Seeing Stars

by Vanessa Grant

  She would die if he didn't... if she couldn't...

  "Please," she whispered when his lips brushed over the soft curls between her thighs, and she knew she would die when he moved away to linger over the hot softness of her thighs, the swelling of her belly.

  Then he touched her with his hand, sliding inside the slick folds of her sex, and she came apart to his touch and the flames engulfed sensation, pleasure, life. She would have begged him to fill her if she could have found words, but she was all heat and need, broken harsh breaths and pulsing emptiness. He stroked her inside, somewhere deep and shattering, where sensation multiplied into a surrender, a need deeper than the ocean, and she opened, opened fully, her throat a high, keening plea, and his mouth settled on her and kissed her so deeply the world stopped spinning on its axis and she lost everything, sensation, meaning, life.

  Then the pulse began to build, and she was desperate, twisting against his touch, moaning his name, driven by feelings too deep, too shattering, needing, taking, spinning into nothingness as his name emptied from her throat and she came apart somewhere deep inside, her woman's body emptying, releasing everything to his kiss in the deep explosion of her climax.

  She lay paralyzed as the tremors left her, couldn't even lift her eyelids. She made a sound without knowing what the sound meant, and he kissed her lightly, intimately, and slowly slid up her body to take her into his arms.

  Time went somewhere, hidden perhaps, as the stars hide when the sun rises. Some countless number of heartbeats later, she moved her lips without sound, opened her eyes and found Blake watching her, tenderness in his eyes.

  "OK?" he asked.

  She moistened her lips with her tongue. "I may never recover," she whispered, her voice husky and lazy from sex, from loving.

  "Good," he said, brushing her hair from her eyes. "I wanted to give you something... something special."

  "Very special," she murmured, her eyes drifting closed again, promising herself that later, when she recovered, there was something very special she wanted to give him. And she wondered if it was possible to drive him over that same cliff, with only her hands and her mouth.

  "I'll pick you up at four," he said, leaning in through the open window of her Honda to take her lips in a slow, possessive kiss. "Pack some jeans, a toothbrush, and be ready for an adventure."

  He wouldn't tell her what he meant, and she drove back to the condo humming the tune that had been playing on his kitchen radio this morning. He liked country and western music, which made sense, she figured, and maybe she liked it too. Certainly the songs of love and loving were fitting to the last couple of days in her life.

  She wished she had longer than one week, but probably it was better this way. She smiled and admitted to herself that after the last twelve hours with Blake, she wasn't sure she could survive even four more days.

  After last night, it shouldn't have been possible to need him again, certainly she'd never have dreamed he could draw from her a climax so shattering she was still shaken. By all the laws of nature, she should have had enough sex in the last twelve hours to last her a hundred years, maybe a thousand.

  But she could feel her own pulse beating deep inside, and although she still hadn't gotten her balance back from that shattering interlude after their shower, she had no doubt that if he touched her, her body would, impossibly, respond.

  Jeans and a toothbrush. Where was he planning to take her? She didn't think he meant to take her back to his house. An adventure, he'd said, and last night and this morning certainly qualified in her life, but maybe he considered that sort of mind-numbing sex to be ordinary.

  No, she thought, pulling up sharply in front of the condo. She'd seen his face, felt his ragged breathing after his shattering climax in the shower, and in his eyes she'd seen that there was nothing ordinary about it for him either.

  Everything was heightened because they knew they had only a week, because they both knew it would never be anything but temporary, so they could allow themselves to be completely carried away, with no risk that either one would be devastated or hurt because of the other's loving not enough, or too much.

  She pulled up in front of the condo and decided she would have a swim, a long, slow swim in the pool. Blake hadn't asked her to come back to the shipyard, and she wasn't certain he would welcome her there. I'll pick you up, he had said, which probably meant he'd rather she didn't spend the day at the shipyard sanding or painting green stuff onto wood. She supposed he probably had typically male ideas about the sorts of tasks women should do, which was why he'd seemed cool the day she worked at the shipyard. He'd taken her there to observe, not to take part.

