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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. “Defineokay.”
“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 notsnuggle.
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 besnuggling.
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’tsnugglethrough 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 hereallydidn’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.
