Free Mastered: Ten Tales of Sensual Surrender by Kate Pearce, Portia Da Costa, Opal Carew, Marie Harte, Jennifer Leeland, Madelynne Ellis, Emily Ryan-Davis, Carrie Ann Ryan, Joey Hill, T. J. Michaels, Sasha White Page B

places, his form of leisure reading. On the book shelves, in front of his extensive library, he kept artifacts from his travels. She touched the statue of a slender woman that always reminded her of a willow tree. She thought the artist had intended it that way.
    There were also randomly collected things, like rocks, shells, fossils. He was endlessly curious about everything, and she wondered what he’d found interesting about those particular pieces. They’d stopped talking about anything much beyond their work. It was easier that way, wasn’t it? Apparently for him, too.
    Biting back the pain at that thought, she left off her examination of his belongings. Brian preferred a queen-sized bed, versus the oversized king most other vampires liked in their guestrooms when visiting the estate. He said he had no desire to sleep on a padded racket ball court. She smiled at that, then slid into the bed. Feeling absurdly brave because he was asleep, and because he’d asked her to do something as intimate as sleep with him, she tugged the light sheet down.
    He wasn’t wearing anything. Usually he wore those brief shorts, a clingy garment that hugged him high on the thighs and elsewhere in very appealing ways. He often made jokes about his looks. How, if not for vampire metabolism, he’d be a typical soft-bellied, sallow lab goblin, but she had her doubts about that. All vampires trained to protect themselves, which included ensuring their stamina was enhanced even beyond what the gods had blessed them with. Brian did strength training with weights as well as punishing ten mile runs along the paths of the vast estate and marshlands. During those workouts, he listened to audio books and articles he downloaded to multitask, but the end result was that the muscles she saw now weren’t all supernatural-made.
    Plus, the man was always active, never still. It was nothing to him to climb up a sheer cliff face to examine the type of nest that might be on the top ledge, or walk to the bottom of a river bed to get a silt sample. Unlike most vampires who disliked the water because of their lack of buoyancy, he found such weighted density—and no need for scuba gear—useful for underwater data collection.
    She folded her hands beneath her cheek on the pillow and gazed at him. He had an aristocratic bearing, six feet with a good breadth of shoulders, tapered waist and fine buttocks and thighs. Freeing one of her hands, she slid her fingers over those areas, barely touching him, but then it was too much to resist. With the mood she’d been experiencing these past few days, she needed to touch him. Perhaps the intimacy would ease her heart, fill the emptiness in her soul.
    When awake, his intellect gave his mouth and brow creases that emphasized his intimidating intellect and emotional maturity. But asleep, those lines smoothed. He would always look like a young thirty-something, as most born vampires did once they passed that age, but he had fine features. Pretty, some would say, especially combined with his sandy-colored hair and punch-right-to-a-woman’s-heart hazel eyes. She thought of the times she’d seen them rest on her with total absorption. It happened during sex, sometimes during feeding, or when their minds did that tangled DNA thing, coming to the same conclusion as if they were one soul. She cherished each of those moments, even though they were as addictive as a drug, leaving her wanting more.
    When she had time, she collected data on other pending projects. One of those was servant suicide data. While she was smart enough to know not to dwell on that subject when her mood was already low, she couldn’t help but think of a journal entry one servant had left. When his Mistress had given Debra the stack of diaries, Debra had asked her if she’d read them. The woman had looked at her as if she’d accused her of reading children’s books for leisure, and shook her head. But Debra noticed her hand lingered on the top journal