Dance of Ruin: Chapter 18

My skin is covered in a sheen of sweat, making my leotard stick to the small of my back. My muscles scream as I push myself again and again and again.

I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been dancing. I do know the rest of the company left ages ago. But me and my wonderful imposter syndrome decided to punish ourselves by staying late, working alone on stage in the darkness of the theater, a single light shining down.

My quads burn, my chest is tight. I’m sweating through the bodice of the Odile costume I’ve donned, since it’s got some feathers on one shoulder that I wanted to start getting used to.

I don’t stop dancing. Stopping means thinking, and I can’t do that right now.

I hold my pose at the end of the variation, chest rising and falling, then plié deeply to propel myself straight into another turn. I bobble the landing a bit.

Goddammit.

I try the transition again.

This isn’t about perfecting technique. Or prepping for opening night.

It’s about chasing a feeling…or maybe trying to erase one.

My mind keeps returning to the night before.

With him.

The dark pleasure of his mouth and tongue. The way his hands felt on my body. The silk ribbon biting into my wrists. The filthy things he whispered like prayers.

Then I told him I was a virgin and it all stopped, like a record scratching.

And I can’t stop thinking about what that means.

Maybe the dark games we’d been playing lost their appeal to him the moment he discovered I’d never had sex before. Maybe he thought he’d have to “teach me” or something, and that was a turnoff.

Or maybe it was that fucking video being brought up again. Maybe he was disgusted by that. Maybe I disgust him.

Maybe I disgust myself.

I should be grateful that nothing further happened last night, right?

But try as I might—and I have been trying—I can’t escape the wildly inconvenient fact that when Nico touches me, it has a way of simply erasing everything else.

It takes away the rawness of what happened at that ‘photoshoot’. It quiets the screaming in my head that still wakes me most nights.

There’s a certain comfort in the brutal, ultra-dominant way he touches me. A surrender in the submissiveness he brings out in me. It’s an addictive rush that he alone can give me. And for that reason, maybe I am disappointed that he didn’t keep going last night.

Until he’d taken all of me.

My mind drifts as I do a series of piqué turns from one corner of the stage to the other, spinning closer to the dark shadows of the theater wings, the black feathers on the shoulder of my costume fluttering.

I should just tell him what the video he’s lording over me really is. That it wasn’t some fucking porn shoot, but an assault.

That I was drugged. That I didn’t say yes. Couldn’t say yes.

In a way, it feels like I’m weighing one sort of darkness against a different kind.

If it was a porn, I’d feel shame about it. It actually being a video of my assault brings shame, too, but that shame is somehow worse. Heavier. Deeper. Sticky and raw and swallowing.

Let’s face it: I was stupid for going there in the first place. For trusting a stranger. Maybe I was weak for not fighting harder.

So given the choice, I’m choosing the shame of him thinking I did a porn with two men over the reality. Somehow, that’s easier. Cleaner.

For me, being reckless and foolish is more forgivable than being weak.

I pull my mind back to the choreography. Pirouettes that should be effortless feel jerky. Transitions that should flow, don’t. I push myself harder and faster, until my thighs seize up and the stage blurs.

And finally—my body gives out.

I collapse to the floor with a dull thud, my breath coming in sharp, shallow gasps.

“You’re very good.”

My body jolts and my head whips toward the house, my chest still heaving.

Nico is sitting in the front row.

Not moving.

Not smiling.

Just watching.

I sit up too fast and scramble to my feet, my pulse jackhammering.

Nico still doesn’t move. He’s sitting dead center, elbows resting on the arms of the theater seat, his piercing blue eyes locked on me making me feel exposed.

Both wanted, and not.

After last night, I don’t know what I am to him anymore: a virgin? A slut? A disappointment?

“How long have you been there?” I manage to whisper.

“Long enough to know you don’t fucking leave my head, even though I want you to.”

My breath catches in my throat.

It’s not what I expected from the man who walked away last night without touching me. But with those words, he’s cracked open something raw inside me. Something that pulses low in my belly, like a bruise being touched.

I don’t know what to say. Don’t know what to think.

I’m not supposed to want this. I’m not supposed to crave his jealousy like it’s affection. It’s sick and shameful and laced with something I don’t even have the language for.

But I do, and I feel it blaze to life like a match struck inside my chest.

“Come here.”

Nico’s voice is low, a dark drawl purring from the semi-darkness of the front row, sliding under my skin and coiling hot in my belly.

I hesitate.

He lifts a warning brow.

