A/N: This chapter is M rated. This is your last opportunity to turn back if that's not what you're here for. More thoughts at the end.
"Computer, lights to 40 percent. Windows to 90 percent opacity. Increase temperature to 30 degrees Celsius. Engage soundproofing."
The flat's computer made the requested adjustments to the environmental settings in her bedroom, and Nyota glanced over at Spock even as the lights dimmed. He stood between the chest of drawers and the bed, looking around the room with undisguised interest.
Not that there was much to see. Even though she'd lived there since the beginning of the academic year, Nyota hadn't made much of an effort to personalize the space. Except for the holos of her family and friends back home that barely left any free space on the top of the chest of drawers and the soft, green blanket her mother had given her before she came up to Oxford for her first year that lay neatly folded at the end of the bed. And the stacks of PADDS crammed into the top shelf of the small bookcase next to her desk. Other than that, she'd left the room exactly the way it had been when she moved in. Sophie had encouraged her to make any changes she wanted, but she hadn't seen the point when she spent most of her time in the library or in lectures or classes or tutorials.
Anyone could see that the only place in the room she really lived was her desk, a battered antique writing desk with a much-scarred top she'd dragged home from a flea market the weekend after she'd moved in.. Which Spock was now staring at.
"You are studying Romulan?" His gaze had landed on the pinboard tacked up on the wall behind the dock for her primary PADD. It was covered in hand-written notes and computer printouts from the language project she'd been working on for nearly the past four years.
"Yeah. In my spare time." She walked over to her desk and looked down at the uncharacteristic chaos scattered across the surface. A half dozen PADDs, her keyboard, a stack of synthetic paper notepads she sometimes had to have next to a handful ink pens and graphite pencils. And data sticks. So many data sticks that were usually in their case in neat rows, categorized by subject, but that were currently laying in an unruly jumble. She vaguely recalled dumping the entire box out a couple of days before, searching for a specific transmission recording, and with the start of the Invitational, she hadn't had time to put them away.
She half-expected Spock to ask her more about the project and wished she'd made some effort to clean up. She hoped his didn't ask. To her eyes, her most recent attempts to improve her understanding of the syntax of interrogative sentences looked pitifully blank.
Or maybe she hoped he would ask about the project. She'd never met anyone who had more than the barest familiarity with Romulan, and certainly not someone who could recognize the language from only phonetic notation. And it make her a little less self-conscious about having dragged him back to her bedroom pretty much the minute they'd gotten to her flat, no matter how agreeable he'd been once she'd convinced him she didn't need to eat right away. But he didn't ask, and the silence in the now almost too-warm room weighed on her as much as the heat.
She barely felt him pull her hair to one side and slide his hand up her arm. It was nearly lost in the way her mind was churning and the wash of heat across the bare skin of her back when Spock stepped close. The press of his mouth on her neck was the faintest ghost of a kiss, all velvet softness and warm breath. It raised the little hairs across her neck and shoulders and shivered down her spine, following the same path of his hand as it drifted from where it played in the ends of her hair and down her spine. His fingertips were callused and rough, probably from countless hours of playing a stringed instrument. They grazed her skin and left a trail of prickling gooseflesh in their wake, and she found it more and more difficult to keep from shying away from his touch.
He paused at the cord that held her shirt together, and her heart pounded hard and heavy when she felt him tug at the flimsy knot. She'd expected this to be harder. To go slower. Like how they'd been on the walk home, always just missing and then having to go back, recollect, and start again. Not that she needed more time. She wanted him. Even if she couldn't explain how it had happened so quickly. Ever since she'd been knocked into him, he'd been a constant, nagging itch. Just out of reach, and the longer she spent with him, the more unrelenting it became. Still, a little more information would have been helpful.
"Spock?" The tie at the small of her back came loose all at once, and the ridiculous scrap of silk Sophie had talked her into wearing came open and slipped off her shoulders. Almost without thought, she clutched the slippery fabric to her chest before it could fall. "Is there anything I should know? Anything that's different?"
