NEW FIC: ICED part 3 of 4, K/L, NC-17
Nov. 22nd, 2005 01:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabid1stICED
By Rabid1st
BSG – K/L
RATING: NC-17, baby!
WARNING: NOT WORK SAFE! NOT EVEN CLOSE TO WORK SAFE! Unless you are Queenie or you work at Hooters.
BETA BABES: Dualbunny, Birthsister and Winter_Queen82
SPOILERS: I don’t think this fic has spoilers. But there is speculation of the coupling kind based on S2: Flight of the Phoenix.
TECHNICAL RESOURCES: Wikepedia: hypothalamus and Hypothermia.org
SUMMARY: This is a ‘nugget slang’ fic and a sequel to Shoot Your Shade. Which was a sequel to Burn the Pipe. Lee shot his shade (overreacted) last time out when he learned about Anders and dumped Kara cold. Now the path to togetherness is about to be iced.
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own these characters. They belong to the SciFi Channel, R&D and Ron Moore…whose e-mail address I don’t know. So, I can’t really ask him for permission or anything. But I’m not making any money or perks off of these characters…so please don’t sue me.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rabid1st/69278.html#cutid1
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rabid1st/69431.html#cutid2
PART THREE
Kara’s heavy artic gear pulled her under before she could take a breath and grim reality crunched down on Lee’s spine, making his knees wobble. He shut the lid on the childlike whimper at the center of his being: the one telling him it was useless to hope. Impatient with his own weakness, he took the med kit from his pocket and shrugged off his overcoat. There’d be time later to curl up in a ball and feel the loss, if it was a loss. Until then he had work to do.
Opening the kit, he extracted their last tank dose and cast the rest of the kit aside. After double checking the safety cap, he slipped the syringe into its designated cargo pocket on the leg of his pants. He’d started counting off the seconds, counting and praying, as soon as Kara vanished. His heartbeat pounded out time's rhythm in his ears. The ice was firm under his boots. He used a heel to kick in pinions and stake the rope. Tying off and triggering the lighted float, he tossed it into the water, trying to get it as close as he could to the spot where Kara had disappeared. He had to believe she would reappear. Kara wasn’t tanked but she was strong. She would surface. Lee didn’t allow himself to consider any other alternative.
Despite her cigar habit, she worked out diligently. Her aerobic capacity was very close to his. Lee knew Kara could hold her breath for over two minute, even under stress. Hypothermia, however, would sap her strength. Seconds dragged by and doubts started to creep in. The ice rocked under him and for the first time he noticed the floe was moving. The gap was closing, getting narrower by the second. In a two minutes, Kara could be trapped under the ice. Maybe her gear took her too far down. Maybe the water was colder than they’d imagined or the current swifter. Lee balanced on the very edge of the ice, ready to react as soon as he saw her. Any second now, he told himself, any second.
She breached, flailing and unaware she’d reached the air. She kept swimming as she crashed down into the water. Gasping and sputtering, she twisted about trying to orient. Lee screamed some incoherent encouragement and she spun to face him. She focused, breathing heavily and then took one long stroke toward the float. Her fingers brushed it, sent it bobbing away. Lee had a brief glimpse of her bone-white face, haunted dark eyes pleading with the universe for a little help, before she went down again. Marking the spot, he dived.
He knifed through the air, getting as much distance as he could before hitting the frigid water. When the sea closed around him, it sank long teeth into his flesh, blinding him for a moment and stealing the breath he’d just taken. The cold brutalized him. It was a crushing monstrous thing, nearly malicious. It seemed to liquefy the air in his lungs. As his sight cleared a claustrophobic panic gripped him and he nearly surfaced. But Kara was there, dropping away from him, the current carrying her out to sea.
The lighted float gave him some visibility, enough to see the pale oval of her upturned face as she sank into stygian blackness. Lee hated to leave the light behind but he had no room for any thought but reaching her. His oxygen-starved muscles cramped as he dove for her trailing hand. He hit one minute in his count and started doubling the numbers.
He almost missed her. The current had them both. She drifted silently limp in its hold. She’d managed to remove her heavy coat and her camouflage fatigues rendered her nearly invisible. But her hands were pale fish in the darkness. Lungs bursting, Lee snagged her wrist and whipped around. It took him a disorienting moment to find the float light, a tiny pin-prick of brightness, too far above him. But there were other slivers of brightness. As his eyes adjusted he saw them, slashes in the ice overhead. Finding a closer one, he stroked hard, pulling them towards the surface.
Kara was dead weight, dragging him back, impeding his fight for life-sustaining air. Every instinct he possessed urged him to let go of her and save himself but he held on even as he lost count of the seconds. Had he passed 180? 200? What was the next critical number? Lee couldn’t remember and it frightened him. He was losing it, his brain was shutting down. Coherent thought slipped from his mind. They would never make it. He should never have tanked early.
They broke out of the sea very close to an ice edge. Lee gulped air, taking in a little water as well. The ice floes bobbed and crashed together around him like bumper cars, some of them rose onto others. A swiftly moving sheet of ice closed on him and Lee dived down to avoid being crushed as it went by. Coming up again, he pulled Kara to his side and leaned into a floe edge, moving as the ice moved, while he gathered the strength for the next phase of the rescue. Kara bobbed, face down, in the brackish water. Noticing her lifeless stillness, Lee clawed into her sopping sweater. Her dead weight provided the leverage he needed to flip her over but it hardly mattered. She wasn’t breathing.
She would never breathe again unless he got them both the hell out of the water. But wrestling Kara onto the ice seemed beyond his sapped reserves. Thinking things through, he used the water’s buoyancy to create wave action and splashed Kara to relative safety. Her head cracked on the ice when she landed, making Lee wince. He tried to climb up beside her but his strength was failing.
Clinging to ice edge, too spent to tread water, he focused on Kara’s bloodless face, her blue lips, as he let the truth fill his mind. Kara's life force was frozen in time. She would die unless he helped her, unless he found the will to make one more lunge. He couldn’t feel his body and was sure it wouldn’t obey his commands but somehow he forced it to move. Like a puppeteer manipulating a marionette, he thought out the motions of climbing. Hands on the ice, elbows tensed. He could see his arms shaking, but felt nothing.
He mercilessly clawed into Kara, using her weight to balance his. He let go only when she started to slide and lunged forward. He was shivering convulsively. That was a good sign, his autonomic body functions trying to save him. The pain was good, too. A hundred thousand icicles seemed to be jabbing into him as head down and panting he spilled across Kara and collapsed. His chest heaved. He needed to rest, might have no other choice but to rest, but knew he didn’t have the time. Lifting his head, he rolled to the left and reached for the tank dose.
He couldn’t feel his fingers and they couldn’t risk a mistake now. Bracing on a numb elbow, he used his eyes to guide his hands. He worked slowly, edging the needle free. There was only one tank dose left. Kara needed it. If he dropped the syringe the false death of hypothermia would become chillingly real. Holding it between his palms, he waited until the ice floe was clear of collision points and then bit on the sterile cap to free the needle. He stared at the sharp tip for a minute, wondering how to deliver the dose. Simplicity seemed best. He turned his hands and jabbed the needle into Kara’s stomach. Letting her flesh hold the syringe for him, he used the side of his fist to push the medicine into her.
For a second or two nothing changed. A scream built in Lee’s chest, a mindless animal cry against the uncaring Gods. It clawed its way to his throat as his head, lolling in exhaustion, pillowed against Kara’s still breast. And then she shuddered under him and started gagging. Reenergized in an instant, Lee sat up. Yanking the needle out of her, he half dragged, half rolled Kara onto his lap. He positioned her over his leg, facedown, so he could massage her back as she vomited ice water.
***************************************************************
“Can’t you at least pretend to be happy for me?” Zak asked as he straddled a chair back on the other side of Lee’s table.
Lee lifted his gaze from his drink to stare at the hazy image of his brother. He rubbed a hand over his eyes to clear them. The world stayed blurry. This was only to be expected when he’d been looking at it through the bottom of a bottle for an hour. Lee squinted past Zak to the vast expanse of the bustling Caprican space port, surprised to learn he was still in the bar.
“What makes you think I’m not happy?” he slurred.
“For starters, you ditched us to come here. Were you planning to leave without saying goodbye?”
“Left you a note,” Lee said. He checked behind Zak again. “Where’s your copilot?”
“Parking,” Zak said, shortly, before adding, “She doesn’t want to see you either.” He studied Lee crossly for a minute and then blurted, “Why don’t you like her?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I’ve seen the way you look at her. Like you wish we still sacrificed women at the stake.”
“That’s ridicul…” Lee paused, frowning. He couldn’t seem to wrap his tongue around the word, after a moment he substituted another. “That’s nonsense, Zak”
“You’re drunk,” Zak accused.
“Last day in port. Pilot’s prerogative. Nothing to do with you.”
“You don’t get drunk, Lee. You don’t loosen your collar without a damned good reason.” Zak glanced over his shoulder. After making sure they wouldn’t be overheard, he lowered his voice a little and announced, “Mom called. I know you wrote to her about Kara.”
Lee blinked, considering what he might say to this. Then, he inched forward in his chair and said, “I don’t know what mom told you, Zak, but all I did was give her my honest opinion of the situation here.”
“Situation?” Zak hissed. “I can’t believe you would try to oppose…maybe you didn’t expect me to ask Kara to marry me but…but….”
“Look, Zak, you’re not me,” Lee interrupted his brother’s sputtering. “You don’t need anyone’s permission to marry. Nobody expects you to uphold the family name or drop the traditional number of offspring. I have to get the old man’s clearance to spit but you can do what you please.”
Pressing his lips together, Zak gave a rueful shake of his head. “You know that’s not true. You’ve got Dad in your pocket. You’ve never disappointed him.”
“Yeah, right,” Lee drawled, rolling his eyes.
“I think Dad will like Kara,” Zak remarked meditatively.
“I’m sure he will.”
“But you don’t. And I just don’t understand it. I know you liked her at first. The two of you were getting along so well. The last time you were here, you were practically inseparable. Kept going out on the 380. I was actually starting to get jealous…”
“It’s the bike,” Lee said avoiding Zak’s eye. “Girls love the Swan. Which reminds me,” he slouched in his chair and jammed a hand deep into his pants’ pocket. After a bit of rummaging he drew out the 380’s remote ignition and tossed it across the table. “I cleared the security codes and left it at the base holding lot. Take it out every so often.”
“Take it out?” Zak stared at the silvery temptation by his right hand but didn’t reach for it. Instead he lifted his gaze to his brother’s face and said, “Okay, now I know something happened. Tell me what it was.”
“Nothing happened, Zak,” Lee said, suddenly very uncomfortable. He didn’t need to be drunk during this conversation. It would be too easy to make a fateful slip. “I can’t take a Swan on a Battlestar. There’s a personal weight limit, you know? And it needs to be ridden or the gears freeze up.”
“Right, like Kara’s going to let it sit around.”
“I’m not giving it to, Kara,” Lee said, too emphatically. He couldn't help thinking about how happy she would be straddling the Swan, moving with it. The bike was a vital part of who he was: Fleet Champion, Caprica City Cup Champion. He could ride or fly anything and it felt like he was leaving that skill in her hands. Zak’s pensive look made Lee wish he’d remained silent.
“You had a lay-over in Delphi province last month,” Zak said, after a thoughtful pause.
“So?”
“Kara has an apartment there. Did you stop by?”
