He moved us like lovers, in long slow turns. With one leg hooked around mine, Dain bent me backwards into a low dip, looking down at me with wickedness in his hooded eyes. He was sure fucking leaning into the knowledge that I found him attractive on his purely physical merits, playing with me the way a cat plays with his food.

"I'm dancing with you," he said with a purring growl, drawing me back into his arms. "Is there a problem with that?"

"Only if it gets me killed," I replied, trying to collect some amount of self control as his hand slid possessively lower on my bare back, pulling me flush with the hard wall of his body.

"Do you think anyone would dare anymore?" Dain asked, turning across the floor with us.

I glanced up over his shoulder to look at the people around us. Like iron to a lodestone, my eyes were caught by the expression on the Queen's face, her eyes fixed on us with a predatory light in them, a slight smile on her face as she saw the thing she could use to give my Dain a mortal wound at last. My stomach dropped.

"Your mother might," I said, my voice going tight. Dain could protect me from a lot of people, but the Queen was the Queen, and she had spent his lifetime trying to destroy him. If she saw him fall in love with me I thought that she wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of his weakness.

"You're frightened of her," he said, no doubt scenting it on me. Dain turned me, I thought so that he could see what I'd seen, then growled next to my ear, with such deadly intent that I broke out into goosebumps and a cold sweat. "Do you want me to stop, Leah?"

"I don't want to die," I said, not sure how to answer that.

Dain spun me, then swept me into another figure before pulling me back against his chest, with far less gentleness. He moved like a warrior now, coiled and dangerous, and that soft expression had been replaced by something like arrogance and hunger, the self-possessed look of a hungry predator.

"Act like this is real," he said, all the warning I got before Dain slammed me up against the wall, snarling. He heaved me up by my clothing, hands fisted in the cloth over my chest. My fucking feet weren't even touching the floor, my dress cutting up against my underarms. The back of his talons kissed my skin where they'd torn through the cloth, cold and deadly.

Despite the fact that I knew this was an act for the Court, it was hot as hell. I didn't need to fake the whimper, or the way my mouth fell open and eyes went round in a cross between fear and desire.