About the Authors

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–nominated author CAITLIN CREWS loves writing romance. She teaches her favorite romance novels in creative-writing classes at places like UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Program, where she finally gets to utilize the MA and PhD in English literature she received from the University of York in England. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with her very own hero and too many pets. Visit her at caitlincrews.com.

RACHAEL STEWART adores conjuring up stories, from heartwarmingly romantic to wildly erotic. She’s been writing since she could put pen to paper—as the stacks of scrawled-on pages in her loft will attest to. A Welsh lass at heart, she now lives in Yorkshire, with her very own hero and three awesome kids—and if she’s not tapping out a story she’s wrapped up in one or enjoying the great outdoors. Reach her on Facebook, Twitter (@rach_b52) or at rachaelstewartauthor.com.

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Also by Caitlin Crews

The Billionaires Club

The Risk

Hotel Temptation

Unleashed

Undone

Untamed

Also by Rachael Stewart

Mr. One-Night Stand

Mr. Temptation

Naughty or Nice

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Teach Me

Caitlin Crews

Getting Dirty

Rachael Stewart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09935-6

TEACH ME & GETTING DIRTY

Teach Me © 2020 Caitlin Crews Getting Dirty © 2020 Rachael Stewart

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Teach Me

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Getting Dirty

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

About the Publisher

Teach Me

Caitlin Crews

Read the first book in the Filthy Rich Billionaires trilogy by USA TODAY bestselling author Caitlin Crews!

“Here, now and until I say otherwise…the only thing you have to worry about is doing exactly what I tell you to do.”

Socialite Erika Vanderberg has been planning for this night for months. Years. All so she can finally gain entrance to Berlin’s most exclusive sex club. Erika is here for one person: Dorian Alexander, her brother’s best friend and her secret childhood crush. Only, now her childish crush has been replaced by something hungry, raw and oh-so-wickedly adult. And the moment Erika sees Dorian—his dark eyes intent and focused, that hard body—everything comes crashing into place.

Yes, she’s submissive. And yes, she desperately wants to surrender to Dorian over and over again. Oh yes, please.

But Erika has spent her life pretending to be a spoiled little socialite who pushes everyone away. Submitting to this delicious man and all his heady power won’t change who she is—will it? After one taste, there is already a dark hunger between them…one that threatens to unleash who Erika really is.

Harlequin DARE publishes sexy romances featuring powerful alpha heroes and bold, fearless heroines exploring their deepest fantasies.

Four new Harlequin DARE titles are available each month, wherever ebooks are sold!

To Rose, in hopes you’ll perform this one, too.

CHAPTER ONE

SHE WAS IN.

Finally.

Erika Vanderburg tried to breathe as elation and anticipation coursed through her in equal measure, as if in time to the deep thump of the music that wound its way around and through the crowd and seemed to rest against her clavicle. Like a heavy hand.

The notion made her warm. Maybe too warm.

Concentrate, she ordered herself.

She’d worked too hard to get in the door to waste her one chance…fluttering.

No one could simply walk into the infamous Walfreiheit Club, though many tried. The line of hopefuls stretched for acres on its once-a-month semipublic exhibition nights, like tonight. Some waited outside every night and never got in. And though Berlin was a city filled with sex clubs to suit any mood or experimental phase—or all of the above, all at once—Walfreiheit was its most exclusive.

Erika had been trying to get in the door for going on six months now. She would fly in the night before, then spend the day treating her jet lag at the Hotel Adlon Kempinski Berlin, her favorite hotel in the city. She liked to take her time selecting an outfit from the high-end shops on Friedrichstrasse before relaxing in the hotel’s five-star spa. The routine was familiar now, and got her ready for a long night of waiting in line with the rest of the hopefuls outside the converted old building in East Berlin. All of them trying to look appropriate, whatever that meant when the place in question was an upscale bondage club. And when the opportunity to enter was entirely at the whim of whoever was at the door.

She had been reminding herself—sternly—that there was a point to all this, despite the annoyance of being denied entry month after month, when one of the terrifyingly calm and formidably solid bouncers had pointed straight at her. Erika had frozen solid.

“You,” he’d said in German, then shook his head at the dark-haired woman next to Erika who surged forward. “The blonde.”

Erika had been certain that he’d shake his head at her when she moved toward the door, but he didn’t. He opened the rope and waved her through. It was on her to somehow…not fall apart with sheer giddiness as she was actually let in.

The Walfreiheit Club specialized in kink. Specifically BDSM, though it was whispered that definitions were kept loose to better serve the imaginations and desires of its exclusive clientele. Members played as they liked within the walls, and membership was never automatic. No amount of money could buy someone a place if the other members didn’t vote them in. Unanimously. There were always stories about this or that celebrity or tycoon trying to buy his way in, only to be summarily denied, because the club did as the club liked. Always.

In the same vein, on exhibition nights, the men on the door made their selections from the vast line outside according to their fancy. Selected hopefuls were brought inside to the large, cavernous foyer where Mistress Olga waited, dressed in full fetish gear—though what was actually terrifying about her was the arch amusement she wore on her distractingly beautiful face.

Erika had not been prepared for Mistress Olga. She wasn’t sure a person could be prepared, especially because the bouncers outside were only collecting a group of potentials for the mistress to sort through. Which she did.

With brutal precision.

The tiny yet ferocious woman reputed to be the most sought-after Domme in Berlin threw out most of the people who’d waited in that foyer with Erika at a glance. She sauntered down the line, flicking a finger to dismiss each person she didn’t like. She nodded at a stunningly pretty-looking man. She studied a woman with a bowed head, then murmured an assent. By the time she’d reached Erika, she’d gotten rid of most of the people who’d been let in. And she stood there, magnificent in her spike-heeled boots that stopped midthigh, training her very cool, assessing look all over Erika until Erika rather thought she might scream. Or otherwise embarrass herself beyond repair.

She would never know how she managed to just…stand there.

“You will do,” Mistress Olga pronounced, in crisp German.

Erika had been ushered into a smaller foyer, this one in all black. She and the other two selected were met by another woman, this one clearly not a Domme. Or so Erika assumed from the way she bowed her head to Mistress Olga. The three of them were made to fill out extensive paperwork, were given bright yellow wristbands that they were warned sternly not to take off, and were then treated to a long list of the club’s rules and regulations.

The truth was Erika would have agreed to absolutely anything to get inside.

She’d played around with various outfits for months. How did a person broadcast the necessary submissiveness required in a place that took its sexual roles very seriously while also making sure to advertise to one specific person exactly what he’d been missing all these years? She’d fiddled with different attempts to hit that sweet spot every month. Tonight she wore a strappy little top that cupped her breasts and lifted them up, but left most of her shoulders and her midriff bare. And a tiny little skirt that flirted with the bottom curve of her ass. The only other thing she wore was a thong that peeked up over the waistband of her skirt.

It wasn’t her most subtle outfit. But what was subtle about sexual escapades that started with a frank negotiation of terms, needs, expectations, desires and limits? Erika had decided to fully embrace what she was walking into.

Though that had seemed more like a power move before she was actually doing it.

“All right,” she muttered to herself beneath her breath as the huge doors were opened and the three lucky selections were led through into the wall of noise and simmering dark. “You need to settle down.”

The main floor of the club was big, soaring up from the open space where most of the crowd was gathered to a second-floor gallery that offered views of the action down below. And, the club submissives had told them, private playrooms. Not that a person sporting a bright yellow guest wristband would be allowed up there.

There was a bar against one wall, though that, too, was subject to strict rules. No more than two drinks for anyone who wanted to play, no exceptions, and no drinks for yellow wristbands at all. Alcohol is a privilege of membership, they’d been told. There were a number of small, private seating areas tucked into nooks along the dark walls, and then a wider, more open collection of sofas and tables and comfortable-looking chairs, which Erika assumed were as much for aftercare as for socializing. She’d read all about it.

There was a dance floor, and there were people out there working off their energy and anticipation—or maybe that was just her—to the seething, brooding electronic music that filled the space. And made everything feel edgier. Cut through with danger.

But beyond that, Erika knew thanks to the hand-drawn map they’d been shown up front, lay the dungeon. Here there be dungeons, someone had written in bold letters and they’d all laughed on cue—and had all sounded equally nervous, to her ears.

