Tasha didn't want to be seen as a tantrum throwing child. One who cried each time something didn't go her way. She wanted to be perceived as strong and independent. A woman without emotional ties to hold her down, yet that is what happened. Against her will, her traitorous emotions began to weave around her superior officer. How many times had she silently repeated to herself that Data was nothing more than a machine? Thousands? Millions? Was she forever destined to bemoan her fate of being a human with emotional attachments to an android who was more than the sum of his parts and programming?
In her farewell message, she had called him a child, but here on this alien beach she was the one being childish. She couldn't understand his pre-occupation with her. Why was he staring at her instead of the distant sunset? Could he not find those magic words that would turn him into a real man? Magic was something she didn't believe in until she was well on her well out of her teens. She was sure that magic was the not only the key ingredients in sunsets like the one she was watching but one where she'd find her partner. Her attraction to Data, admittedly was unreliable, unprofessional and the other dozens reasons why she continued to keep him at arm's length. But he wasn't off investigating some quandary that mystified him—
"Why are looking at me like that?" Tasha said finally getting up the nerve to ask her friend who had elected to spend his shore leave with her.
Relenting she caught his golden eyes with her blue ones. He looked rather 'frustrated' at the moment. "I am trying to ascertain when would be the appropriate moment to kiss you."
A laugh spluttered out of her in response. "Data, you don't—" A lecture on the proper way to court a woman from Turkana IV was on the tip of her tongue. She squashed it the moment she realized that he was attempting to find a way to connect with her in a way he probably hadn't connected with anyone else. And the sad thing was, she was probably the only person who would give him a moment like this. He reached out; awkwardly at first, and wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer to him. Then it suddenly dawned on her what she meant to him. It went beyond the bedroom. His eyes spoke of desires that he didn't understand and most likely she didn't either. He wanted her for his own. He wanted her to give in to him.
Maybe she was imagining it. Maybe she was telegraphing her emotions onto him. Maybe she wanted him just as much. No sooner had she thought that, she surrendered to his loving lips. A kiss—destined to be her undoing. She was sure of it. She was too busy running her hands through his hair to contemplate what programs he was running…to care what he what he was really thinking. His lips demanded more from her. She didn't want to know how he knew how to do that. How he knew where to put his hands. How she this machine could make her want him more than any other man she had had in the past. She leaned into him.
Tasha broke the kiss when she became aware that one of his hands lingered on the zip of her uniform. His eyes silently implored her for permission. She did nothing to thwart his efforts to undress her. She wanted him. She ached for him like she hadn't before. She was easy but only for him. Tasha captured Data's lips with her own, her fingers still musing his hair until the zip to her uniform began to travel painfully slow down the front of her uniform.
Again she didn't ask why, she just assumed that he wanted her—here and now, and she was glad to accept his need inside of her own. No force in the universe that she had experience could have come close to being with someone who so desperately wanted to be with her. She could tell Data wanted nothing more than to please her; driving himself deep within her body.
It wasn't awkward. It was natural. It wasn't painful. It was gloriously pleasurable. Every thrust. Every heartbeat drove her closer and closer to something she had never experienced with anyone but him before. They were connected beyond the physical. Beyond what was sane. Beyond what was good for her career. Beyond the realms of passion of what her supposed love her life had taken her. She shouted out his name as her climax gripped her. Heaven never looked or felt so beautiful as that moment that they had shared on the beach.
"That was beautiful, Data," she gasped as he stopped his lovemaking. It was then when she noted how raw the sand had rubbed her backside raw. However, in the scheme of things that was a minor detail.
Data kissed her gently on the lips. "You are aesthetically pleasing against this particular backdrop."
He was still inside of her—fully erect. Still connected. Did he want more? She smiled at his compliment. "Are you saying I look good in this light?" she joked.
"Yes, and I want—" Data admitted.
"More?" she asked with a teasing smile appearing across her face.
"Yes, but I sense that you have injured yourself during our lovemaking on the beach," he said to her.
Despite her best efforts to use her uniform as a barrier against the sand, he was right; the sand had rubbed against her skin, causing the skin on her backside to be scrapped off. But he wants more. He wants to be shown more. And she was in a pleasing mood. With a little effort on her part she rolled him over until he was the one with his back to the sand and she was straddling herself over his lap; his cock buried deep within her. "I'm not going to ask you how you know that," she teased. He opened his mouth to reply but she leaned over quickly and kissed him. "And I don't want to know," she murmured against his lips.
