A/N: I promised I was working on it, and I was! I can't believe it's been so long since the last installment. Suffice it to say that the content of this bit was extremely difficult for me to write (not because I don't like it, but because...well, it's challenging and embarrassing). Anyway, rating has changed to 'M' because of this next part. Enjoy, and thanks for sticking with it!
His voice, subdued, stopped her cold.
"My bunk smells like you…"
Hera sucked in a sharp breath, her hand on the doorframe.
In his absence, the nights she was on the verge of collapse but could not find peace in her quarters, she'd found her way to his, curling up on the bed and hugging the pillow to herself in desperation. It had been meager comfort, but at least she'd found some rest there, where his presence seemed to linger.
Hera turned back to see that Kanan had slumped a little more into the pillows at his back. There was a question in his eyes, and he suddenly looked so...sad. Her breath left her in a whoosh of anguish at his expression, stripped raw with exhaustion and fever.
He didn't deserve this. Even if he'd made his feelings for her secret all this time, the way he looked at her - even when he thought she wasn't paying attention - gave them away. He'd always told her, without telling her, how much he felt. Yet, he'd demanded nothing in return.
Hera had not always been so forthcoming, their dance both enticing and frustrating over the years, but she'd deemed the protection of denial worth it - until a few weeks ago. When the regret of never letting Kanan know just how much he meant to her nearly drove her mad, when the sureness of his capture and unlikely return crushed her heart with the anguish of that regret, she'd wished for the ridiculous chance to mitigate it.
Now, against all odds and common sense, she had it. She had him.
"It's all right," he murmured gently, averting his eyes and pressing his mouth into a resigned sort of smile, offering absolution with his words, always accepting.
It looked like it hurt.
It definitely hurt her.
"No," she gulped, shaking her head. It really wasn't. Not any more. In two long strides, she was lowering herself back to the edge of the bunk, staring at his downcast features as realization began to settle her heart and her skin broke out in goosebumps.
All this time, she'd been fighting with herself, but why? Ezra had been right. Why did one have to exclude the other? This was her choice. She could live with the challenge of juggling the connection between them and her responsibilities to the rebellion. She could live - eventually, perhaps - with losing him to death's door. What she could not live with, was the regret of letting him believe she did not, and could not, feel the same way that he did. The regret of not letting him know that she loved him beyond words, and had for a long time.
Tentatively, her fingers reached out to trace his jawline. "No," she breathed again.
Kanan blinked. His eyes slowly drifted up the planes of her face until they finally met hers, searching, but silent.
No. It was his voice now, in her head, from the holorecordings as he fought the probing and drugs designed to break him. No. That horrible, broken plea from the depths of his delirium as the medics had fought to hold him down and administer life-saving treatment. No…
Her fingers barely grazed the bow of his parted lips, and she dropped her gaze to stare. His breath, faint against her fingertips as she leaned forward, stuttered when her mouth brushed faintly against his. The air was thick around them, almost alive, and she wondered what kind of intensity Kanan felt, with his Force sensitivity. He had yet to move, she realized, pulling back just enough to focus on the tempest in his eyes, a torrent of emotion and uncertainty. She tilted her chin just a little, and he adjusted this time to meet her, their breath mingling with hesitant, open-mouthed caresses.
"Hera…" he breathed after several long moments.
He was restraining himself, barely.
"Yes, Kanan," she responded, a desperate benediction against his mouth. "Yes."
"Yes," he echoed, over-writing the haunting memory of his holo-recorded voice in her mind.
A fervent, drawn out press of their lips and Kanan's hands were skimming over her waist, trailing up her sides and drawing her close even as she wound her fingers into his hair. She swept her tongue against his and he hummed, meeting it with his own. Hera leaned in further to press Kanan against the pillows at his back, shifting her weight and sliding over him to gently straddle his hips. He gasped, and for a moment Hera was afraid she had hurt him, but his mouth was now leaving a hot trail of kisses down and back up her neck, pressing against her lips once more and shutting off that train of thought. Heat flashed across her skin and pooled in her belly, then spread lower as she felt his body responding in kind.
"D-Door," Hera muttered, shivering when the hand that had been trailing gently down her left lek lifted, and with a flick of his wrist effectively whisked the door to his quarters closed. His mouth didn't skip a beat.
"Show off," she whispered, feeling Kanan grin smugly against her lips before they were lost again to one another's touch.
The first of their clothing was loosed and removed with reverence and very little need for words. Their mouths were far too occupied anyway - until, with the electric contact of skin on skin, Kanan suddenly went very still, his arms locked tight around her middle, head burrowed in the hollow of her neck.
Hera made herself stop squirming and tugging at his hair. "Kanan? Am I hurting you?"
His breathing hitched, but he did not immediately respond.
"Love, what is it?"
A huff of a bitter chuckle, and his breath was hot against her collarbone. Hera drew a deep breath, attempting to steady her hammering heart and distributing her weight across his lap and her knees. The tight urgency that had been coiling low in her belly and enticing her to grind her hips against his subsided somewhat. The live wire of their arousal dimmed, but his hands pressed more tightly into her to keep her from moving away. She relaxed her fingers and drew them gently through the disheveled strands of his dark hair, dropping kisses and tender words at the top of his head.
"I thought I was going to die…" he choked out against her skin, "I tried to convince myself I wanted to die. When I could put two thoughts together, I tried to provoke just the right amount of anger for them to crank the voltage, use just the right combination of drugs - anything it took - to keep them from the small bits of information I did know."
