Imprisoned at Her Pleasure

The next time she sees him is very different from the time before.

It's been seven days since Alex's previous visit - seven days of isolation, dreams, and one or two quickly stolen climaxes under the relative privacy of her sheets.

She

doesn't

hope he watches through the cameras. She doesn't.

And with every meal that is delivered, hastily and somehow with a tangible disdain even though the alien on the other side isn't visible to her at all, she is reminded of the intel she gave him: the dose of the pacifying drug in her meals stays low, just as Alex promised. Her muscles stay hers to command.

She starts working out with this newly returned control, every day, before every meal - it'll take time until her body is back to the kind of condition that has killed more than one alien, but she relishes the ability to at least

start

that recovery: no more mindlessly pacing her cell, her time punctuated only by the meals and her restless sleep - finally her muscles can burn with work, she can be drenched in sweat from something

other

than her captor - and maybe it's wishful thinking, but she thinks she sees the sharp edge of her abdominals start to return in the low light before sleep one night. Something of the original her.

The exercise doesn't stop her turning over what she told Alex, though - over and over. It was low risk information, just like he suggested, but she checks and double checks that she didn't say more about Thalassa all the same, about her friends and comrades, about the solar system's defensive structures...

She didn't. Her friends are safe.

Relatively

safe.

With the return of her strength comes some of her confidence. She's a rebel commander, after all. Mid-level, sure, with several superiors above her, but still a commander - a squad leader, in fact, although the words sound foreign after so many days of Alex's

captain, captain, captain.

Every pilot is a captain of their own ship - it takes more to lead, to protect a squad, to take the fall...

She winces mid push-up on the seventh day, flooded suddenly with memories of the crash.

Her headset filled with shouting, with cursing.

Seven-Eight, we have three of those bastards right on your tail, if you pull up now we might be able to-

"Negative, Seven-One, I'm the only one with enough batt left for a firefight - save yours for getting home, you copy?"

Seven-Eight, you won't have enough power to break orbit again if you go into atmosphere now-

"Too late for that, Seven-One! Didn't I always say I wanted to die on Venus?"

Seven-Eight-

"Tell Oh-Fifty I'm running them into the west side of Mt. Skadi, four... correction, three clicks from Hadron. There's no way these fucks can pull up in time, not in those model elevens, you guys might be able to retrieve some of the-"

But then they shot out her starboard engine, with a deafening, shattering

bang

.

She remembers biting her tongue in the spin.

Thinking:

this is going to hurt.

Then nothing.

Nothing for either seconds or for weeks, until she wakes up in a cell with only scraps of remembered sensation to mark the passing time. Scissors, cutting her out of her flight suit. Stitches, at some point.

A voice. A voice she's heard a lot more since, but back then it didn't say words in her language. Didn't make her body ache with desire.

She blinks, and finds her arms fully extended, mid-set with unshed tears in her eyes. She lifts a hand to swipe them away and finishes her reps with flat, calm determination.

She

will

see her people again. She just has to get through this... this

episode

with Alex, buy herself enough time to either be broken out of here or break herself out, and then she'll be reunited with them. The rebels look after their own, and they pull their own weight too - sooner or later, she

will

get out.

And if her dreams stray to Alex's tongue between her legs in the meantime, she won't crucify herself over it.

And if those dreams have her waking with her fingers already between her thighs, already wet, already on the edge of climax, she won't crucify herself for that, either.

Perhaps she can string Alex along, after all. Perhaps old, low-grade intel will be enough to keep her safe, to keep her least favourite alien feeling nice and accomplished, while not risking her friends' lives and hard-fought advances in the process. She doesn't

love

the idea of stroking his ego while she stalls for time, but-

Her cell door opens abruptly.

"Up you get, Captain."

The next time she sees him is very different from the time before.

She springs up from the floor not strictly out of obedience but out of an immediate, alarming

rush

- drug or no drug, the isolation is clearly starting to fuck with her and her eyes snap to him, to take in his face, his voice, his eye contact, fucking

anything

at this point, she hasn't seen anyone in

days

-

He's in a uniform.

