She waits for his reprimand or words of disapproval.He kisses her instead. Hard. Lips demanding, fingers tightening on her chin. He consumes her with this single act.

The night surrounds, breathes across her skin. They’re lost in the shadows of the moon.

Or to myself. Besides, your feelings for me aren’t real. The Society did this to you. And if they did it to you, they probably scrambled my brain too. I can’t trust that any of...

I’m sorry,” he says. No two words were ever truer.Still, she says nothing. Once a shield, now her taciturnity is brandished like a blade, carving away his sanity. She’s the flaw in the paragon of...

Yeah, telling your girlfriend the Angel of Death might visit her if some switch is flipped is normal pillow talk.

You’re beautiful. All of you.

Her gaze travels back to the lie twisted in a tempest of mud and blood. She witnesses the culmination of her recklessness through a curved lens. Absorbed in life uncoiling, unaware of the world beyond...

Maybe the Society was right all along. From the very beginning, that’s what they called her. A time bomb.Tick, tick, tick.

Summer turns and marches away, fed up with being handled like a child. Like she’s a glass doll that might break at any minute. She hasn’t been a child since the day she was whipped...

Dreams deny her the freedom she truly seeks. Darkness consumes. Leg muscles burn. She runs away, even while lost in the paradise of sleep. Gravity is a crushing force bearing down on her chest, shattering...

Because here’s a news flash: You might’ve wanted to shelter me, but there’s nowhere you can hide me that’ll keep me safe from what’s inside my head.

Struggling transforms her captor into a Chinese finger trap. She’s suffocating. Sucking in air without relief. Her lungs expand. Contract. Expand. They fill with lies and broken promises. With despair and lost hope. Each inhale...

Feeling’s mutual.” Julian tosses him a disdainful look.

She feels him scoot closer, the heat of him radiating off his chest and absorbing into her skin. His legs straddle her from behind, and he places delicate kisses along her shoulder, her back, the...

You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” Rob says, smirking.

He holds her for an eternity. Time cascades into the void of the past. She inhales his scent. Full of man and strength and yearning. And she wonders why she ever doubted their relationship. Why...

Seconds ebb and wane. She’s not afraid of her voice anymore, but she’s not entirely sure she trusts it. She’s seen the damage caused with a single word. Right now, each one is a weapon,...

So are my eyes. How do I always get roped into these things?” Avery coughs and pats Rob’s back in sympathy. A poof of dust billows from the contact.

Death and his scythe do not come. No sweeping black capes or ethereal escapes. There’s no pearly gate, no prisms of colors as his soul slips away. The stillness is cold steel. The silence is...

A glacial chill rushes through Gage. He whips around just in time to see arms clutch Summer around the middle and drag her into the dark. Panic seizes him, and he takes off after her,...

To save you,” he says.But there’s nothing left to save.

I’ll kill him.

Shut up.

Time keeps ticking away, unaware of the suffering each second generates. Time doesn’t care, because if it did, it would’ve reversed.

This is a battle trophy and nothing to be ashamed of. Every one of your scars makes you more beautiful to me.

You’re saying everything I want to hear, but I don’t know if I can trust it.

Because this is the beginning, not the end.

That’s real.

Time is a thief. A killer. Time is killing him.