Just as the terror of being drowned was about to overwhelm him, they flipped him back over. He fought to get air around the gag and not choke on his own saliva, but they were indifferent to his distress. Olivia moved back between his legs to start slicking the razor down his pubic area. Mischa’s gel-free hand disappeared back under the water and he felt one long finger slide all the way back into his now lubricated ass, stroking inside in a way that made his head drop lower in the water. Sound was swallowed as it closed over his ears, framing his face. One of the women fisted her fingers in his hair beneath the waterline, keeping him aware of how easily they could pull him under. Their cruel laughter and comments became gurgles of sound in an echoing chamber where reality and imagination were disturbingly intertwined.

It was harrowing how quickly that straight-edged razor was taking the hair off his privates. Olivia worked the blade with admirably deft skill over him, scraping him clean. When the women’s hands moved back over him a few moments later, the hair on his arms, chest, stomach and legs gave way at their touch. The gel was some type of depilatory and cleanser, making him smooth and hairless all over, and explained Mischa’s intimate exploration of the area between his buttocks. He had to be as smooth as the proverbial baby’s bottom, for Mischa was as thorough as a prison guard doing a drug check. From her smile and the fact he was certain his cock was going to explode, he had no doubt she was enjoying her work.

A guttural sound between pain and pleasure tore out of his throat when Olivia’s fingers circled him. She wrapped the straps of the cock harness back around him, increasing the intensity of the near-climactic state he was in. Buckling it over the bare tender skin, she pinched him enough to rein back the response he was sure he couldn’t hold back another moment. When the women brought him to his feet, he despised the fact that he was forced to lean as the blood pounded out of his head. Worry and lust made him even more unsteady.

How was he supposed to get a handle on any of this, let alone the upper hand?

Mouth stretched by the gag, arms wrenched back to display his chest and hold his muscles taut. Dona’s collar on him. He was hard as a rock, his body screaming for release, but thankfully the harness would keep him from losing control. He was terrified to realize he felt like a true slave. Completely out of control, dependent on the whim and Will of his Mistress. A state he’d rarely if ever truly allowed a Mistress to achieve with him.

There would be breathing time later. Wouldn’t there? Time to get his ducks in a row. Let them prepare him for her pleasure now. He made himself stand rigid, his jaw clenched as Olivia brought that blade into play on his face. When she made him lift his chin, he could not help but glance toward the banks, seeking Dona. She sat now, her hands clasped around her knees while she watched. Carefully scrutinizing everything being done to him.

Fiona looked toward the shore. “What about his head? Take the hair or wash it?” She had the gel bottle in one hand and another crystal bottle in the other, perhaps shampoo.

Mistresses loved his hair, the thick ash blond strands that they could coil around their fingers, play with on his nape. He’d never let it grow this long, but these last few months he hadn’t been interested in letting the prison butchers who called themselves barbers touch it. He’d been looking forward to walking into a men’s salon, having it artfully styled the way he always liked it. Short, layered on top, streaked with some dark brown and cut close at his nape, an expensive GQ-looking style.

Such a style was part of the whole package that attracted the attention of well-to-do Mistresses who liked a man who knew how to put himself together well. Who would look good on their arm inside a club.

The idea of having another weapon removed from his arsenal panicked him. His ability to assert rights he might not have anymore had been taken from him with that gag. He couldn’t employ his charm to coax and cajole. Hell, Dona hadn’t even given him a safe word, but he had the distinct feeling they were in a territory far beyond safe words. He was a dumb bastard who had allowed five years of self-denied lust, his weak need to play at being a submissive and the fact he somewhat remembered this bitch to cloud his judgment. He’d been so stupid, giving in to something he felt when he looked at her, some freaky emotional reaction. A reaction that, damn him three times over for an idiot, he still felt every time he looked at her.

Like now, his panicked eyes locking with hers for some type of approbation as she sat on that bank. Her expression said it clearly. He was hers to do with as she wished and it just made his cock get even harder.

Maybe this was some weird hallucination. While his mind howled at the idea he might still be in the prison, undergoing some bad trip on something some bastard had slipped in his slop that was called lunch, no woman had ever had this kind of hold on him.

Pulling away from Olivia, he tried to get away from all of them. He tripped, tumbled under the water. The weeds reached for him, twining around him from ankle to thigh. As he twisted in mindless terror, he sunk further. Tendrils soft as a woman’s hair circled his throat under the collar, holding him down below life, air. He struggled, his lungs bursting.

A shadow brushed against him. Feeling a clasp on his arm, he turned his face in that direction, seeking help. Instead, he saw a broad face, the lips pulled back in what would appear to most to be a maternal, kindly look. Her gray and brown hair waved around her face.

