Page 43 of Dance of Ruin

“Next time,” he adds coolly, “be shaved bare. And if you don’t own better lingerie, don’t bother wearing any at all.”

I nod, my face flaming.

I leave, and the door clicks shut behind me.

I’m shaking so hard, I can barely stand.

10

THE RAVEN

That last soundshe made plays on a loop in my head.

The soft, helpless moan—sharp, and sweet, and broken. The sound of someone coming apart in your hands when you thought they would scream. Fight.

She didn’t scream. Shemoaned.

I can still feel her heat against my fingers. The way her legs trembled when I told her to spread them. The way her pussy clenched when I first slid my fingers inside her, like she’d beenwaitingfor it—craving something without realizing it.

I’d like to say my full attention was on the way her tight little pussy clenched tightly around my fingers, her slick arousal coating them with glistening proof of her submission. On the way she came all over my hand like a greedy little thing.

But my attention was split between that and her face.

The way it crumpled, so poetically. The way her breath fogged on the polished surface of the desk. The way her eyes squeezed shut, like she was trying to push away the pleasure and focus on what I know she thought she should be feeling.

Shame.Guilt.

Maybe she did feel those things, deep down. But that’s not what I saw on her face, with her mouth hanging open and her eyes clenched tight shut.

I saw raw need. Ravenous hunger.

"Raven."

I blink. The chamber snaps back into focus—the stone walls, the flickering candlelight. Tension swirls around the table like mist.

Carmine is watching from where he's sitting to my right, his expression concealed by his Hound mask. The Bull leans back in his chair across from me, one muscled arm slung over the back of it, his other hand twisting a glass of whiskey on the table in front of him. The Wolf, on my left, taps his fingers rapidly on the table, the tempo just shy of manic, as if he's physically incapable of caging in his crazy.

I honestly don't think he is.

Meanwhile, in utter contrast, The Stag is perfectly still, sitting casually in his chair, hands calm and unmoving on the armrests. Just…watching, in that—fine, I’ll say it—somewhat creepy way he has.

The Black Court is in session.

“Well?” The Bull says.

I sit forward, flicking ash from my cigarette into the tray. "Leonard Kim set up the bombing outside my home.”

All of them stiffen a little bit, and I hear Carmine snarl behind his mask.

“One of my informants put me in touch with a guy who said he worked for an outfit called the Obsidian Syndicate. I’ve personally never heard of them, but it seems they do wetwork, and this guy said they’d done a lot of jobs for ‘the Politician’. When I asked, he couldn’t tell me who the guy was. But then Congressman Kim happened to pop up on the bar TV, and this guy IDed him.”

A heavy, thick silence follows.

“I’m confused,” The Wolf mutters. “Why the fuck would Congressman Kim try to blow up your fucking sister.”

“The car was a present forVito,” I growl. “But it doesn’t make it any less weird that a US Congressman would try to kill a retired don.” I take another drag of my smoke. “What we need to do first is figure out who the fuck this Obsidian Syndicate is. Then we go after them and peel off their fucking skin.”

No one speaks for a long moment. My eyes narrow behind my mask.

---