Free Ask For It by Gail Faulkner

her walk across his lair in this mood and not had to resist the erotic invitation she embodied. Her strolling into his conference room now would probably be cause for calling the emergency medical team. Some of those scientists were too old to take it.
     
    “Now you look too sexy to go in there,” he told her around the snarl. Tor glanced over his shoulder at his brothers. “Burke, say something stupid and piss her off.”
     
    Burke backed away from them with a half smile. “Your problem, brother. I’m having trouble with my fantasies at the moment.”
     
    “What?” Tor turned quickly, placing Sahara behind him.
     
    “Your own fault, High King,” Burke continued irreverently as he fell onto a lounge chair. Reclining put his body in the least threatening position as he answered. “You kissed her and turned her on. Her scent is a stimulant. Nothing we can do about it.”
     
    Nearrid turned and strode to the windows, standing with his back to his family, deeply inhaling the fresh air.
     
    “Right,” Tor growled as he watched his brothers deal with the age-old problem. “So she didn’t affect you like this before I kissed her?”
     
    “Not as much,” Burke admitted. “Nothing like what happened three weeks ago.”
     
    “Hello, that ‘she’ is still in the room.” Sahara scowled at the two males who had the grace to look at her. The third remained with his back to the room. “It’s not as if I try to do this.” She pulled out from under Tor’s arm and backed away from them.
     
    “Want us to lie about it?” Burke asked conversationally.
     
    “No, I guess not. It’s just sort of personal and invasive. As if I’m naked all the time or something,” Sahara defended her discomfort.
     
    “Not exactly naked,” Tor tried to soothe her, but wasn’t sure what to say next.
     
    “You are a sexually active Mist Lioness,” Nearrid stated from the window, not bothering to turn around. “Every Leonor male within scent of you will know it. Controlling our response to that natural stimulation is what separates us from the savages we were.” He turned to regard her with his cool gaze. “No one blames you, little sister. Males wanting you does not make you a whore.”
     
    Sahara blinked as she met his eyes and then her attention turned to Tor. Her eyes dropped. She was standing with her back to the wall, hands nervously clasped then unclasped. She crossed her arms, her chin tilted, her eyes challenging as she raised them, her body stance as defensive as her gaze. “No, it doesn’t.”
     
    Tor frowned as he looked from Nearrid to Sahara and realized he’d still not grasped the root of her defensiveness. It had taken the dispassionate and often-mistaken-for-cold Nearrid to see her fear. It was the same cultural difference that had separated them to begin with.
     
    With him, she was a complete hedonist. But add another in any way and she felt shame. Even something as obviously not her fault as other males lusting after her.
     
    Leonor sexuality was earthy and basic. Bringing a female to pleasure was a warrior’s duty, but more than that, it was a need. Their culture focused a male on the serious hard matters of combat and training. As a warrior matured, it was easy to lose touch with any other part of his soul. But intimate interaction with a female, even if it was only his place to see to her pleasure, eased that pressure to such a degree that it became his pleasure. If she was not his and he could not complete within her, he still drank from her body a measure of peace that could not be found in other ways.
     
    The loss of women from his society made those in a family even more treasured and their sexuality revered. The concept of shame because she was desired was strange. There were no whorehouses on Leonor as other worlds knew them. The term whore was learned from other societies. There were places where a warrior could seek relief with a priestess if he needed.
     
    Within families, sisters