Part Three: In Which Our Heroine Makes a Startling Discovery, As Does, Er, Someone Else

~*~

The clothes that Inara and Mal threw on so haphazardly before storming the bridge come off equally as haphazardly once Kaylee leaves them in peace. Not that either of them really notice her there in the first place, amidst all the charging hormones and sweaty necking in the pilot's seat.

After a few moments of getting spooked by sounds coming from the corridor, however, they have enough sense to go from the bridge to the relative safety of Mal's bunk. Poor River, Inara thinks absently, as their skin detaches from the leather pilot seat with a sticky, delicious drag.

The ladder down to Mal's bunk poses a particularly challenging obstacle. Especially considering Mal's increasing attack on Inara's person, all grabbing hands and long, heated kisses.

They get down with minimal fumbling and injury, though, and then Mal presses her against the inside of the ladder, his eyes bright and mildly dangerous.

"Assault on your person?" he scoffs, his breath ghosting over her nipples before he traces his tongue around one rosy, aching bud. "Now, I got bruises to prove just the opposite."

Inara curses her increasing inability to keep her inner monologue strictly inner. Being around Mal makes her head spin. She does crazy things. Like think out loud. Or give Mal hickeys.

Hickeys. How...unrefined. Yet freeing, and Inara cries out as Mal's mouth closes over her breast once again, wet and hot and his teeth scraping bluntly across her skin. She traces her fingers over the reddening bruises on Mal's neck, before palming the muscles in his back. "More," she whispers, pressed against the ladder of Mal's bunk. "I can't--Mal, please--"

Another feng le thing she does is beg. In fact, there's quite a bit of pleading, and Inara's nothing if not a bit unused to asking others for their favor.

"I got you," Mal says. "Just let go."

Words like these, uttered so casually but sincerely, affect Inara far more than the burning trail of Mal's tongue across her belly. They loosen a net that Inara has always kept tied snug around her heart, and when the barriers fall away, so do all the uncertainties and aches, releasing into her bloodstream, slipping through her veins.

The simple pleasure of Mal's body against hers is suddenly complicated by his words and what they could mean.

He says he has her now, but will he tomorrow, when the drug wears off? Will he still want her this way, accept her so unconditionally for what she so unapologetically was and would still be, were it not for being cast away by the Guild?

Mal is the type to hold innocence as close to him as he can get it; it's why Kaylee's aboard, and why he's fought for River so damn hard. Will he still want Inara when the haze has cleared, even though there's nothing clean, pure, untouched about her, or him, or them both together?

Even though there's no nobility in what they're doing right now, and how they're doing it, and why?

Inara feels the bite of utter, almost unrequited longing slice through her confused, rambling thoughts, and her body arches as Mal's mouth reaches her center. His tongue strokes against her, pressure building in the pit of her stomach as she moans and squirms against his capable hands. If she concentrates, she can almost imagine he is tonguing some sort of script across her folds, communicating his heart the only way he knows how to with a woman like her.

Inara chokes against the burn of tears suddenly searing the back of her throat, at the emotion rising and ebbing through her like storming waves against a far-off shore.

Who does she think she's fooling? She's wanted Mal for so long, she's not sure what it's like not to anymore. The drugs have done nothing more than make it impossible for Inara to abide by her inhibitions--her feelings for Mal haven't been altered in even a small way--

So even if he can't stand to look at her when this is all over, what she and Mal are doing now means more to Inara than anything ever has. It frightens her.

"You have me," she whispers brokenly, her fingers firmly tangled in Mal's hair. "You have me, I--"

Mal's head raises at the sound of her voice. He looks at her for a long moment, slowly blinking those clear blue, heartbreakingly-honest eyes, before reaching his hands up to gently entwine his fingers through hers. He rises slowly, taking her hands from his hair. Then, as he pulls her close, her hands fall to his shoulders, his skin warm and pliant under her touch. Hoisting her up again, Mal leans in, kissing Inara's closed eyelids so tenderly it almost undoes her. She gasps for simple breath as she situates herself around him, cocooning around his warmth, unable to bear the thought of any part of him not touching her, even for a second. Blinding heat sizzles through her from her navel to her nipples, as Mal enters her slowly. "I got you," he affirms again, his voice low and rough with feeling. "Just let go."

And Inara does. With a long, shuddering moan, she digs her heels into his flesh, folds her arms around his neck, and breathes in the salty, sweaty, gunmetal smell of his skin as he begins moving his hips.