She stops dead.

"Good morning," Alex says, but she doesn't hear him, because he's changed out of his boots into immaculately-shined parade shoes. He's in black tailored slacks, legs dangerously long, and he's traded his usual white shirt for a black tunic that hugs the narrowness of his waist so closely that her mouth runs dry. There are epaulets at his shoulders and he's broader than she remembered, muscle tightening the fabric across his chest in a way that shouldn't be allowed - when her eyes trace above the high-clasped collar to his face, she sees he's clean-shaven, hair smartly slicked back, and the edge of his jaw is sharp enough to turn her belly to pure liquid when he meets her eyes.

"What?" he asks her then, except this time he smiles a little. "Did... did I surprise you?"

And then he shifts his weight slightly to the side, brings up his hand -

which is gloved, black leather, she almost passes out

- to rest casually on something clipped to his belt at the hip, a sort of silver, intricately-handled-

"Is that," she manages, "a

sword

?"

Alex looks utterly at home, all deadly military grace, and his grin is handsome enough to make something twist with pleasure inside her as he nods.

"Ceremonial, but yes. I'm surprised you know what a sword is, to be honest."

She used to like ancient history, but none of that matters now - her eyes stray back to the epaulets at his shoulders, and she counts six silver, glinting studs.

Alex outranks her.

Alex

significantly

outranks her.

What a terrible time to remember his thumb, pressing gently into her windpipe as she climaxes.

She tries to say something, something witty and flippant, and only succeeds in gulping like a fish. Alex waits for a moment to give her a chance, eyes roaming over her face, but when nothing is forthcoming his smile starts to warm, his eyes filling with something... dangerous.

"My, my," he murmurs. "You're actually flustered."

"I'm not flustered," she replies immediately, which just makes him grin wider, and as he steps further into the cell so the door can shut behind him she steps back on jellied knees - before she can blush any further under the wicked twist of his smile she turns to face her bed and busies herself with the task of making it - the only distraction she can think of in this godforsaken room considering her actual preference would be to jump out of the nearest airlock right about now.

"Why-" she starts, but her voice comes out a little high and she has to start again. "Why all the fancy clothes, then? Did you run out of innocent people to harass and it's time to play dress-up?"

He's checking her out. She can feel it more than see it as she leans across the mattress to straighten the sheet, and he doesn't even hide it with an attempt at conversation - his silence as his eyes slide down the insides of her thighs makes her face heat with indignation as much as arousal, and she grabs the pillow to start punching it into shape.

"Alex," she says, flatly.

"I missed you, Captain," he replies, his voice warm.

God help her.

"I- I said-"

"We have about two minutes. Should we try and make you feel better before we leave?"

Her knees almost give out, and she feels every one of those seven days since he last touched her with a deep, tight

stab

in her belly. Her exhale is shaky, and she tries not to think about those gloved hands - tries and fails. She's still leaning over the mattress when she finally looks over her shoulder at him, and as her eyes lift to meet his she knows they're hooded with barely-contained desire.

He inhales, softly.

"Alright then."

And he's unbuckling the sword from his belt so fast that her heart leaps. In two seconds flat she's somehow climbing onto her bed and opening her knees to watch him drop the sword to the floor with absolutely zero regard for it, the metal barely finished clattering before he's pulling off those gloves one finger at a time and advancing towards the bed to kneel between her legs in an instant.

"Wait, can't you-"

"Absolutely not," he says, and finishes pulling off the second glove with his teeth in a way that almost makes her

whimper

- then he's suddenly on top of her and there's tightness at her neck, she's pinned down into the pillow with a

thud

and her hips buck once with pure relish when he squeezes her throat with strong, naked fingers. "If you get cum on those gloves I'll be court martialed."

"

Fuck Alex I want you."

It escapes her in a rush, and Alex practically growls. "I want you too," is his only reply, before she feels the fingers of his free hand slide between her legs and her mind is wiped with heat.

