Dance of Madness: Chapter 34

The food is a nice touch.

So was the blanket I woke up to find draped over me. I’m also not chained anymore: the manacle around my ankle is gone.

The food is making me feel a little more clear-headed—which may or may not be a good thing. The sleep helped, too, though I can’t actually believe I did fall asleep again. But I guess after forcing myself to stay awake for God knows how long, it had to happen eventually.

I sit quietly on the edge of the cot on day…who knows…slowly eating the sandwich. I’d like to say that after days in this hellhole, anything would taste good.

…But even so, it’s a pretty fucking tasty sandwich.

Plus, it’s a distraction from everything going on in my head right now. I’m too exhausted to think this through anymore or wonder what comes next. Too tired to dwell on the fact that the man I’ve fallen in love with—twice—hates me.

Tasty sandwiches or not, he hates me. Otherwise, I’d be out of this fucking cage. He’d be looking me in the eye, and we’d be talking about everything.

And that’s the other fucked-up part: I know that if he walked down here and let me out right now, I wouldn’t run away. I wouldn’t slap him or tell him to fuck off and die. I wouldn’t run to my father to have him avenge me.

I’d still want to be with Nero.

I’d still want to hold him and be held by him.

I’d still be fucking in love with him, which is just…I don’t know. A sign of serious mental issues? Or just plain pathetic?

Footsteps descending the basement stairs pull me out of my thoughts. I wash down the last bite of turkey and Swiss with a swig of OJ as Nero unlocks the basement door and steps in.

“Here to throw more water over me?” I mutter. “You missed your chance last night when I was out.”

He doesn’t respond, just stands outside the bars in dark slacks and a white button up, the sleeves rolled to his elbows and his arms folded. Watching me, his green eyes glinting ferally.

“Thanks for the food,” I mumble. “And the blanket.”

He nods, still saying nothing.

Finally, the silence is too much.

“Why am I still in this cage, Nero?” I say quietly.

His jaw sets.

“What do you want from me?” I say, a little louder. “Another confession?! I’ll confess to whatever the fuck you want, okay?”

His eyes glint. “I’ve never been looking for a confession, Milena,” he growls. “I’ve been looking for an admission.”

I roll my eyes. “Fine! Then let me admit to you that⁠—”

“Lose the fucking sarcasm,” he hisses, “and tell me the truth. Not what you think I want to fucking hear,” he snaps. “The truth. If you’re even capable of that.”

I stare at him. “The truth?! I’ve already told you the truth!” I jab a finger at the TV screen. “That video is fake! Maybe not the visual, but the audio damn well is! I don’t know how the fuck else to say it!” I scream. “When I came there that night to meet you, I had no fucking idea that any of that was going to happen!” I choke, tears beading in my eyes. “Nero, I am so fucking sorry about what happened to your parents, I can’t even tell you! But⁠—”

“You were there that night, Milena,” he snaps. “You showed up in your little mask, played your part, then handed me over to⁠—”

“Enough!!!” I scream. “Nero, I didn’t know! I thought it was just a night! Just you and me!”

“Don’t lie to me!” he roars. “Don’t look at me like you feel or ever felt something for me, and⁠—”

“I do feel something for you!” I scream, tears pouring down my cheeks now. “I’ve felt something for you this entire time! I felt it before, when it was just us and the notes, before I even knew who you were! I did not set you up!!”

His face darkens, his teeth flashing. “Then why were you there!?”

“Because I⁠—”

“WHAT OTHER POSSIBLE FUCKING REASON WOULD YOU HAVE BEEN THERE!?”

The force of his roared voice, the sheer rage in his words, sucks out all the air in the room, leaving us in sudden, brutal silence.

I’m shaking as my body stiffens, my eyes locked on him as my mouth falls open.

Because suddenly, all at once, in a way so tragically, brutally painful that it cuts a hole through my heart, I understand.

“Nero…”

I choke his name out, my chest tightening as I slowly walk towards him. He stays where he is, glaring at me, his lips curled into a vicious snarl. I stop when I get to the bars between us, clasping them as I look up into his furious face.

“Why else would you have been there, if not to lure me?” He rasps.

Tears roll down my cheeks as I slowly shake my head, my eyes locked on him. “Do you seriously not consider yourself to be lovable?”

The silence hangs in the dank air between us. He blinks, his jaw ticking as he slowly moves closer, until he’s right at the bars. His hands grip them tight as he leers down into my face, his teeth bared.

“No,” he chokes. “No, I don’t.”

