And because she wasn’t looking at him any longer, he seemed bigger. As if he filled the vast room, taking up all the space and air. He made her shake, and he hadn’t done anything yet. She’d done it to herself.
She got it then, in a way she never had when she’d been playing with party favor floggers before. He made her want to do this to herself. He made her want the roller coaster of sensation and emotion.
It was like an adult magic trick. And she was still shaking.
“Very nice,” he said from across the room, and his approval made her flush, then feel as if she was blooming, somehow. “Obedience looks good on you.”
She thought he was goading her, but she was determined that he wouldn’t succeed. She glared at the floor and ordered herself to keep her hands out of telltale fists.
“Let me be clear about what is going to happen now,” Dorian said, almost conversationally. If she ignored that kick of command and heat wrapped up in his words and the way he delivered them. “I’m going to spank you. Your behavior tonight has been disgraceful. Keep those eyes down, please. And I would strongly caution you not to say whatever it is you’re about to say.”
Erika jerked her head back down, her heart pounding hard in her chest. She felt outraged. Insulted. How dare he call her disgraceful?
Her mind veered away from the spanking part.
“I want you to listen to me, Erika,” he continued, pitiless and relentless, and in exactly the same calm tone. And the steadier he sounded, the more wildly out of control she felt. Her eyes were blurry, and she told herself that was why it seemed as if her hands were shaking. “Ignore the noise in your head. Ignore all those lies you like to tell yourself and everyone else. Focus on me. Only me. Here, now, and until I say otherwise, the only thing you have to worry about is doing exactly what I tell you to do. Do you understand me?”
She sucked in a shaky breath. “Yes, but—”
“Yes is a complete sentence, kitten.”
She had to bite her own tongue, actually bite it, to keep from snapping back at him. He was maddening. How could he sound so blasé when he was saying something so...
But she was the one who was still kneeling. She was the one who kept doing as he said. She was the one he’d threatened to spank and here she was, still kneeling here like she had no choice. When she had every choice. When this was her choice.
“We will use the same safe-word structure as before. I want you to tell me what that is, now. With no editorializing.”
“Green light means everything is good, fine. Yellow light means I’m not sure about something. Or I want to pause. And red light means stop.”
“Very good.”
He moved then, and she could track the sound of him, but she didn’t dare look up. It was more than that—it felt as if his hand was on the back of her neck again, holding her head down, when he wasn’t even near her.
It was only when she heard the sound of his big body against leather cushions that she realized he’d sat himself down on the wide couch that faced her.
“Come here,” Dorian commanded. “And I want you to crawl.”
Was she really going to do this? Erika slid her hands off her thighs, not surprised to discover they were damp. She leaned forward, putting her palms on the ground, and then she froze.
“Now, Erika,” Dorian said in that same implacable way. “And I already told you how I’d like it to look. I want to see that ass bared. There’s no one here but me, but go ahead and imagine you’re back in the club. The only thing you should be focused on, there or here, is me.”
She told herself he was a narcissist. A lunatic. An asshole of the highest degree.
But she was the one who slid her hands forward, then dragged her knees along behind. Once. Again. And then, without even meaning to, really, she was crawling across the floor.
She couldn’t say she remembered the last time she’d crawled anywhere. She felt foolish. Exposed again, and it didn’t matter that they were alone here. Her skirt slid to her waist, and she couldn’t seem to keep herself from imagining the picture she made: a wanton little slut, crawling across the floor to obey him.
The thought nearly made her come again.
She made it over to him, and found herself at his feet.
“Look at me.”
His voice was gentle enough, but with that steel beneath that made her feel as if she was on some kind of leash. She lifted her head.
And the look in his eyes took her breath away.
Dorian reached over and brushed his fingers over one cheek, then slid his palm to hold her there. Once again, the touch of his hand got beneath her skin. It made her want to squirm. Or worse, beg.
“Thank you for doing as I asked,” he said, and again, the approval in his voice made her heart skip a beat.
His palm was warm, but the gleam in his dark eyes was hot. And she felt stretched between the two, flushed and obvious and so needy it hurt.
“I expect you to take your punishment exactly like this,” he told her, as if he could read her mind. Or her greedy pussy. “I’m going to spank you. It’s going to hurt. This is not for your pleasure, though I expect pleasure might be one of the things you feel. You don’t understand boundaries, and I’m going to teach them to you. Thank me.”
She had to fight the wave of dizziness. Of shame and fury and still, that horrible curiosity that she was afraid was the truth of her.
“Thank you,” she gritted out, somehow.
His gaze was cool. One brow rose. “Thank you, who?”
At least she knew this one. “Sir. Thank you, sir.”
“I find that grudging tone disrespectful.” But his thumb moved over her cheek almost tenderly. “Such a pretty face, and yet, so deeply insolent. You told me you were a grown woman, did you not? Now is your chance to prove it.”
