Part 4
Rating: NC-17.
John had retreated to a poorly lit corner of the cell to dry off. He was there now, back turned toward Aeryn, the
pale contours of his body flickering in a ghostly fashion as he moved about in the shadows. The towel lingered
long enough at hip level that she assumed he was busy doing something far less innocent than simply drying
his crotch. After several dozen microts worth of effort, his shoulders dropped, he let out a long sigh, and then
he began toweling his legs.
“Tired?” Aeryn asked.
He didn’t bother turning around. “No.”
“Hungry,” she suggested next.
“I haven’t been hungry since everyone aboard Moya decided I needed to be fattened up like the guest of honor
at Thanksgiving dinner! There is a galaxy-sized draft north of my ears, which is my own fault for not
remembering the drawback to cutting off all my hair, but other than that I feel fine.” John finished drying his
feet, treated his barren scalp to a final two-handed flurry with the towel, and lobbed the damp cloth into the
waste alcove.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
He turned to face her. “No! Guys do not talk about this sort of thing! We hide in a corner, develop a complex
about it, blame our mothers or our first grade teachers for making us insecure, and we worry ourselves into
permanent impotence over it, but we do not talk about it!”
“Right.”
Despite the loud delivery and the wild gesticulations that had accompanied it, John wasn’t engaging in any of
his usual behaviors that signaled either emotional distress or anger. Whatever was causing his lack of physical
arousal, John wasn’t genuinely worried about it … yet. Unfortunately, deciphering the energetic signals he was
putting out didn’t provide Aeryn with a clue how to proceed. She had never been faced with this predicament
before. For as long as she had known him, John had been ‘capable’ to the point of being oversexed.
The problem wasn’t due to a physical injury, she reasoned. If it were, John would be more upset. That left
some combination of psychological or emotional difficulty that was interfering with his usual fast rise to the
occasion.
She tried to imagine what it would have felt like if the other Crichton had miraculously come back to life and had
asked her to make love to him within a few arns of his resurrection; what emotional penalty she would have paid
to cast her grief aside and once again give herself over to the one person in the universe who could destroy
her with nothing more than his absence. Summoning up the emotions wasn’t difficult. The fear was readily
available, there to be tasted and experienced once again: unforgotten, biding its time, buried deep within. It
held the power to turn each and every caress into an agony. His kisses would taste of the sweet joy of love and
the rank bitterness of loss, intermingling until there was no way to pull them apart, giving and taking away with
each tenderly lipped endearment.
The complex tangle of memories and emotions would no different for John. Every touch, every caress, every
kiss would have to be shared between past, present, and future; forever suspended between the fear of loss
and the promise of what the cycles ahead might hold in store for them. In simplest terms, this was nothing
more than an advanced case of distraction. He was attempting to divide his attention between cherishing
her presence, silently celebrating the fact that she was alive, and the more visceral aspects of recreating.
The smallest, most innocuous detail -- a blink, a bead of sweat, a breath, the touch of her fingers against his
chest -- might be enough to disrupt the unthinking sort of mental commitment necessary to achieve and
maintain an erection.
While she had been sorting through the collection of imagined thoughts and emotions, John had begun a slow
orbit of their quarters. The course he was following kept him at a constant distance from the bed, drawing no
closer and yet drifting no farther away. Earlier, in the midst of the battle to discover what was causing his life-
threatening apathy, he had circled the cell in search of an escape route, attempting to flee, his body shrieking
out its desire to run away from an unsustainable level of guilt and self-loathing. Now, with that particular crisis
no more than a couple of arns behind them, he was circling again, only in reverse. This time it looked as
though he was attempting to approach the bed but was being pushed away by some invisible force.
Each lap took him through some of the most cluttered portions of the cell. The whispering slap of bare feet
striking metalloid floors marked his progress over and through the heaps of clothing and collections of
possessions that had been assembled by the DRDs. The jumble of items didn’t interest him. As far as Aeryn
could tell, aside from the obstacles they presented, John wasn’t even aware that there was anything beneath
his feet. All of his attention was focused on something wholly internal. She allowed him six uninterrupted
circuits of the cell, and then stepped into his path, bringing him to a halt.
“Would you like me to leave?” she asked. “Would you prefer to spend the night alone?”
There was no hesitation between her questions and his answer. “No. Absolutely not.”
“What do you want to do?” she asked next.
He stared off to one side for several microts. Fingers scrabbled against his cheek absentmindedly, attempting
to pluck at a beard that was no longer there. “Love you,” he said eventually.
His tone of voice turned the simple comment into an ambiguous declaration. Aeryn wasn’t sure if he meant that
he loved her, or if he was suggesting that he make love to her. Hoping that he meant both, she placed her
hands on his chest and began walking toward the bed. It left him with two choices: retreat before her advance
or be pushed over backwards. He chose retreat.
“What were you thinking?” she asked as they shuffled across the cell.
His hands dropped to rest on her hips. Thumbs stroked her abdomen several times, and then he pulled her
closer. Their progress was just as gradual as before but better coordinated now -- a slow swaying migration
across the cell that was half dance and half mode of travel. John said, “About how much I love you.”
“And what else?” she asked.
A self-deprecating grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Dear god, why won’t it work, why won’t it work, why
won’t it work?”
“That explains why you were walking in circles. It must have taken up your entire attention span.”
“Pretty much.”
The back of his legs hit the side of the bed. He wobbled for a moment, struggling to maintain his balance, and
then sat down with a thump. Aeryn kept moving forward, pushing him over backwards. John resisted for a
moment, but it was only to give himself time to move further onto the bed and get turned around so his legs
weren’t dangling off the edge. After that he went willingly. They came to rest with Aeryn perched on his hips,
the soft, warm cushion of his balls and relaxed cock nestled between her legs. It was a quietly erotic sensation,
lacking force and intent. She had sat in this spot often, much in the same manner as now, but there had always
been a harder, more insistent pressure trapped between their bodies.
John looked up at her. The lingering grin widened into a smile. “Hey there, missy. Come here often?” he
asked.
The comment caught her in the midst of getting more comfortably situated straddling his hips. Aeryn stopped
moving in order to study his expression. “Was that supposed to be one of your word trick things?”
It hadn’t been meant as a joke. She could see it in the sudden quirk of his eyebrow and the infinitesimal shift of
his eyes as he realized what he had said. Rather than answering her question, he asked one of his own. “Are
you telling me that works out to a pun in Sebacean?”
“No. We have separate words for the two concepts.”
John ran his hands lightly up her arms, paused for a moment at the full extent of his reach, and then let his
fingers trickle back down to her hands. Interlacing the fingers of his left hand into her right, he kissed each of
her knuckles before answering. “I didn’t know you were multilingual in smut. I’ll have to watch what I say more
closely from now on.”
Aeryn leaned forward to where she could stare down into his eyes. “Perhaps not,” she said. “Perhaps that was
the right choice of words.” It excited him. The idea that she would derive pleasure from the evening’s activities
brought a flush to his throat and chest, and a mild lurch of interest to the otherwise relaxed anatomy beneath
her. “I come here often,” she said, to see how it would affect him. “Frequently.”
Her verbal teasing shortened his breathing and tightened the skin around his neck and shoulders. Tension,
she diagnosed … of a good sort. Even if there was no response from the lower half of his body, his libido was
intact. Sexual interest was clearly present, merely awaiting the right spark to achieve full ignition. She
considered asking him what would work best -- rough and strenuous, with heavy, demanding pressure and lots
of friction; or a slower, less aggressive approach to generating arousal -- and discarded the idea immediately.
The last thing they needed at this point was for John to devote any more thought to what was not going on
between his legs and its causes.
After several more microts worth of deliberation, she said, “Close your eyes.”
It was an enormous risk. The chances that this would go wrong were greater than the potential for success.
John had spent too much time in total darkness, his grief and his fears playing out against an unyielding
tapestry of black. Asking him to willingly submit to even a voluntary form of blindness was asking that he relive
a waking nightmare. But it was also the best way she could think of to get him to focus on his own body instead
of hers. “Close your eyes,” she repeated softly.
He ran his tongue across his upper teeth, and then caught his lower lip between his teeth and worried it, all the
while staring up at her, considering her request. The interval of silence yielded a quietly voiced, “I’ve been
sleeping with the lights on.”
“I noticed.” The lights were on at that moment, although reduced to a dim twilight that transformed all but the
most distinctive features of their quarters to bronze-hued shadows. With the exception of his short-lived retreat
to the bottom of the neural plexus, John had not allowed himself to be caught in total darkness since he had
returned to Moya. Aeryn rubbed his chest several times then let her fingertips wander outwards along the
ridges of his collarbones to the knobby humps at the top of his shoulders. “This is different. You’re not alone.
I won’t stop touching you for even a single microt. Close your eyes.”
His lower lip was subjected to several more microts worth of abuse. “This could turn out to be your all-time
worst idea ever.”
“Possibly.” She kissed him again, hoping to provide reassurance rather than passion. When she straightened
up, John’s eyes were closed.
Staying true to her vow that she would not stop touching him was an exquisite pleasure, not a chore. There
was a body lying beneath her that cried out to be loved and cherished. All too often in their lovemaking,
John’s male physiology proved almost too easily satisfied when compared to what it took for Aeryn’s body to
reach a similarly hyper-aroused state. He was a generous lover, always concerned that she got as much
satisfaction out of their moments together as he did. But it meant that she seldom got the opportunity to make
love to him -- not in the same way that he did to her. She sometimes found herself wishing that nights like this
happened more often: nights when she could make slow, languorous love to him; first finding and then taking
advantage of every erogenous spot on his body; jacking him up to a shuddering, moaning level of excitement
before finally allowing him the blissful release of an orgasm, and then beginning the process all over again.
