They passed the road to the crater they’d taken earlier today
and some lights could be seen shining from the crater’s RV park.
Tuck drove another minute and started to slow. ‘I reckon this
is as good a spot as any,’ he said as he left the road and drove into the desert
wilderness, the headlights illuminating an expanse of rocky, arid nothing.
They bumped over some rocks and low vegetation before Tuck
turned off the engine and killed the lights, plunging them into the still, inky
blackness of a desert night. They hadn’t travelled far from the highway and
behind them the RV park seemed reasonably close.
‘What are you doing?’ Cassie asked.
‘I want an astronomy lesson,’ he said. ‘And it just so happens
that I’m sleeping with a world-class astronomer. I thought a night under the
stars would be kind of cool.’
Cassie looked up again. Millions of stars winked down at her
through the obsidian dome of the night sky. It had been so long since she’d
looked at them—really looked at them—with the
human
eye.
She’d been studying the cosmos for over a
decade, and with the advantage of deep-space telescopes and the miracles of
modern imaging it was easy to forget the sense of wonder and insignificance
she’d used to feel when looking up.
It crowded in on her now, and she took a deep unsteady
breath.
‘I have luxury bedding in the trunk,’ Tuck said. ‘I thought we
could sleep on the hood of the Caddy.’
Cassie, her head resting back against the leather headrest,
rolled her head to the side. It was dark, the one-quarter moon still low in the
sky, but she could see Tuck’s eyes shining with the same sort of wonder that
Marnie’s used to hold when she’d begged for an impromptu astronomy session.
‘Unless you’d rather check into a hotel?’
Cassie slowly shook her head. It was an ideal night for some
star-gazing. ‘I can’t think of any place more perfect than this,’ she murmured.
‘Or anyone I’d rather be with.’
Cassie blinked as the words slipped from her lips. Obviously
her libido was mouthy, but even she could recognise how the words resonated with
her on a much deeper level. She’d found something with Tuck that it had never
occurred to her to seek out. And she liked it.
Tuck was taken aback by the spontaneous declaration, and the
sincerity in Cassie’s gaze. It had been a novelty, being with a woman who didn’t
cling and wasn’t emotionally needy, but it wasn’t until this moment that he
realised it was also nice to hear her acknowledge that whatever it was they had,
she was into it too.
To acknowledge that maybe she needed him as much as he was
growing to need her.
‘I’ll get the stuff,’ he said. Because, frankly, he didn’t know
what to say to such utter honesty. He was so used to
the
game
he didn’t know how to react when someone played it straight.
Cassie nodded as Tuck climbed out of the car. Another woman
might have been puzzled about Tuck’s non-reaction to her statement, but Cassie
was as eager as Tuck to get flat on her back. And mind-games just weren’t her
forte.
As it turned out they didn’t end up flat on their backs. Tuck
adjusted a double sleeping bag with a thick foam mattress on the hood, but when
they got inside he propped his back against the windshield and she nestled
between his legs, her back to his front, her head on his shoulder, with the
entire Arizonan sky stretched like a sheath of black satin above them.
‘Do you suppose we’ll see a shooting star?’ Tuck asked.
His breath stirred the hair at her temple and Cassie
momentarily shut her eyes. ‘Absolutely,’ she said, her eyelids opening. ‘If we
watch long enough. Although statistically we are more likely to see one after
midnight. But you know they’re not technically stars, right? They’re
meteors.’
Tuck lay back and listened to Cassie chatter about a subject on
which she obviously knew a great deal. He liked listening to her, and her
Australian accent, so obvious most of the time, became less distinct as her
voice took on a generic wonder.
She pointed out all the constellations, including Cassiopeia,
and was full of facts and figures and interesting anecdotes. The night was
perfect, their location even more so, and they did indeed see several shooting
stars over the two hours they sat with their faces turned upwards.
‘I suppose you’ve known all this since you could talk?’ Tuck
murmured as she regaled him with some ancient Greek myths about the
constellations.