There was a sudden coolness at her back, and his voice, when he finally spoke, was quiet and uncertain. "My mother is human."
"What?"
She still had her back to him, so she couldn't see his face, but she could hear him swallow before he continued. "Although I am physiologically Vulcan, genetically, I am half human."
Nyota turned around. The piece of silk in her hand fluttered to the floor, temporarily forgotten, and Spock's eyes drifted downwards as well. Apparently, Vulcan males were as fascinated with breasts as human ones. Or at least half-Vulcan, half-human ones were. Then his gaze snapped back up to her face, like he'd just realized he'd been staring at her…well, her breasts. Which he had. She would have laughed if the circumstances had been different.
Unbidden, a half-remembered conversation from her childhood floated up to the conscious part of her brain. Tamor, her T'Kehr's younger son, had been a huge fan of the Vulcan ambassador to Earth. Idolized him, really. Of course, he'd denied it, but he was all but obsessed with the man, constantly chattering about this negotiation or that state dinner. What he said, what he ate. Even what he wore. Al very logically justified as preparation for his future career in diplomacy.
Tamor had once spent the entire weekend practicing his arguments for wanting to adopt the more traditional hairstyle worn by the Ambassador rather than the longer length his father and older brother favored, and the only thing that had gotten her through it was that she'd made him tell her the whole thing in Vulcan. Regari, not standard.
He'd been particularly interested in the Ambassador's choice of a human wife, a woman from the northwestern part of the United States, and their son, who was only a few years older than Nyota had been at the time. The memories turned like tumblers of an old fashioned lock clicking into place and opening a door.
"You're the Ambassador's son." She didn't need to see the way Spock's eyes jerked upwards from where they'd again gravitated to her breasts or his tight nod to tell her she was right. "How is that not public knowledge?"
"My parents are much in the public eye as a consequence of my father's work, but they made every effort during my childhood to shield me from public scrutiny. When I chose to enlist in Starfleet, it was logical to continue to limit the media's access so as not to interfere with my training and studies." He hesitated, and his voice grew soft. "Is this problematic?"
"No," she answered without thinking and then stopped. Was it a problem?
One of the things that had frustrated Tamor in his relentless quest to know everything about the Ambassador's family was the near complete lack of information about his half-human son, whom he considered one of his peers. Spock. Which was understandable. Intergalactic media regulations severely curtailed the movement of the press when it came to minors and those who chose to keep their lives private.
The child of a diplomat, no matter how well known, wasn't a public figure, either by circumstance or by registration. It wasn't hard for an ordinary person to become a public spectacle if they wanted. Plenty of people were interested in the attention that a public life and a well-run publicity campaign could bring. It was as simple as registering as a public figure and hiring the right publicist.
But in Spock's case, it was more complicated. Not only was he the son of the chief diplomat of Vulcan's delegation to Earth, he was half-human and the first member of his species to join Starfleet instead of serving in some unofficial capacity. Usually "observer" or some other meaningless position.
Nyota couldn't begin to imagine how the Federation, or Starfleet, or the Vulcan government itself, had managed to kill a story that big. It was the sort of thing that that the less-than-legitimate media outlets would be willing to risk just about any legal or professional consequences to be the first to report. Fines, ethical sanctions from the United Earth Intergalactic Press Association, license suspension. Imprisonment. It practically begged to be leaked.
But they did do it. Probably over and over again. Spock had to have known the likelihood that she'd put the pieces together when he told her about his…humanity. He's probably calculated it to at least five decimals. He was clearly trusting her with the information, although she couldn't imagine why he'd said anything. His health cert identified him as Vulcan, both physically and culturally. He hadn't needed to tell her. Except that she had asked if there was anything she needed to know. He clearly thought this was something she did.
Was it a problem? Did it matter? Even with the lights dimmed, she could see that his features were composed, like they'd almost always been since they'd met, but in a way that was tense and guarded.