Aeryn started with the underside of his jaw, easing from ear to ear with gently lipped undemanding kisses. She
migrated to the base of his throat, lingered there until he rolled his head back, giving her more room to nuzzle
and kiss the underside of his jaw, and then worked her way slowly down the center of his body. There were
shoulders and arms and elbows for her hands to caress; strong fingers that intertwined into hers and held on
tight, providing the pressure and proof necessary to convince his subconscious that she wasn’t going to vanish
the instant he opened his eyes. There were familiar ribs for fingers and lips to stroke, and the steep slide to
the concave belly to be discovered. There were hips and thighs, and knees and toes, each waiting to receive
its lightly applied affirmation that she was nearby and wasn’t going to leave him.
The erotic exploration spiraled slowly toward his hips, moving ever closer to the only portion of his body that
had so far showed no reaction in response to what she was doing. She settled into a pattern that had the
power to evoke deep shuddering exhalations and complex snarls of tensing muscles even if it didn’t produce an
erection. Each circuit began with her fingers coasting up the inside of his thigh, pausing for a microt so her
fingernails could rasp delicately along the inside of his leg a fraction of a dench short of his genitals, and then
moved up and outward toward his hips. Lips were brought into play when the route crested the angular heights
of his pelvis, applying just the right amount of pressure to coax a guttural, unintelligible response out of John.
The touch of her tongue and gusting hot breaths took over as she moved down the center of his abdomen,
coming to a halt a fraction of a dench short of her eventual target. The line of his hip received a touch, a taste,
a painstakingly slow traverse of lips that stopped short of the anatomy that she knew John would most want her
to touch, and then the journey started over again.
She discovered a benefit to the honed-down body. The small muscular twitches and reactions, normally
blurred by healthy layers of fat, began to transmit a complex symphony of subtle physical reactions. In the
same way that an extended sequence of hand signals could combine into a graceful ballet that conveyed far
more than an enemy’s location and troop strength, the tiny muscular twitches began coalesce into a saga of
increasing physical excitement. If she had been forced to rely on the deep sighs, groans, and the more
obvious lack of reaction alone, she might have been fooled into thinking that her efforts were in vain.
In the end, however, it took the most innocuous of touches to achieve what even the most vigorous and direct
efforts had not accomplished. It wasn’t until she had made a slow reverent pilgrimage back up his body in order
to explore what it was like to have a nearly bald John Crichton in bed with her that the moment they were both
waiting for finally happened. It was as she was brushing her lips across the side of his head that John let out an
extended airy groan and his entire body underwent a peculiar transformation, becoming at once more relaxed
while achieving a new variety of tension. He hauled in a strangled-sounding breath and let it out again, this
time making the odd throaty exhalation that frequently accompanied his arousal. “Do it again,” he whispered,
opening his eyes for the first time. “Do that.”
She repeated it, this time running her lips across the upper edge of his ear while the fingers of her free hand
stroked a whisperingly light pattern against the side of his neck just beneath his earlobe. His eyes rolled back
in his head, and he let out another of the almost-groans. She could feel him starting to press against her hip
where she lay half across his body, the increasingly rigid shaft expanding beneath her, becoming harder with
each full-body surge of excitement. Aeryn worked her way a few denches lower, this time kissing him on the
underside of the jaw, on the spot close to the base of his throat that was, inexplicably, one of the stronger of his
many erotic triggers.
John let out another deep breath, this time accompanied by a slow rise of his hips, seeking out deliberate
contact. Aeryn slid her leg between his and leaned into him, massaging balls and half-stiffened cock with her
thigh, subjecting them to a cautious nudging pressure. The response was immediate. Whatever had been
interfering with his concentration -- be it distraction, depression, or concern over impotence -- was gone. There
would be no turning back from this point; she was certain. He was fully focused on the signals being
transmitted from loins to brain, plummeting into the depths of physical ecstasy.
She moved back down his body, lips and tongue once again traversing chest, stomach, and belly, and
subjected him to a warm, moist suctioning. The noise he made this time was half way between a whine and a
squeak -- the type of fast, high-pitched exhalation that came from a complete loss of muscular control.
Aeryn pushed herself up on both arms to where she could get a better look at him. John was blushing. “Don’t
mind me,” he said before she could comment. “Carry right on with what you were doing.”
“Are you hurt?” Nudging his legs out to the sides, she delved cautiously between them with both hands, as
though searching for any damage that might have gone unnoticed thus far.
“Oh, dear god,” he gasped. “No, no injuries. It’s just … just been a while, Aeryn. I’m --” Whatever he had
intended to say next was lost to a full-fledged groan that emanated from deep inside the center of his chest.
“There’s a backlog,” she said, fighting back a laugh.
Mock inspection for injuries completed, Aeryn went on fondling the entire area between his legs, making brief
forays outward to massage his thighs, alternating between a firmer grip and more vigorous encouragement,
and lighter caresses of more sensitive areas. After several microts, John shuddered, muscles leaping and
quivering in random patterns, followed by the sound of his teeth clattering out a message concerning an over-
charged nervous system.
“If you’re not careful, something is going to explode,” he said. One of his fists clutched spasmodically at the
covers, knotting a fistful of fabric into a sweat-dampened bundle.
“Should I” -- she paused long enough to kiss him -- “defuse you?”
“Whatever you do, you’d better make it quick. There’s not going to be a whole lot of control tonight.”
Aeryn resumed the steady, firm stroking that she knew would maintain his interest. A muscle near the top of his
thigh began to tense and relax in time with the movement of her hand. “You’re still feeling erratic,” she said.
“Incendiary might be a better word at this point,” he panted out, “or maybe downright ballistic. One small spark
is all it’s going to take to put me into orbit.”
Aeryn took the warning seriously, hearing the truth buried amidst the humorous delivery. If the entire evening
had gone more smoothly -- if John had been able to achieve an erection more easily and it had taken less
effort for them to reach this particular moment -- she might have been tempted to tease him. She could have
hovered a micro-dench above him, tormenting him with the promise of warm engulfment, occasionally lowering
herself just far enough to make contact with the smooth glistening skin at the tip of his penis before pulling
away; or she could have straightened up, stretched, yawned, and looked around the room feigning boredom,
using nothing more than the sight of her naked body to increase his excitement. There were nights when she
subjected him to that sort of pleasurable torment, prolonging his wait for release until, according to John, he
was on the verge of either getting down on his knees and begging her to let him come or staggering off to a
private corner where he could finish the process on his own.
This was not the night for those types of games. Aeryn swung a leg over his hips, paused there for several
microts because she knew that he loved this particular moment -- when he could look down along his body and
see her poised there, hovering above his erect cock -- and then sank down onto him in one long slow motion.
It was a wondrous few moments, consisting of muscles stretching in unique ways to accommodate the thrusting
penetration, and the delightful internal fullness that she had first imagined while they were still in the shower.
As she settled into place, she was treated to the sweet deep internal pang, the one that had the capacity to set
her entire body to shivering and shuddering. Aeryn rocked her hips hard against John’s, pressing downward,
and found it again, infusing nerves she had almost forgotten existed with an ecstatic form of energy.
It was a siren’s song emanating from the center of her pelvis, commanding her to cast aside any lingering urge
to engage in foreplay, and to launch herself into the forceful, energetic thrusts that would generate that
wondrous sensation again and again. It said that the time for slow escalation had come to an end. The desire
to linger over every square dench of skin and each separate muscle was banished, replaced by an
overwhelming hunger for movement, for exertion, sweat, and energy wastefully expended. She threw herself
into the effort willingly, reveling in the quiet aching burn of over-stressed muscles, the sweat slick slide of skin
against skin, and the soothing cold crawl of droplets streaking down her back and ribs.
There was a strangely quiescent lover in her bed. John was normally an active, energetic participant. Even on
the occasions when she took the lead, he was never willing to lie still and let her do all the work. It didn’t matter
whether he was driven by passion, lust, love, tenderness, frustration, or even anger; John always seemed to be
on a quest to achieve total physical exhaustion, seeking that special moment when he could slump down beside
her, panting, sweating, drained in every sense of the word.
On this particular night, he was content to lie back and watch, blue eyes performing the slow easy shift that
meant he was examining each of her features in repetitive succession, noting even the smallest details, leaving
it up to her to provide movement and friction. Interest wasn’t lacking; only effort and involvement had gone
missing.
“Is this all right?” she asked, wondering if some portion of the arrangement was bothering him.
He gave her a curious, contented looking smile, closed his eyes, and, for a moment, seemed to relax. The
relaxation lasted less than half a microt, passing far too quickly for Aeryn to worry that he had lost interest in
what was going on or that she had distracted him into a recurrence of impotence. Beneath her, both inside and
out, John’s body surged against hers, as though someone or something had just filled him to overflowing with
energized plasma. Almost too late, Aeryn realized that his lack of movement and involvement had nothing to do
with his earlier depression. What she had been observing was John dedicating every bit of concentration to
maintaining a highly tenuous vestige of self-control.
She froze in place. All motion came to a stop. Beneath her thigh, a blood vessel in his hip throbbed out a fast
staccato beat. “Do you need a moment?” she asked.
“No.” The single word was expelled an entire lungful of air. He took in a shuddering breath before adding, “But
it might be good if you could hurry up a bit.”
Aeryn resumed the forceful, rhythmic rocking against his hips, searching for and finding the right position for
the best application of pressure, deepest penetration, greatest pleasure for both of them. “I should go faster,”
she said.
His hands, when they grasped her waist to provide added impetus, were shaking, and his breathing was
becoming more erratic with each passing microt. “No … no, that’s not what I meant,” he panted out one
strained syllable at a time.
