Page 116 of Dance of Ruin

I forbid it?

Over my dead body?

Get on your knees and I’ll fuck that mouth into submission for daring even to think about it?

Instead, I lean against the doorframe and just…watch her. My fingers twitch with the need to grab her. Keep herhere,with me.

If I let her go, she might not come back the same.

She might not come back at all.

But I find myself immobile, just standing there, staring at the woman I was supposed to ruin.

That was the plan. A calculated chessboard move: use her and destroy her.

Punish Leonard by breaking his golden child, and leaving the mess at his door.

That’s…not the plan anymore.

I don’t know when it changed, or how, but it did.

Somewhere between her walking into my office and me fucking her on that stage, she stopped being leverage and became the one thing I want to keep.

She slowly turns to face me, her lip worrying between her teeth as if she knows exactly what I’m thinking. Her eyes slowly lift to mine.

“Look, there’s…” my brow knits. “There’s a new player in New York; dangerous, well-funded,verywell organized.” I grit my teeth, trying to decide how much to tell her.

“They may have been behind the car-bombing.”

I look away.

“Nico.”

Her fingers brush my jaw, turning my gaze back to met hers.

“Your father may have hired them to do so.”

She’s heard this before, and she does an admirable job of keeping her face completely neutral.

But I don’t miss the wince in the corners of her eyes. The way the tendons alongside her neck stand out for a second, like she’s biting back a bitter grimace.

“I can get the truth from him.”

My brows pull tight. “What?”

Her voice doesn’t shake. “If my father was behind what happened at your family’s house—if he had anything to do with the bombing—I want to hear him say it.”

I’m trying to figure out what the hell I’m looking at.

This isn’t the trembling girl I tied to my bed. This is a woman about to walk into a den of wolves and demand answers.

Forme.

“Naomi—”

“I’m not doing it foryou,” she says quickly.

Fucking little mind reader.

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