Legs On Shoulders Quotes

A beautiful dress may look beautiful on a hanger, but that means nothing. It must be seen on the shoulders, with the movement of the arms, the legs, and the waist.

Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat. My shoulder is against yours. you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals: not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables. When you really look for me, you will see me instantly — you will find me in the tiniest house of time. Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath.

It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that requires spirit. It's the kind of character that I am going to develop. I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skillfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh - also if I win.

I am a canvas of my experiences, my story is etched in lines and shading, and you can read it on my arms, my legs, my shoulders, and my stomach.

He smiled at that, and then his gaze shifted to a spot over my shoulder and it faded. 'These doubts wouldn’t have anything to do with the company you’re keeping of late, would they?' I didn’t get a chance to answer before the shop door was thrown open and a furious war mage stomped in. Pritkin spotted me and his eyes narrowed. 'You shaved my legs?!' Mircea looked at me and folded his arms across his chest. I looked from one unhappy face to the other and suddenly remembered that I had somewhere else to be.

Do you understand any of this?" he said, pointing to the lines and symbols that covered the massive screens. "Some people understand the value of an education." Hale stretched and crossed his legs, the settled his arm around Kat's shoulders. "That's sweet, Kat. Maybe later I'll buy you a university. And an ice cream." "I'd settle for the ice cream." "Deal.

the easiest way to keep a woman over your shoulder is with a hand on her ass, and the other between her legs.

For a moment, I pretended. Not that we weren't two different species, because I didn't see him that way, but that we actually liked each other. And then he shifted and rolled. I was on my back, and he was still on the move. His face burrowed into the space between my neck and shoulder, nuzzling. Sweet baby Jesus...Warm breath danced over my skin, sending shivers down my body. His arm was heavy against my stomach, his leg between mine, pushing up and up. Scorched air fled my lungs. Daemon murmured in a language I couldn't understand. Whatever it was, it sounded beautiful and soft. Magical. Unearthly. I could've woken him up but for some reason I didn't. The thrill of him touching me was far stronger than anything else. His hand was on the edge of the borrowed shirt, his long fingers on the strip of exposed flesh between the hem on the shirt and the band of the worn pajama bottoms. And his hand inched up under the shirt, across my stomach, where it dipped slightly. My pulse went into cardiac territory. The tips of his fingers brushed my ribs. His body moved, his knee pressed against me. I gasped. Daemon stilled. No one moved. The clock on the wall ticked. And I cringed.

He trapped my hand against his chest and yanked my sleeve down past my wrist, covering my hand with it. Just as quickly, he did the same thing with the other sleeve. He held my shirt by the cuffs, my hands captured. My mouth opened in protest. Reeling me closer, he didn’t stop until I was directly in front of him. Suddenly he lifted me onto the counter. My face was level with his. He fixed me with a dark, inviting smile. And that’s when I realized this moment had been dancing around the edge of my fantasies for several days now. "Take off your hat," I said, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. He slid it around, the brim facing backward. I scooted to the edge of the counter, my legs dangling one on either side of him. Something inside of me was telling me to stop—but I swept that voice to the far back of my mind. He spread his hands on the counter, just outside my hips. Tilting his head to one side, he moved closer. His scent, which was all damp dark earth, overwhelmed me. I inhaled two sharp breaths. No. This wasn’t right. Not this, not with Patch. He was frightening. In a good way, yes. But also in a bad way. A very bad way. "You should go," I breathed. "You should definitely go." "Go here?" His mouth was on my shoulder. "Or here?" It moved up my neck. My brain couldn’t process one logical thought. Patch’s mouth was roaming north, up over my jaw, gently sucking at my skin... "My legs are falling asleep," I blurted. It wasn’t a total lie. I was experiencing tingling sensations all through my body, legs included. "I could solve that." Patch’s hands closed on my hips.

Are you upset that you can’t stomp around like a caveman and pee on my leg?” I poked his shoulder. “I’m not a tree, Your Highness.

Instead of finding himself in nerd heaven—where every nerd gets fifty-eight virgins to role-play with—he woke up in Robert Wood Johnson with two broken legs and a separated shoulder, feeling like, well, he'd jumped off the New Brunswick train bridge.

I watched her for a long time, memorizing her shoulders, her long-legged gait. This was how girls left. They packed up their suitcases and walked away in high heels. They pretended they weren't crying, that it wasn't the worst day of their lives. That they didn't want their mothers to come running after them, begging their forgiveness, that they wouldn't have gone down on their knees and thanked god if they could stay.

It was this: Gansey starting down the stairs to the kitchen, Blue starting up, meeting in the middle. It was Gansey stepping aside to let her pass, but changing his mind. He caught her arm and then the rest of her. She was warm, alive, vibrant beneath the thin cotton; he was warm, alive, vibrant beneath his. Blue slid her hand over his bare shoulder and then on to his chest, her palm spread out flat on his breastbone, her fingers pressed curiously into his skin. I thought you would be hairier, she whispered. Sorry to disappoint. The legs have a bit more going on. Mine too.

Parents, she thought, learned to survive touching their children less and less. As a baby Pearl had clung to her; she’d worn Pearl in a sling because whenever she’d set her down, Pearl would cry. There’d scarcely been a moment in the day when they had not been pressed together. As she got older, Pearl would still cling to her mother’s leg, then her waist, then her hand, as if there was something in her mother she needed to absorb through the skin. Even when she had her own bed, she would often crawl into Mia’s in the middle of the night and burrow under the old patchwork quilt, and in the morning they would wake up tangled, Mia’s arm pinned beneath Pearl’s head, or Pearl’s legs thrown across Mia’s belly. Now, as a teenager, Pearl’s caresses had become rare—a peck on the cheek, a one-armed, half-hearted hug—and all the more precious because of that. It was the way of things, Mia thought to herself, but how hard it was. The occasional embrace, a head leaned for just a moment on your shoulder, when what you really wanted more than anything was to press them to you and hold them so tight you fused together and could never be taken apart. It was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.

I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skilfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh—also if I win.

Emperor, right." she retacked the curtain "That's weird to say, after eighteen years of listening to celebrity gossip feeds go on and on about 'Earth's favorite prince'". She claimed one of the lumpy sofa cushions, curling her legs beneath her. "I had a picture of him taped to my wall when I was fifteen. Grand-mere cut it off a cereal box." Wolf scowled. "Of course, half the girls in the world probably have had that same picture from that same cereal box." Wolf scrunched his shoulders against his neck, and Scarlet grinned, teasing. "Oh, no. You're not going to have to fight him for pack dominance now are you? Come here." She beckoned him with a wave of her hand and he was at her side in half a second, the glower softening as he pulled her against his chest.

Pressed up against him, I can feel the thud of his heart against mine, his ribcase expanding and contracting rapidly against my chest, the warm whisper of his breath tickling the side of my neck, the brush of his leg against my thigh. Resting my arms on his shoulders, I pull back a little to get a look at his face. But he isn't smiling any more.

He stands watching me, motionless in those drawstring pants, his legs braced in a fighting stance, his eyes bursting with need. His broad shoulders jerk with his breaths, and he curls his fingers into fists at his sides. The deep roughness of his voice scrapes my flesh. "Come here then.

Are you lost?" I turned around. "Excuse me?" Two guys were sprawled on a bench close to the sidewalk. The one who had spoken wore tattered shorts and a colonial three-cornered hat-nothing else. He had wide shoulders and long, muscular legs. He stretched dramatically, then lay his tanned arm along the back of the bench. "You look lost," he said. "Can I help you find something?" "Uh, no, thanks. I was just looking." He grinned. "Me too." "Oh?" I glanced around, thinking I'd missed something. "At what?" He and his friend burst out laughing. Way to go, Lauren, I thought. He had been looking at me!

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled, And one arm bent across your sullen cold Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you, Deep-shadow'd from the candle's guttering gold; And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder; Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head.... You are too young to fall asleep for ever; And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.

It wasn’t until someone kicked his legs that Nik woke up. Alek, snoring beside him, his head resting on his shoulder. Ban snoring on the other couch, the noise rivaled only by the dog. He looked into the impossibly cranky face of Zach Sheridan. “Y’all get food?” “We had a full refrigerator before you three got here.” “Where I come from, we don’t let the refrigerator get empty.” “Where you come from, you marry your sister.

What’s three?” I asked, hoping to move away from this uncomfortable topic. The smile pulled at his lips again. “Three.” One of his hands cupped my face and the other slid around my back. He pulled my body against his and my heart began to pound. I took advantage of my free hand and pushed at his chest. “I don’t think so, Lily,” he said. “If you want to get rid of me, you’ll need to do better than that.” I drew a sharp breath and tried to wiggle away, but he held me firmly in place, watching me struggle. He grinned as he lifted me up onto the sink. “What are you doing?” I started to panic. “Someone could come in!” “If they see us, they’ll just turn around and get out of here,” he murmured, lips touching my ear. “No one crosses me.” His hips pressed against my knees, opening them, pushing my skirt up my legs. I gripped his shirt, clinging to him so I wouldn’t fall into the sink. His hand pushed into my lower back. I gasped as his body fitted against mine. Heat flooded my chest, my pelvis. I thought I would drown in it. “We can’t—” His lips stopped my words. The kiss just made me dizzier. I dug my fingers into his shoulders. “You said you didn’t want to be left alone.” His tongue flicked over my cheekbone. “This is me pestering you.” “Aren’t you breaking the rules?” I could barely get the words out. “What about the union?” “I’d rather have you on my own terms.” His hand slipped between my thighs. All strength fled my limbs. “I can’t breathe.” “That means you like it.” He kissed me again.

Kevin stopped where he was and stood there simply gazing at her. Molly sat cross-legged in the meadow with the sun shining on her bare shoulders and a pair of yellow butterflies fluttering like hair bows around her head. She was all the dreams he'd lost at dawn-dreams of everything he hadn't understood he needed until now. She was his playmate, his confidante, the lover who made his blood rush. She was the mother of his children and the companion of his old age. She was the joy of his heart.

Peeta and I sit on the damp sand, facing away from each other, my right shoulder and hip pressed against his. ... After a while I rest my head against his shoulder. Feel his hand caress my hair. "Katniss... If you die, and I live, there's no life for me at all back in District Twelve. You're my whole life", he says. "I would never be happy again." I start to object but he puts a finger to my lips. "It's different for you. I'm not sayin it wouldn't be hard. But there are other people who'd make your life worth living." ... "Your family needs you, Katniss", Peeta says. My family. My mother. My sister. And my pretend cousin Gale. But Peeta's intension is clear. That Gale really is my family, or will be one day, if I live. That I'll marry him. So Peeta's giving me his life and Gale at the same time. To let me know I shouldn't ever have doubts about it. Everithing. That's what Peeta wants me to take from him. ... "No one really needs me", he says, and there's no self-pity in his voice. It's true his family doesen't need him. They will mourn him, as will a handful of friends. But they will get on. Even Haymitch, with the help of a lot of white liquor, will get on. I realize only one person will be damaged beyond repair if Peeta dies. Me. "I do", I say. "I need you." He looks upset, takes a deep breath as if to begin a long argument, and that's no good, no good at all, because he'll start going on about Prim and my mother and everything and I'll just get confused. So before he can talk, I stop his lips with a kiss. I feel that thing again. The thing I only felt once before. In the cave last year, when I was trying to get Haymitch to send us food. I kissed Peeta about a thousand times during those Games and after. But there was only one kiss that made me feel something stir deep inside. Only one that made me want more. But my head wound started bleeding and he made me lie down. This time, there is nothing but us to interrupt us. And after a few attempts, Peeta gives up on talking. The sensation inside me grows warmer and spreads out from my chest, down through my body, out along my arms and legs, to the tips of my being. Instead of satisfying me, the kisses have the opposite effect, of making my need greater. I thought I was something of an expert on hunger, but this is an entirely new kind.

…he glanced over his shoulder at her, regarding her, as he often did before they made love, as if she were a lost continent about to be rediscovered.

Her voice was so melancholy that Gansey was struck all at once by what he and Blue really lost by keeping their relationship a secret. Blue radiated psychic energy for others, but touch was where she gained hers back. She was always hugging her mother or holding Noah’s hand or linking her elbow in Adam’s or resting her boots on Ronan’s legs as they sat on the sofa. Touching Gansey’s neck just between his hair and his collar. This worry in her tone demanded fingers braided together, arms on shoulders, cheeks rested against chests. But because Gansey was too cowardly to tell Adam about falling in love with her, she had to stand there with her sadness by herself. Aurora took Blue’s hand.

