Teach Me--A Sexy Billionaire Romance

by Caitlin Crews

  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.

  Conrad had done his best to fill his father’s shoes.

  Erika had flounced off and started referring to him as her enemy.

  And Dorian, who had witnessed his friend’s struggle and had taken a dim view of Erika’s behavior himself, had repaid his friend’s trust and friendship by defiling the little sister Conrad almost viewed as more
of a daughter.

  Plainly, Dorian was fucked.

  In his arms, there against his chest, Erika stirred again. Dorian needed to distance himself. He needed to repair the walls he should have kept between his cock and what he owed his friend—and fast.

  But her face, her beautiful face, was open and vulnerable when she tipped it up to his. Her blue eyes were sleepy. And suddenly he couldn’t abide the idea of any walls.

  “Lie down with me,” she said, and though she phrased it like an order, he knew it was a question. And an uncertain one at that.

  Obviously Dorian didn’t cuddle up with his subs and sleep with them that way. He’d always imagined that kind of thing was better left to long-term relationships—which he had always been deeply allergic to.

  Allergic? asked that same voice inside him. Or uninspired?

  But all that unfettered emotion on her pretty face was easily the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  And the fact he was digging his own hole was clear to him. But he didn’t do anything to stop it. He set her aside and rolled from the bed, and she curled into a ball against his pillows and watched him strip out of his clothes.

  He waited for that restless itch to wash over him, and told himself he would handle it for however long she slept because it was the least he could do for this woman he shouldn’t have laid a finger on—much less spanked and fucked and made cry. But it didn’t kick in.

  Not when he crawled into the bed and pulled her tight to his front, one arm slung over her soft warmth. Not when they lay there like that, wound together like roots too tangled to ever be pulled apart.

  She sighed a little as she burrowed beneath the covers, and he knew that sound. Surrender and safety. Beautiful, he thought.

  And just this once, just because it was Erika, he let himself go.

  Dorian held her close, matched his breath to hers and then, for the very first time, fell asleep with a woman in his arms.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DORIAN WOKE UP with Erika wrapped around him, tangled up in every possible way with her legs between his and her mouth against his neck, and stopped lying to himself.

  She slept heavily and deep. He knew her scent now, and the heat of her skin, as if she was tattooed on him. And the memories of what they’d done the night before were now interspersed with what it was like to sleep in a sweet knot with her, turning this way and then the other as if they’d choreographed it.

  As if he, a man who never slept easily or at all with another, couldn’t sleep unless he was in contact with her.

  As if you will never sleep well without her again.

  He could feel that weight in his chest, thick and deep.

  But this morning, steeped in the reality his body had already accepted—since he had slept with this woman tucked up next to him and wound around him as if they’d done it a hundred thousand times before—Dorian stopped pretending he didn’t know what that weight was.

  He had always been honest to a fault. It was part of what attracted him to BDSM and why he flourished in a subculture that prized communication, candor and authenticity above all else. He saw no reason to stop now, no matter that this kind of sudden awareness wasn’t exactly what he’d planned for this weekend. No matter how inconvenient the truth that lay there, beautifully naked beside him.

  He took his time easing away from her because he wanted her to stay right where she was, her cheeks flushed with the force of her dreams and that ass of hers still red from his hand. He was hard, but then, he suspected that might simply be the Erika effect. If he claimed her, if she was his, he could look forward to mornings like this. To waking her up in whatever method he could devise to best take advantage, and his imagination when it came to the care and erotic torture of women who liked to kneel before him was boundless. And endlessly wicked.

  Something thudded through him, and he had the distinct impression that it was the last of his defenses disappearing.

  In what felt to him like a plume of smoke. Or maybe a bonfire.

  There was no if about it, he acknowledged.

  He had every intention of claiming this woman. If he hadn’t, he would never have fucked her.

  Because deep down, he knew what he wanted. He always had.

  His restlessness of recent months—the past year—had been because he’d stopped believing that he could get it. It seemed impossible that he could ever combine the two parts of his life. The heir to the Alexander shipping fortune needed to marry an appropriate wife. Dorian had always known that. Even his own father had done his duty in that respect, though Dorian doubted his brittle, elegant mother—now married to a sedate London financier who she could depend on to bore her in exactly the same way for the rest of their stodgy lives—would thank him for it. And Dorian had certainly met his share of kinky, delightfully debauched debutantes over the years, God bless them.

