Page 6 of Intrigue (Dark Syndicate #4)

Selene

The hallway is long and spiraling, with so many doors I don’t think I’ve ever been to or seen.

The air is cool here, with heavy pictures on the walls, oppressive and cold.

It’s hard being in here, trying to fight my way out of the chill darkness, because of the past and my father’s wicked ways, but I think these years away have taught me to push ahead and hold my ground, to sharpen my edges into something lethal.

I’m not going to stop until I get my revenge.

At the end of the hallway, I stumble into a garden and have to pause and breathe in the soft smells of roses and nature and crisp air. In the sky, the moon is halved by clouds gathering, and as a warm breeze caresses my skin, I falter, unsteady with want and rage.

I take a look around. The garden isn’t remotely beautiful. The twisted vines edging up an old stairway and the withering roses give the place a kind of stillness that’s tense, decaying, but I walk in, moving past the benches and shrubs and roses to find—

“Alessandro!” I don’t know if I've said his name out loud until he’s turning, slowly, like he isn’t certain what he’s going to find, or maybe like he’s been waiting for me.

He leans in, voice dropping. “You look out of it, little Marconi. Finally come to the realization that the painter’s not doing it for you?”

“Shut up and do not call me that,” I counter, then step back. “You don’t know anything about him.”

“I know he’s not me.” He follows, matching my step, eyes locked on mine. “I know you’re always still thinking about me whenever you’re with him.”

I want to hit him. I want to scream. Instead, I throw the rest of my wine in his face. It splashes red across his shirt, dripping down his chin. He freezes, then laughs, wiping it off with his sleeve.

“That’s my girl,” he teases. “Keep fighting. Makes it better when you give in.”

“I’ll never give in,” I hiss. “You’re nothing to me, Sandro. Nothing.”

He grins, slow and mean. “Keep telling yourself that.”

“Why are you such an asshole?”

The frown on his brow tightens. “You’ll do well not to speak to me like that, Selene. I’m not the man you once knew. I’ve strangled men for less.”

“Yeah? You’ll always be a puny coward in my eyes.

” I move closer to meet him and slap him the second I’m close enough.

Hard. His eyes widen as he lets out a soft, measured gasp of surprise, but I feel the heat of him, the solid wall of his chest. “That’s for today.

You think you can just show up here by my father’s side and boss me around?

I’m not the girl you used to know, Sandro, so don’t fucking mess with me. Stay out of my business.”

“Or what?” He sizes me up, hands flexing as he corners me, voice dropping.

“What is it you’re gonna do? Call your freaking fiance who, by the way, looks like he couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag?

He can’t save you from me, baby. You can’t keep pretending he’s enough.

I see it, Selene. You’re burning up for me, dying to feel something real. ”

“You’re delusional.”

“Am I?” He steps closer, breath hot against my hair, stirring it just enough to prickle my skin.

“Tell me your pussy didn’t tighten the second you walked in and saw me.

Tell me you don’t want me to slide my hand down there right now, prove how wet you are, and fuck you proper and better than that painter’s limp dick has in five damn years. ”

I move to hit him again, but this time, he’s prepared.

He catches my hand and, with control and skill, pulls me away from him and slams me against a tree. Slamming might not be the right word because when he holds me and presses his body against mine, he’s artful and deft about it, pinning me with a sick precision.

He holds me firmly but not enough to hurt me—the distinction is one I find conflicting, intoxicating, as his hips grind into mine, his breath hot on my neck.

“Get your filthy hands off me!” I yell as I push him away, but my voice cracks, betraying the ache between my thighs.

He lets me go and licks the wine that has trickled down his lips suggestively, a menacing smile curving at the edge like he knows what he just did has my mind spiraling.

Like he knows that no matter how much I despise him, my body remembers. It remembers the heat of his skin, the way his hands once left marks I never wanted to fade. It remembers that once upon a time, I would have licked that drop of wine from his lips myself.

His eyes go dark as he regards me under heavy lashes, voice a growl.

“You think the ring on your finger means anything? You think that’s going to stop me or change anything? Cassian might have his ring on your finger, but you’re still mine, always fucking mine. Your entire body knows it. And if I have to put Cassian in the ground to remind you, so be it.”

I push at him again, but he’s too close, too solid, and my hands linger on his chest as he refuses to break his grip.

“You’re disgusting,” I spit, but my body’s trembling, sold out by the heat he’s stoking. He grabs my wrists, pulls me flush against him, and I feel every hard inch of him pressing into me, daring me to break.

“Disgusting?” he murmurs, lips brushing my ear, voice dripping with filth. “Pot calling kettle black. You’re soaked for it, aren’t you? Hating me so bad it’s got you dripping down your thighs. Go ahead, hit me again, make it hurt, baby. I know you like it rough.”

I wrench free, panting, but I can’t step back—don’t want to—and the air between us is thick with rot and lust, pulling us both down into the muck.

Ugh, he’s so infuriating. I hate him so much it feels hard to breathe sometimes, and even now, when he says this, I’m overpowered by the hate, a choking, living thing drawing up in my throat.

“Get off your high horse, Sandro,” I quip, holding his stern gaze. “I came here to find you and tell you to stay off my back. I could never be yours, and Cassian is a better man than you’ll ever be.”

