B'ELANNA'S SECRET

By Captain Jinx
(c/o redshoes@ix.netcom.com)

Tom Paris attempted to stifle a yawn knowing he was going to fail before he even began.

It was the third or fourth time it had happened since he had come onto his shift at the Pilot's station three-and-a-half seemingly endless hours ago, and it didn't seem likely it was going to be the last time.

Boring. Boring. Boring.

They tell you a lot of things about space when you're at the Academy, Paris reflected. They tell you its dimensions and composition. They tell you the dangers you are likely to encounter. They tell you, yes, that it's the final bleeding frontier. Okay, swell. The only thing they don't tell you is that watching it slip past you, hour after hour --stars, stars, stars, nebula, asteroid, stars, stars -- can also be really dull.

Drowsifying, even.

Especially if there's somewhere else you'd rather be.

Especially if you haven't been getting enough sleep lately.

Sleep. What a wonderful thought. The idea of sleep made Tom think about his quarters, his bedroom in particular, and, naturally enough, his bed. It made him think about how his bed probably looked at that very moment, very rumpled and unkempt. Not at all the quarters of a senior officer. And speaking of senior officers, who's that very attractive, softly curved, olive-skinned form curled up under his comforter? It might be B'Elanna Torres, the very reason Tom Paris was having trouble staying conscious right that moment.

He thought about getting a cup of coffee.

He wasn't sure, but he thought that Tuvok had spotted the last not-quite-stifled yawn. Thanks be to all-and-sundry gods that the Captain was in her Ready Room (taking a nap if she had any sense) and Chakotay was working in his office or Paris would be seriously worried about a raised eyebrow or a knowing smile from the command chair. Not that having the Chief Security Officer notice Tom's lack of sleep was much better, but at least he knew Tuvok wouldn't feel compelled to make a comment unless Tom's behavior was "compromising the safety of the ship and crew..." or something like that.

At any rate... A cup of coffee. Sounded like a good idea. Beverages were generally frowned upon on the bridge, but not officially prohibited. In fact, many's the time the Captain had strolled out of her Ready Room with a steaming cuppa.

Coffee, coffee, coffee.

Actually, now that he thought about it, B'Elanna's skin was more coffee-colored than olive. Coffee with just a touch of cream, just enough to take the bitterness out and make it sweet. Tom thought about the taste of B'Elanna's skin just at the place where the nape of her neck met her shoulder. He thought about the way it had felt a few nights before when the two of them had been lounging together after a particularly athletic session, Tom propped up against the headboard, pillows piled around them, B'Elanna half-sitting, half-lying with her back against his chest. Neither of them had said anything for the last little while, both listening to the ticking of the clock Tom kept by his bed.

He had owned a clock like it when he was a boy -- a real windup clock with springs and gears. This clock wasn't that clock -- he'd lost track of it many years, many moves ago -- but when Tom had suddenly found himself free of the New Zealand penal colony and on board Voyager, he had taken advantage of his then-abundant replicator credits and synthesized himself a few personal items. Under the heading "Clock," Voyager's replicator index listed 42 subheadings, including "Clocks, atomic" and "Clocks, sundial" (Why would anyone onboard a starship want a sundial? Tom had wondered). But when he'd seen the listing for "Clocks, mechanical," it had brought back memories of long-forgotten nights lying in the dark listening to the tic-toc-tic of that old clock. So, he'd had one made up. Put him into hock with Harry for three weeks, too.

When B'Elanna had discovered it among his meager possessions, she slid off its faux wooden back, lightly touched the gearwork and smiled. "Why, Tom Paris," she said, "you may possess the soul of an engineer after all."

Well, maybe he did, but the one thing he was certain of was that it was really an engineer who possessed his soul.

Tom jerked his head back and snorted softly. Did I really just think that? he wondered. But, then there was B'Elanna and that wonderful sweet taste just at the nape of her neck and the way her nipple grew stiff when he brushed it with the tip of his finger and the soft, low groan of satisfied approval when she felt him stir against her lower back and...

Well, Tom thought, guess I won't be getting up to get any coffee right now, after all. Oh, damn. At least I feel awake now. Well, part of me. Why did they have to make these damn uniforms so tight? What did James Kirk use to do whenever this happened to him?

Another yawn, this one irrepressible. Tom raised his right hand to his mouth, hoping to stifle the worst of it, to cover his mouth and nose and hope that he looked like he was suddenly fascinated by something utterly mesmerizing on his board. ("Tuvok! Harry! Look! Anomaly off the starboard... Oh, wait, it was just a bug... Never mind.")

And what the hell was that?

That smell.

And then he knew.

B'Elanna!

That bitch.

They'd been dating for almost two months -- if a word as pleasant and unassuming as dating could be used to describe the amalgamation of constant interpersonal antagonism and totally unfettered carnal desire that was their relationship. Well, whatever it is, Tom reflected, it's working just fine for me. Except for the lack of sleep. And that wouldn't be so much of a problem if they hadn't been on different shifts for the past several days. B'Elanna had pulled a double when the magnetic couplings in back-up to the warp core dumping system had begun to act neurotically. Well, that's not how B'Elanna put it, but it amounted to that as far as Tom was concerned. In any case, after their recent adventure with the loss of the warp core, the Chief Engineer decided she couldn't take any chances and tracked down the problem herself.

The only problem was that it earned her an extra shift off which she gladly took (where once, Tom thought, she would have soldiered on, no matter how dark the circles under her eyes) and now they were out of synch.

So this morning -- his morning, at any rate -- just as he was oozing out of bed (Tom Paris was not a morning person), B'Elanna had knocked on the door and then let herself in. Tom had stared at her, first cup of coffee still clutched in his hands, as she had bounced into the bedroom and said, "On your way to the shower? Great!"

B'Elanna loved to shower. If Tom had splurged too many replicator credits at Sandrine's or to avoid Neelix's latest culinary delights, B'Elanna had used up hers in taking real water showers instead of the practically free (but nowhere near as much fun) sonic variety. She didn't say, "Good morning," or even "How did you sleep?" (Not very well, thanks. I've gotten used to having company.) Just marched into his bathroom, pulling her tunic off along the way. Tom stared at his coffee cup, considered briefly the variety of pleasures the morning was already offering him.

Caffeine.

Shower.

Full-bodied, flavorful aroma. Warmth in the belly. Wakefulness.

Twining limbs. Soap. Back scrubbing. Wakefulness.

No contest, really.

Tom put down his cup, shed his robe and headed for the bathroom.

He found B'Elanna already lathering up her hair, eyes closed, face in the spray. "Get my back?" she asked. Tom stepped in, briefly shying away from the hot water, then easing in behind her (Starfleet shower stalls weren't really meant for two). He picked up a sponge she had brought to his quarters several weeks ago, poured in a dollop of the soap he knew she liked and worked the sponge until the lather foamed up. Tom started in on the knots in her back and slowly smoothed away the aches of B'Elanna's day. She growled low in her throat, a big, happy feline growl, a cat who likes water.

Tom worked the sponge down to her lower back just as she was rinsing away the last of the shampoo. She turned her head to look at him from over her shoulder, eyes half-closed to avoid getting soap in them, and kissed him quickly on the chin. "How's it going there, Flyboy? Miss me?"

Tom smiled, said simply, "Yes," and pressed the sponge into the cleft of her rear end. She wiggled delightfully, enjoying the feeling as he nudged the sponge down between her cheeks and onto the backs of her thighs. He was several inches taller than she, so the process of reaching down that low put his mouth in proximity with the middle of her back. He kissed her once, lightly, on the tiny ridge that protected her spinal column. It was only one of the several minor anatomical differences he had noticed since he'd begun to make a study of Klingon-Human hybrids. Another, he thought, as he worked the sponge back and forth between her legs, was that B'Elanna's erogenous zones were ever-so-slightly different from a human woman's.

Where most human women enjoyed having their nipples kissed lightly, B'Elanna seemed to require a slightly more aggressive attitude, almost as if the nerve endings were a bit better protected. Another difference was that most human women's pleasure centered on the clitoris. Certainly, B'Elanna had a clitoris and she enjoyed any attention that he paid to it (which he was just in the process of doing), but her Klingon-Human nervous system seemed to be a little more generally distributed around the entire genital-anal area. In other words, B'Elanna twitched and moaned whenever you touched her pretty much anywhere in that area, though it required a concerted effort of will to get her wherever she wanted to go. That, as much as anything, had a lot to do with the marathon sex sessions that were already becoming legendary onboard the tiny closed community that was Voyager.

Still, where there's a will, there's a way. And, to paraphrase a comment ascribed to one of Starfleet's greatest pioneers (while speaking of a different, but similar topic): Brother, did she have a lot of will.

B'Elanna backed up against Tom's probing fingers and reached around behind her to see what she could find.

Evidently she liked what she found, for she growled in that way she had that turned his insides out. Her hand closed around his erection and tugged, pulling an answering groan from his own throat. "B'Elanna..." The sponge slipped from his fingers as he cupped her breasts, and his hips thrust forward almost involuntarily as her hand stroked and squeezed.

