For everyone whose been having those GZ tendencies lately You know who you are!

Muse #13 -Vacation all I ever wanted- Vacation time to get away...

~*~

As the sun began to burst its way into the lightening purple of the predawn, Max Evans and Maria DeLuca spread their beach towels out on the sand. Two towels, one blue and one green, side by side, the edges touching.

Max looked over at the woman next to him and remembered the reasons behind the creation of the relationship everyone said would never last. So far, they were all wrong.

Four years earlier in the same place as they were now, something happened that changed everything. Something that defied the law of rational and normal. Max smiled remembering he had muttered words to his previous love, Liz Parker, that ran along the lines that there was nothing great about normal.

"What are you looking at?" Maria DeLuca stood with her hands on her hips, her head tilted to one side.

"Something beautiful," Max tried to leer at her as she stood before him in one of the tiniest black bikinis in existence.

With an eye roll Maria had mastered years earlier, she laughed. "You already got me Max, flattery will get you..."

"Where?" He grinned.

"Right about here."

Max remembered the day where everything changed like it had happened minutes earlier.

The sun was just about to rise and Max was wide awake sitting at the kitchen table of the rented beach house. Liz Parker was still asleep and he could hear his best friend Michael Guerin snoring from the far bedroom that he was sharing with Maria.

Sipping on coffee and waiting patiently for someone to accompany him to watch the sunrise on the beach, Max didn't hear Maria DeLuca walk into the kitchen; nor did he notice her until she blocked his view by standing in front of him.

"Hi," he said quickly and set down his coffee mug.

"What are you doing up? It's like earlier than dawn." She picked up his coffee mug and took a sip. "Sweet, just the way I like it.

Max blushed. "I was just waiting for someone else to wake up; I wanted to go to the beach. Watch the sun rise..."

"I'm up," Maria nodded and then snorted. "In case you've gone deaf and can't hear Michael snoring you know why I'm up."

He nodded. "No, however that snoring may make us go deaf."

"If we could be so lucky!" Maria laughed. "Well, come on then Max. Let's go watch the sun rise and...Whatever."

Max grabbed his towel from a hook beside the backdoor and then handed Maria hers. Trying to be as quiet as they could, they stole out the backdoor and were immediately assaulted by the sounds of the waves as they capped into the beach and the smell of salt and seaweed.

"Over here," Max reached out and grabbed her hand and led her past the other houses beside their rental and down into a little cove. A slight inlet; shielding them from the public eye.

Maria dropped Max's hand and spun around. "This place is great! How come we have been here for three days and I never noticed it?"

Max shrugged and laid his towel out on the sand. "I just stumbled over here while walking around aimlessly yesterday. It's not like we're hidden, just off the beaten path, so to speak."

Maria giggled and spread her towel out next to Max's until the edges bordered one other. She pulled her T-shirt over her head and dropped it to the ground and then stepped out of the cutoff shorts.

Max swallowed as she noticed the way the cut of the emerald green bikini top accentuated Maria's breasts. His eyes fell to her bottoms and the thinness of the strings that appeared to hold the whole thing together.

"So," Maria sat down oblivious to the obvious way her bikini was affecting Max Evans. "Are you having a good little retreat here? I mean, it's been a long time since all of us got away like this, you know?"

Max sunk down next to her after stripping off his shirt. "It's a good time at the beach."

"Wow," Maria laughed. "That was so not an answer!"

Laying back with his arms crossed under his head, Max sighed. "Can we talk?"

"We used to all the time," Maria snarked and laid down on her side, her head propped up by her hand.

"Okay," Max tilted his head to face her, his eyes drawn to the curves of her breasts as gravity shifted them. "I don't know if I'm happy where I'm at anymore. I guess I'm kind of bored; I almost feel like I'm just walking to walk. I'm a breathing dead person. It's the same thing all the time and..."

"I understand," Maria nodded. "Trust me, I understand..." She turned her head as the orange fire from the sun kissed the water. "Sun's coming up. I need lotion." Digging around in her bag she produced a bottle of suntan lotion and handed it to Max. "Do you mind?"

He nodded too eagerly and sat up, his dark eyes twinkling. He waited until Maria turned away from him and faced the ocean before slathering his hands with lotion. "Ready?"

Maria nodded as her body tensed.

That's when it happened. As Max smoothed the creamy lotion onto the blonds back, his hands wandered over the bridge of her shoulders. He felt her body relax as his fingertips wormed their way underneath the straps of her bikini top.

Maria closed her eyes. The feel of foreign hands on her skin electrified her. The need for change roared through her. The rising sun was the sign of a new day. A new life.
She arched her back slightly as she felt his fingers leave her body. She smiled when she felt them at the clasp of her top.

Throwing caution to the wind, Max Evans unclasped her top and pulled the fabric up over her breasts. His hands immediately covered them, palming the globes of flesh he had never thought about before that morning.

"Max," Maria sighed as he pinched her hardening nipples.

"Maria," Max whispered her name in her ear as one hand slid down the expanse of her trim stomach. "Oh God..."

Maria's legs spread. She looked down and watched as one of Max's hands palmed her breast, the other slid underneath the thin fabric of her bikini bottom.

Max's breathing became altered as he slipped his fingers in between the wet folds of Maria DeLuca.

When Maria came, Max came back to life.

He grinned, that's when everything changed.

Feelings were hurt. Anger was rampant. Loud voices carried insults that were meant to damage.

Friendships were broken only to be mildly resumed after an extended cooling off period. Even though they would never return to their former stature; it was better than nothing.

"Whatcha thinking about?" Maria asked as she watched her fiancé drift back into the present.

"How we've come here for the last three years together and did the same thing every time," Max said and sat down on his towel. He pat the towel next to him and waited for her to join him.

"Played as the sun rose?" Maria winked and cocked her head to one side in a way that she knew drove Max crazy.

"It's a ritual now; one I don't want to break. I want to come here every year until the ocean swallows the land or the land swallows us and remember how we got to where we are today."

"That's why we take our annual vacation here, dear." Maria smiled and handed him a bottle of suntan lotion. "Why else would we have invested in some lotion front property?"

end