The Redemption of Darius Sterne

Only to find that escape circumvented as one of Darius’s hands moved quickly across the table and his fingers clamped about her wrist. Not hard enough to actually hurt her, but definitely firmly enough to prevent her from escaping.

The intensity of his penetrating gaze was enough to cause her protest to die in her throat; she knew instinctively, that Darius simply wasn’t a man who took orders, from anyone.

Andy blinked hastily as her vision blurred. She wouldn’t cry. Not here, and certainly not in front of Darius Sterne. ‘Please let go of my arm, Mr Sterne.’

‘Darius.’

She gave a protesting shake of her head. ‘Please, release me.’

He didn’t remove his hand. Andy instead felt the soft pad of Darius’s thumb move caressingly, soothingly, against the sensitive skin of her inner wrist. Increasing her physical awareness of him, despite the fact that seconds ago she had just wanted to escape from the painful memories his words had evoked.

‘I was there that night four years ago, Miranda,’ Darius stated evenly, able to feel the wild fluttering of her pulse beneath the pad of his thumb, to see the look of pained shock in those green eyes for exactly what it was, as well as the deathly pallor of her cheeks. ‘I was in the theatre that night,’ he added, so that there could be no doubts left in her mind as to exactly what he was talking about. ‘The night of your accident.’

‘No!’ she protested weakly.

‘Yes.’ Darius nodded grimly, remembering clearly, as if in slow motion, watching the young ballerina on the stage as she seemed to stumble, attempt to stop herself from falling, before losing her balance completely and crashing down off the stage.

The whole audience had gasped, including Darius, followed by a hushed silence as the music and other dancers froze, and they all waited to know the extent of her injuries.

The realisation that she was the same Miranda Jacobs, the up-and-coming ballerina who had been lauded by the press and critics alike but had been forced to retire four years ago, following that aborted performance as Odette in Swan Lake, now explained so much about her.

That recognition Darius had when he looked at her, for one thing.

Her natural, almost ethereal slenderness, for another.

That fluidity of grace she possessed, just walking across a room. A gracefulness that was apparent in everything she did. Sitting, crossing her ankles, or lifting her champagne glass to her lips.

Everything about this woman was innately graceful.

Even the pained vulnerability he could now see in her eyes.

He had touched on a subject that so obviously caused her immense pain and distress.

Not surprising, when just four short years ago Miranda Jacobs had been called the Margot Fonteyn of her age. She had been an absolute joy to watch that night, mesmerisingly so. And that hadn’t been just Darius’s opinion, but also that of all the reviewers and the newspapers the following day as the headlines had delivered the news of the terrible accident on stage that might possibly mark the end of such a young and promising career.

That had been the end to Miranda Jacobs’s career as a professional ballet dancer; those same newspapers had reported just days later that her injuries were so extensive she would never dance professionally again.

Well, that might be true professionally...

Darius stood up abruptly before moving round the table and exerting a light pressure on Miranda’s wrist as he pulled her to her feet beside him. ‘Let’s dance.’

Her expression was panicked as she pulled against that hold on her wrist. ‘No.’

Darius stilled. ‘Is there any medical reason that says you can’t do a slow dance?’

Her eyes flashed a glittering emerald. ‘I’m not a cripple, Mr Sterne, I’m just no longer capable of dancing in a professional capacity.’

‘Then let’s go.’ His tone brooked no argument as he released her hand to instead place his arm firmly about the slenderness of her waist, holding her possessively into his side as he strode towards the dance floor, deliberately catching the eye of the DJ and giving the other man a barely perceptible nod of his head as he did so.

Mere seconds later the tempo of the music changed to a slow love song.

‘That was convenient,’ Miranda bit out abruptly as the two of them stepped onto the dance floor.

‘No, actually, it was deliberate,’ Darius dismissed unapologetically; he wanted this woman in his arms, and he wasn’t about to pretend otherwise.

