THE OFF WORLD COLLECTION (Short, Steamy Science Fiction Romances) (Off-World Series) (11 page)

“It’s big news on Palomar.”

“I’d rather not be the news.”

“Agreed.” He flicked off the broadcast.

“How often are they going to show me?”

“Probably every hour for a day or two.”

“Too bad.”

“You’ll be famous.”

“I don’t want to be.”

“I think we’ve had enough lessons for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll open a private channel so the two of us can use the units when we’re not together. You can do some unpacking. Or, if you’re tired, go to bed.”

“Yes.”

Yes, what, he wondered. Unpack or go to bed? And then what?

Chapter Four

Caleb hurried back to the prep area, cleared the table, drew hot water into a pan, and added the dishes. Then he put away the leftover food. By the time he was finished with the cleanup and looked into the bedroom, he saw that Beka’s storage crate was sitting against the wall, the bathroom door was closed, and he could hear water running. Should he get into bed? No, he should shower, too. And then what? Did he get in bed naked like he usually did? Maybe that was going too far, under the circumstances.

He went out and unloaded some of the supplies, then came back to see she’d turned out the overhead lights. The bedroom was dark, except for light from one of the oil lamps he’d left on in the front room. He strode past the bed to the bathroom, used the commode, and then took a quick shower, keeping his wounded arm out of the water. When he’d dried off, he put on a fresh pair of briefs, turned off the bathroom light, and walked to the bedroom, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness before he approached the bed. She had taken the side farthest from the bathroom—the right. He took the left, hearing her drag in a breath and let it out as he settled down beside her.

It had been years since he’d slept in a bed with anyone else. At first he’d slept with his dad, until he’d gotten his own small room, which was now used for storage. He knew there were guys who had tried things out together. Sexual things. He knew some of them had thought of their partners as a substitute for a gal. And he knew other guys who had been seriously into the homer thing. Some of them had even moved in together. He hadn’t been one of them—in either case. He had wanted a woman, and now he had one in his bed.

He lay beside
Beka for long moments in the darkness. She’d said she wanted them to be comfortable with each other. Would she be comfortable if he touched her? Nothing sexual. Just a touch. Slowly, he moved his arm toward her, feeling the sleeve of her gown. The fabric felt thick and practical. He slid his arm farther toward her until the back of his hand was pressed lightly to hers.

He felt her stiffen, then relax.

Nothing sexual, he’d told himself, again. But just the contact of her soft skin against his hand sent a wave of arousal through him. Could it be having the same effect on her? Or was he just so far gone that the merest touch was going to charge him up?

For long minutes she didn’t move. Then she turned toward him, slinging her arm across his chest and resting her head on his shoulder. Slowly he brought his arm up, clasping her.

“I told you we can’t . . .”

“I know,” he said quickly.

After a moment, she whispered, “But we can get to know each other a little better.”

“Like how?”

She raised up, then brought her mouth to his, the light contact almost knocking the breath from his lungs. In all his life, he had never kissed anyone on the mouth, and he’d never felt anything that affected him more, not in this lifetime. When she moved her lips against his, he thought he would go up in flames.

His arm tightened on her shoulder as she nibbled at him. Then he felt her tongue exploring the seam of his lips. He’d seen tongue action on the vids. He supposed it was meant to be arousing, but it always looked slimy. He wasn’t sure he wanted to try it.

But when she said, “Caleb, open for me,” he did as she asked.

Her tongue slipped inside his mouth, playing with the inside of his lips, the ridges of his teeth. It wasn’t bad at all. In fact, he caught his breath as he absorbed the erotic wonder of that contact.

“Caleb.” She whispered his name again, this time against his lips.

“
Beka.”

This was nothing like the dueling tongues or hard, frantic kisses he’d seen in the pornos. Nothing at all.

It was soft and sweet, and he had never experienced anything close to what they were doing now. Probably on a normal planet, teenagers slipped off to do this kind of thing all the time. But he hadn’t grown up on a normal planet. He’d been here on Palomar where there were no women.

The kisses made him dizzy with the need for her. He clenched and unclenched his fist, ordering himself not to grab her and pull her body against his aching cock.

She stayed where she was for long moments, but when she eased away, he felt the loss like a dagger in his gut.

“Maybe we should stop,” she whispered.

“Why?”

“Because we can’t make love.” He heard her swallow in the darkness. “And both of us want to.”

Both of us.

Was she telling the truth? He knew he wanted to. But how did you know a woman was charged up?

He lay beside her, wondering what would happen if he reached for her and pulled her back against himself. But he didn’t do it because he had no idea where to put his feelings or his passion.

