Page 68 of Shades of Ruin

“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 bitmore 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 ofthis one’shit 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, soshe’sallowed 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 herenow.”

“—this royal cunt,” I finish with a grin whenI 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 averylong 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.”

“Yourmethods of persuasionare 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 frontof 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 totryto 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 fromPandemonium 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.

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