“Aren’t you the little cynic?”
“Fuck you.”
“Again?”
She let her hand run down the hard-muscled curve of his belly. “Maybe. Depends on whether or not you’re up to it.”
He laughed, pulled her closer, and kissed her. Glowing, fragile gossamers danced in the night sky above them.
And later still, while Kat slept, Garroway queried the net for the location of Sirius and was disappointed to learn that that bright star, Alpha Canis Majoris, was halfway across the heavens, invisible now from Ishtar at this longitude.
He wondered if Lynnley was there now.
He wondered if she was thinking of him. Or if she, like he, had found another lover.
He wondered if the sky where she was could be as spectacular as this.
Well, it scarcely mattered. She was a Marine and went where she was sent.
Just like him.