Today

The medica was young, perhaps just out of the training academy. She still wore her uniform crisp and pressed, her blue hair slicked back from her forehead and held in place by the woven band marked with the symbols of her profession. She gave the man at the patient’s bedside a warm grin and patted his shoulder.

“How nice of you to stay with your grandma all night.”

The man was handsome enough to make her flutter her eyes. His dark hair, streaked by the harsh Lujawedan sun, fell to his shoulders in sheaves that made her fingers itch to run through it.

His hair might show the effects of the sun, but his face showed no sign of weathering. He smiled, his hand in the patient’s, thumb stroking the paper-thin skin of her hand over and over.

“This is my wife,” the man said without any condemnation at her assumption, for which the medica was grateful.

“Oh, I beg your pardon.”

He looked back to the woman in the bed, her eyes closed and face pale. He leaned forward to stroke her hair, long and lush and bleached white the way the sun bleached everything on this planet. His hand caressed her cheek for a moment, and in the presence of such admiration, the medica blushed and left the room.

Yesterday

Marrin woke to the feeling of kisses on her bare stomach. She kept her eyes closed, but smiled as her husband trailed his lips along her skin to the slope of her hip. She waited, breath held, for him to continue, and he didn’t disappoint.

He never did.

“Good morning,” he whispered against her skin, teeth nipping in a way that made her sigh. “The sun is shining again.”

This made her laugh, as it always did, for on Lujawed, the sun almost always shone. “Good morning.”

She cracked open an eye to look down at him, settled between her thighs as though he had no place else to be for the rest of the day. He laid his cheek on her thigh and let his hand stroke along her side. Her hand came down to rest on his hair, the glorious length of it that time and the sun could burnish but not diminish.

“I love you, Keane.” The words slipped out without effort. She stroked his hair, like silk against her fingers.

“I love you, Marrin.” He turned his lips to kiss the skin beneath his cheek, then grinned. “I would love you better.”

She parted her thighs in reply, her eyes already going half-lidded in anticipation of the pleasure he would bring her. She heard his chuckle and felt the hot puff of his breath on her clit a bare micron before his lips kissed her there. She sighed, shifting. His hands curved around her hips to hold her to him while he began to make love to her with his mouth.

He kissed and licked her gently no matter how much she squirmed, taking his time. He always did. It was one of his charms, this constant ability to give his full attention to any task he performed, as though he had all the time in the world to complete it.

Because he does, she thought, lifting her hips as his mouth teased her flesh. To a Seveeran whose lifespan was limited only by accident or choice, anything worth doing was worth taking time for.

Her breath caught as his tongue fluttered against her folds. He nuzzled her, then parted her with his fingers to taste her. His low noise of arousal urged her own, and she answered with a gasp.

“Keane!”

He didn’t answer with words. He slid a finger inside her to stroke in time with his tongue. He’d found the pace she adored. Smooth, steady, alternating patterns of light tongue flicks and harder licks. He slid another finger inside her love-slick passage, filling her.

She wanted more, but he wouldn’t give it, her deviously sensual husband. No. Keane teased her, adding a twist to his hand that had her crying aloud and clutching the bedclothes as her hips rocked upward. He pressed his mouth to her clit, not moving lips or teeth or tongue. Letting her get off by rubbing herself against him. Letting her dictate the pace and pressure. Giving over to her control…until she was on the edge and ready to soar over. Then he pulled back, hand stilling, and blew repeated puffs of air against her pulsing clit and would not touch her with more than that no matter how she begged.

When she calmed, he withdrew his hand micron by terrible, exquisite micron, and slid up her body to kiss her mouth. His cock nudged her opening, and though she was so wet for him she felt the sheets damp beneath her, he did not enter her.

“I love you,” he murmured in her ear, sending shivers to perk her nipples into peaks as hard as lliwrock. “One hundred rotations I’ve loved you, Marrin, and I would have a thousand more.”

She opened her eyes and linked her hands behind his neck to pull him back to her mouth. “I’d give them to you if I could.”

He made no more talk but slipped inside her with the practiced ease of long experience. He paused when he’d filled her and she marveled anew at how well they fit together. Like pieces of a puzzle carved by Adonai’s own hand. He moved, his face pressed to the curve of her shoulder. Slow, long strokes, his stomach pressing her clit with every movement until she was back on the edge again.

She clutched him, fingers drawing trails down his back to cup his muscled buttocks. She pulled him closer. They melded, joined, moved as one. He withdrew and slid in again, the tip of his cock extending to nudge the entrance to her womb. Out again and his penis contracted. In, and it lengthened.

The dual sensation of his external and internal stroking never failed to send her to heights of pleasure she’d have said were impossible if she hadn’t lived with them for so long.

“I love the way you take all of me inside you.” Keane moved faster. His hand found hers. Their fingers linked. He lifted his head to look into her eyes, and the love shining in his gaze lifted her up and up, all the way to the sky.

Her orgasm fluttered at first, then rippled and at last exploded through her. She gasped and cried his name, pleasure making her mindless for a moment. Her body tensed and relaxed.

He gasped and shuddered, his back arching as he thrust into her one last time. She loved seeing him this way, perfect features creased with ecstasy. His body slowly ceased to jerk and shiver, and he lay down on top of her to nuzzle against her neck.

“Good morning,” she said after a moment. “It’s always a good morning when you wake me like that.”

He laughed, the sound as rich as cream dribbled over fresh-picked berries. He got up on one elbow to look at her. “Are you sure I can’t convince you to come with me today?”

“Not a chance, sport.” She settled herself on the pillows as he shifted his weight off her. Now that the lovemaking was over, her hip had flared into the same dull ache that always plagued her. They didn’t speak of it, but he knew and was careful of it.

“No?” He kissed her beneath her ear. “I’ve heard the silk merchants will be showing off their new fashions.”

She laughed and pushed at his shoulder to let her up. “Where do I ever go that I’d need something like that?”

“It’s not a question of need, but want.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him still sprawled in their bed and looking so handsome it made her throat close with emotion. “You go and have a good time.”

He stretched out. Still sinewy and firm, still looking as he had the day she’d met him in the starport. Nothing had changed about him. No wrinkles, no lines, no bulge or bumps of age.

And she… Marrin caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the dresser. When had she gotten so old?

She got out of bed, her throat still closed and her breath short. She went to the window and drew back the outer curtains, but left the inner set alone. They were sheer enough to let in the light but keep out the sun’s harshest rays. In the daylight she could see every blotch and bump on her skin, every imperfection.

“Marrin?”

And then she turned from the sight of her own face, not needing to see anything but how she looked reflected in Keane’s gaze. “Yes, sweetheart?”

“Are you all right?” He’d sat up and was looking concerned. “You look pale.”

She nodded, her hand going to her throat to try and ease some of the pressure there. She tried to catch her breath, but could not. She tried to speak, but could say nothing. She reached for him, and his face was the last thing she saw as her knees crumpled and dropped her to the floor.

Forty rotations ago

“What will you do tomorrow?”