“Didn’t have time,” Lee shrugged. Tilting his head, he let his line of sight flow around Zak’s shoulder to the scrolling announcement of arrivals and departures playing across the far wall. He didn’t want to talk about Delphi.
“You were there for three days.”
‘I need to see you, agapeta.’
‘You need to stop calling me that…I mean it, Lee.’
“And I did the brotherly thing and took her to lunch.”
It had taken three days of phone tag and instant messaging to talk Kara into meeting him. She’d refused to come to his hotel, refused to give him her address so he could come to her. But eventually she’d set a date and a place.
“Lunch? Where?” Zak didn’t sound like he believed it.
“At the Oracle Center’s Officer’s lounge?”
Zak’s blank expression showed this was news to him. Lee was shamefully delighted by the shared secret.
“She had a little too much to drink.”
“Oh,” Zak said and then he beamed. “Probably celebrating.”
“Probably,” Lee agreed indifferently. “You can call the cafe if you like but I doubt the staff remembers us. Nothing happened. We were completely unexceptional guests.”
Would anyone remember him nearly coming to blows with that Major from the 78th? The jealous outburst could be explained as brotherly concern. Kara had no business shaking her tail for some hard-bodied elder statesman. Would the waiter remember Kara telling Lee that she didn’t belong to him and never would? That brief sexual encounters didn’t matter. What mattered was she loved Zak and was going to marry him.
“And anyway, does it matter if I like her?”
“What?”
“Kara? She’s marrying you, not me. Does it matter if I like her?”
“I guess not,” Zak sighed. “I just…I thought you would.”
“Fine. I like her. She’s a honeyed peach.”
“She’s an artist. And you haven’t even seen her in a viper.”
But he had, of course. It was a small step really from the Swans to a simulator. And then it was only a matter of timing a midnight test range run and setting a series of escalating challenges. But he didn’t bother correcting Zak’s misconception. He just added that secret to the growing stack.
“She’s been through so much,” Zak continued. “And she’s still the most amazing girl, bright and funny and brave. A great shot, a great teacher, as good a pilot as you. I thought the two of you would be best friends.”
“Some people aren’t meant to be friends, Zak,” Lee said, sounding unhappy even to his own ears. He drained his glass, grimacing over the burn of too much alcohol.
“First you, now Mom,” Zak grumbled, sinking back in his seat. “How am I going to break this to Dad? ‘Guess what Dad? I want to marry a girl the rest of the family hates. And no, I still don’t have my pilot’s certificate.’”
“Tell him you love her,” Lee advised, drawing in a painful breath as he spotted Kara heading their way.
Gods, it should be that easy. ‘I love her.’ This is the woman I love, my brother’s wife.
He rose from his chair, hurriedly tossing down a tip for the bartender before saying, “I’ve got to go check on my shuttle.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, sorry. Lost track of time.”
“Lee, I don’t want to leave things like this.”
“Things are fine, Zak. I’m fine. Kara’s great. And…if you think it will help at all I’ll even put in a word with Dad.” Lee rushed out this speech but paused before leaving to dart a quick glance at his little brother. “Look, I’m not sure if I’ll make the wedding.” He saw the protest forming on Zak’s lips and headed it off. “It depends on my posting. I’ll send you a blip when I’m reassigned and know for sure. Maybe we can play a little long distance Overlord.”
‘Sure, why not?” Zak agreed sulkily.
Collecting his bag, Lee settled the strap on his shoulder and turned to go. But before he completed the pivot, his conscience prodded him. Needing to be sure of his path, he turned back to Zak.
“You do love her, right?”
“Of course, I love her,” Zak bristled, offended by the question. “I can’t believe you would even ask me that.” He shot out of his chair and stepped around the table to face-off with Lee. “Kara is going to be my wife, no matter what you or mom, or even dad, have to say about it.”
Lee swayed drunkenly for a minute, his vision misting over again. Kara was nearly in hailing range. Knowing he couldn’t face her goodbye, Lee leaned toward Zak and pulled him into a bear hug. After pressing a firm kiss on his brother’s cheek, he whispered, “Then, I’m happy for you.”
Zak’s arms tightened around him and Lee lingered in the embrace, savoring the warmth of his brother’s love, feeling nothing but love in return. They had always been close. Lee couldn’t let his weakness come between them. He found a new depth of courage as he stepped back and looked straight into Kara’s face.
“I’m happy for both of you,” he announced with a sincere smile.
It was the last time he saw his brother alive.
*********************************************************
The underworld was cold as hell.
Kara’s first coherent thought ruled out the Elysian Fields. Not that she’d had a lot of hope in that direction. Despite her call sign nobody had offered to set her among the stars. But her arrival in this icy corner of the hereafter meant she wouldn’t be seeing Lee or Zak or Commander Adama any time soon. The thought left her bereft. But she resolutely pushed the self-pity aside. It made sense, didn’t it? Screw-ups got the screwed up version of Hades, the avant-garde version. What the Delphi art circle critics would call an “interesting interpretation.”
She tried to open her eyes but the bright glare of Hades and the dipping, jostling orientation of her body made her instantly nauseous. She closed her eyes again, fighting the urge to vomit as she took her bearings. She seemed to be floating and upside down. Maybe she was still in the water. Something was anchoring her, though, a heavy band around her knees, and she couldn’t sense the press of water.
She remembered falling into the sea, fighting to surface. Her coat, a giant squid of fabric, pulled her deeper until she thrashed free. She recalled breaking the surface and seeing Lee’s float, almost close enough. Struggling to reach it, she’d despaired over her uncoordinated limbs. She remembered her failure, Lee’s blue gaze, holding onto her, and then the sinking into pain-laced blackness. Tiny demons had speared into her back and chest, puncturing her lungs, stealing her breath.
Even now, the cold horror of drowning threatened to overwhelm her senses and push her towards panic. There was a fluid rattling in her chest, an echo of the earlier agony, but she could breathe. The cold had grated her throat raw. Her nose and ears ached and her pulse hammered in her temples. Should she have a pulse? For that matter, did eternal shades have stomachs to purge? Tantalus got hungry, so maybe. When her nausea passed she tried again to push around to what her dizzy head told her was an upright position. Her arms were restrained by something.
“Damn it, Kara, stop squirming or I’ll drop you on your ass,” Lee ordered.
Kara’s eyes popped open. “Ow,” she yelped, flinching from the brightness. “What the…frak? Lee?”
“Almost there,” he assured her in a friendlier tone.
Almost where?
She wanted to ask but her swollen tongue and parched throat made it hard to enunciate. She raised her head and focused on the ice field spread out to the far horizon. There was Lee’s sled close, moving with her, with him. She didn’t understand any of it but the important thing was Lee had her. Unless her senses were still deceiving her, she was balanced over his shoulder and the thing restraining her was his long coat.
This meant she was alive. Or, she thought suddenly, Lee was dead.
If he was dead she was going to kick his ass.
The nature of the light changed, growing dimmer, earthier. Kara had time to note the rocky terrain replacing ice below them and walls rising on both sides and then she was sliding to her feet as Lee bent over, dipping his shoulder. He held onto her as she staggered, fighting for equilibrium, and she gripped his upper arm, hugging it for support
“What…what happened?” she wheezed, trying to gulp in too much air and finding her lungs already partially full.
“You fell into the water,” he answered with a staccato short-temperedness. “I got you out. Now, get undressed.” He used his free hand to catch at his coat as it slithered from her shoulders. He draped it back around her. “And put this on.”
Kara looked beyond him, assessing their shelter. It was a small cave, overlooking the bay, a tiny bubble in the rock wall. Lee's sled nearly blocked the vertical slit of the cave mouth. There were patches of moss on the ceiling and deep pools of shadow in the rounded corners. Shadows meant time had past. The day was well advanced. Kara put it all together: her memories, her nauseating weakness, and their damp, partially frozen, clothes. She looked at Lee, smelled the sweat and sea salts on him. Saw the icy strands of his hair, dripping melt water.
“You…frakking…idiot,” she gasped, pulling back to punch the arm she’d been desperately gripping. Lee winced and his coat spilled to the rock strewn ground at their feet. “You…you went…in the water.” It wasn’t so much a question as a tearful accusation.
The horror of losing him became real to her in retrospect. He could have died trying to save her. He hadn’t but that didn’t change the frisson of fear raising the hairs on the back of her neck. Her head was spinning. Too disoriented to stand on her own, and too furious with Lee to tolerate his touch, she reeled to the nearest wall, leaning heavily against it.
“You were dying, Kara. Dead. What was I supposed to do leave you to drown?”
“Yes,” Kara said, nodding numbly. Pressing into the wall, she clawed at her chest with one hand, trying to breathe evenly. “Yes, you leave me. You stay alive. Complete the mission.”
“Mission?” Lee laughed. It was a hollow sound. After a moment he took in her wide-eyed defiant stare, saw she was serious, and shook his head. “You can’t believe I would…”
“It’s basic survival, Lee. You never go in the water.”
“I know what the damned regulations say, Kara,” Lee sighed. Turning his shoulder to her, so she couldn’t read the pain in his face, he shuffled a few paces away.
“Then why didn’t you follow them?”
Lee looked back at her, plainly confused. “Why didn’t I leave you? I can’t...even...”
He ran out of air and cocked his head, considering her in stunned silence while he digested this question. His hand drifted up to his chest, fingers clenching over his heart. Just thinking about the kind of loss she was describing drilled deep into him. How could she be so cold? He tried to speak but nothing escaped his constricting throat. Eventually, he spread his hands wide in defeat. There was no common ground on this issue. He wanted to shake her, to make her understand but was afraid it might be hopeless. So after staring a few heartbeats longer, silently admonishing her, he turned his attention to unloading the sled.
Kara watched him work, feeling the lash of his silence more keenly than she felt the cold. He’d risked his life for her and this was the thanks he got. She hadn’t meant to belittle his efforts. Obviously, he deserved some kind of epic poem written in his honor. Would any other man have dived into that black water? If he’d been any other man she’d have frakked his brains out in happy, life-affirming, appreciation. But she didn’t want to think about Lee risking his life for hers. Snuggling into his coat, she sat down on the stone floor and studied him as he set up camp, knowing she’d pushed him beyond angry to an empty, lonely place.
Lee cleared rubble before spreading a tarp and blanket on the floor. He used a few rocks to make a fire cirlce and started a small blaze before unpacking his dry clothes. As he stripped and changed into pants and double tanks, Lee muttered harshly under his breath. Damn her. Damn her frakking need to do everything alone. Damn her for her hypocrisy. Because he knew, he just knew, she would have gone in the water after him, probably untanked, too. Then they both would have died. He stopped unloading supplies abruptly when his eyes filled with tears. His lower lip trembled and he covered his mouth with his palm, fighting for composure. The last thing he wanted to do was cry.
The first thing he wanted to do was strangle Kara. No, he wanted her alive. What he wanted was to make her admit she was happy to be alive. Admit to her frakking hypocrisy.
Shifting his hand from his mouth to his muddled head, Lee blinked hard as he stared out of the cave toward the bay. He pressed the heel of his palm into his temple. He had to get control of his zigzagging emotions. The T.N.K. must be wearing off. People had been known to do regrettable things, awful things, when they came down from a tank dose. The over-stimulated hypothalamus sputtered out hot-blooded suggestions in an effort to compete with the drug. Lee’s was suggesting very primitive actions. He scuffed the fingers of both hands through his hair, trying to corral his wayward focus.
