Desiree felt as though she was walking on air as she left her manager Geri's office the following afternoon. She hadn't gotten a wink of sleep the night before, due to the fact that she'd been making love all night to the man of her dreams, but she nevertheless felt as fresh as a daisy and alive as she ever had- also due to the fact that she'd been making love all night to the man of her dreams.

It seemed absurd, now that they'd finally consummated their feelings for one another, that they'd ever waited so very long to do so in the first place. What they now shared felt like the most natural thing in the world, organic and right, and although their relationship had only just begun, it now felt close to impossible for her to even be able to begin to imagine her life without him in it.

She wished she could have stayed there in bed forever with him, lying in his arms, twisting around in the sheets with him... And she would have, too, had he not suggested she do otherwise.

“You have your meeting with Geri to go to today, don't you?” he'd asked, as Desiree had begun trying to initiate the act of lovemaking for what must have been the fifth or sixth time over the course of the night. The sun had been coming up at that point, signifying an end to the night she might have liked to go on indefinitely.

“Yeah... So?” she said, her wrist a rising and falling lump in the sheets as she caressed his manhood to life, or tried to anyway. “I'll reschedule it. It's been almost a month since we stopped the tour, another day won't hurt anything...”

She'd begun to kiss the expanse of his chest, thinking she would lower herself down beneath the covers and wrap her lips around him, but he stopped her before she went any further.

“Hey, Desiree, listen. I really like you. And I've had an incredible time with you tonight. But... Well, if things are going to work between us, I need to feel like I'm not getting in the way of your life, or your career.”

“What? Don't be silly,” she said. “Geri won't care...”

He sighed. “It's not about Geri. It's about you. I don't ever want you to feel like I've held you back, or like I've distracted you from living the life you want for yourself. You were meant for great things, and I would hate myself for standing in the way of that. Plus, to be honest, I think it would be good for you to try and get back out there. I know that... Well, that what happened to Shade was traumatic for you. It was for me too... But I don't think it's healthy for you to stay around the house all the time. And I think if you're at a point where your comfortable going out again, you should... At the very least, consider going on with the tour. And at the very, very least, you should go to that meeting with Geri and see what she has to say about everything.

She knew he was probably right, about all of it, but she nevertheless gave him a stubborn look, rolling her eyes.

“Yes, dear,” she said sarcastically.

He sighed. “I know we only just... Officially became an item, Desiree, and maybe I seem like I'm being presumptuous telling you what to do.”

“As a matter of fact...” she began wryly, trailing off.

“But I didn't just start caring about you, or worrying about you. It's been my job for the past two months, and you better believe that now I'm taking it more seriously than ever. Not every threat a person has to worry about comes from the outside, you know...”

He'd put this just sweetly enough to get through to her, and in spite of her annoyance, and her desperate wish not to get out of this bed with Julian by her side, she had to admit he was right.

She sighed.

“You're perfect,” she said, summing up her feelings on the matter, then she leaned in and kissed him on the nose. “Alright, I'll go. But you have to promise me one thing if I do...”

“What's that?” he asked, and she gave him a devious smile.

“You have to meet me right back here again, the same time tonight...”

He grinned devilishly back at her, and capitulated only too gladly to her terms.

After that they'd stumbled out and slipped into the shower together. They didn't have sex, but he cleaned her up by rubbing a soaped up sponge all over her naked body, and letting the frothy white suds flow in glorious cascades along the curvature of her form (he also did quite a bit of sliding his slippery erection up and down between her soaped up buttocks while he washed her, and she made a mental note to pick up from this very interesting point later on that evening.)

He'd driven her to her manager's office then, but told her he wouldn't be able to pick her back up again as he had another small job to do before his shift at her place that evening. That was fine, she said, she would call one of her own drivers from home to come and pick her up once the meeting had concluded.

He'd given her a last peck on the lips and driven off, and Desiree had practically floated up the elevator shaft to Geri's floor of the towering office building, ecstatic as she felt about the developments of the previous evening.

The meeting in question went by breezily enough, with the newly pliable Desiree agreeing to almost everything Geri proposed to her.

Yes, she thought she would be back on her feet and ready to tour in the next two weeks.

Yes, she would gladly come in and help pick out a replacement drummer to fill in for at least the remainder of the world tour.

Yes, yes, and yes, she kept saying, actually unnerving Geri a bit, considering how understandably sullen and disagreeable Desiree had been in the weeks since Shade's murder.

Given the amount of money that was at stake here, however, she wasn't about to comment on the change in Desiree's mood, or question her cash cow's decision to let her milk it dry.

They agreed that there would be tightened security for all upcoming shows, but said that hopefully, given that the killer hadn't once raised his head since that first attack, and that the next several dates would be played across Asia and Europe, the potential risks would be relatively low as they proceeded.

