The Easy Question
Title: “The Easy Question”
Summary: When the gods bring you a blessing, you can’t tell ‘em they’ve got the wrong house. (AU in an undestroyed Caprica City)
Characters: Kara & Lee
Rating: NC-17 for explicit sexual situations
Author Notes: A gift for indigo419 for the pilots_presents challenge and probably the most fun I've had writing BSG fic.
Past midnight, outside Lee’s house on the far west side of C City, and the beast Kara normally kept caged inside her was loose and prowling. After thirty straight hours on call, she’d shaken off her scrubs to grab a few drinks with Karl and Alex and Gaeta. She wasn’t drunk; she was restless. Half-bear, half-wolf, the beast inside her was always hungry. At least, this last year.
It was growling as she let herself into Lee’s apartment, where the smell of steaks sizzling, and the sound of oldies piping in the wireless felt so… so homey, and domestic. He’d probably turned on the frakking lanterns on the back patio.
She was a godsdamned doctor. She’d spent all day healing-well, trying to heal-but now, she wanted to slash at something. Dammit. Get back in your cage.
At Lee Adama.
She knew Lee heard the too-hard slam of the door, could almost see the steadying breath he took to brace himself for her mood, and felt her blood rage again, just picturing it. “In the bedroom,” he called mildly.
That meant kitchen. Early in their relationship, every time he’d tried to make dinner for her, she’d gotten him naked instead, and when he’d tried to romance her in his bedroom, she’d developed a sudden, insatiable desire to go out for barbecue, or pasta, or gumbo. He’d learned misdirection fast.
So, fine, she was perverse. When someone pushed her one way, Kara pulled the other. Her dad had sent her to art school in Rhodes, encouraged her to pursue painting; Kara had transferred colleges and gone pre-med at Corsica University behind his back. And her mother, gods rest her soul, had never been subtle about pushing Kara into following her into the military. When Socrata Thrace had come home on Kara’s ninth birthday with a set of battlestar action figures (complete with a commander and XO, sixty Viper pilots and a deck crew), she’d buried the lot of them, one at a time, around the whole neighborhood, so they couldn’t be recovered.
Gods, Mama had been furious, and if Papa hadn’t intervened….
Not, of course, that Kara had told Lee any of this. He’d gotten some of it from Karl, though, and had ventured to ask her a few questions which she had firmly and categorically shut down. Karl was becoming a meddlesome old woman, and she couldn’t get rid of him ‘cause they’d gotten out of the neighborhood in C-City known as Watchtower Hill together, against some steep odds.
“Smells great, Mrs. Adama,” she called back to the kitchen mockingly as she kicked her shoes into the hall closet. She frowned. The door was sticking. She’d have to fix that tomorrow.
She suspected, sometimes, that Lee was proud of her. And if he ever slipped and told her that, she swore to the gods she’d walk that same second. The worst part was that she knew he knew it, knew he’d sighted and skillfully dodged every damn one of those traps that littered the ground between them. So far, he’d outsmarted her every step of the godsdamned way.
Now, a barely-banked fire in her eyes, she leaned against the kitchen doorframe. There was Lee, still in his dress trousers and a button-down. Just like he was still ready, hours after every other person with a normal job had gone to sleep, for another round of meetings with colonial staffers.
“I see you’re settled in for the night,” she mocked.
He followed her gaze, glanced down at his outfit. “I had late drinks with Representative Sarmati,” he said briefly.
“You didn’t have to wait up.” Or make dinner at midnight.
He shook his head. “I’m not going into the office tomorrow. And I haven’t eaten anything yet.”
He’d waited on dinner. Waited up, and must have known that she’d stopped off for drinks when she’d gotten off work, despite the fact that she’d known he was waiting. He’d restructured his whole frakking life around her backwards schedule. She was just waiting for him to call her on it. She’d bolt. Why the frak won’t he call me on it?
“No high-powered meetings tomorrow, huh, big shot?”
Now there was a tic in his jaw. She was irritating him. Good. “Rough day?” was all he said.
“What will the neighbors think if they see you lounging around in the middle of the week-”
He shot her a quelling look. “I don’t give a frak what the neighbors think.”
“Except when they complain about the noise from one of your dinner parties, or the color you paint the shutters, or a frakking branch hanging over the damn-”
“You want to fight about my neighbors, tonight, Kara?” His hands were a little rough as he transferred greens from a big bowl onto their plates. “That’s your problem? You’re mad that I respond when they have problems?”
“Respond? You respond like the fire department does, Adama. I think it took you six hours from the minute that Mrs. Garrison criticized them to repaint every shutter on the damned house.” She hitched herself so she was sitting up on the counter.
“She knew the old neighbors, Kara. They lived here for fifty years. She’s ninety-two frakking years old!” He all but threw the spoon back in the salad bowl. “So what does it cost me if she wants to keep things looking the way they used to for a while? A bucket of paint, a couple hours. So I’m a sucker. Fine. Point made! How was your damn day?”
He turned the heat off on the stove with an irritated flick of his wrist and threw a cabinet door open to grab two plates. Kara felt a slow smile creeping over her face. The beast smelled blood.
“Oh, fine and dandy. Zak was in for the results of his annual screenings.” Now Lee’s hands slowed in the silverware drawer.
“Has it been a year?” He was tense, now, and turned to look at her.
“Nervous that you missed our anniversary, sugar?” Her voice was oddly high-pitched, on that, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Don’t mistake your issues for mine, Kara.” Or maybe he had noticed. There was a tone in her voice that made her think… anyway, that was more than he usually would have said.
She got hold of herself. “Everything’s clean. White blood cell count high. Everything looks good.”
“Good.” He nodded. “He would have called me otherwise.” He muttered that, and she could hear that he was telling himself that, not her, reminding himself it was true.
They’d met, a year before, because Zak Adama had been in her caseload for months. The medically interesting progression of his bone cancer aside, he’d become a special favorite of hers, with his easy flirtation, his thinly concealed air of vulnerability, and his relentless affable kindness to the nurses and other patients in the ward. She’d met both of his parents many times, heard about his brother with the fancy law degree. She’d gotten an impression: the sharp forward arrows of Lee Adama’s work ethic, the tight, hard corners of his work’s ethics. And she’d even been there once or twice when Lee had called from Themis-he’d been chief of staff to one of the High Justices-and had thought, well, he can’t be a total asshole if he makes Zak laugh that hard.
And then Lee had started up his think tank, and come home, just in time for Zak’s last in-patient release day. She’d been on break. She probably shouldn’t have been with Zak Adama, as she shouldn’t have been many nights, that month. But there she was, chatting with Zak as he ate dinner, when Lee had sauntered in with a bunch of flowers clutched in one hand, looking tense like family often did, on their first visit to the oncology ward.
And then his gaze had flickered, and he’d seen her, standing in her lab coat. His fingers had slipped. He’d just about dropped his flowers, had to fumble for them, barely got it together enough to say, no, they weren’t for Zak, they were for his fabulous doctor. Sometimes she thought that maybe, at that second, he’d felt it, too, those first four feelings all at once:
Heat.
Recognition.
Longing.
Terror.
The first howls of the beast.
“He was going to ask you out, you know.”
She blinked. “Who, Zak?” She supposed she’d known that. She would have asked him out herself, probably, knowing her. She hadn’t let herself think about it, about what she would have done, about how close she’d let Zak get. Lee was watching her now. Carefully. “Was he mad about it? At you? About me, I mean.” She almost cursed at how her tongue stumbled over that simple question.
Except nothing’s ever simple with Lee. Everything’s always one sentence away from total ruin.
She felt what her heart was doing, reached instinctively to measure her own pulse. He saw, of course, and it seemed to help him make up his mind about something.
“He wasn’t thrilled, no. The word ‘poaching’ came up a few times.” Lee shrugged, more a roll of his shoulders. Then he squared them. “He says I won’t make you happy.” Quiet, but firm.
Wrong way around, Zak. “What the frak does he know about it?” Warning bells were clanging in her head. Shut this down, Kara. She turned to the cupboard beside her, pulled out a pair of glasses. No wine, tonight-it was too late-but she could use a glass of water, maybe some aspirin. And a distraction.
“Can I, Kara?”
“Can you what?” She turned to the tap, but he snagged her forearm, pulled her gently toward him.
“Make you happy,” he said flatly.
She swallowed. Tell him he doesn’t. Tell him you can’t be. This is it. He’s looking for an out, so give it to him, already.
“You make me dinner,” she heard herself say thinly.
“I just-Zak’s right. I can’t figure out what you need,” he thrust an impatient hand through his hair. “Look, Kara, it’s time we had this out. You want to frak instead of talk-fine. I shut up and get you off. You want to leave, every frakking morning, before I wake up-okay. I keep my eyes shut and let you slip out.” Her heart skipped a beat. “You want to go out for godsdamned drinks after work when you probably haven’t eaten in twelve hours, and I stand here, so tired I can barely see straight, and I make you a damned dinner.” At that, he picked up their plates and practically threw them on the kitchen table.
