"Smeds-MarathonRunner" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smeds Dave)

Thea kept talking. She was easy to listen to. The stiffness leaked from his
shoulders and spine. He stopped compulsively running his hands up and down the
handle of his mug. Thea filled the dreaded long pauses when he couldn't think of
a thing to say. Yet she listened when he did manage to stutter out a phrase. She
laughed at his jokes.

Gradually the conversation became real, more than small talk. Neil managed to
get past his tendency at earlier parties to keep it light. Dr. Rosen said that
trait was a defense mechanism, a habit left over from his twilight decades when
any friend he made died. Old widowers risked much to try to forge deep
relationships. Neil didn't care about the analysis. He just did what felt right.
Heart pounding, he got the words out: "Can I see you again?"

Thea played with one of her tightly kinked curls, like a cat next to a mouse it
has trapped, letting the poor thing wonder if it will again set down its paw.
"Yes. I would like that," she said.

For their first date, they took the Slingshot up to low earth orbit, on a
ten-hour tourist package Thea had signed up for on a whim years back. She'd
never canceled the reservations for two, figuring that when the time finally
arrived, she'd find someone who wanted to accompany her.

Neil and Thea spent the bulk of the visit strolling along the view decks of the
Earthrise Mall, goggling at the starscape. Their favorite moments, though, took
place in what Thea labeled "the trampoline chamber," a sphere eighteen meters in
diameter, attached to the space station just so Grounders could fly back and
forth to their hearts' content. They giggled like children, hysterical at the
peculiar effect of weightlessness on their faces and figures. By the time they
took their berths in the descent vehicle, they were so pleasantly exhausted that
they napped for the last half of the glide to sea level.

As they strolled out of the station into a blustery night, Thea threw back her
head and hooted enthusiastically, "Oh, I love doing new things, don't you?"

Her arm drifted into the crook of his elbow. Neil's wits seemed to vanish into
the breeze, knocked out of his brain by the unexpected chill of natural
planetary atmosphere. He recognized the cue. The decision, said her body with a
theatrical shiver, was his.

She looked so perfect, black flesh framed against a black sky. The warmth of her
radiated all the way from his cradled elbow up his arm and down his torso to his
crotch. Yes, he told himself, trying to reestablish his ability to breathe. If
she was ready, so was he.

SHE TOOK Neil into her with velvet-glove softness. She squirmed on top of him,
rolling like an otter on the slick, firm surface of his torso. Her breasts
tickled the hairs of his chest, pasting them down with her own sweat. Casting
off his anxiety, he concentrated on pleasing her.