Page 3 of Ruin
I hold her gaze. She holds mine.
A moment passes, then she looks away.
"Miss Deveraux."
Peter. I'd know the voice anywhere—flat, polite, the verbal equivalent of a closed door.
He's standing two feet behind me with his hands clasped and his face arranged into the pleasant nothing that Cassius's men wear like a uniform.
"He's ready for you."
Three words. No urgency. No please.
Just the calm assumption that I'll follow, because why else would I be here on day 365 with his collar around my throat and Malbec on my tongue.
I leave the wine unfinished and follow Peter to the elevator. The dress is black and fitted and I chose it knowing he'd take it apart with his eyes before I opened my mouth.
The descent is the same. The air thickening, the temperature shifting, the sense of the world above falling away.
My heartbeat picks up and I let it. No point pretending I'm not nervous when my body has already decided to betray me.
The doors open and I'm in Hell.
Red light. Leather. The hum of soundproofing that makes everything feel muffled and close.
The smell of it—something dark and warm that I've been dreaming about for the last year and could never quite reconstruct from memory.
He's at the end of the corridor. Not in a room. Standing in the open, leaning against the wall beside the door where I first knelt for him, where I first called him Sir, where I first understood that the thing inside me that craved destruction had a name and the name was his.
He looks exactly the same.
Suit, no tie, top button undone. Gray eyes that take me apart before I've crossed half the distance between us.
He doesn't move toward me. He doesn't smile. He just watches me walk, and I can feel his gaze on my body like a physical thing, measuring every change, analyzing every difference between the girl who left and the woman who's coming back.
I stop three feet away. Close enough to smell him—sandalwood and whiskey and something underneath that's just him, just skin, just the scent I've been chasing in my sleep for a year.
"Three hundred and sixty-five days," I say.
"I know."
"Not one more. Not one less."
"I noticed."
"You look different," he says.
"Iamdifferent."
"Are you."
Not a question. A dare. Show me.
I reach up and touch the collar. His eyes follow my fingers the way they always follow my fingers when they're near his diamonds.
"I had pneumonia," I say. "A couple months back. Bad enough for a chest x-ray. The technician asked me to remove my necklace."
Something flickers behind his eyes. Faint. Gone fast.
