Title: Object of her affection (Sequel to "Seven's Year Itch".)
Author: Veronica Jane Williams
Series: Voyager
Codes : Voy, P/7
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Paramount created the sultry Seven, Paris and other
Voyager regulars. I borrowed them, threw them in Sandrine's
(also Paramount's creation), and let them play around a little.
Summary: This story continues where "Seven's Year Itch" left off.
It's a sequel. There will be more in this little saga which I hope
to give an overall title to. My corner of Seven's heaven.
At the end of "Seven's Year Itch": Seven walked into Tom's
quarters and said: "Make Love to me, Tom."
Now read on...
OBJECT OF HER AFFECTION
Seven stood for a few seconds in the corridor at the doors that
just closed behind her. She stared blindly at the opposite
bulkhead, her eyes wide. There was a glimmer of tears and she
pulled her elegant brows furiously together to try and stem what
she thought was an unaccustomed flow of tears. It was a grimace
of pain that flashed briefly before she collected herself, ran her
hands over her hips to smooth down her already smooth blue cat
suit. It was a futile gesture, more womanly than she actually
realised. A gesture of trying to cover some form of hurt or
mortification or simply embarrassment.
She straightened up, her chin moving in a unconscious action
of her imperious bearing before she started walking. Down the
corridor to the nearest turbolift. Some crew who passed her paused
briefly to nod in her direction before they went on their way
again. It appeared that they did not notice the unusual high
colour to her cheeks, her flushed look or that she cast her eyes
mainly downwards as though shy to look at anyone.
Perhaps they assumed that she was emulating yet another of those
irritatingly irrational and to her - irrelevant - human traits of
being just perfectly human. Fine, they thought, it's time Seven
learned to be irrational too. Good feeling isn't it? Of not being
in control, they would ask her if they had the inclination to or
just the gumption.
Control, she thought as the turbolift doors closed behind her and
she gave the instruction for the next deck. . She headed
for the cargobay. It was as if it called her, like the invisible
Borg siren beckoned her to come home. Right now it was where she
wanted to be, away from prying eyes, stares that in the last few
hours made her squirm. She was unaccustomed to this.
She wanted to hide, if truth be told. Hide from everyone and shut
herself off for the next ten hours if she could. If only she
could! Shut out her Borg nanoprobes that kept her so alert anyway
that she had to think, that turned over in her head every
conversation, every nuance of feeling. That jeeringly played
around and kept her alive. Where once before they were her link
to the all encompassing protection of the collective, they were
now mercilessly jockeying around to sting in individual bursts
upon her consciousness. But she was Borg. She could muster the
strength of the whole collective to help shut out images, colours,
feelings, touches of hands and mouth... If she could.
"I am Seven of Nine," she told herself. "I am not Annika Hansen.
Seven of Nine has no feelings to hurt. She is impervious to
insults and pain and the pleasures of oral consumption or
carnality. She is forthright and hyper-intelligent with the
collective knowledge of thousands. Seven will give her body for
the sexual gratification of another person; her feelings are
irrelevant. Borg do not procreate; copulation is just that."
Seven tried to let these thoughts impress her on her brain. She
tried to hit at the metal implant, the tangible reminder of what
she was, of what she had been turned into. "Leave me!" she cried
out her anguish. "Let me be Seven!" she pleaded to herself.
She was breathing raggedly as she tried to dispel what happened
in Tom's quarters. "I must not be Annika. Annika can feel,
experience pain and anguish and disappointment. I don't want to
feel. I don't want to feel!" she told herself. "I am not Annika.
Annika can feel. It hurts. It hurts!"
***
Tom stood still where he had been when Seven entered his quarters.
He sighed heavily. He knew she had been shattered, if he were to
read the flash of pain that flitted across her beautiful features
correctly. He wanted to kick himself for putting it there. But
there was little he could do now. He had to put her down as gently
as he could.
She wanted something from him which, if she had asked him three
years ago, he would have obliged in a second. In a second, he
thought. He had changed so much in the intervening years, the
responsibilities he had been given had also given him a new
dimension, character, a driving sense of direction. And mostly,
he thought, B'Elanna had been instrumental in these changes in
him. And now Seven...
He had gone all noble suddenly, done what he thought to be the
honourable thing. He cursed again. When it came down to it,
honour and nobility was irrelevant. He smiled derisively. He
was beginning to reflect her sentiment. He just plain rejected
her, that's what. And Seven, she would see it as exactly that.
She had been soft and tender and imminently vulnerable when she
asked of him what he felt he could not oblige, not the way she
put it.
"Make love to me, Tom..." she said without preamble as she stood
in front of him.
He looked at her and masked his surprise and mild shock as she
advanced on him and placed her hand on his cheek. Gently but
firmly he took her hand and held on to it for a few moments,
placing his other hand over hers. God, he must have appeared
grandmotherly when he held her hand like that, so patronising.
Yet Seven did not read these undercurrents, these subtleties of
human behaviour and interaction. She thought...
"Er...Seven, it's not that easy," he blustered his way through
an answer. "You er...can't just... order it, you know..."
