THE KISS OF FIRE

I watched Julian who came out of the ward and stopped thoughtfully. His mouth, usually so generous, was like an overturned bracket, the lips compressed so tightly that they seemed almost colorless. His eyes wandered and I didn't try to catch his gaze. It was not that I felt impatient to know; perhaps I even relished not knowing - even if just for a few moments. Then he looked at me and lifted his hands in a dismayed gesture:

"I don't know, Captain. I would like to say something concrete. We stabilized his condition as much as we could but he lost too much blood. It can turn either way."

I nodded thoughtfully. Julian's eyes stayed on me as if he supposed I would leave now and then widened in surprise when I walked past him and past the guard to the ward's door. No one said a word, however. I knew they wouldn't.

The greenish lights were dim inside and the air had a slight salty blend of ozone. It was not completely quiet here, the silence broken by tiny sounds of working regenerators - and slow shallow breath coming from the man in the bed. Every sharp inhale sounded as if it had to overwhelm the resistance in his chest.

The door slid shut behind me and I flinched slightly when the flow of air touched me, bringing me out of my stupor. I made a few steps inside, my eyes never leaving the motionless form. I didn't particularly want to look at it - hell, I didn't want to be here at all. But I was - despite what was expected from me, despite my own decisions.

He looked so calm like this, lying flat, covered with a sheet up to his neck, his half-ruined body pulled together as much as possible and the little clever machines set to work against his wounds. Hours ago when I found him on the floor of the shuttle, curled in the corner, with his fists pressed to his temples as if he tried to squeeze out the contains of his skull - he hadn't seemed normal at all. Most of all, he reminded me of a trapped animal, attacked a countless number of times and eventually defeated. A very injured animal. I had felt almost sick when I saw the vast puddle of blood spread around the crouched body. My hands got wet and sticky with it immediately as I touched him.

I thought he was dead. During those few moments when I needed to get from the shuttle door to him I thought it was all over. I must have felt triumph - or relief - or at least satisfaction - because wasn't it what I had been dreaming about all those days since I had returned to the station? The end of my nightmares. But I felt nothing. Just very empty. Then I squatted over him and found the faint beating of a pulse under his jaw.

"Take him to the infirmary. Hurry!"

Suddenly his eyelids had fluttered almost imperceptibly and I stepped back; unreasonably I didn't want him to look at me. I didn't want to look at him, either.

But he had never come round enough for it. The ragged moan he made was still in unconsciousness and his head flopped back listlessly when he was moved. The twisted angles of his limbs were sickening, but the fractures were probably not so dangerous as the long gashes on his chest where his clothes were shredded to rags. I knew what could have left them - the short claw-like knife generously covered in blood that lay at his side. I looked around. The insides of the shuttle had been smashed to pieces - almost everything, except the control panel. I came up to it and saw the coordinates of the station entered in the destination column.

"You bastard, Dukat," I had whispered knowing that nobody could hear me. "What have you done to yourself?"

There was no fight in him now, just exhaustion. His chest rose steadily and somehow reluctantly as if he doubted the necessity of every breath. The regenerators and fixtures under the sheet gave his body the protrusions and hollows that should have never been there. I recalled the sight of the jagged edges of his broken ribs coming through the skin and fought to get rid of this image. I thought he didn't feel pain now.

I had wished him to feel pain. There were nights when I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming aloud - and then the dark images of his possible suffering were my only consolation. I thought I could pray for it. Well, if any prayer should have been listened to, it apparently was mine.

Are you happy, Captain?

His mouth was soft. The lips that could be so derisive - or feral - or ruthless - were sadly peaceful, almost slack now. These lips... I reminded myself, trying to resurrect the anger that had been so difficult to keep on leash. I had fought it for all this time - but now I suddenly wanted it back.

There was only the feeling of bitterness, however. And it was not bitterness only for myself.

"You made a choice," I informed the unconscious body. "You know you did."

