Page 63 of Dance of Ruin

“It’s implied.”

“Likehellit is.”

I sigh, rolling my eyes. “Fine. We’ll use a safe word.”

“And what’s the safe word?”

“Dealer’s choice.”

She nods, thinking. “Fine. Odile.”

“Excuse me?”

“Odile,” she repeats. “InSwan Lake, there’s Odette, the white swan that the villain has put under a spell, and Odile, the black swan. She’s the villain’s daughter.”

“Howpoetic. Fine. Odile will be your safe word.”

“And when I say that, you stop, no matter what?”

Begrudgingly, I nod. “Yes.”

“In that case…” She looks right at me. “Odile.”

“Yeah, that’s not how it works.”

Her brows furrow. “I don’t understand—” She gasps as I surge across the room, forcing her back until she hits the wall by the door, my hands planted on either side of her, caging her in.

“In that case, little swan,” I murmur, “I’ll just have to explain better next time.”

She shivers. “Which will be?”

“When you least expect it. Sort of like this.”

I never planned for it to play out this way. The point was to tear her down. Ruin her. Destroy Leonard’s sweet little chaste ballerina daughter and show him that hiding behind secret service agents won’t stop me from making him bleed, even if it has to be through her.

But those plans collapse exactly half a second before I grab her jaw, slide my fingers back into her hair, and crush my lips to hers in a brutal, claiming kiss.

She stiffens at first. But as my tongue demands entrance, pushing into her mouth to dance with her own, she starts to melt for me.

Her lips open wider. Her tongue swirls with mine as her hands fall lightly against my chest.

A shiver skitters through her body as I steal the breath from her lungs and the innocence from her skin.

I kiss her until my teeth get involved. I start to see black and red as I crush her against the wall, sinking my teeth into her bottom lip. Naomi whimpers against me, gasping into my mouth as coppery wetness floods both our tongues.

It’s only then that I pull away.

My eyes land on the smear of blood on her lips. Without thinking, I reach out and run my thumb slowly over it, smearing the red across it like a brand.

A mark.

A giant blinking neon sign that simply says “mine.”

13

NAOMI

I don’t rememberthe last time my body felt this heavy.

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