  She was the woman he was romancing, the woman he'd asked to work with Jake, but she didn't belong in his shipyard working with the boys.

  Inside the condo, she found the red message light on her telephone flashing. She dialed the resort office and discovered Jennifer had called.

  She called her friend and caught her having a cup of tea.

  "Perfect timing," said Jenn. "I just put Tammy down and poured myself a cup of tea. I called you at nine. Where were you? Having an early swim?"

  "I was at Blake's," Claire said, then felt her cheeks flush in the pause that ensued.

  "You did it, then."

  "I... yes." Claire wasn't sure she wanted to talk about it.

  "And of course you used protection," said Jenn, sounding every bit like somebody's mother. Tammy's mother, Claire thought, but it would be years before Jenn would need to have this sort of conversation with her daughter.

  "Of course we used protection," said Claire, her face even hotter.

  Not this morning, we didn't. This morning, in the shower...

  "You're leaving Port Townsend on Friday?"

  "Yes."

  Four days... four more nights. She felt dizzy, thinking of Blake... of them, together. She'd stepped into his shower and he hadn't been expecting it, hadn't been prepared. She remembered how he'd felt inside her. How she'd stared into his eyes, the water pouring down her back, his hands holding her tight.

  "Maybe you should leave now," said Jenn. "You're not the type for impulsive affairs. I'm worried about you."

  "I'm not a child, Jenn. I'm a woman, and I'm not leaving until Friday." A woman. Today, she felt like a woman in a way she never had before. "You don't need to worry, Jenn. After all, this was your idea."

  "Maybe it wasn't such a good one."

  "It's too late now. You sabotaged me, packed romance novels in place of the astronomy papers I was going to read, loaned me that too-tight dress. This is my affair, I'm enjoying it, and nothing on this earth is going to make me leave before Friday."

  "Well..." Jennifer sighed audibly.

  "Jenn, I'm not taking part in some wild orgy." Wasn't she? Hadn't last night and this morning been exactly that: a wild, breathless, two-person orgy? "I'm working with a teenage boy—three boys, actually—showing them how to build their own telescope. Blake works with delinquent boys and I'm helping out."

  "And fooling around a bit on the side," said Jennifer, laughing now.

  "Yes, and you were right. It's been far too long since I've... well, this was a good idea. I want to thank you for arranging this week for me at the resort."

  "Will you see him afterward?"

  "Afterward?"

  "After you leave. I guess what I'm really wondering is: Are you falling in love with this guy? And is he good enough for you?"

  "Jenn, this is an affair, nothing more. Friday I'll be leaving to drive to San Francisco for that interview. If I get the job, I'll be moving to Chile, and I intend to get the job. Nothing matters more than that."

  "That's not an answer, but I'll let you off the hook. Happy birthday, Claire. It sounds as if you've already had your present."

  Happy birthday, she mused as she hung up the phone. She'd forgotten.

  Last year, her birthday had been marked by the expected call from her father. They'd talked about solar flares, and he'd to
ld her how proud he was of her.

  She missed him. Would always miss him. Ever since her mother's death it had been just Claire and her father. They'd come to Port Townsend together, studied the stars together. He'd been at her high school graduation, her college graduation. He'd taken her out to dinner the night she learned she'd gotten her first job at the observatory in Maui, where she completed her Ph.D. thesis.

  Kevin, the man who said he loved her, hadn't been excited for her. When he learned, he'd frowned and asked her to turn down the job, to stay in San Francisco, stay at the university as a junior lecturer. He'd been unwilling to wait, to compromise.

  Probably, she realized now, no compromise had been possible. Kevin had been as firmly rooted in his college-professor identity as she'd been in her dreams of running her own observatory and finding comets.

  But her father had known how important it was, just as he'd known three years later when she called to tell him she'd landed the job in Arizona, and he congratulated her for making a big step up the ladder of astronomical success.

