love with you.  Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t.  You can’t control it.  I don’t know what makes a person fall in love with another person.  It’s ephemeral.  It just didn’t happen for me with you.”

Bo said nothing.  There was nothing really to say.

“But to answer your question, yes, I do love John.  I tried to ignore it eight years ago, but it didn’t work.  I’ve been trying to ignore it since he got back to Salem, but it’s still not working.  I guess I just have to face the fact that for me, it will always be John.  I will always be in love with him.”

“You didn’t love Roman?” Bo asked, although he wasn’t really sure why he was asking.  He was in love with two women at the same time, he knew it was possible.  

“No, I did love him,” Marlena assured him.  “But it was a love that was born out of nostalgia, for what we once had. When he came back, neither of us were the same people, and it just wasn’t there anymore.  I didn’t feel the way I wanted to feel about him.  But I tried to tell myself I could, if I just tried hard enough.  But that’s the thing.  You can’t make yourself be in love with someone.  You either are, or you aren’t.  And the truth was, when I fell in love with John, there wasn’t any room any more for me to love Roman.  Or at least, to be in love with him.   And I hurt him, I really hurt him.”  Bo could see the pain and guilt she still felt about that.  It was written all over her face.  “I don’t want to hurt you that way, honey.”

Bo nodded slowly.  He could accept what she was saying.  It made sense.  It was the only thing that did make sense in this situation.  “What are you going to do?  Are you going back to John?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, quite yet” she admitted.  “I’m not going back to John.  Not right now.  In the future,” she shrugged, “who knows?”

“He loves you very much,” Bo stated the obvious.

“I know he does,” she nodded.  “But there’s a lot we need to resolve if we are going to have a future together.  And there are things I need to work out in my own head.”  She looked thoughtful.  “I’ve spent a lot of time running.  Running away from the pain of Roman leaving.  And running towards something with John.  A lot has happened in the past ten years, and somewhere along the way I think I lost who I was a little bit.”  She bit her lower lip.  “You called me needy the other day, and that really hurt.”

“I shouldn’t have said that” Bo said quickly.  “That wasn’t fair of me.”

“No, it hurt because you were right,” Marlena replied sadly.  “The only thing you were wrong about is that John did it to me.”  She brought her leg up on deck again and bent it, lacing her arms around it and dropping her chin onto her knee for a moment as she thought about what it was that she wanted to say.  

“It wasn’t John.  I did it to myself.”  She lifted her head and looked rueful.  “At some point, probably because of what happened after our affair became common knowledge, I stopped trusting myself.  At some point even earlier than that, I started putting everyone else’s needs first.  I didn’t even think about what it was I needed.  I couldn’t let myself think about that.  I guess I realised recently how unhealthy that is.  I need to work out who I am now.  I’m a friend, a mom and a doctor, for sure.   But I need to work out who Marlena is.  And I need to learn to trust her again.  She used to make good decisions, once upon a time.”

“Yeah, pretty sure she wouldn’t have jumped into bed with her brother-in-law,” Bo said with a sheepish smile.

“Maybe not,” she acknowledged with a small smile of her own.  “But I don’t regret it, Bo.” She reached out and laid her hand on his arm.  “I want you to know that.  You were there when I needed a friend.  When I needed someone to keep me afloat.”

“I don’t regret it either,” he smiled at her, but there was a lingering sadness in that smile.  “Although ask me again in a few months’ time.  I have a feeling it’s going to be pretty hard to get over you.”

“Oh, don’t say that.”  She bit her lip and raised her eyebrows, her eyes wide with concern.  “You’ll be fine, honey.  You just need to go and live your life.  You’ll forget me soon enough.”

“Didn’t work for Roman,” Bo reminded her.  “He never got over you.”

“Roman was…” she sighed.  Sometimes she forgot that that guy that Kate had killed had not been her Roman.  Sometimes she even forgot that Roman was dead, and it hit hard when she did remember.  She still often felt a twinge of guilt when she thought about him.  But then she remembered the letters he had sent her and John before he had died.  One day, she hoped she would be able to think about him without feeling guilty.  But that day wasn’t today.

“That was a different situation, Bo.  Roman was held captive for seven years and he… I am sure it was necessary to his survival that he had something to hold onto, something to live for, something he wanted to come home to.”  She shrugged.  “But that he built that something, me and the children, into an image of perfection.  Something we could never live up to when he finally did come home.  He never came to terms with that.  It wasn’t me that he couldn’t get over.  It was the impossibly perfect creation he’d made up in his head.  You… you know I’m not perfect.  And it’s different too because you love Hope.  Roman didn’t have anyone else.  It was just me.”     

Bo nodded his head, but he looked unconvinced.

“You’re going to be just fine,” she reiterated, her smile a little too bright, as though she was trying to convince herself as much as she was trying to convince him.  “You’re going to go and find Hope and you’re going to sort things out with her. And then you’re going to come home and be gloriously happy.  I just know it.”

“Sure I am,” he gave her a brave smile but it faltered and flattened into a look of worry.  “Marlena, we are still friends, aren’t we?”

“Oh honey, of course we are,” she laid her knee back on the deck, reached forward and caught his hand in hers.  “You’re one of my best, my very best friends.”  She looked down at his hand in hers and then looked up at him reluctantly.  “Although I kind of think if you do patch things up with Hope, she might have an issue with that.”

“Nah.”  Bo shook his head vehemently.  “Nuh-uh.  My friendship with you is non-negotiable.  She’ll have to deal with it.”

“It might not be that simple,” Marlena offered gently.  “She might get jealous.  It might be a boundary she has to set to feel secure in her relationship with you.”

“She should have thought about that before she skipped off to Europe with John,” Bo said angrily.

“Honey, that wasn’t Hope, that was Gina,” Marlena reminded him.  “As far as Hope is concerned, she probably feels nothing for John.  She’ll still be in love with you.  She’ll be committed to you.  And when she finds out what we did, she’s going to be very hurt and she’s probably going to feel very betrayed.  You have to be prepared for that.  And you’re going to have to work out how to make it right with her.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Bo said petulantly.  “We didn’t do anything wrong.  How were we to know Stefano put a damned computer chip in their heads?  We couldn’t have known that.”

“No, we couldn’t,” she agreed.  “But this is love Bo, not logic. These are feelings and emotions, and we can’t control Hope and John’s feelings any more than we can control our own.  I’m just trying to prepare you for what might happen.  It might be a long time before the four of us can be friends again.  If we ever can.”

“That’s bullshit!” Bo pulled his hand away from hers and pushed himself up before stomping across the deck angrily.  

“Look at you and John,” Marlena reminded him as she watched him, his body tense with the anger and frustration he felt.  “How long is it going to take to repair your relationship?”  Bo glared at her silently and she sighed.  “See?  It’s just not that simple.”

Bo compressed his lips, trying to find a way to refute her argument but failing miserably.

“I thought at least if I couldn’t be…  at least I would still see your beautiful face.  I thought at least I could still have your friendship.”  He looked devastated.  “I take back what I said about not regretting it.”

“Oh, honey,” she pusher herself off from the railings and stood up, dusting down her crumpled sundress.  Moving across the deck, she stood in front of him, looking up into his impossibly warm brown eyes.  “I don’t know what’s going to happen for sure.  But we’ll still see each other, even if it’s just in passing.  We share family.  And now that we’re not… seeing each other anymore, Caroline might even start talking to me again,” she attempted a small smile, “so I am sure we’ll see each other at the pub.”

“Mom adores you; you know that.”  He lifted his hands to frame her gorgeous face with his large palms.  “She was really worried about you when you went missing.”  His eyes devoured her face, trying to memorize every last curve and plane.  Every line, the way her hair swept down across her forehead and behind her delicate ears.  The soft blush that stained her cheeks.  The way her eyes seemed to melt from green into brown and then back again.  Her sweet, pink, very kissable lips.  “God, I’m going to miss you,” he whispered.

“I’m going to miss you,” she whispered back, putting her hands on his chest, feeling the pounding of his heart through his thin cotton shirt.  “Thank you.  For being a friend.  For having my back.  For loving me.  For holding me together when I couldn’t do it myself.  I couldn’t have made it through this last few months without you.”

“Ditto.”  A smile curled his lips up at the corners.  “You’re really something, you know that?”

“Right back at ya, Brady.” She lifted one hand and brushed the hair away from his temple.  “Do you think… would a goodbye kiss be okay?”

“Yeah, I think it would be just fine,” Bo confirmed with his signature cheeky grin.

Tilting his head, his lips found hers as one of his hands slid down over her shoulder and found the small of her back.  He pulled her to him as he invested everything he had in that one last kiss.  The feel of her mouth on his, her tongue, her hand in his hair… her warmth, her fragrance… and knowing that this was the last time that he would ever have her like this, was almost enough to break him.

But instead, he broke the kiss and breathlessly stepped back from her.

“I love you,” he said.  “I want you to be happy.  Please, go and be deliriously happy.  No-one deserves it more.”

“You deserve it more,” she told him, her eyes filling with tears.  “I want the same for you.  I want you to go and find Hope and just be happy.”

He nodded and took a deep breath.  “You should go now.”  

Without waiting for her agreement, he took her hand.  Walking her to the edge of the boat, he jumped down to the pier and then helped her step down.  A lone tear spilled down her cheek.  His instinct was to reach out and wipe it away, but that wasn’t his place now.

They said nothing else.  There was nothing left to say.  Marlena inclined her head and then, turning around, she started to make her way to the stairs.

Halfway there, she turned back to find Bo watching her.  She pressed her fingers to her lips to try and stem the tears and then, on instinct, she reached her hand out and waved at him.  He smiled sadly and waved his fingers back.  And then she turned, climbed the stairs and was gone.

To be continued…

Part Trente Huit

I bet you think I either moved on or hate you
‘Cause each time you reach out there’s no reply
I bet it never ever occurred to you that I can’t say “Hello” to you
And risk another goodbye

And I just wanna tell you
It takes everything in me not to call you
And I wish I could run to you
And I hope you know that every time I don’t
I almost do
I almost do

Oh, we made quite a mess, babe
It’s probably better off this way
And I confess, babe
In my dreams you’re touching my face
And asking me if I wanna try again with you
And I almost do

I Almost Do  – Taylor Swift

“You did the right thing,” Laura said softly as Marlena wiped her eyes.

“I didn’t exactly have a choice in the end, did I?” Marlena asked.

“He knew you were there to break it off.  You made his choice easier for him.  And he made it easier for you to walk away,” Laura was gentle.  She knew Marlena was upset but this was honestly the best way it could have gone down for the two of them.  A mutual recognition that there was no future for them and breaking it off without any acrimony was better than Laura could have hoped for. “This is for the best, you know it is.”

“I know it is, yes.”  Marlena struggled for breath.  “So why do I feel so jittery?”  She’d had three panic attacks today already and she knew if she didn’t get a grip of herself, she was about to sink into the abyss of another one.  She was getting better at managing them herself, but they still left her shaken and disturbed.

“Because you don’t have anything to distract you, any longer,” Laura reminded her.  “We’ve been unpacking a lot this last week.  But before, you were able to focus on Bo and the internal argument you were having between continuing things or cutting him loose.  Now he’s gone and the argument is gone, and you’ve opened up that space to all those other feelings that you’ve been keeping compartmentalized.”

Marlena bit her lip and focused on the books that lined the shelves behind Laura’s desk.  She had known intellectually that this was going to happen but stupidly she had thought she’d be able to control which feelings came first.  To pick which set of circumstances she wanted to deal with, and to leaf through the attendant emotions almost as though they were a pile of index cards in a drawer that she had pulled open.  But what was actually happening was all the feelings were assaulting her at once in a confusing tumultuous mess of emotions which seemed to have no beginning and no end, and she was having trouble defining which feelings and which physiological symptoms went together and which circumstances they were attached to.  

At any given moment she would find herself overwhelmed by anxiety or by sorrow, and she now knew exactly how her patients felt when they told her they felt they might be going crazy just because they were feeling too much of everything all at once.   

“Laura, I’m not sure I can do this,” she sucked in a deep, long breath, counting to five, trying to control the spiraling panic.

“You can do it, honey,” Laura reassured her leaning forward in her chair and looping her fingers around Marlena’s hand.  “I have every faith in you.  You can for sure, do this.”

“Do you?”  Marlena shook her head, her eyes wild.  “Because I don’t.  I don’t.”

Laura’s eyes darkened with sympathy.  “What are you frightened of honey?”  She squeezed Marlena’s hand.  “That’s it, keep breathing.”

“What am I not frightened of?” Marlena asked after a long exhaled breath.  “I’m bringing up two small children by myself and trying to keep my practice together and I’ve been making terrible decision after terrible decision for years.  I’m still looking over my shoulder watching for Stefano and Kristen, I am afraid I’m going to fall off the wagon again and do something dangerously stupid, and I’m terrified that John is going to break my heart all over again and this time I won’t survive it.”

“What makes you think you’ve made terrible decisions?” Laura asked, a little confused.  

“Shall we start with how I chose to try and make things work with Roman when I was really madly in love with John?  And how about how I believed that Stefano had really changed, and I moved him into my apartment to help with his rehabilitation.  And then I let Kristen emotionally blackmail me for months.  And then John…” she shook her head in defeat, “I could write a book about the mistakes I’ve made with John.”

“You did all those things because you care about others, and because you want to believe the best of people.  Maybe some of those things weren’t the best choice for you because you were putting other people’s needs before your own, but I can’t fault you for making them honey.  You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t try and see the best in people.  And you wouldn’t be the therapist you are if you didn’t believe people can change and be a better version of themselves.”

“But my choices have hurt people, Laura.  They’ve hurt Roman and my children.  They’ve hurt John and Bo.”  She stood and wrapped her arms around herself, clutching her upper arms as if she could ward off the memories, ward off the truth of how much turmoil her choices had created.

“You’re talking like you could have known the outcome of those decisions.  That you consciously made those decisions knowing they would hurt people.” Laura watched her as she turned to the window and placed her hands on the ledge, taking a deep breath as she did so.  “Honey, that’s not you.  You wanted to do the best by Roman and Isabella.  And you wanted to believe Stefano had changed.  You wanted to make amends for what had happened to him while you were…” she trailed off.  

It wasn’t something that they had tackled yet in session, Marlena’s dance with the devil.  Laura had been on the periphery of that drama.  John and Kristen and the rest of those involved in Marlena’s exorcism had managed to keep the truth of her ‘affliction’ quiet until almost the end of her ordeal.  By the time she had ‘died’ the rumors had been rife, but no-one that hadn’t seen it with their own eyes had wanted to believe such an outrageous tale.  

It was only when John had carried Marlena’s lifeless body into St Luke’s and asked the Lord to show them the miracle that he had bestowed on them, that she had begun to believe the truth of the rumors that had percolated through the hospital and beyond.   

But even after that, she had found it hard to wrap her mind around the actuality that her best friend had been taken over by a demon and that she hadn’t even known.  And then there had been Marlena’s guilt trip over Stefano’s injuries, sliding into the drama of John’s arrest and trial at Aremid.  That was followed immediately by Stefano’s regaining of his memory, his machinations to make sure John was convicted of Tony’s murder, and his eventual kidnap of Marlena.  And underlying all that, Marlena’s realization of her true feelings for John.  

It had been all too easy for all of them to push the horrors of what had been visited on Salem, and on Marlena and her family in particular, to the back of their minds.  Laura was as guilty as anyone for not insisting on conversations that would have been crucial to both Marlena and John’s healing.  She would have to come to terms with the guilt she bore in that, and she would have to find a way to finally admit to herself the truth of what had happened to her best friend.  

She knew that they would have to tackle it together, sooner or later, but today wasn’t that day.  

“You’re human, Marlena.  You make decisions and sometimes they work out well and sometimes they don’t work out the way you expect them or want them to.  It doesn’t mean you made a mistake or a bad decision.”  She leaned back in her chair and watched Marlena run her fingers through her hair and then turn back to look at her, clearly trying to decide if she should argue that point.  Laura chose quickly to take the possibility out of her hands.  “Even if you did make a mistake, you made it with the best of intentions.  You recovered from it, you made amends where you needed to make them and then you moved forward.  I don’t see anything to feel bad, guilty or be worried about in any of the decisions you’ve made.  Other than maybe you put other people’s needs ahead of your own in your decision-making process, and maybe that’s something you need to do a little bit less of.”

Marlena bit into her lower lip but she remained silent.

“Honey, you mentioned the mistakes you feel you’ve made with John.  Is that what’s really bothering you right now?” Laura didn’t really have to ask the question.  Bo’s departure made room for John’s return, but she knew that Marlena was frightened of the strength of her feelings for John and of the way she responded to him physically.  She wasn’t ready to let him back into her life, not while there were still so many unresolved hurts lodged in the past they shared together.  But she also couldn’t ignore him.  They shared children and he had made it clear he wanted her back and he was not going anywhere.  

“He’s going to take my ending it with Bo as a signal that I want him back,” Marlena confirmed as she came back to the sofa and sat down again.  “And I don’t know that I’m strong enough to withstand the force of his attentions.  But I’m not ready to take him back Laura.  There’s too much to sort through.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Laura smiled.  “But I think you don’t have enough faith in yourself.  Or in John’s consideration and care for your feelings and your wellbeing.  He was the one to put the brakes on when you were at his loft last week, wasn’t he?”

“Yes but look at what I did.  Even if I can trust John, can I really trust myself?”  Marlena sounded irritated and Laura wasn’t sure exactly who she was irritated with.  Not that it really mattered.

“Isn’t that the crux of the matter?” Laura asked.  “You don’t trust yourself.  You don’t trust yourself to make good decisions, to make strong boundaries and stick to them.  And if you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?”

Marlena sighed.  She’d said as much to Bo on the boat the other day.   “Let’s face it,” she said, “my track record isn’t great, Laura.”

“Your track record is just fine.” Laura demurred.  “And you can absolutely do this.  I have complete faith in you.  You just need to prove it to yourself, that’s all.”

“Laura, five days ago, I tried to drunkenly seduce John while I was still in a relationship with Bo.  How can you have faith in me?  I don’t even have faith in my ability to be in the same room with John without chaos ensuing.  Let alone spend time without falling back into bed with him.  And into that dysfunction where we subsist on, and think we’re communicating through, sex; without addressing any of the very real issues that exist between us.”

“So, you need to set boundaries and communicate them to John.  You need to tell him what you want and expect from him.  Do you know what that is?” 

“I…” Marlena felt her heart beat a little faster.  She knew what her heart wanted, and what her body wanted, but it was exactly what her head didn’t want.  It was what made her so scared about being around him.  That conflict that played itself out time and time again as her head shut down and let her body and her heart lead the way.  

“I want to be friends with him,” she said eventually.  “I want to be able to spend time with him and the children.  I want things to be how they were before my feelings got in the way.  I want to feel like I can talk to him about the things that bother me, the things that happened after I came back, the things that hurt me when Kristen started to manipulate us.  And the things that hurt him.”  

She recalled his words in the loft when he had pulled out her sweats and handed them to her.  When he had told her how he still had nightmares about when she was possessed.  He had as much hurt and anguish to unpack as she did.  From losing his family in the wake of Roman’s return to the terrors of Maison Blanche and the aftermath of her demonic possession.  And most recently, Roman’s return and his fear that after everything they had been through, she would choose Roman again.

“Well then, that’s your homework before our next session,” Laura looked at her watch.  “We’re almost done today.  I want you, before you come back on Friday, to call John and tell him what happened with Bo.  He deserves to know, and he deserves to hear it from you.  And that way he won’t be free to make any assumptions about what it means for the two of you.  You can be very clear with him about what your boundaries are.  That you’re not ready to resume your love relationship but that you want a friendship with him.  And let him know that you trust him to respect your boundaries and that you will, in turn, respect any boundaries that he wants to put forth.”

“Oh Laura, I don’t know that I can…” Marlena suddenly looked panicked.  “I don’t think I’m ready to talk to him yet.”

“Honey, he’s going to find out about Bo soon enough, if he doesn’t already know, and then he’s going to seek you out.” Laura told her firmly.  “Or he’s going to make assumptions.  You owe it to yourself and to him to make sure he knows where you stand and what you need from him.  If you want to rebuild that trust, both with him and with yourself, you need to set those expectations as soon as possible.  You need to prepare yourself for that and it’s better that you do it on your terms so that you can feel like you’re in control of the situation.”

“Oh Laura,” Marlena stared at Laura helplessly.

“Don’t ‘Oh Laura’ me,” she stopped short of rolling her eyes.  “You can do this.  You know you need to do this.  Stop pretending you’re helpless and incapable.  The Marlena Evans I know is one of the most capable women on the planet.  You just need to get your mojo back and start believing in yourself.”

“You’re a pain in the neck, you know that?” Marlena was accusatory and snappy with her retort.

“That’s why you pay me the good money!” Laura laughed.  “You know I’m right.”

“I know you’re irritating,” Marlena continued to feel aggrieved.  She, of course, knew that Laura was right, but that made it all the more annoying to be told what to do.  To be told to do the one thing she didn’t feel ready to do right now.

“Yes, I am my dear friend.”  Laura stood and extended her hand out to Marlena.  “But you know it’s all for your own good.  I’ll see you on Friday?”  She waited while Marlena stood and then nodded.  “You know if you need to talk at any time, you just call me.”

“I know.”  Marlena pulled Laura into a hug.  “Sorry honey.  I’ll do my homework, I promise.”

“I love you,” Laura air kissed the side of Marlena’s face and then walked to the door and opened it.  “Good luck, sweetie.”

Marlena nodded and gave Laura’s hand a quick squeeze as she passed through the door.

In the corridor outside Laura’s office, she stopped to open her compact and check her make-up.  She didn’t want to walk the halls of the hospital with mascara smeared half over her face, so she’d made a habit of checking to make sure she was presentable before she left Laura’s office.  This time she’d forgotten until she made it outside.

She drew a knuckle under each eye but then, in the reflection in her mirror, she saw the one thing she wanted very much not to see.

“Doc!” John came striding towards her and she snapped the compact closed, her heartbeat quickening. “Hey Doc, how did your session with Laura go?”

“I’m sorry?” she turned to face him.  She hadn’t told him she’d had a session booked with Laura.  In fact, she hadn’t seen or spoken to him since he’d dropped the children off last Friday.

“Your session,” John slowed down as he neared her, suddenly aware of the tension between them.  “Just checking it went okay.”

“How did you know I had a session?” she asked angrily.  “That’s my private business.”

“Doc!” John held up his hands.  “You don’t need to bite my head off, honey.  I’ve been worried about you after last week, that’s all.  I just want to make sure you’re safe and you’re doing okay.”

“What, so you’re following me and checking up on my private appointments, is that right?” she demanded.  She suddenly felt claustrophobic and under attack.  She wasn’t ready to see him, much less speak to him.  She needed time alone to gather her thoughts after talking to Laura, and being accosted by him in the hallway was not something she could cope with right now.

“No,” John wasn’t about to tell her that while he’d not exactly been following her everywhere, he had still been keeping tabs on her.  “Marlena, I just happened to be here for a meeting.  I dropped by your office to say hi, but Hilary said you were with Laura.  I assumed it was a session.  I’m sorry if I overstepped my bounds.”

“Oh,” she felt left footed by his explanation.  And then suspicious.  What business did he have in the hospital?  “Who were you meeting?” 

“Does it really matter?” he shrugged.  “Are you okay?”

“John-“ She really didn’t know whether to believe him or not.  But if she stayed here and argued with him, she was going to have to tell him about Bo and this wasn’t the right time, and she wasn’t in the right state of mind.  “Never mind.  I’m fine.”  She made a show of looking at her watch.  “Look, I really have to go, I have a patient due soon and I have to go over their file before they arrive.”

“Doc, Hilary said you didn’t have any more patients scheduled this afternoon,” John gently called her on her fib.  “Listen, why don’t we go somewhere and have some coffee and- “

“You really are checking up on me, aren’t you?” she said hotly.  “I don’t appreciate it, John.  I don’t need you hovering around, keeping tabs on me.”

“Doc, honey, I just want to make sure you’re safe.”  He sighed.   “I know you’re emotionally kind of fragile at the moment and I want to be sure you don’t go and do anything stupid again.”

“So, what, you’re going to tail me and make sure I don’t go to another bar?” Marlena asked snidely.

“I don’t know, do I need to?” John shot back and then immediately regretted it when he saw the fury that chased the hurt from her face.   “Marlena, I didn’t mean-“

“Of course you meant it,” she batted away the hand he reached out to still her.  “Nice to know you think I’m that stupid.”

“Oh baby, of course I don’t think you’re stupid.”  His hand waved uselessly in the air.  He knew she wouldn’t let him touch her, but it was as natural as breathing for him to reach for her.  “I’m worried about you.  I’m protective of you, you know that.  That hasn’t changed.  That will never change.”

Marlena stared at him for a moment, her heart pounding and her head swimming with both the nearness of him and the fear that she felt.  She shook her head, breathlessly.  “I can’t do this right now.”

“Then when?” he asked with a hint of the desperation he felt.  “Marlena, we need to talk.”

“Not now,” she whispered, panic and tears nibbling at the edges of her composure.

“Have you seen Bo?” John knew he shouldn’t push her, but he couldn’t help himself.  He had to know.

Marlena blinked.  “Why would you ask me that?” her voice cracked.  “Really John, have you been following me?”

“No, Doc, I haven’t.”  He wasn’t about to tell her that he’d stopped in at the pub to talk with Caroline yesterday and Kim had regaled him with the news that the ISA had found Hope.  In the wake of the conversation he had shared with Kim and Caroline, he’d decided to go back down to the docs and find Bo with the intention of talking to him again.   To try and convince him that now Hope was back on the canvas, he had a decision to make.  He had hoped to impress upon Bo that his place was at Hope’s side.  That Hope would be confused and scared, and she would need him to be her strength.

But when he had neared the section of the docs where the Fancy Face II was moored, he had seen Marlena and Bo sitting side by side on the deck of the boat.  Lingering at a distance, he had watched them as they had talked and then she had turned to face Bo, eventually taking his hand in hers.  He had watched as Bo got up and moved across the boat.  John hadn’t been able to decode what was going on, Bo looked irritable, and Marlena had looked concerned as she had followed him across the deck of the boat, smoothing down her crumpled blue sundress as she had done so.

John’s heart had leapt at the sight of her.  The sun had shone through her blonde locks, framing her face in a halo of gold.  Her sundress clung to her curves in all the right places.  And she had looked up at Bo and he had framed her beautiful face with his hands.  And next thing John knew, he was watching them kiss.

He hadn’t stuck around to watch any more.  He’d been distraught at the sight of his girl kissing another man.  It wasn’t the first time, and he understood in theory that she was with Bo, and that meant that he was going to kiss her and touch her and…

Seeing it was a completely different situation.  Seeing her kiss Bo after she had been so seductive with him hurt.  Seeing her lay her hands on Bo’s chest and slide her delicate pink tongue between Bo’s lips after she had kissed him, taken her bra off and begged him to fuck her, was like a kick in the gut.

He had practically run from the dock and had eventually found himself banging on Abraham’s door, looking for the advice of a good and level-headed friend.  Abe and Lexie had taken him into their house and talked him down.  Reminding him that Marlena had loved him for more than a decade and that he had to just be patient.  Be the man she fell in love with, Abraham had reminded him.  She’ll come around soon enough.

“I just wondered if you’d talked to Bo, is all.  I know…  Kim told me that the ISA found Hope,” he reached out and touched his fingertips to her face.  “Doc, I just want to help you.”

“Well, you’re not,” tears pooled in her hazel eyes and threatened to spill down her cheeks.  “Please John.  I can’t talk to you right now.”  She pushed his hand away.  “I have to go.”

With that, she turned on her heel and practically ran down the hallway towards her office.

John sighed as he watched her go.  Well, that went well, Black.  Well done!

Marlena reached her office and cursed as she fumbled her keys trying to unlock it with shaking hands.  Hilary had clearly decided to take an early afternoon as per her earlier suggestion and Marlena found herself incredibly grateful that she didn’t have to face or deal with anyone else right now.

Finally managing to unlock the door, she pushed it open, stepped inside and slammed it shut behind her.  Leaning back against it, she kicked off her shoes, leaned her head back and exhaled unsteadily, allowing the tears to trickle from the corner of her eyes.

Laura’s assessment that she didn’t trust herself was spot on.  She didn’t trust herself, especially around John, and his unexpected appearance just underlined that.  She was torn between wanting to give herself to him, body and soul again and running at top speed in the other direction.  And she wasn’t even sure why anymore.  He had been so sweet and caring and cognizant of her needs the other day.  The way he was right now, was the John she knew and loved.  Not the stranger that she had thrown out of the Penthouse earlier in the year.  He was not the cold, careless charlatan she’d turned him into in her head.

But could she really trust her own assessment of him?  Or was she seeing what she so desperately wanted to see?  Might he change again once he was assured of her love and compliance?  And would she survive it if he did?

She took a deep breath, willing her heart to slow down as she reminded herself that she had survived this go-round, as she had survived losing him before.  As she had survived Stefano and Kellam.  And losing Roman and Don.  As she had survived the devastating deaths of her sister and her beloved son, D.J.

She would always survive. That’s who she was.  She had her children, her family and her friends.  She had herself.  Even if she wasn’t always the best her she knew she could be; she could rely on herself.   Well, as long as she stopped reacting to, and running from, everything.

That was the biggest part of her problem, she knew.  Somewhere along the way, she had let circumstances overtake her.  Her problem wasn’t so much the decisions she was making, rather the decisions she was passively making by abdicating making active decisions.  Or lying to herself about the decisions she had made.

When Roman had returned, she and John had never spoken about their choice, they had made it without really making it at all, accepting it as the only possible option when in reality there had been a myriad of choices spread in front of them.  And in all honestly, she had known when she went to the plane that night what would happen.  On some level, she had wanted it to happen.  She had been tired of denying herself the one thing she really wanted.  The one person who loved her, respected her and made her life make sense.

And now, like she’d told Laura, she’d fallen into the thing with Bo.  Running on instinct.  Trying to subdue the pain and confusion she felt.  Just like she’d fallen into John’s arms after the secret room fiasco and had neglected the very real need to sit with him and work through all the pain contained in their shared past.  The injuries and damages inflicted on them, by Stefano and Kristen and even Roman and Isabella.  And by each other.  Because there was no denying, they had both been responsible for their share of hurt and anguish and it was time they reckoned with that.  Regardless of whether they faced their future together, or not, they owed each other the hard task of working through their mutual hurts.

Wiping her face and exhaling a deep breath, she placed her palms against the door and opened her eyes.

On her desk, sat an exquisite bunch of flowers.  Baby-pink roses and blowsy peonies interspersed with delicate white lilac blooms and white lisianthus.  Not an ostentatious bouquet, but big enough.

It was no surprise.  She must have registered the scent when she had entered the room.  It was sweet and surprisingly calming and reassuring.

Crossing the room, she pulled the card out from between two peonies and slipped it out of the envelope.

Can’t stop thinking about you.  Worrying if you are okay.  Don’t want to overstep my bounds, but I am here if you need me.  If you need to talk.  If you need anything at all.  

I love you, Doc.  But I will always be your friend.  Whatever happens, you can count on that.  And on me.

Aways, John.  

Marlena lowered herself into her chair and fingered the silky petals of a peony as she looked at the card in her hand.

Laura was right. It was time to trust herself.

It was time to start healing.

She picked up the phone and dialed.

“John?  Hi.  It’s Marlena.  Can we talk?”

Part Trente Neuf

I, I loved you in spite of

Deep fears that the world would divide us

So, baby, can we dance?

Oh, through an avalanche? And

Say, say that we got it

I’m a mess, but I’m the mess that you wanted

Oh, ’cause it’s gravity

Oh, keeping you with me, I–

Could’ve spent forever with your hands in my pockets

Picture of your face in an invisible locket

You said there was nothing in the world that could stop it

I had a bad feeling

Dancing With Our Hands Tied  – Taylor Swift

John watched her as she walked into the Penthouse Grille.   He knew his eyes weren’t the only ones on her.  She wore a simple white one-shouldered sheath dress of a modest length, finishing just above her knees.  Her hair was piled on her head in a messy French twist with tendrils framing the sides of her gorgeous face.  She wore simple pearl drop earrings, and her make-up was understated but immaculate.  All in all, she looked like she’d gone to very little effort, but John knew her better than that.  Her beauty was effortless, that was for sure, but he was pretty sure a lot of thought had gone into her statement of simplicity.  She wanted to look good for him, but she didn’t want to look overtly sexy.  She was sending him a message, for sure.  Look, but don’t touch.  Not yet.

“Hey Doc,” he stood as she reached the table and leaned forward, kissing her on the cheek.  “You look incredible.  As always.”

“Thank you,” she smiled, the hint of a blush rising in her cheeks.  “Thank you for meeting me.”

“Any time,” he reminded her as he pulled the chair out for her.  “I’ll drop everything for you, you know that.”

Once they were seated, a waiter came to take their drinks order, but Marlena simply ordered sparkling water.  John, realizing why she hadn’t ordered wine as she usually would, followed her lead.

“John, I need to apologize,” she said, once the waiter had departed.  “For yesterday at the hospital, I mean.”

“Don’t worry about it, Doc,” John shrugged.

“No, I wasn’t fair to you, accusing you of following me.”  She played with the stem of the empty wine glass that had not yet been removed.  “I was just… I wasn’t prepared to see you right at that moment.  I… my therapy sessions with Laura are tough.  I had some things to work through and seeing you right then… it threw me for a loop.  But I behaved badly, so I apologize.”

“Honestly, you don’t need to explain, honey.  But apology accepted.”  He knew he shouldn’t use such terms of endearment with her, but he couldn’t help it.  They slipped from his lips before they’d even formed in his head.  She would always be his honey, his sweetheart.  His pretty lady.

They were interrupted by the waiter bringing their water and then another to take their order.  Marlena watched the way that John dealt with the waiter, his blue eyes sparking, a confident smile on his beautiful face and she felt her heart skip a beat.   She loved him but she was so scared about what that meant.

“What?”  He asked as he turned back to her, bemused by the look on her face.

“Nothing,” she gave him a small, embarrassed smile.

He nodded, clearly unconvinced.  He took a mouthful of his water and regarded her for a moment.  “Are you okay, Doc?” he asked.  “I mean, really?”

She nodded tentatively.  She knew what he was asking.  “I’m having trouble sleeping,” she admitted.  “Bad dreams.  And I am struggling with anxiety.  But I’m okay.  I will be okay.”

He reached out but thought better of taking her hand in his at the last minute and instead stroked his fingers across the back of her hand.  She shivered at the intensity of the feelings his mere touch aroused in her.

“Did you sort things out with Bo?” he asked gently.  He hadn’t meant to broach that subject so early in the evening, but he had to know.  He had to know.  But he saw her flinch and immediately regretted his own selfishness.

“Listen.  Never mind.  None of my business.” He waved his hand and awkwardly lifted his glass to his lips.

“No, that’s really why I wanted to talk to you,” she picked up her glass and curled her shaking fingers around it.  “One of the reasons anyway.”

John raised one eyebrow and waited quietly, his heart pounding.  He could usually read Marlena so well but since his return to Salem she had at times, been a closed book to him.  This was one of those times.  Maybe it was because he wanted so much for her to say that it was over with Bo, and he was so terrified that she was going to say she was choosing to stay with him.

“I thought you should hear it from me,” she started, and his heart sank.  She was going to let him down gently.  She was going to tell him she’d decided to stay with Bo.

“Bo and I…” she looked at her fingers as they toyed with the condensed moisture that was collecting on the outside of her water glass.  In the background, cutlery clinked, and soft background piano music swelled and eased, carrying John’s nervous emotions with it.  “John, there is no Bo and me.  Not anymore.  We decided to end things.  He’s going to London to be with Hope while she recovers from her chip being removed.”

“Oh,” he didn’t quite know what to say.  She made it sound like Bo’s decision.  After the debacle with Roman, he wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that.

“It was a mutual decision,” she calmed his fears.  “I had already decided I couldn’t be with him anymore when he told me he was going to London.”

“You had?” John asked hopefully.

“Yes,” she nodded.  “But I want to be clear, that doesn’t mean I want to get back together with you.  At least, not right now.”

John couldn’t help the internal somersaults that took place in his insides.  She’d ended it with Bo.  And she wasn’t ruling out a relationship with him.  But keeping his face neutral, he nodded.  “You okay?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” she nodded.  “It was the right thing.”  She studied his face, marveling at his ability to school his expression into a mask that revealed little about what he was feeling.  But she knew him well and she knew that the dark indigo of his eyes reflected his response.  His relief and his hope.

“Does this mean…?” he ran his teeth across his lower lip.  “Doc, is there some hope for us?  Eventually, I mean.”

She waited, reminding herself of the conversation with Laura.  “I… I can’t promise you anything right now.” She told him.  “But I can tell you that I knew in part that Bo and I had no future because of my… my feelings for you.”

“I’ll take that,” he reached out and ran his fingers over the back of her hand again.  “Honey, I’ll take anything I can get with you.”  He studied her with his intense cobalt eyes.  “I believe I told you once that I would take you on any terms you offered.  That still stands.”

Marlena pulled her hands away from him and swallowed over the lump in her throat.  “We have a lot of things we need to talk about before I can start to think about whether there’s a future for us.”

“I know you’re scared, Doc.”  His brow furrowed and his eyebrows beetled together.  “I know I hurt you.  Not just leaving with Hope.  But the… when I was with Kristen.  I know I hurt you.  I didn’t mean to, it was the last thing I ever wanted, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.”  He picked up his knife and tapped the base of it on the table, not quite able to meet her eyes for a moment.  “We never really talked about it when we got back together.”

“There’s a lot we didn’t talk about,” she said so quietly that he almost didn’t hear her over the swell of sound in the restaurant.  He looked up at her, his expression quizzical.  “I wasn’t the only one that was hurt.  You lost your family, your job, and your identity.  And that’s partly my fault for convincing you that were Roman in the first place.”

“I got over that years ago, Doc,” he waved his hand dismissively, but she couldn’t help but notice the way his knuckles had tightened around the handle of the knife.

“Did you?” she asked softly.  “Because I don’t think I ever got over any of it.  Roman coming back.  Losing you.”  Her lower lip trembled.  “I loved you so much.  And then I just had to pretend I didn’t.  It was like trying to stuff a jack-in-the-box back into its box.  My love for you kept threatening to spill over.  I was so conflicted.  I loved Isabella but I was so jealous that she got to love you in a way that I wasn’t allowed to.”

John felt a lump in his throat as he saw his own pain reflected in her eyes.  They had never talked about that time, even after their reunion because it was just too painful.  It felt dangerous to uncover all the hurts that they had suffered.  

“You’re not the only one that was jealous.”  His voice broke and he looked away, trying to control emotions that he had not allowed himself to feel for years.  Emotions and memories that had been stirred up by the sight of her in Bo’s arms.  “He had my children; he had my name and my job.  And he had you.  And the worst of it was, he didn’t even appreciate you.  Any of you.  I knew you were miserable.  I couldn’t bear the sadness in your eyes, but I was dealing with my own and I didn’t know how to change any of it.”  He saw the glitter of teardrops clinging to her lashes and shook his head.  “Baby, I don’t blame you.  Not for thinking I was Roman.  And not for choosing to be with him.”

“I blame me,” she swiped at her tears and then looked away in discomfort as the wait staff brought their meals.  John waited until all the food was on the table and then reached out and took her hand.  This time when she tried to pull it away, he wouldn’t let her.

“Don’t.”  He said simply.  “Don’t do this to yourself.  You loved him.  You thought he died tragically, you wanted him back and all the evidence pointed in my direction.  It was supposed to.  That was the whole point.  Of course you thought I was Roman.  Stefano set us up so that you would think I was Roman, and you would fall in love with me.”

“But I fell in love with you long before I thought you were Roman,” she reminded him.  “If you remember rightly, we thought you were Stefano and I was horrified, not because you might be Stefano, but because my feelings for you were so intense and I couldn’t reconcile loving you when you might be him.”

“Which made it all the easier for you to accept that I was Roman,” John said gently.  “You felt guilty for moving on, I know that.  The explanation that I was Roman meant that you didn’t have to feel guilty about loving someone else.  Someone who was essentially a stranger to everyone, even himself.”

“So, because I felt guilty, your whole life got turned upside down?” Marlena’s heart ached for him and for herself.

“No,” John shook his head.  He wasn’t about to let her do that to herself.  “You gave me a life, Doc.  You gave me a place where I belonged.  Thinking I was Roman, that was a gift.  You gave me children and a family and when I lost you, they were the reasons I survived that grief.  Losing you was the worst thing that ever happened to me.  If I hadn’t thought I was Roman, if I hadn’t had the Brady’s and the kids?  I don’t think I would have made it.”

“I…” Marlena wasn’t sure she’d ever thought about it like that.

“That was part of the reason I was so… why I held back when you returned.”  He said, pushing at the food on his plate with his fork.  “Losing you the first time almost killed me.  I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you again.  And then I kind of did, after our affair.  So, I threw myself into the thing with Kristen, convincing myself that I couldn’t have you because I couldn’t bear losing you yet again.”

Marlena was silent and he looked across at her to see tears trickling down her cheeks.

“Oh, don’t cry baby!” He shook his head and drew a thumb across her cheek, wiping away the tears.  “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“It’s all still so raw,” her voice was choked.  “We’ve spent so long trying to pretend, trying to protect each other.  All that pain is still there.  It never went away.”

“At times, I’ve fooled myself that it has,” John said sadly.  “But this… all this has stirred up so many memories and feelings…”  He looked at her as she played with her own food.  He knew he’d lost his appetite and wondered if she had too.

He suddenly wondered if it had been such a good idea to meet in such a public place.  When she had asked him if they could speak, he had said he would come back to her office or to the penthouse.  She had said she needed a little time to pull herself together and could they meet somewhere that was a bit more neutral ground.  He had suggested dinner at the Penthouse Grill and while she had sounded reticent, she had agreed.  Now he pondered the wisdom of that choice.  He’d thought having people around would take the pressure off.   Instead, it just seemed to be adding to the intensity of the moment between them.

“Doc, do you want to go somewhere else?” he asked.

She nodded.  “I’m not really hungry anymore.”  She looked up at him.  “Perhaps a walk in the park?”

He nodded and motioned to a passing waiter, asking for the check.

They were mostly silent until they got down to the Salem Park.  It was close to dusk and there were still joggers around and a few couples who’d had similar ideas.  

John took her hand as they followed the path down towards the river and she took comfort in it, lacing her fingers between his.  They walked in companionable silence for a few minutes, enjoying the quiet and the way the setting sun painted everything in shades of gold.

“Doc,” John started eventually.  “I made you promise a few weeks ago at my loft that you would come and talk to me about how you feel.  When you’re ready.”

“I’m… I’m not ready.  Not just yet.”  He felt her hand tense in his and he noted, out of the corner of his eye the way her other hand curled into a ball.

“Okay, okay,” he nodded.  “I just wanted to remind you.  I want you to know that I want to hear it all.  I know how much you’ve been through.”

“How much we’ve been through,” she corrected him.  “John, we have this amazing, complex history.  And as much as sometimes it hurts, as much as the future scares me, I am so grateful for the time we’ve had together.”

“Me too,” he smiled at her.  “And listen, I know you’re scared, and I understand why.  Like I said before I lost you more than once.  I know how it feels to wonder if you’ll get through it another time.  And I can’t promise you a lifetime.  No-one can promise that.  But I can promise you that as long as I am on this earth, I will love you with everything I am.”  He stopped and turned so that he was facing her, taking her other hand in his, slipping his fingers between her curled digits and her palm.   Her blonde locks, glowing a luminous gold in the setting sun blew gently around her beautiful face. “Marlena, you are everything to me.”

“John, I…” she sighed.

“I’m not trying to put any pressure on you.  But I need you to know how I feel.  I am not giving you up without a fight.  And I don’t care how long it takes.  I meant what I said.  You’re my very best friend.  You have been since that fateful day that I met you in Shenanigans.”

“The day that you saved me,” she smiled, despite herself.  “If only I knew then how many times you would save me.”

“Always will,” he held her mossy green gaze with his.  “Always Doc.  I’m yours, always.”

She shivered visibly and she blinked.     “I wish I could give you what you want but I need more time,” she whispered.  “I need to learn to trust you again.  I need to learn to trust myself, more importantly.  I’ve hurt too many people with my impulsive decisions.”

“I’m not asking for anything you’re not ready to give, honey.  You set the pace here.  You tell me what you need.” He lifted his hand and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.  “Just talk to me.”

“I want…” she caught his hand in hers.  She couldn’t let him touch her face.  It was too intimate.  She was having a hard enough time keeping the physical boundaries as it was.  “I need to work out who I am now, John.  I need space to do that.  But I want to… can we just be friends and see what happens from there?”

“We can be anything you want, Doc.  As long as I get to stay in your life.”  His eyes raked her face, devouring the sight of her.  She was so goddamn beautiful that it hurt.   “As long as there’s a chance that I can make all the hurt up to you.  I want to show you that you can trust me.  As long as it’s within my power, I won’t hurt you again.  I’m not going anywhere.”

“Okay,” she nodded.  “Friends.  Platonic.  No kissing.  No inappropriate touching.”  She knew she was telling herself as much as she was telling him.  Even here in the dimming of the daylight and in public, she had to fight her desire to wrap her arm around his neck and pull him to her.  To whisper her lips over his, to snake her tongue out and taste him.  She was sure he could see the desire in her eyes, in the blush on her cheeks but he wisely said nothing and instead nodded.

“Friends.”  He lifted their still interwoven hands.  “Friends that hold hands, maybe?”

“Maybe,” she nodded with a guilty smile.  

“Doc, when you’re ready to talk, if you want me to go to counselling with you, I will,” he offered.  “If you want me to see a therapist alone, I will.  You just tell me what you think we need to do.”

“Oh, John.”  She hadn’t expected that.  His only experience with therapy had been with her.  Not exactly ideal if she was honest, but she was the only one that he had ever trusted enough to reveal the inner recesses of his tortured psyche.  

When she and Roman had been going through one of their very worst patches, before she had been kidnapped by Stella and thrown in that horrific hellhole, she had begged Roman to see a therapist with her.  John was right, she had been miserable.  The trauma both she and Roman had suffered by being kept from their family was taking its toll.  Roman was controlling, disrespectful of her and Carrie, and deeply angry, bitter and resentful.  And his expectations of her and all the children were unrealistic and unhealthy.  There had been no compromise, it had been Roman’s way, or the highway and she had felt them drifting further and further apart as the months went on.

But he had refused to co-operate.  Instead, he buried his head in work and refused to admit that any of what was wrong in their relationship was his fault.

It had been inevitable really, their marriage falling apart.  When she looked at the facts, what had happened to them and how none of them had really been prepared to admit to the damage that had been wrought on them, she wondered how they ever really thought it would work.  

So, it meant the world to her that John would not only consent to counselling, but that he would suggest it.  “I think that would be… I think it would really be helpful.  If you’re willing to do that.”

“I’m willing,” he wanted to touch her so badly it hurt.  He wanted to pull her to him and kiss her so that she’d be in no doubt as to how much he loved her and wanted to make this work.  He would do anything.  Try anything.  If it meant spilling his guts to a stranger, he would do that.  “I know I have a lot of shit going around in my head.  I don’t want to lay it all on you though.  Maybe it would be good for me.  Good for us.”

“I think it would,” she smiled and this time, it reached her eyes and they sparkled.  John’s heart skipped a beat.  “I think we owe it to Belle and Brady too.  A lot of the mistakes we made hurt our older children.  I’d like to avoid making the same mistakes with our little ones.”

“We should at least make different mistakes,” he grinned, his heart leaping again as she spoke of Carrie, Sami and Eric as ours.  “Okay, give me a couple of recommendations and I’ll set up an appointment.  No time like the present.”

Marlena nodded thoughtfully.  “John?”

“Mmmm?”

“Thank you,” she turned back to the path and started back down towards the river, pulling on his hand as she did so.  She didn’t say any more.  She didn’t need to.  Her thank you encompassed so much, and it didn’t need to be qualified.  And they both knew it.

“Any time, Doc.”   He grinned as he followed her.  

This felt like something.  Not quite a new beginning, but things felt a little lighter.  Like the first glow of light above the horizon as it heralded dawn.  It wasn’t everything, yet.  But it was definitely something.  

Some-damn-thing.  And he was more than ready for it.   

Part Quarante

So you were never a saint
And I’ve loved in shades of wrong
We learn to live with the pain
Mosaic broken hearts
But this love is brave and wild

And I never (never) saw you coming
And I’ll never (never) be the same

This is a state of grace
This is the worthwhile fight
Love is a ruthless game
Unless you play it good and right

State of Grace  – Taylor Swift

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” Marlena shepherded the children into the Brady pub and Belle flew into her father’s arms.

“Hey there Tink!” John lifted Belle effortlessly and spun her around, her golden hair flying as he did so. “How’s my girl? How was school?”

“I did nasties!” Belle told her father proudly.

“Oh, you did, did you?” John looked at Marlena in confusion.

“I believe she means she tried gymnastics,” Marlena explained. “It was sports day and they got to try lots of new things.” She smiled at the sight of her daughter comfortably clasped in John’s arms. Despite all the upheaval of the last few months, their smallest children seemed to be adjusting well to the changes in their lives, but then it had ever been thus. Their lives had not exactly been up until now, after all.

“Ahhh, nasties, huh?” John tapped her nose. “Did you like it? Do you want to try it again?”

Belle nodded her head enthusiastically. “I like it. Brady don’t.”

Brady wrinkled his nose to indicate his distaste for the ‘nasties’.

“Well, you can’t be a gymnastics superstar when you’re going to pitch for the Yankees, right kid?” He tousled Brady’s hair and Brady grinned, revealing the gap where his two front teeth had been until recently.

“Brady can be whatever Brady wants to be,” Marlena said, her eyebrows raised but the small smile that curled her mouth let John know that she was amused by the exchange.

“Can Mama stay and have tea with us?” Brady asked John, his tone pleading as he took Marlena’s hand in his.

“If Mama wants to, Mama would be more than welcome to stay and have tea,” John looked at Belle. “Would you like Mama to have tea with us?” Belle nodded and they turned their identical electric blue eyes on Marlena. “Whaddya say Mama? Can you spare some time for Daddy and the kids?” He stuck his bottom lip out and Belle giggled.

“No fair, this is an ambush,” Marlena laughed. “I’d really love to, but I have a couple of errands I need to run.”

“Please Mama?” Brady tugged at her hand, gazing up at her with his sweet puppy dog eyes.

John looked at Belle, poked her in the belly, and grinned and nodded at her. “Pweeeeease Mama,” they copied him, their eyes wide and wearing identical cheeky smiles.

“Oh,” Marlena smiled, her heart fluttering. “How can I say no to my favorite people in the whole world?” She leaned over and pressed a kiss to the top of Brady’s head. “Go and pick a table, sweet boy.”

She looked up to find John had put Belle down and was holding his hand out to her.

“Thanks, Doc,” he took her hand in his and her stomach flipped. It was like an electrical charge where his skin touched hers and it sent sizzling trails of want through her, nudging awake parts of her body which she’d rather were dormant right now.

“It… it’s for the ki… the children,” she stumbled over her words. “I don’t want to disappoint them.”

At that moment, Caroline emerged from the back of the pub, wiping her hands on the apron she wore wrapped around her hips. “John, I-“ she stopped as she saw Marlena and it was like a shutter came down over her face, her lips thinning, her eyes hardening.

“Hi Caroline,” Marlena greeted her in a quiet, tentative voice.

“Marlena.” Caroline nodded curtly but her tone was still and Marlena’s heart sank. Despite John’s urging, she had been avoiding the pub for the better part of a month now, but it looked as though nothing had changed in Caroline’s attitude towards her. She knew she should try and make amends, but she wasn’t even sure what she could say that Caroline would hear and take as an apology. For all the pain and discomfort their liaison had caused for Bo and for herself, as well as for everyone around them, she still didn’t regret it. Therapy with Laura had helped her recognize that she had needed it. Despite her seeming acceptance of John’s departure, in truth, she had been sinking and Bo had been a lifeline, a life preserver that she had gratefully clung to. Maybe it hadn’t been the healthiest way of dealing with her pain, but she couldn’t regret it because it had saved her.

“Marlena is joining us for dinner,” John said to Caroline, his blue eyes flashing with his displeasure at Caroline’s continued obstinance. He had challenged her on this endlessly, and sometimes it felt like she might be coming to an acceptance that she couldn’t continue to cut Marlena out of her life, and then her stubbornness overrode that recognition. He really didn’t understand what her continued problem was with Marlena now that she wasn’t with Bo. Caroline couldn’t really explain or justify it either other than explaining that it was ‘just too much and Marlena had gone ‘one step too far’.

John wasn’t sure how he was going to broker a peace between the two women, but he knew he sure as hell wasn’t going to do it while they spent all their time avoiding each other. “That’s not a problem, is it?”

“Of course it’s not,” Caroline painted a false smile on her face, all the while avoiding Marlena’s gaze. She patted John’s arm. “I’ll get Lisa to bring across some menus.”

“Ma, you were going say something?” John reminded her.

“It’s not important,” Caroline shook her head, her lips pursed. “It can wait.” She cast her eyes sideways at Marlena and then turned. Shawn, who had watched the whole interaction from the bar, shook his head sadly at Caroline as she passed.

“Honey, you just need to give her a bit more time,” John said gently as he saw Marlena trying to fight the tears which gathered at the corners of her eyes. “She’ll come around.”

“You’ve been saying that ever since Bo left,” Marlena replied miserably. “I think I just have to accept that she’s never going to forgive me.” She looked over to where the children were waiting by a table near the back wall. They looked concerned and a little confused and her heart went out to them. Their lives had already been hard enough. They shouldn’t have to bear witness to the awkwardness between the people that they loved most in this world. “I should go.”

“Johnny is right, so he is,” Shawn’s voice came from behind her, and she felt his warm hand clasp her shoulder. She turned to look at his kind face, his bright blue eyes so oddly reminiscent of John’s. “Don’t take it so hard, sweetheart. Caroline is a proud woman, so she is. She feels guilty for treatin’ ye so bad, but she doesn’t know how to admit she was wrong. Give her a little longer. She will relent. Ye just keep bein’ your beautiful self and she will come round.”

“Oh, Shawn,” Marlena was grateful for his intervention, but she was unconvinced about the wisdom of staying where she wasn’t sure she was wanted. “Thank you for saying that. But I really think I should go.”

“No,” Shawn shook his head. This was the happiest he’d seen John look in weeks. He had stayed silent during those awful weeks when Caroline had pushed Marlena away and he had mostly held his tongue since. But he wasn’t going to stay silent anymore. Not when his wife’s stubbornness was hurting them all. Especially this beautiful girl here. “No, you are more than welcome here darlin’. You’re part of our family. And we’ve missed you. I’ve missed you.” He pulled her into a hug, and she buried a soft sob in his shoulder, wrapping her arms around his solid middle.

“You go and sit down with Johnny here and those beautiful kiddies of yours and I’ll bring ye those menus.” He squeezed her shoulders and kissed the top of her head.

“Thanks, Pop,” John reached for Marlena’s hand again as Shawn released her and she smiled at the older man before she let John lead her over to the booth where the children waited.

“I’m hungry! I want fwies and a milkshake!” Belle announced loudly and John smiled gratefully as Marlena pulled her little spitfire of a daughter into her arms, burying her face in Belle’s golden hair.

They were in the middle of their meal, when the door opened, the bell above the door jangling wildly. Marlena looked up casually, her attention caught by the bell, but she froze as Bo Brady entered.

“Ma!” his voice boomed through the pub, and John’s head snapped up. Turning, he watched Hope Williams follow Bo toward the bar, and then he turned to look at Marlena. Her eyes were wide, her face pale. He felt a surge of jealousy that she would react to Bo’s appearance so viscerally. But then he reminded himself that she had told him, more than once, that their parting was a mutual decision and that she was not, and had never been, in love with Bo. Then he wondered if her reaction was more about Hope than Bo as she looked back at him, a muted question in her eyes.

“Bo, you’re home!” Caroline threw down the cloth in her hands and hurried over to her youngest son, throwing her arms around him and pressing her lips to his cheek as she stood on tiptoes. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming back!”

“I told you on the phone, Ma. We decided to stay a while at Shane’s and see a little of England.” He turned to Hope and slid his arm around her shoulder with a grin. “Hope and me, we had some catching up to do.”

“Oh, Hope honey, it’s so good to see you back!” Caroline beamed at Hope and leaned forward to envelop her in a hug. From where she sat in the booth by the wall, Marlena couldn’t help but contrast and compare Caroline’s colorful and loving greeting for Hope with the frigid one she had received earlier.

“Thanks, Caroline,” Hope smiled uncertainly, tucking a strand of glossy brown hair behind her ear. All traces of the platinum blonde stripes she had sported prior to her departure for Europe had been obliterated, along with the arrogant, smug aura that had surrounded her in those last weeks.

Seeing her now and comparing her to that ‘Hope’, Marlena wondered how she could have ever mistaken Gina for Hope. As she wondered how she could ever mistake Stefano’s mercenary John Black for the man that sat across from her.

It was a question she asked herself constantly and one she had raised several times recently in therapy with Laura. The John that she had spent increasing amounts of time with over the past few weeks was her John, the John that she had fallen in love with all those years ago. The kind, brave, thoughtful and passionate John. He was nothing like the cold, unfeeling man that had walked out on her, and flown to Europe with Hope Williams on a whim.

It made her question her own judgment, personally and professionally. But every time she brought it up, Laura reminded her of her long years of trauma, her vulnerability, and her abandonment complex. She also reminded her that no one could have known that John and Hope had both been inhabited by completely alternate personalities conjured up by a computer chip, because, how could they? The idea of both of them, at the same time, exhibiting behavior that was dictated by malevolent alter personalities seemed ludicrous.

So, while her judgment had been somewhat off, as Laura had confirmed, that wasn’t responsible for her not being able to identify the cause of the symptoms she was seeing in Hope and her husband. And also, Laura reminded her, she had not been seeing either of them professionally. This had been her personal life and because she was so close to, and affected by, the pain and trauma, she hadn’t been able to think beyond that pain. She had reacted emotionally and that was perfectly understandable and acceptable, and no one could expect any more from her.

Now though, seeing Bo and Hope here together, she felt all those reactive emotions raising their ugly heads. Her pain, her jealousy, and her fear. Hate was a strong word, and she had always felt that she was a better person than that, but she was struggling with it right at that moment. It must have been written all over her face because she felt John’s hand on hers and heard the quiet murmur of his voice.

“She’s not Gina,” he reminded her softly, but there was an edge to his voice that made her look at him. “All that is done and over.” He was trying very hard not to let his emotions show but she could feel it in the tightness of his fingers around hers and the way his ice blue eyes flashed with pain.

“It’s not over,” she said simply. Her heart hurt for him and for her family. “I don’t know how we’re all going to get past this.”

“Are you jealous of Hope?” John asked uncertainly. He wasn’t really sure what he was asking. Was she jealous of Hope because she had gone to Europe with him, or was she jealous of Hope because she’d come home with Bo?

“Jealous? No,” she gave a tight laugh, watching as Bo guffawed a little too loudly at a story Hope was telling. There was something about Bo’s manner that shouted forced joviality like he was trying a little too hard to convince everyone that he was happy. Like he was trying to convince himself. “But I have a lot of other feelings. And I am pretty sure she’s going to have some feelings about me too. If Bo has told her what happened while she was away.”

