Chapter Text
All Dedra wanted, her usual coat pulled around her regardless of how incongruous it looked with the outfit beneath it, was to get home and get out of these ridiculous heels.
But of course, as had been her life lately, there was an obstacle between her and that goal in the shape of Syril Void-cursed Karn. It was something of a relief when the shadow skulking around her door materialized into him and not some greater threat; that did not mean he was welcome. This was a concerning escalation from him, his relative harmlessness notwithstanding, and she should have expected such after their... encounter on Ferrix. It was one thing to accost her outside of work, though that was also unacceptable. This was entirely another.
"Can I help you, Mr Karn?" she said with as much chill as she could muster. To his credit, he didn't jump or physically startle, only stood a little straighter as he turned to her. At his tallest, she stood about equal with his nose, which shouldn't rankle but did. She kept distance between them. She had let him invade her space too often to believe that he wouldn't take it as invitation.
"Supervisor," he greeted, likely aiming for formal but missing entirely as his eyes trailed down her body before snapping back up to her face. She resisted the urge to cross her arms, to hide. Yes, she was out of uniform but that didn't excuse his leering. This dress had been chosen because it had fit her two main criteria: formal enough that no one would comment otherwise and easy to freely move in should it come to that, owing to the knee-high slits on either side. It still felt odd to be in black rather than stone as she had grown accustomed and odder still to be in a skirt at all.
"Is there a reason that I find you on my doorstep in the middle of the night?" she asked instead of the more expletive-laden version that lived in her head. She blamed it on the uncomfortable shoes.
"You look beautiful," he blurted out, looking like he regretted it immediately. She willed her own face not to heat, aiming for unimpressed and contemptuous, but did cross her arms this time. Let him think it was impatience and not discomfort.
"Focus on my questions, Mr Karn. Why are you here? And how?"
"I wanted to speak with you." She might have rolled her eyes if he wasn’t watching her with such intensity.
"Yes, I assumed that much. And the how?"
He had the good sense to look contrite, eyes casting downward. "I... followed you once." So he was stalking her. Stars above. Clearly her own OPSEC needed work if she hadn't noticed him, just one of billions in Imperial City. Too in her own head. An annoyingly common problem lately.
"Where were you?" he asked in a rush, the question sounding like one word as it pulled her from her thoughts, Syril apparently uncowed by her scowl. He lacked any of the fear she had come to expect from civilians. It was immensely irritating.
"An event," she said through gritted teeth. "One humiliation amongst many required by my position, as if my ability to answer incessant questions from my superiors is in doubt or made less of an interrogation by the lack of uniforms and presence of stimulants." She hadn't meant to tell him that but her irritation of the entire situation was begging to be vented like a malfunctioning steam engine and he had offered himself as the perfect target. If he was put off by it, he didn't show it, only nodded. There even seemed to be something of relief in his aspect. She eyed him suspiciously.
"You do look beautiful," he offered again, as if it hadn't been a mistake the first time. It would have been polite to say thank you. She said nothing. "I had a question for you."
"Personal or professional?" He had stalked her to her home and perhaps halfway across the galaxy now, he had dared to put hands on her uninvited, he had called her beautiful twice, it was a valid question. And if he answered incorrectly, she would send him on his way with prejudice. And consider moving, maybe, but that seemed like a nuclear option.
"Professional," he assured her. "About a... mutual friend." He glanced around to see if they had been overheard but the corridor remained empty at the late hour.
Of kriffing course. Cassian kriffing Andor.
She had a good idea what he'd ask and it was not a conversation that they could have out here. Damn him to the depths of Mon Cala. Silently, she unlocked her door with a wave of the access chip at her wrist and left it to hang open behind her. He followed obediently before the door closed with a silent slide, dousing the two of them in darkness for several long heartbeats before the lights came up in a soft white glow.
Her apartment was sparse, minimalist. She’d never been one to chase creature comforts and the work she did was vital but not extravagantly paid. The primary thing to recommend it was the view of the city and its location near the ISB Central Office, near enough that she could walk. Clearly, it was near enough for someone to follow her home from it.