She gave a protesting shake of her head, the straight curtain of her hair moving about her shoulders as she placed her hands against his chest, with the obvious intention of pushing him away. ‘I really don’t want to dance.’

‘Liar,’ Darius stated arrogantly as he refused to release her; he had felt the increase of the pulse in her wrist, and his arms about her waist now allowed him to feel the fluttering of excitement that ran through the whole of her body. Very like that of a caged and wounded bird longing to be set free.

Damn it, he was starting to sound poetic again!

If nothing else, his mother’s distant behaviour towards him these past twenty years had taught him that women were fickle and cold and not to be trusted with his feelings.

Nor did he become involved, in any way, with women who were complicated, or wounded, as Miranda Jacobs so obviously was. He carried around enough emotional baggage, the rest of his family’s as well as his own, without taking on someone else’s. Hell, he didn’t become involved with women at all, except in the bedroom, and even then only on a purely sexual basis. Just a scratch to his itch.

But having forced the dancing issue he could hardly back down now. ‘Move your feet, Miranda,’ he encouraged huskily as he lifted her hands up onto his shoulders before pulling her closer still as he began to move slowly in time to the music, leaving Miranda with no choice but to follow his lead.

She was so slender in his arms that Darius almost felt as if he might bruise the willowy slenderness curved against his much larger and harder frame. And if he feared bruising her, just from dancing with her, how much more likely was it that he would completely crush her if he were to ever attempt to make love with her?

That was no longer even a possibility.

Making love to this woman was a definite no-no as far as Darius was concerned. Knowing who she was, who she had been, he also knew this woman was just too vulnerable, her past making her far too emotionally complicated, for him to even contemplate continuing his pursuit of the attraction he felt between the two of them. One dance together, and that was it. Then he would take her back to her booth, before returning to his office until she and the rest of her family had left the nightclub.

Never to return.

Yes, that was what he would do.

Her hair felt smooth as he rested his cheek lightly against it, those silver-gold tresses smelling of citrus and some deeper, enticing spice, that caused his hardened body to throb achingly as he breathed the scent deeply into his lungs. An arousal that Miranda, with the proximity of their two bodies, couldn’t help but be completely aware of.

* * *

Andy was too disturbed at first, at finding herself dancing in public again, albeit in a crowded club, to be aware of anything else. But as her nerves slowly settled, and the trembling stopped, she couldn’t help but become completely aware of the man she was dancing with.

She was five-eight in her bare feet, and even adding a couple of inches for the heels on her sandals Darius still towered over her by a good five or six inches. The width of his shoulders felt hard and muscled beneath her fingers. His chest and abdomen felt just as firmly muscled as he curved her body against and into his. As evidence, perhaps, that he didn’t spend all of his time behind a desk counting his billions.

Well...no, she was sure that Darius spent a lot of energy exercising in his bedroom too. Horizontally!

None of which changed the fact that being so totally aware of the hardness of his thighs, and the heavy length of his arousal pressing against her contrasting softness, had completely taken her mind off the fact that she was actually dancing in public again. More of a shuffle, really, but it was still dancing.

And it was with Darius Sterne.

Darius had to be at least ten years older than her, as well as far more experienced and sophisticated. He was a man who no doubt changed the women in his bed as often as some minion changed the silk sheets for him afterwards, which would be often.

Andy already knew those silk sheets would be black—

Already knew?

Did that mean she was seriously imagining herself one day sharing Darius’s bed sheets with him? Sharing his bed?

She hadn’t needed to be in this man’s company for two minutes to know that she should have heeded Kim’s warning earlier. To know that Darius would eat her alive. Totally possess her. Devour her. Inch by fleshly inch. Bit by arousing bit!

The shiver that now coursed down Andy’s spine was one of pleasurable anticipation. A longing, a yearning, for whatever Darius wanted to give her.

She couldn’t do this.

