Box Me

Author: Regency
Title: Box Me
Pairing: Adama/Roslin
Category: light smut
Summary: Will teaches Laura to box.
Disclaimer. I own nothing.

It was humid in the workout room, filled only with the presence of the Admiral and the President. Both decked out in shorts and tanks and boxing gloves. The President looked entirely out of place in the dank environment, her hair pulled into a semi-neat braid and her heels discarded for a pair workout shoes.

Will had to keep himself from laughing; his president, in boxing gloves, was attempting to put some sort of combat game face on. It wasn’t working in her favor. Still, he was glad she came.

“Okay, Laura. Hold up your fists like this.” He took her hands in his, rearranging her fingers so that her thumbs pressed against the outside of her knuckles. He didn’t want her break her thumb when she hit someone. That visual still made him laugh.

“Like this?” Now she had the fists right, but the rest was off.

“Almost. Let me just…” He came up behind her to adjust her stance. “Like this.”

“Okay.” She tilted her body forward in a way that would leave her vulnerable and he subtly pulls her shoulders back towards him. “Don’t square up. Stay loose.” She shook her shoulders and stretched her neck. “Good. Now, keep your back straight.” She attempted to straighten up but only succeeded in pushing her ass into his pelvis in a manner that disturbed the tentative peace in that part of his body.

“All right, you need to set yourself up in fighting stance.” He moved around to face her, well demonstrating the stance. “Can you do this? Lean onto the ball of your foot. put your weight in front, 60/40.” She did, but unaccustomed to this new center of gravity, fell forward straight into his chest.

She swore, “Frak.” She wasn't used to this lack of grace. She was constantly certain of her every step. This was something new. On top of that, thing between she and Bill had been different since...the kiss. In some ways better, but mostly more perplexing. Kissing him was one thing; falling into his arms was quite another.

“This is going well,” he smiled in gentle teasing.

She smiled in return despite herself. “Yes, I guess it is. If we call me tripping over gravity an improvement.”

“If you don't succeed, I'll say it was my fault. Come on, retake your stance. We'll try again.” With some regret she stepped out of his informal embrace and retook her position before him. “Now, watch me.”

His body tense-electric like a live wire and dangerous like a caged lion, her circled her. She kept her eyes on him per his instruction, biting her lip in concentration. Caged, dangerous, threatening. He wanted her now, but most of all, he wanted her safe. If he couldn't be the one to guard her, then he trusted only her to guard herself.

Look at her, he thought to himself, she learned as she lives. That ever-changing mind. Her mind was shifting and she was memorizing his movements, preparing to defend herself from his attack. He faked a center punch and she instinctively threw her weight behind her defense and follow-up.

She stumbled when he dodged her, allowing her to fall this time. She glared up at him with the power of a supernova from the mat then; jumped up swiftly, ready to keep going. She was ready to be bruised. Circling each other further, she watched him with the tactlessness of an amateur well on the way to being a pro. This was personal. She didn't want only to grow; she wanted to kick his ass at his own game.

Coming in sudden and quick, he tapped her with surprising lightness and threw her off entirely. She expected him to knock her down again. This was his turf, his mind game. He threw a shot at her side, not gentleness and light this time. It took the wind straight from her sails.

She thought, this is what a soldier feels like.

As he next came to attack her, she blocked his arm and kicked him in the side, still unsure what game they were playing. He looked at her with a new respect growing in his eyes. She could fight too. Another beat went on with them dancing about; some would have said they appeared foolish, both sweaty and tanks sticking to them like second skins.

But she was overwhelmed by the reality of it. What was more tantalizing than a man and woman of certain statures and age trying to good-naturedly kill each other? Only, not. Always aware of him, she let down her guard, knowing he would count it an amateur mistake and take the bait. She jumped away and elbowed him in the back. Clean boxing? Not so much. But it was fun as hell. As he tripped and fell, she grinned and laughed triumphantly. She was holding her own.

He hit the floor with a whoosh! and lay there stationary for too long. Fearing she'd actually hurt him, she walked slowly up to his side. He was on his stomach, she could hear him breathing.

“Will,” she said his name like a worried sigh. He rolled over, groaning and looking thoroughly beaten.

He surrendered. “Help me up,” he offered her his hand. She smiled, she had won. She took it and immediately, a devious smile overtook his solemn face and he proceeded to flip her over his body and onto her stomach. He rolled onto his knees without so much as a groan of discomfort. Age did not mean old, or slow.

“You're good, Laura.” His large hands held her slim wrists together with no effort. “But I'm better.” He stood up, releasing her. “Fight clean or don't fight.”

She only partly conceded. “Rules matter to you?” Pun intended. His silence was his self defense.

“They matter when I'm trying to teach you how not to kill people you don't have to. I want you alive, but I want you...as you. You wouldn't be you if you killed someone to save yourself, would you?” She let the words go unacknowledged.. She knew, he knew. The art existed in the things not said.

He was feeling weighed down by his clothes and shed his tanks with the President's blessing. As soon as his skin came into view, she felt the air beneath her collar warm (despite her also wearing tanks) and shed her first top in kind. It was hot, they were adults; they could be nearly naked together without...things happening that shouldn’t.

The fighting, those instructive, became instinctive for her. She sensed him, his vibe and motivation. Each band of sinewy muscle gave itself away as they shifted before each of his motions. His speed was terrifying. At any time, he could've taken her down, but he didn't. He wanted to battle her at this moment, to test her, to go head to head. She was his equal and he wanted to meet her as such.

“Bring it,” he challenged her. So, she punched him in his jaw. To both of their immense surprise, Will Adama hit the floor like a wet sack of sugar. And though victorious, she was horrified. She didn't have to ask, she knew he wasn't playing pretend.

