"But, if it's worth anything to you at all, know that as far as I am able, I have loved you, PhaHks. I realise that is probably not enough."

*

Veexow had gone to PhaHks the next night and lay down beside him in his bed. With a gentleness from her he had never known, she had stroked his cheek, his hair, his mouth, but with only feather light finger-tips.

Asking nothing of him, coming only to provide if he should so request, to comfort her lover in his terrible state.

They ended up making love when his lips, in needy supplication, sought out hers.

*

Veexow, one article at a time, removed his clothing.

There was no hurry. She was here for him more than anything. Above all else.

Later, for herself.

She lay him out on his bed and her practical, working hands slowed to a measured caress. She wanted to take her time now, if eternity would allow it.

She wanted to look at him.

Straddling his hips, she wanted him to see her looking.

Without even touching him, his penis responded to the smoldering desire in her black pupils; grew and changed; hardened into a thing of irresistible form. Thick and engorged; wet-tipped and ready.

His breathing quickened and shuddered a little, his lids half closed in the weakness of lust. His eyes looked far away to an ecstasy that was calling him.

Veexow licked her lips and he gasped.

She plunged forward as if diving to her destiny and stopped just above the silky head.

Kissed it once. A movement of lips just touching, as if in prayer.

Let her closed mouth rest on the moistened member for a delightful second before opening her mouth and swallowing him inch by inch. Lips conformed and molded to his shape on the journey down, until she reached almost to his base.

On the skyward return, tongue squeezed the sensitive underside.

She sucked.

So. Hard.

And.

So. Long.

Drawing her head up, craning her neck, she raised her eyes up as if to a vision, as though to the approval of an ancient god looking on.

And wanted to take PhaHks with her. Wanted to take him to a place where it would never stop. Wanted to learn and retain the perfect caliber of his private sex. He was the only instrument she wished to play, his desperate moans the only music.

Veexow quickened her motions with her mouth on his turgid cock and her hand cupping his swollen testicles, until his hips bucked, his red shaft hardening further.

She placed one finger in behind his delicate sacs and pressed softly up into his body. His blood would not escape until she released it. Press. Release. Press...

Press. Press.

PhaHks tangled his human hands in her non-human hair so she wouldn't stop anything.

She didn't until he bucked wildly and shot into her over and over, crying out as she swallowed and swallowed, as though his hot fluid was the source - the only thing - that gave her life.

In succeeding love plays, he or she administering the greater half, each came to know the others secrets. What tongue on what part, what touch and how often, what rhythm and how fast, repeatedly took each to the teetering edge of a precipice.

Veexow was over him, on him, watching him as she humped. She wanted to see herself fuck him and so would lean back on her muscled thighs, raise her body off of his wet, ruddy shoot and then slide back down, eyes never leaving it as it was buried in her again.

His breaths were the gasps of a newborn, his trembling the spasms of a fallen bird.

His beautifully long abdominal muscles flexed and relaxed then flexed again under her. She writhed and grinded above him. Splayed hands on male chest, tongue and mouth and teeth kissing, sucking and nibbling fine hair and finer skin.

As she moved, changing rhythm often, she watched his face looking back, relishing the responses her sexual ministrations evoked in him.

His features had aged. Tiny crows feet at the outer edges of his eyes were evident when he frowned or, like now, when he grimaced, wrapped within her promise.

His eyes half closed, she kissed them over and over. A soft, barely audible moan escaped his lips as she lengthened her movements, rocking faster.

At one point, he opened his eyes, pupils dilated from the drug of sex, reached out one hand and stroked her up sloping eyebrow as if it were another sexual part of her. It made her groan, that one sensual, beautiful touch.

"I'm FUCK-ing you, PhaHks!" Suddenly she had to cry it out. All in the Universe must hear it and know. "I'm fucking you....fucking you.... I'm going to fuck you forever....Forever." The Tongue of possession and one possessed.

"I love y-o-o-o-u-u-u-u..."

His answer, "U-h-h-h-h-h-n-n...", open mouthed. A surrendering.

She looked at him, committing to perfect memory every hair in his eyebrows, every uneven colored speck of green and brown in his "Ha-ZaHl" irises.

Taking his hands in both of hers she gently forced them above his head, using them as a brace so she could pump his granite even harder and longer.

One quick down thrust and he writhed in the pleasure and pain of it. She slowed again.

*Not too much or he will break.*

The fact that she could actually cause him pain while fucking him was incredibly erotic.

*But only sweet pain, my PhaHks.*

She wanted him to remember what she did to him here. She wanted him to see, feel and be swallowed by her. And to hear his own desperate sounds as she nudged him near climax and then eased him away again; building him into such a frenzy that every breath that came out of his mouth was a whine; a plea for her to end it.

