Amidst a Crowd of Stars Read online

  Marrin watched him undress, her eyes lingering on his body in constant appreciation. “Have you ever wished it had been different when you came? That we’d had the chance for a honeymoon like most married people get?”

  He turned from the dresser where he’d been placing his watch and the interlocked chain he wore around his wrist. “Do I wish I’d been able to spend a week with you at an overpriced tourist resort indulging in decadent sex and overeating bad food? No, Marrin.”

  She laughed. “I mean do you wish we’d had the chance to be a couple before we were a family?”

  Again, he shook his head and stepped out of his trousers, hanging them with the same neat efficiency he always did. At last fully naked, he moved toward her and stretched out on the bed beside her.

  “The moment I stepped off that freighter and saw those three little faces, I was in love,” Keane said. “Falling in love with you came later and was a pleasant side benefit.”

  She nudged him with a frown, but his answer pleased her. “You don’t think it would have been easier without the girls?”

  “Easier? Undoubtedly.” He put his hand flat on her belly, fingers splayed. “Would I wish it had happened differently? Never.”

  He leaned down to kiss her, his tongue urging her lips to open. His breath was sweet from ceremonial wine. She licked his lips, tasting.

  “It would’ve been easier to make love to you at the beginning without three little ones always underfoot,” he whispered as his hand began a lazy ascent toward her breasts. “But maybe we can make up for it now.”

  “Pretend this is the first time?” she teased.

  “If you like.” His hand cupped her breast.

  Her nipple rose beneath his palm. Keane rubbed his thumb across it. The barrier of her dress blunted the sensation but made it no less delightful.

  “I was so nervous that first time. I don’t think I’d want to repeat that.”

  “You were nervous?” He laughed. “I was afraid I wouldn’t please you and you’d send me back.”

  “Keane, you weren’t!”

  He paused in kissing her to look into her eyes. “I was.”

  She’d never known he’d been afraid, too, the first time they had made love. The admission touched her. She put her hand to his face.

  “I couldn’t have sent you back,” she said. “I loved you too much to live without you.”

  His tender kiss hadn’t changed in all the years they’d been together. Familiarity couldn’t steal the sweetness of it, or quench the fire he always created when he put his mouth on hers. No matter how many times they joined, each time was as exciting and fresh as the first time.

  “You’re not naked,” he whispered in her ear. “And I am.”

  She remedied that by sitting up and tugging her dress off over her head. “We can’t have that.”

  His low chuckle parted her thighs. His hand stroked the curls there, finding the already upright button of her clit and pinching it lightly. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger before moving his hand down lower to slide a finger through her folds.

  Slickness, begun at the sight of him undressing, already coated her. He brought some of it up to coat her clit, making it slippery. He rubbed her in small, tight circles interspersed with an occasional up and down stroke that had her whimpering in short order.

  He kissed her mouth, her cheek, her jaw, down to her collarbone where he nibbled along the ridge and smoothed his tongue across her skin. He moved lower to suckle her nipples, one then the other, while his hand continued to work between her legs. Marrin looked down to see him stroking himself too, the thickness of his cock appearing and disappearing into his fist as he pumped it.

  “Come here.” She reached for him.

  He shifted on the bed so she could reach his penis. He kissed her hipbone. She angled her head just a bit, and took him into her mouth.

  His low, strangled moan sent a pulse of pleasure through her that she could so affect him. Marrin slid his cock down the back of her throat as far as she could until her lips touched his belly.

  His hand stuttered in its movement against her clitoris as she sucked him harder. The break in his rhythm only gave her more pleasure, brought her closer to orgasm faster. Her clit throbbed and her hips moved as she slid her mouth up again, then down.

  “Marrin, I love it when you take me all the way in your mouth.”

  His throaty words made her body tingle. She loved that about him, his ability to tell her exactly how he was feeling at all times during their lovemaking. What he liked, what he wanted, how to please him.