No doubt other woman, so many other women, would be flattered just to have attracted the attention of a man like Darius. Even more so, to know that he had deliberately engineered her presence in the Midas club tonight, before he had swooped down on her, his arousal now unmistakeable as he danced so close against her.

Other women would be flattered.

Andy couldn’t have the luxury of allowing herself to be flattered by the attentions of a man as dangerous as she considered Darius to be. Not when she knew it could ultimately lead nowhere.

Four years ago her dreams had been shattered. The dream she’d had since the age of five, of being a world-class ballerina, had come crashing down about her ears. Just as surely as she had come crashing down off the stage, shattering her hip and thigh bones.

It had taken over a year of operations and physical therapy for Andy to even be able to walk again, let alone be strong enough to rise up from beneath the misery threatening to bury her. But she had finally done it, had known she had no choice, that she needed to seriously consider her options for the future, now that she could no longer pursue her longed for career.

In the end she had realised that ballet was all she knew; she had won a scholarship to ballet school when she was eleven, had lived, eaten and breathed that world for so long, she couldn’t imagine ever cutting herself off from it completely.

Opening up her own dance studio, while making her painfully aware of her own inadequacies, had seemed the natural solution.

Even that had taken hard work, and Andy had studied hard to take her teaching certificate, before just six months ago finally managing to open her own dance studio. She still had a long way to go for it to be as successful as she wanted it to be.

She certainly didn’t have the time, or the emotional energy, to indulge in even a flirtation with a man like Darius. A man who she had no doubts broke women’s hearts on a regular basis. A man who would have made no secret of the fact that none of those women had meant any more to him than just another conquest, a beautiful body to be enjoyed in his bed, and totally forgotten about the following morning.

Except Andy’s body was no longer beautiful; how could it be, when it bore the physical scars from those many operations?

She pulled out of his arms the moment the song came to an end. ‘As I said, thank you for inviting us all up here, and for the champagne and the dance.’ She made her voice deliberately light, her smile bright and meaningless. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see that my sister and brother-in-law are waiting for me at the table, no doubt so that we can all leave,’ she added wryly. Kim, at least, was glaring accusingly across the room at Darius.

He frowned. ‘It’s still early.’

‘Maybe for you.’ Andy nodded. ‘Some of us have to get up for work in the morning.’

‘Doing what?’

Her chin rose. ‘I now own my own dance studio, teaching ballet to children. Yes,’ she snapped as she saw his eyebrows rise, ‘a typical example of “those that can’t, teach”! Now, if you’ll excuse me?’

‘No!’

Andy looked up at him uncertainly as she heard vehemence in his tone. ‘No?’

It was one thing for Darius to have decided he couldn’t take his attraction towards this woman any further than he already had, and quite another for Miranda to decide to walk away from him.

Damn it, had he really become so arrogant that he couldn’t accept a woman’s lack of interest in him for what it was?

Hell, yes, he was that arrogant!

Most especially when he knew that Miranda wasn’t uninterested in him at all.

The sexual tension between the two of them had been palpable downstairs in the restaurant earlier, and it was even deeper now that they had actually talked, and then danced together.

‘Have dinner with me tomorrow night,’ Darius prompted abruptly as he turned to place a restraining hand on her arm before they could reach the table where her sister and brother-in-law were waiting for her.

‘I— What—? No!’ Miranda looked totally flustered by the invitation.

‘Why on earth not?’ He scowled darkly.

She gave an impatient shake of her head. ‘As I said, I’m grateful to you for inviting us up to your club, and—and everything else. It’s made my birthday even more special. I just— This— You and me— It isn’t going anywhere.’

‘I only invited you out to dinner, Miranda, not to become the mother of my children,’ he pointed out dryly.

The colour had first drained and then deepened in her cheeks. ‘And when was the last time you invited a woman out to dinner without the expectation of taking her to bed at the end of the evening?’ Her pointed chin rose challengingly as she looked up at him.

‘And what makes you so sure that isn’t going to happen?’ he purred.