She’d been right about the patio. She could see through the kitchen window that the lanterns were on, and there was a candle flickering in a glass bowl out on the table. But now he was ignoring it.
She’d made him forget his plan. The beast bared its throat in triumph.
“Sex and dinner is more than I’m used to sharing, champ.” She was wary, placating. Mostly she just wanted him to keep talking. The beast wanted it. “You say it like it’s-like it’s nothing-”
“Sex and dinner?” He was incredulous. “A year in, that’s what this relationship is, to you?”
“No. It’s-” she closed her eyes, prepared herself to ask a question that she never let herself so much as think. “What do you need, Lee?”
Tell me it’s not me. I know it’s not. And I’ll be able to do the right thing and go.
His eyes glinted for a second, and she had one of those flashes he occasionally gave her-one where she realized that he was a man who could be shockingly dangerous. Quick as a flash, he swooped in for her mouth, his hand sliding to the small of her back, pulling her up hard against his body. She opened her mouth on instinct, and then their tongues became joined, hot and slow. And dangerous.
She was moving to bite his lip when he pulled his head up. “I need you to eat,” he said.
“You… what?”
“When was the last time you ate, Kara?” He was going to keep at this.
She met his eyes guiltily. “Aside from the nuts at the bar? Maybe about ten hours ago.”
“Yeah. Okay. Sit. Eat.”
He led by example, and she followed him, thrown more than a little off-balance by his mood tonight.
They didn’t say much, through dinner. He asked her to decode what the tests had shown about Zak’s remission, and she complied. She asked if his father had stopped by today to bring some property agreements on which he wanted Lee’s legal advice. He had. She ate the meal, noticing he’d cooked her steak medium rare, the way she liked it. He was so damn competent.
That creature inside her was practically whining.
When the last dishes slid into the dishwasher, Lee grabbed her hand, tugged her to the stairs.
“In a hurry, for once, Adama?”
“You better believe it.” He flashed her a grin, and if it was oddly tense, she chose not to notice. They were going to bed. A frak. It would be simple, again: he’d infiltrate, she’d surround. The first one of them to surrender would lose. They’d go again. If not tonight, in the morning. That was what she could have from him.
When he got to their room-his room, she corrected herself-he reached immediately for the tie he’d undoubtedly tossed on the bed when he’d gotten in from his drinks with the colonial representative earlier.
“We haven’t made a lot of use of these bedposts,” he ventured.
She picked up his meaning, re-evaluated the tie swiftly. “Mmm. So what’s your plan-last one to the finish line-”
“Nope.” Quick as a flash, he slid it over her right wrist, and slid it against the back left bedpost. “My game, tonight, Doc.” Intrigued, she watched him make swift work of a loose knot around the post. “Courtesy of basic training, army reserve.”
“Gods, they train you for kink in the military? I missed my calling.” She stared down at her bound hand in bemused disbelief. She grinned like she couldn’t care less, but her heart was racing. She wasn’t putting up much of a fight, she noted absently. That was bad for appearances. “So you want me at your mercy?”
He shook his head. “Nah. You’re allowed a free hand. What I want-what I need, Kara-is for you to stay. I want you to have to stay, tonight.” Her smile slid slowly down her face. “Get on the bed, honey.” He jerked his head toward the bed she was tied to, behind her.
“Convince me.”
“Okay,” Lee murmured. “Most of my training is in persuasion.” He lowered his lips almost to Kara’s mouth, but passed over them with her quick indrawn breath. He let his lips brush her chin, swept his tongue over where her pulse was pounding in her neck, then lowered his face down into the vee down deep on her sternum, darted his tongue down and inside. He pulled the shirt to the side, let his finger run up and down her skin, just under the edge of her bra. Just a finger, up and down around the edges.
“What are you doing, Leland?” she bit through her teeth. The beast was almost purring. Kara was terrified.
“Scared, Kara?”
Now she bared them. “Of you?”
He affected a puzzled frown. “Hmm. Then why’s your heart pounding so hard?” He wasn’t foolish enough to wait for an answer. He just nibbled from the spot where her jaw met her neck down to her clavicle, until she let a fast tremble shake its way out of her core. “What’s there to be afraid of in a relationship that’s mostly about dinner and sex, hmm? Let’s see.” He slid his hands slowly up her stomach, until he was cupping the underside of her breasts gently. “It wasn’t dinner, you got through that fine, even if the dressing could’ve used a little less salt.” He brushed his thumbs over her nipples, felt them pucker slightly. “You don’t usually have a problem with the sex.”
“Let’s talk about your problems-”
“So it must be that I said I wanted you to stay.” She stilled, even as he grabbed each of her nipples gently between his thumb and forefinger, and slowly pulled. She bit back a gasp. “You attached to this shirt, Kara?”
“I… what?”
“The shirt’s sentimental value, sweetheart. Try not to get distracted.”
“Well-you know, I… no, it’s just a shirt.”
He pressed gently on her shoulders until she was sitting on the bed. “And the bra?”
“It’s just a frakking bra, Adama!”
“Great. Wait here.” He smirked at her bound arm, came back seconds later from his office with a pair of sharp scissors. “Stay still. Please.” He cut two lines across her shirt, one perpendicular to the other and stretching across her arms, and then pulled it off around her, slowly. Then he stood back and stared at her, now wearing her jeans and a navy blue bra. “Do you know you’re beautiful?” he asked, as if conversationally.
She flashed a grin that told him nothing. “Oh, yeah?”
“I get that you don’t care that you are. I’m not sure if you know that you are. It’s the kind of thing you don’t let me figure out. Because Kara Thrace’ll never let anybody see her bleed. See that she has bled, ever.” He licked his lips, and she shivered. Dangerous. “But now that you’re not going anywhere…” He trailed his hand over the thin material of her bra, a little roughly. She grabbed his wrist with her free hand in mid-swipe.
“I can get out of this knot any time, Adama.” And she could. The military, by way of her mother, had trained her to escape its knots. Albeit not deliberately.
The beast howled mournfully at the idea of slipping out of this one, though.
He picked up the scissors, cut the thin strip between her breasts. “You’re a coward,” he said easily. And she gasped as if he’d just plunged her under cold water, and her breasts fell free. “Beautiful,” he murmured. Now she scrambled to get all the way onto the bed, even as spread himself alongside her. He lowered himself down over one of her nipples, let his breath warm it for a moment before he pulled it hungrily into his mouth, even as he slid his hand down over her stomach to slip beneath the waistband of her jeans. He kissed beneath her breast, along its underside, letting his tongue trail along the crease, there, as she felt two fingers struggle into her heated core, wanting to know that she was wet for him. He pulled one hard along her clit as he withdrew his hand, his pupils flaring as he felt her clench around him, there.
“I have lots of questions, Kara, now that you’re all tied up. And I think I have to finally ask them, tonight. I’ve put this off too long.” He put his hands on either side of her shoulders, anchored himself above her. “For instance. Why can’t I meet your father? He can’t be worse than mine.” He ignored her scoffing sound. “Why won’t you let me go with you to Watchtower Hill? You have to know we weren’t that well-off when I was a kid, right? And that I wouldn’t care, anyway?”
“It’s not about money, Lee.” She bit her lip. That had been almost like an answer, and she never answered. Lee saw her ice over, and forged on.
“Why won’t you take Laura into your caseload-is it just because she’s my friend? Are you jealous of her? Afraid of disappointing me? I swear to gods, Kara, all I want is for you to try to help her.” The words were tumbling out of him almost faster than he could formulate them, now. The beast was all but dancing, listening to Lee Adama’s song. “And where the hell do you go when you leave here in the mornings and you’re not on call? Why don’t you paint anymore-is that my fault?”
“You’re boring me, Adama,” she gritted.
“Can you just tell me that your mom abused you already, tell me what it was like, so I can stop pretending I don’t know?” Something choked in her throat, there, even in the beast’s throat, and that thing didn’t know fear. “And lastly,” he pressed his lips along her jaw, and ended with a kiss on her mouth that she didn’t return, “when are you gonna notice that you moved in with me? I know I can’t ask you, ‘cause you’ll bolt, but sometime you’re going to have to see that the fact that we live together means-”
She struggled underneath him, at that. “I don’t live with you.”
“Ninety-seven of the last hundred or so nights-when you haven’t been at the hospital-you’ve been right here, Kara. Mathematically speaking…”
“I go to my apartment all the time.”
“You drop in to get clothes and your mail.”
“I…” She bit her lip. If it weren’t for her studio, that would be true. And it wasn’t that she hadn’t noticed, it was that she was hoping that he hadn’t. “If you want me to-to be around less-then just say so, OK?”
“Less?” He resettled himself between her legs, let her feel his erection, pressing hard against her, there. “Two of those nights-when I was away in Boskirk, for that conference-”
“Yeah.”
“I was really hoping that you’d take my hint about my meter check and offer to stay here.” He sounded irritated with himself. “I wanted to be able to think of you, here, in my bed.” He rocked against her again. “Waiting for me. It would have meant…” He trailed off, because they both knew what it would have meant. “You don’t know how disappointed I was when I called your place and you answered, over there.”