She pulled in a breath now, then let it out in a rush. Because she knew without a doubt that the dungeon was where she would find him.

And she would finally be able to set her plan in motion.

There were butterflies in her belly as she began to make her way through the crowd, her gaze skimming over couples in leather and latex or jeans, submissives in various chains and collars or merely kneeling at their dominants’ feet. She took an extra moment to admire two buff, beautiful men on the end of their top’s leash wearing bridles and jaunty tails.

She skirted the edge of the dance floor, her feet bare against the hardwood. It felt strange to be barefoot in a club, but it was deliberate. Submissives are encouraged to go barefoot, they’d been told at the desk, where they’d surrendered their phones, wallets, coats and bags, as well as their shoes.

Erika would have worn clown shoes if asked, and had thought it was a silly request meant to make the club more mysterious—but now she got it. The wood beneath her feet felt silky and warm. It was one more sensation to add to the mix. The heat of so many bodies in one space. The cool prickle of air moving over the flesh she’d left uncovered. She could feel her pulse pick up as she wove her way through the crowd, carefully keeping her gaze averted from anyone she passed.

Especially if they had that particular look about them, too calm and too direct, that she knew meant they were dominants.

Erika was wearing the costume of a submissive, and she’d experimented a little with the whole power-exchange thing, but she intended to explore it further with only one very specific person. Starting tonight.

It had taken her six months to get in the door tonight, but she’d spent years working her way here, one way or another. She’d danced nearly naked beneath the desert sky one summer, then experimented in the red-light district out there in Black Rock City. That had been illuminating, if dusty, and it had spearheaded her own little journey. She’d followed her libido wherever it took her, aware that there was a restlessness in her but never sure quite how to address it. She’d tried partying. She’d tried spiritual retreats. She’d done yoga in Santa Monica and she’d surfed in Bali. She’d hiked and she’d communed and still, that restlessness had dogged her.

That had been true since she’d dropped out of university after her second year, but Erika had felt an enormous sense of relief when she’d packed up her things and left Oxford behind. She’d felt less sanguine about her choices when her officious, tight-assed older brother, Conrad—in his role as head of the family that he’d assumed after their father had died, which Erika felt he’d taken to a little too readily and far too sternly—had cut off her financial support.

“I’m not supporting you while you waste your life,” he’d said after he’d summoned her to his palatial home in Paris.

She’d rolled her eyes. “I’m actually getting a life, Conrad.”

“Get it with a job, then,” he’d retorted.

And could not be swayed, epic asshole that he was.

Erika had gone right out and found herself a job in a dive bar in New Orleans, because she was sure that would gall her uppity brother, and she’d had every intention of paying her own way to make her own fun. But then her dramatic, theatrically self-involved mother had swept in and restored Erika’s access to the family money, because the only thing Chriszette Vanderburg feared was not having strings to pull on to control her offspring.

At first, Erika had resisted, because she didn’t want to answer to anyone. Especially not a member of her family. But Chriszette had implored her and Erika had given in because Chriszette was difficult to ignore and harder still to deny, and that was how she’d ended up acting like a paid companion when her mother was between torrid love affairs. And having to find new ways to ask for money without ever being so crass and vulgar as to ask for it the rest of the time.

But what she’d really missed in that time was not Conrad, who could shove his tough love up his own ass as far as Erika was concerned. She didn’t care if he treated her like a walking disaster, because really, he always had. What she missed was the occasional access to Dorian.

She shuddered a little, involuntarily, as that name—his name—rolled through her the way it always did.

Dorian Alexander was her older brother’s best friend, stretching back to their boarding school days. They had been thrown together at age eight and had been fast friends from the start. She had heard Conrad refer to Dorian as his brother.

But he was not Erika’s brother.

The last time she’d seen Dorian, it had been at the family charity ball his shipping magnate grandfather threw each year in Athens. Erika had gone with her mother, who liked to order her daughter to serve as her date at such things when she didn’t have a lover on hand. And yes, if she was honest, Erika had accompanied her mother to an event she could have talked her way out of for the distinct, petty pleasure of flaunting herself in front of her brother.

Conrad had been icily civil. Though Erika had seen that telltale muscle going wild in his jaw and had smugly enjoyed the satisfaction of shooting him an unmistakable middle finger simply by turning up and not begging him to reconsider.

Dorian had not followed Conrad’s lead. He had been distinctly uncivil when Erika had chirped a greeting his way, and her stomach had knotted up with a strange heat when he’d stared at her. Unsmiling.

“Why don’t you dance with me?” Erika had asked him, feeling reckless and daring. Where Conrad was infinitely disapproving and always annoyed by Erika’s existence, Dorian had always been…stern. But there was something about the particular intensity of that sternness and the frank way he looked at her—at everything—that had always made Erika feel…silly.

That night she’d decided to lean into the silliness. And besides, she’d been wearing a sparkly dress that bared most of her back and hinted at her ass. Okay, more than hinted. She’d wondered how long he’d stay stern if he had his hands on her.

“I don’t dance with little brats in the middle of temper tantrums,” Dorian had said. Calmly.

And she’d never understood how he could do that. How he could look at her in a certain way, usually while saying obnoxious things to her, and it only made her want to giggle. Or maybe melt. Or worse, both, while the knotted heat inside her seemed to thump its way lower the longer he looked at her.

“That sounds like Conrad-sourced propaganda,” she’d said, laughing.

Because she was afraid that if she didn’t laugh, she’d do something far more embarrassing.

Dorian did not laugh. He was a tall, extraordinarily well built man. That had been true when he was in high school and Erika had seen him on the odd holiday he’d spent with Conrad’s family instead of his own. But time clearly loved him. He looked as if he was chiseled from stone, his lean muscle honed to perfection. His dark hair was closely cropped, yet somehow gave the impression he’d only moments before run his fingers through it. His eyes were a cool coffee brown, excruciatingly intense. Powerful. His cheekbones were so high they made Erika think of arias.

And his mouth was always set in that firm line. She’d spent a lot of time staring at it over the years, so she knew its every slight quirk and the raw sensuality that seemed to brood its way out of him no matter how stern he looked at any given moment.

But the look he gave her at that ball in Athens was pitiless.

“Is it propaganda or simple truth that you flounced out of university and refused to return?” he asked coolly.

“I wouldn’t call it flouncing.”

She expected him to launch into a screed on the importance of education. Or to discuss the firsts he and Conrad had received when they’d gone up, because of course they had. She’d wanted him to, really, because surely if he was horrendously boring and too much like Conrad she’d stop feeling so lit up when she saw him.

Dorian was not the only person around who disliked Erika, well she knew. But he was the only one whose dislike she felt so keenly. And the only one whose dislike did not result in her immediate indifference.

But Dorian did not wax rhapsodic about the dubious charms of an Oxbridge degree as expected. “Your brother has far more patience with willful disobedience than I would,” he’d said instead.

“I’m not sure I would consider cutting off his only sister very patient,” Erika had replied, not sure why she felt flushed. With a surprising wallop of what couldn’t be shame, surely. And something else she hadn’t wanted to name. “But I suppose your mileage may vary.”

“I don’t negotiate disobedience,” Dorian had said in that same quiet, intense way. His gaze was fierce and disapproving and, worse, made her shiver. “I punish it.”

Erika hadn’t known what had come over her then. It was part of that flush that seemed to deepen by the moment. Red and everywhere and what was happening to her?

She’d tilted her head to one side. “How would you punish me?”

Dorian hadn’t smiled. If anything, he’d looked more forbidding. And harder, somehow, though he didn’t move or shift as far as she could see. Erika had felt herself go a little weak, even as she’d felt herself get wet and needy between her legs.

Right there in a fancy dress, in a room where her mother and brother also stood.

And that restless thing in her…settled. Into a kind of expectant stillness she’d never felt before in her life.

“I generally start with a spanking,” he’d said very distinctly. “And not the kind you’d think was fun, Erika. The kind that would encourage you to change your behavior.”

“Or what?” she managed to ask, though her voice was barely above a whisper.

His eyes had gleamed. And she could swear there was something like a curve to his hard mouth. “Or I would be even more disappointed with you than I already am.”

And it was at that moment that a great many things about her older brother’s best friend came together for Erika. With the force of a blow—or, perhaps, that spanking.