She turned to face her interloper and found him much closer than she’d realized. Despite being used to it, she hated having to look up at him and the closer he was, the more she was forced to adjust. “Was it him?” Syril asked, voice low, gaze intense.
“No,” she said curtly and his shoulders sagged. “I don’t know why you’re disappointed. A corpse can’t lead us to its network.”
“It would have been the end of–”
“Nothing. Andor is one man and his life is as meaningless to me as it is to his rebels. His death ends nothing except our best lead to find the creature at the center of this web. Take heart, Mr Karn, that the body they found in the starship orbiting Andor’s toxic home planet was not his.”
“It would have been the end,” he repeated significantly, “of my pursuit of justice for two colleagues killed by this man.”
“You’re sentimental,” she accused, not bothering to hide her contempt for the idea.
His lips quirked in a sharp quick smirk, there then gone. She wouldn’t have noticed if she wasn’t so close to him. “Maybe. But that sentimentality might have saved your life.” He didn’t have to say when or how. They both knew. The moment she had started to look at him differently. The moment she had felt the purest relief at the first glimpse of his face.
Dedra ducked her head as she wrestled that specific spike of anxiety back in its box. When she looked up again, moments later, it was to find Syril’s eyes trailing over the curves of her body like a lover’s hands. When his gaze met hers, there was naked hunger in it, a ferocity that she wasn’t sure had ever been aimed at her by anyone else. It lit an answering flame in her own belly, though she would have thrown herself into the worst of Ryloth’s hells before she admitted that out loud. She breathed slowly through her parted lips, her eyes flicking to his own when his tongue darted out to wet them.
Shoving down that heady reciprocal spark and hoping that the flush she could feel on her face wasn’t as visible as she feared, she turned sharply from him. Her back still to him as she approached her empty coat rack, she told him, “That’s your question answered.” She shrugged out of her jacket and hung it neatly. “I trust I don’t need to draw you a map to the door.” Once he was gone, she could finally take off these awful shoes, exchange her slinky black dress for something more comfortable, try to make up for some of the time that had been stolen from her that evening.
Instead of moving towards the door, she turned back to find Syril crossing to her in a few quick strides. He murmured a heartfelt, “Forgive me,” as he slid one hand over her cheek to settle in her hair and pressed his mouth to hers.
To say she was surprised was an understatement. Perhaps she shouldn’t be. Since that day in the plaza where he’d brazenly put his hands on her and hauled her back to him, she had known that he had never lacked in audacity. And this was audacious. His fingers tangled in her hair, pulling strands loose from their tight perfect updo. His tongue traced the seam of her lips for only a moment.
Dedra was not experienced in being wanted. She didn’t even really have much experience in wanting, having found that instinct in her and strangled it in its nascency. Desire was a distraction, a weakness that she would not be held back by. Lesser people were controlled by their vices; how many times had she wielded those feelings like a knife in the gut of those stupid enough or unlucky enough to find themselves trapped in her net? It had always seemed ridiculous to her, having someone that you couldn’t or wouldn’t walk away from. A parent and child, a bond of blood, at least made sense. But a lover? The rationale for that sort of attachment had always eluded her. She didn’t have to understand it to use it.
Syril had freckles across the bridge of his nose, she thought absently as he pulled back. She’d never noticed, never been close enough to notice. And now he stared at her with those depthless blue eyes, waiting for her reaction. She wasn’t sure how to react. The imperial officer in her wanted to escort him forcibly to the door. But the curiosity lingered underneath. Who was this man who had thrown himself into a mob for her? What did he want? Why did he, of all people, have her stomach twisted up in knots and the skin under his fingertips aflame?
Whatever he saw, his eyes darting over her face like he was trying to commit her to memory, was enough to make him lean in again and this time she met him, tongues colliding as she opened to his intrusion.
