Persephone

He swears she isn’t real, just some kind of creature from one of the atrociously long books he had to read in high school�"the Odyssey or some s**t�"and he thinks the word he’s looking for is siren, but he can’t remember because all he can think about is her. She’s all caramel skin and sun in her hair, flowers in her hands and feet dancing on morning dew, and god she’s something. Beautiful. Otherworldly. Dark and alluring and he would drown himself for her and that is exactly his problem. She’s brown eyes and tender glances and soft touches and yet beneath all that there is a monster lurking and when she calls he follows, and that is exactly his problem. 

She kisses him first. 

It’s wicked smiles and a mess of cutting teeth and fingernails sharp enough to break skin, painted a dark dark dark red. There’s blood in his mouth, and he can taste the metal and pomegranate juice and something that might be wildflowers but god he can’t focus. She’s everywhere all at once and it’s overwhelming and he can’t stop. He doesn’t know if it’s her blood or his. 

He breathes her in like cigarettes, the sharp smoke burning its way down to his lungs and goddamn is she addictive. She’s clawed her way inside, those horrifically red nails tearing him open and killing him from the inside out, but he doesn’t think he actually wants her to stop. It’s horrifying and mesmerizing and all he knows is that her voice sounds like a cruel whisper of wind before a storm and he wants to hear it again and again and again. She whispers make me queen and steal me away and take me to hell in between languid touches and mocking laughs and the only word he seems able to form is yes yes yes yes.

It’s dangerous and reckless and brazen and probably a thousand other things at once, but he doesn’t mind. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks he probably should. 

She has six pomegranate seeds in her palm and the juice is staining her fingers a bright red. She eats them slowly, savoring the taste, and when she smiles there are six sickly-sweet seeds in the hollows of her teeth. Her lips are ruby red and he thinks gods don’t worship mortals, but he might just start. 

She becomes spring all over again and he watches her put flowers in her hair and paint her nails a muted pink and her lips a perfectly amenable rose.

Winter comes and suddenly her nails are painted crimson and her lips stained a deep red, and he tells her she tastes like the damned.

He realizes he doesn’t mind the taste as much as he should.

She says those who take pleasure in the damned soon join them--she doesn’t know he’s already falling.