Breath shuddered through her lungs as he moved to her final tattoo, a rendering of Athena. “This one’s all for you, though. You call on her to forget the fear, give you a warrior’s courage. Mixing the Christian and pagan together, because a soldier needs tactical support wherever she can get it. The devil never lacks for representation out in the field.”

What was he doing to her? Slow, sensuous circles on her stung buttocks, words that were stripping away shields most Doms never touched. But she’d known, hadn’t she? He didn’t need the dungeon. This was what he did to a woman. He flayed away the skin, left her completely exposed. Was this what she’d signed up for?

Apparently so. Because despite the fear and uncertainty, “freedom” had never felt more unappealing to her. Her fingers closed infinitesimally where they were hooked over his.

So slight, it might be taken for a simple involuntary twitch of her body. She cursed herself for a coward. She had that Athena tat for a reason. Closing her eyes, she tightened her grip, passed her fingers back and forth over his knuckles. If she was being the sub she was used to being, she’d provoke him with a grip suggesting what those fingers would do if they were on his cock. Instead, she moved in a tender caress on his curved fingers, tracing the calluses, the tough male skin.

“Oh, sweetheart, you’re a treasure. You don’t even realize it, which makes me harder.” He turned her, lifting her in the cradle of his arms again, and stepped right into the fountain, unconcerned about his jeans or the scuffed-looking cowboy boots he wore under them.

He took her to the Aphrodite, which Dana realized was not sinuously posed without purpose. Peter set her down against the statue, so her bottom rested on the goddess’s bent knee. Stretching her arms up and back, he laced the extra gauntlet ties to a discreet ring embedded at Aphrodite’s throat, part of her jewelry. The alabaster folds of her artful dress formed hard curves through which he threaded Dana’s feet, pointing her toes with fingers caressing her arches and the sensitive ankles. When he stepped back, gravity and resistance kept Dana firmly restrained. Aphrodite’s ample cleavage pressed into her back so her own breasts jutted out.

When his hands closed on her there, she could tell in his absorption and touch that her captain was an avid breast man, making her wish she had more to offer him there. But he was so thorough, exploring the way they molded into his palms, testing their weight, tugging the nipple clamps and staring at her stimulated nipples in a way that had them aching. It left her feeling as though they were more than enough for him.

“My favorite thing, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Suckling pretty tits until I make you come. But there are some other things we need to handle first.” He shrugged his shirt off his shoulders, his gaze drifting up to her mouth, the way she continued to hold his tags. But when he turned to toss the shirt over the fountain wall, letting it flutter to the grass, she drank him in greedily, glad he wasn’t a Dom who required her to lower her eyes. One set of biceps bore the Don’t Tread on Me flag with its coiled serpent. Celtic styled letters formed an arch over the massive breadth of his shoulders. PEACE.

She understood why he’d put it there, because it had the same meaning the Lord’s Hands did to her. They fought to protect and preserve, but any soldier who’d seen the carnage of war yearned for the day when love would prevail. And hoped there’d be some recognizable vestige of himself left when it finally arrived.

The soul of this man was strong, strong enough to surround her and carry her through anything. The unexpected thought startled her. She’d heard from subs who’d been broken down to the point their most vulnerable needs and truths were revealed. She hadn’t thought she was there, but her heart was telling her something different. He’d barely touched her physically, but she already felt owned by him, through and through.

He hadn’t moved, holding her gaze as if he knew something intense was going on with her. Maybe for him as well. Reaching out, he traced her mouth, taking away embarrassing saliva with a knuckle. There was a softness in his gray eyes, something that made the coil in her lower belly pull in two directions, toward her heart as much as the throbbing need between her legs.

Please do something. Hurt me. Fuck me. I don’t care. Just don’t strip me like this so fast.

She should spit out the tags, take whatever punishment he could dish out. Anything but this freakish scenario straight from a romance novel, offering love at first sight and everything that went with that improbable scenario.

Yeah, in the middle of a BDSM club with your legs spread and your tits thrust out. Get a grip, Dana. Had she deluded herself to make her fantasy a reality?

He’d picked up a small remote from an alcove to the right of the statue. When he pressed it, water started flowing off the branches of the palm tree draping over Aphrodite’s head.

It poured down, filtering under her eye mask so she had to turn her face into Aphrodite’s cheek. The water spread out, taking a dozen different routes along her throat and over her curves. That flood, as well as the fragrant mist rising, soaked through the thin fabric of her sheath, pasting it to her body.