Her fingers knotted infuriatingly helplessly in his tunic as his hand in her hair tightened and his other hand found the small of her back, crushing her to him. There was a desperation in the kiss. Like this was the only chance he was going to get. Which it was. This was a temporary lack of judgment that she could blame on too much alcohol paired with too little sleep. She sighed at the feeling of his tongue sliding over hers, hot and searching. Just this once.
They were both panting when they separated, Dedra resisting the urge to flinch at the wet sound of their mouths parting. This was never something she had sought out, the mess of it seeming more hassle than it was worth. She did not like messy. Syril didn’t seem a man of great experience but she wouldn’t be surprised if he had more than her. Morlana One, contrary to its reputation, had its share of brothels and she wouldn’t rule out him being a patron (and she also wouldn’t examine why that thought made her a little nauseous). But her lack of experience had left her wrong-footed. She wasn’t exactly sure what came next, save for the option to unceremoniously throw him out into the cold.
His hands wrapped around her hips and guided her back until she was perched on the back of her low sofa. “What–” she began to ask but fell silent as he fell to his knees.
He didn’t take his eyes off hers even as he drew her foot into his lap, finally taking that contemptible excuse for footwear away from her skin. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?” she asked, wishing it didn’t sound so weak in her own ears. He didn’t answer, using gentle hands to raise her leg higher and bending slightly to press a kiss to her ankle. His eyes fluttered closed as he did it again and Dedra’s hand flew to her mouth to muffle the pathetic noise that threatened to leave her.
Fire trailed in the wake of his lips as he moved as high as the hem of her dress and no further. She watched him, transfixed, as he did the same to the other ankle, hand curled under her calf, both of them heedless as her heel clattered to the floor.
No one had ever touched her like this, so reverently. When Syril looked up at her, still on his knees, the blue of his eyes were nearly swallowed by the black of his pupils. There was no pretense in him as he simply said, “Please.”
“Please what?” she asked, half gasp. Her chest was heaving, which would be humiliating if he wasn’t panting between her knees. She was too hot and too cold, unable to look anywhere except at the desperate need in his eyes and hoping beyond hope that her own didn’t match.
“Let me serve you,” he said, hands finding the hem of her dress again and sliding it up bare centimeters. Asking for permission. “Please. I need…”
“What do you need, Syril Karn?” she demanded, grasping for any last strands of control.
“You,” he said, sounding like the word was ripped from his soul. “I need you.”
His desire was intoxicating in its omnipresence, ratcheting her own higher. She had never been needed. Desired? Perhaps. Feared? Certainly. But needed? Need was an unfamiliar sentiment to feel or receive but she believed him. Hadn’t he told her as much all those months ago? ‘We want the same thing’?
“Do you think,” she asked harshly, watching as he swayed closer like he couldn’t help it, “that you should be rewarded for coming here, manhandling me as if you’ve a right to it?”
“Consider it my apology,” he replied, a ghost of a smile on his lips. His thumbs traced dizzying circles on her ankles, one liberty amongst many that he’d taken with her. She shouldn’t be so familiar with his hands on her. “Let me do this for you.”
“For me? Or for you?”
“Same thing.”
Fast as a viper, she leaned forward and caught his chin roughly, forcing his head up. “What do you want?” she asked, pretending that her breathing wasn’t as shallow as his own.
His expression was intense and as serious as she had ever seen him. “I want to taste you. I want to make you come on my tongue until you forget your own name.”
Heat was a living thing as it moved through her, tendrils of desire crawling through her veins, over her shoulders, up her neck. As unwelcome an invasion as any disease that left her fevered. The coarseness of his language demanded to be met in kind. “You will not fuck me,” she told him, his face still close enough where it was clutched in her fingers to see the victory in his eyes. He shook his head minutely.
“No. I just want to worship you.”
“I am not an altar,” she told him as she straightened. When her fingers fell away, he reached again for her ankle, scraping his teeth lightly over the protruding bone before following it with the slightest brush of his lips. She hissed, unable to stop herself from reacting entirely.
“I would make you one. Please.” He nosed over the curve of her calf, placing another electrifying kiss to her newly-exposed skin as he eased her dress higher. “Please.”