Andy wasn’t sure of anything in regard to her undeniable and unexpected attraction to this man; that was the problem!

It would be too easy to become completely caught up in Darius, in his mesmerising attractiveness, in that arrogance and certainty, only to have all of that crash down about her ears when he realised, when he saw, her physical imperfections.

Physical imperfections, scars, which she had no doubts would illicit either pity or disgust. And Andy wanted neither of those things from Darius.

‘I said no, I won’t have dinner with you tomorrow, Mr Sterne. Or any other time,’ Andy added as she pointedly removed her arm from his grasp. ‘Excuse me.’ She didn’t wait for a response from him this time as she turned and walked away determinedly.

As she turned and walked away from the man she knew, instinctively, was capable of capturing her heart before just as quickly breaking it.

CHAPTER THREE

‘I THOUGHT I WOULD wait for your students to leave before I came in.’

Andy froze as Darius Sterne’s voice echoed across her otherwise empty dance studio, her gaze now riveted on the mirrored wall in front of her as she saw his reflection in the doorway behind her.

It had been a week since she had left him at Midas, and he looked as tall and darkly forbidding as ever. Today he wore a charcoal-coloured suit and paler grey shirt and tie, beneath a dark overcoat. The darkness of his hair was even longer than a week ago, and more tousled about those harshly patrician features, his topaz gaze fixed on her intently.

Andy’s last class of the afternoon had just left and she was currently standing beside the barre on the wall going through the routine of exercises and stretches that she did at the end of each day, before going up to her apartment to shower and change.

What on earth was Darius even doing here?

How was he here at all? Andy didn’t remember telling him where her dance studio was located, only that she had one.

He was Darius Sterne, and if he wanted to find out exactly where that dance studio was situated, then no doubt he could just instruct one of his employees to find out for him.

The real question was: why had he?

Andy had tried her best not to even think about this disturbing man for the past week. Or her unprecedented physical response to him!

And for the most part she knew that she had succeeded, spending the weekend either going out with Kim and Colin, or cleaning her flat, and keeping herself busy at her studio the rest of the time, as she kept thoughts of Darius at bay.

Unexpectedly hearing the husky sound of his voice, and just a single glance at his reflection in the mirror, and Andy knew she had been wasting her time trying so hard not to think about this man this past week. She could feel the moist heat gathering between her thighs, and her breasts were already tingling with arousal.

And those were the reasons Andy couldn’t turn and face him, but instead continued to look at his reflection in the mirrored wall in front of her, her fingers now curled so tightly about the barre beside her that her knuckles showed white.

‘I had to separate two of those little angels before class began; they were arguing over whose leotard was the prettiest,’ she answered dryly.

‘Women in the making,’ he teased.

‘No doubt,’ Andy answered dismissively before asking the question she really wanted an answer to. ‘What are you doing here, Mr Sterne?’

At this precise moment, Darius was exerting all of his considerable will power to control the urge he felt to quickly cross the studio and kiss her delectable lips, before baring her body and kissing that too!

Who knew that a woman could look so sexy in a leotard and tights?

That Miranda Jacobs, specifically, would look so sexy in a white leotard and tights, with silky white ballet shoes on her slender feet?

The long-sleeved leotard hugged every inch of her body, outlining her small but perfectly rounded breasts tipped with ripe—and aroused?—berries. His gaze took in her tiny waist, the slight flare of her hips, her bottom two perfectly rounded globes, her legs long and shapely in white tights. Her hair was brushed back and secured in a ponytail at her crown and her face, completely bare of make-up, tinged with a slight glow of warmth to her satiny smooth skin. No doubt the latter was from her recent exertions with the dozen or so small children that had just left with their doting mothers in tow.

He had his own driver, but had chosen to drive himself to the dance studio. He’d arrived about fifteen minutes ago, the amount of other vehicles in the car park telling him that she must have a class on at the moment. Sure enough, shortly after he’d parked his car, the young students had all trooped out and disappeared off with their mothers in their various vehicles and directions.