Dorian had sauntered away as if nothing had happened. As if Erika was breathing normally and wasn’t the least bit overheated and reeling. The genteel crowd had swallowed up that gorgeous body of his, dressed in black tie that somehow managed to suggest that he was from another time.

Her blood had thudded inside her, making her heart feel heavy and her head light. And the sense that he’d spanked her without putting a hand on her only seemed to grow, turning into an ache. An ache that spread, then went deep.

All the whispers that followed in Dorian’s wake made a different kind of sense suddenly. The very specific way certain women looked at him, as if they knew a secret about him. Erika had always thought it was simply because he was so powerful, with all that Alexander family money augmented by the tech company he’d gone and started himself after university. Apparently feeling that where there was one fortune, there might as well be two.

And when she began looking specifically for rumors about Dorian Alexander in darker, more shadowy places… Well. That was when she’d really found him. And it hadn’t taken a whole lot of digging to learn that Dorian was famous for a great many things in the wider, more civilized world, but when it came to sex he was a king of a whole different sort.

In fact, they called him Master.

Her schoolgirl crush flipped inside out and turned into something far more edgy.

Particularly because, the more she thought about Dorian and spanking—and Dorian spanking her, for that matter—all her vague fantasies and all her sexual explorations seemed to spark into something new. And much, much hotter.

She’d experimented with light bondage and a few tame scenes in clubs in New York. London. Lisbon. She’d spent a particularly hot and steamy winter down under in Melbourne, playing top and bottom games with some new friends. And anytime it got to be too much, playing dominance games with tops who were never quite what she wanted, she thought of Dorian.

Master Dorian, as he was known. Master Dorian, who had used to scene quite a bit in the clubs—especially in Berlin, at the Walfreiheit—but did so less and less these days. Master Dorian, who was a legend and a favorite fantasy of pretty much every submissive she met.

Master Dorian, who had nothing to prove, had never given a submissive his collar and was the only thing Erika could take from her brother that he would miss.

He’d had no use for her as a supposedly spoiled rotten socialite, sure. But would he feel differently about her as a submissive?

It was time to find out.

She felt her pulse pick up when she saw the displays as she made her way into the dungeon. A pretty girl strapped to a table while her Domme applied all manner of wicked-looking clamps to her, murmuring encouragement as she shuddered and squirmed. In the next room, a Dom was working his submissive into a series of intricate and beautiful shibari knots, as if she was an installation piece, there with her ass in the air and her face to the floor. One scene bled into the next. Threesomes. Fireplay. Suspension. One erotic fantasy brought to life after another.

But the biggest throng of onlookers had flocked to the biggest space, toward the back, and Erika headed in that direction. Even though she felt something shiver over her, like foreboding.

Because she knew what she would see. They’d all heard the whispers out there in line, that Master Dorian was picking up his whip tonight for the first time in ages. That he was putting on a show.

But God help her, she wasn’t prepared.

Dorian stood on a raised dais, facing a Saint Andrew’s Cross. A woman was strapped to it, straining against her bonds, moving her head back and forth in erotic distress. That alone made Erika’s belly quiver.

But Dorian took her breath away.

He looked darker and more dangerous than she remembered him, dressed in dark trousers, boots and a black T-shirt that managed to hug that remarkable chest of his like an obsessed lover. Every single one of the muscles she’d marveled at when he was clad in black tie was on display. And more, like his mouthwatering expanse of sheer abdominal fitness.

And it was hard not to appreciate his glorious corded arms as he wielded that lethal, deliciously terrifying whip.

Erika’s mouth went dry. She felt her eyes go glassy, but she couldn’t look away. She felt rooted to the spot as surely as if it was her up there on the cross, writhing, tears wetting her own cheeks while cuffs kept her exactly where he wanted her.

Meanwhile, Dorian made the whip dance.

He was murmuring in a low voice and the woman responded, and it took Erika some time to understand that he was telling her exactly where each strike would land. Then he waited as she writhed, moaned.

But each time she quivered. Then said distinctly, “Yes, Master Dorian. Please.”

Yes, Master Dorian. Please.

The words jolted through Erika like a live wire. Like the kiss of that terrible whip, landing precisely where he said it would.

He was controlled, precise. Beautiful and terrible, like an angel. He moved like a furious dancer, a dark and mighty cloud, and Erika thought the whole crowd was as breathless and undone as she was.

And for the first time since that party in Athens, Erika thought to ask herself what in the hell she was thinking.

All her little sex games were just that. Games. But Dorian was very plainly the real thing. She’d been charging up a gentle slope and calling it a mountain, and it was only now that she understood the enormity of her error. She wanted to poke at her brother, not…this. A whip and a crowd and that hungry, greedy thing she could feel turn over inside her and bare its fangs.

She didn’t want that. Erika felt exposed, even though she stood with everyone else, and knew no one was looking at her. Still, she felt vibrant with embarrassment and panic. Most of all she felt deeply, remarkably silly. Foolish.

The brat he’d called her, and more.

She needed to leave. Now. Before she made an even bigger fool of herself.

But she couldn’t seem to tear herself away. The scene on the dais went on. The whip licked over the submissive on the stage, bringing her closer and closer to that brutally perfect end that Erika could feel all over her. Her own nipples were hard. She was much too wet. She wanted to squirm but she didn’t dare move. Or she couldn’t move.

And then, finally, he asked and was answered with a sob. But a yes, Master Dorian, please, all the same. Dorian shot out his arm. The whip cracked.

Then landed with merciless precision on the submissive’s exposed clit.

The girl on the cross screamed, her body shaking wildly as she arched into a climax, her body like a bow against the cross. Out there in the dark of the audience, rooted to the floor and still bright red with the realization that she shouldn’t have come here at all, Erika felt her own body clench and tremble, as if she was on the same slippery edge.

That was when Dorian stopped. He looked out toward the crowd and the murmurs of appreciation. He looked as if he might smile.

But then he saw her.

She felt the impact of those fierce, intense eyes. She saw the flare of recognition.

And without a single hand upon her—without anything but that outraged gaze of his—Erika felt herself catapult straight over that edge.

Hard.

CHAPTER TWO

HIS BEST FRIEND’S little sister was coming right there on the floor of his club.

That it was impossible—that she shouldn’t be in the club, or dressed like that, or witness to his particular enthusiasms without his knowledge or approval—didn’t change the fact that it was happening. Right there before Dorian Alexander’s astonished eyes.

Her climax rolled over her, and he could see entirely too many things about little Erika Vanderburg, then, that he understood in a flash he would never be able to unsee.

Her plump, high breasts and her hard and proud nipples that poked out from behind the top she wore, begging for his mouth. Or better yet, his clamps. Her exposed abdomen, a sensuous display of softly toned female flesh that quivered with the force of her orgasm. And low on her hips, so low he could see her thong poke up above the waistband, she wore a skirt so tiny it hardly deserved the name, making him think that if she shivered that much more he might actually catch a glimpse of her pussy, too.

The mental image he’d carried around forever of little Erika, maybe age ten, with pigtails he wasn’t sure she’d ever actually worn, went up in smoke.

His gaze shot back up to find hers. Her eyes were heavy-lidded and flooded with arousal. And something else the dominant in him was delighted to see looked a whole lot like the kind of panic that made a good scene sing.

Dorian had been reasonably aroused throughout his whipping demonstration, because he loved what a whip could do to a trembling, beautifully bound woman who let it kiss her and carry her off into bliss. He didn’t understand anyone who claimed they didn’t.

But looking at Erika—and that ferocious orgasm that still held her in its grip—he was suddenly as ragingly turned-on as if instead of a demonstration he’d been deep in a scene he expected to end in his own release.

That’s Conrad’s little sister, something in him protested, but his body didn’t seem to care. His body saw only a lovely submissive, flushed and wide-eyed and panting—just the way he liked them—and all she’d been doing was watching him whip someone else.

Dorian couldn’t permit himself to focus on that, so he focused instead on what he was supposed to be doing on that dais in the first place. Which was demonstrating one of his hobbies for the assembled club members and tourists here on one of the club’s exhibition nights. Only a split second had passed, he was sure of it, despite the fact that to him it felt like a lifetime or two—but it was still a loss of focus.

