Part 3
Han lowered himself to his knees, careful and slow. The maneuver was tricky; suspended above the ground as she was, Leia couldn't leave the strut without his help. In any other circumstance, he would've quipped a snide remark: when you got yourself in that position, didn't you have a plan for getting out? Or maybe: oh, you need me to move, do you?
But she'd riled him up enough to keep him quiet, it seemed. For that, Leia was grateful.
She unwrapped her legs from around his hips and walked her lower body back to the strut. She held out a hand to him as he stood and he tugged her in close, breathed in her hair as she wrapped her arms around him.
"I'm onto you, wife," he growled to the crown of her head. "I'm supposed to be getting my way here and you're usin' acrobatics to get yours."
She stepped away from him and tugged on his belt, the nerf-hide rough against her fingers: as clear a sign as any that she wasn't interested in anything but his way. Her eyes found his in the swirling dust, promise and pinpoint focus clear in the hazy green. She pursed her lips, guided him to the ramp controls, leading by the buckle of his belt and holster. Backwards, up and up and up, out of the blazing sun and red canyon dust and further beneath the ship.
Slapping a hand against the control panel just above her head, Han reached around her to pat the dust from her shoulders and arms. He did little but leave Han-sized handprints in the collection of red on her skin and vest. She smiled ruefully and shook her head, hearing the first notes of the boarding ramp's descent cycle.
"We're a mess," she said.
"Always," he said.
She nodded but loved his answer. Han's unique talent for speaking to two situations with one word never failed to enchant her. They were always a mess; he was right. Never quite on the same page as everyone else, either too stubborn or too clueless to keep to the status quo. Their whole marriage, their whole relationship, hell, even their friendship had been a mess. Embracing the chaos had been one of her finest choices.
She slid her hands over his lower back—daringly low, just shy of blatantly inappropriate—and smiled up at him. "Bad habit."
"Nah," he said, with a flash of white teeth. "Just have to, uh, clean up first."
He winked at her as the boarding ramp clunked to a heavy stop and Leia's heart swelled in open, blazing adoration. They hurried up the ramp, their footsteps echoing into the Falcon's ring corridor. Leia turned and pressed the interior controls for the ramp and then turned to face Han, tilting her head in coquettish question.
"Fresher?" she asked.
"Fresher," he answered.
He grabbed her hand and led her around the bend in the corridor, through the galley and past the holochess table. Leia did not miss the contemplative look Han sent the table as they passed and stifled her urge to laugh.
The captain's cabin was dark when they entered. A safe haven, their home while on missions: the Falcon's sole bunkroom felt like a refuge from the chaos of their lives. Here their undercover identities didn't exist, the darkness and the evil in the galaxy that they fought was nothing. The cabin was for them, was for intimacy in all senses of the word. She talked about Alderaan in this space; he talked about Dewlanna. Beyond sexual intimacy, the cabin was where she felt supremely herself and the relief she felt upon entering it with Han was almost overwhelming.
Han didn't bother to turn on the lighting panels. They passed the bunk, the holding crates and the holo-panel by memory alone, coming to a stop inside the cramped, unlit fresher.
"Light?" she asked as Han turned and slipped his fingers beneath her vest.
He didn't look up, only shrugged as he stepped closer to her.
"Wouldn't you like to see what you're doing?"
He shrugged again, his eyes locked on the bottom hem of her vest like it held all the secrets of the universe. She clasped his wrists before he could unlatch the fastener of the vest and tried to give him her best patient look.
Perhaps she'd gone a bit farther in her teasing than she'd meant to go. Singular focus was definitely a Solo trait when he felt frustrated or when the thread of sexual tension pulled taut. She'd known this for more than a decade: while patient, Han had limits. And when pushed past those limits his focus became laser-thin, nanometrical. It was the reason he was an inspired pilot, the reason he'd survived his youth.
It was not the best mindset for this moment, though. She smiled and lifted her right hand to press against his mouth, forestalling his grumbling.
"My last suggestion," she said. "I like watching you."
Han's eyes glinted and he kissed her fingers, reaching behind her to brush his hand against the fresher's light controls. The space illuminated with blinding light: even modified for certain comforts, there was no need to install a low, romantic light setting on a smuggler's freighter fresher. Leia blinked and Han came back into focus, waving watery lines sharpening into tall, broad, grinning Corellian with wild challenge in his eyes.
