A Dance Macabre (Perverse City, #1)

by Naomi Loud

When I lean back toward Mercy, I graze my fingers over her inner thigh before I settle us back into the seat. I savor the hitch in her breath and the subtle grind of her hips. I can practically feel the heat of her cunt through her leather pants. The feeling is a blissful kind of torture. I trail my hand up the valley of her breasts and then her neck, cradling my palm and fingers just below her chin. “Why act so surprised then?” I rasp before sucking her earlobe into my mouth.

let out a low groan, her cunt beginning to grind harder into my thigh. “I didn’t know it would be by your hand,” she answers dismissively, but she can’t hide the tremor of lust in her voice.

“I don’t need you to explain to me in words how watching me kill him made you feel,” I hiss into her skin while my own skin burns and burns and burns. “Considering how you’re currently fucking my lap, you sick little fuck.”

Mercy laughs. She laughs … It’s small, barely noticeable, but the noise leaves me momentarily stunned.

“And what about you?” she says a little breathlessly. She slides her hips forward and reaches back to palm my hard cock. It throbs painfully in response. I bite down on a growl as my lips blaze up her bare throat...

“What makes you think I want anything to do with a feral creature like you?” My hand moves down her stomach, over my linked arm, and grazes over the seam of her leather pants. She doesn’t say a word, but her lips part when I put pressure over her clit. It’s a slow taunting circling motion, her eyes burning as I do so. I then splay my entire palm over her cunt, pulling her hard against me. “The very thought of you is a plague I’d rather not catch,” I spit, finally unhooking my arm from around her waist and pushing her off my lap.

Wolfgang is ignoring me again. It’s been nearly a week since he last had his hands on me. The night at Vore when he killed one of his men for touching me. Heat curls low in my stomach at just the thought. It incenses me.

Footsteps approach the drawing room and I start counting those instead, until Wolfgang finally appears, wearing an embroidered smoking jacket. I’m disgusted by the small leap my heart takes when I see him.

I’m plagued with the thought of her cunt sheathed around my dick. Plagued with the thought of her telling me all the ways she could kill me while still letting me fuck her. I despise her. I crave her. I will have her.

The violin music fills in the silence between us, the air shifting into a living, breathing thing. It growls and moans and begs for attention, but all I can do is watch Mercy. She undoes her sash. Her movements are deliberately slow. I swallow hard. First falls the robe, fluttering delicately around her bare feet. Then her fingers slide under the thin strap of her nightgown, letting it slip over her shoulder. Then goes the other strap. My throat goes dry. Her eyes burn. A small shimmy of her body. The dress falls. And my violin nearly falters once again.

If I didn’t know any better I’d think she was the servant of the god of lust for how affected I am right now. Or even my own god of idolatry, for my sudden and blinding need to worship her.

I experience a sudden and maddening hysteria watching her touch herself in front of me, unable to actually see her fingers, let alone her cunt. The music stops.

Her eyes narrow in challenge as I approach her and although I’m bedeviled by desire I notice the small grin of victory she’s trying to conceal. She thinks she’s gained power over me. “You vile little whore,” I can’t help but hiss.

“What’s wrong, Wolfie?” she says tauntingly as she idly glides through the water. “Displeased to see me in your precious bathhouse?” The pet name sends an unwanted shiver down my spine, and I begin to slowly approach, my eyes on her like a predator with their prey. “When in these waters, you should be tithing to me, Crèvecoeur,” I say slowly.

“Maybe you should tithe to me, instead.” I grow still, a mere foot away from her, my hand curling around my cock as I begin to slowly stroke the ache away. Her gaze dips down, then flutters back to my face. “Come here, and I will,” I say, my voice deepening with pleasure.

“I don’t trust you,” she finally says. I chuckle dryly, my head falling back slightly while I continue to stroke my cock under the water. Straightening back up, I pin her with my stare. “What is there to trust, Mercy? That’s not why you came to me tonight, is it?”

between us urging for someone to speak, until I finally heed its command. “I’d rather never see my own reflection again, than ever compliment you,” I grit out. She startles just long enough for me to successfully snap my hand out, grab her by the throat, and dunk her into the water. Her limbs flail as I keep her under, the glee in having her this compromised is incomparable.

