Ravage by Lacey Andersen (ebook reader online txt) 📕

He always made me laugh, always made me feel included in a way no one else could. It was never like I was the little sister. It was like I was his friend.

Now, here we are, years later, and his soft touch is running over me beneath the warm spray of the water. And for some reason, it makes sense that he’s doing this. Since the first time I slept with a man, sex had never been something gentle or loving. A man’s touch was hard and good, but so far from the way Lucian touches me that it almost seems impossible that a man is capable of doing both.

If it were anyone else at any other time, I’d feel too vulnerable to be seen like this, to be touched like this. But with Lucian, it’s almost…natural.

“Better?” he whispers.

I nod, too tired to open my eyes. “Bed.”

His hands freeze in my hair. “Esmeray, can you dress yourself? Can I get you to your—?”

“Your bed is fine,” I say, slipping so close to sleep that I’m startled when the water turns off.

A warm towel wraps around me, and then I’m picked up into strong arms.

With the towel still around me, I’m settled into his lap. A shirt goes over me. Then, after a quiet moment, he reaches for the back of my bra, unhooks it, and pulls it off out of one sleeve of the shirt. My underwear goes next, although I can feel the weight of the warm shirt and the towel concealing me from view.

At last, the towel drops away, and I’m tucked beneath soft sheets. When Lucian starts to pull away, my treacherous hand snags his shirt.

“Lay with me.”

I hear him moving around, then a little while later, the bed sags beside me. Instinctually, I roll toward him, curling against his side. My skin still feels strangely sensitive from the iron demon, and my body is drained.

But somehow, I feel safe.

For the first time since my brother’s death.

7 Lucian

My father once said that being around Rayne’s family had forever corrupted me. That being around dark fae was like catching a virus, that suddenly the darker emotions could take root and grow within us. I never told him the truth. I never said that it wasn’t being around Rayne and his family that had changed me forever, it was being connected to Esmeray.

Being her mate.

Were she a light fae, she would feel our connection the same way we do. Like a part of our souls we never knew existed suddenly flared to life. Like we changed in ways that not even we could understand.

But she isn’t a light fae. While she changes us, we don’t change her.

Emotions I never thought could live and breathe within me so overwhelmingly do. Like rage.

For a second I see myself as a young boy standing in front of my grandmother’s cottage as the flames consumed the structure. But I only felt the flames at my back, because I couldn’t turn around. I couldn’t look back. Because if I did, I’d remember that the flames might burn away the evidence of what I’d seen, but it could never erase the images from my mind.

If I wasn’t connected to Esmeray, I had no doubt that I would’ve accepted my grandmother’s murder. I’d look back at our time spent in her kitchen with fondness, not the bitter-sweetness that I did. But I was glad. If I forgot the pain and anger of that night, then maybe I’d lose my empathy for others when they lose loved ones. I’d walk around this world believing that my future was guaranteed and that the evil that lurks in the shadows couldn’t hurt me.

I never wanted to be that naive again.

It takes me a second to realize that my hands are clenched and that sweat beads my brow. I take a ragged breath and try to focus on the future. To focus on what had brought me to such a dark place.

When Bron had told me that Esmeray was now on campus, taking over her brother’s old room, I’d felt a need to be near her uncurl within me like nothing I’d felt in my life. After knocking lightly on her door and finding her gone, the way I felt changed. Worry grew. I’d gathered my weapon and set off to find her.

But when I came across the iron demon attacking her, it was rage that took over. That blinded me. I’d felt things when killing that demon that no light fae should feel…like complete and utter satisfaction that I killed the creature hurting my female.

And when I’d swept her into my arms and carried her light body to my bedroom, I was complete for the first time in my life. Her body, her touch, things I’d gone too long without, were finally a part of me. Even knowing that it was a false feeling of completeness, that my mate hadn’t willingly came into my arms, that fear and weakness had brought her to me, wasn’t enough to diminish the sense that everything was right in my world at last.

But now? Now I was a fool, because as she lay against me in my bed, I felt things I should never feel for a woman who cannot love me back in the same soul-ending way that I love her. I stare down at her ashen face, framed by her dark hair, and I can’t imagine spending another night alone.

“Fucking hell,” I whisper to myself.

She turns slightly, her brows drawing together, and curls closer to me.

I clench my teeth, willing myself to stay silent. I might want forever with Esmeray, but I couldn’t have that right now. What I could have… I could have tonight.

And that would need to be enough.

8 Dwade

Lunch with Lucian and Bron was strange. I felt like we hadn’t yet gotten used to Rayne’s empty seat since his death. We spent so much of our