Something they no longer did, as Dorian had gone and gotten himself married.
To Conrad’s formerly selfish and irresponsible younger sister, of all people.
Though Conrad was forced to admit the two of them not only seemed astonishingly happy—but Dorian had been a good influence on Erika, too. She was currently back at university, finishing up the degree she’d swanned off from years back.
May wonders never cease, he thought now, and not for the first time.
And concentrated on the morsel before him, vanilla-scented pastry though she was.
“What kind of name is Rory?” he asked. “Are you a little boy?”
“It’s my name.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “And no. Obviously.”
“That’s it? In its totality? Rory isn’t short for something?”
She looked a little less confident, then. Or a little less self-righteous, as the case might be. “My mother named me Aurora, but no one’s ever called me that.”
“Why not?” he asked. And he almost called her little one. The way he would if this was a scene.
He put down his glass of water. And then, internally, shrugged. Because why not enjoy himself? He couldn’t be the only man who’d long had the fantasy of coming home from a business trip to find a pretty girl in his house. He could play a little.
Without actually playing, of course.
Clearly his cock was already all in.
“I don’t like Aurora,” she said. “It sounds like an old woman.”
“It’s a beautiful name.” He laughed at himself, but he did it anyway. “Little one.”
“Did you...?” Rory blinked. “It’s actually really demeaning to be called little one, you know. It basically reeks of toxic masculinity.”
Conrad smiled faintly. “Then leave.”
He was still only toying with her, but she didn’t turn around and head for the door. She stayed where she was, those astonishingly beautiful brown eyes of hers looking faintly dazed.
Conrad noted she didn’t move.
And he felt all the dark in him catch fire, then blaze.
“Paris is just outside,” he said. “If you wish to take on the patriarchy, I suggest you use the front door, let yourself out, and get on with it.”
“Well, I just...” She didn’t finish that sentence. She seemed to lose track of it halfway through.
Conrad braced his hands on the marble counter in front of him and regarded her.
“I don’t need a cleaner,” he said with a certain quiet intent. “I’ve just returned from a two-week business trip and I’m tired. I need a shower and then I need to fuck.”
Rory blinked. “Are you hitting on me?” She sounded scandalized.
“I do not hit on people, as a rule.”
His gaze was steady on her, so he could see the beat of her pulse in her throat. He could see the way she kept shifting her weight, moving from one foot to the other, and he was as sure as he could be that it wasn’t that her feet hurt in those clearly overly comfortable shoes she wore. He had no doubt that if he reached between her legs, he would find her hot and wet.
For him.
Like the good girl it was possible she was after all, deep inside.
“So you just like talking about fucking in a general sense, then?” she demanded, as if she had the upper hand. Or as if she thought she was discouraging clumsy attempts to flirt with her in some dreadful bar.
Conrad took his time rounding his counter. He found it amusing when she stood her ground in the great arch, her chin tilting a little farther into the air with every inch he closed between them.
Like she thought she could fight him.
Or that he would fight her in the first place, when he didn’t need to. Not when she was so busy fighting herself.
“If you don’t want to fuck me, then don’t.”
He stopped when he was a little too close, because he’d never met a boundary he didn’t like to push a little, just to see what happened. In this case, the effect on her was delightful. She stiffened. Her nostrils flared. She looked flushed.
“Are you...asking me to fuck you?”
“I don’t ask women to fuck me,” he said, trying his best not to laugh. “They beg me for the honor.”
He expected her to react to that, and he wasn’t disappointed. Rory pulled in a breath, ragged and obvious, and blinked rapidly, as if she didn’t quite know what to do with her face.
“Of course they do,” she said, and then she rolled her eyes.
Conrad almost laughed again.
“That’s not a line,” he said mildly. “I’m not trying to impress you. It’s a statement of fact. If you weren’t here when I arrived home, there is a long list of people I could have called who have already begged me for the privilege of being on that list in the first place.”
Her chin jutted higher. “Do you expect me to applaud?”
Conrad did laugh again, then, not sure why he was finding this entertaining. When he was, deliberately, strict and humorless when it came to these things. He liked discipline. Obedience. He expected his submissives to do as he asked, when he asked, or he found a different submissive. He had limited time and even less interest in “training” when that meant, as it so often did these days, hanging about at the service of a selfish woman who thought only of her own pleasure no matter how much time she spent on her knees.
Conrad, famously, had no interest whatsoever in the bratty sub phenomenon.
Yet here he was, hard and intrigued despite himself.
And it had been so long since he’d been drawn to anything that he went with it.
“You wouldn’t like the way I prefer to receive my applause,” he told her, not stepping back. Not giving her space. “It involves your mouth. You on your knees with your hands behind your back. And generally speaking, a healthy amount of tears on your part. That tends to be par for the course in the kind of sex I prefer. Perhaps the equipment you saw in the other room already clued you in.”
