Iron and Magic (The Iron Covenant, #1)

by Ilona Andrews

That red-hot boiling rage. It turned him on. He wanted to keep fighting her. He wouldn’t have stopped until one of them was dead, and she knew it. Her face flashed before him. Daniels had looked horrified. And then she almost fled. The recollection disturbed him. He groped for the connection to Roland, for the clean feeling of surety that clarified all his doubts, but it wasn’t there. He was on his own. Hugh locked his teeth, sorting through his memories, going through Daniels’s facial expressions. He remembered the last one best, the time he had starved her, trying to force her to submit to her father. She had this look of resignation on her face as if she had given up on him ever getting it. She never saw him as a man. He was never in the running; he had known that from the start. He was either an extension of Roland or… It hit him like a ton of bricks. Daniels saw him as a sibling. She probably didn’t even realize it. On some level he had always understood it. It wasn’t the woman he had wanted. It was what she represented. He wanted her acceptance. He wanted her to admit how good he was. He would’ve seduced her to get it and then rubbed Roland’s face in it. One way or the other, the bastard would acknowledge him then. Validation. So simple.

*rolling my eyes* bloody men.