On the bottom of the pool was an artful scroll design, but when he bent in an attractive ripple of muscle, a pull of denim at groin and thigh, she saw through her wet lashes that not all of them were decoration. Some were long, thin hoses. He straightened one, and the pinpoint nozzle on the end warned her ahead of time. Her clit spasmed in remembrance, her already moist pussy beginning to prepare for him anew.

“If you come without my permission, I’ll give you ten more lashes with that switch,” he said. “You keep a Master at arm’s length, suck his dick and let him paddle your cute butt, call you a naughty girl. You think you’re a badass. But on the inside you’re a total pussy, sweetheart.”

Her reaction wasn’t calculated. She snarled and almost dropped the tags, showing her teeth. He showed her his in return, a devastating smile, but there was a heat in his eyes, a hardness to his jaw that told her the intensity wasn’t all one-sided.

“You want way more than that. That’s why those tags are in your mouth. Remember who you belong to.”

The words were a somersault, from outright combat to lovemaking. Helpless here, tied and spread before him, that water licking down her body, she knew the pasted sheath highlighted every crevice and curve, the jut of her nipples. He hadn’t taken anything off her but her shoes, and she’d never felt so naked. He hadn’t taken off the mask because he didn’t need to do so. He was laughing at her attempts to mask who and what she was.

He started at her nipples, playing with them like a cold, forked tongue, making her gasp with need, then washed the water over the high curve, hitting the crease beneath. Her body undulated, breasts quivering for him. Then he dropped and the water jet hit her clit dead on, shuddering through her body like voltage. No, no, no . . . Oh, God. From the first second, she lost. No matter how much she wanted to do so, she couldn’t control her body’s reaction, because he was flicking his fingers through the spray, idle movements changing the friction. She bucked against the hold of the restraints, her ass slapping hard against Aphrodite’s unrelenting knee. She bit down on the metal, felt the raised type of his name and rank, who he was. Her Master.

She wouldn’t whimper, wouldn’t plead. Son of a bitch thought he could get under her skin, into her head. She didn’t want that. She wanted . . . God, she didn’t know what the hell she wanted. She couldn’t think, immersed in sheer, tsunami-powered feeling.

She wanted to lose. It would give him pleasure to switch her ass. That was what he wanted. He was her Master. She wanted to do whatever made him hard, whatever would make him want only her.

But in the end, it didn’t matter what she wanted. He already knew, and he took away all choices. The orgasm hit her like a tidal wave, so intense it was painful. Though her clit was oversensitized, she wasn’t in a position to move away from the stimulation. She screamed and screamed and screamed, the only thing left in her tumbling mind the need to keep a pit-bull grip on those tags, though more saliva pooled, slipping out around them. Fortunately the water washed it away, while the orgasm took everything else.

As she slowly descended to occasional, spasmodic jerks, she was mumbling around the tags, trying to clear the water from her eyes, her body shaking so hard. She needed his arms, his body, his heat. Please, Master. Master. That was what she was mumbling, though it registered only in a far-distant part of her floating head.

When he came to her, bringing the hard heat of his bare chest against her, tears spilled out without reservation this time. Locking his hands over her laced wrists, he pressed his mouth to her cheek below the mask. Though the water continued to flow over them, over her face, she was sure he knew she was crying.

He pulled back, but she kept her eyes closed, unsure if she could handle whatever he had planned next. She couldn’t hear anything over the rush of water, and her body was vibrating so violently it provided its own low roar in her mind, clouding everything else.

When he returned to her, she moaned against the tags. He was blissfully naked, his knees against her thighs as he leaned into her, taking hold of her wrists again and bringing that fine chest closer to her face, so she could press into it, wishing she could open her mouth, taste water and heat.

His cock pressed between her legs, the head finding her with unerring accuracy. She was so slick and wet, she sucked him in like her mouth, but Jesus, he was a big man all over.

She couldn’t raise her legs, couldn’t control anything as he pushed into her, slow and inexorable, refusing to be denied, no matter the tightness of her entry in this position.

With the water running over her face, her sight and hearing were limited. But that made every sensation more excruciatingly noticeable. The shape of his broad head, the hard but delicious malleability of his cock, learning the unique feminine shape of her channel.

He’d used a condom, since the club allowed nothing less, but she wondered what bareback would have felt like with this much heat and hardness. Her hold on the tags had increased to the point the chain had constricted on her neck, biting in, a collar he’d created only for her.