Cara gave a little cry of surprise, whirled, and ran over to embrace her son. Vall quickly joined the pair and wrapped them both within his long arms. Long, strong arms his firstborn son had inherited. Star remained to the side, watching with tears hitching in her chest.
Udo was home. Her love had returned, she would finally bear their child, and they had so much to be thankful for.
Chapter Twenty-One
Opaque
“Are you hungry? We had bor brithin for supper. There’s plenty left. Let me warm some up for you,” Cara insisted. Pulling herself away from the men, she hurried into the kitchen as she wiped her eyes with the dishtowel she still clutched.
Hunter glanced at Star, and the hunger she saw in his eyes wasn’t for food, although she knew his last meal may have been days ago.
“Actually, Mom, if it would be all right with you and Dad, Star and I were wanting to stay here for the night before continuing on to Synaria.”
“You know you can stay anytime,” Vall gently derided him.
Hunter gave a lopsided grin as his father tousled his hair, a gesture she had seen both parents do with affection. She was often guilty of doing it, too.
“Terrin, I’m going to take a shower and change into something less grungy.” Giving her a slight nod, he vanished for the back bedroom that would always be exclusively his…theirs. She remained standing and staring at the spot where he’d vanished, lost in her own thoughts, when Vall’s question interrupted.
“You look exhausted. Why don’t you sit down? Would you like something to drink?”
She looked exhausted? Now that he mentioned it, she realized how tired she really was. But for some reason, Hunter’s return made her weariness insignificant, until she remembered she had to think of the baby first.
At the thought of the baby, the initial hunger that manifested itself between her thighs began to beat with a growing intensity. They were spending their first night together here, and she wondered if they’d be able to make it through the dark hours without consummating their passion.
“A glass of water would be nice, thanks, but let me get it.” She quirked a smile at him. “Remember, I’m not a guest here. I’m family.”
Chuckling, Vall waved her away and dropped back into his favorite chair to resume watching whatever was on the vid. Star strolled into the kitchen to find Cara sending the dishes through the cleaner. The woman stopped what she was doing to fetch a glass from a cabinet, and handed it to her.
“The nightmare appears to be over,” Hunter’s mother whispered, and sniffed. Her eyes were pink from crying.
“Yeah, I hope so,” Star confessed. She glanced around the kitchen as she realized something. “Where’s Dallin?”
“On a field trip to the Biro Farsta nebula. They’re spending the weekend on Mars Hebris Two…or is it Taris Hebron Two?” Cara shook her head. “I can’t keep track anymore,” she admitted with a giggle. Casting another look at Star, she narrowed her eyes again. “Terrin, why do I get the impression there’s still something wrong? You’re glowing with happiness, but I would swear something’s holding you back.”
Star set the empty glass down on the counter. The woman could almost read her as well as Hunter did, and maybe it was a blessing. Maybe she didn’t have to wait to ask Doctor Perlakian.
“I…” She took a deep breath and lowered her voice. “Can I ask you a very personal question?”
“Terrin, you can ask me anything. You know that.”
“How… Is it possible to make love when I’m pregnant?”
Cara’s gaze went immediately to her throat, and the woman’s hand flew to her own HeartCrystal embedded in the same location as Star’s. Her eyes then dropped to Star’s rounded tummy before looking her in the face. A compassionate smile curved her lips.
“Yes, Terrin. You can make love without hurting the child, up until your eighth month,” she softly informed her. Smiling warmly, she added, “At least, that’s what my doctor told me.”
“And when we make love, will it bring back our crystal?” Star asked.
More tears welled up in the older woman’s eyes, forcing her to nod. Cara cleared her throat to continue. “Go. Go love my son. Fulfill your happiness and his. I promise, after you do, your worlds will tilt back on their axes, and your lives can resume.” She gave a little shooing motion, similar to the way her husband had done earlier. “Go on! You can raid the pantry later. By then, you’ll both be starving.”
