Read The Redemption of Darius Sterne for Free Online

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