From a Certain Point of View
It was the sound of her breathing that woke him. His eyes, blurry with sleep, swept over the features of her face. There wasn't a line on her smooth, white skin – not a worry on her brow. Her cheek and her mouth were puffed out against the pillow beneath them and a long piece of hair trailed along her face and down the line of her neck. One of her hands was resting on his, and he closed his fingers around it gently.
She stirred and he closed his eyes. He felt her move to take her hand from his and he squeezed it. Opening his eyes to meet hers, he found her face now painted with fear.
"Stay."
She shook her head at him and pulled her hand once again.
Tightening his grip, he said, "It's just one little word. Nothing to be afraid of."
She lay on top of the covers. A thin, long-sleeved tunic swallowed her upper body, its light, eggshell color blending with her alabaster skin. There was an embroidered pattern that exploded with color at her neckline. The threads were a myriad of jewel tones, their zigzag pattern a complex dance that weaved and flowed over her breast and down to her stomach. Her legs were covered with long night pants made of a gauzy material that picked up on the lightest hue of the golden-colored threads as if their ink had spilled onto the material and stained them.
Han became aware of his bare chest facing her. He had short, boxer underwear on, but the coverlet draping over his torso left only the impression of his naked body jutting from underneath it. Her eyes bore into him as if she were afraid to look anywhere else in the room but at his face. The look in her eyes was of a woman on the edge, of a fugitive deciding whether to run for their life or walk slowly ahead so as not to draw attention to themselves.
He looked down at her mouth and her lips were separated but only for the mere purpose of breathing. Her breath traveled slowly in and out of her lungs, but not a hint of any sound, not a single word seemed able to escape. Maintaining his grip on her hand, he placed the other at the back of her head and with one, quick, liquid motion, he pulled her to him. He hesitated, granting her time to protest. And then his mouth was on hers, his hand trailed down her spine until it rested on her lower back and he pulled her entire body to him.
His hand went lower, over the curve of her hip and down to her thigh as he hitched her leg over him. He kept his fingers resting in the crook of her knee maintaining a firm but light pressure so as not to allow her body to naturally roll away from him should he let go. She responded to his every request, almost as if in anticipation of it. He felt her press herself against him and run her fingers through his hair.
His hand ran back up her thigh, followed the dip of her waist, slid across her ribcage and cupped one of her breasts. It was almost without thought, his mind following a roadmap that his dreams had perfected so long ago. Like returning to his childhood schoolhouse, knowing where every hallway led, what was behind every door, the view from every window as only diligent memorization from years of experience will provide. Yet still feeling as if he didn't belong there at this particular point in time and as if everything was vastly different from what he had remembered it to be.
Leia broke the kiss and Han, unable to remain idle, afraid that if one break in his movement would dispel the reality, began to trail his mouth down her neck as if drinking in her skin. He heard her say, "You don't want to do this."
He stopped and paused with his mouth still pressed against the pulse point of her neck. The steady beat pounding against his lips in perfect contrast to the cool calmness of her voice. When he looked at her, her eyes were closed. "If you've been inside of my head, Leia, then I think you know that isn't true."
Her eyes opened and she looked at him. This time she pulled him to her, delivering a searing kiss as she tightened her leg around his hip and drew her body against his. In his dreams she was like this. In his dreams she wanted him as much as he wanted her but so foreign was this state of affairs that Han had to fight to get his head around it. Is this what it felt like for your dreams to come true?
He felt her fingernails dragging against the skin of his back and he pulled and tugged at the fabric of her night clothes, wanting to feel her skin beneath his own fingertips.
"This isn't...," she breathed out as his lips left hers and began to nibble along her jaw line. "It isn't what it feels like..." He reached her neck and slid his tongue up to her earlobe before he captured the skin between his teeth. It was a long practiced maneuver and it garnered the reaction that he knew it would. She moaned. Then her body shuddered as if she fought to regain control of it and then she said, "I'm only protecting you."
He pulled his head back and looked at her for a long moment, letting her words sink in. He trailed a finger along her cheek and then whispered, "Who's protecting you?"