Was it a problem? She stepped forward and started unsealing his jacket. "You're wearing too many clothes. And while that's good to know, that's not what I was asking."
"I apologize."
Nyota stretched up to kiss him and pushed the jacket off his shoulders and down his arms where it dropped into an unceremonious heap at his feet. She tugged at the bottom of his sweater, and Spock pulled away and stripped it and the long-sleeved, black undershirt he wore off over his head. They joined his jacket on the floor.
Not so different from a human, she thought. She reached out and riffled through the coarse, wiry hair sprinkled across his chest and that trailed down to his navel where it disappeared under his belt. Similar anatomy and muscular structure.
His skin was pale, something she had problems reconciling with the idea of someone who had grown up on a desert planet with a thin atmosphere, and the dark hair that covered his arms and chest stood out in stark relief. There was nothing soft or extraneous about him. He was all hard lines and angles, and the muscles under her hands were taut and solid. His abdomen twitched when she hooked her fingers into the waistband of his trousers and pulled him closer to her again.
"The mechanics of Vulcan sexuality are not appreciably different from that of humans." His voice was tight and strangled, and she looked up. His eyes were dark under heavy lids, but there was something in them that seemed to burn.
"Okay."
And then he was kissing her again, his lips on her mouth, her face, trailing down her throat. His hands were light and quick and teasing on her body, only slowing when they traced over her breasts. By the time he undastened her jeans, she was panting and breathless, and she was very nearly dizzy again. He had her jeans halfway down her legs when he froze.
"What's wrong?"
"You are still wearing your boots."
"Oh." Was that all? Nyota bent to take them off, but with her jeans down around her thighs, she overbalanced and had to grab him to keep from toppling over. Spock steadied her, and she thought she saw the corners of his lips twitch. "What?"
He said nothing, but once she righted herself, he knelt down and lifted her foot and removed one boot and then did the same with the other. Her jeans quickly joined the growing pile of clothing next to her chest of drawers. When he glanced up at her, he was smirking. Definitely smirking. She was about to say something she was sure would have been witty and brilliant, but whatever it was dried up and blew away at the slide of his hands up her legs, and his fingers hooked into the tiny little excuse for knickers she wore and peeled those down to the floor as well.
In the same situation, Charlie would have waited for her to pull up her jeans and take her boots off herself. But Spock wasn't Charlie. It was a mantra she kept repeating to herself because it lit her up inside like the stars she was named after, and he'd barely gotten to his feet before her arms were around his neck, her body sliding against his and sending him staggering back a step. He was too tall now that she didn't have any shoes on, and she had to half raise up on her toes and half pull him down so that she could kiss him. And kiss him again. And again until his hands were on her, burning against her skin and coaxing her closer and closer. And he was still wearing half his clothes which wasn't fair at all.
Her fingers skimmed down his chest and over his waistband to wrap around the hard length of him, blazingly hot even through the fabric of his trousers, and his mouth moved over hers again, rougher than before and with a need that made her breath come short. She suddenly couldn't get close enough to him, and she hurried to undo his belt and unfasten his trousers even as her mind whispered the Vulcan names for every part of her he touched: her neck (drahk), her shoulders (tipan), her breasts (thasek), her hips (abru-mal). The curve of her back (plat).
His belt came undone easily enough. His waistband, however, wasn't as cooperative. But she'd only struggled with the closure for a few seconds when Spock's long, neat fingers circled her wrists held her hands still.
"Nyota—"
"I'm perfectly capable of getting a man out of his clothes."
"I have no doubt." As he spoke, he loosened her grip on the front of his trousers. "But it would perhaps be more efficient if you would allow me."
Nyota exhaled, sharp and heavy, and glared up at him. There it was again, that upwards tick of his lips and the crinkling at the corner of his eyes. She pulled her hands out of his grasp and took a few steps back to give him some room, ignoring the flush of heat that burned across her cheeks and down her neck. Trying to ignore him removing his own short boots and the rest of his clothing and leaving everything on the floor with the rest of his uniform, too.
