A/N: This chapter is pretty much all about sex and a little bit of fluff. Mostly sex. I feel that Shepard and Thane deserve a little bit of sweaty R&R before the intensity of their personal stories return. If you do not wish to read the smutty, lovey parts you can skip this chapter entirely and the plot will resume in chapter 14, without anything important having been missed. If you do wish to read the smut, please enjoy my first attempt at dirty writing.
At first he seemed to think that he had to be gentle with her, perhaps thinking that the fragile emotional state he had caught her in when he appeared meant that she wanted tender, reassuring cuddling and softness. This was not her style, never had been, and he began to understand that as she tore his vest open, spreading the leather to either side so she could openly ravage his impressive physique with her eyes.
The cables of black that twisted up his arms and across his shoulders and down were amazingly vivid, forking out in jagged stripes across his muscular arms and chest. She ran her hand down one of them, startled by the extreme contrast of their skin, green and gold against each other. His scandalous abdomen was a wall of sculpted muscle, the anatomy of his body familiar enough despite a few striking differences. Most notably, how incredibly smooth he was all over, no nipples or belly button to mark the expanse of light green scales. She looked back up at his face to see that he was studying her with a look that seemed almost nervous. She cocked an eyebrow at him.
"What?" She asked, leaning forward again to nuzzle her face under his jaw and slide her tongue along its sensitive underside. She could feel him tremble underneath her, his hands tracing the length of her powerful legs, up across the naked small of her back making her shiver.
"I wasn`t sure what you would think once I got my clothes off." He confessed, his hands sliding around her waist to her stomach and down the smooth lines of her abdomen. He glanced down as he discovered the small indentation of her belly button and grinned at her as he traced it with one finger.
"Are you kidding? Drell have got to be the prettiest aliens in the galaxy." She paused, thinking about that and shook her head. "Okay, maybe pretty isn't the most encouraging word. But seriously, your skin is goddamn beautiful." She raked her fingers lightly down the long lines of black scales that flanked his abdominal muscles and felt him tense. "And your eyes." She looked up into those amazingly dark, expressive eyes. "And your lips, with that little line." She kissed those lips, running her tongue over them and catching a hint of his sharp citrus taste. "I was more worried about what you would think of me. Drell women are pretty different."
She gave her breasts, still bound in the grey cotton sports bra that was her only lingerie, a meaningful look. One hand rose to the brutal lacerations that ran down the left side of her body, tracing the evil scars with distracted self consciousness. She wondered how it was possible that someone as smooth and perfect as Thane could find something attractive in her body, which looked in many places like it had been simply glued back together after its terrible destruction. She felt his hand suddenly against hers, pressed at the apex of her scar, just under her armpit beside her breast. He sat up under her, looking into her eyes as he drew her close.
"Siha, do you not have any idea how beautiful you are?" He asked quietly, ghosting his lips over her cheeks, over the thin scars that still lingered there, and then over the bump of her often broken nose. She sighed and looped her arms lightly over his shoulders.
"Even human men don't think I'm all that great." She replied wryly. Beautiful was never a word that had been used to describe her, at least not by anyone but the most feverish of her strange little fan base. She was a marine not a model, she could not have cared less if people described her as a walrus as long as they got her combat stats right. Thane pulled back slightly and smiled at her, shaking his head slightly.
"I am not human." He reminded her softly, running his fingers through her hair as he always did. She felt him lift her off the bed, as effortlessly as though she weighed nothing at all, and then she was sinking back against the pillows as he kissed her neck, her shoulders, the first, mostly flat plains of her chest above her bra.
They did not try to speak after that, and Shepard felt herself relax under his ministrations. He shed his vest and ran his hands down her body, tracing the stiff lines of reddish scar tissue that marred her left side as lovingly as she had traced the astounding patterns of his skin. Her fingers slid across the wide, flat scales that covered his head, down his neck, feeling the protective bony ridges of his spine all the way to the small of his powerful back. He felt so different then anything she was used to, hard and unyielding in places, smooth and soft in others. She kissed his shoulder, licked the skin and found no trace of salty human sweat. He tasted exactly like he smelled, clean and fresh with a lingering, tingling hint of spice. She felt his hands slide around her back and run across the smooth cotton of her bra before his head popped up from where he had been gently caressing the back of her ear with his tongue.
"Mordin's diagrams said there would be some sort of hook back there." He said, sounding indignant at the misinformation he had received. She laughed and pulled the garment over her head for him.
"That's for fancy underwear. There's no room for delicate wire hooks in the marine corps." She replied. He did not answer, and she wondered if maybe all his talk about her beauty had been just that, and now that he saw how weird she really was he was having second thoughts. He looked up at her after a moment, catching the doubt flickering through her eyes and shook his head slowly, cupping her breast in one hand and giving it an experimental squeeze. After a moment he laughed out loud and gripped the other, pressing them together.
