Amidst a Crowd of Stars Read online

  Sometimes they made love slowly, taking hours. Sometimes, like now, they came together hard and fast, with nothing more than a glance to serve as foreplay. It didn’t matter. She was as ready for him now as if he’d spent half a day caressing her.

  The teacups rattled in their saucers as his thrusts rocked the table, and Marrin let her head tip back, back, laughing and gasping her pleasure as he filled her.

  “Touch yourself,” Keane said, his voice hoarse. “I want you to come with me.”

  With Keane supporting her she had no need to hold herself up, and it was easy to slip a hand between them to stroke her clit in time to his thrusts. She cried out as she rolled the small button under her forefinger. Keane stretched and filled her, in and out, while she rubbed.

  He kissed her, mouths open, tongues darting and becoming desperate as their mutual climax approached. Marrin heard a clatter and a crack but took no time to see if they’d at last made the cups fall over. She lost herself in her husband’s kiss, in the pleasure of his magnificent, unique cock as it moved inside her, in the sensation of her own hand between her legs.

  He gathered her closer, his grip tightening. Her face pressed against his chest. She found his skin with her teeth and tongue, tasted the salt and spice of his sweat and of their passion, and he groaned when she nipped him.

  “Come with me, Marrin.”

  She already was. Bright sparks of joy filled her. Her body jerked. Keane thrust inside her, sending another burst of ecstasy exploding through her. She cried out, riding him, digging her nails into his shoulders hard enough to bruise him.

  He thrust again, this time hard enough to move the table. His back arched. He shuddered, then relaxed against her, panting.

  Marrin heard a slow dripping and turned her head to see they had, indeed, spilled the tea. It had made quite a mess on the floor, too, but at that moment, she couldn’t rouse herself enough to care.

  “You wear this old man out,” Keane whispered into her ear, nuzzling and nipping before hugging her tightly.

  “Never,” she replied.

  “You can try,” came his teasing reply.

  “I can try,” Marrin agreed and put her arms around the man she loved.

  Ninety-nine rotations ago

  “Hurry, Keane! Hurry! It’s starting!”

  Aliya danced, holding her pot with both small hands. Sarai joined her sister, a mug in each of hers. The baby, Hadassah, no longer such a baby, but a girl of nine rotations, held a mixing bowl up toward the darkening sky.

  Keane, his long, dark hair tied at the nape of his neck, stepped through the glass doors at the back of the house and onto the slate patio. He’d put on the shirt she’d made for him Marrin saw, and though she tried to pretend the sight didn’t make her heart leap, it did.

  “Keane, it’s starting!”

  “All right.” He laughed and reached for the mug Sarai handed him. He tipped his face toward the sky. A drop of rain splatted him between the eyes and he laughed again, spreading out his arms as more water came from the clouds.

  The girls squealed and held up their containers, trying to catch the still slow-falling raindrops. They danced in their festival dresses, their small faces bright with excitement. Marrin’s heart hurt to look at their joy, so fierce and overwhelming was her love.

  “Look, Ima, look! Flowers!”

  And indeed, what had been moments before a brown and barren yard had now begun to bloom. More rain pattered down, soaking instantly into the parched ground. Green tendrils that had been dormant an entire season now sprang up from the ground so fast they could see them growing. Flowers, red, purple, white and yellow, bloomed on vines and stalks. The smell of them filled the air, and Marrin breathed deeply, astounded as always by the annual miracle.

  The blessing of rain. Lujawed was a desert planet, its water held so deep within its embrace it took the deepest wells to reach it. Yet once a year, thankfully without fail, clouds gathered. The skies opened. And water, the gift without which they couldn’t survive here, poured forth in torrents. Sometimes four days. Sometimes two weeks. Glorious, fresh, sweet and life-giving water.

  The Lujawedi called it idvad, and so the colonists had taken on the term, adopted the holiday festival when all work ceased and every attention was given to collecting and appreciating the sky’s bounty.

  Watching her daughters’ dance, Marrin’s throat closed with emotion. She held her face up to the sky, letting the rain hide the tears suddenly sliding down her cheeks. She blinked rapidly and her gaze fell on Keane, who looked up at her from where he bent, laughing, to help Aliya empty her pot of water into one of the rain barrels.

  One full rotation had passed since the day she had gone to Bosie Starport to pick up the man who had answered her ad. One Lujawed rotation, one round of seasons, one passage of time, and yet so much more.

  He stood, his dark eyes flaring briefly blue in the way he had that she’d found so disconcerting at first. Seveeran eyes changed color with emotion, unlike Earther eyes that always stayed the same. And now, not for the first time, Marrin wondered what other differences his race had from hers.

  She blamed her shiver on the chill rain, but knew it had nothing to do with that and everything to do with this man she’d taken as her field-husband. Keane Delacore.

  Though they wanted to, the children couldn’t stay up all night. When true night fell, Marrin dried them off, dressed them in warm clothes and tucked them into beds to be soothed to sleep by the unfamiliar sound of rain pattering on the roof. They fell asleep in moments, and she took the time to touch their faces, each one so precious to her she could scarcely bear it.

  Her girls, Earth-age nine, seven and four. Growing so fast and so beautiful. She tucked the blankets around them and left their room, closing the door behind her.

  The rain had grown heavier. It slashed the windows and sliced at the grass that had grown up in the past few hours. Marrin slid the glass doors open and went outside, water soaking her instantly to the skin.

  Baths were a luxury. She wanted to spend as much time as she could with water on her skin. She let it wash over her as she walked into the garden that hadn’t been there earlier.

  And she found him. Standing, arms outspread, face tipped up to the downpour, eyes closed, mouth open to drink.

  It seemed somehow too intimate to see him this way, in this ecstasy. She had shared a home with him for a rotation. Taken meals together. Argued and been kind, laughed and wept, labored with him side by side in the melon fields that were only now beginning to take full root.

  She had spent a rotation with this man, who was no longer a stranger to her, but she had never seen him lose himself in such joy. She made to back away, to find her own place to stand and take in the rain, but Keane, at that moment, turned his head and saw her.

  He turned slowly to face her, his arms going down. The shirt she had made for him of white flaxene and red embroidered flowers had gone sheer, showing every ridge and muscle of his chest. It made her knees feel as though they would not hold her; she stumbled at the sudden, unexpected sensuality of seeing Keane wet and outlined by red thread she had sewn with her own hands. She had seen him stripped bare to the waist many times, but this was somehow all at once more and too much.

  She took a step back on the tiles made slick with rain. She stepped onto grass and soft earth, smelled the scent of flowers she crushed beneath her bare heel. Her hair clung to her as her gown did, molding itself to her body as his shirt hugged him, and she realized his eyes were roaming over her as hungrily as she was certain hers had over him.

  She had seen his eyes go blue and green and only once, red with anger. Now they were tinged with amber and gold as he blinked. He’d taken away the tie and his hair fell over his shoulders and halfway down his back.

  She took another step back. Keane moved fast, smooth, with agile grace she’d always admired. His hand caught her by the upper arms just as she teetered with uncertain steps on the mushy ground. She gasped at his touch, fo