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—
