Tumblr user yennas / AO3 user BellumGerere sent me a drabbles prompt for "a kiss on the wrist" and I... sort of got carried away.
Prompt word: "OASIS" | Credit for this summer challenge goes to the wonderful Rosenkow on Tumblr.
Thane has a way of awakening her body like no one else does.
The first wisps of sunlight begin filtering through the open patio in their bedroom, bidding her to wake with the dawn as he bids her to wake with his body. Nearly soundless, he whispers over her bare skin, hands blazing a trail ahead that he follows with his mouth. He's so gentle she might even call him reverent, every sound on his lips like a prayer to his gods and his loves.
He presses firmer as she stretches off the stiffness of sleep. Her eyes are closed, but she can feel him - a palm low on her belly, pressing her backside against his unclothed hips.
For a moment she almost forgets where they are. The atmosphere is like a dream - plush sheets beneath her, gauzy pale curtains shifting with a gentle desert wind, casting slow flickering shadows across their bed. Fresh air in her lungs, silent but for the leafy palm fronds that shake in the breeze.
An oasis. A moment just for them, two lovers snatching one earned moment in the chaos of the galaxy on the cusp of war.
She rolls back against his body, humming at the welcoming heat of bare scales, smooth and lustrous after so many days under the desert sun.
"Good morning, Siha," he whispers. He leans over her, sheets cast down around his hips, and kisses her forehead.
"Morning." She works the sleep out of her features and cracks her eyes open, still bleary. "Is it just the sun or have you always been this gorgeous?"
She rests a hand on his cheek, stroking his glossy green scales.
"Perhaps a bit of both," he says in amusement, closing a gentle hand around her forearm and shifting his lips to her wrist.
The way he kisses her makes her body sing unlike anything else. She might be spoiled for pleasure for the rest of her life, because there's never been a person who's touched her like Thane does. His devotion makes her spine tingle, firm lips opening over her pulse to lave his tongue along skin she never knew could be so sensitive.
To have died and been resurrected for the privilege of sharing a bed with this man… there are no words. She surrenders herself to his soft affections; he's hungry for her in a way she never would've thought possible. At times it's lust and at times it's sweetness, but always, it's something deeper, difficult to grasp. He practices love the same way he lives it - with whispered devotion. Every touch is a sacrament, every word a promise.
She sighs as he tastes her skin. She never knew, never would have believed in intimacy this perfect. Past lovers took their pleasure from her, left her bored and unsatisfied. It wasn't until she first kissed Thane that she learned the purity of a lover's touch.
"No scale unturned," she murmurs as he kisses along the inside of her forearm, fingers soothing not far behind.
He's bemused. "Turned scales are painful, Siha."
She closes her eyes and smiles, unwilling to stop him as he blazes a trail across her collarbones. "I'd have guessed. I was making a joke. Humans have a phrase: No stone unturned. It means you're very thorough."
He hums, lips over her breastbone. "It warms my heart to see you like this."
Her smile is beaming. "It warms my heart when you… oh…" his lips push tenderly into the side of her breast, just over her pulse, and again atop one dusky nipple. "Fuck, how are you so good at this?"
Shepard bites back a moan as his attention shifts to her other breast, flicking its peak with his tongue. With confidence unfaltering, he responds, "I have the privilege of a receptive lover. One might argue that you are simply good at receiving pleasure." There's delicious pressure on her ribs as his hands push into the base of her breasts, appreciating their softness. "I'm called to you, Siha. I seek only to love you as you deserve."
Heat blooms across her cheeks and she presses into her pillow, averting her eyes.
Scaled fingers graze through her hair. "You're flushed. Are you... blushing?"
It's embarrassing, but she meets his eyes as he cradles her cheek in his palm. "Shut up. It means I like you."
From somewhere within him comes a deep sound. She's heard it before, the one he only makes for her. With a kiss atop each of her flushed cheeks, he says, "Dra'shu, se tu-fira."
Each syllable rolls off his tongue like water, coated in that rumbling baritone she loves so well. She could listen to him talk for hours, as though only good and beautiful thoughts could be spoken in such a language. She whispers across his lips, "What did you say?"
He answers with a gentle kiss. "By Arashu, I am lost in you." The words are their own kind of reverence as he nuzzles into her neck. "Even your skin calls for me. You are a blessing."
She kisses his scales in gratitude. Accepting compliments has never been her strong suit, but he knows that.
