EMBRACEABLE Q
by Janet E. Coleman

	"May I join you?"

	Belinda smiled at the counselor, nodding to indicate the empty
seat next to her. 

	Deanna Troi did not so much settle as slink into the proffered
seat, and she smiled warmly at Belinda. "So...I hear you've
finished your thesis. Congratulations."

	"Yes...thanks," Belinda sighed, and stared into her glass.
There were only a few other tables occupied in Ten-Forward at this
hour in the second shift. She was acutely aware, suddenly, of
Deanna's empathic abilities, and flushed hot with embarrassment
that Deanna must certainly sense the state Belinda was in. 

	It just made it worse, her suspicion that Deanna found her
attractive...ordinarily she would have been excited by the
attention of such an outrageously feminine power like Deanna's, but
lately...

	"I wish you would tell me what's troubling you," murmured
Deanna, her dark eyes gleaming. 

	"I want to tell you," Belinda burst out, then lowered her
voice self-consciously. "I think you might understand...I've been
doing research on Q for years now, you know. I've - I've done some
truly brilliant work, if I may say so - and I think I can!" At
Deanna's firm nod, Belinda continued: "I've breathed, slept, eaten,
excreted, discussed, pondered, studied and slept Q for the last
three years..."

	"And now you want to fuck him," whispered Deanna, and Belinda
went ice and fire all over at the starkness of it, out loud there
at the table in Ten-Forward...at the starkness of having it said at
all, at having her lust named. 

	"You were ashamed of this? Belinda...how could one not be 
attracted to omnipotence? The ultimate power...it *is* very sexy."

	"Just think...of the *things* he could do," breathed Belinda, 
and they both squirmed in their chairs right then, each in her own 
private fantasy of all the fantasies they had ever had.

	"I also find him attractive," Deanna confessed, "because I 
can't sense him. He's a mystery. Like the maps of ancient 
sailors... uncharted territory was marked, 'Here Be Dragons'. It's 
very seductive."  She collected herself and leaned back. Belinda's 
eye followed the swift line of Deanna's glorious breasts, only 
partially captured by her neckline.  

	"The Enterprise has a state-of-the-art holodeck, you know. Why
don't you indulge your fantasy? - If my mother could only hear me 
now," Deanna laughed ruefully. " 'Get it out of your system, Little One!'
- But, truly, Belinda: you seem troubled by the intensity of this desire,
and I think you of all people have earned a little bit of indulgence,
don't you? - Give it free rein, for just a little while. Live it. It
will lose its power over your every waking moment."

	Deanna got up to leave, but turned back to Belinda after 
taking a step. 

	"Get Q out of your system, Belinda," purred Deanna, as feline 
as she'd ever seemed, vibrating with life and potential pleasures. 
"And when you have...come to see me, and we can discuss 
further...uncharted territory."

	And she left, hips swaying, back straight, her lush dark hair 
spilling waves of invitation almost all the way down to her round, 
firm bottom...and Belinda felt her juices flooding as she watched 
Deanna go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
	Belinda had dismissed the idea out of hand the first time it 
had occurred to her, for the simple reason that she could not tell 
the computer what she wanted without spoiling it in the process. 
She wanted Q in all his unpredictability - though, as she had 
concluded in her study, this very unpredictability had its own 
large, elegant pattern, like the embryonic 20th-century "chaos 
theory" that first attempted to define -

	Hang on...

	What if she told the computer to allow for his "randomness" - 
to allow for all that it and she knew about Q, based on its 
records, and her research? - if she got her research computer 
talking to the holodeck program...like a zombie, Belinda rose from 
her seat, equations firing in her head like square-dancing neurons,
and she made her way to her quarters, staring at nothing, and 
unconsciously licking her lips.

	She lay down naked on the bed in her quarters, and began 
giving instructions to her own portable and to the Enterprise's 
holodeck program in a calm voice, while she lay on her back with 
her knees drawn up, thighs spread wide, as the ship's computer spoke
back to her in its warmly prim tones. 

	She dipped one finger into her vagina, which dripped with her 
own juices. 

	"Computer," she murmured, "compile what I've given you so far 
and leave me alone till I call you."

