Yes.

Now choose.

He wanted to ask what she was wearing, but he suspected Eve had left her something special to put on.

He waited, trying to think, trying to order his thoughts. He already sensed what it was she wanted to do.

May I see you first before I decide, because if you’ve gone down a certain path, I’m not sure I can take it.

I’ll let you see my hand.

The door opened slightly and her hand appeared. The wrist was wrapped in silver-studded leather. Hanging from each stud were several thin chains, each of which draped to encompass her fingers. If she used her hand on him, he would feel the chains.

She would hurt him, yet not hurt him.

He could feel his heart pulsing behind his eyes.

Adrien, do you trust me?

After two deep breaths, he sent, I’m yours.

Good.

He pushed the door open then stilled.

She stood across the room, next to Eve’s table, an ancient wooden thing polished to a gleam through the years.

She was a vision in leather and wore a feathered headdress that was also a half mask. He could see the glitter of her eyes. Her lips were dark red, bloodred.

She wore a costume of black leather straps that covered only strips of her skin around her breasts and down her thighs, then broadened to encompass her knees and ended in loops of leather beneath her feet. She wore stilettos that put her just shy of his height. Her breasts and her bare peach were on display.

If he’d been hard before, now he was in pain. She’d taken sex into the realm of dark fantasy and it worked for him.

Oh, God, how it worked for him. And he knew it wasn’t just about Lily and her costume or sex, but about his life and what had been done to him when he was young.

She turned her back to him and planted a hand on a long table, then bent over just enough so that he could see the bareness of her bottom. She was fully exposed and swollen.

When she turned back, she moved to the end of the thick wood table.

She put her palm flat on the table, the chains making a soft clinking sound. “Take your clothes off and get up here. On your back.”

When his vision cleared of all his lust, he saw that heavy chains and manacles dangled off the sides of the table; two more chains lay taut across the top and bottom. In addition, he sensed the preternatural quality of the chains, that something very vampire would bind him in place, like the manacles Daniel used in the Himalayan prison.

He’d already made his choice. He wanted this. Hell, he’d been wanting it far longer than he could admit even now. But his heart pounded in his chest.

He stripped off his clothes then climbed up on the table and laid himself flat. He stared up at the mirror-covered ceiling and saw himself lying there, naked, and very erect. He kept looking at himself, his tight eyes, the vein thumping in his throat, his cock straight up and ready for something that scared the shit out of him.

Lily worked quietly and went from one ankle to the other, setting the heavy manacles with pins only she could remove. His legs were now spread far apart.

When she got to his wrists, he realized the air was thick with her feminine scent. He finally looked at her and saw that her nipples were peaked and that sweat lay in a sheen over her skin. Her bare labia were swollen with need. Whatever he felt, her desire matched his.

I can feel your need, Adrien. You’ve worked me up as well.

I want to suck your breasts and then eat you. Blatant words.

All in due course. Right now, you’re mine to do with as I please.

When the last pin fell into place, Adrien pulled on the chains. That’s when the panic set in. He felt the familiar power, the one that told him he was now a prisoner, trapped.

He couldn’t breathe.

“Let me go,” he said.

But Lily leaned over him. “No. Can’t do that, Adrien. You agreed. You can beg me a hundred times, a thousand times. Not gonna happen. You have to trust me.”

“I’m serious Lily. This isn’t going to work. I can’t do this. These manacles have power.”

“I know. I requested them, otherwise you could break free.”

He took a deep breath.

She glanced down at his erection and chuckled. “And something tells me you’re gonna be just fine.”

He hated this truth: that while he could protest, his cock loved what was happening. His hips arched and his balls were two nests of fire ready to explode.

She climbed onto the table. He was about to protest one last time, but she straddled one of his thighs, on her knees, and her hand began a slow descent of her body, from the navel, kneading her skin, all the way down to her labia. She closed her eyes and fondled herself, arching her neck. “These bonding chains are extraordinary. I can feel you shift from your fear to your desire. Do you like what I’m doing to myself?”

His mouth watered. His eyes moved from her erect nipples to her fingers massaging her clitoris and back. Using her free hand, she began to play with a nipple. He needed to get to her, to touch what she was touching.

He jerked the manacles at his wrists, trying to pull away. He wanted parts of her in his mouth, his cock buried inside her, his body thrusting.