On one hand, it didn’t seem fair to tease him at this particular moment. On the other hand, the opportunity was
too enticing to pass up. “That’s what you said.”
“Good god, woman. You expect coherent thought at a time like this?”
She watched his progression toward a physical explosion with pleasure, enjoying all the familiar signals that
John was approaching the point of no return. He started by slipping away from his surroundings, retreating to a
place that she could never visit and would never truly understand. The lingering smile gave way to a faraway
dreamy gaze that meant his attention was shifting from touch, sight, and sound to wholly internal sensations;
transitioning into the slack jawed, dazed look he got whenever his body was hurtling toward an orgasm; and
eventually to the bared teeth and strained breaths that looked as much as though he was suffering as it
resembled the final onset of physical ecstasy. He let go of her waist. Fists clenched. Muscles bunched and
tautened across his upper body. He began to drive upward into her descent with more vigor, seeking the extra
bit of tactile provocation that would summon him to the final culmination of their efforts. Aside from the fluttering
eyelids and the way his eyes were rolling back in his head, he looked and sounded like he was in agony. And
yet, amidst all the signals that suggested otherwise, the pleasure was unmistakable.
Life was like that, Aeryn realized. In a revelatory flash, she was struck by the connection between John’s
impending climax and the way their lives often played out. Joy and heartache, love and loss, pain and
pleasure: they were so closely intermixed one could often melt seamlessly into the other until it was difficult to
tell them apart. Having John back, alive and well, was a blindingly bright moment in her life, and the pain of
watching him struggle with his sense of guilt was every bit as intense as the pleasure.
She had never suspected how painful heartbreak could be until she had learned to love. And love came with
the promise of heartache and loss. There was no avoiding it. Giving birth went hand in hand with agony,
enduring the inconceivable pain of being shot had led to the ecstasy that she had managed to survive and
would live to see John Crichton again, and his moral and physical starvation had been the price paid to get him
back alive. The more clearly she saw how the opposites were intertwined, the faster they knotted into an
inextricable tangle that no longer made any sense.
“Hey.” John’s panting summons dragged her back to the here and now. “Where’d you go?”
She smiled and bent down to kiss him. A trickle of perspiration streaked toward his temple, scarcely paused
when it hit the short-cropped hair, and disappeared into the damp stubble. “You distracted me,” she said.
“Nuh unh,” he said, shaking his head. “You had that wonderful ‘Eureka!’ look you get when you’ve had a
brainstorm.” He grabbed her around the waist and held her still. “You’re beautiful when you look like that.
I love it. Share.”
“This --” she began, meaning to suggest that they not interrupt their activities.
“This,” he said, nudging upward with his hips, “will be here after you tell me what set off that funny little smile
you get sometimes.” He tugged one corner of her mouth upward with a thumb. “You never believe me when I
tell you how much it excites me when you concentrate on yourself when we’re together like this. Let me in on
the secret for once.”
“What about your self-control? I thought I was supposed to be hurrying.”
“I found some along the way. Forget about that for a moment. Tell me what you were thinking.”
Aeryn ran the backs of her fingers up his stomach, let them drift up the center of his chest, and then ran her
thumb across one of his nipples several times. She felt the surge of response from his body, and understood
how close he was to losing control. John was hovering in that special place where every touch, sight, smell,
and sound had the potential to complete the short journey to an orgasm. If she were the one teetering on the
edge, the one being touched and stroked while they talked, the sensations would be nearly unendurable and
would at the same time hold the promise of an intense, unequalled climax when they chose to finish. John was
slightly different because of his need for thrust and friction to carry him forward, but all of the appropriate signs
were present. There were the small squirming movements beneath her and the occasional chuckling gasps
that said he was enjoying the delicate, nearly excruciating in-between state.
So she leaned over him, and tried to explain her revelation, starting with the grimace she had seen on his face
and working through to how it related to his guilt over the wanton killing. It didn’t come out nearly as well as
when she first assembled the associations in her mind.
John closed one eye tight, squinted at her out of the other, and looked confused. “You’re saying that my being
all torn up inside is a good thing because once I get over it I’ll appreciate not being that person even more. Is
that it?” He was rubbing her upper arms and shoulders, one hand or the other occasionally traveling further to
explore her neck or make a foray to one of her breasts.
“I’m not sure what I’m saying. It was clearer before I tried to explain it.”
“Good and bad go together. One can’t exist without the other. That’s a very old story,” he said. Both hands
migrated down to her breasts. “You’re not nursing anymore.”
“I couldn’t. At first I was too badly injured; then I was full of drugs,” she said, and then returned to her confusing
revelation. “This is more than two opposites coexisting side by side. They are the same thing. It’s like the
drugs they gave me. What saved me took something away at the same time. Good and bad at the same time
in the same situation. It’s like when this” -- she rocked against his hips until he let out a quiet, ecstatic groan --
“feels so good it hurts.”
John considered that for several microts without ever stopping the slow mapping of her body with his hands.
“My doing horrible things while I was on that planet comes from the same part of me that loves you so much that
I can’t exist without you,” he said finally. It was a statement this time, not a question.
“Mmmhmm,” she agreed. It seemed like a good time for another kiss: one-tenth reward for deciphering what
she was having so much trouble trying to convey, and nine-tenths because she wanted to feel his lips, his
tongue, his body touching hers. Several tens of microts passed before the conversation resumed.
“That’s a bit twisted, even for a Peacekeeper,” John said with his lips brushing hers.
“You believe I am wrong.”
“No, I think you’re probably right, and I’ve never had to figure it out before this happened because my life on
Earth was so mundane. There were no monumental personal disasters, but there was no great love of my life
either.” John looped an arm around the back of her neck and shoulders, trapping her where the kiss had
ended, close to his body. He stared up at her from a distance of less than four denches. “You’ve been doing
the Confucius thing the whole time I was doing all my thinking with the small brain. When did you get so smart,
woman?”
“I have always been exceptionally intelligent. I simply needed someone to show me how to use it,” she said.
“Exceptionally intelligent,” he repeated. A grin and the much-missed light in his eyes appeared at the same
time.
“Exceptional breeding. Far superior to other species,” she said, smiling down at him.
“God, I love you,” he said, and then wrapped his other arm around her and rolled them over.
John made love to her after that. He made love to every dench of her body from her toes to the top of her
head, exploring it as thoroughly as she had repeatedly traversed his. He led with his fingertips; lips and tongue
trailed behind, drifting dream-like along the long lines of thigh and arm, dipping into the hollows, rising up to
crest the arc of breast and shoulder. Strong hands urged her toward a quivering, gasping level of excitement;
firm but gentle fingers, moving with thorough familiarity, sought out every one of her favorite bits of anatomy
and stroked her to an agonizing degree of desire.
He held her there for what felt like arns, just as she had held him just short of the point of no return while they
talked. Sweating, panting, straining to achieve the last bit of excitement necessary to achieve a climax, she
wallowed in the agonizing pleasure that she had tried to explain to John. Time and again he withdrew, each
time returning with the heavier pressure of hands stroking her thighs, shoulders, and lower back; more lightly
applied devotion drifted endlessly across her breasts and the base of her throat. He carried her up, paused,
and let her drift back down again repeatedly, until the tension and desire demanded a far more vigorous
response from her.
Their union became a limb-tangled cooperative wrestling match, full of straining muscles on both their parts,
liberally fueled by sweat and effort, punctuated by panted vows of love, quiet laughs, and the more frequent but
unintelligible groans and gasps of delight. There was an unforgettable moment when, in the midst of a
laughing, ridiculous endeavor to change to a different position without bothering to first pull apart, her body
decided that it was time to release its pent up energy. She felt the first aching signals that it was about to
happen and let out a quiet cry of frustration. Caught in a half-upright not quite kneeling posture, it would be
impossible to give herself over to the internal nervous demolition. John, feeling what was about to occur,
laughed quietly near her ear and held her tight, supporting her body in midair, freeing her to concentrate on
the pulsing bursts of sensation that clamored to take over her entire existence and the strong arms that were
keeping her safe throughout. It was like having an orgasm in freefall, every electron in her body set free to
take up a new orbit without the hindrance of gravity affecting the eventual outcome.
She spun back to the reality of Moya and their bed to find that they were in a position that she loved, but that
she knew was far from relaxing or even satisfying for John. It allowed him the greatest freedom to stroke her
entire body, coaxing an absurd level of arousal out of her, and it also required more strength and exertion from
him than any other position save one. “No,” she said, trying to roll to one side. “This is –-”
He interrupted before she could finish explaining that she wanted this night to be about John and his needs.
“I enjoy this,” he said. “You know I do.”
“I wanted tonight to be –-” she tried again.
“-- for me,” John finished. “I know. I figured that part out. This is about me and what I want, Aeryn. I promise.
I want” -- he stopped, for an instant looking both confused and frustrated -- “I want us to be … I want it to be
about both of us, not just you seeing if you can give me a heart attack.”
He started to resume his fumbling explanation. For the second time that evening, Aeryn placed her hand over
his mouth to shut him up. “I understand,” she said.
The uncertainty in his expression eased, but didn’t disappear. “I didn’t explain it very well.”
“Yes, you did.” Aeryn lay back, relaxing, finding the position every bit as pleasurable as always, loving that she
could watch him, that she could see every dench of his body from his thighs to the crown of his head, and could
still reach him without a great deal of effort. John was right. She loved this position. She said the three words
that she was sure could convince him that she truly did understand what he was trying to say. “I love you.”
