Muscle Pump Quotes

Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkably difficult to kill.

I ran. I ran until my muscles burned and my veins pumped battery acid. Then I ran some more.

Memory is a part of the present. It builds us up inside; it knits our bones to our muscles and keeps our hearts pumping. It is memory that reminds our bodies to work, and memory that reminds our spirits to work to: it keeps us who we are.~Candle

It occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkable difficult to kill.

A body could be labeled but a person couldn’t, and the difference between the two depended on that muscle in your chest. That beloved organ, not sentient, not aware, not feeling, just pumping along, keeping you alive.

And as for romance? Well, I want that too. I want to fall asleep next to you, 100 times a night, so I can know you 100 times better before we hit the day light. And despite all of this, I also want amnesia so I can relive each kiss with a perfect newness that leaves me smashed in the arms of rapture. I want the sky to fracture under the impossible weight of an apology because I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I want so much. I'm sorry that I'm using "I'm sorry" as a crutch to lean on for so long but if you sing me that song of sweet logic again then I promise to make the effort to stand on my own. There is a reason that our hearts are more like a muscle and less like a bone. I've known so many people who've have grown up flexing in front of mirrors and falling for their own reflection as if that's adequate but that's bullshit. Because we only get now until the time we go and if they've only got time to love themselves then nobody is going to be around to hear the sound of their heartbeat echo. So lady, don't expect an apology when I tell you I'm only held together by a heart that pumps blue, it's the strongest muscle in my body and I'm flexing it for you

Running doesn't just make me happy. Running keeps me alive. When I'm running-the blood pumping through my veins, the tunes playing in my ears, the muscles tightening on the inclines- the problems of the world disappear. It's just me, the sidewalk, and God.

This body is fragile. It is just flesh. Listen to the heartbeat. Life depends on the pumping of a muscle.

I'm not bitter, I survived a liar. I'm not bitter, I weathered a cheater. I'm not bitter, I sustained a massive injury to the giant, bloody muscle in the center of my chest that is responsible for pumping blood through my entire body.

Evolution sceptic: Professor Haldane, even given the billions of years that you say were available for evolution, I simply cannot believe it is possible to go from a single cell to a complicated human body, with its trillions of cells organized into bones and muscles and nerves, a heart that pumps without ceasing for decades, miles and miles of blood vessels and kidney tubules, and a brain capable of thinking and talking and feeling. JBS: But madam, you did it yourself. And it only took you nine months.

No one can ever use his heart to listen or touch or feel or see or smell. It's just a lump of muscle pumping mechanically inside your ribs. It has no will and no ability to do anything but go on pumping until it gives up and withers away or is choked by some disease. Your spinal cord, on the other hand, feels. The central nervous system pours out from the spinal cord, and with it one feels pain. Pain is the most trustworthy sensation a human being can know because it teaches us what hurts. With the spinal cord, one can hear what will hurt, smell the sting of suffering, taste it, feel it, and see the world with new eyes. I learned a long time ago not to follow my heart, the hunk of meat flexing in the chest. I trust the tube locked up in a column of bone, the tube that shows me what pain is.

Gut instincts were supposed to be the most trustworthy and it was in her gut where she felt the butterflies. The heart had its purpose as a blood pumping muscle, but love...love blossomed and sparked through the body - originating from the gut.

Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way.

Kingsley watched her disappear from the room, wondering if his heart would break. Logic informed him that of course it would not. The heart was no more than a muscle, a pump which distributed blood about the body; it had nothing whatsoever to do with a man's emotions. But if that was the case, why did it ache so?

Exposure to nature - cold, heat, water - is the most dehumanizing way to die. Violence is passionate and real - the final moments as you struggle for your life, firing a gun or wrestling a mugger or screaming for help, your heart pumps loudly and your body tingles with energy; you are alert and awake and, for that brief moment, more alive and human than you've ever been before. Not so with nature. At the mercy of the elements the opposite happens: your body slows, your thoughts grow sluggish, and you realize just how mechanical you really are. Your body is a machine, full of tubes and valves and motors, of electrical signals and hydraulic pumps, and they function properly only within a certain range of conditions. As temperatures drop, your machine breaks down. Cells begin to freeze and shatter; muscles use more energy to do less; blood flows too slowly, and to the wrong places. Your sense fade, your core temperature plummets, and your brain fires random signals that your body is too weak to interpret or follow. In that stat you are no longer a human being, you are a malfunction - an engine without oil, grinding itself to pieces in its last futile effort to complete its last meaningless task.

I say let all the earth be alive and overwhelmingly so. Let the sky be pressed to bursting with wings, beaks, pumping hearts, and driving muscles. Let it be noisy. Let it make a mess. Then let me find my allotted space. Let me feel how I bump up against every other living thing on this earth. Let me learn to spin.

When your heart breaks, you can actually feel it, an agonizing stab of pain in a muscle that you know for a fact is just a glorified pump. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, the ordered universe changes, the solid ground beneath your feet becomes a slippery rock. The material world that seemed so safe and solid a moment ago becomes a shifting, ghostly place of shadows and mist. Matters that seemed settled and certain a long ago come suddenly unhinged, and you begin to doubt everything you ever knew to be true.

We have body clocks not just in the brain but all over—in our pancreas, liver, heart, kidneys, fatty tissue, muscle, virtually everywhere—and these operate to their own timetables, dictating when hormones are released or organs are busiest or most relaxed. Your reflexes, for instance, are at their sharpest in mid-afternoon, while blood pressure peaks toward evening. Men tend to pump more testosterone early in the morning than later in the day.

Creole and Haiti stick to my insides like glue—it’s like my bones and muscles. But America is my skin, my eyes, and my breath. According to my papers, I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m not a citizen. I’m a “resident alien.” The borders don’t care if we’re all human and my heart pumps blood the same as everyone else’s.

Grief handed me a heart of iron, and I rusted it with my tears, a muscle not made of flesh, not pumping blood.

Suddenly, the ice became liquid and her veins filled with the cold, condensing fluid. Her heartbeat intensified as the poor muscle attempted to pump the viscous solution.

The average gym junkie today is all about appearance, not ability. Flash, not function. These men may have big, artificially pumped up limbs, but all that the size is in the muscle tissue; their tendons and joints are weak . Ask the average muscleman to do a deep one-leg squat-ass-to-floor-style-and his knee ligaments would probably snap in two. What strength most bodybuilders do have, they cannot use in a coordinated way; if you asked them to walk on their hands they'd fall flat on their faces.

your heart is nothing but a muscle. It contracts and expands, working just as hard as any other muscle. The difference is, the blood pumping through it pumps through your entire body. That blood holds memories. Things you try to forget but it won’t let you. You have to use those memories, use that blood to fuel you.

He stopped, finally, and smiled. “Honestly? With this thing I think I could get my jerk-off muscles so well-developed that I could rub out a spooge with one pump! If that’s not worth $19.95, I don’t know what is.

Don't you feel as though you could love everything starting tomorrow, and everything could love you, if only you took an action to set into motion the coming of our new tomorrow and its tomorrow and that one's tomorrow? Shotgun loaded hand on the pump and no matter who you damage you're still a false prophet, but we drink chocolate milk and then we get muscles and smash down the droves with fists like hammers and then we pump the fists in the air for victory. I be the prophet of the doom that is you. You are the mess in messiah.

The woman who later became his wife was sleeping in his bed, her face buried in the pillows and her feet crossed on top of each other like a child's. He watched her sleep and struggled to see her as she was, but what he saw instead were her muscles and bones. He saw right through the skin to where her femur connected to her tibia by way of the ligaments, to the hair web of nerves and the delicate forest of her lungs, to the abstract heart pumping blood through her arteries. It terrified him how easily these systems could fail her.

The activity has pumped out his chest and hardened his abs, and I can't believe I'm even noticing or appreciating it. His smile is naughty, the muscles in his shoulders thick and ripped, undulating with his movement when he adjusts his position for me to get an eyeful.

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.

