"Just a little longer, sweetheart. I know you can do it."
Shepard brushed her hand affectionately over Liara's face and the asari bit the inside of her cheek, doing her best to hold back. The Spectre's full lips caught her blue ones once more for a long, slow kiss while her hand moved back between Liara's legs, building her up again with gentle strokes along the length of her clit.
When Shepard had suggested trying this, the archeologist had been confused, asking, "But I enjoy it so much when you make me climax. I am not quite sure I understand the purpose in delaying that."
"With sex, the trip is half the fun," the Spectre had informed her with a mischievous grin, "And sometimes, taking a longer trip can make it even more intense when you finally do get there.
"All right," Liara had agreed, "I trust you."
She still did and after an hour of relentless teasing and pleasuring, the asari knew that Shepard had been right. Her whole body was tingling, her every nerve ending sensitized, the smallest touches of her lover's hands and mouth enough to send shivers through her. The climax building inside her was truly massive and as she approached it, Liara was too far gone to do anything but clutch at the commander's shoulder, making a series of small whimpering noises as she was stroked.
The tips of Shepard's fingers slid just a little bit of the way into her soaked azure and the archeologist's hips pushed desperately against them, trying to take her commander deeper.
"Jesus, you look beautiful when you're so turned on," Shepard purred, pulling her fingers back far enough to temporarily deny Liara all of what she wanted without breaking contact entirely. "And you've been so good." She planted a kiss on the sweaty skin of the asari's neck before whispering, "Do you want to come now?"
"Goddess, yes, please," Liara begged, her eyes already half-way to black with her need, not sure how much longer she could fight down the urge to meld.
Hearing her plea, the Spectre suddenly thrust her fingers the rest of the way into Liara and the asari screamed, too turned on to care if half the ship heard her. Shepard's thumb rubbed firmly along her clit and at that final stimulation, her walls completely collapsed. The archeologist's mind reached out, yanking Shepard's thoughts to hers, and her body went rigid as the most powerful climax she had even experienced overtook her.
Across the meld, she could feel Shepard peaking too, the Spectre pressing her own thighs together as her body shook from an orgasm that's she'd barely needed to be touched to achieve, but even beneath her pleasure, the power of her feelings was unmistakable. Her love and pride were deep wells that Liara eagerly drank from, the emotional bliss prolonging the physical, Shepard's hand and her love guiding the asari through ecstatic convulsions that she felt would never end, that she never wanted to end.
Liara awoke with a gasp, the last moments of her erotic dream still burned into her mind even as consciousness returned to her. She slept in the nude, a habit she had picked up during her time with Shepard, and when she slid a hand between her sweaty thighs, she found them slick with her arousal, her body's reaction mirroring the lust that still swirled around her head.
All that a part of her wanted do was lie back in bed and return to the past, to recall the way that she'd reciprocated, eating Shepard out until her tongue was sore and both of them lay exhausted from more shared climaxes than they could count. To touch herself to those memories until she could find some sort of release.
Another part, though, couldn't bear the thought. The memory of that night, once so dear to her, had turned bitter to contemplate. How could the same woman who had taught her so much about pleasure abandon her now? How could the love she had seen in her commander's thoughts have vanished into thin air?
It might have been easier if she understood. The archeologist liked to believe she was a rationalist and she thought that, perhaps, if she had a plausible reason for why Shepard had moved on, she could too in spite of the strength of her feelings.
She wasn't convinced it was as simple as a case of lost interest, though. The asari's thoughts kept returning to that one day on Ilium when they had seen each other once again, only for Shepard to leave her once more. To the kiss she could have sworn the commander was relishing as much as Liara had been. To the frightened look in Shepard's eyes when she'd pulled away. To the perfunctory, unsatisfying explanation the Spectre had given Liara for why they couldn't be together now.
None of it made any sense to her, and trying to solve the mystery without sufficient data was slowly driving Liara mad. Hoping that work would distract her from her confusion, to say nothing of her unwanted arousal, the asari picked up her omni-tool from her nightstand and checked her messages.
