Bioware's sandbox; I'm just playing in it.

Kaidan jerked awake, sweat beading on his skin and a scream lodged in his throat. His heart hammered against his ribs, and enough adrenaline was coursing through him that he shook as he sucked in deep, greedy gulps of air. Shepard still lay half sprawled across his chest, and his arm curled reflexively around her waist, drawing her impossibly closer. He buried his nose in her hair and breathed deep, trying to surround himself with her.

Shepard stirred, and her touch was heavy with sleep as her fingers ran over his chest, up the side of his throat, into his hair.

"'Sokay," she murmured into his skin, curling her fingers gently against his scalp. "'M here. I'm alive and I'm here." Her fingers trailed down over his shoulder, his arm, reaching to lace with his. She rolled over onto her back and gently tugged his hand up to her throat, laying it against her pulse, letting him feel it thrum under his fingertips. She cupped his hand, rubbing her thumb slowly over his knuckles, and slid her other hand behind his head, pulling with gentle instence until he rolled over and nestled against her collarbone. He heard the steady thump of her heart, the gentle rush of breath in her lungs.

It wasn't enough. God help him it wasn't enough.

He needed her.

He was still trembling as he slowly opened his mouth over her collarbone, closing his eyes and focusing on the taste of her skin under his tongue, trying to drown out the last vestiges of the nightmare. Shepard's palms skated sleepily across his skin, lazily touching him, reassuring him, and he slipped his hand between her head and her pillow to cradle the back of her skull.

Shepard turned her face towards him, and her fingertips pressed gently against the backs of his shoulders, urging him up to meet her mouth. He let her lead him; he dragged his lips up the column of her throat, over her jaw, and when he kissed her, her mouth was soft and pliant under his, letting his tongue delve inside to taste, to touch, to take what he needed.

His fingers drifted down her side, stopping at the swell of her breast, briefly kneading it and feeling her nipple pucker when his thumb brushed against it. Shepard gave a soft moan of encouragement into his mouth and rolled her hips.

Kaidan couldn't help the answering needy groan that rumbled through him. He needed to feel her writhing under his hands, to hear her whisper his name and make that one glorious noise that always went straight to his groin, the noise she always made when he entered her - a breathless gasp of pure pleasure that caught in her throat; it was a sound that not even his best dreams in those damnable years without her had been able to duplicate. He needed to know she was alive and whole and here.

Kaidan slid his hand down to palm the back of her knee and, without taking his lips from hers, rolled onto his side and dragged her after him. He draped her knee over his hip, nestling her against his chest. Her warmth pressed tantalizingly against his quickly growing arousal, and he trailed his fingers up her thighs to her core, teasing, testing. He nearly whimpered when one of Shepard's hands slipped between them and wrapped around his cock, working him to full hardness with long, easy strokes.

Shepard arched her hips away from him just enough to position his tip at her entrance, and then she brought her hips rolling back. As he pushed into her, as her wet, slick heat enveloped him, she made that perfect, wondrous little gasping noise into his mouth. He clung to her when he heard it, dragging her as close as he could get her, cradling her in his arms. He needed to have her close, to be as close to her as possible, to touch as much of her as possible.

She held onto him just as tightly as he rocked against her, his thrusts short but deep. His tongue swept into her mouth in rhythm with his hips, and one of Shepard's hands tangled in his hair with a gentle tug. She gave a low, throaty moan as her leg tightened around his waist, and he knew she was close. Kaidan slid a palm down her spine to cup her backside, pulling her up tight against him, changing his angle just enough to push against the most sensitive parts of her.

Shepard came softly, quietly - all staccato whimpers into his mouth and a gradual tightening around his cock that resolved into rippling spasms, and Kaidan could feel his own orgasm coiling in his gut. He dragged his hand from her backside to her thigh, lifting it up just a fraction, letting him slide just that little bit deeper inside her. The tightness, the warmth, the feel of her invading every one of his senses, was enough to send him tumbling over the edge, and he groaned into her mouth as he spilled himself inside of her.

Slowly, Kaidan brought Shepard's leg back around his waist, his hands gliding reverently over her skin. Shepard's kiss turned gentle, soft, her lips drifting away from his mouth to brush across his jaw and down his throat and over his collarbone as she nestled sleepily into his shoulder. Kaidan threaded his fingers through her hair and held her close, letting the even rhythm of her breathing lull him back to sleep.