Tom's mouth - no, his entire throat - seemed to dry up. If the memory of her lovely, naked flesh had been something - seeing her now was something entirely different. She was ab_so_lutely gorgeous: her perfect, pert breasts; her pink, puckered nipples; the utter flawlessness of her smooth, alabaster skin. Even those few Borg implants that rose and retreated, seamlessly, beneath the skin of her small ribcage held a sort of erotic quality.
His mind was full of all sorts of horrible, self-directed insults, telling himself how wrong last night had been...while his body was quickly, literally jumping at the possibility of doing it again, his hormones telling him nothing had ever felt so right in his life.
'Tom, if you did everything that 'felt right' in your life, there'd be little Tom Parises littering half the Alpha Quadrant, and probably certain parts of the Delta, as well,' he thought. Then he remembered his and the Captain's warp 10 offspring, and Tom realized that that thought was really quite correct. Tom sank his face into his hands, mourning what had been his life woefully. As soon as B'Elanna learned of this he'd die a long, painful death - assuming that she wasn't so enraged that she forgot to make it long. Regardless, it would definately be painful.
'Hell hath no fury damned close to a Klingon woman, scorned.'
He wondered if she'd even get one blow in before he died of intolerably high epinephrine levels...when his thoughts were suddenly shattered by Seven's hand slowly trailing up his thigh...towards his ever-hardening erection. He sucked in a breath and looked over at her. If ever a man knew he was in hot water - and helpless to swim his way out of it - it was Tom Paris as he looked over at Seven of Nine at that moment. She was naked, unashamed - exhausted from their lovemaking and a night of horizontally positioned regeneration (as opposed to a cycle in her chamber). Her eyes were still cloudy with sleep and her lips were pouty. Her skin was warm and wrinkled - like a baby's, he observed. And her long, blond tresses fell all about her face, shoulders, and breasts.
Tom swallowed. Hard. And Seven smiled...smiled...at him. "Good morning...Tom," she said, voice drowsy, and Tom wondered, 'When the hell did that monotonic voice of hers get so damned sexy?' He came out of the bed as if a Klingon Targh had bitten him in it.
Seven looked at him, befuddled. "I...I'm going to clean you up," he squeaked, retreating to the bathroom at transwarp velocity. Seven merely shrugged, an unusual gesture for her - most likely brought on by their rather unusual evening and her exhaustion. She lay back down in his bed.
When Tom reached his basin, he worked like a man on automatic, hands shaking terribly as he dampened a washcloth and fumbled in his nearby medkit for a dermal regenarator.
'You selfish son-of-a-...,' he thought, 'You no doubt hurt her last night. Now you're getting ready to patch her up and you're still hard, already wanting to take her again!'
The intensity with which his hands were shaking knocked various items out of his medkit and into the basin. When his hand finally grasped onto the regenerator he stilled, leaning his forehead against the mirror. He'd started keeping a medkit in his bathroom for B'Elanna - or, more correctly, for himself after he and B'Elanna had begun sharing each other's beds more and more frequently. There was no such thing as safe sex with a Klingon, and he'd used the regenerator countless nights to treat his own cuts and abrasions; fractured clavicles; even a broken rib or two. A similar medkit resided in B'Elanna's quarters. Once, on a particularly passionate evening, he'd even had reason to use it on her. He'd gotten carried away, swept up in her wild, Klingon brand of lovemaking. He'd dislocated her shoulder and fractured her wrist in three places. he'd been horrified - she'd been as turned on as he'd ever seen her before. Not that he'd seen her turned on any time recently. That dutiful little regenerator that had burned out many a cell trying to keep up with the wild, amorous couple, hadn't been touched in longer than he cared to remember. And now he was using it on Seven. Tom shook his head and returned to the bedroom.
When he reached the bed he almost thought Seven had gone back to sleep. She looked utterly peaceful as she lay there in all her naked glory. When Tom sat down at the foot of the bed, however, and she felt the mattress shift to accommodate his weight, her eyes opened. She looked at him only a moment and then, with not a sign of modesty or embarrassment, slightly spread her thighs to facilitate his wishes to 'clean her up'. Tom tried not to let the sight of her like that, lying on his bed, openinn herself to him, totally trusting, to effect him. As he began to gently wipe her with the damp cloth, then activate the dermal regenerator, he almost believed he had succeeded. Until Seven let out a quiet sigh and his hands started to shake again. 'Damn. Who am I kidding, anyway?'
"Better?" he asked, pleased at least that his voice wasn't squeaking any longer. He set the regenerator and the towel aside.
"I am no longer feeling any physical discomfort in the area to which you just administered treatment, yes, thank you."
Tom grimaced feeling guilty again. "I'm sory that I wasn't more gentle with you when we...uh, when we made love last night," he said, sincerely, stumbling only briefly over verbally confirming the reality of what they'd done. He moved over to lie beside her, though he felt awkward in doing so. 'What do I do now?' he thought. Should he touch her? Seven seemed to make the decision for him, turning and slinking one arm around his waist, slightly sliding towards him. Tom briefly wondered what happened to the "Comfort is irrelevant; pleasure is irrelevant" Seven he thought he knew. If he'd thought about it more often, and he admitted to himself now that last night wasn't totally out of nowhere - there was the odd moment of lust and curiosity when he did think about what Seven would be like after sex. 'After, before, during....' When he'd thought about it, he'd imagined her response after 'copulation' would be a formal thank you and a quick departure. He hadn't expected her to stay the night, or for that matter, to still be there the next morning, wanting to cuddle.