Dance of Ruin: Chapter 27

The cathedral is silent—a tense silence, like a held breath before a scream.

Everyone remains still, turned expectantly toward the dais as the five men in the animal masks take their seats, then silently nod to each other.

The whole vibe feels weirdly reverent, and not because we’re in what might be an actual cathedral.

A side door creaks open, and a man is shoved forward by two masked guards.

He’s Asian, maybe in his late forties. Slicked-back hair, broad shoulders, a long scar across his cheek, hands bound in front of him. He’s not wearing a mask.

I glance around, my heart racing.

Where the fuck is Nico? And what the hell does he have to do with this shit?

The bound man sneers at the crowd, clearly trying to look annoyed by all this instead of scared. He’s…not exactly selling it.

The man in the dog mask leans forward.

“Han Jiang,” he says. His gravel-thick voice sends a chill through the room.

Han scoffs. “Spare me the fucking theatrics.”

“You stand accused,” Dog Mask says calmly, ignoring the sneer, “of breaking a blood marker with Desmond Robinson, leader of the New York Jamaican Syndicate.”

“I merely exited a deal that no longer served me,” Han replies, unruffled. “Desmond can take it up with my people or go fuck himself. That’s business.”

A ripple moves through the masked crowd.

The man in the dog mask tilts his head. “Unfortunately, it’s not that simple, Han. We all know how a blood marker works. It is thesingle unbreakable currency of the underworld. Yet, you broke it.”

Han laughs. “I don’t give a shit. I do what’s best for me and mine, same as all you motherfuckers.”

The man in the crow or raven or whatever fucking bird it is mask stands, rolling his neck, cracking his tattooed knuckles.

Something about that moment freezes me, but I can’t identify what.

“Desmond’s cousin Jamal is dead,” Bird Mask says. “Killed when your people, under your direction, opened fire on Desmond’s.”

Han rolls his eyes. “I don’t know about you, but the underworld that I live and operate in is dangerous. Truces crumble. Arrangements change. It is what it is.”

Bird Mask shakes his head slowly. “Truces crumble, yes. But a truce cemented by a blood marker is an unbreakable oath by both parties. Again, it is the one currency the underworld has that we all agree cannot and will not be broken.”

“Oops,” Han says sarcastically.

“You signed the contract,” Bird Mask continues, an edge glinting in his tone. “You swore in blood. You chose to break it. And now, you’re going to pay the price of that choice.”

Wait.

Something inside of me ripples and jangles, like a warning bell in my head.

When it suddenly hits me, like a slap to the face, I can’t breathe.

It took a while, because of the mask muffling it, but I know that voice.

The cadence. The tone. The dark power behind it. And it’s then that the rest of the pieces suddenly fall into horrible place as the world tilts.

The tattooed hands and neck.

The suit jacket I watched him put on earlier.

The man in the bird mask is fucking Nico.

“It’s time for judgment,” Nico growls quietly. He turns to the man in the dog mask. “Hound?”

“Guilty,” Dog Mask says easily.

“Guilty,” Nico growls in a tone that makes my pulse race as it slithers down my back.

The man in the wolf mask nods. “Guilty,” he says gleefully.

“Guilty,” adds the man wearing the bull mask.

Stag Mask nods. “Guilty,” he murmurs in a slightly creepy, almost ethereal tone.

The man Nico called Hound turns to Han, voice steady.

“You have been adjudicated.”

Finally, the smirk drops from the man’s face. “Wait. On what fucking authority?”

“This court’s authority,” Nico says grimly.

“No, fuck that!” Han barks. “Fuck you and fuck this! Get me on the phone with Desmond. We can figure this out man to man⁠—”

“Fight or flight?”

Han blinks, tripping over his words as Nico sits and the man in the wolf mask stands, leering down at him from the dais.

“W-what?”

“I said, fight…” the wolf growls, his tone full of malice, turning and gesturing to a low table draped in black velvet and covered in weapons.

Blades. Baseball bats. Axes. Chains. Hammers.

What the fuck.

