Calamity's Child Read Free Page A

scandalized to
find that her new and unshorn husband came to her fully tutored.
Still, Slade thought muzzily, he
was
the elder here, and it was
his duty to ease her way, as much as it was hers to ease his
fear.
    "First," Arika said, breathlessly,
slipping her hands away. "We must remove these skins..." Her
fingers were at the knot again, somewhat steadier. Slade left her
to it and reached to the laces of her robe. She froze.
    "What do you?"
    He smiled again, as guileless as he
might, in which endeavor he was no doubt assisted by the
drugs.
    "If we must remove the
skins, it will go quicker, if you remove mine and I remove yours."
He affected a sudden shyness, dropping his eyes. "Unless there is
some reason in
erifu
that I should not...?"
    She frowned, as if trying
to recall a long-ago and not very well attended lesson. Finally,
she jerked a shoulder -- the Sanilithe negative. "It does not
offend
erifu
. You may continue."
    Continue he did, taking care with the
laces while she fumbled with his kilt. He did not wish to reveal
her too soon. Best, if they became naked and equal in the same
moment.
    He felt the knot at his hip loosen all
at once, slipped the last of the lacing free and slid his palms
over her shoulders, easing the garment up, just as the kilt fell
unceremoniously to the floor. Softly, he smoothed his hands down
her back, slipping the robe down and off, to pool about her
feet.
    She visibly swallowed, her pale eyes
moving down his body in quick glances. Obviously, she hadn't the
least idea what to do now.
    Slade stepped forward, lifting a hand
to her hair, stroking it back to reveal an exotic and enticing
little ear. He heard her gasp, but she had heart, did Arika. She
slid her fingers into his hair, silking it back to reveal his ear.
Greatly daring, she ran her finger 'round the edge and he felt his
blood flare as he copied the motion, then stroked the line of her
jaw. She followed his lead, her fingers moving in a long stroke
down the side of his neck.
    He cupped her breast, she
ran a light hand down his chest; he bent and put his lips around
one pert nipple. She gasped, back arching, and it came to him
that
erifu
would have required that she also drink the Choosing drugs,
to be ready to welcome the new husband in fullness...
    "Slade," she said huskily, and her
hands were in his hair, drawing his face up, her gray-green eyes
looking deep into his. "We -- should lie down."
    A good
idea
, he thought,
before one or the other of us falls into the
fire.
    He stretched out beside her, and she
touched him, tentative fingers warm now, and indescribably
exciting. He moaned, and pulled her to him, exhaustion burning away
into the brilliance of passion.
    *
    Slade opened his eyes to a tent wholly
unfamiliar, a heavy weight pinning his arm to the sleeping mat.
Carefully, he turned his head, and discovered his wife, Arika,
deeply asleep, her head on his shoulder, hair tangled with last
night's passion, lashes sooty smudges on her thin cheeks. In the
spill of morning light from the fire hole, her face was achingly
young.
    Surely,
he thought wildly,
surely a child of this age ought to be with her tutor and not
roistering about in the darkness, soliciting strange men into the
service of her tent?
    He drew a hard breath. The Sanilithe
came quickly to adulthood, and quickly to old age. Gineah, revered
grandmother that she was, with two daughters and a hunter-son, all
grown and mated -- Gineah had between fifty and fifty-five Standard
Years. On the planet of his birth, she would have just reached the
height of her powers, with another thirty to fifty years before
her...
    The planet of his
birth
, he thought, suddenly bitter;
which he had wished with all his heart to escape -- and found his
wish well-granted.
    Carefully, not wanting to awaken the
girl-child asleep on his shoulder, he drew a breath, and looked
about him.
    It was not the largest tent he had
seen among the Sanilithe, nor the tidiest, though it might,
considering the