"Let me get this straight, Torres. Seska will be dropped off at the nearest refugee camp. I don't need her services."

"She worked at a Bajoran installation, involved in communications. We can use her help - "

Chakotay walked round his desk and towered above B'Elanna. His nostrils flared and B'Elanna, still slightly in awe of Chakotay, backed away two steps. He stood hands on his hips. She hated it when he was so resolute.

"She's goes, Torres. No debate."

B'Elanna bristled for a moment, then decided her awe of Chakotay was not enough to prevent another salvo from her.

"Chakotay," she started softly, beating a fist in the palm of her hand, "Seska...did you see what she looked like when we found her? She'd been raped, beaten senseless, her husband killed and then they left her for dead. Gerron was there - "

"Another Bajoran. Why should he speak for her? He claimed he never saw her before. Look, Gerron is a kid, Torres. He's still shell-shocked from seeing his friends murdered,

"Well, then you know what Seska must have endured, Chakotay! Hell, you saved me from a similar fate."

Why was she fighting him? B'Elanna wondered. It was all going to be so easy. Chakotay took in strays, didn't he? He had a heart, didn't he? Although right now she could swear by Kahless he was born with a metal ball where his heart should be, the way he sounded now. Sometimes he could be so bloody angry and refuse to budge on the simplest things. As she kept his gaze, he seemed to relent. His eyes became soft, but the moment was fleeting. Damn! Why the hell didn't he just take the woman?

Chakotay's hands gripped B'Elanna's shoulders and he shook her a little. "Torres, listen to me. I can't explain it. I just don't trust her. You know how I got Dalby? Eddington recommended him to me when he heard what they had done to Dalby's wife. He figured Dalby could be of great assistance in the Maquis. There was one very angry man, but I understood him and I knew he could be trusted. The man's my second in command, Torres. Dalby gave me your credentials because he knew you and trusted you. He referred Gerron to me, Ayala, Morrison, Chell... Dammit, Torres. This woman is an unknown factor. I don't know her, I don't know of her and there sure as hell were no Bajoran installations that claimed a record of a Bajoran named Seska who worked for them."

B'Elanna didn't want to think how Chakotay found that out. If he were uncertain of anyone, that was how he ran checks on them: tracing them all over the Alpha Quadrant. He took no chances but she was not ready to appreciate his paranoia over security. Seska was a Bajoran who was violated and beaten to within an inch of her life. Didn't the man appreciate that at least?

"But she's Bajoran..."

"Who says Bajorans can't be traitors, Torres?"

Chakotay was really making life difficult.

"She has the ability - "

Chakotay shook her again.

"Nothing is as it seems. I don't trust her. She came here without any recommendation - "

"Chakotay! How many crew on this vessel didn't also come without any recommendation?"

She got him there. There were crew on the Liberty that came with no recommendations other than that they lived on homeworlds taken over by the Cardassians, or lived in the Demilitarised Zone where the Cardassians violated the Peace Treaty over and over.

"I can tell you I checked them all, Torres."

"She is intensely interested in joining our cell. Chakotay, if I promise to keep her under my wing, will you let her stay for a few weeks?"

"A few weeks, Torres? I'd have to kill her after that. Who knows what secrets she may be encouraged to part with once she's out?"

"Dammit, Chakotay!"

He let her go so suddenly that B'Elanna stumbled backwards. For a few tense seconds he stared at her and B'Elanna saw how a nerve twitched in his jaw. Seska was a beautiful woman; her severe injuries couldn't even hide that. After she had been tended to, her face glowed. Could Chakotay be threatened by Seska's beauty? Why was he so dead set against her when he didn't even know her? She understood that one could mistrust a person on instinct, but surely, with Seska, given her particular circumstances, it was not enough. No, it couldn't be that he was threatened by her beauty, she thought. When he spoke, it was with a sense of resignation. She heard his sigh, saw the hands slump at his sides.

"Fine. She's stays. But at the first sign of trouble, she's out. You hear me? I don't care if you strike up a life-long friendship with her, she goes. I don't like her, Torres."

