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.