From a Certain Point of View
Han returned from work that same day and immediately sought Leia out in the apartment. Walking tentatively into her bedroom, he peeked his head around the open 'fresher door and found her standing at the sink, studying her face in the large mirror as if a stranger were staring back at her.
Their eyes met and she turned away. There was an awkwardness in the room of first-time lovers that are unsure of how what they've done might affect one another.
Han studied her for a moment and then asked, "Leia, was that your first time?"
It was a question that had been on his mind the entire day. She had not necessarily acted as if it was; if anything she acted quite the opposite, but there were clues granted in hindsight, misgivings or an intuition that told him he had to ask to be sure. He watched the blush paint her face, all the answer that he needed, as she turned and looked down at the basin but she did not verbally reply.
"It's a little late to be embarrassed, sweetheart." He took two steps toward her but did not go any further. "Why didn't you tell me?"
She kept her head down, eyes on anything but him.
Another two steps and he was next to her. A tug at her chin with his finger and she finally looked at him. He said, "Believe me, you have nothing to be embarrassed about."
She stared at him, the color had not totally left her cheeks but she was gaining back her composure. Giving her shoulders an easy shrug, she replied, "I knew the mechanics."
He laughed, loudly. "You knew more than the mechanics." She turned away and he cupped her reddened cheek in his hand and kissed the side of her mouth as he whispered, "You were a master mechanic."
Leia chuckled and turned her body to face him.
He pulled her into an embrace and kissed the top of her head. "Are you alright?"
"Yes," she responded as she wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest. "It's not as if I hadn't wanted to, I just hadn't…"
"Found the right person?"
She stepped out of his embrace saying, "I was going to say the time, but that works, too."
He shook his head at her. "You're quite a piece of work, you know that?"
She seemed miffed by his cockiness and Han tried unsuccessfully to throttle back on his wide grin. Recognizing the determined set to her jaw, he realized that she had regained whatever footing she may have lost by his question and her reluctant admission. She stuck her chin out and said, "I guess you forget that I've spent every night inside of your head for the past few months."
It was a well-delivered blow that left him slightly dumb-founded and totally embarrassed. As he felt all remnants of his cocky grin evaporate with the burning of his cheeks, he watched her lips curve up in a devilish smile. Another wave of blush hit him as he tried to recall anything and everything that he might have dreamt about in the last several weeks.
Suddenly every touch, every synchronized movement from yesterday made much more sense. She sidestepped around him and left him standing in the 'fresher. Running his hand across his face, he thanked the gods that she hadn't killed him after getting just one peek inside of the 'field guide to Han Solo's depravity'.
Releasing a cleansing breath, he spun around and followed her into the bedroom. "Should I be surprised or grateful that you haven't killed me already?" He fought to maintain his air of bravado, but he felt himself slowly deflating in her gaze.
"Neither. The types of tactical maneuvers you were plotting against me, I knew I could handle."
He blushed again.
Her smile turned wicked and she added, "I will say, though, that you are nothing if not consistent."
He cocked his head and eyed her sideways with a smirk, but failed to come up with a retort worth verbalizing. His mind raced to assign the correct meaning to her words.
She seemed encouraged by his silence, bolstered by this sudden turn of events. "Don't worry, the only thing you dreamt about nearly as much as me was the Falcon."
His eyes lit up at the mention of his long lost ship and it seemed to aid him in regaining some of his mental footing. But he still found no retort worth vocalizing and she left little time for him to think.
"I wasn't exactly sure if I should be offended, or jealous or…very flattered." She smiled, an easy smile that indicated that she was nearly finished with teasing him.
Rolling his eyes, he finally said, "Alright, I think you've made your point."
She took a step towards him and leaned into him, as she purred, "I do apologize, though, that I was unable to address all of your fantasies in one night, Captain."
The look in her eyes told him that the game was back on, but this game he was ready to play. She turned to walk away from him but he grabbed her arm, halting her progress and spinning her around in the process. Pressing her against the wall of the bedroom, he leaned his weight against her and said, "The day is young, sweetheart."
Lowering his mouth to hers, he kissed her. It was different than any kiss that the two had ever shared and he recognized the change immediately. It was the kind of kiss that only lovers can share. The openness and nakedness of it having an almost animalistic quality, trust laced with a familiarity that comes only with the act of making love. He thought of her comment about his fantasies, meant to tease him but he took it as an affront or a challenge, he did not like to feel as if anyone knew everything about him.
The kiss broke naturally with their mutual need for air. He sucked the skin along her neck and breathed out, "I want you in a way that I've never dared to dream about."
The rush of the moment was sucked out of the air like a vacuum and a thin silence engulfed them. He knew what he had meant by his words, he knew how they sounded and all the different ways that she could interpret them. He moved his mouth against her skin again, just noticing that he had stopped. He was comfortable with any way she chose to comprehend his meaning.
