"Stay with me tonight, Brenda."

His sweet, soft, urgently whispered words rang in her head as Brenda gazed down into eyes of breathtaking emerald blue, knowing what she wanted. Knowing what he had asked of her and what he wanted. She closed her eyes and tried with all of her might to find the will to resist giving into this delectable temptation here before her; to resist surrendering to this magnetic attraction between them; to resist surrendering to him, surrendering to her own heart.

She shut her eyes. Why was her willpower such a joke when it came to this man? How could the desires of her heart overwhelm her like this? How could they constantly win out over things like caution and pride and dignity and anger and fear?

"Brenda?" She heard his beautiful voice penetrating her thoughts.

She opened her eyes and wished she hadn't. Beneath her was everything she ever wanted, everything her heart ached for, everything her soul needed for completion. And the desire to take it was drowning out all of the warning bells in her head into irrelevant silence.

He cupped her face with gentle urgency, sensing an advantage, sensing her heart was in control now, and not her head, not her doubts, not her lingering accusations about the past - just her heart; just her truest feelings… for him.

"Don't go," he whispered in a voice that tore at her heart. And then he was pulling her face down to him and brushing his mouth gently over hers. "Whether you believe me or not, I am in love with you," he said. "Passionately in love with you. I always have been. And I want nothing more than I want to be with you right now. And ever after," he whispered, kissing her again in that same tender, yet burning, way that made her heart turn to mush and her defenses crumble like the walls of Jericho.

Tumbling dowwwwnnnn….

Her brain scrambled to put together some reasons not to do this. Reasons to keep the walls of Jericho in tact. Reasons. Like, hello - protection?

But truly, weren't those walls of Jericho she had erected in an attempt to keep him out of her heart eternally, already extremely wobbly? Hadn't they been from the first time she had been alone with him in Alexis's conference room and he had touched her?

"Jax, I'm not …"

"Stay with me," he murmured insistently against her mouth, not about to let her head outvote her heart tonight.

She gazed down into his eyes, trying to summon up the will to get up and walk out of his arms, walk out of his room. She realized, too late, that if she really wanted to leave him, she should never have looked into his eyes - those beautiful eyes. They spoke right to her heart at that moment.

Every time our eyes meet
This feeling inside me
Is almost more than I can take

He kissed her yet again. "Stay with me," he whispered, his fingers stroking lightly over her face.

And baby, when you touch me
I can feel how much you love me
And it just blows me away

She really should at least be trying to resist this thing! she thought a little wildly.

But in the end… she couldn't possibly.

"You don't see me going anywhere, do you?" she whispered back to him.

His heart jumped a bit. Brenda shivered because she felt it, too, in her own heart. That got a sexy little smile to curve Jax's lips. His eyes penetrated into her soul, "Don't do this unless you love me," he said softly, his eyes never leaving hers.

She wasn't about to confess to that, she thought. "I want to be with you right now - I want this moment," she said instead, her voice so soft and breathy that it made his blood turn to liquid fire.

He stared into her eyes for another few seconds, and then she lowered her mouth and placed sweet kisses along his chest, moving up to his mouth where their lips melted together in a slow, smoldering kiss. Brenda had almost forgotten exactly how much she adored his kisses, but the memory came flooding back to her with every skilled, sexy brush of his lips against hers, every slow, luscious tug of his teeth against her bottom lip, every sensuous invasion of his tongue to tease and stroke her own.

She knew there was no going back now. She knew there was no turning away from anything that felt this incredible.

I've never been this close to anyone, or anything
I can hear your thoughts; I can see your dreams

That familiar, phenomenal magic of theirs stirred to pulsating life immediately, like burning embers bursting into flame and illuminating the night with brilliants sparks. They kissed endlessly. Each time the kisses grew longer, deeper, more passionate, more urgent. Until they became positively frantic.

I don't know how you do what you do
I'm so in love with you
And it just keeps getting better

Brenda moaned softly into his mouth, pressing her body to his, slowly sliding her breasts - clearly visible beneath the wet peach satin of her pajama top - against the smooth hardness of his bare chest. Moaning some more at the sweet friction and the tingling pleasure it sent straight down to her belly.

Never taking his hungry lips from hers, Jax quickly began to undo the buttons of her top, peeling the wet clothing off of her. He groaned in pleasure when Brenda immediately leaned forward, seeking the heat of his body, her full, soft breasts crushing softly against him. It was mind-boggling to be with him like this again. To touch him like this. Tease him like this. Watch his passion intensify with each kiss, each touch, each slight change in the shade of aquamarine of his eyes. Her body, cool and wet from her having been caught in the rainstorm on the balcony, felt heavenly against the heat of his.

