Lori resumed progress, working her way down toward his belly. She was trying to seduce him, he knew, to take his mind off the dream, and she was good at it. He was happy to let her continue. If only the woman of Mars hadn’t been in that space suit! He could imagine it was her…

“Was she there?” she asked nonchalantly.

Oh-oh. Did she have antennae to pick up his thoughts? He felt guilty, thinking of the other woman when it was manifest that Lori was all that any man could desire. But Lori’s interest in that other was amusing in its way.

He played dumb. “Who?”

“You know.” Lori lifted her head, making a contemplative moue. She was playing dumb too, pretending that she couldn’t quite remember or describe that other woman. “The girl with the…” She cupped her hands in the universal gesture for large breasts.

He smiled. “Oh, her.” As if Lori weren’t of that type.

But she refused to let it go. “Well, was she?”

He laughed. “Amazing! You’re jealous of a dream!” The thing was, this did intrigue him, perhaps because it lent some reality to a figure he knew existed only in his imagination.

Lori punched him in the stomach and twisted away. He tried to grab her, but she struggled to get out of the bed. They had always played rough, but not too rough; he never hit her back.

“It’s not funny, Doug,” she said, half off the bed. “Let met go!” Now gravity was helping her; if he let go, she would fall on the floor. “You’re on Mars every night now.”

All too true! “But I’m always back by morning,” he protested weakly. He realized that there was only so far this could go without turning ugly, because he really did have a secret passion for that nonexistent woman, and Lori was catching on.

He succeeded in pulling her back on the bed. Now Lori occupied his full attention, as surely had been her purpose. They wrestled, and she got her legs around him, squeezing him in a harmless but most interesting scissors grip. He pinned her arms to her sides and tried to kiss her. She turned her head from side to side to avoid his lips.