John just nodded. He couldn’t argue with that. He had the same feelings about Bo. Even though it was over between Bo and Marlena; just knowing that Bo had been in her bed was enough for insidious tendrils of jealousy to tangle him up at the most unexpected of moments. And he couldn’t even unwrap how he felt about Hope right now. He really didn’t want to think about that. Didn’t want to think about waking up to her gleeful green eyes, the way her tongue swiped her bottom lip as she raked her gaze across his naked torso. He closed his eyes, feeling nauseous.

He did know that he didn’t think Hope was going to cope well with knowing that Bo had bedded, and fallen in love with, Marlena. Her sister-in-law and one of her best friends.

It was a fucking emotional minefield laid in wait.

Across the room, Bo felt her eyes on him, and he lifted his head and looked in their direction. The smile fell away from his face as his gaze met Marlena’s. He looked from her to John and then back again. He had known that he was going to see her at some point. But he hadn’t expected it to be the moment he returned to town. Not in his parent’s pub and not with John. His gut clenched as he saw John’s hand caressing hers.

He had tried so hard to forget about her.

A month before, he’d flown to London and he had been taken to a hospital where Gina, in Hope’s body, had laughed scornfully at the sight of him. She’d fought with everything she had to stop them from taking the chip out of her neck. But with Doug’s permission granted, they had sedated her, anesthetized her, and removed the tiny but insidious device.

She had awoken as Hope, with all her own memories, in addition to the memories of the past few months. And she had been distraught and riddled with guilt.

When she had been released from the hospital, realizing she was in no way ready to go back to Salem and face her friends and family, Bo had taken her to stay at Shane’s. There they had slowly reconnected; dancing, at first, around the events of the past few months. But eventually, when they started talking about returning to Salem and their son, Bo realized that he needed to tell her about what had happened with Marlena.

To say she hadn’t taken it well had been an understatement.

As a result, Bo had played down the intensity of the relationship and convinced her that it had been foolish and short-lived, and had meant nothing to him. He had almost managed to convince himself of that fact for a hot minute.

Until now. Until he saw her sitting there, all golden fire and ice. And he was struck by the memory of the way her perfectly rounded breasts fit in his large hands, and the little whimpers and moans she made as he whispered his lips over her neck, and he was lost all over again.

“Bo?” Hope followed his gaze and froze as she saw John looking back at her, his blue gaze icily resentful. And across from him, Marlena.

Marlena. Beautiful, feminine, intelligent, perfect Marlena Evans.

Her friend. Her rival. Her enemy?

Bo said nothing but she felt the tension rolling off him as she touched his arm. His muscles were strained, ready for fight, or flight. She knew not which it was. He was a closed book to her where the past few months were concerned. He had told her the bare minimum, but she knew there was more. She knew Bo, she knew when he was trying to protect her. Trying to keep things from her. She had been sure he hadn’t told her the full truth about him and Marlena, which was hardly surprising given the way she had flipped out when he’d told her. She regretted that, and however much she had pushed him to tell her more after her enraged outburst, he had maintained that it was a short and meaningless fling, nothing more than a couple of rolls in the hay. But now, seeing the way he was looking at her, Hope knew that was a lie. It had been more than that, and Bo clearly felt something for his sister-in-law that made jealousy blossom inside her.

And then there was John.

Hope remembered everything she had done as Gina. She remembered Gina’s feelings, and her frustrations. She remembered what she had done to John. But it had been Gina, not her. She’d had no control over her own body, no control over what Gina had done to John’s.

And yet she flinched with guilt and shame as his eyes bore into her.

Bo pulled his arm from Hope’s grip and walked towards the small family sitting at the rear of the pub. He wasn’t really thinking about what he was doing, the implications, or the consequences. He was drawn to her, like a moth to a flame. He knew he was going to get burned, but he didn’t care.

He came to stop in front of the booth. Marlena had already withdrawn her hand from John’s, and she had slipped an arm around Brady’s shoulder.

“Marlena.” His throat felt uncomfortably tight, and his heart thrummed loudly in his ears. She looked incredible, her hair piled up in a ponytail, revealing the slender neck that sloped down into shoulders kissed with freckles. She looked up at him from under dark lashes, looking remarkably innocent and unsure of herself. He wanted to kiss that look of shock and surprise off her beautiful face. But that was not going to happen. Never again.

“Bo.” Marlena’s cheeks flared with unbidden heat. She wasn’t ready for this. She wasn’t prepared for any of it. But then, would she ever be? She had made this mess, she needed to deal with the consequences. “You’re back.”

Bo nodded, his eyes smolderingly dark and fixed on hers. There was an uncomfortable silence between them.

“You’re back with him then?” He demanded eventually as Hope came up behind him. It wasn’t appropriate, he knew. It wasn’t fair to her, and it wasn’t fair to John. He had been the one to end it, she owed him nothing. But Jesus, it hurt to see her with John. Knowing how much he had hurt her. The pain in Bo’s voice was evident to everyone within earshot.

“No,” Marlena shook her head, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Bo had no right to assume anything about her relationship with John, but she knew he was hurting so she allowed it. Her words weren’t meant as reassurance; after all, there was no hope to give him. It was simply the truth. “John and I are friends. And we’re Belle and Brady’s parents. So, we see each other, that’s all.”

That wasn’t all. But she didn’t owe him any more than that. She didn’t want to explain the intricacies of her relationship with John to Bo. Especially not with Hope standing there at his elbow, a mutinous look on her face.

“Hope,” she tried to smile but it ended up as just a twitch at the corners of her mouth. She knew logically that Hope wasn’t responsible for any of the things Gina had done, from pursuing John to leaving with him to fly to Europe. And she wasn’t responsible for the way Gina had sexually assaulted John by drugging him into incapacity and climbing into bed with him.

But still, looking at Hope’s face, she was haunted by those photos and by the knowledge that Gina would have kept John from his children and his family, had she been able. If that chip in John’s head hadn’t worked its way loose, where would they be now? And would Marlena and his children ever have seen him again?

“Marlena.” Hope’s face was immobile, and Marlena knew without a doubt that Bo had told her. She somehow managed to keep the antipathy from her face, but there was no warmth in her expression, and her grey-green eyes flashed with barely outrage and jealousy.

John said nothing. He just busied himself cleaning the tomato ketchup off Belle’s face and fingers, wishing and hoping that Bo would take Hope and get the hell away from them.

But instead, there was another one of those awkward silences as Marlena looked from Hope, back to Bo, and then at Hope again.

“Are you… okay now?” she asked finally.

“If you’re asking whether they removed the chip, then yes.” Every word fell, precise and clipped from Hope’s lips, but each one was also barbed and acidic.

“I was asking if you were okay… physically… emotionally.” Marlena tried to soften her tone, tried to muster all her professional empathy but she was only able to scrape up fragments, and her words had a curious hollowness to them. She had a lifetime of memories with Hope and only a few months to call on of Gina, but somehow, they were the ones that stood out in her mind. And she couldn’t forget that Hope had actively pursued the investigation of her past under Stefano’s control. Knowing how lethal he was and what havoc he could wreak on them, she had dipped her hand straight into the viper’s nest and she had been bitten. But her actions had poisoned them all.

“I’m…” Hope reached for Bo’s hand and wrapped her fingers around his. Marlena watched Bo’s face with curiosity. She saw a flicker of discomfort in the narrowing of his eyes and the curl of his lips, but it passed quickly. Whether that was by design, she didn’t know. “Bo’s been taking care of me,” Hope said deliberately, and with certain possessiveness.

“While I’m sure he has been taking very good care of you, you need more support than that, Hope. I think you probably need some counseling to come to terms with what happened to you, what you did as Gina, and the memories you’re carrying around now.” Marlena suggested, her tone even in the face of Hope’s passive aggressiveness. She wouldn’t let Hope see how much her presence bothered her. How uncomfortable she felt in this conversation.

“Are you offering your services, Marlena?” Hope laughed scornfully. For her part, she hated every moment of this. She had to stand here and pretend that the thought of Bo and Marlena together wasn’t eating her up inside. She had been consumed by Stefano’s parasite, her body controlled without her knowledge, and against her will. Gina had used her to lead John on a merry trail around Europe and to try and debase him when he refused to dance to her tune.

But that had been Gina. Not her. She hadn’t chosen that path, she hadn’t had any control. But Marlena… Marlena had chosen to undress in front of Bo. Marlena had chosen to put her hands and mouth on a man that was not hers. And Hope hated her for it. Her mind told her that they hadn’t known, that they had been hurting and they had acted impulsively, irrationally. Her heart told her something different. Her heart told her that if Bo really loved her, he would have known Gina wasn’t her. He would have known something was wrong. And Marlena, clever shrink that she was, definitely should have known.

Hope still loved Bo so she couldn’t hate him. But she could damn well hate Marlena. And she did.

“No, I think we both know that wouldn’t work.” Marlena had a hard edge to her voice. She could hear the bite in Hope’s voice and as unhappy as she had thought Hope was going to be over what had happened, she now knew that it was so much worse.

Her heart sank. Wasn’t it already bad enough with Caroline and Sami being angry with her? Now she had to carry Hope’s hatred as well? “I can give you a few names of good therapists if you like.” She didn’t expect Hope to take her up on her offer, but she made it all the same.

“I think I’ll be fine,” Hope replied caustically. “C’mon honey,” she tugged on Bo’s hand. She’d had enough of this farce. And definitely, she’d had enough of the way Bo was looking at his ex-lover. “We got places to be.”

Bo hadn’t stopped staring at Marlena throughout the whole conversation and as Marlena looked back at him, she saw the full depth of his pain and the confusion he felt.

“G’bye.” It fell softly from his mouth, directed at her and only for her. But it wasn’t really a goodbye. It was a ‘we need to talk but not right now and Marlena knew she would be hearing from him before the week was out. She also knew she needed to be clear with him that while she and John were not back together, there was still no chance for the two of them.

Bo nodded at her, his mouth twitching into the hint of a hopeful half-smile before he turned and followed Hope back to the bar where Caroline was waiting. Marlena saw Shawn looking at them sadly and then, with a sigh, she turned back to John.

His expression stopped her in her tracks. His eyes were pressed tightly shut, his hand on the table clenched into a tight fist. His lips were a thin line drawn across a face pale beneath tanned skin and his breathing was labored.

“Daddy?” Brady asked nervously. John didn’t answer but opened his eyes when Marlena put her hand gently over his.

“Honey, are you okay?” she asked softly.

He shook his head. He most definitely wasn’t okay. “Can we get outta here?” he asked his voice hoarse.

Marlena looked at him for a moment. There was something deep within him she recognized. A pain that spoke to her own. She nodded, her eyes moist with empathy.

“Lisa?” she caught the regular Brady as she bustled past them. “Could you bring us a couple of boxes? We need to go.”

“Why we goin’ Momma?” Brady asked uncertainly. They hadn’t finished their food so he didn’t understand why the sudden urgency. Belle looked from Brady to Marlena and then to John. She was confused and a little bit scared. She didn’t understand what was but she understood that people were cross and she didn’t like it.

“Daddy’s not feeling too well honey and we need to get him home. Is that okay?” Marlena ruffled Brady’s hair affectionately while she ran her thumb over John’s fingers trying to bring him some reassurance and comfort. “You can finish your dinner up in the car, or I can heat it up when we get back home.”

“Okay.” Brady seemed satisfied with her answer and when Lisa returned, they made quick work of boxing up their leftovers.

It was only when they were out of the pub that John finally let the tension drain out of his shoulders and he started to shake as they reached her car. He let Marlena help the children into the car and get them strapped in. Once she had closed the doors, she turned to him and took his hands in hers.

“It’s okay to be angry, you know,” she said softly. “Have you talked to Dr. White about what happened in Europe?”

John shook his head. He had been concentrating on his feelings for Marlena and his fears about losing her the few times he had talked to his new therapist. There was so much to go at there, there was no room to think about, much less talk about what had happened with Gina) in Europe. How would he explain it anyway? It was hard enough to describe the confusion over his arrival in Salem. A man without a past, without a face of his own. A man gifted a family and a wife that was ultimately not his, but that he loved more than life itself.

He had seen disbelief in Dr. White’s eyes more than once when he had started the fairy-tale (or was it a horror story?) of his ascension to the bosom of the Brady family only to see that membership torn away as he was denied his identity and his belonging. And most of all, denied the woman he loved beyond all rationality. He had granted Dr. White permission to access his medical records so that she could see for herself and in the following session, she had apologized for her doubt. He was, she admitted, the most fascinating and challenging patient she had ever seen.

So no, he hadn’t spoken to Dr. White about Hope or Gina. And if he had his way, he wouldn’t. Therapy was to unravel all of the hurts he had caused Marlena and to make sure that he didn’t ever cause her pain again. Gina was his own pain to bear. His own personal punishment.

“Do you want to talk to me about it?” she released one of his hands and lifted hers to cup his cheek so that he would look at her. His brilliant blue eyes were reddened and tear-filled. “John, honey. I’m here. Let me help you.”

She had to resist the urge to lean forward and kiss away his pain. She understood it. Damn, she felt it. The anger, the guilt, the violation. It hadn’t been Hope in that bed but when he saw Hope, he saw her face. Gina.

If it was confusing for Marlena to see Hope, it had to be doubly confusing for him. He was the one who had woken up next to that face, he was the one who had been stripped naked, posed, and photographed. What Gina had done to him was assault. He may not have been an active participant, and he may have barely been conscious, but that was still assault as far as Marlena was concerned.

“Get in the car,” she opened the passenger door to her car and gently pushed him. Wordlessly, he climbed into the seat and let her strap him in. The feeling of her breasts brushing across his chest as she leaned over him to buckle the seatbelt was finally enough to rouse him from his disconnected state, and he caught her hand as she drew back.

All of a sudden, he was aware of his heart pounding in his chest. His cock swelled in his jeans as the scent of her enveloped him. He wanted her so badly, it hurt. He wanted to plunder those soft lips, bury his tongue in her mouth, fist his hands in her golden hair. His breath came in short bursts as his hand clutched hold of hers like she was a lifeline.

“Doc,” he brushed away a lock of hair that was falling over her face. Marlena’s breath caught in her throat as his eyes drank her in, practically devoured her. He cupped her face with his oversized palm and smoothed his calloused thumb across her cheek.

“John,” she knew she should pull away, put some distance between, them but her heart was pounding uncontrollably, and her legs felt weak. “John-“

Neither of them moved for a moment, their eyes locked. Marlena felt like she was drowning in the depths of his bottomless blue pools. His thumb burnt a slow trail across her skin, followed by his fingers as they skimmed her soft cheek, whispering over the curve of her jaw and the thumping pulse in her throat.

Her chest rose and fell with shallow, labored breaths. All she could think about was how good he smelt, salt and sea and maleness, and how his lips would feel as they swiped across hers.

“John-“ her tone was pleading, desperate. She didn’t even know if she was asking him to stop, or to never stop.

John swallowed hard and withdrew his hand. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice scorched with longing. “Doc, I’m sorry.”

She nodded wordlessly and pushed herself away from the seat.

“We don’t have to do this,” he said. It wasn’t what he wanted to say but he wasn’t sure that he could take being around her right now. He wasn’t sure that he had the restraint.

He had seen Hope, and everything had flooded back. The horror he had felt, waking up and looking into her predatory eyes. Her feral smile as he’d realized he was naked beneath the covers. The revulsion that had suffused him when he had discovered the scored lines on his back from her fingernails. He’d felt… he wasn’t even sure he could name all the feelings. Shame and disgust, for sure.

But now, now all those feelings had ebbed. Being so close to Marlena was both a comfort and a torment. He wanted to bury himself in her, to worship her, to lose himself completely in the feeling of her skin against his. He wanted to weave his fingers in her hair, pull her head back and inhale her scent, devour her throat, and bring forth those infuriatingly sexy moans.

Dr. White would ask if these urges, this obsession with Marlena, was a way of running from his problems. From his feelings. And John would say, as he did every time Maura White asked such a question, that he simply never stopped wanting Marlena. Whether he was running hard, falling fast, or simply caught in her gravity, he always wanted her. He always had, and he always would.

But it wasn’t just sexual. It was the fact that she grounded him. She was the foundation of who he was, his rock, his anchor. He wasn’t him without her as a counterpoint. Dr. White had kindly suggested that maybe this wasn’t the healthiest basis for a relationship. That maybe he needed to learn who he was first and foremost and then look to integrate Marlena back into his life. That maybe that was what Marlena was trying to do, and why she was insisting on time and space.

John had told her that with all due respect, he knew everything he needed to know about who he was. But he also knew he was a far better man with her at his side.

It was just that right now, having her by his side was far too tempting. Maybe he was trying to run from the knowledge and memory of what Gina had tried to do to him. How she had tried to destroy his life for her own twisted reasons.

Or maybe, and more likely he thought, it was just the feel of Marlena’s soft breasts against his chest, her warm, damp breath murmuring against his neck that made him want her so much.

God, he wanted her so damn much. This was torture. But if he was honest, it was a torture that he was more than willing to endure to just have her in his life.

“We don’t have to,” he repeated with a shake of his head. We don’t have to. We shouldn’t because I’m not sure I can keep my hands off you if we do. He wanted to be in her company, but he felt stripped raw, and he didn’t trust himself not to reveal the depths of his longing or desire for her. And he didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on her. “I can… I should go back to the loft.”

“No. I want to,” she was struggling to ignore the way his gaze seared her skin. She could feel his need for her, a response, she guessed to the anger and shame that had flooded him on seeing Hope. This was dangerous, but he needed her. She would have to be strong enough for both of them. “We’re friends, aren’t we? Friends are there for each other.”

“Friends.” He nodded. They were so much more than friends but if she wanted to continue telling herself that lie, he wasn’t going to argue with her.

“Then come back to the penthouse,” she touched his arm with a small smile. “We can talk.”

“Talk?” For all the time they had spent together with the children over the past month, they still hadn’t talked. She’d continued to see Laura and he’d started sessions with Dr. White. But they’d avoided any talk when together of anything meaningful, choosing instead to concentrate on parenting their children and discussing light day-to-day matters. So, they hadn’t really talked about anything important since that night in the park.

“I think it’s time,” Marlena nodded. She was nervous. She wasn’t sure she was ready, but it seemed only fair that if she wanted John to be honest with her about how seeing Hope had affected him, that she should start to open up about her feelings. And really, wasn’t it time? John had been true to his word and had not pressured her at all. He had just been there, spending time with her. Making her laugh. Making her feel cared for. He’d done everything she’d asked, everything she’d needed. Now it was her turn. “If you still want to, that is?”

“Still want to?” he looked incredulous. “Honey, I told you. I want you to tell me everything. It’s the only way we’re going to heal.”

“This is a two-way street John,” she reminded him. She needed him to reciprocate. She needed this to be a conversation, not just her dumping her feelings on him. “I want to know what you think and how you feel too. That’s the only way this is going to work.”

“I know,” he nodded, but Abe’s words sounded in his head. Have you considered that maybe it’s you that should be listening? John, buddy, you need to give her space. She’s hurt and she’s scared. She needs to trust that you’re going to hear her when she starts talking. “Marlena, honey, I know. I just want you to know that I’m going to really listen. I want to hear what you have to say. I want to know it all baby. All of it.”

Marlena’s eyes filled with tears, and she nodded. Quietly, she closed the car door and moved to the side. Climbing in, she paused, took a deep breath, and turned to him.

“John… I love you,” she said simply. “I’m not ready for anything more. Not yet. But I need you to know. I love you.”

“Oh baby, I love you too.” His heart danced with elation. He knew it already, of course. It was in everything, the way that she smiled at him, in the tenderness of her touch. She loved him. He knew it. He’d always known it. But that she was prepared to say it, that meant real progress. That meant they had a chance at a real future. “And it’s enough. For now, sweetheart, it’s enough.”

T

Part Quarante-et-Un

I blew things out of proportion, now you’re blue

Put you in jail for something you didn’t do

I pinned your hands behind your back, oh

Thought I had reason to attack, but no

Fighting with a true love is boxing with no gloves

Chemistry ’til it blows up, ’til there’s no us

Why’d I have to break what I love so much?

It’s on your face, and I’m to blame, I need to say

Hey, it’s all me, in my head

I’m the one who burned us down

But it’s not what I meant

Sorry that I hurt you

I don’t wanna do, I don’t wanna do this to you (Ooh)

I don’t wanna lose, I don’t wanna lose this with you (Ooh)

I need to say, hey, it’s all me, just don’t go

Meet me in the afterglow

Afterglow – Taylor Swift

John was standing at the window, his eyes following the snaking silver trail of the river that passed far below the penthouse and cut through the city he’d adopted as home so many years ago.  This apartment, he had called home for a little less than a year before Marlena had thrown him out.  Before that, a mere matter of weeks between his discovery of Kristen’s complicity in Marlena’s abductions and the terrible truth of her deeply devious nature, and then the introduction of Roman back into their lives.  An intrusion that had turned out to be nothing more than another manipulation.  Another terrible lie.

Further out lay the lake, the DiMera Mansion beyond it.  Maybe one of the longest stretches he had spent in the same house as Marlena.  He had spent the whole time wanting her.  Rounding corners, bumping into her, and holding her arm a little too long.  Inhaling her scent as she brushed by him.  Catching glimpses of her in ravishing satin and lace nightgowns that caressed her glorious curves.  Melting inside as she turned that bewitching hazel gaze on him.  

Oh, the nights he had dreamed of her.  And holy mother of God, the dreams he had dreamed.

Behind the penthouse, in the shadows of the setting sun on Sycamore Drive, sat the house he had shared with Marlena more than ten years ago.   They were meant to spend a lifetime together there, to raise their beautiful family, to add to their brood.   But that had been stolen from them.  By the ISA.  By Orpheus.  By Stefano.

They’d had six months.  Six impossibly short months, punctuated by Marlena’s brush with death and subsequent coma.  Six months where they had loved each other with a blazing hot intensity that had never been even close to matched by his feelings for any other woman.  

And then, in the blink of an eye, it had been over.  She had been taken from him and it was like the world had moved from brilliant technicolor into black and white.  He survived the initial onslaught of grief which had almost crippled him, and then he had stumbled through the intervening years, from woman to woman, desperately looking for something to dull the pain of living without her.  Looking for anything to keep him from slowly going insane.

And then, just as suddenly as he’d lost her, she walked back into his life.  Through the mist, she had emerged, rose and gold and smelling like a slice of heaven he had never thought to experience again.

And he had been so damn scared….

Even now there were nights that he woke in a blind panic and found himself reaching out for her, needing to touch her to remind himself that she was alive.

His heart thumped in his chest as he heard her descending the staircase behind him, but he stayed glued to the window.  He wanted to look at her.  He was desperate to, he just couldn’t.  

“Hey.”  He felt her hand on the small of his back as she came to stand beside him.  Her voice was low and quiet.  It was sexy.  Her voice was always sexy.

“Are they asleep?” he asked, still not looking at her.

“Belle is.  I left Brady reading.  One of us should go up in fifteen minutes and turn his light out.”  She stifled a yawn and leaned her head against his arm.  He wished she would stop touching him.  It was making him lightheaded.  It was doing things to his body that he couldn’t control.

“Doc, I think I should go,” his voice was gruff.  She looked up at him in surprise.

“Go?” She frowned.  “I thought we were going to talk.”

“I do, I want to talk… it’s just.   I don’t want to put any pressure on you and right now I feel… I feel outta control.  Like I might do or say something that will make you feel… like I expect…” he let out a breath of pure frustration and peeled away from her, stalking across the room towards the door.  “I just don’t think I can do this tonight.”

“John!”  Marlena ran after him, light on her feet, her ponytail bouncing against her neck.  “John, honey.  Don’t go.”  She caught his arm, turning him to her, and framed his face with her small hands.  “Please don’t go.”

“Doc…” he stared down at her his eyes drawn to her mouth, those full, pouty lips, so soft.  His breathing shortened, caught in his throat.  Flecks of gold flashed in her eyes.  His hands found her waist, lush warm curves where it flowed into those sinful hips.  She wore the sweats he’d given her at the loft a month ago and he wondered idly if that was on purpose.

She smelt incredible.  Lavender and caramel.  Like hot marshmallows.  Like sex.

He lifted one hand to her face and pressed his thumb to her lower lip.  She sucked in a breath, and he felt himself harden.  “I want to kiss you so bad,” he moaned.  He stared at her a beat longer, fascinated by the softness of her lip, the tiny glimpse of her wet, pink tongue beneath her teeth.  And then growling, he spun away from her.  “I can’t do this.”

“John!” She caught his shirt in her fist and pulled him back.  She pressed herself against his back and wrapped her arms around his waist.  She could feel his heartbeat against her heated cheek.  “Don’t go.  We can do this.  We need to do this.”

“Doc.  Baby, I don’t know if I can do this.  I want you so bad right now.  It’s taking everything I’ve got in me to stop myself throwing you on that couch and stripping those goddamn sweats off you.”  He slid his hands over hers, which were crossed against his stomach.  His stomach that was hard and tense as he tried to control his breathing.  All he could think about was how soft she felt against him and how much he wanted to bury himself between her legs.

With almost superhuman effort, he pulled her arms apart and twisted, pushing her away from him at the same time.  “Baby, I don’t think you have any idea what you do to me.”

She searched his face with hazel eyes ablaze with emotion.

“John, you’re running from whatever emotions seeing Hope brought up for you.  But honey, you can’t outrun it.  You’re not going to be able to avoid her.  If you don’t deal with this now, you’re going to keep feeling whatever it is you’re trying not to feel and it’s just going to get worse.  Trust me.  I’ve been there.”

She stepped forward but stopped short of touching him.  Instead, she simply held her hand out, palm upward.  “Please let me help you.”

John looked at her hand and then let his eyes drift up to her face. 

“I don’t trust myself,” he shook his head and took a step backward.  “I don’t… Doc, I don’t have to be traumatized to want you.”

“No, but this out-of-control feeling, this wanting to bury yourself in a physical connection…  That’s an emotional reaction to what you’re feeling.”  Her concern and empathy were written all over her beautiful face, her hazel eyes solemn and full of love for him.  “Honey, I’ve been where you are.  Not that long ago, if you remember.  And this time I can be strong enough for both of us.  You were strong for me at your loft.  If you can’t trust yourself, you can trust me.  Okay?”

“Doc…” he blinked, remembering.  How she had unhooked her bra and lifted his hands to her full, rounded breasts.  How he had brushed his thumbs across her hardened nipples, and she had whimpered.  How she had straddled his lap and rubbed her satin-clad center against the bulge in his pants.  How she had devoured his mouth, tasting of bourbon and desire.

He groaned, hardening in his pants at the thought of her.  Ruby red lips, dark emerald eyes framed with dark sweeping lashes.  Blonde waves falling around her shoulders.  Her breasts full and soft, rubbing against his chest.

This wasn’t making it any easier.

“Just stay,” she begged him.  “Please?  You said when I wanted to talk, you’d listen.”  She hated to pull that on him, it was emotional blackmail, using his own words against him when he was vulnerable.   But she didn’t want him to be alone right now.  Not with his thoughts of Hope.  Not with his self-recriminations.  He was confused and hurting, and she knew how that felt.  She didn’t want him to face it by himself.

“Doc,” he sighed heavily.  She had him bang to rights.  He had made her promise and he had promised in turn to be there when she was ready.  How could he leave now?

“C’mon,” she reached for his hand and this time he took her proffered approach, wrapping his own fingers around hers so that they would stop shaking.  He followed her back to the sofa, full of misgivings but determined to see it through.

“Just wait,” she entreated him when they reached the seating and she disappeared into the kitchen.  She was soon back with a pot of tea, two mugs, and a glass of brandy, which she handed to him.

“Doc, I don’t want to…” he waved the glass at her.  She still wasn’t drinking, and he didn’t want to make things awkward for her.

“It’s fine,” she smiled reassuringly.  “It’s not that I can’t drink.  I’m just choosing not to right now.  I feel safer and more in control if I stay away from it.  That’s not to say I’ll never have a drink again, just not right now.  But I don’t mind if you drink.  And honestly, I think you need one right now.”

She could see that his hand was still shaking slightly as he raised the glass to his mouth and took a large mouthful of the amber liquid.

“Now, do you want to tell me what you were thinking when Hope came in?  What you were feeling?”  She busied herself with pouring a hot tea, not wanting him to feel too pressured to give an immediate answer.  She knew he would need to take his time and she had plenty of time to give him.  

He was silent and eventually she looked up at him as she put the pot down.

“I don’t…” he blinked away the moisture in his eyes.  “Doc, I really don’t think I can.”

“Why not?” she asked gently, putting her hand lightly on his knee, noting the way his eyes narrowed as she did so.  “I know you probably feel like you don’t want to relive it.  But it will help, I promise.”

“No, I just…” he sighed.  “This is so complicated.”

“What about our lives isn’t?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.   There was no smile now.  It might be a funny quip under other circumstances.  But right now, it was just too much.  Their lives were impossibly complicated.  They had been since the moment John arrived in Salem; a nameless man covered in bandages.  But those days seemed fantastically simple compared to the current situation they found themselves in.  She found herself longing for those days for a moment.  The days where they were just finding each other and there were no expectations and no hurts to overcome.

“Doc, you don’t need to be so…” he frowned and picked her hand up off his knee, squeezing her fingers before he pushed her away. “You don’t have to be so damn understanding.  I got myself into that situation.  You don’t have to listen to the details.  You don’t have to live with this too.”

“Don’t you think I’m already living with it?” she demanded.  “I only have my imagination but it’s filling in lots of gaps, John.  It wasn’t you that chose to go away with her and even if you had done, what she did to you was assault, John.  Do you get that?”  Marlena felt a spike of red-hot rage towards Gina.   “She incapacitated you and did things to you physically, without your consent.  Whether you were yourself or not, you didn’t ask for her to do that to you.  Of course you’re upset and angry.  Who wouldn’t be?”

“But I went with her Doc!” John slammed his brandy glass down on the table and Marlena sucked in a breath.  “Deep down, I knew what it was that she wanted, and when I became more aware of myself, I should have gotten the hell out of there.  But I didn’t.  I never should have gone to Berlin with her.”

“I never should have gone to that bar, and I never should have drunk half a bottle of bourbon, but that doesn’t mean I asked to be attacked.  I didn’t ask for that man’s hands and mouth all over me.”  Her cheeks flared red, and her heart pounded as she had a flash of being pinned against the wall, bourbon coursing through her veins and a stranger’s hands coarse against her skin.  “And you didn’t ask for Gina to strip you naked and manipulate you.”

She looked at him suddenly, wondering if there was more to this than he was telling her.

“John, do you remember something more?”

“Like what?”  he frowned, his brows knitting together.  Then suddenly he understood what she meant.  “Oh God, no Doc.  No.  There was no sex, I am sure of it.”  

She nodded, feeling unaccountably relieved.  For him as much as for herself.

“I guess I’ve just been… I wanted to forget everything that happened in Europe.  It’s not important.  What happened, happened.  I’m only interested in the future.”  John leaned forward and picked up his glass again, rolling it around in his hands and watching the way the brandy clung to the walls of the glass, slowly sliding down into the pool of liquid at the bottom.  “I thought I could just put it behind me.  It wasn’t Hope and it wasn’t entirely me.  So, I figured I could just forget about it.”

“Until Hope walked into the pub?” Marlena finished for him.

“Until Hope walked into the pub.”  He nodded and took a mouthful of the brandy, exhaling a long, shaky breath.  He closed his eyes, seeing Hope grabbing at Bo’s hand.  Hope’s eyes, shifting away from his.  Insecure.  Guilty.  “My skin crawls when I look at her, Doc.  I woke up in that bed and I was ….” He gave Marlena a sideways long look.  “You shouldn’t have to hear this.”

“I want to hear it.  It won’t be any worse than my imagination,” she reminded him, as she lifted her own cup.  “John, you know I don’t blame you for any of this, don’t you?  Any more than you blame me for walking into that pub down at the docks.  Sometimes we make bad decisions but that doesn’t mean that other people have the right to violate us when we’re vulnerable.  You told me that, remember?”

It hadn’t only been John to tell her that, it had been Bo and Laura, and even Carrie more recently.  But this was the first time she’d really understood what they had all been saying.  This was the first time she’d really been able to accept that what had happened was not her fault.  That she hadn’t on some level deserved the indignities of being molested by a drunken stranger.  Because John sure as hell didn’t.

“I remember.”  He nodded.  He couldn’t really fault her logic but somehow it didn’t feel comparable to him.  But then again, she was right.  He had been drugged and incapacitated.  Even super-spy John Black wasn’t unassailable when it came to chemical influence.  He hadn’t trusted Gina, but he hadn’t expected her to go so far as to actually drug him.  That had been his mistake and he was paying for it now.

“What happened?” Marlena asked gently.  “You told me she drugged you.  Put something in your champagne?”  

“Yeah,” John exhaled unsteadily and then gulped down the remaining brandy in his glass.  Pursing his lips, he stood and went across to where she kept the alcohol and pulled out an unopened bottle.  He took it back to the sofa and used it to refill his glass.  

“She knew I was there under duress.  I had told her that I’d meet this one last contact and then I was heading home to Salem.”  He continued, telling her about how they had met with Krause and the only thing that had resulted was some scant details about a possible job they’d done at the NationalGallerie and more vague suggestions that the next contact might be able to provide them with more useful information.  He had, he said, told Gina (still masquerading as Hope) that he was done.  That in the morning he would be flying back to Salem.  

And then the world had started to spin. 

“When I woke, it was morning and I felt…  groggy.  Everything felt heavy.  My eyes were gritty, my mouth was dry, and my head felt like it was filled with cotton wool.  I opened my eyes and found her looking back at me.”

“You knew she was Gina at this point?” Marlena asked before taking a mouthful of her tea.  

“Yeah.  She wasn’t calling herself Gina, but she wasn’t exactly hiding it either,” John frowned.  “Doc I just…” he shuddered as he recalled the horror of realizing that he was naked in a bed with a woman he considered a sister.  “I felt disgusted.  I was naked.  She was naked.  I didn’t know what she’d done but there were… I felt pain in my back and when I looked there were scratches down my back.”

“Oh, John,” Marlena bit into her lip, wondering whether John’s avowal that there had been no intercourse was more denial than certainty.

“She tried to make out we’d had sex but Doc, I was unconscious.  I have absolutely no memory of getting to that room or anything until I woke in the morning.”

Marlena nodded silently.  John had to know there were drugs that could make a person forget periods of time.  But then, she’d looked at the photos again and he was right, he was not an active participant in any of them.  If he’d really been conscious and they’d actually had sex, surely that would be reflected in the photographs?  Gina would not have wasted any opportunity to show him as an active participant.    On balance, she had to believe that he was correct, and that Gina had not managed to violate him in such an intimate way.  At least they could be grateful for that.

“Are you angry at Hope?” Marlena wondered.  “Or is it just, when look at her, you see Gina?”

“Damn right I’m angry at her,” John spat out.  The rage was boiling under his skin now.  So close to the surface he could taste it.  “She made a choice to pursue this.  Stefano warned her off.  You told her to leave it alone.  But she insisted on pursuing it and dragged me into her search.  If we’d just stayed ignorant of the past, none of this would have happened.  Why did she damn well have to know what happened while Stefano had her?  Why did I follow her in her search?   I had everything I needed right in front of me.  I had you, and our kids, and a wonderful future all lined up and I damn well threw it all away.  For what?”

He slammed his drink on the table once again and Marlena winced, wondering how many more times the glass would withstand such punishment before it shattered in his hands.  She watched him as he pushed himself from the couch.  Running his fingers through his hair he stalked back to the window.  He thumped his fist against the door frame, and she flinched again.

“Are you angry at me?” Marlena asked softly.  She tried to make the question as neutral as possible, but she knew in her heart what his answer would be.  She also knew what the real answer was.  She needed him to admit it.  It was the only way they would start to heal.

“Of course I’m not angry at you Doc,” John looked across at her, surprised.  He hadn’t been prepared for that question and it had thrown him.

Marlena nodded thoughtfully.  “Okay, do you want to be honest with me this time?”  She had seen his pause and the tensing of his shoulders before he answered.  It was exactly what she had expected from him.   But it wasn’t what she needed.  She didn’t need him to protect her from this, she needed him to be honest.  “Because I was furious at you, and I am pretty sure you’ve got good reason to be angry with me.”

“Doc, I don’t…” he shook his head.  He wanted to deny her words, to convince her that he had nothing but love in his heart for her.  But that wasn’t the truth.  He was angry.  He was damn well furious.  But this was dangerous territory.  If he let the anger start to trickle out, he wasn’t sure where it would stop.  He wasn’t sure that it would stop.  “This isn’t going to help matters any.”

“What’s not going to help is pretending that all these feelings aren’t there.  Ignoring them, burying them…. John, that’s what led us here.  We’ve spent the past decade trying to bury unpleasant, hurtful feelings but all that’s resulted in is hurting each other more.  Don’t you think it’s time that we faced the truth?”  She put her cup down and stood, unzipping her hooded sweatshirt and shedding it as she came to where he stood, his clenched fist and forearm leaning against the frame of the French door.  He turned his head to look at her his nostrils flaring as he moved his lower lip backward and forward between his teeth.  

“You want me to tell you everything,” she reminded him.  “You made me promise that I would.  Well, there’s a lot of pain in our past.  A lot of regret, and more than a little anger.  I need to trust that you can hear that.  And I need you to trust that I can hear it.”  She reached out and touched her warm fingers to his bare forearm, feeling his wiry hair beneath her fingertips.  John closed his eyes, overwhelmed by her words and the closeness of her.  He kept trying to escape her, and she kept invading his space, and it was all too much.  And Marlena just carried right on, as though she was talking about the weather and was not, instead, cracking his armor wide open.

“If you’re hurt and angry that I didn’t know he wasn’t you, you’ve got every right to those feelings,”  she said, the softness of her voice at odds with the violence of her words.  “You’d be right.  I should have known.  And if you’re hurt and angry that I turned to Bo, then I can’t blame you for those feelings either.  If the situation was reversed, I think I would be incredibly hurt.”

“How could you have known, Doc?” he asked her, trying to ignore the tension in his shoulders, the churning in his gut.  He didn’t want to have this conversation; it was all too raw.  And she was standing too close, her white t-shirt clinging to her, outlining her curves, the hard peaks of her nipples visible beneath the white cotton, so that he was desperate to run his thumbs over them.  His tongue.  He closed his eyes.  “You couldn’t have known.”

“I knew you were different,” she admitted guiltily.  “I didn’t understand why.  I just… it was too painful.  I was too hurt, and it brought up too many feelings which I thought I’d… I thought I’d dealt with them, but I hadn’t.  I’d just buried them.  I just swept them under the rug and pretended they didn’t exist.”  Her hold on his arm tightened and he fought the desire to slide his hand under the back of her t-shirt and feel the soft, warm skin just above her buttocks.  “But they piled up,” she continued, oblivious to the thoughts running through his head, the internal battle he was fighting between his lust for her and his desire to do what was right.  “And when you… when you were him, or he was masquerading as you, he peeled back that rug.  I was too busy dealing with the feelings that had been uncovered to ask why you were doing it.” 

“You think I’m burying my feelings now?” he opened impossibly blue eyes and fixed them on hers.  

“I think you’re trying to sweep them under the rug.  I think that if you’re not honest about how you feel… we’re in danger of just continuing to try and outrun the pain.”  She shook her head sadly.  They’d spent so long running; it was as though they didn’t know any other way.  But they were going to have to find one.  She was done running.  “The pain is catching up, John.  It’s outrunning me, now.  I can’t carry on like this.  If we’re going to have any chance of making this work, then we have to be honest.”

Both her hands were on his arm now and his throat was tight with the effort of trying to hold back his desire and his fury.  His skin was both warm and cold where she touched him.  His chest hurt and his head felt dizzy.  She was right, he was so angry that he was screaming inside his own head.  He wanted to make her hurt the way he hurt. 

Without warning, he caught her around the waist and slammed her back against the door.  Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth to gasp for air, but he stole the breath from her with his mouth.  His hand tangled in her hair, pulling her head back against the glass windowpane and his lips claimed hers hungrily.  She moaned, unable to stop him.  Not wanting to.  

His teeth nipped her jaw as he mouthed his way up to her ear.  He pressed her against the door with the weight of his body, the wooden framing biting into her back.   He knew she could feel the full length of his erection as he ground his pelvis against her.  She felt so good beneath him, so hot and soft and goddamn perfect.  He suckled the skin beneath her ear, and she let out a small whine.

“Yeah, I’m angry, Marlena.  I’m so fucking furious with you I that can hardly see straight,” his voice was low and intense and hotly wet against her ear.  “You fucked Bo Brady.  Bo-fucking-Brady!  Do you know how much it hurt to see you with him?  To know he was touching you.  That he was fucking you.  In our bed.”  He took one of her hands in his and slammed it against the doorframe above her head.  “You’re mine, Marlena.”  He bit her jaw again, hard this time and she let out a heady whimper.  “You’re mine.  Like I’m yours.  Fuck Bo.  Fuck Hope and fuck Gina.”  

His free hand fumbled for the bottom of her t-shirt, and he yanked it up, exposing one naked breast.  Marlena writhed against him, clearly aroused by his manhandling of her.  He groaned as he palmed the soft mound, feeling the hard pebble of her nipple rolling under the center of his hand.  He pulled back and stared at her for a moment.  Her eyes were dark and fiery, her lips red and swollen.  Her arm was looped around his shoulder, her fingers digging into the tight muscles of his shoulder.  He wasn’t sure when that had happened, or when her leg had wrapped around his, her thigh caressing his hip, desperate to get closer.  She wanted him as much as he wanted her, and it made his blood run hot with the fire of his desire for her.

Keeping eye contact, he deliberately reached for her nipple, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger before deliberately pinching it hard.  Marlena gasped, her eyes rolling back in her head, her back arching and pushing her breast into his hand.  He pulled her head to him and kissed her again, pushing his tongue between those beautiful lips and tasting the inside of her mouth.  He felt her hand tangle in his hair, and she rolled her body against his as he filled his senses with her.  

“John,” she moaned as he broke the kiss.  “Oh God, John.”  She knew she should stop him.  She had promised him she would be strong enough for both of them, but he was proving her wrong.  Her body craved him, like an addict.  The moment she got a fix, it inflamed her, drove her a little crazy with a need that threaded through her veins like wildfire.

Marlena’s voice, her breathy incantation of his name, pierced the suffocating blanket of frantic desire that had fallen over John and suddenly he became fully aware of what he was doing.   Struggling for breath and battling with everything he had against everything he wanted, he pushed himself away from her.  

“Doc I…” he shook his head, trying to process what had just happened.  “Oh shit, I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have…”

Marlena stared back at him, her eyes wide and blown with arousal.   Slowly, she pulled her t-shirt back down over her creamy skin and swallowed, her heart pounding in her ears, her throat, her chest.  

She couldn’t find her voice for a moment.  She was still too filled with need.  Her skin burnt where his rough stubble had dragged across it as he kissed her.  She ached where he had bitten her, tingled where he had sucked her.  She throbbed where she wanted him to touch her again.  Touch her more.  Stroke her, lick her.

“I should go,” he was still angry, but at himself now.  This is exactly what he had promised her he wouldn’t do.  What he had promised himself.  This is what he had known would happen if he stayed here tonight.

“Don’t.”  She reached out and clutched at his hand.  “Don’t.  It’s okay.  You stopped.  I don’t blame you.  I pushed too hard.”     She wanted to tell him that she found it just as hard to stay away from him.  That she had wanted it as much as he did.  That she wanted to bury herself in him.  She wanted… she wanted him.  She wanted his hands, his lips, his tongue.  She wanted him filling her, the friction of his hot, sweaty skin against hers.  

The wanting was so much easier than the anger and the pain. 

He looked at her, his dark indigo eyes stormy with lust and sorrow and then he stalked back to the sofa, picking up his brandy and throwing it down his throat.  He was torn between going and staying.  Between telling her the truth and seeing the hurt reflected in those beautiful hazel orbs, and just staying silent.  

“I meant what I said,” his voice was husky.  He ached with the loss of her.  His skin burned where his blood called to her.  “I am hurt and angry.  I know logically why you turned to him, but it hurts in here.”  He thumped his fist to his chest, his eyes filling with hot tears.  He blinked in embarrassment.  “I thought we had something special, Doc.  I thought after everything we’d been through that we built an understanding.  I thought you knew me better… I thought I’d get more grace from you than that.”

“I know.”  She didn’t make a move to follow him.  The space between them represented safety right now.  From his pain.  From her need.  “I’m sorry, honey.  I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

“Doc, I don’t want your apologies.” John sighed, dropping heavily on the sofa.  “I want to understand.  I want to know what it was I did, that meant that you couldn’t give me that grace.  I know you… I know if you turned to Bo, it was because you felt like you had nowhere else to go.  It fucking hurts and I hate it and I’m angry, yeah.  But I also know there is a reason.”

“There is a reason.”  She nodded.  “I’m not sure I can articulate it yet.  Not easily.  Not quickly.”

“How about you just try?”  John suggested, running his fingers wearily through his hair.  

“I thought we were talking about you and how you feel about Hope?” Marlena wasn’t ready to open up.  She wasn’t sure when she would be.  If she ever would be.  

Her palms were still pressed to the glass of the French door.  She was scared that if she removed them, she would start to shake.  She was even more scared that if she moved back to the couch, she would find herself drawn to him again.  She would find herself with her fingers in his hair, her lips hungrily searching for his.

“I don’t want to talk about how I feel,” John poured himself another brandy and took a mouthful.  “I want to know what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours.   That’s why I’m staying.  If you’re not going to talk, Marlena, then I’m going.  Because you’ve unlocked a shitload of demons in my head and if you don’t quiet them down with your either your words or your body, I don’t know what I’m liable to do.”

“Okay…” Marlena nodded slowly.  She had pushed him; she’d persuaded him to stay with the promise that she was ready to talk.  She owed him her truth.  Whatever that was.  “Okay.  I… I’m just not entirely sure where to start.”

“How about you start at the beginning, sweetheart?” John said, his voice devoid of warmth.  The anger was seeping out now.  Surrounding him like a grey, tumultuous halo.

Marlena’s heart thumped, but this time it was with anxiety.  She wasn’t entirely sure if she’d unleashed something in him that she couldn’t handle.

“The beginning?” she asked.  She wasn’t sure where the beginning was.  Her return to Salem?  Her ‘death’?  The conceit that he was her dead husband returned to her?   Or was it the multitude of other losses she’d experienced before that?  

“Where did this start?” he asked her.  “When did I hurt you so badly that you lost your trust in me?  In us?”

She looked at him and blinked.

“The day I came back to Salem,” she said simply.

Part Quarante Deux 

And maybe we got lost in translation
Maybe I asked for too much
But maybe this thing was a masterpiece
Till you tore it all up
Running scared, I was there
I remember it all too well

And you call me up again
Just to break me like a promise
So casually cruel in the name of being honest
I’m a crumpled up piece of paper lying here
‘Cause I remember it all, all, all too well

All Too Well – Taylor Swift

Marlena looked at John and blinked.  “The day I came back to Salem.”

John wrapped his fingers around his glass and took another mouthful.  It was starting to take effect, to take the edge off his emotions.  “Go on.”  The cold, hard edge to his voice had dulled and Marlena allowed herself to take a deep breath.  She wasn’t afraid of him, she would never be afraid of him; but to have this conversation she had to allow herself to be deeply vulnerable in front of him.  And that meant opening herself up to being hurt all over again.

“Go on, Doc,” he repeated, and his voice was softer now.  “I’m listening.”

“You…” she licked her lips nervously.  “You remember the night I came back.”

“I’ll never forget it.  It’s burned on my brain,” he said simply.

“I didn’t tell you… I don’t think I ever told you… I almost left Salem without coming to the pier that night.”  She winces at the memory of how desolate she had felt after approaching her house and seeing her family celebrating the engagement of her husband to Isabella Toscano.  “You know I had been trying to get messages to you.  I went to the Continental Bar but you didn’t show, so I went to the house and you were … there with Isabella and the family.”  It still hurt, even after all these years.

“Baby, if I had known you were there…” he shook his head.

“You would have done what?” she demanded.  “Because when you did know I was there, you weren’t exactly quick to shout it from the rooftops.”

John was silent.  He knew she was right, and he knew she needed to get this out.  This was her truth and he needed to let her tell it.

“So, I went back to the motel and threw the few things I did have in a bag.”  Tears came to her eyes.

“Oh baby, why?” he frowned.

“I knew how disruptive my reappearance was going to be.  You had remade your life, you seemed happy with Isabella.  The children were happy.  I had fought so hard to get back to you and I don’t know that it ever really occurred to me that there might not be a ready-made space for me when I did get home.  When I saw you with Isabella, the children and the family that night, I suddenly felt like there was no place for me.  That I would just be disturbing things unnecessarily.”  A tear trickled down her face as John shook his head.

“I don’t care how much it upended our lives, having you back was the best gift I’ve ever been given.  And you’re telling me it almost didn’t happen?” He couldn’t believe what she was saying.  That in any reality she would think that he and the children would be better off without her.  “Where did you think you were going to go?”

“I don’t think I thought that far,” Marlena admitted.  “My actions were impulsive.  I was exhausted.  I’d escaped that damn island, stowed away on that airplane and fought my way home.  I was running on pure adrenaline.  Honestly, even if I had left, I probably would have come back eventually.  I couldn’t have lived with knowing someone else was raising my children.”

John nodded.  That made sense.  As much as anything about that time made any sense.  “So, what made you change your mind?”  

“I don’t know,” she shrugged.  “I just… all of a sudden something called me to the pier.  You, I guess.  That connection we always used to have.”

“That connection we still have, Doc,” he told her with certainty.  “How else would I have already been halfway to The Anchor before you told me where you were?  I still know the moment you walk into a room, Marlena.  I know things have been difficult for a while now, but that has never changed.  We still have a connection.  We always will do.”

That was something she couldn’t dispute.  She still felt it when he walked into a room.  It was like electricity skittering across her skin.  Like a nearby lightning strike.  Her hair would stand up on the back of her neck and she would know he was nearby.  And she knew he felt it because he would turn around and find her eyes the moment she walked into the room.  He always knew where she was, and he knew when she needed him.  It was innate.

“You don’t know how long I lived off the memory of those moments on the pier,” she said quietly.  “The way you held me.  The way you kissed me.  It sustained me through the weeks that followed.  The months.”

Again, John said nothing.  Like her, he had relived those moments over and over again in the years since.  The feeling of her in his arms.  The scent of her had elicited a thousand memories, swift, fragmented, bittersweet.  

He had thought himself to be dreaming at first.  Then he had wondered if he was losing his grip, hallucinating his long-dead love.  Until he had touched her, held her close.  Even after he had spoken to her, felt her warm skin against his, he had halfway expected her to vanish from his arms.  And then he had kissed her.  And it had been like internal fireworks exploding inside his head and his body.   It had been like he had suddenly come to life inside the space of a minute.  

Before those fifteen minutes on the pier, his life had been quietly controlled.  He had loved Isabella, but it was a quiet, comfortable love.  Not challenging, not fiery, not dangerous.  He had been in no danger of suffering any of the profound depths of pain that he had experienced after Marlena’s death.  And then she had walked back into his life and cracked it wide open.  And all the broken edges of that life were sparkling and deathly sharp.

“And then we went back to that motel room and you… you held me at arm’s length.  I know… I knew it was difficult for you.  I understood that.  Logically I understood it.  But it hurt, John.  I was your wife.  I’d been alone, I’d fought to get back home to you and you just left me there in that motel room.  You called Isabella, told her you loved her, gave me some money like I was a two-bit hooker and left me there alone.  Do you have any idea how that felt?”  

“You told me to go,” he said flatly.  He’d hated leaving her there, but he hadn’t known what else to do.  He had been shocked, incapable of making a decision.  She had told him what to do and he had done it.  Like a child, he had moved on autopilot, no room in his brain to formulate a plan.

“I did.”  She nodded her head.  “You’re right.  I did.  That’s on me.  I put your needs ahead of my own.  I put Isabella’s needs ahead of my own and I didn’t even know her.  But who was taking care of my needs, John?”  She pressed her lips together and flicked a stray tear from her cheek.  She was determined she wouldn’t cry.  She’d shed enough tears over the years.  This was going to be hard enough for John to hear, she didn’t need to pile on the guilt.

“Honey, I know it was an impossible situation for you, but I had been away from my children for five years.  I had been away from my life, my family.  You.  I fought so hard to get back to you and you just left me there.  Alone in that seedy motel room.  I cried myself to sleep that night.  I had never felt more alone in my life.”

“Oh God, Doc.”  All John’s anger had dissipated now.  Bo had reminded him of this on the boat not that long ago, and despite the fact that he tried to forget how he had left her there, it had been haunting him.  At the time, it had taken Bo, of all people, to point out how unfair he was being to her, and to Isabella.  

“You kept telling me we’d work it out, but you wanted me to stay holed up in that hotel room so that no-one would see me.  Like I was a dirty secret to be kept hidden away.”

“Doc, baby, it wasn’t like that,” he ran his hand over his face and through his hair.  

“Maybe not in your head, but that’s what it felt like to me,” she told him, her back still to the cool glass of the French door.  “I tried to understand.  I did understand how torn you were.  You’d just asked her to marry you.  But John, I was your wife.  I loved you to distraction.  I’d had a taste of you on that pier.  A kiss.  You, holding me.  And then there was… nothing.  All I wanted was for you to hold me in your arms and tell me everything would be okay, that you loved me… I wanted you to take me home to our family.  I wanted my life back and Isabella was standing in the way of that.  You were standing in the way.”

John was silent.  With everything in him, he wanted to refute her words, her claims.  He wanted to explain to her how much he had loved her, so much he had been terrified she would slip through his fingers again.  That he hadn’t wanted to hurt Isabella but more than that, he hadn’t wanted to hurt again himself, the way he had when he had lost her the first time.

But he knew now was not the time.  This was her time to tell her story.  She needed him to hear her, not tell her she was wrong.  

“And then when you did take me home, nothing was… quite right.  We were in the same house, but we weren’t… together.  We weren’t connecting.  There were moments when we did, and it felt magical and then… then you would pull away.  You’d shut me out and I didn’t understand what was happening.  There were moments when you would touch me, and I couldn’t breathe.  It would be so natural and like no time had passed, like you were mine.”  

She swallowed as she remembered that first night in her bedroom, when he had come up behind her, entreating her to try and remember something about the clinic where she had awoken from her coma.  She had felt his warmth against her back, his hands on her arms and she had been dizzy with the closeness of him.  She had felt the way he nuzzled the side of her head with his nose, breathing in her scent and for a moment, she had leaned back against him, imagining melting into his arms, his mouth on hers.  But instead, he had pulled away.  He had talked again about the search for the truth of her past.  As though that moment had not just happened.  As though she had no effect on him, other than being a source of unanswered questions.

“And then just as suddenly, you would stop and you would let go, like you’d suddenly remembered her and the world outside.  It hurt so much.  Every time I thought we were getting close to really connecting, real intimacy, you’d pull back.  You’d go back to obsessing about the search for what had happened to me, like that was somehow going to help you decide.”  She sighed wearily, leaning her head back against the glass.  “I didn’t understand that.  If I’m honest, I still don’t.  I don’t know how knowing what happened to me would help you make the choice you had to make.”

“It wasn’t going to help me.”  John could finally admit it all these years later.  “I was running from the choice.  You know that.  I knew that making that choice was going to hurt Isabella, or it was going to hurt you.  I didn’t want to be responsible for causing either of you pain.”

“You caused me pain anyway.” Marlena shivered, the drop in temperature outside translating to the coolness of the door against her back.  John frowned and reached for the hoodie that was draped across the end of the couch.  He stood and came across to her and pulling her away from the glass, he draped the sweatshirt around her shoulders.

“Come and sit down, baby,” he said softly.

“I don’t…” she looked up into his eyes, dark cerulean.  Intensely hypnotic.  She crossed her arms across her middle., clutching her upper arms with icy fingers.  “John, I need to say this.”

“I know you do,” he ran his finger under a strand of her hair, lifting it and placing it behind her ear.  “I’m listening, I promise.”

“I can’t…” she struggled to breathe.  He was too much.  The effect that he had on her was amplified a hundred-fold by the way he had handled her earlier and by the memories she was recalling.  There was too much pain and too much wanting.  And when the two collided, the wanting always expanded to obliterate everything in its way.  But she couldn’t allow that.  Not this time.  “I can’t think when you’re this close to me.”

John let his fingers drift down the side of her face and his eyes held hers.  Huge green-gold eyes fringed with delicate, dark lashes.  Her mouth was pink and swollen from his previous assault on her. It called to him, invited him to taste her, to claim her.   He swiped his thumb across the puffy softness of her lower lip and moaned quietly.

“John,” she whispered.  “Please.  Please ….”

He nodded and taking a deep breath, he turned and walked away.  “I don’t think you understand why my decision was so difficult,” he said when he’d made it back to the sofa.

“I didn’t understand then,” she pushed her hands through the arms of the sweatshirt and wrapped it around her with a shiver.  “When we found Roman, I think I understood it more.  But at that moment, all I knew was I was your wife and you’d made a commitment to me.  But she was important enough for you to question that commitment.  I couldn’t help but feel you loved her more than you loved me.  That what you felt towards me was obligation.  Because if you really loved me, the way that I loved you, there would have been no question in your heart as to who you wanted to be with.”

“Oh baby,” John shook his head.  “No, it wasn’t like that.  Not at all.”

“That’s how it felt,” Marlena clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms the discomfort keeping the tears at bay, for the moment.  “I don’t know if you remember but I practically begged you to tell me that you loved me.  And you didn’t.”

John shook his head.  He didn’t remember much of that time, if he was honest.  It had been so hard; he had been in such turmoil after her return.  Being near her but not allowing himself to fall into her.  He had known if he let himself, he would fall for her, hard and fast and she would swallow him whole.  He had lived five years of his life missing her, craving her, dreaming of her.  And then suddenly, there she was, whole and warm and so impossibly beautiful and alive.  And in letting himself love her again was potentially opening himself up to a world of pain.  

Isabella had been the safe choice.  She had been the milk and cookies.  Marlena had been the truffles and champagne.  Isabella hadn’t challenged him, she hadn’t set his world on fire.  She was sweet and kind and mostly safe.  Marlena lit up his soul, made him feel alive and ten feet tall.  The idea of feeling like that and then losing her again, was too much.  So, he had kept her at arms-length.  Pushed her away again and again, absurdly trying to convince himself that he could control his feelings for her.  That he could contain the wildfire that she ignited inside his soul if only he kept his distance from her.

And that had broken her heart.

“Tell me,” he said, his throat tight and dry.

“It was that damn search for my past.” She descended the steps from the door and walked slowly across the room to the staircase.  Sitting on the bottom step, she curled her arms around her calves and rested her chin on her knees.  She looked so innocent and vulnerable John’s heart ached.  “I accused you of using the search to avoid the choice you needed to make.  You told me to stop analyzing you.  We were like ships passing in the night.  We were living in the same house, but we were sleeping in different bedrooms, and you spent more and more time at work.  I told you that I wanted more.  I wanted my husband back.  Isabella was standing between us, and it was breaking my heart.  You said you felt pressured, and I asked you if you loved me.”  She ran a knuckle underneath her eye, catching the rogue tear that had slipped past her lashes.  It still hurt, the memory of that conversation.  “You couldn’t say it.  You couldn’t tell me you loved me.  You just asked how I could say that.  As if it should have somehow been obvious.  When you couldn’t even touch me, let alone kiss me, or make love to me.  John, you’d forget for a moment, and you’d touch me, your fingers would find my face and then you’d pull away and I would ache with emptiness.  All I wanted was for you to show me, to tell me.  I needed to feel wanted, to feel like I belonged in my own family.  But I felt like a stranger.  When I wasn’t the one who had changed.  But you, you didn’t hear me, or you couldn’t hear me or give me what I needed.  You just kept running.  Just kept focusing on the search, as though it would lead you to some kind of revelation.”  