He didn’t seem to require an answer even as he begged, fingers warm and calloused as he dragged the fabric up and over her knees to expand his canvas to paint on with tongue and teeth and lips. She couldn’t help her whimper when he nipped at the widest part of her calf, her ankle resting on his shoulder. It was humiliating but seemed to urge him on, his grip tightening as he placed an open-mouthed kiss to the inside of her knee.
Dedra clung to the back of the couch with as much strength as she could muster. With only one foot on the ground and nothing behind her to brace on, it took a sizable amount of her focus to keep from toppling over, a focus that was becoming harder to keep the more of her his mouth explored. When he switched his attention to her other leg, she had to bend forward in order to keep from falling back, a terrible posture that somehow made her feel less in control than even the litany of sighs and pants escaping her.
He lunged forward as if to catch her, letting her feet fall back to the floor as he grabbed at her hips hard enough to bruise. There was only bare millimeters that he could pull her forward without pulling her into his lap but he managed to perch her on the very edge, going up on his knees as he slid her dress up to her waist.
There was no way, she realized as he kissed his way up her sensitive inner thighs, that he couldn’t smell her arousal or feel her trembling. As if he could hear her thoughts, he let out a moan that was half-growl as he reached the apex, only thin fabric between his mouth and his goal. She whined, one hand rising urgently to cover her mouth as if that would make the sound unheard again while the other knotted in his hair. His grip on her hips and thighs loosened as if he was forcing himself to back off and his mouth moved lower again, sucking and nipping at the tender skin there.
Arousal was a fog that cradled her as every touch set off a cascade of sparks through her nervous system. She understood now why people would beg for this, though she’d walk off the roof of the Imperial Palace before she’d ever do the same. She didn’t quite understand why Syril had begged for the opportunity to do this to her, other than that he had cultivated a dangerous obsession. Not dangerous to her, though. Dangerous to him. She could easily disconnect herself from him and would, after whatever this was. He would sate his lust, she would sate her curiosity, and they would separate again, unless and until the Empire found need for them both.
She was pulled from her thoughts by a sharp bite that drew a cry from her, Syril apologizing for it with his tongue. He couldn’t have been too sorry about it, however, as he did the same on the other side, not stilling in the movement of his mouth even as tears formed on his lashes from how hard she was pulling his hair.
Then he returned to the gusset of her underwear, hot breath fanning out as he panted against her. “Please,” he said, nosing against the fabric and then following it with the flat of his tongue. “Please let me. I need…”
Wordlessly, she nodded frantically. She needed too, whatever it was that he needed. He had infected her with his madness, she thought as her hips shifted against him. She’d never forgive him for it.
She blinked in confusion as he pulled back but then his fingers found the waistband of her underwear, curling so solidly under the elastic that she wondered for a moment if he intended to tear them. Instead, he pulled them steadily from her, down and off, discarded behind him somewhere, and then he was back between her thighs like he didn’t want to be anywhere else.
The first touch of his tongue on her bare clit felt a little like being brushed with a stun rod. If the work of his mouth was electrifying before, then this was something else. She clutched at his head and shoulder as his tongue slipped into the seam of her, already mortifyingly wet for him. He groaned at the first taste and clutched at her knee, spreading her wider so he could get deeper. She whined at his probing and his answering moan felt like it reverberated through her whole body.
Syril ripped himself away from her and stood, nearly knocking her backwards in his abruptness. He caught her by the elbows and yanked her to her feet. She blamed this rough treatment for the way that she opened her mouth to his kiss when he pulled her tight against his body, shuddering at the taste of herself on his tongue. He was hard against her hip; she pushed down on the irrational desire to stroke him through his trousers. That wasn’t what they were doing. He had requested the ability to put his mouth on her. She had acquiesced. They weren’t going anywhere else. His hands found the backs of her thighs and used them to urge her to wrap her legs around his waist, easily carrying her weight.
It was with the same single-minded determination that she had grown so used to in him that he carried her to her bedroom, all but throwing her onto her own bed. She barely had time to push herself up on her elbows before he joined her on it, hiking her dress back up to her waist and returning to his dedicated work.
