His eyes widen slightly, did he hear her right?  Did she mean it they way he hoped she did?  Unthinking he slowly edges himself closer to her.  As his lips draw closer to her, his eyes close in anticipation of what he could only dream of before.   As his lips first touch her soft lips, so many emotions race through his body, lust, love, joy, sadness.  The kiss was so very short but everything he has felt over so very many months wrapped into that single kiss.  Realization quickly dawns on what he had just done, his eyes grow wide as he pulls back from her mumbling an apology, “I…I..am so…. sorry, I should not have.”<br/><br/>Lowering his head to look into her lap with silence drawing deeper, “Alliana, I need to tell you something, that …..well something I should have told you long ago, but simply could not.”  Taking a deep breath Michael begins, “over the last months that you have lived here, they have been such a wonderful experience and….and I have come to realize you mean much more to me than just a roommate or family.   I have tried to deny it and drink it away but.  I don't know....I know that my feelings do not belong but to deny them any longer….I simply can’t.”  A tear slips down his cheek almost begging, “please do not think any less of me for how I feel.”