B'Elanna nodded and didn't wait to be dismissed. She turned on her heel and stalked out of the ready room. She had been to Seska's cabin earlier, before she had come to Chakotay. Chakotay had only seen Seska when she had been brought on board and treated by Chell and Mariah Henley in the small sick bay of the Liberty. Chakotay stood just inside the door of the sick bay and walked forward to look at the latest arrival. He had given Seska one look then turned and left again, but not before she, Dalby and Chell had seen his thunderous expression. If she didn't know Chakotay in the last two months reasonably well and thought the universe a very small place that chance meetings could have taken place at some point, she could have sworn Chakotay knew Seska and hated her. Yet, it couldn't be possible. Chakotay had never been to that home world and Seska was - or had been - a married woman. Not that the ties of marriage could stop anyone from knowing another person or being friends with another being. She knew it was not possible that he could have known Seska, but his reaction, the way Chakotay's whole body stiffened as he saw the battered Bajoran woman... B'Elanna shook her head as she made her way to Seska's cabin. Knowing how Chakotay was attached to Kathryn Janeway - she had caught him often inadvertently looking at the photographs on his desk whenever she was in consultation with him - she knew him to be loyal to one partner. Something about Chakotay just struck her that way. Whomever he may have been married to, he would honour that marriage, and more particularly a union with Kathryn Janeway. He bore his cross well, she thought. His entire family had been murdered on Dorvan V, and she had heard too, that until his child was born, he had been separated from his wife for many months. No one knew exactly what happened or why they had been separated. Whatever the reason, he loved his wife desperately. In was in the way his eyes gave him away when he couldn't take them off the woman in the photo.

Now he had, what she thought, an irrational dislike of a woman he had never seen before. It wasn't as if he couldn't take her on as a member of his crew. He had never seen Gerron before; Chakotay had thought she herself was a man when he went looking for Torres almost two months ago. Yet, he took them on trust, trust in Dalby's assessment of them. The way that Chakotay reacted to Seska was just so different, as if a subliminal signal alerted him to danger in the way some animals sensed it, and then prepared to protect themselves.

She felt drawn to Seska, and she conceded their common ordeal at the hands of Cardassians fostered that feeling. The woman was beautiful, but B'Elanna was in little doubt that her beauty was all that recommended her. She had asked questions about the ship's specs, its communications and engineering where B'Elanna spent most of her time. It wasn't because she was nosy; B'Elanna had seen the keen look of interest in her eyes when she was told the size of the vessel and that the hulls of at least two Romulan derelicts made up the entire vessel.

"A true collection of parts, according to the Boss," she had told Seska earlier.

"The Boss?"

"That's what we call him sometimes."

"I don't think he wants me here," Seska replied. "I don't belong here."

"Why are you saying that? You have me, Chell, Gerron and Ayala on your side - "

"No, that's not what I meant. Your leader - "

"The Boss?"

"Yes. He - he seemed disturbed somehow, by my presence. I don't want to imposition you. I can go to Alkorea where you said you took refugees..." Seska's words trailed, her meaning heavy was she whispered the last words.

"Listen to me, Seska," she told the Bajoran, "Chakotay will not reject you. I know he'll consider the situation we're ourselves in, needing so many medical supplies, a good communications officer, someone to lend a hand in engineering - "

"I am capable," Seska replied, "and I do know a power coupling from a warp core."

"I don't doubt that, Seska," she told her new friend. "But let me speak with him first, okay?"

Seska had given her a grateful look. Her lower lip trembled and B'Elanna could see that she struggled to keep her composure. B'Elanna wanted to murder those Cardassians who raped Seska. They found traces three Cardassians' semen on her body. Seska looked like she still needed to sleep to recover fully from her ordeal.

"I hope he takes me. I can be of service. You helped me; you saved my life - "

"Hey, it's not a big deal. It's what we do. Chak - "

"Chak?"

"Yeah. Chakotay, he saved my life too. Killed five Cardassians without blinking an eye."

Seska paled visibly when B'Elanna told her that. B'Elanna saw her discomfiture, her shocked expression, then laughed out loud.

"That's exactly how I felt and must have looked. He never really explained even though I asked a hundred times, how he could kill any man like that. But Seska, that's Chakotay for you. He doesn't take well to being interrogated or just questioned about his private life."

Seska's colour had returned and she smiled. There was a humorous glint in her eyes.

"Chakotay has a private life?"

"That's the spirit. Before you know it, you'll think you've always lived here on the Liberty."

