Word Count:
Date: 9/27/05
Series: S2
Rating: M+
Category: Relationship
Pairing/Focus: Lee/Kara
Warnings: Ladida, lotsa sexy :)
Summary: After Kara's return from Caprica, she and Lee spend
some quality time together on the Astral Queen.
Spoilers/Disclaimers: Spoilers through "Home (part
1)." I don't own the characters! They belong to lots of folks at Sci-Fi who
are not and never shall be me. But damn if they aren't fun to toy with. ;)
"Still love me?"
Kara Thrace, ace pilot and possibly still a lieutenant in the Colonial military if they didn't count her recent desertion to Caprica, grinned as she chased after her immediate superior with the kind of dogged determination that made her the best Viper pilot in the fleet. Lee, for his part, was doing an able impersonation of a Cylon raider, dodging around corners and avoiding all attempts at interception. It had been a good ten minutes since their little chat in the maintenance bay, and she'd decided she wasn't going to let him walk away. There was just too much fun to be had in this situation.
"Kara, I told you, I didn't mean it like that." Lee sounded exasperated, which just made Kara grin wider.
"Really?" She chuckled. "And here I thought saying I love you was a pretty straightforward expression of a person's feelings." Whistling innocently, she paused in her pursuit, took aim, and hit him squarely in the back of the head with her Pyramid ball. That ought to stop him, she thought smugly.
It did. She was nothing if not brilliant when it came to pissing off Lee Adama. "Kara!" he snapped, turning around and rubbing the back of his head as the ball bounced away into a corner. No doubt the hit had stung; she had a great arm. "Cut it out!"
"Still love me?" she asked, batting her lashes and rocking coquettishly back and forth.
"At this rate, you're lucky I don't shoot you."
"You'd never do that. You love me, remember?" She'd cornered him in some kind of office; abandoned, judging by the layer of dust on the furniture. At least that meant he'd have to get past her if he wanted to keep running, as the only way out was the same way they'd come in. It made her shoulder blades itch, feeling the yawning space of the Astral Queen's deserted management corridors stretching out behind her.
"Okay, fine." Lee threw up his hands in defeat. "You've got me. Let's talk about this."
Kara frowned. That hadn't been the plan. She didn't want to talk - if they talked, he was going to tell her he only meant he loved her as a friend, and she didn't want to hear that. She wanted him to kid around with her, to go along with the game, so she could keep deluding herself a little longer that he'd suffered a slip of the subconscious tongue. The last thing she wanted to do was get into a deep conversation with him. Undoubtedly that would lead to conversations about other things - things like Caprica and what had happened there - and she really wasn't ready to discuss that. "Oh, I think we're fine," she teased, hoping to dissuade him at least for a moment longer. "I'm not going to let you weasel out of it by talking about it."
"Kara?"
"Lee?"
"You're a pain in the ass."
Kara beamed. "It's a gift."
He laughed softly and she felt her own muscles relax; she'd bought a little time.
For the first time since setting foot on the Astral Queen, Kara let herself look - really look -- at Lee Adama, and what she saw wasn't pretty. Dark circles hung under his eyes, as much from stress and guilt as from lack of sleep. She could count on one hand the number of times she'd seen Lee with stubble, let alone any kind of substantial facial hair, and this was one of them. It made him look rough and harried, like some kind of wanton pirate. But that was nothing compared to seeing him out of uniform. She'd seen him in his off-duty gear before, but somehow Lee didn't seem like Lee without the promise of his crisp blue uniform or the slick material of his flight suit. He was wearing camouflage gear - no doubt scrounged from the Galactica -- and it just reinforced how much things had changed in the weeks she'd been gone.
For some reason that made her angry. Certain things weren't supposed to change. Lee was supposed to be the one who played by the book; she was supposed to be the troublemaker. He was supposed to be the one bailing her out of hack, not the one rebelling against authority and splitting the fleet in half. Just when the frak had the universe gone insane? Had it started with the attack on Caprica, or had it always been like this?
"You know," she mused, "I don't know about you, but I've had a tough few weeks. It's nice to know I had someone pining away for me back with the Fleet."
The smile was small at first, but it was all Kara needed to know she'd won this hand. "You think you've had it bad?" he said. "I committed mutiny, broke a military prisoner out of hack, and tore the Fleet apart." His smile broadened.
Kara grinned. "Yeah, well, I got shot by Cylons. So we're even."
Oh, dammit, wrong thing to say. She'd just managed to steer him away from talking, and now he was frowning again and looking ready to chat. "Shot?" he asked, furrowing his brow and moving towards her.
Kara rolled her eyes as he started running his hands up and down her arms, as if searching for bullet holes in the fabric of her field gear. "I'm fine, all right?" she assured him, putting up with his worried touches because it had been too long since she'd seen him. They hadn't been on the best of terms when she'd jumped to Caprica, and though she'd never admit it to his face, that had been gnawing at her. "Good as used."
Lee glared at her, his patented I know you're lying to me, Kara glare, which always made her feel two feet tall and three years old. "Show me," he demanded.
Kara snorted. "No."
"I'm giving you an order, Lieutenant."
"In case you hadn't noticed, neither of us is in the military anymore, Captain."
"Kara, please?"
She sighed. "You're not going to give this up, are you?"
He shook his head. "Not in this lifetime."
"I still owe you a black eye for stealing my ball earlier. You're going to earn another one if you keep bugging me."
"Let me see the gunshot and I won't even fight back."
Kara gave him an impish smile. "Aww, it's no fun when you don't fight back," she teased, but obliged him by tugging up the hem of her form fitting gray jacket to reveal the bandage taped to her abdomen. "See? Just a scratch."
Lee slid down to his knees in front of her to get a better look at the field dressing, and Kara felt a tremor work down her spine as his breath coasted over her stomach. There had been reasons they weren't on good terms when she'd jumped to Caprica; reasons involving a certain Vice President of the Colonies and a stupid, stupid night spent drinking too much ambrosia and fantasizing about this same man who was kneeling in front of her, running his fingers in maddening lines along the edges of the surgical tape on her belly.
"This looks bad," he said, openly dismissing her claims to the opposite. "How long ago did it happen?"
Kara shook her head, fighting the urge to lay her hand on his hair. "A while. I was out cold for most of the time, so I can't be exact."
He looked up at her, blue eyes filled with concern. Lee worried too much about too many people - she didn't want to be one more burden he had to bear on top of all the rest. "There are surgeons left on Caprica?"
She didn't want to go where this discussion was going. She'd vaguely mentioned the Resistance to Lee, but she didn't want to tell him anymore than that. She didn't want to tell him where she'd been, or who had saved her life, or what she'd seen while she was there. It was all too raw in her own memory and she wasn't willing to bring that all back to the surface, especially not when Lee had been up against an emotional battering ram of his own in recent weeks. "No," she murmured, and this time she did let her hand rest on his head. It felt good, this familiar warmth between them; comforting. Lords, she'd missed having someone she could talk to. "Not really."
"This is professional work, Kara," he said, but his voice was careful. He knew she was holding something back.
"I know."
"And there were no surgeons?"
"No."
"I see." And he did. That was one of the things she'd always marveled about where Lee was concerned. On some things he could be thick as hull plating, but other times he was surprisingly perceptive. It was what made him a good CAG, and an even better friend, though at times she didn't appreciate his uncanny ability to know what she was thinking.
"Guess they didn't want me dead," she murmured, idly running her fingers through his hair. She remembered Sharon's words to her - "You have a destiny," -- but what did that mean? Yeah she had a destiny. To blow as many Cylons out of the sky as she could before she died in a blaze of fire and glory. That was destiny. Everything else was just window dressing.
"Any idea why?" Lee was treading carefully around the topic. He'd shifted his gaze back to her stomach, his fingers resting on the white bandage. The pressure wasn't uncomfortable so Kara didn't bother to bat his hand away. Besides, if she did he might make her take her hand away from his hair, and it felt good as it ran between her fingers.
"Nope." It wasn't a lie, just not the full truth. Sharon hadn't chosen to elaborate on the destiny thing and bringing it up now would just lead to more questions she couldn't answer.
"I see." Was what he said. What he meant was, You're lying again.
Kara felt his fingers slide lower, tugging faintly at the waistband of her pants to reveal the second, smaller scar below the gunshot wound. "What's this?" he asked, genuinely curious.
Kara swallowed, resisting the urge to tighten her fingers in his hair. "Don't know," she murmured again. When he looked up sharply, she shrugged. "Really, Lee. I don't know."
"Any thoughts?"
The smirk that twisted her lips felt ugly and cold. "The Cylons wanna have babies," she cooed in a sing-song, childish voice. Visions of those women strapped to their cold steel tables, tubes invading their most private regions, swam through her head, and she felt suddenly nauseous and angry and wanted to hit something. Anything. Maybe Lee would let her give him that black eye now.
She was jarred from her thoughts by Lee's hands grabbing her hips and pulling her down to kneel in front of him. His eyes were blazing, though not with anger. "What?" he demanded.
