“Freed”: Aurelia’s a match for her two men

“Freed”: Blurb: Aurelia has moved into Niall's apartment, as has Mas, the two men choosing to accept each other so they can share the woman they both want. Aurelia plans Trevellyan, Merrick, Vaughan, and Evelyn's commitment ceremony, and finds she has a talent for such things. Mas and Niall continue to love Aurelia, giving her more orgasms than she's ever dreamed of, and planning fun outings where the three of them truly bond as a unit. Aurelia continues looking for a job, and all three of them are still trying to get a lead on where the other call centers may be, to free the workers as they freed Aurelia. Meanwhile the sex just gets hotter. But will Aurelia ever find a real job? And can the demons running the call centers be stopped? Story excerpt She let them get well ahead of her, wanting to take everything at her own speed and do it her way. She was looking forward to the challenge of this track, but realistically, she was probably going to fall off her bike sooner or later. Hopefully onto something relatively soft, like grass, and not into a big puddle of water. When Niall’s and Mas’s dust died down, she climbed back on her bike, patted it, and said, “Okay Let’s go.” Until she’d actually done it, she would never have understood how exhilarating it was, sailing down the hillside on the back of a mountain bike, her long hair flying out behind her, hands gripping the handlebars, tears in her eyes, as she squinted hard to see and adjust to the twists and turns in the track. It was a constant test of her skills to slow enough to take the bends properly without risking overturning, but not to slow so much she spoiled the effect of the race and destroyed the challenge inherent in staying on board the bike. She had her bike lined up exactly right for the first few crests, lifting off airborne, launching herself through the air then landing smoothly on the track without missing a beat. But then it became harder, the dips hidden behind bends in the track, and a deep ditch that seemed to come at her out of nowhere. Each time she managed to negotiate the slalom and keep her momentum going. Until she was airborne over one crest and realized that this time she was out of luck. She was going to land well short of the end of a long muddy puddle. But the edge of the trail was drier. Maybe… She angled her bike slightly to the side, leaning forward, hoping for an extra few feet of air before she hit the track. Her wheels came down harder than she expected, the back wheel still in the mud but the front one clear. Pedaling madly and holding the handlebars tightly, she steered onto the dry dirt and kept going, glad she hadn’t fallen off. But if the traps are getting bigger, I need to be moving faster. So she pedaled harder, pointing the bike to the center of the trail and squinting her eyes again, looking for hazards as far ahead as she could see. Against the wind rushing into her face, eyes, and ears, she thought she heard Mas yell, but couldn’t be sure. Although if he’d fallen off, it was a certainty she would, too. Hopefully Niall would be able to avoid landing on top of him! Aurelia concentrated on her riding, enjoying the speed and the testing of every one of her skills. I bet Evelyn would ace this after all her time riding motorcycles. Hey, maybe I could get a motorcycle license. Help her in her job. Putting that idea away to think about later, Aurelia added more speed to her cycling, understanding she must be getting close to whatever made Mas yell. If the noise had been him indeed, and not just her imagination. The bend in the trail was a tricky one, right, left, right so quickly in succession it was very hard to ride through the curves, but she was still firmly in the saddle when she saw the huge rock in the center of the trail. Instinctively she pulled to the right, lifting her left leg out of the stirrups, to avoid scraping it on the rock as she raced past, gaining speed on another downhill slope as she frantically pushed her foot back into the stirrups again. Not long after that, the track leveled out into a big sandy area, and she realized she’d reached the end of the slalom without falling off her bike. Niall was half sitting, half leaning on a rock, his bicycle at his feet, his hands on his hips, laughing at Mas. Mas’s golden hair was black with mud, his face streaked with mud and water, and it was impossible to guess what color his shirt had once been. He was blackish-brown with a layer of mud all the way down to his boots. Aurelia’s face split into a grin as she brought her mountain bike to a standstill. “Where was that puddle? I didn’t see any evidence you’d landed in one on the way down.” “The rock,” Niall said with a laugh. “Rock?” “Yeah. I saw what happened to him just in time to avoid doing the same thing.” Aurelia stared at Mas. “The rock on the trail? But there was no puddle there.” “If you hit the rock, it flipped your bike into a huge puddle. Betcha they put it there deliberately to catch people just like me. At least it saved me being hurt. Would have been too bad if I’d buckled the wheel of the bike, though.” “You’d have forfeited your deposit. So again, no skin of their nose,” Niall said quickly. “Exactly.” “Let’s do it again. Now I know the traps, it should be even more fun,” said Mas. “Hell, yes!” Niall agreed, picking up his bike. Buy Link: http://www.bookstrand.com/freed “Freed” follows on from “Enslaved” but is a complete story in itself. Berengaria