“I’ve seen such provincial performances. Like carnival side-shows.” Lord Charles shrugged. “Tanks of sea snakes, where a vampire may enter the water to feel their bodies twine around your limbs, slither across your bare skin. Quite affectionate creatures, but venomous. We had far better entertainments in the mother country.”

“I find that hard to believe. I’ve been to England, and they are far less imaginative than the Australians.” She gave him a conspiratorial wink, lessening the barb. “Go to Sydney, Lord Charles. You won’t regret it. But for now, we shall make do, won’t we?” Her gaze shifted to Mary, still helplessly manacled to her.

My lady, she’s trembling. You’re frightening her.

She will not be harmed, Dev. No more than she deserves. Do not worry for her.

On that less than comforting thought, Danny rose in a rustle of taffeta. “Go stand with Chiyoko and Aapti,” she ordered. As Mary complied, Danny circled the other side of the table, moving behind Ian’s chair. Letting a white-gloved hand trail along the chair back, she brushed his shoulder, giving him an amused look and Charles a speculative one as she made her way to the women.

Mary waited between the two servants, her head bowed, lips pressed together. Dev wasn’t sure, but he thought her perilously close to tears. He didn’t like this, though he held his tongue, waiting to see what his capricious sheila had in mind. But it was an effort.

“Easy, dear maid. You shall only give us pleasure tonight.” Danny stopped beside her. She was about three inches taller, but the stature difference had nothing to do with which of them had greater height. “The first task shall be easy. Kiss me, Mary. Do your best. Imagine I am who you love best here. I will discern who it is.”

Mary swallowed as Lord Charles’s and Ian’s attention sharpened like the end of a spear, pointed toward the four women.

Dev was as riveted as either male vampire as Mary lifted her face and awkwardly pressed her lips to his lady’s mouth, her hands fluttering nervously, alighting in tense fists just short of Danny’s body, the maid obviously uncertain if touch would be welcome.

Aapti and Chiyoko had taken a knee on either side of her, naked and patient, but their eyes were locked upon the display as well.

Dev noted Chiyoko’s nipples hardened further in the clamps, obviously stimulated by the merest twitch of the chains placed in her nether regions. Aapti, while equally attentive, was entirely still, waiting, which suggested she was the most experienced. In fact, her gaze slid briefly to Dev while the others were distracted, marking his reaction, obviously gathering information for her Master, before it went back to Danny.

Danny chuckled against the girl’s mouth and in the next moment gripped the back of her head, tumbling off the white lace cap, tearing out the pins so her mouse brown hair tumbled down. Mary gasped, but Danny forced her harder against her lips, tunneling her fingers in the girl’s hair, the other arm snaking around her waist and clamping onto a buttock, bunching up the fabric of the black uniform. Mary made a noise of part pleasure and fearful discomfort as Danny’s hand gathered up the skirt, slowly revealing the generous bare bottom beneath. Dev’s eyes narrowed. It was bruised and marked with red welts. Belt marks. Danny’s fingers traced over them, the movement of her lips showing that she was plundering Mary’s mouth fully, tongue tangling with hers, nipping at her so a trickle of blood ran from the corner.

He wasn’t sure which way to look. His lady was surrounded by enemies, but he wasn’t sure if she wasn’t one of them at the moment. Then he noted that, as she kissed Mary in such a hard, brutish way, Mary’s initial resistance was melting away. She was leaning into Danny’s body, tentatively grasping at a fold of the taffeta skirt, making soft whimpering noises as Danny alternated between petting the marks and cruelly pinching them. He tried not to notice, but Mary had a fine, fat arse.

Finally, Danny pulled back. She held the girl away from her as she strained for a moment, too carried away from the passion to recall herself. When she did, she flushed and tried to gaze down.

“No need to be all prim and proper now,” Danny observed mildly. “Though that’s your appeal, isn’t it? You’re so innocent. You came here a virgin, didn’t you?”

The maid nodded, a quick jerk of her head. Danny made a satisfied hum. “You have a good eye, Ian. Or my mother did. Was she a gift?”

“Yes. One I am very fond of. Your mother had an aptitude for finding them, the innocent ones who craved Mastery.”

“She did at that.” Danny glanced at him. “Well, let’s see if we can erode some more of that innocence. Strip off your clothes, Mary, and get on your knees between them.” She nodded to the two servants kneeling on the floor.

The maid haltingly untied the sash of her apron. Danny took it from her, and then watched as the maid struggled with the zipper in the back of the uniform, wriggling in a way that had Chiyoko wetting her lips and Ruskin taking another generous sip of his wine.