Kara tried to push his hands away but he held on. "What, you think Sharon's some kind of fluke?" she snapped. The urge to hit something was suddenly overwhelmingly strong as rage and terror she'd been suppressing since Caprica bubbled at last to the surface. "You think she's carrying Helo's baby because she's got some kind of defect that made it happen? They've been working on this for a long time, Lee. A long time. But they're frakking machines! They're made, not born! They can't do it, so they need US. Don' t you get it?" She grabbed his hand and pressed it over the scar.
"We're just little incubators for them," she snarled, pressing his fingers into her skin, feeling the newly healed flesh of her gunshot wound pulling, pulling, aching. She didn't care. She wanted the pain; it reminded her she could feel it; she wasn't some frakking robot. "Little incubators and little egg farms."
"Kara, stop it," Lee said, voice firm as he tried to pull his hand away.
She ignored him and pressed closer. She hadn't realized how much she wanted to say all this; spit venom and vulgarity; let loose all the dark thoughts she'd kept cooped up in her head since waking up in that bed at the hospital. The pain in her abdomen was growing now, spreading out and feeding her anger. She'd vowed she didn't want to talk about this, and now she couldn't keep her mouth shut. "You're lucky they just want the women," she whispered, so close to his face he flinched back from the spite in her voice. "Else they'd milk you dry, flyboy. You've got pretty genes."
"Kara!" This time he succeeded in wrenching his hand away and the sudden lack of pain left Kara feeling disoriented. His hands clutched her face, holding her steady, and she welcomed the focus it gave her as she found his sharp blue eyes.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, and she was. She felt herself deflate as she reached up to hold his wrists. "You didn't see them, Lee. Those women. They weren't even treated like cattle. They were like machines. Individual baby factories, every one of them." Tears burned in her throat, but she swallowed them angrily as Lee's hands tightened on her cheeks. "They were going to put me in there, Lee. I was going to be one of those women."
"But you're not," he reminded her, his thumbs running soothingly over her cheekbones. "You're here now."
"Am I?" This time she dropped her own hand to the scar on her belly. "How do I know I'm all here? Lords, Lee, I don't even know what they did to me. I don't know if they took something out or put something in." She laughed; a hollow, humorless chuckle, because otherwise she was going to cry.
"Hey." His hands slid down from her face and she felt him wrap his arms around her, pulling her close to his chest and holding her there. "Whatever happened, we'll get through it, all right? We'll find out what they did and then we'll kill them all."
Kara laughed at that, but this time it felt real. A little snuffly, perhaps, but real. "Wasn't that always the plan anyway?"
"This gives it more appeal."
She sighed, pressing closer and letting her face rest in the warm crook of his neck. That was another thing that never changed: Lee always smelled like Lee. It was a combination of soap, salt and skin, sometimes with the lingering scent of aftershave. The latter was missing now, thanks to his week's worth of beard, but the rest was still there, as familiar and welcoming as a comfortable pillow.
"You know," she murmured, trying to inject some levity into the conversation as his hands rubbed up and down her back, "this is unfair on multiple levels."
"How do you mean?" he asked near her ear.
"I mean I could be the mother to any number of Cylon babies, and I didn't even get to do it the fun way."
His laugh was something she hadn't heard in a long time. "Yeah, well, how much fun would it have been anyway?"
"I don't know. Maybe lots." She grinned against his neck. "I mean, come on. They've got to have some stamina, right?"
"Are you saying human males have no stamina?" Kara could hear his smile.
"Maybe some of them do, but none I've met."
"Maybe you just haven't been with the right guys."
"Oh yeah?" She raised her head, arching an eyebrow at him. "You offering?"
Lee grinned at her. "Sorry, Kara, but you're out of commission." He patted her stomach where the bandage covered her gunshot wound.
"You think so?" That got his attention. It got her own for that matter. She hadn't meant it to sound so throaty, but then she hadn't expected to feel Lee's fingers brushing over her navel either.
"Yeah, I do actually," Lee answered, but he wasn't playing around this time. There was an edge of authority in his voice that was unmistakable. "You're hurt, Kara."
"So?" She deliberately wrapped her arms around his neck as she straddled his lap with her knees. "If I don't mind, neither should you."
"Well I do."
"Oh come on, Lee," Kara all but purred, running her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. "You think I don't see the way you look at me when you think I don't notice? You think a girl could miss that? Haven't you ever seen me looking back? Besides, you've already told me you loved me."
This was entirely the wrong way to go about doing this, for entirely the wrong reasons, and Kara knew it. Lee would never respond to this kind of predatory action, brought on by her need to forget every damn thing she'd seen on Caprica, from the acid yellow sky to the women strapped down like chattel on their surgical tables. Lee was a gentleman, and her best friend, and he'd never let her get away with prostituting herself like this. But she couldn't stop herself; she really couldn't. It almost worried her how far her actions were going as her fingers slid down his chest, parting the camouflage jacket and skimming along the neckline of his customary double-tanks beneath. Almost, but not really.
"Don't tell me you don't want this, Lee," she murmured, bending forward to press her mouth against his throat. "Don't tell me you haven't dreamed about it. Lords, it's all I've thought about since I got off that frakking planet."
"Kara..." His voice was husky, but the moan was belied by the steel in his hands as he gripped her arms and pushed her back. "No. Not like this."
Kara rolled her eyes. "Stop trying to be the frakking CAG and let me frak the CAG, all right?" she said, bending her head down to find his lips, only to have him push her back even further. "Dammit, Lee, stop fighting me!"
"We're not going to do this, Kara," he said firmly, his jaw hardening in that infuriating way of his. It made her want to punch him; hard. "You're not in the right mindset."
She stared at him for a good three seconds before she started laughing. "Mindset?" she snorted. "Lee, you're trying to tell me that this has anything to do with frakking mindset?" She reached between them and ran her fingers over the obvious bulge in his pants. She knew immediately it was the wrong move when his eyes turned the color of arctic ice. Smart, Starbuck. Real frakking smart.
"You see?" he hissed. "This is exactly what I mean. Is this really what you want, Kara? A quick frak on a prison ship's floor? Is that really all I mean to you?"
Kara didn't know what to say to that. Correction, she knew exactly what to say to that: no. Of course he meant more to her than that. If she had her way, they'd have done this weeks ago after the Colonial Day party, doing very improper things in a proper bed on proper sheets. But she was Starbuck, and Starbuck didn't take her walls down for anyone. Not even Lee Adama. Not even for the frakking god of sunlight, healing, music and all the good things humanity supposedly stood for. Oh no, Starbuck kept those walls up high. And so the words went unspoken and his eyes changed from arctic to glacial.
"I don't know what the hell there is between us, Kara, but this isn't happening like this, understood?" he said, sounding so much like her commanding officer and so little like her best friend that she squared her shoulders in the face of his words. "If this ever happens, if we ever get to this point, it's going to be because we want to, do you hear me? Not because you need something to help you forget."
"I don't need anything," she said through gritted teeth, furious at him for reading her mind again. Tears were building in her throat and she told them to go to hell. "I sure as hell don't need you."
"No, of course you don't," Lee said, in a voice of such awe it took Kara slightly by surprise. "You don't need anyone, do you, Starbuck? All you need is yourself. Everyone else is just a blip on your radar screen. A useful way to pass the time and maybe have a little fun, but nobody you need. Because you can survive anything - Caprica, Cylons, an apocalypse -- so long as you have a smoke, a drink and a frak to fill your time."
"You asshole," she snarled, hating him all the more because he was making her want to cry. "You self-righteous, arrogant asshole."
"I'm going to leave now, Kara, and we're going to forget this happened. Understood?" With a forceful shove, he pushed her off his lap and stood. She hated that he was towering over her like some kind of avenging angel, backlit by the dim red lights that were this level's only illumination.
"You know, Kara, I do look at you," he said, almost like an afterthought. "I look at you, and I ask myself, How could someone who's got so much to offer manage to screw herself up so badly?"
That did it. With a howl of rage, she launched herself off the floor and flew at him, right hook connecting squarely with his jaw. They stumbled with the force of her momentum until Lee's back connected soundly with the wall. She flailed at him with fists and feet, not bothering to notice that he wasn't fighting back. Not bothering to notice that his arms slowly went from trying to fend her off to wrapping around her waist and holding her upright against his chest. Not bothering to care that, after a few minutes, the only thing she really wanted to do was stand there with her face in his throat and never, ever move again.
"Feel better now?" he murmured near her ear after she'd calmed down.
"Beating up on you always makes me feel better," she muttered and felt his chest flex with a laugh.
"Yeah, well, I think you more than called in those two black eyes you owed me," he chuckled, stroking her hair. "In fact I'd say I'm covered for the next five or six arguments."
"Which'll get you till the day after tomorrow if you don't piss me off too much."
"I'll see what I can do."
