At last, with an easy movement, she pushed herself up on his thighs, nudging the book out of the way. Before he could greet her awakening, she’d curled her arms around his neck and teased his mouth open with hers, feeling a surge of need when he clasped her in his arms, his hand cupping the back of her head, taking over control of the kiss, making it deeper, more insistent, like the pressure she was feeling against her hipbone, the hard bar of iron at his groin.

“Good dreams, then?” he asked at last when she drew her head back. She noted his voice was thick, his arms not easing from her a bit, so she felt the tension of his biceps, the broad shoulders.

“Almost as good as the real thing.” She touched his mouth. “It’s time to give you that reward, Dev. I don’t want to wait until we get there.”

It took a moment to register, then she was surprised to hear the thought in his mind, see the charmingly embarrassed flush. She laid a hand on his cheek. “I will heal, you know.”

He cleared his throat. “I . . . One of the prostitutes I was with, she said it’s so awful for so many women because they don’t use things . . . of different sizes . . . to stretch themselves out first.”

“I will heal,” she repeated gently.

He shook his head. “It’s not that. I know that. I want you . . . to enjoy it. I don’t want to hurt you that way.”

“Don’t you?” She raised an eyebrow. “That first night, with the whip. You knew exactly how to do it without causing me pain, but you chose to give me that sting. You like it, giving out some pain, Dev. Making it part of the pleasure. You might have a drop or two of vampire blood in you somewhere.” Leaning forward to his mouth again, she stopped to breathe on his parted lips, her blue eyes lifting to embrace his green ones. “The key to making it pleasurable for me, bushman, is to make sure I’m so wildly aroused that I’ll tear the flesh off your bones if you don’t take me down.”

Dev swallowed. The power of his lust was rising, and the feeling of it washing over her was enough to heat her own skin, make her hungry for it. Make her hungry, period.

Sliding his belt free, she unbuttoned the front of his trousers. As he watched her, she reached in and teased his thigh above the hiked-up edge of his boxers. “Ease these down,” she whispered. “Just to the tops of your thighs. I’m going to prove my point.”

“Danny—”

“You think it’s lust that makes what’s between us bearable, addictive.” Her gaze glinted. “Take your trousers down.” A muscle flexed in his jaw, but he complied, shifting her weight as he did so. It kept him hobbled, she knew, because he still wore his boots, but she was going to use that right now.

“Now, spread your legs for me. A few inches.” She was still lying halfway over one thigh. When he obeyed her, she let her gaze drop to the delectable outline of his testicles, straining against the seam of the boxer shorts, and from this angle, she could see the flesh color of one of them, the full ripeness of it, revealed by the open leg.

“Pain and pleasure. They go together,” she breathed, and bent her head.

As she pierced the femoral artery in his thigh, he arched up against her mouth, his breath drawing in sharply. She caught the rich blood in the back of her throat, savored its rapid pump, even as she placed pressure above to slow it down. She wanted time to linger, enjoy, let her lips nuzzle his flesh. Her hair and the shell of her ear were so close to that erect organ that her other hand found, clasped and began to tease it with slow strokes, up and down.

“Jesus, love.” His hoarse groan, the sudden grasp of her hair in hard fingers, told her that pleasure had kicked in, dragged the pain with it. She would make sure they’d intertwine the same way their bodies would, very shortly. By the time she finished her meal, his upper body was jerking, movements he was fighting to rein in, but emulating the rhythm his body most wanted.

Taking his hand, she brought it down and placed it on the pressure point she’d been holding, even as she took the time to make sure his blood was clotting. His heart was beating fast, his throat working, a reaction to the dangerous precipice. But as a third-mark, she could almost drain him and he would live, as long as he received her blood in a prescribed time.

Then she rose, surprised when he caught her wrist. “Where are you going?” His green eyes devoured every part of her, his voice a low growl.

“Wherever I want to go, bushman.” She gave him a teasing smile and, with a quick, easy movement, freed herself. Her gaze lowered to the hard length of him, now trying, with success, to point up along his belly, stretch beyond the waistband of his shorts.

Going to her small carry-on, she withdrew the warm oil and sat it on the built-in shelf, the bottle vibrating with the clicking of the train. “You can use me gentle, bushman, or throw me down on the bed, use me like a whore who likes it hard and rough, pour all that fury and pain you’re carrying into me.” She gave him a steady look as she slid her shirt off her shoulders, then took off her trousers. Then the scraps of knickers, leaving her naked to him. “Time to draw off the poison, Dev. Give you a rest from it.”

