The Dare Collection February 2020

CHAPTER SIX

DORIAN HADN’T MEANT to do anything but scare her.

But then she’d stuck her chin in the air, gave him that challenging look, talked about finding herself a different kinky club and… No.

He couldn’t allow it.

And somewhere in there, it had all changed from a lesson he could have imparted to anyone who needed to understand what a firm hand and some discipline could do, to…this.

His cock was so hard he thought he might burst. When he was never, ever out of control. Never with submissives. Never anywhere, for that matter.

She’s different, something in him whispered, but she was Conrad’s little sister, so that was impossible.

But at the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to think about all the ways he had already betrayed his oldest and best friend tonight, because he wasn’t done yet. He had made Erika a promise.

And Dorian did not break his promises.

She couldn’t possibly know the picture she made, Dorian thought as he gazed at her now, or how badly he wanted her.

He had spanked her hard and she’d pinkened beautifully, so that high, round ass of hers was bright and getting redder by the second. He could see the pouting lips of her pussy when she bent forward slightly, still holding up that skirt to give him a better view. Her blond hair was a tousled mess from all that thrashing around on the couch, her face was tearstained, and her eyes were wide and glazed.

But best of all, bratty little Erika Vanderburg was looking at him as if she’d seen God. And better still, wanted some hard, wild communion.

He was so hard it hurt.

He’d never intended to do more than spank her. Teach her a lesson.

Liar, something in him laughed.

But she was looking at him with awe and greed and he felt the same thing return—and then some. And he couldn’t think about all the reasons why he shouldn’t do exactly what she’d asked him to do.

“Hands and knees,” he ordered her in a growl. “Right there.”

She rushed to obey him, and he almost laughed at the sight. She was so wound up, it hadn’t yet occurred to her how much she’d changed between the hallway at the club and here. How eager she was to obey him, with her pupils dilated and her pulse wild.

Erika liked a hard hand, he’d discovered. She bloomed under discipline. He made a note of that as if he planned to expand on that discovery—

But this wasn’t the time to second-guess himself.

Dorian reached into the drawer in his side table and pulled out a condom. He knelt behind her, freed his aching cock from his trousers and sheathed himself. Then he gripped her lush hips, making sure his hands pressed into her reddened flesh. She made a whimpering sound, but pushed back to get closer to him.

It made him smile.

“I’m going to fuck you,” he told her, wanting to sound cool but coming out gravelly instead. But that worked, too. “You may come whenever you like, but if you do not, you’re out of luck. You can’t touch your clit. You can’t rub yourself against me. I want you to submit, take it and see what happens. Do you understand me?”

Her head fell forward, as if she could no longer hold it up. As if the idea of submission on that scale made her weak.

“Yes, sir,” she whispered.

Dorian lined himself up with the entrance to her pussy, pressing his fingers into the curves of her ass because he knew it would sting. And remind her what she’d already taken. She shuddered, and he could smell how wet she was. How ready.

God help him, but she was a wonder.

He took a split second to admire her, there on her hands and knees, her ass red from his hand and her pretty pussy on display and ready to be split wide-open by him.

It was almost perfect.

“Put your face on the floor,” he told her. “Hands behind your back, please.”

She blew out a breath, then obeyed with a certain graceless alacrity that pleased him more than studied grace would have—because it meant she was too excited to contain herself. And better still, his grip on her meant he kept her pussy right there, pressed against his wide cockhead. As she shifted, he coated himself in her and had to hold himself back, hard.

When her hands were behind her back and her forehead was nestled against the oversoft, cushy rug beneath them, he wrapped one hand around her wrists and held them there. Maybe a little higher than she would have naturally, to make it fun.

“Thank me,” he commanded her. “For showing you this consideration and allowing for the possibility of your pleasure in the midst of this punishment.”

He felt the shudder work its way through her, and he loved the way goose bumps prickled all over her skin. She was so responsive. He was already thinking of all the wicked things he could do to make her shudder like that, over and over again.

Dorian hadn’t been this pleased and impressed by a submissive in a long, long while.

“Thank you, sir,” Erika moaned. “Thank you, thank you.”

And with absolutely no warning, he slammed himself home.

She came instantly, violently, with a scream that was like music to him.

He didn’t wait for her to ride it out. Dorian pounded into her, hard and deep, claiming her and taking her over and over. He fucked her through the wallop of that first orgasm, then straight on into a second one.

Erika kept screaming, prettier every time.

And still he kept fucking her at the same, ferocious pace, until her sobs and screams changed. And turned into his name.