When he reached the collar of her shirt, he pulled back and looked at her. Only seconds had passed but it felt like days since either one of them had spoken. He could see in her eyes that she at least knew that he hadn't been referring to sexual positions or exotic locales. She swallowed and he smiled at her.
With a strength that he suspected was aided by the Force, she spun him around and pinned him against the wall. She looked as if she wanted to say something that would complement the move but seemed to be at a loss for words. She leaned against him, pushing herself up on the tips of her toes while dragging her body along his. Her lips were on his and he accepted them, granting her the lead that she seemed set on taking. Her hand slid down in between them and her fingers brushed against him with a tentative touch that, for the first time, betrayed her lack of experience. He thrust his tongue deeper into her mouth and groaned, encouraging her without words.
Her body slid back down his as their mouths separated. She trailed her fingers up under his shirt, lifting the material over his head, slowly and deliberately their eyes locked the entire time. He rested his back against the wall while the light cotton material of his shirt slid from his long arm, past his fingers and silently to the floor.
She stood just centims from him, but not one single part of their bodies touched save her fingers on his chest. They traced the plane of his collarbone and her eyes followed their path with the wonderment one usually reserved for a fine work of art. It felt like he had never been touched before. It was a level of intimacy that he had never achieved even with women that he thought he might have loved in the past and certainly hadn't thought possible in his current state of dress.
Han had had many sexual encounters, but he was no slut. He tried to reserve the act for women that he truly respected, and if he was lucky, loved. But such women were so hard to come by and liquor so inexpensive at certain ports, that that could not or had not always been the case. Nevertheless, he thought himself too old and too experienced to feel vulnerable or unsure in the act of lovemaking. In fact, he had been counting on his experience in that arena to be one thing that might even the playing field with the woman that had recently enchanted him, seeing how she was so obviously out of his league in most other respects. But here again, she humbled him with her mere presence not even appearing to try to, with her one single, purposeful, innocent touch.
She had followed the line of his collarbone over his shoulder and down his bicep to his forearm before she showed the slightest bit of hesitation. Up until that point, he was sure that she had choreographed the entire maneuver sometime in her own depraved dreams, if she had allowed herself any. But she had faltered; he could see it in her eyes when they met his. Unsure of herself and not used to the alien feeling, she had finally let it trip her up.
He grinned, that grin that he knew only seemed to affect one side of his face but seemed to affect women all over. "You got an X-wing out of a swamp, sweetheart. I think you can handle me."
There was a flicker in her eye, almost as if she wasn't used to anyone knowing the secrets she had told him and that she had forgotten that he knew of them. Then she smiled and began to lean into him, straining to maintain eye contact until her lips made contact with his skin and her eyelids slid shut. A trail of light kisses fluttered across his chest, over his nipples and down his rib cage as her hand brushed against him once more, eliciting a deep moan he neither controlled nor tried to curtail once it began. As he heard it with his own ears, he was nearly embarrassed by it, but he had had enough of that emotion for one day.
She stopped...everything. Not a trace of contact remained between them as she looked up, a broad smile across her face. "You're easier than an X-wing."
He grinned back. "That's a new one."
She turned him around forcefully, the playfulness immediately extinguished. Pushing him down on the bed, she asked, "How many women have you been with, Han Solo?"
In light of his recent thoughts, her question caught him off-guard and the use of his full name seemed to suggest that he had lost ground somehow. He had wanted to express what he had just been feeling but any words he tried to put to it seemed inadequate and trite. So he simply stated, "You didn't steal my virginity, if that's what you're worried about."
He held his breath, wondering if his flippant answer would satisfy her. She studied him for a moment as her fingers began to work the buttons of her blouse and a smile worked itself across her face. She either appreciated his humor or understood it for what it was. Either way he felt relieved.
She undressed for him. It was not in an overly sensual or teasing manner, just in the normal movements of one that needed to rid themselves of clothes for any number of odd reasons. But it was still the sexiest thing that he had ever seen - her undressing for him. He not having to lift a single finger or coax a centim of fabric off her body but to have it done for him, completely willingly and openly. He was sure she must understand the power she wielded by appearing so submissive.
After the Princess was completely naked, he found himself being de-clothed in a similar fashion. From her hands tugging at the heels of his boots to her fingers working the clasp of his pants, no woman, depraved or otherwise, had done anything so erotic to him in his entire life. No woman had driven him to complete and utter agony over the want or the need to be touched in any way, no matter how innocuous.
Her task complete, she crawled onto the bed over his body and hovered there, looking down at him.
Taking a finger and pushing her hair back behind her ear, he offered, "You know, I can take over from here."
Her immediate response was an arch of an eyebrow. And then her face relaxed and she smiled and asked, "Am I being relieved of duty?"
As she said it she lowered herself so as to brush against him and he sucked in a hiss of breath. "Not for failure to perform...," he managed to choke out the words as she moved over him.
Another arch of her eyebrow accompanied by a sly smile was all he got in return.