I stand there for a while, then sit cross-legged before it and bow my head. "Hi, Metias," I say in a soft voice. "Today's my birthday. Do you know how old I am now?" I close me eyes, and through the silence surrounding me I think I can sense a ghostly hand on my shoulder, my brother's gentle presence that I'm able to feel every now and then, in these quiet moments. I imagine him smiling down at me, his expression relaxed and free. "I'm twenty-seven today," I continue in a whisper. My voice catches for a moment. "We're the same age now." For the first tine in my life, I am no longer his little sister. Next year I will step across the line and he will still be in the same place. From now on, I will be older than he ever was. I try to move on to other thoughts, so I tell my brother's ghost about my year, my struggles and successes in commanding my own patrols, my hectic workweeks. I tell him, as I always do, that I miss him. And as always, I can hear the whisper of his ghost against my ear, his gentle reply that he misses me too. That he's looking out for me, from wherever he is.

Fuck, man,” Nate breathed, his attention suddenly on the shoes and my legs. “Don’t let her sell those.” His heated eyes devoured me. “Those are shit hot.” “I will seriously hit you,” Cam warned him darkly. Nate shrugged, threw me a cheeky grin, and turned back to the television screen. “Not my fault your girlfriend is so bloody fuckable.” Cole slammed his shoulder into Nate before Cam could retaliate. “Dude, that’s my sister.

I reach for Prim in the twilight, clamp my hand on her leg and pull myself over to her. Her voice remains steady as she croons to Buttercup. "It's all right, baby, it's all right. We'll be OK down there." My mother wraps her arms around us. I allow myself to feel young for a moment and rest my head on her shoulder.

Solar Eclipse Each morning I wake invisible. I make a needle from a porcupine quill, sew feet to legs, lift spine onto my thighs. I put on my rib and collarbone. I pin an ear to my head, hear the waxwing's yellow cry. I open my mouth for purple berries, stick on periwinkle eyes. I almost know what it is to be seen. My throat enlarges from anger. I make a hand to hold my pain. My heart a hole the size of the sun's eclipse. I push through the dark circle's tattered edge of light. All day I struggle with one hair after another until the moon moves from the face of the sun and there is a strange light as though from a kerosene lamp in a cabin. I pun on a dress, a shawl over my shoulders. My threads knotted and scissors gleaming. Now I know I am seen. I have a shadow. I extend my arms, dance and chant in the sun's new light. I put a hat and coat on my shadow, another larger dress. I put on more shawls and blouses and underskirts until even the shadow has substance

You can't see yourself. You know what you look like because of mirrors and photographs, but out there in the world, as you move among your fellow human beings, whether strangers or friends or the most intimate beloveds, your own face is invisible to you. You can see other parts of yourself, arms and legs, hands and feet, shoulders and torso, but only from the front, nothing of the back except the backs of your legs if you twist them into the right position, but not your face, never your face, and in the end - at least as far as others are concerned - your face is who you are, the essential fact of your identity. Passports do not contain pictures of hands and feet. Even you, who have lived inside your body for sixty-four years now, would probably be unable to recognize your foot in an isolated photograph of that foot, not to speak of your ear, or your elbow, or one of your eyes in close-up. All so familiar to you in the context of the whole, but utterly anonymous when taken piece by piece. We are all aliens to ourselves, and if we have any sense of who we are, it is only because we live inside the eyes of others.

Pain ripped through my leg, and I knew from the powerful scent and the disturbing warmth that my blood was flowing freely. I kicked instinctively with my left leg, and followed that with another blow from the shovel, this one powered by anger, as well as fear. And to my extreme satisfaction, that bastard hobbled away from me with a dislocated shoulder, mewling like a newborn kitten. Meow, meow, motherfucker.

Late in the afternoon, thunder growling, that same old green pickup rolled in and he saw Jack get out of the truck, beat up Resistol tilted back. A hot jolt scalded Ennis and he was out on the landing pulling the door closed behind him. Jack took the stairs two and two. They seized each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, then, and easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together, and hard, Jack’s big teeth bringing blood, his hat falling to the floor, stubble rasping, wet saliva welling, and the door opening and Alma looking out for a few seconds at Ennis’s straining shoulders and shutting the door again and still they clinched, pressing chest and groin and thigh and leg together, treading on each other’s toes until they pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on endearments, said what he said to his horses and his daughters, little darlin.

Did you learn the rotation of the border patrols?’ said Laurent. ‘Yes, our scouts found—’ Laurent was standing in the doorway wearing a chiton of unadorned white cotton. Damen dropped the pitcher. It shattered, shards flying outward as it slipped from his fingers and hit the stone floor. Laurent’s arms were bare. His throat was bare. His collarbone was bare, and most of his thighs, his long legs, and all of his left shoulder. Damen stared at him. ‘You’re wearing Akielon clothing,’ said Damen. ‘Everyone’s wearing Akielon clothing,’ said Laurent. Damen thought that the pitcher had shattered and he could not now take a deep draught of the wine. Laurent came forward, navigating the broken ceramic in his short cotton and sandalled feet, until he reached the seat beside Damen, where the map was laid out on the wooden table. ‘Once we know the rotation of the patrols, we’ll know when to approach,’ said Laurent. Laurent sat down. ‘We need to approach at the beginning of their rotation in order to give us the most time before they report back to the fort.’ It was even shorter sitting down. ‘Damen.’ ‘Yes. Sorry,’ said Damen. And then: ‘What were you saying?

He shifted his weight, throwing his good leg off the bed as if he were going to try to stand. “What are you doing?” I demanded through the tears. “Lie down, you idiot, you’ll hurt yourself!” I jumped to my feet and pushed his good shoulder down with two hands. He surrendered, leaning back with a gasp of pain, but he grabbed me around my waist and pulled me down on the bed, against his good side. I curled up there, trying to stifle the silly sobs against his hot skin.

L'union libre [Freedom of Love]" My wife with the hair of a wood fire With the thoughts of heat lightning With the waist of an hourglass With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes With the tongue of an unbelievable stone My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child's writing With brows of the edge of a swallow's nest My wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roof And of steam on the panes My wife with shoulders of champagne And of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the ice My wife with wrists of matches My wife with fingers of luck and ace of hearts With fingers of mown hay My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut And of Midsummer Night Of privet and of an angelfish nest With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill My wife with legs of flares With the movements of clockwork and despair My wife with calves of eldertree pith My wife with feet of initials With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking My wife with a neck of unpearled barley My wife with a throat of the valley of gold Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrent With breasts of night My wife with breasts of a marine molehill My wife with breasts of the ruby's crucible With breasts of the rose's spectre beneath the dew My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days With the belly of a gigantic claw My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically With a back of quicksilver With a back of light With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking My wife with hips of a skiff With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers And of shafts of white peacock plumes Of an insensible pendulum My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos My wife with buttocks of swans' backs My wife with buttocks of spring With the sex of an iris My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat My wife with a sex of mirror My wife with eyes full of tears With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle My wife with savanna eyes My wife with eyes of water to he drunk in prison My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe My wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire

I'll teach you later, but for now I just need someone to watch the signs for me. Come on up to the copilot chair." I jerked a thumb in the direction of Chubs. Liam only shook his head. "Are you kidding me? Yesterday he thought a mailbox was a clown." I unbuckle my seat belt with a sigh. As I climbed over Chubs's outstretched legs to the front, I glanced over my shoulder, my eyes going to his too-small glasses. " Is his eyesight really that bad?" "Worse," Liam said. "So, right after we got the hell out of Caledonia, we broke into this house to spend the night, right? I woke up in the middle of the night hearing the most awful noise, like a cow dying or something. I followed the wailing, clutching some kid's baseball bat, thinking I was going to have to beat someone's head in for us to make a clean getaway. then I saw what was sitting at the bottom of a drained pool." "No way," I said. "Way," he confirmed. "Hawkeye had gone out to relieve himself and had somehow missed the giant gaping hole in the ground. Twisted his ankle and couldn't climb out of the deep end. I tried so hard not to laugh, but it was impossible. The mental image was just too damn good.

Warner has collapsed in the corner. He's curled into himself, kness pulled up to his chest. arms wrapped around his legs, his head buried in this arms. And he's shaking. Tremors are rocking his entire body. I've never, ever seen him look like a child before. Never, not once, not in all the time I've known him. But right now, he looks just like a little boy. Scared, Vulnerable. All alone. ... I touch his arms, so gently. I run my hand down his back, his shoulders. And then I dare to wrap myself around him until he slowly breaks apart, unfolding in front of me. He lifts his head. His eyes are red-rimmed and a startling, striking shade of green, shining with barely restrained emotion. His face is the picture of so much pain. I almost can't breathe. An earthquake hits my heart then, cracks it right down the middle. And It hink here, in him, there is more feeling then any one person should ever have to contain. I try to hold him closer but he wraps his arms around my hips instead, his head falling into my lap. I bend over him instinctively, shielding his body with my own. I press my cheek to his forehead. Press a kiss to his temple. And then he breaks. Shaking violently, shattering in my arms, a million gasping, choking pieces I'm trying so hard to hold together. And I promise myself then, in that moment that I will hold him forever, just like this, until all the pain and torture and suffering is gone, until he's given a chance to live the kind of life where no one can wound him this deeply ever again.

I'd never wanted to consume another body as rabidly as I did when he was inside me, but even like this, I could never seem to get close enough to the parts of him I wanted to feel. And it was with that thought in my mind that the delicious ratcheting tension along my skin and in my belly crystallized into an ache so heavy I slipped my legs off his shoulders, pulling all of his weight on top of me and pleading, "Please, please, please," over and over.

I was desperate. I had to keep Annabeth alive. I imagined all the bubbles in the sea—always churning, rising. I imagined them coming together, being pulled toward me. The sea obeyed. There was a flurry of white, a tickling sensation all around me, and when my vision cleared, Annabeth and I had a huge bubble of air around us. Only our legs stuck into the water. She gasped and coughed. Her whole body shuddered, but when she looked at me, I knew the spell had been broken. She started to sob—I mean horrible, heartbroken sobbing. She put her head on my shoulder and I held her. Fish gathered to look at us—a school of barracudas, some curious marlins. 'Scram!' I told them. They swam off, but I could tell they went reluctantly. I swear I understood their intentions. They were about to start rumors flying around the sea about the son of Poseidon and some girl at the bottom of Siren Bay.

Since our nights together on that trip, I had longed every night to feel her next to me, to curl up against her, my stomach against her behind and my chest against her back, to rest my hand on her breasts, to reach out for her when I woke up in the night, find her, push my leg over her legs, and press my face against her shoulder.

Allison." I almost collapsed in relief. "Yeah," I whispered, forcing a pained smile as he stared at me as if I were a ghost. "It's me. Damn you, Kanin. You were a pain in the ass to find, you know that?" Kanin didn't answer. Without warning, his hands rose, pressing to either side of my face as I went rigid. His stare was awed, hopeful, as if he couldn't quite believe I was real and had to touch me to make sure I wasn't a phantom. "You're here." I barely caught the whisper, and Kanin's eyes closed again as he bowed his head. It was a broken sound, a man desperately grasping at the last thread of hope, when he had been in the darkness for so long. "You came." And, as I stood, shocked, against the wall of the cell, Kanin sank to his knees in front of me, holding the backs of my legs. The top of his bowed head pressed against my thighs. "You came," he repeated, a chant holding him to sanity. I swallowed the lump in my throat and touched his broad shoulders, biting my lips to keep the tears in check, as the cell door opened with a creak, and the Prince beckoned us both to freedom.

His stare shifted back over to Qhuinn. The guy's huge body was arching into the human woman, his broad shoulders and his tight hips and his long, powerful legs guaranteeing her one hell of a ride. He was amazing at sex. Not that Blay would know firsthand. He'd seen it and he'd heard it...and he'd imagined what it would be like. But when the opportunity had arisen, he'd been relegated to a small, special class: denied. Actually, it was more of a category than a class...because he was the only one who Qhuinn would not have sex with.

She walks barefoot into the humid night, moonlight on her freckled shoulders. Near a huge, live oak tree on the edge of her father's cotton fields, Sidda looks up into the sky. In the crook of the crescent moon sits the Holy Lady, with strong muscles and a merciful heart. She kicks her splendid legs like the moon is her swing and the sky, her front porch. She waves down at Sidda like she has just spotted an old buddy. Sidda stands in the moonlight and lets the Blessed Mother love every hair on her six-year-old head. Tenderness flows down from the moon and up from the earth. For one fleeting, luminous moment, Sidda Walker knows there has never been a time when she has not been loved.

