Sorcerer: A Loveswept Contemporary Classic Romance by Ruth Owen Read Free Book Online Page A

dance.
Love.
    She arched closer, filled with his magic, aching with the need to make that same magic happen in him. She mated her own tongue with his, and his moan of pleasure shivered through her like a hundred tiny explosions.
This is real
, she thought as thejoy of pleasing him erupted through her.
God, please make this be real.
    Her silent plea went unheeded. One moment she was locked in his arms—a heartbeat later she wasn’t. Fingers that she’d knit into his soft, dark curls clutched emptiness. Lips that were hot and throbbing from the hunger of his kiss felt the cool brush of climate-controlled air. She felt the tiny pressure of the sensors on her body, heard the muted click of calibrated monitors as their circuits opened and shut. Pushing up her visor, she stared at the equipment-studded interior of the egg, feeling empty, and cold, and more alone than she’d ever been in her life. “No,” she whispered helplessly. “Oh, no.”
    The egg’s door whooshed open, admitting a stream of stinging light and the angular form of Sadie Hedges. “Boy, kiddo, you had us scared. We thought we’d lost you.”
    Jill blinked her eyes at the sudden light, feeling disoriented and cheated. “Where’s … Ian?”
    “Still trussed up like a chicken, I imagine,” Sadie said cheerfully as she hunkered down to unfasten Jill’s harness. “The doc told me before you went in that he wanted me to get you out first, since this was your first time in the simulator’s cyberspace.”
    Simulator? Cyberspace? They were two words in a crossword-puzzle consciousness that still had a lot of letters missing. Jillian passed her hand over her eyes, feeling more confused than ever. “Don’t remember …”
    “You will,” Sadie assured her. “It’ll take you aminute to get your bearings, especially since you were in the simulator almost seven minutes over the recommended limit.” She pulled back Jill’s harness, and started to remove the sensor nodes from her skin and bodysuit. “Just open your mind and let the memories come back to you at their own speed. It won’t take long.”
    Sadie was right. As soon as Jill stopped trying, the memories flooded into her mind like a movie on rewind. She remembered the orc, the snagging brambles, the wonder of the sunny summer world and the gray emptiness preceding it. She remembered the gleam of armor and the flash of a sword, and the enchanted embrace of a knight who’d risked his life to save her. She remembered the passion, the pleasure, the multicolored magic that had bound them together like two halves of the same heart. Despair replaced wonder as she realized it had all been an illusion, a beautiful dream that had never happened. And horror replaced despair as she realized that real or not, she still had to deal with the consequences.
    She’d kissed Dr. Doom!
    Jill struggled against the remaining restraints like a wild bird caught in a huntsman’s net, her gloved, still-uncoordinated fingers fumbling helplessly with the harness’s clasps. “Sadie, get me out of this thing!”
    “Hey, where’s the fire?” joked the older woman, extracting the clasp from Jill’s death grip. “No need to panic. You’re safe.”
    Safe? She’d never felt more
unsafe
in her life. She needed to get away, to find a quiet corner where she could come to grips with what had happened, where she could compose herself … hell, where she could
hide.
She was no coward, but the thought of facing Dr. Sinclair after the ecstasy she’d just experienced—correction: which she’d thought she’d just experienced—in his arms, was enough to make anyone run like a rabbit. “Just get me out,” she said, closing her eyes as a wave of embarrassment washed over her. “Please.”
    Sadie frowned in concern, but she did as Jillian asked. In another minute Jill bolted out of the egg and down the steel ladder that connected the simulator’s higher levels to the ground. She reached the floor and started toward the