Beyond the Stars Read online

  BEYOND THE STARS

  * * *

  C.S. Wilde

  BEYOND THE STARS. Copyright © 2017 by C. S. Wilde.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  To those who never give up.

  1

  -James-

  Tonight, Miriam sits on the porch of our hotel cabana, staring up at the starry sky. A sandy beach stretches some ten yards ahead of her, then merges with the ocean. Dark-grey foam gathers at the waves’ crests, the roar of water crashing against the shore the only sound in the night.

  Miriam doesn’t turn back as I approach, her attention lost in the stars.

  I drop by her side and wrap an arm around her shoulder, kissing her temple. “Looking for home?”

  She nudges me with her elbow. “I am home, silly. I simply enjoy watching the sky.” She keeps her eyes up, a sort of wonder in them. “Besides, you can’t see Whisa’thar from here.”

  I know Miriam’s not going anywhere, but I’ve always felt that she belongs here with me and at the same time, up there, in the vast space. As if she’ll always exist halfway between here and the stars.

  “You miss being up there and that’s fine. You’re allowed to like opposing things.”

  “Oh, am I?” She turns to me and winks, then looks up again. “I miss some aspects of home and being out there.” She nods to the stars. “But I’m a human researcher, or at least I was. Being here among you is basically what I was raised to do.”

  I can’t help but think of Dian Fossey, living with the gorillas. Shaking the thought out of my head, I lift Miriam’s chin and turn her face to mine before planting a kiss on her lips. “So, just watching?” I whisper.

  She leans her forehead against mine. “Just watching.” Miriam must sense my unease, because she cups my cheeks and adds, “Being here with you is the definition of a human heaven to me, James. You have nothing to worry about.”

  “I know...” I really do, but my insecurities have their way of sneaking up on me every now and then.

  I plant my lips on hers as a soft wind stirs the top of the palm trees. She kisses me back, the tip of her tongue exploring the edges of my mouth. Slowly, my hand slides up her torso, venturing inside her blouse.

  “As much as I appreciate stargazing, Mrs. Bauman—” I kiss the tip of her nose, then her lips again “—people usually do other things during their honeymoon.”

  She leans toward me, her breast full in my palm, her nipple between my fingers, and a familiar pressure grows inside my shorts.

  She opens a lazy smile, her lips an inch from mine, before whispering with a low, sensual tune that makes certain parts of me pulse, “Why, Mr. Bauman, I never get tired of doing other things with you.”

  ***

  “Morning,” I spoon Miriam’s back, bringing her close.

  We’re tangled in white sheets as a sharp and fresh marine scent hangs in our room, seagull’s caws ringing in the distance.

  I kiss the curve of her neck, taking in all of my wife: her sweet morning fragrance, the salty taste of her skin against the tip of my tongue, her perfectly shaped curves as my hand slides down her waist….

  She moves her hips, rubbing against my nether parts. “Morning,” she says with a smile in her voice. “I like waking up this way.”

  “Hmm.” I groan as I press harder against her, blazing a trail of kisses on her shoulder.

  I don’t know what Miriam sees in me, but whatever it is, it has kept us in this room for the past two days. Which is freaking awesome, but we are supposed to enjoy our days at the beach. Eventually.

  She stops rubbing against me. “You prefer the beach?”

  “No mind reading,” I grumble, hoping she’ll get back on track.

  “But you’re right. It’s been two days and we haven’t left the room much.”

  Damn it. “You missed the part where I said ‘eventually’. As in not now.”

  She turns around, and I sigh deep within my chest. Morning sex isn’t happening any time soon, is it?

  “I’ll tell you what.” She caresses my stubble. “Let’s find a deserted beach. What is it you humans say? Kill two birds with one stone?”

  Sex on the beach? God, I love this woman.

  We put on our beach clothes, and just as we’re about to leave, Miriam’s eyes widen and she gasps, leaning on the wall. “By all the stars in the universe.” Her tone is hoarse, weakened, almost scared. “Did you feel that?”

