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

by Maggie Sunseri

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.

in the last couple years I’d been dimming like a dying star, and I’d decided that the world was too grand and unknown to succumb quietly into the void. I’d chosen life.

Monsters were far scarier when they had no beginning and no end.

I didn’t like the way they’d pulled her out of the happiness she’d wrapped around herself. The way they’d stolen her from her own, carefully crafted reality and made her an object in theirs.

Disappointment was a wasted emotion.

She had been on the cusp of adulthood, and though I knew the logic was faulty, it felt more innocent to watch her when she was a child. Maybe a part of me was frightened of the shift—to see her as something other than pure and unactualized. I’d decided it was best to let her go, for her future to exist only in my imagination. Just as I would only ever live in hers.

Her blood. Her pain. Arousal spread slowly from my core and outward, and soon my pants were uncomfortably tight. I bit down on a curse. I was sick and twisted in more ways than I could count, carrying a list of sins long enough to damn me to the underworld for far longer than an eternity. But this? This was my worst fuck-up yet. By a longshot. And the worst part of it wasn’t what was currently happening, but the terrifying realization that I had absolutely no control over what happened next. And I was always, always in control.

Only I was allowed to creep on Scarlett.

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.

You’re not nearly pretty enough to go to war over.” Uriah clutched his chest. “Ouch.” He grinned. “Though pretty enough implies you do think I’m pretty.”

“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.”

I was used to being misunderstood. What did public opinion of me matter when I would live on and everyone in this square would one day perish? What did it matter if they hated me if it meant this island was free and safe from worse monsters?

She hated how much she wanted me, and it was deeply, intoxicatingly, satisfying.

Mortals were fleeting, and I was eternal. My Scarlett would haunt me with all the rest one day.

As much as I wanted to break her, I also wanted to preserve the fire in her blood that made her so stupidly, recklessly brave and defiant. I loved the way she burned.

Seduction was best as a long game, especially when it came to using people for material benefit. Tease then withdraw. Reveal then hide. Exude confidence then stoke confusion. Each game was a delicate dance, and worming deeper into someone’s subconscious slowly over time yielded the best results.

Although I enjoyed feeling like we were a team, I kept one of my feet firmly out the door to avoid receiving the full brunt of her inevitable rejection. It was a lonely way to do friendship, but I was used to feeling alone.

“Do the turned mourn themselves?” I asked softly. The tragedy of such a thought slammed into me much harder than I expected, and for a moment, I saw Rune’s face. Reggie set down his drink, a sad smile tugging at his lips as he leaned closer. “Some. I do every day.” He shook his head, rubbing his chin dotted with silvery stubble before shaking a finger at me. “You, my dear, are quite unlike any mortal or immortal I have ever met before.”

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

I would not play his games. I would make him play mine.

I could feel his smile. You had to be kidding me. “Rune.” “Baby, if you wanted my attention, you could’ve just used your words,” he said, so close to my ear that his lips grazed the curve of it.

“Submit now or keep fighting, either choice is deeply satisfying to me.”

“Tell me to stop and mean it,” Rune dared. “Tell me to leave you alone, to never speak to you or touch you ever again.”

He was the dark stillness of night embodied, the canvas upon which the stars aligned.

That was another key ingredient to any great seduction: creating contradictions. Contradictions drove people wild. It was deeply erotic to tease the presence of a quality that didn’t belong, that undercut assumptions. We all loved to be surprised. It was the mystery, the unanswered questions, that kept readers turning the pages.

I thought I was the insane one in this relationship, but this girl was absolutely giving me a run for my fucking money.

“What is it, Little Flame? Tell me. Let me help.”

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.”

Something told me the people she’d grown up with, especially her sister, had poisoned her against herself, all in desperate, envious attempts to dull her vibrancy. It would now be my job to help her undo that damage, to see past their lies and free herself from her own limiting beliefs. Scarlett’s darkness was just as captivating and endlessly intriguing as her light.

“I will earn your trust,” I said. “And then I will demand everything from you. Your secrets, your desires, your needs, and your every last dream. I will make sure you live the life you have always deserved.”

I’d asked for her secrets, and she’d carved into my flesh to pull out mine instead.

It was the unnamable twist of fate that continued to bring us together, to intertwine our lives. 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.

with Rune, all the parts of myself I hid yearned for him just like the rest of me, as if they knew he would hold and cherish them. Maybe even consume them. How could my darkness be too much when it stood in the shadow of his?

“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.”

More than his cruelty or his dominance, his warmth or his praise, I loved most when Rune’s control slipped, and I saw underneath his shields. When I made him lose control, it was nothing short of a drug to me.

“You’re so pretty when you’re putting that spiteful little mouth to good use,”

“You don’t believe in your own perfection yet, but one day you will. I’ll make sure you see yourself the way I do even if I have to destroy the entire realm to do it.”

it was only through knowing the darkness that I could one day find myself drowned in light.

Everything about me that Isabella hated, Snow accepted without a single attempt at changing me or criticizing me.

The way Snow made me feel so secure, seen, and accepted only made worse the heartbreaking understanding that Isabella only ever made me feel the opposite. I’d thought it had been because of who I was deep inside, or maybe because I’d done something wrong that I couldn’t remember. But if Snow could treat me this way, then Isabella could’ve too.

“I’ve noticed something when I’m watching you,” Snow said slowly, drawing my eyes to hers. “Sometimes, when you’re really excited about something, or you’re deep in that zone you enter in Odessa when you’re working the room—there are these lapses, as if you realize you’ve flown too high. 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.”

“You don’t have to hate her. You don’t have to feel anything that you don’t feel. Resentment is a hollowing emotion. I think holding on to it can be a way to perpetuate our pain.”

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

My body was not my own. Over and over, men had shown me that I was only a temporary caretaker, a custodian of the flesh that belonged to everyone who desired me, but never to me.

“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 would not touch her unless she asked.

I could witness the most gruesome, unspeakable maiming of flesh and not bat an eye, but the first sign of Scarlett in pain cut through every shield I’d ever erected over my cold, dead heart.

“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.”

“I will give you anything you want and need, and as soon as you no longer desire it, you will tell me, and I will stop. Deal?”

When she lifted her gaze, her blue eyes stunned me for a moment, as they often did. In them I saw oceans, multitudes, and the fire that refused to die. “You are here, in this room, with me. And there’s no safer place in this world for you.”