“I’m part human and all witch. It helps me manage it.” She put her hand back on the door latch, quirked a brow at him as a chorus of strident Raiiinnnnaaa calls started up in the room, Cathair adding to the discordant music. “We can talk about this later.”

Pushing open the door, she was relieved when he let her slip away. Her outburst said his presence was taking her down paths she’d abandoned long ago. She knew better than to follow those roads. Having taken those journeys before, she knew exactly where they led.

AS MIKHAEL FOLLOWED RAINA INTO THE MAIN PARLOR, Cathair was having a grand old time, shredding pink and white tissue from the shipping crate in which the box had come. Raina fussed but didn’t really stop him, taking a seat on a stool Saul pulled out for her. As she gave them permission to open the box at last, Mikhael slid onto a stool behind her and leaned back against the mahogany and brass trim of a fully stocked bar.

It was like watching a party where all the participants were the birthday guest. They crowded around the box, pulling out a variety of things, shiny objects that kept the raven’s bright eyes darting about as he hopped up and down on his perch. Clamps, restraints, a variety of vibrators. Then Luke pulled out an alarming-looking anal probe.

“Awesome. My guys will love this. Especially Mark.”

“Luke,” Raina said reprovingly. “No names, even among ourselves.”

“Yes, ma’am.” His eyes twinkled. “But he really will.”

“I’m sure.” Raina glanced back at Mikhael with amused exasperation. It seemed their enthusiasm had restored her mood. It had startled her, that slip in her composure. What surprised him was how much seeing her rally, regain her good spirits, improved his own mood. Even as he was mulling over what she’d inadvertently revealed to him.

“Would you like to give the anal probe a try, Mikhael?”

He met her devilish gaze. “Only if you bend over.”

“You got the nipple jewelry we liked!”

He was sure she said something uncomplimentary to him, but it was lost in the multiple exclamations that followed Catalina’s squeal of delight. She and Ana pulled out a thick handful of sparkling chains like Mardi Gras beads. Without hesitation, the females shed their tops and began modeling for one another, treating him and everyone else in the room to a panorama of breasts embellished by a variety of nipple treatments. Ellen put a clamp on one nipple, then ran the chain to a second clamp on Ana’s pert nipple. When two more pairs of the other girls did the same, along with one coed partnership of Li and Catalina, they raced one another across the room, like a bizarre three-legged race. Then they crisscrossed them, mixed colors and styles of chains and clamps.

Isaac was staring down at Isabella, bemused as she tugged off his shirt and put a set on him. Seeing his confusion, she laughed and curled her slim hand in the chain, tugging gently to test the pleasure-pain quotient until he kissed her. Smiling against his mouth, she drew him down, rolled over the floor and pinned him, like a couple of puppies.

More things were pulled out of the box. Li chased Gina with the flogger, twirling it over his head like a lasso, threatening to put her over his knee, while Ana and Min experimented with the dual-headed vibrator. They’d stripped off their jeans and the thong panties beneath to get in a Twister-like contortion on the floor, legs scissored together.

A miasma of sex demon energy was soon swirling through the room, such that Cathair was looking a bit dazed. When Raina took him to the door on her arm and set him aloft, his flight path was a drunken zigzag. She made sure he arrived safely in the branches of one of the live oaks, then left the doors open to the fresh air, mixing with the fragrance of pleasure.

“This is beautiful.” Gina went down on her knees next to the half-empty box and pulled out a supple corset collar. “Who ordered this?”

“I did,” Marisa said. “It’ll look gorgeous with my taffeta.” She affected a Southern drawl. “Particularly when I do my Scarlett O’Hara.”

“I don’t remember Scarlett having a corset collar.”

“Scarlett didn’t lift her skirts for about twelve guys a night, either.” Marisa giggled. “Some modifications make the menfolk happy. Or the womenfolk, as the case may be.” She batted her eyes. “Women fantasize about lacing Scarlett into that corset, too.”

Laughter went around the room. “Wait—this would look beautiful with Raina’s black lace,” Gina said. “Oh my God, that would be gorgeous. Raina, try it on. You could use it the nights Marisa wasn’t playing Southern belle.”

Marisa nodded enthusiastically, brought it over to Raina, holding it up. “Try it on, see what it looks like. You have the most beautiful swan neck.”

“In a few minutes,” Raina said. “Let’s look at the other things first.”

“Oh, come on. The fashion show is part of the fun.”

“Not now,” Raina said, her tone changing. “All right?”

