Page 74 of Lovely Violent Things

I have her in my arms at the same time she pushes off the stool to take me to the floor. She straddles my thighs, her mouth sealed to mine. I meet her frantic kiss with ravenous, covetous need before any sane thought has a chance to break through.

I turn my head and issue a harsh curse, trapping her face between my palms. “You’re drugged, Halen. I can’t—”

“That’s a requirement of the ritualist, the seer. Right? To be intoxicated.” Her heated words drop to my mouth as her fingers seek out the sigil again, and I’m rock-fucking-hard at hearing my little Halen use sex magick terminology.

I drag my thumb over her bottom lip, entranced by her. “Fuck, you lie so pretty.” That moment in the library, of course she’d already done her research. “You’re the only one to ever surprise me.”

I called for her, and yet, I still never saw her coming.

“Maybe…” She pauses to nip my thumb. “I just want to hear you talk about things. You give a lot away when I let you talk.”

A savage yearning shreds my restraint. “I’m done talking.”

Her swallow is hard, the plea in her liquid gaze flaying the pitch-black tar of my soul. “Then unlock me, Kallum. Unravel me. I don’t want to be blind anymore. I want to see.”

“Goddammit,” I mutter. Her scent sears my lungs, the shower steam infusing the aphrodisiac notes of ylang-ylang into my fucking pores, and I’m all but drugged on her. She writhes on top of me in search of friction, making my fractured control nonexistent.

I band an arm around the small of her back and lift her against me, flinging the blanket away. “Fuck it,” I say as I take her to the shower. “I’m no fucking saint, either.”

17

SORCERY OF THE SOUL

KALLUM

Ishove the shower curtain aside, nearly ripping it from the rod. Not bothering to remove my pants, I climb into the tub with Halen in my arms. Her throaty whimpers guide me to press her back to the slab of marble, caging her body with mine.

I devour her mouth like a famished animal, every salacious desire rend from my being by the soft feel of her sultry lips. She needs me to chase back the darkness, and I’m the demon to do that. I’ll swallow every bit of darkness for her.

Her palms braced against my chest, she wanders her hands reverently down the hard planes of muscle, washing my skin clean as the warmth of the spray rinses blood between us.

I break away to tower over her, splaying my hand against her slick skin, streaking the crimson between the valley of her breasts in worshipful pursuit to memorize every beautiful, enticing inch of her.

And I glimpse her in my mind’s eye, with blood coating her hands, droplets splashed on her face, bathed in pale moonlight—a muse delivered to me to rouse my dead soul.

I had never wanted anything or anyone as badly as I wanted her in that moment, and I never stopped. Each day I waited for her, my hunger only grew. I want her just as badly right now, to the point I have to will myself to slow before I consume her in a fit of gluttony.

She yanks on the belt secured around my waistband, and I catch her hand. “Not a chance, sweetness,” I whisper across her mouth as I trap her wrists and push her arms above her head. “Let me work my magick and burn that drug from your veins, then I swear, I’ll fuck you until you literally see god.”

If I can’t make my muse commune with a higher power, then I’m not worthy of her.

Her gaze snares mine, a fiery current banked there affirming her own vow to break me. “The rite is to repeatedly arouse the ritualist-seer,” she says, arching her back until I’m forced to relinquish one of her wrists and cup her perfect breast, “to bring them to sexual exhaustion…never reaching orgasm.” She licks her lips in a sinful taunt. “Are you going to arouse me to near death, Kallum?”

I smile against her mouth. “Devious little sprite, if I deny you gratification for that length of time, that torture will damn sure kill me first.” I lower myself to take her peaked nipple into my mouth, sucking until she releases a strangled cry, then I swallow that lovely sound with a demanding kiss.

“Eroto-comatose lucidity is only one method,” I tell her as I clasp the side of her face, trailing my thumb down her wet lips. “I much prefer the practice where I exhaust you by bringing you to orgasm over and over.”

A state between awareness and sleep, induced to bring on a trance. Enhanced when the seer gazes at a sigil during the rite. Yet no matter the chosen practice, it’s the intensity of the act that conjures the magick, taking what’s present in the conscious mind at the moment of orgasm and reaching far into the subconscious.

A flame of hope is stoked by the chance such a state could elicit her latent memory.

In mirrored conflict, Halen touches my face, seeing right down to my core. “It doesn’t matter,” she says, her tone grievously fragile. “Whatever is in the past…leave it there.”

A raw ache chars my throat with the powerful hit of her melancholy. During our ritual, I could taste her desire and hesitancy equally as she battled her rational mind for control. Feeling Halen surrender to us now, here in this moment of time, is like the purest dose of aphrodisiac injected into my bloodstream.

Her hazel gaze beckons me to abandon my pursuit to bring her back.

She’s here with me now.

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