Page 4 of Dance with Death

He stills.

He crouches on his haunches beside me, reaching out to wipe tears from my face.

“Don’t touch me!” I shake my head, jerking away from his touch.

He pinches my chin sharply between his fingers and thumb. “Perhaps now you understand the pain I felt finding you naked with him in the bedIgave you,” he seethes.

My face responds with a twisted grimace of disgust as I meet his eyes. If I didn’t know him as well as I do, I might say his gray eyes look glassy, covered in a sheen of angry tears. I look a little longer, stare a little deeper, hoping to see something there,anything—something more than the washed-out gray that masks who he truly is.

“Rotten whore,” he spits before pushing to stand and my gaze falls away from his toward the floor. “You can have what’s left of her, Ezra. I don’t suppose she will dance anytime soon. She’s useless to me now.”

Ezra suddenly appears at my side, and I realize only then that Kostya was there, holding him back. As Nikolai walks away, Ezra kneels beside me and I roll onto my back in heaving sobs.

He reaches beneath my shoulder blades, lifting me gently, curling me toward him and hiding my naked breasts from the world around me. A true gentleman even amidst the horror; I love him all the more that he provides me whatever little comfort and protection he can when so much power has been stripped from us both.

A swift motion catches my eye and I turn my head to look just as Vigo Vittori rushes toward us. My breath charges wildly in and out of my lungs, nearly forcing me into hyperventilation.

Vigo is coming closer, walking fast. When he comes upon me, his leg sweeps back and I hardly have a moment to figure out what he’s doing.

“No!” Ezra shouts, and tries to shift me away, but it’s too late.

Vigo kicks, driving his toe into the side of my injured ankle. A whole new lightning bolt of pain shoots up through my leg and my head rolls sideways on Ezra’s lap as I try to curl away.

“Whoops,” Vigo says flippantly as I grunt and whimper through another explosion of pain.

He steps over my writhing body to get to Nikolai. I watch over Ezra’s shoulder as I pant out breaths filled with pain. Vigo claps Nikolai on the back as he runs a trembling hand through his disheveled hair.

What right does Nikolai think he has to be shaking over this when I’m the one writhing in pain?

“Come, let’s discuss business,” Vigo says, glancing back at me with vicious intent. “I think I can make you a fair offer for your talentless slave. I could use another broken doll. Tell me how much your broken Russian doll is worth to you.”

Ezra once asked me what could be worse than death.

I thought it was this life, but I think I’m about to discover an even more terrifying existence.

I’m about to be sold to the Vittoris.

Chapter 2

Ezra

Anguish is aword I didn’t know the meaning of until this very moment.

Torment.

Suffering.

Those words meant nothing to me before now.

The tears of my blue-eyed girl spill onto my bare thigh as I cradle her, curling her against my body. I’m shaking, truthfully trembling from head to toe.

And I feel completely useless.

“Fuck you, Nikolai!” I scream at his back. “You’re a coward, a weak excuse for a man.”

I regret opening my mouth before the words come out, but my mind is on a different plane of existence and I’m not thinking clearly.

He whips around to face me and there’s a beat that pauses us both in a rage-fueled stare. His eyes are glistening with smoky gray fire and his features are clouded with violence.

---