To underscore it, taking advantage of the shock that coursed over his expression, she went up on her toes and seized his mouth. Cupping her hands around his skull and biting down on his bottom lip, hard, she caused him to growl.

I know it's not natural to you, to wait and ask, fawn and grovel. Be the man I know you are. Sweep me away. Fuck me so I can barely walk.

She heard that leash break, knowing hunger, lust and need were all leaping against those self-imposed restraints. Catching her under the arms, he put her against the wall, but his eyes burned into hers. “I don't want to hurt you.”

“Speak in my mind.”

I don't want to hurt you.The sensual impact of it, his voice inside her, was incredible.

You'll hurt me only by holding back.In the swirl of their emotions and tumbling thoughts, each of them struggling to hear the uppermost thought in the other's mind, she made sure that one was clear.You said I have the control to beat this. I do. That I shouldn't be treated like a rabid animal. I don't want to be treated like a victim. I want your cock. I demand it.

He fisted his hand in her hair, plundered her mouth. There was the lingering flavor of blood, where Daegan had to strike him and he'd bitten his lip. Lust was a glorious sensation, but she'd never felt it like this. Was this why Daegan was always so ready to take her, even within minutes of having pushed them both over a peak? She wanted to draw it out forever, make Gideon suffer with lust until he was a brutal, mindless male animal. She wanted him to come inside of her now, hear his lust release in a long, helpless groan as he clutched her with his callused hands, speared her with his thick cock and sank deep, so deep she'd feel impaled and never want the pain of having the weapon pulled free of her aching flesh.

He had another surprise for her. Putting her on her feet, he turned her, pressing her against the shower wall and himself against her, his palms over her hands, pushing them flat against the tile, fingers curving into the spaces. He ground himself against her buttocks and she lifted for him, gasping, stepping on the toes of the boots he still wore. Bringing his knee up, he lifted her on his thigh, his other hand circling her waist and holding her in place to let her rub there, have the glorious feel of his thigh muscle rubbing against her clit as he opened his jeans.

“Yes,” she muttered. “Do it. Fuck me.”

Water was pounding against them. Even so, she clearly felt the tender brush of his lips on her nape as he worked her hard against his body, his strength able to keep her there if she didn't use vampire strength against him. If he hadn't had the second mark, his lack of sleep, of nourishment other than what he'd been able to scavenge from her kitchen between seizures, would have defeated him, but that energy sustained him as their need for each other only increased.

So did madness, with angry, slashing claws. Her fingers dug into the tile beneath his.No. Not yet.

“Gideon.” Panic gripped her. “Another one . . . another.” Would it ever end? Would it be as bad as the last one, or could he truly help, now that he was in her mind and halfway oriented?

I'm here. I see it, feel it. We'll ride it out together. You won't hurt me. You're in control, Anwyn.

Mistress.

As the seizure invaded, so did he, ripping open his jeans to drive himself into her to the root. He held her hands tightly, not to restrain her, but to tell her he was there as the pain of the transition ripped at her internal organs, made her cry out. She clung to the pleasure of him thrusting into her, to the way he filled her inside, how he pressed her against the shower wall so her clit made contact with it.

But that madness continued to build, the voices growing louder, the crimson haze covering her eyes. A renewed flood of panic was quickly swallowed by greed, the bloodlust using the sexual energy as fuel for its own purposes.

Breaking free, she whipped around and drove him up against the opposite wall, climbing his body to take control, slamming herself back down on him. With the thick breadth of his cock rubbing her slick tissues inside, her muscles milked him with ruthless craving. Her fingers fisted in his hair hard enough to hold his head back, his throat arched out to her.Mine. He was hers, to do with as she wished. That flimsy curtain she'd attempted was torn away, her mind invading his so he could hide nothing from her. Daegan had said the third mark was even deeper, soul deep. If she'd given him that last mark, she could clutch it in her hands, shred it if she wanted to do so.

They are never to be trusted. Kill him, now. He can still be killed. Blood is so much sweeter, easier, and a dying man's blood goes down so well. Do it when he's pumping his seed in you, let him die in the throes of orgasm, where you hold and take everything from him.

The gremlins screamed like a crowd of rabid fans at a rock concert. And threaded through it all, that voice, the sibilant lisp that had become a part of who she was, a part she was trying to deny. They all stroked her need for power and control, taking her places in her mind she hadn't known existed. Her fangs grew longer, the crimson tide bathing everything around her in blood, turning the water running over them into a shower of it. She heard Gideon's voice in her head, a distant, weak thing, attempting to bring her back to that pathetic creature she'd been a moment before. He would fail.

