“I can’t stand it when women diet themselves down to zero cellulite thighs and a tiny ass. They lose their breasts, the curves of hip and bosom that make them a woman. I wish we could go back to the fifties, and see women who were firm and healthy, with generous breasts, soft asses, whose thighs were like soft pillows for a man’s hands. I’d be in heaven.”

“Sounds like I’m a disappointment to you, then.”

He chuckled and weighed one breast in each hand, pressing her nipples to the heated cup of his palm, eliciting a soft whisper of pleasure from her.

“Not in the least. You’re a beautiful woman.” The Southern accent got deeper, richer. “While you and Matt spar, or Jon drones off one of his never-ending financial reports—”

there was a snort from the end of the table, “—I’ve imagined them a lot of different ways.

“Bare, like this, nothing clothing them but the touch of my hands.

Anticipating the feel of your nipples in my mouth when I close my lips around them and suckle them.” He gave them a gentle pinch, a mere pressure, and she arched, moaning.

“Or in a beautiful satin bra, with sheer cups so I can see the suggestion of your nipples and the color of your skin behind the cloth. The kind with underwiring that pushes you together, makes that deep cleft that I want to run my tongue down, like the cleft of a woman’s cunt lips.

“Or a shelf bra that your breasts are just barely tucked into, the plump tops rising high like the smooth tops of freshly baked cinnamon rolls.

You’ve worn that style before, and the images it conjured have made me nearly insane. I want to sprinkle powdered sugar over the top of them, lick it all off.”

She was shuddering, and his touch had turned into a gentle kneading, slow, torturous, a manipulation of the sensitive globes even as his thumbs idly, all too infrequently, passed over the distended nipples.

“And then there’s the bra with cutouts for the nipple, so you can have all the support and shapeliness a bra provides, but your nipples are as prominent under a shirt as if you’re not wearing one at all. No man can resist looking, hoping for a rain shower to soak the cotton, make them even more noticeable.

“Nipple jewelry is also something I’d love to see on you. D-rings and barbells for piercing, dangles, chains to attach them to one another and adorn the neck. Weights with uncut gemstones. All of which stimulate the nipples and keep them distended, aching for touch.” His hands kept up their complex composition on her, and she thought he would make her come, just from the combination of words and skillful fondling.

“There are hundreds of ways to appreciate a woman’s breasts, and every day I think of a new way. If I had you to myself for an entire afternoon, I’d lay you out on my bed, apply a henna paste to your tits, decorating them with a Celtic design.

And then when I was done, and it was dry so I could touch you, when your body was screaming for fulfillment, I’d place your breasts in a parallel bar restraint like this and tease you with my teeth and tongue until you screamed for release. But not release from that bar.

Release from the passion you would be feeling.”

His voice dropped to a rough whisper, a sensual friction against her senses. Her entire breast tingled as if she could feel the weights he spoke of, the touch of the henna paste, the squeeze of those bars distending her, making her more aware of touch, of the need to be tasted.

“Would you like me to suckle your breasts, Savannah?” Peter asked. “I want to, very much. Tell me you want that.”

“Yes,” she managed. “I want that.”

“Good.” His mouth curled up at the corners. “Because I was going to do it whether you agreed or not.”

He leaned forward, his face even with her breasts, and looked up at her. “While I’m doing this, Ben is going to be preparing you for a very different sensation. Together we’re going to rouse you to the pinnacle of climax, but hold you there longer than you think is possible, until we reduce you to mindless sense again, the pure being that you are, nothing else.”

“I’m not sure I can take much more…” The weak words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, appalling her, but the totally male smile from Peter ran fire through her, obliterating the cold frisson of fear.

“You can take it. You’ll have to, because it’s not a choice.”

He lowered his head, covered her with the heat of his mouth, and swamped her with the sweet satisfaction that her nipple had been craving, so sharp that she cried out as he drew it in, teased it in the wetness, pressing on it with his lips. He brought his hands up, framed the rack of her breasts and squeezed just in front of the grip of the bar restraints, causing a moan, an outright whimper.

She’d never had each part of her so focused upon, so worshipped and cozened as it had been in the past several hours. Her entire body, every expanse of skin and the restless nerves beneath, desired something, a level of fulfillment Peter had just indicated they would not deliver. But it didn’t matter, because the spiraling need felt so good that she shamelessly angled her hips in wanton display. Peter deepened his suckling, making appreciative wet noises as he drew succor from her.