“Please, Dorian. Please, sir. Please—please—please—”

He couldn’t have said what she begged for. Only that he took it.

Again and again, he took and she gave, and that was the beauty they made between them. That was the discipline and the desire, the coming together of two halves to make something much hotter, much brighter than either one of them alone.

Dorian made her come once more, and then, with a roar, he took his own pleasure at last.

And as he fell, he had the distinct notion that this time, he was well and truly damned.

Dorian did not typically spend a lot of his time questioning himself, his motives or his actions, because he’d spent a lifetime committed to honesty and openness in all things and that generally meant there was very little to question.

He was renowned for ferreting out secrets in the club and in the boardroom by dint of…simply asking. Then demanding honesty in return.

It was amazing how rare that was. So rare, in fact, that he’d heard it discussed in his office as his superpower. He’d always rolled his eyes at that, because if he had a superpower, he was pretty sure it had more to do with the kind of sex he preferred than a simple round of honest conversation.

Some people liked to claim he had been born confident, and he couldn’t dispute that. Dorian had always had a deep, invariable sense of who he was, what he wanted and what he was prepared to do to get it. That had come to him honestly. His father had been the disappointment in the Alexander family, lazy and addicted and good for nothing at all—but his inability to live up to the standards set by Dorian’s grandfather had merely given Dorian a good example of what best to avoid.

He did not lie because that was all his father ever did. He did not cheat because he had seen the pain his father’s various forms of cheating had caused, whether in his relationships or in the business. He was bracingly honest with everyone he came into contact with—especially himself.

But that was before his best friend’s little sister had turned up in his favorite club, sank to her knees and made something deep inside him hum.

As if he’d been waiting all this time to truly come alive.

He shook that unsettling notion off. And he concentrated on the practicalities instead.

Erika lay on the floor in a heap. Her eyes were closed, her face was still flushed, and her lips were parted. She was in the position he’d left her, as if she’d simply…folded into herself. Fully surrendered, fully his.

The woman of your dreams, a voice inside him pronounced.

Dorian rubbed a hand over his face, amazed to find he was less steady than he ought to have been.

He tucked himself back into his trousers, amazed that he had come so hard. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had gotten to him like that. And he didn’t feel empty and restless the way he did more and more these days, especially after sex. He wasn’t already thinking about the work he had to do or what his next extreme BDSM feat would be should he find a willing submissive to test it with him. He wasn’t already thinking about who that might be.

He wasn’t thinking about anything except Erika and that was…new. Like the feeling of deep stillness inside him that he knew he’d never felt before—and yet recognized, somehow.

Dorian didn’t know where the hell to put all that yet, so he shoved it aside. He reached down and plucked her up from the floor, shifting her to hold her in his arms. Then he carried her up the stairs to the master suite that took up most of the second floor. Her head was a soft and welcome weight tucked there into the crook of his neck, making the stillness in him feel like something else. Like religion, maybe.

He moved down the hall past his study, personal gym and sauna, and he didn’t bother to turn on any lights. Berlin was bright outside the many windows, casting the room in a dim kind of glow. And when he looked, he could see the first signs of dawn in the sky.

It should have been no more than another well-spent night in this anything-goes city. But that wasn’t how it felt.

Not when she was still groggy as he set her on her feet, there against the side of his bed with its four steel posters that he would very much like to tie her to. So groggy she hadn’t arranged her features in the usual way. She looked sweet. Defenseless. Wide-open and guileless, and Dorian’s ribs seemed to shrink. It was hard to breathe for a moment.

He couldn’t say he liked that at all.

Erika murmured something incoherent as he stripped her few clothes from her body. He laid her out on the mattress and left her there, murmuring a quiet order for her to stay where she was.

And she was exactly where he’d left her when he came back. He’d gone downstairs to the kitchen to fix her a little snack and a glass of water, with an electrolyte powder mixed in for when she was recovered sufficiently to tend to the inevitable postscene drop. He’d also found his preferred salve in the play bag he brought to the club, though he hadn’t used it in a while.

But that was one more thing he didn’t want to think about, because it felt…fraught. Fragile, almost, in this strange blue light of almost-morning with a woman he shouldn’t have touched soft and undeniably his in his bed.

Dorian shouldn’t have touched her, but he had. And that meant he had responsibilities. The kind of sex—and sex games—he liked meant there was no hit-it-then-quit-it option afterward. Especially not when things had gotten so intense between them.

Some submissives didn’t like to be touched afterward, but Erika had snuggled into him as he’d carried her. He wondered if she would feel that way with one of the fantasy dominants she’d imagined she’d find in the sex clubs he had every intention of banning her from—or if it was specific to him. To them, because she knew him.

