The Risk / Friends With Benefits

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.