Page 2 of Your Devoted Monster

Every shadow could hide Gabriel. Every footstep behind Ezra could be him. But the street was empty except for the occasional car passing, illuminating Ezra in headlights like stage spots, presenting him to an audience of one.

Half a mile had never felt so long. Or so short. His feet carried him to the industrial district. Warehouses and abandoned buildings, the kind of place where screams wouldn't carry.

The same kind of place where Gabriel had tried to kill him three years ago. Full circle.

By the time Ezra reached the warehouse, he was shivering hard enough that his teeth chattered.

He looked like a victim already—barely dressed, bruises on his throat, walking toward danger instead of away from it.

The kind of person who you’d expect to end up in crime scene photos with a chalk outline.

The warehouse looked exactly like what it was—abandoned, dangerous, wrong. Broken windows, rusted metal siding, weeds growing through cracks in the loading dock. The side door hung slightly open, darkness visible beyond.

This was the place.

Inside, Ezra's eyes adjusted slowly. Concrete floors stained with things he didn't want to identify. Industrial shelving creating a maze of shadows. Chains hanging from ceiling beams. The air smelled like rust and bleach and something underneath that made his primitive brain scream run.

This was the kind of place Gabriel had used before—before Ezra.

Five bodies, the news had said. Five men posed like Renaissance paintings, arranged with artistic precision before being violated and discarded.

Each one found days later, positioned in careful tableaus that the press had called "disturbing" and "blasphemous.

" Gabriel had been building to something with each one, perfecting his craft.

Then Ezra had stabbed him and run, leaving Gabriel's masterwork unfinished.

Now in one corner, a single window let in a pool of light. And there, illuminated like a fallen saint, stood Gabriel.

Three years of nightmares and fantasies, but he'd never seen Gabriel's face. His dreams had been all sensation—hands on his throat, that voice in his ear, the weight pinning him down, the hunger in those amber-ringed eyes through mask holes. Those eyes Ezra knew, had memorized. But the face...

Gabriel was somehow exactly what Ezra had always known he’d be.

The face was sharp. Pale. Dark hair pushed back except for one piece that fell forward. High cheekbones, a mouth that didn't smile. Handsome in a way that felt wrong.

There was something fundamentally wrong in that face.

Not ugly—worse. It was the wrongness of perfection with nothing behind it, like those AI-generated photos where the features are flawless but the longer you look, the more you realize something essential is missing.

Gabriel's face had all the right pieces arranged in all the right ways, but underneath was an emptiness that should have been terrifying.

It was. And Ezra was hard enough to cut diamonds.

He hadn't even been touched yet. Hadn't been threatened. Gabriel had just stood there looking empty and perfect and wrong, and Ezra's fucked-up brain went yeah, that's the one. That's what we've been looking for.

"No mask this time, huh”? Ezra said, voice barely a whisper. His feet moved forward one step without his permission.

Thirty feet between them. Twenty-nine now.

Gabriel smiled, touching his own face as if remembering. "Halloween was three years ago. Though I kept it. Would you like to see?"

Another step. Ezra's feet silent on the concrete. His brain screamed at him to stop, run, do anything but walk toward the man who'd tried to strangle him, turn his body into some fucked-up art.

Twenty-seven feet.

Like revealing a gift he'd been saving, Gabriel reached behind him and produced it—a simple black mask, the kind you could buy at any costume shop. Innocent-looking. Ezra's knees went weak at the sight of it.

Gabriel held it up to the light. "This little thing gave me such an advantage. The anonymity. The theater of it. But tonight..." He tossed it aside, letting it disappear into the shadows. "Tonight I want you to see exactly who's touching you. Who's ruining you. Who you're choosing."

Ezra's cock jumped at the words, and he was too far gone to be ashamed of it. His mouth went dry as he imagined the scar on Gabriel's ribs now, the one he'd made, hidden beneath that perfectly pressed shirt.

He needed to see it more than he’d ever needed anything in his life.

“Disappointed?" Gabriel asked, tracking Ezra's approach but not moving, letting him come like a moth to flame.

"No," Ezra breathed, still walking. Fifteen feet. "You look exactly like you should."

"And how's that?"

Ten feet. Close enough to see the pulse in Gabriel's throat, steady where Ezra's was racing. "Like you.”

Gabriel's eyes darkened. "I've been wondering if you'd recognize me. Without the mask. Without the context. If I'd passed you on the street—"

"I'd have known," Ezra interrupted, close enough to smell him over the warehouse rust—something clean and expensive that didn't belong here.

Three feet. Ezra stopped, finally, trembling with the effort of not closing that last gap. This was insane. This was suicide. But three years ago, Gabriel had wanted him—wanted to possess him, consume him, make art of him. Nobody had wanted Ezra that much before or since. Not even Ezra himself.

"Even though you've never seen my face?"

"I've seen your hands." Ezra's eyes dropped to them—those elegant fingers that had wrapped around his throat. "I've felt your weight. Heard your breathing. That’s enough.”

Gabriel was wearing all black—of course.

Slacks and a button-down like he was going to a gallery opening instead of a murder.

Not a wrinkle anywhere. Not a hair out of place.

Like he'd been waiting here for hours in perfect stillness, only the faintest tension in his shoulders suggesting he'd noticed Ezra at all.

But his eyes. Those amber-ringed eyes were locked on Ezra like a predator that had finally cornered its prey after a very, very long hunt.