I want to spend the rest of my life
With you by my side
Forever and ever

"Oh, baby, this feels so right," Jax murmured, kissing her frantically and lifting her towards the bed, not bothering to stop to turn on any lights in the bedroom as he made his way in the familiar layout of the darkened suite. He did not want this to be some turbulent, thrilling tumble on the couch that she could find a way to dismiss as "curiosity" later on, as she had their passionate kiss up against the Quartermaine front door; no, he wanted this to be a lengthy session of intensely passionate lovemaking in his bed. Something she could never dismiss as frivolous or without profound meaning to them and to their future together. "It feels so right," he repeated, "So right and so perfect," he said.

Brenda agreed with him wholeheartedly on the rightness and the perfection of how this felt. She was in absolute paradise here. But she wasn't about to say any such thing out loud. Besides her lips were far too occupied to attempt speaking right now, she rationalized, as her tongue slid erotically over Jax's, swirling and stroking and tangling sensuously with his in an erotic, fiery kiss that had their hearts crashing within their bodies. Jax kissed her as if he would die if he didn't, and Brenda returned his kisses with equal fervor as if his lips, too, were her very lifeline.

Oh, how she wanted him. She wanted him so much.

Apparently he was in a similar state.

"I want you so much I can't even think straight," Jax said in a frenzied whisper as he gently lay her on the bed and wasted no time in peeling off the wet shorts of her pajamas and then sliding off her black satin panties slowly down her shapely tanned legs. As she lay there naked in his bed waiting for him, her body glistening from the rain, her breasts rising and falling quickly with her breathless panting, Jax nearly fell to his knees.

No woman should be so beautiful. No woman should be so bloody desirable as to blot out every other thing going on in the world - bombs could be dropping from the sky and he doubted he'd notice. No woman should captivate a man so completely like this.

But Brenda did that to him.

She always had.

And to be honest, making love to her always did this to him; reduced him to this rabid, panting, worshipping male, who would do anything she asked of him. He liked to think he reduced her to a similar state, however.

They finally were granted a brief moment to catch their racing breath and slow their racing hearts when Jax went to quickly light a couple of candles. He loved making love to her by candlelight. And by firelight, by moonlight, by sunlight, by lantern - hell, by flashlight, he thought, with a grin.

He tossed his shirt off and reached for the buckle of his belt, his eyes glued to her, mesmerized by her beauty in the soft, golden glow of the candlelight.

And Brenda was fully mesmerized by him as well. Watching in rapt fascination from beneath the long curls of her dark eyelashes as he undid his belt, the top button of his jeans, and then went for the zipper.

"I want you, too," she said softly, holding out her arms to him, crazily anxious to be in his arms again, lest this all be one big fantasy from which she was about to awaken. And admitting how very much she wanted this was as far as she was willing to go, she decided. It wasn't like she was going to trip up and confess her love or anything. No way.

Jax stripped out of his remaining clothing with lightning speed, half-scared to death that this was all some beautiful dream, and desperate to touch her again so he could feel that she was here, feel that this was real.

Every little thing that you do
Baby, I'm amazed by you

He came down on top of her slowly. The contact of his body against hers in the bed nearly shattered the control Jax was doing everything in his power to hold onto. It was the most wonderful feeling he'd ever experienced to be with her like this again. To love her so much, to want her so much, to not have to deny himself any longer, to be able to have her. And to know she felt everything he was feeling, too - because he knew she did.

Her hands reached out to touch him. Her fingers running covetously over his body, savoring the familiar, wonderful, exciting feel of him. The warm smoothness of his skin, the hard contours of his muscles.

She flattened her palms against his chest and moved her hands down the rippling golden abdoninals, down to his hips, sighing with pleasure as he shuddered above her.

They shared a mutual moan of ecstasy at the closeness of their bodies like this once again after such a long time apart. "My beautiful Brenda," Jax whispered, raining kisses along her temple, " - I swear to you my heart beats out a symphony made sweeter because it sings your name."

She had been waiting in gleeful anticipation for this - knowing, from the completely glorious experience of having made love with Jax on many occasions in the past, that eventually the most poetic words would begin to flow from his lips and would make her tingle all over with absolute delight. As if he were not already phenomenally skilled in the art of making love, his tender caresses and his poetic turns of a phrase spoken at just the right moments had always thrillingly heightened their lovemaking to a stunning degree, taking it from the merely phenomenal to the utterly sublime. She had tried once to say something poetic and beautiful to him in the throes of passion, but it had ended up making them both laugh hysterically and from then on she'd left the poetry up to Jax.