"You do that." Sighing, she raised her head and gave him a weary smile, only to have it turn into a frown. "Lords, Lee, you could have fought back a little," she chided, wincing as she fingered a red patch on his cheekbone; he'd be lucky if that didn't blossom into a bruise. "I only wanted to smack you around a bit, not make you look like a mince pie."
Lee half-shrugged and gave her a small smile. "You've had a lot of anger bottled up inside since you got back," he told her. "You needed to hit something and I was the softest available target. It was either let you wail away at me or risk you breaking your hand hitting the walls, and then you wouldn't be much good to anybody, let alone yourself. I took the path of least resistance."
"Literally. Frak." She shook her head and took his face between her palms. "Don't ever do that again, all right? Gods above, Lee, you take way too much on yourself sometimes. Next time I need to hit something, just find me a pillow."
"And if there're no pillows available?"
"The XO will do in a pinch."
He laughed again, leaning his head back against the wall. "I'll remember that."
"You'd better, or I'll have to teach you a lesson."
They stood in companionable silence for a while, Kara gently stroking her fingers along his cheek, her eyes running over the contours of his face, while Lee quietly watched her, his arms loosely wrapped around her waist.
"Lee," she murmured.
"Mmm?"
"Stay with me."
He sighed, closing his eyes. "Kara, we just went over this."
"I know we did. And it's bullshit, Lee. Yeah, maybe I'm feeling a little needy right now, but that doesn't change one thing."
"And that is?"
"I want you."
That got his eyes open. "Starbuck."
"Don't start pulling my call sign into this," she warned. "This is between Kara and Lee, not Starbuck and Apollo. And right now, Kara wants Lee. Got it?" Sighing, she pressed her hands against his cheeks and rested their foreheads together. "Or maybe you don't get it. Lords, Lee, sometimes you're dense as lead pipes."
"Sta- Kara. Even if we were to do something, now isn't the time." One of his hands stole around to the front of her body to rest on her stomach. "You're hurt, remember?"
The idiot. The chivalrous, self-sacrificing, glorious idiot. Raising her eyes to meet his again, she said, "Lee, I was stranded on Caprica, shot by Cylons and more or less gang raped by toasters." He winced at her description, but she wasn't pulling any punches. Truth was truth. "Do you really think anything you do is going to hurt me? The only thing you could do that would hurt me more than any of that would be to walk out that door right now instead of staying here with me. I don't need you to be my knight in shining armor. I don't need you to rescue me. I just need you to be Lee. Can you just be Lee for me? Please?"
He stared at her for a long time, but Kara wasn't going to back down. She knew he was searching for something in her eyes, but whether it was hesitation or determination she wasn't sure; likely the former. Lee already knew she was always determined when it came to getting what she wanted.
"So when we wake up afterwards and everything's changed, what will you say to me then?" he murmured.
Kara gave him one of her patented slow grins. "Are you saying you're going to fall asleep on me, Captain?" Her fingers combed back through his hair. "Because that's no way for a gentleman to treat a lady."
Lee answered her grin in kind. "Show me a lady and I'll act like a gentleman."
"Oh, I'm going to make you pay for that, Adama."
"I'm counting on it."
"Is that a yes then?"
"No."
"Oh?"
"This is a yes."
And he kissed her.
There was no denying this - Lee Adama could kiss. Not just mash his lips on top of hers in a wild frenzy of teeth and tongues. Oh no, this was an art form, and Lee had always excelled at art history. Lee'd always excelled at everything, so it really should have been no surprise he'd know how to kiss like a fiend. The surprise to Kara was her own reaction. She'd done her fair share of kissing, to the point where she could write the manual on good technique versus poor technique, but this one took the book and threw it out the window. It was like being kissed by a Viper at half-throttle; hard, fast, smooth, but restrained to the point of breaking; to the point that you knew if you edged the stick forward a hairsbreadth further you'd be pushing more Gs than a giggle. Oh, frak, if this was Lee at half-strength, Lee at full-strength was going to kill her.
But Lords, what a way to go.
When they broke apart, she was pleased to see he was just as out of breath as she was, and even, she fancied, a little cross-eyed. Good. He might be a good kisser, but she was the one with the experience to compare him to. "So what do you say, Captain," she panted, gripping the back of his neck to keep him close, even as his arms wound tightly around her waist. "Up for a quick frak on a prison ship's floor?"
Lee managed a wide smile despite his lack of breath. "Are you kidding?" he said, his fingers dipping beneath the hem of her shirt to skim the top of her pants. "I'm a CAG. CAGs do it on the couch."
<CENTER>---------------------------------</CENTER>
The Astral Queen was the only ship in the fleet to suffer from a dearth of free space. There were many reasons for this, not the least of which being that most of the surviving colonists preferred to stay in their cramped but relatively safe lodgings aboard other ships rather than packing up their belongings and moving to a ship run by a former terrorist and his band of merry inmates. What space could be used for storage of non-essential items had been used, and the rest of the ship had gone to seed, particularly those areas which had once belonged to middle management: the bean counters, the pencil pushers, the coffee makers - all those people who had worked as little cogs in the big machine that was the Astral Queen's daily routine. Those who had been eligible had relocated to other ships around the fleet, leaving the lunatics to run the asylum.
That was another reason why people refused to move to the Astral Queen -- too many ghosts.
Lee Adama didn't believe in ghosts. It was a damn good thing, too, because if he did he'd have had to believe they were getting one hell of a show as he and Kara fumbled their way across the floor, fingers working frantically at buttons and buckles and zippers as they neared the small, utilitarian gray couch that filled one wall of the tiny office. The straight-laced part of him was screaming that he should make sure the door was locked and secure before proceeding, but the part of him that had been lusting after Kara Thrace since the Academy told it to frak off.
"Frak, Lee, your shirt," Kara panted against his mouth between frantic kisses that were barely able to keep up with the speed of her hands as she pulled off his clothing. "Caught. Dogtags."
"Got it. Boots?"
"Gimmea sec. Frak, frak... Off!"
They tumbled backwards into a sitting position on the couch, Lee strategically beneath Kara so that she landed neatly in his lap, knees straddling his body. He twined his arms around her waist, pulling her flat belly tight against his own, mindful of her bandages, as he indulged in another long, passionate, mindbending kiss. Gods, but Kara could kiss. He'd always been told he was quite a good kisser, but Kara was something else entirely. Words hadn't been invented to describe the way she was able to insinuate her tongue into his mouth and hold his breath hostage.
Which was why it nearly killed him to break the kiss and hold her back. "Kara, we've got to slow down," he panted, his fingers digging into her hips to hold her still. "This is happening too fast."
"Frak that," Kara growled and lunged for him, managing to capture his mouth for a split second before he was able to push her back again.
"Kara, stop!" he said firmly, eyes as stern as his voice. "I'm not going to rush this with you."
"Lee, you've got to be the only guy I know who's actually interested in the foreplay," Kara muttered, giving up on the frontal approach and leaning forward instead to nuzzle and kiss hungrily along his bare shoulder.
He closed his eyes, letting the sensation of her warm lips on his steadily warming skin sap the tension from his muscles. "Then it's like I said earlier," he murmured. "You haven't been with the right guys."
"Mmm, you going to be my Mr. Right, Lee?" she purred, nipping along his jaw until she could nuzzle the pulse point beneath his ear. "You going to show me how it's done?"
He grinned slowly, smoothing his hands up and down her sides. "Yeah," he affirmed. "I am."
Without a word, he wrapped his arms around her and twisted them to the side, until she was on her back on the couch beside him and he was leaning over her. The metal plates of his dog tags pooled on her chest, just above her heart. "What's this about?" Kara asked, her hands greedily dragging down his bare chest, making his stomach muscles clench as she moved lower still. "Asserting your dominance, Lee?"
"Nope." He ran the tip of his finger down the smooth column of her arm, and was rewarded with a pleased shiver from the woman beneath him. "Just showing you how it's done."
"Yeah?"
"Mm-hmm." He leaned in and pressed his mouth to the hollow at the base of Kara's throat, feeling her pulse flutter against his lips.
"Mmm..." The tell-tale loosening of her muscles told Lee she was enjoying this. "What else have you got?"
"A few things," he murmured, moving his lips down to tease along the neckline of her sports bra, one of the few remaining pieces of clothing between them. Warmth against his lips told him she was blushing, turning a shade of rosy pink that would make her hazel eyes all that much more liquid. If he had his way, that blush would spread across her whole body before long. "But first you have to lose this." He plucked at her bra, snapping the elastic teasingly beneath her breasts and making her jump.
"You want it lost then lose it, flyboy," she said with a warning rake of her nails across his shoulder blades.
"Someone's cranky," Lee observed, moving up to kiss behind her ear as his fingers slipped beneath the bra's elastic. Kara gasped softly as his fingertips grazed the base of her breasts before moving higher so he could cup her in his palms. She arched up into his touch.