Sandro drags one foot forward, anger flashing across his handsome features, a storm breaking over that perfect, loathsome face, but I put a hand up to stop him, my nails itching to make him bloody. “Touch me again and I’m gonna cut you.”

“Cut me?” he asks, mockingly. He brings out a dagger from his belt behind him and snaps it out of the holder. The blade glistens in the dark, even as he holds it between us, taunting me. “Try it, princess. I’d like that, bleed me out, see if I don’t make you drink it.”

“Fuck you.”

He throws the dagger on the floor and doesn’t make a move to pick it up, daring me with that smug, filthy smirk. I do. I reach down, grab it, and point it at him.

“You’re not the one holding all the cards now, you see? It’s pathetic what you’ve turned out to be, isn’t it?”

Sandro rushes at me suddenly. One moment I have the dagger waving in front of me, and the next, his hands are in my hair and on my cheeks, dragging me into him, his body pressed firmly against me, breaths coming in ragged, desperate gasps that burn against my skin.

“Tell me how pathetic I am,” he mutters, voice rough and unhinged, his lips grazing my jaw. “I’m here in front of you now, Selene, so tell me or cut me, but know this…I’m not letting Cassian take you from me. I’ll gut him first, and fuck you raw right beside his cooling body.”

“Get off me, Sandro,” I snarl, shoving at him, but it’s useless.

His hands drop to my waist and he pulls me into him, hard, possessive. Goosebumps ride up my arm when I feel something harden in his pants, his erection pressing into me until all I can think about is how thick and insistent it is, branding me through the fabric.

Sandro guides my hand to his length and rubs himself through his pants, groaning like the animal he is.

“See what you do to me? My body still fires up for you. It still wants you badly, craves you like a fucking drug. Tell me you don’t feel it too, you lying little slut.”

I squeeze his cock gently, tentatively, knowing I shouldn’t be doing it but wanting to anyway, needing to feel him pulse under my grip. He groans when I rub him faster, breathing hot and wet against my neck, his tongue sticking out to taste me.

I stop, mutter, “No…” but it’s weak, a plea drowned in want.

He shakes his head and looks at me, and I see the darkness in his eyes, a void that swallows me whole.

“Stop fighting this, Selene. You can’t run from this sweet ecstasy, can’t run from me fucking owning you.”

I push at his hard chest even as heat begins to pool at my core, a traitor’s flood.

I have to grind my thighs together to settle the tingles, but I feel it as it happens: my body still wants him, hungers for him, and I can’t stop it, can’t kill the sick pulse of it.

“You’re not gonna get away with this, Sandro… ”

“You still call me Sandro,” he growls, triumphant, like it’s proof I’m his.

He slips a hand under my dress to press a finger against the slit in my panties, finding me soaked, betrayed by my own flesh.

He hisses a breath, victorious. “You’re fucking wet for me…

you want me to fuck you up against this tree, don’t you?

You’re dripping, such a needy little whore for me, aren’t you? ”

He’s right. He’s so right. But I can’t play into his arms like this, not after fighting hard to forget about him, to scrub him from my bones.

“Let me go,” I snap, but it’s half a whimper, my resolve cracking.

Let me go. Let me go before I do something irreversible, before I tear apart the life I’ve tried so hard to build. Let me go before I prove that I was never meant for the quiet, renewed kind of love Cassian gives me.

He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. And maybe, just maybe—I don’t want him to.

He leans forward to kiss my neck but uses some teeth too, biting down just shy of breaking skin. As he grazes my neck, I shiver in his arms and do the worst thing imaginable: moan, loud and broken, a sound that rips me apart.

“Goodness gracious,” he murmurs, his breath hot on my skin, voice thick with lust. “I’d give anything to hear you moan my name like that again. Fuck. I want to taste you, lick that sweet, wet cunt till you’re screaming, till you’re begging me to ruin you.”

I try to push him off me again, but I can’t.

I’m a trembling mess in his arms, weak and wanting.

His body is all ripped muscles and hardness, and when my palms flatten against his chest, my first instinct is to undress him and kiss his body, to drag my tongue over every inch, to mark him as he’s marked me.

Wait, no! I can’t.

“I’m fucking engaged.”

He lets me go then, stepping from me with a shake of his head, eyes blazing with hunger. “You will never get over me. This isn’t over, Selene. Trust me. Soon I’ll have you. Enjoy painter boy while he’s still alive.”

I watch him walk away, and this time, I don’t follow him, too wrecked to move. My legs are jelly after he leaves, so I have to find a bench to sit and calm my nerves, my pulse pounding, my panties soaked through with shame and need.

That’s when Cassian comes to find me. He kneels down in front of me and clasps my wrists in his hands like they’re the most delicate thing, gentle where Sandro was brutal.

“You’re tense and flush. Did something happen?”

I can’t exactly tell him about Alessandro and what he’s just done to me, how he’s turned me into a quivering, hateful wreck, so I settle for a breathless fib, my voice shaking.

“I just had a headache, so I stepped outside for a breather. It’s nothing. I’m fine, I promise.”

A lie.

Because the real headache just walked away with my soul in his hands.