A sob rips from my throat as I grab his shirt through the bars and pull him close.

“Well, you are to me.”

And then I kiss him.

I bang my face on the bars when I do, but I don’t care. I kiss him and cry against his face, clinging to him like he might evaporate or push me away at any second.

But that doesn’t happen.

Suddenly, he’s kissing me back, with a force so powerful that it sucks the air from my lungs. Nero groans, keys jangling, his lips still on mine as he unlocks the door. We pull apart just enough for him to bang it open and surge into the cage. Then I’m choking on another broken sob as he grabs me in his arms and lifts me against his chest, his lips searing to mine in a vicious, consuming kiss.

All I know is his arms and his lips as he carries me out of the basement and up the stairs, all the way to the third floor. I dimly hear water running, but all I really feel is the heat of his body against me and the feverish way I’m clinging to him.

He breaks away from me just long enough to tear my ruined dress from my body. His own clothes are next, then he’s scooping me up again and getting us both settled into warm, sudsy, water.

I moan and go to kiss him again, but he stops me, a broken look on his face, his eyes haggard as he cups my face.

“Milena—”

“It’s over,” I choke, crying. “It’s just you and me⁠—”

“I chained you,” he croaks. “I locked you up in the fucking dark in a fucking cage⁠—”

“Yes,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “And then you came back for me, and we’re here now.”

His throat works as he stares down at me, chest rising and falling like something’s trying to tear its way out of him.

“No,” he rasps. “That’s not enough.”

He brushes wet hair from my face, his hand shaking.

I go to speak, but he stops me with a shake of his head.

“I am so fucking sorry, Milena.”

His forehead presses to mine. I feel the heat of him. The tremble in his chest.

“I should’ve trusted you,” he whispers. “I should’ve looked you in the eye and seen what was real. But I wasn’t looking at you, Milena,” he chokes. “I was looking at everything I lost, and making you fucking pay for it.”

“Nero—”

“I wanted to hurt someone for what happened to me,” he hisses, his hands shaking as they cup my face. “And you were the only person that I could make bleed. All I could focus on was my pain and my grief and the past,” he chokes, “instead of what’s right here, right now.”

I tremble as he holds me tighter, his eyes two green flames blazing into mine.

“You were right there in front of me, baby. And all I could see were the ghosts.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I whisper, smiling through the tears as I reach out to touch his face. “I forgive you.”

But he shakes his head.

“I don’t deserve to be.”

“Nero—”

“I’m so fucking sorry, princess,” he whispers, closing his eyes. “For the cage. For not believing you. For hurting you when all you ever did was love me.”

He takes my hands in his and brings them up to his mouth, our foreheads still touching. My heart melts as he starts to kiss my knuckles, one after the other.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t better. I’m sorry I didn’t just fucking tell you I loved you⁠—”

“You don’t have to keep saying sorry,” I whisper as I start kissing his knuckles.

His eyes meet mine, something flickering in them that I’ve never seen before.

“Say it again,” he murmurs.

My lips curl into a grin.

‘Say what?’

‘You know what.’

“I love you.”

He buries his face in my neck, holding me tight like he might fall apart without me. I whimper when I feel his lips on my skin and his hands on my body.

A hardness between us.

When I reach for him, he stops me.

“I’m not done apologizing yet. Turn around.”

“You are, trust me⁠—”

“Turn the fuck around, princess.”

I giggle.

That’s my Nero.

I turn my back to him, holding my knees against my chest. I gasp when I feel warm water sluicing over my head, down my back. When I start to turn again, he stops me with a firm hand.

“Let me do this.”

More water pours over my hair, his strong hands combing through it and pulling it behind me. He says nothing, just tilts my head back, pouring even more water on my hair.

“Nero, what are you…”

I grin when I hear shampoo being squirted into his palms. His hands work the suds into my blonde locks. His fingers massage my scalp, lathering every strand as I close my eyes and sigh contentedly, sinking back against his chest.

He rinses my hair, then does the whole thing again with the conditioner before rinsing it again. Then he soaps and cleans my body, inch by inch, moving with a tenderness I didn’t know he was capable of.

“Lie back,” he growls, pulling me into his chest. He reaches past me, pulls my legs out of the water, and sets my heels on the edge of the clawfoot tub.

“What are you doing?” I murmur lazily.

“This.”

My eyes open in surprise. He’s lathering my legs with shaving cream.

My head twists to look at him. “You’re not seriously going to⁠—”

“Would you like me to?”

I chew on my lip, locking my eyes with his.

