Page 45 of Shades of Ruin (Sharp Edges Duet #2)

Chapter Thirty-Two

GREYSON

I can’t stop staring at the diamonds sparkling in Angélica’s gorgeous, caramel nipples.

The second she slipped into the dress I picked out for her, I knew I made the right choice.

Her pierced tits are displayed beautifully, the see-through, gold silk delicately caressing her full breasts like a lover’s embrace.

The low dip of the back leaves most of her skin bare, ripples of golden silk draping below the twin dimples right above her ass.

Flakes of gold melt into her tan skin, making her entire body glow in the light of the flames.

Her long hair is down, a laurel of golden feathers intertwined in her curls.

She first entered Pandemonium as a fallen angel, ruined and scorched. Now she enters as a radiant goddess, her perfect body swathed in gold, her black wings beautiful and fearsome, her warm, brown eyes brimming with fire, and my fucking mark on her for everyone to see.

Since I needed to pierce her nipples and fuck her twice afterward, we arrive late to the summer solstice party.

The loud hum of conversation, interspersed with the assaulting clamor of sex, dims the moment we walk through the doors.

All eyes are on us. The attention doesn’t bother me—I’ve grown pretty used to it as the club’s most notorious playboy.

But Angélica shrinks back from the stares, the awe, the insatiable fascination and inherent jealousy of the eyes assaulting her.

With her body almost bare, she feels vulnerable being devoured by the frenzied, gossip-hungry masses of Pandemonium’s high and mighty.

Angélica is so used to blending into the background where she’s comfortable.

I reach over and wrap my fingers around hers, crushing her hand against mine until I see the tension in her body start to ease.

I’ll be her armor until she remembers her own strength.

“Don’t let them scare you, angel,” I whisper with my lips brushing the side of her neck. “I’m the only one who gets to own your fear. No one else is worthy of the honor.”

“They’re staring,” she bites back.

“Of course they are. They’re realizing true beauty didn’t exist until you walked into the room.”

“Shut up,” she huffs with a roll of her eyes, but her cheeks heat so prettily at the praise.

“Careful how you speak to me, little ruin. I might decide to put my mouth right where you like it in front of all these people. I think they’d enjoy watching you scream while your pretty clit dances on my tongue.”

“Greyson!” she shrieks, glancing around to see if anyone heard. I don’t really give a fuck if they did.

“ Master Greyson,” I scold. “Club rules still apply.”

“Seriously?”

I glower at her. “Would I lie?”

“No, Master Greyson,” she mutters with murder in her pretty brown eyes.

“Good girl.” I give her an indulgent tap on the tip of her freckled nose below her mask just to dig under her skin a little bit more before tugging on her hand and leading her through the throng of masked voyeurs.

“Grey!” comes a familiar squeal right before a pixie-sized blonde in heels blindsides me from the left and throws herself at me.

“Hey, little sub,” I sigh with an affectionate smile. I wrap my one free arm around her shoulders and embrace her as best as I can while Angélica suddenly has my other hand in a death grip.

“I missed you,” she mumbles against my chest without letting me go.

“I missed you, too,” I chuckle. “But I think you’re going to have to unhand me before you and I find ourselves at the top of this one’s hit list.” A quick glance to my right confirms that Angélica is already in the preliminary stages of plotting my demise.

“Shit, sorry,” Kara replies, pulling away quickly. She straightens her gold mask etched with roses and smooths her hands over her tiered, gold gown. “Didn’t mean to assault you in front of your date.”

She takes a step back and throws an apologetic glance at Angélica before recognition flares in her eyes. “You’re Flores,” she gasps in surprise. “From the restaurant. You made that delicious dessert, and Grey was a total prick to you.”

“Oh, so she’s allowed to call you Grey?” Angélica seethes.

Refusing to let my angel be angry, I throw both my arms around her and drag her toward me, careful not to jostle her wings.

My hold is half-embrace, half-chokehold because I’m not sure which she needs more right now.

“Don’t blame me,” I protest in innocence.

“I’m not the one in charge of beating her into submission. That privilege belongs to?—”

“Kara Elizabeth Caine, get your goddamn arse back here now .”

“—this royal cunt,” I finish with a grin when I see my favorite British bastard storming toward us, his stereotypically handsome face fitted with the golden mask of a beast, spiraled horns jutting from his dark, wavy hair.

