The Fine Print Disclaimer: Paramount owns the characters, but I'm filing for custody on the grounds of neglect. WHO'S WITH ME??

The Author's Note: Please don't mistake this story for any kind of an attempt at a serious analysis of their relationship. It's Certified 99.5 percent Angst-Free.

The Obligatory Content Warning: Many of you praised the PG-ness of my first story. This story gets a little bit . . . racier. Sorry, I tried to get J/C to behave, but those two are just impossible! You've been warned.

Homework: If you haven't already, I strongly encourage you to read my first fic, A Part Of Your Life You Know Nothing About -because if you haven't, much of this story won't make sense, as it has several in-jokes based on plot points in my Shattered rewrite. If you HAVE read my first story, but it's been so long it's a little foggy, I invite you to review: Chapter 7 Could You Please Repeat The Question?, Chapter 9 Oh, Game On! And, my personal favorite, Chapter 10 The Den Of The Lioness. All of which can be found neatly packaged on my fanficnet page.

So, without further ado . . . I give you . . . My second story:

The Morning After A Part of Your Life You Know Nothing About

by Polomare - 17,000 words total - Rated R - October 2008

Tom Paris was having the time of his life. It was 1957 and he was behind the wheel of a real sweet ride. It was a vintage candy apple red Corvette convertible complete with blue flame decals and an aftermarket supercharger to boot. What could be better? He admired himself in the rearview mirror. He looked good in a black leather jacket, dark blue jeans and a white tee shirt. The desert wind in his hair and the hot chick with the movie star sunglasses in the passenger seat completed the fantasy. He was finally free to live out an early American dream and explore the seemingly never-ending blacktop of Route 66 with an auburn beauty at his side.

A weathered, dented sign at the side of the road caught Tom's interest.

"Scenic Overlook, 500 ft" Tom sensed an opportunity.

"Whaddaya think, Kat? Should we park at the overlook?"

"Oh, Tom, I'd love to see the sunset!" she cooed.

He pulled off the asphalt and strategically parked the car cliffside to allow them the best possible view of the canyon. No sooner did he put the car in park and she was all over him. She tossed her sunglasses into the back seat and pressed her warm flesh to his face. What a groovy gal. Her lips were so soft and silky and her red lipstick . . . well, she was getting it all over his face, but hey, it was Kathryn's lipstick so who cares?

A twinge of incongruity knocked on the back door of Tom Paris' mind. Kathryn Janeway? He pulled back from her passions, breaking the kiss. He eyed her strangely. The red canyon walls washed away to a black streaking starfield and the fuzzy sweater and poodle skirt morphed into Starfleet command attire.

She addressed him with total innocence, "What's wrong, Tom?"

Tom Paris was unconscious.

But even his subconscious knew something was very wrong with this picture.

He punched through the thick blanket of sleep that cocooned his mind. His body temperature quickly warmed as his blood pressure spiked. He must have gasped in a full cubic foot of air as he jolted awake. Tom tried to jump out of bed but the sheets thwarted him. He wrestled them for a moment, he thought he was free, but when he put his feet to the floor they tangled his legs and he crashed to the ground. Too much adrenaline was surging for him to feel the fall. He jumped to his feet as quick as a cat and adopted a defensive posture as he scanned the room.

Voyager. His quarters. Safe. Whew! But his relief was short lived when he realized there was a female figure curled in his bed. Still in a drunken fog and unduly influenced by what, only moments ago, his brain thought was reality he came to a scary conclusion. A very scary conclusion. Oh, No. I didn't . . . We didn't . . . Say it ain't so! Belanna would kill him. Chakotay would kill him twice. Then Belanna would go back in time, bring him back to life, and kill him all over again. He gulped as he ever so carefully pinched the sheet between his fingers and gingerly pulled it down from the sleeping woman's face. B'Elanna! His second sigh of massive relief in as many minutes.

Reality fully replaced absurdity in his mind and he let out a hearty laugh. Belanna stirred and he slapped his hand over his mouth. She quieted again and he knew she was safely asleep. He flopped down on the foot of the bed, exhausted from his imaginary ordeal.

