the dark by herself, wondering why her mama didn't chose her over all diaphanous things and all of her passing dalliances. Her mother was the embodiment of Venus, pulchritudinous and transcendental but her artistry was deceiving and destructive. Eliana Collins had venom on her silver tongue, stardust on her veins and vile influence on her fingertips. Like Aphrodite in all her beauty and splendor, she was vain and envious, filled with desire and seduction.

All it took was a husband riddled with work and an unfaithful wife to destroy the facade of a home. Admist forgotten lovers, the reality of seperation and rage, Eliana forsaked the existence of Lavinia Summers—it was ironic, how the goddess of love didn't have any love to give—and all because in her daughter's honeyed eyes, she saw the aftermath and the downfall of her wicked indulgence.

Neglected and denied affection by a grieving and an enraged father, she got attached to the first person who offered her peaches on a warm midsummer day, uttered words of assurance on a hot lazy afternoon, made love to her on a warm and slow afternoon, carassed her hair and read poetry to her in the backseat of his car, kissed her tears underneath the glitz of a thousand stars, and told her he loved her in July.

Did he truly?

So many days has passed since Elias Montgomery has kissed her, reignited the mesmeric ecstacy and their summer amour but Lavinia recalls how she saw him in town with another girl again, kissing her like he kissed her inside his car. She acts like what he does now doesn't concern her—she knows that Elias Montgomery was never truly hers— but she remembers how she longed for his wicked touch that ignited her soul, his rough kisses that sent jolts of electric pleasure down her spine and it makes her chest ache, because he does not feel what she does.

The high and the exaltion dies down and it leaves her dysphoric.

As if on cue, a soft tap on her window gently wakes her from her thoughts. She sees Elias outside, shivering a little from the cold as he takes the last drag of his Marlboro cigarette and exhaling the smoke slowly as he stares into nothing. A soft sigh escapes her lips when he lays his eyes on her, her loud and delirious thoughts are now silent and dead.

"Hey," his lips curve into a whimsical smile when he sees her and she notices the cut on his lips first. He brings the cigarette to his bleeding lips again and she sees his bruised hands drenched in blood, the proof of his wrath imprinted clearly on his skin. His runs his fingers over his disheveled and wild hair as he waits for her to say something and her heart drops at the sight of hm.

"Are you going to invite me in or would you rather stare at me while I freeze to death?" He questions, his eyes glinting mischievously in the dark as he takes his last puff and extinguishes it under his feet before he leans in.

A slight crimson hue spreads over her cheeks and she opens the window to let him in. He closes the window after him and looks around silently in the dark. "Is he home?" His voice is deep, hoarse and raw from all the smoke his lungs take in but to her, it is soothing.

"No." Her father is rarely home.

He hums lazily in response as he walks towards her bed as if takes off his shirt and sits on the edge of her bed. Even in the dark she knows the visibility of his hallowed collarbones, every curve of his naked torso and the harsh ribcage over his godly physique, the osbedian writings on the side of his abdomen and every trail of the protruding veins on his forearms, she knows it all by memory.

She looks aways quickly and he raises a questioning eyebrow in amusement. "Why are you looking away? You've already seen everything before."

"Come here."

She goes to him.

"Look at me."

The moonlight illuminates the room entirely and his dark and messy hair glimmers like silk in the absence of the sun. His eyes appear bloodshot as if he spilled blood and not translucent tears but the moonlight dances delicately around him, casting it's divinity on his ungodly mind. Even in the absence of Apollo, Selene still glorifies him.

"What happened to you?"

"Are you worried about me?" He teases, taking her dainty hands in his stained ones. Her eyebrows creases in disbelief and her pink saccharine lips settles into a little frown. She hears the low rumble of his vibrating chuckle, and it oddly reassures her.

"I missed you," he says and she notices how his bloodshot eyes looks up at her feverishly, like he should look at his lover. He caresses her cheeks so softly, like his fingers are trying to memorize how her skin feels like against his own that are tainted by crimson liquid, unforgettable pleasure and beautiful inquity.

"You didn't," she turns away when she remembers the girl he was with the other day. She was pretty and her laughter was infectious. He tilts her chin gently and she flinches a little when his rings creates a cool sensation on her skin.

"What makes you say that?" His gaze is as intense as a flame and it lights her on fire.

"I saw you with her," she whispers in hopes that he wouldn't hear it. She stands quietly in his arms, the eerie silence, comforting darkess and Selene the only witness of their tragic entanglement.

"It didn't mean anything. Don't be upset," he brushes his hand across her cheek lightly and delicately. "I missed you." He repeats again but she says nothing because she misses him more, longs and cries for him on nights like this. So she treats this as a fleeting dream that morphed from her desperate longing.

"Your hands. They'll scar," she grazes her fingers lightly over his but he doesn't pull it away or show any signs of discomfort. She can hear him breathing, his chest rises and falls as he does so. It is serene, tranquil and the only reminder that he's human too.

"I don't care, I came to see you," her breath hitches when he touches her bare skin and her veins pulsate under his unholy touch. And so she relishes in the devoting sensation of his hold.

In the pale moonlight, she glances at him and in the violence of his eyes she dies everytime. His eyes are a different kind of sobriety, a contrast from the way his touch gets her high.

"What happened to you?" She asks again.

"Later," he murmurs as he lays her down on her bed gently. "Let me just hold you for now."

And so, she just let's him hold her.

She lay besides him in her bed, with her dark hair spilled across the silky pillows, he wraps his arms around her in an embrace and she thinks it amusing how they ended up this way. She knows that he has not given her an answer but for now, she let's fate play a cruel joke on them, while the melancholic sonata plays forever in their deranged heads.

a/n: thoughts?