"Fuck, I thought so," Alex says then as she feels his fingertips divide her, his skin a little rough, and he chuckles as he leans down to press a kiss to the side of her throat - the heavy fabric of his dress uniform brushes against her breasts and makes her nipples harden instantly. "You're wet already. Do you like that I outrank you, Captain? I saw you looking."

"Just shut the fuck up and

touch me

."

And they actually both laugh at her words, breathless and a little delighted with each other, before Alex's two longest fingers press easily inside. She gasps, she groans, she almost pulls him up by the front of that maddening uniform to steal a kiss-

Someone bangs, hard, on the door of her cell.

They both jump, the first time she's ever seen Alex get completely startled, and when they meet each other's eyes with faces barely an inch apart they both hold their breath for just a second - like they're just teenagers, caught fooling around.

Then come sharp words from behind the door in the language she doesn't speak, the language she hates, and she gets to watch Alex's blue, enigmatic eyes change from ready lust to something cold. For the briefest moment she thinks she sees real anger there, and something like smoke, the kind of smoke that the alien species shifts so easily between when changing form - but then it's gone and so is Alex, straightening up from the bed and leaving her body empty before they'd even had a chance to really begin, empty and immediately yearning to have him back.

He snaps something in his language towards the door and it makes her stomach twist to hear it, his eyes staring towards the direction of their interrupter like he can glare a hole through the panelling.

She then watches as the two have a slightly longer exchange, one alien and one... Alex, and when she sees Alex bend to pick up his sword she closes her legs and pulls herself, hastily, into a stand as well, tucking her hair behind her ear and burning with something not quite as bad as shame. The alien on the other side of the door seems to leave, because the conversation doesn't continue, and she watches Alex re-clip his weapon, watches him locate his gloves from where he'd tossed them aside.

Then he murmurs: "We have to go," as if it isn't obvious.

"Go where?" she asks.

"There's an inspection of the outpost, and you're going to be inspected with the rest of us."

An inspection.

"A marching of the guard?" she says, and Alex's eyes move to hers, his now-gloved hands pausing in the straightening of his uniform cuffs.

"...Yes. Precisely."

Over the years the rebel resistance has accumulated a patchwork of both useful and at times frustratingly patchy information about the colonising bastards they're working so hard to repel from the solar system - and if there's one thing they know, it's that the alien species has many traditions maintaining its military force. The marching of the guard happens on a cycle designed to keep the soldiers continually at their highest discipline - the most senior officer in the sector could sweep in at any time to check there isn't a toe out of line, a single resource going to waste - and she's probably counted as one of those resources, prisoner as she is.

Alex looks at her for a moment, eyes dropping somewhere near her breasts and his mind suddenly spinning. Then his weight shifts towards the cell door and it unlocks for him in an instant.

"I'll be back," he says lowly. "Wait here."

As if I have any other choice

, she thinks, and soon she's alone again in her cell, trying to ignore the nudging complaints of her neglected sex and thinking about how the gorgeous curl of his fingers inside her was far,

far

too brief.

When Alex returns there's a new urgency to him, and she immediately sees something new in his hands - he passes it to her and recognizes it at once as one of his white civilian shirts. It's been so long since she had a proper covering for her modesty that she practically leaps into it without needing to be told, pulling the soft cotton over her shoulders and hastily doing up the buttons even as she says, somewhat sarcastic:

"You couldn't get me some

underwear

while you were at it?"

And despite Alex's evident new anxiety, his eyes tracking her progress with the buttons with thinly-veiled impatience, he does have the decency to huff a small laugh.

"Where would be the fun in that?"

The shirt is too big for her thanks to the breadth of Alex's shoulders, and the fabric finishes just shy of covering her ass - when she's finished putting it on she's dismayed to find it somehow feels

less

modest than her nakedness did, her nipples hardening again under the friction of the fabric and a smokey, spiced scent drifting up to her nose.

She swallows, and fiercely ignores the stirring between her legs -

god, his shirt smells good.

"Look at me," Alex says then, and she does. That uniform renders him all power and quiet menace, and she has to push down the small cocktail of admiration and fear that makes her heart race.