Marrin turned to look at her assistant. Former assistant, she corrected herself. As of this moment, Marrin Levy no longer had an assistant, or needed one. It had taken a full two rotations to get all the details sorted out, but now that everything had been taken care of, she was more than ready to let go.

“Sleep in for one.” She smiled at Darlin. “Have a leisurely lunch in the courtyard. Perhaps go shopping in the afternoon for the girls’ birthdays.”

“Sounds perfect.” Darlin’s bright grin shone against the dark skin of his face. “I’m envious.”

“You know you’re always welcome to visit us.”

He reached out to her for a hug. “We’ll all miss you, Marrin.”

“It’s time for me to step down.” She returned his hug without even a sentimental tear at the thought of leaving the position she’d had for the past eighty rotations. “Time for me to spend some time with my husband.”

“Keane will keep you busy.” Darlin laughed and squeezed her again.

“I’m sure he will.”

And Keane, it seemed, intended to start keeping her busy the moment she returned home that evening. Marrin saw the glow as she walked up the curving stone path leading to the house she shared with Keane. She paused, looking over the low-slung white building nestled into the red Lujawedan earth. He’d lit candles in every window.

More candles illuminated the entryway and made a path through the smoothly curving halls toward their sleeping room. She followed the flickering light. By the time she got to the bedroom, her heart had already started to beat faster.

“Keane?”

More candles beckoned her toward the bath chamber. Smiling, she followed them and found her husband waiting for her. He looked up as she entered, glancing over his shoulder, and she caught her breath as she did so often when she looked at him.

“You’re late,” he said gently, turning. The candle glow lit his bare skin with a loving touch, hiding scars and making shadows turn every glimpse into seductive temptation.

“They had a party for me,” she explained. “I had to say goodbye to everyone.”

He smiled and held out his hand. “Everyone will miss you.”

She went to him and took it. “I’m ready to give it up. Ready to be home with you all day long.”

He bent his head to brush his lips along hers. “I’m ready to have you here.”

So many rotations, and still that simple first kiss upon meeting after being apart never failed to send a shiver of desire through her. Marrin tilted her head as Keane’s hand cupped the back of her neck. His fingers massaged the two small spots at the base of her skull, eliciting an immediate response.

Her moan made him laugh. “You’re still tensed up.”

“Not so much, now.” She pressed herself against him, and the heat of his skin seeped through her nawe.

The hand not on her neck slid to her hip and began inching the floor-length garment upward with his fingertips. Cooler air, blown through vents in the bath chamber floor, caressed her feet and ankles, then her thighs as he gathered the thin cloth and exposed her skin.

Keane kissed her, lips parted. She opened her mouth wider beneath his to let his tongue stroke her. His hand slipped around from her waist to cup her between the legs. The heel of his palm pressed her clit while he used his fingers to nudge aside the filmy barrier of her panties. He stroked along her folds.

“You’re so wet for me.”

“Always.” The word came out low, throaty.

He pulled her closer, the hand on her neck sliding down to palm her buttocks and gather more of her nawe. In another few moments he’d pulled the garment up to her hips, then over her ribs and head. He tossed it to the floor.

“You won’t need to wear that again.” He bent back to kiss her, both hands on her ass, holding her close to his already hard penis.

She laughed. “No? I do if I intend to ever go anyplace other than this compound.”

He nipped her jaw, urging her with his teeth and lips to tilt her head back so he could slide his tongue along her throat. “I intend to keep you here with me…naked.”

“All the time?” Her giggle became a gasp as he bit the tender spot between her neck and shoulder. His hands rubbed her buttocks, dipping between her legs to brush her folds from behind before sliding up again along the ridge of her spine.

“All the time.”

Marrin put her hands flat on his chest. His heart thumped under palm. She traced the indent running from his throat to the place his navel would have been had he been Earther like her. It was sensitive, that thin place in his skin where once he’d been connected to the artificial womb in which he’d been grown, and her touch made him shiver.

She didn’t bother arguing with his impractical suggestion she never wear clothes again. At that moment, the thought appealed to her so greatly, she was more than willing to believe in it. She kissed his chest and tasted his warmth. Keane’s arms closed around her, cradling her.

“I love you,” she said, emotion all at once hitting her harder than she’d expected. “I would never have been what I am today if not for you.”

He kissed the top of her head. “I love you too, Marrin.”

His fingers traced lazy circles on her bare back. She looked to the sunken tub set into the tiled floor and smiled. He’d filled it with steaming water and floated gillyflower petals on top. She breathed their scent and tilted her head back again to look up at him.

“Are you going to join me in there?”

He smiled, revealing bright, white and shining teeth. It was the happy grin that had been the first thing she’d noticed about him all those years ago.

She needed help getting into the steaming water, but Keane held both her elbow and her hip in such a way she was able to slide into the tub in what seemed an effortless motion. He knew how her hips and knees pained her. He was always there to lift and carry for her, to open doors, to help her with stairs. He never made it seem as though she couldn’t do it on her own. Always, every assistance came as though it sprang naturally forth from everything else he did to care for her—everything he had done for years.

Marrin settled into the water with a sigh and breathed in the scent of the flowers. He’d added oil to the water too, and it glided along her skin.

“Such luxury,” she teased. “An entire tub full of water, just for me?”

“Maybe I’ll have to share it.”

“Maybe you will.”

The water slopped over the sides of the tub when he got in, and they both laughed. She slid into his arms, her back against his front, and he cradled her.

“I can remember when there was no water for bathing like this. When we washed once a week and used the bathwater for irrigation.”

“We still do,” he reminded. “Only now it goes out through a drain and into the earth, instead of being poured by hand from the tub.”

She laughed. Against her back, his cock lengthened and grew hard. Marrin nestled closer. Keane’s hands came around to cup her breasts.

Her nipples tightened instantly beneath his skilled fingers. He pinched them lightly between his thumb and forefingers, tugging gently. Pull, release, and again, followed by a circling motion.

Her clit pulsed in time to his treatment of her nipples and she parted her legs. The hot, slick water washed over her pussy like a tongue, licking. Marrin shuddered and let out a small moan.

Keane slid one hand down her side, over her hip, then between her legs. His fingertip unerringly found her swelling bud. He stroked it, dipping low to caress her folds before moving back up to place steady pressure on the bundle of nerves.

The fingers on her nipple pulled and released without ever letting go. In a moment, the fingers on her clit did the same. Pull, release in small, steady movements that nonetheless caused the sensation to build up and up until she became mindless with it.

She writhed, back arching, legs spreading to allow him free access to wherever he wished to touch her. “Keane—”

He murmured words of love in his native language she didn’t need to understand to know their meaning. He lifted her in the water, the hand on her clit leaving for a moment to slide beneath her buttocks. His other hand came down to grip his penis and guide it inside her. He seated her on him, her head tilted back to rest upon his shoulder and her breasts pushed upward, out of the water.

He moved her, letting the water aid him. Keane thrust inside her with exquisite slowness. His fingers went back to circling on her clit.

The shallow thrusts rubbed her just behind her pubic bone and made her moan and shift, seeking to thrust herself further down on his shaft. Wanting to fill herself with him. His cry as she succeeded forced an answering one from her throat.