"Jaaax," she said in a whispered breath as she wrapped her slender arms around his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers for a five-alarm kiss.

The smell of your skin
The taste of your kiss
The way you whisper in the dark

Their tongues mated wildly for several minutes, and then Jax blazed a trail of heated kisses across her face and down along her throat as his hands caressed her body and then reached up to wind around her hair and capture her lips again in yet another frenzied, sensuous kissing marathon.

Your hair all around me
Baby, you surround me
You touch every place in my heart

His hands caressed her breasts, sending frissions of heat shooting through Brenda every which way.

"Brenda?" he murmured, kissing first one breast, then the other.

"Yes?" she responded breathlessly, her nails raking deliciously down his powerful arms.

"Do you love me?" he asked her.

Her body shook with tremors of delectation and her fingers dove into the softness of his honey blonde waves.

Oh, it feels like the first time
Every time
I want to spend the whole night,
In your arms

"Do you?" he repeated, taking her bottom lip fully into his mouth, suckling slowly, hungrily, driving her absolutely wild, then sending blazing kisses along her body.

"Yes," she breathed, "Oh, yes."

"Yes what?" he murmured.

"Yes, I love you, Jax," she said unable to hold onto her wits and hold the truth in at a time like this. "I love you. I love you," she said. "Oh, God, I love you, but please promise me you won't remember any of this tomorrow."

His low, rich laughter made her grow pleasingly warm all over. "I love you, too," he kissed her down to her belly button, dipped his tongue inside, then circled his tongue around it. "And I want you to remember that tomorrow, and every day after that. As to my forgetting you just told me that you love me - I'm afraid there's not a chance in hell of that, sweetheart."

"I was afraid of that," she murmured dreamily, reaching down to cradle his face.

He placed a last kiss to her tummy and moments later they were locked in a passionate, earthmoving kiss, so passionate, in fact, that it was difficult to breathe. Ah, but who needed to breathe? This was heaven!

I don't know how you do what you do
I'm so in love with you
It just keeps getting better

Jax knew she was carried away by passion, but he also knew she was telling the truth. Hearing her say it out loud was like the breath of life breathed into his body, breathed into his soul. He was alive again. Like never before.

Brenda had confessed her love for him, and he was never going to allow her to backtrack on that. Not ever. She could try all she wanted, but he was not going to let it happen.

I want to spend the rest of my life
With you by my side
Forever and ever

"I missed you so much," he said, brushing his fingers along her throat. "I missed laughing with you, fighting with you, making up with you. I missed teasing you about your cooking, while you'd chase me around the penthouse with shaving cream cans. I missed the personal lingerie modeling shows you used to give me in our livingroom; I missed the way you'd hurl yourself into my arms with such joy whenever I came back from a trip out of town. I missed kissing you under the mistletoe at Christmas, making love to you by the fireplace, your inventive holiday meals, whisking you off to Mum and Dad's cabin on New Year's Eve. I even missed rolling my eyes at all the places I'd find your million-and-one sticky notes laying around the penthouse."

Brenda smiled impishly at the memory of how that used to drive Jax crazy to see the tiny post-it notes everywhere he turned. Jax kissed her smiling lips. "Kissing you. Oh, I have missed kissing you," he breathed. "And making love to you until we were both screaming and breathless from it. And holding you in my arms as we fell asleep. Waking up with your body all entangled in mine," he said huskily.

Brenda's breathing was fast and soft as she gazed up at him, mesmerized, as his lips once again claimed hers, laying hungry, sensual siege to them.

"I missed hearing your breathing," Jax said as his lips moved over to kiss every inch of her face; her lips, her cheeks, her eyebrows, her forehead, the tip of her nose, her eyelids, her chin. "Just hearing your soft breathing when you would fall asleep before me - feeling your soft, warm breath on my cheek, feeling your body rising and falling in my arms, your beautiful hair sprawled out across my chest like silk kissing my body."

Her fingers circled the corded muscles on his arms as they kissed with sensuous delight. Brenda thought she might explode from how aroused she was, not to mention the happiness setting fire to her heart. Oh, yeah, she was in heaven here…

No words were needed now. Their magic had taken over and it was in rare form this evening, completely captivating them and stealing any words they may have wanted to say. It was only their hearts, their eyes, their lips, and their bodies that were doing all the talking now.

