"Goddamn you," he hissed. With a quick movement of her spiked heel, she slid a nearby pail under the bench. She tilted the edge of the container to get it under his long, erect cock, enclosing it on all sides where it was suspended in its cage of straps just at the end of the bench.

"You finally gave me a truthful answer, Mac," she said softly, watching his buttocks clench and push, then pull against her as she ruthlessly fucked him with her fingers, brought her other hand around to feel the tightening of his balls. She loosed the harness at the base of his cock a notch, enough to let him go where she wanted him to go. "But you're going to lose control with me. As often as I wish it. Let go now, spill your seed into that pail, or I swear I will find the biggest strap-on on that wall and fuck you blind with it before you get a single taste of my pussy."

He didn't growl or snarl this time. What came out was more of an enraged and frustrated roar. His knees lifted as much as they could, slammed back into the floor as his body heaved and rocked and gave up the fight, shooting jets of semen into the bucket even with the restriction of the harness, which she knew would prolong it, make it even more excruciatingly pleasurable.

"That's it, baby," she crooned. "Show me how much you want to fuck me." She couldn't tell where the wetness of her pussy ended and the oil of his back began, but she didn't care. She rubbed both over him, marking him, working her body with the delightful plunging rhythm of his.

He fought against the inevitable so hard that the strain of the powerful muscles was art in motion. She enjoyed it, every convulsion and tightening, every grunt and moan. When his head dropped forward on the bench at last, resting on his arm, she slowly withdrew her fingers, teasing him as she went so he shuddered even more. She freed his arms, but bade him keep still with a hand to his back as she picked up a towel and lifted herself off him.

Violet took a moment or two to clean herself, conscious of his eyes upon her. She kept her expression cool and indifferent, the picture of control, until she squatted and lifted his head with her hand.

His much larger hand seized her wrist, dragged her forward and his mouth fastened over hers. Not gentle, not practiced, just raw, brutal strength and desire. She felt his teeth as much as his tongue, felt his frustration, fury and lust all there, felt her bones melt under his strength.

She could have yanked away, punished him for his roughness and breach of etiquette, but she knew that was what he wanted. He wanted her to act like an enraged Mistress. Punish him, not because that got him off, but because it would establish emotional distance, the familiar territory where he was comfortable.

So instead, she raised her other hand, stroked the side of his face, balancing his brutality with gentleness. She stroked his hair around to the back of his neck, loving touches that were an equal answer to his violence, until his kiss eased into a groan of need that pulled her heart into her throat.

She put a finger between their mouths, separating them, then brought her lips back to his still ones with a feather soft touch, tasting him. A cinnamon flavor, wrapped in the surrounding smell of his aftershave, the scent of sex and sweat underneath that. She loved the way a well-groomed man smelled after sex, a mixture of the civilized and the primal, both offerings of respect to her. One scent indicating his desire to groom himself for her pleasure, the other indicating that he had exercised his desire for her. Trailing her lips down his cheek, she brushed his shoulder, then she lowered her hand, unbuckled his cock harness, rubbed her thumb over the deep red impression where the point of the buckle had dug into him earlier. "Idiot," she murmured, stroking him there. He was soft, spent in her hand, but she could feel the little twitches, see the flare of his nostrils as she fondled him, all indications of how quickly he could be roused again. He had a fast recovery time. Good. He would need it. Because she wasn't done with the lesson.

She rebuckled his wrists to keep him still as she rubbed the towel over him, cleaning him up. He said nothing, and she did not draw him out. She could tell a thousand thoughts were chasing themselves through his head, and the foremost might be that he'd had enough, that this was more than he wanted to give. Well, he was here now. She had him for tonight. She cleaned him with wet towelettes, which were left in every room for the patron's hygiene needs. She wiped him down; head, shaft, scrotum. He roused under her touch, but still he said nothing, and her nerves were starting to vibrate with anxiety, even as her fingers itched to continue slowly stroking that cock, which was rising to life again.

