Lovely Bad Things: A Dark Romance (Hollow’s Row 1)

KALLUM

It may have been Chaucer who first penned the derived maxim on the devil making use of idle hands. After hundreds of years, the wordage has altered, but the meaning remains unchanged.

We’re still blaming devils for our bad deeds.

While Halen slept, I occupied my idle hands with pilfering the necessary items for tonight.

Time is always the enemy.

The patience I’ve been able to afford ran out the moment I reentered my hotel room and Halen’s sinful fragrance took a cheap shot to my gut.

The scent of her shampoo infuses the air like a toxin invading my bloodstream. Lily of the valley alluringly drifts under the doorway. Ylang-ylang wraps my senses in a chokehold. The violent assault grips me in a blind fury until I’m forced to shoulder the conjoining door open, snapping the chain bolt off the hinge.

My chest heaves as I loom over the threshold, the sinew cording my bones stretched tight and muscles on fire as I try to rein in the vicious craving.

The bathroom light spills into the dark room, bathing Halen’s curled figure underneath the sheets like a fallen angel.

With marked restraint, I throttle my craving and seat myself in the corner chair of the room. Hands braced on my thighs, I watch her sleep, listen to her breathy exhales. Her legs twitch beneath the covers and she flinches, releasing a soft moan. Her mind won’t let her rest, even when her body is vitally desperate for it.

“Kallum…”

My whole body tenses at my name on her lips.

The wicked temptation to peel those covers away and slide between her thighs tears a destructive path through my mind, making me question my fucking sanity.

It’s the lovely bad things that steal into our thoughts in the middle of the night and tempt us across the line between good and evil. Those torturously beautiful sins that provoke our deepest, most deviant desires. It feeds us in the dark, stoking a frail flame into an inferno we can no longer resist.

She is my flame.

And I am all but pleading for my muse to burn me alive.

As my senses run wild, I can taste her saccharine fear. Her muted scream rakes nails down my back. I can feel her pulse kick against my palm. My need for her is tangible. She’s carved into my goddamn flesh.

The longer I watch her sleep, the stronger the urge to make my desires manifest.

My fingers dig into my thighs as I hold myself back. The slightest abrasive rub of my jeans over my raging cock damn near sets me off.

So when her eyes flutter open to remove the devious temptation, relief slams my body.

She doesn’t react to my presence by flinging herself out of the bed or screaming. Even coming out of a fitful sleep, she’s soft and pliant when she first wakes.

Her hazel eyes track over me as she becomes fully conscious. “How did you unchain the door?”

The tension ebbs from my constricted chest on a forced exhale. “A slab of wood won’t keep me from you. What were you dreaming about?”

Sweeping the tangle of hair from her forehead, she eyes me with severe suspicion. Then she glances at the door to see the broken chain lock. “Sigils,” she says, her voice a throaty rasp from sleep.

I inhale her punishing scent, nostrils flaring at her admission. “Keep going.”

“A symbol started appearing on my body,” she says. “All over. I don’t know why or what it meant. Vague, like all dreams.”

She pushes herself up against the pillow on the headboard. Her nightshirt stretches tight over her breasts. A sliver of her pink panties peeks above the sheet. My heart thunders inside my chest at the sultry sight of her.

“Where did the sigil first appear?” I ask.

A hesitant arch of her fine eyebrow, then she daringly draws the sheet down. My breath stalls in my lungs as she guides my gaze with her fingers. Across her belly, over her hip. My lungs burn for oxygen as she parts her legs and her fingers settle on the enticing skin of her innermost upper thigh.

“Here,” she says.

Whatever control I had mustered snaps.

I’m out of the chair and stalking to the edge of the bed where, when I reach her, I have to fist my hands to keep from touching her. My breaths saw my lungs to escape.

An ember of fear sparks in her eyes, but it’s not strong enough to snuff out the dark swirl of emotions fighting for dominance. Lust. Anger. Yearning to submit to the danger.

Resistance only heightens the hunger. The constant battle to keep our desires in check is a weary one, and when that sweet surrender finally takes us, the rapture is divine.

“What did the sigil look like?” Restraint coils tense muscles around my bones.

Her phone lights up to briefly steal her attention. She reaches for the device and reads a message. “Devyn says they can’t locate the hermit suspect. She really could have went with a better moniker. But Alister’s team has gotten onboard with the search.”

I remove the phone from her hand, toss it on the bed. “You knew he wouldn’t be found. You also know how to find him.”

Her strained swallow drags invitingly along her throat as she pins me with a searching look. “I’m not playing these mind games with you, Kallum.” She throws the covers aside and scoots toward the other side of the bed.

