Teach Me

by Caitlin Crews

  She couldn’t hold his commanding gaze. Her whole body was a mass of flame and desire, that swamping, impossible need, and something that felt like shame. But it was much darker and less destructive than that, and somehow connected directly to that pulsing greed in her pussy.

  Erika hated that they were both dressed in all these clothes. She yearned for the simplicity of his penthouse in Berlin, all those modern edges. And the quiet reality of her nakedness before his demands.

  She could see those days laid out before her like a tableau. Like a fantasy. Like a wish made real, though she’d already experienced it.

  God, how she wished she could go back.

  Wasn’t that what the past two weeks had been about? Hating and wishing and wanting, desperate to be in his presence again—

  And now she was.

  And it was here, at Conrad and Jenny’s engagement party. Where he wanted her to do this thing that would break her in half. She knew it would. It would destroy her, and if she was destroyed, she could never, ever go back. She could never have Berlin again.

  She could never have him again.

  Erika felt his fingers on her chin, and then he tipped it up, forcing her to meet that dark, simmering gaze of his. She quivered. And thought she saw the hint of a smile.

  “You look beautiful, kitten,” he said quietly. “More than beautiful. You look like who you are.”

  That made her feel more than simply hot all over. It made her want to sigh, maybe. And lean into him. And it felt as if she already had.

  “My mother disagrees,” she said, concentrating on his strong fingers pressing into her chin. “Demure clothing like this is for very beautiful women or very clever ones. Dumb whores like me need to put on a show. Tits and ass, presumably.”

  She wasn’t sure why she’d said such things to a man who had, until recently, been the most likely to agree with Chriszette’s take on her. Until she saw his temper flash across his face, and not at her.

  “Your mother is a very small, very jealous woman.” Dorian’s brow rose, and Erika was conditioned now. She felt the blaze of it go through her, settling heavily in her oversensitive clit. Her nipples ached for his mouth. She hurt for him. There was no other way to put it. She already hurt for him, and she would hurt more if he wanted, because the pain was a blessing. It made everything bloom. Especially her. “And I thought we covered this already. The only opinion you need to consider is mine.”

  “I can’t do it,” she said breathlessly. “I can’t apologize to him. You don’t understand.”

  “I do understand.” He was unyielding and it made her melt even as it made her stomach twist again. “I never told you it would be easy, little one. I only told you that I expected you to do it.”

  Misery slammed into her, another tidal wave she could do nothing to prevent. “I can’t.”

  She expected him to look angry, but he didn’t. He looked only disappointed, which was worse. “That is a choice.”

  And he had taught her all about choices, hadn’t he? He had taught her how to choose. But this didn’t feel like a choice. This felt like a death sentence.

  “You want to humble me,” she said. “Humiliate me. I get that. It’s important to you.”

  And to her surprise, Dorian laughed. “When I want to humiliate you, kitten, you will know. You will not be clothed in full view of the richest men in Europe, one of whom is your brother. You will very likely be on all fours, at my feet, and very, very naked. Understand that first.”

  She was breathless as he dropped his hand from her chin and then maneuvered her in front of him, away from the crowded ballroom and deeper into the house. He rested a hand on the nape of her neck as if it belonged there, and Erika relaxed into it. The weight of his palm felt right. Good. And after all the turmoil of the past weeks, wave after wave of too much emotion, it took her a moment to recognize what it was that suffused her now.

  Peace. Safety.

  There was something about this man that felt like home.

  He opened a door, and ushered her inside, and it took her a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the different lighting. It was a very small study, or sitting room, that Erika had never seen on her previous visits here. It was the kind of place the ladies of the house might have retired in latter days to keep up with their embroidery or correspondence. There were delicate, ebullient furnishings, heavy on scrollwork and filigree.

  In the middle of so much unrestrained femininity, Dorian was like a brooding, lethal fist. All threat and masculinity, and that uncompromising power that blazed out of him like his very own sun.

  That power that she took into her, gloried in and made her own.

  Dorian closed the door behind him and then stood there, a narrow, assessing look on his beautiful face.

  Inside, Erika felt fizzy. Bright.

  He lifted one finger and twirled it in the air, indicating that she should turn for him. And she did, different sensations scudding through her, but all of them ending up in the same place. That delirious, delectable heat between her legs that pulsed out into everything else.

  “The trouble with you, Erika, is that you are too beautiful already. And far too clever.”

  His voice was almost more beautiful than he was, if such a thing was possible. It was his voice that had stayed with her in the time they’d been apart. She’d heard him on the phone and in her head, as if he had a direct connection to her body no matter where he was. As if he owned her, body and soul, mind and pussy, and everything in her exalted in that notion.

  Not least because, if he owned her, surely she could own him in return. It was a power exchange after all. Not a power grab.

  “When you walk around with your gorgeous body on display, people get silly,” Dorian said, his gaze steady on her. “Stupid. They say jealous, small-minded things, as your mother has already amply demonstrated tonight. And people are not always as good as they should be about holding two ideas in their head at once.”

