Page 26 of Dance of Madness

Tonight is more about leaving a message.

A simple, straightforward one, at that:

You, Milena, aremine.

I pull the blanket gently up over her hips. I leave the slick wetness on her thighs.

She stirs, eyes fluttering behind her lids, but still, she sleeps.

I go back to the window, but not to leave, not yet. I’m merely getting the presents I brought her. Back at her bed, looming over her as I look down at her quiet, sleeping, utterly wrecked face, I leave them on the pillow next to her.

Then I brush a strand of blonde from her face, my lips curling darkly.

We’ve only just begun, little princess…

6

MILENA

I wake slowly,the way you do when you’ve had a good dream and you don’t want to leave it behind.

My eyes are still shut, but I can feel the sheets twisted around my legs, my skin slightly damp, like I sweated during the night. My hips ache in that deep, satisfying way that usually comes with?—

My eyes snap wide open as my fingers brush between my thighs, and then consciousness slams me fully awake.

Firstly, where thefuckis my underwear. Secondly, there’s no denying that what I feel dried on my inner thigh right by my bikini line is the remnants ofarousal.

I sit up quickly. The room spins, my head twisting in a haze of confusion with something dark, wrong, and hot swirling underneath it all at once.

Before I can begin to unpack what the hell is going on, something catches my attention at the edge of my peripheral vision. When I whirl to it, my heart skips.

There’s a black rose lying on the pillow next to me: thorns still intact, a single velvet petal beginning to curl at the edges. Underneath it, folded with perfect, eerie precision, are my panties.

Not the ones I’m currently missing. The ones from the night at Greymoor.

Everything goes quiet all at once—so quiet that all I can hear is the thud of my pulse in my ears as I stare at the rose and the panties beneath it.

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

I scramble out of bed, nearly tripping over the sheets. My legs feel weak, and I’m painfully aware of the bareness and lingering sensations between my legs, like my body’s trying to remember what my mind refuses to believe.

I didn’t dream what I thought I did last night.

Maybe I did. Maybe that’s all it was: an extremely vivid sex dream. The kind that sinks its claws into you so deeply that you’re still thinking about it hours after you wake up.

But dreams don’t leave roses on your pillow.

And they sure ashelldon’t return the panties you lost during a chase through a fucking haunted mansion.

My throat tightens.

I stare at the black rose like it might bloom into teeth and bite me.

He was here.

He was in my fucking bedroom while I slept.

I don’t remember anything, but something happened?—

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