Cassie nodded. ‘I used to spend hours under the stars with Mum
as a little girl. I used to complain about going to bed and wish we had a glass
roof, so I could sleep under the stars. Then she bought me these
glow-in-the-dark star stickers for my ceiling. There were planets as well. We
mapped the whole solar system out—all geographically correct, with the
constellations accurately represented—and I got to sleep under the stars every
night.’
Tuck stroked his fingers up and down Cassie’s arm. The desert
night air was getting cool now, and he felt gooseflesh beneath the pads of his
fingers. ‘You sound like you’re close to your mother?’ he said as he pulled the
bedding up around them.
Cassie shrugged. Her relationship with her mother had always
been hard to define. ‘Yes and no.’
Tuck heard the wistfulness in her voice. ‘Oh?’
Cassie didn’t know how to explain it. ‘I was the child that
interrupted her astronomy career. Put a stop to her grand plans of a great
discovery that would forever change the world and a subsequent Nobel Prize.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand, and she pushed me to go on and do what
she hadn’t been able to, but…I don’t know… I think there’s part of her that has
always resented the intrusion of a child…of
me.
She
loved having me around to teach me things about the stars, but outside of that
there’s just this part of her that I never seem to be able to reach…like the
stars, I guess.’
Cassie wasn’t sure where the calm insights had come from. She’d
never given them voice before. Never thought about them too much. But there was
a whole lot going on with her emotionally lately that she’d never thought
possible. And somehow, cocooned in this warm dark night with Tuck, it seemed
right to talk about it.
‘What about your dad?’ Tuck asked.
‘He adores her…but he’s never really understood her. Her
brilliance. And certainly not why she chose him. He sure as hell doesn’t get
me.
So he does his thing, and she does hers, and
I do mine and we all live in a kind of oblivious co-existence. I don’t know…it
works, but I don’t think they’re happy.’
Tuck thought about the fiery, passionate relationship of his
own parents and couldn’t even begin to imagine them just
co-existing.
He thought about how passionate his relationship with
Cassie was, and the vibrancy of their in-between times too.
Their conversations.
He knew he would never survive in a relationship where everyone
co-existed
and nobody lived.
Cassie shifted against him and heat traced through his groin
with all the urgency of a meteor shower. ‘Well, I guess it takes all types,
honey,’ he said as he let his hand drift from her arm to her side, under her
shirt and up her ribs to the smooth rise of breast.
Cassie shut her eyes and moaned as his thumb taunted the
stiffening peak of her nipple. The stars were forgotten as her nose brushed
against his neck, inhaling a mega-dose of pheromones and suddenly her desires
went from cosmic to carnal.
She turned in his arms, crawling up his body until she was
straddling him. His erection nudged the apex of her thighs and she ground down a
little. The harsh suck of his breath was loud in the eerie Arizonian desert and
when she lowered her mouth to his their passion ignited.
Before she could blink her shirt was up and off her head and
her breasts were bared to the cool night air and to him, and they were kissing
and pulling at each other’s clothes, and then he was inside her and they were
making out on the hood of the car, oblivious to their exposure, driven by the
intangible force of nature all around them and their own innate drive to be
one.
And Cassie did indeed see fireworks as she came, hard and fast,
her head thrown back, her gaze open wide to the stars as they blended in a
kaleidoscope of colour and came showering down around her.
NINE
It felt like
hours later that Cassie stirred from her post-coital doze, but it was
probably less than thirty minutes. The cool air was caressing her exposed skin
and she needed to take her medication.
‘Where are you going?’ Tuck murmured as her warmth left his
side. He reached for her as she sat up and tugged on her T-shirt.
‘Just taking my tablet,’ she said as she shrugged into the
warmth of the fabric and eased down off the side of the car.
She delved into her handbag, located on the passenger seat.
Cold air nipped at her bare legs and crept icy fingers beneath her hem and onto
her naked butt as she opened the internal zipper where she’d placed her tablets
that morning. She pushed out a small blue pill into her palm and washed it down
using the bottle of water that Tuck had bought at Barringer.
