The Redemption of Darius Sterne. Carole Mortimer

changed to a slow love song.

      ‘That was convenient,’ Miranda bit out abruptly as the two of them stepped onto the dance floor.

      ‘No, actually, it was deliberate,’ Darius dismissed unapologetically; he wanted this woman in his arms, and he wasn’t about to pretend otherwise.

      She gave a protesting shake of her head, the straight curtain of her hair moving about her shoulders as she placed her hands against his chest, with the obvious intention of pushing him away. ‘I really don’t want to dance.’

      ‘Liar,’ Darius stated arrogantly as he refused to release her; he had felt the increase of the pulse in her wrist, and his arms about her waist now allowed him to feel the fluttering of excitement that ran through the whole of her body. Very like that of a caged and wounded bird longing to be set free.

      Damn it, he was starting to sound poetic again!

      If nothing else, his mother’s distant behaviour towards him these past twenty years had taught him that women were fickle and cold and not to be trusted with his feelings.

      Nor did he become involved, in any way, with women who were complicated, or wounded, as Miranda Jacobs so obviously was. He carried around enough emotional baggage, the rest of his family’s as well as his own, without taking on someone else’s. Hell, he didn’t become involved with women at all, except in the bedroom, and even then only on a purely sexual basis. Just a scratch to his itch.

      But having forced the dancing issue he could hardly back down now. ‘Move your feet, Miranda,’ he encouraged huskily as he lifted her hands up onto his shoulders before pulling her closer still as he began to move slowly in time to the music, leaving Miranda with no choice but to follow his lead.

      She was so slender in his arms that Darius almost felt as if he might bruise the willowy slenderness curved against his much larger and harder frame. And if he feared bruising her, just from dancing with her, how much more likely was it that he would completely crush her if he were to ever attempt to make love with her?

      That was no longer even a possibility.

      Making love to this woman was a definite no-no as far as Darius was concerned. Knowing who she was, who she had been, he also knew this woman was just too vulnerable, her past making her far too emotionally complicated, for him to even contemplate continuing his pursuit of the attraction he felt between the two of them. One dance together, and that was it. Then he would take her back to her booth, before returning to his office until she and the rest of her family had left the nightclub.

      Never to return.

      Yes, that was what he would do.

      Her hair felt smooth as he rested his cheek lightly against it, those silver-gold tresses smelling of citrus and some deeper, enticing spice, that caused his hardened body to throb achingly as he breathed the scent deeply into his lungs. An arousal that Miranda, with the proximity of their two bodies, couldn’t help but be completely aware of.

      * * *

      Andy was too disturbed at first, at finding herself dancing in public again, albeit in a crowded club, to be aware of anything else. But as her nerves slowly settled, and the trembling stopped, she couldn’t help but become completely aware of the man she was dancing with.

      She was five-eight in her bare feet, and even adding a couple of inches for the heels on her sandals Darius still towered over her by a good five or six inches. The width of his shoulders felt hard and muscled beneath her fingers. His chest and abdomen felt just as firmly muscled as he curved her body against and into his. As evidence, perhaps, that he didn’t spend all of his time behind a desk counting his billions.

      Well...no, she was sure that Darius spent a lot of energy exercising in his bedroom too. Horizontally!

      None of which changed the fact that being so totally aware of the hardness of his thighs, and the heavy length of his arousal pressing against her contrasting softness, had completely taken her mind off the fact that she was actually dancing in public again. More of a shuffle, really, but it was still dancing.

      And it was with Darius Sterne.

      Darius had to be at least ten years older than her, as well as far more experienced and sophisticated. He was a man who no doubt changed the women in his bed as often as some minion changed the silk sheets for him afterwards, which would be often.

      Andy already knew those silk sheets would be black—

      Already knew?

      Did that mean she was seriously imagining herself one day sharing Darius’s bed sheets with him? Sharing his bed?

      She hadn’t needed to be in this man’s company for two minutes to know that she should have heeded Kim’s warning earlier. To know that Darius would eat her alive. Totally possess her. Devour her. Inch by fleshly inch. Bit by arousing bit!

      The shiver that now coursed down Andy’s spine was one of pleasurable anticipation. A longing, a yearning, for whatever Darius wanted to give her.

      She couldn’t do this.

      No doubt other woman, so many other women, would be flattered just to have attracted the attention of a man like Darius. Even more so, to know that he had deliberately engineered her presence in the Midas club tonight, before he had swooped down on her, his arousal now unmistakeable as he danced so close against her.

      Other women would be flattered.

      Andy couldn’t have the luxury of allowing herself to be flattered by the attentions of a man as dangerous as she considered Darius to be. Not when she knew it could ultimately lead nowhere.

      Four years ago her dreams had been shattered. The dream she’d had since the age of five, of being a world-class ballerina, had come crashing down about her ears. Just as surely as she had come crashing down off the stage, shattering her hip and thigh bones.

      It had taken over a year of operations and physical therapy for Andy to even be able to walk again, let alone be strong enough to rise up from beneath the misery threatening to bury her. But she had finally done it, had known she had no choice, that she needed to seriously consider her options for the future, now that she could no longer pursue her longed for career.

      In the end she had realised that ballet was all she knew; she had won a scholarship to ballet school when she was eleven, had lived, eaten and breathed that world for so long, she couldn’t imagine ever cutting herself off from it completely.

      Opening up her own dance studio, while making her painfully aware of her own inadequacies, had seemed the natural solution.

      Even that had taken hard work, and Andy had studied hard to take her teaching certificate, before just six months ago finally managing to open her own dance studio. She still had a long way to go for it to be as successful as she wanted it to be.

      She certainly didn’t have the time, or the emotional energy, to indulge in even a flirtation with a man like Darius. A man who she had no doubts broke women’s hearts on a regular basis. A man who would have made no secret of the fact that none of those women had meant any more to him than just another conquest, a beautiful body to be enjoyed in his bed, and totally forgotten about the following morning.

      Except Andy’s body was no longer beautiful; how could it be, when it bore the physical scars from those many operations?

      She pulled out of his arms the moment the song came to an end. ‘As I said, thank you for inviting us all up here, and for the champagne and the dance.’ She made her voice deliberately light, her smile bright and meaningless. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see that my sister and brother-in-law are waiting for me at the table, no doubt so that we can all leave,’ she added wryly. Kim, at least, was glaring accusingly across the room at Darius.

      He frowned. ‘It’s still early.’

      ‘Maybe for you.’ Andy nodded. ‘Some of us have to get up for work in the morning.’

      ‘Doing what?’

      Her