I spoke to the Major before coming here. I knew what she was going to say - and I knew there was only one way I could answer - that I would do what I had to do. Everything would be done according to the law - what else could be expected from me?

If he was going to live till the trial, that is.

I groped for a stool blindly and dragged it to the bed. Dukat's left side had suffered worse, his arm was pressed firmly between the plates of metal. A familiar sight, wasn't it? I sat down quietly. It was not that I had nothing to do at the station. But I could have a few minutes. Just a few minutes like this.

The unseeing face was so tranquil. Before I could register it, I reached my hand to it, the wide forehead with sharp ridges, so smooth and so cool, not as warm as it had to be - as it used to be. My fingers were dark on the grey skin and trembling very slightly. I didn't like this trembling. It could be okay after a few sleepless nights in succession - but my day only started for me in reality.

Do you want to stroke him or to hit him, Captain?

I took my hand away. It felt empty lying on my lap and suddenly this feeling brought back some of the emotions I yearned for.

"What am I doing here?" the words sounded peevish, strange in the quiet room, and I chuckled furiously. Speaking to yourself... yeah, real good, Captain.

"I don't know."

For a split second the voice seemed surreal. My head snapped up but, of course, it was not in my mind - and there was nobody else to speak to me in the room but him. The voice was not the same, however-- not the velvety confident voice that I used to hear negotiating, not even the edgy one that had cursed me through the howling wind. The pale lips moved revealing the slight pink of his mouth in a ghost of a smile - and the voice was ghostly, too, so faint that it seemed non-existent.

"You are back," I stated flatly. Something urged me to ask for how long but I stifled it. It didn't matter and I was not going to say anything he could interpret as if I cared.

"Yes, Captain."

There was the slightest stress on the title - even in this almost expressionless voice - and I felt painful anger seizing me. He remembered. He dared!

So much for my conciliatory feelings. I fought a fit of rage; I knew it was not right, I had to be calm, up to my position - but deep in my heart I was glad to feel it again. Anger was natural. What I had felt minutes ago, looking at Dukat's prone body, was not.

The shadowy eyelids trembled slightly before rising; the grey irises hardly visible around huge black pupils. The gaze was pain-filled - the suppressor must have been not enough - but it was sober; without the madness that I had seen there the last time we met.

"So..." he coughed when his voice failed him; a little smile touched his lips as if he was amused with his own weakness. "I am at Deep Space Nine."

"Wasn't that what you wanted?"

"Why should I?"

"You sent the shuttle to the station. Who else would have wanted to come here, of all places?"

"Oh... plenty," a trace of irony in his voice was like a bitter pang and suddenly I felt my heart sinking. "Kira... or Damar... or Weyoun. Don't worry, Captain, they are gone now."

"I see," suddenly I didn't know what to say - but it didn't seem he wanted me to speak. He spoke over my words.

"And I am going away, too. From your life."

It was true. Whatever his sentence would be - our ways were not likely to cross again.

"From life," he added tranquilly.

"You are not dying, Dukat."

A sardonic smile curved the pale lips.

"You wouldn't be here otherwise, would you, Captain?" he asked softly and suddenly his right, less injured hand reached towards me. It was an awkward gesture, he had to reach over his own body and he couldn't move to his side. "But thank you, anyway."

Dukat's hand wandered in the air tentatively, long pale fingers trembling slightly, until it touched my own arm.

"What?" I didn't flinch - but it was a conscious effort. One of so many efforts I was good at applying recently.

"It..." his voice faltered minutely and he closed his eyes for a moment. "It healed."

"What did you expect?" I snapped.

It still hurt. At some nights it reminded me of itself with an exhausting dull ache settled somewhere deeper than in the bones - and even Julian could do nothing for it.

I felt Dukat's fingers moving over my arm - as if exploring it by touch - until they lay on my wrist quietly - cool and strong, strong even now. He didn't hold me, however. I would shake him off, maybe, violently if he would. He just touched me. And I let him; I couldn't think I would - ever -again.

