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Two years and one week ago…
“I thought you liked your women with a little bite.”
*
“It feels good to be warm again.”
B’Elanna’s throaty voice zinged along his nerve endings and Tom turned his head toward her and smiled. She’d tipped her face up to the holographic sun and he caught the small smile that played on her lush mouth, curving her lips slightly upward. He was slammed with a memory of another time she’d smiled at him, but that one had been more daring, more joyful, and the sun on her gorgeous face had been filtered by a canopy of leaves. His jaw throbbed with a phantom pain. He felt the sudden and overwhelming desire to kiss her again, and he sighed.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “it sure does.”
He studied her for another moment then settled back into the lounge chair with a smile of his own. For a while after the incident on Sakari, she’d been cooler toward him, more reserved. Professional. He’d understood. She’d been embarrassed by her behaviour and had needed time to put the experience into perspective. So had he. If he were being honest with himself, he’d have to admit that he’d needed the space, too. They’d played with their attraction to each other, figuring they had all the time they wanted to draw it out, to explore these feelings. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t a game anymore. So, afterward, he’d given her time and she’d slowly thawed, and lately he’d started to gently push her back to the close friendship they’d shared before the incident. Before Vorik and Sakari.
But something had changed in the intervening months. Something warmer, sweeter, had begun to blossom between them and Tom welcomed it. Wanted it. He opened his eyes and glanced at her again, and found her studying him. He smiled. “Do you want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?” asked. The words were out of his mouth before he’d even thought them, bypassing the part of his brain that had decided that a war of attrition was the only way to win B’Elanna’s heart. A slow, gradual chipping away at her reserves. An off-the-cuff dinner date invitation wasn’t slow. He tensed, expecting her to decline, and hastened to downplay the idea. “I can reserve a table here,” he gestured to the tables set out on the patio near the entrance to the holodeck. “Or I can programme one near the lake.” He’d be sure to programme a spectacular sunset, too.
“What’s wrong with the mess hall?”
“Usually, the food,” Tom told her.
“Will the programme be running?” She tilted her head to the side as she asked.
She meant, running publicly, of course. Tom was suddenly uneasy. Did all of these questions show interest or was she looking for a graceful way out? “Yeah,” he answered. “The captain said we should keep it open for a while, for the crew.”
“Yeah,” she agreed.
“So, that’s a yes to dinner?” He smiled his most charming, most persuasive smile. It generally didn’t work with her but, after their stupid argument on that habitat ship, he needed all the charm he could muster.
“I’d love to,” she smiled back, “but I can’t. I’m on duty. Gamma shift.” Her mouth quirked and she shrugged.
Tom scowled. “You’re the chief engineer; can’t you get out of gamma shift?”
She grinned. “We could do breakfast. Your breakfast, my dinner,” she clarified. “I’ll meet you and Harry in the mess hall at 0730.”
“Sure,” Tom nodded. He’d learned long ago that sometimes, instead of wishing for what he couldn't have, he had to take what he could get. For now, anyway. He settled back against the chair cushions and closed his eyes against the fake sun’s glare, feeling warm and happy and almost content.
***
Two years ago…
“You know, maybe you’re onto something. I could add a steamy love scene between the Starfleet conn officer and the Maquis engineer…”
“Oh, that’s realistic!”
*
“To be honest, seeing Seska again has me a little rattled.”
B’Elanna’s quiet admission had Tom nodding in agreement. “You think you’re rattled,” he declared with a smirk.
B’Elanna stopped walking and touched him lightly on the forearm. “Are you sure you’re okay?” A small frown creased her forehead between her eyebrows and her mouth was drawn into a tentative grimace.
“Yeah, it’s fine; the Doc fixed me up. No nitric acid necessary.” He flexed his arm toward her, rotating his hand at the wrist and wiggling his fingers.
“It looked like it hurt,” she said.
“A little,” he admitted, downplaying the intense pain he’d felt when the hologram of Seska had shot him with her phaser rifle. “It gave me a new appreciation of holodeck safeties, anyway.” He smiled.
“Good.” B’Elanna nodded, then shook her head. Suddenly, she laughed.
“What?” Tom asked. An anticipatory smile stretched his mouth.
“The thing the captain said, about wanting a western themed holonovel. I just suddenly got an image of Chakotay in a black hat.”
“With six-guns,” Tom agreed. The image of B’Elanna in full Western garb popped into his mind. Aside from a black hat of her own and a holster at her hip, his mental picture of Cowgirl B’Elanna looked very much like her hologram, dressed as a Maquis in Insurrection Alpha, had. He glanced down before she could read his mind.
