Don’t distract me, cher . Daegan"s warning made her want to smile. Mostly because she knew it might be a while before she"d feel like smiling again.

“Take me deep,” Daegan murmured, moving his hand to Gideon"s hair. Sliding his fingers through the clean, thick strands, he cupped the back of the man"s skull. Anwyn was in Gideon"s mind when he tasted the first salty flavor of the broad head, let it move between his parted lips. Then Daegan pushed all the way in, a rough, urgent move, as if he didn"t care to hold back his desire anymore. At that moment, Anwyn landed the first strike.

She"d had the occasional client who wanted his flesh split open. Even at her club, they limited that to three strikes. She"d had only one who made it to that number. The reality of it was far different from the imagining. It could require stitches, leave permanent scars. She didn"t encourage it. She wanted her club to be a haven for those who used pain as an avenue to a complete bonding between Dominant and submissive, not to feed a destructive pain addiction.

The heart rate accelerated under extreme pain, and adrenaline kicked in. When the pain grew too intense, and there was no safe word, as now, the mind would go into fight or flight mode.

There would be struggling panic, or rage. She expected at least the latter from Gideon, which made it more impressive to see him hold his position. The Council was visibly amazed that she hadn"t chosen to bind him, because staying still would be almost impossible as the pain got worse. She knew Daegan would help with that, though.

The third mark helped Gideon"s resilience considerably, but she knew beyond all of that, it was his heartbreaking stubbornness that kept his body jerking but his knees still. A slight noise came from the back of his throat on strike eight. Daegan pushed him deep onto him, and Gideon bucked, this time for another reason.

Swallow, love. Concentrate on relaxing your throat. He’s a lot to take at once. Relax the muscles in the back. Let your saliva gather to lubricate him. Suck your cheeks in as he pulls out and pushes in. The suction increases the pleasure. And use your tongue. Then she struck again, the whip leaving a red, angry stripe across the broad back, the shoulders that had borne so much.

Gideon knew what a cock felt like, knew that sense of steel under liquid silk of a blood-filled erection. The way the tip would pearl with pre-come, indicated by the musky taste on his tongue now. Daegan had large balls, of course. At another time, when he didn"t feel like a flamethrower was being used on his back, he would have been tempted to cup and squeeze them. The random thought would have horrified him, but for the overwhelming pain which kept him from embarrassing himself in such a crazy way. That, and Daegan"s order to keep his palms on his knees, which gave Anwyn a clear strike field.

On the eleventh strike, it started to get crazy. Crazier, really. Pain, rebellion, pleasure, need.

It all started to roll together, like a snowball, though this one had jagged glass that stuck out like people"s feet and hands in the cartoons when they rolled down a hill.

Perversely, though, the pain helped. It wiped everything out of his mind. What he was doing to another male, what the Council was watching and would decide to do next, any worry about this being too much for Anwyn, possibly triggering another attack.

The Council had done them all a favor, bringing the mind-wiping pain into it for him. They were linked together in one focus. Anwyn kept up that quiet murmur of encouragement, reassurance, even as Daegan flavored it with the sexy male commands to suck him harder.

Fuck, your mouth feels good, vampire hunter.

How he could be getting harder during this was one of those fucking twisted vampire-servant things. He groaned, a half scream, as the next strike landed and fire erupted anew. Holy Christ, it hurt. It hurt like all the lonely moments when he"d crouched in dark places, soaked to the ankles in blood. It hurt like it did when the adrenaline drained away, leaving him standing over a body to be burned, an area to be cleaned up. It hurt like all the hard, dirty mattresses he"d slept on alone.

Thwack.

He didn"t know where the emotional shit was coming from, so he sucked harder, focused on the physical, because that was damned baffling and amazing at once. His mindless cock was straining. Was his lust simple, bestial reaction to doing something that most males enjoyed so much themselves? Or was it deeper than that? Was he actually getting stiff from doing this to Daegan? Being on his knees, taking the vampire"s cock, tasting him, giving him pleasure, making him shudder as he handled him as roughly as he"d want it done to himself? Slickly sliding up and down, teasing him with a tongue that seemed to have a mind and direction of its own, flicking at the vein beneath the broad head, then down, following that thick ridge, sucking hard on the whole thing like a favorite damn treat.

And he was doing it while experiencing some of the worst pain he"d ever felt. Fuck, he was having to imagine his knees nailed into the ground to keep from bolting. His whole body was shaking, and his gut was turning over.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

He strangled on the cry, unable to stop himself. The blood was running down his back, over the dried blood from earlier. The pain and irritation were beyond description, just a white inferno. His hands clenched on his thighs. Holy Christ. What number were they on?

Let go, love. Just let it go. It doesn’t matter.