Sadly, none of them was of especial use to her. There were more leads to be sure: a possible agent of the Shadow Broker she could investigate, a crooked politician she could blackmail, but it wasn't enough. Even after Shepard's aid had unmasked her own secretary, Nyxeris, as a spy for the Broker, it hadn't brought Liara any closer to her goal. The other asari had attacked her, forcing Liara to terminate her employment rather permanently, and a search of her files hadn't revealed anything the information broker could use to find her real enemy. There was nothing but more payments run through dummy companies and bank accounts with fake names on them, not the thread that would lead her to what she really wanted: an identity or location for the Shadow Broker.
Frustrated, the asari closed her inbox and rose from the bed, throwing on a thin grey robe she kept nearby. This was getting her nowhere, neither pining for her former lover nor her current approach to finding the Shadow Broker helping in least. She walked over to the huge window that covered one of the walls of her apartment and as she gazed out at the vast city of Nos Astra waking up beneath her, Liara realized she needed to try something new.
But what? Somewhere out there were the answers she needed, but who had them? The answer hit her like a shock to the spine. Cerberus. It all came back to Cerberus. They were the ones who had told her where to find Shepard's body and who had then taken custody of it after Liara rescued her lover from the Blue Suns. The fact that the Illusive Man knew about the Broker's involvement in that matter meant he probably had some kind of intelligence on them, and the fact that Shepard had been working for him ever since meant that he might have some clue as to what was wrong with the Spectre.
Walking over to her terminal, Liara began opening up her old files on Cerberus, refreshing her memories. In the almost two years in-between the hand-over of Shepard's body and her return, Liara had begun an investigation into the human supremacist group, hoping to learn if they were doing as they'd promised with her commander. She'd made enough progress to confirm massive spending on some kind of bleeding edge bio-tech project, but after she'd known that Shepard was alive, she'd given up on that line of research, focusing instead on her hunt for the Broker. That had been a mistake, and as she pulled up her list of medical supply companies who she knew had done business with Cerberus, it was one she vowed she would not make a second time.
It was two days after their little romp in the hold before she and Shepard talked again, at least beyond just saying, "Hey," while they passed each other in the halls on the Normandy. It wasn't that she'd been avoiding Shepard, the convict told herself, just that the commander had been busy. After Pragia, it had been straight off to Omega, where Shepard was running some sort of errand for that big-breasted Justicar they'd picked up. That meant shore leave for the rest of the crew, leave Jack was spending at the sort of vile hole in the wall she liked to drink in.
She was enjoying her third round of the evening from atop a stool she'd kicked a smart-mouthed turian off of when the commander came in. The well-groomed red-head looked about three cuts too good for the place but her shiny guns and armor discouraged anyone from commenting on that fact as she crossed the bar room.
"Hey," the red-head said, taking an open seat next to Jack, "Nice spot you've got here."
"Yeah, well, it's out of the way," Jack replied with a shrug. "How'd you find me anyway?"
"I'm pretty good at that sort of thing," Shepard told her, returning the shrug and telling the tattooed asari working the bar that she'd have one of whatever Jack was drinking. "Special forces training and all that. Anyway, I thought you might want to talk."
"About what?" Jack took a swig of her drink. It stung her throat, but in a way she kind of enjoyed. "We fucked. It's not a big deal."
Her words were dismissive, but Shepard wasn't sure if she really felt so little or if that was just part of the uncaring façade the biotic usually wore. Not wanting to pressure Jack about it in either case, Shepard didn't focus on the convict's feelings. "Maybe it wasn't for you," she told Jack, "But I was pretty much a wreck and you straightened my head out." She took a slug of the brown liquor in her glass, swallowing the burning liquid before she had to taste too much of it. "Did you hear what my mission on Omega was, anyway?"
"Some shit for Samara," Jack replied.
