Pretty When You Cry
by Skye Warren
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: Dark Romance
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BLURB:
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.
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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