“And more importantly,” he murmurs. “Do you trust me to?”

I frown, like I’m thinking. But it’s really just to fuck with him. Then I giggle and twist my face up to his, kissing him softly. “The answer is yes, and yes,” I murmur.

Then I lie back against his chest and watch as quite possibly the most savage, feral, violent man I’ve ever met slowly and methodically shaves every inch of my legs without nicking me once. Stroke by stroke, he cleans the lather and the stubble from my legs, until they’re baby smooth.

“Lift your arms.”

I’m too stunned to even protest as he lathers my armpits and slowly shaves those as well, calmly and methodically.

“Stand up,” he murmurs into my ear.

Yep, still too stunned and way too pampered to have a thing to say about any of this. I stand and let him spin me around, settling my butt on the edge of the tub.

“Spread your legs.”

I gape at him.

“Nero—”

“Spread your fucking legs, princess.”

I obey in a daze, watching him through a fog of desire and need and love as he moves between them. I shiver when he smooths the shaving cream over my pussy, and tense up as he brings the razor close. Then he cleanly and slowly takes the first stroke.

After that, there’s no nerves at all. I just sit there, watching as he cleans away all the hair, running the razor over me until every inch of my most private place is smooth as silk.

Nero’s eyes darken with hunger as he pours water over my pussy, washing away the last bits of shaving cream. I bite back a whimper, waiting for his tongue as he leans close.

Instead, he does something almost more intimate: he kisses me right above my pussy lips, on the clean, smooth skin.

I’m still staring at him with my mouth hanging open as he pulls back with a lazy grin. Then he starts to kiss down my left leg, trailing his lips against my inner thigh. He moves lower, kissing his way down my calf before he pulls my foot out of the water and raises it up, kissing lower still, toward my ankle.

I panic for a second, and nervously try and pull my foot away.

He doesn’t let me. His grip tightens, pulling my foot all the way out of the water and sitting it on his firm chest.

“Nero…” I mumble, turning red and looking away. “Not…my feet…”

He slowly looks up at me. “What?”

“They’re…” I make a face. “They’re ugly,” I mumble. “I mean, I’ve danced my entire life. I have scars and ugly calluses and⁠—”

My breath catches as he lifts my foot off his chest, brings it to his lips, and kisses the arch softly.

“It’s the scars that make them beautiful, princess,” he says quietly. ‘They’re the battle wounds you got in pursuit of your art. Lessons learned in pain and punishment.”

He kisses it again, then sets my foot back in the water before pulling out the other one. I watch with a warm feeling in my core as he kisses it softly, just like the first one.

“For the record, not a single fucking part of you is ugly.”

His lips move up my calf. Up my inner thigh as he sets my foot back in the water. When his mouth finds its way to my pussy, I’m already dripping wet for him.

I moan as he dances his tongue over me, swirling it over my clit and then plunging it deep. My head drops back, my hands sliding into his hair as he licks me slowly and purposefully, teasing me and coaxing me higher and higher.

His lips wrap around my swollen clit, his tongue rolling over it. My moans and gasps fill the bathroom as he sinks two fingers into me, curling them and stroking in and out as he tongues my clit over and over.

Until it’s too much. Until I’m clutching his head tightly and whimpering his name. Until I’m shattering and coming all over his mouth with a wild, choked cry.

He pulls me wordlessly off the edge of the tub. I’m still shaking as I settle onto his lap, his hard, huge cock throbbing against my entrance.

We both moan as I sink down onto his cock, stretched tight around him, my breath hitching at his sheer size. But I keep lowering my body, taking more and more of him until I’m settled against his base.

My forehead against his. My nipples electric against his chest. Our eyes locked.

“I love you,” he growls quietly as his muscled arms surround me, his strong hands gripping me tight. “Let me love you.”

For once, our sex isn’t madness and darkness, viciousness and brutal pleasure.

This time, we make love.

I ride him slowly, rolling my hips and gliding my pussy up and down his swollen cock. He bites and licks and sucks on my neck…my collarbone…my chest. He takes a nipple into his mouth and swirls his tongue over it, sending me reeling as I grind on his fat cock and give myself completely to him.

His mouth slides up to my jaw, kissing and sucking before he groans and takes my face in one hand, the other guiding my hips as he kisses me fiercely.

Our tongues dance. Moans entwine and blur, and the world around us slows until the fire inside me explodes.

I come gasping and moaning into his mouth, shuddering against him as my body melts against his. And when I feel him grunt, feel his thick cock pulse as he spills his cum into me, I lose it all over again.