Dance of Madness: Chapter 8

I stay completely, totally, paralyzingly still.

This isn’t just the man who chased me through a decaying mansion like a wild beast hunting prey the other night. Not even just the wraith who slipped into my bedroom while I slept, removed my panties, almost certainly put his hands on me, and then left sick, twisted reminders of that, and our chase, on my pillow.

It’s him.

The man I once wrote letters to.

The one I gave myself to—naively, fully. Brutally and shatteringly.

And he doesn’t know it.

But I do.

Or again, at least I think I do.

I found out when I got home—wrecked, bleeding, still full of his cum—and heard my uncle say that our men had just killed Antonio and Natalia De Luca, and that they’d cornered the heir, Nero, with “some girl”, at the place I’d just run from.

In that horrific moment, capping a night of both ecstasy and horror, I learned that the man I’d been talking to through letters and notes, with whom I’d shared my every dark, filthy secret, was the son of my family’s enemies.

A week later, I went to the New York Public Library to write one last time and ask him who he was. To see if my suspicion was right, and somehow, I’d lost myself with the mad emperor Nero.

But the book where we always left our letters was gone, and I was left with my best guess and nothing more.

Now, here in the present, my body ignites with a thousand confusing signals, half of them screaming run, the other half pleading don’t you dare move.

My breath catches as he teases his finger, like a lover’s touch, or a claw, over my neck. His mouth is right at my ear when he speaks.

“I was supposed to meet someone that night,” he growls. “I doubt it was you.”

His hand clamps around my waist, pulling me tighter to him, his rock-hard body pinning me to the marble counter. His fingers dig into my flesh through the dress, and his coiled muscles ripple and pulse against me.

“She—” The words choke in my throat as a thousand different emotions and sensations explode through my system, all clamoring for my attention.

“She’s upstairs!” I blurt. “Alicia⁠—”

“Oh, I’m not interested in her anymore.”

His hand slides up into my hair, coiling my ponytail and clenching it in a fist. His lips brush my neck, causing my throat to seize up. My muscles clench and shake. My core flutters.

Horribly, my nipples tighten to throbbing electrified points.

“I’ve found a much more amusing plaything… Miss Kalishnik.”

My heart lurches.

“But what I’ve been trying to make sense of over the past few days is how a spoiled Bratva princess manages to stumble into a place like Greymoor to be chased and fucked by a monster like me.”

There’s a rough, feral tone to his deep voice that…does something to me. Not what it should. It doesn’t inspire fear, panic, or the blood-chilling feeling that I’m about to be hurt, or worse.

Instead…because I’m apparently deranged… It sends a throb of raw need clawing and snarling through my body, sucking the air from my lungs.

“I—” I swallow the lump in my throat, acutely aware of the tingling sensation bordering on pain as he tightens his grip on my ponytail.

“I’m waiting…”

“I was tricked,” I blurt, my eyes finding his in the mirror again. “I…I didn’t know you were there. I didn’t know anything about whatever you and Alicia⁠—”

“I already told you: I don’t give a shit about Alicia. We’re not talking about her. We’re talking about you.”

“And I’m trying to tell you,” I hiss through clenched teeth, “that I⁠—”

I cry out and gasp sharply as he yanks my hair tighter, and then pulls his other hand from my hip, winds up, and sends his palm smacking hard against my ass.

A mortifying sound, somewhere between a yelp and a fucking moan, escapes my throat before I can stop it.

A low, dark chuckle rumbles against my jugular.

“Let’s try that again, shall we?” he growls. “And let’s lose the snippy tone while you’re at it…princess.”

Heat floods my face—a mix of fury, shame, and something much worse.

“I was tricked into going as part of dumb dare at a party,” I mutter quietly. “I didn’t go there to…to…you know…”

“I don’t know. Say it.”

I swallow. “To…do that.”

He chuckles against my neck again, then takes a slow, leisurely breath.

“You’re not selling it, you know.”

My brow furrows. “Not…selling…?”

“Your aversion to what happened the other night.”

“Excuse me?”

He gives my ponytail another firm tug, sending lightning and fresh need coursing through my body.

