Stalked by Seduction and Shadows (Eternal Obsession, #1)

by Maggie Sunseri

I wanted to gaze inside the powerful, haunted, beautiful mind of which I had only ever caught glimpses. I wanted to pry her open and drag her hidden pieces out into the chilly autumn air. I wanted to hold her trauma in my palms and study it, find where the tears began so I could help her mend them. I wanted to know her void and how compatible it was with mine. My pain wanted to flirt with hers. She was so used to manipulating desire, and I wanted her to set her sights on me. I wanted her to become frustrated when I refused to bend and downright terrified when she realized that her heart was the only thing ever truly in danger.

Live, Little Flame. If you can survive what you have and still burn this blindingly, I have no doubt you will lead a life worthy of immortalization. Not the kind that has killed and buried my soul—but the kind that lives on with your children and ancestors in spoken word, or ink on pages that make it to strangers across the realm. Live. Burn. And never, ever, let them dim your fucking light.

All of Aristelle could gaze upon my Little Flame for all I cared, but just one touch, and I’d make sure they fucking burned.

I’d made the morally correct decision in Crescent Haven. I’d let her go. But now that she’d defiantly fought her way back to me, planting herself before the most powerful beast in a city full of them, I wouldn’t be making the same mistake again.

“I will ruin all others for you, Scarlett,” he said. “Anything else but us will only feel empty, meaningless, soulless. I will be the only thing you can see, the only being worthy of touching you, of seeing all of you.” His power stilled, a resolute calmness eclipsing his features. “That is what I will demand of you, and what you will eventually give freely. All of you. The parts that you hide, the parts that you hate, the parts that others have made you ashamed of, the parts that you flaunt and wield as weapons.”

But the more time I spent with them, the more I saw this loneliness inside of them that I fundamentally understood but didn’t know why. I wasn’t like them, and yet, in a strange way, I felt more akin to them than fellow humans.

“Something tells me you will become your most powerful self when you learn to love what makes you stand out.”

“No. The first time you’re fed from will be after you’ve sufficiently begged me to claim you, and I don’t think you’re ready to do that yet,” he said. “Because after I have my first taste of you, no other blood will ever again be satisfying. And I will be addicted to you even more than I already am, body and soul.”

“There are many people in this world who would love nothing more than to clip your wings. Stop doing it for them. Soar instead.”

“There is no competition in trauma. None of it is ever better or worse than any other. Trauma is not what happens to you. It’s what happens inside of you as a result of what happens to you.”

“If you harm her⁠—” “Then you can kill me,” Rune said. All eyes darted to him. “I’ll hand you the blade.”

“You may be used to having the upper hand with men, but as we’ve already established,” he said in my ear as more shadows bound my ankles together. “I am much more than a man.” “Oh, so you’re putting me in my place?” I asked, struggling against him futilely. He stroked my cheek. “You’re so intelligent, baby,” he said. “I love when you steal the words right out of my mouth.”

we were this act of depravity, yet so much more. We were the meaning behind the props and the theater. We were the exchange of trust and the flow of surrender and devotion. We were the obsession and the addiction, the love and the art and the poetry. Life, in all of its complexity and duality, its grit and its unending fire.

“Scarlett, you are the only thing that feels different in a world that never changes.”