Kemina shook her snow-white head in wonderment. “It seems to me that a great deal of responsibility has been loaded upon your shoulders,” she said. “Let me suggest that you forget about your destiny until it calls to you once again, Lara. Just enjoy the good life you have been given. Your husband. Your children. Your home and the child that is to come in a few months. You have done this before. You need not stand guard awaiting your destiny’s next call.”
Lara sighed. “You are right,” she said. “These last months have been so frenzied I have forgotten how to enjoy my life.”
The high priestess took Lara’s slim hand in her own. “I understand how the responsibility that we bear for others can do that, my child.”
Lara laughed now. “Aye, I imagine that you can, Kemina. Now I know I was right in coming to the temple. A few days of prayer and meditation with you and your priestesses will soothe and calm my frantic spirit.”
“We will send a faerie post to Magnus so he knows where you are,” Kemina said.
The Dominus was not happy that his wife had taken Dasras and gone off without telling him. But as he read the high priestess’s message his irritation eased. He remembered his faerie wife’s independent spirit. He could never confine it and he had to remember that she was not a frail creature who needed his protection. She was a strong woman, and while he wasn’t certain that he would ever get used to having such a wife he knew he loved her beyond all else. And so he would learn to be content.
When Lara returned from the temple several days later, her restless spirit seemed to have quieted. When he saw her coming from the stables he held out his arms to her and without any hesitation she walked straight into them. “I missed you, my lord,” she told him.
“I missed you more,” he told her softly, kissing her brow.
“Then perhaps, Magnus,” she murmured low, “we should find a quiet place and there you can show me just how much you missed me.” Her fingers brushed his groin.
“Can we…” he began. But he was already hard for her.
“I would not say it if we couldn’t,” Lara told him as her tongue traced the shape of his ear both inside and out. “I have a great longing for you, my lord. Surely you would not deny the woman who will give you your son.” Her hand slipped beneath his long gown and she cupped him in her warm palm a brief moment before stroking his manhood. Her slender fingers slid the length of him, once, twice, a third time.
The Dominus let a hiss of excitement escape him. “You are a shameless faerie woman,” he told her. His lust for her was boiling. His heart beat rapidly.
“I am joyously shameless with you, my lord,” she whispered hotly in the ear she had been teasing so delicately. “And you are eager for me, I can see. Let us find our bed, for it is past time we indulged our senses in each other.”
In the great bedchamber they now shared they quickly shed their garments and tumbled into the bed. She smelled of flowers and fresh air and horse. He told her so, and laughed when she said she would bathe if it offended him. “Nay, sweeting,” he told her. “I am not going to let you go until I have explored every delicious inch of you.” And he proceeded to do just that. His hands, his tongue, his lips touched and tasted and kissed her until Lara was dizzy with sensation. His mouth closed over one breast, his teeth gently scoring her nipple as he licked and tenderly suckled. Lara screamed softly with the pleasure-pain his lips gave her tender breasts.
She pushed him onto his back and straddled him so she might taste and tease his nipples. She bit them gently and then licked away any pain she might have given him. Her kisses covered his long torso. How many times had she made love to him, and yet she never grew tired of his body. She slid down him, taking his manhood into her hand, and forcing a groan from him. Slowly, slowly she licked up one side of him and slowly, slowly she licked down the other side. The taste of him was unique and she loved it. She licked provocatively at his seed sac, taking it into her mouth, swirling her tongue about it. Then her lips closed over his length and she sucked strongly, drawing it deeply into her mouth.
Magnus Hauk groaned as he felt her tongue swirling about his manhood. He was near to bursting but he forced his hunger down. “Let me go now, my love. The pleasures between us will be greater if I am buried deep within you, feeling the walls of your hot sheath enclosing me.” And when she released him, kissing the tip of his manhood, he pulled her so that she sat upon his trunk. From his own half-seated position he kissed her slowly as his hand pushed between her nether lips so he might push two fingers into her heated wetness. He moved those fingers slowly, withdrawing and thrusting, until she gave a little cry of pleasure. His mouth never left hers as he played between her nether lips, but then he realized that they both needed more. His hands gently fastening about her waist, he lifted her up and set her down upon his manhood.
Lara sighed deeply as she felt him filling her with his hard heat. “Oh, Magnus!” she purred and then she leaned back and rode him until neither could bear another moment and the pleasure burst over them as his big hands fondled her breasts, gently caressed her belly. She fell forward onto his broad chest.
He was still buried deep within her and was not yet ready to withdraw, but he did roll them over, one of his long legs swinging over her hip. “Why is it,” he asked her, “that no matter how much you give me it is never enough, my beautiful faerie wife?”
“I feel the same way,” Lara murmured. “You give me pleasures in excess and yet I want more, and more and even more, my darling husband.”
“Then I suppose I must see that you are content,” he told her as he began to move upon her once more. She was so hot. So wet. He could feel his member throbbing fiercely within her tightness as he thrust and withdrew until they were both half sobbing with the delight that they brought to each other. His juices flowed a second time and her sigh of happiness brought a smile to his face as he groaned with the pleasure of his release. “I love you,” he said into the tangled golden hair that surrounded them. “I will never stop loving you, Lara, my wife.”
Relaxed and content, filled with happiness beyond measure, Lara curled against him with a sigh. “He is going to be the most beautiful boy,” she said, her hands enclosing her faintly swelling belly. “He will look just like you.”
Kissing the top of her head he replied, “I should rather he look like you, my darling. You are far prettier than I am.”
“Oh, no,” Lara told him. “He must look like you so our people will accept him as a Terahn. We want no one claiming he is too faerie to rule Terah. Have you decided what you will call our son?”
“I will decide when I see him,” the Dominus told her. “He will tell me his name.”
THE SUMMER WANED, and the autumn came. Magnus Hauk was content that Terah had returned to what he considered normal. In Hetar, however, the women of The City had been insisting on a greater voice in the government and they would not cease their demands to the surprise of the magnates, the High Council and the new Lord High Ruler.
Jonah suspected that Vilia was involved with the agitating females but thought it better not to confront her on the matter. He would rather learn from his wife just what it was the women of The City wanted. “You hear things,” he said to her one evening as they lay together.
“What can you mean, my lord?” Vilia asked him coyly. She had a great surprise for him, but she was not yet ready to share it.
“The women around you surely talk,” he replied. “And you go out into The City to shop. Lady Gillian says that the women are not yet ready to speak with the High Council. If these women want something, why do they not tell us? Why do they delay?”
“They delay because they have not yet finished deciding how to word their manifesto, my darling,” Vilia told him.
“
“They want the freedom to decide for themselves, my lord. They don’t want their husbands and their fathers telling them what to do,” she told him quietly.
“But women are frail and need to be protected,” Jonah told his wife. “They do not have the wisdom to make decisions for themselves. It is the way the Celestial Actuary created them. Surely you agree with me, Vilia.”
“Nay, my lord, I do not agree with you. Women are strong both in body and in mind. Men may own the Pleasure Houses, but it is the women who manage them.
“Shopkeepers’ wives and merchants’ wives can all tell you the inner workings of their husbands’ trades and businesses. Women in the lower orders all manage to keep their homes running and all women, no matter their class distinction, bear children. We have women who are healers, but dare not practice too openly lest they offend
