That was to be the first of many times that we made love. There is now no place in and around that very gorgeous log cabin of his, that we haven't made love. Each time we do, the bond between us continues to deepen. A blissful week has already passed and I'm already feeling scared by how quickly it has passed. In just seven days time, we will be having to say yet another painful goodbye all over again. Shivering at just the thought of it whilst being held warmly in Rhys's arms, he tries to cuddle my shiver away. "You cold?" He sweetly asks, nuzzling into my hair.

"No, just thinking."

"Uh oh, that's gotta be bad news for me." He jokes, squeezing me tight in our seated position on the lakefront decking of the cabin.

We have been sat out here for over an hour now, watching the sun go down over the shadowed mountains and watching the twinkling blanket of stars gloriously come out. We have been curled up on a chair together, wrapped in each other and the thickest of blankets, but it's only when I start thinking about leaving Rhys that I start to feel shivery cold. Not wanting to worry him, I chuckle at his teasing of me. "Funnily enough, that is exactly what Dex says to me."

"What's really on your mind, Clara?" Our deepening bond seems to have also given Rhys the sudden and surprising ability to sense when something is really bothering me.

Shifting uncomfortably in his strong and caring hold, I am reluctant to share with him my true feelings. "I'm okay, I was just thinking about how many days we have left, that's all." I try to make it sound as casual as I can—no biggie.

Giving me a long kiss to the top of my head, Rhys breathes in deeply. "And?"

Lifting my eyes to look up at him, I confess all. "It's going to be really hard to say goodbye to you again." My gaze drifts away from him because it's far easier to look up at the stars than it is to look at the face that I've grown so very attached to.

Taking hold of my chin between his attentive fingers, he forces me to face him. "It doesn't matter where either one of us is anymore, Clara. All that matters is that we feel each other inside of here." His hand places my palm just over his heart, holding it in place there. "Oceans, land, mountains and time, can no longer separate what we have."

He uses such beautiful words from his beautiful soul to console me and it's their beauty that suddenly bring happy and silly tears to my admiring eyes. "You've turned me into such a girl!" I laugh through my tears, joking about how much my feelings for him have totally changed me.

Bringing our mouths intimately close, Rhys smiles. "But you're my girl, so it doesn't matter." His satisfying kiss is affirmation of me being his girl. I was his girl. Head to toe, I was absolutely his.

Sighing with such deep contentedness, my fingers start stroking his waist just beneath the cotton of his slim fit T shirt. I have discovered he has a little ticklish spot there and it's a place that my fingers sometimes love to frolic. Shuddering to my teasing touch, he warns me with his scolding sage eyes to stop it. My fingers frolic some more, touching him ever so softly that he repeatedly shudders beneath my rebellious fingertips. He doesn't want to smile, but he is nevertheless; a sexy and wicked smile. "It's like that, is it?" His brow crookedly rises, deliciously rises. Biting down on my bottom lip, I smirk with a lazy nod of the head. Rhys shifts in his seat, making it comfortable for the two of us when I sit deeply into his lap. "You know we've already done it out here, right?" He asks, still sexily smirking.

I pretend to look shocked, grinning more and more by the horny second. "Have we? Really?"

Laughing with his fingers firmly holding my hips in place, he looks back at me with devilishly dilated eyes. "Twice." He cockily states.

Leaning seductively forward as my arms drape themselves around his neck, I proposition him. "Third time lucky?" I say, pushing deeper into his eager crotch.

Immersing his fingers in the back of my long hair, he kisses me aggressively hard before saying. "Hell yeah."

For the third time on the decking area, Rhys showed me why oceans, land, mountains and time can no longer change how we feel about each other. As he pushed deeper inside of me, the deeper I fell for him. Within the perfect beauty of Rhys Ryan and Echo Lake, I am falling in the deepest of love.

**

After a tranquil evening of slow and cherishing sex and a long candlelit bath together, we decide to go to bed. With the moonlight reflecting off the lake and shining into the window of the bedroom, I wonder whether my life will ever be this perfect again. I know that it's impossible to stay like this forever, but what if we could?

How wonderful would that be?

Rhys is caressing my shoulders with lovely little circles across my skin. My skin loves his fingers. Almost as much as my mouth loves his lips. I don't actually think there is a single part of him that I don't love. Feeling in a relaxed, almost silly mood, I ask him about any possible flaws he may wish to share with me. "Do you think you have any bad habits or traits?" My sudden question replaces the silence of the moonlit room.

Rhys quietly thinks with his fingertips still adoringly stroking me. "Uh, nope! I'm pretty much perfect." He chuckles lightly with my head rising and falling with his bare chest.

Helpless to not agree with him, I decide to share mine. "Okay, Mr Perfect...I can be stubbornly independent."

"I think I've worked that out for myself." His teasing just keeps on coming.

"And I'm not great company when I'm on my period." My chin rests on his stomach, cheekily waiting for his response.

Glancing down at my mischievous face, he just gives me a knowing grin. "Is any woman?"

"I'm especially bad company."

"Then I'll keep a period survival kit close to hand at all times."

My brows rise, totally intrigued. "Oh yeah?"

His grin deepens. "Yeah! I'll have chocolate, alcohol, painkillers and duct tape at the ready."

Pulling myself up to playfully straddle him, I link our hands together. "Why the duct tape? Are you going all kinkaliscious on me?" My lips sexily press together as I stare down at him with a sassy tilt to my head.

Looking very pleased with himself as his fingers playfully bend over mine, he cockily replies. "Nah, I'm just thinking that your snoring might get louder when you're on your period, so I'll just quieten you down with some duct tape." He dirtily laughs, pulling me nearer to his face. "And what's kinkaliscious? Do you want kinkaliscious, Clara Thorn?"

