Return to Valjiir Stories
With the door again firmly closed, Ruth took a deep mental breath and reestablished the connection to her husband. His urgent call thundered through her, her brain not taking the time to translate the Vulcan words he sent to her. This was not a good sign, she knew. When he started talk/thinking in Vulcan during sex, it meant he was seriously in need.
She opened herself fully, dropping all her barriers save the one that was set to automatically guard against any potential eavesdropping from as-yet-undiscovered Sevrinite telepaths. When Del’s agonized roar nearly deafened her, she hurriedly put that wall back up as well.
While she had been assigned to Memory Alpha, the telepathic union she and Spock had shared had been warm and loving, a gentle blending that grew slowly more heated until passion took over their senses and brought them emotional if not physical satisfaction. This, she knew, had to be different. This had to have the same effect for Spock as it had for Sulu. The mental and emotional stimulation had to be enough to push his careful control out the airlock and force his strong, lean body to its peak…
And thinking like that just may do it, she thought as her mind conjured up lascivious pictures of her husband’s slender to-her perfection. She sent to him all the arousal such thoughts gave her, then added images of what she would be doing to him were she with him. They were immediately answered with the images in his mind, and she found that the animalistic savagery that had so frightened her in the shuttle after Shas now held only breathless urgency.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes! cried from her mind to his and was joined by his demands. It took only seconds for the fire between them to reach bonfire level, and a moment of eternity for the flames to come crashing down around them. She felt the very physical orgasm ripping through Spock’s body, and arched with her own, then fell back onto the bunk like a rag doll.
Several seconds passed.
I love you, Dei’larr’ei, sounded gently in her mind.
You sure do, she replied. Honey, you sure do.
One of the most unexpectedly annoying things about this ship, Ruth decided, was that you never knew what time it was. It was disorienting enough to be suddenly cut off from the strict schedule regulating life aboard a starship, but these people did absolutely nothing to simulate a diurnal rotation and did not seem to have ever even thought of buying a chronometer. Therefore, she had no way of knowing how long she'd been asleep.
When she came into the main cabin, the first two impressions that hit her were that a lot of other people were asleep and that Daffy was sad. The last surprised her. It wasn't that she'd never known Daffy to be sad, but Gollub was the sort of person who sublimated sadness so well you tended to forget about it.
"Where is everyone?" Ruth asked.
Daffy looked up from her dbathi stick and shrugged. "Fucking."
Ruth blinked. "What?"
The room was empty except for Gollub, some scattered clothing among the pillows, and Pavel Chekov who was sleeping near her feet.
"After six hours of foreplay," Daffy explained dryly, "Del suddenly decided he actually wanted to have sex. With everyone."
"Really?" Ruth asked, grimly remembering that ‘Kill Del’ was at the top of her list of things to do.
"Yes." Daffy tapped some ashes into a bowl. "I think he put it, ‘Fuck her! Fuck him! Fuck 'em all! Who wants to fuck?’"
"Romantic," Ruth concluded, knowing that she was certainly the "her" being referred to.
"Yeah, you can tell he's a poet from the vocabulary."
Their conversation must have disturbed Chekov. He roused enough to roll over. When he did so, his hand landed on Daffy's thigh. Without waking, he sighed contentedly and caressed her.
Gollub carefully slid his hand back to the mat and positioned it so that when she touched his shoulder he'd automatically reposition himself so that his cheek was resting on it instead.
This, Ruth knew, was what was making Daffy sad - the wanting to be touched and feeling compelled to push away.
Gollub twisted her lips and gave her the ‘Outa my head, Valley’ look.
"Where's Sakura?" Ruth asked instead.
"Fucking," Gollub replied blithely. "I don't know if she knew that's where she was going, but they took her. If I hadn't have thrown a pillow over Pavel and sat on him, I think they would have dragged him off too."
"You didn't go?"
"Nah." Daffy re-lit the dbathi stick. "You know what they say - Two's company and five's going to involve someone taking a number and having time to do their nails. But enough about me and the Pied Piper of Orgytown, what have you been doing?"
"Well… uh." The grin that she didn't think she'd manage to crowbar off her face when she went to sleep crept back on. "Something that deserves to be written up in a special issue of the Journal of Xenopsychosexuality."
Daffy smiled. "Think you'll make the centerfold again?"
