"gideon," he snarled.

she didn't stop. in a blink, she was gone, the door closing on well-oiled hinges behind her. gideon stared at the door, his hands closing into useless fists at his sides. hell, he shouldn't be here, shouldn't be doing this. she'd been right to leave. vaguely, he knew he'd paid them for the right to be here, that he should be pissed, but he understood this place better than he would have at one time. this underground level wasn't about memberships and having your ass kissed.

then he realized something. the door was closed. they left it open after a session's completion. at this point, the security guard would have put his carefully blank face back in and told him how many minutes he had before his ass was expected to be out of there. instead, he heard the locks snick in place again.

something loosened in his chest and tightened even lower.

he cleaned up, and not just the dresser. he didn't know how to rehang those tapestry things, but he laid them on the bed, so they weren't on the floor. he picked up the candlesticks he'd snapped when he'd ripped a candelabrum from the wall, righted the vanity stool and put it back in front of its table and mirror. for the broken glass, wax shavings and splinters, he used his hands as broom and dustpan, scraped it all together, ignoring the cuts that bloomed. he used a bowl that looked like an old-fashioned washbasin to hold the pieces. gathering cut, limp flowers, he stuffed them back into the vases he hadn't broken.

what started as grudging compliance to her wish to move one piece of furniture became a tense, almost obsessed need to change what he'd done, even though he couldn't undo or erase it. but as he continued to be alone, he knew he was avoiding doing the one thing that might bring her back.

he turned toward the prayer bench. it was innocuous looking, polished wood with spaced depressions on the inclined floor piece, intended for placement of the shins. adjustable wooden pieces were at the end, providing a place to brace the foot, so the kneeler wouldn't slide back during his devotions. the riser in front of the bench, and the upper rail, would prevent the knees or body from sliding forward, no matter what force they were experiencing from behind.

she hadn't said to undress, though he had a curious desire to be stripped bare. still, it was hard enough to walk to that bench, and force himself to his knees, fitting his shins in the places provided and adjusting the brace pieces for his longer legs. it wasn't too uncomfortable, but he expected that, after a while, the knees would start to ache. there was no padding, after all. two hand-sized holes in the upper riser led through to wrought-iron handles, obviously intended for gripping. none of it seemed to be mechanized, nothing that would suddenly engage and hold him fast, but again, he knew this room wasn't about that. in here, bondage was a state of mind, either embraced or rejected. he'd rejected it three times. but this fourth time . . . he remembered his analogy of the enchanted castle, and thought of sirens and sorceresses, of men turned to pigs.

he clenched his jaw. "fuck it." threading his hands through those two holes, he took a good grip on the iron handles. he stared at that stained glass angel, who stared back at him with an unreadable yet mesmerizing expression. he couldn't determine what lay in the winged warrior's face. compassion, detachment, anger . . . it was like mona lisa, every expression and none able to be read there.

"i'm here, damn you. come back now." he swallowed. "please." anwyn had returned to her private office, calling up the queen's chamber on her monitor in there.

"let's see what you've got, angry man," she murmured. when he at last began to clean up her room, not just the dresser, her chest tightened, the constriction increasing as he tried to fold the tapestries, push the flowers back in the vases. as he got down and scraped glass and wax into his hands, her own fingers closed, feeling the pain of the small cuts. he looked so incongruous doing such tasks, and yet she knew this was harder for him than fighting a physical enemy. the most frightening monsters were the ones that lived in your head. the aroma of a red rose, sensory memory, could be as painful an assault as a bullet in the chest.

"you are a strange and unsettling woman,cher . one who plays with a vampire hunter." she didn't take her eyes from the screen. anwyn always knew when daegan rei was near her. it bemused him, she knew, because in his world, such cognizance was usually accompanied only by a marking. perhaps because vampires had a physical way to inflict immediate mind, heart and soul intimacy upon humans, they didn't realize that a human foolishly, deeply in love could acquire the same awareness, without a blood-link. his scent wrapped around her like a longing for what could never be. it made the craving even sharper, bittersweet.

"that intrigues you. it's why you like me playing with him." she stood behind her office chair, which she'd positioned in front of the monitor screen as if it were a barrier between her and what she was watching. much like the barrier she'd always held between her and daegan. it was an unexpected discovery, that she felt some of the same wariness about gideon's impact upon her senses as she did daegan's.

however, when the vampire slid his hands with possessive familiarity over her latex-clad hips and caressed the bare skin beneath the camisole, she leaned back into him, unable to deny her desire for his touch.

