Finally we are alone.

After six long months parted, half a year filled with pain and worry, we are alone and together. Standing a mere foot apart.

The space around and between crackles with tension forming an invisible barrier like a forcefield poised to punish with a razor-sharp shock the one who reaches out first.

Both of us stand absolutely still. Both hold our breath unwilling to chance that the slightest movement, involuntary or otherwise, will banish the other, proving this moment is an illusion, an ethereal dream.

Chris' jaw-length hair remains as if it is a talisman of the ordeal he endured. Free of its binding, it falls forward across his eyes. He has trimmed and neatened the beard, his first concession.

And then, simultaneously, we fall into each other's arms. I tug his shirt over his head. He unbuttons mine.

I brush the unruly hair out of his eyes as he leans forward for a kiss. The kiss is fast, hesitant, as if testing for temperature before wading into the water. A second kiss follows, an insistent one, filled with impatience bordering on desperation. When Chris buries his head against my chest, I cradled it.

He pulls away. We stare at one another.

The dam breaks.

We press together, tightly. Hands awkwardly, frantically caress, stroke the other. Then the rhythm slows and smooths.

"They kept insisting you were dead," I whisper. "But … I … I didn't believe them. I knew if you had … passed … beyond my physical reach, I would have known it innately. I would have felt it."

Chris trails a row of kisses across my forehead. "Shh," he says tenderly. "It's over now."

With our remaining clothes discarded and scattered on the floor, Chris gently lays me onto the bed. He pauses for a moment, propped on his arm, gazing down at me. Every time they tortured him, he had withdrawn into a memory of our life together and into the pleasure and comfort of holding each other. That had kept his mind intact. That had made the pain bearable. That had safeguarded the Federation's classified security secrets.

Raw need pushes aside all else and he slides in.

But this isn't about climax. It isn't even about sex.

It is about skin against skin. The security of closeness. The love conveyed by touch.

The dissolution of all separation between lovers. The melding of two into one.