Disclaimer:
The Star Trek universe is the copyrighted property of Paramount, and 
borrowed solely for the use of this story. The story is copyright 1997 
by Ariana (ariana@ndirect.co.uk). All rights reserved. Do not distribute
without the present header and the author's written permission. Please
contact the author if you wish to include this story in an archive.
Archived at:  http://www.alpha.ndirect.co.uk/trek/
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                       Just for tonight
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                by Ariana (ariana@ndirect.co.uk)
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"I go go go and try to be somebody else
 with a tear in my eye I remember where I come from
 I better keep silent
 don't tell about my life
 I keep on listening to all the strange tales and
 the melody of your voice
 I'm somebody else for a while
 on your cosmic ceiling, anyway
 whether you do or do not stay
 under that cloudy sky today"
          Bobo in White Wooden Houses - "Cosmic Ceiling"
   
   
The story so far: Just as Dukat is due to return from the Gamma Quadrant,
Deep Space Nine has fallen prey to a virulent strain of nanites. These
microscopic robots have not only disabled the comm systems and universal
translators, but also made some people, like Quark and Major Kira, behave
in an unusual way. In the midst of all this confusion, Ziyal is rejected by
Garak, and feels growing apprehension at the imminent return of her
estranged father, further reinforced when she gets attacked by a Bajoran
mob... 

* * * *

   The crowd and the soldiers dissipated, leaving only Ziyal, Quark and
Odo.
   "Are you all right?" asked Quark, placing a reassuring hand on Ziyal's
arm. His Kardasi was far better than his Bajoran, though there were some
sounds he couldn't pronounce correctly.
   "Yes, I... I think I will be fine," she lied, though her teeth were
still chattering with the shock of the attack. Quark and Odo guided her to
the nearby benches, and she sat down, breathing deeply to try and regain
her composure.
   "Sincere apologies," said Odo. "I can see I will have to enforce more
stringent security measures. Everyone is on edge with this rumour about the
Dominion attack."
   "You mean everyone is running around like mating-crazed voles and it's
only a rumour?" exclaimed Quark. "I thought Kira was ordering
reinforcements from Bajor and putting the Defiant on standby and what have
you!"
   "She is," said Odo.
   "Because of a *rumour*? Dukat is going to have a fit if he comes out of
the Wormhole, minding his own business, and finds a Bajoran fleet waiting
for him! If he wasn't thinking about attacking, that would definitely
change his mind. Now, you tell Major Kira from me that if..."
   "All right, Quark, that's enough," grumbled Odo. "Major Kira is quite
capable of dealing with the situation without any help from you... Now,
Ziyal, I will assign a security detachment to you to make sure this sort of
thing doesn't happen again."
   "No, that's all right," she said. "I'll just stay in my quarters. I'll
be all right."
   "Do you want some company?" suggested the Ferengi gently.
   "Quark..." growled Odo.
   Quark just shrugged his shoulders and sat down beside a still very
shaken Ziyal.
   "Seriously," he said, placing his hand on her shoulder. "I think we
would all feel much better if you weren't alone while this is going on. Is
there anyone you know who could stay with you until this is over?"
   She shook her head. "No. I'll be fine," she said, getting up.
   "You do have friends on the station, you know," said Quark as he rose
with her. 
   Such solicitude was unusual coming from the Ferengi and Ziyal smiled at
him. She felt she should kiss him or take his hand, or something, but she
was too shy to touch him, too afraid whatever move she made would be
misinterpreted. So instead, she leant forward and murmured, "Thank you."
   She turned to Odo and thanked him as well.
   "I'll walk you back to your quarters," said the shapeshifter.
   Ziyal managed to remain brave and calm all the way to her quarters. She
even held up for a further few minutes of assuring Odo she was fine, and
no, there was no need to send for Kira or Garak. She was a big girl, she
could take care of herself, and the Bajoran hadn't really hurt her at all.
The shapeshifter was obviously not convinced, but at least she managed to
get him to go on his way.
   As soon as the door closed, she collapsed on the floor and wept. Not
because of that brute on the Promenade, or even because of Garak's
rejection which had kept her in tears half the night. She was crying
because of the one person she adored more than anyone else in the universe
-- her father. The most handsome, charming, and loving man she had ever
known. The cruellest, harshest and most ambitious also. And in a few hours,
he would either be sailing past the station, apparently oblivious to her
very existence, as he had done many times before, or he would come here to
attack, as everyone seemed to fear. Either way would be just another
example of the ill-fate which plagued her life.
