He arched up with a hiss, the fiery pain wrapping itself up with the thrust into Janet's mouth. When he felt that dildo again, pressed against his buttock, he tensed immediately, but his Mistress remained leaning against his body, holding him in a light clasp of her arms. Idly, she played with his nipples, then followed the line of hair that arrowed down his abdomen toward the busy Janet. The submissive was making hungry little humming noises in the back of her throat, such that he couldn't help but imagine her before him on her knees, head moving and gorgeous ass quivering and tits wobbling as she worked him. If he was free, he'd be tempted to pull back her head and spill his seed over them, or work his cock in that slippery valley between.

He wondered what it would be like to have this cool Mistress on her knees before him and almost came then and there. Would have, if she hadn't scored the other nipple with that sharp edge, as if she was anticipating the edge of control he was riding.

“You won't come until I tell you that you can. You won't be weak. You'll hold out for me, won't you?” He gave a muffled curse, and her smile pressed against his shoulder. “That's what I thought. You want to know what else I think? Sometime, not so long ago, there was a night where you finally got those terrible voices in your head to be quiet. On that one blissful night, it wasn't about how you'd failed, or what you had to do. Things got so intense and simple at once, it was all about feeling, but not the bad kind of feeling. You moved past conscious thought to what your heart and soul wanted, needed, so desperately. They could breathe for a little while.”

She lifted on her toes, her voice dropping to a whisper, as if she spoke to him through a closed door, telling him that she had the key to free him, that his shields were an illusion she could swing out of her way at any time. “A woman held the reins that night. Your heart and soul keep bringing you back to my door, because you know Atlantis has what you're seeking.”

Not Atlantis. Her. But she was still talking, her voice stripping him more effectively than the removal of his clothes. “Your problem is your mind came here looking for what you want, rather than what you need. Your soul is the battleground between those two forces.” A helpless, angry groan escaped him as her words, her caressing touch and Janet's mouth distracted him enough that the well-oiled dildo slid past the opening of his ass, sinking inside a couple inches. A wealth of nerve endings awoke, obviously responding well to her pioneering efforts. He bucked against the stimulation, though, and the cock harness bit into his turgid flesh.

“There you go. There's my boy,” she crooned, and used his movements to slide in farther. Christ. It burned and yet it felt good, too good. His cock was pulsing in an alarming way.

“A sweet, fine, virgin ass. Stop resisting, Gideon. Just be my slave. Let me use you until you're mindless.

This is actually very slim, a beginner's size. Slim enough that you can't keep it out, but a nice flared head to give you the proper friction and pressure.”

“Stop it,” he mumbled around the gag, and saliva escaped onto his chin, embarrassing him. Janet's mouth withdrew, and a handkerchief touched his mouth, as if the submissive were a nurse, ready to mop up the blood or wipe away the result of his Mistress's surgical incisions into his soul.

Now past the clenched muscles that could provide any resistance to her, she sank in to the hilt. He shuddered, his cock spasming. No, he couldn't, he wouldn't, let go. As if she knew how close he was, both women went still as he fought the release. It was a near thing, his heart thundering in his ears, his face tight with concentration, her breath on his neck, waiting.

“You are powerless, and yet you are also invincible, Gideon. Nothing is so dichotomous as human beings. You're a warrior, a killer . . . yet you're helpless against this need in you. You need to serve a woman's desires, her demands.”

He shook his head, kept shaking it. In answer she moved again, a thrust and rock that took her right against his prostate, pushing with the right amount of pressure. And again, and again, until his cock was pulsing. He yanked against the restraints, yanked hard, and got nothing. Damn. It incensed him, but she increased her thrusts, starting to fuck him in earnest. He groaned as Janet's mouth closed over his cock again, taking him to the root, tongue flicking in a way that took the rest of his brain cells. The women worked in tandem. As he jerked forward, he plunged into Janet's mouth. When he jerked back, he impaled himself.

She'd said not to come, but he couldn't stop it. He was going to fail her. Fail himself. But then she gave him Heaven from inside Hell's grip.

“Come for me now, Gideon. I command it.”

He roared against the gag as his seed came boiling forth. Despite that, he fought his own body and the stimulation like a battle in truth. No matter what she said, this wasn't what he wanted, needed. But she didn't care. She worked him deeper, harder, drawing the climax out longer than he expected, so that his roar became a bellow, a snarl of frustration. Particularly when Janet pulled off him, leaving him hot and hard, hanging in the wind, jetting out onto the tile floor.

Even without that wet heat closed around him, it was one of the most intense orgasms he'd ever experienced, the combination of stimulation and deprivation together, his hot, relentless pump into the air, the contraction of his balls as his cock flooded with one last, hard expulsion of semen. He rocked against the chains, swayed, the world spinning. Without the chains' support, his knees would have buckled.

