The Risk / Friends With Benefits. Margot Radcliffe

away from her, shifting to set her other foot on the ground. As I rose, she swayed there before me but stayed on her feet. She looked dazed. Drunk, almost.

      Something roared in me, triumphant and hot.

      “Do you come like this with all your customers?” I asked her.

      I didn’t know where the question came from. I had never been a possessive man. I never compared myself to others, and not because I worried comparison might steal my joy or whatever the fuck motivational nonsense people liked to splay all over their mugs of tea. Quite the opposite. I felt confident I had no peer.

      If I’d had one at all, he’d stopped speaking to me years ago when I’d lost all his money.

      And I wasn’t precisely jealous now, either. It was something else. I wanted to mark her, perhaps. I wanted to leave an indelible mark on her supple, remarkable flesh. I wanted her to remember this—and me—forever.

      I did not want to analyze why I had this urge. I just wanted it.

      She blinked, then smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

      And I don’t know which one of us was more surprised by that, her or me. But I was shocked when I...laughed.

      I wanted to throw her down and bury myself inside her—right now—but I didn’t. My own laughter felt like a tension breaker. Like another kind of coming and, oddly enough, it made me feel something like... Exposed.

      I studied her body instead. I had been too consumed with the need to bury my cock in her before to take a good, hard look.

      I remedied that now. And took my time.

      “What kind of dancing do you do?” I asked. Because she was a lithe, taut column of muscle, but she was bruised here and there. And sported the kinds of scrapes that spoke of a body well used.

      And her feet.

      Her feet were a disaster.

      “Don’t look at my feet,” she said, and when I looked up I thought I saw something on her face for second, but it was gone too soon to name it. “I have a horrifying addiction to high-heeled shoes.”

      “High-heeled shoes do...that?”

      Her feet were so battered that they called to mind something inside me, some memory I couldn’t quite place, of an image—

      “You have to be brave to be beautiful,” she told me, with another one of those wicked, mischievous smiles that I wanted to taste. “That’s what my mother always told me.”

      “Is your mother dead?”

      My little dancer let out a laugh. “I certainly hope not. As far as I know, she’s alive and well and competing for the title of best hostess in the whole of—” She stopped herself, and her smile was rueful. “I apologize. The last thing you want, I’m sure, is a whole lot of unsolicited personal detail.”

      This would ordinarily be true, no matter how I’d met the woman in question. But she was...different, somehow, from all my previous dates and conquests.

      “It’s not unsolicited. I literally solicited it. Just now.”

      Another tilt of her head. “Do you talk about mothers every time you buy a woman?”

      I laughed again, but surely none of this was funny. And stranger still, it only made me harder. “What if that’s my kink?”

      “Then you can call me Mommy while you come.” Her eyes were alight with a wicked sort of promise I wanted to lose myself in. “If you must. But somehow, I don’t think that’s your thing.”

      “Indeed, it is not.” Still, I studied her. “Does your mother know what you do?”

      “Of course.” Her smile widened. “She supports my dancing wholeheartedly.”

      That made me laugh again, and it was like a light switched on inside me. From pitch-dark to blazing, laughter and secrets and need, and I was done. I needed to fuck her, hard and long and now.

      Right now.

      I rose then, and she must have seen my intentions on my face, because she sobered as she tipped her head back to look at me.

      “Time to fuck, little dancer,” I told her. Softly.

      And I watched, in pure delight and no little wonder, as goose bumps broke out all over her skin.

      There were things I could do if I was willing to take my time...but I couldn’t wait. Not now, with her taste in my mouth and the evidence that she wanted me as desperately as I wanted her written all over her flesh.

      I felt edgy and wild. So close already, as if I might explode or topple over some cliff and lose any semblance of control.

      That set off an alarm, deep inside me, but I didn’t care. Not now.

      I couldn’t wait another second. I reached down and slid my arm around her waist, then lifted her into the air.

      She was a little thing, though she was all muscle. Still, she felt like air, particularly as she flowed with me, wrapping her legs around my waist as if I’d ordered her to do it. And then she held herself there, with thigh muscles that made my head spin around and around with lust, and her arms around my shoulders.

      My God, she was a wonder.

      I gripped her ass again and began lowering her, but for a heady sort of moment I couldn’t tell which one of us was doing the work.

      Was I holding her up? Or was she the one holding herself against me, then lowering herself down, with a kind of impossible precision that made the blood in my cock pulse?

      “You have a lot of muscle control,” I managed to say as she inched down my torso the slightest bit more, then the slightest bit more than that, so I could almost feel the heat of her with the head of my cock.

      She let out a laugh, her hard nipples brushing my chest. “For a whore, you mean?”

      “For anyone,” I managed to get out.

      “You saw me on that stage. What did you think? It was all smoke and mirrors?”

      Something inside me tore open. Something greedy and dark, an uncontrollable storm of need and longing.

      And instead of fearing such a thing, I wanted to lose myself in it.

      In her.

      “Prove it,” I dared her. “Fuck yourself silly.”

      A smile broke over her face, wicked and bright and all mine.

      “Yes, sir,” she said, her voice rough and husky.

      And then, at last, she obeyed me.

      Darcy

      Being lifted was nothing new for me. But this was different.

      Everything about this was different.

      He held me easily, and it was almost like dancing. It was almost like the pas de deux.

       Almost.

      I adjusted my hold on him and let myself slide until I could feel the thick head of his cock at the opening of my pussy.

      I had the mad thought that all those years of ballet training had been for this, all along.

      For this moment, when I could look up and hold his bright blue gaze, then lower myself down on that hard, hot length of his.

      I was so wet it should have embarrassed me though it didn’t. I was wildly soft and deliciously hot, and even so, I had to adjust to the size of him. He was thick and long, but I dedicated myself to the task of taking him.

      One hot inch after the next.

      Slowly, carefully, I lowered myself. I waited for my body to accept him, then I went farther.

      And we were both sweating by the time I finally