Giving the woman a quick buss on the cheek, Star hurried for the back bedroom.
Hunter was still in the shower when she closed and locked the door behind her. His grimy uniform lay on the floor by the closet, a habit she’d never been able to break him of doing. The closet panel was open to where she could see the spare uniforms they kept at the house for those times when they wanted to use the bedroom as a quick layover.
Strolling into the bathroom, she could see Hunter’s blurry outline on the other side of the cleansing chamber door. Decontamination rays bounced off the hard plastite portal like tiny white exploding fireworks. She caught a glimpse of herself on the shower’s reflective outer surface. A woman with the slightly rounded belly stared back, a silly grin on her flushed face, her eyes twinkling with expectation. Quickly, she shed her own uniform before knocking on the chamber.
“Any room in there for a pregnant woman?”
The rays were turned away, and the door slid to the side. Hunter raked his eyes over her, and his erection began to stiffen, lengthen, and rise. He hesitated.
“Terrin, do you think that’s wise?”
She gave him a slow, sexy smile. “I have it on the best authority,” she murmured in that sultry tone she knew always turned him on, and stepped inside.
He wrapped his arms around her as he drew her under the purifying rays with him. Taking her mouth, he kissed her deeply, and with growing enthusiasm as his member prodded her inner thighs.
“Terrin.”
“Love me, Udo. Don’t hold back any longer. Love me. I’ve missed you so much.” She mouthed the stubble on his cheek, not caring if it abraded or not, then moved to his neck and bare shoulder. “Oh, gods, I’ve missed you.”
“Let’s move to the bed—”
“No!” she urgently whispered, taking his face between her palms to kiss him again. To let her tongue invade his mouth where he would suckle on it the way she enjoyed.
He lifted her off her feet, and the sensation of her rounded belly sliding up his abdomen made him chuckle. “Star, do you remember that time when you floated horizontally for me?”
There were many times they had floated above the bed, the floor, or wherever, she recalled, but she knew the very first time he was referring to. Letting go of his face, she locked her feet behind him and leaned backwards until she lay perpendicular to his body. Grasping her legs, Hunter pulled her toward him, adjusting her height to where their groins met. The head of his erection nestled against her lower lips with a promising pressure. Within the large, oval-shaped interior, there was plenty of room for her to stretch out.
“I didn’t think you could ever be more beautiful than you already were,” he murmured. His hands grasped her swelling breasts to lightly pinch the tips. Star gasped, and he immediately withdrew them.
“Did I—”
“No. You didn’t hurt me,” she reassured him. Reaching for his hands, she brought them back to her breasts. “Trust me, my love. Read me. You’ll know if I feel any pain.”
His fingers playfully batted her tight nipples, rolling them like dials on a comm board. With every touch, she could feel her need growing more and more voracious, almost like a physical plea to him to enter her. And when he ran his nails lightly across her skin, ice and fire crawled under her skin.
She shivered. “Take me, Udo. Please!”
Instead, he lowered his face over her abdomen and kissed it. “Our baby. Our love made another child. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this miracle.” His lips traveled downward towa
rd her mons as his fingers continued to make swirling patterns over her hips and thighs. “When I was inside the wormhole, I didn’t allow myself to dream of this, of loving you again like this. I couldn’t. Being taken away from you like that… I couldn’t think past the present. I couldn’t dream of the future.”
Neither could she. But that nightmare was over. They were together again, and it was all she could do to keep herself elevated. The heady sensations racing through her were intoxicating.
She felt his hand at her entrance, spreading her lower lips, which his other hand released its grip above her knee. Carefully, he placed the head of his erection at her entrance, moving it slowly, agonizingly, around and over her clit. She jerked her legs impatiently and started to reach down to grab him when he stopped her.
“Let me take my time, Terrin. It will make the outcome all the sweeter.”