He reached for her vest and slipped his fingers beneath the leather: feather-light, soft touches at her stomach. The hard ridges of his fingers sliced against her skin like loving wire and Leia felt the heat suffuse her again. Her body remembered what he'd done to her already today: his cocky grin, the rumbles against her ear, his desperate lips. His eyes weren't on hers—they were on his hand—but his confident smirk was shameless, fully proud. Leia remembered his heat against her back as he'd taught his little flying lesson. The thrusters between her legs. The lightheaded, dusky feeling of being captivated by someone who had captivated her many times before and yet could always surprise her.
His fingers moved upward and he stepped closer, palm sliding under her vest to press against her navel. She sucked in a breath, the only sound in the small space between them. Where his palm touched, her muscles contracted: torch-like, lighting everything on fire as he went. Up, to the skin below her breasts, stopping there like a leaden weight.
And Leia remembered why she couldn't get enough of him, why she always fell apart against him. The pure stubbornness of his mettle, the unyielding courage of his conviction. So sure that he knew her own intractability, could contain it or overpower it.
That was why he could surprise her, why she let him surprise her. Because the sexiest thing about Han Solo wasn't his eyes or his smile or his broad shoulders and trim waist, though she appreciated all of that like the work of art he was. No, the sexiest thing about Han Solo was that he listened to her needs and desires, did not judge, and offered his own in return.
His eyes paused, his whole form still: nothing moved except her shallow breaths against his hand. The whole galaxy: waiting.
He smiled. Full lips rolled up one side of his face like a river breaking through rock. Inevitable. Satisfied. So utterly confident in himself. He blinked and his eyes challenged, goaded: like he'd already seen how this played out and was keeping her in suspense. And with an expression like that, she sure as hell wasn't going to stop him from doing damn near anything he wanted to do.
"Leia," he murmured, and dropped his eyes to look at his hand hidden beneath her vest. "Who won the race?"
She had to do something with her hands; it was a sudden imperative. In a moment of beautiful panic, she grabbed the elbow of the hand that was beneath her vest. The other she pressed against the side of his abdomen, her thumb tracing the well-worn fabric of his shirt.
"You did," she said.
He hummed and nodded. Leia felt his thumb brush against the underside of her right breast twice, forward and back, and then retract to its former position at her abdomen. Leia exhaled, her breath leaving her in a rush.
"And what did I win?" he asked.
His voice. Basement deep: challenging warmth that fell into her body and nestled just below her stomach. Pressed up against her, towering above her, he looked powerful and … dangerous wasn't the right word, not at all. But the air was thick with want, their breathing loud, and Leia returned to the image of a predator and his prey. Being agreeably cornered. Willingly trapped.
"Me," she whispered.
His smirk turned corkscrew, slipping up one side of his face while his hand pressed upward and his thumb ran under her breast like he was touching an unexpected reward. Leia sucked in a breath and bowed her body back, pressed her hips to his.
"You," he said with such naked, dark awe that Leia had to close her eyes against the urge to hug him to her, so overwhelmed with gratitude for the man in front of her.
And then the switch flipped.
Han's hands retreated, sudden, with a quick exhale, and then they were on her vest, gripping the hems of the fabric and ripping it open with a rend of torn thread. The violence of it was appallingly hypnotic. Safe in the hands of the man who loved her, the quick destruction was less dangerous to her health and more surprising thrill.
"You're replacing that," Leia said.
He cocked an eyebrow at her, teasing. "You have a million vests just like that one."
"That one was my favorite."
She pushed the ruined vest down her arms and onto the cold deck plating beneath her boots.
Han knelt, gave her his shoulders to use for balance. "Looks exactly like all the other ones you have," he said.
Leia put her hands on her hips: stared down at him as he unbuckled her military-style boots. The old ones that she'd had since Endor, the ones with the stubborn latch he couldn't ever seem to undo.
"It's stun-proof," she said to the top of his head. "It doesn't get too hot in the sun. It doesn't scratch up my arms. It fits."
"Does it know how to take off this fucking boot?"
Leia laughed and knelt to take over the job. By the time she'd unlatched the boots and kicked them off, Han had stood and removed his shirt and vest, tossing the clothing onto the deck next to her. She shifted to her knees and reached with nimble fingers to the clasp of his belt.
"Han Solo bested by a boot latch," she marvelled. "If you weren't capable of doing nav calculations in your head I might worry about your faculties."
She caught his eye as she popped the fastener on his belt. Green shone so playfully—so cocky and sure of himself—that she could only swallow and stare. What a smile, Leia thought, heart tripping at her husband's sly intelligence and confidence. What a ruthless, beautiful smile.
"No need to worry about my faculties, Princess," he murmured.