“Or flight,” the wolf finishes. He gestures past the crowd with his other hand to a stone archway that appears to lead down a hallway lit only by low candlelight.

The color drains from Han’s face. “Get… Get Desmond,” he chokes. “Whatever he wants to make this right⁠—”

“We’re well past that,” the bull grunts.

“You know the rules,” the wolf says, his voice light—playful, even. “It’s not complicated. Run, or bleed.”

Han glances at the table. Then he turns, looking to the archway.

“What the fuck’s in there?”

“A way out,” the wolf purrs seductively. “Maybe,” he amends.

Han swallows, shaking his head. “I-I’m not going in there.”

“Then you fight!” the wolf says gleefully. “Choose your weapon.”

Han stares at the table as a guard walks over and cuts his wrists free. He takes a shaky breath, his face grim. “Fuck it,” he mutters. “Knives.”

The wolf steps down from the dais, tilting his head slightly. Psychotic. Predatory.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

A guard hands Han a huge, gleaming hunting knife, then offers its twin to the wolf.

My mouth feels dry. My nerves are jangling as I struggle to breathe.

What the HELL is this.

I want to turn and scream at Nico, tell him it’s me and that I’m freaking the fuck out. But I’m frozen in place, watching the two men with knives circle each other.

When it happens, it happens quickly.

Brutally.

The wolf doesn’t fight like a man. It’s like watching a wild beast: fluid and unmerciful. He lets Han get in one good swing before he surprises him with a swift kick to the shin. I and many others in the crowd gasp sharply when Han’s leg jerks unnaturally to the side with a loud snapping sound.

Jesus Christ.

Han screams as the wolf rakes the tip of his blade up his forearm, opening the skin and splattering blood across the stone beneath their feet. Han’s knife clatters to the ground as he falls to his knees.

The wolf doesn’t let up: he wraps his arm around Han’s neck from behind and drags him screaming across the floor, forcing him to face the crowd as they come to a stop right in front of us.

This is madness.

Sheer, savage lunacy.

I feel like I’m in some apocalyptic movie, watching warlord justice as the wolf jerks his arm, forcing Han’s head back and exposing his throat.

He brings the knife to Han’s neck.

I rip my eyes away, but not fast enough to avoid seeing the blade slice across Han’s throat in one clean arc.

Oh God…

Blood sprays out in a flood, the crowd gasping and screaming—some in horror, others in rapt, orgiastic voyeurism.

I stumble back, my entire body trembling.

Nico sits—masked, unmoving and silent—as the body drops to the ground.

This is what he’s part of.

What he’s been keeping from me.

My legs start moving on their own accord.

I slip away from the crowd, melting back into the shadows near the stone archway carved with runes that leads to the flickering hallway.

The man in the wolf mask called it “a way out.”

It’d better be.

No one sees me slip out. I stumble down the hall, still looking over my shoulder at the gothic cathedral scene. Then I turn, and I run.

My heels are loud against the stone, but I don’t care. I keep running, my breath shallow and frantic until I suddenly hit a wall. The hallway branches left and right.

Oh, fuck.

This isn’t an exit.

It’s a maze.

But I can’t go back to the carnage in the cathedral. So I blindly choose left, and bolt that way. Then right. Then another right, followed by a left.

Panic begins to claw at me.

Every turn looks identical—arched ceilings, flickering light, stone walls that feel like they’re pressing in closer with each corner I round.

The air is colder here. Drier.

I stop and slowly spin in a circle, vainly trying to remember which way I came, fear roaring through my system.

Suddenly, my spine snaps straight and my skin prickles.

Footsteps.

I whirl in their direction, tuning my ears before panic suddenly bursts through me.

No, not footsteps.

Someone running.

Fast. Coming closer.

Oh, God.

I start to run again, twisting left, right, down another hall, then another left⁠—

I slam against a wall.

Dead end.

I whirl around to run in the other direction⁠—

And scream when a shadow lunges from the dark.

A body slams into me, hard, ripping off my mask and whipping me around, slamming me face-first into the wall, pressing hard against my back.

