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On and on they've gone, weeks of staticky messages. Beth hates that it's always while she's here in her office, that she must lock the door or else hope that her face gives nothing away, that she just looks bored.
("You look bored, Captain," he purred, one day. "Or perhaps I'm just misunderstanding human facial expressions again. Are you bored?"
"And what would you do if I said I was?" she asked, and even though he started it, Dukat looked angry, his eyes darkening. Beth grinned, and he glowers, and redoubled his efforts to humiliate her. Which he already had, but not as much as he thought -- and, of course, she's done the same for him.)
On and on, and she's gotten to be quite good at this, at pretending there's nothing wrong, at pretending that the door is simply locked because she's got a lot of paperwork to send to Starfleet and can't let the Chief's latest upgrade ideas or the old man's teasing distract her.
"Why here?" she asks, knowing already that it will anger him, and loving the way his eyes narrow just the slightest bit, the way the ridges on his neck grow a little more pronounced, like a predator showing its crest. Animals, Beth recalls, make such displays to impress potential mates, as much as to fight. When they do fight, it's generally against rivals for said mates. "Why," she continues, "in my office?" She doesn't emphasize "my", mostly because she doesn't need to.
"Your office," he repeats, taking his time on the words, just that fascinated, it would seem, by the shape of them in his mouth. "Your -- oh, my dear, if I were there, I'd be more than happy to show you just how much my office it still is."
"Mm, and you know, depending on my mood, I just might indulge you," she says.
"Would you? Would you like that, Elizabeth? I must admit, I'm not surprised. You Federation officers talk so much about peace and diplomacy, declaiming from high atop your pedestals, and I really wonder that the rest of the galaxy hasn't caught on yet to just how badly you long to have more of us knock those pedestals down and bend you over them for a good hard -- "
"Computer," she always says, right around then, and his eyes flash, and she grins at him. "Mute audio."
The chirp is the only sound then, that and the hum at the very edge of her hearing of the station's mechanical heartbeat, like the ocean murmuring its agreement with the whirl of her current. His pupils, if she can make them out in this light to begin with, disappear, blown wide with his fury and lust. She has to tell the computer, further, to turn off subtitles, which she usually remembers, although the few times she hasn't have been their own kind of something. Sometimes she'll tilt her PADD, for at least a moment, just long enough, at just the right angle, for him to see the hand she's got pressed against herself. More often, though, she just grins at him, holds his eyes with her own, until he looks down, himself, at the hand that hasn't been involved in expansive gestures for some time now.
It's less real this way, less believable of herself, easier to keep at arm's length. That makes it worse, in some ways, though, more cartoonish. She can tell, at any rate, when he goes utterly still, when his other hand goes from whatever gesture he was making to cradling an invisible throat --
"Computer, sound on," she'll whisper sometimes, then, though there's not much to hear besides a crocodilian rumble, one that blends all too easily into the sound of the station.
"Computer, end transmission," she says, always, after she's shuddered into orgasm herself, and is left alone with the desk that he calls his.