When he was sure his voice wouldn’t crack, he addressed Kara without looking in her direction. “I told you to get out of those wet things,” he said with deceptive softness.
Kara decided to mend fences. “Lee, I didn’t mean...It’s not that I’m not grateful...”
Lee slammed down the space heater he'd been positioning to dry his clothes, bending one of its legs. It tottered as he twisted its control knob to the highest setting. Kara snapped her mouth closed. As the heater’s red glow intensified, Lee took a few short, shallow breaths and wrestled with his testosterone driven urges. But his tank needy brain refused to clear. Planning to shake her until she broke he pivoted and stalked toward Kara. His hands were fisted at his side as if he meant to hit her.
Kara knew what this was. She was feeling the same spiraling, barely restrainable, emotions. She craved some kind of reckless exercise. It didn’t matter what form the action took was as long as it was intense. But she also needed more air, especially if she meant to take on Lee. She tried to scramble away but her weak knee buckled as she left her crouch. Slithering down the wall, she scraped her elbows as she collapsed.
Lee’s face was furious as he spat, “I’m not interested in your gratitude, Lieutenant.”
“I just don’t want you to die for me,” she said, looking up at him with the cautious calculation of a trapped animal.
“Then take better care of yourself,” he countered. Hooking his hands under her arms, he wrested her to her feet and thrust her into the wall. “I told you to get out of these clothes,” he growled.
“I…I can’t…my fingers have gone numb.” She presented her gloved hands but Lee wasn’t in the mood to feel sorry for her.
“Frak,” he barked. Then, leaning very close to her ear, he softly snarled, “You are making me crazy.” Clawing into the front of her soggy sweater he used the material as a harness to drag her back to the sled, barely letting her dancing feet touch the floor as they went. His coat got left behind, during the short, fast trip. Spinning Kara around, he pushed her into the side of the sled, and then held her in place with one hand. He started fishing through his few remaining spare clothes with his other hand as he repeated, “Crazy.”
“It’s the tank, Lee,” Kara said, hugging herself against her relentless shivering. She braced her feet wide to stand. At least, her breathing seemed easier. Maybe it was the adrenaline sparked by Lee’s man-handling. She really wished she felt up to punching him again. “We’re coming down from the dosage.”
“It’s not the tank,” he corrected, though he knew it probably was. “It’s you. You and your reckless self-indulgence.” He grabbed at her hands. Wrenching her wrists around, he peeled each of her gloves off, as he added, “I have half-a-mind to put you over my knee and wallop you good.”
The blood warming combo of the nearby fire and space heater worked with Kara's own tank withdrawal to renew her energy. She jerked her hand away from him, balling it into a fist. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Keep tempting me,” Lee countered before seizing the hem of her sweater and carrying it swiftly over her head. “Going after eight raiders on your own, jumping the hell back to Caprica…” Casting the sweater aside, he removed her shirt and, with one seam-rending yank, her bra. Kara’s hands went to her breasts, more from shock than modesty. Lee had seen her naked before but he’d seldom treated her violently. “Pushing on when I tell you…I order you to turn back…”
He dropped his hands to her waist. The leather of her belt hissed against the metal buckle as he forced it through. He popped all eight of her fly buttons in record time. As her pants sagged, he reached around her to retrieve an oversized wooly sweater he’d separated from his meager stack of dry clothes. Stretching the neckline out of shape, he shoved the bulk of the material over her head and let the body of the sweater fall. It covered Kara like a bag. She had to punch her hands around to find the sleeves.
Going to his knees, Lee tried unlacing her boots. But the swollen laces proved stubborn. Easily frustrated, he pulled one boot into his lap and pried it whole, sock included, from her foot. He threw the boot to the far corner of the cave. Kara’s loosened pants slipped down as he repeated this maneuver with the other boot. She made a grab for her trousers but overbalanced and stumbled forward. Hobbled by folds of cloth, and falling, she was forced to brace against Lee’s shoulders or tumble into his lap.
“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” he asked, staring up into her remarkably guileless face. “What it’s like to wait in the dark for you to pop up again…all bright smiles…with your arrows and cylons and grandstanding conquests?”
Punching his arms up slightly, he opened them inside her elbows, breaking her hold so she dropped into his hands. He used the momentum of her fall to carry her to the blanket at his side.
“Lee, I think we should...” she began reasonably, while kicking out of her clinging cloth hobble.
In no mood to hear anything she had to say, Lee pinned her with his body and smothered her remarks with a fervent kiss. Startled Kara tried to squirm free but Lee held on, determined to push her into some rash action. Deepening the kiss, he slid a hand along the silky curve of her inner thigh. She gave in too easily, melting under him. The tension of his erection was like a drawn bow. When the curve of it brushed against Kara’s leg, she moaned. The open invitation acted like a draught of cold water down Lee’s spine. What the frak was he doing? This definitely wasn’t the fight he’d been looking for. Kara should have come up swinging as soon as he put her down. He pressed up on one elbow to glare at her.
“You want to fight or get laid?” He growled.
Brows lifting, she cast a saucy look his way. “Nice to be given options,” she purred before breaking into a huge grin.
Lee found nothing funny in Kara suggesting he would give her no choice. He would never force her to...even coming off tank. He groaned and collapsed to the side, freeing her to escape. She sat up, massaging her chest but didn’t scamper away from him. It would be silly to pretend she needed to defend her virtue from Lee Adama, even if she had virtue left to defend. Hooking her fingers under the sweater she wore like a dress, she rocked her hips from side to side until she could kick off her wet underwear.
“I didn’t mean…” Lee began red with the mortification of it. “I wasn’t going to…”
“What? Have your drugged way with me?” she finished, laughing at the idea. “Damned right, you weren’t.”
“I thought you’d just…take a swing at me,” Lee muttered, an arm across his eyes. “Then, I’d have an excuse to…I don’t know…tie you up, throw you out of my cave…”
He didn’t see her tender smile but he heard her moving and expected to hear her speak from the other side of the room. His whole body jerked when she straddled him. His arm dropped back, combing over his hair, and he stared. Kara had her chin down as she worked on his belt buckle. Her fingers, still stiff from the cold water, weren’t cooperating but she was determined. Lee tried to sit but her hands abandoned their half-finished task to splay across his chest, pushing him down.
“I don’t want to fight,” Kara said, looking pointedly into his eyes.
Spreading her knees wider, she scooted forward until her desire-dampened curls caressed the chilled skin of his abdomen. Lee forgot to breathe. Numbly he helped Kara strip away his tanks. Her fingers were like ice, at first, making his muscles clench whenever she touched him. But her hands warmed quickly as they explored his stomach and chest. Lee collapsed back onto the blanket to better appreciate the firelight playing in Kara's dark eyes. It created a halo in the platinum strands of her drying hair. Her skin had a golden blush and heat seemed to build in her, radiate from her.
She took his face between her palms and kissed him. He wasn’t ready for that. It was a slow, sweet, mind-numbing kiss and Lee grew weak from it. Any objection he might have made to her choice of option number two faded into white noise in his head. His hands floated up to touch her elbows, caress her waist and, finally, seize the curve of her bare bottom. He anchored there, digging in for a moment. Then his fingers slipped lower, finding sensitive skin already dewy with readiness.
Wicked words backed up on Lee’s tongue. It didn’t pay for a C.A.G. to say certain things. It wasn’t smart to think of his pilots in purely sexual terms, either. But Lee was thinking of little else as he toyed with Kara's slit, opening her slightly with the tip of one finger. She murmured encouragement and relaxed letting him go deeper. His finger entered cock heaven and reported directly back to his groin. Kara also reported in. She rocked against his fly…hot, wet, eager, a great lay just waiting to happen. Gods, there were so many words he never let himself apply to her, despite the fact that he thought about frakking her, on average, every 2.5 minutes.
Smiling against her mouth, Lee considered telling her she was the best piece of tail in the fleet, Mark VII included, great lines, easy to ride and ultra-manueverable. He withdrew his finger and let his hand glide along the swell of her hip. He trailed over powder soft skin until he could push between their bodies and reach those slippery curls again. When he eased into her slick folds, Kara whipped away from his mouth, back arching. Taking the hint, Lee abandoned subtly and twisted three fingers up into her.
“Gods, Lee,” she gasped, her body wracked by a spasm of pure delight.
"That's the way, baby, take it all. I got more when you need it."
He found the right knot of nerves in her sheath of tightly corded muscle and circled. His fingers got slick and his cock got achingly hard as Kara responded. She rode his hand, using it to pleasure herself. The sweater between them only increased the erotic nature of the encounter, hiding much of their union from view. Lee longed to see her naked, breasts bouncing. The need to taste her built in him. It felt illicit, forbidden.
'Because it is,' his few active brain cells chided. 'You’re her C.A.G. for frak sake.'
And that was unfortunate because he would never, ever get this image out of his head or get the feel of her off his fingers.
She was palming her breasts, kneading them as her hips gyrated in slow circles. The desire to help her feel more, to see all of her, overwhelmed him and he eased free of her slippery, accommodating heat. Kara protested but he only shoved her back a bit so he could sit. He peeled his sweater off of her and let it slide down her spine. Stunned by the sudden chill, Kara stilled, panting, her hands landing like doves on his shoulders. Lee simply stared at her for a moment, as if he’d never seen her before, never seen anything so entrancing.
Then, he cupped her breasts, one in each hand, forcing them closer together. They were beautiful breasts, budding pink at the tips. Kara was soldier-hard underneath but softly, yeilding just below her skin. Circling his thumbs over her chill-tightened nipples, Lee enjoyed her succulent femininity. He placed a chaste kiss into her cleavage and then drew the flat of his tongue all the way from there, up the curve of her throat, stopping just below her ear. The primal nature of the caress made her shiver and press her aching breasts into his palms.
“Are you cold, agapeta?” he whispered, throatily.
Kara trembled, feeling the bite of the cold intensify as her heart warmed to his secret name for her, the forbidden endearment. Agapeta. Most loved. It sliced to her marrow. Was it true? Was she everything to Lee? So beloved that nothing, no vow or honorable pledge, would keep him from her? She thought about denying it, denying him as she’d almost always done.
But she wanted this, too. She wanted to be wild with him, free of any constraint. She fumbled for his fly. Her questing fingers shoved fabric aside until they closed around his sobering length. He wasn’t a grossly endowed man but he had enough girth to intimidate a lesser woman. Kara pursed her lips slightly, thinking about physics. They had nothing to ease the encounter but their natural lubricants.
As she took his measure, Lee lowered his mouth to one of her nipples and quickly flicked the tip of his tongue, like the tassel of creation’s softest whip, over its peak. Oh, sweet Aphrodite, Kara thought. He could just do that and she’d bounce hard and high. He fondled her ass as he slurped her puckered aureola into moist heat, his tongue performing a complex dance. Then, using his teeth, he pulled her nipple taut, letting it go with a sucking reluctance.
Shuddering with every moue of Lee’s lips, every curling of his tongue over the throbbing tips of her breasts, Kara rejected the idea of a hand job or a quick blow. He was getting far too cocky but she didn’t want to risk losing him to her skill, didn’t want him to bounce until she had him deep inside. Rising over him a little, she crested her back like a cat and positioned his shaft at her slick gateway. Her labia bloomed wider to hold him, velvet on velvet.
