“I don't want you playing with him while I'm gone, and yet you know I must leave tonight. If I forbid you. . .”

“I would disobey.”

“Perhaps my discipline wouldn't be to your liking.”

“There's no discipline you have that isn't to my liking.” She made sure her eyes warmed as she looked up at him. “You know that.”

Even without the marks, that edge was between them, whenever they came together. Vampires were powerful predators, so domination was an instinct, even when dealing with their own kind. Her instincts as a Domme were natural, and had been honed by experience, but he had centuries of blood behind his.

In the still, sacred privacy of her own mind, she'd realized a long time ago that if she was a cat, then he was a lion, and though he might be more powerful, their aggressive tendencies were similar. She wouldn't fully surrender herself without complete trust.

He'd always been brutally honest with her, and that meant she trusted him more than she'd ever trusted anyone. Yet he'd made it clear that with the third mark, he would have a limitless ability to scour to the bottom of her mind, know her fears and sorrows, her insecurities and most elemental needs, things she had difficulty facing in herself.

At one time, early on in their five-year relationship, he'd pursued his desire to make her his servant with a single-mindedness that had resulted in volatile, agonizing arguments. He could be terrifying when he was determined, and he'd come so close to winning so many times, knowing just how to undermine her female defenses. He knew so much about who and what she was already.

She'd withstood the assault until the storm passed, but he'd left, disappearing from her life for six months. It was then she'd recognized how much he'd become a part of her. Even moving and breathing were difficult, pretending she was still Anwyn when he'd apparently torn her soul out of his body and taken it with him. In her despairing moments, she'd told herself if he ever came back, she'd give him what he wanted. She would walk into the cage he offered, and somehow learn to trust him enough that she no longer saw the bars.

But when at last he returned, he'd told her he would not ask her again, nor would he permit her to agree to it. Perversely, she'd felt a sense of loss, that he'd turned his back on the bond that his species viewed as the closest possible link with another living being. Ironic, considering that link was possible only with a species they considered inferior.

His fingers stilled against her. Pulling out of her thoughts, she caught her breath as Gideon knelt at the prayer bench. The man's obvious struggle with himself made Anwyn's own body clench. He was rigid with tension, from the breadth of his shoulders in his thin T-shirt, down to the braced thighs and taut ass in the worn jeans.

“He keeps a toe blade in those boots.” Daegan's attention sharpened on the screen.

“I'll be fine, Daegan. He won't hurt me. I know it.”

Gideon's hair fell farther forward across his brow in his penitent position. It only enhanced the fierce resistance in the brilliant blue eyes that flashed through the unruly strands. When she heard his words—

I'm here, damn you. Come back to me—an insolent demand, her heart soaked up his pain, her pulse accelerating against Daegan's palm.

He kissed her there, letting his lips linger. His hands had returned to her breasts, and now they were drifting, stroking, plucking so that her body was shifting restlessly, a rhythm to his erotic motions. “I suppose you intend to keep him waiting,” he murmured.

“It's part of what he needs. Do you have time . . . for me to need you?” Gideon had touched her own healed wounds with his rabid suffering. It made her willing to let her guard down. Though deep in her heart, she knew she could trust Daegan with far more of herself. It was herself she didn't trust.

He'd stilled at her soft request, but now his lips increased their pressure against her throat, becoming more insistent. “You so rarely ask me for anything,cher . You know I would deny you nothing.”

“I want to keep watching him.”

“I know. You will taunt him with that, too, that another took your body while he knelt in loneliness.”

“Serving me with his obedience. A gift I'll reward. But with him, I need to hold back. That's the key.”

“You're afraid you'll want to give too much of yourself to him, too soon.” She couldn't deny it. It was in the quiver of her body, the way her nipples continued to harden beneath Daegan's touch, elongating under his skilled fingers. The aching pleasure became more uncomfortable as he pinched them again. She bucked against him, throwing her head back onto his shoulder, the violence taking her by surprise. Sometimes she came to life like the slowest boiling water, tiny bubbles of response barely quivering below the surface, and other times it was like this, as if the time Daegan had spent away from her had turned her blood to lava, such that she would erupt at his merest touch.

He was ready for her, though. Sliding the side zipper of the latex over the curve of her hip, his hand teasing bare flesh, he peeled the pants down but didn't push the tight garment past her thighs. “Bend over; clasp the chair in front of you,cher . I want to take you tight, where you cannot spread as wide for me as you wish.”

