Lovely Violent Things (Hollow's Row, #2)

by Trisha Wolfe

We don’t get the choice of where we originate from; but everything after is all choice.

“Light cannot exist without the dark. Good cannot exist without evil. The totality. Ergo, peace cannot exist without violence.”

If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Want—pure, unadulterated hunger—will drive us to the brink to possess, by any means, that which we cannot live without.

Her calm surrender to logic quiets the raging storm of fury and madness which plagues my mind. By the same design, my chaotic frenzy awakens her heartsick soul with maddening vigor. One cannot exist without the other. I cannot exist without her.

To have tasted divinity—to have knelt before my goddess and indulged like a feral glutton, to have buried myself so deep inside her, only to have lost her… That is my great, yawning abyss. That is staring into the void of indifference and apathy and feeling your soul wither into a hollow husk. That torment stirs a wicked desperation in a man to which he will forge to the darkest, most depraved bounds of hell to recapture. There are no limits. For her, I will kill without remorse. I will lap blood and mutilate in a haze of ecstasy until I’m gorged, and then I will demand more.

My daemon sank his teeth into my flesh, lapped at my tears, feasted on my blood. He latched on to my soul and fed off my pain like a night terror crushes air from the lungs. He’s entwined around my bones, seeping deep into my very marrow.

“Go to hell, Kallum.” His smile is wicked. “Obligingly. But only with you by my side, angel.”

There’s a monster that feeds off pain, and his beautiful, disarming eyes look right into me, down to the rawest truth of my grief. The more vulnerable I become, the deeper my daemon slithers. If I can’t escape him, he won’t stop until he consumes all of me.

My muse of heartbreak, the sweetest epiphany. If I had an infinite number of lifetimes, it still wouldn’t be enough. She’s all that I want, all that I crave, and I’m desperate to make us last longer than an ephemeral flicker in time.

“If Alister touches you again, I’ll flay his skin from his tendons and carve my initials in his bones.”

But I’m not her obedient little lapdog. I won’t let anyone come between us ever again. Not even her.

He’s the storm that won’t pass.

“I’m crazy for you.” His gaze drifts over my body, deliberately taking in my soaked shirt. “Fucking certifiable. Capable of the most vile, monstrous acts.”

“It’s heated glances and charged near touches. It’s cruel words and fiery tempers. It’s instant chemical attraction across a quad when you make that first real connection, when you feel the center of gravity shift…and you know nothing will ever be the same again.”

“I want you,” he says, as relentless as the storm. “All of you. Your sexy as fuck body that drives me right out of my goddamn senses. Your intellectual mind, rational and logical to a frightening degree, but so fucking brilliant everyone else around you pales miserably by comparison. Your beautifully broken soul, so immersed in anguish it chokes me—” he swallows hard “—but I relish the pain. I’m begging for it, because the sweetest taste of you soothes the burn, and it’s fucking euphoric.”

“I love you in my jacket,” he says, a sly smile curling his mouth.

“The villain only becomes such after he’s lost that which he cannot live without,” he says. “I’m in no need of a metamorphosis. I refuse to lose you.”

“You won’t be satisfied until I’m completely under your spell.” A devilish smile slants his mouth. “Satisfaction is an impossible demand,” he says. “But I can be contented right this second to taste the rain on your lips.”

It’s a scary thought that you can’t trust your own past. As the mind wasn’t meant to hold on to every memory, it’s the most damaging ones our brains will obsess over, never letting us forget. Those painful memories define and shape our existence. Then there are the memories so shattering the psyche has to purge them or risk being damaged beyond repair. It’s a defense mechanism.

The mind constructs and alters memories to protect us.

“There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.”

I’m drawn to his negative space, the desire to touch the darkest part of him too seductive despite the beautiful flame I know will burn me to cinder. Kallum is my dark zone.

“For hurting you.” I tip her chin up, not concealing the rage still fueled by the memory. “And I’ll always be that man, Halen. The one who will spill blood for you. I should have torn out his entrails and let Devyn feed them to her minions. If that makes me a monster, I have no quandary in that regard. I might have stormed the castle and swept the princess into my arms, but I’m not the knight in shining armor.” Forcefully, I push my hands past the blanket and palm her waist. “In fact, I would destroy that fucker to steal the girl.”