Slowly, I start to walk toward him. My legs feel shaky under me, but I move to the front of the stage, step by step, until I’m standing near the edge of it, looking down at him, my breath coming quickly.

I watch him watch me, the moment stretching out silently until the feeling of being poised before a drop almost overwhelms me.

Just as I’m opening my mouth to say something, he speaks.

“Take off your tights.”

He cocks his head, eyes dark.

“I don’t like to share what’s mine,” he continues. His voice is quiet, but it lands like a whip. “I don’t even like to think about sharing what’s mine.”

Oh God, he’s talking about the video again.

“Nico,” I begin, voice shaky. “I didn’t⁠—”

He holds up a finger.

“I have no interest in talking about pasts,” he growls. “What I give a shit about is right the fuck now.”

He sinks back in his seat in the shadows and looks up at me like he’s deciding exactly how to devour me whole.

“So: take off your fucking tights. And then sit on the edge of that stage and spread your fucking legs for me like a good girl.”

For a full five seconds, I don’t even breathe. I stand there frozen, trying to force my throat to swallow the lump caught in it his eyes pin me in place.

“Naomi…” he growls quietly.

My hands move like they’re possessed by some external force, like I’m either completely unaware that I’m standing in a huge auditorium seriously considering doing this, or else I simply don’t care.

At this point in my life, caught up in hurricane Nico, it could well be the latter.

I feel like I’m watching myself from his point of view as my hands reach under my black tutu, undoing the snaps that keep the gusset closed. My fingers slip higher to the waistband of my tights. I push them down to my ankles, pausing briefly to remove my pointe shoes before sliding them off one foot, then the other.

I let them drop onto the stage next to me and just stand there, pulse thudding in my ears, my hands clenching and unclenching in at my sides.

He nods approvingly.

“Now sit,” he murmurs.

My face throbs and tingles as I walk to the lip of the stage and do as he says, legs hanging over the edge.

Nico’s eyes glint with something that both excites and terrifies me as he reaches up to stroke his fingers languidly over his chiseled jaw.

“Feet up, on the stage.”

It feels like someone else is controlling my body—like I’m a marionette—as I do as he says.

“Spread your legs wider, Naomi,” he murmurs darkly.

A low whine hums through my ears, heat sparking through my veins. My breath catches and my eyes flare a little at his bluntness.

“I said spread your legs wider,” Nico growls thickly. “And show me your pretty pussy. Show me my fucking pussy.”

Heat floods my face. But I obey, my eyes locked on his as I slide back a couple of inches so I can spread my legs farther apart, the skirt of my tutu flipped up.

Nico calmly strokes his jaw, his ice-blue eyes piercing brightly out of the darkness, eviscerating me. Then his gaze languidly drops, and I can feel the heat of his gaze teasing over the throbbing heat building there.

My shameful arousal.

My eager desperation.

Nico looks right at me, unblinking, making my core spasm and my pulse and face burn even hotter.

“Now touch yourself. Play with that messy little pussy for me.”

I hesitate. My thighs try to close.

“Naomi…”

His voice cuts through the space like a blade, and my eyes snap to his. His expression hasn’t changed, but his voice has softened just enough to cut deeper.

“You’re doing so well,” he murmurs. “You’re being such a good girl for me. Show me how a good girl rubs her greedy little cunt.”

My breath catches violently. That phrase—good girl—slices through my resistance like it’s nothing but gossamer.

I bring my fingers down, gasping quietly as they slide over my lips.

I stroke once, tentatively, barely grazing but feeling how embarrassingly wet I am.

“More,” he commands gently. ““You’re dripping, baby. Such a good girl, making such a mess.”

The sensation that rolls through me is hot and needy, achy and consuming. My face crumples along with my inhibitions, my fingers rubbing my clit as I cry out.

“That’s it, baby,” he growls. “Slow circles. Get that pretty pussy nice and ready for me. Show me what a greedy little slut you can be.”

Whatever trepidations I have left shatter around me as the sensations throb through my core. I spread my legs a little wider, feeling the ache twist deliciously low in my belly. My other hand goes behind me to brace on the stage and I lean back slightly, shaking and biting my lip as I work my fingers over my pussy.

My eyes start to fall shut as the pleasure coils within me. But I can feel his gaze on me, like I’m his masterpiece, and he’s letting me paint the first layer before he takes over and destroys it.

“You’re being such a fucking good girl, Naomi,” he murmurs. “Rubbing that pretty pussy so well for me.”

The praise is like fuel thrown on a fire.

“You’re glowing, baby. Fuck, you look so beautiful trying not to scream for me.”