"Hmmmm...?"

"Oh, babe..." And that was as far as he got before she turned around. Seizing his face between her hands, she tilted his head down and kissed him. Hard. Thoroughly. His response was just as enthusiastic, and their teeth clicked briefly before he pulled back slightly. "Sorry."

"'s'okay," she murmured and attacked his mouth again.

Tom had kissed and been kissed by many women in his life, but before B'Elanna, he wasn't sure he would ever have described any of those oral adventures as "ravishment." But, he decided, that's exactly what she was doing -- she was ravishing him. And the sudden shiver up his spine convinced him that it was precisely what he wanted. A burst of enthusiasm on B'Elanna's part made him take an abrupt step backward, and he let out a yelp as his back hit the cold shower wall. The muffled sound of B'Elanna giggling even as her tongue continued to explore the space between his upper lip and his front teeth stirred him to a different sort of action. She mewled in protest as he pulled away from the kiss, but he was firm. "You are an evil woman and need to be taught a lesson," he explained reasonably, as he lifted her up just high enough to impale her. She laughed with delight and wrapped her legs around his waist as he began to thrust, then squealed when he pushed her back against the opposite wall.

"Tom, that's cold!" she shrieked.

He growled and bit her on the shoulder. "Serves you right." He shifted his position slightly for better purchase as he continued his offensive. She moaned as the friction began to work its magic, and hugged him hard. She began to pant in time with his thrusts, and he redoubled his efforts. B'Elanna tended to be vocal during sex, and Tom found it tremendously inspiring to hear her guttural cries. He realized dimly that her punishment was rapidly becoming a reward and recognized the unfairness of it, but as he shifted his feet again to improve the angle, he stepped on the sponge and nearly lost his balance, losing his grip on B'Elanna in the process. She slid off him, and momentarily growled in frustration, then began to snicker. He was irritated, briefly, but her hilarity was infectious, and he slithered to the floor of the shower, taking her down with him. With the shower beating down on their heads, they leaned on each other and howled with laughter.

"I'm getting water in my ears," Tom said, when he could talk again.

"And I'm sitting on the sponge," B'Elanna replied.

"Lucky sponge. I have to get moving. Do my back?"

They helped each other up and B'Elanna dutifully and thoroughly scrubbed Tom's back, neck and rear end. She spun him around and lathered up his chest and groin, but, except for the wicked grin, didn't do anything overt to protract the shower. Tom rinsed off, his semi-erect penis bobbing, said, "You're a bad, bad woman, B'Elanna Torres," and exited.

B'Elanna would be in the shower for at least another ten minutes or however long her credits would last. Tom had never met a woman who took so much pleasure in hot water beating down on her. In fact, now that he thought about it, it was a rare occasion that the two of them took a shower together that she didn't turn amorous. File that mental note away, Mr. Paris, he thought. Might be a holodeck program to develop.

Tom recovered his now lukewarm coffee and gulped it down while shaving, searching for a clean uniform, and finding his right boot. He looked longingly at the replicator, knowing he would be down to his last credit if he asked for an espresso or a raktajino, and decided to wait. He might need the caffeine boost later in his shift. Just as he was getting ready to leave, B'Elanna stepped out of the bathroom, languidly toweling her hair dry, wearing one of Tom's not-quite-pristine red uniform jackets. It was one of the several Tom had trashed on various away missions but had never bothered throwing into the replicator for reprocessing. Being his early morning, the environmental controls in Tom's quarters were set to be what was, to him, comfortably cool. For the half-Klingon engineer, who preferred things to be a little warmer and dryer, the room was just a little too chilly to walk around naked, especially after a shower. Tom nodded at B'Elanna and said, "You look good in red and black."

"So I should switch career tracks?"

"No, I don't think I could stand the idea of you telling me what to do on the bridge, too," Tom said dryly.

"'Too?'" B'Elanna sidled up to the pilot. Much taller than the chief engineer when both were dressed, Paris towered over her when he was wearing boots and she was barefoot. Still, the challenging glint in her eye made Tom feel... slightly trepidatious. "What do you mean, 'Too?'"

"Well, heh," Paris said, taking a half-step backward as B'Elanna tried to close in on him. "You can get pretty, uh, commanding sometimes when it's just the two of us."

"Ah. 'Commanding,'" she said, taking his hand, and looking up at Paris under lowered brows. The low light in Paris' quarters cast dark shadows under her brow ridges making her eyes seem to shine predatorily. "You don't mean 'domineering' or 'bossy' or anything that could be interpreted as derogatory?"

"No, B'Elanna, of course not," Paris said, just a little nervously. He felt the pressure of her fingers around his increase slightly. The half-Klingon engineer was significantly stronger than a human woman, more than a match for any human male in most situations (Like when I'm trying to keep all my parts intact, Paris thought). Struggling to change the subject, he said, "Really, all I meant was you look good in red and black. Maybe the next time we find a trading post, we could go shopping for something that you could wear when you're just, you know, lounging around."

"'Lounging around.' You know, Tom Paris, we don't do too much 'lounging' around here." B'Elanna tightened her grip on the pilot's hand, twisted it, and pushed the palm toward her belly. Tom felt her flat stomach muscles under the loose uniform jacket. "In fact," she said, pulling his head down to the level of her mouth and breathing the words into his ear, "I can't remember the last time I 'lounged' anywhere."

Tom kissed his lover's ear lightly and said, "Well, maybe that's something I can teach you about when I get off my shift. It seems to me that that's the point of the Federation -- different cultures teaching each other about different lifestyles." B'Elanna pressed the tips of Tom's fingers against her lower belly and he felt the light brush of her lush pubic hair.

"I think I remember something about that from my Academy days," B'Elanna whispered, now slightly thrusting her hips against Tom's hand. "'Infinite diversity in infinite combinations,' or something like that." Tom groaned softly as he felt his erection begin to stir. From a point far, far away, the notion stirred that this, this was an incredibly bad idea. As she pushed his fingers lower into the soft folds of flesh, Tom thought she hadn't toweled herself completely dry, but then the familiar aroma hit his nostrils and he knew he was lost. I'm going on report, he thought, and there's nothing that I can do about it.

B'Elanna ground her hips into Tom's hand as he parted her labia and began to stroke her. "B'Elanna..." he whispered as he began to kiss down the side of her neck, shoving aside the collar of the uniform jacket with his nose.

"Tom..." she growled into his ear, biting the lobe just a little harder than any human woman would, just short of drawing blood and driving them both crazy. Tom's fingers were now sliding deep into her and he was beginning to think about how he might possibly be able to get out of his uniform, fuck the living daylights out his lover (And, no, we are not talking about making love here, Paris thought, we are talking about fucking), and get to the bridge in the next five minutes. Emergency beam-out, maybe? B'Elanna was authorized to do that. Maybe right into his chair. Nobody would notice if there was something happening on the viewscreen -- like the Q juggling Borg cubes while singing 'On the Good Ship Lollipop...'

His back now against the door to his quarters, his fingers vigorously rubbing his lover's secret places, both gasping for relief, the pilot whispered hoarsely, "Listen, B'Elanna, maybe this isn't..." but before Tom could say another word, B'Elanna suddenly took a step backwards from the door, said, "Computer, unlock the door," and gave her lover a well-placed shove in the chest.

Tom landed flat on his back in the hallway outside his quarters.

B'Elanna regarded him from the doorway, arms crossed over her breasts. "'Too commanding.' Mister, you have no idea what you're in for now." Then, she smiled sweetly, waved the tips of her fingers and said, "Have a nice shift, Tom." The door closed with a swish.

Tom pushed himself to a sitting position and quietly regarded the door for a moment, pondering the many synonyms he had learned for "Schmuck" since joining Starfleet. Just as he began to think about standing up, Tuvok came around the curve in the corridor and saw the senior pilot sitting there. He paused, eloquently regarded Paris for a moment, then said, "Good morning, Lieutenant."

"Oh, hey, Tuvok. Good morning."

"Is there something wrong, Mr. Paris?"

"Oh, no. Nothing really. Just thought I saw one of those gigantic viruses again, but it was just a dust bunny."

"A 'dust bunny,' Mr. Paris?" He offered his hand to the pilot to help him to his feet. Tom began to reach out with his right hand, then realized where that hand had been a few moments before, remembered the Vulcan's extraordinarily acute senses, and changed his mind.

"Yeah," Paris said, climbing to his feet. "We should check the environmental programs when we get to the bridge. Maybe the filters need changing."

"Hmm," the Vulcan commented. "An excellent idea, Mr. Paris."

Walking toward the lift, his hands locked behind his back, Paris asked, "Tuvok, what's the Vulcan word for 'Schmuck?'"

END Part 1

So, revenge.

Revenge, revenge, revenge.

Tom checked the chronometer. Two more hours of this until he could get off shift and begin to put his plans for retaliation into action. There was only one problem...

No plan.

