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

by Maggie Sunseri

Sometimes I felt dead inside, but really, I was alive—so fucking alive—and my life was out there. It hadn’t even started yet. The future was as rich and juicy as the peach in my palm, just waiting for my teeth to pierce its skin and let its aliveness dribble down my chin.

But this girl—she was the red and orange of autumn leaves in the looming, dark woods. She was the flame of life that burned on and on, the warmth I would never feel again, the embers that had dimmed when I’d forsaken my humanity for an eternity of ice and death.

At a certain point in immortality’s long march, pain became the only means of effective communication.

The taste of blood reflected a person’s essence, and this guy’s soul was full of shit.

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.

I didn’t envy vampirism, but I sometimes envied immortality. All the books I’d have time to read, the people I’d meet, the skills I’d learn, the places I’d go, and the different versions of myself I’d get to be.

In the fizzy electrolyte water, I’d planted a drop of my blood. As soon as Little Flame had taken a sip, she’d been marked. My essence was planted inside her, forever. No longer would I need to track her by scent.

“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.”

“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.”

“And yet you burn. Despite everything you’ve endured, all the pain and the loneliness and the grief and the betrayal, you burn fucking blindingly, like you can’t help but be anything less than radiantly alive. In you I see hope that never dies, and some might call it weak or naive, but I think it’s the most beautiful thing about you, this radical choice to be open and warm in a world that is overwhelmingly cold and brutal.”

On the surface, we were direct opposites. We shouldn’t have belonged together, this ageless monster cloaked in shadow and this human ray of sun. And yet, my darkness called to hers, and even more disastrous, so too did the humanity that I secretly mourned every year or two in early autumn.

“Scarlett, my beautiful, helpless toy, I will bring you more depraved ecstasy than you could ever conceive. I will bring you to the edge of your limits, flood you with so much pleasure and sensation that your body will give out, and then I’ll do it all over again. I will find and exploit your every weakness and use them to both satisfy and torment you endlessly. I will fuck your perfect mind even harder and deeper than I will fuck your divine body. I will make you the best, strongest, most powerful version of yourself. I will destroy you and remake you in my image as your Master and God.”

Because it was only through knowing the darkness that I could one day find myself drowned in light. I believed in love written in the stars because I couldn’t fathom living in a world without it.

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

“Don’t you dare give up, Little Flame. Or I swear I will fight Helia herself to drag you right back down here to live in hell with me.”

“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.” “You don’t have to.”

Though she didn’t want to be alone, it was also all she’d ever known, and that made her solitude just as comforting as it was painful. Better the devil we knew than the one we didn’t.

“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.”

“Scarlett, I would drink your darkness, bathe in it, pull it into me while I held you inside my own.”

Books raised me, shaped me.” “They were your escape,” I murmured. “You must’ve been so lonely.” He paused, his hand going still against the curve of my waist. “Indescribably.”

The whole world is doomed, Little Flame. We live and love anyway.

“You deserve so much more than what life has handed you, Scarlett. Don’t accept the half-love that you’ve grown accustomed to. Only accept the full, staggering devotion that you deserve. It’s what we all deserve. To feel wholeheartedly chosen, desired, secure, and nurtured. Anything less is theft.”

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

“There is no deserve when it comes to love. There are no conditions or stipulations. You just love.”