I moan a little louder, fingers circling over my clit as the throb in my core surges and clenches and demands.

“Look at you,” he purrs. “So fucking obedient. You touch yourself better when I’m watching, don’t you?”

I choke on a moan, my hips twitching upward.

“I asked you a question, Naomi.”

A low groan wrenches from my throat. I nod eagerly: I can’t speak. My fingers keep working, and I can feel the tension building—hot, thick, unbearable.

“I bet that needy little clit is throbbing for me.”

It is.

“Don’t slow down,” he says. “Keep going until I say you can stop.”

My arm behind me is braced tight, keeping me from falling back. My other hand is a blur, shamelessly fingering myself as I grind my palm against my clit. I’m moaning louder now, helpless and unrestrained.

And still he doesn’t move. Just watches, like a man studying a painting being created in real time.

My head lolls back. My eyes squeeze shut.

“Don’t look away,” he growls sharply.

I force my eyes open. Force myself to look right at him, letting his unflinching, unmerciful gaze eradicate whatever shame I have left.

“Good girl,” he praises. “You’re going to look at me when you fall apart.”

I’m so close. Close enough that I can feel the edges of the world beginning to fray. I can’t help it, my eyes hood, head dropping back as my chest tightens…

And then suddenly, I feel it: hot breath near my pussy.

My whole body jerks. My eyes fly open again, and I look down to see Nico standing in front of me, no longer in his seat. He’s stepped right up to the edge of the stage between my legs. His hands grip my thighs as his eyes lock on mine, his jaw clenched tight.

“My fucking turn.”

His tongue is heat and destruction.

He buries it between my legs, licking my pussy with slow, punishing strokes—deliberate, all-consuming, tasting my surrender and shame.

I cry out, half gasping, half moaning, my thighs trembling around his head as he drags his mouth over me again and again.

He grabs the backs of my thighs, shoving my legs up and apart as I tumble back. I writhe, stuffing the heel of my hand into my mouth as Nico devours my dripping pussy. He growls into me savagely, forcing his tongue into me like he’s fucking me with it.

My toes curl as he drags his tongue up to my clit, swirling and darting around the throbbing nub as I keep screaming into my hand. His tongue drags back down through my lips and then keeps going. My face crumples, and I melt as his wicked tongue swirls lightly around my asshole.

“Nico…” I mewl, a whimpering, subby mess on the stage as he fucks both my holes with his tongue. His palm cracks sharply against my ass, sending electric heat throbbing through my core.

My back arches as he pulls my clit between his lips, his tongue mercilessly swirling around it as my entire world begins to shatter.

“That’s it,” he growls against me. “Give it to me, baby. Let me have it. Let me have your fucking come all over my tongue.”

My breath catches violently as my eyes fly wide open.

“Come for me like a good little slut, now.”

I do.

Hard.

The orgasm rips through me so fast I barely register the beginning before I’m arching off the stage, clawing at it, my back bowed as I fall apart with his name on my lips.

“Nico—!”

He groans, licking me through it like he wants to devour the sound of my pleasure. When I try to pull away from the overstimulation, he pins my thighs open and keeps going.

“Stay still,” he growls. “I’m not fucking done with this pussy.”

By the time he finally pulls away, my body is limp. Breathless. Completely ruined.

I blink up at the single light overhead, dazed.

And then I hear it.

The sound of fabric and a belt buckle hitting the floor.

Nico climbs onto stage, naked, his huge, rock-hard cock swinging heavily between his muscled thighs, a panther who’s cornered his prey.

I whimper, caught between need and erotic fear as he moves over me like a predator, pushing me against the stage as he shoves my thighs apart and crawls between them.

I glance down at him, shivering as my core tightens.

His cock is…massive.

Thick. Veined. Swollen and leaking precum as it bobs heavily against his abs. And that gleaming metal stud at the tip glinting wickedly…

My mouth opens, but no sound comes out.

Which is fine, because in that instant he leans down, grabs a fist of my hair at the back, and crushes his mouth to mine in a brutalizing, branding kiss.

I whimper into his mouth, feeling my breath hitch as his swollen cock parts my lips and sinks against my opening.

“This pretty pussy’s been waiting just for me, hasn’t it.”

I shiver as he sinks the head in just a touch, letting me feel the first stretch.

“No one else gets this,” he murmurs darkly. “Ever. Understand?”

I moan softly, thighs shaking, my pulse all over the place, my body a dripping, shaking, eager mess as he teases my clit with his enormous cock.

Heat pulses deep inside me as he grabs my wrists and shoves them over my head, pinning them with his hands as his fat head twitches against my pussy.

