Her voice was breathless.

He swallowed the urge to reach up before his hands were anchored and make her come down to him. For one thing, she could easily slip away. But he was recalling her words.

If you can't obey me, I have no use for you.

He wasn't sure that was true, but some iota of good sense told him he'd better not test his theory at this moment. So he reached as far as he could, feeling the muscles of his upper body sliding up his ribs, stretching taut over his stomach. Her eyes reflected her enjoyment in the show.

The arch in his back increased as she moved away to tether the manacles with chain to the bed rail, drawing up the slack further. Taking hold of the joining point of the manacles on his wrists, she pulled on him, one sharp, decisive move that elicited a grunt from him and stretched out his body several more inches. It would have taken a rack borrowed from the Spanish Inquisition--or a vampire's strength--to extend his body this far, and he felt the strain in his joints as she held him with one hand, tightening the chains with the other to keep him that way.

The floor was gone beneath his toes. She'd just made him completely helpless. The room had gotten exponentially smaller, warmer. With his thighs spread, nothing protected his genitals. His cock had no sense at all, staying high and stiff, calling all sorts of attention to itself. The stretched position put pressure on the gnawing hunger in his lower abdomen.

"Does looking at me make you wetter, my lady?" Fighting panic, he asked the question with rough demand, driven mad by watching her gaze course over him, linger.

"It does, Jacob. Would you like to taste?"

"I would. If it pleases my lady. "

"You've learned your manners well. I'll have to attend more Faires in the future. " However, rather than granting his desire, she sat on the bed, spread out the hem of her robe's skirt in a half moon before her and smoothed it. Sitting there with her dark hair falling on her creamy shoulders, she was bewitching, her breasts bare and taunting him with their proximity. "My cunt is a hot, wet sheath, but small and tight, my courteous knight. You seem generously endowed. " "Well, my lady, perhaps you should let me make your silken walls more so with my tongue, for an easier fit. " He swallowed. "Christ, let me fuck you, Lyssa. Let me give you pleasure. "

His fingers closed into fists as he braced himself for what might come next. Protecting her he'd been prepared to do. Taking care of her. But he hadn't expected to be at her total mercy.

"Not just yet. I think you need a test in obedience first. You're talking out of turn again. I'd also advise you to think twice before you ever call me familiar again. " Rising to her knees, she spread the hem of her robe out like a curtain just above her knees as she straddled his forearms. As she looked down at him, he had to fight the urge to crane his neck back, see if she had spread open the garment enough to give him a glimpse of heaven.

"I'm going to move over your body now. If you don't remain still, I'll stop, get off the bed and leave you this way for an hour as punishment before we start again. "

In this position he could fondle the base of her bare ass with his fingertips, for the back of the robe was draped over his hands. But as she stared down at him, he didn't.

She walked on her knees, as delicate in her movements as a crane through water. Watching the hem lift above him as she moved toward his head, he felt the wave of trapped heat beneath. He inhaled her a moment before she released the robe and it drifted over his face, closing him into darkness. The soft fabric brushed his jaw, the lines of his shoulders and biceps as she moved along the length of his arms, now like a wild cat gliding slowly over a fallen tree. When she straddled his head, her thighs brushed his temples, the heat of her cunt just above him as she progressed.

He registered wetness on his forearm. Warmth. Arousal she'd left there.

All intentions to obey dissipated. Perhaps she'd do as she'd threatened. Perhaps not. That was her decision. This one was his, and he was going to make it damn hard for her to make hers.

He eased upward so she'd know his action was premeditated and began to lap at her, his tongue making the second sweet contact of the night with those slick lips. He didn't rush, didn't try to devour her in one bite. Didn't want to nip at her like a dog and make her jump away. He teased, stroked, made her hesitate on the point of decision of what to do about his disobedience. Whether to follow her own mandate or decide it was worthwhile to take some time to mull it over.

In this position his chin and lower lip had the best access to her clit and so he rubbed her, letting her feel the rough friction of the trimmed fringe of his beard as he delved deeper with his tongue, using his neck muscles to strain higher. Oh, sweet Jesus in heaven. That was a shudder of response against his mouth. As he clamped his lips more tightly over her, starting to suckle around his thrusting tongue, he nuzzled the tiny puckered entrance to her backside with his nose.

