They were alone on Serenity.

She stood in the common room, her back to the table, facing him. He never said a word. He was moving slowly towards her, steadily, confidence radiating in his very being. She backed up, into the table and he was there, not touching her, just looking at her with desire she had never known. She tried to move to her left, he placed his hands palms-down on the table behind her. She suddenly found it very hard to breathe. She opened her mouth to say something to him, to excuse herself, anything, and his mouth was on hers, pulling all of her excuses from her with a need she felt she had to meet. He kept his hands firmly on the table behind her, his mouth pressed against hers, their kiss arousing her from within. She felt her cheeks flood; her body respond to his seduction.

He broke the kiss first and watched her as she caught herself from leaning in for more. She tried to regain calm in her breathing, but her heart was fluttering like a virgin's on her wedding night. He half-smiled and leaned in again, this time placing his lips at the sensitive place just below her earlobe where her neck met her jaw line. She gasped at the delicacy with which he flicked his tongue, tracing a path down her neck to her still-quickening pulse, to the crest of her collarbone, down further to the top of her breast. His hands remained on the table behind her. She gripped the table edge with a force she had previously been unaware she owned. She wanted to move, to touch him, to feel his heartbeat race beneath her touch, to excite him the way he was her, but it was all she could do to remember to breathe.

He had reached the neckline of her dress. Either he would have to move a hand to push aside the fabric or he would have to stop. She felt if he stopped, her heart would stop beating altogether. She needed him to continue. She needed it with every fiber in her being.

He removed his lips - those blessings from Buddha - from her skin and looked her in the eyes, his need to continue evident in the l