Charmed. Cole and Phoebe Guardian series. To know Phoebe is too...

Charmed. To know Phoebe is to... Chapter 20

Part 3:Keeping it in the Family

Chapter 20

They went back to the hotel, easier and more comfortable, than they had been the night before. Phoebe spent most of the drive back to the hotel impressing on Cole how she was totally pissed at him, but even that was safe. He said he was sorry three times and she knew perfectly well he did not mean it. She wondered quizzically if she would ever convince him, not to believe he always knew best. She doubted it.

This time it was Cole who wanted sex badly and did not wait to ask or seduce. Phoebe gave way to his tension and passion and somewhere in the wildness and crazy thrill was aware she was touching a darkness in him that she had never touched before. It wasn't evil and it left her more excited than anything she had felt with him.

Afterward they lay on the bed naked, both quiet but it was peaceful, comfortable, safe.

"What you thinking?" Cole asked.

"Don't you know?" she snarked.

"You really are pissed at me aren't you?" he said sighing.

"Yeah" she said happily "Why were you thinking you could get away with being an arsehole?"

"I'm not." he said and was not lying.

"Good" she said turning and snuggling up to him. "Still pinching yourself. Can't believe it happened?" she asked smugly "You just made me break a promise to myself" she said.

"What?" he asked.

"I promised myself I wasn't ever going to fuck you again and look what you just made me do." she pouted.

"Yeah well Saturday night ago I promised myself I was going to get out of the past find a future. " He smiled "Go to New York, live as a human, have a life away from you" he answered.

"New York" she said I ran away to there once."

"I know." he said.

"That was stupid" she added. "I came back. You would have only had to come back" she added confidently.

"I know" he said.

"Anyway, you are keeping the promise" she said "You are going to having a future, just with me not without. "

He was quiet for a little while then said "What sort of future is it Phoebe?"

She looked up and smiled shyly but shook her head. "I'm not sure." she said. She thought "That's the trouble when all your future depended on winning one thing, having a life, a future, future was a word without a real meaning. "

Phoebe woke up at dawn. She was lying on her back and Cole was on his side His face buried into her neck and one leg over hers and arm across her, almost pining he down as if he thought she would run, if he did not hold her there. She had to prove it, she moved a little and his am tightened across. He had a case to think she might run and then she smiled ruefully he also had an answer. The times she had run from him and he stopped her, found a way to keep her, even if it was to get himself into her memory and her feelings and heart so she only felt half alive without him.

Fated together, her hold on the deeper recesses of her soul so tied to his. She wriggled a little to move so she could look at his face as he slept. When he slept she saw something that never showed when he was awake and laughing or exasperated or angry. His face showed the care of the 120 years he had lived; the hardness of his life was a shadow that made him look wilder, older; something ,someone outside her world but in spite of the age weariness that showed, as she looked and tried hard to see something else, as she felt his breath evenly on her shoulder all she could see in his face was the good man she loved.