Dr. Rookwood and the Kiss, part 2

part one

"Ah..." he wavered uncertainly as her lips lingered on his fingers. "Well, any information you have about these people and the tech they use could be useful to us. You said they use a ring system." He frowned, lowering his voice. "If they're Goa'uld, it's all right. We're against them too. Anything you know about the people who keep you here, you can tell us." He pulled his hand back, watching her. Did she know she was... Idiot! Of course she knew... Didn't she? He hoped his face wasn't as red as he felt warm.

Ercinee leaned forward, just enough to break into Josiah's personal space. "So... your reward for saving my life... anything you could choose... and you'd like me to give you the intel I'd have given you anyway?" She took his hand once more and laughed honestly, sweetly. "I think we need to try this again, Josiah. Humor me and be a bit more creative." Did she just... bat her eyelashes? Such long eyelashes...

"Ah..." Again. Because apparently that was the most intelligent thing his PhD brain could come up with when she was that close to him. "You're not, ahm, asking me if I'd like to, er, if I'd..." He frowned at her seriously. "I wouldn't ask a favour for something like this." Especially /that/ kind of favour. "Anyway, I've got to get out of here, too."

"First of all," Ercinee squeezed his hand and tilted her head, "It's not a 'favor' it's a 'reward'. Perhaps you don't realize this, but you are the first person in a long time to actually listen to me. Your modesty is really sweet. Ironically," her voice dropped in pitch and one perfectly arched eyebrow arched for a split second, "I find it a turn on."

Colour rose from Josiah's collar into his cheeks and he leaned backward a little, swallowing roughly. "Heh," he grinned lop-sidedly. "I don't need a reward for doing something I'd do anyway. If you give us intel, that's enough for me. Really." He squeezed her hand back, gaining a little confidence. "Really," he repeated. "So what's the plan? They ring in, I shoot at them. They uh... /don't/ die. We take advantage of the confusion and ring away?" He frowned. "We don't have a hand device or key..."

The smile slid from Ercinee's lips and her face fell. In a parody of exhaustion, ostensibly from her disappointment at her rescuer's disinterest, she fell backward on the bed. She didn't look at Josiah as she replied. "They have the hand device on them. It's specifically keyed to me so I can't use it, but you should be able to just fine."

"Oh. All right." Josiah twisted his mouth up guiltily as she slumped away. "I didn't mean to offend you," he began tentatively. "I'm just... I don't uh... It's nothing to do with you," he added hastily. "Nothing at all. It's just not my ... way." There.

Ercinee glanced at him, clearly perplexed by his statement. "Do you mean to say..." she began slowly, "that you prefer the company of men?"

"What? No," Josiah answered quickly, a flash of leering Malone coming unbidden to his mind's eye. Even knowing the truth now didn't make that first encounter any more bearable. "No. I'm-" Not /really/ a lie. "-/was/ a man of God. A religious leader," he explained. "It's not in my nature to do such intimate things with a woman until we're..." He smiled warmly and knitted his fingers together. "Together."

Ercinee shifted on the coverlet, pulling one or two small throw pillows to herself as if preparing some kind of amunition. "Religious leader? You are a religious leader, and you combat Goa'uld?" she sat up, hugging a pillow to her front. "My my, you are just full of paradox, aren't you?" she sighed sadly. "And I'm in the most ironic situation of my life. I meet a man I would actually prefer to get to know, and he's as unresponsive as my captors are amorous." She fell back again, this time turning onto her side.

Josiah blew out a breath and shifted a little closer to her as she turned away. "The Goa'uld are not gods. My being - having been a religious leader and my fighting the Goa'uld are not paradoxical." He hesitated a moment, then touched her arm. "I'll get you away from here. Somewhere safe. And then... maybe we can have coffee or something."

Ercinee's eyes turned to regard him silently. She shifted slightly, reaching an arm to lay on a cushion of her own ebony hair above her head. "Kiss me." She stated.

Josiah quirked a brow. "Maybe I didn't explain myself well..."

Ercinee bolted to a sitting position, her eyes reflecting some desperation prompted by loneliness. "Kiss me. Just once. After that I will leave you to your untouchable barrier of self-imposed modesty if that is what you wish. Is it so much to ask? Your reputation is not in jeopardy; this is not a horrible thing I am asking for, and even if it were, there is none but me to witness it. One kiss. Is it so forbidden to ask for a kiss that heals rather than destroys?" Ercinee looked away, as if disgusted with herself for showing such weakness.

Josiah knitted his brows, at a loss. Kisses weren't such a big deal, but her fervour spoke to something else at work here. "There's me to witness it too, Ercinee," he said softly. "My morals aren't mine because I think someone else is watching what I do. They're mine because ... they're mine." He touched her arm lightly. "You are a beautiful woman, one I would gladly get to know better. But this goes beyond demands for affection, here. You want something that you shouldn't have to ask for, and once we're out of here, you'll get the chance to... not... ask for it." Way to be eloquent. And he'd thought he'd been doing so well up to that last bit.

"Josiah... you have no idea what I want... except to leave. Everyday, since I was five years old..." she sighed and stopped whatever thought she had struck onto. Instead she lay back down, this time on her stomach where the cruel lash wounds lingered just below the see-through surface of her robe. "Well, I suppose I would want to get rid of me too if I continued to be so trivial, talkative and annoying."

The linguist sighed. "I didn't mean to presume," he conceded, frowning at her. "And I don't want to get rid of you. I just want to get you out, and get myself home in one piece. We can talk all you like." Since she was five, what? She was a captive here? "Where are you from, originally?"

"I don't know. I don't remember. Chances are, none of this matters anyway. You somehow came through on a whim, which means you may yet find yourself home and snug before 11 hours is up. Perhaps this is just some new torture devised to effect me psychologically since all of their other methods no longer work."

Josiah looked at her consideringly. "They plucked me from a planet at random and dropped me here just to mess with your head?" It wasn't out of the realm of possibility either, if her captors were into headgames. Taunt her with the possibility of rescue, only to snatch it away again. In fact, it'd explain away that niggling problem of how he got there bereft of pack, but sporting both weapons. The illusion of freedom. "Why do they torture you for simply disagreeing with them? Did you... do something specific? To piss them off?"

"Oh yes," she assured, "I did something to piss them off." She looked him, "And I'll tell you the entire story.... for a kiss."

This time, he smiled when he sighed. He wasn't going to get out of this, and like it or not, he was as much a captive as she was, until this got sorted. A healing gesture, to offset possibly /years/ of misery. "Just one. A little one." He held up a warning finger. "Three seconds, no tongue."

"No tongue?" Ercinee was mortified. "Three seconds??" As the rest of it caught up with her - "I'm not your daughter, Josiah. Be at least a LITTLE reasonable." But she had become a bit less despondent and sat up. "At least 10 seconds, with a hint of tongue."

"I'll go as high as fifteen, lips only." He adopted a business-like pose, but couldn't help the half-grin.

"Fifteen seconds with lips only will make us both feel terribly foolish. Can't there be at least 5 seconds in there of passion?"

"Passion? We've known each other maybe half an hour." This was getting out of hand. "Ok. I'll concede to some... passion. But now you've cut it down to 7 seconds." Soooo woefully out of hand. It was just a kiss for cryin' out loud. A kiss with a woman he didn't know, whom he only assumed was telling him the truth about all of this, and whom, if she /was/ telling the truth, had made out with who knew how many gross guys. How rude was it to ask if she had any strange diseases...

part three
part four
part five
part six
part seven
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Ercinee (c) Mary Logan
Post written co-operatively