"Thank you again, B'Elanna, for saving my life."

"You're welcome. Just don't get too personal with Chakotay. He'll eat you for breakfast."

"I'll remember that."

B'Elanna reached Seska's cabin and pressed the chime. Seconds later she stood before an anxious Seska who was wringing her hands together as she anticipated B'Elanna's report. Seska was dressed in similar dark brown clothing that was functional more than it enhanced beauty, but on the Bajoran woman, who was taller than B'Elanna, it looked good. B'Elanna smiled broadly as she grasped Seska's hands in her own.

"It's a deal."

Seska gave a huge sigh of relief and sank gratefully down on her bunk. Then she got to her feet again and gave B'Elanna a tight hug.

"I owe you, B'Elanna. I could help you in engineering - "

"You're on. Just don't drag your feet, Seska. I run a very tight little department."

"I'll not disappoint you."

"You'd better not," B'Elanna said. "Now, let's get going before Chakotay notices our absence from engineering."

B'Elanna grabbed Seska's wrists and pulled her towards the door. Minutes later the women were in engineering, Seska slightly out of breath as she took her place at the small station B'Elanna appointed her to.

"For now, you can study the ship's specs and get acquainted with the Liberty. You have two hours."

Half an hour later B'Elanna watched the smile that slowly formed across Seska's features, and noted the way Seska looked very closely at the monitor when she studied the specs of the Liberty. B'Elanna stood closer and frowned, then laughed out loud.

"Hey, that's Chakotay's quarters."

"I can dream, can't I?"

"So soon?"

"And why not?" Seska asked, smiling.

"Seska, smile some more until you'll turn blue in the face. Than man is spoken for. Really, really spoken for."

***

The woman was danger, Chakotay thought, ten days later. He should have thrown her out when she came on board. Strange woman. He never felt the empathy for her ordeal that he felt for B'Elanna. Seska stared at him moments too long. He was not a vain man, but the way Seska looked at him sometimes when he was on the bridge or walked to engineering to speak with B'Elanna, gave him cold shivers. She was beautiful, he admitted, but that was all. He could admire in a platonic way or even coldly clinical way - if one could be so coldly rational - the beauty of Seska. Still, there was the way she could stare directly at him as if she expected him to respond to some unspoken message.

He had never been within three feet of her, like he had been with B'Elanna, yet he felt an unease he couldn't quite explain. He knew it was not fair to reject Seska on sight; he was not that type to do so out of hand. With B'Elanna Torres it was different. B'Elanna evoked in him something fiercely protective, and the nights in the last ten days that she had her nightmares, he had done the same drill: she walked to his cabin, pressed the chime and on his command she would enter, looking thoroughly spooked.

Spooked and afraid. Her hair and eyes would be wild, and there'd be the remnants of tears. Once her hand had covered her lower abdomen as if she were trying to fend off her unknown attacker. He had wanted to swear to high heaven, but knew it wasn't what B'Elanna needed in those moments. There would be nothing spoken between them as he wrapped a blanket round her and held her until she became calm again. Then he'd walk her back to her cabin and remain with her until she fell asleep again. Chakotay smiled inwardly. He was probably the only person who saw her at her most vulnerable. In the bright light of a cold morning, B'Elanna would be herself again, coldly efficient or more often than not, explosive, as she organised her department. As if her trauma never happened, she'd be busy giving orders or beating her already battered engines into life.

The last time she came to his cabin he had given her his code.

"Don't knock, B'Elanna. Just come in and wake me up if I'm sleeping, okay?"

B'Elanna, lying snugly under the blankets in her bunk, her eyes already drooping, nodded wordlessly. Never, unless he counted Winonah or his mother or Roshana or Kathryn or his daughter, had he felt the need to protect so strongly. He'd kill again if anyone hurt B'Elanna.

With this Seska, there was too much of the unknown about her, too much of a mystery. Therefore, any empathy he might have had, even in a minimal amount, was lessened by the looks she had given him in the last few days.

He had to admit that B'Elanna's attachment to and defence of a lonely Bajoran woman tipped the scales in Seska's favour. It didn't eradicate that deep mistrust he had of Seska, so he played a waiting game, waiting for the first moment Seska might trip over herself.

