Title: A Man’s Ship
Author: helgaleena
Pairing: Zekk/Anja Gallandro
Setting: Star Wars: Young Jedi Knights
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: het, mention of abuse
Wordcount: 1976
Disclaimer: none of this belongs to me
Summary: Zekk gets a kissing lesson. Missing scene near the end of Anderson and Moesta’s Crisis at Crystal Reef. Many thanks to the authors for creating these wonderful characters that make the GFFA relevant to teens.
Ties into my stories of Zekk, For the Goddess and Tamith’s Pet. Which are rated NC-17. You have been warned.
It was just another nondescript cargo freighter leaving Mon Calamari, to any outside observer. But to this young human, it was home. Lightning Rod was now set on a trajectory away toward his friends, blurring into hyperspace toward the Cron Drift.
“Force, it’s good to be in this seat again.” The former bounty hunter, soon-to-be Jedi Knight with the broad shoulders and the long dark ponytail, smiled and stretched out his long limbs in the pilot’s chair. His companion in the co-pilot’s spot, a female human his own age, grinned convivially, then looked serious.
“Zekk, you know I would have brought this crate back again eventually.”
Green eyes, each iris rimmed in darker green, pinioned hers. She saw shadows of annoyance there, but the young man remained calm. His voice in reply, though, was stern. “No, I don’t know that at all.”
The curvaceous young smuggler swallowed hard, her dimpled chin bobbing. “Well, yeah, I would maybe have had some excuse or other, if it was a choice between a good supply of andris and bringing Lightning Rod back to Yavin, I suppose. But that was before.” Her huge soulful eyes, the pupils no longer unnaturally dilated, met his boldly. “Cilghal’s cure worked. I’m free from spice. And I—“--she exhaled noisily-- “I really am sorry. I’ll make it up to you. Right now, if you want.”
Her tone of voice had turned inviting. Abundant locks of dark hair, lightened with pale streaks, fell about her smooth round face, and the womanly figure below. She bent forward, turning her cleavage into an inviting crevasse of golden brown that enticed a being to wish to bury his face—
Zekk ground his teeth audibly. Red glints started at the corners of his eyes, which Anja probably would attribute to reflections of the console lights. “You --stole —my —ship,” he gritted out. “Don’t touch me.”
She drew back. “What; are you and Jaina steady or something? Or do you only like guys?” In one of her lightning changes of mood, she was choosing to take offense, crossing her arms over her chest in her old prickly manner.
Zekk sighed. “You know you’re hot, Anja. But a man’s ship—“
She was not Force-sensitive, despite her having her own light-saber to play with, and she could be as dull and blunt as a brick sometimes. But her tongue was sharp enough.
“Oh, I get it. Compensating for anything, are we?” That didn’t deserve an answer. He let the silence stretch.
After a few quiet minutes, Anja calmed down and repented, letting her inborn good nature take over. “Poodoo mouth I’ve got sometimes, huh? Sorry. It’s just a bad old habit, I guess, thinking I can get what I want with my feminine wiles and all. But your forgiving me is what I really want. And you know I like you, Zekk. You tried so hard to help me learn, there on Yavin. And Jacen and Tenel Ka are probably not wasting their alone time on the Rock Dragon, you know.”
Zekk thought it over. Yes; he’d been so focused on having Lightning Rod back, on sitting in his own ship again, where he’d practically grown up with old Peckhum, that he hadn’t thought about who’d be riding with him. And so here he was, alone with a nubile fellow space orphan, who was telling him she was perfectly willing—
“Listen, Anja; it’s not that I don’t like you, too, but I just— sex ought to mean something, not just scratch an itch.”
Even as he said it, familiar tension clamped down on his shoulders and throat; like a bad headache a remembered voice echoed in his ears.
“You are easing my cramps for me, steed.” Her itch, not his. Ever.
His jaw tightened. He could feel Anja’s big brown eyes on him, studying the side of his face. He checked and double-checked the readouts, which of course hadn’t changed since they’d entered the hyperspace lanes, and didn’t need checking. They both knew that he was simply avoiding her eyes.
She broke the silence. “Somebody used you.”
Undaunted by his lack of reaction, she continued. “Like Czethros used me. He kept me addicted and deluded, and he was probably going to toss me away like a soggy tissue pretty soon.”
He couldn’t help wincing at the thought of Czethros and her. He didn’t want to think too hard about the possible uses a ruthless crime lord and fellow human would have for an attractive underage female. She probably knew more about sex than he did; and he knew more about sex than he wanted to.
She snorted, and rose to seat herself against the console he was pretending to study, so that he had to look at her.
“Listen. You and I both grew up the hard way and had to do some nasty stuff to survive, met some creeps and lived to tell about it, okay? You don’t think you’re too good for me, do you?”
