The Dare Collection February 2020

She doubted very much the Dorian would count that at all.

“It sounds to me like you’ve taken a little emotional dip and have stayed there,” he said. “I told you that you might.”

“Not everything is a pageant of intensity,” she snapped, and she was aware as she said it that she clearly didn’t believe that herself. Because if she did, she wouldn’t be sitting in her carriage house bedroom on her mother’s lover’s estate, with all the curtains closed tight against the drizzle of another English afternoon. God, she was so sick of her own shit. “And here’s a fun fact. Not every emotion I have has something to do with you.”

“I’m delighted to hear it,” Dorian said smoothly, but still, there was that undercurrent that kicked at her and made her sit a little straighter. “I just landed in London. Your brother’s party is this weekend. Now that you’re so marvelously recovered from all the intimacy we shared, I hope you remember the promise you made me.”

“Go to hell.”

Dorian made a tsking sound that blazed through like the warning it was, making her body light up. Wet, needy, naughty—and desperate for the discipline only he could administer.

She wanted to hate herself for that but she couldn’t quite get there. Not with his voice in her ear.

“That does not bode well for you, kitten,” he said, with that soft, amused menace that made her…glow.

She cleared her throat. “What I do or don’t do concerning my brother is no business of yours.”

“If you say so.”

And she could swear, if she closed her eyes, she could see the look he was wearing on his face when he sounded like that. All that dark, dangerous patience in his gaze. That unyielding power stamped into that unsmiling mouth that made her feel weak in all the best ways. What was it about this man that made her silly straight through?

“Are you touching yourself?” he asked, his voice stern.

Erika froze, because sure enough, she’d reached down between her legs with one hand, and was pressing the heel of her palm against her throbbing clit. How the hell had he known that? “No.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

Her hand fell away from her pussy as if he’d ordered her to stop touching herself. As if he’d reached over and physically removed her hand, more like.

“I’m not lying,” she said. And his silence felt as sharp a rebuke as a slap on the ass. She sighed. “Now.”

“Good,” he said, and she could hear laughter and satisfaction then. And all that glorious heat. “Don’t. As far as I’m concerned, that’s my pussy and you can’t touch it without my permission. I’ll know, kitten. And there will be consequences.”

“You can’t just say things like that to people, Dorian. Are you insane? I can do anything I want with my body.”

“What’s that?” he asked, sounding mild and stern at once. The combination made goose bumps rise all over her skin. “Was that your safe word? Or was it another round of predictable complaints because you like to deal with your uncertainty by shooting off your mouth?”

She wanted to hang up on him. She didn’t. And she hated herself for that, too.

“I’ll see you this weekend,” he promised her. Though it sounded a lot more like a threat. “And I’ll expect you to remember every detail of the promise you made me, Erika. Because you can be certain I do.”

And he cut off the call before she could protest. Deliberately, she was sure.

But something about his voice galvanized her. She got out of the bed where she’d been conducting her experiments in insomnia and petulance. She threw open the curtains and glared out at the gray day. She went down into the kitchen of the carriage house and stared around, uninspired, at the dry cereal boxes that had provided her with the bulk of her nutrition since she’d arrived. Because her mother certainly didn’t want her grown daughter taking meals at the big house with her lover. Erika’s very existence was a testament to Chriszette’s age.

Erika had learned that lesson the hard way. And years ago. Now she accepted the fact that her mother liked to control her in between affairs, but never during them. A situation that had suited them both since Erika had left university.

Does it suit you? a dark voice that sounded suspiciously like Dorian’s asked inside her. Or do you put up with it because she treats you the way you think you deserve to be treated?

“Shut up, Dorian,” she muttered into the empty kitchen.

Her body was still flushed, and wound up, and she thought that maybe she should go ahead and handle her own needs. Because fuck him. Who cared what he ordered her to do? He wasn’t the boss of her.

But even when she sat down, then slipped her hand back between her legs, she couldn’t do it.

Because you want to be his, something that was all her whispered, telling her more truths she didn’t want to face.

