Author's Notes:

Disclaimers and Story Details in Chapter One, "Promises and Choices".

This story contains strong sexual references, and drug and alcohol use. It earns its M rating, and is NSFW.

T'Pol and Trip have been consumed by the need to be together, but now Trip is realizing that there's something monstrous in T'Pol's never-ending need for more. Will he be devoured by the raw need that's swallowed her whole?

The Monstrous More

"More, more, more!"

He never would have guessed she had a monster living inside her. Sure, he'd seen her passions, knew she could lose that famous Vulcan control. He knew it was a hell of a lot more likely to happen when they were alone together.

But this monster made her nothing but endless, ravenous hungers.

"More, more, more."

"Pepperpot, I can't...spirit's willing, but the human's weak - "

She stared into his eyes, and her pupils had swallowed up all the hazel. Maybe it was because he was really drunk, and everything was blurry. Tricky knowing where he ended and she started. Like she was in his skin, and he in hers...

"More, more, more!" She moved frantically, but it was no use. She'd plumb tuckered him out, or pulled the Tucker right out of him.

"Damn – way too drunk, if I'm making jokes about my own name – yow!" Her grab was fierce. "Kroykah!" he yelped, and either the sound or the word startled her into letting go.

The monster inside her didn't understand. It reveled in pain. Maybe natural, maybe the damned fist-sized rock's worth of trellium she'd pumped into herself – and that was just what he could remember through the booze haze.

Was trellium-D the monster, or was it something else?

Didn't matter. She was shaking. Damn. Where was her limit, anyhow? Could the monster ever get enough? He pulled her up close, stroking her back.

"More, more, more?" she whimpered, staring at him, her eyes filling up. It did him in, that she still needed him so much she cried. Or was that the monster, too?

"Sorry, pepperpot. Can't, now. Need to sleep..." So did she, but the monster wouldn't let her.

"Drink more?" Was she was breaking out of her monster's more, more, more? Or just trying to get him drunk enough to go again?

"More neuropressure?" He was going to get sick again if he drank any more now.

"Mate more?"

"After sleep." He kissed her; could still do that, anyway. "I promise."

More, more, more. Her heart beat it out swift and strong against his belly. Her fingers moved to his face; two were burned, like his, from when they'd thrust them into the flame. Trip was a little scared. More than a little. Her plasma arc got stronger every time. Every time, he felt more, more, more of her. More of her. More of the monster inside, taking her over.

Would it possess him, too? What would happen, if it did?

What would happen, if he didn't let it get any further...?

Too tired now...both so tired – even the monster must have been, because her head settled on his chest, over his heart...

"So slow...so slow...so...slow..." she murmured, hot breath tickling his chest, and she smelled like walking through Grandma Tucker's orange grove on a spring afternoon...

They're sitting at the Cap'n's table, in the grove. Sandalwood candles are burning, blending with citrus. Strong with minerals...oh, damn. "On Vulcan, we mate only once every seven years." So prim and superior. A self-righteous pain in the ass.

And she was lying. Cause this was sure as hell Vulcan, and they'd 'mated' seven times in the last seven hours. Maybe more. "More, more, more."

She's sitting on a branch, a plum slice poised at her lips. She's just told Phlox, and he's asked her why. Why would she do something so dangerous? She tips the fruit – not a plum anymore – to her lips. She knows it will change her forever, in ways she can't predict.

"I wanted more." She opens her mouth, gulps greedily, can't hold it all. Sticky nectars run down her chin, and he licks and kisses them away, while she becomes something new.

"I wanted more. More, more, more." So simple, her reason - But it wasn't simple. It was all through her, this dangerous need for more. Not want. Need.

The flame, when she was a baby. The nectars, on the Forge, beneath T'Khut at full, in a crevice in the obsidian cliffs. She waited, trembling, until the ripened fruit fell into her hand, her scarred fingers cradling it.

Need drove her. Need was the monster inside her. The need to know more. More, more, more...forever, more, more, more.

Her mind was full of it, like a mantra. She was open and trembling here, too...poised to give him more, more, more of herself – all of herself? To let him share the nectars, and the flame. No. More.

More, more, more.

He was the nectar, and the flame. She gave herself to him, as she had to them...she was changed by him, and she wanted more.

Moremoremore.

If he let her have all she wanted, her monster would gobble him up. What would happen to Trip Tucker? He could feel it, rising, preparing to swallow him whole, the way it had her...

He jolted awake. She was finally sleeping -deeply. He hadn't woken her with his jerking away from the monster inside her...

"More, more, more."...monstrous, her need for more – it was there; he could here it in her breath...

It had swallowed her whole, and he was next...

No.

Not letting that happen!

Trip wriggled out from under, and stared at her sprawled across the bed. The marks on her body shocked him – she was bruised, scratched, abraded. What the hell had they been doing, these last who the hell knew how many days – she was married, and not to him, but they'd acted like it was their honeymoon -

Where the hell was Koss, anyway? Her rightful, Vulcan husband?

Falling more than walking, he got to the door. He wanted to turn and look at her one last time– but he didn't dare. To see her asleep in candlelight, to see the marks of their lovemaking on her copper skin – no, that way lie more, more, more madness...

Trip stumbled naked out of the room, chased by her relentless mind, and its endless plea, command, desire...which he felt, still, in the beat of his human heart.

"More, more, more...."