Page 44 of The Beautiful Dead

I had never reacted to another person like this before. Like I was the lock, and he was the key. We connected. Complemented. Craved. A perfect, devastating fit.

His tattooed hands landed on my shoulders, heat and ice bleeding through the fabric of my hoodie. I felt him everywhere, even where he didn’t touch, his presence sinking into the marrow of my bones.

But my hand didn’t stop moving. The pencil scratched across the thick page, desperate to keep up with the image in my mind—trying, aching to bring it to life.

Domino leaned in, his stubbled cheek brushing against mine. “That looks familiar,” he mused, voice humming against my skull.

I swallowed. It was only a faint echo of the night before, twisted and aged with time. “It does. But?—”

“But?”

Before I could finish, he spun me around, and I lost every thought. My vision filled with him.

Black sweatpants hung low on his hips, sharp grooves of his Adonis belt leading to the dark trail of hair vanishing beneath the waistband. My breath hitched. My memory hit hard, transporting me—the feel of him on my tongue, thick and heavy, the salty taste of him lingering.

I dragged my gaze up his torso, devouring the black ink carved into his skin. Every line of his tattoos was a story. A map. A labyrinth of chaos and death I wanted to trace with my tongue.

Silver bars gleamed in the tight buds of his nipples, twin accents against the smooth expanse of his chest. A sword inked in bold strokes lay between his pecs—mirroring the silver one around his neck—its tip kissing his skin like a silent promise of violence.

A woman’s face emerged from the hilt, ink bleeding into wild, tangled branches that clawed their way up his throat, consumingevery inch of bare skin. The dark lines wove seamlessly into the sharp cut of his jaw, as if she were screaming from the depths of him—trapped, lost, and forever bound to his flesh.

Art. He was art—living, breathing, untouchable. And I wanted to ruin him, to carve my obsession into his skin, to paint with him in strokes of blood and bruises. To make him mine in a way no one else ever could.

“See something you like?”

His lips twitched—almost a smirk. Almost. Then it was gone, leaving only the unrelenting weight of his gaze.

I nodded. Shamelessly.

“Now, are you going to answer my question?”

“What was it?”

“The ‘but’ about your drawing?”

“Oh. Umm.”

My fingers twisted. The pencil slipped from my grasp, tumbling to the floor with a quiet snap, shattering the graphite inside. Domino moved before I could bend to retrieve it as it rolled across the floor. His fingers found my chin, tilting my head back.

He looked at me with those intense eyes.Reallylooked at me. Like he was peeling back my ribs, prying them open to see what lay underneath. Like he already knew what he’d find.

The truth coiled at the base of my throat, thick and cloying. Unspoken. Undeniable. I had spent my life ignoring this part of me. Shoving it down. Keeping it hidden in the dark recesses of my mind. But he had dragged it into the light.

Watching him play with life and death—like it meant nothing, like it was his to control—had unlocked something inside me. And I wanted more.

I wanted to know what it felt like to bathe in someone’s blood as the light faded from their eyes. To hold a life in my hands—todecide if they deserved to keep it. To feel a knife sink into flesh, steel parting skin, blood welling in thick, sticky ribbons.

Would muscle fibers fight me when I cut into them? Would they resist, sinewy and strong? Would fresh bone splinter as I carved through it, creating something beautiful from its fragility?

What would it be like to peel flesh from bone, to strip muscle away with deliberate precision like an artist sculpting his masterpiece? To drape the skin like an angel’s tattered wings, a grotesque and unholy offering. To take what is raw, macabre, and broken and twist it into something hauntingly, devastatingly beautiful.

To bring to life my art by creating it from life? I exhaled, the taste of unspoken confessions heavy on my tongue.

Domino’s fingers tightened. “Remi,” he murmured, voice dark and knowing.

He saw me, and for the first time, I didn’t want to hide.

Domino eradicated all the space between us and stepped between my thighs, tipping my head back further until his lips brushed mine. “I see you, mypiccolo agnello.”

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