She finds him reading in his bunk and then all but smacks the book out of his grasp before he has a chance to realize she's the one who just entered and slammed the hatch noisily behind her.
"This is mine," she says in accusation, but merely tosses the book to where it lands on the table behind her.
"Wouldn't have pegged you for the poetry-reading type." He meets her eyes with the relaxed and humored look in his, and she chuckles a little.
"Frak you. Move over." Her body slides in along his, her skin feeling happy and eager for the body-warmed sheets. He smirks at her slightly as her head props down on her hand right next to him. She gets coy and sarcastic: "I put my boots out. But we could talk about poetry. You wanna have a heart-to-heart, Apollo? Talk about our favorite books?..."
Lee is suddenly laughing, like he's pleasantly surprised to find her in this mood.
"I could lend you this one—mmm..." Kara is cut off when he darts his head forward and brushes his lips up along hers, a slow petting kiss that grows in feeling by the second. She's feeling lazy and receptive and doesn't move to get in her own share, content to receive and rub circles over that nice bone that adorns the hill of his shoulder while his lashes flutter closed; she starts to melt more under his increasingly deepening kisses and then her eyes are closing too. Finally returning more of an insistent surge of a kiss, she yanks him lightly over to press him over her body, and he lands between the bend of her legs. She can already feel the good ache coming back to her, the dizzy disbelief of her body in being close to his again, and her breathing quickens. She sighs, "Lee."
He pulls his lips up to her temple to kiss at her softly there. He mutters, "How did it go?"
"How did what go?" she diverts, her face twisting.
"With the old man?"
She considers for a couple seconds and then just moves to get to unzipping his pants. "So, about that poetry..."
He scoffs. "That bad, huh?"
"That boring. Get your frakking clothes off already."
"Gods, you're pushy."
"You love it."
Lee's eyes graze over hers, almost flustered over his smile as he shucks out of his shirt.
"Right?"
His movement pauses, and his eyes appraise her, obviously an unspoken complaint about her state of still being dressed. She pushes herself up so that her legs ride up around him onto his lap, as if offering permission, and he lets out a half-snicker, starts to eagerly unfasten her belt.
When she hitches up to help him take her pants off, she watches him looking at her as if from a distance, admiring the flex of her abs with the riding up of her tanks. It's always a weird wonder she has about the way he looks at her; it's been this revelation of unexpected and uncomfortable tenderness, that he more than desires her, a fact which has been more than evident ever since the first few times they frakked. It hadn't taken long for Kara to realize that he never looked at her like she was just a warm body even if he never said anything about the particular shape of his attraction to her, because she wouldn't let him or he wouldn't let himself. Maybe she'd had an idea even before then, when she'd put on that silky thing on Colonial Day and he'd looked a little smacked in the face by her wearing it, and at the time he'd been shocked to the point that it felt like a backhanded compliment that made her escape from under his scrutiny to the nearest person who would distract her, and then around the time he admitted later to being something like jealous of what she did with Gaius Baltar, she finally got around to realizing Lee might have been trying to ask her to dance with him that one time. Maybe.
As for her attraction to him, she realizes now with an almost embarrassed resignation in the back of her head: It says enough that she wore the dress that night in the first place.
She was never like this before with anyone, blazing with a vague yearning for some affirmation of herself from someone else just because he forms some instinctive notion in her mind that feels warm in her chest whenever she sees his smartass pretty face. It's been there with Lee from the beginning; it's why he was capable of hurting her with any seemingly benign flick of a stupid comment and why she always tried her damnedest never to forgive him for anything. She should have known the very second they took it to the bed and he gave that thing in her a pulse that she was totally done for.
She knows it now, all of this and other things that make her thoughts skid around all reckless, wanting him to shout things about her, tell her he loves her, some day if not now. She's definitely in a better emotional place than she was in hours ago, but she still feels a deep need, a hollow hungry space that's one edge away from plunging her back to where she'll think too hard about everything she's trying to get away from. Lee bends far down to kiss his way up her chest as she helps him remove her tanks; as soon as her hair and face is freed from the tangle of fabric he's kissing her again and she jolts into more insistent motions, wrapping her legs up at his hips and tightening around him as he starts to rock teasingly against her.