"Captain," the word was bitter, making me bite the inside of my lip. "You have to do something for me."

Oh had I? My irony didn't need to go out in words. I saw Dukat nodding slightly as if admitting my rejection. And yet he continued.

"You can't deny it to me. It is my last request, after all," the chuckle behind these words was rueful, as if he apologized for being so pathetic. He must have wanted to ask me to spare him the trial, I thought. I couldn't quite believe Dukat could care - but what else could it be?

This isn't the first time he's surprised the shit out of you, Captain, is it?

"Tell me and I'll decide," stupid... I was not going to do it. No matter what he was going to ask. "I can't promise anything."

"Of course," he nodded when I didn't finish yet, his eyes closed giving his face a strangely concentrated expression, "of course, you can't. But I hope you will do it. With all my heart I hope."

"Do what?"

The elusive lizard eyes looked straight in mine for a second - and then his gaze passed to his own body.

"I want you to do it to me, Captain. The same thing as I did to you. Revenge yourself on me."

I shook his hand off from me even before he finished, even before I fully realized what he meant - but he didn't try to stay with me. In fact, he moved it away eagerly, taking the sheet and pulling it slowly away from himself.

The long wound openings were not gaping any more, with the regenerators working on them - but the dark gashes and burns still looked frightening on the pale skin. Dukat was naked under the sheet - I could see his broad chest revealed, his washboard abdomen - and then I grasped his wrist and yanked the sheet back over him abruptly.

"You are sick," his wrist was delicate in my hand and yet steel-strong. My voice was stiff with fury - with contempt I tried to put into it. "Don't try to do it again!"

"Why?" he didn't struggle against my grip, just letting me hold him - and after a few seconds I let him go, suddenly displeased with my outburst. "I admit you probably don't find me... attractive. I am not the catch of the day, especially now. But it isn't a matter of... physical appeal, you understand?"

"Don't fuck with me," interesting choice of words but I didn't care. Suddenly all my feelings were gone. I felt so immensely tired that even talking seemed an unbearable labor. I just wanted out of here.

"You try to forget it," the voice was mild but urgent and I gritted my teeth not knowing how to shush it. "But it won't work like this, Captain. You can't fight your anger. Be angry if you want to. Don't bury the demons inside you because they are not dead."

"If there is any demon - it's you, Dukat."

"It will make you feel better," there was sudden dreaminess in Dukat's voice, his eyes half-closed, not looking at me. "And it will help me to leave in peace, Captain. Then I will know I helped to mend you."

"You never destroyed anything to mend now. It takes more to destroy me," my voice was so tight that it sounded unfamiliar; so forced. The heavy-lidded eyes looked up at me but there was no irony in them.

"Yes," he nodded seriously, "You are strong. I know. I've always known it. You were strong then. And I was weak. I needed your strength, Benjamin. I had to take it."

"So, that's why, Dukat?" I said slowly, not sure that I wanted to hear it, that I wanted the answer. "That's why?"

* * *

The blow of the bar was stunning. I saw it breaking on me but my clumsy body was not up to moving. The next one went on my good arm that I desperately tried to shield my face with. If he breaks it, you will be good for nothing, Captain. I crawled on the grainy sand, clinging to the rock, but it could not protect me. There was no protection and no help.

"Stop it, for God's sake..." the words got muffled with sick salty blood filling my mouth. It must have been my ribs. They had been cracked already, and when the bar hit them, a flash of white fire spread in my chest with every breath. "You'll kill me!"

What makes you think it is not what he wants, Captain?

I fell on my left side, trying to protect the injured arm, curling in a ball around it. I tried to be silent when the bar fell on me again and again but I couldn't be, not completely soundless. He didn't leave me even a chance of dignity.

