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rather than playing such games.
    “For you both, then,” she breathed. “The one who will take me, and the one I will take for myself.”
    He opened his jeans with one hand and then brought her back to him with that hand in her hair, the rolling chair providing an anchor point under her breasts as she arched back like a crescent moon. When he drove his cock into her, the thick, turgid length of it, he earned her cry, pleasure in how he filled her. Reaching back, she curled her hands into the open fabric of his jeans and held on, as he leaned forward and enveloped her in the folds of the duster he hadn’t bothered to remove.
    She was a Mistress, but he alone compelled her to surrender like this. While he had stopped demanding her agreement to be his servant, she knew the surrender she gave him fell short of how much he truly wanted from her.
    Though he’d never said why he stopped asking, she thought she knew why, and it made the pain a little sharper, a blade she willingly drove into herself every time she clasped him to her.
    In the vampire world, there was no greater crime than to fall in love with a human.

3
    G IDEON didn’t wear a watch, because digital ones beeped and wind-ups ticked, and both could be heard by vampire ears. He’d gotten pretty adept at knowing the passage of time without one, and though he knew it had been only fifteen minutes since he took the position on the prayer bench, it felt like twice that. The door didn’t open, and with the soundproofing, the only noises in the silent room were his breath and heartbeat. Which increased his tension to the point he was gripping those iron handles as if they were a lifeline.
    A strange thing had happened to him, kneeling here. The decision to obey had been spontaneous, a reckless “oh fuck it.” But the more time passed, the more it was as if she was compelling him to stay there. Challenging him. Somehow he knew her eyes hadn’t left him. She was watching him, not one of her staff. He was going to stay here, in this position, until Hell froze over. Because that door hadn’t opened and no one had told him to go home.
    The longer he’d remained in this position, the harder he’d gotten, until his cock was a fucking steel bar, aching. It was at an uncomfortable angle beneath his fly, but once he’d grabbed hold of those iron bars, he’d pilloried himself. He wouldn’t let go.
    Jesus, he’d fucking lost his mind.
    Despairing, he dropped his head so his brow rested on the padded rail. Cushioned velvet, an interesting choice since everything else about the bench was penitential hard wood. He was in that position when the door opened, and he heard her step back in.
    He stiffened, but didn’t move, keeping his head where it was, too messed up to make a decision about whether or not he should lift it. He held on to the sound of her coming across the floor, the sharp shot of stilettos, briefly muffled by a throw rug, then back to the wood again. The wet slide of the latex, the whisper of the camisole as her body moved beneath the clothes.
    Then her scent and heat were close. He didn’t know about flowers and perfumes. He just knew she smelled totally Female, capital F . He wanted to bury his face in her hair, that sable sea of comfort and torment.
    “Keep your head down.”
    Her hand touched his hair then, stroked along his temple, his skull. He stared at the velvet cushioning, the rich red color filling his vision like blood, the iron handles hot under his sweaty grip. Pain, such as what the other Mistresses had given him, would have galvanized his normal instinct to rebel, but he had no strategy to fight this kind of attack. Lyssa had done it, too, that night long ago. Simply stroked his head, teaching him that a cruel goddess could turn mercy and compassion into a weapon. A treasure a man would sell his soul to experience.
    Her touch was gentle, but there was a firmness there, too. She dug into his scalp, massaged. Her thumb had a sculpted nail,