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.”
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