For some reason Darius hadn’t expected that Miranda would be dressed in the same leotard and tights as her small charges wore. Or that it would take just one look at her in those revealing clothes for his body to harden to a painful throb!

It was a reaction that didn’t improve his temper in the slightest; he had already thought about this young woman far more over this past week than he was happy with—in the middle of business meetings, on a couple of long flights, in the shower, in his otherwise empty bed!—without becoming aroused almost the moment he set eyes on her again.

‘Mr Sterne?’

While he had been lost in the thought of exactly how and when he would like to have sex with her, Miranda had turned to face him, her head tilted curiously as those green and gold eyes looked across at him quizzically.

Miranda Jacobs was all and everything that Darius deliberately avoided in a woman.

And yet here he was, a week after their first meeting, hard and aroused after taking just one look at her.

Darius had tried taking out and bedding other women the past seven days—and nights—several of them to be exact. But every time it came to the end of the evening an image of ash-blonde hair and a willowy, desirable body would flash inside his head, totally deflating any desire he might feel to have sex with the woman he was with.

Every time he stepped into the shower, or climbed into bed at night, he could imagine that ash-blonde hair either slicked back and wet from taking a shower with him, or feathered out on his pillows, her green eyes sultry as she looked up at him invitingly, and making any idea of sleeping impossible. He also resented having to take care of his arousal himself.

He certainly didn’t appreciate having had an image of Miranda popping into his head in the middle of a business meeting, as it had earlier this week in Beijing!

Something had to be done. And the only solution Darius could come up with was to take her to bed, before then putting her firmly from his mind.

If that meant he had to wine and dine Miranda, charm her—although that part might be a strain on his usual taciturn nature!—before then seducing her and taking her to his bed, then that was what Darius had decided he had to do. For his own sanity, if not hers.

His mouth thinned. ‘I was under the impression you no longer danced?’ He swept his gaze up and over her leotard once more.

‘I dance enough to be able to demonstrate the moves to my students, and to be able to do that I need to dress as they do.’ Andy was thankful that the thick white tights she was wearing also hid the mesh of scars on her right hip and thigh.

‘So why are you here, Mr Sterne?’

He drew his breath in sharply. ‘I came to invite you to attend a charity dinner with me on Saturday evening.’

To say Andy was surprised by the invitation would be putting it mildly.

Although she did know, after finally giving in and looking him up on the Internet, that Darius wasn’t now, nor had he ever been, married, or even engaged to be married. In fact, at the age of thirty-three he had never been involved in a single serious relationship, as far as Andy could tell from the information available on him.

Which, surprisingly, hadn’t been as detailed as she had expected it to be.

There had been plenty of articles on how successful he and his brother were in business; it appeared they owned half the known universe, not almost all of it, as she had first thought!

There were also numerous publicity photographs of him and his brother, and others taken of him at exotic locations all over the world, with beautiful and glamorous women on his arm. Noticeably the majority of those women had been tall and shapely brunettes.

But Darius Sterne’s private life seemed to be exactly that: private.

Oh, on the surface of it there appeared to be plenty of details.

She’d discovered the names of the schools he had attended, followed by a degree at Oxford University. She’d read up on the social network site that had been the start of the successful business empire that he had owned with his twin brother for the past twelve years. As well, there had been a brief mention of the fact that his father had died when he was thirteen, and his mother had remarried when he was fourteen. But that was all it had been; there was nothing tangible about Darius himself. Nothing about Darius Sterne the man, or his relationship with the rest of his family, apart from that business partnership with his twin. And despite Kim’s warnings of a lurid past—and present?—there had been no ‘kiss and tell’ newspaper articles from any women Darius might have scorned.

Although Andy suspected that the reason for the latter was because Darius either owned, or had influence over, most of the world’s media.

She now also knew he lived mainly in a penthouse apartment in London, but also owned other homes in several capital cities around the world, including New York, Hong Kong, and Paris.