She snarled in protest, an angry, aroused cat, when an arm circled her neck from behind. A strong body pressed her harder onto Gideon's, creating a storm of sensation as her head was jerked to the side and a pair of fangs sank into her throat.

No, no, no . . .Gideon's surge of anger joined her own, but they were both helpless against the power of the creature holding them joined against the shower wall. Though she fought it, need grew heavy and hot again, for as Daegan drank, desire doubled and tripled in her blood. It spun around her, rousing every nerve ending. She began to rise and fall on Gideon, her fingers digging into his shoulders, nerve endings singing at the clutch of his fingers low on her hips, the way they convulsed to make the stroke of his cock, every velvet steel inch, the friction of the broad head, even more pleasurable. Though he appeared resistant because of their company, he couldn't resist the lust any more than she could.

Fuck me, the wildness in her screamed.Do it, or I'll tear your heart out of your chest.

No, you will not.Daegan's voice in her head was a startling and new experience. Gideon registered it as well, for it came right through her open mind to his.He is your servant. You care for him, and he cares for you. His desire is all for you, Mistress Anwyn. Accept it, use it. Make him yours by winning his heart, not his fear. That is your way. His mind may be yours, but it is a gift. His surrender is a gift. Win the gift, Anwyn. Don't take it.

Words she'd lived by all her life. She felt the heat of the man inside of her, the one behind her. Saw Gideon's desire and felt the fragile pounding of his heart at once.

A gift . . .

Whatever had changed in her face had altered something for Gideon, for he decisively cupped her throat, the opposite side from Daegan. Leaning forward, he brought his lips to that sensitive juncture. He worked his way down her sternum, dragging his open mouth over the top of her breast, and she arched up into Daegan as he took the nipple in his mouth, suckled deep, causing that luscious low pull in her belly, in her pussy.

The wracking pain, the throb of bloodlust, was still there, but it had a counter now. She knew how to work pain and pleasure together. That experience, working with two opposites, made her work around the chaotic storm, the division of her own mind between herself and the unstable vampire she was becoming. She reached for the voices of the two men she wanted inside her.

Daegan intuited her every thought so often, so hearing his voice, now actually there, wasn't as disruptive as she'd expected. Though she knew she should be really pissed off at whatever he'd just done, she had nothing to spare for that right now. Not with Gideon's mouth working on her so deftly, teasing the nipple, his teeth squeezing down on it just right, that slow build of pressure. Years ago, she'd been told by a favored cop client how to handle a gun. Squeeze, don't pull. It apparently worked in myriad, volatile ways.

Daegan was braced behind her, and she registered that he still wore the dark jeans but no shirt, water rolling down his fine muscles, pressed against her back and the outside of her arms. She had her head on his shoulder and now she looked up at him through a film of mist to find crimson lights flickering in the depths of his dark eyes, his bloodlust obviously roused by this, and by the blood he'd taken from her.

With a trembling set of fingers, she reached up, traced his wet lips, watched him stay still beneath her touch, his breath hot and moist on her. Whatever else they couldn't resolve, she could never deny him her body. And he knew it.

Drawing in a breath, she couldn't look away as Gideon pulled out, slowly surging back in. He took over the pace, his gaze flaming further at her reaction. As he fucked her this way, while simply holding her, there were a million things in his eyes. Moaning at the next thrust, she arched upward, found Daegan's mouth and dug her fingers into the side of his neck to hold herself there. He didn't disappoint her, taking instant command of the kiss, capturing her head to prolong the erotic duel of tongues and lips as Gideon worked his way back up to her throat. Cinching his arm in between her back and Daegan's body, he began to ram into her in earnest, reading what she wanted. That hard rutting that overwhelmed the new attack, like a tidal wave swallowing high-tide surf, mixing together in one violent event.

Gideon . . .She gloried in the small victory of issuing a command during such a storm.Do not come until I say so.

She felt his acknowledgment, his frustration because he was so close, but too mindless to question why he submitted to her desire.

Her own climax was fast approaching, and she devoured Daegan's mouth, scraping his fangs with her own and earning a growl that made her lips stretch back in a feral response. It was so good to taste him like this, no thought, not having to deal with the minefield between them, all that swept away for the moment by the easy, familiar, never-ending desire for each other. Then the orgasm took her, shuddering up from the joining point between her and Gideon.