The Risk, page 7
She laughed, but she didn’t argue. She didn’t throw out something suggestive, as I half expected. She only took the sponge I offered her, dipped it in the water and kept her melting brown gaze on mine as she slowly began to work it down one side of her elegant neck.
My mouth went dry.
It was another performance, I knew. Another dance. She might not have been removing her clothes, but she still commanded the stage. And every last bit of my attention.
I watched her, as wildly greedy as a man who hadn’t just come—so hard it had left me something like dizzy, so I’d had to remove myself until I’d regained my control. She smoothed the sponge down the length of one arm, over each of her fingers, then up the other arm. Then she knelt up higher and arched her back in that way of hers that I thought might haunt me for the rest of my days, tracking hot water and soapy bubbles across one breast and proud nipple, then the other.
It was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen, especially because I knew how she tasted. How her pussy gripped me when she came. And all the hungry noises she made while she fought to take all of my cock.
“How are you enjoying Paris?” I found myself asking her, perhaps because it was the sort of question a man might ask a woman in more innocuous circumstances. Over a sedate dinner, perhaps. While pretending not to notice the stultifying boredom. “Will you be staying here long?”
“Maybe I live in Paris.” She grinned. “In a charming garret, the way you’re supposed to live here. Or maybe I have no particular home at all. And merely roam about the planet, wherever the wind takes me. Then again, maybe this is my secret life and I spend the rest of my time as a very junior accountant in an unremarkable suburb somewhere.”
“Pick a life, Darcy,” I drawled, enjoying the way she played with herself, arching this way and that with all of her mouthwatering flexibility. “And tell it to me like a bedtime story.”
“Are we going to bed?” she asked, and there was more than simple feminine awareness in her gaze, then. It was shot through with something else. I wanted to call it delight, but I told myself I was making that up. Putting it where it didn’t belong. Making this something it wasn’t. Something I shouldn’t want it to be. “That’s not where I thought this was heading, sir. If I’m honest.”
“Make sure it’s a good story, then. And who knows where we’ll end up?”
My own words seemed to sit in me strangely. As if they were too heavy, or too ripe with something I refused to call foreboding. As if I was talking about something else altogether.
I shook that off because she swayed closer, balancing herself—though I felt certain she didn’t need any help to balance herself—with her fingers on my thigh beneath the water. She dipped the sponge in the water and began to run it slowly over the thigh she wasn’t already touching.
“Once upon a time there was a girl named Darcy,” she told me, and there was laughter in her voice and in her gaze. It was like sunshine to me, who had been born and bred in the rains of England and the cold of my father’s house. I wanted to bask in her. “Unrelated to anyone present here tonight, of course.”
“Of course,” I agreed, caught somewhere in the heat of the steam, the water and the sensation of her hands on me. Her body, slippery and lithe, and the sound of her voice like a spell.
That was the secret I didn’t want told, not even to myself. I wanted to be enchanted, if only for the night.
“Darcy lived in a house big enough to be a castle, though it wasn’t. It had tennis courts. Its own bowling alley, though no one ever actually bowled in it, because bowling was considered low-class. There was an indoor swimming pool that no one ever used, but was always mentioned in public anyway, especially in the winter. And there were miles and miles of lawn, always green and manicured. And quickly Darcy learned that though she had come into the world as a daughter, her true purpose in the castle was to be a doll.”
“A doll?”
“Dolls are collected. They’re dressed perfectly and can be left to their own devices for years at a time if necessary, remaining pristine. Dolls never talk back. They not only do what they’re told, they don’t do anything at all unless someone does it for them. Darcy was more of a puppet, really. And where there’s a puppet, there are puppet masters. I think you know the puppet masters make the rules.” She laughed, though it held less sunshine than before. “And if the dolls don’t obey, they get set down and ignored. Possibly replaced.”
She wrung out the sponge, then dipped it in the water all over again and started on my other leg.
If she noticed that my cock was hardening again, she gave no sign.
“Darcy decided that if she had to be a puppet, a doll, she might as well be the best of all the dolls. The prettiest. The most accomplished. The kind that was so universally beloved that she belonged in the puppet masters’ favorite music box, twirling around and around whenever the box was opened.”
“This does not exactly sound like an uplifting bedtime story.”
“That really depends on how you think about dolls and puppets, I guess.”
“I don’t.”
“But you’re British. Punch and Judy and all those terrifying pantomimes. Puppets are in your blood, surely.”
“I have never paid the slightest attention to dolls, puppets, or bloody pantos.”
“Haven’t you?”
Her mouth curved at that. And she moved again, sliding that soft, warm sponge across my chest, rubbing me like she was polishing me to a shine.
I didn’t care that she was challenging me.
On the contrary, I liked it.
“Dolls exist to be bought,” she said. “To be played with. To dance while the music plays, then be put away until they are useful again.”
Her voice changed at that last part, melting a bit as she spoke. Not quite singsong, but close enough.
