ekrochford

[ekrochford]

Return of Maul x Femreader (part 8/?)

Part 8

You look at your chrono, then wipe the sand grit from the screen and look again. It’s fifteen minutes to local midnight. Time to move.

There’s no sound outside your tent, so you ease the closure up and peer out. The moons are up in the always-clear sky, filling the sleeping camp with colorless light. There are sentries. Professor sprung for eight, paid out of the budget: four daytime and four nighttime escorts. Yes, escorts—a kind word for mercenaries.

As far as mercenaries go, they aren’t a bad lot. They are a team that contracts often with the University, and there hasn’t been a single riffle of discontent. They’re well-accustomed to the archeology types, and understand many of the idiosyncrasies that come with the territory. The eight of them have a fairly easy job, guarding a group with virtually no wealth and little to tempt bandits.

The ease with which you disable the sensors, cross out, and then turn them back on without raising an alarm—for the second time—leaves room for concern.

You strike out towards the rock canyon where you first reunited with Maul, full of conviction. No wily word games tonight—no games of any kind. No excuses. Maul said he would take you down into the ruins tonight, and that’s what you expect.

If he tells you that he isn’t sure it’s safe, you plan to insist anyway. Call his bluff. If he tells you that it’s too damaged to traverse, you’ll tell him you want to see for yourself. If he wraps you in his arms and kisses you like he did last night… well, you’ll think of something if that happens.

Last night… you let yourself have a little shiver of pleasure, remembering. Maul is at his best when able to talk, but even so…

And then, at the end there, another kiss that was just… different. You wonder what to make of it as you trudge up the dune. He’d asked about Zhalar, and his usual brazen confidence had simmered low. It was difficult to believe that Maul was actually worried about Zhalar—for one thing, if he was worried at all (and this occurred to you far too late) he could have just snuck through the camp and put a lightsaber through Zhalar’s chest.

Thankfully, he hadn’t. The possibility didn’t even occur to you until you saw Zhalar in the mess tent today; if Maul had murdered him, you wouldn’t have thought of it until someone (probably Ralla) found his corpse baking in his tent.

Other men in your life had grown defensive or possessive if they thought they had competition. You never really thought about how Maul would receive a rival, but you wouldn’t have guessed it would be almost anxious.

Dathomir was matriarchal, but he said he wasn’t raised there. If he had been, maybe you’d understand why instead of getting angry, he’d grown tense. Anxious, eager for touch as reassurance.

You crest the top of the dune, to the joy of your knees and quadriceps. You were a little off-center, so you course-correct and take a slightly left path down the other side. The shoulder of rock hunched out of the sand is close, and it only takes a couple minutes to descend the far side of the dune and reach the break in the rocks.

In your mind, you’ve also prepared a plan for Maul ditching you altogether, but you don’t need it yet. He’s here, waiting by his Razalon. You know he sensed you from a kilometer away, and he doesn’t bother acting surprised to see you’ve woken up on time tonight.

“Enjoyed your sleep?” he purrs as you walk near.

You’re relieved that he showed up and your mood is high. As a result, you’re feeling a little bold. “I slept great, but maybe you should have stayed. I had to walk all the way across camp for something to eat.”

You’ve earned a stunned silence, but his surprise shifts into a wicked smile as you reach the speeder.

“It just so happens that I, too, like my breakfast to backtalk me.”

Stars, he has a comeback for everything.

You step subtly out of his reach; this also puts him out of your reach, and it’s difficult to say which is more important. “Ready?” You roll your eyes at the smirk on Maul’s face. He lets it go, and swings into the Razalon’s seat.

“Ready.”

Other fond memories involving the Razalon float to the surface as you settle on the tiny sliver of seat visible between Maul’s legs. He gives a low sigh and adjusts his hips. You aren’t fooled, but you can’t resist the bait.

“Uncomfortable?”

“Quite the contrary.” Maul hooks his feet in the wells, which presses the two of you together from knee to chest. “I think I’d prefer to ride everywhere like this.”

---

An uneventful speeder ride, and then an uneventful climb up the hidden stone stairs to the landing above. Your excitement cranks upward as the distance closes. A part of you had quietly held out, doubtful and suspicious. There was every reason to suspect Maul, and precious few to trust him. But after a trip across the sands and up the staircase, you’re finally standing in front of the door again. It’s still open, as you left it. Inviting.

Maul digs out his illumi-droid and activates it. With a high whir and a crackle, it begins to hover and the light sparks on. You’re better prepared tonight; you brought your satchel with a hand-light and extra glow-rods as back-up, but you don’t pull them out yet. The illumi-droid is enough at the moment.

You look at Maul, asking a silent question. He chuckles and nods. “The stairs are safe enough. A few are damaged, so watch your step.”

He extends an arm outward, an ‘after you’ gesture.

Too excited to speak, you step over the threshold and take in the tiny antechamber. The illumi-droid follows, and Maul lingers over the door, giving you what space there is to be had.

As expected, this room looks just as ancient as the ruins near the camp. But enclosed, shielded from the sun and wind and sand, there’s ancient paint still on the walls, faded but incredibly intact. Runes—there are runes! They line the wall just above head height in a row. You take out your journal and copy a few, but they aren’t in a language that you recognize.

“Do you know what language this is?”

“No.”

You don’t look at his face. Maul rarely ever gives one-word answers, but lies are better kept short. You suspect that he knows you see through it, that both of you understand there’s only a very narrow path by which this adventure can proceed. The entire truth would surely cut it short.

There’s a whole complex down the stairs, but every time you finish one note, you see something else you want to jot down. Abstract. Unknown language. Red pigmentation. Geometric design with repeating motifs…

The walls and ceiling are more precisely cut than you realized from outside. The corners are sharp angles in the sedimentary stone (an ancient ocean bed, you think), contrasting with the curve of the descending stairs. The illumi-droid throws rounded shadows, filling the ceiling overhead with a soft, dusky veil.

You’ve been cramming notes into the corner of the page and you look at your chrono; you’ve already wasted twenty minutes here, without even descending the stairs.

“Better head down,” you say—to Maul or to yourself? Now that you’re here, standing at the head of the spiral, one final flicker of doubt worms at you. Maybe you should have told Professor, after all.

But the call of the mysteries at the bottom of these stairs is too loud to ignore. You start down, the illumi-droid out front and Maul following close behind.

The walls are just as smooth as the antechamber. No lines, no bricks. These stairs were carved into the rock, and whoever did it, they were laser-precise. There was some wear to the steps; once, this passage had seen a lot of traffic.

“Watch that stair.” Maul was very close, almost standing on the same step as you, as he pointed out a stair that was missing entirely. Like a missing tooth, there was just a gap, opening into a deep, narrow gorge.

You step over it carefully. You can’t see the bottom.

“Was that a trap?”

“Yes. I triggered it the day before last, and it doesn’t look designed to reset itself.”

“The mechanism could be broken.” You’ve stopped by the stair; you grab the illumi-droid, ignoring its chirping protest, and shine the light into the empty space. “Our theory was that these ruins were pre-nomadic Tuskan, but I doubt it, now. I don’t think Tuskans ever built like this.”

Maul doesn’t answer, and you don’t bother pressing.

You can’t see the mechanism that manages the trap. Curious, you get down on the bottom stair and start to lean into the crevice. To your surprise, Maul rushes down next to you to catch your shoulders.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking at the underside of the stair.”

“Why?”

“What—because I want to see if the trap mechanism is visible, obviously.”

With a sigh, he lets you to it. You can’t see very much, anyway, although you lean almost your entire torso down into the gap trying.

“Damn.” You shimmy back out of the hole and get to your feet. “Was it activated when you put weight on it?”

“Of course.”

You take out your journal and jot this down, too, flipping to a fresh page. You sketch a diagram of the grooves in the stairwell wall where the missing step used to be, while you’re at it. Maul raises the ridges where his eyebrows would be, but lets you scribble away. When you get moving again, there are two additional missing stairs (“If you miss the first one, I suppose,” Maul comments drily). And then, without warning, the steps end in a landing and an archway, and the space yawns open.

The illumi-droid isn’t nearly enough; hovering a meter over your head, it tries to adapt to the greater space, but it lacks the power. Mouth hanging open, you fumble through your satchel blindly, still staring out into the chamber before you, and pull out your hand-lamp.

It stretches on far past the range of your lamp, a long walkway, a long corridor, with gaping black offshoots punched along even intervals. Statues punctuate the walkway—the raised walkway, you see now that there is a sunken area off to each side, as if there were pools here once. Pools! On Tatooine!

The next hour—hours—pass in a blur. Maul follows behind you, letting you jabber about incised versus dentate, the lifespan of various pigments, repeating patterns and hexagonal construction styles. You note that three-sided and six-sided structural elements are both present, and if Maul answers, you don’t hear it because you’re already thinking about how it may be comparable to ancient Dantooine constructions, but this dark, luminous stone in the empty water pools and the doorways is unfamiliar, and these statues don’t look like anything in the Arrakis system…

You settle against the pedestal of one of the stone-hooded figures that stand sentinel down the corridor. You scampered down at least a kilometer before you reached the end, a huge triangular door that stands firmly shut. You weren’t finished in the main corridor yet, so you left it alone, and now you’re exhausted. Your hand is cramped from writing, and you’re reading back over your notes when Maul crouches down just in front of you.

“Anything interesting?”

Where to start?! “All of it!” You laugh, light, exultant, and fatigued. You point over his head. “The frieze running along the top might be mythology, or it might be history. It’s sort of hard to tell, most cultures have a figure like that—you see the haloed figure elevated above the others? It could be either a god, some kind of god associated with this temple—it’s framed like a supreme god, but if this was a sanctuary of that god, they would paint him as supreme. But it could also be some sort of warrior-king, or even a god-emperor. A mortal deified as an ascended being.” You’d written down pages of notes comparing it offhand to other ancient sites that sprung to mind, but you aren’t exactly used to working alone. Usually you have Professor and your archeology peers to bounce ideas off of.

Maul is listening with interest. “Can you date it?”

“At least a thousand years old. I think the ruins I’m excavating at the other end are towers—and that means this was all built in a different geological age. I think it might even predate the climate disaster.”

“Climate disaster?”

“Tatooine used to have water. Paleogeologists theorize that there may have been another moon around Tatooine once, and its orbit grew until it looped right off into space. This could have caused a—a thinning, of the planet’s magnetic field. Less protection from the suns’ radiation.”

Maul absorbed this. His interest didn’t seem feigned. “Is that common?”

“That kind of event is a once-every-billion years chance. But in a galaxy this size, there are lots of other examples.”

“So were there other people here besides the Tuskans?”

“It seems so.” You indicate the structure around you.

“They could have colonized this planet.”

You pull out your journal; your hand stings painfully, but you note that down anyway. “That’s very true. Other structures may just be buried in the sand, too deep to see…”

“Have you tried to sense anything?”

Your hand pauses mid-sentence. “Well… no. Usually structures like this are too old, memories fade after a millennium or so.”

“You should try. I wonder if you could point me in the right direction.” Maul looks down toward the door at the end of the hall, irritated. “My search has turned up nothing.”

You tuck your journal into your bag. When you get your feet under you to stand, Maul is already up and his hand is out. You take it and let him pull you upright.

“Where have you looked?”

“Through many of the offshoots, and in that main chamber down at the end.” Maul nods in that direction. “I suspected a hidden room or hidden compartment somewhere within. But that would be obvious. Likely, what I seek is hidden somewhere more subtle.”

“And these offshoots?”

“They go everywhere. I’ve started something of a map, to keep track of the halls I’ve already explored.” He pulls out a holoprojector, and after a few taps to bring it to life and navigate files, a holo-representation of the underground chambers appears. Off of this main tunnel, you see several long, branching halls, many with dead ends or cave-ins marked out. There’s a recognizable pattern, visible through the centuries of damage. You see red marks here and there, and when you count three on the stairs you realize that they mark traps that Maul already found.

Logically, the best place to start is at the beginning. You track back up the walkway, trailed by Maul and the illumi-droid, and stand in the archway at the foot of the stairs.

Uncertain, you try to open your energy, like turning on a tap. Like opening a window. Visualizing these things helps a little; you can feel the ambient energy, cool like water, drifting past. Your ability to sense it is limited by your own modest powers. Maul, as usual, is a blank space, but you search around for some fragment, something else left behind.

Wisps. You grumble, reaching for them and knowing that they will dissipate under your fingers. You aren’t strong enough. These lingering whispers can’t manifest from the little energy that you have to give them.

“There’s something here,” you tell Maul, closing your eyes. “It’s weak. I don’t think I have the power to feel it out.”

“Emotion sometimes helps.”

You think of the waves of anger pulsing through Maul’s door and shudder. “I don’t think there’s anything I’m angry enough at.” Your eyes are still closed, concentrating.

“Not even the University? This Iliana woman?”

You shake your head, barely listening. There is something here. It’s so close… “She’s annoying, but I’m not… I’m not consumed by it. It’s just part of the life. Yeah, I need the University to pay for the dig site, but that’s just how it is. I have to jump through some hoops.”

“Hmm… Not the Hutts?”

“No. And least, not yet. Jabba’s just a crime lord, he’s all business. Not very different from some local governments I’ve seen.”

Maul was quiet for a minute. In that time, you reach out with the Force, but it’s like trying to catch smoke with a net. “Dammit…”

“I may be able to help.”

“Oh? How’s that?”

You’re expecting a verbal answer. What you get is Maul’s gloved hands on your hips, gently grinding you back against him. You don’t open your eyes yet, not even when Maul presses a slow kiss to the base of your neck.

“Desire, too, is an emotion.”

Maybe it is. The energy you’re struggling to sense does become clearer. “I… I think you’re right.”

His teeth graze over your skin, and your pulse spikes. The Force around you, too, brightens as if a shade is removed from your inner eye. Brightens, and gains color. You’ve never seen it so clearly, except in Maul.

“It is helping?” Maul whispers into your hair.

You nod, and he breathes another line of kisses from your ear down to the collar of your shirt. He groans, and his hands on your hips clutch harder. “I want to tie you up again.”

Your concentration flags, but your connection to the Force surges. You’ve never tried this; emotion makes it much easier. You’ve always heard the Jedi are the calm, meditating types. That doesn’t make much sense, when tapping into your emotions makes it feel like the Force is flowing through your pores, sunlight in your veins.

And with it, you can see the echoes like never before. You can see them where they cling to the stones, waiting in place—you’ve never been able to detect them, except to simply feel. And they’re all different! Different shapes, different colors… Maybe you can even guess what’s in them first…

You reach for the strongest one with your mind. Not-quite-images appear behind your eyelids. Shadows on the other side of a thin curtain. You think there’s two—the voices are definitely two—and they’re speaking…

…Hutt’s power plays. Again. It’s tedious.

They could be destabilizing. Perhaps it’s time to see Gardulla retired.

Perhaps. She’s had power for some time, and it’s gone to her head. Charge me a toll? She’s forgotten who put her here…

It’s anger sealing this memory, a curious flavor of it. Entitled. Proud. There’s a depth to it, the tunnelling, criss-crossing paths of years and years of seeing things work favorably, soured by perceived offense.

But it doesn’t tell you where to look. A part of you is still well aware of the closeness of Maul’s body. And yet, you’re moving on to the next memory.

This one has no words, no images. You can just make out the brush of fabric across the stair, and a fleeting crack of rage—and hatred—the seething fury of a creature with a boot on its neck.

Anger, more anger. It leaves your throat dry and your limbs shaking. It’s one thing to see a person angry, to experience their emotion from the outside. This is like having it injected into you, rage that isn’t yours, pummeling your mind like a whirlwind in a barrel.

“Too much?”

You aren’t sure if he means the same thing you do, but you nod.

“Just close it off again.”

And you do. It fights a little, as if your Force powers don’t want to go back in the box. But you get the lid down—or maybe it’s more like snapping a filter back in place. Your usual glimmer of energy resumes, and you open your eyes.

All at once, the strain lands. You feel like your mind has dead-lifted a speeder.

When you don’t move, Maul sweeps you up by the knees and shoulders and carries you to the first pedestal in the row. He sets you down; there’s enough room to sit in front of the hooded statue, right at its feet. The illumi-droid hovers near, throwing light in a tight yellow circle.

You’re sapped. Even before you tried playing with the Force, you were already tired, and it’s well past the middle of the night. Exhaustion or no, you’ll need to get back soon, and that thought only adds to the weight. It isn’t that you feel sick, and it isn’t that you feel dizzy. You just pushed past your own long-accepted horizon, and the ease with which it happened made it simple to push farther. Maybe too far.

You’re sitting with your eyes closed, but you can feel Maul standing right in front of you. He blocks out a slice of the illumi-droid’s light, and his cloak rustles every so often as he moves. His hands move from your shoulders, to your knees, then to your arms.

It isn’t until you look up at him that you realize he’s worried. He’s worried, and he doesn’t look like he has any idea what to do with that feeling.

“That worked,” you say, and muster up a weary smile.

“Yes, it did.” He’s looking in your eyes, and then his fingertips land on the pulse under your jaw. “You look… tired. But you’re awake, and breathing. Your heart is beating. I can feel the flow of the Force through you is… reduced, again. What do you feel?”

“Nothing. It’s back to normal.”

Maul’s lips pull down and you catch his eye bob towards the far end of the hall, where the chamber at the end waits.

You make yourself sit upright. “Do you want to go check in there?”

“No,” he answers quickly. He clears his throat. “No, we should get you back to your camp. You’ve been awake all night. You’ll need to sleep. If you can rest during the day, we can come back tomorrow and…”

“Try again?”

Maul looks you up and down, frowning. “Try again, slowly. You really haven’t tried… anything… with the Force, have you?”

You start to inch off the statue base. He doesn’t bother holding your hands; Maul simply lifts you down to the ground and sets you cautiously on your feet. Well, both your legs hold up, and that’s something; you wobble just once, but apart from being ragdoll-tired and kilometers away from your bedroll, you don’t think you’re doing too badly.

You start off towards the stairs, faking confident steps. The thought of climbing all those stairs… you don’t think about it. You’ll have to just start climbing, and not worry about how many stairs there are.

“I didn’t realize how much was intact.” You start up, bravely stepping over the first missing stair. Maul is very close behind, clearly ready to catch you if you start to plummet into the abyss.

“And you haven’t even explored the side rooms.”

“What’s back there?”

“All sorts of things. Some rooms are completely empty. There are several halls that seems like… barracks. Or dormitories.” Only half of your foot catches the next step, and Maul has to lunge forward to keep you from smacking forward against the stone. He sets you back on your feet. “Meeting rooms, or gathering rooms, I suppose. I even found an interrogation room.”

“What?” You nearly miss a step again, but this time you catch yourself.

Maul laugh is low and velvety. “I told you I wanted to tie you up again.”

And here you are, struggling up these stairs when you could be… What a waste. If you’d known that option was on the table, you would have cut your fevered exploration of the main chamber short by an hour or two.

“Nothing too bloody, I hope.”

Maul chuckles behind you. “Some of it, I think so. The climate is perfect here to preserve it. But there are at least a couple manacles that only look a little rusty… Maybe I’ll come down during the day and clean them.��

You can’t tell if he’s teasing. More disturbingly, you hope he’s not.

---

Like what you read?

[ekrochford]

Return of Maul x Femreader (part 7/?)

[A little late with this one, sorry!]

Part 7

Outside your tent, someone is calling your name. You topple and flop out of your bedroll, bleary-eyed. The suns are up, you can see the light through the solar-flect. That means that even though you’ve only been back for two or three hours, you’ve massively overslept.

You wrap a blanket around yourself—much faster than getting dressed, and there’s an urgency to the voice that has you rushing without understanding why. Confused and dizzy on two hours of sleep, you trip over your boots and almost tumble through the closure of your tent.

You rip it open at last and blink up at Zhalar, who’s leaned forward as if he were about to open it himself. You take in his furrowed brows and tense jaw. His wide coppery eyes.

But in the next second, his nostrils flare and his concern turns to surprise. His large ears pin back with it, and eyebrows raise.

“Well. I guess it went well.”

You feel a blush heat your neck, your face. Clumsy and trying not to let it gape open, you shuffle the blanket to cover your camisole and underwear. Zhalar himself seems abashed. He straightens. He clears his throat awkwardly.

“I… um… thought I’d come make sure you were in your tent, and not half-buried out in the desert.”

“Thank you.” It comes out a little short, and you wince. “Really—thank you… for coming to… check on me…”

“Professor wants to see you,” Zhalar continued, sheathing his hands in his pockets. Those coppery eyes have wandered elsewhere, either politely or awkwardly averted. “He doesn’t seem upset that you overslept, but word is that he heard back from the University already.”

That gets your attention. Your head is still pounding, but you nod. “Thanks—I’ll go see him now.”

---

In minutes, you’ve slapped aside the hanging panel door of the office tent and strode inside. Your eyes are burning and your skin feels like it’s hanging off your bones. You haven’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon and if you don’t drink some water soon, you’ll be so dehydrated that you could blow away like a desiccated kite.