  “My mother holds a great number of ideas in her head, all of them nasty.”

  “It is easier to believe that stunning blonde woman with a smile that can light up a room and blue eyes the color of summer must be dumb,” he said quietly. “Foolish, at the very least. An easily dismissible whore. I’m not surprised that the people in your life who feel threatened by all that you are would encourage you to dress and act as if you are far less than that.”

  He pushed off the door at his back and came toward her at last. And then, finally, he was touching her again. He ran his hands over her the way he’d done so many times before, as if he was memorizing her shape. This time, he skimmed his palms down her arms and then held them out at her sides.

  “Dressed like the powerful heiress you are, you give all of these vipers no choice but to see the real you. I’m sure they won’t like it.” He shrugged, that dark intensity in his gaze never wavering. “But as we keep discussing, it only matters if I like it. And I do. Very much.”

  And she couldn’t have said why that mattered so much to her. Only that it did. And that further, his praise felt like a crackling fire on a cold night.

  “Dorian,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to be disappointed in me, but you will be. Because I can’t—”

  “Quiet, please.”

  It was an order. And on some level, Erika wanted to demand that he make these boundaries between a scene and life clearer to her. But then, she didn’t want them clear. She wanted this, the poignancy and sharpness, the intensity and color, and the possibility that every moment with him was a scene.

  And only sometimes would actual cuffs, whips and chains be involved.

  But she had to shake that off, because she was thinking in terms of tomorrows and she doubted very much that he would want much to do with her by the end of the night.

  Because she couldn’t give him what he wanted.

 
“I want you to do something for me,” Dorian said, sounding casual when his expression was anything but. “It’s not an order. I’m going to tell you what I desire, what I wish, and you may choose or not choose to do it. What are you wearing under that dress?”

  It felt as if he’d rocked a boat she hadn’t known she was standing on, and she almost felt like she had whiplash as she fought to keep her balance. She expected him to bring up Conrad again and almost asked him why he hadn’t...

  But his gaze was intent on hers, and over the course of her time in Berlin, she had learned that it was better not to test his patience. She bit back a shiver, remembering the creative things he could do when a naked woman didn’t respond quickly enough to an order he’d given her while they were preparing dinner together. One piece of peeled ginger inserted into the right place left indelible memories—and a healthy respect for the limits of his patience.

  “Um,” she said. She blinked. “A thong?”

  “Is that a question? And who are you addressing, kitten?”

  She cleared her throat. “A thong, sir.”

  “Remove it.”

  She blinked at that, too. Dorian only stared back at her while his brow slowly began to rise.

  Erika started to pull at the long skirt of her dress while he stood there and made no attempt to look away. She pulled the skirt up to her waist, then wriggled out of her thong. And when she pulled it down and off, she straightened again to find him holding out his hand.

  “I’ll take that, thank you.”

  And it was ridiculous, given the things she had already done with him, but handing him her thong while it was still warm from her body made her cheeks burn. She could tell from the gleam in his dark eyes that he was enjoying it.

  She handed them over and was acutely aware, then, that she was suddenly going commando under her dress. Not that it should have mattered to her in the least, when she was normally dressed in much less. But then, that was why the things he did were so diabolical. They could be over-the-top, like a dark pageant in his club. Or they could be as simple as this. Wearing a pretty dress, but knowing she was naked underneath—at his command.

  He pocketed the thong, and then pulled something else out of a different pocket, holding it there in his palm like a gift. Erika knew what it was. It was a particularly high-end anal plug, complete with a bejeweled button on the end.

  “I bought it just for you,” he said, a wicked amusement in his voice. “Thank me.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the thing in his hand.

  “Let me tell you what I want,” he said while her heart pounded and her skin seemed to shrink. She would have called it fear or revulsion were it not for her traitorous pussy that ached, soft and hot. “I want you to bend over that breakable-looking chair behind you and lift your skirt for me. Then I want you to thank me when I slide this deep inside your ass. When I’m done, we both know you’ll be so slippery that something will have to be done before we go back out there, so I’ll have absolutely no choice but to fuck you, hard. You’ll want to come, because you always want to come, but you won’t, Erika. This time you’ll hold it back, for me.”

  He hadn’t moved. He still stood there, doing absolutely nothing but holding his hand out with the plug gleaming there in his palm. And yet Erika was gasping for breath as if he’d thrown her over his lap and paddled her again.

  “I told you, this isn’t an order,” he said. “This is my desire, nothing more, nothing less. You can choose whether or not you want to do it. It’s up to you.”

  And something in that scraped at her, though she couldn’t have said why. She felt the way she often had in Berlin, as if she was too big inside, too bright and hot and expansive, and all because he looked at her like that. With that firm, infinite patience that made her believe she could do anything at all. Anything he asked. Anything he dreamed up.

  Anything he thought she could do.

