Page 7 of Dance of Madness

This is all wrong. It’s not just him, not just the terror I never anticipated. It’s that one of us seems to be playing a game that was planned, and the other is just running for her fucking life.

Then it hits me.

He thinks I’m someone else.

He thinks I’m fucking ALICIA.

The horrible realization of exactly what that bitch-cunt set me up for tonight hits like a knife to the stomach. But I don’t have time to digest howutterly fuckedit is that she sent me into this, not now.

I don’t have time for anything butsurvival.

I slam through another door and find myself in what used to be a ballroom. Moonlight filters in through shattered windows. Dustmotes swirl in the air. Another grand piano sits broken in one corner, like a corpse.

I only get ten steps across the floor before I hear the door to the ballroom bang open behind me, and the beast comes spilling into the room like black ink.

I spin to run, but it’s too late.

A hand slams across my mouth from behind, muffling the curdling scream that tears from my throat. The sheer weight of him—powerful, muscled, and hard—slams into my back, tipping me forward until I go crashing into the piano.

Everything goes numb. The taste of copper floods my mouth, and sheer panic surges through my system as he brutally slams me forward over the piano.

I scream bloody murder into his hand, fighting and kicking, trying to shove him off me. But he’s too strong. Too powerful.

Too all-consuming.

Suddenly, his hand is grabbing the back of my skirt and yanking it up over my ass.

“This isn’t what we agreed to,” he growls.

“You have the wrong person!” I scream into his hand. “I’m not her!”

It only comes out as muffled, garbled nonsense against the iron hand clamped over my mouth.

“You were supposed to be naked,” the monster rumbles darkly. “Allow me tofix that.”

He’s completely heedless of my hands flailing and clawing behind me as he grabs the back of my panties andtearsthem down my thighs.

I scream as the cool air hits my skin. My legs tremble.

And yet…

Somewhere deep inside me, something rotten, secret, and shameful isresponding.

Traitorously.

Obscenely.

Horrifically.

It’s not thisexactscenario. But there's enough elements of it that the deranged darkness inside me ignites.

The hands on me, taking my power away.

The taste of fear in my mouth, and the smell of unbridled arousal in the air.

The feel of bulging, uncaring, unmerciful muscles pinning me and taking complete control, heedless of my wants or feelings on the matter.

What the fuck is wrong with me.

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