"You will stay with me at all times," he tells her quietly, and her skin warms with the intimacy of the warning in his tone - is that

protectiveness

in her captor's voice? "If you try anything at all that looks even remotely threatening towards the inspecting officer, you will be killed."

The last word lands like a small slap, and to his credit, Alex seems to notice too - a muscle in his jaw clenches.

"

Someone

will kill you," he amends, and it's an omission that she files away in a secret corner of her mind. "We take our hierarchies seriously, and my superior will not take as kindly to your general...

personality

as I do. I will be what keeps you alive today. Trying to get away from me will be a death sentence. Are we clear?"

"Yes sir."

And she could rip out her own tongue because she didn't mean to say that, something of the squad leader in her apparently responding to his authority in an instant, but Alex barely seems to notice - he just nods once, as if he's used to being obeyed, and then reaches out to take her arm.

Corridor after corridor, like when Alex led her towards the showers days ago. He's so different now, walking beside her in quiet, focused silence, that it's hard to believe he's the same person as the grinning, tousle-haired man who'd pressed her against the tiles and kissed her so soundly in the steam.

I'm quite taken with you today.

Stop trying to touch me there, Captain. Look how much I'm having to restrain you - look!

"What is it," the present Alex says then, his voice quiet, and she startles to realise she'd been looking at him so obviously.

"Nothing."

"Tell me, I could do with the distraction."

And she almost stares at him point blank - he speaks to her now as if something that's meant to be separating them has simply... melted away, as if their week apart while he did god knows what has made him softer.

A squad leader would use this opportunity, and she knows that. She just doesn't know how, yet.

"The shower, the other day," she murmurs, as they turn together down another corridor - ahead of them the dark panelling opens up into a hive of activity she can more hear than see, a chatter of voices and a thud of footfalls drifting towards them.

"Tell me more."

She swallows against a sudden swell of

something

.

Holy shit, there's so much she can do with his attraction now she isn't drugged, she can get out, she can escape, she can get back to-

She breathes evenly to calm the rush, before it brings back distractions about the crash, her squad - the end of the corridor is nearing and the sound of voices rising.

"I liked how you kissed me," she finds herself murmuring, only able to hold onto the truth through her spinning thoughts. "And how... how much you liked it too."

And Alex's smile is brief, tight. He might swallow.

"I'll be doing my best

not

to think about that during the inspection, thanks."

And she huffs a laugh, before the corridor walls fall away and they're stepping out into the open space together.

'Shuttle bay' doesn't do the enormous room justice - it's more like a hangar. The walls are more than a mile away from them in each direction and barely visible to her if not for the big, glaring red stencils of alien language printed across their panels - she might not know their tongue but she's landed in enough spaceports to guess the meaning of the words and labels, and all at once she feels a pang of longing for her squad's ready room back home. Coffee, the creak of leather seats, the slap of a hand on her shoulder, the bang on the podium as their CO tells them all to

sit down, shut up, and switch on. Today's orders are as follows...

The roof of the hangar is so high that the lights studded into the ceiling look more like stars, and for a dizzying moment she realises she has no idea if they're on the surface of a planet, underground, or inside a ship. She'd

guessed

it was a ship, but the size of this room would mean the enemy were capable of building spacecraft far bigger than anything her people had yet encountered, and hadn't Alex said 'outpost'?

That's a term her enemies use for planet-side fortifications in foreign territory, which means territory they've already captured in her solar system. That could only place them in the fifth sector, the outer ring, because they haven't succeeded in pushing further in...

Realisation dawns.

They're on Pluto.

Pluto, which the enemy annexed two years ago but is only a week's flight from rebel space, only a stone's throw from her people if she can simply find a way to-

"Here will do."

She startles slightly, not realizing how much she'd been walking on autopilot under Alex's guiding hand until he brings her to a stop. The shapes of other soldiers, not wearing skins like Alex is, hurry past them from all directions, filling her nose with a gunpowder burning that's nowhere near the heated, pleasant rush of Alex's scent on her borrowed shirt. She grits her teeth and steps closer into Alex's orbit just to make sure none of the fuckers touch her, her attention focusing on what's in front of her.