Clenching her hands, she pressed them to her hips, when Hunter removed his member. A moment later, his mouth replaced it to lick her hard little bud, and she nearly soared. Throwing her arms out to her sides and turning her palms face down, she was able to steady herself, but she was rapidly losing touch as his tongue probed her inner chamber, plunging past the entrance as his unshaven cheeks and jaw rasped over her sensitive flesh. When he took her clit into his mouth and suckled it, she felt herself rising toward her peak. Her hips bucked uncontrollably against his assault, but his hands kept her firmly in place.
“Udo!”
She was gasping, trying to stay aloft, as fiery need consumed her. She couldn’t stop him, she couldn’t beg him to take her fully to feel herself being filled with his hard length. Her mind went blank as her body drank from this world of pleasure.
At no time was she aware of him removing his mouth until he slowly sank himself deep within her. Pushing his quivering erection all the way inside before withdrawing it an inch at a time. Letting her juices coat him, scald him, force him back within her.
Their ragged breathing echoed within the chamber. Hunter clutched her thighs as he pumped himself, using long, smooth strokes that gradually became shorter and rougher. She sensed him leaning over her, his breath puffing over her tummy. Their moans echoed within the chamber, until he reached between her legs, edged his thumb down to where they were joined, and manipulated her clit.
The room went incandescent. White hot light flooded her soul, blinding her, and scorching her muscles. Star cried out, and she lost the power of flight.
Hunter caught her before she fell. Sliding onto the shower floor, he pulled her onto his lap and continued to pump into her as she leaned her head on his shoulder. Working her over him in his frenzy to find release. Seconds later, he grunted, followed by a deep groan, and he allowed Star to slump against him as he leaned against the shower wall.
They continued to hold each other, their breathing irregular, his arms wrapped around her waist and hers touching his neck as their mutual satisfaction simmered inside them. Vaguely, Star could only wonder what the rest of the night would bring, or if they’d even get any sleep at all.
Although none of it mattered. None of it was more important than being together, sharing their lives and their love.
Presently, Hunter moved, and she felt his softened erection slipping out of her. “Did Mom say she’d prepared bor brithin for supper?”
Laughing silently made her fuller breasts rub along his chest. Gasping, she reached down to protect her extra sensitive nipples. Hunter also chuckled and deliberately rubbed his stubbly chin across her collar bone.
“I’m hungry,” he told her. “For food, this time. Or else I won’t have the energy to continue loving you.”
Cupping his face again in her palms, Star looked down into his warm gaze. “You know, I think I’m becoming partial to that beard you’re trying, or not trying, to grow.”
Hunter smiled. Bowing his face, he started to kiss her shoulder again when he stopped. His eyes grew wider, and he quickly glanced up at her.
“Terrin, our crystals.”
“What?”
She turned to look at the shiny inner surface of the chamber and her slightly fuzzy image. Reaching over, she wiped the silvery wall with one hand, and her eyes riveted on the tiny stone lying in the hollow of her throat.
The HeartCrystal, which had been clear all these months since Hunter disappeared into the wormhole, was now black and glowing. Restored.
Emma had come back to them.
*
Black and glowing. Cementing their love until it was stronger than ever. Star reached up to caress the temporal stone, when Seeker’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
“Star? Will you be much longer?”
Glancing up from where she’d been staring down at the meeting room table, Star managed to smile at her fellow Guardian who had come looking for her.
“Yeah. I’m on my way,” she replied and rose from her seat.
Hunter would find Callie. She had every faith in her husband that he would. Just as she had every belief now that her father would pay for every hour, every year of misery he’d forced upon her since that moment when he sold his only child to a traveling gypsy faire.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Accused
Star felt Hunter’s approach before her husband notified Command. Standing on top of Transport Two where she’d been helping with patching, she looked up at the huge bay doors and waited. Within moments, Hunter’s voice announced over the open intercom, “Transport One to base. Coming in to land.”