Rolling orange fire silhouetted him from behind, backlighting the warrior’s broad shoulders and casual, long-legged stride. As he strolled away from the inferno, the ends of his loose black coat winged out behind him like a cape befitting the prince of darkness himself. “Holy hell,” Brock murmured. “Tegan.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been building you a House out of my own bones. And still, you look at me with so much contempt and mistrust. You complain because there are gaps in the roof of my ribs, and you ask me to give more of myself to fill them. You want my hips to be the bowl you drink from. My shoulders, your bed. My arms, your walls. My legs, the very ground you stand on. You want your fill of my blood whenever you crave it. What more do you want from me?

in better company, they found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrezarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust.

Poem from Rev. Jim Cotter, as listed on the opening pages of “Anatomy of the Spirit” by Caroline Myss: ~ God be in my head and in my understanding. God be in my eyes and in my looking. God be in my mouth and in my speaking. God be in my tongue and in my tasting. God be in my lips and in my greeting. ~ God be in my nose and in my smelling/inhaling. God be in my ears and in my hearing. God be in my neck and in my humbling. God be in my shoulders and in my bearing. God be in my back and in my standing. ~ God be in my arms and in my reaching/receiving. God be in my hands and in my working. God be in my legs and in my walking. God be in my feet and in my grounding. God be in my knees and in my relating. ~ God be in my gut and in my feeling. God be in my bowels and in my forgiving. God be in my loins and in my swiving. God be in my lungs and in my breathing. God be in my heart and in my loving. ~ God be in my skin and in my touching. God be in my flesh and in my paining/pining. God be in my blood and in my living. God be in my bones and in my dying. God be at my end and at my reviving.

He found Podrick Payne asleep in a chair outside the door of the solar, and shook him by the shoulder. "Summon Bronn, and then tun down to the stables and have two horses saddled." (Tyrion). The squire's eyes were cloudy with sleep. "Horses". (squire) "Those big brown animals that love apples, I'm sure you've seen them. Four legs and a tail. But Bronn first." (Tyrion)

Tarquin turned from the table, just as the tent flaps parted for a pair of broad shoulders— Varian. He didn’t so much as look at his High Lord, his focus going right to where Amren sat at the head of the table. As if he’d sensed she was here—or someone had reported. And he’d come running. Amren’s eyes flicked up from the Book as Varian halted. A coy smile curved her red lips. There was still blood and dirt splattered on Varian’s brown skin, coating his silver armor and close-cropped white hair. He didn’t seem to notice or care as he strode for Amren. And none of us dared to speak as Varian dropped to his knees before Amren’s chair, took her shocked face in his broad hands, and kissed her soundly. ... None of us lasted long after dinner. Amren and Varian didn’t even bother to join us. No, she’d just wrapped her legs around his waist, right there in front of us, and he’d stood, lifting her in one swift movement. I wasn’t entirely sure how Varian managed to walk them out of the tent while still kissing her, Amren’s hands dragging through his hair, letting out noises that were unnervingly like purring as they vanished into the camp. Rhys had let out a low laugh as we all gawked in their wake. “I suppose that’s how Varian decided he’d tell Amren he was feeling rather grateful she ordered us to go to Adriata.” Tarquin cringed. “We’ll alternate who has to deal with them on holidays.

He closed the distance another tight inch. Her breasts pressed against his chest, and her nipples were hard little points stabbing out of the scarlet material, begging to be freed. Her breath came in ragged gasps, her perfume swamped his senses. He grew hard, and her eyes widened as his full length throbbed against her leg in demand. “I’m calling your bluff, baby.” Pure shock registered on her face as he removed one hand from the wall to casually unbutton his shirt, slide off his tie, then grasp her chin with a firm grip. “Prove it.” He stamped his mouth over hers, not giving her a chance to think or back off or push him away. He invaded her mouth, plunging his tongue inside the slick, silky cave, then closed his lips around the wet flesh and sucked hard. She grabbed for his shoulders, and made a little moan deep in her throat. Then she exploded.

As I sailed into Shadow, a white bird of my desire came and sat upon my right shoulder, and I wrote a note and tied it to its leg and set it on its way. The note said "I am coming," and it was signed by me. A black bird of my desire came and sat upon my left shoulder, and I wrote a note and tied it to its leg and sent it off into the west. It said, "Eric- I'll be back," and it was signed: Corwin, Lord of Amber. A demon wind propelled me east of the sun.

Koh demonstrating how to make a toga of a bed-sheet and sending Blue and Gansey into a cluttered bedroom to change. It was Gansey politely turning his back as she undressed and then Blue turning hers – maybe turning hers. It was Blue’s shoulder and her collarbone and her legs and her throat and her laugh her laugh her laugh. He couldn’t stop looking at her, and here, it didn’t matter, because no one here cared that they were together. Here, he could play his fingers over her fingers as they stood close, she could lean her cheek on his bare shoulder, he could hook his ankle playfully in hers, she could catch herself with an arm around his waist. Here he was unbelievably greedy for that laugh.

In that latitude the temperature flirted with a hundred degrees for a few of the dog days, but to a child it can hardly ever be too hot. I liked the sun licking the backs of my legs, and the sweat between my shoulder blades, and the violet evenings, with ice cream and fireflies, wherein the long day slowly cooled. I liked the ants piling up dirt like coffee grounds between the bricks of our front walk, and the milkweed spittle in the vacant lot next door. I liked the freedom of shorts, sneakers, and striped T-shirt, with freckles and a short hot-weather haircut. We love easily in summer, perhaps, because we love our summer selves.

He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

I heard the bathroom door close and I kept my eyes screwed shut, but my heart skyrocketed into uncharted territories. I folded my arms around me and held my breath. There was the slightest movement behind me. Skin brushed against mine. A fine shiver rolled up my spine. An infinite spark transferred between us, something that couldn’t be replicated or forced. How could I’ve forgotten that when connected with Seth? My heart turned over heavily. Aiden brushed the mass of thick hair over one shoulder and his lips met the space between my neck and shoulder. His hands slid down the slick skin of my arms, cupping over my elbows and then to my wrists. Gently, slowly, he eased my arms to my sides. I bit down on my lip and my legs started trembling. But he was there. Like always, holding me up when I couldn’t stand on and letting me go when he knew I needed him to. He was more than just a shelter. AIden was my other half, my equal. And he needed no weird Apollyon connection. Aiden waited, still as a statue, patient as ever, until my muscles unlocked, one by one. Then his hands dropped to my waist and he turned me toward him. A heartbeat passed and he placed his fingers on my chin, tipping my head back. I opened my eyes, blinking the wetness off my lashes, and the air hitched in my throat. Faint, purplish bruises shadowed his jaw. There was a cut over the bridge of his nose. No doubt injuries I had given him.

I can't believe you'd rather hold handle bars than a girl." He angled his head thoughtfully."I hadn't considered that." "Maybe you should." He hopped over,gingerly swinging his bad leg over to the other side and settled down behind me on the seat. "You got rules on how I can hold you?" "Nothing distracting while I'm driving," I tossed over my shoulder, meeting his gaze."We don't need another accident." "And when you're not driving?" "The Kate-have-a-good-time fund is getting low.Maybe you should think about making a deposit.

After a while Mary said, “Zsadist?” “Yeah?” “What are those markings?” His frowned and flicked his eyes over to her, thinking, as if she didn’t know? But then . . . well, she had been a human. Maybe she didn’t. “They’re slave bands. I was . . . a slave.” “Did it hurt when they were put on you?” “Yes.” “Did the same person who cut your face give them to you?” “No, my owner’s hellren did that. My owner . . . she put the bands on me. He was the one who cut my face.” “How long were you a slave?” “A hundred years.” “How did you get free?” “Phury. Phury got me out. That’s how he lost his leg.” “Were you hurt while you were a slave?” Z swallowed hard. “Yes.” “Do you still think about it?” “Yes.” He looked down at his hands, which suddenly were in pain for some reason. Oh, right. He’d made two fists and was squeezing them so tightly his fingers were about to snap off at the knuckles. “Does slavery still happen?” “No. Wrath outlawed it. As a mating gift to me and Bella.” “What kind of slave were you?” Zsadist shut his eyes. Ah, yes, the question he didn’t want to answer. For a while it was all he could do to force himself to stay in the chair. But then, in a falsely level voice, he said, “I was a blood slave. I was used by a female for blood.” The quiet after he spoke bore down on him, a tangible weight. “Zsadist? Can I put my hand on your back?” His head did something that was evidently a nod, because Mary’s gentle palm came down lightly on his shoulder blade. She moved it in a slow, easy circle. “Those are the right answers,” she said. “All of them.” He had to blink fast as the fire in the furnace’s window became blurry. “You think?” he said hoarsely. “No. I know.

Rebecca, always Rebecca. Wherever I walked in Manderley, wherever I sat, even in my thoughts and in my dreams, I met Rebecca. I knew her figure now, the long slim legs, the small and narrow feet. Her shoulders, broader than mine, the capable clever hands. Hands that could steer a boat, could hold a horse. Hands that arranged flowers, made the models of ships, and wrote “Max from Rebecca” on the flyleaf of a book. I knew her face too, small and oval, the clear white skin, the cloud of dark hair. I knew the scent she wore, I could guess her laughter and her smile. If I heard it, even among a thousand others, I should recognize her voice. Rebecca, always Rebecca. I should never be rid of Rebecca. Perhaps

There was a lot more to it than he had ever thought. First, he used a rub-rag, cleaning Red’s head gently but not too rapidly. He went behind the ears and under the halter, then moved on to the neck, chest, and shoulders before whisking off the stall dust from the back. Then he went down the thighs to the legs, holding the hind leg a few inches above the hock in order to deflect the leg if the colt tried to kick him. As well as Man o’ War knew him, there was always the possibility of being kicked, for every horse was apt to act on impulse.

The suspense is killin’ me, Pigeon!” Travis called. I walked out, fidgeting with my dress while Travis stood in front of me, blank-faced. America elbowed him and he blinked. “Holy shit.” “Are you ready to be freaked out?” America asked. “I’m not freaked out, she looks amazing,” Travis said. I smiled and then slowly turned around to show him the steep dip of the fabric in the back of the dress. “Okay, now I’m freakin’ out,” he said, walking over to me “Okay, now I’m freakin’ out,” he said, walking over to me and turning me around. “You don’t like it?” I asked. “You need a jacket.” He jogged to the rack and then hastily draped my coat over my shoulders. “She can’t wear that all night, Trav,” America chuckled. “You look beautiful, Abby,” Shepley said as an apology for Travis’ behavior. Travis’ expression was pained as he spoke. “You do. You look incredible…but you can’t wear that. Your skirt is…wow, your legs are…your skirt is too short and it’s only half a dress! It doesn’t even have a back on it!” I couldn’t help but smile. “That’s the way it’s made, Travis.” “Do you two live to torture each other?” Shepley frowned. “Do you have a longer dress?” Travis asked. I looked down. “It’s actually pretty modest in the front. It’s just the back that shows off a lot of skin.” “Pigeon,” he winced with his next words, “I don’t want you to be mad, but I can’t take you to my frat house looking like that. I’ll get in a fight the first five minutes we’re there, Baby.

Fuck!” he snarled. He tilted her up again, her legs now resting on his shoulders, and positioned himself and began to push. Into her back entrance. Kimber drew in a great, shocked gasp, her hazel eyes wide. “Deke?” “What the hell are you doing?” Luc barked. Tensing a little more with every inch he pushed inside Kimber’s tight passage, the tendons on his neck standing out, the muscles in his arms shaking, assailed by the amazing sensations of being slowly enveloped by her tight, ready flesh, Deke could barely form a word. “Fucking her ass. Saving her life.

Max dances around in a circle with one leg pulled up, and people move away as if he's mentally unstable. He and I are the only collectors that like to remain visible to the living. The other four roll incognito. Max finishes his dance and brushes his shoulders off. "What the hell was that?" I ask. "My new move," he says matter-of-factly. My fellow collector is six years older than me but acts like he's thirteen. We met a couple of years ago after he kicked the bucket and came onboard. He talks so fast, I have trouble understanding him sometimes. I like to think he was the World's Best Car Salesman before he croaked.