“Uh uh uh,” he admonishes in a low, sultry deep voice. “What did I just say about the tiara-wearing princess attitude? Try again.”

I remain silent, my body shivering against the hard muscles of his body.

“You want me to think that you’re some tourist who wandered into a world in which she doesn’t belong⁠—”

“I don’t,” I blurt.

A growl rumbles in his chest.

“For a tourist, you played the role very well.”

I frown. Before I can reply and probably get spanked again, he continues.

“A tourist doesn’t run like you did.”

I shiver again as his body presses harder to me.

He could crush me. Kill me. Fuck me however he wants against this counter.

“I… I was scared,” I say quietly. “Terrified. I ran because⁠—”

“Oh, is that what you’ve told yourself?” he muses. “That it was fear making your feet pound the floor and your breath catch in the shadows?”

I swallow.

“Or was the reason you ran so fast the same reason your panties were a fucking drippy, soaking mess when I ripped them off your pussy.”

Shame roars into my face, turning it blood-red in the mirror as my pulse skips.

Nero chuckles quietly behind me.

“A princess like you isn’t used to being spoken to like that, is she?”

My bottom lip retreats between my teeth. Then my entire body jolts, sparks, and writhes when his palm comes slapping against my ass again so hard that I bite down, whimpering as the taste of copper floods my tongue.

I whimper as the heated sensation throbs, needy and demanding, in my core.

The harder he pins me to the counter and the mirror, the tighter he grips my hair, the more he spanks me, the further I sink into this new, all-consuming darkness.

I want more.

The twisted thing inside of me craves it.

My breath catches sharply as he licks a slow stripe up my neck, then scrapes his teeth along the same path, marking me. Heat rushes straight to my thighs.

“You smell like you did that night,” he rasps. “All soft and scared…and sweet.”

I swallow hard. “This is insane. You can’t just⁠—”

He chuckles darkly. “Oh princess, darling, you haven’t seen insane yet.”

His hand slips lower, possessive and hungry. The weight of it is dizzying. Everything he does is dizzying.

“You’re shaking,” he observes.

“And you’re deranged,” I bite back. It only makes him chuckle as his hand wanders over my ass and grips the flirty hem of my dress.

The part that really terrifies me isn’t him.

It’s me.

The way I’m melting under him. Again.

The way my mind is screaming, and my body is…betraying me. Aching.

Wanting.

He tugs sharply at my hair, dragging a mortifyingly needy whimper from my throat. He tilts my head, forcing me to meet his eyes in the mirror. His hand starts to drag the back of my dress up, the hem teasing against the back of my thighs…

“I’m seeing someone.”

It bursts out of me like a gunshot.

“I have a boyfriend.”

Nero stills. His piercing green eyes latch onto mine in the mirror. His jaw clenches with a barely contained violence that chills me.

Then, suddenly, he laughs: a dark, rasping, bark.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

His head tilts to the side, a lock of his dark hair falling across one eye like a scar.

“Did you have this boyfriend the other night at Greymoor?”

I hesitate.

“Yes,” I finally mumble.

His eyes narrow. “So, you’re a cheater.”

My brows furrow deeply. “What? No⁠—”

“No?” His hand tugs a little at my ponytail, the other one dropping my dress to slide over my hip and yank my ass back possessively against his body.

“You came to that house looking for…” He chuckles. “Well, I think we both know.”

My eyes narrow. “I was tricked,” I snap. “I already told⁠—”

I yelp when he spanks my ass again.

He really needs to stop doing that.

Not because it hurts…although it does…but because with every fucking slap, my defenses break down a little more, like a dam crumbling.

Pretty soon, I won’t have any left.

“I didn’t know⁠—”

“Didn’t know what?” he growls. “That you’d soak through your panties like a greedy little slut from being chased through the dark by a man in a wolf mask?”

Heat rushes up my neck. “I didn’t⁠—”

“Don’t lie.” His voice dips lower. Turns rougher. “They were a fucking mess, Milena. I could still feel the slippery heat from your hungry little pussy when I stroked my hard, fat cock with them later.”