He locked the Council out of his mind. He deserved suffering, but the pain of this lash could make him free. It would creep into his battered heart and soul, make him let go, take him to a place where he"d just feel what Daegan and Anwyn were doing to him forever. But oh, how it hurt. There was nothing but them, but it was all pain, and pleasure, never one without the other.

Daegan reached down then, gripped Gideon"s fists and lifted them so Gideon"s hands were clasped over Daegan"s hips, digging into him with hard fingers, an anchor. Daegan kept his hands manacled on Gideon"s wrists, so when the next lash landed, and Gideon reflexively jerked back, he was held fast, Daegan making him a prisoner. It just made him hotter, harder.

He was still pumping him with his mouth, but he was in full, hellfire agony, and didn"t know how much longer he could keep it up. Thwack. Thwack. She was striping over existing wounds now. He didn"t want to scream, would bite down on his tongue if Daegan"s cock wasn"t there, and fortunately for the vampire he had enough of a brain not to do that. He dug his fingers hard into his thigh muscles, bruising. He wouldn"t scream, not in front of those assholes, whatever they were thinking.

You scream if you must, Gideon. Anwyn"s sensual tone, her Mistress"s voice. You are ours, and this is what we desire. You are serving us, giving us pleasure with your pain.

He realized he"d divided his focus solely between Dagean"s cock and Anwyn"s lashing.

Perhaps because of the weird contrast to what was happening, he was drawing peace from the familiar smell of Daegan"s clothes, the cologne he"d used tonight. Muscular buttocks flexed just beyond the range of his fingertips as Daegan fucked his mouth.

I should have shoved my dick in here a long time ago, vampire hunter. I just never realized how effective it would be for shutting you up and getting you to focus on more important things.

Gideon managed to clumsily score him with his teeth, hard enough to earn a grunt. Daegan"s hand shifted to give his hair a sharp, warning tug, but he thought he heard the vampire"s feral chuckle, and a muttered, “Careful. Payback is hell.”

It was going to be okay. Daegan was ragging his ass. He was going to survive this. He was.

A clear image arrived in his brain, compliments of Anwyn. Gideon, stretched out and tied on a rough wooden wheel like a medieval torture device, turned upside down so Daegan could close his mouth over him without the subservience of being on his knees. It made Gideon still the slave, Daegan tormenting him, holding him helpless and upside down, sucking and sucking until he was so close to coming . . .

Thwack. The wet meat of loosened skin slapped against open wounds.

He did scream this time, and the pulsation against Daegan"s cock made the organ jump.

Daegan"s hand convulsed as well. That’s it. Scream, vampire hunter. Vibrate against my cock, so I can shoot come down your throat. That is what a servant does. Serves his Master and Mistress’s will, no matter what he is enduring.

Gideon thought he might black out or vomit, but he did neither. Drawing on the determination that had gotten him through a couple decades of hell, he pushed past the pain, heard the voices of Anwyn and Daegan"s encouragement in his mind as he worked himself up and down that organ, pushing back into the lash. Somewhere along the way, screams turned into animal growls, snarls of rage, defiance and rutting pleasure. He became all beast, red-eyed and ready to kill, to fuck, to do anything but break.

Daegan"s grip on his wrists was iron, while Anwyn decorated him with a crisscrossing of stripes on his ass and back that dripped blood onto his thighs, running down inside his pants.

Come for me, you bastard. Give me every drop.

You do not order me to do anything, Gideon. Tell me what you want.

I want you to come. But I’m not begging for it.

One day, you will.

With a matching growl, Daegan released, holding Gideon"s hair in a hard grip to shove himself to the back of his throat, shooting hot seed there as Anwyn landed the last five strokes in hot, hard, bloody succession. Gideon howled, even as he furiously worked to keep Daegan"s jetting come going down his throat. He was dying, except he knew no one ever seemed to die of agonizing pain. Another of God"s constant stream of ironies.

You’re done, Gideon. You did it.

Exhausted satisfaction swept in among the wreckage. He"d done it. He"d given them both what they wanted, hadn"t failed. Was a part of them.

No, that didn"t make any sense. Fuzzily he recalled this had been a test for the Council, not something he was doing for Daegan and Anwyn.

It doesn’t matter. It’s all the same. And you never fail us, love. Never.

Daegan was slowly withdrawing, and Gideon couldn"t help himself. He cleaned it as it left his mouth, nuzzling it, giving it a sharp bite that won another of those sexy warning noises. He tried for a sneer to tell the vamp what he could do with his warnings, but he couldn"t seem to find the energy to curl up the corners of his lips. He should have been falling down. Instead, embarrassingly enough, he was leaning into Daegan, his head against his hip. Crazy world that it was, Daegan stroked his hair, that manly tousle, sensual affection. He hadn"t failed.