She had her head bent close to his, drying the oil from his back with the towel, when she felt his lips brush her cheekbone. Suppressing the urge to turn her face to him and devour him in joy at the simple victory, she kept quietly to her task, let him nuzzle her, nibble her neck.

"Mistress, let me go, let me make you come," he whispered against her ear.

She closed her eyes as his nibble on the lobe dropped, became an open mouthed, strong pull on her throat.

"No. You can't trust a new pet off the leash until you're sure he'll obey your commands. You're a new pet, Mackenzie. My new pet. So you'll be on the short leash until I'm sure that stubborn head and big cock of yours both understand who their Mistress is. It's too soon." She pulled back from him, stood to establish distance, and for the added psychological benefit of standing over him, which she knew would piss him off. "I'm going to go home." She met his gaze squarely, her eyes impassive, though there was a spring of tension in her lower belly, just looking at him lying there naked before her. "I'm going to put a vibrator in my pussy and imagine it's your cock."

His jaw tightened, but he kept his voice controlled, at odds with the flash in his eyes. "Take me home. Let me do it for you instead."

She shook her head. A grim smile touched her lips. "I suspect I'll have to come a dozen times before I'll be calm enough to sleep."

"Then don't do it. I'll be worth the wait."

"Nice try. I should give your ass a good beating, trying to give orders to a Mistress." She gave his face a light swat with her nails, was not surprised a bit when his eyes shot fire at her.

"No, Mackenzie," she said, her lips thinning into a straight line. "You don't want to fuck me for the right reasons. You just want to erode my control, make me lose my senses so I'll go easier on you next time. But I'm keeping the reins. I'm not giving up a bit of it, and I'm going to keep pushing you until I have all of you, not just the cock you're so free with. It's time you start realizing that having a Mistress means everything is hers, as I said before. Your heart, your mind, your soul and your body. Cock, ass, whatever I want of you is what you give me, and if you can't get that through your thick skull, it's going to get way rougher before it gets easier."

"You're the one making this harder," he said, with a look in his eyes she was beginning to anticipate. "You're a cock tease."

Violet tossed the towel to the side.

"You know, you get mean when you get scared, Mackenzie, but you're not going to drive me off. You want some punishment? You got it. I can be the bitch of your dreams, sugar, but I can also be so much more. If you'll stop being such a chicken-hearted bastard, you'll find that out."

She went to her bag of personal belongings and withdrew something she hadn't anticipated using tonight. Something that made his eyes go dark with apprehension. "You're not putting that in me."

"Really? Of course not. Not if you say the words. And you know the words, Mac. Are you ready to use them?" At his fury-laden silence, she nodded, went behind him. She placed a hand on his backside, fingered him despite his futile attempts to jerk his ass away from her touch. "Still well-lubricated. Well, then."

He bucked up and she neatly reached under him, caught his balls and twisted, just enough to freeze him in place as he realized to move further would cause him excruciating pain. She slid the plug all the way in, to the flared wide tip. He had a tighter ass than she'd expected, which suggested his tension and that he did not do anal play often. She stood, took the remote and programmed it, then set it down on her chair, putting it just out of his reach.

"Now I've programmed that for three twenty-minute sessions," she said, meeting his enraged glance as she turned it on. The twitch that went through his body, the jump in his cock, told her she had seated the plug right where she should. "It will build, get stronger and stronger, then go back to a low speed, then build again. I suspect it will make you come each time." She nudged the pail under his stiffening cock again. "As regular as milking a bull for sperm. I'll ask the staff to come release you at the end of an hour."

His head snapped up. "You're not staying to watch?"

"No, I'm not. They will." She hit the ceiling switch and the darkening feature reversed. It would be a full house. Even with the soundproofing, she sensed all eyes would be riveted on the handsome male specimen below, left bound and being jerked off for their entertainment.

"Violet, don't do this." His face was wild, desperate, and she saw his legs trembling, already starting to feel the effects of the vibrating plug. Sweat was shining on his brow, those magnificent muscles glowing.