Now was likely the time, he reasoned, while she still felt some sympathy for his injury. Maybe he should have played it up a little more. Tom took a breath and seized his opportunity. “You know, we never did have that dinner…”
She cocked her head and snorted lightly, then pointed behind them at the mess hall doors. “We just had dinner.”
They’d just left the mess after a meal with the entire command crew to celebrate the defeat of holographic Seska and her band of mutineers. It wasn’t quite the romantic evening he’d been hoping for but she’d sat beside him at the table and he’d got to share a few intimate glances with her. He’d been trying to arrange a quiet, private dinner date with her for the last few weeks, but something kept coming up. Either Chakotay being kidnapped by alien scientists, or the whole crew being kidnapped by space car-jackers, or Seska’s crazy, homicidal hologram, or, well, their opposite shifts. Something had come up to derail their plans. It almost felt like a conspiracy.
“How about dessert then,” he suggested. They’d passed on the pokkel berry flambé that Neelix had served. “In my quarters,” he added. “I was thinking of something a little more chocolatey than pokkel berries.”
A look of genuine regret creased her features. “I wish I could,” she said. “But I need to run a full diagnostic of both holodecks and the interface. I have no idea if Seska laid any more traps in the system.”
“I guess so,” Tom agreed. He certainly wouldn’t want a homicidal Seska to pop up in the luau programme or Sandrine’s.
“Plus we need to double check all the other systems that she overrode to make sure there are no glitches.” She shrugged. “I really should be overseeing the diagnostics myself.”
“Sure,” he nodded. They stopped in front of the turbolift and he pressed the button to call a car.
“But I’m free tomorrow night,” she continued. “If you want to…do something.” Her mouth quirked. The ‘lift arrived and she stepped on, then turned to face him. “As long as it involves chocolate.”
Tom grinned from his spot in the corridor. “My quarters? Twenty hundred?” he asked.
“It’s a date,” she agreed, just as the doors closed and cut her off from his sight.
A slow smile split his features. Had she meant it, he wondered? When she’d said the word date, had she meant an actual date? He grinned at the thought and spent the rest of the evening thinking about tomorrow night, and chocolatey desserts, and whether or not he should replicate her some flowers.
***
Four hours ago…
“One step at a time. Dating is a human ritual wherein two people share a social activity, get to know each other. In time, it can lead to a romantic involvement and eventually, if all goes well, even marriage.”
*
She’d been quiet lately, distracted. He’d wondered if she was still disgruntled about his partnering with Seven for the ping pong tournament last week—she’d accused him of bringing in a ringer—but he suspected her pensive mood was about something else entirely. Their little dive into the life of one of the captain’s ancestors the other day had certainly made him think about his own family tree. B’Elanna’s was far more complicated and, at the moment, more difficult to research than his.
He hadn’t seen her this morning, since the quick meal in the mess that they’d shared with Harry, and he had a few minutes between his shift in sickbay and his one on the bridge, so he commed her. “Paris to Torres.”
She sounded distracted as she answered him. “Torres, here. Hi.”
“Hi.” He smiled at the sound of her voice. “Are you busy or can you grab a cup of coffee?” They usually managed to see each other at some point during their duty shifts, if not for lunch then for a quick coffee break.
“Umm… Actually, I’m a little busy with something.” Tom didn’t have time to respond with his disappointment before she added, “But actually, you might want to help me with it.”
One eyebrow lifted at her cryptic comment. “That sounds mysterious. Are you in engineering?”
“Holodeck two.”
Curiouser and curiouser. “Well, I’ll be right there.” He stepped into the ‘lift and called for deck 6. It was a short trip from sickbay and he strode through the holodeck doors less than a minute later. He hadn’t really formed a mental picture of what programme she’d be running: the inside of the antimatter containment chamber, maybe, or a magnified version of the electro-plasma grid. He certainly hadn’t been expecting a dim, smokey cave.
She was standing in the middle of the cave, holding a large PADD. She tapped a few commands and a large, rather mean-looking targ appeared in front of them. It had seriously shaggy fur and very sharp horns and tusks.
“If you’re looking for a pet, I recommend a hamster,” he said.
“Too much like a tribble,” she countered. She looked up and smiled at him. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Tom glanced around the cavern. “What’s going on?” Then it struck him why the programme looked familiar. “Is this the Day of Honor programme?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “The Day of Honor is coming up and it’s been on my mind.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say, ‘it is?’ but he stopped himself in time. It was on the Day of Honor two years ago that she’d told him she loved him for the first time. Of course, they’d thought they were about to die, but still, she’d said it. And he hadn’t said it back, not then anyway. That wasn’t something a guy in a committed, long-term relationship with a woman who had captivated his heart and soul was supposed to forget.