Eyes closed, Kara breathed into relaxation, rocking her hips through a sensual figure eight. Lee couldn’t help dropping back to stare as she took him in, slowly, an inch at a time. He forgot about pleasuring her, forgot about everything but how she looked and how incredible she felt. Her mouth formed a perfect ‘o’ as she eased down his length. Lee’s neck tensed in an arc and his lashes closed but he could still see her clearly in his mind’s eye. There was no escaping her, this woman he was too weak to deny.
He would have her. He would…
Growling it under his breath, he seized her at the nape of the neck and the waist, yanking her into his body as he rolled her over onto her back. When she was supine, he plunged into her, going far deeper than he should with a single thrust. Kara cried out, bridging up beneath him. It was too soon to take her like this but Lee had no restraint left. He sank his teeth into her shoulder, almost tearing the skin. She did tear into him, dragging her nails down his arm as she wrenched control away from him.
Lee went rigid, panting, trying to hold on when she clamped down on him with the same muscles she used to fight G-force turns.
“Kara…please…”
Please? She liked that. There was a blossom of pain under her ribs but pain was nothing to her. A minor annoyance set against the full, stretching, insistence of Lee Adama between her legs. Lee was on her, in her and he was going to bounce for her. Any minute now his sweet, hot, nectar would flow and she would have him. Have this to keep her warm during those long empty hours in her rack when he was only a few feet away and a world beyond her. She would have the memory of his scent, the weight and rigid heft of him, to take with her into the future, into every meaningless encounter with lesser men.
She penetrated him again with her nails, drawing blood, marking him for the mirror. Later in the week, as he showered or changed, he would notice the healing cuts and remember this moment. It was a transient victory. But, Kara decided on the instant, if she ever got to give him that prison tattoo, it would be a recreation of this branding of his flesh, four long scratches down his arm. Then his next soft-spoken, well-behaved woman would know he was hers.
“Mine,” she murmured.
“Oh, yeah,” he agreed gutturally, though he could barely process language.
His face was distorted, a mask of intermingled pain and pleasure. If she didn’t ease up, he wasn’t going to last. There were bright spots in his vision but he couldn’t check his hunger. He needed to be closer to her, closer than any man had ever been. He needed to know she was his. It seemed he’d wanted nothing else, no one else, since the day he’d met her. He hooked a hand under her knee, drawing her thigh up and out, not caring in the heat of his own need if she was ready for what he was going to give her.
His mouth claimed hers as she inhaled, forcing her to breathe through her nose. On the exhale his lips twisted, releasing her for a second, and he emitted a humming moan, “Mmmmmm.” The meaningless sound spoke of succulence, as if she were ripe fruit, the first of the season. It made her squirm. Her tight walls fluttered around his rigid length and she got a little wetter. Inspired, Lee repeated the kiss and hum, a number of time. Soon he was pumping smoothly in and out of her slippery depths.
They rocked together in a complicated rhythm. Every few breaths, Lee held the kiss, tongue wrestling with Kara's, fingers tangled in her hair. Grinding against her while she bucked and shimmied under him, he ignored the call to breathe, until they were forced to break and gasp. It made his blood quicken, already there was lava in his veins.
Once, when he tried to capture her mouth, Kara eluded him, tossing her head back and calling on the Gods to help her. But the Gods were on his side. Finally. Despite his less than loving technique, Kara didn’t once ask him to slow down or stop or even go easy. Lee wondered if he could. It seemed impossible. Kara had him locked into this frantic, slithering, stroking dance. She moaned through every breath he allowed her, pussy tugging at his cock when he pulled back and squeezing when he surged forward, until he lost himself in the primal pounding of his pulse and their bodies.
This wasn’t like him. It wasn’t like him at all. He didn’t generally put his own needs first; take without any thought of giving.
Aphrodite and all her acolytes knew he wanted to please Kara, more even than he’d wanted to please his first woman. But he wasn’t going to make it to her release. Small wonder if she condemned him as weak. If she sought other lovers, rather than return to him. He’d lost control like this, three, maybe four, times in his life. But the last time he’d done so was their first time together. Their only time until now. He’d lost control then, too, in his brother’s home, in his brother’s bed, less than a week after the funeral.
If there was any excuse in good intentions Lee could claim it. Frakking his brother’s grieving intended had been the last thing on his mind when he’d found her in tears. He’d only wanted to comfort, to hold her for a moment, to share their mutual pain. But their needs were far more complex than either of them had imagined. When Kara had wrapped her body around his, he'd responded with a shocking ferocity. The shame of that desperate union haunted them, separated them. His one selfish indulgence had driven them apart, kept them apart for two years. Until fate and the end of the world had forced them together again.
How could Zak not understand, not forgive this? Zak of all people should know what Kara could do to a man. How easy it was to love her. How you fell into her contrary snares and hoped never to be free again.
Pushing all thought of his brother aside, Lee shifted his weight to his forearms and let his head hang low as he took their girl to a place no one but him had ever taken her. Not Zak. Not Baltar. Not some nameless Major or faceless resistance leader. This was what she wanted. She wanted him.
“Say my name,” he pleaded, knowing her compliance would push him past the brink.
Her hands crept to the small of his back and then dove beneath the loosened waistband of his trousers, pushing the pants lower so she could cup his ass. She tried to urge him closer than was humanly possible, really couldn’t get enough of him. She brought her knees up, to take him deeper. Caressed the back of his thighs with her toes, spreading her knees wider, using his body for leverage as she tightened around him
“Lee...oh, Lee” she panted obediently and his stomach muscles seized.
Sweet release shuddered through him, breaking his voice when he said her name.
Lee returned from the star-studded flight through perfect peace to find Kara gazing up at him with a fathomless, unreadable stare. It was the same look she’d given him after their first time. And just like then, when she saw his eyes open she turned her face away. He saw tears glistening on her lashes just before they fluttered closed, shutting him out.
This time, Lee resisted the urge to interpret, to assign meaning. He refused to fill the void with his own guilt. Instead, he drew languidly back, easing free of her still pulsating grip. She made a tiny mew of protest, missing him immediately. Lee rubbed his cheek along hers and then, licked and kissed his way down her taut form to her beautifully swollen mound. She opened her legs to accommodate the breadth of his shoulders and he parted her lips gently, exploring with his fingers and tongue. She tasted like him now, redolent with his essence. He stroked the hard nub of her arousal and she rewarded him with a quickening of her breath.
Her hand found the back of his head, combed through his hair and then pressed down, holding him in place. He let her maneuver him into the ideal position. Once he was sure of it, he sucked harder, purring against her moist heat. The vibration jolted Kara off the blanket in a series of tiny quakes. Lee reached his free hand up, patting blindly until he could pinch her nipple. He twirled it between thumb and fingers and she bounced easily for him, clenching convulsively around the fingers of his other hand as he thrust into her. Her less viscous melt sweetened the taste of his rich cream.
Lee should have been satisfied. But Kara’s release seemed muted and her skin felt too hot under his probing tongue. Worried, he lifted his head to study her. She was smiling and limp with satisfaction. Tiny aftershocks visibly shook her. But her eyes had a glassy sheen. Lee climbed up her body to tenderly kiss her parted lips. He brushed the sweat-dampened hair from her forehead.
And felt the unnatural heat. She was flushed, burning with fever.
“Kara?”
“I’m…sorry,” she panted, trying to focus on him. “It's so good...I just…I can’t breathe.”
Guilt had its way. Cursing himself for an idiot and a satyr, Lee dropped an ear to her chest and listened. He heard the fluid rattle, immediately, as she struggled for air. There was water in her lungs.
“Frak! Frak…”
END THIS PART
By Rabid1st
BSG – K/L
RATING: NC-17, baby!
WARNING: NOT WORK SAFE! NOT EVEN CLOSE TO WORK SAFE! Unless you are Queenie or you work at Hooters.
BETA BABES: Dualbunny, Birthsister and Winter_Queen82
SPOILERS: I don’t think this fic has spoilers. But there is speculation of the coupling kind based on S2: Flight of the Phoenix.
TECHNICAL RESOURCES: Wikepedia: hypothalamus and Hypothermia.org
SUMMARY: This is a ‘nugget slang’ fic and a sequel to Shoot Your Shade. Which was a sequel to Burn the Pipe. Lee shot his shade (overreacted) last time out when he learned about Anders and dumped Kara cold. Now the path to togetherness is about to be iced.
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own these characters. They belong to the SciFi Channel, R&D and Ron Moore…whose e-mail address I don’t know. So, I can’t really ask him for permission or anything. But I’m not making any money or perks off of these characters…so please don’t sue me.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rabid1st/69278.html#cutid1
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rabid1st/69431.html#cutid2
PART THREE
Kara’s heavy artic gear pulled her under before she could take a breath and grim reality crunched down on Lee’s spine, making his knees wobble. He shut the lid on the childlike whimper at the center of his being: the one telling him it was useless to hope. Impatient with his own weakness, he took the med kit from his pocket and shrugged off his overcoat. There’d be time later to curl up in a ball and feel the loss, if it was a loss. Until then he had work to do.
Opening the kit, he extracted their last tank dose and cast the rest of the kit aside. After double checking the safety cap, he slipped the syringe into its designated cargo pocket on the leg of his pants. He’d started counting off the seconds, counting and praying, as soon as Kara vanished. His heartbeat pounded out time's rhythm in his ears. The ice was firm under his boots. He used a heel to kick in pinions and stake the rope. Tying off and triggering the lighted float, he tossed it into the water, trying to get it as close as he could to the spot where Kara had disappeared. He had to believe she would reappear. Kara wasn’t tanked but she was strong. She would surface. Lee didn’t allow himself to consider any other alternative.
Despite her cigar habit, she worked out diligently. Her aerobic capacity was very close to his. Lee knew Kara could hold her breath for over two minute, even under stress. Hypothermia, however, would sap her strength. Seconds dragged by and doubts started to creep in. The ice rocked under him and for the first time he noticed the floe was moving. The gap was closing, getting narrower by the second. In a two minutes, Kara could be trapped under the ice. Maybe her gear took her too far down. Maybe the water was colder than they’d imagined or the current swifter. Lee balanced on the very edge of the ice, ready to react as soon as he saw her. Any second now, he told himself, any second.
She breached, flailing and unaware she’d reached the air. She kept swimming as she crashed down into the water. Gasping and sputtering, she twisted about trying to orient. Lee screamed some incoherent encouragement and she spun to face him. She focused, breathing heavily and then took one long stroke toward the float. Her fingers brushed it, sent it bobbing away. Lee had a brief glimpse of her bone-white face, haunted dark eyes pleading with the universe for a little help, before she went down again. Marking the spot, he dived.
He knifed through the air, getting as much distance as he could before hitting the frigid water. When the sea closed around him, it sank long teeth into his flesh, blinding him for a moment and stealing the breath he’d just taken. The cold brutalized him. It was a crushing monstrous thing, nearly malicious. It seemed to liquefy the air in his lungs. As his sight cleared a claustrophobic panic gripped him and he nearly surfaced. But Kara was there, dropping away from him, the current carrying her out to sea.
The lighted float gave him some visibility, enough to see the pale oval of her upturned face as she sank into stygian blackness. Lee hated to leave the light behind but he had no room for any thought but reaching her. His oxygen-starved muscles cramped as he dove for her trailing hand. He hit one minute in his count and started doubling the numbers.
He almost missed her. The current had them both. She drifted silently limp in its hold. She’d managed to remove her heavy coat and her camouflage fatigues rendered her nearly invisible. But her hands were pale fish in the darkness. Lungs bursting, Lee snagged her wrist and whipped around. It took him a disorienting moment to find the float light, a tiny pin-prick of brightness, too far above him. But there were other slivers of brightness. As his eyes adjusted he saw them, slashes in the ice overhead. Finding a closer one, he stroked hard, pulling them towards the surface.
