Page 101 of Ride With Me

“Fourteen,” I was caught on the number, on the way I couldn’tseethe weight of it in the innocence of his face.

“Warren.” He pushed himself to his feet, and some small part of me wondered if I needed to move. The knife was still in his hand, and I’d seen what he could do with it. “I want to trust you, Warren. I want…” Benji paused, and the shiver that trailed through his body seemed to span the room and catch along my ribs, making my heart skip a beat. “Iwantyou.”

“Why did you get into my truck, Benji?”

I stayed still as he stepped toward me, didn’t run when he stopped a few feet in front of me.

“I wanted to get Mitchy out of town so I could kill him somewhere that he wouldn’t be found. Your truck was unlocked, so I knew I could use you. But Warren…” he looked at the knife he held, and his brows drew together. “I was just going to catch a ride for a few hundred miles and then call Mitchy. I didn’t know when I got into that truck that I’d find you. I didn’t know I’dwantyou this much.”

He looked up at me then, and his expression was so raw, so open. I could see that chill I’d witnessed in the building earlier… but beneath that was the vulnerability I’d seen in the truck when we’d first met. It was all there, mixed together into an amalgamation of something beautifully broken.

“Benji… you’re a killer. I?—”

“Nothing has ever felt as good as killing until I met you.” He interrupted me. The sincerity in his voice nearly brought me to my knees. “The way I feel when you hold me down, when you use me… Fuck, Warren, I can just let go. I can leave my head and justfeel. I’ve spent so much of my life feeling like there was a part of me that was empty, a part of me that was broken. But you fill it up and make mefloat.”

The knife in his hand fell to the ground beside him, and he turned his empty palms up to me.

Like an offering—like he was giving me those hands that were so capable of taking a life, that I’d justseenkill a man.

Logically, it made no sense that the gesture would pull at something in my chest, twist something behind my ribs and nearly steal my breath away.

Then again, logically, I should have called the cops the second I got back to the room instead of showering off and waiting for him.

Logically, I shouldn’t have been turned on listening to akillertell me that they wanted me, that I could take them higher than their urges, higher than the sensation of taking a life.

Impulse control… I’d never,everhad very good impulse control. And there was a reason I was more comfortable driving alone with the night sky as company. A part of me had always felt empty, always felt broken—I wasn’t a killer like Benji, but I wasn’t sure I was a good person, either.

I definitely wasn’t sure I was when I stepped forward and cupped his jaw, brushing my thumb across his lower lip in a slow gesture that made him shiver.

“Can I trust you?” It was a simple question—could I trust him not to kill me? Could I trust him to give me this part of himself… Could I trust him to be clever enough not to get caught so webothwent down for his crimes?

Could I trust him to be mine the way I’d wanted him to be since the second I first laid eyes on him, and apparently the way Istillwanted him to be even though I knew he was a monster?

He turned his head and brushed his lips against my palm. “I want you to. I can see it in you, Warren… that same blank space that I see in me. We could fill each other up—wefit.” He whispered the last word like he was singing a litany to a god he’d never believed in until he looked at me, and I shivered.

“I’ve never wanted to kill anyone, Benji.”

“But you liked watching, didn’t you?”

Was I that transparent? Was he seeing things about me that I wasn’t even ready to admit to myself? Because yes, I had.

Ihadliked watching.

And I didn’t know what to do with that information other than run from it or accept it, and I already knew which I was going to do.

“I likeyou. I don’t know why, but I do.” I finally murmured, because it was the only answer I had. It didn’t make sense.

None of this made sense, but maybe it didn’t have to.

Benji dropped to his knees in front of me, and there was something sosereneon his face. So trusting and open—vulnerable in direct contrast to the malign wickedness I’d seen in the building.

“I’ve never wanted anyone to see me before, Warren. But you? I wantyouto have me. All of me.” His dark eyes were the night sky when he looked up at me. Endless and open. Spanning for what felt like eternity.

Capable of making me feel at home, at peace.

And if I had to admit that seeing someone who’d killed a man on his knees for me—someone who was obviously capable of something as powerful as ending a life without blinking an eye—turned me on…

Well.

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