   For years, she had believed she was being punished for something,
something so terrible she had been wrenched from her beloved parents at the
age of thirteen, so terrible she had watched her mother die before her very
eyes, so terrible she had lived five years as a slave for the Breen, so
terrible even the faintest glimmer of happiness was denied her time and
again. Oh, it was easy enough to figure out what that something was - the
paghs of ten million Bajorans murdered by her father and his predecessors
was reason enough for a life of unhappiness. But try as she might, she
could not accept that the ordeal the Prophets were putting her through was
fair.
   She had tried to explain this punishment to Kira, but religious though
she was, the major could not see the logic in the young woman's reasoning.
She had said that the Prophets were not vindictive, and that if they were,
they would punish Dukat, not his innocent daughter. But Ziyal didn't
believe that. She knew her father would never be punished, simply because
she was being punished in his place. And part of her punishment was that he
didn't even know.
   That was the part that broke her heart. Her love for him was unrequited.
She had worshipped him when she was a child, had spent her five years of
captivity dreaming of the day he would come to save her. And then he did,
just as her mother had promised, just as she had known he would... She had
nursed the illusion that she didn't care, that the solicitude of Garak and
Nerys was enough to feed her affection-starved soul, that she could see her
father for what he was, that bastard, that murderer, that pagh-wraith.
   And yet she loved him.
   Her throat tightened and her sobs grew more intense. She knew there was
no hope for her, because the person she needed most in the universe didn't
love her. Even Garak's gentle rejection was nothing compared to what her
own father had done to her. He had loved her, had accepted shame and
demotion for her, as if she were the most important person in the universe.
And after years of being the lowliest of creatures for her captors and
fellow captives, she had thought her heart would burst with happiness. But
then he had abandoned her; without so much as a second thought, he had
exiled her away from him, to this station, to be cared for by a woman who
had no time for her amongst people who felt nothing but hatred or
indifference for her. That was when she understood what role she was really
destined to play. It should not have surprised her when he finally disowned
her.
   But it didn't matter if she was being punished for his crimes while he
enjoyed his new power, selling out the whole Quadrant for his personal
gain. It didn't matter that he had rejected her so cruelly after making her
hope for so much. He was her father, and she loved him, and she missed him.
And the thought that he might come on the station, might see her and look
at her with hatred like the rest of them, just broke her heart.
   She got up and staggered into her room, leaving the light off as she
fumbled with her bedside drawer. She pulled out her dagger, a Cardassian
combat knife her father had given her when they were together on the
Groumall. She didn't often resort to such drastic remedies, but there had
been occasions when the pain inside had become so intense that only the
pain outside could relieve it. The serrated edge of the knife seemed to run
across the back of her arm of its own volition and her mind was shocked
into concentrating on that tangible, physical pain, instead of the mental
misery that pervaded it. 
   The door chime rang, its high electronic sound breaking unexpectedly
into her solitude. She paused, knife poised, and waited to hear if whoever
was ringing the doorbell would persist or just go away. The door chimed
again; they obviously didn't want to go away. She was paralysed by
indecision, hoping her unwanted visitor would take the hint of her lack of
response and leave her alone. They didn't. In fact, she heard the door
slide open. Whoever it was had the emergency overrides. She sighed and just
prayed that it wasn't Nerys or Garak.
   For once the Prophets answered her prayers. It was Quark.
   "Ziyal?" she heard him call from the living room. She stayed quiet,
still hoping he would go away so she could enjoy her catharsis in peace.
"Ziyal? Are you in here?" he repeated.
   Her forearm was throbbing from the pain of the cuts, and she could feel
the warm blood trickling down her skin. The pain became more intense as her
mind got over the initial shock of her onslaught and processed the sensory
input from her wounded flesh. She closed her eyes and shivered as the waves
of agony washed over her. This was the catharsis she had been looking for;
her mind was so alarmed at the pain coming from her arm that it was totally
incapable of concentrating on anything else. Within a few seconds, it
didn't even matter to her whether Quark was going to walk in on her or not.
All that mattered were the cuts on her arm.
   "Ziyal!" She was vaguely aware of some light filtering through her
eyelids, but she didn't have the willpower to open her eyes and see what
was happening. Her mind was frantically inspecting the cuts, drawing her
attention to each one in turn, incapable of deciding which wound required
immediate action, and should therefore cause the most pain.
