Brim marveled silently as he feasted his eyes on the loveliness before him-had he purposely tried to discover Margot's opposite, he couldn't have made a better job of it.
Where one's beauty was blond and ephemeral, the other's was luxuriously dark and hirsute.
Margot's breasts were small and pointed with pink nipples while Claudia's were large and round, tipped by great dark aureoles and generous paps. Margot herself was a large woman with truly sensual grandness; Claudia, on the other hand, was small and well proportioned, graced by just a touch of plumpness-precisely where it belonged. Both, however, were quite alike in one important element: when sufficiently aroused they could make fierce and intemperate love-in the most deliciously unrestrained and licentious expressions of pure carnality be could imagine....
Brim and Claudia dozed and made love until false dawn lightened the stormy horizon out to sea. He was again relaxed in a corner of the couch, wistfully delighting in her unique beauty by firelight, when his ears caught a familiar thunder in the air- Defiant. Covering himself with his discarded coat, he stepped quietly to the rain-streaked doors-just in time to recognize a unique shape as it thundered out of the clouds. Clearance lamps glowing brightly in the darkness, the graceful cruiser swept over Grand Harbor in a perfect arc-like a ship a tenth her size. Only Aram would be flying her that way, Brim thought with a grin. As her landing lights split the streaming darkness with three powerful beams of dazzling silver, he could almost hear the litany in the young A'zurnian's mind: one seventy on the airspeed-not a whisker more or less-and four threes on the Verticals; turn crosswind at five-hundred irals, then simultaneously reset the Verticals to exactly one thousand and turn for a tight downwind....
Claudia stirred on the sofa, and he turned to face her. She had opened her eyes to frown at him again, still completely unmindful of her nakedness-as if they had been living together for years. "That was Defiant, wasn't it," she asked.
"It was," he said with a smile. "How could you tell?"
"By watching you, Wilf Brim," she said a little proudly. "I think perhaps I have learned to read you."
Brim placed his coat on an end table and sat beside her, still wholly awestruck by the consummate beauty manifested before him. He took her hand and looked into her eyes.
"What else do you read?" he asked.
Her face broke into a little smile, and she squeezed his fingers. "Do you really want to know?" she asked with a serious look.
"I really want to know," Brim said, grinning as he gently rubbed the delightful mound of her stomach.
"Hmmm," she said, wiggling pleasurably under his hand, "one thing I read there is a most profound love for deep space-and all the ships that ply it. But then," she declared with a faraway look, "I already told you about that." Suddenly she frowned a moment, smiling a little wistfully. "No woman will ever completely possess you because of it, either."
"I wonder," Brim said thoughtfully, finding himself drawn inexorably across half a galaxy to the Torond, "if that might not be all too true...." Abruptly, he stopped rubbing. "What else do you read in my face?" he asked.
"Well," Claudia declared in a quiet voice, "sometimes your eyes are full of sadness, Wilf.
I guess I've always wondered if there was someone already in your life." She smiled wistfully.
"I suppose I've always been afraid there was." Suddenly, she frowned and pursed her lips.
Brim shook his head for a moment, gently leaning forward to place his hands on her shoulders. "I won't lie to you," he said, brushing her lips with his. "There is someone whom I think I love, but she is awfully far away and..."
An indignant look suddenly crossed Claudia's face. "Someone you love?" she asked indignantly, pushing him back to a sitting position. "Great Universe," she said angrily, indicating the surfeit of crumpled tissues littering the floor. "I've lost track of how many times we've made love tonight-what would she think of you now?" She raised her eyebrows and peered down at his hand on her stomach. "What would she think of me?" She groaned.
"You could at least have told me before we started this, Wilf Brim. I'll admit that I was every bit as horny as you-but even so, I'm not used to spending the night on my back entertaining somebody else's man!" She glared into his face. "Do you have any idea how easy this sort of thing is for a single girl in a port city like Atalanta? If I wanted to get laid, I didn't need to come to you."
Brim started to open his mouth, but she held up a silencing hand. "I'm not finished yet, you hypocrite," she said, drawing up her knees. "I could have a different man here every night if I wanted to-but I've got a hell of a lot more pride than that. I don't sleep with just anybody. And let me tell you-I never do it with a man that I think belongs to another woman." She shook her head. "She's a long way off, eh? Well, you poor baby! Why didn't you take care of yourself at Payless before you came here?..."
Brim ground his teeth and remained silent until she seemed to be finished. Then he firmly put his hand on her arm.
She scowled, but let the hand remain.
"You didn't let me finish, Claudia," he said in good time, looking her directly in her eyes.
"All right," she admitted grudgingly. "I suppose I didn't." She glowered. "But is there anything else to say?"
"There is," Brim answered calmly. "I'll admit that my brains have been hanging between my legs tonight," he said. "And pretty much everything you've been thinking about me is true. But," he added, raising his index finger in front of her face, "when I said 'she is far away,' I didn't mean only far away in distance. She has recently married someone else...."
Claudia's carefully plucked eyebrows rose suddenly and she pushed back into the cushions. "Married!" she gasped.
"Married," Brim assured her.
"Oh, Voot!" Claudia muttered in a much subdued voice. "I'm sorry. I guess, then, she wouldn't mind much at all, would she?"
"You can be quite sure of that," Brim answered. "In fact," he added, staring off into the room thoughtfully, "I rather suspect that she'd be glad we've gotten together this way." He gently drew her fingers to his lips-they smelled strongly of love. "There," he whispered, "now you know my secret. Can we still at least be friends?"
She looked thoughtfully into his eyes and pursed her lips. "Yes," she said after a time,
"we must be friends, that's very important to me, I find. But only friends, even when we share a bed-or a couch." She smiled. "I have a few other acquaintances in town," she said evenly.
"I broke a date with one of them yesterday afternoon."
"No permanent plans with anybody?' Brim asked.
"None," Claudia said emphatically. "Otherwise, you and I wouldn't have sullied my couch the way we have. When it comes time for me to settle down, Wilf, then he'll be the one."
He nodded. "I think I'm finally beginning to know you a little bit," he said simply.
"Good," she said, "and now, Mr. Brim, there's something I want to know about you."
"What's that?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Promise to tell me the truth?"
Brim grinned. "And hope to die," he declared.
"All right," she said, looking him directly in the face. "When you are-" she shrugged "-you know, panting and groaning like you do..."
"Yes?" She had little room to go on about his panting and groaning, he thought with a private smile.