I grab her ankles and tow her back toward me, then flip her onto her back. A savage craving fires through my veins as I collar a hand around her throat. Fingers braced to the back of her neck, I press my thumb to the soft curve under her chin and, in one fierce move, draw her up toward me, angling her face right below mine.

Balancing on her knees, Halen releases a shaky breath. Her body trembles as I keep her where I want her.

“What did the sigil look like?” I demand this time, my voice fire over brimstone.

She blinks, her gaze flitting over my hardened features as her pulse riots against my palm. Tentatively, she brings her hand to my wrist and slips my sleeve back to reveal an inked design.

“Like this,” she says, her voice strangled by nerves. “But there was a line through it. And I’ve seen your tattoos. I’m overly tired and stressed.” Her swallow teases my palm. “Even if I wanted to know the meaning, you can’t remember.”

I use my free hand to unfasten the buttons along the placket of my shirt, effectively silencing her excuses. As I stretch the shirt open, her eyes drop to the tattoos, and her fragile breath caresses my skin.

Her shocked silence intensifies my hunger, and I bare my teeth as I clasp her hand and press her fingers to the sigil carved into my left pectoral—the design she saw in her dream.

She has seen most of the tattoos marking my body. Her dreams could be a manifestation of her obsessive desire to name me the Harbinger killer and her overworked psyche. A rational analysis.

Yet, when our suppressed desires fight to surface, they seek to take shape within any outlet, like the destructive force of water as it creates a new channel toward the ocean.

“I carved this into my skin the night of Wellington’s murder,” I say. “I know the meaning and the purpose, because every fucking day it won’t let me forget.”

Her curious gaze burns through me as she surrenders. “What is the mark?”

“The sigil for my muse.”

Her mouth parts, her hesitancy clogging the air between us. She doesn’t probe further. Because if she asks, then she has to decide what to do with the answer.

Before I release her, I take something for myself.

Slipping my hand from hers, I roll her sleeve back. I keep her braced in my hold as I push the cuff up her trembling arm. This time, she doesn’t deny me.

My fingers graze the rough, beveled scar tissue, but the injury she sustained during the wreck isn’t what has my heart thrashing my rig cage.

The scripted words tattooed over the scar reads: One must cultivate one’s own garden.

“It’s Voltaire,” she says, the soft cadence of her voice spilling into my head. “But you know that, I’m sure. It reminds me to stay in the present.”

I know the line quoted from Candide—and I also know what that line means to her, and why it was imperative for her to brand it on her skin. To recite the mantra to herself every day.

Her dread is so tangible it scorches the back of my throat.

“If there was ever a philosopher to imprint on your body,” I say, lightly tracing my fingers above the raised words inked into the scar, “this would be my choice for you.”

Something daring flashes beneath her gaze, and I swear if she continues to look at me with those large pixie eyes, with the goddamn hypnotic rhythm of her pulse enticing me, I won’t be responsible for the carnage I commit.

I move my thumb from under her chin and sweep the pad along her jaw, savoring this moment.

“Last night,” she says, “when you said what you did…” She swallows. “Don’t mock my pain, Kallum.”

With my free hand, I lower her sleeve, letting her shelter this part of her grief, but I flip her necklace out of hiding from beneath her shirt. Then I trail my finger over the concealed bite mark on her shoulder. “Don’t hide your pain from me, and I’ll never shame you into hiding it.”

Raw vulnerability leaks into her features. She rests her hand against my chest to regain balance. “You derive pleasure from my pain.”

It’s as much a question as it is an accusation.

A dangerous smile slants my face. As I tighten my hold on her once again, I lower my mouth next to her ear. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, doctor.” I pull back and drag in a searing lungful of her scent before I push in close to her lips to taste her broken breaths. “The very, very bad things I want to do to you…we’d both derive pleasure.”

A shiver rocks her body and she licks her lips. The demanding urge to pin her to the mattress threatens to annihilate my feeble control.

Sensing the danger, she traps my gaze. “I can’t tell what’s real anymore.”

I release a tense breath. “There has never been any act between us, little Halen. That is real. Everything between us…nothing has ever been more real.”

The visceral lure of her gravity ensnares me, her pull too powerful. If she demands more, I’ll open a fucking vein and let every truth bleed out—but she’s still wary enough to know when she’s teetering too close to the hazardous edge.

Fear crests above the depths of her silvery gaze and, dropping her hand, she removes her touch. I feel the force of the severed connection all the way down to my roiling marrow.

