A/N: Some of the Mando'a that follows is my own interpretation of the language, just to give a heads up to the diehard nitpickers out there before you decide to chew me out again for taking creative license with a fake language that has approximately 30 words listed in canon. :P

Captain Enlightenment:

Ahsoka still had a hard time believing that the feel of Rex's strong, large, but oh-so-careful hands petting her lekku had been so different and decidedly more stimulating than any of the many other times her sensitive headtails had been touched, but it was true. He'd sent her body into spasms of ecstasy that now had blissful content settling into her very bones, and the sopping panties she was currently wishing would disappear were evidence enough to prove that it had, in fact, happened. All of her close friends knew that she liked to have her rear lek stroked when she was going to sleep, and they'd all done so on multiple occasions. Even Rex. But he'd only ever touched her with gloves on. The feel of her chosen mate's bare skin against hers had triggered a completely new response from her body that she had to think could have been discovered years ago if she'd even once caught him with his gloves off when she fell asleep against his shoulder.

Which was a pity of rather depressing proportions, but at least she'd found her mate before it was too late altogether.

When she'd brought Rex into this (astonishingly luxurious) cabin, she'd honestly thought that they'd do a whole lot of talking and then explore a bit of kissing and then crash for a few hours all snuggled up together before they had to be up again and organizing for war. But that's not how it had happened and now she was just going with it. (Her newly awakened hormones would probably rebel and take over completely if she tried to stop this runaway train of desire anyway.)

And that meant getting poor Rex out of his armour - that she could sense was causing him intense discomfort - so that she could make him feel as good as she was.

And while she was helping him undress like they were performing a race against his brothers (she'd seen the shinies dekit and kit in races for desert rations or silly things like prime spots in the gunships) Ahsoka answered the half-heard, unspoken question that had whispered thorough her mind. "You wondered where I learned Mando'a?" she asked as she pulled off his blue pauldron and then slid off his lap so he could stand.

Rex glanced up at her as he attacked his belt with the attached kama and she continued on his upper body armour with flying hands. "Ummmm. Yeah. Specifically the word for sweetheart. I was pretty sure the boys and I had only taught you the swear words before now since Jango only ever deigned to yell swears at us as he trained us, and the Kaminoans refused to let us learn anything other than Basic in its entirety."

She giggled and tossed a bicep band onto the growing pile of white and blue plastoid armour on the floor. "Oh, you did a fine job of passing those on. But from what I've learned while living with Bo and her extended family for the last three months, I didn't call you sweetheart."

Rex paused with his hands on a knee pad and looked up at her again, his eyes wide. "You didn't?"

Ahsoka attacked the fasteners on his chestplate. "Nope. I called you Rex'ika, which means Rex, my beloved."

He blinked and then his hands were flying down his legs again. "Ooookay. But isn't that essentially the same thing? When Cody overheard the Duchess call General Kenobi Obi'ika in a very telling way, we were sure that we'd finally learned a proper endearment in what should have been our native language."

She laughed as she tossed the somewhat more flexible ab plate to the floor and dropped to her knees to help with his boots. "You poor things. You did, but no, it's not the same as sweetheart. Not really. They also call their younglings ad'ika, which means my beloved child. There is no real Mando'a word for sweetheart because they don't have a word for sweet, but the closest would probably be ner kar'ta, which means my heart."

"All right. I like that," Rex rumbled as he toed off his last boot and kicked it aside, leaving Ahsoka to look up at him. She was presented with a firsthand view of a rather impressive bulge in his black bodysuit right were his groin plate had been. It was decidedly more enthusiastic than the plate would have allowed for. Wow and Oh, my poor Rexi, fought for dominance as her next thoughts.

Her breath caught as her core found that bulge very interesting indeed. Ahsoka rose to her feet in a swift flash and she pushed him back onto the bed before he could even blink. Rex landed on his back in a whoosh of surprise, but he grinned as she pounced on top of him and settled her soaking core on top of that wonderful bulge. At the contact, she purred and he groaned in perfect counterpoint, music to her montrals.

