“Um,” she said. She blinked. “A thong?”
“Is that a question? And who are you addressing, kitten?”
She cleared her throat. “A thong, sir.”
“Remove it.”
She blinked at that, too. Dorian only stared back at her while his brow slowly began to rise.
Erika started to pull at the long skirt of her dress while he stood there and made no attempt to look away. She pulled the skirt up to her waist, then wriggled out of her thong. And when she pulled it down and off, she straightened again to find him holding out his hand.
“I’ll take that, thank you.”
And it was ridiculous, given the things she had already done with him, but handing him her thong while it was still warm from her body made her cheeks burn. She could tell from the gleam in his dark eyes that he was enjoying it.
She handed them over and was acutely aware, then, that she was suddenly going commando under her dress. Not that it should have mattered to her in the least, when she was normally dressed in much less. But then, that was why the things he did were so diabolical. They could be over-the-top, like a dark pageant in his club. Or they could be as simple as this. Wearing a pretty dress, but knowing she was naked underneath—at his command.
He pocketed the thong, and then pulled something else out of a different pocket, holding it there in his palm like a gift. Erika knew what it was. It was a particularly high-end anal plug, complete with a bejeweled button on the end.
“I bought it just for you,” he said, a wicked amusement in his voice. “Thank me.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, but she couldn’t take her eyes off thethingin his hand.
“Let me tell you what I want,” he said while her heart pounded and her skin seemed to shrink. She would have called it fear or revulsion were it not for her traitorous pussy that ached, soft and hot. “I want you to bend over that breakable-looking chair behind you and lift your skirt for me. Then I want you to thank me when I slide this deep inside your ass. When I’m done, we both know you’ll be so slippery that something will have to be done before we go back out there, so I’ll have absolutely no choice but to fuck you, hard. You’ll want to come, because you always want to come, but you won’t, Erika. This time you’ll hold it back, for me.”
He hadn’t moved. He still stood there, doing absolutely nothing but holding his hand out with the plug gleaming there in his palm. And yet Erika was gasping for breath as if he’d thrown her over his lap and paddled her again.
“I told you, this isn’t an order,” he said. “This is my desire, nothing more, nothing less. You can choose whether or not you want to do it. It’s up to you.”
And something in that scraped at her, though she couldn’t have said why. She felt the way she often had in Berlin, as if she was too big inside, too bright and hot and expansive, and all because he looked at her like that. With that firm, infinite patience that made her believe she could do anything at all. Anything he asked. Anything he dreamed up.
Anything he thought she could do.
They weren’t in that apartment of his, with all those clean lines and vast spaces, as if to make room for his dirty imagination. And still, everything else fell away. She forgot that they were in a tucked-away room in Jenny’s house. She forgot that her entire family was out there, just down the hall, at a party filled with people who wouldn’t take a lot of convincing to think the worst of her.
She didn’t care, she realized. Even if they’d all been standing right here in front of her, watching and judging from the fragile-looking settee, she still wouldn’t have cared.
Erika saw nothing in Dorian’s gaze except confidence that she could and would do anything he asked of her, and that was all she needed. His confidence in her gave her confidence in herself—or maybe that wasn’t quite right.
It was more that he saw in her what she had always believed was there, and because he believed in it, she could, too.
She jerked slightly, as if she was coming out of a spell. And still, Dorian watched her as if he could wait forever. And would. She turned to the chair he had indicated, and she flipped her skirt up as she bent over. The arms of the chair were low, and she had to tilt herself at a sharp angle to hold on to them. She was wearing heels, and the simple act of bending over tilted her naked ass high into the air.
“Very nice,” he said.
And she dropped her head down, let out a small sigh of satisfaction and waited.
Dorian moved behind her, and she felt his hands on her body again. There had been times over the past couple of weeks that she’d thought she would never feel him again, and she’d never been so happy to be wrong. Her eyes drifted shut as his palms traced down her back, then over the curves of her butt.
Warming her. Greeting her. Both, maybe.
He removed his hands, but his legs were still there, brushing against hers and obliquely reminding her of his strength. His control.
And the particular sweetness of her surrender.
Because giving herself over to Dorian felt like real freedom—not like loneliness.
She felt his hands move into the crease of her ass, rubbing her opening in a way that told he was going to take what she was offering and more, that he expected her to like it. It felt rude and hot at once, especially when she felt something slick and cold on his fingers. He rubbed at her, dipping his finger in and laughing slightly when she made noises she couldn’t seem to bite back.