She has no words, still, to describe the feeling of him inside her, or the feeling of her surrounding him.

It's not sweet, like the aching crescendo that builds in her stomach when Mal looks at her the way he's looking at her now. It's not dark, like the reaches of space they are flying through, reaching dizzying speeds and heights till the only way to chart their course is by the stars that haven't burnt out. And it's not rough and tumble, like war and making do when there's nothing left to fight for, and everything left to fight against.

It's urgent, because they both know that with each burning stroke and accompanying sigh, they are one moment closer to running out of excuses. It's hot, because the cold they've harbored inside for so long is unable to withstand the combined force of this--this thing they're doing. And it's right, perfectly right, in an inexplicable way. The carry-through, the ability to act on all the feelings trapped inside...it's so exquisite that Inara cries out again, clutching Mal by the shoulders and rolling her hips against his, whimpering at his long, low groan.

When they'd had that last standoff on Mr. Universe's planet, and Mal had gone off to do what heroes did, he had held Inara's gaze for a thousand eternities in one heavy, pained glance, even amidst all the chaos. Crouched behind a makeshift barrier, knowing it would either be Reavers or Alliance gunfire, Inara had seen only death in their immediate future. And she had felt the simple horror of all the words left unsaid between her and Mal--sorrow for everything she had never done, and he had never done, and which they were too weak to ever do, no matter how strong they were all the time else.

She had felt a fear alien to anything she'd ever known--fear for a man who wasn't her lover, who wasn't her client, who wasn't even really her friend, but who was in her heart. Ingrained so indelibly within its chambers that no amount of pretending would ever erase his presence.

Then Mal had swished away, striding down the corridor with that brown coat swinging behind him, and Inara had looked after his shadow, regret burying her so deep for a moment that catching her breath had been difficult. The heavy thud of his boots walking towards certain death is a sound she still hears in her nightmares, and for a moment, Inara focuses on the heavy sound of Mal's breathing instead, the harsh inhalations in her ear, the endearments he's mumbling in his jumbled Chinese.

That one moment when she had been sure she was losing everything makes Inara so glad for this moment, this second chance, and she lets her lips drag against Mal's forehead, a kiss of a benediction she doesn't know how to verbally give, and heartfelt thanks.

Mal looks at her with fathomless, dark eyes, hooded and full of secrets and pains she can't even begin to heal. And yet he also looks at Inara like he wants to save her, instead of her saving him. A one-man rescue operation, meant to melt the ice settling in her bones, meant to assuage the pain of being a space-drifter. No profession, no mission, no meaning to life except this ship, this crew, this captain. This communion that, even without the tea ceremonies, the oils, the studied compassion, is more spiritual than Inara would have ever guessed it could be.

There are worse things, Inara thinks, realization dawning. Worse things than feeling this way. But no worse fear to have than the fear of getting in too deep.

Her heart stops for a moment as Mal kisses her again, his breath warm as it mingles with her own. Emotions threaten to swamp her, close over her head until she can't do anything but swallow her feelings down and accept them as part of her. She fled back to a home, a cage, she swore she would never return to, just to escape her feelings for this man. What if now is the time when she must face up to her inability to run from chains for too long?

What if being with Mal is a pair of shackles she would gladly dawn?

Do I love you? she thinks, her breath coming faster in rising wonderment. She tests the words almost soundlessly, sees if her lips can conform, if her insides won't leap in protest. "Am I in love with you?" she asks in a voiceless, disbelieving whisper.

Mal doesn't hear, his head ducked in the nook of her neck, his tongue tracing her pulse. Inara closes her eyes and holds on for dear life, her heart thudding to fill in the spaces between her every erratic thought.

There's no way she can wrap her mind around this right now, as Mal's hands catch her waist and that familiar tightening curls her toes. There's plenty of time later to hypervenilate and ponder what it could mean, being really, truly in love with Malcolm Reynolds.

They've got half a day still left, and Inara intends to make sure they use those hours doing something infinitely less confusing than thinking, anyway.

- - -

Unsurprisingly, there's not a large amount of faculties left in Mal's reserve once they finally collapse onto his narrow bunk. Which means pillow talk is limited to conversations considerably less romantical or philosophical than Inara is used to, in a post-coital embrace.

