The Pleasure in Surrender (an erotic historical short story) Read Online Free Page A

upper arm, inhaling the scent of sex, his musk, surrounded by the man. Captured. In his thrall. And happily so.
    *
    The next morning, Grimvarr held her hand as they entered the hall. Lord Alred was already seated on the dais breaking his fast. Everyone stared as the couple crossed to take their places at the head table.
    She knew what they saw. Her cheeks were still rosy from having awakened with him hard and sliding inside her. His face bore the expression of a man who had been well pleasured. Together, they exuded an aura of sensual ease. They were lovers.
    Geade glanced up from his table and raised his glass, a silent toast. Relief was apparent in his smile.
    Grimvarr made of show of helping her take her seat then lifted her hand from her lap, turned it, and kissed her palm. Edwina’s eyes filled at the tender gesture. Still bent over her hand, Grimvarr offered her a smile, one filled with wicked promise.
    Beside her, Lord Alred lifted his beaker of mulled wine. “To a glorious siege!”

From Rules of Engagement
    C allie Murphy had never been one to moon over a man. Fairytale romances were best left to novels. After all, she’d seen firsthand how transitory love could be after watching her mother drift in and out of three marriages, only to be left disappointed when “true love” faded. However, the video Callie watched for the thousandth time stirred a wistfulness inside that left her feeling restless and thinking about what might have been.
    Just the sight of that steady gaze enveloped her in warmth. The deep timbre of his voice as he sang raised the fine hairs on her arms and caused her nipples to tauten, because she remembered that same voice murmuring in her ear in the darkness.
    Knowing she’d never get his approval for security’s sake, she’d snuck this recording of their Skype session using a plug-in installed on her computer because she’d wanted something of him to linger after they’d said their goodbyes. This recording had been made before their final breakup. Now, watching and listening to him was a form of self-torture. Wearing desert camouflage pants and a brown tee stretching across a well-muscled chest, his dark hair a little shaggy and his beard scruffy, he was all man. All complication. Those piercing blue eyes stared into the camera at her, steady and determined, and Callie couldn’t help the tears welling in her eyes.
    Prickles of dismay swept over her as she imagined some other woman, someone not her, on the receiving end of one of his calls, being serenaded with that husky, smooth-as-silk voice. The last time he’d proposed, she’d been firm, making it clear she had no interest in leaving behind the life she’d built in Two Mule, Texas, while he was set on a career in the Navy. Rightfully, he should have moved on. No one here in Two Mule would ever fault him. No one really understood why she kept refusing him, but then they hadn’t walked in her shoes through her childhood.
    Her mother had followed that “broken road,” uprooting Callie three times, from the friends she’d made, from the roots she’d tried so desperately to sink deep into every place she’d lived. She’d never make that same mistake. Love faded, turned bitter and dark. When love ended, good people drifted apart, or worse, struck out at each other. She’d lived it, firsthand.
    So when Derek had stood on her doorstep that last day before heading back to Little Creek, where no doubt his team would be deployed on more dangerous secret missions in the Middle East, Africa, or whatever foreign hellhole the powers that be scrambled a SEAL team for, she’d shut the door on everything he’d offered, despite the fact he’d been sincere—and despite the fact her own heart had twisted inside her chest at the disappointment darkening his eyes.
    Watching the video now, him seated on a narrow cot strumming a guitar while he sang about roads leading him straight to some other woman, Callie couldn’t help sniffling. He’d