Chakotay remembered the connection he felt to Gerron that first day when the kid entered the ready room. He also felt sorry for Gerron. The kid was still too young to be thrown into the kind of subversive activities the Maquis were involved in. He had lost his parents; his two friends had been killed.

"So you say they killed your parents on Bajor?"

"Yes, Sir."

Gerron looked sullen, and his lips trembled slightly in an unsmiling face. The moment Gerron had answered him, the boy looked away, finding a spot on the opposite bulkhead that seemed to take his interest.

"Look at me when I speak."

Chakotay had hardly raised his voice above his normal tenor, but he reckoned there was a sharp edge to it. Gerron rocked to attention.

"Yes, sir."

Chakotay had pursed his lips. The kid...he still looked so fresh-faced, as innocent as Tomaso had been. At the thought of Tomaso Chakotay felt a constriction in his chest. Gerron had looked him in the eyes, and Chakotay wondered as he always did, how, in the face of the most vicious adversity, when life threw them cruel curve balls, a boy like Gerron could still have that look of pride in his eyes. It was not an insolent look. As if Gerron temporarily shook of his fear of Chakotay, the terror of being with an unknown group of people, his eyes had what Chakotay had seen in most Bajorans: pride in his cultural identity. He had sent the boy away in the care and tutelage of Ayala, and now, ten days later, Gerron could fly the Limpet better than Ayala and almost as good as Tom Paris.

Seska distinguished herself in engineering and communications like she promised B'Elanna, although he had a hard time acknowledging her expertise. Like Gerron she was Bajoran and God help him; unlike Gerron, her eyes showed none of the pride of being Bajoran. There lay the critical rub. How could she not look proud of who she was? He always thought it was instinctive, an unconscious bearing of race and culture. How often hadn't Kathryn told him he was more Native American than he'd care to admit because she said it was in his bearing and he hardly realised it? He saw that in Gerron, even saw B'Elanna's proud bearing sometimes when no one looked. Now Seska...

Mostly, Seska looked like she wanted to conquer him.

A fleeting image of Kathryn the night she ran from him on Dorvan V came to him and for a moment only, he gave a cry of pain. He was never going to hurt her again. Never.

Yet, he needed to know what Seska was up to. He smiled to himself. It wouldn't be a bad idea, he thought, to get to know what Seska was up to. She definitely had an agenda... Not so long ago he told B'Elanna that even Bajorans could be traitors.

Even Bajorans.

He hoped fervently that he was wrong and that he wronged Seska.

***

"I'm almost there," Seska murmured to herself as she studied the data on the computer she had inveigled into her cabin. She gave a snort. In different circumstances maybe, she could have been very close friends with B'Elanna Torres. Now, she didn't have time to conjure up a conscience in the knowledge that poor Torres would be hurt by her betrayal.

She had a job to do and once again, Chakotay was gullible. Slowly, over the last fifteen days, she closed the distance between them. First, in the small sick bay, with a very concerned B'Elanna looking on, Chell the Bolian and Henley had treated her wounds. Not once did she flinch as they worked on her. Even now, she recalled how her body had been pleasured when the Cardassian warriors copulated with her. She had incited them to be as wild as they could be, even rape her if they liked.

They liked.

She rejoiced.

It made her injuries so much more authentic and when Chell had to remove her clothes, she affected a posture of outrage until they called in Mariah Henley. Together, Mariah and B'Elanna took note of her injuries, repaired damage to torn skin, broken rib, her pubic area that looked rather wasted. The women made little sounds of sympathy and once, during the process of regeneration and healing, B'Elanna had made a sound as if she wanted to retch her guts out.

Good for her.

It was Chakotay she had to get to. The man stood in the door of the sick bay and kept his distance. What was it about him that made him do that? She knew her arrival on the Liberty was more unorthodox than Gerron's or even B'Elanna's had been. It was a good way of getting their attention, preying on the old Federation sympathy - though she thought the Federation's stance with the Dorvans and other homeworlds sacked by the Cardassians very typical of a Cardassian strategy - that took in lame dogs and sick puppies. She was one very sick puppy that came to the attention of the right persons, thanks to that stupid Gerron whose friends they had to murder afterwards.