Well, no good plan, at any rate. Maybe he should bring in Harry on this one. The pilot had discovered over the past three years that the Ops Officer's otherwise guileless exterior masked an almost encyclopedic knowledge of practical jokery. It came, explained Harry-the-overachiever-from-day-one, from always being the youngest one in any class at school and, until his late adolescence, usually the smallest. He was six years old when he first felt the toe-curling pleasure of looking on in complete innocence when the class bully's work station erupted into an endlessly-repeated, rafter-rattling rendition of the school song punctuated by a chorus of belches and farts that could only be produced by a lactose-intolerant cow.

On the other hand, if he told Harry he needed revenge on B'Elanna, he'd have to explain why he needed revenge on B'Elanna. The Chief Engineer and Harry were close friends -- perhaps not quite as tight as before Tom and B'Elanna became publicly acknowledged as a couple -- but friends nonetheless. Tom had made it a point not to go into too much detail with Harry about his life with B'Elanna, mostly because his friend still hadn't established a relationship with anyone on board the ship (though, thankfully, he seemed to have put the ghost of Libby to rest). Harry's sporadic interest in Seven-of-Nine seemed to fading, thank goodness. Tom had been involved in enough fruitless relationships to know the face of potential disaster when he saw it. Tom hoped the day would come when the two of them would be able to swap stories of... of... of what? Paris wondered. Ritual humiliation? Of course, relationships have their upside, too, Tom thought, surreptitiously lifting his hand to his nose.

Still, it couldn't hurt to ask Harry about dinner when they were off shift...

He turned to look over his left shoulder and saw Harry hunched over his panel, intently studying a readout. "Hey, Harry," Tom began.

"I've got it, Tom," the Ops Officer responded. "Good catch. How did you pick up on that?"

"I have it, too, Mr. Paris," Tuvok said calmly from his station. "Initiating a sensor sweep."

Paris attempted to look nonchalant as he turned back to his board and patched his sensor readouts into Tuvok's much more sensitive system. What the hell are they talking about? he wondered. Paris brought up long-range sensors and checked 360 degrees on the ship's x and y axis, then a much quicker search on the z axis. Nothing, he thought. Or close enough as not to make much difference. And then he saw it: a faint shimmer several hundred thousand kilometers in the wake. It looked for all the world, Tom thought, like a trip wire.

A trap? Tom checked the readings and saw that Tuvok and Harry were a step ahead of him. The short-range sensors were concentrated on a small -- by stellar standards -- area of space off their starboard bow. Radiation readings were fluctuating wildly within a tightly focused area. Some sort of gateway, like the ripple in subspace when a ship enters warp? For a moment Tom's heart sank as he thought of the manner the ships of Species 8472 entered "normal" space, but neither Tuvok nor Harry would look quite so puzzled if that were the case. In any event, Tuvok tapped his com badge and called, "Captain to the bridge."

Janeway and Chakotay strode onto the bridge from separate doors at almost the same moment. How do they do that? Paris wondered. He had noticed that the Captain and the First Officer's movements -- whether they were in the same room or in different parts of the galaxy -- had begun to seem almost synchronized over the past few months. They had always been good together -- a captain and an XO couldn't work together without an almost empathetic understanding of each other's movements -- but a change had occurred recently, Tom realized, a deeper understanding had been forged. Janeway and Chakotay had always treated each other respectfully -- even deferentially -- but now they were a unit, two halves of a whole, neither knowing he or she was incomplete until the status changed.

If Tom had thought about it (and, frankly, he hadn't been -- there had been other things on his, uh, mind in the recent past), he probably would have dated the change from the war between the Borg and Species 8472, but the change was so subtle (Or I've been so oblivious, Tom decided), that he was willing to bet it had gone almost unnoticed to everyone except possibly Tuvok, who sees all and comments on nothing. Kes would have noticed, Tom thought, and teased me for this "sudden" insight. Tom resolved to watch the Captain and Chakotay a little more carefully in the future to see if he noticed any other changes in their behavior. Maybe they've been watching me and B'Elanna. Maybe it's catching, he decided.

But first, Tom Paris concluded, attention once again focused on the imminent unknown, let's see about surviving the next few minutes.

Chakotay sat in his chair and fired up his console even as Janeway parked herself behind Tom's left shoulder as had become her habit. "What do we have, Harry?"

"We've crossed some sort of marker or picket line, Captain," Harry rapped out crisply. "My first reaction was that we had triggered an automatic sensor sweep from some sort of hidden station, but I don't think that's what is happening."

Tuvok briskly contributed: "I concur, Captain. If we had tripped a snare, there would be some sort of communication, but I am detecting nothing on any subspace or normal band. However..."

"Something is out there, it's on our tail and we can just barely make it out," Tom concluded.

Paris felt rather than heard Tuvok's sigh. "Mr. Paris, as is his wont, has reduced the situation to its essentials. Yes, I cannot detect any means of propulsion or even an eddy in the currents of space, but there is no question that 'something is out there.'"

Speaking more to his computer than anyone on the bridge, Chakotay rumbled, "I can put whatever we've got up on the screen."

"Give us a visual, Chakotay. Let's take a look."

The main view screen shimmered and changed to the aft scanners. The stars suddenly stopped shifting toward the viewer and began flying away into the distance. Tom always found the transition to be momentarily disorienting and so shifted his eyes down to his board. When he looked up, he saw a faint elongated shimmer in the center of the screen. He knew it wasn't a real image, but only the sensors doing their best to resolve the image into something humans could process.

"What's our current speed?" Janeway asked.

Tom responded, "Warp 7.54, Captain. Warpfield integrity is excellent. This area of space seems to be free of any kind of irregularities. We could do warp 9 without breaking a sweat, Captain. Get far enough ahead of it, then turn around."

Paris heard Tuvok emit what could only be a small puff of exasperation at Tom's anthropomorphization of the ship, but the pilot could also hear the smile in the Captain's voice. "I don't think that will be necessary, Mr. Paris. Besides, if we go above warp 8, we'll wake up B'Elanna," Janeway said, patting Tom on the shoulder and he felt more than heard the small laughs of approval from all the non-Vulcan bridge crew members. Paris knew that Janeway's real concern was the still-unknown performance specs on the Borg technology B'Elanna hadn't completely analyzed. Warp 7.5 was as far as she was willing to trust.

"Suggestions, anyone?" Janeway opened up the floor. Tom knew this meant she didn't think the probe -- or whatever the hell it was -- was an immediate threat. Just something she didn't like having on her tail.

"We could vent a little warp plasma. See if that affects its cloak," Harry offered.

"Hmmm," Janeway considered. "Let's hold off on that, Harry. Like Tom said, this area of space is relatively free of irregularities. If this is someone's shipping lane, they won't take kindly to our cluttering it up with warp plasma."

"If it were in front of us rather than behind, we would probably be able to break through the cloak with the main sensor array," Chakotay said.

"Any thoughts on how to do that?"

Tom said,"Well, two possibilities. First, drop speed suddenly and hope it doesn't have time to compensate. Or..."

"Or what?"

"Outfly it. In the time we've been here in the Delta Quadrant, we've seen ships that are bigger or more powerful than Voyager, but nothing that can match it for speed and maneuverability. If Chakotay thinks the front array can break through the cloak, let me get around behind it."

Janeway paused to consider. She walked around in front of Tom's panel and stared at the smear of light. The pilot tried not to stare at her rear assets, but it was difficult not to. I'm involved in a mature, committed relationship, he thought.

This is my Captain, he thought.

But I'm not dead, he concluded.

"When was the last time I let you play, Tom?" Janeway asked.

"I can't recall," Paris said, eyes quickly shifting down to his panel.

"Hmm. Yes, well I can. Chakotay, announce a yellow alert. Mr. Paris is driving."

If Tom had been paying attention, he would have heard a slight chuckle in the XO's voice as he responded, "Aye, Captain. All hands, yellow alert. Inertial dampers to maximum. Everyone hold on to their breakables."

Good flying is like good sex, Tom thought. Maybe even a little better. He stopped again to consider the morning scene in the shower. Well, maybe not. But damned close.

Voyager was a sweet ship. In his 20-something years, Tom had, by his own estimate, flown about as many different kinds of ships as anyone in Starfleet: cadet trainers, personal and military shuttles, runabouts, freighters and patrol ships, everything up to the Excelsior Class starship: big fish and small, but none could hold a candle to Voyager. In a sea full of wallowing turbots and tuna, she was a shark.

And all I had to do to get her, Tom thought, was get zapped to the Delta Quadrant. Oddly enough, he did not, at that moment, consider that the same could be said of B'Elanna, but long before he became a lover, Tom Paris was a pilot and so we will forgive him the oversight.

Before he laid in his course changes, Tom patched his console into the sensor arrays and set the parameters the systems would respond to. Every pilot had different sets of programs for different situations. Piloting a starship, Tom knew, even a relatively small one such as Voyager, was nothing like piloting a plane or a boat. All a starship pilot can actually know about the environment around his vessel (as opposed to the approximation of reality shown on a view screen) is what the sensors and computers can tell him. The piloting comes in knowing how to interpret the signals and to tell the computer how to respond to them. A good pilot is, in essence, a good programmer in that he has worked out tricks and short cuts to give the computer that extra millisecond to process the data. Tom was always a little annoyed that people seemed surprised that he was such a good holodeck programmer, but to him there didn't seem to be any conflict between his livelihood and his avocation.

