Читать книгу The Risk / Friends With Benefits - Margot Radcliffe - Страница 15

Darcy

I MADE AN involuntary sound.

I had made many sounds already—some I couldn’t believe had come out of me—but this was different. I realized it even as it escaped my lips, but I couldn’t take it back. I watched that dark, intent expression on his face as it altered slightly at the evidence of my vulnerability still echoing there between us.

I’d spent my whole life denying that I was capable of vulnerability. I smiled, instead. I danced until I bled, then I danced some more. Only actual broken bones made me stop, and sometimes not even then. And I certainly never made vulnerable noises. Ballet dancers were tough. We had to be, or we could never look that graceful.

“Problem?” he asked, his voice gritty.

Less a question than a demand.

I felt my breath shudder through my body, as if I’d forgotten how to breathe. I could feel the ache in my thighs, reminding me that I was splayed open as I sat astride him. And I could feel him, deep inside me, hard and hot. Still.

It made a different sort of shiver curl its way down my spine.

Every part of my body was sensitized. Overly raw and mad with it. Awake and alive in ways that made my head spin. I couldn’t make sense of it. Of him. Of this fantasy brought to life at last. All the sex I’d had before this seemed dull, dim. Unsatisfying in a thousand ways, and we weren’t even finished yet. It was as if this was my first time, as crazy as that was to imagine.

I felt words I shouldn’t say swell inside of me—

But then I remembered myself.

This was the fantasy I had chosen.

And no man—or woman—bought an experience like this so they could hear about someone else’s emotions. I understood that full well. The fantasy was in the anonymity. In the taking. This was a place for only certain kinds of intimacy.

My emotions were my own business. As were his.

That was what made this so hot.

“Of course not,” I said, trying to sound serene and in control. I even managed what I thought was a passable smile. “How could there be a problem?”

His eyes were so bright I was sure they were punching holes right through me. I wondered if when I looked down I would see not only myself impaled upon him, but see those marks, too. Like scars.

And I wanted those scars. I wore the ones ballet had given me like badges of honor. Audiences had no idea what it took to look that effortless onstage. We covered our scars and danced straight through them.

I wanted whatever this man would give me. I wanted to wear his marks forward, like brands.

I expected him to start fucking me again, much harder this time—a notion that made me quiver—now that he called it his turn.

Instead, he moved one of his big, strong hands to fit against the curve of my cheek. It wasn’t gentle, particularly. It felt like the very brand I’d just been imagining. A mark of ownership, especially when his thumb moved over my lips again.

As if he’d seen the raw, unbound truth behind my smile and was rubbing it away.

“You don’t have to worry about anything,” he told me then, and there was something in the way he said it. So dark. So intent and sure. So certain. That, too, made me quiver. “You have one job. Do you know what that is?”

“I thought I was doing it.”

His blue eyes sharpened. “All you have to do is what I tell you to do, little dancer. No more. No less. I will tell you what I want. What I like and what I don’t. You don’t have to worry about anticipating my needs. I’ll make sure you know what they are. Do you understand?”

A thousand responses to that swirled around inside me, each one as raw and powerful and emotional as the next, but in the end I chose the only response that mattered.

“Yes,” I said. He watched me, something expectant and commanding on his face, and I felt myself flush. “Yes, sir.”

“Good girl.”

And then he showed me what he meant.

His hands smoothed their way down my torso to grip my hips. I thought he would order me to move, but he didn’t. Instead, he lifted me up, an easy slide along the length of his cock because I was so wet and hot and melting. He lifted me up, then slammed me back down.

Sensation exploded inside me, and he did it again. And again.

I didn’t have to do a thing. He was using me like his very own fuck toy.

Something else exploded in me then. Something so bright and sharp and beautiful that I wanted to grand jeté straight into the center of it. I wanted to spin around and around and around until I became it.

I wanted this to last forever.

Still he lifted me, then slammed me down against him. Faster and faster. Harder each time.

I didn’t know if it was aftershocks or a new tremor all its own, but I shook. Each slam of my body against his, with his cock so deep inside me, made my whole body hum in a sort of startled delight that spread everywhere until I was lit up with it.

And inside, I understood exactly what it was I felt. What all that rawness and wildness was.

Joy.

Freedom.

Because this was not the ballet. There I was an object valued for the pain I could withstand in my ability to make it all pretty and perfect for the audience. But here I was a different sort of object altogether.

Made for pleasure, not pain. And there was no putting a foot wrong. There was no messing up a step or ruining the perfect uniformity expected of the corps.

There was only this man’s needs, his imagination and what he told me to do. Or did himself with my body as his instrument.

It was like magic.

He slammed me against him until I couldn’t tell where I ended and his iron control began. There was only the sweetness of total surrender. And all the while, the building crisis of sheer delight inside me.

“Come once more,” he ordered me, and it didn’t occur to me to do anything but what I was told.