Where on that first day there had been that distance between her and Chakotay, it had become narrowed down to just one metre. Now she could see his eyes and remember that she hated him even as she loved him. This time though, she knew that she had a mission, and that mission debarred any feelings of sympathy, any emotional connection that might betray her. She hated him, yet how she could do that while her body craved for him had been a supreme test of endurance, greater than not crying out when the Warriors raped her. She was whittling down Chakotay's resistance, and very soon, if not tonight, she would have come much closer than just the small space between them.

Just a few hours ago, Chakotay had returned her look she gave him. It was much longer than the day before when he also looked at her, his eyes warm on her. Seska played a waiting game. When he looked at her today, it was as much as she could hope. She was winning him over. She didn't think it was any pity that Torres had to be in the vicinity when it happened and frowned at the way she had been bold enough to challenge his look. It strengthened her resolve and made his pending downfall far more poignant. She had smiled back at him and was gratified when he didn't look at her as if she were worse than the Cardassian cat-walker. No, negate that thought, she admonished herself. The Cardassian cat-walker was a noble, fleet-footed animal very much like Earth's black leopard. No, it was the horasp that no one liked. Yes, before, Chakotay had looked at her like she was horasp, something filthy, obnoxious. Seska looked at the ring on her finger and grinned. No one was expected to recognise it, not even Chakotay. The head was the head of the cat-walker, a ring Gul Evek had given her when she told him how she planned to get Chakotay. She would make the Boss, as most of the crew called him, writhe above her in an orgasmic explosion before she would strike...

Seska gave a sigh of pleasure. All she had to do now, was to close in on her subject since he wasn't denying her now. The thrill of anticipating the kill rippled through her body. She smelled victory. Just thinking about him, how he had looked at her with love in his eyes even when he thought she was Kathryn, aroused her senses and whet her appetite. She itched; her skin tingled; a moistness settled in her lower region. It made her get up from her bunk and move to her door. Chakotay would be in his office or what they termed their ready room at this moment. She had studied his movements thoroughly over the last fifteen days and knew that just before he retired for the night, Chakotay spent time in his office.

It shocked her some months ago when he boarded the Vetar, that Chakotay wiped from her ship's computers every single record she had of him, of their sex romps, of all the conversations she initiated with him and in which she, with hindsight now, made such a fool of herself. That he wiped away all the leverage, all the evidence she had against him, against the Federation, against Janeway and - she sighed at the thought - other Cardassian high dignitaries whose wives would have been very disgruntled indeed at the way their husbands had been blackmailed, had made her blindingly angry. She had underestimated Chakotay then. Wholly underestimated a man she thought was a walkover. Up to a point she had succeeded, but Chakotay... He hacked into her systems so cleanly and so completely that it still left her stunned. Yes, she had been angry when she realised that her files had been deleted permanently. That anger had followed the humiliation at the way Chakotay turned on her, at the shame when Gul Evek fucked her afterwards and at the hopeless realisation that she had been a class A fool.

"Hey, you going somewhere, Seska?" Ayala asked as he passed her in the corridor. Aroused from her deep thoughts, she smiled at him.

"Chakotay has asked to see me."

"The Boss? He never - "

"But he has, so if you'll excuse me. I believe there'll be trouble if I'm not on time."

She could kill Ayala with her bare hands for looking so sceptical.

"See you later then, Seska."

"Take care!" she called after him when he stumbled and grinned sheepishly at her.

The smile turned into a smirk.

Fools.

When she reached the ready room, her movements were calm, unhurried as she pressed the chime and heard instantly the command to enter.

When she stood inside the door and heard it swish close behind her, she took in her fill of the picture before her. Chakotay stood reading a PADD, and when he looked up, only the nerve that twitched in his jaw was any outward sign that he was either surprised or shocked at her entry. He looked as she always imagined he'd look: rough, aggressive, hard-nailed with little of the softness she knew that lurked in him. It was the way she liked him. The planes of his face were rugged, hard, his narrowed eyes not so much steely as they were contemplative, speculative. This was no time to wonder whether he looked at her with speculation or anything else. She took a step forward and he put down the PADD as she stopped right in front of him, much closer than the metre of three days ago when she all but had to drill herself to keep calm. She had never expected Chakotay to recognise her, yet suddenly, she wished that he did look at her with some recognition in his eyes, some acknowledgement that once she had been joined to his body. It was the down side of her job. She wanted him to know it was Sedeka who would seduce him again and kill him. As Sedeka she'd not get to within ten parsecs of Chakotay. Yeah, she sighed as a momentary regret gripped her, she'd have liked to see recognition in his eyes. Strange how the thought that she had wanted to be pregnant by him catapulted itself in her brain. A vision of her holding an infant suddenly crept upon her. A moment only she faltered, then she gathered herself.

