Inspire (The Muse #1)(70)
Author: Cora Carmack

I pull the knob to switch the showerhead on. I wait, letting the water run down my back, and I know the second it hits midnight. The dull throbbing in my head disappears, and the overhead light in the bathroom no longer makes my eyes water from the sensitivity. I lean back, letting the water run over my head. I lift my hands, intending to rub away at whatever blood is left on my now healed forehead, but Wilder grabs my arms and pulls them away before I can do more than smudge it.

I meet his eyes, pulling one wrist free from his grasp, and with him watching, I rub my fingers over the spot where my head had apparently hit a lamppost earlier as I fell. I don’t just hear him suck in a breath; I feel it too. His grip tightens around my arm, and his body locks up next to mine. He starts to step away, but it’s my turn to grab hold of him this time.

“Wait. Don’t go.”

He stares at me for a long moment, and I can feel tears welling at the corner of my eyes. This could be it. This could be the moment he walks away from me.

His fingers graze my cheek, and he steps in closer. His height puts him looking down at me, and he rubs his thumb across the skin just above my eyebrow, just below my former injury. His eyes dip down to mine briefly before returning to my forehead, then he tilts my head back, leaning me into the line of the water again. It sprays against my hairline, smoothing through the knots and clumps left by the rain and blood. He runs his thumb over the unblemished skin there—back and forth, back and forth—as if he needs to touch it to believe his eyes.

“How?” he finally breathes.

Here goes.

“I’m—” Not human. Not like you. Not normal. “Immortal.”

He doesn’t react. He doesn’t call me a liar or crazy. He doesn’t ask me any questions. He doesn’t say anything at all. So I keep going.

“I’m a muse.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Wilder

I can’t stop staring at the smooth olive skin on her forehead. There was a cut there. Not just a cut. The skin had been broken, and it had bled and bled.

It bled so damn much.

But now there’s nothing there.

I can’t decide if I want to be afraid or worried for my sanity or to pinch myself to wake up. Maybe that was it. Maybe I missed Kalli so goddamned much that this was some elaborate fantasy dream gone wrong

“Wilder, say something.”

Her arm smooths over my bare bicep and presses hard against my chest.

“You feel real,” I mumble, more for me really, than her.

“Of course I’m real.”

She’s always felt too good to be true. How beautiful she is. The pull I felt to her from the very first moment I saw her. The way we both fell so quickly and so hard.

Am I crazy? Is that what’s happening here?

“Wilder, did you hear what I said?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.”

How the hell is this happening?

I touch her forehead again. “How?”

“I told you. I’m immortal.”

The word doesn’t really register in my head. And if she told me, I must not have heard her. Maybe I really am going crazy.

“Immortal … like live forever immortal? Like a vampire or something?”

She grabs my wrist, pulling my arm down in front of her. Her index finger traces over my forearm, down the form of Atlas tattooed on my skin.

“Like this. When I told you that my name is Kalliope, you mentioned that you remembered a goddess by that name.” She pauses, her eyes searching mine. “I’m her.”

Water is still spraying around her head and shoulders, and maybe it’s a trick of the light or maybe it’s part of my delusion, but she does look ethereal all of a sudden. The spray creates a halo effect around her head, and the water sluices down over her perfect skin. Her clothes cling to her form, and she’s a modern day statue. Fabric draped against her breasts, revealing beautiful curves and lines.

One second I’m standing up looking at her, and the next my knees have given out and my back is slamming into the shower wall as I fall down into the tub.

“Wilder!”

Kalli kneels over me, cupping the back of my head, easing me down until I’m laying back against the wall and my legs are stretched out in front of me.

Everything feels like it’s spinning out of my control, and as often as I look at her, as I touch her, there’s a shrill, shouting fear in the back of my mind that this isn’t real, and I’m going to lose her all over again. But it will be so much worse because I won’t be able to win her back, to find her. She just … won’t exist.

I clutch her waist, pulling her closer until her knees are over my thighs and she’s straddling me. I take hold of her neck and pull her face down to my level. Her forehead rests against mine, and she feels so solid and good in my arms. But there’s still a spot of blood on her neck, and more on my hands, and I don’t fucking understand.

“How is this real?”

Her fingers drag through my hair, holding me tight.

“It just is. I was born several thousand years ago. I’m the daughter of Zeus, the god of gods, and Mnemosyne, the deity of memory. The rest of the gods have withdrawn from the human world, but my gift as a muse, my ability to inspire artists, is just as much of a curse. I have to use it.”

She starts talking about poisonous energy and influencing humans and the madness she’ll experience if she doesn’t do it.

“The night you found me downtown—when I ran out of that club and you came after me … I’d thought I could fight the energy. I’d thought I could live without doing what I’m supposed to do, without affecting mortals. But the energy had a will of its own. My mind … I lost control and did a terrible thing. I put a lot of people in danger, and I was running from it when you found me.”

“What terrible thing?”

Her hand trembles, releasing her grip on my hair.

“There’s a fine line between genius and madness. A little time with me can open up a person to their potential, move them to greatness. But too much time with me … and that balance can be damaged. That fine line can be crossed. I … before we met, there was an artist I was seeing. He became obsessive. He couldn’t let go. Of me or what my abilities did for him. I stayed too long, and he tried to kill himself. It’s why I pushed you away at first. Why I ran the morning after our first night together. I’m dangerous. Being with me is dangerous. And you were better off never knowing me at all than risking the same fate as him. But—”