Page 168 of Dance of Madness

I stare at him. “Thetruth?! I’ve alreadytoldyou the truth!” I jab a finger at the TV screen. “That video isfake! Maybe not the visual, but the audiodamn wellis! I don’t know how the fuck else to say it!” I scream. “When I came there that night to meet you, I hadno fucking ideathat any of that was going to happen!” I choke, tears beading in my eyes. “Nero, I amsofucking sorry about what happened to your parents, I can’t eventell you! But?—”

“You were there that night, Milena,” he snaps. “You showed up in your little mask, played your part, then handed me over to?—”

“Enough!!!” I scream. “Nero,I didn’t know! I thought it was just a night! Just you and me!”

“Don’t lie to me!” he roars. “Don’t look at me like you feel orever feltsomething for me, and?—”

“Idofeel something for you!” I scream, tears pouring down my cheeks now. “I’ve felt something for you this entire time! I felt it before, when it was just us and the notes, before I even knew who you were! Idid notset you up!!”

His face darkens, his teeth flashing. “Then why were you there!?”

“Because I?—”

“WHAT OTHERPOSSIBLEFUCKING REASON WOULD YOU HAVE BEEN THERE!?”

The force of his roared voice, the sheer rage in his words, sucks out all the air in the room, leaving us in sudden, brutal silence.

I’m shaking as my body stiffens, my eyes locked on him as my mouth falls open.

Because suddenly, all at once, in a way so tragically, brutally painful that it cuts a hole through my heart, I understand.

“Nero…”

I choke his name out, my chest tightening as I slowly walk towards him. He stays where he is, glaring at me, his lips curled into a vicious snarl. I stop when I get to the bars between us, clasping them as I look up into his furious face.

“Why else would you have been there, if not to lure me?” He rasps.

Tears roll down my cheeks as I slowly shake my head, my eyes locked on him. “Do you seriously not consider yourself to belovable?”

The silence hangs in the dank air between us. He blinks, his jaw ticking as he slowly moves closer, until he’s right at the bars. His hands grip them tight as he leers down into my face, his teeth bared.

“No,” he chokes. “No, I don’t.”

A sob rips from my throat as I grab his shirt through the bars and pull him close.

“Well, you are to me.”

And then I kiss him.

I bang my face on the bars when I do, but I don’t care. I kiss him and cry against his face, clinging to him like he might evaporate or push me away at any second.

But that doesn’t happen.

Suddenly, he’s kissing me back, with a force so powerful that it sucks the air from my lungs. Nero groans, keys jangling, his lips still on mine as he unlocks the door. We pull apart just enough for him to bang it open and surge into the cage. Then I’m choking on another broken sob as he grabs me in his arms and lifts me against his chest, his lips searing to mine in a vicious, consuming kiss.

All I know is his arms and his lips as he carries me out of the basement and up the stairs, all the way to the third floor. I dimly hear water running, but all I really feel is the heat of his body against me and the feverish way I’m clinging to him.

He breaks away from me just long enough to tear my ruined dress from my body. His own clothes are next, then he’s scooping me up again and getting us both settled into warm, sudsy, water.

I moan and go to kiss him again, but he stops me, a broken look on his face, his eyes haggard as he cups my face.

“Milena—”

“It’s over,” I choke, crying. “It’s just you and me?—”

“I chained you,” he croaks. “I locked you up in the fucking dark in a fuckingcage?—”

“Yes,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “And then you came back for me, and we’re here now.”

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