His tongue lapped at her, catching on her clit before trailing down to spear into her, chasing the taste of her to its source. A near-painful grip on her thigh transferred her knee to his shoulder. It was humiliating being so open to his mouth, his touch, his gaze. She preferred to keep herself bare, beneath her clothes as strictly maintained as above them, but that meant that he could see and taste all of her as his fingers spread her folds for his questing tongue.
Her fingers, twisted once again in his curls, spasmed when he drew her clit into his mouth and sucked. Her hips jerked on instinct but he was quick to push them back down, keeping her exactly where he wanted her. He was done, it seemed, asking for permission, though he had never really needed it when it came to moving her as he liked. She’d be angry about his entitlement some other time, though, because it was hard to remember what she had been before she became one single throbbing nerve under his touch.
The arm she had used to brace herself up collapsed behind her. Laying flat on her back on her own bed, dress around her waist, as Syril kriffing Karn licked into her cunt like it was the only thing in the galaxy that mattered was not a particularly dignified position but it was a dizzying one, her head spinning as arousal built. She was close; it wouldn’t take much to push her over. She just needed…
Like he had read her thoughts, Syril sucked at her clit with a tantalizingly light touch and slipped his middle finger into her. She was slick enough that her body offered no resistance to this invasion. The finger inside her twisted for a moment or two, like he was looking for something. He curled it, rubbing firmly at her front wall, and seconds later, she was shaking apart underneath him with a shuddering, stuttering whine.
Dedra tried not to feel bereft as the finger slipped from her as she caught her breath, looking anywhere except at him. His mouth was back on her thighs, licking, sucking, kissing anywhere he could. He seemed to take great pleasure in licking where her own arousal had dripped down, scraping his teeth over her skin, following it with his tongue. She gasped sharply when he bit her again, down by her knee before moving back up and doing it again. That time, she had to slap her hand over her mouth to muffle her shocked, loud moan. Clenching down around nothing and hating the emptiness despite how sensitive she was, she licked dry lips and finally looked down at the man in her bed.
He caught her eye immediately and pushed himself up on his elbows. “I made a promise to you,” he reminded her. A surge of heat ran through her when she noticed the shine of her arousal on his chin. “Until you forget your own name.”
“What if I forget yours?” she bit out, hating how wrecked her voice sounded. She might have been making more noise than she was conscious of and that thought made her face burn.
“Maybe you already have,” he said, a joke with little humor. He was used to being forgotten, expendable. Tonight might have been the first time that he had approached her and didn’t introduce himself again.
He moved to duck his head again but she pulled it back up by his hair. “I haven’t,” she told him. Syril looked confused for a moment, searching her face to divine her meaning. She kept it carefully neutral; no point of giving him false hope of affection she wasn’t capable of. Whatever he found made him smile at her, a crooked but genuine one, and he nodded, heedless of the way the movement had her tugging on his scalp.
“Ok,” he said and hitched her leg up higher.
Her second orgasm came faster than first, despite the static shock of overstimulation on her clit. Syril used his fingers to perfection, playing her body like an instrument that she had never encountered.
Coming more than once was never something that she had explored in herself. Others might spend their days lazily bringing themselves off over and over but it had never been more than a biological reality that she needed to attend to, less frequent than feeding herself but no less distracting when she went without. The goal in all habits was to achieve efficiency and she had learned several tricks to bring herself to orgasm efficiently.
It was a little irritating that Syril seemed to be learning how to apply those tricks on her even faster than she had.
His attention to detail was a thing she actually appreciated about him; she wasn’t sure she appreciated it being focused on finding out what made her shake or gasp or clench around the three fingers that she took easily. His fingers were wider than her own, which made them the widest thing she’d ever taken inside her, and when he had spread them while fellating her stiff swollen sensitive clit, she’d come so hard the edges of her vision went white.
But he had let her recover between the first and second. He seemed to have no such interest in letting her rest between the second and third.