But none of those things matter. Not just now. “What’d they say?” you demand without preamble.

Professor Taq Norr is sitting at the flimsy field desk in the corner. He looks up at the junior assistants, back again this morning making cross-comparisons of the radar images from yesterday and the Republic database. The juniors, including Ralla, look up from their work, first at you, then at Professor, then back at you. Hesitantly, they start to set down their materials and step out.

Professor gives an exasperated scoff and waves them to stay. “Everyone’s going to hear about it by lunchtime anyway, you might as well just hear it from me.”

You cross to the desk and stand there, looming over the cluttered tabletop. Professor looks up at you uneasily, at your twitching fingers and cranked shoulders. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” You sit, feeling like the bottom of your stomach has turned into a sieve.

“No, it isn’t,” Professor says. “But you look like you didn’t sleep.”

The rattle of the Razalon underneath you jostles to the forefront. You clear your throat. “I slept some.”

“Well, I told you there was no need to worry, and there wasn’t. The Department Chair was thrilled to hear about the expanded find.”

“You got the Department Chair on holo? What time was it on Coruscant?”

“Late, I think, but we have friends too.” Professor’s eyes crinkled. “Belmona likes you more than Illiana, and she’s been with the department for five hundred years. Her word carries some weight, when she wants to use it.”

It feels like melting into a hot bath—the relief soaks through you, and your shoulders finally drop. “Oh, stars. I thought…” You sigh. Professor already knows exactly what you thought; the way he’s raising his eyebrow feathers says so. “That’s good.”

“There is other news…”

Suspicious, you look up at Professor. He sees your look and raises his eyes to the tent ceiling.

“By all the… it isn’t bad news. But a consultant is being shipped out to review the GPR. It’s perfectly normal for the University to send a third-party to confirm new data when funding is involved.”

Your lips twist, annoyed. “But you sent them all the GPR images. It isn’t like we can see any of it in person, yet. What does the funding committee need to send a consultant for?”

Professor frowns, thinking, and glances over your shoulder at the junior associates. You already know at least one of them is listening intently with those sharp little green ears of hers. “Actually… I don’t recall the DC saying anything about the funding committee… I’m not sure they told me who this consultant is meant to represent. Possibly a representative of the Galactic Histories Department board.”

This is more confusing still. Why would the board want to send a consultant? The ins and outs of the dig site were handled by committees, treasurers, inspectors… the board didn’t get involved in this sort of thing.

Professor sees the confusion on your face and shrugs his shoulders. You can see he has the same questions you do.

For a sliver of a moment, you think of telling Professor about the doorway. Right now. You think about the years he’s been a mentor and a friend to you, and how your love for ancient things is only an echo compared to his own. You don’t believe that Maul was lying to you last night. After all, he never has before—not outright, not like this. But here and now, you’re lying to one of the people who have always guided and helped you as you chased your dreams and goals. The guilt is acidic, and you actually open your mouth to confess everything.

But then behind you, something drops to the floor, and Ralla gives a soft curse as she dips down to retrieve it. You close your mouth, and don’t open it again.

“Why don’t you go get some more sleep?” Professor asks diplomatically. “You look like you could use a little more rest.”

---

Rest. You trip over the threshold of the tent on your way out; Ralla lets out a high giggle but doesn’t say anything as the tent flap drops back into place.

You pull down your UV goggles and pull up your linen hood; the suns are white-hot light, so intense you can almost feel the photons like a heat wall as you pass through camp. Your only exposed skin is your hands, and they feel like jerky strips drying out in the zero-humidity air.

There’s a rattling water cart at the edge of camp; the metal frame over the cart bed catches the sunlight in flashing white. You look at your wrist chrono. The water harvesters come by about this time every day to sell another barrel for drinking and cooking. They’re right on time, as always—this camp is a reliable buyer and so far, no other water farms have realized it’s here. No competition.

Out of nowhere, you wonder whether Maul has enough water, wherever he is.

You have to stifle the thought. You’re too exhausted to think about Maul, right now. Maul, and being thoroughly dicked over the handlebars of his speeder. Maul, opening a secret door in the cliffs. Maul, telling you that he showed you his true self and you ran away from him…

Stop thinking about him…

You’re passing by the canopied pavilion—you can’t call it anything else—set out front of the Hutt rep’s tent. At least you can forget Maul for a second; the human male Hutt representative (what was his name? Bemat? Bumat?) was reclining in a camp chair in the shade. He can’t see your eyes through your dark goggles, but he catches you look his way and gives a smug wave.

You’re exhausted enough that if his two guards weren’t practically close enough to smell, it might be worth dying over to just slap that smug look off his face. But since they are, and it’s not, you trudge on to the dig site.

At least you have a little satisfaction over it. Just a little. You’ll be going inside the ruins tonight, and that thought is more powerful than some gangster’s smirk. Before the Hutts, before anyone except Maul, you’re going to see what’s inside.

You have to hold tight to this thought a few minutes later.

“We can’t dig?” You stare at Nelon, aghast. “Why…?”

“I thought Professor would have told you,” Nelon replied, tugging the veil down from his mouth. You can see your shocked face reflected back in his dark goggles. “We have to wait until the consultant from the University gets here.”

“But… why? We’re still working on the original planned dig site! They’re just coming here to review the GRP imaging, aren’t they?”

Nelon shrugged. “I dunno. Sounds like another department to me—trying to see if they can yank the site out from under Professor Taq Norr.”

A bolt of anger strikes through you at that. “Over my dead body.” Nelon winces, and you exhale a sigh; you need to be more professional. Some of these University kids have never been outside the classroom. “Ok, then. What are we doing?”

Nelon gestured at the tables arranged under an awning nearby, mostly empty. “Uh… cleaning and cataloguing.”

Cleaning and cataloguing what? No one’s found anything yet. You sigh again. You feel like you’re doing a lot of that.

The water harvesters are gone by the time you reach the other end of the camp; the water barrel is being hovered away on an anti-grav dolly to its place near the mess tent. Not much hope of finding something to do here.

You collect your clothes from the heap by the dryer; everyone’s things get thrown in the same pile, and you’re long past worrying about having to separate out someone else’s underwear or socks from yours. At least they’re all clean. You chat for a while with Mavit, whose scaled skin soaks up the light from both suns where she’s lounging out from under the shade during her wash station nanny shift. You fold your things to kill time, then carry them back to your tent.

Your bedroll beckons with a near-audible siren song when you open the flap to set your clean clothes inside. You scratch at your hair; you’re sure it’s full of sand, even under the hood.

Thinking of Zhalar and his sensitive nose, you pick up your clean clothes again and cross back to the other side of the camp to the shower. This doldrum stillness is worse now than when everyone was waiting on the GRP coupler. At least then, you could excavate the edges of the visible ruins.

You scrub down in the minimal water, then turn it off and towel dry in the stall. The air is crisp and dry, and within minutes so is your skin. You dress before you step out into the fine-sanded breeze, all the way up to the hood over your barely-damp hair. Even from here, you can make out the summoning call of your bed. If there’s really nothing to be done until the consultant arrives, you decide to take Professor’s advice and catch up on all the sleep you weren’t getting during the night.

---

It’s dark when your eyes creak open again.

“Kriff!” You sit up, blind. What time is it? You hit the tiny light on your wrist chrono. You’ve been asleep for nine hours?!

But then, in the moment before the miniature light blinks out, you look up. In the corner of your tent, the light catches in twin points. Eyes. The chrono light goes out, and you’re in perfect darkness again.

You scream.

“It’s just me,” Maul murmurs, unbothered.

He may be unbothered, but you’ve thrown yourself back into the corner of your tent. Intuitively, you were trying to create distance, but it would have been wiser to lunge for the exit; it was a good thing it was just Maul.

Just Maul. You feel around in the dark for your lamp. Yeah. Right.

“What are you doing here?” You hiss, but before he can answer there’s a voice outside your tent.

“Are you all right in there?! What happened?!”

“Nothing! Nothing—I thought I saw a—a scorpek.”

The voice—Nelon—made a gagging sound. “Ugh. You sure there’s not one?”

“I was just dreaming. Sorry.”

“No problem!”

You sit there, listening for the shuff of footsteps trudging through sand. Nelon’s steps melt away into the camp until you’re alone again. You start to grope around for the lamp.

“Very thin walls, aren’t they?” You can hear the smirk in Maul’s voice.

Somehow, being here in the dark with him is unsettling. Can he see in the dark? And if not see, is he able to sense you flailing around, searching with your fingers for the light?

The fingers in question jam into something unexpected and leathery. Maul’s boot.

“Ah. You found something.”

“You’re hilarious.”

You knock the lamp over in the dark, fumble it back upright, and hit the power. It’s on the middle setting, but you toggle it down until its yellow glow is soft as a candleflame. You set it down in the corner; with the toe of his boot, Maul shifts your travel pack until its shadow lies over him, obscuring his horned silhouette from showing on the solar-flect.

“What are you doing here?” you repeat.

“You didn’t come to meet me.” Maul draws a knee up and slouches an arm over it. “I came to make sure that we still had an understanding.”

He came to make sure you’d kept your mouth shut. Your skin prickles into rawka-flesh. What would he have done if you hadn’t?

“How did you get past the sensors?”

Maul just looks at you, his lips just barely curled in amusement.

Your voice drops even lower. “Alright, well let’s go, then.” You reach for your boots; you’re already half-dressed, it’ll only take a half a minute to be ready.

“I can’t take you down into the ruins yet,” Maul stops you.

Your eyes narrow at him. “Why not?”

He hasn’t moved from his slouched position in the opposite corner of the tent. “I’m not confident that the space is clear of dangers. I would have told you when you came to meet me tonight, but you didn’t arrive.”

The two of you stare at each other. Maul doesn’t seem tense or uncomfortable, but then, you’re sure that he can lie out both sides of his mouth at the same time without blinking.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“No.”

Silence, again.

“What makes you think you can even find all the traps?”

Maul gives a humming sigh, rolling his shoulders. His golden eyes never leave you, and this tent is beginning to feel very small. Maul’s arms are long—you know very well that he can easily reach you from where he’s sitting. Now that you’ve had almost a whole day of sleep, you’re thinking again of what he could do if he got his hands on you.

You catch him smirking.

“Are you reading my mind?” you hiss.

Maul actually laughs at this, low enough that even someone with their ear to the solar-flect might not catch it. “Now, why would you think I could read your mind?”

You shake your head and roll your eyes, embarrassed. Busying yourself putting your boots away, you avoid his eye, but you can still see Maul watching you from the corner. He tilts his head, just a degree. You can just see his mouth open, hesitate, then grin.

“I don’t need to read your mind.” He leans forward onto his knee and rests his chin on his arms. His face has taken on a sly, teasing expression.

“Oh?” You sit back, eyebrows raised.

The corners of Maul’s grin pull apart, a sliver of teeth. “No. I don’t need to read your mind, because I can read you face. Your words…” he chuckles at the way you press you lips together defiantly, “and your silences, too. Your movements, your tone. Your eyes. Your mouth.”

Self-consciously, you try not to do anything; of course this only entertains Maul more. His grin turns from a hint to a gleam in the amber light of the lamp.

“I suppose I should go then.” He doesn’t move.

You roll your lips together and nod. “I guess so.”

The air in your tent feels like someone is sucking the oxygen out of it; it’s a familiar tension and you know exactly where it’s headed. When Maul rolls forward out of the corner, in your every nerve you can almost feel the distance between you shrink. He doesn’t even look at the tent closure; his eyes don’t leave you. Without having to look, Maul reaches out to the lamp and switches the light off.

The darkness presses against your eyes like felt. It’s complete, it’s solid. The moons haven’t risen very high yet, and although the stars outside are bright, the solar-flect is designed to absorb UV and repel the rest of the spectrum.

You can just hear Maul move, and to your straining ears, he sounds so close—like he’s already in your head.

Of course he is. You have time to think this before his hands find you.

His fingers twine with yours, first. He pulls your hand slowly up until he can kiss your knuckles, over your clasped fingers. He gently opens your hand so he can run his mouth over your sensitive palm, and then the inside of your wrist.

It’s incredible how fast the tide of raw need drowns out your better sense. Your tent sits, with its thin walls, in the center of your dig site camp, surrounded by dozens of your co-workers and other University personnel. You don’t care. The things that should matter just don’t seem all that important when Maul is pulling you against the warmth of his body, kissing a line up the sleeve of your shirt until he reaches your exposed neck.

His teeth graze the curve of your jugular vein, starting up a tremor from deep in your abdomen. “Maul…”

“Shh…” He presses his lips and the teeth behind them up to the skin under your ear. “We mustn’t disturb your fellow scholars.” He closes his teeth over your earlobe carefully, tugging at the skin before letting go. “You’ll have to be very quiet while I punish you for being late.”

You can’t see in the dark. The touch of his hands, his mouth, the brush of his clothes against you. The smell of exhaust and sand on his skin. Your ears catch every snap of sound, from the rustle of your bedroll to the rasp of breath against your throat.

You don’t remember if he was wearing gloves before. He isn’t now, because in the absence of sight your skin feels his hands and knows they’re bare. His claws scrape up your scalp gently, through your hair, until he’s got a fistful of it. His mouth closes over yours, sealing your gasp—and any other sounds you might make—while his other hand pulls you back onto your bedroll by your belt.

His hands vanish, and you can just barely hear the rustle of clothes over you; a flop of fabric that is too heavy to be anything but Maul’s cloak lands on the tent floor. A jangling, next—his belt, surely, which also lands with a ring in the pile. Further rustling—he’s just taking everything off, and you can’t see any of it. You start to sit up on your elbows.

One clawed finger lands at the hollow of your throat and gently presses you back down. It only disappears when you’re flat on your back again. You don’t comment, because those are the rules of this game: no sight, no sound.

You can’t see him, but knowing that Maul is naked over you… Your mind fills in the void far too efficiently.

Your ears pick up the rustle of his weight resting near your feet, just as Maul starts pulling your boots off. In your head, you think about how to ask without speaking if you should help; you smile (still not sure if Maul can see in the dark) and pull your belt loose. Maul doesn’t stop you, and that’s answer enough. You pull the ties of your outer tunic loose, as well.

By the time you have that done, Maul has both your boots and both your socks off. He takes one of your feet in his hands and presses his thumbs deep into the sole. You have to stop what you’re doing; if you don’t concentrate, you know you’ll moan out loud. He’s circling his thumbs directly on the sore knot in the arch of your foot. It feels like you’ve been hit with a stun gun, like your muscles just can’t hear your directions to move.

One of his hands disappears, only to land on yours. Maul moves it to the closure of your pants, and his message is clear. You tug at the closure while Maul moves to the other foot, kneading and massaging. When you wrestle your pants down your hips, he reaches up to yank down your underwear, too, and pulls it all off.

Maul catches your leg, and closes his teeth over your inner thigh. A gasp shakes out before you can stop it. His bite is a little less than gentle, hard enough that it might bruise, and he quickly let’s go. He kisses up your thigh instead, as if to apologize; he’s thoroughly enjoying this game, enough that he slipped for a second and let his arousal show.

His hands are softer, now. His teeth are well-hidden. Maul presses his mouth up the top of your thigh, lingering at the bend of your hips to tease you. Stars, it’s working. He lets you take off your own camisole, your own bra, gradually moving up your side to your ribcage until his horns scrape the underside your breast. Your hands find the muscles of his shoulders and cling tight.

Maul’s weight is resting between your legs, spreading them a little at a time. But he moves around the places where you most want touched. Over your sensitive ribcage. Along your collar bones.

You know he understands. Your fingers are digging into his shoulders, your back arches up against him, but Maul goes on teasing, teasing. He presses his hips into you, presses the length of his warm, hard cock so close to where you want it, but doesn’t move to slip it inside.

When he’s run out of places to taunt you, Maul finally moves a hand to cup one of your breasts. The air that escapes you makes a wheeze in your throat. You can feel Maul’s grin, can feel his lips curve where they’re pressed against your sternum.

Instead of teasing, Maul’s thumb and finger close around your nipple mercilessly, and your whole body goes taut. You barely hold in a shout, and barely hold it in a second time when Maul’s mouth finds your other nipple.

He’s gone from teasing to torturing. You’ve begun to shake beneath him. You need him inside you, and your hands move down to his hips, digging in.

Abruptly, Maul pulls back and spins you over. You can guess at what he’s planning, and you could sob in relief—if you were allowed to make a sound. A moment later Maul leans over you; you can feel him lined up along your thighs, hips, and back. He grasps your jaw carefully from behind, squeezing at the mandible until you open your mouth.

Between your teeth, Maul fits what feels and tastes like your rolled-up shirt sleeve. He’s gagged you, and that thought lights your skin with need. You bite down on your own shirt.

Maul yanks your hips up, slapping crisply against his own. You start to rise onto your arms, but Maul presses down with a hand between your shoulder blades, pressing your chest and face into the bedroll. You stay down with your buttocks high in the air, which seems to be exactly what Maul wants, because he’s lined up his head between your labia.

You nearly bite through your shirt as Maul thrusts it into you. Your hands claw into your bedroll, holding on tight as he gets up to speed. Your skin and his clap together, but he doesn’t slow down and doesn’t seem to care. Come to think of it, you don’t care very much either. About anything. You can’t possibly think, not with your brain pinwheeling.

From this position orgasm is only a few thrusts away, and that distance is quickly crossed. Game or no, small whines and moans escape you around the gag. Maul, too, can’t stay completely silent. His breathing above you is rough, and you expect him to finish soon.

He slams it into you, then pulls slowly, slowly out. And then slowly back in. Out, and then slowly in again. Your teeth grind on your shirt sleeve at the stretch of sensation, like your orgasm is being stretched out, too. Growing thinner and more precarious.

Just when you’re afraid it may snap altogether, Maul rides back into you. Fast and rough for maybe a minute, racking your heart rate into the red. And then slow again, forcing your body to come back down.

When he goes hard for a third time, you can hear his gasps, the small growls with each thrust, and it only drives you further out of your mind with pleasure. You don’t worry for a second that Maul might make too much noise when he comes; when he does, there’s only a muffled groan in the dark, as if he’s clamping his lips tightly shut.

He lowers to the bed next to you, skin hot but barely damp in the hyper-dry air. You stretch out your legs, throw your shirt on the pile on clothes, and curl against his side.

Maul’s arm has barely hugged around you when a shout from just outside your tent has you bolting upright.

“Hey!”

It’s Ralla—not now!—she’s right outside the closure of your tent! Frantically, you snatch the edge of the bedroll up, flailing around in the dark—

The tent flap whips open and a light shines in your face.

“Hey! You never showed up for your laundry shift! Mavit might be willing to cover for you, but…”

Your blood is so full of adrenaline that—paradoxically—all you can do is sit there, transfixed by the light in your face. Maul is right next to you, in clear view, as naked as you are and there’s no possible way to explain this that doesn’t get your career obliterated—

The light drifts away a little, just enough that you can see Ralla’s face. “What are you doing?”

You blink.

“Are you naked?” Ralla’s eyes take in your tent interior in a sweep. How can she possibly look at anything other than Maul?

You look at him, just to make you sure aren’t insane. Did you just imagine all that? No. Maul is still next to you, sitting up on his elbows. He doesn’t seem the least bit alarmed at Ralla’s intrusion. He’s staring straight at her.

“Uh… yes?” you answer. It comes out as a question. “I… I was… hot.”

Ralla looks for a long time at Maul’s clothes on the floor; he sees the direction of her stare, and she seems to forget about them and turn her annoyance back in your direction.

“Mavit and Nelon may be happy to cover your slack, but you had duty shift and whether you’re senior assistant or not, you still have to do the camp work with the rest of us.”

“Yes—you’re right.” What else can you possibly say? “You’re absolutely right. I—I should have been there. I’ll head there now. Thanks for coming to get me.”

Ralla narrows her eyes. Maybe it’s only the speed at which you’re agreeing with her, but your being naked seems to be a red flag. Again, she looks at your clothes on the floor.

“Was there someone here?”

“What—? No, of course not!”

Even to you, this denial seems comically untrue. But it’s really the best you can come up with when all two meters of unclothed Maul is reclining next to you in your bedroll. Ralla gives you a sly grin.

“No? Come on.” Then, more eager, “Was it Zhalar?”

“What—? No!” Somehow, it sounds just as much of a lie as an actual lie. “No, Ralla. I’m not fucking Zhalar. Sheesh. Why don’t you go find him and ask him yourself before you start spreading rumors around camp.”

Ralla puts on a pout and shines her light in your face again, just to irritate you. “Fine, whatever.”

“I’ll be at Laundry in a few minutes.”

“Fine.” She’s obviously annoyed at having a bite of gossip yanked out of her teeth. Ralla pulls her light out of your tent and lets the flap fall back into place.

You scramble through the new darkness and secure it shut. You wish there was a lock, but there hasn’t been much of a need, until now. The light flares behind you, and you turn in time to see Maul rearranging your travel pack to disguise his horned shadow from the tent walls.