The blows stopped when I thought I could take no more of them, not even one. Through the red mist I saw Dukat throwing the bar on the ground and I went limp, the remnants of strength leaving me.

"It was your own fault, Benjamin," he was out of breath. He stood over me and when he moved forward I couldn't help but start back involuntarily. "You brought it on yourself. I had to punish you."

"Go to hell, Dukat," I didn't have strength to speak properly. More blood trickled out of my mouth with the words. Just having said it I realized it was not the best thing to say. If he got angry with me again... I was not going to survive another beating.

"To hell?" there was a kind of forced mockery in his voice. "Your human invention? To burn there eternally. How do you know we are not in hell yet?"

His hand was broad and warm touching my face and I bit my lips not to push him away. He squatted over me, his pale sharp-featured face nearing mine as he checked the wholeness of my skull bones.

"You are so stubborn, Benjamin, do you know that? What I wanted from you was just some respect. Was that so much to ask for?"

I only sighed. I felt sick. The warm rough hands were like wings flying over my face, touching it briefly here and there, almost gently, and I closed my eyes in exhaustion. That was when an abrupt blow made my head swing.

"What..." no more, I couldn't stand more. The trickles of blood from my nose thickened.

"Look at me, Benjamin. Don't dare to look away when I speak to you."

I looked at him. He leant forward, his palms cupping my face, raising it from the ground - and his tongue entered my mouth rudely.

The unexpectedness of it stunned me - I didn't even fight when he cleaned blood from the insides of my mouth, his soft warm lips locked on mine, his tongue like a streak of flame darting over my teeth and palate.

I still felt it burning and salty inside my mouth when he let me go. His eyes were like pits of darkness, so close to me, with the sparkles of orange in their depth. I raised my fist and hit that face.

There was not much strength I could put in the blow - he merely sat on his heels with the force of it, a few drops of blood appearing from his nose. Then there was a grip on my hand - a steel vice - and I was pulled, my wrist wrung behind my back as another stunning blow broke on my head. I was thrown flat on the sand, my only healthy arm twisted behind me and pressed to the ground with my own weight and with Dukat's body leaning on me.

"You fool!" he spat and I never had a chance to answer him, my lips getting split with another slap. He didn't let me go, still having me pinned to the ground when his hand slid down and pulled the belt of my pants.

I don't remember the exact moment when I understood. My head was swooning and the pain in the broken ribs was distracting - and even when the realization descended on me, I still couldn't quite believe it. Dukat's frozen face above me was like a mask and as much as I sought a flicker of sanity in his eyes so that I could hang onto it - there was only glassy emptiness in them. There were streaks of blood on his face and suddenly I realized it was my own blood. He smeared himself while kissing me.

I must have been fighting. It must have not been enough. So many times later I tried to recall exactly when I finally lost - and couldn't. I remembered the devastating feeling of the dead weight of my left arm - and a startling pain flashing through my ribs when he doubled me. I caught the air with open mouth, suddenly in panic that I couldn't breathe, that I wouldn't be able to - and he kissed my mouth again, his lips and tongue the only soft part of him.

I was in too much pain for the penetration to make any difference. I was sick, however, and about to go in dry heaves. Dukat's haughty face with the swirls of fire reflecting in his eyes was like a vision; I might have been hallucinating. Only I knew I was not. His hips worked in smooth long motions between my thighs. There was very little resistance to him, my blood must have made it easy. I growled in despair of my own uselessness.

Dukat's arms were folded around me, both preventing me from struggling and in a parody of embrace, as he bent to me, his eyes looking in mine, sucking my gaze into their emptiness - and then he whispered something and with astonishment I realized that it was a Cardassian endearment.

"Beautiful, beautiful, Benjamin, mine, my darling..."

I gathered bloody saliva in my mouth and spat at him. Let it be if he was going to kill me for it. He laughed. His long throat reverberated with the low rumbling sound as he tossed his head back, my spittle leaking over his chin. And then I plunged forward, thrusting my broken arm into his chest.