“You could have asked me.”
“Yeah, right. And then asked where you wanted your stuff mailed as you ran out the door.”
He’d said more in the last five minutes than the last five months, at least as far as the beast was concerned. Now, that uncaged beast she’d come home with had taken over her whole body, was tallying through all those questions, adding up what they meant, in aggregate. Was about to roar. “So.” Yes. The beast inside was powerful, and it was smug. It was also happy. “Lee Adama loves me.”
Lee’s grin was lopsided, and his eyes were sad. “Is that such a revelation?”
Like all the finest revelations, it was deeply obvious in retrospect. She threaded her free hand’s fingers into his hair, and then started to giggle. “Me. Kara Thrace. Top five in his law school class at frakking Ephesus, and he chooses the girl who came within one well-timed apology to two very angry police officers from being kicked out of high school for public indecency-”
Lee cocked a brow. “You don’t think being at the top of your medical school class changes any of that math?”
“Once a frak-up, Lee, always a frak-up.” She laughed again, tried to roll over with him, but the tie around her wrist stopped her, held her in place. As he’d intended. She kept laughing. “Wait, wait, I gotta say, I thought this was just a novelty thing, for you.”
He scowled. “You think I’ve never met a beautiful genius with an attitude problem before?”
“Eh. Maybe. Maybe you’ve seen the likes of me before.” She smirked. The beast growled in satisfaction. “But I doubt it.” She let out a little shiver, right under her grin, as the beast ran alongside its old cage, scraped its claws around the side, and reminded her about another thing that had kept it trapped, there. “And it’s not about Zak? About-you know, about being grateful?”
It took him a moment. “Because you were one of his doctors and he lived?” She could hear from his tone that that had never occurred to him, and that was comforting, in itself. “Gods, this is what the Laura thing has been about, too, isn’t it?” he realized.
She struggled for the words, couldn’t say them because she’d never said them to herself. She wanted to save them-for him. But if she couldn’t, gods, she wouldn’t be able to bear it. She wouldn’t even be able to look at him.
So she kept quiet, and could hear him preparing his words; his lawyer-brain was churning through rhetoric, working out ways to talk her out of her suspicions. “It wouldn’t be any different if he’d died, Kara,” he said finally.
“If I’d killed your brother.”
“If cancer had killed my brother. No. Except that we’d have even more bullshit to work through, and your savior complex would probably be even more inflated. But no. If I’m honest, I feel a little guilty about the-about the poaching. But the fact is, you wanted me more than him.” He shrugged. “And I need you more than he did. And that’s that.”
“You… need me?” She forgot about Zak, had to stop the beast from beating her heels on the bed with delight, at that. “And you’re sure, Leland? You’re sure that I’m what you want?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Think about the last year, Kara, and what you have made me put up with.” He dipped a quick, sweet kiss onto her shoulder. “Any way I can have you. Not a lot of pride left, here.”
She’d been so afraid of the beast. For so long. The beast that had paced back and forth, clamoring for Lee Adama’s love, so that she’d had to cage it up inside her so it wouldn’t take over her whole being, so her whole being didn’t starve along with it. And now that it was gloriously free…
Well, but Kara Thrace was a survivor, and survivors double-checked for safety, and they wore protective gear when possible. So she huddled together with the beast for a moment, while they argued about whether it was safe, and under what circumstances, to go after what they wanted. She let the beast, for the first time ever, convince her: whatever they decided, Lee Adama would try to give it to them.
The conference was swift. So we’re agreed? Me first, then you? the beast growled.
Agreed. They shook hands in the recesses of her chest.
“OK, Lee, I have a deal for you.”
Lee visibly prepared himself. “Shoot.”
“I’m gonna answer one question,” he drew in a breath sharply at the word answer, “for every time you make me come.” She felt his erection surge against her thigh before anything changed on his face. A light sprang into his eyes. A competitive gleam, his warrior gleam. She frakking loved that gleam.
“You’re on,” was all he said.
She and the beast high-fived. And then she let the animal dissolve back into her soul.
Lee, in the meantime, was running his hands, very gently, up and down the inside of her arms, tracing her veins.
“Playing a long game, huh, Adama?”
“There’s no rush.” He relished the words. He was pressing feather-light kisses back along her clavicle and over her breast plate, letting his mouth slowly trail down her handcuffed arm, sipping at it along the way. When he reached the tender inside of her elbow, she let out a yelp of laughter. She’d never known she was ticklish there, before.
She never had been, before.
He smiled, nuzzled that sensitive nook, and had her shivering as he reached the erogenous zone that was her wrist-seriously, how did he do that?-sighing as he swiped his tongue around the side where his tie was digging, just a little bit, into her hand. He soothed her, there. And then he turned to her other arm, was just as soft, and she thought she might melt on the bed. And he didn’t even have her frakking jeans off yet. So she took advantage of her free hand. Her hands were seldom subtle, and cupped his dick, ran her hand up and down it through his trousers.
She saw his abdominal wall jump beneath his shirt. His eyes were calm, though. He just reached for her hand, pinned it to the bed beside her, and resumed his steady, too-gentle exploration of her body.
When he swiped a tongue over her nipple this time, she growled in frustration. “Agh. Harder. ”
He squinted at her consideringly. “Nah. Not yet.” And then he was painting his tongue all over her abdomen, for long, sweet moments. And then he was all over her belly button like he thought it was her clitoris, his tongue surging into it and curling around its rim, and the whole act was so sweet and hot and intimate that Kara thought she might scream. And for the first time, it occurred to her to wonder if there were any questions left she didn’t want to answer. Because he’d be asking a couple, for sure.
Lee pulled her jeans down very slightly, to let his teeth scrape along her hip bones, his mouth nuzzle the sensitive skin of her lower belly. And then he lowered the heel of his palm of her mons, slid it down along the crease of her pants, achingly slowly. When he slid it back up and pressed his heel down hard above her clit, she arched off the bed, and shuddered like a sheet in a windstorm.
“I take it that’s one?” So mild, her Lee. So deceptively mild. She scowled.
“Just a small one.”
He shrugged, unbothered. “Then I’ll ask an easy question, for that one.” He unsnapped her jeans, eased them off her legs, then returned one hand to pinning hers beside them.
Kara wondered why she felt so much more vulnerable, wearing one scrap of underwear, than she felt when she was naked. She was fierce, when she was naked, fierce and uncontrollable. Now…
Lee lowered his mouth to hers, and kissed her-not gently, now, but avidly, like he wanted to kiss her whole mouth, like kissing her mouth was the same as kissing her whole body. And she was kissing him, and struggling with her free hand because she wanted to slide it up his back, at least slide his frakking shirt off, but he was keeping her hand beside her, and kissing her like, well, like a man in love, she supposed. Like he could settle in for a long time.
Okay, that was gratifying, but why was it such a turn-on? She squeezed her thighs together in acknowledgement that it was, in resistance of it. “Can you take off your shirt?” she breathed against his mouth.
She felt him smile. “You think that’s gonna help your cause?”
And she raised a brow. “You so sure about what my cause is?”
He stroked his tongue along his teeth, now, and released her long enough to unbutton his shirt, pull his undershirt over his head, so there were his frakking shoulders. Kara had never been one of those teenagers who sat around the lunch table gushing about this guy’s ass or that girl’s legs, but in those days, she’d never seen Lee’s shoulders, and so she’d been another person.
He leaned down over, put his arms on either side of her so those beautiful shoulders were almost surrounding her, and whispered into her ear, “Just try to control yourself, OK?” And then he tugged her earlobe between his teeth and reached for her panties, slid them slowly down her legs. Then, holding her eyes, and probably just to make her squirm, he slid them into the left pocket of his pants.
“Hmm. How to make Kara Thrace come. Hard, this time,” he murmured, as if to himself. Seeming to reach a conclusion, he gripped her calves and swung them back around the edge of the bed, and pulled her forward so her sensitive center was at the edge of the bed. “I know how you like to bring me to my knees,” he smiled. And then sank down onto them, and pulled her knees apart with his hands and shoulders.
“Ah, the humility of Lee Adama,” Kara managed. It was a fight. She wanted to squeeze her legs back together-wanted to lower her free hand down, slide two fingers, three, up inside herself. Realizing her hand was free, she started to reach down without thinking about it, then remembered his campaign of restriction and stilled.
“Go ahead.” Lee smiled. “Touch yourself.”
She raised a brow up. “Seriously?”
He pulled her hand down, lifted her thigh over his shoulder so she could reach beneath it, set her fingers at the entrance to her vagina. “Seriously.”
“You realize that if I make myself come-”
He lowered his head, slid his hot tongue into the top crease of her vulva. She couldn’t help it. She moaned. “I’ll take the risk,” Lee’s voice came up against her body.