	"Acknowledged," said the voice of the ship, crisply, and
Belinda wondered, very briefly, why noone seemed to notice that it
sounded just like Deanna's mother...

	Deanna. An image of the counselor strutting out of Ten-Forward
assaulted Belinda. 

	In her mind's eye, she placed Deanna on the bed, her dark, 
glossy curls spilling over her bare shoulders...Deanna gazing at 
Belinda's widespread vulva, close enough that her breath nudged at 
the straining clit.

	Belinda grazed her clit now with her finger, so lightly that 
her finger barely registered the contact - but her clit sang like 
a harpstring. 

	She moaned and drew her legs up higher so that her feet were 
suspended over her thighs. She thought of Deanna's low, warm voice,
tinted by that faint, delicious accent...whatever it was...

	She dipped her finger into herself again, and touched the 
slick tip squarely to her clit. She moaned aloud. She felt she had 
been afire with lust all her life... aching, dripping with need, 
spread wide and whimpering...

	Slowly she began circling the swollen, wet button with her 
finger. Mmm. Deanna's pink tongue dancing, teasing her pussy...ahh...
*ahhh*...

	She was getting close, so close to coming. She increased the 
speed, orbiting her clit faster and faster, hips bucking, so close,
but she couldn't *quite* reach the point of no return...she whimpered
aloud, burning with frustration, heels pawing the bed.

	Then she imagined *him*. She imagined looking down, meeting 
the knowing eyes of Q above the devil's tongue that lapped like the
Northern Lights at her cunt, and she CAME, howling, jerking her hand
away is if it might be burned or blown to bits by the force of her
coming and coming and coming...

	Belinda lay there awhile, gasping, then slowly sat up, 
trembling. She had had an orgasm of astonishing intensity for one 
self-inflicted...but *it was not enough*. She was as sick with lust
as she had been before she started...as she had been day after day,
night after night, for too long now.

	"Computer! Let's get this program finished! - before I lose
my mind..."


EMBRACEABLE Q
by Janet E. Coleman

Part Two

	Q sidled through the universe, pondering his options. Since 
these were effectively infinite, they took nearly six whole seconds to
consider carefully - and when he had finished, he had selected, 
once more, his favorite pastime. 

	Time to go put Picard's panties in a bunch.

	Oh, Q was entirely cognizant, of course, of his underlying 
motive in this decision. For all his human limitations - or, to be 
really honest, *because* of them - Picard was a genuinely 
entertaining creature.

	Besides, though Q would rather be trapped in human form again 
and have his head sawn off slowly with a plastic spoon before he'd 
admit to it, he rather *liked* Jean-Luc. Oh, well, since he *was* 
alone, he allowed himself to feel friendship for the semi-evolved 
simian, just for a moment - then, embarrassed even in the privacy 
of his own mind, dismissed the whole train of thought and homed in 
on the Enterpriuse like a mischievous albatross.

	When not manifesting themselves corporeally, the Q are 
generally very large, diffuse patterns of energy. This is the state
Q had been relaxing in while he considered what to do with his 
afternoon. Now that he had decided, he would, of course, have to 
climb back into the now-familiar (and nearly comfortable!) form 
which so annoyed Picard. Now, where was the little toy ship, that 
tiny bubble of metal and air that they putt-putted about their 
little bathtub of space in?

	There it was - in the usual pocket of space and time, the 
watchpocket of a Q's jeans, really - and they thought they were so 
adventurous! - there it was. Q extended himself so that he 
surrounded the ship like a huge, invisible cloud...then began to 
collapse in on himself, blurring through the seemingly porous skin 
of the Enterprise, deck after deck flashing through and by him as 
he sank into singularity, concentrating himself into the puny human
shape that -

	Hello - what was that?

	He had passed through someone who was thinking about him. Not 
idly, either. He had briefly overlapped a mind which was fixing so 
powerfully upon him that it burned like a star.

	He paused, mid-hurtle toward Picard's ready room.

	It was no use. He was too curious and too (he knew it!) 
conceited not to investigate. The abuse he took whenever he graced
this pitiful miniature vessel with his presence could indeed grow 
tiresome...it would be nice to be liked...wouldn't it? He couldn't 
be certain. It had never happened before.

