Read Online Awaken to Pleasure by Lauren Hawkeye - Free Book Online

Prologue
    Fifteen Years Ago
    Moira Connor remembered the fire.
    The dark sky, the ash that rained down, soft and hot, choking her with every breath until she wanted to rip open her own throat, just to get some blessed relief.
    The fire had been all consuming—the unnatural emerald and amethyst flames devouring everything in its path. Its light had all but blinded her as she cowered in the corner of what had once been an alley between buildings.
    The entire city of Jackson was being annihilated by the fire.
    But she hadn’t been blind enough to miss seeing what had been done to her parents. The witches had burned them alive, right before her eyes, and Moira hadn’t been able to save them. Hadn’t even tried, because she been so paralyzed by fear that she’d run.
    Not that she could have done anything. She knew that now, and yet it haunted her every waking moment—and sometimes the sleeping ones as well.
    It was guilt of the survivor. But she should have died with them. And the only reason she hadn’t was because of a man—a man with a pair of bright blue eyes.
    If she ever found that man, she would kill him. Moira would rather be dead, after all.
    Instead, she was still alive when, numb with grief, she and the other survivors of what the world had come to call the Great Witch War struggled to pick up the pieces of their existence, to save the last of their race. She scavenged on the streets, seeking out bits of treasure to barter for food while those who were able tried to protect their kind from the witches who would leach the energy from every last one of them.
    And now she was a prisoner in one of these shelters. Those who lived in the enclosed villages called them havens, but she knew better.
    They were prisons. Incarceration for those who had done nothing more than act on the basic human instinct to survive.
    And so Moira existed, helping those who couldn’t help themselves as a way of making amends to the parents she hadn’t helped. And all the time, she dreamed of the man who had saved her life. Over the years, her hatred for the witches slowly bled over until it focused entirely on him. Why had he let her live but not saved her parents?
    It was because of him that she was still here, trapped in the numbness of her grief.
    Because of him she could commit the most cardinal sin of the survivors—she could kill. Kill him.
    The kicker of it all?
    She wouldn’t even know him if she saw him. For all she remembered was the color of his eyes.

Chapter One
    Present Day
    The late-afternoon sun glinted off the sand surrounding the haven village of Mavi, causing temporary blindness even as it mercilessly made sweat flow. Moira squinted against the glare, wishing that she had brought her goggles, but months of living in the cool comfort of Mavi had softened her once keen instincts for survival. While she had remembered to wear a hood to protect her tender scalp, her goggles had remained, likely buried at the bottom of the box that held all reminders of her former career as a treasure hunter.
    Well, it was her own damn fault. Her destination wasn’t far, after all, and if she hurt herself on the way, she had no pressing matters to attend to that would intrude upon her healing. Not anymore, not since she and all other humans had been forced to close themselves in the dome-covered villages that were their only protection against the dark magic that had taken over the world.
    Plus, that was just what she did. She took care of the humans who couldn’t do so for themselves. And she knew why she did it, but didn’t care to think on the matter overmuch.
    It seemed silly, really, to go to so much trouble for a sack of rice, but the tiny store located within the dome of Mavi’s haven had been running low, and there were others who needed it, others who couldn’t venture out onto the now barren plains of Mississippi to get it. And it was no skin off of her back, after all…not unless she ran into a witch. But those with magic