The Risk. Caitlin Crews

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.

      And lost about six inches, making her even tinier than I’d imagined.

      Perfectly sized to lift and move and handle as I wished.

      Her wings were dispensed of with a few tugs behind her shoulders, which she did herself. Showing me all the ways she was flexible. Limber.

      My mouth was dry.

      Her hair tumbled around her shoulders as she reached behind her and unwrapped those shining jewels from around her breasts.

      “That’s enough,” I growled.

      Because I knew that if I saw her fully naked right now, this would end far too soon.

      This round, I amended.

      She would be no businesswoman at all if she didn’t take me for the fortune I had offered her, and that meant I intended to get my money’s worth.

      Again and again.

      But something else had happened as she stood there with her angel’s wings in a feathery cloud around her and that stark, wicked invitation on her face.

      It had suddenly become wildly important to me that she want me, if not as much as I wanted her, then at least enough.

      Enough to shiver. Enough to ache.

      Just as I did.

      “Show me,” I commanded her. “Touch yourself, little dancer, and show me exactly how much you want me.”