She opened her mouth, but something in the way his eyes gleamed stopped her.
“You have said a great many things tonight.” Dorian’s voice was even quieter, like thunder that rumbled so deep inside her only she knew what a catastrophe it was. And she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. She couldn’t seem to do anything but breathe too hard, too fast, and burn. “But that’s what you do, isn’t it? You’ve spent your whole life writing checks with that mouth that your body can’t cash. Tonight, we’re going to settle your accounts.”
He dropped his hand, then sat back. “You may stand.”
Suddenly, crazily, Erika didn’t want to stand. She wanted to stay where she was, there on her knees at his feet, where it was safe.
When she knew full well there was nothing safe about kneeling in front of this man.
Dorian watched her intently. With that armored, intense patience that made her want nothing more than to do what he wanted. However he wanted it.
Something spooled out inside her, then, that had nothing to do with the way her mind raced. It felt long held. Secret and certain.
And the more it unwound itself within her, the less jittery she felt, even when she knew he wasn’t kidding around. Dorian had every intention of hurting her. Deliberately. Spanking her like a child, because he thought that would teach her something—
No, that thing inside her corrected her. Not like a child.
Because this was about sex and this was about submission, and ultimately it was about her choice to combine those things and let him pick the path they took. She could use her safe word at any time. She could be up and walking away from him right now.
The issue wasn’t that Dorian wanted to spank her. It was that deep down, Erika wanted to let him spank her.
Or she wouldn’t be here, at his feet, fighting herself while he waited. And watched.
And Erika couldn’t tell if she was shuddering because she couldn’t bear the thought, or because she was terrified of what she might actually learn from this. Who she might become
when he was done with her.
But either way, she stood.
“Lovely,” he said, and it made her flush with that same strange pride. Then he patted his thighs, his dark gaze its own command. “Now lie down.”
CHAPTER FIVE
ERIKA MIGHT HAVE thought she was on the verge of being sick, if it weren’t for that blazing fire in her pussy that made a lie out of all the other sensations that sloshed around inside her. Her heart jolted, her stomach dropped, her skin felt stretched too tight... But still she burned.
And all Dorian did was sit there, almost lazily, watching her intently as she battled herself.
He did nothing to encourage her. He did nothing to hurry her along.
He only waited as if he was in absolutely no doubt that no matter her struggle, she would do exactly what he’d told her to do.
Because you want to do it, something in her whispered.
She was that hard, small stone in his palm, and he would make a fist only if she admitted it. If she allowed it. If she laid herself across his lap and submitted the way she wanted to, with every last part of the melty, swoony thing currently burning up inside her.
“Were my instructions unclear?” Dorian asked, mildly enough.
But nothing about the intensity in his dark gaze was mild.
Erika let out a breath that turned into something like a sob, and then she lowered herself over him.
It was awkward. His thighs were much too hard, and she was too...aware of everything. The way her breasts pressed into the leather cushion and how weird it was to crawl over another person like this in the first place. Much less for the reason she was doing it.
“I want you to lace your hands behind your head,” Dorian said, and she instantly felt calmer and more on fire at the same time.
It was like the more she melted, the more of her there was to melt.
And it was a lot different to hear him talk now. In this position. She shifted, and his hand came down to the small of her back, holding her there. Firmly, yet light enough that if she’d wanted to, she could have rolled away from him. Thrown herself on the floor, run for the door—
But she only exhaled. Loudly.
And stayed where she was.
“Hands, please,” he said calmly. But there was no mistaking the power in his voice.
God, that power.
Erika had spent her whole life careening about from one so-called authority figure to the next, always laughing when they tried to control her, because they couldn’t. They always backed down, or lost track of her, or proved easy enough for her to control. They had the position of authority, but not the power to back it up.
Dorian had the power. And she’d given him the authority, hadn’t she?
And she knew without having to ask that there was no possibility that she was going to control this, or him, or anything at all unless and until she uttered that safe word.
But she really didn’t want to do that.
Her skin was so oversensitized she thought she might come from the faintest breeze, and it seemed to get worse with every breath. Or maybe she meant better. She threaded her fingers together behind her head, and that changed things all over again. It thrust her breasts into the leather cushion beneath her, abrading her nipples through the strappy top she wore and making them pull tighter.
But she was far more focused on Dorian. His rock-hard thighs beneath her, muscle like stone, that made her feel deliciously weak. And that hand in the small of her back, holding her in place so easily—though it felt like a heavy length of chain to her. She could feel his heat. His strength. That power that she’d already spent two years chasing. She felt surrounded by him, and it made her body shudder in reaction. Or longing. It was hard to tell.
It was all the same, and she melted, and everything was much too hot—
He smoothed his other hand over her ass, flipping up that tiny skirt. She tried to imagine what he saw. Her bright red lacy thong stuck between her ass cheeks, painting him a picture. She could see herself and it made her hips rock a little, as if that could help her aching clit.