"I don't recall asking you to come here, Seska," Chakotay said as he half seated himself on the desk, his leg dangling as he braced himself.

"You didn't."

"So I'm not amnesiac after all," he countered, smiling for the first time.

"No, I should hope not, Chakotay," she said, her voice low and hoarse, a slow drawl that she thought brought a warmth in his eyes. "Because, this..." she started, raising her hand to his shoulder and caressing it, giving a little squeeze at the point just above his shoulder-blade, "is what I desire you to remember.." Did she imagine she heard a soft moan? She watched how his eyes closed.

Good...

She positioned herself closer, standing in the crook of his legs and tentatively touched the tattoo, her fingers grazing his lips as her hands explored his cheek. She thrilled when his legs squeezed against her. It was pointless to will away the moistness between her legs as her body responded to him. Chakotay's hand came up and covered hers, pressing his lips into her palm at the same time. The heat of his hand burned into her. Seska felt the desire overwhelm her as she inhaled his cologne. It reminded her of Dorvan V and how close she had been to him. A low groan escaped her. For a few moments she leaned into him, her body succumbing to the wild waves of ecstasy that coursed through her.

"Chakotay..." she breathed hoarsely as she lifted her face to his. His eyes had a deep glow in them, a gleam that she, with the last modicum of restraint she had that could enable her to think rationally, knew was one of passion. He exhaled and the waft of his breath caught her, fanned her face and she gave another soft moan as she felt his hand leave hers to cup the back of her head and nudge her gently closer to him.

"You were married, Seska..." he whispered against her mouth.

"Azar is dead..."

"I know," he said, before he lowered his head further and Seska knew that the moment had come. The skin of her lips changed to an electrical field that kept sparking as Chakotay's mouth touched hers. A deep groan escaped him as he deepened the kiss. Under her thumb that grazed his neck, she felt the vibration of that groan. His smell was even stronger, she thought absently as she lost herself in the enjoyment of the kiss. His tongue nudged, her mouth opened under his and then she gave a long moan as Chakotay's tongue plunged deep inside her mouth. He sucked at her, nipped and licked; she gave him pleasure for pleasure as she returned his kisses. The moments he left her mouth, his searing lips blazed a trail all over her face, her neck, her open mouth. Soft cries filled the room as he pressed himself against her and she could feel his arousal. His hand was in her hair, and fumbling with the pins, her hair fell about her face in long tresses. "Seska..." he murmured as he pulled her head back and she felt his lips burning into her neck skin, nipping into soft flesh, then brushing, caressing as his moist tongue lapped at her. His other hand cupped her breast and squeezed. She gave a groan of pleasure as at the same time his mouth captured hers again, tearing at her lower lip, then covering her mouth, his tongue once again plundering deep inside. Unaccountably, she felt a sting of tears as he held her close to him so that she could feel his arousal. Her heart sang as his lips worshipped her eyes, kissed her fevered forehead, then brushed against her lips. He breathed heavily, his face flushed with desire as she looked dazedly at him.

Then Chakotay stopped abruptly, leaving her completely bereft. Before she could ask in a bemused manner why he stopped, Chakotay looked over her head, to the door of the ready room.

"B'Elanna..."

Seska turned and saw B'Elanna standing in the door - a shocked B'Elanna who stood rooted to the spot, her mouth gaping.

"Chakotay? Seska?" she managed at last. Chakotay let go of her and slipped off the desk. Seska clasped his arm, her stance defiant.

"Hello, B'Elanna," she said to the shocked engineer. But B'Elanna's eyes were on Chakotay.

"Hey, it's not like your wife is around," B'Elanna said quickly as her eyes shot sparks at Chakotay, "you can do what you like. You're the Boss..."