She rocked herself against him, losing herself in the pleasure washing over her. The slap of the water against her only aided the sensation of his hands on her. It rushed over her clit and breasts and belly, caressing her in every place his hands were not and in other places when his fingers found those.

His cock extended and contracted inside her as he neared his climax. Knowing he was so close made her orgasm tumble toward her like rocks rolling down a hill. A flurry and rumble of sensation built inside her, gathering together, gaining speed, centered in her clit, but drawing sensation from all the rest of her body.

He gave her what she wanted. Hard, solid thrusts deep inside her. Hard enough to lift her from the water. Marrin didn’t care. She arched to create a better angle. Keane’s lips found her temple. Her hand came around to run her fingers through his hair.

They both spoke but what words came out, Marrin could not have said. Words of pleasure, senseless. Lovetalk, Keane called it. An outpouring of emotion echoing the outpouring of sensation in their bodies.

Keane no longer rubbed her clitoris. He put his palm over it. His thrusts moved her against his hand, the stimulation more subtle, but no less perfect.

Marrin’s orgasm rippled through her. Her fingers tightened in his hair. She cried out. Her tunnel clenched his cock, earning her a cry of pleasure from his lips.

It sent another wave of climax over her. She tensed, relaxed, tensed again when he thrust once more and held her hips hard enough to hurt if she hadn’t been so filled with ecstasy.

“Marrin,” he whispered.

The water ceased its sloshing and rippled gently. The scent of gillyflowers covered them. Marrin floated in her husband’s arms, replete.

Forty-two rotations ago

“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor.”

Keane’s calm bemusement was usually enough to defuse her, but not this time. Marrin looked up at him but had to blink hard, twice, to get her eyes to focus on his familiar beauty. He reached out a hand, and she took it.

“She’ll be fine,” he told her. “She has the best medica. The best care. And she’s stronger than you think, Marrin.”

Marrin linked her fingers in his. “She’s been in labor for more than a day. If she doesn’t have the baby soon—”

“They will take care of her,” he soothed. “And Sarn is with her. He will let us know when something happens.”

Marrin nodded, knowing Keane was right. She gave him a grateful smile. “Now is the time when you remind me it’s time for me to let go. Again.”

He pulled her into his embrace with a gentle laugh and nuzzled her neck. “Aliya is with her husband, doing what mothers have done for hundreds of rotations. What you did, without benefit of such fine facilities, I might add. And you survived it.”

Marrin looked around at the pale blue walls, the soothing art, the soft and comfortable furniture meant to cradle those waiting for news of their loved ones. “I gave birth to Hadassah in my own bed with the vadid howling in my ears and Raluti telling me the wind meant good fortune for births. What she really meant was it was fortunate for those outside the hut because they wouldn’t have to listen to me screaming.”

“But you did it,” he reminded. “In a place you didn’t know, with people who weren’t yours.”

She squeezed his hand. “So much has changed since then. There were no medicas. No town, really. No paved roads.”

He nodded and smiled and hugged her closer against him. “Aliya will be fine. She’ll have this baby in a few more hours, and you’ll be a grandmother.”

Marrin made a small groan. “I don’t know if I’m ready to be a grandmother.”

“Well, I’m ready to be a grandfather.” Keane ran his hands down her back. “I look forward to cradling a small one.”

Marrin tightened her arms around him. “Are you sorry you never had any of your own?”

“I have three of my own. Just because they didn’t spring from my seed makes them no less mine.”

She tilted her head to look at him. How lucky she had been the day he walked off the freighter with her letter in his hand.

“I love you.”

He kissed her forehead. “I love you too.”

The hours passed. The baby was brought forth. The mother and father were congratulated and the infant admired, the family expanded by one.

Marrin held her tiny newborn grandson in her arms and sought signs of Aliya’s father Seth in the tiny boy’s face. She found it in the crinkle of his forehead as he frowned, and she wept, kissing the spot and wetting his little face with her tears.

At home, when they had left the new parents to rest, Marrin stayed quiet. Thinking. Lujawed had rotated past its sun a multitude of times since she’d arrived, a young woman with two small daughters and an idealistic, unrealistic husband set on changing their lives.

Their lives had changed all right. Seth had found the plot of land granted them by the Interstellar Homestead Act didn’t quite live up to the photos in the brochure he’d shown her. If they wanted green grass and a tidy little cottage, they’d have to work on it. Work hard.

Lujawed in those days was habitable only by sweat and effort. By hauling water up from wells dug so deep they needed to be lined with lliwrock to keep them from collapsing. By erecting buildings that could stand up to the vadid, the ever-present desert wind that howled and bit and ground away at the surface of everything, leaving it pitted and scarred.

They’d had help from the natives, grateful to trade their labor for the luxuries brought in on the Homestead Freighters. Nomads, the Lujawedi had no use for permanent dwellings. They didn’t understand the need for roads, for sanitation facilities, for hospitals. Goggles that kept the sand from their eyes and water pouches that kept their beverages cold were welcomed and coveted. So long as the Homesteaders kept to their own sections of the planet, the Lujawedi didn’t care what the newcomers did with it.

And amazingly, Lujawed remained amicably split between its nomadic natives and the newcomers who’d come seeking a better life. Unlike many of the other homesteaded planets, Lujawed had been settled without war. Marrin could take pride in being one of the original colonists. Every rotation they honored her at a city council dinner—but it had been several rotations since she’d been asked to sit upon the council.

That was the way it went, she supposed, turning from the window where she’d been staring. Out with the old and in with the new. Only she didn’t feel old, damn it. On a planet that rotated twice as fast around its central sun, her years were doubled, but not her lifespan. She was a grandmother who felt like she ought to still be that young mother digging in the sand.

It was largely due to Keane, who aged so slowly he seemed not to. Now Marrin watched him at his meditation in front of the small burning candle. The scent of the powder he burned tickled her nose, and she sneezed. He opened his eyes with a smile, unfolded himself from the floor and came toward her with long strides.

“Time for bed,” he said.

She turned to lean back against him, and his arms came around to hold her close. He put his cheek to hers as they both looked out the window to the land that seemed only yesterday to have been barren and brown and now shone with soft green grass and vibrant desert flowers.

“So much has changed.” Marrin sighed. “Keane, where has the time gone?”

He turned her in the circle of his arms and kissed her forehead. “Time goes. It’s what happens to it. What’s wrong?”

She tilted her head back to look up at him. “Nothing’s wrong. We have a grandson.”

“We do.” Keane smiled and brushed the hair from her forehead with his thumb, then let his hand come down to caress her cheek. “And look at all you’ve accomplished.”

“All we’ve accomplished,” she corrected. “I’d never have made this estate what it is today if not for your help. I’d never have been able to manage the irrigation systems that let us grow that first crop of udeji melons. And now look at us. Landowners. Largest supplier of fresh udeji melon in the entire colony.”

He smiled again and kissed her, letting his lips linger on hers. “You should think about retiring, Marrin. You’ve worked hard. Take some time to enjoy your new grandson.”

She laughed and squeezed his bum. “You just want me to sit around here with you, getting fat and lazy.”