"That was a mighty fine robe, Inara," Mal starts, when it seems that he can finally find it within himself to drag words out. His arm dangles over the side of his bunk, wrist flopping uselessly as he tries to point at the silky heap on the floor. "Nice, soft-like material. Nice, sweet-smellin' somethin' or other sprayed all over it. Nice, uh, pinky-purple-red color. Yep. Mighty fine robe. I approve."

Inara rolls her eyes and chuckles in spite of herself. Of all the things Mal could awkwardly bring up after sex, he brings up her robe? A surge of affection energizes her enough to scoot closer to him and lay her head against the damp, warm plane of Mal's chest. Her arm drapes tentatively over his stomach, fingers trailing from his elbow to wrist, tapping at his palm. A sense of euphoria infuses the musky, heavy air around them, and Inara can't fight the almost-girlish smile tugging at her facial features.

Ever since meeting Mal, she's been teetering at the edge of a chasm containing all that's always been unknown to her. For so long, she was scared of that abyss, of the fierce, overpowering darkness of what she couldn't foresee.

But just now, she is more excited than scared.

"It's silk, and rosewater perfume, and the color is mauve," she clarifies, voice full of laughter. "Malcolm Reynolds, fashion expert?" she asks, her lips quirked at the edges. "Don't misunderstand, my heart's burden is utterly lightened by your approval," she adds quickly, eyebrow arched. "And it was a nice robe, yes," her voice is drier but still agreeable around a delicate yawn. "Just as your shirt was 'nice' and your ridiculously close-fitting pants were 'nice'. Unfortunately, now they're...well, I hesitate to call them nice rags, but--"

Mal makes an inarticulate noise of agreement, catching Inara's wrist and folding his arm against hers. He brings her palm to his lips, kisses the life line softly. The look in his eyes when Inara shivers is enough to make her groan again, trying ineffectually to pull away.

"Again?" she asks, half-thrilled, half-incredulous. "Mal, we can barely even move as it is."

Mal arches an eyebrow. "I got no problem gettin' certain parts on the go, darlin'." His leer is practiced, but half-hearted. Inara shrewdly notices the droop of his eyelids and the laxness of his usually firm, tensed jaw.

She smiles fondly, rolling her eyes again. She lets her hand untangle from his so she can press her fingertips over his heart. "We have time left, you know," she reminds him softly. "You can sleep now and when you wake, we can do it again."

Mal gives a small grin at her cajoling, practiced tone--what he's always called her 'Companiony' voice. "Promise?" he asks teasingly. But the look in his eyes is apprehensive, and it strikes Inara that perhaps he's as anxious as she is about what's going to happen between them after this is over.

Perhaps he wants to enjoy every moment unguardedly, just as she does.

Inara sighs and burrows closer, still a little self-conscious at this sharing of space between herself and Mal. His arms are warm and strong around her, though, and she may just be imagining it, but she thinks he kisses her temple before laying his chin against her head.

"I promise," she says, her eyes drifting closed in fatigued satisfaction. "Rest with me."

And he does. After all, for once, there's no danger that when he wakes up, she'll be gone.

Because for once, Inara doesn't feel the need to leave.

- - -

One fitful, restful sleep later, Inara wakes to sounds of chaos.

It wouldn't be Serenity without the chaos, though, would it? she thinks rather ironically, sighing to herself before slowly opening her eyes. The clock by Mal's bed reads 7 o'clock, shiptime. The bed is empty, but Inara isn't surprised--Mal's voice near the shuttle door is the sound that woke her in the first place.

She can only see his boots on the ladder, and she's a bit disappointed that he's up so early, and dressed. Especially since they only have five more hours left. Her hand coasts over his side of the bed, sinks into the warmth as she sighs.

Mal hisses something through the metal barrier of the bunk door once again as Inara stretches leisurely, enjoying the slight ache of her thighs and lower back. Good, hearty excercise, she smirks inwardly.

"Mal?" she asks, her voice low and a bit rough. She blinks in surprise, because she has never quite sounded like that before: a slow, satisfied, sated purr. She's stunned to realize that she likes her voice like this, honest and warm. Honeyed, but not in that practiced way she'd been taught as a Companion.

It sounds like herself, and she's a bit thrown to realize she never knew till now what she really sounded like after being with a man, without worrying about catering to her client, or putting up a contrived image in defense.

Mal's just teaching me a whole world of new things, though, isn't he? Inara thinks dryly. She arches an eyebrow and comes up on her elbows, cocking her head in confusion as thuds issue against the door, and Mal pounds twice in response.