When I gauge she’s had enough, I pull her out of the water but keep her firmly in my grasp, my fingers now digging into the flesh of her arms. She gasps, mouth wide open and eyes closed as she tries to swallow down lungfuls of air. It doesn’t take me long to push her down again, but not before she lets out a shriek that makes my cock ache with vicious satisfaction.

maybe damnatio memoriae is not what I fear the most, but the fleeting thought that Mercy and I are destined for more. It makes me want to drown alongside her.

“Do you think I’d yet to forget how much of a conniving bitch you are, Crèvecoeur?” “I’ll gut you alive for this,”

“Why didn’t you fuck me when you had the chance?” she asks breathlessly.

My hands slide over her wet skin and I’m fucking starving. Her fingers coil into my hair at the base of my neck, tugging hard, but I ignore the sting as I slot my cock against her slit and then begin to circle the tip around her clit. With my free hand, I grip the back of her nape and make her look at me. “You know why.” My voice is pained with need. “You know why,” I repeat again, groaning through my teeth while the tip of my cock slides much too close to her entrance.

The threads of reason are unraveling and I’m moments away from slamming my cock into her. I can hardly recall the reasons why I shouldn’t.

“My ruin,” I breathe against her clit, sucking it into my mouth before straightening back up quickly, bending her knees, and pulling her even closer to me. I catch her gaze in mine while I slowly circle her entrance, soaking the tip of my cock with her arousal. “My terrible demise.” Her bent legs fall open even wider, her eyes a burning inferno as her hand finds her swollen clit, her face transforming into shocked rapture. “Your downfall,” she moans, voice thick with need.

Her back arches upwards and my thighs begin to shake with the effort it takes not to thrust into her. I wrap a hand around my shaft, the other digging into her hip, and fuck myself while I’m barely sheathed inside. “Despicable little thing,” I spit while my arousal rises and rises. Anger spilling into aching desire, spilling into the uncontrollable seduction that is Mercy Crèvecoeur. “Look at what you’ve made me do.”

The regret is perfumed by how it felt to experience him in the most erotic of intimacies, leaving me yearning in ways that I cannot explain. The stretch of my pussy around the head of his cock. The heat of his cum on my clit. I’ve never felt this type of desire before. I am no stranger to pleasure, to the carnal and sensual, but no one from my past compares to Wolfgang.

Almost as if a part of me had always known him like this, and I was simply revisiting the feeling. The selfish greed has turned into an ache that speaks only in words laced with Wolfgang’s primal essence. An invisible string has somehow attached itself between us, and I can feel the tug no matter where he is. Even if we’ve done nothing but ignore each other. I wonder if he feels it too.

“My ritual, my rules. You’ll collect Wolfgang’s blood and he’ll do the same to you.”

My dear god of death whispers the answer into my ear. I look back at Wolfgang in alarm. “We need to⁠—” I don’t have time to finish my sentence before an explosion sends me flying backward.

Blood, death and … “Mercy!” I bellow. The sudden terror of finding her dead has me pushing through the pain and standing.

I’m struck by her beauty even here amidst the madness, blood staining one side of her face, soot and dirt smeared on her skin and dress.

I keep my gaze locked on Mercy as I take her hand in mine and lift it to my lips.

My attention wearily returns to Wolfgang while his gaze lingers on the cut near my temple. It smarts under his quiet appraisal, and I lift my hand to idly touch the drying blood. “It needs to be cleaned,” he says softly, nodding his chin toward my face. There’s a note of concern attached to his words that stings more than the wound itself.

“If we’re already damned like you claim we are,” he says low and dark, fingers digging into my cheeks. His face is serious but the corner of his mouth curls into a bitter smile. “Then killing you is not how I want to meet my death.” His mouth slams into mine. The kiss is unforgiving, feverish and I can taste the sweet tang of his blood from his split lip. The taste of him has me dropping all pretense, relieved that Wolfgang has cracked his mask open so I can do the same with mine.

I move to touch it, compelled by some uncontrollable tenderness, but he slaps my hand away. “Don’t,” he growls while he tugs his suit jacket off, revealing a tattered white shirt underneath. “Not now.” Out of spite, I push a thumb into the gash and Wolfgang hisses loudly before his hand wraps around my throat, slamming me back down onto the cold marble, the rings from my chainmail corset digging into my skin. “Hateful little thing,” he seethes, ripping my thong off with his other hand, his face inches from mine. “You deserve nothing but misery.”

