Under an Endless Moon (Moonlit Ridge Book 2)

A pale gray glowed through the bank of windows as the earliest hours of the morning nudged me from sleep.

Warmth covered me whole, a blanket of comfort that soaked me through.

Any of the fear I’d felt last night had been eradicated by the presence of Otto who I was currently plastered against.

His enormous body wrapped around mine as he slept.

Protectively.

Possessively.

And there was no question within me that lying in their strength was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Sometime during the night, we’d kicked off the covers. Apparently being in this bed with him had ignited a fire, and now I burned at a thousand degrees.

My skin flaming in every spot we touched.

A hazy, filmy light filled his room. Through it, I gazed across at his handsome face where he rested his cheek on the pillow. A face that stirred a riot inside me. The longer pieces of his cropped hair were a mess, and his stubble had grown thick.

His eyes were closed, and the sharp curve of his jaw had softened with his sleep. Plush lips barely parted as he breathed.

His scent swamped me.

Patchouli and warm apple pie.

His aura was the only thing I could breathe.

I wanted to sink into it.

Inhale and imbibe.

Disappear.

No question, even thinking about it was dangerous. But I didn’t know how to stop myself when I would likely never have another chance.

I gave into the compulsion and allowed my eyes to caress over his bare flesh.

A tremble flash-fired through my body. Desire burning through me in a quivering of need. I hadn’t seen him without a shirt in quite a few years. Whenever we went to the lake, he rarely played in the water, which was a complete injustice because, oh my God, this man was beautiful.

My gaze roamed over his thick, muscled arms and the swirling art that River had tattooed on him.

Otto’s ink was a mix of dark and light. Skulls and crosses and spirits that crawled up his flesh.

Though flowers were woven in between, as if hope had braided itself into his grief.

My fingers itched with the need to trace the designs. Memorize each one. Commit him to memory in a way he’d never allowed me.

I lost my breath when I shifted and the top of my thigh grazed his front. I froze as a firestorm of heat swept through my entire being.

My stomach tight and my heart battering.

Was that his…cock? And was he…hard?

I gulped around the jagged rocks that had suddenly lodged in my throat.

Crap, what was I supposed to do?

A dark, deep sound rolled through Otto’s chest, and he started to press himself harder against the top of my thigh where one of my legs was pinned between both of his.

Definitely his cock.

I didn’t know if I should hold really still and let him go about his business because interrupting him seemed like an injustice itself, or if it would be more considerate to wake him up from whatever dream he was having the way he’d done with me last night.

Only that fire blazed into a complete inferno when he rumbled in a gruff, sleep laced voice…

“Raven.”

I swore, he moaned it, and I felt the reverberation of it all the way down to my toes. The spot between my thighs became heavy and achy.

I had the intense urge to shift and wrap my legs around him so he could rub his hard length against my throbbing center.

Only his eyes popped open.

Those deep endless pools of blue stared back.

For one, perfect second, our connection screamed between us. That invisible thing that I’d sworn had been there all along.

Fierce, desperate desire.

Agonizing want.

A longing that went so deep there would be no way to crawl out from under it.

Our breaths harsh and our hearts thundering.

I felt it like a life-beat pounding against the walls.

Did he?

Did he feel it?

Or was he immune?

He couldn’t be. This was too⁠—

Whatever it was demolished the next second. That second when recognition at what was happening slammed him.

Shocked horror took to his features, and he reeled away.

He tried to cover his reaction with that mischievous, easy grin. As if all of this was normal.

Still, he reached out and took me by both arms to separate us.

“Sorry about that, darlin’. Dangers of sleeping with a man in his bed. Can’t be helped.”

I wanted to tell him there might be a way I could help him. That I really wanted to. Just go right ahead and confess that I wanted to experience everything with him.

But I knew what would happen.

He’d reject me. Like he’d done then. And I’d feel small and ignorant and vulnerable all over again.

So rather than suffering all of that again, I forced a coy tease. “Don’t worry. I barely felt it.”

His grin turned into a playful scowl as he peeled himself farther back. “Barely felt it, huh?”

“That’s right. I’m not sure what all those women are falling over themselves about.”