“How did you do that?” Because of course it was his doing. You don’t doubt it for a second.

Maul shrugs, lying back in your bedroll. “It’s a power you can hone with use of the Force.”

“So I could learn to do that?”

Maul gives you an appraising look, and you realize that of all the questions you could have asked, that one came out first. “I mean… what exactly did you do?”

“I only convinced her that I was of no interest. I was impressed at how hard she resisted; she really wanted to know what you were doing.”

“Hmm. Of course she did.” You start dressing.

“Leaving?”

“You heard her. I’m expected at the laundry station. And I’ve been sleeping all day, I need to get up and do something.”

Maul chuckles, and you can’t help but smile. You need to get up and do something else. Besides Maul.

You dress, but Maul doesn’t move just yet. Should you kick him out? You doubt he would be ruffled, even if you did. But then, if he can make himself functionally invisible to your camp-mates, who cares if he stays here? He can obviously come and go as he pleases.

You’ve sat on the edge of your bedroll to pull your boots on when Maul finally asks, “Who is Zhalar?”

“He’s the one who smelled you out in the desert. The Zyggerrian.”

“Ah.”

It isn’t until you’ve laced up and tied your boots that you wonder why Maul would ask. But then, after exactly one second of thought, you don’t need to ask him why—it was clear enough from Ralla’s questions what she was suspecting. You yourself went so far as to say it plainly.

“I’m not fucking Zhalar,” you repeat, looking back at Maul.

“I didn’t say you were.” His tone is neutral again, pleasant, even. You pull your outer tunic on and tie it closed, then reach for your belt.

“I’ve got to get to Laundry. Are… you going to stay?”

Maul rolls to his side and props his head up on his arm. “Do you want me to?”

“Yes, I do.” Sometimes, you don’t feel like giving Maul the satisfaction of handing him the answers he wants. But in this case, it seems more like the answer he needs.

His neutral façade thaws a little. He sits up; your tent and your bedroll both are built for one. Sitting up, he’s inches from you. You wait, expecting him to pull you close, grab you by the hair, or drag you in by the shirt collar.

When he doesn’t, you realize that he’s waiting for you, this time.

Your lips turn up in a smile, and you lean in. Once you meet his lips, Maul returns your kiss enthusiastically. One of his hands glides up to cradle your skull. You were expecting a fairly cool reception, after the mention of Zhalar. On the contrary; you sense a little bit of… uncertainty… in his touch. A desire to be reassured.

“Maul…” you don’t know what you planned to attach to that, but it comes out on a breath between the two of you. He breaks apart the kiss, but leaves his hand twined in your hair, watching your face.

“I’d better go,” he admits, reluctantly. “If you’re going to go exploring tomorrow, you’ll need to sleep tonight.”

You snort, then give Maul your most innocent eyes. “Are you saying you’d keep me awake?”

---

Like what you read?

[ekrochford]

[ekrochford]

Return of Maul x FemReader (part 6/?)

Exhilarated, nearly dancing, you let Maul lead you back down the stairs. He tucks the illumi-droid back in its home and the Tatooine night returns to silver and sharp black. A whole complex! Your head is spinning. Access without excavation! It would save time, resources—not to mention capture the attention of the funds committee. Your feet are hardly touching the rock by the time you reach the sand and realize that Maul has pulled his cloak off.

You stop a few steps away, thinking he might want to shake sand out of it. “What’re you doing?”

And then Maul turns your way, and you see the utterly humorless smile on his face. “You didn’t think we were going to ride all the way back like this—with your ass right on my cock? When I’m still this hard?”

If you’re being honest, you’d forgotten all about it in light of what he’d shown you at the top of these stairs. But this is Maul, and you’re well aware of what else he can show you.

You watch him fold his cloak and hang it over the handlebars, still watching you. The smile hasn’t dimmed.

Your mind simply will not abandon the doorway up the stairs, even as your blood starts heating. As a result you stand there dumbly, your body feeling like the two of you are pulsing opposite magnetic fields while in your head, you’re thinking how you didn’t get a good look at the door, or the interior of the entry…

Maul’s smile widens. He crosses the sand toward you, one slow step at a time. “It seems I still can’t hold your attention.”

“No, I think you have it.”

Maul laughs low in his throat and stops just in front of you. He put both of his gloves back on upstairs by the door, and now he holds your ungloved hands in his. His smile doesn’t dim—the light of the gold in his eye burns brighter still—as Maul squeezes both your hands. Raises them to his mouth. Kisses one palm, slowly, then the other.

Your throat is dry; you have to clear it before you can get anything out. “You definitely have it, now.”

Another laugh, and then Maul takes your hands and pulls them around his waist until his chest is an inch from your cheek. His scent fills your nose, starts a signal cascade from your brain downward. He holds your hands behind his back and puts them on the buckle of his belt.

“If you would be so kind.”

They seem to move on their own, albeit not well. Your fingers fumble with the buckle—anything is difficult when you’re handling it blind. But you tug it loose and pull it away. It hangs awkwardly in your hand as you watch his outer tunic billow open.

Maul takes his belt from your numb fingers and drops it in the sand. He holds up his gloved hands, staring straight down at you. “These next, I think.”

You nod, and catch yourself rolling your bottom lip under. As you remove both gloves and the red of his skin appears in the moonlight, the memories of what he likes to do with those hands make your brain feel a perilous degree warmer.

Maul watches you, knowing perfectly well. “And the rest?”

You push the outer tunic off his shoulders, feeling his muscles flex beneath your hands. It rustles to the ground along with the belt and gloves. With Maul’s eyes still burning a hole through yours, it’s clear he expects you to continue. You loosen the neck of his under shirt, and a line of tattooed throat and chest appear.

“Much better,” he murmurs when it’s gone. When he’s bare from the waist up. “And the boots.”

You have to kneel to remove them, bringing your face parallel with the bulge at the front of his pants. Maul only has so many articles of clothing left, and when first one foot, then the other is stripped of boot and sock, you feel Maul’s hand twine through your hair. Gently at first, but gaining a stronger grip as his fingers move down your skull.

“I missed how well you follow directions.”

The signal cascade has landed with a half-ton of force between your hips. “I missed how well you give them.” Your voice is higher and airier than usual, spoken with your head tilted slightly back.

“I believe the pants are next.”

Your heart is beating higher and higher in your chest, but you manage to speak around it. “Yes, sir.”

Maul’s hand in your hair flexes at this, claws pulling lines across your scalp. You reach up for the ties of his pants and tug them free; with little effort, they slide off his hips, off the source of the bulge, down his thighs, and Maul steps out of them without looking away from your face. He’s gone still, intent, quivering with anticipation.

“You ready for it?”

Stars, he’s good at this game. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Open your mouth, then.”

He’s a mouthful and then some; you relax your throat, try to take as much of him as you can. He brushes the back of your throat; tears blur your vison. Maul’s hand in your hair tightens, and he gives a soft moan. He pulls out a little, then back in.

“I can see your eyes tearing up… what a good girl you are, doing your best to take it all.”

You can’t possibly answer, not around Maul’s cock in your mouth. The way he talks is diabolical. Precise. Every word seems aimed right at the pleasure centers of your brain, tapping your thoughts like buttons. His hips move faster, and your hands come to rest on his thighs—you need something to balance with, keep your weight from dragging on your hair fisted in Maul’s grasp.

“In a—moment,” he pants out. “I’m going to—come—Have you missed—swallowing—my cum?”

You nod, so much as you’re able to. You try to make a sound, just to see if you can. Maul thrusts down your throat again and it’s close enough to your voicebox to muffle even a hum.

You feel his cock pulse in your mouth, and Maul’s other hand lands in your hair, too. You hear Maul suck in a breath through his teeth; you hold yours—you can’t get in any air around him—the instinctive flutter of panic sending your blood in a rush through your veins. It all seems to snag between your legs, growing hotter and aching harder with each passing minute. He spasms against your lips; you swallow.

Maul pulls himself out of your mouth, and you gasp in air. His limbs are looser now, his face more relaxed. He pulls you up carefully.

“Catch your breath… Yes, breathe…” He leads you over to the speeder.

“I’m… I’m fine. I’m good.”

Maul chuckles at that. “Yes, you are.” He sits you in the Razalon seat. “I just wanted you to catch your breath before I get started on you.”

His nakedness in the open desert sands doesn’t seem to bother Maul, and he gets to work stripping you down, too. He starts with your boots, then your socks, tracing fingers along the bare soles of your feet. It sends shocks up the nerves of your legs, and you can’t help but jump. Maul pulls on the tie of your tunic, slowly tugging it loose.

“I’ll need a few minutes before I can go again. That means we have a few minutes to play.”

At thought of how he likes to play, that ache low in your abdomen turns scorching. He slides the wrapped ends of your tunic apart, hums in approval. “I think I like this one better. Easier to take off.”

He does take it off. He takes your undershirt off. He takes your camisole off. Your bra. With a command, Maul has you lift your hips so that he can pull off your pants, and the panties right along with them. Before you know it, you’re naked in the Razalon seat with Maul looking down at you.

“Put your feet up in the footwells.”

You do, and it separates your knees to either side of the frame. The cool air swells in between your thighs and you inhale a gasp.

Maul reaches down and arranges your arms back, braced on the seat behind you so that your shoulders are tucked together and your breasts are more prominent. He stands back, leaning on the handlebar, just watching you.

Sitting like this is erotic torture, feeling his gaze all over your body while burning to feel his hands. You bring your knees together, just a little; Maul sees at once, shakes his head with a grin. You let them fall to either side again.

“What are you waiting for?” you ask.

Maul tilts his head. “Just trying to remember every detail. So I can think of you later. Actually, there is one thing…”

He picks up his cloak where it’s lying behind him. Rifles through the pockets, retrieves something so small, you can’t see it in his hands. You can only hear the soft clink of metal. When he returns, he shows you what looks to be two metal rings linked by a hand’s worth of chain.

He’s watching you closely, but you don’t react to the whatever’s he’s shown you. You don’t put the pieces together until Maul loops one ring around one nipple and bends it gently closed, then attaches the other in the same way on the other side.

Maul looks at you, smiling his most devilish smile but also watching you for a reaction; well, you have one. The small, continuous pinch doesn’t hurt, but even the negligible breeze across your hyper-stimulated tissue is maddening. And then Maul runs a finger under the chain, pulls it slowly—relentlessly—taut. You gasp and nearly twitch out of the seat. You lean your chest forward, but Maul pushes you back into the frame.

“No, no… just enjoy it from there.”

Maul holds the chain so that your nipples are just barely tugged outward. They’re dark and hard with arousal, with need, but Maul will only give you a little at a time. He’s crouched by the Razalon’s frame, mouth so close that you can feel his breath on your skin.

“Keep your hands behind your back. If you don’t, I’ll just have to tie you…”

“Please,” it’s a whine, and you know it, “I’ll keep my hands to myself. Just…please, touch them. Please. I want your mouth…”

Maul gives a pleased murmur. “Well, you were a very good girl. And you’ve asked very nicely.”

He doesn’t release the pressure on the chain, but his tongue circles your nipple in its ring. You cry out—unable to stop yourself and knowing damn well that Maul wants you to.

“Open your legs wider and I’ll touch you there, too.”

You do, gladly. As wide as you can get them, and Maul always does what he says he’ll do. He dips two fingers inside you, rubbing against your front wall as his thumb lands on your clit. His tongue moves to the other breast and grazes back and forth until you’re seeing even more stars than usual.

He fingers you to orgasm, pulsing against you again and again. Your muscles wind together like cord and then shatter apart—your hips are rocking against Maul’s hand without you telling them to. He keeps stimulating, keeps you shaking under him, keeps your mind in a glowing haze.

When he takes his hands—and mouth—off of you, you slump back in the Razalon seat. You don’t know what time it is or what day it is and you aren’t even sure what your name is, but you feel aware of every molecule in your body.

“Hmm… It seems I’m ready again.”

Maul helps you to your feet, straddling the Razalon frame. He tucks his cloak on the handlebars carefully over the hard edges, and then gives you another smoky smile. He catches a finger under the chain still strung between your nipples and gives a tug. Your breath lodges in your throat, and you follow his lead, chest first. He pulls you forward until you’re bending over the handlebars, and then steps into place behind you. He lifts your hips until they’re resting on the handlebars, too, and you’re barely touching the sand with your toes.

You don’t doubt he’s ready to go; you can feel him hot and stiff between your thighs. The rings still hooked on your nipples are still sending a cacophony of signal traffic to your vaginal muscles. There isn’t much to hold onto on the front of the Razalon’s frame, but you do your best because you know from experience that you’re going to need it.

Maul’s hands are clawed around your hips, gliding his cock against your labia. “I’m not planning on doing this gently,” he says; he’s tense and rasping and you know he’s finally too aroused to play calm. Too aroused to play, period. “If it hurts, if the speeder handles hurt you, tell me at once.”

“I will.” It comes out as a gasp. Before you have the chance to beg him to do it, Maul fits his cock inside you.

You’re in the middle of another orgasm instantly. Blinding, searing pleasure, too intense to even shout. You can barely even breathe; Maul is not just aroused, he’s slipping into feral abandon, pounding away so hard the entire speeder shakes.

“I’ve—thought of this—many times—” he grinds out between breaths. “So—so many times—I’ve wanted you—bent over—this way—to fuck you over my—speeder—”

“You—have me here,” you manage to reply. “So—don’t—stop—”

Maul doesn’t answer, only goes at you harder and you know he’s going to come soon, if you can just hang on another minute…

When he comes, with a shout that echoes back at you against the rocks, Maul jolts the Razalon so hard you’re sure it’s about to tip over. But no. Maul steadies you, himself, and the speeder before all three of you can topple over into the sand.

He pulls you back against his damp skin and settles you into the curve of his body in the speeder seat. His chest heaves with each breath, which you feel ruffling your hair. Soon, though, it settles back into rhythm, deep and slow, and the two of you lie there together in full-body exhaustion.

The gossamer-soft touch of the breeze flies and dips through the dunes, and the moons turn in multi-phasic paths through the Tatooine stars. Your toes brush the sand under the speeder, and from knee to skull you’re pressed to another living being in natural, unspoken attunement. It flies in the face of all the things that are decidedly amiss in your world, but in this moment, the galaxy seems perfect. Balanced. At peace.

And into that stillness swells a furious red pulse.

It jars through your skin, clanging your own Force energy like a ripping wind gust through a bell tower. A beat, like a single wave that crashes over you—through you—dunking you under and filling every space. There’s a strange, curious energy to it. Testing. And then it recedes, a total retreat into silence.

You don’t look back, and you don’t comment. You’re watching the stars, and you simply assume that for once, he let himself slip. Sometimes, with Maul, it’s more reassuring to simply assume.

You’ve come to realize that sometimes, with Maul, it’s better not to know.  

---

Like what you've read?

[ekrochford]

Return of Maul x FemReader (part5/?)

“Your speeder?”

Maul sighs, tugging his cloak to settle back into place. “No.”

And yet, he’s led you back to it. The make is emblazoned on the body—FC-20. It’s all dark metal, a gleaming shadow under the shelter of the rock. Maul starts it up, eases it out into the open. Swings his leg over and leans back to make space.

“What I want to show you is a short ride away.”

“I see. It… seems like it only seats one.”

Maul smirks, but his only answer is to gesture at the scrap of seat just in front of him. The parts of you that will be pressed into his body grow warm in anticipation. You take a slow step closer.

“Where are my feet supposed to go?”

“We aren’t going far. You can brace them on the frame.” And then he just leans back, grinning. Watching you and—you suspect—already knowing what you’re going to do. You give up resisting and climb on; you’re half in Maul’s lap, which makes it clear that he’s still more than half hard.

“Fuck,” you murmur.

“What was that?” Teasing, as if he doesn’t know.

You look at him over your shoulder and grind your buttocks gently back. His jaw goes slack for an instant before he schools his expression back into a grin. He pulls your hips back, a short, hard jerk, then reaches up for the speeder handles.

You do manage to brace your feet against the frame, but there aren’t exactly safety restraints. You rest your hands on the handlebar in front of you and wonder if you’ll just fall right out when the Razalon starts moving. It turns out to be a non-issue; when Maul shifts into gear, the frame tilts slightly back, and you’re pressed into Maul’s chest and hips by gravity and inertia.

You take off, through the heart-thumpingly narrow opening in the rocks, out into the open sands. Maul picks up speed, and you head in a straight vector out and away from the dig site. You catch the shape of more rock formations in the distance, and they only grow closer as the Razalon whirs along.

At the base of a rocky spine jutting from the dunes, Maul slows to a stop; his arm wraps around you as the loss of force threatens your precarious seating arrangements. He engages the landing gear and kills the engine before he releases his hold.

“Hmm… It’s running smoother than usual,” he murmurs wickedly, running a hand along the speeder’s grip.

With his mouth so close to your ear and his body spooned around yours, even the clunkiest innuendo melts you. Your voice is a little higher than usual when you find it. “We’d—um—better get going.” Before you turn around and straddle him.

Maul helps you to your feet, having no trouble dismounting himself, even in the uneven sand. He nods toward a break in the rock; when you look closer, you see the curve of a rock staircase, almost shielded from the stark white moonlight. Maul leads the way, up a flight’s worth of irregular stone-chip steps, to a small level landing above.

It’s not hard to guess what you came here for. In the crusted shoulder of rock is a round stone door, adorned with a pattern that you can’t make out in the dark. You move closer, reaching into a satchel you’re not wearing for a glow stick that isn’t there. You exhale, irritated.

“Do you have a light?”

“I do. But before that… can you feel this place?”

You look back, realizing that Maul hasn’t approached the door with you. Your brows furrow, thinking. You aren’t used to simply being open to the Force all the time. Unlike when you’ve felt Jedi, or Maul, for this you have to focus. Coax it, like blowing gently on a tiny flame.

When your focus is rewarded, what you sense isn’t a living creature. It’s a memory, like the hundreds you’ve seen and heard before.

We’ll store it here, Darth Plagueis. Away from the Republic.

You snap yourself away. You’ve heard that voice before. Where? You shake out your hands mindlessly, disliking the feel of the memory in your head.

“What?” Maul is standing just behind you.

“I heard something. Does the name Darth… Plagueis… mean anything to you?”

And you know it does, because at the sound of the name, Maul’s face turns blank as permacrete. Unreadable.

“Perhaps. I’ll have to think on it.”

“Right.”

“I was hoping you could help me.” Maul guides you to the side of the door, where a panel has been smoothed away in the stone. “I find I must open this door. But it takes two.”

“Two what?”

“Force users.”

“I’m not a Force user.”

Maul exhales and rolls his yellow eyes. You look away, back at the stone door.

“Not like that. I can’t do anything with it.”

“Have you tried?”

The answer was no. You don’t say it, because Maul wasn’t asking for his own benefit. You look at the smooth circle at the side of the door, at the matching one far on the opposite side.

“What do I do?”

Maul guides your hand to rest flat on the stone. “Call to it. I suspect it’s similar to your psychometry.”

He’s correct. You barely press through your hand—glowing with life—into the inert stone before it lights up in your mind’s invisible eye. It’s so sudden, you yank your hand away.

Maul walks to the other side and removes his glove. Sets his own bare hand on the opposing panel of stone. Looks at you. The implication is obvious, and you return your palm to the rock.

When you both activate it, the result is instant. Within the rock formation, there’s a ground-shaking, grinding whine—and the large circular door sinks straight down into a threshold.

You peer inside, dizzy with excitement. A hundred questions come to mind. “Who put this here? Tuskans? Why is it activated that way? Why would you fashion it to require two people?”

“To deter treachery,” Maul answers quietly.

You don’t even notice. You’re already on the threshold, ready to run straight inside.

Maul catches your shoulder before you can. “Wait—I’m expecting traps.”

Your jaw drops. “Traps? Like Tombs of Jedha traps?”

The corner of Maul’s mouth twitches. “I suppose you could say that.”

“Do you have a light? You said you had one, earlier.”

Maul raises an eyebrow, but digs a small-model illumi-droid out of his cloak. With the flip of a switch, it activates in his hand, sputtering a spill of yellow light from its round glass eye. The light stabilizes as it hums upward on tiny repulsors.

In the light, you examine the edge of the door, the smooth panels on the side, and the floor of the chamber within. You don’t cross the threshold—the traps of the Jedha sites were clearly unforgiving, and you aren’t interested in too close a look. But as you examine closer, the stone starts to look very familiar.

Your jaw drops. “These are the same as my ruins.”

Maul doesn’t answer. You spin to look at him; he shrugs.

“So it is.”

“This is the same stone! Who built this?!”

“I… can’t say for sure,” Maul replies, and you narrow your eyes. Is he telling half a truth or lying outright?

“Did you know?”

“Yes.”

“Maul—this is incredible. Another site—and this one above ground!” You run your fingers through your hair, overwhelmed.

“Not another site.”

“Yes! It is—it’s obviously the same stone, and the mortar looks the same—”

“Not… a different site.”