   She felt an arm around her shoulder and automatically leaned into the
touch. He smelled of the bar, of strange drinks and strong foods, cleaning
solutions and the mixed aromas of a dozen different races, combined with a
faint bittersweet scent that was perhaps characteristic of a Ferengi. She
had never been this close to a Ferengi before, and, not having the acute
sense of smell of a Klingon, she would not have noticed such subtle
differences under other circumstances.
   "Poor girl, what have you done to yourself?" he said, his normally
strident voice hushed into a gentle murmur. "Ziyal, we have to get you to
the Infirmary."
   "No," she protested drowsily. The shock was over, and her body had
finally released some endorphins to dull the pain. She felt much better.
   "Your... your whole arm is bleeding. We must get someone to see to it,"
he insisted.
   She timidly opened her eyes and looked down at her left forearm. He was
right: it did look most alarming, as if she had plunged her arm into a vat
of black kanar. Most of the cuts were thin black lines criss-crossing her
grey skin, but there were places where her knife had hit more than once,
and the dark blood seemed to gurgle out of her flesh. She surveyed the
disaster unemotionally, confident in the knowledge that she hadn't done her
miserable half-caste body any irreparable harm.
   "It's all right," she said slowly, unable to tear her eyes away from the
wounded flesh. This wasn't the first time her arm had looked such a mess,
but she was still fascinated by the harm she had done. Strange that so much
pain did her so much good.
   "It's not all right!" exclaimed Quark. "Ziyal, you could be bleeding to
death!"
   She shrugged her shoulders groggily. "Don't be silly. Of course I won't.
There's a regenerator in the top drawer."
   She didn't feel like constructing long sentences, but Quark understood
her meaning. He fumbled through her drawer and finally found the device,
automatically switching it on and off to check that it was working.
   "Don't you think you should go to the Infirmary?" he asked as he handed
her the regenerator.
   Ziyal shook her head. "I'm fine." She lunged forward and stood up a
little shakily, before stumbling towards the bathroom. After a moment's
hesitation, Quark followed her in, apparently under the impression that she
would need help to clean up her arm. In fact, it wasn't exactly difficult
to run some warm water over her wounds, but Ziyal nonetheless appreciated
the Ferengi's quiet presence. His solicitude was quite comforting.
   Once Ziyal had washed her forearm, Quark wrapped a towel around it and
led her back to the bedroom. Sitting down on the bed beside her, he took
the regenerator she was still clutching and ran it over her cuts until they
had all vanished.
   "There you go," he said, obviously trying to sound cheerful. He didn't
seem to know what to say next.
   "Thank you," she said politely.
   He hesitated and then asked, "Why did you do it?"
   She shrugged her shoulders and smiled weakly at him. "It makes me feel
better."
   "Makes you feel better? You mean you've done this before? But... why?
How could you hurt yourself like that?"
   "It doesn't hurt that much. It helps..." she began, before realising she
couldn't possibly hope to explain how slashing her arm helped her mind. He
would think she was mad.
   "Is this because you're unhappy here on the station?"
   She didn't answer. Her unhappiness had nothing to do with being on the
station. She could have been living on Bajor, Cardassia or Dozaria III for
all the good it did her to live anywhere. The only place she had been happy
was on the Groumall, with her father.
   "You needn't be unhappy, you know," continued Quark, recovering some of
his usual confidence now that all the blood was gone. "If you're feeling
lonely, you can always come and talk to me. I'm a very good listener, you
know."
   Ziyal knew he was nothing of the sort; Quark was notorious for his
unswerving selfishness.
   "I know what you're thinking," he said, raising his hands. "You think
I'm just offering because you're a pretty young woman."
   That was, of course, another thing Quark was notorious for. Ziyal was
quite pleased to find such light-hearted thoughts in her mind at this
moment. Her depression was definitely better. But mention of her looks
didn't really help.
   "I'm not pretty," she mumbled, looking down at the smooth flesh on her
forearm. Her skin was hairless like a Cardassian's, but still conserved the
reddish pigment of her Bajoran mother. It was disgusting and unnatural; no
one could find her pretty with skin like that.
   "Who told you that?" said Quark, a tone of fake outrage in his voice.
"That ruffian on the Promenade, perhaps. Well, I'll tell you one thing,
Ziyal, you are pretty, and I'm sure I'm not the only who thinks so. I heard
Garak say so, too."
   She shook her head, her heart further depressed by the thought of Garak.