Her hands are down and pushing at the waistline of his boxers before she thinks about it. "Now," she gasps. A shoving slip of sound and Lee shifts quickly to pull his blanket up over them, plants a feverish mess of kisses all along her face, and with another fluid rocking motion he's sliding in and sliding her legs up and she feels pulled loose and bright as her head collapses back into the pillow. She groans, loud.
Through the swarming rush of pleasure she vaguely hears some murmur of her name gasped in response. The feel of him is much slower than when they were in the admiral's quarters, her body sinking with that hungry ache into the motion with an ebbing boneless surrender; if she tries to say something it might come out nonsense, and all she does is breathe heavy from somewhere in the floorboards of her voice, finally moving to claw at the silk of his hair when he trembles over her in a long rushing moment.
He doesn't take time to recover before he's mouthing at her collarbone, then lower, half-disappearing under the blanket while she's still reeling close to the edge. He kisses her ribs and then she feels his tongue somewhere at her hipbone and then without looking down to look for his eyes she feels that tasting mingled with a teasing hand and knows what he's asking and she remembers how to talk long enough to moan, "Ah yeah—"
Her shoulders are jammed up to the back of the bunk wall and he lowers his head down, and she gets what she asked for.
"Lee—" Her groan draws off as she realizes he's going to tease. "Frak, come on, don't frakking mess with me—"
Her body shrugs about impatiently, until she hears a chuckle from under the wool. His hand comes up around her leg and she clutches it, gently then not so gently, and the rest of her is dissolving again as he gets back to business, gasping in little shocks of noise as she comes slowly undone. After she finally reaches it and lets her head thunk back, he kisses his way mischievously all the way back up her body, pecking with finality at her mouth.
"Don't look so smug," she warns.
He shrugs and lies in next to her while she shimmies down into a more comfortable position. "So."
"Yeah, like I don't know what you want to ask."
"...You remember." Lee smiles, genuinely surprised. He finally asks quietly, "Why didn't you let me do that before?"
Kara rolls her eyes nervously. When they finally meet his, his expression is curious, harmless. "I feel like you're expecting a different answer, you know..."
Lee smirks. "Well, I'm not harboring any idea I'm the first guy to ever do that with you, if that's what you're worried about."
They're both laughing a little; she gives him a soft shove. She fiddles with the top hem of the blanket between her fingers, and finally sighs. "I said no because you asked me. If you had just done it, at the time, I might not have..."
She looks over as her voice trails off and again, Lee's expression isn't what she expected.
Finally she clarifies with a slight cringing, "It was that it would mean something to you. Not that it meant something to me."
"...Okay."
Kara is resting her head down onto his shoulder. After a second, eyebrows furrowing, she looks up at him. "Okay?" she repeats back.
Lee shrugs. He repeats, "Okay. You're a piece of work. That's nothing new."
She makes a motion as if to smack him, which he catches easily and they're wrestling around a little, until Kara has him pinned, is grinning over him crookedly. And then suddenly she cocks her head in a thoughtful direction. "Are you late?"
"Am I...?"
"Didn't you say to your dad—"
"Oh. Oh, shit..."
There's a fumbling mess of Lee rushing back into his clothes, which Kara simply watches lazily after pulling his blanket up over her, knowing they're overdue for the impatient fists to come knocking. Sure enough, one kid comes rustling at the hatch, and Kara pulls the rack curtain while Lee goes to open it, but isn't too thorough about covering the whole way. So while Lee is awkwardly entertaining Hot Dog's casual questions and complaints about the CAP schedule, he catches her eyes peering through, and when Hot Dog isn't looking, bends down in a silent laugh to steal a kiss, then another. After he darts back up and quickly goes, she stays there hidden behind in his rack until she's spinning slowly into a warm sleep, the hazy idea bright in her mind that she's the best secret he ever had.