Following the pleasing memories of her psychic tryst with her husband was the shadow of things she'd glimpsed in the four way - or should she say five way? - meld. "I can't even begin to describe what happened." Ruth shook her head slowly, her smile fading. "I can't process it all yet. Not sure if I even want to try..."
Daffy interrupted her with a sudden, "Hi, Jer."
Valley looked up to see Paget coming out of the privacy room from which she had previously sensed a mass of sleeping people.
"Hi." Jeremy was re-tying his shirt.
"So?" Daffy raised an eyebrow. "Changed our minds, did we?"
Paget paused and wondered how much he really needed or wanted to explain about his level of frustration and how, in the moment of despair that had set in after he declined his beautiful, glowing love's invitation to shower, he'd felt -- rather than heard -- the sounds of coupling and had been drawn -- almost compelled -- into the sweet forgetfulness of intertwining bodies.
Instead of addressing any of this, Paget sighed and shook his head as he sank down onto the cushions. "It just suddenly seemed like a good idea."
"Did Phen wind up in there?" Gollub asked.
"He has blue skin, right?"
"Yeah."
Paget paused to sort through his oddly fogged memories. "Maybe."
"Was Sakura in there?"
Jeremy paused again. It was almost as if his brain had gone on vacation after he entered the room. "Maybe."
"Was she awake?"
"Could have been." The more he thought about what happened, the less sure he was of what happened. Starting to be a little creeped out by this, Paget decided it was time for a change of subject. "Did our friends have a message for us?"
Ruth looked at him blankly. "What?"
"When you made contact."
"Huh?"
Paget looked around to confirm they were alone. "With Spock?" For some reason, Ruth started grinning. "When you told him that we had an approximate E.T.A.."
"Oh, hell!" Valley smacked herself on the forehead. "I forgot to tell him."
Paget rolled his eyes. "I think they'll probably still be interested."
"Yeah," Ruth said, rising, "and I think there's a log entry he's going to be needing some help with." Ruth rose with a farewell smile and left the main cabin.
"So." Jeremy turned to Daffy, taking the seat the Antari had just vacated. "Has anything happened to our boy NC since he's been on the Enterprise?"
"Like what?"
"Like, uh… I don't know. Developin' god-like powers?"
"Does developing god-like blue balls count?"
"I don't think so. It's just that - " Paget broke off. His memories and impressions were still fuzzy and hard to articulate. "When I was standin' outside that room… I'd swear somethin' reached out and grabbed me."
Daffy grinned. "I'll bet."
"Okay, that is part of the plotline a little later in the story," Jeremy acknowledged. "But what I'm talkin' about was… mental. I was thinkin’, ‘Maybe I'll go in’ and it was like someone else made the decision."
"Uh-huh," Gollub agreed patronizingly. "Sure."
"Granted, there can be a little of that feelin’ for other reasons, but this was different. I felt like someone was thinking for me."
"Hmm." Daffy took a thoughtful drag on her dbathi stick. "Ruth was doing a brain-kink with Spock. Maybe you got spillover."
"Actually, they did a four-way with Sulu and Jilla."
"Really?" Gollub took a moment to process this information. "You know I don't think I'll ever be comfortable hearing the words "Spock" and "four-way" in the same sentence."
"Right there with ya," Paget agreed, then slowly shook his head and tried to untangle the mass of conflicting impressions. "I don't think that was it, though. There was times last night that I think I was seein’ the scene from NC's point of view."
"How can you tell?"
"Normally when my hands come into my field of view, I'm not a white guy."
"There's that," Gollub conceded.
"I didn't know he could do things like that."
"Hmmm." Daffy took a thoughtful puff on the dbathi stick. "Could be the dope."
"What?" Paget's eyes snapped open. "What's wrong with the drugs?"
"Probably nothing."
"Probably?"
"Yeah." Gollub nodded calmly. "Probably nothing."
Paget narrowed his eyes. "Do you guys take lessons in cryptic on the Enterprise?"
"Sometimes." Daffy replied in a manner designed to make him crazier.
"Information now," the Security officer ordered. "Funny later."
"Nothing to tell, but..." Gollub fished first a blue pill then a marbled pink one from between two nearby cushions. "When was the last time you saw sapphire come in the same size tab as anylazaphene?"
"We've been takin’ homebrew?"