He offered his hand and then tugged her bodily to him. With a quick snap, he unlatched her trousers and pushed them down to the floor. She reached to return the favor but he was too fast, too excited, to let her help. Pure boyish glee in the movement, a particularly male and distinctly Corellian joy in the speed of it.
Goddess, she loved him.
And then they were skin to skin, pressed against one another with fresh excitement after a tremendous buildup. Leia looked up at Han, at his devilish eyes and heartbreaking lips and the telltale lift to his eyebrow and waited for the inevitable end to his statement. No need to worry about my faculties, Princess—
A heavy beat, like a drum. Sure and strong. Conniving and aggressive. Heat and joy and comfort and—
"I'm all here," he murmured.
He tugged her back with him into the fresher, where water rained down from the ancient spout above them. Slick, warm hands slid across her hips, hypnotic: pressed against her skin like the consummate expert he was when it came to matters of sex in the fresher.
She leaned into him, into the pressure of his palms and the bite of his fingertips, and watched the water turn his hair dark brown, almost black. She lifted her hands, slid dust-mud residue from the gleaming bronze of his skin, starkissed and delicious. Over shoulders, biceps, through the hair on his chest and over the beautiful ridges of his throat to the back of his neck.
"You certainly are," she said, eyes following her hands as they navigated the star-chart of her husband's body.
Han watched her hands too, watched as they slipped beneath the planes of his stomach, followed the vee of muscle and bone, to his very hard erection. She ran teasing fingers over him, repeating her two-finger come-hither motion but without the nuisance of fabric. His breathing stuttered, resumed with a quiet cough. Slick with the water from the shower, warm from the blood that coursed through him, skin soft over hardness. Such a dichotomy, such a puzzle, how she could affect him so much that he was relegated to wordlessness.
She chanced a look at his face, caught the lax pout of his mouth, the closed eyelids as his throat conjured a grunt so soft, so pleading, that Leia felt a moment of pity. She slipped her fingers to his base, slid her palm beneath the head and squeezed him.
Leia knew her husband's body like Han knew the Falcon. She knew what foreplay took from him, the heavy toll of being the generous lover he was. She expected his low groan, the jolt that ran through his body at her grip, the way he towered over her and leaned into the space above her head. A part of his intense stubbornness, manifesting in his need for competitiveness. It was fun to torture him with it, to wield her power against him by forcing his own pleasure. A harmless way of asserting her own stubbornness, her own competitiveness.
Thus she acted the ready loser in his game, in his bet, and fought to push him over the edge first. Not to humiliate him: there was no such embarrassment between them. Perhaps in a different universe their stubbornness might work against each other. But not here. Not in the safe space of their marriage, where wants and needs were readily met and enjoyed, where there was no scorecard for pleasure.
And, too, Han had a beautiful way of reciprocating whenever she felled him. Merciless. Absolutely revelatory.
She slid her finger tips up again, walked them to the head, soft pinpricks against vulnerable skin, then made a fist at the tip, squeezed. Han grunted and thrusted into the tightness of her hand. Involuntarily, she guessed, because he exhaled in a rush and leaned back.
"Tryin' to kill me," he muttered.
"Mm-hmm."
She added her second hand, tried to ignite every bit of his body as she enfolded him completely. Leia didn't put stock in the size of a man's …. ah, Alderaanians had called it laartei and that was the word she used in the privacy of her head, though Han said cock. She didn't understand the utter ridiculousness of judging by size or girth or whatever else it was males felt warranted heraldry or ridicule. She assumed the fascination with size was largely a human male construct. Such unnuanced assumptions seemed par for the course.
But Han was well-endowed, from what she'd gathered from her little experience and a particularly embarrassing conversation during the trip to Bespin. Leia didn't care: simply appreciated how he used such an appendage, with vigor and a teasing competence that matched her own need for power and dominance on occasion. By contrast her hands were small, so when she really wanted to drive him insane, she had to use everything she had.
Han groaned again, pressed his left forearm against the fresher wall above her head, leaned into it like it was keeping him upright. His slouched position allowed the spray to hit the crown of her head, her hair taking the brunt of the water, dark strands clinging to her face and neck.
Leia didn't care. Han shook, his thighs braced and his knees bent. His telltale signs of deepening enjoyment, when he stopped thinking and fell into the weight of his intense desire for her. She suspected she'd already thwarted whatever plans he'd had when she brought her hands to him. But that was her specialty: rendering her husband incoherent. She knew what he looked like before he came: the marvelled, surprised tension that bit into his forehead and the sides of his mouth, his shaking right hand. She'd catalogued the sequence of facial expressions like a words in a favorite poem. Treasured the knowledge. Memorized the art she created.