  They weren’t in that apartment of his, with all those clean lines and vast spaces, as if to make room for his dirty imagination. And still, everything else fell away. She forgot that they were in a tucked-away room in Jenny’s house. She forgot that her entire family was out there, just down the hall, at a party filled with people who wouldn’t take a lot of convincing to think the worst of her.

  She didn’t care, she realized. Even if they’d all been standing right here in front of her, watching and judging from the fragile-looking settee, she still wouldn’t have cared.

  Erika saw nothing in Dorian’s gaze except confidence that she could and would do anything he asked of her, and that was all she needed. His confidence in her gave her confidence in herself—or maybe that wasn’t quite right.

  It was more that he saw in her what she had always believed was there, and because he believed in it, she could, too.

  She jerked slightly, as if she was coming out of a spell. And still, Dorian watched her as if he could wait forever. And would. She turned to the chair he had indicated, and she flipped her skirt up as she bent over. The arms of the chair were low, and she had to tilt herself at a sharp angle to hold on to them. She was wearing heels, and the simple act of bending over tilted her naked ass high into the air.

  “Very nice,” he said.

  And she dropped her head down, let out a small sigh of satisfaction and waited.

  Dorian moved behind her, and she felt his hands on her body again. There had been times over the past couple of weeks that she’d thought she would never feel him again, and she’d never been so happy to be wrong. Her eyes drifted shut as his palms traced down her back, then over the curves of her butt.

  Warming her. Greeting her. Both, maybe.

  He removed his hands, but his legs were still there, brushing against hers and obliquely reminding her of his strength. His control.

  And the particular sweetness of her surrender.

  Because giving herself over to Dorian felt like real freedom—not like loneliness.

  She felt his hands move into the crease of her ass, rubbing her opening in a way that told he was going to take what she was offering and more, that he expected her to like it. It felt rude and hot at once, especially when she felt something slick and cold on his fingers. He rubbed at her, dipping his finger in and laughing slightly when she made noises she couldn’t seem to bite back.

  Then she felt the tip of the plug, narrowed for entry before it widened to that thickness her mind shied away from, and she pulled in a deep, scared sort of breath. Scared, electrified—she couldn’t really tell the difference.

  “Push out,” he told her, but he didn’t wait for her to obey him. He simply began pushing the slicked-up item deep inside her.

  It didn’t exactly hurt, though it wasn’t at all comfortable. Still, it was thrilling at the same time, because he was relentless. It wasn’t about the butt plug. It was his will and her surrender, and the struggle wasn’t between her and him, but inside herself.

  And the more she accepted that, the wetter her pussy got and the more she pushed herself back against the plug to help him seat it inside her.

  “Someday, baby, that’s going to be me,” he told her, low and fierce.

  It made her shudder, her clit pulsing as if she was dangerously close to coming already.

  She fought it back, but she was breathless by the time he got the plug all the way in. And she couldn’t have said if it was from that cartwheeling, delighted thing inside her because he was here and this was happening, or the laughter she couldn’t quite hold back, or all the other things she felt for him—because God, what didn’t she feel for him?

  And then it didn’t matter, because she heard the tear of a condom wrapper.

  One hand rested on her low back, keeping her in place. And his cock was there at the entrance to her pussy, as broad and thick as she remembered it.

  He thrust himself in
side her, hard and deep, and Erika had to bite the tufted pillow in front of her face to keep her scream inside.

  “I didn’t hear you thank me,” he said, and she heard her own crazy breath as she pulled it in, high-pitched and wild.

  “Th-thank you...” she managed to get out.

  “Who are you thanking, kitten?” came his voice, a dark and silken thread that wrapped around her and pulled tight.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said.

  And she meant it.

  His cock was a revelation inside her. The plug in her ass made her tighter, and him bigger, and he was not a small man. She wanted to explode on the spot, so crammed full of him—of Dorian and his demands and his desires—that she shuddered right there on the edge of a climax—

  But only in the last moment, remembered that she was not to come.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered under her breath.

  Dorian laughed, and then he began to fuck her.

  He took her hard and deep, the way he always did. As if she wasn’t tighter than usual. And he didn’t slow down. Or speed up.

  It was that same, unyielding, relentless rhythm that haunted her in her sleep. It was a greedy, glorious pounding, and normally she would have come twice already.

  But she fought it. Erika could feel every inch of him in Technicolor, but she held on.

  Her clit ached, and her thighs quivered, and she thought there were tears tracking down her face, but somehow, she held on.

  “You’re such a good girl,” he said, leaning over her, his voice a dark taunt, giving her back those words that no one had said to her since she was a child. Making them new. And his. “You’re trying so hard to please me.”

  Erika couldn’t speak. She couldn’t do anything but hold herself as tightly and as carefully as possible, because the slightest wrong move—

  “But I told you before. Sometimes, no matter how good you are, I’m just going to want to punish you. Because I can. And because it’s fun.”

  And his wicked, terrible hand snaked around, took her plump, desperate clit between his fingers and pinched. Hard.