At the same time, the ceiling doors parted and began their slow descent sideways. Before they were halfway open, One entered the bay to nestle precisely in its cradle. Star drifted down to the floor as the other Guardians gathered nearby.
As soon as he shut down the engines, Hunter popped out of the craft without lifting the cockpit hood, and gathered his wife in his arms for a kiss. A second kiss to her forehead, and he released her to face Deceiver.
“All right. I’ve brought One home. I’m going back to the space station to look for my daughter,” he told the Guardian leader, as if challenging him to delay his hunt even further than it already was. Deceiver nodded, and started to reply, when a soft voice interceded.
“She’s not on the space station.”
Everyone turned to stare at Destiny, who emerged from the shadowed section where she’d been working. Hunter stared at her, brows knitted.
“Run that by me again? Callie’s not on the space station?”
“Neither is DiMackerlyn,” the woman added.
Star sensed her husband’s resentment roiling inside him like thick black clouds. He took a step toward the psychic with undisguised anger.
“How long have you known?” he accused her with that soft voice that sent chills down the spine. “You knew all along I wouldn’t find them, didn’t you? And here, all the way back, I kept wondering if you’d picked up anything. If you knew all this time, why didn’t you tell me before I left so I could take someone with me to bring back the ship, and free me to resume searching for them? You knew!”
“Why didn’t you tell us, Destiny?” Star joined in. “What are you keeping silent? What information are you not sharing with us? Huh?” She also took a menacing step forward. “I want to know where my baby is! I want my baby returned! If you know anything, tell us!”
Seeker spoke up. “Destiny, are you saying DiMackerlyn and the baby are not on the station now? Or that they won’t be there when Hunter arrives?”
For once, they got an answer of sorts when the pale little woman shook her head. “They’re not there now, nor will they be there when Hunter goes back.”
Beside her, Star felt her husband stiffen. At the same moment, an awful thought came to her, and her stomach nearly turned itself inside out. Not to her surprise, Hunter voiced it.
“Then tell me this. Was that sorry SOB and my daughter on the space station when I was there?”
Destiny remained frozen in place, either refusing to answer, or unable to. Or not wanting to.
But it was the answer Star was dreading.
“Oh, dear gods, she was!”
She wanted to strangle to woman. Her hands came up, fingers curved, as if she was ready to place them around the woman’s throat and squeeze until the cartilage buckled under the pressure. Star was unaware of the others around her as she started to advance toward the woman, when she heard a collective gasp of shock. Pausing, she saw them all staring past her, and Star turned to glance at her husband.
Thick ebony wisps swirled around him like ethereal creatures as he brought forth his power, the dark, raw edge of his abilities to hunt and capture. His eyes were no longer the deep blue she loved to gaze into. They were black and as soulless-looking as a collapsed star. When he spoke again, his voice was hollow, reverberating throughout the huge docking bay.
“Tell me now, Destiny, or by all the stars in the heavens, I swear I’ll—”
A loud dinging sound pealed around them. Unlike the emergency claxons, the Guardians recognized an incoming call from one of the visitors kiosks.
“What on earth could they want?” Animator questioned aloud.
“Could be anything,” Disaster mumbled. “Maybe there’s an emergency with one of the tours.”
Blender strode over to answer it, and everything went on temporary hold as they listened. Beside her, Star felt Hunter’s temper continue to boil, but he kept himself in check. The black shadows circling him abated. If she looked, she knew she would see his blue eyes once again.
“Guardian Command. This is Blender.”
“Uhh, hello, Blender.” The voice was young and obviously belonging to someone inexperienced with speaking one-on-one with a Guardian. “This is tour kiosk station C. I have a couple here who claim to be Hunter’s parents. They’re requesting entry onto the base.”
Star glanced at her husband, who also looked at her. “Were you expecting your—” she started to say, when Hunter suddenly disappeared. Seconds passed without him returning, leading Deceiver to comment.
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