Things are about to get interesting….Force style.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all who celebrate. Please do so safely. Look for the conclusion to this story sometime after the New Year.


Playing With Fire


"You actually believe you could scare me? I'm not afraid of anything," Leia asserted, "least of all a story." Because she knew he was thinking it, she added, "And no, not Vader. What is there left to be afraid of? What more could he do to me?"

"Alright then." In an effort to lighten her mood, Han pulled a face of playful alarm at such a bleak response. "Geez, between you and Luke, I'm the one walking away depressed."

It must have worked; a small smile caught Leia's lips, though she tried to hide it.

"I read you loud and clear, Princess: no scary stories."

"Now I didn't say that. We can still tell them." Leia's eyes brightened, sparking mischief. "I'll start," she volunteered. "With something truly terrifying." She paused for effect, the cheekiness permeating her whole face as she revealed her punchline. "The Falcon's last maintenance report."

"Hilarious," Han conceded begrudgingly, but genuine enjoyment was easy to read on his face, and he met her baiting comment with open flirtation. "The real fright is how little I'm getting paid to cart your pretty ass here and back."

As a member of High Command and a woman who didn't want to get her heart broken, Leia knew she shouldn't enjoy him tossing out flippant compliments of her anatomy, but gods help her she did. She liked the thought of him finding her attractive — wanted him thinking about her in that light, desiring her the way she did him — and she found herself flirting back.

"Believe it or not, the entire Alliance isn't so easily charmed by you, out of their credits…or anything else."

"Credits? 'M only getting fuel. And I don't care about 'the entire Alliance'. I'm interested in hearing what I could charm you out of — easily or the hard way. Personally, I prefer the hard way," he intoned wickedly, giving her a shamelessly sexy wink.

Its effects weren't fully realized, however, as Leia was preoccupied with the more interesting piece of information there and ignored his double entendre. "You're only getting paid in fuel?"

"You know I am," he scoffed.

"Actually, I didn't…" she revealed, taken aback. "Carlist was responsible for that end of things."

Realizing the significance of what he'd just let slip, Leia's previous smile expanded into an all-out, self-satisfied grin. "You know what this means, don't you? You flew all the way to Nalday and you're only being compensated for the fuel, which you wouldn't have used in the first place if you hadn't flown here for the Alliance. So essentially, you're not getting paid at all. You did it for nothing."

Han made a show of shrugging ambivalently, but he was irresistibly caught up in her delight. "Wouldn't say it was for nothing. Someone's gotta watch out for you and the kid, make sure you stay in one piece to run your little revolution."

"Seems like it's your revolution now, too. Even if you still won't join up," she harped. Leia didn't care how many times he heard it; she would never let it go until Han officially accepted a commission. "And since when have you known me to need anyone's protection?"

Han's immediate thought was to say 'plenty'. Leia had a maddening tendency to put the needs of the Rebellion above her safety and consequently often needed protection from her own self. After all, concern for her wellbeing had to be someone's top priority, since she refused to make it her own. But he wisely didn't say as much aloud, choosing instead to tease her with a long familiar debate. "The Death Star."

"Mm-hm." Smiling, Leia fell happily into their now-established repartee. "Right. A brilliantly planned operation." She pivoted in her chair, unconscious of the fact that she was willingly inching closer to him; her body seeking his before her brain could catch up and stop it. "And who exactly took charge of that rescue?"

"Yeah, and you led us straight into a pool of garbage in a dianoga's dining room." He shot her an irritatingly appealing half-smirk. "Luke was almost lunch."

"This again? We made it out unharmed didn't we? Which is more than you could say if we'd stayed in that hallway getting blasted by a dozen stormtroopers."

"I would've found another way out. Always do."

"Until you don't."

He took a moment, it couldn't have been more than a second but it was enough to appreciate her: Leia in her quick-witted, challenging glory; the rush of excitement that always came from sparring with her. She would deny it was a mutual feeling, but the signs were unmistakable that she felt it too. The air virtually sizzled with their interplay.

She was waiting, her lips slightly parted in electrified anticipation of his rejoinder, and he grinned roguishly knowing what it would be, knowing he had her; he'd won this round. "Wouldn't've been that day. Not if you buy into Luke's mumbo jumbo. The Force decreed he had to survive to make that shot over Yavin."

Leia firmly believed that was the case — the Force had been with them all that day — but she didn't take offense at his flippancy, only called it for what it was. "I think you know it's not 'mumbo jumbo'. Or you wouldn't try so hard to brush it off. Whatever you protest the hardest, I know you feel the most."