	Q moved his high point of density to the room which housed
the mind that pondered him, but he did not allow his presence to be 
known...yet.

*******************

	Belinda felt a strange calm, almost a detachment, as she 
approached the great double doors of one of the holodecks. It was 
as if she watched herself walking down the corridor, stopping at 
the doors, speaking to the console. Dimly she wondered if that was 
her heart she felt, pounding.

	As the doors slid open with a pneumatic sigh, she snapped
back into focus, feeling that she had been rudely redeposited into her 
own life. The low aching hunger buzzed deep inside as she stepped 
through the portal, feeling a puff of air stir her hair as the 
doors slid shut once more and melted from view.

	He was there, standing in the center of the plain black-and-
yellow holodeck grid, arms crossed, slouching in perfect symmetry, 
and dressed in the uniform of a Starfleet admiral. He eyed her with
the ghost of a smug smile haunting his mouth.

	Belinda felt a rush of moisture seeping from her sex, which
suddenly felt almost unbearably confined by her panties, like a fondling, 
squeezing hand...his eyes drove a spike of attention into her mind.
The arrogance of his posture, the shape of his mouth, yes, this was
what she wanted - almost...

	He opened his mouth to speak.

	"Computer, freeze program," said Belinda.

**********************

	Startled, Q froze, his mouth open. 

**********************

	Belinda frowned: had she overburdened the holodeck computer 
with her fancy programming? The plain background could well be part
of the "random" logic she'd designed, but that lag of almost a full
second before the computer obeyed her command to freeze?... State 
of the art, ha!

	
Embraceable Q (Part Three)
by Janet E. Coleman


     "Computer," said Belinda, staring thoughtfully at what she 
thought was a hologram of Q, "change his costume."

     "Specify."

     "Oh, gods," sighed Belinda, "*anything* but that." She waved 
a hand at the red and black jumpsuit. "I see them all *day* - 
couldn't he come up with anything more exotic than *that*?"

     The computer twittered briefly to itself while Q seethed. He 
deflected the computer's attention from himself and scowled at the 
woman. Why, this uniform was actually somewhat stylish - in a drab,
human way, of course. No. It was too annoying. He couldn't keep 
silent.

     "Perhaps you would prefer me naked?" Q snapped peevishly, 
discarding his pretense at stasis.

     Belinda held perfectly still for a moment, staring at him, 
then one eyebrow arched elegantly over an amber eye. What a 
program! It could even ignore system commands in favor of the 
personality program...surely it would not affect essential ones. 

     She did not try to find out. She stared at him, her gaze 
hungrily gathering him in, till her eyes flicked back to direct 
contact with his, and she almost fell down.

     "Yes," she breathed, "oh, yes."

     "You...want to see me naked." He sneered it, dismissively. 
"*That's* why you were thi... why you created this program? To play
out some sexual fantasy?"

     "Of course," said Belinda.

     "Humans," said Q, and it was something of an epithet. The 
memory of the...incident aboard this ship when he had briefly been 
- shudder - human himself was uncomfortably close to the surface of
his infinite mind. "What do you think you know about passion...with
your puny nervous system...limited by little scraps of flesh that 
go ping faster than other bits..."

     "I want your power," she said, "No, let me finish - I don't 
want to have your powers for myself - it would drive me mad - I 
want you to join with me, I want to feel *everything*, you in me 
and me around you - make me a goddess while you fuck me - *now*, 
Q!"

     And she stepped up to him, eyes boring into his, mouth fierce 
- her heart was pounding, he could hear it through her skin. And it
*was* lovely skin, if one looked at it with human shallowness, 
wasn't it? - indeed, she was quite a winning creature. His last 
sexual encounter in human form had not been his idea - but he could
play this one however he wanted...take utter control, with a human 
who actually wanted him...and not for revenge.

     His hand shot out, faster than she could follow, and cradled 
the back of her head. The touch was gentle, but she could feel the 
potential of force coiled behind it, and she shuddered, flushing 
hot with need and...fear?...yes, it was fear. She knew, dimly, that
he was a program...yet she was able to allow herself to entertain 
the tiniest doubt, that he *could* truly be Q. It was enough.