“I beg your pardon.” Keane made a show of sounding affronted. “Lazy I’ll give you, but am I fat?”

She ran her hands over his hips, then up his taut belly and firm chest to link her fingers behind his neck. “Most definitely not.”

Keane reached down and swept her up into his arms. He walked her to the bed and laid her down, stretching out along her body. “Not too heavy for you?”

She laughed and pulled him down on top of her. “No. Never.”

Then he began kissing her, and she didn’t think about melons or the desert or anything else but his hands on her. He lifted the hem of her gown to her thighs, then higher to expose her belly. Keane kissed the scars there. Her badges of honor, he’d called them, the signs of her pregnancies. They’d always made her feel self-conscious before him, but to Keane they represented something so miraculous and glorious he never failed to make her find them as beautiful as he did.

Seveerans didn’t reproduce with their own bodies any longer. Science had replaced childbirth. Seveerans procreated solely via artificially inseminated and cultivated embryos in a crèche system. To Keane, the fact Marrin had carried her own children inside her body and given birth to them seemed like something out of a fairy tale.

He gave only a moment to her marks, though, instead moving lower across her belly to the area between her thighs. She sighed when his breath fluttered across her clitoris. She gasped when he used his tongue to stroke it. Marrin closed her eyes and leaned back into the pillows, giving herself up to him.

Keane slid his hands beneath her buttocks to hold her closer to him. His lips and tongue began a familiar pattern. He knew so well how to please her. He knew just where and how to touch her. How hard or soft, fast or slow, how she needed him.

It wasn’t instinctive, but rather years of experience that had given him such talent. Experience and enthusiasm. But most of all, love. Love allowed him to find the right spots to send her soaring, let him discover new places to make her gasp his name and arch her back under his caress.

Keane slid a finger inside her, pressing upward while he pressed down on her clit with his tongue. The dual sensation was exquisite. She shivered. Bright sparks of pleasure radiated outward from her pussy, up her belly, spiking her nipples and parting her lips in a breathy sigh.

“I love when you make that noise.” He paused in licking her to look up. “It makes me so hard.”

She smiled down at him. “And I love it when you get hard.”

His answering grin made her heart pound. He bent back to her clit, nuzzling it lightly before beginning to lick again. He had her on the edge in another minute, earning a moan of regret when he pulled away to tease her. Keane loved to tease her to the brink and hold her off, bringing her close and refusing her release until she exploded under a breath or a whisper.

Tonight, Marrin had no patience for that. Her body craved him. She twined her fingers in his hair and pulled upward. Keane followed willingly, kissing her. The taste of her arousal made another low moan leak out of her. He thrust his tongue inside her mouth, mimicking the way she wanted him to push his cock inside her.

“Make love to me,” she whispered against his mouth, her fingers moving again and again through the dark, silken length of his hair.

She didn’t have to ask him twice. Keane slid inside her slickness without effort, all the way to the hilt. He filled her completely. He moved in slow, smooth strokes, angling his body in such a way that he rubbed her clit with his every thrust. It drove her half-crazy, the way he did it, the stimulation not direct enough to send her over the edge, but tantalizing enough to keep her hovering on the verge of orgasm.

He buried his face in the curve of her shoulder. His teeth stung her. The small pain was enough to jolt her entire body upward. He thrust harder. She wrapped her legs around the back of his thighs, pulling him closer while her hands made furrows in the smooth skin of his back.

His low cry sent another wave of ecstasy through her. Sweat slicked their bodies as they moved. Keane moved harder inside her, hard enough to move the bed against the wall, which made her smile and laugh a bit, breathless, even as she moaned in pre-orgasmic splendor.

If her sudden vocal appreciation of his skills surprised him, Keane didn’t show it. He responded by moving faster. Harder. Marrin’s orgasm began in a thunder of beating heart and shouts.

A second one followed on the edge of the first with no more than a heartbeat between them. Keane kissed her as his body shuddered in its own release. He collapsed against her, though even in his pleasure he remembered to hold himself up on his arms so he didn’t crush her.

They breathed together. In. Out. Completely in time with each other. Then he propped himself up and looked into her face. He kissed her. “Will you at least think about staying home with me?”

The seriousness of his question surprised her into sitting up. “You mean it?”

Keane rolled onto his back, one lean arm behind his head to support it. “I do.”

“Keane, my work—”

“Your daughters and their spouses have taken over the company. You have shareholders and a board and secretaries and volunteers.” He looked up at her, his dark eyes shifting color as they did when emotion moved him. “You’ve worked hard to get where you are. But now, can’t you consider taking a rest?”

“I’ve worked hard and you’ve been behind me every step of the way. You’ve worked as hard as I have. And you’ve always refused any sort of official position in the company.”

He smiled. “Those who matter know my place at your side. Those who don’t will always assume I’m just your Seveeran houseboy. Pretty to look at.”

She reached to caress his face. “It’s been a long time since anyone accused you of being that.”

“What I’m saying is, Marrin, why not let it be true? Retire. Stay home with me every day. I’ll be your houseboy and make it worth your while.”

She laughed and leaned down to kiss him. “You’re wooing me.”

His grin remained as charming as it had always been. “I am.”

“Stop working?” Marrin leaned back against the headboard, thinking. “I’m not sure I’d know what to do with myself all day.”

“Lounge in the garden, breakfast on the terrace, make love in the afternoon.”

“Be lazy is what you’re asking me to do, Keane.”

“Take your reward,” he corrected gently. “And let go so your children can also have a chance to prove their value with hard work.”

She sighed. “You want me to let go of something I’ve spent half my life working to build.”

“And I want you to spend the other half enjoying the fruits of it.” Keane linked his fingers through hers. “I want you to spend the time with me.”

And that, she decided as she looked down upon him, was reason enough to do as he asked, for Keane had never asked her for anything before.

Fifty-two rotations ago

The door opened and Marrin looked up, her mouth full of pins. “Sarai, good, you’re here.”

Her middle daughter, the fairest one, closed the door behind her and set down the bouquet of udeji melon flowers Hadassah had insisted on carrying for her wedding.

“You look gorgeous, Dassah.” Sarai gave her younger sister an admiring look. “Jaron will faint when he sees you.”

“I hope not.” Marrin slid another pin into Hadassah’s trailing hem. “We don’t need any fainting going on.”

Hadassah took a deep, shaky breath. “Ma, do I look all right?”

Marrin stood and looked into her daughter’s face. Her baby, the child she’d borne in the desert, the one of her daughters who’d known no other world than Lujawed.

“Gorgeous.” She smoothed Hadassah’s dark curls over her shoulder. Of the three girls, Hadassah looked the most like Seth, who had never even had the chance to see her. Marrin hugged Hadassah tight, not caring that she crumpled the gown of fine Lujawedi flaxene. “Absolutely beautiful.”

The door opened again, this time for Aliya. “Are you ready?”

Hadassah lifted her chin and took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

Marrin looked at her children—the three bright, shining lights she had produced—and her throat closed with emotion. “Your father would be so proud.”

Her girls hugged her then, and the four of them clung to each other in the circle they’d always made.