She continued as if he had not spoken. "At the half-hour point, I'll send Mariah down to give you water. She'll force feed it to you if necessary. I won't have you dehydrated. At the one hour mark, she'll come and release you, and you can clean up after yourself and go home. If you've never held a plug this long, be sure and wash yourself out with this." She put a bottle of salve next to the remote. "It will soothe the tissues, so you'll be ready for Friday."

"Friday," he said, staring at her.

She hadn't intended to extend the invitation, or at least that's what she'd told herself, but now she knew she'd planned to take him from the very beginning. She was nuts. She could barely control him. If he were free now, he'd have her slammed down on her back in an instant. The thought made her thighs tremble.

"Friday," she repeated firmly. "There's a group of female Doms from The Zone who are bringing their current slaves to a weekend place on the Gulf that belongs to a friend of mine. I want to bring you. You don't have to go," she added. "If it's too soon for you to go off site, I'll understand, and we can keep playing here." She softened her tone, stepped forward, and dared to get close enough to twist his hair in her fingers. He licked her wrist, bit down on her palm, the jerky movements of a man being pushed to climax and fighting to hold back.

She hesitated, then plunged forward, ignoring all sense, caution. She focused only on those beautiful eyes, so angry and needy, all at once. "If you've still got the guts, meet me out in front of The Zone, at four o'clock."

"It's too soon for you," he said, surprising her. "You don't know me well enough. You should be more cautious about going off alone with strange men."

She squatted, met his burning gaze, and felt his fingers strain against his bindings, whisper at her ankles to caress her. "I can handle you, Mackenzie. Now, you think about tonight and what you did to deserve this punishment, and maybe you won't have to go through it again in front of four Doms this weekend, but I suspect you will. You're just that goddamned stubborn. Bring that plug with you Friday. If you're a good boy, I'll just put it back in my bag."

Her lips twisted at the expression on his face, one step away from murder. "I'll be thinking of you when I'm in bed tonight," she murmured. "Making myself come with the fingers touching you right now." She pressed her lips to his, the briefest of contacts, before she drew back, taking her ankles out of his reach, and stepped toward the door.

"Mistress...Violet...son of a-don't do this."

"Good night, Mackenzie." She glanced up. "Looks like a large crowd tonight. I think they're going to enjoy the show."

Chapter 7.

Five times. God, her knees were too weak to get her out of the car and take her into her house. She'd stayed, stuck to the shadows alone with her glass of wine, and watched over him as the hour passed. No way would she ever leave his care to someone else, unsupervised, but he hadn't needed to know that. The plug had brought him to orgasm five times, a tremendous response rate, and she had sent Mariah down with water for him at two twenty minute intervals instead of only once. He'd mesmerized the club crowd, positively stolen the show of the other open rooms. Who could resist watching a powerful man, a gladiator restrained, sexually stimulated to climax again and again? The build up of the sensations until he could not help himself, until he had to let his ass plunge and clench as if he were thrusting into a woman, the broad shoulders flexing, back muscles rippling, the head pressed down hard against his chest, refusing the natural desire to throw it back and let them see his face. On the fourth time, he had ten minutes left to go and she didn't believe he could go again, not without full collapse.

The body was the locked gate to the soul. Break the body, and the soul would have to defend itself. She wanted that vulnerability, wanted to show him what gift that truly relenting to a Mistress would bring him. She believed she'd done the right thing, but then the fifth climax took him and his body merely shuddered through it, a man too tired to resist the inevitable. When Mariah released him, he simply lay down on the floor. She felt eyes look toward her, felt judgments being weighed as to what she'd done.

She wanted to be down there helping him, but with a grim smile through the tears welling in her eyes, she watched him shrug off Mariah's help, snarl away the two male attendants she'd sent down. He snapped at them like a pit bull in truth, struggled to the room controls on his own and darkened the ceiling, shutting them all out. But not her. She could feel his exhausted heart pounding in her own chest, feel his trembling muscles in her own thighs. This was either battle or courtship, or both, and though the ultimate outcome was uncertain, she knew she had won this battle. At least she thought she had, unless he didn't show Friday. Then she would have lost the war.

