Page 43 of The Beautiful Dead

The memory burned, seared into my skin, into my lungs, into the very marrow of my bones. I had never felt more alive. I should have felt shame, fear,something.

Instead, my fingers itched for my sketchbook, my body humming with the need to recreate it—every detail, every drop of claret, every shadowed curve of Domino’s face as he watched me fall apart for him.

The image was so vivid I swore I could reach out and touch it. I could still taste it—the sharp copper of blood. The cloying scent of fear. The underlying, all-consuming lust that had burned through me like wildfire.

Domino was in my veins now. A poison I’d swallowed willingly. A sickness I’d never want to cure.

I’d give him anything he asked for.

The hot water of the shower unraveled the tight knots in my muscles, but it did nothing for the itch beneath my skin. It had spread. Crawling through my veins, burrowing into my marrow—a wildfire that no amount of water could extinguish.

It wasn’t just in my fingers anymore. It had traveled to my brain, clawing at my skull, demandingrelease. I dragged on a pair of clean jeans and snatched a black hoodie off the chair. Thesoft fabric ghosted over my face, and I inhaled deeply—Smoke. Leather. Blood. His scent. His claim.

Domino hadn’t just marked me with his words, his hands, his presence. He marked me with everything. His clothes. His space. The lingering phantom of him, wrapping around me even in my solitude.

And I let it.

I didn’t question the madness taking hold of me, didn’t fight the pull of it. What was the point? I’d already lost. The likelihood that neither of us would survive this didn’t deter me.

To walk in the shadows with him—even for a little while—would be worth every consequence.

The apartment was too quiet when I stepped out of my room, sketchbook clutched tightly against my chest. The kitchen felt foreign, sleek, and untouched. The expensive coffee maker on the counter looked like something out of a catalog—beautiful yet useless to me.

I knew how to survive.

Not indulge.

A spoonful of instant coffee in a mug filled with hot water was the extent of my knowledge. Domino might come from a different world than me, but surely, he must have some? I searched the cupboards and the hallway closet. Nothing.

“Fucking, fuck.”

The curse slipped from my lips as I slumped against the counter, forehead pressed to the cool marble. My body vibrated with restless energy. The hunger to create gnawed at me, a primal need that threatened to consume me whole.

There was only one way to quiet it. I needed to breathe life into death. To pull the images from my mind, let them take form, give them flesh.

I dragged the stool across the floor, the sound sharp, jarring in the silence. My sketchbook fell open, thick pages whispering as I flipped to a blank one.

The moment my pencil met the paper, the chaos in my head stilled. Lines bled from graphite. The delicate curve of a human skull took shape beneath my fingertips, the shadows hollowing out its endless, empty sockets. I lost myself in the details. The cracks spider-webbing along brittle bone. The jagged teeth, fractured and broken. The remnants of skin, clinging in patches, half-obscured by the torn plastic of a trash bag in a moonlit alleyway.

A masterpiece of decay.

But something was missing.

My fingers tightened around the pencil, my breath slowing as I stared down at the page. The scene was almost perfect—but not quite enough. It wasn’t just death that fascinated me. It was the way it happened.

The moment a soul departed, when flesh caved beneath bone, when blood spilled in thick, sticky rivers. That sweet, sacred violence.

A sigh shuddered through me, my heart kicking against my ribs. Maybe I couldn’t capture it with just my hands.

Maybe I needed to see it.

Totouchit.

To create something real.

“What are you drawing?” Domino’s low rasp ghosted over my skin, sending a violent shudder down my spine.

His presence swallowed the room, thick and inescapable. The air shifted, molecules rearranging to make space for him—as if he were the center of gravity itself. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, goosebumps rippling down my arms.

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