The door opened a third time, this time to Keane, who held back for a moment upon seeing the clustered femininity that had left him flustered and left out on occasion in the past. “We’re ready whenever you are, Dassah.”

Hadassah, who had never known another father, had nonetheless been the one who’d clashed most fiercely with Keane over the years. Marrin would walk Hadassah to the wedding canopy alone. Now Keane looked discomfited, and Marrin knew her husband well enough to know he didn’t want to be accused of interfering.

“Keane…” Hadassah stepped free of her sisters’ and mother’s embrace. She reached for his hand and he took it with a look of surprise. Her voice clear and unclogged by tears she said, “I know I’ve been an awful brat to you in the past. And I know you’ve always been patient with me, even when I didn’t deserve it. I appreciate more than you can ever know how you agreed to my wishes about this wedding…but I’ve been stupid and stubborn, and I’ve changed my mind. I’d be honored if you’d walk with me to the canopy.”

Marrin watched as his eyes changed from black to blue to green, expressing his shifting emotions.

He nodded and squeezed Hadassah’s hand. “I’d be so honored to walk with you. If that’s what you really want.”

“You’re the only father I’ve ever had.” Hadassah’s voice broke at last. “And I know I haven’t often shown it, but I love you.”

Then they all cried except for Keane, whose eyes didn’t shed tears, and they hugged and kissed, and then it was time for Hadassah Levy to become Hadassah Levy Curani.

No bride had ever looked lovelier, no mother had beamed brighter with pride, and no father had ever given away a daughter so tenderly. It had been a perfect day, with food and family and friends. At the end of it, exhaustion claimed Marrin, and she tumbled onto her bed face down before rolling onto her back with a sigh. Keane laughed gently from the doorway.

“The last to go,” he said, shedding his formal jacket. “And now, we’re alone. The whole house to ourselves. We’ve never had that.”

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.”

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.

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.

Sometimes they made love slowly, taking hours. Sometimes, like now, they came together hard and fast, with nothing more than a glance to serve as foreplay. It didn’t matter. She was as ready for him now as if he’d spent half a day caressing her.

The teacups rattled in their saucers as his thrusts rocked the table, and Marrin let her head tip back, back, laughing and gasping her pleasure as he filled her.

“Touch yourself,” Keane said, his voice hoarse. “I want you to come with me.”

With Keane supporting her she had no need to hold herself up, and it was easy to slip a hand between them to stroke her clit in time to his thrusts. She cried out as she rolled the small button under her forefinger. Keane stretched and filled her, in and out, while she rubbed.

He kissed her, mouths open, tongues darting and becoming desperate as their mutual climax approached. Marrin heard a clatter and a crack but took no time to see if they’d at last made the cups fall over. She lost herself in her husband’s kiss, in the pleasure of his magnificent, unique cock as it moved inside her, in the sensation of her own hand between her legs.

He gathered her closer, his grip tightening. Her face pressed against his chest. She found his skin with her teeth and tongue, tasted the salt and spice of his sweat and of their passion, and he groaned when she nipped him.

“Come with me, Marrin.”

She already was. Bright sparks of joy filled her. Her body jerked. Keane thrust inside her, sending another burst of ecstasy exploding through her. She cried out, riding him, digging her nails into his shoulders hard enough to bruise him.

He thrust again, this time hard enough to move the table. His back arched. He shuddered, then relaxed against her, panting.

Marrin heard a slow dripping and turned her head to see they had, indeed, spilled the tea. It had made quite a mess on the floor, too, but at that moment, she couldn’t rouse herself enough to care.

“You wear this old man out,” Keane whispered into her ear, nuzzling and nipping before hugging her tightly.

“Never,” she replied.

“You can try,” came his teasing reply.

“I can try,” Marrin agreed and put her arms around the man she loved.

Ninety-nine rotations ago

“Hurry, Keane! Hurry! It’s starting!”

Aliya danced, holding her pot with both small hands. Sarai joined her sister, a mug in each of hers. The baby, Hadassah, no longer such a baby, but a girl of nine rotations, held a mixing bowl up toward the darkening sky.

Keane, his long, dark hair tied at the nape of his neck, stepped through the glass doors at the back of the house and onto the slate patio. He’d put on the shirt she’d made for him Marrin saw, and though she tried to pretend the sight didn’t make her heart leap, it did.

“Keane, it’s starting!”

“All right.” He laughed and reached for the mug Sarai handed him. He tipped his face toward the sky. A drop of rain splatted him between the eyes and he laughed again, spreading out his arms as more water came from the clouds.

The girls squealed and held up their containers, trying to catch the still slow-falling raindrops. They danced in their festival dresses, their small faces bright with excitement. Marrin’s heart hurt to look at their joy, so fierce and overwhelming was her love.

“Look, Ima, look! Flowers!”

And indeed, what had been moments before a brown and barren yard had now begun to bloom. More rain pattered down, soaking instantly into the parched ground. Green tendrils that had been dormant an entire season now sprang up from the ground so fast they could see them growing. Flowers, red, purple, white and yellow, bloomed on vines and stalks. The smell of them filled the air, and Marrin breathed deeply, astounded as always by the annual miracle.

The blessing of rain. Lujawed was a desert planet, its water held so deep within its embrace it took the deepest wells to reach it. Yet once a year, thankfully without fail, clouds gathered. The skies opened. And water, the gift without which they couldn’t survive here, poured forth in torrents. Sometimes four days. Sometimes two weeks. Glorious, fresh, sweet and life-giving water.

The Lujawedi called it idvad, and so the colonists had taken on the term, adopted the holiday festival when all work ceased and every attention was given to collecting and appreciating the sky’s bounty.

Watching her daughters’ dance, Marrin’s throat closed with emotion. She held her face up to the sky, letting the rain hide the tears suddenly sliding down her cheeks. She blinked rapidly and her gaze fell on Keane, who looked up at her from where he bent, laughing, to help Aliya empty her pot of water into one of the rain barrels.

One full rotation had passed since the day she had gone to Bosie Starport to pick up the man who had answered her ad. One Lujawed rotation, one round of seasons, one passage of time, and yet so much more.

He stood, his dark eyes flaring briefly blue in the way he had that she’d found so disconcerting at first. Seveeran eyes changed color with emotion, unlike Earther eyes that always stayed the same. And now, not for the first time, Marrin wondered what other differences his race had from hers.

She blamed her shiver on the chill rain, but knew it had nothing to do with that and everything to do with this man she’d taken as her field-husband. Keane Delacore.

Though they wanted to, the children couldn’t stay up all night. When true night fell, Marrin dried them off, dressed them in warm clothes and tucked them into beds to be soothed to sleep by the unfamiliar sound of rain pattering on the roof. They fell asleep in moments, and she took the time to touch their faces, each one so precious to her she could scarcely bear it.

Her girls, Earth-age nine, seven and four. Growing so fast and so beautiful. She tucked the blankets around them and left their room, closing the door behind her.

The rain had grown heavier. It slashed the windows and sliced at the grass that had grown up in the past few hours. Marrin slid the glass doors open and went outside, water soaking her instantly to the skin.

