The Risk / Friends With Benefits

What I felt was like a fury. That driving. That impossible. That dark and all consuming.

Soon it became clear that she danced for me. She still didn’t smile. Her eyes seemed heavy to me, thick with secrets, and she found me in the dark.

Again and again, she found me.

As if she knew.

Who I was. What I’d done.

What I needed.

When she was done with her routine, she walked down the stairs at the side of the temporary stage and was almost instantly swept up in a throng of admirers. I couldn’t blame the men and women who wanted a piece of her. Who wouldn’t?

But I was having none of it. I wanted her.

I wanted her with that all-consuming fury that I was very much afraid was desperation. But a desperate man was a determined one, and I’d built an empire on the strength of my determination.

What was one night?

I cut my way through the crowd, and I knew she was aware of me coming. I could feel that awareness like my own blood in my veins, thick and insistent. And then I was before her.

Her gaze locked to mine and I couldn’t breathe. And, oddly, didn’t care.

I was dimly aware that I must have looked angry. Menacing, perhaps, given the second glances others threw my way.

But my dancer—my dancer—didn’t look the slightest bit afraid.

“I want you,” I told her baldly. “Now.”

That sultry, pouty mouth did not curve, and I wanted it beneath mine. And all over my body. But her eyes sparkled. “Do you always issue orders like that? Do you just...snap your fingers and watch your minions jump to do your bidding?”

I was surprised she sounded American. No one walked around the club with a name tag on, it was true. Still, it was a long while since I had gotten the impression that someone did not recognize me. I was Sebastian Dumont. I had been born rich, and had made myself infinitely wealthier after that one, early failure. After losing my fortune, I’d doubled it before I was twenty-five. Tripled it by thirty. And I very rarely succumbed to want.

Because there was so very rarely something to want that I didn’t already have.

“Yes,” I gritted out. “Is that how you jump? I like your dancing better.”

I was vaguely aware that the rest of her fans had peeled off, no doubt recognizing the ferocity of my claim.

Or, more likely, the fact that she looked only at me.

It would have felt like a triumph if I’d already been inside her.

She gazed at me a moment. Something indefinable moved through her dark eyes. I could have sworn she hesitated, when the women who came to the club as part of its offerings were usually far more overt.

But then she tipped her head, the feathers on her headdress swaying as she moved, and it was hypnotic. She was.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how much?” she asked.

This was familiar ground. I liked the purity of a transaction. Compensation for goods and services, no muss and no fuss. But this woman was already like a madness in my veins. I had the strangest thought that there was nothing I wouldn’t do to have her. Nothing at all.

I wanted her no matter the cost.

I didn’t care that the club normally handled these things far more discreetly and behind the scenes. There was something refreshing in discussing it openly. It put us both on the same page, with no possibility of later confusion.

Better still, it made my dick ache.

“I don’t care what you charge,” I growled. “Name a price.”

“That would be vulgar.”

But then—at last—her lips curved, and there was something wicked and innocent in it. Angel and devil and, my God, I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted her.

I leaned forward, unable to keep my hands to myself. I traced her lips with my thumb, and that electric charge between us ignited.

Her lips were soft, with a hint of wetness that drove me wild and had me imagining what sort of dance she could perform with that mouth. She smelled sweet, with a hint of musk that reminded me she’d just performed.

I wanted a far different performance.

I wanted everything.

I wanted.

I lifted a finger and a member of staff materialized before me.

“Whatever the price,” I told the man without looking at him. “No cap.”

“Very good,” the man murmured. Then he pressed a key into my hand. “Please enjoy Suite Six, monsieur.”

I took her hand in mine, marveling at the slide of skin on skin. It was a lush little preview.

“Very good,” she said, as if daring me.

Challenge accepted, I thought.

I drew her with me. The private rooms of the club were accessed through the sweeping stair out front, and I didn’t care who watched me take my prize with me to the second floor. I wasn’t sure I would have cared if it ended up in the tabloids. That was how much I wanted this woman.