"Mal?" Inara tries again. "Are you...using morse code?" Mal's boots scuff on the ladder, his fist suddenly stilling against the door.

"Well, good mornin' sunshine," he says in response, ducking his head down. "Be with you in just a second."

Inara has to stifle a look at the barely-concealed panic in his eyes. "I'm sure you will," she nods solemnly. Actually, she's sure of just the opposite. In fact, what she's even more sure of is the fact that Kaylee met with the crew this morning and shared an interesting tidbit of gossip. And that someone, probably Jayne, is now banging at Mal's door, demanding an explanation (or, actually, if it really is Jayne, details).

She stretches again and lays her head against Mal's headboard, staring up at the ceiling. Normally, she'd be mortified at the thought of Serenity's crew knowing that she and Mal had been...intimate. But right now, all she can feel is relieved. And a bit smug. For all Mal's talk about never trading with a Companion, she did manage to impart some appreciation of her profession this last past day.

Her smile fades. But then, for all her talk about never bedding a crewmember, she went and bedded the last one she ever should have. And as much as she'll blame it on the cider, she knows it's no sort of drug making her heart beat so hard and fast right now. She knows it's no sort of drug that has caused her to toss and turn in restless dreams of him, and above all, she knows it's no sort of drug that makes her ache for him to come back to bed and touch her like she's fragile.

It's a problem, she knows. This propensity of Mal's to think she needs saving. This way he has of making her into something she's not: a fallen angel, a woman compelled by circumstance, an innocent in a whore's body. She's not sure if he will ever realize the complexities that comprise who she really is, but then, she doesn't quite understand the darkness of Mal's own personal makeup.

There is a give and take, however, and the fact is, they've both been occupied with saving others for so long, they've forgotten how to save themselves. Perhaps, Inara muses, she needs Mal after all, in some small way. Just as he needs her, even though aloud, neither would admit that truth.

"Mal," she calls. "We have a few hours left, you know. Yelling at the crew to mind their own business can wait, don't you think?"

Her grin is positively victorious, she'll wager, but she has no time to be ashamed by herself, not when Mal's boots hit the floor and his eyes pin her to the bed.

"Well, aren't you just a saucy minx?" he drawls, his elbow propped against the wall. He looks quietly dashing, even in those suspenders. He's tall and lean, and funny how Inara has never really taken the time to look at him past the rough-hewn Captain of a pirate vessel. There's so much she doesn't know about him: where he was educated, for instance, because for a Rim-raised man, he's more intelligent and better-versed than most.

And his knowledge of such a wide array of things is astonishing--she almost fell over at the ball on Persephone, when he'd first started dancing. He'd looked, for all the world, as if he belonged there. He'd known exactly what to say, what to do, how to act--up until the punch, but then no one deserved a blow to the head more than Atherton Wing, and the fight was a result of Mal's temptuous nature more than any inherent crassness, or ignorance.

If she thinks about it, she can see the depth she knows Mal is capable of, lurking in the crevices of his every smile. Like life is one big, bitter joke, and only he understands.

Perhaps Inara should be disturbed by his obvious lack of faith in the world, but then, Inara has never herself been overburdened with an investment in fate, or destiny, or a higher power. Buddha and His teachings, the inner peace that Companion training preached, it was all well and good, and it serves to center Inara when nothing else seems to work.

But the realest spirituality, the realest religion Inara has ever found is in the very act of ceremony, in the communion with another soul. She supposes she could call it a humanism of some sort, but if she told Mal, she suspects he would roll his eyes and ask if humanism involved regular communion in one's drawers.

Probably it should bother her, his disregard for all she holds true.

But right now, time's wasting, and there's the matter of an incredibly intriguing, infuriatingly attractive man to attend to.

"If we're going to be giving each other nicknames, Mal," Inara begins, her lips curled in shades of laughter, "I don't think saucy minx is wholly appropriate."

Mal grins and pushes off the wall, sauntering closer with his thumbs casually tucked beneath his suspenders. "That so?" he asks. "What about...insatiable wench?"

"Insufferable bastard," she shoots back.

"Mmm, got a nice ring to it, I'll give ya that." He eyes her carefully, his gaze tracing the dip of her collarbone and the arch of her neck. "You can get a tattoo, you know. 'Insufferable bastard was here.'"