The staff had smoothly taken over Mary’s duties, removing the appetizer dishes from the previous course as Mary stripped down to the bare skin. Danny shoved her to her knees before she could kneel, so the girl landed heavily between the two servants.

However, before she came to harm, they had her arms, only to wrench them back as Danny knotted the sash of the apron around them and crossed it up the back, tying it around Mary’s neck in a neat bow. Like a more feminine version of a man’s tie, so the maid had to hold her arms up at an uncomfortable angle to keep pressure off her throat.

“Now, these two very experienced ladies are going to do as they like with you. Suckle you, fuck you with fingers or anything else that comes to hand. If you come before you beg me to do so, this nice gentleman behind my chair will fuck you in the backside.

Believe me, that will hurt like nothing you’ve ever felt. You’ll cry pretty, pretty tears, and I’ll kiss every one of them away before I take your sweet blood.” She glanced at the two women on their knees before her. “I trust you’ll take the choice out of her hands, ladies. I’d like to see those tears.”

Elegant as a lady of the manor should be, she turned on a heeled slipper, this time passing behind Ruskin. He put out a hand as she reached him, and she allowed him to take it, press a kiss to her hand. “I believe I owe you an apology, Lady Daniela. You have a fine grasp of what we would best enjoy.”

“Well, I will forgive you this once, Lord Charles.” She extricated her hand before he could linger, but with a smile that ensured it wasn’t an insult.

Dev.

He needed the prompt, though he had a difficult time focusing on the simple act of holding out her chair.

I don’t like what is being done to this girl, love. It’s pissing me off.

Steady, Dev. Trust that I know what I’m doing. She will come to no harm.

Chiyoko and Aapti had descended on the girl, despite her protests. Though he was disturbed by her cries, Dev couldn’t ignore the dripping slickness of Mary’s cunt. As Danny’s mind directed his attention there, he recognized undeniable evidence of a delicious mortification, a nectar she obviously fed upon in this depraved household. Aapti spread the maid’s legs and put her mouth to work on her, while Chiyoko straddled Mary’s face and made her eat her pussy. She massaged the girl’s breasts, pinching the nipples enough to earn yelps that vibrated pleasurably against her, if the way she tightened her knees on Mary’s skull and ground her sex in her face were any indication.

Danny had opted to let her chair stay somewhat away from the table, so he was startled when her hand drifted back. He moved forward a step or two, took the hand.

Step to the side of my chair, Dev. Put my hand on your cock. I want to feel how hard it is.

The two men were, of course, more absorbed in the women, but they were not ignoring Danny’s actions, either. Dev was in a room of hawks, whose sharp eyes missed nothing. He’d definitely never indulged in public displays like this. Maybe her command now was driven by spontaneous arousal on her part, goaded by the scene before them, but for some reason, nothing felt spontaneous.

However, when he hesitated, Ruskin’s gaze honed in on him. Anything that suggested less than complete loyalty could undermine her. He comprehended that. But she’d put him on the spot, hadn’t she? She wasn’t giving him any answers or direction, and though he was sure she could hear the questions, it seemed as if this quite significant choice was all his.

Keeping his eyes on the women, avoiding eye contact with the two men, for reasons that had nothing to do with pretended deference, he molded her palm over him, feeling the silken stretch of the erotically snug glove over her fingers, the bumps of her knuckles. He had to stifle his own groan. She teased his hard length, not at the easiest angle at the moment, having come to the erect state beneath the slacks and him still too much of a wowser to handle himself in mixed company. Mary made a plea, and Aapti gave her a hard, strong lick, worrying her clit, making her scream in short bursts. The Indian woman’s silken hair pooled on the floor. Indulging herself, Chiyoko reached past the struggling maid to stroke her fingers through it, straighten it, but then took one of the small pillows and forced the edge of it into Mary’s mouth.

“Bite down and be silent,” she commanded, and Dev knew the order had come from Ian, from the faint displeasure on his face at the noise.

“Now, in deference to Lord Charles,” Danny said, a quiet purr, keeping her eye on the women even as she let her knuckles glide across the straining fabric of Dev’s pants, “I did witness a marvelous entertainment in Berlin. They blindfolded a man, his body bound on a St. Andrew’s cross. It was unfinished wood, and they’d dragged him over it several times first, so splinters had embedded themselves in his back, his buttocks, thighs, the backs of his arms. It was rope crucifixion, but the cross was tilted to a forty-five-degree angle. The point was the edge of pain, not agony.

“They brought woman after woman to him, impaled them on his cock, and yet he didn’t know who or what he was fucking. They kept teasing him to arousal, never letting him release. It went on all night. Every once in a while, his Mistress would bring him water and food. The tenderness with which she fed him, stroked him, whispered to him of her pleasure—for it was all for her pleasure—