"Probably not. At least not most of it. Haven drugs are pretty hard to replicate - and I should know."
"Then what?"
"My guess is that they buy… I mean, steal... excuse me, liberate some chems then repackage them into smaller tabs to make them go further. That's what the poor kids do when they don't have a rich, horny, homicidal maniac subsidizing their self- destructive impulses."
Jeremy gave a perfunctory grimace at this allusion to Cal. "And what does this frugality have to do with ampin’ up NC's brain?"
"Maybe nothing. But they're probably cutting their chems with something at the same time. Psychotropic drugs can affect psychic abilities. Change the chemistry and you can change the affect."
"What do you think they're addin’?"
Gollub shrugged. "What you cut your chems with depends on where you are in the galaxy, how much you want to spend, and how clever you are."
Paget smiled, wondering if Admiral Brezhnova had consciously anticipated the team would need an expert in recreational pharmacology. "And what are the clever people doing?"
"Playing with absorption rates. The basic choices are frontloading and backloading. Frontloading speeds absorption so you get a big bump right away - like you would from a bigger dose. Backloading slows absorption so your high lasts longer - as long as a bigger dose. If you're really, really clever, you can do a little of each."
"Clever like you?"
"I'm not clever," Gollub said, tapping away an ash. "I'm a genius."
“So, genius, what are our Loonie pals doing?"
"I'm a genius," Daffy pointed out, "not a tricorder."
"Hmmm." Paget paused to consider the logistics of getting the readings he needed.
"You're that curious about what Del did to you last night?" Daffy asked.
"Oh, I know what happened to me," Jeremy assured her. "I know it from multiple points of view. What I need to know is if he's gonna be broadcastin’ everything we do, say, think, or know from four different angles every time he pops the wrong pill."
"Oh." The lights seemed to go on for the chemist. She held up her fingers like quotation marks. "Thus endangering "The Plan"?"
"Not to mention "Our Asses"," Paget replied, imitating the gesture.
"I'm still not a tricorder," she reminded him.
"Not necessarily a problem."
"Oh? Then I guess we're going to need some privacy."
Both stopped to think of the only reasons why people on this ship made allowances for privacy.
"Hey, baby," Paget said with a teasing leer, "wanna let me show you my equipment?"
"Always a treat," Daffy grinned. She suddenly stopped, looked at Chekov still asleep beside her, then looked back at Paget pretending that she hadn't wavered. "Now?"
Paget scavenged a few tabs of sapphire out of a nearby bowl. "Gotta deliver coffee and beignets to our Cajun friend first."
"Fine," Daffy said as if she didn't care that they were a setting up a situation that would make it look like she was cheating on her boyfriend.
"Think I'd better check and see if anyone's drivin’ the ship, too." Paget smiled and hoped it would make him seem less Machiavellian. Like the Sevrinites, he had begun to believe it would be better for all concerned if Daffy and Chekov were not together.
"There's a comforting thought," she replied, uncomforted and undeceived. After the Security Officer exited, she sat very quietly, hoping Chekov would stay asleep until after she had a chance to sneak off with Jeremy.
As luck would have it, only a few moments later the navigator began to stir. He sat up and looked at her blankly. Like most officers assigned to the Bridge, Chekov had developed an almost unnatural ability to go from absolute unconsciousness to complete wakefulness. The barbs in his system were slowing that well-oiled response down to a crawl.
"Dafshka," he said, recognizing her before recalling the rest of their context.
Gollub let him kiss her. This was a mistake. She could feel the embrace go cold and stiff as his awareness of where he was and why he was there returned.
"I should get something to eat," he said apologetically as he stood.
"Yeah." Daffy took a long drag on her dbathi stick. "Big day ahead."
The hornets had finally stopped buzzing and Del had a massive headache. Part of it, he knew, was because the hornets had stopped buzzing. Part of it was the normal press of thought and emotion that intensified when he was in physical contact with people – like he was now with… He raised his head briefly and counted: Lace, Diona, Phen, Ravi, Gypsy – wasn’t Cobra here, too? Shit, too many anyway. But the larger part was the fierce, almost brutal shutting down of the contact with Ruth. He hadn’t meant to bleed all over her, and he knew she hadn’t meant to be so open to him. The Rigellian was partly to blame for that – an’ the hornets, he thought ruefully – but again, most of it was due to the intensive work they’d done for this mission. She had tried to give him stronger shields, but that meant weakening the ones between them. And so instead of leaking all over everyone else, he just dripped slowly but continuously into her. And she to him. And the despair that engendered was responsible for the mention of the Kamikaze shot and for the twosie, and would be, if things kept up, for a hit of venus – and that would kill them both.
