Page 65 of Dance of Deception

But there’s something so…evisceratingabout the way he's looking at me. Like he’s flaying open my skin and revealing every single hidden thought and insecurity I’ve ever had, all at once.

I try again to pull my wrists free of his grip. I might as well try to move a mountain.

“What that means, little dancer,” he growls quietly. “Is?—”

“Let me go—ahh!”

My eyes bulge when in one casual motion he reaches up with his free hand and roughly pinches my left nipple, twisting it sharply in his fingertips. Something raw and primal erupts inside of me, the pinching pain of his merciless touch swirling with the dangerously, illicitly exciting.

“Do notinterrupt me,” he murmurs.

His fingers are still tight around my nipple, sending bolt after bolt of throbbing heat teasing through my nerves. He rolls the aching bud between his fingers, wrenching a whimper from my lips.

The second it falls from my mouth, I want to melt into a puddle and disappear through a crack in the floor.

Carmine’s eyes spark with something malicious and hungry as he latches onto the sound, like a vampire.

He smiles.

Darkly. Knowingly.

I squirm as he reaches for my other breast, his fingers tightening slightly, rolling that nipple before releasing it—but the damage is already done.

My entire body is buzzing traitorously, still aching where he touched me.

Then, his voice cuts through the haze.

“You have this bad habit of thinking you get to set the terms, little dancer,” he murmurs, his tone smooth, mocking.

He leans in, his lips merely a breath away from my ear.

“Popov thought the same thing.”

He waits, letting the words settle, allowing me to connect the dots.

I shudder.

“Did you—” My voice falters. I clear my throat, forcing the words out. “Did you kill him?”

Carmine’s smirk deepens.

There’s no guilt in his expression. No hesitation.

His hand slips from my breasts and slowly moves to my ribs, letting his fingertips press into each little ridge and indentation as he skims lower to my hip, making my breath catch.

“My secret weapon,” he murmurs, “is that it’s not hard for me to do what I need to do. To get what I want. To protect my interests, and what’smine.”

A heated shiver ripples through my core as his hand tightens on my wrists behind my back. The other one pushes lower over my hip, teasing further and further before suddenly, his fingers are slipping into the high slit of the borrowed gown.

My eyes fly wide as he suddenly pulls the dress open, his hand boldly sliding under the silk and against my inner thigh.

“Carmine…”

I throb with embarrassment as his name tumbles needy and desperate from my lips.

His hand moves again, sliding higher until his fingertips brush against the delicate lace of my panties.

I freeze.

---