Nick Bottom Quotes

Nick? Any idea?" Nick coughs too. "Nope. No idea at all." Wilbur gives him a stern look. "So what was the point in doing all the Jane Austen stuff if she doesn't know about it, Poodle-bottom?

He didn't want the respect of people who weren’t worth wiping his nose on—people who weren't worth the spatout gum attached to the bottom of his worn-out shoes. The only respect he wanted was from himself and the people who really mattered in his life. The people who really loved and cared about him.

Take this fucking thing off me!" he demanded. "Good morning to you too, Nick," Damian said mildly. He unlocked the door without haste and went to his office, Nick dogging his every footstep. "Did you --?" "I didn't touch it or myself. Take it off right now!" Nick said angrily. Damian sat down and motioned Nick closer. "We're going to have to have a talk about topping from the bottom. I don't allow that, pet.

He was now beginning to wonder whether the jigsaw was the correct metaphor for relationships between me and women after all. It didn't take account of the sheer stubbornness of human beings, their determination to affix themselves to another even if they didn't fit. They didn't care about jutting off at weird angles, and they didn't care about phone booths and Mary, Queen of Scots. They were motivated not by seamless and sensible matching, but by eyes, mouths, smiles, minds, breasts and chests and bottoms, wit, kindness, charm, romantic history and all sorts of other things that made straight edges impossible to achieve.

We were little animals, which is not to imply that by the end of the week we were tearing our tank tops off; just that, metaphorically speaking, we had begun to sniff each other's bottoms, and we did not find the odor entirely repellent.

Oh my God! Issie's a bunny, isn't she? Do they have those? Do they have werebunnies?" "Big leap there,Zare." Nick cracks up. He shakes with laughter. I pout. "She'd be a good bunny." "True.But it's not her.It's Devyn." "Devyn? Devyn is cute and normal." He scrapes at the bottom of the hash pan. His voice comes out dead calm. "He's an eagle." "Oh.Okay.I am not going to freak out about this, but let me say that I am surprised." "Because he's in a wheelchair?" "No! Because he's a bird.

He obliterates things, she realized. He shatters them. They think they've won because he's a bit vague and he waffles, but that only goes so far. It's his shell, like a tortoise, if a tortoise was soft on the outside and dangerous on the inside. That's how the Time War ended: he got to the bottom of his patience, and he took two entire civilisations out of the universe and lock them away, and one of them was his own. That's how sharp his sense of obligation is. And he lives like that. He does it all the time.