My cry was so shrill that in the last moment before the darkness enveloped me I got surprised that I, Captain Sisko, could make a sound like that. Then there was nothing - and it was good. It was what I wanted.

When I was back, there was a wet cloth dabbing my face. Just like it had been the first time when I had come round and seen Dukat kneeling at my side. Ages ago... Water made me blink, getting in my eyes, seeming pink: it must have been blood from my forehead getting washed off. I pushed the hand away and fortunately it didn't return.

"You are hurt, I..."

I will kill you, Dukat, I thought. He was still too close and I pressed to the rock as if I could merge with it. Shivers were racking my body and I hated to feel them but I couldn't control it.

"I didn't mean it..." he started again. His hands hovered in the air hesitantly, clenching the stained rag. I smiled - my teeth bare, an ugly grimace plastered on my lips. He recoiled from me, his face changing subtly until it acquired a lofty, insulted expression that was no more sincere than my smile.

"You misunderstood me, Benjamin," he said. "Everybody misunderstands me."

A damned liar.

"Don't you call me Benjamin," I said.

He picked up the bar from the ground and I closed my eyes tiredly. Fuck him, I had had enough. But he just sat down and passed the rag over the bar's length, wiping blood and dirt from it.

* * *

"Your were defiant, Benjamin... Captain," Dukat said tranquilly. As I looked at his face, his black eyes opened to me, very clear and very tired. "You were in my power and you laughed at me. Don't you ever dare laugh at me."

"I didn't laugh," I said carefully. Another explanation, not worse than the previous one. "You know that. You were insane."

"Yes," he agreed softly. "But now I am not."

"Yes, you are," another wave of fury rolled on me, "if you think I will do what you ask me to."

"Do you want me to plead with you, Captain? I can't exactly do it properly now," his scorn was not very effective and he knew it. "Oh well!" a sudden exasperation changed his voice and made it more familiar. That was the real Dukat, wasn't it? "You can't do it, right? You are too good for that. I am the one who could do it. A murderer. A rapist. Your personal monster, Captain."

He didn't even guess how close to the truth he was. Ironic. Those nights when I had waked barely in time to catch my scream, still seeing his triumphant face above me... I had hated myself then even more than I hated him - for my inability to forget and go on, to leave the past with the past.

But Dukat was not the past; was never going to become the past, no matter how I wanted it.

"Did you report what I had done to you, Captain?" his voice was insinuating and I needed all my self-control to appear calm. "Will this crime be included in the list on the trial? No, I don't think so."

I regarded hitting him. It would be distasteful, I would never hit a prisoner - and yet that was not what stopped me. It was that it would make Dukat happy if I did. I was contented seeing the sparkle of hope dying out in his eyes as I didn't move.

"I am not going to play the role you cast me for, Dukat," at last I managed to put as much disdain in my voice as I wanted. "Disappointing, isn't it?"

I needed to see defeat in his eyes - but I didn't hope I would win easily; he would continue to press, I knew, trying to get what he wanted. Dukat was good at getting what he wanted, wasn't he?

His gaze was steady and tranquil - but despite what I expected, there was no more insistence, no question in it.

"I understand, Captain."

There was only tiredness. Then he closed his eyes.

My belligerence was gone as if his gaze was what fueled my determination. Damn you, Dukat, don't do it to me! I wanted to fight. He couldn't deny me it!

Everything was going wrong.

I didn't mean it to be like this when I had come here. I wanted to face my anger - the righteous, pure anger that would set me free from my memories - from him. But instead of it I let myself be involved in his manipulations, in his game when even what he claimed to be an attempt of reconciliation he used to try to prove that he was in charge.

He wouldn't stop playing games even on his deathbed. Well, maybe, it was his deathbed.

Or, maybe, he was not playing. What do you think, Captain?