“Get the fuck away from her, Greyson,” Ashford growls, sliding his fingers under Kara’s ruby collar and jerking her back against his chest. Caveman instincts at their finest. I suppose he can’t forget the memory of Kara straddling my hips in a seedy sex club as easily as I can.

“Lovely to see you too, Lord Tea and Scones,” I greet him with a smirk that’s sure to make his perfect teeth grind in irritation. I flick my gaze to Kara. “Still Caine, then? You haven’t been forced into unholy matrimony yet?”

“He’s certainly tried,” Kara answers with a glare at her fiancé.

“But I refused to be rushed down the aisle like a fucking captive in a white dress. Caden and I haven’t come to a mutual agreement regarding the date or the venue or the guests or the necessity of having a wedding at all.

And it will probably be a very long time before we make any decisions. ”

“You can’t hold me off forever, love,” Ashford threatens with a sharp nip at Kara’s neck. “I’m going to have to increase my methods of persuasion.”

“Your methods of persuasion are the reason why I can’t sit down tonight, so they hardly put me in an amenable mood.”

“Seemed pretty amenable to me when you were begging for more while my crop reddened your arse and my cock filled your soaked cunt.”

“Caden Ashford, you’re a bastard,” Kara gasps, swatting at Ashford’s arm. I love it when she doesn’t take any of his shit, and he has a singular talent for riling the feisty librarian like no one else.

“Behave, Kara,” Ashford warns, his tone suddenly severe. There’s no escaping the way Kara melts under his dominance. “You know I’d have no hesitation spanking your sore arse in front of an audience, so watch your damn mouth and show me some respect.”

“Sorry, sir,” she responds meekly, but the sly smile on her face tells me it’s all for show.

I notice Angélica catch sight of the enormous engagement ring on Kara’s finger, and the tension in her body fades a little.

She should know I’d never give her any reason to doubt me.

Every woman in the world faded away the moment I fell for her.

I squeeze her hand, hoping she’ll be patient while I figure out how to get us the fuck out of Kara and Ashford’s melodrama and upstairs to my private room.

Before I can contrive an escape, we’re interrupted by the Lord of Hell himself—also known as fucking Finn.

His sculpted torso is painted in gold, shimmering as the light of the flames dances over his naked skin.

He’s wearing a gold harness over his chest that’s strapped to a pair of golden wings that drape down his shoulders.

A gladiator-esque skirt made of metallic gold panels hangs low on his hips, just barely covering one of the few cocks at the club I actually haven’t seen.

He has the sort of soft, angelic face that belongs in a Renaissance painting, but he’s covered his features from temple to cupid’s bow in a mask of twisted gold serpents—the angel and the devil combined.

His thick, white-blonde curls are adorned with a crown made of delicate, interlocked gold stars that looks very befitting of Lucifer Morningstar.

Finnian Holt is an enigma that I’ll never fully understand. He’s an almost-priest with an unspoken vendetta against me and a sacrilege kink that I don’t even want to try to get into.

Finn is Ashford’s best friend, and I use the term friend lightly because really he’d rather be sucking Ashford’s cock while Kara watches from the sidelines.

The first time I brought up the obvious sexual tension between the two, I was banned from Pandemonium for a week.

And I’ve been looking for ways to thrust it into casual conversation ever since.

“Why does it look like you two are about to start a brawl in my club?” Finn hisses, crossing his arms over his painted chest.

He steps between us as though his glorious presence will somehow quell the charged animosity that always seems to mount when you put a bunch of dominant men and their erect cocks in a room. Shocker—it won’t.

“Well, I know which one of us would be blamed if a fight ever did break out,” I drawl, looking as deathly bored of this conversation as I am. “Ashford has always been daddy’s favorite.”

“Christ, Greyson, can’t you ever be serious?” Finn snarls, and Ashford huffs in agreement.

“And walk around looking like I’ve got a thick, Ashford-sized dildo up my ass all the damn time like you do? No thanks.”

“I’ve warned you not to fuck with?—”

“Ever wonder why you’re so damn touchy, Satan? Hell, Ashford and I have brushed tips and neither of us gets squeamish about it. You’re telling me the owner of the most notorious sex club in Chicago is too straight and narrow to take a fucking dick joke?”

I know what his problem is—he was raised by a piece of shit father who taught him that big boys don’t cry or take it in the ass.

After a decade of reigning over a kink kingdom, you’d think he’d have outgrown his father’s bigotry by now.

But sometimes it’s a fight to the death to escape the warped lessons our parents beat into us.