With a guttural curse, I tamp down the clawing hunger and release her. Taking a forceful step back, I button my shirt closed. The darkness of the room presses in.

“Less than forty-eight hours,” I say, reminding her of our limited time.

She lowers herself to the bed and pulls her legs beneath her, offering me a tantalizing view of her panties to further wreak havoc on my pulse. I can still taste her from last night. That flimsy barrier dares me to tear through the material and claim what’s mine.

I’ve all but scratched away her surface. Only a sheer veil remains.

She touches her neck, her thoughts pulled inward, before she grabs the phone and taps the screen. As if flipping a switch, she slides into her comfortable persona where she believes her erected walls protect her from me. Then she aims the screen in my direction.

“An analyst in my department pointed out a shape in the reeds,” she says, offering me the information I accused her of withholding. “A circle.”

And like that, she slips through my fingers all over again.

Leashing my frustration, I give my attention to the image. It was photographed from an aerial view. The circle is clearly defined where the reeds have been broken to mark the ground.

Halen toggles to another screen, her demeanor growing impatient. “Alister’s team posted an update confirming it’s a ritual circle, carved in the earth by an unspecified object.”

“A thyrsus,” I say, giving her the specified answer. “The staff associated with Dionysus and his followers. It was used during ceremonies and rituals. So safe to assume your suspect made use of it, too.”

She closes the tab on her phone and sets the device aside. “Could it have been used to string the eyes to the trees that high up?”

She’s still reaching for logical explanations, a way to piece together the inexplicable and bizarre. Because that is what she used to do, who she used to be, before the solid earth beneath her feet crumbled.

“Halen, anything is possible.” I smirk, recalling her claim during the trial. “Didn’t you once state that?”

Her gaze darts away, a fragile awareness creased in her stressed features. She tucks the white forelock behind her ear and throws her legs over the side of the bed. “Then there’s nothing left at the crime scene to connect.”

I roll my sleeves up my forearms, my body still tense and flesh overheated. Caging my obsessive thoughts, I attempt to lure the spider with enticing prey.

“His narrative,” I say, and she looks at me with a furrowed brow. “Connecting his story, that elusive motive. Isn’t that what you look for in the scenes?”

Her gaze tapers warily. “I think I’ve already uncovered enough of his motive,” she says, and I don’t miss the double entendre directed at me.

I spin my thumb ring a few times. “An unhinged mind doesn’t think linearly,” I say. “He’s moving through the stages by his own design. He’ll be feasting soon.”

Escaping my reach, she snatches the phone off the sheets and stands near the foot of the bed. “The locals know their suspect better than anyone else can.” She scans through her messages, then grabs a pair of jeans out of her open suitcase. “Maybe it’s time to follow their lead.”

“Where are you going?” I demand.

She opens the adjoining door, the broken chain knocks against the wood. “I’m going to help with the search.” She points through the doorway. “And you’re going to your own room.”

In less than two days, I’ll be back at Briar. And she’ll be out of my reach.

I reseat myself in the chair, earning an exasperated breath from her. “Kallum—”

“He stared into the abyss,” I say, the gravel in my voice reflecting my shortening fuse. “The narrative stems from the ritual ground. That’s where we’re going.”

“Then go.” She hastily runs her fingers through her hair. “Because if you have some information you’re not sharing with me…either say it, or otherwise I’m going to help Devyn. I owe her.”

A rush of heated fury zips through my veins. My jaw tightens as I watch her slip her legs into her jeans. She needs to be corrected about who she thinks she owes.

My gaze lingers on her sexy ass as she buttons her pants, and I drag in a searing breath to curb my impatience. “He looked into the abyss,” I say. “He stared death in the eye. Realizing this is all for nothing, that anything we do is pointless because it all ends.”

She turns to face me. “Everyone realizes that at some point,” she counters. “Not enough of a reason to justify a dissociation of this grandeur.”

“But do they really?” I force eye contact with her. “We all have a vague recollection of our end. But how many of us truly face our mortality on a candid level where, once we know—once it infects our entire state of being—we cannot simply return to life as we once were.”

She seems to take my words further inward, and the sudden worry of her slipping too far out of reach stalls my breath. “How does it end for Zarathustra?” I ask, shifting her thoughts.

“It doesn’t,” she says, reasoning. “At least, it doesn’t end in a literal sense. He overcomes his final sin. Compassion…pity. Then there was a lion and a lot of the author’s vanity leaking into the prose.”

My mouth tips into a slanted smile. She’s not wrong; Zarathustra is a divine depiction of Nietzsche. Philosophers can’t resist feeding their egos. But logic and rational deduction will only serve to frustrate her further. And it won’t serve me at all.