Of course, having a good seat-of-your-pants feel for how hard you can push a vessel, how much torque you place on the flanges before they pop, well, that's important, too.

Tom completed the loading of the programs he used for close flying and recalibrated the sensors. Hang onto your socks, everyone, he thought, but what he said was "Course laid in, Captain."

"Engage, Mr. Paris."

Tom dropped speed sharply to warp 2.1. The probe or scout ship or whatever it was obediently dropped speed almost as quickly as Voyager. Then, he collapsed the warp field, dropped into sublight, spun Voyager on her axis and re-engaged the warp engines. Somewhere off to his left, Ensign Warner, manning the engineer's station, squawked, "Gah!" but managed to actually retain his seat. If it had been Lt. Torres in that seat, Tom knew, he'd be spitting out teeth right that moment. Nobody treated her engines like that. Truth be told, though, it was a smooth move. Probably hadn't even stirred B'Elanna's sheets.

The view screen shimmered and refocused on the probe. It drew perceptibly closer, but then put on speed, grew smaller, and shifted to Voyager's port side. Didn't move around back to the bow, Tom thought. Interesting.

"Very nice, Tom," Harry chided him. "But I didn't have enough time to get a lock on them with the front sensor array. It looks like they've got a Tom Paris of their own over there."

Tom narrowed his eyes, accepting the tacit challenge. He checked the short range scans, looking for a set of local conditions that would help him get where he wanted to go. And there they are over there. He almost laughed out loud. Sucker.

Tom put the ship into a slow, gentle spiral, arcing down toward a small nebular cloud -- dust and debris that had drifted together over the millennia and were held together by weak gravimetric forces. Moving through the field at warp speeds would mean, well, essentially nothing since, by definition, they were in different dimensions: the nebula in "normal" space and Voyager enclosed in its warp field. The probe, too, was in some kind of warp field, but that wasn't really important for what Tom had in mind.

The thing that was important was that the probe seemed both determined and capable of matching Voyager's course and speed. He'll dance around us a little, Tom thought, but he's not really interested in doing anything too challenging. Perhaps it was piloted by a robot, or maybe its pilot was simply too confident in his ship's ability to avoid detection or escape any pursuer. Tom had met enough pilots like that in his day to know their weaknesses. Perhaps I'll be one myself someday, he reflected. Smug. Self-satisfied. Ready to be taken down a peg.

But not today. Without warning, he dropped Voyager's bow down toward the nebular cloud and slowly became aware of the fox-like grin that was spreading across his features. He hoped none of the bridge crew could see it, but, he figured, probably most of them were concentrating on keeping their lunches down as the inertial dampers and artificial gravity struggled to keep them from being splattered across the ceiling. Bet B'Elanna felt that, Tom thought, and winced at the thought of what his lover might be saying about him just that minute.

Tom brought the impulse thrusters up to three-quarters and the nebular cloud seemed to rush to envelop the ship. From a distance of several thousand kilometers the dust and debris seemed to flow back and forth in ebony bands. As they came closer, the bands just dissolved into black.

"Captain, could I have control of shields at my station?"

"Mr. Tuvok?"

"Aye, Captain."

At the moment the short range sensors told him he was crossing into the cloud, Tom suddenly cut speed and adjusted the shields to the maximum expansion. Rather than being the thick barrier that normally closely hugged Voyager's hull, the shields were suddenly a thin, almost nebulous, extremely elastic field. Milliseconds ago, that field had been moving at three-quarters the speed of light. Suddenly, it wasn't anymore. The effect was essentially the same as firing a balloon out of a cannon into a wet paper bag.

From the engineering station, he heard Ensign Warner emit a brief popping sob as he watched his board light up.

After having hung around in essentially the same area of space for several centuries, the nebular debris was instantly displaced, enveloping Voyager in an impenetrable cloud. If Tom had been trying to hide (which is what he hoped the probe was thinking) it would have been impossible to locate him. No sensors could cut through the swirling chaos.

But he wasn't trying to hide. He was trying to get a look at someone who, if he had followed all the patterns Tom had seen so far, would be a short distance outside the now-heaving nebular cloud waiting to see if he would emerge. Tom pivoted the ship on its axis and, using only his directional thrusters, nudged Voyager to the thin edge of the cloud. He could see out, but the probe couldn't see in.

"I think you can take your pictures now, Chakotay."

He looked over his shoulder to see that the XO was busy at that moment doing just that. Janeway was grinning at him. "Mr. Paris, when you were a small boy, were you one of those kids who liked to hide under the blankets and wait for your parents to come find you, but couldn't help but giggle?"

"Now, Captain. You knew the Admiral. Can you imagine him doing something like that?"

"Hmmm. Perhaps not. But I knew your mother, too."

"Ah, well," Tom said, smiling at her memory. "That's a different story entirely."

END Part 2

Part 3

Okay, so, now I'm awake, Tom Paris thought striding purposefully out of the turbolift. He practically bounded down the hall to the door of his quarters, a single thought running on a loop through his brain, the words he had said to himself a couple of hours ago: Good flying is like good sex.

And he almost walked into the door's sensor field until he remembered the expression on Warner's face when Tom had left his station at the end of his shift, the "I-know-someone-who-is-going-to-hurt-you" look. Having seen all the idiot lights flashing on the Engineering board, Tom had a pretty fair idea who and why. Hmmm, Tom thought. Maybe I should go get something to eat.

And then, through the door, came a crash. Not a loud crash or even a particularly violent one -- not a Something Being Thrown With Klingon Strength crash -- but a crash nonetheless. Maybe a Something Fragile And Valued crash. Tom winced. Time to beard the lioness in her den.

The door whooshed open. B'Elanna was standing with her back to him, madly punching all the buttons on the replicator and cursing savagely in Klingonese. Tom recognized a few of the phrases, one of them having to do with forcing an object of a certain mass into a volume that it couldn't possibly contain, and thought again about getting something to eat. Or perhaps hiding out in Harry's quarters.

B'Elanna was still wearing the oversized red-and-black uniform jacket, apparently having slept in it. She wasn't wearing anything else as far as Tom could tell and since she was bent at a 45-degree angle at the waist causing the jacket to ride up partway, he had a pretty good idea what she was and wasn't wearing. Tom paused to admire the sight for a moment, thinking perhaps, that it might be his last chance for several days if previous occasions of unanticipated breakdowns in Engineering was any basis to judge. It's like a lovely exotic fruit, he reflected. Almost but not quite symmetrical, broken by that lovely shaded line. Smooth and beautifully curved. The most warm and wonderful hue, almost like it was carved out of some rare, soft wood...

...And I'm not going to be touching it for a long time.

Oh, well. Being the best pilot in the quadrant meant having to prove it every once in a while. Pilots and engineers were never meant to be the best of friends every day of the week. And Chakotay got his pictures. And, if I read the board correctly, nothing too important blew out...

"I want some clean m'tal underwear, you peTaq machine!" B'Elanna shouted. She pounded on the door to the replicator unit like she was pondering reaching into the inner workings and coercing the machine into giving her what she wanted.

It's just that way with technology that's gotten her where she is today, Tom thought, smiling wistfully.

"Ooooooh!" B'Elanna screamed again, whacking the replicator door with her knuckles, then "AHH!" when the pain registered. She spun around, sucking on her hand, and then laid eyes on the love of her life, her reason for living, her amour...

...The man responsible for her not having any underwear.

Her eyes burned. Her nostrils flared. There was a tiny spot of blood on her cheek where she had rubbed her face with her bleeding knuckle. She stalked over to Tom and blew a hot breath on his face.

"You... you... you..." Tom waited for the invective to hit the proverbial fan.

Finally, her gears stopped spinning and the works clicked into place.

"You... Pilot!" she hissed.

And then spun on her heel and marched back into the bedroom. Tom followed, curiosity overwhelming his usually reliable survival instincts. Peeking through the door, he watched as B'Elanna shrugged out of the jacket and stepped into the uniform she had thrown onto the floor the night before. Well, Tom thought, at least she didn't throw that into the laundry. She probably had clean clothes back in her own quarters, Tom knew, but the odds of her actually stopping there before heading for Engineering were someplace between slim and nil. Once her feet hit the deck outside his door, she would make a beeline to her office and wouldn't stir from the lower decks again until Voyager was once again ticking like a clock.

She pulled her shirt over her head and zipped up her jacket. Hmmm, Tom thought. Can't really tell. B'Elanna wasn't particularly big up front, but Starfleet uniforms weren't especially forgiving to anyone but the perfectly fit. Still, if you look carefully... he thought admiringly.

B'Elanna looked up and saw where his eyes were locked.

