The Risk. Caitlin Crews

be real. But I was so close to the stage I could see her breathe. I could very nearly smell the scent of her. Her eyes were luminous and wicked, her hips were a wonder, and her sultry mouth wasn’t hitched into an unconvincing smile.

      It was pure temptation.

      I was vaguely aware that she was doing some routine. A shifting of hips and dance steps of some description that only drew my attention to what little she wore beneath those feathers she opened and closed as if she was tempting me, personally. Sparkling stones covered her breasts, holding them aloft and leaving the sweep of her glorious abdomen bare. More bright, shining stones covered her pussy and rippled as she did. Her legs were like poetry. She wasn’t simply toned. She was strong.

      I felt her everywhere.

      And at some point during her performance on the intimate stage before me, she saw me there in the audience.

      I felt the electric pulse of the connection. The crackle of it. I was certain every hair on my body stood on end.

      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