Glow (The Plated Prisoner, #4)

by Raven Kennedy

“Come, baby. Take your pleasure on my cock and fucking flood me with it.” Her orgasm seems to implode. I feel her body clamp down on my cock, and my thrusts stutter. She calls out my name, shaking all over, her pussy surging with wet heat that sends me right over the edge with her. “Good fucking girl.”

That’s the thing with trauma to the body—it shows up instantly. In breaks and bruises, in burns and in blood. But the trauma on the inside, that’s harder to see. It creeps around your mind, poisons you with disquiet. It can hit you out of nowhere, debilitating and ruinous. There are no marks visible for those. None, save the shadows in your eyes.

I may be empty, but I am not alone. And that, at least, is something.

Maybe none of us truly know our own strength. Not until the world has hacked away at us. But the point is, we aren’t strong because of our trauma. We were always strong to begin with. We just needed to figure it out for ourselves.

You never notice what’s keeping you balanced until you realize you’re not standing straight anymore.

But it’s true. I do know I’m beautiful. Any beautiful person who says otherwise is lying. Sometimes, it’s to fish for compliments. But mostly, it’s because they have been taught by society—men, in particular—that we have to downplay our beauty, to only let them determine it. To seem humble. But I don’t have to be humble.

I’m not one to give fake grins or to simper. I only smile when the person or the moment truly warrants it.

“Oh, Goldfinch, I’d follow you to the end of the world and tip right off the edge, all because of a crook of your finger.”

when you ask for everything from a person, you don’t get to pick and choose. You take them as they are.

“You’re teasing me,” he rumbles, and I try to smile around him, eyes flicking up. “Suck me, baby. I want to see those cheeks hollow

With the right person, there is power when you kneel. There is adoration with submission. There is balance with control.

“Auren,” he says, cutting me off. “Stop doubting yourself and fucking kiss me.”

“One person’s pain doesn’t negate another’s. Our heartaches are not competition, but the bridge to empathy. So that we can look at one another and know that on some level, we understand. That’s one beautiful thing about grief, I think. That sometimes, we can find someone in the world to look at from the other side of the bridge of our torments and know that we are not alone.”

“You can say something until you’re blue in the face, and it won’t do any good. People rarely change their opinions when they’re argued with. They only tend to listen to the voices of those they already agree with.”

“But remember, Auren. Your body—your pleasure—you gave it to me. So I will be there, wherever you decide you need to be. At a pub. In a sea. On a bed. I’ll be there with you. Watching you. Joining you. You are mine, and I am yours, and whatever pleasure you seek, I will be there to watch you get it, and I will feed it to you tenfold afterward because you are mine, and I will see that you get what you need.”

“You’ve made my cock a dripping mess. It’s practically salivating to feast on your pussy.”

“You don’t even know what you’ve unlocked, letting my cock drip all over your pretty dress,” he says, movements slow. Even. As if he’s not torturing me with this erotic tease. “It makes me want to sink my teeth into your neck and leave a mark in your skin. Makes me want to strip you down, your mouth open, tongue out, and cum all over your chest, your pussy, your face. Makes me want to smear it over your tits, rub it against your pouting lips, watch you swallow it down as I smooth the cream right over your throbbing pussy.”