and reeling. The genteel crowd had swallowed up that gorgeous body of his, dressed in black tie that somehow managed to suggest that he was from another time.
Her blood had thudded inside her, making her heart feel heavy and her head light. And the sense that he’d spanked her without putting a hand on her only seemed to grow, turning into an ache. An ache that spread, then went deep.
All the whispers that followed in Dorian’s wake made a different kind of sense suddenly. The very specific way certain women looked at him, as if they knew a secret about him. Erika had always thought it was simply because he was so powerful, with all that Alexander family money augmented by the tech company he’d gone and started himself after university. Apparently feeling that where there was one fortune, there might as well be two.
And when she began looking specifically for rumors about Dorian Alexander in darker, more shadowy places… Well. That was when she’d really found him. And it hadn’t taken a whole lot of digging to learn that Dorian was famous for a great many things in the wider, more civilized world, but when it came to sex he was a king of a whole different sort.
In fact, they called him Master.
Her schoolgirl crush flipped inside out and turned into something far more edgy.
Particularly because, the more she thought about Dorian and spanking—and Dorian spanking her, for that matter—all her vague fantasies and all her sexual explorations seemed to spark into something new. And much, much hotter.
She’d experimented with light bondage and a few tame scenes in clubs in New York. London. Lisbon. She’d spent a particularly hot and steamy winter down under in Melbourne, playing top and bottom games with some new friends. And anytime it got to be too much, playing dominance games with tops who were never quite what she wanted, she thought of Dorian.
Master Dorian, as he was known. Master Dorian, who had used to scene quite a bit in the clubs—especially in Berlin, at the Walfreiheit—but did so less and less these days. Master Dorian, who was a legend and a favorite fantasy of pretty much every submissive she met.
Master Dorian, who had nothing to prove, had never given a submissive his collar and was the only thing Erika could take from her brother that he would miss.
He’d had no use for her as a supposedly spoiled rotten socialite, sure. But would he feel differently about her as a submissive?
It was time to find out.
She felt her pulse pick up when she saw the displays as she made her way into the dungeon. A pretty girl strapped to a table while her Domme applied all manner of wicked-looking clamps to her, murmuring encouragement as she shuddered and squirmed. In the next room, a Dom was working his submissive into a series of intricate and beautiful shibari knots, as if she was an installation piece, there with her ass in the air and her face to the floor. One scene bled into the next. Threesomes. Fireplay. Suspension. One erotic fantasy brought to life after another.
But the biggest throng of onlookers had flocked to the biggest space, toward the back, and Erika headed in that direction. Even though she felt something shiver over her, like foreboding.
Because she knew what she would see. They’d all heard the whispers out there in line, that Master Dorian was picking up his whip tonight for the first time in ages. That he was putting on a show.
But God help her, she wasn’t prepared.
Dorian stood on a raised dais, facing a Saint Andrew’s Cross. A woman was strapped to it, straining against her bonds, moving her head back and forth in erotic distress. That alone made Erika’s belly quiver.
But Dorian took her breath away.
He looked darker and more dangerous than she remembered him, dressed in dark trousers, boots and a black T-shirt that managed to hug that remarkable chest of his like an obsessed lover. Every single one of the muscles she’d marveled at when he was clad in black tie was on display. And more, like his mouthwatering expanse of sheer abdominal fitness.
And it was hard not to appreciate his glorious corded arms as he wielded that lethal, deliciously terrifying whip.
Erika’s mouth went dry. She felt her eyes go glassy, but she couldn’t look away. She felt rooted to the spot as surely as if it was her up there on the cross, writhing, tears wetting her own cheeks while cuffs kept her exactly where he wanted her.
Meanwhile, Dorian made the whip dance.
He was murmuring in a low voice and the woman responded, and it took Erika some time to understand that he was telling her exactly where each strike would land. Then he waited as she writhed, moaned.
But each time she quivered. Then said distinctly, “Yes, Master Dorian. Please.”
Yes, Master Dorian. Please.
The words jolted through Erika like a live wire. Like the kiss of that terrible whip, landing precisely where he said it would.
He was controlled, precise. Beautiful and terrible, like an angel. He moved like a furious dancer, a dark and mighty cloud, and Erika thought the whole crowd was as breathless and undone as she was.
And for the first time since that party in Athens, Erika thought to ask herself what in the hell she was thinking.
All her little sex games were just that. Games. But Dorian was very plainly the real thing. She’d been charging up a gentle slope and calling it a mountain, and it was only now that she understood the enormity of her error. She wanted to poke at her brother, not…this. A whip and a crowd and that hungry, greedy thing she could feel turn over inside her and bare its fangs.
She didn’t want that. Erika felt exposed, even though she stood with everyone else, and knew no one was looking at her. Still, she felt vibrant with embarrassment and panic. Most of all she felt deeply, remarkably silly. Foolish.
The brat he’d called her, and more.
She needed to leave. Now. Before she made an even bigger fool of herself.
But she couldn’t seem to tear herself away. The scene on the dais went on. The whip licked over the submissive on the stage, bringing her closer and closer to that brutally perfect end that Erika could feel all over her. Her own nipples were hard. She was much too wet. She wanted to squirm but she didn’t dare move. Or she couldn’t move.
And then, finally, he asked and was answered with a sob. But a yes, Master Dorian, please, all the same. Dorian shot out his arm. The whip cracked.
Then landed with merciless precision on the submissive’s exposed clit.
The girl on the cross screamed, her body shaking wildly as she arched into a climax, her body like a bow against the cross. Out there in the dark of the audience, rooted to the floor and still bright red with the realization that she shouldn’t have come here at all, Erika felt her own body clench and tremble, as if she was on the same slippery edge.
That was when Dorian stopped. He looked out toward the crowd and the murmurs of appreciation. He looked as if he might smile.
But then he saw her.
She felt the impact of those fierce, intense eyes. She saw the flare of recognition.
And without a single hand upon her—without anything but that outraged gaze of his—Erika felt herself catapult straight over that edge.
Hard.
HIS BEST FRIEND’S little sister was coming right there on the floor of his club.
That it was impossible—that she shouldn’t be in the club, or dressed like that, or witness to his particular enthusiasms without his knowledge or approval—didn’t change the fact that it was happening. Right there before Dorian Alexander’s astonished eyes.
Her climax