Promises and Pomegranates (Monsters & Muses, #1)

by Sav R. Miller

I learned I quite enjoy the taste of brutality on my tongue. Love the way it blossoms like a flower springing from the earth, igniting a compulsion like no other.

She’d say humans are made up of energy, and that energy has a certain magnetism to it that attracts both what we fear and what we desire, and it was up to us to reflect the kind of life we wanted to the universe so it would be able to deliver.

All the ways I’d worship her tight, perfect body if given the chance. How I’d drag her to the depths of hell but convince her she’d gone to heaven, using my tongue to write wordless poetry on her sensitive, swollen flesh.

If Elena is even half as divine as the fruit in the Garden of Eden, I absolutely understand Eve’s surrender.

Maybe Hades was lonely too, and he brought Persephone to his realm because he knew she’d bring the light with her.

Or maybe it’s that the violence comes as a tribute to me, being wielded on my behalf in a way no one has ever done for me before.

I don’t know how, but every time our lips meet, she tastes fucking divine, like a holy scripture written to absolve me of my sins, something sweet and succulent and entirely too pure for her own good.

“You were spring, and I the edge of a cliff, and a shining waterfall rushed over me,” he recites softly, the line barely registering in my brain before sleep welcomes me once again.

Yet that’s what heartbreak feels like; it’s having someone reach into your chest and tear the organ from your body, except they don’t use any tools or care to make it a clean extraction. They yank and twist until it pops free, leaving all the broken muscle and tissue behind, veins spilling with nowhere else to pump into.

She may have loved me, but I never loved her. Losing her never felt like being dismembered or having the blood drained right from your body, creating a loneliness unlike anything I’ve ever known. It never felt like spending your life as a sinner and finally getting a taste of heaven, only to have it ripped right out from beneath your fingertips. But it takes a woman like Elena to elicit feelings like that. It requires kindness and warmth. Not the kind of fires lit just for the hell of it but the flames that flourish with passion and understanding and just a touch of darkness. It’s Elena’s innate goodness that makes the loss fucking unbearable. Without her, I feel like one half of a soul, existing aimlessly, waiting for the earth to reclaim me the way I have so many others.

I loved thee, though I told thee not, Right earlily and long, Thou wert my joy in every spot, My theme in every song.

monsters aren’t capable of returning love. And the longer you spend chasing it from someone who cannot ever give it back, the more of a monster you become in turn.”

My obsession. My ruin. My husband.

You cannot love a person fully without knowing the darkness etched into their soul.

She’s here to stay, and the darkness inside me starts to feel a little less heavy.

I inhale deeply, trying to commit the smell of happiness to my memory: potential and sweetness wrapped in a tender little package, sometimes full of anguish and stains that muddy the journey but that bring you out whole on the other side. It’s springtime in the middle of winter, a sliver of light shining on your soul that somehow makes you feel less alone. Because that’s what happiness is. The people you find along the way who make life a little more bearable. And once you find them, you don’t let them go.