Under an Endless Moon (Moonlit Ridge, #2)

by A.L. Jackson

Sovereign Sanctum: River, our leader. Kane, our money launderer. Theo, the protector. Cash, our hacker. Then there was me, the deliverer.

My best friend’s little sister. Sweetest girl on the face of the planet. And to my great misfortune, the sexiest one, too.

Maybe I should have accepted it as my fate. That it was already over. Maybe I should have known Raven Tayte was really going to be the end of me.

Don’t push me, Raven. You don’t want to see what it looks like when I come unhinged. Think it’s best if you keep your conquests to yourself. Don’t want to think of you with another man, and I sure as fuck don’t want to watch you with one.

“Look at you, Raven. Look at who you are. If you could only see the way I see you. You are brave and strong. So goddamn beautiful. A bloom in the middle of the darkest night.”

Needed to see your face because you’re the only thing in this world that keeps me sane. Only thing that grounds me to reality when I feel it slipping.

“You are the one person who hears me when I need someone most, Otto. You’re the one person who makes it better. The one person who makes me feel like I don’t have to be afraid to go to sleep.”

“You think these arms weren’t made to hold you? You think I’m not made to carry every-fucking-thing that you are?”

“Because I’m no good, Raven. Because you don’t know who I really am. Because you’d be disgusted if you knew.” Because I’d failed my sister, and I’d be damned if I failed her, too. “Because yes, Raven, I’m terrified of hurting you.”

“He says he wants to fight for me, Charleigh, and I want him to fight for me. For all of it. That is, if he wants me that way.”

“I love you so much, and I have my entire life. And it’s not infatuation or hero worship or bred of this trauma. It is what my heart knows. It’s my truth. And if it’s not yours, then I’ll accept it. I’ll walk away and I’ll never look back. But the one thing I’m asking right now is for you not to lie to me. Don’t be a coward and give me some camouflaged truth. Tell me what you feel when you look at me.”

“You want to know how I feel, Raven? You want to know if my heart fuckin’ bleeds every time I look at you? You want to know if I toss at night thinking about holding you in my arms?”

“You are the first thought I have when I open my eyes in the morning and the last one before I go to sleep. You are the thunder in my veins and the chaos in my spirit. You are everything I want and the one thing I’m not supposed to have.”

“It means I’m so fuckin’ in love with you, so fuckin’ gone for you, that there’s no chance my world could spin right without you in it. So fuckin’ in love with you that I feel like I’m ripping apart every time I look at you. You are my heart, and that’s the truth.”

“You are the light inside of me, Raven. Only thing that could ever lead me out of the dark. Gonna love you through it all. Under every endless moon. And when dawn finally breaks, I will watch you rise.”