She hurried back to Tuck and his big warm body, spread on the
hood so invitingly. She dived in beside him and sighed as he gathered her into
his chest and pulled the covers up over them.
‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d need that to sleep any more,’ he
said, kissing the top of her head. Her hair was cold against his face. ‘I
thought
I
was your drug of choice?’
Cassie smiled. ‘You are. But I still need the other one.’
Tuck stroked his fingers up and down her arm as he gazed
absently at the stars. ‘Sounds like addiction to me.’ He tsked, his voice low,
teasing. ‘You might have to go cold turkey.’
Cassie tensed against him.
She needed
it.
Going off it just wasn’t an option.
‘I know just the thing you can use as a substitute,’ he
murmured, his hand stroking lower, moving onto her naked hip.
Cassie didn’t even feel the light brush of his fingers as her
brain vehemently rejected his suggestion. She pushed herself away, coming up
onto her elbow. ‘No. I can never go off them.
Never.
’
Tuck blinked at her. Her face was scrunched into a fierce
frown, the stars behind her forming a crown.
‘O…kay…’
‘I
need
them. They keep my brain
from racing. They shut it down so I can sleep.’
He grinned again, picking up a lock of hair that had escaped
her scrunchie and fallen forward over a bare shoulder. ‘That’s exactly what an
orgasm does. Best sleeping pill there is.’
Cassie sat, pulling her knees up, tucking them against her
chest. ‘I mean it. The pills and I are a package deal. I learned the hard way a
long time ago that my sanity depends on them.’
Tuck paused. Cassie was rocking slightly, and she looked all
wild-eyed beneath the moonlight. ‘Hey,’ he said, dragging himself up into a
sitting position too, ‘it’s okay. I was just teasing.’
‘It’s not funny.’
Tuck put his arm around Cassie’s shoulders and felt her resist
for a moment or two before relaxing against him. He could feel a slight tremble
running through her and he didn’t think it was from the cold. ‘What happened?’
he asked, his palm running up and down her arm, warming her.
Cassie didn’t say anything for a while. She hadn’t really told
anyone about that time in any detail. Not because it was a secret, but because
she hadn’t been close enough to anyone to share it. Apart from that reference to
it at the breakfast table at the Bellington Estate, she hadn’t even told her
college girlfriends.
‘I was fourteen. I wasn’t a typical teenager. I never really
slept a lot—my brain was always busy—but I became convinced there was an error
in a textbook that I’d been studying. I became obsessed with it—up all night on
the computer trying to cross-reference, e-mailing hundreds of experts in the
field trying to prove I was right, e-mailing the publishers, constantly
harassing them to have it fixed. My brain was full of it. My schoolwork was
ignored and I couldn’t sleep. I was surviving on less and less each night until
I wasn’t even getting an hour’s respite.’
Cassie stopped. With the benefit of time and clearer
thought-processes she could see how trivial it had been, and how fanatical and
irrational she’d become, but it had felt like a matter of national importance at
the time.
‘It was all I talked about, all I thought about. I barely ate.
I couldn’t sit still long enough to eat. Eventually I was admitted to hospital
with dehydration. But I was rambling about it…
raving,
I suppose is a better word. And from there I was admitted to
a psych unit.’
Tuck’s hold on her tightened as her voice, husky in the silence
of the night, gave away the turmoil not evidenced in her dispassionate words. He
guessed this kind of thing was the flipside of genius.
‘They drugged me up. I lost days…weeks…where I was this zombie.
Where I had no say or control over my life. I couldn’t think. My mind was blank.
I could barely feed myself.’ She shuddered. ‘Eventually they got my medication
right and I came out of the fog. It was scary.’ She looked at him. ‘And I never
want to go there again.’
‘Shh,’ Tuck said, kissing her forehead, amazed at what she’d
been through. At how susceptible her genius had made her. ‘I understand. The
medication gives you control.’
Cassie nodded. ‘More than anything, I learned that my brain
needs sleep to be healthy, to perform at its highest level.
