Page 8 of Lovely Wicked Things

He whom love touches not walks in darkness.

I’ll always find her, no matter how dark her mind goes.

I rest my forehead to hers as I continue to trace the symbol over her skin, our breath mingling, our emotions a tangle of heat and want and heartache.

Then I capture her lips with mine in a decimating kiss to chase back her pain. Fuck, I eat her pain like a goddamn fiend. I take it for her, every morsel of anguish and fear and sickness. I kiss her with a desperation my soul has never known.

When her mouth closes against mine, kissing me back with equal hunger, I tremble under the annihilating force, the tender feel of her tongue meeting mine with demanding need.

Sheltered in this moment, time stalls for us, and I covet every second.

“Stay,” I whisper over her lips.

Her breath shudders hot across my mouth.

“Stay with me,” I plead.

She blinks up at me. “I’ll stay with you.”

At her concession, I scoop her lithe body into my arms, relishing the feel of her palms braced on my bare chest as I carry her toward my bed. Before I even draw the covers over her, her eyes are closed, her body fighting against the sleep pulling her under.

I place a gentle kiss to her forehead, then step back and check the time on my watch, already dreading the loss of it. But there is still a lecture hall that needs to be cleaned, evidence destroyed, and surveillance to alter.

By the time the sun breaks the sky and I reenter my townhouse, I know the fallout before I cross the threshold into my room.

Her bag is gone, and so is she.

A hollowness takes up residency inside my chest as I stare at the dimmed embers in the fireplace. Like the dying light of the fire, the coals growing dull, my inspiration is fading without her.

Before my muse crashed my life, I inked a sigil in my chest. As my obsessive desire all but consumed me, I carved into that mark tonight. I made a demand of the universe, I opened the wound and let the blood flow. And now that I’ve tasted my muse, I know it will be a vain and futile attempt to try to forget her.

I can no more purge her from my thoughts than I can tear my soul mate from my sternum.

She is the bridge erected over my abyss. She is life sparked amid my death.

My desire was born in those hauntingly beautiful hazel orbs that are cast with silvery storm clouds.

I lower to my haunches and reach into the fireplace, scraping aside ash as I take the tiny object between my fingers. I twirl the shiny gold piece as I stare at the initials.

The object that brought her here, the token she’s searching for.

Time and tide wait for no man.

My muse will return to me.

2

MUSE

HALEN: NOW

There are as many conflicting tales around the muses as there are the gods themselves. Their origin, their number. Whether they were deities or forces.

One myth says the goddess of memory birthed the muses, and that they were then given to Apollo to raise. Hence their devotion, love, and aptitude for the arts and science.

The irony doesn’t escape me—as I’m sure it hasn’t escaped Kallum—that memory and logic presided over the muses. Two connections to me. A wink from the universe, a jab of cosmic synchronicity as my memory returns with a vengeful force.

Yet the one aspect all the poems agree on is that the muses were a source of creative inspiration, existing merely to inspire hungry souls.