She almost came when she heard that but stopped for a few seconds, seeing his lips move but unable to speak. Seeing his body spasm but unable to move. Feeling his lung's shallow gasping, but unable to draw a full breath.

She had performed a sexual hypnotism.

He was deep.

So vulnerably deep. And the fact that he was hers; every part of his body belonged to her and that thought, that he was unknown to all but her alone, that he was her forbidden fruit made her want to come again.

But she wouldn't. Not yet. Not until she was frenzied too. She wanted him to hear what he was doing to her as well.

She kissed his mouth and he opened for her. She sucked and bit his bottom lip. She twisted her fingers in his hair, holding his head to one side.

Kissed his cheek softly, barely touching. Kissed the laugh lines around his mouth that had deepened and nibbled hair, temples. Nothing remained untouched by her.

The fact that he had grown older just made her want him more than ever and she lay flat on him, breasts pressed onto his cool chest.

Veexow wanted to learn his body blindly, exploring with tactile hands. She wanted his seed inside her with Romulan fury. She had wanted him.

*I have always gotten what I wanted.*

She looked at his face, shiny with perspiration, and felt new throbbing at his flushed color, at that red hue that was still as alien as it was beautiful.

Not the color of Romulan blood, green-grey like an ice-covered moon, cold and dark, but red, like the burning surface of a star. Like a red sun that had existed for billions of years - ancient.

Existence enduring beyond all comprehension.

The faint lines at the corners of his alien eyes and the thought of his impending old age (he was beyond forty now) made her cry out.

*Let him think that I cry out in passion and not that he has divided, sewed and now severed my heart. PhaHks, what you have done.*

But she could deny no longer that she loved him, whatever that meant. No longer pretend but that she had done it to herself; come to treasure this human more than her power or wealth.

Or her life.

Now, as the love swelled, so did regret. She'd wasted so many years standing coldly, stupidly distant, as though to admit to loving him was a weakness. As if it were something to consider, to examine clinically but to avoid as if an unpalatable alien dish.

She focused on him again, rolled with him, breathed him and was almost satisfied.

He gave out a little cry of mercy when she executed some hard down thrusts of her pelvis and begged her.

She rocked him with long measured strokes, sliding up and down his thick cock until all she could feel was him.

Only PhaHks.

The planet beneath her vanished without form or pull. Gravity and substance evaporated. Bed, floor, walls and all things dissipated under their exhales.

All that existed was the velvet mass of him.

She was skewered on the center of the universe, loving every inch of it.

If it were possible, he became harder and she wetter, as his girth rammed her.

It was too much.

She finished it, writhing up and down, faster and faster, feeling his monument swell her particular spot until she herself could no longer stand the teasing of it.

He stiffened and cried aloud what she had done to him, his body jerking upward to meet her as he came inside her. She let out a cry, arching her back, trembling as wave after wave of satiation crashed...

...everywhere.

It was better than she had expected.

Better than she'd hoped.

When they had slipped passed the orgasms of sex and calmed into the pleasured after state, Veexow did not raise herself up and off him immediately.

PhaHks said nothing though puzzled by her stillness.

But this was how she wanted to see PhaHks. This is how she wanted to remember him. In many ways, but mostly like this. Connected.

One being.

Now that she had made love to him, and he to her her heart began its breaking.

Veexow knew, this night when she pulled up and allowed air to pass between their bodies, once she separated from his softening sex, it might this time be forever.

****

Kol was dead and DhraH'Ken had made it clear he now owned KeK.

Veexow knew it meant the sooner she, Rhengar and PhaHks made their departure, the better.

Two mornings later, she told Rhengar to prepare her shuttle to leave for good.

*

As she entered her chamber for the last time before fetching PhaHks from his (she'd thought it best he remain in his quarters now that DhraH'Ken was in control of things on KeK), Kol's old kitchen servant appeared from around a corner and followed her in.

He stood there in the door, waiting for her permission to speak. He was a quiet creature and she remembered he excellent preparation of Klingon fare. Had told him so on more than one occasion.

"What is it?" she asked, not really wishing to indulge in conversation when they were nearly ready to leave.

"I must clear things between us, you were kind to me." he said.

A cryptic parting message. She supposed he was thanking her, in his Blue-skinned BreeOn way, for enjoying his food.

"Thank-you for your service." Polite but did not encourage further exchange.

"They are coming, Madam."

She tended to her packing. ""They"? They who?"

The BreOn fidgeted. "I overheard him speaking to them late last night. Only light years away now."

Veexow froze. Looked at him.

The BreeOn had told her everything without saying a thing really. DhraH'Ken might spare him if any doubts should surface.

She closed her spherical case. Went to him, and pressed something into his hand.