Han caught her eye, reached up and fiddled with a stray lock of hair near her temple. "Right back at you, Princess."

Her heart skipped at that, truth and heat surging through her in exhilarating measure. She caught his wrist and drew it back from the hypnotically sensual way he was twirling the strand of her hair around his forefinger. "Stop that. Stop trying to get me off-course. We were talking about payment for being on this mission."

"Talk about it then, Worship. Or are you a little too distracted?"

"My payment," she pushed past that insinuation, "is to one day see a free galaxy. Luke's was to seek out the Force. Yours is, apparently, ensuring that Luke and I are safe — and that's a curious thing not a frightening one, since I could've sworn I've heard you repeatedly say you're only in it for the money. You know something?" She leaned in as if to share a secret before asserting in a dulcet whisper, "You're not a very good mercenary, Captain."

Han's eyes glittered with intrigue and she watched his expression melt into elated self-assurance. "I might not be, but…" He looked pointedly down at her fingers, still curled about his wrist, with the resounding message: Who's enticing who when you're the one holding onto me?

Leia instantly withdrew her hand, but with such a transparently flustered manner that it emboldened him all the more and he further pressed the nearness that she herself had created.

"…I got other uses." He crept to the edge of his chair, brushing her knee with his as he promised, "Things I'm real good at. Been trying to show you."

The way he was looking at her — devilishly seductive, sure of himself, yet thrilled by her response — was impossibly alluring and rather than retreat, with a wry smile, Leia implicitly invited more. "Oh, I know you have."

He smirked at that but admitted, "Can't seem to find the way."

"I'm not surprised. You won't often find me in Lieutenant Voss's bunk." She hadn't meant to say that, but it was out there now and she wasn't backing down.

Han's brow shot up, not expecting that. The motive behind her accusation wasn't lost on him, though, and he replied with a shrewd, "Won't often find me there, either."

Leia's initial instinct was to dismiss that as an outright falsehood, but since when did Han lie about his conquests? The male populace on base celebrated him as quite the ladies' man, a reputation Han did nothing to dissuade. Just look at the incident a few months back with Kasari Talon. No, if Han was having repeated trysts with Lieutenant Voss he'd own up to it.

So maybe it wasn't an ongoing affair, only a one-night stand, but the principal was still the same. There would be no talking his way out of this one. "Perhaps not often, but once is more than enough."

"I never slept with Amaya Voss. If that's what you're getting at." He knew it was. Leia had been on a fishing expedition, at the very least wanted him to know she knew."

"I'm not 'getting at' anything," she bristled. "Whether or not you've been with her isn't my business."

If thinking he was keeping company with other women was the thing holding her back Han would dispel her of that notion in no uncertain terms. "I didn't sleep with her. Not even once. Not even close. Hasn't been anything between us at all."

"I—" Leia floundered. Truthfully, she was taken aback by his answer: both the veracity of it, which she somehow unmistakably felt, and that he would offer it up so freely rather than trying to brag about his prowess.

Flustered — by how far off she'd been, by how the allegation itself must make her look, and by the flood of relief she felt upon hearing him reveal it never happened — Leia automatically reverted to aloof propriety. "Well, I wasn't asking."

Han laughed at her denial, his expression bluntly disbelieving. "Kinda were. Implying, anyway."

That rankled, because yes, she had brought it up purposefully, but it hadn't come out of nowhere; it was in direct counterpoint to Han bemoaning his failed advances toward her. "I was only explaining that such behavior is no way to make me want to — Not that there is a way where I would want—" Leia cut off, aware she was only making it worse, and finished with a sigh, "What I'm saying is, do what you want; it doesn't matter to me."

"Is that what you were sayin'?" His tone dripped skepticism and she knew what was coming even before he flashed a cocky grin. "Sounded a little different to me. Sounded an awful lot like jealousy."

When Leia began to protest, as he'd known she would, Han barreled on with, "Thought you knew better than that." Softening his voice, he gently chided, "Thinking I was sleeping with Amaya…"

"The rumors all—"

He reached out and played with that strand of her hair again as it had seemed to affect her the last time, and when he spoke his tone dipped further, down to the low honeyed baritone that always got a rise out of her. "Thought you knew by now my interests lie elsewhere."

