Darkly, Madly Duet

by Trisha Wolfe

But the single most interesting thing about my psychologist is this: I make her curious. Not in a professional sense—though I’m sure that’s how it started; a small flame sparked into existence—but the deep-seated, scary curious. The kind of curious that drives good girls bad.

All I know for sure is that we have a story. Ours is not a love story—we’re too volatile, too explosive for monotony. No, our story comes with a warning. Beware.

“I’m inside you now…” His teeth graze my shoulder. “Under your skin. I want to break you, so I can piece you back together.” His hand tightens, and the lack of oxygen makes my head swim, yet I’m hyperaware of every erogenous zone on my body—and I want him to master them all.

I was damned long before Grayson found me, and it was that dark note of my soul that called to him. I’m burning. I’ve set my whole world aflame to indulge this moment, and as he devours me, taking me within himself, consuming my willpower, I’d burn it all down for him—again and again.

He tastes hypnotic. Like a drug. Like freedom.

“I know how scared you are,” he says. “That moment when you first say it out loud…there’s no going back, London. You’ve already kept it buried too long. Once it’s unleashed, you can’t lock the monster back up.”

Isolation is a survival instinct. But I no longer crave solitude to suffer my penance—I’ve found the one thing that can set me free, and I’ll kill for it.

The stem reaches for the light, growing toward the only sunshine its ever known. One living limb on an otherwise dead tree. London is the sunlight, and that new limb the feelings I’m only able to feel for her.

Synapses fired, awakening a forgotten, dormant road. I’ve never felt any connection to a single person… Until her. I covet this rarity. Anxious to nurture this dark little seed she planted in my soul. My own design of love may be a twisted creature, but that creature is hungry and demands to be fed.

“Inappropriate? I hardly think that expresses it. It was fucking shattering. You want romance, go find yourself a nice little do-boy. But you don’t want that—I tasted what you crave. I can feel it in you now. That dark obsession that twists you, makes you mine.

“It’s never over.” He positions himself between the door and me. “For this to be over, one of us has to die.”

You’re a monster.” “I’m your monster.

“I’m not giving up,” he says, but he doesn’t pursue me. “We were designed for each other. Don’t you feel the pain when we’re apart? Don’t you want it to stop?”

“You’re mine, London. We can dance this violent dance until we bleed each other dry, or we can surrender. Your choice. But I will have you.” “That monster born of sin and death died in a car wreck. She’s gone.” “Then it’s my mission to resurrect her.”

From the very beginning, people have divided good and evil. Two beings fighting for dominance. I don’t believe in divine beings. Life is simpler than that. We’re our own gods and devils. Capable of the vilest evil and of the holiest righteousness. We make our own rules, and create our own heavens and hells.

Her hands fight to remove my shirt, her nails digging into my skin. It’s agonizing and pleasurable and unadulterated. I hiss out a tense breath as her fingers hit the fresh wound on my stomach. “Do it again,” I say. She strokes the injury she inflicted with a sure hand, owning me. “Is this what love feels like?” I crave her pain like my lungs crave oxygen. “This is what our love feels like.”

“I’d suffer any torture willingly if it came at your hands. My sick matches your sick.”

This is heaven. The only heaven I care to witness. She’s my truth now—the rules ours to make.

I fuck her violently. I fuck her brutally. Against the cold, unforgiving earth, under the open night sky, I make love the only way I know how to the woman who’s dominated my being since I first tasted her.

Now that she’s free, I can be patient. I’m willing to be any and all that she needs. I’ve left her clues, pieces of my puzzle. My story will unravel the truth for her. She’ll find me. No, ours is not a love story. Ours comes with a warning. And it’s not over yet. Of course, no one heeds warnings. If ours began with a beware, my story begins with a threat. Do not enter. I was spawned in hell itself.

We feast on each other and exist only for the highs…and even now as I kneel before my dark goddess and pray for her mercy, I regret nothing. We truly were happy. Maybe we still can be.

Death at my lover’s hand. The ultimate reward and punishment for our perfection. I couldn’t ask for a more perfect ending.

“This is dangerous. You’re dangerous.” I’m risking everything to be here—but existence means nothing without her.

She’s fire and life. She brings color to my world. I’ve been waiting a lifetime for her without even realizing she was the missing part of me. Flesh of my flesh.

London is the music awakening my soul. She’s the reason my heart beats. I’m alive for her—I’m free because of her, and now we’re unstoppable.

I need an antihero to complete me. A man that looks beneath my surface into the black abyss of my soul and licks his lips, ravenous to devour me.

Love—that all-consuming love artists pen sonnets about—is a short-lived emotion. That kind of love can’t be sustained. It’s wild and passionate and consumes you like a wildfire tears through a forest, burning hotter and raging rampant until its only option is to die out. That’s what Grayson and I are: a wildfire. We’ll burn through each other until our resources are expired. That kind of love also makes you blind.

A slow curling fire licks the back of my neck. “Interesting,” I say, my voice grinding out like gravel. The primal Neanderthal inside me rears up, London in danger of a brutal fucking where I stake my claim like the carnal animal she makes me.

We are perfection. And we are the fear that lurks beneath it. We feast on each other and exist only for the highs…and even now as I kneel before my dark goddess and pray for her mercy, I regret nothing.

Death at my lover’s hand. The ultimate reward and punishment for our perfection. I couldn’t ask for a more perfect ending.

Not all demons are born to the dark. And not all angels seek the light. Sometimes our circumstance demands a fusion of both. There is no good and evil. Only the time spent between both heaven and hell, where we find our peace. And love. Even the vilest of monsters deserve to be loved.