"There's just certain duties that only I can undertake," he explained as he returned her smile in kind.
She kissed him and with the gesture allowed her body to rest on top of his, her legs bent at his waist.
His hands ran over her body and he fought to recall when he had consciously touched her last. It had been when he had pinned her against the wall in what seemed like hours ago. Her reaction seemed to tell him that her body had missed and craved his touch. And without waiting for permission or confirmation that their game was over, he rolled her over and reacquainted himself with her naked body.
Han worked on her until she dragged him back up her body by the hair on his head, begging for a reprieve. Her face flushed, her chest heaving beneath him, he afforded her no such thing as he entered her with a quick, gentle thrust of his hips. She turned her head, pressing her cheek against the pillow and arching her back to aid his entrance.
The shockwaves rocked up his body at the feel of being inside of her once again, her body stretching to accommodate him. More so than their first encounter, this union felt several degrees different. No longer an exploration of senses and feelings, a tender investigation of two bodies, this felt like an intermingling of their souls.
He stroked himself inside of her with a long and steady rhythm, driving her to another climax. Their bodies worked together now, not in the rhythmic beat that had been his dreams but in a new tempo that was all their own. It was no longer a dance where she compliantly followed his lead, but an exchange of movements for a common goal. If she had let him drive her to climax this morning, this time she seemed quite capable of giving him directions.
As he watched her mouth drop open and her eyes widen with the tremble of her body he wondered if she had ever felt this level of pleasure before. Easily convinced that she had not and that he was the first and only to have seen her this way, to have brought her to this place, he stilled his hips and gasped a painful, muffled groan as he fought to control his body's nearly uncontrollable desire to join her in release.
"What's wrong?" She looked sincerely concerned for him.
"You're too much for me," he responded as he gathered his wits and began to move again. Another set of words lumped together to mean so much more than he had meant to say or perhaps they were exactly what he had meant to say – just not out loud.
She smiled and rocked her hips along with his and he spun them around, so that she was now on top. His hands slid over her body from her thighs, up her stomach and to her breasts. She exhausted herself on top of him pushing both of their bodies to their limits. It was like nothing he had ever imagined.
Finding another release, she arched her back and threw her head back, her hands gripping his chest, fingernails digging into his flesh. Unable to delay it any longer, he grabbed her at the hips and let his release pump into her with an agonizing moan. He fought the urge to cry out that he loved her and bit his lip down to stop himself. He was not some lovesick teenager that declared love after a few sexual encounters. But everything about this woman had him turned inside out.
Her chin traveled back down toward her chest as she brought her face down to look at him. Pure satisfaction and contentment painted her features with a glowing sheen of perspiration. She had never looked more beautiful to him.
She rolled off of him and nuzzled her body up against his side. He wrapped an arm around her and held her to him. Their breathing returning to normal and their hearts pounding to what seemed to be the same steady beat, he tugged on a piece of her hair and asked, "So why is it that you've been spending every night inside of my head?"
She looked as though he had just asked her to divulge the secrets of the galaxy and her mouth fell open, but she didn't respond.
He looked down at her hand resting amongst the sparse hair on his chest and he pulled at it until their fingers were intertwined. "C'mon," he said in a whisper. "You can talk to me. I know you know those mechanics, right?"
She smiled at him but still hesitated a moment before she said, "Those women, that kidnapped you, they still haunt you in your dreams."
"That's why you said that you were protecting me?"
"Yes, it's like a link. I establish a link between us. If I'm there, I can stop them," she explained and then her cheeks flushed as she added, "Which leaves you free to dream as you normally would."
He looked at her, feeling his own face burn again and she smiled at him. Squeezing her body against his, he asked, "So, you're using the Force to do this?"
It seemed almost silly to ask it once he had said it, but she stiffened in his arms and did not reply.
He added, "It's alright, Leia. I think I've known you could use the Force since you rescued me. There's nothing wrong with being a Jedi."
"I'm not a Jedi," she corrected him as she wriggled in his arms. "I haven't been fully trained." Resting her head against his chest, she added, "I know just enough to be dangerous. I thought that you would've known that from everything I've told you."
"Hey." He squeezed her again and waited until she looked at him. "I've heard everything you've told me and I know that you are not dangerous."
They stared at each other in silence, she seemed primed to argue his point but then he watched as her features relaxed and she seemed content to let it go.
"Thank you for taking care of me…again," he finally whispered to her with a warm smile.
She laughed. "Should I assume that you're talking about your nightmares and not more recent events?"
He laughed with her. She certainly had the ability to dissect the meaning of his every word. "Take your pick," he replied, once again leaving the interpretation of his words in her capable hands.
He had wanted to ask how much longer these nightmares could or would continue and if there was any way to banish them completely. But anything that kept her in his bed every night seemed silly to fight about or wish away. But he did wonder if that was what she had been searching for these past few months and, if so, what would happen once she found it.