The Devil's Benediction

~ A L L E S A N D R O B L A C K W E L L ~

The silken torment of her hair, the phantom ghost of her scent, the lethal curve of her lips-I am haunted by the softness of her skin and the melody of a voice that could summon devils. She possesses a mouth as sharp as a blade, a tongue that cuts deep, but it is those eyes... those endless, abyssal black orbs that stare back at me, daring me to break.

Her confidence is a collar around my throat, tightening until the air turns thin. It brings me to my knees, a king desperate to kneel, trembling with the need to surrender my very soul at her altar.

She is whiskey in a porcelain teacup fragile, deceptive, and burning with a fire that threatens to consume me whole. And I am the addict, parched and trembling, dying for a single taste of that ruin, desperate to drain the cup. She was never merely a part of my world. She is the axis on which my world turns. She is my world.

~ K A L Y A N I D E S H M U K H ~

He was the midnight rain cold, relentless, and washing over everything in his path. He was the exquisite kind of ache, a beautiful sorrow that offered a terrifying, silent peace. A pain that felt like salvation.

But I was an intruder in his gilded empire. He was carved from the finest marble of luxury, born into a world of opulence where I had no place to stand. He was the King seated upon a throne of shadows, and I was merely his lawyer nothing more, nothing less. He was the storm that owned the night, and I was the moon that had no choice but to wane, to vanish, and finally, to leave.