Star Dust (20 page)

When he came back into the dining room, Anne-Marie was there, still in her party attire, but wearing an apron and kerchief. She was scrubbing at the sideboard between two chafing dishes with a damp rag, her entire body shaking with the force she was applying. She paused for half a moment as he approached, then scrubbed harder.

He went back to picking up dishes. He knew how to read a keep away sign. “Turkey was good,” he offered into the silence between them. “Carruthers couldn’t stop talking about it.”
 

They’d all loved her—the other guys, their wives, hell, even the press. She could do this astronaut wife thing. If she wanted.

She didn’t look up. “You don’t think it was too gamey?”

The clatter of the dirty silverware as he piled it onto a platter was in sharp contrast to the flatness of her tone. “It’s wild turkey. It’s supposed to be gamey.”

“Some people don’t like gamey. Maybe everyone was just being polite and secretly hated it.” She stopped her scrubbing and dug her knuckles deep into the rag instead.

God, that looked like it hurt, what she was doing to herself.

“Hey.” He crossed to her, tugged the rag away from her. She curled her hands into fists. “You did great. Everything was perfect.” Gentle and reassuring. And true. It had been perfect. She had been perfect.

She shrugged. “Just doing my patriotic duty.”

The flippancy in her voice had him stepping back. “Well, your country thanks you,” he tossed off just as flippantly. And a little angrily.

The moment hung between them, heavy and tense. Maybe he should leave. Helping with the dishes wasn’t worth it if it only pissed her off more. And honestly, his temper wasn’t exactly even at the moment either.

Right as he was about to offer to go, her fists uncurled.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just… I got a glimpse today of what you have to endure with the press. It wasn’t pretty.”

He didn’t tell her that today the press had been positively gentle. No need to scare her. At least he was getting somewhere. “Was that what sent you to the bathroom?” he asked gently.

“Partly,” she admitted. “How can you stand it? Just this one evening was more than enough for me.”

“Don’t worry about me. I can handle it. And I get to go to space. Fair trade, I think.”

She tilted her head as she studied him. “And the wives and kids—the ones who get left behind—do they think it’s a fair trade?”

He thought on all the funerals he’d attended at Pax River, the widows and kids standing by a flag-draped coffin. An aviator always said that the risk was worth it, that he’d rather die in a plane than in a bed. But no one ever asked the families.

The press asked the astronaut wives all the time how they felt about their men going into space.
Proud, thrilled, happy
was the response that always came back. Exactly the lines they’d been fed by the ASD.

“I don’t know how they feel,” he admitted. “If you want us to stop seeing each other, I understand. Because this—tonight—was only the beginning. We can try to keep our relationship a secret, but the longer this goes on, the more public it will get.”

If she said yes, that she wanted to end this… He set his teeth, held his breath. He had to be ready to hear her say that—no matter how badly he didn’t want her to.

“I don’t think I can,” she said softly, finally.

Thank God
. It was selfish of him. Hadn’t she just said that the exposure of tonight, the prying of the press, was too much for her? But he gave thanks anyway.

“And that scares me,” she finished. She fumbled for her pack of cigarettes on the sideboard, tapped one out—and slid it back. “Sorry.” She set the pack back, pushed it away from her. “Margie told me you guys are all trying to quit. I shouldn’t be smoking around you.” She wrapped her arms around herself, tapping her arms with her fingers.

“I’m scared too.” A fatal thing for an aviator to admit—but there it was. He felt as if he were in a dead spin with no chance of recovery. The time to hit the eject button was long past.

She looked up at him, eyes wide with surprise, her hands falling to her sides. He waited for her reaction to turn—was she simply surprised? Or appalled?

A careful blankness came over her expression as she walked toward him. And then she was reaching for his hand, linking her fingers with his as she gave him a small, brave smile. “It’s okay. We can be scared together. Your secret’s safe with me.”

He released a breath, squeezed her hand. They stood like that for several moments, hand in hand, the half-cleaned wreckage of the dinner party surrounding them.

“We should finish cleaning,” he said finally. But he kept hold of her hand.

“Yes.” She didn’t let go either.

“Will I see you tonight? Later, at my place?”

“Yes.”

Twenty minutes after shooing him out of her newly cleaned house, Anne-Marie knocked on Kit’s patio door. She was shaking. Not from the cold, though it was. Or from the dark, though clouds masked the stars tonight.

At some point this evening, their relationship had shifted.

They’d left
just
behind. It wasn’t just an affair anymore. They weren’t just friends. This wasn’t just sex.

It was still amorphous. Developing. But it was suddenly more.

Kit opened the door, nude from the waist up, and in spite of everything, she beamed as if it had been days since she’d seen him.

“I can’t stay long, I only—”
wanted to see you
, she finished in her head. But instead of saying it, she popped up and pressed her mouth to his.

He pulled her over the threshold, locked the door behind them, began stripping off her clothing, all without breaking the kiss. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, so when he shoved her worn blouse to the floor she could press against him, skin to skin.

He should stay like this all the time. Hell, he should go to space without a shirt. They’d surely beat the Soviets that way. Shirtless, muscled Kit was a recipe for world peace.

Which she would tell him as soon as he released her mouth.

He unbuttoned her trousers and she stumbled out of them as he shepherded her toward the couch. They tumbled onto it together. Somehow she ended up beneath him. He reached between them and parted her thighs with a single finger. Moving her panties to the side, he dipped into her core and then brushed up. Again and again he sprinkled feather-light touches over her. She resettled under him, seeking pressure.