Leia dropped to her knees and slid her right hand under his shaft. Poor man deserved …. Well. Han always deserved the best of what she offered, and she'd known long before she'd first slept with him that her mouth was a favorite. Whether it was a typical male fantasy or something unique to the image of someone capable of enormous change with the slightest words from her lips, Leia didn't know. It was probably a combination of both. Pleasure so rarely stemmed from only one source.
She loved the way he fell to pieces when she did this, the pleasure he took from it.
She kissed his tip, ran her left hand over his leg and looked at his face, just to make sure she wasn't pushing him past his limit. He looked down, eyes less green now and more… gold? A lighter brown? She didn't know. He brought a hand to her cheek.
"Yeah," he muttered.
She nodded, wrapped her right hand around his base, and took the tip of him into her mouth.
The sound that came from his lips was so helpless that Leia wanted to smile. Oh, Han. Talked the big talk—wanna fuck you in every location and every position on the Falcon, he'd said only about thirty minutes ago—but was rendered completely powerless by her mouth. She swept her tongue under him, brushed her free hand up the inside of his thigh. He shuddered, panted, wrapped his hand around the back of her head and tried to set a rhythm for her. She took his hint, hollowed her cheeks and pulled her lips to his tip. His head dropped back, chin to the ceiling, as she indulged him, alternated between a driving, fast rhythm and a more teasing one.
Her free hand ran over his body in freeform strides. Whereas Leia liked to concentrate on the sensations he created with his mouth when he did this to her, Han preferred a more fulsome experience, wanted to feel lost in the moment. Years together had honed her technique and she no longer had to be guided. Fingertips brushed through the hair on his thighs, a palm over the maddeningly attractive seat of his pants when he was wearing any. A pause in the action to brush her lips over his length, soft and loving. Brute rhythms were one thing, more her thing. But Han wanted to be constantly pulled to his limit and then fall back only to reach the limit again.
The climb's part of the fun, he'd told her once.
So she sucked harder. Walked her knees closer to him, found a furious, fast rhythm that went just past his usual preference. Still loving, still careful, but Leia did indeed know the starchart of her husband's body and she was damn well going to use that knowledge to her advantage.
"Hey, now," Han's hoarse voice swept over her, and his palm pressed into her hair. "What're you—oh."
She concentrated on her goal, prided herself on the shaking in his legs next to her. Added a deft brush further below him, aiming for complete vanquishment. You won the race, darling, she would say to him if she could. And now you pay the price for cheating.
Power. A trading commodity. Offered and freely given. What made Han so completely her match in the sanctuary of their intimate relationship, the ability to give and take in tandem with emotional support overlaying the entire experience. She loved him. And because she loved him, he wouldn't expect her to take it easy on him.
Leia released him for a moment to run a hand over her hair. Wet strands stuck to her cheek and she tossed her head to clear them. Then she leaned close and opened her mouth, ready to resume, but was startled by Han's voice.
"Hang on," he mumbled. "Wait a second."
She jerked back, lifted her chin and looked up to his face. His eyes were trained on hers, wide and accusatory. She tilted her head as Han backed away, a hand in front of himself like he was warding her away. In any other circumstance, Leia would have found it amusing.
"What's wrong?" she asked, as innocently as she could. She knew precisely why he'd stopped.
"You're doing it again."
Leia pursed her lips. "Doing what?"
"Taking charge," he said.
Leia sat back on her heels, opened her hands to the side. "And you're enjoying it," she pointed out. "Isn't that point?"
"No. Not the point," he said and, forgetting himself, shook a finger at her. "I won the race. I won."
"Of course you did," she answered, wiping her wet hair from her cheek.
"I'm in charge," he said. "Me."
"You said yeah!"
"You try telling a beautiful woman—your wife—to stop sucking your cock and tell me how it goes," he said.
Leia had to laugh then. "I will admit I haven't had the pleasure."
Leia eyed him, his heavy exhales, the strong, proud line of his erection, the way his eyes bounced between hers, playful and teasing. Giving himself time to regroup, she thought. He's going to fight back.
She flattened her hands on her thighs. Point to you, Han. But she had other ways of wrestling control from him. Her mouth was only the most obvious of her tools.
She stood, moving to the side to avoid the spray of the water. "Fine," she answered. "You want to be in charge?"
"I am in charge."
