The light bulbs seemed to go on forever in both directions.
Yet there was no one anywhere she could see and she heard no voices, no sounds. But there had to be people of some sort here. Why else would you need seven hospital beds? As her brain worked the multipliers, she knew that this was a massive drug operation, on par with the ones in South America.
This was definitely the big supplier they’d been looking for, Mozart’s equivalent on the other side of the business.
The thrill of the chase revived her even further.
If she could get out of this alive, she was going to be able to bring down the whole enterprise. This was the reason she had been doing her job for the last three years. This was everything she had— “I can wait outside,” Luke said, “but I think it’ll be better if I come in with you.”
“Huh?”
Oh, right. He’d opened the way into a bathroom that was lit with—yup, another light bulb on a wire. But at least the faded tile floor and the basin and toilet were clean, the place smelling of the same astringent as the clinic-type area. There was also a shower in the corner, with no curtain.
“Heck of a first date this is,” she blurted.
When she realized what she’d said, she started backstroking, but he cut her off while he carried her over to the porcelain throne. “Considering how things started between us, I think we’re actually making headway on the road to appropriate. Assuming you don’t fall off the loo and knock yourself out.”
Rio had to laugh. “Just put me on the seat and let’s hope for the best.”
“And then I’ll make your whole day.”
“How’s that,” she gritted as her stiff, sore body protested being lowered down to the toilet.
“I have a toothbrush and toothpaste in my pocket.”
With a sharp look at his too-handsome face, she couldn’t believe that some Oral-B and a little Crest made her feel like she had won Powerball. But he was right.
“Oh, my God,” she murmured. “I could fall in love with you right now.”
Guess that was a good thing, she decided, considering she was about to drop her pants in front of the guy.
Just as Vishous couldn’t stand the anticipation and dread a second longer, his shellan came forward, floating over to him. As she closed in, he realized her ghostly body was naked, her high, firm breasts tempting his mouth and his hands, the cleft of her sex something that made him lick his lips. He was also beyond ready for the straps, for the buckles. The initial fever pitch of fear and anticipation had leveled off, and now he needed more gasoline on his fire.
He had to have the actual trapping, the tangible tying down, to keep himself tripping on adrenaline—
Jane went by him, moving over the floor like an apparition. Because she was one.
And that was fucking hot as fuck.
The moan that came out of his throat was ragged, his need denied, his body pricking with—
Jane went to the door. Turned around. Looked into his eyes.
And then, with her right hand, the one she operated with, her dominant side . . . she slowly turned the lock into place—the copper lock, the one that he had put on the door just two months before.
For exactly this purpose.
The thing was, he had sold his penthouse at the Commodore a while ago. That place, where he had had sessions with females, with males, with humans, hadn’t appealed to him after he’d mated his Jane. So he’d let his wooden worktable go. He’d given away his tools of the trade. He’d thought he’d moved on from the sadomasochism shit.
But internally, he had not changed. He still needed this outlet.
This patient room was his new playground.
Their new playground.
V started to pant as Jane returned to the foot of the bed. As she stopped, she looked up his body. Then she touched his ankles with her hands. In spite of her ghostly form, he felt the warmth and substance of his mate, and knew her for the miracle that she was, back from the dead, a gift from his mahmen, the Scribe Virgin. Tears speared into his eyes as he remembered holding her lifeless body in his arms, and staring at her cold, grotesquely white skin.
Yet she was here with him now and would be forever.
It almost made a disenfranchised son wish he’d reconciled with the female who had borne him.
“What do you want, Vishous,” Jane asked in a low voice.
“I want . . .” Fuck, he couldn’t breathe and he was pretty sure he was going to come again. “I want you to buckle my ankles.”
“Why?”
“I want you . . . to control me.”
“I already do.” Jane lowered her chin. “You’re mine.”
Vishous arched his back, his pierced nipples tingling, his single ball sac tightening, his cock jumping up and slapping back down on his abdominals. Jane was the only female who had ever seen this side of him, the only person he could really go to for this sacred space of submission, this exchange of power that ran in only one direction: to her.
In the past, he had played her role, and gotten off on it, but there had always been a detachment to the experiences—and it wasn’t until he’d known his shellan that he’d realized a truth about himself that was a shock. He had been a Dom . . . because he had wanted to be submissive.
You had to have trust for that to happen, though.
And Jane was the only one—
“I will do what I want to you. So no, you don’t get the buckles.”
V bit his lip. “Please—”
She rubbed his ankles . . . and went up to his calves. “You do not get them. You are going to keep yourself just as you are. Or things will not go well for you.”
Jane walked up to the head of the bed. Staring down at him, she played with the tips of her breasts, as if she knew what was tingling on him, and with her forefingers drawing little circles, she bit her own lip.
A mirror of him.
“Please,” he groaned.