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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Devyn Rivers
Read between
March 6 - March 16, 2025
For the bad girl who wants to be called “good girl”
His eyes were bright blue, nearly the color of the glaciers I saw hiking the other day. There was something wild and almost feral about him.
She stared at me with eyes I realized were a beautiful shade of green and for a moment I forgot what I was agreeing to.
She was staring at me intently with those big green eyes. Up close, those eyes were even more captivating—they were the color of the surrounding evergreens with flecks of gold like when the sun filtered in patterns through the leaves.
Up close his presence is dominating and aggressive and damn my body for liking it.
This man was hardened and brutal—cut from steel and birthed from shadows. He had some demons following him and I didn’t know what that meant for me yet.
“No, you like authority and dominance. And you can be controlling without being an asshole.”
“Don’t worry sweetheart,” I said as I turned my back to her. “When I touch you, it’ll only be after you beg me to.”
“—probably sales or a lawyer or something from the way you like to talk. You’re engaged to an asshat of a man—who is a bully and mediocre in bed at best. You like nice things but aren’t materialistic and you live in some big city like LA or New York. You’re a swimmer, probably have been all your life, and unless God decided you’re his favorite, you workout and possibly do yoga. You’re used to getting your way but you like to think it’s not all because of your good looks.”
“You’re some type of ex-military, probably army or marine but definitely special ops—you know your way around a gun but you’re too—” I waved my hand at him and tilted my head. “—criminal-ly to be a cop or something. You enjoy nature because it doesn’t talk back and ask you silly questions. It just is and you like the simple but brutal way of life out here. It’s survival. It makes sense. You had trouble with the law—yes, obvious I know—but you have that look in your eyes of someone who’s gone through some dark aspect of human depravity—either prison or maybe something else—so I bet it’s not
...more
She swallowed visibly and then turned around quickly in a huff but not before I saw a blush tint her cheeks. I decided I liked making her do that.
I hated to admit it but I spent a ridiculous amount of time watching her.
“You’re playing a dangerous game, princess,” I said, my voice strained. “I thought you were a dangerous man.”
She was a wildfire someone tried to contain in a fireplace—it just didn’t work.
He looked down at me, giving me every chance to stop him. But I knew what I wanted now. It was too late. I was burning so hot there was no stopping now. I was a raging wildfire and not even the storm outside could tame me.
I pressed my lips to hers and damned myself.
I knew then I didn’t just want to fuck her, I wanted to see her come undone.
Because what I felt in the tent was something I hadn’t experienced before. Yeah, I’ve had amazing sex and connected with a lot of women but whatever we just did was different and the instinct to chase after that feeling was why I found myself in the rain, chasing after a woman—something I absolutely never thought I’d do.
No one was going to save me here. I was on my own and I didn’t have a clue how to escape.
“Who touched you?” He demanded.
“He won’t touch you again,” he said in a murderous voice
“Stubborn woman,” Kraven muttered.
“You should know by now I don’t like my women powerless,”
I realized it was a very intimate thing to do to acknowledge someone’s scars. After all, they were a visible reminder of painful and often traumatic events.
My eyes met his and his storm pulled me in as he took in every detail of my soul.
“Break for me, darlin’.”
I could see a desperation and wildness in his eyes as though he wanted to possess me and never let me go. He wanted to claim me as his forever.
I recognized the Stockholm Syndrome but the dark part of my soul just didn’t care.
I would rather have the devil I knew, than the devil I didn’t.
“It’s that war between instinct and logic. Fantasy and reality. Your mind and your body fighting against each other for what’s right. It’s the manipulation of the breakdown.”
I never knew what being broken would feel like but I knew now.
It was Graham.
“Hey—Shh—I’m here—come here.”
“Shh—I’m here—I’ve got you—”
“I’m harder to kill than that, pretty girl,”
And there it was. At his words the nightmares of my past flooded my thoughts.
It is in the breaking, we become whole again. It is through darkness, we find the stars. Somewhere between the soul and the self, we find what we’re made of.
“Thank you—for coming back for me.”
“We have to move,” he said, looking at me in concern. “Can you make it?” “I don’t have a choice,” I said.
was trying to be optimistic for her but I knew Cooper wouldn’t stop. I recognized the look in his eyes: obsession.
Either way, it involved Kaelin now and I wasn’t giving her back. She was mine.
I grabbed her and pulled her into my arms where she held onto me as though I was the only thing keeping her from drowning.
Broken people. She was right. There was nothing in this forest but broken people. We all break once and then we’re never the same.
“I’m not leaving you,” Graham said fiercely.
“We’ll get out of this. I won’t let them take you again—I promise,”
When your very soul is broken, there aren’t any safe places. Not even within yourself.
“You deserve to feel whole,” he said against my neck. “You are gorgeous when you come. But that is your gift to give me. Not mine to take.” He kissed me again.
The last few weeks I became obsessed with getting her back and I didn’t know why. All I was going off of was the tentative connection we experienced the day she was taken. I didn’t realize just how much I’d grown attached to her in such a short amount of time before she was ripped from me. But now she was in my arms again and I knew that’s where she belonged.
She was mine and we would figure everything else out later.
I decided I’d do anything I could to hear that laugh again.