"play, yes. but if you get hurt, his end will not be pretty. take care that your toy doesn't get out of hand.

you've never wanted to put your hands on him before."

"on the contrary, i wanted to put my hands on him the very first time he walked through the door. my mouth, every sweet, slick part of my body that you have touched." she turned her head so she could catch his ear in her teeth. he gave her an indulgent growl, though his muscles hardened, a predatory response that the mistress in her liked to goad. "you taught me the sweet pleasures of anticipation," she whispered. "denying me until i beg, until i would die to have the barest brush of your mouth at my throat.

even if you only intended to tear into it, take my life." his fingers dug deep into her hair, tugging so her throat was exposed to him in truth. she shivered as the tip of one of those sharp fangs drew a line unerringly down her thudding pulse. "it would be an unforgivable insult to abuse such a beautiful thing. i would make the smallest possible punctures"-he pressed a sharp tip into her-"and sip until you drifted away, a gift to heaven." she closed her eyes. when she detected a dangerous tension sweep through him, she raised her lashes to see his nostrils flare, his lip curling in a feral warning. "i can smell the blood of his latest kill on you.

have you allowed him to touch you already?"

"no. i've been in the room with him. a few minutes ago."

daegan's senses were so sharp, on every level. though guarding her true feelings for him could be agony at times, the challenge of giving so much of herself to him, and so little at once, of being slave and mistress both, was irresistible to one with her talents. the reason she took so few sessions now was that every interaction with daegan was as fulfilling and exhausting as any session she'd ever experienced.

gideon had called to her in a way she recognized as complementary to both what she had and what she lacked with daegan. even for a mistress, she knew her needs and hungers were more complex and unusual than most, and this was untapped territory. it gave her a shiver of fear and anticipatory pleasure at once. daegan, she was sure, registered both reactions. his hands cruised up to her breasts, cradled them with deceptive gentleness.

"gideon green," he said, voice laden with irony. "the best vampire hunter in the world. hard to find, hard to kill. should i worry over your obsession?"

using her response to his touch, she gave him a breathless laugh. "i would never destroy nature's perfection by allowing him to cut off your gorgeous head. i might ask him to snare you, though. restrain your body so i could stroke it with the tip of the stake, then slowly, slowly, ease it into your flesh, the way your cock eases into me, my body welcoming and destroyed by it at once. a gift to the flames of hell."

he muffled a sudden chuckle against her shoulder, and anwyn relaxed into his arms, giving herself that brief pleasure as he caressed her throat. "you are such fiery torment,cher , hell would seem like a vacation. do you know how many vampires would like to capture him, take days to teach him the error of his career choice?"

where their macabre teasing gave her erotic shivers, that didn't. a cold ball formed in her stomach as she turned her gaze to the screen again. she studied the tilt of his head, the way his uncombed hair fell in unruly disarray over his creased forehead.he's mine. i won't let any harm come to him.

she masked the unexpectedly vehement reaction with a light shrug. "good thing you care nothing for such temptations."

when he gazed down into her face, she held his dark stare. in the beginning, his sensual punishments had been most severe for her refusal to turn her gaze downward, something vampires expected of their servants. but she bore no mark of daegan rei's. she was not his servant. as a result, she had no real idea what she was to him, the strange path of their relationship, while she was all too aware of what he was to her.

he'd described the effect of the different marks. it took more than a vampire bite. the vampire had to release each of the three separate, special serums from his fangs. one mark was merely a geographical locater, allowing the vampire to find the human he had marked. the second mark allowed the vampire access to the human's thoughts. they knew everything the human was thinking, and they could speak in the human's mind. daegan had said the third mark deepened that mind-to-mind link, took it down to the heart and soul. practically, a second-or third-marked servant could lend strength to the vampire if he was injured, but if the vampire was killed, a third-marked human would die within moments. if that human was killed, depending on how long they'd been together, it could be a powerful emotional blow to the vampire, but he would survive it.

he'd told her that words were not sufficient to describe the third mark, to understand why it differed so much from the second, but she could read between the lines. it was a complete surrender, a giving to the vampire of all that particular human was. but in the vampire world, humans were viewed as an inferior species, the property of their master or mistress, slaves in truth. a human servant gave her vampire everything, while in turn accepting whatever part of himself he chose to give to her.