More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Part two is for everyone who has suffered abuse.
This book is about finding love and acceptance in another person, and more importantly, loving and accepting yourself.
You are worthy of love. You are worthy of a more beautiful future. It can happen for anyone. It happened for me.
I’m safe from the rest of the world when I’m under his eye, under his protection. No one can hurt me, no one can touch me. Except Cole himself.
I could never be this calculated, this patient, this effective. He really is superhuman. And he’s not even trying. It’s just a game to him.
“I want all of you. Every single part of you. I want to know everything about you: all your history, and every thought that comes into your head. Every desire, no matter how dark or how perverse. Every fantasy, no matter how impossible it may seem. And most of all, Mara, I want to occupy your thoughts like you occupy mine. I want you obsessed with me, bound to me, dependent on me. I want you to live for me, not just with me.”
To me, this is a more terrifying prospect than when I thought Cole might murder me.
“I’m not trying to change who you are. I’m trying to reveal it. A diamond can’t shine until it’s cut.”
It’s never enough for him to get what he wants—it has to be exactly the way he wants it.
“Why do you need music for everything?” Cole asks me. “Because it makes everything better,” I say, stepping into the pounding spray.
Cole stands motionless, watching me. His endless fascination creates a voyeuristic energy that spurs me on to stranger and stranger behaviors.
“That’s right …” Cole murmurs. “Good girl. Don’t stop.”
Cole is a pleasure-seeker just like me. He wants what he wants, and he’s willing to pay for it. Right now he wants to make me cum, and he doesn’t give a fuck what clothes he ruins.
“Is this how you learned to cum? In the bath, spreading your legs under the faucet?”
Cole’s chuckle is what tips me over—rich and wicked, vibrating down to my bones. “I know you would, you little psychopath.”
He’s tasting me, smelling me, lapping me up. So hungry that I could never satisfy him, even while he’s gorging me with pleasure.
I look at the mark, thin and clean. I know from experience this won’t scar. It’s the ones you cut deep, the ones that are ragged, the ones you make over others that are still healing: those stay forever.
“Eight thousand dollars?” I squeak to Cole. “For one coat? What’s it made out of—hair clippings from Ryan Gosling?”
The man who never cared about anyone is fixated on the girl nobody gave a shit about. In some twisted way, we’re made for each other. And that really fucking scares me.
“You deserve to be here as much as anyone. More than anyone. You’re talented, Mara, really fucking talented. You’re already a star. Everyone else doesn’t know it yet, but I do. You’re going to make art that makes people think and cry and burn with envy.”
The richness, the softness of the material … the way it clings and stretches and flares around me like the garments are alive, like they’ve fallen in love with me … I’ve never experienced anything like it.
Cole’s idea of fun terrifies me.
Cole has discovered a fatal weakness, one I didn’t even know I possessed. Vibration is my kryptonite, and Cole is employing it with Lex Luther levels of evil genius.
Cole is illuminated with the purest, brightest amusement I’ve ever seen. It lights up his whole face, making him beautiful on a level that awes me.
I make a sound I’ve never made before. My brain exits my skull, floating several inches up in the air.
Some mistake has been made: I died, heaven exists, and they let me in.
Friendship feels so real, until it pops like a soap bubble.
Mara shivers with pleasure. She loves to be praised—she can’t get enough of it. She’d probably take a compliment over a body-shaking orgasm.
“You threaten everything I thought I knew, and everything I believed.”
“At first it was against my will,” I tell her. “But now I’m all in. I have to have you. Even if it blows up my life.”
“That’s because you’re a pleasure kitten. You like anything that feels good.”
I want to know all her secrets. She keeps them buried deep. I’ll have to be the first one to break out a shovel.
I shrug. “Men deserve it more.”
“Men deserve it more.”
“You killed Sonia’s ex-husband,” she blurts out. I frown at her. “How do you know that?” “Sonia told me how he died. I thought it was very … convenient.” “It was very inconvenient when he was dragging her to court for months on end. It affected her work.”
“You could have just fired her.” “Hiring someone new is even worse.” “You wanted to help her.” “I helped myself. It just happened to benefit Sonia as well.”
I like how hard she bites, the little savage. It makes me want to bite her back.
She’s out of her fucking mind, and so am I. Our madness aligns in all the right ways.
“Come up to the kitchen,” I say. “I can’t get you a unicorn, but I can damn sure make you an ice cream sundae.”
And second, I don’t fuck up your life, I fix it.”
“The fuck you are.”
Cole wraps his arms around me, pulling me close against his chest. He’s warm and strong, his heart a metronome that never falters.
“Mara, I will never tear you down to other people. I will never degrade you in their eyes. I want to build you up, do you understand that?”
I’ll admit, it’s not just to protect you. I have to be around you. I’m addicted to you. You fuel me, you light me up inside. Just knowing you’re in the house enlivens me. I can’t go back to the way I was before. I’m afraid of it.”
Cole looks at me. “Are you ready to kill him yet?”
The worst people are free to maim and defame however they like. There is no justice. There is no fairness.
We’re kissing each other with more than passion. We’re exorcising our anger, our resentment, our fear, and our rage.
“I’ll do what I have to do. No one is going to take you from me … and no one is taking me from you.”
“Fucking hell,” Cole breathes. “You’re a goddess.”
“I love you,” I say. If I’d thought first, I would have been too afraid to say it. Cole looks down at me, his eyes black and flickering, full of reflected flame.
