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I came from a place of
dirt floors and holy scriptures. They told me the world outside is full of sin,
and the first night I escape, I know it’s true. Ivan saves me, but he does more
than that. He takes me. He makes me his own girl.
My conditioning runs
too deep. Ivan sees what I am.
That’s the thing about
showing a mouse to a cat. He wants to play. And it’s terrifying, even for me.
Because the only thing darker than my past is his.
Excerpt:
The bed is the largest one I’ve ever seen, but somehow too
small for two people. Too small if one of the people is Ivan. He’s physically
large and, more than that, terrifying. What will he do to me? I can’t fight
him. God, I’m not sure I want to try. Home.
In the end I push back the heavy blankets, almost as thick
as my sleeping pallet in Harmony Hills, and climb onto the bed. The pillow is
perfectly soft, so clean, and I let myself drift away. I’m floating on a cloud,
plush and high up.
I dream in those moments. I dream about color and light. I
dream about the sky.
There is a deep voice from above and all around me, telling
me to get on my knees. Commanding me to pray. This is the first time in my life
I’ve ever skipped bedtime prayers. The first time I haven’t begged for
salvation. I’m not going to beg, not ever again.
The hand on my face doesn’t feel angry. It isn’t a slap for
my insolence. It strokes down my temple and cups my cheek. My eyes flutter
open. Ivan.
His hand falls away.
“Candace,” he says in the same deep voice of my dream.
And there’s a look in his eyes, the same look Leader Allen
gives Mama. The same look he started giving me. That look is the reason Mama
sent me away.
“You’ll stay here,” he says softly. “I don’t want you to
dance, but you can stay.”
The allure of it beats through me, a heart of its own,
thumping away to a dream that isn’t mine. Safety. Home. I want those things,
but I want freedom more. I want the flash of lights and of skin. I want the
power those women had onstage.
Ivan wants to put me in a cage, but what I really want is to
fly.
“Okay,” I lie, because one sin becomes many. Leader Allen
taught me that, and he was right. I’ll convince Ivan, though. One day I’ll
dance on that stage, and Ivan will watch me.
One day he’ll teach me everything there is to know.
“Good girl.”
The praise washes over me, undeserved and darkly
pleasurable, a stroke along my spine. It feels good, but I know what it is. A
trap. A chain around my ankle to keep me on the ground. In this moment, it
locks me so tight that I’d accept anything he did to me. If he were to touch me
the way the woman with the kind eyes meant. The way Leader Allen touches Mama
during prayer.
Ivan leans down, and I hold my breath. Large hands take hold
of the blanket, lift slightly. I feel everything between us—anticipation and
denial, lust and fear corded together. We feel them together, breathe them in
through the air, pulse them with each beat of our hearts. It’s a kind of
knowledge, this feeling, connecting a thousand nerve points to the core of my
body. This is what he meant by teaching me. This and so much more.
Then he pulls the blanket higher, tucking it around me.
“Good night,” he says, eyes glittering in the dark.
He is silver and light, made even brighter by the shadows
behind him. It’s strange, the disappointment I feel that he isn’t going to
touch me. He isn’t going to teach me. Not tonight. “Good night,” I whisper
back.
Then he’s gone, shutting the door against the dark, locking
me in. And I slide away into sleep, without dreams, without color, with only
the shameless black of contentedness, knowing I am safe for the night.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Skye Warren is
the New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of dark romance. Her books
are raw, sexual and perversely romantic.
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