  But none of them had inspired him for more than a night. Or in his case, a part of the night. The ones who played as hard as he did weren’t interested in anything but playing. And the vast majority of them were better at playing at debauchery than really giving themselves over to man who could lead them through the darkness of anything real.

  He stood there, one hand on the steel post that he really was going to tie her to, one of these days. It was almost as if he could see it. As if it had already happened, when he knew it hadn’t.

  Yet.

  That word echoed in him like a premonition. Like a vow.

  He pulled a light blanket up and over Erika’s body, little as he liked covering such mouthwatering nakedness. He would much prefer to lie back down, roll her over and lose himself in her again and again...

  But he had some thinking to do. Some serious thinking to do.

  And he doubted very much that he would get any of that done while he stood here, this close to slipping back into that bed, holding her hands over her head so her breasts jutted toward his mouth and waking her up the way he wanted to do.

  Dorian showered, and toweled himself off, choosing not to handle his cock—because he had plans. He grabbed a pair of jeans and a T-shirt on his way toward the stairs, and dressed before he jogged down them. When he reached the main floor, he found his mobile and checked his messages and email. There was the usual influx of work-related things he intended to ignore as much as possible. And there were also three messages on his personal voice mail.

  All from Conrad.

  And if he’d had any lingering doubts about the conviction he’d woken up with, it vanished then. Because Dorian knew he needed to have a frank conversation with his best friend today, but what he didn’t feel was any sense of guilt or shame.

  Fuck that.

  He padded into his modern, streamlined kitchen, and set about fixing himself his morning coffee. He answered the one or two emails that couldn’t wait, then tossed his phone onto the counter. Then he stood there, drinking his coffee and staring out his windows at his beloved Berlin. His grubby, beautiful, sprawling and unknowable city. He had lived here over a decade, had no plans to relocate and still found something new every time he walked down the street.

  That was what BDSM had always been for him. Adventure and home in one. A refuge for a boy who had grown up on a steady diet of his father’s chaos, and a place where the man he’d made himself—uncompromising, brutally honest and as demanding as he was protective—was appreciated. Lauded, even.

  And still, lately, he’d been thinking he was going to have to give it up. Because he needed to marry to carry on the family line in the time-honored fashion, he had no intention of treating any wife of his as shabbily as his father had treated his mother, and he didn’t believe that there was any possibility he would be lucky enough to find an heiress to please his grandfather who would also please him.

  After all, it was notoriously difficult to please Master Dorian. His entire reputation was built on t
hat essential truth.

  And then here, last night, with the least likely person he could ever have imagined, he’d felt that particular stillness inside him.

  Erika had pleased him. Deeply and completely.

  And as she had told him already last night, his grandfather already loved her.

  Dorian might have preferred a direct blow to the face rather than the sucker punch that realization felt like this morning, but he was nothing if not capable of rolling with what he found and making the best of it. It was what had made him his second fortune. It was also what made him popular at the club.

  He didn’t have to glance at his mobile to see his best friend’s name again. Conrad’s name was emblazoned inside him, and the idea that a man he considered a brother would hate him for this disloyalty ate at him—but Dorian had never been one to hide from hard things. Hiding was akin to lying as far as he was concerned.

  And the liar in his family was his father, not him.

  He made himself a second cup of coffee and started thinking about solutions.

  Conrad was an issue, but bigger by far than his best friend was the issue of Erika herself. Dorian knew she’d needed what had happened between them last night—desperately. Her submission to him had been real and raw and truly one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. He wanted nothing more than to protect her. Help her.

  And get them both off while he was at it. Repeatedly.

  It was what he was made for.

  He wanted to do his level best to use this particularly kinky spark between them to make them better people together than they could ever be alone. It was the sweetest, most dangerous game. It was the crux of the power exchange. He dominated, she submitted, and somewhere in there, her strength humbled him even as his power melted her.

  It was Dorian’s favorite kind of fire, and he had never felt it burn as hot and as wild as it had last night. Because while clubs like his existed all over the world to create safe spaces for like-minded individuals to play at burning, it was still just play.