[excerpt] The usual I say. Essence. Spirit. Medicine. A taste. I say top shelf. Straight up. A shot. A sip. A nip. I say another round. I say brace yourself. Lift a few. Hoist a few. Work the elbow. Bottoms up. Belly up. Set ‘em up. What’ll it be. Name your poison. I say same again. I say all around. I say my good man. I say my drinking buddy. I say git that in ya. Then a quick one. Then a nightcap. Then throw one back. Then knock one down. Fast & furious I say. Could savage a drink I say. Chug. Chug-a-lug. Gulp. Sauce. Mother’s milk. Everclear. Moonshine. White lightning. Firewater. Hootch. Relief. Now you’re talking I say. Live a little I say. Drain it I say. Kill it I say. Feeling it I say. Wobbly. Breakfast of champions I say. I say candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. I say Houston, we have a drinking problem. I say the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. I say god only knows what I’d be without you. I say thirsty. I say parched. I say wet my whistle. Dying of thirst. Lap it up. Hook me up. Watering hole. Knock a few back. Pound a few down. My office. Out with the boys I say. Unwind I say. Nurse one I say. Apply myself I say. Toasted. Glow. A cold one a tall one a frosty I say. One for the road I say. Two-fisted I say. Never trust a man who doesn’t drink I say. Drink any man under the table I say. Then a binge then a spree then a jag then a bout. Coming home on all fours. Could use a drink I say. A shot of confidence I say. Steady my nerves I say. Drown my sorrows. I say kill for a drink. I say keep ‘em comin’. I say a stiff one. Drink deep drink hard hit the bottle. Two sheets to the wind then. Knackered then. Under the influence then. Half in the bag then. Out of my skull I say. Liquored up. Rip-roaring. Slammed. Fucking jacked. The booze talking. The room spinning. Feeling no pain. Buzzed. Giddy. Silly. Impaired. Intoxicated. Stewed. Juiced. Plotzed. Inebriated. Laminated. Swimming. Elated. Exalted. Debauched. Rock on. Drunk on. Bring it on. Pissed. Then bleary. Then bloodshot. Glassy-eyed. Red-nosed. Dizzy then. Groggy. On a bender I say. On a spree. I say off the wagon. I say on a slip. I say the drink. I say the bottle. I say drinkie-poo. A drink a drunk a drunkard. Swill. Swig. Shitfaced. Fucked up. Stupefied. Incapacitated. Raging. Seeing double. Shitty. Take the edge off I say. That’s better I say. Loaded I say. Wasted. Off my ass. Befuddled. Reeling. Tanked. Punch-drunk. Mean drunk. Maintenance drunk. Sloppy drunk happy drunk weepy drunk blind drunk dead drunk. Serious drinker. Hard drinker. Lush. Drink like a fish. Boozer. Booze hound. Alkie. Sponge. Then muddled. Then woozy. Then clouded. What day is it? Do you know me? Have you seen me? When did I start? Did I ever stop? Slurring. Reeling. Staggering. Overserved they say. Drunk as a skunk they say. Falling down drunk. Crawling down drunk. Drunk & disorderly. I say high tolerance. I say high capacity. They say protective custody. Blitzed. Shattered. Zonked. Annihilated. Blotto. Smashed. Soaked. Screwed. Pickled. Bombed. Stiff. Frazzled. Blasted. Plastered. Hammered. Tore up. Ripped up. Destroyed. Whittled. Plowed. Overcome. Overtaken. Comatose. Dead to the world. The old K.O. The horrors I say. The heebie-jeebies I say. The beast I say. The dt’s. B’jesus & pink elephants. A mindbender. Hittin’ it kinda hard they say. Go easy they say. Last call they say. Quitting time they say. They say shut off. They say dry out. Pass out. Lights out. Blackout. The bottom. The walking wounded. Cross-eyed & painless. Gone to the world. Gone. Gonzo. Wrecked. Sleep it off. Wake up on the floor. End up in the gutter. Off the stuff. Dry. Dry heaves. Gag. White knuckle. Lightweight I say. Hair of the dog I say. Eye-opener I say. A drop I say. A slug. A taste. A swallow. Down the hatch I say. I wouldn’t say no I say. I say whatever he’s having. I say next one’s on me. I say bottoms up. Put it on my tab. I say one more. I say same again

fired up my e-reader to get lost in Easter Lust. It’s a story about a bunny rabbit shifter who meets a chicken shifter. They come together, fall in love, and then, tragically, discover they’re both submissive bottoms.

This, really, is the bottom line, the chief attraction of the opposite sex for all of us, old and young, men and women: we need someone to save us from the sympathetic smiles in the Sunday-night cinema queue, someone who can stop us from falling down into the pit where the permanently single live with their mums and dads. I’m not going back there again; I’d rather stay in for the rest of my life than attract that kind of attention.

In the brush at the bottom of Master Wu’s garden, something snuffles. I do not know whether ninjas snuffle. It seems to me that a very subtle sort of ninja might snuffle so as to make you think he was a neighbourhood dog, or just to let you know he was there and yet leave you guessing. On the other hand, maybe a ninja would regard this kind of trick as amateurish.

A Complete List of Lily's Nicknames Silly Little Lil Monkey Bunny Bunny Rebbit Mousse Tiny Mouse Goose Silly Goose Mongoose Monster Monster.com Peanut Penuche Pinochle Sweet Pea Walnut Walnut Brian Copper Bottom Crazy Baby Puppy Guppy Old Lady Crank Cranky Cranky Pants Squeaky Squeaky Frome Tiger Dingbat Mush Mushy Face Hipster Slinkster Slinky Bean Dog