Erika went on a long, punishing walk. When she’d exhausted herself, she trudged back to the carriage house and took a long bath. She soaked in the hot water until she was so heartily sick of herself and her own endlessly cycling thoughts that she thought she might scream.

She wrapped herself in a bath towel, then padded back to the bedroom. She picked up her phone, scowled at it for a while, and admitted that what she really wanted was for Dorian to call her again. Especially now that they were in the same country again.

I’ll see you this weekend, he’d said, and she shivered now, because she would see him again.

But that meant she would be seeing other people, too. Maybe it was time to stop recovering from Berlin and start handling her actual life. The one that went on no matter how many hard truths Dorian had marked into her skin that weekend.

Erika pulled up Jenny’s number.

So, she texted, what do you think I should wear to your ENGAGEMENT PARTY to MY BROTHER?

Her phone rang almost immediately.

“Oh my God, Erika,” Jenny cried when Erika picked up. “I thought you were blanking me.”

“I wasn’t not blanking you.”

“Where are you? Are you still in Germany?”

“No,” Erika said, her body flushed from her bath. She looked down at herself, caught by that same awareness that had haunted her since she’d left Berlin. That this wasn’t her body any longer. That he’d made it his. And why was that the only thing that seemed to soothe her? “I’m in Devon with Chriszette and her latest fling. Lord Something or Other. I only stayed in Berlin for that one weekend.”

The way she often had, over these last six months. Jenny would think nothing of it. Another weekend clubbing, that was all. And Erika would let her think it, because she couldn’t articulate what had happened between her and Dorian to herself. There was no way she could explain it to anyone else.

And maybe that was why, when the silence stretched out between them, she let it. Because she understood it.

“It would be better to see you in person—and before the party,” Jenny said after a moment. “Can you come up to London?”

Erika looked around at the carriage house that had become a prison of all the emotions she’d told Dorian she wasn’t experiencing. She thought about the fact she’d be seeing Dorian himself this weekend, and all the anticipation and anxiety, need and longing that kicked up. She thought about the promise she’d made him and what that would mean—could she really apologize to her brother?

Her brother, whom Jenny was marrying, for reasons unclear.

“As a matter of fact,” Erika said, “I would love to come to London. I could use a break.”

She did not add from me.

Because that would require explanations she didn’t want to give, not even to her oldest friend.

But if she could, she thought the next morning as she caught the train from Cranbrook to London Waterloo Station, she would have left herself behind.

CHAPTER TEN

THEY MET IN the breathtakingly posh bar of an extraordinarily luxurious and exclusive hotel where they’d liked to sneak away to during their Oxford years and imagine what their lives would be like when they graduated.

Erika could almost squint and see all those dreams dancing there in the dimly lit, aristocratically plush surroundings. It made it impossible not to engage in a game or two of what-if.

What if she’d lived these last years differently? Where would she be now? What would have happened if she’d stayed at Oxford and done as Jenny had—because Lady Genevieve Charlotte Elizabeth Markham, Jenny to her friends, was nothing if not dutiful.

In the flattering light of the cozy, quiet bar, Jenny looked as if she could still be the teenager she’d been when they’d met as first years. She sat across from Erika looking as disarmingly approachable as ever, which had always been her secret weapon. She radiated warmth even when she wasn’t feeling the slightest hint of it herself. Erika had been drawn to it. Who wouldn’t be?

Maybe Conrad could use a little warmth, too, came that dark voice inside.

She told her inner Dorian to go fuck himself.

And then she marinated in memories and more what-ifs while Jenny set about ordering them wine.

Dutiful, well-behaved Jenny had taken the requisite job in an appropriate charity after she’d graduated with her first in classics. Like many girls of her station, saddled with a father consumed with notions of bloodlines and the consolidation of hereditary lands, her charity work had only ever been meant to be a stopgap. A pretty little notation on her résumé. One that she could toss aside the moment she assumed her true duties as a wife of a worthy, wealthy gentleman. Preferably one of her father’s choosing.

“You haven’t posted a single thing on any social media site in weeks,” Jenny said when they were both properly fortified with glasses of wine and a tray of spiced nuts. “I was starting to think the announcement might have killed you.”