Wow, that was. . . eeesh, I don't know what that was. He hadn't had dreams like that in ages. He had never had dreams like that about the captain. Well . . . almost never. There was that week or two when he was recovering from his little foray into the world of infinite velocity and he had been faced with the knowledge that his altered self had abducted the captain, whisked her away to a swampy love nest and fathered offspring with her.

He waxed sentimental for an odd moment. Aw, I wonder how the little buggers are doing . . . Did they ever grow up, get good jobs? Did they settle down and have little lizard swamp babies of their own? Paris shook the thought out of his head. This was too serious to be joking about, even for him. And that's saying something.

Reminiscent of a puppy scratching behind its ear, Tom vigorously scratched his scalp. I wonder what time it is. He padded softly into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. "Computer: Time"

O-Six Fifty Three Hours

"Yikes!" I'm due on the bridge in seven minutes!

As he tore through his morning routine, a foggy middle-of-the-night conversation he had with a grumpy Belanna came back to him. She had staggered in around 2 am.

"What are you doing getting in so late?"

Typical Klingon bite in her voice "Well, for some reason I still don't fully understand," she yanked off one of her boots and let it fall unceremoniously to the floor "our fearless Maquis leader decided tonight would be a good time to play a little game of 'let's burn out the deflector dish.'"

"That's nice honey" He wasn't really awake.

She threw her other boot at him "Tom! Are you listening to me?"

"WELL NOW I AM"

She continued her rant for the entire time it took her to undress. "Of course, it's not that it's something I can't easily fix," a thread of pride in her engineering abilities laced through her words "I always keep replicated deflector components readily available in storage for just such an eventuality . . . it's that it took HOURS to process all the burned out components. They had to be decontaminated for chronoton radiation before they were safe to put in the recyclers."

"Chronoton Radiation? Why were they contaminated with chronotons?"

"I don't know! Chakotay wouldn't give me anything! He ran off to Astrometrics to scan for temporal anomalies and left me and Vorik to clean up the mess he made." Tom's interest was piqued by the need for the temporal scans, he wanted to ask Belanna to elaborate, but she wouldn't pause long enough to let him interrupt. "AND THEN! If that's not enough, Captain Bat-Out-Of-Hell Janeway sends the order up to the bridge to burn the engines at Warp 10 negative for the rest of the night. The new deflector components should have been tested at warp one before that kind of flight. A phase variance at that speed would be critical. I had to watch the engines like a hawk to make sure the new components were playing nice. I mean, what's her hurry? She was only in her quarters having dinner with Chakotay, and it's like all the sudden she's trying to make up for lost time . . ."

Tom looked down at this Klingon woman, feisty looking even in sleep, and smiled thankfully that he was lucky enough to be with her. He bent to flutter a kiss on her eyebrow. He knew she had the day off, but he set the computer to wake her in an hour just in case. She wouldn't want to miss the senior officer's briefing scheduled for o' nine hundred that he read about in the morning ship's status messages while he was getting ready. Hopefully, he would get more answers about yesterday's brush with the chronometric anomaly at today's briefing than he did out of Belanna. He looked back at her one more time as he scooted out the door for his shift on the bridge.

oOo

"Just how close do we get?" Hmm. I'm glad you asked . . .

Kathryn Janeway was having the time of her life. It was 2377 and she had just experienced a night of mind-blowing, body-racking, comet-displacing, star-shattering sex with her first officer. Chakotay had made good on his promise. He had indeed crawled all over her body and worshipped every inch of her. One by one, every single muscle and sinew in her body had individually contracted and relaxed at his touch. Muscles she didn't even know she had jumped to awareness and begged for more. He had no problem obliging. It was seven years of restrained fantasies . . . seven years of speculation, curiosity, longing, desire. Keeping two predestined soul mates apart for so long can be dangerous. It all super-collided into a night of unrestrained screaming passion that would have undoubtedly killed any two lovers with weaker constitutions.

