Page 120 of Death is My Ride or Die

“The water cooler thing,” I said, pointing. “I popped it.”

“Fucking hell, cupcake.” Death snatched a towel off his bench and stormed toward me. My breath caught as he zoomed in, and I glided away to another part of the room. He was the night on foot: dark, dangerous, beautiful. I stared wide-eyed at his large hands, those long talons that gripped the rag as he got down on his knees to mop up the carpet. The jagged V-shaped scar on his back, the slight glimmer of his full-body tattoos now camouflaged underneath his skin.

It took me a moment to remember how to form sentences. “So . . .thisis your evil lair? I thought for sure there would be a dragon, bear traps, and swinging blades.”

“Why are you here?” He slammed the cooler down, and it stopped leaking before he faced me. My mouth went so dry I wish I’d utilized that water cooler while I had a chance.

I mean, sweet mother of God, he wasripped. And monstrous. Definitely monstrous.

Death gazed unflinchingly at me for a painful amount of time.

“I came here to talk to you,” I said, and my voice sounded hoarse. I cleared my throat. “About what happened in Ace’s library.”

“Pass.” Death stalked away, looped the weighted belt around his narrow waist again, and leapt back onto the pipe with a growl, pulling himself up furiously.

“Real mature,” I said, getting angry now. I marched across the basement to stand in front of him as he continued the pull-ups. “Don’t go to the mausoleum tomorrow.”

He ignored me.

“Please,”I said, feeling as though I had already reached a point of desperation. “Don’t do this. Don’t push me away.”

His mismatched eyes seared through me as he fully extended his arms from the pipe to slowly lower his body. I fought the urge to stare at the ridiculous show of muscles in his chiseled abs right above my face, not to mention the clear outline of hisappendagein his low-riding sweats.

“Isn’t it past your bedtime,cupcake?” Death asked in that deep, throaty voice.

I hated how his voice alone had an insane effect on me. Like he’d licked an imaginary path down my spine. “I’m not letting you go on a suicide mission.”

He leisurely dragged himself back up and continued his upper body workout. “That’s what you think this is? You think I’m trying to kill myself?”

“As far as I can tell, you had no problem accepting Ace’s vision.”

“Here she goes again, storytelling.”

“Tell me I’m wrong, then. Tell me you are doing everything in your power to protect yourself.”

“You’re confusing acceptance with passiveness.”

“Passive, like how you say you feel about me?” I challenged.

“I already told you how I felt in the greenhouse.” A grin split his cruel, fanged mouth. “Unfortunately for you, that offer has expired.”

From his cocky tone, I assumed that he’d satisfied his urges, and a horrible feeling churned my stomach. I glanced back at the rumpled sheets of the bed against the far wall and felt the green-eyed monster scratch its way out. “Wel, I guess old habits do die hard. Glad you took some of the edge off, at least.”

“Old habits die hard? What are you talking about?”

I crossed my arms over my chest, burning all over. “I was told you might be with a woman here.”

He paused at the top of his pull-up and laughed in a way that made my ears tingle. “Ah, so that’s why you broke my alarm system. You thought I was having sex.”

“I—”

“If I didn’t make it clear enough by my current location,” he said, switching his grip on the pipe for another variation of a pull-up, “I didn’t want to be bothered tonight. By anybody. But,” he continued, with a shit-eating grin, “now that I know how keen you were on getting in here and finding me with another woman, would you have joined in?”

If I could have, I would have breathed fire onto his half-naked, all-stupid body and laughed maniacally as he disintegrated into a pile of arrogant ash.

“You should feel flattered by my offer,” Death said, still performing pull-ups like an Olympic athlete. How many of those could he even do? “Would have been a lot of schooling on my part. You probably don’t even know what a hymen is.”

“Of course, I know what a hymen is.”

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