She extended an index finger. "You are a dead man," she said very matter-of-factly. "The only thing that is saving you at this moment from being beamed out into space is the fact that the transporters are down AGAIN and I don't have time to drag you by your thinning hair to the shuttle bay." Tom put one hand on the top of his head near his, uh, distinguished hairline and tried to look wounded. B'Elanna sat down on the edge of the bed and slid one foot into a boot. When she stomped her foot down, she gave a surprised little shudder as her butt slid against the bed. The crease of anger left her brow for a moment. She pulled her other boot close with her foot and gently slid her other foot in.

Standing, she regarded the pilot sternly and said, "I'm sure Captain Janeway gave you full permission to do whatever insane thing you did to my poor ship because, whether she'll admit it or not, she's a complete sucker for those floppy-eared puppy dog looks you give her sometimes." She paused, trying to straighten out some of the wrinkles in her jacket. She looked up again and resumed. "I. DON'T. CARE. Any extra time that I have to expend nursing these engines back to health is coming out of your hide, Mr. Hotshot Pilot. Or, to be more precise, it's coming out of the time that your hide will be coming into contact with my hide." She stepped to the bedside table and picked up the clock. "Note the time, Helmboy. This was supposed to be my downtime. I had big plans for our mutual entertainment that you are never going to know about. Never, never, never. Get it?"

Tom cleared his throat. "Got it."

"Good." She slammed the clock back down on the night table, the bell chiming raucously.

B'Elanna stomped out of his quarters.

Tom sat down on the edge of the bed, then slowly turned the clock to face him. The glass was cracked.

Some time later (actually, a long time later), Tom stripped out of his uniform, pondered taking a shower, decided against it, and slid beneath the rumpled sheets. He was asleep within minutes.

Three hours and twenty minutes later, the replicator unit came back on line. It had been programmed, as Tom knew, for underwear. At first, B'Elanna had asked for the particular brand and style that she found most comfortable for duty time. As it became more and more clear that the unit wasn't going to cooperate, she had become increasingly angry and increasingly desperate, asking the unit to reproduce something, anything.

As Tom Paris, the connoisseur of tomato soup, knew, Voyager's replicators were programmed to produce a sometimes dizzying variety of permutations of even the most basic item.

Three hours and twenty minutes after Tom Paris fell asleep, when the replicators came back on line, its rather large memory buffer began to feed every single one of B'Elanna Torres' requests to the matter assembler.

Every few seconds, the replicator door swooshed open and revealed something new. Soon, the pile grew so big that things began to slide off the pile onto the floor. Some of them were emerald green and black. Some were frilly and white. Some were whisper thin and translucent. Some were red and black.

Well, thought B'Elanna Torres, it could have been worse.

Seven hours.

Actually, by Voyager standards, not much more than a pause to refresh. In the past, they had spent more time stopping to admire a quasar or investigate a flaring sun just for the pleasure of riding the solar wind. But I'll never tell him that, B'Elanna thought, fuming.

Of course, the repairs had not been without their own peculiar difficulties. For example, they had had to take environmental controls offline for several hours in order to make some adjustments to the plasma conduits. Nothing serious. The temperature in the rest of the ship may have risen one or two degrees. No more than a passing inconvenience for most of the crew. Down in Engineering, the temperature had risen perhaps eight or ten degrees. Not uncomfortable, but hardly pleasant. In many ways, B'Elanna was a harsh Chief Engineer, but she had never been one to force protocol down her engineers' throats. Her solution had been to tell everyone to strip down to a point where they were comfortable. Uniform jackets came off. Sleeves were rolled up. A few of the men took the opportunity to show off their physiques, clothed only in tee shirts and shorts. One or two of the women were wearing sports bras or tank tops, so there was no problem there.

There had been a brief moment of universally held breaths when Seven pulled down the zipper of her jump suit, but everyone exhaled with relief when she stopped halfway down the front of her chest. Several longstanding bets were settled, too. She really does have some kind of support garment under that thing, B'Elanna mused. Looks damn uncomfortable, too. She considered briefly telling the Captain about it so Janeway could inform her protegee about some of the less restrictive methods a woman could use to keep it all in place.

Then again, B'Elanna thought, nah. Smirking, she strode off the turbolift.

The only problem with her order to disrobe to a state of comfort was that the only thing B'Elanna could do was take off her uniform jacket and even that had made her feel a little discomfited. Of course, it was a well-known fact that, because of her Klingon blood, she preferred a warmer climate, so there wasn't any reason to explain why she kept her shirt on when most of the others were stripped down. Unfortunately, it took her a little while to notice when the environmental controls came back on and the temperature began to drop. Joe Carey had been talking to her in her office for a good ten minutes before she had noticed his eyes flickering back and forth between the middle distance two feet above her head and the front of her shirt.

She tried not to think about whatever kinds of rumors might already be making their way through the Engineering section. Her only hope was that the revelation about Seven's undergarments would be more interesting to most of the crew than her lack of same.

I wonder how much I can get away with in the way of making Tom suffer for this, she mused. She'd been pretty steamed when she left his quarters -- though, truth be told, almost none of the repairs had much of anything to do with Tom's hotshot piloting. Most of it was just the result of him stressing systems that were already well past their tolerance. The simple truth of it was that Voyager needed a refit, top to bottom, stem to stern. And she planned to tell Janeway just that in her report. Tomorrow.

It wasn't Tom's fault.

Or, at least, not much of it.

And yet, strangely enough, here she was standing outside his quarters. She hadn't been thinking -- or at least not about where she might be going to get some rest -- and her feet had carried her to the door outside Tom's quarters. She stood in the spot where she had planted Paris' smug behind half-a-day earlier and almost laughed out loud. Well, she thought, maybe he's suffered enough.

As programmed, the door slid open for her. It was dark inside, not even the small lamp lit in the living quarters that Tom and she had made it a habit to leave on at all times since they'd become a couple and prone to drop by unannounced in each other's quarters. Walking the three steps to the sleeping quarters, B'Elanna heard Tom's soft, regular breathing.

Sleeping.

Maybe she'd slip out of the dirty uniform and slide under the sheets with him, the way one or the other of them had so many times in the past couple of months.

Maybe she'd smother him with a pillow.

She kicked her boots off and decided it would be easier to decide if she had something to eat. She walked across the darkened room to the replicator (Got those back on line fast enough that I didn't hear from anyone about Neelix's cooking, she thought smugly) trying to decide between a cup of lentil soup and a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. She could have called for lights, but who knows what mysterious genetic quirk motivates otherwise rational beings to cross dark rooms simply because they have crossed them hundreds of times before in lighted conditions?

Two steps from the replicator, she felt something strange under her foot. Something slippery. She took another step before the sensation registered completely, but it was too late by then. Both of B'Elanna's feet were sliding out from under her. She tried to compensate, but overbalanced and found herself tipping dangerously to starboard. B'Elanna mentally prepared herself for a crash, so it came as quite a surprise when, instead, she got something closer to a fwump.

Fwump?

What the hell is this? B'Elanna wondered. She found herself sitting on her ass with the back of her head propped precariously against the bulkhead. She attempted to gain some sort of purchase, but the deck was covered with some sort of nearly frictionless material. B'Elanna suddenly lost whatever foothold she might have had with an erect posture and slid onto her back, her feet sticking straight up into the air. After the slide ended, she tried to pull herself back up to a seated position, but could only get to a part of the floor where she could gain some purchase by pushing off against the bulkhead with the soles of her feet.

Standing, or, more accurately, crouching, she called for half-lights.

END Part 3

Part 4

And gaped at the sight that greeted her. Underwear. Or, more accurately, lingerie. Oh, to be sure, a few utilitarian samples of plain white and gray briefs and brassieres. But mostly panties. Frilly, lacy, sheer, feminine embarrassing panties. Dozens of them. With garters. Without garters. With crotches. Without... And the bras -- more of the same. With lace. Without lace. Black. Red. Sheer. Padded. Underwire. Strapless. Decollete. She shuddered as she looked at them, remembering her frenzied shouting at the replicator, ordering it to give her something, anything of the undergarment family to wear as she'd gotten dressed earlier. She began to swear softly. How in the hell was she going to get these out of here without Tom seeing them?

"B'Elanna?" The object of her thoughts shuffled into the doorway from the bedroom, sleepily calling her name. "Whaddya doin'?"

Even bleary-eyed, scratching the back of his head, clad only in the Starfleet-issue black shorts, Tom still cut quite a figure. Despite her irritation with him, she couldn't help admiring his long frame -- the lean swell of his biceps, the sturdy lines of his strong thighs, the tightly muscled calves, the blond hair lightly dusting the smooth chest and arrowing down the waistband of his shorts to where a slight rise in the fabric reminded her what lay beneath... Don't go there, she warned herself. You're still annoyed with him, remember? It was a hard thing to keep in mind when he looked this good. Zefram Cochrane help me, B'Elanna thought. I've begun to think of him as looking good when he looks like this.

The lights were low enough and Tom was still sleep-bleary enough that he didn't notice the pile of frilleries on the floor until his toe touched the strap of a sheer black bra. He bent over and picked it up, then held it loosely with a thumb and forefinger, and watched it twirl limply from side to side. Finally, the spryest parts of Tom Paris' brain (except, perhaps, the parts that flew the ship) began to whir. He prodded something... something ribbed, B'Elanna thought... with his other foot and then...