And he hadn’t forgotten, not exactly. It had been in the back of his mind like some nebulous fragment of a memory that he knew was important, knew he should spend some time considering and evaluating, but he’d been busy with those double shifts in sickbay, courtesy of his stupid bet with the Doc.
“Are you thinking of running the programme?” he asked.
“I thought about it.” She shrugged. “Since I didn’t, you know, finish it the first time. And I didn’t get the chance last year.”
A year ago, he’d actually made plans to celebrate their anniversary, if not the Klingon holiday. Extravagant ones. He’d been hoarding his replicator rations, and had asked Ensign Bronowski, who did duty in the hydroponics lab, to set him aside some flowers for a bouquet. He’d been working on a holodeck programme just for them. Then they’d run across the nebula that emitted subnucleonic radiation and, to cross it, they’d had to spend a month in stasis chambers. They weren’t built for two, and their anniversary had passed without the celebration he’d been hoping for.
He’d known there was something, but life in the Delta Quadrant was best described as long stretches of monotony punctuated by moments of sheer terror, and he’d been distracted. There’d been the visit with the Kadi monk that had gotten totally out of control. Not to mention the brouhaha over Seven’s study of his and B’Elanna’s mating habits, and granted, that would have been less easy for her to do—but not that much less, apparently—if he’d still had enough rations for a private, romantic dinner with B’Elanna in his quarters that fateful evening, instead of the very public one in the mess hall.
There’d been his, fine, slightly mean-spirited bet with the Doc over his ability to bring Seven up to snuff as a potential romantic partner for some lucky member of the crew. A bet he’d lost. Well, a bet he’d conceded after he’d realized the Doctor had caught him on a technicality. The Doc held him to those double shifts for two weeks before he’d let him off, and he’d still had to put in his duty on the bridge. It had killed all of his plans with B’Elanna.
Her lingering resentment with Seven over her study hadn’t helped. And his choice of Seven as his partner in the ping pong tournament hadn’t gone over well with B’Elanna.
“We could run the programme together if you want,” he offered.
Her mouth dropped open on a chuckle. “You’re volunteering for the painstiks and the Heart of Targ?” she asked.
“As long as I don’t have to slay him myself,” he answered, pointing at the frozen, holographic targ. He’d helped her to design the programme two years ago, so it wasn’t really a surprise to him; he knew what to expect and he was actually looking forward to the bat’leth fight.
“So,” he slid his hands around her waist and pulled her closer. “If the Day of Honor is coming up, that means our anniversary is too. Who’d have thought we’d last two years?” He smiled. “Not Tuvok; I heard he lost two week’s replicator rations on that bet.”
She snorted at that, and he leaned in for a slow, sweet kiss. After a moment they drew apart.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Of course, that month in stasis helped pass the time.” She flashed a grin.
“And my month in the brig?” he asked.
She sobered as she shook her head. “That made it feel longer.”
“Yeah, it did,” he agreed.
He’d had nothing to do for those thirty days but miss B’Elanna, and think about all the things he’d screwed up in his life and confess this new transgression in a letter to his father. And to think about what he and B’Elanna would do when he got out of the brig, starting with planning the perfect date night. …of course they’d had to wait for that date because, once again, the Delta Quadrant got in the way. The mess with the Devore, the Doc’s meltdown when his memory suppression failed and he remembered Ahni Jetal’s death, his months–which had really only been a few days–in that gravity well with Tuvok. He shook his head.
“You ever feel like the universe is plotting against you?” he asked. She cocked an eyebrow in response, and he kissed her again. The feel of her mouth under his and the words, date night and anniversary, mingled in his mind for a moment, and Tom pulled away from her with a gasp!
“What is it?” She frowned, confused by his sudden reaction.
“I just–” No. No, admitting that he’d just now remembered that, if the Day of Honor was coming up that meant that another anniversary–one equally special–must be almost upon them too… if he hadn’t, please no, forgotten it already! “I just remembered that I need to… talk to…Harry about something.”
Her features shifted and squinted as she peered at him. “Isn’t he on gamma shift? He’s probably still asleep.”
Tom gave her elbow a squeeze as he stepped away from her. Harry wasn’t the person he wanted to speak to, but he made a handy excuse and he would cover for him if need be. Maybe. “He’ll probably…want to get there early. You know how eager he is–”
“Ensign Paris, report to the bridge.” The sound of his combadge chirping and Chakotay’s voice cut through Tom’s mangled explanation. He leaned down to plant another quick kiss on her cheek, then headed for the door. “Have dinner with me tonight,” he said.