She dug her hand into his chest and the upper part of his abdomen for balance. The imprint of all five fingers seared his skin like a tattoo. She began to rub herself against his mouth, the wet heat of her body lubricating her movements so he felt his cheeks, mouth and chin getting damp. He reveled fiercely in it, her taste. He might have sold his soul to take her just once in the quiet, magical dimness of her bedroom.

She started to move toward his feet again, leaving his face. Turning his head, he bit the inside of her leg gently, trying to hold her through persuasion, but she kept going, the skirt of the garment whispering over his face, a trail of pitch black filled with her scent. Her knees moved over his shoulders, then back to the bed on either side of him. When the robe slipped from his face she'd reached his hips. She turned to face him, swinging her leg over his cock and giving him the incredulous hope she'd impale herself, give him that welcoming glove.

Instead, she seated herself on his stomach and untied the robe, letting it drop off her shoulders and pulling it free so she sat upon him completely naked. His gaze moved over her. His lady. His Mistress. Why it was so easy to think of her that way had to be more than just Thomas's training, and he knew it. While he couldn't explain it, he couldn't deny the swirl of primitive desire taking him over, making him willing to do whatever she wanted to accept him. As all born vampires were, she was perfect. Not a blemish to her pale skin, no memory evoked by childhood scars. Now he could see what he'd known from tasting the sweetness of her pussy, that she had no silky black hair between her legs to match the God's bounty spilling over her shoulders and down her back.

As he watched, she reached between her legs with both hands and came away with wet fingers. Starting to rock her hips again, she stroked herself against his stomach. Bumped his cock with each undulation of her ass, performing a sinuous dance upon him.

His throat was dry as she arched back, a lithe move to trace her damp fingers along the inside of his right leg and then his left. Her backside pushed his cock down with the crescent angle of her body. She ran her hands along the outside of his calves, then his thighs, marking him with the honey she'd gathered on her hands. In that position, if he could ignore the screaming in his neck, he could look down his body to an unimpeded view of her pussy in its glistening state.

She continued to rock upon him in that relentless, slow-rolling motion, creating friction between them. He groaned as more of her juices made tiny tracks over the petals of flesh. Still arched, she brought one hand back there--holy Christ--penetrated herself, thumb rubbing her clit. Then she stretched almost as far as she'd made him do to paint a circle of her fluids on his ankles, the arches of his feet.

When at last she rose, her pale face was flushed. She sank her fingers into herself again, oiling herself all the way to her top knuckles. Sweeping her hands behind her once more, she gripped his cock. Using her dew to lubricate his shaft, she pressed her buttocks around him, rubbing. Slow, up and down.

"Did you know when cats rub their faces against you, they're marking you with their scent?" she asked.

He didn't have a clue as to the price of a newspaper or who was president. He was hypnotized by the glide of her body. The feel of her ass pressed around his cock, sliding up and down, aided by the response leaking from him. Her upper body tilted up, the small breasts quivering, her glossy hair whispering on her shoulders.

"If I decide to keep you, I'll mark you this way often so other vampires know you're claimed. We have a very keen sense of smell. "

She released herself abruptly and leaned down over him, her breast just over his mouth. "Please me, Jacob. "

He wanted to bite down like a rabid animal, but somehow he remembered himself enough to close his lips over the nipple with a gentle sucking pressure. His cock was hard and large, sliding along the back of her thigh, so close to her pussy it made him want to groan. He'd never focused on using his tongue so persuasively. Suckling a woman's breast was as much of a complicated art as eating her cunt. If a man could get past his fascination with nipples and only stimulated them when the timing was right, the rewards were great.

So he licked her slowly, methodically, almost like a cat bathing her, and was rewarded by her purr. Catching her fingers in his hair for just a moment, she released him to stretch her arms the length of his bound ones, closing her hands on his wrists below the manacles. He marked her now, with the wetness of his mouth on her breast, with the liquid on the tip of his cock, bumping insistently against her buttocks, her thighs.

As the purr became a growl and her movements became more urgent, he began to use his teeth. Now he seized the nipple, bit down, held it with rigid pressure as he flicked it rapidly with his tongue, released it to let the blood rush back into it, then did it again.

Her pussy was slick against his abdomen as she stroked her clit against his cut stomach muscles. Feeling her against him, he couldn't keep himself from fucking the air to communicate how much he wanted to be inside her.