“A little lower,” she whispered.

Obligingly, he moved a finger, but it wasn’t quite… She shifted again.

“Show me,” he instructed.

Her eyes flew open. “What?”

“Show me want you want.”

She flushed—and not for the right reason. “I, well…”

“I want you in flames here. Show me what you like.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t know what he meant. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what she wanted. It was that she wasn’t sure she could do
that
in front of him.

But this was more. They wanted more. In this room, with this man, maybe she could.

He turned on a lamp and sat back on his heels, watching. She rolled her panties off and tossed them aside, then set a tentative hand on her thigh. She watched him rub a hand over the bulge in his trousers. This, she, was driving him insane. Trying to focus on that, she closed her eyes and complied.

She couldn’t think about what she was doing, about how she stroked with her fingers, where and how she was touching herself. She concentrated on the sound of his hand. He groaned and she smiled in response. But then she brushed the right spot and gasped.

He made an appreciative noise and she did it again. Her nerves were electric, her skin fire. She didn’t have to school her thoughts anymore. The shame was gone.

Inches away, he was watching her. He wanted to see this—what she liked. If she were brave enough to open her eyes, she’d see him seeing her. As it was, she could hear his hands moving over his own body, and she matched his pace. Deliberate. A bit rough.

Soon her hips were moving in sharp jerks. She was close. She inhaled sharply, so close, and he stilled her wrist.

“That was—you are… hell,” he whispered. Then he dropped his head between her thighs and he licked.

She cursed. Something salty that she’d never said in front of anyone. He responded by doing it again. When her knees threatened to snap together involuntarily, he clamped one down against the couch. His other hand snaked in, pressed into her. And with his mouth and his hand, he proceeded to drive her insane.

She didn’t watch. She couldn’t. She’d read about this in an old copy of Krafft-Ebing that one of her friend’s fathers had. It had sounded perverse. Oh, how wrong she’d been.

What was driving her over the edge were the noises. The lapping of his mouth over her flesh. The gasps she made. The bucking of his hips against the couch. This was for her—good God was it for her—but he was close, too. He liked this.

Which was convenient, because he was going to be doing it a lot.

Just then he curled his fingers inside her, touched some hidden place, and she moaned, released, relaxed. He didn’t raise his head until the final quake was over.

When she risked opening her eyes at last, she found him leaning against her, watching.

“I have never in my life seen anything I want like I want you.”

She swallowed and inhaled. The breath was shallow and now she couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen. His eyes were serious. If it was a line, he delivered it with conviction.
 

Trying to keep things light, she rolled up on her elbow. “The stars? The moon? Even Mars?”

He rose to his feet. “Mars doesn’t even come close.”

She wanted to disagree. She wanted to argue. She wanted to hide. But she also wanted it to be true.

He shoved his trousers down. He was—if such a thing was possible—more aroused than she’d seen him before. He pulled a condom off a side table and rolled it in place.

“What interesting decor you have,” she teased.

“I put it there in an act of desperate hope.”

He sat next to her and she moved to straddle him. He nudged against her, asking for entrance, but she didn’t move.

Framing her face with his hands, he whispered, “I wanted you before I should have. When I still thought you were married. When you still hated me.”

She opened her mouth and shut it. She didn’t know what to say, so she shifted and let herself settle onto him. That joining, slick and tender, forestalled debate.

She pitched forward and kissed him, tasting herself on his mouth. She clenched at the thought and his hands on her hips flexed so hard it hurt. So she did it again. She never had known when to quit.

They moved together. He canted forward, running his teeth over her neck, her breasts. She dug her fingers into his shoulders and gloried in the feel of it, of her taking from him. This man, this gentle, polite, brilliant man—and they were groping toward pleasure together with enough force to gutter the furniture.

He pressed his face into her hair. “Jesus, Anne-Marie, l—”

Not wanting him to finish the thought, which sounded like it was going someplace scary, she turned and kissed him. She twisted her hips, sharp and sweet. The pace quickened. Turned more frantic. Her hands balled against his chest and she almost cried out. He absorbed it and slammed into her before finding his own pleasure.

She turned her cheek and leaned against his chest. She listened to his heart. It slowed to a normal rate, but still his arms, banded against her back, didn’t loosen. He had her. He would always have her.

After a few minutes, she pushed back. “I need to go. I’m not certain I can make it home, but I need to try.”

He lifted her up and set her down while he fussed with the condom. “I know. It’s been a long day.”

“I’m not certain how I’m going to get up in the morning.” She shimmied into her panties and began hunting around for her other clothing. “Oh Lord, do you have anything dangerous to do tomorrow? Are you going to be able to operate on this little sleep?”

He chuckled. “I’ll be fine.” Then his tone blanched serious. “Thank you.”

“For?”

“Dinner. Helping me impress Margie. Opening up.”

She blushed as she pulled on her trousers. “Oh, well, you’re welcome.”

He opened the door. Bucky shot out and a gust of cold air blew in. “Brrr,” he said, rubbing his still-bare arms. “It got cold.”

“It did.” Anne-Marie did enough buttons to keep her blouse closed and then pulled on her coat.

Kit wrapped his arms around her when she attempted to flit out. He pressed his lips to her head. “We’ll work out the details, honey. Every one of them. I’m only glad you’re willing to try.”

She made an affirmative noise and pushed out of his arms. Without looking back she called, “Night!” and dashed home.