“You make people cry when they give you blow jobs?”
“They cry because my cock is large and I like to fuck their faces,” Conrad said, the way he might discuss mild weather with the Queen of England. “And because crying at their own helplessness while I take my pleasure as I please makes them even hotter.”
She was breathing fast. “That sounds revolting.”
But her eyes were glassy with heat. He could see it roll over her, making her whole body quiver. And that pulse in her neck beat out the truth.
“Liar,” he said, and made a faintly disapproving noise. “What am I going to do with you? If you can’t even tell the truth to yourself, how will you possibly achieve the honesty that I require?” He let his gaze sharpen. “Because let’s be very clear. Honesty isn’t a suggestion. It’s a commandment you break at your peril.”
“Wait a minute. I haven’t agreed to anything.”
“Rory. Little one. You haven’t left.”
It seemed to occur to her that they were standing too close, then. That she was breathing too hard, her skin was too hot, and her nipples were poking hard against her oversize T-shirt—and worse, that he could see all of those things. She scrambled back a few feet and caught herself against the exposed brick wall behind her.
He made no move to follow her, and he could see that confused her.
“I’m not opposed to a sexual interaction,” she said after a moment, though every bit of her body language suggested that she wasn’t nearly as blasé as she sounded. “Necessarily.”
“I’m delighted to hear that.” Conrad watched the way the hand she’d shot out against the brick wall trembled. “But I generally require consent to be far more unambiguous. And enthusiastic. And occasionally documented.”
She shook her head at that, but sharpened her gaze on him as if that could keep her co
nfusion at bay. He rather liked that she came to it naturally.
“But there are some things that you should know about me,” she told him, in the same lofty voice she’d used to lecture him on artisanal housecleaning, of all ridiculous things.
“Don’t worry too much about that,” he said. In what he liked to call his soothing voice. Not to be confused with his commanding voice. Though both usually had the same effect. “If I get my hands on you, I’ll know everything about you. Sooner or later.”
Her lips parted at that and it seemed to take her a long moment to shake it off. “First of all, I’m going to need you to respect my identity.”
“Which identity is this? An artist whose medium is bleach in a bathtub? An American who distinguishes herself by wandering around Paris dressed appallingly?”
She frowned, swaying on her feet like she couldn’t decide where to swing first.
“I’m pansexual,” she announced, and nodded, as if cosigning her own declaration.
“Again, you have my felicitations.”
“I’m pansexual for sure and probably demisexual, and—”
“Explain to me what these words mean to you,” Conrad said, interrupting her.
Her frown deepened. “What do you mean, what they mean to me? They have specific definitions.”
“Most things do. But what are those definitions? As you understand them.”
“I can be attracted to anyone, and am,” she threw at him. “I like all kinds of actors and actresses. But I only really enjoy sex with people I have feelings for.”
“You cannot possibly have feelings for me. You met me moments ago, while trespassing in my private area. What do we do if these definitions fail us?”
“I guess you could consider me het-curious.” She inclined her head like royalty, which made him want to do all manner of filthy, glorious things to her. She was that lovely. “That means I’m curious about the behavior of heterosexuals. Though I should assume that’s what you are?”
“Among other things,” he agreed, perilously close to laughing again.
“Well. Okay then.”
Conrad thrust his hands in his pockets and kept his gaze on her. “Everyone has a sexual identity, Rory. I like power differentials, personally.”
“Both ways?”
He smiled. “No. I like power games, I insist on obedience, and when I fuck, I’m always in charge.”
She...fluttered. There was no other word for it.
“And before you tell me how little that interests you, you should know that I can see how aroused you are,” he said quietly. “Arousal is not action, I grant you, but let’s try to be honest about it.”
“You can’t see that. You can’t see any of that.”
“I can. For example, the look on your face right now tells me that for all the many attractions you claim you’ve had to all and sundry—all on screens, I assume, given you mentioned their job descriptions—you haven’t had a lot in the way of decent lovers. Is that wrong?”
Rory blew out a breath. “What do you mean by a decent lover?”
“One that made you come,” he said dryly. “A lot.”
“I’m really more focused on intimacy.”
“So the answer is no, then.” Conrad shook his head. “How can you decide what your sexual identity is if you’ve never had good sex?”
“I’ve had great sex,” she retorted.
“Great sex without coming?” He lifted a shoulder, then dropped it. “What is that?”
“Just because you’re psychotically goal oriented doesn’t mean everyone is.”
“Rory. Sex is about orgasms, or you could simply have an intimate cup of coffee with a friend. When a man has sex, he can expect that he will always have an orgasm. Why as a woman should you expect any less?”
“I—” But she stopped. She stared at him, and he could see the way she had to catch herself, as if her knees weren’t quite working. Once again, he was struck by how beautiful she was, this absurd argument and all. “It’s the closeness that really matters.”
