me, from us. Even though they might have something to prove, you still belong to me. Your pleasure is my property. I won’t see it abused.” She gripped the collar, and felt the power of it vibrate up her fingertips. “I asked you to trust me, before I became this. Will you trust me to be your Mistress tonight, Gideon? Everything after that, we’ll negotiate. Vampire or not, I go in there as a Mistress. Will you go in as my slave?”
“Yes.” Seeing and feeling the core of her resolve, so strong it rippled over his skin like erotic heat, Gideon spoke from his heart. “Anwyn or Mistress, they’re the same to me. I can’t claim to understand what I want or need most days, but the answer to that one is clear enough in my head. I’m yours. Whenever you need me, however you need me.”
Within limits. But she knew his limits, didn’t she? When she put the collar on his throat, sliding the buckle into place, her fingers lingering, Gideon felt the emotion well up inside her. It was like a divine energy, a strong magic that held him still beneath her hands, as if he was part of a sacred ritual in truth. Fleetingly, he wondered if this might be what marriage felt like, that commitment to forever. What he might have felt sooner, if they’d had more time to do the third marking the way he’d heard it was supposed to be done.
The collar was definitely for a male slave, a wide three-inch strap with prongs worked into it so there was a warning prick of steel all the way around the top and bottom edges. Two long lengths of chain ran from the front steel loop, and fastened to two matching cuffs she tightened over his wrists. She closed her hand on those two lengths of chain where they met at that collar loop and followed them down, drawing his hands together until they rested on his knee and he felt the pull against his throat. Her gaze was molten, a blue-green sea under a hot sun, so that his skin burned beneath it. Latex didn’t have as much give as it first seemed, for his cock swelled painfully, pushing its limits. His body responded to that collar in a primal way, and he couldn’t control it. The collar was the sign of her ownership, his fealty to her. Whom he served.
His own fervency made him uncomfortable. Better able to handle his physical reaction than his incomprehensible emotional one, he let his gaze pass over her. She’d prepared herself as well. She’d put a sleek corset over a black bodysuit. There was a brace of topaz at her throat, one additional sparkling pin to dress her hair. A loose braided belt, studded with silver metal pieces, embellished the corset, low on her hips. Thigh-high boots with her trademark stiletto heels inspired a sudden desire to put his mouth on them, a peculiar feeling he hadn’t experienced before.
“My ankle, Gideon,” she said softly. “The material is very soft. I’ll feel your mouth through it.”
He bent, not caring about the extreme subservient position as he brought his lips to the creased ankle of those sexy-as-hell boots encasing sexy-as-hell legs. She shifted, putting the other boot on the curve of his bare back, holding him in the clamshell position as she adjusted a lacing, the point of the heel digging into his flesh. Catching his hair, she brought his head up, his mouth mere inches from her pussy. His nostrils flared so he could almost taste the scent through the thin fabric, saliva gathering on his tongue. “Smell that arousal? That’s all for you, Gideon. Be good tonight and you might get some of that.”
“I expect I might get more if I’m bad.” He tossed his head back against her hold, gave her a shit-eating grin. She bared her fangs at him.
“I’ll be happy to beat him if you’d like to watch,” Daegan offered, now standing in the doorway to his room.
Before they could respond to that, there was a knock on the door and an envelope slid beneath it. Glancing at Anwyn, Daegan retrieved it, looked at the addressee and extended it to her. “Apparently the Council has before-dinner instructions for you.”
Anwyn took it, turned it over in her hands and opened it. From where he now stood, Gideon could see only several lines of writing, but her mouth tightened in a hard line, matched by a