Her full and high bosom heaved with her all-too-easily kindled annoyance. It made Zekk grin in spite of his internal confusion. Anja had never been awed by her celebrity acquaintances at the Academy, or timid about mingling with the super-rich at the trendy resorts of Bespin and Mon Calamari.
Now he, a former gutter scavenger from the under-levels of Coruscant, was one of the celebrities, by virtue of his new Knighthood. He’d better get used to it, eh?
“Oh, no; not at all,” he replied mildly.
“Then forgive me, for nek’s sake!”
Zekk smiled at the pretty smuggler. “I have.” His hand fell lovingly against the familiar pilot’s cradle. “Lightning Rod is back with me. And we even righted some wrongs on the way to its return.”
Mollified, Anja put her hand over his. “I can tell you take good care of this rig. I had no trouble flying it.”
“I grew up on this ship, Anja,” he said, looking up at her vivid face, framed by the curtains of dark hair striped with blond. He didn’t pull his hand away; he could sense her lack of hostile intent.
Slowly, she came closer and crouched before him. “You’re the captain,” she said.
His breath began to pump faster in and out of his chest at the sight of her between his knees. Fleetingly he wondered if Czethros had liked her there, playing his little acolyte. But this was the present…
“And don’t you forget it,” he said, only half joking.
Ever so slowly she inched forward, to plant a tiny flutter of a kiss on his cheek. That went well. He could almost read the thought straight out of her huge eyes, so dark and so near. A little kiss doesn’t hurt.
“Thanks for forgiving me,” she breathed, her ocean-y scent filling his nostrils, rising from the leather band restraining her hair, that had taken on the flavor of Mon Calamari’s salt spray. Saliva sprang up from beneath his tongue. One more instant of hesitation, looking into her big brown eyes, and then Zekk dared it. He put his mouth over hers and inhaled her soft lips with his own.
One of his long arms wrapped around behind her head as it tipped back under his. It was like holding a precious package wrapped in her fragrant hair. She leaned her entire weight back against his arm, letting him take over the kiss completely, and it fueled his confidence.
He let his tongue run along the inside of her lips, enjoying their warmth and softness. She parted her teeth and suddenly his tongue was touching hers, hot and nubbly and full of her spirit. It was wonderful. A grunt of amazement rose in his throat, and he let his own tongue slide fully along hers, reveling in the juicy friction.
**
But along with that excitement, a violet fog of coercion began to flood the space behind his eyes. A rough commanding alto voice echoed, loud as a blow landing between his ears:
“You are mine now, until you die. Get used to it.”
Sudden involuntary revulsion turned his mouth sour. Prickling chills rose up his back and ran along the outer surfaces of his arms. Anja’s soft hair suddenly felt like sticky webs he had to get away from his hands.
It wasn’t fair. What she had done should have died with her. Unfair. He wanted to spit.
As gently as he could, he pulled his mouth away and helped Anja sit upright. Her big eyes were puzzled. “Zekk, what’s wrong?”
The sound of her voice was muffled by the putrid violet haze all around him. He probably looked sick; he felt that way. Blinking, getting his voice to work, he managed to rasp out, “Anja, I—“
He couldn’t tell her what was really going on. He couldn’t say, sorry, you’re just too much like her, the one who made me into her puppet among the Dark Jedi. He couldn’t say, my initially healthy desire for you flips half a dozen switches in my head that punish me for being unfaithful to a witch— a dead witch. So he finished, lamely, “I don’t want this.”
She could see that he was shivering, but not exactly why, of course. “You are really serious about Jaina, huh? Wow. She’s lucky. I never felt like that about anyone, myself.”
She stood and patted him on the back. “No hard feelings, stud. I think I showed you a little something about kissing, anyway, huh?”
He chuckled, trying to relax. “That you did.”
“Haven’t you ever kissed her?”
Zekk felt himself blushing. “Only on the cheek.” He didn’t add that Tamith Kai had never let him kiss her at all. She’d been the one who kissed him— and never with affection.
He heard Anja sigh. “I guess I’m a little bit too mixed up myself right now, anyway. Czethros—grrr! I thought he loved me, but that was probably as much a lie as everything else he told me. It would be a shame for us to mess up a perfectly good friendship with bad sex.”
Zekk laughed hard at that, deep guffaws of relief. At last he said, “So— is it all about you, Anja?”
She grinned. “Of course it is.” She looked like an imp, ready to bounce around and tickle bellies. But she kept her hands to herself.
“Friends?”
“Friends.” He smiled easily at her in return, as the ship reverted to normal space for the tricky approach to Kessel.
Jacen and Tenel Ka, Jaina and Lowie, all would be waiting there, ready to share the story of their team effort to curtail the spice trade, and the resurgence of Black Sun. They’d hug each other, full of the increasingly familiar relief that they’d all survived once again.
He wondered if he’d get up the nerve to kiss Jaina on the lips. No; not now. Not yet.
But he wanted her for his co-pilot.
**Far too descriptive
Leona
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