" Cal," he said, raising his glass to hers. "From Callan. Family name. My father's side of the family is very big with the passing on of family names. Where's the Kenai come from?"

"The Kenai River. It's in Alaska."

"Sure, where all the big salmon go home to die."

"I was raised on it."

"Your dad a fisherman?"

She shook her head. "A pilot."

"Sure, how you learned to fly. Brothers, sisters?"

"Nope. You?"

"No. You know what they say about only children."

"Overachievers R Us."

He laughed. "When did you decide you wanted to be an astronaut?"

"What, you haven't read the press release?" She drank champagne, dry, a shivering along the tongue, delicious. "Again, I applaud your taste in wine." She looked at him, broad shoulders, strong throat, firm chin, mouth hovering always on the edge of a smile, eyes so blue. She put down her glass and knotted a hand in the front of his shirt and pulled. Irresistibly he leaned forward until their lips were almost touching. "Close your eyes," she said, her voice the merest breath of sound.

Obediently, he closed them. She rescued his forgotten glass, which was about to tip out of his hand, and set it on the table next to hers. She turned back to see his eyes still closed, and noticed that his breath was coming a little faster. She rubbed her face lightly against his, nose, lips, cheeks, a long extended nuzzle that branded him with her scent, a faint, flowery perfume, a hint of Tide, and a growing muskiness that spoke of her own arousal. He shifted to ease the sudden tightness of his chinos. "Be still," she said, and kissed him, a long, warm, wet, sensuous invitation, and nipped his lip as she drew away.

His eyes opened, dazed, and she said, her voice husky with laughter and desire, "In just fourteen hours from now, I'll be on a plane heading north and west. I don't have time to dance."

She watched as his eyes focused and narrowed. His hand came up and traced the neckline of her top, lingering at the exposed cleft of her breasts. A wave of heat started there and flooded south, loosening her thighs. His hand slipped between them, to press his palm firmly against her.

"Oh," she said, breathlessly, and let her hand slide down over his and press. He lunged out of his chair and tossed her up into his arms. Once inside, he let her slip down the front of his body until her cleft rested against his erection.

"Oh," she said again, and made an involuntary movement, lifting her hips to invite and encourage. Her head fell back. "Oh," she said, this time drawing out the word on a note of discovery and desire. It was like being struck by lightning. They began to tear at each other's clothes, fumbling in their haste, stopping only to snatch a kiss or a caress, their urgency overriding the desire to linger over every piece of newly exposed skin. She wasn't wearing a bra and he descended on the nipples beneath the hot pink tank top that had so tantalized him with lips and teeth. He had never felt so ravenous for the taste of a woman. She cried out once and he stopped, afraid he'd hurt her. "No," she said, her voice hardly recognizable, "harder."

She'd never felt so hot, she could hardly breathe for it. She couldn't speak, she couldn't see, she could only feel. He fell to his knees and opened her up like a ripe, sweet melon, feasting greedily, and she came in a powerful, rolling wave that robbed her legs of the little strength she had left. He swore softly and caught her, easing her down, kneeing her legs apart and coming between them, frantic with the need to get inside her. "Jesus," he said, sounding as astonished as she felt, almost trembling with need, and thrust into her.

"Oh!" she said, her head going back, her legs coming up around his waist.

He tried to slow down, to take his time, to wait for her, and he might have been able to, if she hadn't latched on to his ass with both hands and said between her teeth, "Harder."

IN THE END THEY ORDERED UP ROOM SERVICE. SHE CAME OUT OF THE

bathroom, knotting the robe at her waist as he was signing the check. The door closed behind the bellman, who she was glad to note was too well trained to gawk. NASA no longer expected its astronauts to be as whitewashed as the original Seven, but there was a long line of them waiting for shuttle assignments and the Madonna was always going to be preferred over the whore.

The room was in fact palatial, with a bed the size of a trampoline and the balcony overlooking Biscayne Bay that was only slightly smaller. "The hotel must be running a special, or it's empty," she said. "I don't ever remember NASA paying for a room like this." She raised an eyebrow in his direction.

The fizz had gone out of the bottle he'd brought and he'd ordered up another with their meal. He popped the cork and poured. "I confess, I made a call after you left the ship, and had your room, uh, upgraded."

She grinned, approving of his light manner. She didn't know what had just happened but she knew she didn't want to talk about it. "I'll say."

"You're not angry?"

She laughed and accepted the glass he held out to her. The clock on the nightstand read eight o'clock and she and Bill were scheduled for departure at nine the next morning. "One glass more after this one," she said, "two maximum is my limit for tonight."

They raised their glasses to each other and sipped. "So, Kenai," he said as they settled back into their chairs on the balcony.

He was evidently as determined to keep things light as she was, and she approved, but the muscles in her thighs felt pleasantly sore and she smiled to herself. "I was born in Seldovia on Kachemak Bay, went to high school in Homer across the bay, went to college-first time-at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. BA in English."

"English?"

"English."

"Sorry," he said, "kinda expecting, I don't know, astrophysics."

"Try electrical engineering," she said. "The doctorate, anyway. That was later, at the University of Washington."

"Yeah," he said, "and the master's?"

"Also electrical engineering, also U-Dub. You?"

"I have not achieved the rarified air of the doctorate," he said, and she accepted his bow of mock humility with a queenly nod, spoiling it with an infectious giggle that would have had him on his knees if he hadn't caught himself. Whoa there, fella, he thought. "Just a couple of lowly masters," he said, "one in organizational administration and the other in strategic studies."

"Where?"

He grinned. "Harvard and the Naval War College."

She thought of the sheikling her mission had just inherited and said ruefully, "Wanna go for a ride?"

"What?"

She shrugged and drank champagne. "Probably no harm in telling you, it'll be all over the news soon enough."

He heard her out, and at the end of it said, "Hard on the rest of the astronauts waiting to be assigned to their own missions."

She was surprised at his instant comprehension, and grateful. "Exactly."

"And," he added, continuing to follow her thoughts with an accuracy that made her distinctly uneasy, "I hate taking on new crew the day I'm supposed to leave the dock. Taking on an untrained, unknown crewman on a space shuttle mission seems to me to be a thousand times more dangerous. Short of an actual sinking, there isn't a hell of a lot an inexperienced crewman can do to Munro. But to Endeavour?"

She nodded. "Yes," she said, serious, "very dangerous. You should hear the stories the other crews tell about getting stuck with a part-timer." She sipped champagne. Again, excellent, dry and crisp. She looked at him with approval. "Worst story I ever heard. His experiment broke, he had a gold medal case of space sickness, and he couldn't defecate. Seven days on orbit, this guy's constipated, puking nonstop, and his entire reason for being on board has just gone away. The CDR said he thought he was going to have to put the guy on a suicide watch."