I laughed shortly. Derek wasn’t fond of vamps, not even Leo, and not even when Leo had healed some of his men from wounds suffered in his service. “Be sure to film it when you ask him. That should be interesting.” The elevators opened and I took Bruiser’s arm. The heat of his body was like a fever, and I felt it roar through my flesh like Beast hunting. Teeth showing, intent. Pushing its way through my grief.
We will scream out our pain to the moon at dawn, she thought at me. Then we will kill our rival. And retake our foolish mate.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said to her and to Bruiser, letting Beast have her way for now. “We might have to revise the middle part a bit.” I had no intention of killing anyone. “For now, let’s go dance,” I said. “Can you get some better music? I liked that track that was playing the night I beat the crap out of Leo.”
“Which was a thing of beauty to behold.”
I snorted. “His beating you was staged, wasn’t it?”
“Not precisely.” Bruiser tapped his mic, requesting a change in music. He didn’t pause as we entered the ballroom to the opening strains of a Bonamassa instrumental I didn’t recognize, clueing me in on who at vamp central liked the blues guitar player. Bruiser. He had set up the music for my fight with Leo. In advance. I put that realization away for later.
Bruiser led me forward into the middle of the dance floor—the pirate and his scarlet-haired traitor to my left and Bruiser’s right—and into a slow, slow tango. Totally not what I was expecting, totally not what my hidden heart wanted, but I moved with him, my feet and body finding the cadence of the steps in the odd rhythm of the song, one not arranged for the Latin dance. I concentrated on his lead and let the beat hold me to the floor, knowing that I might lose myself in the music and dance through the pain if I forgot that I was working.
Bruiser was a masterful dancer, my body moving like a length of silk in his arms, bending and sliding and dipping, my feet shifting perfectly, though my shoes were leaving small bits of earth from the garden in our wake. There was something mystical in the music and the soil dropping from my feet, as if I had walked from a grave and into the dance. My heart began to lighten as Bruiser bent me back over his arm, his leg between both of mine, pressing into the center of me. I wanted to pull away, but he held me there for a moment, for several long beats, his eyes on mine. “They have stopped dancing,” he murmured beneath the music. “Watching us.”
I smiled, slow, so slow, and let my head drop back, exposing my neck to him. It was a position of submission to the predators watching. A posture of a different kind of submission to Bruiser. His arm tightened across my back and I arched deeper. Closer into him.
He rolled me up in his arms, trapping me, whispering in my ear. “Some night soon,” he said.
I let my smile slide away, promising nothing, but not denying him. Knowing I wasn’t ready. Not right now. Especially not tonight. Maybe not ever. Yet he yanked my body against his, a reminder of his intent. I slid away from him, whirling, as I always had done before. And Bruiser laughed, saying softly, “No, Jane. Not this time.” And deftly, as if I weighed a feather, he whirled me back to him.
The song ended with me at Bruiser’s feet, one arm up, resting at the top of his thigh, his Onorio heat blazing though the cloth of his trousers. He leaned down and murmured, “Shoffru’s heir, Cym, is no longer with us tonight. We should wonder why that is so.”
“Yeah. We should.”
A different Bonamassa song started, even slower than the first, and Leo stepped into the dance, replacing Bruiser as if they had planned it. And who knew? Maybe they had.
Leo pulled me to my feet and led me into his arms. His black eyes caught mine. And I felt Beast staring up and out at him through me. The silver chain that bound her to him tightened, vibrating, a slight tremor that reached into the deeps of me, through my grief, through my anger at him for the forced feeding.
My life was so messed up.
Leo held me for two beats, then stepped to the side, into a bolero. The dance steps were so slow and romantic, the pauses with our bodies at sharp angles to each other, our legs intertwined as the steps ground us together. His body was ice-cold, where Bruiser’s had been inhumanly heated. Beast purred.
Inside, I wept.
CHAPTER 16
Dead-Slab-of-Gravestone-Marble
The dance ended. Leo released my body and, following the pressure of his hand and arm, I moved out to his side, facing the partygoers. Our arms were out, clasped hands extended in the air between us. “My Enforcer,” Leo said, releasing me. “Bring me the supplicant.”