Page 97 of A Vicious Love

Sienna.

The photograph had been taken during her performance tonight.

She wore white, soft layers of tulle and silver detailing. Her velvet-black hair had been pinned away from her face. One arm reached above her head. Her body had been caught mid-turn.

Beautiful. Too fucking beautiful. The image sat in another man’s hand. That was the part my body objected to first. His thumb near her face. His eyes moving over her body as if she had been placed there for him.

I took another drink.

I did not care.

She was a dancer.

People watched dancers.

That was the point.

The man enlarged the image.

My jaw tightened.

“Those legs,” he said.

A second man reached for the phone. “Show me.”

The screen shifted, and this time a different photo. Sienna in a darker part of the performance. The camera had frozen something intimate that probably lasted less than a second. Now a table full of men had it.

One of them smiled.

“Crow’s fiancée?”

My fingers tightened around the cigarette.

The first man laughed. “St. Cross has been moving early. Weston sat front row.”

I looked away from the screen before I put somebody through the glass barrier overlooking the dance floor.

“Pretty thing,” the man beside me said. “Wouldn’t mind seeing whether ballet makes a woman flexible off stage too.”

Men rarely understood danger immediately when alcohol and ego had started competing for space inside their skulls. Reeves posture sharpened behind me. The man holding the phone looked toward my face and realized nobody else had laughed.

His smile faded.

I rested the cigarette against the ashtray and leaned forward.

“Put the phone down.”

He swallowed.

The screen remained lit between us.

Sienna stared upward from the photograph, caught beneath pale theatre light.

Mine.

The thought arrived before sense did.

I hated it.