Oh, there was so much in that tone of his that screamed I am in no way in charge of this! But she was practiced at keeping those thoughts to herself. And, honestly, she wasn't sure she cared at this point who took who. The sight of her handsome life-mate in thrall with her actions—a brilliant, wordly, good-to-a-fault man who lived his life in fierce contest with who the galaxy thought he should be—had made her desire for him thrum, low and warm, between her legs.
Leia lifted her chin: smirked. "Then take charge."
He grinned: bright, white and happy.
"Or I will," she finished.
His grin faltered but she could still see the lines of amusement around his mouth, the snide confidence in his eyes. He jerked back, slapped a hand against the water controls to shut off the spout, and then turned to her with a playful snarl.
He walked her backwards, using his imposing body—the hard ridge of his erection, his chin at least a kilometer above hers, the way he dwarfed her so completely that she should have been afraid—to pin her against the warmed plastex of the fresher cubicle. Leia could feel the heat from his skin. She looked down, noted the powerful musculature of her husband's thighs, the sleek cradle of his hips into hair and tight skin. Then further up, to the broad expanse of his chest, narrow to full, skin tanned and kissable. His shoulders, round and tense, muscle rippling into bicep, tricep, elbow, wrist. The palms he pressed into the fresher wall above her head. Imposing. Powerful. Inescapable but so damn loving that she felt no fear. Only want: a rolling, deep flutter below her belly button, just beneath the skin at the center of her hips. Like the water at the bottom of a well, but the water was boiling, roiling, violent and active just above where he would press into her.
"Location," she murmured.
He tilted his head down toward hers, caught her eye. He jerked his head to indicate the captain's cabin. His wordlessness sparked a deep want in her chest, pure animalistic desire. She opened her lips, felt her breath come short.
She licked her lips. "Position."
He looked at her for the space of three heartbeats. Just looked. No sound. No clue how he would answer her. Then with a movement so quick it startled her, he bent his knees, swept his hands beneath her thighs and hauled her up against him. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck: felt him hard beneath her as he knocked the dry-air sequence with his shoulder to evaporate the water from their bodies.
Han ducked his head, brought his lips to the shell of her ear. "Gonna do a few," he whispered.
Oh, but the dark promise in those words was enough. She sucked in a breath—lips opening and eyes closing—as he swept his tongue under the sensitive skin of her ear. She tightened her arms around his neck, holding on for dear life as the dry cycle finished and he stepped out of the enviro-shield, out of the fresher and into the dark cabin.
He walked to the large bunk, knelt and then released her thighs so he could fall on top of her but still cushion her landing. And with one quick movement he settled against her, pressed their hips together and thrusted, hard, into her body. Unexpected and fierce, and Leia was thankful for the long buildup, the thrusters, the spare minutes in the fresher, because she was ready for him.
He dropped her to the bunk and enter her within the same handful of seconds, so fast that she hadn't yet grown accustomed to her horizontal orientation. The effect was revelatory, like … like falling. Her stomach exploded into nervous flutters that only drew her deeper into her own sense of adventure. The not-fear of submitting to this large man. The sense of being safely small in his hands. She didn't care if she plunged into the sharp feeling of submission. Just for a moment, just for him.
She opened her eyes, looked below her. Han's hips were flush against hers, the pale ivory of her skin pressed into the bronze of his. His knees were planted wide, forcing hers wider, too. His upper body didn't touch hers, and something about that felt glorious. No safe, warm shelter of his chest, no exposed throat for her to nibble. His hands were braced on either side of her head and his eyes, his eyes were closed, his mouth open above her. Taking his moment to adjust, looking just as affected as she felt.
She itched for him to move, though. The spell of their fall had waned and now she wanted the fierce rush of adrenaline that accompanied the push-pull of his thrusts. The tension pulled tight. The line grew taut inside her while she watched him lose control, lose the facade he tried so hard to present to her in these games of theirs.
Her knees were too far apart for her to press her feet into the bunk; she couldn't do much to get him to move. So she lifted her arms, reached her hands to grip his wrists and squeezed. The position left her underarms exposed, made her feel open. Her shoulder-blades squeezed together, her lower back arched.
But it did the trick. Han opened his eyes and looked down at her. She had a feeling he was steeling himself, trying to last. A war of attrition, it seemed. Wearing the other down with any and all means at their disposal in an attempt to see the other break.
"Better'n the thrusters?" he asked.
Leia cocked an eyebrow. Was he kidding? The thrusters had stimulated, had made warmth bloom through her veins, yes. But Han was inside her now and nothing compared to that, the fullness, the strange completion of a man so well suited to her that his impudence didn't at all offend her. And yet she heard herself say—
"At least the thrusters moved."