So what you gonna do about it? he asked himself. She can’t keep shorin’ up your damn shields. An' you not dare let ‘em get so leaky that they leak out our plans to all the pretty l’il loonies. An' the more sex you have wit’ the loonies, the more likely that become.
An’ just how you stop your leaky brain at the Academy? At the Clave?
She hate that.
She hate what you’ll do to each other worse. An’ if the mission fail because of it? Will all those defensive weapons be put to offensive use if we found out?
Only one real choice, non? With exaggerated care, DelMonde extricated himself from the tangle of arms and legs. He found his clothes in the material-strewn cabin and quietly slipped them on.
"Hey."
Somehow being able to sense that Paget wasn't mad at him didn't make the moment less awkward. He looked up to find the security officer leaning against the entryway. "Hey."
"You okay?"
"Yeah, fine," he replied, choking past the guilt he felt at having used Gypsy and Cobra for his manipulative orgy of self-pity – although he felt none for Diona, Ravi or Phen. Del hated to top that abuse off with a lie, but apologies were far too inadequate and all he wanted now was to somehow make his way back that huge bowlful of shimmering capsules – and the sapphire he needed.
"No, you're not." Paget held out a palm full of blue salvation. "Let's give your brain a rest while we figure this out. Okay?"
Del would have taken them all if Jeremy hadn't stopped him. "I said rest," Paget joked, "not rest in peace."
DelMonde leaned back against a bulkhead. Cleansing waves of blue began to course through him. "I so sorry, Jer," he said before the last vestiges of sensation were submerged.
"Don't worry about it." Paget watched the Cajun slowly slide down the wall as the blue-black ocean silence closed in over him. The security officer leaned down, gently smoothed back his friend's hair, and gave him a soft kiss on the top of his head before closing his unseeing eyes. "I'm worried enough for both of us."
This, Sulu decided, was the sweetest part of a good amber cruise. Right before the effect completely left your system, the drug filled you with a liquid gold calm. Thinking would come later. Regrets might come later. Responsibility might come later. For now though, he was nothing more or less than a sated golden animal, content to gaze at the stars before him and feel the ship hum obediently under his hands.
“Unregistered ship, this is the USS Diana, please acknowledge and identify yourselves.”
Roger glanced uneasily at Madvig, inclining his head toward the helmsman, who was moving to answer the hail.
The Sevrinite woman reached out and stopped Sulu’s hand. “What are you planning to say to them, brother?” Madvig’s voice was soft, but her eyes were sharp on him.
The amber afterglow made it easy to grin and shrug. “Sorry. Force of habit.” He turned in the helm seat to include Roger in the conversation. “Should we just ignore it?
“Will they fire if we don’t?" the Sevrinite asked.
“Well, the Diana is a scout. She doesn’t have much in the way of weaponry, but she’s fast and might follow us.” He paused, debating whether or not to give out a vital piece of classified information, then decided that the Sevrinites must have a decent source of intel or they wouldn’t be of concern to the Federation. And even though the details were classified, it wasn’t really anything that could be used against the Diana. “She’s equipped with the Valjiir cloak, so if she was shadowing us, we’d never know it. And I’m guessing that wouldn’t be a good thing.”
Roger frowned and the suspicion left Madvig’s face. “So what do you suggest?”
“Answer the hail. Tell them we’re a private, personal vessel. Apologize for the lack of registry and give them a false one.”
“And you’ve memorized a list of false registration codes to use under circumstances like this?” Roger asked acidly. “Starfleet really does prepare its officers for all eventualities.”
No wonder the crew of the Shambala keeps so many drugs on hand, Sulu concluded. It’s the only way they could tolerate being around Roger. “Call Gypsy up here,” he replied easily. “She’s – she was a yeoman. She’ll know how to fake it.”
Madvig smiled and left the small bridge. Sulu stood.
“Where are you going, brother?” Roger asked.
“You don’t want them to see a deserter on your personal, private boat, do you?” Sulu pointed out.
