So focus, damn it. You don’t want to hurt her.

Or did he? Fleetingly, he wondered if he might cheat a little . . . just to see what she’d demand of him. The look in her eyes was the way a lioness centered herself before chasing down that helpless buck. He did and didn’t want to do it her way. Some part of him wanted to go to her, bury himself in wet heat, feel the desperate clutch of her hands as he drove her to climax. Because after he exploded inside her, for a short time he could drift in the fantasy of a reality he’d had for too short a time. A reality he’d never have permanently again, because his heart wouldn’t survive its loss twice.

Stop it. Control wasn’t only important in the use of the whip. It was what was most important of all. As long as you had it, it implied you had choice. Startled, he realized he’d echoed her words by the billabong. Control was what was important, above all.

He uncoiled the whip with one deft move of his wrist. “You sure you might not enjoy feeling a touch of pain, my lady?”

“That’s beside the point.” She curled her lip, showing him a flash of her canines, which seemed particularly sharp. “The bet is no pain, or I get to take everything I want.”

He could curl the whip around her body for hours, twirl her in a dance, touch the end of it to any pink, fragile part, tease a nipple or the hint of her pretty pussy beneath the gauzy fabric. Or cut a brand into her flank as intricate as he might wish. His cock hardened inexplicably at that thought.

As she posed there, beautiful, statuesque, something far beyond his reach, her blue eyes never left his face. Then she destroyed him by raising her arms above her head so her breasts rose, the skin stretched over her rib cage, making it more defined, vulnerable.

She stayed that way, as if her hands were bound from the ceiling, and his blood fired.

The whip sang out, the pop striking right where he intended. A spot high on her perfect right breast, the first place he’d put his lips to soothe the skin. He put enough recoil into the strike that the effect was a bee sting, raising a blush on the skin. No cut, but it definitely hurt. Proving that he could do it without pain, and had made the conscious choice not to do so.

Sometimes he thought his roughness with women, the need to hurt them a little, came from the fact that none of those women was the one he missed so much. But there was a different component to this. Bloody oath, she didn’t even flinch. But he sensed something change in the air as he brought the whip back to him, coiled it up in an efficient movement. If he had to give it a name, he’d say it was a wave of feral satisfaction, emanating from her like blazing heat.

Holding the whip in a clenched fist, he saw her gaze travel to where his cock was straining against his trousers, then back over every tense muscle in his body. As her attention went up his bare chest, it reminded him of her touch through the bar rag, the way she’d seemed to savor every inch of him.

“I assume you’re a man of your word?” she asked.

“I am.” He found his mouth was dry.

“Take off your shirt.” When he complied, she began to move toward him. As her hips moved like the pendulum of an elegant clock, her breasts quivered in the cradle of that bra. He was sure the under-wire beneath the lace was far more unforgiving and cruel than his hands would be. Or maybe not.

She stopped before him, gazed up into his eyes. Dev was unable to move, the proximity of her body to the raging need of his own overwhelming, paralyzing him. “When we’re alone, you may call me Danny,” she said. “All right?”

“Yes, my lady.” He wasn’t sure why he couldn’t comply with it just yet. Maybe he needed her remoteness. Maybe he was afraid that what was inside him would swallow her whole if she left no barriers between them.

“There’s something in your eyes, bushman,” she continued softly, looking up into them. “I want to keep this moment quite real between us. You said you’d let me have anything I want.”

“There’s not much to take, love.” And he was afraid what little there was, he might give her. He’d immersed himself in women before to keep the darkness at bay, but despite the fact that this woman looked a handful of years younger than him, it was as if she understood the deep intricacies of the world, how they were heartbreaking beyond bearing. She wasn’t soothing him or telling him to shut it out. Instead she was throwing him a line, making him accept the port she was offering from his storm.

Her hand slid over his on the whip, started to uncoil it again. When he reached for her with his free hand, she caught his wrist, guided it behind him, then the other, the whip still in his grip. Before he could object or try to overpower her, she’d lifted on her toes and brought her mouth to his, pressing those straight-from-heaven tits against his chest. The bra was so thin he could feel the pressure of her hardened nipples.

Opening to her, he gave her his tongue, teased her with it, demanded with his lips what his body had to have. He was vaguely aware of her tangling his hands in the whip, and now he’d no objection to her game. Until he felt the kangaroo leather cinch on his wrists, one shot past painful, and found she’d securely bound his wrists behind him.