I let my head tip back, my breasts jutting forward as I curved my back into the arch.

And the cries that came out of me as I convulsed on his dick once again, as ordered, seemed to bounce back from the marble floors and the carefully brocaded walls. Calling me out. Calling my name when I didn’t know his.

But the true music was when he finally roared out his own release, coming deep inside me in what felt like a scalding flood.

That tripped off another shock inside me and I sobbed with it, riding it out until I finally collapsed against him.

If I was on a stage, I would have to remove myself from it. I would have to dance my way off, no matter how I felt or what had happened to me up there. Or I would have to crawl off—maybe even ask someone to pull me off if I was really hurt—once the lights went down. The stage was an addiction, and there were times the price it demanded seemed impossible to pay. And no matter what, the show had to go on. The music would swell and the next act would take their place. That was the nature of the business we called show.

But this was no stage. There was no spotlight. This was a far simpler transaction.

The price had already been paid, and not by me.

And somehow, that notion made me feel safe. Enough that I hardly moved when he stirred beneath me, then swept me up with him as he stood.

I assumed he meant to set me on my feet. And then...who knows? Slap me on the ass and tell me to leave? Tell me to collect my things and go? Whatever he did, it certainly couldn’t be worse than standing before the ballet master—or any one of the fierce teachers I’d had in my career—fighting to control my breathing while also trying to pay attention as they ripped my performance to shreds. Step by step.

Was there a critique in a transaction like this? Notes?

I wasn’t sure what it said about me that my nipples hardened at the thought. As if all this time, all I’d really wanted was someone to take all these brutal little pieces of the life I’d chosen and turn them into sex.

Not just anyone, something inside me whispered. Him.

He didn’t set me down. I thought the wiser course of action was to close my eyes, the better to avoid looking at the overwhelming perfection of his face. Not to mention the impossible blue of his gaze.

I rested my head against his broad shoulder as he carried me. And I peeked from under my lashes as we left the main room, moving through a bedchamber with a crackling fire in a picturesque grate and on into a seductively lit bathroom suite. It was there that he set me on my feet, propping me up against the nearest tiled wall as if I really was no more than a sex toy.

The same delirious heat curled in me again. I stood where he’d put me, happy to wait and see how he would use me next.

That this was a suite set aside for sex was obvious, because the bathroom was clearly arranged for seduction first and hygienic purposes second. There was a door across the room with a WC written on it, but everything in the chamber where we stood was either gold, marble or dark wood, all of it as beautiful as it was functional.

Like me, I thought. My career in a nutshell.

He moved around the tub, which was vast and tall and clearly made to service at least four people. The water spilled out of the faucet like a waterfall, quick and quiet. The room grew steamy, scented with lavender and something spicier I couldn’t identify. I breathed it in, deeply.

He looked up, then tilted his head toward the water in silent command. I had never been waited on in this fashion before. No one saw to my physical needs after a tough class, no matter how many muscles I’d pulled. It was up to me to care for my body, always making sure it could withstand the demands of all that dancing.

And even if I’d imagined someone tending to me, it would never have occurred to me that someone could perform the tasks he did while making it seem like some kind of noblesse oblige. The lord of the manor ministering to his underlings, but certainly not serving them.

My limbs felt deliciously heavy. I hadn’t had sex in a while, and I’d never had sex like that. I could feel the ache of it, the longing deep inside and the actual sensation of use in my pussy. I could feel aches and pains all over, just enough to indicate I’d done something—and a lot of it—but not nearly enough to qualify as actual hurt.

Truth be told, I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt better.

“Do I need to ask you twice?” His voice was silky then, but I didn’t mistake the erotic menace in it.

And even that rolled over me with a delicious sort of ripple. I tried to hide my smile as I moved off the wall. He watched me—supervised me, maybe—as I climbed into the expansive tub, sighed at the embrace of the hot water, then sank down into it.

“Stay there and soak,” he ordered me.

Then he strode from the bathroom, leaving me there to do just that.

The huge tub was set up on a dais, with a bank of windows splayed out before me, showing me Paris at night. I twisted my hair into an easy knot on the top of my head. I sank down as the water rose, letting it cover me to my chin. And I just...soaked.

As ordered.

I expected to start questioning myself. For the second-guessing to take me over, storming around and around inside me until it made me raw. I expected all the usual voices of doubt and worry to swamp me then and braced myself a little in anticipation.

Because it was one thing to fantasize about something and another to do it. I already knew that all too well. It was my life. Every little girl dreams of being a ballerina at one point or another. But the actual doing of it was something else entirely. Everybody wants the tutu. Everybody imagines themselves starring in Swan Lake.

Nobody wants the reality of practicing the same step over and over and over, day in and day out, ignoring your body screaming, your exhaustion, and all those same voices in your head forever telling you that you can’t make it. That you can’t do it. That no matter what, you’ll never get there. All that to be good enough in your local ballet school.

