“I’ve seen nothing but ugly bastards with dicks for five years, and you’ve driven up in an outfit that says you’re here to give me some. So stop being a cock-tease and offer it. Or fuck off.” He patted his shirt for another cigarette.

“Oh, you’re pushing it, sweet boy. Just begging for punishment, aren’t you?”

His fingers fumbled the pack the moment she said it, a trigger inside him squeezing off, making him even harder. He clamped down on the cigarette with his teeth. Feeling in the narrow confines of a jeans pocket for his lighter, he found he couldn’t get his fingers down there, his organ had gotten so huge.

“Come here.” She crooked a finger at him. It sported a long black glossy nail with a silver star appliqué that flashed, giving the sharp point of the nail the appearance of a scalpel in the glaring sunlight. His lower extremities became even tauter. He was likely going to cream himself just from looking at her.

He didn’t like the way she was looking at him. All proprietary, as though he were a dog she knew wasn’t content unless he was at a Mistress’s heel.

He didn’t want to play this game. He’d planned a simple, uncomplicated fuck with a paid whore, followed by that shave and shower. He just needed to get his uncooperative cock to understand that.

“I’m waiting for the bus.” The fucking bus that should have been here by now.

“Jonathan Powell, on public transportation.” She mocked his gruff tone. “Wouldn’t he rather be seen with a sexy woman in a fast, powerful car? I’ve already set up an appointment for your haircut and manicure. A full shave.” When her attention lowered again, he swore he felt the feathering of those thick lashes stroke his cock from twenty feet away. “Or is he running away because there’s a woman he doesn’t think he can handle?”

Her words taunted him inside the way her voice was doing outside. He perused her thoroughly, resting his attention insolently long on those luscious tits before he gave her a mocking bow.

“What the hell. For a shower and a shave, I guess I’m all yours, Mistress.” Picking up his bag, he strode to the door of the car on her side and tossed it into the backseat under her intent regard. “Like what you see?”

“I like to study my food before I eat it. It’s called savoring, Nathan.”

“Jonathan. I go by Jonathan. Someone told you wrong at the club.”

“That’s not what you call yourself.”

Before he could circle around to the passenger side, she bent forward, giving him a view of her breasts that made him want to howl like a ravenous wolf. Reaching out, she slid two fingers deep into the recesses of the pocket of his jeans and found his lighter.

She retracted it, making him hyperaware of his hard cock only an inch away from her touch. When she got it free, she fired the lighter in a mean line drive across the road so it landed on the asphalt and clattered off into the sand. Plucking his cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, she tossed them in the same direction. “I’ll call you whatever I fucking want. You won’t be smoking. You’re my slave, so get your ass in the car. Nathan.” The anger surged up in him, hot, bloodthirsty. He made no effort to hide it, narrowing his gaze. It was a look other prisoners had learned to respect. She merely waited, those breasts at eye level, dominating his vision. God, she smelled so…female.

Perfume. Hair shampoo. Body spray. Powdery female deodorant. He wanted to wallow in those scents, in a woman. He despised himself for needing one like her far more than he needed a vanilla fuck.

Mistresses knew a submissive man’s needs were more complex. He wasn’t a complete whipped candy-ass like other male subs. However, he couldn’t deny fucking with a Domme’s head had taught him pleasure like nothing else had. Her standing there with that “I’m-going-to-work-you-over” smug smile on her face was more than he could resist. So he tried out a smile of his own, one he hadn’t pulled out of his hat in over five years. A smile capable of making a woman wet just from the implication of it.

“May I help you back down behind the wheel? Mistress.” With an amused look that made him feel as if she was scoffing at him, she placed her hand in his. The feel of a woman’s fingers, delicate and smooth, capable of being merciful or merciless, made his hand tighten briefly. While he absorbed his own reaction, she stood still, apparently waiting for his next move, a surprise courtesy. He almost sensed…compassion. As well as a terrible knowledge he didn’t have and didn’t want to know about himself. It raised a need in him so strong he wouldn’t give a name to it. If he hadn’t known that jerking back might unbalance her and make her fall on her ass, depriving him of his ride, he would have done it. Instead, he steadied his mind and watched her use his weight as a counterbalance to slide back down into the seat.

Withdrawing her hand with a nod, she followed him with that same inscrutable look as he circled to the passenger side and got into the car.

“You owe me cigarettes. And a lighter.” He rasped it out of a dry throat.