Yes, we’re all on a journey here. We’re not perfect. We all struggle. We can tell from the fatigue we feel and the stiffness in our spiritual joints that we haven’t always taken good care of ourselves. But prayer wakes us up with mercies from God that are “new every morning” (Lam. 3:23). Prayer is how we start to stretch and feel limber again, feel loose, ready to take on the world. And when we start applying prayer to particular muscle groups—like our confidence in Christ and His victory over our past—our whole body and our whole being start to percolate with fresh energy, with the blood-pumping results of applied faith.

The modern fitness scene is largely defined by the presence of pumped up, muscle-bound bodybuilders, expensive exercise machines, and steroids. It's wasn't always this ways. There was a time when men trained to become inhumanly strong using nothing but their own bodyweight. No weights. No machines. No drugs. Nothing

In twenty years you could say and do a lot you wish you hadn't. In twenty years you could store up a lot of regrets. And then, when it was too late, when there was no one left to say "I'm sorry" to, "I didn't mean it" to, you could stop sleeping for regret, stop eating, talking, working, for regret. You could stop wanting to live. You could want to die for regret. It was only remembering the good times that kept you from taking the knife from the kitchen drawer and, holding it so, tightly in your fist, on the bed, naked to no purpose except that that was how you came into the world and how your best moments in the world had been spent--holding it so, roll onto the blade, slowly so that it slid like love between your ribs and into that stupidly pumping muscle in your chest that kept you regretting.

So I got to witness firsthand how those metal links got broken. The muscles in his upper arms pumped to the size of grapefruits, and the fabric of the T-shirt tightened around them almost to tearing… Then the metal gave way with a musical twang, and the chain snaked noisily from the grate, falling to the rain-softened earth with a clunk. “By all means,” John said, brushing his hands together in a self-satisfied way, “let’s call Mr. Smith.” I ducked my head, hiding my blushing cheeks by pretending to be busy putting my cell phone back in my bag. Encouraging his occasional lapses into less than civilized behavior seemed like a bad idea, so I didn’t let on how extremely attractive I’d found what he’d just done. “You know,” I remarked coolly, “I’m already your girlfriend. You don’t have to show off your superhuman strength for me.” John looked as if he didn’t for one minute believe my disinterest. He opened the grate for me with a gentlemanly bow. “Let’s go find your cousin,” he said. “I’d like to be home in time for supper. Where’s the coffin?” “It’s at my mom’s house,” I said. “What?” That deflated his self-satisfaction like a pin through a balloon. He stood stock-still outside the door to his crypt, the word HAYDEN carved in bold capital letters above his head. “What’s it doing there?” “Seth Rector and his girlfriend and their friends asked me if they could build it in my mom’s garage,” I said. “They said it was the last place anyone would look.” John shook his head slowly. “Rector,” he said, grinding out the word. “I should have known.” I threw him a wide-eyed glance. “You know Seth Rector?” “Not Seth,” he said, darkly.

Villanelle It is the pain, it is the pain endures. Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through. Poise of my hands reminded me of yours. What later purge from this deep toxin cures? What kindness now could the old salve renew? It is the pain, it is the pain endures. The infection slept (custom or changes inures) And when pain's secondary phase was due Poise of my hands reminded me of yours. How safe I felt, whom memory assures, Rich that your grace safely by heart I knew. It is the pain, it is the pain endures. My stare drank deep beauty that still allures. My heart pumps yet the poison draught of you. Poise of my hands reminded me of yours. You are still kind whom the same shape immures. Kind and beyond adieu. We miss our cue. It is the pain, it is the pain endures. Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.

I’m sorry, I have to move. I have to. You’re so bloody tight. So good,” he groaned, his face distorted with need. He started to pump into her, long, powerful thrusts, the slap of flesh on flesh and the wet rush of their bodies moving together mingling with their ragged breathing. Everywhere she touched him he was hard as granite, as though every muscle in his body was straining toward completion. She’d never felt more desired, more wanted, more wanton or sexy in her life and she felt her own desire rising higher with every stroke.

I could feel his heart pump and his muscles strain," she said, "when he balanced himself and me on the rocks. I knew that if we fell, we’d go together; he would never drop me".

body could be labeled but a person couldn’t, and the difference between the two depended on that muscle in your chest. That beloved organ, not sentient, not aware, not feeling, just pumping along, keeping you alive.

She had collided with an elk and died...At twenty-four minutes to eleven her heart had stopped pumping the blood around her body. One single muscle in a single person's body. A speck of dust in time. And the world was dead. David stood next to her bed with his arms by his sides, the headache burning behind his forehead. Here lay his whole future, everything good that he could even imagine would come from life. Here lay the last twelve years of his past. Everything gone; and time shrank to a single unbearable now.

Skin tissue and muscles and nerves, bone and blood. A body could be labeled but a person couldn’t, and the difference between the two depended on that muscle in your chest. That beloved organ, not sentient, not aware, not feeling, just pumping along, keeping you alive.

mind at that point, my fingers itching with the need to tie knots and pull hair, every muscle in my body primed to fuck her so hard that she grunted like an animal. And then I would fill her with my seed, pump her so full of my cum that she’d be dripping with it for days.

But Fia was very young and pitifully thin, by no means underfed, but undeveloped, short on muscle, short on work. What was she to do with herself, this talented girl? Her parents could afford to keep her at home or to keep her abroad, whichever she preferred, and whether she was here or there she was nice, she was charming, and she never went upstairs two steps at a time, no, never.

Yeah, yeah, cum inside me, fucking fill my hole!” Ty started really flexing his ass muscles, milking my dick. He reached behind me and gripped my ass, pulling me closer to him. I pumped a few more times, then my body went rigid as my cock shot one long rope of cum inside his ass. I quaked over and over as more cum erupted from my balls, splashing his guts. “Ahhh, arrggg… fuuuck!” I shivered as I finished my orgasm. It was intense and my cock was still hard inside him afterwards.

Don’t you see, Mhairie, if we don’t keep telling the stories, we shall forget them. And if we forget them, our marrow will leak away, our clan marrow will vanish. Now was not the time to forget. Now was the time to remember. Memory, Dearlea thought, is the life-pumping artery, the blood in that artery. Memory is the sinew, the muscle that stretches back to the Beyond and before the Beyond. Have we not come full circle? she wondered. Now is not the time to forget. She felt a quiet despair, for there was song deep within her desperate to get out. Lupus, she would not die with the song inside her! Her mother, who rode next to her on another narwhale’s back with Abban, turned toward her and howled, “Sing, Dearlea! Sing! You are a skreeleen. The first in this new world.” So Dearlea threw back her head and sang. And out of that dark place we fled That broken land so scarred and dead Our hopes our dreams forever gone. Then did we follow this wolf so bold To this place that did unfold As if lost in mists of time It was the Distant Blue A new world sublime. On a bridge of ice we walked and walked We now give thanks to Lupus, to Glaux, To Ursus and gods not known, And to whales who carried us The last way To here in our new home. The other creatures began to join in. The wolves howled, and from Toby’s and Burney’s deep chests came sonorous roars that stirred Faolan’s heart. Dearlea was so right to sing, to remind them of what they had left behind.

Do you ever think about it? About nothingness. I do, I think about it all the time. Because of course it’s nothingness that awaits us. Of course it is. If it weren’t why would our hearts keep pumping any longer than they had to? Why wouldn’t we all emerge into the world pure and innocent, and then before we had a chance to get in any trouble, before we had a chance to take our first oily shit, just immediately shut down our systems and head straight to the hereafter? If there were a better life after death, why bother getting fitter for survival’s sake? Why would evolution even be a thing? Why fight for something second best? If death was really awesome, in a life or death situation, our bodies wouldn’t muscle up with epinephrine and cortisol. Our brains would hit us up instead with sloppy, sleepy happy love. Hannibal Lecter would be our Mickey Mouse. No, there’s fuckall to look forward to. Our bodies understand this. The real problem is, it’s unbearable to know this. So we cope.

The function of my comedy is not to provide answers, but to postulate questions, impertinent questions and therefore finally, pertinent questions. Not to open doors, merely to unlock them. To not invade the boundaries of probability but stabd a cool guard this side of the boundaries. Somewhere between there's a thesis. To pump up the muscle of dialectic (or in my case Di-Eclectic!) against the brawn of surrealistic solution. I play not Hamlet, but the second gravedigger, not Lear but the fool.