"Do they?" Leia queried tremulously. She let her upper body slant close to his. Han's eyes flared with surprise, then hope and delight — a moment before she batted his hand away with a self-satisfied smirk of her own at so easily baiting him this time. "That explains those other rumors. The ones about you being raised by Wookiees and consequently experiencing a certain…attraction to them."

"Do people really say I fuck Wookiees?" He blurted it so suddenly Leia thought she'd offended him, until he started laughing. "Gotta tell that to Malla next time I see her. She'd have a few words for you on what female Wookiees think of human males. I'll give you a hint: it ain't even slightly erotic. Chewie's dad'd be blunter: he thinks I look like a bald Wook pup several months premature."

"Technically, the rumors never said Wookiees shared the attraction," she teased, "only that you felt that way."

"Well, I do have a penchant for metims of long dark hair."

Something in the way he said it — coaxing, transparently an effort at enticement, yet almost guarded too, like it left him vulnerable to admit — brought Leia's eyes to his. The way he looked back made her heart race, made excitement warm her blood as a little thrill zipped through her. Feeling her cheeks heat, she was the first to look away.

Han didn't miss Leia's flushed face, however, and sidled closer. "All the better if she wears it up in braids coiled around her head." He fiddled with one at the nape of her neck, ever at her hair tonight; finally just plainly stating what he was after. "Braids that maybe one day she'll let me uncoil."

She should just get up and walk out; if she was sane that's what she'd do, Leia knew it. But the pull was there again, that attraction to Han that beckoned her — awakened her, spirit and body — from so early on in their acquaintance she couldn't begin to pinpoint where and when it had started. More than just that, she genuinely liked Han and enjoyed being around him, making it doubly hard to resist that draw to him.

All right, yes, in this particular moment it was desire that had the most salient pull. But, really, she wasn't to blame. Han Solo by setla lamplight — honestly, any light — was a devastating sight. Any being with a pulse didn't stand half a chance against that. So although she was playing with fire, gods help her but she liked it too much to stop.

"That's a very specific proclivity," Leia commented coyly. She met his eye, held it as she tip-toed further into exploring this tantalizing thing between them. "One you're not likely to find in the middle of a forest.

Han raised his brow expressively, inclining his head towards hers. "You'd be surprised," he slyly asserted. "Night's not over yet. Might even find it right here in this tent."

Leia exhaled a quickened breath, and he was now so near it fluttered the scruffy hair falling over his temple. For that alone all her alarms should be blaring; her carefully constructed walls should be slamming into place. Instead, all she could think was that it ought to be criminal to look as good as Han Solo did.

The way the shadows played off his cheekbones. All that tanned skin; Nalday was a warm planet so he had plenty of it on display: his shirt unfastened more than halfway, his sleeves rolled up. And they'd been camping, roughing it, which left an irresistible shade of dark stubble across his jawline. That delectable, crooked smirk of his particularly prominent: white teeth flashing and catching the light, lower lip shining too, full and inviting.

Even the way his long, capable fingers curled around the beer bottle was breathtakingly erotic to her. Everything made her want him tonight…The dark golden hairs on his toned forearms drew her eye up to appealingly muscular biceps and back across to his half-bare chest that made a striking showing whenever he stretched his arms and his shirt pulled further open. There was nothing she wanted more in the galaxy, heaven help her, than to run her fingers across it, her mouth down it.

Gods, but he was a perfect piece of artwork sitting there beside her, like one of the chiseled Alderaanian alabaster statues in the museums back home. Only Han was real, not nude but cold marble; a man in flesh and blood. He was alive, so alive, and warm and open, smiling charismatically at her. Tempting, encouraging, making it clear she could have him right now if she wanted to — and, kest, but she did.

Why couldn't it be all right? Leia reasoned, bargained with herself. Han wasn't nearly the risk he once had been. Despite his lack of official commitment, it seemed increasingly unlikely that he would actually leave. He'd followed them to the nearly unlivable landscapes of Hoth, after all, and if there was ever a time to bail that would have been it. He flew her on nearly all of her missions, had just admitted to coming on this one for free. He was voluntarily on the regular roster for perimeter patrols of Echo Base, something wholly unconnected with smuggling or piloting. Why, Han was practically respectable now.

If he was all that and he wasn't leaving, then why wouldn't it be all right to finally know the taste of his mouth on hers? She'd been kissed before. Could there truly be any harm in that? Just a kiss?

"What if you did, find it? What would you do?" Leia pressed.