And so here she lay. The most content she has ever been. Bathed in the afterglow of surging hormones, cocooned by a generous pile of her Starfleet issue bedding, no longer asleep, but not yet willing to admit she was awake, lest she break the spell of total satisfaction that encompassed her. She was peripherally aware that Chakotay had left her side to get dressed and start the day. She found herself wanting to follow him, but the exertion of the night before had turned her muscles to jello and, although she couldn't be certain, she suspected her skeletal structure may have turned to sponge.

A half second before she smelled the coffee, she sensed his presence. Somehow, she mustered the willpower to open a single dreamy eye. Her line of sight just barely cleared the sheet that lay across the bridge of her nose. She was rewarded with a vision of an Adonis in red and black standing at her bedside. Groomed to annoying perfection and way too bright-eyed for this time of the morning . . . at least, she noted, he had the sense to bring her coffee.

"Good morning."

His deep voice sent a jolt of excitement down her spine as vibrant memories of body-arching ecstasy from the night before erupted in her mind. The sheet may have covered her face, but it did not hide her smile from him.

"I assume you slept well." he said it rather smugly.

Janeway knew her voice would be raspy, so she tried to keep it low as she tugged the sheet down from her face. "And just what are you doing looking so perfectly primped and proper this early in the day?" It immediately occurred to her that she really had no idea what time it was. Perhaps she had overslept. She gathered the sheet around her collarbone and propped herself up on one arm. "What time is it?"

Chakotay detected the note of duty in her voice and rolled his eyes. "It's quarter to seven. Relax. No one expects the captain to be in her chair even one minute before o' eight hundred."

Relieved by the news she hadn't overslept and feeling suddenly coy, she issued a teasing objection. "But no one expects the first officer to be in his chair one moment before o' eight hundred, either." She shot him a suggestive smile.

Chakotay pinched his earlobe between thumb and forefinger as he returned the smile. "Ah, well, some people are expecting a report to be filed on last night's encounter with the chronometric anomaly. I really should get it written before alpha shift starts."

Janeway sat the rest of the way up, crossed her legs and sat on her feet. "You can't possibly think the captain would be mad if you turned that report in late?" she countered.

Chakotay followed her lead. "Well I suspect the captain may not have any objections, but now the chief of security, on the other hand, he may question my dereliction of duty."

Janeway pursed her lips into a sexy pout. She squinted her eyes slightly. "Ah yes, Tooovock." she drawled thoughtfully.

Damn. Only she could make that Vulcan's name sound sexy. Chakotay felt some of his composure slipping away. Kathryn stood up on her knees in bed so they were the same height. She abandoned all modesty and let the sheets fall to the floor. He couldn't help but scan the length of her naked body. Chakotay found the need to hold his breath.

"Just tell him . . ." she reached for his perfectly pressed uniform "that you were busy . . ." she clenched the material into a wrinkled ball "with a very important first contact situation." She pulled his body towards hers with surprising strength and planted her lips on his. She dove into him. Probing, searching, drinking him in. Revisiting discoveries made the night before, she sapped his strength and weakened his knees. He whimpered for mercy into her mouth. He could not get aroused again, he had work to do. Seriously. Besides, it was really hard not to spill the coffee he was now holding a protective arm's length away. When she was done swimming in his soul, she peeled away from him.

Breathless and somewhat disoriented, he could only open his eyes half way. He was promptly rewarded with the sight of Kathryn's lovely cream white thighs forming an oh-so-inviting v shape up to her . . . he bit his lower lip to stifle a groan. He came to realize that if he didn't leave immediately, neither of them would make it to the bridge before noon.

She freed him from his temporary paralysis by assuming an air of playful royalty. "You may go." She waved him off nonchalantly. Speechless, he pivoted away from her on one foot. Her tone turned to one of deadly intent. "But leave the coffee." He swallowed hard as he pushed the mug blindly into her hand and then strode determinedly out of her bedroom. Externally, he was silent. Internally, OH YEAH.

Chakotay thought his power of coherent thought would return once he reached the corridor, but really his problems were only just beginning. Harry Kim trotted up behind him.

"Good morning, Commander," annoyingly eager, "and how are you and Captain Janeway today?"