Baths were a luxury. She wanted to spend as much time as she could with water on her skin. She let it wash over her as she walked into the garden that hadn’t been there earlier.

And she found him. Standing, arms outspread, face tipped up to the downpour, eyes closed, mouth open to drink.

It seemed somehow too intimate to see him this way, in this ecstasy. She had shared a home with him for a rotation. Taken meals together. Argued and been kind, laughed and wept, labored with him side by side in the melon fields that were only now beginning to take full root.

She had spent a rotation with this man, who was no longer a stranger to her, but she had never seen him lose himself in such joy. She made to back away, to find her own place to stand and take in the rain, but Keane, at that moment, turned his head and saw her.

He turned slowly to face her, his arms going down. The shirt she had made for him of white flaxene and red embroidered flowers had gone sheer, showing every ridge and muscle of his chest. It made her knees feel as though they would not hold her; she stumbled at the sudden, unexpected sensuality of seeing Keane wet and outlined by red thread she had sewn with her own hands. She had seen him stripped bare to the waist many times, but this was somehow all at once more and too much.

She took a step back on the tiles made slick with rain. She stepped onto grass and soft earth, smelled the scent of flowers she crushed beneath her bare heel. Her hair clung to her as her gown did, molding itself to her body as his shirt hugged him, and she realized his eyes were roaming over her as hungrily as she was certain hers had over him.

She had seen his eyes go blue and green and only once, red with anger. Now they were tinged with amber and gold as he blinked. He’d taken away the tie and his hair fell over his shoulders and halfway down his back.

She took another step back. Keane moved fast, smooth, with agile grace she’d always admired. His hand caught her by the upper arms just as she teetered with uncertain steps on the mushy ground. She gasped at his touch, for other than an occasional brush of fingers when they passed each other something, Keane had touched her only once before.

He had never taken advantage of the rights granted a field-husband, never called on the contract they’d both signed that granted him conjugal rights in exchange for his labor. Keane had never pushed her, and she’d always been grateful…until now.

Now he slanted his head to hers without asking for permission. His kiss seared her, and Marrin opened her mouth to taste him. Her arms went around his neck. His went around her back, pulling her close. His tongue darted inside her mouth and she groaned.

She had almost forgotten desire. She had pushed it away for so long, since Seth’s death from a native virus, that she’d been certain she’d never feel it again. Now it crashed over her, blooming inside her like the flowers had bloomed all around them, brought to life by the rain, and by Keane’s hands on her.

He pulled at her dress, tugging it upward over her thighs. His hands trailed along her heated skin and she shuddered when his fingers reached the spot between her legs. He pressed against her and she cried out, the noise muffled inside his mouth, still kissing.

He lay her down on a bed of soft grasses and flowers and left her mouth to pull off his shirt. He took her hand and put it over his heart, which thumped so hard it moved her fingers against his skin.

“Do you want this?” he asked, voice hoarse. “Marrin, I have to know if you want this. If you want…me.”

She nodded. “I want you, Keane.”

Had he been afraid she would say no? He closed his eyes for a moment and his shoulders heaved, but when he opened his eyes again, he smiled. He stretched out along her to kiss her again. He put her hand on the bulge in his trousers and groaned when she curled her fingers around it.

Wet clothes were difficult to remove. They fumbled with desperate fingers, both laughing and kissing and shivering in the rain, but at last they were naked together and Marrin looked over his body in wonder. To see that his penis was basically the same shape and girth and functioned in the same manner was a relief, and she couldn’t help reaching to touch him as he knelt next to her.

“You’re perfect,” she told him, cupping her fingers around his length. His erection throbbed at her touch, and she smiled. Not so different.

Her touch had made him shudder, but he still smiled. “Glad you think so.”

“I wasn’t sure—”

“You’ve heard stories?”

She nodded. Keane bent down to kiss her, his body covering and warming her. “Yes. It does extend and retract during lovemaking, but not enough to hurt you.”

She let out a breathless giggle. “Good to know.”

His hand smoothed away the hair from her forehead, then slid over her cheek, down her neck to her shoulder, further down to cup her breast. “You’re sure you want this?”

To answer him, she brought him back to her mouth to kiss her again. He tasted so good, so sweet and fresh. It made her stomach leap and jump and her clit follow suit. He was smooth and firm and fully masculine. He was kind and a hard worker and good to her children. She wanted him for all those reasons, but also for one more.

She loved him. The knowledge of it, of realizing what she must have known for months but ignored, made her gasp aloud. Her eyes opened and she stared into his.

“Marrin?”

She shook her head, not wanting to speak or ruin this moment they had taken so long to reach. Keane searched her gaze, but said no more. He bent to kiss her throat. His mouth slid down as his hand had, and he suckled at her breasts one at a time until she gasped and put her hand on the back of his head.

His lips moved further down her ribs, to her belly, and she tensed. Hard exercise had kept her fit and poverty had kept her trim, but three children had changed her body in ways that would never recover. She bore scars. His lips traced them slowly, kissing each silver line as she tensed in mingled self-consciousness and desire.

“I’ve never seen such beauty,” he murmured. “My people have nothing like this. No birth. You’ve done such a blessed thing, Marrin.”

She had no time to reply because he had slipped lower. He parted her thighs and nuzzled her. She cried out, wordless, and put her hand over her face. Her pelvis bumped up against his mouth and he put his hands on her to hold her still. Her reaction should have embarrassed her, the enthusiasm of it made her blush, but it felt too damn good. His tongue found her clit and he licked her while she wiggled.

Whatever difference their races had, Keane knew how to make love to her. He used his mouth to bring her to the edge, then moved aside. He slid a hand under her buttocks and tilted her toward the sky. He parted her folds, exposed her to the beating spatter of the rain.

She’d gone mindless with pleasure. His tongue had made her throb, but this, this was unbelievable and unbearable. The rain, so rare and precious, pattered against her swollen flesh. Marrin broke, shattered, and exploded into shards of bright, shining desire.

He slid inside her while she was still pulsing. She climaxed again at once from the feeling of his cock inside her. She had gone so long without love, without touch. Now, as the skies had opened up, so did her body open to Keane.

He moved inside her, his face buried against her neck. Marrin put her arms around him, her fingers sliding along his wet skin to clutch his buttocks and urge him to move.

She didn’t think herself capable of another orgasm. The two she’d already experienced had left her wrung out and drained. She would concentrate on Keane’s pleasure now, but to her surprise, her body began to respond again as he made love to her.

He pushed inside her, pelvis to pelvis, but then to her astonishment, his cock kept moving inside her. It grew. It nudged her cervix, which should have been painful but wasn’t. When he pulled out, she lost the sensation of anything different. In again, and the feeling of his penis moving deeper into her made her tunnel spasm around him.

He groaned. “Oh, you feel so good.”

He moved faster, riding her. The ground had churned to mud beneath them. Slippery grass allowed their bodies to slide with every thrust. Desire puddled between her legs and in the pit of her belly again.

He moved faster, panting. She joined him. He gave a low cry and so did she. They moved in unison, giving and taking, each move as orchestrated as a dance they’d practiced for hours instead of performing for the first time.