The flesh of Kara's breasts was soft and giving in Lee's hands; so unlike the woman they belonged to that he had to wonder how they could be one and the same. Nothing about Kara's personality was soft; she was composed of stark, skewed lines and hard edges. But if you went deeper, you would find another Kara underneath all that; the one who had given him a precious cigar the day he blew up the tylium refinery, or the one who had shared in his grief at Zak's funeral. If you were lucky enough to find that Kara, it was easier to believe the way her body moved so smoothly beneath his hands, rocking faintly to the gentle rhythm of his touch as he massaged her breasts, pressing his thumbs into the hollows at their base and rubbing his palms over her hard nipples. "Lee," she breathed, voice a soft moan.
"Shhh," he whispered, nuzzling her chin and using his wrists to inch her bra higher until the fabric bunched under arms and left her breasts exposed. She gasped as the air hit her bare skin. "Enjoying this?"
"I swear by the Gods, Lee, I'll gut you if you stop."
He grinned and dropped a quick kiss on her lips. "Don't worry. I wasn't planning to." With another fleeting kiss, he edged down her body until he could lay a lingering kiss in the valley between her breasts.
He felt Kara shrug out of her bra and drop it beside the couch, giving her arms more freedom of motion as she ran her hands down his back. "Oh yeah," she moaned softly, rippling underneath him with a pleased shiver as his mouth closed over her left nipple. "A girl could get very, very used to this. Ohh YES..." This last exclamation as he sucked firmly for a moment before relaxing his mouth's grip and circling the tight nubbin with his tongue. "Oh, frak, Lee..."
He wanted to respond with some witty quip along the lines of In a bit, Lieutenant, but found he didn't have the strength to try. Frankly, he was having a hard time controlling his base impulses, which were screaming at him to pin her down as he drove in hard and fast and spilled inside her like a shattered dam. But then he'd be doing what every guy before him had done; frak the foreplay, just do the deed. Kara deserved more than that; they deserved more than that. Years of history didn't deserve to come crashing to a halt in a mangled heap of sweaty limbs and hungry mouths. This needed time, attention, and above all, concentration. He needed to memorize her, in case his worst nightmares came true and she told him unequivocally, Never again.
Kara tasted like recycled air and thermal shirts, with a hint of sun that hadn't left her skin since Caprica. He tried not to taste the radiation or sterile cleanliness of hospital sheets, but she hadn't had a thorough shower in a while - neither of them had - and they were there as ambient background flavors. As he moved his mouth from her left to her right breast, lavishing it with the same care as the first, he tried to pretend he didn't taste the salt flavor of someone else on her skin. It wasn't his business what she'd done on that planet, or who she'd done it with; all that mattered was that she was here with him now. That and, judging by her moans, whoever had been with her hadn't taken the time to really taste her. Lee prided himself on being the first.
"Oh... Oh Gods, Lee," she panted, her belly rubbing against his, heedless of her bandages. Slender fingers left deep furrows in his hair as she pressed his head closer to her body, and he knew she was feeling a silver cord of pleasure with every pull of his mouth, tugging from the soles of her feet to the top of her head, setting her body into a desperate rocking motion. He'd done this before with other women and they'd told him how it felt, but he'd never told them they were just practice for the real thing. He'd never told them they weren't even second best, because his imagination and a hand in the shower were better than that. The shower was the only place he could breathe her name without offending some nameless She with hair that wasn't the right shade of blonde or eyes that were too brown to be hazel.
When her hands started tugging on his ears to pull his head up, he decided it was probably best to go along with it and let himself be dragged up to her mouth. She kissed him hungrily, her tongue passing over his lips, a shuddering moan echoing into his mouth as she tasted herself on his teeth. "My turn," she growled. There was no room to argue as, with a mighty heave, she pushed him up onto his knees and followed him into a sitting position, her mouth attacking his chest, teeth grazing over his nipples and making his body tighten.
"Kara," he moaned, burying his fingers in her hair as she dragged her teeth along his collarbone, setting off explosions of sensation that left his head spinning. He barely even noticed her fingers in the waist of his standard issue boxers until she had them down around his knees and her thumbs were rubbing over the ridges of his hips.
"You know how to play sweetly, Captain," she purred against his throat as her hands turned to claws and pulled him tight against her. "And now I get to show you how to play rough."
<CENTER>-----------------------------------</CENTER>
Throughout their relationship, Kara had never had a hard time getting Lee Adama on his back. More often than not this was the result of a solid right cross, though occasionally it had more to do with one too many bottles of ambrosia. Those were the nights when they'd both end up flat on their backs across somebody's bed - hopefully one of their own - and wake up in the morning with no idea how they'd gotten there.
Today was no different, as with a few well-placed nudges and prompts she had him stretched out on his back beneath her while she straddled his thigh with her knees. "Comfortable, Captain?" she asked with an angelic smile, her hands running down his arms, sculpting his shoulders and exploring the contours of his biceps.
"A bit chilly, Lieutenant," he confessed with a dazzling smile.
"Mm-hmm, I can understand that." Teasingly, she ran a finger down the crease of his thigh and was rewarded with a gasp and a jump. "But don't worry. I'm going to warm you up."
Leaning forward, Kara pressed her mouth to his and smiled into the kiss as she felt him moan when her breasts pressed into his bare chest. Strong hands took hold of her upper arms, pulling her closer as Lee raised his head to deepen the kiss. She could feel the complex interplay of warm muscles beneath his skin, flexing under her fingers. It was hypnotic.
With a low growl, Kara shrugged off his hands and grabbed his wrists, forcing them up above his head where she pinned them against the arm of the couch. "Did you worry about me, Captain, while I was gone?" she murmured against his mouth, keeping enough distance between them that her lips barely grazed his as she spoke.
"Every day," Lee said without hesitation, slightly breathless. He was straining to reach her lips, but Kara held back until he could barely taste her breath.
"You know you shouldn't," she scolded, massaging his trapped wrists and rubbing her breasts languidly against his chest. A shuddering sigh was her reward. "I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself. What do I have to do to convince you to stop worrying about me?"
"Stop getting into trouble."
"I will, when I die. But what about before that?"
"Never run away again."
He said it with such tenderness that, for a moment, Kara wasn't sure how to respond. One look into his eyes was all she needed to know he was being totally honest with her. That was a change; she and Lee had never been honest with each other. It was one of the hallmarks of their frakked up relationship. Their conversations were always laced with rich veins of innuendo, but trying to get a straight answer between the pair of them was like trying to turn lead to gold: something of myth.
Wicked intentions forgotten for the moment, a sudden pang of irrepressible guilt washed over her as she thought of Anders. Caprica had been dead and he'd been a small whirlpool of life amidst the crumbling ruins of a fallen civilization. She thought perhaps she loved him, but things were a lot more hazy now, out of the acid yellow glare of the radioactive sky. Did she love him? Or had he just been a useful cog in her wheel - a fun distraction to help her get through the day on a dead planet. Lee had said he wouldn't sleep with her if all she wanted to do was forget. Was that what she'd done to Anders? Had she slept with him just so she could forget, for a few blessed minutes, that she was stranded in the middle of a dust bowl at the end of the world?
This was not a good train of thought. One of the last times she'd been intimate with a man she'd been focusing on another man's face, too, and that hadn't ended well. Not well at all. For anybody. Gods forbid she moan Anders' name while Lee's hands were on her body. Lee was too sensitive; he'd never forgive her. For all that he shared the name of a god, he was far too human at times.
Lips against her throat jarred her from her reverie and she blinked to clear her vision. Lee was looking up at her, blue eyes utterly clear, and she had the disconcerting feeling that he knew exactly what she'd been thinking. "Cubit for your thoughts," he murmured.
Kara blinked again. Somewhere along the way he'd taken control once more, without so much as laying a hand on her. She was perched on top of him, he was spread out beneath her like a picnic blanket, but right now he had all the power. How did he do that? "Make it a cigar and you're on," she said, and managed a small smile.
Lee grinned in return. "Afraid I'm all out."
"Your loss."
"I'll take the consolation prize."
"Yeah? And what do you think that is?"
"You're imaginative. Use some of that outside the box thinking you're so famous for."
Kara grinned. "Is that an order, Captain?" She didn't wait for him to answer, moving swiftly to capture his mouth in another ravenous kiss, though this one was meant not only to feel good, but also to banish all thoughts of Anders and Caprica and the whole damn mission from her head. Like she'd told Lee earlier, this wasn't about Starbuck and Apollo; this was about Lee and Kara. Starbuck had been the one to FTL back to Caprica to retrieve the arrow. She'd been the one to fend off the Cylons and escape from their baby-making farm. But Kara was the one left to pick up the pieces; and one of those pieces was named Lee Adama.
"Gods, I want to frak you blind," she panted against his mouth, releasing his wrists so she could bury her fingers in his hair. Her pulse was roaring in her ears as his arms wound around her waist, holding her tightly while her mouth worked savagely against his. "Until you can't walk, or move, or remember your own frakking name..."
