Trip Tucker was trying like hell not to stare at his door. Maybe he should take a minute or two to appreciate the irony of that - after all, he'd been trying not to watch the doors of Fusion the night she'd walked into his life with absolutely no warning, too.

But he couldn't take that kind of time away from staring-not-staring and wondering if he'd finally gone too far. He'd still been mad as hell about what she'd said this morning.

Now he thought of how she'd felt in his arms, how she'd clung to him. He touched the place where she'd sunk her teeth into his shoulder when she came, as though she'd needed an anchor to hold her against that surge of emotional chaos he'd felt in her - and how the hell had he felt what she was feeling? His shoulder hurt like hell, and it had all day, but, every time he noticed it, the memory of her instinctive response, the feel of her shuddering climax, her teeth closing on him, made him grin.

"Shoulda left well enough, Tucker. You got some - and you got her some."

He'd been her first. That was something he'd never even considered; that T'Pol, the most alluring, mystifying, infuriating, desirable woman he'd ever met, would have been a virgin, until last night, when she practically pulled him inside her.

Would it mean anything to her, that he was her first? Was he right to think that, despite the unflattering comparison to a lab rat, despite her insistence that it was just something about his culture she wanted to know more about, that it had been him and not someone else because -

"Because what?"

The damned door was still closed. Trip paced to the mirror and looked at himself - he didn't look noticeably different than he had a day ago - same old face; one he was lucky enough that some women had always found nice enough to convince them to stick around and see more of what he had to offer.

He stripped off his shirt – no, he wasn't going to think of what it meant that he'd worn the blue one; the one he'd had on last night, when he got to her quarters, before she'd rocked his world with her first, smoldering, completely unexpected kiss. He examined the perfect set of small teethmarks she'd left him with. He hadn't let Phlox touch them, other than to be sure he didn't get an infection. He refused to comment on the 'alien DNA' the Denobulan mentioned didn't match the dead Sphere-builder. Phlox had to know damned well that only one person on the ship could have given him that DNA, but that didn't mean he had to confirm it.

Especially since she might just tell the doctor that it was all an experiment.

The door signal chimed, and Trip's heart sped up like it thought it could get to the door and press the button before he could say, "Come in."

Since he stumbled over his own voice, and sounded like an idiot, maybe it would've been a better idea to let it try, so that he could expire on the floor.

But then the door opened, and there she was, in her Vulcan robes this time, holding what looked like an old book -

Her dilated, shining eyes focused on his shoulder. Her lips parted just a little, and the tip of her tongue peeked out to run over them, as though she was remembering the taste of the blood she'd drawn, the way he kept having little flashes of the green blood smeared on her thighs-

She didn't say anything. Trip wasn't sure she was even breathing. All she did was stare at the damage she'd done, her eyes glittering and her tongue busy. Citrus and sandalwood drifted into his nose; damn, but she smelled good!

Just an experiment, hell. Damn, she'd marked him. Claimed him, with that bite. Made him hers, in some way maybe she didn't even understand.

He stood up just a little straighter. Well, if he was hers, he was. It wasn't like he hadn't been, more than halfway, ever since the first night he saw her. But he wasn't going to make the mistake of bringing it up first. Not this time.

Instead, he just said, "What brings you by?"

She didn't answer, didn't flinch, didn't stop staring at his shoulder.

"T'Pol?" He took a step toward her, and her gaze darted from his shoulder to his face - and, from there, he silently recited the choreography as she went through her steps, look down and to the left, pause, swallow, pause, lift her eyes not quite to his chin - and hold. He wondered if she knew that he hadn't been lying last night, that he was learning to read her almost easily.

He wondered if she had any idea how sexy she was when she blushed.