“You can. You will.” She put a finger in her mouth, two, then three, and then, as sly and sinuous as a carpet shark, she slid that hand down between his thighs, caressed the joining point between balls and cock, causing a shudder to run through him. She carried the movement right in between his sweaty arse cheeks, already lubed up from sweat.

“Don’t . . . no. Ah, God.” He bucked up from her touch and impaled her mercilessly, playing deep, going where no one ever had.

She leaned forward, bringing close the wet red lips, pale skin, and cruel intensity of soft blue eyes that should have been on a child’s doll.

“Don’t ever say no to me, Devlin.” Her fingers adjusted, found what she sought, that gland, and her lips curved, celebrating her sinful victory as he convulsed, tongue tied up by that unusual but unbearably good stimulation. She knew her business there. With a wrenching that he thought might be from his guts twisting around her fingers, he began to come again. Dry this time, for he had no semen left to offer, leaving him painfully hard when he was done.

Tossing back her head set her breasts quivering. Exhausted as he was, he couldn’t not look at the spread of milk-and-cream thighs, the slope of her abdomen, glistening from his sweat. Before this round, she’d given him water again, the same way, and the tracks of his mouth were on her damp breast. The nipple he’d latched on to with the furor of a newborn at her guidance was still hard and a darker red than the other.

He did his best, kept his hips working, dragging in and out in rhythm with her, determined to give her the full amount of pleasure.

Her eyes were closed, soft whimpers coming from her throat. He wanted to hear her scream and so redoubled his efforts, ignoring the spasms in his back muscles, the gray settling into his vision, the fact he had no more oxygen left. He was going to do her right and proper. Ride her to the end, as she’d said. If his heart did explode in his chest, if that made him daft, he didn’t give a damn.

There was only this. No more thought.

She cried out as he rammed up hard, giving her the full measure of him. “Don’t get shy on me now, love,” he managed, making sure she knew he had fight left in him. “Take all of me in that eager cunt of yours. Take me deep, if you dare. Most girls . . . won’t . . .

can’t. If . . . I bent you over the table and put myself up your arse, you’d think I’d split you in two. Make you cry pretty tears, even as you’d gush all over my balls.”

She met his gaze then, the spark there telling him he was a complete dill for challenging her again. Her body shifted, enveloped even more of him, took him deep, all the way, so he felt the cervix give way, right into the uterus. Most women found it too uncomfortable, but he saw the pain of it ripple through her gaze and then become something else that hardened her clit and the walls of her womb around him.

“Ride me to the end, love,” he snarled. “You’ll never need another mount.” Her nails dug hard into his chest, gouging the countless welts she’d already made with the whip. A couple times she’d sliced hard enough to shred skin, then lapped at the blood with her tongue.

The release of pain, the demand of pleasure. He’d used them separately to absorb that constant burning in his gut, the memories that battered him. He’d never known the power of using them together. She’d brought him that. If endlessly serving her was a punishment in Purgatory, he’d take it.

Summoning all his strength, he bounced her on his loins, a bucking that slapped her flesh against his, brought her clit down against his taut body. “Spread wide for me, love,” he muttered. “Let me hear how much you like it, my fucking you.” She shrieked like an animal as she went over, her nails sliding down, pulling skin with them, her inner muscles convulsing in a way that took him with her. Lord, she had a grip, and she fit him so perfect, so bloody tight and slippery at once. She pistoned her hips, matching him blow for blow, her lips stretched back to show those fangs, a guttural sound of release coming from her absurdly fragile-looking throat.

He couldn’t get enough breath, couldn’t draw in enough air, his limbs quaking so the manacles that had cut cruelly into his flesh rattled harshly against the iron headboard. When at last she slid from him, the limp length of his cock lay like a heavy trout along his thigh. It stirred weakly, the last throes of a dying soldier, as her body pressed on the inside of his leg and her breath touched it, a dainty tongue sweeping over the ultrasensitive flesh.

“I’ve taken so much,” she whispered. “Left you almost nothing.” Her nose nudged his cock aside, and her teeth grazed his thigh, the fang pressing with enough pressure that he was aware of the erratic beat of the vital artery behind the flesh. “But you’ve drained me as well. Can you feed me, bushman? I’m hungry for your blood again.” His eyes were closing, his grasp on consciousness slipping. Though he felt like a desiccated lizard, he didn’t begrudge her whatever was left. But he could tell his response was important, even if her intent was to finish him off. “You told me . . . not to tell you no again.” It curved his lips, but the rueful comment twisted something sad and exhausted within him. “Do as my lady desires. It’s all yours, Danny.”

