"I do not accept that it was an honest misunderstanding."
As Liara followed her new wife towards their cabin, she heard Shepard chuckle. "What? You don't believe your father really thought the vows went 'love, honor, and ravish?'"
A small smile appeared at the corners of Liara's lips. "The rest of her toast certainly made it seem more likely that her goal was simply to make me uncomfortable."
"Hey, it wasn't just you. I'm pretty sure I could see Tali blushing right through her faceplate after that bird flu crack."
"Goddess! She was not the only troublemaker either, Melanie. Those stories Wrex was telling were almost as bad. And James…"
"I'd say that marine can't hold his liquor, but he certainly held plenty of it today. When he was hitting on Falere and Samara had to explain her condition to him… I thought Steve and Grunt were going to die laughing."
Liara sighed, but it came more from happiness than annoyance. "It was still nice to see so many of our old friends though, wasn't it?"
"It was. A shame Kasumi didn't turn up, but I can see how that many Specters in one place might have made her nervous. Nice statue she sent by the way. Where do you think she got it?"
"It may be best if we do not enquire too deeply."
Shepard's bemused agreement was cut short by an appreciative look at their destination. "Good of the asari government to not go cheap when they chartered this ship for us." Liara could see what she meant; fresh fruit and flowers, a hot tub, and a very large, very comfortable looking bed all promised a pleasant two days en route to the Prothean ruins they had chosen to honeymoon at. Melanie laughed. "I only wish they could have been this generous when I needed their help to stop the Reapers."
As the door closed behind them, Liara pulled her lover close for a deep kiss, the warmth of the human's body against her banishing the day's small irritations from her thoughts. "I think that, for tonight, you can forget about their past failings and instead simply enjoy this manifestation of their richly-deserved guilt."
"Right now, I'd rather enjoy my incredible good fortune in convincing the most beautiful asari in the galaxy to marry me."
"You," Liara replied playfully, "Are Commander Melanie Shepard, Savior of the Citadel and the greatest hero in the galaxy. You could have had gotten almost anyone to agree to marry you."
"Now, however," she continued, her voice lowering to a whisper as she brushed a hand over Melanie's cheek, "You are mine."
"I have been yours, my love," Melanie breathed, "For a very long time."
"Mine," Liara repeated, a reverent look in her bright blue eyes. The pain of Shepard's initial rejection that night after Feros had faded long ago, but the memory of it still added a special touch of poignancy to moments such as this, to the fact that they were together now and always.
Her slim blue fingers went to the brass buttons of the retired commander's dress uniform, undoing them slowly as she planted kisses along her throat. "Every inch of you, love?" Her words were a question that she already knew the answer to, but it still thrilled her to hear Shepard reply.
"Of course." Melanie's jacket fell to the floor, and Liara's hands began to run over the black tank-top she wore underneath it, feeling strong muscles arch beneath the thin fabric.
"I will always be yours, Liara." The asari pulled the top up and over her wife's breasts, caressing the soft flesh there, hearing Shepard's breathing becoming sharper as her nipples stiffened against Liara's palms.
"Only I get to do this?" Her lips went to one of the dark tips, Liara first flicking her tongue over it before taking it into her mouth, while her hands finished removing the top.
"Ah… why would I want anyone else to, when you're so good at it?" Liara's lips switched breasts while her hand cupped the one her mouth had just left, rolling the now-slick nipple between her fingers. Shepard sighed happily, gripping the asari through the delicate fabric of her blue and white dress, her strong hands massaging her shoulders.
As Liara knelt to kiss her way down Shepard's firm stomach, she felt warm fingers stroking her crest. Purring softly as Melanie nimbly played over the ridges, she unfastened her lover's dark blue pants, sliding them down to reveal a pair of uncharacteristically sexy black silk underwear.
"You only wear these for me?" Liara traced over the outline of her wife's outer lips, the lightness of her touch through the barrier causing Melanie to angle her hips against the asari's fingers in her craving for more contact.
"Only for you." Liara pressed a kiss against Shepard's clothed bud, and as her wife let out a short, sharp cry, the asari hooked her fingers through the waistband of her panties, sliding them down. Shepard's scent, rich and musky, filled her senses, and she felt a throbbing between her own legs as she began licking her way up the tan skin of Melanie's inner thigh.