“We don’t have to show them a video feed,” the Sevrinite said.
“That will only make them suspicious about what you don’t want them to see.”
Roger grunted a grudging acknowledgement.
“And after Gypsy tells you what to do, make sure she gets out before you do it.”
Another grunt, and Sulu left the bridge, pausing only to give Sakura a quick kiss on the cheek as she and Madvig passed them.
For good measure, he gave Madvig one, too.
For extra good measure, Sulu turned around and gave Stupid Roger a kiss on the top of his stupid starting-to-bald head. He grinned as the Sevrinite turned to gape at him. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Stupid Roger snorted and tried to regain what passed for composure with him. “Thanks for leaving me with a wide open field of options.”
Pavel Chekov hated Denebian cognac. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have downed half a mouthful of the vile, sickly sweet stuff, let alone the bottle and a half he’d consumed over the course of the last three hours. Under the circumstances, however, there was little he could do other than drink… and fume.
How dare she touch another man in front of me! he thought, giving silent voice to a sentiment he would have never spoken aloud. He did not think of himself as being jealous, possessive, or controlling. However, the bottle and a half of cognac was telling him it was perfectly natural and normal to feel such a way after what he’d had to endure.
“She’ll say it was part of the mission,” he muttered, drunk enough to not realize he’d spoken aloud. Fortunately he was alone on this side of the room. The gentle strumming of Ruth’s guitar covered his outburst.
Chekov was still sober enough to realize that there had been something more than a little theatrical about the flirting and whispering Gollub and Lieutenant Commander Paget had engaged in for a couple hours before disappearing arm and arm into one of the “privacy” rooms. Particularly galling was the way Daphne had very deliberately turned and given him a look before kissing the Hood officer and leading him off with a very defiant toss of her head.
“Quite the actress,” he mocked bitterly. “Quite the actress.”
“Who is?”
Chekov gasped involuntarily when a blue-skinned face suddenly popped into his line of sight.
“Who’s quite an actress?”
“Uhmmm…uh..” he stammered. “Anna Pavlova. She… she was known as a ballerina, but it’s a little known fact that she was also quite the actress.”
“Huh,” Phen nodded, not caring. The white-haired youth grinned as he plopped down on the pillows beside the navigator. “Brother, you should have been with us last night. I tried to wake you up.”
“Oh?” Chekov abstractly wondered if Phen’s phrase “last night” meant that it was now day.
“Yeah. It transcended transcendence!” the Sevrinte pronounced with a satisfied sigh, then nodded to Chekov as if the navigator would understand. “You reach?”
The Enterprise officer had no clue. “Indeed?” he said, pretending that he did.
“It’s not like we never do the group thing,” Phen was saying. “But you really need some dudes to make the flower bloom, you reach? Roger’s okay, but Roger’s Roger. You reach?”
Chekov felt closer to grasping at straws than to “reaching” anything. “I suppose.”
The white-haired youth laughed at him. “Hey, little brother,” he said, tapping the navigator on his nose teasingly, “you’re drunk.”
“A little,” the Russian admitted, glad to be able to at last understand a comment directed towards him .
“I reach that.” Phen grinned and took the navigator’s bottle – leaving Chekov’s hand wrapped around the neck under his warm blue grasp – and pressed it to Pavel's lips.
It was such an unexpectedly intimate sensation to feel this stranger’s fingers moving against his lips as he drank that the Russian forgot to protest or pull away.
Phen laughed at the navigator’s stunned expression. “You’ve got the most twitched look on your face,” he said, using his grip on Chekov’s bottle and hand to pull the Russian forward. “You’re really drunk, brother.”
Chekov was drunk enough not to know what to do when the white-haired youth put his hand on the back of the navigator’s neck and quickly guided him into a startling kiss.
Phen grinned delightedly as he released the Russian and stood. “Next time we have sex, I’m going to wake you up,” he said emphatically.
Chekov couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be a promise or a threat. “Oh?” he replied numbly. “Oh?”
The Sevrinite merely laughed and exited in the direction of the Shambala’s cockpit, passing Sulu on his way in.
