Tempestuous

Tempestuous The love they had made that morning had been…beautiful. As much as he tried, Jean-Luc couldn’t find a more apt description. They had woken early, simultaneously as it turned out and had been able to use the extra time to really indulge themselves. They were greedy for each other, giving and taking pleasure with an abandonment unusual in its intensity. And his resultant orgasm had been one of the most intimately satisfying experiences of his life…more so because he knew instinctively that Beverly had shared the intensity of the moment with him.

His euphoria lasted through the languid shower they took together and, as they dressed he even managed to be untroubled by the sight of her blue lab coat she habitually wore. He hated that coat, had done so for a very long time and he was pleased when she didn’t put it on, rather, she carried it into the living room and draped it over the back of her chair.

They replicated their breakfast together in warm silence, speech unnecessary, their feelings adequately expressed through lingering glances and tender touches.

He took his seat as she took hers and, as he reached for a croissant she quietly spoke.

“You are aware, of course, that this mission is immoral.”

His euphoria vanished like a wisp of smoke on a windy day. Several emotions surged through him, but he settled on a gentle rebuke.

“You know that’s not true, Beverly.”

She took a warm croissant and tore it into pieces. As she casually buttered a morsel, she said in a very conversational tone, “Are you going to sit there and tell me you have absolutely no qualms about what you’re intending to do?”

He took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then let it out slowly, willing himself to stay calm.

“The Prime Directive.”

She nodded, her face grim.

“Yes, the bloody Prime Directive.”

“I have my orders and I will obey them.”

Incensed, Beverly laughed sarcastically.

“You’ve broken it before, when it suited you.”

He sighed, desperately trying to avoid the brewing storm.

“You know as well as I, there are times when the Prime Directive is less than absolute… and may I add, I was exonerated by Command on each of those occasions.”

Beverly popped the bite-sized piece of pastry into her mouth, chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds, then shook her head, her growing anger plain to see in her blue eyes.

“Don’t do that, Jean-Luc.” He frowned, not understanding.

“Do what?”

Her tone became combative.

“Go all…captainly on me.”

Exasperated, Jean-Luc spared a momentary thought as to where his wonderful euphoria had gone. Anger was beginning to build in the man and he struggled to contain it. Since starting this new intimate aspect of their relationship only a month ago he had found that

1

they often argued, but it was mostly simple innocuous differences of opinion that were quickly resolved. There was only one subject that they had argued vehemently over without compromise from either of them…and it had been going on for years. The Prime Directive.

Knowing she would not give up, Jean-Luc retreated behind his Captain’s persona.

“This discussion is pointless.”

Slamming her hand down on the tabletop, Beverly shouted, “There you go again! Hiding inside your fucking uniform!”

He could take many things from his lover, but not an accusal of cowardice. Outraged and furious, he stood and glared down at the red headed Doctor.

“You accuse me of hiding inside my uniform when you’ve been using that bloody lab coat as a shield for years! You hid inside it, not only from the more personal aspects of your job, but from me!”

Now on her feet also, Beverly’s voice dropped but lost none of its venom.

“At least I didn’t shut myself off from my emotions.”

That hurt and brought about more malice and spite than he ever intended.

“It wasn’t me who ran from starting a relationship, Beverly. You left me high and dry that night and the next day, when I saw you, you wrapped that damned coat around yourself like some kind of armour and treated me like an experiment gone bad! There are times, Beverly, when you can be a hard hearted bitch.”

He saw immediately that he had struck a raw nerve. Her eyes darkened and glistened suspiciously with unshed tears.

“You call me hard hearted when it’s you who is going to sit back and do nothing while millions of innocent men, women and children die a needless annihilation as this ship meticulously documents their deaths!”

She paused for breath, then delivered her coup de grace.

“Perhaps you’re more like Locutus than you realise.”

The shock of that statement reduced them to staring silently at each other, mouths agape.