It’s time to start lowering the veil.

“Nietzsche advocated instinct over reason.” Elbows braced on the armrests, I steeple my fingers together. “The ‘will to power.’ The belief that, essentially, our will alters the universe. Amid your offender’s crippling fear of his end, his weakness of the flesh, he will cling to this belief.”

She sits on the edge of the bed, dropping her head in her hands. “We’re going in circles, Kallum. When I first read Allegory of the Cave, it was like falling down a rabbit hole. Yet he’s incorporated every symbolism into his delusion.” She blows out a breath and pushes her hair back, linking her hands behind her neck. “Everything connects. As if I already have the answers, all the pieces, but finishing the puzzle is like trying to link together over a million intricate pieces.”

“Synchronicity,” I state.

“But now I’m just exhausted.” She rests her hands on her thighs. “No more rabbit holes, no more existential meanderings. I need facts. Or…I need to leave and let the case solvers do their job.”

I narrow my eyes on her. “Running away is your default.”

“You don’t know anything real about me.”

“I know things that would make your head spin.”

“I’m trying to rationalize how to save these people—”

“You rationalized renting a car when you were leaving today,” I say. “To go where?”

My question gives her pause. She looks to the door. “I wasn’t sure,” she admits.

“Neither of us have a place we belong.” I cock my head. “Aren’t we a fucking pair.”

She releases a derisive breath. “Yes. A crazed, murderous fiend, and an apathetic profiler who lets him go down on her in the middle of an urgent case with lives at stake.” She shakes her head, disgust evident in her drawn features.

I can’t help the devilish smile that teases my lips. I stand and walk toward her. She keeps her gaze aimed on the floor, so I lower myself to my knees and cup her face.

“Falling through suffering is a descent into chaos,” I say, savoring the feel of her soft skin. “It’s the darkest obscurity, the ultimate terror. But the ascent out of the abyss reveals itself in the most tender moments.”

Her gaze alights on me, and a kernel of hope—that rare emotion always so elusive amid true despair—flares in her eyes. If I could bottle the awe in her face, my ego could feast and never starve. But it’s not her soft underbelly I’m a glutton for.

I sweep my hand to the nape of her neck and sink my fingers into her hair. I grip her hair and force her head back as I rise to my feet. Staring down into her face, I drink in the emotive fear crashing through her.

I flatten my other hand against her chest, absorbing the violent thump of her heart.

“That day in the quad when I approached you,” I say, “you felt your heart race for the first time.” Her heartbeat quickens in response. “That’s what terrified you.”

She struggles against my hold, her nails dig crescents into my wrists. “You twist everything—”

“That fire is really why you became infatuated with me,” I press on. “Why you couldn’t stop thinking about me, even when your career was in jeopardy.”

Her fight stalls. Breaths ragged, she doesn’t deny it.

“I could strangle you.” I yank her head back farther. “Does that frighten you?”

She doesn’t hesitate. “No.”

My gaze drags over her features, assessing the truth for myself. “Death doesn’t scare you,” I say, “because you have nothing left to fear losing. You’ve stared into the abyss, faced your worst horror, and now you fear nothing at all.”

She swallows hard, and the intoxicating mix of her lust and terror is the most potent aphrodisiac.

“Except me.” I slip my tongue over my teeth. “You fear everything about me. The way I tempt you to lose control. The way I dare you to rattle the cage of that dark prison in your mind. But most of all, you fear the way I make you feel. That terrifies you so deeply I can taste it every time you look at me.”

Her heart rate spikes, slamming against my palm.

“What do you fear, Kallum?” she asks, her voice breaking on an exhale.

My smile falls. “As if I’d give you yet another power over me, sweetness.” I tsk. “You’ll have to solve your own riddles.”

I remove my hand from her chest and touch her face. I run my thumb over her full lips with a reverent yearning so intense, my teeth grit against the need.

“The more you suffer, the deeper your pain, the more intoxicating your rapture.” I wet my lips. “That’s why the frenzy was so seductive to you last night, Halen. You’ve experienced hell. Anything above that is sheer, transformative ecstasy. It’s Nietzsche’s rausch. The path to the philosopher’s stone. What your suspect so desperately desires.”

“You are certifiably mad,” she says.

“Want will drive you right into the maddening depths, I assure you. But you have to want with a fire, with a passion. The day you stop wanting, is the day you decide to die.” A tense beat settles between us, the air thickening. “I know this, because I believed I’d never find my muse. Unfulfilled until the end came for me. Bored. Apathetic. Uninspired.”