"I read in the database that humans like to be direct, Tom."
"Perhaps when the moment and situation allows it, Seven."
"Now is not the moment?" she asked, a little confused that he
could have said no.
He sighed then. "Now is not the moment, Seven. Look, I don't think
you are ready - "
"I was ready on the holodeck, Tom," she said quickly. "My body..."
She paused, trying to find the way to express something she felt
had been completely alien to her. "My body responded to your...
touches. I know what I felt, Tom."
"What did you feel Seven?" he asked, curious to hear her
expression of what he introduced her to. He knew she was untouched
and totally unaware of just how sensual she was. She had a
sexuality as yet unexplored, and he had given her a taste of what
she could be capable of. He knew he was treading some dangerous
ground and was for a second again the hunter. But then B'Elanna's
image reached into his brain again. He closed his eyes for a
second, trying to dispel that image and thinking: Here is someone
willing to throw herself at me, and suddenly I'm chicken. But it
was the old call of knowing what he did to Seven, knowing that he
made her body respond that gave him the assurance that B'Elanna did
not, by way of expression, emasculate him completely. And partly
because he wanted to spite those betraying emotions he still had,
that he asked again: "What did you feel?"
"I - " he watched as she tried to formulate her response. There
was a sheen in her eyes, a distraughtness in the way she frowned
and her lips trembled slightly. "I felt...warm. I *felt*," she
emphasized. "It was...overpowering and - and made me tremble.
My skin... my insides...craved for - for more, Tom. I wanted it
to last..."
"You felt good, then."
"Yes. I did. I did not - could not - imagine that my body, every
nerve cell, every nerve ending could play such - such havoc with
me. It made me - it made me lose - "
"Control, Seven? You felt like the world turned you a little crazy
for an hour and made you crave something that gave you intense
pleasure and joy?"
"I did. But I know I can experience a greater fulfillment, Tom."
"Perhaps not with me, Seven," he said kindly. He was angry with
himself. He should never have done what he did there on the
holodeck. He should never have taken out those frustrations on
her, for frustrations they were. And Seven, God help him, she was
just so arrogantly imperious and self-assured in those moments,
he wanted to prove to her that he could have her under him,
writhing in orgasmic pleasure and screaming for his touches.
He knew the way she did respond to what he did, that he could take
her all the way home. But while both might have enjoyed that
interlude, the lingering effects would have been damaging, he
thought. For both of them.
For him, it would have afforded him no pleasure, other than the
immediate physical gratification of great sex. He wanted no such
victory, chiefly because it was motivated wrongly and secondly,
perhaps more importantly, she would have read all the signs wrong.
Like she did anyway now. He liked her. He liked her tremendously
and she deserved someone she could give herself to with the same
completion that she needed to be loved. And that was the sorry
crux. He still had to resolve things about his own failed
relationship - *that* it failed - before he could let his heart
feel again the way he revealed and made himself vulnerable to
B'Elanna. He was not ready for that kind of hurt again. Though
knowing Seven, she would with complete certainty probably tell him
that she would be his forever.
That was what his little interlude did there on the holodeck.
Because he, Tom Paris could let her body sing and writhe out of
a pleasurable control, Seven has latched on to him as the object
of her affection. And what was to him a game, dammit, an
experiment to bring her to her knees was for her something
earth-shaking and terrifyingly real. He acted like a cad, he knew.
She was so small then, so fragile in heart and mind, he was only
then overwhelmed by an immense tenderness for her. It was why he
held her so close and kissed her and whispered endearments to her.
She was so warm, so soft then in him arms, so trusting and giving.
But he needed time, and she needed time before they could validate
anything.
He vowed that there would be a day he would really accept her and
welcome all advances she was about to give so freely to him
minutes ago.
"Not with me, Seven. I'm sorry," he said again kindly as he
watched her back away from him, her hand loosening from his.
"You do not want me then, Tom." It was a statement that had a
ring of finality about it. It was so Seven-like that he cursed
inwardly. If he did not want her, she thought, if he did not
want to comply, she could not in typical Borg fashion just
assimilate him into doing so. She was on Voyager, a member of
the Voyager collective, where she dealt now with individuals and
individuality. She had to accept his decision. She accepted
defeat, for it was to her understanding, a kind of defeat.
He sighed. It was never easy, he thought, to reason around
such emotions and subtleties and grey areas as she currently
experiencing and could not understand fully.
"It's not that I don't want you, Seven. I like you very much.
But to comply to your request without at least some feeling
of love and caring on both sides, would not be fair, Seven. Not
to you. Not to you," he repeated. "When you give yourself in that
way, you will want to love that person, I promise you that."
"I have to be in love first?" she asked, now plainly uncertain
of herself.
"You should at least have some feeling, Seven, that goes beyond
just feeling the physical need to have sex. Do you understand
that?"
"You don't want me then."
He sighed again. The truth, for now:
"No, Seven."
She looked at him with that same distraught expression of earlier.
He saw her eyes fill with tears, the lips and fingers tremble
before she turned wordlessly on her heels and left as quietly
as she came in.