The mattress shifts and he stands from their bed, fingertips trailing along her arm. "Come out on the patio with me?"
She cracks open an eyelid to catch his scales glinting in the dim light as it creeps through the doorway. "But it's so early."
"Indeed, it will be more tolerable for you while the sun is still low," he offers, kissing her forehead. "Please, Siha. Lie with me beneath the sunrise."
He's poetry in motion, and she is his willing listener. She shifts, throws an arm out to leverage herself up only to feel his strong arms snake beneath her waist and knees. As if she were a damsel, he carries her out to the patio, scales warm like glazed clay against her bare skin. Why had they even packed clothes? There's no one around for miles.
Their vacation villa is settled among a manicured collection of desert flora. Tall palm trees sway above smooth stones and greenery, partially surrounded by a swimming pond, and further still is the sandy stretch of desert dunes. In the sky, night is beginning to melt into day, stars still twinkling in the darkest reaches of the sky as the sun begins to peek over the horizon behind their villa. And there among the various amenities is an outdoor sunning bed, complete with white sheets and gauzy fabric draped around a breezy canopy. Thane sets her gently on the mattress and she settles in, stretching out on her stomach in sleepy contentment.
He's right about one thing - the warming sunrise feels like autumn in reverse, slowly heating the chill of desert night into a sweltering day. The air is just right. It strikes her that she doesn't find it weird to bask fully nude under the sky. Years of combat training have conditioned her against such vulnerabilities, but the persuasive power of their luxuriant getaway is too great to ignore. Years of hypervigilance unravel with startling expediency, but does it matter? If this is to be how she spends her last moments, she won't complain.
Thane sits upright beside her, wordlessly brushing her hair away from her skin. She's nearly fallen back asleep when he begins rubbing sunscreen slicked hands across her back.
Those hands of his - the first time she'd seen them, they were snapping necks and crushing windpipes. Back then, sharing his bed had been the furthest thing from her mind. Now, luxuriating under a brightening sky, it feels like they've known each other for a lifetime; she's been privileged to learn that those same, deadly hands are capable of no small number of pleasures.
She breathes out her anticipation when he straddles her thighs. The first deep press of his strong, scaled fingers into her flesh sends a throaty groan from her lungs. If he wants to rub her back like this, she sure as shit isn't going to stop him.
"Fuck , never stop doing that." she sighs.
Thane merely hums in appreciation, massaging sunscreen into her muscled arms and shoulders.
It's hard not to fall back to sleep beneath those incredible hands of his. Like he knows her too well, he's carefully keeping her awake as only he can. He covers her, lips brushing the back of her neck and ghosting down her spine as he drags his hands down her sides. When he kisses the small of her back, his palms settle on the firm hill of her backside, sliding and kneading with confident strokes. Shepard honestly never thought a butt rub would feel so good - to have gone her entire adult life without experiencing this? Ludicrous. His hands are heaven sent, igniting nerve endings she never knew she had, sowing his own need into her skin, tempting her to arousal.
He reaches the backs of her thighs and he's not shy about letting his fingers brush along their apex. Each firm press of his hands carves deep rivers of pleasure into her flesh and she's melting under his touch. Her body sings with contentment, longing, and everything in between. She hasn't felt this unguarded since before her enlistment. The promise of pleasure to come, the wonton love he lays into her, endless worship of her flesh until he finally surrenders and presses his fingertips into her wet center.
This time, when she moans, it's another sound entirely. Her voice betrays the heat rising in her chest and between her thighs as he works her. Plush lips meet the base of her spine as he settles between her knees and pushes her hips up in the air. She lets him - good god, she'd let him do anything after he's carefully unraveled her for what feels like hours. Ass in the air, he pulls her against his mouth, tongue swirling over the bud of her arousal while his hands roam the curve of her backside.
He licks into her lazily, clearly in no hurry and indulging in her arousal. That deft tongue carries his venom into her body and before long she's tingling with that familiar high. She's slowly burning up, eager for more - her body begging to be loved senselessly in the morning sun.
She tries to flip over, but he stops her with his firm grip, a demure "Please..." slipping her throat with every unrelenting stroke of his tongue. He doesn't linger - in moments he's upright on his knees and teasing her clit with the tip of his unsheathed erection.
She bites her lip. "This isn't too impersonal for you?"