She backed away from him then, holding the tail of the whip through his legs. When he started to move forward, she lifted it between them, putting an uncomfortable pressure against his testicles. Her blue eyes had sobered, but he found it somewhat reassuring they still reflected the raging desire he was feeling himself.

“Did you know that when a convict was brought here, sometimes he didn’t even know the length of his sentence?” Her voice had become that sultry murmur again, despite the grim topic. “Perhaps the judges forgot to tell him, or didn’t think him worth the effort.

I think that would be the worst part of his lot. Truly helpless to his fate, forced to trust his master to tell him when his release would come.”

He told himself all he needed to do was twist to yank the whip from her. Instead, he remained still, watchful. “You didn’t jump when I marked you. As though you expected it.”

“I did. You don’t do what you’re told, because you want to defy the consequences. Prove you can handle them.” She came back to him then, one step, two . . . three. Reaching out, she caressed his jaw, then tipped his chin back, slowly, her nails digging in a little. She liked using her claws. A further tip, straining his neck some, a deeper gouge of those sharp edges. “Plus, I trusted you.

Can you trust me?”

Her breath was on his flesh, near the artery pulsing in his throat. For some reason Dev heard his blood pounding through it, his ears, his chest, as if rushing water were closing in on him.

“I doubt it.”

A soft chuckle, then the pressure of the whip against his testicles loosened, brushed against his buttocks as she dropped the tail and reclaimed it in the back, guiding a length of it across his tense buttocks and fondling him with greedy fingertips. When she took a handful of muscular meat and squeezed it against the braided leather in her palm, he growled and stepped forward, bumping her.

Her other hand found his cock and balls, ready to explode out of his trousers.

“My God, Dev.”

“Let it out to play, love, and you won’t be sorry.” His urgency had the edge of desperation. Even if he’d been a man dying of thirst in the desert, he would have taken a lick at her pussy over water at this moment.

“Is this how you do it, Dev? You assuage the need and then go back into the bush, until it becomes unbearable again? No working mates, not even a dog to keep you company. Maybe Elle’s right to worry about you.” Before he could respond to that, she was continuing on, her fingers teasing, stroking. “There’s only one reason God gives a man a gift like this. I think you should stay with me awhile, see if burying yourself between my thighs often enough will slow those demons chasing you.”

His arm muscles strained against the restraint as he pushed her back a couple more steps, a challenge, an attempt to get her to shut up. She moved with him as easily as if they were dancing again. Cripes, what kind of knot had she tied? He was testing it, but he couldn’t tell. In truth, his brain was so fogged it could have been a simple shoelace tie.

“Why only between your legs, my lady?” He rasped it against her temple, groaned as she squeezed him, letting him feel her nails again. “You strike me as the type that appreciates a good arse fucking. And then there’s your smart mouth.”

“Be careful, bushman.” Her throaty voice, the taunting laughter in it, vibrated against his skin. “Or I’ll wash yours out.”

“Well, there’s plenty of fluid soaking your knickers now, isn’t there?” As she tipped her head back, he saw she’d closed her eyes. They’d almost reached the wall. Bending his knees, Dev put his hips hard between her legs, taking her off her feet and slamming her back into it with the pressure and strength of his upper torso and legs. Her eyes flew back open. Grinding himself against her mons, the swollen clit he knew would be vulnerable to such an attack, he earned a gasp as she caught hold of his back and neck.

He stopped at that point, though, so hard he was on a dagger’s edge, unable to move unless he wanted to come in his pants. But more than that, there was a violent pain in him, and he was afraid he was going to put her through the wall to deal with it.

“Shhh . . . . shh now.” She wasn’t fighting him, struggling to throw him off in anger as he likely deserved. Instead her touch, the blue of her eyes, drew him in, eased him like a soft sea air.

She lowered her hand to open his trousers, and then closed over him, cool, firm pressure against pounding, insistent heat. She was trembling, and it was only that which recalled him, though he was certain it wasn’t fear. While he pressed his forehead to the wall to the left of her fair skull, he kept her off her feet between him and the wall, determined not to let her get away, trying to rein it in, trying to protect her. All long fine limbs, fragile face . . .

“What made you what you are, Dev?”

Though it was phrased as a question, in that seductive whisper she had, it resounded in his mind with the ring of command. When he shook his head, his gut knotting, her fingertips grazed his nape, played in the strands of his hair.