Captain's Turn (part 1):

Beautiful. She's so stars-blessed beautiful.

Rex couldn't have peeled his eyes from Ahsoka's lithe and vibrant form even if the ship was disintegrating around them. She was absolute perfection to him. There wasn't a single thing about her that didn't turn him on. It was like she'd been made from his fantasies and brought to life. And thus, every piece of her was worshipped by his gaze as she finished undressing.

He loved her adorable star topped montrals. The satin soft but strong blue stripped lekku that responded so well to his caresses. The beautiful markings on her face that emphasized features that would be the envy of any model's. Her big sky blue eyes that boasted the only hairs on her body in the form of fanlike eyelashes that brushed her cheekbones so becomingly when she closed those eyes. Her cute little nose that invited playful kisses. Those plush burgundy lips that had driven him mad for years. Her athletic build that didn't take away from the curves of womanhood. The new markings for him to adore on her chest, arms, and… yep, shins, thighs, and, holy stars, even nexu stripping on her perfect ass, just like she'd teased. By the time he looked all the way down to her cute little toes, he realized that at least a third of her skin was stark white instead of brilliant orange. Add a tail and he might even believe that she was part tooka.

Shab, I can't wait to kiss every one of those marks.

Once she turned fully back towards him, the last of her clothes tossed to the floor, they just looked at each other for a minute of silent mutual gawking. And then Rex was reaching for her. "Come here, my gorgeous girl," he rumbled.

"Always," she whispered back and then she was tumbling forward into his arms with enough momentum to roll him over onto his back. Hugging her tight to his chest, Rex thrilled at the feel of her pointed nipples rubbing against his bare skin as their mouths fused once again in heated passion.

Her mouth tasted so kriffing amazing, like a blend of candy and spice like he rarely got to enjoy as a soldier (and most of those times were because Ahsoka had smuggled in a treat for him on the sly), and came with just enough danger in the form of her sharp little teeth to make the exploration of her mouth an adrenaline filled adventure. Despite the throbbing in his groin, all he wanted to do in that moment was kiss her endlessly. The way her velvet tongue stroked along his as she literally purred into his mouth was seriously messing with his ability to think.

So perhaps it was a good thing when she pulled away a bit and gave him a glorious smile. "I knew you would be just as good at this as everything else you do, Rexi," she praised with strong arms hugging his neck and fingers stroking over his fuzzy scalp.

Feeling like he'd just passed ARC training all over again, Rex flushed at the compliment. "Easy to do when I have you for inspiration. I just want to make this good for you."

Ahsoka smiled softly, her gaze warm and caressing as she looked at him. "You've done that and more." She pushed herself back a bit further and looked down the length of his body before returning to his face, her eyes now sparkling wickedly. "And as I was saying before, it's your turn to feel better than good."

Oh kriff. "Uhhhhh. Okay?" Rex honestly had no idea how she wanted to proceed to make that happen. But he did have a few ideas of how he'd like for it to go. Even though he knew it was unrealistic at this stage of their budding relationship, burying his eager cock in her pussy was definitely at the top of his list.

Realistically, though, she could probably just pet other parts of his body or breathe on him for a minute and he'd still come like a geyser; he'd been ramped up for so long.

Gulping at the thought of doing something so cadet-like, Rex vowed to not embarrass himself quite that badly.

"How do you want to…" His words faded away as she giggled and pressed a teasing kiss to his mouth.

"Just lie there and enjoy," Ahsoka said, grinning. "I've seen enough in the lower levels of Coruscant and in all those seedy bars Anakin kept dragging me into to find the bad guys that I think I know how to make this good for you."

Having also frequented many of the same places, Rex had a fairly good idea of the type of education Ahsoka had gotten and he practically trembled in anticipation at even the hint of it. Those lips wrapped around me will definitely be my undoing, I swear.

At least that's a respectable way to go.

"Can I touch you while you're, uhhhhh, working?" Please, oh, please, he thought loud enough there was no way she didn't hear it through their new Force bond. (Which he was mostly doing a mental happy dance over because it was just one more way to be connected to her. The mind reading thing was going to take some getting used to, though.)

Ahsoka pursed her lips, seriously thinking about it, and then shook her head, sending her lekku swinging across her round breasts in the most hypnotic way that almost distracted from the dashing of his hopes to trace those intriguing white marks on the figurative rocks. Almost. "No. I don't think so. You're too good at blowing my mind with your hands. I don't want to accidentally bite you."

Even as he mentally winced at the painful possibility, he beamed at the praise and shrugged slightly. "It would be worth it."

