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 a marble floor at our feet. Just beyond, there was a living area with sturdy couches and thick rugs. A million surfaces on which to enjoy her, but I needed her naked. Right now.
When she didn’t move, I only lifted a brow. And waited.
She didn’t smile, but she started with her headdress. She pulled out a few pins, then lifted it up and off her head. She held it aloft and looked at me inquiringly.
I nodded toward the ground between us.
My little dancer set it down gingerly, then released her hair, rubbing her fingers through the thick length of it, releasing into the air between us the scent of ripe apples. Her shampoo, presumably.
I hissed in a breath as if the scent would send me over the edge. It nearly did.
Bread crumbs, I snarled at myself.
She leaned down much the way she had onstage to unlace one shoe. Then the other. Then she stepped out of them, leaning to one side and balancing her fingers against the wall, her eyes half lidded and fixed to mine.