Kara was dead weight, dragging him back, impeding his fight for life-sustaining air. Every instinct he possessed urged him to let go of her and save himself but he held on even as he lost count of the seconds. Had he passed 180? 200? What was the next critical number? Lee couldn’t remember and it frightened him. He was losing it, his brain was shutting down. Coherent thought slipped from his mind. They would never make it. He should never have tanked early.
They broke out of the sea very close to an ice edge. Lee gulped air, taking in a little water as well. The ice floes bobbed and crashed together around him like bumper cars, some of them rose onto others. A swiftly moving sheet of ice closed on him and Lee dived down to avoid being crushed as it went by. Coming up again, he pulled Kara to his side and leaned into a floe edge, moving as the ice moved, while he gathered the strength for the next phase of the rescue. Kara bobbed, face down, in the brackish water. Noticing her lifeless stillness, Lee clawed into her sopping sweater. Her dead weight provided the leverage he needed to flip her over but it hardly mattered. She wasn’t breathing.
She would never breathe again unless he got them both the hell out of the water. But wrestling Kara onto the ice seemed beyond his sapped reserves. Thinking things through, he used the water’s buoyancy to create wave action and splashed Kara to relative safety. Her head cracked on the ice when she landed, making Lee wince. He tried to climb up beside her but his strength was failing.
Clinging to ice edge, too spent to tread water, he focused on Kara’s bloodless face, her blue lips, as he let the truth fill his mind. Kara's life force was frozen in time. She would die unless he helped her, unless he found the will to make one more lunge. He couldn’t feel his body and was sure it wouldn’t obey his commands but somehow he forced it to move. Like a puppeteer manipulating a marionette, he thought out the motions of climbing. Hands on the ice, elbows tensed. He could see his arms shaking, but felt nothing.
He mercilessly clawed into Kara, using her weight to balance his. He let go only when she started to slide and lunged forward. He was shivering convulsively. That was a good sign, his autonomic body functions trying to save him. The pain was good, too. A hundred thousand icicles seemed to be jabbing into him as head down and panting he spilled across Kara and collapsed. His chest heaved. He needed to rest, might have no other choice but to rest, but knew he didn’t have the time. Lifting his head, he rolled to the left and reached for the tank dose.
He couldn’t feel his fingers and they couldn’t risk a mistake now. Bracing on a numb elbow, he used his eyes to guide his hands. He worked slowly, edging the needle free. There was only one tank dose left. Kara needed it. If he dropped the syringe the false death of hypothermia would become chillingly real. Holding it between his palms, he waited until the ice floe was clear of collision points and then bit on the sterile cap to free the needle. He stared at the sharp tip for a minute, wondering how to deliver the dose. Simplicity seemed best. He turned his hands and jabbed the needle into Kara’s stomach. Letting her flesh hold the syringe for him, he used the side of his fist to push the medicine into her.
For a second or two nothing changed. A scream built in Lee’s chest, a mindless animal cry against the uncaring Gods. It clawed its way to his throat as his head, lolling in exhaustion, pillowed against Kara’s still breast. And then she shuddered under him and started gagging. Reenergized in an instant, Lee sat up. Yanking the needle out of her, he half dragged, half rolled Kara onto his lap. He positioned her over his leg, facedown, so he could massage her back as she vomited ice water.
***************************************************************
“Can’t you at least pretend to be happy for me?” Zak asked as he straddled a chair back on the other side of Lee’s table.
Lee lifted his gaze from his drink to stare at the hazy image of his brother. He rubbed a hand over his eyes to clear them. The world stayed blurry. This was only to be expected when he’d been looking at it through the bottom of a bottle for an hour. Lee squinted past Zak to the vast expanse of the bustling Caprican space port, surprised to learn he was still in the bar.
“What makes you think I’m not happy?” he slurred.
“For starters, you ditched us to come here. Were you planning to leave without saying goodbye?”
“Left you a note,” Lee said. He checked behind Zak again. “Where’s your copilot?”
“Parking,” Zak said, shortly, before adding, “She doesn’t want to see you either.” He studied Lee crossly for a minute and then blurted, “Why don’t you like her?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I’ve seen the way you look at her. Like you wish we still sacrificed women at the stake.”
“That’s ridicul…” Lee paused, frowning. He couldn’t seem to wrap his tongue around the word, after a moment he substituted another. “That’s nonsense, Zak”
“You’re drunk,” Zak accused.
“Last day in port. Pilot’s prerogative. Nothing to do with you.”
“You don’t get drunk, Lee. You don’t loosen your collar without a damned good reason.” Zak glanced over his shoulder. After making sure they wouldn’t be overheard, he lowered his voice a little and announced, “Mom called. I know you wrote to her about Kara.”
Lee blinked, considering what he might say to this. Then, he inched forward in his chair and said, “I don’t know what mom told you, Zak, but all I did was give her my honest opinion of the situation here.”
“Situation?” Zak hissed. “I can’t believe you would try to oppose…maybe you didn’t expect me to ask Kara to marry me but…but….”
“Look, Zak, you’re not me,” Lee interrupted his brother’s sputtering. “You don’t need anyone’s permission to marry. Nobody expects you to uphold the family name or drop the traditional number of offspring. I have to get the old man’s clearance to spit but you can do what you please.”
Pressing his lips together, Zak gave a rueful shake of his head. “You know that’s not true. You’ve got Dad in your pocket. You’ve never disappointed him.”
“Yeah, right,” Lee drawled, rolling his eyes.
“I think Dad will like Kara,” Zak remarked meditatively.
“I’m sure he will.”
“But you don’t. And I just don’t understand it. I know you liked her at first. The two of you were getting along so well. The last time you were here, you were practically inseparable. Kept going out on the 380. I was actually starting to get jealous…”
“It’s the bike,” Lee said avoiding Zak’s eye. “Girls love the Swan. Which reminds me,” he slouched in his chair and jammed a hand deep into his pants’ pocket. After a bit of rummaging he drew out the 380’s remote ignition and tossed it across the table. “I cleared the security codes and left it at the base holding lot. Take it out every so often.”
“Take it out?” Zak stared at the silvery temptation by his right hand but didn’t reach for it. Instead he lifted his gaze to his brother’s face and said, “Okay, now I know something happened. Tell me what it was.”
“Nothing happened, Zak,” Lee said, suddenly very uncomfortable. He didn’t need to be drunk during this conversation. It would be too easy to make a fateful slip. “I can’t take a Swan on a Battlestar. There’s a personal weight limit, you know? And it needs to be ridden or the gears freeze up.”
“Right, like Kara’s going to let it sit around.”
“I’m not giving it to, Kara,” Lee said, too emphatically. He couldn't help thinking about how happy she would be straddling the Swan, moving with it. The bike was a vital part of who he was: Fleet Champion, Caprica City Cup Champion. He could ride or fly anything and it felt like he was leaving that skill in her hands. Zak’s pensive look made Lee wish he’d remained silent.
“You had a lay-over in Delphi province last month,” Zak said, after a thoughtful pause.
“So?”
“Kara has an apartment there. Did you stop by?”
“Didn’t have time,” Lee shrugged. Tilting his head, he let his line of sight flow around Zak’s shoulder to the scrolling announcement of arrivals and departures playing across the far wall. He didn’t want to talk about Delphi.
“You were there for three days.”
‘I need to see you, agapeta.’
‘You need to stop calling me that…I mean it, Lee.’
“And I did the brotherly thing and took her to lunch.”
It had taken three days of phone tag and instant messaging to talk Kara into meeting him. She’d refused to come to his hotel, refused to give him her address so he could come to her. But eventually she’d set a date and a place.
“Lunch? Where?” Zak didn’t sound like he believed it.
“At the Oracle Center’s Officer’s lounge?”
Zak’s blank expression showed this was news to him. Lee was shamefully delighted by the shared secret.
“She had a little too much to drink.”
“Oh,” Zak said and then he beamed. “Probably celebrating.”
“Probably,” Lee agreed indifferently. “You can call the cafe if you like but I doubt the staff remembers us. Nothing happened. We were completely unexceptional guests.”
Would anyone remember him nearly coming to blows with that Major from the 78th? The jealous outburst could be explained as brotherly concern. Kara had no business shaking her tail for some hard-bodied elder statesman. Would the waiter remember Kara telling Lee that she didn’t belong to him and never would? That brief sexual encounters didn’t matter. What mattered was she loved Zak and was going to marry him.
“And anyway, does it matter if I like her?”
“What?”
“Kara? She’s marrying you, not me. Does it matter if I like her?”
“I guess not,” Zak sighed. “I just…I thought you would.”
“Fine. I like her. She’s a honeyed peach.”
“She’s an artist. And you haven’t even seen her in a viper.”
But he had, of course. It was a small step really from the Swans to a simulator. And then it was only a matter of timing a midnight test range run and setting a series of escalating challenges. But he didn’t bother correcting Zak’s misconception. He just added that secret to the growing stack.
“She’s been through so much,” Zak continued. “And she’s still the most amazing girl, bright and funny and brave. A great shot, a great teacher, as good a pilot as you. I thought the two of you would be best friends.”
“Some people aren’t meant to be friends, Zak,” Lee said, sounding unhappy even to his own ears. He drained his glass, grimacing over the burn of too much alcohol.
“First you, now Mom,” Zak grumbled, sinking back in his seat. “How am I going to break this to Dad? ‘Guess what Dad? I want to marry a girl the rest of the family hates. And no, I still don’t have my pilot’s certificate.’”
“Tell him you love her,” Lee advised, drawing in a painful breath as he spotted Kara heading their way.
Gods, it should be that easy. ‘I love her.’ This is the woman I love, my brother’s wife.
He rose from his chair, hurriedly tossing down a tip for the bartender before saying, “I’ve got to go check on my shuttle.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, sorry. Lost track of time.”
“Lee, I don’t want to leave things like this.”
“Things are fine, Zak. I’m fine. Kara’s great. And…if you think it will help at all I’ll even put in a word with Dad.” Lee rushed out this speech but paused before leaving to dart a quick glance at his little brother. “Look, I’m not sure if I’ll make the wedding.” He saw the protest forming on Zak’s lips and headed it off. “It depends on my posting. I’ll send you a blip when I’m reassigned and know for sure. Maybe we can play a little long distance Overlord.”
‘Sure, why not?” Zak agreed sulkily.
Collecting his bag, Lee settled the strap on his shoulder and turned to go. But before he completed the pivot, his conscience prodded him. Needing to be sure of his path, he turned back to Zak.
“You do love her, right?”
“Of course, I love her,” Zak bristled, offended by the question. “I can’t believe you would even ask me that.” He shot out of his chair and stepped around the table to face-off with Lee. “Kara is going to be my wife, no matter what you or mom, or even dad, have to say about it.”
Lee swayed drunkenly for a minute, his vision misting over again. Kara was nearly in hailing range. Knowing he couldn’t face her goodbye, Lee leaned toward Zak and pulled him into a bear hug. After pressing a firm kiss on his brother’s cheek, he whispered, “Then, I’m happy for you.”
Zak’s arms tightened around him and Lee lingered in the embrace, savoring the warmth of his brother’s love, feeling nothing but love in return. They had always been close. Lee couldn’t let his weakness come between them. He found a new depth of courage as he stepped back and looked straight into Kara’s face.
