Page 135 of Ruin
Faces in the red light. Watching. Waiting.
Selene turns to me, the audience at her back, the bed between us, the collar burning at her throat.
"They're going to watch us," she says.
"Does that bother you?"
"No." She reaches behind her neck and unzips the dress. One slow pull, the sound of it louder than it should be in the quiet room.
The fabric falls away from her shoulders, pools at her waist. Slides over her hips and hits the floor, and she steps out of it wearing nothing but the collar and black heels and the expression of a woman who has decided, finally and completely, to stop being ashamed of what she wants. "I want them to see."
She crosses to me, unbuttons my shirt ever so slowly.
Each button is a deliberate act, her fingers moving down my chest while the people on the other side of the glass press closer.
I can see them in my peripheral vision, the shapes of their bodies, the hunger in their posture, but my eyes are on Selene.
She pushes the shirt off my shoulders. Runs her hands down my arms, fingertips tracing the veins, the muscle, the scars.
Then her mouth follows the same path. A kiss to my collarbone, to the center of my chest, to the scar on my ribs, and each one is soft and slow and deliberate in a way that's designed to drive me out of my mind.
"Selene."
"Quiet." She undoes my belt. Pulls it free in one long slide. Wraps it once around her fist and holds it there, the leather taut between her fingers, and the image of her standing in nothing but the collar with my belt in her hand is something the people behind the glass will remember for the rest of their lives.
I know because I'll remember it for the rest of mine.
She drops the belt, pushes my pants down and takes me in her hand before I've finished stepping out of them. The sound I make when her fingers wrap around me is not the sound of a man in control. It's the sound of a man being dismantled in front of an audience by the only person who knows how.
"Sit on the bed," she says.
I sit and she straddles me. The glass is behind her, the watchers pressed against it, and I can see their reflections framing her body like a dark halo.
But she's not looking at them. She's looking at me.Only me.The audience is for the world. The eye contact is for us.
She takes me inside her slowly, sinking down inch by inch, her hands on my shoulders, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and the sound she makes when I'm fully inside her is low and raw and the most honest thing I've heard in this room,which is saying something for a place that deals in exposed nerve endings.
She rides me, her back facing the audience, which means they see everything—the curve of her spine, the flex of her thighs, the collar glinting at the nape of her neck as she moves. But her face is mine. The expressions that cross it—pleasure, intensity, something fierce and possessive—those belong to me alone.
The watchers get the performance. I get the truth.
"This is mine," she says. Rolling her hips in a slow, devastating rhythm that makes my fingers dig into her thighs hard enough to mark. "This empire. This body. This life."
"Yours," I manage.
"Say it louder."
"Yours."
She leans back, shifts the angle so I hit deeper inside her, and the moan that leaves her mouth is not quiet. It carries.
It fills the room and bleeds through the glass and the people on the other side hear it and press closer and she doesn't care. She wants them to hear.
I grip her hips and thrust upward, meeting her rhythm, and her head falls back and the collar catches the red light and she looks like something out of a painting that should hang in a museum nobody's allowed to enter.
The heels are still on. I can feel them digging into the mattress on either side of my thighs, and the sharp bite of them against the silk sheets is a detail I didn't know I needed until right now.
"Harder," she says. Not a whisper. A command. Loud enough for the glass. "I want them to see what you do to me."
