Because it was, she reminded herself sharply. And maybe with a touch of panic. For him, this was any old night at the club. The only difference was that she was his best friend’s little sister.
Something about that fact—which she’d known full well while she’d spent all these months trying to get herself into this very position, not to mention most of her life—twisted in her differently now. It made her feel even hotter suddenly.
Erika tried to focus on what he’d said.
“Why do you want their eyes lowered?” she demanded, and she did not avert her gaze. Instead, she glared at him. “Because you hate women?”
“Because I love what it does to a woman when she surrenders herself into my hands,” Dorian said. “By her choice. And your impertinence is noted. If I were you, I would rethink that glare.”
That shouldn’t make her thighs clench, but it did. And for a moment, she thought her pussy might take over again, catapulting her toward another climax she didn’t want and couldn’t make any sense of. She tried to fight it back.
And that gleam in his dark eyes made her think he knew exactly what was happening inside her. When he couldn’t. Could he?
“But I can tell you’re brand-new, Erika,” he said then, and he had to know how riled up she was, or why else would he sound so satisfied? “So I will give you more leeway than I would otherwise.” He tilted his head slightly to one side, that assessing look as cool as it was stirring. “And I find I quite like the way you look at me.”
Whatever snarky remark she’d meant to throw at him died there in her mouth. Because she couldn’t help thinking he looked more like a wolf. Poised to take the leap that would take his quarry down.
He looked as if he could pounce at any moment.
And it was hard, once again, to catch her breath.
“Let me tell you the rules,” Dorian said.
“They told us at the door,” she all but threw at him, filled to the brim with a kind of desperation she didn’t recognize. Did she want to poke at him—or please him? “Green light is yes, yellow light is I’m not sure and red light is stop.”
“Are you satisfied with that system as your safe word?” He studied her and he was so thorough. It made her ache. “Let me backtrack. Do you know what a safe word is?”
“Of course I know what a safe word is,” she said. Or really snapped. Making no effort to modulate her cranky tone. “I read Fifty Shades like everybody else.”
Dorian did not wince. Not exactly. And yet she was in no doubt that he’d come as close to rolling his eyes as she’d ever seen. “This is not the place to mention that book, if you please.”
And Erika realized that she hadn’t...forgotten she was kneeling, necessarily. It was impossible to forget. But it had changed into something else.
She felt quivery, the way she had before. It seemed to go straight through her, as if kneeling on the ground at Dorian’s feet had plugged her into an electrical current and it kept pouring into her. Making her sizzle and burn.
But the panic was gone. She felt calmer, somehow, when surely it should have been the opposite. Surely she should have been too outraged and weirded out to stay in that position—but the longer she stayed there, exposed and vulnerable, the more she started to feel something utterly contradictory.
Safe.
“What are your hard limits?” Dorian asked in that cool way of his. But not quite clinically, she could see. There was that intensity in his gaze. The way he held hers.
It was as if she was nothing but a bright pebble closed tight in his fist.
She had no idea where that image came from. Or why she reacted to it the way she did, everywhere—from a breath that shivered out too hot to that melting, aching fever in her pussy.
“My hard limits?”
“Repeating a question is not answering it, Erika. Try again.”
She thought she might be sweating. “Um. I mean...”
“I’m not familiar with those sexual practices. Enlighten me.”
“There are just so many things,” she said, because she had to say something. Even if it was desperate.
“Then perhaps we should narrow it down.”
One of his dark brows rose, and she had the vague notion that it made him look demonic. What it did not do was detract in any way from his appeal. Maybe, she thought wildly, there really was something the matter with her. But she didn’t rise from her knees. She didn’t bolt again, the way some part of her wanted to do.
But only so he can catch you, a voice inside her whispered, like another bolt of electricity.
“Do you want me to tie you up?” Dorian asked, his voice somehow managing to be matter-of-fact and silky at the same time. It felt like an assault. It made her think of that whip, arcing through the air and yet landing like a kiss. She couldn’t seem to stay still on her own knees. “Cuffs? Chains? And what would I do once I did tie you up? You seem to like the looks of the whip, but that’s hardly for beginners. A paddle perhaps? Or maybe you’d enjoy it if I gave you that spanking you so richly deserve?”
For no reason she could think of, Erika suddenly wanted to cry. She felt emotion well inside her as if she was bruised from the inside out. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, and found them lying open on her thighs, as if in supplication.
She thought she should do something about that, but she didn’t.
And she didn’t understand how the swelling emotion inside her could be so intimately connected with the greediness between her legs.
“I don’t think...” she started faintly.
But he wasn’t done. Dorian shifted position to lean against the wall before her, as if he’d never been so relaxed in all his life. She thought she might hate him.
Maybe she did hate him, but that was its own bright heat, like a lick. Right where she needed it most.
“There are so many things to choose from,” he was saying in that mild tone at total odds with the stern intensity in his gaze. “Cattle prods. Ball gags. Nipple torture. Watersports. Total sensory deprivation. Pony play.”