Her hands were running all over his body as she tried to touch every inch of him at once. Kara Thrace had seen Lee Adama in various states of undress for years, thanks to the no-frills living conditions of the Academy and then life on the last functioning Battlestar. Lee was generally reserved about his nudity around her, hearkening back to the gentlemanly days of old, but that didn't mean she hadn't indulged in the occasional peek now and then. Suffice it to say, she knew every inch of his body like she knew the schematics to a Mark II.
Which was why the new scar on his thigh took her by surprise.
"What the hell is this?" she asked against his mouth, her hand stalling on the unfamiliar ridge of raised flesh just above his right knee. Pushing up on one elbow, she gazed down his body as her fingers trailed over the smooth, pale line of scar tissue.
"Nothing," he assured her, his fingers combing through her hair, trying feebly to draw her back down to his lips. "Just a scratch."
She raised her eyebrow at that. "Yeah? Like this is a scratch?" She gestured to the bandage on her abdomen; the scar beneath was going to be throbbing this time tomorrow thanks to all these acrobatics, but she could care a less. Anyway, that was beside the point right now. "What happened?"
He sighed, letting his hands drop. Obviously he realized she wasn't going to let the subject rest. "Just a little souvenir courtesy of the Cylons."
That shook her a little. When the frak had he gotten that close to the Cylons? "What, they crawled into your Viper with you or something?"
"Not exactly. They boarded Galactica."
That shook her a lot. "What?" she demanded. "How?"
"Firefight. The Cylons were swarming us and they managed to crash a transport pod onto the hangar deck. We had Centurions all over the ship." She saw him swallow and realized with a pang of remorse that she was making him relive a particularly gruesome memory. "Bodies everywhere."
She remembered her own observation on Caprica about how clean the streets were; no rotting bodies or bloated corpses. Apparently Centurions weren't so interested in tidiness as their humanoid counterparts. "And this?" she murmured, trailing her fingers over the scar again.
"One got a bit too close," he said, closing his eyes. Muscles she hadn't realized were tense went loose under her hands as she continued to trace his scar. "I blew his head off and he was kind enough to bury a piece of it in my thigh as he exploded. Didn't even realize it was there until I was back in my cell an hour later." He chuckled. "Doc Cottle called me an idiot, gave me a few stitches and sent me on my way."
"Hmm...," Kara hummed noncommittally, resting her cheek on his chest and gazing down their bodies at the scar beneath her fingers. Lee could laugh it off all he wanted; she didn't think it was very funny. It was just another reminder that she hadn't been there to help protect her ship, her friends, all the people she loved. She'd been gallivanting off on some damn fool mission to retrieve a dusty relic from a radioactive museum, all on the word of a dying woman who was likely high on painkillers. Meanwhile Lee had been stranded in hack on a ship swarming with Cylons. He could have died. It was stupid, really; odds in that situation were that he should have died. In all rights she should have been mourning a dead man right now. The realization made her clutch reflexively at his thigh as she curled forward on his torso, bringing her lips down to kiss his hip. The hot, hard throb against her belly just served to remind her of how alive he was, no thanks to her.
"It's not your fault, Kara," Lee murmured, stroking her hair, and dammit, he was reading her mind again. Women were supposed to have secrets; she was supposed to have more than most. How could she have any mystery when he insisted on reading her like a book? "You couldn't have done anything."
"Shut up, Lee," she muttered, too angry with herself to keep the tone out of her voice. Too angry with him to care. "You don't know what I could or couldn't have done. I wasn't frakking there, remember? I was chasing prophecies to the other side of the frakking universe and back."
"And you got what you went looking for. Mission accomplished."
"Would you quit being so understanding and just yell at me?" she snapped, letting the emotion get the best of her as she sat up and glared at him, one hand still possessively clutching his thigh. He was regarding her with those same cool blue eyes; it made her want to hit him. The fresh bruises on his torso were all that stayed her hand. "I abandoned you! I took off after some fairy story and left you all to die! Don't you get that?"
"Doesn't matter," he said, shaking his head and raising his hand to run his fingers along her cheek. "You came back."
"I might not have."
"But you did."
"What if I hadn't?"
"You did. Why do you want to keep living in the past?"
"I'm not living in the past," she snapped, pushing up higher and turning away, sitting petulantly between his legs and pulling her knees up to use as a platform for her chin. "I'm just wondering how the hell you can forgive me so fast."
She heard him sigh, felt his muscles bunch as he sat up, felt the warm press of his chest against her back - of something hotter against her tail bone - and closed her eyes as his arms wrapped around her from behind. "You want me to say I was angry with you?" Lee asked, resting his chin on her shoulder and speaking directly into her ear. "Fine. I was angry with you. Frakking furious, to be truthful. I wanted to hijack the Galactica and follow you back to Caprica, just so I could kick your ass before the Cylons got a chance to do it before me." His fingers rubbed up and down her calves, and Kara closed her eyes. "But then you jumped back into my life and I decided I really didn't care about any of that anymore, because I was just so damn glad to see you again. I thought I made that pretty clear when you arrived."
Kara smiled faintly, remembering his impromptu kiss from earlier that day. "It was kind of hard to miss," she agreed with a small grin.
"Yeah, well, nothing with you is ever easy, Kara," he said, and she could hear his smile even if she couldn't see it.
Sighing, she leaned back against him. "Yeah it is," she mumbled, closing her eyes and tilting her head to the side so she could press her face under his chin. "This is easy."
"Getting here wasn't."
"What the frak is our problem, Lee? Why didn't we just do this months ago, when everything went to Hell in Persephone's handbasket?"
"I don't care about months ago," he murmured near her ear, nuzzling her temple. Kara could feel the heat at her tail bone growing warmer, growing firmer, and knew she was losing the fight with this conversation. His mind had gravitated to his pelvic region. "I like right now just fine."
"No argument here," she breathed, arching her back as his hand slipped down her stomach and under the waistband of her panties. How did she still have those on? "Oh yes..."
His fingers dipped deeper, teasing at the base of her belly, and she grunted in frustration, rocking her hips deliberately so her ass would rub against the hot bulge pressing into her from behind. A choked moan from Lee proved she'd had the desired effect. "I think I'm overdressed," she said with a sigh, which turned into a moan as his fingers finally moved down and slipped into the warm heat that throbbed between her legs. "Lee, frak..."
His breathing was ragged in her ear, and she suddenly wanted to see him; wanted to see the half-desperate look in those crisp blue eyes. Twisting in his arms, she found his lips by sense memory alone, swallowing his moan as her fingers wrapped around the heat that had been pressing into her back for the past few minutes. "Ohh frak, Kara..." he choked into her mouth.
Kara purred as his hands forced their way further into her panties, sliding around the back to cup her ass and knead firmly. "This is going to feel so good," she moaned, though it wasn't much of a guess. Lee was hot and throbbing in her hands as she stroked him, and she could feel the moist heat between her own legs begin to thrum in time with his heartbeat.
Lee peeled the panties over her hips until they pooled around her knees, then plunged one hand between her legs, going deeper this time than he had before. Whereas he had merely skimmed the surface a few minutes ago, now he pressed a finger into her moist folds, rubbing blatantly over the throbbing bundle of nerves that was more than ready for his touch. This time it was Kara's turn to moan into Lee's mouth as he circled her with the pad of his thumb, calloused from too much trigger-happy time in the cockpit. "Oh.. Oh Gods, yes... Lee, yes....!" she whimpered, feeling more like a girl and less like an androgynous Viper pilot with every passing second.
Somehow they ended up stretched out on the couch again, Kara on Lee's chest, Lee's arm around her waist as the other hand continued to wreak havoc on every nerve ending from her pelvis outward. Never one to be outdone, she tightened her grip on his shaft in retaliation and was rewarded with a sharp inhalation of breath. She'd have him groaning her name before this was over; she made herself that promise.
"How long have you wanted to do this, Captain?" she panted, deliberately bringing his rank into the picture because frak if it didn't make things all the more exciting to be breaking the rules by doing this with her senior officer. "Do you watch me in the shower? Huh? I bet you do." She squeezed and felt him jerk beneath her. "I bet you can't keep your eyes off me, can you? You watch the water roll down my body and you wish you could follow each drop with your tongue. Don't you? Tell me, Lee, don't you?"
"Shut up, Kara," he growled, and without preface pressed two long, calloused fingers into her body.
"YES!" Kara exclaimed before she could bite down the reaction. Her back automatically arched as radiating waves of pleasure exploded in her abdomen. "Oh shit... Oh frak, Lee, don't you frakking... Oh Gods..."
His free hand crept up her back to press between her shoulder blades, pulling her slowly down onto his chest. Warm lips touched her throat. "You think I watch you, but I know you watch me."
"Arrogant bastard," she moaned, but couldn't work up the appropriate level of venom; it came out sounding like an endearment. "What makes you think any part of you is worth looking at?"
