Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
REMI
L ast night was like a twisted fever dream—where dark fantasies bled into reality, leaving me gasping, wanting, craving more . I’d learned more about myself in those breathless, brutal moments than I had in my entire life.
I had never even kissed another person before. But I woke up with his taste on my tongue. I felt like I was spiraling—losing my grip on the version of myself I’d always known. But instead of fighting it, instead of running, I let go. I let myself fall.
Sunlight streaked through the thick velvet curtains, carving harsh golden slashes across my skin as I lay in bed, aching. My muscles were sore, my throat raw, my mind still drowning in the intoxicating weight of him .
A normal person would have been thinking about Kyran. I should’ve been thinking about him. I should have cared.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t care about the way his body had curled on the ground, the pathetic sounds spilling from his busted lips. I didn’t care that he’d been left bleeding, broken, discarded.
All I cared about was the man who did it. Domino. The one I should fear. The one I’d follow into hell if he so much as beckoned me forward.
Something inside me had changed—a door had been thrown open, one I’d always been too afraid to even knock on. Domino’s darkness called to mine. Whispered to it. Coaxed it forward until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
Until I didn’t want to.
I wondered what it had felt like for him. That moment when his fist connected, when Kyran’s face split beneath his knuckles. Did it feel like power? Like control?
Did his blood sing the way mine did when he forced me to my knees, ignoring the body beside us as he claimed my throat like it belonged to him? Because it did .
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, demanding release . I dragged on a pair of clean jeans and snatched a black hoodie off the chair. The soft 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.
To touch it.
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.
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, consuming every 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. Really looked 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—to decide 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, my piccolo agnello.”
His thumb traced lazy circles over my cheek, a touch so deceptively gentle it made my breath hitch. Without warning, his lips crashed into mine—hot, demanding, with a devastating hunger. The moment he teased the seam of my mouth, I surrendered, parting for him without hesitation, desperate to drown in the intoxicating taste of him.
He took everything. My mind, my sanity. His tongue licked into my mouth, duelling with mine, claiming, consuming. A punishing rhythm that left no room for doubt—I was caught in his wicked web, and he was trapped in mine. Each stroke sent shivers racing through my body, electric sparks igniting along my skin until I was burning from the inside out. Lust flowed through my veins like quicksilver, my cock filled with every stroke of his tongue against mine.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, his slick skin silky soft, and dragged him closer. I needed more, more of him, of his talented tongue—of everything. A deep growl rumbled from his chest and into mine as his hands tangled in my hair, angling my head and devouring me deeper. His teeth caught my bottom lip, tugging, teasing, before soothing the sting with another dizzying kiss. He tasted of sin, of obsession, of something I would never get enough of.
My lungs screamed for air, but I couldn’t pull away—not yet, not when he felt like the only thing keeping me tethered to this world. He kissed me harder, deeper, until my body threatened to give out and my head spun in a euphoric haze.
When he finally tore his lips from mine, we were both panting, foreheads pressed together, our breaths mingling in the charged space between us. My lips tingled, swollen and bruised from his relentless attack. All I could think about was how soon I could taste him again.
“There’s somewhere I want to take you, Remi.”
His voice was a low, velvety murmur, wrapping around me. I blinked up at him through my lashes, my mind hazy, the world beyond his presence reduced to a blur. The meaning of his words hovered just out of reach, teasing at the edges of my understanding.
“I want to show you.” His fingertips brushed over my jaw, the contact light but possessive, grounding me even as it sent a shiver racing down my spine.
I tilted my head, confused. “Show me what?”
“That I see you.” His lips ghosted over my forehead before he pulled back, just enough for me to see the way his emerald eyes darkened—deep, endless pools that threatened to pull me under. “The real you. The one buried beneath the surface.”
A slow, shuddering breath left my lips. Something in his voice, in the gravity of his words, sent my pulse skittering wildly.
He saw me. Not the carefully constructed version of myself I showed the world. Not the Remi who had spent years suffocating beneath expectations and self-imposed restraint. He saw the one lurking in the shadows, the one even I had been afraid to acknowledge.
“I want your demons to dance with mine.”
My lips parted, but no words came. I tasted the remnants of him on my tongue, it sent a pulse of heat curling low in my stomach.
“I-I don’t understand.” My voice was barely a whisper, uncertain and breathless all at once.
His mouth curved—not into a smirk, not quite a smile. Something more dangerous. More knowing.
“You will.” His fingers traced a slow path down my arm before retreating, leaving behind the phantom burn of his touch.
“Soon.”
His gaze locked onto mine, unyielding. “I will show you every terrible thing you’ve ever dreamed of—” He leaned in, his breath mingling with mine, his words a dark promise sealed between us. “—and make it real.”