i want to feel you

"Help me," she told him, tugging on his shoulder. "I want to feel you."

He nodded, the lack of oxygen going to his brain. He'd tell himself that was what it was. In truth, while they might be a little impaired from oxygen deprivation, what they were doing was stupid. There was a huge chance that they weren't going to die in here. Okay, not that huge, not after this long, but all they were accomplishing with this heavy breathing was using up what air they had and setting themselves up for some pretty solid regrets, if not disciplinary action.

Just as quickly he decided he didn't care. He reached up and behind his neck to release the sealed black strap that secured his body armor. She laughed when he didn't stop there, instead releasing the finely honed zipper that created the suction barrier from his collar bone to the middle of his right side, then unlatched the wide black straps that connected his chestpiece with the armored plate at his back, then repeated the action of unstrapping the silky black tape at his wrists. He stacked plates from his chest and back, then started on the ones lining his arms and then legs the rest of it.

"Good gods," she muttered. "How do you all do that all the time?" Her eyes danced. He could see the glitter of them in the near-blackness.

"This from a woman wearing fourteen layers of clothing," he shot back as he arched up to tug the form-fitting garment over his head, leaving him stripped to the waist.

Some of the guys had taken to wearing undergarments of varying kinds beneath the black base of the white plasteel. As the smile melted from her face and she skimmed her hands down his bare torso he was thankful that the regulation uniform had always been comfortable to him. His breath hitched as her soft fingertips trailed over his heated skin. She felt his chest heave as he held himself up over her. The satisfaction it gave her was older than time. Then she reached up to press her closed lips to the ridge of muscle between his collar bone and the bulge of his finely honed pectoral muscle. His eyes rolled back in his head and he rolled her with him, moving to his side so that he could enjoy the sensations she created even while seeking further contact with her body.

The long hooded tunic was shoved down her shoulders and his hands busied themselves untying the knot holding together the sides of her over-tunic. It and the first impediment were slipped over her wrists and left to the mercies of the hard rock floor of the cave. He slipped his hands beneath the hem of the thin fabric of her long-sleeved undertunic, an almost sheer mesh that made him think of evening gowns and fairy wings. Her skin was warm beneath it. The sensation of the filmy material gathering at his wrists and his palms sliding over the body-warmed combed cotton of what she wore beneath it coaxed another low moan from his throat.

"Rex," she breathed, moving against him. He rolled again, trapping her legs beneath his as he drew it over her head. Then his mouth fastened on hers again. She pulled him closer - - pulled him down to cover her completely - - and his body responded by going insane.

His mouth became frantic on hers, then moved to lave at her neck and earlobe and shoulder. The thin straps of her tank teased at him. As did the almost-nothing barrier between his body and hers. It was just enough to send his body into sensory overload. And again, once more, his hand moved to her waist, skimmed up beneath the garment, and worked to remove her clothes.

"Tell me to stop," he panted - - begged - - into her ear. His body was hard and heavy over hers. Perfect. She'd given in to things she'd promised to avoid - - attachments and passion and emotion. But she wouldn't stop now. Not when she had him like this. Let tomorrow be for regrets and responsibilities. If there was a tomorrow. Today she would feed her desire as far as this man would let her.

"I can't," she told him, almost a sob. She clutched at him, dragging him down to her. Her hands coursed over his skin, her arms wrapped around his back. Higher, around his neck.

And he gave himself over and let himself make love to a woman. A woman no man had a right to touch - - and certainly not one who was hardly a man.

It was a mystery of discovery. They rolled, untutored in their passion, but ripe with it. The light of the lantern left shadowed patterns on their bodies. And when he finally breached her, when his body arched into hers and filled it, the feeling was of completion instead of guilt. He slowed, wanting this moment to last. Wanting it to be enough to stretch on for all eternity if that's what they had left. And to fill the hours if that was the way fate swung.

Afterward, as their pulses slowed and the air in the cavern cooled their sweaty bodies, he pulled her close against him. She toyed with the small pucker of a scar - - one from training with the fumnug sticks when he was still on Kamino - - over his left nipple. He drew his hand over and over through her hair, combing out the sweaty knots his lust for her had created.

And when she shivered he wrapped her in her cloak and drew her closer.

And fired the flames again.

This time when they were spent he frowned. "It's getting cooler," he told her huskily. "Better take the time to layer on all that nonsense again before we lose the light."

She reached out to smack him lightly against the shoulder. As she sat to pull on her tall boots he lifted the masses of her hair to press a kiss to the back of her neck. "What am I going to do with you now?" he asked.

She smiled back at him and shook her head. Now that they'd separated it was harder to fight the sinking sensation of futility. She watched him tug his uniform back in place. Watched him adjust the straps and zippers and seals that made the garment waterproof and airtight and damn near indestructible. And the vows she'd broken weighed on her.

"The air doesn't seem to be getting any staler," he decided.