When you’re experiencing a negative emotional state—angry or upset or fearful—your brain goes on alert. It prepares your body to enter a full-blown, fight-or-flight response. This response evolved to mobilize the body to face an external threat—think of a tiger coming after your ancient ancestor. All the body’s defense systems are turned on to support either fighting or fleeing from the danger. Your adrenaline pumps, your muscles tense, and your blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar all rise to give you extra energy to meet the challenge.

Muscles contract somewhere above the roof of my mouth, pumping venom into her bloodstream. Kelly cries out, a gasp of pain that turns suddenly to moans of euphoria as the carotids rush the narcotic serum directly to her brain. Her knees buckle, and I reach down to steady her — one arm over her breasts, the other around her waist as I hold her tightly to myself. Then the blood begins to flow, seeping out of the wounds I have made, and I put my lips to her skin and drink. There are no words adequate to describe it. My mind explodes with a wash of light and color, swirling and dancing before my eyes. Then the Sharing truly begins, and I can see inside her: images of her memories, her thoughts, her hopes and dreams, the way she remembers her past and how she imagines her future. Her joys; her grief; that which she loves and that she despises, what stirs her fire and chills her bones. And through it all, I feel the touch of her presence, and I know that she sees the same things inside of me. Blood is more than matter, more than plasma and hemoglobin. Blood is life, the river on which the spirit flows. And as Kelly's blood flows into me, it carries her life with it, until my soul entwines with hers. She has given a part of herself to me, and from this day forth we are bound to each other.

The ghost was not a ghost at all, or so it claimed - it claimed to be a psychic energy baby, birthed in some ethereal dimension, and pulled into the phone by the powerful magnetism of phone signals. It remembered with perfect clarity how it came to be - remembered coalescing from the membranous surface of the world, streaked with reflected light, humming with surface tension under the pressure of emptiness underneath. The Psychic Energy Baby found form among the emanations of people's minds and the susurrus of their voices, it found flesh in the shapes of their lips and eyes made, the surprise of 'o's and the sibilations of 's's; its skin stretched taut like a soap bubble, forged from the wet sound of lips touching; its thoughts were the musky smells and the nerves twined around the transparent water balloons of the muscles like stems of toadflax, searching restlessly for every available crevice, stretching along cold rough surfaces. Its veins, tiny rivers, pumped heartbeats striking in unison, the dry dallying of billions of ventricular contractions. And it spoke, spoke endlessly, it spokes words that tasted of dark air and formic acid. It could speak long before it took it's final shape. And when it happened, when all the sounds and smells and words in the world, when all the thoughts had aligned so that it could become - then it found itself pulled into the wires, surrounded by taut copper and green and red and yellow insulation; twined and quartered among the cables, rent open by millions of voices that shouted and whispered and pleaded and threatened, interspersed with the rasping of breaths and tearing laughter. It traveled through the criss-crossing of the wires so fast that it felt itself being pulled into a needle, head spearing into the future while its feet infinitely receded into the past, until it came into a dark quiet pool of the black rotary phone, where it could reassemble itself and take stock.

How strange and delicious it was to sit here like this, entwined and filled, while sea breezes rustled through the marram grass on the dunes and quiet waves lapped at the shore. Eventually Keir lifted his head, his eyes very light in his flushed face. "Put your legs around my waist," he said. He helped to rearrange her limbs until they were pressed together closely in a seated embrace, with his bent knees supporting her. It was surprisingly comfortable, but didn't permit much movement. Instead of thrusting, they were limited to a rocking motion that allowed only an inch or two of his length to withdraw and plunge. "I don't think this is going to work," Merritt said, her arms looped around his neck. "Be patient." His mouth sought hers in a warm, flirting kiss. One of his hands searched beneath her skirts to settle on her naked bottom, pulling her forward as they rocked rhythmically. Feeling awkward, but also having fun, Merritt experimented by bracing her feet on the ground and pushing to help their momentum. The combination of pressure and movement had a stunning effect in her. Every forward pitch brought her weight fully onto him, in deep steady nudges that sent bolts of pure erotic feeling through every nerve pathway. The tension was building, compelling her toward a culmination more intense than anything she'd ever felt. She couldn't drive herself hard onto the heavy shaft, her body taking every inch and clenching frantically on each withdrawal as if trying to keep him inside. Nothing mattered except the rhythmic lunges that pumped more and more pleasure into her. Keir's breath hissed through his teeth as he felt her electrified response, the cinch of her intimate muscles. His hand gripped over her bottom, pulling her onto him again, again, again, until the relentless unfaltering movement finally catapulted her into a climax that was like losing consciousness, blinding her vision with a shower of white sparks and extinguishing every rational thought.

Sitting down on the stairs, Cheyenne watched Behr through the slats in the railing. She liked what she saw. Covered in a fine sheen of perspiration, muscles swollen from what was clearly a grueling workout, Behr’s toned physique was a serious distraction from her worries, making her content to just sit and watch. Each thump of his fist into the bag resonated in her bones. Each kick of his leg thundered in her ears. Every move seemed to be in time with the harsh sounds of the music pumping through the room, until he was a frenzy of movement. It was frighteningly beautiful. Standing, Cheyenne called out to him. “Behr? Are you hungry?” She was feeling a little peckish herself, and she needed something to keep her hands busy. Between a combination of brutal punches, knee jabs and the music, Behr didn’t hear a word she said. So she decided to go to him. Winding her way through equipment and stepping over the discarded sweaty T-shirt, Cheyenne approached him. Waiting for the right moment to interrupt, she tapped him on the shoulder during a brief pause. Big mistake. Huge.

As the pumping engines for the circulatory system, ventricles must have a particular ovoid, lemonlike shape for strong, swift ejection of blood. If the end of the left ventricle balloons out, as it does in takotsubo hearts, the firm, healthy contractions are reduced to inefficient spasms—floppy and unpredictable. But what’s remarkable about takotsubo is what causes the bulge. Seeing a loved one die. Being left at the altar or losing your life savings with a bad roll of the dice. Intense, painful emotions in the brain can set off alarming, life-threatening physical changes in the heart. This new diagnosis was proof of the powerful connection between heart and mind. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy confirmed a relationship many doctors had considered more metaphoric than diagnostic. As a clinical cardiologist, I needed to know how to recognize and treat takotsubo cardiomyopathy. But years before pursuing cardiology, I had completed a residency in psychiatry at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. Having also trained as a psychiatrist, I was captivated by this syndrome, which lay at the intersection of my two professional passions. That background put me in a unique position that day at the zoo. I reflexively placed the human phenomenon side by side with the animal one. Emotional trigger … surge of stress hormones … failing heart muscle … possible death. An unexpected “aha!” suddenly hit me. Takotsubo in humans and the heart effects of capture myopathy in animals were almost certainly related—perhaps even the same syndrome with different names.

The date rape drug he’d intended to give me has knocked him out so hard he’s barely even flinched, despite being dragged to the top of a twelve-storey building, stripped naked and bound to a post. His head lolls towards his chest. I stand back to admire him, taking in his slumped frame as he wilts against the pressure of his rope bindings. He looks Christ-like, vulnerable. His skin is grey in the murky moonlight. His body is incredible. Hardly surprising, since he seems to spend half his life at the gym. His stomach is taut, rippled with abs. His pecs are straight from a swimwear ad, his broad shoulders and ripped arms are built like a boxer’s. His biceps are strong, lined with veins that will soon cease to pump blood. He has the kind of arms that could pin you down so tightly you wouldn’t be able to move a muscle. His hands are large – the least attractive part of him: dry, thick, stubby. They’re the type of hands that could grip your wrists and stifle screams. Hands that could have killed me tonight. Hands that would have hurt me. Hands that would have held me in place while he raped me. I let my eyes wander down to his cock, which would probably have been pounding away inside me around now if things had gone his way. I could tell pretty early into our date that he was a predator. Perhaps it takes one to know one, but I could see it in his dark eyes and sly glances, the hungry way he took in my body, the type of questions he asked, his eagerness to buy me drinks. He probably didn’t think I had it in me to notice. Of course he didn’t. He just saw my shiny, sweeping hair, my lashes, my clothes, my smile. He saw what everybody else sees: my mask.