A hand wraps around my throat, sending adrenaline exploding like napalm through my body.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” a voice growls.

My breath stutters.

I freeze.

It’s Nico.

His hand is still on my throat, not squeezing, just holding. Like he doesn’t trust me not to disappear, or trust himself to let me go.

“What the fuck are you doing here,” he growls again, his voice even more edged and deeper.

“I—” My voice breaks. “I saw⁠—”

“Everything?” he finishes for me.

I nod.

His hard body clenches with rage behind me.

With hunger.

And then—I feel it.

The sharp press of him, thick and growing, hardening against the curve of my ass through his slacks.

My breath stutters, and my traitor body sparks to life.

Knowing him. Needing him.

Being so fucking familiar with him that it craves him as he pulls nearer.

Unraveling me from the inside out.

Except just as that feeling ignites inside of me, something darker, something angry, roars up to snuff it out with a black cloud.

“Don’t you fucking touch me.”

The words hiss through my clenched teeth as I tense against him. I shove back, as if trying to dislodge his weight as it pins me to the wall. But he doesn’t move or even budge one inch. His hand stays tight on my throat, the other slamming into the wall beside my head.

“I said,” I choke, writhing under his grip. “Do not put your hands on me!”

There’s a pause. A throbbing, vibrating silence.

“Excuse me⁠—”

“You got dressed up tonight,” I snap, still facing the wall with his hand around my throat and the achingly familiar heat of his body pressing into me. “You smelled like cologne.”

“I told you,” he snarls. “I had a work thing⁠—”

“Or was it a Melissa thing?” I blurt furiously. “Or maybe some other side girl?!”

Nico goes still. But then, the short, dark laugh that rips out of him almost makes me scream in rage.

“You think I got dressed up to go fuck someone else?”

I push back against him, shoving off the wall, but his hand slams against the stone beside my head, caging me in.

“I fucking saw your phone,” I snap. “Don’t act like I’m making shit⁠—”

“This,” he snarls, and I flinch as his muscles coil tightly and furiously against me. “This is what I was talking to Melissa about,” he snaps angrily, yanking his phone out of his pocket with his free hand and shoving it in my face.

The screen glows brightly in the dim, low light of the stone hallway he’s got me pinned to the wall of. But as my eyes adjust to the glow, the image I’m looking at clears.

Worn, ancient-looking pale satin pointe shoes encased in a velvet-lined display box, with a title above it almost like an eBay listing that reads:

My brain stutters.

Pierina Legnani was an Italian ballerina who is still thought of as one of the greatest of all time. She played the dual Odette-Odile role in the infamous Imperial Ballet production of the newly revised Swan Lake in 1895, choreographed by two of the greatest choreographers ever, Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov.

“I—what?” I stammer.

“Melissa is a retired dance teacher, and now works as a broker for rare ballet antiquities,” he growls. “She taught Bianca when she was five. She’s almost eighty, for what that’s worth.”

My pulse roars in my ears. I don’t say anything. It’s like I can’t say anything.

“Since you were snooping,” Nico rasps in my ear. “You probably already know that I went to see her. That she thinks I’m the sweetest. That she loves the gift…”

I shiver as his snarled breath traces like a blade over my jugular.

“The ballet slippers,” he growls tightly. “That I bought for you, by the way.”

I go still. Time seems to stutter for a moment.

“Surprise,” he mutters dryly.

Holy…

WHAT.

His face moves closer to mine, his voice a lethal whisper now.

“You think I could even look at another woman, when you exist?”

My breath catches again.

My heart flips.

Because I want to scream. I want to apologize. I want to throw myself into his arms.

But then his tone changes.

Darkens.

Flares into something else entirely.

He presses harder into me, pinning my hips to the wall, his breath hot and sharp in my ear.

“I told you this part of my life wasn’t for you,” he growls, his voice like a razor dragged across velvet. He presses harder on my back and pins me to the wall with his firm body. “You’re too good for this,” he rasps.