Knowing she had gone too far, Beverly was about to apologise when a call came from Sick Bay. “Selar to Crusher.”

Summoning her voice, Beverly couldn’t stop it from trembling.

“Crusher here.”

“Doctor, you are needed in Sick Bay immediately.”

Almost in a trance, Beverly turned and picked up her coat. She said absently, “On my way, Crusher out.”

She was putting the coat on as the doors opened. She left and didn’t look back.

Jean-Luc was left staring numbly at the closed doors. What she had said had wounded him deeply, in fact he was having trouble even believing she had uttered something so heinous. Eventually his eyes drifted down to the table, still strewn with the remains of their mostly uneaten breakfast. With a softly muttered, “Fuck!” He then lifted his head and said quietly, “Picard to Riker.”

“Riker here, Captain.”

“There will be no senior staff meeting this morning, Commander.”

A nonplussed Number One replied cautiously,

2

“Understood, Sir.” “Picard out.”

Jean-Luc left his quarters, his mantle of Command firmly in place. But inside he seethed.

Will Riker, First Officer of the Enterprise knew straight away that something was amiss the moment Jean-Luc entered the Bridge. His stony faced CO stalked to the Command chair, sat and made a perfunctory show of checking his monitors, then, said with a softness of voice Will had long ago recognised as a sign of suppressed anger, “Report.”

Will delivered his report of the ship’s status, then hesitated slightly before saying softly, “The rate of infection on the planet has accelerated. Mortality rates are rising exponentially; the total loss of life is now over seven million. Total sentient population extinction will occur in approximately eight days.”

Staring fixedly at the image of the doomed planet on the viewscreen, Jean-Luc muttered, “Acknowledged, Commander.”

He then stood slowly and took a deep breath.

“Continue scans and tell microbiology to make sure the samples are kept under strict containment protocols.”

Then he sighed deeply and sadly.

“You have the Bridge, Number One.” Once safely ensconced in his Ready Room, Jean-Luc tried to work, but no matter how hard he tried, Beverly’s words came back to wound him again and again. Then, as he attempted to put the devastating accusation in the back of his mind, a new thought emerged.

“Was she thinking about all this while we were making love this morning? While I was lulled into a false sense of security…and love? Lowering my guard so her attack would be that much easier?”

The anger and hurt he had been feeling grew into a towering fury. He sat at his desk, his eyes staring at nothing. Absently, he picked up the crystal shard, but instead of inspecting it, as he so often did, he gripped it so hard in his fisted hand it was little wonder the faceted edges didn’t slice into his flesh.

In his mind he replayed the argument over and over, each time the hurt cutting deeper and deeper into his psyche.

“Oh, Beverly, how could you?…how could you do this to me?”

He got through his duty shift, he even got some work done, but if asked, he wouldn’t have been able to explain how.

Back in his quarters he sat in his favourite chair, a tumbler of neat, authentic scotch in his hand. Unable to eat, unable to sleep, but eminently able to drink himself into a stupor, he silently waited for Beverly’s return. His wait was in vain.

Four days passed in solitude and in the ensuing time his anger and hurt settled as a cold, hard lump in his gut, just under the surface, but within his control.

A quick check of the roster showed him it was Beverly’s day off. He reasoned, actually he hoped, she would come to him to offer the apology he knew he was due. Yes, he knew he had also said some hurtful things and he would apologise for them, but what she had said was almost unforgivable. So, although he was dressed in his uniform, he exercised the privilege of his rank and took a rare unscheduled day off.

3

She arrived just after eleven and, as soon as she entered his quarters and he saw her, the anger he has so carefully boxed away in his mind, surged to the surface as he saw, although she was dressed in civilian clothing, she wore the damned blue lab coat.

He rose from his chair, his face unreadable.

“It is your day off. Why are you wearing that bloody coat?”

Brought up short, both by finding him in his quarters and by his attitude, Beverly straightened and adopted a defiant pose.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but there was an emergency in Sick Bay and I was needed.”