Inara bites back a grin. "That sounds like a painful lot," she says. "Where would this tattoo be, by the way?"

Mal sits on the edge of the bed, his hand resting lightly on her sheet-covered foot. She shivers at the heat, and his throat works as he gazes determinedly at the seemingly-innocuous curve of her shoulder.

"Want me to show you?" he asks hoarsely, all laughter gone from his voice. His fingers flex against Inara's foot, and her toes curl at the goosebumps racing their way up her legs.

"Please," Inara answers, peeling the sheet away from her body slowly. Mal's eyes don't leave the point above her shoulder, and she's aware that he is consciously trying to reign himself in. She appreciates the effort, especially since she feels as if she's a moment away from letting go of every tenuous thread tying her together. They can banter and flirt all they want, but under the influence of this drug, still racing its way through their systems, one overly-heated glance or even the slightest, skimming contact of his skin against hers, it can mean utter abandon.

She scarcely breathes as her skin is revealed to the heated air of the bunk. The atmosphere inside is thick and humid, and Inara wonders if Kaylee has been tinkering with the inner air system again, or if perhaps it's just the prospect of Mal touching her sore, heated flesh that makes her warm. Sweat gathers at the nape of her neck and lights a fine sheen across the valley of her breasts. Mal's breathing is rough but even, deep draws and only the slightest groan to the sound.

Inara reaches out a shaking, hot hand. Takes Mal's hand and lays is against her neck, letting her palm pillow across his pulse, thumb sweeping the bone of his wrist. His fingers sift through her hair, and he gently moves her curls to the side so he can lay a kiss beneath her ear.

She gasps; nothing more, nothing less. Mal's tongue traces the flesh of earlobe, nipping with blunt teeth. Inara's nipples harden, and Mal's other hand cups her breast, covering the heavy, aching weight of it tenderly. He winds her hair in the hand at her neck, lifting the oppressive spread of curls and twisting it in a makeshift rope. Then he pushes at her softly, making her lie down, her skin damp against the cool sheets.

Mal's still fully clothed as he lays an open-mouthed kiss on her breast, sucking the tip, swirling it with his tongue. The straps of his suspenders press into Inara's flesh, and the seams of his pants are rough beneath her questing fingers.

She clutches the thick hair of his nape as he layers kiss after kiss over the rise of her breasts, the delicate bones of her clavicle, the thready beat of her pulse. He is adding coals to the fire, making it flare brighter and hotter in the cells of her body. She feels as if she's going up in flame, and she just needs him to kiss her more, to get closer. She needs him to keep touching her forever, because she fears the emptiness if he stops.

"Yes," she whimpers. "Oh, tianna. More, please, more."

A sound breaks through the haze of Mal's body against hers, and Inara gasps sharply, her fingers digging at the collar of his shirt.

"Mal," she says. "Mal." She pushes at him gently, her body screaming at her to let him continue, her mind yelling equally as loudly for her to stop and listen.

"Huh?" Mal's voice is fuzzy, and for good reason, as the erection biting into her thigh is formidable.

"Did the others...what did the others say?"

Mal's brow furrows. "Sent them away, 'Nara," he complains. "Can we--?"

Another sound, like a choked giggle and a quick hush. But if they were still outside, it would be too far for her to hear them. So how--

"Well, aren't you just a saucy minx?" he drawls, his elbow propped against the wall.

His elbow propped against the wall.

"Mal!" Inara fairly shouts. "The comm!" She points to the wall, where Mal's elbow must have slipped when he was leaning against the commlink. Where he must have activated the device's link to the bridge. Where the entire crew must have heard all their moans, gasps, rustles.

Her cheeks heat and Mal's eyes narrow. "Ching-wah tsao duh liou mahng--" he curses, getting off the bed. "Didn't your mamas ever teach you never to listen in on a body's personal life?" he barks, striding to the comm.

A crackle, then: "Well, can't say she did, sir. But I'll be sure to mind the connection to your bunk from here on out." Zoe's voice is cool, but even Mal must hear the amusement laced through, because he growls and bangs the comm button 'off' with a bit more violence than seems strictly necessary.

Inara's cheeks feel like they're going to burn off.

"Now, then," Mal says, after a moment. His face is tight and bright red, and he looks like he wishes he could sink through the floor. "Where were we?"

Inara can't help it; she bursts into laughter.

The mood's a bit shot, after that.

- - -

TBC