doing, and that’s not the norm. I fit here, and I’m grateful for whatever it is you need to do to make sure I keep fitting here.”
“Next question — did you feed on lust since I last saw you?”
She had, but he shouldn’t have been able to tell. “Yes. A group of us were tasked with looking for steganography, and the shots were quite explicit — fisting, watersports, and needles. Some were horrified, but others were turned on. I fed from the room, not a person. It’s fine. How did you know?”
“I have no idea.”
Eunice had to keep a strong hold on his arousal while he unfolded and set up the heavy-duty massage table they’d converted into a bondage table. As sure as he’d known she’d fed from lust the night before, he knew she’d wake in the next thirty or so minutes, and it was barely four o’clock.
Fabio was on a job at the convention center, and Collosa was working out in their home gym.
Eunice had brought rope that would hold a vampire, and the meat tenderizer — a stainless steel hammer with sharp pyramidal points on the hammer’s striking surface. It weighed nearly two pounds, and it was a beast.
He could never use it on humans, but he’d destroyed several clits belonging to shapeshifters, and then made them wait a day or two before he allowed them to change. He didn’t know how long it would take for Kelsey to heal, so he’d keep it to eight strikes today. Or maybe six.
But then he’d have Collosa fuck her fast and hard, further bruising the area, and it would be enough. If it’d been an out-of-the-blue transgression, he’d have stuck with the cane, but the circumstances around it demanded more. He had to make certain she wasn’t misbehaving just for the attention of being punished.
And with that thought, he pushed it back up to eight strikes of the hammer.
He looked up as the steel trapdoor grated on the bricks and opened, but he didn’t smile at her when she rolled off the granite platform and landed on her feet on the hardwood floor.
“Strip and climb onto the table. Face up.”
She took seven seconds to begin following orders. He’d have thought nothing of punishing one of his usual slaves for the hesitation, but he didn’t want to punish her.
Which meant he had to. He couldn’t risk giving her any leeway. A vampire above her in the hierarchy wouldn’t let her get away with it, and neither could he.
“Tell me why you’ll be punished for the seven seconds it took you to decide to follow orders.”
“Because my conformity to rules and submission to your place in the household must be absolute, Sir.”
“Did Georgio allow you to disrespect him?”
She was about to climb on the table, and she faltered before turning to him, shock on her face. “No, Sir. He was a powerful—” She cut herself off and went to her knees. “I apologize for doing so to you. I was happy to see you. I wanted to tell you I’d decided on a quest for Sunday, and how well I thought it would fit this group. It took me a moment to change tracks, but it wasn’t acceptable.”
“Apology accepted. Bend over the back of the sofa and accept five strikes of the cane without the need to be restrained. One strike for each second beyond what I believe it should’ve taken you to readjust and follow a direct order.”
He didn’t take it easy on her with the cane, and he was impressed she managed to hold her position. Her tears made his dick hard inside his jeans, but he didn’t adjust himself.
When he finished, he ordered her to climb onto the table, and she didn’t hesitate to stand up and move.
While she walked to the makeshift bondage table, he told her, “You may as well feed from the lust in the air while you can. You’ll get no blood today.”
It was within his rights to withhold a feeding for up to three days without checking in with Etta. Longer than five days and she’d need to be housed in Marco’s dungeon — and those rules were put in place before she could feed on lust. He figured she could go a good bit longer with her alternate feeding source, but he’d stick to the rules as written.
Because the table was made to hold humans and not supernaturals, he had to restrain her to herself. He had her put her arms in