Every little thing that you do
Baby, I'm amazed by you

Brenda's hands drew tiny circular patterns against Jax's back as he ravished her, kiss after wildly erotic kiss. Then her hands glided over his shoulders savoring the feel of him, the strength, the power. Knowing soon he would be a part of her again. Like they were always meant to be.

Always meant to be. Dangerous thoughts, those, she knew, but she couldn't seem to prevent them. He was all she could think about, all she wanted to think about, all she could feel. She was in love. So desperately in love with this man. It was both a blessing and curse, but right now none of that mattered to Brenda. Nothing mattered beyond this moment.

Every little thing that you do
I'm so in love with you
And it just keeps getting better

I want to spend the rest of my life
With you by my side
Forever and ever

Jax shut his eyes and moaned in blissful surrender to her touch. He slid his arms over hers, bringing her arms up to each side of her head, near the headboard, and lacing his fingers through hers to pin her hands there, beneath his. Then he grinned down at her, that half dashing/half wolfish grin that turned women's bones to jelly and their blood to bubbling lava. And she smiled back at him, conceding that he had her right where he wanted her. Which was just fine with her.

And a great relief to Jax.

Bloody hell, he could barely connect one thought to the next in his mind! He was already envisioning them reaching their sensual nirvana in a burst of dazzling fireworks.

He felt it the second his restraint deserted him and his frantic desire to seal this union with her overruled everything else. He went crashing into heaven then as her nails dug into his shoulders and the pleasure rush that shot through them was positively electrifying.

The fire between them was now full-blown inferno and it was glorious. They were both swept away on a rushing tidal wave of delight, leaving the mortal world behind. Their interlocked fingers flexed together with the building urgency, and Brenda was gripping those warm, strong hands with all her might, needing to hold onto something as she knew she was mere seconds from being completely lost in the waves of this wildly erotic ocean.

This was like magic. Like pure magic spinning inside them, spinning all around them. It was like the exclamation point on a love that could not quite be put into words, a passion that also defied mere words. The way it always had been between them. Nothing had changed, Brenda realized on a wave of mesmerizing ecstasy. Oh, God, this was amazing - nothing had changed.

Brenda freed her hands from his and held onto him tightly, knowing they were coming apart in each other's arms. And they did, in a burst of blissful surrender that lasted and lasted and lasted, before ebbing away ever so slowly, leaving ambrosial exhaustion in it's rapturous wake.

Everything little thing that you do
Everything little thing that you do
Baby, I'm amazed by you

Jax collapsed on top of her, bracing himself on his elbows so as not to crush his petite little love, and then rolled onto his side taking her with him, cradling her cozily in his arms and softly kissing her face even as he tried to get the breath back into his lungs and to come down from that heavenly place he had just ascended to in her arms.

Neither of them spoke for several minutes afterwards, barely able to breathe after what they had just done.

"That," Jax finally said, his voice still breathless and so very sexy, "was merely one indication of how much I love you. One of many."

Brenda just continued trying to get her breath back and trying to get over how stunningly amazing their lovemaking had been. Or correctly, still was.

She loved that he was still as breathless as she was. His heart was pounding furiously beneath her ear, and she was certain he could feel her own out-of-control heartbeat. In fact, she wouldn't have been at all surprised if their thundering heartbeats alone woke up the entire hotel.

"And you told me you loved me," Jax mentioned with a lazy grin that was entirely too gorgeous for her taste. "You said it, Brenda. You can't take it back now. I won't let you."

"Oh, all right - yes, I do love you, damn it," she muttered into his ear and then kissed him there. "But I shouldn't."

"Why not?" Jax demanded, even as he nuzzled her neck.

"You know why, Jax."

He let out a sigh of total frustration. "Do not tell me that after what just happened between us, you still believe I'm the one who sent you away that summer?"

"Well… I'm not nearly as sure about any of that as I was before," she admitted, chewing on her lip as she saw in her mind the lists she had come upon earlier in the sitting area of his suite while he'd been napping. Jax could not possibly have planted those there for her to see. He'd had no way of knowing she'd be trapped in the rain and would have to climb over to his balcony and come inside.

Or did he? Maybe he was the one who locked her balcony door somehow? Maybe the reason his balcony was open was because he had expected her to come through it? Oh, she was so confused! A man did not make love to you like you were everything he lived and breathed for and then lie to your face, did he?