Neither of them bothered to address the fact that it had led to a revelation.  Just not the kind of revelation any of them had expected.  Or a revelation that had led them to the decision John might have made had Roman not returned.  

John didn’t remember the conversation she was referring to.  But that hardly surprised him.  He had blocked out a lot of that time.  But he didn’t doubt what Marlena was telling him.  He knew he had hurt her and disappointed her.  He had disappointed himself with the way he had behaved.  He had been a coward, running from his feelings.  Running from the truth.  That he would never be able to walk away from her.  That no matter how safe and secure his life was with IzzyB, he would always want Marlena, always feel that jolt of pure electricity when their hands met.  He would always stare at her lips and imagine running his tongue over them.  He would always remember how her back arched as he buried himself inside her, how warm her hair felt against his thighs, how she tasted as she came against his tongue.

“And then we went to Miami,” Marlena ignored his lack of response.  “And suddenly it felt like things had changed.  I don’t know what it was, being away from… the distractions of family and …”  She didn’t want to raise the specter of Isabella again.  Not by name.  One of the downsides of the other woman’ death was that Marlena often felt as though in her tragic passing, Isabella had achieved an elevated sense of martyrdom.  And Marlena often felt guilty when she had critical thoughts about Isabella’s behavior on discovering her fiancé’s dead wife was not, in fact, quite so dead.    

“I think you forgot yourself for a moment down there.  Or maybe it was just that you forgot everything else that was going on and just let yourself feel.  But you kissed me, and it felt like everything opened up.  Like suddenly you switched tracks.”  Her voice softened and quavered uncertainly as she spoke her next words.  “Did I imagine that?”

“No baby,” he smiled sadly.  He could barely believe that she had to question that.  That she still had doubts about how much he had loved her.  And why he’d struggled to make his choice.  He vowed that once she’d said everything she needed to say, he would spend as long as it took to explain and reassure her that none of the insecurity she had felt back then had been needed or warranted and that it had been all his fault for making her feel that way, when that was not at all what he had intended or wanted.  He had simply loved her too much and the fear of losing her again was too great.  “No, you didn’t imagine it.”

“You held me that last night we spent in San Cristobal.  The night before…”  She couldn’t bring herself to say it.  Sometimes, to her deep shame, she wished they had never gone to San Cristobal.  Things would have been so much simpler if they had never found Roman.  If they had continued to believe that John was the real Roman Brady.  

She knew in actuality that even had they gone home that day without finding Roman, eventually he would have found his way back to Salem.  But maybe by then, she and John would have cemented their relationship again.  And maybe all the pain that they had suffered in the wake of their decision to do what everyone expected of them and put Roman and Isabella’s needs before their own would have been circumvented.

She would never know for sure.  But it was a story she liked to tell herself from time to time when she questioned what might have happened had things been different on that fateful day.

“I did,” John nodded.  He had known she was scared and vulnerable and he had held her, despite his misgivings.  And he had watched her sleep.  He had felt the way her body curled into his and he had buried his nose in her hair and inhaled her.  He had let his fingertips skim the curves and planes of her beautiful face.  Watched her long lashes curl and flutter against her pale cheeks as she whimpered through disturbed dreams.  

He had recalled their heated kiss on the beach in Miami, a kiss that had not been intended, that had happened merely through reflex, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.  A kiss that had sent him tumbling into the abyss of his desire for her.  

Lying next to her in that deserted monastery, his hands had brushed across her breasts and his jeans had tightened across his crotch.  He had whispered her name, crooned sweet endearments in her ear and he had told her in the wee, small hours of the morning how much he loved her.  How now he was holding her, he didn’t think he would ever be able to let her go again.

He had finally listened to his heart instead of his head and when they had woken in the morning, he had known he was hopelessly in love with her once again.

“You said you were going to talk to Isabella when we got back to Salem,” she recalled.  “But I wasn’t clear on what you were going to say.  I asked you and you said you weren’t sure, just that you thought it was time.”  She unwrapped her arms from around her legs and leaned against the wall.  “I didn’t know what that meant.  Even then, I couldn’t be sure.  You’d been sending so many mixed messages; I couldn’t be sure.”

“I was going to tell her it was over, Doc.” John stood and walked to where she sat.  Crouching down, he looked directly into her eyes.  “I need you to believe this.  I’m going to explain everything I was thinking and feeling once you’re done telling me what you need to tell me.  I don’t want to make any excuses or deny anything you felt or are feeling.  But I need to reassure you right now about this.”  He reached out and took her hand in his.  “I was going to tell Isabella it was over because I had finally been honest with myself about my feelings.  And I had made my decision.  I chose you.  I wanted to be with you.  Not because I made a commitment to you five years earlier, although yes, there was that.  But I chose you because I loved you.  Because I loved you more than anyone or anything.  I always had and I always would.  I always will.  But I never got the chance to tell her, or to tell you, because we found Roman.  And then everything went to hell.”

Part Quarante Trois – Feeling Unmoored

Hey December
Guess I’m feeling unmoored
Can’t remember
What I used to fight for

I rewind the tape but all it does is pause
On the very moment all was lost
Sending signals
To be double-crossed

evermore – Taylor Swift

Marlena stared at John’s hand as it enveloped hers.  For all that he was a man of action, he had remarkably sensitive hands.  Long slender fingers and soft palms that skimmed and smoothed and flitted across skin with feather-light touches.  Those hands, those skillful fingers could coax all kinds of pleasure from her body.

She missed them so much.  She missed his touch, his lips.  It was so hard, spending time with him and yet having to keep herself separate from him.  She knew he wanted more.  He hadn’t pressured her, only hinted at it every so often.  But still, she maintained a safe distance from him.  Mostly.

Not tonight though.  Tonight was… their emotions were running high, and it was hard to remember her boundaries.  Hard to maintain them when they were both so close to the edge.  The edge of their memories.  The edge of their pain.

“Sometimes I wish we’d never found him,” John confessed quietly.  “And I feel so awful for thinking that, but I wonder how different our lives would have been if we had just gone home to Salem that day and I had spoken to Isabella and you and I had moved on with our lives.”

“Isabella was already pregnant,” Marlena reminded him.

“I know.  And that would have given me pause, I’m sure.  But Marlena, I knew after that night that my choice was, could only be you.”  He smoothed his thumb across the back of her hand and ducked his head to try and catch her eyes. She looked up at him from under wetly spiky lashes, her gaze guarded.  “We already had children together, or so I thought.  I still had dreams of us having more children.”  He gave her his patented raised eyebrow.  “Maybe in a less disruptive way than we actually did.”

“But we did find him,” she said softly as she withdrew her hand and tucked it protectively inside her loose sweatshirt.   “And you’re right.  Things were already so complicated.  Roman made them impossible.”

“You said when he reappeared you understood more why my decision was so difficult.” John reminded her as he sat down on the carpeted floor, his back to the wall.  He drew his knees up and leaned his head back, still looking sideways at her.  “You wanna tell me what you mean by that?”

Marlena pursed her lips, considering his question, considering her own statement.

“It was the same, but it was different,” she said eventually.  “Partly because we had the added confusion of not knowing which one of you was Roman.  I’d married both of you, but only one of you could be Roman.”  She sighed softly, curling her fingers into her palms beneath the soft mushroom fleece of her sweatshirt.  “But even once the DNA results came back and I accepted that he was Roman and that I was legally married to him, my legal ‘commitment’ was to him, my heart was telling me that I wanted you, not him.  And it made me question your uncertainty all over again.”

John frowned and fixed her with darkly inquisitive eyes.

“If I had wanted Roman, it would have been an easy choice,” she shrugged and bit into her lower lip as she considered how she had felt over those weeks where she had been caught between John and Roman, all of them living in close quarters.  Roman pushing her for more, John watching and waiting.    “I was legally married to him.  Of course he was the easier, less disruptive choice.  And if I compared our situations then I was your Roman.  But it seemed I wasn’t the easy choice for you.  So, I figured that maybe I had it wrong about your Miami about-face.  But then that didn’t make sense either because you started referring to me as your wife and it seemed that hanging onto your identity was as much about keeping your family as it was about who you were.”

“If you remember, you were the one that convinced me to come back and work everything out,” John reminded her.  “It was you, Doc.  I would have split Salem that night if you hadn’t shown up at the pier and talked me down.  You were the only person that could have gotten through to me and made me stay.  I told Bo that, I told him you made me believe in you.”

“You never told me that,” she said quietly.

“I should have.  I’m sorry baby.  There are a lot of things I should have told you.” He looked rueful.

“I remember asking you why you wouldn’t sleep with him,” John said softly, referring to Roman.  “I overheard the two of you speaking.”

Marlena nodded.  “I was confused.  You know I was.  Roman was pressuring me.  He didn’t understand at all the fact that I was conflicted.  He expected that we would just pick up right where we left off, but I had lived what felt like a lifetime between when he died and when he came back.  I had changed.  And I was in love with you.  I told him that, that I had married you, I’d made love to you and I couldn’t forget that.”  She took a deep breath, remembering how Roman had asked if she still loved him.  “I couldn’t tell him I loved him because I didn’t know whether I did.  It turns out I did love him, but I wasn’t in love with him.  That was you.  It was always you.” 

John swallowed heavily, running his fingers through his hair.  This was intense.  He could feel Marlena’s confusion, her pain.  The pressure they had both been under had been unfathomable.  They had shared that and yet they hadn’t.  They hadn’t held each other during that time.  Not physically, not emotionally.  They had stood across the room from each other and stayed silent, as though that would protect them and the people around them from the truth of their searing love for each other.

“But the next thing I knew, you were running off again when Isabella called.  And then she accosted me, accused me of keeping you hanging on, of enjoying having you and Roman running after me.”

“She what?” John blinked disbelievingly.

“She was upset.” Marlena leaned her head on one side.  “She thought since Roman was back, I should be satisfied with him and set you loose.  It was that simple for her, that obvious.  I can’t really blame her.”  She shrugged.  It hadn’t been a pleasant confrontation, but she had long ago accepted that Isabella’s anger had been understandable, if not entirely warranted.

“Oh man, Doc, I’m sorry.  I had no idea.”   John had known Isabella was frustrated and angry, but he hadn’t known that she’d taken those frustrations out on Marlena.  “It wasn’t your fault, baby.  I think she knew deep down that it was you that I wanted.  She was doing everything she could to hang onto me.  It was my fault for not being honest with her.”

“Well, she got what she wanted in the end, didn’t she?” Marlena said, a little bitterly.

John frowned.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean, she got you.  You chose her.”  Marlena pushed herself off the bottom step and walked back to the window.  She couldn’t look at him.  This hurt too much, even after all these years.  She had known, of course, when Isabella didn’t come back to their hut that night.  Roman had confirmed it when he’d told her John had likewise been absent until daybreak.  Roman had been overjoyed.  She had been devastated.

“I chose her?” John repeated, confused.

“In Mexico,” Marlena said softly.  “After the whole thing in the Castillo.  The two of you didn’t come back to the huts.  I was worried about Isabella.  Until I realized you’d spent the night together.”

“I wasn’t… that wasn’t me choosing her Doc.  I was… I’d just lost everything.  Isabella was there for me.”  He watched her across the room, her ponytail brushing lightly against the base of her neck as she leaned her forehead against the cool glass.

“How did you know you’d lost everything?” she asked in a faint voice as she twisted around, leaning back against the glass door once again.  “Did Isabella tell you that?  Because I didn’t.  You never gave me the opportunity.”

“I…” his throat felt raw with the grief he had experienced that day.  He had tried to convince himself that at the end of the search they would find the truth, that the other guy was an imposter, and he was Roman Brady.  And after that, he would go home to his beautiful wife and his amazing children and that would be it.  Although, on some level he had known that was not true, not given the memories he’d had in San Cristóbal and in Cancun.  But he had pushed that knowledge away, depending on a truth he had come to trust and cherish over five years before.  

And then Stefano had malevolently and gleefully torn everything away from him in a single moment.  He was not Roman Brady.  Marlena was not his wife.  She belonged to another man, as did his children.

In that moment, he thought he had lost everything.  And Isabella had been there.  Reminding him, that while he had lost everything else, he still had her.  And more than that, he would have a child of his own soon.  A family that no-one could take away.

Only, it wasn’t the family he wanted.

But he had clutched at it, at her, like a drowning man.  He had buried himself in her, wanting desperately to forget all the things he had just lost.

Had he chosen her?  Hell no.  Certainly not consciously.  But she’d been there, she was having his baby.  And Marlena was…. Marlena belonged to another man.  Had there even been a choice to be made?

“You were married to him,” he said finally.  “He had first claim on you.  You had children with him.  How could I compete with that?”

“I was not a prize to be won, John,” Marlena said angrily.  “I was, I am a human being.  I am a woman with my own thoughts and feelings and desires.  It was never up to you and Roman to slug it out between you.  He didn’t get to have me because he was Roman Brady.  Because he was first in line.”

“But you were married to him, Marlena.  You made vows to him.  I know how much that meant to you.  I know how much he meant to you.”  John pointed out.

Angrily, she stalked over to the dresser that was stacked with photos of their family.  She picked up their wedding picture, restored to its rightful place now that he was back in Salem and back in their lives, and she brandished it at him.

“I don’t accept that!  I was married to you.  Marriage is more than a piece of paper, a legal contract.  Marriage is a binding of hearts and souls.  Its vows made to each other in front of God and friends and family.  The last person I married with my heart and my soul, was you.”

“But you thought I was him,” John argued.  In the wake of that hour in the Castillo he had been convinced that Marlena would take Roman back and he had fled from that realization, straight into Isabella’s waiting arms.  The idea that he might have been wrong, that had he gone back and told Marlena that he still loved her, and he still wanted her, despite everything and she might have chosen him?  It was too much to bear.

“Again, no!” She slammed the picture back down on the dresser, knocking over the pictures around it so that they toppled like dominos.  The pictorial moments of their life scattering, much as the real events had.  “I wish people would stop telling me how I feel or felt about you.  I loved you because you were you.  I told Roman that before we even went to Mexico.  He said you took his place, and I told him that no, you made a new place for yourself in my life.”  She paced across to the sofa and then back to the window, trying to put her thoughts in order before she continued.  “I didn’t realize until much later but Roman didn’t see me as an equal.  He saw me as less than capable, someone who couldn’t be trusted, who needed protecting from the world and from herself.  Someone who needed to be controlled.  He wanted to make me small so that he could be big.  He wanted me to cut pieces off myself to fit into the box he had made for me.”  She shook her head angrily.  She’d never voiced these thoughts about Roman to anyone.  Not even Laura.  But they had been there for a long time.  Maybe unwanted, definitely unvoiced.  But they were there.  

“You never did that.  You respected me, you treated me as an equal.  You never wanted me to be anything less than my best.  You let me grow into myself.  With you, I became a better and truer version of me.  And I wanted to be that Marlena.  The one who lived and loved fiercely and passionately.  The one who was terrified but did it all anyway.  The one who was married to you.  But you chose her.”

John was devastated by her revelations.  Propping his elbows on his knees, he clutched at his hair and stared at her in disbelief.  

“But that day… the day before we found the codices.  I… you were in the hut with him.  You were kissing him.  I walked in on you, and you pulled apart and I knew what was happening.  I     Doc, you’d already… I thought I was losing you.  I thought I’d lost you.”

“You thought you’d lost me because you made an assumption,” Marlena said miserably.  “Seems to be quite a pattern with us, doesn’t it?  We don’t ask questions, we make assumptions and then make decisions based on those assumptions.”  She moved to where they stored the drinks and picked out a solid tumbler which she took back to the table.  Picking up the bottle, she splashed a liberal serving of brandy into the glass and picked it up.

“Baby, do you think you should?” John asked, suddenly on high alert.

“Probably not,” she threw back the liquid in a single mouthful, the liquid burning her throat as she forced it down.  “There are a lot of things I shouldn’t have done.  I’ll just add this to the list.”  She poured herself another helping and picked up the glass.  She took it back to the window and stared out over the city.  Lights flickered now in the gathering gloom, and she thought about Brady up in his room, reading his book.  Her beloved boy, a gift from Isabella.  She had taken John that day, but she had ended up giving so much more in return.  Marlena couldn’t be too angry with her.

“Yes, Roman kissed me that day,” she told him, not looking at him once again.  “He took me by surprise.  I was… I was curious to see if I felt anything when he did kiss me, if I am honest.”

“And did you?” John asked curiously.  He wasn’t sure what he wanted the answer to be.  If she’d felt nothing for Roman, if there had been no attraction there then why had she fought so hard to stay in the marriage during and after their affair?  And the idea of her being in a marriage devoid of any kind of real desire was too awful to contemplate.  Marlena was an intensely passionate woman, a woman who knew how to give and to take pleasure.  Which made it all the more incomprehensible that he could have accepted that she would remain single for all those years without an exceptional reason.

“There was something,” she admitted as she took another mouthful of the brandy.  “But it didn’t set my world on fire.  Not like you did when you kissed me.”  She looked back at him over her shoulder.  “Do you remember when you found me on the beach in Miami?”

“Remember?” he allowed himself a small smile.  “Talk about setting the world on fire.  The world could have burned down around my ears in that moment, and I wouldn’t have noticed.”

“That’s all I ever wanted,” she said quietly as she half-turned, leaning against the door with her shoulder.  “You and me and the children.  But you made love to her, and then you came and said goodbye.  And it was over.  Our marriage was over.  And I was just supposed to move on like it meant nothing.  When it meant everything to me.  Everything.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” he asked, her pain echoing in his eyes.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t tell you.” She sank down to the floor wearily.  “I’d made my feelings clear, or so I thought.  And you’d made your decision.  I had to accept it.  I had to move on.”

“Baby, I am so sorry,” John couldn’t believe that she’d been keeping all this inside for so long.  “I didn’t… If I’d had any idea you’d felt like that…”  He shook his head a thought occurring to him.  I don’t think I was actively making a choice.  I didn’t think there was a choice to be made.  Honestly, I just thought that was the way it had to be.  You were married to him.  She was having my baby.”

“We always make choices, John.  Even if we’re running away from a choice, that’s still a choice.”  She took another mouthful of the brandy and winced as she gulped it down.  “That day, I chose not to fight any more.  I gave up on us.  That was my choice.  You didn’t fight for me; so I was done fighting.  I couldn’t be the only one fighting for us.”  

She could still remember the desolation she’d felt.  Roman was little more than a consolation prize, and she’d felt just as guilty about that as she had felt destroyed by John’s choice.  As a result, she had chosen to double down on her commitment to Roman.  He had emerged from seven years of captivity and torture, and she’d felt he deserved her time and effort.  He never did discuss exactly what he had been through at the hands of Stefano’s men, no matter how much she had begged him to talk to her or to get therapy to work through it.  He had also never acknowledged that she’d lost five years of her life and that she still had no idea what had happened to her during those five years. 

She and John had made the journey to San Cristobal to find the truth about her missing years and they had found Roman instead.  The explanation that she had been held captive and comatose simply to control Roman hadn’t, and still didn’t, sit well with her, but she’d learnt her lessons about the dangers of seeking answers in the past.  She had simply accepted that it was probably just something she would never have answers to.  The past was the past and she doubted that there was any way that knowing the truth about what had happened to her would improve her future.

But Roman had come back a hardened and embittered man and no matter how much she had tried to find a way through his scar tissue, he had refused to open up his tortured soul to her.  He had known his past, but he was determined to keep it to himself.  He shut her out, tried to control her and the children and buried himself in work, trying to prove his worth to his family, friends and the world at large.  Trying, she guessed, to prove that he was a better man than the one that had replaced him.  In the end he had proved that he was anything but.

And she had been so lonely.  While he had worked and battled his own demons and taken off after Raffi Torres, she had tried to hold herself and her family together.  She had seen Isabella grow round with John’s baby and she had been tormented with quiet resentment that Isabella had a part of John she would never have.  She was carrying his child.  And then also, his name.  

Marlena had smiled and been the kind of good and supportive friend everyone expected her to be but in private, she had cried herself to sleep on long nights when Roman was gone or working another case, another stakeout or interrogation.   

In private, she had wept for the husband she wanted, not the husband she had.

And then they had received the news that Isabella was dying.

By then she had stopped wishing and hoping for anything more than friendship from John.  He loved Isabella and he was devastated by her death, that much was clear.  And Marlena had her own battles to fight.  Roman was impossible to live with.  It was hard to enter into intimacy with a man who didn’t respect her as a woman, as a person, as a professional.  He had sought to control her and their children.  Carrie had fled the family home, but Marlena had been trapped there with a husband who was argumentative, controlling and jealous of the time she spent with both her patients and with John, who had needed her support in the wake of Isabella’s death.

“I tried so hard to be what Roman needed, I really did,” she said softly.  “But he needed perfection.  He needed a wife who required nothing from him.  I couldn’t be either of those women.”

“Of course you couldn’t,” John watched her from across the room.  He felt the sadness drift over her as she spoke of Roman, of the hopelessness of rebuilding her marriage with a man who wanted the woman that she had been ten years prior.  He had watched how hard she had tried to make it work with the man, while he took her for granted, ignored her, looked right through her.  There were moments where he had resented Roman with everything he had.  There were moments he had hated the man for the way he had treated the greatest thing that had and would ever happen to him.

“I settled for being your friend because I couldn’t bear not having you in my life, but I can’t lie and say I was happy watching you make a life and a family with Isabella. I was so unhappy and at times, I was unbearably jealous of her, even though I couldn’t admit it, even to myself.  She had everything I wanted and what did I have?  A husband who wanted to treat me like a child.  A husband who didn’t respect me or my choices.”

“And yet, you chose to stay with him.” John pointed out.  He wasn’t going to take all the responsibility for their long separation.  She had also made some choices that had played into the mutual mistaken assumption each of them had made that the other just saw them as a dear, trusted friend.  “I made it clear how I felt about you, Marlena.  After we made it out of that warehouse.  After we almost died in each other’s arms.  After we made love on that jet.  I couldn’t have been more clear about how much I loved you.  How much I wanted you.  I pursued you relentlessly.  If you were so unhappy with Roman, you could have walked away.  So why didn’t you?”

Marlena wrapped her arms around herself protectively and took another mouthful of the brandy, emptying the glass for a second time.

“Doc?” John raised an eyebrow.

“I was scared,” she admitted eventually, her voice trembling.  “I know it probably doesn’t make sense but the feelings… when you found me in that nightmare, when we thought we were going to die… the feelings were so confusing.  I was… I’d been down there in the dark for weeks.  I was dehydrated and starving, and I knew I was going to die alone.  Not just that, but I would have died without anyone even knowing I was missing.  Roman thought I had abandoned him.  He thought I had abandoned my children.”  Her eyes filled with tears at the thought.  That Roman had thought so little of her, had thought she was so petty that she would ignore her children just to punish him.  He might have been able to walk away from his children, but she would never.  She would never.  “And then you were there.  You hadn’t just figured out that I was missing, you figured out where I was.  And you risked your own safety, your own life to find me.  Not even to save me.  Just to find me.”

“I will, every time, Doc.” John’s voice was full of warmth, sadness and empathy.  He remembered only too well how close to death she had been.  How terrified.  How she had clung to him.  How utterly beautiful she had looked, despite being filthy and emaciated.  “Every time.”

“Stella really did a number on me. Those weeks stuck down there.  I was questioning everything.  She thought I wanted to take Roger away from her.  Roger Lombard.” She laughed bitterly.  “But being stuck down there, alone in the dark, I admit, I started to wonder if I had strung Roger along.  I started to wonder if I was the terrible wife and mother Roman seemed to think I was.  That Stella accused me of being.”

“Oh Doc, no!” John exclaimed.

“John, I was hallucinating.  Roman.  Samantha.  You.  I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.  She ripped opened the scars of ancient wounds as well as newer ones.  She absolutely broke me.  Honestly, when you found me, I think you saved my sanity as well as my life.  But that… hell I went through, it left emotional injuries I didn’t… couldn’t admit to.   I was deeply traumatized by what happened, but I buried it deep and convinced myself I was fine.  Convinced everyone else.  But it came out in unanticipated ways.  You know it did.  I made impulsive decisions.  My feelings for you spilled over.  I couldn’t control myself.  And all of it seemed to underline the insecurities that Stella had picked the scabs off.  Roman knew he had a lot to make up for and it seemed like he was really trying…”

“Was he?” John remembered being shocked that Roman had left Marlena at home alone mere days after she’d been released from hospital.  She had been afraid of the dark before she’d been trapped below the warehouse, he couldn’t imagine how terrified she must have been afterwards.  

“For a little while.”  She pushed the hair off her head with the heel of her palm and blew out a long breath.  “I guess I wanted to believe he was trying.  I wanted to think he cared enough to try.”  She pushed herself up from the floor and went across to the table where the brandy sat, temptingly on the table.  John watched her pick it up and unscrew the cap.

“No, Doc.  Don’t.”  He scrambled up and crossed the room quickly, pulling the bottle out of her hand.  

“Are you telling me what to do?” she asked irritably.

“No.  I’m just asking you to think about it for a moment.  You told me earlier on that it was better if you didn’t drink right now.  I know this is hard.  I know this hurts.  It hurts me too.”  He took the bottle top from her other hand and screwed it back onto the neck of the bottle before putting it on the table.  Then he lifted his hand to her face, taking her chin between his finger and thumb and forcing her to look at him.  “The alcohol might dull the pain but is that really what you need right now?  Or do you need a clear head?”

Her eyes swam with tears.  She knew he was right.  She was replacing the sex with alcohol again.  And what would inevitably happen was that the alcohol would impair her impulse control, and she would end up throwing herself at John.  That wasn’t at all what she wanted.  At least, it wasn’t what she needed.  

“It hurts,” she whispered, and he nodded, wiping the tears away from beneath one eye with his thumb. 

“If it didn’t hurt so damn much, we would have done this a long time ago,” he said softly as he smoothed his fingers down over her cheekbone and tangled them in her golden tresses.  His palm fit against her cheek like it was made to hold her.  He stared into her smoky green-gold eyes, bright with all the pain she carried, pain which had been carried for years, buried beneath her skin.  Pain which was now erupting, fresh and new, like hot lava, searing paths through her emotions, her psyche.  She was scarred, as surely as if she’d been sliced with a knife.  And he had wielded the blade.  He had, Roman had.  Stella, Isabella, Kristen.  They had all taken their pound of flesh from her.  And she had given and given and given, until she had nothing left to give.  

Until finally she had said goodbye.  Because that was all she had left.

“You are the strongest, most incredible person I have ever met.”  He told her gently.  “What you have been through, what you have survived.  It’s unbelievable you’re still standing.  And yet, here you are.”  He brushed his thumb across her cheek, and she shivered.  “I know you’re hurting; I understand how brave you have to be to do this.  But I want you to know that I am here.  I am here for it all.  I’ve got you baby.  If you have to fall apart, I will hold you until you can put yourself back together.  You can trust that none of this is going to phase me.  I love you and I’m not going anywhere.”

He lifted his other hand and framed her face.  “I love you Doc,” he dipped his head and drifted his lips across hers.  “I love you so much.”

Part Quarante Quatre 

Combat
I’m ready for combat
I say I don’t want that
But what if I do?

‘Cause cruelty
Wins in the movies
I’ve got a hundred thrown-out speeches
I almost said to you

Easy they come
Easy they go
I jump from the train
I ride off alone
I never grew up
It’s getting so old
Help me hold on to you

The Archer – Taylor Swift

Marlena gasped at the whisper-light touch of his lips on hers and then, without warning, she snaked her arms around his neck and pulled him into her, crushing her lips against his.

John groaned as she opened her mouth, her tongue sliding between his lips, teasing him, tasting him. While his right hand remained tangled in her hair, his left found her waist, sliding beneath her sweatshirt and her t-shirt until he encountered the warm skin of her lower back. She moaned into his mouth and the vibration of the sweet noises she made against his lips traveled down like wildfire to his groin. He felt himself harden in response and he grunted again.

The feeling of her lips on his. The way her hands clutched at his hair, desperate and needy. Her body, lithe and soft, pressing against him. The gentle, breathy sighs and whimpers that punctuated her kisses. All of it conspired to drive rational thought from his conscious mind.

This could so easily sweep out of control, flaring up and consuming both of them if they let it. Once their bodies took over, there was little, it seemed, that they could consciously do to stop the natural progression of their mutual desire.

He kissed her again, hard, his tongue tangling with hers in first his mouth and then in hers. His hand slipped down beneath the waistband of her sweats and caressed the soft curve of her incredible ass.

He was desperate to feel her, to bring his hand between her thighs, to slide his fingers into her panties and see how wet she was for him. She had been haunting his dreams lately. Visions of her fingering herself in the shower, bringing herself to climax in his bed had kept him awake night after night until he finally gave in and stroked his cock while he moaned her name.

Now she was here, warm and fragrant against him. Her scent made him dizzy. Lavender, strawberries, and sex. God, he wanted to taste her, to suckle her nipples, slide his fingers through her slippery warmth until she came, arching her back and crying his name.

“I love you Doc,” he murmured again against her jaw. “God, I love you so much. So much.”

“I love you,” she pulled back and looked into his eyes, midnight blue and burning with desire for her. She was breathless with her need for him. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

She slid her hand around to cup his cheek. “But we need to stop this.” She didn’t want to stop it, the ache between her thighs demanded that they continue. She wanted to feel him touching her, licking her, filling her. She wanted him to talk away her pain, to silence it with his body and his mouth and his sweet endearments. But it would, she knew, only be temporary. And once they had stopped talking and started making love, would they ever restart this conversation again?

John took a staggered breath. He was almost beyond being able to stop but he saw the conflict in her eyes, and he knew she needed his strength and his love much more than she needed his body right now. It was what was good but hard for them versus what felt good and was easy.

“Okay,” he drew his hand out of her sweatpants and stepped back from her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

“It’s okay,” she said, her voice muted. “I wanted you to kiss me. This is a two-way street. I want you as badly as you want me, I just know I’m not ready for it yet.”

“I’m on board, baby,” John smiled haltingly, smoothing her tousled hair and tucking it back behind her ear. “It’s just hard. I want you so much. My body just does things when you’re near and this madness comes over me when I touch you. But I know you’re right. This conversation needs to happen. So, I’m still listening.”

He took her hand and pulled her back to the sofa. Sitting down, he tugged on her hand until she was sitting next to him. Leaning down, he grabbed her legs and pulled them up and over his thighs so that her knees were slightly bent across his lap. Then he looped his arm around her waist, pulling her close.

“You were talking about the warehouse, about Stella,” he said in a low, empathetic voice. “I know that’s bringing up a lot of feelings for you. Probably things you’ve never really talked about. Things you’ve probably tried hard not to even think about. So, I know this is hard, I know it hurts. But she can’t hurt you now. And I’m not going to hurt you again, I promise. So, this is a safe space. How did what happened with Stella and that pit mean that you weren’t prepared to leave Roman?”

Marlena swallowed, her throat tight again. Looking down, she noted that one side of John’s shirt had come untucked from his jeans, and she picked up the edge of it and played it through her fingers.

“I…” she pressed her lips together. “I couldn’t sleep for weeks after we got out of that pit. When I did sleep, it was with all the lights blazing. And I couldn’t stop thinking about you. About the things we’d talked about down there in the dark, the way you’d tried to keep my spirits up. My emotions were all over the place and once again, Roman just seemed to ignore everything that had happened. I mean, he was and he was caring, but he still carried on like… like life was normal. When nothing was normal. The twins were in Colorado, I had almost died and every time I tried to talk about it, he’d just brush me off. He’d tell me it was over I didn’t have to worry about it, to think about it .”

John pressed a kiss to her hair. Any goodwill he’d built up towards Roman in the years since he’d left Salem was rapidly vanishing with every word out of Marlena’s mouth. The man was a controlling, pig-headed asshole, and he hadn’t deserved any of Marlena’s love and loyalty

“And then things with you… my feelings started to boil over. I was out of control. And you know what happened next.”

“I wish our affair hadn’t hurt so many people, most especially you, baby.” John reached out and ran his thumb over her cheek. “But I’ll never regret it. The night I kissed you on that plane, I felt more alive than I had since that beach in Miami. More alive than I had since I thought you’d died.”

“I wish… I wish we… I wish I’d made different choices,” she said guiltily. “I was so confused… After what happened when I was trapped in that warehouse, and then you with you planning to leave Salem… it made me frantic. I know it doesn’t make sense, but you were the one thing I felt I could depend on when everything had been turned upside down.” She worried her lower lip with her teeth as she tried to make sense of the multitude of thoughts warring inside her head. Even now, she could barely understand her own feelings or put them into any kind of context with the sequence of events that had led to that feverish night on the Alamain Jet. Or indeed why she had subsequently insisted that she had to stay committed to Roman, rather than following her heart.

“I was already questioning so much, because of Stella, because of how hard things were with Roman. I was so scared, because things were already so chaotic. In my head. In my marriage. I couldn’t… there was no solid ground. It didn’t matter how unhappy I was because was barely hanging on by my fingertips, and I was clinging to any kind of stability. And Roman, my marriage, the Brady’s. They were all… it was hard, but it was familiar hard. Leaving Roman for you was… I couldn’t even contemplate that kind of change. Do you understand?”

John frowned. He wasn’t entirely sure he did understand what it was she was trying to say.

“Sometimes it’s better the devil you know,” she said softly. “If I’d left Roman for you, what would have happened? What did happen when he found out about us? I couldn’t deliberately put the family through that. I wouldn’t put the children through it. Of course, if I had known then how it would turn out, maybe I would have made different decisions, but I didn’t know. I was just trying to stay afloat, John. I was just trying to stay safe. Less than a year after coming back to Salem, I almost died at Stella’s hands. I didn’t feel safe. I just needed to feel safe.”

John nodded and rubbed her thigh comfortingly. “I understand,” he said. “At least I think I do.”

“It’s easy to see, to say in hindsight what we should have done.” She stared at his hand before she touched her hand to his wrist, sliding her fingers up his forearm. Watching the way his muscles flexed, the way the dark hair stood to attention at her touch. “I regret so much. I regret all the time we lost. I regret that you weren’t able to be there when I was pregnant with Belle.” She looked up and caught his gaze with her own. “I am so sorry about that. I’m so sorry you missed that experience, that you missed those first months.”

“I’m just sorry we didn’t get to share it, baby,” he said sadly. “You didn’t know. Sami took that away from us.”

“Sami was just trying to protect her father,” Marlena leaped to her daughter’s defense, even whilst knowing what Sami had done was indefensible.

“What Sami did, changed the trajectory of our lives,” John reminded her. “If I had known Belle was my daughter before she was born, it would have changed everything. I never would have let you stay in that miserable marriage with Roman. We would have been able to tell him privately. Maybe we could have been together all these years. But instead, we were robbed of that. I’m not… I’m not saying I hold Samantha responsible for all the terrible things that have happened to us. But she played a part. We can’t pretend that isn’t a fact.”

“She played a part because she was traumatized by what she saw at Titan that night,” Marlena reminded him. “Because I was so caught up in my feelings for you. I tried so hard, again and again, to push you away and then I, I lost my head. And Sami paid the price.”

“Sweetheart, you’d just been through hell. I’d just lost Isabella. We’d both been in deep denial about our feelings for each other. We thought we could dismiss them, switch them off. Bury them. But we were wrong. We made mistakes, for sure, but I don’t think making love to you was a mistake. It was the natural conclusion to everything that had happened over the previous eighteen months.”

Marlena said nothing, trying to absorb his words. The idea that their affair had been inevitable in the course of the circumstances that had dictated their separation and their reunion was something she had trouble with. But she was starting to hear what Laura had been saying about holding herself to impossibly high standards and that perhaps she should try accepting that she was human and imperfect from time to time.

“So, tell me.” John twisted his forearm and caught her hand with his before lacing his fingers between hers. “What else? What else did I do?” He frowned as he brushed his thumb across hers. “There’s more, I know there has to be more. We’ve been through too much for it to just be that.”

He felt the tension stiffen her back and he stroked her softly relishing the warmth of her so close to him. “It’s okay. I want to know it all, remember?”

“Even if it seems unreasonable?” she asked, her voice wavering.

“Why don’t you try me?” he encouraged. “I told you I want to hear everything, right?”

“You want to hear how much I resented you taking up with Rebecca Morrison, even though I was pushing you away and had absolutely no right?” she raised her eyebrows.

“Rebecca?” John raised his own eyebrows in return. “Baby, she was just a means to an end. I was just trying to take my mind off you.”

“I realize that.” Marlena pulled her hand from his and swung her legs off the sofa. She sat forward, her elbows on her knees, her hands tightly clasped. “I hated her. I hated that you were with her, even though you were trying to talk me into leaving Roman. It felt like you were trying to serve me an ultimatum. To make me jealous.” She looked sideways at him. “I can tell you it worked, if that was your intention.”

“I wasn’t trying to make you jealous, Marlena.” John shook his head, surprised that she would think that. “I wasn’t trying to force the issue with you. I just knew that if I was going to stay away from you, I had to find something, someone to occupy my mind. My body.” He gave a short, harsh laugh. “I wasn’t cut out for celibacy.”

“That much is clear,” she replied acerbically.

John flinched, cut by her carelessly hurtful response. “Care to tell me what you mean by that?”

“I mean I…” She had seen his pain and her immediate response was to shut down, to reassure him that she didn’t mean anything.

But that wasn’t the truth. His need for a warm body at all times was part of what had them in this mess and she needed to be honest with him about how much it hurt her.

“I thought, when I came back… I mistakenly thought that Isabella was the first woman you’d been involved with.” She turned away from him and pushed off the sofa again. His closeness made her honesty feel too brutal. Too hurtful. Walking back to the dresser, she picked up their wedding picture from where it lay amongst the scattered family portraits. “I know I told you… I wanted you to move on. But it hurt to know how fast you managed to do that.” She touched her fingers to his smiling young face, his arms curled around her waist. They had been so happy. Between the dramas, they had been so impossibly happy and in love.

“And I had to hear their names from Roman, of all people,” she exhaled deeply.

“I’m sure he took great pleasure in telling you,” John growled.

“I think he thought I already knew.” Marlena kept her back to him, studying the picture in her hands. Simpler times. She wondered how different their lives would have been, had she never been taken from him. How different he would be. How different she would have been. “I didn’t ask him for details. He just mentioned that both Diana and Yvette had been linked to Victor. I had to do the digging after that to understand just what they had been to you. Imagine my surprise when I found out you had almost married Diana Colville less than two years after my death.”

“Doc…” John started.

“John, just let me say what I need to say,” she turned around, one of her hands holding tightly to the furniture behind her, the other holding their wedding picture to her chest as though it was armor. “This is so hard. I am so… I don’t want to hurt you and I don’t want you to think less of me. I know you think I’m strong and confident, and mostly I am. Except when it comes to you. When things are good with you, I feel like I can take on the world. But when the distance between us becomes unbreachable, I feel… fragile and insecure. I am insecure. I want to believe the best of you, but too much has happened to us. Because of us. I am sure you must have feelings about the decisions I’ve made too. I’ve made some terrible decisions that have hurt you. That have hurt both of us. I’m not pretending I am blameless in any of this. But I need you to hear me out. If you start telling me I am wrong, I won’t be able to carry on. And I need to say this. I’ve been holding it inside for a long time. Rightly or wrongly.”

John held up his hand and nodded. “I wasn’t going to say you’re wrong, honey. I was going to say how sorry I am you had to find out about Diana that way. I was… it was all wrapped up in the shock of you coming back. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t even think about it. Or maybe I did, and it was just another thing I avoided.” He frowned, his guilt and regret written all over his face. “But I am sorry, Marlena.”

“Thank you,” she forced a small smile. That hadn’t really been her point, but she appreciated his apology, nonetheless. “The point is, you became involved with Diana the year I died, and it was serious enough that you almost married her. Then you became involved with Yvette DuPres. And then Isabella, who you did end up marrying. And then Rebecca and after her, Kristen. I sometimes feel like maybe you just need to be with someone. And it doesn’t really matter who it is, as long as you have a warm body in your bed. And that sounds incredibly cruel when I say it out loud because I know that’s not who you are and I know you love me.  But it scares me how quickly you can move on and find someone new to share your bed and your life. You’re such a beautiful, passionate man and I know that there is no shortage of women who would be with you if you wanted them. Gina is a case in point. So, what makes me so special?” The casualness with which she shrugged belied the fact that she was revealing her deepest, darkest insecurity and fear. It was almost impossible to admit this to him. She had no idea how he was going to react, but she kept going anyway. He had to know it all, no matter how flaky and anxious it made her look. “What will keep you with me, long term? What if you get bored with me? I don’t think I could bear losing you again. I don’t know if I would survive it.”

John felt her words as a physical sensation inside his body. An explosion of shock and realization. A pain in his belly that radiated into his limbs and made him breathless and dizzy. His eyes widened and his face paled.

“You really think that?” he blinked, the surprise and the hurt registering on his face. “That I just need someone. And anyone will do?”

“I don’t really know what I think,” she tightened her hold on the picture she held and turned away from him, unable to bear witness to the way she had just cut him open. “I just know how I feel. I know how devastated you were when Isabella died. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I was a rebound after you lost her. Your life was a mess, just like mine was. You’d lost your wife, the mother of your small baby. And then we almost died. And I wonder sometimes if I’m just the safety you retreat to when things get too chaotic. I’m the safe place you come back to, only to move on again when the chaos retreats.”

“Oh Marlena, you couldn’t be more wrong.” John swallowed. “I can’t believe you’re saying this. I can’t believe you really think this. You can’t be serious, Doc!”

Marlena bowed her head, her heart aching deep in her chest.

“John, we’ve only ever had small bubbles of time together. We’ve never been afforded the opportunity to really test the longevity of our love. And I’ve seen you move from relationship to relationship, and it makes me doubt where I stand with you. It makes me question how you can love me so deeply and yet still give your time and affection to another woman.” She turned back to him. “I couldn’t do it. After Roman left, I could have accepted that you were never going to be mine and I could have tried to move on. I can’t pretend that I wasn’t asked out on dates, that there weren’t interested men. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t. My heart belonged to you, the only person I wanted touching my body was you. And if I couldn’t have you then I would have rather been single than settle for something that was a pale imitation of what I had with you.”

“What was Bo then?” John demanded, his previously tempered anger rising to the surface again. “Because you sure as hell moved on with him the moment my back was turned.”

“Bo was…” Marlena struggled for breath in the face of his anger. It was justified, she knew it. But she couldn’t let him derail her and catapult her into a round of apologies and shame. “Bo saved me when I was in danger of shattering. For the first few weeks, I convinced everyone, I convinced myself, that I was handling you walking away. But that day he came and told me you and Hope had left for Europe, something inside me broke.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I put on a good show. I’ve developed the ability to hide the worst of my internal turmoil over the years, but inside, I was on my knees. Bo was in the same place. We found ourselves in the middle of the wreckage of our lives and we gravitated together. I’m so sorry that hurts you but I am not going to apologize for doing what I had to do to keep my head above water. Bo held me together when I couldn’t hold myself together.”

“And you can’t understand why I needed the same thing?” John questioned angrily.

“It’s not the same thing,” The tears tumbled over her cheeks now. Despite all her vows to maintain her cool, and to keep her emotions in check, she felt provoked. She felt vulnerable and raw. “Bo was one man. After being hurt and disappointed over and over again. I was so lonely, John. I was empty and I was broken.”

“Bo was your brother,” John couldn’t help the anger flooding him. He stood and stalked across to where she stood. He knew he wasn’t being fair. But her accusation that he was simply filling his bed with the closest woman each time he was alone hurt him, and his immediate instinct was to hit back. Diana, Yvette, Isabella, Rebecca, and Kristen. There had certainly been no large gaps between them, but they hadn’t been close friends or family.

But Bo Brady… sleeping with Bo was practically incestuous.

“Bo was my friend.” Marlena cried, distraught at the turn the conversation had taken. “Bo was here. You weren’t. You weren’t here, John. You left us. You left me.”

“You threw me out!” John shouted. He saw her flinch and was immediately astonished by, and ashamed of, his anger. He had told her he would listen and here he was, tearing a strip off her about Bo. And why? Because she’d had the courage to call him on his neediness, his pathetic need to have a warm body in his bed to distract him from his need, his desire for this woman. This beautiful woman that he had hurt over and over, and was hurting again, even now.

“You were already gone,” she sobbed. “I didn’t know it wasn’t you. I didn’t know. I just knew I couldn’t live like that anymore. I couldn’t be that unhappy and that alone and pretend that everything was fine all over again. I couldn’t do it.”

“Doc-“

“Daddy?” they both turned at the sound of the voice from the top of the stairs. It was Brady, looking scared and upset. “Daddy? Why you shouting?”

There was silence for a moment as both Marlena and John tried to process what had just happened and the fact that Brady was witness to their arguing.

“You should go and see to your son,” Marlena said stiffly, wiping her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

“Doc, I…” he reached out to her, but she shrank back, backing up against the dresser as she tried to avoid his touch. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I shouldn’t have… I lost my temper. I shouldn’t have said those things. I’ll… let me put Brady to bed and then we can… we can sort this out.”

She said nothing, just stared at him with wide, hurt eyes. He frowned, his brows knitting as he tried to work out what to say to delete the past five minutes.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he said to her desperately. “I need to… I need to make this right.” He reached out again to touch her face. Again, she shied away, ducking his touch. He balled his hand into a fist and then nodded, worried and sorrowful.

Marlena watched him turn and mount the steps, sweeping Brady into his arms with a kiss and a soft murmur. A sob erupted from her as he rounded the corner and disappeared out of sight.

How could this evening have been going so well and then suddenly veered so off-course, so out of control?

She felt as though she couldn’t breathe. She felt so hurt, so betrayed by his anger. When he had promised he would be there for her, he would listen to it all, instead, he had become defensive, and he had attacked her to deflect from what she was trying to tell him. And in doing so, had magnified her pain.

Biting her lip and ignoring the tears which once again coursed down her cheeks, she looked to where he had disappeared once again. And then making up her mind, she crossed the room, pulled her coat out of the closet, and picked up her keys.

When John came back downstairs ten minutes later, she was nowhere to be seen.

Part Quarante Cinq

No words appear before me in the aftermath
Salt streams out my eyes and into my ears
Every single thing I touch becomes sick with sadness
‘Cause it’s all over now, all out to sea

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
You were bigger than the whole sky
You were more than just a short time
And I’ve got a lot to pine about
I’ve got a lot to live without

Bigger Than the Whole Sky – Taylor Swift

“Marlena?” Bo emerged out of the darkness and into the soft golden light that illuminated the pier she stood on.  “Hey gorgeous, what are you doing down here alone at this time of the night?”

Marlena sighed.  She didn’t want to see or talk to anyone right now, especially not Bo.

“I just… I needed some air,” she said quietly.

“You’ve been crying,” Bo came closer.  He noted the way she wrapped her arms around her body and shivered in the cool night air and his mouth tightened.  “What did he do now?”

“Nothing,” she replied huskily, trying to keep the pain locked inside.  She couldn’t let herself break down in front of Bo.

“You’re not down here crying for no reason, Marlena.”  He frowned.  “You shouldn’t be down here alone this late.  It’s not safe.”

“Where’s Hope?” she asked, ignoring his pointed remarks, and trying to shift the focus off herself.

“Hope is at Alice’s, with Shawn-D,” Bo looked out over the water.  “Things are… a bit tense right now.  She’s pretty pissed at me.  At us.”

“I guessed as much,” Marlena shivered again, and Bo came close behind her, lending his warmth to her.  “Bo-“  Her breath caught in her throat.  

“It’s okay, you’re cold,” he said nonchalantly.  “Just keeping you warm.”

“That’s not what you’re doing, and you know it.”  She moved away from him and turned to look at him, his face falling in the shadows.  “Bo, we can’t do this.  Hope has a right to be upset.  John has a right to be upset.  We can’t be down here alone together.  You certainly can’t be standing that close to me.”

“Is that why you were crying?” Bo asked.  She could detect a quiet note of satisfaction in his voice and maybe a sliver of hope.  “Has he been giving you a hard time about me?  About us?”

“There is no us,” Marlena replied quietly.  “Not anymore.  Maybe there never should have been.” 

Bo couldn’t respond to her.  It hurt too much to contemplate that she thought he might have been a mistake.  That what they’d had between them shouldn’t have happened.  But then, a small part of him thought that she might be right.  All of this hurt, it hurt him, it hurt her and it hurt Hope.  Fuck, it even hurt John, and as much as he hated and resented John right now, there was still a part of him that thought of John as his brother. 

He just watched her from where he stood in the shadows as his contemplation was interrupted by the shrill ringing of her phone.

She fished it out of her pocket and stared at the small grey screen.  Pressing a button, she slipped it back into her pocket.

“That him?” he asked.  

She said nothing in response, she didn’t need to.

“I’m still in love with you,” Bo said finally.  “I can’t stop thinking about you.  Hope can tell something isn’t right and she thinks it’s you.  I keep telling her she’s wrong, but she’s right, Marlena.”  He stepped forward into the light and she could see his chocolate brown eyes glittering in the golden fluorescence of the lights that lined the damp wooden struts.  “It’s not the same with Hope because I can’t get you out of my head.”  He swallowed heavily.  This was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to say. Both because he felt like he was betraying Hope, but also because he had to lay his heart on the line, most likely to have it trampled.  “I dream about you at night.  I find myself daydreaming about you when I should be paying attention to my family.”  He ran his fingers through his close-cropped hair.  He looked tired.  He looked miserable.  “If you haven’t… I have to ask… if you’re not with John, maybe… is there still a chance for us?”

“Oh, Bo.”  She exhaled shakily, her heart heavy.  This was why Caroline had been so angry from the beginning.  And it was probably why she was still angry.  She had seen this coming.  She had known Bo’s heart was going to be a complicating factor.  That he was going to fall and fall hard.

“I just,” he stepped close to her again and reached out, taking her hand in his.  “I have to ask.  I have to know.  Maybe if you say no, I’ll be able to move on.  But I keep thinking, I keep hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe, you’ll say yes.  You’ve realized you have feelings for me too.  And that’s why you aren’t with him.”

“No.”  She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears.  “Bo, my feelings haven’t changed.  You’re one of my best friends.  I love you but I’m not in love with you.”  She swallowed and pulled her hand from his.  “I love John.  I’m in love with John.  It will always, always be John.  Bo, he’s my beginning, my middle and my end.”

“And yet, you’re down here, alone, crying.”  He pointed out, his tone veering into the acerbic as his frustration and disappointment mushroomed.  “He’s not good for you Marlena.  He just hurts you, over and over again.  You keep going back to him and he keeps breaking your heart.  When are you going to learn that he’s only interested in one thing, and that’s John Black.”

“That’s not fair, Bo.”  Marlena was angry now.  She understood that Bo was hurting but he was wrong.  However much John had upset her earlier, to claim that he was only thinking about himself was patently incorrect.  “He’s been very patient with me.  He just… he’s still upset about the fact that I turned to you.  I can’t blame him.  This was a mistake.  Too many people have been hurt.”

Bo stared at her for a moment and then he stalked across the pier, his footsteps muted against the damp wood.  Turning around he looked at her, frowning, ignoring her last assertion.  He wasn’t going to dignify that with a reply.  He wasn’t sure what his reply would be if he did.  “What does he expect?  That you’ll spend the rest of your life watching him get distracted by the latest revelation about his past or the next woman that catches his eye and you’ll just keep taking him back?”  

“Don’t!” she held up her hands.  His words hit too close to home, and she didn’t want to hear them.

“It’s so damn frustrating having to watch this from the sidelines!” his jaw set obstinately.  “You deserve better than that.  You deserve to be fucking cherished.  Not tossed aside the moment he gets bored.”

“Bo, please don’t!”  Her eyes welled with tears again and Bo felt a lurch of guilt deep in his belly.    

“Is that why you’re upset?” he asked, a little more harshly than he intended.  “If he’s messing you around again, I swear I’m gonna-“

“No,” Marlena shook her head, wiping the tears from her face with the sleeve of her coat.  “It’s not that.  It’s not that at all.  He’s been wonderful.  He’s been… he’s doing everything he can to prove to me that he’s not going to hurt me again.”

“Oh.”  Bo felt guilty for his immediate flash of disappointment.  He didn’t want to see her in pain, but he also didn’t want to hear about how John was doing all the right things to win her back.  He knew that John was prone to big, romantic sweeping gestures that would turn a woman’s head, but Bo questioned whether he could translate that into long-term commitment.  His track record wasn’t exactly fantastic, after all.  “Then what is it?” he asked gently.  “What did he do?  Why are you down here alone?”

“I don’t think….” She pressed her lips together.  She shouldn’t be talking to Bo about this.  It would drive John crazy if he knew she’d gone straight to Bo in her distress.  But then, she hadn’t gone straight to Bo, he’d just found her here.  And he was her friend.  Except, was he?  After everything that had happened between them, could they really be friends?  Could he be her friend when he was in love with her?  Wasn’t it likely that anything he might say, any advice he might give her, would be colored by his feelings?  Not that she thought he would deliberately try and manipulate the situation, manipulate her.  That wasn’t Bo’s style.  He was a good man who mostly had the best of intentions.  But she knew he would willingly believe the worst of John and try and persuade her that his perspective was correct, simply because it might give him the opening to convince her that she should be with him instead.

She also knew that it would be the worst outcome for them all.  Bo’s infatuation with her was just that, an infatuation.  He loved Hope and he was running away from his feelings and all the hurt and responsibility and hard work required to fix things, just as surely as she had been running from John.  He was avoiding what he needed to do by focusing on what temporarily felt good.  That was, he was avoiding what was right but required feeling the pain and working hard on communication and the rebuilding of trust.

“Bo, I know you think you’re trying to help, but you need to go home and be with Hope.”  She shivered, not because it was cold, but because of the multitude of emotions she was feeling.

“Hope doesn’t want me there, right now.” Bo’s throat tightened.  He’d been with Hope at her grandmother’s house where she had been staying since their return and they’d had an almighty row over the way he’d been looking at Marlena in the pub earlier.  She had practically thrown him out on his ear, and he had headed straight for his boat, as he always did when he needed to think.  But on his way, he had seen Marlena down here, looking out over the river, her melancholy almost tangible, like a pool of sadness spreading around her.   

He had been drawn to her, both concerned about her safety down here in the dark as well as just wanting to be close to her.  He knew this was doomed but he couldn’t stay away from her.   “Just talk to me, Marlena.  We said we were still friends, didn’t we?”

She frowned as he stepped closed to her.

“Bo, John would go crazy if he found us down here alone.”  She eased back a step.  “This isn’t a good idea.”

“I knew it!” Bo glared at her.  “He’s been giving you a hard time about me, hasn’t he?  He’s angry at you because you dared to actually discover that you could feel good with someone else instead of feeling taken for granted by him!”

“That’s not fair!” Marlena cried.  “That’s not…  we were talking about the past.  I was telling him how I felt about what happened when I came back.  And about his relationships with… the other women… how they made me feel.  He pointed out that I had done the same thing.  Run into someone else’s arms to outrun the pain.  Except that person was you.  And you’re like a brother to him Bo.  He trusted you.  And you’re Roman’s brother.  So, it’s all too close to home for him.  Too…” she hesitated to use the word that John had implied in his scathing assessment of her liaison with Roman’s brother.  Incestuous.  It had been echoing in her head ever since she had run from the penthouse to try and escape the overwhelming pressure she felt of his emotions colliding with hers.

“Maybe he should have thought about that before he ran off with Hope and left us both high and dry and alone,” Bo said snidely.  “What did he think was going to happen?  You’re beautiful and one of the best people I know, did he really think you were going to hang around and just pine after him forever?”

“He wasn’t himself Bo, he wasn’t thinking anything because his conscious thought had been taken over by that chip that Stefano put in his head.”  She looked sad and regretful.  “And he’s hurt because he thinks I should have known that it wasn’t him.  That he wouldn’t behave like that.  And I should have known.  I should have.”

“What, that he wouldn’t go sniffing after another woman?  He does remember he married Isabella?  And almost married Kristen DiMera?”  Bo gave a snort of derision.  “His track record sucks.  He needs to take a look in the mirror before he starts pointing the finger at you.  At least he knows how it feels now.”

“This was never about revenge.”  Even as she said it, Marlena wondered.  On some level, had she chosen Bo because she had known it would hurt John?  And Hope?   She didn’t think so, but she wondered if that was how John saw it.  And if that was why he had reacted the way he had.  Did he think somehow that she was trying to get even by sleeping with Bo?  

“I know that,” Bo stepped closer to her again.  He could smell her scent.  It brought back an avalanche of memories, old and new.  Kissing her.  Making love to her.  Holding her in bed while she cried.  He hated to think that she was opening herself up to John decimating her all over again.  “Marlena, I just can’t stand the thought of watching him hurt you again.  You and I… we went through a lot the last few months.  We shared a lot.  We cried together.  I think we healed a little, together.  I’m scared about what it might do to you if he walks away again.”

Marlena searched his face for a moment.

“You don’t need to worry about me, Bo.” She told him, her voice thick with sorrow.  “You should worry about yourself and Hope.  She needs therapy.  She’s been through so much.  And I think she’s lashing out at the people who love her.”  She put her hand on his arm.  “You need to be patient with her.”

“She’s really angry, Marlena.”  Bo looked apprehensive.  “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen her so angry.  About everything.  At everyone.”

“She’s been through hell, and she has no answers,” she reminded him.  “Stefano used her body and supplanted her own consciousness, and she doesn’t know why.  She must feel violated.  She must feel traumatized.  She’s had to fight for you, for your relationship over and over again.  I think this time she needs you to be the one that fights, Bo.”

“What if I don’t want to?” he asked plaintively. 

“If you’re still hoping there’s a chance for you and me, then I have to tell you definitively that there is not,” she replied firmly.  She reached out and laid her hand on his arm.  “I know you don’t want to hear that right now but in time, you’ll know I’m right.  I love John.  I may not be with him right now and things might be hard and we’re both hurting, but I know John and I know us.  We will end up gravitating back together.  Sooner or later, we will be together again.  We can’t stay away from each other.  Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe not.”  She shrugged with a nonchalance she didn’t feel.    “Maybe I’ll get hurt again, yes.  But there’s something I do know.  I will survive it, whatever happens.  You need to let this… what we shared… go now.  You need to look to your future because that future doesn’t include me.  I hope it does include Hope but only you can answer that question.  Whether you want it to.  And whether you’re willing to fight for your love and work for your relationship with her.”

Bo stared at her.  He wasn’t sure how to let her go.  He wasn’t sure if he could.  He looked down as she squeezed his arm, and he randomly noted the nude pink of her beautifully shaped nails.  He recalled the way her fingers felt threading through the hairs on his chest and closed his eyes.

“How do I stop thinking about you?” he asked, feeling lost.  

“You just take it day by day,” she said softly.  “And you decide what it is that you do want, and you work towards it.”

“You make it sound so easy,” he twisted his forearm and caught her hand in his.