She snorted softly. "I doubt it. I want your impressive manhood in working order, not bleeding all over this really nice bed."

He sighed mournfully, only half joking. "Fine."

"Good boy." Ahsoka kissed his cheek. "Now, put your hands behind your head so you don't forget."

"Sir, yes, Sir," Rex grumbled as he reluctantly removed his hands from her narrow waist, where they'd fallen to when she sat up, and linked his fingers behind his head, as ordered.

Her approving and appreciative look as she scanned his suddenly more defined shoulder and chest muscles made it worth it. Again, almost.

"Mmmmmm. You are one fine male, Commander Rex," she purred as her fingers trailed down his neck and along his arms.

He blinked. He'd nearly forgotten that he was an official Commander now. But after all these years, the title didn't sound right. Especially coming from the girl who'd only ever known him as a Captain and had called him as such with clear affection for so long. "Can… When we're alone, anyway… Can you still call me Captain?"

Ahsoka's eyes shot back to his and a look of understanding settled on her beautiful face as she searched his eyes. "Of course. You'll always be my Captain Rex even if you were to become the first clone to gain the rank of General. Which you deserve way more than us Force Users, by the way."

Rex unlinked his hands to cup her cheek with one. "Thank you, my cyar'ika. You've always understood me better than anyone else."

She snuggled her face into his palm, eyes half closing, before she kissed it and smiled a little ruefully at him. "And now I know why. I can't believe it took me so long to see that you were my mate."

Rex ran his hand along a lek once before he returned it dutifully back to behind his head. "I have a theory about that."

A little rumble of a purr echoed from her throat as she leaned down again to kiss his jaw. "And what is that?"

"You weren't ready to have a mate yet until you'd been on your own for a while, so the instinct stayed dormant."

Ahsoka flicked her eyes to him as she nibbled on his jaw delightfully. "That… is actually very likely the right answer. As long as I thought of myself as a Jedi, I doubt I would have ever done anything with you to trigger it. But then again, I think you and I were fated from the start, so I probably would have ended up kissing you just like this sooner or later."

Since she was now feathering kisses across his earlobe as she finished her sentence, Rex could see how it might possibly happen… IF she was high on pain meds after an injury or something as he carried her to safety like a hero. Personally, he was happy she didn't have to get physically hurt to get to this point. But on the other hand, she did go through mental anguish when the High Council kicked her out of the Order. In the end, I think that was probably worse.

Pushing the depressing thought out of his mind, Rex summoned a smile as his arm muscles flexed with the clenching of his hands at the shivers running through him. "After I got over the shock, I can guarentee that I would have lost all semblance of control if you did this to me for longer than a minute."

She laughed softly in his ear, sending more shivers through him, and then bit it ever so gently. "You'll just have to hang on to that control for now, Rex'ika, because I have so much more in store for you."

"Oh, Force," he moaned, straining cock twitching and leaking at the stimulation. Control. Control. Control. Find some shabla control! She's just getting started!

Ahsoka laughed huskily again as she moved her kisses down to his shoulder. "Easy there, my Captain. There's so much of you that I've never seen before that I'm determined to explore." Her hands caressed a corded bicep. "Like this. Such a shame to keep you covered up all the time. Your body is a work of art."

"Thanks," he gasped out, eyes all but rolling up into his head just from having her fingers touching his skin so carefully.

Then she was tickling his exposed armpit, making him shudder slightly with pleasure. "Funny. I could have sworn that Humans had hair here. That would have been intriguing to play with."

"We do," Rex said in a tone slightly higher pitched than normal as her caressing fingers moved down to his pecs and small nipples. "Or, well, real Humans do if the Generals are anything to go by." (He'd seen them training shirtless a few times when stuck on a hot planet for an extended campaign.) "But the longnecks were unimpressed with unnecessary hair that would just cause rashes and itching under our armour, so they engineered us without it. Us clones consider ourselves lucky they left us with everything that normally grows from the neck up."

"Hunh," Ahsoka said with a raised eyebrow marking, her fingers circling his nipples curiously and making it very hard for him to not squirm. "I guess that makes sense. At least I can pet your head." She shot him a teasing look which told him what she was about to say wasn't meant to be taken seriously. "If you really wanted to please me, you could grow your hair out long like Anakin's. It looks really pretty and very pettable."

Rex snorted loudly. "Yeah right. Can you just imagine me with long curls like that? My brothers would never stop laughing long enough to shoot a tinny. I don't kriffing think so."

