Cinder and Smoke

Cinder I want a love that will scorch the night to ashes. I want a passion that will make the stars burn out. Ecstasy and agony, beautiful and brutal. I want something that cannot be ignored. I want something deserving of a spotlight and the headlines. When I first laid eyes upon Gabriel Cartwright, I was transfixed. It happened at the café I worked at two summers ago. I would watch him as I served freshly brewed coffee and cappuccinos to the patrons. He noticed me, but he didn’t make an advance. There was something about him – something different from other men. Gabriel was watching me, observing me, it seemed. I knew then and there, I had to have him. It wasn’t a question of if, but when. Glancing at me with a charged glint in his eyes, Gabriel acknowledged what I knew. Our love would set the world aflame. Gabe Some of the most beautiful things in nature are also the most lethal. Behind the most alluring of facades, the most cunning of masks, often lies a calculating danger; a cold cruelty. Beauty acts as a mask, and the true nature of the being is only revealed after its prey has been lured in, ready to be devoured. Akin to the deadly beauty of the white oleander, an exquisite flower that is poisonous in all its parts. One touch is dangerous. One kiss is toxic. Cinder is much the same. At first I was fooled, but masks don’t stay on forever. Once you are affected by her, you are forever altered. Tarnished by the beautiful poison that roams within her. Cinder. The name sends shock waves through my body every time I hear it spoken out loud. I regret the day I ever crossed her path. Where there is smoke, there is fire, and something told me, I was about to get burned.