Dare Collection October 2019. Margot Radcliffe

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.

      “I want another night,” he said.

      He might as well have tossed a grenade across the table. I lowered the linen napkin I’d pressed to my lips and set it beside my plate. I swallowed hard. And suddenly, I couldn’t bear all that bright blue regard. “That’s not our arrangement.”

      “Is it money?” He lifted a shoulder. “I will pay you whatever you wish, of course.”

      “It’s not the money.” The moment I said that, I thought better of it. What enterprising prostitute said such a thing? Of course it was about the money, as it should be. “Every night is the same price, rest assured. But this? You? One night only, as agreed.”

      A brow lifted in a way that told me he was used to great swaths of underlings vaulting about to tend to his every whim, expressed or not. “Why?”

      It would have been different if he’d seemed upset. Or too…determined, in any of the ways that might have tripped alarms in me. But he didn’t. Instead, he lounged back in his seat as if this was all a foregone conclusion, and I had the impression of a predator trying to hide in plain sight. The intense focus in those bright blue eyes didn’t fade in the least.

      “Our arrangement was for one night,” I reminded him primly.

      “Then let’s change the arrangement.”

      “I don’t think so.”

      “Darcy.” The folly of telling him my name was all too apparent then, because it was exactly as I’d intended. He used my name, and it felt intimate. It felt real. I might cling to these things later, but they only made this moment harder to navigate. “If an item is for sale, and I have the money required to purchase it, there is no reason I shouldn’t have it. Is there?”

      I made myself laugh, bright and sparkling. “My feeling is that a performer should never commit to more performances