Though Mikhael couldn’t see Raina’s face, he noted the tension in her shoulders. The flicker on Marisa’s face was also telling, as well as the brief pause in the chatter, the exchanged glances. He sensed they’d run up against this in Raina’s nature before, but like the house’s moods, they didn’t always predict where that door would turn up. To her credit, Marisa nodded, pressed Raina’s hand, and left the corset collar in her mistress’s lap before she retreated.

In a few minutes, they were enraptured by a vibrator the size of a Louisville slugger. He was fairly certain no normal-sized person would sit still to have that shoved up any orifice.

RAINA HOPED THAT EXCHANGE WOULD GO UNNOTED, but a consummate hunter noticed everything. While her staff was playing with the enormous dildo, she heard the scrape of the stool as he moved closer. His long-fingered hand slid around her elbow, his chest briefly pressing into her back, his thighs now alongside the outsides of hers as he picked up the corset collar from her lap. His breath teased her ear. “Pull your hair to the side.”

“I can’t. Please…just don’t.”

“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “I’m here; we’re here; all of them are here. Nothing bad is going to happen. Some part of you wants this. Pull your hair to the side. Obey me.”

Before his arrival, if any male tried to command her, even in the most subtle of ways, her back would go up and the unfortunate would get the sharp edge of her temper. But when they came from his lips, those two words had the ability to make her do unthinkable things. That was the problem. Everything with him was different.

That crack he’d opened last night was still there, and getting wider. She couldn’t move. Her hands were too cold. But he put his hands under her hair, against her neck. His skin warmed hers. Pushing her hair to the side, he slid his fingers through it, found her nape.

“You do have a neck like a swan. It’s beautiful, everything a woman’s neck should be. Here we go.”

That sexy Russian accent flavored the warning as he fit the collar around her throat, smoothing it. She quivered, vibrated. She wasn’t shaking. She wasn’t.

“You remember earlier, when I kissed your neck? Putting this over that spot, lacing it to hold it there, to remind you of my marking…I like that idea.”

So did she. She wished he’d broken skin with his bite, so she could feel the tenderness under that provocative snugness. As he tightened the laces, testing it to make sure he wasn’t constricting her windpipe, it made her keep her chin up. Made her vulnerable and dependent on the Master who owned her, who put it on her.

She knew all the permutations of BDSM. For a woman particularly, its power was in the psychological manipulation. The collar, the restraints…Those were mere tools to encourage the mind to accept the submission. She could write helpful fact sheets, “Bondage and You.” As he’d pointed out, it was one of the many things offered by her house.

Her relationship to it was far more personal, as she’d just made clear in her ridiculous and irrational reaction to Marisa, prompting Mikhael to push harder. She knew about both sides of the coins, the ugly and not so ugly. But her direct experience, until Mikhael had arrived, was only with the ugly side. The not so ugly was just an incoherent yearning behind the darkness. But a Dark Guardian had no fear of darkness. He would stride through it, not let it stop him from giving her what that quivering part of her wanted. Because she knew that, some part of her trusted him to do this. That scared her most of all.

She remained still, but if the turbulence inside her had been translated to movement, she’d have run three laps at a full-out sprint by the time he finished the lacing. He caressed her spine below the collar, and she made a tiny noise as he brushed his lips over her ear. He’d pushed the robe to the points of her shoulders during his task, and she held it loosely clasped over her breasts, her knuckles too tense.

Sophia glanced up. “Gina, look. You’re right.”

Gina turned with Marisa and the others. Mikhael eased back, but his leg was still alongside her stool, his foot braced on the bottom rung, surrounding her with a sense of ownership. She saw it register in their eyes. In Li’s, it was a knowing, somewhat concerned look, making her wonder how much her senior staff member understood about his mistress.

She summoned a faint smile, despite the pressure building in her chest that needed them to look away. To go away. “Well, that cinches it, no pun intended. Marisa, you’ll have to order another. This one’s mine.”

Desperately seeking a distraction, her gaze shifted to Isaac. When the party had escalated into more movement and noise, he’d retreated to the doorway, hanging back and giving himself an escape. It reminded Raina of one of the cats, curious enough to stay where he could see, but ready to bolt all the same. His eyes were on Raina when Min lunged at him playfully from the floor, trying to drag him down to his knees to rejoin the group.

Not expecting it, he leaped back, hitting the doorframe hard enough to knock a few of the pictures off the wall. The glass of one broke as he stumbled, stepping on it. Raina winced. He’d just put his footprint in an original watercolor.