Jesus.

Pure fire rushes into my face as I stare incredulously at him in the mirror.

“You’re sick.”

“Ms. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle. And I don’t like cheaters.”

“I’m not a cheater!”

“Really?” He brushes my hair back from my shoulder like we’re lovers having a lazy morning in bed. “I thought you had a boyfriend, princess. Or was it him you were thinking of as you ran from me with a soaked cunt, just waiting to be used?”

“You’re twisting this…” I breathe, my voice shaking.

“No, sweetheart.” His lips skim my ear. “I’m just pointing out how fucking shit a liar you are. I have an even better way to illustrate that point, actually.”

He moves before I can think.

One hand grabs my wrists, twisting them behind my back with cruel ease. The other lifts the hem of my dress, dragging it high over my ass.

“Don’t,” I croak, even as my core clenches with sick, desperate need. “Stop.”

Don’t. Stop. Don’t stop.

He leans in close, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest as his teeth rake the side of my neck again, sending my mind reeling.

“You’ll have to be much more convincing than that, princess.”

I thrash, but his hold only tightens. Suddenly, his hand is on my ass, sliding over the soft skin of one cheek before it quickly plunges between my thighs. A gurgled, choked cry tears from my lips as his thick, strong fingers stroke over my pussy through the soaked lace of my thong.

He groans.

Feral. Animal. Primal.

“Christ,” he growls. “So fucking wet for me. Have you been that desperate for me since the other night, princess?”

I whimper as his fingers slip under the gusset of my panties and yank it aside.

You’ve been dreaming about it, haven’t you.”

“No…”

“Liar.”

His fingers drag between my folds, and my body jolts as I bite back a choked cry.

“You were soaked before I even touched you at Greymoor,” he rasps. “And you’re soaked now. So which is it, princess—are you a masochist, or a slut?”

“Go to hell.”

“Let’s go together.”

Two fingers slide into me in one hard thrust, knocking the air from my lungs and making my toes curl inside my shoes.

My body tenses and shivers.

My knees wobble.

Oh…fuck…

The pleasure hits me like a slap—hot, jarring, immediate.

I hate it. Hate that it feels so good. Hate that I’m dripping for the man who chased me, who broke into my bedroom and touched me in my sleep, who just called me a slut and made it sound like a fucking compliment.

Hate that my hips twitch and arch back toward his hand, wanting more.

There’s a sick heat coiling low in my stomach—dark, needy, violent—that doesn’t care about right or wrong. It just wants.

More.

Deeper.

Harder.

Rougher.

But beneath the want is shame, thick and suffocating, rising in my throat like a scream I can’t let out.

I’m disgusting.

Because if he doesn’t stop, I’m going to come.

“Mmm, see?” he murmurs with dark smugness. “See how fucking messy your little pussy gets for me?”

“It’s…” My breath catches, my body shuddering. “It’s not you⁠—”

He laughs, sharp and mocking.

“It’s just biology?”

A needy, achy, pathetic sound gurgles from my throat.

“Just as an FYI, this is exactly how drippy and wet your pretty little cunt got the other night, when I visited while you were sleeping.”

A stab of something filthy, wrong, indignant and achy slices through me.

“You made such a mess of your sheets when this pussy was wringing the very blood from my fingers. And that’s before you came all over my tongue and chin.”

My eyes bulge, my mouth opening in a silent moan as my body writhes.

My tongue and chin.

He didn’t just take my panties off. Didn’t just touch me. He went down on me.

While I was totally asleep.

It’s sick how much that turns me on.

“Ahh, didn’t know that, did you?”

I whimper as his fingers suddenly leave my soaking pussy. He raises his hand so I can see in the mirror the low lights catching the glisten on his fingers. My face heats as he spreads the two that were just inside me, letting the sticky cream between them drip down his fingers.

My arousal.

My shame.

My dark, needy ache.

Then, slowly, his green eyes locked on mine, he brings those same fingers to his mouth, sucks them inside, and wraps his lips tight around them.

Sweet fucking Jesus.

Nero makes a show of licking them clean before he slips them from his mouth.

