Page 152 of Blood & Throttle

“You survive this,” I whisper, lips to her ear, breath warm against sweat-slick skin. “Or I’ll tear this whole fucking world apart.”

She nods, and I know she believes me.

Because even she knows, she’s mine, and nothing will fucking taking her from me.

Not Jace.

Not Kane.

Not even fucking death.

Twenty-Nine

Sienna

G.O.M.D - J.Cole

You’d thinkafter getting wrecked in a strip club I’d be tapped out. Emotionally. Physically. Sexually. But Riot Carter doesn’t do “enough.” He finishes what he starts, then finds new ways to start it again.

Now we’re cutting through The Verge on his bike, wind slashing my cheeks, the city glowing like it’s drunk on its own pulse—neon graffiti bleeding across crumbling walls, alleys that smell like secrets and rot. It’s beautiful in that haunted, toxic kind of way. Like everything’s decaying in rhythm.

I’m clinging to him, thighs sore, pulse slower than it should be. My lips are swollen, my neck’s marked up like a crime scene, and the way he touched me back there still echoes in my spine.

Then we slow.

Riot pulls off the main road into a narrow backstreet lit only by the sick buzz of dying signage. A rusted-out truck is half-swallowed by weeds, and there’s a busted tattoo shoptucked in like it doesn’t want to be seen. Neon letters flicker overhead, spelling outNO REGRETS INK,one bulb away from total darkness.

He kills the engine, and we both take our helmets off. He lights up a cigarette, the cherry flare illuminating the sharp edge of his jaw. I lean in, pluck the cigarette from his lips, take a drag like I own the air, then pass it back to him with a grin.

I slide off the bike and arch a brow, hands on my hips. “So, what is this place?”

“Used to be a tattoo shop,” he says. “Belonged to a girl named Sammy. Ran it with her boyfriend.”

I cock a brow. “What happened to ‘em?”

“Boyfriend got killed when the world started going to shit. Syndicate hit, wrong place, wrong time—whatever excuse they gave. Sammy vanished not long after. No one’s seen her since.”

He takes a drag, exhaling slowly, eyes fixed on the building like it’s a memory bleeding through the walls.

“I used to come here,” he adds. “Before everything. Before The Gauntlet. Before I had blood on my knuckles and ghosts in my bed.”

I nod once, letting that settle. I don’t press. Not my style and even if it was, Riot Carter isn’t the type to care. He’s the type that holds shit in, until he feels like it needs to be discussed, or until he wants to share it. .

He glances at me through the smoke, then says, “She was the only one I ever trusted to put a needle in my skin.” There’s a pause. A heavy one. Then he looks me dead in the eye. “Until you.”

That knocks the smart-ass right out of me.

My mouth opens but nothing comes out.

He smirks, like he knew that’d hit. Tosses the cigarette,crushes it under his boot, and heads toward the door of the old tattoo shop.

“Let’s go, Little Stray,” he calls over his shoulder. “I don’t got all night. And I’ve been itching for some new ink.”

I blink once, twice then grin, sharp and slow.

“Try not to cry when I stab you with the needle, lover boy.”

The lock clicks open under his code. The door creaks like it hasn’t been opened in years. Inside, the shop smells like old ink and ghosts. Faint antiseptic clings to the air, barely masking rust and mildew. The lighting flickers overhead—half-dead fluorescents and a dusty neon sign in the back that humsOPENlike it’s lying.