  Astronomical success. She remembered how his voice had sounded when he said the words, how she'd laughed and felt the warmth of achievement then, in a way she incomprehensibly hadn't when she got the phone call from the head of the selection board.

  She shook her somber mood off and grabbed towel and bathing suit, heading for the swimming pool. It was her birthday, and her father certainly wouldn't want her mooning around, being sad.

  Mind you, she thought wryly, he probably wouldn't approve of what she'd already done on her birthday. She stood at the door, hand on the knob, realizing she didn't know what he would think of this, didn't know what he would think of Blake. Unlike other fathers, he'd never warned her about boys, had never needed to. Until college, there hadn't been any boys, and by that time, the habit of years had prevented her from telling him about Kevin. Had, perhaps, prevented him from asking, if he'd even wondered.

  He was a man whose work had always been his life. He'd loved the precision of mathematics and physics, and his parenting had consisted of drawing her into the world where he was comfortable. His world. Hers too.

  If her mother had lived, would Claire have spoken of Kevin to her? Would she have confided, after this week, that she'd had a wild, improbable affair with the man she'd once watched wistfully in high school corridors?

  Impossible to know, but she was glad of Jennifer, glad there was someone in the world she could tell about Blake. Otherwise it would be a secret she could never tell, and afterward, it would be as if it had never happened.

  But Jennifer wasn't being consistent—first urging Claire into an affair, then, this morning, talking as if it were a mistake. And Claire had lied to Jennifer, although she hadn't realized it was a lie as she first spoke the words. Of course we used protection.

  She crossed the pavement and went through the door into the pool. In the change room, she stripped and changed into her black bathing suit. Then she dove in and swam steadily, lap after lap in the small pool, the water flowing over her body as she maintained a steady crawl.

  This morning, with the water pounding down on them, they might have made a child. It was shatteringly easy to believe that could have happened. What were the odds? She reached the end of the pool, turned and struck out again. The odds... not impossible, certainly. The timing was...

  Just about perfect.

  Once, just once. Could it be? She didn't know the odds, had never explored the science of conception. Had never believed she would conceive a child. Lovers and romance were so far from the everyday path of her life, and even if she'd imagined herself with a man again—well, memories of lovemaking with Kevin hadn't provided any hint that sex could be so urgent, so immediate, that she would be in danger of completely forgetting about contraception.

  Although, to be honest, she'd known Saturday night, on the balcony, when Blake kissed her, held her, touched her as if he never wanted to stop. She'd known then that there was madness and desperate need deep inside her.

  A baby...

  Even given the time of her cycle, the chances had to be... maybe one in ten. She touched the far end of the pool and turned again, swimming harder. Face it, she hadn't a clue what the odds were, and the whole scientific thing of probabilities was completely inappropriate when it came to touching her belly and wondering if life had already begun.

  If it had...

  She burst out of the pool and stood, chlorinated water swirling around her shoulders, streaming off her face. If there's a baby....

  She couldn't get her mind around it, couldn't get past those words.

  She covered her belly with her hands, thought of Jennifer's baby, the soft innocence squirming in her arms as she held Tammy. Of Tammy nestled against Jennifer's breast, suckling.

  But Jennifer's baby had a father, and Claire's wouldn't. A baby alone on a mountain with a single mother. And if she went to Chile—she wasn't sure what medical facilities were like at the observatory in Chile, whether there was a hospital nearby. At least on the mountain, her sports utility vehicle could reach a hospital in Tucson in a little over an hour.

  It wouldn't be reasonable, she thought, to have a child in a place like Chile. But she shouldn't be so foolish as to think it impossible after what had happened this morning.

  She knew she could prevent it. If she went to a doctor today, she could ensure no child was born as a result of their loving. She could... but she couldn't. If there was life... if there was... her child.