I hold my breath while he hooks his hands under my thighs. When he resumes, it's faster, harder, and a whole new level of euphoria. I press my eyes shut just as they start to roll back. That spot. That elusive spot every man had such a hard time locating is front and center now. I silently dub him the G-spot whisperer. Another deep thrust hits it again. Good thing I'm not trying to speak anymore, because I've lost all my words. All I have to offer are huffs of hot air and whimpering. Lots and lots of whimpering. The edge of Callum's mouth turns up, and I have to swallow to keep from choking at the divine sight. He looks like a god in this moment. His skin is a golden glow, painted in specks of sweat, highlighting every single cut muscle he possesses. And his expression---a cross between concentration and satisfaction. It's hard physical work he's doing, but he relishes it. I can tell by the glimmer in his eyes, the way his hands cradle my legs so I'm comfortably supported. I can tell by the pinch of his jaw, those soft grunts he let loose, that this is blowing his mind too. For the second time in one night, pressure builds inside me. The feeling is almost too much, but all I want is more. These long, deliberate thrusts are the greatest physical sensations my body has ever experienced. I could explode at any moment, but I want this to last. Forever, if possible. Arching my back, I press my head against the pillow. I cry out, sounding like a rabid banshee. A muttered curse falls from his lips. "That's it. Don't hold back." Pressure and heat collide, and I couldn't hold back if I tried. The deep thrusts keep coming like an endless loop of crashing waves. Callum and my G-spot are new best friends, it seems. Over and over, he hits it. Over and over, the sensations build to an overwhelming peak. His pace shifts from impressive to phenomenal. If Callum were a sex doll, I'd buy a dozen. His stamina, his technique, his adoration of me and my body, it's all perfection. When I burst, I'm even louder than before. And just like before, I'm ablaze from the inside out. Ecstasy pulses through every inch of skin and bone. My blood pumps hot, like lava flowing through my veins. Every muscle tightens, then loosens. Panting, I clutch Callum's forearms and watch his face as he hits his own peak.

Her enormous eyes were staring straight into his silver ones. He couldn’t look away, couldn’t let go of her hand. He couldn’t have moved if his life depended on it. He was lost in those blue-violet eyes, somewhere in their mysterious, haunting, sexy depths. What was it he had decided? Decreed? He was not going to allow her anywhere near Peter’s funeral. Why was his resolve fading away to nothing? He had reasons, good reasons. He was certain of it. Yet now, drowning in her huge eyes, his thoughts on the length of her lashes, the curve of her cheek, the feel of her skin, he couldn’t think of denying her. After all, she hadn’t tried to defy him; she didn’t know he had made the decision to keep her away from Peter’s funeral. She was including him in the plans, as if they were a unit, a team. She was asking his advice. Would it be so terrible to please her over this? It was important to her. He blinked to keep from falling into her gaze and found himself staring at the perfection of her mouth. The way her lips parted so expectantly. The way the tip of her tongue darted out to moisten her full lower lip. Almost a caress. He groaned. An invitation. He braced himself to keep from leaning over and tracing the exact path with his own tongue. He was being tortured. Tormented. Her perfect lips formed a slight frown. He wanted to kiss it right off her mouth. “What is it, Gregori?” She reached up to touch his lips with her fingertip. His heart nearly jumped out of his chest. He caught her wrist and clamped it against his pumping heart. “Savannah,” he whispered. An ache. It came out that way. An ache. He knew it. She knew it. God, he wanted her with every cell in his body. Untamed. Wild. Crazy. He wanted to bury himself so deep inside her that she would never get him out. Her hand trembled in answer, a slight movement rather like the flutter of butterfly wings. He felt it all the way through his body. “It is all right, mon amour,” he said softly. “I am not asking for anything.” “I know you’re not. I’m not denying you anything. I know we need to have time to become friends, but I’m not going to deny what I feel already. When you’re close to me, my body temperature jumps about a thousand degrees.” Her blue eyes were dark and beckoning, steady on his. He touched her mind very gently, almost tenderly, slipped past her guard and knew what courage it took for her to make the admission. She was nervous, even afraid, but willing to meet him halfway. The realization nearly brought him to his knees. A muscle jumped in his jaw, and the silver eyes heated to molten mercury, but his face was as impassive as ever. “I think you are a witch, Savannah, casting a spell over me.” His hand cupped her face, his thumb sliding over her delicate cheekbone. She moved closer, and he felt her need for comfort, for reassurance. Her arms slid tentatively around his waist. Her head rested on his sternum. Gregori held her tightly, simply held her, waiting for her trembling to cease. Waiting for the warmth of his body to seep into hers. Gregori’s hand came up to stroke the thick length of silken, ebony hair, taking pleasure in the simple act. It brought a measure of peace to both of them. He would never have believed what a small thing like holding a woman could do to a man. She was turning his heart inside out; unfamiliar emotions surged wildly through him and wreaked havoc with his well-ordered life. In his arms, next to his hard strength, she felt fragile, delicate, like an exotic flower that could be easily broken. “Do not worry about Peter, ma petite,” he whispered into the silken strands of her hair. “We will see to his resting place tomorrow.” “Thank you, Gregori,” Savannah said. “It matters a lot to me.” He lifted her easily into his arms. “I know. It would be simpler if I did not. Come to my bed, chérie, where you belong.

My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I made a face at him while answering. “Hi, Jack.” My heart did a little puppy dog shake. Jaime rolled his eyes and started gathering up our supplies. “Hey, sweetheart, staying out of trouble?” Jack’s smooth voice rolled through the line like a caress, strong, and sexy. Yes, I said sexy. I did a little mental fist pump because he’s my Jack. And damn if it didn’t feel good. “Absolutely not. In fact, I’m staring at trouble right now.” I know Jaime heard, but he ignored me. Grinning at my private joke, I rolled my head around, stretching my neck and back muscles. “Tell Runs with Beer I said hi.” Humor flashed in between the words.

Alternating heat and ice promotes healing by helping to take the swelling out of inflamed muscles or tendons with ice, while heat helps to increase blood flow to move acid out and bring blood in. The cold/hot regimen essentially “pumps” the small blood vessels by opening and closing them to decrease swelling and inflammation.

So training smart, training effectively, involves cycling through the three zones in any given week or training block: 75 percent easy running, 5 to 10 percent running at target race paces, and 15 to 20 percent fast running or hill training in the third zone to spike the heart and breathing rates. In my 5-days-a-week running schedule, that cycle looks like this: On Monday, I cross-train. Tuesday, I do an easy run in zone one, then speed up to a target race pace for a mile or two of zone-two work. On Wednesday, it’s an easy zone-one run. Thursday is an intense third-zone workout with hills, speed intervals, or a combination of the two. Friday is a recovery day to give my body time to adapt. On Saturday, I do a relaxed run with perhaps another mile or two of zone-two race pace or zone-three speed. Sunday is a long, slow run. That constant cycling through the three zones—a hard day followed by an easy or rest day—gradually improves my performance in each zone and my overall fitness. But today is not about training. It’s about cranking up that treadmill yet again, pushing me to run ever faster in the third zone, so Vescovi can measure my max HR and my max VO2, the greatest amount of oxygen my heart and lungs can pump to muscles working at their peak. When I pass into this third zone, Vescovi and his team start cheering: “Great job!” “Awesome!” “Nice work.” They sound impressed. And when I am in the moment of running rather than watching myself later on film, I really think I am impressing them, that I am lighting up the computer screen with numbers they have rarely seen from a middle-aged marathoner, maybe even from an Olympian in her prime. It’s not impossible: A test of male endurance athletes in Sweden, all over the age of 80 and having 50 years of consistent training for cross-country skiing, found they had relative max VO2 values (“relative” because the person’s weight was included in the calculation) comparable to those of men half their age and 80 percent higher than their sedentary cohorts. And I am going for a high max VO2. I am hauling in air. I am running well over what should be my max HR of 170 (according to that oft-used mathematical formula, 220 − age) and way over the 162 calculated using the Gulati formula, which is considered to be more accurate for women (0.88 × age, the result of which is then subtracted from 206). Those mathematical formulas simply can’t account for individual variables and fitness levels. A more accurate way to measure max HR, other than the test I’m in the middle of, is to strap on a heart rate monitor and run four laps at a 400-meter track, starting out at a moderate pace and running faster on each lap, then running the last one full out. That should spike your heart into its maximum range. My high max HR is not surprising, since endurance runners usually develop both a higher maximum rate at peak effort and a lower rate at rest than unconditioned people. What is surprising is that as the treadmill

Cardiac muscle tissue occurs only in the heart (the body’s blood pump), where it constitutes the bulk of the heart walls. Like skeletal muscle cells, cardiac muscle cells are striated (see Figure 4.9b, p. 139), but cardiac muscle is not voluntary. Indeed, it can and does contract without being stimulated by the nervous system. Most of us have no conscious control over how fast our heart beats.