I had never seen her naked, I was embarrassed. Today I can say that it was the embarrassment of gazing with pleasure at her body, of being the not impartial witness of her sixteen-year-old's beauty a few hours before Stefano touched her, penetrated her, disfigured her, perhaps, by making her pregnant. At the time it was just a tumultuous sensation of necessary awkwardness, a state in which you cannot avert the gaze or take away the hand without recognizing your own turmoil, without, by that retreat, declaring it, hence without coming into conflict with the undisturbed innocence of the one who is the cause of the turmoil, without expressing by that rejection the violent emotion that overwhelms you, so that it forces you to stay, to rest your gaze on the childish shoulders, on the breasts and stiffly cold nipples, on the narrow hips and the tense buttocks, on the black sex, on the long legs, on the tender knees, on the curved ankles, on the elegant feet; and to act as if it's nothing, when instead everything is there, present, in the poor dim room, amid the worn furniture, on the uneven, water-stained floor, and your heart is agitated, your veins inflamed.

It was hard to get lost in Missoula even if you wanted to. Wherever you were, all you had to do to get your bearings was look around and find the big letter M, embossed in white halfway up the steep shoulder of grass that reared on the south bank of the Clark Fork River. Though only a hill, it was called Mount Sentinel and if you had the legs and lungs and inclination to hike the trail that zigzagged up it, you could stand by the M and gaze out across the town at a travel-brochure shot of forest and mountain dusted from early fall with snow.

On May 26th, 2003, Aaron Ralston was hiking, a boulder fell on his right hand, he waited four days, he then amputated his own arm with a pocketknife. On New Year’s Eve, a woman was bungee jumping, the cord broke, she fell into a river and had to swim back to land in crocodile-infested waters with a broken collarbone. Claire Champlin was smashed in the face by a five-pound watermelon being propelled by a slingshot. Mathew Brobst was hit by a javelin. David Striegl was actually punched in the mouth by a kangaroo. The most amazing part of these stories is when asked about the experience they all smiled, shrugged and said “I guess things could’ve been worse.” So go ahead, tell me you’re having a bad day. Tell me about the traffic. Tell me about your boss. Tell me about the job you’ve been trying to quit for the past four years. Tell me the morning is just a townhouse burning to the ground and the snooze button is a fire extinguisher. Tell me the alarm clock stole the keys to your smile, drove it into 7 am and the crash totaled your happiness. Tell me. Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedy so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues. When Evan lost his legs he was speechless. When my cousin was assaulted she didn’t speak for 48 hours. When my uncle was murdered, we had to send out a search party to find my father’s voice. Most people have no idea that tragedy and silence often have the exact same address. When your day is a museum of disappointments, hanging from events that were outside of your control, when you feel like your guardian angel put in his two weeks notice two months ago and just decided not to tell you, when it seems like God is just a babysitter that’s always on the phone, when you get punched in the esophagus by a fistful of life. Remember, every year two million people die of dehydration. So it doesn’t matter if the glass is half full or half empty. There’s water in the cup. Drink it and stop complaining. Muscle is created by lifting things that are designed to weigh us down. When your shoulders are heavy stand up straight and call it exercise. Life is a gym membership with a really complicated cancellation policy. Remember, you will survive, things could be worse, and we are never given anything we can’t handle. When the whole world crumbles, you have to build a new one out of all the pieces that are still here. Remember, you are still here. The human heart beats approximately 4,000 times per hour and each pulse, each throb, each palpitation is a trophy, engraved with the words “You are still alive.” You are still alive. So act like it.

When he says he doesn’t love you anymore, roll your shoulders back and look him in the eye even when it feels like your ribs are breaking inward; like spider legs. When he digs up old aches that he swore he forgave you for, smile and ask him why he didn’t leave you sooner. Ignore the way the words feel like sandpaper running all the way up your throat to your mouth. When he blames you for mistakes that wear his face, do not scream. Do not cry. Tell him that there are boys who would be proud to say they’d love you. Tell him that in two years you won’t even remember his name and don’t let him see the way you can taste your own lie. When he leaves, ignore the howling in your blood and do not get up after him. Not even to lock the door. Do not, do not, DO NOT. Smell his shirts when you box them up to give them back. Not one. Swear off dating when you realize you’re chasing ghosts that wear his smile. It’s okay to cry over him. It’s even okay to forgive him. But do not go back to him if he did not know how to love you the first time. He won’t know how to do it the next.

There was nothing left for me to do, but go. Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-titled streetlight; a frozen clock, a bird visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; towering off one’s clinging shirt post-June rain. Pearls, rags, buttons, rug-tuft, beer-froth. Someone’s kind wishes for you; someone remembering to write; someone noticing that you are not at all at ease. A bloody ross death-red on a platter; a headgetop under-hand as you flee late to some chalk-and-woodfire-smelling schoolhouse. Geese above, clover below, the sound of one’s own breath when winded. The way a moistness in the eye will blur a field of stars; the sore place on the shoulder a resting toboggan makes; writing one’s beloved’s name upon a frosted window with a gloved finger. Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead. Goodbye, I must now say goodbye to all of it. Loon-call in the dark; calf-cramp in the spring; neck-rub in the parlour; milk-sip at end of day. Some brandy-legged dog proudly back-ploughs the grass to cover its modest shit; a cloud-mass down-valley breaks apart over the course of a brandy-deepened hour; louvered blinds yield dusty beneath your dragging finger, and it is nearly noon and you must decide; you have seen what you have seen, and it has wounded you, and it seems you have only one choice left. Blood-stained porcelain bowl wobbles face down on wood floor; orange peel not at all stirred by disbelieving last breath there among that fine summer dust-layer, fatal knife set down in pass-panic on familiar wobbly banister, later dropped (thrown) by Mother (dear Mother) (heartsick) into the slow-flowing, chocolate-brown Potomac. None of it was real; nothing was real. Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them. I send this out to you, dear friends, before I go, in this instantaneous thought-burst, from a place where time slows and then stops and we may live forever in a single instant. Goodbye goodbye good-

We’re dancing on air,” I whisper as another wave of heat moves through me. He grins even as he pulls me closer and spins us across the dance floor. “Now you know what it feels like.” “What what feels like?” “Being next to you.” Everything inside me stills at his admission, and I move even closer, wanting, needing, to feel all of him against all of me. Hudson must feel the same way, because his arms tighten around me and he’s lifting me up, up, up, until our faces are on the same level and we’re pressed together from shoulder to hip to thigh. “Hi,” I whisper as his mouth hovers inches away from my own. “Hi,” he answers as I instinctively lock my legs around his hips.

The idea that girls are somehow responsible for 'provoking' harassment from boys is shamefully exacerbated by an epidemic of increasingly sexist school dress codes. Across the United States, stories have recently emerged about girls being hauled out of class, publicly humiliated, sent home, and even threatened with expulsion for such transgressions as wearing tops with 'spaghetti straps,' wearing leggings or (brace yourself) revealing their shoulders. The reasoning behind such dress codes, which almost always focus on the girls' clothing to a far greater extent than the boys', is often euphemistically described as the preservation of an effective 'learning environment.' Often schools go all out and explain that girls wearing certain clothing might 'distract' their male peers, or even their male teachers....in reality these messages privilege boys' apparent 'needs' over those of the girls, sending the insidious message that girls' bodies are dangerous and provoke harassment, and boys can't be expected to control their behavior, so girls are responsible for covering up....his education is being prioritized over hers.

Just the sight of him sent pleasure shooting through me. I might be reluctant to get emotionally involved with anyone right now, but I was still a wolf, and still capable of admiring a good-looking man. Kade was that, and a whole lot more. He was a horseshifter, and his coloring was that of a bay--a rich, mahogany bay that came complete with jet black hair and wicked, velvet-brown eyes. And he was built like a thoroughbred, with broad shoulders, slim hips, and those wonderfully long legs. Legs that could hold a girl just in the right place as she drove him deeper and harder inside. excert from Darkest Kiss

There was another pause, and Gansey realized she’d hung up. He leaned back against the fridge, eyes closed, guilty, comforted, wild, contained. In twenty-four hours, he’d be waiting for this again. You know better you know better you know better “What the hell, man?” Ronan said. Gansey’s eyes flew open just as Ronan hit the lights. He stood in the doorway, headphones looped around his neck, Chainsaw hulking like a tender thug on his shoulder. Ronan’s eyes found the phone by Gansey’s leg, but he didn’t ask, and Gansey didn’t say anything. Ronan would hear a lie in a second, and the truth wasn’t an option. Jealousy had ruined Ronan for the first several months of Adam’s introduction into their group; this would hurt him more than that.

Eyes closed a knee in his back hand at his neck forcing his face into the floor of the elevator rough under his cheek smell of vomit and matted fur "God don't hurt me" struggles against indignity his pajamas pulled down around his knees a needle sunk deep into his thigh twists moans and all of it loose like water flowing salt tickles inner edges of his eyes into his mouth twists onto his back arms over his head raw wails of anguish break off in pieces hurt his ears "Baby it's okay" Leo is over him lifts coaxing "Let's get up off the floor huh?" arm around his waist sags heavy his wrist aches where Leo holds him dragged along the watery dark he rolls off Leo's shoulder to the bed eyes closed hands folded in prayer between his legs can't look "God don't hurt me. Please.

When he heard light, rushing footfalls, he turned his head. Someone was racing along the second-floor balcony. Then laughter drifted down from above. Glorious feminine laughter. He leaned out the archway and glanced at the grand staircase. Bella appeared on the landing above, breathless, smiling, a black satin robe gathered in her hands. As she slowed at the head of the stairs, she looked over her shoulder, her thick dark hair swinging like a mane. The pounding that came next was heavy and distant, growing louder until it was like boulders hitting the ground. Obviously, it was what she was waiting for. She let out a laugh, yanked her robe up even higher, and started down the stairs, bare feet skirting the steps as if she were floating. At the bottom, she hit the mosaic floor of the foyer and wheeled around just as Zsadist appeared in second-story hallway. The Brother spotted her and went straight for the balcony, pegging his hands into the rail, swinging his legs up and pushing himself straight off into thin air. He flew outward, body in a perfect swan dive--except he wasn't over water, he was two floors up over hard stone. John's cry for help came out as a mute, sustained rush of air-- Which was cut off as Zsadist dematerialized at the height of the dive. He took form twenty feet in front of Bella, who watched the show with glowing happiness. Meanwhile, John's heart pounded from shock...then pumped fast for a different reason. Bella smiled up at her mate, her breath still hard, her hands still gripping the robe, her eyes heavy with invitation. And Zsadist came forward to answer her call, seeming to get even bigger as he stalked over to her. The Brother's bonding scent filled the foyer, just as his low, lionlike growl did. The male was all animal at the moment....a very sexual animal. "You like to be chased, nalla, " Z said in a voice so deep it distorted. Bella's smile got even wider as she backed up into a corner. "Maybe." "So run some more, why don't you." The words were dark and even John caught the erotic threat in them. Bella took off, darting around her mate, going for the billiards room. Z tracked her like prey, pivoting around, his eyes leveled on the female's streaming hair and graceful body. As his lips peeled off his fangs, the white canines elongated, protruding from his mouth. And they weren't the only response he had to his shellan. At his hips, pressing into the front of his leathers, was an erection the size of a tree trunk. Z shot John a quick glance and then went back to his hunt, disappearing into the room, the pumping growl getting louder. From out of the open doors, there was a delighted squeal, a scramble, a female's gasp, and then....nothing. He'd caught her. ......When Zsadist came out a moment later, he had Bella in his arms, her dark hair trailing down his shoulder as she lounged in the strength that held her. Her eyes locked on Z's face while he looked where he was going, her hand stroking his chest, her lips curved in a private smile. There was a bite mark on her neck, one that had very definitely not been there before, and Bella's satisfaction as she stared at the hunger in her hellren's face was utterly compelling. John knew instinctively that Zsadist was going to finish two things upstairs: the mating and the feeding. The Brother was going to be at her throat and in between her legs. Probably at the same time. God, John wanted that kind of connection.

Travis slammed into my back, wrapping his arms around my waist. “You scared the shit outta me!” I complained. He ran his hands over my skin. I noticed they felt different; slow and deliberate. I closed my eyes when he pulled me against him and buried his face in my hair, nuzzling my neck. Feeling his bare skin against mine, it took me a moment to protest. “Travis…,” He pulled my hair to one side and grazed his lips along my back from one shoulder to the other, unsnapping the clasp of my bra. He kissed the bare skin at the base of my neck and I closed my eyes, the warm softness of his mouth felt oo good to make him stop. A quiet moan escaped from his throat when he pressed his pelvis against mine, and I could feel how much he wanted me through his boxers. I held my breath, knowing the only thing keeping us from that big step I was so opposed to a few moments before was two thin pieces of fabric. Travis turned me to face him, and then pressed against me, leaning my back against the wall. Our eyes met, and I could see the ache in his expression as he scanned the bare pieces of my skin. I had seen him peruse women before, but this was different. He didn’t want to conquer me; he wanted me to say yes. He leaned in to kiss me, stopping just an inch away. I could feel the heat from his skin radiating against my lips, and I had to stop myself from drawing him in the rest of the way. His fingers were digging into my skin as he deliberated, and then his hands slid from my back to the hem of my panties. His index fingers slid down my hips, in between my skin and the lacey fabric, and in the same moment that he was about to slip the delicate threads down my legs, he hesitated. Just when I opened my mouth to say yes, he clenched his eyes shut. “Not like this,” he whispered, brushing his lips across mine. “I want you, but not like this.

