He stroked her bare behind, a touch so gentle, as if cradling a baby’s head. Her soft downy hair hardly registered on his calloused hands in the sweep over her pink flesh. She sighed in contentment and comfort of their shared love. Her head lay on her folded forearms, breath warming the space between her mouth and the sheet of the bed. Her eyes were closed so that she could concentrate on the pleasure of his touch.

Brian, lent forward, taking in the smell of her, savouring the faint aroma from the soap she had used that morning. He kissed the small of her back where the curve of her spine, in concave undulation, met the top of her buttocks. His dry lips brushed across her skin, pausing to kiss and to taste her.

She shivered momentarily as the rasp of his stubble traversed across her spine, and giggled lightly as it tickled and raised goose bumps to form.

Sabine turned over to lie on her side, facing him. She looked into his deep-set, brown eyes that regarded her intently, as if studying her for the first time, drinking in every detail and committing it to memory.

She reached out to him, cupping his cheek.

His head tipped to the side, trapping her hand between cheek and clavicle. He blew a kiss while his hand began to explore her exposed breast. Her teat hardened under his palm as he, with equal care and gentleness, fondled the yielding mound, shaping it into a cone and pronouncing her nipple. He bent and kissed the hardening nub, drawing it into his mouth, suckling, tasting and savouring at each sup.

This time, their lovemaking was so much less frenetic and so much more about feeling, of passion and of love. This time, unlike an hour before, he slid between her legs and entered her body, still slick from the earlier abandon of lustful exuberance. She accepted his length, feeling every millimetre as his cock embedded itself inside her.

Their first copulation had been a clothing ripping madness that had nothing to do with love and all to do with wild sex and instant physical attraction. In less than an hour of meeting, their bodies had melded in a frantic union of hands, tongues and wild abandon, beyond reason.

Their pace was languidly slow, allowing for hands to explore, to touch and caress. Their mouths kissed and licked where flesh was available, even to bite softly or suck skin between teeth. The marks would only last for a few minutes while suffused blood dissipated back into the dermis.

Brian shifted slightly to ease his weight off of her. It drove him deeper than previously and caused her to gasp at the fullness their copulation had her feeling. The sensation, friction and depth drove her to the precipice of climax. The intensity of his gentle thrusts, combined with the sensation of his coarse hair rubbing against her clit was taking her to a place, rarely achieved, when her body gave up of itself, the essences of love, in a fountain of fluid that soaked all that it met.

But Brian was not yet quite ready to impart his own fluencies. He wanted to savour and extend the moment and, perhaps, with luck and endeavour, even bring her to that point again, when her body flowed beneath him and she trembled out her orgasm, bereft of coordination.

He lengthened his stroke, still as slowly as he could manage, gently coaxing her body’s response to his efforts of lovemaking.

Sabine’s nails dug into his back, clawing him, cleaving his body to hers as the tension of yet another climax was stealing her breath, stealing her ability to control her body. Her knees came up and encircled his waist. Her ankles crossed, trapping him in a vice-like grip. Automatically, she pulled him deeply into an even closer embrace, drawing his cock further inside. She was completely open to him. Totally submitted to this physical union that would only end when they were both completely satiated.

Brian’s pace increased slightly, his moment of release becoming an overwhelming need. The basic, instinctive desire to impregnate and create a life taking over, his actions automotive as his pleasure increased. His climax almost took him by surprise, so suddenly did it arrive and intense beyond any he could remember. His seed erupted into her body, filling her canal, only to be forced out again as his final thrusts left little room for his secretions. He shuddered and gasped in a lungful of air.

Sabine felt his spasm. It triggered her release, her second in only a few minutes. She clasped him in a tight embrace as her tremors rippled through her body, her nervous system jangling while she felt him spurt his seed.

Their shared climax was complete, unique in intensity and totally consuming. They needed several minutes before full control of respective bodies was regained.

After they had lain side by side in sated bliss for an hour, entwined, Brian rose from the bed and dressed in his uniform, deciding to shower as soon as he could.

Sabine dressed in the fatigues provided and, after a call made by Brian, was taken by the Red Caps to a holding cell to wait for the transport aircraft and away from ground zero of the war zone. They both knew she would be safe. They both knew it was unlikely they would ever see each other again.

Her freedom would be temporarily suspended, perhaps, but she would be away from the theatre of war where a curtain call was without rehearsal, usually final, fatal and completely impersonal.

He had saved her, perhaps, but had also found and let free, a love he could only have imagined. Later, he wrote on her report, “No intelligence of relevance.” He filed her folder.

As an interrogation technique, his style had its rewards, but this time, he gave more of himself than intended.