  This would be the only way it could happen, she thought. She certainly hadn't planned it this way, but this week with Blake could give her a child, her only chance to have a child because she couldn't imagine doing this with any other man.

  After this week, she'd never see Blake again.

  The child, if there was a child, was out of her control. She would wait, and in a few weeks she'd know. Then, if it was meant to be, it would be a gift and she'd find a way to make it work.

  A birthday present, she thought breathlessly, and it wasn't wise at all, but she couldn't stop herself from hoping it was meant to be.

  When she came out of the pool, she was far too restless to stay alone in the condo. She dressed and grabbed her keys, then drove into Port Townsend, avoiding the pull that tempted her to drive past the Boat Haven, turn right and park at Blake's shipyard where he'd be working with the boys. Instead, she drove slowly along Water Street until she found a parking space in a tiny lot between two buildings. Then she walked.

  A few blocks farther and she'd be at Point Hudson Marina, where the festival would take place in two months' time. She wondered if Blake took an active part in the annual Wooden Boat Festival. She remembered other Septembers, the waterfront crowded with people as maritime history came alive. She'd walked along the waterfront, of course, and had once with her father toured a large wooden ship on display at Union Wharf. She wondered what it would be like to see the festival from inside, to share Blake's view of it.

  He would probably be one of the experts giving lectures and workshops, and the boat whose pilot berth she'd sanded might be one of those on display.

  She opened the door and went into the Salal Cafe. She'd never been there before, but unlike the tourists she overheard talking at the table next to hers, she knew that salal was a low-growing, broad-leafed dark green bush abundant in the Pacific Northwest, and that florists often used its branches to enhance floral arrangements.

  She ordered the salmon fettuccine, a delicious homemade pasta with wild Pacific salmon and a mouth-watering pesto sauce. Spending most of her adult life on mountains, she hadn't eaten a lot of gourmet food, but she'd be willing to bet the Salal's salmon fettuccine could take awards.

  The waitress brought aromatic coffee when Claire finished her lunch, but she was too restless to finish it. Outside, she prowled a museum, but even here she felt uncomfortably aware of being alone. She'd never thought of Port Townsend as the sort of town where a person needed a partner, but this afternoon she wi
shed Blake were with her, wished they could meander through the shops and museum, talking, speculating. In the museum, he'd be able to add facts and fascinating stories about the historical artifacts. In the gift shop, he'd buy her that model of an old sailing ship and tell her stories about the sea.

  This was insane, she thought sharply, hurriedly leaving the gift shop where she'd found herself speculating on presents she and Blake could buy each other. As if they had a future, as if this were a relationship. As if she were the sort of woman to go mooning about the waterfront stores of a quaint little town she'd once lived in, dreaming crazy dreams that had no place in her life.

  She was having an affair, not a romance, and she'd never yearned for domesticity and pair bonding. She'd turned her back on two point four children and a three-car garage when she walked away from Kevin's demands. She wanted more. She wanted to find another comet, to see the photographs from the next space probe, to expand her horizons into space, into infinity.

  She stopped in front of a window display of a mannequin wearing a filmy gown. This afternoon at four, Blake would turn up at her condo expecting a woman in jeans, a toothbrush in her hand. A woman ready for an adventure.

  She had no idea what he planned for her, but she knew she had to do something about this feeling of uncomfortable vulnerability. She needed to meet him on an even footing. Last night they had shared passion, incredible passion. Today, she was hovering on the edge of a cliff, in danger of losing her balance. He was an experienced man, but she'd never been in water this deep before.

  She walked into the store, past displays of soft, sensual, beautiful dresses and blouses. Clothing, she thought, some kind of... armor. Not exactly armor, but something to give her... well, power of a sort.

  A dress wouldn't do, not when the adventure specified jeans.

  In the back of the store, beyond a raw silk suit that made her pause, she found lingerie, silk and satin. She remembered how Blake's eyes had darkened in passion, and she recognized in that instant that she had a certain power over the man who'd taken her on such an incredible journey.