Exercise: Letting Go As you read this, take a deep breath and, as you exhale, allow all the tension to leave your body. Let your scalp and your forehead and your face relax. Your head does not need to be tense in order for you to read. Let your tongue and your throat and your shoulders relax. You can hold a book with relaxed arms and hands. Do that now. Let your back and your abdomen and your pelvis relax. Let your breathing be at peace as you relax your legs and feet. Is there a big change in your body since you began the previous paragraph? Notice how much you hold on. If you are doing it with your body, you are doing it with your mind. In this relaxed, comfortable position, say to yourself, “I am willing to let go. I release. I let go. I release all ten- sion. I release all fear. I release all anger. I release all guilt. I release all sadness. I let go of all old limitations. I let go, and I am at peace. I am at peace with myself. I am at peace with the process of life. I am safe.” Go over this exercise two or three times. Feel the ease of letting go.

it’s a terrible feeling when you first fall in love. your mind gets completely taken over, you can’t function properly anymore. the world turns into a dream place, nothing seems real. you forget your keys, no one seems to be talking English and even if they are you don’t care as you can’t hear what they’re saying anyway, and it doesn’t matter since your not really there. things you cared about before don’t seem to matter anymore and things you didn’t think you cared about suddenly do. I must become a brilliant cook, I don’t want to waste time seeing my friends when I could be with him, I feel no sympathy for all those people in India killed by an earthquake last night; what is the matter with me? It’s a kind of hell, but you feel like your in heaven. even your body goes out of control, you can’t eat, you don’t sleep properly, your legs turn to jelly as your not sure where the floor is anymore. you have butterflies permanently, not only in your tummy but all over your body - your hands, your shoulders, your chest, your eyes everything’s just a jangling mess of nerve endings tingling with fire. it makes you feel so alive. and yet its like being suffocated, you don’t seem to be able to see or hear anything real anymore, its like people are speaking to you through treacle, and so you stay in your cosy place with him, the place that only you two understand. occasionally your forced to come up for air by your biggest enemy, Real Life, so you do the minimum then head back down under your love blanket for more, knowing it’s uncomfortable but compulsory. and then, once you think you’ve got him, the panic sets in. what if he goes off me? what if I blow it, say the wrong thing? what if he meets someone better than me? Prettier, thinner, funnier, more like him? who doesn’t bite there nails? perhaps he doesn’t feel the same, maybe this is all in my head and this is just a quick fling for him. why did I tell him that stupid story about not owning up that I knew who spilt the ink on the teachers bag and so everyone was punished for it? does he think I'm a liar? what if I'm not very good at that blow job thing and he’s just being patient with me? he says he loves me; yes, well, we can all say words, can’t we? perhaps he’s just being polite. of course you do your best to keep all this to yourself, you don’t want him to think you're a neurotic nutcase, but now when he’s away doing Real Life it’s agony, your mind won’t leave you alone, it tortures you and examines your every moment spent together, pointing out how stupid you’ve been to allow yourself to get this carried away, how insane you are to imagine someone would feel like that about you. dad did his best to reassure me, but nothing he said made a difference - it was like I wanted to see Simon, but didn’t want him to see me.

No,” I hear myself say. “You’re not supposed to be here.” She’s sitting on my bed. She’s leaning back on her elbows, legs outstretched in front of her, crossed at the ankles. And while some part of me understands I must be dreaming, there’s another, overwhelmingly dominant part of me that refuses to accept this. Part of me wants to believe she’s really here, inches away from me, wearing this short, tight black dress that keeps slipping up her thighs. But everything about her looks different, oddly vibrant; the colors are all wrong. Her lips are a richer, deeper shade of pink; her eyes seem wider, darker. She’s wearing shoes I know she’d never wear. And strangest of all: she’s smiling at me. “Hi,” she whispers. It’s just one word, but my heart is already racing. I’m inching away from her, stumbling back and nearly slamming my skull against the headboard, when I realize my shoulder is no longer wounded. I look down at myself. My arms are both fully functional. I’m wearing nothing but a white T-shirt and my underwear. She shifts positions in an instant, propping herself up on her knees before crawling over to me. She climbs onto my lap. She’s now straddling my waist. I’m suddenly breathing too fast. Her lips are at my ear. Her words are so soft. “Kiss me,” she says. “Juliette—” “I came all the way here.” She’s still smiling at me. It’s a rare smile, the kind she’s never honored me with. But somehow, right now, she’s mine. She’s mine and she’s perfect and she wants me, and I’m not going to fight it. I don’t want to. Her hands are tugging at my shirt, pulling it up over my head. Tossing it to the floor. She leans forward and kisses my neck, just once, so slowly. My eyes fall closed. There aren’t enough words in this world to describe what I’m feeling. I feel her hands move down my chest, my stomach; her fingers run along the edge of my underwear. Her hair falls forward, grazing my skin, and I have to clench my fists to keep from pinning her to my bed. Every nerve ending in my body is awake. I’ve never felt so alive or so desperate in my life, and I’m sure if she could hear what I’m thinking right now, she’d run out the door and never come back. Because I want her. Now. Here. Everywhere. I want nothing between us. I want her clothes off and the lights on and I want to study her. I want to unzip her out of this dress and take my time with every inch of her. I can’t help my need to just stare; to know her and her features: the slope of her nose, the curve of her lips, the line of her jaw. I want to run my fingertips across the soft skin of her neck and trace it all the way down. I want to feel the weight of her pressed against me, wrapped around me. I can’t remember a reason why this can’t be right or real. I can’t focus on anything but the fact that she’s sitting on my lap, touching my chest, staring into my eyes like she might really love me. I wonder if I’ve actually died. But just as I lean in, she leans back, grinning before reaching behind her, never once breaking eye contact with me. “Don’t worry,” she whispers. “It’s almost over now.” Her words seem so strange, so familiar. “What do you mean?” “Just a little longer and I’ll leave.” “No.” I’m blinking fast, reaching for her. “No, don’t go—where are you going—” “You’ll be all right,” she says. “I promise.” “No—” But now she’s holding a gun. And pointing it at my heart.

The clockwork octopus came out. It extended a tentacle with a clicking of metal joints. Around it was looped the chain of his watch. He hesitated, but took it. The chain skittered over the metal tentacle with a high, thin pitch like incoming sea. It was quite a coincidence for a mechanical sea creature and he was speculating whether it could possibly have been done on purpose when Katsu stole his other sock and flopped on to the floor with an unbiological bang, whereupon it octopused out of the open door and slid down the banister. He exclaimed at it, was ignored, and then went after it just in time to see it disappear into the parlour. It was climbing up the leg of the piano stool when he caught up. The watchmaker confiscated the sock and threw it over his shoulder to Thaniel, who caught it with the tips of his fingers. The octopus settled in his lap. ‘Thank you for finding him,’ he said. Against the piano keys, his hands were too warmly coloured for the watery morning. ‘I was looking for him earlier. He plays hide and seek.

Ivypool backed away. She twisted and ducked under him as he leaped, but his claws sank into her tail and pinned her to the ground. Thistleclaw and Snowtuft attacked from opposite sides, snarling, slicing her ears. She struggled away from them, crashing into hard muscle. Hawkfrost was behind her now. He stabbed his claws into her shoulders. With a gasp, Ivypool saw his teeth flashing beside her throat. Then a black pelt flashed over the top of the gorse. Paws landed with a thump beside her. "Get off her!" Hollyleaf yowled. Ivypool's world spun as the black warrior slammed into Hawkfrost and sent him reeling into the gorse. Free from Hawkfrost's claws, Ivypool turned on Thistleclaw and Snowtuft. She began slashing with her front paws, remembering in a crystalline moment every moon of training. Hollyleaf reared up beside her, matching her blow for blow, as though she instinctively knew where Ivypool would strike next. Blood sprayed the forest floor as Ivypool sliced Snowtuft's muzzle and tore Thistleclaw's nose. Turning she kicked with hind legs and knocked Thistleclaw backward, then sank her teeth into Snowtuft's neck. The white warrior screeched and ripped free from her jaws. Ivypool tasted his blood as he hared away through the bracken. She met Thistleclaw's gaze. Fear sparked in his eyes as she spat out a bloody clump of Snowtuft's fur. "Run," she hissed. "Because if you stay, I will kill you". Mouth open, Thistleclaw fled, disappearing through the gorse. A shriek exploded behind Ivypool. She turned and saw Hollyleaf swipe at Hawkfrost's muzzle. The force of the blow sent the Dark Forest warrior crashing away. He dropped with a thump and scrabbled to his paws. Blood dripping from his cheek, one eye swollen shut, he glanced at Hollyleaf and tore his way through the gorse. Ivypool stared at the black she-cat. "You saved my life!" Hollyleaf staggered and fell to the ground. "Hollyleaf!" Ivypool darted to her side and saw blood pulsing from a wound in her neck. Panic formed a hard lump in Ivypool's belly. Grasping Hollyleaf's scruff in her teeth, she began to half drag, half carry her Clanmate toward the ThunderClan border. Jayfeather would know what to do. "I'll get you home," Ivypool growled through gritted teeth. "I promise I'll get you home".

She sits and listens with crossed legs under the batik house-wrap she wears, with her heavy three-way-piled hair and cigarette at her mouth and refuses me - for the time being, anyway - the most important things I ask of her. It's really kind of tremendous how it all takes place. You'd never guess how much labor goes into it. Only some time ago it occurred to me how great an amount. She came back from the studio and went to take a bath, and from the bath she called out to me, "Darling, please bring me a towel." I took one of those towel robes that I had bought at the Bon Marche' department store and came along with it. The little bathroom was in twilight. In the auffe-eua machine, the brass box with teeth of gas burning, the green metal dropped crumbs inside from the thousand-candle blaze. Her body with its warm woman's smell was covered with water starting in a calm line over her breasts. The glass of the medicine chest shone (like a deep blue place in the wall, as if a window to the evening sea and not the ashy fog of Paris. I sat down with the robe over my; shoulder and felt very much at peace. For a change the apartment seemed clean and was warm; the abominations were gone into the background, the stoves drew well and they shone. Jacqueline was cooking dinner and it smelled of gravy. I felt settled and easy, my chest free and my fingers comfortable and open. And now here's the thing. It takes a time like this for you to find out how sore your heart has been, and, moreover, all the while you thought you were going around idle terribly hard work was taking place. Hard, hard work, excavation and digging, mining, moiling through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It's internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable to get anywhere, to obtain justice or have requital, and therefore in yourself you labor, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again. All by yourself? Where is everybody? Inside your breast and skin, the entire cast.

Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massive insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt in your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kinds of women—those you write poems about and those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought you a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed. My idea of courtship was tapping Jane’s Addiction lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M., whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked within the confines of my character, cast as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan of your dark side. We don’t have a past so much as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power never put to good use. What we had together makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught one another like colds, and desire was merely a symptom that could be treated with soup and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy, as if I invented it, but I’m still not immune to your waterfall scent, still haven’t developed antibodies for your smile. I don’t know how long regret existed before humans stuck a word on it. I don’t know how many paper towels it would take to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light of a candle being blown out travels faster than the luminescence of one that’s just been lit, but I do know that all our huffing and puffing into each other’s ears—as if the brain was a trick birthday candle—didn’t make the silence any easier to navigate. I’m sorry all the kisses I scrawled on your neck were written in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you so hard one of your legs would pop out of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d press your face against the porthole of my submarine. I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen years to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding off the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyriding over flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolate to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy of each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraph from the volumes of what couldn’t be said.

