Redemption

CHAPTER NINETEEN:

When Opal returned to their apartment later that night, she found Obi-Wan waiting for her in the den. The Jedi Master was sprawled in front of the fire in his tunic, feet bare and arms tucked behind his head. According to what Padmè had told her, Obi-Wan had been through quite an ordeal while she was gone and had endured... well, a lot. She was still waiting for him to talk about it. "Hello darling." He murmured, grinning as she shed her boots and robes upon entry. "C'mere."

"What's this?" Opal murmured as she laid on her side beside him, welcoming the scent that clung to his skin and the smoke from the fire into her nose. She had not felt so safe in such a long time. Being with him made her feel at home. "Is this a date?"

"If that's what you want to call it." He mused. "A certain woman told me I tend to be a hopeless romantic behind closed doors." A soft sigh escaped her lips as she laid her head back and focused on the calloused palm sliding up her leg to curve around her hip. She was wearing a similar tunic to his, but she found in that moment that he rolled over and planted himself beneath her legs that she just wanted to feel more. "Sh... my love. I can sense your fear." He bent down and rolled her tunic to her hips. "Breathe. I will not hurt you."

That was the thing. She knew he would never hurt her. He'd rather have died first, but the darkness lingering at the corners of her mind was attempting to suffocate her. It wanted her to believe he'd hurt her to break them apart, to destroy their marriage and draw her back to the dark. Her father was right, it had been calling her.

Obi-Wan was kissing closer and closer to the place she desired him most. Closer, closer...

Darth Zannah let out a frightened, blood curdling scream as Count Dooku lifted her with the Force and slammed her body so hard against the wall it caused her to see black spots in her vision. "Pathetic."

"Be with me, Opal." He crawled back up her body and met her gaze. His eyes had never been more clear or more vulnerable then in that moment of intimacy with his wife in their home, where he often allowed his stoic facade that the Jedi Order had thrust upon him at a young age fall. He loosely gripped her chin and turned wide brown eyes to meet blue.

Opal tilted her head. She slowly lifted her hand and dragged her fingertips across the apple of his cheeks, over his brow and around his eyes. Obi-Wan exhaled shakily as her fingers stopped against his chin and her thumb ran across his lip. She pulled her own between her teeth, painfully aware of the yearning pooling low in her belly as she raked her fingers through his hair and lightly tugged on it.

The moan she elicited curled her toes.

"Obi." Opal whispered. "No more talk about what our reality is, or the Jedi Council or the war. Ignore your inner voices telling you this is wrong, that we are wrong, and kiss me."

It started gentle, just as their relationship did when they met as children. Gentle and warm, open and inviting. Obi-Wan linked his fingers behind her neck and cupped her head in his hands. After being on the front lines of a war that they really had no business fighting, Obi-Wan Kenobi was tired of maintaining his facade of Jedi Master and General Kenobi, and sometimes he just wanted to come home and be Ben. He was tired of fighting his internal conflict of The Code versus the love for the women beneath him. The same woman he'd been fighting to be with since she'd come storming into his life at ten years old.

"Ben." She whispered into his mouth. Her fingers ran beneath his tunic and up his abdomen until they brushed against the ridge of a scar, and Obi-Wan stiffened beneath her touch. "That doesn't feel like a normal scar. It feels like a burn," Swallowing the knot in his throat, Obi-Wan lifted his arms and allowed her to remove the tunic. Her eyes softened at the whip marks that stretched across his back, ragged and red and relatively new. "Where did this come from?"