“If I am your sickness, my ruin,” he groans through clenched teeth, looming darkly over me, his disheveled hair falling over his wild eyes while the head of his cock notches against my slick entrance, “Then you are mine.” He slams into me in one powerful thrust, my head hitting the floor beneath me as a long keening moan escapes my lips.

Bending one of my legs upward, he opens me wider, deepening the angle of his thrusts while the heel of my stiletto digs into his ass. My whimper is brimming with need as I bite his bottom lip until the taste of his blood is back on my tongue where it belongs. We both seem to have lost all manner of speaking, victims of the one thing we swore we’d never desire. Each other.

Somewhere between life, death, and Wolfgang’s undeniable effect on me, I begin to bargain with whichever god dares to listen. I plead and beg, and implore. Let us have this without any consequences. Let us indulge in the forbidden until we’ve had our fill. The gods have their own laws. Why can’t we?

Surely, we’ve just co-signed our death—or at the very least our mutual downfall. But the selfish part of my nature would do it again if it meant reliving the same bliss I just experienced. I’ve known pleasure before but this was … euphoric.

I offer my hand. “Our wounds need to be tended to.” A shadow crosses over her eyes, letting a loaded moment pass between us before slipping her palm in mine. I pull her up, but as soon as she stands, she withdraws her hand and my instinct is to clutch her hand tightly and keep her palm in mine.

A rainfall showerhead hangs from the ceiling and a half-wall with the same black tiles offers a rather feeble attempt at privacy. But privacy is not something I currently crave when having Mercy here alone with me. I don’t bother asking if she wants to be left alone. I don’t want to leave her alone. To my relief, she doesn’t request it, her emerald eyes steadfast and penetrating before she slowly steps out of her heels.

She doesn’t ask for help, and I’m sure I’d be standing here for centuries if I waited for her to use her words. I approach her silently and start on the small leather straps on her back holding the chainmail tight around her chest. It falls with a ripple of clinks next to our feet. My fingers drag over her hips and then her waist before reaching the zipper of her gold dress. Slowly sliding it down until it reaches the small of her back, I then drag a knuckle up her spine. I witness her skin break out into goosebumps before I smooth my hands under the silk and push it off her shoulders so it can pool around her feet.

Taking a step back, I turn to face the mirrors. I track Mercy even here. Although it’s just her reflection, I can’t look away, watching her step under the spray while she unpins her hair, dark strands falling down her shoulders one by one, her family sigil tattoo brazenly visible on her back. It’s only when I manage to tear my gaze away from her and find myself staring back in the mirror that I realize the implications of what I just did. I sought her reflection before even thinking to seek mine.

So much has happened since then. So much has happened between us. And here we are now. At the very crescendo of our forbidden dance. A dance macabre, where even the threat of our own deaths did not stop us. And all I wish to do now as I watch her stand here under the water, naked, bloody, and fucking glorious, is to dig our graves even deeper. To revel in the fatality of our choices. To dig and dig and dig until I reach our gods and demand to keep her, mind, body and soul.

While her lips never leave mine, Mercy pushes me until it’s my back that is shoved against the half-wall, the edge digging into my hips. Before I can piece together what’s happening, Mercy pulls away, her eyes blackened with desire as she falls to her knees before me. I am breathless. Never could I have envisioned such a thing as Mercy on her knees, her fingers curled around my hardening shaft as her lips wrap themselves around my cock.

As I find the back of her head with my palm, I grip her hair and pitch my hips forward to feel even more of her around me, I realize she has become my ruin in every sense of the word. Because nothing will ever compare to having Mercy like this.

“I’ve tasted your blood before,” she says breathlessly, “Now let me consume even more of you.” Her hand strokes my cock, her eyes burning with wild flames. “Show me what ruinous desire tastes like.”

“Your mouth is just as greedy as your pretty little cunt, I see,” I drawl, trying to pretend her words didn’t send me halfway into orbit already. She opens her mouth for me again, and I shove my cock deep into her throat, her hands now digging into the sides of my hips as I begin to fuck her throat with every morsel of possessiveness I have left in me.

The pleasure shooting through my limbs is once again incomparable to anything I’ve experienced before. It almost feels … undeserved. And maybe it’s because it is. It’s Mercy cloaked in the forbidden. It’s having what I can’t have.

I kiss her with such desperation that it’s almost as if her breath, her very air, is what I need to survive. I kiss her like this might be our last.