Carrie felt like her legs were made of wet clay as she climbed the two flights of stairs to her third floor walk up. She honestly could not remember ever being so weary in her life. Even the dull throb that had returned to her head seemed paltry in comparison to the utter leadenness that permeated the rest of her.

As she stumbled through her front door, she knew intuitively that the apartment was empty. Even so, she looked in the bedroom and bathroom, automatically turning off the lights that had been left on. Wandering through the living room, she dropped her coat on the sofa on her way to the kitchen. There were dark smudges all over the place from fingerprint dust. Filling a glass of orange juice from the fridge, she downed half of it in three big gulps. Tired as she was, it felt like pouring liquid sunshine into her veins.

Polishing off the last of it, Carrie leaned a hip against the counter and set her glass in the sink. For a long minute she stared at her dinner dishes from the night before. There was spaghetti sauce dried on a bowl and fork, but it seemed to her that there ought to be cobwebs stretched across them. It felt like a year since she heated up that leftover pasta, absentmindedly leaving the dishes in the sink without rinsing them.

Sleep. Every fiber of her body was aching to get horizontal and unconscious as quickly as possible. NO... I have to find Bobby. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, summoning the willpower to propel herself back out the door and down the block to the corner coffee shop to look for him. She summoned her inner drill sergeant. Move it... now. Pushing off the counter, she took a step toward the door.

The faint scrape of a key in the lock sent a chill through her. Carrie froze in her tracks. Her mind spun and reeled as she heard the lock disengage. She was trapped. Her phone was on the hall table next to the door, and the fire escape was outside her bedroom window, past the door. Hastily, she scanned around her for something she could use to defend herself. The chef's knife in the drawer next to the stove was the obvious choice, and she snatched it up. On impulse, she also grabbed a can of chili from the cupboard. A well placed throw might distract the intruder long enough to give her an opening.

Bobby took the two blocks from the subway to the apartment building at a fast jog. This was only partly due to his desire to get back to Carrie as soon as possible. The temperature had inched up a few degrees with the sun, but it was still far too cold for the thin, gray-blue chambray shirt and gray flannel slacks he had on.

Taking the shortcut through the alley, he looked up to her third floor windows just in time to see the lights go out in her bedroom. Good... she's getting some rest. A tall jogger ran up and used a key to enter the building. A blond teenager with a cocker spaniel on a leash passed him in the vestibule on her way out. Deciding on a quick perimeter check before heading in, Bobby crossed the street and slipped around the side of the building.

Carrie heard two things: heavy, male footsteps that paused inside the door and the hammering of her own blood in her ears. The steps turned and walked away from her down the hallway toward the bedroom. This was it. The bedroom was the only place in the apartment where the intruder wouldn't be between her and the door.

There was no more time for thought. She ran as quietly as she could toward the door, arm coiled, chili can up and ready. She wasn't naïve enough to think she could stop a killer with a can, this was not a thriller and she wasn't Tom Cruise, but hopefully it would throw him off just long enough for her to make it through the door and get a head start down the stairs.

She'd made it as far as the living room end of the hallway when he reappeared. Carrie couldn't see his face, just the huge outline of a man nearly filling the bedroom door frame, backlit by the morning sunlight that filled the room behind him. Choking down the panic that threatened to paralyze her, Carrie pitched her can of chili as hard as she could at the man's head. He ducked a little too slow for it to miss him completely, but there was no time to feel satisfaction at the small grunt of pain.

Lunging for the door, she got her hand around the handle and twisted. It didn't budge. NO!! Forgetting all about the knife still clutched in the left hand, she let it clatter to the floor as she fumbled frantically with the deadbolt and chain. When two big hands came around her on either side and swallowed her smaller ones, she screamed. When arms banded around her, pinning her tight against a massive chest, she kicked and fought, but his superior size and strength were far too great for her struggles to be of any use.

Satisfied that all ground level windows were barred and the service door was securely padlocked, Bobby made his way back around to the locked front door of the building and frowned at it. He didn't want to ring the apartment to be buzzed in if she was finally resting, but standing here shivering like an idiot until someone else appeared and maybe hopefully let him in wasn't appealing either.

His head tipped left as a thought occurred to him. Sure enough, when he reached into his pocket, his fingers connected with his own set of keys. I wonder, he mused, thinking of all the odd similarities between Carrie's apartment and the one he'd left behind. Pulling them out, he slid his own front door key smoothly into the lock, twisting it clockwise with a well oiled click. Bingo.

Ascending the two flights quickly, he paused at the apartment door. As quietly as he could, he unlocked it and slipped in, pausing to set the chain and deadbolt behind him. Turning left in the shadowy, windowless hallway, he tiptoed to the bedroom door and eased it open, wincing at the creak of a cranky floorboard.

The room wasn't large, but still not bad for a New York apartment. The pale, silvery lavender hue of the walls echoed the early morning light streaming through the two tall windows and across the bed. The empty bed. Carrie's purse and gloves sat at the foot, but the room was empty. She's here, but not sleeping. I didn't hear the shower… why didn't she say hello when I came in?

At the sound of running feet, Bobby turned back and stepped into the doorway just in time to see Carrie's arm fling something at him. Surprise had him ducking a bit late, the projectile glancing off his left shoulder. For a moment he stood dumbfounded with shock… until a knife clattered to the floor at her feet. Then he saw it, the terror on her face as she desperately tried to work the locks. Good Christ… Carrie… He called her name but she seemed not to hear him. Stepping behind her, he reached around to cover her hands but she screamed. Not knowing what else to do to calm her down, Bobby wrapped his arms around her in a tight bear hug.