His next words carried the unmistakable undertone of threat.

“Take it off.”

She knew she was on dangerous ground, but Beverly had never backed away from a fight and she didn’t intend to now.

“No.” He moved so fast he caught her off guard. Now standing toe-to-toe with her, she could see a melange of emotions swirling in his darkening hazel eyes. His deceptively soft voice only validated her summation that he was very, very angry.

“Take it off, or I will do it for you.”

That she had the balls to laugh in his face only served to push him further into rage. As she turned to walk away from him, he grabbed her upper arms and pushed her bodily across the room, until her back met the wall with a thump. Not giving her time to react, he took the lapels of her coat and wrenched them over her shoulders and down her arms, thereby effectively confining her. He then took her blouse in his large hands and tore it open.

In all the years she had known him, Beverly had never, not once, even considered that he was capable of this kind of behaviour. She should have been outraged, she should have struggled, but the only thing she felt was a quickly growing desire.

He looked into her eyes and growled, “I’m going to fuck you, Beverly, and this time the only thing on your mind will be how it feels.”

True to her feisty nature, the words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

“You wouldn’t dare!”

In way of reply, he roughly grabbed her bra and yanked it upwards, exposing her breasts…and her achingly erect nipples. He looked down and smiled grimly, his smugness stirring Beverly’s anger. But when his right hand suddenly descended to rudely cup her sex through the fabric of her skirt and push his fingers hard against her, all she could do was gasp, arching her back and thrusting her hips forward to increase the pressure of his hand.

His other hand roughly pinched her nipples while he said quietly, “I won’t rape you, Beverly, if you ask me to, I will stop.”

He then bit her neck hard enough to bruise her. His mouth then descended on hers in a brutal kiss which split her lip. Pulling back he murmured, “But if you tell me to stop, you’d better mean it.”

He gathered her skirt and lifted it, having no trouble ridding her of her underwear. When his fingers pushed through her folds his intense gaze scrutinised her.

“You’re wet, Beverly, you want this as much as I do.”

4

His hand suddenly left her, making her gasp again.

“But you won’t be needing this!”

He grabbed her coat and wrenched it from her, before throwing it across the room. Then he undid his trousers, pushing them and his briefs down just far enough to expose his genitals. Beverly’s gaze left his eyes and travelled down his body until she was staring at his erection. She had never seen him so hard; she could almost see his pulse throbbing through his rigid penis.

He stepped up to her, lifting one of her legs before, without warning, shoving himself inside her in one hard, brutal thrust. She cried out and gripped his shoulders as he bit her earlobe hard, muttering huskily, “You owe me an apology, Beverly.”

Then he began to thrust hard and fast. He was so inflamed, so subsumed by anger and lust that he knew he wouldn’t last long. Reaching down, he roughly rubbed her clit wanting, even through his haze of emotional turmoil that she would be with him when he came.

Beverly was consumed by what he was doing. Her own anger warred with the ache between her legs as he went about taking her against the wall. She was shocked and confused, but those emotions took a back seat to her rising lust. As he pistoned in and out of her, his unrelenting fingers quickly brought about a gathering climax. She lifted her head and stared at the ceiling, barely believing what was happening.

Suddenly Jean-Luc growled, “Hurry, Beverly…I’m going to come…”

Just as she felt him ejaculate deeply inside her, her own orgasm surged through her. Her cry of ecstasy was accompanied by his guttural shout of release.

As they stood, trembling on rubbery legs, Jean-Luc lowered his head to Beverly’s shoulder.

She summoned a shaky voice and asked softly, “Where the hell did that come from?”

He lifted his head and shook it, obviously as confused as she was.

“I don’t know…”

He looked over his shoulder.

“But at least I got rid of that fucking coat.”

Looking him in the eye, Beverly gave a curt nod, but then said with hurt in her voice, “Yes, but I notice you’re still in your uniform…Captain.”

5