I looked at Dukat's face. It was sealed so completely that he seemed unconscious again. The curve of his lips was both bitter and haughty - and his eyelids were closed smoothly - as if he was already building the wall between himself and the other world.

Going. Just as he had said.

I felt furious again - and at the same time so poignant that for a moment I was breathless. There was so little sense in everything. Wasn't my hatred, my rage a waste when he was going to be gone? Even if he didn't die now - being locked for life wouldn't be much different from death, especially for him.

For me, too, when I would recall it.

What was I doing? I had come here to find peace. But I did nothing to bring peace to either of us.

It had been easier when he had been out cold, before he had started to speak! I had known what I had felt then. I had thought my mind was playing tricks to me: the true feeling, the masculine anger, letting me down, the false ones - of bitterness, of loss - surfacing. But what was true and what was false?

Who can know it if you don't know it yourself, Captain?

I knew. Yes, I knew. He might be playing when asking for my revenge - I didn't care. There had been time when I wanted nothing more than to revenge myself on him. But now the truth was my desire for revenge was already satiated. At the moment when I had seen him on the floor of the shuttle in the pool of his blood - I think I had relinquished it.

But it was not the matter of revenge - whatever we preferred to call it. I had hated Dukat. I had felt betrayed even though I reasoned myself there was nothing to betray between us - and, maybe, even more because of it. Only there was something - before hating him, more than hating him - at least for me. And that I couldn't betray.

"Look at me," my voice was so quiet that I thought he wouldn't hear me - and it would be good if he didn't. His eyes opened, very blank, as he waited for me to go on - and I did. "Do you know what you beg for, Gul Dukat?" a flash of fire returned to his gaze and with a sickening feeling I knew I was making a big mistake but I couldn't stop. "It will kill you."

"I would be happy if it did, Captain," his voice was full of strange grace, even despite its faintness, "but you are probably wrong. We Cardassians are more durable than you can imagine."

I got up and walked to the door. A distressed sound from behind told me that he thought I was leaving him, that I deceived him.

No, Dukat, I am not a liar.

I sealed the door - my rank could be useful sometimes - letting me be sure that no one could come in, not that they would try, anyway. It was like moving through a thick liquid when I went back to Dukat, feeling his eyes watching me avidly. I stopped at the bed and snapped the clasps of my clothes.

"I always trusted you, Benjamin," he whispered.

"Don't."

His eyes, full of huge black pupils and still emanating light, never left me while I pulled off the top of my suit and discarded the pants. I put the uniform on the stool and straightened. There was a very slight contented smile on Dukat's face but he was silent, just as I ordered. I pulled the sheet away just enough to get under it; the narrow bed shifted under our double weight. I felt the metal on his broken arm, icy cold against my skin - and I felt his skin, too, so cool, so unlike what I remembered - and it told me more than anything else how much blood he had lost. There was a very subtle vibration of his body, not trembling but something deeper, even more involuntary, caused by his forced rigidity. I turned on my side, rising on my elbow and looked at his face so close to mine. His eyes were open to me - to anything I was going to do - and I knew I could do anything I wanted. To hurt him, to hit him - to kill him - could I?

I raised my hand. He must have expected a blow, even though there was nothing in his face that would reveal it. He breathed carefully, the process seemed to be painful for him. Suddenly that pain was reflected in me as a phantom pain in my lungs, the same ones once pierced by broken ribs. I ran my fingers over the ridge around his eye, my fingers dark on his pale skin, soft on hard, and he looked at me- his eyes strangely accepting whatever I was about to do.

I leant towards him and put my lips on his mouth. It tasted of pain and a readiness for death - the taste I didn't want to feel - but his little sigh I caught in my mouth was delicious. My face was pressed to his, so cool on my burning skin as I flickered my tongue in his mouth without any response from him. I chuckled when letting him go.

You don't understand anything, Dukat, do you?