Or at least trying not to stare.
Abjectly failing at trying not to stare. After all, she'd never seen a naked Vulcan before, male or female. Curiosity was only normal.
Okay, she was staring, but she didn't seem to be able not to. Spock had the lanky, slender build common to Vulcan males, his shoulders and back straight and smooth. Not bulky, his waist and hips similarly slim. Which made the overt muscularity of his legs all the more surprising. And not that she'd doubted him, but from the look of things, the mechanics of human and Vulcan sexuality were definitely similar at the very least.
She couldn't think what, if anything, might have been different because Spock's fingers brushed against her cheek and drove the thought from her mind as if it had never occurred. His hand slid into her hair and settled against the back of her neck, a warm, soothing weight at the base of her skull. He turned her face upwards and kissed her with a precision that sent a jolt of longing through her and buckled her knees. For a split second, she was afraid he was going to insist again that she eat.
And he did pull away, the look he leveled at her no less accusatory for its inherent calm. It was strange and off-putting to have someone she just met be so persistent in trying to take care of her, more so because she suspected that if he were to push her on it, she'd agree just to avoid further conflict.
Before he could say anything, Nyota grabbed his other hand and moved towards the bed until the backs of her thighs bumped into the mattress, and she lowered herself to perch on the edge in front of him. Sitting on the bed, her feet didn't quite reach the ground, and she propped them on the bed rail. She hoped that would be enough to distract him from fussing at her.
It wasn't. At least not at first.
"Nyota –"
She pulled him into the space between her knees, and his voice choked off, what he had been going to say evaporating into the warm air. She hadn't really noticed the temperature in the room since her clothes had been discarded, but she could feel her skin growing tacky with the heat and his proximity.
"What?"
His expression was unreadable and he was so close, she couldn't use his body language to puzzle it out. Besides, having him naked and positioned so intimately, standing between her thighs, she kept getting distracted. By one thing in particular. Something in her brain must have melted because she couldn't remember the Vulcan name for…that part of his body. She knew a hundred different words for it, and she didn't like any of them, so she usually avoided calling it anything.
He was quiet and so still for a long time, and when she glanced up, he was watching her, waiting.
"Spock?" Her hand moved over the hard jut of his hip bone and down to his thigh. That seemed to be the signal he needed because he reached out and teased his fingers along her jaw and down her neck to her breast. When he drew his thumb over her nipple, the rough texture of the musician's callus there caught against her skin, and she gasped and arched into his palm. His eyes narrowed, and he squeezed her breast and gently rolled the sensitive nub between his fingers, seemingly enthralled at the way her flesh tightened and pebbled under his hand.
His other hand closed around her leg, and she drew her lower lip in between her teeth to keep from whimpering when he leaned in closer and spread her apart just a little wider. He traced over her hip to the inside of her thigh, and Nyota held her breath. A single bead of sweat trickled down between her breasts.
When his hand moved between her legs, hot and slick, she clutched at the mattress, anchoring herself. It felt like she teetered on the edge of something gigantic. All she needed was a the tiniest push, and she'd tumble over.
Spock's fingers strummed over her, and her breathing became uneven and ragged. He liked the small, helpless noises she made as she rocked against his hand, matching his rhythm. Liked that he was the reason she was making them. She was certain, although she wasn't sure how she knew. And she knew how ready he was to be inside her, and how reluctant he was to replace his hand with that…that part of him before she…oh. And how close he was to breaking. And how far away she still was.
She was always slow at first, building and building until she didn't know where the peak was. And then the world would drop away, and she'd plummet before she even knew what was happening. It was something Charlie had complained about regularly, although he'd certainly had a knack for coaxing her over the edge. It had really been the only part of their relationship that had worked.