Her fingers ached from clenching into one overlapped fist, the desire to touch, to hold his head closer, denied to her.

She shifted her gaze and saw Matt standing in front of the screens, a silhouette against the many images

of her time in this room. Someone had dimmed the lights so she was in spotlight again. Feeling his claim on her as if he had uttered it like a war cry, she understood then the appealing fantasy of a slave girl being prepared for the warlord’s pleasure. For she knew in looking at him, she was not being shared equally among friends, but pampered, her body made malleable for claiming by the man who had fully intended to have her from the first.

And that time was drawing very close.

Peter’s teeth scraped her left nipple and the shudder of reaction went all the way to her womb.

Then Ben touched her. The man who turned the legal screws when Kensington’s rights were challenged in any situation. It made sense Matt would pull him into this last phase, to ensure there was no challenge left in her. Though Matt underestimated her if he thought that was possible. She would go down fighting.

She had to. Didn’t she?

Ben’s hands were slick as they touched her backside. She smelled an oil, heated musk like opium, and he was sliding it down her buttocks, oiling them, somewhat as Jon did, but then suddenly, he was working his fingers and the oil into her anus, and slid past the resistance before she could react.

“My apologies, Savannah.” His voice was a sexy baritone with the faintest hint of Cajun accent because of his parentage. He’d spent most of his formative years in New England, including the acquisition of his law degree at Yale, where he and Matt had met. “I didn’t want to warn you because you would tense up, and I don’t want to cause you pain.”

She highly respected Ben, because while he was in fact as aggressive as the proverbial pit bull, like all of Matt’s team, he played as fair as he played hard. When she’d been privy to meetings where they’d been on the same side of the fence, she’d noted that Ben did not hesitate to tell Matt whether or not Kensington could do something. Matt followed his direction most of the time, never undermining Ben’s expertise with CEO ego.

It was more difficult to relax with Ben touching her, however. She’d had to acknowledge she had a more affectionate and intimate bond with each of the other four than she would have admitted prior to tonight. But Ben had been more distant throughout her relationship with Matt. The man she knew least was obviously preparing to invade the area she’d explored or fantasized about the least, mentally or physically. Jon had barely entered her there, and with Ben’s firm though gentle hands, she understood implicitly that he was planning a full invasion, as the last step in Matt’s plan to completely break her down.

Her resulting anxiety created a strange dichotomy of sensation, trepidation shooting like a distracting arrow through her reaction to Peter’s mouth, teeth, tongue and hands.

“Stop,” she rasped. “Don’t.”

Peter’s mouth slowed, but did not still. Instead of nips and eager sucking, now he laved her softly, tugging her in slow, lazy sucklings in his mouth so her pussy, already wet, flooded with new heat, moisture Ben picked up on his fingers to rub over the outside of her pussy, stimulating her there, and then raised his touch to use the rest to lubricate her back opening.

“Matt.” She reacted, didn’t think of appearances. “This is scaring me.”

Her voice quavered slightly, but for once in her life, it did not embarrass or appall her. There was no room anymore for the cold pit viper she was described as being. She was just Savannah, a woman aroused and captivated by the five men in the room, captured by the demands and desires which had roused her own. It was the first time she’d been afraid of the physical portion of the evening. She had been afraid of what they would do to her, afraid of where they would and wouldn’t stop, where that would leave her when it was over. Afraid of Matt. Of his relentless determination, so much greater than she had ever suspected, to have what he wanted.

Afraid that she, in the end, did not have the strength to resist him or hold him at arm’s length, stay safely behind a shield so he couldn’t get to who she was. She also was afraid the night’s events revealed all too clearly that he had figured that out a long time ago.

Ben’s strokes became even more gentle, his palms turning so she felt the caress of his knuckles on her buttocks.

“There’s nothing to fear.” Matt spoke quietly. Firmly, which told her he wouldn’t alter the plan for her fear, but with a note of tenderness in his voice that she recognized as similar to a parent reassuring a child. “It will be all right. Trust me. Trust us.

You’re trembling with pleasure even now.”

“Is he going to…” She licked dry lips, and was surprised when Peter’s covered her mouth, moistening them, just a light touch, there and then gone, before she could savor it. Not a kiss, just a very functional action, meeting her needs. Only Matt had kissed her on the mouth. The significance of that struck her.