"Everyone should have these." He said after a moment of her gaping at him dully. His dark eyes sparkled with his mirth when he looked back up at her. "They're so... amusing."
"That's not exactly the reaction I was looking for." She informed him, one eyebrow raised as he continued to explore her alien anatomy. He raised one of his own scaly brows in response to her comment and she gasped, feeling her core suddenly tighten as he rolled her nipple between his thumb and pointer finger gently, teasing it instantly into a hard peak.
"Is that better?" He asked, his voice suddenly dark and sultry. She gasped as he continued to tease her, his other hand similarly attentive on her other breast. That ache, that always present damnably powerful ache was building out of control, making her stomach clench and her thighs tremble as he lowered his head and slid his tongue across the stiff tissue. She moaned, the sound tearing out of her as she arched herself into his touch. It had been so damn long, everything he did was pushing her tantalizingly close to the place where she would lose all control. She moaned again as he drew her into his mouth and nipped, ever so gently, and her hips bucked off the bed involuntarily. He looked up at her, her eyes suddenly hazy with lust over her flushed cheeks and smiled. "I'll take that as a yes."
Growling, she hooked her hand behind his head and drew his face up to hers, her tongue aggressively seeking his. Hallucinogenic saliva be damned, she wanted to fill herself with the sharp, alien flavour of him. He let her, sliding his tongue along across her teeth, touching the dimples of her pallet with tender curiosity. Her arms twined around his neck, her fingers finding those sensitive tracks of skin hidden under the edges of his hard scales and he moaned into her mouth, his hips rocking suddenly forward, until she could feel the hard length of him rubbing up against her. She shuddered and pushed back and they both moaned together as his hands dropped suddenly, desperately, to the waist of her pants and began fumbling with the button and fly. She pushed him away and he made a sound deep his chest that was something like a growl but smoother and more drawn out. Insistently, she pushed him back and stood up, undressing herself with quick, practised efficiency. In a moment she was standing in front of him, all golden brown skin from head to toe, broken only by the lattice of her many scars and the little patch of hair between her legs that had remained its natural black when she coloured the crop on her head.
"Siha..." His voice strained with his want for her and he reached out, pulling her back into his arms. She let him, feeling his hands wander over places where rough, restrictive cloth had separated them before. His fingers traced the surgical scars on her hips, the long jagged track down the back of her right thigh and all the smooth skin in between, leaving tracks of tingling heat in their wake. He kissed her neck, her breasts, drew his tongue along the jagged lines of her scars and dipped it into the divot of her bellybutton, making her giggle as his warm breath tickled her sensitive stomach. As he continued to move lower she realized what he was intending and her head popped up, her hands on his shoulders struggling to bring him back up.
"You don't have to-" She began, her voice breaking when she felt his hand snake up the inside of her thigh and pull her legs gently open. He looked up at her and raised one brow questioningly, not moving back but not pressing forward either. She had the overpowering desire to close her legs, feeling nervous and exposed with her thighs spread wide in front of him like this, but his firm grip and piercing eyes stopped her.
"This is something drell do. I had thought from those vids that humans enjoyed it too." He commented. "I assure you, I have studied all the information Mordin passed me. I know all about the ah," he cleared his throat discreetly, "little man in the boat."
She almost choked, her cheeks flushing brilliant red. "I don't- I mean SOME men do it but you don't have to. I don't expect it. I've never... no one else has ever..." She stopped short, still blushing wildly, a mixture of supreme embarrassment, nerves and pure, raw excitement at everything he was offering. Her stomach fluttered as she vividly remembered the kinds of faces and sounds the women in the vids had made.
He smiled, understanding, and shook his head. "I want to." He assured her, and his hand slid up, off her thigh to her warm, eager centre. She moaned, cupping her hand over her mouth, shuddered, and dropped back against the blankets again. She was not going to fight him, if he really wanted to do this, and as he slid his fingers experimentally against her she felt his other hand gently pull her hand away from her mouth. "And I want to hear you as I do it."
She could not speak so she just nodded, as his fingers effortlessly found the notoriously elusive bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs and stroked it gently. She heard herself make a high, slightly broken sound which was unlike any she normally made and then his lips were on her hips, his tongue snaking across the hard line of bone and down across the flat plain of her belly and lower still to replace his finger and draw another wild, uncontained cry of pleasure from her. She could feel him react to it, to her, as she wrapped her long, powerful legs over his shoulders, one of her hands falling down to the increasingly familiar planes of his skull. As his mouth began to move on her, his long, agile tongue rolling in a way she had never imagined was possible, she began to moan and curse mindlessly, needing some outlet for the amazing sensations that were turning her bones to gel.