Her head snapped back as something low in her belly clenched and continued to build, and the sound that escaped her was halfway between whimper and a sob. Spock's fingers stuttered against her, inside her, even as she curled one leg around his hip and tried to draw him in closer. He was hot and so hard where he was pressed into her thigh. She would have reached for him then if she hadn't been so sure she'd lose her balance. God, why didn't he just…
And there it was again, that no-longer-so-steely determination to rein in his own need until she was…done.
Gasping, Nyota grasped his wrist. "Stop...please…just for a minute." Slowly, he withdrew his hand, and she pushed herself back on the bed to put some room between them. She was never going to come if he kept holding himself back. She kept getting distracted by it. And he was going to have an aneurysm if they kept going the way they were.
He stood pressed against the edge of the mattress, poised as if he was about to pursue her or pull her back. His fingers were clenched into the duvet so tightly that the lean muscles of his arms fairly vibrated. She could almost hear the bed frame groan from the pressure of his hands.
Spock closed his eyes, and breathed, visibly trying to calm himself and not succeeding. Nyota watched him, fascinated. All that resolve. All that hunger pent up inside. All that stubbornness, and for what? His hands had been everywhere. On her. Inside her. She could feel how wet she was. She was more than ready. He couldn't not know that. And still, he was holding back.
Nyota crawled back over to him and rose up onto her knees. They were almost the same height with her kneeling in front of him on the mattress. If anything, she was a little taller, and remembering how much Spock seemed to enjoy looming over her, she smiled.
Even though his eyes were still squeezed shut and she hadn't touched him yet, there was no way he didn't know she was right next to him. She stayed there for a few long seconds and studied him.
His mouth never seemed to relax. Did he know that the slight tension that always seemed to be there accentuated the bow in his top lip and made the way the corners curved upwards more pronounced? Would he care? It was what made her first want to kiss him. If he knew, would he care then? The little v-shaped furrow between his brows grew deeper and deeper as he waited for her, his eyes still closed, and when Nyota leaned forward and kissed him, the creases in his forehead faded. She'd bet he'd care.
She slipped her hand against his side to steady herself and reached between them to where he was pressed hard and heavy against her belly. If she'd thought the rest of him was burning hot to the touch, that was nothing compared to the pulsing heat against her palm. Spock's breath shivered against her lips as she began to stroke him, lightly at first, but when his mouth grew rough and needful, her fingers tightened.
"Nyota, stop," he pleaded, echoing her earlier words. His voice was harsh and unsteady. It was probably as close to begging as he could get. "Please."
But she only pressed in closer, her hand still around him. "Why?" she whispered.
He covered her hand with his, and his breath rasped against her cheek. "I wish…" He swallowed, stopped her movements, and gently disengaged her fingers. "You have not –"
She pulled out of his grasp and took his face between her hands. "It's okay. I'm ready." Nyota kissed him again, scattered them across his cheek and down his neck. "I'm so ready."
She reached the base of his throat and pressed her lips into the hollow in the middle of his collarbone. Spock's hands convulsed, gripping her hips and buttocks hard enough to bruise, and grinding her into him. And the sound he made. A half-strangled groan breathed into her ear that blew through her and made her body tighten. With expectation? With need? She didn't care. She only knew she had to hear him make that sound again and kissed that place on his throat that had pulled it from him the first time, nipping at him with her teeth.
How she ended up on her back in the middle of her bed was a blur. When she'd bitten him, he'd clutched her to him even more tightly. And then the room had spun, and she was looking up at the ceiling above her bed, Spock hovering between her thighs, hands on either side of her head, just out of reach.
She stretched to kiss him and arched up to where he was pressed into her. His hips surged forward, and she gasped against his mouth at the sudden heat of him inside her. With a growl that started deep in his throat, he started to move.