We didn’t speak as we walked. I held her hand, led her behind me and wondered how I could possibly keep my cock from unmanning me as I moved.

When we reached the suite I drew her inside. As with all things involving the club, the private suite was exquisite. Quiet elegance in all its details and Paris at our feet and, far more important for my purposes, privacy.

She was mine.

I had bought her for the night.

And I had never felt something as primitive as the dark thing that beat in me then.

Need. Desire.

Destiny, something whispered, but I shoved it aside.

“Strip,” I ordered her, hardly trusting my own voice. “I want to see you.”

Again, I thought I caught a moment of hesitation. The cynical part of me chimed in then and told me it was because she was a professional. She knew how to inflame a man’s desires with these little bread crumbs that hinted at an innocence she might never have possessed.

Her regular punters must like it.

I liked it, and I was no punter. Regular otherwise.

Anyway, I didn’t care that she hadn’t left the show onstage. I wanted her too much.

We were standing there in the grand foyer of the suite, with a chandelier sparkling above and a marble floor at our feet. Just beyond, there was a living area with sturdy couches and thick rugs. A million surfaces on which to enjoy her, but I needed her naked. Right now.

When she didn’t move, I only lifted a brow. And waited.

She didn’t smile, but she started with her headdress. She pulled out a few pins, then lifted it up and off her head. She held it aloft and looked at me inquiringly.

I nodded toward the ground between us.

My little dancer set it down gingerly, then released her hair, rubbing her fingers through the thick length of it, releasing into the air between us the scent of ripe apples. Her shampoo, presumably.

I hissed in a breath as if the scent would send me over the edge. It nearly did.

Bread crumbs, I snarled at myself.

She leaned down much the way she had onstage to unlace one shoe. Then the other. Then she stepped out of them, leaning to one side and balancing her fingers against the wall, her eyes half lidded and fixed to mine.

And lost about six inches, making her even tinier than I’d imagined.

Perfectly sized to lift and move and handle as I wished.

Her wings were dispensed of with a few tugs behind her shoulders, which she did herself. Showing me all the ways she was flexible. Limber.

My mouth was dry.

Her hair tumbled around her shoulders as she reached behind her and unwrapped those shining jewels from around her breasts.

“That’s enough,” I growled.

Because I knew that if I saw her fully naked right now, this would end far too soon.

This round, I amended.

She would be no businesswoman at all if she didn’t take me for the fortune I had offered her, and that meant I intended to get my money’s worth.

Again and again.

But something else had happened as she stood there with her angel’s wings in a feathery cloud around her and that stark, wicked invitation on her face.

It had suddenly become wildly important to me that she want me, if not as much as I wanted her, then at least enough.

Enough to shiver. Enough to ache.

Just as I did.

“Show me,” I commanded her. “Touch yourself, little dancer, and show me exactly how much you want me.”

CHAPTER THREE

Darcy

IF IT HADN’T been for my burlesque performance earlier, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to handle this.

Any of this. All of my darkest, most-hidden fantasies coming true. At once.

At last.

The club had been better than I’d imagined it. Everything that carefully nameless woman had promised in New York, and then some. All the staff had been excruciatingly professional and, better still, polite when I’d rung the bell to the quiet staff entrance a world away from the fancier entrance at the front of the building. I’d been greeted, then ushered to a private dressing room several floors beneath the Parisian street, surprised to find it significantly more luxurious than most of the makeshift, communal dressing rooms I’d spent my life in at the ballet. The other talent I’d seen in those downstairs halls hadn’t been amateurs, as I’d feared when I’d received an instruction packet that indicated the show tonight was more than just me. The dancers and performers I’d met were reticent about their names and their current gigs, as was I, but we recognized each other just the same.

Professionals, in one form or another. I could identify others in my line of work at a glance. It was how we stood. How we held ourselves. I knew the others I saw were just like me. Here to work, then play.

