Page 8 of Your Devoted Monster
"At being honest," Gabriel corrected, his hand tightening slightly on Ezra's throat. "Everyone else wants you to pretend you're healing. I want you exactly as you are."
"And what's that?" The words came out strangled, challenging even now. "A fucking mess who gets hard thinking about dying?"
"Mine," Gabriel said simply, and felt the word settle in his chest like truth.
He'd watched it happen—every disappointing hookup, every failed attempt to recreate that night. Had stood in Ezra's closet while some random meathead fumbled through the world's most pathetic attempts at domination. Had lain under Ezra's bed last month while a tattooed tryhard grunted away on top of him, and Gabriel had wanted to reach up through the mattress and snap the man's neck just for being so inadequate.
He’d nearly broken cover a dozen times when Ezra's hookups failed to give him what he so obviously needed.
But patience was Gabriel's greatest skill. Patience and observation. He'd learned everything about Ezra in those three years. What he needed. What he craved. What no one else could give him.
Gabriel ran his thumb over Ezra's pulse point, feeling it hammer. "Every man you brought home. Every dangerous stranger. You were looking for me."
Ezra's whole body tensed in defiance. "Maybe I just have a death wish."
"No." Gabriel pressed closer, caging him in completely, letting Ezra feel exactly how hard he was. "You don't want endings. You want the moment right before. The edge. Thealmost."
He punctuated each word with increasing pressure on Ezra's throat, watching the side of Ezra's face—the way it flushed, lips parting, hips twitching back against Gabriel involuntarily. Everything about him was alive in ways those other men could never appreciate.
Because other men would never see the other possibility. They’d never appreciate how bright Ezra shone, because they’d never think about snuffing that light out. Pleasure and death, inextricably linked.
Gabriel's control slipped slightly, his grip tightening more than he'd intended. Ezra's breath hitched, turning to a wheeze, and Gabriel felt that familiar rush—the power of holding a life in his hands. But this time it was different. This time he didn't want the stillness that came after. He wanted this—the gasping, the fighting, theliving.
He forced himself to ease up slightly. Not yet. Not when there was so much more to explore.
"You know what I wanted to do every time I watched you with them?" Gabriel asked, keeping his voice conversational even as his hand stayed wrapped around Ezra's throat.
Gabriel pulled Ezra harder against him, forcing his head back against Gabriel's shoulder. From this angle he could see Ezra's throat working, trying to swallow, could feel the desperate rise and fall of his chest.
"I wanted to kill them." The admission came out rougher than Gabriel intended. "Not artfully. Just ended. Throats slit, erased, forgotten." His hand tightened with each word, feeling Ezra's pulse hammer against his palm like a trapped bird. "They didn't deserve to touch you."
The possessiveness in his own voice startled him. Gabriel didn't get possessive. Gabriel collected, arranged, moved on.
But Ezra wasn't a collection piece. Ezra was?—
He released Ezra's throat suddenly, and Ezra gasped, sucking in air in great heaving gulps. Gabriel kept him pressed back against his chest deliberately, refusing to let him turn around. Not yet. He wasn't ready to look Ezra in the face. Like staring directly into the sun. Gabriel had waited three years; he could pace himself, build to that moment of full contact.
Besides, having Ezra unable to see him, unable to predict what was coming, only able to feel… That had its own appeal.
"But more than that," Gabriel said directly into Ezra's ear, letting his lips brush the shell of it, "I wanted you to see what you were missing. Someone who understands what you need."
"Fuck," Ezra breathed, and his hands came up to clutch at Gabriel's wrists. Not to pull him away. To anchor himself there.
The gesture made something in Gabriel's chest constrict. “And you know it too, don’t you?”
“I know that you’re obsessed with me.” Ezra's fear was transforming into something else, something reckless and beautiful. That defiance Gabriel craved. “You've been stalking me for months, watching me through windows, hiding under my bed like the fucking boogeyman? You want me so bad it made you desperate. So prove it. Prove you're better than all of them."
The challenge in his voice made Gabriel's control slip—just for a second, just enough. Made him grab a fistful of Ezra's hair and yank his head back hard, exposing the long line of his throat. Made him slam Ezra forward against the wall, keeping that brutal grip, forcing Ezra to arch back at an angle that had to hurt.
The size difference was obvious like this—Gabriel looming over him, Ezra bent back and pinned, completely at his mercy. Ezra could talk all the shit he wanted, but his body told the truth. That racing pulse, the quick shallow breaths, the way his hands came up instinctively to grab at Gabriel's wrist but didn't pull away.
"Careful," Gabriel warned, his voice rough. He could feel Ezra's heartbeat under his hand where it pressed against his throat. "You have no idea what I'm capable of."
"Sure I do." Ezra was grinning now, defiant and reckless, looking exactly like he had three years ago when he'd driven that knife home. Lit up. Alive. Matching Gabriel's energy. "You're capable of watching. Of wanting. Of waiting. But doing? That's different, isn't it? It's been three years and you haven't touched anyone. Not once."
Gabriel went still. Perfectly, dangerously still.
Because Ezra was right.