You look between Maul and the gaping open doorway. The implication dawns on you.

“The same site.” In your head, the sheer size of it… If this was one end… “It’s an entire complex! Professor is going to lose his mind!”

Maul crossed his arms. “If you tell him.”

Standing next to you, the illumi-droid has backlit his face, leaving it in darkness. You look at him, suspicious.

“I can’t not tell him. This is huge! This is—! It’s more than we ever dreamed of, and there’s an entrance right here!”

Maul nodded, agreeing. “But if you reveal it to your Professor and your associates, the Hutts, too, will know.”

“Well, yes.” That reality takes the wind out of your sails, just a little. “But that’s just part of the deal. They’re letting us dig here, so they insist on having their hands in everything.”

“I see.” Maul’s answer is conspicuously accommodating. His gold eyes slide sideways to meet yours. “I suppose it can’t be helped.”

“No, it can’t.” You try not to sound annoyed. Now that he’s reminded you of the Hutt rep—at this very moment sleeping in his brand-new tent back at camp—there’s a prickle of irritation stuck through the excitement.

“Can I ask you to wait a day?”

“Why?”

“There’s something inside I need to retrieve.”

“Ha! You are treasure hunting!”

“Not treasure, not in the sense that the Hutts think.” Maul is also looking into the darkened chamber. At the right side, you see the shadows swell as the ceiling tilts downward: spiral stairs. “Something was placed here, not long ago. I need only retrieve it. Before… anyone else finds it.”

“What is it?”

“Something very dangerous. It isn’t a part of the original structure, no use to you and your scholar friends at all. But it would be fatal for them to encounter it. In return, I’ll bring you back here tomorrow night so you can be the first inside.”

“Why not just do it tonight?”

“Tonight, after I take you back, I’ll return here and disable any traps. When I bring you back tomorrow, you can explore freely.” He gives you a conspiratorial smile. “You can beat the Hutts to any treasure inside.”

You can’t help but laugh at that. “We aren’t looking for treasure.” But his offer has your interest. You could lie to him (maybe), let him take you back to camp, and then promptly tell Professor everything. But then what? Professor, being too proper for his own good, would announce it to everyone and their pet mynock. So far, the cartel representative was biding his time, waiting for something to crop up. Well, here it is. Who knows what he’ll do? Maybe he’ll even claim that since this isn’t officially the site they agreed on, you and the crew aren’t allowed to explore it at all, per the written contract. The thought shoots a white-hot spur of anger through your otherwise-rational thoughts.

“Sure,” you find yourself saying. “I won’t tell anyone yet.”

At that, Maul’s smile widens to show teeth. “It’s a deal.”

---

Like what you've read?

[ekrochford]

Return of Maul x Femreader (part 4/?)

Now, this was not how you expected this meeting to go.

Maul stretches under you, and a blissful shiver travels down his body against yours. His hips grind up, unhurried, ebbing down into relaxation. You aren’t fooled. Maul can climb back up in what seems like no time. His loose-limbed ease is deceptive.

You lie there, orgasm so fresh your pelvic floor is still spasming. It’s cool in the desert at night, but it soothes your hot skin and gives you an excuse to curl close to Maul’s side. This is not what you were planning for.

So what now?

Maul’s clawed fingertips drag up your arm, then back down absently. Your skin tightens in a wake of pebbled flesh. When he trails them back up again, his hand moves from your shoulder to twist into your hair. He pulls your head back—not a yank and not painful, but slow and inevitable—to bring your face closer to his.

“You’re worrying again.” He clicks his tongue in disappointment, but there’s that sly smile. “Was that not sufficient to clear your mind?”

“Yes, but—”

“No ‘buts’. Either it was or it wasn’t.”

Maul rolls you by the hair until you’re on your back; he props himself up over you on his elbow. His eyes should surely be gray in the colorless moonlight. They aren’t. They burn relentless yellow as he watches your face.

“Open your legs.”

The legs in question shake at the command. “Maul…”

“Open your legs… or tell me you want me to stop.”

This does not help the shaking. Maul doesn’t look away, and the intensity in his stare pools in your chest, pumping out with each heartbeat, turning your objections to vapor. You don’t want him to stop. So you do what he says and let your knees drift apart.

Maul doesn’t even look down, but the corner of his lips tug upward. “Wider than that, my dear.”

A whimper slips out, but you do it.

“Hmm… good girl.”

It’s more than a whimper that escapes when Maul takes his fingers to you. He watches your face hungrily as you gulp in air, as he works your clit and dips inside you. You know the word ‘please’ slips out time and again; Maul takes it as encouragement.

“I think you’ve almost forgotten to worry,” he murmurs as he watches you writhe in his grasp. He still has your face close to his, reading each blink, each gasp. You feel exposed down to your bones and close your eyes. At this, Maul’s grip in your hair tightens and he squeezes your clit hard enough to send a lightening shock all the way to your toes and fingertips.

“No, don’t close them. Look at me.”

You bite your lip and wrench your eyes open.

“That’s better. Now settle in. I’m going to make sure you don’t think about anything for a little longer.”

Maul does keep his promises. It’s only a few minutes, but your pulse thudding in your skin makes the time feel like a delirious hour. You orgasm on his fingers over and over, and Maul just keeps going with a devilish smile, pushing you to the ledge and throwing you off, over and over. Your hands are cramped from clinging to him. By the time he finally decides you’ve had enough, you know you can’t stand. Your quaking legs would fold under your weight like noodles.

Even with his dangerous hand removed, all you can do is lie there under him and shake. You cling to Maul, irrationally convinced that if you let go, all your component parts will shamble into a human-shaped heap.

He chuckles, low and silky, and pulls you into his arms. Tucks your head against his neck, wraps you tight to his side.

“That’s more like it.”

He wanted to stop you from worrying, and he’s succeeded. You can’t form a single thought. It’s all you can do to loop one arm limply over his chiseled waist. Maul traces his hand down your back absently. His fingers slow, and he flattens his palm down your back and buttocks.

“You’re cold…”

He flips the edge of his cloak up over you, completing the cocoon. Cool, dry air wafts over your face.

“I dreamed of you.” You don’t know why you say it. It’s a sleepy, drowsy confession against the crook of his neck, one you don’t even bother to open your eyes for. After a pause, Maul’s hand brushes through your sweaty, sandy hair.

“You were in my waking dreams,” he says at last. You’re drifting, barely listening to what he says. You don’t register the words you hear next, although he speaks them almost into your ear. “But not my sleeping ones. Those are far too dark for you.”

---

You doze, then startle awake. No—no sleeping. You rock upward into a sitting position, pushing Maul’s cloak aside. You glance upward at the sky: still dark, not even a hint of light at the horizon.

“How long was I…?”

“Not long.” Maul doesn’t sit up with you. He sighs, and he glides his knuckles softly down your back. “Worrying again?”

“Ah—don’t even think about it.”

“Hmm, how stern.”

It would be faster, at least, if he just stabbed you with his lightsaber. You make a point not to look at his groin, at the point there that’s slowly standing to attention. His cloak isn’t big enough to pull over him, not with half of it in your lap.

You focus on his face, reclining with his arms under his head. “I came out here in the first place to figure out why you followed us to the ruins.”

“I didn’t follow you. My destination happens to be nearby.”

“There isn’t anything else out here. Is there?”

Maul speaks carefully, deliberately. “There is.”

You frown. “What is it?”

“A place I was told to go,” Maul answers, and moves on before you can press. “I have been thinking while you slept. Why did you tell your fellow scholars that I was here?”

“I didn’t—one of them… well, he smelled you.”

Maul pauses, frowning. Clearly, that was not what he was expecting.

“He’s Zyggerian,” you explain. “His senses are sharper.”

“Ah, I see. And he told your whole group?”

“No, I asked him to keep it to himself. He said he would.”

“Hmm.” Maul digests this. In the silence, your eyes move down his body on their own before you can stop them. Annoyed, you look back up to find Maul raising his brows. “Something caught your eye?”

You ignore that; he already knows the answer. “If you didn’t follow us… I came to talk to you to make sure you weren’t going to cause us problems. We’ve got enough already.”

Maul’s smirk hasn’t dimmed. “No, I didn’t follow you, and no, I’m not intending to… cause problems.” He glances down. “Although, I certainly seem to have one.”

And it’s growing. You roll your lips together but refuse to look. “I suppose I can’t say I walked all the way out here for nothing, but I guess I didn’t have to after all.”

“Are you sorry you did?” Maul’s tone is—again—deliberately neutral. Light. Playful, but he’s watching you too closely. He’s asking a question under a question. You understand, but you don’t have an answer.

Are you still afraid? Does the raw intensity of his true self frighten you? If you knew why he revealed himself when he did—and how he did—or even what he is—maybe you could answer the question he’s really asking.

“I’m not sorry I came out to meet you.” You have an answer to that, at least.

“Why not?” Maul asks in that casual, careful tone. “Things would surely have been simpler for you to never have known I was here.”

In your mind’s eye, you flash back to the day upstairs over the cantina, standing in the hallway. Feeling the rumble and crash of his power through the door. But only a minute before, you had been arguing with yourself—giving yourself strict instructions, in fact. All you could think about was the kiss—the nearly tender kiss—that he’d given you the night prior.

You have no more answers now than you did before. Do you still want them?

Yes. Of course you do. What kind of historian can bear to leave questions unanswered?

“Why did you kiss me like that, our last night together?”

Even Maul hadn’t predicted you would come right out and ask. His calm demeanor rattles; he sits forward abruptly, avoiding your eye. “I forgot myself.” His answer is rushed. His throat bobs in a swallow, and he tries again, slower. “I was rather carried away. Several things had slipped my mind, not least of all the fact that we were, and still are, strangers that met in a barroom barely any time at all ago.”

The change in him is like turning the shower from hot water to cold. You sigh. He’s right. True, he’s wielding that right-ness to avoid the meat of the issue, but he’s right all the same. The little you knew about Maul was bad, bad, bad. So what if he was sly and witty, both respectful and devastating? He could be tender—but only in the way a predator is to its mate. Always with an edge of teeth.

“You’re right. It was nothing.”

Maul looks over at you sharply, rapidly reading your face, your tone. “I didn’t say it was nothing.”

Your heart gives a squeeze.

“You would prefer that it was nothing?” Maul asks, still sounding like a blade-edge.

“It would be simpler if it was.” It’s a non-answer, but his sudden sharpness has you struggling to keep your verbal feet.

Maul raises both eyebrows loftily. “Simple is the path of cowards. The only way that matters is the way that gets you where you want to go.”

“I guess you can’t call me a coward, then, because you’re anything but simple,” you grumble. You blow out an exhale through your nose and cross your arms over your naked breasts. It’s cold out here. Your clothes—and his—are scattered nearby, collecting sand drifts.

After almost a minute of silence, “What problems?”

“What?”

“You said you have problems at your site. What problems?”

“Bureaucrats,” you spit out the word. “Another site that wants our funding. No one in the Core is really comfortable with the Hutts hovering around, but that’s just how it is. I mean, the Mon Calamari still have a representative at Illiana’s excavation, but no one complains about that…”

Maul props his elbows up on his knees. “But you’re already here. You’ve already received the approval and the funds from your University, have you not?”

You sigh. “We had an idea of the size of the dig, and we submitted approval based around a hypothesis about how big the site was going to be, how much time it was going to take, so on.” You pull Maul’s cloak up over your arms and shoulders. “If this site were in the Mid Rim and if we were under the jurisdiction of a Republic-member government, a find of this scope would be career-making.

“But as it is, the committee that allocates the funds for the Galactic Histories department considers the political situation here on Tatooine to be unstable because it’s in the possession of a crime syndicate.” You roll your eyes. “As if established governments never crumble. Illiana is going to have her hands full if the Quarren move in on the Mon Calamari—she’s been running her excavation like her own little queendom for over a year, and she’ll have NO idea how to handle a civil war raging over her head…”

You trail off, realizing that Maul likely doesn’t care. But when you look at him, he’s watching in interest. If that interest is mixed with amusement, you aren’t offended.

“It sounds like you have a problem with her personally.”

“I do. She’s a paleontology princess who never takes risks.”

“I see. So… you really didn’t have any idea what these ruins were.”

Your mouth thins into a line. “We had an idea. It was just the wrong idea.”

Maul smirks. “Of course.”

“That’s not important right now.” You try to force him back on topic. “Look, Maul. I’m glad I got to see you again, because I wanted to know what in the galaxy was going through your head when you kissed me that way. I know you understand why that was different, and why I’m asking this. If you aren’t going to tell me, just drop it. Let’s not dance circles around it.”

He doesn’t answer at once. You wait, already short on patience. Being who he is, Maul can see you expecting a prompt answer, and he twists his lips, thinking, watching the sand shift under the wind.

The chrono is ticking dangerously into red when he finally answers. “I was thinking of Malgus.”

“What’s Malgus?”

“It’s safer for you not to know.”

You throw off his cloak and get to your feet. “Ok. I get it. We’ll forget it happened.”

Instead of being annoyed, Maul smiles to himself. This irritates you further. You go to hunt up your clothes, picking them out of the sand. They’re easy to tell apart; none of your things are black. You shake them out far away from your body, conscious of scorpeks and dritons and other scaly, poisonous critters.

“I thought you liked it when I played with you.”

Oh, but that sends a tremor from your ears straight down through the floor of your abdomen. You turn to look at him, your bundle of clothes providing a tiny bit of cover from the way he’s tracking his eyes over your skin.

Maul rolls his lips, unblinking. “All right, then. When we were in your room that night, after all the fun we had in the cantina downstairs, I looked at you and realized that you were not afraid of me. Why this should please me, I cannot say. But far from being afraid, it dawned on me that you placed a… perhaps an inappropriate amount of trust in my good intentions.

“And on the heels of that thought, I realized that up to that point, nothing you’d seen of myself had turned you against me, turned you away from me. And I wondered if you could see the rest, what might you do.”

Maul gets to his feet, just as the tremors in your abdomen begin to turn to ice. His stare finally leaves you as he begins to pick up and shake out his own clothes. “Of course, you answered that for me the next morning.”

Speechless, you just stand there. Guilt, and then embarrassment begin to gel like cold sweat, tacky, sticky among the mix of feelings this admission brings. You still haven’t come up with a response by the time Maul has pulled his pants and boots back on. He turns to you, measuring.

“Would you like to see something?”  

---

Like what you read?

[ekrochford]

Return of Maul x Femreader (part 3/?)

What to say? Where to start? Maul doesn’t move from his ledge, doesn’t even drop his arms from his knees. He just looks through the empty space at you, and for the first time it doesn’t feel like he’s undressing you with his eyes. His face is guarded, as if a veil in the dark has been drawn between the two of you.

You stop at the entrance to the hidden stone circle. There’s nothing else here except a speeder, a Razalon by its crescent shape. FC series, perhaps. You can’t see it clearly in the dramatic shadows cast by the sharp-edged moons, but it doesn’t hold your attention. Inevitably, your gaze rolls back to Maul.

He sits in a wash of white moonlight; somehow, it makes him appear as a moving shadow, draped in ruthless black. Only the silvery metal of his lightsaber hilt and the gold discs of his eyes catch the light.

Those eyes narrow. “You called to me.”

How careful his tone is; precise, even, and neutral. Guarded. Your answer is recklessly raw. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

Maul studies you, but it isn’t the same. Before, he was always all confidence, all sure-foot control. Now, there’s something new, and not something welcome. There’s a distance—an invisible arm’s length. You don’t need to read minds to know it’s bound up in that seething aura of furious scarlet and in that final kiss.

The silence draws on. Maul scoffs once, softly, letting his eyes drift away from your face. “Surely it was a relief to think so.”

Those eyes slide back to lock with yours. He doesn’t elaborate. You’re left drifting, feeling like the truth isn’t the reply he wants. It comes out anyway. “It was a relief.”

His grim face darkens. For all that his words are mild, they still taste of venom. “It’s only to be expected.”

You blunder on. “It was a disappointment, too.” There it is, the sprouting seed of the thoughts that breed your dreams. You take a few steps forward and another slow breath. Hesitant, you feel outward with your sapling-small command of the Force, try to feel him sitting there.

Maul looks away, lips twisted in a scowl. He knows what you’re doing, and you suspect he knows what you find: nothing. An abyss in the ambient life energy of the universe.

“Where are you?” It’s a strange question, but you don’t know how else to phrase it.

Maul’s gaze pulls back onto your face with a glare. “I certainly don’t have time to teach you to hone the skills you’ve neglected. For all things that matter, I am here.”

“Why can’t I sense you?”

“Oh, forgive me, I wasn’t aware you relied so heavily on your Force powers.”

You feel your hackles rise. Your teeth grind, and you take a sandy breath in through your nose. “Fine, then. If you are here, then tell me why.”

Maul snorted. “Because you called to me.”

“I don’t mean here.” You circle an arm in a gesture that encompasses the rock walls, the sand, and even the speeder ten meters away. “I mean, out here in the Dune Sea. There’s nothing out here except our dig.”

At this, Maul gives another snort. Pure acid. “Correct, it seems.”

His tone strikes a warning bell. Just one, a long hollow tone. “Don’t tell me you’re a treasure-hunter. There’s a Hutt representative here for that already… unless you work for the Hutts?”

Maul’s glare loosens and his scowl actually resembles a smirk at the corner. “I do not work for the Hutts.”

“Then… another syndicate?” You don’t think so, not really. Maul shakes his head slowly.

“No.”

“Then who…”

“Do not finish that question.” While not harsh, his tone still cuts your words off at the knee. At last, Maul drops his legs off the side of the ledge and gets to his feet. You nearly forgot how tall he is, how broad of shoulder, how much bigger than you… He keeps his distance. “Do not finish that question,” he repeats.

The warning bell is growing into the familiar clammy, trembling signal shivering through your skin. You nod. “Ok. So I won’t ask. But what are you out here for? You’re making my coworkers nervous.”

Maul tilts his head, gives you a tiny smirk. A smoke-curl smile. “Just them?” A glimmer of the man you knew in Mos Eisley shows through, silencing the alarms.

When the alarms die off, you don’t like it; you know you should be afraid. You know you should be suspicious of him. But when he gives you that look, that grin, you just can’t hear the warning bells ringing. You’re clearly not one bit wiser than generations of hormonal men and women who came before.

“No,” you insist, to him and to yourself. “Not just them. Me, too.”

The grin melts. “Why?” he demands coolly.

“Because of what you showed me in that hotel.” your voice is rising. “Because of what I felt—!”

“It didn’t hurt you to feel it.”

“It was nothing but pain!” Your hands are fists and your words are breaking loose. Finally, the fear you had to bottle up from your friends and associates has a pressure valve. Finally, you can let it out, let it free… “Your anger—your hatred—”

“Is it pain just to feel something strongly?” Maul takes half a step closer; his eyes blare and his words sizzle. “Are all your passions so meager—so weak—that to feel anything deeply, anything real is pain?”

“No.” You shake your head, holding his eyes. “No, and don’t you try to suggest… Don’t you act like I—like I overreacted, or like I misread.”

“I showed you what I am.” Maul bit out each word.

“You threatened me.”

“And I showed you the truth.” His voice simmers to a hiss. He’s taken another step closer, but you barely notice. “I am a threat.”

It is a fact, and he states it as such. No apology, no regret. Not even arrogance, no pride. But there is anger, still, in all of him. You sense its echo, so much as he’s worked to hide it within a somnolent void. And suddenly it clicks into place that he is angry—at you.

“Why did you come here—why did you show up here when you heard me?” Why answer your clumsy amateur Force call if he was so angry?

Maul bares his teeth in a silent snarl, but doesn’t answer. How have the two of you taken so many steps toward each other? You plant your feet, annoyed that even now he has you turning in circles. He’s got you riled up, and irritation is hardly less intoxicating than arousal when he’s here, so close again.

“There’s more of it in you than you think.” His tone is as tense as his shoulders, as the grind of his jaw. To your horrified exhilaration, he closes what space is left between you until you’re cloaked in his shadow. Too close, too close. You can hardly breathe while you’re fighting to pin your own arms at your sides, keep your hands from reaching out.

“More of what?” you spit out.

“You have it in you, too.” He matches the cut in your tone. “Anger. That passion which frightened you so terribly—it’s in you, too. You can’t hide it from me.”

“I don’t need to hide anything from you.” Brave words, but now you know you’re lying. If he suspected the way that your skin ached for his hands, the way your mouth ached for his, you’d really be in trouble.

Unfortunately, Maul’s right after all: you see him reading your face, your corded, curled fists and blazing glare. You know the instant that he sees through it, because on his face, the twist of fury unknots. In a blink, in a flash of triumph, you see him reassess.

You’re quivering, starved with the need for his touch and terrified of what it’ll mean if he gives it to you. And now Maul knows it, too.

“Tell me to leave, then,” he murmurs, leaning closer. Amid the scent of sand and dust, there’s that familiar exhaust smell, clinging like a rime over top of his skin. Warm, male, with a tang like salt. His lips are well within reach—you have only to lean forward, reach up.