Hey,” Fitz said, leaning closer. “You trust me, don’t you?” Sophie’s traitorous heart still fluttered, despite her current annoyance. She did trust Fitz. Probably more than anyone. But having him keep secrets from her was seriously annoying. She was tempted to use her telepathy to steal the information straight from his head. But she’d broken that rule enough times to know the consequences definitely weren’t worth it. “What is with these clothes?” Biana interrupted, appearing out of thin air next to Keefe. Biana was a Vanisher, like her mother, though she was still getting used to the ability. Only one of her legs reappeared, and she had to hop up and down to get the other to show up. She wore a sweatshirt three sizes too big and faded, baggy jeans. “At least I get to wear my shoes,” she said, hitching up her pants to reveal purple flats with diamond-studded toes. “But why do we only have boy stuff?” “Because I’m a boy,” Fitz reminded her. “Besides, this isn’t a fashion contest.” “And if it was, I’d totally win. Right, Foster?” Keefe asked. Sophie actually would’ve given the prize to Fitz—his blue scarf worked perfectly with his dark hair and teal eyes. And his fitted gray coat made him look taller, with broader shoulders and— “Oh please.” Keefe shoved his way between them. “Fitz’s human clothes are a huge snoozefest. Check out what Dex and I found in Alvar’s closet!” They both unzipped their hoodies, revealing T-shirts with logos underneath. “I have no idea what this means, but it’s crazy awesome, right?” Keefe asked, pointing to the black and yellow oval on his shirt. “It’s from Batman,” Sophie said—then regretted the words. Of course Keefe demanded she explain the awesomeness of the Dark Knight. “I’m wearing this shirt forever, guys,” he decided. “Also, I want a Batmobile! Dex, can you make that happen?” Sophie wouldn’t have been surprised if Dex actually could build one. As a Technopath, he worked miracles with technology. He’d made all kinds of cool gadgets for Sophie, including the lopsided ring she wore—a special panic switch that had saved her life during her fight with one of her kidnappers. “What’s my shirt from?” Dex asked, pointing to the logo with interlocking yellow W’s. Sophie didn’t have the heart to tell him it was the symbol for Wonder Woman.

Thanks for putting me in bed last night,” I said, watching the swift line of his throat as he yawned again. He grumbled, “Uh–huh,” as he rolled his shoulders before slipping his arms beneath the covers again. “And for giving me a massage.” I had already tried moving my legs, and sure they were sore, but I knew how much worse they could be. I’d done everything I was supposed to do to help prevent the stiffness, but there was only so much a body that wasn’t 100 percent to begin with could handle. “There wasn’t much to massage.” Uh. “What’s the supposed to mean?” “I have more muscles in my glutes than you have in your thighs.” Anyone who had seen Aiden’s ass would know that was a fact, so I wasn’t going to take it personally. Maybe because I was still so sleepy, I raised my eyebrows at him and said, “Have you seen your butt? That’s not an insult. It has more muscles in it than most people have all over their bodies.” His own thick eyebrows rose about a millimeter, just slightly but enough for me to notice. “I didn’t know you paid that much attention to it.” “Why do you think you have so many female fans?” Aiden let out another low groan, but he didn’t tell me to stop. “You could raise a small fortune if you ever auctioned off the chance for a person to take a—” “Vanessa!” Mr. Proper reached over to throw a hand over my mouth, like he was shocked. That big hand literally covered me from ear to ear, and I burst out laughing though it was muffled. “You make me feel cheap,” he said as he slowly pulled his hand away, but the shine in his eyes said he didn’t really mind it that much. I stretched my own limbs with a yawn. “I’m just telling you what anyone else would.” “No, no one else would ever say that to me.” So he had a point. “Well, I’ll tell you the truth then.” He made this noise that had me rolling to face him again. “You always have

We need an engineering friend.” She points a finger at Carin. “Go back to Briar and hook up with an engineering student.” “Okay, but I’ll need to actually have sex with him beforehand, so I won’t be back until,” she pretends to check the time, “ten or so.” “We’re all college graduates,” I proclaim. “We can put this together ourselves.” Clapping my hands, I motion for everyone to get on the floor with me. After three tries of trying to lower myself to the ground and making Hope and Carin nearly pee their pants laughing in the process, D’Andre takes pity on all of us and helps me onto my knees. Which is where Tucker finds us. “Is this some new fertility ritual?” he drawls from the doorway, one shoulder propped against the frame. “Because she’s already pregnant, you know.” “Get yo ass in here, white boy, and put this thing together,” D’Andre snaps. “This is ridiculous.” “What’s ridiculous?” Tucker stops next to me, and I take the opportunity to lean against his legs. Even kneeling is hard when you’re toting around an extra thirty pounds. “We took it apart. How can you not know how to put it back together?” D’Andre repeats his earlier excuse. “I’m an accounting major.” Tucker rolls his eyes. “You got an Allen wrench?” “Are you mocking us right now?” I grumble. “I don’t have any wrenches, let alone ones with names.” He grins. “Leave this to me, darlin’. I’ll get it fixed up.” “I want to help,” Hope volunteers. “This is like surgery, except with wood and not people.” “Lord help us,” D’Andre mutters.

and the girl and I get into her car and drive off into the hills and we go to her room and I take off my clothes and lie on her bed and she goes into the bathroom and I wait a couple of minutes and then she finally comes out, a towel wrapped around her, and sits on the bed and I put my hands on her shoulders, and she says stop it and, after I let her go, she tells me to lean against the headboard and I do and then she takes off the towel and she's naked and she reaches into the drawer by her bed and brings out a tube of Bain De Soleil and she hands it to me and then she reaches into the drawer and brings out a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses and she tells me to put them on and I do. And she takes the tube of suntan lotion form me and squeezes some onto her fingers and then touches herself and motions for me to do the same, and I do. After a while I stop and reach over to her and she stops me and says no, and then places my hand back on myself and her hand begins again and after this goes on for a while I tell her that I'm going to come and she tells me to hold on a minute and that she's almost there and she begins to move her hand faster, spreading her legs wider, leaning back against the pillows, and I take the sunglasses off and she tells me to put them back on and I put them back on and it stings when I come and then I guess she comes too. Bowie's on the stereo and she gets up, flushed, and turns the stereo off and turns on MTV. I lie there, naked, sunglasses still on and she hands me a box of Kleenex. I wipe myself off then look through a Vogue that's lying by the side of the bed. She puts a robe on and stares at me. I can hear thunder in the distance and it begins to rain harder. She lights a cigarette and I start to dress ....

I feel completely embarrassed and remember the lock on the door and think: He knows, he knows, it shows, shows completely. “He’s out back,” Mr. Garret tells me mildly, “unpacking shipments.” Then he returns to the papers. I feel compelled to explain myself. “I just thought I’d come by. Before babysitting. You, know, at your house. Just to say hi. So . . . I’m going to do that now. Jase’s in back, then? I’ll just say hi.” I’m so suave. I can hear the ripping sound of the box cutter before I even open the rear door to find Jase with a huge stack of cardboard boxes. His back’s to me and suddenly I’m as shy with him as I was with his father. This is silly. Brushing through my embarrassment, I walk up, put my hand on his shoulder. He straightens up with a wide grin. “Am I glad to see you!” “Oh, really?” “Really. I thought you were Dad telling me I was messing up again. I’ve been a disaster all day. Kept knocking things over. Paint cans, our garden display. He finally sent me out here when I knocked over a ladder. I think I’m a little preoccupied.” “Maybe you should have gotten more sleep,” I offer. “No way,” he says. Then we just gaze at each other for a long moment. For some reason, I expect him to look different, the way I expected I would myself in the mirror this morning . . . I thought I would come across richer, fuller, as happy outside as I was inside, but the only thing that showed was my lips puffy from kisses. Jase is the same as ever also. “That was the best study session I ever had,” I tell him. “Locked in my memory too,” he says, then glances away as though embarrassed, bending to tear open another box. “Even though thinking about it made me hit my thumb with a hammer putting up a wall display.” “This thumb?” I reach for one of his callused hands, kiss the thumb. “It was the left one.” Jase’s face creases into a smile as I pick up his other hand. “I broke my collarbone once,” he tells me, indicating which side. I kiss that. “Also some ribs during a scrimmage freshman year.” I do not pull his shirt up to where his finger points now. I am not that bold. But I do lean in to kiss him through the soft material of his shirt. “Feeling better?” His eyes twinkle. “In eighth grade, I got into a fight with this kid who was picking on Duff and he gave me a black eye.” My mouth moves to his right eye, then the left. He cups the back of my neck in his warm hands, settling me into the V of his legs, whispering into my ear, “I think there was a split lip involved too.” Then we are just kissing and everything else drops away. Mr. Garret could come out at any moment, a truck full of supplies could drive right on up, a fleet of alien spaceships could darken the sky, I’m not sure I’d notice.

What do you think he saw?" Damn--I regret the awed way I phrased that and the hushed voice I used. As if I think acid is a "religious" experience, a visionary thing. "Himself," Josh says. "You always see your true self on acid. You just usually see more than you want to see. So it all seems disorted." See what I mean? He's not your normal stoner. The guy should become a poet, a psychologist, a scientist. We pull up near Greg's house and stare at it like it's a damn fortress. "You don't think he needs to go to the hospital?" I ask. "Nope," Josh says. "For a while, I thought maybe, yeah. But he's good now, he's off it, he's not hallucinating anymore." "You're sure?" "Yeah." "'Cuz you can die on LSD-" "That's such anti-drug propaganda bullshit, Dan," Josh interrupts. "Nobody's ever died from an LSD overdose. Ever. As long as you keep people from doing stupid things while they're tripping, it's all good man, man. Why do you think I babysat him?" He reaches into the backseat and punches my shoulder. "LSD isn't your dad's smack. So stop worrying." I scrunch down in the seat. How'd he know about that? "Right. What's the plan?" "I'd ask him if ther was a key hidden under a rock," Josh says, "but he's not gonna be much help. Watch." He pokes Greg in the leg, prods him on the shoulder, grabs his cheeks and smushes them together, the way parents do to a baby, and says, " Ootchi googi Greggy, did ums have a good trippy? Did ums find out itty-bitty singies about oos-self zat oos didn't likeums?" Yup... Greg was in his own little world...

Tenways showed his rotten teeth. ‘Fucking make me.’ ‘I’ll give it a try.’ A man came strolling out of the dark, just his sharp jaw showing in the shadows of his hood, boots crunching heedless through the corner of the fire and sending a flurry of sparks up around his legs. Very tall, very lean and he looked like he was carved out of wood. He was chewing meat from a chicken bone in one greasy hand and in the other, held loose under the crosspiece, he had the biggest sword Beck had ever seen, shoulder-high maybe from point to pommel, its sheath scuffed as a beggar’s boot but the wire on its hilt glinting with the colours of the fire-pit. He sucked the last shred of meat off his bone with a noisy slurp, and he poked at all the drawn steel with the pommel of his sword, long grip clattering against all those blades. ‘Tell me you lot weren’t working up to a fight without me. You know how much I love killing folk. I shouldn’t, but a man has to stick to what he’s good at. So how’s this for a recipe…’ He worked the bone around between finger and thumb, then flicked it at Tenways so it bounced off his chain mail coat. ‘You go back to fucking sheep and I’ll fill the graves.’ Tenways licked his bloody top lip. ‘My fight ain’t with you, Whirrun.’ And it all came together. Beck had heard songs enough about Whirrun of Bligh, and even hummed a few himself as he fought his way through the logpile. Cracknut Whirrun. How he’d been given the Father of Swords. How he’d killed his five brothers. How he’d hunted the Shimbul Wolf in the endless winter of the utmost North, held a pass against the countless Shanka with only two boys and a woman for company, bested the sorcerer Daroum-ap-Yaught in a battle of wits and bound him to a rock for the eagles. How he’d done all the tasks worthy of a hero in the valleys, and so come south to seek his destiny on the battlefield. Songs to make the blood run hot, and cold too. Might be his was the hardest name in the whole North these days, and standing right there in front of Beck, close enough to lay a hand on. Though that probably weren’t a good idea. ‘Your fight ain’t with me?’ Whirrun glanced about like he was looking for who it might be with. ‘You sure? Fights are twisty little bastards, you draw steel it’s always hard to say where they’ll lead you. You drew on Calder, but when you drew on Calder you drew on Curnden Craw, and when you drew on Craw you drew on me, and Jolly Yon Cumber, and Wonderful there, and Flood – though he’s gone for a wee, I think, and also this lad here whose name I’ve forgotten.’ Sticking his thumb over his shoulder at Beck. ‘You should’ve seen it coming. No excuse for it, a proper War Chief fumbling about in the dark like you’ve nothing in your head but shit. So my fight ain’t with you either, Brodd Tenways, but I’ll still kill you if it’s called for, and add your name to my songs, and I’ll still laugh afterwards. So?’ ‘So what?’ ‘So shall I draw?