The small phrase worked. He smiled, bent down and kissed her, one hand resting easily on one of her breasts,
the other supporting his weight, his entire body pressing against already over-sensitized nerves. The overall
effect was nothing less than shattering. In the space of an instant she went from teetering on the brink of
lethargy -- wallowing in the post-climatic whole-body buzzing that lay somewhere between sleep and the rise to
another orgasm -- to full arousal. It was that special transition, always dependent on perfect timing, when John
was able to catch her before she slid too far down the scale towards relaxation, yanking her back to an
exquisite, achingly intense level of pleasure in the space of a few microts.
“Dear … Cholak,” she gasped. Arching over backwards, straining with one hand braced against his shoulder,
didn’t help. All it did was expose her stomach and chest to additional attention, inviting his hands to stroke belly
and breast; and raised her pelvis, which allowed him to push harder with each thrust, reaching previously
untouched depths. The resulting shockwave from deep inside was enough to draw a screeching gasp out of
her and a moaning exclamation from John.
It was then, with little forewarning, that she felt intensely, irrevocably naked. The sensation went far beyond
being undressed. It was a phenomenon that never occurred except at times like this, during extended, frantic,
wondrous bouts of recreating with this singular human.
She hadn’t known there were different flavors and tastes of being naked until she had met John Crichton. For
most of her life, being naked meant nothing more than not having clothes on. It was a fact of her existence,
along with the starkly lit showers where anatomy was seldom even noticed and open barracks that provided
little in the way of privacy. It was a way of life that she had never questioned until the morning she had caught
herself walking more quietly as she approached John’s quarters, hoping to catch a glimpse of him as he was
getting dressed.
She never could have guessed at the number of ways to be naked until she had fallen in love. There had been
no knowledge of the end of the day nakedness that came with getting ready for bed, of turning with her shirt or
pants in her hand just in time to watch him step into his loose sleep shorts with the distinctly male stretch of the
waistband as he pulled them into place. She hadn’t known about the nakedness of showering with a man that
she cherished, of the slippery sliding sort of sudsy fun that always involved an extravagant level of skin-to-skin
contact. There had been no way to foresee the type of nakedness that came from having John watch her
nurse their son, or of the tingling warmth that began in the center of her chest and expanded outward when he
slid closer and embraced them together, enveloping both her and the baby in his arms.
There was the fully clothed nakedness when he caught her on a seldom-used tier, backed her into corner, and
made love to her right then and there, begging to be caught by anyone who happened to come by. And there
was this: the explosive, insane kind of nakedness when every cell in her body seemed to be undergo a
transmutation so each one was simultaneously connected to every other cell, and even the smallest of touches
traveled through her body like a demolition’s shockwave, until she was sure that she was about to dissolve into
cloudy haze of individual atoms, flying apart in the exact moment that she reached orgasm.
The effect was always profound, as though she were discovering for the first time that she had skin; and
somewhat shocking, alerting every nerve ending from her scalp to the bottoms of her feet and every micro-
dench in between. John always knew the moment it happened, and took full advantage of the alteration to her
physiology. His hands moved more firmly from throat to belly, stroked her with more urgent demand, knowing
that light caresses and tickles would go unnoticed in the midst of the overall storm.
One of her hands flailed out, seeking any kind of anchor in order to keep her body from flying into a million
separate parts. It located one of his. His fingers intertwined into hers and held tight, squeezing hard when she
pressed and pulled against him, silently encouraging her to throw herself into their union with nothing held in
reserve. Her entire universe dissolved into the overwhelming presence of John Crichton, within and without,
seemingly touching every dench of her body at once.
She tried to ask John a question about his self-control and how much more time he required. The syllables
emerged in nonsensical fragments, tangled up with pleas to hurry and several confused incarnations of the
word “Now”.
Her orgasm began before he could answer, expanding like a fireball of ignited chakan oil, filling her belly to
overflowing with heat and convulsing muscles. It was too late to spend any more time considering what John
wanted or needed. She clung to his hand and abandoned the remainder of her body to the moment.
There might have been muscles contracting in one of her legs, battling to curl behind John and trap him against
her body, and his hand holding on to her ankle, preventing her from moving, which only increased the full-body
spasms. There might have been the heavier pressure of his hands massaging her breasts, urging her on,
coaxing the most out of her synapses. There might have been lips mouthing deep sucking patterns against the
base of her throat, forcing her to divide her attention between that one particular spot and the aching wonder
that was occurring in the center of her lower body, somehow increasing the overall ecstasy in the process; and
there might have been strong hands supporting her lower back, steadying her when the bucking and shaking
threatened to throw her body away from his.
At the moment when the storm inside her body began to slacken, there might have been the hard, needful
thrusting leading up to John’s orgasm, the heat and weight of his body in motion close to hers, blanketing her
with his presence, blocking out the rest of the universe. There might have been strong arms on either side of
her, simultaneously supporting his weight and surrounding her with safety, and a beautiful ballet of tensing
muscles, pulsing warmth, heat, and the sounds of a human male in the throes of ecstasy. Aeryn would never
know for sure if any of that happened. Since she was convinced that her body had been disassembled into its
component parts, rearranged into new patterns, and then put back together so that every light touch had the
power to set her to lurching, yelping, and quivering, she was quite certain that she would never be able to recall
what happened during those frantic dozen or so microts.
The moment passed, leaving her once again feeling wonderfully naked, as though no amount of clothes could
ever cover up enough of her body to quell the sensation. “Oh, be merciful,” she sighed at last, sagging into the
rumpled tangle of thermal covers on the bed. John remained poised above her for several more microts --
eyes half closed, an open-mouthed blissful half-smile frozen in place, his body unnaturally still while he eked
out the final delightful frissons of his orgasm -- then he let out a chuckling groan and lowered himself so he was
lying facedown alongside her.
Aeryn waited to see what would happen next. All too often John wanted to talk. He had assured her that with
the passage of cycles the situation would be reversed, that eventually it would be Aeryn who wanted to lie
awake and discuss topics ranging from what color to paint their quarters aboard Moya to the slow revolution of
the stars outside the view portal, while he fell into the post-climax coma-like stupor that he referred to as a
‘snore-gasm’. But, at least for now, it was John who always wanted to engage in some meaningless, often
philosophical conversation, when all she wanted was to lie quietly and enjoy the slow dissipation of sexual
energy. As far as she was concerned, it was the perfect moment to luxuriate in the warmth radiating from
John’s body, and to expend an arn or two wallowing in the peace and quiet.
Beside her, John sighed. Aeryn waited for him to break the silence. Aside from Moya’s normal rumbles and
grumbles, the only noise was the quiet rustle of skin brushing against bed cloths. John squirmed in close to
her, wrapped an arm around her midsection and pulled her in against his chest. Four microts later the thick,
shaggy thermal covers that John preferred were nearly arranged over their two bodies, and they were in exactly
the position Aeryn had longed after for so many days and nights. His arms were wrapped around her, he was
snuggled in close against her back, his body married to hers from shoulders to toes, and his lips were
performing a slow, relaxing dance along the top of her shoulder and the back of her neck.
She hadn’t really believed that John could complete this much of his recovery in a single evening … not down
deep in her heart where it mattered. She had dared to hope, and had planned as though it were possible, and
had even spent the occasional quarter-arn dreaming that it might turn out this way; but she hadn’t truly
believed that she would end up in John Crichton’s arms, loved, cherished, and feeling as though no intruder
could ever breach the security offered by his embrace. She wasn’t so naïve as to assume that his recovery
was complete. There was no doubt that the days ahead promised relapses, outbursts of unprovoked anger,
and possibly several bouts of deep depression, but the John Crichton who loved her beyond good sense had
returned at some point during the evening, and that meant she didn’t have to be strong for both of them
anymore.
The relief was almost more than she could keep contained. If she hadn’t known that the sudden chill and the
queasy wave of weakness passing though her body were the result of runaway emotions -- as opposed to an
illness or a hidden lingering injury -- she might have been concerned about its causes and possibly even gotten
out of bed until it passed. Instead, she did the one thing that she knew would dispel the unpleasant physical
reactions most quickly. Aeryn turned inside John’s embrace until she faced him, and then carefully insinuated
herself closer to his body, intertwining legs and arms until she was tucked in against his chest, one of her legs
between his, as much a part of him as was physically possible.
It felt weak, it felt immature and needful, and it felt wonderful. John didn’t do or say anything except to
accommodate her change in position. He released his grasp on her when she began to turn over; made room
for her when she wanted to snuggle in against the front of his body; and wrapped his arms around her once
she had come to rest. She wasn’t sure he even understood what was going on until he rubbed her back for
several microts, and then whispered, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Just hold me. Hold me tight,” she said.
He did more than simply tighten his embrace. John rolled onto his back, carrying her with him so she wound up
lying half on top of him. She came to rest with her head on his chest, one leg wedged between both of his, her
upper body cradled inside his arms, warm and secure. It was everything she craved and more. It didn’t take
long for her to slide into a half-waking state where she was conscious of little other than the sound of John’s
breathing and the slow repetitive drift of his hand moving from the top of her buttocks, up across the recently
healed portion of her back to her shoulder blade on that side, and then back down again. If she needed
reassurance that he understood how fiercely she had struggled to survive, it was embodied in that hypnotic
touch.
The sound of John’s voice drew her back from the brink of sleep. “I missed you,” he whispered.
The obvious response -- “I missed you, too” -- felt inadequate. Trapped in the mental morass that lay halfway
between waking and sleep, Aeryn couldn’t assemble an answer worthy of his brief, quietly voiced expression of
how lost he had been without her. She settled for hugging him more tightly, trusting that he would understand
the silent message. And at some point in the midst of the foggy, half-dreaming, half-thinking mental celebration
that she had her arms wrapped around John Crichton, she went to sleep, aware until the very last moment of
the light stroke of his fingers moving up and down her back.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Rating: NC-17.