She didn't answer him, so he kissed her again. Running his hand down her side, he made his way back up underneath her shirt. Cupping her naked breast, she moaned and ground her hips into him in return. The conflict between her words and her body not lost on him.
Pushing her shirt up over her head, she lay back on the pillow and allowed him to look at her. As with everything in her life, with all of his experience dealing with her, she held herself confidently and met his eyes with a fiery boldness that only served to encourage him.
Her chest heaving with the rise and fall of her lungs, he lowered his face and took one of her breasts in his mouth, his tongue flicking at the hardened nipple. It tasted like the fruit of the gods, like something man should not be allowed to experience. "Gods, Leia," he moaned as he moved to the other breast.
"I don't want to hurt you," she whispered as she fisted her hands into his hair, hugging his head against her chest.
"You're not going to hurt me," he replied back breathlessly as he looked up at her. "Believe me, doing this is not going to hurt me."
She smiled weakly, "You don't know who I am."
"I know who you are," he whispered back. "I know exactly who you are and I want all of you."
He undressed her and she let him. He explored every inch of her body, pleasured her until she was calling his name in surrender. He tasted her and smelled her and satisfied every craving of touch that he had fought since the day that he had met her.
It could have ended there and he would have been satisfied. He could have died at that moment and he swore that it would not matter. The trembling ripple of her muscles in the aftermath of what he had done to her, the flush of her skin and the dazed look on her face were all enough to satisfy him for centuries.
He crawled up her body, his mouth leading the way. His eyes met hers at the end of his journey and he found her gaze, questioning, anxious, nervous and anticipatory all at once. "I have a contrachip," he breathed out as he began to kiss her neck.
Her hand glided down the side of his torso and pushed gently at the waistband of his boxers. It was a silent reply to a question that was never really asked. He pulled his head away from her neck to look at her again, to take inventory of the emotions that still resided there. Her eyes seemed wider in a gesture that allowed all the previous emotions Han had recognized to remain but also to include a few others. He took the notice of only one, the one that reigned over all its counterparts: desire.
That she wanted him, that she would give herself to him was more powerful a shock than he had ever experienced. Even lying naked in front of him, even after everything he had already done to her, she seemed yet untouchable or unattainable in this way. But like the legend of mythical creatures or hidden cities of gold, he knew that she could only be attained by those she chose to let attain her.
It was a magnificent yet hollow victory to find that you were the conqueror of the unconquerable only to realize that your enemy has merely surrendered. He had not caught her. She had allowed him to catch her. He had not passed a test. She had promoted him. He had not convinced her. She had willingly succumbed to him.
The concept was foreign to him when it came to her. She had always been a figure far out of his reach. This moment was never had in his dreams without a desperate contest of wills, without a fervent justification of his worth that she had yet to make him utter. But he quickly adjusted his mind to this current reality and found that he quite liked it this way. And something told him that she knew it.
He took his time as he made love to her, surprised at how in sync their bodies undulated together as if they were lovers reunited. She followed his every lead like an expert dancer. The touch of her hand on his bicep, the return of every kiss was just as he had imagined it. When they were finished, he held her in his arms, their bodies limp with exhaustion and painted in sweat.
He closed his eyes at the swell of his own emotions, of the now overwhelming gnaw of self-doubt and disbelief. Nothing in his past should've led him here, yet here he was. One heroic feat in the heat of the moment three years ago did not make him the hero that deserved to win this woman. Was it the sign of a weak man that would judge himself by the woman in his bed, or the sign of a strong woman?
He ran his hand over his face. It didn't matter. If his past had not landed him here, then he vowed that his future would justify it by any means possible. He would become the man that she deserved, the man whose life and deeds warranted her naked body pressed against his for as long as she would let him.
Leia wriggled from underneath his heavy arm and rolled out of bed. She stood up and walked around the room to the 'fresher without a word, her eyes meeting his as he watched her. He studied her naked form walking past him and held it in his mind's eye as it disappeared behind the sliding door.
He rolled onto his back and shut his eyes. After a million thoughts centered only on himself, on her, on them together; his mind suddenly extended to every other man in the universe, as he wondered just who else had held her before him.