One arm folded over her hips, holding her down against the bed as he dipped his tongue down, inside her and the thumb of his other hand moved to take its former place, rubbing small, gentle circles around the aching bundle of nerves. Her mind was erupting with white noise and static, her stomach clenching harder and harder as she hurtled toward her completion and she closed her eyes, unable to stand the way the world spun and shifted around her, hallucinogens or pleasure she could not tell. Her fingers clenched against the ridges of his scales as her legs suddenly tensed and she cried out, gasping, struggling to get more and less at the same time. Her entire body was tight, quivering as the intensity mounted higher and higher and then suddenly, amazingly, it broke and the waves washed over her, making her body tense and relax in little bursts. His tongue slid out of her, caressing the still aching bud in time with the aftershocks of her orgasm, making her whimper and squirm under him. Finally, he drew himself up alongside her, and she threw her arms around his neck and held him close, goose bumps prickling her skin as she became suddenly cold in the aftermath of all that heat.
"Fuck. That was... fuck." She breathed gratefully against the spines of his throat and she heard him chuckle again, his hand flowing down the valley of her waist and over the round swell of her hips. "Wow."
"Indeed." He murmured softly. She looked up at him, one eyebrow raised at the curiously placid expression on his face.
"What is it?" She asked, sitting up slightly. The cold made her skin sing, every sensation amplified ten fold. As she looked down the length of his naked chest she realized that the psychotropic effects of his kisses were stronger than ever, the lightning bolts shooting across his ribcage appearing to shift and move as he resettled himself on the bed, staring up at the stars through the glass ceiling.
"It's nothing." He replied. "I just did not know that human women achieved orgasm so fast. I would have... drawn it out more if I could." He sounded like he was hiding disappointment and she cocked her head to the side. He looked up at her after a moment and tried to make a reassuring face, motioning for her to lay down beside him again.
"Human women can have more than one a night. You know that right?" She asked, a mischievous smile springing to life on her lips. From the look of confusion on his face it was clear that no, he had not known that.
"Among my people, after the woman ah, gets what she wants she generally wants to be left alone or at most, held a little bit before she falls asleep." He said, sitting up and studying her with reanimated interest. "Whether her partner has achieved similar satisfaction or not."
She grinned and moved closer again, straddling his lap and feeling him hard and eager against her. He sighed and closed his eyes halfway as she ran her hands down his hips and tugged at the buckles and straps that held his pants in place. She ran her thumb across one of the slivers of red skin that flanked his black stripes and felt him shiver at the contact, sucking in a sudden breath of air that rasped against her ear.
"Among my people," she whispered against his cheek, "one time is kind of a let-down."
He made that deep, smooth sound in his chest again and with a heave of his hips had flipped her over, tossing her down on the bed. He removed the rest of his clothes in the blink of an eye and while she was still trying to adjust to the swirling, clashing lights of the room around her his body was over her, fabulously naked as he pressed down on her with sudden urgency. All his gentleness, his hesitation, his shy bashfulness was thrown to the winds as she felt him bite down on her neck, his hands gripping her hips and shifting her position under him. He paused only a moment, looking up from her throat to see if she was hesitating or uncomfortable. She pulled his face close and kissed him, sucking his bottom lip in between her teeth and biting down lightly. He grunted, sighed and shifted forward, pressing into her.
The world tilted overhead and she squeezed her eyes closed, her entire body vibrating as she felt him slid into her, filling her in one smooth thrust. His breath was ragged, sharp and hard in the back of his throat as he leant his forehead against her shoulder and began to move, the motion of his hips jerky and short at first as she managed to curl her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders and just watched his body moving on top of hers. His hands dropped from her waist to her ass, clenching tight and pulling her up to meet his thrusts as they became longer, a deep groan escaping his lips. Her toes curled as he shifted position only slightly and she felt him move inside her, the pleasure of his movements increasing suddenly tenfold. She gasped, writhing, pressing herself up against him and he closed his teeth around the lobe of her ear, on her neck, down her shoulder, biting and sucking and licking wherever he could.
Sounds spilled out of her, fractured pleas, wordless sounds of pleasure that made him bear down harder, his pace quickening as she heard him begin to gasp against her neck, nearing his completion already. But she was not ready for that, not ready for it to be over and she pushed him off, taking advantage of his distracted state to lever his superior bulk back until he was sprawled on his back. He made a wordless sound of frustration, still grasping for her as she threw her leg over him, straddled his hips and shook her head.
"I don't think so." She chided. "I probably should have mentioned this before, but I like to be in charge."
