Starlight & Promises (52 page)

“Quietly now,” he whispered. “You cannot scream when you come, or you’ll wake the children.”

She smiled wickedly, a slow curving of her lips, and kissed her way down the strip of skin and wiry hair marching down his chest muscles.

He groaned, rolled her over, and quickly stripped her clothes from her.

“No fair,” she protested. “You are still dressed.”

He grinned and silently stood, tugging off his clothes in record time. “Satisfied?” he murmured, lying back down.

“Not yet,” she purred, “though I shall be soon.”

She pushed him onto his back and straddled him, her core already wet and throbbing. She slowly lowered herself onto his penis, and he growled deep in his throat. Grasping her waist, he pulled her down until he filled her to the maximum. When she swayed forward to sweep her hair across his chest, he lifted his head to fasten onto a pebbled nipple. He suckled, and she moved back and forth and circled her hips in a figure eight. Her spine straightened, and she braced her hands behind her on his thighs while he thrust from beneath.

“No screaming now,” he gasped, settling his thumb between her thighs where they joined to rub against her swollen clit.

She drew in a sharp breath. Coiling tension gathered in her groin and spread like liquid fire down her legs. When the contractions began, he pulled her forward onto his chest and took her cries into his mouth. His hands pressed her downward, and he thrust up into her sheath for a final lunge that exploded through her like a blazing sun. Drained, she collapsed onto his chest and panted like a winded racehorse. He stroked her hair, his heart dancing against her ribs. Kissing the top of her head, he lifted her off him and fitted her under his arm against his side.

She recovered her breath. “See, I performed admirably. I did not even wake the children.”

He chuckled. “Nonetheless, it was a close call.”

She snuggled next to his moist, heated body, throwing an arm over his chest, a leg over his thighs, and fell into a contented sleep.

The Smilodon stalked her through a meadow carpeted in tall grass as golden as ripened wheat. She parted the stalks, and bright sun penetrated to her bones. Stopping, she slowly turned. How close was the cat? He panted as he followed her spoor, snapped grass stalks when he drew closer. He raised his head, and clear green eyes caught her gaze, holding her in thrall. She stood motionless, unable to move. The world fell still. All sound and movement ceased beyond this one perfect spot in this perfect golden meadow on this one perfect day. Yellow sunlight poured down on them. The rest of the world turned as black as the ocean depths, and a curtain of life drew around them, as if nothing else existed outside its enveloping folds. They were the only living creatures left on Earth
.

A quiver shook her limbs, an exhilaration that stole her breath and made her heart flutter. His long, curving canines gleamed. His wide mouth spread into a knowing grin. A grin meant just for her
.

Liquid tranquility poured through her, as bright as the sunshine, as golden as his coat and her eyes. She lowered herself to the ground. Moving up and laying down beside her, the Smilodon crushed the grass beneath him. The meadow’s sweet scent rose in waves. He stretched out his front legs, his paws flexing, pushing against the grass. Rumbling came from deep in his throat, and he washed his legs, his sharp teeth moving closer with every swipe of his tongue
.

When she lay back, the cat failed to move. She opened her eyes and sat up. His paws still gently kneaded the grass, mashing it down. He lifted his head, and his gaze meshed with hers. She drowned in his eyes, merged with the cat, and with the connection, a sudden, oppressive sense of loneliness, of hopelessness, washed over her. Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes
.

The Smilodon was fading, turning to mist, the sun growing wan, cool, and pallid. A stiff wind rustled the grass, carrying the acrid scent of ashes. Dark clouds gathered, throwing shadows and further dimming the light
.

She scarcely saw him now, his image growing fainter and fainter until nothing was left other than two glowing green eyes touched by a melancholy that tore open her heart. Then they, too, faded away. The meadow grass, once so golden and bursting with life, grew withered and seared, leaving behind a dead, barren land
.

She cried out, but her voice made no sound, except inside her head in the bleak landscape of a dying Earth
.

Her cries woke Christian, and he tugged her close. “What’s wrong, tigrina?” he whispered. “A bad dream?”

Tears burned her eyes, the dream still very much with her. The words welled inside her, but she could not voice them. “Indeed,” she replied, snuffling against his chest, “merely a bad dream. Return to sleep. I shall be fine.” Wiping her face on his mat of chest hair, she laid her head on his comforting strength. Though he fell back asleep almost immediately, she lay awake for the remainder of the long night.

Morning came in the strident calls of circling gulls and terns and delicate pink light in a pastel wash in the eastern sky. Christian found Samantha on a hill above camp where she sat on a hummock of sea grass with her legs pulled up to her chest. Her arms wrapped around her legs, her chin resting on her knees, she stared out at the beach below, where a Smilodon in the distance stalked a young seal.

When he eased down beside her, she turned and gave him a watery smile. Moisture pearled on her lashes.