Memory is part of the present. It builds us up inside; it knits our bones to our muscles and keeps our heart pumping. It is memory that reminds our bodies to work, and memory that reminds our spirits to work, too: it keeps us who we are. It is the influence that keeps us from flying off into separate pieces like”—she looked around—“like this peel of orange, and that clutch of pips.

My feet hurt. I needed some new shoes. Or maybe it was high time I got in shape. I was six-three in my socks, heavy enough with muscle, but my gut was starting to show the influence of a few too many beers. I could join a gym. Pump some iron, run on a treadmill while staring at a TV talk show twenty inches in front of my face. Do time on the elliptical next to some flabby gasper in spandex. Or maybe I just needed better shoes.

These are some mighty men about to hit the stage," an unseen announcer screamed through the PA system. "With an average height of six-foot-four, a massive weight of three hundred thirty pounds - all of it rock-solid muscle - they are nationally ranked power lifters, some of whom bench-press over six hundred pounds! And they're not here to brag on their muscles, but to brag on Jesus." The eight members of the Power Team ran up to the stage on thunderous feet, wearing red, black, and blue warm-up suits, weight belts, and boxing shoes. To a man, they were as big as a semitrailer truck. They pumped their fists in the air and stood before us bouncing lightly on the balls of their feet, ready to kick some religious butt. "Fasten your seat belts. If God is for you, who can be against you?" "Woo! Woo! Woo!" the audience screamed, instantly ready to rock and roll. We were less than an hour into the first night of a six-night revival, and already it seemed that Sin was going down in a terminal headlock, and Grand Junction would never be the same.... I had heard about the Power Team not from Christian friends, but from a succession of potheads - quintessential late-night cable TV channel surfers. To the stoned, there is nothing more entertaining than the sudden, near hallucinatory vision of this troupe of power-lifting missionaries led by former Oral Roberts University football star John Jacobs.... [My nephew] bought a comic book in which John Jacobs and the Power Team defeat a lisping South American drug lord. From that and an orientation video, we learned that the Team conducts seventy crusades each year, saves close to a million souls here and abroad - notably in Russia - and consists of "world-class athletes who inspire people to follow Christ - and to move away from drugs, alcohol, and suicide." (At the same time, we were pressured not to let our long-distance dollars go to support "nudity, profanity, or the Gay Games." We could avoid this by signing up with Lifeline, a Christian long-distance provider.)" People Who Sweat: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Pursuits, pp. 126-8.

Beautiful. He was just what a man should be. Not pumped up out of vanity, but hard with useful muscle. “Jackpot,” she breathed. She ran her hands over him, letting her fingers graze his nipples before pulling him closer. “Whatever you do to look like this, let me tell you, it’s worth it.

He runs quickly and quietly through the dense woodland; his breathing is shallow yet steady. Beads of sweat glisten on the translucent skin of his forehead. His intense brown eyes drink in the surroundings of the forest as they flash by. The muscles flex in his arms and legs as he runs, and the sun reflects the contours of his body, showcasing his strong physique. I wake with a start; I can feel the blood pumping

At the mercy of the elements the opposite happens: your body slows, your thoughts grow sluggish, and you realize just how mechanical you really are. Your body is a machine, full of tubes and valves and motors, of electrical signals and hydraulic pumps, and they function properly only within a certain range of conditions. As temperatures drop, your machine breaks down. Cells begin to freeze and shatter; muscles use more energy to do less; blood flows too slowly, and to the wrong places. Your senses fade, your core temperature plummets, and your brain fires random signals that your body is too weak to interpret or follow. In that state you are no longer a human being, you are a malfunction—an engine without oil, grinding itself to pieces in its last futile effort to complete its last meaningless task.

Unbelieving, I look again, and there it is. There it still is. Four neat rows of pink and brown, tiny wiggling creatures, so small and prunish and useless—and yet it is they who have turned this crowd of healthy, kill-crazy humans into a half-melted splotch of dribbling helplessness. And beyond this mighty feat of magic, even more absurd and dramatic and unbelievable, one of those tiny pink lumps has taken our Dark Dabbler, Dexter the Decidedly Dreadful, and made him, too, into a thing of quiet and contemplative chin spittle. And there it lies, waving its toes at the strip lights, utterly unaware of the miracle it has performed—unaware, indeed, even of the very toes it wiggles, for it is the absolute Avatar of Unaware—and yet, look what it has done in all its unthinking, unknowing wigglehood. Look at it there, the small, wet, sour-smelling marvel that has changed everything. Lily Anne. Three small and very ordinary syllables. Sounds with no real meaning—and yet strung together and attached to the tiny lump of flesh that squirms there on its pedestal, it has performed the mightiest of magical feats. It has turned Dexter Dead for Decades into something with a heart that beats and pumps true life, something that almost feels, that so very nearly resembles a human being— There: It waves one small and mighty hand and that New Thing inside Dexter waves back. Something turns over and surges upward into the chest cavity, bounces off the ribs and attacks the facial muscles, which now spread into a spontaneous and unpracticed smile. Heavens above, was that really an emotion? Have I fallen so far, so fast? Yes,

Do you ever think about it, about nothingness? I do, I think about it all the time. Because of course it's nothingness that awaits us. *Of course* it is. If it weren't, why would our hearts keep pumping any longer than they had to? Why wouldn't we all emerge into the world, pure and innocent, and then, before we had a chance to get into any trouble - before we even had a chance to take out first, oily shit - just immediately shut down our systems and head straight to the hereafter? If there were a better life after death, why bother getting fitter for survival's sake? Why would evolution even be a thing? Why fight for something second best? If death was *really* awesome, in a life-or-death situation, our bodies wouldn't muscle up with epinephrine and cortisol, our brains would hit us up instead with sloppy sleepy happy love. Hannibal Lecter would be our Mickey Mouse. No. There's fuck-all to look forward to. Our bodies understand this. The real problem is, it's unbearable to *know* this.

Stacking an MSP strength training with a sprint session can deliver performance benefits via the concept of postactivation potentiation. You literally “pump up” your muscles and central nervous system by challenging muscles under load prior to sprinting.

Do you ever think about it, about nothingness? I do, I think about it all the time. Because of course it's nothingness that awaits us. *Of course* it is. If it weren't, why would our hearts keep pumping any longer than they had to? Why wouldn't we all emerge into the world, pure and innocent, and then, before we had a chance to get into any trouble - before we even had a chance to take our first, oily shit - just immediately shut down our systems and head straight to the hereafter? If there were a better life after death, why bother getting fitter for survival's sake? Why would evolution even be a thing? Why fight for something second best? If death was *really* awesome, in a life-or-death situation, our bodies wouldn't muscle up with epinephrine and cortisol, our brains would hit us up instead with sloppy sleepy happy love. Hannibal Lecter would be our Mickey Mouse. No. There's fuck-all to look forward to. Our bodies understand this. The real problem is, it's unbearable to *know* this.