"Listen to me," Jax said firmly, sitting up in the bed and taking her with him, then cupping her face and forcing her to look at him. "I am going to prove to you that I had nothing to do with what happened four years ago. I don't care how I have to do it; I love you and so I will find a way. But, I really wish that you… I wish that you knew that you were wrong, Brenda," he said, unable to keep a bit of the frustration out of his voice. "I wish that you could just feel it in your heart that you were wrong and that I could never have done those things to you. You know me, damn it. You know me." He shook his head. "You were the air that I breathed. How could you think I could ever have done that to you? How could you not only think it, but believe it?"

The emotional edge to Jax's voice, the pain, the frustration, and the glints of disappointment in his eyes - disappointment in her, she realized a tiny lump forming in her throat - was all Brenda's undoing. She wrapped her arms around him as if to let him go would mean to stop breathing. Jax held her fast, not about to let her go either and thinking this reaction on her part was a huge breakthrough of sorts.

"I'm sorry - I'm just… really confused. I want to believe you. God, Jax, you don't know how much I want to believe you," she said, in a soft, desperate voice.

"Then why don't you? I mean, what is it that's holding you back? Brenda, I really need to know this. Do you really think I would ever be capable of hurting you like that?" he asked, his voice an incredulous whisper. "Because if you do, I need you to tell me. And if you thought I had that within me, why did you ever fall in love with me in the first place? How could you?"

She looked at him, chewing on her lip, distress, guilt, confusion all swirling about in her gorgeous brown eyes.

"And do you really think it makes any sense that I would look all over for you, Brenda? All over the world? I blew off everything in my life for that, Brenda - business, my family, my friends. Everything. You were all I could think about. I ate, drank and slept you, Brenda. Nothing else mattered to me. Jerry thought I was bloody crazy. I was harassing your sisters, your friends, anyone who knew you, just so that I could find you again." He pulled her to him until their foreheads were touching. "I just wanted to find you," he said. "Nothing else mattered to me. Nothing."

Hearing it put that way, along with the love in his eyes and the hurt in his voice at her immediately believing the worst of him, Brenda wondered, appalled at herself, how she could ever have thought such a thing? And then she remembered why. "But… I heard your voice," she said. "On the phone, Jax. I know your voice. I love your voice. It was you."

He kissed the side of her face, but shook his head. "No. It sounded like me," he corrected. "It was not me. I swear to you."

"And then you asked Miranda to marry you, just like your parents said you would," she murmured against his chest.

His parents? "She asked me," he murmured distractedly. "What do you mean 'just like my parents said I would,' Brenda?"

"She asked you?" Brenda asked at the same time, her head popping up off his chest.

Jax was confused as to what they were talking about - oh yes, Miranda - the wedding.

"Yes," he said. "But what do you mean, 'just like my parents said I would'?"

"When?" Brenda asked anxiously, suddenly starving for these details about which she'd had no clue. "When did she ask you?"

"Last year. On my birthday, I think. To tell you the truth I don't really bloody remember any of it. It wasn't especially significant to me."

"Only last year? You didn't ask her like the moment you got her back to Port Charles?" Brenda insisted.

"I didn't ask her at all."

"But you did bring her back to the penthouse, didn't you? When you brought her back from South America?"

Jax shook his head. "No. Why would I do that? I lived there with you, Brenda. Or so I thought until I found you gone. Miranda stayed with my parents. I didn't know where you were or why you had left me, but I knew you would come back to me. I knew that as surely as I knew the sun would rise every day. No matter what anyone told me, I knew they were all wrong. I knew you would never leave me like that without a word, without a trace. But then days passed, then weeks, then months, then years. Years, Brenda. And you never came back to me. You never called; you never sent me a letter. You never came back to me," he said. "And… I don't think you - or anyone else, with the possible exception of my brother - will ever fully know what that did to me," he said quietly.

He felt Brenda hold him even tighter, one hand stroking the back of his hair. "Jax, I'm so sorry," she whispered passionately. And he knew then. He knew she believed him. At last.

He closed his eyes and said a silent 'thank you' to the man upstairs.

"It wasn't me, Brenda," he said, kissing her hair. "Believe me, it was not me."

"I do," she whispered. "Oh, my god, I do believe you, Jax," she said in a voice that sounded startled by all of this. By the suddenness of her sureness when she had been so dismissive of his claims of innocence before.

But just like that she knew it was true. It was not Jax who had called her and shattered her life to smithereens and ripped away their future. It couldn't have been Jax. As Jax had pointed out over and over again to her, she knew him. He would never have done that to her. Not that way - not like that. Jax would have faced her with the truth if his feelings had changed, not told her over the phone and asked that she go.

