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“Here.” I tuck the keys in her palm, closing her fingers around the solid objects.
She stares vacantly at our clasped hands, then finally removes hers from mine to slip the keys into the bag at her hip. “Thank you.”
I trap her face between my palms again, flames licking my viscera at the feel of her soft skin. “We have to move him,” I say. “Now.”
She stares back at me, long lashes framing her light eyes that reflect the stars, and I swear if she asked me to light myself on fire right now, I’d strike a match.
Mercifully, she nods against my hold. No other words are spoken as I reluctantly release her and we heft the drunk and battered professor and lug him across the shadows of the campus.
I make sure to grab the weapon.
My thoughts are a snarl of hypotheticals, an infinite number of paths stretched before us, each one littered with too many unknown variables. Forced to select one, I take the path which leads us into the dim interior of Wellington’s lecture hall, where I let him drop to the lacquered hardwood.
Despite the dire circumstance, a fiendish smile tips my mouth. Wellington’s insult to me during his speech now feels more like a trivial afterthought. Casting a critical look down on his bloodied face, I no longer see a rival, if he ever was much of one from the start.
“Who’s the washed-up charlatan now?”
“You know him,” she says to me, and I note an undercurrent of accusation layered beneath.
I sink my hands into the depths of my pockets. The subtle glow of bookcase lamps is the only source of light, casting the classroom like a darkened stage.
“Unfortunately,” I tell her honestly. “He’s a professor of philosophy here, but more of a hack.”
She paces a few steps, then turns to face me. “Who are you?” she demands.
I lift my chin, the weight of her question met with a host of conflict and friction.
The only certainty I know is, since my first touch, I won’t be able to keep my hands off her. I’ve never felt such a compulsion to enmesh myself in another person. She’s become a part of my state of being. Entanglement theory on a cellular level, entwining us with an epic origin story.
Plato’sSymposiumstates humans were once whole beings that, due to the gods’ fear and envy, were severed in half. One made two.
When one finds their soul mate, they will cleave to them, will abandon all else to be with their other half. Where, in the throes of passion, their need to satiate an endless desire, they will starve and wither in each other’s embrace.
Stale philosophers can argue whether or not Plato actually believed in the concept of soul mates, or if the myth was delivered by a comic as satire.
I’d vainly argue that no one spouts such passion, such fervor, only to dismissively sweep it aside. If Plato ever entertained this belief, then the proof may lie in such a verse:
He whom love touches not walks in darkness.
Daringly, I free my hands and devour the distance between us to capture her wrists. Her gaze lowers to the inked sigils on my fingers as my thumb purposely strokes her skin. The staccato beat of her pulse accelerates under my touch.
“I’m the man who’s been waiting for you,” I confess, the raw honesty flayed from my dingy soul.
She momentarily forgets about her questions and the bastard bleeding out on the floor as her gaze connects with mine, a heated swirl of curiosity and fear and recognition all banked behind those alarmingly expressive eyes.
I tilt my head and nod down to Wellington. “What happened with him?”
She blinks. “He’s a killer.”
Those three words punctuate the atmosphere with damning conviction. The silence of the hall insulates us, fueling the burning ache in my chest as I study the unearthly woman in my grasp.
Her intoxicating fragrance of lily of the valley and ylang-ylang infuses the enclosed space, damn near drugging me. “How do you know that.”
Her teeth sink into her bottom lip, my suit jacket swallowing her. And goddamn, that’s such a tempting thought. How I could swallow her down my gullet this instant.
She shakes her head tentatively. “I don’t know. I lost something,” she says on a shaky breath.
The powerlessness I feel watching her descend further into a state of shock spears my rib cage. The fear of losing her is tangible—a loss so debilitating, it reaches sharp claws down my throat to scrape at my insides.