“It’s not easy,” she shook her head, allowing him to hold her hand for a moment.  “Fixing things is hard Bo, that’s why we run away.  That’s why we distract ourselves with things that feel good, that seem good, but there’s no future in living your life that way.  You and I, we’re good friends…. and we helped each other through a tough time but in retrospect, and I know you don’t want to hear it, but I think it was a mistake.  So, there’s no future for us.  We’re too different, and not in the good way that you and Hope are.”  

She managed a small smile as she thought about Bo and Hope when they were at their best.  When they were passionate and clashing but still communicating and loving each other with everything they had.  “You two spark off each other.  When you’re good together, you light up the world with your love.  But a relationship like yours takes a lot of work, it takes good communication, it takes forgiveness and grace.  I’m sure you can find your way back to each other but you both have to be prepared to put in the work.  You need to remember what you love about each other and build on that.  What is it about Hope that lights you up, that makes your heart beat faster?  Find those things and you’ll remember why you want to make this work.”

“And you and John?” Bo tightened his grip on her hand as she tried to withdraw it.  “What is it about him that lights you up?”

She chewed on the inside of her lip for a moment, wondering how to respond to him.  Finally, she decided that only the truth would do.  He needed to understand that she would always return to John, no matter what.

“He knows me,” she said slowly.  “When we’re good, he sees into the depths of my soul, and he loves me for all the lightness and the dark too.  He respects me, my decisions, my work, and how I choose to live my life.  He’s protective, sometimes overprotective but he would never stop me from doing what I need to do, what I know is right.  He’s kind, he’s generous and he cares intensely about the people in his life.  He has his flaws and he’s made his share of mistakes, but he wants to be better.  And he’s getting therapy so he can be better because he wants to make things work.  Because he loves me.”

“Do you trust him not to hurt you again?” Bo asked hesitantly.  

“Do I?”  She thought about it carefully.  She wanted to trust him.  At the very least, it wasn’t an automatic expectation that he would hurt her now.  But just the fact that she was here now after fleeing the penthouse in tears meant that her trust in him wasn’t anywhere near unassailable yet.  She didn’t think it ever would be.  And maybe that was as it should be.  Wasn’t that what love was about, after all?  Knowing that you could be hurt but opening yourself up to that chance in order to experience the wonder and joy of being completely known and loved by another human being?

“No, I’m not there yet.  I don’t know that I’ll ever be completely there.  I think for all the good intentions any of us have, there is always the danger that we will hurt the people we love.  That’s the nature of being human.  But I know he doesn’t want to hurt me.”

“And yet, here you are,” Bo looked around them. 

“Here I am.”  This time she withdrew her hand.  “But this is just a momentary pause, Bo.   We’re talking about hard things.  We’re uncovering a lot of hurt.  It’s uncomfortable for both of us.  It’s painful.  But I’m committed to doing this.  And I’m sure he is too.  We’re going to have tough moments, moments where we miscommunicate, where we hurt each other.  That’s only to be expected.”

“You sound like you’ve got it all figured out,” Bo’s mouth twitched into a sad smile.

“Hardly,” she managed a small chuckle.  “But I do have the advantage of having a little training in this.  Although it would be helpful if I took my own advice from time to time.”

“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked, knowing already what her answer would be.

“I know I want to try,” she said honestly.  “I know I love him.  I know what we can have is worth making the effort to overcome the hurt we’ve both suffered.”

“Well then, I wish you all the luck in the world,” he said at long last, and he really meant it.  At least at this moment, he really meant it.  He loved her and he wanted her to be happy.  If only John could be the man she wanted, she needed him to be then he knew she would be gloriously happy.  How could he not want that for her?  “I hope he lives up to your faith in him.”

“I just want you to be happy, you know that?” she asked him, her eyes glittering deep green in the fluorescent lighting.  “You’re very important to me.  And so is Hope, no matter what has happened.  I wish I could help you find your way back to her.  But I have to accept that in this moment, all I am likely to do is make things worse.”  She took a deep breath.  “I think we should stay away from each other. For the moment, anyway.  We need to rebuild trust with Hope and with John.  Every time we’re in the same space, it will serve as a reminder to them of what we did.”

“But we didn’t do anything wrong!” Bo argued.

“That is as maybe,” Marlena agreed.  “But it’s not about whether it was wrong or right.  It’s about how John and Hope feel about it.  John wasn’t wrong to have a relationship with Kristen after I pushed him away.  But it hurt me.  Because it made me question how he feels about me.  You don’t think that John and Hope are asking themselves the same questions after we fell into bed together the same day that they left Salem?”

She lifted her hand and touched her fingers to his cheek briefly.  “I know you don’t like it.  I don’t like it either.  But we did this.   We blurred the boundaries.  We’re overfamiliar.  That’s natural but it’s no good if we want to mend things with John and with Hope.  If we’re to have any hope of healing, of letting them heal, we need to do this.  For them.  For us.”

She didn’t add that he needed space from her to heal himself too.  If he was in love with her, or even suffering from mere infatuation, he needed distance and time to get over her.  Seeing her on a regular basis would be like ripping a scab off an open wound.

“I’ll keep my distance from the pub as much as I can,” she said softly, taking a step backward again.  “They’re your family.”

“They are your family too,” he told her, unwilling to contemplate the thought of not seeing her.  Of losing her from his life in totality.

“Caroline is still angry with me,” Marlena pointed out sadly.  “I don’t think I’d be greatly missed.”

“I’ll miss you,” he said, tears welling in his eyes.  “I hate this.  I hate that it’s come to this.”

“I hope it won’t be forever,” a soft, sad smile flickered briefly over her face.  “But it’s the only way.  For now.”

Bo said nothing, just stared at her, as though trying to memorize her face.

 “Thank you,” she said finally.  

“What for?” he asked, confused.

“For helping me make sense of tonight,” she gave a graceful little shrug.  “When I came down here, I was really upset, irrationally so.  Talking to you has helped me put things into perspective.  So, thank you for that.”

“Are you going back to him now?” he asked.

“I’m going back home, yes.  And he’s there.  I don’t know if we’ll talk any more tonight.  I think I need a break.  But we will talk again.  And we’ll sort this thing out.  I know we will.”  She stepped forward again, pausing for a moment.  “Goodbye Bo.”

“Goodbye Marlena.”  He wanted to grab her, pull her into his arms and hold her tight.  He wanted to cry into her hair, and he wanted to kiss her.  But he just nodded.

She smiled and bowed her head in return.  And then she turned and walked away.  

Bo took a deep breath and watched her go.

It was really over.

*

John was sitting on the sofa, his elbows on his knees, his eyes fastened to the door when she finally walked into the penthouse.

“I was worried about you,” he said softly.  “I called you several times, but you didn’t answer your phone.”

“I was… I needed time to think,” she said, shrugging her coat off her shoulders and laying it over the back of a chair.

“Doc… Marlena, I’m sorry,” he stood as she walked across the room towards him.  “I shouldn’t have said those things.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” she shook her head.  “But I over-reacted.  I can’t tell you how I feel and not expect you to get upset.  That was hurtful.  I hurt you.  I’m sorry too.”

“You were just being honest,” John acknowledged gently.  “I’ve been thinking about what you said, and I can see how you might… how you would feel that way.  Like I… have no discretion.  That I’m needy and wrap myself up in the first woman to come along to insulate myself from the loneliness and the pain.” He exhaled deeply.  “There might be a certain amount of truth to that.  With other women.  But not with you, Doc.  Never with you.  All those other women, they were only because I couldn’t have you.  You need to know that.  It’s always been you.”

Marlena stepped closer to him and looked up into his dark eyes.  His face was full of fear and doubt, and she hated that she’d put it there.

“Honey, since the moment I shook your hand in Shenanigans, it’s always been you.” She reached up and caressed his face with her cool fingers.  “I thought I loved Don and Roman, but I didn’t know real, unconditional love until I fell in love with you.  I need you to know that.  And I’m so sorry I’ve hurt you.”  She stood on tiptoes and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.  “It’s going to be okay, John.  I know that I’ve been blowing hot and cold, and I can’t promise you that I won’t still drive you crazy with my need to work through everything.  But it’s going to be okay.”   

“Are you saying…”  John was confused.  He wasn’t entirely sure what it was she was saying.  He knew what he wanted it to be but wanting didn’t make it so.  

“I’m saying that I love you.  And that I want to be with you.”  She smiled, but it was a smile full of trepidation.  “But there’s still a lot to sort through first.  I don’t want to… I’m not ready for anything physical yet.  But tonight has made me realize, it’s made me sure that we’ll get there.  In time.”

“I’m in it for the long haul, baby,” he smoothed her hair between his fingers, studying her beautiful face, her cheeks flushed with a rosy bloom from the cool night air.  “I’ll wait.  As long as you need.”

“I appreciate that,” Marlena stifled a yawn.  “We still have a lot we need to talk about.  And I know I have some explaining of my own to do.  But not now.  I’m exhausted.  I don’t think I’m up to any more of this tonight.”

“Doc,” he started.  

“Please John,” she shook her head.  “I know that we need to continue this, I want to, but I really can’t right now.  Not tonight.  I need some space, some time to process what we’ve said so far.”

John took a deep breath and nodded slowly.  He had half expected her to come home and still be furiously angry with him.   A small, insecure part of him had expected her to throw him out, to tell him she was done with him, and to never come back.

So, this was okay.  This he could accept, and he could deal with.  But he needed a timeline. He needed to know when he would be able to finish this with her.  To tell her how he had felt when she returned.  And how he felt about all the mistakes they had both made over the past seven years.  He needed to explain why he had done the things he had done which seemed selfish and stupid to her.  He needed to make things right with her.

“When?” he asked.  “When can we talk again?  There are things I need to tell you.  Things I need to explain.  About how I felt all those years ago.  Your perceptions… the things you assumed.  I need to explain why I did… what I did.  Why I made those stupid choices.”

“I don’t know,” she bit her lower lip and reached up to brush a loose strand of hair from her face.  Her cheeks were still flushed pink, and John had to resist a powerful urge to kiss her again.  “I just need a bit of time.  Perhaps… can I call you when I’m ready?”

John nodded.  He’d hoped she’d say tomorrow.  That he could come by after work tomorrow and they could finish this.  He didn’t know how much longer he could continue this dance.  This wanting.  The near misses and the close calls.  Every time he touched her, he wanted her more.  It was almost unbearable, the frisson when they were together.  Sometimes he could barely concentrate on her words, could barely string a sentence of his own together.  

But he’d promised her that he would wait.  That he was in it for the long haul.  He loved her.  He wanted her, sure, he wanted her badly.  But more than that, he loved her.  And he wanted her to feel loved and cherished for everything she was.  For all the golden shining light of her and all the shaded hidden corners that she tried so hard to pretend away.  He knew and he loved all of her, even the hurt, angry, betrayed parts of her that had slid into Bo’s bed.  It hurt, it fucking stung but she was the woman he loved, and she was human, and he would learn to deal with that, as he dealt with all her imperfections.  By loving them.  As she had loved him, despite his idiotic choices and his blindness.

So, he nodded and took her hand in his.  Lifting it up, he whispered his lips against her palm, holding her honeyed gaze with his own.

“You call me,” he whispered.  “When you’re ready.  I’ll be waiting.”

She smiled and pressed her palm to her heart.  “I love you,” she said simply.  “I won’t keep you waiting for much longer, I promise.”

“However long it takes, baby,” he leaned forward and kissed her forehead.  “Sweet dreams, Marlena.”

Part Quarante Sept 

And it’s hard to be at a party

When I feel like an open wound

It’s hard to be anywhere these days

When all I want is you

You’re a flashback in a film reel

On the one screen in my town

And I just wanted you to know

That this is me trying (And maybe I don’t quite know what to say)

I just wanted you to know

That this is me trying

At least I’m trying

This Is Me Trying – Taylor Swift

Marlena frowned at the sound of the hammering on her front door. It was the middle of the day, but she was at home in a quiet and harmonious penthouse, having opted to work from home while the children were at school.  This was one of the few, rare, patient-free days she reserved for making notes and organizing patient files, and on the odd occasion, catching up on new articles and research, and she was trying to make the most of it.

Taking off her glasses, she put down her writing pad and placed them on top of it on the sofa next to her.  On the other side of her, she slid a bookmark in between the leaves of the journal she had been engrossed in, slid her legs off the cushion and placed her bare feet on the carpeted floor.

“All right, I’m coming, I’m coming!” she responded to the banging on the door.  Realizing halfway to the door that she still had her pen in her hand, she tucked it into the back pocket of her dark blue jeans and took the opportunity to straighten her cotton cross wrap-top, smoothing it over the top of her hips.

When she reached the door, she opened the little cover to the peep window and smiled when she saw John leaning against the wall, holding a bunch of roses in salmon pink and cream.

“John, what are you doing here?” she asked as she opened the door properly. 

“I’ve been missing you,” he held out the flowers to her and she took them with a smile, burying her nose in the bouquet and inhaling the sweet musky scent.  “I know I said I’d wait until you’re ready and I’m not here to put any pressure on you.  But I just needed to see your beautiful face.”

“These are lovely,” she nodded at the roses, “thank you.  I should put them in some water.”

“How about I put them in some water, and you go and get some shoes on,” John took the flowers back from her and grinned as she looked confused.

“Shoes?” She frowned.

“I have it on good authority you have been working far too hard and you could do with a break.”  He walked past her and went to the cupboard that held the vases.  He selected a squat glass one and pulled it out.  Closing the door of the cupboard he turned back to her.  “So, I’m taking you out to lunch.”

“But I’m working.”  She waved at the pile of files and journals on the table.  “I’m working at home today.”

“I know you are.  I spoke to Hillary.  I also spoke to Laura.  They agree you need a break.  So, get yourself those shoes and something warm to wrap up in.  It might get cold out by the lake.”

“The lake?” Now she was curious.  She felt a bit like she’d been ambushed, but if she was honest, she knew he was right.  Given her extreme levels of distraction over the past couple of months, she felt unconscionably behind in her work.  So she’d been working long hours, trying to make up for

what she’d felt was letting her patients and her colleagues down.  

She was still seeing Laura and she was trying to make time to continue her work on herself.  But she was balancing that with what she felt like she needed to do to bring herself up to speed with her casework, and it was starting to tell on her.

Laura kept telling her to slow down, and even Hillary was expressing her concern, so it was hardly surprising that John had been dragged in to try and provide some balance.  Not that John would require much dragging.  He had been calling, quietly enquiring how she was without pushing her to stop and talk to him again.  But he’d also not so subtly been letting her know that he was ready to listen when she was ready to talk. 

John tapped the side of his nose with a smile and poured some water from a jug into the vase.  Then he plonked the flowers into the vessel and waved his other hand at her, indicating that she should go off and do whatever it was that she needed to do before he spirited her away from the penthouse.  She smiled and gave a small “humph” which was more a pretense at resistance than anything.

“Just to clarify Doc, this isn’t a ploy to push you into anything you’re not ready for,” he watched her as she slipped on a pair of canvas tennis shoes.  “I just want you to relax for a couple of hours, okay?”

“Okay,” she knew he genuinely meant it and she was grateful he apparently wasn’t going to pressure her.  But she also knew that it was past time that they continue the conversation they had started more than a week ago.  The one that she had so unceremoniously cut short when she had run out on him after he had, quite rightly, become upset at her.  She’d had two sessions with Laura in the intervening week and she felt ready now to re-engage with him and finish what they had started.  

Maybe today would be the day.  She wasn’t entirely sure, it depended really on where he was taking her and whether it was suitable enough for them to have an intimate, and possibly upsetting conversation.  The Penthouse Grill was not that setting, but she suspected it wasn’t a restaurant at all if he was talking about going down to the lake.  She pulled a hooded sweatshirt out of the cupboard and a light summer jacket and hooked them over her arm.  Picking up her purse, she nodded.  “I’m ready when you are.”

*

“Here we are,” John placed the picnic basket on the ground and reached for the blanket that Marlena held in her arms.

“John, this is beautiful.  I didn’t even know this spot existed.  How did you find it?”  Far across the lake, the high rises of Salem, including the building that housed her own penthouse apartment glittered in the distance.  This little spot was secluded, almost a wooded glade, surrounded by oak, ash, and elm with a grassy bank that eased down to the lake edge, the clear water sparkling in the bright sunlight of the summer afternoon.

“I’ve been doing a lot of running since I got back home,” John looked sideways at her with a small smile.  “I started getting bored with the riverside, so I got in the car and started coming out here and just taking random trails.  I found this late one afternoon and I knew immediately that I wanted to bring you here.”

He shook out the picnic rug and laid it on the ground and then pulled out a couple of cushions from the other bag he’d been carrying and threw them down.  “Make yourself comfortable while I get our lunch together.”

She smiled again and realized that this was the most she had smiled for weeks as she dropped her sweatshirt on the rug and eased herself down, leaning back on the cushion and watching him as he set about unpacking the picnic basket.

The result was a veritable banquet of pick-and-eat items.  Crusty white bread, olives, chicken, ham, salad, crackers, cheese, pickles, and other crudites.  And, of course, because John would never just do half a job, there were assorted condiments including mayonnaise, mustard, and relish.  She hummed in approval as she let John put together a plate for her and then started to snack as she watched him select his own meal.

They ate in silence for a while, appreciating the view, the warbling of the birds in the trees overhead, and the rustle of the breeze among the leafy boughs that shaded them.  Eventually, John, who had just polished off his third cheese and relish-topped cracker, turned to Marlena.

“Do you want some dessert?” he asked gently.

“Oh,” her eyes widened slightly.  “Ummm…”

“Don’t worry, it’s not strawberries,” he dug around in the basket and pulled out some plastic glasses and what looked like a screw-topped wine bottle.  “I thought about it but felt that maybe it wasn’t appropriate, given our circumstances right now.”

“Oh,” she managed a slightly embarrassed smile.  “I guess not.”

“This,” he brandished the bottle at her, “isn’t wine either.  Just sparkling grape juice.”

“Oh, John,” she leaned back on one of the cushions and watched him unscrew the cap of the bottle.  “You really are so considerate.”

“Not all the time,” he raised an eyebrow at her.  “I think I have a lot to make up for.  But I’m trying.  This is me trying, Doc.”  She said nothing but watched him fill the glass and then accepted when he handed it to her.  “So, dessert?” he asked again.

“Not quite yet,” her voice was soft.  “I’m… um, let’s let lunch settle first.”

“Sure.”  John raised his glass.  “Here’s to…” he looked at her quizzically.  “New, new beginnings?”

“Yes,” she smiled, and her eyes glittered in the sunlight that danced through the canopy overhead.  “New, new beginnings sounds perfect.”

They both took a mouthful and Marlena’s eyes widened and she let out a spluttering giggle as the bubbles hit the back of her throat and rose upwards.  John smiled, his heart beating slightly faster at the sight of her, relaxed and smiling.  And beautiful.  Dear god, she was so beautiful.  He would never stop being in awe of her.  Of her beauty, her intelligence, her quirky sense of humor.

He watched as she took another mouthful of the grape-juice and then she handed it back to him.  Smiling at him, she reclined back on the rug, positioning the cushion under her head.  Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and let out a long hum.

“Can you hear it?” she whispered after a moment.

“Hear what, baby?” he asked, slightly confused.

“It’s so quiet,” she said with a smile, eyes still closed, her lashes sweeping over the high curve of her cheekbones.  “Well, not quiet exactly.”  The birdsong in the trees around them rose and fell in melodious bursts of trilling and burbling.  The intermittent breaths of a warm breeze murmured through the leaves overhead and the water of the lake lapped softly against the stones that edged the shore.  But there was nothing else.  No traffic, no voices.  Just the sounds of nature on a warm summer afternoon.  “It’s so beautiful and peaceful.”

She opened her eyes and watched the slowly dancing patterns of the sunlight as it filtered through the canopy.  Beyond the splattering of lime green, the sky was a brilliant blue that reminded her of John’s beautiful eyes.  She turned her head to look at him and found that he had laid down on his side, his head propped up on his hand, watching her.

“What?” she asked in response to the way those impossibly blue eyes were sparkling.

“It’s just good to see you smile, Doc,” he told her, reaching out to brush a stray lock of hair from the side of her face.  “It’s nice to see you looking relaxed.”

“Mmmmm,” she reached her arms out over her head, arching her back in a graceful stretch, “I needed this, thank you.”

John found himself momentarily breathless as he watched her stretch and he imagined sliding his hand under the hollow of her back and pressing his lips to the soft skin at the side of her throat, in the spot that would make her breath hitch and elicit a high, quavering moan.

Unaware of the effect she was having on him, Marlena rolled over onto her side, her cheek resting against the pale gold of the cushion below her.

 Her dark gold hair framed a delicate face, and the soft swell of her breasts spilled out of the blouse where it crossed over her cleavage.  He could smell her scent, that soft fragrance of lavender, jasmine, and underlying notes of vanilla.  And underneath that, that scent that was unmistakably her.  Sweet and musky.  He never tired of it.

The silence between them was stretching out and John felt the need to fill it with something.  If he didn’t start talking, he was going to start touching her and he’d promised himself he wasn’t going to do that again.  Not until she invited him to.  

So, he spoke.  Not about Belle or Brady or his work or hers or the weather, or the multitude of other things they’d found to talk about on the way here.  Instead, he spoke about the thing that had been on his mind since Kim had told him the other day.

“I heard that there was a bit of a confrontation with Hope when you picked up the kids last week,” he said.  “I’m really sorry about that, Doc.”  

“It’s not your fault.”  She shrugged her shoulder upwards.  “I think it was probably inevitable.  And also, probably deserved.”

“No,” he replied firmly.  “No, you didn’t deserve that.  Not what she said to you.”

“How do you know what she said?” she frowned, lifting her head, and propping her arm underneath her in a mirror of his posture.  “Who told you?”

“Kimberly,” he lifted his eyebrows.  

“Kim wasn’t there, she was upstairs with the children,” Marlena looked confused.

“She was on her way to bring the children down when she overheard it.  She made sure they stayed out of earshot, but she heard the gist of it.” John explained.  “Doc, I hope you know that Hope is hurting.  She didn’t mean what she said.”

“Oh, I think Hope definitely meant what she said,” Marlena chewed on her lower lip for a moment, considering what to say.  “But I know she’s hurting, and I don’t hold it against her.  She said I should have had her back and that I betrayed her trust.  And she was right.  I hurt her and I hurt you.  John, I…” she paused, lost for words for a moment.  Or at least, how to put her feelings and her thoughts into the right kind of words.  Ones that would sound sincere and impress on him how much she had thought about this over the past few days.  “You were right,” she scrambled into a sitting position, crossing one leg beneath her and folding her arms around the other bent knee.  “I’ve been thinking about it all since we talked.  It wasn’t just what Hope said, it was what you said too.”  She compressed her lips together.  “I think you should know, if you don’t already, when I left here that night, I ran into Bo.  Rather, he ran into me.  I went down to the river to get some air.  He must have been on his way to the boat, I guess.”

John felt his stomach sink.  That wasn’t what he’d been expecting or wanted to hear.  She had run out on him and ended up with Bo?  Why was she telling him now?  What had happened between them?

“Doc, I don’t understand,” he said uncertainly.

“Nothing happened that you need to worry about,” she held up her hand.  “You don’t need to worry about Bo and me.  We just talked, that’s all.  It’s just that in the interests of full disclosure, I wanted to be honest with you.  Talking to him made me realize…” she didn’t really want to tell John that Bo had been badmouthing him.  Things were already tense enough between the two of them.  But how would she make John understand that defending him to Bo had helped her to make sense of his feelings, of his feelings of betrayal, without telling him why?

“I was upset,” she said eventually.  “You know I was.  Bo wanted to know why.  And as I explained, I had to put myself in your shoes.  You were right to be angry with me.  I should have known that wasn’t you.  You have always been so thoughtful and attentive with me and with the children.  Even when you were with Kristen.  Gosh, even when you were with Isabella.  You have never made me feel anything less than loved and cared for.  Why did I think you would treat me like that?” she shrugged, pained at her own stupidity.  Her own damaged sense of self had led her to believe that John would discard her in such a callous way.  When in truth, he had never, ever been that kind of man.  She should have known that.  

“I never would,” John agreed gently.  “But I know you had a lot to deal with, Marlena.  Sami, particularly.  I wish I had been there for you.  I will forever regret that Stefano was able to manipulate me like that and hurt you in the process.”

“It wasn’t just Sami,” Marlena absently rubbed the place where her wedding ring once rightfully settled on her finger.  “It was Roman.  It was Don.  Even Sam and my parents.  Of course, it was Sami too,” she clenched her jaw and swallowed.  “Laura and I have been talking a lot in therapy about the impact of the things that have happened to me over the years.  I’ve lost a lot, John.  You know that.  I lost DJ and my marriage to Don. Then Sam.  Roman.  You.”  He started to say something, but she held her finger up and shook her head, tears glittering in her eyes.  “I lost you.  We need to talk about that some more, I know you have things you need to say but this is… I just need to explain this.  I know you didn’t walk away from me willingly.  We walked away from each other, but it still broke my heart.”  She brushed away the tears that glimmered on her lashes, trying to keep herself together.  “And then I lost Sami in the wake of our affair and Roman…”  There were too many tears, and they trickled down her cheeks now.  She tried to stem them, but it was useless.  It still hurt.  This was deep, embedded pain.  Pain that she had kept private for so long.  

“Roman walking out… the way he walked out, the way he made me feel about myself.  That was devastating.   I always felt… Don had an affair because I wasn’t enough.  Because partly, he blamed me for DJ’s death.  Roman left because I wasn’t good enough.  Because I betrayed him.  It made me feel like I was a terrible person.  I had to… I felt like I needed redemption.  But then… everything that happened afterwards….”

“Doc, baby you don’t have to talk about this,” he said softly.  He hated to see her so upset.  Her pain sliced him open.  He wanted to take it all from her.  Soothe it away with sweet words and his fingertips and his lips.  That is what he usually did, reassure her with his body, his kisses, his touch.  But he couldn’t now.  Not while they existed in this limbo.  Between solitude and intimacy.  Right now, words were all that he had.   “Not if you’re not ready yet.  I didn’t bring you out here to pressure you into anything.  I didn’t mention what happened with Hope to start a conversation that you’re not ready for.”

“I’m ready,” she wiped her face with her fingertips and smeared the moisture over her denim-clad thigh.  “Oh John, I’m so ready.  We should have talked about this so many times over the years.  I regret… there’s so much I regret but trying to protect you from my feelings, for not trusting you with my fears and my failings…  that’s near the top of the list.”

“Baby, you never failed anyone.  Ever.”  He reached out and took her fingers in his, squeezing them with quiet desperation.  “Don’t you know that I think you are…” he hesitated to say he thought she was sheer perfection.  Because to him, she was.  Despite her mistakes, her flaws, her weaknesses.  He loved all of her, even the bits that hurt him sometimes and the bits that drove him crazy more than sometimes.  “Doc, you’re way too hard on yourself.  And those things you’re scared of sharing with me, don’t you know that they just make me love you all the more?  They make me want to protect you and love you so hard that you forget all the pressure that you put on yourself to be perfect.  You don’t have to be perfect, baby.  Just be you.  Just be you.  Because you’re more than enough.  You know that, right?”

“I… “ she started to cry again.  How did he always know exactly what to say?  And how did she let her fear prevent her from opening herself up to him so completely for all these years?  Sometimes she didn’t even understand herself, or the needs and fears that drove her.  Sometimes her feelings were a mystery to herself.  But somehow it seemed that John knew her.  Knew her so completely that she almost didn’t need to say what was in her heart.  Because he knew.  And knowing her, he loved her anyway.  He loved her because of it, not despite it.

And yet, she needed to say it.  For herself.  So, there would be nothing unspoken between them any longer.  So she would know that he knew she trusted him now.  With all of her.  Even the weak, insecure bits of her, the bits that she stuffed down deep and which she tried not to let see the light.  

“It took me a long time to put myself back together emotionally,” she told him.  “After what happened with…” She looked away.  She still had trouble admitting what had happened to her in those long-lost months of 1995.  So much of it was a blank and the rest of it was like a nightmare that she flashed back to.  A nightmare that caused nightmares.  That made her sweat, made her feel numb.  She tried not to think about it at all, to pretend it didn’t happen to her.  But the guilt had eaten her alive and she had tried to make amends by inviting Stefano into her home.  In doing so, she had pushed John away.  

Maybe that had been subconsciously intentional.  The shame she had felt was impossible to subsume.  Sometimes, that shame still flooded her when she thought about how the devil had used her to try and get him to betray his vows.  How he had risked his life and his soul to save her.  She had questioned if she was worthy of such a sacrifice and had come to the conclusion that she didn’t think she was.  Otherwise, how would the devil have found such weakness in her that it could slip inside and imprison her soul?

So as an act of contrition, she had befriended Stefano, the villain who had set the whole thing in motion.  She had brought him into her home, knowing it would enrage John and she had tried to convince herself that she was doing it with the best of intentions.

She sighed.  “I moved Stefano into the penthouse, I thought to try and make up for what I had done when I was….”  John squeezed her fingers again and smoothed his thumb across the back of her hand.  “I don’t think I ever truly got over any of it, John.  Not Don, not Roman, and not that my weakness let the Devil wreak havoc on everyone I loved.”

“Doc, that was not your fault,” John tried to reassure her but knew it was largely pointless.  However much therapy she had, he knew that there would always be some part of her that held herself responsible for what she had done while possessed.  That the weakness inflicted by Roman’s abandonment, and Stefano’s nighttime exploitations, that had allowed the demon to slip between her weakened spiritual defenses was somehow a failing on her part.

“So when you… when Stefano messed with your head and you weren’t you… I didn’t recognize it because I suppose in some part, I expected it.  I was waiting for it… for you to finally see through me.  To realize that I wasn’t the person you thought I was.  That I wasn’t enough.”  She took a deep and shaky breath and ran her fingers beneath her eyes, wiping away the remnants of her tears.  “It wasn’t because I didn’t know you or trust you.  It was that I let my own fears and my own insecurities overwhelm what I knew about you.  And I am so, so sorry.  I’m sorry I was too wrapped up in myself, in what was happening to Sami not to see what was happening to you too.  And to Hope.”

“Doc, Doc stop!” John ached for her.  “Honey, don’t you know I would never walk out on you?  I don’t care what mistakes you make; I will never, never think less of you.  Sami was accused of murder, and I know how much you’ve fought for her and your relationship with her.  I know how you feel about all our kids, and I would never expect you to put anything less than a hundred and fifty percent into supporting any of them.  But baby, you need to know that you are more than enough.  You are everything to me.  You’re my sunshine, sweetheart.”  He reached out to cup her cheek in his oversized palm and drew the side of his thumb across her cheek, collecting the tears that sparkled like crystals there.  “And honey I see you.  I see all of you.  I know that you’re scared, I know that you feel flawed, and you feel like you should be better, do better than you do.  But baby, I wish to God you could see yourself through my eyes.  I wish you could know yourself like I know you and give yourself that grace just to be a human being that makes stupid mistakes and learns from them.  It’s okay to make mistakes honey, you tell the kids that all the time, so why don’t you listen to your own advice?”

“Are you done?”  She made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob.

“No.” He shook his head with a stare so intense it made her feel dizzy.  “Not until you realize that whatever you say, whatever you do, you are stuck with me.  I’m not going anywhere.  It breaks my heart that Don and Roman made you feel so unworthy of that love.  And I’m telling you now, I am going to do everything I can to help you rebuild your belief in yourself.  I’m not gonna stop until you love you as much as I love you.”

“I love you,” her eyes glittered gold and green in the freckled afternoon sunlight.  “And I must have done something right to deserve the love and forgiveness of such a wonderful man.”

“You don’t need forgiveness, baby,” he wound his fingers in her hair, fixing her with those deep pools of frosted blue.  “You just need to be loved, loved, and loved some more.”

“I do need forgiveness,” she demurred.  “You were right about… what happened with Bo.  It shouldn’t have happened.  I can’t be hurt that you turned to other women and not expect you to feel the same kind of hurt and disappointment in me.”  She cast her eyes down and turned away as she saw the hurt blossom on his face.  “And with Bo.  She looked sideways at him.  “It was a betrayal.  I hurt you and I hurt Hope.  I am so… so sorry.  I hurt everyone with my selfishness.  Can you ever forgive me?”

“Oh baby, of course I forgive you.”  Unable to help himself, he pulled her into his arms.  “I’m just sorry that I hurt you enough that you felt the need to turn to someone else.”

He stroked her hair, remembering that she had said that she had seen Bo down at the pier last night.

“How is Bo doing with all this?” he asked, pulling back.  One hand drifted to hers where it curled around her shin.   It was obvious from what Kimberly had told him that Hope wasn’t happy, either about Bo and Marlena’s relationship, or about the fact that Bo still clearly had feelings for Marlena.  While a large part of him was still angry at Bo for taking advantage of her, he also knew what it was like to want her but be unable to have her.  And the man had been practically his brother ever since he could remember so he couldn’t help the sliver of sympathy he was starting to feel for the younger Brady.

“Bo is…” she sighed.  “He’s having a hard time with everything.  I think he’s using what he thinks are his feelings for me to avoid the hard work he needs to do to make things right with Hope.”

“Nah.” John shook his head.  “I believe I once told you that you have a way of getting under a man’s skin and ruining him for anyone else.”  He exhaled.  “Poor bastard.  I know what it’s like to have to watch you with someone else.  Fucking torture.”

“Oh John,” she dropped her head against her knee, the denim warm and rough against her forehead.  

“Don’t feel too sorry for him, Doc,” he said, his voice gravelly.  “He made a choice.  Just like Hope made a choice to pursue her past.  Not all of this is on you.”

She looked up wearily.  “Hope thinks it is.” One corner of her mouth quirked downwards into a frown.  “I’ve made such a mess of all this.  I don’t know how Hope is ever going to forgive Bo.  I don’t think she will ever forgive me.  I may have destroyed their relationship forever.” 

“This is not your fault, Marlena.”  John took her hand.  “Caroline was right.  If their relationship had been solid, Bo would have fought for her, not turned to you.  And, although I hate to admit it, the same goes for us.  If we’d talked about all this stuff that’s coming up now back when we should have talked about it, then maybe you wouldn’t have felt so insecure.  Maybe none of this would have happened.”

“I think you always would have felt the impulse to search for your past,” Marlena shrugged.  “Whatever we shared.”

“How do you mean?” John asked, confused as to what she was trying to say.

“When we were in New Orleans last year,” she reminded him of the romantic little interlude they had shared after Roman’s recovery and their second reunion in as many years.  When he had asked her to marry him.  Again.  “When we were dancing in our room, I told you how happy I was and how being with you made me whole.  Made me feel finally complete.”  She took a breath, feeling a pang of pain at the memory.  She had hidden it from him then but it still smarted, even now.  “You said you would never feel complete as long as your past remained a mystery to you.”

“I did?”  He frowned at his carelessness.  “Oh, Doc.  I really said that?”

She shrugged.  “It’s not important.”

“Well, obviously it is if you remember it.  That must have been so hurtful.”  He couldn’t believe he had been so insensitive.  Her insecurity suddenly became a little more understandable.  She had opened her heart to him. and he had obviously brushed it off and made her feel… what was it she had said about how Don had made her feel?  Not enough.

“Baby, I don’t know why I said that.  I don’t know what I was thinking at the time.  But I need you to know I was wrong.  I was so wrong.  Nothing I could find out about my past could ever make me more complete than I am when I am with you.  All of this, the past year, has made me realize that.  If I didn’t realize it before, I sure as hell do now.  You are my life, Marlena.  You and our children.  All of them.  Eric, Sami, and Carrie too.  I…” he reached out and smoothed his thumb down the side of her face, capturing her sweet gaze with his own intense one.  “You are everything.  You were there at my beginning.  My whole life started when I met you and I don’t need anything more to know I have the best I could ever have in you and our life together.  You do make me whole.  And you are enough.  You’re every damn thing.”

“How do you always know the right thing to say?” she asked him with a sweet, honeyed smile.

“I don’t,” he shook his head, “obviously, or I wouldn’t have said something so fucking stupid in the first place.  But in this case, I’m just speaking from my heart, Doc.  I’m just telling you how I feel.  I never want you to feel like you’re not the most important thing in my whole life.  I will do anything to make things right between us.  I need you to know how much I love you and how much I need you to feel the solid ground under your feet.  This is it for me.  You are it.  You are my one true love.  My one and only.  I need you to hear that and to believe it.”

“I believe it,” she told him.  And she did.  All of this, all the mistakes she’d made and his forgiveness, his willingness to listen to her, to reassure her, to make her feel secure.  She knew he wouldn’t do any of that if he didn’t love her.  She could feel it in the intensity of his words.  In the way he looked at her and touched her.  She could feel it in the way his words and his reassurance settled into her soul.

`

“And if I haven’t made it clear, and I am not sure I have… but you are everything to me, John.”  She took his large hand between her own pale slender fingers.  “I said to Caroline, you held me together,” she chewed on the inside of her lower lip, her flesh alternating white and red as she palpitated the delicate skin.  “From the moment I came back to Salem.  Through everything.  Despite Isabella and Roman and Kristen.  You were always there.  There was always that invisible thread between us.  And it stitched me together.  When I would otherwise have fallen apart. You took all my broken pieces, and you literally held me together.  Until suddenly, you weren’t there anymore.”  She swallowed. “I’m so sorry I hurt you.  I love you so much.”

“Oh baby, I love you too.  So, so much,” he took a breath and considered his next words.  “But I think there’s more that we need to talk about.”

She clenched her jaw in response but said nothing.

“I’m waiting for you to disagree but you’re not,” he moved back down into a position where his back was flattened against the picnic rug.  “We talked about Isabella and Rebecca.  But we haven’t talked about Kristen.”  He sighed, knowing by the look on her face that he was right.  This was the last part of the jigsaw puzzle and maybe the one that would be hardest to put together.  

“I think we need to talk about Kristen.”

Part Quarante Huit 

My knuckles were bruised like violets

Sucker punching walls, cursed you as I sleep-talked

Spineless in my tomb of silence

Tore your banners down, took the battle underground

And maybe it was egos swinging

Maybe it was her

Flashes of the battle come back to me in a blur

The Great War – Taylor Swift

“I think we need to talk about Kristen.”  Although his voice was smooth and soft, it rang out around the clearing, vibrating in her ears.

“We talked about Kristen.”  Marlena felt a tight knot in her throat that was hard to swallow over.  Kristen was still too raw.  Kristen and Stefano teaming up to destroy her life.  To destroy her.  To take her from her family, from her children.  It still felt dangerous to talk about Kristen.   

Logically, she understood John’s commitment to Kristen.  He had convinced himself that she just wanted to be friends.  She had convinced him.  But his relationship with Kristen and the lengths she had gone to in order to secure it, had almost been the end of her.  She’d been trapped in that goddamn cage in Paris, and she had almost traded her body, her integrity for her freedom.  Not that Stefano would ever have kept his word.  He was a monster.  And making a deal with him was akin to dealing with the devil.  It had been her integrity at stake.  Her body and soul.  And Kristen had sent her to hell, not caring how it might destroy her.

“No Doc,” John could see it on her face.  There was so much unspoken.  So much they had let drift, let settle between them in the months after he had released her from that infernal room hidden in the wine cellar of the DiMera mansion.  They needed to talk about it now.  She needed to get it out, whatever it was.  “We talked about what she did and how I felt about it.  We didn’t talk about how you felt about it and I am pretty sure you were trying to protect my feelings when all that went down.” John said.

“You’d just lost your wife and your baby in one fell swoop,” Marlena said defensively.  “I couldn’t make that worse for you.  You were already suffering so much.”

“And what about you?” John asked, frustratedly.  “Why do everyone else’s feelings always take precedence over yours, Marlena?”  He was angry at himself more than her.  He had been utterly shell-shocked in the aftermath of the wedding from hell and the revelations that Kristen was not the woman he’d thought she was and was not the woman he thought he’d married.  He’d been so shocked; he had let Marlena just wave away her own pain and all the trauma she had suffered at Kristen’s hands.  He had taken her to bed, and they had lost themselves in their physical connection and never really talked about it in depth again.  

She had referred to it from time to time but if he was honest, he was too afraid to pick at the scabs, to open up those old wounds again.  He had been too afraid to find out what she had really been through and how much of it had been his fault.

But he couldn’t ignore it anymore.  Now he had to know.  And she had to tell him.

“I don’t…” her mouth hung open for a moment as the words tried to work their way out, but they seemed to be trapped, congealed below the lump in her throat.  Giving a moan of frustration, she scrambled into a standing position and walked several feet away from the scene of their picnic.

This was what she did, John reflected.  When things got too painful.  When she was hurting too much or she thought the things she might say would hurt him.  She tried to mitigate the pain with distance.  Didn’t she know that distance only created more distance and more pain?  Was her distance an illusion of control?  

“Marlena, talk to me,” he begged her.  “We need to put this to rest.  This has been standing between us for too long.”

She looked at him, still unsure about what to say.  She had been ready to make her apologies.  She thought she had been ready to talk about Aremid and Kristen and Stefano.  But his sweet, kind, endearing words had disarmed her.  It felt too petty, too reductive to continue to pick at his weaknesses.  Especially when she had so many of her own.

“It doesn’t seem important anymore,” she said carefully.

“Let me judge if it’s important or not,” he said, getting to his feet.  He was in front of her in four steps, framing her face with his large, unreasonably soft hands.  “Doc, it got us where we were when all this happened.  You not trusting me, me hurting you.  You gotta tell me how you feel.  Don’t let this sit between us.  If you keep it inside you, it’ll always be there.  I’ll know it’s there.  Don’t let her come between us any more than she already has.”

“John I…” A single tear dribbled down her cheek.

“Don’t fight me on this, Doc.” He stroked away that tear with his thumb.  He thought back to the night after he had found her trapped in that room beneath the mansion.  “The letter!”  She had told him how Kristen had changed after she’d read his letter to Marlena, the one he’d written to her when he thought he was on the brink of being put to death.  The one where he had spilled out all the feelings he’d kept locked inside his heart for so many years.  He’d finally put words to the feelings he’d known were there all along.  The feelings he hadn’t let himself turn out and examine.  The feelings that he knew might consume him if he let them see the light of day.

“You told me Kristen read the letter I wrote you in Aremid.  She hid it from you, but you found it.”

“She did,” Marlena took a deep breath.

“We never really talked about that.  About Aremid, any of it,” John said.  “You said you were overjoyed when you read the letter.  So, you… you already knew you had feelings for me?”

“I knew I loved you,” Marlena admitted, her heart aching.  “After you were arrested for Tony’s murder… It destroyed me to see you so devastated over Kristen’s doubts.  We talked; do you remember?  In that cell.  About your feelings for her.  About our friendship.  I was sure then that my feelings for you were in the past.  But our friends kept asking.” She allowed herself a small smile.  “Actually, it was Bo.  Do you remember, when you set up the Christmas celebration at the pub in Aremid, and then the judge granted you bail?  Bo watched us and he asked me, more than once about my feelings for you.  If I still loved you.”

“Bo asked you that?” John frowned.  Bo had known of his own feelings for Marlena, but that had been later.  When Kristen had been carrying his child, or so he’d thought.

“Bo asked me that.”  She nodded.  “I told him you were with Kristen, and I wanted you to be happy.  I would be happy if you were happy.  What I couldn’t bring myself to say was that I had moved on.  Because it wasn’t true.  I realized that when I saw you and Kristen together.”  She sighed, remembering how she had seen them through the wrought iron fence.  It had been her that had convinced Kristen to go to John.  To let John convince her that his feelings for her were strong and unwavering, no matter the doubts she had about his innocence.  She had seen him with Kristen in his arms, seen him kiss her, and she had been flattened by the wave of pain she had felt.  

“When you saw us?” John lifted a lock of hair that had fallen over her eye and tucked it behind her ear.

“I saw you kissing her,” Marlena whispered.  She felt breathless, her heart thumping so loudly she was sure he could hear it.  “Outside, in the snow.  You were trying to convince her that you really loved her.  That you wanted to be with her.”

“Because she thought we still had feelings for each other,” he murmured, searching her face.  “She saw things far more clearly than we did.  She saw the truth of the depth of our love for each other.”

“I wonder if that’s when it started,” her breath caught in her throat as he drew a whisper of a finger along her collarbone.  “I mean… when she… uh… she started to change.  To let the DiMera in her… um… take over.  John…”  she looked up at him, her eyes pleading.  His touch was electric.    “I can’t concentrate when you touch me like that.”  The feeling of his fingers on her ignited all her nerves and the sensations shot through her, gathering between her legs, making her throb with desire for him.

“Sorry.”  He withdrew his hand with a smile that told her he wasn’t really sorry.   That he loved that a simple touch could fluster her so much.  His hand drifted downward, skimming the curve of her waist where it flared into those sinful hips.  He licked his lips and then stepped back from her.  “I’m sorry Doc.  What were you saying?”  

He, too, found it hard to concentrate when he was close to her.  The scent of her, the warmth of her skin, the way her cheeks blossomed a delicate shade of pink when he touched her.  All of it was seductive.  Addictive.  He did it without thinking, reacted to her.  Came close to her.  Touched her.  

He needed her, his body craved her, like a drug.  But he couldn’t give in.  Not while there were still words left unspoken.

“So, you saw us.”  He watched as she backed up several steps, her back meeting the rough bark of a white oak.  Her palms and her fingers splayed against it, using it as support.

 “I saw you.”  She nodded.  “I wanted to go home, then and there.  I told you I had to get back to work, do you remember?  You came to my room.”

“We took the kids ice-skating.”  He did remember.  He remembered her sudden insistence that she had to get back to Salem.  To her work and to her patients.  “You were wearing a blue robe.  I’ve always loved blue on you.  I’ve always loved taking blue off of you.”

“John…”

“I found myself wondering, that day, what you had on under that robe.  If I peeled it off your shoulders, would I find you naked underneath?”  He swallowed; his mouth suddenly dry.  “I tried to tell myself we were just friends, Doc.  You just wanted to be friends so that is all we could ever be.  But I still wanted you.  I never stopped wanting you.  And maybe that makes me a terrible person for wanting you and still telling myself I loved Kristen, but I thought I couldn’t have you.  I needed something….”  He winced at the admission.  It wasn’t something that painted him in a flattering light, but it was true.  “I was weak, and I needed something to distract me from the frustration of being so close to you and yet not being able to touch you the way I wanted to touch you.  Not being able to tell you that you lived in the biggest part of my heart.”

“If you had said something,” she said sadly, “anything.”

“Same, Doc.” He shook his head.  All that time they had wasted.  All the pain she had been through at Stefano’s hands.  At Kristen’s.  “Why didn’t you?  You had to have known that I would dump Kristen in a heartbeat if I had known you wanted me.”

“And how fair would that have been?” she asked him, a little angrily.  This wasn’t on her.  This wasn’t her fault.  At least, not entirely.  “I thought you’d moved on.  I thought I had missed my chance.  I pushed you away.  After our affair, after the truth came out about Belle.  Gosh, even after the possession.  When I brought Stefano into my home.  I pushed you away over and over again.  What kind of person would I have been if suddenly I had turned around and told you that I’d changed my mind? That I wanted you after all, and to hell with everyone else.”

“An honest one?” John said simply.

Marlena looked at him, a little hurt at that assessment.  But he was right.  For a psychiatrist, she was pretty damn good at playing her cards close to her chest when she was frightened of having her heart broken.  “I guess I was scared of opening myself up to you.  I didn’t want to put you in that situation.  Not again.  To have to choose between me and another woman.  Because the last time, we know what happened.”  Her shoulders inched up towards her ears as the tension overtook her.  “John, I couldn’t take that kind of rejection again.  Not after Roman.”

He shook his head, silently amazed that she would ever think he would turn her down.  “I told you once that I would take you on any terms.  You just had to come to me and tell me.  You really think that ever changed?”

“I did then.  You kept telling me I was your best friend.  You also kept telling me how you loved Kristen.  How you wanted to be with Kristen.  What else was I supposed to think?” she asked desperately.  

“So, all that time, during the trial, and while Mickey was trying to get them to agree to an appeal.  All that time…”

“I knew I was in love with you, yes.”  She nodded.  She thought about how she had talked to Laura, how Laura had seen the truth of her feelings for John and had convinced her to go to him.  Only for her to stumble upon a half-naked Kristen in his arms and overhear their declarations of passion and intention to spend the whole night making love.  “But I couldn’t say anything.  I might have done but… I almost walked in on you and Kristen.  When I came back from Salem.”

He looked at her, confused.

“You were in your cell, and you were… planning to be… together,” she said.  “She was half-naked, and she was in your arms.”

“Oh, Doc.” John shared her pain.  He knew the night in question.  He knew what she had heard.  What she had seen.  Kristen in her lingerie.  How they had talked about spending the whole night together.  Making love.  “Baby, I’m so sorry.  I had no idea you were there.”

“I know,” she said simply but he could see the pain of the memory in the way she held herself, tense, her fingers white where they clung to the bark of the tree.  “You couldn’t have known.  I didn’t want you to know.”

“And yet, you never wavered in your support of me,” he said.  “All that time, you stood by and watched me with her.  Listened to me tell you how much I loved her. Listened to me tell her.  Even when she doubted me on the stand.  But you were steadfast.”

“I knew you,” she reminded him.  “I knew you better than anyone else in the world.  I knew you weren’t capable of hurting Tony.  I loved you.  I would have done anything for you.”

“So… I have Bo to thank for you going after that diary?  For risking your freedom and your safety to get the truth out of Stefano?” He was almost disbelieving.  “I’m alive because Bo made you realize you still loved me?” 

“No.  I wasn’t just Bo.  Other people figured it out.  Laura called me out on my feelings.  But the truth is, I would have done it whether I knew I loved you or not,” she said quietly.  “I loved you, even when I wasn’t putting a name to it.  I couldn’t bear the thought of living in this world without you.  Even if I had to spend the rest of my life watching you with Kristen, I knew I would do it.  I had to do whatever it took to save you.  The way you’d saved me from the devil.”

It seemed so crazy now she looked at it from a lens of several years distance.  It was so obvious to her that he loved her.  Through all those long months where he had fought the devil for her soul, only to offer his own to finally free her from eternal torment.  How could she possibly have imagined that he just felt friendship for her?

But indeed, how could he have mistaken her desperate mission to obtain the vital evidence that would exonerate him of the crime of Tony’s murder as anything but the purest and most passionate of loves?  

They had been in such denial, both trying to protect each other from pain.  Trying to protect themselves.

“Oh Doc,” he knew how that felt.  To watch the love of your life in someone else’s arms.  To know someone else was in their bed.  And not to say anything.

“I don’t know…” she shrugged.  “I still don’t understand what happened in Aremid.  After you saved me.  It felt like… for a moment it felt like we were both on the same page.  We talked about fate and it what might have in store for us.”

“And then Mike came to check on you,” he recalled.  “I’ve thought about that moment a lot.  What might have happened if Mike hadn’t knocked on the door at that exact moment.  I was so close to opening myself up to you.  I was so… the emotions were so overwhelming.  I wanted to tell you everything.  About how in those last moments in the gas chamber… when I thought I was going to die, you were all I could think about.  I wanted to tell you how much I loved you and how grateful I was that you were alive.  I wanted to hold you and never let you go Doc.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked with a small frown, her eyes moist with emotion.  “Because you left the room, and the next time I saw you, it felt… different.  Your walls were up.  I told myself that it had been the relief of your last-minute reprieve and saving me from Stefano that precipitated that moment.  But I know better now.  You were going to tell me how you felt, at least you wanted to, so why didn’t you?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he raised his eyebrows.  “And I think both our answers would be the same, or at least similar.”  He reached his hand out to her but then stopped short, curling it into a fist as he saw her flinch.

“Doc, baby, I didn’t want to hurt you.  The whole time Stefano had you, Kristen kept asking if there was any chance for her and me.  Whether I could ever forgive her for doubting me.  And I all I could think about, all I had any room for in my head and in my soul was you and finding you.  And when we did find you…” he turned and walked away from her, this time choosing to be the one who put space between them.  He stopped speaking as he walked, thinking about what he wanted to say as he circled back toward her.  Climbing onto a huge boulder that jutted out of the ground, he sat, one foot perched in a crevice of the rock, the other still on solid ground.

“When I left, when Mike was checking you out, I went downstairs, and she asked again.  She was pushing, always pushing to know the truth of my feelings for her, for us to try again.  But I was confused.  I knew how I felt about you, or at least how I felt about you in that moment.  But I didn’t know whether it was real.  Or whether the intensity of it was precipitated by what had just happened.  By almost losing you.  Abe told me I should speak to you about it, but I felt like I needed to get a handle on my feelings first.”

“Abe knew?” she asked quietly.

“Abe knew.”  He nodded.  “He’s a good friend.”

“Lexie knew how I felt about you,” Marlena said softly.  “She confronted me about my feelings for you back in Salem.  She said I had been almost too frantic when you were facing the death penalty.  She thought my feelings were only too obvious to anyone that was looking.”

“Not to me,” John shook his head.  “But maybe I wasn’t looking.  Maybe I was trying real hard not to see it.”  He gave a short, pained laugh.  “Seems like everyone knew how we felt about each other except us.”

“Why?”  She could understand her own reasons for ignoring the signs that he loved her, but she needed to understand his.

“Why, what?” John’s brow furrowed.

“Why didn’t you want to see it?” she asked, her brow creasing gently.  

“Oh Doc, now you’re asking the hard questions.” He held his hands up.  “I haven’t got to this in therapy yet.  I don’t know, maybe because I would have to make a choice again.  Between her and you.  Like I did with Isabella.  I didn’t want to put you in that position.  And I didn’t want to cause either of you any pain.”

“So, you just ignored it?” she asked, a spark of anger igniting inside her.  “You ran away from it like you did in ’91?  You made a decision without asking me how I felt about you, without knowing what the choice actually was?”

“Baby, you weren’t giving me any indication that you felt anything for me other than friendship.  You just said earlier how you pushed me away.  You kept telling me to go and find Kristen and make things right with her.  You did that.  I was supposed to read between what lines there and see what?  You know, you could have said something too.  You could have told me how you felt.”

“John, when we were awaiting the verdict in your trial, you told me that you loved her, and you couldn’t imagine your life without her.”  She bit her lower lip and stared at him.  “When we came back and I was staying at the loft with you, when the security was out at my place… I walked in on you and her… she was in her underwear.   Again.”  She grimaced.  “She liked to make a habit of that, parading around in her underwear.”

“A habit?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“It wasn’t the only time I walked in on her and you.  You know that when I was staying at the mansion, I walked in on you… you were together in the cellar.  It was a hazard I seemed to run on a regular basis with the two of you.”  She turned away; her pain evident.  She had cried in Laura’s arms after that particular occasion, too distraught with the daily agony of having to watch John with Kristen.  Watch him laugh with her, touch her, kiss her.  Walking in on them making love was just one torture too much for her.

John groaned.  Obviously, he had been there when Marlena had walked in on them at the loft.  But he hadn’t known about the night in the jail cell, and he had forgotten about the occasion in the wine cellar.  Kristen had been insistent, and he had been careless, too carried away in the moment to remember there were other people in the house.  That Marlena was in the house.  

“Oh my god.  I had forgotten.  Honey, I’m so sorry,” he closed his eyes and rubbed his hand over his forehead.  He couldn’t start to imagine how much that must have hurt her.  “I did ask you though.  If it had upset you.  You said you were just embarrassed.”

“What was I supposed to say, John?” she demanded.  

“The goddamn truth, Doc.” There was an element of anger in his response.  He had asked her a direct question and she had lied to him.  And she was still angry and hurt that he had stayed with Kristen.  This was an impossible conversation, just as the situation had been impossible.

“I couldn’t,” she whispered.  “I don’t know why you can’t understand that.  I couldn’t break up your relationship, it was too selfish.”

“Then you should have been selfish!  For once in your life, you should have been fucking selfish, Doc.  Maybe we could have avoided all this pain.”  He groaned and rocked his head back, looking at the fluttering leaves above him.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have said that.”  He dropped his head back down and looked at her.  “I’m just frustrated.  You were hurting so much.  It’s obvious to me now and we’re three years down the track and it should have been obvious to me then and I don’t know why it wasn’t.  Why I didn’t see how much I was hurting you.”

“I got real good at hiding it,” she admitted, wiping away the tears gracefully.  

“I don’t understand,” John said with frustration.  “How can you be angry at me for being with Kristen when you were hiding how you felt from me?  Literally hiding it.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!”  She cried, mirroring his frustration.  “I know it’s not rational, John.  Feelings aren’t always rational.  I know we both made choices and did things that were wrong.  But you were sleeping with her while you had feelings for me.  I didn’t do that.  And I didn’t want to be there.  I did everything I could to get out of that house, to get away from you but you wouldn’t let me.  You kept talking me into staying.  Using my safety as an excuse.  Using the woman, your search for your past.  I was stuck there, watching you kiss her, touch her and God help me, making love to her.  So yes, I hid it from you.  I didn’t want you to feel guilty or responsible or beholden.”  She threw up her hands in anguish.  “If I had known how you felt, of course I would have told you.  I would have let you see.  But I didn’t.  Maybe I was too busy trying to do the right thing and not be selfish.  Or maybe I was scared.  But either way… I saw you with Kristen.  I saw you making love to Kristen.  It was pretty black and white to me.”

John swallowed.  He felt awful.   “Okay, yeah, I guess I can see how you might have got the impression that I was…”

“In love with her? Committed to her?” Marlena sighed exasperatedly.  “You certainly said it enough.  She made sure I heard it enough.”

“We obviously had a communication problem,” John rubbed his fingers across his forehead, trying to rid himself of the headache that was taking shape there.  “You were trying to do what was right for me, I see that.  But I was trying to protect you, Doc.  Physically and emotionally.   I was so scared of hurting you.  You’d been through so much, and when I’d let the strength of my feelings get the better of me before, the consequences for you and for the whole family, the price you paid was too high.  I wasn’t about to risk that again.”  

“And I thought you’d moved on.”  Marlena shrugged.  She was tired.  This conversation was hard.  It was bringing up memories she didn’t really want to remember.  And triggering feelings she had long buried.  “I thought you were committed to Kristen, you loved her and wanted to be with her.”

“Until you found the letter,” he lifted one eyebrow as he came back round to where he had started.  “You have no idea how long I spent looking for that damn letter.  I eventually came to the conclusion it had been thrown away.”

“I don’t even know how Kristen got her hands on it,” Marlena mused.  “I don’t know how it ended up back in Salem in that house anyway.”

“If it hadn’t, would we even be here now?” John asked.

“Maybe not.”  Marlena lowered herself to the ground and sat with her back to the tree behind her.  She pulled her legs up in front of her and looped her arms around them, clasping her hands together.  “If Kristen had never found that letter, maybe she wouldn’t have felt so threatened by me.  Maybe she wouldn’t have lost the baby.  Maybe she wouldn’t have felt the need to help Stefano kidnap me.  And maybe you’d still be with her now…”

Part Quarante Neuf 

I’m only up when you’re not down
Don’t wanna fly if you’re still on the ground
It’s like no matter what I do
Well, you drive me crazy half the time
The other half I’m only tryna let you know that what I feel is true
And I’m only me when I’m with you

Just a small town boy and girl
Livin’ in a crazy world
Tryna figure out what is and isn’t true
And I don’t try to hide my tears
My secrets or my deepest fears
Through it all nobody gets me like you do

I’m Only Me When I’m With You – Taylor Swift

“Wait, hold up.”  John held up his hand.  “Go back.  Kristen helped Stefano do what now?” 

“Do you remember how you could never work out how Stefano knew which plane we were on the first time we tried to go to San Francisco?” she asked.  “It was Kristen.  Kristen told him.”

