Erika went nuclear.
She didn’t pass out. Not quite. She was aware that he’d sneaked a hand up and covered her mouth, which is the only reason she didn’t scream the house down around their ears. She felt him come hard with a low groan.
But she was ruined. Already destroyed and beyond saving, and she couldn’t seem to care.
He pulled out, and she moaned again, because the plug was still there. And she could feel him, still too big inside her even as he removed himself. He laughed again, and she didn’t have the energy to do anything but stay where she was, draped over the chair with her ass in the air, completely exposed.
She heard him moving around, and assumed he was disposing of the condom, putting himself to rights. She focused on trying to breathe. Then he was beside her, pulling her to her feet and holding her there before him.
And the look on Dorian’s face made the whole world seem to slip to one side.
Tenderness. That was what she saw in those dark, dark eyes of his.
It made her feel inside out. Stripped raw, made new.
He rubbed his thumbs beneath her eyes, and she had the distant thought that she must look a mess, but she didn’t care. Not when he was looking at her like that. As if she was his world.
And here, in this sacred space they’d made between them, Erika believed it.
“I don’t want you to apologize to your brother for me,” he told her, his voice steady. Utterly certain. “I saw him earlier this week. He took a swing at me, and I let him.”
She frowned. “That’s not right.”
“It hurt like hell, and I deserved it.” Dorian shook his head. “I’m a grown man.”
“Still—”
“I don’t need you to get along with my best friend, however nice I might find the idea,” Dorian said intently. “I want you to apologize to him for you, Erika. He’s your brother. Considering the kind of person your mother is, he’s the only family you have. And I know you think he doesn’t care about you, but I’m telling you—you’re wrong.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand completely,” he said quietly, and his fingers brushed over her cheek. “You don’t think anyone can love you.”
Erika felt as if he’d punched her. Revealed her. Destroyed her all over again.
“But I know they can,” he said, still gazing at her with all that intensity and power that made her hum inside, then melt. She had no choice but to listen to him, no matter how ruined she felt. “I know it because I do.”
It was everything she’d ever wanted and more, because it was him. It was beyond anything she could have imagined. It was every gift she hadn’t gotten. It swept away every time she had been forgotten, thrown away, cast aside. Belittled or ignored.
But it was also impossible.
“Don’t tell me it’s too soon,” he warned her. “You’re already in trouble for coming when I told you not to.”
And he smiled when she glowered at him.
“Dorian—” she began.
“No, it’s not fair,” he said, cutting her off. “And yes, Erika, I’m in love with you. I don’t need more time to make up my mind. I already know. I’ve been waiting for you for years. I knew when we woke up that first morning in Berlin that I was never letting you go, and, kitten, I keep my promises. You know this.”
It caused Erika actual physical pain to hear him say these things when she knew how it would go. How it always went.
“When you get to know me better, you’ll regret this.” She had to force herself to say it. But the fact was she knew. She knew better than him because she’d seen it play out so many times before. “When you see the truth, you won’t be able to get away quickly enough.”
And she said it simply. Matter-of-factly. Because she knew it was the truth.
“I’ve already seen the truth.” His hands rested on either side of her neck, his fingers on the nape of her neck and his thumbs on her jaw, holding her where he wanted her. And what he wanted, she delighted in giving him. “What do you think we’ve been doing? BDSM is never just the sex, kitten. Not the way I do it. Not if it’s right. And this? Us? It’s beautiful.”
“I chased you all over the planet,” she confessed, her eyes filling with tears. “You told me you would spank me in Greece, and I wanted it. I wanted you. Maybe I knew that if I could just find my way to you, you could fix me.”
“You don’t need fixing, baby.” Dorian shook his head, his gaze fierce. “You’re not broken. A little lost, maybe, so I gave you a compass. But the journey you take is up to you.”
She wanted to fall into his arms and hide there. Instead, she made herself look at him straight on. “How can you love someone you hardly know?”
But Dorian laughed. “You were quick to tell me you’ve known me all my life,” he pointed out. “And even if you didn’t, you know all kinds of things about me now. Deep, intimate things. That you can trust me. That if I’m hard on you, I reward it. That I care enough about you to give you the boundaries you’ve wanted all your life. I demanded total honesty. And you gave it to me. What else do you need?”
Erika swallowed, hard, aware of her heartbeat in every part of her. Even her fingertips. “And if I go out there and apologize to my brother, then we can...continue?”
He muttered something, then leaned forward to press his forehead to hers.