  Before Keane, Marrin had never spoken during sex. Orgasms were like buried treasure. “X” marks the spot. Find the map, follow clues, and maybe you’ll hit the jackpot.

  Keane had shown her the freedom of speech, of telling her partner exactly how she liked to be touched and where, exactly what would work to get her off.

  “I want to be inside you,” he murmured, even as he pushed himself deeper into her mouth.

  She gave him one final, loving suck and then let him go. She got onto her hands and knees to look down at him, his eyes gone yellow in his arousal. He licked his lips, and before she could move, Keane got behind her and slid inside.

  A moan escaped her as he filled her. Her butt tipped upward as she put her forehead to the bed, her hands on either side of her head, bracing herself. In this position he could grip her hips to move her, use a hand to slide around in front and tweak her clit while he thrust. He could go deeper, harder, and she gasped out in pleasure as he did.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he told her, as his hands rubbed circles on her buttocks and the small dimples on either side of her lower spine. His fingers traced the jut of her shoulder blades, the line of her backbone and the cleft of her ass. He thrust inside her slowly as his hands caressed her body.

  Climax stole her words. She pushed herself backward against him, needing him to thrust harder. To fill her. He groaned. She answered. Their pace quickened.

  His erection stretched her. She settled her legs wider, pushing upward on her elbows. Keane reached around to press his fingertips to her swollen clit, and Marrin cried out. She pushed herself harder against him, each movement dragging his fingers along her erect button and stabbing his cock into her core.

  They moved together in perfect time. The dual sensations of his erection inside her and the pressure of his hand on her clitoris was enough, at last, to send her over the edge.

  “I want to hear you come,” he said. “Nobody will hear you but me.”

  He was right. They were alone. After all the years in a house filled with children, they were at last alone. She screamed out her ecstasy, voice hoarse and her breath leaving her in great gasps as her orgasm pounded through her. Nobody to hear them, not now. Not with the girls all grown with families of their own. The time of quiet, furtive lovemaking had passed. Now there was no need to be silent in their passion, and the thought of it made her open her mouth and cry out, simply because she could.

  He thrust harder and she bent forward to open herself to him, to take him deeper. She cried out again, another burst of climax filling her. She tensed, relaxed and tensed again. Keane cupped his hand over her, easing off the direct pressure that made her body jerk in the aftermath of her climax.

  His thrusts became ragged. He cried out as she had, a wordless sound of joy. His cock pulsed. His fingers tightened on her hip.

  A third time her vagina contracted around him, a smaller and gentler orgasm that made her moan and push back against him hard as he thrust forward one last time and shivered in his climax.

  He stayed inside her for another breath, another heartbeat, and as she felt him begin to soften, he pulled out of her and lay down on the bed, pulling her into his arms to spoon her as they both caught their breath.

  “Who needs a honeymoon?” she said when she could speak again. “This is much better.”

  He kissed her between the shoulder blades. “It is.”

&n
bsp; And they slept.

  Eighty rotations ago

  Only ten rotations ago, there had been no school auditorium in which ceremonies like this could be held. Students had taken classes in a building much like the one-room schoolhouses of their ancestral Earth. Like everything else in the colony, hard work had provided the new building with its bright, airy classrooms and the large auditorium in which they all now sat.

  Sarai’s class was the first to graduate from the new school. Marrin watched her middle daughter march down the aisle with the rest of her classmates, her fair hair bleached blonder now by the harsh sun that lightened everything over time. Today there were fifty students, an unbelievable number when she thought about the first few families that had come to Lujawed. She’d never have imagined one day she’d sit in an air-cooled room and see her daughter receive a degree for an education as adequate as any she’d have received on Earth.

  Seth had been the one to dream of this, the one to look beyond the barren desert and blinding sun to imagine green fields and a thriving town. This had been Seth’s dream, not hers.