She shook her head, perplexed. “Of course.”
He tapped his combadge. “I’m on my way.” He flashed one more smile at her before stepping through the doors and heading for the bridge.
**
Now…
“Here’s to stories with happy endings.”
*
“Show mercy,” he’d begged. Neelix had responded with a firm, “Your people have a saying: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Then he’d gone on to remind Tom that he still owed him replicator rations for the pork rinds he’d replicated for his monster movie night. Both King Kong and The Mummy had been a hit, Godzilla not as much so.
But as firm as he could be with Tom, Neelix was a sucker for B’Elanna. In fact, if they hadn’t been such good friends–and hadn’t already examined this situation albeit from the other direction–he’d occasionally wondered if Neelix might have tried to date B’Elanna himself. He’d managed to sucker Neelix into fronting him the rations by telling him the truth: that he’d almost forgotten that tonight was the anniversary of his first date with B’Elanna. Of course, he’d had to bend that truth a little, especially regarding B’Elanna, by suggesting that she would have caused him injury (and not the fun kind) if he didn’t come through on their anniversary. He figured she wouldn’t mind: she had a reputation to uphold, afterall. But he hoped that Neelix wouldn't find out about that exaggeration. He wondered how much of their conversation Harry had overheard.
He arrived at B’Elanna’s door with a long stemmed red rose (in his hand, not his teeth) and a bottle of Mouton Rothschild, 2342. B’Elanna preferred red wine to bubbly. He knew her code, but he pressed her buzzer. The door opened almost instantly and she stood in the doorway with a bemused smile.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
“Happy Anniversary!” Tom extended the rose toward her then leaned down to kiss her on the cheek when she took it from him.
“You’re a few weeks early,” she said. She stood back and he brushed past her as he walked into her quarters. “We didn’t get together until after the Day of Honor and it isn’t–”
“Oh, the Day of Honor was when you came to your senses and admitted that you love me,” he cut her off. “Today is the anniversary of our first date.”
“Really?” She answered, her scepticism obvious. “Because the way I remember it, we had that dinner for Tuvok’s promotion, then you cornered me in the corridor outside the mess and kissed me.” One side of her mouth lifted in an uneven smile. “And that was after I came to my senses. We didn’t go on a date until a few days later.”
Tom grinned. “Do you remember that homicidal hologram of Seska that tried to kill me and Tuvok?”
She nodded. “How could I forget?”
“I asked you out on a date after that and you said yes.” His grin became distinctly smug.
“A date…? Really?”
“Well, technically, I said dinner. You’re the one who called it a date.”
“I did?” Now she just looked perplexed. “Are you sure?”
“I noted it in my personal log.” His eyebrows rose in victory. “The evening after we shut down the programme?” he reminded her. “We had dinner in my quarters…?” She still looked confused and Tom sighed. He was starting to feel distinctly deflated by her lack of memory of what, for him, had been a momentous event. “We had the chocolate brownies with chocolate ice cream and–”
“Caramel sauce for dessert!”
Now she remembered, he thought. “Right.” They’d also had the pheasant and asparagus, the same meal that he’d asked Neelix to replicate for tonight; it figured that she’d only remember the dessert.
She stepped into his arms and placed her hands on his chest. “So, you brought wine and flowers? Nice.” She kissed him on the cheek then took the bottle from him and turned to the cupboard to look for wine glasses.
He crossed to her replicator. “You think that’s impressive, how about a celebration dinner of Terrelian pheasant and asparagus…?”
Her face lit up. “I love asparagus!” Then she frowned again, “I thought you were out of rations?”
“Neelix fronted me some.”
She guffawed at that. “Don’t you still owe him for last month? How’d you talk him into that?”
He watched her as she moved toward the table to set the glasses down beside the bottle of wine. “I may have had to imply that you wouldn’t be very happy with me if I showed up tonight without dinner and flowers.” It had been one of his best acting performances since he’d had to rein in his own temper to calm B’Elanna after she’d confronted Seven about that study.
“Are you serious?!” Her mouth dropped open and she paused in mid step. She set the glasses on the table with a thunk. “What did you say to him?”
“Nothing, really.” There was a decided edge to her tone that didn’t exactly sound pleased. “I just…” He floundered, but only for a moment. “I may have said that you wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t, you know, come through with some sort of celebratory dinner.” Her frown deepened. “I also might have mentioned that it was a life or death situation…”
Her eyes narrowed as she stared at him.