His black hair was like silk against my palm and I recalled how it had felt then, raspy with sand, whipping my face when he had wrestled me for the access to the shuttle. He could have killed me then... he didn't. I could have killed him then... when I had got the bar and stunned him - I could have finished it, it wouldn't have been that difficult. But I didn't. It was something I didn't like to recall on those long nights when the visions of that time haunted me. I could have killed him. I chose not to.

The angles of his face were sharp under my hands as I slid them over his cheekbones. And when I cupped his cheek, I suddenly felt him pressing into my palm, almost unnoticeably - a shadow of a gesture - but I didn't miss it. I took his good hand, cold and slack, and put it on my face.

It was soft; it stayed motionless for a couple of moments and then he passed it over my forehead, his fingers tracing my cheekbone and I repeated the same motion over his face - as if we both were blind - but we were not. I looked in his eyes, grey and black, looking in mine. His palm wandered down over my throat, along the collarbone. It suddenly was too much for me. My resoluteness evaporated and I clenched my teeth, trying to fight the memories that flooded my mind.

"Courage, Captain," Dukat whispered softly, the irony in his voice not scalding but almost caressing. His fingers proceeded under the sheet to my bottom belly, reaching my shaft at last and enveloping it in a soft half-circle. Then I felt him moving very slightly, spreading his thighs apart as if inviting me.

You think you can set the pace, Dukat?

I smiled recklessly. The path of my hand was unfaltering, over his smooth chest between the cases of regenerators. His groin was smooth, too - I hadn't noticed it before. He didn't flinch when I took his limp organ and he didn't make a movement trying to protect himself as I cupped it in my palm. His head was heavy on my other hand and I kissed his mouth again, his lips opening for me this time.

"Come on, Dukat, do it," I muttered in his mouth, thrusting into the slack ring of his fingers. My hand slid up and down his cock but I knew I probably wouldn't get any response from him - response could be unsafe for him.

"That is not what I meant, Benjamin," he said softly, our mouths still linked, and I brushed my hand over his cheek, half-stroking, half-hint of a slap.

"Who cares what you want here?" I murmured, my fingers intertwined into his hair, caressing his temple. His cock was half-hard in my hand and I continued to slide over it in cadence with his movements on mine. I bent down carefully, not touching his injured shoulder, and nibbled his neck ridge slightly. He moaned quietly, making a subtle movement forward, into my sliding fist.

"Yes, my dear one, my monster, my loved one, yes, like this," I whispered urgently, thrusting into his hand that was almost too tight around my cock now - and a few seconds later I felt my balls pulling up, waves of dizzying pleasure coursing through me. I still felt Dukat's hand rubbing my slick cock when his own one pulsed in my palm and the warm liquid trickled on my fingers. I hadn't remembered it being warm like this; now I knew.

I felt tired. The orgasm was not the most startling one I had ever had but I was so spent that my elbow let me down and I flopped on my face, dangerously near to Dukat's broken arm. I could feel my own hot breath reflecting on his cool skin as we lay together. My fingers were getting sticky with his sperm - and then he suddenly took my hand and I felt the drying liquid covering his palm, too. It made me smile and I heard a soft chuckling sound coming from him. He held my hand and moved it slowly until our joint hands lay on his chest. I touched his cheek and turned his face to me. But I didn't want to look at him. I pressed my forehead to his, ridges against smoothness, and closed my eyes.

"Did you mean it?" his voice was light flow against my face and I didn't need to ask what he meant. The words I had said in approaching orgasm.

"And you?"

I felt him grinning. He didn't answer.

"Don't come again," he said instead very softly. "If you can help it."

I knew what he meant; I think my fingers clenched involuntarily on his palm. I could feel his heart beating steadily under our hands. So, it was going to be the trial.

I nodded; he must have felt it, our heads were still so close. But he didn't say anything. I could feel his soft breath on my face and it was so steady that I thought he fell asleep. It was good - and there was no reason for me to stay longer, I had already spent too much time there. But I wanted to stay.

THE END