He lay beside her in the darkness for a long time. But sometime during the night he finally fell asleep.

oOo

Beka
breathed out a little sigh when he drifted off. He’d let her take the lead, but she’d felt his passion ramping up. Maybe she was testing him when she told him they should stop. He’d done it, although she knew he’d wanted more. She could tell from his breathing and the heat coming off him.

But that was good. He hadn’t tried to force her. Maybe he hadn’t for a couple of reasons.

He had to be inexperienced, living on this world that had been colonized only by men. He could have gone off Palomar, to a pleasure world. But would he have spent the credits for that?

And maybe, if he’d never been with a woman, he was worried that he’d make some strategic mistake. In that situation, some guys would plow ahead and blunder their way to completion. But hopefully, he was the kind of man who wouldn’t take a woman against her will.

Let this work out the way I want it
, she murmured inside her head, asking the fates for more than she ever had in her life.

oOo

When Caleb woke, he was disoriented for a moment. Someone was in bed beside him. He was reaching for the beamer in the bedside table when he realized who was there.

Beka
.

He turned his head and looked at her, hardly able to believe she was really there, and the events of the day before weren’t simply a dream.

When he’d climbed into bed, it had been dark. Now a stream of sunlight warmed the edge of the blinds, and Beka was watching him. Luckily he was still under the covers because a hard-on strained at the front of his briefs.

He cleared his throat. “Did you sleep okay?”

“Yes. Did you?”

“Yeah, but the day starts early here.”

“I know. I grew up on a farm.”

“You did?” That was the first thing she’d said about her background.

“Yes. That should be an advantage, right?”

“Yeah.”

He eased out of bed, keeping his back to her, and headed for the bathroom, where he used the commode. After taking the bandage off his arm, he turned on the water and stepped into the shower.

He washed quickly and did everything else in record time. When he came out, he smelled coffee brewing in the kitchen.

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” she said, disappearing into the bathroom and closing the door.

He had fixed eggs and cured meat when she came into the prep area, wearing work pants, a warm shirt and boots.

“You can show me what you do in the morning,” she said.

He flushed, then decided it was dumb not to tell her his routine. “I guess I take care of the stock before I eat.”

“Don’t think I have to eat first thing. Let’s leave the food in the pan and do the chores.”

“Right.”

He took her out to the barn, and right away he knew he wasn’t going back inside the house immediately.

Silla was moving around in her stall.

"I think maybe we’re going to have a foal before too long,” he muttered.

Beka
eyed the mare’s bulging middle "She’s due soon?"

"Uh huh. She came into season early, but I had sperm in the freezer unit."

“Oh,” she answered, and he wondered if that was more information than she wanted to know.

Caleb walked over to Silla’s stall, talking to the chestnut-colored horse soothingly as he examined her teats. Not all horses leaked milk. But he saw colostrum—which was a good indication that she was close to delivery.

"We’d better check on her every hour.”

“Yes.”

He let the chickens into their outside yard and fed them, then milked the cows. She watched what he was doing.

When he was finished, they went inside to eat a quick breakfast.

"She might wait until tonight—when she’s alone," Beka said.

"I know," he answered.

After breakfast, he pointed to the comms units sitting on the desk. “We were going to open a line between us. Actually, there should be a line between these two units already, but I haven’t used it in years.”

He gestured for the connection, then saw a green light blink.

“I’ll go outside. You stay in here, and I’ll call you.”

“And then what do I do?”

“You can just say my name.”

“Okay.”

He went out to the side of the barn and flashed the unit. The cube opened up beside it, and a few moments later he saw Beka’s face.

“I guess it works.”

“We’ll get off, and you try to call me.”

“By holding it up and saying your name?”

“Yes.”

They did the reverse. “And now come on out, and we’ll muck out a bigger stall for Silla.”

“What an offer.”

She came back to the barn, and they donned masks, gloves and caps before cleaning the stall.

“We don’t waste anything,” he said. “The manure and the straw will go into the fields.”

When they’d collected the waste, they added fresh dry hay to the stall and led the mare inside. All the while, he spoke to Silla, telling her she was going to have a fine baby very soon.

He checked on the mare every hour, in between doing other chores that kept him around the farmyard—and showing Beka some of the things she needed to know, like what his code meant on the packages of meat in the freezer.

By that evening, Silla was pawing at the straw and pacing around in the stall. After a quick dinner, Caleb and
Beka went back to the barn. Even though the chance of the mare’s developing problems was slight, he also knew that if something unexpected happened, he’d have to deal with it quickly.

