“You've been very ugly to my ladies, Gideon. Been rude and surly as well. I expect better of you.”

“Better lower your expectations. This is as good as it gets.” As she shifted her hand, he saw a flash of metal. He should have ducked away, swept her legs, knocked her to the ground and pinned her. It was how he reacted to the appearance of a blade, but for some reason this time he merely went still. It was a razor blade, cut and fitted to the underside of that long nail.

When it followed his jawline again, the fiery sting, concentrated and precise, told him she'd drawn up a thin line of his blood. What would happen if she bent, licked it away? He clenched his fists against the metal handles, fighting to banish such sick thoughts.

“Maybe you should have gotten your ass in here and done the job right the first time.” He tossed it out, a desperate Hail Mary. “Though I guess you make more money being wrong.” She tightened her fingers in his hair, making him grunt as she put her knee in his lower back. The only thing that kept her stiletto from staking his calf to the floor was the protection of his jeans as she leaned in. Her lips, her blessed lips, were so close to his ear he scented the gloss. A dark fruit of some kind, juicy, sweet and rich, but with a bite. As she held his head down to the rail with brutal efficiency, her breath caressed his jaw and cheek as if she'd rubbed her pussy there, moist and heated.

“Many men resist when they come here. It's part of what they need, so even if their resistance is violent, we can subdue them, because that's what they expect. They want to be here, want to be dominated.

You, on the other hand, feel compelled to be here, forced by something in yourself you despise. That's why the other three only fed into your anger.”

“Sounds like you're into dogfighting, sweetheart.” He wished she'd use the razor again, take his mind off what was happening at a lower altitude, the twisting in his gut, the unabating throb of his cock. Jesus, nothing but her voice and the pain of that jabbing spike heel made his organ convulse, dampen thin cotton. “You threw a couple cats and a golden retriever in the ring to get my blood raging. You're the prize bitch, here for the real fight.”

“Hmm.” Trailing her fingers down the back of his neck, she teased the small, fine hairs so an unexpected shiver ran down his spine. She kept going, down the back of the T-shirt, the pads of her fingers caressing the tense range of muscles layered on either side of that center column, the branches of ribs. Only when she got to his waistband did he realize the purpose of taking her thumb down that center line. He muttered a curse as she used her knuckles to nudge aside the sliced fabric, but he couldn't prevent another, different type of quiver as her nails scraped his bare skin.

“That's one of two shirts I own.”

“I'm sure Goodwill has plenty more where this one came from.” Letting the fabric fall away from his tense flesh, she moved around the rail, between him and the stained glass alcove with its peaceful fountain. She eased a hip onto the cushioned rail, the long thigh encased in latex no more than an inch or two from his nose. The folds of the silky camisole gathered just above it, making it hard to swallow. The fabric was nearly sheer, giving him the hint of bare flesh so close.

He had a death grip on the handles, knowing her ass had to be hanging just over his knuckles on the right. Lifting one of her booted feet in an astonishingly flexible movement designed to reduce a man's mind to a puddle of lust, she threaded it between his forearms so she was straddling the rail. One boot was planted on the prayer bench between his knees; the other remained on the outside of his body. His head was now essentially between her legs. If he turned his face, his mouth would be mere inches from the slick black juncture of her thighs, shadowed by the folds of lace.

Despite that temptation, he lifted his head, following the fall of her hair up to her implacable face, those blue-green eyes that studied him with powerful intent. “I'm not going to try to force you to do anything, Gideon,” she said, her voice a ruthless, feminine murmur. “I'm not going to manipulate you. You don't need that. It's a shield. I'm taking away your shields so you can face what you really need.”

“What's that?”

“I also won't give you answers you already have.” She leaned in, and the camisole slid away from her body, so that he was staring at two perfect breasts, the tips just beyond the range of his vision. Her hair brushed his face as she whispered in his ear. “There will be no money between us, Gideon. You will pay for your drinks, you will pay for any damage you do, but there will be no paid sessions. I am not your employee, nor your whore. When we are in this room, you are here to serve me, and you serve as I choose or you get out.”

“What am I, then?Your employee? Your boy toy?”

She straightened, tipped up his chin. When she did, he stilled, realizing she'd brought that blade right under his throat, was casually stroking it back and forth over his windpipe. He swallowed against the pressure of the razor edge.