John looked at her in astonishment.  He couldn’t believe it.  “Kristen told him?”

“Who else?” Marlena shrugged painfully.  It had been obvious to her the moment she knew that Kristen had been privy to the information along with John.  “The only people that knew which plane we’d be on were you, and her.  I can’t believe you never figured that out.”

“How did… when did you find out it was her?” John demanded.

“As soon as you told me she knew,” Marlena said simply and with no malice.  “It had to be her.  I already knew she was a liar and that she was manipulating both of us.  I confronted her and she tried to deny it, but it was her.”

“Wait.  You knew and you didn’t tell me?” His heart was pounding.  “You knew what danger you were in and that Kristen was aiding, and abetting Stefano, and you still said nothing?  Why Doc?  I don’t get it.  Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to.  Oh, I wanted to.”  Marlena gave a soft, sardonic chuckle.  “But she used the baby, the precariousness of her pregnancy against me.  She used Rachel, she used every tactic she could to prevent me from telling you.”

“Oh, Doc, you should have told me.  You should have told me from the very beginning, as soon as you knew the truth about her.”  John ran his fingers through his hair.

“All this is out of order,” she said slowly.  It was hard to explain why she had kept silent.  Any one event, any one stomach cramp, or guilt trip would not make sense.  Only when it was placed into a timeline, when she could explain how Kristen’s pregnancy had come so hot on the heels of finding the letter and how she had still thought her to be a friend at that point would any of this make sense.  Even then, she was not sure it would, she knew there were probably microaggressions, small moments, and manipulations that she’d forgotten about or missed all together.  But she had to try and make it make sense.  If only to appease her own sense of self, believe in her own choices and decisions.  “I think I should go back to the beginning.  When we came back from Aremid.  When I moved into Kristen’s place so that you could protect me from Stefano.”

“I was so scared that he would take you from me again,” John could still feel the fear, it lingered after all this time.  Especially since the fear had been realized when she had been abducted and imprisoned in that hideous cage for months.  And then again, when she had disappeared the following year.  That fear still lingered, even though Stefano’s obsession for Marlena had ostensibly cooled.  John still lived slightly on the edge of uncertainty and trepidation, waiting for the merest hint that DiMera might be playing the long game.  Might still have nefarious plans for his queen.

“I realize now that living there must have been hell on you.  Honestly Doc, it was hell on me too, having you so close but not being able to touch you the way I wanted to.  Not being able to tell you how I really felt.”  It had been torture, but of the sweetest kind.  He had lived for the moments he rounded a corner and caught her unawares.  In casual moments, a silky nightgown, her hair tousled, and a blush on her cheeks.  He had lived and dreamed her.  He had inhaled her.  If he couldn’t have her, he could at least keep her close.  Keep her safe.  

But it had been an entirely selfish endeavor.    He had thought her to be unaffected, but he had made her life a misery with his greedy need to have more of her in his life than he was entitled to.

“You had Kristen to console you,” she said spikily.  “And she made it clear to me that you saw me as an obligation.   One particular night, she pulled me to one side and asked me to tell you I thought of you as nothing but a friend, because our past and your sense of duty to me was coming between the two of you.”

“She what?  When was this?” John wasn’t sure why he was surprised.  It had become clear a long time ago that Kristen would have stopped at nothing to keep him away from Marlena, but this had been so early on.  There had been more than a year between their return from Aremid and that travesty of a wedding, when he had finally been acquainted with the truth about his sweet and loyal ‘wife’.

“I don’t remember exactly.  You were out.  I think there had been a report of a sighting of Stefano.  Maybe it was the same night I had agreed to stay there because I remember I was wearing a nightgown of Kristen’s.”

“Oh,” John remembered the night in question only too well.  He had run into her in the hallway in that nightgown, and he hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off her.  More specifically he’d had to keep reminding himself to make sure his eyes stayed on her face because they kept drifting down to her bountiful cleavage which had been sweetly framed by the floral satin.  She had been flustered and beautiful and it had taken everything in him not to sweep her into his arms and devour her mouth with his.

“I remember,” he sighed heavily.  While they had been out searching for Stefano, he and Abe had stopped.  And sitting in the mist they had talked about his re-vitalized love for Marlena.  Abe had convinced him to open up to her about his feelings, and so he had returned and started to come clean.  Only, she had closed him down, making it clear that she had moved on and that he should make things work with Kristen, who loved him and wanted to be with him.  “Abe had convinced me that I needed to be honest with you about my feelings for you.  I came back to the house that night to tell you how I felt.”

“And I stopped you,” she let out an exasperated groan.  “Kristen must have seen it coming.  She said you were sharing a room, but you weren’t physically intimate.  She knew why and she played on my love for you and my guilt over what happened when we’d given into our feelings before.  She made sure to remind me how many people we had hurt when we had our affair.  And how, surely, I didn’t want to hurt the children again.  Later, when you mentioned how much you loved Belle and Brady, I just…”  she looked away, biting her lip, trying to keep the tears in check.  They had been so close.  How different might their lives have turned out had she just let him speak that night?  “She knew just how to manipulate me, she knew my triggers, knew how much I didn’t want to hurt you, or anyone else.”

“Damn her,” John growled. 

“I didn’t realize at the time what she was doing,”  Marlena said defensively.  “I still thought she was a good person.  I thought she was my friend, just trying to do what was right for everyone.  It was only when I realized that she’d hidden your letter that it dawned on me just what she’d been doing, and what lengths she would go to in order to hold onto you.  Of course, even then I didn’t really have the slightest clue what she would actually be prepared to do.”

“Tell me about the letter.”  John was starting to feel weary.  He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought to ask Marlena the details of what had happened between her and Kristen.  They should have had this conversation two years ago when they’d reunited.  He should have made her tell him everything then, not just the barest of details.

He was pretty sure that on some level, he had let it fade into the past because he had known that it would make him feel like a complete asshole for not seeing what kind of person Kristen was earlier.  For letting Marlena suffer silently at her hands for so many months.  But he really hadn’t realized exactly how long she had been forced to keep quiet and bear Kristen’s manipulation and taunting. 

“I didn’t know she’d hidden it until I overheard her talking to herself in Rachel’s room.  I found it in a book that you lent me.  She must have found it, read it, and realized that if I read it, I would take it straight to you and tell you how I felt.  And she would have lost you.  So, she hid it.  I don’t know why she didn’t just destroy it.  Thank God she didn’t.”  She shifted uncomfortably, trying to avoid the twigs and stones around the base of the tree she sat against as she sought a more even piece of ground to base herself on.

“You should know that even before I found the letter, I did try and tell you how I felt, a number of times.” She thought about all the times she had embarked on telling him the truth about her feelings, only to be interrupted by a phone call, a knock on the door, or by Kristen, or even John himself.  She dug one hand into her hair, massaging her temple which was starting to ache.  “I just never seemed to… there was always someone or something that got in the way.”

“Story of our lives,” John pushed himself from the rock and walked toward her.  Holding out his hands, he raised an eyebrow.  “Come back and sit with me, Doc.”

“John…” she looked at his proffered hands uncertainly.  “I don’t know…”

“Please?” he wanted to hold her.  Wanted to soothe away the pain.  But if she wouldn’t allow him to do that, then at least he could be close to her and lend her some reassurance.  “I won’t kiss you.  I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to.  But this is hard, Doc.  I can feel the tension rolling off you.  I’m afraid you’re going to run away from me again.”

“I won’t run,” she said, her voice deep and throaty.  She appreciated his fears though, and that he knew that this was difficult for her.  “I’m not scared honey, I’m just… this whole period, when I was living with you at the mansion…  It was torture for me.  Having to watch you with her.  Knowing what she had done to me, to us.  Knowing that she was craven enough to let Stefano take me.  To help him.”

“I hate that I put you through that,” he crouched in front of her and reached out, brushing a strand of hair from her face.  “You know that, right?  Do you know how much I hate that you suffered?  I thought I was doing the right thing.  I thought I was the only one that was suffering.”

“You wouldn’t let me leave,” she reminded him, the agony of those long months echoing in her voice, the tears glimmering in her eyes again.  “I wanted, I was desperate to go back to the penthouse, but you kept using my fear of Stefano, my desire to help Rachel, and to help you find out about your past to convince me to stay.  I don’t know if you realize how much that cost me.  How much it tormented me to watch you with her.”

“I’m sorry,” he ran his thumb across her beautiful high cheekbone, collecting the tears that shimmered on her lashes.  “I am so sorry.  I was clinging to every last moment I could have with you.  Once you were gone, it was just me and Kristen.  I think I knew deep down how lonely that would be.   You brought… you bring color to my life, baby.”  He sighed.  “I need to explain that to you.  But not right now.  Let’s finish with Kristen.  But first, come back and sit with me.  It’s gotta be more comfortable on the blanket, surely?”

 “Okay,” she nodded and let him pull her up.  Overbalancing as she reached her feet, she fell into him.  His breath was warm against her cheek, his arms strong and reassuring around her.  She folded her own arms around his waist and pressed herself against him, inhaling his clean, spicy scent.  She felt him nuzzling her hair, felt his fingers digging into the tousled golden mess, clutching it in a tight handful and she moaned deep in her throat.  

For a moment she thought about leisurely trailing her tongue across his skin, digging her teeth gently into his jaw.  Whispering dirty words hotly against his ear.  It would be so easy to distract him from this.  She knew just how to turn him on, knew how easy it would be.  All she had to do was touch him here, lick him there.  Whimper gently as his hands moved of their own accord to squeeze her behind, his lips blindly seeking hers.  

So simple.

They would stop talking and Kristen would go away again.  All those memories, all the scheming, all the cocky smiles, and the whining coercion would recede into memory.

But really, the truth was, she would still be there.  Buried again, but still between them.  She would always be there until they banished her.  And the only way they could do that was with the truth.  

John grunted and peeled himself away from her.  “We should…”  his hand lingered in her hair, and she shivered, opening her eyes to find his sapphire gaze laying her bare.  His intensity was her undoing as she felt the moisture pool between her thighs.  Suddenly all her good intentions were forgotten as her lips sought his.  She gasped at the taste of him, the feeling of his tongue as it licked across her bottom lip.  A moan tumbled from her as his hand splayed against the small of her back, pulling her against him and she felt him swell against her.

“Oh God,” she whispered against his mouth.  “I want you so much.”

“Doc,” he groaned.  “Oh baby, you feel so good.”  

Her hands twisted in the white cotton of his t-shirt as he bussed her lips, licking them and sucking them between his, before his tongue sought the depths of her mouth, searching and digging.  He pushed her back against the oak tree and ground his pelvis against her, his cock hard in his jeans.  

“Oh God,” she gasped as his mouth found her jaw and then her throat.  She yanked at his t-shirt so that the edges of it pulled out of the waistband of his pants.

“Baby,” John rolled his hips over hers with a groan, “you’re killing me.  I want you so bad.”

She said nothing but slid her hands up under his t-shirt, her slender fingers nimble against his warm skin.  The image of him making himself come in the moonlight while calling her name came to her, and her core clenched, making her pulse with need.

John pulled his hand from behind her and cupped one of her breasts, rubbing his thumb across the hard nub of her nipple.  The lace of her bra, combined with the pressure from his hand and the stroking of his thumb provided exquisite friction that made her knees weak.

“Oh God, oh God…” she was almost beside herself.  The weeks of near misses, of almost-but-not-quite, were starting to tell on her.  She felt constantly horny, a mess of sensation and need whenever he was around.  And the moment he touched her, she felt her resolve start to dissolve.  It was too much, her need for him.  She wanted to feel his hands on her skin, his mouth on her breasts.  She wanted to feel him digging between her thighs, licking, sliding, and thrusting.  “I want you,” she breathed against his ear as he pressed open-mouthed kisses to her neck.  He growled against her hot skin and sucked fiercely so that she could feel the pull of his mouth stinging her flesh.

She cried out, digging her fingernails into the muscles of his back as he forced his knee between her leg, grinding his thigh roughly against her center.  Immediately, she sagged against him, crying out as the stimulation overwhelmed her momentarily.  “John… oh John… please.”

“Oh God Doc!”  John was equally swept away in the moment.  She smelt like heaven, tasted like paradise.  She was warm and sweet and the sounds falling from her mouth, from her throat threaded around him, slithered inside him, vibrating inside his core, making him grow and surge.  His hips thrust against her almost of their own accord.  His mouth was on her mouth, her jaw, her neck.  His hand kneaded her breast and then stumbled downwards, searching for where her blouse was tied at her waist.  His other hand was still in her hair, strands of it wrapped firmly around his fingers as he assaulted her neck, her ear, and her mouth.

“I need you,” she gasped as he pulled at the tie that kept her blouse together.  “John, please, please.”  She fumbled at his t-shirt, pulling it fully from his jeans and shoving it upward, urging him to lift his arms so that she could pull it off him.  

John, you promised…  The internal voice slipped into his consciousness.  He couldn’t even say whose voice it was.  His?  Hers?  Whosoever it was it stopped him in his tracks.

“Marlena…”  

It was only with a singular phenomenal effort that he withdrew his hand from the tie, which was now dangling undone, her blouse sagging open. He caught her wrist in his fingers.  “We have to stop.”

“No, no!” she shook her head, desperate.  “I need you.  I want you to make love to me.”

“No,” he shook his head.  “No, baby you’re just trying to run away from this conversation.”

“No, no I’m not!” she said frantically, trying to pull her wrist from his grip.  “John, please.”  Tears gathered in her eyes.  She was so tired.  So fucking full of need and desire for him she couldn’t even think straight anymore.  She just wanted him inside her. She just needed his touch.  The words could come later.  If they had to.  “We can still talk after.”  She wrenched herself from his grasp and pushed at his t-shirt again.  “Don’t you want me?” she said, looking up at him from underneath her spiky lashes.

“You know I want you,” he growled.  “I want you every single moment of every fucking day.  Woman, you have absolutely ruined me.  I can barely think about anything else.  When I finally do make love to you, I swear to God, you won’t be able to walk for days.  But it’s not going to be today, Marlena.  I promised you that we’d only do this when you are ready.”

“I’m ready, I’m ready!” she cried, so frustrated she could have screamed. 

“No,” he stepped back.  “No, honey, you’re not.  We need to keep talking.”

“I don’t want to talk,” tears spilled over her cheeks.  “I’m tired of talking.  I’m so tired.  It was too hard the first time around.  I let her do this to me.  To us.”

“I know that,” he reached for her and pulled her into his arms, smoothing his large palm over the back of her head and letting her sob against him.  “Baby, I know.  I understand.  It’s hard for me too.  I loved her.  She was supposed to be your friend and she betrayed you.  She made us both into fools and that’s hard to stomach.  But you know what?  Believing the best of someone isn’t the worst thing in the world.  Trusting, loving, and trying to do the best for people… are the things that make you the wonderful woman you are.  Don’t let the actions of a terrible person like Kristen make you second-guess yourself.”

Marlena clung to him, her tears soaking into the white cotton of his t-shirt.  She hated Kristen for everything.  For making her feel foolish, for identifying and using her own weaknesses against her.  For trying to sacrifice her to Stefano’s madness.  For hurting John.

“C’mon,” John led her over to the picnic blanket and lowered himself to the ground, pulling her with him and holding her tightly against him.  

Finally, when her tears abated, he allowed her to pull back.  Pushing the damp hair back off her face, he wiped her cheeks with his fingers.  

“You’re right to be hurt and angry and upset, okay?  At Kristen and at me.  I handled things badly.  I did what I did with the best of intentions, but I was ignorant of what was really going on and I should have seen it.  I should have seen who she was.”

“She’s a DiMera,” Marlena said.  “She learned at the knee of the master.  One thing you can say about Stefano is that he understands people’s weaknesses.  Kristen knew how to play the game.  How to show you what you wanted to see.  How to play on your sense of fair play and honor.”

John took a deep breath, pressing on.  “So, tell me about what happened when you found the letter.  Did you… I assumed you tried to tell me then?”

“I tried.” Marlena ran her own hands across her face and combed her fingers through her hair.  “But we were at the hospital.  Rachel… and that’s when Kristen came up and announced that she had just found out she was pregnant.  I was still going to tell you but then Karen Bader told us that her pregnancy was precarious and that any emotional upset could cause her to lose the baby.  At that point, I didn’t know she’d hidden the letter.  I thought she was my friend.  She was so happy about the baby; she wanted a child so badly.  How could I put that at risk?  And it was your baby too.  I love you so much and I know how much you love your children.  And I didn’t know whether you still felt the same as you had done the night you’d written that letter.  Time had passed.  I thought that maybe it was… you had written it in a moment of crisis and that your feelings had tempered over time.  So, I decided to step back.  You loved her.  I thought you could be happy with her.  With your little family.”

“And then you found out she’d read the letter.  That she knew I loved you and she’d kept that from you.”  John rubbed her thigh, trying to comfort her.

“I confronted her.  I told her I was going to tell you everything.  But she started having cramps.  Every time we would get into it, every time she would use the delicacy of her pregnancy to silence me.”  She pursed her lips.  “Laura kept trying to convince me to tell you.  She kept reminding me that I had a child who deserved to have parents who were together and loved each other.  I kept saying that I didn’t know whether you still felt the same, so she used the opportunity when you were under the effects of the psychotropic drug we used on you, to ask you about your feelings.  But before you could answer, the alarms went off and when we came back, Kristen was with you.  I realized later that she had been the one that had set the alarms off.  She’d been eavesdropping and she’d heard Laura ask you whether you still loved me.  And who you loved more, me or Kristen.”

“So, you never heard my answer?” John asked.  

“No, but I know Kristen heard it.  And if it had been her, she would have done everything in her power to make sure I heard it too.“

“And even knowing that, even knowing I loved you more, she was still determined to hang onto me.”  John shook his head.  All that time, he had thought her to be good and kind when really she was just as evil and depraved as her monster of a father.  At first, he had been grief-stricken that John Jr. was not his child.  Now he was just relieved that there was nothing to tie him to Kristen.

“She had no self-respect, John.  She lost any she might have had when she started scheming to keep us apart.  The moment she started trying to manipulate me, the moment she made the decision to hide that letter, she was on a slippery slope to becoming just like Stefano.  She thought that having your child, marrying you, and getting me out of the way was all it would take to tie you to her forever.”

“She was delusional,” John said angrily.  “She had to have known the truth would come out sooner or later.  She had to know I would see through that façade.  That the moment I knew that she’d conspired to hurt you that she would be history.”

“She was delusional.”  Marlena agreed.  “In that respect, she is entirely Stefano’s daughter.  And more than that, she used everything she could to manipulate and control us.  Our fear of Stefano, our guilt, our love for our children, her pregnancy… she even used Rachel to try and play on my guilt and sense of fairness.  It was endless.  The guilt trips, the pregnancy cramps which I’m pretty sure she was faking most of the time, the gloating…” Marlena looked away, covering her mouth with a folded hand.  John said nothing.  Thinking of all the times he had praised Kristen’s goodness to Marlena’s face.  All the times he had been so worried about her, about the cramping, about the stress of Stefano’s incessant attempts to kidnap Marlena.

“She stopped Stefano from kidnapping you though,” he reminded Marlena.

“That was before I knew about the letter,” Marlena said.  “I thought, at the time, she had stopped him.  Now I wonder exactly how he got into the house in the first place.  I wonder if I woke at just the wrong time, and she pretended to be stopping him.  I can’t be sure of anything where she is concerned.”

“Jesus!” John felt sick.  All the times he had come close so close to losing Marlena.  And he had thought Kristen was as worried as he was about her safety.  When all the time she had been colluding with the old man to take away the woman she saw as her rival, not her friend.

“I’m sure she knew I was in Paris when he did finally manage to kidnap me.  We came face to face at that costume ball and she did nothing to let you know where I was.  And then after you rescued me, after she lost the baby and she didn’t tell you, she still continued to hold the supposed danger to that child over my head.  She must have bribed the doctor into keeping silent, into confirming the risk to her pregnancy.  And she used Rachel’s death to further guilt me into keeping silent.  So, I promised that I would stay quiet until the baby was born, only to find she’d manipulated you into marrying her as she gave birth.”

“Except it wasn’t her,” John dropped his head into his hands.  He had descended so far inside Kristen’s crazy make-believe maneuverings that he hadn’t been able to see the wood for the trees.  

“I didn’t know that then,” Marlena shook her head.  “She had me fooled too.  I knew something was off about her pregnancy.  She hadn’t gained any weight and she wouldn’t let you touch her which was so odd given how inclined she was to hang all over you before Stefano kidnapped me.  At one point I did suspect that she’d lost the baby but then she had a scan, and everything seemed normal.  I never dreamed in a million years that she’d managed to pull off a pregnant look-alike scam.  I mean, who could ever have dreamt that was even a possibility?”

“Certainly not me,” John grimaced, remembering how he had slept with Susan while Kristen had been locked up in the room with Marlena.  And while he had thought something was off then, he had been so lost that he hadn’t even really realized that he wasn’t sleeping with Kristen.  It was as though when Marlena was missing, his life was blurred, not quite reality.  He’d been exhausted and distracted, trying to lose himself in physical sensation to dull the pain and the fear that he would never see Marlena again.  But he’d been an idiot.  A complete idiot.

“When I thought you’d married her, I thought that was it.  I thought any chance for a future for us was over.”  She remembered the desolation she had felt at the realization that he’d put a ring on Kristen’s finger.  “I knew how seriously you take the vows you make.  I didn’t feel like I could ask you to compromise yourself, or your integrity.  But my God, John, my heart was broken.  I had been waiting for her to have the baby so I could finally be honest with you and then, at the last moment, she pulled the rug out from under me.  I was devastated.  And she took so much pleasure rubbing it in.”

“You didn’t think I would want to know what a terrible person she was, Doc?  You don’t think I would have broken those vows in a heartbeat knowing what she’d done to you?”  John said, his frustration getting the better of him.  He understood her motivation, but it made him so sad that she would devalue her own happiness so much.  That she would think his feelings, his integrity so much more important than her own misery.  

“I was just broken, honey,” she said quietly.  “And I didn’t want to see you broken too.  At least, I didn’t want to be the one to break you.  I think I figured she would show her true colors and you would learn who she was without me having to interfere.  But I honestly didn’t think you would divorce her.  Remember, I thought the baby was yours and I thought she was married to you.  I had no idea of the depths she’d sunk to.  I still thought that maybe there was hope for her.  Maybe your love could redeem her if I was no longer in the picture.  But then, of course, I started seeing Susan and it wasn’t long before I started to put all the pieces together.  When I confronted her, that was when I realized it wasn’t her that you had married, it was Susan.  And I knew then that it was all over.  That I could tell you and that you would be free to be with me.  I knew you would be heartbroken, but you would be free.”

“That precipitated her locking you in the room,” John said.  He knew that part of the story.  “And she told Stefano to come and get you.”

“Yes.  But Susan was the flaw in her plan.”  She paused, thinking about those first days when she had been locked in the room by herself.  “I told you that when she had me in that room, she had cameras all over the house and a monitor in the room so that I could see you, do you remember?”  She waited until he nodded uncertainly.  Then she looked down to where his hand had wandered back to her thigh, lightly gripping it as his thumb slid backward and forward, comforting himself as much as her.   “What I didn’t tell you was that she would speak to me while I was trapped down there.  Before Susan shut her in with me.  She would taunt me with the fact that she had you all to herself and that Stefano was coming for me.  That it was only a matter of time before he would take me away from you and the children forever.  And you would never know where I was and what had happened to me.”  She let out a sob.  “It was straight out of Stefano’s playbook.  He did the same thing to you in Maison Blanche.   It made me… I had nightmares while I was down there.  Memories of those weeks trapped in that hell in Maison Blanche.  When we were imprisoned in that dungeon.”  Her voice shook as she spoke, her words thick with emotion.  “I swear to God, everything started to blend in my mind.  The pit with Stella, Maison Blanche, being trapped inside my own mind by the demon, and then in that awful cage with Stefano leering at me.  It was… I felt like my life was never going to be anything but being trapped in boxes.  Dark, lonely spaces with demons lurking at the edges.  Stella, Stefano, Kristen…”  she trailed off.  

It was overwhelming when she put it all together.  It was no wonder she was traumatized.  No wonder her perception was skewed, no wonder she jumped at every possible threat.  No wonder she’d been having nightmares and panic attacks.  Her life was a train wreck and John had been her rock.  Until he hadn’t.     

“I guess you know the rest.”  She looked back at him, trying to downplay the fact that just the memory of being stuck in that room, waiting for Stefano to spirit her away was enough to completely discompose her.  “I hate what she did to you,” she said simply.  “I hate what she did to us.  All that time we lost.  All the time we should have been together, that Belle and Brady should have had their parents together, living with them and loving them.  All that time I spent terrified of Stefano taking me away from you, and she was conspiring with him.”  She ached for him.  For herself.  “It terrifies me to think what might have happened if he had taken me from that room.  If you hadn’t found me.  He was determined to have sex with me in Paris.  It was coercion but I almost gave in to him.  Because I was desperate.  And if he’d taken me again…” she shrugged tearfully, the emotion finally breaking free of the constraints she’d forced it into for so long.  “I might have lost hope. I might have given in to him.  Or he might have lost his patience and forced me.  There were moments that I was terrified he was going to, when I was stuck in that cage.”

“Don’t think about it, Doc.” John pulled her into his arms.  “It didn’t happen.  It’s never going to happen.  I’m never letting that evil old bastard get near you.  Not ever again.”  He ran his hand over her back soothing her as she cried out all the pain she’d held inside for so long.  All the rage and frustration and fear.  

John held her, murmuring soothing sounds and words as he felt her quake in his arms, the warmth of her tears melting into his shirt so that it stuck to his shoulder.  It seemed to go on forever.  Now that the words were done and there was nothing left to hold back the truth, the emotion was undammed.  

And there was so much of it.  

So much grief, so much fear, so much pain.  So, he just held her, and he cried with her.  Cried for all the time they had lost, all the pain she had suffered, that he had suffered.  Cried for the part he had played in hurting her.  Cried for his own losses, for the things he had thought his but had turned out not to be.  His name, his children, his wife.

His life, the one that Kristen had so recklessly diverted away from what it should have been.  After Aremid, it should have been him and Marlena.  The two of them with their beautiful babies.  Maybe they might have made another child.  At least they would have had the choice.  It would have been hard, but they would have been happy.  They would have been so damn happy.

And now they were more than three years askew, and trying to pick up the pieces of their fractured lives, and all over again, he just wanted to murder Kristen.  But more than that, he wanted to wrap Marlena up in his arms and hold her and piece her back together.  He wanted to smooth down all the cracked edges, healing her heart and her soul day by day.  He wanted to love her every moment of every day so that she never again had to linger on any thoughts of not being enough, good enough, kind enough, or loved enough.

“It’s okay baby,” he crooned, stroking her back and pressing his mouth to her hair, kissing her again and again.  “It’s okay.  I’m here.  I’m always going to be here.  I’m still yours.  I’ll always be yours.  Always and forever, I’ll be yours.”

Part Cinquante 

It’s so excruciating to see you low

Just wanna lift you up and not let you go

This ultraviolet morning light below

Tells me this love is worth the fight, oh

I lived like an island, punished you with silence

Went off like sirens, just crying

Why’d I have to break what I love so much?

It’s on your face, don’t walk away, I need to say

Hey, it’s all me, in my head

I’m the one who burned us down

But it’s not what I meant

I’m sorry that I hurt you

I don’t wanna do, I don’t wanna do this to you (Ooh)

I don’t wanna lose, I don’t wanna lose this with you (Ooh)

I need to say, hey, it’s all me, just don’t go

Meet me in the afterglow

Afterglow – Taylor Swift

Finally, when Marlena’s tears eased off and quiet hiccups took their place, John gently peeled himself away from her and used his fingers to lift her chin, so she was looking at him.

“You okay?” he asked softly.  She nodded, her lips trembling, so he pressed a gentle kiss to them and then used his thumb to softly wipe the tears from her cheeks.

“I must look a sight,” she laughed shakily, using her sleeve to wipe away the remainder of the moisture from her face.

“You look beautiful,” he said honestly.  She would never look anything but beautiful to him, but she honestly looked stunning.  He had never met anyone else who could cry their heart out and still look as fresh as a daisy afterward.

“How do you feel?” he asked as he topped up her grape juice and handed it to her.

“Tired,” she said honestly.  “Exhausted.  But…” she took a mouthful of the grape juice.  “I feel lighter.  I feel…. better.”  She smiled at him, her eyes shining. “I love you.  I love you so much.”

“I love you too, baby,” he tipped his cup against hers, the plastic making a thwacking sound.  “Is there anything else?  Anything you want to say that you haven’t said yet?”

“Oh probably,” she rolled her head, trying to disengage some of the tension from the muscles around her spine.  “But nothing that I really need to say right now.  Anything else is minor.”

“Well, if it comes to mind, when it comes to mind, please tell me,” he said, moving around behind her and pulling him to her so that her back was flush with his chest and his arms around her.  He nuzzled at her ear and drifted his lips against the curve of her cheek before speaking again.  “This doesn’t have to be a one-time deal, Doc.  This should be the start of a new us.  A new openness.  You can trust me, you don’t need to protect me, and you don’t need to protect yourself.”

“I appreciate that.”  She took a deep breath and turned her head slightly so that she could catch his eyes.  “So, since I’m done, then it must be your turn.”

“My turn?” he frowned.

“You have things you want to say, I know that.”  She moved away from him slightly and turned half around so that she could look into his eyes.  “I’m not the only one that’s been through all this.  You’ve been through it all with me.  I made missteps too.  I made mistakes and I hurt you.  It’s not just Bo, but Roman too.  You said last week that you would explain everything you were thinking and feeling.   You said I didn’t understand how you felt.  So, help me understand.”

John looked at her for a long moment.  He could see how tired she was, see the tension in the muscles bunched at her shoulders.   He was tired too.  This had been an ordeal.  There was so much that he needed to absorb.  To understand.  He was running on adrenaline; already feeling emotionally spent and he didn’t think that was the right footing to start off on what could possibly be another long and emotionally fraught conversation.

“I think that can wait.  I think we probably both need to catch our breath right now, Doc,” he said gently.

“I…” she wanted to say that she wanted to push on.  To finish what they’d started.  But one look at his face told her that wasn’t her choice to make.  He looked shattered.  

She understood that.  She’d unleashed a torrent of truth on him, hard uncompromising truths that upended what he’d thought he’d known about Kristen, about what had happened between him and Kristen, him and her.  

And all this on top of her version of the truth of her return, and the years that followed.  On top of her betrayal, on top of the revelation that Stefano’s medical goons had tinkered with his brain to control him.  He had to be reeling.  She couldn’t make him do anything more than he was ready to do.  To say anything he wasn’t ready to say.  He had waited so patiently for her.  Now it was her turn.

“Okay,” she said slowly.  “I think that’s fair.  You probably need some space after everything I’ve told you.  Some time to work out how you feel.  But I want to hear what you have to say, honey.  Just as soon as you’re ready.”

“I just need,” he waved his hand in the direction of the water.  “I’m not saying I need solitude or space or days to process this, although,” he rubbed his eyebrow and shrugged wearily.  “Maybe I should need that.  Maybe that would be sensible.”

“It’s a lot,” Marlena reached for his face, drawing her fingers across his tight brow and down the side of his face.  “I know it’s a lot, all at once.”

“It’s…” he shook his head.  He didn’t even have the words.  He couldn’t fathom how she had kept all this locked inside her for so long.  How they had never broached any of it in the wake of their reunion two years previously.  He hadn’t been oblivious to all of it, but he had been oblivious to too much.  Kirsten had taken him for a fool, had manipulated him, had hurt Marlena, had intentionally caused her pain and anguish.  And all because, what?  Why?  Because she wanted him?  Because she was narcissistic, delusional, and obsessive.  Just like her evil beast of an adoptive father.

And all of that, on top of everything else Marlena had endured.  All the captivity, all the heartbreak… she had been to hell and back, quite literally.  He couldn’t comprehend how she was still standing, how she was ostensibly in one piece.  Even if she thought she was in shattered pieces, she was still standing, still breathing, still living.  Still loving.

She was the most incredible individual he’d ever had the joy of meeting.  Of loving.  And she loved him.  Of everyone, she had chosen him.  Far from not being worthy, not being enough for Don and Roman, the reality was that they had not been worthy of her.  They had fallen so short of deserving her.  He fell short too, but at least he knew it.  At least he would spend every day of the rest of his life knowing how important she was and how worthy and how goddamn loved.

And still, beyond her pain and grief, he couldn’t deny his own.  He’d thought Kristen caring, kind and trustworthy for so long.  And then he had discovered her to be duplicitous and manipulative.  He had discovered the child he had loved as his was a stranger’s baby.  But even then, he hadn’t realized the depths of Kristen’s depravity.  To know that all that time that he was fraught with anxiety about Marlena’s safety, all that time she had been quietly plotting with Stefano to remove her from his life forever.  If Kristen hadn’t already exited Salem, he would gladly wrap his fingers around her miserable, scrawny throat and strangle the life out of her for what she had done to them.

But his anger, his outrage wasn’t going to help Marlena now.  Now he needed to concentrate on what she needed to move forward.  And what he needed too.   He had to give Marlena whatever she needed to feel safe and secure and loved.  But he had needs too and he couldn’t ignore those.  Marlena’s example was too potent, too much of a warning.  If they were going to move forward in equal partnership, both getting what they needed, then he needed to be cognizant of his own feelings, his own needs.

“Yeah,” he nodded.  “It’s a lot.”  He held out his hand.  “How about we go for a walk, Doc?”

“A walk?” she asked.

“You know me,” he tried to smile.  “I need to move.  When I feel tense.  When I am trying to work things out.  I’m not like you Doc, I need to move my body.  I can’t just be in my head.”

“Okay,” she nodded with a sympathetic smile.  “Of course, let’s go.”

She let him take her hand and pull her up and then sighed gently as he slid his arm around her waist.  It felt comfortable and familiar as she crossed her arm in front of her and grasped his fingers with her own.  

He led her quietly along one of the trails that led through the woods, parallel to the water’s edge.  She remained silent as they walked, letting him think and just enjoying his presence next to her, his warmth, the clean musky scent of him.

As they walked, she was so aware of him, of his silent strength, of his love for her.  She had just thrown an emotional barrage at him, and he was so quietly accepting and thoughtful.  A lesser man would have become defensive and angry, she knew.  Roman never would have been able to accept or deal with this level of vulnerability and rawness.   At the slightest perceived criticism, he would have turned it back on her, blaming her for his own weaknesses.  He would have made it her problem, her fault.  Her unreasonableness.

John hadn’t done that.  He had challenged her where it was justified.  She was as much to blame for their lack of honesty as he was.  They both had their own reasons for holding back.  He knew hers.  And she knew some of his.  And she would wait for the rest of it.

Unfolding his arm from around her, he took her hand in his as they walked, stroking his thumb over the back of her hand as he sorted through the thoughts in his mind.  There was so much to deal with.  So much to explain.

“Down here,” he pulled on her hand and led her down a rocky path, stopping and steadying her as she carefully picked a path across the stones.  When they emerged through a stand of trees and shrubs, she found that they were in a private little inlet, white stones leading down to where the crystal-clear water lapped against a small stretch of sand.  It was warm and quiet, and the sun sparkled in languid swathes as an almost non-existent breeze pushed at the surface of the water, creating small undulations.  John stood behind Marlena and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and they stood for a long moment, just taking in the beauty of the lake and the city that shone beyond it.

“You died twice, d’you know?” he said quietly in her ear.  “I had to grieve you twice.”

She shook her head wordlessly.  She didn’t know what he was talking about, but she figured if she let him continue it would become clear.  Lifting her hands, she hooked her fingers over his forearms, holding him against her.  He nuzzled her ear with his nose and then brushed it with his lips.

“We thought you died when the house exploded,” he explained.  “That was Orpheus.  He blew up the house and we thought you were in it.  We mourned you.  Me and Carrie, we were zombies for a while.  Carolyn and Shawn helped with the twinners.  I wasn’t capable for weeks.  I could barely take care of myself, let alone the kids.”  He tightened his arms around her as if to remind himself that she was there with him.  Warm and very, very alive.  “And then Orpheus started dropping hints that you were still alive.  Until finally he dropped a videotape of you in my lap.  You were on that island.  I had the ISA authenticate it and when they said it was real…”  He sighed, kissing her hair.  “I almost couldn’t let myself believe it.  Losing you hurt so goddamn much.  But I had to believe it.  Any sliver of a chance that you were alive, I had to find you. So, I started searching for you.  I spoke to his wife’s aunt.  She told me about the island.  And then I found you… but I was too late.  He had you on that damn plane and then you… the plane…” he swallowed, his throat tight and sore.

“They swore no one could have survived that crash.  Barely any of the pieces of wreckage were over a dinner plate in size.”  His voice had dropped to a low whisper, and she could hear the difficulty with which he swallowed.  “Doc, if I had known… If I’d had any idea….”

She released her hands from his forearms and twisted inside his embrace so that she was facing him.  “I know.”  She nods.  “John, I know.  I’ve never doubted that you would have torn down half the world looking for me.”

“Stefano taunted me, you know.  Made me think you were alive but then snatched away that hope.  We searched for you, Doc.  His fucking games, his treasure hunts.  We followed oblique clues, there were photos and sightings of you.  He had someone impersonating you.  It fucked with my head.  It…” his eyes filled with tears.  “I wanted you to be alive so badly.  But at the same time, the hope scoured me out and left me hollow.  Losing you destroyed me, Doc.    I was a fucking automaton for so long.”  He unfolded his arms from around her and stepped back, looking at her straight on.  “Yeah, there were other women.  Honestly, I needed something, anything to keep me going.  At first, it was Carrie and the twins.  I had to keep going for them.  Thank God I had them.  For that reason alone, I am so grateful that I thought I was Roman during that time.  Those kids and the support of Ma and Pa and Bo, Kay and Kim.  I wouldn’t have survived losing you if it hadn’t been for them.”

Marlena said nothing, but she ached for him.  He rarely spoke about that time, the time when she was missing, presumed dead.  And she suddenly understood why.  The anguish in his voice, in his bearing, was palpable.  “So, yeah, Diana came along, and I grabbed onto her, like a drowning man.  My life had gone from vivid color to black and white overnight.  With Diana there was some color in the shadows, you know?”

She nodded.  She remembered how she had felt when Roman had died.  That first year had been excruciating but she had been a new mother of twins and she hadn’t been able to wallow in her misery.  

“It wasn’t because I’d forgotten you, Doc.  It wasn’t because I’d gotten over you.”  A muscle in his jaw twitched as he clenched it momentarily and she saw the largely unconscious action of his hands curling into fists as he recalled the devastation he had experienced.  “It was because I couldn’t get over you.  I’d climb into my empty bed every night and I would feel raw with grief.  It hurt so much.  I would dream of you all night and I would wake up and for a moment, I would forget you were gone.  And baby, that was the best part of my day.  Once it hit me again and I realized you were gone, I was back in hell.  Some days I couldn’t breathe for the pain.  Some days I didn’t think I was going to survive it.  So, I had to do something.  Just to keep living.  And that something was finding someone to take my mind off how much it hurt.  I thought you were gone, Marlena.  I was never going to see you again.  I was never going to hear you laugh, I was never going to lie next to you.  It was excruciating, and Diana took the edge off that pain.  It never went away but being with her dulled it.”

He couldn’t look directly at her when said Diana’s name.  He knew it hurt her to think of him with other women, even when he had thought her dead, and he could understand that because the thought of her with Roman and Bo fucking tortured him.  But he had to make her understand that it had been a matter of survival.

“And then I thought, maybe, just maybe, there was a chance you had survived the crash because that fucking evil old bastard dangled hope in front of me and then took great delight in snatching it away.  And that, seeing photos of you, seeing your writing.  Thinking that maybe you were alive, it…. Jesus Doc, it fucking broke me into pieces.”  He turned away, hugging his arms around himself, suddenly cold, despite the warmth of the sunshine that shone above them.  “I tried really hard not to let anyone see how badly it affected me but inside I crumbled.  I think Diana knew but she was patient with me.  She was good for me.  Until she disappeared in the middle of the night one night.”  He turned back to her, his eyes red-rimmed.  

“Oh, honey.”  Marlena wanted to go to him and take him in her arms.  She wanted to soothe away his pain, pain that he still carried, all these years later.  Just like she carried her own abandonment wounds, so did he.

“So, when you came out of the mist on that pier that night, I thought for a moment that maybe I was dreaming.  Or maybe I’d just finally lost my goddamn mind.  Because I’d had dreams like that.  Over and over.  Night after fucking night.  I would dream you were with me, you came back to me, and then you’d fade into the mist and I’d wake up, my pillow wet with tears.”

He shook his fist helplessly.  He wasn’t used to being so open, so vulnerable.  She was the only one to which he’d ever been able to expose the depths of his soul like this.

“When I touched you and realized you were real…” he exhaled, remembering the feeling of her in his arms, the scent of her which had sent him absolutely reeling.  And the feeling of her skin against his, her tears damp on his cheeks.  Her lips, so fucking soft…  “It was like fireworks going off inside my head, Doc.  Inside my body.  I was so overwhelmed.  But at the same time, I kept expecting you to vanish.  To wake up and find you were gone, that I was dreaming, or someone had taken you away from me again.  Honestly, it took months for that feeling to subside.  But you wanted to know why it was so hard for me to make a decision?  It was because I was terrified.”  

He looked down at his curled fists and realized that they clenched so tightly that his fingers were growing numb.   Blowing out a breath, he turned around and forced his fingers to uncurl before he shook his hands, trying to release some of the tension in his hands, arms, and shoulders.  He was fully aware that this time it was him that was turning away, putting distance between them but for a moment, the intensity of the memory, of the remembered fear, and the way she was looking at him with those emotion-filled warm honey eyes… he could barely breathe.  He felt panicky for a moment and flexed his fingers and his palms, trying to work out the prickly feeling in his digits as he tried to control his breathing.

“It’s okay,” he jumped as he felt her small, slender hands, warm on the bare skin of his upper arms.  They slid up to his shoulders and he felt her thumbs dig into his tense muscles.  “It’s okay, baby.  I’m not going anywhere.  I’m never leaving you.”

“You did though, didn’t you?” He turned around, tears in his eyes.  “Baby, you have no idea what it feels like to be in love with you.  You just have no idea how amazing you truly are.  You fill my world with sunshine and color.  And when you died, all that… it went.  The world was grey and flat.  I was just making it through the day.  Yeah, I turned to other women, to try and inject some color back into my life but it was never full technicolor Doc.  It was muted pastels at best.”

“But you loved Isabella,” she cupped his face in her small hands and used her thumbs to wipe away his tears in the same way he had done to her earlier.  “You were happy with Isabella.  I know you were.”

“Yeah, I loved her,” he nodded.  “But it was a safe love, Doc.  She was good and she was kind, and it was easy and safe.  She didn’t challenge me.  She didn’t set the world ablaze every time she walked into the room.  I knew if I lost her, it wasn’t going to rip my heart out and shred it to pieces like losing you did.”

“But…” she looked slightly nonplussed.

“Oh yeah, I was broken when she died.  I did love her.  But it didn’t eviscerate me like losing you did.  What it did do was leave space for missing you again.  So, I was grieving her but I was still so aware of you and how I felt about you.  And I felt real damn conflicted about that, let me tell you.  There was a day when I came over, I don’t know if you remember.  We talked about me losing her.  And you told me how it felt when you lost your baby.”

“DJ,” she nodded.  “I remember.”

“DJ,” he repeated.  “You told me how I just had to go through the pain.  Like I hadn’t already suffered the worst pain of my life when I lost you.  I’d already been through it, Doc.  And it had been so much worse.  But I couldn’t tell you that because you were with Roman, and I didn’t want you to see how much being close to you affected me.”

Marlena was silent, taking in his words, weighing them, and putting them alongside her own feelings so that they could temper and shape them into something new.

“Doc, I wanted you.  From the moment you walked into my arms on that pier.  I wanted you so bad I could taste it.  But I was so scared I was going to lose you again.  I had Isabella there offering me love and security and a nice safe life.   And then you walked back into my life and exploded everything to smithereens.  You turned everything upside down.   And I couldn’t breathe because I loved you so much, but it was too much.  I couldn’t face losing you again, so it was easier not to have you in the first place.”  He gave a harsh chuckle.  “I guess I thought I could somehow turn my feelings off.  If I told myself I was over you, that we were just friends enough, that would work.  I could talk myself into believing it.”

“We both fell victim to that magical thinking,” she said quietly.

“But you were right about Miami and San Cristóbal,” he told her.  “I realized when I kissed you on that beach in Miami.  I realized that I couldn’t deny my love for you.  That I couldn’t control myself around you for any significant period of time. “

She raised her eyebrows in a gesture that said, you seemed to have forgotten that by Mexico.  

John deliberately ignored the eloquent glare.  “I held you that night in San Cristóbal and I’d made my decision.  Sometimes I wish… I wonder what would have happened if I’d listened to my heart that night and made love to you.”

“It would have changed things,” Marlena told him quietly.  “For me, it would have changed everything.  If I’d known how you felt, if I’d known you were committed to me, I would never have stopped fighting for you.”

“But I didn’t,” he took her hands in his and kissed the fingers of one hand and then the other.  “I wanted to do it right.  I wanted to tell Isabella it was over so that I could give myself to you without any guilt or confusion.  And I wanted it to be special.  Our first time in almost five years, I didn’t want it to be on a mattress on the floor of a deserted monastery.”  He shrugged.  “Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it makes you second guess your decisions.  I don’t know that I regret not making love to you that night, but I do regret not being clearer with you about my feelings.  Both about my fear and confusion, and about my decision that night.  Because by the time we found Roman, it was too late.  Things were suddenly thrown upside down.”

Marlena nodded, remembering how shocked she had been to see Roman’s face.  Although all these years later, she recognized on some level, she had known John wasn’t Roman, at that time it had come as a complete shock.  To be confronted with a face she had thought no longer existed had sent her world spiraling.  She still couldn’t imagine how it must have felt for John, his entire existence being thrown into question.

“You said… after our affair, you just needed some solid ground,” he pulled her down toward the water and untied his sweatshirt from around his waist.  Laying it on the sand, he helped her seat herself down and then lowered himself next to her.  He continued to stare out over the glistening water.  “That’s how I felt after Roman turned up.”  He picked up a rock from the sand and inspected it, turning it over and over in his fingers as he thought through what he wanted to say.  Marlena watched him silently.  She was skilled in letting patients come to their own conclusions.  In being comfortable with extended silences as they worked through their thoughts and feelings.  It was harder when it came to her own life, when she wanted to hear the next thoughts, the explanations that she was so desperate for.  But this was her bread and butter.  She could wait as long as it took.

“You know you were there from the beginning,” he reminded her.  “There’s nothing before you.  Nothing worth remembering.  So, you’re my anchor.  You’re my rock, my solid ground.  You helped me make myself.  Not in Roman’s image but you helped me form myself.  You gave me the strength to trust in myself.  But then you weren’t there anymore, and I had to survive without my center.   I had the babies and Carrie, and I had the Brady’s and they saved me, they really did.  But then you came back and Roman came back and I needed that solid ground.  I didn’t fight so hard to prove that I was Roman because I wanted to be Roman.”  He raised his arm and threw the stone as hard as he could at the placid surface of the lake.  It hit the water and sank immediately, but ripples spread out, disturbing the easy sway of the surface, causing ripples that slowly spread out and eventually surged against the shore.  “I fought it because I wanted you.  You and the kids were the center of my universe.  The thought of living my life without the four of you… “ 

He pulled his knees up against his chest and looped his arms around them.  “I didn’t choose Isabella, Doc.  I pushed you away because I was trying to protect myself. I thought I was going to lose you, so I turned to her.  She offered me security and stability.  She wasn’t you but she was safe.  And I needed safety.  Because I didn’t know who you were going to choose and I thought it would be him.  I knew how much you loved and missed him when you met me, so I made an assumption, and I pushed you away before you could push me.”

He looked sideways at her.  “I’m sorry.  I know now how wrong I was.  What a mistake that was.  But I couldn’t bear to lose you again.  So, I pretended you weren’t mine to lose.  Because it was easier than opening myself up to hoping only to be destroyed again.”

“Oh, John.”  She was tearful at his revelations.

“It was always you, Marlena,” he said, taking his hand in hers.  “Those other women… They were only ever because I couldn’t have you.  Because I needed a distraction, a way to survive without you.  I’m weak, I admit that.  It hurts too much, it’s too desolate when I am alone in my bed without you.”  He shrugged lightly.  It wasn’t something he was proud to admit, but it was true, and she needed to know it.   “When I thought I couldn’t have you, you’re right, I needed another body in my bed.  I needed it because if I didn’t have it, I would have come for you.  I would have pressured you; I would have hurt you and I didn’t want to do that.”

He brushed his thumb across the back of her fingers.  “When Isabella died… after I found you in that warehouse… I couldn’t control myself anymore.  I knew you were unhappy with him.  I saw it.  But I didn’t know what to do about it.  And then… we were kind of honest about our feelings. On the pier.  I touched you.  I touched your face, and I heard you tell me you still had feelings for me and Doc, I got obsessive.  I couldn’t think about anything else but for how it would feel to have your skin against mine.  To smell you.  To feel your tongue against my skin.  To be inside you.”

He took a deep breath, imagining that right now.  About how it would feel to bury himself inside her.  It wasn’t just about that, for him.  That was only a small part of why he was drawn to her, why he adored her.  But he couldn’t deny he was a sexual creature, one who craved touch, and physical affection.  Being close to her but not being able to be with her in that way was its own kind of special torture.

“That’s why I decided to leave Salem,” he said softly.  “You know that.  Because I knew I wouldn’t be able to control myself around you.  Especially when you were so unhappy.  I thought if I went, Roman would calm down.  You’d have the time and space to mend your relationship with him without me being there causing problems.”

“But I wouldn’t let you go,” Marlena said sadly.  “I couldn’t give you what you wanted, but I wouldn’t let you go either.”

“You were just as torn as I was,” John reminded her.  “More I guess at that point.  You were still married.  And you loved him.”

“I loved you more.” Marlena bit her lower lip.  “I loved him, but I was in love with you.  I just fought it so hard because I didn’t want to hurt him.  I didn’t want to hurt the children or the family.  And then I did just that.”

“We didn’t know…” John shook his head.  “We tried to do what was right, Marlena.  “We tried to do what was best for everyone.  Looking back… knowing what I know now… we should have seen how inevitable it was that we would lose control.  But we didn’t know then.”

“I’ve never felt about anyone else the way I feel about you,” she nodded.  “It took me a long time to accept that.  That I couldn’t control my feelings and make myself feel for Roman the things I wanted to feel.  That I thought I should feel.  I tried to be the wife he wanted.  But he wanted me to be something I couldn’t be.  And I just kept gravitating back to you.  Again and again.”

“Same,” John smiled tenderly.  “You always were the sun in my universe, baby.  I’ll forever be orbiting you.”

“I like to think of us more as binary stars,” she swept the tears out from under her eyes with graceful fingers and then reached out and touched her fingers to his cheek.  “Orbiting each other until eventually, we burn out.  Oh my, we have certainly lived some life together, haven’t we?”

“That’s a fact, baby!” He caught her hand in his and then leaned over, cupping her face with his palm before he pressed his lips to hers in a soft kiss.  “That’s a fact.”

Part Cinquante-et-un   

Tossing, turning
Struggled through the night with someone new
And I could go on and on, on and on
Lantern, burning
Flickered in my mind, only you
But you were still gone, gone, gone

Been losing grip, on sinking ships
You showed up just in time

This love is good, this love is bad
This love is alive back from the dead, oh-oh, oh
These hands had to let it go free, and
This love came back to me, oh-oh, oh
This love left a permanent mark
This love is glowing in the dark, oh-oh, oh

These hands had to let it go free, and
This love came back to me, oh-oh, oh

This Love – Taylor Swift

“It really hurt though, Doc,” John said after he pulled back from the kiss.  “The fact that you loved me, but you wanted to stay with him.  With Roman.  I’d done everything I could to protect myself from the pain of losing you again and there I went, falling headlong into that affair with you.  I couldn’t think about anything but you.  I tried to stay away from you, but I couldn’t.  Once I was in, I was all in with you.  I ate, slept, and breathed you.  I took up with Rebecca to stop that happening but… it happened anyway.  She was never any threat baby, she was… like I said, she was a distraction at best.”

“A really annoying, abrasive distraction,” Marlena grimaced.  “She was so…”

“Not like you?” John smiled, slightly amused by her dismissal of Rebecca’s character.  “With good reason, Doc.  If I was going to distract myself from thinking about you twenty-four-seven, it had to be with someone who wouldn’t remind me of you at every turn.  But clearly, it didn’t work because we still ended up on that plane together.”

Marlena swallowed.  “I’m sorry,” she said softly.  “I’m sorry I hurt you.  I should have let you leave.  But the thought… not having you in my life was unbearable.”

“I know.”  He nodded mournfully.  “Baby, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.  It was unbearable for me.  I lived without you for more than four years.  One thousand, five hundred and seventy-five days, to be precise.  And I felt the pain of being without you in my soul every one of those long, long days.  And when you came back and you were with Roman, that was almost too much for me to bear.”  He almost choked on the words and cleared his throat.  Looking away over the water, he ran his fingers through his hair.

“I know you said you didn’t choose him; you didn’t have the chance to make a choice.  But you did choose him after we slept together.  You could have been honest about your feelings, about who you really wanted to be with.  I was free to love you and I wanted to love you.  I would have given anything to make a life with you Doc.  But you chose him.  I know what you said about needing some solid ground and baby, I hear that, and I understand it but goddamn it, you broke my heart, lady.”  He sighed, long and heartfelt.  “So, after that, I guess I needed some solid ground too.  That’s why I found Kristen.  And that’s why even after Roman left, even after what happened with the devil, I couldn’t let myself contemplate the idea that you might feel anything more for me than friendship.”

Marlena looked away as she tried to imagine how it must have been for him when she had died.  She had her own experiences with grief, but even when they had been separated, even when he had left and gone to Europe, at least she had still known he was there.  He was somewhere in the world.  The idea of him not being anywhere just left her breathless with anguish.  If it had been him that had died in 1987, she’s not sure how she would have survived.  

“The demon,” John sounded almost conversational when he said it.  “It stirred up all those feelings again.  I thought I had put them to bed and suddenly I was fantasizing about you.  I was dreaming about you.  I didn’t understand why at first.  But Jesus, I wanted you, Doc.  It filled my mind with all sorts of images, all sorts of lustful, filthy thoughts and there were moments I would have gladly broken every one of my vows to give in to your seductions.”  His heart was pounding, his breath erratic as his admission brought some of those memories to the surface.  “Do you remember…” he shook his head.  “No, of course you don’t.”

“I remember bits and pieces,” Marlena admitted to him.  “Momentary images.  Emotions.  I remember… wearing a red dress.  Wanting desperately for you to take it off me.  I remember being at Smith Island with you.  You were chopping wood,” she smiled and looked away, shyly.  She remembered that vividly.  It was stinking hot, and he had shed his shirt and was chopping wood.  She had been watching him out of the window and then she’d made a show of cooling herself with a washcloth.  The devil had wanted him to break his vows and she had tried to fight, but the truth was, she had wanted him as badly as he had wanted her.  She had been wet with desire and longing.  It was only Kristen that had saved him on that occasion.  Kristen, who had suspected what was going on long before anybody else had a clue.

“That night on the island,” John groaned.  “God, Doc I was so close to giving in.  You were so fucking sexy.  You had an ice cube and you… you did this with it.”  he took his finger and trailed it from her lips down her neck until it disappeared between her breasts.  

“Oh,” she stared at him, her eyes wide, her heart pounding.

“You are so fucking sexy,” he said, hooking his finger over the V of her wrap-around top and pulling it so that she leaned towards him.  His other hand slid around the back of her neck, and he drifted his lips across hers.    She moaned, opening her mouth, flickering her tongue across his bottom lip.  

It was a moment before John pulled away, leaning his forehead against hers and breathing heavily.

“I don’t know how much longer I can keep pulling away from you, Doc,” he admitted.  “Especially when I think about how good it feels to make love to you.”

“I know,” she whispered, her breath warm against his mouth.  “I feel the same.  We’ve wasted so much time.  Maybe we shouldn’t waste any more.”

“No,” he shook his head and pulled back, looking into her beautiful moss-green eyes.  “No, this isn’t wasted time honey.  We need this.  We’ve needed it for a long time.  And I promised you that I wouldn’t make love to you until you’re ready.”

“What if I’m ready now?” she asked, frustrated.  

“You’re not ready,” he told her gently.  “I can tell you’re not ready.”

“How?” she demanded. “How do you know that?  Don’t you think I know when I’m ready?”

“I know you,” he answered simply.  “You haven’t told me you’re ready.  I don’t want us to just get carried away.  I don’t want you to regret it, I don’t want you to have any doubts or questions.  When you’re ready, you’ll tell me, and I’ll believe you.”

“You are so annoying sometimes,” she griped although secretly she was relieved that he was so sensitive to her needs and her weaknesses.  She was so close to giving into his affections, giving in to her own desires.  But he was right.  She wasn’t emotionally ready yet.  She needed him to tell her the rest first.  

She shivered as a gust of wind came off the water and John stood up, dusting off his behind and holding out his hand.  “Let’s go back and have some dessert,” he suggested.

They wandered back in silence, hand in hand until they reached the glade where the remnants of their picnic sat, undisturbed.  Marlena let him help her back down to the picnic rug and then watched as he poured them more grape juice and then rummage around in the picnic basket again.  Finally, he pulled out a wedge of wrapped watermelon.  Placing it on the ground, he peeled back the saran wrap and picked off a small wedge, passing it to Marlena.  She smiled and took a bite.  It was impossibly sweet and juicy, and the juice ran in small rivulets down her chin and over her fingers.  S

She squealed as she pulled it away and tried to chew and swallow it quickly.

“Here, let me.”  He used his thumb to collect the juice from her chin and then sucked it into his mouth.  Then, leaning forward, he licked his tongue across her lips, the sweet taste of watermelon sugary on his tongue.

Marlena was breathless as he pulled away and took the watermelon from her before he lifted her hand to his mouth, sucking her index finger in and swirling his tongue around, collecting all the moisture.

“Are you trying to kill me?” she asked in a shaky voice as he took her hand, finger by finger into his mouth.  Her core clenched and throbbed as he held her gaze with his own.

“I’m just reminding you of what you have to look forward to when you finally are ready.”  He raised one eyebrow and gave her a knowing smile.

“I don’t need reminding, I am fully aware of what I’m missing out on,” she told him, her voice husky with lust and want.  “I feel it every time you touch me.  It’s driving me crazy.”

“Eat your watermelon, Doc,” he handed her back the fruit and grinned as she scowled at him.  Delicately, she nibbled at it, shaking her hand as it became progressively wetter and stickier.      

John watched her intently, even as he picked up a piece of watermelon himself and took a massive bite out of it, ignoring the juice as it ran down his own chin.  She was so cute and sexy and goddamn it he wanted to take it all back and tell her that it didn’t matter whether either of them was ready.  He wanted to take her here and now, smearing watermelon between those stunning breasts and licking all the juice off her creamy skin.  He wanted to unbutton those jeans, slide them over her hips, and down those luscious long legs of hers.  He wanted to slide his palms up the inside of those toned thighs, spreading them so that he could see the silk of her panties, dark with those slippery secretions that felt and tasted like a little piece of heaven.  