John had retreated to a poorly lit corner of the cell to dry off. He was there now, back turned toward Aeryn, the
pale contours of his body flickering in a ghostly fashion as he moved about in the shadows. The towel lingered
long enough at hip level that she assumed he was busy doing something far less innocent than simply drying
his crotch. After several dozen microts worth of effort, his shoulders dropped, he let out a long sigh, and then
he began toweling his legs.
“Tired?” Aeryn asked.
He didn’t bother turning around. “No.”
“Hungry,” she suggested next.
“I haven’t been hungry since everyone aboard Moya decided I needed to be fattened up like the guest of honor
at Thanksgiving dinner! There is a galaxy-sized draft north of my ears, which is my own fault for not
remembering the drawback to cutting off all my hair, but other than that I feel fine.” John finished drying his
feet, treated his barren scalp to a final two-handed flurry with the towel, and lobbed the damp cloth into the
waste alcove.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
He turned to face her. “No! Guys do not talk about this sort of thing! We hide in a corner, develop a complex
about it, blame our mothers or our first grade teachers for making us insecure, and we worry ourselves into
permanent impotence over it, but we do not talk about it!”
“Right.”
Despite the loud delivery and the wild gesticulations that had accompanied it, John wasn’t engaging in any of
his usual behaviors that signaled either emotional distress or anger. Whatever was causing his lack of physical
arousal, John wasn’t genuinely worried about it … yet. Unfortunately, deciphering the energetic signals he was
putting out didn’t provide Aeryn with a clue how to proceed. She had never been faced with this predicament
before. For as long as she had known him, John had been ‘capable’ to the point of being oversexed.
The problem wasn’t due to a physical injury, she reasoned. If it were, John would be more upset. That left
some combination of psychological or emotional difficulty that was interfering with his usual fast rise to the
occasion.
She tried to imagine what it would have felt like if the other Crichton had miraculously come back to life and had
asked her to make love to him within a few arns of his resurrection; what emotional penalty she would have paid
to cast her grief aside and once again give herself over to the one person in the universe who could destroy
her with nothing more than his absence. Summoning up the emotions wasn’t difficult. The fear was readily
available, there to be tasted and experienced once again: unforgotten, biding its time, buried deep within. It
held the power to turn each and every caress into an agony. His kisses would taste of the sweet joy of love and
the rank bitterness of loss, intermingling until there was no way to pull them apart, giving and taking away with
each tenderly lipped endearment.
The complex tangle of memories and emotions would no different for John. Every touch, every caress, every
kiss would have to be shared between past, present, and future; forever suspended between the fear of loss
and the promise of what the cycles ahead might hold in store for them. In simplest terms, this was nothing
more than an advanced case of distraction. He was attempting to divide his attention between cherishing
her presence, silently celebrating the fact that she was alive, and the more visceral aspects of recreating.
The smallest, most innocuous detail -- a blink, a bead of sweat, a breath, the touch of her fingers against his
chest -- might be enough to disrupt the unthinking sort of mental commitment necessary to achieve and
maintain an erection.
While she had been sorting through the collection of imagined thoughts and emotions, John had begun a slow
orbit of their quarters. The course he was following kept him at a constant distance from the bed, drawing no
closer and yet drifting no farther away. Earlier, in the midst of the battle to discover what was causing his life-
threatening apathy, he had circled the cell in search of an escape route, attempting to flee, his body shrieking
out its desire to run away from an unsustainable level of guilt and self-loathing. Now, with that particular crisis
no more than a couple of arns behind them, he was circling again, only in reverse. This time it looked as
though he was attempting to approach the bed but was being pushed away by some invisible force.
Each lap took him through some of the most cluttered portions of the cell. The whispering slap of bare feet
striking metalloid floors marked his progress over and through the heaps of clothing and collections of
possessions that had been assembled by the DRDs. The jumble of items didn’t interest him. As far as Aeryn
could tell, aside from the obstacles they presented, John wasn’t even aware that there was anything beneath
his feet. All of his attention was focused on something wholly internal. She allowed him six uninterrupted
circuits of the cell, and then stepped into his path, bringing him to a halt.
“Would you like me to leave?” she asked. “Would you prefer to spend the night alone?”
There was no hesitation between her questions and his answer. “No. Absolutely not.”
“What do you want to do?” she asked next.
He stared off to one side for several microts. Fingers scrabbled against his cheek absentmindedly, attempting
to pluck at a beard that was no longer there. “Love you,” he said eventually.
His tone of voice turned the simple comment into an ambiguous declaration. Aeryn wasn’t sure if he meant that
he loved her, or if he was suggesting that he make love to her. Hoping that he meant both, she placed her
hands on his chest and began walking toward the bed. It left him with two choices: retreat before her advance
or be pushed over backwards. He chose retreat.
“What were you thinking?” she asked as they shuffled across the cell.
His hands dropped to rest on her hips. Thumbs stroked her abdomen several times, and then he pulled her
closer. Their progress was just as gradual as before but better coordinated now -- a slow swaying migration
across the cell that was half dance and half mode of travel. John said, “About how much I love you.”
“And what else?” she asked.
A self-deprecating grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Dear god, why won’t it work, why won’t it work, why
won’t it work?”
“That explains why you were walking in circles. It must have taken up your entire attention span.”
“Pretty much.”
The back of his legs hit the side of the bed. He wobbled for a moment, struggling to maintain his balance, and
then sat down with a thump. Aeryn kept moving forward, pushing him over backwards. John resisted for a
moment, but it was only to give himself time to move further onto the bed and get turned around so his legs
weren’t dangling off the edge. After that he went willingly. They came to rest with Aeryn perched on his hips,
the soft, warm cushion of his balls and relaxed cock nestled between her legs. It was a quietly erotic sensation,
lacking force and intent. She had sat in this spot often, much in the same manner as now, but there had always
been a harder, more insistent pressure trapped between their bodies.
John looked up at her. The lingering grin widened into a smile. “Hey there, missy. Come here often?” he
asked.
The comment caught her in the midst of getting more comfortably situated straddling his hips. Aeryn stopped
moving in order to study his expression. “Was that supposed to be one of your word trick things?”
It hadn’t been meant as a joke. She could see it in the sudden quirk of his eyebrow and the infinitesimal shift of
his eyes as he realized what he had said. Rather than answering her question, he asked one of his own. “Are
you telling me that works out to a pun in Sebacean?”
“No. We have separate words for the two concepts.”
John ran his hands lightly up her arms, paused for a moment at the full extent of his reach, and then let his
fingers trickle back down to her hands. Interlacing the fingers of his left hand into her right, he kissed each of
her knuckles before answering. “I didn’t know you were multilingual in smut. I’ll have to watch what I say more
closely from now on.”
Aeryn leaned forward to where she could stare down into his eyes. “Perhaps not,” she said. “Perhaps that was
the right choice of words.” It excited him. The idea that she would derive pleasure from the evening’s activities
brought a flush to his throat and chest, and a mild lurch of interest to the otherwise relaxed anatomy beneath
her. “I come here often,” she said, to see how it would affect him. “Frequently.”
Her verbal teasing shortened his breathing and tightened the skin around his neck and shoulders. Tension,
she diagnosed … of a good sort. Even if there was no response from the lower half of his body, his libido was
intact. Sexual interest was clearly present, merely awaiting the right spark to achieve full ignition. She
considered asking him what would work best -- rough and strenuous, with heavy, demanding pressure and lots
of friction; or a slower, less aggressive approach to generating arousal -- and discarded the idea immediately.
The last thing they needed at this point was for John to devote any more thought to what was not going on
between his legs and its causes.
After several more microts worth of deliberation, she said, “Close your eyes.”
It was an enormous risk. The chances that this would go wrong were greater than the potential for success.
John had spent too much time in total darkness, his grief and his fears playing out against an unyielding
tapestry of black. Asking him to willingly submit to even a voluntary form of blindness was asking that he relive
a waking nightmare. But it was also the best way she could think of to get him to focus on his own body instead
of hers. “Close your eyes,” she repeated softly.
He ran his tongue across his upper teeth, and then caught his lower lip between his teeth and worried it, all the
while staring up at her, considering her request. The interval of silence yielded a quietly voiced, “I’ve been
sleeping with the lights on.”
“I noticed.” The lights were on at that moment, although reduced to a dim twilight that transformed all but the
most distinctive features of their quarters to bronze-hued shadows. With the exception of his short-lived retreat
to the bottom of the neural plexus, John had not allowed himself to be caught in total darkness since he had
returned to Moya. Aeryn rubbed his chest several times then let her fingertips wander outwards along the
ridges of his collarbones to the knobby humps at the top of his shoulders. “This is different. You’re not alone.
I won’t stop touching you for even a single microt. Close your eyes.”
His lower lip was subjected to several more microts worth of abuse. “This could turn out to be your all-time
worst idea ever.”
“Possibly.” She kissed him again, hoping to provide reassurance rather than passion. When she straightened
up, John’s eyes were closed.
Staying true to her vow that she would not stop touching him was an exquisite pleasure, not a chore. There
was a body lying beneath her that cried out to be loved and cherished. All too often in their lovemaking,
John’s male physiology proved almost too easily satisfied when compared to what it took for Aeryn’s body to
reach a similarly hyper-aroused state. He was a generous lover, always concerned that she got as much
satisfaction out of their moments together as he did. But it meant that she seldom got the opportunity to make
love to him -- not in the same way that he did to her. She sometimes found herself wishing that nights like this
happened more often: nights when she could make slow, languorous love to him; first finding and then taking
advantage of every erogenous spot on his body; jacking him up to a shuddering, moaning level of excitement
before finally allowing him the blissful release of an orgasm, and then beginning the process all over again.
