Ruin & Rule (Pure Corruption MC #1)

I was braless. I guessed my cup size was a full C.

Even my nipple was tattooed.

My heart bucked as a body I didn’t remember taunted me with such vibrancy—such experience and clues. Who was I to do such a thing?

The tattoo encapsulated something tugging deep and painful in my heart. It meant something. It meant everything. But I couldn’t remember what.

The design was a world within a world within a looking glass within a perfect mirrored pond. To the interloper I’d become, I appreciated the artisan lines of the feathering and shadows. The detailing was superb as well as entirely eye-catching.

But it was more than that. So, so much more.

The throb in my soul knew what it was, but nothing burst forth or let me guess.

To me, the perfect stranger, it was nothing more than a beautiful feather with cobalt-blue forget-me-nots, words intertwined with vines, and interlocking images so perfectly synced, I couldn’t tell them apart.

But it was my right side that made my heart pound in horror.

Burns.

Mottled tight and shiny skin graced my entire right side, almost a mirror image of the gorgeous tattoo on my left. Where beauty was inked, ugliness was stretched.

I waited for some memory of being in a fire. After all, the scars hinted at a terribly traumatic event in my past. But nothing. Not a lick of a flame or the scent of smoke.

My lungs worked hard, dealing with the amazement of my strange form. I expected a visceral reaction—or at the very least a minor freak-out over the bizarreness of my body. But the damn calmness never left, keeping me levelheaded and clear.

I didn’t know who I was, but soon… soon I hoped the story on my skin would make sense.

The new burn on my arm flared bright with pain. Old burns and new.

Is there significance in that, or am I clutching at straws?

I was a coin with two sides: scars and stars. Skin grafts and tattoos. Stunning and hideous.

Rustling occurred to my left and right—the other women stopped gawking at my uniqueness, rushing to follow suit and obey. My attention faded from my scars, back to my tattoo, drinking it in.

“What does it feel like?”

I tensed, grasping his fingers until sweat and heat erupted into a bonfire between our locked palms. “Like flames. Endless tiny teeth of hell.”

“Can you stand it? To have it all done?”

A tear squeezed from my eye as the needle skittered over a bony rib. The pain was indescribable. Awful and tear-inducing but… addictive, too. A peculiar kind of agony that soothed my shattered soul.

I willed the pain to do what other things had failed to.

Looking first at my scars that carried the weight of my sins, I then looked at my virgin skin and murmured, “Yes. I can stand it. Because I’ve withstood so much more.”

The memory flickered luminescent like a lightning bolt, only to fade just as quickly.

No!

Who was I? What had I lived through to warrant such an incredible piece of body art all in the remembrance of… what?

I was so caught up in the tattoo, I didn’t notice the women undressed before me.

A slap to my cheek sent my eyes soaring upward, locking onto my green-eyed nightmare. “And the rest. You’re not done.”

My heart raced having him so close. He reeked of sweat and blood. I inhaled hard, drugging myself on him. Did I know him from another time and place or was that entirely false? How could I describe the overwhelming sensation of recognizing him?

How do I feel as if I’ve loved you and hated you and ruined you in another time?

When I didn’t move or speak, his large fingers went to my waistband. Never taking his eyes from mine, he undid the button, then the zipper, before placing his hands on my hips and tugging the denim away.

My skin ignited beneath his touch, zigging and zagging with flames.

His jaw remained locked, face tight. He gave no hint of being affected by my presence or touching me. I hated the lie he projected. I wanted the man who’d dropped his guard in the battlefield. The man who’d looked at me like I was priceless and scarcely believed I’d been found.

His eyes caressed my body, his nostrils flaring as the jeans puddled to my ankles, displaying the rest of my tattoo. I was wrong to think it finished on my hipbone; it continued down the left side of my buttock and thigh, all the way down my leg to trace around my ankle and finish on my pinky toe. The ink followed a similar path to the scars trailing down my right leg to my foot. I looked as if I’d stepped from fire and straight into a waterfall of color, stained by both—forever changed.

I stood naked before him, my chest rising and falling. My skin alive and tingling beneath his inspection.

It seemed whoever I was, I had an aversion to underwear. Just as I was braless, I was panty-less, too.

He didn’t move. I couldn’t move.

His hands rested on my hips, fingers digging hard into my flesh as he devoured me with his gaze. The connection between us hummed, dulling the room and inhabitants, placing us in a tight bubble of crackling lust.

I do know you.

How do I know you?

My heart flurried the longer we stared. Vulnerability spread warm between us, smothered by confusion.

His breathing turned shallow, his body once again curving toward mine—as if invisible threads bound us together.

“Kill.” The voice was faraway. “Kill! For fuck’s sake, Prez!”

The man holding me blinked, snapping the link between us. The warmth in his gaze turned to snow, shutting me out completely.

Stepping back, he cleared his throat. “Shit.” He swayed a little on his feet.