“Dona.” A sultry voice broke through his wishful thinking and the rasp of his breath. When Dona shifted, he saw the leopard woman stood at his ankles. Her pubic hair was a smooth short pelt of gold, her breasts solid and tempting as grapefruit.

Squatting, she ran a hand over Dona’s hair, then reached down and snapped a tether on his cock harness, giving it a sharp yank so he jumped. “Let us prepare him for you. He’s still coated in the filth of that place. I could smell his prison stench the moment you drove up.” She wrinkled her nose.

“She’s not complaining,” he growled before he could stop himself. The woman’s gaze rose to him and he saw she had diamond-shaped pupils in the bright light. Her lip curled up to show her canines, the overall impression so eerily like a cat it made his blood run a few degrees cooler, despite all the body modifications he logically knew were out there now. Sharpened teeth, split tongues…

Rising off him in one fluid movement, Dona stood over him, looking down the length of his body while he stared up at her. His cock throbbed, his mouth salivating for more, for anything she was willing to give him. His shoulders and arms ached from the discomfort of lying on them. At the moment all her expression was giving him was indifference, making him wonder if he’d imagined her thighs quiver as he tongued her, the wiggle of her ass against his face, the clutch of her fingers on his thighs.

“Thank you, Fiona. Take him.”

Fiona nodded. Jerking her head at Nathan, she underscored Dona’s desire with another sharp tug. He had a momentary thought to raise his foot and boot her back on her ass. Except the bitch likely would hang on to the harness and tear his dick off.

Fiona’s lips curved as if she sensed his dour thoughts. “On your feet, slave. We’re taking you down to the water.”

Chapter Three

As he struggled to his feet, Dona pivoted and walked away without another glance at him. When her arms rose to loosen her hair, it tumbled down her back in a way that made him lose track of time. The ends whispered along the sleek black pants that defined the curves of her ass.

Before he could linger on the image, his upper arms were taken on either side by the redhead and the blonde, their nails biting into his biceps as they got him to his feet.

Fiona led the way down to the water. With trepidation, he saw the three who had played with the cobra headed their way. The snake was wound around the arm and looped low on the bare hips of a woman with smooth chocolate skin and dark eyes like Dona’s, only hers had crimson lashes and the brown irises reflected red in the sunlight.

Her large breasts were a convenient platform for another of the cobra’s coils, his head resting on her shoulder almost like a baby’s, his flickering tongue occasionally brushing her earlobe.

“The snake isn’t coming into the water with us, is it?” He balked, despite himself.

Before Fiona could yank on him again, the redhead’s cool fingers slipped between his buttocks, teasing his anus, making him lunge into forward motion again.

“He’s jumpy and tight, Fiona. You’ll like that.” Fiona sent a wicked look over her shoulder and Nathan curled his lip at her in a snarl. In your dreams, bitch. Though even as he had the thought, he knew it might be desperate bravado, for he wasn’t able to prevent them from doing much in his current situation.

He could bide his time. In prison, he’d sacrificed the necessary pound of flesh to the men who wanted him. While he’d toughened up his muscles as Dona had noted, he quickly learned that becoming stronger and faster would not save him from being outnumbered. He was too good-looking. Too obviously polished and condescending.

They thought they were giving him a comeuppance. He was grimly amused they couldn’t see through the façade any more than the outside world had. So he taught them the same lesson he’d taught countless others who thought they had the upper hand on him.

Every person could be blindsided with his or her weaknesses. With guile, stealth and the tenacity of a bulldog, he proved he was willing to go to great lengths to stage revenge on those who tortured him. No matter how often he was beaten or raped, he made sure the perpetrator suffered more, whether he did it by planting the right lies to ensure his tormentor was knifed by another inmate, or was sent to Solitary for an infraction he didn’t commit. Or maybe the prisoner in question was given the wrong information about his visiting privileges so he missed his opportunity to see a girlfriend or visiting offspring for another long week.

On top of all that, when Jonathan’s muscles got tough enough, taking him down had become much, much harder. He’d grin through the blood on his face when the guards caught him and took him for his stint in Solitary, never showing the clutch in the pit of his gut at the thought of them closing the door with its one small window, leaving him with four close walls and the sound of their feet walking away.

Things like that didn’t matter. What did matter was that he earned the gift of hatred instead of contempt, incurring a grudging respect that was almost gratifying. The attacks had ended after the first year.

