Free Pleasure by Jacquelyn Frank Page B

days later and with almost every surface of the house having been utilized for their insatiable need for each other, Valera feared nothing so much as she feared that their time was running short. As the stamina and strength of his lovemaking improved, it told her he was healing at a phenomenal rate. In fact, she suspected he was entirely well now. His hands were certainly free of any signs of damage as they skillfully wrought responses from her body, to the point where she didn’t even recognize herself in this passionate, multiorgasmic creature she had become.
    As for Sagan, he was all too aware of how deeply mired in trouble he had become. He had expected an intense interlude between them, an appetite that would eventually reach a point of satisfaction. Except it had only grown more and more intense as reservations and societal expectations fell away from them both. She stopped caring that it had only taken him a matter of hours to “get in her pants,” and he stopped thinking of her as “human,” with the differentiations that used to imply to him.
    It also stopped being just a matter of sex; if, indeed, it had ever been that at all. Her studious and quiet ways were so opposite to his physical ones, yet she took as much pride and pleasure in her cooking as he did in his swordwork. It hadfascinated and amused him at first, but as she fed him creations of both complexity and simplicity, he truly came to appreciate the art and effort in what she did. He suspected she made the same effort when it came to her magic, although she never once showed him use of it again.
    But now he felt the press of time and responsibility creeping up on him urgently. Even now, as he tried to catch his breath and was flooded in the wondrous reek of their sexual activities, he realized that there were those at Sanctuary who would be distressed by his absence. They would be looking for him. He didn’t want them to find him here, and he certainly didn’t want them endangering themselves in their efforts to pursue his whereabouts.
    Then there was the unknown factor. The one that told him the things his trauma had caused him to forget were very crucial to those he loved and respected. Also, if he had been attacked so boldly, what had happened to the rest of the religious house? Was it safe, or had it been overrun by whatever force it was that had hurt him? This was the least of his worries, of course, because he had faith in M’jan Magnus’s potent abilities and his sheer determination to guard and guide the house he ruled.
    Still…
    Yet the draw and magnetism of this woman he held was all-consuming, and once he left her, he could never come back. Knowing that made leaving her all but impossible. Not after only two days. Sagan was paralyzed betwixt his choices and his desires, and the one that was most immediately satisfying and so astoundingly pleasurable was the one that won out.
    â€œMmm,” he heard her hum with soft contentment into his ear. “I’m exhausted. I can’t move.”
    He resolved the problem by gripping her luscious backside and holding her weight against him as he drew her back from the wall. He enjoyed her lazy, sated giggle as he walked her down the hall and dumped them both into bed with a hardtumble. She ended up beside him, her sweet shape instantly clinging all along his left side as she pillowed her head on his shoulder.
    He very much shared her feelings of contentment and intimacy.
    This was the part that truly astounded Valera. Perhaps it was because he was limited in just how far he could go away from her on a moment-to-moment basis, but she hadn’t been the one to start these postcoital cuddle sessions. Sagan had all but tackled her to keep her ass in bed the first time she’d tried to ditch him after sex…which had been the first time they’d gotten intimate. She had still been thinking he was going to come to his senses or something and that she