"You dressed up for this," Ezra said, some of his bravado returning. "Cute. I didn't even shower."

"I noticed. You smell like a locker room exploded on you."

"It's Axe. Keith was classy like that."

Something flickered across Gabriel's face—there and gone so fast Ezra almost missed it. But he'd been chasing Gabriel in his nightmares for three years, and he wasn’t missing anything. The tiniest crack in that perfect composure. A muscle jumping in his jaw.

Finally. Finally a reaction that wasn't planned.

"Jealous of Keith?”

"Don't say his name."

“It doesn’t matter what his name was. They're all the same disappointing dick." Ezra tried for casual, despite being about to die in a murder warehouse. "Though I guess you'd know that, since you've been lurking under my bed like the world's most dedicated stalker."

That got a smile. No Kodak moment, but something around Gabriel’s eyes lifted, lit up. “Dedicated. I like that better than creepy."

“Better than stalker.”

“It’s only stalking if you tell me no.” Gabriel tilted his head slightly. "Are you going to say no, Ezra?"

Fuck. “It’s a bit late for that." Ezra gestured at himself. “I’m pretty sure I've made my position clear."

"And what position is that?"

“That I’m stupid. Obviously."

Gabriel's eyes darkened. "I don't think you're stupid at all."

For a long moment, Gabriel just looked at him.

Still as a statue, those amber-ringed eyes taking in every detail—the bruises, the scars, the way Ezra's chest rose and fell too fast. Ezra felt pinned like a butterfly to cork, couldn't move, couldn't breathe properly.

His skin prickled with the weight of that attention.

Three years ago, Gabriel had looked at him like something to destroy.

Now he looked at him like something to devour.

Then Gabriel moved.

The first step made Ezra's heart stutter.

Gabriel had been so still that movement seemed wrong, like a mannequin suddenly animated.

He prowled—that was the only word for it—in a slow circle around Ezra, and Ezra's body remembered this dance.

The way Gabriel had circled him that night, looking for the best angle to strike.

But this was different. That had been clinical, efficient. This was savoring.

Ezra forced himself to stay still, even though every instinct screamed at him to track Gabriel's movement, to not let him get behind him, to protect his throat. His scars ached with sense memory. His cock ached with something else entirely.

"You're shaking," Gabriel observed from behind him, close enough that Ezra could feel his breath on his neck.

"Fuck you, I'm not—" But he was. Fine tremors running through his whole body like an electric current.

"Fear or arousal?"

"Is there a difference anymore?" The words came out more honest than Ezra intended. His wires were so crossed that his body couldn't tell what signals to send—run, fight, fuck, die, all of the above.

His cock was straining against his zipper now, the denim rough and unforgiving. He was leaking enough that he could feel the dampness, adding to the mess already there from earlier. Getting hard from fear. From danger. From the promise of violence in Gabriel's touch.

Gabriel's fingers finally made contact, tracing the bruises on Ezra's throat from tonight's disappointment—the gym bro who'd been so proud of his mediocre technique.

Ezra's whole body seized. Three years. Three years of chasing this feeling in strangers' hands, and nothing—nothing—had come close.

Gabriel's touch was deliberate, precise, like he'd mapped every nerve ending that night and remembered exactly where they were.

Ezra's breath stuttered out, his cock jumping in his jeans, and he hated how obvious it was. How fucking gone he was from one touch.

Gabriel's touch was clinical, an artist critiquing inferior work, but Ezra could feel the heat of his fingers.

"Pathetic," Gabriel murmured. "No understanding of anatomy. No respect for the craft." His thumb pressed against Ezra's pulse point, feeling it race. "I watched him do this to you tonight. Watched you fake pleasure. Watched you stare at the ceiling thinking of me."

"Cocky." Ezra's voice came out wrecked, barely recognizable.

"Accurate." Gabriel's hand shifted, wrapping around Ezra's throat with the exact pressure and placement from that night three years ago.

The warehouse smell—rust and bleach—suddenly became that other warehouse.

The concrete under his feet became the floor where he'd fought for his life.

Gabriel's scent couldn't mask the phantom scent of his own blood.

His vision tunneled the same way it had when oxygen became a luxury he couldn't afford.

Ezra's knees buckled. Only Gabriel's grip kept him upright, which was fucked up on so many levels—being held up by the same hand that had tried to kill him.

His body couldn't figure out if this was then or now, if he was dying or living, if the wetness on his face was tears right now or just his body remembering.

"There," Gabriel whispered, grip tightening incrementally. "That's better. This is where my hand belongs."

Ezra couldn't speak. Could barely breathe. His cock was so hard it hurt, and that was the sickest part of all—his body translating near-death into arousal, getting off on its own destruction. He made a sound that might have been a whimper or might have been Gabriel's name.

Gabriel released his throat, spinning him suddenly, pressing him face-first against the cold concrete wall.

"Look at you," Gabriel said against his ear. "Walking here like an offering. Did you want to make it easy for me?"

I wanted… I don't know what I wanted. Ezra pressed his forehead against the cool wall. “Like I said, I’m stupid.”

“You’re not stupid, Ezra.” Gabriel's hands ran down Ezra's sides, cataloging every shiver. "You just wanted to finish what we started. You wanted to see if it would feel as good as you remember."

"Will it?"

"Better," Gabriel promised, teeth grazing Ezra's neck. "Because this time, you're choosing it. This time, you walked to me. And this time, you're going to beg for it."