he said. "I think I've kept you and Anna Romanoff from each other long enough. Report to the Admiralty personnel office during the next day or so and get your admin work straightened out. And when you're ready, it's back to your old job with the ISS."
"Aye, your Majesty," Brim replied, saluting smartly. Then, turning on his heel, he retraced his steps to the engineering table—amid still another round of deafening applause. Strangely, Brim never could remember the concluding moments of the program. After one look into Anna Romanoff's eyes, all he could hear was the pounding of his own heart.
On their way through the vast foyer, Brim and Romanoff found themselves mobbed by a glittering array of well wishers who then urged them to attend more private parties, in addition to the numerous written invitations each had received in advance. Smiling and shaking hands with throngs of eternally prattling celebrity worshipers, it took them nearly three-quarters of a metacycle to reach the luxurious little skimmer Romanoff kept in Avalon for her personal use. It was covered with light snow. Brim had opened the driver's door for her, but she put her hand gently on his arm. "You drive tonight, Wilf," she said, her large brown eyes soft in the glow from the street lights. "It's been a long evening."
"Of course," he replied, following her around the nose of the car to hold the passenger door instead. As she slid inside, her skirt crept a considerable distance above her knees. He tried to appear as if he hadn't noticed, but he was woefully late.
"Like them?" she asked with a provocative little smile, peering critically at herself for a moment before she smoothed the wayward dress back down to her knees.
Brim took a deep breath. "You have beautiful legs," he said, feeling his face flush with embarrassment. "I apologize for gaping the way I did."
"Well, I certainly hoped you'd notice," she said, looking him frankly in the eye. Then, with an impudent look, she pulled the door shut.
Brim made his way around to the driver's door with his heart beating considerably faster than it had been moments before. She'd never carried on that way before! But then, he considered while he brushed snow from the windshield, neither had he. In recent months, this delicately beautiful woman, all tough and fragile at the same time, had become almost an obsession with him. She was never far from his mind.
Lately, he'd stopped deluding himself; he was genuinely in love—probably for the very first time in his life.
From the beginning, Margot had never realistically been more than a hopeless dream. And his brief, fiery affair with Claudia Valemont was the epitome of wartime romance: all passion and little else. In those days, no one really expected to survive more than a few days at most. He'd blundered into both relationships the way he waged war: totally—and damn the consequences.
Anna Romanoff, on the other hand, was a different story altogether. She was real. And although he didn't think he stood much of a chance with her, he did expect to live for a few more years.
Unfortunately, he reflected, a more or less "normal" relationship was new to him. And because of it, those once-disregarded consequences had become absolutely daunting in significance. What if he'd misconstrued her intentions just now? If he made a pass at the wrong time, a woman like that could rid herself of him with a mere snap of her fingers—and then where would he be? In an utter agony of indecision, he opened the door and took his place behind the controls. "Well, Anna," he asked, staring through the windshield because he hadn't the nerve to face her, "where will it be tonight? We've got more invitations than we can shake a stick at—as usual."
Her answer, when it came, was unexpectedly tinged with a sense of melancholy. "I don't really know, Wilf," she said after a long moment of consideration. "Every one of them seems like a mandate—especially for a brand-new Lieutenant Commander."
Brim glanced at her wistfully. "If it were up to me," he said, "I'd just as soon stay here in the parking lot with you." He shook his head. "We've logged a lot of time together this past year, you and I—but I'll bet we haven't been alone for more than a half-metacycle."
She nodded, watching through the snow-powdered window while a few stragglers glided toward the exits, their running lights blurred by the softly falling snow. "I wonder if they all live frantically like that,"
she mused absently, then turned to study him. "Did you really mean you'd rather sit in a parking lot with me than go to those parties?" she asked presently.
Brim nodded. "Yes," he replied, "I did."
"Even though it's now politically important for you to attend as many of them as you can, Commander!"
"Somehow," Brim admitted, "it's been a long time since anything has been so important as being with you, Anna."
For long, silent moments, Romanoff studied his face in the darkness. Then, she seemed to reach some conclusion. "Wilf," she said with no further preface. "I've wanted you ever since that night at Sherrington's—just before I lost my stupid nerve and wouldn't let you kiss me. And I think you wanted me, too. But since then, I haven't been able to make you interested again, at all. Not even when I let my skirt slide halfway up my thigh tonight." Abruptly, she slid deeper in her seat and raised her hips. "Well,"
she said, this rime drawing the skirt all the way to her waist, "—if this doesn't do it, I guess I'll have to give up." She wore nothing underneath, and in the darkness of the parking lot, her dark tangle of pubic hair stood out in frantic relief to the smooth whiteness of her thighs. The tawny welt of a scar ran the length of her left hip.
Brim felt his breath catch painfully in his throat. "S-sweet thraggling Universe, Anna," he whispered hoarsely as he took her in his arms, "how could I have been such a fool?"
"I was the fool," she said, making a little gasp as his cold hand gently probed between her thighs, "—but I was afraid of losing you and..."
Before she could finish, he covered her trembling mouth with his own in a wet rush of tongues and teeth that left both of them gasping while he struggled to kick his trousers off. Then, impossibly, he found himself sliding onto her seat at the same time she climbed into his lap, her eloquent brown eyes peering into his very being—as they had nearly a year ago at Lys.
"You'll soon enough find that you aren't the first," she whispered with a pensive little smile, "—but for what it's worth, I've never loved anyone before you, either."
Brim was about to open his mouth, but she placed a finger gently across his lips. "Later," she whispered.
"Now, nothing matters except this..." With that, she reached behind her to guide him, then lowered herself until he was enveloped by a Universe of wet, swollen flesh. "Do it, Wilf," she gasped urgently. "Do it now!"
She remained in his lap long after their urgent sighs had hushed, making love with her lips and tongue while she straddled his thighs. Ultimately, she took a deep breath, placed her hands on the shoulders of his Fleet cape, and peered intently into his eyes. "Wilf Brim," she said with a troubled look, "I'm afraid that I have become very deeply in love with you lately, and I'm not quite sure how to handle it."