Three Months.

It was late. And dark. A moonless night. The kind she hated. The kind she feared. The rolling fields on either side were bare and the expansive lawn in front of her was empty. The air was still. Yet, like so many other nights in the last three months, she knew she wasn't alone.

Was tonight different? Would he choose tonight? Would he show himself tonight?

She held tighter to the keys in her right hand and took a tentative step towards her house.

Who would hear her if she screamed? Why hadn't she thought of that when she bought her isolated 1920s farm house? When exactly, did she lose her sense of security? Was it when she met him and realized how completely corrupt the world really was? Or was it after he'd left her life three months ago?

She took her first step towards her normally welcoming – now completely dark and menacing - front porch. Somewhere in the back of her head she knew she'd flipped the porch light on this morning.

Another step. And another. Then another. She was able to get her key almost all the way into the lock before he touched her.

The scream was a reflex. Shrill, serious, urgent. His hand collapsed over her mouth and his body pressed into her back, pinning her to the old oak door that remained locked.

His body was warm, soft – not tense. His hand was loose – not tight or hard – on her skin. It felt smoother than the last time he'd touched her. He pulled the keys from her hand and in one fluid movement, unlocked the front door and slid them both inside. Just as fluidly he turned them around so that he was leaning against the door and she was leaning on him. With his free hand he reached behind himself and turned the deadbolt into place.

She struggled for a second and he instantly let go, moving away from her into the darkness of her tiny living room.

"Michael," it was a statement. Not a question. Her hand groped along the wall for the light switch.

"No lights, Sara." He said and the sound of his voice was like drinking brandy, it made her insides warm and her body shivers simultaneously.

"But I – "

"No lights."

She let her hand fall to her side in submission. The kitchen light was still on, as she'd left it this morning. The faint glow from the back room gave an amber outline to his body. But something in her ached to see his face.

It'd been three months since she'd seen that face. Those eyes…

"Are you hurt?"

"No," he replied softly and without conviction. "I was but I'm not now."

She had heard someone got hurt in the break. She'd seen the blood stains on the concrete outside the prison.

"It was you who was hurt."

"Shot."

"What!" Without hesitation she came forward and ran her hand over his chest. "Where?"

"Shoulder. It's healed. It's okay," he was trying to reassure her but he let her hands roam his body anyway. Over and around his right shoulder. Then his left, where she crawled under the armhole of his t-shirt and stopped on the collapsed flesh and muscle, tentatively exploring.

"I want to see it," Sara told him, her medical mind fighting for control over her emotional one that was getting drunk on the feeling of his warm flesh under her fingertips. Moving herself behind him she placed her hands firmly on his lower back and began to guide him towards the kitchen. Before they could get within feet of the doorway, he stopped dead.

She walked around to face him as he said firmly, "I don't need medical help."

"Then why did you come here?" she wanted to know. She wanted to reach out and touch him again, beg the answer she needed to hear, but she felt she had no right to touch him unless it was medical.

Instead, she stood still and silent as he took a tentative step toward her. They were so close to the kitchen now that his one step pulled him out of the solid darkness. And though inky shadows still touched his face, she could clearly make out his strong cheekbones, smooth caramel skin and murky green eyes. To her surprise, they'd lost none of their intenseness.

In the long aching nights since the escape she never seemed to be able to get those eyes out of her mind. She remembered in vivid detail how she felt when they were on her. And how intensely they'd been on her. How Michael had let them pour over her. Now she'd assumed they'd been so intense because he had been study her. He'd needed to meticulously memorize everything about her – her habits, her schedule, her movements, everything – to keep her from messing up his big break. It had been a clinical move and she felt like such a fool for ever thinking otherwise.

But now they were still intense. Why? Then it dawned on her. "I'm not going to call the police. I promise."

"I know that," he smiled. It was devastating and completely disarming. She had never seen him smile before. Ever. And it made her blush for some stupid reason.

The evident pink on her cheeks made him grin even wider and then she grinned – out of sheer embarrassment. She bowed her head and he reached forward and, like a scene from an eighties romance flick, he pulled her chin up until they made eye contact. The smile was gone now. The intense eyes were back.