She nodded. "Enough coming through the chinks in the boulders?" she offered.

He frowned and shook his head. "We tried out. We tried down." He let his voice trail off as his head tilted to try to take in the near-fathomless space of the chamber. He gauged the space and picked up the glow rod, weighing it in his hand.

"You've got to be kidding me," she told him, deadpan, rising to stand beside him.

She watched, mute, as Rex tossed it up. End over end it flipped, revealing nothing but more yawning black space far above them before returning to his hand. She watched him frown and hang it onto a hook on his belt. He removed his glove again and wet his finger, stretching his arm up over his head. Still contemplative he moved a few paces each way.

"Got it," he grinned at her at last. It was a feral grin. A warrior's victory.

Her liquid cable sunk into something solid when it was launched.

"Do we want to run the lantern up there?" she asked. Climbing up into an abyss of darkness didn't seem like much more of a plan than climbing down into one.

He shook his head and put his weight on the cable, pulling hard. "Give me my bucket," he ordered her, gesturing impatiently with his fingertips for his buy'ce.

Afir rolled her eyes and did as commanded. She'd remind him of who was in charge if he didn't kill himself trying to get them out. Again, just as he'd done in the minutes and hours immediately following the collapse, he adjusted the beam and made a careful survey of their little piece of hell. She didn't know enough about the heads-up display in the helmet to guess how accurately he'd be able to scan the cavern's yawning upper space.

A grunt signaled his completion of the task. He dimmed the spotlight and took off the helmet to look at her, tugging on the pouch in her belt where she kept her cable launcher. There was an easiness, an intimacy, about the gesture that made her want to weep.

"How many of these things to you have?" he asked.

Her eyebrows flew up. "Just the one," she answered. They'd already done personal inventories with an eye toward getting out.

"Then we'll be creative with it." He reached for the cable with one hand, for her with the other. "Come on..." In just a few effective twists and turns he'd created a harness of sorts for both of them out of his rappel line.

They let the glide take them up slowly. "Let me know if you sense the anything approaching," he warned after a while. She took the opportunity to reach one hand up a little higher on the cable so that she would have plenty of warning.

"Kriff," he swore when his body slapped into the arching wall anyway. They'd apparently hit a ridge sticking out. After bouncing around and off of it for a while Rex reached out with his own arm to steer them up and away from it. "Here," he said after what seemed like an eternity of cursing and scraping. The beam from his helmet's lantern, dimming as it lost power, swept out over the ledge. He spun so that she could feel the solid stone at her back. "Test it first - - I've got you," he told her. One arm stayed linked on the cable. The other held tightly onto her waist. Afir gingerly toed her way onto the outcropping.

"I've got it," she whispered.

"On three," he told her. "Ready?"

"Three," she called. She flung her body weight onto the ledge, coming to rest on her hands and knees. From the strain of the cord around her waist she decided that Rex was very probably teetering pretty close to the edge himself.

"Anchor yourself to something," he ordered her. "I'm too heavy."

She snorted. It wasn't the most ladylike of sounds and yet she still managed to make it regal and superior. And the clone captain found himself hovering midair, feet nowhere near touching anything, line above him slack. It was disconcerting.

"I guess I asked for that, didn't I?"

With a wry smile she brought him down to stand beside her on the ledge, then got up and dusted off her knees. "Step carefully. There's something all over the floor. I'm hoping it's twigs from a nest of some sort, but I'm not thinking it any further through than that." Rex heard the slight rushing noise as she reeled in her cable.

Then he was still, listening and watching. He had the night vision activated in his HUD. She would rely on the force. This was why they spent so much time blindfolded at the temple.

"Feel that?" he asked quietly.

She stilled her mind and body and sought his direction with the force. There was no echo of darkness that she could pick up. If Obi-Wan was near she couldn't sense him for once. And she thought she'd pick up the life force of anything else in the area. She shook her head.

"Above. A sense of space. Openness."

"Yeah. A yawning cavern in an unending mountain."

She felt more than saw him shake his head and hiss silent laughter. Then he'd relaunched her liquid cable so that they swung out from the ledge and were making their way up again.

And at some point she realized that she could actually see his outline - - a black silhouette against a background that was just barely black. With an eerie blue glow from the t-slit in his visor. Looking up she caught the shape of an opening above them. In the dark it was hard to tell if it was hundreds of feet above and fairly large or six feet up and tiny as hell, but it was there.

Rex didn't so much feel her reach out with the force as much he sensed her gathering herself in; it distanced her from him a bit. But he picked up on her excitement immediately. His helmet registered the rise in her body temp as her heartrate suddenly bumped up. The hand at her waist felt her body jerk, surprised and tense. And whatever was man inside of him felt the woman next to him smile broadly.

"Okay. You get huge points for being right," she told him.

He tried not to be smug. It only went so far. "Any time, Master Jedi," he promised her.