The reality was that being the best in your ballet school was still not necessarily good enough to make it into the corps, much less out of it to become a principal.

Fantasy was always en pointe, graceful and light like a sylph. Reality was the state of my feet, battered and ugly forever, and that kick of sharp agony every time I used them that told me who I was.

I turned off the water and sank deeper into the tub. I waited for my body to finish cataloging its reaction to what had happened, and for my emotions to catch up and wallop me. I waited for my heartbeat to tip me over into sheer horror at what I had not only allowed tonight, but encouraged. Enthusiastically.

I waited.

But it was as if his order to sit here, to do nothing but soak, and his earlier command to lose myself in what he told me to do...held me, somehow.

It wasn’t that I was numb or hiding from any feelings. I could feel all kinds of things. The silky, warm water against my skin. Every little tug here and sharpness there, each with its own story to tell.

What I didn’t feel was shame. Horror. Self-recrimination or disgust that I had crossed every line there was and, worse still, enjoyed it.

I had taken one of my deepest, most secret fantasies, made it real, and it wasn’t over yet.

And I had no urge to jump up and run. I could have, of course. There were panic buttons in every room, I’d been told. Should anything get out of hand, my intake counselor had told me what seemed like a thousand years ago when I’d rung that bell and set all this in motion. I looked around now and, sure enough, beneath the discreet panel of light switches beside the bathroom door, there was another button. It was big and shiny and glinted like steel. If I didn’t like what was happening, all I needed to do was get out of this tub, go over there and press it.

Nothing was keeping me from it. He had left me in this room all alone. I had nothing to do but consider each and every one of my options. Or even the fact I had some.

I wondered if he’d done it deliberately. I was used to the mind games of famous choreographers and my various ballet masters, who always insisted that we choose. In each and every moment, every step and every note of music, they demanded it. Choose to be here, one of our teachers liked to shout. Choose to be better than yesterday. Choose perfection.

Maybe he wanted me to keep choosing tonight, too.

I didn’t hear anything, but something in the air around me changed. I glanced over, and he stood there in the door, that blue gaze of his as intense as when he’d been deep inside me.

Again, the freedom of this felt heady. I was a little high on it, if I was honest, though I hadn’t touched anything but water since I’d arrived here. Because if he was any other lover, I might have asked him where he’d gone. What he’d done in the other room while I’d sat here, soaking. Why he’d left me in this room in the first place.

But he wasn’t my lover.

This was a different arrangement altogether. There was no reason to ask him a thing. He’d told me so himself. He would make sure I knew what he wanted. All I needed to do was what he told me to do. No thinking or worrying required.

So instead of interrogating him, I smiled. And said nothing.

“Give me a name,” he said.

I noticed he did not ask for my name. I considered. “You can give me one. Whatever you like.”

“If I wanted to give you a name, little dancer, I would.”

I didn’t know what it was about his voice that got to me, like a length of chain coiling inside me, wrapping itself around me and pulling tight. And all those tight links gleaming bright.

“You can call me Darcy,” I said.

That had to be a mistake, surely. I didn’t know where the urge to be honest came from. Why had I given this man my real name? Even if I had tried to dress it up like it was an alias of some kind?

But even as I asked myself the question, I knew the answer.

I wanted him to know me.

Annabelle took great pleasure in handing out fake names wherever she went. Tonight I’m Caroline, she would announced grandly, sweeping into this bar or that party. I’m a disappointed society girl from Beacon Hill, whose inheritance is nothing more than a crumbling old brownstone and three ancient VW bugs. And then she would spend the rest of the night acting and fucking the way she imagined her fictional Boston Brahmin Caroline would.

But I didn’t want to play Annabelle’s games. This was my fantasy, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life replaying it in my head with another woman’s name on this man’s perfectly cruel mouth.

I already knew that I would hoard this night like treasure. I would lie in that bed of mine back in New York, run my hands over my own body and imagine this. Him. The blue of his eyes and the particular scrape of his voice all over me.

I would live this again and again.

It was only one night. But it would have to last me a lifetime.

Because I knew that I was never going to feel safe enough to repeat this, because I certainly couldn’t afford to make myself a member of this club. This was my one chance.

A part of me whispered that it wasn’t only the safety...it was him. This particular man on this specific night.

And if I wanted to make sure that I could hold this close to me forever, in all the years that followed, it required I give him my real name.

“Darcy,” he said, as if he was tasting the syllables. As if it was a fine wine that required its own ritual before he could drink deeply.

I was sure it probably was a mistake to give him my real name, like bread crumbs that might lead away from this enchanted room in this decadent club straight back to my real life. But I would have to beat myself up for that later, when my emotions caught up with me. When I was back in reality, across the sea in Manhattan again.

Because here in this gleaming tub, with Paris like a sea of light outside the windows, all I could think about was the way it felt to hear him say it.

Darcy.

As if I wasn’t just another object to him, as hot as that was.

As if I was his.