“Why the tears, tigrina?” he asked, moving behind her to pull her into the cradle of his knees. Her back met his chest, and he bent forward, dropping a kiss on the side of her neck and pressing his cheek against her hair.

“They are truly extinct, are they not?” Samantha asked while she watched the powerful cat stalk its prey.

“That appears to be the case unless we find a female or two.”

“You have no real expectation that we shall, do you?” She turned and looked into his eyes. Christian once said her eyes resembled the golden light of the sun. His reminded her of the mossy green Earth. Gold to green … sun to Earth … both were necessary for life. Unfortunately, so were male and female.

His breath echoed harshly. “No, I don’t. As I said, it makes no sense. Nevertheless, I have this gut feeling that all the females are gone. If they are, it’s merely a matter of time. These males are probably the final remnants of a dead species.”

“Let them go,” she said softly.

He scooted back, got to his feet, and pulled her up to face him. “You mean keep the secret? Not inform the scientific community?”

She grasped his hands and threaded her fingers through his. “That is precisely what I mean. Allow them to live out the remainder of their lives in peace. I have no wish to see them captured and put on display. They deserve a more dignified end. They are so very beautiful and have managed to exist for such a long time. Allow them to remain free now that their time is nearly over.”

He took on a serious expression. “Have you any notion what you’re asking? This could be the greatest discovery of the century. You’re suggesting I throw it all away.”

She returned his look. “Yes, I am.”

He smiled slowly, released a laugh. “Very well. I was having reservations, in any event. I agree with you, my feisty wife, the mother of my children, the love of my heart. They deserve to live in peace. I have no use for additional accolades or species bearing my name. The greatest thrill is in finding and studying them, not writing the damned papers. We shall keep the discovery strictly among our company.”

“Would that be a promise?”

Christian caught her face between his hands and brushed a kiss across her mouth. “Absolutely, Sam, and you know I always keep my promises.”

She threw her arms around his neck and tugged his head down for a real kiss. He cupped her bottom, lifting her. His cock grew hard as it always did when she wrapped her legs around his waist and pressed her heated center to him. With her head spinning, she pulled back. “Thank you, Chris. I truly believe you are the best of husbands, the best of fathers, and the best of scientists. I promise I shall love you forever with all my heart. And that promise is one I shall have no difficulty keeping.”

When they left Cat Island behind, Samantha also left behind her dreams of the Smilodon and its ultimate fate. Now she dreamt only of Christian.

Dear Reader,

In my books, I pull from many inspirations. The idea of a living Smilodon is one that particularly appealed to me because of my zoological background and my research with wild cats. When I first conceived of
Starlight & Promises
, my animal of choice was the Tasmanian tiger, a marsupial from Australia and Tasmania, thought to be extinct, that filled the same niche as the lion in Africa and the tiger in Asia. However, as I began the book, a small group of living Tasmanian tigers was found in Australia. As a scientist I was thrilled by the discovery, but it ruined my story. Therefore, I shifted gears to the Smilodon, a less likely candidate for sudden rediscovery.

Steven’s scientific hoax was based on a true incident. In 1912, workmen discovered skull fragments in a gravel pit in Piltdown, England, during a time when English anthropology had suffered a decline in popularity and success. The workmen first unearthed a large skull, and soon after, uncovered an apelike jaw. Scientists, ecstatic with the discovery and its anthropological implications, named the fossil “Piltdown Man” and touted it as the “missing link” between apes and men they had sought for so long. Scientists even assigned the fossil to a genus,
Eoanthropus
(dawn man), and a species,
dawsoni
, after Charles Darwin. Forty years later, in 1953, Piltdown Man was exposed as an ingenious hoax, the juxtaposition of a modern human skull with the jaw of an orangutan.

My hero, Christian Badia, is a lover of basketball (as am I), and it gave me great pleasure to introduce this sport in its infancy. James Naismith, a Canadian instructor at the Young Men’s Christian Association Training School (now Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts, invented the game of basketball in 1891. His superior, Dr. Luther H. Gulick, had challenged him to develop a vigorous athletic sport suitable for indoor winter play. Using a soccer ball (known then as a football) as his inspiration, Naismith incorporated elements from football, soccer, and hockey. The original teams had nine players, and peach baskets were nailed to the walls as goals.

The Bornean Bay Cat
(Catopuma badia)
, formerly
Felis badia
, was not (unfortunately) named after my hero, Christian Badia. It was first described by Gray in 1874, but no photograph was taken of the species until 1988, and no live specimen captured for examination until 1992. Until then, only a few skulls and skins, which were collected in the late 1880s, existed in museums. To date, it is one of the rarest and least known of the wild cats.

I hope you enjoyed reading about Sam’s and Chris’s adventures as much as I enjoyed writing about them.

May you always have romance. I love to hear from readers. You can reach me at my Web site,
http://catlindler.com
.

Cat Lindler