Hours later, Tasha found herself lying under a blanket fetched from his hotel room with a small fire blazing nearby. Despite Data's protest that he wasn't in need of rest, she had managed to coax him into laying naked underneath with her. Her hand swept over his cheek. If only he was real, she caught herself thinking. But he is real, she thought to herself feeling a small smile tug at her lips. They had had sex until she was sore from it. And yet you want him again. Could life be more confusing than it already was? Could she have a career and this man (who was her superior officer) as her own at the same time? Time and time again fate proved that she was indeed capable of maintaining a relationship with him despite him being higher in rank.
"You appear contemplative," he said to her.
She nodded in agreement. "Yeah, well, an afternoon of great sex has a tendency of doing that to me," she admitted.
"Our previous sexual encounters weren't—great?" Data queried.
Tasha looked at him then. Did she just puncture his ego regarding his sexual prowess? Knowing her luck with men, she had. "That's not what I meant, Data. I meant—I better shut up before I get into more trouble with you," she said to him then.
"Our copulation tonight was done outside of our duties—"
Tasha decided to kiss him then, keeping him from his rhetoric. "Data, back to what I was thinking about earlier…I was wondering how we are going to make this work between us."
"Was this not a causal encounter between us?"
Half of her wanted to laugh and the other half wanted to slap him for cheapening such a beautiful afternoon. "Not to me, this time it was—"
Love was a weakness. It could be wielded against a person. But she knew better than let that get in the way of doing the right thing. Would it be so horrible to succumb to being truly treasured in someone's eyes? Lutan had treasured her strength. Other's her beauty. Picard treasured her courage. Data treasured—her as a whole. Somehow she sensed that he treasured her more than she even valued herself, and that is what endeared him to her. She wondered if he knew that she was not flawless. That in certain situations she would become an emotional wreck. That he'd be inheriting everything that not only made her a good person but a bad one as well. "—this time was different. I think I'm falling in love with you," she admitted openly to him.
He gave her a disbelieving look then. "Are you certain?"
She chuckled at this. "Nothing is certain in this universe of ours, Data, but I do know that for some odd reason I belong with you. Don't ask me to explain it because I'm not sure if I would even be able to give you a full explanation of why this has happened to me."
"I cannot reciprocate—"
She pulled him closer then interrupting his self-limiting statement. "You already have in so many different ways, Data. Is it so bad that I simply want to be with you?"
"You want to continue our relationship—" he began.
"I want to be your wife, Data," she told him plainly. She had never before considered committing someone so completely. "Like the sunrise is just a few hours over the horizon—so is my desire to be with you in a capacity that only a true partner in life can be."
"It will take some time to come up with an appropriate response to your offer as this is a life altering decision that will impact both of our careers and the way we interact after duty hours," Data pointed out with the sterility of an delicate operation. Disappointment didn't begin to describe how she felt at that moment. While he hadn't turned her down flatly, she wasn't too comfortable with his version of a maybe either. It was almost as if someone had scooped out her heart and dumped it on their sandy bedding.
Laying back on her back then she simply glanced up at the stars feeling as though she had made a fool of herself by proposing to him. Now that she thought about it she was being overly—
"Tasha—' Data said to garner her attention a few moments later. "I have considered your proposal."
"That was fast," Tasha said turning her attention on him then and smiled. He looked gorgeous bathed in firelight with their shared blanket covering the swell of his hip. It was just enough to want him again. Her gaze traveled the seemingly long distance from his hips to his eyes then.
"I have decided to agree to your proposal," Data told her then. "On the condition that you seek Counselor Troi out regarding this matter, prior to our wedding."
Tasha sighed at this demand. "Wedding, Data?" she asked. Why did he want a wedding?
"Yes, I would want the Captain to marry us in the tradition of your choosing."
Tasha shrugged then. "Might as well walk up to a legal computer and get it over with now because I really don't know what the wedding tradition is of my choosing." Would it be a Earth type of wedding or Turkanan wedding? What was a Turkanan wedding like? She'd have to look it up later. "And what do I need to talk to Deanna for?"
"Marriage is a lifetime obligation, Tasha," Data began his lecture. "And should not be taken lightly. We have known each other for—"
"Less than a year, I get it, Data." He had a point. Maybe it was too soon for this. Maybe she was a fool feeling this way for him so soon. But that didn't matter now. What mattered was where her finger was. It was tracing an invisible line down the center of his chest all the way down beneath the blanket to his—he grabbed her hand stopping her before she arrived at its destination. "Promise me you will talk with Counselor Troi on this matter."
Tasha nodded in agreement knowing he wouldn't summit to the moment and to her proposal until she agreed with his condition. "Yes, I'll see Deanna when she returns from her conference in two weeks," she promised as she moved closer to Data then and gave him such a kiss that, again, she was lost in the moment. Lost in him.