     She stared at him, breathing tremulously, a little harder than
normal. His eyes were mesmerizingly intense, illuminated with 
secret knowledge and dark amusement. 

     Her eyes dropped to his mouth. Ah, hadn't she found herself 
fixating on that mouth, as she endlessly viewed and re-viewed the 
records? 

     She flicked her gaze back onto a collision course with his - 
a silent demand. [Now,] she subvocalized at him, almost believing 
he could hear.

     "Your wish is my command," murmured Q against her lips, 
smirking. 

     And the world went out.

****************************

     Belinda did not know where she was. She wasn't certain whether
her eyes were telling her that they could not see, or that what she
was seeing was so incomprehensible to her as to be blocked out by
her panicking optic nerves. 

     [Ah,] said Q from somewhere inside her head, [perhaps I had
better keep the other form for the time being.]

     And he was there with her, and her vision was normal again.
The thin neon lines of the bare holodeck had changed. Stars
wheeled around them, brilliant hot gas jewels spooling out in
ribbons, turning in their stately dance, looking to this point
always. The center of a galaxy - or a universe...

     ...and his hand was on the back of her neck, still gentle, but
bruising her flesh with possibility.

     She was naked. Naked, in open space. 

     Perversely, this reassured her, returned the tiniest semblance
of control to her situation. It was the holodeck. It had to be the
holodeck. It was. Um. Well, it was very very probably the holodeck.

     They orbited one another, lazily, as if locked into a moment,
his hand still owning the back of her neck, and she looked at him.

     He, too, was naked. She had seen men nude in zero-gee before.
They always looked endearingly foolish, with their genitals
floating about, and their limbs swimming around, ready to protect
vulnerable parts. 

     Q was neither foolish nor vulnerable. 

     Belinda trailed her eyes over his body. Oh, the form he chose
to appear in (or did he choose? she wondered idly) was, in itself,
attractive to her; she liked tall men with arrogant mouths, with
long fingers, with intense eyes...but the way he inhabited that
form, the supercharged intensity of those dark eyes, this was what
had infected her, this was what was consuming her.

     Externally, he seemed supremely unaroused, but this didn't
disturb her. It would rather have disappointed her, she mused dimly
as her gaze slid down his thighs, to be confronted with a Q who was
*only* human.

     Still, he *was* in human form, and she'd attend to that later.
First she was momentarily distracted by his toes. Q had toes? - Of
course he had. Right now, anyway. When he manifested as a human, he
was very convincing. Until you looked in his eyes...

     And she looked back into his eyes. They were amused,
challenging, hard and bright. He was allowing her time to admire
him. 

     Belinda reached out, and closed her fingers very deliberately
on the back of Q's neck.

     The circuit was complete; they began to revolve in space...

     "I understand you're usually more talkative," she rasped, the 
sensation of his skin under her fingertips opening the floodgates 
once again. She felt her body suffused with hunger so great that by
now it *would* take a god to fill it. She arched her body against 
their revolution...

     "You don't want me for pillow talk," said Q. He was reaching 
out; there was the electric thrill as his palm made contact with 
the small of Belinda's back. She gasped, softly, then again sharply
as he yanked her against him, full length. They revolved, faster. 
The stars, so many of them, began to blur.

     Her consciousness as she knew it began to melt and stretch 
away into vague memory. Each blurring point of star's light 
corresponded to a nerve ending in her body, and her body sang with 
the connect-the-dots inferno map of a universe. 

     And his eyes, right there, searing into hers, and the whirling
was so fast now that space looked to Belinda like a great bright 
mass. Her hair stood out on end, and tears streamed from her eyes 
because she could not blink, could not shut out for an instant the 
fire-dark eyes of Q.

     The pleasure howled through every cell in her body as their 
revolutions became so fast that even the great bright mass that was
a universe of stars darkened to a dull pallor.

     But a portion of Belinda still felt his skin in contact with 
hers, felt him pinning her to him with the force of planetary 
gravity. 