As it was, when he was done, he was breathing hard, a winded animal. She was still moving in and out of his tender ass, making it clear this was about what she wanted, not him. He was a slave, just as she'd said. No responsibility but doing what she said.

“Beautiful,” his Mistress purred softly, her voice entirely too calm. “You think I'm cruel, but trust me, I can be much worse. One of my favorite things is watching a powerful, naked man on his hands and knees, scrubbing his come off my floors. I typically make him do it on his elbows, so his ass is high in the air, knees held open with a bar spreader. It makes him shuffle along beautifully. All those lovely muscles bunched up, eyes flashing fire at being so degraded, while his cock and balls swing free between his legs.

“You'd put your back into it, though. Just like you did cleaning up my Queen's Chamber. Or maybe,” she mused, “I'd make you use your mouth, tell you to imagine it's my cunt you're cleaning. You'd be angry at first, but then, as your tongue slid across the slick tile, tasted the musk of spent sex, you'd start imagining it, seeing it, smelling it. That's the key, Gideon.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as she withdrew, then thrust back in, deep, inexorable, strangling another guttural noise out of him. “We can always be made helpless, but in our helplessness we find that enduring core of strength, the part of ourselves that reminds us to live, to lust and hunger. To never despair.” Shehad seen that suicidal moment, when her nail had been at his throat earlier. The hard edge entering her voice said she wouldn't be forgetting it anytime soon. That she would punish him for throwing away what belonged to her. Bloody hell, where were these crazy thoughts coming from?

She curled her fingers in his hair, drew his head back, and bit his neck below the collar, suckling it. A sound of pleasurable arousal hummed in her throat, making him pathetically glad to be given that small gift, to know that she wasn't as detached as she seemed. Her nails moved over his chest. He anticipated it now, maybe even welcomed it, God help him. He opened himself up for it as she began leaving small cuts on him, drawing his nerve endings up, keeping his lethargic body in twitching response. Then . . .

holy Christ, a mouth was back, working his cock again. A different mouth.

“This is Charlene, the tall, thin girl. I'm going to let each one of them suck you to climax, Gideon, no matter how long it takes. Because they need the practice, and I have you for the night. Would you like it if I had some of my boys come and suck you off as well? They've much stronger mouths. Many of our male clients like them.”

“Not . . . your . . . client,” he managed against the gag. She'd said so, hadn't she? That was the way he wanted it, too.

From the way she stilled, but her fingers still twitching on him with the hint of pain and blood, he knew she'd understood.

“No . . . men.” He shook his head again, more emphatically. Now her hand tightened on the juncture of throat and neck, a sharp muscle pain that kept him where he was.

“Still haven't learned, have you? Charlene, tell Terence to come in next. He has such a pretty, pretty mouth. Gideon won't be able to tell the difference between his mouth and a girl's, except that I'll tell him.

Keep saying no, angry man.” She was the voice of a devil in his ear. “Every no means yes to me. You'll be sucked off and fucked within an inch of your life tonight until you learn to let go. To give me everything I demand and thank me for it.”

His ass was burning and sore, his mind floundering between arousal and rage, weariness and disorientation. But he was still shaking his head, would keep shaking it. He couldn't do any of it. He couldn't bear it. He would break. Hewas breaking.

With that powerful climax, something had cracked inside of him. She was right. It was worse than any of the physical wounds he'd suffered. He couldn't fight this, but he needed to be released from the chains.

He had to go to his knees, had to curl around that pain in order to bear it. To survive it.

“Let me go . . . let go . . .” He was saying it, but he wasn't struggling against her touch. He was just standing there, limp and exhausted, held at her pleasure and will, a woman's mouth working his decently interested cock.

He decided he was too damn tired to care about pride. “Please.” All of his words sounded garbled with that gag, like a stroke victim. God, he wanted to know her name.

Was it mercy, or did she realize he really couldn't bear anything else? Because of the haze of unwelcome emotion, it took him a few moments to realize that Charlene's mouth was no longer there, and his Mistress had withdrawn from him. When firm but gentle hands released the tether from his cock, he knew it was her, because only those hands could coax his cock past semilife again. She caressed him; then Charlene's touch took the manacles from his ankles. His legs trembled, and when the one hand was released, he reached out, trying to stop his fall, but he was too late. He was on one knee, one wrist still chained and the collar still on, its tether and the one on his arm thankfully slack enough to allow him to reach the floor. Those same hands unbuckled his gag, guided the embarrassingly wet thing from him, soothed the corners of his abraded mouth.