Damn it, why was it all so crystal clear now, yet she had allowed herself to believe he was responsible for years?! YEARS! She felt like a fool. She felt like she had let him down majorly. While she had been making herself hate him in Europe and using her friends and family to ensure he could never find her, he had been looking everywhere for her. He had been ready to believe anything else other than that that she'd deliberately left him. While she had left and never considered that it might not have been Jax on that phone.

In her defense, she thought weakly, Jax had not had the added 1-2 punch of getting any kiss-off phone calls back to back in a voice that sounded exactly like hers. Still, in her heart, knowing how relentless Jax was, knowing how deep his love ran - she knew that even had he gotten such phone calls, he would have done nothing differently.

Oh God, I don't deserve you, she thought miserably.

Jax saw Brenda processing the information and was amazed and a little surprised at how well she was taking all of this. How calm she was, angry as hell - clearly; stunned to her core as well, and apparently doing some kicking of herself, too, if her expressions were any indication - but she was not overwrought and going all to pieces as he thought she had every right to. It would be perfectly understandable for her to be distraught taking in the magnitude of what had been done to them. No one could blame her for that. It was a most heinous thing done to them. Unfathomable. Unforgivable. But no hysterics or hyperventilating was coming from the beautiful young lady lying naked in his arms. She reminded him of an avenging angel; calm and astonishingly beautiful, but with fire in her eyes.

And then out of nowhere his calm angel began furiously blinking back the sheen of tears in her eyes.

For Brenda it was all just too much. Her acceptance of the truth filled her with such happiness and relief. But it also filled her with such regret at what this had cost her and Jax, and such intense anger at how she and Jax had been manipulated, that the emotions welled up inside of her and she felt the tears stinging her eyes. The only reason she didn't give into the urge to let loose with a good, long cry was because she feared once she had begun she wouldn't be able to stop.

Who would have done this to them? Who?! Who could hate them so much as to have wanted to cause them such nuclear-level misery and pain and emotional devastation?

And then she realized that if she had thought Jax had cruelly cast her aside for Miranda, he in turn, coming back to that empty penthouse and finding her things packed up and no sign of her, must have eventually concluded that Brenda had just heartlessly left him. She wanted to cry for the pain she knew he must have been in, and for the desolation being away from him had caused her. She wanted to cry for their beautiful, little son, who had been denied his father all his young life up until recently.

Jax's hands were still cupping her face and as a lone tear spilled over, it slid along her cheek and over his hand. "Hey," Jax said soothingly, using his thumb to brush the tear away. "It's going to be all right now, sweetie. I promise you," he said. "We both know the truth now, so they can't hurt us or manipulate us anymore - whoever they are. And we can see this through together now. Get to the bottom of this. Make right everything whoever did this to us tried to make go wrong," he vowed to her in an impassioned whisper.

"How?" she asked, her eyes gazing into his. "How do we make this right Jax? How do we find out who did this? It could be anybody…"

"I don't know how we find out," he confessed. "Jerry's helping me; I'm making some lists, going over anything out of the ordinary that might have been going down that summer, and… I don't know Brenda, but we are going to find out. We will put the pieces together somehow, I truly believe that."

"You're damned right we will!" Brenda murmured, the fire back in here eyes, the signs of the tears still there, too, though. "I'm going to help you do this, Jax. You can't stop me. This is about the both of us."

He nodded, a hint of a smile on his lips. "I wouldn't dream of stopping you. I want you with me on this. I've wanted that ever since you told me about the phone calls."

She nodded and gave him a grateful, little dimpled smile. "Thank you," she whispered.

"And as for us making it right," Jax continued, "Well, that's the easy part, Brenda," he said stroking her face lovingly. "We make it right by doing exactly what they clearly were trying to stop us from doing."

She looked at him, a puzzled adorable expression on her face.

Jax gave her a quick kiss and smiled. "We get married," he elaborated.

"Ahh… no, we do not, Jax," Brenda said, with a little shake of her head.

Jax raised a challenging eyebrow in her direction. So she was going to be difficult about this, was she?

"You just got out of a relationship - an engagement!" Brenda pointed out.

Jax shrugged. "And the significance of that would be?"

She rolled her pretty eyes. "Jax…"

"If you think I care about what people think, you're wrong."

"I already know you don't care what people think," Brenda assured him.