Would you like some candy, sweetie? They’re going to let you come home with me. Poor little lost soul…such a pretty child…

No… He screamed uselessly against the gag as the face got closer, the lips. He was dying and this was what was waiting for him. A cosmic psychotic joke, for it was what he’d spent a lifetime outwitting, escaping… Other shadows moved in and his subconscious knew them all, knew enough about them to make him fight like a berserker against what could not be fought against.

The bindings released. He was rising, hands drawing him up. When his head broke the water’s surface, since his arms were still bound behind his back by the manacles, he fought desperately to find and keep his balance, anything to stay up above the waterline, away from what lay below it.

Dona was here. In front of him, with her hands on either side of his neck. They were alone together in the water. The other women sat on the bank, completely dry as if he’d been below the surface for an hour. He blinked through liquid, his gaze coming back to cling to her face. When she removed his gag and stroked his lips, he found himself sucking the water off her fingertips fervently, as if she’d saved him from those awful shadows. Her eyes held mysteries he could not fathom, but she was touching him. All he could figure out in his disoriented state was that his sanity at the moment depended on her not going away.

“What the hell are you doing to me?” He said it hoarsely, resting his head against hers, pressing his cheek against the soft raven strands of her hair. It was so long the ends floated in the water around her hips. Looking down in this position, he saw she wore a black swimsuit now, so sheer that her curves would be starkly defined by the shadowing. Lifting his head to confirm it, he saw her luscious breasts were just above the waterline, the dark circle of her nipples visible behind the transparent netting.

Pointed and sharp, as they would be if she were cold. Or aroused.

He pushed his cock against her belly, bending his knees to find the seam of her thighs. Fuck finesse or charm. He’d reverted to pure male animal, needing to reassert who he was. No better way to do that than fucking the woman he wanted.

A sharp yank on his cock snapped his legs back straight like the stock of a rifle. He stifled a yelp, barely. The tether was reattached and back in her hand, wrapped around her wet knuckles.

“Behave, or I’ll put you under again.” She spoke reprovingly, but when she reached up and brushed her fingertips against his ear she had a gentle touch, mixing up that hard-as-nails way of yanking him in line with a sister-of-mercy touch. She grazed his skull. His bare skull.

“Oh, Jesus.” He closed his eyes, shuddering. “Dona. Why…”

“Because you don’t need defenses against me, Nathan. Because you’ll only make things much worse if you use them.”

As she continued to caress his bare pate, he felt…vulnerable. He hadn’t expected to feel that way from something as simple as having his head shaved. Each stimulus she inflicted upon him elicited sensations new to him. He was having a hard time sorting it all out. Particularly when he kept losing his anchor on time and reality.

“When…”

“You blacked out a bit. Things will get disorienting here. You need to accept that.

Accept my dominance over you and play no games.” Her hand went below the water, her fingers rippling along his cock, wrapping around him.

“Dona—”

“I’m going to make you suffer.” Her eyes held him, stilled the words in his throat.

“You have no choice in that. I’ll make it so much worse if you try to fuck with my head.

Now…” She let him go and allowed the tether to drop so he felt the weight of it pull against his cock as the chain obeyed gravity and fell toward the bottom. Her bare foot touched his, caressing his toes a moment before she stepped on the top of them. Sliding her arm around his waist, she gripped his forearm, bound against his back, and used it as an anchor to lift herself up. Her breasts pressed against his chest and he had to look at them, draw his breath in and hold it as her hard nipples made contact with his chest.

He could feel her thigh against his leg, her hip brushing his eager cock.

“Bring your head down to your Mistress.”

He did. As she brushed her lips against his temple, Nathan felt a hard jolt of desire rock through him. She moved to his skull, nibbled. The unfamiliar sensitivity made him thankful for the cock harness. Otherwise he might have come from the brush of her tongue and teeth on that naked flesh. She spoke against his skin, her lips slippery and wet from the water on his skull.

“You’re clean enough to come eat my pussy. Follow me.”

Chapter Four

She held the leash. Though he tried to stride with some type of dignity, the cock harness dug painfully into him as he stumbled out of the water after her, hands still folded up and bound behind his back. Naked, all his hair removed, reduced to nothing of his identity but being her slave. She moved with the same fluid grace through the water as she had moved over the grass earlier in her high heels, while he had to keep his head bowed to keep his balance. It underscored the picture he imagined he made, humbled in a way he’d never permitted any Mistress to do to him before, but then there’d been no permission involved in this. Except the moment he chose to step into the car.