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.