She smiled as she said it, though her gaze was wary.

“The announcement was a surprise,” Erika agreed. And she’d received it not only from Dorian, but from Jenny, Chriszette—and even Conrad’s assistant. Lest she complain that she hadn’t been invited or informed, she supposed. Things she couldn’t imagine doing now but she certainly might have done a few weeks back. She could admit that. “But I survived it intact.”

Jenny sighed as she played idly with her wineglass. And Erika couldn’t keep herself from studying the enormous, sparkling ring that didn’t quite fit on her slender left hand. It slid as she moved, tipping the great stone this way, then that.

Silence had never been their thing. And Erika was suddenly struck by the unpleasant realization that it was because she’d always filled it. She’d always been perfectly happy to twitter on about herself, hadn’t she? Especially in recent years, when she’d viewed every in-person meeting with anybody as an opportunity to deliver highly curated press releases on how wonderful her life was.

Confront yourself and you conquer your fears, Dorian had told her, the dick.

“Jenny,” Erika said softly now, with more self-possession than she’d ever thought she had. “Tell me how this happened.”

She’d wanted to say this tragedy, which she certainly would have before. But something stopped her tonight—possibly the fact that Jenny certainly didn’t look tragic. And more to the point, hadn’t asked Erika’s opinion.

It was another little prick of shame that the pre-Berlin version of Erika would have steamrolled right in and bludgeoned half of London with her opinion without caring if anyone had solicited it. How charming.

“As I’ve mentioned before, I’m sure, my father has never appreciated my passion for charity work,” Jenny said, smiling wryly over her glass of wine.

“I would be astonished if your father appreciated passion in any form.”

Jenny’s smile deepened. “He’s quite fond of his dogs.”

Erika drank from her own glass. “I’m not sure I can figure out how we get from passionate charity work that benefits children in war zones to…Conrad.”

Jenny’s smile faded. She frowned down at her wine, but didn’t take a sip.

“We were at an event in Stockholm. My father likes me to play his hostess even when it’s not his party, so I was with him when he met Conrad. They started talking business, my father liked him, and a few days later he announced that he’d taken it upon himself to set us up on a date.” She lifted her gaze. “Which isn’t unusual. I’ve complained about this before. Any day now I expect him to simply announce that he’s sold me off.”

Erika smiled. Then returned to the subject at hand. “And you went on the date, clearly.”

“I didn’t dare say no,” Jenny said. “I assumed Conrad had either been pushed into it, or thought he could go on a single pity date and then carry on with whatever business dealings he had with my father. But instead, he asked me out on a second date.”

“And again, you went?”

“I couldn’t say no.”

“It’s simple, Jen. No. See? I did it.”

“Erika.” And her friend leveled a frank, sad sort of look at her. “Please stop pretending you don’t know what my father’s like. I’ve been playing this game for years. He sets me up on a date, and yes, I go on the dates, because that’s the price I have to pay for my independence.”

“You shouldn’t have to pay a price for your independence.”

Jenny’s smile was sad. “Should doesn’t have much to do with it, I’m afraid. It never has done.”

Erika remembered this from their university days. Jenny’s sense of unwavering duty to her stuffy, unsupportive father—or maybe, more realistically, to the nostalgia she’d been raised on. The grand stories about what had made the Markham family great. And wealthy.

Not so long ago, she would have railed at her friend about this. Tonight, she kept her mouth shut instead.

“I know that I could rebel,” Jenny said quietly when Erika didn’t speak. “Sometimes I dream of it. But that’s not who I am. So yes, I went on that second date, because my father expected me to. And I went on the third, and when Conrad brought me back home to my father’s house, he stayed for a drink. And proposed marriage, there and then, with this honking great ring and all that… Well. You know what your brother is like. So sure of everything.”

“I do indeed.”

Jenny sent her a reproving look. “And it’s all snowballed since. My father was the happiest I’ve seen him in years. Certainly since my mother died. Later that night, after Conrad left, he fairly waxed rhapsodic about putting me in safe hands at last.”