  “What?” I look around the room. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, but the panic on her face sends shockwaves down my spine. “Mir, are you okay?”

  Miriam stares wide-eyed at the window, then at the walls, her chest heaving up and down.

  “Mir?” I walk to her and cup her cheeks. “Are you all right?”

  It takes her a while to look at me and nod. “I-I guess. I…” She slams her foot twice on the floor as if she wants to make sure it’s not moving. “There was an earthquake. I felt it.”

  I think I’d have noticed an earthquake, but maybe it was a really small one. Just in case, I grab the remote on the bed and turn on the TV. Apart from the usual slurry of news, nothing about an earthquake comes up. I change channels, and just when I stop at CNN, images of cracking grounds and falling buildings pop up on the screen: an earthquake in Tibet. People covered in dirt and debris screaming and crying on the other side of the TV. Thousands of lives lost.

  With a dry throat, I mutter, “Tibet is halfway across the world from here.”

  “This is so odd.” Miriam stares at her arms and legs. “I could feel the ground tumbling beneath my feet, and then the movements slipped inside my body. The ground shaking outside was shaking beneath my skin. Almost as if I had become the earthquake.”

  I swallow hard then clear my throat, fear coating me in a thin layer. But I can’t show it. Having her nerdy, wimpy husband freak out on her is the last thing Miriam needs. So I take her hand and kiss it, trying to hide the worry in my tone. “Did you cause this?”

  She shakes her head and immediately says, “No, definitely not, and I don’t think I ever could. But I felt it. This shouldn’t happen, unless…”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Unless?”

  “Well, feats we can’t explain, so called ‘bugs’ in our telekinesis, aren’t unheard of. Hypersensitivity to natural events doesn’t seem too implausible, considering the connecting surface between the event and me. Tectonic plates aside, it’s still the same ground, so to speak.” Her shoulders relax and her breathing slows. “Yes, it was a bug. I just never expected to experience one. They’re not exactly common.” She lets out a deep, relieved breath.

  Miriam might be calmer now, but my heartbeat is still going a hundred miles per hour.

  She must see the concern on my face, or maybe she read my thoughts, because she says, “I’m fine.” Miriam wraps her arms around me, resting her face on my chest. “Whatever it was, it’s gone.” She gives me a gentle peck on the lips and smiles. “Now, we have a deserted beach to find, Mr. Bauman.”

  2

  -Miriam-

  I spent decades looking for love: on my home world and other planets, in starships and missions, but all I found was emptiness. A hundred Dratas—centuries—gone as I ached for what humans knew so well. Now that I found love, I can’t get enough of it. It’s hard to detach from its source: James, the physical manifestation of the concept, at least to me.

  I abandoned everything for him, and I’d do it again
without second thought. He makes me so happy… but I don’t want to scare him by being too clingy. I read in a magazine that it’s a sure way to ‘lose your man’. So here we are, me reading a book, and he swimming in the green-blue Caribbean waters.

  My mate, husband, as they say on Earth. Marriage is a silly human tradition, but it bears a wonderful weight. I’m his, and he’s mine.

  The warmth of the peaking sun encloses me in a pressing heatwave. Sweat beads on my skin. The beach is empty, only me and James and the water and the sky. Not a bad way to spend the day, especially if we proceed with what we came here to do.

  Everything that James does starts a fire in me: the way he smiles, his calm voice, his stubble rubbing against my skin, his lips on mine… Being aroused is a rare concept to whisars. We copulate mainly to procreate, never for fun. Once paired with mates, though, we go in heat for a few weeks—a simple biological reaction to assure pregnancy. Naturally, conception is of no concern to me. My vessel is sterile.

  Perhaps the heating weeks are the reason our honeymoon has been so… intense.

