Page 114 of The Beautiful Dead

Remi gasped against my lips, his fingers digging into my arms as if to reassure himself that I was real. Alive. Here. “Where are they?” he whispered.

I glanced around. Bodies littered the floor, but we were alone. Salvatore and his sons were gone. Fucking cowards.

A hiss filled the warehouse. Even in the darkness, I could see it. A toxic fog filled the air, crawling across the ground like a sentient being with a singular focus. Search and destroy.

“Remi… I…” I gasped with desperation and slammed my mouth against his again. If this was the last time I ever got to taste him, then I would swallow him whole. I’d take him into the darkest, deepest parts of me and never relinquish my hold.

My body fought against the encroaching darkness, but blood loss, exhaustion, and chemicals coiled around my limbs like chains.

My knees buckled. My vision blurred.

The last thing I felt was Remi’s warmth beside me before the void swallowed us whole.

I woketo the sensation of dried blood pulling at my skin. It cracked as I moved, stretched taut over bruises that pulsed in time with my heartbeat. My jeans were stiff, the scent of copper clinging to the air, thick and heavy, coating my tongue like a memory I’d never forget.

Everything hurt. Every wound, every cut, every bruise sang beneath my skin. A symphony of pain, sharp and unrelenting.

The sheets beneath me were too soft. Too clean. An affront to the ruin carved into my body.

A low groan beside me snapped my focus back to reality, yanking me from the crimson haze threatening to consume me.

Remi stirred. His muscles tensed, the lines of his face drawn tight with exhaustion. But when his dark, sharp gaze snapped to the corner of the room, I recognized the shift immediately.

He saw it, too. The camera. The unseen person was watching us like we were animals here for their entertainment.

We had to be in a Gallo safe house, it was the only logical place. A temporary holding cell, a place to keep us under surveillance. They wouldn’t have been stupid enough to bring us to their main compound, but I didn’t care. I would tear this place apart. Brick by brick. Burn it down and salt the fucking earth.

They touched him.

They would pay.

But right now, none of that mattered. Right now, all I saw was him.

Blood streaked his skin, dirt smeared across the ridges of his cheekbones. A masterpiece of violence. Of survival.

He was fuckingmine.

The word slammed into me, consuming and absolute. The last twenty-four hours or however long it had been since we were at the docks had been hell, and the only thing keeping me from unraveling was him. Breathing. Alive. Here.

I reached for him. My fingers tangled in his hair, yanking him closer. The strands slid through my blood stained fingers like silk, the contrast making something inside me tighten—a hunger, a sickness, an obsession.

Too soft. Too reverent.

Not enough.

It would never be enough. Remi barely had time to exhale before I shoved him back onto the mattress. His body tensed beneath me—a second of resistance as pain flashed over his features before he embraced it. Then he relaxed. Yielded to me.

Not in surrender.

In expectation.

In anticipation.

He’d been waiting for this. For me. A smirk ghosted across his lips, sharp and teasing. Daring me. “You think you own me?”

A growl rumbled deep in my chest. “I don’t think,piccolo agnello. I know.”

His breath hitched, his pupils blown wide; he licked his lips, watching me intently. He liked it.

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