"If you think Miranda will be devastated over this, I believe she knew it was coming all along. My heart was never in it with her. I never did manage to tell her that I loved her. And she was doing her best to avoid speaking with me, in all likelihood knowing that what I was going to say to her was that I wanted out of this engagement because I was in love with you. I wasn't very good at making a secret of it."

"Jax, I love you," Brenda was quick to say. "We have established that as fact. Yes, I love you. Very much. But I'm not ready to just jump back into a full-blown, let's-get-married relationship with you just like that just because we made love," she insisted stubbornly.

"And just because you now know the truth about the summer of our son's conception," Jax reminded her.

"Yes," she nodded. "That, too. I want to find out who did this to us as much as you do, Jax. And I do love you, and tonight was nothing short of incredible, although, really, when has it not been incredible between us?"

"True," Jax concurred, sending her a lethally sexy smile.

She sighed, although she was smiling as she let out the little breath. "But I think we should take this slow. I think we should both know what we really want," she told him, following him as he rested against the headboard and she rested against his chest.

"I want you," he said.

She bit her lip and smiled. "I want you, too!"

"So then it appears we already know what we really want."

"Yes," she agreed. "But…"

"So I can't agree with your idea to take things slowly," he informed her.

"You can't?"

"No. Absolutely not, Brenda. I think we've lost enough time as it is."

Brenda shifted so that she was sitting opposite him on the bed, her knees drawn up in between his, her arms resting on his knees. " So what do you want to do then?"

"You know what I want. I want the same thing I've always wanted when it comes to you. I bloody well want you to marry me, Brenda Barrett."

"Jax, we can't just… we can't just do that," she insisted.

"Why not?"

"Seriously, Jax. We have things to consider."

"Like what?"

"Like I don't like your parents anymore," she said. "I'm sorry, but I don't. And I don't want them around our son. Now, how are you going to feel about that? And you - you don't like my sister," she pointed out.

"What are you talking about? I think Julia's cool."

She grabbed his chin. "You know I meant Carly."

"Oh, her. Well, quite frankly I have no reason to like her."

"I have no reason to like your parents either."

"But the difference is that you did once. Me, I have never liked Carly."

"And you don't see this as a potential problem to a marriage between us? Me not liking your parents, you not liking my sister? And, oh, yes, let's not forget - hating her husband."

"No. I don't see the problem. Really, this is not about your family or my family. It's about you and me, Brenda. Us. And our family - you, me and JC. Does it matter if you don't like my folks or if I have no use for Carly and her idiot husband? The fact is that I love you, and you love me. And we love Justin. And you and I should have been married years ago anyway."

Damn, but he was distracted by the way the sheets kept slipping down on her, revealing her tantalizing breasts to his mesmerized eyes and getting him all hot and bothered again. He yanked up the sheet over her so he could concentrate on the bloody conversation.

"But we weren't," she pointed out. "Married."

"Through no fault of our own, and we're going to find out why," he countered.

"Yes, but you almost married someone else," she said, poking his arm.

Jax sighed. "Are we back to that again? I did not marry her, did I?"

Brenda smothered a giggle at Jax's growing irritation with her stance on this. "Okay, the thing is, Jax, that I don't think you and I should rush into anything. No matter what led us to it, the fact remains that we've been apart for four years. I think we need to get to know each other again. And I don't mean in a stunning blaze of passion like tonight. I mean we need to go out together and do things together and see if we really have a permanent future together."

Jax could not resist rolling his eyes. "You know damn well we do."

Brenda grabbed his arms. "Okay, yeah, maybe I do but that is beside the point. Jax, are you going to date me or not?" she blurted out.

He grinned at her. "All this because you want to be courted?" he asked, leaning forward to kiss the bridge of her nose.

She glared at his grin. "Are you going to do it or not?" she repeated, folding her arms. "And by the way, I shouldn't have had to ask you," she added, turning her head away from him with a swish of dark, wet curls.

Yes, he decided. He was going to do it. He was going to do this right and make her happy.

Of course, he intended to make himself happy as well, so his agreement would be conditional, as he had no bloody intention of waiting any more than a week for her to get over this ridiculous dating business and agree to become his wife.

"On one condition," he said to her.

"What condition?" she asked, turning back to him with a wary look.

"I reserve the right to ask you to marry me on a daily basis," he said, sliding back into a horizontal position on the bed and taking her with him as he propped himself up on one elbow, gazing down at her.

She let out a cute, little laugh. "Yeah… Okay, Jax."

"I am perfectly serious," he warned her, running his forefinger slowly down the bridge of her nose.

"Okay," she agreed softly.

