We were drunk, drunk idiots. Joyous, laughing, and incredibly sweaty from putting on ridiculously embarrassing dancing and singing numbers to outdo each other, but drunk idiots through and through.

I was currently standing in my finishing pose after my last dance number — hands spread out wide on either side at slight angles, fingers waving and a big cheesy smile spread across my face. His head was tipped back onto the couch from where he sat as a spectator, laughing to near tears.

As I broke my pose and bent over to give a few bows and thank-yous, Jim started clapping and saying “Bravo!" By the time I looked up again, his arms were spread out on either side of him, resting along the back of the couch. It drew my attention to his plain white undershirt even more, and it was currently framing the curves of his biceps in a way that caused a physical skip in my thoughts. Shit, shit, shit.

At some point during our drunken charades escapade, he had deemed it far too hot to continue performing in his long-sleeve captain’s shirt. He opted to tug it off, revealing his bare muscled physique for a fraction of a second that had me tossing back another whiskey and finding anywhere else to look but at his abs.

But as I stood upright from my last bow with a slight wobble, I couldn’t dispel the image. Couldn’t fight back against the urge to walk over, sit on his lap and finally feel those beautiful, laughing lips pressed against my own.

Whiskey. So, so much whiskey. My eyes finally managed to focus on Jim, leaning back against the couch, so casually relaxed, with that wickedly charming grin spread across his face.

“10 out of 10. Simply mesmerizing. That was the game-ender. I concede to your greatness.”

And without another thought, without overthinking, without second guessing, I was walking towards him. It was a drunken staggering, with that swish in my hips exaggerated to probably laughable levels. But it got me to him, to where he sat on the couch with that easy smile that was now slowly fading as I stopped in front of his slightly spread legs.

His eyes locked onto mine, and my heart became even louder in my ears. Maybe I shouldn’t want to sit in his lap and give in to all the heat I felt for him. Maybe I should pick up my bag and say my goodbyes. Maybe wanting him would only lead to more shit that would leave me feeling hurt and broken.

Maybe.

But it didn’t stop me from putting my knees on either side of his waist and sitting on his lap, my ass pressing onto his own knees as he moved them to support me. I took his face in my hands, not caring that my Starfleet uniform was now pushed so far up it no doubt revealed my underwear. Not caring that the simple act of touching him had caused my excitement to rise to unbelievable heights. Not caring that I was giving into the blind heat inside of me, giving into the burning desire to feel him and want him and be with him.

I gently stroked the side of his cheek with my thumb as I leaned down, closer to his face, my hair cascading over one of my shoulders and falling onto his. And just before I leaned in to do what I’d been thinking about since before I stepped into his quarters, I whispered his name — and the one syllable undid us both as our lips brushed together.

His hands moved to my sides, resting briefly just beneath my breasts before sliding down to my waist. The arching of my back had me pressed against him even harder, reacting to the warm, firm grip of his hands. They moved to cup my backside, and he dug in with a firm squeeze that had me releasing a sharp gasp onto his lips. He’d grabbed half fabric, half bare skin since my dress had ridden up so far. It sent a flash of pure electricity shooting through me, from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.

Our lips moved together greedily, tongues eagerly mingling as we reveled in each other’s heat. I wanted his shirt off, I wanted my dress off. I wanted to feel every inch of him pressed against me. And because of how I was sitting now, I couldn’t feel the hardness between his legs that I knew had grown since I’d sat down. So I started there.

With a single motion, I pushed my hips forward to drive his legs apart, and ground against the hardness that pressed right against the wetness that had gathered between my thighs. My face angled up towards the ceiling, lips parting with a moan, and my back arched even more as I moved back and forth over him. I felt like my heart might break clean through my chest. A loud gasp escaped my mouth as he pushed up my dress even further, over the curve of my waist so he could grab my bare backside with his hands.

I was torn between bringing our lips back together and continuing to move myself back and forth over him. Thinking through the thick cloud of lust was far too difficult.

“What do you want?”

His breathy voice broke through to me, and I tipped my head back down to see that my nails were digging into his shoulders as I ground against him — no doubt hard enough to leave marks. My hair fell back over my shoulder, and he reached up to push it back behind my ear while simultaneously bringing our faces back together. The absence of having him pressed against me left protests on the tip of my tongue, but instead I moved my hands back to his face and managed to answer his question.

“You.”

The only reply I got was his hands moving away from gripping my backside and heading up my sides to my chest, where he squeezed my breasts through the flimsy fabric of my uniform. Our kiss deepened, and my moan was lost as he squeezed again.