...A grin cracked his face. There's that floppy-eared puppy dog look, thought B'Elanna Torres, and then there's this. Tom Paris has a smile like the sun coming up over the mountain.

He tried to keep a straight face, tried desperately not to make a noise, but then there was a tiny blurping noise. He turned his head, and brought his hand to his mouth, then realized what he had in his hand. He extended his arm and dropped the, the whatever-it-was, back onto the pile. He bent over and poked a finger at something deep blue and lacy, and said, "I don't think this is a good color for you, B'Elanna. I'd take it back."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. On the other hand..." Tom dipped his hand into the pile and pulled up some kind of red and black corset, something with straps dangling from it at any rate, and said, "This, this would go really well with your eyes." Teeth flashed. Tom Paris obviously believed he was immune from harm.

I should have smothered him with the pillows, B'Elanna thought.

She inhaled deeply and dropped from the crouch onto her knees in front of Tom. "My eyes? You really think so?" she purred. She reached up and lightly caressed the side of his leg, her breath blowing softly on the fine hair on his flat stomach. She turned her eyes up toward him and said, trying to speak very low in her throat, "Is that the one you want me to keep, Tom? I just kept looking and looking at these things and couldn't decide which one you'd like the best."

The smile left Tom's face and it seemed to B'Elanna that for a brief second she could actually see the dizzying possibilities flash through his brain. He took a deep breath and, trying hard to sound casual, said "Well, you could try on a few different things and see which one you like best."

B'Elanna moved her hand up to the waistband of his shorts, moved her face a little closer to his stomach, and said, "I don't know, Tom. I think I'd feel a little, you know, self-conscious about that. Maybe you should just give me that one and I'll go try it on right now and if you don't like the way it looks on me..." She raised her free hand into the air so that it was just beneath the red and black fabric octopus and she felt it drop onto her palm as, she assumed, Tom's fingers grew insensible.

She brushed her fingers against the skin just above the waistband and there was a noticeable jump from beneath the fabric just below. The tips of her nails dug into the flesh of his belly ever so slightly and she pulled the waistband down a scant half-inch. The head of his penis, now quite full and reddish-purple in hue, entirely without warning peeked out. Tom Paris watched in mute fascination as B'Elanna Torres grinned deliciously.

"Tom?" she asked softly, her breath like cold fire on the tip of his cock.

"Yes, B'Elanna?" he choked out.

She pulled out the elastic as far as it would go, stuffed the corset down into his underwear, and let the elastic snap back. "Sometime shortly after Hell freezes over."

More shocked than in pain, Paris dropped to his knees howling, then toppled over onto his side. B'Elanna was on him in a second, mercilessly tickling him under the armpits, jabbing her fingers into his ribs, and administering relentless noogies. Paris, crippled by the elastic burn on his penis, was as helpless as, well, as a man with an elastic burn on his penis. He couldn't stop making what B'Elanna considered to be one of the most interesting noises she'd ever heard (and she'd heard some fascinating ones from him, too): a sort of hiccupping, half-laugh/half-groan.

Trying to escape, Tom pushed himself around the floor with his heels and elbows, but B'Elanna was too firmly wrapped around him and he couldn't get purchase on the floor to flip her off because he had inadvertently slid into the center of the pile of lingerie. Soon, not only was he helpless with laughter and pain, but was also tangled up in straps and encased in cups. When B'Elanna finally relented, she and Tom had managed to spread the pile over half of Tom's living room.

Heaving a last desperate gasp, Tom said, "Well, I'm spent."

B'Elanna didn't deign to reply, but only propped her head on her lover's chest. She smiled crookedly and began to play with his chest hair.

"But, seriously," he said, pulling the corset out of his shorts, "what are you going to do with all this stuff? And how did you get so much of it? Didn't it tap out your replicator account?" As he spoke, he examined the corset briefly, dismissed it with a slight shudder and tossed it back on the pile. He began to disentangle himself from the lacy debris.

Though B'Elanna's fingers were starting to do other things, the Chief Engineer portion of her brain had been puzzling over that exact problem. "Probably the replicator was scrambled enough to shunt my request over to my Engineering account. The way I was acting, it probably thought it was an emergency."

"Well, it was, sort of," Tom said, reaching down to cup her breast. He could feel her nipple rise to meet his palm through the material of her uniform.

B'Elanna shifted her weight and threw one leg over Tom's. "Yeah," she snorted. "If you ever see Joe Carey staring at me strangely, now you know why."

"Joe Carey always stares at you," Tom said, moving his hand to her other breast, causing B'Elanna to arch her back and rub her crotch against her lover's leg. "Though whether it's repressed lust or out-and-out fear, I don't know."

"Ha, ha, ha," said B'Elanna softly, each "ha" enunciated very distinctly, the expulsion of breath puffing on his naked chest. Then she started pulling herself up the side of Tom's body, scaling him like a climber. When her mouth reached the base of his throat, she began to kiss, lick and nibble -- tiny, inconsequential bites. No bloodletting was necessary; Tom Paris was marked and he knew it. When her lips reached his, B'Elanna delicately extended her tongue and began to trace the inner edge of Tom's lips, but got distracted about halfway along the route. Tom was massaging her nipples through her shirt, forcing the breath from her body. She reached down to his waist and slipped her hand into his shorts, touched the tip of his once-again erect penis, then slowly traced the length of it down to the point where it swelled into his balls.

Tom's hips heaved and B'Elanna shifted her weight so that she was straddling his waist. His erection, still trapped inside his shorts, was pressed up against the crack in B'Elanna's rear end, and she slowly moved her hips back and forth in appreciation. She wrapped her hands around the back of his head, tipped his mouth up toward hers, and inserted her tongue into his mouth at the very moment the first moan escaped his lips. The moan echoed in the back of her throat, and was soon joined by her own.

B'Elanna nipped Tom's ear, traced a line of kisses down his throat and pinched both his nipples lightly with her forefingers and thumbs. Then, she pulled herself up into a sitting position. Still straddling him, she reached down, grasped the hem of her shirt, and in one swift motion, pulled it up and over her head. Her breasts, not large, but round and high, bounced slightly as they fell free. Tom reached up and began to stroke them, pulling on the nipples gently and cupping them with his palms. B'Elanna reached down into her waistband and slid two fingers between the lips of her labia. Well, damn, she thought. These pants are definitely going to have to go into the 'fresher. She lazily stirred her clitoris once, twice, three times as Tom leaned forward slightly and gently kissed the undersides of her breasts. She pulled her fingers free and touched his lips and the side of his face, leaving small wet trails there. Tom groaned.

"What will it take to get you out of the pants?" he whispered in her ear as they pressed their necks and chests together. It was a standard line for them, the shadow of a now-fond memory of their first encounter.

"What have you got, Helmboy?" Tom thrust his hips up into the cleft of her ass, the tip of his penis prodding her through his shorts and her pants. Woo, B'Elanna thought. That was different. Why was that different? Then it hit her. Oh, right, no underwear. She leaned back, supporting herself on her arms while Tom sucked and licked the tips of her nipples, then tried to work his way down to her belly.

"Yeah, okay. That'll do it," she said, suddenly conscious of her stuttered breathing. She stood up quickly and slipped her hands inside the sides of her pants, then slowly, very slowly, dragged them down, making a show of it, making him wait. This is the difference between lovemaking with Tom Paris and every other man I've ever fucked, B'Elanna thought. I want him to remember it, every single time. I want to burn the sights, the sensations, the smells, into his mind. Her pants inched down over her slim hips, her buttocks, her belly, her pubic hair, and she could feel the cloth pull down from between her legs. She was smiling very widely, she suddenly realized, matching the grin on her lover's face.

He reached up to touch the inside of her thigh and whispered softly, "You are the most beautiful woman I've ever known."

"Damn straight," she said.

B'Elanna lifted one foot, then the other and then kicked the pants off her foot, sending them in a lovely spinning arc toward the bedroom door. She settled back down onto his waist, reaching around behind her and slid her hand up the leg of his shorts to tease his balls. Tom shifted his weight again and sent her tumbling onto her back, his leg now thrown up over hers. He kissed and bit her shoulders, then her throat, then worked his way down to her belly. B'Elanna closed her eyes and let her thoughts drift, anticipating the next stage in the little project they were constructing together.

Good sex, she reflected, is a lot like good engineering. You start with a good basic plan and once you've got that, you can start messing around with the bells and whistles.

Then, without warning, Tom introduced a new bell and whistle.

END Part 4

Part 5

He had just reached the square inch of skin above her pubic hair when he lifted his head and said, "Hey, babe, do something for me?"

B'Elanna, just a moment or two shy of being at a loss for words, said simply, "Wha...?"

"Put one of these things on."

Her head came up sharply. "What?"

"Put one of these things on," Tom said, his lips brushing the skin just above where her thighs joined her pelvis.