It didn’t matter how long it was. His lapse of attention galled him. He was no novice, for God’s sake.

He moved over to the cross, murmuring to Angelica as he released her from her cuffs, soothing her as they both waited for her permanent dom to climb up to the dais and take charge of her aftercare. Dorian had to make himself focus the way he should have been already, because what was important here was caring for Angelica, not a bratty little sub—

Sister, he snapped at himself. Bratty little sister. Of his best friend. A man who was more family than friend, as a matter of fact, and who Dorian knew would be distinctly unamused at the idea that his wild-child baby sister knew a club like Walfreiheit existed. He didn’t want to think about Conrad’s reaction to the news that she was going around climaxing in public and, worse still, because of Dorian.

When Angelica was off the cross and in her dominant’s care, Dorian’s responsibilities to her were finished. He handled his equipment and packed it away, then straightened. He turned slowly, not entirely convinced that Erika hadn’t been a figment of his imagination. Though why he would conjure up such a maddening little brat he spent very little time thinking about unless she was right there in front of him, he had no idea. He searched the crowd, half expecting to find no trace of her. He would find a blonde sub who reminded him of Erika instead, and the good news was, he would know exactly what to do with her. He would tie her up, make her scream and cry and come, and exorcise this strange demon he hadn’t known lurked about inside him.

But Erika was right where he’d left her. The actual Erika Vanderburg, his best friend’s little sister, in the disturbingly succulent flesh. She stood stock-still on the hardwood floor, gaping at the stage.

At him.

When their eyes met again, Dorian could feel the temperature rise, then sizzle.

He told himself it was sheer outrage.

Her eyes widened. Dorian lifted an arrogant brow in reply. It was usually sufficient to make submissive knees bend. Hers appeared to tremble, which sent a kind of shock straight through him. And even up on the dais he could see the gulp of air she took in.

He wasn’t surprised when she turned around and dived through the crowd as if she actually believed she could run away from him. Here in this club that in some seasons had operated as his second home. He wasn’t surprised, but still, the fact she was trying to escape him made something in him, dark and hungry…wake up.

Then focus. On her.

Intently.

He jumped down to the floor, following her through the crowd. He was aware that the people parted before him to let him through, the way they always did. He was vaguely cognizant of the usual congratulations and sultry little come-ons from the hopeful unattached submissives who followed him around in packs on nights like this, but he was focused on his quarry. He stalked her through the crowd, feeling a kick of satisfaction as she looked around wildly—then turned deeper into the dungeons rather than out toward the bar.

He followed, nodding at his friends as he passed. He was in clear pursuit of Erika, and he didn’t have to say a word to explain himself. Master Dorian stalked no submissives when they all flocked to him, and here he was, going after this one.

She might as well have worn his name around her neck.

A not-unpleasant thought.

Which really should have horrified him.

It did, he assured himself. Of course it did. No matter why she’d come here.

Though the notion that she might have come tonight to play with others filled him with a hollow sort of heat that took him a moment or two to realize wasn’t simply temper.

It was deeper. Richer.

He recognized his own rare possessiveness—and should have turned around right then and there.

But he didn’t.

She was walking faster, very nearly running while doing her best not to look as if she was doing any such thing. Dorian followed, taking the opportunity to control his breath. To settle himself down. To make sure that he was in complete control of himself, as he always fought to be, no matter what Erika Vanderburg was doing here or that bright fire that burned in him and seemed to spell out her name.

Erika made another mistake, cutting toward what he imagined she thought was a hallway. And it was, but Dorian knew the far door was locked on a night like this, when nonmembers roamed the premises and didn’t have permission to wander all the different areas of the Walfreiheit Club as they pleased.

He slowed down, checking in with his control again and trying to separate the dominant in him from her older brother’s best friend—no matter his cock’s take on the matter. By the time he made it to the mouth of the narrow hall that usually functioned as a shortcut to the club’s offices, Erika was already turned back around, clearly having realized there was no escape.

Then she saw him.

She jolted as if he’d used his whip on her, which, predictably, made him imagine doing exactly that—though that was a privilege she would have to earn.

No, he reminded himself. Not her. Not Conrad’s little sister.

Dorian followed her into the hallway, casually blocking any possible exit. The hall was narrow and not exactly brightly lit—but not so dim he couldn’t see that her eyes were wide. And he wasn’t sure how he’d never noticed before that they were a particular shade of blue that reminded him of his grandfather’s island nestled out there in the Aegean Sea.

He couldn’t say he cared much for the comparison now.

He stopped when he was a foot or so away from her. He folded his arms over his chest, widened his stance and waited.

And Erika quivered. He could see the pulse in her neck, banging out exactly the sort of rhythm he liked best. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, betraying her anxiety. He had made a study of the female body in various degrees of erotic distress and he could read her easily. And still, she pulled out that careless, reckless smile of hers that she had to know always put Conrad’s teeth on edge.

It reminded him, as nothing else could, what an eternal pain in the ass she was and always had been.

“Oh,” she said carelessly, as if this was a chance meeting at some desperately boring society event. Some overdressed, overstuffed ball or other. “Hi, Dorian.”

He knew distantly how he ought to feel about this. Unamused, certainly. Even annoyed, because this was a complication he hadn’t foreseen and Dorian liked surprises only when he could control their outcome. Which was to say, he didn’t like surprises. His childhood had cured him of that. He should have been thinking through how best to break the news to Conrad—and, of course, how quickly he could bundle Erika out of the club, into some decent clothes, and then dispatch her back to wherever it was she had come from. He knew that was what Conrad would have wanted.

He knew how he should feel, but instead, the things that beat in him were all too familiar…for very different reasons. She looked flushed and ready, her feet bare and her skin exposed, her pretty breasts thrust toward him while she fought to catch her breath. She looked like a brand-new submissive in the grip of the frenzy that often made them adorably reckless. She looked good enough to eat.

And Dorian might have found himself jaded and restless of late—wondering if it was time to stop playing and start thinking about settling down into the life his grandfather wanted for him, and wanted to see before he died—but a pretty blonde submissive with that particular hot awe in her eyes and a slight tremble to her lips…

Well. He wasn’t dead yet.

“Try again,” he suggested softly.

She shifted from foot to foot again, and it took every bit of his considerable willpower to keep his hands to himself. But Dorian was anything but newly minted. He knew very well the power in simply…waiting. Expectantly.

He studied her as he did, wondering how it was he’d never paid such close attention to Conrad’s little sister before…

But even as he thought that, he knew that wasn’t true. He’d certainly seen her when she’d turned up in a backless gown at his grandfather’s charity ball in Athens one year, enlivening an otherwise staid and boring gala. There had been that split second when he hadn’t known who she was, but he’d wrestled that under control. And done nothing more than chastise her a little.

He certainly hadn’t let her get him hard.

The Conrad’s-little-sister part, of course, had always governed his reactions to her, as well it should. He had to be ten years older than her. But when had she become this lush? With all that smooth, apparently blemish-free skin that made his mouth water as he considered how best to leave his mark—

No. She’s Conrad little sister. She might as well be yours.

But that thought didn’t really land. It certainly didn’t impress his cock.

Because he could remember that dress much too distinctly. Erika had worn it for the precise purpose of rendering her brother apoplectic, that much was clear. Dorian remembered murmuring something soothing to his friend, likely about the established brattiness of younger sisters—not that he had any personal experience in that area. Then he’d glanced over and found his eyes drawn to the mouthwatering line of a beautiful woman’s graceful back, bared entirely by a dress that flirted with the curve of her ass.

He could remember it in stark, unwavering detail. Even now, years later.

Maybe he’d seen Erika all along.

That night it had taken one second, maybe less, before he realized he was looking at precisely the dress that had his friend in fits. One second before he’d understood he was looking at Erika. He’d sternly reminded himself that Erika was ever and only a brat. Ungrateful, immature. Forever embroiled in her juvenile attempts to poke at Conrad. Pigtails. Freckles. Stuck in amber at ten years old.

That was how he knew her. It was the only way he knew her.

But now his cock was heavy, she was in his club, and he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t eyed her then exactly the same way he did now. Like a dessert he couldn’t wait to get his teeth in.

A sweet little bite he wanted to taste. Over and over again.