She shrugged, giggling. "It was worth a try. I'll just have to pet Anakin's head whenever I get the chance."

He sucked in a breath as she licked his nipple and then somehow managed to answer, "You do that. I'm sure he's used to it."

Ahsoka paused as she made her way down to his abs and looked up at him by resting her chin on him. "You mean Padmè, don't you?"

"Who else does he comm every day and go insane worrying over at least every other week?"

Ahsoka huffed softly in agreement, hands tracing his abdominal six pack again as her lush lips followed. (He was eagerly waiting for her to go even lower, but was kind of grateful for the delaying conversation that was helping him maintain a semblance of sanity and control.) "No one that I know of. My Master is terrible at hiding his feelings. If he wasn't the Chosen One, he would have been kicked out of the Order long ago, I'm sure."

"Well, I'm glad they weren't that stupid. Aside from maybe Generals Kenobi, Secura, and Koon, Anakin is the best leader any of us clones could ask for. And I know for a fact that no other General fights harder to keep us alive than him." He paused for a second, and then added with a slightly rougher voice as emotions choked him, "And you, when you were fighting with us."

Looking like she was melting with as many feelings as he was, Ahsoka kissed the center of his chest as she hugged his waist. "I'm sorry I left you, Rexi. But at least you had Anakin. He really is a good man. I think he deserves to love whoever he wants without consequences. I almost asked him to leave the Order with me when I did, but then I thought of you and the boys and I knew I couldn't take him away from you too. Not while there's a war to fight and your future is uncertain after that. But I hope that one day he can be free for the first time in his life and just live."

Her breath caught and a shimmer reflected in her eyes as her arms hugged him tighter. "And that goes for you and your brothers too. I want all of you to be free."

Needing to touch her, he moved his hands and reached down to pull her negligible weight up his body. He then cupped her face and kissed her sweetly with every ounce of love he had. As he stroked the winged markings on her cheeks, he then said softly, "And that's one of the many reasons that I love you; you care about us. Actually care. How your wonderful heart has room in it for so many, I'll never know, but it does and that's why my brothers and I would gladly die for you if it meant that you lived even one more minute."

He hadn't meant to make her cry, but now she was, little drops of moisture tricking down her face and catching on his thumbs. "Force, Rex," she whispered, cupping his face in return. "I know you were trained to think that you have to protect me, but it hurts even more every time I hear it. I don't want to lose you or your brothers any more than you want to lose me. I wasn't whole without you."

Now his eyes were filling with moisture that he had to blink determinedly back. "Soka…"

She kissed him silent.

Her lips were damp from her tears and that only made his struggle to not cry too harder.

And then they just clung to each other for a few minutes, foreheads resting together as they pulled their emotions back together.

Just as Rex felt like he could maybe talk again without choking on the words, she beat him to it, her tone soft and tentative. "Rexi?"

"Yeah?"

"I wasn't going to ask yet, but now I can't stop thinking about it… I couldn't help but notice that Fives wasn't in the meeting earlier. Is he on another assignment? Or did he go with Anakin?"

Kark. He swallowed hard before shaking his head slowly. "I'm sorry, Ahsoka, we lost him."

The pain in her eyes as she stared at him in stunned shock made his own heart hurt even worse. Then she buried her face in his neck as she hugged him tighter than was comfortable, but he didn't care. He needed it too. "I'm so sorry, Rexi," she mumbled into his skin. "I should have been there. Maybe I could have saved him."

He rubbed her back and stroked her thicker lek in the soothing motion he knew she liked. "No, Soka, I don't think you could have. It wasn't on the battlefield."

She looked up at him in a sudden motion of wide eyes. "What? How then?"

Rex had to stop his hands from clenching into fists as the memory of Fox gunning down one of the very few brothers he'd allowed himself to truly become attached to flashed through his mind. "I… I can't talk about it right now. Just know that I'm sure there was nothing you could have done. It was a tragic set of unfortunate events that spiralled out of control and has since been brushed under the proverbial rug by everyone involved. Fives didn't deserve to die."

"Oh, Rex," she whispered. "All of your friends keep leaving you."

He summoned up a brave smile, just to help her feel better. "Yeah, that sucks bantha poodoo, but at least I have you back, so things are looking up." His smile grew into something a little more genuine as another thought struck him. "Oh! And we found Echo alive!" Most of him, anyway.

She sat up, basically pulling him with her, as her eyes widened to massive proportions. "What?! Really?! That's great! How?!"

Now this story, he was ready to tell.

So he did.