He was also getting hard again, particularly from the coital movement of lifting and lowering his ass to the strokes, his cock thrusting into the give of the sofa cushions, a rough substitute for the slippery silk of her wet pussy.

Daegan had said third-marks had faster healing powers, but until that kicked in, Gideon might find sitting a little uncomfortable. Nine and ten earned a strangled grunt from him. Setting the paddle aside, she stroked her knuckles over the burning flesh, dragged her nails back across it. Provoke and soothe the painful heat at once. “Raise your ass once more for me, Gideon, and hold it in the air.” When he did, she reached beneath, and found what she'd expected. His cock was raging hard. She teased him with her touch, and his cock surged in her hand like a horse out of a starting gate. She tightened her grip, holding him still.

“You liked that. No, don't say anything. Unless I ask you a question, you don't speak. You break that rule, I'll gag you. Now, hold still.”

She picked up the harness, threaded the straps under his thighs, around his balls and to his waist. She kept them loose, let him feel the way they rubbed against him, like teaching a horse to take a bridle. She started humming a soft tune, alternating her careful adjustments of the straps with rubbing the abused flesh. Bending forward, she dropped kisses on the small of his back, giving him the tip of her tongue, tasting him. Then she tightened the primary strap, drawing the rest snug. It cinched in on his balls and the base of his cock, as well as around his thighs. He jumped a little again, but held still. She'd positioned the harness's back ring where she wanted it to be and now unsnapped the connector holding it into the rest of the harness to make way for what she wanted.

“You're going to feel pressure, Gideon. Deep breath and relax.”

“No,” he said. “Don't put anything—”

“This is my punishment. You agreed to it. Are you backing out?” The next action and reaction were pure instinct to both of them. He attempted to shove himself up from the couch. With one powerful movement, she held him down, kept him on his stomach with a firm hand to the middle of his back, his head turned by clamping her other on the back of his neck and skull. He struggled, but she held him. As she did, it swept through her, the physical power of making him bend to her will, and his recognition of it.

Just like that, she was back to that moment she'd first walked into the Queen's Chamber. This she knew and understood, separate from anything that had happened to her. He needed so much of this. It was a drug she couldn't deny herself. Her own immediate, physical reaction had shaken her, though. It brought to mind the times she'd resisted Daegan, his immediate, almost instinctual reprisals to her sensual rebellions. She forced herself to repeat in a cool voice, “Are you backing out?” He'd gone still, but now he set his jaw, shook his head. “Let me go. I'll accept it.” His voice was beastlike, rough enough she knew it wasn't a command, but an entreaty.

“All right, deep breaths, then. Deep breath. This isn't large.” She slowly removed her grip on him, her mind now inserting itself in his, another way of restraining him to her intent, because she could tell he felt her there. His thoughts wanted to escape her scrutiny, but they couldn't. They paced the cell of his mind, eyeing her warily, too keyed up to form coherent thought streams, just a rapid whitewater of rushing need.

Relax and accept, Gideon. You belong to me, and my will is what you serve.This was all her, not Barnabus, not those sullen shadows. She was sure of it, of herself, in a quiet way that differed from the desperate reassurance that had taken her upstairs. She wouldn't forget the difference again, or forget how the act of mastering a man could help center her. Of mastering Gideon.

She drew the relatively slim dildo out of the prepared jar of sensual, heated oil. When she guided it against his ass, she wasn't surprised to meet the hard resistance of tight sphincter muscles. It was a singular joy to break in a recent virgin to anal play who wasn't a virgin in any other way. Leaning forward, she blew a soft breath against the sensitive area. Goose bumps broke out on the curves of his buttocks. She used the dildo to paint the rim with the oil, let him feel that sweet slickness rub against the nerve-rich center. Then she leaned forward, parted the cheeks further, let her tongue dip and tease the rim herself.

“Jesus Christ.” He started to lift up, but her command in his mind halted the movement.

Be still for me, Gideon. Take all the pleasure, let it build until you can think of nothing else.

That delicious trembling started again, this fearsome, powerful vampire hunter at her mercy as she used her tongue, oiled fingers and dildo to play at that rim, dip in and out. His buttocks were flexing, just minute amounts, an involuntary reaction, a need to fuck, telling her he was staying erect. Though Gideon didn't know it yet, he would be aching to come a long, long time after he wanted to do so. In that way she would teach him never to beg for a climax until it was his Mistress's desire.