"Oh, yeah?" he said, innocent expression over a face that screamed not-innocent.
A powerful thrust. Deep. Hard. Enough to feel in her spine, the resounding, echoing murmurs of movement traveling from their point of joining to the tips of her fingers, toes, the follicles of her hair. Her eyes fell shut.
Again and Leia caught her breath, shards of her waning desire to compete with him lost in the feeling. More than control. Utterly ruthless, the need for him to move, to sustain a harsher rhythm, the feeling of him inside her and wrapped around her together as a whole. Again and Leia tried, oh she tried, to keep from crying out but she'd crossed the line between foreplay and a horizon of physical satisfaction that urged her ever forward. The sharp note of Han a puncture to the chest because it sounded so overwhelmed, so helpless, but she couldn't find it in herself to care.
Again he pushed. Her legs started to shake; she could see the tremors in her knees pressed wide to accommodate his obvious desire to see her exposed.
Again. Again, and Leia rushed headlong into orgasm, surprised by the speed of it. She bit her lip with the last vestiges of her control and fell, thrown into wild oblivion with the depth of Han's thrusts, the sound of his harsh breathing above her, the control he exerted without ever stepping on her drawn lines of respect and honesty.
For a long moment, she hung between world, in a space free of responsibility and awareness. She drifted, nerves lighting on pleasurable fire, energy humming through her body. Between one second and the next. Between perception and reality. Ethereal. Limitless. Expansive and great.
When the ebb faded, she opened her eyes, panting, her hands still gripping his wrists. Han's face was held in a grimace, tension in his jaw. And yet, even now, even when she was sure he was fighting with every ounce against his own orgasm—he'd lasted despite her teasing, her hand, her mouth and now this, through what most beings considered their due—he had enough gall, enough Solo-brand arrogance, to mutter a strangled, low growl of I win.
Her jaw dropped with a harsh exhale, and her body flooded with resumed desire. She could come again, she felt it with certainty. And in this war of attrition, he might have won a battle, sure. But she was going to take him with her if it was the last thing she did.
Quick as a whip, Leia slipped her left hand to Han's elbow and pulled hard, buckling his tenuous bracket above her. At the same moment she brought her right hand to the center of his chest and pushed, forcing him into a controlled fall to his right side as she weaved her left leg out of the way. With a startled huff, Han rolled onto his back and Leia scrambled on top of him, sitting on his legs and tossing her head to clear her loose hair out of her way.
"The hell—?" he gasped.
Leia leaned over him, put her hands on his chest. The last vestiges of her orgasm—the light, airy notes of pleasure—deepened, low notes of a new buildup, excitement over the idea of taking control again. She'd been patient enough with his antics.
"You've been rather obstinate today, Captain," she murmured, breathing harshly.
Han was on spectacular display in front of her. Flushed, his arms flung aside. She could feel the hair of his legs against the skin of her calves and the hollow in her stomach became ravenous. And his erection in front of her, too: proud and strong, so obviously desperate for her.
"Leia," he warned.
She lifted her eyes to his, gold and deep, definitely not pleading. Some kind of exhausted, laconic question there trying to triumph over a harrowing need for her that left her mouth dry.
"Yes?"
"Would you mind?" he said and waved a vague hand in the direction of his groin.
She cocked an eyebrow. "That depends," she said. "Do you surrender?"
"Surren—you're kidding."
She rose, put her weight on her hands and slid her knees to either side of his hips. Poised over him like a vanquishing warrior, she fought her smile. Han's mouth opened in obvious enthrallment, anticipation in every twitch and small expression.
"Admit defeat and all of this goes away," she murmured. "All the build-up, all the teasing."
His lips pursed in a grim line. "Hell no, I'm not gonna surrender. You crazy?"
She nodded. "That's what they tell me."
"For fuck's sake," he said, looking incredulous. "I won the race!"
She didn't answer and took the opportunity to toss the long curtain of her hair over one shoulder. She idly ran her fingers through it, waiting for him to capitulate, acting reasonable and patient when she felt anything but. The thrum of her desire for him, the long planes of his body and the fathomless strength of his mind ran through her veins like blood, like fire. She wanted him inside her again, wanted him lost in his own desire for her.
And since he was acting the obnoxious victor—a regression to Yavin-Han, the Han of mercenary loyalties and scoundrel temperament—she was going to act the pinnacle warrior queen of her past.
Han exhaled at her ploy, turned his head to glare at the corner of the cabin, mouth twisted. "We treat prisoners of war better than this."
That caught her attention. Oh, petulance. He was losing his cool. This boded well for her.