*********
Seven stepped out of the lift and walked down the corridor. Her
feet carried her to the cargo bay. She was now unaware that she
was walking almost stiltedly, like when she had still been wholly
Borg.
"Seven?" she heard a soft voice. Naomi Wildman.
"Yes," she answered without looking down at the child who had been
walking in the opposite direction.
"Why do you walk like that? Like you are Unimatrix 01 again?" the
little girl asked pointedly.
"Because I am Borg," she said tightly, looking down at Naomi for
the first time. A look that made the girl beat a hasty retreat,
though still staring pensively after Seven as she proceeded
to Cargo Bay Two. Boy, Naomi thought, someone made the Borg Lady
mad.
Naomi Wildman was not far wrong in assuming what she did. But
Seven was not really mad. She was something different, she was
impassioned, heavy with a kind of emotion or a gamut of them
she had never experienced. She was feeling everything from shame
to embarrassment to exceeding pain.
She entered the cargo bay and felt a semblance of order in her
mind of chaotic thoughts and mocking images. .
She walked to the computer and keyed in the parameters for an
eight hour regeneration sequence. She would give the command
vocally once she was inside the chamber. She walked to the
beckoning green flickering tongues of light and stepped into
the alcove. Her body assumed the stiff Borg stance as she turned
to face the cargo bay, her left hand ready to be linked to the
console next to her. For a few minutes she allowed her mind to
wander...
*****
"Make love to me, Tom."
She thought saying it that way and not "let's copulate" that he
would comply. How wrong she was. How inadequate she felt.
"You do not want me."
"I like you, Seven. I admire you a lot. But I cannot comply to
your request. It would not be fair to you."
"How would it not be fair, Tom? I - I like you too," she told him.
"It's more than that, Seven and you know it."
"You have not resolved your feelings for Lieutenant Torres then,"
she persisted.
"N-o-o, I...er haven't, Seven."
"Then you need to get over that then, before you can - "
"Before *we* can validate anything. I have - I have feelings still
for her, Seven."
"Does she still feel for you, Tom?" she asked.
"Perhaps, perhaps not. I'm not certain anymore," he retorted.
"But she found a mate. Does that not mean that her feelings
have changed for you, and that she now loves someone else enough
to have intercourse with him?" She thought then that she saw
some pain in Tom's eyes when she said that. Her own heart
contracted painfully when she realised she had unwittingly hurt
him further. In those seconds he had been unable to mask his
hurt.
"Maybe," he said slowly.
"Then why can't you have sex with me?"
"Seven, a few minutes ago you called it "making love". That is
what you want, with all your heart and soul and feelings
involved."
"Yes."
"I can't give you that now, Seven. It would be wrong."
"I know what I felt on the holodeck Tom," she told him, feeling
how she was slowly dying. She came to him, wanting to give her
body to him unconditionally and he refused. He...rejected her.
That hurt. It stung like a thousand nanoprobes each pricking
against a nerve cell.
"No, Seven," he said with such finality.
Wasn't she...beautiful? Wasn't she attractive enough? How was she
to attract him if he didn't want her? She wanted him so badly.
So badly now. She knew that she was... falling for him, and that
the feeling was growing more intense.
"I can make your body sing, Seven," he said in Sandrine's.
His mouth had been everywhere. Her hands went to the cleft
between her thighs and her fingers touched her centre in a soft
brush-like touch. I want him, I want him, it rang like a litany
in her mind as her fingers began to caress her centre, the soft
fabric of the cat suit adding to the intense eroticism she was
feeling. She imagined again how he touched her in Sandrine's
and tried to imitate those touches so that she was aware only
of her responses. They were searing her body, soft feather-like
touches, brushing of his lips against her lips, his tongue against
her...
Her breathing became shallow as she imagined Tom's mouth on her
core, his tongue flicking away the soft folds that she could feel
now were very swollen. She threw her back and she felt his mouth
covering her and his tongue pushing in her. She groaned with
pleasure at the feel of his tongue probing deeply into her. Her
own fingers began to move in little circles tantalising her own
core. It felt even through her suit hot and swollen and soft and
wet. Remembering how she pushed into him them, her hips writhing
and rising against his mouth, she pushed against her hand. Her
her fingers pressed into the fabric trying to find a grip and
fondle until she started heaving. It overcame her again. She was
gasping as her body heated and warm currents of erotic pleasure
coursed through her, building into a swelling current of intense
heat.
Oh Tom, what have you done to me? she thought as her body heaved
once, twice into a climax. Her lips were parted and her head
thrown back as she gasped and orgasmed. She was drenched in sweat
where she stood.
Her hands slumped to her sides. There was a curious mixture of
exaltation and pain on her face. She knew in that instant, if it
had been one or the other, it would have produced the same effect
that happened in the seconds she crashed over the edge. The tears
ran in scalding rivulets down her cheeks.
She stood for a few moments like that. Her tear-stained cheeks
now the only testimony that she was deeply troubled, distraught,
in mindless agony because she loved a man who did not love her
back. She spoke at last.
"Computer, begin regeneration sequence in four...three...
two...one."
end
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