“Oh, gods.” She knelt down beside him, touching his cheek gingerly. “Will? Will! Damn it!” He's going to send me to the brig for this, she thought, again. She couldn't quite decide how to explain this to anyone else. “Wake up, Will. You're the big bad Admiral and I'm the wee President, I couldn’t have beat you that badly. Wake the frak up already!… or I'll tell everyone I see that you were knocked out by a girl.”

Coincidentally, just then, his eyes opened to slits and he was not a glad man. “Ouch.” Then he began to really feel it. “Ow...gods.”

“Oops,” she shrugged, only half-apologetically. She winced when she saw that his bottom lip was bleeding. Without thinking, she removed her last tank and gingerly wiped at the laceration. He moaned, because he, like most men, was a baby. She grinned and continued tending carefully to the cut. “I'm sorry about this.”

“I'm not.” He did smile about it. “You're getting good at this.”

“I had a wonderful teacher.”

“Maybe. Teaching is certainly a different profession than it used to be.”

She lowered her head slightly to hide her high color -- auburn 19. “Yes, it is. Hopefully, as rewarding for you as it was for me.”

She was hovering over him as he lay nearly prone on the floor, topless save a bra, by the way. He should say that, yes, it was rewarding.

“Will,” she touched his chest without thinking before immediately attempting to withdraw her hand, “I've forgotten what I was going to say.” He caught her hand and set it over the scar that marred his chest. She was made speechless by it. She'd seen it once, when there was a chance it might still rob him of life. But he was alive and this was apart of him. “Thank you,” she said, “for trying to protect me.”

“Thank you for being someone worth protecting. You know, I wouldn't let just anyone put me on my ass.” She laughed her throaty and didn't give pause to raking her nails lightly across his chest.

“I should hope not. What would the fleet say?”

“That a subservient admiral is an obedient military.”

“Would that make them happy?”

“I don't know. Civilians aren't my area of expertise.”

Feeling playful, she tapped his chin. “And this civilian?”

“I studied you in college. In fact, I have a doctorate in Laura.”

“I'm an area of study?”

“You're a fascination.”

“To what degree?”

“To any and every one; 360.”

Her Admiral looked up at her in a way that had charmed easily a dozen girls in his day but needed now only to charm her. Success.

The eyes that beckoned her were reflected in those that beckoned him. She couldn't see them anymore when she closed her eyes, but it didn't matter because she was kissing his lips. She was careful of the wound she had inflicted, almost apologetic, in fact. She cradled his face in her palms, decadently absorbing as much him as humanly possible.

As happens, one thing led to another and another...

Laura held fast to the titanium chin-up bar and pursed her lips to keep from calling again to the gods. It had started on the mat, slow and restless, ending too soon and not soon enough. At the end, they'd wanted more. Something more reckless, appeasing, mind-blowing...just to start.

He wrapped his fingers around hers to keep them fastened tight to the bar, so that she couldn't touch him. She had won the fight, fair and square. This was her reward. The air in the gym was cooler than them sending goosebumps beneath her arms, down her sides, across her shoulder blades and to the inside of her thighs. He spent his time there, her legs settled over his shoulders and her head draped back in a foggy ecstasy.

She could've been dreaming or counting if so, only of him and only down until she shook with the release he could provided and had promised her. His lips were soft on her lips and his tongue knew the world inside of her as if he had created her by hand and could with his ministrations take her apart block by precious block

He raked his teeth across the taught surface of her clit, throwing her into a pleasure-pain hot spring of eroticism that she hadn't experience in only she knew how long. Only one man she would never name had brought her that far from home, but this was the only one she trusted to see back.

The closer she came the higher she floated and she may have never made it down. She didn't want to come down. How would she ever get enough of feeling this good? He imbibed her life a drug, never wasting an ounce of her energy, stoking her -- stoking her like a volatile but intelligent flicker that threatened to inevitably become a hellfire. His hellfire.

He turned her inside out. She gasped and exhaled, overwhelmed in her hypnotizing way; wiping the risk from his mind like a silk handkerchief until he forgot that being seen was something they didn't want. She was articulate and refined when the public saw her; the words she had spoken in mid-orgasm would lay forever between them, and he would be able chuckle to himself and say that he knew what lay beneath that veneer. This vixen with her sharp wit, right hook, and sharper tongue was no shrinking violet. She could cry out to the gods and they would stop the world to her yearning. They stopped time for her, her lean trembling body still perspiring. Time waited. She lingered at the shore of her release knowing that if she ventured into its depths, she would drown. And gladly, he would follow her to the bottom.

She sighed tiredly and he eased her down until he could hold her completely in his arms. Unbreakable and steady she was, whispering words he both desired and dreaded to hear.

“We can’t.” It wasn’t wise; there were a dozen reasons why they shouldn’t have.

“But, why not?” He didn’t have to take part. She was the politician, she knew the risks. It was only a battle with herself.

“Handsome, kind, smart.” He was not flattered. He was also a liar, he reminded himself.

“We’re stronger together than we are apart.” That he did say.

She sighed and nodded, holding tighter to him like a treasure she hoped to hoard for herself. “We are that.”

“Then, we ought to stick together…for the good of the fleet.” The magic words; she kissed his neck.

“For the good of the fleet.”

She pushed him against the wall with startling strength and began exploring him appreciatively with her hands. There was always something new to discover. Some things were too good to let go.

Pulling away, his prophet looked into his eyes and lent him her foresight. She didn't have to have a vision to know this wouldn’t be their last time.

“Ready for round two?”