When he entered the main cabin, the helmsman noticed that Ruth was sitting with DelMonde’s head in her lap. The engineer was grounded nearly to unconsciousness, and though the Antari was absently stroking his head, Sulu could tell she was doing more than expressing their alleged relationship. Jeremy had discussed his concern about the Cajun’s leaking brain, and Ruth had reluctantly agreed that sapphire was the best way to prevent it until she could repair the damage done by her completely necessary but less-than-gentle rejection of his mental contact.
Sulu suddenly had to swallow the first bitter taste of post-cruise guilt – if he hadn’t done the damned twosie, he wouldn’t have needed Jilla so badly, Ruth wouldn’t have had to attempt such a telepathically and empathically tricky thing and Del might not have taken emotional control of everyone within a two meter radius.
He sighed. The only other person in the room was Pavel, who was seated near the giant hookah, but was, as usual, stubbornly ignoring it. Sulu himself firmly ignored the ever-present bowl of chemicals, and sat down next to his helmpartner, taking one of the hookah’s mouthpieces.
“Hello,” Chekov greeted him with somewhat drunken formality.
Sulu patted him on the arm. “How ya doin’?”
“I don’t know,” the Russian answered with incongruous confidence. “What is going on?”
“The Diana’s out there, asking after us,” Sulu replied, lowering his voice.
Chekov blinked and straightened as if preparing to rise. “After us?”
“Not us us, the ship. The Shambala isn’t broadcasting a registry. Standard Fleet procedure.”
The navigator settled back down, but he was frowning. “What are they going to do?”
“I told them to fake it, say it’s a personal yacht,” Sulu returned, taking a deep hit from the mouthpiece.
“You told them?”
“We’re supposed to be on their side, Pav.”
“But to deliberately deceive a Fleet patrol…”
“After we deliberately not-fired on Fleet ships, what’s a little deception?”
Chekov was silent for a moment, then murmured, “I hate this, Sulu.”
Sulu sighed, putting his arm around the navigator’s shoulders. “I know. Try to keep thinking of the good we’re doing by being so bad.” He again lifted the mouthpiece to his lips. He felt the Russian tense beside him, and waited.
“Sulu…” Chekov began slowly and very quietly. “Was there a group…uhm... intimacy earlier?”
The helmsman couldn’t help but smile at what was still an incredibly beautiful memory for him despite the encroachments of complex and unpleasant reality. “Yeah, Ruth did a thing so I could be with Jilla…”
The navigator was frowning. “And Phen?”
“Oh, no, no. That was something else… Well, in part… I guess you could say there was some spillover from my thing, but that was a different group thing…” As always, Sulu was amazed by the way that sequences of events that seemed crystal clear and natural while on amber dissolved into inexplicable anarchy as the influence of the drug ebbed.
His answer, in addition to not making a great deal of sense, did nothing to assuage whatever was bothering the navigator.
“I have no problem with bisexuality,” Chekov began carefully.
His solemnity made Sulu laugh. “Well, that’s good.”
“I have been aware that you and Mr. Paget were… and had reason to suspect that Noel sometimes…”
“You’re blushing,” Sulu interrupted. “Pavel, did someone make a pass at you?”
“I don’t know,” his helmpartner replied uncomfortably.
“Tell me what happened.”
“Phen kissed me and told me he planned to wake me up the next time they had group sex.”
“Okay, yes, that’s a pass.” Despite his desire to be supportive, Sulu had to laugh out loud. “For future reference, among humanoid species in most parts of the known galaxy, that is definitely considered a pass.”
“What am I to do?”
Sulu gave the shoulder a comforting squeeze. “Don’t sweat it,” He paused. “If Phen or Roger bother you, you can fake that you’re with me if you want. I don’t mind, and you know I’m not gonna do anything.” The helmsman grinned. “I remember my recent near-disaster.”
“And if I do not want to fake it?” Chekov returned stubbornly.
Sulu let his eyes grow wide. “You mean you’re really interested…? Gee, Pavel, I’m flattered, and under other circumstances…”
Pavel deliberately elbowed him in the ribs. “That is not what I meant,” he growled. “And you know it.”
Sulu laughed, “Sorry. I couldn’t resist.” He again inhaled a deep lungful of Rigellian. “Really, just tell them you don’t swing that way. They’ll reach.” He snorted again, smoke coming out of his nostrils.
The Russian coughed. “Must you do that constantly?”
Sulu thought of Jilla, the ache in his body already returning. “Yes,” was the succinct response.