   "He doesn't like me," she said mournfully. Her mind flew back to the
previous evening, when she had kissed him in the holosuite. He had made it
abundantly clear that he was not interested in a romantic relationship with
her, and that was precisely what she needed -- romance. Or maybe just sex
would do. But most of all, she wanted to be loved by someone.
   "Of course he likes you!" exclaimed the Ferengi, definitely more
comfortable with their conversation now that she was hinting at some
reasons for her behaviour. "I've seen the time you spend together. He
wouldn't be doing that if he didn't like you -- or at least he would be
ripping your ego to shreds if he did."
   "He doesn't want me," she complained. "He told me so."
   "Now that's another matter. Though I might say he's a idiot if he
doesn't. It's not every day a middle-aged man wins the affection of a young
woman like yourself. I wouldn't miss the opportunity if I were him."
   "He doesn't like women," explained Ziyal, paying little attention to
what the Ferengi had just said. Tears welled up in her eyes at the memory
of the previous evening.
   "I know," said Quark simply, confirming her suspicion that everyone knew
Garak's preferences except for her. "But he's still an idiot. What does he
think? That the *doctor* is going to fall in love with him?"
   Ziyal shrugged her shoulders unhappily. She had thought that, as he was
the only Cardassian on the station, Garak was also the only man of her
acquaintance with whom she had any chance of forming a romantic
relationship. But there was evidently no hope of that.
   "Maybe he doesn't want to associate with..." she thought of all the
things people had called in her life, and chose a description she felt
suited her point. "...with Dukat's bastard mongrel."
   "'A pretty face is the key to every door'," retorted Quark without
missing a beat. She didn't recognise the expression, though she guessed it
wasn't Ferengi.
   Anyway, he was wrong; "I'm not pretty," she protested again. 
   "Yes, you are. Believe me, I know," he said, patting her knee
automatically.
   His kindness was too much for her. "But... but I'm unnatural!" she burst
out, letting the tears fall this time. "I'm a freak!"
   Quark shook his head. "No, you're not. Believe me, I've met plenty of
freaks in my time, and you're not one of them. Why can't you accept the
fact that you're a pretty young woman, and your heritage is not important?"
   "No, I'm an aberration, a mistake," she insisted mournfully. "My very
existence is against Nature."
   The Ferengi clucked his tongue and put his arm around her. She leaned
her head against his shoulder and sniffed unhappily as he spoke. "Did your
parents resort to genetic engineering to have you?" he asked.
   She was puzzled by his question. "No, but..."
   "Did your parents hate each other?"
   "No, they were in love..."
   "Did they ever tell you they regretted having you?"
   "I think Father does now," she said.
   "I very much doubt that," he responded shortly. "He wouldn't have
accepted such disgrace for you if he didn't care."
   "He wouldn't have abandoned me here if he did."
   "I know I wasn't there, but weren't you the one who wanted to stay
here?"
   "I suppose so," she admitted, though that didn't make her feel any
better.
   "And what about your mother? Did she ever say anything about you being a
mistake?"
   She thought about that. There had been times when her mother would yell
at her and call her names, but she had never said anything about Ziyal
being a mistake. When they were on the Ravinok watching Bajor fade until it
was nothing more than a star, her mother had wept and held her close. 'You
are such a comfort to me,' she had murmured, 'The best thing I ever did'.
It was a memory Ziyal had cherished in the prison camp.
   She shook her head, and Quark grinned.
   "So your parents made love, and then there was you... That sounds pretty
natural to me. I think they did a good job, too."
   Ziyal sat up and smiled at him, uncovering her even white teeth. She was
rewarded by a look of pure admiration from the Ferengi. He stroked her
cheek, perhaps to brush away a tear.
   "There," he said softly. "You're so much prettier when you smile."
   She knew she was not beautiful; she lacked the grace the Cardassians
admired, and the smooth, downy skin of a Bajoran beauty. And yet she was
overjoyed to think Quark found her pretty. If he did, and he had told her
he did often enough by now, then maybe other people would.
   He took her hand and squeezed it comfortingly. She looked down at the
orange fingers intertwined with her pale grey ones and observed his green
nails. They were clean and neatly trimmed, and she was surprised at how
soft the palm of his hand was against her skin. It shouldn't have come as
such a surprise, she told herself. Her own hands had lost the calluses she
had had when she was a slave; in fact, it had come as a great surprise to
her that those hard bumps were not a natural part of her anatomy. 