“But, Jen.” Erika’s voice was soft. Not quite imploring, but close. “You don’t love him.”

Jenny took a breath, but her gaze was steady when it met Erika’s.

“He’s kind to me,” she said simply. “We want the same things, more or less. He’s perfectly happy if I continue working, which isn’t something I could say for all the cavemen my father’s sent me on dates with. I’m going to have to marry one of them. Conrad is by far the best option.”

“Jenny…”

“And besides,” she said hurriedly, “sex is not a motivating factor for me the way it is for you.”

“That’s because you’ve never been fucked properly.” Erika laughed at Jenny’s expression. “You know it’s true. Or maybe you don’t, which is sad, but I know it’s true. Wait a minute.” She narrowed her eyes at her friend. “Are you saying that Conrad’s bad in bed? Or are you saying you haven’t sampled the wares yet?”

“I can’t imagine that you would want me to answer that question either way. About your brother.”

Erika made a face. “I really don’t. But as your friend, it’s my duty to ask.”

“I haven’t slept with him, no,” Jenny said, her cheeks red in the dark of the bar. It made Erika wonder how her friend would react if she found herself standing in the Walfreiheit Club one fine night. Or what she’d do if faced with a man like Dorian.

But she couldn’t let herself think about Dorian. Not now.

“There’s hardly been time,” Jenny was saying. “It’s all been a whirlwind and my father insisted on throwing this party—”

“You can’t marry a man if you don’t know what he’s like in bed,” Erika said. “Really, you can’t.”

“People have been doing exactly that for centuries.”

“And they’ve been wildly unhappy.”

“Not always.” Jenny shook her head, and her grip on her wineglass tightened. Visibly. “I don’t expect you to understand this decision, Erika. It’s a bit like being on a runaway train, if I’m honest. But what’s the harm in it? He’s not pretending to love me. I’m not pretending to love him. And, you know, there’s lots of research to prove that arranged marriages are happier, on balance, than marriages based on romantic love.”

“I’ll be sure to make that toast at the wedding. Here’s to a sexless union of people who don’t love each other, but whose financial portfolios match well enough to plod along. Three cheers.”

“Just as long as you come to the wedding.” Jenny reached over and grabbed Erika’s wrist in a fully out-of-character move that made Erika both love her more and worry for her at the same time. “We might not be love’s young dream, but we’re going to be all right. And I would very much like your blessing.”

And a few weeks ago, Erika would have lost her shit. She knew it. She would have said terrible things to Jenny that she’d never be able to take back. She would have called up her brother and shouted a whole lot more things, likely uglier by far. And she certainly wouldn’t have been able to sit here and listen to this breakdown of what had to be one of the stupidest reasons to marry another person she’d ever heard in her life. Especially coming from Jenny, who had always been a romantic.

But then, romantic or not, Jenny thought she didn’t like sex. Erika had always thought that wasn’t quite the truth, and that, really, Jenny had a thing about the man she called her best friend and had therefore never touched that way. Dylan Kilburn had been a first year with them at Oxford, had been brooding in Jenny’s direction since day one, and yet Jenny had resolutely refused to see him as anything but a friend. For years now. Erika was chock-full of theories as to why.

A couple of weeks ago, she would have hammered her friend with each and every one of those theories, but she was different now. And Erika wasn’t sure she liked that strange awareness deep inside her. She wasn’t sure she approved of it. But that didn’t matter, because either way, she wasn’t the same.

She had always wished that she could choose not to make a mess rather than always and forever trying to figure out how to clean it up. And tonight she found she could put it into practice. She put her hand on top of Jenny’s and kept her gaze steady. And she set aside her own feelings on the topic, because it didn’t matter what she felt or thought. Jenny hadn’t asked her for her theories, she’d asked for Erika’s blessing.

“You couldn’t keep me away from your wedding,” Erika said very distinctly. And found as she spoke that she meant it. “It doesn’t matter who you’re marrying or why. I will be there, with bells on. You can count on it.”