Some men saw a pretty thing and wanted to lock it away in a tower somewhere. Dorian, on the other hand, wanted to mess it up. But only if she begged.

He almost had to adjust himself.

“This is so funny,” she was saying, brazening her way through this in a way he almost had to admire. She squared her shoulders and held his gaze boldly, as if she was up to any challenge he might put to her. Which he doubted very much. “What a surprise to run into you, of all people. I’m in town for the weekend. One of my friends was talking about his favorite clubs a month or so ago and I couldn’t resist checking them all out. There’s one in Singapore that—”

“Do not lie to me, please.” His voice sliced across hers and stopped her dead. “You’re well aware I live in Berlin.”

She dared to roll her eyes at him, and Dorian’s brows rose in sheer astonishment. He couldn’t recall the last time a submissive in this club—or anywhere else, for that matter—had presumed to treat him with such blatant disrespect. They were usually far too intimidated. He should have been furious. He was. But even so, that spark in him bloomed into a hotter, darker fire.

“It’s a big city, Dorian,” she declared, lifting the stubborn chin that anchored her heart-shaped face—and he really should not have been noticing things like that about her. “I had no idea that if I wanted to find you, which I didn’t, all I had to do was poke my head into the nearest den of iniquity.”

“No one pokes their head into Walfreiheit. You had to wait in line. You had to be dressed appropriately, yet evocatively. And then you have to make it past Mistress Olga, who has an unerring eye for posers and too-casual visitors. Would you like to try telling the truth?” Her lips parted, and he enjoyed watching her cast around for an answer. And enjoyed it even more when she didn’t. “My mistake, Erika. I assumed this must be some kind of social call. That you’d come here to seek me out specifically.”

“Of course not.” But the pulse in her neck told him otherwise. Interesting. “Why would I? I already know that you’re Team Conrad. I prefer to avoid his minions whenever possible.” Again, that reckless smile. “You know how it is.”

He understood she was trying to provoke him. And she was—only not in the way she likely imagined.

“How fortunate, then, that you should run into a familiar face,” he said quietly. “In the midst of your heretofore unknown exploration of power exchanges in all their glory. I had no idea you were hiding a thirst for submission beneath your fluffy, spoiled exterior.”

Her eyes widened further. She started to say something, but it came out as a breath instead. He liked it. Poor little submissive girl. So afraid of what she wanted.

Dorian needed to remind himself that she wasn’t just another new submissive. She was Conrad’s baby sister. And this couldn’t happen.

But he didn’t walk away.

“Well,” she said nervously. “I mean, I can’t say that I wanted to see a familiar face here. Nobody wants to see a familiar face when they’re watching a grown man whip a naked woman until she…”

Her voice petered out. Dorian only watched her, keeping his expression just this side of a scowl until she flushed again.

“Until she came,” he supplied. “And so did you.” He smiled faintly when her throat worked, but no sound came forth. “If this is not a specific social call, that means you are here to play like anyone else. And I regret to inform you that you have already shown me entirely too much disrespect.”

“What are you talking about? You’re the one who followed me down a dark hallway to loom over me and frown dramatically. Maybe you should be concerned about respecting me.”

Dorian studied her, unsmiling. “This is primarily a BDSM club and you present as a sexual submissive. Do you know what that means?”

“Of course I know what it means.”

“Is that an incorrect label for you? The girls at the door are usually much better at teasing out our visitors’ secret wants and needs. Surely they told you that the pink wristband you’re wearing announces your preferences to all and sundry.”

She scowled down at the wristband in question and tugged at it. It sat next to the yellow wristband that announced she was here only for the night, which was why she had no bright blue wristbands, one for each alcoholic beverage patrons were allowed if they wanted to participate in any play.

“I can’t hear you,” he prompted her. “Is that the wrong wristband?”

“This club is obsessed with labels. You know that, don’t you?”

“Indeed it is. Let’s be clear that you as a person can be as complicated and contradictory as you please outside these doors. In here, however, everything is boiled down to its essence. What you want. What you need. And what you are prepared to negotiate to get it.”

Her rebellious chin lifted. “Plus neon wristbands.”

“If you are certain a label cannot contain you, perhaps you had better ask yourself if that’s the truth. Are you so terribly complex? Or are you terrified that if you took the trouble to look inside yourself you would find that at heart, where it matters, you are remarkably simple after all?”

She jerked at that as if he’d slapped her. And he wondered if she knew how dark her eyes got, telling him secrets he doubted she wanted to share.

“The only thing you know about me is who I’m related to,” she threw at him, as if he’d mounted a vicious personal attack. He filed that away. “So maybe you should take the opportunity to ask yourself why you’re such an egregious asshole to a person you hardly know.”

Dorian smiled. “Is it clear to you that I am a dominant, Erika? And was that clear from the moment you saw me here tonight?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “But I…”

“Kneel.”

Dorian was in absolutely no doubt of his own power. He enjoyed playing with the wielding of it. And he might have been thrown by the sight of Erika Vanderburg dressed like a submissive wet dream, but he didn’t think it was a coincidence that she was in Walfreiheit. He didn’t believe she was on a club tour and had accidentally happened on him here.

Couple that with her complaints about “labels” and he had no particular reason to think that she was submissive, either.

Or more accurately, he knew she was a submissive. He could see it every time she looked at him. That longing to yield, but only to a worthy dominant force. To pit herself against his will and chase her own surrender into all the places polite society feared to tread. What he didn’t know was whether or not she would allow herself to play with that need in her, or if she was the sort of person who preferred to pretend she never entertained any dark fantasies there in the privacy of her mind.

There was only one way to find out.

“What did you…?” she managed to get out while goose bumps marched down her arms and told him more truths.

“Do you need me to repeat myself?”

He watched, more fascinated than he wanted to admit, as she waged an internal battle. He could see it. Ordinarily he would have no trouble admitting he was fascinated and hard, but this was different. Because while watching a woman fight to do the very thing they both wanted—when she was as aroused by the notion as she was afraid of it—was one of life’s greatest pleasures, in his experience, this was Erika.

He didn’t know if she would do it.

Or what would happen if she did.

Dorian kept his expression impassive as he watched her struggle there before him. Her pretty face broadcast every last one of her emotions, making it easy to watch her cycle through defiance, longing, fear and a bright flash of straightforward need.

He didn’t help her. He only waited, wondering how exactly she would handle this if she was not, in fact, as submissive as he thought she was.

“Did you say…kneel?”

She sounded almost hopeful. As if he might change his mind.

“You do not have to do anything you don’t want to do, Erika,” he told her, his voice low and his gaze hard. “Safe, sane and consensual aren’t simply words we throw around for fun. But I should warn you, this is not a club where submissives balk at something as simple as kneeling to show respect. You can negotiate high protocol with whatever Dom you like, but they will all expect you to kneel. You might as well practice, don’t you think?” He waited a moment while she breathed a bit too hard. “If submission is what you want.”

“I just… I mean, I only…” Her eyes were slicked over with panic, but he could see the way she kept dancing from toe to toe. Dorian knew this dance. He knew that if he reached between her legs he would find her wet and hot. Better to let her dance it out. “I mean, maybe…”

“Is it our personal connection that has you so flustered?” he asked. Pitilessly. “Would you prefer I summon one of the other masters?”

She appeared to like that even less.

Which he could admit he liked a great deal more.

“I guess… I guess I thought there would be more of a buildup. This feels a lot like going from first to fourth gear in about twelve seconds, doesn’t it?”

“Erika.” Her name made her shiver, then still. “If this isn’t what you want, I will escort you to the bar. You can have as many nonalcoholic drinks as you like, perhaps dance to the music, and feel exhilarated that you were this close to so much edgy deviance. We always expect a certain number of tourists on nights like this. There’s no shame in it. But you need to tell me what you want.”

“I want…”

“If you don’t know how to say it, you can start the conversation very simply.” He tilted his head, indicating the ground beneath her feet. “Simply kneel.”

She moved her hands to her belly, as if her stomach was knotting up. Or fluttering. Or any other of the lovely, delicious reactions she could have been having.

She shot a glance behind him, almost wistfully. But Dorian didn’t move.

And in that moment, when she pulled her gaze back to his and her cheeks got even redder, Dorian had to ask himself what it was he wanted. Did he want her to kneel? Or did he want her to break, flip out and prove that she had come here only on one of her bratty excursions calculated to irritate Conrad more?

