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.
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