"I was worried about you," he told her softly. "That's why I'm here."

"I was worried about you too," she replied just as softly.

"Don't worry," he took another step towards her. "I'm okay."

She let her hand move upwards, skimming the thin fabric of his gray t shirt and landing lightly on the divot in his shoulder. "A bullet wound is not okay."

He closed his eyes and inhaled thickly, then reached up and pulled her hand off his shoulder and up to his face. His soft full lips grazed the pads of her fingertips. The feeling sent shockwaves down her spine and her insides liquefied.

Closing her eyes she whispered, "Michael, you need to turn yourself in." She hated herself the minute the words slipped from her mouth. She was such a fucking girl scout. In love with a fugitive.

"I can't," he said, not at all surprised or offended by her words. "They'll kill us both now."

"Lincoln," she said his brother's name like it was this huge elephant in the room. The condemned brother that had brought Michael into her life and then taken him away.

His eyes blinked once. Then he let go of her hand and stepped back towards the shadows. "I have to go. This isn't fair to you. This isn't your fight."

She heard him begin to walk away and it made her heart race with panic. She stumbled forward and reached out into the darkness, grabbing his arm and pulling him back towards her. A long hiss of pain escaped through his clenched teeth and full lips.

She looked at him, stunned. "Fine my ass…"

She pulled him fully into the lit kitchen and pushed him down in one of her wicker backed kitchen chairs. Swiftly and without room for protest, she grabbed the hem of his soft gray t shirt and pulled it over his head. She lowered herself to study the wound. He was having such a hard time not touching her face as it hovered inches from him.

He was right. It had healed – horribly. On the front of his shoulder was a deep, hard divot about the size of a half dollar where the bullet must have entered. On the back of his shoulder was a hard lump of knotted scar tissue. There was a also a thick, purple, three inch scar. The mangled mass on tattoo ink made the whole thing that much more horrific looking.

"The bullet didn't come out. They had to go in and get it," Michael explained to Sara, knowing without even seeing her face that the scar was making her brow furrow.

"Who treated this?" she wanted to know. Her breath tickled the back of his ear and made his groin tighten.

"Lincoln and… "He can't tell her about Veronica. "someone else. A friend."

"This is going to leave you with permanent shoulder limitations now. You needed a doctor," She said, anger biting through her words.

"I couldn't go to a doctor."

"You could have come to me," Sara told him. She leaned in and kissed the scar tissue tentatively, but lovingly. His skin was so warm and inviting. "Don't you know I would have done anything for you?"

She felt his body tense. His spine elongate and she froze in fear. It wasn't the words or their meaning that had her scared. It was the fact that she'd uttered them aloud that terrified her. And she knew that they changed everything.

He reached around with his good arm and his hand found the back of her neck. His fingers curled through her hair as he softly guided her closer to him. His head turned and those inky green eyes focused solidly on her hazel ones before he brought his lips to hers.

The kiss was an explosion. A long-awaited explosion of heat and lust and longing. The hand in the back of her hair guided her around the chair and she willing straddled him and eased herself down to his lap. She felt his hardness pressed into her thigh immediately.

"I have to go," he whispered, breaking the contact of their lips and making her ach instantly.

"No you don't," she whispered back moving her lips to the side of his neck, needing his skin like a drowning woman needed air.

"This is not fair. You don't deserve to be wrapped up in…"

"In your life? In your problems?" she asked pulling back only enough to whisper the words in his ear before kissing it softly and continuing. "I want to help you. I want to be in your life."

Before he could argue again Sara slide down his bare chest and undid the button on his jeans. "Don't leave me like this, Michael. Don't leave me."

No matter how noble his reasons, he'd become a criminal. She was a saint. The two only mixed in fairy tales and this was not one. He knew he never should have come. He knew this night would end like this. He knew he'd make love to her. And he knew he'd leave her in the morning, before she woke. It'd be a lot longer than three months before they saw each other again.