Page 98 of Death is My Ride or Die

The cold, silver loop piercing on his lip brushed my bottom lip, and his tongue followed in a slow caress that sent chills throughout me. I couldn’t breathe. The back of my dress clung hotly to my skin. The fine line between fear and arousal had burned away a long time ago.

“Don’t you dare kiss me,” I whispered.

“I appreciate your faith in my restraint.”

Then he kissed me anyway. His lips brushed mine with a soft, velvet touch, his tongue skimming the seam of my lips in a gentle nudge for more. I opened for a tiny taste. He grabbed my jaw with a gloved hand and deepened the kiss with a slow, erotic caress of his tongue, and I met him halfway, chasing the high. The flavor of him was too addictive, a forbidden nectar awakening a dark, carnal need.

Death broke apart from me and wet his bottom lip. “You kiss like a slut.”

I grabbed his shirt, light electrifying my palms. I turned and shoved him into the bookshelf. Death slammed into the shelves with a groan, books raining down. I took a step back with my chin lifted, my arms to either side of me as my power flickered away.

Leaning back against the broken wooden shelves, Death breathed raggedly and watched me from under half-lowered lids like a taunt.“Ow,”he purred with delight. “If you wanted to make a mess, you could have said so . . . ”

An evil, devastatingly beautiful grin crossed his mouth as I charged toward him. He grabbed me as I lunged at him and crushed me to his strong frame. We made out at a feverish level until he stifled a deep groan that made my knees wobble.

Flickers of images darted in front of my closed eyes, memories like colorful lattice reaching out to me from him. I pushed them away to make a new memory. Death hoisted me off the ground and hooked my legs around his waist. I locked my arms around his neck as he carried me to the couch and sat down so that I was straddling his lap.

His legs were long and powerful between mine, his skin burning hot through the cotton material of his sweatpants. Breaking away again, Death arched his head back against the couch and tilted my body forward. His gloved hands dragged up the back of my thighs to the curve of my bottom beneath my dress.

“You naughty little cupcake,” he growled in a deep, rough voice. “No shorts indeed.”

Our lips kept at it, our fingers gripping each other’s clothes. He kissed a trail up my neck as I bit back a moan that escaped with a gasp as he sucked on the sensitive flesh. As he dragged the tip of his tongue to my collarbone, I lowered myself flatter into his lap and could feel the large swell of him pressed against my inner thigh. The film of what could happen next played out before my eyes, and doubt swam to the surface of my consciousness.

I braced my hands on Death’s shoulders, pinning him back against the sofa.

Death looked up at me with wild, lust-filled eyes. At the sight of my face, he instantly sobered and dropped his gloved hands to the sides of my knees. “You all right?”

“I can’t.” In my heart, this didn’t feel right. What he wanted and what I wanted were physically the same, but our emotional needs were so imbalanced. My feelings had yet to be reciprocated the way I needed, and I realized they might never be.

Suddenly, I felt so small and awkward, enclosed in my own inexperience. “I don’t want to get things out of my system,” I said slowly so that I didn’t cry. I felt everything so intensely, so fully, and sometimes I couldn’t help but burst into tears. “I’m not . . . I’m not that type of girl.”I want to be loved in a moment like this. “I want more than this. More than what you would give me right now.”

Death went quiet, staring at me for a long beat before he put his hands on my waist and set me down on the couch beside him. It felt like we were a mile apart.

“Say something,” I whispered. “Are you mad?”

“No.” Death raked a hand through his hair and dropped his arm over the back of the couch. “I know better. I know you’re a certain kind of girl.”

“Clearly I’m not because I all but attacked you.” Hadn’t he felt me dissolving into his touch? “I don’t want to regret anything intimate. I want . . . I just . . . ”

“You want to feel reciprocated.” He answered the unsaid, reading me like a book. “You need this kind of stuff to feel special.”

“Yeah,” I said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.

“Then I’m glad we stopped when we did,” Death said. “Emotional stuff, I’m shit at it. Everything besides anger and basic instinct feels so manual, so unnatural, as if I have to learn it all over again. I can’t give you what you need. Not without hurting you along the way.” A wave of anger flickered over his features with an upsurge of something suppressed. “Don’t you understand that I’ve kept myself from you not for my sake but for yours? That it’s the only selfless thing I can remember doing in centuries? If you only knew what I’ve done to be where I am right now, reigning beside Lucifer as his dutiful prince. If you’d only seen me take the lives I have, all for sport. If you knew the friendships and trust I’ve broken. I’ve learned the value of shutting everything out, shuttingmyselfout. I’d break all my rules for you, Faith. Just don’t be surprised if you don’t like what you see once we’re finally introduced.”

I realized I was clutching at my chest. It felt like I’d had the wind knocked out of me.

Death rose to his imposing height and extended out a gloved hand. “Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the roof. I want to show you my wings.”

XXVI

I placed my hand in his, and our surroundings washed away. The roof of his apartment building towered over New York City with a breathtaking view of the skyline at night. I expected the cold air to be freezing all the way up here in November, but the temperature was the same as inside, and there was no wind.

“Why isn’t it cold?” I asked, turning away from the view.

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