Lily. My God, Lily.

I’ve never been so close. Her voice sounded rich and full of desire.

Let me see your finger go inside you.

She arched her hips forward and met his gaze. She held her lower lips apart with the hand that bore the chains, and with her free hand she slid a finger slowly down her clitoris, letting him watch, until she pierced her own body.

He groaned, wanting his fist around his cock. “I need you.” Shit, his voice had dropped an octave.

She withdrew her finger and slowly reached for his lips. “Open your mouth, Adrien. Do it.”

He obeyed, panting now, the chains on the table jangling because his body couldn’t keep still, his hips slammed up and down trying to reach her. His arms flexed and released, pulling on the manacles.

She slid her wet finger inside his mouth and the flavor of her, ripe with excited female and her feminine scent, made him crazy. He had to get to her but couldn’t.

He sucked hard on her finger, his tongue swirling over her. He couldn’t get enough.

She removed her finger, then shifted suddenly so that she knelt beside him.

He froze as she bent her lips in the direction of his cock. He cried out, “Do it.”

Damn but he needed to come.

He looked up at the mirror and saw the straps of her costume giving way to her buttocks, now two white mounds that he wanted his hands on, his mouth, his tongue, his teeth.

Then he felt her tongue on the head of his cock, a gentle swipe, then another.

His back arched. If she just took him and sucked he could release.

You’re torturing me.

She chuckled. I’m enjoying you.

She drew back and looked at him. “Let me know how this feels.” He glanced down at his cock, and watched her hand, draped with chains, close around his thick stalk.

He froze again, fearing, hoping.

She began slowly, up and down. She leaned over and tongued him at the same time so that the chains grew slick. It was both uncomfortable and hot as hell, though he didn’t understand why.

Chains had bound him from the time he could remember.

Now she stroked him with a handful of chains. She kept moistening the chains and didn’t move too fast or put too much pressure on.

I can feel your pleasure, Adrien. I can sense how much you’re savoring what I’m doing to you. I love having command of you like this, taking charge of your flesh and doing whatever the hell I want.

She pumped faster now and it hurt but it felt so good.

She sustained the pace and he could feel himself ready to release, then all the pressure was just gone.

He shouted his frustration.

“Not yet,” she said softly.

He groaned.

She turned to straddle his waist this time. She used the same chain-laden hand to rub deep between her legs, to gather her moisture. She put the same hand over his mouth. “Lick the chains.”

He obeyed her without question. Her arousal was a thick, perfumed cloud all around him. The chains were loose against her palm, so he drew them past his lips and sucked on them, taking the flavor of her down his throat.

His cock throbbed where the chains had rolled over his skin. He ached for her and something more, something so deep inside his soul that he had a sense all his rage at what had been done to him was about to be released.

He sucked harder on the chains. She leaned close and drifted a breast near her hand and his sucking lips. When she removed her fingers and slid her breast closer, he took all that he could in his mouth and sucked hard, muffled cries emanating from his throat. He couldn’t get enough.

Her hands stroked up both of his arms at once, her fingernails digging into his biceps. Her body rolled while he suckled her nipple. Her lashes rested on her cheeks; a pinch of pleasure had formed between her brows.

You smell like heaven, came from her mind to his.

I want to fuck you.

I’d like that. Her eyes opened and her breast came away from between his lips. She met his gaze. But you’re trapped and can’t. You can’t do anything right now.

The words burned like fire through his mind and his soul. She had spoken the reality of his childhood as well as the past year.

She slid down just enough so that his rigid cock touched her ass. He couldn’t quite define the sensations that split him wide. Rage and lust maybe. He wanted her.

What is it, Adrien? Do you want something? Need something? What could it be?

Oh, God, she lifted up her hips. He could see her clitoris through her spread legs and now he could see his cock. He struggled against the chains as he watched her lower her body onto him. He thrust his hips upward, forging a warm wet pilgrimage into her depths.

His neck arched, his eyes rolled back in his head.

She began to move up and down, slowly at first then faster. Her voice once more penetrated his mind: What are you going to do about it, Adrien? I have you now and you can’t touch me, you can’t do anything except feel this pleasure.

But he wasn’t that child anymore, and he wasn’t just a vampire.