Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

“What separates monsters from good men is only a matter of perspective. In your eyes, I’m a sick fuck for what I’ve done to you. But I, on the other hand, see you as a parasite.”

Without a doubt, Lilia Vespertine was going to be a massive headache. But she was my headache.

“Stay out of trouble, Curious Moth,” he said, as he strode for the door. Curious Moth. A nickname. A fitting one, too, given the fact that I had no intentions of avoiding the flame.

“That is the tragedy of women, isn’t it? We deny ourselves beauty for the sake of misleading men.”

“The wealthy possess an insatiable appetite for the rare and priceless. They stare because you’re the only thing worth staring at.”

Calling her beautiful was like calling the sun lukewarm. She’d blazed like the hottest part of a flame in that dress. And fuck me, I’d felt the heat.

might’ve been the perfect match.” “Under different circumstances …” The pause in his words carried a laborious heartbeat that smothered my own, as I watched the slightest smile play on his lips. A beat of hesitation. “I might’ve pursued you.”

“And I might’ve let you.”

“You’re a sickness inside of me that begs never to be cured. Infecting me with this unshakable craving for things I shouldn’t want.”

“And because I’m a selfish prick who has to live with the fact that I cannot have you to myself, I’m going to ruin you so that any boy who comes after me will leave you deeply unsatisfied, and you’ll be left fucking your own fingers, desperate to remember the time you had your professor’s face between your legs.”

She was the warmth of the sun on a cold and rotting corpse. The first breath after a lifetime of death.

“I won’t fuck you again tonight. But I will fuck you again.”

“Jealousy is a callow schoolboy’s emotion that ends in hard feelings and bloody noses. What I feel for you, Miss Vespertine, would destroy lives.”

“The decision was made the moment I met you, though. To stay here. I choose you.”

“I choose you,” I said, and pulled her in for a kiss, feeling the smile against my lips. “And believe me when I say, you’re hard to forget, Miss Vespertine.”

It was there that I began to wonder if what I felt for Lilia was something more than I cared to admit.

“You can’t leave. I won’t let you. You hear me? I won’t let you fucking die. You are my most important thing, and I swear, if you don’t come out of this, I will fucking hunt you down in the afterlife.”

“If you don’t come out of this, I’m burning all of your expensive coats.” “You’re not … burning … my coats,” he mumbled,

“You’re the fever in my veins,” he said through clenched teeth, as he drove into me with furious determination. “An incurable madness I can’t shake. Fucking you is the only thing that keeps me sane, Lilia.”

“Devryck,” I said breathlessly, every muscle spent and liquefied. “I’m scared.” “Of what?” “This is beginning to feel like more than just sex for me.” “So, why does this scare you?” “Because I can’t see past the void, and it feels like this is when things fall apart.”

“You don’t have to be scared. I will never hurt you, Lilia. In fact, I’ll rain hell on anyone who ever hurts you again.”

I loved him. Every cell, every fiber of my being couldn’t hide that truth.

“That I would kill for you without a beat of hesitation, or remorse. And yet, at the same time, I could be reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash without you. I’m weak for you, Lilia.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You and I? This? There’s no escaping it. Doesn’t matter how fast you run, or how far you get, I will always be inside you just like this. In your bones and in your blood and in your head. It doesn’t matter what you tell the universe–what secrets you spill. Nothing can change what we are, what we’ve become.”

“I have lived a lifetime in death–a cold existence in an endless void. Never feeling. Never knowing the warmth of touch. Every unfulfilling breath a suffocating reminder of how hollow I’d become. It wasn’t until you came along and cast the first ray of light that I felt a pulse of life. A pull that I couldn’t resist.”

“Don’t ever hesitate to touch me, Lilia. You’re the only one who can. It was you who dragged my heart from this insensate slumber. And it’s you for whom it beats now.”