“What do you want?”

Everything was spinning. My head, my heart, my desire. I lost control, and there was no getting it back now.

“You.”

This time he drug one of his hands down to the front of my underwear, which was now completely exposed due to my dress being pulled up to my stomach. He slowly pulled his fingers across the front, where my wetness had soaked through the fabric. His touch caused me to gasp and moan and arch my back and nearly lose my fucking mind. His fingers roamed back and forth, so, so slowly as I writhed into his touch.

“Tell me, cadet, what exactly do you want?”

And this time, I didn’t hesitate to tell him exactly what I wanted. Because I needed it. Now. Or else I would implode into dust to join all the stars that twinkled in the galaxies just past the glass of windows mere feet from us.

“Finger me. Please, please finger me.” It came out between breathy gasps for air with my head tipped back and eyes closed as I focused on that soft touch between my legs, caressing me oh-so expertly as I grew more and more aroused and restless.

“Done.”

I was then being dropped back onto the couch as Jim untangled himself from me and stood up. I watched, chest still heaving from the need for release building up inside of me, as he pulled his white undershirt up and over his head and then pulled off his pants — leaving him in just his boxers. Boxers that showed just how long and hard he truly was. And it had me grabbing for him as he climbed back over me, pushing his lips onto mine as he settled his legs between my own, forcing them to spread apart and earning him another moan.

My hands grabbed at the bare skin of his broad back, touching every curve of muscle from his shoulder blades down to the band of his underwear. His hand found its position over my wetness again, resuming his gentle, soft strokes and small circles right over my apex. I felt my nails dig into the flesh of his back as he kept teasing and teasing and teasing. Just as I was about to take matters into my own hands, quite literally, I gasped as his hand finally slipped beneath the top of my underwear and grazed along my core.

The arching of my back forced our kiss to break as I pulled myself to him tightly in response to his fingers finally grazing me. His lips pressed right next to my ear, enveloping me with the sound of his breathing and his voice as he whispered, “Mmm, Aria.”

He continued to tease me with slow strokes and circles in all the right places. My fingers dug harder into his skin, surely hard enough to break the flesh, as he kept driving me mad with his endless teasing. I had no choice but to beg. Again.

“Please, Jim. Please.”

“Please what? You want me to push inside this tight little hole?” This one right here?”

His fingers circled around my opening, the sound of my wetness hitting both of our ears before I moaned, hips bucking in an effort to drive his fingers into me.

“Mmmm, you want me to fuck you with my fingers? Slide them in and out of you?”

Just the tip of his finger pushed in and then out of me then, and I nearly cried out with the ecstasy it brought me, but opted to bite his shoulder instead.

“You want me to make you come by fucking you with my fingers?”

I managed to pull my mouth away from his shoulder and whisper “Yes, yes, yes.”

“I’ll do you one better.”

And with that, he started to move down my body, trailing kisses all the way down my Starfleet uniform as his head moved lower and lower, his fingertip slowly pushing in and out of me the entire time.

He planted kisses on the inside of my bare thighs, my body squirming anxiously for what was coming.

“Do you want me to lick you, Aria? Do you want me to taste you and finger fuck you?”

I could feel his breath with every word he spoke onto the wetness of my core. I was going to lose my fucking mind. He was hovering right over me, his finger still relentlessly teasing me. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I was going to implode.

“Please, please, please, please.”

How I formed words, I didn’t know. And with one last glance down between my legs, I saw Jim staring straight back at me as he slowly lowered his mouth, tongue out, and —

I bolted awake, gasping for air as my heart pounded wildly against my ribcage. Nothing but the silence of Jim’s quarters met my ears as I blinked up at the high ceiling. Sharp pain crashed through my skull that had me pressing my hand against my forehead in an effort to keep my brain from spilling out.

What the hell had that whiskey done to my damn mind? That dream had to have been the most vivid I’d ever had in my life. Not to mention I was still in his quarters at … what the hell time was it? I reached for my wrist, fumbling for my comms, and struggled to find the button to illuminate the time. After way too many attempts, I finally got the screen on to get “3:23 AM” burned into my retinas. Oh my god was I dumb. So, so dumb.

I was still on the couch where we had ended up essentially laughing ourselves silly before … before just falling asleep? Everything was a little hazy after the game had ended with my last performance of some popular song that had Jim’s sides splitting as I goofed my way through it. Had he gone back to his room? There was just enough light coming from the bar behind the couch and from the endlessness of space outside the window to make out the rest of the room.