It was more than a little confronting that he didn’t quite know the answer.

Liar, something in him whispered. You know what you want.

As if she heard, Erika blew out a breath.

And then, as Dorian watched, his best friend’s little sister sank to her knees on the floor before him, tilted up her face and surrendered.

CHAPTER THREE

ERIKA HAD NEVER knelt before a man in her life. Not…just to kneel. And certainly not because she’d been told to kneel. If she’d ever been in this position before, there had been action. She’d been doing something. Usually something that put all the power back in her hands. Or her mouth, more likely.

This was not a blow job. This was…completely different. It was electrifying.

She couldn’t breathe, and she wasn’t sure that she would ever be the right temperature again. She felt much too hot, nearly feverish, though she knew she wasn’t sick. It was that fire in her that seemed to burn and burn and burn, hotter and wilder the longer he looked at her so sternly. Erika was sure that her face was the color of ripe tomatoes. She was shaking, everywhere—inside and out—as if she’d done something extraordinary.

And all he did was gaze down at her, his expression uncompromising.

“Very pretty,” he said after a moment.

Erika wanted to say something sarcastic. Poke at him, maybe. Or perhaps make a joke. Anything to lighten the mood, or make the fire in her dim a little, or counter the bizarre sense of relief she felt that he’d complimented her, but that didn’t seem to be possible. She couldn’t make her mouth do what she wanted it to do.

Because the more he gazed down at her, apparently perfectly happy to stand there all night, the more she was aware of all the other parts of her body. The way her thighs felt, splayed wide beneath the short, short skirt she’d chosen to wear. The cool kiss of the floor beneath her knees and shins. Her bare toes were cool, and it felt like a notable, erotic contrast to how confined her chest and her breasts felt in the strappy top. When she’d put it on earlier, it had felt almost loose, but not now. Now she thought another deep breath would pop the straps, and expose all of her to him.

That notion should have scared her, but it didn’t.

Or it didn’t completely scare her.

She could feel her heart, beating so fast it thudded in her ears like her own personal drum. And like a thick pulse in her pussy, a staccato beat in her nipples and a riot in her chest. Everywhere else, her exposed skin felt much too warm.

Erika didn’t really understand any of this. She didn’t understand the reaction she’d had to Dorian with a whip in his hand. A whip. She didn’t understand the roaring, greedy thing that had walloped her in that crowd, that had made her come and then made her run, like opposite sides of the same too-hot coin.

She’d thought that she was so edgy when she’d played around with handcuffs and a blindfold and a soft little flogger thing, but she’d been kidding herself. This was like a completely different language, and she didn’t know how to speak a single word of it.

She couldn’t find the words, but he’d told her to kneel and she had.

And really, Erika didn’t understand why kneeling before a man didn’t make her angry. Why, instead, what coursed through her felt a whole lot more like that same dark, greedy hunger that had taken her over earlier.

When Erika had always preferred her orgasms sweet and quick, spring showers to dance in rather than the crash and immensity of a sea that could eat her alive.

“I normally prefer submissives to keep their eyes lowered at first,” Dorian said in that low voice of his that somehow made it sound as if what was happening between them was normal.

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.

“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 would 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.

Edgy, yes, but also pedigreed.

He had taken her out of the club with a swiftness that left her off balance. But then, everything he’d done since she’d seen him on that dais left her reeling. He’d reached down and taken her hand in that hallway, pulling her to her feet as if she weighed less than a euro cent coin. And as far as she could tell, he’d been utterly unaware of the way the touch of his hand against hers…stormed through her.

His dark eyes had swept over her, through her, seeing everything with that same uncompromising gaze. Seeing things Erika couldn’t have articulated if her life depended on it. But oh, could she feel it.

He’d pulled her around until she was in front of him, then kept her there with a hand on the nape of her neck as he guided her back to the club proper. It was louder than before, or she was more sensitive to the sounds. The crack of leather against flesh. Moans and screams blending in with the pumping, seductive music.

Erika felt drunk. Wildly intoxicated, spinning and strange, when she was actually far more sober than she usually was in a club. Maybe that was why she did…nothing. She simply let him guide her, shivering a little because he was either really good at it or she was remarkably attuned to every little press of his strong fingers. Both, probably.

She was vaguely aware of him saying something to someone when they left that little hallway, but she didn’t think anything of it. She didn’t think, really. There was a riot inside her and his hand heavy on her neck, and she was still lit up from what had happened—and what hadn’t happened—between them. He led her through the crowds, past the bar and into a different foyer from the cavernous one she’d entered before. This one was all dark stone and dim lights, and all the things she’d surrendered earlier were waiting for her.

“Put on your shoes,” Dorian ordered her in an undertone, his mouth so close to her ear that she could feel the words.

It didn’t occur to her to disobey. Or even to discuss it with him.

Everything seemed dreamlike, or feverish. Or again, so deeply intoxicating that strands seemed to wrap around each other outside time. What she remembered was not how she bent and slipped her feet into her shoes, but instead that moment when she’d glanced up in the middle of it to find Dorian staring down at her. His face had been set in the same stern lines, but an odd gleam in his eyes made her wonder what tenderness looked like on a man like him.

And more, what she could do to earn it.

His hand settled on the nape of her neck again, and that was what she remembered most of all. The heat and the heaviness. The separation between his thumb and his fingers, and the way his middle finger rested on her pulse as if he was monitoring every last beat of her heart.

She had the strangest thought, as she simply allowed him to guide her out into the Berlin night, that she’d never felt quite so safe in all her life.

Though that thought didn’t make sense. Because whatever she was, it certainly wasn’t safe. Not with Dorian.

Surely she knew that now.

There was a car ride through the sprawling city outside her window, alive and kicking no matter the hour. The brash, almost punk-rock east gave way to the plump wealth of the west, the history of Berlin—torn apart and sewn back together—rolling out before her. It wasn’t until they arrived at his building, and he led her across a too-bright lobby into an elevator that required he release her to use his key, that she gathered her wits about her enough to remember that she had her own hotel room.

She realized that wasn’t accidental. He’d let go of her, ergo, she could suddenly think straight.

Erika stood across from him as the lift soared upward, knowing she needed to open her mouth. She needed to say something—anything—to break this spell.

But she didn’t.

She told herself it was natural. She was curious, that was all. She wanted to see how a man like Dorian lived. Was it whips and chains in a red room? Or a medieval dungeon in the lounge?

By that measure, the expansive apartment that appeared when the elevator doors lid soundlessly open was a disappointment. If a person wasn’t looking for iron spikes and spanking benches, it was exquisite.

Erika followed him into the great room, blinking as Dorian switched on lights. Then he moved farther into the apartment, seeming to pay her absolutely no mind as she looked around the loft-like space, with dark wood walls and concrete floors. She hugged herself as she stood there, taking in his aesthetic of clean, modern pieces mixed in with the odd, sumptuous rug that would not have been out of place in a sultan’s palace. There was astonishing, confronting art on an otherwise bare wall. Across the room, another wall was taken up with bookshelves that somehow managed to look clean and spare despite the tremendous number of books they held. So many books it seemed possible he actually read them, and wasn’t using them as a design element.

She didn’t know why it was so hard to imagine Dorian simply sitting down and reading in one of the deep, wide leather chairs or sofas that made up different sitting areas in the great room. He seemed too powerful to ever really be at rest. As if he had to be in constant motion, or standing over her the way he had in that hallway—or back in that ballroom in Athens, for that matter—or he would sputter out into darkness.

Erika didn’t realize she was staring intently at his books, looking for clues to mysteries she wasn’t sure she could name, until he walked back into the room.

And she didn’t hear him come back in. She knew he was there without having to hear his foot against the floor and without having to glance over her shoulder. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, like his hand had settled there again. She felt that now-familiar heat bloom in her all over again, coiling low in her belly and into her pussy. Only then did she look up.

Dorian stood in the opening where one room bled into the next, with massive windows all around so she could see the sparkle of Berlin out there in the dark.

“It’s late,” he said shortly. “I suggest you get some rest in one of the guest suites. They’re all located on this floor. I’ll call your brother in the morning.”

He might as well have slapped her back into awareness. Or doused her in ice-cold water.

