Disclaimer: Star Trek and all associated characters are not mine.
Warning: Strong M: language, dialogue, and characters taken firmly in hand.
A/N: With fondest dedication to Mishi-bishi.
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"You're kidding me, right?"
He tilted his head and gave her one of those looks that he reserved for her more peculiarly human moments.
"I am not. The planet is just as I've stated."
"How do you know?" she challenged petulantly. "Have you been there?"
Spock raised one perfect eyebrow.
"I have not. But Lieutenant Ransom has given a full report, and I see no reason to doubt her account."
Nyota paced her corner of the room for a moment, caught herself, and dropped despondently down on the bed.
"And why did our esteemed captain decide that I should be the one to suffer through this particular ambassadorial exchange?"
Spock watched her remove a boot and kick it carelessly to the side - an outward expression of her agitation, he surmised.
"Because he is well aware that your skills in linguistics are - "
"Unparalleled. Spare me." she interrupted, unzipping the boot's twin and casting it away as well. She crossed her arms over her chest and they both stared at the floor in silence until she spoke again. "He didn't have to pick me." she said, eventually. She sounded forlorn, and so Spock crossed from where he stood and sat beside Nyota at the bed; in periods of upset, he often found that he could calm her simply by increasing his proximity. She looked up at him through wide, dark, worried eyes. "Did he say who would - "
"I have volunteered to lead the away mission." he interjected quickly, wanting to prevent speculation. Although Spock did not feel it necessary to share the full extent of his thoughts with Nyota, he knew that he was far too protective of her to allow anyone else into such a position.
She blinked at him, then looked away.
"Good." she said, but something in it rang untrue and Spock felt a pang that surprised him and made him lean back from her, just slightly.
"Would you have preferred someone else?"
"No." she answered, sulkily. "If I have to pick a…tormentor, it might as well be you." she looked up at him again and he was momentarily stranded in her eyes. "At least I know I can trust you."
Spock had no words that truly reflected thoughts in his head at that moment, and so he looked at her very seriously and said: "You can always trust me, Nyota." suddenly, fervently, and the uncommon expression of his emotion gave them both pause in a moment of companionable discomfort.
Then Nyota smiled and gave him one of her mischievous, sly grins.
"Can I trust you?" she teased, raising one skeptical brow. "How can I be sure you aren't holding some sort of a grudge against me?"
Spock felt confident that this was one of the semi-rhetorical questions that she sometimes asked when she wanted to elicit a behavioral response. So rather than speak his answer, he reached for her and drew her into a kiss; as always, she welcomed him, and the brush of her warm lips against his own gave him a momentary feeling of weightlessness. She leaned forward - a movement of intent, and he felt something which was not quite an emotion, but better an instinct, rise within him. In the periphery of his vision, he saw her shift and separate her legs beneath her skirt, and all was lost.
As a Vulcan, he would always be stronger than her; on occasion, she claimed that this was an unfair advantage, but he pointed out that it was only logical to use one's strengths to attain one's goals. She laughed, and told him that he might become a bully.
As he leveraged himself above her, using one leg to wrest his way between her artfully perfect thighs, he wondered if that were the case now. He paused, and looked down upon her, splayed across her bed, and decided that he simply did not care. Nyota would never refuse him, and so questions of coercion were irrelevant. She was his, and to touch her was his right.
She was responding, as she always did, and Spock felt a need of such urgency that there was no time to undress her; his hands pushed her skirt unceremoniously away to reveal her to him. Beneath her uniform, she was wearing the things he had bought for her, and this inflamed him further. Uhura took in a quick, startled breath when his cool fingers touched her, then arched her back as he laid tongue to skin at the juncture of hip and thigh.
By then, Spock realized that he had grown heady on an odd mixture of emotions; whether they were hers or his, he was unsure…but the outright violence of his desire to possess her made him suspect himself. Vulcans loved deeply, and he was no different. In the old days, they had fought and killed for their mates. Sometimes, Spock mused over the ferocity of his love for Uhura and wondered how far past those days truly were.
He pushed cloth aside to taste her, and the touch of his tongue to the sweetness of her pussy made them both groan. She squeezed his shoulder, and he grasped her around the waist to pull her closer, making quick movements at her peak with his tongue that he knew would drive her mad with sensation. She arched and whined for more; he delved in more deeply, feeling the connection between them buzz with heat and desire.
Nyota cried out and lifted her hips when he grazed gently over a particularly sensitive point - he lingered there another moment, letting her tension build. Her legs trembled and her hands at his shoulders grew more insistent, but she still waited for him to set their pace. Spock paused, then dove in again to press tongue to flesh, laving her, striking every weak point that made her yelp and twist and sway closer to the edge. He found his favorite spot - just at the head of her slit, where any touch would make her gasp his name - and slid his tongue roughly across it, feeling his rough texture against her softness. She made a little sound and he knew it had begun, and then she crested on the wave of her orgasm, and cried out and arched her back again and clung tightly to him and came.
~:~
"So you're going to have to…what, tell me what to do?"
Spock shifted uncomfortably in the bed beside her.
"No. The situation appears more…complex than that."
He could sense her confusion.
"Complex like how?"
"The norms of the Asteri appear to depend heavily on expression of the sa'kal-tepul."
Nyota frowned. Four Vulcan dialects and she'd never heard this phrase before.
"I'm sorry?"
Spock shifted again, and she could tell that he was uneasy with their conversation.
"I believe it best translates as the 'masculine power.' It is a word which refers to the dominance of male over female during the pon farr." he was silent for a long minute. "But the occasions for its use are very, very few."
The insularity of Vulcan sexual culture continued to surprise Nyota; there were so many rituals, practices, traditions, and now linguistic artifacts that had never been written about - never even shared, as far as Spock knew, with an outsider. It was a private affair, he reasoned with her, and the pon farr moreso; because of this, he rarely answered her questions.
For humans, Spock supposed, who experienced emotion in a constant, endless wave, sexual passion must seem mundane. For a Vulcan, whose life was built on the stability of reason, it was a frightening maelstrom of sensation, both inside and out, that pushed one to the very limits of control. And, nature being what it was, this passion could not be avoided, eliminated, or tempered - it could only be survived.
Uhura was inching closer to him now; at some point, she had undressed, and now she was as naked as he beneath the thin blanket.
"So they expect you to show your dominance over me?"
Spock turned to look at her; in the lamplight, she almost glowed.
"First," he corrected her, "they expect me to have dominance over you. Something," he mused, reaching out to splay his fingers through her hair, "That I expect will provide me with a most interesting challenge."