“I want to come.”

“That is for me to decide.”

“Daegan.”

He wrapped his hand in her hair and in one smooth motion, he'd pushed her forward, lifting her around the waist so her breasts were shelved on the top of her office chair and her toes barely reached the floor.

Her heels stabbed at the denim of his jeans.

“You will go to him wanting more, wet with my cock, vibrating with the memory of it thrusting hard into your pussy, but you will not release. To be denied will make you cruel, needy. He needs you cruel and needy.”

Anwyn closed her eyes, her breath short. Always he knew her so well. It hurt so much. He was right—to be denied could make one cruel, as well as needy to the point of silent, suffering anguish. If she knew she had all of Daegan Rei's heart, she would give him anything he wished, without reservation, rather than playing such games.

“For you both, then,” she breathed. “The one who will take me, and the one I will take for myself.” He opened his jeans with one hand and then brought her back to him with that hand in her hair, the rolling chair providing an anchor point under her breasts as she arched back like a crescent moon. When he drove his cock into her, the thick, turgid length of it, he earned her cry, pleasure in how he filled her.

Reaching back, she curled her hands into the open fabric of his jeans and held on, as he leaned forward and enveloped her in the folds of the duster he hadn't bothered to remove.

She was a Mistress, but he alone compelled her to surrender like this. While he had stopped demanding her agreement to be his servant, she knew the surrender she gave him fell short of how much he truly wanted from her.

Though he'd never said why he stopped asking, she thought she knew why, and it made the pain a little sharper, a blade she willingly drove into herself every time she clasped him to her.

In the vampire world, there was no greater crime than to fall in love with a human.

3

GIDEON didn't wear a watch, because digital ones beeped and wind-ups ticked, and both could be heard by vampire ears. He'd gotten pretty adept at knowing the passage of time without one, and though he knew it had been only fifteen minutes since he took the position on the prayer bench, it felt like twice that. The door didn't open, and with the soundproofing, the only noises in the silent room were his breath and heartbeat. Which increased his tension to the point he was gripping those iron handles as if they were a lifeline.

A strange thing had happened to him, kneeling here. The decision to obey had been spontaneous, a reckless “oh fuck it.” But the more time passed, the more it was as if she was compelling him to stay there. Challenging him. Somehow he knew her eyes hadn't left him. She was watching him, not one of her staff. He was going to stay here, in this position, until Hell froze over. Because that door hadn't opened and no one had told him to go home.

The longer he'd remained in this position, the harder he'd gotten, until his cock was a fucking steel bar, aching. It was at an uncomfortable angle beneath his fly, but once he'd grabbed hold of those iron bars, he'd pilloried himself. He wouldn't let go.

Jesus, he'd fucking lost his mind.

Despairing, he dropped his head so his brow rested on the padded rail. Cushioned velvet, an interesting choice since everything else about the bench was penitential hard wood. He was in that position when the door opened, and he heard her step back in.

He stiffened, but didn't move, keeping his head where it was, too messed up to make a decision about whether or not he should lift it. He held on to the sound of her coming across the floor, the sharp shot of stilettos, briefly muffled by a throw rug, then back to the wood again. The wet slide of the latex, the whisper of the camisole as her body moved beneath the clothes.

Then her scent and heat were close. He didn't know about flowers and perfumes. He just knew she smelled totally Female, capitalF . He wanted to bury his face in her hair, that sable sea of comfort and torment.

“Keep your head down.”

Her hand touched his hair then, stroked along his temple, his skull. He stared at the velvet cushioning, the rich red color filling his vision like blood, the iron handles hot under his sweaty grip. Pain, such as what the other Mistresses had given him, would have galvanized his normal instinct to rebel, but he had no strategy to fight this kind of attack. Lyssa had done it, too, that night long ago. Simply stroked his head, teaching him that a cruel goddess could turn mercy and compassion into a weapon. A treasure a man would sell his soul to experience.

Her touch was gentle, but there was a firmness there, too. She dug into his scalp, massaged. Her thumb had a sculpted nail, painted silver white, that he caught out of the corner of his eye when she shifted it forward, passing over his cheek. It drifted behind his ear, along his jaw. She caressed the scar where a vamp had tried to rip open his throat. He'd nearly succeeded before Gideon's small crossbow had sent a bolt straight under his rib cage and into his heart.