  James steps out of the water, droplets contouring his lean body. For a self-entitled nerd who hates the gym, he has tight muscles. James goes on half-hour runs three times a week, even if it rains. He says that he has to compensate for all that time in front of the computer. And compensate he has.

  I catch myself biting my lower lip. Pushing my sunglasses down, I scout around. We’re utterly alone.

  He drops onto our king-sized towel, lying by my side, my glorious sample of the human species.

  I put my book aside and lean toward him. “Nice swim?”

  “Oh yeah. The water is amazing. You have to try it out.”

  My finger traces invisible lines over his chest. “Perhaps that’s a good idea.”

  James raises an eyebrow. “Perhaps, you say?”

  “Perhaps a dive in the cold water could solve my current situation.”

  He stares at me with the goofiest of smiles. “What situation, if I may ask?”

  I lean closer and whisper in his ear, “How hard I need to make love to you right now.”

  I’m trying to use dirty words more frequently. Last time we had intercourse, I shouted “Fuck” and James loved it, but it’s an ongoing, rather difficult, process. Slangs and curses are quite outside my comfort zone.

  James scans the vacant beach, then wraps an arm around me and brings my entire body closer to his. He gently cups my left cheek before drowning my lips in a violent kiss that leaves me breathless. Before I know it, the bottom of my bikini is gone—James is very good with his hands.

  He rolls on top of me and his beautiful curly hair hangs over his face like weeping willow branches. “You’ll be the death of me, Mrs. Bauman,” he rasps before leaning in for a kiss peppered with salt water, his hips grinding into mine.

  Telekinesis can be a great resource in times like these, so the cords of his bathing shorts untangle by themselves. With one simple command from my mind, the fabric strips down his legs. James lifts one foot, then the other, and his shorts fly into the air before falling by our side.

  James is used to my abilities, so his gaze remains locked on mine, but he’s teasing me, taking this long to start.

  “Well?” I ask.

  He smiles in that easy, boyish way of his. “Just admiring you.”

  There’s a wave of love in his adoring gaze, in his smooth, sweet tone; a wave that wraps around me and makes me feel complete.

  James strokes my lips with his before unclipping my bikini top, freeing my breasts.

  “You’re my life, Mir,” he whispers as he kisses my neck, then my collarbone, trailing a burning path toward my breasts. I feel so wonderfully warm…

  Instead of going further, James slowly kisses his way back from my chest to my mouth. Filled with an incessant craving for him, I cup his face with both hands and our mouths smash into one another—lip bites, tongue wars. In one harsh motion we’re one, and I let out a cry of relief.

  James is a tidal wave that rushes in and out with smooth but steady moves. I ache for him to return when he retreats, but then he pushes deep inside and fills me again. When he presses his face in the groove where my collarbone meets my neck, he growls a rough, almost animal-like sound that sends wonderful shivers down my body.

  He goes on and on and I rise, peaking, my head spinning, until I lose the ground beneath me, my mind fuzzy with delirium as I burst into a million pieces and scream his name. James quickly follows, a part of him becoming mine when he grunts a nasty word that sounds beautiful coated in his voice.

  How I love being human!

  A few seconds pass as I keep my eyes closed, reveling in the bliss of after-mating. But when I open them, a breath escapes me. We’re surrounded by clear Caribbean waters that close us in a giant dome. It’s almost as if we’re in the middle of a massive, glassless snow globe with tons of water separating us from the world outside.

  Through the thick water wall, I can faintly see the rest of the beach.

  A small air bubble protects our bodies from the mass of water, but there’s so much liquid around and above, that light barely slips through. A shoal of clownfish casually swims above us.

  By the dimensions, I’ve transported a colossal amount of water from the ocean to the shore in… seconds. The tendons on my neck harden as a swarm of screams accumulates at the back of my throat.

  James’ face rests at the curve of my neck, so he hasn’t seen any of this. When he moves and looks down at me in that calm, almost goofy manner of his, he quickly notices my terror and frowns. “What’s wrong?”