There were days so clear and skies so brilliant blue, with white clouds scudding across them like ships under full sail, and she felt she could lift right off the ground. One moment she was ambling down a path, and the next thing she knew, the wind would take hold of her, like a hand pushing against her back. Her feet would start running without her even willing it, even knowing it. And she would run faster and faster across the prairie, until her heart jumped like a rabbit and her breath came in deep gasps and her feet barely skimmed the ground. It felt good to spend herself this way. The air tasted fresh and delicious; it smelled like damp earth, grass, and flowers. And her body felt strong, supple, and hungry for more of everything life could serve up. She ran and felt like one of the animals, as though her feet were growing up out of the earth. And she knew what they knew, that sometimes you ran just because you could, because of the way the rush of air felt on your face and how your legs reached out, eating up longer and longer patches of ground. She ran until the blood pounded in her ears, so loud that she couldn't hear the voices that said, You're not good enough, You're not old enough, You're not beautiful or smart or loveable, and you will always be alone. She ran because there were ghosts chasing her, shadows that pursued her, heartaches she was leaving behind. She was running for her life, and those phantoms couldn't catch her, not here, not anywhere. She would outrun fear and sadness and worry and shame and all those losses that had lined up against her like a column of soldiers with their guns shouldered and ready to fire. If she had to, she would outrun death itself. She would keep on running until she dropped, exhausted. Then she would roll over onto her back and breathe in the endless sky above her, sun glinting off her face. To be an animal, to have a body like this that could taste, see hear, and fly through space, to lie down and smell the earth and feel the heat of the sun on your face was enough for her. She did not need anything else but this: just to be alive, cool air caressing her skin, dreaming of Ivy and what might be ahead.

One night, very late, he rubs Willem's shoulder and when Willem opens his eyes, he apologizes to him. But Willem shakes his head, and then moves on top of him, and holds him so tightly that he finds it difficult to breathe. “You hold me back,” Willem tells him. “Pretend we're falling and we're clinging together from fear.” He holds Willem so close that he can feel muscles from his back to his fingertips come alive, so close that he can feel Willem's heart beating against his, can feel his rib cage against his, and his stomach deflating and inflating with air. “Harder,” Willem tells him, and he does until his arms grow first fatigued and then numb, until his body is sagging with tiredness, until he feels that he really is falling: first through the mattress, and then the bed frame, and then the floor itself, until he is sinking in slow motion through all the floors of the building, which yield and swallow him like jelly. Down he goes…through the fourth floor...and then to the ground floor, and into the pool, and then down and down, farther and farther, past the subway tunnels, past bedrock and silt, through underground lakes and oceans of oil, through layers of fossils and shale, until he is drifting into the fire at the earth's core. And the entire time, Willem is wrapped around him, and as they enter the fire, they aren't burned but melted into one being, their legs and chests and arms and heads fusing into one. When he wakes the next morning, Willem is no longer on top of him but beside him, but they are still intertwined, and he feels slightly drugged, and relieved, for he has not only not cut himself but he has slept, deeply, two things he hasn't done in months. That morning he feels fresh-scrubbed and cleansed, as if he is being given yet another opportunity to live his life correctly.

Ohhhhh." A lush-bodied girl in the prime of her physical beauty. In an ivory georgette-crepe sundress with a halter top that gathers her breasts up in soft undulating folds of the fabric. She's standing with bare legs apart on a New York subway grating. Her blond head is thrown rapturously back as an updraft lifts her full, flaring skirt, exposing white cotton panties. White cotton! The ivory-crepe sundress is floating and filmy as magic. The dress is magic. Without the dress the girl would be female meat, raw and exposed. She's not thinking such a thought! Not her. She's an American girl healthy and clean as a Band-Aid. She's never had a soiled or a sulky thought. She's never had a melancholy thought. She's never had a savage thought. She's never had a desperate thought. She's never had an un-American thought. In the papery-thin sundress she's a nurse with tender hands. A nurse with luscious mouth. Sturdy thighs, bountiful breasts, tiny folds of baby fat at her armpits. She's laughing and squealing like a four year-old as another updraft lifts her skirt. Dimpled knees, a dancer's strong legs. This husky healthy girl. The shoulders, arms, breasts belong to a fully mature woman but the face is a girl's face. Shivering in New York City mid-summer as subway steam lifts her skirt like a lover's quickened breath. "Oh! Ohhhhh." It's nighttime in Manhattan, Lexington Avenue at 51st Street. Yet the white-white lights exude the heat of midday. The goddess of love has been standing like this, legs apart, in spike-heeled white sandals so steep and so tight they've permanently disfigured her smallest toes, for hours. She's been squealing and laughing, her mouth aches. There's a gathering pool of darkness at the back of her head like tarry water. Her scalp and her pubis burn from the morning's peroxide applications. The Girl with No Name. The glaring-white lights focus upon her, upon her alone, blond squealing, blond laughter, blond Venus, blond insomnia, blond smooth-shaven legs apart and blond hands fluttering in a futile effort to keep her skirt from lifting to reveal white cotton American-girl panties and the shadow, just the shadow, of the bleached crotch. "Ohhhhhh." Now she's hugging herself beneath her big bountiful breasts. Her eyelids fluttering. Between the legs, you can trust she's clean. She's not a dirty girl, nothing foreign or exotic. She's an American slash in the flesh. That emptiness. Guaranteed. She's been scooped out, drained clean, no scar tissue to interfere with your pleasure, and no odor. Especially no odor. The Girl with No Name, the girl with no memory. She has not lived long and she will not live long.

I've been thinking about this mouth all day" he said before covering my lips with his. I licked at his bottom lip and he opened for me, letting me leisurely taste him. The gentle pressure of his mouth was perfect and made me a little dizzy. His fingers slip up my thigh until both hands were gripping my butt. One of his fingers traced the edge of my panties. "I really like this skirt," he murmured against my lips. I really liked it too at the moment. My breath was coming in short gasps as he slid one hand inside the edge of my panties. He gripped my bare butt with one hand while he slid his other slowly back down my thigh and shifted closer to my inner thigh. I liked what his next move would be. What I didn't know was if I was going to let it go that far. Then he moaned into my mouth as his fingers touched the inside of my thigh and my leg fell open of its own accord. The slow, easy kiss became frenzied as we both fought to calm our breathing. His hand inched higher and higher up my exposed thigh. The second his finger grazed the outside of my panties, I jerked in his hold, and something very close to pleading squeaked in my throat. Sawyer pulled back, and his accelerated breathing made me tingle with pleasure. I loved knowing I did that to him. He kissed down my neck until he met the curve of my shoulder. He went very still. His warm breath bathed my chest and neck. His hand slowly moved again. One lone finger slipped inside the edge of my panties and made direct contact. He murmured something against my neck, but I couldn't focus enough to understand. My brain was in a foggy haze, and my heart was about to pound out of my chest. The urge to move against the hand, which now cupped the crotch of my panties, was strong. But I waited while he eased his finger farther inside and gently ran it along the folds. "oh, oh, oh my god," I managed to get out in a breathless chant. "God, you're so warm," he whispered in a strained voice as he began kissing the spot where he had buried his head in my neck. When he slipped his other hand over my leg and pulled it farther open then reached down and pulled my panties to the side as he gently stroked me, I started to come apart in his arms. "That's it, baby," he encouraged me as I clung to him, calling his name and wanting it to never end.

His mouth comes down on mine, harder now, more demanding, a raw, hungry need in him rising to the surface. “You belong to me,” he growls. “Say it.” “Yes. Yes, I belong to you.” His mouth finds mine again, demanding, taking, drawing me under his spell. “Say it again,” he demands, nipping my lip, squeezing my breast and nipple, and sending a ripple of pleasure straight to my sex. “I belong to you,” I pant. He lifts me off the ground with the possessive curve of his hand around my backside, angling my hips to thrust harder, deeper. “Again,” he orders, driving into me, his cock hitting the farthest point of me and blasting against sensitive nerve endings. “Oh … ah … I … I belong to you.” His mouth dips low, his hair tickling my neck, his teeth scraping my shoulders at the same moment he pounds into me and the world spins around me, leaving nothing but pleasure and need and more need. I am suddenly hot only where he touches, and freezing where I yearn to be touched. Lifting my leg, I shackle his hip, ravenous beyond measure, climbing to the edge of bliss, reaching for it at the same time I’m trying desperately to hold back. Chris is merciless, wickedly wild, grinding and rocking, pumping. “I love you, Sara,” he confesses hoarsely, taking my mouth, swallowing the shallow, hot breath I release, and punishing me with a hard thrust that snaps the last of the lightly held control I possess. Possessing me. A fire explodes low in my belly and spirals downward, seizing my muscles, and I begin to spasm around his shaft, trembling with the force of my release. With a low growl, his muscles ripple beneath my touch and his cock pulses, his hot semen spilling inside me. We moan together, lost in the climax of a roller-coaster ride of pain and pleasure, spanning days apart, and finally collapse in a heap and just lie there. Slowly, I let my leg ease from his hip to the ground, and Chris rolls me to my side to face him. Still inside me, he holds me close, pulling the jacket up around my back, trailing fingers over my jaw. “And I belong to you.

I keeled over sideways. The world turned fluffy, bleached of all color. Nothing hurt anymore. I was dimly aware of Diana’s face hovering over me, Meg and Hazel peering over the goddess’s shoulders. “He’s almost gone,” Diana said. Then I was gone. My mind slipped into a pool of cold, slimy darkness. “Oh, no, you don’t.” My sister’s voice woke me rudely. I’d been so comfortable, so nonexistent. Life surged back into me—cold, sharp, and unfairly painful. Diana’s face came into focus. She looked annoyed, which seemed on-brand for her. As for me, I felt surprisingly good. The pain in my gut was gone. My muscles didn’t burn. I could breathe without difficulty. I must have slept for decades. “H-how long was I out?” I croaked. “Roughly three seconds,” she said. “Now, get up, drama queen.” She helped me to my feet. I felt a bit unsteady, but I was delighted to find that my legs had any strength at all. My skin was no longer gray. The lines of infection were gone. The Arrow of Dodona was still in my hand, though he had gone silent, perhaps in awe of the goddess’s presence. Or perhaps he was still trying to get the taste of “Sweet Caroline” out of his imaginary mouth. I beamed at my sister. It was so good to see her disapproving I-can’t-believe-you’re-my-brother frown again. “I love you,” I said, my voice hoarse with emotion. She blinked, clearly unsure what to do with this information. “You really have changed.” “I missed you!” “Y-yes, well. I’m here now. Even Dad couldn’t argue with a Sibylline invocation from Temple Hill.” “It worked, then!” I grinned at Hazel and Meg. “It worked!” “Yeah,” Meg said wearily. “Hi, Artemis.” “Diana,” my sister corrected. “But hello, Meg.” For her, my sister had a smile. “You’ve done well, young warrior.” Meg blushed. She kicked at the scattered zombie dust on the floor and shrugged. “Eh.” I checked my stomach, which was easy, since my shirt was in tatters. The bandages had vanished, along with the festering wound. Only a thin white scar remained. “So…I’m healed?” My flab told me she hadn’t restored me to my godly self. Nah, that would have been too much to expect. Diana raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’m not the goddess of healing, but I’m still a goddess. I think I can take care of my little brother’s boo-boos.” “Little brother?” She smirked.

But what I would like to know," says Albert, "is whether there would not have been a war if the Kaiser had said No." "I'm sure there would," I interject, "he was against it from the first." "Well, if not him alone, then perhaps if twenty or thirty people in the world had said No." "That's probable," I agree, "but they damned well said Yes." "It's queer, when one thinks about it," goes on Kropp, "we are here to protect our fatherland. And the French are over there to protect their fatherland. Now who's in the right?" "Perhaps both," say I without believing it. "Yes, well now," pursues Albert, and I see that he means to drive me into a corner, "but our professors and parsons and newspapers say that we are the only ones that are right, and let's hope so;--but the French professors and parsons and newspapers say that the right is on their side, now what about that?" "That I don't know," I say, "but whichever way it is there's war all the same and every month more countries coming in." Tjaden reappears. He is still quite excited and again joins the conversation, wondering just how a war gets started. "Mostly by one country badly offending another," answers Albert with a slight air of superiority. Then Tjaden pretends to be obtuse. "A country? I don't follow. A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat." "Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?" growls Kropp, "I don't mean that at all. One people offends the other--" "Then I haven't any business here at all," replies Tjaden, "I don't feel myself offended." "Well, let me tell you," says Albert sourly, "it doesn't apply to tramps like you." "Then I can be going home right away," retorts Tjaden, and we all laugh, "Ach, man! he means the people as a whole, the State--" exclaims Mller. "State, State"--Tjaden snaps his fingers contemptuously, "Gendarmes, police, taxes, that's your State;--if that's what you are talking about, no, thank you." "That's right," says Kat, "you've said something for once, Tjaden. State and home-country, there's a big difference." "But they go together," insists Kropp, "without the State there wouldn't be any home-country." "True, but just you consider, almost all of us are simple folk. And in France, too, the majority of men are labourers, workmen, or poor clerks. Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French shoemaker want to attack us? No, it is merely the rulers. I had never seen a Frenchman before I came here, and it will be just the same with the majority of Frenchmen as regards us. They weren't asked about it any more than we were." "Then what exactly is the war for?" asks Tjaden. Kat shrugs his shoulders. "There must be some people to whom the war is useful." "Well, I'm not one of them," grins Tjaden. "Not you, nor anybody else here." "Who are they then?" persists Tjaden. "It isn't any use to the Kaiser either. He has everything he can want already." "I'm not so sure about that," contradicts Kat, "he has not had a war up till now. And every full-grown emperor requires at least one war, otherwise he would not become famous. You look in your school books." "And generals too," adds Detering, "they become famous through war." "Even more famous than emperors," adds Kat. "There are other people back behind there who profit by the war, that's certain," growls Detering. "I think it is more of a kind of fever," says Albert. "No one in particular wants it, and then all at once there it is. We didn't want the war, the others say the same thing--and yet half the world is in it all the same.