I gasp when his hand pushes up under the hem of my stolen dress.

“I—I’m not,” I whimper in a broken whisper.

“No,” he breathes, voice guttural. “Not anymore, you’re not.”

His fingers hook into the lace of my underwear and tears it down to my knees. I moan when he shoves my thighs apart, stretching my panties tight around them as he forces his hand between my legs.

“Bad fucking girl.”

I’m already embarrassingly wet—confusingly so, given what I’ve just seen and experienced. But it’s like my brain has short-circuited. Like I’ve become as broken, fucked up, and deranged as whatever it is I just witnessed.

Try as I might, I cannot make myself be scared, or horrified, or numb.

My palms flatten against the cool stone wall, my back arching before I can stop myself.

Nico unzips roughly. The sound makes me whimper.

Then, without any warning, he grips my hips and rams every fat, swollen inch of his huge cock into me from behind.

Hard.

I cry out, my forehead hitting the wall, and he stills, buried to the hilt.

“Is this what you wanted?” he snarls. “To see what I am? To be part of it?”

My answer is a moan.

A sob.

A scream that only he hears.

He pounds into me, ruthless, raw, consuming. My legs tremble. My fingers scrape across the stone, seeking some purchase.

“Fuck, baby. Your cunt feels even tighter after you’ve run from me. Stretch for me, baby. Let that pussy squeeze and strangle me like a good little cock slut.”

My jaw goes slack, my head swimming as my vision blurs. I pant against the wall, clinging to the rough stone as Nico fucks me like an animal—hard, rough, unmerciful. He reaches up and rips my dress half off, tearing the straps and letting them fall down. My nipples tighten, and I cry out as they press to the hard stone. His hands maul me, pinching and rolling my nipples as his cock rams into me over and over, sending me into an abyss as everything starts to tighten up.

‘Listen to that—so wet for me, so greedy. You’re going to come all over my cock already, aren’t you, baby?” I shudder, whimpering eagerly as he bites my earlobe hard. “You’re gonna make a mess of my big fucking dick, aren’t you?”

He’s not wrong.

I am going to come already.

It’s all of it: the sheer madness of everything I’ve witnessed, the roughness in his touch and thrusts, the vicious way he’s claiming me against the wall, pounding into me hard and fast in a way that ignites unhinged wildness in me.

With a cry, my back arches sharply, my legs spasming and my body wrenching in pleasure. Nico holds me tight, pinning me hard to the wall, never slowing his powerful, deep thrusts…and I feel myself shatter around him.

Moans fill my ears—his and mine together—as the orgasm explodes through me.

Nico slows briefly as I suck in breaths of air. Then he slides his thick cock out of me, leaving me feeling empty.

“I don’t think bad little girls who break the rules get off that easily,” he murmurs darkly. “So to speak.”

His hands grip my ass, fingers digging into the flesh. He starts to spread my cheeks, and when I feel the slick, swollen head of his cock drag up from my pussy, my eyes fly open.

“Nico—!” I gasp.

“You’re going to take me here now. Just like this. Up against the fucking wall like the dirty little cock tease that you are.”

My eyes bulge, my mouth going slack. I hear him spit—fucking spit—and then feel it drip down my ass, where he smears it against my back hole with his dick.

It should be fucking degrading, using his spit as lube to take my ass for the first time. It should feel demeaning and cheap.

Maybe it does.

So why are my legs shaking in anticipation? Why is my body quivering, nipples tight against the wall, with a fresh wave of slickness coating my thighs?

“You’re going to take my cock in your ass like a good girl, Naomi.”

My spine snaps rigid as I feel him rub his slick cock up and down, sliding the head over the impossibly tight ring of my ass.

It’s never going to fit.

He’s too big.

I’ve never done this before.

I’ve never even wanted to before. But right now, up against the wall, waiting for him to take this last part of me, I’m riding a high—and the sheer adrenaline and anticipation of something so raw and wrong and dirty has me aching for it.

He pushes. The pressure builds against my tight hole, and it takes me a second to realize that the whining sound in my ears is me.

