He followed her gaze. "So it is." He sighed. "It's been a long time since we've done this."
"Since we came back to Port Charles." She agreed. "I've missed us making love all night long and being up to greet the new day together." She sighed. "We haven't been even making love that much lately."
"It's a little hard to get in the mood." Sonny replied. "When you're encouraging that Aussie worm to send you flowers and all sorts of other inappropriate gifts."
"You know why I did that." She said in her own defense. "I was just doing it for you."
"I think if you're honest with yourself." Sonny retorted. "You were also attracted to Jax and the sort of lifestyle he could give you." He added. "You have a need to be accepted by the right people. With Jax you would be."
She didn't agree or disagree with that. "What happened to us." Brenda wanted to know. "There was a time when no one existed for us but each other. What happened to that?"
"Life happened." Sonny smiled sadly at her as he possessively caressed her thigh. "We let other people come into our relationship and it made things change between us."
"I think the thing that hurt me most." She confessed. "Was when you said you were married not dead."
"It's true." Sonny told her. "And the same goes for you. There will come times we're attracted to other people." He added a bit contritely. "But I shouldn't have said it. Unfortunately, after putting up with weeks of you encouraging Jax, I wanted to give you a taste of your own medicine. That's probably part of the reason things went so far between Carly and I."
"I'm not sexually attracted to Jax." Brenda suddenly declared.
"I know." He told her. "I wasn't sexually attracted to Lily, either. It was her understanding of the mob that made her attractive to me. It was always such a struggle to have both you and the mob in my life, but it was easy with Lily."
"Just like it's easy with Jax." Brenda replied.
"We'll be attracted to people who would be easy to be with." Sonny declared. "People who the people from our own words would easily accept us with, and not try to throw up the obstacles that they throw up for us. People who the people in our worlds wouldn't constantly tell us we shouldn't be with, instead they tell us this is who we should be with instead of being with each other." He added. "But we'll never be able to feel about them the way we do about each other and when were with them we'll always be wanting to be with each other and we'll never be truly happy or satisfied with them the way we are with each other. We'll be settling for something less than what we could have together because it's easier to be with them than it is with each other."
"We let things go too far this time." Brenda announced. "We can be attracted to other people, but we can't ever let them into our relationship again, especially now that we're married. It'll end up destroying our marriage like it almost just did, only next time we may not be so lucky."
"You can't let me think you want another man." He told her. "You know how I get. When you shoved Miguel in my face, I finally snapped and got involved with Lily. And when you shoved Jax in my face, I almost got involved with Carly."
"It works both ways, Sonny." She reminded him. "You completely closed yourself off from me when we got back to Port Charles. You wouldn't tell me how it was making you feel to be treated the way people were treating you and how it made you feel for them to keep refusing to let you make a fresh start in this town." She added. "If you had told me how you were feeling, I wouldn't of never started the stuff up with Jax. It was the only thing I could think of to bring the old Sonny back and it almost ended up destroying us."
"We were both to blame." He agreed. "We always are. But we pulled back before we self-destructed, this time, so maybe we're finally growing up and finally learning what it takes to make our relationship work."
"The two years we were on the run we didn't have these kind of problems." Brenda pointed out. "How could we do so well when we were on the run, but when all the danger is over and we're back home and safe, in a matter of weeks our relationship is self-destructing right before our eyes."
"Maybe it was because it was just us." Sonny suggested. "No one knew us and all we had was each other, but in Port Charles people know us a little too well and it's no longer us against the world. When we were on the run, there were no two different worlds we came from, we inhabited the same world. We were on the run from the mob and we created a world for ourselves that just included you and me. But in Port Charles people from our own separate worlds begin to pull us apart and back into our own separate worlds that we come from.."
"And we let them." Brenda sighed sadly. "That's the problem. We can't let them. In Port Charles of all places it should be us against them. We know none of them want us to be together. That's where we made our mistake. It stopped being us against them and we can't let that happen again."
Letitia carried Michele into their bedroom. "Someone wants to see her Mommy and Daddy." Sonny held out his arms and took his daughter from her. Since Jason never pretended to be Michael's father, Letitia had never gone to work for Carly as Michael's nanny, so the minute he and Brenda returned to town, Sonny had hired her to be Michele's nanny instead.
Brenda watched as Sonny settled Michele on his chest and began to coo at her. "It's disgusting." She declared.
"What is?" Sonny looked up at her for a minute, hating to take his attention away from his daughter.
"You enjoyed yourself making her." Brenda ticked off points on her fingers. "You didn't have to gain an ounce or carry her inside your body. You definitely didn't have to go through the agony of child birth and look at her. If someone looked at her they wouldn't even know I'm her mother. She looks like a cloned female version of you." She added. "It's just disgusting."
"Let's just hope that's where the resemblance ends." Sonny said with great feeling. "The last thing we want on our hands is a female Sonny."
"Why?" She tickled the baby under her chin and she started to laugh. "You have a good heart. Our daughter could do a lot worse than being exactly like you."