Han knew an invitation when he heard one and set the bottle down in a heartbeat. Placing his hand atop hers where it rested against her thigh, he whispered, "Only one way to find out."

Leia looked down at his hand on hers — his skin appeared all the more bronzed against her paler, far smaller hand and even that contrast stirred her — then to his eyes. His fell to her lips and her breath seemed to stagger to a stop even as her heart raced.

It was only the smallest of seconds before Han caught himself and looked back up into her eyes, feeling her out, measuring where she was at. That small gesture — banking his fire to see to hers, to give her a chance to catch up or to object — the show of tender care it betrayed kindled something in Leia, and she tentatively moved her other hand over his.

Her eyes slid down to watch the path of her fingers as she stroked his tanned skin in a sensual massage so loaded with intent it couldn't be mistaken as anything other than a caress. She heatedly traced over tendons and bones, marveling again at the length of his fingers — their work-roughness, the raw masculinity of hands that moved with such grace — wondering how they would feel on her body in all the most intimate of ways.

Her gaze shifted to his lips this time and Han brought his free hand up to cup her neck, murmuring her name. When she allowed that near-embrace, he slid his hand higher and forward. His eyes searing, steady and intense on hers, he ran his thumb in a circle of her mouth, exhaling a shuttered sigh as the pad of his finger grazed over the silken softness of her lips.

Leia's eyes fell closed and she leaned into his touch, tilted her face up toward his. That was all the more signal Han needed; he bent low to bring his mouth to hers.

And she was going to let him, finally going to let him. More than just let herself be kissed, Leia was eager to be an active participant in the kissing.

Were it not for what happened in the subsequent split second.

One moment she and Han were leaning into each other in a tent in the forests of Sudreara. The next and they were in the Falcon's main hold. It was as if Leia was both watching and living it: lying flat against the bench on the backless side of the acceleration couch, wearing nothing but one of Han's shirts and even that was completely undone, her breasts exposed, her nipples taut stimulated peaks still damp from Han's tongue.

Han was on his knees on the deckplates, the bare skin of his back and shoulders a stimulating, sensual warmth against the backs of her legs. He nibbled his way across her inner thigh and she moaned her pleasure, fingers rifling through his hair in wild encouragement as his lips trailed ever closer to the throbbing, wet core of her.

When Han did move his mouth between her legs — with first the steady, pulsating press of a broad lick followed immediately by the warm, suctioning pull of a suckling kiss to her clit — pure and absolute pleasure jolted Leia back into the present.

Back to Sudreara, where Actual Han was a whisper away from actually kissing her.

Leia's mind reeled, struggling to process the change.

The vision had been so tangible it was dizzying, shocking in its overwhelming intensity, so palpable the sensations had been corporal. Which made no sense at all, as they weren't on the Falcon; she was still in her chair and Han was in his, with no apparent awareness of what she'd just experienced. What's more, no one had ever yet kissed her there, so it was impossible for her to have specific knowledge of that feeling — in this tent, on the Falcon, or anywhere else — yet, she'd felt it.

This explicit fantasy — prediction, hallucination, whatever it had been — left her unbalanced and thoroughly unnerved. Her body and emotions in a frenzy, an alarmed Leia sprang back and leapt to her feet, blurting, "I have to go."

Han stared at her, flummoxed. If Leia ever did let herself go with him, he expected a certain degree of anxiety; she was so afraid to feel anything that giving over to passion would surely be jarring for her. But even knowing her hang-ups well, this was beyond what he'd anticipated. Her face was awash in utter panic. She looked as if she'd just seen Vader himself.

Even in her deeply shaken state, Leia was aware how incongruous her behavior must seem. She'd shot away from him so quickly, her outburst so sudden and extreme that it served only to draw further attention to her when she wished to be as inconspicuous as possible, invisible preferably. Anything so that Han wouldn't notice her heavy breath, her flushed cheeks, the fact that she'd just graphically imagined him intimately pleasuring her — and that even now her inner muscles clenched in ecstasy at the remembered sensation. Goddess.

In an effort at damage control, she struggled to belatedly temper her behavior, make it seem more nonchalant. "I mean, it's late," she tried for light and breezy. "We should go to bed."

The suggestion of that brought the vision instantly back to her — the two of them half naked, his mouth on her body — and Leia's eyes widened in a fresh wave of disconcertment.