“No, I don’t. By the end of our time together, Nathan, you’re going to owe me everything.”

Chapter Two

The landscape rocketed by, a blur of sand and sharp vegetation. The wind was a blessing on his face, as was the knowledge that the prison was getting farther and farther away. Freedom. His glance cut to the driver. Of a sort. But at what time in his life had he not had to play the angles? There wasn’t any such thing as true freedom, not in this crappy-assed world. The dangerous fantasy was believing there could be. A man could give in, delude himself into thinking he could find a substitute for freedom by chaining himself to someone else. He’d found something that gave him a taste of both, a way to be beyond everyone’s grasp when they thought he was captured. She’d be no different. He told himself he’d enjoy the game, particularly with this one. Like the taste of an ice-cold beer after years of nothing but tepid water.

He could be called crazy for even getting into her car. His last such relationship was what had landed him in prison. However, he’d had time to think it over from every angle and he knew what his mistake had been in that situation. He’d let his hatred of another male submissive, Mac Nighthorse, blind him to the dangers of the Mistress who had offered him the opportunity to even the score. Too late he’d learned that Nighthorse was a homicide detective and Jonathan’s Mistress of the moment had cleverly used him in a plan of attempted murder. He wouldn’t let his emotions make him stupid again. If he could get some cushy spa service and maybe a soft hotel bed for playing slave boy for a few hours, no skin off his back. His lips twisted. Unless this Mistress was into flogging.

It didn’t matter. His hard-on hadn’t eased up one bit and he ached for release. He hadn’t jacked himself off in prison, not even once. Something no other prisoner in that place could claim, he was sure. Even most of the guards. So there certainly wasn’t any harm in letting his fingers drift across the console onto her thigh. The frustratingly snug, impenetrable latex denied him the sense of the skin beneath.

She caught two of his fingers and wrenched them backward, sending searing pain through his palm and wrist. “Ow. Jesus…” The angle was perfect. He couldn’t pull away, couldn’t move in any direction without causing himself more agony. “Let go.”

“Did I give you permission to touch me?”

Her voice was cool. She wasn’t even taking her eyes off the road and damn if that very aloofness wasn’t arousing him further. When she tightened her grip, he hissed.

“I don’t play cutesy with my slaves. They give me absolute obedience or they’re punished. Severely.”

“This isn’t a dungeon, sweetheart. D/s is just a game. Can we get to where we’re going before you slip into playing—”

His voice climbed two octaves as she twisted her grip. He was sure he felt his bones begin to crack. If he brought his other hand across his body, he wasn’t so certain she wouldn’t snap one. “Jesus, let me go.”

“This is not a game. It never has been to you. It’s not to me. Ask for my forgiveness or you’ll have two fingers permanently curved backward to hit my sweet spot when I give you permission to put them into my pussy. Say it.”

“My apologies, Mistress. I’m sorry.”

Though he spat it out, apparently it was enough. She released him, as unflappable as she’d been before she’d tried to make his fingers bend a hundred and eighty degrees in the wrong direction. He rubbed his hand, eyed her profile. The hourglass design of her body in that corset, the curve of her hips, the way her buttocks pressed into the seat, even how she pushed down on the gas with the sole of the three-inch spike heel, made him both resent her and want her all the more. The dark waves of her hair whispered around her face as she drove, but now he could see that the mass of it was pinned on her head, making him wonder how long and thick it was, what it would look like spilled over her bare body. Closing his eyes, he turned his face away. It had been a mistake to get into the car.

“Let me set out the rules for you up front. You won’t charm me or play with my emotions,” she said. “I’m not interested in that. I want your pain, your suffering. I want your fear.” When he glanced back at her warily, she was looking straight at him. “I’m the Goddess of the Old Testament, Jonathan. You’re not going to crawl into a crack in my psyche. You serve me, not the other way around. Everything about you is dependent upon your Mistress’s Will.”

Then he felt her hand on his thigh, sliding over it to cup him. Without any conscious thought or command from his brain, his hips pushed up eagerly into her touch, the stroke and pinch of her fingertips.

“Nice,” she purred. “Take it out. I want to play with it while I drive.” Her lips moved into a pout that caused his attention to fasten hungrily on her mouth. “They didn’t have this car in anything but automatic and I like to move a stick when I drive.” Her brown eyes were like that of a she-wolf considering prey. “That was a command.