  I nod at the water around us and he gasps. “A-are you doing this?” His attention flies to a small shark that circles us before dashing away. “Holy shit,” he mutters.

  “I am.” The connection between my mind and the water thumps at the back of my head. I can feel the round shape of the aquarium that traps us, and the force that this mountain of water exerts over the air bubble, trying to break the only thing that is keeping us from being drowned and dragged miles and miles into the sea. The air bubble fights the water pressure back, but who knows for how long. The weight of the water over us is simply humongous. I might as well have transported half of the ocean here.

  “I don’t know how I’m doing this,” I mumble, my voice cracking midway.

  “This is…unexpected,” he whispers, almost as if he believes his normal tone might make the bubble pop, crushing us in tons of water. He sits back and looks up, where the sun shines beyond our prison. “Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath. “Okay.”

  Shivers take hold of my body as I sit up and put on my bikini. James does the same to his bathing shorts.

  “What’s happening?” I mutter to myself.

  Whatever it is, it isn’t a simple bug anymore.

  James holds my hand. “We’ll figure it out.” He nods to himself, almost as if he doesn’t quite believe his words. “Can you try to stop it?”

  I’m not sure. This is not like normal telekinesis. Tendrils of thoughts connect me to the ocean entirely; the fish that swim above might as well be swimming through my skin, tickling as they go. Tides rush back and forth inside me, and I start feeling nauseous. I can’t understand how or why my subconscious is doing this. Telekinesis births from the aware mind, not the dormant one.

  In a heartbeat, the connection spreads. Kilometers ahead, a blue whale swims peacefully across the ocean, across me. A cargo ship sails hurriedly on my skin. My head hurts from too much information crashing into me at once: sharks eating seals, people drowning in another country’s coastline, penguins searching for fish in the arctic. I can feel the ocean, all of it, and it’s driving me insane, but at the same time, it feels… good? I’m free in these waters, soaring through miles and miles, flying inside the ocean, feeling the life pulse of every sea creature beat inside me; dolphins giving birth, volcanoes bursting in the darkness of the ocean’s floor, reefs forming in and around themselves. If life is a miracle, thi
s has to be it.

  A muffled cry comes from a distance. “Miriam!” It tugs my thoughts back to wherever they were before. But I don’t want to go back, I want to stay here.

  “Miriam!”

  Let me be. Tectonic plates moving sluggishly across my skin, shoals of fishes forming clouds in the water, it’s stupendous!

  “Baby, please!”

  This voice is so familiar… James! Snapping out of my stupor, I find him shaking my shoulders, his eyes wide, glistening.

  “You’re back.” He smiles, sniffing back hidden tears. “You stopped reacting,” he says, his words strangled. “It’s like your body was just a shell. Are you okay?”

  I nod, but deep down I want, need, to return to the freedom and infinity of the sea.

  Whatever is happening needs to end now, before I lose myself again.

  I try to break the connection with the ocean, but it doesn’t wane. The sea calls my name, luring me like a siren, showing me miracles of life and death in those ancient waters. So I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to force the link to snap.

  “Mir!”

  Blood goes to my head as I push against the connection, but it’s as resilient as Barkian glue.

  Out of nowhere, and with no particular reason, the link snaps. As fast as a thought, the globe of water spreads above us like a deadly, thick blanket, its shade drowning the entire beach. The blanket is so thick that it blocks the sun, drenching us in twilight.

  The water should’ve returned to the ocean. By the dimensions, this has to be a nightmare.

  The thick blanket crashes down on us, like a long, unending tsunami. Running is futile, because the sky is falling.

  I try to protect us with my telekinetic abilities, but I’m so weak. If the crushing blow doesn’t kill us, the rushing waters dragging us into the ocean will.

  James’ stare says goodbye as he pushes me down and leans over his elbows, lying on top of me to take the full blow first.