He busied his hands with pressing on the lowest part of her abdomen, with sliding up to her breasts and pulling on her nipples, as she dipped her own fingers into their familiar depths. She had to give it to Lee Adama. He was a quick study. He was quickly timing his tongue, curling around her clit, to the thrusts of her fingers, alternating soft and gentle to hard and fast, seeming to sense when it became to intense and lowering his tongue to slide between her fingers. He was a patient man with a gift for strategy. That this took long minutes didn’t deter him-his tongue kept up its complex dance, stroke, stroke, slide down, stroke, stroke, slide down, stroke…
When she started to shake, he tongued her hard, and began tapping his hand rapidly, with increasing strength, on the soft mound of skin just above her clitoris. And so then she didn’t stop shaking-then stopped for a moment, and he slowed-and then they started again, ministering her body together. The third time, she lost any pretense of thought. The world went noiseless and white. She probably screamed.
When she could hear again, it was the soft sound of Lee, having pulled her fingers out of her tight vaginal enclosure, kissing them gently, and laying them on the edge of the bed beside her.
He rocked back onto his heels. “How many of those do I get credit for?”
She didn’t think: “A thousand?”
“No need to flatter, Kara. I believe in hard work.”
“The gods know I’m grateful.” Did she still have bones? She stretched her legs out, ran them up and down Lee’s arms, just to check. She felt him shudder, very slightly. He was on edge, then. “How many do you think you deserve?”
“Maybe two?” he speculated. “A generous three?”
“I’m feeling generous.”
“I’m keeping this method in mind.”
She grinned, stretched again. “Are you gonna keep your pants on all night, Adama?”
She had her doubts that he could make her come again; she didn’t come from vaginal sex all that often, and surely her body had had enough. She felt content to bottom of her feet. Still, she wanted him in her, tonight. A primitive feeling, maybe-maybe it was the beast feeling it-but there it was.
Lee was, in fact, not going to keep his pants on all night. He took them off efficiently, never having been much of an exhibitionist, and slid back up onto the bed beside her. He was smiling. His eyes were hot, but they also looked easy and unguarded.
That day they’d spent together on the Oberon Bluffs-they’d gone hang gliding together, her wrapped around him from behind like she was cradling him in the sky, and they’d felt so alive, so alive and so frakking free. When they’d landed, his eyes had looked just like this.
“Good thing you’re not getting questions off me, tonight.” He shook his head. “I don’t have much stamina left, tonight.”
Now she smiled. The man had been awake for about as long as she had, minus a doctor’s mess where he could crash for a few hours. He’d made her dinner, made her come a handful of times (but who was counting?), and he was still worried about disappointing her. She felt tears threaten, blinked them back, because if they spilled over she’d have to think about them, ask herself if this were really her frakking life.
“I want you,” she whispered.
He let out a low groan, at that, and they rolled together into bed, him beside her, his legs scissoring with hers, his knee lifting hers up onto his hip, as his erection nudged up into her wetness and moved inside without any further foreplay. She gasped and sank her teeth into his shoulder. She’d forgotten how big he was, how wet she was, how good this could still feel. “I want you,” she whispered again. He grabbed her hip with shaky fingers, angled it up so that he was sliding hard against her g-spot, and lowered his mouth because although he knew he couldn’t concentrate well enough to do the feeling justice, he really wanted to kiss her, to keep kissing her. “I want you,” she gasped as his thrusts picked up speed.
And he was in and out, receding and arriving, again and again, but for once it didn’t feel like he ever really left, for a few ambrosiac minutes. He looked down at her bodies, and back at her eyes, and then squeezed his shut as if he were memorizing the pictures. His hips sped up, and she heard him let one sharp cry burst through his lips and then he leaned into her and ground out, into her forehead, “Gods, I love you, ” and at that instant, Lee Adama secured his fifth question because she shook all around him. She just let her head fall back on the pillow, and threw her free arm around his neck, and held him while he needed holding.
She felt him smile against her neck. “Let’s call that a bonus question.”
“Yeah.” She let out her breath once, hard, and then realized that she was panting, and so did it again. “But just… ask that easy one first, OK?”
“Yeah.” He was still breathing hard, too, was only now sliding out of her, coming apart from her.
They laid there for a while, Lee breathing hard near ner neck, stroking his hands up and down her sides. She was clutching his shoulder with one hand, and gradually realized that the one tied to the bedpost was also gripping the post, and so she let it go, slowly, let her hand fall as far as it could, tethered by Lee’s red tie. He watched that hand.
And then he reached for it, slid his arm out along hers.
“I have an easy question. It has to be easy. You have to have an answer, by now.” He buried his face in her neck as though she could protect him from something. And then he raised it, and looked her right in the eyes. “Kara. Do you think, if I wait long enough, there’s a chance that you could fall in love with me?”
The world went noiseless and white again, not with an orgasm, but with blank joy, as if dumped from the sky like feathers. Her grandmother, her mother’s mother, had had a saying that sprang into her head now: “When the gods bring you a blessing, you can’t tell ‘em they’ve got the wrong house.” Lee Adama definitely had the wrong house. But she couldn’t punish him for the fact that her house was built wrong, could she?
She tried to ask the beast, but it only yawned contentedly. She had to feel her way through this on her own. Gods, what would it be like if she said what she wanted to?
So she tried.
“If loving you means that I wanna be here with you every day and hope you don’t notice I’ve all but moved into your house, because I know-knew-you’d think I was taking too much of your time… if it means that I creep out every morning to go to the gym and box and run laps to make sure I’m giving you enough space… and if loving you means that I bait you with stupid arguments so that you’ll get mad enough to slip and tell me what you’re really thinking… and that I secretly want to tell you all the things I’ve been trying to stop myself from saying, to anyone, for years, even though I know it’s selfish to load you down with my problems just because you can probably bear them better than I can…” She took a breath. “Then I think I’ve loved you for a long time.”
He’d been squeezing his arms around her chest very tightly, while she was talking, and now he buried his face between her breasts for a long moment. “We’re gonna have to work on some of that,” he said, when he lifted his head again.
“We all have room for improvement, Leland,” she managed, but then those tears came, and she saw that he was fighting them, too, and she squeezed him as well as she could with her one arm while he held her with all his strength, right up against his chest, as if she were a wriggling puppy who’d somehow float away if he let go.
He rolled over so that she was lying on his chest, and she tried to think of a more comforting sound than his swift, steadying heartbeat. She wasn’t thinking about anything else. After a while, she heard, too, his breath growing even, felt his body relax.
“I love you, Lee.” She felt some of the bars in the beast’s old cage just crumble outright into dust, at that. She was proud of herself for saying it. Even if he was asleep.
But he wasn’t, quite. His heart jumped under her ear. “Love you, too,” he mumbled. “Have to stay.”
“I know. You can untie me, Lee.” He didn’t reply, just sighed into his pillow. So she worked her way free of the knot on her own. Escaping was no trouble.
She wrapped both arms around him, and silently thanked her mother.
In the morning, Kara awoke with the familiar feeling of Lee tucked up beside her, still asleep. This was usually where she’d slip out.
She pulled the tie up from where it was still tied to the post, let it flow through her fingers. And started imagining what she was going to do to Lee with a little planning and a few of this tie’s friends. Then she set it aside and rolled over.
Time for the hard part. “Wake up, Lee,” she whispered.
He opened his eyes far too quickly for someone who’d been asleep. “I’m awake,” he said. His voice said, too, that he was relieved that she wanted him to be. It broke her heart that he’d been laying there, awake, hoping she wouldn’t run away again.
He reached for her. She made herself resist, just for a moment.
“No time for snuggles this morning, Adama. We have a full day planned.”
His brows shot up. “Can I get an itinerary?”
“Yep. First I’m gonna take you to Watchtower Hill. Where you can meet my dad. Who’s probably hung over, but he’ll be on his feet well enough to have brunch with us.” She saw his eyes darken with understanding, then harden with determination. Uh-oh. Lee had found a new project. She winced, hoped it didn’t take as much out of him as fighting her father’s alcoholism had taken out of her. “He’s been drinking since before my mother died,” she added gently, “since he had to take her to court for custody of me. He loved her, you know.”
He reached for her again, but she leaned backwards.
“Then we’ll head over to my apartment. Where I’ll show you my painting studio-because I do still paint, when the mood takes me-and you can help me pack up my things.” She took a breath. “Because I live here now.” She bit her lip, still vulnerable. “Right?”
He laughed with pure joy and swung her up on top of him, pressed a kiss on her chin. “Right. We’ll have to insulate the attic for your new studio.” He smiled into her eyes, and she could see a quarter of his brain was already pricing skylights. “Guess you’re gonna have to forge a truce with Mrs. Garrison.”
She made a face. “Surely one of us being at her beck and call is plenty.”
He laughed again.
“Oh, and one more thing, Adama.”
“Shoot, doc.”
“You’re gonna have to come up with some tougher questions than those soft sliders from last night.”
And then she let him pull her back down and nuzzle her throat as she started to talk and talk. Somewhere in there, she had quite a few questions of her own, and the beast was howling at her to earn the right to ask them.