"Only I get to taste you?" Liara's tongue ran over Melanie's opening, and as the Specter gasped, Liara felt her wife's legs, which had held up through countless battles, suddenly becoming wobbly.
"Oh god! No one but you, Liara." Shepard stepped out of her underwear and staggered backwards so that she could lie down on the indeed-comfortable bed. Looking down at her wife, naked, incredibly wet, and completely hers, Liara felt a rush of heat shooting through her like she rarely had before. Her suddenly fumbling fingers found the clasp of her gown, and even as it pooled at her feet leaving her clad only in a lacy white bra and panties, she was moving to the bed, burying her head between Melanie's legs.
The human moaned as Liara's tongue quickly found it's way back to her opening, dipping inside to taste her fully. As Melanie writhed around her, Liara thought that she could enjoy doing this forever, but her lover was so slick, so immensely turned on that she didn't want to go too slow. As Shepard's hands tangled in the sheets, Liara moved her mouth to the human's swollen clit, her fingers gripping Melanie's bucking hips, and as she started tracing patterns across the bud with her tongue, Liara could feel thighs starting to tighten around her head.
"Meld. Please," Melanie breathed, her voice ragged. Liara's eyes darkened in reply and all the proof she could have conceivably needed that Melanie meant every word of the vows they had spoken earlier that day washed over her, love, devotion, and desire filling her mind.
"Take those clothes off and come here, Liara." Shepard's voice in her head was thick with arousal. "You're mine too."
"Goddess, yes." Liara sat up, unhooking her bra to reveal her pert blue breasts, the nipples already erect. When her hands moved down to remove her underwear, she caught a glimpse through the joining of the way Melanie felt looking at her, of her admiration of the soft curves of Liara's body, and as mental pictures of some of the things Shepard wanted do to with that body reached her, the asari trembled in anticipation.
"Every last part of me is yours, Shepard. We belong to each other." Liara turned, feeling Melanie's breath hot on her skin as she lay down parallel to the human.
"So wet for me." Liara moaned as she heard Melanie's thoughts while a warm tongue crawled up her leg and a hand slid back and forth across her opening.
"Yes, for you. Only for you, love." The asari moved her mouth back to Shepard, feeling the sharp echo of her wife's pleasure across the meld as she pulled her clit between her lips. Two fingers pushed against Liara's opening, probing just past her tight entrance while the commander's tongue flicked lightly over her most sensitive areas.
"More, Melanie. Please. I need you." The fingers pressed deeper into Liara, the wonderful sensation of being filled merging in her mind with the pulses of pleasure flowing from her wife as the asari sucked on her bud.
"Yes… so good… so close…" It felt so right like this, the sharing of pleasure and thought, and Liara knew that neither of them could take much more, so as she felt Shepard's tongue caress her throbbing clit while her fingers thrust inside her, the asari tried to convey all that her lover meant to her.
"I'm yours… I love you… I'll always love you." The last words came from both of them at once, a promise and also a statement of fact, and as they echoed through theirs minds, the climax that had been building within them flooded through the lovers like white light. Liara's awareness collapsed to nothing but Shepard, her bondmate and the pleasure she was giving and receiving filling every corner of her thoughts.
Minutes later, she crawled into Shepard's arms, the feel of the human's hands on her back and her gentle kisses along the top of her crest easing the come-down from one of the most intense orgasms Liara could remember. "I really am the fortunate one, love," she whispered.
The retired commander's smile was blissfully contended. "I think we can call it a tie."
"Mm, fair enough. You do seem extraordinary happy."
"Because of you, my wife."
As the kiss that followed grew more passionate, Liara felt a desire she had thought sated begin to stir again, and when their tongues untangled and her field of vision gradually re-expanded to include the rest of the room, she found a delicious thought entering her head. "You know, Melanie, we do seem to have worked up something of a sweat."
Shepard took her meaning instantly. "Hot tub?"
As Liara watched her wife's beautiful body rising from the bed, she felt a further pulse of arousal deep within her core, and she thought with a laugh that maybe Aethyta had had a point about those vows after all.