Glow (The Plated Prisoner, #4)

by Raven Kennedy

“You don’t have to be cruel to be strong. You don’t have to be mean to seem brave. You don’t have to look down on others in order to stand tall. Having emotions does not mean you’re weak. It means you’re smart enough to let yourself feel.”

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.

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.

“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.”

Slade uses a hand to turn my cheek, to lock our gazes together. “When I say you’re mine, it’s not cheap ownership. I don’t see you as a figure to lock to my arm like a toy to keep away from all others.” That was the only mine I knew. “So what are you saying exactly?” I ask with a faltered breath. “I mean you’re mine to please. To pleasure.” The motive in his eyes matches with the drag of his hand, the curl of his palm as he presses against my throbbing clit and makes me see sparks of light behind my eyes. “You’re mine to protect. To adore. To hear. To see. To experience. To love.”