Going somewhere?” Tamlin asked. His voice was not entirely of this world. I suppressed a shudder. “Midnight snack,” I said, and I was keenly aware of every movement, every breath I took as I neared him. His bare chest was painted with whorls of dark blue woad, and from the smudges in the paint, I knew exactly where he’d been touched. I tried not to notice that they descended past his muscled midriff. I was about to pass him when he grabbed me, so fast that I didn’t see anything until he had me pinned against the wall. The cookie dropped from my hand as he grasped my wrists. “I smelled you,” he breathed, his painted chest rising and falling so close to mine. “I searched for you, and you weren’t there.” He reeked of magic. When I looked into his eyes, remnants of power flickered there. No kindness, none of the wry humor and gentle reprimands. The Tamlin I knew was gone. “Let go,” I said as evenly as I could, but his claws punched out, imbedding in the wood above my hands. Still riding the magic, he was half-wild. “You drove me mad,” he growled, and the sound trembled down my neck, along my breasts until they ached. “I searched for you, and you weren’t there. When I didn’t find you,” he said, bringing his face closer to mine, until we shared breath, “it made me pick another.” I couldn’t escape. I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to. “She asked me not to be gentle with her, either,” he snarled, his teeth bright in the moonlight. He brought his lips to my ear. “I would have been gentle with you, though.” I shuddered as I closed my eyes. Every inch of my body went taut as his words echoed through me. “I would have had you moaning my name throughout it all. And I would have taken a very, very long time, Feyre.” He said my name like a caress, and his hot breath tickled my ear. My back arched slightly. He ripped his claws free from the wall, and my knees buckled as he let go. I grasped the wall to keep from sinking to the floor, to keep from grabbing him—to strike or caress, I didn’t know. I opened my eyes. He still smiled—smiled like an animal. “Why should I want someone’s leftovers?” I said, making to push him away. He grabbed my hands again and bit my neck. I cried out as his teeth clamped onto the tender spot where my neck met my shoulder. I couldn’t move—couldn’t think, and my world narrowed to the feeling of his lips and teeth against my skin. He didn’t pierce my flesh, but rather bit to keep me pinned. The push of his body against mine, the hard and the soft, made me see red—see lightning, made me grind my hips against his. I should hate him—hate him for his stupid ritual, for the female he’d been with tonight … His bite lightened, and his tongue caressed the places his teeth had been. He didn’t move—he just remained in that spot, kissing my neck. Intently, territorially, lazily. Heat pounded between my legs, and as he ground his body against me, against every aching spot, a moan slipped past my lips. He jerked away. The air was bitingly cold against my freed skin, and I panted as he stared at me. “Don’t ever disobey me again,” he said, his voice a deep purr that ricocheted through me, awakening everything and lulling it into complicity.

Their other hands flipped up, palm to palm, and Merik’s only consolation as he and the domna slid into the next movement of the dance was that her chest heaved as much as his did. Merik’s right hand gripped the girl’s, and with no small amount of ferocity, he twisted her around to face the same direction as he before wrenching her to his chest. His hand slipped over her stomach, fingers splayed. Her left hand snapped up—and he caught it. Then the real difficulty of the dance began. The skipping of feet in a tide of alternating hops and directions. The writhing of hips countered the movement of their feet like a ship upon stormy seas. The trickling tap of Merik’s fingers down the girl’s arms, her ribs, her waist—like the rain against a ship’s sail. On and on, they moved to the music until they were both sweating. Until they hit the third movement. Merik flipped the girl around to face him once more. Her chest slammed against his—and by the Wells, she was tall. He hadn’t realized just how tall until this precise moment when her eyes stared evenly into his and her panting breaths fought against his own. Then the music swelled once more, her legs twined into his, and he forgot all about who she was or what she was or why he had begun the dance in the first place. Because those eyes of hers were the color of the sky after a storm. Without realizing what he did, his Windwitchery flickered to life. Something in this moment awoke the wilder parts of his power. Each heave of his lungs sent a breeze swirling in. It lifted the girl’s hair. Kicked at her wild skirts. She showed no reaction at all. In fact, she didn’t break her gaze from Merik, and there was a fierceness there—a challenge that sent Merik further beneath the waves of the dance. Of the music. Of those eyes. Each leap backward of her body—a movement like the tidal tug of the sea against the river—led to a violent slam as Merik snatched her back against him. For each leap and slam, the girl added in an extra flourishing beat with her heels. Another challenge that Merik had never seen, yet rose to, rose above. Wind crashed around them like a growing hurricane, and he and this girl were at its eye. And the girl never looked away. Never backed down. Not even when the final measures of the song began—that abrupt shift from the sliding cyclone of strings to the simple plucking bass that follows every storm—did Merik soften how hard he pushed himself against this girl. Figuratively. Literally. Their bodies were flush, their hearts hammering against each other’s rib cages. He walked his fingers down her back, over her shoulders, and out to her hands. The last drops of a harsh rain. The music slowed. She pulled away first, slinking back the required four steps. Merik didn’t look away from her face, and he only distantly noticed that, as she pulled away, his Windwitchery seemed to settle. Her skirts stopped swishing, her hair fluttered back to her shoulders. Then he slid backward four steps and folded his arms over his chest. The music came to a close. And Merik returned to his brain with a sickening certainty that Noden and His Hagfishes laughed at him from the bottom of the sea.

Something creaked beneath me! A soft step on rotting wood! I jumped startled, scared, and turned, expecting to see-God knows what! Then I sighed, for it was only Chris standing in the gloom, silently staring at me. Why? Did I look prettier than usual? Was it the moonlight, shining through my airy clothes? All random doubts were cleared when he said in a voice gritty and low, "You look beautiful sitting there like that." He cleared the frog in his throat. "The moonlight is etching you with silver-blue, and I can see the shape of your body through your clothes." Then, bewilderingly, he seized me by the shoulders, digging in his fingers, hard! They hurt. "Damn you, Cathy! You kissed that man! He could have awakened and seen you, and demanded to know who you were! And not thought you only a part of his dream!" Scary the way he acted, the fright I felt for no reason at all. "How do you know what I did? You weren't there; you were sick that night." He shook me, glaring his eyes, and again I thought he seemed a stranger. "He saw you, Cathy-he wasn't soundly asleep!" "He saw me?" I cried, disbelieving. It wasn't possible . . . wasn't! "Yes!" he yelled. This was Chris, who was usually in such control of his emotions. "He thought you a part of his dream! But don't you know Momma can guess who it was, just by putting two and two together-just as I have? Damn you and your romantic notions! Now they're on to us! They won't leave money casually about as they did before. He's counting, she's counting, and we don't have enough-not yet!" He yanked me down from the widow sill! He appeared wild and furious enough to slap my face-and not once in all our lives had he ever struck me, though I'd given him reason to when I was younger. But he shook me until my eyes rolled, until I was dizzy and crying out: "Stop! Momma knows we can't pass through a looked door!" This wasn't Chris . . . this was someone I'd never seen before . . . primitive, savage. He yelled out something like, "You're mine, Cathy! Mine! You'll always be mine! No matter who comes into your future, you'll always belong to me! I'll make you mine . . . tonight . . . now!" I didn't believe it, not Chris! And I did not fully understand what he had in mind, nor, if I am to give him credit, do I think he really meant what he said, but passion has a way of taking over. We fell to the floor, both of us. I tried to fight him off. We wrestled, turning over and over, writhing, silent, a frantic strug- gle of his strength against mine. It wasn't much of a battle. I had the strong dancer's legs; he had the biceps, the greater weight and height . . . and he had much more determination than i to use something hot, swollen and demanding, so much it stile reasoning and sanity from him. And I loved him. I wanted what he wanted-if he wanted it that much, right and wrong. Somehow we ended up on that old mattress-that filthy, smelly, stained mattress that must have known lovers long before this night. And that is where he took me, and forced in that swollen, rigid male sex part of him that had to be satisfied. It drove into my tight and resisting flesh which tore and bled. Now we had done what we both swore we'd never do.

What's Toraf's favorite color?" She shrugs. "Whatever I tell him it is." I raise a brow at her. "Don't know, huh?" She crosses her arms. "Who cares anyway? We're not painting his toenails." "I think what's she's trying to say, honey bunches, is that maybe you should paint your nails his favorite color, to show him you're thinking about him," Rachel says, seasoning her words with tact. Rayna sets her chin. "Emma doesn't paint her nails Galen's favorite color." Startled that Galen has a favorite color and I don't know it, I say, "Uh, well, he doesn't like nail polish." That is to say, he's never mentioned it before. When a brilliant smile lights up her whole face, I know I've been busted. "You don't know his favorite color!" she says, actually pointing at me. "Yes, I do," I say, searching Rachel's face for the answer. She shrugs. Rayna's smirk is the epitome of I know something you don't know. Smacking it off her face is my first reflex, but I hold back, as I always do, because of the kiss I shared with Toraf and the way it hurt her. Sometimes I catch her looking at me with that same expression she had on the beach, and I feel like fungus, even though she deserved it at the time. Refusing to fold, I eye the buffet of nail polish scattered before me. Letting my fingers roam over the bottles, I shop the paints, hoping one of them stands out to me. To save my life, I can't think of any one color he wears more often. He doesn't have a favorite sport, so team colors are a no-go. Rachel picked his cars for him, so that's no help either. Biting my lip, I decide on an ocean blue. "Emma! Now I'm just ashamed of myself," he says from the doorway. "How could you not know my favorite color?" Startled, I drop the bottle back on the table. Since he's back so soon, I have to assume he didn't find what or who he wanted-and that he didn't hunt them for very long. Toraf materializes behind him, but Galen's shoulders are too broad to allow them both to stand in the doorway. Clearing my throat, I say, "I was just moving that bottle to get to the color I wanted." Rayna is all but doing a victory dance with her eyes. "Which is?" she asks, full of vicious glee. Toraf pushes past Galen and plops down next to his tiny mate. She leans into him, eager for his kiss. "I missed you," she whispers. "Not as much as I missed you," he tells her. Galen and I exchange eye rolls as he walks around to prop himself on the table beside me, his wet shorts making a butt-shaped puddle on the expensive wood. "Go ahead, angelfish," he says, nodding toward the pile of polish. If he's trying to give me a clue, he sucks at it. "Go" could mean green, I guess. "Ahead" could mean...I have no idea what that could mean. And angelfish come in all sorts of colors. Deciding he didn't encode any messages for me, I sigh and push away from the table to stand. "I don't know. We've never talked about it before." Rayna slaps her knee in triumph. "Ha!" Before I can pass by him, Galen grabs my wrist and pulls me to him, corralling me between his legs. Crushing his mouth to mine, he moves his hand to the small of my back and presses me into him. Since he's still shirtless and I'm in my bikini, there's a lot of bare flesh touching, which is a little more intimate than I'm used to with an audience. Still, the fire sears through me, scorching a path to the furthest, deepest parts of me. It takes every bit of grit I have not to wrap my arms around his neck. Gently, I push my hands against his chest to end the kiss, which is something I never thought I'd do. Giving him a look that I hope conveys "inappropriate," I step back. I've spent enough time in their company to know without looking that Rayna's eyes are bugging out of their sockets and Toraf is grinning like a nutcracker doll. With any luck, Rachel didn't even see the kiss. Stealing a peek at her, she meets my gaze with openmouthed shock. Okay, it looked as bad as I thought it did.