I found my hands moving of their own accord. I spun her around so her back was to my chest and her ass was snug against my cock. She braced herself, one hand on each of my thighs, and she moved in a sinuous, delicious little wiggle that made me groan.
“You can keep talking to me about dolls,” I managed to say, though I wanted to roar it. “But do it with my cock inside you.”
She arched against me, and I filled my hands with her breasts, small, but perfect. And those nipples that I could pluck and roll between my fingers until goose bumps broke out all over her neck. She tilted her hips and impaled herself on the tip of my cock. Then slowly, rolling her hips, worked herself down my full length.
And her pussy was scalding hot. Far silkier than the bathwater all around us.
“I told you to keep talking,” I growled against her neck, and raked my teeth across the goose bumps I’d raised.
I could feel her shudder from where she clenched tight around my cock to the breasts she pushed harder into my palms.
“This is how a doll dances,” she told me, a catch in her voice. “Music box dancers are all the same, you know. You must nail them down on some kind of peg or pole.” And she demonstrated by clenching me tight with her internal muscles. Locking me inside her in such a fierce grip that for a tumultuous moment I thought I might come there and then. I gritted my teeth, bit her a little in warning and held on. Barely. “And as long as the music plays, they dance. Like this.”
And she rocked against me then, her hips the enchantment I’d been looking for. Pure magic. Lust and light. She rose, then settled back against me, each sweet, sexy wriggle taking me deeper.
Beneath the surface of the water, I could see the way she looked splayed against me like this. Riding my cock, open and abandoned.
She was most beautiful thing I had ever seen. There was no possible way that one night with her could ever be enough. I accepted that, and the regret I would feel when this was over.
But it wasn’t over yet.
“Our Darcy takes each and every music box she finds herself in seriously,” she told me, tipping her head back so she could lean into my mouth against her neck. “One way or another, she still wants to be the favorite doll. Everyone’s favorite.”
“I think that’s really down to her owner, don’t you?” I asked.
I left one hand where it was, toying lazily with her nipple, and let the other one fall down to the place where we were joined. I felt my own cock, and I felt her. That sweet, hot pussy, greedy and lush.
Then I found her clit, and began to play with it the way I was playing with her nipple. Lazy enough to make her flush. Intense enough to make her moan.
“I like the way you dance,” I told her as she began to make those choked noises that I knew meant she was close to coming again. “And I had no idea how much I like a music box. I like to turn it on. Then turn it off, at will. My will.”
I stopped playing with her nipple and moved my hand to hold her pussy flush against me, so she couldn’t keep rocking us both toward bliss.
“On,” I growled against her neck, and resumed what I’d been doing. Pinching her nipple and her clit in turn. She sobbed out something that could have been words, and moved again. More jerkily this time, her body trembling in my hands. “Then off.”
Again I stopped. Her breath sawed in and out of her. I could feel her pulse beneath my mouth, thundering in her veins.
“Darcy.” I said the name she’d given me because I liked it. And because it made her shudder. “I don’t play with dolls. But a music box? That’s something I could get my head around. I like to collect pretty things, after all. But there’s something you should know. When I take something and make it mine, I don’t like to let it go.”
I didn’t know why I said that. Or why I raked the soft, sweet skin of her neck with my teeth until she cried out, then bucked against me wildly as if she’d lost all semblance of control.
“Please, sir. I want to come. I want to dance. I want whatever it takes—”
“You get what I give you, little doll. Maybe that’s the shelf for you, cast aside with nothing to do but watch.”
I pulled her off me then and set her before me, turning her around again until she settled back down on her knees.
And this time, her eyes were unfocused. She was panting, her lips parted, a pretty flush all over her cheeks.
She was so beautiful it hurt. I reached over and helped myself to some more of the bath gel. I wrapped my hand around my cock, made a fist and pumped myself as she watched.
And very nearly lost myself entirely when that unfocused look turned greedy. Hungry.
“Sir...?”
But I shook my head, enjoying myself. And her need. “I want you to stand up. Climb out of this tub and wrap yourself in a towel.”
She swallowed. “Can I make you come first?”
I felt my cock pulse in my own hand.
“Did I ask you to?” I demanded. Severely.
She blew out a breath as if that hurt her, which only made me harder.
Then she did what she was told.
And that was when I knew.
No matter what, no matter what it cost or how foolhardy it was, there was no way in hell one night with this woman who called herself a doll—and who I wanted to call mine—was going to satisfy me.
I wanted more.
And I was Sebastian Dumont. What I wanted, I usually got.
My little dancer didn’t stand a chance.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Darcy
SOMETHING WAS DIFFERENT.
I wrapped myself in a towel as ordered and watched as he did the same. Then I followed him out through the sumptuous bedchamber to the main room again, where an elegant meal had been set up on the table for two, placed to take in the breathtaking views of Paris all around us.
It looked romantic. Intimate. And I felt something tug at me, because there was a part of me that wished it was—
Stop, I ordered myself. I needed to remember my place. The transaction I’d agreed to, no matter what it looked like.