Aeryn started with the underside of his jaw, easing from ear to ear with gently lipped undemanding kisses. She
migrated to the base of his throat, lingered there until he rolled his head back, giving her more room to nuzzle
and kiss the underside of his jaw, and then worked her way slowly down the center of his body. There were
shoulders and arms and elbows for her hands to caress; strong fingers that intertwined into hers and held on
tight, providing the pressure and proof necessary to convince his subconscious that she wasn’t going to vanish
the instant he opened his eyes. There were familiar ribs for fingers and lips to stroke, and the steep slide to
the concave belly to be discovered. There were hips and thighs, and knees and toes, each waiting to receive
its lightly applied affirmation that she was nearby and wasn’t going to leave him.
The erotic exploration spiraled slowly toward his hips, moving ever closer to the only portion of his body that
had so far showed no reaction in response to what she was doing. She settled into a pattern that had the
power to evoke deep shuddering exhalations and complex snarls of tensing muscles even if it didn’t produce an
erection. Each circuit began with her fingers coasting up the inside of his thigh, pausing for a microt so her
fingernails could rasp delicately along the inside of his leg a fraction of a dench short of his genitals, and then
moved up and outward toward his hips. Lips were brought into play when the route crested the angular heights
of his pelvis, applying just the right amount of pressure to coax a guttural, unintelligible response out of John.
The touch of her tongue and gusting hot breaths took over as she moved down the center of his abdomen,
coming to a halt a fraction of a dench short of her eventual target. The line of his hip received a touch, a taste,
a painstakingly slow traverse of lips that stopped short of the anatomy that she knew John would most want her
to touch, and then the journey started over again.
She discovered a benefit to the honed-down body. The small muscular twitches and reactions, normally
blurred by healthy layers of fat, began to transmit a complex symphony of subtle physical reactions. In the
same way that an extended sequence of hand signals could combine into a graceful ballet that conveyed far
more than an enemy’s location and troop strength, the tiny muscular twitches began coalesce into a saga of
increasing physical excitement. If she had been forced to rely on the deep sighs, groans, and the more
obvious lack of reaction alone, she might have been fooled into thinking that her efforts were in vain.
In the end, however, it took the most innocuous of touches to achieve what even the most vigorous and direct
efforts had not accomplished. It wasn’t until she had made a slow reverent pilgrimage back up his body in order
to explore what it was like to have a nearly bald John Crichton in bed with her that the moment they were both
waiting for finally happened. It was as she was brushing her lips across the side of his head that John let out an
extended airy groan and his entire body underwent a peculiar transformation, becoming at once more relaxed
while achieving a new variety of tension. He hauled in a strangled-sounding breath and let it out again, this
time making the odd throaty exhalation that frequently accompanied his arousal. “Do it again,” he whispered,
opening his eyes for the first time. “Do that.”
She repeated it, this time running her lips across the upper edge of his ear while the fingers of her free hand
stroked a whisperingly light pattern against the side of his neck just beneath his earlobe. His eyes rolled back
in his head, and he let out another of the almost-groans. She could feel him starting to press against her hip
where she lay half across his body, the increasingly rigid shaft expanding beneath her, becoming harder with
each full-body surge of excitement. Aeryn worked her way a few denches lower, this time kissing him on the
underside of the jaw, on the spot close to the base of his throat that was, inexplicably, one of the stronger of his
many erotic triggers.
John let out another deep breath, this time accompanied by a slow rise of his hips, seeking out deliberate
contact. Aeryn slid her leg between his and leaned into him, massaging balls and half-stiffened cock with her
thigh, subjecting them to a cautious nudging pressure. The response was immediate. Whatever had been
interfering with his concentration -- be it distraction, depression, or concern over impotence -- was gone. There
would be no turning back from this point; she was certain. He was fully focused on the signals being
transmitted from loins to brain, plummeting into the depths of physical ecstasy.
She moved back down his body, lips and tongue once again traversing chest, stomach, and belly, and
subjected him to a warm, moist suctioning. The noise he made this time was half way between a whine and a
squeak -- the type of fast, high-pitched exhalation that came from a complete loss of muscular control.
Aeryn pushed herself up on both arms to where she could get a better look at him. John was blushing. “Don’t
mind me,” he said before she could comment. “Carry right on with what you were doing.”
“Are you hurt?” Nudging his legs out to the sides, she delved cautiously between them with both hands, as
though searching for any damage that might have gone unnoticed thus far.
“Oh, dear god,” he gasped. “No, no injuries. It’s just … just been a while, Aeryn. I’m --” Whatever he had
intended to say next was lost to a full-fledged groan that emanated from deep inside the center of his chest.
“There’s a backlog,” she said, fighting back a laugh.
Mock inspection for injuries completed, Aeryn went on fondling the entire area between his legs, making brief
forays outward to massage his thighs, alternating between a firmer grip and more vigorous encouragement,
and lighter caresses of more sensitive areas. After several microts, John shuddered, muscles leaping and
quivering in random patterns, followed by the sound of his teeth clattering out a message concerning an over-
charged nervous system.
“If you’re not careful, something is going to explode,” he said. One of his fists clutched spasmodically at the
covers, knotting a fistful of fabric into a sweat-dampened bundle.
“Should I” -- she paused long enough to kiss him -- “defuse you?”
“Whatever you do, you’d better make it quick. There’s not going to be a whole lot of control tonight.”
Aeryn resumed the steady, firm stroking that she knew would maintain his interest. A muscle near the top of his
thigh began to tense and relax in time with the movement of her hand. “You’re still feeling erratic,” she said.
“Incendiary might be a better word at this point,” he panted out, “or maybe downright ballistic. One small spark
is all it’s going to take to put me into orbit.”
Aeryn took the warning seriously, hearing the truth buried amidst the humorous delivery. If the entire evening
had gone more smoothly -- if John had been able to achieve an erection more easily and it had taken less
effort for them to reach this particular moment -- she might have been tempted to tease him. She could have
hovered a micro-dench above him, tormenting him with the promise of warm engulfment, occasionally lowering
herself just far enough to make contact with the smooth glistening skin at the tip of his penis before pulling
away; or she could have straightened up, stretched, yawned, and looked around the room feigning boredom,
using nothing more than the sight of her naked body to increase his excitement. There were nights when she
subjected him to that sort of pleasurable torment, prolonging his wait for release until, according to John, he
was on the verge of either getting down on his knees and begging her to let him come or staggering off to a
private corner where he could finish the process on his own.
This was not the night for those types of games. Aeryn swung a leg over his hips, paused there for several
microts because she knew that he loved this particular moment -- when he could look down along his body and
see her poised there, hovering above his erect cock -- and then sank down onto him in one long slow motion.
It was a wondrous few moments, consisting of muscles stretching in unique ways to accommodate the thrusting
penetration, and the delightful internal fullness that she had first imagined while they were still in the shower.
As she settled into place, she was treated to the sweet deep internal pang, the one that had the capacity to set
her entire body to shivering and shuddering. Aeryn rocked her hips hard against John’s, pressing downward,
and found it again, infusing nerves she had almost forgotten existed with an ecstatic form of energy.
It was a siren’s song emanating from the center of her pelvis, commanding her to cast aside any lingering urge
to engage in foreplay, and to launch herself into the forceful, energetic thrusts that would generate that
wondrous sensation again and again. It said that the time for slow escalation had come to an end. The desire
to linger over every square dench of skin and each separate muscle was banished, replaced by an
overwhelming hunger for movement, for exertion, sweat, and energy wastefully expended. She threw herself
into the effort willingly, reveling in the quiet aching burn of over-stressed muscles, the sweat slick slide of skin
against skin, and the soothing cold crawl of droplets streaking down her back and ribs.
There was a strangely quiescent lover in her bed. John was normally an active, energetic participant. Even on
the occasions when she took the lead, he was never willing to lie still and let her do all the work. It didn’t matter
whether he was driven by passion, lust, love, tenderness, frustration, or even anger; John always seemed to be
on a quest to achieve total physical exhaustion, seeking that special moment when he could slump down beside
her, panting, sweating, drained in every sense of the word.
On this particular night, he was content to lie back and watch, blue eyes performing the slow easy shift that
meant he was examining each of her features in repetitive succession, noting even the smallest details, leaving
it up to her to provide movement and friction. Interest wasn’t lacking; only effort and involvement had gone
missing.
“Is this all right?” she asked, wondering if some portion of the arrangement was bothering him.
He gave her a curious, contented looking smile, closed his eyes, and, for a moment, seemed to relax. The
relaxation lasted less than half a microt, passing far too quickly for Aeryn to worry that he had lost interest in
what was going on or that she had distracted him into a recurrence of impotence. Beneath her, both inside and
out, John’s body surged against hers, as though someone or something had just filled him to overflowing with
energized plasma. Almost too late, Aeryn realized that his lack of movement and involvement had nothing to do
with his earlier depression. What she had been observing was John dedicating every bit of concentration to
maintaining a highly tenuous vestige of self-control.
She froze in place. All motion came to a stop. Beneath her thigh, a blood vessel in his hip throbbed out a fast
staccato beat. “Do you need a moment?” she asked.
“No.” The single word was expelled an entire lungful of air. He took in a shuddering breath before adding, “But
it might be good if you could hurry up a bit.”
Aeryn resumed the forceful, rhythmic rocking against his hips, searching for and finding the right position for
the best application of pressure, deepest penetration, greatest pleasure for both of them. “I should go faster,”
she said.
His hands, when they grasped her waist to provide added impetus, were shaking, and his breathing was
becoming more erratic with each passing microt. “No … no, that’s not what I meant,” he panted out one
strained syllable at a time.
