"Coffee, tea, or me?" she wondered, throatily, winding her arms around his neck. Her eyes were huge and gray and so filled with sass.

He grinned. His fingers tangled in her crimped blond hair. "If I pick you, do I get to take you with sweet?"

"You bet," she said, her full, bottom lip glistening with the faint sheen of pink gloss.

And he leaned down. He leaned down and kissed her like he had in the rain outside the CrashDown. When they'd both tried to resist the pull of destiny. He couldn't resist. And this time, he wasn't complaining. He pushed her up against the shelves of the Eraser Room, feeling her hands tugging him by the belt loops.

She moaned. He whispered her name. And the stars exploded around them. And the desert flew past them. And everything spun quickly and steadily into a vortex of pure blue.

Max woke up, gasping for breath. He drew his hand across the back of his mouth, but he could still taste her. Taste the sugar on her lips. Tess. Sexy, mysterious, alien Tess. He could taste the sugar and he wanted more of it. No, he didn't. No. "Oh, God," he whispered, covering his face with shaking hands. "Why is this happening to me?"

It was Liz's lips he'd dreamed of ever since he'd recognized what kissing meant for love. It was Liz's eyes he'd dreamed of ever since he'd recognized what staring into them meant for love. Liz Parker. Not Tess Harding. Never Tess Harding. Who was she? What was she? She was temptation. She was destiny. She was the past and future he could not escape. Liz was the present. A present. One he didn't deserve. All dark hair and dark eyes and so much trust--trust he'd betrayed. And he couldn't stop.

Even in his sleep, he betrayed her.

He rolled over, burrowing into his sheets, shivering despite the warm spring wind that blew in through the unlatched window. He still left it open. Not for Michael. He knew Michael would never sleep on his floor again. Thanks to too much pride and his own apartment. Instead, he kept it open for the stupid faint hope that it would be Liz's shoes he'd hear hitting the carpet. Liz's soft footsteps crossing to his bed. So she could stand over him and whisper, "I forgive you." And..."I still love you, Max."

He was a betrayer and delusional. Great.

Tess. This was all because of Tess. And hormones. Stupid raging alien hormones driving him towards her. His hormones. Making it equally his fault. There was also one more thing he knew he could blame. The taste of sugar on her lips.

"Damn it. Damn it. Damn it." He swore, softly, pressing his legs together. He tried to will away the throbbing at his groin, to ignore the sensations that made his entire body overheat and start to buzz. He failed. Even thinking about mud couldn't counteract the madness of Tess. The insanity of wanting her in public places and private places and naked ones, too.

"I love you, Liz," he whispered into his pillow. "I love you, not Tess."

He closed his eyes...hoping to see her. Praying to see her.

Bright gray eyes. Blond hair.

"Fuck!"

And just as his eyes flashed back open with horrified frustration, the window swung open and banged lightly against the wall. Light footsteps landed on the floor. His chest tightened. The buzzing grew worse.

"Liz?" he asked, hopefully, knowing instinctively that it was a wrong guess.

"No, it's me...Tess." Her voice was oddly foreign...musical. No...haunting. Like the Sirens from _The Odyssey_. Drawing men to their doom.

And, then, there she was...sitting down on the edge of his bed, her heart-shaped face so lovely that he wanted to hide. "Wh-what do you want?" he stammered, hearing his voice crack with panic.

The minute he said it, he wish he hadn't. Her face shuttered, and she looked as though she'd been slapped. She moved back a couple of inches on the coverlet. "I needed to talk to you," she murmured, the words barely audible.

"So, talk." He didn't budge, didn't blink. Didn't knuckle under to the hurt in her huge, guileless eyes.

She stared at her hands--small hands, with carefully shaped red fingernails. "What do you want me to say, Max?" she asked, with caution. Once again, that foreign lilt entered her voice. Australian? Where had she been before Roswell? "That I feel connected to you? That I'm not here to hurt you, or Michael, or Isabel?" She shrugged, worrying her full bottom lip with her teeth. "You won't believe me, will you?"

"H-how can I?" he demanded, scooting back against the headboard, bringing his knees up to his chest. "When you're in my bedroom in the middle of the night?" His body's throb was growing unbearable...and the buzzing was inside his head now, sending panic signals every which way.

She raised her eyes...and he couldn't help but flinch at the pain that was reflected in them again. "Would you believe me in daylight? Or in the rain?" She didn't look dangerous in her jeans and red cardigan, with her curly blond hair framing her face. Just beautiful. Which was even scarier. "I came here to talk...but I don't even know the words to say to you. Tell me, Max...tell me how I can make you see."

"You can't." He forced the harshness out, the biting words, as Liz's face swam before his eyes. "I'm with someone, Tess...and I love her. I've loved her all my life."

Her lashes folded over. He could hear her deep, shuddering, breath in the silence. Over his own pounding heartbeat. "What if...what if I told you..." One hand reached out to tentatively touch his kneecap and he felt the searing fingertips through the sheets. As if electric current jolted each tendon, each ligament. "I've loved you all my life."