Her body actually shook with pent-up desire all the way through the drive home. When she walked up her stairs and let herself into the house, she felt as weak as a person with the aftermath of the flu.

She chose a hot bath as her release, wanting its comfort and the sensual, bone-deep pleasure and tranquility it offered. Her emotions were too wrung out to seek her toys. Toys sought for non-playful reasons simply heightened stronger, more painful yearnings. She had no desire for release except through means of the man she had just left.

Violet had taught herself to accept that someone with her proclivities would likely always have relationships only within the confines of a place like The Zone. Two sessions with Mac, and she wanted more. She wanted it all again. Despite his easy invitation, she knew it would actually shock Tyler to the bone that she'd invited her new slave to do something outside the club area so soon, invited him to get to know her life, because she wanted to know his.

You're setting yourself up for such a hard fall, baby. But she'd done it, so she'd ride the horse until it tossed her, and hope she hadn't gotten a mean bronc that would trample her or toss her into a wall.

She decided on lavender bubbles with a touch of aloe and left her clothes in the bedroom, sinking down into the water with a blissful sigh.

When the phone rang, she reached over, hit the speaker button on the unit next to the tub.

"Hello, Tyler."

"Checking caller ID again?"

"No, I just knew it was you. You know, stalking is illegal."

"But spying isn't. Within reason. You okay?"

She closed her eyes. "Complicated question. I'll take the next one. Better yet, no questions. You talk, keep me awake so I don't drown."

"I thought I smelled bubble bath. Need someone to come scrub your back, darling?"

"You offering?"

"I would, but you'd just be imagining I was that poor bastard you wrung out dry. The consensus is you are one scary bitch."

"He's goading me, Tyler. He wants me to test him with the macho stuff, the floggings and pain. That's easy for him, way too easy. I want the stuff that gets under the skin and makes him vulnerable. He always falls in with Mistresses that want his cock."

"You want him."

She paused. "Yes. Yes, I do. I don't want anything less. If he won't give me that, I don't want him. So how long do I keep trying?"

"As long as he keeps showing up, I say he's interested in giving that to you. That's the way the really difficult subs can be. They don't know that's what they want, but their subconscious does, so they keep coming back for it. In the meantime, you're getting very popular. A couple of subs have practically begged me for an introduction." Another pause. "Violet? Any interest?"

"No," she admitted. "I just want him. I'm bringing him this weekend. If he shows on Friday."

A startled stillness on the other end of the phone. Violet waited, watching bubbles run down her thigh when she placed her foot on the rim of the tub.

Tyler's voice was soft when he spoke, reminding her why she considered him one of her closest friends. "If he doesn't, he's nuts. You're doing great."

"Am I? Or am I pushing too hard? I remember all the things I've learned and seen, but when I'm in there, something else takes over. Gut, or instinct."

"You've always trusted your instincts, Violet. It makes you good in the vanilla world, and it makes you the kind of Mistress no sub can refuse in this world. It's an art form. How often have you heard a writer or painter say 'something just takes over'? Maybe there's a Domination muse."

She snorted with laughter, sending a paw of bubbles across the tub. "Idiot."

"An idiot who cares a lot about you. I think it's good you're bringing this guy. If you're falling this hard, this fast, I want to check him out."

"That may even be part of why I'm bringing him. To get an objective opinion."

"Fair enough. Get out of the tub before you fall asleep. Now, while I'm on the phone. Just remember, Vi, my objective opinion isn't going to matter two damns if it turns out you're already gone on him."

"Yeah, but you'll be able to say 'I told you so' when he stomps my heart into little pieces."

"That's what I love about you. Always looking on the positive side. Night, Vi."

"Night, Tyler."

Mac stared at his ceiling and listened to the clock tick. The case file for the S M Killer, as she'd been dubbed, was scattered at the end of the bed, the crime scene photos fanned out on the floor. He'd tacked several key pictures to the ceiling just below the skylight window, angling the neck of the bedside table lamp up so he could spotlight every detail.