It was the “play” part I was trying to get my head around now.

I’d practiced my routine so many times that I’d expected my actual performance to flash by. Or maybe I’d hoped it would. Annabelle and I had laughed about what we’d both called my “snobby striptease” so many times that my emotional response while I was actually doing it in front of an audience took me completely by surprise.

Alone onstage. Centered in the spotlight. Nothing but the pumping, seductive music.

And me.

Just me.

I felt...walloped by it.

I could never tell Annabelle this when I got back home, but there was something about the burlesque that got to me in a way I wasn’t sure I understood.

Or maybe I did understand. Too well.

Because there was something about the freedom. No one knew the steps except me, and that meant I could embroider upon them as I pleased. For the first time in as long as I could remember—maybe in my whole life—I could do whatever I wanted while dancing onstage.

I felt powerful. It was thrilling.

It was like a wave crashing over me, then carrying me out to sea—

And then I saw him.

That sensation intensified. Until I became the sea or it ate me alive, and either way I was still dancing.

And somewhere in that hot, electric moment between one breath and the next, I forgot that I was on a stage at all and found myself dancing only for him.

He sat in one of the closest booths to the stage they’d set up in what I’d been told was usually a library. I could see him perfectly over the stage lights, and he never took his eyes from me. I danced for the man in the perfectly cut suit, his gaze as brooding as it was bright, and the cut-crystal lines of his beautiful face.

I danced as if we were alone. As if I was there for his pleasure and nothing more.

Until that was all I felt.

And then, afterward, he came to me as if we were magnetic halves, drawn together no matter what.

I’d always secretly dreamed of handing myself over like this. Offering myself for purchase, and then surrendering to whoever bought me. Not the way I did, in one way or another, in my career. Surrendering to the demands of my ballet overlords...hurt. Always. The pain was an accepted part of life in the ballet.

In my dreams, I could hand myself over, make myself nothing more than a possession and feel nothing but pleasure. The ultimate dance of pleasure and need. Everything the ballet promised but didn’t deliver. Surrender and greed, lust and longing, all made real. All available if I but dared.

The taboo made me shiver. The fantasy made me hot.

But I wasn’t Annabelle. I had never wanted my fantasies to become real, not in the real world. No yachts or monetized “dates” for me, because I knew I would never, ever feel safe enough to go through with it.

Fantasies in my head were glorious when I was alone in my bed. But I knew a little something about making fantasies real in my actual life. There was always a price, and that price was often pain. I had never wanted to test the thing that made me hottest out there in Annabelle’s world of risky nights and reckless lovers, because I’d always known on some level that reality would ruin it.

Until tonight.

Because the beautiful blue-eyed man might be a stranger to me, but he was known to the club or he wouldn’t have been permitted in the audience. One of the numerous documents I had signed had made that clear. The club knew everything about everyone, including medical records and sexual preferences. Everyone was deemed safe for playtime or they weren’t allowed to partake. And no abuses would go unpunished, assuming they even occurred—which was, I was told, so unlikely as to be well-nigh impossible.

This wasn’t me in my bed at home taking myself on a little fantasy journey. But it wasn’t quite reality, either. That made it perfect.

It felt like a dream, but I knew I was awake. Awake enough to feel myself jolt and shiver when he touched me, there beside the stage. Awake enough to make it clear I was for sale and extract a purchase agreement, a notion that made me...ache. Everywhere. And more than awake enough to follow him up the sweeping stairs to this suite.

I wasn’t going to sleep through a single moment of this fantasy-made-real. Not now that I was stripped down to nothing but the sparkly bikini bottoms I’d worn onstage, though I didn’t feel exposed or naked. I felt completely dressed in this man’s hot, demanding gaze.

And he wanted me to prove I wanted him. He wanted me to show him.

I wasn’t sure my knees would hold me up as I imagined—in bright detail—how I could do that.

“Haven’t I already proved it?” I asked. We both still stood in the marble foyer of the suite, my costume in heaps at our feet. “If I didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.”