“Eyes on me, baby. Look right at me when I take what’s mine.’

Then he pushes in.

The stretch is instant, sharp. My breath punches from my lungs as he fills me inch by slow, huge inch.

“You’re doing so good,” he mutters. “So fucking tight. So fucking perfect around my dick. You were made for my cock, Naomi.”

I cry out, hips jerking, unsure whether I want more or less or everything.

“Almost…” he murmurs, voice strained.

My eyes roll back as a tearing sensation dissolves into something hot and melty.

“Fucking…”

Warmth floods my core as pure, unfiltered pleasure suddenly fills my veins.

“There.”

Then he’s fully inside, buried to the hilt, every fat, hot, hard inch of him claiming every single piece of me.

His mouth is near my ear, his voice a low, reverent growl as he grinds deep.

“You feel that, baby?” he breathes. “That’s your old life ending.”

Then he starts to move.

I choke on a moan as he slides out of me, only to shove right back in.

Deeply. Punishingly. Unmercifully.

Forcing my body to admit exactly how much I crave the submission. The stretch. The brutal rhythm of his hips as he starts to pick up speed.

I dig my nails into his back. I bite his shoulder. I scream into his mouth as he swallows the sound with a growl.

And I realize—I’ve never wanted anything so badly.

Just him.

And being taken.

There’s no first-time gentleness. He’s not “making love” to me.

He’s claiming me.

Maybe I’ve never really been Odette at all. Maybe I’ve always just been waiting for the moment my wings turn black, and I embrace Odile.

My body jolts as I cry out, hands scrambling for purchase on the stage, my back arching against the worn wood. He growls viciously as he starts to ram into me harder, pulling almost all the way out before driving his thick cock back in again, over and over.

“Fuck,” he hisses through clenched teeth against my throat as I whine for more. “So fucking tight.”

The pain is real.

But not enough to make me want him to stop.

If anything, it makes me want more.

Because it doesn’t remain as pain. It changes. Sharpens. Becomes heat and pressure. Becomes something only he can pull from me.

This doesn’t feel like innocence lost.

It feels like innocence being torn from my body. Ripped apart, and devoured, and rewritten as something darker.

Odette dies in the end.

I don’t want to die.

I want to rise up as Odile, and watch the world burn as I dance barefoot through the fire.

Nico fucks me like he’s waited a lifetime to be inside me, and now he’s making up for every second he wasn’t.

There’s no tenderness. Nothing gentle.

Just his teeth and hands, and filthy praise grunted between breaths.

“Good fucking girl,” Nico growls, his grooved, muscles hips coiling as he pounds his fat cock into me over and over, both of us drowning in the lewd wet sounds of my soaking pussy stretched tight around him. “Taking my dick like you were made for it.”

I moan—loud, unrestrained. My costume scratches against the skin of my back and waist. But I don’t care. I want the scratches. I want the pain.

He hooks one of my legs over his shoulder and drives in deeper.

I scream. He catches it in his mouth. Kisses me like he’s claiming the sound as his.

And it is.

Every cry, every moan, every screamed sob—I give them all to him.

My thighs start to tremble again. The orgasm builds fast, sharp as a blade dragged along my spine.

“You’re so close,” he snarls. “I can feel it.”

I nod, gasping. “Nico⁠—”

My head lolls to the side, and I cry out as he grabs my throat and jaw in his hand, pulling me back to him.

“Don’t you fucking dare look away,” he growls, fucking into me. “You look me right in the fucking eye when you come all over my dick like a good girl. You’re clenched so tight around me, baby, like you’re trying to strangle my cock with your tight little pussy. You love my fat cock tearing you apart, don’t you? Scream for me, baby. Come all over my fucking dick for me. You’re my good girl, Naomi. And my good girl is going to come for me like a greedy little whore right now.”

The second the words leave his mouth, I break.

Truly. Utterly. Devastatingly.

The climax tears through me, violent and shattering. My whole body convulses beneath him, rippling inner walls clenched around him like a vise.

He roars as he slams into me one last time, burying himself deep, spilling into me with a vicious growl that sounds more animal than man. His cock jerks and pulses, and I feel every twitch. Every thick blast of cum as it spurts into me.

His mouth crushes to mine, stealing my lips, my breath, my moans.

…Whatever last shred of sanity I have.

I can’t think. Can’t move. I just exist—wrecked and filled and floating.

I didn’t just lose my virginity tonight.

I shed the white swan.

I laid her to rest, and rose again as something hungrier and unholy.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be Odette again.

…Or if I even want to.