His hands came up to hang on to her hips and grind her down on him harder as she rested hers on his broad shoulders temporarily. The sweet shocks of pleasure radiating up from her core short-circuited her thinking for about half a minute before she managed to catch her train of thought again. She leaned down and whispered in his ear as she writhed against his chest and pelvis, "You could also call me cyare, which means something that resonates with your soul, which can be anything from a favourite piece of music to a twin who thinks just like you. But if you really want to show off to your brothers, you could call me cyar'ika, which means beloved soulmate, and is not an endearment to be taken lightly. Only Mandos who are absolutely sure they've found their perfect match will use the term."

Rex stilled his subtle thrusts against her and moved his hands up to cup her face, making her meet his beautiful dark gold eyes shining with absolute love. "Cyar'ika," he whispered back, very deliberately. "Ner cyar'ika."

Ahsoka all but melted into him, her heart and soul and the Force around them literally filled with the love he felt for her and hers for him. She cupped his face in return and kissed his mouth sweetly, softly, then bit his bottom lip almost fiercely. "My mate," she growled as he gasped slightly. "My perfect, handsome, strong mate."

"Yours," he agreed before tugging her back to him and kissing her almost desperately, his tongue invading her mouth insistently and demanding that she play with him. Ahsoka was more than happy to.

She was also overheating from the nearly overwhelming amount of desire they were sharing down their new bond and couldn't stand the feel of her constricting battle clothes anymore. So she let go of Rex with her hands and started multitasking, keeping her mouth still plastered to his while she tugged off her vambraces and hand guards, then went for her belted beskar skirt that now held her precious lightsabres. As soon as those were tossed to the end of the huge bed, she pulled down the zipper that kept her thigh length, fitted tunic dress closed from collar to chest, allowing it to open enough to be pulled down her shoulders and arms and pool at her waist, leaving her upper body clothed in only her blue, supportive compression bra that was much more functional than pretty.

Rex, finally noticing that she'd been squirming around a bit more than absolutely necessary to just drive them insane with mutual rubbing, pulled his mouth from hers and opened his eyes. She smiled and blushed a little as his eyes widened almost comically as he took in her less clothed state; he thankfully didn't seem to care that her bra wasn't see-through lace or something equally beautiful but useless in battle. She sat up on him and let him look.

His blatantly hungry gaze roamed from her collarbones to her abs and then settled on the contained orbs in between. Sensing how much he wanted to see her bare, Ahsoka undid the front clasp and shrugged out of her bra too, pushing her tense and slightly throbbing lekku back over her shoulders to a less comfortable position in the process as an extra gift.

Rex stopped breathing for a good ten seconds, every muscle under her freezing and tensing. And then he grabbed her by her messily clothed waist and pushed her back on his thighs a little so he could sit up too as he basically wheezed out, "Osik, you grew even more than I thought." His hands were then suddenly floating in the vicinity of her chest, not quite touching what he so clearly wanted to. He swallowed hard and then flicked his gaze up to hers. "Can I?" And then out loud too, because he felt like he had to make sure, which just made her love him more for his consideration of her personal space. "Please?"

"Yes," she nodded, catching his hovering hands and putting them on her suddenly aching breasts. She gasped as he squeezed them gently before measuring how perfectly the weight of them fit in his long fingered hands, the already beading burgundy nipples that matched the colour of her lips peeking out from between his thumbs and pointer fingers.

Then he was smiling like a child with a new toy as he let go with his right hand and traced the four solid white diamonds that circled her slightly paler areola in a perfect cross. (Which sent a delicious, electric shiver through her.) "I didn't know you had more markings. These are amazing!"

Ahsoka smirked and flicked her eyes down to her forearms, where her hands were gently resting on his wider and decidedly stronger looking ones just above his wrists. "I have more still."