He lifted himself onto his hands to thrust harder inside her, and to look down into her face. His eyes met hers. His face contorted as his climax approached. The sight of him in such bliss made her own fill her again.

She climaxed a third time, a small fluttering that didn’t match the intensity of the first two, but was still enough to make her gasp aloud. Keane smiled when she did, eyes showing pleased surprise. In the next moment, they closed and his face contorted again.

He thrust inside her again, hard. His body tensed and he shuddered. Then he collapsed on top of her.

Marrin put her arms around him, holding him tight to her. Warmth filled her. She started to cry.

Keane got up on one arm to look at her. His body shielded her face from the rain. Concern filled his eyes. “Marrin?”

She shook her head, her emotion making her feel foolish and awkward in a way their lovemaking had not. Keane caressed her cheek. He smiled and bent to kiss her.

“I love you too,” he said into her ear.

And there in the garden, in the mud and rain with the smell of flowers blooming and going to rot, Marrin kissed the man who was no longer her field-husband, but her husband entirely.

One hundred rotations ago

Where was he? Marrin kept a firm grip on Hadassah’s hand, no matter how hard the little girl tried to get away. Sarai and Aliya were running in circles around her, trying her already thin patience. Marrin searched the crowd exiting the starport, many of them greeting colonists who’d come out to meet them. Some carried the bags and bore the pale skin of new colonists as yet unburned by the harsh Lujawed sun.

She didn’t see the man she sought anyplace. Tall, he had written. Dark hair to his shoulders. He’d be wearing a blue jumpsuit with white piping, and carrying a black leather bag.

His name was Keane Delacore. He was forty Earth years old, though Seveerans aged differently than Earthers and she shouldn’t be surprised if he looked younger. He looked forward to meeting her in person, and her daughters.

If he didn’t show up, she’d take her children and go back to the homestead. She would feed them and put them to bed, and maybe she’d go decadent and fill the washtub for a bath. If he didn’t show up, she’d be no worse off than she already was—and maybe she’d be better.

If he didn’t show up, she would somehow find a way to pay a labor crew to help her in the fields. How, she didn’t know. She had no cash and, as yet, no crop to count on. She had nothing to barter, nothing to sell.

Seth had left her with nothing but three children and debt. In the three years since his death, Marrin had watched everything they had brought with them from home be sold off or break down in the harsh desert atmosphere.

He had been a good man with a wonderful dream, and it had not been his fault the immunizations against native viruses hadn’t worked for him. It happened in .0001 percent of the population, a risk so miniscule even Seth, who calculated everything, had been willing to take it. It wasn’t his fault the idvad had been scarcer than usual their first two years on Lujawed. And it wasn’t his fault he’d taken sick as their first crops failed, or when he died, but though none of those things were Seth’s fault, there were days, many of them, when Marrin blamed her husband bitterly for her current situation.

The crowd of exiting passengers had trickled to nothing. Marrin kept her back straight, her eyes dry, her grip firm on Hadassah’s straining hand. He wasn’t coming.

“Come on, girls,” she said at last, when the only person remaining in the starport station was the elderly Lujawedi sweeping the floors. “Let’s go home.”

As she turned, one last figure appeared in the starport doors. A tall man with dark hair to his shoulders, wearing a blue jumpsuit with white piping.

He stepped cautiously through the doors and looked around. His eyes fell on their little group and he smiled, stepping forward, the look on his face one of a man greeting long-lost friends. He looked overjoyed to see them, and Marrin stepped back at the sight of Keane Delacore’s smile. He didn’t look forty. He looked even younger than her twenty-six years.

“Marrin Levy, I greet you,” he said.

The formality of his speech took her aback for a second, but then she nodded. He spoke in Universal, in which she was competent, but not fluent. Perhaps he wasn’t either.

“Welcome to Lujawed.” Her voice sounded strained and brisk even to herself. She cleared her throat and held out the hand not holding Hadassah’s. The little girl had shrunk behind her mother, watching from around Marrin’s hip. “You must be Keane.”

“I answer to that, yes.”

He had an easy grin that tried to make her mouth twitch upward in response, but it had been so long since Marrin had smiled, the effort failed. His faded a bit when she nodded at him instead. He turned his attention to Sarai and Aliya, who had ceased their running and now stared with wide eyes at the stranger their mother had agreed to bring home with them.

“You must be Aliya.” Keane pulled something from his pocket and held it out to the oldest girl, who reached out a trusting hand.

Instinct almost made Marrin intercept him, but she resisted. This man had passed every test the Association for Interplanetary Spousal Provision had given him. He’d scored higher in morality, work ethic and intelligence than the other ten applicants Marrin’s own analysis had matched her with. She was already technically married to him, and had been since the moment she’d signed the plazscreen at the agency office three months ago. So she stayed her hand and waited to see what he had brought.

“Thank you!” Aliya looked stunned and happy. She took the chocolate—a full bar, still sealed, and held it to her chest. “Oh, thank you!”

“And Sarai,” said Keane, pulling another bar from his pocket. He had to bend farther for her, but she took the present with no less enthusiasm than had her older sister.

“Thank you!” the girl cried, and added a spontaneous hug. Sarai had always been the most affectionate one.

Keane’s eyes met Marrin’s over the top of Sarai’s head. He looked away in a moment and focused on Hadassah, still clinging to Marrin’s leg, though the bounty of chocolate had drawn her out.

“And Hadassah.” Keane straightened, hand pulling out a third chocolate bar and handing it toward her.

Hadassah grabbed it and kicked Keane solidly in the shin.

“Hadassah!” Marrin’s shocked cry echoed throughout the empty starport. “Oh, I’m so sorry—”

Keane shook his head, standing upright and giving a far kindlier smile to Hadassah than Marrin would have. “It’s all right.”

She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “She’s usually not—”

“Marrin.” Keane shook his head. “It’s fine. Really.”

Marrin nodded. “Shall we go?”

“Lead the way.” Keane lifted his bag. “They told me the rest would be shipped out to your place once it goes through decontamination.”

“Yes. I’ve brought the truck. It’s outside.”

The colony of Bosie couldn’t be called thriving, but it had grown quite a bit since she and Seth had arrived six rotations before. Seeing it now and imagining what it must look like through Keane’s eyes, pride and dismay warred inside her. To an outsider it didn’t look like much, but to one of the original hundred and forty colonists, it was a metropolis built of love and sweat.

“You’re seeing it at a great time,” she told him as she hefted the too-big-to-be-carried Hadassah onto her hip and walked toward the truck. “Just after the idvad, when everything’s in bloom. In a month, this will all be gone.”

She indicated the flowers on vines covering most of the buildings.

Keane nodded. “I’ve read everything I could find about Lujawed. The holos are amazing, but not even close to seeing it for real.”

That earned him a smile. She settled the girls into their seats and harnesses, then climbed behind the wheel as Keane took the passenger seat.

“It makes it all worthwhile,” she admitted. “Knowing that for a few weeks out of the year, it’s all beautiful.”

By the time they got from town to the ranch, Keane had fascinated two of her daughters with tales of his journey.