Amusement played across his face as he chuckled low. Maybe he really was immune.

“Wow, way to demolish a man’s ego first thing in the mornin’. And after I stayed with you the whole night.”

“I’m just speaking the truth.” I let my lips quirk up at the side.

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. The hundreds 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.

My father in 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.”

It was time for me to rise above it.

Agony filled his long stare before adoration replaced it. He let his hand glide up the words on my side then lifted it to cup the side of my face. Tingles raced as the pad of his thumb traced the apple of my cheek. “Sweet fuckin’ moonflower.”

Desire weaved through me like a giant thread. Knitting me in a desperation I hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

“Otto.” I murmured his name, hoping he would understand what I was asking of him.

We hovered there, connected in a way we hadn’t been for a long time. And I guessed it was too much for him because he suddenly flew off the bed.

He stood at the side staring down at me.

Hands clenched in fists, his big body rippling with explicit, untamed strength. With him towering over me, there was more of him on display than I’d been able to explore when I’d been plastered against him.

And now, I couldn’t stop from gobbling up the sight. This man the brute force of a bull. Obscenely tall and shoulders intrusively broad.

A pillar that covered me in shadow where he towered at the edge of the bed.

Pure muscle and brawn.

He wore these tight, tight black briefs, and I gulped when I saw he was still hard. Huge and hard and vibrating with need.

Flames consumed, and I was sure I was being burned alive.

A witch at the stake.

Because it had to be wicked and wrong, what I was doing. Ogling this man who’d reiterated a thousand times that he only thought of me as his family.

But I was only human, and he was…something else entirely.

A dark avenger. Carved of stone and hewn in gold.

Adorned in all those tats that covered every exposed inch of skin.

My mouth watered as I devoured every inch.

Only I froze when I saw it.

I wasn’t the only one who had gotten new ink in the last few years.

The stunning piece took up the entirety of his left lower abdomen and hip.

A tortured moon that hung in an ominous sky. Disfigured and misshapen. The earth was barren beneath it.

All except for the single moonflower that cracked the dirt and blossomed beneath the pale, murky light.

His jaw clenched when he realized what I was gaping at, my breaths coming short and my spirit spinning with possibility.

I looked back up at his beautifully brutal face, and my heart clattered in my chest as I struggled to get the air into my lungs.

Something tortured twisted through his expression. “You shouldn’t be lookin’ at me like that, Raven.”

“And what am I looking at you like?”

“Like you want me to crawl back into that bed with you.”

I exhaled a shocked breath. Unable to believe the way he’d given it voice.

Like…like maybe he wanted to.

A crash of confidence rolled through me, and I moved up to sitting, shifting around until I was on my hands and knees. Angling his way like an offering. “Maybe that’s exactly what I want you to do.”

Otto growled this low sound that trembled through the room.

My world canted to the side as he came forward to lean over me. Dizziness rushed me with this dream.

Because, oh my God, was Otto Hudson actually going to touch me?

He did, but not in the way I was dying for him to.

He set one of those giant hands on my cheek, so big it covered the whole right side of my face. His voice scraped the dense air. “Would be the luckiest man alive, getting to touch you. But I swore to myself a long time ago that I would never hurt you, and I fuckin’ meant it.”

The butterflies flapping in my belly tumbled and sagged, and my heart hurt at his confession. At the shame that littered his face.

“You’d never hurt me.”

He grazed his thumb over my lips, and that intense blue gaze dipped to the action before he forced his eyes back to mine. “That’s right. You’re too fuckin’ good for what I have to offer, Raven.”

Then he straightened to his full, imposing height. Severity lashed between us, and his jaw clenched in sharp restraint. “I’m going to go take a shower, then we’re going to go about our day like this never happened.”

I couldn’t say anything as he turned and strode across the room and into the en suite bathroom.

He clicked the door shut behind him, cutting off the energy that banged the walls of his room.

I flopped onto my back and stared at the ceiling. “Otto, what are you doing to me?” I mumbled, quiet enough that he could never hear.

Because I wanted it. I wanted to experience the things I’d never been brave enough to experience before.

I wanted to fly.

I wanted to rise.

And I knew, all the way down to the deepest parts of me, that I wanted to rise with him.