go. If he asked her a question, he expected her to answer.
He would not forget her or any detail about her, down to the dress she’d worn two years ago at a party in Greece.
He would not, for example, swan off to Cap Ferrat for the season as her mother had done one winter, forgetting that she’d left Erika alone on the estate south of Melbourne where they’d spent a span of years. She’d been seven. The staff had been lovely, but her mother hadn’t deigned to return until Erika lit a fire in one of the old, empty barns and the butler had finally given his notice, as he wasn’t a babysitter.
Erika had no idea why that weird, old memory was cropping up now. While she was close enough to naked and tossed over Dorian’s lap all these years later and in Berlin.
“Erika. Don’t make me ask you again.”
“No,” she whispered. “It’s not a limit. I would try it.”
“If I asked.”
“If you asked,” she agreed, her heart so loud inside her it hurt. “Sir.”
She felt humiliated and excited in turn, and the contrast lurched around inside her, making her squirm. And pant. And want to die—but not before he kept that promise that any hurt he dished out would come with a hefty dollop of pleasure, too.
Erika thought she might die if he didn’t keep his promise.
And then, to her horror and her delight, he reached beneath her and cupped her pussy in his hand. That was all he did. He simply…held her there.
She was the one who was quivering, sensitive and sweating with the force of a need that felt like madness.
“Look at this,” he said, sounding dark and approving all at once. “You can’t wait, can you? You’re desperate. Soaking wet. As if you’ve been waiting your whole life for someone to finally take you in hand. Is that what you want, Erika?”
She wanted to fight. She wanted to argue. And more than both of those things, she wanted to thrust herself backward and somehow make him move his palm hard against her, because she knew it would take only the slightest graze of her clit against him to make her explode.
But she didn’t dare misbehave like that. And he didn’t move his palm. As if he knew exactly what it was she wanted most.
“Yes, sir,” she made herself say, squeezing her eyes shut as storm after storm rampaged through her. She kept her cheek pressed hard against the leather, gripping her own fingers behind her neck—even though all that did was press her breasts harder against the sofa beneath her.
Everything she did made it worse. Or better.
“I want to hear you say it.”
“Yes, sir,” she said again, desperation making her voice shake. “I’ve waited my whole life for someone to take me in hand.”
“Not someone. Me. You want me, specifically, to teach you boundaries. To demand respect. To be the only person you’ve ever met who doesn’t allow your insolence to go unheeded. Don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
And it came out a moan, though he hadn’t really done anything yet.
All she was doing was lying here, in this remarkably exposed position, with his hand resting gently in almost the perfect place. And yet she was as turned-on as if he was fucking her. She’d had orgasms that were less intense than this. She was stretched out, gripping her own hands too tightly behind her neck, every part of her tense and waiting and so, so needy—
“You are in luck, little girl,” he told her, with a certain erotic menace that made her pulse kick at her even as she melted all the more. “Because I have no intention of going easy on you. I’m going to spank you. You’re going to count. You can sob, but you will lie still. You can cry out, but you will not fight me. If you use words, they will be of gratitude or your safe word and nothing else. Do you understand me?”
It was all storms and riot inside her. Why wasn’t she calling this off? Why wasn’t she rolling away from him, protecting herself, doing something to stop this?
Erika had played games before, with handcuffs and funny little floggers that tickled, and she’d thought she was practicing for this. But she’d never doubted that she was in complete control. Not once. The men she was with had teased her, but never hurt her.
This was different. Dorian wanted to hurt her. And would.
Or maybe it wasn’t that simple. He wanted her to allow him to hurt her, because the crazy thing was, she wanted him to do just that.
He saw her. He could list her sins, and had. He was the only one who could punish her for them—and then grant her absolution, too.
She might not be in control of him. But she was here because she wanted to be here.
It was as simple and as wildly, impossibly convoluted as that.
“Yes, sir,” she said and shuddered with the force of what she was agreeing to—but it felt as if she needed this. As if he was right, and she’d been looking for it all her life.
“Are you a reckless, thoughtless, selfish girl who needs this punishment?”
It was as if he could read her mind. She tried to control her breathing, and failed miserably. “Yes, sir.”
“Do you trust me to punish you as you deserve?”
She gave up on her breath, because she was sobbing. Big racking sobs rolled up from somewhere deep inside her, and made her body convulse. Her eyes were wet, her fingers so tight they were cramping behind her neck.
And still, all she could focus on was that blazing heat between her legs.
And him. Dorian.
At this moment, he was the whole of her world.
“Yes,” she managed to get out. “Yes, sir.”
He moved his hand from her pussy, and did it without so much as grazing a single part of her that would have kicked her deeper into that fire. And when his hand moved over her ass again, she could feel her own wetness.
The first smack shocked her.
It hurt.
“Count, please,” he ordered her.
“One,” she managed to get out. “Thank you, sir.”
“Excellent,” he said, and he was already rubbing the place where he’d smacked her, almost soothing it. But not quite enough to keep that deep red ache at bay. “Just like that.”
And then he got to work.
It was shocking. Excruciating. His hand was big and impossibly hard. And he was thorough. The pain of each precise smack jolted through her, making her kick her legs, but she didn’t roll off him. She stayed where she was, no matter the sting and the ache of it.
Erika counted. And thanked him.
And cried.
And he kept going. First he spanked one cheek, then the other. He smacked her in the crease where her ass met her thighs. He continued until her whole butt felt bright red and agonized, and then he started the same painful pattern all over again.
Again and again, until she wasn’t even pretending that she was doing anything but sobbing her eyes out.
She sobbed and she sobbed and he spanked her, and it fucking hurt. And she was strung out somewhere between the white noise in her head and the way her nipples were still too hard as they moved with the force of his smacks against the leather beneath her. Her ass was on fire, the pain outrageous and bright, and still, her clit ached and her pussy was so wet she hardly knew what to do with herself.
Dorian, by contrast, did not thrash about. He spanked her, that was all, but he did it in the same calm, considered rhythm as when he’d started. He didn’t