Hadassah had always been the most stubborn one, the most spoiled and petted and cosseted, having essentially three mothers instead of only one. She glared at Keane the whole way home. She slammed the door in his face when they got to the house, and she stuck her tongue out him.

Marrin sent her to her room for that last insult and apologized once more to Keane, who smiled and shrugged, holding out his hands.

“It takes time,” was all he said. “For everyone.”

That first night, she offered him the choice of sides of the bed and lay stiff as iron when he climbed in beside her. Their contract stated there would be conjugal benefits included in exchange for his work. Seth was the last man who had touched her. Aside from her children, he was the last person to have touched her in any other than the most casual ways.

She waited, eyes wide in the darkness, for the slide of a hand along her skin, for a mouth to seek hers. She listened for a shift in his breathing, for the rustle of clothes.

“I’m sorry,” Keane said at last, his voice a richness dissolving into the darkness like honey dripped into tea. “I’m really tired from the journey. Would you mind if I just went to sleep?”

“No, of course not. Not at all.”

And so he went to sleep, while she lay beside him for a long time, unable to sleep.

He worked hard by her side, and cheerfully, doing whatever task she set for him. He was vocal in his appreciation of her skills in the field, and of the meals she cooked, and of the way she washed his clothes. He never failed to thank her no matter what she did for him.

He won over Sarai and Aliya with his gentle manner, and he tolerated Hadassah’s constant sassiness with patience and bemusement. Day after day he made himself a part of their family. Night after night he slept beside her in their bed, and night after night he made no move to make love to her.

“Good night, Marrin,” he always said, and her answer returned, “Good night, Keane.”

Months passed and she found herself laughing with him over after-dinner coffee, and discussing the girls’ schooling, the crop, the repairs they needed to make to the house, and the sad state of their now mutual bank account. She found herself remembering how he liked his breakfast prepared and making sure his clothes were mended and clean. She discovered herself staring at his hair as it fell over his broad shoulders and down his muscled back, now tanned by the sun.

She watched him when she thought he wasn’t watching her.

When he’d said Seveerans aged differently than Earthers, he had meant their lifespans were longer. Once they reached maturity, they did not appear to age. They’d removed themselves almost entirely from the birth process. Genetics and specialized breeding had found a way to stop aging but not death; there was no fading away as there was in Earthers, no gradual decay and decline in quality of life as joints began to ache and vision faded, or memories began to disintegrate. If accident didn’t claim their lives, Seveerans simply reached a time when they no longer wished to live, and then they no longer did.

It bothered her that he looked younger. When they went into Bosie, the people who saw them assumed Marrin Levy’s field-husband was good for more than planting and harvesting. That she’d hired herself a young lover as well as a laborer.

Why it should bother her so much she couldn’t say, since essentially, for all intents and purposes, that was what she had done. Bought a man to replace the one who’d died. What nobody else knew was that she and Keane weren’t lovers. More like partners. And it wasn’t any of anyone’s business, was it?

“I think I’ll go into town today,” she said one morning.

Keane looked up from his newsform. “I’ll go with you.”

“No need.”

He smiled easily. “I’d like to.”

“I think I’d rather go by myself.” Her words sounded stiff without reason, angry without reason, and she saw confusion in his eyes. She lifted her chin.

How could she explain that she didn’t want to walk down the street and listen to the whispers that followed them? Especially when they weren’t true.

He got up from the table. “Marrin, did I do something wrong?”

“No, of course not.”

He frowned, an expression that rarely crossed his face, and moved closer. “You look angry.”

“Well, I’m not, okay?”

Fuming, she crossed to the sink and ran the water, hard, though it wasted it. She splashed the dishes and slapped them with the sponge until he came over and twisted the faucet closed. He looked at her. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I just want to spend some time by myself,” she snapped. “Is that so much to ask? Do we have to spend every moment together? Can’t I just have some time to myself for once?”

She couldn’t look at him. Shame turned her face away so she wouldn’t have to see his look of hurt. She wiped her hands and started to move away.

He reached out and grabbed her upper arm. It was the first time he’d ever touched her deliberately. His grip was strong. It would leave bruises if she tried to yank her arm from his fingers. She didn’t try.

“If I’ve done something—”

“You haven’t.”

“Marrin.” Keane’s gentle voice made her want to cry. “Look at me.”

She did then because she couldn’t help it. She kept her expression neutral. “What?”

“Are you going to send me back? Release me from our contract?”

His question surprised her. “No.”

He nodded. “Good. Because I don’t want to go back.”

He released her and she stepped away. “Why not?”

She’d never asked him his reasons for agreeing to become a field-husband, for traveling light years from home to scratch out an existence on a planet as despairing as Lujawed. He’d never offered an explanation. She knew he wasn’t a criminal because the agency had done a thorough background check. But beyond that, he’d never spoken of home or family.

She assumed his answer had something to do with some trauma on Seveer. A falling out with his family maybe. Or debts he couldn’t pay. What other reason could he have had for coming here, and not wanting to go back?

He didn’t answer her question, but posed another one of his own. “Do you wish you’d never sent for me? Or that I was someone different?”

“Yes,” she said, though she didn’t know why.

She turned her back and left the kitchen and Keane, and she went to town alone where she spent the day looking in shop windows at items she didn’t need and still could not afford.

When she got home, she found the house quiet. The girls slept in their room and Keane in a chair by the window, a newsform on his lap. A covered plate in the coolbox made tears spring to her eyes again. She crept from the kitchen to stand in the living room doorway, watching him.

Then she went to his chair and stood. He opened his eyes.

“Because I’d miss you and the girls,” he whispered in answer to her earlier question.

“We’d miss you too,” Marrin whispered back. “Come to bed.”

She went to the bedroom and got into bed, and Keane got in beside her. They lay in silence for a few minutes.

“I’m sorry I’m not what you expected me to be,” he said at last.

“I’m sorry I expected something different.”

She heard him shift, felt the bed dip as he turned toward her. She waited for him to touch her, but all he said was, “Good night, Marrin.”

“Good night, Keane.”

Today

“Good morning, sir!” the medica chirped as she opened the blinds to let in the sun.

The poor man had fallen asleep by his wife’s bedside, holding her hand. The medica smiled and moved closer to put her hand on his shoulder. She drew it back immediately with a small cry of surprise.

“Oh, my,” she said as she ran for someone to come and help her.

Another medica joined her a moment later. “What’s wrong, Pimmie?”

She gestured. “They’re gone.”

“Both of them?”

She nodded. “Yes. She was ailing, but the young man seemed fine yesterday.”

The other medica moved closer. “She was his grandma?”

Pimmie shook her head, remembering the conversation of the day before. “Oh, no. She was his wife.”

The other medica looked more closely at the man’s face. “But he’s Seveeran. They don’t just die. They have to choose—”

“And he chose,” said Pimmie, tears sliding down her cheeks. “He chose to go. When she did.”

She smiled through the tears. “He didn’t want to be without her.”

“Well, now they’re both in the stars,” said the other medica. “Together.”

And as she turned to leave the room, Pimmie thought she heard a whisper, but when she turned back to listen, it had gone.

Good night, Marrin.

Good night, Keane. I love you.

I love you, too.