Clamping down on his rioting reactions, Severance deliberately began to stroke and coax the response he wanted from Cidra. After a brief struggle that seemed to stem more from her surprise and confusion than any real desire to fight him, she stopped resisting. Her arms went around his neck, and he knew a vast sense of relief. It was going to be all right this time. He could make her want him.

“Say it, Cidra. Say you want me.” He probed between her legs, finding the nubbin of exquisitely sensitive female flesh. He flicked lightly with his fingers and felt her react almost at once. “Say it, sweetheart.”

“I want you,” she whispered, arching against his hand. He kept up the light teasing between her thighs while he lowered his head to draw first one nipple and then the other into his mouth. She shivered in his hold, and another wave of satisfaction went through him. Relentlessly he kept up the tender assault, even after she was trembling under his hands. She responded to him the way a flower responded to sunlight, opening herself and welcoming him.

“Severance. Please. I can’t stand any more.” Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, her head arched back over his arm.

But he didn’t stop, and he didn’t move to cover her. This time he would make sure everything went right. Slowly he began working his way down her body, tasting her with his tongue, nibbling at her until she cried out for more. All the while he kept his fingers moving on her and in her. She twisted and writhed in his hands, and he gloried in it.

When he dropped an intimate kiss into the triangle of hair at the apex of her thighs, she cried out again and clutched at his shoulders.

“That’s it, sweetheart. That’s it.”

The scent of her was dark and spicy, the essence of her femininity. Severance thought it would surely drive him over the edge. Still he maintained his self-control. He touched the nubbin with his tongue and felt Cidra’s whole body tighten convulsively.

Deliberately he deepened the passionate caress. The little cries in her throat were the most beautiful songs he had ever heard. He felt her nails digging into his shoulders and knew another lightning jolt of satisfaction.

“Severance!”

“Let go, Cidra, Just let go!” He parted the pliant opening with his fingers, and she whispered his name again. He loved the tight, husky, aching way she said it. He slid two fingers gently into her, his tongue still curling around the bud of throbbing flesh.

She tensed again, breathed his name again, and this time a thousand tiny shivers flooded her body.

“Severance. Sweet Harmony, Severance!”

“That’s the way I want to hear my name.” Intoxicated with the knowledge that he’d brought her complete satisfaction, half spaced with his own anticipation, he flowed back up along her body and slipped between her legs. He drove into her before the tiny convulsions had ceased. The last of them pulled him deeply into her. A moment later it was Cidra’s name that was filling the tent and his body that was shuddering in completion. And then he went still on top of her.

When he finally came back to his senses, he was aware of Cidra’s fingers moving languidly in his hair. Severance decided he liked it. He moved his head a little closer.

“I wasn’t trying to kill myself, Severance.”

“You were upset. Scared, maybe.”

“Scared of what?” she asked.

“Scared of what’s happening to you. To us.”

She appeared to give that some thought. “It’s confusing, but I don’t feel really frightened.”

“Good. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

“I’m wide-awake,” she told him. “I wouldn’t mind discussing it now.”

He opened his eyes and found that his line of focus took in the peaks of her br**sts. It was a pleasant view. “You need the sleep, Cidra. And so do I. We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“I feel strange, Severance.”

“You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“I don’t feel bad,” she emphasized. “Just strange.”

“I’m sure it’s a normal reaction.”

“I don’t know.” She sounded genuinely puzzled. “I also feel a little sore.”

He winced guiltily. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. You’ll feel better in the morning. And next time you won’t feel sore afterward.”

She yawned. “You sound very sure of everything.”

“I’m the pilot in command, remember? I’m supposed to sound sure of everything.” He lifted himself up on one elbow and looked down at her. “Cidra?”

“Hmmm?”

“You swear you weren’t thinking of doing anything rash because of what happened tonight?”

“Why would I want to kill myself after enjoying such plea-surer’

He smiled and kissed her. “That’s the true Wolf outlook.”

“You know what the best part is, Severance?”

“What?”

“Feeling so close to you. It’s very nice.”

“Very,” he agreed.

As he drifted back into sleep Severance decided that Renaissance wasn’t such a bad place to stake his claim on Cidra. He hadn’t intended to rush things. He had wanted the right time and the right background. During those two weeks on board Severance Pay he had fantasized more than once about the perfect setting. In his mind he had constructed a picture that included good ether wine, Harmonic music in the background, a wide, lush bed, and all the time in the world.

Here in the middle of a Renaissance jungle he’d had none of those props, but it didn’t seem to matter. There was something primitive and new about the jungle, and it fit in well with the way he felt about Cidra. The more he thought about it, the more appropriate the setting became. She had been right earlier when she had tried to tell him that the jungle wasn’t really a green hell. It was an exotic, exciting, primitive world, not a hell.

A man could survive in the jungle without deflector screens and crispers, Severance decided. Hadn’t he survived today? There were places in the jungle that were soft, green refuges. In such places he could make love to Cidra beneath twin moons with strange names all night long. It would be good to see her soft, slender body bathed in moonlight. He fell asleep with that last image in his mind.

When he awoke again, he knew it was nearly dawn. Lazily he turned, feeling for Cidra. Then he sat up with a jerk. She was gone again. This time Severance didn’t feel the rush of fear he had felt the last time he had awakened and found her gone. She hadn’t had time to get far, he thought as he pulled on his clothing. And she would be safe enough. The jungle was safe for her. And for him.