“I…mostly let him use his imagination,” Tom finished.
She didn’t move for a moment, then she turned her head away from him.
“I just…I mean… It’s our anniversary,” he said lamely. He stepped toward her and cupped her shoulders but she refused to look at him. “You’re right. I’ll cancel the food requisition and apologize to Neelix.”
“No you will not!” Her head snapped up. “I mean, yes, you’ll apoligize to Neelix. But not tonight.” She peered over his shoulder at the empty replicator, noting the light that was flashing on and off, signifying an order waiting to be claimed. “He sent the requisition here?”
“Yeah.”
She nodded and cocked her head. “What’s for dessert?”
Tom hissed and his face crumpled. “I forgot about dessert,” he confessed.
She huffed at him. “You tricked Neelix into giving you extra rations by making him think that I’d, what, go Klingon on you if you forgot our anniversary, and then you forgot about dessert!?”
Tom slid a hand onto her hip. “Actually, I was hoping you’d be happy enough with the flower and the meal that you would go a little Klingon on me…” He waggled an eyebrow at her and sent her a slow grin.
She studied him for a long moment–a little too long. Tom started to wonder if she was genuinely pissed off at him, but then she snorted and slid her hands up his chest and around his shoulders. She leaned up and nipped him on the jaw. “How Klingon?” she breathed.
Desire slammed into him, hard and immediate. His belly tightened and he felt a zing of anticipation skitter up his spine. His hands convulsed on her hips before he traced their curve, then inched upward to the dip of her waist and pulled her flush against his chest. He kissed her on the cheek and trailed soft kisses along her jaw to below her ear.
She kissed him then; she nudged his head up with her nose and claimed his mouth, hard and fully, lips pressing, opening, their teeth clacking as he opened his mouth to her invading tongue. She tasted sweet, and he inhaled her as he drew in a lungful of B’Elanna-scented air.
“Dinner can wait,” she murmured when she broke from his mouth.
He wasn’t sure that he could. He loved her like crazy, so much so that, at times, it made him want to deny it. To run in the other direction. If anything ever happened to her, to them– He pulled back and stared at her: her eyes were warm and half closed, her lips slightly parted. They moved upward in a slow smile.
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I still don’t understand why you suddenly decided that you love me on the Day of Honor,” he told her truthfully.
She snorted and raised a hand to push her fingers through his short hair. “I knew I loved you before the Day of Honor. I just suddenly decided to tell you then.”
He squinted and pulled away from her a little bit, giving himself room to think. “So, if the warp core hadn’t overloaded, or if we hadn’t ended up floating in space, would you ever have told me?”
She wiggled a bit in his arms and he loosened his hold on her. “Probably,” she admitted, staring into his eyes. “At some point in the last two years.” The corner of her mouth quirked upward in an uneven smile. She reached up and hooked her fingers in the placket of his uniform and tugged the fastener down so his jacket fell open, then she shoved it off of his shoulders. It fell onto the floor behind him. “Especially after those aliens messed with our hormones.”
Tom grinned, picking up the old argument. He took a step forward, forcing her to back up toward her sleeping area. “They didn’t,” he told her between kisses, “mess” another kiss, “with me,” he scraped his teeth along her jaw. “That was all us…” He kissed her, soft and open-mouthed, on the soft spot below her ear.
“Upon my word, I tell you faithfully,” he murmured into her ear.
Through life and after death you are my queen.”
She stilled in his arms, her breath catching.
“Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly,”
“Their beauty shakes me who was once serene.”
He heard her sharp inhalation of breath, and her arms tightened around his shoulders as he kissed and nipped a path down her throat. She groaned and pressed against him, and his hands tightened on her waist. “Straight through my heart the wound is quick and keen.”
She growled lightly at the words and her fingernails bit into his shoulders.
He claimed her mouth again and pulled her closer. Her breath hitched and her body tensed, then her hands slipped to his shoulders for a brief moment before she pushed him away. Vigorously.
He staggered backward for a few steps and had barely caught himself from falling when she launched herself at him. She hit him with her full weight, and he hit the deck with a thump–it was a good thing that he and Baxter had been training in hand-to-hand lately so he knew how to fall. He relaxed his body and made sure that his head didn’t hit the floor. When she landed on him a moment later the breath left his lungs with a whoosh.
She grinned down at him: her teeth bared and a feral light in her eyes, her hair hanging in her face, and he immediately remembered those hours on Sakari over two years ago. Lust made his body heat, made his nerve endings spark with a mixture of pain and pleasure. “Only your word will heal the injury to my hurt heart… ” he recited, picking up the poem.