Conrad sighed. “Do you know who says things like that? People who don’t know any better. Or men who don’t care to do their jobs.”
“I have a million orgasms,” she assured him. “All the time.”
“Rory. I can make you come in minutes. Right here. That’s the very least you should expect from a person you take into your body. It pains me to imagine that you have careened through life allowing your lovers to treat you so shabbily.”
“My lovers, of which there are many,” she said, in a tone of voice that suddenly made him wonder if she’d had any lovers at all, “know, as I do, that there’s a lot more to sex than just coming.”
“Of course there is.” He found himself smiling again. “Or everyone would simply masturbate and call it a day. I hope you do, by the way. Since you don’t achieve satisfaction anywhere else.”
“I’m a sexually liberated, infinitely satisfied woman. I am fully in charge of my own orgasm—”
“That’s a yes, you do. I think. I’m pleased to hear it.”
“I demand, and receive, exactly what I want in bed.”
“Then it’s sad that what you demand and receive is so paltry. And unsatisfying.”
“I think you’re full of it,” she threw at him, her eyes overly bright. “The truth of the matter is, everyone has different bodies. You can’t make sweeping statements like—”
“Like, I can make you come?” Another laugh came out of him, astonishing him. But then, this whole scenario was astonishing, and here he was. Still participating in it. “But I can. In minutes, as I said.”
She moved forward in a display of aggression that he would never have tolerated in any of the women he normally played with.
But there was something about Rory that entertained him. He couldn’t have said why. She was different. All wrong, in fact.
Yet that wasn’t really what he was concentrating on as she put her hands on her hips, stuck her face in his, and scowled at him.
Actually scowled.
At him.
“Okay, big guy,” she threw at him, which was obviously unacceptable on every level, and yet only made him hard. “Then prove it.”
CHAPTER THREE
RORY HAD MADE a mistake.
A huge mistake, she thought while everything inside her shuddered and those dark, navy blue eyes of his seemed to...turn to steel.
It was as if he’d put on a mask, suddenly.
Or worse, a voice in her suggested, taken one off.
It wasn’t that his face changed, really. He was still as beautiful. As striking, no matter he wasn’t her type. It was as if he was suddenly...more than all that. And she could feel her response prickle all over her, inside and out, until she felt almost feverish.
Hot. Cold.
Back and forth.
While she was wholly unable to jerk her gaze away from his.
Rory had the insane notion that he’d picked her up and was holding her in the palm of his hand, though he was only staring down at her in that darkly unreadable way of his. And wasn’t touching her at all.
Another man might have reacted. She’d banked on a reaction, but Conrad only burned. And studied her as if he was a sheathed weapon she had no business getting near.
She could suddenly see nothing else when she looked at him but that danger.
Rory couldn’t say she’d ever paid that much attention to her nipples before in all her life, but now they were so sensitive that the weight of her T-shirt against them was almost unbearable.
But if she let herself think too much about why, she thought she might pass out on the spot.
And the way her heart kept battering at her ribs, that was a very real worry.
“See?” She made herself demand, aware that her voice was a little too much
on the uneven side. That wasn’t good. But she was still standing there, hands on hips and her face in his, and she was sure that if she didn’t double down, she might die. Or worse, something in her whispered. “All talk and no—”
“That’s enough.”
There was something about that voice of his. It wasn’t harsh. It wasn’t sharp or loud, even. If she’d had to describe it, Rory would have said it was patient, and surely there was no reason that word should have rattled around inside her like that. Particularly when it wasn’t the sort of patience she would normally think of when she used that word. He was no saintly, self-sacrificing grandmother type.
His patience was charged, somehow. Weaponized.
But the truly astonishing thing was that she simply...obeyed. Her mouth shut with an audible snap. Her hands slid off her hips. She didn’t exactly shrink or cringe, but she stood normally.
It was the strangest thing.
“I will tell you what I want you to do,” Conrad said. It was almost as if his voice became another unbearable fabric against her skin, but inside her, too. It was so...rumbly. The kind of deep that seemed to move through her, fusing to parts of her she hadn’t even known were there.
She felt her clit pulse and nearly doubled over, because the only time she could remember feeling it quite like that was when she’d gotten her piercing down there. On a whim one night in Nashville because maybe she’d thought she needed to prove that just because she was still there didn’t mean she wasn’t doing things. And what she did best was something sexual in one way or another, because that was easy enough to perform. Especially online, where it was much easier to cut and filter and create a scene. She’d made a little video of the proceedings and gained thousands of followers. All for a little U-shaped barbell through the hood over her clit so that any pressure at all made it sing.
Except there was no pressure. There was only Conrad’s voice.
She fought it.
Because she was much more used to the way things looked. The way things might make her look. What certain images or opinions said about her.
Tempt Me Page 3