To be me.
And if that means I have to swallow one little pill every
night for the rest of my life, even if I have to wake up to do it, then that’s
what I’m going to do. Because the alternative…’
Tuck felt her shudder again and pulled her harder against him,
wrapping both his arms around her shoulders. This was the first time he’d ever
seen her vulnerable and he couldn’t help but feel that they’d taken a major step
forward.
‘Is unacceptable,’ he finished for her. ‘I know,’ he agreed. ‘I
know.’
The distant rumble of an engine from the direction of
the RV park woke Cassie at six the next morning. She was snuggled into Tuck’s
side, her head on his shoulder, all warm and cosy despite the cool air on her
face. She stretched and rolled on her back. The inky obsidian of last night had
morphed into a crystal-clear desert dawn, with a slight blush of pink tingeing
the pale blue arc that stretched endlessly to the distant horizon.
She smiled as Tuck rolled towards her, his big arm clamping
around her waist, his lips nuzzling her neck.
‘We have to get going,’ he murmured into her hair, reluctant as
all hell to leave their deliciously warm cocoon. He felt closer to her this
morning after her revelation last night than he’d ever felt. But they had a Gulf
Stream to catch. ‘The plane leaves in an hour.’
Cassie nodded. Ordinarily she would have sprung up and been
keen to get back home. To Cornell. She was essentially losing two days out of
her academic schedule by taking this time out. But she wouldn’t have missed this
in a million years. Being here, seeing Barringer, having a truly magical night
under the stars…
And all because of Tuck.
Lying here, in his arms, she was grateful that she’d have this
amazing memory to take back home with her. But more than that she was beginning
to think that maybe there might be more to life than twenty-four-seven
study.
And, surprisingly, it
didn’t
scare
the hell out of her.
A minute later Tuck kissed her neck. ‘Come on—time to shake a
tail feather.’ And he hauled himself up into a sitting position.
‘I don’t know where my clothes are.’ Cassie yawned. She’d lost
her shirt again not long after her confession to him last night.
Tuck threw back the covers and looked down at her naked body,
stretched before him. It had a predictable effect on him and his body snapped to
instant awareness.
‘Clothes are overrated,’ he said as he trailed a hand down her
body from the hollow of her throat to her pubic bone. He eased himself back on
his elbow, leaned in and kissed her neck, his hand easing back up her body to
cup a breast.
Cassie shivered as the cool morning breeze sizzled across her
heated skin. She stretched her neck to give him better access, and when his hand
travelled south again and slipped between her legs they opened eagerly. When the
pad of his thumb stroked against her centre she moaned. When one finger probed,
then slipped inside, she arched her back. When another joined it she called his
name. And when his head followed the path of his hands and settled between her
legs Cassie surrendered to the maelstrom.
She built quickly, the speed and strength of her orgasm
multiplying as visual data from all around bombarded her senses. The perfect arc
of blue sky, the vast flatness rolling all the way out to the horizon, the eerie
quiet broken only by her delirious cries, the cool breeze, and Tuck’s blond head
between her legs doing that thing he did that pushed her over the edge
every single time.
The overpowering visuals coalesced and ripples of release
fanned through her belly. She lifted her hips as they became hard and
unrelenting. She cried out, jack-knifing up as they flung her into space and her
whole world threatened to collapse in on her. She thrust her hand into his hair,
holding him fast, riding the wave and the hard edge of his tongue until her body
shattered and fell and twirled back to earth. She collapsed back against the
hood, shamelessly spread before him and the sky above like some pagan sacrifice,
overwhelmingly sated.
Another engine noise caused her to stir a little while later
and she opened her eyes. Tuck was kissing his way back up her body. ‘We really
do
have to go,’ he said against her neck as he
dropped her shirt on her belly.
Cassie was fairly incapable of speech. She could see the
highway not far away, and the first RV of the day turning on to it, heading in
their direction.