She dove for his wrists but he was ready for her. He gripped her arms and rolled her onto her back, pinning her to the carpet the same way he’d done on Sakari, on the leaf strewn ground, and leaned down to whisper against her throat, “...while yet the wound is clean.”
She laughed again the same way she’d done then, joy and excitement shining in her eyes. If they’d made love then, under that canopy of leaves…if Vorik hadn’t interrupted them… “Upon my word, he said, meaning it, “I tell you faithfully through life and after death you are my queen…”
Her back bowed and her body rose from the floor swaying toward him. Her breasts brushed his chest and her groin pressed solidly against his already hardening cock. Tom grinned in expectation.
“Your two great eyes will slay me suddenly,” he murmured. “Their beauty shakes me who was once serene.”
She buried her nose in his neck, under his ear and scraped her teeth across his throat. “You were never serene,” she told him, her voice breathy.
“I can be downright unflapple most of the time,” he countered. “But when I’m around you… Straight through the heart the wound is quick and keen,” he told her.
She growled softly, the sound coming from deep in her throat, and Tom smiled in anticipation. Her eyes were slitted as she gazed up at him, a dark, liquid brown that he was sure he could fall into. She pushed against his chest and hands, testing the commitment of his restraining grip on her wrists. He pressed his belly against hers and heard her gasp.
He ran his teeth along her jaw. “I miss you even when you are beside me…” Her body bucked and he raised his head to look into her flushed face. “I dream of your body even when you are sleeping in my arms.”
Her face contorted into a snarl as her whole body tightened and she heaved him off of her. “That’s not Chaucer,” she said.
He rolled, laughing, and got his feet under him in time to duck a flying couch cushion. “The words–” This time, he dodged a PADD, which clattered against a table leg behind him. “The words…”
She grinned and launched herself at him again but he ducked, curling his body and rushing toward her. He caught her by the waist and they went down in a heap beside the couch. Her coffee table teetered alarmingly. He pinned her again, and she bucked under him.
“The words, I love y–”
She growled again and surged upward, her lips drawn back in a snarl, her eyes flashing. She sank her teeth into his jaw near where she’d bitten him in that cave over two years ago. Tom hissed, his face contorting at the sudden, stinging pain, and his grip on her arms eased as his hands spasmed. She hooked a leg over his hips and rolled them so she was looming above him.
He’d recited poetry to her before and had reaped the rewards of a turned on Klingon girlfriend, but as rambunctious as they’d sometimes get, she hadn’t bitten him since Sikari. He stared up at her, his own breathing laboured, face throbbing, and reached for her, his hand curving around the back of her head to pull her down to him. Their mouths came together in more a battle than a kiss: lips and teeth and tongues, hot breath. She broke from him and shed her uniform jacket and shirt in seconds, then pulled off her undershirt and tossed it behind her in one smooth, fluid motion. Her breasts bounced, and Tom smiled his appreciation.
He made an attempt to sit up and do the same, but she wouldn’t allow it. Instead, with only the glint in her eyes as a warning, she grabbed his shirt and shoved it up his chest. Her fingernails scraped along his ribs, and Tom curled his body upward so she could pull his turtleneck shirt over his head and off. He was about to lower his arms, intending to hook his undershirt and slip it off, but she grabbed it at the collar and tore it from neck to hem. Tom looked from the shreds of his shirt to the gleeful expression on her face, and laughed.
“My queen,” he murmured as she grinned back at him. He flipped her and grabbed ahold of her slacks and practically tore them down her legs. Luckily, she’d shed her boots before he’d arrived. He resisted the urge to actually rip off her underwear…
She stretched languorously and smiled up at him, but he wasn’t falling for that! He reached for her hands and threaded their fingers together, pinning her hands near her head, her elbows outward. She shifted, testing his strength as he took a slow perusal of her body: smooth skin and firm muscles, her brown nipples standing proudly, enticing him. He leaned down and licked a nipple into his mouth and she groaned. He sucked harder, biting lightly, and her body convulsed. She grunted, gasped his name, her voice a breathy whine. He was more than happy to follow her silent order.
He laved her nipple for another long moment, his tongue playing with its pebbled texture, before switching to the other one. She pushed against the grip of his hands on hers but he could tell that she wasn’t serious. Her body bucked, her hips writhing. He got the hint. He kissed a trail down her ribs, detouring for a moment to her navel, then he traced a path with his tongue across her belly to her hip bone.
“Tommmmmm…..” Her voice was a rough growl. A warning, not a plea.