THE END
Summary: When the gods bring you a blessing, you can’t tell ‘em they’ve got the wrong house. (AU in an undestroyed Caprica City)
Characters: Kara & Lee
Rating: NC-17 for explicit sexual situations
Author Notes: A gift for indigo419 for the pilots_presents challenge and probably the most fun I've had writing BSG fic.
Past midnight, outside Lee’s house on the far west side of C City, and the beast Kara normally kept caged inside her was loose and prowling. After thirty straight hours on call, she’d shaken off her scrubs to grab a few drinks with Karl and Alex and Gaeta. She wasn’t drunk; she was restless. Half-bear, half-wolf, the beast inside her was always hungry. At least, this last year.
It was growling as she let herself into Lee’s apartment, where the smell of steaks sizzling, and the sound of oldies piping in the wireless felt so… so homey, and domestic. He’d probably turned on the frakking lanterns on the back patio.
She was a godsdamned doctor. She’d spent all day healing-well, trying to heal-but now, she wanted to slash at something. Dammit. Get back in your cage.
At Lee Adama.
She knew Lee heard the too-hard slam of the door, could almost see the steadying breath he took to brace himself for her mood, and felt her blood rage again, just picturing it. “In the bedroom,” he called mildly.
That meant kitchen. Early in their relationship, every time he’d tried to make dinner for her, she’d gotten him naked instead, and when he’d tried to romance her in his bedroom, she’d developed a sudden, insatiable desire to go out for barbecue, or pasta, or gumbo. He’d learned misdirection fast.
So, fine, she was perverse. When someone pushed her one way, Kara pulled the other. Her dad had sent her to art school in Rhodes, encouraged her to pursue painting; Kara had transferred colleges and gone pre-med at Corsica University behind his back. And her mother, gods rest her soul, had never been subtle about pushing Kara into following her into the military. When Socrata Thrace had come home on Kara’s ninth birthday with a set of battlestar action figures (complete with a commander and XO, sixty Viper pilots and a deck crew), she’d buried the lot of them, one at a time, around the whole neighborhood, so they couldn’t be recovered.
Gods, Mama had been furious, and if Papa hadn’t intervened….
Not, of course, that Kara had told Lee any of this. He’d gotten some of it from Karl, though, and had ventured to ask her a few questions which she had firmly and categorically shut down. Karl was becoming a meddlesome old woman, and she couldn’t get rid of him ‘cause they’d gotten out of the neighborhood in C-City known as Watchtower Hill together, against some steep odds.
“Smells great, Mrs. Adama,” she called back to the kitchen mockingly as she kicked her shoes into the hall closet. She frowned. The door was sticking. She’d have to fix that tomorrow.
She suspected, sometimes, that Lee was proud of her. And if he ever slipped and told her that, she swore to the gods she’d walk that same second. The worst part was that she knew he knew it, knew he’d sighted and skillfully dodged every damn one of those traps that littered the ground between them. So far, he’d outsmarted her every step of the godsdamned way.
Now, a barely-banked fire in her eyes, she leaned against the kitchen doorframe. There was Lee, still in his dress trousers and a button-down. Just like he was still ready, hours after every other person with a normal job had gone to sleep, for another round of meetings with colonial staffers.
“I see you’re settled in for the night,” she mocked.
He followed her gaze, glanced down at his outfit. “I had late drinks with Representative Sarmati,” he said briefly.
“You didn’t have to wait up.” Or make dinner at midnight.
He shook his head. “I’m not going into the office tomorrow. And I haven’t eaten anything yet.”
He’d waited on dinner. Waited up, and must have known that she’d stopped off for drinks when she’d gotten off work, despite the fact that she’d known he was waiting. He’d restructured his whole frakking life around her backwards schedule. She was just waiting for him to call her on it. She’d bolt. Why the frak won’t he call me on it?
“No high-powered meetings tomorrow, huh, big shot?”
Now there was a tic in his jaw. She was irritating him. Good. “Rough day?” was all he said.
“What will the neighbors think if they see you lounging around in the middle of the week-”
He shot her a quelling look. “I don’t give a frak what the neighbors think.”
“Except when they complain about the noise from one of your dinner parties, or the color you paint the shutters, or a frakking branch hanging over the damn-”
“You want to fight about my neighbors, tonight, Kara?” His hands were a little rough as he transferred greens from a big bowl onto their plates. “That’s your problem? You’re mad that I respond when they have problems?”
“Respond? You respond like the fire department does, Adama. I think it took you six hours from the minute that Mrs. Garrison criticized them to repaint every shutter on the damned house.” She hitched herself so she was sitting up on the counter.
“She knew the old neighbors, Kara. They lived here for fifty years. She’s ninety-two frakking years old!” He all but threw the spoon back in the salad bowl. “So what does it cost me if she wants to keep things looking the way they used to for a while? A bucket of paint, a couple hours. So I’m a sucker. Fine. Point made! How was your damn day?”
He turned the heat off on the stove with an irritated flick of his wrist and threw a cabinet door open to grab two plates. Kara felt a slow smile creeping over her face. The beast smelled blood.
“Oh, fine and dandy. Zak was in for the results of his annual screenings.” Now Lee’s hands slowed in the silverware drawer.
“Has it been a year?” He was tense, now, and turned to look at her.
“Nervous that you missed our anniversary, sugar?” Her voice was oddly high-pitched, on that, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Don’t mistake your issues for mine, Kara.” Or maybe he had noticed. There was a tone in her voice that made her think… anyway, that was more than he usually would have said.
She got hold of herself. “Everything’s clean. White blood cell count high. Everything looks good.”
“Good.” He nodded. “He would have called me otherwise.” He muttered that, and she could hear that he was telling himself that, not her, reminding himself it was true.
They’d met, a year before, because Zak Adama had been in her caseload for months. The medically interesting progression of his bone cancer aside, he’d become a special favorite of hers, with his easy flirtation, his thinly concealed air of vulnerability, and his relentless affable kindness to the nurses and other patients in the ward. She’d met both of his parents many times, heard about his brother with the fancy law degree. She’d gotten an impression: the sharp forward arrows of Lee Adama’s work ethic, the tight, hard corners of his work’s ethics. And she’d even been there once or twice when Lee had called from Themis-he’d been chief of staff to one of the High Justices-and had thought, well, he can’t be a total asshole if he makes Zak laugh that hard.
And then Lee had started up his think tank, and come home, just in time for Zak’s last in-patient release day. She’d been on break. She probably shouldn’t have been with Zak Adama, as she shouldn’t have been many nights, that month. But there she was, chatting with Zak as he ate dinner, when Lee had sauntered in with a bunch of flowers clutched in one hand, looking tense like family often did, on their first visit to the oncology ward.
And then his gaze had flickered, and he’d seen her, standing in her lab coat. His fingers had slipped. He’d just about dropped his flowers, had to fumble for them, barely got it together enough to say, no, they weren’t for Zak, they were for his fabulous doctor. Sometimes she thought that maybe, at that second, he’d felt it, too, those first four feelings all at once:
Heat.
Recognition.
Longing.
Terror.
The first howls of the beast.
“He was going to ask you out, you know.”
She blinked. “Who, Zak?” She supposed she’d known that. She would have asked him out herself, probably, knowing her. She hadn’t let herself think about it, about what she would have done, about how close she’d let Zak get. Lee was watching her now. Carefully. “Was he mad about it? At you? About me, I mean.” She almost cursed at how her tongue stumbled over that simple question.
Except nothing’s ever simple with Lee. Everything’s always one sentence away from total ruin.
She felt what her heart was doing, reached instinctively to measure her own pulse. He saw, of course, and it seemed to help him make up his mind about something.
“He wasn’t thrilled, no. The word ‘poaching’ came up a few times.” Lee shrugged, more a roll of his shoulders. Then he squared them. “He says I won’t make you happy.” Quiet, but firm.
Wrong way around, Zak. “What the frak does he know about it?” Warning bells were clanging in her head. Shut this down, Kara. She turned to the cupboard beside her, pulled out a pair of glasses. No wine, tonight-it was too late-but she could use a glass of water, maybe some aspirin. And a distraction.
“Can I, Kara?”
“Can you what?” She turned to the tap, but he snagged her forearm, pulled her gently toward him.
“Make you happy,” he said flatly.
She swallowed. Tell him he doesn’t. Tell him you can’t be. This is it. He’s looking for an out, so give it to him, already.
“You make me dinner,” she heard herself say thinly.
“I just-Zak’s right. I can’t figure out what you need,” he thrust an impatient hand through his hair. “Look, Kara, it’s time we had this out. You want to frak instead of talk-fine. I shut up and get you off. You want to leave, every frakking morning, before I wake up-okay. I keep my eyes shut and let you slip out.” Her heart skipped a beat. “You want to go out for godsdamned drinks after work when you probably haven’t eaten in twelve hours, and I stand here, so tired I can barely see straight, and I make you a damned dinner.” At that, he picked up their plates and practically threw them on the kitchen table.