Either way, Erika’s fingers curled into fists again and she suddenly felt much less fuzzy.

“Or, you know, you could also not call him.”

Dorian gave the impression of sighing and shaking his head without actually moving at all. Impressive for a man doing such a terrific impression of a stone wall. “That was a statement of fact, Erika. Not an invitation to negotiate.”

“All right, then.” She held his gaze, even though there was that part of her, quivering and soft inside, that wanted to lean further into all those things they’d only brushed against in the club. The part of her that wished she’d crawled before him the way he’d requested she do, exposed for all to see. She fought off a telling shiver. “You go right ahead and call Conrad. I’ll call your grandfather. He’s always had a soft spot for me.”

Dorian stared back at her. Erika felt the tension in the room surge toward an almost unbearable breaking point. But she refused to break. She refused.

Meanwhile, Dorian looked as arrogant as he did…astounded.

“You little shit,” he said in a kind of awe that she chose to interpret as affectionate. Or close enough. “Are you threatening to tattle on me?”

“I assumed that’s what we were doing here.” Erika was pleased she managed to sound, if not as calm as he did, far calmer than she felt. “If you’re going to tattle on me, why wouldn’t I return the favor?”

He tilted his head slightly to one side, his dark eyes focusing on her so intensely she thought she might bruise. But that wasn’t half as scary as the way he did nothing but…breathe. One breath, then another. She watched him visibly relax. Gaining his control, then slamming it back into place, she realized as she watched.

It was the hottest thing she thought she’d ever seen. No yelling. No insults. No other reactions—just Dorian handling himself.

She wondered what it would be like to be handled by him.

Her knees went rubbery. And far worse—or perhaps worse was not the right word here—it made her pussy clench, then ache.

“You are an inventive, insolent girl,” he said quietly enough after a moment.

It was not a compliment. And it took her a beat to understand what that note in his voice was, tangled up with the darkness in the disapproval.

She could swear that was disappointment.

Her heart thudded hard against her ribs at that, and there was something almost dizzying that tore her up, then settled in her stomach like regret.

Erika tried to ignore it. “So you keep telling me.”

“You are reckless. Immature and impetuous. And in so far over your head it’s a wonder you haven’t drowned yet.” He said those things calmly. As if he was making a grocery list, when she could see that particular intensity in his gaze that indicated otherwise. It was too controlled to be temper, but it lashed at her all the same. “You come into my club, you claim you’re there to play, but you can’t handle even the lightest conversation. That’s breathtakingly foolish.”

“I thought that was what exhibition nights are for.”

“What if it hadn’t been me?” he demanded. “What if it had been some other dominant who hasn’t known you all your life?”

“Then I imagine I’d be coming my brains out right now,” Erika shot back. “Instead of being lectured to death by my older brother’s irritating friend. You don’t know me at all, Dorian. You know Conrad. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’m not the little girl he thinks I am.”

“Then I invite you to stop acting like one.”

His voice was rougher then. Much darker in a way that made her breasts feel full again, with that sharp pinch in each that meant her nipples were already hard.

Why did everything Dorian do get to her like this? When he clearly thought so little of her?

“I don’t know what makes you think you get to tell me what to do.” Erika eyed him, then dug into her story, because she had no intention whatsoever of telling him the truth. Not now. “Everyone knows that Walfreiheit is the best BDSM club in Berlin. Maybe in the world. How was I supposed to know that Conrad’s school friend would be there the night I got in, flinging a whip around, and then up for a spot of bullying?”

“Oh, little girl,” Dorian said with a dark amusement that licked over her, then knotted up inside her. “I haven’t begun to bully you.”

“You’re the one who keeps threatening me with my brother. Do you run back to him and tell him every last thing that you do? Or do you only feel you need to report on me? I’m all grown-up, Dorian, and Conrad lost his right to comment on what I do with my life when he kicked me out of my own family.”

This time he really did roll his eyes. “Your mother seems to have cushioned that blow nicely.”

“And look at that. One more thing that’s entirely my business and not yours. At all.”

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Dorian told her. In that calm way that made her want to scream, though she didn’t. “Do you? Standing in my home and hurling accusations at me at three in the morning is not a particularly smart way to convince me of your maturity, Erika.”

“I don’t have to convince you of anything, Dorian. You’re not my friend. You’re not my brother. And when I tried to do the BDSM thing like anyone else might have in that club—”

“You safe worded out.”

But his voice changed. It took on that ruthlessly uncompromising quality she remembered from the club. And more, it had an instant effect on her. Her breathing changed. Her chest felt tight.

Suddenly she couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away from his.

“I was momentarily overwhelmed.” She said it distinctly. Almost loftily, trying to convince herself as well as him. “I didn’t realize that using a safe word meant being dragged out of the club into the street. You should have made that clear.”

“Careful,” he advised her. “Or you might get what you’re asking for. And then what?”

“Then let me be more explicit,” Erika threw at him. She stood straighter, ignoring that pulling sensation in her breasts, her pussy. Her whole body. “I went to that club for a BDSM experience. Not an older-brother’s-best-friend-acting-like-a-dick experience, because I’ve already had that, thanks. So if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to leave, go back and tell them I was spirited away against my will.”

“Really.” There was even more of that amusement then, so dark and dangerous she could feel the edge against her skin like a blade. “And what will you do when you’re there?”

“Whatever I feel like doing.” She smirked at him and knew the moment she did it that it was a mistake. But she committed to it anyway, because she was nothing if not brazen when it was only going to get her in trouble. “You don’t get to decide how I behave, Dorian. You don’t get to decide a damn thing I do.”

“Erika.”

His voice was a crack, like that whip of his. Erika felt her breath go out of her in a rush. All he’d said was her name, but it hit her like a command. Like his hand wrapped against the nape of her neck, guiding her where he wanted her to go.

All she could do was stare back at him, mutely, entirely too aware of her pulse going wild and her breath sawing in and out of her lungs.

“You don’t need to go back to the club to have a BDSM experience,” he told her. “Lucky for you, I’m a BDSM experience all by myself.”

“Lucky me,” she said. Faintly. Because the floor appeared to be tilted beneath her feet and she knew that couldn’t be real. It only felt real. “But maybe I want…a different experience. Far away from you and your threats to involve Conrad.”

His mouth moved into a curve that was in no way a smile.

“Tonight you have two options. Me, or sleep.”

She hoped he couldn’t see the way she quivered deep inside, and stood straighter to hide it. “This is Berlin. There are clubs everywhere. I can—”

“Erika, hear me on this if nothing else. You will not get into any BDSM club in this city. Tonight or ever again. It will take one call.”

Her breath went a little ragged, but she believed him. She’d heard entirely too much about his reputation over the past two years to think he couldn’t do exactly what he said he would.

“Me,” he said again. He angled his head toward the hallway that stretched off behind her. “Or sleep. Choose now.”

She was choosing sleep, obviously. She would meekly shuffle off to a bedroom like the biddable girl she’d never been, count to a hundred or something, then leave. Or maybe she would just leave now, without the charade. Because there was no way she was taking the other option. No way in hell. That little scene in the club had been more than enough—it had been too much, thank you.

But…something deep inside her whispered. But what if…?

After all, she’d spent so long getting here. And she might find this—him—more overwhelming than she’d expected, but there was no denying the fact it turned her on. Just as he did. And he was supposed to be the best. Maybe here in the privacy of his home, he wouldn’t scare her the way he had in that hallway. Even if he did, there wouldn’t be a crowd of witnesses.

And she still couldn’t think of a better way to stick it to her obnoxious older brother.

Blah, blah, blah, that voice inside her commented. What matters is that you’re wet. And very, very hungry.

Maybe that was the real point of all of this. The things that had happened tonight had left her balanced precariously on the edge of a very high cliff, and despite everything, Erika…wanted to jump.

She met his gaze again and wasn’t at all surprised to find him watching her in that intent, edgily patient way of his.

He didn’t pressure her. He didn’t have to. He was a wall. All she had to do was walk toward that wall or away from it.

“Have you decided?” he asked, as if he’d offered her a glass of water.

She nodded. Jerkily.

“Use your words, please.”

Erika swallowed, but her throat stayed dry. Half of her screamed at her not to do this—to get the hell away from him—but the other half was far too curious. And much too focused on that need between her legs.