This time the dildo made it through the first ring of muscles easily, and then she eased it past the second group, feeling that sudden descent. Like when the foot stepped into a soft, giving depression of sand in the ocean, now pulling in the phallic shape, rather than rejecting it. She'd threaded it through the harness ring as she took it in, so now she snapped the harness back in place and made one more adjustment so that he was well and truly yoked. The dildo would stay in, enough give when he walked to drive him crazy. The cock harness would hold him secure and tight, a reminder that the seed boiling in his balls and blood hardening his cock all belonged to her. She lifted off him. “Stand up for me now.” He pushed himself up on his hands, moving gingerly at the new sensations in his ass and around his genitals, and glanced down at himself. He swallowed repeatedly as his fists clenched, but she backed away, leaned against her desk and crossed her legs. “Walk across the room for me.”

“Anwyn.” If Daegan came in now, Gideon would die of embarrassment. She saw it clearly on his face as well as consuming his mind.

“Daegan would get hard just looking at you. Seeing your cock restrained like that, that dildo in your ass.

I bet he'd imagine pulling it out, shoving you down over the couch arm and putting his cock there instead.

As you know, he's substantially bigger and thicker than what's in there now. You could take him, though.”

Seeing Gideon's shock and desire war across his face was a terrible and beautiful thing both, and she leaned forward. Her shirt had a low neckline, and his eyes immediately went to the generous breasts beneath, because of course now his mind was focused on any sexual stimulus. Even the cracks in the floor had likely become prurient. The pale curve of her desklamp globe was probably a gateway to all sorts of imaginings.

“I don't want him fucking me.”

“Hmm. You're seeing your feelings in light of a world that judges a man who desires another man, tries to label him. Don't you realize the two of you are naturally attracted to each other? Two warriors, wanting to test each other, take each other down. Both connected to the same woman, who welcomes you both in her body.” She went back around her desk and sat down, folding her hands on her knee.

“Put on your clothes.”

At his startled glance, she nodded, allowing a feline smile to curve over her face. “You'll keep that in until I say to take it out, or until it starts to hurt. You tell me immediately when that happens,” she added, injecting a sharp tone. “That's not the kind of pain I want you to experience. If I have to hear it in your mind first, I won't be pleased.”

He grunted, and she let that noncommittal answer go, because he'd already given her more than she expected at this point. She knew how to whip a man into a sexual frenzy, get him past the emotional hurdles that kept him from surrendering himself, but Gideon was a little different from that. He wasn't going to be the housebroken type. Though she was going to enjoy the pleasure of seeing how close she could get him to it.

He pulled on the jeans, working the zipper up with excruciatingly pleasurable caution, but came around the desk, resting tense knuckles on the wood, looking down at her. “So you took care of my punishment.

What was yours?”

She looked away, feeling her cheeks warm. “Daegan took care of that one.”

“Hmm. Did he hurt you?”

“Nothing I didn't deserve. Or that wasn't bearable.”

He cocked his head, still looking at her; then he went to his knees. As she watched him, he cradled the ankle of her crossed leg, bent and brushed his mouth against the bones there. “Did he hurt you here? Or maybe it was higher?” His mouth moved upward, a few inches, and she felt the tip of his tongue.

“Gideon.” She wanted to summon a chuckle, but there was a seriousness to his seduction that held her still. He moved up another few inches, just below her knee, and she quivered, her pussy getting wetter, making her want to shift and feel the slippery texture of movement. Getting him worked up had of course gotten her worked up, and he was keying into that. She should set him back on his ass.

Did he ram into you, punish you with his cock for coming so close to dying?

She swallowed, looking down at his head. “It wasn't like that. He was being a bastard.” His mouth moved up to her thigh, and it trembled as his hand slid under it.If I thought I nearly hadn't gotten there, that you'd almost taken your life because I wasn't smart enough to figure out what you needed to know or hear in time, I'd take it out on your ass, too. Because it's hard to reach your own ass, you know. In the same way.

A smile trembled on her lips, but then she sucked in a breath as he cruised higher with his clever mouth, nudging under the short skirt, his tongue flicking the seam between her thighs, coaxing entry into that pulsing heat. She hooked her fingers in his hair, tightened. “I didn't give you permission to do this.”

“Your mind wants me to continue.”

“I really need to get that shield working between us.”

“You will. But not tonight.” He lifted his face to her, his blue eyes vibrant. Lust poured off him in heady, heated waves, and she knew he was still hard as a rock, aching for her. Yet he didn't ask for that release. He asked for hers. “Let me pleasure you with my mouth, Mistress. He took. I can give. You need both.”