“Every bit as sweet and delicious as the other night, princess. I think you might be going on my permanent menu.”

His hand drops between my thighs again, and I cry out when his same two wet fingers plunge back inside me. He curls them deep, stroking my g-spot, making my thighs shake and my toes curl. My arms strain as he keeps my wrists pinned behind me with one hand, and I gasp and moan pathetically. Eagerly.

“Tell me you’ve been dreaming about the other night. Tell me you’ve touched your little cunt imagining me chasing you again. Pinning you down. Taking what I want as roughly as I please, and not giving one single fuck about your consent.”

My brain screams that this is beyond fucked up, and wrong on so many levels. That this man is a fucking predator, not a dark fantasy.

But the rest of me doesn’t get that message, or if it does, it refuses to acknowledge it. My body craves this. Reacts to it. Needs it. Demands more.

I can feel how mortifyingly wet I am around his fingers. I can hear it, for God’s sake—lewd, wet, squelching sounds fill the bathroom as his thick fingers plunge in and out over and over.

“Tell me,” he snarls.

I hate him.

I hate the way I brace my hips against the sink and push them into his hand.

“Say it,” he murmurs. “Say you loved it. Say you’ve touched this pussy and made it come all over your fingers, wishing they were mine or my cock, fucking you, taking you hard, ripping you apart while you scream for more.”

I’m sinking. Drowning. Losing myself in his ferocity and mad, mad darkness.

“No…”

I gasp when he rubs his thumb over my clit.

“Say it, princess.”

I clench my jaw defiantly.

The pressure builds anyway. My thighs tremble anyway. My whole body is hurtling toward the edge⁠—

And then he stops.

He pulls his hand away, like he’s suddenly bored of this game. Meanwhile I’m still trembling and aching, right on the fucking edge of release.

“What the fuck—” I gasp. It comes out breathless and cracked.

Desperate and needy.

Not indignant.

I cringe as shame floods my face.

“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” he murmurs in that same smug tone, lording it over me.

He drops his grip on my wrists and steps back away from me.

I whip around, shivering, heart pounding as I yank my dress back down and glare red-faced at him. “You⁠—”

Fuck, I don’t even know what I’m accusing him of. Humiliating me? Turning me into someone I don’t recognize?

Am I mad that he touched me, or mad that he didn’t finish?

Maybe it’s that I know he’s seen inside me, discovered the dark, fucked-up thing I keep locked in the shadows of my psyche. The sick little truth I can never outrun.

He adjusts his shirt cuffs like nothing happened. Like I didn’t just fall apart for him. Like I’m not standing here, a mere breath from sobbing or coming.

He lifts his eyes to mine.

“Do you come like that for your boyfriend, princess?” he asks, his voice as sharp as glass and steeped in sarcasm.

I gulp.

He watches me like I’m still writhing beneath his touch.

Like this was just round one.

I shift, awkwardly trying to slip my panties back into place, pulse still hammering. My skin’s flushed, damp with sweat—worse, with want. I feel raw, used, unmade.

I should slap him.

Scream.

Instead, I just look at him.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I whisper.

He grins. Not with humor. Savagely, with teeth.

“So many things, princess. I can’t wait for you to discover them all.”

He steps close—so close I can feel the warmth of his body like a wall around me. His hand lifts, and I flinch.

But he just tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. Slowly. Gently. Like he didn’t just have his fingers against my g-spot two minutes ago.

“Tomorrow night,” he says. “Greymoor. Eleven o’clock.”

My mouth is dry. “And if I don’t come?” I whisper.

“Oh, don’t worry, princess. I’ll let you come next time.”

My face erupts in heat as I glare at him. “I meant,” I fumble out, “what if I don’t show up?”

He leans in, his breath stroking my ear, making me tremble.

“I’ll fucking find you anyway.”

He turns and walks out. Like he didn’t just leave me standing in a smoldering pile of psychological carnage.

The restroom door swings shut behind him. I don’t move. I can’t. My thighs are trembling. My panties are soaked. My chest heaves like I just ran a mile.

And the worst part…

I’m still aching for more.