That and the dangerous gleam in his gaze that she could feel inside her.

“You,” she said. “I choose you.”

And this time, the smile that spread over his stern mouth washed over her like heat. Or maybe she was already regretting her choice—

“Excellent,” Dorian said, and she thought he sounded pleased. It amazed her how much she wanted to please him. He didn’t move farther into the room, and she could have sworn he loomed over her all the same. “Let’s start by addressing your disrespectful attitude, shall we? On your knees. Eyes on the floor.”

“But—”

“You will speak only when spoken to,” he said, his voice that calm force that made her feel giddy and terrified at once. “You will answer any question I ask, and, Erika, let me be very clear. I expect and require total honesty. On your knees. Now.”

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t sound particularly sharp or angry. If anything, he sounded even calmer than before.

And still, that power he wielded hit her like a blow. That was the only way she could describe the massive force that seemed to push her forward, almost against her will. She didn’t think it through and worry over it from every angle. She sank down on her knees and found her hands on her thighs again. And it was easier than she’d imagined to cast her eyes down toward the ground.

Then there was nothing but her breath. Her panic and anticipation, tangling around into something else. Something hot and liquid that streaked through her, lighting her up and settling like a weight in her pussy.

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 was 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.”

“Yes, sir,” she said again, desperation making her voice shake. “I’ve waited my whole life for someone to take me in hand.”

“Not someone. Me. You want me, specifically, to teach you boundaries. To demand respect. To be the only person you’ve ever met who doesn’t allow your insolence to go unheeded. Don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

And it came out a moan, though he hadn’t really done anything yet.

All she was doing was lying here, in this remarkably exposed position, with his hand resting gently in almost the perfect place. And yet she was as turned-on as if he was fucking her. She’d had orgasms that were less intense than this. She was stretched out, gripping her own hands too tightly behind her neck, every part of her tense and waiting and so, so needy—

“You are in luck, little girl,” he told her, with a certain erotic menace that made her pulse kick at her even as she melted all the more. “Because I have no intention of going easy on you. I’m going to spank you. You’re going to count. You can sob, but you will lie still. You can cry out, but you will not fight me. If you use words, they will be of gratitude or your safe word and nothing else. Do you understand me?”

It was all storms and riot inside her. Why wasn’t she calling this off? Why wasn’t she rolling away from him, protecting herself, doing something to stop this?

Erika had played games before, with handcuffs and funny little floggers that tickled, and she’d thought she was practicing for this. But she’d never doubted that she was in complete control. Not once. The men she was with had teased her, but never hurt her.

This was different. Dorian wanted to hurt her. And would.

Or maybe it wasn’t that simple. He wanted her to allow him to hurt her, because the crazy thing was, she wanted him to do just that.

He saw her. He could list her sins, and had. He was the only one who could punish her for them—and then grant her absolution, too.

She might not be in control of him. But she was here because she wanted to be here.

It was as simple and as wildly, impossibly convoluted as that.

“Yes, sir,” she said and shuddered with the force of what she was agreeing to—but it felt as if she needed this. As if he was right, and she’d been looking for it all her life.

“Are you a reckless, thoughtless, selfish girl who needs this punishment?”

It was as if he could read her mind. She tried to control her breathing, and failed miserably. “Yes, sir.”

“Do you trust me to punish you as you deserve?”

She gave up on her breath, because she was sobbing. Big racking sobs rolled up from somewhere deep inside her, and made her body convulse. Her eyes were wet, her fingers so tight they were cramping behind her neck.

And still, all she could focus on was that blazing heat between her legs.

And him. Dorian.

At this moment, he was the whole of her world.

“Yes,” she managed to get out. “Yes, sir.”

He moved his hand from her pussy, and did it without so much as grazing a single part of her that would have kicked her deeper into that fire. And when his hand moved over her ass again, she could feel her own wetness.

The first smack shocked her.

It hurt.

“Count, please,” he ordered her.

“One,” she managed to get out. “Thank you, sir.”

“Excellent,” he said, and he was already rubbing the place where he’d smacked her, almost soothing it. But not quite enough to keep that deep red ache at bay. “Just like that.”

And then he got to work.

It was shocking. Excruciating. His hand was big and impossibly hard. And he was thorough. The pain of each precise smack jolted through her, making her kick her legs, but she didn’t roll off him. She stayed where she was, no matter the sting and the ache of it.

Erika counted. And thanked him.

And cried.

And he kept going. First he spanked one cheek, then the other. He smacked her in the crease where her ass met her thighs. He continued until her whole butt felt bright red and agonized, and then he started the same painful pattern all over again.

Again and again, until she wasn’t even pretending that she was doing anything but sobbing her eyes out.

She sobbed and she sobbed and he spanked her, and it fucking hurt. And she was strung out somewhere between the white noise in her head and the way her nipples were still too hard as they moved with the force of his smacks against the leather beneath her. Her ass was on fire, the pain outrageous and bright, and still, her clit ached and her pussy was so wet she hardly knew what to do with herself.

Dorian, by contrast, did not thrash about. He spanked her, that was all, but he did it in the same calm, considered rhythm as when he’d started. He didn’t speed up. He didn’t hit her harder or taper off into something lighter. He was laying down a lesson.

And all Erika could do was count. And sob for all the memories she didn’t want in her head right now, but seemed lodged in her chest anyway.

Though Dorian seemed determined to spank them right out of her.

When she counted all the way to twenty, he stopped.

It took her a moment to realize that, because she was still sobbing. He picked her up, so easily that it occurred to her he’d wanted her to crawl into that position with as much strained awkwardness as it took.

But that was something she would have to think about later, when she wasn’t so beside herself. He pulled her to him, cradling her against his chest. And then he murmured words that didn’t quite penetrate as he held her there, her ass sore and hot against his thighs and her face tucked against his collarbone.

For a long time, Erika cried. And it wasn’t until she was sniffling and calming herself, that it actually hit her that she was in Dorian’s arms.

And not only that, all the pain in her ass seemed to be radiating out and setting that raging fire in her pussy into some kind of inferno.

“If you keep squirming against me like that,” Dorian said, his voice so close, so dark, it made her shudder, “I will take it as an invitation to continue the lesson.”

She shuddered out a breath and stopped.

And then he lifted her, gripping her by the upper arms and holding her just far enough away from him that he could stare directly into her eyes.

The world outside had disappeared. There was only sensation, Dorian and that intense gleam in his eyes.

“You please me, Erika,” he told her, his voice grave. “You took that well.”

She couldn’t seem to think. Or speak. All she could do was hold his words close, unexpected light that made her heart feel bigger than it had been.

She pleased him.

Maybe that was enough.

And then, all she could focus on was that ache between her legs, made ravenous by the hot red ache he’d given her.

He set her on her feet then, there between his legs. Erika cast her eyes down without being asked, but she could feel the smile in his voice when he spoke.

“Turn around, please. I want to admire my work.”

She shuddered, but obeyed.

“Hold up your skirt, please.”

And she could hear her own breathing again—not quite a sob any longer, not simply a breath—as she stood there, staring at those books again. Pretending she wasn’t holding her skirt up high, her thong still tangled around her knees, baring the ass he’d spanked to his view. And also unable to think of anything else.

She knew he sat forward when he gripped her hips, then moved his hands painfully over her ass cheeks again.

“Stay still,” he ordered her.

And she tried. She really did try.

“Your ass is beautifully red and hot,” he told her after a moment. “I like all those tears on your face, Erika. I’m feeling magnanimous and very well pleased. Ask me for what you want. I might just grant it to you.”

She didn’t even think. She didn’t have to think. She knew exactly what she wanted.

Erika couldn’t have imagined that it would all go down like this, that he would scare her, then spank her and make her purge herself of some ugliness she wasn’t sure she even wanted to look at straight. But she knew what she wanted.

She’d only ever wanted one thing from him, above everything else. It was funny how clear it was now. All the world had seemed to narrow down to just one thing.

“Look at me,” he said, and she did.

She looked back over her shoulder to find his dark eyes blazing with the same intense heat she could feel coiled so tightly inside her.

“Ask me,” he ordered.

“Please, sir,” Erika said softly in a voice that sounded like belonged to someone else, but she couldn’t think about that now. “Please. Fuck me.”