Our bodies don’t really distinguish between physical danger and emotional stress. The natural fear response associated with our fight/flight apparatus causes the body to react to physical or emotional crisis by pumping out sufficient quantities of stress chemicals, like adrenaline, to get our hearts pumping, muscles tightening, and breath shortening, in preparation for a fast exit or a fight.

the Greek philosophical tradition thought of the world as, first and foremost, an overarching order: at once harmonious, just, beautiful, and good. The word “cosmos” connotes all of this. For the Stoics, for example, to whom the Latin poet Ovid defers in his Metamorphoses—when reinterpreting after his fashion the great myths dealing with the origins of the world—the universe resembles a magnificent living organism. If we want to get an idea of this, we might think of what doctors or physiologists or biologists discover when they dissect a rabbit or a mouse. What do they find? Firstly, that each organ is marvelously adapted to its function: What is better constructed than an eye for seeing, than lungs for oxygenating the muscles, than a heart for pumping blood via an irrigation system? These organs are a thousand times more ingenious, more harmonious and complex, than almost all of the machines devised by man. Moreover, our biologist discovers something else: that the ensemble of these organs, which considered individually are sufficiently astonishing, together form a quite perfect and “logical” whole—what the Stoics indeed named the logos, to refer to the coherent ordering of the world as well as to verbal discourse—and a whole that is infinitely superior again to any human invention. From this point of view, we must humbly acknowledge that the creation of even the humblest being—a tiny ant, a mouse, or a frog—is still far beyond the reach of our most sophisticated scientific laboratories.

And what powers the thoracic pump is the diaphragm, the muscle that sits beneath the lungs in the shape of an umbrella. The diaphragm lifts during exhalations, which shrinks the lungs, then it drops back down to expand them during inhalations. This up-and-down movement occurs within us some 50,000 times a day.

If you drink neem juice everyday, all the parasites in your muscle memory and bio memory will be cleansed. Even when the sex hormones are pumped into your body, it just manifests an intense devotion, sweetest secret sacred sentiment. It does not trigger violent, lusty, uncontrollable, agitating, life-negative, suicidal, wild, self-destructive visualization or patterns.

I love you," Avery whispered and slid his hands under Kane's back, gripping his shoulders as he slowly began to move his hips, pulling almost out and slowly pushing back into that delicious tightness, moving faster and harder with each thrust. "I…love…you…" Kane whimpered. Avery gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, burying his face in the crook of Kane's neck. He wanted this to last, but the force of Kane's muscles gripping him felt too good. "You're finally mine." "And you're…finally…mine…" Kane declared, his hips rising to meet Avery's, thrust for thrust. "I've been yours since the first moment I laid eyes on you. Today was for you, baby." Avery gripped Kane's shoulders tighter, holding him in place as he drove himself deep into Kane's body. His knees dug into the mattress as he tried to get better leverage. He couldn't get close enough to Kane, couldn't get deep enough in the man he loved. He slammed his hips wildly against Kane, their loud grunts and moans filled the room, and the sound of their bodies slapping together added to the heat of the moment. Avery managed to slide his hand between their sweat-coated bodies and pump Kane's hard cock. His rhythm was erratic, he couldn't keep the pace, not with the way Kane's tight ass grasped him, but he wanted Kane to come before he did. His body strained, and he screwed his eyes shut, trying to prevent his release. He hung on until he felt Kane's cock twitch and hot jets of thick cream shot between his fingers and splattered on his chest. Kane shuddered and moaned beneath him, and his ass contracted around him. The smell and feel of Kane's release drove him insane. He grabbed Kane's thighs, pushed them back, lifting him higher, and plunged into him, pistoning his hips like a jack hammer. "Yes. So…good, baby." It wasn't a second more before his own release hit, and his cock jerked deep inside Kane's hot ass as he filled him with his come. "You're amazing," Avery roared as he slumped forward, falling on top of Kane.

Muscle X Pump 2400 The supplement creatine could help you. A creatine supplement can assist you in training harder and longer, and will help build muscle in combination with the right diet. Consult a physician before using supplements to ensure safety.

Dilemmas of the Angels: Flight" Before the angel there was something else— not this coffee shop next to a drug rehabilitation center filled with war veterans of the past, men and women strapped to their chairs, birds straining to rise from piles of feathers, bones, and blood. Drenched in sweat and a little shaky from too much caffeine, she takes flight, a shining white-winged trumpeter swan crossing open water, steam rising from the feathers' barbs. Below her, a cormorant, unfolding its black wings, explodes from the surface, and even fish, leaping from the oily sheen, glide for a moment, gills pumping in the poisonous atmosphere. Such longing. How large the muscles in our shoulders must be to lift our wings even a single time.

Oh fuck. Do it,” Green demanded. Ruxs pumped his dick into Green’s balls, and pushed until just the tip of his finger was inside his partner. “Fuuuck!” “Fuuuck!” They both moaned. Green hurriedly spit in his palm and wrapped it back around his dick, his hand flying up and down his shaft. His eyes were closed tight, his mouth slack as he moaned for, “More.” Ruxs pushed deeper and it felt like Green’s ass was trying to eat his finger. It was sucking on it, pulling, like it had a mind of its own and knew how to seek out its pleasure. Ruxs pulled out against the resistance, only to the tip, then gave in to it, gave it what it wanted. He pushed in more. So damn hot. “Want your fuckin’ thick cock in me so bad. Filling me until I can’t take anymore,” Green muttered. It was like he was talking to himself, but Ruxs heard him. Thought about his own cock, buried inside this burning confinement. Ruxs’ back muscles flexed, his hips thrust up, and the veins in his neck bulged. He was coming again. Emptying his hot come against Green’s balls. With one finger still pumping in and out of his partner, he took his other hand and reached between them, wanting… no needing, to feel his seed against Green’s skin. His eyes rolled back in his head, as he massaged his essence in deeper. He pumped Green’s tight ass and rolled his balls with the other hand at the same time, giving them a hard pull. Green clutched his shoulder, and slammed his hips forward. “Now, Mark! Fuck! I’m coming!” Ruxs

His muscles gradually relaxed, his eyes focused, and he realized that Prophet hadn’t come yet. The man remained hovering over him with the semi-patience of a predator, still hard inside of him. “Fuck.” “Yeah,” Prophet agreed, his voice husky. Tom’s only comfort was that Prophet was half out of control himself. Hanging on by a thread. Using the little strength he had left, he pushed his ass back, drawing Prophet’s cock deeper into his body. He was already overstimulated and that made the pain/pleasure line finer, which made him thrust back over and over again until Prophet hissed and pushed fingers through Tom’s hair again. “You like that, Proph?” “Yeah. Make me come, Tommy. Make me.” He took that challenge, worked as hard as he could, despite his position, to fuck himself on Prophet. Soon, he felt like he was going to come again before Prophet, although the man was close, so close. Three hard bucks back against him and Prophet lost it, nearly howled as he came in a pumping rush, tightening his grip painfully on Tom’s hair, which made Tom come again, a small orgasm but still one so close to the first that he felt like he could die happy. He

He was so pumped, jumping up and down on the spot, showing off the taut lean muscles in his quads and calves so different to the bulkiness of a lot of the other players. He bristled with energy, shaking out his arms, flicking his fingers. Flicking off invisible globules of testosterone so powerful she could feel their pull all the way up here. He dropped his head from side to side to work his traps, bending at the waist right in front of the box to execute a perfect hamstring stretch. Ooh la freaking la.