"Carrie… CARRIE… C'mon baby… it's me… it just me…" Over and over until she finally heard him and stopped fighting. Twisting in his arms, she looked up at him, eyes wide with shock.

"B…Bobby?"

He relaxed his hold, then caught her up tight again when her legs crumpled under her. As the fear and fight leaked out of her, it was replaced by heavy, racking sobs that shook her body, one after another. Her arms snaked up around his neck and held tight. Bobby buried his face in the silk of her hair, murmuring things he hoped were reassuring.

"I don't… don't know why… I'm crying..." Her words came out in little hiccupping bursts.

"Sometimes it happens this way." His voice was such a low, comforting murmur; Carrie imagined she was hearing it as vibrations through his chest. She pressed her cheek to the heat of his skin radiating through the thin fabric of his shirt. "It's your body's reaction to the stress. Just let it happen."

Already his warmth was seeping through her. With each breath she felt a little more in control, a little less desperate. "I… I hate this… I hate feeling like this." Any desperation at all was intolerable to her. It always had been. As she gained her composure, her overwhelming instinct was to fight it.

She lifted her head to look up into his eyes, so full of compassion and just a crinkle of humor around the edges. "I don't know." His brow furrowed in mock seriousness. "You feel pretty good to me."

Carrie coughed out a little laugh and hugged him harder, grateful he knew so well that what she needed was not more coddling, but a change of mood. "I don't… want to feel like this anymore."

"No?" A gentle smile caught the corners of his mouth as his head dipped into that charming, familiar tilt. "You have another feeling in mind?"

"Yeah." Even when Carrie pushed up on her toes, she couldn't reach his mouth. Instead she reached for his neck, specifically the pulse point just under the line of his jaw. Hovering for just a fraction of a second, she let her breath warm the spot, before pressing in with her lips and tongue. His sharp intake of air did more for her state of mind than an hour of soothing whispers ever could have.

"Carrie… honey, wait… what are you doing?" The tremor in his voice had her smiling into the scruff that had accumulated since the last time she'd kissed this spot.

"Hmmm… I don't know. If you have to ask, I must not be doing it right." Her voice was a sexy purr that was making it very difficult for him to put two thoughts together in order. That and the way she was taking his pulse with her tongue. The light-speed shifting of gears momentarily paralyzed his mind and body. For at least a minute and a half, Bobby quite literally had no idea what to think. That was until she moved up to his jaw and bit him.

Okay, it was more like a nip, but it jolted him out of his state of suspended animation. His head snapped forward and then his mouth was on hers, tongue barely pausing to greet her lips before losing himself in the warm sweetness of her.

Hands in motion now, he was ready for her when she hopped up to wrap her legs around him, catching her and holding her up to his height. Her body wasn't tiny, but it was flexible, strong and so unbelievably sexy locked around his. She was exquisitely soft and yielding but her passion was determined… even demanding. The contradiction ignited a hunger in him that threatened to burn down what was left of his self control.

When her hips rocked against him he knew the time was running short when necking in this hallway would be enough for either of them. Bobby knew the apartment's layout like that back of his hand, so he didn't need to open his eyes or interrupt his comprehensive exploration of her mouth in order to navigate the few steps to the bedroom. Bodies tangled together, they tumbled onto the bed as one creature, her purse falling unnoticed to the floor. The hands that were no longer occupied holding her up were now free to roam and seemed to need to touch every inch of her.

Too many clothes. Even as the thought crossed his brain, her hands were under his shirt, pushing the fabric toward his shoulders. Bobby pulled back to help the process along but froze at the sight of her. At any other time, the lovely rosy flush of her skin, the sleek tumble of her hair on the bed, the light panting of her breath between lips that were parted and swollen from his kisses would have wiped every coherent thought from his head. But at this moment, none of it was enough to distract him from the humbling sight of the white bandage on her forehead. The reality of all she'd been through in the last twelve hours flooded back to him and he cursed himself for forgetting it even for a minute.

"Carrie… honey… this isn't a good idea. Your body needs rest to recover."

His argument sounded reasonable to his ears, but the determined look that shifted into her eyes told him that convincing her was going to be an uphill battle.

"Bobby, listen to me." Carrie reached up to lay a hand on his cheek but saw him working out his next argument rather than really paying attention to what she had to say. "Hey," she reached for his arm this time, with a hard pinch. "I said listen." His brow furrowed but at least now she had his attention. "I hear what you're saying. But the fact is, I wasn't really hurt badly at all. It's just a little bump on the head."

He tried to interject something about concussions, but she cut him off. "Stop it. It's not bad. They didn't even hesitate sending me home alone." Her fingers tightened on his arms, but it was the intensity in her eyes that conveyed just how badly she needed him to hear her. "But you are right too… I'm not really okay. This whole night was been a blur of hurt and fear and confusion. I… I'm shaken and I just can't take any more."

Tears started to well in her eyes again, and he could see what it cost her to fight them back, to keep her voice even and make her point logically so he would listen to her. In the face of all that courage, how could he give anything less than exactly what she needed from him? Even in her weakest moment, she was a pillar of strength.

"Please Bobby. Help me. I can't stand feeling like this anymore. Help me feel something else…"

This time, when she reached for him, all he saw was her.