She was panting as if she was running. She still wanted to cry. And also slide her useless hands between her legs and make herself come hard enough that all these feelings went away. “I have a yellow bracelet on.”
As if she was brandishing a rosary at him.
“That means you cannot exchange bodily fluids, Erika. It doesn’t mean I can’t, for example, secure a ponytail in your ass, clamp your nipples and make you ride a spanking bench until you come. After making sure your ass is a nice bright red. Does that sound like the sort of thing you had in mind when you came here? On this magical mystery tour of your newly kinky sexual appetite?”
Her head shorted out a little, as those images tumbled around inside her. She felt as if she was drowning, the parts of her body he’d mentioned tingling as if he’d already done the things he’d said he would, though he still hadn’t touched her. She felt her own fingers digging into her thighs, but she was caught by the expression on his face.
A little too hard. A little too amused.
She got it, then.
He was trying to frighten her away.
And nothing that she’d felt tonight made any sense. Nothing since she’d found him on that dais, wielding that whip like a song. She’d come. Then she’d run. Now she was kneeling on the floor, staring up at him as if he could save her, when she was very much afraid that no one could. Because clearly she didn’t want to be saved, or she would have left the minute she’d seen that bullwhip in his hands.
But she already knew what would happen if she backed down. Dorian would be patronizing. He would call Conrad, who would be livid. And she would have wasted these months and accomplished nothing.
Erika couldn’t quite accept that she could have gone through what she’d already gone through and get nothing out of it.
&n
bsp; “That all sounds great,” she said bravely. Mutinously. “I saw a pair of ponies on the way in. It looks...intriguing. Bridle and all.”
And then, for the first time in as long as she’d known him, she watched Dorian laugh. Not smirk. Not raise those brows of his. But actually laugh.
It was a rich, profoundly male sound. It slid over her like chocolate, thick and dark. And the strangest sensation washed over her, centering between her legs again, and she almost thought she might come again. Just from hearing him laugh.
“I believe you’d do it,” he said. And he shook his head. “That’s not a compliment. If you can’t articulate what you want and what you don’t want, you shouldn’t jump into it blindly. There are many places on this planet we can be coy about sex, but this isn’t one of them.”
“I’m not being coy.”
“No, you’re being thoughtless. Reckless. As immature as ever, and with far higher stakes than a backless gown at a charity ball we both know you wore to irritate your brother.”
That was exactly why she’d worn that dress, but that wasn’t the only reason she shuddered. “I’m glad you remember a dress I wore two years ago.”
“I remember the controversy.” The way his eyes gleamed made her stomach flip, in that peculiar mix of fear and hunger she was learning to associate with this man. “You enjoy controversy, do you not?”
“It’s Conrad who enjoys controversy, since he’s the one who causes it. I don’t know why you can’t see that, as his best friend. But that doesn’t make it any less true.”
“If you were here for reasons that did not involve your brother, I would handle all this insolence, Erika,” he said, quietly. “But you are not, are you?”
And there was something about the very quietness that made her think of that whip again. Precise. Intense.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I’m allowing you to keep your eyes raised. I’m allowing you to talk back to me, glare and conduct yourself as if this isn’t a power exchange. These are gifts I could rescind at any moment.”
Could he see her heart slam against her ribs? “I thought I had safe words.”
“Do you feel that you need one? All we’re doing is discussing terms.”
“I haven’t agreed to anything.”
“You don’t need to agree to anything to employ simple courtesy, Erika.” And this time, his voice was a lash. A stark command. “When you’re on your knees or otherwise involved in a scene with me, you call me sir. Or Master Dorian. And I’ll expect you to address me that way every time you open your mouth.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
But she remembered where she was. They weren’t, in fact, standing on a ballroom floor in Greece in sight of her mother and disapproving brother. She had chosen to come here. She’d known what kind of club it was. That brow of his inched upward and she shook deep inside.
Even as her pussy flooded all over again.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said again. “Sir.”
Because over her dead body would she call him Master anything.
“Thank you,” he said, and she was certain that was an unholy amusement in his dark eyes. But his mouth remained stern, the way it always did. “It is not ridiculous. And no, I’m not on a power trip, which I’m sure is the next thing you plan to say. As insolently as possible.”
“Oh, come on. Surely your whole thing is a power trip.” His eyes flashed and she remembered herself. “Sir.”
“I’m interested in power, yes,” Dorian replied. “But it’s not a trip. There is no power without surrender of one sort or another. A fist is only as strong as the delicate fingers that make it up.”
“I don’t know what that means,” she said crossly. But she was thinking of a hard little stone cupped in a palm. Fingers wrapped around it, making that fist. “And I don’t think any man ties up a woman if he doesn’t want power over her.” She saw his expression. “Sir. I thought that’s what is hot about it.”
“I do not want power over a woman,” Dorian said, very distinctly. “I want her to surrender her power to me. It’s the difference between demanding that you kneel before me or waiting for you to choose to do it yourself. Do you understand?”