"Shepard," he says, in that deadpan he uses when he doesn't want to repeat himself, "Please believe me when I tell you there is nothing impersonal about the way l'll make you scream for me."
Whatever thoughts that might've been lingering in her mind are gone the moment he utters those words. The chills down her spine are the only warning she gets before he's pushing into her slick channel, prying her open with that exquisite, smoldering sting that feels like nothing else. He huffs out a breath, each subtle ridge of his florid length stretching and filling her, slowly pressing forward until his hips go flush with her thighs and she rocks impatiently into him.
"Fuck… fuck, Thane. I wish you knew how good this feels."
He chuckles quietly and the expression vibrates through him enough to make her eyes roll back. "I'm not even moving, Siha."
"Yeah," she huffs. "My point exactly." From this angle, he lodges so perfectly against her core that even the unmoving press of his hardness makes her see stars.
Cradling her hips, he pulls back and rocks into her again, groaning at the wet, silken heat of her body. She's already beginning to come apart, clutching at the sheets beneath them. It's unparalleled, what he does to her. Becoming one flesh, whispering his admiration to dive straight into her heart and know her as the woman she is with no pretense, no reservations. Two people from different worlds, but crafted so finely for one another. She swears she can feel every nerve in her body as sure as a tree feels every quaking leaf upon its branches. She absorbs the intense, breathtaking heat of him like a life force, granting her power beyond imagining to receive every pleasure he has to give. From his most subtle touches to the blinding fire of each deep thrust, she feels him.
And good god , how she screams for him. Sound carries across desert sands just as much as it does on a starship, but this time there's no one around to hear her come undone. Her voice is boundless, lost and drifting through ruffled palm fronds and across golden dunes. The sounds of their ecstasy lighting upon no ears but their own.
His palms round over her backside, drifting over muscled thighs, finding the heart of her arousal and slicking his fingertips against it without mercy. He tilts his hips just so and the new angle is somehow impossibly deeper, the darkness behind her wide-shut eyes erupting in shards of color. Her voice is a throaty sob beneath his touch until she breaks apart, shouting for dear life because there's nothing in this world or the next that feels as good as he does. She rides herself on him until her climax saps her strength and she's left moaning, quivering and breathless, Thane above her seeking his own completion.
He could never hope to know the pleasures his body bestows upon her. Her world is immaterial. There's only the sun and sweat on her back, the sweet, light air in her lungs - the snap of his hips sending chills down her spine and blooming heat in her chest as though her nerves aren't evolved enough to interpret the sensations rushing through her. She fists her hands in the sheets, back arched downward with a cheek pressed into the mattress and unable to think of anything but the blood-boiling pulse of him between her legs.
He chokes out a roar when his climax takes him, suffusing her depths with the tingling warmth of his release. The sweet, floating high of him overtakes her nearly instantly as they tangle against one another, panting and spent, rustling air dancing over sweat-slicked skin and glossy scales. Above them, the golden sky is banishing the last touches of night and the sleepy warmth of exertion overtakes them both.
She slumps heavily into the sheets, and he beside her.
"I'll be honest, this isn't what I expected when you asked me to 'lie with you beneath the sunrise.'"
He brushes an errant lock of hair from her eyes. "Nor I," he smiles. "I confess, you're very… distracting."
Shepard laughs, "No shit, you're insatiable. I haven't had this much sex since… actually I don't think I ever have."
"Surely you had lovers before me?"
"You aren't my first, if that's what you're asking. But I wouldn't call them lovers." She pulls her arms around his neck and he nuzzles his face unabashedly into the softness of her chest. Her voice is low. "No one's ever given me what you have, Thane."
His throat rumbles in appreciation, and he shifts to meet her eyes. The sun illuminates the brilliant green of his irises and it feels like gazing into peace eternal. And then he laughs, unexpectedly.
She quirks an eyebrow. "What's so funny?"
"Nothing, Siha," he says with a smile. "When we met, I was preparing - even wanting - to die in the Dantius towers. Now I'm your boyfriend. Not something I'd thought I'd ever say of myself again. The gods are mysterious, indeed."
She kisses the dark scales adorning his forehead, giggling, and pulls him into a tight embrace. "Maybe you should convert me. I think I like your gods."
"I think they like you too. I thank them for you every day."
She doesn't know if she believes in divine intervention as he does, but if the sky were to fall tomorrow, at least they'd have each other.
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