Worshipful, I trace my finger across her cheek. “But then there was you—and you sparked a ravenous desire, one I will drop to my fucking knees and grovel for.”

The fear within her peaks, her defenses erecting to close me off. “You need help, Kallum,” she says. “I should have left you in that hospital to rot.”

A deep chuckle escapes, and I fasten my hand to her jaw. “Oh, you couldn’t hop on that plane fast enough to get to me. You’re in thrall to your obsession just as I am. There’s nowhere to go, little Halen. No one else can give you the answers to the questions plaguing you.”

The veracity of my words penetrates her obstinate defenses, and her expression opens.

“And the answers will be delivered my way because you owe me.” I seethe the words, dropping them against her mouth.

With what restraint I have left, I release her, and she pushes away from me.

“Now, are you coming willingly? Or am I throwing you over my shoulder, gagged and bound?”

Her anger is a fiery whip as it lashes out at me. “I don’t know if you’re really insane or not, but you’re a fucking sadist.” With derision in her heated gaze, she grabs a hairband and ties back her hair in a low ponytail, then grabs her mud-covered boots from beside her case, decidedly making her choice.

Good girl. Although I’m admittedly disappointed we’re not going with the former option.

As I head to my room door, I say, “Trusting my methods has gotten you this far. Dare to go all the way, little Halen.”

“All the way down to the pits of hell with the devil himself.” Her slitted pixie eyes flay me. “You asked me which one of us was selling our soul. I think you now have your answer.”

A smile forms as I hover in the doorway. “The ninth circle welcomes you, sweetness.”

She slips her feet into her mud boots. “You truly believe everything you say.” She assesses me coolly, logically, through the lens of a psychologist.

“I’ve had some time to work through my struggle with faith and trust. If you can’t trust your own mind, then what can you trust, Halen?” I leave her with that as I dip into my room to gather the supplies.

The suspect and I have at least one thing in common: We both need a bridge.

For him, in order to overcome his pity for the higher men and do what’s necessary to feed his unrelenting desire for self-deification, he must sacrifice them. Those he painstakingly selected. Those he may even love.

They are his bridge.

For me, I’m not here to save lives or this town. I’m not here to serve justice. I don’t need a fucking bargaining chip.

My muse owes me.

And I’m here to collect.

My bridge will be built of blood and bone. Fear and unadulterated lust.

We sacrifice that which we love to obtain our passions.

Before I meet Halen in the hallway, I use a butterknife to remove the plastic covering of my ankle monitor. Breaking the circuit is what gives off the signal to send an alert. I bypass the circuit and unscrew the pins. I remove the band and set the bracelet next to the receiver on the dresser, giving myself free roam until the morning.

We’re silent as we descend the steps of the emergency stairwell and exit on the backside of the hotel.

Halen removes the car keys from her pocket. “Once I know your truth,” she says, stopping at the driver-side door the rental car. “You’re not simply going to hand yourself over.”

I hold her gaze across the roof of the car. “The truth sets you free.”

Mouth pinched in a hard line, she nods slowly. “Right.”

She has never appreciated the honest answers I offer her.

“Here’s one more truth for you to puzzle over,” I say as she opens the car door. “Your suspect needs to feel threatened someone else is more worthy than him of ascending.”

Tossing her bag in the backseat, she says, “And who would be more worthy…?” Her voice falters as the whole picture starts to come into focus.

With the crescent moon hanging in a sea of fiery stars above her, Halen touches the diamond at her neck as understanding dawns.

“You have to perform the rite,” I say, confirming her suspicion. “Invoke Dionysus. Descend into the depths. Make your suspect believe you’re closer than him to ascending into the overman. This will lure him out of hiding far faster than a search party.”

It can only be her. Her pain and suffering is a siren’s song to the lost. Her insatiable frenzy to reach divine madness elevates her to a celestial temptress.

“What are you going to do to me, Kallum?”

“I’m going to bathe you in a libation,” I say, my blood heating at the mere thought. “I’m going to make you the ultimate temptation.”

“You’re going to sacrifice me.” Her breathy allegation slips over my skin.

To effectively give us both what we desire, I will make Halen into a pagan goddess. Adorn her head with a crown of bone, pose her against a barren tree, right under a ring of moonlight, where I will bathe her in blood and worship her body before I devour her.

Seduction of the mind, body, and spirit. The sacred trinity. At the height of frenzy, I will take all of her.

This is my ritual.

The time has come to awaken my muse.

“No, sweetness. I could never sacrifice you. I’m far too covetous over my desires.” I lick my lips with aching hunger. “You’re going to ascend.”