“Baby. I’m not letting you go. If you don’t apologize to your brother, I’ll be disappointed. And I might take that disappointment out on that fine ass of yours. That’s your choice.” He laughed when she shuddered. “But you and me? There’s only one thing you could do to end this. You’ll have to tell me to go, and you’ll have to use your safe word, so that I believe it. Is that what you want?”
“No,” she breathed. “I don’t want that at all.”
“Make a choice,” he ordered her.
“You,” she said, and she didn’t even think about it. It didn’t require thought. “Of course, you.”
Dorian tilted her head up then, and dropped his mouth to hers and gave her the sweetest, most delicious kiss, like something out of a fairy tale. And then he raised his head, his eyes went wicked and he dropped a hand down to her butt and squeezed.
Making her jump, because the plug was still in there.
“Try not to walk as if you have a stick up your ass, kitten,” he told her, amusement making his voice that much richer. “You wouldn’t want to raise suspicions.”
Erika scowled at him, but when he took her hand, she laced her fingers tight with his and felt nothing short of giddy.
She took a quick peek in one of the mirrors they passed out in the hallway, and hardly recognized the person she saw looking back at her. Because finally, after all these years, she looked alive. She wasn’t hiding. She wasn’t afraid.
She was just...Erika. Herself.
At last.
Dorian drew her back to that same doorway where he’d found her earlier and they stood there a moment, looking in on the assembled crowd. Erika found Conrad quickly in the middle of the throng, looking as buttoned-up and unapproachable as ever. Her stomach twisted, predictably.
“Are you ready?” Dorian asked from beside her.
Erika looked at her brother. And she looked down at her hand entwined with Dorian’s.
And she knew it didn’t matter what she chose. That he would express any disappointment in her honestly, and present her with consequences, but he wouldn’t cut her loose. She could make any choice at all, and he would support her. And possibly paddle her if he didn’t agree with it.
But after all this time, after so many years out there, alone, she’d finally found her home. He was her home.
Dorian would keep her safe. He had the power to lead, to demand. But she had the power to surrender. And between them, they had the power to do absolutely anything.
But she didn’t tell him that. Not now. She was certain he would much rather tie her up and make her say it later, when he ran out of patience.
She could hardly wait.
Erika looked up and found herself there in the bright gleam in his dark eyes that was all for her. Only and ever for her.
“I would follow you anywhere,” she told him.
And then she smiled, as bright as the sunshine he made her feel even here, inside and at night. Everywhere. That was the magic they made between them, and always would.
She believed in him. In them. In this, no matter how new.
In the home they made between them, and carried wherever they’d go.
And before he could prompt her, she leaned closer and whispered his favorite word in his ear, so no one else could hear.
“Sir.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
ERIKA APOLOGIZED TO her brother, with an openness and vulnerability that made Dorian fall in love with her all over again. And more deeply.
But then, she was good at that.
They’d made a commitment to each other in that frilly, prissy room in the Markham family manor house, but Dorian knew better than to take his skittish little kitten for granted.
It took him two months—and his favorite swing, which he could suspend from his bedroom ceiling—to get her to admit she was in love with him.
He already knew she was in love with him. But he liked hearing her tell him so.
It took him sixteen more months to get her fully moved into his penthouse. Or to be more precise, he moved her in almost immediately because he didn’t see the point of being without her, but it took her all that time to finally admit that was what was happening.
He expressed his feelings on her reticence in the language they both understood best.
And Erika set about making his life better in a thousand little ways that had nothing to do with sex. She taught him to feel sorrow for his father’s wasted life, instead of outraged about it. She charmed his grandfather and had the old man sparkling like a teenager whenever she was around. Her life had been unconventional in the extreme, but that made her the perfect sounding board for all of the business issues Dorian had never been able to talk through with anyone else. Not completely.
In turn, he taught her how to stand up to her mother—or at the very least, choose not to engage with her cruelty.
She had spent so long acting a part, but the more comfortable she became with him and the safety of the life they made together, the more she began to shine. And she took care of him. She worried about him. For once, Dorian didn’t have to be responsible for holding up the whole damned sky and everything in it.
With Erika, Dorian was safe, too. He could allow himself the vulnerabilities he’d always before seen as weaknesses. He could share all of himself instead of chopping himself up into necessary compartments.
He could let her soothe him, too. He could grow, more and more each day, without worrying that the slightest crack in his confidence would send her running.
Because she loved all of him. The dominant, the man and the partner he became, just for her.
Dorian had known he wanted her, permanently, after that first night. But even he couldn’t have foreseen how beautifully in sync the two of them would become over time, until he found that he could no longer remember what life had been before she’d wandered into his club and claimed him.