Again, Desiree agreed, and by the time she left the meeting, she felt as giddy and as spirited as she had upon her arrival.

She decided that it was far too nice a day out to immediately return home as she'd told Julian she would do once the meeting was over, and reasoned that, since the tabloids were all still reporting that she was holed up inside her father's mansion, there would be no real harm in going out for the afternoon, perhaps to grab a bite of something to eat. She was dressed in a trench coat, wearing dark sunglasses and no makeup, and she thought that was probably enough not to alert any potential fans of her presence among they, the commoners (she thought this jokingly, but then pondered how weird it was that she would never get to be a normal civilian again for the rest of her life thanks to her status as a superstar.)

She shrugged this thought off, however, and made her way down the street- completely disregarding the key observation she'd made at the time of Shade's tragic death.

Things always plummet south at the moment when you're feeling the highest, and you have the least real reason to anticipate the danger...

_____

He couldn't believe it.

There she was, leaving her manager's office on foot, traipsing down the street like she wasn't the biggest effing deal in the entire western hemisphere right now, and as though her drummer hadn't just been brutally murdered at one of her shows less than a month ago.

Jesus Christ, he couldn't believe it...

Was this really the same girl who'd spent weeks on end locked up inside her father's gated mansion out of fear, and who'd had to hire a personal bodyguard just to look after her at night she was so afraid of being his next victim?

He thought about it for a moment, and then pieced the puzzle together in his mind.

“They probably started fucking,” he surmised accurately, aware as he was that love (and sex) could really screw up a person's mind if they weren't careful, as he knew well from experience.

In any case, the why didn't really matter, so much as the fact that her carelessness had just opened up a serious window of opportunity for him to enact his plan. He'd been waiting for weeks at this point for her to come out of hiding. There was no way in hell he was going to try and infiltrate that gated, well secured mansion after he'd nearly been caught by Julian fleeing the concert. He didn't think law enforcement had any especially clear photos of him to go by- just the blurry snapshots from street cameras as he'd fled the scene, and the sort of but not really accurate police sketch that had been distributed based on Julian's description of him wearing sunglasses. But if he'd gotten caught breaking into a place like that, which seemed highly likely, and the material they did have was linked back to him, well- that was pretty much lights out for him, now wasn't it?

This whole thing was about revenge, and going down like that would be an even greater humiliation for him than the already numerous legion of them that he'd already been forced to suffer through.

No, he'd had to wait it out, to bide his time until the ideal moment struck, before he made another go at his plan.

And, lo and behold, now that ideal moment had just presented itself to him, traipsing down the street in broad daylight, in a trench coat and sunglasses.

It was almost too perfect, he thought, and this time he was not going to screw it all up...

He waited until Desiree had made it several blocks down before he started his engine, so that she would remain oblivious to the fact that she was being followed. Then he cruised slowly on behind her, thinking of a specific block up ahead that was scarcely populated, and that would be the perfect place to leap out of his car and grab her.

He stopped suddenly, as Desiree had done the same a few blocks ahead. He pulled quickly into a spot to avoid detection, and looked through his window to see that two eagle-eyed fan girls had spotted the international pop star in spite of her impeccable disguise (sarcasm implied.) They were begging her for her autograph, and Desiree agreed, on the condition that they didn't tell a soul about it and they be on their way the moment she'd given it to them.

He waited, and waited, for what felt like a much longer period of time than it actually was. Then, at last the kids ran off giddily, and Desiree smiled after them, the naive fool that she was.

She turned, and continued on her way.

There were no more interruptions from that point onward, and he drove up behind her as stealthily as he could, certain that at any moment she would turn back to look at him and break out in a run- she never did.

Only at the very last second did she have any indication that anything at all was amiss.

She heard the click of the car door opening, and turned dreamily to see what was intruding upon the euphoria of her afternoon. Then she saw the man leap out at her, his eyes concealed by dark glasses and a damp rag clutched in his hand.

It took her mind too long to make the connection between what she saw and what she knew must be happening, and by the time the appropriate neurons in her brain fired to allow her to run away from it, the man's hand was around her wrist, gripping her fiercely, disallowing any possibility of escape.

She screamed, but the rag was up against her nose and mouth before she'd completed a single note, and her eyes immediately began to water.

Ether...

She kicked and flailed in his arms, struggling to free herself, but she knew it was no use.

He was far too strong, and the ether far too potent, for her to have even the remotest hope in hell of breaking herself free of his grip.

The last thought that flitted through her head as it fell to one side, and faded toward unconsciousness, was that she'd seen that man before.

Somewhere- though she didn't know where. But it had been a long time ago, so long ago that his memory was now little more than a single, glowing light in her brain.

That light was extinguished, along with all others, as she faded into unconsciousness.