Gleam (The Plated Prisoner, #3)

by Raven Kennedy

I should yank it away. I should back up. I should do anything to put space between us. But I don’t. I don’t, and I can’t even admit why.

MATES!!!

Men ruin all of women’s best laid plans.

“You caught me,”

“I’ll do that anytime you need catching, Goldfinch.”

He’s a smoldering, sexy warrior with transcendental beauty, and I like being in his arms far too much.

“My own good hated me, fought me, argued with me, but I didn’t care, because I watched her slowly come out of her shell, peeling back one layer at a time, and it was stunning.” He raises a finger in front of my face. “I got one touch. One taste, and if it was an act of selfishness, then you should know, it certainly wasn’t one-sided, Auren.”

“I’m saying that you are my own good. And for you, I gave you a choice, but you chose him.”

This was definitely a bad idea.

We kiss like two stars colliding, our heat flaring with the threat to burn, while the cold world around us fades in our light. We kiss like we need the taste of one another or we’ll never be able to emerge from the dark.

Mastered me, he means, this complete and utter piece of shit—

You’re not the villain in my story.” “I am,” he says without remorse, his sharp jaw tight with tension. “But I’ll be the villain for you. Not to you.”

“I’ve wanted you since the moment I laid eyes on you, Goldfinch. I was just waiting for you to catch up.”

He thinks I’m gorgeous. Okay, yeah, he thinks I’m a liar too, but the takeaway here is the gorgeous part.

She settles my magic, calms my anger, calls to my fae nature. She’s a burst of light in my dark, erupting life in the rotting depths of my soul. She is everything I don’t deserve. But I’m going to keep her anyway.

“You’ve bewitched my senses, taken over my thoughts. Every time I blink, all I see is you, like you’ve seared yourself into my eyes and I’ll never close them again without envisioning you.

So this is how it can be with the right person.

“Males are always biting at the hand that strokes them.”

That’s the thing about escapism. In whatever form, it always ends, and then we’re forced back into a reality that’s not nearly as satisfying.

“You never came to see me, pet.”

“You were the painted girl who cut into my profits, and then had the nerve to run.”

“Barden East,” I whisper in shocked horror. “You were Barden East.” His smile is an accumulation of every sharpened edge piled in my chest. “And you’re ten years too late.”

Great Divine, Fake Rip is Slade’s damned brother.

“Better the whore to the man at my back than the favored to you.”

Crack that whip girl

“Don’t,” I whisper. “I won’t let him make you into the villain.” A gaze as sharp as thorns hooks into me, holds me hostage. “I told you, I’ll be the villain for you.” Resolve bolsters my spine. “Yes. But so will I.”

AHHHH

“Use your ribbons,” he urges, and a choked sob curdles from my cinched throat. “I can’t.”

I stand before the man who has done nothing but use me, lie to me, manipulate me, threaten me, and abuse me for over ten years. I look at him, and hate looks with me.

The gold he coveted so much, the gold he loved more than anything else, eats him alive.

I want to be the monster that’s been held back for far too long.

“I want everyone to hurt like I hurt,” I say through gritted teeth. “You punished the one who mattered.”

Ok not funny im crying now

I’m so fucking proud of her. She destroyed him so spectacularly that my chest swells, even as I feel guilt that she was put in this position in the first place. You did it, Goldfinch. I knew she could burn brighter than the sun if she only stepped out of his shade.

That’s my girl.