Just barely lifting my head caused shooting pain to sear through my temples. Never. I would never drink whiskey again. God was I stupid. Peering in front of me yielding nothing — just empty couch and the coffee table that had an empty bottle and glasses on it. Ugh. With painstaking slowness, I turned my body and head just enough to look behind me, down the other end of the large couch. And just an inch or two away from the top of my head sat Jim’s leg. He was asleep, head tipped back onto the back of the couch with his arms spread out in the same way my ridiculously annoying dream fantasy had started.

The power of my headache and slight churning in my gut was enough to outweigh any residual lust leftover from that damn dream my brain had so intensely concocted. No doubt it would still be with me when I was sober and had my head screwed on straight again. There was no doubt that whenever Jim and I actually had a normal, non-whiskey laced conversation again that it would plague my every thought.

But for now, I could reach over and give Jim’s leg a shake without getting hung up on the fact that he had so vividly been crouched between my own legs just minutes ago. He moved his head a little, but settled back into sleeping after a few seconds. I tried shaking his leg again, this time saying his name a few times in an effort to get him to wake up.

“Hmm? What?”

He groggily tipped his head forward and brought his hand to his forehead just as I had done upon first reentering the world after our fun night of shenanigans and whiskey. The cost seemed steep right now, but maybe after some decent sleep and a thousand glasses of water we would feel differently.

“Jim, you should go to bed. Your neck is going to kill sleeping there.”

There was a good deal of general groaning from aches and pains that no doubt mirrored my own before he responded in a rasp.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Come on.”

With what looked to be an incredible amount of effort for such an easy movement, Jim pushed himself forward and momentarily paused with his hands on his knees before grunting a little and finally standing up.

“Come on? I’m okay on the couch, I don’t want to — “

“I know your head is pounding just as much as mine. Come with me before our heads explode from too much talking and moving.”

It was true, and he was right. I didn’t want to keep talking, and I didn’t want to move. But getting to his room would definitely require a certain amount of physical effort. Between the churning of my stomach and shooting pain from temple to temple, I wasn’t sure how I would pull it off. Plus, I seriously thought my head might fall off my body if I took my hand away from my forehead.

“Okay, okay. Just give me a second.”

“Here, take my hand, come on.”

I blindly reached a hand out up and over my head, and felt his hand wrap around mine gently, tugging it in an effort to motivate me to get upright. Swinging my legs over the edge of the couch and standing just about did me in. I staggered, and would’ve fell into the coffee table had it not been for Jim pulling me into him before I could meet my own drunken demise.

“I hate whiskey.”

“Come on now, you don’t mean that ... But I hate it too. Here, let me save us from the hassle of you trying to walk.”

In a relatively effortless motion, punctuated with a grunt, Jim bent down and scooped my legs and back into his arms. There was no point in trying to resist, in trying to insist I could walk and take care of myself — because I couldn’t. Or barely could, maybe. But all I wanted was to lay down in an actual bed and curl up and never think about drinking again. And this way, I would get to said bed even faster. Not to mention I was thoroughly enjoying the warmth of Jim’s body as he cradled me against him and walked to his bedroom. His solid chest served as the perfect place to rest my throbbing head. It offered me just enough stability from the jostling of walking, while letting me breathe in his musk and the freshness of his undershirt.

I was then was being laid down on something soft, a blanket was pulled over me, and I felt him crawl into bed on the opposite side. I couldn’t help but seek out the warmth and solidness of his chest again. My splitting skull demanded it. I scooted up to his side, where his arm opened for me and wrapped around my back as I laid my head down on his chest.

My head gently rose and fell as he took a big, even breath in and out of his nose. Without letting my imagination wander back to where it had been just a few short minutes ago, I lifted my hand and placed it on his chest right next to where my head lay. His own hand wrapped around mine as soon as I had laid it down. I felt his nose nestle into the hair just above my forehead, where he placed a light kiss before settling into stillness.

Between the rhythmic sound of his deep, even breathing, and the gentle stroking of his thumb on the bare skin of my arm, I was being pulled into sleep’s comforting embrace. And for the second night in a row, I fell asleep in the arms of a man I was still coming to know, and who enthralled my every sense when he was around. I was scared, unsure, queasy, and lustful. For now, that was all fine. Because right now, everything felt okay. Everything felt right. Sleep would take me, and I would know nothing but peace.

And I knew as I slipped off into slumber that those thoughts would inevitably find me in the morning, whether I was ready to face them or not.