Chapter 3

He gathered her in a hug and pressed their bodies tightly together, wanting to feel every inch of her. They were both shaking; she with the lingering tremors of her orgasm, and he with his urgent, aching need for the same. His voice was a rumble against her chest. "I want you, Kathryn. I need you."

She leaned her head back and reveled in the hunger evident on his face. "Not yet."

"Please!" he begged.

She ran her hands down the taut muscles of his arms to his ribs until she found the top of his pants. "When you take me, it will be with your soul. Right now, I want your desire," she purred.

She moved her lips to his neck and kissed a line from his chin to his shoulder, then ran her tongue under his collar bone. Her fingers found the buckle of his belt. She quickly had it undone, released the button, and lowered the zipper. She let the slacks drop to the deck of the boat and he stepped out of them. Her fingers squeezed him again through the material of his boxers, sliding over the hard lines of him. She let him go and grabbed the top of his shorts, pulling the elastic over his manhood and pushing them down to his feet. He stepped out of those, too, and kicked them to the side with a flick of his ankle. She lowered him to the blanket before standing back up.

"Please, Kathryn," he gasped again. He was losing his mind in the delicious pain of his arousal. He wanted to grab her by the ankles, yank her down on top of him and drive hard into her. His legs wouldn't stay still and his hands dug into the soft blanket under him. If the deck of the boat had been real rather than holographic, he would have left gouges in the surface.

Kathryn watched his agony and marveled that she could have such an effect on him. She used her toes to kick off each shoe, released her own slacks down her silky legs and pulled them off. She grabbed the top of her white lace panties and heard him groan. She slowly worked them down and tossed them to the side. She placed her hands on her hips and ran them down the front of each thigh, unable to resist tantalizing him. She slid just her nails back up the inside of her legs, along the lines beside her sex and up to her breasts.

"Oh, sweet Gods!" The sight of her touching herself, of her pale skin glowing in the moonlight, of her womanhood now in full view, the sweeping curves of her nude body more sensual than he had ever imagined, was more than Chakotay could take. She filled his vision as he grabbed his straining cock with one hand and squeezed tightly, his hips bucking upward, his other hand balling the cloth in his fist.

Kathryn took pity on him and knelt at his feet. She stretched her body out over his, sweeping her hard nipples over his legs and across the tip of his member. She bent her head down and gently bit his nipple before moving to the other one. She nipped that one, too, and then raked her tongue down his body as she curled back onto her knees.

He was still holding his erection, stroking it slowly. She licked the tip of it, eliciting a half-gasp, half-sob from his throat. She replaced his hand with her own, continuing his rhythm for a brief few seconds before squeezing the base. As she squeezed, she took him into her mouth and clamped her lips around him. Her tongue circled his cock and licked up the shaft to the sensitive underside of the head before she opened her fingers and took all of him into the heat of her throat.

"Kath…" It was the only coherent sound he uttered before his breath left him. His hips ground against her over and over. He couldn't stop them any more than he could halt the gravitational pull of a singularity. She expertly matched him, humming softly on his ascent and sucking hungrily on his retreat. He looked down and saw himself thrusting in and out of her, and Chakotay knew his control had flown completely. Her wet sucking, the slide of her tongue up and down his shaft, the subtle vibrations as he hit the back of her throat, all worked in perfect harmony to hurl him headlong over the cliff.

He felt the first flood wave rush through his body. All he could do was warn her. "I can't stop, Kathryn!" he growled as he grabbed her head with his hands and tried to pull away from her. She only clamped down harder and suckled him in the moist heat of her mouth. His every desire, every want of her, every fleeting thought of her he had suppressed for so long exploded in his primal cry ringing through the holodeck. Her hand and lips worked in time to the pumping of his spilling seed. His orgasm seared through his nerves to his very bones, culminating in a white flash behind his eyes. He cried out again and lifted them both halfway off the blanket with the power of his release. Just when he thought it would never stop, that he was lost forever in the shattering of time and space, his convulsions began to slow. She slowed with him, lessening her pressure around him. Finally, when she felt him soften between her lips, she gently slid him out of her mouth, kissed the head lightly, and slithered her way back up his body.

Kathryn lay beside him and rested her head on his shoulder, pulling his arm over her side. She looked up into his face and smiled languidly. His heart still pounded in his chest and his entire body had melted in in a quivering puddle. "Great heavens, woman," he panted. "What did you do to me?"

"Mmmm," she sighed. "I was only returning the favor. Did you like it?"

"I didn't know it was possible to feel that way. I am not as young as I used to be, you know. I'm wondering if I need to call the Doctor to get my heart beat back to normal." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "I've never done that before," he panted.

Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. She rose up her elbow and looked down at him. "You have never had a woman do that?" she asked.

"I didn't mean that. It's just that the times before, they always stopped before, well…"

"Before you came?" she completed his sentence.

Chakotay laughed softly. "Yeah, that." He grinned at her.