She could kill him. All this time spent fighting vampires, and this night, weary and hungering for something only she could provide, he could be ended with barely a flick of her thumb.

For a moment, he wished she would do it. Almost wanted to beg her for it. She'd taken him right into a dark part of his soul he tried to ignore, but always knew was there. Growing larger every day. There was a flicker in her gaze, a tightening of her mouth, as he saw her recognize it. But her voice was terrifyingly mild.

“There's a segment of society that serves, but is not paid. That's what you are to me. In this room, you are my slave.” The edge of the blade dug in, but he found himself more agitated about the fact her words had accelerated his pulse than any physical harm she could do.

“I know you're big, brave and strong.” Her voice changed, hardened. “Come in here with your hidden knife, with your predator's eyes and clenched fists. Would you use them on me? Turn all those weapons against me?”

“No,” he muttered, wondering how she knew about the toe blade. When her hand dropped, he shuddered as her fingers stroked his fly, caressing the aroused beast beneath. She hadn't even looked, had known exactly how and where to touch. As she teased the ridge of his head underneath the strained denim, his breath got ragged.

“You think this is a weapon, too, don't you? But I could make you come like a boy in your pants.”

“Talk is cheap—”

She slapped him. She did it quickly enough it caught him off guard, and it was no girl slap, either. His ear was ringing. If his hand had been over the rail, he would have caught her wrist in reaction, but he'd kept that death grip on the iron handles. So he just stared at her, his nerves singing along his jaw and cheek, his blood boiling.

“That's enough, Gideon. Do you understand me?” Her voice remained cool, but her eyes could laser skin. It wasn't uncontrolled anger. In fact she felt perfectly, frighteningly, in control. “Say, ‘Yes, ma'am', if you understand. You will call me nothing other thanma'am orMistress . I hear anything else, or you push me once more, I get up and leave. This time I won't come back.” He held her gaze a full minute, his jaw tight. “Yes, ma'am.” He was going to get up. Demand her name. Leave. Break more furniture. He didn't have to take this shit. He wished she'd stroke his head some more. He wanted to throw her down on the ground and fuck her, feel her body struggle beneath his, because he knew he was stronger. But as he looked up the slope of her abdomen, the rise of her breasts and slim column of throat, all delicate, feminine features, he couldn't make himself move. Instead, he lowered his head, pressed his lips to the inside of her thigh, turning so his temple rested on the opposite one, his forehead pushed into the curve of her stomach.

She lowered her hand to his head again, a slow, slow stroke now, one that followed his hair from his brow all the way to the ends at his shoulders. The movement brushed the lower curve of her breasts against his head, and he was fine with that, as well as with the flex of the muscles beneath his cheek. “I'm going to have three ladies come in now. They're going to strip and restrain you, at my direction.” He tensed, but her fingers kept up their soothing and implacable motion. “If I sent in three men, you'd fight them, bloody their faces. Your choice now is to submit to what I want, or disprove my theory about your chivalrous nature.”

“You can do anything you want to me without restraints.”

“Yes, I can. But the restraints aren't for me. They're for you.”

“I can't.” The rawness of his own voice disturbed him, but he couldn't move as long as she was touching him this way, the comfort of her thighs against his face, the reassuring, intimate female scent of her so close. Arousal. She'd been aroused when she came in here, and that scent was still there, as well as the hint of a different musk, one that seemed familiar but he couldn't quite place. He wanted to lift his head, use his mouth to find out if her nipples were hard, stiff little points that would welcome the wet, demanding heat of his tongue, the bite of his teeth, the pressure of a suckling squeeze with his lips.

“I know you think you can't. But you will, anyway. Because you are my slave, and that is what I demand. In here, you fail no one if you submit, if you give in to what you want. I accept everything you are. There is no dark room inside you that I won't open.”

“I want to fuck you. I want that to happen.”

He knew that never happened with a hired Dominatrix. But she'd said there'd be no money between them, hadn't she?

“That's up to me. We'll see how well you obey, and if you deserve something that special.” Her fingers tightened, a warning. “In this room, you are not in control, Gideon. You are not God here. I am. I am the only one allowed to pass judgment on you. Your Mistress.” A Mistress. An owner of his soul.Guardian of his soul. The insidious whisper came from that sly part of his mind that knew what buttons to push. Seductive, misleading.You are not in control. She'd called him her slave. But she would walk into those dark, secret rooms inside of him and find other names.