Tuck lay down beside her, lifting his hips as he eased his
shorts up. ‘I think I’ll need to investigate the bottom of the sleeping bag a
little more thoroughly to find the rest of our clothes,’ he said.
The RV pulled to the side of the road, in their direct line of
sight, but still probably a hundred or so metres from them. Tuck looked up,
frowning at the intrusion into their private little bubble.
‘Come on then, Cassiopeia,’ he said as he heard a car door open
and close. ‘If these people are stopping to ask us if we’re okay we’d better be
dressed.’ He swung his legs off the hood and jumped to the ground. ‘Of course…’
his gaze fanned over her again ‘…if you just want to stay here for ever like
that with me then I’m sure I could arrange that too.’
Cassie shook herself out of her post-coital daze at Tuck’s
reminder that there was a world for them to get back to. That Cornell was
waiting. She pulled her shirt over her head and Tuck held out his hand to help
her down.
The wind caught her shirt and it billowed out as Tuck lifted
her down. Cassie felt the breeze cool places that were still quite overheated,
but was thankful that she favoured baggy shirts—she didn’t fancy giving the man
at the side of the road an eyeful, no matter how distant.
She stumbled against Tuck as her feet hit the dirt and one of
them found a sharp little rock. ‘Ow!’ She cursed, screwing up her face at the
jab of pain.
‘You okay?’ Tuck asked, grabbing her by the arms to steady
her.
Cassie nodded as she breathed through the pain. ‘Fine,’ she
said on a sucked-in breath.
Tuck grinned down at her. ‘You’re kind of cute when you
cuss.’
She glared at him, but his hand was sliding onto her jaw and
his mouth was descending and his kiss swept the indignation, the pain and every
IQ point she owned into the ether. His pheromones filled her head and Cassie
clung to his naked chest as they made her dizzy.
Tuck pulled away, groaning against her mouth. ‘We
have
to go.’
A minute later the RV left, and ten minutes after that they
were on the road back to Flagstaff. Within the hour they were wheels up and
winging their way back to Ithica.
Two nights later Cassie shut the lid of her laptop
around ten. Tuck was sitting up in bed, his long, muscular legs crossed at the
ankles, watching a Thursday night game on the massive big screen television that
dominated the wall opposite their bed. He had the sound turned down low for her
benefit, but he really needn’t have bothered. Cassie easily became consumed in
her work to the exclusion of everything else. The street could have exploded and
she’d have been oblivious.
He gave her a goofy grin, one of several he’d given her since
she’d come home, and she frowned. He’d been mysterious about his day too.
‘You’re up to something,’ she said.
Tuck feigned a hurt look. ‘Not me.’
Cassie smiled at his obvious lie. ‘I’m having a shower.’
‘I’ll be here waiting for you when you get back,’ he said.
Cassie eyed him suspiciously as she headed for the bathroom.
She was tired.
Good
tired. Ready to go to sleep
tired. She’d never felt tired prior to meeting Tuck. She’d always been a little
on the wired side and her need for that one little pill had never been
questioned. But Tuck was right. Sexual satisfaction was a powerful sedative—a
pity they couldn’t bottle it.
Cassie was in and out of the shower in ten minutes, padding
back into the room in just her underwear, her hair in its regulation ponytail.
She could feel his eyes leave the television and follow her every movement as
she went through the drawers searching for a shirt.
‘You shouldn’t bother with a shirt,’ Tuck said, eyeing the
swing of her breasts, football game forgotten.
Cassie turned to face him, her nipples responding to the
blatant strain of sex in his voice. ‘Oh?’
Tuck laughed at the slogan on her underwear. It had a Pi sign
and read ‘I speak geek’. He held out his hand. ‘Come to bed
just
like that.’
Tuck was wearing a pair of boxer briefs and nothing else and
Cassie was drawn across the room, his voice wrapping silky strands around her
waist and slowly tugging. She detoured around to her side of the bed and peeled
the sheet back as she climbed in. Tuck flicked the TV off with the remote and
Cassie reached out to snap off the lights, plunging the room into darkness.