He’d played some games with whores, but even when he’d blindfolded or restrained them, it had been temporary, play only, no matter how hot his need had been at that time. He hadn’t realized what it would be like to be blindfolded and restrained for hours like this. It was entirely different, what it did to the body, the mind, how it broke things down. He was making unintelligible noises into her mouth, into her mind, an animal level of communication somewhere between plea and threat. He knew his cock was leaking over Lyssa’s ring-bedecked fingers. Once or twice, she turned and raked him with the sharp edges of her gems, causing him to flinch at the unexpected pain, but then Nina’s warm, wet mouth followed the blow, soothing and keeping his cock hard and upright despite the scraping pain.

“You should consider piercing him, Danny. There are some wonderful practitioners in Singapore.” Lyssa’s voice came slow and thick with pleasure toward them all. She teased his throat again, another prick. “Seems a shame to have a cock this large and not be able to adorn it. They have gold rings like manacles they can size so one locks behind the head, one around the base, and then one around the top of the scrotum. You connect them with chains, keep those chains short, and when he gets aroused . . . Ah, the pleasure and discomfort it puts them in . . . it’s a delight to watch.” He rocked into her hand, expelling more fluid, and she slicked it over his head with her thumb. “I think he’s ready for you, Danny,” Lyssa said in that throaty purr. “Taste him from my fingers.”

Alistair released the blindfold, so Dev got to see Danny suck Lyssa’s fingers into her mouth. Lyssa stroked her blond hair with the other hand, turning it over so she could caress the side of Danny’s face with her knuckles, an affectionate, almost loving gesture.

When Danny had cleaned the last of his essence, her blue eyes lifted to Dev’s face. She reached out with her fingertips, grazed them down his cheek. With the blindfold on, he hadn’t noticed, but he didn’t want to believe that what she was tracing were the tracks of dried tears on his face.

“I want him here. Now.”

As if prompted, Thomas brought several cushions from the chairs and sofa. Nina withdrew, Alistair gallantly helping her to her feet as Thomas arranged the cushions on the floor. Danny eased down on them, Lyssa holding her arm and back to assist before she, too, withdrew. Candles were extinguished, all but those closest, so it became just the two of them there, even as Dev could sense the vampires in those shadows, following him with gleaming fangs and watchful eyes.

He’d expected to be released, but the mechanics engaged again. The chains holding his arms began to tighten, and those holding his ankles did as well, so he was pulled off his feet and pitched forward, a short but harrowing fall before he steadied. He was adjusted so he was close to parallel with the floor, facing down, though his lower torso was kept higher, so he was almost in a shallow dive position, being lowered toward Danny’s waiting body. He remembered then what she’d said in the cave, about suspending a man in manacles.

God in heaven, his lady was drawing up the edge of that tight stretched skirt, to expose long pale legs, the slick, pink lips between them. Her fingers were there now, teasing herself as she arched in sensual invitation, her eyes watching him come down upon her.

As he came to a halt, his chest barely brushed hers. Now he knew the reason for the angle, for his overly blessed cock was so very close to her wet heat. Just not close enough. Her blue eyes devoured what he was sure was a very needy expression on his face.

He wanted to kiss her, and could, but somehow knew he had to wait. Strewth, she was killing him.

“Just for me, Dev,” she said softly.

She stretched up to kiss him. He kissed her back, as hard and demanding as he could, and when she drew back, he fought the chains, wanting to follow her, but they merely clanked and bounced, pulling at his shoulders until he was sure they might dislocate. It didn’t matter. They would bloody heal, right?

One slim leg lifted, the heel of the foot tracing the back of his calf, up, up to his thigh, then his buttock. His cock was at her mons, and she lifted enough to rub herself there, pleasuring herself with that tip on her clitoris, her breath coming short, skin flushing. She could come just from doing that, he could tell, and she might. While it would leave a gnawing in his gut, it would be . . . okay. He just wanted her. Needed her to look at him with her blue eyes, feel the passing touch of her hand . . . Feel her inside his mind, his body. He wanted to fuck her until he drained himself to a skeletal husk, but he also wanted to hang here, his shoulders screaming with pain, his buttocks drawn up tight, and see the way she looked at him, with so much hunger in her eyes. A hunger that went beyond lust and blood, and encompassed both.

She would make him wait, because that increased her desire, watching him go mad with pain and lust. He found that state of mind was similar to his place of no thought, only this was not a conscious choice, not an effort to stave off destructive blood rage. In this place, he was capable of doing anything and nothing, for though violent desire and need tore through his body, he was bound, not only by chains, but by her will.

An experienced servant will simply wait, unbound . . .