She’d been right about the patio. She could see through the kitchen window that the lanterns were on, and there was a candle flickering in a glass bowl out on the table. But now he was ignoring it.
She’d made him forget his plan. The beast bared its throat in triumph.
“Sex and dinner is more than I’m used to sharing, champ.” She was wary, placating. Mostly she just wanted him to keep talking. The beast wanted it. “You say it like it’s-like it’s nothing-”
“Sex and dinner?” He was incredulous. “A year in, that’s what this relationship is, to you?”
“No. It’s-” she closed her eyes, prepared herself to ask a question that she never let herself so much as think. “What do you need, Lee?”
Tell me it’s not me. I know it’s not. And I’ll be able to do the right thing and go.
His eyes glinted for a second, and she had one of those flashes he occasionally gave her-one where she realized that he was a man who could be shockingly dangerous. Quick as a flash, he swooped in for her mouth, his hand sliding to the small of her back, pulling her up hard against his body. She opened her mouth on instinct, and then their tongues became joined, hot and slow. And dangerous.
She was moving to bite his lip when he pulled his head up. “I need you to eat,” he said.
“You… what?”
“When was the last time you ate, Kara?” He was going to keep at this.
She met his eyes guiltily. “Aside from the nuts at the bar? Maybe about ten hours ago.”
“Yeah. Okay. Sit. Eat.”
He led by example, and she followed him, thrown more than a little off-balance by his mood tonight.
They didn’t say much, through dinner. He asked her to decode what the tests had shown about Zak’s remission, and she complied. She asked if his father had stopped by today to bring some property agreements on which he wanted Lee’s legal advice. He had. She ate the meal, noticing he’d cooked her steak medium rare, the way she liked it. He was so damn competent.
That creature inside her was practically whining.
When the last dishes slid into the dishwasher, Lee grabbed her hand, tugged her to the stairs.
“In a hurry, for once, Adama?”
“You better believe it.” He flashed her a grin, and if it was oddly tense, she chose not to notice. They were going to bed. A frak. It would be simple, again: he’d infiltrate, she’d surround. The first one of them to surrender would lose. They’d go again. If not tonight, in the morning. That was what she could have from him.
When he got to their room-his room, she corrected herself-he reached immediately for the tie he’d undoubtedly tossed on the bed when he’d gotten in from his drinks with the colonial representative earlier.
“We haven’t made a lot of use of these bedposts,” he ventured.
She picked up his meaning, re-evaluated the tie swiftly. “Mmm. So what’s your plan-last one to the finish line-”
“Nope.” Quick as a flash, he slid it over her right wrist, and slid it against the back left bedpost. “My game, tonight, Doc.” Intrigued, she watched him make swift work of a loose knot around the post. “Courtesy of basic training, army reserve.”
“Gods, they train you for kink in the military? I missed my calling.” She stared down at her bound hand in bemused disbelief. She grinned like she couldn’t care less, but her heart was racing. She wasn’t putting up much of a fight, she noted absently. That was bad for appearances. “So you want me at your mercy?”
He shook his head. “Nah. You’re allowed a free hand. What I want-what I need, Kara-is for you to stay. I want you to have to stay, tonight.” Her smile slid slowly down her face. “Get on the bed, honey.” He jerked his head toward the bed she was tied to, behind her.
“Convince me.”
“Okay,” Lee murmured. “Most of my training is in persuasion.” He lowered his lips almost to Kara’s mouth, but passed over them with her quick indrawn breath. He let his lips brush her chin, swept his tongue over where her pulse was pounding in her neck, then lowered his face down into the vee down deep on her sternum, darted his tongue down and inside. He pulled the shirt to the side, let his finger run up and down her skin, just under the edge of her bra. Just a finger, up and down around the edges.
“What are you doing, Leland?” she bit through her teeth. The beast was almost purring. Kara was terrified.
“Scared, Kara?”
Now she bared them. “Of you?”
He affected a puzzled frown. “Hmm. Then why’s your heart pounding so hard?” He wasn’t foolish enough to wait for an answer. He just nibbled from the spot where her jaw met her neck down to her clavicle, until she let a fast tremble shake its way out of her core. “What’s there to be afraid of in a relationship that’s mostly about dinner and sex, hmm? Let’s see.” He slid his hands slowly up her stomach, until he was cupping the underside of her breasts gently. “It wasn’t dinner, you got through that fine, even if the dressing could’ve used a little less salt.” He brushed his thumbs over her nipples, felt them pucker slightly. “You don’t usually have a problem with the sex.”
“Let’s talk about your problems-”
“So it must be that I said I wanted you to stay.” She stilled, even as he grabbed each of her nipples gently between his thumb and forefinger, and slowly pulled. She bit back a gasp. “You attached to this shirt, Kara?”
“I… what?”
“The shirt’s sentimental value, sweetheart. Try not to get distracted.”
“Well-you know, I… no, it’s just a shirt.”
He pressed gently on her shoulders until she was sitting on the bed. “And the bra?”
“It’s just a frakking bra, Adama!”
“Great. Wait here.” He smirked at her bound arm, came back seconds later from his office with a pair of sharp scissors. “Stay still. Please.” He cut two lines across her shirt, one perpendicular to the other and stretching across her arms, and then pulled it off around her, slowly. Then he stood back and stared at her, now wearing her jeans and a navy blue bra. “Do you know you’re beautiful?” he asked, as if conversationally.
She flashed a grin that told him nothing. “Oh, yeah?”
“I get that you don’t care that you are. I’m not sure if you know that you are. It’s the kind of thing you don’t let me figure out. Because Kara Thrace’ll never let anybody see her bleed. See that she has bled, ever.” He licked his lips, and she shivered. Dangerous. “But now that you’re not going anywhere…” He trailed his hand over the thin material of her bra, a little roughly. She grabbed his wrist with her free hand in mid-swipe.
“I can get out of this knot any time, Adama.” And she could. The military, by way of her mother, had trained her to escape its knots. Albeit not deliberately.
The beast howled mournfully at the idea of slipping out of this one, though.
He picked up the scissors, cut the thin strip between her breasts. “You’re a coward,” he said easily. And she gasped as if he’d just plunged her under cold water, and her breasts fell free. “Beautiful,” he murmured. Now she scrambled to get all the way onto the bed, even as spread himself alongside her. He lowered himself down over one of her nipples, let his breath warm it for a moment before he pulled it hungrily into his mouth, even as he slid his hand down over her stomach to slip beneath the waistband of her jeans. He kissed beneath her breast, along its underside, letting his tongue trail along the crease, there, as she felt two fingers struggle into her heated core, wanting to know that she was wet for him. He pulled one hard along her clit as he withdrew his hand, his pupils flaring as he felt her clench around him, there.
“I have lots of questions, Kara, now that you’re all tied up. And I think I have to finally ask them, tonight. I’ve put this off too long.” He put his hands on either side of her shoulders, anchored himself above her. “For instance. Why can’t I meet your father? He can’t be worse than mine.” He ignored her scoffing sound. “Why won’t you let me go with you to Watchtower Hill? You have to know we weren’t that well-off when I was a kid, right? And that I wouldn’t care, anyway?”
“It’s not about money, Lee.” She bit her lip. That had been almost like an answer, and she never answered. Lee saw her ice over, and forged on.
“Why won’t you take Laura into your caseload-is it just because she’s my friend? Are you jealous of her? Afraid of disappointing me? I swear to gods, Kara, all I want is for you to try to help her.” The words were tumbling out of him almost faster than he could formulate them, now. The beast was all but dancing, listening to Lee Adama’s song. “And where the hell do you go when you leave here in the mornings and you’re not on call? Why don’t you paint anymore-is that my fault?”
“You’re boring me, Adama,” she gritted.
“Can you just tell me that your mom abused you already, tell me what it was like, so I can stop pretending I don’t know?” Something choked in her throat, there, even in the beast’s throat, and that thing didn’t know fear. “And lastly,” he pressed his lips along her jaw, and ended with a kiss on her mouth that she didn’t return, “when are you gonna notice that you moved in with me? I know I can’t ask you, ‘cause you’ll bolt, but sometime you’re going to have to see that the fact that we live together means-”
She struggled underneath him, at that. “I don’t live with you.”
“Ninety-seven of the last hundred or so nights-when you haven’t been at the hospital-you’ve been right here, Kara. Mathematically speaking…”
“I go to my apartment all the time.”
“You drop in to get clothes and your mail.”
“I…” She bit her lip. If it weren’t for her studio, that would be true. And it wasn’t that she hadn’t noticed, it was that she was hoping that he hadn’t. “If you want me to-to be around less-then just say so, OK?”
“Less?” He resettled himself between her legs, let her feel his erection, pressing hard against her, there. “Two of those nights-when I was away in Boskirk, for that conference-”
“Yeah.”
“I was really hoping that you’d take my hint about my meter check and offer to stay here.” He sounded irritated with himself. “I wanted to be able to think of you, here, in my bed.” He rocked against her again. “Waiting for me. It would have meant…” He trailed off, because they both knew what it would have meant. “You don’t know how disappointed I was when I called your place and you answered, over there.”