When the women pulled him into the water, he sucked in a breath. Despite the fact the oasis had to be in the center of a desert, the water was cold as hell as it sloshed around his calves. Giving him no time to become accustomed to it, they dragged him in to his waist. There’d rarely been a hot shower in prison, but a spray of cold water was not the same as immersion in a vat of it. His nipples beaded up tight, though he noticed the women, all of them naked, were not similarly affected. They seemed as impervious to the frigid temperature as Dona was to the heat in her outfit. Fiona reached out to pinch one of his nubs idly. When he winced and pulled back, they all laughed.

“Mariah, take him under and get his hair wet.”

Mariah was apparently the redhead, for she stretched up, wrapped her arms around his neck and shoulders and covered his lips with hers. He yelled his surprise into her open mouth when his feet were yanked out from under him. Hooking one hand on the back of his head, the other pinching his nose, Mariah took him down, his body weighted and held fast by two of the other women.

He struggled despite himself, kicked. His panic increased tenfold when tendrils of something he couldn’t immediately identify wound around his ankles. They pulled his legs apart firmly and held him. When his eyes opened and he could see through the wake he was creating, he saw ropes of some kind of pond weed were holding him, though it was hard to make them out past Mariah’s flowing hair. Her mouth was wet and hot, her tongue playfully teasing his as his breath rasped hard in and out, his terror making him desperately need oxygen. Thankfully, the women were bringing him up to his feet again, though the organic bindings held his ankles fast, keeping him immobilized for their intentions. As he came up, Mariah let him go and he drew a deep breath, the only one he got before a hard rubber ball gag was shoved in between his teeth and buckled behind his skull, taking another defense away from him. He was starting to shake. The cold, fear and something else were working him, something he couldn’t bear to think about. Where was Dona? Where the hell—

He found her standing by the water’s edge, watching. She hadn’t left him to the mercy of her minions. While he knew this was all being done at her behest, for some reason he clung to that thought as a comfort. The snake woman was sitting on the bank just behind her.

“You’re very lucky that Aliyah’s pet doesn’t like water,” Mariah crooned. “She can’t resist teasing, particularly when she smells fear. None of us can.”

“Olivia, you shave him, we’ll wash him.” Fiona beckoned to the blonde with a straight-edged razor and Olivia took it. As she approached, Nathan felt Mariah’s hands on his dick, unbuckling the harness.

Olivia descended, the blade in her teeth as the waters closed over her head. “I wouldn’t move a muscle,” Fiona advised. “Ladies, take him back.”

“Shit. What the—” The gag muffled the words, underscoring the futility of protesting. While it was a relief to feel the restraints loosen on his ankles, it was a momentary respite, for his calves were seized in the women’s hands and he was lifted so he floated horizontally on the water. Now each woman had a portion of him, holding him level. He wanted to thrash as Olivia emerged between his legs, but he believed Fiona’s warning. He suspected they could care less if his struggles left him maimed.

Olivia slicked back her hair so it clung to her skull as though she were a silver seal touched with gold. She had smaller breasts than Dona, but they curved upward in a tempting manner. A diamond and gold ring glittered at her navel. Removing the razor from her teeth, her gaze lowered to his groin, her tongue coming out to touch her upper lip in anticipation. The cold and fear should have made him as flaccid as a floundering fish, but whether it was the proximity of so many naked women or perhaps his dick had frozen, he was still thick and hard under their greedy eyes.

There were murmurs of appreciation. Giggling, they slapped at his cock as if they were playing a game with the damn snake again. When he tried to duck his hips under the water, an Asian girl with emerald green eyes and hair straight as falling rain put her hand under the water and thrust two fingers up his ass, snapping his spine straight and making him groan with the burning sensation of the non-lubricated entry.

“Be still for Mischa now, slave, or Olivia will turn you into a eunuch,” Fiona reproved him. As if he had any control over his body with that almond-eyed siren caressing him deep inside. He managed to focus enough to see Mariah remove the cork from a crystal bottle filled with a green liquid. Tipping the bottle, she drizzled the contents over his navel. As it pooled there and spread out on his abdomen, demonstrating that it was gelatinous and insoluble, the other women used their free hands to rub it across his chest, belly, thighs and arms, making the sticky substance glisten on his muscles. They pinched his nipples, leaned down to nip at his flesh with their mouths.

Olivia moved away and they flipped him, holding him facedown in the water as one of them, probably Mischa, rimmed his ass and rubbed the substance up and down the crease. Even as his panic climbed while they held him where he couldn’t breathe, he was sure his cock was leaking pre-cum into the water. The deprivation of air, an extreme BDSM tactic, was goading him. He had to fight the desire to release along with the panic. No way was he giving in to them. Not with his Mistress watching. Though he couldn’t see Dona, he could feel her regard, knew she was there.