"Why would I want to do that?" B'Elanna asked, slightly annoyed at having been jerked back into the here-and-now.

"Hey," Tom said. "Don't get excited. I was just curious to see how you'd look, how they'd look. If you're not interested, don't worry about it."

"I'm not worried about it," B'Elanna said, feeling the moment slip away. "It's just that, well, I've never really understood what men see in these sorts of things."

Tom lifted his head and put his hands on B'Elanna's hips as if to comfort her. He shrugged, smiled, and replied, "I don't know if I can explain it myself. It's never been a big obsession of mine, but I thought since all this stuff was just lying about, well.... But if you're afraid to try something new, I understand perfectly."

"Afraid?" B'Elanna propped herself up on her elbows and looked down at her lover. "What do you mean afraid? Fear has nothing to do with it. I just don't think I should have to parade around in some costume in order to entice you."

Tom's smile faded a notch, but he tried not to let the mood disintegrate completely. "Hey, I said, 'It's okay.' I understand. This sort of thing wasn't part of your upbringing. I can't imagine there's anything as antithetical to the Klingon way of life as silk lingerie."

B'Elanna's eyes narrowed. She looked into Tom's eyes, trying to find the motive, the hidden agenda, and saw... nothing of the kind. He had made a sincere, more-or-less spur-of-the-moment request (she wasn't so foolish as to think he hadn't pondered the exact wording of the request), and she had more-or-less jumped down his throat. She pulled herself up into a seated position, leaned over and kissed Tom on the nose, then scooped up an armful of the silky fripperies.

"Go to the bedroom," B'Elanna said.

He smiled. "Yes, ma'am. I've had enough rugburn for the past couple weeks anyway."

B'Elanna turned the bathroom lights up to full, then changed her mind and lowered them to half. She quickly picked through the pile and tried to separate them into different types of clothing. Some were clearly bras, others were clearly panties, and then there was a third subset that could not have been designed to serve either a support or sanitary purpose. Obviously, in response to her desperation, the replicator had moved pretty far down the hierarchical "undergarment" tree.

She set aside the pieces that were clearly parts of a set for which she only had one piece. Others she tossed onto a pile as being too radical or just plain unfathomable. One item she examined for almost three minutes before she finally understood its purpose, then blushed a deep crimson. She almost stuffed it into the sanitation chute, but then stopped, regarded it for a moment, then put it back on the pile. The Klingon in her was saying, You have to someday face anything that provokes that strong a reaction in you.

Finally, B'Elanna whittled her options down to two items. She pondered them carefully for several seconds, then finally slipped on the first item. No problem here, she thought, regarding herself minutely. She even turned up the light to three-quarters and did a slow half-turn. "Hmph," B'Elanna said. "Not bad. It's all really about engineering when you come right down to it."

She slid on the second item, then spent a couple minutes trying to figure out how the pieces interrelated, if at all. Puzzled, she poked her head out the door and looked into the living area. She could see a soft light coming from the bedroom and deduced that Tom had gone there, as ordered. Hope he doesn't fall back to sleep, she thought. Well, then again, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing. She tiptoed out to the replicator unit and called up the clothing menu. "Computer," B'Elanna said, "Display hierarchy: lingerie." The computer complied and B'Elanna spent a few moments studying the menus, trying to track down the exact name of the items she had selected.

A few seconds later, there came a soft, "Aha," and she punched up a submenu. "Computer," she said, "replicate item S-1344 in my size please. Lt. B'Elanna Torres."

The computer beeped and responded flatly, "No record of sizes for this item is on record." B'Elanna rolled her eyes, then stood in front of the unit.

"Scan me," she whispered.

Invisible electric eyes scanned her. She could almost imagine she felt a strange tickling, but knew it was impossible.

"Color?"

B'Elanna paused for a moment, regarded the rest of the outfit. She shrugged. "Black, I guess."

"Item replicated." The replicator door slid open and B'Elanna reached in. She almost couldn't tell the item she requested was there, the material was so sheer. She pulled it out and looked at her request.

"Hmph," was all she could say.

Tom Paris was wondering if he should consider sending out a search party or just call to reassure B'Elanna that he didn't really care what she was wearing when he heard a soft voice call to him from the living quarters.

"Tom?"

"Yes, B'Elanna?"

"Still awake?"

"Yes, love."

He heard a short sigh of relief, even embarrassment from the darkness. "Good. Sorry to make you wait so long, but I had to ask the replicator for something."

"Wrong size?"

B'Elanna stepped out from the darkness into the low light of the bedroom. "No, just something missing."

It was a good thing Tom Paris was lying down, because if he hadn't been, he probably would have fallen over. No doubt because of the sudden loss of blood in his brain as it rushed to other parts of his body.

B'Elanna Torres was a vision in translucent black. She was wearing a simple black silk underwire bra that lifted her already firm breasts into honest-to-god cleavage, and presented a spectacular view of the tops of her nipples. No lace, no fillips, but the material was too fine and the straps too thin to be confused for anything but an invitation to enticement. She was wearing a kind of black lace bikini panty/garter belt that just barely covered her pubic area. The garters were attached to a pair of sheer black silk stockings, obviously the item B'Elanna had had to replicate. She smiled tentatively, did a small turn, and said, "So, what do you think?"

Not wishing to intimidate her with superlatives (and having problems reaching the vocabulary portions of his brain), Tom said, "Um, I, uh, like it."

"Really?" B'Elanna said. "You don't think it looks silly?" She did a little half-turn, a move that revealed the panties were a kind of thong running up the cleft of her rear end.

"Is that, uh, uncomfortable?" Tom asked, pointing.

"No, not at all. Actually," she smiled, "it's kind of, um, stimulating." She gave a little skip and crossed the distance to the bed, dropping to her hands and knees onto the mattress.

Tom tried not to move, tried not to say anything stupid that would ruin the moment. B'Elanna grinned wickedly at him and the image was burned forever into his mind. Many, many years hence, when he was an old man, whenever he thought of the life he had shared with his wife and lover, this was one of the images that would always dance into his memory. Tom smiled and thought, I'm really sorry for anyone who isn't happy here, but, dammit, I'm glad I came to the Delta Quadrant.

B'Elanna crawled slowly on her hands and knees up the length of the bed, her head lowered and her back arched like a great jungle cat. She pulled the thin coverlet back from Tom's body with one finger and seemed pleased that, as she pulled, the sheet seemed to have acquired a tent pole. She flicked her finger and the sheet slid off Tom's hips. She very badly wanted to stroke the front of his shorts, but chose at the moment to shift her attention to other areas. B'Elanna continued to move up the length of the bed until her lips touched his. He could feel the silk of the bra touching his chest, the slightly rough nap of the stocking against his inner thigh. B'Elanna extended her tongue and licked the corners of his mouth, then began to kiss down the front of his chest.

She let her knees slide down the length of the bed as she moved downward, ever downward. For the second time that evening, she gripped the waistband of his shorts, but, this time, there was no slow, seductive tug. She jerked the shorts down and enjoyed Tom's startled gasp as his erection sprang free.

B'Elanna had taken enough lovers in her life to know that most men's equipment fell within a fairly narrow range of parameters. One of the things she quietly admired about Tom was the fact his penis was, structurally speaking, very much like the rest of him: long and lean, capable of great sensitivity and great power. She touched her tongue to the underside of it, just below the glans, and then lowered her mouth slowly, tracing the throbbing vein there down to his testicles. She knew from previous experiences that she couldn't spend too much time around his sac, that he was as likely to giggle as anything else, so she only stayed long enough to suck each briefly into her mouth. While she was doing this, she reached down with one hand and pushed her fingers around the thong into her crotch. This was something, she had also learned, that excited him greatly. She wet her fingers, then wrapped them around the tip of Tom's penis and pumped up and down slowly as she nibbled ever so slightly on his shaft. Tom's hips heaved and he moaned deeply in his chest.

B'Elanna smiled, then crept up the front of his body, being sure to make maximum contact between her silk-covered breasts and his groin, belly and chest. He tried to kiss her as her face moved past, but B'Elanna had other things on her mind. She continued to climb him and her weight pushed him back onto the mattress. She raised herself on her knees, then lowered herself over his face.

"Lick me," she commanded.

"Yes, ma'am," she heard her lover say. She felt him pull the thong aside, then spread her labia with his fingers. The first touch of his tongue on her clitoris was like a shock from an EPS conduit, and B'Elanna almost toppled off her precarious perch, but she regained her senses when he began to probe her depths with his tongue and fingers. The thong bit deliciously into the crack of her ass. As had become their practice, Tom ran a slim finger up and down her slit, moistening it, then slowly inserted it up her anus. Klingons, in general, had fewer taboos about the anus as an erotic zone than humans and these ministrations stoked the fire that was already burning in B'Elanna. She groaned something incomprehensible in a combination of Klingonese and Spanish, wondering even as she said it where she had heard it, but forgot about the question when Tom began sucking on her clitoris.