"I'm moody and broody." Sonny ticked off the points against their child being like him. "I run away from true love like it's a disease I'm afraid of catching. I constantly make the wrong choices. I have a self-destructive streak. I have emotional problems galore." He added. "The worst thing that could happen to Michele is if she's exactly like me. Better she look like me and be like you."
"Oh, that would be so much better." Brenda replied sarcastically. "I have daddy issues. I'm selfish and I'm self-absorbed. I have emotional problems galore. I was also a drug addict." She added, as she took his chin playfully in her hand and gave it a shake. "The only way I want our child to be like me is to be even more tenacious than me when she finds the love of her life and he keeps trying to run away from her like her Daddy did. Otherwise, I think it's best she be like neither of us."
"Agreed." Sonny laughed. "She can look like me and be like neither one of us."
A comfortable silence descended over the room as Sonny continued to play with the baby and Brenda got a bit moody and broody. "So." She finally broke the silence. "Our love is not what it used to be because let outsiders intrude upon our relationship." She added. "It all goes back to me letting Ned and Lois talk me into wearing that wire. That's when it changed between us."
"Brenda." He sighed. "Even without that happening, our love would have changed. It couldn't have stayed the way it was forever with us being sexually obsessed with each other." He added. "We're married and we have a child. You're still a drug in my blood and I still love you with the same intensity and passion, but in a more quieter way now. It's different than the love we first had. In some ways it's not as good as what we first had, but in some ways it's also better."
"How is it better?" Brenda wanted to know. "And how is it not as good?" She wasn't about to let this go, yet.
He ran his fingers in his hair in frustration. "It's not easy to put into words." Then he thought about it for a moment. "When we were first together our love was this wild and tempestuous thing. Me going after Miguel with a shard of glass. You cutting off all your hair. It was like a rollercoster ride. And while it was exciting, it's not something I miss." He added. "When you wore the wire for the cops, I felt like you had reached into my chest and ripped out my heart. Then you started screwing Miguel and rubbing my nose in it. There were times I would wonder how could a man without a heart still be in love with you. It was like you'd seeped into every part of my being."
"I felt the same way when you married Lily." Brenda confessed. "And left me standing in the rain when you learned she was pregnant. I felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest, but I still loved you. No matter how hard I tried to stopped loving you, deep down the love was still there. It just wouldn't go away no matter how hard that I wished it would."
"And with each thing we did to each other." Sonny interjected. "That should have destroyed our love, and that it survived, it just grew stronger and stronger." He stopped himself from adding that when he thought she was dead he had killed the part of himself that had loved her and had bottled up in a place so deep inside of himself the love that he felt for her, that even when she came back, he wouldn't let it come out, again. Even though there were a few times that it almost did.
"When I think back on how I loved you when we were first together." Sonny continued. "It seems an immature and paltry love compared to the way I love you now. Sure, we had this volatile passion between us, but we also did a lot of damage to each other. If I were given the choice to go back to that time before the wire and Miguel, I don't think I'd want to go."
"But we also would have never been attracted to other people, either." That was still sticking in Brenda's craw. She wanted Sonny attracted to no one but herself, and she didn't like the fact he'd been attracted to that cheap tramp Carly Quartermaine.
"Come on, Brenda." Sonny called her on this. "Even after you fell in love with me, are you telling me you weren't still attracted to Jagger Cates? You know, the guy you were so desperate to have that you plastered nude pics of Karen Wexler around school that you'd secretly taken while she was taking a shower in the girl's locker room? And would you have jumped in the sack with Miguel so fast, if you hadn't been just a little attracted to him, as well?" He suddenly laughed. "Brenda, no one person can be everything to another person. They'll always be some other person that can offer you something that your significant other can't, even if that significant other is your soul mate, true love or love of your life. It's just human nature. The key is to think about what you have and if it's really worth trashing what you have for what you might have with another person and if it'll be as good as what you have right now."
"So what are you saying?" Brenda wanted clarification.
"That even in our sexually obsessed with each other days." Sonny flashed his dimples wickedly at her. "We were both attracted to other people. People who ended up in our beds when we screwed things up between us. Just like even though our love has changed, were still attracted to other people now, the only difference is now we won't let them in our beds." He added. "So even though our love has changed, it's also still the same. When I look into your eyes, if I don't try to fight it or I'm not ticked off at you, no one in the room exists for me but you."
"And my lips still burn." She suddenly smiled at him. "Hours after you've kissed me."
"So I still can make you burn for my touch?" He would have rolled on top of her and began to make love to her, if their daughter was nestled cosily on top of his chest.
"You know you can." She replied, feeling much better about things.
"Happy now?" He knew she was.
"Almost." She surprised him by replying. "I won't be truly happy until I do something about the way people are treating you."
"Brenda, let it go." He suggested. "I'm used of people treating me like this. They've been treating me like this since the day I was born."
"I don't care." She retorted. "It's not right and I intend to put a stop to it."