Sins On The Skin

XXVI.

"Love can be holy." He said but the look in his eyes promised anything but. "It can be kind and gentle. It can be the flutter in your chest when you feel someone touch you, the blush staining your cheeks when someone brushes his knuckles over them."

To prove his point further, he took his knuckles and brushed them over her sharp jaw all the way to her lightly dusted cheeks and sharp cheekbones. "However, love can also be vile. Dark and all-consuming. The kind of love that makes you want to fall to your knees and let it destroy you." He let his palm rest on her soft skin and let the warmth she provided so carelessly travel to him. "That's all I can offer you."

He'd been dying to get those words out of his chest but something always stopped him. Funny how easily they'd come out now, how naturally.

He cupped her cheek and watched as the same emotion he was trying to defeat bled into her eyes.

He was a disaster but she didn't seem to mind.

He had worshipped false Gods. He had fallen in love with women that would never belong to him. To him, they were only borrowing their bodies. Which was convenient since he would never have taken them with the intention to keep them.

Muses, that's what they were.

Muses like Beethoven's Elise, Rossetti's Lizzie, Manet's Victorine, Klimt's Emilie and of course, Botticelli's Simonetta.

Muses he'd used before he found his own.

He had stolen, there was nothing he wouldn't do for a flash of inspiration.

He had killed. He had never taken possession of someone's last breath but he continously  dismembered what was once beautiful, he defiled it, violated it and so, essentially had taken its life.

He understood that there was still much to discuss, that the most important words had not been uttered yet. Regardless, he wished to forget all about that for a few hours. He wanted to take away her pain and exchange it with something that could hurt much worse if it was not taken care of properly.

"That's all I want from you." She wasn't lying. She'd take his darkness and drown in it if it meant that she could drown with him. His darkness was pure. It resembled the Chaos that reigned before the world was created. His darkness hid no malevolence, only beauty.

He was a Devil in his own right.

A Devil who had found a religion to worship between her thighs.

For him, she'd be Holy until the word bled.

And knowing her, not a single crimson drop would appear.

Even the truest believers suffer from momentary doubts, he thought as the memory of the hateful words he'd thrown at her appeared.

"I'd worship the fucking ground you walk upon without asking for anything in return but you don't want that. You want me to give you pain and worship you when you're covered in my marks. You want me to taint you, to destroy you, to love you, don't you?" As he spoke, his fingers played with his leather belt, excitement humming through his royal blue veins.

She offered her neck to him, knowing he could destroy her until she was nothing but a memory. "More than anything in the world."

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed harshly. She trusted him enough to help her breathe by suffocating her.

What an oxymoron, the voice in his head chuckled but he found no fault in the contradiction. It was perfect. The perfect way to heal. Even if it wasn't, he'd be damned if he dared deny her anything.