On one hand, it didn’t seem fair to tease him at this particular moment. On the other hand, the opportunity was
too enticing to pass up. “That’s what you said.”
“Good god, woman. You expect coherent thought at a time like this?”
She watched his progression toward a physical explosion with pleasure, enjoying all the familiar signals that
John was approaching the point of no return. He started by slipping away from his surroundings, retreating to a
place that she could never visit and would never truly understand. The lingering smile gave way to a faraway
dreamy gaze that meant his attention was shifting from touch, sight, and sound to wholly internal sensations;
transitioning into the slack jawed, dazed look he got whenever his body was hurtling toward an orgasm; and
eventually to the bared teeth and strained breaths that looked as much as though he was suffering as it
resembled the final onset of physical ecstasy. He let go of her waist. Fists clenched. Muscles bunched and
tautened across his upper body. He began to drive upward into her descent with more vigor, seeking the extra
bit of tactile provocation that would summon him to the final culmination of their efforts. Aside from the fluttering
eyelids and the way his eyes were rolling back in his head, he looked and sounded like he was in agony. And
yet, amidst all the signals that suggested otherwise, the pleasure was unmistakable.
Life was like that, Aeryn realized. In a revelatory flash, she was struck by the connection between John’s
impending climax and the way their lives often played out. Joy and heartache, love and loss, pain and
pleasure: they were so closely intermixed one could often melt seamlessly into the other until it was difficult to
tell them apart. Having John back, alive and well, was a blindingly bright moment in her life, and the pain of
watching him struggle with his sense of guilt was every bit as intense as the pleasure.
She had never suspected how painful heartbreak could be until she had learned to love. And love came with
the promise of heartache and loss. There was no avoiding it. Giving birth went hand in hand with agony,
enduring the inconceivable pain of being shot had led to the ecstasy that she had managed to survive and
would live to see John Crichton again, and his moral and physical starvation had been the price paid to get him
back alive. The more clearly she saw how the opposites were intertwined, the faster they knotted into an
inextricable tangle that no longer made any sense.
“Hey.” John’s panting summons dragged her back to the here and now. “Where’d you go?”
She smiled and bent down to kiss him. A trickle of perspiration streaked toward his temple, scarcely paused
when it hit the short-cropped hair, and disappeared into the damp stubble. “You distracted me,” she said.
“Nuh unh,” he said, shaking his head. “You had that wonderful ‘Eureka!’ look you get when you’ve had a
brainstorm.” He grabbed her around the waist and held her still. “You’re beautiful when you look like that.
I love it. Share.”
“This --” she began, meaning to suggest that they not interrupt their activities.
“This,” he said, nudging upward with his hips, “will be here after you tell me what set off that funny little smile
you get sometimes.” He tugged one corner of her mouth upward with a thumb. “You never believe me when I
tell you how much it excites me when you concentrate on yourself when we’re together like this. Let me in on
the secret for once.”
“What about your self-control? I thought I was supposed to be hurrying.”
“I found some along the way. Forget about that for a moment. Tell me what you were thinking.”
Aeryn ran the backs of her fingers up his stomach, let them drift up the center of his chest, and then ran her
thumb across one of his nipples several times. She felt the surge of response from his body, and understood
how close he was to losing control. John was hovering in that special place where every touch, sight, smell,
and sound had the potential to complete the short journey to an orgasm. If she were the one teetering on the
edge, the one being touched and stroked while they talked, the sensations would be nearly unendurable and
would at the same time hold the promise of an intense, unequalled climax when they chose to finish. John was
slightly different because of his need for thrust and friction to carry him forward, but all of the appropriate signs
were present. There were the small squirming movements beneath her and the occasional chuckling gasps
that said he was enjoying the delicate, nearly excruciating in-between state.
So she leaned over him, and tried to explain her revelation, starting with the grimace she had seen on his face
and working through to how it related to his guilt over the wanton killing. It didn’t come out nearly as well as
when she first assembled the associations in her mind.
John closed one eye tight, squinted at her out of the other, and looked confused. “You’re saying that my being
all torn up inside is a good thing because once I get over it I’ll appreciate not being that person even more. Is
that it?” He was rubbing her upper arms and shoulders, one hand or the other occasionally traveling further to
explore her neck or make a foray to one of her breasts.
“I’m not sure what I’m saying. It was clearer before I tried to explain it.”
“Good and bad go together. One can’t exist without the other. That’s a very old story,” he said. Both hands
migrated down to her breasts. “You’re not nursing anymore.”
“I couldn’t. At first I was too badly injured; then I was full of drugs,” she said, and then returned to her confusing
revelation. “This is more than two opposites coexisting side by side. They are the same thing. It’s like the
drugs they gave me. What saved me took something away at the same time. Good and bad at the same time
in the same situation. It’s like when this” -- she rocked against his hips until he let out a quiet, ecstatic groan --
“feels so good it hurts.”
John considered that for several microts without ever stopping the slow mapping of her body with his hands.
“My doing horrible things while I was on that planet comes from the same part of me that loves you so much that
I can’t exist without you,” he said finally. It was a statement this time, not a question.
“Mmmhmm,” she agreed. It seemed like a good time for another kiss: one-tenth reward for deciphering what
she was having so much trouble trying to convey, and nine-tenths because she wanted to feel his lips, his
tongue, his body touching hers. Several tens of microts passed before the conversation resumed.
“That’s a bit twisted, even for a Peacekeeper,” John said with his lips brushing hers.
“You believe I am wrong.”
“No, I think you’re probably right, and I’ve never had to figure it out before this happened because my life on
Earth was so mundane. There were no monumental personal disasters, but there was no great love of my life
either.” John looped an arm around the back of her neck and shoulders, trapping her where the kiss had
ended, close to his body. He stared up at her from a distance of less than four denches. “You’ve been doing
the Confucius thing the whole time I was doing all my thinking with the small brain. When did you get so smart,
woman?”
“I have always been exceptionally intelligent. I simply needed someone to show me how to use it,” she said.
“Exceptionally intelligent,” he repeated. A grin and the much-missed light in his eyes appeared at the same
time.
“Exceptional breeding. Far superior to other species,” she said, smiling down at him.
“God, I love you,” he said, and then wrapped his other arm around her and rolled them over.
John made love to her after that. He made love to every dench of her body from her toes to the top of her
head, exploring it as thoroughly as she had repeatedly traversed his. He led with his fingertips; lips and tongue
trailed behind, drifting dream-like along the long lines of thigh and arm, dipping into the hollows, rising up to
crest the arc of breast and shoulder. Strong hands urged her toward a quivering, gasping level of excitement;
firm but gentle fingers, moving with thorough familiarity, sought out every one of her favorite bits of anatomy
and stroked her to an agonizing degree of desire.
He held her there for what felt like arns, just as she had held him just short of the point of no return while they
talked. Sweating, panting, straining to achieve the last bit of excitement necessary to achieve a climax, she
wallowed in the agonizing pleasure that she had tried to explain to John. Time and again he withdrew, each
time returning with the heavier pressure of hands stroking her thighs, shoulders, and lower back; more lightly
applied devotion drifted endlessly across her breasts and the base of her throat. He carried her up, paused,
and let her drift back down again repeatedly, until the tension and desire demanded a far more vigorous
response from her.
Their union became a limb-tangled cooperative wrestling match, full of straining muscles on both their parts,
liberally fueled by sweat and effort, punctuated by panted vows of love, quiet laughs, and the more frequent but
unintelligible groans and gasps of delight. There was an unforgettable moment when, in the midst of a
laughing, ridiculous endeavor to change to a different position without bothering to first pull apart, her body
decided that it was time to release its pent up energy. She felt the first aching signals that it was about to
happen and let out a quiet cry of frustration. Caught in a half-upright not quite kneeling posture, it would be
impossible to give herself over to the internal nervous demolition. John, feeling what was about to occur,
laughed quietly near her ear and held her tight, supporting her body in midair, freeing her to concentrate on
the pulsing bursts of sensation that clamored to take over her entire existence and the strong arms that were
keeping her safe throughout. It was like having an orgasm in freefall, every electron in her body set free to
take up a new orbit without the hindrance of gravity affecting the eventual outcome.
She spun back to the reality of Moya and their bed to find that they were in a position that she loved, but that
she knew was far from relaxing or even satisfying for John. It allowed him the greatest freedom to stroke her
entire body, coaxing an absurd level of arousal out of her, and it also required more strength and exertion from
him than any other position save one. “No,” she said, trying to roll to one side. “This is –-”
He interrupted before she could finish explaining that she wanted this night to be about John and his needs.
“I enjoy this,” he said. “You know I do.”
“I wanted tonight to be –-” she tried again.
“-- for me,” John finished. “I know. I figured that part out. This is about me and what I want, Aeryn. I promise.
I want” -- he stopped, for an instant looking both confused and frustrated -- “I want us to be … I want it to be
about both of us, not just you seeing if you can give me a heart attack.”
He started to resume his fumbling explanation. For the second time that evening, Aeryn placed her hand over
his mouth to shut him up. “I understand,” she said.
The uncertainty in his expression eased, but didn’t disappear. “I didn’t explain it very well.”
“Yes, you did.” Aeryn lay back, relaxing, finding the position every bit as pleasurable as always, loving that she
could watch him, that she could see every dench of his body from his thighs to the crown of his head, and could
still reach him without a great deal of effort. John was right. She loved this position. She said the three words
that she was sure could convince him that she truly did understand what he was trying to say. “I love you.”