“I’m happy for both of you,” he announced with a sincere smile.
It was the last time he saw his brother alive.
*********************************************************
The underworld was cold as hell.
Kara’s first coherent thought ruled out the Elysian Fields. Not that she’d had a lot of hope in that direction. Despite her call sign nobody had offered to set her among the stars. But her arrival in this icy corner of the hereafter meant she wouldn’t be seeing Lee or Zak or Commander Adama any time soon. The thought left her bereft. But she resolutely pushed the self-pity aside. It made sense, didn’t it? Screw-ups got the screwed up version of Hades, the avant-garde version. What the Delphi art circle critics would call an “interesting interpretation.”
She tried to open her eyes but the bright glare of Hades and the dipping, jostling orientation of her body made her instantly nauseous. She closed her eyes again, fighting the urge to vomit as she took her bearings. She seemed to be floating and upside down. Maybe she was still in the water. Something was anchoring her, though, a heavy band around her knees, and she couldn’t sense the press of water.
She remembered falling into the sea, fighting to surface. Her coat, a giant squid of fabric, pulled her deeper until she thrashed free. She recalled breaking the surface and seeing Lee’s float, almost close enough. Struggling to reach it, she’d despaired over her uncoordinated limbs. She remembered her failure, Lee’s blue gaze, holding onto her, and then the sinking into pain-laced blackness. Tiny demons had speared into her back and chest, puncturing her lungs, stealing her breath.
Even now, the cold horror of drowning threatened to overwhelm her senses and push her towards panic. There was a fluid rattling in her chest, an echo of the earlier agony, but she could breathe. The cold had grated her throat raw. Her nose and ears ached and her pulse hammered in her temples. Should she have a pulse? For that matter, did eternal shades have stomachs to purge? Tantalus got hungry, so maybe. When her nausea passed she tried again to push around to what her dizzy head told her was an upright position. Her arms were restrained by something.
“Damn it, Kara, stop squirming or I’ll drop you on your ass,” Lee ordered.
Kara’s eyes popped open. “Ow,” she yelped, flinching from the brightness. “What the…frak? Lee?”
“Almost there,” he assured her in a friendlier tone.
Almost where?
She wanted to ask but her swollen tongue and parched throat made it hard to enunciate. She raised her head and focused on the ice field spread out to the far horizon. There was Lee’s sled close, moving with her, with him. She didn’t understand any of it but the important thing was Lee had her. Unless her senses were still deceiving her, she was balanced over his shoulder and the thing restraining her was his long coat.
This meant she was alive. Or, she thought suddenly, Lee was dead.
If he was dead she was going to kick his ass.
The nature of the light changed, growing dimmer, earthier. Kara had time to note the rocky terrain replacing ice below them and walls rising on both sides and then she was sliding to her feet as Lee bent over, dipping his shoulder. He held onto her as she staggered, fighting for equilibrium, and she gripped his upper arm, hugging it for support
“What…what happened?” she wheezed, trying to gulp in too much air and finding her lungs already partially full.
“You fell into the water,” he answered with a staccato short-temperedness. “I got you out. Now, get undressed.” He used his free hand to catch at his coat as it slithered from her shoulders. He draped it back around her. “And put this on.”
Kara looked beyond him, assessing their shelter. It was a small cave, overlooking the bay, a tiny bubble in the rock wall. Lee's sled nearly blocked the vertical slit of the cave mouth. There were patches of moss on the ceiling and deep pools of shadow in the rounded corners. Shadows meant time had past. The day was well advanced. Kara put it all together: her memories, her nauseating weakness, and their damp, partially frozen, clothes. She looked at Lee, smelled the sweat and sea salts on him. Saw the icy strands of his hair, dripping melt water.
“You…frakking…idiot,” she gasped, pulling back to punch the arm she’d been desperately gripping. Lee winced and his coat spilled to the rock strewn ground at their feet. “You…you went…in the water.” It wasn’t so much a question as a tearful accusation.
The horror of losing him became real to her in retrospect. He could have died trying to save her. He hadn’t but that didn’t change the frisson of fear raising the hairs on the back of her neck. Her head was spinning. Too disoriented to stand on her own, and too furious with Lee to tolerate his touch, she reeled to the nearest wall, leaning heavily against it.
“You were dying, Kara. Dead. What was I supposed to do leave you to drown?”
“Yes,” Kara said, nodding numbly. Pressing into the wall, she clawed at her chest with one hand, trying to breathe evenly. “Yes, you leave me. You stay alive. Complete the mission.”
“Mission?” Lee laughed. It was a hollow sound. After a moment he took in her wide-eyed defiant stare, saw she was serious, and shook his head. “You can’t believe I would…”
“It’s basic survival, Lee. You never go in the water.”
“I know what the damned regulations say, Kara,” Lee sighed. Turning his shoulder to her, so she couldn’t read the pain in his face, he shuffled a few paces away.
“Then why didn’t you follow them?”
Lee looked back at her, plainly confused. “Why didn’t I leave you? I can’t...even...”
He ran out of air and cocked his head, considering her in stunned silence while he digested this question. His hand drifted up to his chest, fingers clenching over his heart. Just thinking about the kind of loss she was describing drilled deep into him. How could she be so cold? He tried to speak but nothing escaped his constricting throat. Eventually, he spread his hands wide in defeat. There was no common ground on this issue. He wanted to shake her, to make her understand but was afraid it might be hopeless. So after staring a few heartbeats longer, silently admonishing her, he turned his attention to unloading the sled.
Kara watched him work, feeling the lash of his silence more keenly than she felt the cold. He’d risked his life for her and this was the thanks he got. She hadn’t meant to belittle his efforts. Obviously, he deserved some kind of epic poem written in his honor. Would any other man have dived into that black water? If he’d been any other man she’d have frakked his brains out in happy, life-affirming, appreciation. But she didn’t want to think about Lee risking his life for hers. Snuggling into his coat, she sat down on the stone floor and studied him as he set up camp, knowing she’d pushed him beyond angry to an empty, lonely place.
Lee cleared rubble before spreading a tarp and blanket on the floor. He used a few rocks to make a fire cirlce and started a small blaze before unpacking his dry clothes. As he stripped and changed into pants and double tanks, Lee muttered harshly under his breath. Damn her. Damn her frakking need to do everything alone. Damn her for her hypocrisy. Because he knew, he just knew, she would have gone in the water after him, probably untanked, too. Then they both would have died. He stopped unloading supplies abruptly when his eyes filled with tears. His lower lip trembled and he covered his mouth with his palm, fighting for composure. The last thing he wanted to do was cry.
The first thing he wanted to do was strangle Kara. No, he wanted her alive. What he wanted was to make her admit she was happy to be alive. Admit to her frakking hypocrisy.
Shifting his hand from his mouth to his muddled head, Lee blinked hard as he stared out of the cave toward the bay. He pressed the heel of his palm into his temple. He had to get control of his zigzagging emotions. The T.N.K. must be wearing off. People had been known to do regrettable things, awful things, when they came down from a tank dose. The over-stimulated hypothalamus sputtered out hot-blooded suggestions in an effort to compete with the drug. Lee’s was suggesting very primitive actions. He scuffed the fingers of both hands through his hair, trying to corral his wayward focus.
When he was sure his voice wouldn’t crack, he addressed Kara without looking in her direction. “I told you to get out of those wet things,” he said with deceptive softness.
Kara decided to mend fences. “Lee, I didn’t mean...It’s not that I’m not grateful...”
Lee slammed down the space heater he'd been positioning to dry his clothes, bending one of its legs. It tottered as he twisted its control knob to the highest setting. Kara snapped her mouth closed. As the heater’s red glow intensified, Lee took a few short, shallow breaths and wrestled with his testosterone driven urges. But his tank needy brain refused to clear. Planning to shake her until she broke he pivoted and stalked toward Kara. His hands were fisted at his side as if he meant to hit her.
Kara knew what this was. She was feeling the same spiraling, barely restrainable, emotions. She craved some kind of reckless exercise. It didn’t matter what form the action took was as long as it was intense. But she also needed more air, especially if she meant to take on Lee. She tried to scramble away but her weak knee buckled as she left her crouch. Slithering down the wall, she scraped her elbows as she collapsed.
Lee’s face was furious as he spat, “I’m not interested in your gratitude, Lieutenant.”
“I just don’t want you to die for me,” she said, looking up at him with the cautious calculation of a trapped animal.
“Then take better care of yourself,” he countered. Hooking his hands under her arms, he wrested her to her feet and thrust her into the wall. “I told you to get out of these clothes,” he growled.
“I…I can’t…my fingers have gone numb.” She presented her gloved hands but Lee wasn’t in the mood to feel sorry for her.
“Frak,” he barked. Then, leaning very close to her ear, he softly snarled, “You are making me crazy.” Clawing into the front of her soggy sweater he used the material as a harness to drag her back to the sled, barely letting her dancing feet touch the floor as they went. His coat got left behind, during the short, fast trip. Spinning Kara around, he pushed her into the side of the sled, and then held her in place with one hand. He started fishing through his few remaining spare clothes with his other hand as he repeated, “Crazy.”
“It’s the tank, Lee,” Kara said, hugging herself against her relentless shivering. She braced her feet wide to stand. At least, her breathing seemed easier. Maybe it was the adrenaline sparked by Lee’s man-handling. She really wished she felt up to punching him again. “We’re coming down from the dosage.”
“It’s not the tank,” he corrected, though he knew it probably was. “It’s you. You and your reckless self-indulgence.” He grabbed at her hands. Wrenching her wrists around, he peeled each of her gloves off, as he added, “I have half-a-mind to put you over my knee and wallop you good.”
The blood warming combo of the nearby fire and space heater worked with Kara's own tank withdrawal to renew her energy. She jerked her hand away from him, balling it into a fist. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Keep tempting me,” Lee countered before seizing the hem of her sweater and carrying it swiftly over her head. “Going after eight raiders on your own, jumping the hell back to Caprica…” Casting the sweater aside, he removed her shirt and, with one seam-rending yank, her bra. Kara’s hands went to her breasts, more from shock than modesty. Lee had seen her naked before but he’d seldom treated her violently. “Pushing on when I tell you…I order you to turn back…”
He dropped his hands to her waist. The leather of her belt hissed against the metal buckle as he forced it through. He popped all eight of her fly buttons in record time. As her pants sagged, he reached around her to retrieve an oversized wooly sweater he’d separated from his meager stack of dry clothes. Stretching the neckline out of shape, he shoved the bulk of the material over her head and let the body of the sweater fall. It covered Kara like a bag. She had to punch her hands around to find the sleeves.
Going to his knees, Lee tried unlacing her boots. But the swollen laces proved stubborn. Easily frustrated, he pulled one boot into his lap and pried it whole, sock included, from her foot. He threw the boot to the far corner of the cave. Kara’s loosened pants slipped down as he repeated this maneuver with the other boot. She made a grab for her trousers but overbalanced and stumbled forward. Hobbled by folds of cloth, and falling, she was forced to brace against Lee’s shoulders or tumble into his lap.
“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” he asked, staring up into her remarkably guileless face. “What it’s like to wait in the dark for you to pop up again…all bright smiles…with your arrows and cylons and grandstanding conquests?”
Punching his arms up slightly, he opened them inside her elbows, breaking her hold so she dropped into his hands. He used the momentum of her fall to carry her to the blanket at his side.
“Lee, I think we should...” she began reasonably, while kicking out of her clinging cloth hobble.
