“Oh.”

He smiles wistfully down at the little hands holding him in place, and flushes like a schoolboy with a crush, this living volcano, when her mouth finds his neck.

“I was just thinking about you, actually.”  

Every life he’s taken, fucked up or butchered, the grief and the torment of replenishing his conscience in their wake, fades into the pink noise of their near minds.  She is his only harbor of solace in all the universe, and his reliance upon her is terrifying.  

He turns his head, bends and pecks her cheek.  

“You wanna hear a poem?  This one’s by George Bernard Shaw. 
‘I want my rapscallionly fellow vagabond,
I want my dark lady.  I want my angel–
I want my tempter, I want
my Freia with her apples. I want the lighter of
my seven lamps of beauty, honor, laughter, 
music, love, life and immortality … . I want 
my inspiration, my folly, my happiness,
my divinity, my madness, my selfishness,
my final sanity and sanctification,
my light across the sea, 
my palm across the desert,
my garden of lovely flowers,
my million nameless joys, 
my day’s wage,
my night’s dream,
my darling and
my star.’”