The small phrase worked. He smiled, bent down and kissed her, one hand resting easily on one of her breasts,
the other supporting his weight, his entire body pressing against already over-sensitized nerves. The overall
effect was nothing less than shattering. In the space of an instant she went from teetering on the brink of
lethargy -- wallowing in the post-climatic whole-body buzzing that lay somewhere between sleep and the rise to
another orgasm -- to full arousal. It was that special transition, always dependent on perfect timing, when John
was able to catch her before she slid too far down the scale towards relaxation, yanking her back to an
exquisite, achingly intense level of pleasure in the space of a few microts.
“Dear … Cholak,” she gasped. Arching over backwards, straining with one hand braced against his shoulder,
didn’t help. All it did was expose her stomach and chest to additional attention, inviting his hands to stroke belly
and breast; and raised her pelvis, which allowed him to push harder with each thrust, reaching previously
untouched depths. The resulting shockwave from deep inside was enough to draw a screeching gasp out of
her and a moaning exclamation from John.
It was then, with little forewarning, that she felt intensely, irrevocably naked. The sensation went far beyond
being undressed. It was a phenomenon that never occurred except at times like this, during extended, frantic,
wondrous bouts of recreating with this singular human.
She hadn’t known there were different flavors and tastes of being naked until she had met John Crichton. For
most of her life, being naked meant nothing more than not having clothes on. It was a fact of her existence,
along with the starkly lit showers where anatomy was seldom even noticed and open barracks that provided
little in the way of privacy. It was a way of life that she had never questioned until the morning she had caught
herself walking more quietly as she approached John’s quarters, hoping to catch a glimpse of him as he was
getting dressed.
She never could have guessed at the number of ways to be naked until she had fallen in love. There had been
no knowledge of the end of the day nakedness that came with getting ready for bed, of turning with her shirt or
pants in her hand just in time to watch him step into his loose sleep shorts with the distinctly male stretch of the
waistband as he pulled them into place. She hadn’t known about the nakedness of showering with a man that
she cherished, of the slippery sliding sort of sudsy fun that always involved an extravagant level of skin-to-skin
contact. There had been no way to foresee the type of nakedness that came from having John watch her
nurse their son, or of the tingling warmth that began in the center of her chest and expanded outward when he
slid closer and embraced them together, enveloping both her and the baby in his arms.
There was the fully clothed nakedness when he caught her on a seldom-used tier, backed her into corner, and
made love to her right then and there, begging to be caught by anyone who happened to come by. And there
was this: the explosive, insane kind of nakedness when every cell in her body seemed to be undergo a
transmutation so each one was simultaneously connected to every other cell, and even the smallest of touches
traveled through her body like a demolition’s shockwave, until she was sure that she was about to dissolve into
cloudy haze of individual atoms, flying apart in the exact moment that she reached orgasm.
The effect was always profound, as though she were discovering for the first time that she had skin; and
somewhat shocking, alerting every nerve ending from her scalp to the bottoms of her feet and every micro-
dench in between. John always knew the moment it happened, and took full advantage of the alteration to her
physiology. His hands moved more firmly from throat to belly, stroked her with more urgent demand, knowing
that light caresses and tickles would go unnoticed in the midst of the overall storm.
One of her hands flailed out, seeking any kind of anchor in order to keep her body from flying into a million
separate parts. It located one of his. His fingers intertwined into hers and held tight, squeezing hard when she
pressed and pulled against him, silently encouraging her to throw herself into their union with nothing held in
reserve. Her entire universe dissolved into the overwhelming presence of John Crichton, within and without,
seemingly touching every dench of her body at once.
She tried to ask John a question about his self-control and how much more time he required. The syllables
emerged in nonsensical fragments, tangled up with pleas to hurry and several confused incarnations of the
word “Now”.
Her orgasm began before he could answer, expanding like a fireball of ignited chakan oil, filling her belly to
overflowing with heat and convulsing muscles. It was too late to spend any more time considering what John
wanted or needed. She clung to his hand and abandoned the remainder of her body to the moment.
There might have been muscles contracting in one of her legs, battling to curl behind John and trap him against
her body, and his hand holding on to her ankle, preventing her from moving, which only increased the full-body
spasms. There might have been the heavier pressure of his hands massaging her breasts, urging her on,
coaxing the most out of her synapses. There might have been lips mouthing deep sucking patterns against the
base of her throat, forcing her to divide her attention between that one particular spot and the aching wonder
that was occurring in the center of her lower body, somehow increasing the overall ecstasy in the process; and
there might have been strong hands supporting her lower back, steadying her when the bucking and shaking
threatened to throw her body away from his.
At the moment when the storm inside her body began to slacken, there might have been the hard, needful
thrusting leading up to John’s orgasm, the heat and weight of his body in motion close to hers, blanketing her
with his presence, blocking out the rest of the universe. There might have been strong arms on either side of
her, simultaneously supporting his weight and surrounding her with safety, and a beautiful ballet of tensing
muscles, pulsing warmth, heat, and the sounds of a human male in the throes of ecstasy. Aeryn would never
know for sure if any of that happened. Since she was convinced that her body had been disassembled into its
component parts, rearranged into new patterns, and then put back together so that every light touch had the
power to set her to lurching, yelping, and quivering, she was quite certain that she would never be able to recall
what happened during those frantic dozen or so microts.
The moment passed, leaving her once again feeling wonderfully naked, as though no amount of clothes could
ever cover up enough of her body to quell the sensation. “Oh, be merciful,” she sighed at last, sagging into the
rumpled tangle of thermal covers on the bed. John remained poised above her for several more microts --
eyes half closed, an open-mouthed blissful half-smile frozen in place, his body unnaturally still while he eked
out the final delightful frissons of his orgasm -- then he let out a chuckling groan and lowered himself so he was
lying facedown alongside her.
Aeryn waited to see what would happen next. All too often John wanted to talk. He had assured her that with
the passage of cycles the situation would be reversed, that eventually it would be Aeryn who wanted to lie
awake and discuss topics ranging from what color to paint their quarters aboard Moya to the slow revolution of
the stars outside the view portal, while he fell into the post-climax coma-like stupor that he referred to as a
‘snore-gasm’. But, at least for now, it was John who always wanted to engage in some meaningless, often
philosophical conversation, when all she wanted was to lie quietly and enjoy the slow dissipation of sexual
energy. As far as she was concerned, it was the perfect moment to luxuriate in the warmth radiating from
John’s body, and to expend an arn or two wallowing in the peace and quiet.
Beside her, John sighed. Aeryn waited for him to break the silence. Aside from Moya’s normal rumbles and
grumbles, the only noise was the quiet rustle of skin brushing against bed cloths. John squirmed in close to
her, wrapped an arm around her midsection and pulled her in against his chest. Four microts later the thick,
shaggy thermal covers that John preferred were nearly arranged over their two bodies, and they were in exactly
the position Aeryn had longed after for so many days and nights. His arms were wrapped around her, he was
snuggled in close against her back, his body married to hers from shoulders to toes, and his lips were
performing a slow, relaxing dance along the top of her shoulder and the back of her neck.
She hadn’t really believed that John could complete this much of his recovery in a single evening … not down
deep in her heart where it mattered. She had dared to hope, and had planned as though it were possible, and
had even spent the occasional quarter-arn dreaming that it might turn out this way; but she hadn’t truly
believed that she would end up in John Crichton’s arms, loved, cherished, and feeling as though no intruder
could ever breach the security offered by his embrace. She wasn’t so naïve as to assume that his recovery
was complete. There was no doubt that the days ahead promised relapses, outbursts of unprovoked anger,
and possibly several bouts of deep depression, but the John Crichton who loved her beyond good sense had
returned at some point during the evening, and that meant she didn’t have to be strong for both of them
anymore.
The relief was almost more than she could keep contained. If she hadn’t known that the sudden chill and the
queasy wave of weakness passing though her body were the result of runaway emotions -- as opposed to an
illness or a hidden lingering injury -- she might have been concerned about its causes and possibly even gotten
out of bed until it passed. Instead, she did the one thing that she knew would dispel the unpleasant physical
reactions most quickly. Aeryn turned inside John’s embrace until she faced him, and then carefully insinuated
herself closer to his body, intertwining legs and arms until she was tucked in against his chest, one of her legs
between his, as much a part of him as was physically possible.
It felt weak, it felt immature and needful, and it felt wonderful. John didn’t do or say anything except to
accommodate her change in position. He released his grasp on her when she began to turn over; made room
for her when she wanted to snuggle in against the front of his body; and wrapped his arms around her once
she had come to rest. She wasn’t sure he even understood what was going on until he rubbed her back for
several microts, and then whispered, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Just hold me. Hold me tight,” she said.
He did more than simply tighten his embrace. John rolled onto his back, carrying her with him so she wound up
lying half on top of him. She came to rest with her head on his chest, one leg wedged between both of his, her
upper body cradled inside his arms, warm and secure. It was everything she craved and more. It didn’t take
long for her to slide into a half-waking state where she was conscious of little other than the sound of John’s
breathing and the slow repetitive drift of his hand moving from the top of her buttocks, up across the recently
healed portion of her back to her shoulder blade on that side, and then back down again. If she needed
reassurance that he understood how fiercely she had struggled to survive, it was embodied in that hypnotic
touch.
The sound of John’s voice drew her back from the brink of sleep. “I missed you,” he whispered.
The obvious response -- “I missed you, too” -- felt inadequate. Trapped in the mental morass that lay halfway
between waking and sleep, Aeryn couldn’t assemble an answer worthy of his brief, quietly voiced expression of
how lost he had been without her. She settled for hugging him more tightly, trusting that he would understand
the silent message. And at some point in the midst of the foggy, half-dreaming, half-thinking mental celebration
that she had her arms wrapped around John Crichton, she went to sleep, aware until the very last moment of
the light stroke of his fingers moving up and down her back.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