"B'Elanna, it's not what you think - " he tried and Seska thought how ridiculous he sounded. Did he tell Kathryn that the first time? B'Elanna burst out laughing.

"Hell, no, it's not what I think, that's for sure, Chakotay."

Chakotay gave a little cough. He looked embarrassed, thought Seska, but his eyes still glowed from their kisses, even his lips appeared redder. She walked to her friend. B'Elanna was still glued to the floor in the doorway of the ready room.

"I know this comes as a shock to you, B'Elanna," she said softly, "but Chakotay and I..." Seska deliberately let her words trail, giving B'Elanna the full benefit of conjecturing on Chakotay's supposed disinterest in a Bajoran refugee he fought so hard not to keep on board. "Look, can we talk later?" She smiled at B'Elanna.

"I - I don't know what to - to say," B'Elanna stammered, her voice deflated suddenly.

Chakotay had in the meantime approached B'Elanna and without touching Seska again, though she still reeled from the turbulent waves of passion his kiss and body created in them, he came to stand next to her. Seska looked up at Chakotay, and he looked at her. She milked the little scene in front of B'Elanna, leaving the half-human, half-Klingon in little doubt that there was much between her and Chakotay. His kiss had been genuinely enjoyable; she still felt the thrill coursing through her body. She touched Chakotay's arm in a proprietorial gesture, one that claimed the cell leader for herself. Her hands had been all over him minutes ago and the way his body responded, was too real for her to think he never meant it. He was attracted to her again, even though she was Bajoran now. The old chemistry was there.

Seska had great hope that her mission would succeed. Very great hope. So she turned to look at Chakotay who smiled down at her that her heart pumped wildly.

"I'll go now, Chakotay," she breathed seductively. "B'Elanna obviously has a few things to discuss - "

B'Elanna didn't wait for her to finish speaking. She swung round and stalked out of the ready room. They heard a loud thump as her fist connected with a bulkhead. When they couldn't hear B'Elanna's footsteps anymore, Chakotay turned Seska so that she could stand in his embrace and look up at him.

"Remember one thing, Seska," he started with an edge to his voice, yet still smiling at her, "it's my call, every time. I don't want you barging in here again like that, you hear me?"

"But, Chakotay - "

"I mean it, Seska. I admit I'm attracted..."

He didn't finish speaking, but instead, he lowered his head and brushed his lips against hers, breathing deeply as he took in her scent. His arms clamped round her shoulders as he pressed her close to him and he groaned again before releasing her, looking with smouldering eyes at her.

"Oh, Chakotay..." she whispered before she buried her face against his chest. When she lifted her face to him, her lips parted as she expected his own lips on hers, he did just that. For a few mad seconds he kissed her, burning kisses that she wondered how she could let him go. When he stopped eventually, he was breathing hard.

"Go now, Seska, before I strip you down and make love to you..."

"Chakotay..."

"Go."

She gave a sigh of pleasure before she backed away from him slowly, her movements lazy, seductive. A few seconds later she walked down the corridor to her cabin.

***

Chakotay wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The movement was jerky, angered. His arousal had long settled into its normal state. His face creased; he was still shuddering as he remembered Seska's mouth under his. When he closed his eyes, a burn settled behind his eyelids. He felt suddenly nauseous. He turned quickly and walked round his desk, marveling at the way he felt unsteady on his feet, how the release of tension caused him to shiver. His eyes caught Kathryn's face in the frame and picking up the photo, he gave a hoarse, despairing cry. Kathryn appeared to look straight at him. She was laughing into the imager. He remembered the day he took that picture. She had been happy, her blue dress lapping about her ankles, her hands smudged with dark soil.

"Come on, Chakotay. I rather like mucking around in the dirt when you're around."

She had been planting tomato seedlings at Indiana and he had been teasing her about scientists who had no green fingers that he knew of. Now he remembered that day and a sudden, deep longing for her conquered him.

"Kathryn...oh, Kathryn!" he sobbed again. "You don't know what I've done...and why..."

Something was happening. Seska was gone for the moment, but her smell still lingered on him.

Lingered on him.

Lingered on him.

He thought of Seska and a sudden image of Sedeka superimposed on Seska's face.

His stomach started to heave.

The next moment Chakotay dived into the little alcove behind him and bent over the small wash basin where he retched painfully for several minutes.

***

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