Rated: NC17
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Chapter 3
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With only a few days left before our sealing Cassi cornered me as were walking and discussing the details of the ceremony and, my favorite part, our post-sealing trip.
"Starbuck," Cassi censured, correctly deciphering the gleam in my eyes. What harm was there in planning a few hands of pyramid while she was, um, resting?
"Aw, Cass..." I began to cajole when something caught my attention.
Had it been anyone else, I wouldn't have even paused in conversation. I would have just kept going. But it wasn't just anyone. It was her. With another man. Someone else who might hurt her. Someone who wasn't me.
One micron I was discussing my post-sealing trip and the next I was microns away from taking apart the Captain from the Green Squadron. I realized in that micron that it was something that I had been wanting to do for sectons.
He was even there when Athena informed me she was resigning her flight status and would no longer by my wingmate.
What I hadn't wanted to suspect was being confirmed before my very eyes.
"You sure move quickly," I hissed as I stalked over to them, forgetting about Cassi, about our plans.
"Hmmm, what?" Athena asked, turning towards me with dazed eyes and moist, swollen lips.
My hands balled into fists. I couldn't stop the words from spilling spitefully from my mouth. " Orion, Bojay, me, and now him!" I hissed.
"Can we speak privately?" she raised her chin, not letting the tears that flood her eyes fall. Good girl, I thought irreverently. My stomach fluttered.
I looked her over, as if she were offering me more than conversation. I took pleasure in the spark of anger I aroused as I grabbed her arm and dragged her off into an empty room.
"You sure you just want to talk?" I leaned in closely as we stood alone a few centons later.
"What exactly is your problem, Starbuck?" Athena asked, not backing off my my closeness. I could feel her breath against my lips. Her heat warmed my body. "Am I suddenly not allowed to kiss whomever I want?"
The swift transition from the offensive to the defensive caught me off guard. Aroused me.
"Funny, now you have nothing to say," she hissed, an undecipherable gleam in her blue eyes.
"Are you getting sealed to him?" I blurted out.
"He asked a few days ago and I've been thinking it over," she admitted.
"And he was trying to convince you to accept? Did you?" I grabbed her arm, our faces were mere millimeters apart. My other hand slid over her hip.
"I said I was thinking about it," I felt her breath on my lips.
"Then think about this," I said recklessly as my hand slid up her arm and under her hair. Clasping her neck I barely had to move to press my lips over hers.
"And this," I whispered as my teeth nibbled her bottom lip and then my tongue soothed the damage. Her breath teased my mouth, daring my tongue to slip into her warm, moistness. I could never turn down a dare. My hand moved to cup her head as I drank my fill, tasting, soothing, arousing.
I could feel her breasts crushed against my chest. My other hand stroked the sides of them through her shirt eliciting shivers from her form just as my tongue elicited moans from her throat.
Her fingers were buried in my hair as I continued to fuse our mouths. I reveled in her desure as I urgently stimulated the rest of her body.
Her breath came out as a groan as I moved my lips down the curve of her chin and neck. Her hips pressed impatiently to mine as I nipped her collarbone.
"Feel that," I thought as I buried my pulsing shaft against her pelvis.
I cupped her firm ass and pressed deeper as my teeth nibbled her sensitive nipples through her uniform. First one, then the other.
Frak! One micron with this man and my senses desert me! Taking a deep breath and I moved back and straightened my spine.
For a few days I let myself be swept away in Biehn's plan to care of us. It was convenient, but wrong. I had to tell him the truth and accept the consequences for what I had let happen on Talus.
"I need to tell you something," I said, as his hands slid under my shirt and cupped my bare, throbbing breasts.
"I'm listening," he took a deep breath and looked at me, warily, desirously.
"Let's sit down?" I suggested as I tugged him to a sitting position.
"Mmm," his hands continued to roam over my body.
"We've never talked about what happened between us on the Talus," I started, feeling him stiffen against me.
"Is that why you're thinking about being sealed to Biehn? To get back at me?" he interrupted.
"No, yes, partly. What do you mean get back at you? How..." I sighed. He was doing it again.
"Are you in love with him?" he asked.
"No, will you..."
"If you're not in love with him how can you consider sealing to him?" Starbuck jumped out of his seat.
"Starbuck!" I was frustrated.
"Is he in love with you?" Starbuck demanded, his hands on his hips.
"No..."
"Ha!" Starbuck waved a hand around.
"Starbuck! Will you listen to me!" I pleaded.
"If you're not in love with each other how could you consider getting sealed?" he asked.
"Because I'm pregnant!" I stood up and yelled at him.
"I mean, really...you're what?" Starbuck's eyes widened and he took silent and still as he digested my announcement. My heart constricted, but stopped myself from apologizing from the confession he had wrested from me so unceremoniously, instead I stared mesmerized by the play of expressions over Starbuck's face. Waiting for his reaction.
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If I thrive on confusion, then I should be thriving right now.
Athena pregnant?
Apollo's little sister is going to be a mother? My former girlfriend? The woman that I almost just ravished? The woman I had finally ravished?
Was it? Could it?
"Bojay?" I asked.
"It's yours Starbuck. I have medical scans to prove it."
Mine? I think I might have said that out loud.
Until then I had thought what I felt when I believed that Chameleon was my father was the deepest, most elemental I could emotion I could ever feel. But a child? My own child?
"I was going to wait until we found Earth, if I had lived," I remember saying something like that as I moved to stand before her.
"Surprise!" she said, humor dancing in her eyes.
The levity broke the paralysis that had overtaken my mind and limbs.
"Yeah, a big one," I snorted.
"This doesn't have to change anything. You can be sealed to Cassi in a few days and I'll raise our child. I would like for him or her to know who its biological father is," she said.
Cassi. Lords, I had forgotten about Cassi. I left her back in the corridor with Biehn.
"No other man is going to raise my child!" I said.
"You can be as involved as you want to be," she said.
As she spoke a long-suppressed dream came to my mind. My very pregnant wife and I in each other's arms by a lake, surrounded by woods, peace reigning all around us. I had forgotten, back when those woods were destroyed by the Cylons.
"Everything happens in the woods. I was lost," I said referring to the Cylon attack that destroyed my family, "then I was found," I said referring to when Athena told me I was part of her clan, "and then another family was created."
Athena's lips quirked, reminding me that I wasn't often poetic.
"May I?" my eyes dipped to her still-flat stomach.
"S..sure," she said. "You won't feel anything."
She was wrong.
Drawn, I moved forward and cupped her middle. Her warmth made my fingers tingle, her scent intoxicated me. I could feel life in there. My son or daughter.
"I need some time to think about this, promise me you won't do anything rash," I said.
"Okay," she nodded.
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A few centons later it turned out that I didn't have to bother asking her that. When we returned to where we had so rudely left our companions, we found our companions hadn't stood in the corridor twiddling their thumbs waiting. Apparently, they were coming to an understanding of their own.
"So that's why he was willing to martyr himself," I said to Athena as we approached them.
"I'm sorry," Athena said, and something in her voice caught my attention.
"You knew?"I asked.
Athena just nodded.
"I guess all sealings are off," I said loud enough for my fiancé and the man who held her in his arms to hear.
As they moved apart I could see the happy flush in Cassi's face warring with belated embarrassment and guilt.
"Well, this isn't going to be as hard as I thought," I said.
End Chapter 3
Chapter 4
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