Page 100 of Shadows of Stardust

“What do you hope, Roslyn?”

For a few moments, I think she won’t answer, that it’s another secret I haven’t earned. Something she’d rather keep to herself than have the entire universe know.

But, like I should have already come to expect, Roslyn surprises me.

“I’d like to open a greenhouse one day.”

I give her a perplexed look as my translator tries to make sense of the word, and Ros laughs softly.

“A plant store. Somewhere I could grow things and sell them to people. The place I grew up on Earth… well, from what little I can remember of it, was so green, so alive with plants. One of the last green places.”

Her eyes go distant for a moment in memory, and I don’t know what to say. An old familiar ache kicks up in the center of my chest. The knowledge that sometimes you can’t ever go back, that the place in this universe which feels most like home will forever be lost to you.

It’s an ache Ros likely knows just as well, and I squeeze her hand softly. As if that one touch might communicate the depth of loss and understanding.

“I’d like to give that to people,” she murmurs. “I’d like to bring a little life into wherever it is I go after this. A little growth. A little green.”

She cups a blossom in her other hand, touch feather-light, staring at it for a few wondrous moments before she turns her face up to meet my gaze.

Her smile is brighter than all the blooms around us.

Brighter than the sea of stars above, brighter than any dawn or any blazing sunset, more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen.

It’s different than the smiles I’ve seen from her before.

No brittle humor and no edge of defeat, no half-formed expression meant to mask a pain she doesn’t want me to see.

Unrestrained and unguarded, offered to me like the fates themselves have called me to stand before them for their blessing. For a few heartbeats, it’s like looking into the bright living center of the universe.

I can’t stop myself from leaning down to taste all that sparkling light for myself.

Ros drops the flower, turns in my arms, and leans into the kiss. Though the faint whir of the hovercams is a reminder that this moment isn’t just ours, it hardly matters.

I’d live in it, if I could. In this achingly tender piece of eternity.

In all the effervescence of it, in the simple, uncomplicated beauty, so much more terribly delicate than anything I’ve known. Fragile, so fragile, like one false move might shatter it around us.

But my Ros doesn’t shatter as she pulls me closer, opens her lips for me and groans when I deepen the kiss. She’s solid as the bedrock of the mountain beneath us in the grip she places on my neck, my shoulders, grasping tightly enough for me to catch her intent and lift her against me.

She wraps her legs around my waist, nips at my lips, and I open to her silent command, letting her direct the kiss just how she wants. Tangle her hands in my hair and tug at my horns just how she wants. Fit every sweet curve of her body against mine just how she wants.

I’d give her anything she wants.

Any request, spoken or unspoken, it’s hers.

As I kiss her beneath the stars, as I lose myself in the warmth of her, the passion of her, I know that truth to my very marrow.

I’d give Roslyn anything she asked of me. Foolish or not, temporary or not, there’s no force in the entire universe that could make me turn away now.

27

Roslyn

The hover drops us right back down at the front steps of the bungalow.

Cameras circle to capture the last few moments of our date as Zan helps me down to the sand, but when they finally drift off and leave us alone, I’m still way too keyed up to relax.

I… think that went well.

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