And she wanted to rage something back at him, but even as she opened her mouth to do it, there was that emotion welling up inside her again. Still. That bruise getting bigger, making it so much harder for her to breathe, making her eyes prickle.
She felt protected, yet she was terrified. Overwhelmed, yet so wildly turned-on it was like she didn’t know her own body. And it hadn’t escaped her notice that he hadn’t laid so much as a finger upon her.
And sobbing on this hallway floor, she knew, was no way to do what she came here to do.
“I didn’t know you were this...” she started to say without thinking.
An odd look moved over his face then, and she would have called it regret on someone else. But not Dorian.
“I am all this and a good deal more than you can comprehend,” he said.
He pushed off the wall and moved closer, and it was better and worse at the same time. Sharp, impossible, until she felt heavy with longing and whatever kind of fear this was that made her head spin and her pussy wet.
He reached down, and fit his palm to her cheek, and to her horror, she felt tears well up in her eyes.
“I know why you came here, Erika. I imagine you thought you would simply show up before me wearing as few pieces of clothing as possible, and I would fall like a stone. I imagine this is the effect you’re used to having on men.”
“I didn’t—”
“Quiet.”
And as if shushing her wasn’t enough, he slid his thumb over her lips, and kept it there. Shutting her up whether she liked it or not.
And like everything else, she couldn’t tell.
“My desires run a bit deeper than a hot body,” he said, low and dark. “My needs require very specific outlets. I can fuck like any selfish fraternity brother you might have encountered out there, and I’ll get off, but it won’t truly satisfy me. So this offering of yours, while sweet, is doomed to disappoint you. You can’t give me what I need, Erika.” He studied her. “And even if you could, I will not be used as a tool to slap at your brother.”
Erika wanted to bite him, but she couldn’t seem to muster up the will to do it. Much less slap his hand away. Or really anything at all but sit there, his hand hot and strong as it curved around her face, wondering what on earth was happening to her.
Or how he’d seen through her so easily.
“I never said I wanted to use you.”
“Time’s up, kitten,” he told her, and it wasn’t until she followed his gaze down to her hands on her lap that she saw she was digging her own nails into her fists. Ha ha, she thought, angrily. A kitten with claws. “You’re not here to play, which means you need to go.”
“But...”
She could see from the look on his face that there would not be a second chance. She would never get back in through the doors of this club, that was certain. And she doubted it would matter if she tried to find him anywhere else. His office. His home. Whether he had her turned away by others or turned her away himself, he was done. His expression reminded her a little too strongly of the one he’d used on her all her life. Dismissive. Patronizing. Not at all the heat she’d seen before.
This was her only chance. And she might have misjudged things here, but it was only a matter of degrees, surely. The reality was that she’d watched him bring a woman to climax, and had come herself already. That alone was worth experimenting with.
She could handle him. She was sure she could.
“What if I want to play?” she asked.
“Very well.”
He stepped back, taking his hand and his warmth with him, and she was afraid those tears really wo
uld spill over from behind her eyes. Would he do what he’d threatened to do? Or had that been a promise? Erika didn’t know which part of it shot off the most sparks inside her. A ponytail? Or that spanking that had been haunting her since he’d first mentioned it two years ago?
Dorian’s dark eyes blazed. “If you want to play, you must prove it.”
“I’ll do whatever you want.”
His mouth curved. “Don’t promise things you can’t deliver.”
He indicated the hallway behind him, and the club waiting for them, filled with people and music and all the kinky things Erika could imagine—plus a great many she couldn’t.
“Prove how much you want this,” Dorian ordered her. “Crawl, on your hands and knees, down this hallway and then out into the club proper. Keep going until I tell you to stop. You should be aware, of course, that the tiny little excuse for a skirt you’re wearing will almost certainly flip up on your back as you go. Does that thong cover you well, do you think? Or will everybody who looks at you be able to see exactly how wet and eager you are? With your ripe, juicy pussy right there for everyone to see and touch and comment upon—”
And it was too much. Pony play was outlandish but what he was talking about was a humiliation she could envision all too easily, all those eyes and him and the display that was all her and yet not at all in her control...
“Stop,” she managed to gasp out, while her heartbeat nearly bent her in half and that fever in her about took her head off. “Red light.”
“Yes,” Dorian said with far too much grim satisfaction. “Red light. Enough of this game, Erika. It’s time to take you home.”
CHAPTER FOUR
DORIAN MAINTAINED A penthouse in a quietly moneyed neighborhood that seemed far too settled for a man with his predilections. He was so kinky Erika had imagined he would live somewhere desperately cutting edge within walking distance of his club, but instead his penthouse reflected the old money he came from and the fortune or two he’d made himself. His place sprawled across the top of a luxury building that seemed a lot like a five-star hotel, which, once Erika thought about it—once she was capable of thought, that was—made sense for a man like him.
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