   Apart from Garak, she rarely touched men's hands, and for some reason
always expected them to be as hard as the hands of the prisoners she had
spent five years with. She brushed away the memories of those rough hands
on her in the stifling caves of the Breen mine. All that was far away in
the past and best forgotten.
   She drew her eyes back up to the Ferengi's wrinkled orange face. His
small grey eyes were shining with friendly concern between their darkened
eyelids. Ferengi had to be the ugliest creatures in the universe, but
Quark's features were so familiar to her that she no longer noticed the
irregular furrows on his splayed nose, or the tiny, widely spaced needle
teeth he uncovered when he smiled. He was an amiable man, for all his
devious Ferengi ways, and he had always been kind to her. She leant over
and kissed his lips.
   Quark immediately pulled back as if she had struck him a blow, and she
felt her heart sink. Was this the way it was going to be every time she
kissed a man? And she had thought Quark found her physically attractive.
   "What's wrong?" she asked automatically, though she could guess. He
thought she was repulsive, just as Garak did. He had only said she was
pretty to make her feel better, because he pitied her.
   "I... I think I should be leaving," he stammered, getting up.
   Ziyal nearly wept with frustration and decided there was no point
keeping her thoughts to herself. "Why does everyone hate me so much?"
   He stopped in his tracks, halfway to the door of her bedroom, evidently
debating whether he should make a quick escape or stay to comfort her.
Whatever his reasons, he decided to come back and sit beside her.
   "I don't hate you, Ziyal."
   "Then don't go, please," she said, taking his hand. "I don't want to be
alone."
   She lay back on the bed and then shifted her position so that she was
lying with her head on the pillow. Quark watched her move, his small pale
eyes missing nothing while he decided how he should react to her covert
invitation. He finally decided to sit up on the bed, kneeling beside her.
   "Do you want me?" she asked simply.
   "How could I not? But I don't think this is..."
   "Shh."
   She had never been so forward with a man; there had been no need in the
prison camp. Again the memory of her fellow prisoners returned to her mind,
and again she tried to forget them and all the ugliness she had known. She
looked up at Quark and found that he was smiling. He reached out to stroke
her cheek, and then ran a tentative finger along the contour of her ear and
then down onto her neck ridge.
   Ziyal shivered and closed her eyes as he caressed that part of her
anatomy. She vaguely remembered someone -- it must have been Garak --
telling her that Quark had once had a Cardassian lover. Maybe this was
something he used to do to her. It was pleasant enough, but her ridges were
not as sensitive as those of a full-blooded Cardassian.
   She gingerly took his hand, with a view to placing it somewhere she
wanted him to touch. He passively accepted the movement, probably anxious
to let her call all the shots on this experience. She vaguely remembered
some second-hand comment Nerys had picked up from Dax about Ferengi men
being relatively passive in bed. But it soon occurred to her his inaction
might prove a bit of a problem. She knew she wanted him to touch her, but
she wasn't too sure where to place his hand. She settled on her stomach for
the time being.
   Quark swallowed visibly and then moved his hand flat over the coarse
material of her Cardassian dress. The pressure on her sensitive stomach
made her shiver at first, the sensation hovering close to an unpleasant
tickle, but then her abdominal muscles relaxed to the touch. It was strange
to have her body touched by someone else, and she closed her eyes to enjoy
the sensation.
   Though his gentle massage was pleasant, it did not command her whole
attention, and she began to wonder what else Quark would do to her. She had
read enough romantic novels from various planets to know all the things
that were physically possible, and though she wasn't familiar with Ferengi
anatomy, she had reason to believe at least some of the acts she had read
about would turn up in the course of this evening.
   She promised herself that if it looked as if he was going to do
something she didn't want, she would tell him to stop. If he didn't want to
stop, and tried to fight with her, she would just have to grin and bear it.
After all, this was her idea, and if he expected some disgusting Ferengi
act to be performed, that served her right for initiating physical contact
with a species she knew nothing of. She had some experience of enduring
unpleasant things, so it wouldn't be too difficult. But she doubted Quark
would take advantage of her anyway. She hoped she knew him better than
that.
   She gasped as he tentatively moved his hand down over her lower stomach.
This time, a larger part of her mind was drawn to pay attention to what he
was doing. There was still nothing overtly sexual in the touch, which
traced gentle circles just below her waistline, but that area of her
anatomy was obviously connected to nerves which went all over her body,
particularly down her thighs and in between. Perhaps there was a
supplementary set that went up to her vocal cords, because she let out an
involuntary little moan as his fingers brushed against her groin.