He looked at it. A jewel. One valuable enough to keep him in comfort for years to come.

"Thank-you." She said, looking directly at him, eye to eye. "Thank-you."

He bowed deeply and, checking over his shoulder, swiftly disappeared down the corridor.

Veexow lost no time in gathering up PhaHks, hurrying him through the vast complex headed for the Landing Bay, but saying nothing.

They entered the Hall of Conquests, had almost passed through when,

"Leaving so quickly?"

Veexow spun to see the massive Klingon, Beh'ah'Let in hand, watching them from the darkness. The Beh'ah'Let was dripping black blood.

She stepped in front of PhaHks protectively. "You said it was finished between us."

"Yes, I did. But Kol is dead now, and I have changed my mind. Your Romulan police would have arrived here on time to do it for me, but the servant - the dead one - warned you, so now I must repay the payment."

"That is not the way of a warrior." She mocked. She had no weapon. Her energy phaser had not been recharged for months and though an excellent fighter in hand to hand combat, her opponent had learned from infancy to execute swift, lethal strikes.

And he was outweighed her by one hundred pounds.

And he had a Klingon sword.

She was defenseless.

DhraH'Ken, seeing her step in front of PhaHks, laughed. "My argument is with you, Veexow. I decided that simply killing the human is not enough to balance the death of my father."

"And,.." As he spoke, he closed distance.

Veexow put the table between DhraH'Ken and herself and PhaHks.

"...The cook, before he died, also told me you had one of your own kind slaughtered for your little flower. That is not the way of a Romulan Commander."

Closer. Within striking distance.

"It appears we are both liars."

He lunged, clearing the table in a single leap.

Veexow used two countermeasures. First, she shoved PhaHks back behind her as hard as she could, getting him out of harms way. Next, she dived under the stone table and scrambled out the other side. That she had donned casual dress that morning was standing her well now.

PhaHks landed on his butt and watched the next moments unfold.

Veexow was on the losing side already, and things were about to get a whole lot worse for her. And then, for certain, him.

She was backed against the Wall of Many Battles, its entire surface adorned with weapons suitable for slicing and dicing. But all fastened in place and useless.

DhraH'Ken charged, raising his blade like a club to bring it down and divide her in two.

Veexow just managed to twist and dodge out from under it as the weapon clattered against the wall, dislodging some of the trophies.

One skittered across the floor to PhaHks.

He scrambled to pick it up. It weighed sixty pounds if it weighed an ounce. It felt solid. Potent.

Veexow was again trapped against the thick table, no escape in sight with DhraH'Ken poised to split her in half.

Once more, she turned the right way as the weapon dropped from above and it missed her most vital portions but for her right shoulder. One of the blade's many points grazed the slope of it, removing a slice of flesh.

Blood spurted and she cried out.

DhraH'Ken had the weapon already above her again and this time she would not be able to flinch, not while injured and in pain.

But PhaHks was there. Behind DhraH'Ken.

And he had a sword raised high over the Klingon.

And then he brought it down as if it was a sledge hammer and the Klingon the "Test of Strength" target at a fair ground.

It sliced through air and through DhraH'Ken's shoulder unhindered, lopping it off at the hinge. The weapon and the arm that held it tumbled away in a purple fountain.

DhraH'Ken screamed as he watched his warriors flesh and blood abandoned it's duty. In his overconfidence, he had forgotten about the warrior human.

PhaHks had not hesitated in lifting the sword high again.

This time, his aim had improved and it met DhraH'Ken's neck at the shoulder-join.

DhraH'Ken's head lolled to one side as gushers escaped into un-confining air.

The warrior's heart still beat but his death was assured as his bled-out body timbered to the stone floor.

PhaHks was not finished yet. Not by a long shot.

Payback time was what raged through his arteries and he began striking the fallen body.

His mind screamed and he swung and swung the blade again and again until the head separated from the shoulders and rolled across the floor, coming to rest at Veexow's feet. DhraH'Ken looked up at her with locked eyes.

DhraH'Ken.

DhraH'Ken was the reason for it all.

PhaHks brought the sword down hard. He was striking the other dead shoulder.

For brutal rape...

...*strike*!

For broken ribs...

...*hack*!

For two dead little girls...

...*Hack! Hack!*

For all the pain brought to every person everywhere in the universe.

...*slice*!

For dead fathers and missing children...

...*gouge*!

For abductions...

...*STRIKE!*

For comas, cancers, murders...

...*strike, strike, strike!*

Because of scars on body and in mind, PhaHks dismembered the Klingon. For all of it.

For her.

For himself.

He struck and struck until he fell back spent. The blade, finally free of its morbid task, lay still on the floor beside him, once again just part of a collection.