He grinned, then settled between her legs and swept his tongue over her heat. She moaned and bucked into his mouth. He could never be sure, when she was in this mood, if she wanted it hard and fast, or prolonged, sweeter. His queen liked foreplay: both Klingon and Human… Her salty-sweetness was familiar on his tongue, her musky scent made his head spin. He closed his eyes and experienced all of her: her hitched breaths as he explored her folds, her moan when he found her clit, the way her hips tilted, the heat of her. Her body opened and offered itself to him when he closed his lips around her clit and sucked. Her gasped moan of pleasure and relief.
It didn’t take long for her to come, writhing beneath him, almost fighting her pleasure. He released her hands and surged above her, wanting to feel her skin against his, her breasts on his chest, her leanly muscled softness all around him. Before he could lower his body onto hers, she flipped him onto his back with a cry of victory, and had his pants unfastened and his cock freed before he could draw a full breath. Her mouth was hot and wet around his straining cock, her tongue coming alive as it darted and kissed his length. He hissed a breath and grabbed her head, trying to slow her down.
“God, B’Elanna, wait.” He gripped her hair. She liked to make him come in her mouth, especially on nights when they were like this. On nights when they both felt like they couldn’t get enough of each other. She liked that she could make him lose control.
She swirled her tongue around his head and tilted her face up to look him in the eye, and his cock popped out of her mouth. “Do you want to fuck me, Tom?” she asked, her voice barely above a sultry whisper.
His jaw tense, his teeth grinding together, eyes slitted as he studied her sultry, satisfied expression. God, he loved this woman! “Yes,” he breathed.
She was on top of him before he could form a plan in his head, her legs straddling him, her small, hot hand gripping his dick and aligning it to her opening while he was still reaching for her. She slammed down onto him and he was engulfed by her slick heat. He held his breath; he was not going to come so soon! It was too good, too right, to be over so quickly.
A long, low moan came from deep in her throat, and Tom’s hands convulsed on her hips at the sound of it. Her little sighs and grunts, her breathy gasps, just made him more aroused. She turned him on when she was turned on. He almost laughed from the sheer joy of it. The rightness.
He would probably leave bruises on her skin. He hoped he would.
He thrust up into her and she rocked forward with a sigh. He gripped her hips and grounded his heels on the floor, and thrust again, this time harder, faster. His bare ass scraped the carpet, and his uniform slacks hampered his legs as he lifted them from the floor with the force of his thrusts. Her answering groan thrummed in his own chest. She was wet and hot and felt so right! All pretence of tenderness flew away then; he pounded into her and she slammed her hips down onto him. Her hands slipped on his shoulders, and he pulled her down to him; her pebbled nipples dragged on his chest with each thrust of his cock into her tight heat.
It was too much, too much. My queen… The words tumbled through his mind as he slid his hands over her back and waist, anchoring her to him. His teeth locked together as he fought to keep control. She buried her face in his neck, whimpering, and Tom nudged her head up just enough to kiss her jaw, her cheek. He felt her lips and tongue on the wound on his cheek, the light graze of her teeth, and he hissed in anticipated pain as his body jolted upward, slamming into her.
She grunted, then her breath caught. He felt her tighten and shudder as she ground her clit against his groin, felt her muscles flutter with her orgasm, and he couldn’t hold on any longer. Light exploded behind his eyes, pleasure zinged along his skin, his muscles tensing, breath stilling in his lungs as he came into her tight heat. He grunted against her throat, his features contorting in an imitation of pain. Her own laboured breaths puffed hotly against his throat and their bodies were merged; sweat slicked skin to sweat slicked skin. His laugh was a low rumble that made her body bounce.
She pulled in an errant elbow and propped herself up. “What?” she asked.
“My queen,” Tom repeated, and he kissed her again.
**
A few hours later…
*
“How many times do you think we’ve done this?” she asked.
Tom smiled as her voice pulled him from a half-sleep. The motion stretched the skin on his cheek, which had begun to scab over his bite, and his jaw stung all over again. His cheek throbbed with each pulsebeat and he resisted the urge to reach up and touch it. “Woke up the neighbours? Maybe we should ask Seven,” he joked. She thumped him on the chest and he let out a little grunt. “Ow.”
Her touch turned softer as she trailed her hand down his ribs to his hip and inner thigh. “This…” she said, cupping his balls.
Tom’s hips rocked upward, seeking firmer contact, and she lightly scratched her nails over his skin. Sweet and slow, hard and fast, up against the wall or her straddling him on the sofa. They’d made love hundreds of times in the last two years. At least. As often as they could given their life on Voyager, their responsibilities and their rocky period a year ago. But she was better now, and he wasn’t planning on defying orders and being thrown in the brig again, and he was grateful.