He shifted, his jeans becoming uncomfortably tight as he hardened just thinking about how she would feel, how warm and slick.  How she would whimper and moan as he touched her, ran his thumb across her clit, slid one finger inside her, and then two.

“What?” she asked as she became aware he had stopped eating and was just staring at her.  “Do I have something on my face?”  She wiped her hand over her mouth and then gasped as John launched himself at her, pushing her back on the rug as he attacked her mouth.  

She dropped the remainder of her watermelon and wound her sticky hand around his neck as he kissed her ferociously.  His knee forced its way between hers and she felt his hard cock digging against her thigh and her groin as his hips bucked against her.

“Oh, God,” she groaned into his mouth as he sought her lips with his, his tongue swiping her lips in broad strokes, before plunging into her mouth.  While he leaned the bulk of his weight on his left forearm, his right hand found her face, skimming her cheek with his fingers and then down her throat and over the swell of her breast until he found the cotton ties that she had fastened into a pretty bow after their last fumble against the tree.  

He twiddled the cotton between his fingers until he found one end and pulled on it, unraveling the tie.  Marlena moaned as he kissed across her jaw, and then down her neck, licking and sucking on her sensitive flesh.  He was hard and insistent against her as he wrestled with her top, pulling it open and finding her pebbled nipple with his thumb and forefinger.  

“Oh God, Doc,” he bucked his hips against her again as he groaned and there was an answering long, breathy moan from her.  “I don’t wanna stop, baby.  You feel so good.  I wanna touch you so bad.”

“Do it,” she gasped.  “I’m ready.  I’m ready!”  She arched her back, pressing her breast into his hand.  “Oh God, John.  I want you.  Please, please make love to me.”

He rose up off her, but she couldn’t let him go yet.  Instead, she reached up and pulled his face back to hers, kissing him desperately.   “Please, John.”

“Doc,” he knew he should stop but the feeling of her under him was seductive.  Addictive.  He lowered his mouth to her lace-covered breast and tongued her nipple through the lace, licking and biting at the rough fabric until she moaned and twisted beneath him, her body desperate for more of him.  For all of him.  

He didn’t have any holy vows to keep this time.  There was nothing to stop him.

He pulled the lace cup of her bra down and sucked her nipple between his lips, mashing it with his tongue against the roof of his mouth and rolling it around until she cried out in ecstasy and ground her center up against his thigh.

“Mmmpphhh…” she rolled her head back and he found her throat again, sprinkling open-mouthed kisses and licks across her warm, salty flesh.  Her hips rolled against him as her hands clutched at his hair.  

Suddenly, Marlena froze as the sound of laughter floated into earshot.  John was still kissing her neck when she uncurled her arms and pushed at his shoulders.  “Someone’s coming,” she hissed.

John looked dazed as she scrambled out from under him and hurriedly tucked herself back into her bra and wrapped her top around her, tying the cotton ribbons back into a bow.

A young couple, entangled around each other and kissing frantically, stumbled into the clearing.  John rolled over and sat up, aware of Marlena’s mortification.  He wasn’t sure whether it was that they’d gotten carried away or whether it was almost being caught but either way, he needed to extract them from this situation as gracefully as possible, so he loudly cleared his throat.

The young couple pulled apart like they’d had a bucket of cold water thrown at them and they looked wide-eyed at John and Marlena.  “Um… sorry to interrupt.”  The young woman, a perky freckled blonde looked as embarrassed as Marlena felt.  “We didn’t… there’s usually no one else here.”

“It’s okay but we’re kind of in the middle of something,” John raised an eyebrow.  “So, if you wouldn’t mind finding somewhere else to …. go for your… walk.”

“Um, yeah, sure man,” the young man grabbed his girlfriend’s hand.  “Sorry, again.” They turned and fled, the way they came, and John turned back to Marlena.

“Sorry about that baby.  All the times I’ve been out here I’ve never seen a single soul.”

“It’s okay,” she managed a smile before she took a deep, regretful breath.  “Maybe they did us a favor though.”

“Yeah.”  John nodded slowly.  “Maybe they did.”  They eyed each other speculatively, both still wanting to pick up where they had been interrupted, but also knowing that they had only just talked about how they weren’t going to do that and that they needed to wait until she was emotionally ready.  Until they both were.

“Um… perhaps we should be getting back to the penthouse,” Marlena suggested awkwardly.  “I’ve still got work to do.”

“Yeah, okay.”  John agreed although it was the last thing he wanted to do.  Taking her home meant that he would have to say goodbye to her again.  That it would probably be days before he saw her again.  Before they could finish this conversation.  And maybe that was a good thing, but then again, maybe it wasn’t.

He watched her as she started to clear away the plates and cups, clearing them of waste and stacking them neatly in the basket.

“I know you think that I was angry at you for moving Stefano into the Penthouse after…”

“After I threw him off the balcony and almost killed him you mean?” she smiled grimly.  “Sometimes I wish he had died, y’know?”

“You don’t really mean that,” John cocked his head to one side.

“No,” she sighed.  “If I’d been responsible for his death, I don’t think I would have been able to forgive myself.  I had a hard enough time with him not being able to walk.”

“I hated that he was living with you because I was so scared for you,” John clarified.

“I know that honey,” Marlena started wrapping up the leftover food and putting it in the basket.  

“You know he tried to kidnap you at least twice while you were possessed.  That’s why the devil was able to throw him off the balcony.  Because he was going to spirit you away again.  He’d already done it once,” he explained

“The devil used his weaknesses like it used everyone else’s,” Marlena remembered that much, at least.  “It used his pride and his arrogance to manipulate him.”

“The old man’s arrogance is always his undoing,” John gave her a tight smile.  “I just… having him in your house was terrifying to me, Doc.  I know you believed he’d changed but I still don’t think you were thinking clearly in the wake of that whole ordeal.  The guilt was eating you alive and you were so vulnerable and all I wanted to do was protect you.”

“And I didn’t want you feeling responsible for me,” Marlena shrugged.  “I didn’t have any room for anything else but surviving what had happened and the guilt and shame I felt.  I’ll be honest with you; I didn’t think I deserved the risk you’d taken for me.  John, you could have lost your life, your soul trying to save mine.”

“I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” he said in a rough voice.  “When I thought you’d died… again…it brought back all those feelings from when you were gone last time.  But this time… I wasn’t your husband.  It felt like I wasn’t… entitled to feel that same devastation.  But I did.  My heart was broken.  The kids kept me going in those days but all I could think about was you, losing you, and how I had failed you.”

“You didn’t fail me.  You’ve never failed me.”  She reached out and touched his face.  “Oh honey, you could never.”

John caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm and then pulled her into his arms, suddenly filled with a simultaneous dread of losing her again and a profound thankfulness that she was there with him and that she was safe.

“I need you to know,” he said roughly.  “I wouldn’t have done that for anyone else.  I wouldn’t have gone up against the devil.  Offered up my soul.  Only you, Marlena.  I would do anything for you.  I would die for you.  I would risk eternal hell for you.”

“Oh God,” tears welled in her eyes at the intensity of his words.

“You’d have to be crazy to think I would walk away from you after all that.” He took a deep breath.  “I can’t lose you again, Marlena.  I can’t ever go through that again,” he murmured into her hair, holding her tight against him.  She wrapped her arms around him, equally thankful that he was here with her.  She’d had a taste of life without him when he’d disappeared to Europe, and she didn’t ever want to experience that again.

“I wish I’d told you,” he said as he pulled back, playing with her hair as he spoke.  “That day in Aremid.  When Mike came to check on you.  I wish I had stayed and told you how I felt.”

“And I wish I’d told you.  That day and so many days after.”   She looked down at where their legs were tangled.  “I just…” she stopped short, and he could see there was something she wanted to say but was stopping short.

“What is it, Doc?” he asked.  “What do you need to say?”

“I…” she covered her face with her hands.  Wrapping his hands around her wrists, he pulled her hands away.  

“What is it?”

She looked up at him, her eyes glowing gold in the afternoon sunlight that filtered into the clearing.

“I have a hard time with understanding how you didn’t see how much it was hurting me to be so close to you.  To watch you holding her, kissing her.”  Tears filled her eyes.  “I thought we understood each other so well and yet… shouldn’t we have known?”  She ached.  Deep down, it still hurt.  That he hadn’t seen the anguish in her eyes, that he hadn’t been able to dig beneath her surface denials and pretense.  He was supposed to know her.  He was supposed to see her.  Everyone else had seen it.  Laura, Carrie, Lexie.  Why hadn’t he?

“I’ve asked myself the same question, over and over,” he admitted, studying her small hands, dwarfed by his.  “All I can give you, Doc, is that I couldn’t let myself see it.  Because I’d got myself in so deep with Kristen.  Because I was scared of hurting you again.  Because if I got my hopes up and I was wrong, I would be heartbroken all over again.  You died twice.  I lost you to Roman, twice.  I almost lost you to the devil, I thought you were dead then.  Again.  I couldn’t…. to hold you in my arms and tell you I loved you just to have you turn me down again?  I couldn’t bear it.”

He looked up at her, his mouth trembling.  “If you hadn’t… if Kristen hadn’t persuaded you to convince me you just wanted to be friends.  I might have, Doc.  I might have seen it.  But you were so damn convincing.  You dashed any hopes I might have and I vowed to just be what I thought you needed.  A friend to rely on.  If I couldn’t be anything else to you, I could at least be that.”

“Oh, honey,” she leaned her forehead against his.  His breath was warm against her skin, his hands damp where they enclosed hers in their grip.

“One last thing I need to say,” he squeezed her hand.  “And I know you know this but while we’re being honest about things that hurt?  You almost marrying Roman, or that guy we thought was Roman?  That really fucking hurt.”  

She opened her mouth to speak and he held up his hand.  “I know why you did it, I understand.  But realizing that if I had been thirty minutes later you would have married that guy and been tied to him again.  And I would have been out in the cold.”

“He was dying, John.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

“Yeah,” he nodded.  “But you were engaged to me.  You lied to him for months, and that whole thing… I felt like I was on the verge of losing you all the fucking time.  Like any moment you were going to choose him again.  And maybe that wasn’t rational but like you said, feelings aren’t rational.  I was scared, Doc.  I don’t think you understood how much.”

“I didn’t.”  She sat back and looked at him, her eyes wide.  “There are a lot of things I didn’t understand.  John, we should have talked like this years ago.  If I’d known… I never would have put you through that.  But I didn’t know.  I didn’t understand.  I was hurt because I didn’t understand.  And I didn’t trust you with my heart.  Not completely.  So I prevaricated.  If I’m brutally honest with myself, I was testing you.  To see if you’d stick around when things got hard.”  She looked down, ashamed of herself.  “I shouldn’t have done that.  I should have been open with you about my feelings and my fears.  And I should have been honest with Roman.  Like I should have been honest with him when he came back.  And when I realized I was still in love with you.” 

She looked up at him her eyes a smoky amber.  “I had no right to get upset that you got angry over Bo.  You were right.  What I did was entirely the same thing.  In fact, I had far less of a reason, far less right to turn to someone else.  I’ve been such a hypocrite.”  

“No baby,” John smiled at her tenderly, reaching out to curl a tendril of golden hair around his finger.  “You’ve just been human.  Yeah, I’m hurt.  I’m jealous as hell.   The thought of him touching you makes me want to hit something.  I hate it.  Right now, I hate him.”  He brushed her cheeks with his fingertips in reassurance.  “But I get it.  I get why.  I just hope you understand now why I turned to who I did.  When I did.”

“I do,” she nodded.  “Our past is a minefield.  But understanding why makes it navigable.  It doesn’t take away all the pain, all the regret, but it makes it manageable.  And it does take away some of the fear.”

“I love you, honey,” he drew her close again circling his arms around her waist.  “And I am sorry for all the things I’ve done.  All the choices I made… and didn’t make, that hurt you.  That was the last thing I ever wanted.”

“Same,” she looped her arms around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder.  “For all of it.  I am so sorry.  About the choices.  About not understanding the depths of your grief and your fear.  For not being honest with you.  For not trusting you more.  For not knowing you like I should have.”  She nestled her cheek against the curve where his neck met his shoulder and pressed a kiss to his throat, now rough with stubble.  “I love you.  I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Doc.”  He smoothed his palm down her back, relishing the feeling of her so close to him.  “I love you too, but it’s getting late in the day, and we need to get home.”

“Yes,” she lifted her head and looked at him with a smile.  “Let’s go home.” 

Part Cinquante Deux 

It only feels this raw right now

Lost in the labyrinth of my mind

Break up, break free, break through, break down

You would break your back to make me break a smile

You know how much I hate

That everybody just expects me to bounce back

Just like that

Uh-oh, I’m fallin’ in love

Oh no, I’m fallin’ in love again

Oh, I’m fallin’ in love

I thought the plane was goin’ down

How’d you turn it right around?

Labyrinth – Taylor Swift

“Oh God, Laura, I’m so frustrated,” Marlena gave the cushion on her lap a hearty thump and then threw it to one side as she stood up from the couch and walked to the window.  Laura sat back in her chair and watched her friend with interest.

“Have you told him how you feel?” she asked, amusement threading through the tone of her voice.

“Again and again,” Marlena exclaimed as she turned around and looked at Laura, the heels of her palms on the windowsill behind her.  “It’s been weeks and we’ve done nothing but talk.  I mean, sure, there’s a kiss and a fumble now and then, but he keeps backing off.  I just… I want him to… I want him to touch me.  I mean….” She groaned in frustration.  “You know what I mean.”

Laura grinned.  She knew.  She also knew how afraid Marlena had been of tumbling into bed with John when he came home.

“You were the one who wanted to take it slowly.  Get everything out in the open,” she reminded her best friend.  “If you’re still talking, maybe he thinks you’re not done yet.”

“But we’re not going to stop talking,” Marlena said, wide-eyed.  “We promised each other that.  That we’d keep talking, be really open and honest with each other.”

“And you have been, from what you’ve told me,” Laura nodded.  “What exactly have you said to him?  About this situation I mean.”

“I’ve told him I’m ready.  That I want to…” she blushed, “I want us to… well, you know.”

“Don’t you go getting all coy with me,” Laura laughed.  “I saw you with your hand down Bo Brady’s pants.  If you want to get all wild and horny and sexed up with John, you can say it.  I’m not going to be shocked!”

“Oh God, don’t remind me!” Marlena covered her eyes with her hand and took a deep breath.  

“John’s not still upset about Bo, is he?” Laura was curious.

“Of course he’s still upset,” Marlena dropped her hand and grimaced.  “I had sex with Bo in our bed.  He’s got every right to be absolutely livid and to never want to speak to me again,” she raised her eyebrows.  “But for some reason, he’s being very sweet about it.  To me at least.  We saw Bo and Hope at the pub last week and there was a frosty silence all around.  But honestly, I don’t think that’s it.  John being upset about Bo, I mean.”

She dug her teeth into her lower lip and huffed out a breath.  “I really don’t know what to do, Laura.  I can’t concentrate on anything.  Not work, not conversations with friends and family….  I wake up in the middle of the night, and I’ve been dreaming about making love to him and I’m…” she drifted off as Laura held up her hand.

“Okay, I know I said you could be honest, but I probably don’t need to know every single little detail!”  Laura chuckled at Marlena’s look of horror.  She knew exactly how active Marlena’s sex life had been since she and John had finally reunited after the horrors that Stefano and Kristen had visited on her.  They weren’t quite as discreet as Marlena had thought them to be.  And then there had been the ongoing affair with Bo, which had been so indiscreet as to have been public knowledge to just about everyone.  And yet, despite all this, Marlena could appear remarkably naïve at times.  Laura thought it was quite sweet and wasn’t about to disabuse her of the notion that she and John weren’t the talk of the town when they got all hot and heavy.

“So, what have you been doing since you had your ‘big talks’,” she used finger quotations to delineate the conversations that Marlena had described to her.  “I mean, with John.  What are you doing?  Where are you seeing him?”

“Apart from the time we’ve spent time with the children, which obviously…” she blushed again.  “Um, he’s taken me out for dinner.  We’ve gone out for walks.  We’ve had lunch at the pub.”

“All in public?” Laura raised her eyebrows.  

“Well, yes.   But he picks me up and takes me home and kisses me at the door but when I ask him to come in, he declines.  He’s being the perfect gentleman, but I don’t want him to be a gentleman anymore.  I want him to be the John that can’t resist tearing my clothes off!”

“So, there’s wining and dining, but no sixty-nining?” Laura couldn’t help laughing as Marlena once again looked both embarrassed and annoyed.

“Honestly, Laura!” She sounded exasperated.  “Could you just be serious for five minutes?”

“Oh relax!” Laura grinned.  “I’m just teasing you.  This seems like very much a first-world problem Marlena, and one which I am sure you could resolve with a little bit of applied pressure on your part.”

“Applied pressure?” Marlena ran her fingers through her hair.  “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Exactly when have you been telling John you’re ready to take the next step?” Laura asked.  “Have you taken the time to have an actual conversation about this, or are you just saying it in the heat of the moment when you’re getting carried away?”

 “Well…” Marlena thought about it.  She hadn’t thought there was a need to have a sit-down conversation about it.  John had said he would know when she was ready.  And as far as she was concerned, she was ready.  She was more than ready and had been for some time.

“I thought so,” Laura nodded.  “Before you split, John usually took the lead in your romantic relationship, am I correct?”

“Uh,” Marlena blushed.  “Not always.”  She certainly hadn’t been shy in initiating lovemaking when she wanted it.  

“Sure, but John is good at providing the setting and establishing the mood, am I right?” Laura asked.  Marlena had certainly shared enough of John’s grand romantic gestures to give Laura that impression.  Whisking her out to restaurants, off for romantic weekends, providing candle-lit bubble baths, and plying her with champagne and jewelry.  He certainly wasn’t backward in coming forwards when it came to romancing the woman he loved.

“Yes,” Marlena inclined her head with a small smile.  John certainly knew how to take things in a romantic direction, that was undeniable.

“Well, maybe you’re taking that a little for granted, do you think?” Laura suggested.  “I mean, you’re expecting him to seduce you.  When you’re the one that ended the relationship and you’re the one that was tentative about taking him back and wanted to take it slow.  Do you think that maybe you’re being a little reactive?”

“Reactive?” Marlena frowned, considering Laura’s words.  Was she?  Was she taking John’s seductive nature and their physical attraction for granted?  “Are you saying I need to be more proactive?”

“What do you think?” Laura shrugged with raised eyebrows.  “I’m not here to tell you what to do, honey.  I’m here to be a sounding board and help you work out what it is you need to do.  Do you think you could be more proactive and how do you think John might react to that if you were?”

Marlena looked thoughtful.  More proactive?  She had certainly been leaving it to John to arrange their dating schedule.  They didn’t necessarily need to have a serious sit-down conversation about this, maybe she just had to make it obvious from the outset of the evening what it was that she wanted and that she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

She had been too passive in her acceptance of John’s repeated terminations of their frenetic fumbles, the ones that would have once led to explosive lovemaking.  She had been expecting him to push it.  Now she realized, Laura was right.  John was waiting for her to take the lead.  When he’d said he would know, that must have been what he’d meant.

“You’re brilliant,” she looked up at Laura, her expression transformed from dejection and frustration to understanding and anticipation.  Her eyes sparkled as she smiled.  “But then, you know that don’t you?”

“I do believe I’ve been told it once or twice,” Laura winked at her.  “You know what you’re going to do?”

“Oh, I have an idea or two.”  Marlena smiled as she grabbed her purse.  “Thanks for the chat Laura, I gotta go.”

“Enjoy yourself,” Laura called after her.  “Don’t forget, I want all the details!”

*

John was walking through Salem Place, heading for the pub when his phone beeped to alert him that he’d received a text message.  He pulled it out of his pocket and opened the message from Marlena.

John, I need you to please come over to the
Penthouse as soon as possible. M  

John looked at his phone his heart speeding up as he read Marlena’s message.  It sounded urgent which scared him.  What had happened now?  Was it one of the kids?  Or was Stefano creating havoc again?

Hitting reply, he punched in a message as quickly as he could.

I’ll be there as soon as I can.  

Is everything okay Doc? JB

He pressed the send button as he walked swiftly.  It was evening and Marlena had the children this week.  What if something had happened to one of them?  To both of them?  

“Answer, dammit!” He looked at the screen of the phone.  When she didn’t respond, he dialed her number.  “Pick up, Doc,” he growled.  The last time he’d called her, and she hadn’t answered, she’d been on her way to getting attacked in a dive bar.  He felt sick.  “Marlena, call me when you get this,” he said frantically before breaking into a run as he reached the edge of the mall and headed towards his car.  “Hang on baby,” he said as if she could hear him.  “I’m coming!”

He made the Penthouse in double quick time, breaking the speed limit along the way.  Slamming his Jeep more or less into a parking space, he ran to the elevator and stabbed at the button for the 20^th floor.  As the door slid closed, he looked at his phone again.  Still nothing.

He dialed Marlena’s number again and slammed his hand against the wall as it rang and rang.

When the elevator finally reached the floor where the Penthouse was located, he practically ran to the door and pounded on it with his fist.

“Doc!  Doc, open up!”

He was about to bang again when Marlena opened the door.

“What’s wrong?” he charged in.  “Are you okay?  Is it the kids?  Has something happened?”

“No, nothing’s happened.” She looked confused.  “Why, what’s going on?”

“You texted me.  It sounded urgent and then you wouldn’t answer my texts or my calls!” John ran his fingers through his hair, trying to get his breathing and his heart rate under control.  “I thought something had happened.  I thought maybe it was Stefano-”

He stopped suddenly and blinked as he really looked at her.  Closing the door behind him, he looked around the room slowly, taking it in.  There were candles on every surface, giving the room a warm, romantic glow, and on the table sat an ice bucket, condensed moisture trickling down the outside.  A champagne bottle rested against the rim, and two champagne flutes sat to one side. 

His gaze moved back to Marlena.  Slowly, his eyes traveled from her head to her feet and then back up again.  Her hair fell in soft waves, touching her shoulders and she had diamonds at her ears.  She wore a black dress, the bodice of which was encrusted with black gems.  The long sleeves were sheer chiffon with more glittering gems around the cuffs.  The skirt fell in soft folds to her knees, and he knew when she turned around that the back of the dress would dip down to reveal her upper back.  He knew that dress.  He knew what it meant.

Raising one eyebrow he cocked his head slightly.  “Doc, what’s going on?” 

“I’m sorry I scared you,” she said softly but sincerely.  “I didn’t mean to.”

“I called you,” he said, pushing the heel of his palm against his chest, willing his heart to slow down, although now it was beating hard for an altogether different reason.  “You didn’t answer, and I got so scared.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” She pressed her lips together and looked around.  “I got caught up in… things.  I texted you and I must have left my phone upstairs.  I didn’t think.”  She stepped forward and caught his hands in hers.  “Will you let me make it up to you?”

He took a moment to look at her beautiful face.  A hint of a smile played around her lips, and the diamonds swinging from her ears glittered in the candlelight.  He tucked the glistening waterfall of gold hair behind her ear and smiled back at her.  “And exactly how do you propose to do that, Marlena?”

Dropping his hands, she stepped back and twirled around, her skirt floating gently as she moved.  As he had known it would, the back of her dress ended in a curve just above her lower back.  He remembered holding her close, one hand holding her fingers against his tuxedo jacket, the other splayed against the warm, bare skin revealed by that modest, yet tempting dress.  He had wanted her so badly it had physically hurt.  She had looked scared, angry, and aroused.  She had wanted him too; he had known that at the time, but she had been stalwart in her determination to stay loyal to Roman.  At least, that night she had.

“Do you recognize it?” she asked, her voice caught in her throat, full of hope and desire.

“It’s the dress you wore the night….” He trailed off.

“The night you paid an insane amount of money to dance with me,” she completed for him.  “It’s also the dress I was wearing when you told me that if I ever changed my mind, I could come to you, and you would take me on any terms I asked.”  She stepped closer to him.  

“You said there would never be any terms.”  He lifted his hand and ran his fingertip lightly down the side of her face, marveling at the way her eyes changed color in the flickering candlelight. 

“I was wrong about that,” her voice was deep and husky.  “I was wrong about a lot of things.  Do you think you can forgive me?”

“Already done, Doc,” he walked his fingers around the back of her neck and pulled her closer.  “So, you have terms now?”

“I have terms.”  She breathed unsteadily as he nuzzled her cheek with his nose.  “Oh!  Mmmm,” her breath hitched as she felt his hand on her back, his warm fingers caressing her skin.  “Yeah, I uh, I have terms.” 

His lips brushed against her cheek, and she melted against him.  “Tell me your terms, Doc,” he whispered hotly against her ear. “Because I’m yours.  Whatever you want, baby.”

She pulled back.  “I want you.” She fixed him with hazel eyes which glowed luminous honey green.  “I want you to make love to me.”  She touched her fingers to his jaw, making sure he was listening to her.  “I’m tired of waiting for you to hear me when I say I’m ready.  So, I’m telling you…. I’m showing you.  I want you.  I love you and I want you, John. And I’m not taking no for an answer this time.”

“Oh, baby!” he grinned, pulling her into his embrace.  He wrapped his arms around her and claimed her mouth with his.    That was all he had wanted and needed.  Her getting carried away hadn’t been enough to convince him.  He’d wanted to know that she’d thought through it, she was really ready, and that she would have no lingering regrets.  He hadn’t known exactly she would persuade him; he had just known that whatever it was, he would feel it.  And by God, he felt it.  She looked amazing, she smelled and felt amazing and the look of lust and determination in her eyes was everything.   

“Come and have a drink,” she tugged on his hand after they came apart after the kiss.  

“Where are the kids?” he asked as he followed her across to the sofas.

“They’re at the pub,” she loosened the cork and gave a delighted shriek as it popped loudly, the stopper bouncing off the wall near the kitchen.  “Oops!” she giggled.

John smiled and shed his jacket before sitting down on the sofa and watching her pour the sparkling champagne into the flutes.  “How are things with Caroline?” he asked as she handed him one.

“Good,” she smiled.  “I think she’s really forgiven me.”  She tapped her glass against his, the clink of the crystal ringing loud and clear.  “I’m a lucky girl.”

“No, just very loved,” he smiled.  “No one expects you to be perfect, Doc.”

“Just me it seems,” there was a touch of sadness to her smile.

“You have to stop being so hard on yourself,” he caught her hand and pulled her down to sit next to him.  “We’ve all made mistakes, honey.  You included.  It’s just life.  We don’t get everything right the first time, that’s how we learn, right?”

“Right,” she nodded but she still sounded uncertain.

“What would you tell Belle about mistakes?” he asked gently.  “What do you tell the kids?”

“That they’re inevitable.  That as long as you try and do your best by yourself and other people then mistakes are nothing to be ashamed of.  They’re learning experiences.” She tipped her head down and smiled, looking up at him from under her lashes.  “Do you know how much I love you?”

“Stop trying to change the subject, Doc,” John smiled.  He loved her so goddamn much.  He wished she didn’t hold herself to such impossibly high standards.  

“I’m not, I do hear you,” she told him.  “But I am lucky, John.  I’m lucky to have friends and family that love me so much and are so forgiving.  And I’m lucky to have you.  I don’t know what I did to deserve you but gosh I am so grateful every single day.”  She put her champagne on the table and moved closer to him.

Lifting her hand, she tenderly cupped the side of his face, her thumb crossing his cheek to rest against his nose.  He adored the way she touched him, the love and care with which she imbued every single movement, every single stroke of her fingers, her hands, her lips.

“Thank you,” she whispered, brushing her lips against hers.  “For loving me.” She kissed him again, gently, reverently.  “For being patient with me.”  And again, her tongue fluttering against his lower lip so that he moaned.  “For listening and accepting and forgiving me.”

“Doc,” he breathed her in, his hand sliding to the back of her neck again as he kissed her back, his own tongue licking the length of her lips and curling into her mouth, sliding against hers, warm and wet.  “God.  Baby, I want you so much.”  

“Soon,” she whispered.  “But… have you eaten yet honey?”

“There’s only one thing I want to eat,” he growled as his hand found her thigh and slid up under the layers of chiffon.  Encountering lace at the top of her sheer black stockings, he groaned.

“You’ve been so very, very patient,” Marlena kissed him softly.  “Just be patient a little longer.  I promise you; I’ll make it worth your while.”

“You have no idea how hard it’s been,” he squeezed her thigh, fingering the lace band that encircled her leg.  “Especially once you started throwing yourself at me.  Jesus, the cold showers I’ve taken over the last few weeks.”

“You could have given in,” she laughed.  “You have no idea how frustrated I’ve been!”

“Oh, I had a fair idea,” he bit back a smile.  She had been adorable, practically stamping her foot when he had turned her down the last few times that he had brought her back to the Penthouse and left her, largely unmolested, at the door.  “But I needed to be sure you weren’t getting carried away in the moment.  I had to know there was no chance you would regret it the next morning.  I don’t want there to be any more misunderstandings or uncertainties between us Doc.”

“Are you convinced now?” she reached out and undid the top button of his shirt, biting her lower lip sexily as she did so.  “Because I’m telling you right now, there’s only one way I’ll have any regrets in the morning and that’s if I don’t have some of the best sex of my life in the next few hours.”

“Is that a challenge, Dr. Evans?” he asked with a cheeky smile.

“If you want it to be,” she smiled back, her eyes sparkling with the flickering of the candlelight.

“Uh, yeah, I want it to be,” he ran his finger along her collarbone, making her shiver in anticipation.  “And for the record, I am most definitely convinced.”  He looked around the room with the shadow of a smile.  “You have put on quite the show here, Doc.”

“I… I want to make up for all the time we lost,” she said softly.  “All the confusion.  All the hurt.  I want to get back to where we were.”

“We need to get to a better space than that, Doc,” he reminded her.  “I want to make sure you never doubt for a single moment again how much I love you.  You’re the love of my life, Marlena.  You have my whole heart, now and always.”

“And you mine,” she inhaled as he leaned forward and brushed his mouth tenderly against hers.  She moaned as she felt his tongue wet and warm against her lips, flickering against the seam, asking her to invite him in.  She opened her mouth to allow him access and his tongue met with hers, tangling beautifully in passionate union.  “Oh God, I love you so much.”

“Shall we skip the food?” he slid his hands up her leg, his fingers dipping into the warmth of her inner thigh, finding the bare skin above the lace-top stocking.

“Oh,” she pushed him away.  “No!”

“C’mon Doc,” his expression was caught somewhere between amusement and frustration.  “Don’t you think we’ve waited long enough?”

“Yes, I do,” she breathed before taking hold of his arm and extracting it from between her legs.  “But I have something…” she stood, brushing the floaty skirt of her dress back into place.   “Please?”

“You didn’t cook, did you?” he lifted an eyebrow and she wasn’t entirely sure whether he was serious or not.

“No, I didn’t cook!” she looked a little offended and he laughed.

“Just teasing you, baby,” he drew his hand down the outside of her leg comfortingly.  “Okay, go get… whatever it is.”

“Okay,” she smiled, a look of excitement on her face, and turned towards the kitchen.  

He watched her go, marveling at the smooth golden skin of her back, the sway of her hips, and the way her long legs tapered down to black stiletto heels that made them look like they went on forever.  God, he was the luckiest man on the face of the planet, and he was never going to forget that again.  He would never take her for granted for as long as he lived, and he would make sure she was aware of that fact every single day they spent together and even the ones they spent apart.

When she came back, she had a tray with two large paper bags, still warm from the oven.

She put them on the table and let him open and peer into the first bag.

“Chinese?” he lifted one of the cartons out with a grin.  “Baby, you ordered us Chinese?”

“Brings back some memories, doesn’t it?” she smiled happily.

“I remember bringing you Chinese not long after you moved in here,” John mused.

“When I was still desperately hoping I could fix things with Roman,” she said sadly.  “I remember.  John, I regret that you know.  I am sorry I pushed you away.  I’m sorry for all the times I chose him when I should have been listening to my heart and not my sense of duty.  If I’d had the courage, if I had listened to my heart, really listened to it, I would have chosen you.  Every time, I would have chosen you.  You are the love of my life.  You have been since the moment you took my hand in Shenanigans.”

“You were trying to do what you thought was right for the family and for Roman, I know that,” he said as he took the cartons out of the bags and arranged them on the table.  “I would have done anything for you though, you know.  I would have burned down the world fighting for you if you had just given me one indication that you wanted me.”  He opened a packet of bamboo chopsticks, separated them, and handed them to her.    

Marlena took them and swallowed heavily.  “I wish I had,” she choked the words out over the lump in her throat.  How different things might have been if she hadn’t wallowed in misery and guilt.  If she hadn’t insisted on punishing herself, shutting herself away, and allowing Stefano to invade her dreams and her soul.

“Don’t punish yourself, Doc,” John opened a carton and used his own chopsticks to take out a piece of Kung Pao chicken.  Lifting it up, he smiled and directed it toward her mouth.  “There’s been too much of that.  Too much pain, too much guilt.  Let’s draw a line under it all.  You deserve to be happy.  So do I.  And the kids.  Let’s concentrate on that.  Let’s concentrate on our future.”

Marlena opened her mouth and let him put the chicken on her tongue.  She chewed it with a smile and nodded.  

It was half an hour later after they’d had their fill of Chinese that she handed him a fortune cookie.  “Open it,” she said softly.  

Raising his eyebrows, he took it from her and wrenched open the cellophane wrapper.  Tossing it to one side, he snapped the cookie in half and pulled out a scrap of paper.  Turning it over, he read it silently once and then looked up at her.  She nodded, a pink blush rising on her cheeks.  John looked back at the paper again to be sure he hadn’t misread it, and that he understood correctly.

“It says…” he looked up at her, “it says… will you marry me?”

“It does,” she nodded.  Her heart pounding in her chest, she slipped from the sofa, her knees meeting the carpet before she took his hands in hers.  On her knees in front of him, she lifted one of his hands and kissed his knuckles.  “You’ve asked me three times now.  I thought maybe this time, it was my turn.”  She took a deep breath.  “I messed up, John.  I gave up on us when I should have known you.  I should have had faith in you.  I love you so much, and I want to be your wife again.  I want you to be my husband.  I want to go to sleep with you every night, I want to wake up with you every morning and I want to raise our children together.  I want to be your partner in everything.  Now and for always.”

“Oh, Doc,” he shook his head, momentarily speechless.  He might have expected a lot of things, but he hadn’t expected this.  This was his job, his joy.  He’d already been wracking his brains for a way to ask her again.  But this… this was perfect.  This was them, as a perfect, equal partnership.  She wanted this as much as he did.  She loved him as much as he loved her.  He knew that now.  After everything they’d been through, he finally felt totally one with her.  Utterly complete.

“What do you say?” she asked, a little uncertain at his pause.

“I say there is nothing more I want on this earth,” he cupped her face with his hands, “than to be your husband.  To spend the rest of the days of my life, honoring and cherishing you.”

“The days of our lives.”  Tears filled her eyes, happy tears this time, as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.  “I want that too,” she said as he pulled her up so that she was sitting on one of his thighs, her skirt askew, revealing just a hint of lace.  “I love you, John.  I don’t think I have ever loved you more than I love you right at this moment.”

She dipped her head and captured his lips again, her tongue nimble against his lips.  He groaned as his arms encircled her slender waist and she hooked one arm around his neck, the fingers of her other hand digging into his cheek as she kissed him almost desperately.   

“Doc, I’m gonna lose control if you keep doing that,” he whispered.  “I wanna fuck you so bad.”

She could feel the proof of that nudging against her leg and she could feel the evidence of her own need soaking her panties and making the top of her thighs sticky.  Her breath hitched as his mouth found that sweet spot just below and behind her ear and she moaned loudly.

“Oh, God!” she pulled away and swallowed.  She wanted him to fuck her too.  But there were just a couple of last things she wanted to give him before she let him take her to bed.  Or take her… wherever he wanted to take her.  This sofa, the terrace, the stairs.  She would let him fuck her anywhere he wanted.  Or preferably, everywhere.  “I want to watch the sun rise with you in the morning,” she told him breathily.  “And I want us not to have slept a wink when we do.”

“I’m pretty sure we can make that happen,” he murmured against her throat before licking the soft skin that tasted like salted caramel.  “Doc, you taste fucking amazing, do you know that?”

“There’s just…” she pulled away, breathing heavily, and pulled another fortune cookie from the table.  She handed it to him.  “I need you to open this one too.”

He raised an eyebrow and nodded.  With his arms still around his waist, he tore into the wrapper once again, discarding it on the table in front of them.  As he cracked the cookie in his hands, a ring tumbled out.  It was Marlena’s engagement ring.  The one she had taken off when she had asked him to leave.  When he had flown to Europe with another man inside his head.

“Doc,” he looked at the ring and then at her.

“I want you to put it back on my finger,” she said.  “And this time, I promise you with my whole heart, I will never take it off.  Not for anything.”

“Oh, baby,” he kissed her as she held out her hand.  With trembling fingers, he slid the sparkling rock of a diamond back onto her ring finger and then kissed the back of her hand.  The diamond glistened and sparkled in the candlelight as Marlena held her hand up to admire it.  

“I’d almost forgotten how right this feels on my finger,” she said with a smile that was even more dazzling than the diamond.  

“I can’t wait to put a wedding band next to it,” John said gruffly.  “Let’s not wait, Doc.  Let’s do it before anything else can get between us.”

“Nothing else is getting between us,” she reassured him.  “Not ever again.  You’re mine, John Black. You are mine and I am yours and I am not letting you go.”  She leaned down and kissed him gently.  “Not ever, ever again.” 

Part Cinquante Trois

And all my walls stood tall, painted blue
But I’ll take ’em down, take ’em down
And open up the door for you
And all I feel in my stomach is butterflies
The beautiful kind, making up for lost time
Taking flight, making me feel right

Everything Has Changed – Taylor Swift

“One more thing!” Marlena held up her finger.

“More?” John smiled at her.  He had a feeling he knew what the one more thing was.  At least, he hoped he knew.  Because that would be the perfect segue into how he wanted to spend the rest of the night with her.   

Marlena said nothing but flashed him a sexy smile and climbed off his lap.  He watched her once again retreat to the kitchen, her skirt swaying around her incredible thighs, the scent of perfume and arousal drifting back to him.  He groaned quietly as he watched her perfect ass disappear around the corner and he adjusted the growing bulge in his pants as he imagined getting his hands on that ass and pulling her bodily towards him before he dove between her legs and tasted her like a fine delicacy.

Running his hands through his hair, he got up and wandered over to the stereo, fingering the spines of the CDs in the rack.  Pulling out an Anita Baker CD, he slipped it into the CD player and pushed play.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Marlena came back into the room, carrying two dishes, both covered by silver cloches.  “I didn’t even think about music.  I was too busy thinking about you and getting nervous about whether you’d hear me this time when I said I was ready.”

“I hear you loud and clear, baby,” he turned the music down so Anita singing about ‘sweet love’ served as background music.  Back on the sofa, he sat down next to her and looked at the dishes.  “This what I think it is?”

“What do you think it is?” Marlena smirked.  She knew exactly what he was thinking and of course, it was exactly what he was expecting.  There was something comforting and also sexy about the predictability of the strawberries and cream coming out for dessert.  The unpredictability would come in how they used them to accent their lovemaking.  And she couldn’t wait to see how he would use them on her body this time.

John’s lips twitched and one eyebrow lifted as he leaned forward and removed one of the silver cloches.  Beneath it was a pile of strawberries, each one richly red and glistening in the low light.  Puckered with tiny yellow seeds, an impossibly green calyx and stem capping each berry, they looked like jewels sitting on the plate.  Marlena lifted the other cover to reveal the bowl of whipped cream, beaten until it stood in stiff peaks, just as her nipples would once he got his mouth around them.

“Okay?” she asked, her voice deep in her throat, so sexy and wanton it made him shiver.

“Yeah,” he unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and rolled his sleeves up, revealing his beautifully muscled forearms.  “More than okay, sweetheart.  It’s absolutely perfect.”  He looked up from the strawberries to her.  “Just like you.”  He took in her delighted face, her perfectly sexy smile, her dark, smoky eyes framed with a sweep of dark lashes.  He was the luckiest man on the face of the earth.  She loved him, she wanted him, and he was going to do things to her body tonight that would make the angels blush. 

“I love you,” he told her, reaching out for a strawberry and swiping it through the heavy, sticky cream.  “I love you more than life itself, Marlena.  I have always,” he swiped the strawberry across her lower lip, spreading cream liberally across it, “always, loved you.”  He leaned forward and licked the cream from her with a sweep of his tongue across her pillowy lips.  

Across the room, Anita Baker sang, her voice like liquid honey.  

[When we met, always knew, I would feel that magic for you…]

“And I will always,” he took another helping of cream and applied it to her top lip this time. “Always love you.”  Another stroke of his tongue and Anita’s crooning made her moan helplessly.  

[I love you here by me, baby, You let my love fly freely, I want you in my life for all time]  

“Remember it?” he asked her, his indigo eyes deep in shadow, questioning, willing her to remember both the night in front of the fire and the moment they had shared in the pub.  When he had put this song on the jukebox and the memories had come flooding back, so intense.

“I remember,” she said breathlessly.  “My legs gave out.  You looked at me and I knew what you were thinking.  Because I was remembering it too.  That night in front of the fire.”

[I’m caught up in the rapture of love, Nothing else can compare, When I feel the magic of you]

“That night was…” he exhaled, shaking his head.  

“It was special.”  She remembered it as though it was seared into her brain.   “It was intense.”

“I halfway expected Tom and Alice to come across and tell us to shut up,” he smiled as he drew his fingers through her hair.  “You certainly made the most of Mom and Pop having the kids that night.”

“I seem to remember you encouraging it,” she unbuttoned the next button of his shirt and then another so that she could finger the dark hair of his chest.  He had been between her thighs, his tongue doing criminal things to her pussy as she had arched her back and cried out, somewhere between pain and pleasure.  Making love to him was always on the edge of both and she loved it.  She welcomed the pain, knowing he would soon make her tumble over the edge into bliss, and she would vocalize every sensation that he drew out of her body like the virtuoso conductor of a carnal orchestra.

[Say tonight will be just the start, I love you here by me, baby, You let my love fly freely, I want you in my life for all time]

He dipped the strawberry in the cream for the third time and this time, she opened her mouth and swirled her tongue around the long conic-shaped fruit, cleaning the cream off before she bit into the berry, the juice dripping down her chin.  John fed her the rest of the berry before cleaning off her chin with his tongue and kissing her, tasting the cream and berry on her lips and her tongue.

Groaning, Marlena climbed onto his lap, her knees straddling either side of his hips, her skirt hiked up so that he could see the lacy tops of her stockings.  She slowly undid two more buttons of his shirt and then curled her arm around his neck.  Leaning back, she moved the dishes onto the sofa next to them and selected a strawberry.  Dipping it into the cream, she brought it back to him, dabbing it on his nose and licking it off delicately, and then doing the same to his chin.  For an encore, she smeared the cream all over his mouth.  

“Open up,” she said throatily.  He did as she asked, his hooded cobalt eyes dark with arousal and he sucked the berry in whole before chewing on it.  She waited a moment before diving in and licking the cream and berry juices from his lips, her hands clutching at his dark hair as she ground herself against his lap.

“You keep doing that, baby,” he looked down at where her skirt draped prettily across the bulge in his jeans, “and I’m gonna come in my pants.”

“Don’t do that,” she shifted back slightly, her lips pursing and then curving into a knowing smile.  “When you come, I want it to be inside me.  My mouth or my pussy, either will do.”

“Oh, Jesus,” he groaned loudly.  He came completely undone when such filthy talk came out of that gorgeous, primly perfect mouth.

[Nothing else can compare, When I feel the magic of you, The feeling’s always new, Caught up in the rapture of you]

“I love you.”  She tightened her thighs around his and hooked the toes of her stiletto heels around his shins as she finished undoing the buttons of his shirt.  She pulled it out of the waistband of his jeans and then pulled it open, revealing his perfectly sculpted chest.  Running her hands up from his abdominal muscles over his pectoral muscles, she inserted her fingers under the cotton and pushed it back over his shoulders.

“I love you, baby,” he lifted his hands to her throat, sliding his fingers around either side so that he cupped her neck.  Then he ran each thumb along her sharply defined collarbones, making her shiver as he touched her.  “No one else has ever compared to you.  No one else has ever made me feel the way you make me feel.  You turn me on so much.  You make me want to taste every inch of your body; you make me want to hear every sound that comes out of that beautiful mouth while I make love to you.”

“Oh, God!” She threw her head back as his mouth found her throat, biting and sucking and licking.  She’d bear the marks of his attentions in the morning but for once, she didn’t care.  She wanted him to mark her, to brand her as his.  She wanted the world to know that he had taken her to his bed and had fucked her six ways from Sunday.  She wanted to ache and sting and hurt tomorrow so that she would remember every moment of what he did to her tonight and what she did to him in return.

Releasing her neck, he skimmed his hands over the rough jewel-encrusted shoulders and down the billowy fabric of her sleeves, his fingers dancing lightly against her skin so that she shivered again.  Then he brought his hands down to the sides of her body, molding to the voluptuous curves of her breasts, the bodice of her dress rough beneath his palms.  

He felt her fingers flit over his shoulders again, coming to meet behind his neck as she closed her eyes and concentrated on the way his hands felt as he brought his palms down over her ribs and then down to where her slender waist curved inward and then outward again into hips that sat atop his thighs, driving him crazy.  He fingered the fine, wispy fabric of her skirt, the sensation of the lace-top stockings underneath only fueling his desire for her.

“Oh, Doc.  Baby,” he bunched up the fabric in his fingers, trying to restrain himself.  He wanted to throw her on the sofa, push the skirt up her legs and fuck her so hard she saw stars.  He wanted to feel her, soft and wet and warm.  He wanted to feel her tighten around him as she moaned and whimpered and writhed.  But at the same time, he wanted to make this special for her.  He wanted it to be a night that she never forgot.  He wanted to remind her over and over again that he was the only man she wanted, the only man who could do this to her body, bring her to these heights.  And fast and furious was not the way to do that.

Releasing the material in his hands, he straightened his fingers, flexing them, his breathing heavy and labored.  God, the things this woman did to him.  

Marlena took the opportunity given by his pause to pluck another strawberry from the dish and coat it in globs of whipped cream.  Holding it up, she gave him a small, sexy smile, and then she reached behind her with her left hand and drew her hair around behind her neck.  She leaned her head towards the left and with her right hand, she drew a line of whipped cream with the strawberry from behind her right ear, down to the hollow of her throat.

John grunted something unintelligible as he wrapped his arms around her, his fingers hot against the bare skin of her back and his mouth and tongue fierce on her neck as he licked and sucked a trail up to her ear, focusing on the spot behind her lobe which he knew made her go weak with desire.

“Mmmmmph.”  She didn’t disappoint as she let go of her hair and clutched at his.  “Oh!  Oh John, I need you.  I need you now!”

Panting, he roughly pulled the front of her dress off her shoulders as he feasted on her throat.  His hands fumbled for the zipper he knew must be concealed at the side of her dress, pulling it down once he located it.  Marlena’s thighs tightened around his as his hips bucked instinctively at the feeling of her soft skin beneath the dress.  God, he was going to lose all self-control if he wasn’t careful.  He didn’t ever remember wanting her this much.  Maybe not even when they had reunited back in ’97.  Almost losing her and then all these weeks of being close to her, of almost but not quite had him almost insane with lust for her.

Taking a deep breath, he drew back slowly and looked into her eyes which gleamed a dark autumnal green.  “You are so beautiful,” he drew his hands around her waist to the golden freckled skin of her shoulders and décolleté and watched as his fingers traced whisper fine lines over her skin, the beginning swell of her breasts, most of the rise still hidden beneath the bunched material.

“I’ve missed you so much,” her voice trembled as she laid one of her own hands against his chest, her fingers threading amongst his thick pelt of hair.  “I’ve missed touching you.  I’ve missed your hands on me.”     The other still held a rapidly warming strawberry and he lifted her hand to his mouth, and he sucked it in, holding it between his lips as he pulled her to him.  She wrapped her own lips around the remainder of the strawberry, sweeping it into her mouth as he released it.  She bit into it as he kissed her, the taste of strawberry juice exploding on her tongue as he entered her mouth with his own and they shared the sweetness of the strawberry and of each other.

As he kissed her, John’s hands found her thighs again, his fingers creeping beneath the sheer black skirt this time and pressing against the lace of her stockings before they found bare skin.  She mewled against his mouth as his thumb edged its way up the top of her inner thigh and found the satin and lace at the apex of her thighs.

“Oh Jesus, Doc, you’re so wet,” he growled as he drew the pad of his thumb down over her clit to trace the seam of her pussy beneath the satin, warm and dripping with sweet, honeyed juices, just for him.

Marlena bucked against his hand, her cry vibrating against his mouth.  His eyes rolled back in his head as he brought his thumb back up and drew it in small, slow circles around her already swollen clit.

“Mmmmph.  Mmmmph,” she whimpered against his mouth before gasping loudly.  John’s mouth licked and kissed across her jaw, and she tipped her head back, grinding herself desperately against his thumb.  His lips found her earlobe and he tapped it with his tongue before sucking it into his mouth.  She sobbed gently, her arms tightening around his neck.  “Make love to me,” she gasped.  “Please, I can’t wait any more.”

“Soon,” he murmured hotly against her ear.  “I want you too honey, but I’ve had to wait a long time for this.  I want to savor it.  Your body is an artwork, baby and I want to take my time adoring it.”  He drew his hand back out from under her skirt and she squeaked with the loss of his touch.  She wanted him there.  She wanted him everywhere, all over her body.  She craved his touch, the way he made her skin tingle, and her heart pound.  He played her body with reverence and joy, like it was a priceless instrument and he a virtuoso musician.  

He brought his hands up to the sides of her face and looked intensely into her eyes.  His eyes were a shadowy indigo, dark with lust and his deep, abiding love for her.  Drawing close to her, he drifted his lips across hers and she shivered and moaned the desire she felt for him deep in her core.  “I love you,” he murmured before teasing her with his lips again.  “I am never letting you go.  Not ever again.  You are mine, Marlena.  Do you hear me?  Mine.”  He kissed her again, harder this time, his tongue licking across her lips with small, feathery swipes.  She gasped as he pulled back.  “Tell me,” he held her gaze intently.  “Who do you belong to?”

“You,” he had stolen her breath with his kisses and his declaration of ownership.  For that’s what it was.  He owned her, body and soul.  She was his, as he was hers.  Forever and always.  “I’m yours.  I’ll always be yours.”

“That’s right,” he growled, taking the shoulders of her dress, and roughly yanking it down her arms so that it exposed her breasts.  Her nipples immediately pebbled, a combination of the cool evening air and the ravenous passion with which he was eyeing her.  “These are mine.”  He cupped her plump breasts in his large hands, perfectly sized to hold and caress the soft, voluptuous mounds.  “Oh, Doc!”  He dipped his nose to the valley between her perfect, bountiful bosoms and inhaled deeply.  

She smelt like heaven.  Roses, vanilla, and desire.  It triggered a thousand memories and almost as many emotions.  She smelled like home.  His whole life was encapsulated in the glorious scent of her.  And he’d almost lost her.  It would have killed him to live without her, of that he had no doubt.  Sure, he’d done it for five years but that was before everything they had been through together over the past seven years.  That was before he’d watched her give birth to his daughter.  Before she’d saved his life in Maison Blanche and in Paris.  Before he’d offered up his soul to save hers.   She wasn’t just his.  She was his life, pure and simple.

He nuzzled her soft skin with his nose and then his lips, kissing her and then skimming the tip of his tongue across her golden skin, tasting the slightly salty tang of her.  He moved his hands around to the side and brushed his thumbs lightly across her hardened nipples.  She gasped, arching her back and pushing herself further into his hands.

“You’re perfect,” he breathed, looking up at her.  “You’re just absolutely perfect, Doc.  You’re a goddamn masterpiece, you know that?”

She drew her hands up his abdomen, her fingers threading through the rough hair, making his abdominal muscles jump under her touch.  “You are beautiful,” she looked up at him from under her lashes, her hazel eyes dark and hooded.  “Do you know how much just looking at you turns me on?”  Her voice was deep and threaded with lust and it made his gut prickle with want and anticipation.  “Do you know how wet I can get just looking at you from across the room?”

“Jesus, Doc!” His hips jumped, the trapped hardness straining against the tight denim constraint of his jeans as he ground himself against her center.  His hands squeezed her breasts, leaving white imprints where his fingertips dug into her.

“Touch me, John.”  Her voice sat deep in her throat, sexy and full of need.  “I want your mouth on my breasts.  I want you to taste me.”

John growled, the sound vibrating in his chest.  Leaning over, he picked out a strawberry from the dish and bit the pointed end off.  Holding Marlena’s gaze, he chewed slowly on the strawberry in his mouth while he spun the half-eaten berry around in his fingers.  It was soft and dripping juice as he brought it to her right nipple and swirled it around and over the hardened nub, using the berry to flick her nipple and massage her areola.  She moaned as he moved the strawberry to her other breast, pinching it so that it softened and ran juicy pink.  He anointed her other breast in a similar manner, watching as the berry juice dribbled down over the lower curve of her breast and down over her upper abdomen to soak stickily into the bodice of her dress which was bunched around her waist.

He dipped the remainder of the squashed berry in the cream and then lifted it to her mouth which she opened to accept the white and red morsel before dipping her head to kiss him.  He tasted the sweet creamy berry on her tongue as he swept his own into her mouth, searching and digging for just a moment before he pulled back.  Taking his hand, he dipped his index and middle finger in the cream, scooping up a dollop of the rich, whipped delight, and used his fingers to trace the outline of her dark pink areola before daubing the treat all over her nipple with deft, flicking movements.  Marlena whimpered deep in her throat at the feel of the cool cream as it smeared over her hot skin, and he lightly pinched and flicked her with his fingers.  

He repeated his attentions with her other breast, swirling the tip of his index finger around her nipple, watching first the way it stood to attention as he touched her, then the way the skin around it puckered and dimpled as he touched her, as he coated it with the thick, gloopy delicacy.  Then, as she moaned and shifted restlessly astride his lap, he looked up at her.  Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed as she reveled in the feeling of his hands on her.

“Look at me, Doc,” he said, his voice low and firm.  “Look at me while I taste you.”

“Oh,” her breaths came in short, shallow pants as she brought her gaze down to meet his.  “John, oh baby, I….”

He lifted his cream-smeared fingers to her mouth.  “Lick them,” he demanded, his voice harsh with desire.

She swallowed, caught, snared by the midnight blue of his intense gaze.  Snaking out her tongue, she delicately stroked it up the seam of his fingers and then closed her lips around the tips of his digits.  Never breaking their eye contact, she slowly sucked his fingers into her mouth, fluttering at them with her tongue.

“Fuck, Doc!” John felt his stomach tighten and roll as she sucked off his fingers, her golden eyes glittering as she watched his reaction.  

Releasing his fingers finally, she smiled sexily.  “That’s a sample of what’s in store for little John, later,” she told him with a wink.

“You’ll be the death of me, woman,” he shook his head before clasping her chin between his thumb and forefinger and bringing her mouth to his for a slow, lingering kiss.  Then, splaying his palm and fingers across the small of her back, feeling the roughness of the beaded bodice of her dress against his skin, he bit and kissed her way down her jaw and throat.  He sighed against her skin as he dragged his lips over the salty sweetness of her upper chest until he reached the soft slope that started the swell that peaked in her cream-covered nipple.  

Smiling naughtily at her, he used his free hand to cup the underside of one plump mound and lifted it so that he could still see her face while he lavished his oral attention on her insanely gorgeous breasts.

Reaching out with his tongue, he started with the sticky berry juice that had dribbled down the underside of her creamy globe and he lapped it up with his tongue until he reached the uneven disc of cream that capped her aroused peak.  Then he slowly licked in ever-decreasing circles, clearing her areola of the melting mess of cream and berry juice.

“Oh, God,” Marlena cried out as he flicked her nipple with the pointed tip of his tongue before he sucked it between his lips and softly nipped at it with his teeth.  “Oh, God, John.”  She closed her eyes involuntarily as he sucked hard at her breast.  She tried to lift her hands to his head, but her arms were constrained by her dress, so she had to settle for grabbing at his waist to steady herself as she arched her back.

“Look at me, baby,” he said, although his words were muffled by the delicious, pliant flesh in his mouth.

“Mmmmph,” she looked back at him, her eyes narrowed with lust and shining a stunning dark green.  “Oh God, baby that feels so good,” she moaned.  “Harder!”

He bit at her nub again, harder this time and she cried out as he sucked her back into his mouth, sucking hard before he rolled her nipple around in the top of his mouth, applying pressure rhythmically as he sucked.  

She swallowed a sob of pure pleasure as he released her with a small pop and then transferred his attention to her other breast.  Looking down, he took another scoop of cream and smeared it wider across her breast.  Then, still watching her watch him, he began to lap up the cream in broad strokes of his tongue, massaging the hard pink bud with his tongue with every pass.

“You taste incredible,” he told her between licks.  “I’ll never be able to get enough of you, sweetheart.”

“Oh,” Marlena’s breaths were coming hard and fast now.  She was so fucking turned on she could feel the pressure growing between her legs as her panties became progressively wetter.  She wanted desperately to touch him.  She wanted her hands on his face, her fingers in his hair.  She felt out of control, her need for his touch, to feel his hands and mouth everywhere, all over her body was like a wildfire burning out of control.

She pulled at the sleeves of her dress, trying to struggle out of the bejeweled confines of the bodice, the shoulders of which still sat around her forearms.  Frustrated, she grunted in despair as she tried to untangle herself from the alternately stiff and wispy fabric.

Realizing what she was trying to do, John disengaged his mouth from her and raised his hands to her upper arms.  Skimming them down he helped her pull the garment from her upper body.  She sighed as she pulled her hands from the jewel-encrusted cuffs and lifted her hands to his shoulders.  Cupping them around his neck, she looked deep into his eyes as she dug her fingers into the hair at the base of his skull.

“More,” was her singular demand as she pulled herself back towards him, arching her back.  With a grin, John attacked her again, using his lips tongue and teeth as well as the pressure of his suctioning mouth.

“Ohhhh,” Marlena began to rock on his lap, brushing up against the bulge in his jeans.

John used one hand on her free breast while fumbling at the hem of her skirt with the other until he found his way under the sheer material.  His fingers crept up the inside of her leg which became increasingly damp and sticky as he neared the apex where her thighs met in that little dark triangle of untold wonders.

His heart pounding and his dick jumping and straining, he drew his thumb over the warm, moist gusset of her satin panties.  Marlena jerked against his hand and cried out.  He redoubled the efforts of his mouth to bring her pleasure while he started to gently massage the soft, sensitive swelling that lay nestled in darkness below a layer of slick satin.

“Oh, God!  Oh, oh John,” Marlena’s eyes rolled back in her head as she clutched at his hair.  It was too much.  She’d waited so long for him to touch her, and everything was on fire.  She was super sensitive everywhere and he knew just where to touch her, just how to touch her, to rub her, to flick, lick and suck her to bring her to orgasm when she was just the normal amount of horny.  But this wasn’t the normal amount.  This was beyond.  She was beyond trying to control herself, beyond pleasure and sensation and desire.  She was just a singular flame of intense, exploding bliss as her insides collapsed into nirvana and for a moment, there was no thought, no her, no him, everything was just intense sensation and joy.

John hummed gently, still sucking on her breast as she collapsed against him, her arms heavy and limp around his neck, her breathing harsh and heavy. 