Dorian really didn’t want to think about how he knew her, or how long he’d known her, and he was all too aware that the things he didn’t want to think about were starting to feel a lot like lying to himself. He wasn’t all the way there yet, but he had the creeping suspicion it was gaining on him. His jaw clenched on its own accord and he made himself loosen up as he sat down next to her on the bed.

She was soft and warm beneath his hands, and she smiled as he turned her over onto her belly. He took his time rubbing the liniment into the marks he’d left on her ass, taking more than a little satisfaction in the heat of her reddened flesh beneath his palm.

“I can’t decide if that hurts or feels good or both,” she said softly, as much to the mattress as to him, and when he looked up, her eyes were closed. As if she was talking in her sleep.

“Then it’s working.” He finished with the lotion and set it aside, then ran a hand down the elegant line of her back that had entranced him for a split second long ago—and that he had the sneaking suspicion would haunt him for a lot longer now. “Are you okay?”

Her eyelashes fluttered as she blinked at him. “Define okay.”

“Do you feel exposed? Vulnerable? Emotional?”

Her gaze was steady and much too blue. “Yes.”

And to his surprise, Dorian found himself smiling. “Good.”

“You wanted to make me feel things,” she said after a moment. “Didn’t you?”

“We can talk about it later,” he told her gruffly.

And normally he was remote, if caring, during aftercare. He tended to any wounds and made sure there were no physical complications. He held subs on his lap if necessary, made sure they got their energy levels up again. But he was not cuddly. He was Dorian Alexander. He did not snuggle.

And still, without thinking too much about why he was doing it, he crawled up onto the bed beside her. He pulled her to him and held her there against his chest. Which meant he was going to have to find another word to describe what it was he was doing, because it felt too good to be snuggling.

She shifted, and for another moment that made his chest too tight, he thought she might pull away. But she didn’t.

Instead, she settled against him, tucking her head against his chest and letting out a long, slow exhale.

And a knot in Dorian’s chest he would have insisted wasn’t there, because it never had been before, eased a little.

Unfortunately, that gave his mind leave to spin about at will.

Dorian had accepted his particular kinks and quirks a long time ago. Unlike some of the dominants he knew, he had never agonized about the things he wanted. His only concession to his supposed deviance had been to go out of his way to make certain that whoever he played with wanted the same things he did. The dynamic. The exquisite give to his take.

He took joy in the initial negotiation, the setting of terms and expectations. He reveled in building scenes and taking submissives on a ride. And even if he’d begun to feel more like one of those shabby old American theme parks of late, that didn’t change what he liked or who he was. All it did was make him more selective. It was edging up on a month, maybe two, since he’d gone to the club before tonight—when there had been a time he couldn’t get enough.

Dorian knew people thought it was a sickness, even in these so-called enlightened times. His father, for example, who had discovered his son’s predilections early and had spent years throwing it in Dorian’s face—and not only when he was out of his head. Dorian had been grateful for that, all things considered, because it had made it that much easier to cut his father out of his life. The way his mother and grandfather had done before him.

For him, always, it all came down to this moment. After the storm of play and passion, the simple trust of a well-pleasured, well-spanked woman. It was everything to him. It was the point.

And he had always enjoyed this moment, when surrender was absolute, and only trust remained. He didn’t snuggle through it, normally, but he always liked it. And tonight he couldn’t help noticing that he’d never felt so complete before. As if she wasn’t the only one who’d put an integral part of herself out on the table here tonight.

As if she wasn’t the only one exposed.

He didn’t like that thought at all.

And he really didn’t like, once it took hold, how that thought bloomed. And cascaded, because this wasn’t a random submissive woman he could have met in a club. It wasn’t only a surprisingly intense scene that had veered off and become something he hadn’t quite intended.

There was no getting away from the fact that this was Erika in his arms, naked, with a red ass he’d given her himself. Erika Vanderburg. Conrad’s little sister.

Dorian had never hidden his nature from his friend. There was no point when his father liked to trumpet it to the world at every opportunity. And, in fact, Conrad shared a number of his inclinations.

But he doubted very much that Conrad would find it even remotely acceptable for Dorian to be exploring those inclinations with Erika.

Erika seemed to be in some doubt about the situation with her older brother, but Dorian knew what she didn’t. Conrad loved her. Fiercely, stubbornly and perhaps too sternly—but he loved her. Dorian had been with him when he’d received news of their father’s death. And Dorian knew that one of Conrad’s major concerns, then and now, was how he was going to raise his spoiled, fragile little princess of a sister the way his father would have wanted.