"What? You can do it but you can't say it?" she teased.

He chuckled again. "It just sounded so… so crass in my head."

"Chakotay, I am not a prude," she insisted playfully, an impish half-grin on her face.

He caressed her cheek, growing serious, and told her, "I have and always will have the greatest respect for you, Kathryn. I can't explain it. You are the strongest woman I have ever known, but still I feel an obligation to protect you from the harshness in life as much as I can. I know I can't shield you from the Delta Quadrant, and I can't take on your burdens of your ship and your crew. But I can, as much as possible, deflect some of the worst." He smiled softly at her. "Even when that worst is me."

She leaned over to give him a long, lingering kiss, tenderness returning now that the immediacy of their passion was not consuming them. She rose up again and pressed her palm to his chest just over his heart. "I have needed you more than you know to share my burdens. Not to remove them, but to share them with me. And I admit that I have known, and sometimes felt guilty, that you were deflecting what you could from me. I have asked you to give me everything and more, and you have never hesitated in doing so. I have demanded more from you than any being has a right to demand from another."

She lowered her eyes from his. "I have also required of you to hide your true self, your true feelings, from myself and from the crew. No longer, Chakotay. I will not ask you to hide any part of yourself from me again. From the crew, maybe, for a time, but not from me." She looked at him again, wanting to read his eyes and the life behind them. "Intimacy is never crass when it is with the one you love."

Against his will, a tear escaped the corner of his eyelashes after hearing her words. She had said, "the one you love." But it was not the same to him. He needed to hear her say it, really say it. He cupped her cheek in his hand, a gentle pressure of his thumb on her chin keeping her in place where he could stare into the deep blue of her gaze. "Do you?" he asked her softly.

She returned his stare, brushed her fingers lightly across his brow and down the line of his jaw, and confirmed with absolute conviction, "I love you, Chakotay."

He ran his hand through the soft hair at her temple. "Kathryn, I love you, too."

There was nothing left to say. She lowered her head to his shoulder again, the weight of his arm over her side pulling her into the safety and sanctuary of this man that loved her with his whole being. As quietly as she could, she instructed the computer to return the boat to the dock. Those minutes it took to make the trip, locked away here with the soft breeze playing over her naked body and the warmth of him solid and real underneath her, were the most content she had spent in her life. His words to her on that evening back on New Earth replayed unbidden in her mind. She finally understood in the depths of her very core what he had meant by the "true meaning of peace."

Chakotay felt the boat slow to a stop, and he glanced over Kathryn's shoulder. They were at the shore, the wooden dock visible through the little ship's railing. He rose up, careful to cradle her head on his arm. With his other hand, he trailed a light finger over the strong features of her cheek bone and jaw and down to her chin. "I don't want to leave," he told her softly. "I want to stay here with you forever."

She sat up and placed her delicate hand on the back of his neck. Suddenly, her eyebrow quirked upward and she crooned, "Oh, we're not leaving yet." She reached behind her and groped for her shirt. She pulled it over her head then stood up. "Oh!" she cried, bending over with her hands on her thighs. Alarmed, he started toward her. She held up her hand and let out a throaty laugh. "I'm okay. I guess I don't recover as quickly as I used to, either."

He grinned knowingly, then stood up and placed his hand on the small of her back. When she straightened up again, he kissed her. He loved the silky feel of her shirt as he slid his hand down to her barely covered buttocks. "What did you mean 'we are not leaving yet'?" he asked.

She kissed him back, more forcefully but briefly. "We still have a few hours before our duty shifts begin. And there is a lovely little cabin sitting over there." She nodded her head toward the small rise and squeezed his hand. "It would be a shame to waste it."

His eyes darkened again and he felt a twinge somewhere in the center of his body. He laughed at the surprise of it. Only she could awaken him so quickly after the shattering release he had experienced just a short time ago.

Kathryn was gathering up the rest of her clothing, but she didn't put it on. She started off the boat with her bundle in one hand and the picnic basket in other. The scalloped hem of her white blouse brushed lightly along the very tops of each leg as she stepped.

"Gods, you are beautiful!" he called after her. It felt so good to finally say those words out loud to her. She turned slightly toward him, looking over her shoulder. He could see uncertainty briefly play across her face. This deepened personal relationship was still very new for the both of them, but he understood that it would take her longer to fully let go of her barriers and open up to him.

Then she smiled, a glint in her eye signaling her receptiveness. "And you, my handsome warrior," her alto spoke, "are all mine." Kathryn turned back and started off across the lake shore toward the path to the cabin.

Chakotay quickly pulled on his boxers, gathered the rest of his clothing in a bundle as she had done, and swept up the blanket and champagne bottle off the deck of the boat. He followed in her wake, letting his eyes roam over the back of her from her tiny bare feet lightly sinking in the sand, to the sway of her silk-clad hips, to the waves of her long auburn hair bouncing with her step. Oh, sweet Spirits, no. We are not leaving yet, he thought to himself.