Craving it.

Desperate for it.

Needing it in a brutal, dark way I can’t explain.

“Fuck me…” I choke as Nico’s thick cock eases against my little hole.

He groans behind me and spits on my ass again. I shiver, whimpering as I feel his fat cock spread the slickness over my asshole and then start to press in again.

“Fuck you how,” he snarls.

“Rough,” I blubber, nails dragging down the wall.

“Where.”

Oh, God.

“My ass…” I whisper, my breath catching as he starts to push in, adding more pressure. “Fuck me hard in the ass…”

Suddenly, his head pops past my ring.

I cry out, my jaw clenching, my face caving as pain and pleasure surge brutally through me.

He feels fucking huge, like he’s stretching me past my limits, like he’s going to split me in half.

“Nico—”

“That’s it, baby,” he groans, leaning down and biting my shoulder sharply, making me gasp. “Just relax, and take my cock in your ass like a good girl.”

He slides in a little more, and my eyes roll back as red and black mist clouds my reality.

It’s so good.

It hurts.

I want more.

Nico pushes his fat cock deeper.

It’s pain, and heat, and a fullness I’ve never even imagined.

I can’t breathe from the sheer force of him claiming every inch of me.

He thrusts deeper, and I scream, muffled by his hand. Deeper, deeper deeper…his cock feels endless as he crams every inch up my ass until suddenly, my eyes fly wide and my mouth drops open as I feel his heavy balls against my pussy.

Holy. Fuck.

It burns. It aches. It breaks something in me.

But it’s not pain that brings me close to tears. It’s the way he groans—low, triumphant, like he’s finally home.

His mouth brushes my ear. “You feel that?” he growls. “That’s me taking the last of you.”

My knees shake. My nails scrape the wall. He slowly drags his thick cock out of me, my ass clenching tight around him. Then, with just the head inside, he starts to work it right back in, wrenching a low, guttural moan from my throat.

Suddenly, the pain begins to melt just enough to make room for something else, dark and obscene and electric.

Pleasure.

My hips push back a little.

His hand slides from my mouth to my throat.

“You’re taking my cock in your ass like such a good girl, Naomi,” he groans. “You’re going to feel me here for days, ballerina. You’re going to remember how fucking mine you are with every step. This slutty little fuck-hole’s been waiting for me to take it, hasn’t it?”

I’m drowning in a mix of pleasure and pain that’s taking me places I’ve never been before.

I can’t speak, can barely breathe.

Most of all, I just want more.

Nico is happy to oblige. He fucks me like he means it. I moan his name and cry out for more. He grips my hips, pounding harder, faster, deeper, until my body shakes and wrenches.

I’m going to come.

I’m going to come with his cock in my ass.

“Look at you, baby. Such a dirty little anal slut. You’re going to come like this, aren’t you? Greedy little thing, squeezing my cock with that back hole, making your pussy jealous.”

His thrusts grow rougher. His breath turns ragged.

My whole reality shifts and blurs.

“That’s my good girl,” Nico snarls into my ear as he buries his cock deep inside my ass. “Taking it so good. Taking it like a such a fucking good girl.”

It’s like pulling a trigger. The second the words leave his lips and purr into my ears, my whole body writhes and shatters.

The scream that rips from my throat is both unholy communion and sweetest deliverance. My entire body spasms, my nails clawing against the stone as the orgasm explodes through my core.

Wave after wave crashes into me as I hear Nico groan. He grabs my hip hard with one hand and wraps a hank of my hair around the other as he buries himself balls-deep in me, muscles clenched hard at my back.

And then he pumps his hot cum into my ass, growling against my skin, both of us collapsing to the stone wall.

He doesn’t let go. Just holds me there, arms wrapped around my chest, his breath warm against my neck.

When he finally moves, he turns me gently, pressing his forehead to mine.

Then he kisses me, hard and fierce.

Like he’s sealing something.

“Mine,” he murmurs.

And I think, somewhere in this madness we’ve wrapped ourselves in…

He’s mine, too.