Caitlin Crews - The Risk

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In the second installment of The Billionaires Club quartet, arrogant tycoon Sebastian Dumont risks everything for one night with an exquisite dancer...whose dark fantasy leaves him wanting more.

Love is a risk I will never take, a prize too good for a man who betrayed his family. Thats why I prefer to keep things transactional. So when I see an exquisite dancer in the exclusive Parisian billionaires club, turning her burlesque into an erotic art form, Ill give whatever it takes to have her...

She is mine for one night, to do with as I please. But following my commands seems to bring her as much pleasure as it does me. And I cant help wondering at her performance. She almost makes me believe this is a fantasy of her own making.

Im not ready to let her go after just one night, but I never imagined my hunt would lead me to New York City, or to a restrained and disciplined ballerina. Stoking the fire that rages between us could be the biggest risk Ive ever taken...one that may cost me everything, including my damaged heart.

Mills & Boon publishes sexy romances featuring powerful alpha heroes and bold, fearless heroines exploring their deepest fantasies.

Four new Mills & Boon titles are available each month, wherever ebooks are sold!

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA Awardnominated author CAITLIN CREWS loves writing romance. She teaches her favorite romance novels in creative-writing classes at places like UCLA Extensions prestigious Writers Program, where she finally gets to utilize the MA and PhD in English literature she received from the University of York in England. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with her very own hero and too many pets. Visit her at caitlincrews.com.

THE BILLIONAIRES CLUB

Exclusive. Elite. Always discreet.

Welcome to The Billionaires Club! Join the members of this elite clubAsh, Seb, Orla and Imogenas they get up to exciting, sinfully sexy and downright dirty naughtiness at exclusive, international and glamorous events. Let the debauchery begin!

Have you received your invitation yet...?
Enter the world of The Billionaires Club:

The Debt by Jackie Ashenden
The Risk by Caitlin Crews
The Proposition by JC Harroway
The Deal by Clare Connelly

Discover more at www.millsandboon.com.au

THE RISK

Caitlin Crews

www.millsandboon.com.au

Contents

O NCE I WALKED through the door, there was no going back.

I stood there on the Paris street in the thick, rich darkness of an autumn night, staring at the discreetly unmarked door in question. I was breathing hard and felt faintly dizzy, as if Id danced a difficult night of several shows on very little food.

I was used to the feeling. It was the reason for the feeling that was making my heart pound tonight.

I had signed all the documents, in triplicate, from the straightforward performance contract to several different NDAs that would make certain I never dreamed of telling a soul what happened within the walls of the M Club. To me or around me. I had practiced the burlesque routine that was my entrance into this excruciatingly private club in Paristhough Id been informed there were many other locations scattered across the globeuntil I could do it in my sleep.

All you have to do is dance, my friend Annabelle had told me with an eye roll when shed asked me to take her place here at M Club. Or whatever you want to call it.

Wed laughed, because we were proper, professional ballet dancers, not burlesque performers. We dedicated our lives to perfecting lines and steps, counts and patterns, in a world-renowned ballet company. We didnt play pretend with feathers and bloomers or whatever it was burlesque was meant to do when, really, it was just a striptease. Emphasis on tease.

And, yes, we were maybe a little full of ourselves. Annabelle and I had met in the corps de ballet of the prestigious Knickerbocker Ballet in New York City when we were both seventeen. Ten years of dancing and struggling through injuries and setbacks, occasional partying and rooming together in a tiny walk-up in New York City, and we were still hanging in there.

That we were both stilland onlymembers of the company meant, of course, that we were not likely to be promoted to principal dancers, despite whatever dreams wed had as younger, newer dancers. It also meant that our inevitable retirements were looming, whether we wanted to stop dancing or not.

No one wanted to stop dancing. I certainly didnt. But the body could only take so much, and nothing but sheer greatness in the eyes of the worldand demanding artistic directorsever seemed to combat the ravages of gravity. Soloists and principal dancers were more likely to fight their way toward the age of forty before retiringwhen their bodies finally gave out after too many surgeries and untreated injuries and the daily toll of so much pointed use. Or when they could no longer maintain the preferred form and appearance required by most of the major ballet companies, no matter what lip service they might give to a newer, more body-positive approach. Ballet was about precision. And even the most celebrated principals were forbidden the creeping ravages of age.

But dancers who had never made it out of the corps in the first place? They leaned in hard, made themselves indispensable and became ballet mistresses when they could no longer perform, like the Knickerbockers much-feared and widely respected Miss Fortunato. Otherwise, they tended to give up the fight sooner, usually after a steep downward spiral from an esteemed company like Knickerbocker through far less demanding organizations until even those wouldnt have them.

That I knew my own future didnt make it any less grim. I did my best to focus on the day before me, not the future I couldnt change no matter what I did.

It didnt surprise me that Annabelle had found yet another new and strange way to get her center stage fix, while crossing as many lines as possible in the process. She had always been the adventurous one.

For every lover I took, Annabelle took three. At once, whenever possible. Annabelles boundaries were fluid, smoky. One year, between seasons, she beguiled a well-known older Broadway actress who still called our apartment, all these years later, begging for one more night. Another year, while nursing a broken ankle that took her out of the company, she had entertained two princes and a number of politicians on the sort of Mediterranean yachts that were forever appearing in the tabloids.

Last year, when rent money had been scarce between our performance seasons, Annabelle had decided that she might as well monetize her dating life. Shed found the initial experience electrifying. She liked to indulge herself on nights we didnt perform, and liked to tell me every scandalous detail of the men who paid her for the privilege of touching her.

Others might call it escorting. They might use other, less euphemistic words. But Annabelle didnt care what anyone else thought of her. And I was the one who pretended to find her stories scandalous...and then, when I was alone in the dark, imagined it was me starring in all those dark and dirty scenes.