     "Not -" she gasped, struggling against unconsciousness as her 
brain threatened to shut down: "Not - not enough -"

     Flashpoint! There was a tremendous B O O M as they came, 
impossibly, to an absolute stop, and the stars trembled.

     Q was really gripping her by the back of her neck now, as if 
she were a recalcitrant puppy. He gave her a little shake. "Not 
enough? Not *enough*? You little mammal, I have just made love to 
you with a moderate-sized *universe* - and it's not *enough*?"

     She blinked - and suddenly she knew. She *knew*. This was no 
hologram. This was not her attempt at programming, which she knew 
now wouldn't have worked, would indeed merely have crashed the 
holodeck computer.

     This was really Q. And she had just seriously insulted him.

     And all fear left her, completely.

     Her own hand was still on his neck, and she shook him in 
return. "Don't be obtuse. It doesn't become you...that was more 
pleasure than I suspect I'm capable of feeling...but Q, I didn't 
ask you to make love to me." She slid her arms around Q's neck, and
whispered with her lips just touching his ear,

     "I *told* you to *fuck me*." And she bit him. Hard.

     Long fingers entwined in her hair and yanked her head back. 
Once more her eyes were imprisoned in his as he held her there, her
neck arched back.

     He was smiling. Wickedly, but he was smiling. 

     "Humans," he said again, but this time with a low undercurrent
of fond amusement, and something darker which Belinda could not 
identify...and which drove a fresh spike of craving through her.

     "You've surprised me," said Q, "and amused me. Now you 
challenge me. Very well...I'm feeling indulgent this afternoon; we 
shall meet halfway...Belinda."

     And he yanked her hair again, harder, a little cruelly. 
Belinda gasped, and her legs opened of their own volition.

     Now she felt her body again, her spine thrumming with 
anticipation, nipples drawn to tight points thrusting against the 
star-smeared darkness. Thighs parted, she could almost feel space 
itself breathing over her sex, and the need was pain, but greater 
than pleasure. 

     He jerked his handful of her hair, sharply, and she opened her
eyes with a gasp. There was mocking scrutiny in his face, and that 
*other* something, the dark mystery, was stronger.

     Q reached his other hand under her other outstretched arm and 
anchored it, too, firmly in Belinda's hair. 

     Then he leaned forward and delicately brushed her lips with 
his in a silky kiss, brief and weightless...

     And just as Belinda relaxed into the kiss, powerfully he 
hauled down and back on her hair, bending her supple body into an 
almost perfect circle, and in that instant she felt him plunge into
her, abruptly hard and huge, almost too much, almost. She shrieked,
fingers stretching out as if to grasp the void, and once again they
began to revolve...

     She could not see his eyes from the position she was in, but 
she saw them anyway. She howled as they turned, as he drove thick 
and hard into the hot, blind, primeval force of her cunt, and they 
turned faster, and the stars began to streak a sphere of vivid 
lines around them, and still his eyes held hers, impossibly...

     ...and every impulse in her body once more aligned with the 
whirling kaleidoscope of fire...and still he plunged in, filling 
her with a universe; cramming stars and planets whole into her 
womb. Sobbing, singing, she accepted it all, and the stars were one
monstrous star, and they were fucking, were fucking at the heart of
it, a fury of heat and power. He blurred into her, and for an 
aching instant, the merest fraction of a moment, she felt what it 
was like, felt what it was like to be Q. 

     She came, and the great star went nova. She came in silence, 
because there was no voice left for it - her mouth straining open 
in a silent cry that shook a cosmos to glittering fragments. 

     She came, and came, resonating across the moment, backwards 
and forwards, caught in a loop of her own coming, and then

     she

     shut 

     down...

     (and his laughter followed her down into darkness, and his 
eyes too, and another triumphant brush across her lips...and he was
gone.)

**************************

     Belinda woke, naked and bruised, on the floor of the holodeck 
somewhat later. She sat up slowly, her hand going automatically to 
her riotously tangled hair...and smiled wolfishly.

     She set about clothing herself, humming a little tune she had 
never heard before. A few days to recover...and then she had a date
with Deanna, and a few new ideas to bring to it.

     She left the holodeck, without looking back.


**THE END**