Page 174 of Beyond the Temptation: Vol 2

His mouth inches toward me. His cinnamon breath blows against my skin. He’s so close. Dangerously close, in fact. No good can come from his lips that are drifting to my ear. “Because this is your freebie. No one gets those. But today, I simply don’t have the time to deal with you. The next time I say move, and you don’t?—”

“What? What are you going to do, tough guy?” I cut him off, tired of listening to his empty threats. My finger swipes through the tip of the flame and then around the metal of the lighter. It’s hot enough to sear my point into his skin with a scorched smiley face. The scar above my right knee is proof that the temperature doesn’t have to be nearly as hot as this is right now to burn him into submission.

“I’m going to chase you down like the prey you are, and when I catch you, and I will, you’re going to pay with that smart mouth of yours.”

The familiar cool metal of a gun presses against my cheek and pushes my face closer to him. His tongue slides up my neck. “Understand, little fox?”

I don’t move a damned muscle. This isn’t the first and won’t be the last time someone puts a gun to my head, but this time is different. I didn’t expect him to pull a weapon on me. He looks like he had an entire bag of disgruntled chips on his shoulder, not just one. But the fact he carries a gun? No, I didn’t expect him to be packing.

“Now, you’re going to shut the fuck up, be a good girl for me, and do as I say. Nod if you understand,” he instructs in such a seductive voice that it’s hard to concentrate on anything other than him. It wasn’t a request; it was an order. I want to deny him and kick him in the balls instead; that’s what I should do. But it’s impossible to completely ignore the way my body instantly aches for him to use that voice again. My thighs quiver, imagining the possibilities this situation we found ourselves in could lead to. I’m not stupid, though. At the end of the day, this man has a gun to my head, and even if I could overpower and outrun him, there’s no escaping the bullet that no doubt lies within the chamber with my name on it.

As the desire I desperately want to stop courses through my traitorous veins, I don’t breathe a word. If I open my mouth, it’s hard to tell what would come out. So, I do as he expects and nod mechanically.

“That’s right. Now, fucking move!”

My feet happily shuffle away from the gun, and I run down the hall in the opposite direction.

CHAPTER TWO

LO

Run, little fox, run.

Watching her run for me is a pleasant surprise. Yes, technically, she’s running away from me…but…eh, they’re the same in my book. The violence that radiated from her almost made me hard, but I held it together. Normally, I wouldn’t have pulled a gun so quickly, but I was running out of time and needed to leave, even though the only thing I wanted to do was see how far she would let me push her before she broke. Her time will come, and I’ll be the happiest man alive when it does.

When she lit the lighter and didn’t flinch as the flame danced along her knuckles, the heat no doubt burning her skin, I got harder than steel in seconds. She didn’t think I could see what she was doing, but our height difference gave me the perfect view. Not that I am a mind reader or anything like that, but I know her type. She is very much the kind of woman who lives by the mantra fuck around and find out. The possibility she didn’t give a damn if I could see what she was up to while she did it, daring me to stop her, excited me further. There is one thing I’m certain of, her strong will is going to bend for me. By the time I am finished with her, I won’t use force or even ask permission. She will beg for me to break her.

I was disappointed that she only had a lighter on her, but the simple willpower to stand up to someone as big as I am was impressive nonetheless. I can’t even remember the last person to tell me ‘no,’ much less someone who is such a beautiful, violent thing. She almost got off the hook simply due to my lack of time, but I need more. More glares. More violence. More pain. More her.

“What took you so long, slacker?” Ren says in his naturally harsh tone, flipping the ashes off his smoke as I approach him from behind. He loathes tardiness and is always on time himself. He doesn’t bother turning to face me as he looks at the city below us. We’ve met on this rooftop for years now. One would think this would be the worst location, given its openness and the countless people we piss off on the daily, but thus far, no one has been brave enough to rain bullets down on us.

“You know. Traffic,” I lie, grabbing his cigarette and taking a drag. He doesn’t need to know who held me up. Our mutual interests are what keeps us going, but those aren’t the only things we have in common. Knowing Ren as well as I do, there’s no denying he would find my little fox fascinating, too. I don’t intend to share her with anyone, especially him.

“Whatever. I tell you a time that is about fifteen or so minutes earlier than when I need to meet.”

“How’s that working out for you?” I ask, blowing out a cloud of smoke and snuffing the cigarette out on the brick beside his foot.

“You’re still five minutes early, so I’d say pretty fucking well, wouldn’t you?”

“Ren?” I ignore his question, prop my foot onto the ledge, and lean against my thigh in a similar fashion to his stance.

“Sup?”

“Now I’ll know the time I’m really supposed to be somewhere and just end up dragging ass until I’m late.”

“I never keep the time increments the same. I always change it. Have for a long time. Truthfully, I figured you would’ve caught on by now, but you haven’t.”

“Asshole,” I say, eyeing him in my periphery.

“Traffic isn’t going to stop you from doing what you have to do tonight, is it?” he asks, making air quotations as he says “traffic.”

I scoff, “Really, Ren? This is our life’s work. I won’t stop until every last one of those bastards chokes on their blood as I ram my blade through their pathetic throats.”

“Good. We don’t have time for distractions.” His muscles tense as he speaks through gritted teeth, “They took too much from us. From everyone. I can’t stand the thought of them breathing the same air we do. They have to die!” His fists ball up, and his breaths are uneven. He’s worrying about me fucking up our plans, but if he doesn’t get this under control, he’s going to be the one whose mind is full of distractions. He is right, though; we can’t have anything clouding our judgment.

I put my hand on his back to ground him. We all have our reasons for doing what we do, but for Ren, the pain lingers just beneath the surface as if his wound never fully healed. What happened to us isn’t really something anyone can come back from, though. Our life is filled with agony and violence, constantly leaving us with a hard decision. Live or die? We choose to survive by consuming the hate because if we don’t, it will eat us alive from the inside out. Ren and I swallow our dose of savagery like the mother fuckers we are and have been dealing with the side effects of our self-inflicted chaos ever since. He’s just as fucked up as I am, which is one of the reasons we get along so well. If one of us goes nuclear, the other is there to meticulously detonate the other. We have always been there for each other and always will be. Nothing will ever come between us. “They will, Ren. They might think they like violence, but I promise you, I fucking love it!”

“Yeah. Yeah. You are a pretty sick fuck, Lo,” he states, unclenching his fists and squeezing them tighter. His veins pop out of his skin more than usual, and I can almost count the beats as his pulse thunders through them.

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