  Keane’s fingers linked through Marrin’s and squeezed, and she gave him a grateful glance. Sarai’s graduation had hit her harder than Aliya’s, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe because her oldest daughter had always been the one to make the milestones and seeing Sarai make another only emphasized to Marrin how much time had passed in her own life. In another four rotations Hadassah would finish her primary education. By that time, the university would likely be finished, and she could attend an actual university instead of taking correspondence lessons.

  Her babies weren’t babies any longer, and though Marrin didn’t want to hold them back, part of her mourned the loss of her role as young mother. They didn’t need her any longer. Not like they had.

  She half-listened to the speeches, her mind on the company she’d finally turned into a success. Ashco had turned its first profit this year. A year of good weather and an unusually plentiful rain season had allowed her to siphon some of the expense she’d normally have spent on irrigation into finishing up the climate-controlled warehouses and implement the distribution system that allowed the crop to reach all parts of the colony before it spoiled.

  Luck had been with them this year, no doubt about it. It meant money and security, and the realization of a dream and the success of the business contented her in ways she’d never expected. Marrin Levy, a businesswoman? She’d have laughed at the thought. Now, she couldn’t imagine anything less.

  Keane’s arm rested along the back of her chair, and she stole a look him. Without him, she’d never have made it to this place. The fever that stole her first husband had left them bereft, alone in a harsh land that was not home. A young mother of two, with a third growing in her belly, struggling to plant and harvest a brown and bleached scrap of land without the man who’d brought them there… There had been so many times she’d come close to giving up. If she’d had the money she’d have taken her children and gone home, but he hadn’t left them even with that.

  Three rotations of struggle, of poverty, of hunger and backbreaking labor, had finally forced Marrin to send away for what the Homesteaders called a “field-husband”. A man to work her fields and help take care of things.

  Love hadn’t been meant to enter into it. She looked at Keane’s face, his eyes trained on the stage where there were more speeches being made. His lovely, dear face, which hadn’t changed since the day she’d first seen him.

  He turned to look at her and they shared a secret smile. The speechmakers stopped talking. The audience rose to clap and cheer for the graduates, and Marrin turned from the sight of her husband, the man who’d come to tend her fields, but who’d ended up tending her heart, and found Sarai’s beaming smile.

  The colony was still small enough to support group celebrations like this one. The tables had been set with flowers and pretty cloths. A band hired to provide music. Food, laid out in a bounty that proved to any who doubted how prosperous they’d all become.

  Marrin watched Sarai chattering with her friends. Her other daughters, Aliya and Hadassah, had also abandoned the dull company of their parents to seek their companions. Marrin had a plate of salad and a glass of iced water, but wasn’t doing much beyond looking around in amazed pride.

  “You’re Sarai’s mother, aren’t you?”

  Marrin turned at the question to see a woman of about her own age she faintly recognized. “Yes. I’m Marrin Levy.”

  “Arlene Simpson. I’m Jack’s mom.”

  Marrin didn’t know Jack, but she smiled and nodded anyway. Keane came up beside her and put his arm around her shoulders, squeezing gently before stepping away to take the plate from her hands and begin finishing the salad.

  “Hi,” he greeted Arlene.

  The other woman’s eyes widened slightly. “Hello. I’m Jack’s mom.” Her smile thinned as she looked at Marrin.

  Keane smiled and shrugged, more honest in his reply than Marrin had been. “Sorry, I don’t know Jack.”

  “Jack Simpson?” Arlene’s tone clearly said Keane ought to know him. “He might be a year or two behind you.”

  Keane paused with the fork halfway to his mouth, an eyebrow raised. “Sorry?”

  Marrin tensed, her gut twisting. It wasn’t the first time their apparent age difference had been brought up in casual conversation, but it had been quite a while. Anyone who knew them knew Keane wasn’t as young as his Seveeran genetics made him appear.

  “My son,” Arlene said patiently, as though Keane were an idiot. “He graduated today with your girlfriend.”

