Page 10 of Dance with the Devil

I shift in my seat, crossing my legs, squeezing my thighs together beneath my sundress as I appreciate his masculine beauty.

In fact, I get so distracted by him that I barely notice it as he swivels in his chair, the iPad nestled on his lap, as he reaches beneath his desk for something.

Seconds later, I hear something crack. A sharp noise, followed by apsstsound, and I can’t stop my lips from twitching upward as I flip the design book closed.

I know something else about Cross that I’ve picked up on over the last six weeks. It became pretty obvious when he was always there to answer a call or a text, no matter the hour, or how he enjoys driving through Springfield in the middle of the night on his bike, but Cross, like,neversleeps. He’s an insomniac, and I blame the can he just grabbed from the mini fridge beneath his desk for his inability to sleep.

“What flavor is it today?” I ask, tapping my fingernails on the cover of the design book.

Cross brushes his hair out of his face so that he can look at the flavor printed on the bottom of the energy drink can he’s holding. “I had a peach mango earlier, but this one is fruit punch.”

“You keep drinking those, your heart is going to explode,” I tease.

He shrugs, contemplates the can for another moment, then takes a swig.

I shake my head. “You’re addicted to those things.”

“There are worse things to be addicted to,” Cross points out.

My brother is responsible for the entire drug trade in Springfield. Trust me, I know.

And, yet, when I look at Cross da Silva, I know one thing about myself: I could easily become addicted to him—and if settling for friendship with him is all I have to look forward to, beggars can’t be choosers.

FOUR

FLAMES

CROSS

When I look at Genevieve, I see flames.

That should scare the shit out of me. My only experience with fire is a fucking tragedy. I wasn’t even home the night that my childhood home burned down to the ground and my entire family died, but I saw the ashes after. I smelled it on the late autumn air, the char and the death and theburn,even hours after the Springfield Fire Department got the blaze under control. It’s clung to me since, following me doggedly through the years?—

As the report swiftly revealed that my mother, my younger sister, and my younger brother all died of smoke inhalation before the fire consumed them. That it was arson—and that my sick bastard of a stepfather was the one who spilled the gasoline and lit the match.

As I went through the motions of foster care because I didn’t have anyone else, eventually aging out before I found a new family with the gang of brawlers, gamblers, and gun runners that would eventually become the Sinners Syndicate.

As I rose up through the ranks, joining the inner circle under the Devil of Springfield himself as the official tattoo artist for the syndicate… the smoke and the dust and phantoms of my past followed me every goddamn step I’ve taken for nearly twenty years, but never fire. Never a spark.

Never any heat.

Until Genevieve Libellula danced her way into my life.

I’m fucking obsessed with this one.Addicted.She’s all I think about, her pretty blue eyes, her impish smile, her forwardness, her sass… I love it all. She’s life personified, and when I’m in her orbit, I don’t feel as I’m simply existing. I come alive, too, when before only my art only made me feel that way.

Now it’s all Genevieve. My muse and my secret weakness in one, I knew from that first dance that it would be far too easy to fall in love with her. I never expected that it would happen so fast. I told myself it was innocent, swapping numbers with her, that I wouldn’t have to call her.

She could be my Madonna. The woman on a pedestal that inspired me to create, but virginal in a way that meant I couldn’t sully her with my dirty hands. Then, during one of our first conversations—that she initiated, and I was helpless to continue—Genevieve coyly admitted that isn’t just virginal. She’s an honest-to-Godvirgin.

And I knew from that moment on that I couldn’t have her. Maybe if she was broken like me, we could heal the cracks in each other. But she’s nothing like the Sinner I am. She’s kind. Smart. Thoughtful. Ambitious, too; she doesn’t just dance because she likes it, but because it’s her calling.

Genevieve doesn’t know what it’s like to struggle. To have had to rely on free lunch during her school days, secretly pissed when a more well-off classmate would swipe part of the only meal he’d get that day right from the tray. I had three fosterfamilies before one stuck, but they kicked my ass out the door on my eighteenth birthday.

She lives in a fuckingmansionwith her older brother on the East End.

She doesn’t rub it in, though. Because her brother got his money the same way I do—through the syndicates that run Springfield—she thinks we’re on the same level. A secret criminal fling, made all the more exciting because, up until last summer, the Sinners and the Dragonflies were kill-on-sight rivals.

Genevieve thinks that I’m hesitant to start any kind of relationship with her because her brother runs the Libellula Family and I owe my loyalty to Devil. While I’ll do what the Devil of Springfield says because he’s my boss, that’s not enough to stop me from pursuing my butterfly the way I want to.

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