But I couldn’t keep myself from trying to make light of it, somehow. I laughed as we walked toward the table. “Is this a date? I think we’re doing it backwards.”
“Do you have dinner with all your dates without your clothes on?” He didn’t wait for my answer. He pulled out a chair for me, helped me sit in it with distinct courtesy, though I didn’t require assistance, and then took my towel from me.
I should have protested. I meant to, surely. Instead, goose bumps prickled all over my skin in a new kind of delight and I...didn’t.
When he sat down across from me, he kept his towel knotted loosely around his hips. That meant I could still admire that beautifully formed chest of his. I could marvel at the clean, masculine line of his jaw. I could watch his hands as he used them to pour the wine and remember what they felt like on me. In me.
It was possible I sighed a little. Happily.
“Surely this night is whatever I want it to be,” he said as he filled one crystal glass, then the other. “Or did I misunderstand what I paid for?”
On some level, I imagined that was meant to be a slap. But I liked it. It was good to be reminded of what this was. Who we were. Every dancer had to know the limits of the stage, after all. Or she risked toppling off into the orchestra pit.
“Are you hungry?” he asked after a moment, when I didn’t respond.
And I understood the difference in him, then. It was this sudden solicitude. I could see the same greediness in that blue gaze of his that had held us both so tightly before. The same driving hunger I’d seen from the stage. But first he’d had me soak. Now he wanted to feed me.
“It really isn’t a dinner date,” I said. Sternly.
Because I wasn’t worried he needed the reminder; it was me.
“Thank you, Darcy.” And there was a gleam I suspected was amusement in his bright gaze. “I am aware. I have a great deal of money and even more influence, and even I cannot dine out wearing so little.”
For some reason, that calmed me. And it wasn’t until I felt calm again that I understood I hadn’t before. Not really. There had been too much sensation. Too much feeling. Too many emotions circling around and not quite landing. Too much soaking.
For a little while, there was silence. If this had really been my job, I probably would have leaped to fill it. I would have attempted to entertain him with my sparkling personality and wit—assuming I could access either, after all that astonishing sex—but then again, that wasn’t what he’d signed up for. The burlesque was a lot of things, suggestive and saucy in turn, but it didn’t involve conversation. At least, not the way I did it.
And the truth of the matter was, I was ravenous.
I hadn’t paid much attention to the hollow feeling in my belly, because we’d come up to this room right after I’d finished my act. And I’d had other, more pressing concerns. And with all that ruthless, glorious fucking, it was like my performance had just...kept right on going. I was used to controlling any flashes of hunger while I danced, in class or rehearsal or in strange little pockets of my performances. It was to be expected when using my body with such intensity.
And this night was a very different kind of performance, but it wasn’t over yet—and it was already requiring just about all the intensity I could stand.
He had taken the ordering upon himself, but there was a variety to choose from on the table between us. Meat, fish. Salads and sides. I helped myself to a little bit of everything, and ate. Heedlessly.
With the table manners my mother had drilled into me since birth, in deference to my opulent surroundings, but heedlessly all the same.
“You eat the way you fuck,” he said when I finally sat back and sighed, happily full. “But you are so slight. You cannot possibly eat that way all the time.”
I shrugged. “When I allow myself to eat, I eat whatever I want.”
“And what are your allowances?”
I grinned, not in the least put off by this line of questioning. No matter how progressive the ballet pretended to be to get in line with the times, we were all obsessed with food. Eating too much or too little of it. Eating the wrong things that would adversely affect our performance or stamina.
We did what we had to do to keep attention on how we danced, not our shapes while we did it. People didn’t like to admit these things out loud in these welcome days of body positivity out there in the real world, but I had always been of the mind that my body belonged to the company. The company was responsible for its aches and pains, its sometime ability to almost fly, and so too whatever shape was best to fit into their costumes and blend into their backgrounds. It was only when I strayed outside the confines of the ballet that I remembered the rest of the world viewed these things rather differently.
Because the rest of the world didn’t have to dance beautifully enough to disappear, night after night after night.
But this man was not the world. I had the distinct impression that if he could, he would take the place of the company. And mold me to his own specifications.
The notion thrilled me, like his hands on me again.
“I usually eat after a performance,” I told him. “But I don’t like to eat much beforehand. It makes me feel...heavy. And cranky. And no one likes a cranky—” I remembered myself. And my anonymity. “Dancer.”
His gaze was as sharp and incisive as it was blue. “And when you speak of performance, you mean the burlesque?”
I felt as caught in his gaze as I had been in his arms. My throat was dry. I had the strangest urge to tell him my whole life’s story—and not in the form of a thinly veiled fairy tale this time.
Instead, I smiled airily. “What else could I mean?”
I expected him to smile back at me. To acknowledge that we were both playing this little game of masked identities, secrets and lies. Wasn’t that the purpose of a single night like this? Everyone could be who they pretended to be for this little window of time. You could do anything for a night, after all. Anything at all.