Needing to get him back about the snoring thing, I make him think that I am moving in for a delicious kiss. Just as our lips barely touch, I let go of his hands and start to tickle him on his weak spots around the sides of his waist. He begs for me to stop but my fingers won't relent. So Rhys grabs me by the hips and throws me under himself, pinning me to the bed. "You haven't answered my question, do you want kinkaliscious?" His eyes become hooded and sexily dark. "Do you?" His question is accompanied with a smutty smile that broadens across his divinely shadowed moonlit face.

Aroused and playful, I sneer up at him. "Maybe." I pretend to be bashful but I am anything but bashful when I am with Rhys. He brings something out of me that is too thrilling to ignore.

Rhys lowers himself down on my body, licking my throat and the lobe of my ears with the tip of his hot and teasing tongue. He does it so provocatively slow and light, I start to writhe and groan beneath him. Just as I am blissfully losing myself to him and his sinful tongue, the telephone downstairs starts to suddenly ring.

Rhys stills on top of me.

I still under him.

Rhys had told everyone, including his mum, that they were to only call if it was an emergency. Horny but now very worried, Rhys looks down at me with heat and an apology clouding his sage eyes before removing his naked weight from off of me. In the light of the moon, I watch him hurry out of the bedroom and down the wooden stairs to answer the persistently ringing telephone. For just a few moments, I lie there; recovering from what his tongue had just been doing to me. When I hear Rhys loudly curse from the living area of the cabin, I wrap a blanket around my bare body to find out what is going on.

"How could this happen, Mom?" Rhys is pacing, his face pale with worry yet tight with growing anger. "How long has she been gone?" He carefully listens, quick to butt in on the tense conversation. "Is she with this Leon guy?" He impatiently waits for his mums answer. "Check whether she has gone there and I'll get back as soon as I can, okay?" He's trying to sound calm on the line, but his whole demeanour tells me that he's not calm at all. "I know, mom...I know. Try not to worry and keep me updated. I will get to you as quick as I can. I'll talk to you soon. Bye." When he ends the call, he leans over the back of the sofa in such a depressed way. Nervously, I edge closer to him. As soon as he sees me, he grabs hold of my blanketed body; desperately clutching me against him. "Maci is pregnant and has walked out of the rehab. Mom is in a mess, she doesn't know what to do. Shit, I don't even know what to do."

Not sure of what to say or do either, I just try my best to comfort him. "I'm sure she'll be found, Rhys."

His anger quickly returns. "And then what? We tie her up until she's had this baby?" Pulling on my blanket, he looks down at me looking more sorry than ever. "Ignore me, Clara...I don't mean to take it out on you."

Standing closer, I assure him with a nervy smile. "You're upset, it's fine."

Holding me right against him, he apologises again. "It's not fine, I shouldn't be raising my voice at you. It's not you that I'm angry with, it's Maci. How could she be so stupid and get pregnant?"

Becoming aware of his nakedness and just how cold he feels, I take his hand and pull him over to the sofa so that we can talk things through with my blanket wrapped around us both. "You're cold." I soothingly say, draping the warm blanket right around his shoulders because I need him to know that I'm here for him.

Blankly staring straight ahead, Rhys looks totally drained. "I can't believe she has done this, Clara. She can't even care for herself, let alone a baby. That's of course if the baby even survives. You name it, my sisters on it. Babies are born with lots of problems who have mothers like Maci, don't they?" His despair becomes more audible, more desperate. He's trying to make sense of something that he has zero control over.

Not entirely sure what I should be saying, I just say what I think. "I'm not sure, Rhys...but Maci and the baby will be well looked after."

"That's if we find her."

"She will be." I remember a name I heard him mention, so I ask about it. "Who is Leon?"

Glancing sideways, Rhys looks at me with his worry etched all over his strained face. "He's apparently the father. Some washed up rock star that she met in her last rehab. Mom is trying to get his details, to find out if Mace has gone there." Rubbing both of his cheeks with his anxious hands, he talks with such bitterness. "I swear, if Maci has gone and got high, knowing that she is pregnant, I am forever done with her."

Again, I don't know what is the right thing to say. "She probably just needs some time to think things through." It's a weak suggestion, I know. The way Rhys talks about the person that his sister has become, isn't someone who thinks things through. Her addiction has made her become self absorbed and selfish. In fact, the only thing that she seems to truly care about, are drugs. Realising just how lame my suggestion truly is, I hold Rhys's hand by way of a silent apology. "Let's go and pack." At least that suggestion is a much more helpful one.

As I stand, Rhys wraps his arms around my blanketed legs as he sadly looks up at me from the sofa. "I'm so sorry, baby. I'm sorry that we have to cut things short here."

Kneeling down in front of him, I smile in his sad direction. "Rhys Ryan, you owe me nothing, certainly not an apology." More of my sympathetic smile is offered to him. "You need to get home, I understand that. I'm just happy to be where you are." Then I lovingly kiss the tip of his cold nose.

Rhys is glad of my gentle kiss and my kind understanding. I know it because his relieved sigh says it all. "I don't know what I have done to deserve having you come into my life, but boy, am I glad that you have." His cool lips earnestly meet mine in a firm and affectionately slow way before giving me the only smile he can summon. "We'll pack in the morning. Go up and get some sleep. I need to make some calls first, okay?"

Caressing one side of his face, I quietly answer. "Okay." Knowing that I'll not be able to sleep at all, but Rhys doesn't need to know that. He just needs me here, supporting him. He needs me to go upstairs and to leave him to make those important calls, which I do. We have a long journey ahead of us tomorrow and I think the emotional journey ahead for Rhys is going to be an even longer one.