“I prefer certainty to innuendo,” he said, a faintly sardonic note in his voice.

It kicked through me. A megawatt jolt in my chest and a helpless shuddering below.

My being present here tonight—on that stage and now here with him—should have been enough. There was no one here who hadn’t asserted their willingness in triplicate. That was part of what the club offered.

But that wasn’t enough for this man.

He wanted my explicit consent.

It made me dizzy. It made me wet.

And as that surge of molten heat left me slippery and achy, I felt the same wild wave that had taken me over on the stage nearly take me from my feet here, too.

He didn’t know who I was. I was a woman he’d bought for the night, that was all. He didn’t know a single thing about me; he didn’t care and wouldn’t pretend to care as long as he was certain I wanted this, too, and that meant... I could be anyone.

I could be as free as I’d felt on that stage, strutting around to steps of my own design, following my body instead of forcing my body to follow rigid protocols to suit someone else’s aesthetic.

I was no longer an indistinguishable member of the corps. I was no longer the perennial understudy, condemned to the back of the stage and judged harshly should I in any way stand out from the crowd. Tonight I would not be judged, for once, on the position of my wrist or the turn of my ankle.

Every lover I’d ever taken had known exactly who I was before we’d touched. And some men loved the idea of a ballerina. A little doll, they thought, who could spin around on command and show off her splits in bed. But what they expected from that little doll was her shyness. A docile willingness to please that tipped over into fragility. Tears, vulnerability and an eating disorder.

I was many things, but meek wasn’t one of them.

And if I was fragile, I never would have made it into the corps in the first place, much less maintained my place for a decade.

But surely no call girl would be expected to be anything like meek.

I smiled at this dark, mouthwatering man who wanted what he’d bought so much that his face looked tight with it. Hungry.

The way he looked at me made me hungry, too.

“I could have had anyone in that room,” I told him, almost unconsciously letting my body move as it liked. And what it liked tonight was the burlesque. The jut of a hip. The exaggerated curve at my waist. The feminine knowledge I could feel in me and all over me, like his hands would be soon, I was sure. “I chose you.”

“And here I thought I was the one who had done the choosing.”

“This isn’t a street corner. Last I checked this was the most exclusive club in the world.”

“You are American,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. If anything, it sounded like an accusation.

“You are British,” I replied. “And apparently very wealthy, to be a member here and to offer me any amount of money I choose. Does that mean you come with a title attached?”

His mouth curved. And here in this quiet, hushed space where he would take me as he liked and I would surrender entirely—a notion that made me feel as if I teetered right there on the edge of an orgasm without his even touching me—I couldn’t help but find myself dazzled by all of his male beauty. He was a hard man, because the fact he was beautiful did not make him pretty. And there was something about the cut of his jaw and that simmering heat in his bright blue gaze that made me want to sink down onto my knees. And show him exactly how much I wanted him.

“I’m not that kind of British, nor that kind of wealthy,” he said, though his accent made him sound like the earl of this or the baron of that. “But you can call me ‘sir,’ all the same.”

That made me even wetter, and I had the strangest sensation that he could tell. That he knew.

That he might think I was some kind of hardened prostitute who did this all the time, but still I was soaking my panties for him.

Maybe that was his fantasy.

“Very well,” I said softly.

I moved toward him, the marble soothing beneath my feet, then hard enough to leave bruises when I sank down on my knees before him. But I was a ballet dancer. I wore my bruises like badges of honor, counted them, and sometimes gave them names. I already knew I would love these wholeheartedly.

I swayed forward, resting my hands on his powerful thighs, and then I tipped my head back so I could meet his gaze up above the impressive length of his toned, muscled body.

Above the thick rod of his cock, which pressed out against the front of his trousers and made me feel something like giddy.

“How’s this?” I asked. Then smiled. “Sir.”

I saw his nostrils flare. His blue eyes glittered like an afternoon sea. And he did nothing but incline his head.