Her hands skimmed down his chest to his waist, and her leg wrapped around his, her foot nestling into the crook between his knee and calf. Her breath escaped in sharp gasps and sighs, driven by his movements, by the heat of him, by the way that every thrust teased her. His head dropped to her shoulder, and his rhythm quickened and grew erratic and unsteady. Nyota clutched at his back and hips, rocking up against him and urging him to stoke into her with more force.
Spock was silent when he climaxed, his mouth open against her neck, muffling any sound he might have made. But his hips jerked, and she could feel him drive himself deeper, and he pulsed inside her. His movements slowed and then stopped. He was heavy. Heavier than she'd expected.
His breathing was harsh, and he gulped in great lungsful of air. But he recovered quickly because Nyota was still catching her breath when he started to pepper her neck and shoulder with slow, lazy kisses. In that moment, it wasn't important that she hadn't…well, hadn't. He'd wanted her, and it had been so palpable and so staggering a thing, she felt like she'd shattered anyway.
"Thank you." His words were a murmur against her neck, and Spock pushed himself up onto his elbows.
Nyota smiled. "You're welcome."
"I apologize for not being more attentive to your needs. He dropped his forehead to hers and then rolled to one side. "I would appreciate the opportunity to improve on my performance."
All she could manage was a weak laugh. "Is that your way of telling me you'd like to do this again?"
"Yes. If you are amenable. And after a necessary refractory period."
She laughed again, stronger this time and maybe more of a giggle. "Okay. How long is that?"
"Four minutes and thirty-two seconds."
"Oh."
"I maintain that you say that word with some frequency."
"I do not."
"You have used that –"
"Shhhh." Nyota turned onto her side and shifted closer. She pressed her fingers against his lips. "Stop talking."
Spock's mouth had finally fully relaxed and curved into a gentle smile. Barely there, but a real smile and not just the upwards lilt at the corners she'd caught glimpses of before. She traced along the bow of his top lip and then leaned over and kissed him, slow and soft and deep, until his arm wrapped around her waist and his hand twisted into her hair and she felt herself turning, pressed back into her bed under the weight of his body. His mouth traveled from her cheek to her neck to her shoulder and down to nuzzle at her collarbone.
"What are you doing?"
He didn't answer, just trailed hot, open-mouthed kisses between her breasts.
"Spock?" She lifted up onto her elbows, and her heart pounded at how his dark eyes glinted up at her.
"You instructed me to stop talking," he murmured against her sternum. "I was merely complying with your wishes."
The only thing Nyota could do was laugh at his earnest tone, even as he worked his way down her body and slid between her legs. His mouth was gentle against the inside of her thigh, and then it wasn't, sucking and biting at the skin there until she squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled sharply though clenched teeth, and suddenly, it wasn't funny at all. He kissed her thigh again and then he shifted one of her knees over his shoulder and gripped her leg, not giving her the chance to move away. Slowly, deftly, he spread her open, and then it was only his lips and teeth and tongue and hands; the feel of his hair clenched between her fingers and the mattress against her back as she arched into him again and again.
A/N: I only play in the garden of Star Trek. I promise not to steal any of the flowers.
Hello to any new readers! It's great to have you here! And thank you for the reviews and comments after the last chapter. I'm still feeling a little guilty, but it was better that it happen when it did than interrupt the next series of chapters. This is also where I'd usually thank my beta CB for reading and rereading all of the different versions of this, but he seemed way too happy whenever a new draft showed up in his inbox, so I'm going to skip it.
So, this isn't the first M rated content I've written, but it's close, and it's certainly the first that I've put out there for public consumption, and it's the first that was written with my brain in that specific space. So congratulations! You're all my guinea pigs. There's a lot that I'm happy with about this chapter and a lot that I'm sure could still use some work. But I had to give myself a deadline, or I would have just sat on this chapter, editing and reediting and never posting it. So, this is it, for better or for worse.
Anyway, I hope this lived up to the expectations, especially after the fake out of the last chapter. And while I didn't plan it this way, this is the week of my birthday, so I guess this is my birthday present to everybody who's reading. Have a great weekend!