Controlling her hips was impossible at this point, so she didn't bother to try. Instead she closed her eyes and dug her blunt nails into his arms, squeezing with all her might as he rocked his hand against her. She desperately wanted more, but she'd be damned if she'd beg him to add another finger to the two already inside her body. Kara Thrace didn't beg for anything -- not for mercy, and not to be frakked good and proper by a god. Besides, he was suffering just as much as she was; she could feel his shaft throbbing against her thigh. That alone was enough to bring her cresting to the edge, ready to fall over.
Then he took his hand away.
The bastard took his hand away.
"What the..." Her eyes snapped open to find him grinning mischievously at her, his blue eyes twinkling despite the fine sheen of sweat that coated his skin and belied the relative calm of his smile. "You frakking son of a bitch!"
"Kara, I thought you liked my mother."
"Shut up! Put them back!"
"What?"
"You know what!"
"Kara, you're hysterical. Calm down and speak slowly." His hand had gone from the enviable position of working miracles between her thighs to the frustrating position of massaging her bottom; frustrating because it still felt unbelievably good and Kara couldn't profess to being entirely unhappy with the situation. She wanted to be furious with him, but didn't have the energy to lash out.
"I've killed men for less than that," she managed to growl, forcing herself to stop panting; she wasn't about to let him see how much he'd affected her.
"No you haven't," he said, still grinning like a cat with cream. "It would be on your record. I'd know."
"That's just because no one ever found the bodies," she snapped. Struggling to get her own body under control, she plotted her revenge. It seemed to her that Lee was getting far too much out of this set-up: unrestricted access to her body and a ridiculous amount of skin-to-skin contact. If he was going to tease her... Well, she knew a thing or two about that.
Kara grinned, and was pleased to see a flicker of worry in Lee's eyes as response. "I said I was going to play rough before," she mused, and began slowly inching her way down his body. "I don't think I've quite followed through on that. Gods forbid I break a promise to the almighty Apollo."
Nuzzling along his ribs, she ran her tongue down the well-defined lines of his abdomen, feeling the muscles twitch as cool air touched the moist tracks she left behind. Giggling demonically, she blew a quick gust of breath into his navel and heard him groan. "You're so sensitive, Lee," she observed, nipping at his hip as she rested herself on her hands, balanced on the solid columns of his thighs.
"Kara," she heard him warn, though his voice broke when her fingers danced up his inner thigh.
"Oh no no, Lee," she chided, resting her chin on his stomach and gazing innocently up his body. "You've had your fun. Now I get to have mine."
Dipping her head, she dropped a soft kiss on his cock, enjoying his gasp before taking him fully into her mouth. Revenge, it seemed, was salty, not sweet.
<CENTER>---------------------------</CENTER>
In his life, Lee Adama had literally seen worlds explode, if the remaining ships of the Colonial fleet could be considered worlds. When it happened, it was always an ugly, terrible, ungodly beautiful sight. The eye was drawn to the blossoming plumes of flame as combustion ate the oxygen that tumbled into space. You were forced to wonder what exactly was burning, since metal wasn't known for being flammable. Your mind filled in the more gruesome details of charred carcasses and ash-blackened furniture, and then just as you were beginning to second guess having eaten lunch, the fires would die, gobbled up by the vacuum of space, and all that would remain was a floating hulk of metal and a field of debris. It left a man shaken and unsure of his place in the universe.
But this...
This time, the worlds exploding were all behind his eyes, and he knew exactly where he was. He was flat on his back on a couch aboard the Astral Queen, while Kara Thrace was partaking of some wicked delectation around his nether regions. The fact that he could even comprehend words like partaking and delectation while her tongue ran circles around his cock made him proud; if he could remember words like that, then he could still remember his own name. When he started to forget his own name, he was in trouble.
Her teeth grazed along his hard, smooth length, and for a moment he couldn't remember if Lee was spelled with two Es or if there was an A in there somewhere.
"K... Kara..." He laced his fingers in her hair, feeling her head rise and fall. She mumbled something around him - he thought maybe it was his name, whatever that was - and he nearly lost it then and there as the vibration turned his nervous system to mush. He'd been painfully hard for her even before she started this oral torture, and now he was willing to swear on the scriptures that he'd do anything for her if she'd just close her teeth a little tighter and moan his name again. "Oh, Hestia's Virgins," he moaned, tightening his fingers in her hair. "Kara..."
Then, just as suddenly as she'd begun, she took her mouth away; he'd never felt more cold in his life.
"Kara!" he exclaimed, trying to push her mouth back down. But Kara was a fighter pilot, and a scrapper from day one, and she shrugged off his trembling hands like so much bothersome confetti.
"Reap what you sow, flyboy," she purred, kissing down his inner thigh, and he could hear the wicked smile she was no doubt wearing. "My turn to play."
Her mouth found the scar on his thigh and she ran her tongue down the ridge of sensitive tissue. Lee shivered as the sensation shot straight to his groin.
"I should have been there when this happened," she murmured, lips brushing his thigh. "I should have made sure it didn't happen."
He couldn't think straight, let alone talk. Instead, he let his fingers trail down her spine as she opened her mouth over his scar again, sucking gently.
Out of the blue, he was struck by what a picture they must be. If someone were to come along and see them through the open door, what would they look like? Him stretched out on his back, rigid as a poker, with Kara curled up like a kitten between his legs, both naked as the day they were born. No one would believe it, certainly not about him. No one believed a CAG had any passion except for yelling at pilots and throwing his weight around.
"It wouldn't have killed me," he managed to say, his voice a raspy whisper. "That's more than you can say about that scar on your stomach. Gods, Kara, I wish you'd told me what you were planning to do before you left."
"Why, so you could come with me?" She nuzzled his knee. "No offense, Lee, but that raider was barely big enough for me without cramming your huge ass in there."
"I would have thought of something," he persisted. This was important to him, though he didn't know why. "You shouldn't have had to face all that alone."
Her lips moved away from his scar and he gazed down his body as she rested her cheek on his thigh and looked up at him. "I wasn't alone," she murmured. "Helo was with me. The Resistance."
"You didn't know any of them were there. For all you knew you were jumping onto a dead planet covered in corpses."
"The Cylons are tidy. They cleaned all the bodies away."
"You know what I mean, Kara."
"I know." She sighed, trailing her fingers down his ribs. "What would you have done, Lee?" she asked. "Lent moral support? Taken the bullet for me? I didn't need the first and I wouldn't have wanted the second. It was nicer knowing you were here so I had something to come back to." Another sigh, shakier this time, as she closed her eyes and curled her fingers against his stomach. "And then I get back and find out Adama's been shot and you've mutinied and you almost got killed by the Cylons. You know, maybe it would have been better if you had come with me. Then I could have kept you out of trouble."
He laughed because he knew she wanted him to, though her voice betrayed the fact that she didn't think it was very funny herself. "I could say the same thing for you, Lieutenant." He ran his fingers through her hair. It was longer now than it had been when he first found her in the brig on Galactica, back before the world ended. It was softer, too. Funny that her hair could get softer while the shell she built around herself got harder everyday. "I would have taken that bullet for you, Kara," he murmured.
"I know," she whispered back. "I'm glad you didn't."
"Don't say that."
"You would have died, Lee."
"You don't know that."
"Yes I do."
"How?"
"Because you have a Y chromosome." Her eyes opened and hit him like a laser beam. "Those aren't too fashionable on Caprica these days."
He thought again of the scar on her belly, just below the gunshot, and felt a surge of anger. How dare those machines think they had the right to touch this woman. How dare they. Lee'd worked for years for the chance to touch her, and they thought they could march in and take her body by force? If they wanted to make an enemy for life, they'd succeeded. As if the whole human race weren't enough, they now had Lee Adama to contend with. If he had to work for a thousand years to ensure they paid, and paid dearly, for the traumas they'd inflicted on Kara, then he'd find a way to do it.
"Come here," he murmured. She obeyed, sliding up his body so her cheek rested on his shoulder. It worried him that she demured so quietly; normally she would have at least arched an eyebrow at him. Wrapping his arms around her, ignoring the stirring in his groin that was a result of her smooth skin sliding along his own, he continued. "You know I'll never let them touch you again, Kara. You understand that, don't you?"
"Don't make stupid promises, Adama."
"I don't think it's stupid."
"It's impossible."
"Nothing's impossible. I thought this was impossible, until you changed my mind." He cuddled her closer, rubbing his knee soothingly against her inner thigh.
"Do you really love me?"
The question was out of nowhere, but it didn't surprise him. "Of course I do," he said, kissing her forehead.
"Like a friend?"
Sighing, he tilted her head up so he could focus on her eyes. They were wide and vulnerable, and he knew he wouldn't see her like this again for a long time. "No, Kara," he murmured. "Not like a friend."
She was quiet for a moment, reading his eyes. Then, very slowly, a smile twitched her lips upward. "Not like a sister though, right?" she asked.