Determining that he needed a bit more of a push, Leia bent her knees, brushed Han's erection with her body. Just a slight weight, an easy glancing touch. Han's knees tensed beneath her and he tried to lift his hips into the contact. And then she rose back up, out of reach, frustratingly far from where they both wanted her to be.
"Shit," Han muttered. "Oh, fuck."
"Surrender."
She watched him with avid interest, hoping her eagerness didn't show on her face. This was a gambit on Han's desperation. If he hadn't breathed out that little I win, she wouldn't have pushed him into any such admission. But Han just couldn't help himself. His ego, rightfully stroked, couldn't leave the moment alone. And it was so fun to make him playfully angry. He was an outwardly tough man—capable, brilliant, strong—but in this one case he was no match for her. And she adored him for it.
"You want me," she whispered, almost a song, melodic. "You want me."
"No shit." He reached for her hips; she shimmied away from his hands. "Leia, c'mere."
"Imagine how good it will be," she murmured.
"Can imagine just fine, thanks."
She tilted her head, considered him. That last comment carried with it a sense of actual frustration, which was not her intention. And she'd always promised herself that she would be careful with him in situations like this, watch him carefully the same way he paid excruciating attention to her whenever he took control. Han's confidence in himself was astronomically strong, but anyone could be pushed past their limits.
She softened her expression and lowered herself against him again, trapping his erection between them. She leaned her chest against his and set her chin on the backs of her hands, watching him pull himself together, arranging the puzzle pieces of his desire for her. His breathing slowed, the heartbeat settled beneath her palms.
She waited for his eyes, the green-brown-gold finding her face with his typical stubborn light.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
This was important to her, the validation that the game was not actually hurting him. What she was after was his pleasure. She loved to see him overcome, the pure joy at seeing the wonder and awe in his eyes and mouth when he found himself in her body. That was powerful, yes. It was powerful because she loved him with a ferocity of which she had never believed herself capable, not because she demanded control over him. She wanted him happy, and sated, and loved and cherished and adored the way a man so purely good should be. And she would do anything to make sure all of his needs were met, including stopping the game now if he needed it to stop.
He cleared his throat, lifted a hand to brush against the naked skin of her back. "Yeah, you're good," he whispered. "Just pick up the pace, huh? I'm dying here."
She smiled, leaned into him. Kissed him, brushed his tongue with hers, pure adoration in the contact. Light and soft, loving. Then she sat up and pressed her hands against his chest, fingers weaved into his hair. She tossed her hair back to tangle behind her, tickling his thighs.
She smiled: light, teasing and he responded in kind, happy grin slipping up one side of his face. His hands found their way to her hips, squeezed affectionately.
"A truce, then," she offered.
Leia lifted off his stomach and shimmied down. With a light touch she positioned him and slowly—so slowly, so unbelievably slowly—she lowered herself onto him.
A different feeling than the quick, heady rush of the last time he'd entered her. That had been driven and fierce, like breaking through a duracrete wall. She'd felt consumed and beloved in his ferocity, swallowed whole by the feeling. This in contrast was like walking a tightrope: tense, full to the brim with fluttery anticipation, utterly controlled but only just. Precipatory. Shallow and trepidatious in its own subtler way. She could feel him inside her, feel how he nestled within her like he'd been forged there, like this was his natural state. The blood pounded in her ears and she lost her breath, couldn't seem to control the soft hum that slipped from her throat.
Han seemed similarly affected. His hands gripped her hips just shy of too hard: kneading. Expand-contract. Expand-contract. Hypnotic, the way he struggled with himself, the way his eyes closed and he pushed the back of his head into the bunk, exposed the ridge of his throat.
She waited, hung on a precarious moment, let time slide through them like honey. Connected like this, pure intimacy, the most vulnerable they ever were and safe in that vulnerability all at the same time.
"Never gets old," Han mumbled. "God."
Her fingers twitched on his stomach and the careless depth of his voice triggered her inner muscles to contract around him, pulling a groan from his lips like browbeaten, eager torture.
She whispered yes and then began a soft rocking rhythm. His knees bent behind her and he pressed his heels into the bunk, offering his thighs as a kind of lounger. But while she was conspicuously maintaining Han's ideal rhythm to start—soft, rocking, before the energy flipped as it always did into something much harder, much less constrained—she was not about to lose the thread of the game entirely.
"Living up to your imagination?" she asked.
He cracked an eyelid and ran a hand down her left thigh. "Always."