It didn’t. Especially when he widened his legs, effectively preventing her from rocking herself against him for any kind of relief.
More than that it reminded her, wordlessly, that he was in control. Complete and utter control, and saw everything. Every little wriggle she tried to make. Every expression on her face. Every flush that stained her skin.
For someone who had spent a whole life being both too visible and yet forever ignored, it was...gratifying. Terrifying. Electrifying.
“I’m going to pull your thong down,” he told her matter-of-factly, as if he was narrating the weather to a disinterested party. “I want your ass entirely exposed. It looks as if it’s never been touched. Has it?”
“No one’s ever really spanked me, sir,” she said to the leather beneath her. “If that’s what you mean.”
“I’m not surprised to hear that,” he said with what she thought might be a measure of satisfaction. “You’ve needed a good spanking as long as I’ve known you.”
She shuddered at that, and his hand moved, rolling her thong down over her hips. She expected him to pull it all the way off her, but he only left it tangled there above her knees.
Confining her, she realized. Making her feel dirty, tied down and, for some reason, so turned-on she wanted to cry.
Then he didn’t say anything. He stroked her ass in silence, warming each cheek with his palms. Roughly. He explored her, running his hands where he pleased, even delving into the furrow between her cheeks to press against the opening there.
Something arced through her, white-hot and greedy, a dark little gas fire of fear and longing.
“Has anyone taken you in the ass before?” he asked with that damned calm.
“N-no.”
“What a shame. Why not? Is it a hard limit for you?”
She wanted to kick him, but she couldn’t seem to move. “No. I don’t know.”
“Pick one or the other.”
“It’s supposed to hurt,” she said, scowling at the cushion beneath her. “Why do something that hurts?”
Though it occurred to her that the question was pretty silly, given her current situation. To his credit, though she had the sense he smiled, Dorian didn’t laugh.
“Because pain is temporary and, if employed deliberately and well, enhances pleasure.” He pressed against her tight bud again, then moved on. He rubbed his palms restlessly over her upturned cheeks, laying in a pinch here, there, then holding her down when she jumped. “I promise you that if I hurt you, when I hurt you, I’ll also make you come. Eventually. You may thank me.”
“Th-thank you, sir,” she managed to say, while she melted and burned, raged and wanted to sob.
“And you didn’t answer my question. Is anal play a hard limit for you?”
Erika felt the strangest trickle of something like relief then, when that didn’t make any sense. Why would she feel relieved when she was still waiting for a spanking of all things? And he was going out of his way to make sure she knew he never forgot a damned thing?
But in the next too-quick breath, she understood. That was why. He didn’t forget. He didn’t let things go. If he asked her a question, he expected her to answer.
He would not forget her or any detail about her, down to the dress she’d worn two years ago at a party in Greece.
He would not, for example, swan off to Cap Ferrat for the season as her mother had done one winter, forgetting that she’d left Erika alone on the estate south of Melbourne where they’d spent a span of years. She’d been seven. The staff had been lovely, but her mother hadn’t deigned to return until Erika lit a fire in one of the old, empty barns and the butler had finally given his notice, as he wasn’t a babysitter.
Erika had no idea why that weird, old memory wa
s cropping up now. While she was close enough to naked and tossed over Dorian’s lap all these years later and in Berlin.
“Erika. Don’t make me ask you again.”
“No,” she whispered. “It’s not a limit. I would try it.”
“If I asked.”
“If you asked,” she agreed, her heart so loud inside her it hurt. “Sir.”
She felt humiliated and excited in turn, and the contrast lurched around inside her, making her squirm. And pant. And want to die—but not before he kept that promise that any hurt he dished out would come with a hefty dollop of pleasure, too.
Erika thought she might die if he didn’t keep his promise.
And then, to her horror and her delight, he reached beneath her and cupped her pussy in his hand. That was all he did. He simply...held her there.
She was the one who was quivering, sensitive and sweating with the force of a need that felt like madness.
“Look at this,” he said, sounding dark and approving all at once. “You can’t wait, can you? You’re desperate. Soaking wet. As if you’ve been waiting your whole life for someone to finally take you in hand. Is that what you want, Erika?”
She wanted to fight. She wanted to argue. And more than both of those things, she wanted to thrust herself backward and somehow make him move his palm hard against her, because she knew it would take only the slightest graze of her clit against him to make her explode.
But she didn’t dare misbehave like that. And he didn’t move his palm. As if he knew exactly what it was she wanted most.
“Yes, sir,” she made herself say, squeezing her eyes shut as storm after storm rampaged through her. She kept her cheek pressed hard against the leather, gripping her own fingers behind her neck—even though all that did was press her breasts harder against the sofa beneath her.
Everything she did made it worse. Or better.
“I want to hear you say it.”
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