Releasing her breast from his mouth with a little pop, he drew his hand out from under her skirt and skated his hand up her arm until he reached her shoulder and her neck.  Weaving his fingers in her hair, he pulled her head back, looking up into her glazed eyes.  “Sounded like you needed that,” he smiled, his own eyes twinkling.

“Oh… boy!”  She shook her head, trying to dislodge the haze that had settled there in the wake of her intense orgasm.  “Oh boy, oh boy.”

John inhaled deeply, he could smell her arousal and it was making him more than a little bit crazy.  He needed to get his mouth on more than just her breasts.

“You think you can stand up?” He asked softly.

“Hmmmm?” she was still dazed as she met his eyes.  

“Stand up,” he repeated.  “Let me take this gorgeous dress off that gorgeous body of yours. I have things I want to do to you baby, and I can’t do them while you sit on my lap, no matter how fucking stunning you look.”

“Oh, okay,” she nodded, still not really comprehending his words.  Whatever he was saying though, she would do.  She would do anything he asked at this point.  Anything.

She let him help her into a standing position and then watched him as he breathed in deeply, just looking at her for a moment, his eyes drifting from her flushed face, down over her naked breasts to where her dress was still bunched around her hips.  He lifted his hand to his mouth, inhaling the smell of her which lingered on his fingers before licking the pad of his thumb.  “Fuck, I love the way you taste, baby.”  His voice came out as a low growl and made her shiver.

Taking his hands, he wrapped them around her waist and drew them down, pushing the fabric of her dress down over her hips.  His breath hitched as he encountered the lace band at the top of her panties and then drew his fingers down over the slippery satin.  

The dress, liberated from her hips, fell to the floor and she stepped out of it, clutching at his upper arms as she wobbled unsteadily on the high heels she still wore.

John helped her kick the dress away, steadying her with his hands on her hips as his heart pounded.  All these weeks, all these months he had been dreaming of this moment.  His mouth was dry, his breathing labored as he reveled in the sight of her.  She was a goddess, and she was all his.  For a moment, an image of Bo flashed into his mind.  Bo, holding her.  Kissing her.  

A little angrily, he banished the thought from his mind.  He wouldn’t let Bo spoil tonight.  Bo was merely a symptom of their miscommunication and their fear.  He had no power to change things now, only the power John gave him.  Marlena had put Kristen behind her when they had reunited, he would have to do the same with Bo.

“Are you okay?” Marlena asked, suddenly aware of John’s momentary distraction.

“Fine, Doc.”  He knew his smile was strained.  He knew she knew he was lying.  Well, he wasn’t lying.  This would pass, it always did.  He’d always had to live with the fact that he was not the only man she’d taken to her bed.  This shouldn’t be any different.

“Don’t lie to me John,” her voice was soft and sympathetic.  “We promised.  No lies.  No trying to protect each other, or ourselves.”

“I don’t want to spoil the moment,” John looked into her eyes.  “It will pass, Doc.”

“It’s about Bo, isn’t it?” she brought her hands up to his neck, one hand slipping up to his cheek, playing with the hair at his temple.  “How can I make this better for you?  John, I have no feelings for Bo.  Nothing beyond friendship.  I care about him, of course I do, as a friend only.  But I love you.  I want you.  I always wanted you.  Even when I was with him, I wanted you.  No one has ever made me feel like you make me feel.  No one.   You take me to places I’ve never experienced before.”

“Even after all this time?” his smile was genuine now.

“Even after all this time.”  She brushed the pad of her thumb over his lips.  “Every time, it’s like the first time, John.   The way you make me feel, the effect you have on me is… I can’t explain it.  I can’t put it into words.  It transcends everything I’ve ever known.”

“You don’t have to explain it,” he took her hand and kissed her palm.  “Because I feel it too.  When you touch me.  When…. God, just when I see you baby.  Across a crowded room.  You walk in and I’ll feel it before I even see you.  A wave of electricity running through me.  Prickles over my skin.  Goosebumps.  You leave me breathless, Marlena.  Every time.”

“God, I love you so much.”  Tears filled her eyes, and her words came out as a sob.  “I almost destroyed us.  How can you ever forgive me?”

“I don’t need to,” he shrugged.  “It was just part of our journey, Doc.  We needed this to happen.  I let fear rule me for too long and then I chased after ghosts and let that blind me to what I was at risk of losing.  I took you for granted and I was stupid.”

“Never again,” Marlena tipped her head up, her warm lips brushing against his.  “You will never take me for granted again and I will never doubt your love for me.  There will never be anyone else for me, John.  I’m yours and yours alone.  Now and always.”

The corner of John’s mouth quirked upwards.  He had needed her reassurance.  Just for a moment, he had needed it.  Fuck Bo Brady.  He was just a sliver of time in her past.  John was her past, present and entire future.  Bo was no threat, no reason to feel insecure.

“Let me show you,” Marlena pushed his shirt from where it sat tight across his well-muscled shoulders, skimming her palms down his broad upper arms, tracing the dips and curves of his muscles with a loving touch.

She pushed it over the wiry hair of his forearms as she looked up into his eyes.  His gaze was dark indigo and full of hunger as he stared back at her, and it made her stomach flip and clench with want.

He worked to free his hands from the rolled-up arms of his shirt as her hands found his belt, unlooping the stiff leather from between the steel bars of the buckle and pulling it free.

“You’re so sexy,” he murmured as she lent her nimble fingers to unbuttoning the stiff denim and pushing down the zipper.

“You make me feel beautiful,” she said softly.  “I still can’t quite believe you love me the way you do.  You are the most incredible, beautiful, sexy man.  I love you so.”

“Oh, baby,” he breathed as she pushed on the waistband of his jeans, pushing the denim down over his hips.  He brought his hands up to her face, cradling either side of her head with his warm, oversized palms, his fingers delving into the blonde locks that tumbled riotously on either side of her face, framing her delicate features.  Dropping his head, he caught her mouth with his, his tongue insistent as it swept into her mouth.  Her efforts to strip him of his pants faltered as her arms curled around his waist and she leaned into him, the dark wiry hair of his chest scraping against her sensitive nipples as he plundered her mouth.

“Oh, oh my,” her head was swimming when he pulled away.  Raising one eyebrow with an unspoken promise and a challenge, he pushed at his jeans, and kicking his shoes off, he pulled his feet out of them and discarded them alongside the crumpled pile of fabric that was her beautiful dress.

“Lie down, baby.”  He leaned down and moved the dishes back to the table and helped her to sit back down on the sofa.  “No, leave them on,” he entreated her as she reached for her shoes.  He knew they probably weren’t entirely comfortable to wear, but sweet Jesus if she didn’t look as sexy as fuck in those stockings and heels, and the idea of having those legs wrapped around his waist, those heels digging into his ass was just an extra turn-on.  Not that he needed any more than just her and her naked body.  But hot damn, she looked fucking amazing.

With a smile, she leaned back on the sofa and let him arrange a cushion under her head.  Then he drew his hand down over her shoulder, her chest, brushing her breast as he did so.  She sucked in a sharp breath, holding it for a moment as he brought his fingers to her nipple and pinched it lightly, watching her responses, from the hitch in her breathing, to the rise of color in her cheeks and the tightening and puckering of the skin at the summit of her breast.

“Oh, baby,” he breathed.  “God, I’ve missed you.”  He dipped his head and took her in his mouth again, swirling his tongue around her taut bud as she moaned, arching her back and holding his head to her chest.  Lavishing the attention of his lips, tongue, and teeth on her breast, he slid his hand under her back to hold her firm and then his other hand slid downwards and played with the lace band at the top of her panties, sliding his fingers under it and skimming them along her lower belly just above her pubic bone. 

This elicited a cry from her, and he felt her pelvis jump, her belly tightening with desire under his touch.  “Oh,” she rocked her hips against him, grinding upwards, trying to find some relief from his hand or his abdomen.

He hummed an admonishment against her sensitive skin as he slid his fingers further into her panties, fingering the soft, well-trimmed fuzz at the apex of her legs.  “Oh, oh, God,” she bucked against his hand again and wove her fingers tightly in his hair as her body arched and undulated in a wave.  “Oh God, John.  I need you to touch me.  Please.”

“All in good time, Doc,” he crooned as he ran his fingers through the short, soft pubic triangle, relishing the way it felt against his fingertips.  She was wet down there, and he hadn’t even made it down to the valley between her thighs, to her delicious moist heat.  He knew when he ran his fingertip down over the lips of her pussy, she would be warm and slippery, and she would taste like a slice of heaven.  He could barely wait to feast on her, and he felt his own hips buck with barely contained need as he inhaled her scent and imagined how she would feel and taste.

“Oh, God.  Oh God,” she writhed under his touch, trying to move so that his fingers would slip down and brush against her clit, slide into the hot groove of her sex, and plunge inside her, bringing her to the brink of orgasm again.

But he refused, withdrawing his hand, and reaching out for another strawberry.  Smiling, he dipped it into the cream and used the tip of it to draw the outline of a heart around her belly button.  Leaning down and watching her face as he did so, he licked her stomach clean, enjoying the moans and whimpers that spilled from her beautiful lips as she arched her head back, her stomach jumping under his ministrations.  

Finally, when he was done, he hooked his fingers into the sides of her panties and drew them down over her hips.  She exhaled heavily as she lifted her buttocks, her heels pressing hard into the cushion as he drew the satin and lace down over her shapely ass, his fingers stroking her as he brough them down, slowly and reverently.  His gaze took in every detail of her, the shadows, the soft, pink, swollen lips beneath the downy layer of dark hair, the soft gleam in the candlelight highly suggestive of the wonders hidden within.

A strangled groan died in his throat as he brought the satin down over the tops of her stockings and drew them slowly down her long, slender legs, finally hooking them over the shiny heels with the fire-engine red soles.  

Lifting them to his nose, he closed his eyes and inhaled, the satin damp against his lips.  Marlena watched him from heavy-lidded eyes, finding his delight at the evidence of her readiness for him highly arousing.  She licked her lips as he opened his eyes and looked at her.  Dropping her panties to the ground, he crawled up between her legs and bussed his lips against hers.  Bringing her thighs up either side of his hips, she rocked against the satin of his boxers, making him growl as he sucked and bit at her lips. 

“I need you,” she breathed against his lips, her fingernails scratching desperately at the muscles of his back as she tried to get closer to him.  “I need you inside me.  Now.”

“Oh, baby!” He was tempted to just strip his boxers off and plunge into her with no more pause.  But he had promised himself this was going to be a night she wouldn’t forget.  That neither of them would forget.  If he let himself go now, he wouldn’t have enough in the tank to last the night through.  He had to pace himself.  Marlena on the other hand…. Marlena had at least half a dozen orgasms in her before she would start to flag, and he was determined she would get to experience all of them before the night was through.

So, leaning on one forearm he concentrated on her mouth, his other hand running lightly down the underside of her thigh, exploring her soft, sensitive skin and the familiar, erotic curve of her buttock.  Licking and biting his way up her jaw, he sucked the sensitive skin beneath her ear and felt her shiver and tense beneath him.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured against her warm fragrant skin as he slid his mouth back down her neck, planting open-mouthed kisses down her throat and down over her chest until he found her breasts again.  Stopping briefly, he flickered his tongue across one nipple and then the other, making her gasp again before he continued down, tonguing her belly button before he kissed down over the soft swell of the belly that had carried and borne his daughter.

When he reached the shadow of dark hair, he looked up at her again and smiled.  Hooking his fingers in the top of one stocking, he drew it down her long smooth leg.  He removed her shoe and slipped the stocking off before gently replacing the shoe on her foot and dropping the stocking on the floor.  He did the same with the other stocking before he reached out for another strawberry.  He bit the end of it and squeezed it so that it dripped juice onto her thigh.  Bringing it down to the inside of her knee, he drew a line of strawberry juice and pulp up the inside of her thigh.  Then he followed the same path with his tongue, lapping up the pleasant juices of the berry as well as the sweet, saltiness of her.

“Oh,” her hips and belly rolled under the power of his ministrations.  “Oh, oh my god.”  She was in a haze of wanting and need and pleasure as he selected another berry and repeated the activity on the inside of her right thigh, licking up to the crease at the apex of her thighs.

Folding one hand under her head so she could watch him, her eyes followed his hand as he selected yet another berry.  Lifting his eyebrows and concentrating hard, he brought the red gem to her and brushed it lightly against her center.  

The luscious fruit was cool against her skin as he dipped it into her heat drawing it up between her lips.  His mouth hung open slightly, and she could see hints of the tip of his tongue as he unconsciously followed the path of the berry through her folds, moving it up and then down again, pushing it in and then pulling it out.  She was wet and warm where his fingers met her as he manipulated the berry through the slippery warm crevices of her sex and his cock throbbed with the wanting of her. 

Making sure she was watching him, he withdrew the berry and lifting it to his mouth, he sucked it in, cleaning it of her juices with several swirls of his tongue.  Then again, he lowered the berry to her pussy and swiped the tip of the berry upwards, making sure it was coated in her viscous, slippery secretions.  Then he crawled up her body, nudging her with his satin-clad cock so that she cried out.

He waved the strawberry gently under her nose.  “You smell and taste incredible,” he murmured.  “Let me watch you.  I want to see you taste yourself.”

Her breath shallow and unsteady, she wrapped her trembling fingers around his wrist and flicked her tongue out to lick the berry.  He exhaled heavily, his eyes midnight blue in the darkened room as he watched her.  “Mmmmm,” she licked her lower lip and then opened her mouth, enveloping the top of the berry and then sucking it in between her lips and biting it.

“Fuck, Doc!” John’s heart was pounding, and he could feel the wetness of her soaking into his boxers.  Dropping the roughened calyx of the berry on the floor, he tangled his fingers in her golden tresses and kissed her as if his life depended on it.  She tasted sweet and spicy and musky and fucking unbelievable, and he almost climaxed just from the taste and feel of her against him.

Marlena wrapped her legs around his hips, her arms tight around his shoulders, and ground against him as he kissed her.  She couldn’t get enough of him.  She wanted him on her, around her, inside of her.  She wanted him to own her, body and soul.  She felt him thrust against her, the hard shape of his shaft under his boxers bumping and grinding against her core.  And suddenly, almost unexpectedly, she was coming again, her body clenching and tensing, the wave of a second orgasm rippling through her.

“Oh… God!”  She threw her head back as she clung to him, riding out the tremors of her climax.  “Oh, Oh fuck, oh God!”

“Oh, baby!” He waited as she jerked and trembled underneath him until she finally settled with a sigh and then opened her eyes, her surprise evident.  “Jesus, you’re so fucking sexy, Doc.”  He groaned as he ground himself against her again, slowly, deliberately.  He could feel her juices soaking through his boxers and the damp fabric clung to his dick as he pulled away from her.

“I need to feel you, John,” she caught his jaw between her fingers, forcing him to look into her eyes.  The look of raw hunger she found there made her shudder and moan silently.  “I need you inside me.”

“You want me to fuck you baby?” he asked, his voice low and thready.

“Oh, God, yes!” she nodded eagerly.  “I want you to fuck me.  I need you to fuck me.”

“You’re such a good girl,” he smirked as he drew his hand down over her breast, pinching her nipple as he went and making her gasp.  “You’ll get what you want but sweetheart, you need to be patient a little while longer.  I need to taste you first.”

“Oh,” she arched and tensed as he pushed her thighs open wider.  “Oh John, I don’t kn-“

“Shhhh,” he dipped his mouth to her belly and danced his tongue across the sensitive skin above the freshly trimmed vee that topped her mound.  “Let me love you, Marlena.  It’s been too long.  I’ve missed you.  I’ve missed this.”

He blew softly on her, stirring the soft, wiry hairs and she whimpered quietly, anticipating the first touch of his tongue.  Her hands reached for his head, clutching at handfuls of his short, cropped hair as his hands palmed the sensitive insides of her thighs, baring her to his hungry mouth.  

The first swipe of his tongue up the swollen groove of her pussy brought moans forth from both of them.  John’s every single sense was full of her, smell, taste, sound… he thought he might lose his mind, or at least his self-control with the way she tasted and felt under his hands.  

“Jesus, you’re so wet,” he nuzzled her folds with his lips and tongue.  “So wet and hot…  So goddamn hot, baby.”  

“John!” tears leaked out from beneath her closed eyelids.  His mouth on her felt so good it almost hurt and the teasing swipes of his tongue were as frustrating as fuck but God, she loved it.  She loved the way he loved her, the way he teased her and built her to a mountain-top crescendo from which she would swan-dive into utter bliss.  He drove her crazy, but in the best, best way.   

He used his thumbs to spread her wide and then flickered his tongue up the exposed wet, pink flesh of her pussy, his cock twitching at the sound of her cries of pleasure.  When he reached the pink pearl of her clit, she wailed and arched her back, grinding herself into his probing tongue.

“Oh, fuck!! she whined.  “Oh, John! Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”  She exploded again, the orgasm so intense she lost all sense of herself for a moment, completely overwhelmed by the pleasure exploding inside her, the fire licking over her skin, and the roaring of fireworks behind her eyes. 

Unable to help himself, and not even giving her the time to recover, John continued to lap at her, alternating his attention between her pussy and the thick, swollen nub that crowned it.  Sucking it into his mouth, he flicked his tongue over it repeatedly so that she cried out heady squeals and writhed against him, her hips rolling against his mouth in rhythmic thrusts.

John slid his hands under her, his palms cupping her beautiful ass cheeks as he feasted on her.  inserting the tip of his tongue between her pussy lips, he delved as deeply as he could and flicked it back and forth, thrusting it into her, just like he intended doing with his aching cock when he got to the point that he couldn’t stand the waiting any longer.  But now, now he wanted to make her come again and again.  With his tongue, his lips, his fingers.  He wanted to hear her scream his name, feel her convulse around him.  When he finally fucked her, he wanted her to be delirious with bliss.  He wanted to make her feel like she was so high she was never going to come down.

“Oh, oh God,” Marlena reached her arms up over her head, trying to gain some purchase on something, anything as John continued to drive his tongue into her, his fingers digging into her cheeks, holding her firmly to his mouth, giving her no quarter.  She wanted him to stop but at the same time, she wanted him to never stop.  His tongue was driving her insane, bringing her to the brink of yet another climax and then slowing down just before she collapsed in on herself, her body tensing and twisting as she tried both to avoid and reach that pinnacle at the same time.

John stroked his tongue up over her nub again and then concentrated on it, massaging it in small circles, just the way he knew she liked it.  “Oh fuck, oh God, baby, that’s it,” she responded just as he knew she would, her hands clutching the arm of the sofa behind her as she rolled her hips against his mouth.  “Oh, right there.  Just like..  ohhhh, oh God John.  Just there.  Like that… oh God, oh fuuuuuck!”  She came hard against his mouth, every muscle in her body taut, her thighs clamped tight against the sides of his head.

John groaned at the feeling of her, the wetness against his tongue, the way she throbbed and ground against his mouth.  Moving one hand from under her, he bought his fingers up to her slit, running them up and down over the wet, slippery cleft.  He needed to feel her now.  Her heat, the way her muscles would clench and release around him.

He looked up to find she had clasped one of her hands over her eyes and he was suddenly worried.  Pushing her thighs apart, he crawled up her body and touched his hand to her cheek.  “Marlena, sweetheart?” he said gently.  “Are you okay?”

She shook her head wordlessly, and his misgivings suddenly exploded.  Prizing her hand away from her face, he looked into her eyes.  He was grateful to find she wasn’t crying.  “What’s wrong?” he asked softly.

“Too much,” she breathed, barely able to put together coherent words.  

“Too much?” he repeated, confused.

She swallowed and threaded her fingers in his hair.  “It’s okay,” she whispered after a moment.  “I’m okay.  I just got a little overwhelmed.  I’m….” she shifted and groaned as she brushed against his boxers.  “It’s intense.  I’ve missed you so much and I just…. It all got a bit too much for a moment.  I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, needing reassurance that he hadn’t hurt her or upset her in any other way.

“I’m sure,” she smiled, and her eyes shone golden in the candlelight.   “I’m sure.  I just love you so.  Sometimes it just gets… the feelings are…. So powerful.  It just hit me again how close I was to losing you.  And how, if I had, I would have never felt like this ever again.”

“You don’t need to worry about that, baby,” he drew his thumb over her cheek.  “I’m not going anywhere.  Not ever.”

“Promise?” she whispered.  “It would kill me to lose you again.  Please don’t ever-“

“Baby,” he put his finger to her pink, swollen lips.  “You don’t need to worry.  Wild horses couldn’t drag me away from you.  You’re stuck with me, okay?”  

She smiled as she wrapped her arms around his neck.  “Yeah.  It’s okay.  More than okay.”

“I love you, Marlena,” he said, the full weight of the emotion he felt carried in his words.  Lying here with her, after everything they had been through… he understood the intensity of her emotion, the sudden impact of the realization of what they had been through and what they had almost lost.  

This.  This love, this connection, this magic that was them, together.  And the physical intimacy, the mind-blowing, fucking incredible intensity of the two of them coming together.  

There never was, never could be anything to top the way she made him feel.  And the way he made her feel.  Together they were magic.  

Pure magic.  

Part Cinquante Quatre

You never know what people have up their sleeves
Ghosts from your past gonna jump out at me
Lurking in the shadows with their lip gloss smiles
But I don’t care ’cause right now you’re mine

And you’ll say
Don’t you worry your pretty little mind
People throw rocks at things that shine
And life makes love look hard
The stakes are high, the water’s rough
But this love is ours

And it’s not theirs to speculate
If it’s wrong and
Your hands are tough
But they are where mine belong and
I’ll fight their doubt and give you faith
With this song for you

Ours – Taylor Swift

“Do you want to take a breather?” John asked, stroking her face with fingers that smelt of her sex.  She reached languidly for his wrist and drew his hand to her mouth, delicately licking her essence from his fingertips.

“You’re going to be the death of me, lady!” he chuckled.

“Don’t you go dying on me,” she reached down between them, rubbing her hand over the satin that clung to his hard dick.  “I have plans for you and they don’t include you dying.”

“Oh baby,” he caught her hand and pulled it away from him.  “Don’t.  I can’t…. I don’t have the option of multiple do-overs like you do.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure you do,” she raised her eyebrows with a knowing smile.  “You forget, I’ve experienced your recuperative powers firsthand.  What about that night in New Orleans?  I seem to remember several go-rounds.”

John raised an eyebrow and then smirked.  “Thanks to your magic mouth, yeah.”

“Well then,” she closed her lips around the tops of his fingers and sucked them in and out of her mouth several times, laving them with her tongue as she did so.  When she finally released them, she swirled her tongue around the tips of his fingers, her eyes dancing.  “My mouth hasn’t gotten any less magic, you know.”

“Christ!” John groaned.  “Are you trying to kill me, Doc?”

“No,” she reached her hands up over her head and stretched, drawing her leg up and wrapping it around his thighs, carefully stroking the back of his leg with the patent leather of her heel before she slid the long pointed heel between his legs.  “I’m trying to make myself irresistible to you, so that you’ll fuck me.”

“You don’t need to do anything to make yourself irresistible,” he growled, tangling his fingers in her tousled golden tresses.  “You already are.  Every moment of every day.  I just have to look at you and my cock gets hard.  I would fuck you, all day, every day if I could.”

“Well then,” she raised her eyebrows again in invitation.  “What are you waiting for?”  She rolled her hips upwards, rubbing herself against his aching hardness.  “I need you to fuck me, John.  Now.”

“Do you know how much it turns me on to hear those filthy words come out of that beautiful mouth of yours?” He asked, running his thumb across her lower lip.  

“No,” she blinked, a little surprised.  “No, actually I didn’t.”

“It does,” he dipped his head and licked his tongue over her lips.  “It makes me so fucking hard.  You look so innocent and then this filth comes from you, and it drives me crazy.”

“I didn’t think you were into dirty talk,” Marlena said with a smile as she looked up into his eyes.  “How did I miss that?”

“I don’t know,” he drew his fingers down over her throat and traced the line of her collarbone.  “Maybe I held back from telling you.  Maybe I didn’t want you to think badly of me.”

“Can I tell you a secret?” she murmured against his mouth, “It really turns me on too.”  She brought her hand back over her head and walked her fingers down over his shoulder, tracing the invisible outline of the phoenix tattoo with which Stefano had him branded before he’d come to Salem and changed her life forever.  She continued down his spine, her nails scraping his skin and making him shiver.  When she reached the waistband of his boxers, she inserted her fingers beneath the elastic waistband and cupped his ass cheek before giving it a squeeze with a small sigh.  “Okay, I’m ready to go if you are.”

“You’re insatiable,” John chuckled.

“I don’t hear you complaining,” Marlena shifted, rubbing herself against him again, and closed her eyes briefly, a beatific smile curling her lips.

“Oh, I’m not,” he grinned, brushing the hair from her cheek, and nuzzling it with his nose.  “Trust me, I’m not.”

Marlena pushed at the waistband of his boxers, trying to push them over his hips.  “So, what else don’t I know about you?” she murmured against his ear.  “What other naughty secrets are you hiding from me?”

“Can we talk about it later?” John caught her hand, images of his devil-fueled fantasies flashing before his eyes.  He pushed it up over her head, circling both her wrists with his fingers before he dipped his head to her ear and sucked her earlobe between his lips, massaging it with a determined tongue so that she moaned.  “Too distracting.  The only thing I want to be distracted by is your hot, wet pussy.”

“Oh Jesus,” Marlena bucked her hips against him.  “Oh fuck!”

“Soon, baby,” he traced the curve of her outer ear with his tongue, making her shiver.  “Soon, I am going to fuck that hot, tight pussy of yours until you beg me to make you come.  I’m going to make you scream, Marlena.”

“Oh, God, yes,” she panted, unsure whether she was more turned on by his words or the way his hand held her wrists captive.  “Please.  Please.”

John bit her jaw and then pulled the sensitive flesh of her throat into his mouth, deliberately sucking it hard so that he would bruise her.  He wanted everyone to know she was his again.  Body and soul.  He especially wanted Bo to know.  He wanted his one-time brother to be in no doubt that Marlena was his, and his alone.  That she was off-limits, in every single way.  

He was gratified to find that she only moaned as he marked her again.  Usually, she would pull away and scold him, but tonight she was all in.  Tonight, she seemed to want to be claimed, just as much as he wanted to claim her.

“Fuck, Doc,” he skimmed his hand down the soft, curve of her waist, closing his eyes as his palm skated over her, where the concave line flared into her rounded hips.  God, every part of her made him as hot as hell.  He would never be able to touch her and not want her.  The Devil had chosen the perfect victim because she was temptation incarnate.  How he had ever thought he could just be friends with this woman, when she did things to him that made him blush, he did not know.

Letting go of her wrists, he shifted, lifting himself to one side of her body, and propped himself up so that he could properly take in the sight of her.  “Spread your legs, honey,” his voice was low and thick with lust.  “Let me look at you.”

She whimpered as she acceded to his request, her shoes digging into the floral sofa cushions.  John stroked the heel of his palm from her bent knee to the wetness at her core.  

“Fuck,” he breathed again as he drew his fingers up her soaked pussy.  “Jesus baby, you are so fucking wet.”  He took a deep breath, trying to calm the pounding of his heart but the scent of her, the sweet, floral, earthy everyday scent overlaid with the heady smell of her arousal was almost too much to stand.  His stomach tightened and his cock bobbed in his boxers as he slid two fingers slowly into her sweet heat.  

“Ohhhhh,” Marlena’s eyes fluttered closed as his thick fingers pushed into her.  “Yesss.”  She clenched around his fingers and rolled her hips upwards.  “Oh god, that feels so good.”

John was lost for a moment, speechless as she filled his senses.  He didn’t know how he could have forgotten exactly how sublime it was to be inside her, but he had.    Leaning down, he flicked his tongue over her mouth, and she opened her lips, inviting him inside.  He withdrew his fingers and then plunged them back into her at the same time as he thrust his tongue inside her.  She curled her arm around his neck and attacked his mouth as she rocked her hips against his hand.  He groaned against her open mouth as he pulled his fingers out of her, stroking her walls, teasing her nerves before he thrust them back into her again.

“Oh!” She broke the kiss, gasping for breath, and arched her back.  “Oh, more.  Harder.”

John pressed open-mouthed kisses down her throat and across her shoulder before he sat up again, concentrating his attention on where his fingers plunged wetly in and out of her.

“Touch yourself,” his voice was hoarse, and he swallowed heavily.  “Like you did in the shower at the loft.”  He felt her tighten around his fingers at the sound of his command and little mewls came from her.  “C’mon baby,” he paused his fingers, fluttering them against the upper wall of her channel so that she cried out.  “I want to see you do it.  I want to see you make yourself come.”

“It’s you,” she gasped as she lowered her hand to meet his.  “It’s always you.  I was fantasizing about you in the shower.  I always fantasize about you.  About the things you do to my body.”

“Tell me.”  He stroked her inner walls with his fingertips as he watched hers search for her clit and begin to lightly rub it.

“I was… Oh God, I was thinking about seeing you… stroking yourself,” she bit her lower lip, her hips straining upwards, “uh… the night before.”

John licked his lips, his eyes flicking from her hand to her flushed face and back to where his fingers were buried between her slippery folds.  “Is that all?” he choked out through clenched teeth.

“No…” she opened her eyes and looked at him.  His eyes were dark and hungry for her, just as they had been in her fantasy that morning.  “I imagined you’d seen me watching you… OH,” she bucked her hips as he withdrew his fingers and thrust deeply into her.  “Oh fuck….”

“What did I do?” he demanded as he added a further finger, making her squirm.  “In your fantasy, what did I do when I saw you watching me.”

“You came to me and pushed me…” she twisted against his hand, her fingers firmer against the tiny, swollen nub.  “Oh fuck, yes, that feels so good.”  The muscles in her legs tensed, her shoulders digging into the cushions below her as she reveled in the feeling of his hand inside her in concert with her own fingers, rhythmically driving her closer and closer to the peak.

“Pushed you?”  He could see it.  Him turning around in the bathroom, his hand stroking the length of his rigid cock, seeing her there, wearing his shirt over those white cotton and lace panties, her golden eyes wide and blown with arousal.  He wanted to know what had happened next in her head.

“Onto the bed,” she gasped.  “You tore open my… your shirt.”

John groaned audibly and it triggered a moan from her.  “Then what?” He felt the pace of her hand increase, the small circles becoming tighter and faster, the pressure of her fingers harder as her excitement mounted.

“I ah…” she reached her hand up over her head, gripping the cushion she lay on.  “Oh God.”  She bit into her lip again, the feeling of her own hand and his fingers bringing her closer and closer to climax.

“Slow down baby,” he stilled his fingers, and she moaned as he slid them from her and laid his fingers over hers.  “I want to hear the rest of your fantasy first.  Before I make you scream my name.”

Marlena bit her lip again and opened her eyes to look at him.  They were glazed with desire.  She was so close, teetering on the edge of orgasmic oblivion.

“Tell me.”  He leaned close to her, “I tore your shirt open?  Did I spread your thighs and taste your pussy?  Or did I fill that sweet pussy with my cock?  Was it gentle or did I make it hurt?  Did you beg for more?  Did you want it faster, Marlena?  Did you want it harder?”

“Oh, Jesus!” she whined, her hips searching upwards for his hand.  Trying to move her fingers under his.  “John, please.  I need you.  Inside me.  I need you, now.”

“You need me to what?” he demanded, plunging his fingers back into her.  “What do you want, Marlena?”

“Oh, Jesus, fuck me,” her hips lifted up from the couch, straining against his hand, her own fingers flicking at her clit.  “Oh fuck, John!  More!  Harder.  Fuck me harder!”

John thrust his fingers into her, hard and fast.  “I want to see you come, Doc.  Show me how good this feels.  My fingers inside you, my mouth on your breast.”  He leaned down and sucked her nipple into his mouth, pinching it between his lips and massaging it with his tongue and then his teeth.

“Oh John, oh God, Johhhhnnnn!”  His mouth was the final part of the puzzle and the orgasm she’d been chasing exploded through her, starting in her core as she clenched around John’s fingers and then rippling through her body as she tensed and then clutched at John, clawing at his back as she curled around him and then arched her back again.  

“That’s it, baby,” he murmured around the soft, pliant flesh in his mouth as he tongued her nipple again, making her squeal.  “Let me hear you.  Tell me how good this feels.”  He slowed his hand momentarily and then applied his thumb to her clit as he stroked her g-spot with his fingers.  Once again, she convulsed around him, screaming out his name into the glimmering candle-lit semi-darkness as another orgasm tore through her, obliterating all sense of decorum and restraint.

He was so hard now he could hardly stand it.  His cock throbbed painfully against her leg where she convulsed against him.  He was almost beyond control as he withdrew his fingers and wrestled his boxers over his hips and thighs, kicking them off.

“Are you ready for me, sweetheart?” he asked softly.  “I’m gonna fuck you now.”

“Oh God,” she sobbed.

“Is that a yes?” he asked, weaving his fingers between hers and then lifting her hand to his mouth, licking her essence off her fingers and then his own.  “I need you to tell me it’s okay, Marlena.  Do you want me inside of you?  I’m aching for you baby; my cock is so hard it hurts.  It wants to be sheathed in that hot, sweet pussy of yours.”  

Marlena was almost incoherent with pleasure.  She’d lost count of the number of orgasms he’d given her and yet his words, the soft, insistent velvet sexiness of his voice stoked her desire again.

“Yes!” she breathed; her voice caught in her throat.  “Oh God, yes.  I want your cock inside me.  I’m so ready for you.  I need you to fuck me.  Hard.”  She gasped as he shifted over her leg so that he was centered above her, his cock bobbing against her slippery wet heat.  He groaned as he felt her wetness embracing the underside of his rigid length and he bucked against her, the painful hardness of his dick grinding up against her hot slit and brushing the sensitive nerves at the apex.  “Oh God, really hard!”

“Oh, fuck baby.  I don’t know how long I’m gonna last,” he closed his eyes, reveling in the feeling of her against him, her wetness, the softness of her skin, the swell of her breasts against his chest.

“I don’t care, just hurry up!”  She reached down between them and wrapped her hand around him, stroking her fingers gently up his length and then back down again.

“Oh God, honey, keep that up and I’m gonna come before I even get inside you!” he pulled her hand from him and lifted it up to his mouth, kissing her palm before he shifted his body, so the head of his shaft rested against her center.  He took himself in his hand and parted her folds with the head of his penis, dragging the sensitive glans up through her heat, groaning as her breath caught in her throat and she gave a heady whimper.  “Fuck, baby!”  It was almost too much for him to stand.  “Bend your knees for me, sweetheart.  I want them up around your ears when I fuck you.”  It was a position they both loved.  It made for deep penetration and a rapid and intense climax for Marlena and the flexibility she exhibited made him even hotter for her.

Her stomach clenched as she moved against him and then responded to his request.  “God, I love you,” she said, her voice deep and melodic with lust and satisfaction.  “You make me so fucking hot.  You’re so beautiful and you feel so amazing.  Your mouth, your fingers…”  As he listened to her, he started to move his hips, thrusting so that the head of his cock parted her, filling and stretching her before he moved back out again.  “Ahhhhhh,” she clutched at his shoulders as he repeated his movements, entering her a little more this time.  “Oh, John.”

“Brace yourself, baby.”  He settled his hands either side of her freckled shoulders, his upper arms and shoulders firm against the underside of her thighs, and he planted his knees firmly in the cushions of the couch.  And then, with a single hard push, he was inside her, his cock almost fully sheathed in her welcoming warmth.  Marlena gasped with the pain and the pleasure of his forceful intrusion.  John closed his eyes, grunting at the way her muscles tightened around him.  The contrast of her warm, wet depths, and the way she held him tight within her, her muscles clenching at his cock was unbelievable and it made him so fucking horny, he almost came there and then.

“Fuuuuuck….” His eyes rolled back in his head as she wriggled under him.  The pressure on his cock was immense.  “Christ baby, you’re gonna make me come, you’re so fucking tight.  You feel so fucking gooooood.”

“Don’t come yet,” she whispered against his ear as she let herself relax and adjust around him.  “I need you to fill me, baby.  I need you to move inside me.”  She moved so that her knees were embracing his ears, her calves draped over his shoulders.  “I need you to fuck me now, Sailor.”

John raised one eyebrow and smirked at her.  Reaching out for the strawberries, he plucked one out, scooped it through the remaining cream, and then brought it to her mouth.  She opened her lips and as she did so, he pulled almost all the way out of her.  She moaned with the loss of his fullness, but she knew what was coming.  He placed the strawberry into her mouth, and she held it between her lips, her eyes a sparkling dark forest green, the corners of her mouth quirking upwards as she waited for his next move.

Forcefully, he thrust into her again and she sucked the strawberry into her mouth.  His lips found hers and his tongue tangled with the strawberry inside her mouth, pushing it between her teeth before he withdrew both his tongue and his throbbing dick.  She bit into the strawberry and then cried out as he slammed into her again and shared the taste of the berry and cream in her mouth.  And then again, he was pulling out of her and then feeding her his thick length, fast and hard.  She wound her fingers in his hair and pulled his head to her again, kissing him desperately as he pounded into her.  

John slipped his arms under her, curling his fingers up over her shoulders, holding her to him as he thrust deep into her core.  She felt unbelievably good, she surrounded him, filling all his senses so there was nothing in his reality but her.  The hot, sweet, earthy, wet, slippery, whimpering, shuddering perfection of her.  

She crossed her ankles across his upper back and drove her pelvis up against him, meeting him, thrust for thrust.  “Oh, oh, oh!!”  She broke their kiss and threw her head back as she felt her climax start to build.  “Oh, shit.  John I….”  her stomach rolled and clenched as his groin slapped hard against her ass and his pelvis ground against her clit.  “Oh God, John, oh fuck, I’m gonna come.  Oh…”

“Let me hear you, baby,” he growled.  “Let the whole fucking building hear you.  I want them all to know how hard I made you come tonight.  I want everyone to know you’re mine.  Now and forever.”

“Oh, Johhhhnnn!” she wailed as his words tumbled her over the precipice, her knees tightening against his ears, the heel of one shoe digging into his back, her pelvis grinding hard into his as she hollowed her back, her hands searching for something to push against so that she could get even closer to him.

John watched her in awe as she came again, writhing beneath him, convulsing around him, and crying his name as she shuddered her way through another intense orgasm.  It was almost enough to tip him over the edge into his own climax but somehow the sight of her was too compelling.  He wanted to remember every moment of how she looked as she rode this wave into pure existential bliss.

He could still feel the tremors of her climax as he started to move inside her again, the spasmodic contractions of her vaginal walls clenching and massaging his shaft as he thrust slowly and forcefully into her.  

She opened her eyes, her surprise registering as she felt him still hard and insistent inside her.  “Oh baby,” she whispered.  “You didn’t?”

“I wanted to watch you,” he nuzzled the side of her face.  “You are so beautiful when you come.  You take my breath away.”

She lifted her hand to the side of his face and feathered her fingers in the dark hair at his temple, her eyes glazed with pleasure and exhaustion.  “You’ve been incredibly generous,” she said softly, “but I think it’s time you came to the party, don’t you?”

“It would be my pleasure,” he smiled.  “You got any gas left in the tank?”

“I might be able to take one last trip,” she unhooked her leg from his shoulder, “but darling, I need to take these shoes off first.”

“Yeah, of course” he withdrew out of her, and she moaned as she unfolded her body, shedding the heels and straightening her legs before tangling them with his.  Propping herself up on one elbow, she gave him a sexy half-smile.

“How would you like it, Sailor?” she asked, reaching for his length and taking him in her hand, and rubbing him against her wetness once again.  “On top?  From behind?”

“Baby, I’ll take you any way I can get you,” he grinned.  “As long as I’m inside you, I’m gonna come so you choose.”

Marlena’s lips curled into an alluring smile, her eyes glittering in the shimmering candlelight.  “Lie down,” she shifted to the edge of the cushions.  “Let me take care of you this time.”

John said nothing but reached out and cupped her cheek before he leaned in and kissed her softly.  Then as she entreated, he lay down on his back, his head replacing hers on the large cushion. Marlena looked at him for a long moment and then drew her hands down over his chest, admiring the definition of his muscles as her fingers trailed over the planes and grooves.  With a smile, she bushed his nipple with her thumb and enjoyed the groan it elicited and the bobbing of the head of his cock against his belly.  Leaning down, she licked her tongue across the hard point of his nipple and he caught his hands in her hair.

“Baby, I need you on top of me.” He caught her eyes.  “NOW.  If you think you’re going to wrap that gorgeous mouth around anything and I am still gonna come inside you, you are very much mistaken.  I need my dick inside you.  Now.  And if you’re not going to make that happen now, then I will have you on your back again faster than you can say fuck me, okay?”

Marlena looked up at him, a glorious smile on her face.  That he was so close to coming that he could barely touch her turned her on immensely.  “Okay.”  Her voice was velvety as she pushed herself up and anchored herself over his hips.  He lifted his hands and caught hers, steadying her above him.   Reaching down with one hand, she wrapped her hand around his length and lifted him so her slick groove slid across his head.  She watched his eyes roll up and his head rock from side to side as his hips lifted his cock, making her hand slide down his length.

“You feel so good,” she murmured.  “I feel so complete when you’re inside me.  Like we’re one.  Like we’re meant to be together.  For always.”

“We are,” he groaned as she enveloped the head of his penis with her slick heat.  “Oh, Jesus baby.  There is no better place than here with you.  Inside you.  It’s a slice of heaven.  You take me to places that aren’t here,” he groaned as she slid down around him, “on earth.”  He closed his eyes, her warm heat clenching tight around his dick.  “Fuck Marlena.  You feel so fucking good.  This is too…” he reached for her hips, his fingers digging into her soft flesh.  “I’m gonna have to fuck you now.”

“Oh, God, honey,” she placed her hands on his chest, deliberately rubbing her thumbs over the nipples she knew were so sensitive.  “Oh, fuck.  Please.”

She lifted herself off him and dropped back down as he thrust up into her, his fingers digging deep into the flesh of her hips.  She knew she would be bruised tomorrow, hips, breasts, and throat but she didn’t care.  She wanted to feel and see his love, his passion for her for days, in the bruising, the tight muscles, the tender flesh between her thighs.

She met his hips and rocked against him, panting and groaning.  His sighs and moans melted into hers and then they were dueling, his grunts, her swaying backward and forward before she tucked her feet under his thighs and lifted her hips, allowing him to thrust into her.  

A cry tore from john’s throat as he gripped her hard, his knees bent as he pounded into her his hands tight on her hips.  “Oh fuck, Doc,” he cranked out, his throat tight.  “I’m so close.  I’m gonna fucking come.  Tell me you’re there.  Please. I need you to come with me.”

“Oh honey!” she tightened the muscles of her pussy around him.  She was close too, but she didn’t care if she came or not.  Her only goal was his climax.  She wanted to feel him erupting inside her.  She wanted to see, to feel his pleasure.  

He bucked into her, hard and fast, holding her against him as he thrust up as hard into her enveloping wetness.  He felt her inner muscles contract around him and the telltale tightening started in the base of his balls.

“Fuuuuuuuckkkkk!” He pushed as deep and hard as he could into her and then he was tensing, stiffening, and exploding, his hands clutching at her, his body bolting upright to grab hold of her.  Almost in desperation, his arms wrapped tight around her as he buried his face in her hair and keened his orgasm vocally as his body convulsed against hers.

The feeling of him filling her, embracing her, crying his passion against her ear was enough to hit all her pleasure centers, and then she was coming again, her long slender legs and arms curling around his hips and his waist, her own cries hot against his ear.

It seemed to John that it went on forever, her spasming inner walls milking his cock as he spilled his hot seed into her.  Her cries mingled with his, as he uttered her name over and over like it was a prayer or an invocation of glory.  She was warm and damp with perspiration, her hair sticking to the side of her face as he whispered his love for her.  And as the violence of their mutual climax eased, she shuddered against him and continued to tighten around his semi-hard length as the tremors of her orgasm slowly subsided.

“Wow.”  He said finally as she laid her cheek on his shoulder wearily.  “Wow.”

Marlena opened her mouth to speak but found herself temporarily without a voice or anything to say.  She was stunned into silence by the intensity of their lovemaking, of the overwhelming power of the pleasure he brought to her over and over again.  By the ongoing trembling of her body, and the profound love she felt for this incredible, beautiful man.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice hoarse as he stroked her hair gently.

“Mmmmm,” she nodded even though she felt the tears fill her eyes and start to melt into his skin.

“Hey, hey,” he put his finger under her chin and lifted her head so he could look at her.  “Baby, you’re crying.  Did I hurt you?”

“No!” She shook her head firmly.  “God, no!  It’s just I…I… lo…love,” she stumbled over her words as a sob shook free from her throat.  John gave her a look that was pure adoration and sympathy with a tiny little bit of concern laced through it.  “I love you so, so much.”  The tears trickled down over her cheeks and John wiped them away with his fingers.  “Sometimes I feel it so intensely it hurts a little bit.” She pressed the heel of her hand to her chest.  “In here.  I feel so lucky and blessed that you love me.  And this was just… this is…. you take care of me so beautifully.   Sometimes I just feel it all.  All at the same time and it brings me to tears.”

“Good tears?” he still looked concerned although he was a little awed that his loving her could elicit such a profound response.

“Definitely good tears,” she smiled shakily.  “Very good.  I’m so happy, John.  I feel like… I know the last few months have been hard and horrible, but we were holding things back.  We needed to be honest.  I needed to understand your grief and your fears.”

“And I needed to understand how hurt you were when you came back,” he gently brushed at the strands of hair stuck to her face, peeling them away and tucking them behind her ear.  “And I needed to understand how what happened with Don and Roman affected you.  I’ve thought about that a lot since you told me.  How abandoned you must have felt when Don left and Roman died, and how my holding back must have seemed another abandonment when you returned.  I’m sorry honey.  I promise you won’t ever need to worry about me going anywhere.  Not ever again.  The only place I want to be is here, holding you in my arms.  Making love to you.  Loving you, supporting you, and walking by your side for the rest of our lives together.”

“You’ll make me cry again!” she pressed one bent finger under her eye and wiped away the tears that were gathering once more.  “But John, I feel like there are no barriers between us now.  Nothing left unsaid.  No assumptions, no confusion.  And the fear… my fear has gone.  And I trust, I know that we’re going to walk that road together for the rest of our lives.  I feel a peace that I’m not sure I have ever felt before.”

John smiled and framed her face with large, warm hands.  “I love you, Marlena Evans.  I love you; I adore you with everything I have and everything I am.  And everything I have ever been and ever will be.  You’re my beginning and my end and every damn thing in between.”

“And I love you with my whole heart.  I want to spend the rest of my life making you the happiest man on the face of this earth.”  She smiled, her golden eyes dancing.

“I already am Doc.  You don’t have to do anything to make me happy.  Just always love me the way you love me right now.  Just marry me and wake up every morning next to me as my wife.  Just laugh that gorgeous sexy laugh of yours and kiss me at least once a day.  That will be all you need to do.”  He stroked one thumb across her cheek, marveling at her beauty and how ethereal she looked; tired, and freshly fucked in the shimmering candlelight.

“It’s a deal,” she quirked one side of her mouth.  “Will you kiss me now, to seal it?”

“You don’t have to ask twice,” John leaned forward, touching his forehead to hers for a moment before he nuzzled her, his lips brushing past hers before he licked his way along the seam of her lips, nudging her mouth open.  She sighed headily as he gently kissed and bit her top lip and then his mouth met hers in a long, hungry kiss that made his cock twitch inside her.

“Oh baby,” she pulled back, wide-eyed.  “Really?  I’m not sure I have any energy left.”

“No,” he shook his head with a smile and a quirked eyebrow.  “Not yet.  Maybe later when we’ve rested a bit.  You wanna have a nap and then see how we feel?”

“You have the best ideas.”  She leaned back and grabbed a throw from the end of the sofa.  Shaking it out, she wrapped it around her shoulders.  “Lie down honey.”

John did as she requested and shifted as she lay so that he remained sheathed within her as he held her in his arms, her leg curled up over his hip, her hair falling over his bicep, her arm draped around his neck and the throw pulled across both of them.  

“Close your eyes, sweetheart,” he kissed her forehead as she yawned.  “Thank you for tonight.  Thank you for being you, and loving me the way you do.”

“Sweet dreams, my love,” she murmured sleepily.

Within minutes, the sound of regular breathing filled the near-silent room as the candles burned to stubs and the water that had once been ice in the champagne bucked slowly warmed to room temperature….

Part Cinquante Cinq

I’m so in love that I might stop breathing

Drew a map on your bedroom ceiling

No, I didn’t see the news

‘Cause we were somewhere else

Stumble down pretend alleyways

Cheap wine, make believe it’s champagne

I was taken by the view

Like we were in Paris

Like we were somewhere else

Like we were in Paris, oh

We were somewhere else

I want to brainwash you into loving me forever

I want to transport you to somewhere the culture’s clever

Confess my truth in swooping, sloping, cursive letters

Let the only flashing lights

Be the tower at midnight

In my mind

Paris – Taylor Swift

When Marlena woke, the moon was bright through the window and she opened her eyes to find John propped up on his elbow, watching her.

“Hi,” she murmured sleepily.  “What time is it?”

“After midnight,” John brushed a lock of hair from where it fell over her eyes.  ”Don’t know exactly.  I’ve been watching you sleep for a while.”

She smiled at him as she reached out and ran a hand down over his upper arm.  “Why didn’t you wake me?” her eyebrow quirked suggestively, and he grinned.

“I thought about it, but I thought you could do with the rest.  You had quite a workout earlier.”  He grinned cheekily.  “And anyway, there’s plenty of time.  I just wanted to enjoy being here with you again.  I enjoy watching you sleep, I always have.”  He drew his index finger across the graceful ridge of her collarbone, raising gooseflesh along her arm.  “You’re so beautiful, Marlena.  I don’t think you know how gorgeous you really are.  Inside and out.  You fill my heart.”

“I could say the same thing to you,” she glowed as she smiled up at him.  “I honestly don’t think I have ever loved you more than I love you right now.”

“I know I haven’t,” he lifted strands of her hair and twisted it around his forefinger.  “I thought I couldn’t love you more than I did when I married you in ’86.  And then I didn’t think I could love you more than I did when you gave birth to my daughter.  And then when we found each other again a couple of years ago, I thought I couldn’t possibly ever love you more than I did that night I realized you loved me like I loved you.  But here I am, loving you so much it takes my breath away.”

“We are so lucky, aren’t we?” she asked, her voice low and as silvery as the moon.  “We keep finding our way back to each other, no matter what life throws at us.”

“No matter what DiMera throws at us,” John rubbed her silky hair between his thumb and forefingers.  

“If it wasn’t for Stefano, you never would have come to Salem,” she reminded him.  “I never would have fallen in love with that mysterious man without a past.  We would have never had the chance to fight to be together.  To make a life together”

“Shall we throw him a party to say thanks?” John asked, his voice laden with irony.  

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Marlena replied lightly but then her voice slipped into a more serious tone.  “John, honey, if you still want to look into your past, I’ll support you.  I love you and if you need to know more about your past, I will be there with you every step of the way.”

“No,” he shook his head with absolute certainty.  “I have everything I need right here, Doc.  I have you and the kids.  The past is just that, the past.  It should stay there.  If I never know anything else about ‘Father Black’ or what Stefano had me do, I’m just fine with that.  In fact, I’d prefer it that way.”

Marlena looked thoughtful and John raised an eyebrow.  “What?”

She sighed.  “I just worry that Stefano has something up his sleeve.  That we’ll decide to put this search behind us and let our guards down and he’ll hit us with something awful about your past.”

“And if he does, we’ll get through it,” John cupped her cheek with his hand.  “Doc, I’m done going looking for trouble.  If it comes looking for me, I’ll deal with it then.  I’m not going to spend my life looking over my shoulder.”

“We’ll deal with it,” she nodded, her shoulders relaxing in relief.  “You’re right, of course.”

“Besides, there’s not just my past that’s a mystery,” he reminded her.  “There’s your missing five years.  You’ve never shown any interest in discovering what happened to you while Stefano had you.  Aren’t you even the least bit curious about what happened to you during that time?”

“I don’t want to know,” she admitted.  “I told Hope that, not that long ago.  The best part of my life is here, now.  You and the children.  How would knowing what happened ten years ago make that any better?  It could only make it worse.”

“Well then,” John raised his eyebrows eloquently.  “You understand exactly how I feel.”

She said nothing for a moment, thinking of what they did know.  Of Philomena and Leopold Alamain.  Of a drowned child that had somehow ended up under Stefano’s control.  Of mercenaries and priests and mind control.  Maybe some things were better left in the past.

She nodded, reaching out and touching his face, running her fingers through his dark, hair and admiring the way his eyes flashed darkly in the shimmering candlelight.

“Oh!” she half sat up resting on her elbows as she looked around.  “Candles?”

“I replaced the ones that were completely burnt out when I woke,” John leaned over and picked the bottle of champagne out of the ice bucket.  “I put some more ice in the bucket too.  We didn’t finish the champagne earlier and it was warm.  Seemed like a waste of good champagne.”  He brandished it at her.  “Want some?”

“Mmmmmm,.”  She lay back down and stretched her arms dreamily up over her head with a smile.  The throw slipped down over the swell of her breasts as she moved, exposing a delicious expanse of rounded flesh, her nipples pert and swollen from his earlier attentions.

He turned back to her with champagne flutes in each hand and then stopped short as he took in the sight of her.  “Fuck, Doc.  Do you do that on purpose?”

“Do what?” she smirked.

“You fucking do!” He grinned.  “Two can play that game, baby!” He deliberately tipped up a glass of champagne over her luscious breasts and spilled a creamy stream of sparkling liquid over her skin, making her squeal.  Handing her a glass, he leaned down and began cleaning the moisture from her skin.  She whimpered as he broadened his tongue and lapped at the champagne and then swirled the tip of his tongue around her nipple, before flicking it hard.

“Oh… God…” she sighed.  “Don’t start something you can’t carry through on honey.”

“I can carry through,” he shifted closer to her, and her eyes widened as she felt his hardness brush up against her groin.

“Oh,” she blinked.

“I told you I’d been watching you for a while,” he murmured as he lapped at her nipple again.  “Imagining what I want to do to that beautiful body of yours.”

“Why don’t you tell me?”  Marlena took a sip of her champagne and hummed her appreciation of the way he filled his mouth with the chilled wine and then sucked her nipple into his mouth, the incongruity of the cold liquid and his warm tongue massaging her, making her head swim with pleasure.  

John imagined telling her how he had visualized Bo walking in on them together, him inside her, making her scream his name and he blushed and tensed, pulling away from her.  It had been a turn-on in the moment he had envisioned it, but now it just raised the specter of her physical relationship with Bo, and the questions that he had tortured himself with since he had discovered her sexy black lingerie in Bo’s bed.

“What is it?” she could tell immediately that something had upset him or disturbed him.  “Tell me, honey.  If something has upset you, I want to know.”

“You know what it is,” he shrugged diffidently.  A muscle twitched in his cheek as he clenched his jaw tightly.  He felt unaccountably angry all of a sudden but he knew it wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t stop thinking about it.  Couldn’t stop his imagination from torturing him.  Taking a deep breath, he willed himself to calm down.  “I want to be bigger than this, Doc.  I want to put him… to put what you did with him… in the past.  I know you love me.  I know he’s no threat, but I can’t stop thinking about you with him.  Wondering how it happened.  Where it happened.”

“Oh honey,” she stroked the back of her fingers down his face.  “I understand.  I really do.  But I don’t think the details would help.  Do you?  It happened. Like Kristen happened.”

“My imagination tortures me,” he admitted, the corners of his eyes creased with the pain he had tried so hard to keep inside.  “For instance, did you do it here, on this couch?   Or in our bed?”

“John…” She sighed, leaning over to put her glass on the table and then sitting up, slinging her thighs over his.  “I can give you all the details.  If you think that would help.  But I personally don’t think it would.  The sight of you with Kristen in the wine cellar still haunts me.  Hearing the two of you in her bedroom…. Imagining what you were doing to her…”  She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the thought of Kristen in her trashy lingerie, hanging all over John in the cellar.  “It’s unpleasant.  I know it is.  And I am so sorry that you are beleaguered with those questions and those visuals too.  But I think having the details will only make those thoughts, those questions more insidious.  Where does it stop?  How many details will you need?”  She shook her head empathetically.  “I’ve counseled a lot of people in similar situations and my opinion, for what it’s worth, is that knowing too many details will only prolong your pain.”  She reached out and laid her hands over his.  “I am yours.  Bo was an unhealthy coping mechanism.  A means to an end.  You are my end.  You are my past, my present, and my future.”

“I know,” John sighed.  “I will get over it.  And you’re right, I don’t want to know the details.  It’s hard enough dealing with just my imagination.  Details would probably tip me over the edge.”

“The way you make me feel,” she said softly, “he could never compare.  I wanted you, even when I was with him.”

“Tell me how it happened,” John suddenly said.  He respected her professional opinion, he really did.  But this was one thing he needed to know.  To understand how she had come to sleep with her former brother-in-law.  “You said it was mutual.”

“It was,” she nodded.  “You really want to know?”

“I really want to know,” he nodded in return.  He wasn’t entirely sure that he did, but he wasn’t sure that he didn’t either.  

Marlena sighed.  “Okay.  If you’re sure.”  

“I’m sure.”  He was anything but, but it was like a compulsion.  He had to know, even if it wasn’t good for him.

“He came over to tell me you had come to the boat to invite Hope to go to Europe with you,” she recalled how Bo had landed on her doorstep, his eyes red, and his face revealing his devastation.  “He was upset so I asked him to stay for a while.  We had some wine and we got to talking.  About our past.  About you and Hope.  At some point,” she pulled the throw up over her breasts, feeling suddenly vulnerable, “I… don’t know. I’d had too much to drink and I guess I fell.  He caught me.  The way he looked at me… I could feel his heart pounding….  It was obvious what he was thinking.”

“He always wanted you,” John growled.  “I knew it.  He always had the hots for you.  I knew that, even when we thought I was Roman.”

“Yes,” she admitted.  She had always known too, on some level.  But his crush had been harmless and she had put it to the back of her mind as she had known it would never lead anywhere.  He respected her and he respected his brother too much to do anything stupid.  “He told me he had, that night.  I’d had too much to drink, I was feeling hurt and angry and…”

“Abandoned.” John finished for her.

Marlena nodded sadly.  “You… I didn’t realize it wasn’t you.  But you’d barely looked at me for months.  I felt… unloved.  Unattractive.”

“And he made you feel wanted,” John finished for her.

“Yes, he made me feel desired.” She nodded her head, swallowing heavily, her throat tight.  “And that was something I needed.  I needed the distraction from my misery.  I needed to feel… ” she sighed.  “I’m not a young woman anymore, John.  I look in the mirror and I see lines that weren’t there before.  To know someone found me attractive, was… flattering.  Intoxicating.”

“Oh, baby,” John shook his head.  He found the idea that she would be insecure about her attractiveness both heartbreaking and also incredibly endearing.  “Please let me reassure you, you are more than attractive.  You are an absolute goddess.”  He reached out and touched her cheek with featherlight fingers.  “I’m just so sorry I made you feel like that.  I promise, never again.  I’ll make sure you always feel beautiful and wanted.”  

Marlena blushed and smiled shyly before she looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap, her diamond engagement ring twinkling with fire.  “Were you attracted to him?” John asked her.  “Before that night, I mean.”

“No,” she shook her head with certainty.  “I mean, don’t get me wrong.  I’ve always known that he’s a good-looking man.  Of course I did.  But he was Roman’s kid brother.  I couldn’t think of him that way.”