You dig your fingernails into your palms. “Leave, then.”

Maul’s eyes blink open. He’s frozen in place for a moment—then he’s all anger, face hard, eyes narrowed. He pulls back, doesn’t bother to even shout, and in the second before he spins away to retrieve his speeder, you catch it. A sliver of pain, an edge showing beneath the furious veneer.

Pure instinct, you lunge out and snatch his wrist.

Maul doesn’t shout or even react. He stands paused in mid-step, still half-twisted away. Refusing to look you in the face.

“Something more to say?” he asks coldly. “Twice already, you’ve found too much fault. You cannot expect me to accept a third time gracefully.”

“Maul.”

What else to say? How can you explain why you’re still holding on? You squeeze his wrist through the glove, afraid he’ll pull away before you’ve caught the words that are slipping through your fingers.

He does worse than pull away—he turns back. Looks at your face, and even a man much blinder than Maul couldn’t have misread you.

You both move at once. Maul seizes you by the shoulders, and your curled fists find his tunic collar. The two of you come together with a ravenous violence, grasping, gasping. You kiss him like you can simply devour him into yourself, and he crushes you against his chest like he can absorb everything you are by sheer force of will.

Your name rasps out between his lips and into yours. His arms around your shoulders and back are so tight you can hardly breathe, but you only want more, closer, harder.

Maul unwinds his grip on you, and you find yourself back on your feet. There’s no time to protest. He’s pulling at your belt, your tunic. You start to yank at his clothes, senseless with need; in about five seconds of you both struggling around each other’s arms, you retreat to undress yourselves.

Your lips find each other, over and over, between each shed article of clothing. Maul throws his cloak over a flat patch of sand and grips you by the hair and the waist again an instant later. Another raging kiss, and then his face is buried against your bare neck. You’re still trying to kick out of your pants and boots.

“Tell me,” he moans into your skin. His teeth close over the muscles of your neck, barely restrained. His claws press dangerous furrows. “Tell me what you want. I need you to say it.”

He helps shove the last of your clothes away until you’re naked in his grip. You open your mouth to say everything you’ve dreamt of, tell him every graphic detail… but you realize that isn’t what he’s talking about at all.

“I want you, Maul.” He shivers under your hands; his yellow eyes meet yours, wide and wild. You hold him tighter still. “I want you.”

Maul doesn’t answer except to rip out of his pants, flinging his boots away. He pulls you down to the ground with him—not difficult, as you’ve half-thrown your weight onto his spread cloak. He splits your legs in a second, fitting between them like he was shaped for it.

But before he buries it inside you, Maul rolls you both over, dragging you into position on top. His gaze is searing a molten line down your body in the moonlight. His hands are splayed at your hips, claws digging in.

“If you want me, take me,” he rasps. He’s coiled like a spring, all energy potential, practically shaking with it. “If that’s what you want…”

It is, and you tell him so. You slide onto him; your gasp and his blend into the same sound in the high of the moment. Ecstasy tightens like a vise where his cock hits, and you don’t stop or slow. You only go harder and faster to meet the frenzy you see building on Maul’s face.

He’s been clinging to your hips, and now he slams you down with every thrust, bucking his own hips off the ground. There’s nowhere to hold on, so you dig your fingernails into his chest as you take what you so badly want.

If it hurts him, you’d never know it. Maul only drives up into you with more and more force. The spring building up in you snaps under the pressure, orgasm shredding you to trembling pieces.

Maul sees and hears and feels you come, and goes right along with you. He shouts your name and grinds you against him as his body forms a tight-wire arch, then collapses. You collapse, too. Each of your thousand shredded pieces jumbles with his, flat against his chest, listening to his heart race.

Your breathing is ragged, your arms and legs are tingling. It’s cool without the dual suns’ scorching light. The Dune Sea whispers as the wind runs fingers through the sand. It whistles against one of your ears. The other is pressed to Maul’s heart.

It’s several seconds before you realize with a jolt that there’s an extra pulse in there.

Maul notices your jump and your stare, and chuckles. He curls his arms around you with a sigh. “I have two hearts. All Zabrak do. Much more useful than phallic barbs.”

You clear your throat and roll your eyes. “Anything is more useful than phallic barbs.”

---

Like what you read?

[ekrochford]

Return of Maul x Femreader (part 2/?)

[Hope everyone likes! Enjoy!]

Part 2

You look at your chrono on your wrist. It’s past midnight. You haven’t heard a sound in half an hour, but you lie still anyway, eager to believe that it’s not clear to leave your tent yet.

Earlier tonight, Zhalar had had no idea what kind of bomb he was dropping on you. You’re thankful he’s discreet enough to consult you first. What if he’d just gone to Professor straight away?

That’s why it had to be tonight. There’s nothing you can do if Zhalar has a fit of prudence and deems it safest for everyone to report the stranger lurking out in the sands. And what with the uncertainty cast by the GPR’s initial images, who knew what effect that information would have on Professor’s report to the Galactic Histories department.

You’ve been waiting. Your name was on the shower sign-up sheet, so you arrived at your assigned time and scrubbed as well as the low-flow camp shower allowed. You put on your last clean clothes and hauled your spares to the wash set-up standing beside the showers. Both used endlessly recycled water that pumped through a five-fold filtration system. Supposedly, the water that came out was as fresh as its first use. Supposedly.

“I saw Zhalar outside your tent earlier,” Ralla had said, crossing her arms. It was her shift to mind the washer and dryer to make sure they didn’t eat everyone’s clothes. Her dark lips pressed into a sly grin. “What was that all about, hmm?”

Stars, she’s nosy. She’s the rumor mill, granary, and frontline sales team all in one. “He was asking about you.”

Ralla perked up, instantly hooked. “What?! What’d he ask?!”

“He wanted to know if your tattoos are uneven on purpose.”

Ralla’s hands flew to her face before she could stop them, then curled into small fists. “That’s not funny.” As per her home culture, Ralla had a small pattern tattooed above each eyebrow to mark a major event, supposedly when she was accepted into the University. She tells everyone that she’ll add to it when she achieves her doctorate but in the meantime, it’s always seemed to you that the one on the left is a little closer to the center than the one on the right.

“It’s none of your business, Ralla.”

“You have laundry duty tomorrow night,” she answered angrily. “Don’t forget.”

“I won’t.” You left her to head back to your tent. You don’t worry about your clothes; Ralla is generally not foolish enough to push anyone too far. And sabotaging someone’s socks when the nearest market is a day’s ride away is undeniably too far.

But that leaves you here, now, with nothing to do but wait another five minutes to make sure that there aren’t any stragglers lingering by the campfire to see you leave the protective circle of the sensors.

The sensors. Damn. They’ll alarm when you cross the line. Well… your position grants you access to the security sensor codes. You can turn them off, cross outside, and then reactivate them—then repeat the process when you come back. You roll over on your side and retrieve your datapad; after entering your personal credentials, you’re able to access the sensor codes for the dig. You lay back, reassured.

It’s been quiet for a long time, and in the silence, your heart begins to punch against your eardrums.

You’ll be seeing him again soon. Sooner than you thought, since you thought you’d be seeing him never. Even if your dreams were frequent reminders, in your waking hours you hadn’t expected to cross paths again.

It’s a ghost town out there; you sit up in the dark. You’re still dressed, ready to go. You pull on your boots by feel.

It has to be you. Who knows what he’s doing out here, out in the Dune Sea, but the obvious answer has something to do with you. Whether he’s looking for another roll in the hay—or sand—or whether he’s here to silence you permanently, it’s your mess to deal with.

That thought freezes your fingers on your boot laces. There was that terrifying moment, there at the end. You’d been sure you were a goner. And then… he’d just let you go.

Did he change his mind?

You try to listen for the sound of your gut clanging one direction or the other. Your catastrophe signal, the intuition that had kept you intact through your Outer-Rim travels. It was as quiet now as the sleeping forest of tents, not a peep, even when you imagined what waited for you out in the dunes.

You step out into the cool desert night; it smells like sand, air so dry it cracks the nose and mouth and eyelids. For the second time, you gather up your little handful of Force ability and cast it like a net. It’s easier the second time around, now that you know you can do it.

As before, an answer flares like a single scorching beat of thunder. You swallow and turn further into camp, just one last stop. You search through the tents (most of them identical) until you think you have the right one.

“Zhalar?”

Muffled mutterings, and then Zhalar’s large ears appear in the flap of his tent. He’s groggy with sleep, nose twitching, blinking and bare-chested. But he’s alert enough and fixes you with a bleary stare.

“What are you doing here?”

You bend down to be on eye level. “Hey, do me a favor.”

“What? What favor?” His ears quiver, and he shakes his head as if to clear it.

“If…uh…if I turn up missing tomorrow…”

“What?!”

“Shh! Listen, I’m not expecting it, but just in case.”

Zhalar’s looking at you with his mouth hanging open, revealing elongated top and bottom canines. “What… you want me to cover for you?”

“No, if I’m not in camp tomorrow, I want you to tell Professor the truth. What you saw—smelled—in Mos Eisley, and on the way back from the Jawas. I’m just going now to see what he wants, I’m not expecting trouble. But, you know… in case trouble finds me.”

Zhalar is fully awake now, looking like he’s just listened to you explain that you were going to try and eat mortar. His eyes narrow. His brows furrow.

“Are you serious?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“Why not just tell Professor yourself now?”

It’s your turn to look at Zhalar like he’s said something remarkably stupid. “He’d flip his lid. He’d freak—half his feathers would fall out. He’d have us pack up tonight and leave tomorrow.”

Zhalar doesn’t argue, only shrugs to cede the point.

“Besides,” you continue, “I don’t think he’s here to cause trouble. If I go talk to him, I can probably get him to just go away.”

Zhalar sighs. “Fine. Go ‘talk to him’. How should I describe your murder suspect if we find your lifeless body dumped in the desert?”

“Haha, very funny. He’s Zabrak. Red skin, black tattoos. All black clothes.”

“Yeah, I thought he smelled like a Zabrak.” Zhalar blinks at you, thinking. His lips twist wryly. “So, is it true about male Zabraks…?”

“No! No, it’s not true! Did you need to be able to describe that, too?”

“Maybe. Is that gonna be the murder weapon?” He smirks at you, showing pointed teeth.

You’ve barely spoken to Zhalar before. You had no idea he could banter. It’s a pleasant surprise to find someone as abrasive as you are. “Just tell Professor, if I’m not back.”

He retreats back into his tent, muttering. You can barely make out the words as he seals his tent shut. “You must really be something, if he’s hiked all the way out here just to see you again.”

The thought does not reassure you. Because if you’re being honest, you weren’t the one knocking the stars out of his sky—quite the other way around. So if he’s come all this way, following you into the Dune Sea… he’s come for something else.

---

The desert surrounds you on all sides. The galaxy domes upward, outward into space, tinted with the particle colors of terrestrial atmosphere: in the place of void black, the stars burn white in a field of deep and dark velvet blue.

The sensor code worked perfectly. You slipped out of camp without a peep. When you pushed out a call, this time, the answer was near. The dig site is only over the dune just behind you, barely ten minute’s walk. You follow the direction of the red pulse against your skin, heading to a cluster of rock outcroppings planted among the dancing sands. In the moonlight, they look like craggy silver faces with black shadows, watching.

You can feel the nearness of him. It’s impossible to say whether the feeling is magnetic or repulsive, but the urge to draw closer wins out. You boots churn through the soft sand, stubborn and set on their path.

The echo in your mind wisps out as you reach the rock, but you don’t need it now. You round a break into a sand-carved bowl of a canyon, rock walls and open sky.

And there he is. Black hood thrown back, lightsaber worn in plain sight on his belt. Perched on a shelf of rock, arms resting on his knees. He looks up, and neither of you pretend to be shocked to see the other.

Maul. 

---

Like what you read?

[ekrochford]

Return of Maul x Femreader (part 1/?)

[More shameless self-insert fanfiction. Enjoy.]

Red skin. The hard bone of cranial horns. The flash of his eyes, flame-yellow and spitting with heat. The snarling strength of his hands on your body, and the scrape of his claws over the thinnest, most sensitive patches of your skin.

Lying on your back, you open your eyes and sigh. There’s nothing but the dingy canvas underside of the solar-flect tent you’re sleeping in, alone. The suns can’t be up yet; it’s not hot enough, not even close. But the light pressing through the solar-flect—framing the outlines of the puzzle-piece solar array sewn into the tent canvas—tells you that there isn’t much time left to enjoy a cool breath.

You kick the disheveled bedroll away from your legs and just lie there, enjoying the temporary chill in the bone-dry air. You could do with some cooling off. In the absence of a cold shower, a girl had to take what she could get.

And the man on your mind was not high on the list of available goods. You’re exasperated with yourself. Three weeks past, you thought you finally did something smart and put some distance between you and tangible danger to your life. But even good-sense fear hadn’t been enough to black out the memory of everything you experienced in the rooms upstairs of that cantina.

And downstairs… you groan at your own treacherous memory.

You swing your legs over the edge of the bedroll. They strike the thick mat that floors your tent; underneath, you feel your heels thump a dent in the endless Tatooine sand.

---

“That’s part of the structure, I’m telling you.”

“It’s fossilized organic material. Look, it’s obviously a different texture from the wall.”

“No—look—it’s part of the wall.”

“It is not!”

“It is!”

You listen to the bickering but don’t take your eyes off the chunk of white stone. A long time ago, you would have found it nearly indistinguishable from the ruins of the wall it’s tacked onto. Everything out here in the Dune Sea is blasted of moisture and color, desiccated and bleached. Even stone.

A long time ago, you were fresh and unlearned in the ways of the archeologist. But even with the intervening years of hands-on work, even though you see the minute differences in the materials, you really can’t tell whether the chunk of stone you’re looking at is architecture or unrelated calcification. The site has only been up and running for three weeks, and very little structure has been exposed yet—most of what you can see is the same circle of small dwellings that were already exposed when the transports pulled up on the scene.

The three of you scanned the stone, but were only able to confirm some remnant organic compounds. Possibly a dead life form that had burrowed against the wall, died, and been fossilized. Or, possibly an adhesive compound used by the builders of these ruins. You peer over the wall again, view the tiny mortar lines, the faded striations in the stone.

You hold out a hand. “Give me the pick.”

A gasp. It’s Nelon, the Chiss male arguing to preserve the rock chip. His light-sensitive eyes are tucked behind blackened UV goggles, but you can see the horror on his expression.

“It’s—”

“Give me the pick.”

Ralla, the Mirialan female with whom he was arguing, passes over the pick. The point of it was about as big as a curved metal toothpick. You lean in, aware of the others hovering over your shoulders. In your other hand you have a run-of-the-mill toothbrush. You scrape carefully at the rock in question with the bristles; their scratch is the only sound on the oven-dry air. You feel the two, practically in each of your ears, holding their breath.

You place the pick carefully against the side of the suspicious fragment and hold yours, too.

You pry at it, and the fragment instantly pops clean off.

Nelon makes a choked sound, but you and Ralla sigh in relief. Under the pale rock, it’s clear that the wall is uninterrupted by tell-tale scoring that may suggest it was a decorative piece, adhered intentionally by the original inhabitants.

Ralla takes a deep breath and covers the pale green skin of her face with her hands. “That was so stressful.”

You turn to look at her, completely lost for words. The three of you are under an insufficient canopy cover in the scorching, sand-grain wind of Tatooine’s most barren region. You’re sweaty and dusty, wearing the same clothes for days on end, mouths parched dry. There are roving Tuskan raiders—maybe far, maybe near—and a pretentious Hutt representative sitting ten meters away with his personal guard, observing you toil.

You smile, and a single chuckle spirals up and out. “Isn’t it great?”

---

A buzz of activity interrupts the dig. You look at your dirt-crusted chrono. It’s only a little past local noon. As a member of the team, you’re eager to drop what you’re doing and run to hear the news. As senior assistant, you opt to set a better example—instead of dropping everything, you instruct Nelon and Ralla to pack it up carefully and set the tools aside.

“It’s here! They had it!”

Your heart skips at the shout from across camp, but you resist the urge to run and see. If Professor found the part, he’ll be coming right here with it.

Sure enough, in a matter of minutes, Professor Taq Norr and a small crowd of the field team are headed your way. In his taloned hands, you see it: the new power coupler for the ground penetrating radar.

“Lucky they had one,” you comment as Professor draws near, ruffling his feathers against the relentless sand. His prominent beak doesn’t lend itself to expressions quite like a humanoid face, but you’ve spent enough time with him to recognize that he’s beaming with excitement.

“I knew they’d hike the price up if they realized how much we needed one.” Professor and the crowd gravitate to the GPR, draw back the heavy canvas cover. He gives you a sheepish look. “It’s not very honest, but I circled their entire crawler twice pretending not to see anything of interest.”

You laugh, delighted. “Professor! You can be sneaky!”

“Only because I couldn’t afford to pay two hundred credits for a five-credit part,” he admonishes. But his eyes are still crinkled in a smile. “Well, let’s see if this thing even works.”

“If you paid anything for it and didn’t plug it in to check beforehand, I’ll be much less impressed.”

Professor laughs as he and another student pull the panel of the GPR aside. You rethink the word ‘new’ when you get a good look at the coupler he’s found. Nothing from the Jawas is necessarily new, per se, and much of it has been battered around. But when the coupler is linked into its slot by the power cell, lights glow and an affirming ping earns a cheer from the crowd of dirty and exhausted archeology students.

It’s practically a sporting event, moving the GPR into place. The weary tedium of a stalled dig site is gone, replaced by chatter and energy that nearly has you jumping. The coupler was discovered to be damaged in transit when it was unpacked, so not even a single radar image has been taken. Three trips back to the Mos Eisley tech market turned up nothing. You’ve all been digging blind, carefully scraping the top layer away from the above-ground ruins.

You and Professor arrange the GPR antenna unit in the center of the ring of rock-dwelling structures.

“Start on the widest range with the lowest power, I think,” Professor says as the two of you secure the radar apparatus in the sand.

“Will do.”

The receiver console is set out under the shade of an open-sided canopy. When the area is clear and the GPR is activated, the familiar hum and rhythmic thump of the radar begins, and shortly after, images start scrawling across the holo-display.

At first, there’s another cheer. Success!

But then, as the details of the GPR become clearer, the entire group trails into a silence both awed and unsettled.

“It’s…” You trace the subterranean structure down the display with your eyes. “It’s partially underground. Mostly underground.” The GPR’s range is set wide, not deep, but it’s clear that the underground structure continues beyond the limits of the radar, down some five meters.

None of you had theorized this sort of underground infrastructure. There are confused looks exchanged, some muttering. Tuskans don’t dig, not this deep. Of course, they haven’t built with stone in centuries, either—when Professor’s chief theory was that these ruins were pre-nomadic Tuskan dwellings, possibly part of a large settlement, spirits had been high to uncover previously-unheard-of anthropological data.

But something feels off about the depth of those huts. You trace them with your eyes again. Cellars and basements follow a predictable stair/open space pattern. Sleeping nooks, storage areas, fire pits. In the limited power of the lowest radar setting, it’s still obvious that these structures go straight in an uninterrupted line down and down and down.

---

Professor sighs. “We have to inform the University.”

You sigh right back and rest your elbows on your knees. The two of you are in the tent that serves as the operations office; it’s the most secure with double the support beams and double the foundation pegs. All the precious data-disks are stored here in neat filing cabinets. There’s a portable holo-table in the center of the room, and the junior assistants are studying it now, comparing what the GPR revealed with other established dig sites throughout the Republic.

You look up at Professor, pained. “They might yank funding on the whole site.”

“No, no, I don’t think it’s that bad,” Professor replies too quickly. He clears his throat and absently preens his talons through his wing feathers. Every one of the crew has sand in every single nook and cranny; it’s become a fact of life. “Tatooine wasn’t high on the priority list, but even a major change in projected labor isn’t necessarily enough to cut us off altogether.”

You cross your arms, frowning. “Normally, no. But you know Illiana was pulling all her contacts on the committee trying to get our funding diverted to her Mon Cala temple. We’ll need to start campaigning for renewal right now if we want another season paid for.”

Professor tilted his head, great crest feathers bobbing as he thought. He was still preening his talons absently through his feathers; he caught himself and coughed awkwardly. You shrugged, unoffended. Preening himself in public, for feathered folk, seemed to be equivalent to unfeathered or unfurred species scratching in crude places, but you simply aren’t socialized to be bothered by it.

“She’s going to try and steal our allotment,” you insist. “Mota Jor is happy to do whatever Illiana wants, just because he’s her uncle.”

Professor winces. “Family ties are hard to beat.”

You exhale, thinking. This could be a spectacular opportunity. It could turn out to be the size of the Mon Cala complex, reveal a trove of data. Centuries of history, maybe. But if it is the size of the Mon Cala complex, that means not only will you have to petition for a renewal at the end of the approved season… you’ll have to convince the committee to increase your funding.