"Well, yeah, but it wasn't the kind of work I usually do. She had me acting as the bait for an asari sex vampire." A little shiver of remembered and confusing desire ran through her as she recalled the way the Ardat-Yakshi had looked at her, the dark pleasures her eyes had promised. "How well do you think that would have gone two days ago?"
That idea got a laugh out of Jack. "Not good. You were pretty much a horny mess."
"I was," she agreed. She'd held out, resisting Morinth's advances until Samara arrived, but in the state she'd been in before Jack's help, she doubted she would have managed half as well. "And I owe you one for fixing that."
"Nah," Jack shook her head, uncomfortable with the expression of gratitude. Not only did she not like asking for favors, she didn't want anybody else to owe them to her. Those kind of ties just complicated things. Better to keep it simple. Less chance of getting hurt that way. "You helped me on Pragia," she told Shepard, "And besides, I got off too. You don't owe me shit."
Shepard didn't agree, but she wasn't going to argue the point, given how uncomfortable it seemed to make Jack. "Fair enough. We'll call it even."
For a few minutes, the two women sat in silence, finishing off their drinks. Once her glass was empty, Shepard wasn't really keen for another one, and the Spectre stood up, leaving a few credits on the bar to cover their tabs. "See you back at the ship," she told the biotic, but before she got all the way off her stool, Jack stopped her.
The convict couldn't quite put a name to what she was feeling, but in a single, impulsive moment, she decided she didn't want to leave things like that. Shepard had been the best fuck she could remember, and she was a friend, so why the hell not say something? "Hey, Shep," she told the Spectre, "You know, what happened, I wouldn't mind doing it again some time."
Shepard smiled at the reluctant compliment. "Neither would I," she replied and as the commander sat back down for one more drink, she reflected that while it still wasn't romance, right then, it'd do.
"What do you have to report, Operative Lawson?"
Miranda instinctively straightened her already-excellent posture as she faced the Illusive Man's holographic image. With Shepard busy on Omega, it was a good time for her to use the Normandy's communication array without the commander being any the wiser. "There's been a significant development, sir," she told her boss, "Shepard has had sex with Subject Zero."
The leader of Cerberus took a long drag on his cigarette before he answered. "I see. This wasn't our optimal scenario, was it?"
"No, sir," she agreed, "But it a possibility we foresaw, and certainly one that we can exploit."
He nodded. "Agreed. Do you know if the relationship is ongoing?"
"It's too soon to say, but I don't think it will matter. In either case, there should be more than sufficient attachment if we have to activate our contingency plan."
"I'll trust your judgment in this matter, Miranda." The threat beneath his words was unspoken but clearly understood none the less. If she was wrong and Shepard didn't stay under their control, Miranda would be the one who'd take the blame for that failure. "Are there any other developments I should know about?"
"No, sir. Everything else is on schedule. We've recruited all of the personnel in the dossiers you gave Shepard, and she continues to build her relationships with the rest of the crew. She really does have a talent for that kind of interaction."
"Very good." He crushed out his cigarette before lighting a fresh one, the digital smoke swirling around his face. "There is one thing you should be aware of, however. Doctor T'Soni has begun making inquiries into your work on Shepard. She's done this before, during the Lazarus Project, but her resources are greater at this point and she may be able to make inroads."
"Should we eliminate her?" Miranda had first suggested that course of action after Cerberus had received the commander's body out of concern that Liara's past relationship with Shepard would prove an obstacle to their plans.
"I still don't think that would be wise," the Illusive Man cautioned her. "If Shepard's desire for revenge becomes stronger than her attachments, we could lose control of the situation. No, I have another way. We can both get rid of the doctor and get Shepard to thank us for our role in doing so. I'll send you the details."
The Illusive Man ended their connection and as she began perusing the file he transmitted to her, Miranda's face took on a small, determined smile. Certainly, the road they were going down was dangerous, but it was the one she had chosen to walk. The galaxy would not be saved from the Reapers by half-measures, but she was determined that one way or another, it would be saved.
And now we're off to the new material in earnest. A tough chapter for poor Liara I'd say. Please let me know what you thought of it and thanks for reading.