His gaze was hungry as she took her time looking down his long, muscular body, at the parts of him she had not had time to examine in the height of his lust. The patterns that flanked his abdomen thinned dramatically on the flat place just above his organ, winding into a single knot of black against the dramatic green of his skin. The skin below was vibrant red like it was on his neck, spreading down the inside of his thighs a ways and when she touched him there he moaned and threw his head back, closing his eyes. The scales on his knees and shins were large and solid like they were on his face, but otherwise it was the same soft, snake-like green scales, accented here and there by individual stripes of black from his hips to his ankles. She could not remember having been more attracted to anyone, and she ran her hands over the shifting lightning bolts of his ribcage, moving down and caressing his sensitive abdomen until she gripped his length and guided him back inside her.
She closed her eyes as she began to move, the heightened pleasure of control mixing with the breathing walls and dancing light of the stars to an intensity that made her dizzy otherwise. She heard him moan and his hands found her hips, guiding her as she rolled back and forth and then began to tense her thighs and move up and down in the same motion. He gasped, his entire body tensing so powerfully she could feel it move through her and cracked one eye open, needing to see his face. He was staring up at her, his dark eyes devouring the movement of her small breasts, the curves of her body, the point of their joining and he moved one of his hands to touch her there, making her moan loudly and increase her speed as her pleasure began to mount immediately.
"Ah, Siha, faster. Please." He moaned, his back arching as he threw his head back again, his eyes closing. She smiled her satisfaction, one hand gripping her own breast, the other braced against his chest as she increased her speed only the slightest bit. He made a wordless, guttural sound of frustration and thrust desperately up into her. Her other hand fell to his chest and she moved faster still, his moans increasing with every twitch of her hips, every sound he made as sweet as music to her ears. There was something burning inside her, deep in the pit of her stomach, stronger even then what he had done to her with that oh so talented tongue of his and she moaned her name for him as their movements grew steadily harder, faster, more frantic as they both reached the final stretch, aching muscles carried forward by the momentum of their coupling and nothing more.
Even with the psychedelic twist of the world making her dizzy and disoriented she had to open her eyes fully, to really see him as he thrashed and writhed under her. He looked up, his dark eyes finding hers and drew her down, their mouths crashing together, tongues tangling as she felt the second wave break over her, making her shudder and tremble, her hands clenching tight against his chest. His answer came a moment later, a soft roar torn loose from his throat, his fingers on her hip digging into her skin slightly as his back arched and she felt the warmth of his release filling her. He slumped back after a long, trembling moment and sighed, one of his hands coming to his forehead and resting there as he shook himself slightly, the lacquered look to his dark eyes making him seem almost drunk. She smiled and slid off him, sprawling across the bed in similar satisfied exhaustion.
"I was expecting everything to be more drawn out." She said later, as he curled up against her back and looped one arm gently around her waist, holding her close. He laughed, a sound she could feel vibrating in the depths of his chest and into her. "The extranet made sex with a drell sound like a marathon. I got lotion for chafing and everything."
"That's more because of the women then the men." He mused softly, his fingers tracing the indent of her bellybutton in a way that was already becoming familiar. She had already made it clear that constantly playing with her breasts was not appropriate afterglow behaviour, which seemed to disappoint him somewhat. "The same could be said of pretty much all parts of drell intimacy. It isn't as balanced as it is among humans."
She made a face at him. "Human sexuality is balanced? You heard me say that I'd never had oral sex before right? Guess how many times I've given it."
He laughed, nuzzling into her hair. "I've never had it either. Guess how many times I've given it."
She grinned at him, one dark eyebrow raised over her luminous eyes, glowing orange in the dim light as they always did. She could see perfectly fine, though the world had a somewhat ruddy sheen to it, like firelight in the darkness. "I can fix that for you." She whispered, wickedly.
He made a face that she recognized as shocked and excited at the same time and shifted drawing her tighter against him.
"Unfortunately, once a night is entirely on par for drell. It will be several hours until I can… perform again." He really did sound disappointed, but she just sighed and snuggled back against him, putting her head down on the pillows and inhaling the warm, spicy scent of him.
"That's fine. We've got time." She replied. Her eyelids felt heavy, the rigour of their coupling and the release of so much pent up stress and downright, dirty horniness having taken all the energy right out of her. Nothing was fixed, all the same problems and doubts waited for her outside of this little cocoon of warmth they had created under her sheets. Right now though, all that seemed so far away, something she could deal with later. "Why don't you put some music on?" She murmured sleepily.
He did, something soft and mellow as drell music tended to be. In the background, past the sighs of the wood instruments she could hear a clear, crystalline tolling. Bells. Before she realized what was happening Shepard was asleep, dreaming of the bells, the sweet green meadows and clean air of Mindoir. For once, things were that simple.