The Mon Cala site, being at the bottom of the ocean, is an extravagantly expensive project that the Galactic Histories department loves to put at the forefront. It’s great press on a friendly world, with the pro-Republic Mon Calamari in enthusiastic support.

At least when you ask for an increase, you don’t have to include scuba gear for digging in the Dune Sea.

“We may need someone to go there and make our case.” Professor points out.

Your frown deepens. “Not me.”

He shrugs his avian shoulders. “All right, but I’m surprised you would trust someone else to do it.”

“Not just someone else. I’d trust you to do it.”

“Me? I can’t leave. I’m head of the site—I have to stay here.”

You shake your head. “That’s months away, anyway. Half a standard year.”

“Correct, you are. It will suffice to submit an update to our progress to Belmona, and she can make sure the records are all in order back on Coruscant. I need to make sure she doesn’t send a new GPR unit, also… she’s been waiting for word about the coupler…”

You sit there, thinking. He’s right that the Lina Soh University must be updated to this change of events. No question about that. But you think you’re right, too. Competing sites want your funding, and no one wanted a dig site under the Hutts supervision; a Hutt representative in a University field operation is nearly beyond the pale for the council members sitting in a clean office on the Core world of Coruscant. They just don’t get how things work out here in the Outer Rim, and the idea of having to devote even more resources and labor to a compromised site will be easy for certain parties to use in their own schemes.

“I’ll send them a message immediately,” Professor announces, slapping his hands on his knees and leveraging himself to his feet. Rishii are rather tall, and usually their winged arms seem to take up an impossible amount of space. Accustomed to the interior of classrooms, delicate artifacts, and small office tents, Professor has gotten very good at keeping each and every feather out of the way.

You stand up, too. It’s dark outside and you’re running on fumes. You start to excuse yourself, but Professor stops you.

“Say… have you thought more about your dissertation?”

You feel like the sand beneath the tent has begun to crumble. “Uh…”

Professor takes a breath, and gestures with his wing for you to do so, too. “Just a question. Have you thought about it?”

As little as you could manage. “Some.” At least if this site gets scrapped by the University, you won’t have the supervising hours to complete your requisite experience. It’ll probably be another couple years, minimum, until another opportunity comes knocking.

Professor backs off; he knows that this black spot looming on the horizon is a sensitive topic. “Go get some sleep. But seriously, give it some thought. It’s time you decided how the rest of your career is going to proceed once there’s a ‘Doctor’ at the front of your name.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Good.”

You back out of the tent, into the dark desert night, and stand there like a dimwit under the billion Outer Rim stars. Doctor. Uneasily, you head for your tent.

On the way, you steal a glance at the fancy brand-new solar-flect tent erected for the Hutt rep. Jabba doesn’t hire many humans in administrative positions, but this lackey is. He’s middle-aged and watchful, tall but weasely, too sharp of eye. It was a condition of the cartel allowing this dig site in what is—galactically speaking—their turf. The representative is here to observe that no items ‘of significant cultural significance’ are removed from the planet.

That’s a thin lie. Everyone here knows that he’s keeping an eye out for treasure, not that anyone’s expecting to find what the Hutts would consider valuable. The babysitter’s presence here grates all the same.

Anxious on one hand and aggravated on the other, you arrive at your tent to find that the night still isn’t over.

“Zhalar?” The Zyggerian is easy to spot, even in the starlight. His huge vulpine ears make his tall silhouette one-of-a-kind. You halt a few steps back. You don’t like finding men waiting at your bed unexpectedly—at least, not co-workers. And maybe just not Zhalar; you know he’s condemned his people’s ways, become an outcast among them. But Zyggerians are notorious as vicious slavers and worse… and in the wild places of the galaxy, there aren’t many things lower than slavers. You certainly never turn your back on one when you’re exploring alone.

Zhalar’s ears twitch; he’s noticed. He rolls his eyes. “I need to speak with you.”

You nod. “Ok.”

He exhales. “From all the way over there? I doubt you want Ralla hearing this.”

You approach, stuffing your doubts out of sight. Ralla is certainly more of a pain in the ass than Zhalar has ever been. “What’s up?”

Zhalar looks at the tents pitched next to yours. He drops his voice to a slip of a whisper. “Look, I don’t get in people’s business.”

You nod. “Ok.” He really doesn’t. Zhalar barely even talks to anyone.

“When we met up with you in Mos Eisley, I smelled a male on you.”

Heat sears up your cheeks in a second. Zhalar waves a hand. “Like I said, I don’t care. Not my business. My nose and ears are dozens of times sharper than yours. If I got involved in everything I heard or smelled, I’d never see the end of it.”

Shocked, you just nod. “Um… ok.”

“The only reason I’m bringing this up is because I went with Professor to the Jawa crawler today, and while we were driving back, I caught his scent near the camp. Whoever he is, he’s nearby.”

Out of nowhere, the memory of clawed hands digging into your hips seizes you. A rush of terror and a fierce craving zip through your nerves. Zhalar sees the surprise on your face and reads your alarm. “So… Is he going to be a problem? Should we tell Professor?”

“No.” The word flits out long, long before you’ve decided to say it, and now you’re asking yourself what you think you’re doing. “No, net yet. I don’t think he’ll be a problem.”

Zhalar watches your face, then shrugs. You see him relax, obviously unwilling to make a scene about your personal life. You can only imagine what he thinks of some man following you out into the desert. “Well… we might not have to worry about it much longer one way or another.”

You wince; everyone already knows Professor’s dilemma with the bureaucrats back on Coruscant. Zhalar turns to go, and you catch his arm. He looks back, wary.

“Thank you. For telling me.”

He gives you a small, sharp-toothed smile. “No problem. Just don’t be stupid; he smells like trouble.”

You don’t know the half of it, you think as you watch Zhalar stride through the half-dark, out of sight.

The first of Tatooine’s moons is ballooning up from the horizon, and the world turns silver. You stand there outside your tent, thinking about the GPR, thinking about the Hutt interloper across camp, thinking about the dissertation you have to write and present—and on what? But most of all, you’re thinking about a red nova of energy on the other side of a door, much too close, much too strong.

Hesitant, you look out over the sand. You summon up that little spark of Force you carry, and you throw it out like a line into the ocean.

From out in the desert, a crimson heartbeat drums back. An answering call. 

---

Like what you read?

[ekrochford]

One of my favorite pieces of canon continuity is that clones cannot lie for shit

[ekrochford]

Never seen maul as happy as he is riding around on r2

[ekrochford]

Maul x femreader NSFW self-insert fanfic (part 11/11)

[Here it is the final chapter! To be continued...?]

Chapter 11

Outside your small window, the desert night is pulling back under a curtain of lilac half-shadow. Dawn is still a ways off, but you’re up and dressed. You rest a finger on the switch of the table lamp, taking a final look around the corners of your hotel room.

It hasn’t been an hour since Professor Tak Norr commed to announce the team’s arrival in port; he received your prompt response with some surprise, but the matter of when to meet was resolved quickly. If most of the preparations to travel from town to site could be made in the cooler morning hours, all the better. No time to lose. You’ve got on your boots and cloak, your packed travel bag is over your shoulders. Out onto the road again.

You open the old sliding door (another creaking whoosh into the wall port) and step out into the darkened hall. To one side, the narrow stairs. To your relief, you hear noise clamoring up from the cantina. You hesitate and look the other way.

Room 6, just next to yours, is closed and quiet. Was part of you hoping that he would be out in the hall, waiting to say goodbye? Silly. You shake your head at yourself.

Maul was… something. You thought at first he may have just been an agent of a cartel. No—at first you thought he was just mafia muscle. At least you guessed quickly that Maul was too smart, too sly to be just a thug. But you’ve come to realize perhaps you underestimated him even more starkly than you thought.

If you hadn’t felt it in a brief, vivid flash yesterday, you would think that your danger intuition had failed altogether. You didn’t consider that a Force power at all—just the worldly wisdom and things that you’d seen, coalesced in the pit of your stomach to give you warning faster than your mind could compute reason for.

Why didn’t it ever ring a warning when Maul looked at you? Even the first time, long before you’d talked or flirted or gotten naked together. Why not?

Living outside the law certainly wasn’t enough to make someone bad, per se. After all, some cultures outlawed eating meat—but only on certain days. Or punished the picking of the state flower. Tariffs and taxes and shipping codes were, technically, laws that were broken daily.

But you know it’s more than that with Maul. Even if he was only the agent of a crime syndicate, he was still clearly a killer for hire, but you’ve begun to suspect that he is beyond even that infamy. He’s something you don’t have an explanation for. Something loud and red and intense, battering on your nascent Force sensitivity…

The look on his face after he kissed you, the feel of his arms carrying you upstairs. Your feet wander to his door even as your mind muddles in circles.

The best and smartest thing to do would be to leave as quietly as possible and hope that he doesn’t notice until you and the University team are a hundred kilometers from here. And still, here you’re standing, thinking of how carefully he settled you in bed last night, and that kiss.

You make a deal with yourself. I won’t ask him about it. There. Simple. You’ll knock, he’ll answer, you’ll say your goodbyes. It was a sprawling, huge galaxy, but you never knew who you might meet again; it paid dividends to leave a good impression when you could. That was it. That was the only reason you were raising your fist to knock on his door.

Although your fist was up, poised to knock, you hesitate still.

We’re not asking him about the kiss. We are not asking him about that kiss. No.

You nod to yourself and take a readying breath.

Your fist freezes in midair again, but it’s not overthinking. Not this time. Sweat breaks out over you as a familiar sensation beats against your skin—no, it beats against your energy, the Force around you, agitating like an opposing electromagnetic field. Opposing, and much, much stronger.

The same wardrum pulse, the same impression of furious red waves of power, like the crashing ocean under a crimson sky. Like sound that’s so loud, you feel it strike your skin and rattle your bones.

Its source is just on the other side of the door.

You know. You’ve known it was him. You’ve known he was something else. But here, now, he’s no longer a blank space in the energy field—he’s like a supernova. Without the door in the way, he’d be close enough to touch. Too close.

And the anger. The rage. And yes, the hatred, too. You can hardly conceive that all of it could have fit inside him. No wonder some of it stuck to his saber.

The lightsaber… A terrible thought starts to form. You’re standing so close, hand still raised to knock. Why would he reveal himself to you like this… unless he expected it wouldn’t matter?

You’re frozen in fear—did he sense you listening yesterday? Does he know you heard what little snippets that you did? Is even that too much? Too dangerous to forgive?

You’ve heard the sound that lightsabers make often enough. Jedi demonstrating or lecturing at the University, and, once, a padawan shyly explaining the mechanics of his crystal-powered weapon to you. It’s a unique sound—a sort of snap, hiss, and then the hum of the energy blade.

Is it going to be the last thing you hear? How many times have you flippantly thought to yourself that he would be the death of you?

This man might really…

You wait, too afraid to move. The sound of your death never arrives.

The red, raw power breaking over you recedes. The tide slips away, further and further, losing violence and power as it washes back under the guise of nothingness.

Before you lose contact with your body again, you take a step back. Another. And another. You back away down the hall. You back to the top of the stairs and creep down without taking your eyes off his door, and when your line of sight is broken you watch the stairwell until you step down into the lobby.

With one eye on the stairs, you square your account with the Weequay hostess, who still won’t look at you. You can hardly blame her, more so now than ever. You add an extra few credits to your bill as a tip and an apology, and then you stride briskly out into the dawning Tatooine morning.

You pretend you don’t feel eyes on you from an upstairs window. You don’t look up to see.

[If you like it, leave a tip!

See you next time!]

[ekrochford]

I'm almost finished with this fic!

[“Hmm.” Maul has hardly blinked. The way he stares at you, you’re sure he’s about to ask what your dream was about. You grope around your imagination for something fake and harmless, some inane series of events that could reasonably explain your terrified reaction.

But Maul doesn’t ask. After another minute of watching you, gazing across the pillows with his unblinkingly yellow stare, he makes a low sound in his throat and pulls you into his arms.

You don’t fight it, but you hold your breath. It’s impossible to ignore the power in his body, from his corded arms wrapped around you, to the slab muscle of his torso, to his thick legs twisting with yours. It’s such a subtle reminder, you can’t be sure whether it’s intentional: he overpowers you, period. No contest.

He folds you in against him and nuzzles a searing kiss against your neck, under your jaw. And just like that, you’re no longer pretending to relax into his embrace. The tension in your body softens like wax. His mouth on your skin shuts off your thoughts like the flip of a switch, leaving your mind in luxurious, velvet silence.]

Everyone I know who writes is already on here! I don't have anyone to tag! :(

Out of Context

I've seen enough last/first lines challenges, now I decided do an out of context challenge. Pick a random line of your fic and post it with no context.

Thanks for the tag @kotemf ! Love this idea!

—

“But I can still walk,” Ahsoka laughed.

—

NPT: @snips2112 @ladylucksrogue @whyamismall @aknightreaderr @queen-of-mandalore

[ekrochford]

Maul x femreader NSFW self-insert fanfic (part 10/11)

[Second to last chapter, and when I said earlier that this is possibly the most vile thing I've ever written, I'm talking about this chapter.]

Part 10

Both suns were low in the sky by the time you shuffled out of the sandy evening breeze. The distant dunes were glazed in hot-pan red with the night sky a creeping indigo whisper above them. The thinly civilized Mos Eisley was winding down for the night, and the Mos Eisley that slept beneath was stirring. Time to turn in for off-worlders without a lethal weapon on hand.

The supplies you’d purchased for Professor Taq Norr were stored in an empty hangar that you’d rented for the purpose; if it was big enough to house a speeder, it was roomy enough for a few anti-grav crates. The hangar owner didn’t bat an eye. There wasn’t exactly a storage facility in town, and you’d been directed his way for a place to stash goods behind a locked door.

You had the impression that the goods he usually stored were more volatile than the sealed rations, bolts of canvas, fuel cells, and other menial odds and ends on Professor’s list.

The thought of locked doors reminded you of Maul and thinking of Maul put you in a glowing good mood. You passed the Weequay hostess (who hadn’t spoken to you once since yesterday morning) and trekked up the stairs. You had a bag full of freshly cleaned clothes and nobody was in the refresher; you were going to scrub the sand out of your hair, knock on Maul’s door, and wish your ov-blocker implant good luck.

You’re careful not to dwell on what you’d heard this morning. Not as you gather your things in your room, not as you bathe, not as you dress in freshly-cleaned clothes. What would be the point? The galaxy was full to the brim with people who lived outside the law. A girl like you wasn’t about to solve that. A girl like you could only move between worlds in a calculated balance, and the key to that balance was keeping a sharp ear, but minding your own business.

What Maul did and who he worked for was certainly not your business. You were out of here tomorrow, and you’d never see Maul’s face again after that. The only business you had with Maul was the kind conducted horizontally.

Or standing… or tied up… or…

Memories of last night brought on a jagged shiver. Oh, he was going to ruin you for other men. How in the galaxy would you ever track down anyone who could compare?

It had been a long, sweaty day, and it felt so good to just be clean, to be wearing clean clothes. To be laying in clean sheets. You kick off your boots and stretch out on the mattress.

The last thing you think about is where you’re going to hunt up supper before you drift off to sleep.

---

It’s nearly pitch black in your room when you shock yourself awake. Your throat is too tight to scream, but a shriek bounces off your ribcage, struggling for escape. You whip your head around—you can’t see, your lamp isn’t lit. It was still the last dregs of daylight, last thing you remember.

You rocket out of bed, land on trembling legs and listen for something that isn’t a sound. It isn’t a sense, not one you detect with eyes and ears.

It’s the Force again, but you’ve never felt it like this.

You pinch yourself; your body is real. You aren’t having a dream or a vision or what-have-you. You are awake, and something is wrong.

Downstairs. You feel it downstairs, through the floor, radiating upward and outward. It isn’t an object—this isn’t the passive, static memory of metal or stone. This is something alive. When Jedi are near, the Force pulses around them in a gentle white heartbeat. This is a wardrum, and it pounds through the walls, echoes through your skin to your bones. And it’s not white. It’s…

Gone.

You stand in the middle of your room, feeling fragile as blown glass. The memory still punches through you, a ghostly drum in grim cadence. With two shaky steps, you reach your table lamp and click it to life. The shadows retreat into corners.

Evolution has never managed to erase the comfort of a warm light from the human mind. The adrenaline starts to drain from your bloodstream. Just as your pulse slows to a brisk walk, there’s a knock at your door.

Who else could it possibly be? You walk over, tap the unlock, and the door creaks back into the wall port.

Maul takes you in with his eyes, head to foot. Reads you in a glance. You can’t imagine he’s missed your wide eyes and cranked shoulders. His hands fold behind his back. “Are you all right?”

Maybe you’re paranoid, but it sounds like he already knows the answer. “Fine.”

He looks down at you from the shadow outside the door, the glow of the lamp catching his gold eyes. You stare back. Where did he come from? Downstairs? You try to feel his place in the ambient energy of the world—that Force that you’ve never taken the time to know—try clumsily like feeling blindly in the dark. All you feel is an empty space that’s in his shape.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” you announce bluntly.

“Oh?” Disappointment? Disinterest? He’s impossible to read. “Your University friends are finally arriving?”

You nod.

Maul tilts his head, still staring at your face. He wears a small smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes; those are glimmering yellow, intense as he stands there thinking. And you stand there, too, noticing for the first time his missing undershirt through the open front of his tunic. Despite all you’ve felt and thought and worried, the rippled muscle of his chest and abdomen are difficult to look away from. Difficult to keep your hands off of.

Finally, Maul’s grin curls wider and he holds out a gloved hand.

“Then tonight is our last night together. And I have something already in mind.”

You’re off-balance, careening from one emotional extreme to the other. Anxiety and dizzying lust are pulling you first one way, then the other. You can’t forget the intuitive gut-punch this afternoon, the impression of immense danger like a clanging bell. But it isn’t ringing now.

You take his hand. One more night.

---

Maul doesn’t lead you back to his room. By the hand, he escorts you down the stairs, down to the ground floor, down to the entry level. You don’t worry for a moment about what you’ll find there. Not now; it’s too late to worry about such small things.

Everything is quiet. You hadn’t looked at your chrono—what time is it? Surely you hadn’t slept so long that all the cutpurses and drunks and card skippers tucked themselves in for the night? The two of you reach the bottom of the narrow stairs, and you see that the hostess desk is empty.

He makes a turn into the stillness of the cantina, and you see why there is no sound. It’s empty. Abandoned like a tomb; the primary array over the bar is off, and the only light is the glow of the knee-level backups inset behind the bar. Even the Ithorian barkeep is gone.

Maul leads you inside, and you let him. He casts you in like a boat drifting on still water, and you wander through the rickety, shadowed tables. Your eyes cast about, taking in the details. The shutters are closed tight. Half-full glasses are still sitting out, some tipped over on tabletops, some shattered on the floor. Alcohol drips in a steady beat. Sabacc cards lay abandoned in phantom games, dropped in an instant.

The hair raises on your arms, just as you hear Maul roll the cantina doors shut and tap the lock. What happened here? Your eyes circle round again. A chair tipped over. An abandoned coat.

Maul’s hands close over your waist, pulling your back flush against his body. You feel his breath on your hair, hot exhale, long and savoring inhale. The warmth of his skin seeps through the layers of his clothes into you, melting your lines to parallel his.

“Where did everyone go?” you ask breathlessly. His arms have tightened around you in a coil.

“Elsewhere.” One of his hands crescents beneath your breast, thumb stroking upward. The ‘why’ dies before you take in the air to ask it.

“We don’t have to concern ourselves with the noise, tonight.” Maul leans his lips down to your ear. The way he brushes them down the curve to the lobe is part kiss, part taste.

“There’s still the rooms upstairs, the hostess…”

“I doubt very much they’ll return before tomorrow.” Maul bites down gently on your ear, and anything you may have said in protest withers. But you still wonder—what did he do? Did he chase them out? Or did he…

He hums disapproval, and his wandering thumb flicks over your nipple through your clothes. It shocks a gasp out of you.

“You seem distracted. Will I have to earn your attention?”

“N-no…”

“And here I thought you would behave. Any fool could hear that’s a lie.” His thumb crosses your nipple again, more slowly.

You hear his smile as he speaks into your hair. “Perhaps what you need is to be tied up again. You’re so very obedient, that way.”

Just the thought drains the resistance out of you. Your hands wander to cover Maul’s, and you thread your fingers through his. The two of you are standing amidst the abandoned tables of the cantina like a sea full of bobbing, vacant lifeboats.

You close your eyes to avoid seeing. “Where did you get so good at that?” you ask with a sigh.

“Hmm? So good at what?”

“The way you talk… the way… everything. Where’d you get to be so good?”

When he answers, it’s playful and with a buoyant, pleased chuckle. “I would never claim to be good.” His fingers give your nipple a gentle squeeze through your clothes.

When you can speak, again, “You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do.” He steps back and you turn to see him striding slowly to the bar. Back to the place where you two sat together that first evening. He looks back and tilts his head again, beckoning. “Come here.”