The thrusting of his fingers slowed then stopped but he didn’t withdraw them, seeming content to just feel her clench around him. Her body felt deeply unfamiliar as she continued to tremble, eyes fluttering and hands clenching uselessly in the sheets underneath her. The torture his mouth inflicted was both too much and not enough. She jerked away from him only to immediately crave his touch again.
When she bucked her hips hard enough to dislodge him, he only shoved her back down easily. A frisson of very real fear rattled through her, memories of too many hands, too little control. She had never, until just that second, considered that he was stronger than her. It had never seemed relevant. But here, like this, she was suddenly very aware of how vulnerable she had made herself.
Less vulnerable, she thought, than on Ferrix and yet she had trusted him then. Trust was a hiltless blade, one she had wielded deftly. She did not like putting that blade in someone else’s hand but here it was, already in Syril’s, entirely without her permission.
”C’mon,” he said softly, coaxingly, pulling her attention back to his hands in and on her. “One more. You can give me one more.”
She opened her mouth to snap at him (his audacity truly did know no bounds) but all that came out was a guttural and pathetic sound as pleasure edged too far into pain. It was too much and not enough at once. The bastard had unmade her.
Her back arched as another lance of pleasure-pain threatened to overcome her. He was still murmuring to her but she couldn’t hear and didn’t care to understand whatever it was, too focused on the gentle brush of his lips over her lower belly. Whether or not she would give him one more seemed a foregone conclusion; the only question was whether it happened before or after she lost control of the tears prickling at her eyes.
Her eyelashes were damp when her body limped over the precipice one more time, her whole body buzzing with the adrenaline crash as she practically seized before collapsing back on her bed, her head spinning. It took her a few seconds to realize that Syril had pulled his fingers from her but now had his forehead pressed to her inner thigh, panting hard, rutting into the bed underneath him. It didn’t take more than a few thrusts before he stilled. Goosebumps rose over her skin at the enormity of his want and how it shattered before his promise to her.
Nearly vibrating, Dedra took stock. The muscles in her abdomen were protesting from their exertion. There was a bite on her inner thigh that smarted now but would fade. A few places where he had gripped her hard enough to bruise that might be purple tomorrow. Everything between her legs was sore from the attention lavished there. And there was an aching empty cavern that he carved for himself and then vacated as soon as they were both sated.
She couldn’t let him back in again.
When she was recovered enough to do it without making a fool of herself, she sat up and smoothed her dress down as best she could, smothering a wince. He had been upright for a while and she caught him at the tail end of cleaning his fingers with his tongue. Desire, unwelcome and far too soon, rolled through her at the sight.
”This… was unbecoming of us both,” she told him, mouth dry. “It cannot happen again.”
He nodded slowly, as if he had expected it but was disappointed anyway. He should have expected it. His dashed hopes were none of her business and not her fault. When he leaned forward, she froze. But he was only moving to stand, not kiss her again like she’d feared (hoped, Void take it all). He gave her an odd look, one she couldn’t read at all.
”Alright,” he said, though lacking the finality she hoped for. “I don’t need a map to the door.” That damnable half-smile. It was an offer, an inside joke, and she could only stare at him helplessly, so far out into unfamiliar waters that she was drowning in them. It faded and he nodded once, more resolutely.
And then he was gone. She heard the front door open and slide closed again and it was all she could do not to put her head in her hands and scream. There was a reason she didn’t do this. There was a reason she didn’t let people this close.
After her thoroughly ridiculous pity party was over, she showered and changed. There were bruises blossoming on her hips and thighs, some from his mouth and some from his hands. But they would fade and so would memories of this and they could both move on.
Clean and comfortable again, she ventured out into her living room to return her terrible shoes to the back of her closet where they belonged. Her shoes were right where she expected them to be but the underwear that had dropped in that same place were nowhere in sight. She stooped to see if they had been kicked under the sofa or back towards the kitchen but no such luck. They were simply gone.
”You bastard,” she growled to herself.
If Syril Karn knew what was good for him, he would stay as far away from her as possible.