Page 58 of Under an Endless Moon

Lies. All lies.

He was the only thing I could feel.

“Besides, you act like you were doing me a favor. Who wouldn’t want me in their bed?”

A low sound rumbled in his chest, and his eyes dipped to my mouth.

His tongue stroked out, and a shiver ripped through my body.

Intensity climbed between us again, and I nearly came apart when he lifted his hand and stroked his fingers through my hair. “You’re right, Raven. Who wouldn’t want you in their bed?”

His gaze drifted, then I felt him stiffen. I realized that his tee that swallowed me had bunched up and was cinched around my waist.

My black lace underwear on full display.

But that wasn’t what he was looking at.

He was looking at the scars that covered my abdomen. Thehundreds of burns that covered all of my front, hips, and back. Strategically placed so they would be hidden under my clothes.

Inflicted by a monster who fed on my pain.

A sick sadist who’d traumatized me for so many years.

For one beat I was back in the nightmare I’d suffered last night.

Myfatherin my room, a man who was supposed to protect me but instead had used me as some twisted plaything.

It was never sexual. He’d just loved to hear me scream. But that didn’t mean I hadn’t spent my life terrified of someone touching me.

Everyone except for Otto.

His gaze roamed, going to the newer scar, the one that had been left on my side when I was eighteen. I felt him flinch, the rage that he tried to contain, the hate that blazed as hot in his eyes as the intensity between us did.

This scar was the deepest. The one that had been driven all the way into my soul.

A tattoo now covered it. One that hadn’t been there the last time he’d seen my marred, disfigured flesh since I’d only been brave enough to ask one of the artists at River’s shop to do it for me two months ago.

The wings inked on his throat fluttered as he swallowed hard, his eyes so clearly tracing the script.

I will make it to the sunrise.

Except Haddie hadn’t been able to.

I didn’t let my stare waver when he looked up to my face, his own pain stark in his expression. I could see the war go down in his features, could feel the tremor that rocked through him as he let his fingertips whisper over the inscription.

Need careened through my senses at his touch, though it was a touch that felt too much like an apology.

“Would do anything to erase them, Raven. All of them.” His voice was gravel.

I let my fingertips caress down the sharp edge of his brutal face. “But you can’t. None of us can. And like you told me last night, it’s how I live with them. And I intend to live, Otto. I intend to live every day of my life with everything I have.”

I wouldn’t let any of them steal it. Not my father. Not the bastards who’d laughed and mocked as they destroyed. Not the ones who’d wanted to hurt him.

Something flashed through that blue, depthless gaze. Something that looked like determination and guilt. “I want them to suffer the same.” The words were shards. “I want to go back and end every single one of them.”

My spirit flailed. The confession trapped in the abyss where I kept it locked.

“And I don’t want to ever go back.”

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