Harry had seen him exit the captain's quarters. It was really early in the morning for him to be doing that. Did he suspect something? What did he mean by how are you and the captain doing today? Chakotay panicked. "We were playing Kadis-kot." he blurted.

Harry raised an eyebrow at him. He made a grand gesture of looking at his wrist, as if to read the time on an old Earth timepiece. "At seven in the morning? That must have been some game. I just assumed you were delivering your report on the anomaly that damaged the deflector dish last night."

Yes. Chakotay thought to himself dryly. That would have made more sense.

They reached the turbolift together. Chakotay hesitated. He really didn't feel like sharing a lift with Harry after that uncomfortable little exchange.

"Commander?" Harry questioned.

"I forgot a PADD I need in my quarters. You go ahead. I'll see you on the bridge, Ensign."

"Aye, Sir."

As soon as Chakotay was certain the turbolift system had whisked Harry safely away, he returned to the entry doors and called for another lift. As he entered, he chided himself for his stupid excuse for being in the captain's quarters. Clearly, his night with Kathryn was affecting his thought processes. He needed to get a hold of himself. There was, after all, a ship that needed running. He had to get to his office and sit down and concentrate on filing his report, or he really would have some explaining to do to Tuvok.

"Ah yes, Tooovock" Kathryn's overwhelming sensuality involuntarily jumped to the forefront of his mind again. What a night. She had been quiet at first, timid in response to his advances . . . but then he found just the right spot and her carefully constructed walls of propriety came crashing down and she crumpled into a heaving pile of desire. I always knew she was a screamer, he thought with a wicked smile. She had indeed screamed his name. That is, in between babbling requests that he do profane things to her.

He shook his head in disbelief. Part of him still couldn't believe that was Kathryn Janeway in his arms last night. Captain Janeway. The woman he had learned to worship from afar . . . to look, but don't touch . . . was now his. His Kathryn. Now that was going to take some getting used to.

It's funny. He had spent many a sleepless hour over the last years of his life fantasizing about what a night with Kathryn would be like. Never once had it occurred to him to imagine what the morning after would be like.

It still hadn't sunk in. He was only beginning to process what it all meant, for him, for her, for them.

For the millionth time over the last five years, he thought back to New Earth with a twinge of regret. One would have thought that after consummating their relationship that regret would leave him. But no, it was still there. Think of all the time we've lost. The devil on his shoulder whispered a familiar mantra in his ear; You should have bent her over your workbench while you had the chance. But now, it was chanted with a different motivation. Had they become lovers then, had they satisfied those first hungry pangs of desire early on, surely, all these years later the relationship would have matured to a much more stable one. He undoubtedly would have asked her to marry him by now. Maybe, just maybe, he might have even made her feel secure enough to consider having a child with him . . .

And speaking of children . . . there was the crew to consider. What to do about them? Should they tell them? Keep it a secret? For how long? Any more mistakes like the one he just made with Harry and it really wouldn't be their choice. He knew the crew half-suspected they were an item when they returned from New Earth, and that belief persisted for a long time . . . but now, all this time later . . . how would the crew-

He was startled out of his reverie by the opening hiss of the turbolift doors. He found himself face to face with a confused Tom Paris.

"Commander? Don't tell me the turbolifts are the only place left on this ship to get a little peace and quiet?"

Chakotay looked past Tom into the corridor, he was still on Deck 3. I forgot to tell the computer where to take me. He had been sitting still all this time. Chakotay shook his head despondently. And that's mistake number two. In light of the miserable cover story he gave Harry, he decided honesty was the best approach this time. He elicited a self-deprecating laugh from himself. "I guess I forgot to tell the computer where to take me. I'm a little out of it this morning."

"It's ok, big guy." Tom was enjoying this a little too much. "I'll help you out." He patted Chakotay on the shoulder as he entered to stand next to him. "Kompuder . . ." Tom spoke with an enthusiasm normally reserved for addressing a kindergarten class on a field trip "take us to Deck One!"

Chakotay had rare opportunity to employ the Janeway Death Glare. This was one of those times.

Stay Tuned for Chapter 2