Chapter 4 - A Dance on Razor Wire
A heavy orchestral waltz began to rise from the stage, filling the cavernous room with dramatic strings and brass. Larkin didn't step back. He looked at her bare shoulders, the sharp edge of her dark hair, the absolute defiance in her eyes. For three years, he had been blind.
"Dance with me," Larkin commanded softly.
"I am your secretary, Mr. Steves. Social obligations are not in my contract."
"Consider it an emergency amendment."
He took her right hand in his and placed his other palm firmly on the exposed curve of her lower back. A tremor of heat went through both of them. Larkin pulled her out onto the center of the parquet floor, right into the middle of the ballroom where the entire underworld hierarchy could see them.
The dance was not gentle. It was a battle of wills disguised as choreography.
Larkin moved with the ruthless grace of an apex predator, guiding her through the turns. Penelope matched him beat for beat, her steel-tipped stilettos gliding effortlessly over the polished wood. Her black silk skirt swirled like smoke around his trousers.
"You knew Thomas put me up to it," Larkin murmured as he spun her outward and drew her back flush against his chest.
"I have eyes, Mr. Steves. I also have ears. Thomas laughs too loudly, and you think too little of people who don't carry guns."
"I was wrong," he admitted, the words raw and unexpected even to his own ears. "I'm not usually wrong."
"A common flaw in men who inherit kingdoms."
Larkin chuckled, a dark, genuine sound that turned heads across the room. No one had heard Larkin Steves laugh in public for years. "You have a sharp tongue when you aren't hiding behind spreadsheets, Miss Woods."
"I only hide when it's unprofitable to be seen," she whispered, leaning closer so her lips nearly brushed his ear. "Tonight, staying invisible would have cost me my self-respect. I don't operate at a loss."
Across the floor, Thomas Dixon was watching them, his knuckles white around his glass, eyes dark with unbridled envy and irritation. As the waltz reached its soaring crescendo, Larkin pulled Penelope tightly against him, their faces inches apart.
May you like
For a breathless second, the entire criminal underworld faded into background noise. Larkin looked into her smoked-out coal eyes and saw not a terrified employee, but a woman capable of ruling a world.
"Starting Monday," Larkin breathed, "everything changes."