It was an order, not an invitation.

My mouth was watering. My hands felt as if they were shaking, though I could see that they were not. I moved to unzip him, easing the metal teeth carefully over the thick heat of him, so big and so hot to the touch that I felt almost giddy.

I finished with the zipper, then ran my hands over the silk he wore beneath his trousers, getting my first feel of him.

His cock was huge. Heavy. The ridge beneath the silk grew as I rubbed it, and whatever notion I might have had about playing with him a while shivered off into a bright, hot lust.

“Take me out,” he ordered me, his voice a low growl. “I want to watch you while I fuck your mouth.”

People did not say things like that to sweet, meek, fragile ballerinas, that was for sure.

Again, it wasn’t a request.

My nipples pulled so tight a sharp little pain stabbed through me every time I breathed. My breasts felt heavy, my pussy was scalding and soft, and I couldn’t seem to keep myself from pressing my thighs together to give myself a little bit of friction.

And I did what I was told.

I pulled that beautiful cock out from the silk of his boxers, reveling in the textures. The soft, warm silk, then the heat of his satiny flesh stretched over the thick iron beneath.

I moved even closer, pressing my knees against the marble floor to make sure I got that bruise. His hands moved to tangle in my hair, holding me right where he wanted me.

This was what I’d wanted, all this time. This was what I’d dreamed about and feverishly imagined, hidden away in the privacy of my own bed, playing out the stories Annabelle told me in my mind with my hands busy between my legs.

I couldn’t seem to help myself. I let him support my head with those big hands tugging at my hair and keeping my head high. I slid my own hands beneath the sparkling bikini bottoms I wore, finding my way through all that molten heat to my greedy clit.

And as I found myself, I opened my mouth and sucked him in.

He tasted like salt and man; he was big, and I took as much of him as I could. Even though he came perilously close to triggering my gag reflex.

But the truth was, I liked that, too.

I could feel tears form in the corners of my eyes. I wanted to cry, but not because I was sad.

But because his hands controlled my head, holding me as he began to thrust.

He didn’t ask if I was ready. He didn’t consult my feelings. He just took what he wanted and, my God, did I nearly come all over myself in my eagerness to give it to him.

He eased his way in, then pulled out, letting me feel every thick inch of him. My mouth was wide, my tongue busy against his satiny length, but he didn’t wait to see what sort of acrobatics I might perform with it. He didn’t wait to see if I was a licker or a sucker. He took charge and control.

And there was nothing I could do but stay where I’d knelt, keep my mouth open and let him fuck my mouth as he chose.

That hard, uncompromising slide, a little deeper each time, like a test.

I was filled with him. His cock in my mouth and my hands between my legs—two fingers, then three—as I pretended he was fucking me there, too.

And then I was coming. Flooding my own fingers as he maintained that same bossy, insistent rhythm. Once. Then again.

As if I really was an object.

And I’d spent my whole life learning how to be a specific kind of movable, flexible object, set here and there in the choreography of every creative director I’d ever danced for. I was a company dancer, trained my whole life to be interchangeable. My job was to blend. To be indistinguishable from the girl beside me.

I fought for that privilege. I fought to disappear every time I went onstage. I beat myself up, suffered the critiques, and staggered into the studio every day with my aches and nagging pains and protesting limbs to do it all over again.

We are nothing but game pieces they move around their little boards, my friend Winston had said before he’d left the ballet two years back. We’d all pretended to be supportive of what he called a lateral move into contemporary dance, but we’d all viewed it as a death. A suicide.

I prefer to be one of the prettiest, most perfect pieces, Annabelle had said afterward. Or why not just go home?

And here, now, on my knees in a hotel suite in Paris with a man whose name I didn’t know, it was that very objectification that made it all so hot.

He wanted me because I was that object. Because we could play this game, where he did with me as he pleased because it pleased me, too. And I didn’t have to know any steps or worry about perfection.