"I. I should go to bed." She caught a glimpse of the bedrolls laid out around them and realized her mistake. "But then our bed is right here, isn't it? My bed. I should go get ready for my bed." She was only making it worse, she knew, and gave up, reverting back to her original proclamation. "I should go."

Han studied her a moment more before rising from his chair. The restored height difference put the wide expanse of his appealing chest at eye level, which didn't help her any, and when he skeptically replied, "Okay. Righhht", it put her sense of self-consciousness at its height.

"What does that mean? It is late," Leia argued defensively, but when she glanced down at her chrono the lie was revealed straightaway. "Later," she amended.

"It's…later." He nodded in pretend agreement. "Later than the morning, say."

"I only meant that we should get some sleep." For herself more than him, she added, "Separately."

"I wasn't thinking anything else," Han retorted.

Discomfited that he seemed to have read her mind, Leia made to bolt from the tent. "I have to go."

"Leia." Han stepped into her path.

It was an insufficient impediment, they both knew. She could have moved around him or pushed him away. There was nothing truly stopping her from leaving. But she would never want to be perceived as yielding or conceding defeat, and he called her bluff.

"I thought you weren't afraid of anything."

Leia's chin went up contentiously. "I'm not afraid," she denied. "What do you think I'm afraid of? You?"

"Not me. Us." Han gestured between them, closing the distance another step as he boldly called out the explosive tension, the mutual hunger and yearning so thick in the air whenever they were together that it qualified as a third entity in the room. "This."

It had long been their unspoken rule to never acknowledge that tension aloud. Han was breaking that pact and it left Leia feeling flustered and unsettled, which annoyed her. He didn't have the right to change the rules, to alter the way they played this game just because he decided so. "I don't know what you're talking about," she demurred.

"Yes you do," Han challenged decisively, not backing down. "That's what's got your eyes as wide as a convor's."

Leia's forehead wrinkled in riled consternation to go with those widened eyes she was about to dispute. "They are not. You have no effect on me at all, Han Solo."

"'S that right?" He stepped further into her space until she had to tilt her neck back to maintain defiant eye contact. "Then why are you shivering?" He moved nearer still, their chests just a breath away from touching. "I've been around enough to know when a woman wants me, Sweetheart, and you're affected alright. You're so affected it's got you runnin' scared."

"I'm not running, or scared." The denial fell from her lips instinctively, before she had time to formulate a plausible alternative explanation. "It's just late and…I'm cold."

"Cold?" Han spread his arms, indicating his open shirt. "We live on a kriffin' ice ball. This place has the heat of the seven hells compared to Hoth. Come on, you can do better than that. You're scared. Scared of what might happen if you stay here with me."

Leia's heart beat a frantic rhythm. "I'm not afraid," she repeated with breathless fear.

"No?" His eyes tracked over her face, mapping out those features he adored, and when he spoke again his voice was tender and low. "Then stay and see what happens. Stay and let it happen. Stay and let me kiss you."

Han's tone was close to entreaty and her heart begged to answer it….but she just couldn't. She'd been wrong before, lying to herself. It wouldn't be just a kiss; she knew it would be so much more, physically and emotionally.

Leia looked up at him, her eyes wild pools of desire mingled with terror. Han read the truth in them without her needing to say it. "You're afraid you're gonna like it. You're afraid because you want it, too."

That allegation hit home in a way that sent Leia into a tailspin. Oh gods, does he know what I saw, what I felt — or was thinking, or whatever that was? Was she that transparent in her desire for him?

If so, it was equal parts mortifying and worryingly dangerous. If Han were to ever find out even half the very real effect he did have on her….

She had to defuse the situation at once; her flight response had been triggered. She had to get the hell out of there. Everything in her demanded it.

"There's certainly no problem with your ego, Captain," she told him in perfect Coruscanti inflection and far more composure than she felt as she sidestepped around him. "Let me make this clear: I do not 'want' you. I wouldn't let Wes kiss me either, and we can both agree I don't want him. How you can imagine that not letting you kiss me means I want you is beyond me. I think you're confusing desire with disdain."

Disdain. The caustic rebuke hurt Han to a shamefully devastating degree.

Running was Leia's defense mechanism; turning hurt to anger was Han's, and his eyes flashed now, the warmth draining from them instantly.

"Well, don't worry, Your Highnessness," he said coldly, giving a little mock bow. "You don't gotta deal with your 'disdain' any longer. I'll remove myself from your royal presence."

"You needn't bother. I'm going," Leia hissed as she turned on her heel and fled the tent.