Lee grinned. "I don't know about where you're from," he chided, arching an eyebrow and shifting them carefully so she was tucked securely between him and the back of the couch, "but where I'm from, we don't do these things with our sisters."
"I don't know, you hear some weird things on a warship. Guys getting desperate, yearning for home..." Her voice trailed off as her eyes twinkled mischievously.
"Oh Gods, just shut up and kiss me," he chuckled, feeling her arms curl willingly around his neck. She answered with a smile and a soft, slow kiss that made his mind whirl.
Moving again so that she was situated comfortably beneath him, Lee eased his body between her legs, grateful when she wrapped her legs around his waist in invitation. "Are you all right?" he asked, letting the question mean whatever she needed it to mean.
Her smile was playful. "Shiny like a new penny." The grin turned a little wicked. "I'm hoping you'll tarnish me a little, actually. It better suits my image."
Lee nodded, giving her his best solemn face. "Image is everything," he agreed.
"Like you, for example, have the image of being a straight-laced, no-nonsense hard ass. And while I can agree with the hard ass part," she quipped, reaching down to gently slap the area in question, "I think you've begun to disprove the rest of it. This could go a long way to helping in that regard."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yep. I have it on the best authority that this will make or break your image in the Fleet."
"How so?"
"Because I have every intention of telling each person I meet just how good you are in bed."
Lee felt a surge of masculine pride uncurl in his stomach like a waking lion, but he kept it from showing on his face. "You wouldn't dare," he said, knowing she would.
Kara batted her lashes at him. "Afraid you won't measure up?"
"You tell me," he answered, pressing his hips forward so the straining heat of his erection pressed against her warm, wet entrance. The shock wave was intense as it rippled through his lower body, and he saw it reflected in her face as she gasped. "Do you think I will?"
The insistent pressure of her heels on his lower back was all the answer he needed. It was a relief, he found, as he felt her hand reach between them to guide him fully into her body; a relief to finally reach this point with her. Their relationship had always consisted of guessing games, as each tried to figure out the motives behind the other's actions. Sometimes they guessed correctly, sometimes they guessed wrong, but in the end, it was always just a guess. Now, at last, they shared a clarity of purpose.
"I am going to make love to you, Kara Thrace," he breathed in her ear, angling his hips forward and hearing her hiccuping gasp in response as she enveloped him. "And I don't care if you tell the whole frakking universe."
<CENTER>--------------------------------</CENTER>
Kara had one fantasy, and it was this: Lee Adama on top. In most of her sexual encounters she wheedled and connived her way into the topmost position, giving her as much power over the situation as she desired while at the same time giving her counterpart one hell of a good show; she wasn't heartless after all. It just wasn't in her nature to be coy and retiring; she may be religious, but that didn't make her missionary.
Things were different with Lee. With her other conquests - and that's how she saw them, as conquests - she'd wanted the power, so she'd claimed it. It took trust for Kara to allow a man on top, and she didn't trust easily; too many broken hearts and one too many dead fiancees. Even Anders, whom she trusted with her life, had kept his shoulders flat on the mattress.
(Don't think of Anders, don't think of Anders, don't think of Anders...)
In the end, the constant assertion of dominance was exhausting. Oh yes, there was the thrill of power and the indescribable rush of climax, but that didn't make it any less tiring. She suspected that was how the whole mess with Baltar had begun; she'd decided not to bother fighting him, forfeiting him the place she reserved for one man alone, and look where that had landed her.
For years - even during her time with Zak, which was a sore point of incredible guilt for her - she'd imagined what sex with Lee Adama would be like. She pictured it as slow and steady, inexorable as a sunrise; moving higher and higher until, with a flash of blinding light, it crests the horizon and bathes the world in warmth.
Only Lee Adama could make her fantasize in such florid metaphors.
So it didn't matter that she let him hover over her, propped on his hands, because she knew he'd take care of her. She didn't need to be taken care of but he'd do it anyway, because that was the kind of guy Lee was. He'd make sure this didn't end before she was ready, and he'd make sure when it did end, she'd remember it. The concentration on his face was almost too adorable to bear; she wanted to press her lips to the furrow between his eyebrows. His eyes were closed and his lips were moving soundlessly as he sheathed himself to the hilt in her warm, willing body.
For her part, Kara could only watch him, muscles loose and languid. She laced her fingers through his hair to keep her arms from falling away and deliberately tightened her legs around his waist as he filled her. The delicious press of his body on hers was everything she'd ever imagined; more, because this time it was real. A cynical portion of her mind was convinced his face was going to melt away to reveal Anders, or Baltar, or some nameless marine. She quickly sealed off that train of thought before it could do any damage. This was Lee, he was real, and when she moaned his name, he'd be the one to hear it.
As if to test her theory, she murmured, "Gods, Lee, you feel good..."
"Mmm..." he hummed in response as his body came to a standstill. His belly slid over hers as he leaned down to kiss her, finding her lips from memory and opening his mouth against hers. Kara sighed with pleasure as she sought out his tongue with her own, tasting coffee and herself on his teeth. Her nipples rubbed against the fine mesh of hair on his chest, sending bolts of electricity straight to her core. A few minutes of that and she was moaning into his mouth and rubbing against him like a horny teenager.
Not that Lee was immune. She could feel his ragged breathing against her cheek as he pulled his mouth away. "I need this," he breathed, pressing their foreheads together. "I need you."
"I know you do," she panted, stroking her hands rhythmically through his hair. She paused before adding, "I need you, too."
It really wasn't so hard to say when you meant it.
A soft whimper escaped her as he began to gently rock his hips, and she felt her bones melt around him. Gods, this was it. This was it. This was where everything fell down so it could be built up again. How many years had she dreamed about this very moment? Now it was happening, and she wanted to scream to the world how absolutely perfect it was, but she couldn't even get her voice to work as she watched his face, tight with concentration, and the steady flex of his shoulders. Lee Adama was making love to her. Oh, Lords of Kobol, Lee Adama was making love to her. "Lee," she choked, and found to her horror there were tears in her eyes and burning her throat. "Lee, please..."
His eyes opened slowly with a dreamy flutter of his lashes, and for a moment she forgot how to breathe. Then he frowned and she remembered. "Kara?" he murmured, resting all his weight on one arm as he brought the other hand up to brush her hair back from her eyes. "What's wrong?"
"Oh Gods, nothing," she assured him, cradling his face in her hands and shaking her head as a watery smile touched her lips. "Nothing, Lee. That's the whole point. There's nothing wrong."
A gentle smile curved Lee's mouth. He dropped a soft kiss on the corner of her eye. "Then why," he asked as his face passed over hers to lay a kiss on the corner of the opposite eye, "are you crying?" He nuzzled her temple.
A breathless, helpless laugh hiccuped past her lips. "I have no idea," she acknowledged, wrapping her arms around his neck and rubbing their cheeks together.
"Okay." His breath tickled her ear as he chuckled. "I knew I was good, but I've never reduced anyone to tears before."
Kara snorted, kissing his jaw. "What makes you think you're so good?"
"Hearsay."
"Hearsay?" Kara arched an eyebrow. "I thought a CAG was above things like gossip."
"Yeah, well..." He pulled back, pressing their foreheads together and grinning down at her. "We all suffer a little vanity now and then."
"Narcissist."
"Ooh, big words, Lieutenant."
"I know a few."
"And here I thought you were only well-versed in the four-lettered variety."
"Careful, sir. I have you in a very compromising position at the moment. Don't think I won't use that to my advantage."
"Believe me when I say this, Lieutenant: I would love to see you try."
"I think this is the most chit-chat I've ever had with a guy when he's already inside me."
"I'd rather not hear about your past encounters right now, Kara, if you don't mind."
"Then shut me up."
"With pleasure."
And he was kissing her again. No nuance this time, just unrestricted ardor. Kara flattened her palms against his back, moaning into his mouth as their hips began rolling in unison, as if on cue. They'd always functioned at their best as a unit. The friction was already threatening to tear her apart. She'd been teetering on the edge of orgasm on and off all evening, and now that she was finally within reach of that goal it seemed to be rushing up on her impossibly fast. She'd be damned, however, if she was ever going to tell him he lived up to the hype.
"Oh Gods... Oh Gods, YES," she groaned, raking her fingernails down his back and hoping she drew blood. His hiss in response told her she probably had. Good. He was hers now, and she wanted any other applicants to know that right off the bat. No one interfered with Starbuck's property.
"Kara... Kara..." Lee's mouth worked against her throat, grazing over her jugular vein, and she had a sudden realization of just how vulnerable she was in this position. This was why only Lee could get away with this kind of power over her; he was the only one she trusted to look her in the eye the next day and not expect her to simper. Kara didn't believe in vulnerability; it was something that happened to other people.
