Page 174 of The Beautiful Dead

And neither did I.

He rocked against me, his hardness grinding against my thigh in a frantic, needy motion. I tightened my grip around his throat. His pulse pounded under my palm. His breath faltered—caught in my grasp.

His body trembled.

His nails bit into me, sharp little reminders that he loved this, loved me. Loved being on the edge of death, knowing I was the only one keeping him tethered to life.

Tears glistened in his eyes. He looked beautiful like this. Fragile and invincible, all at once.

Mine.

I exhaled, loosening my grip just enough to let the oxygen rush back into his lungs. “Patience,piccolo agnello.”

I stepped back as the doors slid open. Remi glared at me, flushed, panting, his eyes dark with lust and fury.

“Fucking tease,” he muttered.

My lips twisted in a smirk. I lived to unravel him. To push him to the very edge—and pull him back when it suited me. His ice-blue eyes lit up as I fastened his helmet. A ritual. Something that should have been mundane, but with him? It was an intimate interaction. Binding. Sacramental.

I threw my leg over my bike, glancing at him over my shoulder. He bit his bottom lip, the softest act in a boy who had never been soft. Then slid on behind me, his arms locked around me. My body shuddered, electrified at the contact.

He was a disease. A virus. A toxin.

And I wanted him to ruin me completely.

My Ninja growled beneath us, its roar reverberating off the concrete walls. The vibrations hummed through our bodies as I pulled back the throttle, the rush of speed intoxicating. Behind me, Remi buried his face against my neck as much as his helmet allowed, his grip tightening around my waist with every shift of the gears—silent, steady, utterly in sync.

The streets were quiet tonight. The city was still recovering from the war we had brought upon it. Still littered with the ghosts of the men we had killed, as the steel buildings blurred past us.

But all I saw was him. Remi—a creature carved from the same hunger that devoured me. Nothing else mattered. Not the past. Not the bodies. Not the city we had burned to the ground.

Only him.

Engraved in my bones. Fused to me at a molecular level. I’d had fixations before. But nothing like this. Nothing like him.

We pulled into a covered garage, the rain growing heavier as we dismounted.

“Elysian Chambers?” Remi grinned, a slow, creeping thing. “It’s time?”

“It is.”

He whistled, low, appreciative.

I pulled my helmet off, shaking out my hair. “I assume you came prepared?”

Remi scoffed. “I don’t go anywhere without my babies.”

His arm curled around my neck, reeling me in until our noses brushed. His breath, warm and teasing, ghosted over my lips—a whisper of what he knew I craved.

“Thank you,” he murmured, pressing a slow, deliberate kiss to my lips, his tongue swiping against mine just once before he pulled away. A taunt. A fucking torment.

My fingers snapped up, gripping his chin, forcing his gaze back to mine. “Don’t make me wait.”

He smirked, the kind of smirk that made my blood heat, that made me want to carve my name deeper into his skin. “Impatient, are we?”

The buzzer screeched as he pressed it, an offense in the quiet of the night. I gritted my teeth. I hated waiting. Hated being made to wait. I wasn’t the kind of man who waited on others. They followed my rules, or they paid the price.

Rain dripped from our clothes, pooling at our feet as the silence stretched, taut and electric.

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