   His hand moved back to her waist, but she now knew that wasn't what she
wanted at all. In fact, her mind and body were unanimous; his hand had to
go back where it had been a minute ago. Ziyal still had a shred of modesty
which prevented her from acting on the strong impulse she had to seize his
hand and push it downwards. She trusted Quark to have enough experience of
non-Ferengi women to *know*. 
   In the meantime, and in spite of Quark's now relatively innocent
caresses, her body seemed to be initiating all sorts of pleasant, albeit
frustrating, sensations of its own. She knew she was aroused, and the part
of her that was still pure thought registered some surprise at finding it
wasn't quite as she had expected. She was aware of some normally unused
instincts giving her strange instructions. For instance, she just *knew*
that she would be much more comfortable if she drew her legs up a little.
She couldn't remember ever reading about that in any of the works she had
consulted. Maybe it was some residual instinct the Bajorans and Cardassians
didn't like to talk about. Or maybe it was some weird aberration of her
mongrel heritage.
   Either way, the impulse was strong enough to strike her as being a very
sensible suggestion. However, she didn't feel quite confident enough to
place herself in a totally wanton position. Her sense of where she was and
who she was with hadn't completely disappeared. Also, a little part of her
rational mind wanted to test the instinct to see if she would really be
more comfortable in that embarrassing position, looking like a woman giving
birth, or if it was just a genetic ploy to place her in a
reproduction-friendly posture.
   Quark, who was naturally quite oblivious to the intense reasoning going
on in Ziyal's mind, had now moved his hand upwards. Though that was totally
the wrong direction as far as she was concerned, it did give her an
occasion to rearrange her lower limbs without interrupting his caresses.
Praying to the Prophets that her dress wouldn't hamper her movement, she
placed her left foot flat on the bed so that her leg was drawn up under her
skirt and her thigh tilted away from her other leg. Her instinct had been
right; she was much more comfortable like this, and she was even rewarded
by a dull wave of pleasure coursing through her body. Responding to the
delightful sensation, she shifted her right leg so both limbs were spread
more widely apart. 
   Ziyal knew she probably looked totally ridiculous like this, but for
some reason, that didn't seem to matter so much. She did wonder vaguely
what else she could do to make herself more comfortable, and in particular
if there was any way she could convince her body to repeat the wave of
pleasure she had just felt.
   Fortunately, this was where Quark suddenly proved his full usefulness,
after being relatively peripheral in her mind for the past few minutes.
Presumably in response to the position she was currently in, he ran his
hand slowly back down her body. She thought for a moment that he was going
to touch her in the right place to make the sensation come back -- wherever
that was. But his fingers just tickled her lower stomach, and she writhed
with a moan. She probably looked like the woman in the holonovel she had
watched that afternoon. Well, now she knew how the woman felt.
   The Ferengi had apparently decided she looked ready for a change of
pace. Ziyal felt the pressure of his hand move down between her legs and
she let out a little moan again. He continued to caress her through the
material of her dress for a while, and the motions of his hand, though they
provoked no particularly intense pleasure, seemed to bring on a total
relaxation of her body. She found herself giving a low hum each time the
touch went downwards; something there was definitely very sensitive.
   The movement of Quark's hand became gradually more hesitant. She could
hear him breathing a lot more heavily, and was vaguely aware of the faint
clucking noise his mouth made as he licked his lips. Whatever he wanted to
do to her later, she hoped he would finish what he was doing now first.
   It turned out the hesitation was not entirely due to the Ferengi's
arousal. Ziyal felt him pull on her dress to try and draw it over her
knees. She barely opened her eyes as she reached down to help him, pulling
her clothes up to bare her stockinged legs. Quark then pulled her underwear
off. He was silent for a moment, apparently looking at her and perhaps
debating as to what to do next.
   "Computer," he called out finally. "Dim lights by 50 percent."
   The light dimmed appropriately and Ziyal opened her eyes. Quark noticed
and turned to smile at her. She smiled back, though she was actually hoping
he would continue what he had begun.
   "You're so beautiful," he said finally, before his smile faded and his
hand started to caress her inner thigh.
   She closed her eyes again. He had said exactly what she wanted to hear;
if he thought she was beautiful, she would let him do whatever he wanted.
Just for tonight.


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