She would never know how she managed to stay standing instead.
And he had an idea of who she was in his head, clearly, so she smirked at him.Useless. Disastrous. Afraid.She stuck her hand on her hip as if she was trying to be provocative. Just another example of stupid, attention-seeking Erika Vanderburg. Just what he wanted to see.
“I have no idea,” she said, not politely. “Are you going to make me?” She waited for his brows to rise, and that thunder to roll in across his stern, hard face, then made a face she knew he wouldn’t care for at all.“Sir?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
EVERYTHINGWASGOINGas planned.
She’d walked into his kitchen with her hair wet, making her blue eyes look even bigger, wearing nothing but one of his shirts. He didn’t think she’d been trying to provoke him. Quite the opposite, this morning. She looked sleepy and sweet, and she gazed at him like he’d personally made the sun rise.
He hadn’t known how much he wanted to see her look at him like that. How it made everything in him settle. Then hum.
Now he wanted to see it all the time.
Conrad had not been amused. He’d been silent at first. That had been far better than the lethal clip to his voice when he’d spoken again.
My...sister, he’d repeated.My little sister and you. In your club.
Dorian had winced, but that was the thing about taking responsibility, wasn’t it? Sometimes it sucked. Sometimes it made people hate you.
But it was always the right thing to do.
I don’t know if this will make you feel better or worse, Dorian had said gruffly.But I have nothing but good intentions where she’s concerned.
I don’t feel anything, you prick, Conrad had snapped,except homicidal.
Dorian was glad the conversation was happening over the phone, or he imagined Conrad would have swung on him. And he would have taken it as his due, because he’d not only crossed a line, he’d done it in his own inimitable way. What older brother wanted to think about that?
You can try to kill me all you want, Dorian had told him.But that’s not going to change anything.
Conrad had made a frustrated noise. Then he’d gone silent.
Is she happy?he asked quietly.
I intend to make her happy, Dorian had promised his best friend. The only brother he had or wanted.I intend to dedicate myself to the task.
It had been a vow. And he’d meant it.
But that was the easy part, all things considered. Now he had to do the hard part, which was convincing this dragonfly of a woman—always alighting here, then buzzing off there, always moving, always changing—that he’d found everything he’d wanted in her. In one night. That yes, he knew his own mind and heart. That he’d spent his entire adult life committed to extreme self-awareness.
It was that or follow his father’s path. The lies, the self-deception.
Dorian had chosen to face himself in the mirror, no matter how unpleasant the sensation of cataloging his own flaws and working to change them.
He expected no less from the very few people he let into his life. Conrad had always been one of the few men alive who lived up to Dorian’s standards. He had no doubt that Erika would, too. He’d seen what she could be for him and with him last night.
And while he was busy celebrating that unexpected connection that had rocked him to his core, he also needed to make her see that she was worthy.
Of his interest and devotion, which he planned to lavish on her—in the way a man with his particular appetites did, that was—but also of all the other things she’d walked away from. The relationships she pretended didn’t matter. The empty life she pretended made her happy. All those things she’d made sure to ruin herself before anyone could take them away from her.
He aimed to give her the tools to take them back.
It didn’t take a psychiatrist to understand that a woman like Erika, who hid her truly sweet, soft, longing heart beneath so many layers of attitude and armor, had set out to destroy her relationship with her brother after their father died because that way, she lost him on her terms.
Dorian was ashamed he hadn’t recognized that years ago.
Then again, maybe he had. After all, he’d mentioned spanking to her in Greece. Had he sensed, even then, where they would end up?