Hera's jaw clenched in silent agony, her hands knotting in his hair briefly, pressing him ever-so-slightly more against her as she stifled a sob. "Kanan…"
"I was terrified of my weakness, my fear, Hera. I was afraid. It was getting harder and harder and they were so dangerously close...I would have betrayed you all if they'd had enough time, and yet I couldn't seem muster the courage to make them kill me first, either, no matter what I tried. I couldn't think of you and yet I did. It was selfish, hanging on to what I wanted and couldn't have…"
He raised his head enough to look into her eyes, brimming with tears that matched the ones trailing down his flushed cheeks. She took his face in her hands as he continued, "I should feel ashamed, but now I'm so very grateful to have it. I need it. I need you, Hera." His eyes closed and he breathed in desperation, "I need you so badly."
Sniffling, Hera bent and rested her forehead against his. "You have me. You've always had me," she whispered tremulously, feeling him shudder against her.
Perhaps a Jedi of old would have considered him selfish. But, Hera would argue that what he'd deemed fear and weakness had actually kept him alive long enough for the rest of them to save him. Perhaps the Force had more of a hand in it than Kanan realized. They'd taken too long, and yet he'd hung on just that tiny bit longer, and right now: that mattered. This moment mattered.
Her shoulders shook with emotion and she held him fiercely to her bare chest. This mattered. She couldn't live with the regret. "I love you, Kanan Jarrus...I'm so sorry...I love you, and I need you, too…"
He pulled back, searching her face as if for some sign that belied her words and what she hoped he surely felt from the Force, then surged forward and smashed his mouth to hers, swallowing both of their sobs. "I need you, too," she repeated against his lips, and Hera suddenly couldn't touch enough of him to assure herself he was here, with her. "You're here. You're alive…"
Kanan's hands gripped at her, equally as greedy, framing her face and then skimming up and over the top of her head. "I need to feel you," he responded hotly, reigniting the flame in her belly as she groaned an affirmation into his mouth.
His hands continued their way down to the tips of her lekku then helped her shimmy carefully out of her sleep pants. She tugged gently at his pants next, trailing their descent down his legs with her mouth and earning stifled gasps and shivers in return. She grinned up at him and slowly made her way back to his mouth, paying careful, gentle reverence to all the tender, newly healed places; the faded, raw restraint marks across his abdomen and at his wrists, the now diminished bruising of broken ribs, faint traces of the cuts and burns and needle points.
His fingers slid between her legs and her mouth was against his once more, the kiss almost powerful enough to bruise but the need for more, please, yes escalating until, coaxed and panting, Hera finally sank down upon him. Kanan's eyes rolled back with a moan that matched hers, and Hera nearly took a header against the bunk above when she threw her head back in gratifying shock. She rocked her hips, adjusting in the cramped space, the motion sending a jolt of sensation through them both; it was almost too much.
Hera steadied herself with a hand to the underside of the bunk above her, Kanan's hands hot on her hip bones. She took a deep breath through parted lips, reveling in the feel of him, gazing down through hooded eyes. Kanan stared up at her, his expression one of rapture. She smiled then, enjoying the flicker of pleasure on his features as she leaned over and tightened her muscles around him. Reaching for his hands, she laced their fingers together and pressed them back into the pillows, setting a slow, intimate pace above him.
Kanan sighed, "Force, Hera…" and dissolved into an unintelligible rumble of bliss.
She answered with one of her own, and for awhile, that's all there was, the moment wholly cathartic with the heat of their touch, murmurs and sighs, soft pleas, more tears. Her first small orgasm rolled over her, unexpected, and caused them both to gasp at the augmented connection between them. Kanan's hands squeezed hers before breaking free and pulling her against him. Hera controlled the pace and effort, but Kanan met her, thrusts gradually growing a little more desperate and her position atop of him driving him deeper.
Kanan's mouth closed around the tip of thcun, tongue swirling, while his hand caressed tchin. The second orgasm slammed into her and sent her vision white. She couldn't stop herself from crying out with the intensity. He groaned, the vibration against her lek causing her to gasp his name and grind against him.
His breathing was erratic, sweat trickling down his temples, and he tore his lips away. "Ah, Hera - " he gasped, almost a whine, before he suddenly came hard and with such a drawn-out, guttural sound that Hera shuddered, her insides rippling one last time.
Their mouths sought one another, breath heavy and punctuated with quiet sighs as they clung to one another. Hera tingled from the tips of her lek to her toes with the buzz of euphoria and hint of what would be sore tomorrow. Kanan had collapsed against the pillows, utterly spent. She wilted against his side, arm draped lightly over his chest, and planted a kiss at the still hammering pulse in his neck.
She frowned. His body may not have been ready for such activity. "Kanan? Are you all right?"
Chest heaving, his blue eyes struggled to blink open. His smile was punch-drunk, but genuine. "Ask me again, when my soul returns from the jump…"
"Your heart is beating so fast."
He nodded against the pillow, lifting a heavy hand to caress her bare back. "I'm all right," he assured her quietly, kissing the curve of her lekku. Sensing her uncertainty, he swallowed and tightened his arm around her. "That was one of the single most moving experiences of my life. The connection to the Force," he tilted his head to the side to look in her eyes, "To you, was…pure. Powerful."
Her fingers drifted over his cooling skin and found the loose hair at his neck. "How are you feeling?"
Something akin to a purr left his throat as she gently sifted through the soft strands. "Aside from amazing? Better." A yawn. "And tired."
"Think you can sleep?"
"Mmm."
He was already beginning to drift.
"Okay," she murmured, using her foot to draw the tousled blankets closer, and reaching to pull them up, she nestled back at his side.
Hera thought she would want to lay awake and hold him, recount her blessings for hours. But, she had barely settled when her weariness descended upon her and the reassuring rhythm of his heart against her cheek, the sound of his deepening breaths, had lulled her into a deep and restful sleep.
