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CHAPTER 4

Iris

Brody covered me with his body and pushed my legs wide, his gaze intense, like he was trying to draw every one of my thoughts from me, to learn every secret I might have.

“You have everything,” he said, and it wasn’t the first time he’d said that to me. “You didn’t even have to work for it. It all just landed in your lap.”

“That’s not true.”

“You don’t even appreciate it. While I watched my mom slowly die, you were living in that big house with your big family. Powerful, safe.”

I hated when he got like this, like he was jealous of me. Shouldn’t you be happy that the person you loved hadn’t had an awful life? I hated that he’d lost his mom, no one should suffer that.

“I’m sorry you lost your mom,” I said, like I always did when he spoke this way because there was nothing else this could be about. He missed her, and sometimes he took that out on someone else he loved, someone that was still here.

“You’ll never understand what it’s like to feel helpless, Iris. To feel like you’ve been left behind and forgotten. Powerless.”

“Your aunt loves you…I love you. I’ll never leave you behind.”

He leaned in, pressing his lips roughly against mine, the kiss hard, bruising, and when he lifted his head, his expression was strange.

“What are you thinking?” I whispered.

His lips curled up, an expression he sometimes got when he looked at me, a warning. That’s how I’d come to think of it. I hated when he got like this, but he needed me. Sometimes, he needed more from me than I knew how to give, and I’d learned to go with it. It was easier than making him angry. His hand slid up my chest between my breasts and wrapped lightly around my throat.

I whispered his name in the shadowy room as the look in his eyes darkened. Yes, he was in pain, and it was my job to get him through it, even if I didn’t want this. But when you loved someone, you took the good with the bad, right? My father hadn’t; none of my sister’s fathers had. They’d left Mom sad, broken, and feeling abandoned. I would never do that to the person I loved.

And the bad wasn’t very often. I could take it.

His fingers tightened a little more, and he slammed inside me with a grunt. It hurt, I wasn’t ready for him. But I let him work out his frustration on me, his pain, because I was his and he was mine. He needed this from me for some reason, even though sometimes it felt like he was trying to inflict pain rather than soothe his own.

I shoved that thought away.

No.

Brody loved me.

He would never intentionally hurt me.

He looked down at me, teeth gritted, eyes filled with rage, and my stomach gripped tight.

“You’re not so powerful now, are you, Iris?”

I woke with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed.

My heart pounded in my chest, vomit churning in my gut. Why had I let him treat me like that? Why had I put blinders on, refusing to see the person he truly was? He’d shown me repeatedly, and I’d been so scared he’d leave me, like most of the men in our lives, that I’d refused to see it.

Another ex once told me I had daddy issues. I’d always been needy, desperate for attention from the guys I’d dated, and the desperate way I’d clung to Brody, the way I’d rationalized the awful things he’d said and done, made me think it might be true. I’d been so desperate for Brody’s love, I’d blinded myself to the truth.

I rubbed my eyes, trying to force his hated face from my mind, his voice too. It lingered now. A voice I used to look forward to hearing, like the needy idiot I was.

Tingles goose-bumped their way across my shoulders and down my spine before a cold blast hit me out of nowhere. I blinked into the dark room as a weird hum spun around me.

Come to me, child.

I jolted at the voice filling my mind. Definitely not Brody’s.

Come to me now, daughter of coven Thornheart. The voice repeated—a female voice.