He set out a kit of items he might need. But since a mare could stop her labor during the first stage if she was disturbed, he spread a blanket for himself on a pile of straw outside the stall.

He’d gotten very little sleep in the past couple of days, and he must have dozed off. The next thing he knew, a strangled exclamation woke him. Staggering up, he crossed to the stall and found Beka down on her knees beside the horse.

Silla was lying on her side, pushing, but when he looked between her legs, he saw what
Beka had spotted—a red bag at the entrance to the birth canal. And he knew what it meant. Premature separation of the placenta.

Chapter Five

"Can you call a vet. . .?" Beka gasped.

"Nobody could get here in time," Caleb answered, knowing that immediate action was critical because the foal’s oxygen came from the placenta, and it was no longer attached to the uterus. If they didn’t get the baby out of his mother fast, it would suffocate.

There was no time to panic.

"Talk to Silla. Tell her everything’s going to be okay," Caleb directed, even when he knew it might be a lie.

Dashing out of the stall, he grabbed the scissors that he’d gotten ready—just in case. Beka was bending over the mare, speaking soothingly to her.

"What else can I do?” she murmured.

"Just keep her calm."

Beka
answered with a tight nod, stroking Silla’s face as she bent to whisper soft words.

Feeling a kind of deadly composure, Caleb knelt down at the other end of the mare and used the scissors to open the placenta, being careful not to cut Silla or her baby.

"I’ll help her deliver if she needs me," Caleb murmured, keeping his voice low and even to avoid alarming the horse.

Beka
nodded, and he felt the shared intimacy of what they were doing. His attention switched back to the horse when Silla pushed again. As he saw two feet emerge, he breathed a sigh of relief.

"The
foal’s in the normal position," he said, then saw the head follow, with the ears slicked back against the skull.

"Thank the universe,"
Beka breathed.

As Caleb gently tugged, Silla pushed her baby into the world.

Both he and Beka breathed a sigh of relief as she turned and began to lick her colt. He raised his beautiful chestnut head and looked at his mother.

They kept working together, making sure the baby had no breathing problems and washing Silla’s udders.

By the time the foal stood and took his first drink of colostrum—the fluid in his mother’s udder before her milk came in—Caleb was exhausted.

Wearily, he turned to
Beka. "Thank you. We made a good team.” They had worked together well, and it had felt good.

But now that the crisis was over, he could see
Beka was wavering on her feet. "You need some sleep," he told her.

"I was about to say the same to you."

They both made it back to the house. In the bedroom, he saw Beka throw one of his old sheets over the bed. “We’re both filthy, but we both need to sleep,” she said in response to his questioning look.

“Yeah.”

He kicked off his boots and flopped onto the sheet. Beka did the same and lay down beside him. He was asleep almost instantly and didn’t wake until his usual time in the morning.

Turning his head, he looked at his wife. “That was a strange experience.”

“What?”

“Having help. I appreciated it.”

“I’m glad.”

“I’m going to go check on Silla and the foal.”

She nodded, then asked, “What are you going to name him?”

“Why don’t you pick a name?”

“Me?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Let me think about it.”

He went out to the barn and checked on mom and baby before letting the chickens out, noting that
Beka must have put them in for the night while he was busy.

When he came back to the house, she’d made a pot of coffee, and he took a mug.

“You probably want to take a shower,” she murmured.

“You can go first.”

“I’ll wait,” she said, and he thought he heard a strained quality to her voice.

He strode to the shower, turned on the hot water, and discarded his dirty clothes. He started to kick them to the side of the room. Instead he scooped them up and put them in the hamper.

The hot water felt wonderful after the grubby session in the barn. He had just rinsed his hair when he felt cool air invade the shower space. In the next moment, he realized Beka had stepped in behind him.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Taking a shower.”

“With me?”

“It’s practical.”

He kept his shoulders rigid and his back to her, wondering what he was going to do now. Especially since he was suddenly hard as a shovel handle.

“I was thinking about what we could do,” she said in a husky voice.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean instead of what we can’t do . . . Let’s try some other stuff.”

He knew she had lathered her hands when she stroked her slippery fingers over his butt. He had thought he was hard. Now his erection was almost painful.

He went absolutely still when she pressed her naked body against his back, and he felt her breasts against his wet skin. In the next second, she reached to his front and clasped her fist around his pole.

“Don’t,”

“Why not?”

“You’ll make me . . . come,” he managed to say.

She stroked her cheek against his back, ran her free hand along his ribs and his hips, making his body tighten even more.

Opening her mouth against his shoulder, she nibbled at his taut skin.

“You don’t want to?”