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

by Maggie Sunseri

The first time a man made me go to that empty place in the stars, I didn’t come back to my body for three days.

“Because you have a big heart,” he said with a cold, sinister smile. “And seeing your lovers lose appendages or disappear off the face of the earth might make it crack a little. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

The way I felt surrounded by hundreds of people, yet still just as alone as I was when I escaped to the woods to stare up at the stars? The meaninglessness of every fling, every seduction, every game—the way a man could be inside of me and still not fill even an inch of the void in my soul?

You clip your own wings. You push yourself back down. You reach to cover yourself, to hold back your true thoughts and feelings. No one is ever born with that instinct; that’s something we’re taught. Abusers don’t just drain us of our light. They also condition us to dim it for them, even when they’re not in our lives anymore.”

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

“I’m tired of being alone,” she whispered. “Exhausted from it, really.” She was deflated, her light dimming to gently glowing embers. “I don’t want to absorb another wound by myself. I can’t.”