There was beauty in the human body, wonder in the blood vessels that pumped oxygenated liquid from the lungs to the heart, down to the extremities and up once more for trip after trip. I had long admired the curves and lines, the muscles and tendons that made us work as we did. But

Sloane pulled off Dex, gave his nipple a tweak, before he sat back on his heels. He slowly removed the dildo and replaced it with his cock. He buried himself inch by inch until he was settled against Dex’s ass. Taking hold of Dex’s legs, Sloane began to move, pumping into Dex, his groin slapping against Dex’s ass. The couch moved beneath them, but Dex held on tight as Sloane pounded into him. “Oh fuck! Oh God, oh God, oh fuck!” Dex cried out, his back arching up off the couch, his cock spurting come across his chest, with some landing on his neck and chin. Sloane bent over Dex, grabbing his shoulders, jerking Dex toward him as he drove into him. His hair fell over his face, sweat dripping down his neck as he fucked Dex wildly, his hips losing all rhythm. White heat spread through Sloane, exploding in front of his eyes as his orgasm barreled through him. His muscles tensed, and he pumped into Dex even harder as he spilled himself inside Dex’s hole. It seemed to go on forever, until Sloane was sore and collapsed on top of Dex. Sloane

rhythmic drums were pumping waves of emotion into both of them.  Her lusty eyes looked at him with a penetrating stare. Fionna’s naked breasts pressed against Dick as they came together to dance.  Dick faced Fionna and he held her tight.  His naked rippling muscles pushed against her firm aroused female flesh.  Dick danced with his wife Fionna. Then he grabbed the guitar to stroke a few chords of ecstasy.  Another man was pounding the drums while Fionna danced naked in front of the live audience.  Fionna made harmony with Dick as the throbbing beat made her explode with excitement and pleasure.  He touched her deep inside with his music.  He made love to her with his instrument.  Each stroke of the guitar was like a motion of erotic love. Dick made her feel as if her body was quivering inside. 

I’ll never be put in a box and lowered into the earth. I’ll never grow old and watch the veins on my hands begin to work their way out of my skin. … It was funny, now, the way all the inner workings of old people moved to the outside. Their muscles and their sinews got hard and ropy and hung on the outside of their skins. Their veins rose up, so where you hadn’t been able to see them before you could see them now. There were little blue ones that appeared on the forehead, jagged like a saw blade, where the skin had once been smooth. There were others like cords wrapping their way across the backs of hands, and along legs. And pulses turned up where they never had been before. The throat one now, you didn’t even know it was there, until one day you saw it, naked and exposed, pumping your blood for everybody to see. … I won’t be like that, Margaret thought. I won’t ever get old and I won’t ever die. I couldn’t. …

She felt time in the lean muscles in her thighs and rounded bottom when she pushed herself off the ground. She felt time in the way her arms and legs pumped when she walked into the river, bathed herself in the cool reflected surface of the dark pool under the waterfall. Josephine felt the possibility of time the night she watched the couple bend, release, break, and come back together on the trunk of the hundred-year-old tree. -The Girl with Dragonfly Wings

Her body was pinned to the carpet, and the cock burned her as it drove inside her, scraping her clitoris, plunging deeper into her vagina. I can’t stand it, I can’t bear it. Split me apart, yes. Laid waste. The orgasm flooded through her, her mind blank except for the raging flow of colors like waves as the rollicking sensation washed up through her belly, and her breast and her face, and down through her thighs, stiffening her calves, and through the muscles of her feet. She heard her own cries, but they were far away, unimportant, flowing out of her mouth in a divine release, her body pumping and helpless and stripped of will and mind. Again and again, it exploded in her, scalding her. Over and over, until all time, all guilt, all thought was burnt away.

Pliable muscles are long, soft, and capable of full muscle pump function.

Nothing on this earth had ever felt as good as being inside Chloe. He gritted his teeth, hanging on to the last remnants of sanity he possessed, as he tried to calm enough not to take her like some primal beast. The grip of her. The silky heat. He braced his elbow next to her head and their eyes locked. He was fucking Chloe. This was going to change them forever. He experienced a rush of panic that quickly dimmed as her thighs clasped his hips and she arched to meet him, gasping. Her hands fell to his waist, nails digging into his skin. He moved, gripped her wrists, and brought them up over her head. They were touching everywhere, the length of him sliding into her. Her breasts against his chest. Her inner muscles clamped around him and he cursed, thrusting inside her. He'd think later. Much, much later. He covered her mouth with his, his tongue sliding against hers. The air grew thick and humid. Tinged with a desperate, urgent lust. He ripped away and groaned. Pumped harder inside her. Her head pressed into the pillow and her neck arched. He held her wrists tighter, he bit her exposed throat, before soothing the skin with his tongue. She cried out. Her nails dug harder. Her thighs clenched. Their movements deepened. Quickened. He let her go, levered up, and rammed hard inside her, circling his hips. Grinding against her. Thrusting harder. Faster. Deeper. The bed frame banged its frantic beat against the wall. Over and over and over again. Her body rippled down the length of his cock. He jerked, losing what little control he had as he came in a loud shout, just as her orgasm rushed through her, milking him for everything he was worth, his vision dimming as intense pleasure tore through him in endless waves. He had no idea how long they went on like that. Pushing and pulsing together mindlessly, lost in the aftershocks of bone-deep satisfaction. He collapsed on top of her, burying his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling that special scent, unique to Chloe. He licked her skin. Tasting salt and sex.

Ever since that day I heard Grip’s heartbeat, I’ve been living by proxy, leaning on his heart to beat for mine. Grief handed me a heart of iron, and I rusted it with my tears, a muscle not made of flesh, not pumping blood. Ever since that day I’ve been a lament in limbo, no longer in the dark but not fully in the light, but here, now, Grip’s touch drags me into the light.

There was a sharp, smoky undertone to her scent now; adrenalin was pumping and she was beginning to tense up. My muscles were loose and warm and my heartbeat steady and strong.

It unfolded like a stop-motion film of a blooming rose: bright, beautiful and blindingly fast. And I wanted to laugh as I ducked and lunged; wanted to sing as I sank my fist wrist deep in an abdomen, whipped an elbow up, up, through a fragile jawbone, slid to the side of a thrusting arm and took it, turning it, leaving it, letting the body follow in an ungraceful arc. My heart was a tireless pump, arteries and airways wide. I was unstoppable lost in the joy of muscle and bone and breath. Axe kick to the central line of fuddled mass on the floor; disappointment at the sad splintering of ribs and not the hard crack of spine. Mewl and hail of body trying to sit; step and slam, hammer fist smearing the bone of his cheek. Latex slipping on sweat. Body render my hands folding to the floor, not moving. Nothing moving but me, feeling vast and brilliant with strength, immeasurable and immortal.

His weight lifted, and his hand reached between her thighs, stroking and opening her. She felt a nudge, an adjustment as he aligned himself, then steady pressure at her entrance. He was so hard, his flesh like steel, but he was gentle and controlled, taking his time. She gasped as her muscles gave way and the broad tip pushed inside, stretching her, keeping her open. He held still, his hands stroking her hips and bottom. All her nerves tingled and sparked in anticipation, knowing how good it was going to be. She pressed back against him, and he sheathed himself in a slow, wet plunge, all the way inside, deeper than she'd ever been filled before. He went in at just the right angle, pressing where she most wanted. Her body gripped him, or tried to, except the invasion was so thick, her muscles only fluttered and throbbed instead of clenching down. She felt almost as if she were at the brink of release. And to her astonishment... she was. She was about to tip over into a sea of mind-dissolving pleasure. "Wait," she heard Keir say through the clamor of her heartbeat. His hands were on her hips, keeping her close and tight. For some reason it aroused her intolerably, knowing he was trying to stop her from climaxing. She tried to drive herself back on the hard shaft inside her, unable to get enough of its even though she was stretched to the limit. Raising up on her forearms, she writhed and pushed desperately against him. Keir's husky laugh caressed her ears as he leaned over her. He held her hips snugly against his, allowing only a sense of motion, a subtle grinding that wasn't nearly enough. Very gently, he closed his teeth on the side of her neck and soothed it with his tongue. "Tell me how good it feels," he whispered. Merritt fought for the breath to reply. "It feels too good. I want to come... I want to spend... oh, please, Keir..." "Spend," he repeated, and smiled against her shoulder. "I like that word for it." He withdrew just an inch, and rolled his hips upward. "Aye, I want your pleasure. Spend it all on me." She sobbed and squirmed, able to feel the motion of him deep in her belly, but it wasn't enough. "Harder. Please." The rhythmic drives grew longer, more aggressive. "No one else could ever feel this good to me," he said. "No other woman in the world. Only you." He reached beneath her to cup the round weights of her breasts, and began to pinch and tug at her nipples. Not sharply but not softly, the little flashes of discomfort somehow magnifying her pleasure. His hand slid down her front and between her thighs, finding the taut peak of her sex. The gently massaging fingers, the steady pumping, set off an explosion of pleasure that spread to every part of her body and kept unfolding and renewing itself. The release was so powerful, it left her dazed and too weak to move. She was only vaguely aware of Keir's climax, the quiet growl he pressed against her skin, the rough shudders that ran though him.