Though she often seemed embarrassed about her Klingon heritage, Tom had learned that when an orgasm approached, B'Elanna could be positively draconian in her demand for attention. "Good, suck that. Yes, right there. Don't stop. Don't stop." She said these things softly, almost to herself, but Tom knew that if he, even for a moment, ceased to obey her, B'Elanna's thighs would clamp around his head, threatening to crush his skull like an overripe cantaloupe. It was an extremely persuasive technique.

As the waves began to come closer and closer together, B'Elanna began to rock back and forth on Tom's mouth. He continued to lick and suck on her clit, while alternately sliding his free hand into her anus or her vagina. She was very wet, very tight, very ready. He began to anticipate the feel of her around his cock and, almost as if she had read his mind, B'Elanna reached back and began to stroke him at first gently, then with increasing vigor. This, too, was part of their practice, because B'Elanna was uncannily aware of when Tom was coming too close to the edge and could stop his orgasm by clenching the base of his penis. It was an exquisite mixture of mild pain and intense pleasure.

Just when he sensed she was nearing her own edge, Tom changed the pitch and frequency of his attentions and B'Elanna was forced to release his penis. He thrust his finger up her anus one more time, then reached over her legs to her nipples which were now thrillingly sensitive to his touch. B'Elanna arched her back as the first wave of orgasm hit, then had to catch herself with her arms as she tipped over backward, gasping loudly, rending the air with her incoherent cries. Tom reached out to catch her as she tumbled off his face onto the bed. She fell lightly, though still caught in the throes of her orgasm.

Gasping, B'Elanna stroked her nipples through the silk, as she recovered her senses, touched her clitoris lightly and ran her hands over her silk-encased legs. "Okay," she said, grinning wickedly, "so I'll hang onto these." Tom smiled back at her, and began to say something else, but before he could get a word out, she put her hand over his mouth and said, "Paris, shut up and fuck me."

Tom closed his mouth, then nodded.

B'Elanna rolled over onto her stomach, pushed herself up onto her knees, then pulled the thong aside and wagged her rear end seductively. "This okay?" she whispered.

Tom rolled over and climbed onto his knees. His cock was throbbing madly and it was all he could do to stop himself from thrusting madly into her without any consideration for her feelings. But he had some sense of decorum.

"No problem," he said, and directed the tip of his penis to her slit. B'Elanna's vaginal lips were red and engorged so when Tom entered her it felt almost like she was sucking him in. As he thrust forward the first time, she thrust back in perfect opposition. Practiced lovers, they both emitted a low, "Ahhh..." then moved apart again. Tom grabbed B'Elanna's hips and began to move at a slow, steady pace. He felt her move her hand between her legs, first so she could touch his cock as it slid in and out of her, but then to rub her clit through the silky material. Tom felt her work her nub faster and faster, almost in a frenzied manner. The walls of her vagina gripped him and he felt the pressure building inside his balls.

"Oh, baby," he groaned, "I am not going to last very long here. You just feel too good."

"Not yet, mister," B'Elanna responded. "Just keep it together for... uh..." and then she lapsed into Klingonese/Spanish again. She was gripping the sheets with one hand for purchase while she thrust back with her hips and rubbed herself into a frenzy.

Tom's cock was moving in and out of her, from tip to balls, in long, hard thrusts. He was headed to the point of no return when he felt B'Elanna begin to spasm beneath him. She had stopped masturbating and was now calling his name over and over: "Tom... Tom... Tom..." and then he was coming into her, shooting himself deep inside her, briefly feeling himself fall into his lover's soul, her heart, her mind...

And then they were both sagging down to the mattress...

...And Tom was thinking, I wonder if there's anything else out there she'd like?

The computer chimed softly. The lights came on at their lowest setting and slowly grew brighter, brighter until they approximated what the computer index called, "Earth morning, Normal."

Tom Paris didn't see this pleasant light. His head was buried under a pillow. He had burrowed there some three hours earlier, shortly after B'Elanna had risen for her first duty shift. Padding around the nearly dark room, B'Elanna had sung softly to herself, something in Klingonese. The only snatches Tom had recognized were the words for "baby," "rock," and "fire," so they could have been about almost anything: maybe a lullaby (If Klingons sing those, Tom thought), maybe a song about the joys of branding your lover. Who knows with Klingons?

Dear God, thought Tom Paris, as the computer chimed again. I have got to start getting more sleep. But then he reflected on why he hadn't been getting more sleep, and there, beneath the pillows where nobody could see him, Tom Paris smiled.

Ten minutes later, he dragged his sorry carcass out of bed and into the shower.

Twenty minutes later, he was sitting on the edge of his bed, drinking his second cup of coffee, looking about at the debris. Somewhere along the line, B'Elanna had scooped up all the lingerie and dumped it in the corner of the bedroom. Some time between that moment and this, Tom had begun dividing the red, green, black, blue, purple, silver, white, gold, and transparent garments into piles that he had mentally labeled: "Looks silly in this," "Looks good in this," "Looks GREAT in this," and "Grrrrr..." plus one or two subsections of each.

Infantile, he knew, but what the hell. They were 56,000 light years from home. You had to do something to pass the time.

Ten minutes until his shift started. Tom considered a third cup of coffee, but decided he might need a steady hand today. Some real flying today? Tom wondered. He did some swift mental calculations and realized, no, not today. The docking would probably take place tomorrow, sometime during the second shift. He'd be in Sick Bay with the Doctor. Maybe he'd talk to the Captain about that. Not that he didn't trust Ivanovich. A good enough pilot, but this wasn't something he'd done before. Not that I have, either, Tom admitted to himself, but I've threaded more than a couple needles since we left the Alpha Quadrant. Besides, what good is being Chief Conn Officer if you can't pull rank?

He stood, looked at the rumpled sheets and the sheer black nightgown B'Elanna had tossed on the floor last night when she'd decided it was just too constricting. Too bad about that. He would have placed it on the "Grrr..." pile, but B'Elanna got the final word on these things. Tom picked it up and placed it on the "Looks GREAT, but she doesn't like it" pile. He sighed wistfully.

It hadn't taken them too long to turn the whole replicator incident into a game. Now that he thought about it, he realized that it never took them very long to turn anything into a game. Maybe it was the very serious nature of the business they were in. Maybe it was the fact that they were 56,000 light years from home with very little real chance of ever making it back to Earth. Maybe it was just that both of them had lived through such a long stretch of bad luck that when they found each other, playing seemed like the perfect thing to do. Maybe he would ask the Doctor if he knew of any research that could expound on the issue.

Maybe he wouldn't.

Whatever the cause, he decided, it was good to play.

Tom Paris smiled, tugged on his uniform tunic and walked out the door.

He arrived on the bridge some three minutes before his shift began. Tuvok was already at his station studying a long range sensor report. He looked up, nodded, then returned to his work. Harry would be about five minutes late, as sure as stars were made of hydrogen. It had pleased Tom no end when he had noticed that his friend had developed this habit over the past few months. He kept waiting for the Captain or Chakotay to comment about the chronic problem, but neither of them ever did. Maybe they had decided it suited them to know the perfect Starfleet ensign wasn't so perfect after all. Or maybe they just weren't paying attention.

Both of them had been spending most of their time over the past few days making preparations for the docking and proposed refit. No one knew exactly what to expect when they reached the station, what kind of goods or coin they might or might not have to barter, but the prospect of the coming adventure seemed to please them. Whatever else might be happening in the next few weeks, at least they knew they wouldn't be sitting in the center seat. Certainly, the Captain would still be the Captain and the XO the XO, but, hell, change was good. The prospect of play was good.

Standing behind Ivanovich, touching him lightly on the shoulder to let him know his relief was there, Tom noticed that B'Elanna was at the Engineering station. This was unusual, the Chief Engineer generally preferring to do all of her work on the Engineering deck, but recently she had discovered that certain diagnostic programs ran faster from the bridge station. Maybe some blown gel packs. Another of the myriad problems they were hoping to address in dock. Tom watched his lover as she completed her program request, then swiftly rose.

Turning, she caught sight of him and smiled. B'Elanna had been playing around with different hairstyles the last few days, he'd noticed (and commented on -- he knew what was good for him), and today was no exception. A couple of braids on the side and the hair brushed back away from her forehead. It was an enticing combination, showing both some feminine softness and her strong forehead. And looking at her as she crossed the bridge to him, Tom Paris suddenly and unexpectedly found himself awash in a wave of tenderness. I genuinely love this woman, he thought. I'm in love with her. How very strange. How unexpected and wonderful.

She neared him just as Ivanovich was rising and Tom was sliding into the pilot's seat. As he was logging into the station, B'Elanna quickly leaned over and whispered into his ear:

"I'm wearing the red one."

Still smiling, she straightened and left Tom sitting. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but, no. She had been just that fast. Even Tuvok hadn't raised an eyebrow.

He heard the door to the lift whoosh open and B'Elanna saying, "Hi, Harry."

"Hey, B'Elanna." Okay, only three minutes late.

Tom Paris steered a true course through the stars.

The red one?

That bitch.

I love the red one.

Grrr....

THE END
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