"I further reserve the right to employ any weaponry in my romantic arsenal to get the answer that I want from you."

He was over her now, shifting his body to blanket her.

She was burning with that wicked love-fever instantaneously.

"Oh… uh… I don't know about that one," she said haltingly, recalling how he'd gotten her confession of love out of her. "Besides that's two conditions," she complained.

"Take it or leave it," he murmured, kissing her. "And you'd better take it," he added with a wink just before kissing her far more erotically.

"Take it," she said breathlessly, moving restlessly against him.

Jax groaned at her provocative movements and wasted no time in joining his body with hers.

"Ohhhhhh," she said in a blissful tone, eyes closed. "You are so amazing!" she breathed, running her fingers against the soft golden hairs on his chest.

A soft, but hoarse chuckle kissed her ear. "Oh, so are you," he growled sexily. "So, we've established that we are, in fact, still madly in love with each other, correct?"

"Yessss," she said, her hands sliding around his shoulders, holding onto him. "Madly…"

"Then it stands to reason," he panted, "that we should get married, doesn't it?" he asked next.

"No fair," she said on a soft, extended sigh of pleasure.

"I'm in love with you. I would do anything to have you. Therefore, you can hardly expect me to play fair," he reasoned. "So," Jax said in a breathless voice, "as I was saying, it stands to reason that we should get married, right?"

Brenda issued a squeal of pleasure in the midst of their turbulent passion. "I'll have to… take the… fifth, on that," she panted. "I may incriminate myself."

"Sounds like a yes to me," he said, followed by a low groan of ecstasy.

"No, only a yes would be a yes, and I didn't say…" her mind went blank and her hands wrapped around Jax's muscular forearms. "Oh, Jax…!" she squeaked as heaven ascended upon them.

"Do you have any idea how much I missed you?" he asked in a frantic whisper as he too tumbled into heaven above her. "And how good this feels?" he groaned. "This is where you belong, Brenda - with me - always," he vowed, his breath racing madly now. "I'm never letting you go," he whispered urgently as he covered her mouth with a mind-splintering kiss and they reached paradise in shuddering, moaning unison.

"I have it, madam," the handsome, dark haired manservant said as he descended into the living quarters of the yacht and presented his employer with a thick package.

"Excellent. I take it Maximus is unaware that we have this?"

"Yes, madam."

"That will be all, Andreas," the elegant, older woman told him, dismissing him for the privacy she wanted with which to look over the contents of her brother-in-law's secret little files on Jasper Jacks.

"Well now, Maximus Theopholus Cassadine. Let us see just what you have been hiding on this young man."

The soft, yet age-spotted hands opened the contents of the fat folder and found a myriad of details of Jasper Jacks' life. When he spoke his first words, when he lost his first tooth, where he went to school from the kindergarten playgrounds of Sydney, Australia, to the Ivy League walls of Harvard Business School. She flipped through the pages, perplexed, as there were details upon details about the young man's life, his parents striking oil, relocating to Alaska. Jax breaking his arm while taking a spill racing on his dirt bike when he was twelve years old in Australia. Jax getting a mild concussion when he was14 and his surfboard had crashed into a dingy while he was doing some crazy trick. Jax spraining an ankle while mountain climbing with his brother at the age of 16. Jax dislocating his shoulder at age 19 on his snowmobile when he was blindsided by a tree in Alaska.

"What the devil is all this?" she pondered in confusion. "The boy has had an interesting life, certainly, but it's hardly anything worth hiding. And why on earth does Maximus care about this particular young man? I've got to be missing something here."

Every childhood accident Jasper Jacks had ever had, every award he had ever won, his engagements to both Miranda Jameson as a barely 19-year-old and then to Brenda Barrett when he was 24 - all of it was detailed here.

And then she came across some adoption papers.

"So, he was adopted by the Jacks family. Interesting, I suppose, if one cares about such things. Yet what is the significance of that, Maximus, you fool?" she scoffed, tossing the adoption papers aside and digging further into the files.

She picked up an official looking document and realized it was in fact a birth certificate. The sharp blue eyes blinked in astonishment as she read the date of birth, the place of birth, and the names of the father and the mother.

"No!" she bellowed, her hands shaking with a mixture of severe shock and icy rage. "This cannot be!"

Song Credit: Song: "Amazed" written by Marv Green/Aimee Mayo/Chris Lindsey from the CD entitled Lonely Grill. Artist: Lonestar.

Poem Credit: a portion of the poem Dearest Love by Steven Mather.