Here, there, anywhere. You follow him to the bar and stand in the same spot where you sat that night, with him in the same spot next to you. Like most of the cantina, the barstools are askew, one lying on its side on the floor. You pretend not to notice.

Maul leans his hip against the bar. “I learned the same way I learn anything else. Some reading, much practice…” He raises an eyebrow at you, smirks. “You can master, oh, just about anything with commitment. With discipline.”

After your last couple nights together, the word discipline has an effect on you that it certainly never did before. Your skin warms, remembering. Memory turns to blood-rushing, heart-thudding anticipation. Maul grins wider.

“Do you know what I thought of when we were sitting here?”

You lean back against the bar, almost as casually. “I bet you’re about to tell me.”

Grinning still, Maul pushes off the bar and comes to stand just in front of you, boots bracketed to either side of yours, effectively pinning you against the bar without laying a finger on you. He rests both hands on the bartop to either side, boxing you into his arms, still without touching. His face is leaned down very close to yours.

“I couldn’t stop thinking that no one in this cantina was brave enough to say a word if I bent you over this bar right in front of them. No one would say a thing. I could yank your pants down—after you’ve begged me to, of course—shove you face-down over the counter, and have you coming, loudly, in a matter of minutes, and no one would have dared to object.”

The smell of his skin, the sight of all that exposed chest, right in front of you, and his words (always, always his words) have finally burned off any lingering anxiety. “Is that offer still available?” You reach for his belt to yank him closer, as you did this afternoon. Maul catches your hands.

“Tsk. So grabby. You didn’t even ask if you were allowed.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Not yet you aren’t.”

Maul has both your wrists in one hand; he pulls them out until your shoulders are hitched forward. He catches you by the hair with the other hand and tilts your head back. He leans in, and you’re more than ready to feel his mouth kiss along the line of your throat. Your skin is electric with need.

Maul, of course, only taunts you, barely brushing. So close you can feel his breath, but nothing else, even as he follows the path of your jugular.

“Do you want me to tell you what I’m going to do with you?” You can still hear the grin in his voice, spoken almost directly into your ear.

“Yes.” You do. You can’t wait to hear it, knowing that Maul doesn’t break his promises… “Yes, sir.”

A silky laugh into your hairline. He pulls your wrists, winds your hair around his fist a little harder. “First, you’ll take your clothes off for me. All of them.”

“Now?”

“Soon. Once all of your skin is exposed, I think I’ll need to do something about these wandering hands of yours. Tie them behind your back, maybe. Perhaps that will keep them out of trouble.”

His tongue flicks over your ear, triggering a rumbling tremor through your lower abdomen.

“Then, once I have you naked and restrained, I’ll have all the time I could need to search for these spots that I missed.”

You moan and bite your lip. “Well… maybe I was mistaken…”

“No, no.” Maul leans back to look in your eyes. His grin is wicked and the look in his eyes nearly sparks. “It’s too late to take it back, now. I never do anything by half. If there’s somewhere I missed…” His claws scrape gently down your scalp, through your hair. Your skin puckers immediately, tickled and stimulated and buzzing sensitive. “I’m going to find it, and I’m going to make up for missing it the first time.”

The base of your spine grinds against the rounded countertop. Maul fills the space around you, from his legs straddling yours, to his massive chest inches from yours, to his hands holding you in place. Your nerves, your entire body hums like a stretched cable and you feel—like a matching tone—that Maul is just as taut, just as satisfyingly tense.

He kisses down your throat, lingering at the hollow between your collarbones, just above the neck of your tunic.

“It’s time for you to take these off for me.”

Maul releases his hands and stands upright, still extremely close, so close that you brush against him as you do what he says. Boots and socks, sturdy outer tunic and work pants, the layers turning thinner and lighter until your underwear joins the pile on the floor. You’re standing naked in a public barroom, but Maul said that no one was coming back tonight. And whether you have too much faith or just enough fear, you believe him. Maul keeps his promises. All of them.

In the low white lighting strips behind the bar, you see him gaze up and down your body. Desire, yes. But planning, too. Planning out how he’s going to devastate you. Head to toe, your skin puckers in rawka-flesh as you stand there waiting under his stare.

With a smirk, he leans in to kiss your lips. “Surely I didn’t miss there.”

Up to your forehead, down the side of your face. He kisses under your jawbone, and his tongue slides against your carotid pulse-point. “Hmm…”

His hands cover yours where you’ve propped yourself upright against the counter. You need the support; if you tried to stand on your own, the floor would tip. He moves to your shoulder, then down your arm, ignoring the way your nipples have tightened to points.

Maul brings your hand up so he can kiss your palm, then the soft underside of your wrist. “You weren’t talking about here?”

You shake your head. At the moment, you aren’t sure what you were talking about before. You aren’t sure you could talk right now, in fact.

Maul brings up your other hand, pretending to search with his lips over your fingers and wrist. His yellow eyes cut sideways at you devilishly. “Here? Or… here?”

You shake your head again. “N-no… not there.”

“Hmm…”

Maul twists you around until your hips bend at the counter level. The bar is cool against the flushed skin of your belly and breasts. Your pulse kicks up three gears, expecting him to crush against you—to skip ahead to the part you’re aching for—but Maul still doesn’t touch more than necessary. The deprivation has you burning, building heat like an empty skillet on a hot stove.

You feel him running a hand up the back of your thigh, teasing up towards your buttocks. Your muscles clench involuntarily, anticipation running ahead of you. You can hear him roll his lips together in the way his chuckle is half groan.

“Would you like for me to spank you?”

It might not be sane, but you would, in fact. Not only because you’re blinded by white-hot arousal that Maul is so very good at feeding, but because you know he likes to do it, he likes the sound and feel and the dominance of it—and maybe if he does, he’ll feed his own arousal and lose his own monumental control and then he’ll…

“Yes. Please.”

His hand has stilled, and you’re sure in that moment that he’s only taking time to aim. Then he sighs.

“No, no… Because I know for certain that I… hit that spot, so that couldn’t be the one I missed.”

A soft cry of protest slips out of you when he takes his hand away. Maul’s laugh isn’t the clipped, cool tone he started with; it’s grown a razor-thin edge as Maul’s excitement creeps up the dial. You aren’t the only one eager to reach the end of this game.

The most important difference is that Maul has much more patience than you do.

Instead of spanking you, he pulls your wrists together behind your back. “What did I promise you? That you’d be naked and restrained?” It’s another strip of the flexible, silky material, and once he’s tied your wrists together you don’t have much hope that you could yank them out.

Maul thrusts your legs apart with a knee. With your legs spread this way, with the cool air against your labia, you’re increasingly desperate to have him. Maul is still exploring your body, touching everywhere except where you want, but he’s started to pick up speed. His claws have just started to dig into your skin. That’s a tell—and if you play it right…

“Sir?” You don’t have to act much to put a whimper in your voice.

Maul pauses where he’d been memorizing your sensitive ribs with his lips. “Yes?”

“The counter is very… solid. Much better than the chairs in your room…”

Maul rumbles a laugh and moves to your back, kissing down the length of your spine until your bound hands get in the way. “You noticed.”

That wasn’t enough, obviously. Maul returns to the slow process of edging you into a frenzy, one kiss, one touch at a time. It’s difficult to think when you just want him to fuck you senseless, when you’re about ready to beg for it.

You glance at him out of the corner of your eye. He catches you looking and gives you a grin.

“Something the matter?”

“No, sir. I was just—thinking about whether you’re going to come all over me, or if—if you’re going to—fill me with it.”

Maul blew out a breath, then a short laugh. “And which do you prefer?”

Honestly? The one you want is whichever consumes his self-control, whichever drives him mad with lust. Whichever completes the delicious process of stripping away his restraint until he’s gone as rabid as he makes you feel.

“It’s not up to me.” You smother your smirk and put on a wide-eyed and breathless face. “Good girls do what they’re told.”

You see Maul close his eyes, take a deep breath, open them again. He loosens his hold on your hips, where you’d just begun to feel his claws sink in.

“Hmm… Because you’re hoping for something?”

You’re hoping for anything, at this point. “Yes, sir.”

“Tell me what you want, then.”

Is this a trick? He’s so very close to the beck of your thighs, you can feel the heat of his body, the tiny brushes of his clothes against you, and it’s making you crazy.

“I want your cock.” You try to keep your good girl voice on, but it cracks a little at the end. Even in your own ears, you really do sound like you’re begging. “Please...”

“You’ll need to do something in return.”

His hands are gone and you can hear him fumbling with his clothes. The adrenaline shot through your body makes you feel like you could levitate—you’d agree to anything. “Yes—anything, sir—”

“It was very disappointing… that we had to be so quiet last night—” Finally, you feel skin against your ass, you can feel his erection thick between your legs. “I want you to say my name, scream it. I want to hear you coming until you can’t anymore.”

“Can’t what? Scream? Or… orgasm?”

“Whichever gives out first.”

He thrusts it into you, and your voice chokes off with the intensity of it. It’s a full-body sensation. You can hardly breathe, let alone speak. Maul is done teasing, done going slow; with the solid bar counter to grind you against, he has the leverage to ram it in as hard as and fast as he wants.

“Well?” He manages to growl.

“Maul…”

“That’s—not all that—loud—”

You’re dizzy on adrenaline, on the sound of the blood rushing in your ears and the unflagging rhythm of his cock lighting up your nerves from the inside. With your hands tied behind your back, you can’t even hold on. Maul holds you in place, holds your legs apart with his thighs. Whatever happens, you’re at his mercy.

So you do scream. His name, pleas for more, sometimes just incoherently. If anyone could hear, they would think there was a murder happening—not that anyone here would dare confront Maul about it.

That should scare you. That should matter. But you couldn’t follow a train of thought now if your life depended on it, so you let it go. You haven’t stopped orgasming yet, and Maul’s pace hasn’t dropped a beat, and for the moment nothing else exists.

You suspect that it’s the sight of you slumped over the bar, ravaged and wrung out and nearly unconscious, that finally pushes Maul over the edge. He finishes with a shouted curse and a long rumbling groan—claws still hooked in your hips, hard this time but you notice it only very, very distantly.

He rolls you over on the bar. This would mean laying back on your bound hands, except that he hauls you up into a sitting position. You don’t help or resist; you feel as boneless as a rag doll. Now that you’re facing him, you see he’s shrugged out of his tunic so that the sweat filming his chest and shoulders catches the low light and the cool air.

You blink at him, dazed, and he looks back. He doesn’t look done. He still looks ravenous, fixated on the breath rattling in and out of you. Your hair must be a sweaty mess, you probably look like you’ve been wrung through the rusty desalination filters out back. That’s certainly how you feel.

He yanks you in against him, swallowing the small gasp that slips out with a kiss—but kiss is simply too tame a word. He consumes you, sharing a ragged breath from your lungs to his. You find yourself caught between his solid arms and his massive chest; his belt scrapes against your inner thighs where he’s practically wrapped you around him.

You break away to breathe. Maul breaks away to look down at you again, propped up naked on the counter, hands tied behind your back. A shiver passes through him.

He presses his hips forward, almost in agitation. “Open your legs.”

They already are, but you spread them wider.

“More,” Maul insists, and where his pants are opened in front he’s gotten stiff again. You open your legs as far as they’ll go, thinking that you certainly wouldn’t object if he plunged it into you from this angle, too.

But Maul catches your hair again, catches your mouth again with his, and proceeds to torment your clit with his thumb. You’re trembling again almost instantly. Maul notices, and grins against your lips.

“Yes… come again for me…”

Without removing his thumb, Maul slips a finger inside you, as well. It’s a surprise that you can feel anything down there, and stars, can you feel it. He adds another finger, massaging your front wall in time with his thumb’s movements.

“But…” you gasp. Maul has pulled back to look down at his fingers sliding in and out of you, so you have a moment to try and catch your breath, calm your spinning mind. “There’s… you just…”

Maul glances up at you, confused and impatient.

“I mean—your—your cum—”

Realization hits quickly. Maul rolls his lips under, taking a breath. “You’re not being facetious, are you?”

You shake your head.

He leans his head back and chuckles. And then he takes a tighter grip of your hair and adds a third finger inside you. The fourth one joins soon after. You’ve been staring in disbelief, but your nerves catch up and the sensation of it dumps into your brain all at once. The result is nearly paralyzing.

“Am I to believe you think I’m squeamish about my own cum?”

He twists his hand, and you know that if he wasn’t holding you up you’d be flat on the counter. It’s intense and kinky and unexpected. For once, Maul doesn’t force you to answer, just twists his hand gently against your hyper-sensitive flesh.

“Did you know that the majority of your vaginal nerve endings are here?” Maul asks pleasantly. He’s gathered himself back under control, but you can still hear the excitement underneath. Thinly, temporarily restrained. He presses his fingers a little deeper until his knuckles slip inside you. The cantina disappears in a gray haze, just for a moment; it doesn’t seem possible that his hand should fit, but the feeling of having yourself stretched over his hand is unbelievable.

You feel yourself tilt back. Maul lays you back on the counter. “In the first two or three inches, in fact. Length is… important…” Maul presses his hand a little deeper. Rotates it. His voice drops even lower. “Maybe I’ll find that spot I missed.”

Before you can even attempt to answer, Maul drops his mouth you your clit, and speech is lost. You can feel him catch on your pelvic bone, and it’s alarming more than painful, shaking you down to the base of your spine.

“Coming again? I can feel your muscles…” Maul has to pause, collect himself. “You had better remember the rules. If you want to stop—and don’t tell me—I’ll be very displeased.”

You nod. “Y-yes…”

“Good girl.”

And he’s at it again, his tongue and his hand and… You feel like you’re caught in a storm, just breathing and surviving the stunning barrage of sensation. You can’t even scream anymore. You keep thinking he’ll get tired of it but you begin to realize that you’re going to have to surrender much sooner than he is.

“M-M-Maul…”

“Hmm?”

“I…”

His hand retreats out of you. “Too much?”

You nod.

“I hurt you?”

“No—I just—I need—to stop—”

You can hear the grin in his voice. “A different kind of too much.”

You try to nod; your body feels like slab permacrete.

“I want a little more… Not my hand… I want to come inside you again.”

You whimper. “It… I must be stretched… Do you think…”

“I don’t care.” You can hear the smile in his voice, and you realize your eyes are closed. You blink them open. “I’ll just have to make those muscles clench back up.”

He’s ready to go, lined up between your legs. You bite your lip and nod.

“Ok.”

Maul tsk’s, but traces his head around your sore clit. “Ok? Not good enough.”

Trembling again, you give him the answer he wants. “Yes. I want more. M-More of… your cock…”

Maul doesn’t answer this time. He slides it in, brings your legs up to his shoulders. You’re lying flat on your tied-up hands, but you’ve forgotten all about them. He drags another orgasm out of you, and it seems like the very last of your strength, but at least he’s finished quickly too. He loves these games and he loves to wreck you; you know the sight of you limp and exhausted from his mouth, his hands, his cock—it only gets him going harder. No wonder he’s coming again almost at once.

You’ve arrived at the point where you know you physically can’t continue. You’re lying back on the bar with zero concern for your surroundings or your nakedness. These small things are too far away for you to focus on, when there are much closer problems, like the fact that you don’t think you can sit up unassisted.

Luckily, Maul helps you upright. Your head spins, but by the time he’s untied your hands, it’s settled again.

You look down at the floor. It’s very far away. Your outer tunic lands over your shoulders and you look up.

Maul is standing just in front of you, arms and chest tucked back into his tunic. He settles a bundle of your clothes on your lap; your boots are tied together in one of his hands.

He seems to be thinking, looking you up and down—with satisfaction, yes, but also pragmatically. It’s as obvious to him as it is to you that your bed upstairs is a long way away.

You nod, uncertain if the two of you are really thinking the same thing.

Maul lifts you under your back and your knees. You’re wrapped in your outer tunic, but it’s not very long. Anyone could see your exposed legs and butt. Anyone left in the building, if there is any. But you don’t worry about that. Maul doesn’t have any trouble carrying you out of the barroom, through the dark and empty lobby, up the narrow curving stairs. You fish your key card out of your pocket—it takes a couple tries to locate the right pocket, but once you scan the unlock, your door opens with a whoosh and a clank.

It's the first time Maul has been in your room. He doesn’t comment, just carries you to your bed and helps you pull the sheets back. Your limbs are gradually reconnecting to your brain, little by little. You can actually sit up on your own as Maul hangs your clothes over the back of your chair and sets your boots neatly beside them.

Discipline. You smile. Of course.

“Good night,” you tell him, maybe a little dreamily. Your limbs may be plugging back in, but the night has been mind-blowing and you haven’t quite descended back to the real world. You almost giggle, almost.

Maul stops to look at you, amused, hands folded behind his back. He looks at you, and looks at you. You sit there, dazed and sleepy, looking back.

And then he walks closer. You think to yourself that sex with this man is going to be the very last thing you do at this rate, thinking he’s about to start up again, another round, another mind-melting climax…

He stops next to the bed, watching you. He sits next to you on the mattress, not smirking or smug but just looking. As though he’s lost in thought.

And then he leans in to kiss you. And it’s a kiss, true to the name. Not sexually charged, although certainly not chaste. The hand that comes up to cup your face is—nearly—gentle in doing so.

When he pulls away, both of you are speechless. You didn’t think he had anymore surprises, but he’s pulled another one out of his sleeve. Maul, on the other hand, sits there, brow furrowed, as if he’s got more on his mind than ever.

He stands up abruptly, bids you an absent-minded goodnight, and leaves without another word. 

[If you like it, leave a tip!

See you next chapter!]

[ekrochford]

Maul x femreader NSFW self-insert fanfic (part 9/10... or 11?)

[Here we go friends, things are getting tense!]

Part 9

You wake up in your own bed. Sunlight, so hot and bright it bounces off the floor, lays in a solid line through the small window. You didn’t pull the shutters last night, but you can barely remember coming back to your room. You’re lucky you managed to close the door.

Wobbly, you clamber out of bed and notice that you’re naked. Your clothes are lying nearby—you’re almost sure that you put them back on to cross through the hall from Maul’s room to your own. Almost.

The first thing you do is stumble over and activate the door panel to check the lock. The display bleeps red; good, you locked your door behind you.

Red. You stare at it, feeling queasy.

Last night floods back, clips and blurs of images all at once. You would prefer to linger on the ones where your arms and ankles were bound, but wrangle your attention back. To the dream. No, not a dream. A Force vision.

You’re a little exhilarated at the thought, terror aside. It could be said that your little spark of psychometry is, technically, the ability to gain Force visions from objects, but you’ve never really counted it that way.

Is your Force sensitivity growing stronger? Should you contact the Temple?

You discard that thought immediately. You’re no youngling, and even if they did take you, what in the galaxy could you want such a change of life for? You already have the career you’ve dreamed of—since you were little, listening to the history of this and that relic in museums, you became curious about the origins of things. As you got older, you realized there was a whole universe of history to discover.

Why would you want to change all that, become the weakest of Jedi, when you were already on your way to being one of the top authorities on Pre-Republic civilizations?

So you weren’t going to run away to become a Jedi. That was one concern dismissed.

You wonder if you should contact the Temple anyway, not to join, but to see if anyone could give you some advice.

You pull on underwear and your camisole and retrieve your datapad from your pack. Service is patchy in the Outer Rim. Big cities—or city-planets like the Hutts’ Nar Shaddaa—typically had connection to the Core holonet that was nearly as reliable as Coruscant itself. Mos Eisley was no Nar Shaddaa.

After a long, long loading screen, search results for Force visions begin to populate. They aren’t very helpful, especially not in slow-motion. Several are skeezy ads for Force-psychics or other scams. Pass.

You navigate to the University archives digital access browser and enter your credentials. The loading screen returns, rotating, rotating, rotating…

When the home page finally appears, you open a filter-less search through the archives for ‘Force vision’. The result is to strain the tenuous connection until one single result loads every minute, clocking doggedly down the screen. Endless as the loading screen. You sigh.

You narrow the search. Surely the best information on the topic would come straight from a Jedi. You filter your results to peer-reviewed works submitted by Jedi Masters. Keywords Force vision.

There are still thousands. The archive holds the records of centuries, millennia of information. You organize the results by date, most recent first. This, too, requires a full minute to process. You wait impatiently.

You browse through the eventual list, moving farther into the past as you scroll. Many of these are controlled studies attempting to quantify the effectiveness of one stimuli or another on a subject’s ability to perceive Force visions. Most of their concluding statements summarize that manipulation of one’s Force sensitivity is quite irregular from one individual to the next; very few tried-and-true amplifiers exist. You certainly haven’t been meditating lately.

Out of the wealth of long and descriptive study titles, a strangely brief one meets your eye.

Premonitions from the Force.

