The Risk. Caitlin Crews

the space we carved out for our indulgence.

      I couldn’t look away from the woman sitting across from me in that hushed, watchful room.

      “I do,” I said. And I sounded far more certain than I’d expected I would.

      “There are certain expectations in such a transaction,” she said, and her very briskness felt like an acceptance of me, of the dark needs that coiled inside me, of this. I felt my overly straight back ease. “Certain rules. What he wants. How he wants it. When he wants it. And for however long he wants it. He will not ask after your feelings. Your family. He might suspect that you have a history of dancing, but he will certainly not know. Or care. All he will see is something he wishes to possess. Use. Then discard.”

      My throat hurt from whatever I was holding back. A sob? A cry of joy and excitement as she outlined precisely what I wanted most? “Are you trying to talk me out of it?”

      “My dear girl, I can see your arousal written all over you,” she told me with the detachment of a doctor, which kept me from surrendering to the same mortification that had made me blush when I’d discussed these things with Annabelle. “This excites you, and well it should. Fantasies are powerful. I find it is when you begin to second-guess yourself that the trouble comes.”

      I was shaking. I felt jittery, as if I’d downed too many cups of coffee and eaten nothing but sugar for days.

      “I understand that you don’t want someone who might back out—”

      “You will not back out of the performance, as you are a professional,” the woman said. “But I encourage you to take advantage of the opportunity that you are being given to explore your darkest desires. This is normally a privilege of membership. You will not be hurt in any way, unless you request it. The members of our club who choose to purchase what we call ‘party favors’ have all agreed to a certain framework that ensures your safety and theirs. I feel certain that momentum will carry you through this encounter handily. What concerns me is how you will handle it on the other side.”

      “You don’t need to worry about that,” I told her with tremendous confidence. If I could stop shaking, I was sure I’d be able to feel it, too. “I get butterflies before I go onstage, but I never think about the show once it’s over.”

      Once again, that enigmatic half smile. As if she knew things I did not.

      “I hope very much that you enjoy your time in our club in Paris,” she said quietly. And that was that.

      I practiced the burlesque routine at home on those summer nights after we got out of ballet rehearsals. Annabelle threw dollar bills at me to “set the scene,” and we laughed and carried on as if it was all a big joke. The required costume came, what little there was of it, fitted so perfectly to my measurements that it almost felt like a lover’s hands when I put it on. And even more so when I took it off, there in our living room that we’d made a stage. As summer gave way to fall I grew comfortable with it. It was another show, that was all, if more naked than anything the Knickerbocker put up.

      Still, it seemed like a lark. A story I would tell, the way we all did when we strayed a bit from the ballet, then came back. We always came back. Because the ballet couldn’t last, so we were addicted to what little piece of it we had while we had it.

      And now I was here, across an ocean from the place I danced my heart out, always knowing I wasn’t good enough to find myself elevated from the corps. The night I’d been working toward in my scant free time was upon me, and yet I was frozen in place outside. Staring at a door.

      It’s only stage fright, I told myself. Just a few butterflies.

      All I had to do was the routine. And no one would be looking for missed steps or bungled counts—they’d be looking at my flesh. And then, afterward, instead of tending to my sore muscles and preparing to do it all over again the next day, I could play out one of my more deeply held fantasies.

      My pussy was melting hot and slick already.

      “You don’t have to do anything but dance,” I reminded myself. Sternly. “You can go straight home after the performance if you want.”

      This was my choice. My yes or no that made it happen, or didn’t.

      The only thing required of me was the performance, and I knew I had that down. Everything else was icing.

      I walked the last few remaining steps until I was square in front of the unmarked door, a world away from the fancy entrance out front. I reminded myself that I was a professional. This was what I did, no matter the costume or lack thereof. I had nothing to fear.

      Except surrender, a voice inside me whispered.

      “There’s nothing to be afraid of if I choose it,” I told myself, my voice sounding harsh and rough against the night.

      I reached out my hand. I took a breath.

      Then I rang the bell as I’d been directed, and sealed my fate.

       CHAPTER TWO

      Sebastian

      I WOULD ORDINARILY avoid a burlesque show or anything resembling such a thing like the plague.

      I was a man of discipline. I had been ruled by my passions precisely once, and it had cost me. Now I indulged them as I pleased, but only as far as I could control them. I did not leap heedlessly into spontaneity. I did nothing heedlessly at all.

      And I certainly did not vie for the attention of women.

      I preferred directness to coy flutterings and anything involving glitter or bejeweled bikinis—which was the only thing the woman descending from ribbons in the ballroom appeared to be wearing as she writhed about—but I found myself watching the M Club burlesque show anyway. I was a longtime member of the world’s most exclusive club, membership by invitation only and based entirely on net worth, and these charity displays were part of the package. The membership made charitable gestures a few times a year, the better to disguise the true purpose of the club as far as I was concerned.

      Which was business. And when business was concluded, excess in controlled circumstances. Meaning no press, no scrutiny, and no possibility of anyone emerging later with blackmail fodder.

      I had not been expecting to see my half brother tonight.

      I hadn’t been expecting to see Ash anywhere, for that matter. He had suffered the most from my one and only hotheaded decision all those years ago and had hated me ever since—a feeling he expressed by competing with my luxury hotel business, disrupting what deals he could and generally making sure I knew he would never, ever forgive me my error.

      I didn’t forgive myself, either.

      Ash Evans had been my best friend and closest, most trusted ally during our boarding school years, a relationship that had flourished despite—or because—we both knew our father had intended for us to hate each other. Ash was my father’s illegitimate son; his very existence, and the affair right under my mother’s nose that had made him, had been the final hail of bullets that had broken my mother’s heart and made her the brittle, fragile woman she was to this day.

      Our friendship had been unlikely. Its end inevitable.

      Ash had saluted my surprise at seeing him here tonight in a manner only he could, with one finger raised high at the bar. In the scruffy jeans and a T-shirt that extended that same fuck you to the entirety of the club and all its members. Much as the Ash I’d known well when we were kids had always done in our aristocratic boarding school.

      If he wasn’t so dedicated to my downfall, I might have admired him. The way I always had.

      After Ash stalked off—no need to speak when he’d already been so eloquent—I found myself restless. I normally saved that sort of drumbeat and drive for my business, especially when I so often had