Lee, however, didn't seem to have any such qualms as he somehow managed to bring his hips to a standstill and raised his head to look down into her eyes, open and raw and vulnerable as hell. Poets and philosophers had spent centuries describing the soul-shifting power of the human eye. Some said eyes were the windows to the soul. Some said eyes were a mirror of the soul. Some said looks could kill. They were all just words so far as Kara was concerned, because eyes were just little bags of viscous jelly that communicated visual data to the brain and kept you from dying by flying into a Cylon barrage. Sometimes, if you were lucky, they were nice to look at.
Why hadn't anyone ever told her the books were true? Didn't they know lack of preparation could get you killed?
Kara felt her insides quiver as he stared at her. "W... what're you... looking at...?" she panted, her body straining against his as she slid her hands down his torso, rubbing his hips.
"You," he murmured.
Damn him. His pupils were dilated, swimming like black islands in the blue of his eyes, and she could see everything he was thinking. He thought she was beautiful. He thought she was strong. He thought she was brave for doing the things she'd done, and stupid for not asking for help. He didn't blame her for leaving him and he thanked the Gods she'd come back. He'd fallen in love with her on their first day at the Academy. He'd never stopped. He'd been secretly terrified of acting as Best Man at her wedding. He'd been guilty as hell when the opportunity never came. He'd avoided her for two years because his father saw her as a daughter and him as less than a son. He'd spent the last several months kicking himself for that because nothing could have been further from the truth. He'd fallen in love with her again. He'd never stopped. He worried every time she climbed into the cockpit. He hadn't slept well in weeks, and it was all her fault. He was willing to forgive her for bringing the Cylon back from Caprica. He'd fallen in love with her again. He'd never stopped.
He'd never stopped.
So this was how he always read her mind - he just had to look at her. What did that say about the state of her eyes? Further, what did it say about her that she'd never done the same?
"Whoa," she breathed.
"Yeah," he murmured, and she knew that he knew she knew. More loopy, whirligig emotional magic between the Lieutenant and the CAG.
"Lee-"
"Do you get it now?" he asked hoarsely, cutting her off. "Do you get it?"
Do I get what, Lee? Do I get why you're here with me, or why you flipped out on me about Baltar, or why you asked me to dance on Cloud Nine, or why you never spoke up when I got engaged to Zak, or why you want to kill Sharon, or why you left the Fleet, or why you think I'm supposed to know what I'm supposed to get when the only thing you're thinking is that you love me?
Oh.
"Yeah," she whispered, her voice a harsh rasp. "I get it."
And suddenly a whole new dance began. If what they'd been doing mere moments before had been heated and hungry, this was slow and melodic. He played her like a lute, his fingers gliding over her ribs as he kissed her again, full and lush and purposeful. She felt him peel away the surgical tape of her bandage, revealing the freshly healed scar beneath, and gasped as his hand gently cupped the sensitive area. Kara welcomed the loss of the one last interloper which stood between them, and thought this was probably why Lee had tugged it off.
The world was spinning in circles of slate gray and hazy red around her head, and she fought to focus on Lee's face: stolid, almost solemn, locked in an expression of utmost concentration, as if she were a game of chess. Now and then his lips would brush reverently over her shoulder, her cheek, the top of her breast, and each touch made her skin tingle and the tension in her lower belly coil a little tighter. Her own lips took every opportunity to taste his skin, touching his forehead, his jawline, the corner of his mouth, as she murmured his name over and over; sometimes calling him Lee, sometimes foregoing him completely and calling on other names entirely; names she didn't even know she knew. Obscure gods from the apocrypha, lesser deities of the upper pantheon. She begged Aphrodite to make this last, begged Hera to make it flourish, begged Zeus to make it holy.
She didn't call on Apollo. This wasn't about Apollo. This was about Lee. Lee and Kara. Kara and Lee.
A low groan made her blink and swim back to awareness, and she realized it was coming from Lee. His thrusts were growing more ragged and his breathing more labored. He was close, so godsdamned close, and she could feel her body react to the knowledge that she was the one who'd brought him to that point. "Lee...," she moaned, as the fire in the pit of her stomach unwound itself like a sleeping dragon and began to spread heat through the rest of her body. "Oh Leeeee....!"
"Come on, Kara, come on," he urged, pressing his face into her shoulder and letting loose with his hips. Kara cried out, arching away from the couch and holding onto him for dear life as every synapse in her brain fired at once, telling her this was the best sex she'd ever had in her life because she was so frakking in love with the man who was doing it with her.
"Lee... Lee... Lee...!" she chanted, keening out his name, feeling her shoulders rock into the couch. "Oh fraaaaak, yes, yes, YES, YES!"
And then it was there.
BANG! Like the jolt after the first burn of a Viper's engine, but this was so much better because the rush wasn't over in a split second. This just kept coming and coming and rolling through her limbs like honey as she pitched beneath him, giving up on his name and settling for desperate, senseless moaning as the explosion in her pelvis sent shock waves through her fingertips and out through her toes. She felt him shudder and stall and break inside of her, stammering out her name against her cheek as he added more warmth to what was already swirling in her belly. For a second Kara was sure she 'd gone blind, until she realized she'd just closed her eyes, trying to burn the exact details of this moment into her long-term memory.
They lay like that for a long time; how long Kara couldn't be sure, and frankly didn't care. The universe had asked enough of Lee and herself over the past few months. The least they were owed were a few uninterrupted minutes of afterglow.
Lee was the first to stir. He'd collapsed haphazardly on top of her after his climax, angled at an odd position to keep from crushing her. Now he took the opportunity to lazily shuffle them both onto their sides, so Kara was pressed between him and the back of the couch. "'Mmm I love you," he mumbled drowsily, nuzzling in to kiss her shoulder.
The grin that stretched Kara's cheeks was almost painful, but she reveled in it. "Bet you say that to all the hot Viper pilots who could kick your ass in a firefight," she murmured, kissing his forehead, then the crown of his head.
"Mm-mm, nope. Just you."
"Well now I feel all kinds of privileged."
"Mmm-hmm."
"You know, I could make a bunch of jokes here about the Arrow of Apollo."
Lee groaned and pressed closer, burying his face in her throat. "Yeah, but you're not going to," he complained sleepily.
"Aww, come on. It's begging to be done."
"Kara, I'm too tired to start laughing at your dirty jokes."
"Too tired to start? Or too tired not to?"
"Kara..."
"Long, smooth shaft, very sturdy-"
"Kara, shut up."
"-excellent penetration of intended target-"
"I'll put you on report, Lieutenant Thrace."
"-flies straight and always hits the bull's eye. All in all, an excellent weapon of mass seduction."
Lee sighed and looked up, fixing her with a dopey, drowsy smile. Kara responded with her brightest, perkiest grin. "You're a sex fiend, Lieutenant," he said around a yawn.
Kara shrugged innocently before curling her arms around his neck again. "Just because you indulge me, Captain."
"Spare the rod, spoil the child, mm?"
"Are you calling me a child, sir?"
"You do have the maturity of a five-year old most of the time."
"Now I'm offended. I thought I'd at least graduated to age seven."
"Mm-mm, nope, sorry."
Kara sighed. "Oh well. I'll get by." She grinned again, cuddling closer to him and feeling his body relax at her closer proximity. "Which is more than I can say for you, Captain."
"Hmmm?" He really was half asleep now. She'd have to talk fast.
"You're buck naked on a prison ship with your ass to an open door, sir," she reminded him near his ear. "Since when did you like living on the edge?"
He chuckled sleepily against her throat. "You're rubbing off on me," he mumbled. "Now shut up and sleep."
"What if I want to toy with you some more?"
"Later. Sleep now."
"You are such a man."
"Mm-hmm."
"Are you asleep"
"Mmm..."
Kara sighed, then laughed softly, rubbing her cheek against his hair. His breathing was warm and steady against her collarbone, and she found the fixed rhythm was making her sleepy, too. Closing her eyes, she replayed her orgasm a few times in her head, feeling warm sympathy tremors ripple through her body each time. That would be a nice trick to remember the next time she pulled a long-distance CAP. It could lead to all kinds of fun discussions when she had to explain to Lee why she'd broken radio silence to moan.
"Still love me?" she murmured dreamily, not expecting an answer and running her fingers through his hair.
"More than ever..."
She didn't jump at his voice, but she did stiffen for a moment before loosening again and kissing his forehead. "Go to sleep, Captain," she whispered. "We have a busy day tomorrow."
This time he really was asleep, because he didn't make any kind of remark. Kara closed her eyes again. Tomorrow, things would be different. She wasn't sure how, but just... different. For one thing, no one else was allowed to know. If Lee didn't understand that, she'd make him understand. Too many good things in her life had been taken away, and she wasn't going to risk him becoming a similar casualty because of regulations or duty or whatever harebrained, idiotic excuse some sick person could think up to keep them apart. So long as they were secret, they were true.
Second, she was going to be sore from the waist down. For a week.
Third...
"Hey, Lee," she murmured near his ear, half-asleep herself and letting her mind work on auto-pilot. "Love you, too."
And she thought he must have still been at least partially awake, because as she drifted off to sleep she could swear she felt him smile.
THE END