She smiled and took his hand from her thigh and ran it to her breast, continuing to roll her hips. The tempo increased, the tightwire feeling dipping low in her stomach and branching out along her spine. Heat bloomed along her limbs and settled in her chest; sweat prickled the skin along her shoulder blades. Han's breathing changed as his fingers traced her nipple, as Leia switched from a slow roll to a quicker rhythm.
"Fuck," Han mumbled. "Leia."
The sound of her name made her close her eyes, made her nerves light on fire. The divine sensation of him deep within her arched up her back. She felt the bud of her growing orgasm, a blinding thrill lost in the heat of the moment and fought to ignore it as she pushed Han further toward his own.
But it was growing, the small, contained galaxy within her, whirling at breakneck speed to a fantastic death. It grew and grew, consuming space beneath her skin, fighting the parameters of muscle and bone and blood. Soon she wouldn't be able to hold onto it any longer.
"Isn't it strange—?" she began but the words got stuck in her throat as her right knee slipped and drove Han deeper. The slight pain in her hip was nothing next to this new angle, corkscrew and tilted.
It felt good, oh, it felt good …
"What?" Han croaked, picking up the thread.
Right. She smiled at Han, panting, flat on his back beneath her. "Appropriate posi—oh, goddess. Positioning."
He blinked at her, obviously slow to pick up details. She moved faster, threw a hand onto his shoulder so she could lean into him, her hair a living curtain around them as her hips tipped into a frenzied rhythm. He felt unbelievable inside her, and the quicker pace and the tilt in her pelvis seemed to push him deeper, hitting a very specific place, one that just needed …. A little more ….
"You're a good ride, Han Solo," she panted with the last of her control.
His body hit the place again, twice, three times, and she combusted into fire and color. Chaos ripped through her, a wide awake, sweeping, feverish cloud of sensation. She was lost, thrown to the four corners of the galaxy, the breadth of her sensations pulled tight like a blanket. She could see everything, past, present and future, the ions that slingshotted through time and space. The laws of the universe were nothing against this, the heat and the energy and the fulfilling, quasi-spiritual experience of Han inside her, wreaking havoc as only he could, as only they could.
Her arm gave out and she tumbled against him. Boneless she felt herself flipped to her side, Han's hands on her thighs as he took control. Wordless and without coherent thought, she scrambled closer as he pushed into her at full capacity, opening the throttle and heaving groaning symphonies into her ear. He thrusted at maniacal speed, pressing into her with abandon, almost as lost as she.
Her organsm shimmered and settled as his hit him. He groaned against the shell of her ear, wrenching her hips to his as if to fuse her to him. His hands shook, his shoulders shuddered, and Leia could feel the tension in his torso as she held him with a fierce embrace.
All of it, all of it. The universe and everything in it, reduced to the taste of his sweat on her tongue, the utterly intoxicating feel of his skin on hers, his breath in her ear, so harsh, so desperate. Sight and sound without any meaning to her other than a warm contentment and the feeling of having found her place among the stars.
"Leia," he whispered. "Leia. Leia."
Her arms tightened around him, holding him close as he came down. The cabin seemed to cool around them, the air soft on her skin. Her heart slowed, the fire in her veins extinguished, the driving need to consume and be consumed calmed into a quieter adoration. The lines of permanence wavered; she felt herself tugged into sleep by the sheer enormity of her body's endorphinic response.
Han's weight shifted and he left the embrace of her body, rolled onto his back. He reached for the sheets and tugged them over their bodies, then pulled her to lie against him. His warmth, his breathing, the beating of his heart, all of him pulled her into himself. As intimate as what they had just done. Just different.
"I swear," he murmured into her hair. "You keep surprising me, sweetheart."
She spread her fingers wide on the skin of his throat, watched him swallow. "Good."
Leia lifted her chin, offered him her lips as his left arm wrapped around her lower back. And when he kissed her, it wasn't with need, or possession, or sexual desire. It was with comfort, and partnership. Understanding. Affection and friendship.
"I still won," he whispered against her lips.
She smiled and tucked her nose under his jaw. "You think so?"
He hummed, kissed her forehead. Leia closed her eyes, sleep tugging at them both, content and happy. Until next time, Flyboy was her last thought and then she was swallowed by a calm and peaceful sleep she only seemed to find in his arms.
Author's Note: Special thanks to AmongstEmeraldClouds for the double beta. Your reassurances and suggestions were most helpful and I am so thankful you were willing to read this monster scene twice in the writing process. Any mistakes or awkwardness in this chapter are all on me: she probably warned me against the mistake and I was too stubborn to fix the damn thing. Thank you!