Gleam (The Plated Prisoner, #3)

by Raven Kennedy

I’m wrapped in deceit and molded in manipulation, stuffed full of everything I’ve done to survive. I want it all to unravel.

“What does it say, do you think, about a male who keeps a woman in a cage?”

“That’s your fear talking, and it’s a weakness that you have to shove down before it towers over you.”

“Either do it or don’t. Makes no difference to me,” she says matter-of-factly. “Though, it seems to me that trying and failing is better than giving up.”

I’ve taken it personally, and I probably shouldn’t have, but you can’t reason with feelings. They do what they want, forcing you to endure. All you can do is grit your teeth and take it, hoping that time will dull it down.

We tell ourselves twisted lies to tangle around our wicked truths, all so that we can get caught up in the bind and not have to face bare regrets.

I know he’s full of shit, and it’s certainly not gilded.

“My own good was cowering before men who were nothing—fucking nothing—in comparison to her.”

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

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.”

“Love happens in all kinds of ways. Fast. Slow. In bits and pieces, or immediate. Filled with lust, one-sided longing, a snap realization never noticed before. Deeply. Thoroughly. Love is a whisper we didn’t hear or a sound that drums in our ears and drowns out everything else.”

“And you’re a gorgeous little liar, but that’s okay,”

There comes a point in your life when you have to choose between having regrets and the possibility of making mistakes.

Taking chances can be like walking through a mudslide, where every inch of you gets stained, but regrets are the stagnant pools of deprivation, and I’ve been wading in them for far too long. It’s time to get a little dirty.

“Hi,” I blurt out. Hi? That’s what I say? This male bent my body in all sorts of ways last night, brought me more pleasure than I’ve ever experienced, and I just stand here awkwardly and say hi?

“Shit,” Judd says in a groan. “Rip is being fucking cute, and it’s making me want to vomit.”

“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.

The world taught me that things could always be worse. I learned to always look up, to take what I could get, to settle. I became too blinded by my bright sides to see the truth. Sometimes, you look at the silver lining so much that you drift into denial about the clouds.