John nodded but said nothing.  He didn’t need to belabor the point, she had said it, not him.

“But when I realized that he was…” she blushed, folding her arms in front of her, her shaking hands gripping the throw tight across her body.  “…That he wanted me, I got curious.  And then I thought, to hell with everything and everyone.  I was feeling so lonely and suddenly I was less lonely.  And I was distracted from my loneliness.  And my heartache”

John nodded.  He could see how it had happened.  Marlena had had her head turned.  He couldn’t blame her.  His scattered memories confirmed her narrative; that he had been cold and dismissive of her.  He had left her to cope with Sami’s arrest and court case alone while he entertained ‘Hope’ and Greta.  And then he had walked away.  He hadn’t fought for her, instead, he had gone and taken Hope from under Bo’s nose and left the country.  

If everything had been right with them, he knew Marlena would have intrinsically intuited that it wasn’t him that had ignored her and walked out on her.  But everything hadn’t been right with them.  He had been hurt and fearful, and she had been distrustful of his love for her.  She had been wrong to feel that way, but she hadn’t been party to all his thoughts and feelings, so he couldn’t truly be angry at her.

And he couldn’t really blame Bo either.  To have Marlena there in his arms, lonely, tearful, and slightly drunk… looking up at him with those luminous golden eyes… no man in his right mind would be able to resist her, especially when he’d spent most of his adult life fancying her.

“Are we okay?” Marlena asked, her voice quivering.  This felt like dangerous ground, but while it bothered John it was going to keep coming between them.  She knew honesty was the best policy, within reason.  He knew her too well; he knew when she was lying or holding back.  So, if he needed to know more, she would tell him what she could, without adding to his emotional burden.

John looked up at her slowly.  “We’re okay,” he nodded, “if you answer me one more question.”

“If I can, I will,” she reached out for her glass and then took a fortifying mouthful of her champagne.  John noticed the shake of her hand as she lowered it back to her lap.

“Don’t be nervous baby,” he said, more gently now, as he reached out and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, stroking the sensitive spot below her ear with his thumb.  “We are okay.  I forgave you a long time ago.  I might even forgive Bo in time.  I just… I guess I wanted to know how it happened.  My imagination has been working overtime.  But I get it now.  I really do.”

Marlena exhaled her relief and nodded.  “I just don’t want to make things worse for you,” she whispered.  “I tried to tell myself while it was all happening that I was justified, that I wasn’t doing anything wrong.  But deep down, I knew it was wrong.  Yet the more Caroline and Kim pushed us to end it, the more I pushed back.   I was so lost.  I thought he was keeping me afloat, but he was part of the bigger problem.  I was sinking without you.  I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t come back.”  Her eyes filled with tears at the thought of a life without him.  That she might have never had this again because of her own insecurity and stupidity.

“Shhhh. I did come back,” he tucked her hair behind her ear.  “And you’re seeing Laura and fixing yourself.  I’m seeing Dr. White.  And you and I, we’re better than we’ve been for a long time.  So you can stop beating yourself up about Bo, okay?  You did what you had to, in order to survive.  I know that.  Like I did what I had to when you died.  Sometimes we make bad choices, but they are the only choices available to us at the time, and we grab onto them with both hands to stop ourselves from drowning.”  

“I love you so much,” she leaned into his hand which was now cupping the side of her face.  “Thank you for understanding.  Thank you for being so forgiving.”

“I love you,” he told her.  “I’d forgive you just about anything you asked, Doc.  That’s what love is, isn’t it?”

“It is.”  She nodded as she took a deep breath.  “Okay, you had another question?”

“Yeah,” he nodded.  “I don’t exactly know how to ask this…”

“Just say it,” she suggested softly.  “If I can answer it, I will.”

“Are you…” he looked into her eyes as he smoothed his thumb across her cheek.  “Okay…”  He took a breath, his heart pounding.  “If I tied you up… while we were having sex… would it turn you on?”

Marlena stiffened.  She hadn’t expected that, at all.  She’d thought he was going to ask her something more about Bo.  Maybe insist on knowing the details of where, if not when.  So this line of questioning was completely out of the blue.

“Why do you ask that?” she whispered unsure about what direction this was going to take.

“You wanted to know if there’s anything I hadn’t told you about my…. turn-ons.  I want to know if there’s anything you haven’t told me.”  He exhaled as he saw the uncertainty in her eyes.  He had to come clean because she obviously suspected this hadn’t come from nowhere.  And they had promised they would be honest.  “Okay, cards on the table.  I saw the handcuffs on Bo’s boat.”  She flinched and he held up his hands.  “I’m not trying to start anything.  Honestly.  It’s a genuine question.”  He paused, trying to think of the right way to say what it was he wanted to say to her.  “When I first saw them, I admit, it made me want to kill Bo.  I thought…” he shook his head.  “I won’t tell you what I thought.  But later, when I realized everything was consensual between the two of you…” he took a mouthful of his champagne, an image of Marlena with her wrists bound beneath him flashing before his eyes.  “I can’t stop thinking about it, Marlena.  The thought of tying your wrists above your head.  Restraining you so that I am completely in control of what happens between us.  It’s so….” He shook his head, and his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper.  “It’s so fucking hot, I can barely stand it.”

“Yes,” her voice was low and thick.  She couldn’t deny it.  Just him saying it out loud, painting that picture for her was enough to elicit a throbbing and a gush of wetness between her thighs.  “Yes, it would turn me on.  Very much.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he took her hand and laced his fingers between hers as he took another sip of his champagne and waited for her answer.

“I did once.  When we were married,” she looked down at where their hands were linked, his thumb brushing against hers.  “I asked you to tie my wrists together and you looked horrified.  I was confused because I thought you were Roman, and Roman and I had….” She trailed off, they didn’t need to go there.  “But I reasoned afterward that whatever happened to you when Stefano had you had traumatized you, and that you associated restraint with the terrible things that he did to you.  And then when I knew you weren’t Roman… after what happened in Maison Blanche, I couldn’t bear the thought of upsetting you or traumatizing you anymore.  I figured our sex life was already good enough.  If you wanted to add more spice to it, I would leave it to you to raise it.  But you never did.”

“I don’t remember,” John said quietly.  “When we were married, I mean.  I’m sorry I wasn’t… receptive.  I’m sorry if I made you feel… any shame.”

“I didn’t,” she squeezed his hand and looked back up at him.  “I just figured it was off the table.  It was fine.  It is fine.”

“Okay, well consider it back on the table,” his mouth quirked into a tempting smile.  “I can’t say I want to be tied up, you’re right about how Maison Blanche affected me.  And before.  I’m dealing with that with the help of Dr. White.  But wrapping silken cords around your wrists and tying you to the bed?  That’s kinda already a fantasy of mine.”

“Oh?” She raised her eyebrows and then her lips curled into a smile.  “Oh, it is, is it?”

“It is,” he nodded, biting his lip to stop from grinning quite so broadly.

“Tell me another,” she deliberately let the throw fall so that her breasts were naked again, dragging John’s eyes downward and making him groan.  Her voice lowered to a sexy whisper as she wriggled her thighs against his.  “Tell me what turns you on.  What you’d like to do to me.”

“Uhhhhhh, he emptied his glass into his mouth and dropped it on the sofa before leaning forward and taking her nipple in his mouth and swirling the cool liquid around it.   Marlena gasped as he unlaced his hand and used his fingers on her other breast, tweaking and pinching her nipple so that it hardened to a rosy peak.  Winding her fingers in his hair, she held him to her and rolled her head back, reveling in the way he teased and pleasured her.

Using his teeth to pull at her nipple, he drew back, releasing her puckered flesh as she yelped slightly.  He continued to play with her other nipple as he looked up at her.  “I fantasize about these all the time,” he confessed.  “Your tits are fucking amazing.  I want to touch them, suck them….”

“Do you want to fuck them?” she asked with a dirty smile.  “With your cock, I mean.”  She pushed her breasts together with her hands and John moaned, feeling his thickening shaft spring into action, hardening and twitching.

“Fuck, Doc!” he pulled the throw over the evidence of his reaction to her words.  “Jesus, what are you trying to do to me?”

“Nothing?” she shook her head, all innocence again, and then smiled at him.  “Tell me more.”

“That’s not enough?”  He already badly wanted to fuck her.  The idea of discussing more of his dirty fantasies was both excruciating and as horny as fuck.  

“Surprise me,” she said, her voice thick and creamy.  “You said the Devil gave you fantasies about me.  Tell me.  Tell me something really dirty.  Something you think would really shock me.”

“Doc…” he shook his head, a flush of embarrassment rising up his cheeks.  “I can’t. You’d never look at me the same.”

“Darling, I think I would surprise you.”  She lifted his hand to her mouth and enveloped his thumb with her mouth, sucking it in and swirling her tongue around it.  “There isn’t a lot I wouldn’t try with you.  At least once.”

John said nothing but his breathing was suddenly labored, his chest tight.  Fuck, this woman really would send him over the edge.  If he’d thought her sexy before, it was nothing compared to what he thought now.  He swallowed, his throat dry, his cock throbbing hard beneath the throw.

“What wouldn’t you try?” he asked, hoarsely.  “For the record.”

“Hmmmm,” she looked thoughtful.  “That’s a good question.”  She paused for a long moment, thinking.  “I don’t think I would want to share you,” she said finally.  “With another woman, I mean.  The thought of watching someone else touch you…. I don’t think I would be into that.”

“What if she was touching you?” John asked impulsively.  “What if I wanted to watch another woman make you come?”

“Oh,” Marlena’s core clenched at the thought of John watching her with another woman.  Another woman’s lips on hers, another woman’s head between her legs, eating her pussy.  John pulling on his dick as he watched them.  Her cheeks flushed with desire and embarrassment.    “Oh… uh… I…”

“You did ask, Doc,” he raised his eyebrows, finding her sudden shyness incredibly cute and sexy..  

“I did.”  She had never considered that possibility.  It wasn’t that she hadn’t considered having sex with a woman at all.  In fact, the truth was, she and Tamara had not been just friends for the whole time they were in college.  For a short time, they had explored their sexuality and each other, before deciding that they were both definitely more straight than anything else.  But the idea of bringing another woman into their bed for her pleasure and John’s visual enjoyment had never occurred to her.  “I’m…. not averse to the idea,” she finally said, making John’s eyebrows almost shoot off his forehead in surprise.

“Oh Doc!” he leaned forward and licked the corner of her lips before kissing her.  “Pretty lady, you are full of surprises.”

“Don’t ever feel like you need to hold back on my account,” she told him with a seductive smile.  “I will tell you if I don’t like something or if I don’t want to try something.  But like I said, I am quite open-minded, and I will try pretty much anything as long as it doesn’t hurt or embarrass anyone.  Either us or anyone else.  And by that, I mean fundamentally cause hurt,” she reached out and tweaked one of his nipples, making him yelp with surprise.  “But a little bit of pain can also be…. pleasurable.  Don’t you think?”

“Ohhhhh, baby,” John’s black pupils widened to fill his narrowed eyes.  “Are you serious?”

“Very,” she licked her upper lip with a pointed pink tongue and John just about died.  “So,” she said, twirling her hair around her finger.  “Tell me about that dirty fantasy that makes you so hot you want to fuck me the moment you see me.”

John swallowed.  “I don’t need a fantasy to want to fuck you, baby.  But if you really want to know…”  

She nodded and emptied her glass into her pretty mouth before she threw it down onto the sofa next to him and then climbed astride his lap.  “I really want to know,” she fluttered her tongue along his lower lip, and he groaned, wrapping his arms around her and crushing her to him as he kissed her deeply, his tongue plundering her mouth as his dirty, devil-fueled dreams filled his head.

“I fantasize,” he said as he pulled back from her.  “About fucking you in public.  Where people can see us.  I dream about you sucking me off in the elevator of the Penthouse Grille.  I imagine fingering you under the table at the pub and making you come while people are all around us.”  He bucked against her, his cock throbbing under the throw that separated them.  “Fuck Doc.  I find it such a turn-on.  The idea that people might see us.  See what I do to you, how I make you come.  You’re so fucking sexy, you’re all mine, but I want to share you with the world.  I want everyone to know how incredible you are.  How incredible we are together.”

“Ahhhhh,” she smiled at the thought.  It didn’t really surprise her, although she suspected his fantasies might be a little more graphic than he was letting on.  But they would get to that in good time.  “Is it the idea of knowing people are watching us, or the thought that someone might be, or someone might catch us that turns you on the most?” she rolled her hips against him, her arms curling around his neck and her hard nipples brushing against his chest.  

“Oh God, Marlena!” John closed his eyes and dug his fingers into her hips again.  “All of it.  All of it.”  He pressed his face to her neck.  “I want you, I need you.  Any way I can get you.  I’m fucking obsessed with you.  And this, this talk, just the mere idea of it, fucking makes me crazy with lust.  I fucking love you so much.  And I need you.  Right now.”  He dipped his head and took her breast in his mouth, sucking desperately hard on her nipple.  

“Oh,” she rolled her body against him again, arching her back, pushing her breast further into his mouth, rubbing her core against the chenille throw which covered the bulge of his shaft.  “Ohhhh, John.  Baby, I need you too.  But not here.”

“Huh?” his reply was muffled for a moment, but her breast pulled from his mouth as she leaned back to pull his shirt off the back of the couch.  She pulled it over her shoulders and slipped her arms into the sleeves.  “Oh Jesus, sweetheart.  You know what it does to me when you wear my shirt.”  He grabbed the edges and pulled her back to him, kissing her fiercely.  

“Yes, I do know,” she smiled wickedly as she climbed off his lap.  “Here.”  She held out her hand and

John took it with a quizzical look.  “Follow me,” was all she said.

 Wrapping the throw around his waist, he followed her, watching the way her curvy ass swayed from side to side under the rounded hem of his shirt.  Shit, she really would be the death of him.  But if she was, he would die supremely happy, that was for sure.

When she reached the French doors that led onto the terrace, she opened them and stepped into the night air.

“Doc?” John wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t still asleep and this whole conversation had been a dirty wishful fantasy his head had dreamed up.  But the touch of her hand as she pulled him into the cool evening told him it was only too real.  She turned around, the shirt hanging open, her nipples pebbled as the temperature of the air around them dropped.  Backing up against the terrace railing, she slipped the collar of the shirt up over her shoulders so that her breasts were fully exposed and the dark triangle of hair between her legs glistened in the moonlight.

Holding his eyes, she lifted her hand and swiped her tongue across the pads of her fingers.  Then she lowered it between her legs and began to rub her fingers down her warm, wet slit.  “You gonna join me, Sailor?” she offered the invitation in a voice that was so throaty and sexy, it made John shiver.

“Are you sure?” he asked darkly.  “Because if you are, I am going to fuck you so hard you’re gonna see stars baby.”

“Do you promise?” she crooked her middle finger and slipped it into her warmth.  “Oh, God.  John, I’m so ready for you.   I’m so wet… I’m aching for you to fill me up.”

John growled, dropping the throw so that his impressive length sprang free.  He felt it twitch as he took it in his hand.  He was hot and his cock ached for her sweet warmth, just like she ached for his girth.  He advanced toward her, a feral look in his eye as his gaze swept her from head to toe.  Her tousled hair glistened silver in the moonlight.  She was a million facets of perfection.  High cheekbones, swollen lips, elegant shoulders, voluptuous breasts with deliciously puckered areolas, and rock-hard nipples.  The ever so soft swell of her belly, the short cropped wiry fuzz between her thighs.  And those sinfully beautiful legs that he liked best when they were wrapped around him.  His thighs, his waist, his neck, he didn’t really care.  He just wanted her skin on his, his mouth on hers.  His fingers, his rigid length inside her.

“Turn around,” he commanded as he reached her.  She withdrew her hand from between her legs and lifted it to her mouth, licking the moisture from her fingers.  Then she turned around slowly, facing the sleeping city.  “Put your hands on the railing.”  John could barely speak, his throat was so tight.  

Marlena turned her head and looked him in the eye as she shrugged the shirt off so that fell on the floor between them.  Gracefully, she kicked it away and then placed her hands on the railing.

“Fucking hell, Doc!”  It was all John could do not to explode all over her shapely ass there and then.  He’d always thought her the sexiest woman in Salem but now he was pretty sure she was the sexiest woman on the goddamn planet, if not the universe.  

Marlena responded by pushing back with that fine behind so that his cock slid up the crease between her rounded ass cheeks.  He groaned headily as he pushed against her again and again.  Looking out over Salem, he looked across the river at the Continental Hotel dotted with lights, and he felt his balls tighten as he imagined the hotel residents that might be looking in this direction, watching as he  fucked the woman of his dreams in the warm summer night air.

“Ready baby?” he said roughly.  “This might hurt a little.”  He heard her breath hitch in her throat before she hummed her approval.  “Spread your legs, honey.”

He wrapped one hand around the smooth column of her throat and used the other to finger her wet core.  Their moans mingled in the quiet night as he plunged two fingers into her and flickered them, feeling her wet, heated tightness respond to his intrusion.

“Oh God,” she whined.  “Now.  Don’t tease me this time, John.  Please.”

“I…” he pulled out of her and closed his hand around his rigid shaft, stroking it several times, coating it with her juices before he pressed his head to her entrance.  “Guuuuhhhh,” he drew the head of his cock up and down the seam of her pussy, collecting the moisture.  Marlena pushed back against him and his dick flicked up and over her ass again.  She cried out and shivered, and the memory of another fantasy assaulted John, his stomach clenching in response as his hips rolled against her.

“Fuuuuck, baby, you gotta hold still or I’m gonna blow my load before I even get inside you.”  He tightened his grip on her throat and she whimpered as he positioned himself at her entrance again.  And then, with one forceful thrust, he was deep inside her, filling her, stretching her almost beyond what she could stand.

“Oh, oh, oh!” she cried out, her knuckles white where they gripped the cold metal railing.  “Oh God, oh fuck!”  She was so fucking tight around him it was almost painful.

“You okay baby?” he asked softly.  “Just try and relax around me.  The pain will be gone in a minute or two.  You know it will.  It will feel so good in just a few minutes.”  He bent over and gently bit her shoulder, making her cry out again.  The hand that wasn’t holding her throat found one of her breasts and began to twist her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.  He felt her roll and buck against him and her inner walls tightened even more so that for a moment her pussy felt like a vice imprisoning his cock.  And then she was relaxing and moving her hips so that she was pulling away from him and then pushing herself back against him, lodging him deeper and deeper inside of her as she pushed back.

“Fuck me,” she gasped as she rolled her hips against him.  “Fuck John, I need you deeper.”

He said nothing but slowly tightened his buttocks, pushing himself deeper as she moved back against him.  She moaned and he pulled back and then slammed into her, his hand firm around her taut throat, his other hand curling around her shoulder, holding her in place.  

“You see all those windows, all those lights?” he murmured in her ear.  “I think there are people out there watching us.  Watching me fuck you.  Watching me touch those amazing tits.  Listening to the fucking insanely hot noises you make every time I thrust into you.  Does that make you hot, baby?”

“Yes,” she gasped.  “Oh, yes!”  And it was the truth.  The idea that someone might be watching John take her on their terrace, pound into her from behind like she was a cheap whore, desperate for a good fucking, made her incredibly hot and desperately horny.  “Oh fuck John, I’m…” she couldn’t even find the breath to say it, he was pummeling into her so hard.  He filled her, hard and fast, the front of his thighs slapping against the back of hers, his cock hitting every nerve ending as he thrust into her.

“Doc,” he panted, “I’m… Jesus, I’m so close.  You can come now, baby.  Let me hear you, sweetheart.”  He dropped his hand around her front and found the little button of her clit and flicked and pinched it, sending her tumbling over the precipice into a mind-blowing orgasm.

“Ohhhhhhhhh!”  She squealed loudly and felt him give one last massive thrust into her so that his full length was fully sheathed inside her, the head of his penis hitting her cervix, sending her spiraling into incoherent bliss.  She cried out loudly, again and again, her cries creating a kind of erotic harmony with his as he came hard and sharply inside her.  As he came, her inner walls tightened, squeezing his girth snugly, eliciting string after string of sticky ejaculate which he deposited deep inside her.

“Oh, oh fuuuuck,” she thrust her hips back against him again, and then she sagged, her legs giving way.  Breathlessly, John caught her around her waist, and pulling a chair up behind him, he dropped into it, settling her on his lap.  Marlena wriggled so that she was partially sideways and then softened against him, laying her head against his shoulder and whimpering.  He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and held her to him.  They both trembled slightly with the aftershocks of their simultaneous climax and John could feel her still tightening around him in residual, receding contractions as she nuzzled her nose and mouth against his throat.

“I…uh…” he didn’t even know what to say.  He didn’t have any words.  If he’d loved her before, she had absolutely blown his mind tonight.  Instead, he just ran one thumb down her arm, marveling at the feeling of her soft skin under his hand.  

“I love you,” she whispered against his neck before she kissed him and then licked him before sucking his flesh into her mouth and fluttering her tongue against it as she pulled on it.   John groaned, feeling his semi-hard cock stir again.  At his age, it shouldn’t be possible for him to recover from such an intense orgasm so quickly.  And yet here he was, putty in the hands of this woman, this goddess who made the impossible absolutely possible every single day.

“Take me upstairs,” Marlena murmured against his ear as she felt him begin to harden inside her once more.  “Take me upstairs and make love to me all over again.”

Part Cinquante Six – On My Knees

My name is whatever you decide
And I’m just gonna call you mine
I’m insane, but I’m your baby (your baby)
Echoes (echoes) of your name inside my mind
Halo, hiding my obsession
I once was poison ivy, but now I’m your daisy

And baby, for you, I (I) would (would) fall from grace
Just (just) to (to) touch your face
If (if) you (you) walk away
I’d beg you on my knees to stay

Don’t Blame Me – Taylor Swift

John wasn’t sure what time it was when he awakened again.  It was dark in the bedroom with just a sliver of moonlight falling on the carpeted floor by the window.  For a moment, he was frustrated that he had woken from the delicious dream he’d been having.  A dream where he’d been inside Marlena, moving in and out of her sweet, warm depths.

It was a moment before he realized the sensations from his dream hadn’t ceased upon awaking.  In fact, they were becoming more intense.  Lifting his head, he looked down to see Marlena’s mouth enveloping his shaft, her elegant fingers curled around the base and her blonde hair falling across her eyes as she sucked him.

“Oh God, Doc!”  He jerked uncontrollably, pushing himself deep into her mouth.  She took him in like a champ, looking up at him through her long bangs.  “Oh fuck!”  His head dropped back to the pillow as he tried desperately to get control of his body.

Marlena slowly drew her mouth up his length, her lips smooth but firm against the ridges of his throbbing erection.  When she reached his head, she sucked it and then released her lips, running her tongue down the crease, flicking across the tip so that he shuddered.

Feeling and watching the way he jumped and twitched in her expert hand, she slid her hand up his engorged hardness and then back down, using her thumb to add extra pressure to the underside of his shaft.

John groaned as he pulled a pillow from her side of the bed and jammed it under his head so that he could watch her.

“I remember when you used to wake me like this when we were married.”  He reached down and used his middle finger to brush the hair back from her eyes.  He wanted to see those beautiful blazing hazels as she stroked and licked and sucked him.  

“Best way to start the day,” she drew her tongue up the underside of his shaft and then licked around the top of his shaft like it was a particularly delicious lollipop.  “I missed tasting you,” she murmured.  “I almost forgot how much I like having my mouth around you.”

“Not half as much as I like you having your mouth around me, I guarantee,” he pushed his pelvis up with a groan as her hand tightened around him and she enveloped him again, taking him deep in her throat.  His stomach tightened, his hips tense with the effort to hold himself largely still.  It was almost tortuous when all he wanted was to bury his fingers in her hair and push himself further into her.  But he knew if he gave her a few minutes, she would take more of him into her mouth until she met the hand fastened around the base of his throbbing erection with those amazing lips of hers.  

So he stayed still and just watched her, his abdomen tensing each time she engulfed him in that expert mouth, her tongue massaging him on the way back up.  Her fingers were tight around him, controlling his pleasure as she squeezed and released him, as she stroked her hand up and down his length.

His breathing became heavier and more labored as her speed increased and she took him deeper into her throat.  His fingers grabbed at the bed, one hand grabbing the side of the mattress, the fingers of the other twisting in the floral comforter.

“Oh, god,” he rolled his head back.  “Feels so good, baby.  So fucking good.  Ooooofff.”  Despite himself, he rolled his hips, pushing slowly into her mouth.  He lifted his head again to watch her take his length, to make sure he wasn’t forcing her to take more than she could handle.   The corner of her lips twitched as she withdrew slightly.   Her eyebrows raised, the hand around the base of his shaft pulled him upwards slightly, inviting him wordlessly to move.  He groaned loudly and dropped his hips and then rolled them up again, panting with the effort of restraining himself.   He wove his fingers in her hair, and held her lightly as he rocked his hips, burying himself deeper and deeper in her gorgeous, astonishing throat.  But just as he thought he might explode inside her beautiful, skilled mouth, he pulled on her hair so that she released him.

“Lie down,” he demanded.  

“I wanted to make you come,” she pouted, wiping her mouth gracefully with the back of her hand.  “You’ve got some catching up to do.”

“Baby, if I’ve counted correctly, you’ve had at least nine orgasms tonight already,” he chuckled.   

She’d had six or so on the sofa, another one out on the terrace and then he’d gone down on her again when they’d made it up to the bedroom.  The last orgasm before they’d fallen asleep again, exhaustion getting the better of them, had been him spooning her from behind, one of his hands caressing her breasts, the other gently rubbing her until she had arched against him, her arms reaching behind her for his head.  He had bitten her shoulder, her jaw and then kissed her deeply as she turned her head to find his mouth.  

As she had writhed against him and cried out her pleasure, he’d come again, less intensely than earlier but with intimate cries, words of love, and pledges of forever.  He had fallen asleep with her in his arms, his thigh across her hip, his nose in her hair.  He hadn’t thought he had anything more left to give.  But he hadn’t counted on her magic mouth.

“With the best will in the world, I’m never going to manage anywhere near that.  This next one is probably going to wipe me out, so I want to make it worth both our whiles, okay?”

“Okay,” she maintained the pout but added a smile.  She had really wanted to just give to him, the way he had given to her earlier. She had wanted to watch him as he came, unencumbered with her own libidinous pleasure.  But the promise of having him inside her was just too tempting.  “I guess that’s an offer I can’t refuse.”

John still had his hand in her hair, and he tugged it gently.  “Come here,” he winked at her with a come-hither smile that made her stomach tighten in anticipation.

She crawled up his body, straddling him so that her center was over his swollen shaft.  He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and pulled her to him for a fiery kiss, swallowing her lips and her tongue with his.  A series of whimpers and moans spilled from Marlena as she rubbed her slick core and the nub of her clit along the underside of his shaft.  John buried his fingers in her hair and held her mouth to his, consuming her with everything he had, his hips moving in rhythm with hers as she slid her wetness along his turgid length.  

She felt incredible.  Sweet wet, sticky, heat. The glorious friction of her warm, wet flesh on his.  Her dark honey hair falling around his face, the scent of her enveloping him completely.

“Aaaggghhhh,” he growled into her mouth as he ground his pelvis up against her.  He had to be inside her.  He needed that sweet, tight torture of her gripping him as he came deep and hard.  She was his and he needed to have her.  Now.

“Lie down,” he said, his voice rough and demanding.  “On your side.”

Marlena raised her eyebrow but said nothing.  She knew that tone and she knew better than to argue with him.  She shivered with excitement as she bit back a smile.  She was about to get smashed into oblivion and she was so ready for it.

Swinging her leg over him, she lowered herself to the bed, lying on her side, her naked body shining in the dim moonlight.  John leaned over her and turned on the bedside lamp.  He wanted to see her.  Making love in the dark wasn’t for him, he enjoyed watching her too much.  Not just the way she looked, all sinful curves, freckled skin, and tousled golden hair.  But it was her expressive face.  He loved the way she looked when the pleasure overtook her.  When her mouth rounded to an erotic O, when her eyes darkened and narrowed, glazed with desire.  When a flush rose in her cheeks as she floated closer and closer to the crescendo of her climax.  He loved all of it.  He loved all of her, and he didn’t want to miss a moment.

Pushing her top leg so that it was bent up against her breasts, he leaned over and brushed her hair back from her beautiful, delicate ear.  He straddled her lower leg and then flickered his tongue across her earlobe as he pushed his dick up against her clit.

“Oh!” she caught him around the neck with her hand and turned her head to find his lips with hers.

“Nuh-uh!” Her fingernails were digging into his back when he pulled her arm from him and pushed it up above her head.  “Arms up above your head,” he told her.  “No touching until I tell you you can.”

“John!” she whined.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked.  He couldn’t have stopped if he’d wanted to, but he wasn’t about to admit that to her.  He knew that it turned her on when he took control though.  She didn’t have to tell him, for him to know that.  She had to be in control in every other facet of her life.  This was the one place where she could safely relinquish control and know that he would take care of her and make it pleasurable for her to let go.  He’d always known this, it was jut that he hadn’t known how deep that desire to relinquish control went.  Now he knew she liked to be bound, it opened a whole cornucopia of questions and possibilities that he was eager to explore.

But not tonight.  All he had left in him tonight was to give her a small taste of his dominance with verbal commands and to bury himself so deep inside her that he would make her scream his name when she finally came.

“No,” she whimpered and shook her head.  “Don’t stop.  Please don’t stop.”

“Your arms,” he repeated.  “Above your head.  Now.”

Her breath hitched as she obeyed him, lifting her lower arm above her head to meet her left hand so that her fingers laced together, her knuckles white.

He pushed her head back to the side and brushed her hair back again.  “Good girl,” he murmured hotly against her exposed ear.  He felt her shiver beneath him, and he smiled.  “You like that?” he asked.  “You like to be praised, Marlena?”  He reached between her bent left leg and her body and cupped her breast, pinching her nipple hard so that she moaned.  “Answer me.”

“Yes,” she groaned.  “Oh, God.  Yes.”  She liked to be praised.  She liked to be punished.  She liked just about everything, as long as she was his.  As long as his hands were on her, his body filling hers.

He slid his hand down her belly and slowly pushed her leg back towards him.  Then he lifted it so that it was curled around the left side of his waist.  She was breathing heavily, expectant, waiting for his next move.  Her eyelids were heavy with desire, her lips red and wet where she had licked them with her skillful tongue.

His gaze roved her body, from her slender hands, clasped above her head, to her exposed breasts and down to her rounded buttocks, pressed against his right thigh.  And between her legs, that delicious treasure of dark hair, slippery folds and warm, taut depths that would soon take him to a place close to heaven.

Reaching down with his hands, he pressed his right thumb against her slit, watching as it slowly disappeared between her glistening folds.  He heard her cry out and looked up at her face.  Her eyes were closed, her full concentration on what his hand was doing to her.  He smiled and pushed the pad of his thumb up the groove of her pussy until he reached the sensitive little bundle of nerves at the apex.  Using the fingers of his left hand, he spread her folds and then used his thumb to massage her.

“Oh, oh, oh!” Her leg tightened around his waist as she rocked her pelvis against his thumb.  “Oh my…”  She pushed her hands against the floral headboard and arched her back, trying to intensify the pressure of his hand against her.

“Shhhh, slow down baby,” he murmured.  “I want to take this slowly.”

“Oh,” she cried out, “I can’t.  I can’t.  Oh God.”

“You gonna come baby?” He smiled and slid two fingers into her, maintaining the pressure on her clit, making small, tight circles as he feathered his fingers on the inside wall of her pussy, right where he knew it would have the maximum effect.  

“Oh, fuck!”  She opened her eyes and frantically found his gaze.  “Please, please John.  I want to…. I need to…”

“Let me hear you, sweetheart,” he crooned as he drove his fingers into her.  “You sound so beautiful when you come.  And you look like an angel.”

“Ohhhhhh Gooooddddd!”  She gripped the top edge of her pillow and turned her head into the softness, releasing her cries of pleasure so the loudness would be muffled in their puffy floral depths.

John groaned loudly as he watched her writhe beneath his fingers, her thigh in a death grip around is waist as she tried simultaneously to escape the exquisite torture he meted out on her most sensitive spots and to chase it.  She didn’t know what she wanted any more.  More of this, less of it.  She was scrambled, overwhelmed, out of her head with the delicious pleasure he just kept wringing out of her body, over and over again.

John fluttered his fingers as he pulled them out of her and then used the moisture on his hand to lubricate his shaft.  Pushing the head of his cock up against her swollen folds, he pushed it up towards the nerves still exposed by his fingers.  She cried out and convulsed as he pushed his cock over her clit again and again, and her back arched so that her breasts wobbled like mounds of incredibly delicious jelly.  

He wasn’t sure if it was yet another orgasm or a lengthening of the one he had just given her.  It didn’t really matter either way.  What mattered was that she was fucking amazing, and insanely hot, and he wanted to make this a night she would never, ever forget.

“Oh baby,” he murmured.  “I love you so much.  I just love you, you beautiful, sexy, wild woman.  Give it all to me baby.  Everything you have.  Make it loud.  You’re so fucking hot when you come.”

Marlena could barely hear his words through the haze of sensation that filled her body.  She was almost insensate, incoherent with the pleasure he was extracting from her.  “Oh, fuck!” she sobbed. “Oh God, John, John, Joooooohhhhhnnn.”  Every muscle tightened, with the intensity of the explosions inside her.  She thrust against his hardness, spasmed around the emptiness inside.  It was too much.  It was almost painful now and she needed him hard and deep within her.

“Stop,” she gasped.  “Too much.  Too…” She brought her hands down and grabbed for his thighs.  “Need to…  Need you inside.  NOW.”

John could see the wetness on her face where the tears had fallen and melted into the pillow and knew it was time to bring this night to a close.  Looking behind him, he smiled.  There was a glow on the horizon which spoke to late, or early, hour.

“Hey, look there baby, the sun is coming up.  Just like you wanted.”  

“John, please,” she begged him.  

“I love you,” he placed himself at her entrance and slowly pressed his length into her.  “I love you so much, Marlena.”

“Mmmmmphhh!” She was so far gone she barely had the space for comprehension or for stringing a sentence together.  All that filled her head was the sensation of him filling her.  His thickness penetrating her sensitive depths.  Thrusting, rubbing against the nerves which were already raw and oversensitive.  Her muscles still contracting from her previous orgasm clutched at him, pulling him deeper as she cried out in pleasure and in pain.

“Are you okay baby?” John asked softly.  He knew the sounds she made, and this was a little out of the normal range.  He didn’t want to cause her any pain, any discomfort.  He’d forgo another orgasm if it was going to hurt her.

“Mmmmm?”  She looked up at him, her eyes glazed with gratification, overwhelm and confusion.

“Is it too much?  Do you want me stop?”

“Oh,” she shook her head.  “No.  No.”  He looked worried and her expression softened.  “No, it’s okay.  It feels good.  It’s just… it’s a lot.  It’s been a lot.  It feels good though.”

“Okay, if you change your mind, you just need to say, alright?” He reached out and brushed the hair from her face.

“I know,” she gave him a dazzling smile.  “I know that.  I trust you implicitly, sweetheart.  But I am fine, I promise.  Just take it slow for a few minutes.”

“Okay,” he leaned over her and planted his hands either side of her torso, his own body pushing her leg back up towards hers as he sought out her lips with his own.  “Slow and gentle it is.”

“Just for a little while,” she murmured into his mouth.  “I just need a little recovery time.”

“Not surprised,” he whispered as he flickered his tongue across her jaw and found her ear.  “I’ve driven you pretty hard tonight.”  He ran his tongue up around the rim and then dipped the tip of it into the center of her ear.  Marlena moaned and rolled her hips in an automatic flex.  “When you fall apart in my arms, it’s the prettiest thing I have ever seen,” he told her before he sucked her earlobe between his lips and nibbled on it.  “It makes me want to do it over and over again.  I can never get enough of you.”

“I love you,” she gasped as he started to move inside her, slowly and deliberately, his hips making small circles, her leg, hooked around his waist, moving backwards and forwards with the flow of his movements.  “I love you so much.”  She turned her head and grasped his face between her hands.  “You are the only man for me.  The only man I will ever love.  The only man I have ever truly loved.”

“I love you, Doc.  And I promise you I will spend every moment of every day making sure you never doubt or forget it.”  He dipped his mouth and caught her lips with his, his tongue diving into her mouth, dueling with hers as her fingers tugged at his hair.

“You feel so good,” Marlena began to move her own pelvis in a rhythm that matched his, a familiar synchronized back and forth which allowed him to slide deeper inside her.  He was hot inside her.  Thick, the curves and ridges causing just the right amount of pressure and friction in all the right places.  He leaned down and sucked her lower lip into his mouth and bit it softly.  “Tell me.”  His voice was low and musical.  “Describe how I feel inside you.”

“Uhhhh,” she pushed her hips forward, meeting him thrust for thrust as his movements became deeper and faster.  “So good.  Oh God.   I feel so… full of you.  I can’t…” she shook her head.  She wanted to verbalize it for him, but she was almost beyond being able to consciously think.  “So… oh god, so hard.  So fucking good.  Oh, oh!”  She cried out as he picked up the pace, moving deep inside her so that all she could feel was him and the way he made her feel.  Safe, full, blissfully happy.

John was similarly being transported to a place he had rarely visited, and only ever with Marlena.  A place where all conscious thought had just been displaced by sensation.  With the feeling of her beneath him and around him.  The scent of her enveloping him and the sound of her ringing in his ears.  She was everything to him.  Absolutely everything and this, here tonight, was pure magic.  Pure perfection. It didn’t get any better than this.  The two of them, alone.  Nothing between them but their hearts, meeting, merging, reaching for the divine.

“Oh shit, I’m gonna come,” he said suddenly as it overtook him, the feeling of her, tight around him.  The feeling of her, the perfection of her, the absolute joy that he felt.  “Oh God Doc, I….” He closed his eyes but there was no stopping it.  It washed over him like a flood.  His balls tightened, his cock did the same and then there was no stopping it.  He tensed and pushed himself deep inside her and roared as he shattered, his climax eviscerating any vestige of self-restraint he had left.  He thrust himself into her hard and fast as he came, crying her name against her face.  And Marlena felt him tense and explode inside her, hitting her depths, filling her, obliterating her.  And then she was in the abyss with him, fiery white light filling her vision, her body tensing and twisting beneath his, her thighs gripping his thigh and waist as though she might snap him in half.  And their cries built to a crescendo, calling for God and each other and then finally collapsing into breathless moans and whimpers before John fell onto the bed next to her, absolutely shellshocked.

Marlena slowly unfolded herself and rolled onto her back, next to him, dazed.  They both stared at the ceiling for a long minute as they regained their breath.

“What was that?” Marlena whispered, finally.

“Think maybe I saw God,” John murmured, running his hand over his face and then looking over at Marlena.  “It was… I don’t think there are even words for what that was, Doc.”

“Exhausting,” she rolled onto her side and smiled, her lips red and swollen with kisses.  “Mind-numbing.  Existential.”

“Blissful,” he rolled onto his side to face her and pulled the covers over their aching bodies.  “Phenomenal.  Spine-shattering.”

“I love you,” she whispered.  “Although I don’t think a word as small as love can encompass the hugeness of everything I feel for you.”

“I know what you mean,” he nodded.  “Come here, baby.”  He stretched out his lower arm while leaning back to turn off the lamp.  Then he pulled her into his embrace, wrapping tired but firm arms around her neck and shoulder.  She sighed happily, insinuating her thigh between his and curling her arm around his waist as she nuzzled his neck and yawned.

And as they drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms, the sun rose on a new day in Salem.

Epilogue  – Ever and Evermore

‘Cause I fell from the pedestal
Right down the rabbit hole
Long story short, it was a bad time
Pushed from the precipice
Clung to the nearest lips
Long story short, it was the wrong guy
Now I’m all about you
I’m all about you
I’m all about you

No more keepin’ score
Now I just keep you warm (Keep you warm)
No more tug of war
Now I just know there’s more (Know there’s more)
No more keepin’ score
Now I just keep you warm (Keep you warm)
And my waves meet your shore
Ever and evermore

Long Story Short – Taylor Swift

August 2001

Hope

It’s been two years.  Two years since we returned to Salem.  A little more than two years since I found out that Bo Brady, the love of my life slept with the altogether too perfect Dr. Marlena Evans while I was in Europe.

Yes, I was with John.  And yes, Bo and Marlena had cause to be upset.  But not to turn to each other.  That was beyond the pale.

We were best of friends.  Bo and I had known Marlena since we were practically kids.  She was married to his brother, for God’s sake.

But it’s not just the indecency of it.  If it had just been a fling, if it had meant nothing then I would have been able to let it go.  At least, I think I would have.  But it meant something.  To Bo at least.  I saw the way he looked at her when we returned to Salem.  I would see it and I would hear what he didn’t say in his silences.  When I asked him how he felt about her, when he lied to me and said it was over and he felt nothing more than friendship, I would see it in his eyes.  His lies.  His truth.

He still had feelings for her.  He never came right out and said it, but he was in love with her.  I know Bo so well.  I know how he looks at a woman when he loves her and that’s how he looked at Marlena.  And oh, how he looked at John, when he thought no-one else was looking.  Like he resented him.  Like he hated him.

It broke my heart, I’ll be honest.  All of it.  Bo’s betrayal.  Marlena’s disloyalty.  John seems to have moved past it.  They seem to be happier than ever, which is like salt in the wound.  I would hear them walk into the pub, giggling and it would make me want to throw up.  I would see John tuck the hair behind her ear and rub her stomach.  And I would see the way she looked at him, doe-eyed and so in love, and I would want to punch something, or someone.

I couldn’t bear Bo even touching me.  Thinking, knowing, it was her he wanted to be touching.

I went to therapy, I ranted and cried on a couch and paid a hundred dollars a session for the privilege but none of it made me feel any better.  None of it changed Bo’s feelings.  None of it fixed us.

So, I left.  I left Salem.  Left the US.  I went back to the UK and asked Shane if I could join the ISA and help them track down Stefano.  He was understandably nervous about the prospect.  An unchipped Princess-doppelgänger, maybe stable, maybe not.  I can’t say I blame him.  But in the end his superiors decided it was worth the risk.  

But it turned out that they would only let me go out in the field with someone they felt could keep an eye on me.  Another recently recruited agent, none other than one Beauregard Aurelius Brady.  I almost quit there and then.  It was Bo I had been trying to escape.  Or so I thought.

I don’t really know what I was trying to escape.  Bo’s feelings for Marlena?  Marlena herself?  John and Marlena’s nauseating happiness and their reconstituted, blended, and ever-growing family?

Whatever it was, when Bo and I started working together, things were different.  He was still infuriating, he was still bossy, he still argued every decision I made.  He was still painfully overprotective and pigheaded.  But without Marlena hovering in the background, we started to communicate.  We started to enjoy each other’s company again.  We started to fall in love.

It’s not perfect.  It will never be perfect.  That will always be between us, the knowledge of what he did.  With her.

And Stefano is still out there.  Watching.  Waiting.  Planning.

Bo

I never thought I would end up living in London, working for the ISA.  I never thought that would be what brought Fancy-Face and me back together.

But it has.  

She was right to leave me.  She was right to leave Salem.  She was right to be angry and hurt.  She knew that I wouldn’t, couldn’t, get over Marlena while we lived in the same town.  While I had to see her practically every day.  While I had to see her with John, see her kiss him, laugh at his dumb jokes, grow large with his child.

They were so fucking happy.  That’s what stuck in my craw.  I know if I really loved her, loved her selflessly, I should have wanted her to be happy.  I was as bad as my brother in that respect.  She didn’t love me, but damned if I could watch her in another man’s arms and be happy for her.  If that makes me immature and selfish, then so be it.

But it hurt Hope.  Of course it hurt her.  That was never my intention.  It was never about revenge; it was never about hurting anyone.  It was a thing that happened.  Marlena says now that it shouldn’t have happened.  That it was wrong.  Maybe she’s right but that’s not the reason I regret it.  I regret it because she got under my skin.  She fucking got deep inside my heart and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get her out.  If I could have dug her out with my own hands, I would have, but I couldn’t.  She was buried deep in there with her golden hair and those beautiful hazel eyes and those lips.  God those lips.  And the noises that came from them….  Jesus.

I used to dream of her.  That’s what tipped Hope over the edge in the end.  Muttering Marlena’s name in my sleep, dreaming of making love to her, waking with a painful hard-on that Hope couldn’t fail to miss.

She booked a plane ticket the next morning.  Wouldn’t tell me where to, just said as long as things stayed like this, we were never going to work.

It took me a couple of weeks to come to the conclusion that she was right.  I was never going to put her out of my head, out of my heart, while I saw her practically every day.  While I heard her laugh, smelled her perfume.

She wasn’t mine, but I still wanted her, and I was drowning in jealousy and bitterness.

So, I left Salem too.  Went back to London.  Told Shane to sign me up for the ISA.  They snapped me up.  But it was conditional.  They wanted me to chaperone a new agent out in the field.  And it was Hope.  Because of course it was.

Part of me thinks Shane did it on purpose.  Probably on the urging of Kimberley.  Because Kimmy knew.  Force us together in a situation where we weren’t focused on us, and what went wrong with us, and the old magic would return.

And it did.

It’s still hard, I won’t lie.  I still think of her from time to time.  I wonder how she is, if she’s happy.  But I don’t really have to wonder.  I know she’s happy.  She and John were meant to be together.  That was clear.  

Those days after they reunited, really properly reunited, she was fucking glowing.  I mean, it was obvious what they’d been up to.  They didn’t even try to hide it.  Small bruises everywhere, the faux embarrassment, the hanging off each other.  The fucking laughter and kissing and red cheeks and shining eyes.  You’d have to be an idiot not to know exactly what they’d been doing all weekend that weekend.

Ma and Pa were thrilled, of course.  Carrie, Kim and Laura were their cheerleaders.  Eric was cautiously happy.  Sami was Sami, enough said.  And I sat in the corner, glowering, while Hope glared at me and then stormed out.

We weren’t invited to the wedding.  I didn’t really expect we would be, but I won’t lie, it kinda hurt.  It made me realize just how much we’d sacrificed for that couple of months together.  How much I’d sacrificed.  My friendship with her.  My brotherly relationship with John.  My relationship with Hope.  My goddamn peace of mind.

She had it all.  Her love, her happiness, her family.  I envied her.  I fucking envied John.

I still do, if I’m honest.  But that resentment, that obsession has dulled to a gentle ache now.  Now Hope and I have found a new footing, a new way, in a new place.

I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to go back to Salem for good.  Maybe in time.  Or maybe not.  

It’s working for now, at least.  And that’s something.

John

Two years.  Christ, it’s been two years since Marlena and I found our way back together.  Ha!  That makes it sound like it was by chance.  Like we bumped into each other and fell into each other’s arms.

Hardly.

It was a lot of work.  It took a lot of faith and a lot of trust.  A hell of a lot of honesty.  And a hell of a lot of love.

If we hadn’t loved each other so much, I don’t think we would have made it through.  Certainly not through those initial first days.  When we unfolded our feelings and our fears in front of each other.  When we talked and we listened, and we tried to make things right.

It wasn’t all over then, of course.  It’s not like we talked and then made love, and everything was good for ever and a day.  Of course it wasn’t.  That’s not real life.  Stuff came up.  My jealousy reared its ugly head more than once or twice.  Hers too.  But we got through it because we both know nothing could be better than what we’ve got between us.

It was hardest when Bo and Hope were still around.  She was sympathetic to their feelings and wanted to hold back, so as not to upset them.  Me?  I wanted to rub it in their faces.  Hope (as Gina) had tried to break us up.  Bo (as Bo) had seduced my vulnerable wife.  Okay, okay, maybe it was less of a seduction and more of a mutual falling into bed together.  And maybe they were both vulnerable.  But my sympathy for Bo Brady wasn’t exactly overflowing, especially when I saw him looking at Marlena like he wanted to eat her up.

Every time he and I ran into each other, we were at odds.  Our old friendship, our camaraderie in tatters.  Because we both loved the same woman.  I knew he still loved her.  I could see it in his eyes when he looked at her.  Hope knew it too and she was bitter and jealous.  But my sympathy was slim to non-existent.  I hadn’t wanted her to investigate her past and I am sure that Stefano had his goons activate my chip as a direct reaction to her search.  I could have lost myself forever.  I could have lost Marlena and my children.  If the chip hadn’t worked its way loose, I shudder to think what might have happened.  

So I was pretty cold and non-communicative with both of them.  If I’m honest, I was fucking thrilled when they split Salem.  First Hope and then Bo.  Marlena and I were good, we’ve only strengthened and deepened our relationship in the past two years.  But honestly, it’s been easier for us without them here.  We don’t have to worry every time we walk into the pub.  Marlena can take the children to see Alice Horton without having to check first if Hope is there.

I hear about them from time to time when I talk to Shane.  Sounds like they are doing okay, and I am happy for them, I really am.  I know… yes, I still care about Bo.  He was my brother for a lot of years.  They were family, even when they weren’t blood, they were still close.   When all this happened… I couldn’t stop caring about them.  I love them both, I just don’t want to be around them.  Not while he still moons over my wife.  Not while I still resent the fuck out of Hope for almost destroying us.  

One day, maybe, I’ll get over it.  One day they’ll walk in the door, and I will see my brother and his wife, and I will smile and clap him on the back and ask them how they are and really want to know the answer. 

I know I will, because I eventually stopped wondering about Marlena and Bo.  Just like she said I would.  I stopped torturing myself with the questions about what they did and just made sure that whatever it was that he’d done with her, I did it a hell of a lot better.

And I am pretty sure that I succeeded.  For a while there, our love life was pretty spicy, kinda wild at times.  We tried things I had never imagined Marlena might even consider, let alone be into.  I made her come once at a table at the Penthouse Grille, my hand under her skirt, her face buried in my shoulder.  Another time, we fucked up against a support on Pier 29 while the fishing boats came in from a long day to dock.  

Our honeymoon, I tied her up, blindfolded her and made her scream so loud we got asked to keep it down by the hotel management.  Another day, I took her down to the secluded Hawaiian beach near the hotel and made love to her on the beach.  Marlena is pretty sure that was when we conceived our little surprise.  And I can’t deny, I kinda love that idea.  That our honeymoon sex was so phenomenal that we ended up with an unexpected passenger back home to Salem.

Our wedding was amazing.  We chose to keep it small, and Bo and Hope weren’t invited.  Marlena felt bad about it, but I told her I didn’t want Bo there watching her with his big sad eyes and I didn’t think Hope would want to come and I didn’t really want her there anyway.  It wouldn’t add anything to the ceremony.  It would only spoil it, in my opinion.

She agreed and we invited Mom and Pop, Abraham and Lexie, Alice, Kimmy, Laura and of course, all the kids.   Well, all the kids we had then.  It was early November and Marlena wore an ivory gown of chiffon and lace.  Her hair was pinned up with roses and she looked ethereal and like an angel.

Our honeymoon was a beautiful, quiet week in Hawaii, just us and no interruptions.  And back in Salem on Christmas Day, she made me unwrap a plastic stick which made it unequivocally clear that she was pregnant with our baby.

I thought I couldn’t be happier than I was on the day we were married, but she launched me into the stratosphere of happiness when I tore open that gift.  Of course, it signified the end to some of our more daring sexual escapades, but I figure there will be time for that when the kids are a bit older.

We got to share everything this time.  From the beginning.  I got to watch her grow round with our baby, to make love to her beautiful body, swollen with our growing child.  I got to go to doctor’s appointments with her, see sonograms and attend Lamaze classes.  And I got to be there when our child was born, this one on-time and in the hospital.

And I got to be a Daddy from the very beginning.  A daddy, alongside Marlena’s adoring, gentle, attentive mothering.  It’s so different from Belle’s early childhood.  This baby is adored by everyone, even Samantha, who finally seems to have come around.  Now Roman is not here to complicate things, she finally seems to have accepted that Marlena and I are together and bringing up our small children in a home filled with love and happiness, a home that she is now part of.

He turned one last week.  Our perfect little guy.  Chubby, noisy, always giggling and into everything.  So different from our sensitive Brady and thoughtful Isabella.  This little guy is more like Samantha.  A noisy, chaotic whirling dervish.  He certainly keeps us on our toes.  But I wouldn’t have it any other way.  And neither would Doc.

I can see it every time I look at her.  She’s finally happy.  At peace.  She is absolutely brilliant, strong and wise, but she was born to be a mother.  She is happiest curled up with her children on the sofa or snuggled up in bed with the baby, breathing in his baby scent, or watching the children and their older siblings explore and play at the park.  

She is everything to me.  She and the children are my life.  She’s not perfect and I don’t need her to be.  Her imperfections, her mistakes, her messiness makes her human and captures my heart anew every day.  I will never stop being awed by her.  I will never stop adoring her.  She makes me want to be the best man I can possibly be and to make her life as brilliant and as perfectly happy as I can possibly make it.  

She deserves that.  She deserves ease and happiness.  She deserves peace and joy.

And I think she has it now.

Marlena

I am so unbelievably happy.  If you had told me two and a half years ago that I would be this happy, this content, I would have said you were crazy.  I would have said it was impossible.

My life fell apart when Sami was in jail for Franco’s murder.  When John was suddenly more interested in his mystery past.  When he was wrapped up in a girl from the swamp and our erratic once-sister-in-law.  

I thought I was doing okay for a while, but I was in denial.  I know that now.  If I had been doing okay, I never would have looked twice at Bo when he caught me that night.  But it wasn’t just a clumsy, drunken moment, me falling against him.  In a way, it allowed me the safety to fall apart emotionally.  At least, it felt safe at that moment.

It wasn’t really safe.  It was fraught with danger, and it damaged so much.  Looking back, I know it was a mistake.  I hurt him, I hurt John.  I really hurt Hope too.  So much so, she eventually had to leave town.  It breaks my heart that we were all so close once and because I was hurt and angry and weak, I destroyed our friendship.  Our bond.

I know we all played a part in that, but I feel like I bear the brunt of the responsibility.  John and Hope can’t be blamed for what they did while under Stefano’s mind control and Bo… well Bo has always been impetuous, and he was deep in his feelings.  I knew that and still, I threw caution to the wind, and I was selfish in trying to bury my own pain the way I did.  I was irresponsible and I hurt us all.

But I can’t undo it.  I can only hope that with time, Bo’s heart is mending and that he and Hope are rebuilding their relationship.  Finding their irrepressible love once again.  And I hope that one day they can return home with lighter hearts and some forgiveness for a friend that made mistakes and who only wants to put them right somehow.

John still gets frustrated when I think like this; when I talk about it.   He is no longer angry at Bo; he feels some sympathy for him, but he also tells me this was as much Bo’s fault as mine.  I can’t and don’t agree and it leaves us at loggerheads sometimes.  But less, admittedly, as time goes on.  

I can tell he misses Bo, despite himself.

I miss him too.  I miss him.  I miss his goofy smile and his loyal but impetuous friendship.  He came to my office before the wedding, to tell me he understood why we hadn’t invited him.  I wanted to, but John put his foot down.  He didn’t want Bo or Hope there, and I couldn’t find a good enough argument to turn his viewpoint around.  And honestly, I think he was probably right.  I would have spent the day worrying about them if they had been there.  Bo understood, he said, and he probably wouldn’t have come, had he been invited.  But he knew I would be a beautiful bride and he only wanted love and happiness for me.  He held me close for a moment.  Maybe a little too long.  And then he left.  I haven’t seen him since.

As it was, it was the most perfect, intimate ceremony.  Just our children (his, mine and Carrie who we both consider ours), Shawn and Caroline, Alice Horton, Abe and Lexie, Laura, Kim and of course, John and me.  

It was early November, and we had an evening wedding.  Of all the days, there was freak storm which took out the power, so Father Jansen married us in St Luke’s by candle light.  It was perfect.  John cried.  I cried.  Laura definitely cried.  

Afterwards, we went to Tuscany for what was supposed to be a small, intimate, private meal for us and our guests.  It started off as that but one by one, friends stopped by to congratulate us and before we knew it, there was one heck of a party underway.  But after a while, we just fell into each other’s arms and danced, eyes locked, secluded in our own little world.  

It’s always been like that.  He holds my palm over his heart, I feel it beating and mine keeps time.  He smiles, his blue eyes shining at me like I am the only person in the world he wants to be with.  And I am lost.  I wrap myself in his presence, in his scent, his arms, his unique John-ness.  And indeed, he is the only person in the world I want to be with.  The only person I can see, hear, feel.

We honeymooned in Hawaii, and it was everything and more I had hoped.  We swam in warm, tropical waters, we ate amazing fresh food, we drank delicious cocktails, and we made so much love. We made love in the sun, under the moon, and we made love a little too noisily in the hotel room so that a blushing hotel manager asked if we wouldn’t mind keeping the noise down a little.

And at some point, during that perfect, blissful week, we created our unexpected little miracle.

Eoin Thomas Black.   Our little spitfire.  Eoin, is the Irish variation of John and the name means “gift from God”, which seems appropriate somehow.  And of course, Thomas, after our darling Tom Horton.  Alice was so thrilled when we told her, and she sits for the baby every chance she gets.  Not that there is any shortage of willing babysitters.

He was complete unanticipated by all of us, but he is wholly loved and adored by the whole family.  Even Samantha Gene is completely in love with the little guy.  Now that Roman is gone, she and Eric both seem to have finally accepted that John is a permanent fixture in my life, and they have started to rebuild their relationship with him.  Eric has even started to randomly call him Dad which I know makes John’s heart full.

Belle and Brady absolutely adore Eoin.  Belle is such an engaged, caring big sister and Brady looks out for both of them, bossing them around like only he can.  

And John?  Well, John has always been the best, best Daddy.  I catch him holding Eoin and talking to him, telling him how lucky he is to be born into a family where there is so much love.  How lucky he is to have a mother like me.  

But I think he is so blessed to have John for a father.  There could be no better parent than my husband.  He is caring, empathetic and understanding.  He knows that children are little people in their own right, and he is encouraging all of our little ones to learn who they are without the heavy expectations of others on them.  They know they are loved and respected and trusted.  He gives them autonomy and boundaries, and he makes them laugh.  Gosh, he makes them laugh.  I am so lucky and proud to be his wife, and to be the mother of his children.  

He even brings his expansive and loving parenting to Sami and Eric now.  It brings me such joy.  Sometimes Sami will be watching him with Eoin or Belle, and she will have a far away look in her eye.  And then he will see her, and he’ll call her over and pull her into a hug and tell her how much he loves her and how proud of her he is.

And that’s all Samantha ever needed.   To feel part of a whole family.  To feel loved and accepted for who she was.  All her glorious strengths and her glaring flaws.  She’s not perfect, the family is not perfect, and their relationship still needs work. Ours still needs work.  But it’s a million miles from where it was two years ago.  And I couldn’t be happier about that.

It was the worst of times.  I almost lost John.  I almost lost myself.  When I think about what might have happened… if John hadn’t had that chip removed… if he had been too hurt and angry to fight for us… if he hadn’t found me at that bar that night.  If he hadn’t been so patient.  If he hadn’t loved me the way he loves me….

But I don’t regret any of it.  Well maybe I regret hurting Bo.  And Hope.  But the things that happened made us face the truth of the past.  Of our feelings, the good, the bad and the very ugly.  The fear of losing each other made us vulnerable, and the vulnerability made us honest and that was a good thing.  That was a wonderful thing.  

That was what saved us.

That was what made us stronger and more in love than ever.

Truth, honestly and love.  They are the cornerstones of who we are.  What we are together.

Ever and evermore.

The End