Serial killers sometimes liked to take trophies, leave a mark. For this killer, it was how she left her victims. Both cuffed on the floor by the footboard of the bed. Arms spread and manacled to the top railings, ankles to the posts, so her victim was pulled out to an uncomfortable angle. His point of gravity was forward, hanging by the weight of his arms because his legs were spread out too wide for him to keep his balance under stimulation and there wasn't enough slack to let him be on his knees. She'd climbed up on the bed behind him, leaving her knee prints in the spread, and shot out the back of his head with a hollow point. She hadn't wanted to look in his eyes in that last moment. Why?

Maybe she didn't want him to see it coming. Maybe she didn't want him to suffer. Perhaps she was killing some part of herself, and didn't want to see him as a separate identity. Both victims had suffered a light flogging, had reached climax shortly before the kill. She'd given them pleasure before death. She wasn't interested in torture, not yet. But if she kept doing it, and everything indicated she would, that would change. She was all-powerful, had him at her whim. Why not push the boundaries, see what it felt like to push past where he was willing to go, if it was the same rush to push past his pain threshold as it was to take his life?

Mac had tracked killers long enough to know that eventually the blood lust had a dark power of its own that took over. Its only blessing was that it dulled the wits of the sharpest murderer. But he'd rather not wait until this one reached that point.

She'd already chosen her next victim, he was sure of that. She would be in the process of winning his trust, working toward this ultimate goal. The ultimate surrender.

He blinked. He'd covered this ground for an hour now. After he'd slept for six solid hours. When he'd gotten home, he'd had no choice. He had abandoned pride, fallen across the bed and let exhaustion take him where it wanted to go while his body built back up a reserve. His lips twisted.

He'd made the decision to seek out another Mistress, one less distracting. That resolve lasted for about an hour as he did some mingling, checking out a few leads he'd identified from the previous night, following up on some promising conversations. Then, right at the time she had dictated, he had turned his feet toward the downstairs area. He'd stopped at the top of the stairs, managed to fight with himself for a good solid minute before he went down, straight to the room she'd reserved, and done as she'd told him to do. And he knew without a doubt he'd be outside The Zone on Friday, waiting for her.

He'd done it for the case, because he hadn't found another Mistress that suited his purposes as well as Violet. However, he knew he had done it for a hell of a lot of other reasons besides, reasons that had nothing to do with the case at all.

She had drained him. He had almost cracked, almost begged her not to leave him that way, a performing act for the others of the club. But he had managed. Mostly. She disturbed him, deep down, the things she said, the way she was making him feel. She made him furious, but not in a way that made him want to turn his back on her. He wanted to show the little minx she might be tough, but he was tougher. That he could please her beyond her wildest dreams, if he could just figure out what the hell it was she wanted, and why he felt like he couldn't stay away from her. Even though he'd never been so apprehensive under a Mistress's hand as he was with her.

He wasn't in control with her. That was it. Mac forced himself to face it, face that there might be some truth to what she'd been telling him about his previous Mistresses. She saw through bullshit, and she wasn't hesitating to reach right through it to curl her little fingers tight around his balls. He didn't know what she'd ask next. What if she wanted something that he couldn't handle, that would break him down completely? He could turn away now, before that happened, but everything in him strained toward her, as if she were a drug in truth. He was afraid he wouldn't refuse her anything.

Violet wished she'd had more time to unwind after work. She'd run over shift, and it had been a hellacious day with an overabundance of assholes. She had planned on a long bath so she could come to The Zone in the right frame of mind, but had only had time for a quick shower. She cursed herself for not deciding to go up to Tyler's on Saturday, so she would have had Friday to prepare herself. The plain and simple truth was she'd been too eager to see Mac again to wait.

But there were other ways to regroup. She pulled into the convenience store parking lot across from The Zone and sat there a moment, just gazing across the street at the front entranceway of the club from her screened position.