Dare Collection October 2019. Margot Radcliffe

don’t have to talk about these things,” I murmured, not sure why my instinct was to soothe him.

      His smile was merciless. “I keep my life in strict compartments. Work. Play. Family on one branch, my social life, such as it is, on another. And these branches never, ever cross.”

      “I think everybody does that.”

      I thought of my own parents, chilly and remote. Never quite pleased, no matter what. They had attended my early recitals—if the dates didn’t conflict with their social calendars—but I’d always thought they supported their ballet-dancer daughter because that made them seem more sophisticated to their friends. It meant I had worked that much harder, as if I needed to prove myself to them. As if that might make them love me. I was almost thirty and I wasn’t sure they did. I never asked them about it. I just…danced. With more focus and intensity. And I had never considered introducing Annabelle to them, for example. It was unimaginable that they might have access to my actual life.

      “Families are like secret wounds that never quite heal,” I found myself saying, there in a suite in Paris while a man watched me too closely with eyes like every summer I’d missed because I’d been too busy rehearsing. “Sometimes they leave scars. But I think those scars mean you’re lucky. For the rest of us, there’s no hoping that the scar tissue fades from pink and becomes white over time. For most of us there’s no healing. There’s only coming to terms with the maintenance and the bandages as best we can.”

      “Why, Darcy.” His hand moved against my cheek. “I had no idea someone who moves the way you do could be so cynical.”

      “It’s not cynicism, it’s reality. No one can work in fantasy without a serious grounding in reality. Not if they want to survive. Much less succeed.”

      I surprised myself, because I was talking about ballet. And what it took to live the life I did. The kind of life that strangers assumed they could imagine when all they saw was pancake makeup and costumes floating across the stage, never the years of work that went into looking that effortless—

      But he thought I was talking about sex.

      “And here I thought it was your emotions that made this work.”

      “Emotions are fuel,” I said lightly. “Let them take control, and they’ll eat you alive. Use them as fuel, and they’ll help you burn brighter.” His thumb moved along my jawline, hypnotically. “But then again, I am not drunk.”

      “Indeed, you are not.” His mouth flattened. “I cannot imagine a woman like you ever allowing a man to break her the way my father broke my mother. Over and over again.”

      “I break things all the time.” That happened to be true. “What are a few broken bones among friends?”

      It occurred to me after I said it that possibly that was the sort of joke better confined to the ballet rehearsal halls.

      “Bones heal. Marriages? Not so much.” Again, that smile without any mirth. “I promised myself I would never make myself so vulnerable to another. I would never allow anyone close enough to break me. And I never have.”

      “Forgive me,” I murmured then. “You do not strike me as particularly…unbroken.”

      He let out a sound at that, though I would not call it a laugh. “Tell me, little dancer, why do I have the impression that you will be the wound I cannot heal?”

      “I can give you what you paid for,” I whispered, my heart pounding in ways I refused to analyze. “Nothing more.”

      “I want another night. The whole bloody weekend.”

      “No,” I whispered. “That will only make it worse.”

      “I don’t think it will. I don’t think it could.” He lifted me up and settled me on his lap, and for a moment there was nothing but the electricity between us. The crackle of that connection. Heat and longing. “But this will. I’m sure of it.”

      I held my breath, not sure what he was about to do. And not prepared when what he did was wrap his hand around the nape of my neck.

      Then slowly, inexorably, he drew my mouth to his.

      “You can’t…” I began.

      “Did I buy all of you? Or only a small part of you?”

      It was a silken challenge. Dark and hot.

      “I don’t even know—”

      But I cut myself off. Horrified that I’d nearly given myself away.

      And something far more complicated than merely horrified that the very thought of his kiss…panicked me. All the sex we’d had must have gotten to me. But not like this.

      His blue eyes flashed a warning, but I didn’t pull away. And not because he’d paid for me. But because I wanted him to kiss me more than I’d ever wanted anything. More than breath.

      And when he took my mouth, it wasn’t as if he owned it. Or me. It was as if kissing me was the answer to a question neither one of us wanted to ask. An answer that thudded in me like stone.

      But I didn’t pull away.

      His kiss was sweet and hot at once. It was searing. And yet it filled me up like a sob.

      He pulled back, his mouth close to mine, and I knew.

      That nothing would be the same. Least of all me.

      “My name is Sebastian,” he said, because it turned out there was always a way to make it worse. To make it hurt. “Sebastian Dumont. I want more, little dancer, but if you won’t give it to me, all I can do is make sure that every single moment we have together, tonight, counts.”

      And that was exactly what he did.

      Again and again and again.

       CHAPTER EIGHT

      Darcy

      BACK HOME, I told myself that everything was exactly the same.

      New York was as noisy and exhilarating, anonymous and comfortable as I’d left it. I had the same life, the same responsibilities, the same routine. Morning class and endless, intense rehearsals as we geared up for the new season.

      I was the same person who had left for a weekend in Paris.

      I was fine.

      “You’re welcome,” Annabelle had purred when I walked into our apartment after my long flight home. “I told you that you needed this and I was right. Think how much fun we’re going to have here now that you—”

      “I’m not doing it again.” I dropped my bag on the floor and wanted to frown at her. Sternly. But I made myself smile instead, because I didn’t want her to know that I was…rocked. I wanted her to think I was like her and completely at my ease. “I wanted to do it once. And I did, so I’m done.”

      Then, no matter how much she begged, I didn’t tell her a single thing about Sebastian. I told her about the performance. I commiserated with the fact she’d stayed here to understudy when, of course, Claudia hadn’t had so much as a stray sniffle and likely wouldn’t. I talked about the thrill of the burlesque, the unwieldy costume, and how different it had all been. I told her every detail I could recall about the club she’d been dying to see for years—at least, all the ones I could share under the conditions of the NDA.

      But I kept Sebastian to myself.

      Sebastian, who had been absolutely true to his word. Sebastian, who had kissed me and fucked me, made me cry his name, made me sob, and made me laugh. Over and over again.

      We hadn’t gotten any sleep. After that meal and my refusal to extend our arrangement, he had applied himself to the task as if bent on leaving his