The heart is a muscle that pumps blood, not sentimentality! I'll do what I please!

The heart is a muscle that pumps blood, not sentimentality!

Blood vessels lose their elasticity, making the heart work harder to pump blood around the body Muscles, joints and tendons lose strength and flexibility Testosterone production plummets The metabolism slows down

Before I was turned, my human body sustained itself, albeit only for days. Something in me must have kept my heart beating and the muscles in my ribs tightening and relaxing, letting air into and out of my lungs. It's completely possible that that human power is still there, only dormant. Perhaps there is actually a lot of human potential in me. Last night, as my body had been warmed by Ben, I'd felt alive in a way I've never felt before. My heart had woken up and was beating faster than the demon could ever pump it; I'd felt a pleasure better and more intense than eating; I'd felt Ben's blood coursing through his veins but felt no desire to drink it, and only gratitude that he was alive and with me. It had been the duck that had repelled Ben---death had, essentially, repelled him: the remnants of my last meal. If I deny myself blood, perhaps the human side of me will get stronger until I can consume and live off human food, and I'll attract humans to me too, and a human life for myself, and human love.

She points to two devices in the center of the dark space. The contraptions are silver and remind me of the suits knights wore in past centuries. The armor hangs suspended between two metal wires. “They are concentraction machines.” I slide my body into the machine. Dry gel hugs my feet, my legs, my torso and arms and neck, till only my head is free. The machine is built to resist my movements, yet it responds even to the tiniest stimuli. The idea of building muscle is to exercise it, which is nothing more than using the muscle intensely enough to create microscopic tears in the tissue fiber. This is the pain one feels in the days after an intense workout—torn tissue—not lactic acid. When the muscle repairs the tears, it builds on itself. This is the process the concentraction machine is built to facilitate. It is the devil’s own invention. Harmony slides the device’s faceplate over my eyes. My body is still in the gym, but I see myself moving across the rugged landscape of Mars. I’m running, pumping my legs against the concentraction machine’s resistance, which increases according to Harmony’s mood or the location of the simulation. Sometimes I venture to the jungles of Earth, where I race panthers through the underbrush, or I take to the pocked surface of Luna before it was populated. But always I return home to Mars to run across its red soil and jump over its violent ravines. Harmony sometimes accompanies me in the other machine so I have someone to race.

The lymphatic system is a network of vessels, nodes, and organs that removes waste products and toxins from our bodies, and it is part of your immune system, which protects you against infection and disease. This system relies on passive circulation. In other words, unlike the blood vessels (which require a heart to pump the blood around the body), there is no pump for the lymph system. The lymph system relies on your muscles tightening and relaxing around the lymph vessels to move the lymph, a process called lymph drainage. To keep this system working well, it is important to be using your muscles regularly—another benefit of WBV!

Before I could give it too much thought, my attention snagged on Darius as he charged across the pitch like a stampeding rhino, tackling a member of the other team so hard that I heard something crack. My breath caught in my throat as the Starlight player groaned on the ground while Darius snatched the ball from him and launched it across the pitch with the force of a torpedo. A timer was counting down as the Starlight player failed to get up and Darius raced away from him without a backwards glance. I knew it was part of the game but it was insanely brutal. Although if I was being totally honest, watching all of them brawl like that and seeing the power they exuded even while they were losing, was totally hot too. Darius’s muscles pumped fiercely as he sprinted away from me and I found myself staring at his legs which were splattered with mud and somehow looked even better because of it. “Olef you’re Out!” Prestos yelled but the Starlight player still didn’t move. A pair of medics jogged onto the pitch and gave him a quick inspection. “Broken back!” one of them yelled. “This is a long heal, call in a sub once his time out is up.” My lips parted, I stared on in shock and I couldn’t quite believe what I’d heard. “Did he just say that Darius broke that guy’s back?” I asked in disbelief. “That’s the risk you take when you play,” Orion said darkly as he walked past me to regain his seat. Darcy raised her eyebrows at me and I returned my gaze to the match just as Geraldine tore up the pitch with a rumble of writhing earth magic, knocking the Starlight Waterguard off of her feet and forcing her to drop the ball. A huge -5 flashed into place on the Starlight scoreboard and I leapt from my seat in excitement to applaud my friend. “Go Geraldine!” I screamed and she flashed me a smile as she somehow managed to hear me. Seth almost missed the ball as it was thrown to him next while he was distracted by scratching his head. He managed to wrangle it with a gust of air magic and started sprinting for the Pit as the timer above us ticked down to ten seconds. The crowd started counting down, “Nine! Eight! Seven-” Seth leapt into the air, propelling himself forward with his magic but the two air Elementals on the opposing team threw their own magic up to counter him. “Three! Two-” Seth gritted his teeth as he threw even more power into his propulsion but he was out of time. The ball in his arms exploded in a blast of pure air which snapped his head back and sent him tumbling out of the sky. He hit the ground hard as the crowd oooohed in disappointment. For three whole seconds my heart didn’t beat at all as I stared at his prone body in the mud, wondering if he was dead. Seth coughed, pushing himself into a sitting position just as Darius appeared to offer him a hand up. He shook his head to clear it and my eyebrows rose all the way into my hairline. “This game is crazy,” Darcy breathed, her eyes wide with the thrill of it. “I think I love it,” I agreed. (tory)

My heart is pumping ferociously, and I’ve never been so hyperaware that the heart is a muscle because it feels like it’s on the verge of snapping.

Stress is a survival mechanism that serves an obvious evolutionary function. When we are anxious, our autonomic nervous system releases a cascade of chemicals (stress hormones), which give our body instructions on how to prepare to face danger. Our heart beats faster to pump more blood to the muscles, and our breathing becomes heavier to provide us with more oxygen. Muscles tense up to protect us from injury and to facilitate fighting or running. Sweating helps cool the body down. Our attention increases, and our reflexes become sharper, keeping us alert. Stress acts as motivation, helping us to focus on our goals and rise to meet our challenges, whether those involve studying for an exam, flying a fighter jet or scoring that match-winning goal. In short, stress serves a purpose. The problem, however, is that beyond certain threshold stress ceases to be useful.

This was stress cardiomyopathy, also called “broken heart syndrome.” First described by the Japanese in 1990, this disease occurs when an emotional trauma causes the brain to release high doses of stress hormones. This hormonal blast paralyzes the muscle cells of the heart, preventing them from working to pump the blood. Typically only one section of the heart is spared this devastating paralysis—the part closest to the aorta so that with each heartbeat only the upper portion contracts and the heart looks like a narrow-necked vase. The Japanese called it takotsubo, after a type of trap that is used to capture octopus and has the same vase-like shape. For reasons that no one understands, this mostly affects postmenopausal women. There is no cure. There is no clot to bust, no bugs to kill. Like its metaphorical counterpart, the only treatment is support and the passage of time. The initial burst of hormones subsides and the patient must be kept alive until the heart recovers. For those who survive long enough to reach the hospital, the prognosis is good.

Hear me, healer. I have need that you hear me. Your trouble must be great that you reach out to those you do not trust. The voice was startling clear in his head; the answer came so quickly that Jacques felt a surge of triumph. He was much stronger, so much more capable than he had been even the day before. Gregori had given him blood; it flowed in his veins, pumped through his heart, restored damaged muscle and tissue. He had forgotten how easily one could communicate. I heard Byron scream. The betrayer has taken him. He must turn him over to the humans before dawn. Dawn approaches now, Jacques. Gregori sounded calm, undisturbed by even such news as this. Then we must find him. Do any of you have the ability to track Byron? Has he exchanged blood with any of you? Only you made a pact with him. If he turned and was unable to seek the dawn himself, he wanted you to hunt him, and vice versa. You did not want your brother or me to have the responsibility for your destruction.