  “My girlfriend?” Keane’s face showed an amusement Marrin envied, but didn’t feel. He looked around the room, clearly biting back a laugh.

  “Well, yes…you’re Sarai’s boyfriend, aren’t you? I just guessed you—”

  “You guessed because I was here with Marrin and behaving in such a familiar manner that I must somehow be related to her, and you assumed for some reason I was here because of her daughter, who graduated today with your son.” His smile remained pleasant, his voice light, but he’d set down his plate and put an arm around Marrin’s shoulders.

  Arlene looked confused, from Keane to Marrin and back again. “Well, yes.”

  “Marrin is my wife,” said Keane without changing his tone.

  If the woman’s face could have blushed any more crimson, Marrin didn’t see how. Arlene Simpson stammered and stuttered and backed away like Keane had somehow insulted her when really, she was the one who’d put her foot in her mouth.

  It made Marrin feel no better to watch the other woman’s distress. Much of the time she could forget her husband was of a different race that didn’t age the same way Earthers did. She aged every day. Keane did not.

  “Don’t let her bother you,” he murmured in her ear, his arm tightening around her waist that she was proud hadn’t thickened in their years together. “She didn’t know.”

  “I know.”

  Marrin put on a smile, talking with the rest of the parents and well-wishers, but by the time the day was over she had a pounding headache from gritting her jaw. Tears stung her eyes as she sought the privacy of her bath chamber and splashed cold water on her temples. Sarai had gone to a graduation celebration, taking her sisters with her, and the quiet house was a balm to her strained nerves.

  The sound of a whistling teakettle caught her attention and she lifted her head. She was too far from the kitchen to smell the udeji blossom tea, but she knew that’s what he’d be preparing. She went to the kitchen and found her husband. He’d set the table with her favorite mug, the teapot with steam curling from the ceramic top, and a plate of cookies. He’d included a vase with a flower plucked from Sarai’s congratulations bouquet.

  This simple act of caring moved her to tears. More emotion after a long, emotional day. The best part of it was she didn’t need to explain herself to him. All she had to do was look into his eyes, and Keane knew just what to do to make it all better.<
br />
  Or if not better, at least bearable. He took her in his arms and pressed his lips to her temple as he stroked her back. His fingers tangled in the hair falling over her shoulders—which she now noted with some distress was streaked even further with white. That the bleaching came from the sun and not just her age didn’t help. They might all live on Lujawed, but most of them had come from Earth originally, and standards of beauty were the same.

  “I thought it didn’t bother me anymore.”

  His lips curved against her. “It shouldn’t. It’s only misconception.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m seven rotations older than you.”

  “I know that,” she said, swatting him. “But you don’t look it.”

  “And I never will,” Keane said gently. “But that doesn’t mean anything. Did you fall in love with me because of what I look like?”

  “No,” Marrin said, “but that you’re gorgeous helped a lot.”

  He laughed and hugged her, rocking her in arms still strong from long hours working in the fields, though he no longer needed to labor that way. “I could say the same. The first time I laid my eyes on you, you took my breath away.”

  She scoffed. “I was covered in dust and had three screaming children circling me like satellites.”

  “A pearl covered in mud is still a pearl.”

  She tipped her head back to look up at him. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  His hands slid up and down her sides, resting at last on her hips. He shifted her around until she was snugged up against him. Heat flared in her belly at the feeling of his erection already straining the front of his loose trousers.

  “We’re alone,” he reminded her. “The girls won’t be home until tomorrow.”

  “However shall we occupy our time?”

  Keane smiled. “I think I can imagine.”

  The kitchen table was just the right height for him to slide inside her as he stood between her legs and she sat on the table. The curved plazglass table warmed to her skin, bared in only moments when he lifted her skirt and tugged down her panties. One hand cupped the back of her neck and the other anchored her hip as he moved inside her. Marrin locked her ankles around his hips, pulling him closer, holding him tighter.