You smile and click on it. If the title is any indication, the report should also be brief. Your eyes skim the author line: written by Jedi Master Elzar Mann, co-authored by Master Avar Kriss. Your smile widens as you read through. Throughout your career, you’ve co-written with a few fellow academics and you know a tug-of-war when you see it. Throughout the abstract, your trained eye can pick out where one of the authors wanted short and to-the-point, and the other insisted on proper form. You wonder which was which, and then realize you know; Elzar Mann likely asked his co-author Master Kriss to help put his ideas in scientific format, too impatient or inexperienced to do it himself.

The Force has a will of its own. This statement can only be supported by anecdotal evidence; at the present time, no method exists for the measurement of the Force and its sentience cannot be gaged. But it is a fact accepted among Jedi and among all Force users that the Force has a will and can act with its own purpose.

Jedi… and other Force users? That would be you, you suppose. The weaker Force users, and other cults, like the witches of Dathomir.

Maul was born on Dathomir, but he claimed that he wasn’t raised there. The red lightsaber in your vision hovers behind these thoughts. You brush it aside and continue reading.

In the interview with M. Torgan (M. J.T., Y. 456.15.88), she reports that her experiences with Force visions (premonitions) have often been vague but in time, come to be understood as relevant to current or approaching conflicts. This suggests that the greater Force is aware of events unfolding in the physical realm and seeks to influence these events to unknown ends.

It can be reasonably deduced, when compared to a body’s natural inclination to maintain homeostasis, that the Force, also, seeks to maintain a cosmic homeostasis. To that end, it can be tentatively hypothesized that Force premonitions are comparable to the actions of an endocrine system, that is, making slow and gradual change to maintain long-term homeostasis.

That whole paragraph had the cautious tone of a scholar reluctant to make sweeping generalizations. The next paragraph was decidedly less cautious, to your amusement.

Force visions, alarming as they can be, do not arrive lightly. There is every reason to consider the pattern of known Force visions associating with physical-world events as evidence that the Force is not only sentient, but able to decide which actions will produce future benefit.

You can hear the stubbornness in Mann’s writing, even while Kriss tries to soften his edges.

Your comm pings from your bag.

You jump and scramble to the edge of the bed to fish the comm out of your pack. There’s only one person who you’re expecting to hear from; you pull your tunic over your camisole to be decent.

“Professor!” Taq Norr’s birdlike Rishii features flicker into view. His beak doesn’t exactly lend itself to smiling, but his eyes crinkle at the sight of you.

“Well, well, my intrepid little spacefarer! Enjoying Tatooine?”

Too much, you think to yourself. “Enjoying the refresher. It might be half a rotation before I see another one.”

Professor laughs, and then grimaces.

“Ugh, well… All part of the dig life! I’m calling ahead to give you some work before we all arrive on the liner tomorrow. The big kits are coming with us, of course, but there are a number of supplies that we’ll need to secure in Mos Eisley—I’m transmitting a list to you, now, and transferring the needed credits from the fund into your University account. You still have the access code to utilize the department account, don’t you?”

You do… somewhere. The last site wrapped up almost a full standard year ago, and you’ve been moving through the Outer Rim on your savings ever since. The odds are better that you have it than not, so you nod to Professor. “I believe so.”

His feathers ruffle and smooth absently. “Good, good. We’re at a stop just now, once we jump to hyperspace I’m sure we’ll lose connection. The captain expects us to reach orbit late tomorrow. Collect what you can from the list, if there’s anything you cannot obtain, we’ll just have to request it shipped from the Mid…”

Both of you grimace. The extra shipping to an Outer Rim planet is not an expense either of you want.

“I’ll go over this place with a comb,” you promise. “Do you already have accommodations arranged for your arrival?”

“Yes, there’s an inn close to the center of town. It was a little bit more spendy, but I thought we could all use one last good shower before we head out into the wild.” Professor laughs. “Where are you staying? Hopefully not somewhere too seedy?”

You know exactly which inn the Professor meant—and you walked past it because of the price. Obviously, Professor sure knows you well enough to guess at that fact. You shrug. “It’s not the worst place I’ve stayed.”

He laughs again, nearly cooing. “We’ll be there with you tomorrow. Just don’t get into any trouble before then.”

“Me? Get into trouble?”

Professor shakes his head and severs the connection.

You turn to the datapad to review the list, and find your page still open to the work of Masters Mann and Kriss. Your eyes catch on the date in the citation, which is in an utterly unfamiliar format. You open another window to puzzle out what year this was written in.

Stars! This essay is nearly two hundred years old!

You minimize it and bring up Professor Taq Norr’s list. Two hundred years isn’t very old when it comes to artifacts dug out of the ground. But scientific papers?

---

You take an uneventful trip to the refresher. If you’re afraid at all of scrubbing the memory of last night off your skin, you needn’t worry; maybe it’s the low-water wash that just doesn’t seem to do the job, but the feeling of Maul’s fingers—and his everything else—only seems branded up and down your body by the time you pull your clothes on.

In your room, you pack your collection of dirty clothes in your travel bag. There’s somewhere to clean them in town, you’re sure of it. It’s just a matter of asking around; the locals wash their clothes somehow, someone’s got to know.

Your datapad with Professor’s list goes in your pocket, with your comm on the other side. Half of your credits are tucked into the breast pocket of your tunic, the other half are tucked into your boot. The University account chip is in the breast pocket, too, and you even hunted up the access code from your encrypted personnel file.

You feel ready to explore a dangerous, unknown backsand city.

The door unlocks with a tap of a key and grinds open; it clanks out of sight into the wall port.

And across the hall, Maul is leaning beside the opposite door.

You freeze in the doorway.

He’s fully dressed, and that should make it easier to stop thinking about him naked. It does not. If anything, today’s modesty makes it impossible to stop imagining…

“Good morning.” His arms are crossed over his chest. He’s got his smoke-curl smile on today as he leans there looking at you; his eyes haven’t dropped from your face, and you wonder if he’s having any trouble at all concentrating. Or if it’s just you.

“Morning.” You step out into the hall and let your door clonk shut behind you. The light from your window vanishes and the hall is plunged into gloom; some sunlight slants in from a high window in the wall, but it’s not much. Without fumbling or dropping your key card, you manage to lock the door behind you and even put the card away without looking like you have ten thumbs. It’s a win, considering the weight of Maul’s stare tracking your every move from his place across the floor.

“I wanted to check on you this morning. When you left last night you were… in quite a state.”

You vaguely remember pulling on your clothes for the trip back to your own room; you hope you hadn’t tried to put your pants on backwards or your boots on the wrong feet, but it was far too late to worry about it now.

“Never better.” You lean against the wall across from him and return his smile. “Thanks for the good night’s sleep.”

This actually earns a chuckle from him. “The pleasure was all mine. If you ever need help sleeping, you have only to ask.”

Sleeping? If he doesn’t stop looking at you like that, you’ll have trouble standing.

“Well…” How verbose, you harangue yourself. “I’ve—um—I’ve got some errands to run.” You wonder whether it’s wiser to say ‘goodbye’ or ‘see you later’. And Maul is standing there, arms crossed, smirking. Waiting. For the millionth time… can he read minds?

Neither of you move, although you think moving would help you get your errands done. Nevertheless, you stand there with the wall holding you up and Maul’s eyes pinning you in place. You can’t believe you’re up for more after he nearly filled out your death certificate last night. That doesn’t change the fact that you most certainly are.

He tilts his horned head, grinning. “Something else?”

This is not a safe game to play, but you grin back. “I was thinking that you hit just about every spot last night, but now, looking at it in hindsight, you may have missed one. Maybe two.”

Maul doesn’t move. For several ear-drumming heartbeats, he just looks at you, eyebrows raised. It’s disbelief, and surprise. He’s actually speechless with it. A tiny flutter of triumph hits, and you can’t keep a smirk off your face.

He grins again, wider now. Your triumph wilts as you watch him push off the wall and close the space between you with slow, casual steps. He unfolds his arms and smoothly moves his hands to clasp behind his back. It would be non-threatening in anyone else. In Maul, you can’t say for sure if there’s danger, but you know that if there’s anything you don’t feel, it’s non-threatened.

“My.” He stops with plenty of space between you; a respectful distance, even. He leans forward a little, closer to your ear, and lowers his voice. “You’re much less mouthy when you’re naked.”

He’s close enough to smell his skin, the dust and exhaust on his clothes. You take a deep breath through your nose, savoring it and knowing Maul catches your every move. You see his eyes wander down to your mouth before he puts his smug grin back in place.

You don’t blink and you don’t look away. You reach out to his belt and twist your fingers behind it. Not fast or rough. Plenty of time to see his startled intake of breath, feel the way his abdominal muscles tighten at your touch beneath the black layers. You tug him by the belt, and he lets his hips arch forward first, boots to follow, until he’s standing with both feet just outside of yours and his hip bones are pressed squarely against you.

All right. Maybe he’s a little too tall for the two of you to line up perfectly. Maybe you feel his groin at your belt line instead. You stand up straighter, still holding his eyes, still dragging him against you by the belt.

Maul presses one hand against the wall, leaning in. He lets out a low chuckle, and his other hand comes up to brush your jaw. “I’m amazed no one has put you under lock and key to keep you safe from yourself.”

You swallow and give a shaky smile. “Tried it once. Office work doesn’t suit me.”

Maul’s laugh is low and close on your ear. “As it happens, there’s a lock on my door. We could lock ourselves in and you could show me this spot that I missed—”

A comm pings from his tunic pocket.

Both of you look down in unison.

Maul’s mouth twists into a frown. “I must go.” And that’s that. Flirting is over; he’s pulled back and his boots are already pointed toward his room. You stand up quickly, working to look less disappointed than you feel.

“Alright, then.” You figure it must be important—very important, if your guesses about Maul’s career are even close to right. If his boss is a Hutt or a Pyke or some other criminal head, keeping their call waiting isn’t good for his health.

“Wait.”

You stop at the top of the stairs; even this early, there’s a clanking, clamoring racket from the cantina echoing up the stone stairwell. Maul has paused at his door.

“Tonight?” he asks with another grin, another stare that burns gold through the dark.

You smile and nod—no thought, no hesitation. You’re long past wondering whether you should.

Maul dips his chin and lets himself through his door with his key card.

You’re about to descend, but you think of Maul with his key card and suddenly, you can’t remember if you locked your door. You were a little distracted… All your journals and reference notes are in there, not to mention some of your dig kit. It’s only a few seconds to check.

You retrace your steps and tap the crusted old door panel with a finger. It blares red. Locked. You roll your eyes at yourself and turn back to the stairs.

You hear someone talking and go still. Listening. It’s from Maul’s room.

One of your feet turns toward the sound involuntarily. It’s not any voice that you’ve heard before. It has a peculiar rasp to it, a cloying cadence. Even through the flimsy doors, you can’t hear clearly, but…

“…Federation… the Jedi…”

Adrenaline gallops through your veins and clammy sweat breaks out over your face, your hands. You back away toward the stairs. That’s it—that’s the catastrophe signal. You reach the stairs and creep down, before Maul’s face can appear in the hall and catch you listening.

You rush through the tiny lobby, past the cantina doorway. It’s the feeling that’s always been absent when dealing with Maul. You’ve been waiting and waiting to feel this gut-punch intuition; it’s never led you astray. You don’t need to simply trust your gut this time. You aren’t stupid enough to think you can listen in on syndicate or cartel business and walk away, just because you and Maul have been having a good time.

You pull your UV glasses on and your hood up as you move out into the sunlight. Let Maul keep his livelihood to himself. As long as it meant you got to walk away with your life.

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[ekrochford]

STAB THEM 🤣

Solid advice

[ekrochford]

Maul x femreader NSFW self-insert fanfic (part 8/10)

[I'm reeeeeally beginning to think this is going to be longer than 10 chapters. Might need just one more.]

Part 8

You suspect it’s a dream this time, but that doesn’t soften the cold bite. It’s more than desert chill. Your dream self gets right out of bed on steady legs, stubbornly pulling you forward to the center of this sinister miasma, this phantom anger.

Something there… something that a small spark inside of you insists you have to see.

You’re standing over the pulsating rage tucked between Maul’s cloak, and from the eerie, liminal light emerges another color. Red.

It’s a lightsaber.

You stare at it, numbly unbothered in your dream. Only Jedi carry lightsabers. Maul isn’t a Jedi, is he? Why would he have this? The spark of the Force in your veins has never, ever compelled you so strongly. Almost against your will, it wanted you to see this. His lightsaber.

And within its metal heart… not blue or green, like the other Jedi. Red.

---

Dammit you want these visions to stop.

You lunge up out of bed, clutching the sheets up like some kind of shield. Something between you and the folded bundle of Maul’s cloak, lying less than three meters away, looking just as it had in yet another bone-chilling Force dream. You stare—your eyes are so wide, tears prickle the corners. Is it your imagination, or can you see the shape beneath the folds of cloth?

Claws rake gently up your flank, and you flinch. You rip your gaze from the bundle and look down.

Maul is lying next to you. His pale gold eyes are open and still. They catch the weak lamplight; outside, the lavender desert dusk has ended and the world is dark. You see his eyes flicker once—fast as a blink—following your stare to his cloak across the room.

“Dreaming?” he murmurs. It doesn’t really sound like a question.

You swallow and nod your head. The energy between you has changed. Hardened, thinned. The air feels brittle now, as if the wrong word could shatter it. Part of you wants to bolt from the room; another part scoffs at this overreaction.

A tiny part is afraid that Maul would prevent you from leaving.

With a deep breath to calm your heart (still clanging like an iron bell), you recline back into bed and bully your limbs into relaxing.

“Yes, something bizarre. Weird dream nonsense.”

“Hmm.” Maul has hardly blinked. The way he stares at you, you’re sure he’s about to ask what your dream was about. You grope around your imagination for something fake and harmless, some inane series of events that could reasonably explain your terrified reaction.

But Maul doesn’t ask. After another minute of watching you, gazing across the pillows with his unblinkingly yellow stare, he makes a low sound in his throat and pulls you into his arms.

You don’t fight it, but you hold your breath. It’s impossible to ignore the power in his body, from his corded arms wrapped around you, to the slab muscle of his torso, to his thick legs twisting with yours. It’s such a subtle reminder, you can’t be sure whether it’s intentional: he overpowers you, period. No contest.

He folds you in against him and nuzzles a searing kiss against your neck, under your jaw. And just like that, you’re no longer pretending to relax into his embrace. The tension in your body softens like wax. His mouth on your skin shuts off your thoughts like the flip of a switch, leaving your mind in luxurious, velvet silence.

Maul rolls over top of you, still running his lips over your skin. Without interruption, he turns you over onto your stomach so that his mouth can glide over your shoulder-blades and spine. His large hands take the place of his mouth, and he gives your trap muscles a slow, wringing squeeze.

The last of the lingering knots in your shoulders unravel. Maul squeezes again, and a sigh from the very bottom of your lungs wheezes out. He’s heavy, straddling your butt; you know he isn’t resting his weight on you, but his mass hovers over your back. You can feel him there, even with your eyes closed. An emptiness.

You frown. You don’t sense the Force in people, not often. Only in the ones that are very strong. A Jedi, for example, interrupts the air like a strong current, pulsing gently between the ambient flow of regular beings. You just don’t have the sensitivity to look closely at most of it; like microscopic organisms under low magnification, you can only detect the most obvious, the most jarring.

In the ambient current, Maul is a vacancy. A yawning blank space.

He squeezes your shoulders again and rubs his thumbs in a hard line up the sides of your neck. In fact, his fingers are very close to settling around your throat, even as he massages the muscles at the base of your skull.

“You are… a little Force sensitive, are you not?”

Out of the corner of your eye, you look back at him, but he’s too far in your periphery to see his expression in the dim light.

“I… yes, a little.”

“I would think that the Jedi would have… collected you.”

A shiver trills down your spine at the way he says that word. Jedi. His casual tone slanted just a little; he spoke the word like it was bitter to the taste. Like many who lived outside the law, Maul had no love of the Jedi. Not a surprise.

“They are involved in your University, are they not?”

“Yes, and no. The Jedi are involved in many projects, and I know they accompany some field researchers—some Jedi are conducting research of their own and utilize University resources, but that’s a long-standing agreement, all the way back to Chancellor Soh’s time…”

You trail off. Maul’s claws are tracing up your scalp from the base of your skull, gently scraping through your hair. Your skin feels like it’s shrunk a size as every hair on your body stands on end. He scrapes his claws back down, and your breath rattles out. You’d forgotten to breathe. Back up through your hair… then back down again.

“And they never tried to take you?”

“Um…” His fingertips disappear from your scalp, which seems to switch the power back on between your brain and your mouth. “I… I’m barely sensitive at all. Most kids—they start moving things or controlling animals or…” Maul’s hands press down your spine and you forget what you were about to say.

“I—I only hear things—memories—from old objects.” You groan as Maul presses against your thoracic spine, just behind your lungs.

“Breathe in,” he murmurs.

You take a breath in, and your ribcage expands outward.

“More. Deeper.”

You drag in all the air your lungs will hold and your back pops under the pressure of Maul’s palms. You close your eyes with a moan.

“I would have thought they would have snatched you up anyway,” he mutters.

Distantly, you think of the first time you saw him across the cantina. He’d looked back at you, come across the bar at you…

I apologize for the intrusion. I thought you were someone else.

He couldn’t possibly have thought you were a Jedi?

“Ma had no idea anything unusual was happening,” you continue softly. “She just thought I was playing pretend. And then, when I was a teenager, I felt like it was some kind of… I don’t know… big grown-up secret.” You snort out a laugh. “Stupid.”

“It’s just as well.” Maul inches down your back until he’s working at the muscles of your lumbar spine. He doesn’t elaborate, just goes on massaging.

He reaches your glutes, and his hands only press harder and slower. But he’s not erect—you can’t feel him hard against you. If he’s not thinking about sex… what is he thinking about?

You lie there and consider how things must seem to him. “I don’t know any Jedi. Not very well, at least,” you venture. No response from Maul. “I don’t report to them, not even through the University. You don’t have to worry that I’ll… tell anyone about you.”

Where he’s straddling your legs, Maul goes very still.

“I am not afraid of Jedi.”

His tone sends a spike of fear bolting through your chest.

A second later, he’s warm again, turning you over by the legs. He holds one ankle and kisses it, eyeing you with a small and secret smile. He moves up your calf to your knee, up your thigh, by which time your trembling has changed from fear to something quite different.

“We should be careful not to disturb the neighbors with too much noise.”

He leans up and covers your mouth with his. One hand glides five clawed fingers back through your hair until he’s got a fistful of it, and then his kiss is quite inescapable. Even if you could remember why you should.

You realize he’s grown hard again about the time you realize that he’s squared himself between your legs.

“One more,” he whispers between your lips. “Just one.”

You don’t have time to answer before he’s pumping it into you, an inch at a time until he’s buried to the sack inside of you. You try to cling to his arms, but he’s moved his arms down until he can hook each of your knees over an elbow. The change in angle sends your mind into a cartwheel and you end up clutching the pillow under your head like a lifeline.

“I believe you mentioned this?” Maul teases, grinding himself in and out. “I’d almost forgotten… I told you that you could have anything you wanted, and you asked for this specifically…”

“Yes…”

“Shhh… I see you won’t be able to keep your voice down,” Maul remarks, amused. “I don’t think I can trust you to stay quiet.”

There’s something beyond this statement, but how are you supposed to read subtext at a time like this? With every movement, Maul is shattering your thoughts like waves on sand. Just when you think you’ve assembled them into something like order, they break apart again…

“Yes, I can…” you try to whisper. It ends on a moan, but you think you managed alright. “I can… be quiet…”

“Let’s find out.”

With your legs pulled up this way, your every nerve already simmering and your muscles already worked and sore, the feel of him riding into you is devastating. You clamp your lips together, aware of Maul’s eyes fixed on you. He doesn’t stop and he doesn’t slow down; quite the opposite. He begins to pick up speed. You have to brace against the headboard to keep from slamming into it.

A small gasp escapes you. You bite your lip and risk a glance at Maul’s face. He heard, all right; his composure is crumbled and his eyes almost glow as they take in your face, your hands braced over your head, your breasts jumping in time.

You gulp down the moan forming in your throat. You’re sure that this has become a game, too. Maul loves to play games… loves to tease… loves to push…

Harder and faster, Maul continues and it gets more difficult to breathe, let alone resist the urge to give in. You want to moan and possibly to shout, certainly you want to tell him that you’re coming yet again, and if he wanted one more out of you, he has it.

But you don’t. Stubbornly, you grind your lips shut, meeting Maul’s eyes. He’s beyond lost composure, now; he’s gasping for breath, teeth bared in a growl of animal pleasure.

The next instant, he’s bucking hard against you, spasming in release. His groan is rough-edged, sounds like it was dragged all the way up from his toes. Maul lets your legs back down—you can hardly move them—and collapses on top of you, panting, his face lying on your breasts. His cranial horns just brush your jaw, but you can’t possibly care.

See? I told you I can be quiet. The words float to mind, but you’re burned out like a candle wick. You can only lie there under him and breathe, and that takes all the concentration you have left.

But one thought does persist: you cannot, under any circumstances, fall asleep in Maul’s room again.

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