He groaned. “Upon my word, I tell you faithfully,” he began.
Her hand slid onto his cock and squeezed, and she leaned up to kiss him, successfully distracting him from his Chaucer. She slid her leg over his and pressed against his side.
“What’s the rest of the poem?” she asked.
“Umm…” Tom had to think for a moment. “Through life and after death, you are my queen.”
“Not that one, the one where you miss me even when I’m sleeping in your arms.” She ran a fingertip over his chest, playing with the crisp, auburn curls.
“Ah. Christopher Poindexter, a twenty-first century Earth poet from the American sector.”
“Just tell me,” she interrupted.
Tom loved her impatience. Most of the time. “I dream of your body even when you are sleeping in my arms. The words, I love you, could never be enough. And it’s true,” he said. “I like to think that I show you how much I love you.”
“You do.” Her expression softened as she smiled. “Still, I like to hear you say it.”
“I love you, B’Elanna,” he said simply.
“I love you, too,” she answered.
She kissed him again, and when they broke apart, he murmured, “True intimacy is the fire I feel when I kiss you in places the sun never touches…” And then he did.
**
The next morning…
*
“Make way for the day shift!”
Tom smiled hugely as he walked onto the bridge. No one could accuse him of being serene; he was positively exuding cheerfulness. In fact, he was damn near euphoric!
He’d ended up staying the night at B’Elanna’s, and they’d had their celebration dinner a little later in the evening than he’d originally planned. Thankfully, nothing had happened in the night to interrupt them. He’d have to thank Harry, he thought. He’d had to leave B’Elanna’s earlier than he’d wanted to go back to his quarters this morning, taking a little side trip to the deserted sickbay to mend the bite on his cheek. A few passes with the dermal regenerator and it was healed.
The uniform he’d worn yesterday was barely salvageable, but luckily he had a clean one hanging in his closet. He’d pondered the idea of leaving a clean uniform in her closet for the next time that happened… He’d mention it to her when he met her in the mess hall for lunch, later. She’d treated him to breakfast–his last decent meal for the foreseeable future–but at least he’d have her company, later, while he choked down Neelix’ revenge. Likely to be served hot, not cold.
He took the three steps to the main bridge at a trot, expecting to see Harry, but there was no sign of him. The captain and Chakotay were both there, however, quietly discussing something between them. Harry’s voice came over the com as Tom slipped into his seat at the helm.
“Away team to Voyager.”
“–Now,” Chakotay said, and the captain laughed.
“That’s our Harry,” the captain said, humour in her voice. “If I were you, I’d watch out for my job.” Her tone changed as she addressed Harry’s hail. “Go ahead, Ensign.”
“We found the source of the distress call.”
Tom checked his sensor readout and frowned; they were in orbit around a planetoid…
“It’s some kind of artificial intelligence, badly damaged. The Doctor thinks we should beam it aboard.”
Tom’s eyebrows shot up and he realized that his lunch with B’Elanna was suddenly in jeopardy.
“You’re in charge of the away mission, Ensign, what do you think?” the captain asked him.
No, Tom thought. No no no. Ensign Eager’s reply confirmed his worst suspicions.
“Well, I think we should help it if we can. But as a precaution, I recommend sealing off an engineering bay–”
Tom’s newly healed cheek crumpled in a grimace…
“–with a level ten force field and beaming it directly there,” Harry continued.
“Agreed,” Janeway replied. “Give us a few minutes.”
And there goes dinner, Tom thought. He sighed. An artificial intelligence that had sent out a distress call? Where had he heard that before…? He knew there was no way he was going to be able to pull B’Elanna away from Harry’s new mystery toy. Oh well, he thought, it would give him time to plan their next date.
***
A/N: I spent forty five minutes attempting to find a decent accreditation for both poems that Tom recites. Bombed out.
Rondel of Merciless Beauty (or, Merciles Beaute, a poem in rondel form) is by Geoffery Chaucer, London, 1343-1400. I couldn’t find exactly when it was written or who translated it into modern English and I’m not about to go hunting through my few volumes of poetry to look because Prompt Month!!!
The second poem, Untitled, I miss you even when you are beside me… is by Christopher Poindexter, b1991, a young, modern American poet who, though he’s published a couple of books of verse, appears to like to drop little gems on Instagram. I found this one after a google search for love poems.
The final line of poetry is from the poem, Philantia by Christopher Poindexter, in his book of poetry, Old Soul Love, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2018.
…and my Uni prof would slay me for that bungled citation.