"Why don't you make love to me the Vulcan way?"
Spock put down the padd he held flat on his desk. "And what, Lieutenant, do you know of the Vulcan way?''
Nyota, who lay on her stomach, on the floor, in her uniform, tilted her kicked up leg from side-to-side.
"That's my question, Mr. Spock." Her other leg rose into the air.
"Am I not a Vulcan? Is my lovemaking lacking? Do you require a Vulcan spice to our activities together?" His tone was harsh but his face mild.
Nyota's legs stilled. "I've angered you."
"That is illogical. You have not created emotion in me."
Nyota gasped. Tears pricked her eyes.
Spock folded his fingers. "You are saddened."
"Yes. No. I don't know, I didn't…"
Spock rose from his chair and stretched out on his stomach beside her. She sniffed. After a moment, he put his hand on the small of her back. "Do you wish me to be more Vulcan? Do you know specifically of what you ask?"
Nyota wiped her nose with her finger tips. Spock partially removed his shirt and offered her his sleeve. Not that she noticed.
"You're great at everything we do together, but you seem so human."
"I—" he paused. "My mother is human." For a moment, his eyes were warm and beseeching in his set face and then his face blanked.
"Are there things that you would like to do that you don't do with me? I don't-"
"Anything I do not do with you I would not do with anyone else," he said stiffly. "What I do with you, and for you, and for myself, I would not do with anyone else for that matter." His nostrils flared at the beginning of his interruption and stayed flared while his voice was clipped.
"You interrupted me," Nyota said.
"It would be illogical for me to permit you to labor under a false supposition that reflects neither reality, nor my commitment to you, nor my inclinations."
"That's not very fair," she pointed out. "I don't think what you have said, just now, is just." She spoke slowly, her fist clenched, the rhythms of her native tongue completely stripped from her speech.
He sighed. "Nyota, I desire...I will be at your indulgence until you send me away or unforeseen circumstance forces a permanent separation. As a Vulcan male of Earth ancestry—certain physiological consequences may attempt to assert imperatives in the course of our relationship and- In that matter I may be more Vulcan than you might like."
This conversation, Nyota thought, was going from bad to worse. But she said, "What do you want? Do you wish to bond with me formally? For me to call you husband?"
"Yes. I have wished for this since we became lovers."
She sat up, swinging her legs in front of her. His hand fell from her back.
"Then why assign me to the Farragut?"
"Vulcans do not date. You did not desire me for a bondmate and I wished to avoid the appearance of favoritism. Vulcans marry young, as you have observed. Humans, as you told me, do not."
"But I'd earned the appearance of favoritism before I set up camp in your bed. And you hadn't actually said you wished to bond with me."
Spock blinked and every line in his body released. "True." His voice was bland. "Nonetheless, you were not prepared to bond with me at the time. Considering what I had shown you that was specifically Vulcan in regard to shared intimacies, I found that telling."
She considered his words, and glanced at the hand beside her fist on the floor. "You were giving me an out?"
He nodded. He traced the knuckle of the hand nearest him with the kissing pair of his index and middle finger.
"What are you doing?"
"Demonstrating my considerable respect, unconditional positive regard...and carnal intentions."
"Is that what that is?" but she laughed.