His last conscious thought was that the sensation this time was different, as if the puncture of her fangs jolted him with electric current. His leg jumped, but her gentle, powerful hands held it fast. “My parting gift, Dev,” he thought he heard her murmur. “So I can check in on you now and again.” Her hair brushed his balls, his cock, a fond caress as his lady’s mouth drew sustenance again from his body, a body willing to give her everything.

Was that a magic she had? Or had the desolation of his soul responded to her as if hell had finally beckoned, ready for him at last?

He’d given up thinking a few hours ago and he sure as hell wasn’t up to any weighty thoughts now, particularly when it really didn’t mean a bloody thing. He drifted away, not caring if he ever woke again. Dust and oblivion. That was heaven for a man like him.

The only heaven he’d wanted for five years. But the bloke who’d impaled Jesus on a spear had been doomed to walk the earth for all eternity. Why should his punishment be less?

Blasphemous, Tina would have said, giving him a light smack. But consciousness left him before the ache of tears could come.

He surfaced with no sense of what day it might be, but it was nighttime again. Maybe about nine or ten o’clock. She’d drawn the windows and curtains during their daylight time together, but now they were open, the screens keeping out the flies as the wind moved the lace curtains. As he woke, for a wistful moment he’d hoped that breeze was the light touch of her hand.

Struggling to his elbows, he surveyed his body. He was naked except for one leg snarled in the sheet. Cripes, he felt like he’d fallen into spinifex grass and been dragged for miles. Had he said light touch? He’d been trampled by cattle with kinder feet.

But the cruel and the sweet together was what had made it addictive. The way her eyes had softened when she nursed him at her breast. Or the couple of times she’d curled up next to him, laying her head on his shoulder. Though the extra weight had added to the strain on the joint, the way she’d wrenched his arms up so high and held them there, wrapped around the top railing of the headboard. He remembered once—and only once—she’d offered to loosen the bonds. As he’d stared into her eyes, his throat had thickened, saying the incredible words which made no sense.

“No, love. If it gives you pleasure . . . leave me as you wish.”

From the flare of desire and what he forced himself to acknowledge as possession in her eyes, it had been the right answer. The stroke of her hands had alternated between playful wisps along his flesh and sudden pains as she’d drag her nails through the welts she’d reopen, making him jump. On other expanses of skin, she’d simply traced circles on him, spoken in quiet tones, murmuring noises like he might use to soothe stock animals.

He could see all those marks now, cuts, welts and bruises. Feel the ache of pulled muscles. However, where he’d expected to see a bloody, sweaty shambles of bedclothes, he found he was on clean linens. The places where she’d broken skin had been dressed with a mint-smelling salve that cooled his flesh and the inside of his nostrils as he inhaled it, easing him somehow. Then his gaze found the pitcher of water beside the bed.

By the time he slowed down, he’d drunk more than half. He, a swagman who knew the value of water, who would never think of guzzling it like he was bellied up to a bar in Perth. There was also a covered plate, heaped with a feast of cold lamb and roo meat, plus a hunk of bread wrapped in a separate cloth. He wolfed it all down, sitting there naked like some kind of famished animal, which he guessed he was.

Despite the hard use of his body, he had to acknowledge that inside was a different matter. His spirit felt almost . . . easy. Knots hardened by the salt water of unshed emotion were now loosened a bit, letting him breathe. He normally felt a bit easier for having lain with a woman, despite the painful yearning aftermath, but this was a grade or two above that. Bless the fine-arsed darling. The blood-sucking fiend.

He winced over the smile. She’d bitten his mouth as well as his tongue, left cuts on both. Though he knew she was gone, he still looked for evidence of her in the room, other than the things she’d left for his care. Then he noticed that underneath the plate he’d pulled from the side table over to his lap was a folded square of paper.

She didn’t know everything, that one. He might have missed it if he hadn’t felt a need to eat in the bed, lie back against the pillow to steady himself as he put meat and water in his gullet. Then again, he expected she’d treated other blokes to this, so maybe she did know what she was about. It made him frown, though getting jealous over it made no sense. He’d been her dinner, and she’d been kind enough to show him a roaring time in payment. He thought about the paid women he’d hard-used and ruefully acknowledged the scales of justice had a way of righting things.

Christ, how civilized did that sound, when there’d been nothing civilized about this at all? He focused on the note.