In no mood to hear anything she had to say, Lee pinned her with his body and smothered her remarks with a fervent kiss. Startled Kara tried to squirm free but Lee held on, determined to push her into some rash action. Deepening the kiss, he slid a hand along the silky curve of her inner thigh. She gave in too easily, melting under him. The tension of his erection was like a drawn bow. When the curve of it brushed against Kara’s leg, she moaned. The open invitation acted like a draught of cold water down Lee’s spine. What the frak was he doing? This definitely wasn’t the fight he’d been looking for. Kara should have come up swinging as soon as he put her down. He pressed up on one elbow to glare at her.
“You want to fight or get laid?” He growled.
Brows lifting, she cast a saucy look his way. “Nice to be given options,” she purred before breaking into a huge grin.
Lee found nothing funny in Kara suggesting he would give her no choice. He would never force her to...even coming off tank. He groaned and collapsed to the side, freeing her to escape. She sat up, massaging her chest but didn’t scamper away from him. It would be silly to pretend she needed to defend her virtue from Lee Adama, even if she had virtue left to defend. Hooking her fingers under the sweater she wore like a dress, she rocked her hips from side to side until she could kick off her wet underwear.
“I didn’t mean…” Lee began red with the mortification of it. “I wasn’t going to…”
“What? Have your drugged way with me?” she finished, laughing at the idea. “Damned right, you weren’t.”
“I thought you’d just…take a swing at me,” Lee muttered, an arm across his eyes. “Then, I’d have an excuse to…I don’t know…tie you up, throw you out of my cave…”
He didn’t see her tender smile but he heard her moving and expected to hear her speak from the other side of the room. His whole body jerked when she straddled him. His arm dropped back, combing over his hair, and he stared. Kara had her chin down as she worked on his belt buckle. Her fingers, still stiff from the cold water, weren’t cooperating but she was determined. Lee tried to sit but her hands abandoned their half-finished task to splay across his chest, pushing him down.
“I don’t want to fight,” Kara said, looking pointedly into his eyes.
Spreading her knees wider, she scooted forward until her desire-dampened curls caressed the chilled skin of his abdomen. Lee forgot to breathe. Numbly he helped Kara strip away his tanks. Her fingers were like ice, at first, making his muscles clench whenever she touched him. But her hands warmed quickly as they explored his stomach and chest. Lee collapsed back onto the blanket to better appreciate the firelight playing in Kara's dark eyes. It created a halo in the platinum strands of her drying hair. Her skin had a golden blush and heat seemed to build in her, radiate from her.
She took his face between her palms and kissed him. He wasn’t ready for that. It was a slow, sweet, mind-numbing kiss and Lee grew weak from it. Any objection he might have made to her choice of option number two faded into white noise in his head. His hands floated up to touch her elbows, caress her waist and, finally, seize the curve of her bare bottom. He anchored there, digging in for a moment. Then his fingers slipped lower, finding sensitive skin already dewy with readiness.
Wicked words backed up on Lee’s tongue. It didn’t pay for a C.A.G. to say certain things. It wasn’t smart to think of his pilots in purely sexual terms, either. But Lee was thinking of little else as he toyed with Kara's slit, opening her slightly with the tip of one finger. She murmured encouragement and relaxed letting him go deeper. His finger entered cock heaven and reported directly back to his groin. Kara also reported in. She rocked against his fly…hot, wet, eager, a great lay just waiting to happen. Gods, there were so many words he never let himself apply to her, despite the fact that he thought about frakking her, on average, every 2.5 minutes.
Smiling against her mouth, Lee considered telling her she was the best piece of tail in the fleet, Mark VII included, great lines, easy to ride and ultra-manueverable. He withdrew his finger and let his hand glide along the swell of her hip. He trailed over powder soft skin until he could push between their bodies and reach those slippery curls again. When he eased into her slick folds, Kara whipped away from his mouth, back arching. Taking the hint, Lee abandoned subtly and twisted three fingers up into her.
“Gods, Lee,” she gasped, her body wracked by a spasm of pure delight.
"That's the way, baby, take it all. I got more when you need it."
He found the right knot of nerves in her sheath of tightly corded muscle and circled. His fingers got slick and his cock got achingly hard as Kara responded. She rode his hand, using it to pleasure herself. The sweater between them only increased the erotic nature of the encounter, hiding much of their union from view. Lee longed to see her naked, breasts bouncing. The need to taste her built in him. It felt illicit, forbidden.
'Because it is,' his few active brain cells chided. 'You’re her C.A.G. for frak sake.'
And that was unfortunate because he would never, ever get this image out of his head or get the feel of her off his fingers.
She was palming her breasts, kneading them as her hips gyrated in slow circles. The desire to help her feel more, to see all of her, overwhelmed him and he eased free of her slippery, accommodating heat. Kara protested but he only shoved her back a bit so he could sit. He peeled his sweater off of her and let it slide down her spine. Stunned by the sudden chill, Kara stilled, panting, her hands landing like doves on his shoulders. Lee simply stared at her for a moment, as if he’d never seen her before, never seen anything so entrancing.
Then, he cupped her breasts, one in each hand, forcing them closer together. They were beautiful breasts, budding pink at the tips. Kara was soldier-hard underneath but softly, yeilding just below her skin. Circling his thumbs over her chill-tightened nipples, Lee enjoyed her succulent femininity. He placed a chaste kiss into her cleavage and then drew the flat of his tongue all the way from there, up the curve of her throat, stopping just below her ear. The primal nature of the caress made her shiver and press her aching breasts into his palms.
“Are you cold, agapeta?” he whispered, throatily.
Kara trembled, feeling the bite of the cold intensify as her heart warmed to his secret name for her, the forbidden endearment. Agapeta. Most loved. It sliced to her marrow. Was it true? Was she everything to Lee? So beloved that nothing, no vow or honorable pledge, would keep him from her? She thought about denying it, denying him as she’d almost always done.
But she wanted this, too. She wanted to be wild with him, free of any constraint. She fumbled for his fly. Her questing fingers shoved fabric aside until they closed around his sobering length. He wasn’t a grossly endowed man but he had enough girth to intimidate a lesser woman. Kara pursed her lips slightly, thinking about physics. They had nothing to ease the encounter but their natural lubricants.
As she took his measure, Lee lowered his mouth to one of her nipples and quickly flicked the tip of his tongue, like the tassel of creation’s softest whip, over its peak. Oh, sweet Aphrodite, Kara thought. He could just do that and she’d bounce hard and high. He fondled her ass as he slurped her puckered aureola into moist heat, his tongue performing a complex dance. Then, using his teeth, he pulled her nipple taut, letting it go with a sucking reluctance.
Shuddering with every moue of Lee’s lips, every curling of his tongue over the throbbing tips of her breasts, Kara rejected the idea of a hand job or a quick blow. He was getting far too cocky but she didn’t want to risk losing him to her skill, didn’t want him to bounce until she had him deep inside. Rising over him a little, she crested her back like a cat and positioned his shaft at her slick gateway. Her labia bloomed wider to hold him, velvet on velvet.
Eyes closed, Kara breathed into relaxation, rocking her hips through a sensual figure eight. Lee couldn’t help dropping back to stare as she took him in, slowly, an inch at a time. He forgot about pleasuring her, forgot about everything but how she looked and how incredible she felt. Her mouth formed a perfect ‘o’ as she eased down his length. Lee’s neck tensed in an arc and his lashes closed but he could still see her clearly in his mind’s eye. There was no escaping her, this woman he was too weak to deny.
He would have her. He would…
Growling it under his breath, he seized her at the nape of the neck and the waist, yanking her into his body as he rolled her over onto her back. When she was supine, he plunged into her, going far deeper than he should with a single thrust. Kara cried out, bridging up beneath him. It was too soon to take her like this but Lee had no restraint left. He sank his teeth into her shoulder, almost tearing the skin. She did tear into him, dragging her nails down his arm as she wrenched control away from him.
Lee went rigid, panting, trying to hold on when she clamped down on him with the same muscles she used to fight G-force turns.
“Kara…please…”
Please? She liked that. There was a blossom of pain under her ribs but pain was nothing to her. A minor annoyance set against the full, stretching, insistence of Lee Adama between her legs. Lee was on her, in her and he was going to bounce for her. Any minute now his sweet, hot, nectar would flow and she would have him. Have this to keep her warm during those long empty hours in her rack when he was only a few feet away and a world beyond her. She would have the memory of his scent, the weight and rigid heft of him, to take with her into the future, into every meaningless encounter with lesser men.
She penetrated him again with her nails, drawing blood, marking him for the mirror. Later in the week, as he showered or changed, he would notice the healing cuts and remember this moment. It was a transient victory. But, Kara decided on the instant, if she ever got to give him that prison tattoo, it would be a recreation of this branding of his flesh, four long scratches down his arm. Then his next soft-spoken, well-behaved woman would know he was hers.
“Mine,” she murmured.
“Oh, yeah,” he agreed gutturally, though he could barely process language.
His face was distorted, a mask of intermingled pain and pleasure. If she didn’t ease up, he wasn’t going to last. There were bright spots in his vision but he couldn’t check his hunger. He needed to be closer to her, closer than any man had ever been. He needed to know she was his. It seemed he’d wanted nothing else, no one else, since the day he’d met her. He hooked a hand under her knee, drawing her thigh up and out, not caring in the heat of his own need if she was ready for what he was going to give her.
His mouth claimed hers as she inhaled, forcing her to breathe through her nose. On the exhale his lips twisted, releasing her for a second, and he emitted a humming moan, “Mmmmmm.” The meaningless sound spoke of succulence, as if she were ripe fruit, the first of the season. It made her squirm. Her tight walls fluttered around his rigid length and she got a little wetter. Inspired, Lee repeated the kiss and hum, a number of time. Soon he was pumping smoothly in and out of her slippery depths.
They rocked together in a complicated rhythm. Every few breaths, Lee held the kiss, tongue wrestling with Kara's, fingers tangled in her hair. Grinding against her while she bucked and shimmied under him, he ignored the call to breathe, until they were forced to break and gasp. It made his blood quicken, already there was lava in his veins.
Once, when he tried to capture her mouth, Kara eluded him, tossing her head back and calling on the Gods to help her. But the Gods were on his side. Finally. Despite his less than loving technique, Kara didn’t once ask him to slow down or stop or even go easy. Lee wondered if he could. It seemed impossible. Kara had him locked into this frantic, slithering, stroking dance. She moaned through every breath he allowed her, pussy tugging at his cock when he pulled back and squeezing when he surged forward, until he lost himself in the primal pounding of his pulse and their bodies.
This wasn’t like him. It wasn’t like him at all. He didn’t generally put his own needs first; take without any thought of giving.
Aphrodite and all her acolytes knew he wanted to please Kara, more even than he’d wanted to please his first woman. But he wasn’t going to make it to her release. Small wonder if she condemned him as weak. If she sought other lovers, rather than return to him. He’d lost control like this, three, maybe four, times in his life. But the last time he’d done so was their first time together. Their only time until now. He’d lost control then, too, in his brother’s home, in his brother’s bed, less than a week after the funeral.
If there was any excuse in good intentions Lee could claim it. Frakking his brother’s grieving intended had been the last thing on his mind when he’d found her in tears. He’d only wanted to comfort, to hold her for a moment, to share their mutual pain. But their needs were far more complex than either of them had imagined. When Kara had wrapped her body around his, he'd responded with a shocking ferocity. The shame of that desperate union haunted them, separated them. His one selfish indulgence had driven them apart, kept them apart for two years. Until fate and the end of the world had forced them together again.
