LITMIR.BIZ

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sense of relief when she’d packed up her things and left Oxford behind. She’d felt less sanguine about her choices when her officious, tight-assed older brother, Conrad—in his role as head of the family that he’d assumed after their father had died, which Erika felt he’d taken to a little too readily and far too sternly—had cut off her financial support.

      “I’m not supporting you while you waste your life,” he’d said after he’d summoned her to his palatial home in Paris.

      She’d rolled her eyes. “I’m actually getting a life, Conrad.”

      “Get it with a job, then,” he’d retorted.

      And could not be swayed, epic asshole that he was.

      Erika had gone right out and found herself a job in a dive bar in New Orleans, because she was sure that would gall her uppity brother, and she’d had every intention of paying her own way to make her own fun. But then her dramatic, theatrically self-involved mother had swept in and restored Erika’s access to the family money, because the only thing Chriszette Vanderburg feared was not having strings to pull on to control her offspring.

      At first, Erika had resisted, because she didn’t want to answer to anyone. Especially not a member of her family. But Chriszette had implored her and Erika had given in because Chriszette was difficult to ignore and harder still to deny, and that was how she’d ended up acting like a paid companion when her mother was between torrid love affairs. And having to find new ways to ask for money without ever being so crass and vulgar as to ask for it the rest of the time.

      But what she’d really missed in that time was not Conrad, who could shove his tough love up his own ass as far as Erika was concerned. She didn’t care if he treated her like a walking disaster, because really, he always had. What she missed was the occasional access to Dorian.

      She shuddered a little, involuntarily, as that name—his name—rolled through her the way it always did.

      Dorian Alexander was her older brother’s best friend, stretching back to their boarding school days. They had been thrown together at age eight and had been fast friends from the start. She had heard Conrad refer to Dorian as his brother.

      But he was not Erika’s brother.

      The last time she’d seen Dorian, it had been at the family charity ball his shipping magnate grandfather threw each year in Athens. Erika had gone with her mother, who liked to order her daughter to serve as her date at such things when she didn’t have a lover on hand. And yes, if she was honest, Erika had accompanied her mother to an event she could have talked her way out of for the distinct, petty pleasure of flaunting herself in front of her brother.

      Conrad had been icily civil. Though Erika had seen that telltale muscle going wild in his jaw and had smugly enjoyed the satisfaction of shooting him an unmistakable middle finger simply by turning up and not begging him to reconsider.

      Dorian had not followed Conrad’s lead. He had been distinctly uncivil when Erika had chirped a greeting his way, and her stomach had knotted up with a strange heat when he’d stared at her. Unsmiling.

      “Why don’t you dance with me?” Erika had asked him, feeling reckless and daring. Where Conrad was infinitely disapproving and always annoyed by Erika’s existence, Dorian had always been…stern. But there was something about the particular intensity of that sternness and the frank way he looked at her—at everything—that had always made Erika feel…silly.

      That night she’d decided to lean into the silliness. And besides, she’d been wearing a sparkly dress that bared most of her back and hinted at her ass. Okay, more than hinted. She’d wondered how long he’d stay stern if he had his hands on her.

      “I don’t dance with little brats in the middle of temper tantrums,” Dorian had said. Calmly.

      And she’d never understood how he could do that. How he could look at her in a certain way, usually while saying obnoxious things to her, and it only made her want to giggle. Or maybe melt. Or worse, both, while the knotted heat inside her seemed to thump its way lower the longer he looked at her.

      “That sounds like Conrad-sourced propaganda,” she’d said, laughing.

      Because she was afraid that if she didn’t laugh, she’d do something far more embarrassing.

      Dorian did not laugh. He was a tall, extraordinarily well built man. That had been true when he was in high school and Erika had seen him on the odd holiday he’d spent with Conrad’s family instead of his own. But time clearly loved him. He looked as if he was chiseled from stone, his lean muscle honed to perfection. His dark hair was closely cropped, yet somehow gave the impression he’d only moments before run his fingers through it. His eyes were a cool coffee brown, excruciatingly intense. Powerful. His cheekbones were so high they made Erika think of arias.

      And his mouth was always set in that firm line. She’d spent a lot of time staring at it over the years, so she knew its every slight quirk and the raw sensuality that seemed to brood its way out of him no matter how stern he looked at any given moment.

      But the look he gave her at that ball in Athens was pitiless.

      “Is it propaganda or simple truth that you flounced out of university and refused to return?” he asked coolly.

      “I wouldn’t call it flouncing.”

      She expected him to launch into a screed on the importance of education. Or to discuss the firsts he and Conrad had received when they’d gone up, because of course they had. She’d wanted him to, really, because surely if he was horrendously boring and too much like Conrad she’d stop feeling so lit up when she saw him.

      Dorian was not the only person around who disliked Erika, well she knew. But he was the only one whose dislike she felt so keenly. And the only one whose dislike did not result in her immediate indifference.

      But Dorian did not wax rhapsodic about the dubious charms of an Oxbridge degree as expected. “Your brother has far more patience with willful disobedience than I would,” he’d said instead.

      “I’m not sure I would consider cutting off his only sister very patient,” Erika had replied, not sure why she felt flushed. With a surprising wallop of what couldn’t be shame, surely. And something else she hadn’t wanted to name. “But I suppose your mileage may vary.”

      “I don’t negotiate disobedience,” Dorian had said in that same quiet, intense way. His gaze was fierce and disapproving and, worse, made her shiver. “I punish it.”

      Erika hadn’t known what had come over her then. It was part of that flush that seemed to deepen by the moment. Red and everywhere and what was happening to her?

      She’d tilted her head to one side. “How would you punish me?”

      Dorian hadn’t smiled. If anything, he’d looked more forbidding. And harder, somehow, though he didn’t move or shift as far as she could see. Erika had felt herself go a little weak, even as she’d felt herself get wet and needy between her legs.

      Right there in a fancy dress, in a room where her mother and brother also stood.

      And that restless thing in her…settled. Into a kind of expectant stillness she’d never felt before in her life.

      “I generally start with a spanking,” he’d said very distinctly. “And not the kind you’d think was fun, Erika. The kind that would encourage you to change your behavior.”

      “Or what?” she managed to ask, though her voice was barely above a whisper.

      His eyes had gleamed. And she could swear there was something like a curve to his hard mouth. “Or I would be even more disappointed with you than I already am.”

      And it was at that moment that a great many things about her older brother’s best friend came together for Erika. With the force of a blow—or, perhaps, that spanking.

      Dorian had sauntered away as if nothing

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