Page 74 of The Dancer and the Masks (Their Obsession 1)

“What the fuck?” Konrad reaches for her, his hands gripping her shoulders as he turns her to face him. “Who are you?” he asks, anger rolling off him.

She laughs, more tears welling. “Yours? Or am I no longer desirable? Am I too disgusting,deformed,for men like you to fuck now that you’ve seen my true face?”

Konrad’s jaw grits, then he pinches her chin between his finger and thumb and twists her head from side to side. “You hid.”

“I’m not hiding now,” she replies, jerking her chin from his hold, but he lunges for her, his hand curling into her hair as he yanks her close.

“You shouldn’t have hid,” he grinds out, then smashes his lips against hers in a kiss that is as punishing as Leon’s was, just in a different way.

I’ve watched my brothers kiss women—fuck them—before, but I’ve never seen them act like this. Leon kissed her like he wanted to ruin her, end her life. Konrad kisses her like she’s an anchor and he’s a boat cast adrift, like she keeps him afloat, alive somehow. Two polar opposites but both of them are punishing. Nothing fists his shirt, her knuckles white, her body stiff until it isn’t, until she’s melting in his hold. Then he lets her go with a grunt and she wavers on her feet, hands still raised, eyes blinking, face flushed, nipples erect.

“Screw you,” she hisses, wiping her hand over the back of her mouth, fury painting her features—her skin—with a pink blush. She looks from Konrad to me, finally resting her gaze on Leon. “Don’t you have anything you wish to say?”

Leon’s quiet for a time, assessing her. Then he rolls his shoulders and bares his teeth in a way that is more animal than human. “Looks like we’re not the only ones wearing masks.”

She snorts, her gaze trailing up and down his body. I’ve never seen anyone as brave as her when it comes to Leon. Though I suppose there’s nothing more dangerous than someone who believes they’ve got nothing left to lose. “Fuck you.”

“No, you’re the one who’s well and truly fucked now,” he replies, a dark laugh bursting from his lips.

“Is that so? Well,Leon, this is me. Every last deformed and scarred part,” Nothing taunts, throwing her arms out to the side. She lifts up onto the ball of her left foot, and turns gracefully until she has her back to us. I watch as her long red hair sways over her arse, revealing the red stripes of Konrad’s lashes and the shapely curve of her long legs. Next to me Konrad groans, and I know he wants to run his tongue over the welts marking her skin. I’m about to ask what she’s doing when she reaches for her hair and pulls it over her shoulder revealing a back so ravaged by scars that I have to force myself to keep rigid and not fall to my knees in reverence.

“Still want to fuck me now?” she asks.

Yes, I think.Yes I want to fuck you. I want more than that.But I’m stunned into silence.

We all are.

I take a step forward, but Leon’s hand flies to my shoulder, squeezing tightly. He holds me firm, understanding me at this moment, understanding the danger this woman brings to our status quo, to our life we’ve made here. She’s suddenly turned from a plaything to tease, torment and cast aside, to something infinitelymoredangerous.

We stare at her, unable or perhaps unwilling to break the spell she’s put us under. I don’t know for certain how my brothers feel, but I can guess their thoughts are as tumultuous as my own.

This woman. She’s not what any of us expected.

Beside me Leon twitches, the muscles in his body taut with tension. He’s barely holding on and I know he’s close to exacting his revenge on Nothing for the death of our father in the only way he knows how. Violently. Right now he’s her biggest threat.

Konrad, however, is perfectly still. He’s assessing what he sees before him, trying to figure out how she’ll fit into the way he sees the world, and me? I both want to throttle her to death for causing this friction and fuck her until I can’t see straight. Of the three of us, it’s Konrad who eventually breaks the silence, who acts.

“I didn’t know you were burnt in the fire too,” he comments, stepping up behind her, his voice soft, sympathetic.Jesus, fuck.She’s his wet dream come true.

Nothing looks over her shoulder at him accusingly. “How did you know about the fire?”

“We do our research. How do you think we found you, Zero?” His fingertips feather over her damaged skin in a way a man might touch his lover: gently, and with affection.

“Well, your research wasn’t very extensive given you didn’t know about this. Perhaps you should’ve dug deeper,” she retorts, jerking away from him.

“Don’t,” he warns, gripping her upper arm and holding her firm with one hand as he traces over every bump and swirl of skin with the other. Her chest heaves, her breathing becomes more ragged. His touch is no longer pleasurable, that’s for sure. However she managed it, The Quickening has left her system completely. Right now she wants to fight him off, she may still do that. A large part of me wants her to because I know if she did, Leon would end this here and now and we could forget about all the ways she’s fucking with our heads.

“Grim was good at hiding your past, just not good enough at keeping you hidden,” I say, my eyes drinking in every inch of her scarred skin. I can’t seem to look away. From just beneath her shoulder blades to a few inches above her hips, her back is completely covered in scars reminding me of the whorles and grooves that form the thick bark of the trees in the forest surrounding the castle. They’re almost too painful to look at. There’s no doubt that she would’ve suffered immensely. My black soul finds a sick kind of peace in that, and my cock. Fuck, I’m harder than I’ve ever been in my life.

Konrad releases her from his hold and she turns around to face us, backing away. None of us move to go after her, stuck in place with shock, and dealing with our own perverse reactions to her disfigurement. Leon clears his throat, tension rolling off him. I glance at him, and for the first time in my life, I can’t fully read his intentions. I’m not sure if he wants to fuck her or kill her. Probably both. Either way, he’s resting on a knife’s edge. So you can imagine my surprise when Leon doesn’t lunge for her like I expected him to, and instead asks her a question.

“How old were you when it happened?”

“Aren’t you supposed to know that already?” she retorts, folding her arms across her chest in an attempt to comfort herself.

“I wasn’t interested in your history before.”

“And I’m not interested in telling you either—”

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