“You could have asked me.”
“Yeah, right. And then asked where you wanted your stuff mailed as you ran out the door.”
He’d said more in the last five minutes than the last five months, at least as far as the beast was concerned. Now, that uncaged beast she’d come home with had taken over her whole body, was tallying through all those questions, adding up what they meant, in aggregate. Was about to roar. “So.” Yes. The beast inside was powerful, and it was smug. It was also happy. “Lee Adama loves me.”
Lee’s grin was lopsided, and his eyes were sad. “Is that such a revelation?”
Like all the finest revelations, it was deeply obvious in retrospect. She threaded her free hand’s fingers into his hair, and then started to giggle. “Me. Kara Thrace. Top five in his law school class at frakking Ephesus, and he chooses the girl who came within one well-timed apology to two very angry police officers from being kicked out of high school for public indecency-”
Lee cocked a brow. “You don’t think being at the top of your medical school class changes any of that math?”
“Once a frak-up, Lee, always a frak-up.” She laughed again, tried to roll over with him, but the tie around her wrist stopped her, held her in place. As he’d intended. She kept laughing. “Wait, wait, I gotta say, I thought this was just a novelty thing, for you.”
He scowled. “You think I’ve never met a beautiful genius with an attitude problem before?”
“Eh. Maybe. Maybe you’ve seen the likes of me before.” She smirked. The beast growled in satisfaction. “But I doubt it.” She let out a little shiver, right under her grin, as the beast ran alongside its old cage, scraped its claws around the side, and reminded her about another thing that had kept it trapped, there. “And it’s not about Zak? About-you know, about being grateful?”
It took him a moment. “Because you were one of his doctors and he lived?” She could hear from his tone that that had never occurred to him, and that was comforting, in itself. “Gods, this is what the Laura thing has been about, too, isn’t it?” he realized.
She struggled for the words, couldn’t say them because she’d never said them to herself. She wanted to save them-for him. But if she couldn’t, gods, she wouldn’t be able to bear it. She wouldn’t even be able to look at him.
So she kept quiet, and could hear him preparing his words; his lawyer-brain was churning through rhetoric, working out ways to talk her out of her suspicions. “It wouldn’t be any different if he’d died, Kara,” he said finally.
“If I’d killed your brother.”
“If cancer had killed my brother. No. Except that we’d have even more bullshit to work through, and your savior complex would probably be even more inflated. But no. If I’m honest, I feel a little guilty about the-about the poaching. But the fact is, you wanted me more than him.” He shrugged. “And I need you more than he did. And that’s that.”
“You… need me?” She forgot about Zak, had to stop the beast from beating her heels on the bed with delight, at that. “And you’re sure, Leland? You’re sure that I’m what you want?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Think about the last year, Kara, and what you have made me put up with.” He dipped a quick, sweet kiss onto her shoulder. “Any way I can have you. Not a lot of pride left, here.”
She’d been so afraid of the beast. For so long. The beast that had paced back and forth, clamoring for Lee Adama’s love, so that she’d had to cage it up inside her so it wouldn’t take over her whole being, so her whole being didn’t starve along with it. And now that it was gloriously free…
Well, but Kara Thrace was a survivor, and survivors double-checked for safety, and they wore protective gear when possible. So she huddled together with the beast for a moment, while they argued about whether it was safe, and under what circumstances, to go after what they wanted. She let the beast, for the first time ever, convince her: whatever they decided, Lee Adama would try to give it to them.
The conference was swift. So we’re agreed? Me first, then you? the beast growled.
Agreed. They shook hands in the recesses of her chest.
“OK, Lee, I have a deal for you.”
Lee visibly prepared himself. “Shoot.”
“I’m gonna answer one question,” he drew in a breath sharply at the word answer, “for every time you make me come.” She felt his erection surge against her thigh before anything changed on his face. A light sprang into his eyes. A competitive gleam, his warrior gleam. She frakking loved that gleam.
“You’re on,” was all he said.
She and the beast high-fived. And then she let the animal dissolve back into her soul.
Lee, in the meantime, was running his hands, very gently, up and down the inside of her arms, tracing her veins.
“Playing a long game, huh, Adama?”
“There’s no rush.” He relished the words. He was pressing feather-light kisses back along her clavicle and over her breast plate, letting his mouth slowly trail down her handcuffed arm, sipping at it along the way. When he reached the tender inside of her elbow, she let out a yelp of laughter. She’d never known she was ticklish there, before.
She never had been, before.
He smiled, nuzzled that sensitive nook, and had her shivering as he reached the erogenous zone that was her wrist-seriously, how did he do that?-sighing as he swiped his tongue around the side where his tie was digging, just a little bit, into her hand. He soothed her, there. And then he turned to her other arm, was just as soft, and she thought she might melt on the bed. And he didn’t even have her frakking jeans off yet. So she took advantage of her free hand. Her hands were seldom subtle, and cupped his dick, ran her hand up and down it through his trousers.
She saw his abdominal wall jump beneath his shirt. His eyes were calm, though. He just reached for her hand, pinned it to the bed beside her, and resumed his steady, too-gentle exploration of her body.
When he swiped a tongue over her nipple this time, she growled in frustration. “Agh. Harder. ”
He squinted at her consideringly. “Nah. Not yet.” And then he was painting his tongue all over her abdomen, for long, sweet moments. And then he was all over her belly button like he thought it was her clitoris, his tongue surging into it and curling around its rim, and the whole act was so sweet and hot and intimate that Kara thought she might scream. And for the first time, it occurred to her to wonder if there were any questions left she didn’t want to answer. Because he’d be asking a couple, for sure.
Lee pulled her jeans down very slightly, to let his teeth scrape along her hip bones, his mouth nuzzle the sensitive skin of her lower belly. And then he lowered the heel of his palm of her mons, slid it down along the crease of her pants, achingly slowly. When he slid it back up and pressed his heel down hard above her clit, she arched off the bed, and shuddered like a sheet in a windstorm.
“I take it that’s one?” So mild, her Lee. So deceptively mild. She scowled.
“Just a small one.”
He shrugged, unbothered. “Then I’ll ask an easy question, for that one.” He unsnapped her jeans, eased them off her legs, then returned one hand to pinning hers beside them.
Kara wondered why she felt so much more vulnerable, wearing one scrap of underwear, than she felt when she was naked. She was fierce, when she was naked, fierce and uncontrollable. Now…
Lee lowered his mouth to hers, and kissed her-not gently, now, but avidly, like he wanted to kiss her whole mouth, like kissing her mouth was the same as kissing her whole body. And she was kissing him, and struggling with her free hand because she wanted to slide it up his back, at least slide his frakking shirt off, but he was keeping her hand beside her, and kissing her like, well, like a man in love, she supposed. Like he could settle in for a long time.
Okay, that was gratifying, but why was it such a turn-on? She squeezed her thighs together in acknowledgement that it was, in resistance of it. “Can you take off your shirt?” she breathed against his mouth.
She felt him smile. “You think that’s gonna help your cause?”
And she raised a brow. “You so sure about what my cause is?”
He stroked his tongue along his teeth, now, and released her long enough to unbutton his shirt, pull his undershirt over his head, so there were his frakking shoulders. Kara had never been one of those teenagers who sat around the lunch table gushing about this guy’s ass or that girl’s legs, but in those days, she’d never seen Lee’s shoulders, and so she’d been another person.
He leaned down over, put his arms on either side of her so those beautiful shoulders were almost surrounding her, and whispered into her ear, “Just try to control yourself, OK?” And then he tugged her earlobe between his teeth and reached for her panties, slid them slowly down her legs. Then, holding her eyes, and probably just to make her squirm, he slid them into the left pocket of his pants.
“Hmm. How to make Kara Thrace come. Hard, this time,” he murmured, as if to himself. Seeming to reach a conclusion, he gripped her calves and swung them back around the edge of the bed, and pulled her forward so her sensitive center was at the edge of the bed. “I know how you like to bring me to my knees,” he smiled. And then sank down onto them, and pulled her knees apart with his hands and shoulders.
“Ah, the humility of Lee Adama,” Kara managed. It was a fight. She wanted to squeeze her legs back together-wanted to lower her free hand down, slide two fingers, three, up inside herself. Realizing her hand was free, she started to reach down without thinking about it, then remembered his campaign of restriction and stilled.
“Go ahead.” Lee smiled. “Touch yourself.”
She raised a brow up. “Seriously?”
He pulled her hand down, lifted her thigh over his shoulder so she could reach beneath it, set her fingers at the entrance to her vagina. “Seriously.”
“You realize that if I make myself come-”
He lowered his head, slid his hot tongue into the top crease of her vulva. She couldn’t help it. She moaned. “I’ll take the risk,” Lee’s voice came up against her body.
