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Wasn’t it convenient that now he didn’t have to?
He studied her as she walked inside his house, looking jittery and hectic, even though she tried to hide it.
Her hair was down, and he liked that. It was inky black, glossy, and fell below her shoulders in lovely waves. She wore a hint of cosmetics on her face, and unlike some who made it look as if they’d used just a hint by using a great deal, he had the impression her use was actually sparing.
Conrad had no opinion on cosmetics one way or the other, but he filed that away anyway, because it told him things about her. That she was confident. That she liked how she looked enough to both enhance it and not hide it.
Rory was dressed in clothing far more becoming tonight. A figure-skimming tank top over a loose, flowing sort of skirt that showed him acres of her sweetly formed legs straight down to her bright red painted toenails inside a pair of sandals. Around her neck she wore a frothy sort of summer scarf. And down one arm, a collection of bracelets that chimed and sang when she moved.
She looked bright and almost too pretty to bear. He remembered discovering her clit ring, and stopped pretending everything about her didn’t fill him with an impossible heat.
Conrad beckoned her, with exaggerated chivalry, to precede him into the part of the grand space on the first floor that he liked best. For a variety of reasons. It was a living room, first and foremost. It was set with various chairs and couches, tables and art, all arrayed around the fireplace he enjoyed in winter. But this part of the house was off the plaza, and on nights like this, he opened up the French doors and let his garden in.
Conrad loved cities—any city. He craved that kind of pulsing energy, because there was nothing better than setting out on a long walk at any hour and feeling the heartbeat of the city as he moved through it. He loved Paris particularly, because it was his. No ghosts of his father here. No interference from his overbearing mother. Here he had built himself a company, a fortress, and a life, and all of it made sense only here in the center of the city.
But a man needed green to grow, his father had told him long ago. Conrad had taken that to heart.
Assuming he had a heart, that was.
A topic that was often up for debate. With his mother, the impossible Chriszette, and occasionally one of her unfortunate lovers. Who seemed always to feel the need to chime in on Vanderburg family matters—but rarely more than once. And with his sister, of course—though Erika had changed since she’d started up with Dorian. All for the better, Conrad had to admit, after years of assuming Erika was a lost cause. It was why he’d cut her off.
Something he’d remedied once Erika and Dorian had actually started living together. Little as he wished to think about the things that must be true about his sister if she’d ended up with his best friend.
Given that Conrad and Dorian had discovered they’d shared a great many of the same interests when they’d been teenagers, shunted off to the same boarding school and prone to the sort of confessions that could only be made at age fourteen.
He shoved that away, as he always did, because surely he could wish them the best without allowing himself to imaginehis sisteras the submissive she must be if she was the right woman for Dorian. Or if Dorian was the right man for her, which it was clear he was.
Conrad’s oft-disputed heart could only take so much.
But happily, unsolicited comments on his heart or lack thereof were not something he had to contend with when it came to lovely women begging him to perform his favorite acts all over their bodies. For his own pleasure and amusement.
Especially not when they turned up at his front door to commence said begging, a practice he would normally strongly discourage. And certainly not reward like this.
But her bloody contact details had been taunting him for two weeks, and his body did not understand why he kept going to the gym instead of the dungeon.
There was a faint breeze through the windows as he led Rory to the chair he wished her to take. The sound of the Champs-élysées from afar. The luxury flats and penthouses in the tall buildings surrounding his private plaza seemed like their own galaxy of sorts, lights beaming down through the canopy of trees in his garden.
He expected Rory to balk, or start ranting at him again. That she sat down quietly and obediently was one more indication the past two weeks had impacted on her.
Conrad was egotistical enough to enjoy that. Even if he was also experienced enough to understand that it might not be him she’d come back for as much as another taste of dominance.
If a person had a taste for it, it was difficult—after sampling it for the first time—to think about much of anything else.
He knew that all too well. He remembered.
Conrad took the chair opposite her, sitting down with his legs thrust out so that he claimed the greater part of the space between them. And so that he was giving the impression of caging her between them without actually resorting to chains or bars. Though the night was young.
And then he...did nothing. He propped his head on one hand, kept his gaze on her, and was silent.
Silent and watchful, while his quiet house stood hushed all around, like another observer.
Faint sounds of traffic floated in the French doors. Music from somewhere up high. The hint of laughter on the breeze, but gone the next moment.
He could have turned on music, but didn’t. He waited.
And watched, entertained, as Rory lost her nerve and began to fray, right there before him.
First she began to fidget. She arranged and rearranged the hem of her skirt as it flirted with the middle of her pretty thighs. She pressed her lips together, then straightened them. She fiddled with her bracelets. She moved her hair forward over one shoulder, then back. Then she did it all again.