How could Zak not understand, not forgive this? Zak of all people should know what Kara could do to a man. How easy it was to love her. How you fell into her contrary snares and hoped never to be free again.
Pushing all thought of his brother aside, Lee shifted his weight to his forearms and let his head hang low as he took their girl to a place no one but him had ever taken her. Not Zak. Not Baltar. Not some nameless Major or faceless resistance leader. This was what she wanted. She wanted him.
“Say my name,” he pleaded, knowing her compliance would push him past the brink.
Her hands crept to the small of his back and then dove beneath the loosened waistband of his trousers, pushing the pants lower so she could cup his ass. She tried to urge him closer than was humanly possible, really couldn’t get enough of him. She brought her knees up, to take him deeper. Caressed the back of his thighs with her toes, spreading her knees wider, using his body for leverage as she tightened around him
“Lee...oh, Lee” she panted obediently and his stomach muscles seized.
Sweet release shuddered through him, breaking his voice when he said her name.
Lee returned from the star-studded flight through perfect peace to find Kara gazing up at him with a fathomless, unreadable stare. It was the same look she’d given him after their first time. And just like then, when she saw his eyes open she turned her face away. He saw tears glistening on her lashes just before they fluttered closed, shutting him out.
This time, Lee resisted the urge to interpret, to assign meaning. He refused to fill the void with his own guilt. Instead, he drew languidly back, easing free of her still pulsating grip. She made a tiny mew of protest, missing him immediately. Lee rubbed his cheek along hers and then, licked and kissed his way down her taut form to her beautifully swollen mound. She opened her legs to accommodate the breadth of his shoulders and he parted her lips gently, exploring with his fingers and tongue. She tasted like him now, redolent with his essence. He stroked the hard nub of her arousal and she rewarded him with a quickening of her breath.
Her hand found the back of his head, combed through his hair and then pressed down, holding him in place. He let her maneuver him into the ideal position. Once he was sure of it, he sucked harder, purring against her moist heat. The vibration jolted Kara off the blanket in a series of tiny quakes. Lee reached his free hand up, patting blindly until he could pinch her nipple. He twirled it between thumb and fingers and she bounced easily for him, clenching convulsively around the fingers of his other hand as he thrust into her. Her less viscous melt sweetened the taste of his rich cream.
Lee should have been satisfied. But Kara’s release seemed muted and her skin felt too hot under his probing tongue. Worried, he lifted his head to study her. She was smiling and limp with satisfaction. Tiny aftershocks visibly shook her. But her eyes had a glassy sheen. Lee climbed up her body to tenderly kiss her parted lips. He brushed the sweat-dampened hair from her forehead.
And felt the unnatural heat. She was flushed, burning with fever.
“Kara?”
“I’m…sorry,” she panted, trying to focus on him. “It's so good...I just…I can’t breathe.”
Guilt had its way. Cursing himself for an idiot and a satyr, Lee dropped an ear to her chest and listened. He heard the fluid rattle, immediately, as she struggled for air. There was water in her lungs.
“Frak! Frak…”
END THIS PART
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 02:07 pm (UTC)my.
god.
how can you just leave us like this???????
what a turn on the dime!
I'm evil?
Date: 2005-11-22 02:21 pm (UTC)Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 06:19 pm (UTC)Thank you for the ICED fb
Date: 2005-11-23 01:24 am (UTC)Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 07:04 pm (UTC)(thanks for this one though!)
"Guh" is the best one word feedback
Date: 2005-11-24 05:07 pm (UTC)Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 11:56 pm (UTC)Wow. That was--chica, I love this story. Hot. So frakking hot. Now, about the ending...AAAAAAAARRRRGGGHHH! Need more! Please? Love it!
I'm sensing a lot of gutterals out there in fic-land ;-D
Date: 2005-11-23 01:26 am (UTC)And yes, cliffhangers are very bad...but come on...doesn't it just make you want the next part a little quicker?
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-23 01:12 am (UTC)For some reason LJ won't let me post in beyond_insane. You have an interesting discussion going about Lee losing it with Kara. Good stuff.
Can't wait for more backstory, too, especially about the nickname and their possible first time.
I have been debating, Gobi
Date: 2005-11-23 01:58 am (UTC)Will Lee chose Kara over duty when the decisions aren't so split second?
Would he risk the entire fleet to save her life?
Tune in next week...and find out. :hee:
Thanks for the feedback, Gobi...always appreciated.
Rae
who has been having trouble with LJ posting all day...yours was the first message to show up in my e-mail alert like it should.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-23 05:28 am (UTC)Ouch... what a cliffhanger!!! *waitsimpatiently* Love it!
~ moon
What great feedback...!
Date: 2005-11-23 05:38 pm (UTC)Very happy that you are happy with the direction I am taking the characters...I'm one of those people who don't mind giving readers the happy as long as I get the character's to that place honestly. In other words, Kara and Lee have to work out their issues together...not just fall into the mushy love.
As for my canon, one of the reasons I write fanfic is to answer my own questions. To fill in all the gaps that tv can't show us...like...in this case, why Kara and Lee act so goofy toward each other in the Mini, when the above boards back-story is telling us they shouldn't be acting that way. They should care about one another, of course...but those longing looks and shared intimate smiles speak of another relationship than "my brother's intended." And all of the Mini stuff has to come from history (a pretty intense one) because they haven't seen one another in 2 years.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-24 04:31 pm (UTC)great scene between zak and lee at the airport. it really does suck that he is dead because i would love to see how he would react given the time that has elapsed. because i really do wonder what he does suspect and feel is the problem between the two of them.
as for the best bit to me was {He stopped unloading supplies abruptly when his eyes filled with tears. His lower lip trembled and he covered his mouth with his palm, fighting for composure. }
you have a great talent for creating such vivid images.
thanks.
Yeah, I like to think Zak
Date: 2005-11-24 04:41 pm (UTC)I think Kara thought Lee was...at first...just more of the same to her. A hot, arrogant pilot who would be fun in bed. Only later does she come to understand that he and Zak have the sensitivity and tenderness in common. When she begins to need Lee more...and he treats her sweetly...she starts to understand that Lee is the one she wants.
Thank you for taking the time to feedback. I will wish you a Happy Thanksgiving even though I suspect you might not celebrate the American holidays. This one is my personal favorite...no commercialism...just family gathering together.
Rae
Re: Yeah, I like to think Zak
Date: 2005-11-25 02:14 pm (UTC)so where did you think i was from then? no offense was taken just compliment.
agreed with zak. thats why i think thats the bsg fic i had always wanted to see the most and kept hoping someone would write it. but no one seems to want to have intersecting realities.
I thought maybe you were, Japanese
Date: 2005-11-26 02:06 am (UTC)Anyway...doesn't really matter...I was just impressed with your English skills. As for your wish about Zak...hmmmm...I wonder. ;-D
Rae
Re: I thought maybe you were, Japanese
Date: 2005-11-29 02:14 pm (UTC)hmmmm as for times i think i usually reply 9am ish, noonish, and then 11pmish lately. east coast time.
the pic is a member of L'arc~en~Ciel and the name is a proper name of an anime character that i had been given the nickname of uhhh...8? yrs ago.
but still that could be name and id still live in the US. does japan get bsg?
oooooohhhh, will i get my wish granted? i hope you arent just evilly leading me on.
See...most of my East Coast Posters
Date: 2005-11-29 07:59 pm (UTC)Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-25 07:03 am (UTC)Your Lee is the hottest Lee eva. you take his base and add balls. Bravo
Your Kara, she rocks she is softer than the crass template and stronger as well
You don't have to make your supporting characters bad to make L/K be plausable (Dualla) I LOVE IT.
I wish i had your level head and obviously big brain. thank you for writing and sharing. I don't comment much because I don't usually have time for a lot of thought but this sequence of stories made a place in my head and I felt it necessary.
the sensuality is peppered with thought, so much love for that.
would like to friend you so I can keep up with your updates if you don't mind
Thank you for the wonderful feedback
Date: 2005-11-26 01:57 am (UTC)I never get a chance to read my friend's list so it hardly matters anyway. If I have time to be with a computer when I'm not working...I need to write or vid. I chat way too much with my beta babes and long-standing fandom friends as it is. And I like to comment on feedback if I can because I love feedback...but every minute I don't write...I feel guilty.
Meanwhile...I am so glad you commented on (and appreciate) my sensitivity to character. I don't like to make any character ALL one mood. I think it leads to eventual dead ends in character. I would even go so far as to say that this is the main failing with most TV shows...they begin to make their characters too one dimensional. So far BSG is doing okay but it is early in the series...this is why I like to move ahead with my main couple romances...and then start to throw stuff at them...because I want to see them...DANCE (BWAHAHAHA!)
:Rabid clears throat: I mean, I want to see them develop. Yes, that's it, yes. Develop as characters. ;-D
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my stories...the feedback means a lot.
Rae
Re: Thank you for the wonderful feedback
Date: 2005-11-26 03:23 am (UTC)Again...nice warm glowy feedback...
Date: 2005-11-26 06:10 am (UTC)There is a pimped out link somewhere? Do tell?
Anyway, yes, I love the cliffhangers. Because they get the reader's ire up...and increase the dramatic tension and all...plus...FUN!
I hope to have Kara and Lee back to the funny of the Pegasus guard scene soon. Because I like them sneaking around...but until then...yes, it is a bad time for a medical emergency.
Glad you have joind us at LJ and that you loved my fic enough to leave the feedback. Hope to see you next week for chapter 4.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-09 02:24 am (UTC)You keep the characters true personalities and reactions, find a great plausible story line and just frakking run with it!
I read a comment where you said you like Viper Pilots getting together, but without the 'mushy' giving in type of thing. SO SAY WE ALL! mush is too over rated in fanfic. Yes, PWP is great sometimes, but not when the characters do and say things they wouldnt normally do, just to get them into bed.
Loved the line about . That sounded something like Mr. Military Career would think.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-10 06:26 am (UTC)And what a place to end it. The only thing that makes it better is knowing that there is more. :)
Oh, and my favourite part had to be 'If he was dead she was going to kick his ass.' That is so characteristically Starbuck right there. You hit the characterization perfectly.
You are kind of making my morning, N
Date: 2005-12-10 03:31 pm (UTC)Yep, I liked that "kick his ass" line, too. Sometimes I just can't stop the characters from speaking when I am trying to write. That actually was a big problem in this fic because Starbuck keeps trying to overide any Kara softness and Lee is already tanked and caveman-ish. Lee kept wanting to sit down and cry and Kara kept wanting to kick his ass and tell him to suck it up and be a good soldier. So I had the worst time stopping them from fighting like children...and getting on with the frakking.
Luckily...Kara can show compassion and Lee does have a strong sense of duty...and they do love each other...so I was able to manipulate them into some snugglies and move the story along. But...SHEESH...what a struggle.
So happy to hear from you twice in one day. Thanks for the feedback.
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-08 12:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-08 12:45 am (UTC)Thanks for the feedback. Glad you are having fun with it. Iced is one of my favorite stories, lost of action and sex appeal. This is the point where I was really into Kara/Lee and I saw them in Razor and was almost into them again. I do hope I can get the vibe back for this final season.
Let me know if you liked the full fic. Also, did you read the prequeals? Shoot Your Shade and Burn the Pipe? And thanks again for the lovely praise.
Rae