Rex followed her gaze and then chuckled wryly as he took in the long, dual lines of white zigzags similar to her forehead marking that ran down the top of her forearms from elbow to the top of her hand and were just as obvious as the markings on her breasts. "Shows you just how narrow-sighted a male can get when you put a pair of beautiful tits in front of him," he laughed at himself.

She laughed too and then shivered as he traced a zigzag with an exploratory finger. (His left hand was still possessively attached to her breast, thumb now stroking over her nipple, the ambidextrous and clever, clever man.) "That's all right. I didn't expect much different," she teased.

His twinkling eyes looked back into hers for a second. "I still should have noticed sooner. I'm supposed to be trained to observe everything in one glance." He sighed in mock dismay and then curiosity took over. He looked down at her clothed legs speculatively where she knelt over his. "Do you have more still?"

Ahsoka lifted his chin back up with a gentle but insistent touch. When their eyes met again, she said teasingly, "I might. Do you want to find out?"

His eyes crinkled at the corners as he grinned widely. "What kind of question is that? Are planets round? Are the B-1 droids as dumb as rocks and just as prolific? Does our fearless General crash-land nearly everything he flies? Of COURSE I want to find out!"

"Force," Ahsoka gasped, already giggling, but descending into full guffaws at the last comparison regarding her unlucky Master. Her head fell to his shoulder and he wrapped her in his arms as he chuckled along with her.

"It wasn't supposed to be that funny," he protested mildly, hands trailing up her bare back and then skimming back down her back lek.

Ahsoka stopped laughing almost instantly as another shudder of pleasure coursed through her. "Do that again," she mumbled into his bodysuit.

Rex did, humming agreeably in his throat.

She shuddered again, also noticing that her bare nipples were rubbing against his chest and that didn't help calm her rising desire at all. Good thing she didn't really want to settle down. Kriff. I want to feel his bare skin against mine. She pulled back a bit and looked into his heated eyes; the man knew exactly what he was doing to her now and she had a feeling he wasn't going to be satisfied until she was a limp noodle of blissed out Togruta by the end of this. As long as he's in the same state, then bring it on, Captain. "I'll take off the rest of mine if you take off the rest of yours," she offered before catching her lower lip in her teeth seductively like she'd seen some of the professional working girls do in various seedy bars around the galaxy.

His pupils expanded noticeably and his breath caught, and then he was nodding like a man possessed by a bobble-head doll. "Sir, yes, Sir," he gasped out after a moment or three.

She grinned and gave him a fleeting kiss just before rolling off him and onto her butt so she could deal with her boots and leg guards. By the time she had that done, Rex was already a long line of naked and eager male propped up on an elbow as he watched her with an avid gaze in her peripheral vision. She didn't let herself really look at him, though, until she'd pushed off her tunic, leggings, socks, and blue boyshort panties that matched her bra and were just as good at staying put no matter what acrobatics she performed. The massed lump of blue and grey cloth - most of it heavy armorweave like Rex's black bodysuit – hit the floor with a thump not quite as loud as her boots had made, but it was close.

And then she rolled over on her side and looked upon her mate in all his glory for the first time.

He had the most perfectly developed lithe musculature over strong bones that spoke of years of training and tireless strength, making her want to feel all of that dense weight covering her as he drove her into the mattress relentlessly. (Or held her up against a wall and made her scream his name, or even just cradled her in his arms as he kissed her senseless.) His surprisingly hairless and soft looking tan skin was scarred in more places and in more ways than one or even twenty bodies should ever have to endure, which made her want to caress him from head to toe and kiss away all of the undeserved pains. And she definitely wanted to explore his turgid male length that might as well be whimpering her name while it begged on its knees, it was so insistently pointed at her.

But what drew her the most was his adoring smile, inviting hands as they reached for her to pull her close, and the patiently eager eyes and the same feelings radiating from his Force aura, colouring him in her mind in shades of blue and gold.

Beautiful. He's beautiful.