Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men, #6)

by Giana Darling

To be isolated was to be safe. In control of my own environment, separated from the scrutiny and emotional outflow of others. It was in company that I suffered.

It underscored why I didn’t believe in religion. In the archaic notion of good versus evil, heaven versus hell. Because I was death and the devil, ruler of life’s underworld, and Bea? Not even an angel fallen from God’s own palace could be so bright and exquisite as her.

Before her, I had lived only to feel the pain I felt was my atonement and then, after Zeus, to serve the only family I’d ever really known. Now, I lived for them still. But if I had a metaphorical heart in my chest, it only beat for her. Mo cuishle. My heartbeat.

Because I would ruin her. I would eviscerate her morals to ash until she giggled when I brought her a dead man’s head just because he had wronged her. I would burn away her inhibitions until she begged me to desecrate all the holy places of her body with my tongue, my cock, and the cold edge of my steel.

“If I make you mine, you stay mine until death comes for us. You’re mine in the night and the shadows where I’m fucking king. You’re mine in the light with your family and friends, standing beside Death as his queen. If I’m a killer, you’re a killer. Where I end, you fucking begin.”

“You got the devil between your thighs, Bea,”

“You worship anyone, it’s gonna be me.”

Any man with a god-complex only had to put his mouth between a woman’s thighs to feel like a motherfucking king.

I held her tight to me, so tight our hearts seemed to beat as one while we climaxed simultaneously. And I knew heaven.

I’d be haunted by her forever. And I was already haunted by so many demons, didn’t I bloody well deserve to possess just one? To own just one glorious thing in my life all for myself?

“Better men could love you,” I said, my voice guttural but strong. I opened my eyes and pinned her with the heaviness of my conviction. “But now, I’ll kill any of them who try.”

Sometimes, there aren’t words big enough to describe emotions, to describe the way events carve themselves into your flesh, sinew, and bone.

I stared at the girl who was my heart displaced outside my chest. Only with her did I ever feel this agonizingly alive. Every beat of my heart, every molecule of blood in my veins, and breath in my lungs claimed and reanimated by her.

I was a weapon, the sharp edge of a blade and the blunt force of a fist, and Bea was a silk heart. It would have been simple to assume she would be safer in a different man’s hands, but who would protect her better than a weapon, than me?

“I see you, Priest, even when you don’t want to be seen. You cannot be invisible to me. Religion teaches you to covet the divine, to swallow it wholesale down your throat like communion. To seek it out for absolution. To me, you are divine, and my pursuit of you is anything but unholy.”

I wanted to give her everything, all of me, hollow bones and empty soul, but that was too much. Too much, too much, too much.

“You’re mine in life; you’re mine in death. We’re never gonna be fuckin’ parted, mo cuishle. I’ll haunt you, I’ll haunt you, I’ll haunt you.”

There was cracking in my ribs, a yawning open of bones, and then with a brutal thud that robbed me of breath, I felt her there, my girl, my heart, slotted into my chest. I was destroyed by her love, the dead man murdered by sweet hands.

“A rún mo chroí,” I muttered in Gaelic, then hesitated in my translation. “Secret of my heart. My secret heart living outside of my chest.”

I wondered if I was in her dream, decided it was unacceptable if I was not, and then considered waking her just to ask the absurd question.

I’ve got your back even when you make choices I disagree with.

“Woulda given anythin’ to have the chance to save my woman. I’m thinkin’, we’d been brothers back then, you’d’ve done the same.”

Sobbing

“She’s pregnant,” he said.

I knew it

“Okay,” I said, fucking relieved she was done but aware this was a big moment for her, if not for me.

Lmaoooo "okay" I'm dying

“I don’t feel anythin’ at all unless it revolves around you,” I said fiercely, hoping to brand the words on her soul. “And now, this baby. I might be a shit fuckin’ dad, but you gotta know I’ll try my best as long as you don’t mind havin’ a killer as your baby daddy.”

I lived and died by this girl with the haloed hair and angel eyes. I’d give her the fucking world if she wanted it, but somehow, she only wanted me.

“I am obsessed with every inch of you. The fragile bones beneath your lean muscles, the entire expanse of your cream suede skin, and the way it bruises so pretty for me. I’m obsessed with the knuckles in these small hands,” I said, pausing to gently bite each hook of bone at the base of her fingers. “And every strand of this haloed hair.”

“In a way, I never left.” I vaguely heard him mutter as he wrapped me in his arms. “Heart stayed here the entire time I was gone.”