And now that he had Erika, Dorian lost his taste for club games. He practiced his favorite hobbies on her. He had no need to bring anyone else into it. And more to the point, he had absolutely no interest in sharing her with anyone. He liked all her exhibitions to be for him alone.
Six months into living together officially—meaning six months into getting her to believe that he wasn’t going to throw her out, she wasn’t going anywhere the next time the whim took her and he really did love her to distraction—she looked at him over the top of the book she was reading one evening. She was curled up beside him, naked as she usually was when they were at home. He sat next to her with her legs on his lap, wearing his typical jeans and T-shirt.
And Berlin was there outside their windows, always beckoning, always bright and unexpected. Much like his woman, Dorian thought.
“I want to do something,” Erika said. “But I don’t know how you’ll like it.”
“If I don’t like it, I’ll tell you so and I will proceed from there.” And he grinned at her when she scowled at him. “Is that is advisable way to look at me?” he asked idly. “I haven’t played with my whip in a while.”
Erika shivered beside him, but her eyes gleamed. She liked to pretend she hated the whip... But they both knew better.
“I want to finish university,” she said, surprising him. Because he never knew what she would say or do next, and that was one more reason why he loved her. “Oxford has offered me a place, if I want to do my third year. But it would mean...”
Dorian set aside the papers he was reading, already forgetting whatever tedious report he been making his way through. He reached over and settled his hand on the nape of her neck, calming them both. Connecting them. “And what will you do with this fine Oxbridge education should you finally receive it in full?”
And her smile was hopeful and almost scared, as if she couldn’t believe she was daring to do this. To even discuss doing it.
It made his heart hurt.
But then, she was good at that, too.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Anything and everything. Isn’t that the point?” Then she bit back her smile, and looked down at her lap. “But Oxford is...in Oxford, not Berlin.”
“Let me guess. You want to have a discussion about what it is you think I want. And if I tell you that I forbid it, that gives you something to rebel against, which is far more comfortable than simply telling me what you want. Is that about right?”
She let out a sigh that was half a groan, tilting her head back to lean into his hand. “You know, sometimes, Dorian, I just want to have a conversation. I don’t want to scrape back every layer and expose my raw and beating heart to the air.”
He pulled her face to his and kissed her. “Tough luck, baby.”
“I want to do this,” she said, lifting her gaze and keeping it steady on his. “But the idea of missing you, even if it’s only during the week and I fly back here on weekends, or whatever, makes me feel...sick. What if I ruin this? I don’t think I could bear it.”
“You can’t ruin this,” he told her, keeping her face close to his. “It’s not up to you. If you want to go and do this thing, I want you to do it. Not everybody gets the opportunity to reset their past. I’ll support you completely.”
“My God,” she said, there against his mouth. “Do you have any idea how much I love you?”
He did. But he used his whip that night anyway, to measure it.
They found a flat in Oxford, and they made it work. Sometimes she flew out to meet him at his various business affairs. Other times, he came to her. And it wasn’t the same as living together 24/7, but it was fine. It was temporary, and they made it good.
And one night, when he waited for her in a pub not far from her last lecture of the day, he patiently turned down the advances of several women. And when he looked up, he found her watching him.
“Jealous?” he asked when she came to him, an odd look on her face.
“As a matter fact...not at all,” Erika said, and then she laughed. “I’ve worried so much about our separations, but I see now that I shouldn’t have.”
He traced her lips with his thumb, and felt himself harden, right there on the bar stool.
“Because you trust me implicitly?” he asked.
“That, and the reality of what we are to each other.”
She smiled at him, and
he felt it then. That she finally saw what he’d seen in her, and helped her bring to the surface. Real power. Their power. And damn, if it wasn’t beautiful.
Just like her smile. “A random girl in a bar could never give you what I do.”
“Amen,” he said, drawing her closer. He made sure to pull her hard against his thigh, so he could press into her pussy, right there where anyone could see them if they looked hard enough. “And remember, please, that your flat is not soundproofed. I wouldn’t want your neighbors to call the police this time.”
And she still blushed, which was yet another reason he loved her to distraction. But these days, she also smiled. Wickedly.
“Promises, promises,” she said.
And then paid for that impertinence, later.
Dorian was there, along with Conrad and his wife—but mercifully not her mother—when Erika walked across the stage and got her degree at last.
Because she could do anything, and would, and he would be right there with her every step of the way. He would put his rings on her finger. She would make him some babies. He knew what he wanted his happy-ever-after to look like, because he was already living it.
She was his. And she was perfect.
Especially when he knew that underneath her graduation robes, Erika wore nothing but his favorite plug that he’d greatly enjoyed inserting earlier—and his handprints, all over her extraordinary ass.
* * *
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