"That's impossible!" he gasped, jerking his knee away from her warm palm. "You don't know me, Tess...you don't know anything about me!"

A gentle shake of her head. Another deep breath. And a tear slid down her cheek. Just one tear. He watched it drip down to her lips and spill from her chin, wondering if it tasted sweet or salty. "That's not true," she whispered. The sheets rustled, and he watched the hand that had reached for him flatten over her chest...the left side. "I know you in here. I've always known you in here. I've felt you inside...every day for the last ten years. You and the others."

There was an alien girl sitting on his bed, crying. She wasn't Liz. She tasted sweet. Her voice was filled with earnest sadness. He wasn't man enough to keep being cruel. "Why?" He asked the question in a gentler voice, watching the emotions play across her face. "Why?"

"It was you." Her hand dropped from her heart...twisted a fistful of sheet and coverlet.

It was you. His own words coming back to haunt him. He swallowed hard, forcing down the lump in his throat, trying to force down the primal call that made him want to lurch forward and yank her into his arms, to kiss away the agonized words on her lips.

And, all of a sudden, without any touches or any warnings, the visions were there. Exploding behind his eyelids. A cave. Four glass-like pods. Four. A sense of loss as a small boy, covered in ooze, stared at the last, unhatched pod. At a tiny, blond, girl behind the icy shell. And, then, the boy followed the other two of his kind...looking back one last time...and burying the loss of their fourth corner. He'd reached for Isabel's hand...but it was another's he'd wanted to clasp. And they'd left her.

He rose from the vision like rising through fathoms of deep, black, water, gasping as his chest cavity seemed to fold in on itself. "Tess!" he cried, helplessly, eyes focusing once again on her face...a face that was now just inches away, etched with concern...and hope. "No!"

"Yes." She whispered it, nodding. "Yes, Max."

He groaned. The fever. The buzz. The all-consuming guilt. It was too much. How could he have left her behind? One of them. The one who loved him most. His mate. It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense.

Except sugar.

The pull was instantaneous. The bare hint of distance between them closed...and he wasn't sure who kissed whom. She breathed him in...he grasped her shoulders and pulled her against his legs. They were caught up in the deep blue vortex. Technicolor. Swirling up together. Flashes of metal and light and a warm cave where they'd once been safe. Stars. Planets. Asteroid belts moving in concentric circles at lightning speed. He licked her lips, drank the sweetness from the inside of her mouth. Her hands flattened against his bare chest and he was fraught again with current and tension.

"Max..."

"Oh, God." He couldn't stop. Couldn't tear himself away as the images and the feeling of belonging seemed to grow brighter and hotter. His legs lost their lock and slid down into the sheets. She fit perfectly between them and he drew her down on top of him, winding his hand in the soft curls at the base of her neck. With his other hand, he tugged at her cardigan and her jeans, tossing them away with her help, and revealing soft, tender, flesh to his touch. A smooth, slightly rounded belly. The curves of lush hips. Perfect. Perfect for his touch. For his child. For their destiny.

When their bodies met for the first time, he felt the stars explode behind his eyes. Far reaching blasts that settled deep into his bones. Her eyes were almost silver with desire...silver and filled with the same recognition he knew his own held. Her body was alien but familiar. It was as if they'd touched a thousand times before, even as they came to each other as virgins. There was no pain. No agony. Just the joy on her face. Just the purest passion he had ever known. Hot. Salty. Sweet.

"Tess...Tess...Tess..." he chanted as they sank together.

She claimed his mouth in another searing kiss, silencing him and letting something much more primeval sing loud and long. His mate. His other half.

Now he was whole.

A whole betrayer. And he didn't much care.

"I love you, Max," the drowsy girl in his arms murmured, her lips brushing his collarbone.

He held her close, licking the traces of sugar on his lips, and let sleep drag him into a beautiful dream. Her. Him. Together. The past. The future.

Always.

Everything would be okay. She would see him, whisper "I forgive you" and it would all be okay. She trusted him. She loved him. And they could survive anything.

"Max...? Max, its me...Liz," she whispered as she tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear and steadied herself.

And then it all went to Hell.

She paused, one foot on the floor and the other poised on the edge of the sill, and her stomach lurched like an elevator falling thirty-six stories. With one swift kick to the guts, she was brought low.

Even in the dark, she could make out two naked bodies. Tangled together. On the bed. They didn't stir. And, as the tears spilled down her cheeks and she tried to look past the haze, there was the odd realization that the blond head nestled against the bare, muscled, chest, looked like it belonged there.

The one thing she knew she couldn't survive.

"No," she whispered. "Oh, no."

Lost in blissful sleep, neither of them heard her muffled sobs. Neither of them heard her grappling with the window sill and her footsteps rapidly leading away from the side of the Evans' house.

And Liz Parker, too, was unaware. Of one last betrayal.

Her true love's dreamy whisper.

"I love you, Tess."