He busied his hands with pressing on the lowest part of her abdomen, with sliding up to her breasts and pulling on her nipples, as she dipped her own fingers into their familiar depths. She had to give it to Lee Adama. He was a quick study. He was quickly timing his tongue, curling around her clit, to the thrusts of her fingers, alternating soft and gentle to hard and fast, seeming to sense when it became to intense and lowering his tongue to slide between her fingers. He was a patient man with a gift for strategy. That this took long minutes didn’t deter him-his tongue kept up its complex dance, stroke, stroke, slide down, stroke, stroke, slide down, stroke…
When she started to shake, he tongued her hard, and began tapping his hand rapidly, with increasing strength, on the soft mound of skin just above her clitoris. And so then she didn’t stop shaking-then stopped for a moment, and he slowed-and then they started again, ministering her body together. The third time, she lost any pretense of thought. The world went noiseless and white. She probably screamed.
When she could hear again, it was the soft sound of Lee, having pulled her fingers out of her tight vaginal enclosure, kissing them gently, and laying them on the edge of the bed beside her.
He rocked back onto his heels. “How many of those do I get credit for?”
She didn’t think: “A thousand?”
“No need to flatter, Kara. I believe in hard work.”
“The gods know I’m grateful.” Did she still have bones? She stretched her legs out, ran them up and down Lee’s arms, just to check. She felt him shudder, very slightly. He was on edge, then. “How many do you think you deserve?”
“Maybe two?” he speculated. “A generous three?”
“I’m feeling generous.”
“I’m keeping this method in mind.”
She grinned, stretched again. “Are you gonna keep your pants on all night, Adama?”
She had her doubts that he could make her come again; she didn’t come from vaginal sex all that often, and surely her body had had enough. She felt content to bottom of her feet. Still, she wanted him in her, tonight. A primitive feeling, maybe-maybe it was the beast feeling it-but there it was.
Lee was, in fact, not going to keep his pants on all night. He took them off efficiently, never having been much of an exhibitionist, and slid back up onto the bed beside her. He was smiling. His eyes were hot, but they also looked easy and unguarded.
That day they’d spent together on the Oberon Bluffs-they’d gone hang gliding together, her wrapped around him from behind like she was cradling him in the sky, and they’d felt so alive, so alive and so frakking free. When they’d landed, his eyes had looked just like this.
“Good thing you’re not getting questions off me, tonight.” He shook his head. “I don’t have much stamina left, tonight.”
Now she smiled. The man had been awake for about as long as she had, minus a doctor’s mess where he could crash for a few hours. He’d made her dinner, made her come a handful of times (but who was counting?), and he was still worried about disappointing her. She felt tears threaten, blinked them back, because if they spilled over she’d have to think about them, ask herself if this were really her frakking life.
“I want you,” she whispered.
He let out a low groan, at that, and they rolled together into bed, him beside her, his legs scissoring with hers, his knee lifting hers up onto his hip, as his erection nudged up into her wetness and moved inside without any further foreplay. She gasped and sank her teeth into his shoulder. She’d forgotten how big he was, how wet she was, how good this could still feel. “I want you,” she whispered again. He grabbed her hip with shaky fingers, angled it up so that he was sliding hard against her g-spot, and lowered his mouth because although he knew he couldn’t concentrate well enough to do the feeling justice, he really wanted to kiss her, to keep kissing her. “I want you,” she gasped as his thrusts picked up speed.
And he was in and out, receding and arriving, again and again, but for once it didn’t feel like he ever really left, for a few ambrosiac minutes. He looked down at her bodies, and back at her eyes, and then squeezed his shut as if he were memorizing the pictures. His hips sped up, and she heard him let one sharp cry burst through his lips and then he leaned into her and ground out, into her forehead, “Gods, I love you, ” and at that instant, Lee Adama secured his fifth question because she shook all around him. She just let her head fall back on the pillow, and threw her free arm around his neck, and held him while he needed holding.
She felt him smile against her neck. “Let’s call that a bonus question.”
“Yeah.” She let out her breath once, hard, and then realized that she was panting, and so did it again. “But just… ask that easy one first, OK?”
“Yeah.” He was still breathing hard, too, was only now sliding out of her, coming apart from her.
They laid there for a while, Lee breathing hard near ner neck, stroking his hands up and down her sides. She was clutching his shoulder with one hand, and gradually realized that the one tied to the bedpost was also gripping the post, and so she let it go, slowly, let her hand fall as far as it could, tethered by Lee’s red tie. He watched that hand.
And then he reached for it, slid his arm out along hers.
“I have an easy question. It has to be easy. You have to have an answer, by now.” He buried his face in her neck as though she could protect him from something. And then he raised it, and looked her right in the eyes. “Kara. Do you think, if I wait long enough, there’s a chance that you could fall in love with me?”
The world went noiseless and white again, not with an orgasm, but with blank joy, as if dumped from the sky like feathers. Her grandmother, her mother’s mother, had had a saying that sprang into her head now: “When the gods bring you a blessing, you can’t tell ‘em they’ve got the wrong house.” Lee Adama definitely had the wrong house. But she couldn’t punish him for the fact that her house was built wrong, could she?
She tried to ask the beast, but it only yawned contentedly. She had to feel her way through this on her own. Gods, what would it be like if she said what she wanted to?
So she tried.
“If loving you means that I wanna be here with you every day and hope you don’t notice I’ve all but moved into your house, because I know-knew-you’d think I was taking too much of your time… if it means that I creep out every morning to go to the gym and box and run laps to make sure I’m giving you enough space… and if loving you means that I bait you with stupid arguments so that you’ll get mad enough to slip and tell me what you’re really thinking… and that I secretly want to tell you all the things I’ve been trying to stop myself from saying, to anyone, for years, even though I know it’s selfish to load you down with my problems just because you can probably bear them better than I can…” She took a breath. “Then I think I’ve loved you for a long time.”
He’d been squeezing his arms around her chest very tightly, while she was talking, and now he buried his face between her breasts for a long moment. “We’re gonna have to work on some of that,” he said, when he lifted his head again.
“We all have room for improvement, Leland,” she managed, but then those tears came, and she saw that he was fighting them, too, and she squeezed him as well as she could with her one arm while he held her with all his strength, right up against his chest, as if she were a wriggling puppy who’d somehow float away if he let go.
He rolled over so that she was lying on his chest, and she tried to think of a more comforting sound than his swift, steadying heartbeat. She wasn’t thinking about anything else. After a while, she heard, too, his breath growing even, felt his body relax.
“I love you, Lee.” She felt some of the bars in the beast’s old cage just crumble outright into dust, at that. She was proud of herself for saying it. Even if he was asleep.
But he wasn’t, quite. His heart jumped under her ear. “Love you, too,” he mumbled. “Have to stay.”
“I know. You can untie me, Lee.” He didn’t reply, just sighed into his pillow. So she worked her way free of the knot on her own. Escaping was no trouble.
She wrapped both arms around him, and silently thanked her mother.
In the morning, Kara awoke with the familiar feeling of Lee tucked up beside her, still asleep. This was usually where she’d slip out.
She pulled the tie up from where it was still tied to the post, let it flow through her fingers. And started imagining what she was going to do to Lee with a little planning and a few of this tie’s friends. Then she set it aside and rolled over.
Time for the hard part. “Wake up, Lee,” she whispered.
He opened his eyes far too quickly for someone who’d been asleep. “I’m awake,” he said. His voice said, too, that he was relieved that she wanted him to be. It broke her heart that he’d been laying there, awake, hoping she wouldn’t run away again.
He reached for her. She made herself resist, just for a moment.
“No time for snuggles this morning, Adama. We have a full day planned.”
His brows shot up. “Can I get an itinerary?”
“Yep. First I’m gonna take you to Watchtower Hill. Where you can meet my dad. Who’s probably hung over, but he’ll be on his feet well enough to have brunch with us.” She saw his eyes darken with understanding, then harden with determination. Uh-oh. Lee had found a new project. She winced, hoped it didn’t take as much out of him as fighting her father’s alcoholism had taken out of her. “He’s been drinking since before my mother died,” she added gently, “since he had to take her to court for custody of me. He loved her, you know.”
He reached for her again, but she leaned backwards.
“Then we’ll head over to my apartment. Where I’ll show you my painting studio-because I do still paint, when the mood takes me-and you can help me pack up my things.” She took a breath. “Because I live here now.” She bit her lip, still vulnerable. “Right?”
He laughed with pure joy and swung her up on top of him, pressed a kiss on her chin. “Right. We’ll have to insulate the attic for your new studio.” He smiled into her eyes, and she could see a quarter of his brain was already pricing skylights. “Guess you’re gonna have to forge a truce with Mrs. Garrison.”
She made a face. “Surely one of us being at her beck and call is plenty.”
He laughed again.
“Oh, and one more thing, Adama.”
“Shoot, doc.”
“You’re gonna have to come up with some tougher questions than those soft sliders from last night.”
And then she let him pull her back down and nuzzle her throat as she started to talk and talk. Somewhere in there, she had quite a few questions of her own, and the beast was howling at her to earn the right to ask them.
THE END