Page 113 of The Beautiful Dead

The bullet punched through his throat. Blood and tissue exploded outward from the proximity of the shot. The flash of gunfire illuminated wide, horrified eyes. But I didn’t hang around to savour the kill and watch the life drain from him. I had a singular focus. Every cell in my body drove me forward, toward Remi.

I spun around and fired a round of shots in the direction of heavy thudding boots closing in on me. Another body crashed to the ground, skidding to a stop against a girder.

Blood thickened the air. Viscous and metallic as it coated my tongue with every inhale, tasting like sweet poison as it filled my lungs.

My monster roared as another Gallo fell. And another. They fell like flies. If this was the level of training they gave their men, wiping them off the face of the earth was going to be easier than I thought.

I moved like a phantom, precise and unrelenting, my world narrowing to the cold press of steel and the warm spray of blood.

Footsteps scrambled to my right. A coward hiding behind one of the thick pillars. I pivoted, catching the faintest outline of his form. He clutched his leg, blood seeping between his fingers where a ricocheted bullet had caught him.

His breath hitched. “P—please?—”

I silenced his pathetic pleas with the brutal press of my thumb into the open wound, pushing the bullet lodged in his flesh deeper. His scream echoed around us, as thick claret welled around my thumb. Delicious chills raced over my skin, making the hairs on my nape stand on end.

I smirked as his eyes widened. He could see the monster in me. Reflected in my eyes. “The keys,” I ordered, voice calm against the hysteria. “Now.”

His hand trembled as he yanked the ring free and thrust it toward me. I snatched it from his grasp, my fingers closing around his throat in a slow, deliberate squeeze. His racing pulse fluttered beneath my fingertips.

“You’re the one who locked me up.” My voice was almost gentle. A lie from a sinner’s lips. “Tell me. Did you enjoy it?”

He whimpered. I tightened my grip. His hands left his bleeding leg to claw at my arm. A manic grin curled my lips as pain sliced into my skin where he shredded it with his nails.

His body spasmed once. Then he went limp. Eyes glassy, unseeing. Euphoria rushed through my veins, chasing away the exhaustion. I discarded him, stepping over his corpse. Forgetting him like the nothing he was.

Remi—My eyes shot straight to him. The vice that had sunk its teeth into my heart retreated. He was watching me through his dark lashes, ice-blue eyes, almost phosphorus in the dim light.

My Remi smiled up at me and licked his lips. His heady gaze raked over my bruised and bleeding chest with a visceral hunger that went straight to my cock.

He was the only person I would ever kill for again. He was everything to me. My solitude. My home. My darkness made whole.

Mirrored souls, carved from the same depths of hell.

I crouched behind him, sawing at the zip ties with the sharp edge of the cuffs that had bound my wrists. My fingers brushed against his wrist, lingering a second too long on the bleeding flesh, feeling the depth of the lacerations.

His blood coated my fingertips. I brought them to my lips, sucking them clean one by one. Remi’s bright eyes hooded as he watched them slide into my mouth.

“You took your time,” he murmured, voice hoarse but steady.

A huffed laugh caught in my throat, and I brushed the pad of my thumb across his bottom lip. “Had to make sure they learned their lesson first.”

Remi’s lips twitched. But his gaze flickered past me. Tracking movement in the shadows. I turned just as a Gallo soldier staggered to his feet, gun shaking in his hands.

A low growl curled from my throat as I stepped in front of Remi. Protecting what was mine with my life. The soldier barely had time to blink before I pulled the trigger.

The bullet tore through his skull, splattering brain matter across the ground and silencing him before he could make another foolish mistake.

I reached out, tucking a stray lock of hair behind Remi’s ear. His breath hitched, and he licked his lips. My eyes traced the slow progression of the tip of his tongue.

His hands trembled—whether from exhaustion, relief, or something deeper, I didn’t know. But it didn’t matter. Because the moment I wrenched the last restraint free, the second his hands were no longer bound?—

He surged forward. His fingers clutched at my bloodied skin. And his mouth was on me, lips melding to mine, making me gasp as hunger parched my throat. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t sweet. It was heat and desperation. Teeth and tongues. A brutal claim.

A promise.

A vow.

My fingers curled into his hair, dragging him closer, devouring him. Blood slicked our lips and stained our skin, the taste of copper and something sweeter lingering between us.

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