Taken by Touch and Torment (Eternal Obsession, #2)

by Maggie Sunseri

I was not born to be Lillian’s slave. I was her daughter.

“If you want to be someone who matters in this life, you have to lean into the hunger. You have to sit with it. You have to feel it so viscerally that you no longer feel it at all. It’s the fighting that makes it painful. The yearning, the wishing for something more than you currently have. Victory is for those who play the long game. For those who choose lasting fulfillment over fleeting pleasures. Victory is for us. Not them.”

“I will do what’s right for them both, because there is no world without Scarlett. And Scarlett is in love with the world. I would sooner die than let anything she loves go up in flames.”

“I understand why the whole world is fighting over you. Your blood would start wars.”

“It’s a crime that you only get to be your true self when you’re with me. You’re so much sexier when you’re free.” I couldn’t have agreed more, dickhead.

I understood now that self-love was the love that had always mattered most, from which all other love rippled.

Scarlett Hale, my soul has been in love with yours since we were nothing but flecks of stardust. I would sooner die than let you believe otherwise ever again.”

“Does it make you uncomfortable to see your God on his knees before you, Little Flame?”

“Feel what you feel. But feelings and thoughts are not always reality. Especially when they’ve been planted inside us by those who wish to make us small.”

“I love every single part of you, from the wicked to the sublime. That powerful mind of yours, equally infuriating and captivating. The delicious chaos of your soul—the way it yearns for adventure and novelty, sex and power, comfort, love, and belonging. You became my entire world without even a drop of magick. We are inevitable. We always have been. And I will never stop showing you how hopelessly entangled my soul has become with yours. It is my deepest regret I ever showed you anything less.”

“Scarlett, my love, I would kneel before you in front of the entire damn world.”

“Ugh! I hate this stupid book and I’m never reading again!” She was breathing rapidly, her face moving from anger to regret. “Oh, hell. I shouldn’t have thrown that.” She bent down and picked up the book from the grass and dusted it off, mumbling an apology to the inanimate object.

“You can rule this whole world, baby,” Rune said. “But don’t you ever fucking forget who rules you.”

“You will never receive closure from other people. Closure is something that you give yourself.”

“I love you, my soul,” he whispered against my lips. “I love you too, my darkness.”

“This world was built by beautiful, deadly women, as much as we men would rather believe otherwise,” he called. “Give them hell, ladies.”

“You were always the destination, the tomorrow I sought on the horizon.”