The Taking (Seven Deadly Sins #3)(2)
Author: Erin McCarthy

When Felix turned around to face her again, he had a snake in his hand, its long brown body wriggling in an attempt to escape, but its captor brandished it high in the air, chanting lowly. Camille hadn’t known about the snake, had never guessed one of the baskets was holding a living reptile, and she gasped. Not from fear, but from excitement. This was right. This was magic.

Felix’s hand moved the snake so skillfully that it looked as if it were dancing, its body moving to a rhythm its master created, a decadent, primitive form of expression. A glance down the length of Felix’s hard chest and past his trousers showed that his bare foot tapped out a beat, and with his free hand he pulled a stick from his pocket and hit the chest of drawers, the sharp rap of the rhythm loud in the closed room. The hand tapped out time, the snake did his dance, Felix’s foot went up and down, but the rest of him held still, a hard, lean body of control.

“Dance for me, Camille,” Felix commanded, his eyes trained upward.

She did, first swaying softly, hands in her loose hair, then closing her eyes and letting her body feel the rhythm.

It started in her feet and worked its way up to her hips, her shoulders, until she was careening to the staccato beat, feeling it from inside her, springing to life, wanting out, needing air to fan the flames.

“You have the power,” he told her. “The magic comes from you. Reach for it.”

It did. She could feel it, boiling up in her body, and she would have it. Camille opened her eyes as she moved, dancing in a pounding circle, her arms reaching up and out, sweat trickling down her back, and she loosened her chemise in a sharp tug at the ribbons, wanting the air, wanting the brush against her bare skin, wanting Felix to see her, wanting to connect with her very essence, the heart of who she was.

Felix brought the snake to her, and where she would normally have recoiled, Camille didn’t flinch or retreat, but danced for Felix while the reptile twisted and turned in front of her. They moved together, and she tore at her chemise with trembling, excited hands until she was completely naked, writhing like the snake, her fingers in her hair.

“You are ready,” Felix said.

She was. She was ready for whatever this night would bring.

Chapter One

Regan Henry wanted to leave her husband tonight. She wanted to leave him so desperately that the mere sight of him mingling across the room at his law firm’s Christmas party made her palms twitch, her heart race, and a cold trail of sweat trickle down between her br**sts.

Get out.That’s all she could think, and it took everything in her to not turn around and run from the room.

He wasn’t a bad guy. Some would call him the perfect man, the perfect husband. Attractive, successful, charming.

But perfection demanded perfection, and Regan was exhausted from the effort of trying to live up to that expectation.

When she realized he was making his way to her, a smile on his face as he adjusted his tie, she took a gulp from her glass of wine to fortify herself.

“You could try to smile,” he said, his own smile still in place, the words light and teasing. To anyone around them, it would seem as if he were trying to cheer her up, include her, but Regan heard the censure behind it.

“I have a bit of a headache,” she said, which was the truth. Her temples were throbbing, and a dull pain jabbed above and below her eyes. The room was cold, and she was wearing a sleeveless black cocktail dress. Between the chill and her own stress, every muscle in her body was tense.

“Do you think maybe you should lay off the wine then?” He reached out and took her glass. “That’s your third.”

She wasn’t sure if it was or not, but she felt compelled to argue. “It’s only my second.”

He gave a laugh, which to Regan’s practiced ear held no true amusement. “It’s okay. I’m not criticizing. I knew you were a lush when I met you.”

His voice had a quality when he was displeased that Regan had come to think of as humming. It sounded normal, pleasant, teasing, to most people, but when it took on that light, singsong quality, she knew he was unhappy with her, and God, she was so tired of having her every move, every word, every decision scrutinized and found lacking.

“Three glasses of wine do not make me a lush.”

“So now you’re agreeing it’s three?” He finished off her wine himself, and tucked her hair behind her ear, flicking a finger over the pearl earring he had given her for their first anniversary that October. “Why didn’t you wear your hair up? I like it best that way.”

It was nothing, something a thousand husbands might say to their wives as mere flirtation or playful pouting, but to Regan it was the latest in a litany of disappointments, accusatory glares, and criticisms veiled as suggestions from the man she was supposed to recognize was so much wiser than her. Patronizing words he dropped one by one, like stones of Puritan punishment, letting them settle onto her chest, robbing her of breath, crushing her slowly and painfully. Word after word had pressed, piling on top of one another, paralyzing in their heaviness, rendering her incapable of speech or protest, unable to defend herself, until she knew it was time to leave or lose her voice in her marriage forever.

Shifting her hair out of his touch, she masked her shudder as his fingers fell from her skin. Every touch, every invasion of her personal space, had grown more difficult to endure with each passing day, and it was hard to remember why she had married him, how she could have ever thought herself happy. There was no affection left for him, only the keening and urgent need to flee before she cracked, and lost control.

She was perilously close to it at this goddamn cocktail party.

He rendered a long-suffering sigh next to her. “Fine. Don’t talk to me. Don’t wear your hair up because I like it. Just be a bitch, I don’t care.”

Regan said nothing, digging her fingernails into her palms. She hoped they bled. She hoped breaking open her own flesh and feeling the sharp sting of pain would keep her from screaming, would hold the persistent tears at bay.

“But before you prance over to the bar and get another glass of wine, which I have no doubt you’re about to do, could you put yourself out long enough to do your duty as a hostess at this party?”

Turning her head to stare at her husband, taking in his good-looking and proportionate features, his tidy and stylish blond hair, his elegant and expensive suit, she waited for him to finish. He would tell her which VIP he wanted her to chat with, which pet project of which partner’s wife she was supposed to volunteer to assist with, what invitation for which party she was to extend.