“And you think one good arse fuck will do that? Christ, you have a high opinion of yourself.” Dev was startled by the sudden flood of his anger, but she’d pointed so easily to that darkest part of himself, the desires any other man would have suppressed. And she’d done it without reading minds, he was almost sure of it.

“I don’t know, Dev. Will it?” She took a step back, away from him, toward the berth, a glittering light in her blue eyes. In the dim light, with the curtains drawn, they were almost black.

“Unbraid your hair. I want to wrap my hands in it when I fuck you.”

She cocked her head. “You’re my servant. You do it.”

Yet when he leaned forward to yank off his boots, get the bloody trousers off so he could go after her, she beat him to it. Putting one lithe pale leg over his knee, so she was practically sitting in his lap in the confined space, she straightened his leg, took hold of the toe and heel and pulled. The rounded cheeks were like two curved flower petals in his face, inviting touch. He ground his teeth together, everything in him drawing together like a coiled spring. A snake in the sand, waiting to strike.

As soon as she removed the trousers, he whipped up off the long seat, seized her by the waist and turned her, bringing her facedown on the lower berth, his body insinuating behind her, close enough that the jut of his cock pressed against her arse, though separated by the straining thin cotton of his boxers.

“You don’t move,” he said, his voice not his own. A way he’d never talked to any woman, but needed to now. But even as he got the boxers halfway off, she’d slipped away from him, her laughter torturing raw emotions in him.

When he was completely naked, she was in the corner behind him, a taunting, intimate display, her fingers drifting down the front of her body. She made a fair dodge around him on his next lunge, but he caught her waist, turned her and slammed her against a wall, going to one knee himself before she could anticipate him. Taking hold of her arse with both hands, he parted her and began to lick her rim, that oh-so-sensitive area for women. She was already wet. He could see the silver tracks of it on her inner thigh, and when he started doing this, he forced his hand up between her legs, widening her, and teased her opening with his fingertips. He was rewarded with another flood of moisture that bathed the digits as she worked herself against his mouth. She hit the side of the train wall with her mound, a fierce impact that reverberated into her clit, if her breathless moan was any indication.

“Oh, God, Dev. That feels . . . marvelous.”

She sounded amazed, as most sheilas were who’d never contemplated it, who were too embarrassed about it. He’d had the pleasure of far more virgins than his mates who preferred only the one orifice. But he’d never been able to unleash himself, take it beyond her pleasure into the darkest realms of his own. He was holding on to sanity by a thread, the taunts of bloody faces, the sound of bullets and men’s screams, the dying eyes of a twelve-year-old, closing in on him.

I can’t . . . Danny, are you sure? I’m dying here.

I won’t let you hurt me more than I can bear, Dev. Know that I can stop you at any time. Do your worst.

He turned, bit her buttock, deep enough to break skin, and she shuddered. Then he pushed her facedown on the bed again, pulling her knees up on the mattress, keeping her hind end up in the air as he used the moisture between her legs to lubricate his cock, as well as the oil she’d provided, until he was dripping onto the covers and the skin over his organ was painfully tight. God, the way she looked, sitting there, haunches in the air, that tiny pucker waiting for him, damp from his mouth as her lips glistened with arousal.

Between her splayed legs, he saw her breasts mashed against the mattress, the press of the nipples against the cover. When she began to rise, he caught her neck and shoved her back down, holding her there as he began to guide himself in with the other hand.

He didn’t take his time, wasn’t gentle. Drawing a deep breath, she pushed against him, exactly what either an experienced whore or a woman who had no fear of it would do. Swallowing, he let go of her neck, took hold of her hips, and rammed into her with a savage snarl.

Her cry of pain was music to a damned soul, freeing it. Her hands went to the covers, grasped it in fists, tearing it with her strength, but she didn’t stop him. He pumped hard and sure into her, feeling the convulsive flutters of her inner muscles, even as he worked her hard enough his testicles began to slap against her clit, a sensual spanking that had her hips tentatively lifting. But she was biting her lip, tears on her cheeks from the pain, and it maddened him like an aroused bull. Falling over her, he reached beneath with one hand and found a breast, squeezed it hard, took his pleasure in the wobbling feel of it, of his leg pressing hard against the back of hers. Insisting, he knocked her out wider, stretching her farther for the other hand he now used to press two fingers into her, engorging her clit with his thumb even as he knew her rectum had to be on fire.