She shifted, pushing the other breast into his mouth. He was even rougher now, nipping, pulling hard as her hip movements became more frenetic. When he heard the incoherent plea in the back of her throat, he knew he was hearing a woman on the edge of losing control. He lashed her with his tongue, strained to reach her with his cock as she moved wildly on him, using his stomach with the singular fierceness of a woman doing laundry on a washboard. As she began to climax, he snarled his desire against her but kept up his sensual torment on her breast, feeling the hard nipple of the other one brushing the stubble of his cheek and the curve of his ear as she surged forward, humping herself on him with abandon, her thighs spread wide to bring her clit in full contact with his hard stomach, knees sinking into the bed. Her flesh spasmed against him when she cried out, a pure note of pleasure that gripped his cock and made it throb futilely for what she held just out of reach.

She went for a long time. The climax wrung cry after cry out of her, then small harsh moans of aftershocks that kept her shuddering, her head bowed and hair covering her face. The soft strands draped over him like a curtain. Like the climax at the salon, it was the release of a woman who'd denied herself for far too long. As if she'd just been freed from a prison of her own making and had given herself leave to find the type of pleasure in a man's body she hadn't received in quite a while.

There was an emotional component to it, too, in the way she fell over him, her body arched over his face and fingers gripped on his forearms again. When she drew back, pressed her temple into his shoulder, she nestled her cheek into his armpit as if she were getting as close as she could. Close as she could get to having his arms around her.

So when she shifted, trying to match every part of her upper body to the corresponding parts of his, he followed his intuition. When she stretched out her arms far enough to brush his bound hands with her fingers this time, he twined his own with hers, holding them with simple, loose intimacy. Her lashes fanned his skin as she closed her eyes, pressed her temple to his. The searing, almost spiritual pleasure he felt for her was enough to distract him from the agony of the most intense erection he could ever remember having.

At length, the last shudder passed through her. He stayed still beneath her, quivering, his head turned so his breath was on her hair, lips pressing there. Feeling her breasts against the upper part of his chest. While he was in torment, in some odd way he wished they could stay like this forever, knowing he'd brought her pleasure, feeling her quiet joy in lying on top of him.

Untangling herself from his. Grip with reluctance, Lyssa pushed herself up, pressing her bottom back against his turgid cock. Studying the blue eyes that held so much lust she couldn't quell a hard quiver of response, she ran her fingers with deliberate casualness over the hardened nubs of his nipples, the muscles damp with her climax.

"I did warn you, Jacob, " she said softly. "You disobeyed. "

"Aren't you glad I did, then?" His voice was husky, so unconsciously sexy in his own desire Lyssa wanted to take him all over again.

"Yes, " she said simply. "But you won't be. I'll be back in an hour. "

Rising to stand over his naked body, she saw understanding dawn. A surge of fierce temper flooded his expression, goaded by the razor edge of a sexual frustration so high it would exceed even a male wolf's chained near a pack of females, every one of them in heat.

"Before you say a word, " she said in an even softer voice, "remember you're here by choice, for the moment. If obeying my commands is too much for you to handle, then I'll free you and let you be on your way. Is that what you want, Jacob?"

She kept her expression unreadable, impassive, while inside her a voice was shrieking at her to relent. He'll leave, and you want him. You want him worse than you've wanted anything in a while. Damn Thomas.

If she said that phrase too many times, could it impact where the monk had gone when he crossed over? She was superstitious enough to say a prayer to take it back, though it felt strange to pray in a moment like this, with her body still vibrating with the orgasm, aching for something more fulfilling.

She wanted nothing more than to kiss Jacob's snarling mouth,taste herself on his lips and ride that engorged cock, feel a sense of connection. She'd just relieved a need without giving herself the intimacy she truly craved. He was so angry he obviously didn't trust himself to respond to her question. Good. It gave her the excuse to regain her sense, to put some space between them. "Since you don't know your answer, I'll leave you alone to think about it. "

She could use a variety of excuses for the reasons she found herself wanting Jacob. Enforced celibacy, Thomas's knowledge of what attracted her, loneliness for a mate, and perhaps some of all of it held truth. But she knew it was more. When he looked at her, she felt like she'd found something precious she'd be insane to relinquish. Perhaps Thomas had cast a dark spell, something to compel her to take Jacob as her servant. If she hadn't known the monk's devotion to his God so well, she'd have given the idea more merit.

He had picked a man for her who was everything she wanted and nothing she needed. But if she was crazy enough to keep him, he had to learn the basic lesson she was trying to teach him. Otherwise his time in her world would be cut short for reasons far more serious than the loss of a position in her household.