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 actuallylaugh.
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.”