Later, as she was lying in the hotel room she’d taken for the night—curled up on her side with that ravenous hunger between her legs that still she didn’t take care of because Dorian had told her not to—she remembered Jenny’s face. And how stunned she’d looked that Erika had given her blessing.

And hadn’t made the whole damn thing about herself, more likely.

Erika wrapped herself up in her coverlet and pretended it was Dorian’s arms around her.

What if this was the strength you brought to every part of your life? he had asked her after another one of his wicked, ingenious scenes. He’d turned her inside out, left her gasping and half-mad, and yet convinced on a deep level that she could take anything he dished out. What if you controlled yourself out there, and only let outside forces control you when those forces were me?

And she felt too full there, in another anonymous hotel bed. Alone. Close to bursting and too thick with it for it to be anger. Or anything as straightforward as a sob.

Dorian had held up a mirror to her life and she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t looked into it. And seen. Somehow, in surrendering herself to him, he had given her the control now. Out here, in the world. Because she knew what true surrender was like, so there was no reason to submit herself to every passing whim.

Erika had chosen to give herself completely to Dorian because he was powerful enough to keep her safe while she did it, and having done that, why would she bother with these lesser surrenders that never made her feel anything but alone?

She could have a host of emotions about her friend and her brother, but she didn’t have to succumb to them.

She could choose.

She felt as if she’d been struck by lightning, so bright and hot was the jolt of awareness that hit her then.

Dorian had taught her how to choose.

Erika ran with that over the course of the next few days. She stayed in London, searching for the appropriate outfit. And this time, she didn’t want attention in a general sense. She wanted his attention. Only his.

Not just his attention, if she was honest. His approval.

And when she tried on the perfect dress, cut to enhance rather than expose, it felt like his hands on her body. As if he lounged there in the corner of her dressing room, his eyes ablaze and his mouth that unsmiling line that made her heart flip over.

The night of the engagement party, she was dressed, her hair pulled back into a neat chignon at her nape, and ready to go long before it was time to leave Devon and make the drive to the Markham family’s stately home in Wiltshire.

Possibly, she thought wryly, you are a little overexcited.

She waited in the ancient gallery in her mother’s lover’s sprawling house. She stared at the dark portraits that lined the walls, each featuring some ancestor or another of his with the same red jowls he sported himself, and found herself very thankful indeed that her mother’s taste in men had been much better when she was younger.

“My goodness, Erika,” came her mother’s stilted, affected voice from the stairs—as if she’d sensed Erika was entertaining uncharitable thoughts about her and had rushed to remind her why each and every one was true. “Are you ill?”

Erika turned to watch her mother come toward her. As ever, Chriszette was resplendent. An ice sculpture best enjoyed from a safe distance. Her blond hair was swept back from her smooth face and secured with combs. She wore a sweeping, elegant gown that made the most of her trim figure. She was a striking woman with a regal bearing and flashing blue eyes that made everyone around her feel as if really, they ought to curtsy.

And she certainly liked it when they did.

“Do I look ill?” Erika asked lightly. Because there was no telling how her mother would strike. Chriszette was like a snake. She was quite happy coiled up in the sun, until she wasn’t. And sometimes she moved so fast you never even saw the strike coming until you bled.

“I have never seen you look so…appropriate,” Chriszette said, her accent making her sound sharper than she perhaps meant. Then again, perhaps not.

“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” Erika said with perhaps more determination than enthusiasm. “Thank you, Mother.”

Chriszette did not like to be called Mother. Her blue eyes cooled considerably, which was always hard to imagine as she started out so devoutly frigid. She glanced toward the stairs, and Erika knew that she was looking to see if her lover had heard Erika admit to their relationship. A fate worse than death.

“Darling,” Chriszette said with a smile that heralded the coming venom, “only very beautiful and very clever girls can afford to hide their assets. I assumed you knew that.” She swept her eyes up and down, taking in every inch of Erika’s body. “If you don’t put on a little show and make sure they’re looking at all that bare skin, they might remember that you’re a university dropout who shuffles aimlessly from one place to another, effectively homeless. What is cute in one’s twenties is a character flaw in later years. You’d do well to remember that.”