She made the first bite hurt, spearing her fang into his pectoral, an inch or so above the sensitive nipple. When he arched with a snarl, Danny licked his blood away, then bit his abdomen. His arm. His shoulder, his throat. A dozen different places she sampled, including high up on his thigh, sliding her body as needed, until she was aligned with him again, face-to-face. Then her legs lifted, slid over his hips, her hands clutching his overstrained shoulders, causing him to let out a short exhale of breath at the additional pressure.

“Bring his cock down to me.”

Danny took him, inch by inch, clinging to his shoulders. They kept his upper body several inches off her, reversing the angle so he was stretched over her like a warrior leaping off a ledge to strike, his manacled wrists and interlaced fingers over his head, back arched. His body was still shuddering, doing that outer and inner trembling that made it difficult for him to determine if the cause was physical or emotional.

Her lips parted, those amazing eyes fathomless pools. As she took him in deep, she began to work her lower body up and down, teasing his shaft in long, slick strokes. He was going to die, for it was entirely perfect, the slow, slow build in his own groin, the knowledge that he would come, but only when she’d worked him past the point of insanity.

You’re my pleasure, Dev. In every way. God . . .

Her breath started to quicken and her eyes glazed, chin tilting back so there was that tempting throat, the pulse beating hard in it.

He almost wanted to do as she did, sink his teeth in, taste her flesh and blood, but she wasn’t going to let him do anything but serve her now. His mind was spinning in a cataclysmic free fall so that he didn’t know what he’d be striking when he hit bottom.

“Time to come for me once more, Dev,” she whispered, and her muscles drew taut, her body moving more swiftly now, that friction that could bring fire to wood.

He cried out hoarsely, his body straining, working against itself, pulling ligaments and tender muscles into blood-and-brimstone agony. It must be the third mark that gave him this ability, for nothing else explained why his cock, heedless, spurted into her welcoming heat. Her cries were hoarse, needy, tumbling over the raw field of his emotions like a wind, stirring them up further.

It goaded his climax to monstrous proportions as he writhed in the chains, his lady fucking him, not letting him get away with anything less than full, mind-altering release, leaving no part of him hidden as he cried out, cursed her, begged her, threatened her.

Adored her.

When he was done, his head had fallen down so his temple pressed into her throat. The chains were removed, his arms remaining limply over his head, along the sides of hers, his body shuddering, his breath coming in short gasps. As the manacles were removed from his thighs and ankles, his knees settled between her spread legs, a cradle for his hips, cock still inside her. Laying her arm around his back, she murmured to him. Meaningless things, gentle things, soothing him almost as one would soothe a child. He felt like a child, something broken so deep inside him, he wanted to hold it up to her, ask her to fix it. But his arms were too tired, and it was something he knew couldn’t be fixed. Not like this.

Slowly, he managed to rise up on his knees, to take the edge of her short skirt as he came out of her and draw it back down so she wasn’t exposed to the other two men in the room.

My chivalrous, possessive bushman . . .

The emotion she let wash into his mind was of tender amusement, but in truth Danny was feeling something much deeper at the look in his eyes. She’d stripped him to the bone. She’d done what she was supposed to do, the highest level of what her kind demanded at an event such as this. But the deepest level of her soul said she should have left him at Thieves’ Station. Maybe even left him alone at Elle’s.

The truth of it wrenched her. The man trying to get to his feet, who had been used in such a callous and depraved way, who’d been whipped and whose seed glistened on his thighs, had been a laughing young man who’d married an uncomplicated, loving woman.

They’d had a son and a flock of sheep, a simple, beautiful life. She’d seen the memories in his mind, and it very much matched the life she herself wanted, but could only have as part of her much more complicated world.

As he moved to the side, she lifted up on her elbows and stroked his calf, feeling the quivering muscle. When he swayed on his knees, before she could rise to hold him, Thomas was already there. Lyssa propelled her to her feet, took her arm in a companionable grip and steered her toward the archway. “Alistair, why don’t you set us up for a final brandy while we ladies go freshen up?”

“It would be my pleasure.” Without another glance toward Dev, he took Nina’s hand and guided her out the opposite door with him.

“Don’t look back,” Lyssa murmured as they moved outside the archway. “Alistair is still watching.” The vampire queen took her directly to the rooms Alistair had provided the monarch. She brought Danny into her private bath facilities so she could straighten her clothes, clean the dress where Dev’s semen had stained the fabric. However, as she started to wipe her skirt with the cloth, Danny found she couldn’t stand. So instead she sat down on the edge of the tub. Looking down at her hiked-up skirt, she held the wet cloth balled in one hand, but couldn’t yet use it to erase the lines of fluid he’d left on the insides of her bare thighs. Proof of his body being part of hers. The flushed color of her labia, her still-swollen clit that would likely want him again in no time.