But later, just as we're turning the corner into my road, and I'm beginning to panic about the pain and difficulty of the impending conversation, I see a woman on her own, Saturday-night-smart, off to meet somebody somewhere, friends, or a lover. And when I was living with Laura, I missed... what? Maybe I missed somebody traveling on a bus or tube or cab, *going out of her way*, to meet me, maybe dressed up a little, wearing more makeup than usual, maybe even slightly nervous; when I was younger, the knowledge that I was responsible for any of this, even the bus ride, made me feel pathetically grateful. When you're with someone permanently, you don't get that: if Laura wanted to see me, she only had to turn her head, or walk from the bathroom to the bedroom, and she never bothered to dress up for the trip. And when she came home, she came home because she lived in my flat, not because we were lovers, and when we went out, she sometimes dressed up and sometimes didn't, depending on where we were going, but again, it was nothing whatsoever to do with me. Anyway, all this is by way of saying that the woman I saw out of the cab window inspired me and consoled me, momentarily: maybe I am not too old to provoke a trip from one part of London to another, and if I ever do have another date, and I arrange to meet that date in, say, Islington, and she has to come all the way from Stoke Newington, a journey of some three to four miles, I will thank her from the bottom of my wretched thirty-five-year-old heart.

It wasn’t just Shoyo or McNab or Texarkana; it was America, lying here like a huge discarded tin can with a few forgotten peas rolling around in the bottom. And beyond America was the whole world, and thinking of that made Nick feel so dizzy and sick that he had to give up.

Just like the beautiful tea bowls that Japanese artisans purposefully nick or chip at the bottom as a quiet reminder that there is no such thing as perfection, so was Robuchon flawed with his frustration and his temper. His food was divine, but the chef was a man with all of the nicks and chips that make us human.

I suppose you can’t help who you fancy, can you? And that was the bottom line, I fancied Nick. Fancied him more than I’d fancied anyone in years, and somehow, when someone gives you that tingly feeling in the pit of your stomach, you stop thinking about the rights and wrongs, the shoulds and should nots, and you just go with it.

Then it was horn time. Time for the big solo. Sonny lifted the trumpet - One! Two! - He got it into sight - Three! We all stopped dead. I mean we stopped. That wasn't Sonny's horn. This one was dented-in and beat-up and the tip-end was nicked. It didn't shine, not a bit. Lux leaned over-you could have fit a coffee cup into his mouth. "Jesus God," he said. "Am I seeing right?" I looked close and said: "Man, I hope not." But why kid? We'd seen that trumpet a million times. It was Spoof's. Rose-Ann was trembling. Just like me, she remembered how we'd buried the horn with Spoof. And she remembered how quiet it had been in Sonny's room last night... I started to think real hophead thoughts, like - where did Sonny get hold of a shovel that late? and how could he expect a horn to play that's been under the ground for two years? and - That blast got into our ears like long knives. Spoof's own trademark! Sonny looked caught, like he didn't know what to do at first, like he was hypnotized, scared, almighty scared. But as the sound came out, rolling out, sharp and clean and clear - new-trumpet sound - his expression changed. His eyes changed: they danced a little and opened wide. Then he closed them, and blew that horn. Lord God of the Fishes, how he blew it! How he loved it and caressed it and pushed it up, higher and higher and higher. High C? Bottom of the barrel. He took off, and he walked all over the rules and stamped them flat. The melody got lost, first off. Everything got lost, then, while that horn flew. It wasn't only jazz; it was the heart of jazz, and the insides, pulled out with the roots and held up for everybody to see; it was blues that told the story of all the lonely cats and all the ugly whores who ever lived, blues that spoke up for the loser lamping sunshine out of iron-gray bars and every hop head hooked and gone, for the bindlestiffs and the city slicers, for the country boys in Georgia shacks and the High Yellow hipsters in Chicago slums and the bootblacks on the corners and the fruits in New Orleans, a blues that spoke for all the lonely, sad and anxious downers who could never speak themselves... And then, when it had said all this, it stopped and there was a quiet so quiet that Sonny could have shouted: 'It's okay, Spoof. It's all right now. You get it said, all of it - I'll help you. God, Spoof, you showed me how, you planned it - I'll do my best!' And he laid back his head and fastened the horn and pulled in air and blew some more. Not sad, now, not blues - but not anything else you could call by a name. Except... jazz. It was Jazz. Hate blew out of that horn, then. Hate and fury and mad and fight, like screams and snarls, like little razors shooting at you, millions of them, cutting, cutting deep... And Sonny only stopping to wipe his lip and whisper in the silent room full of people: 'You're saying it, Spoof! You are!' God Almighty Himself must have heard that trumpet, then; slapping and hitting and hurting with notes that don't exist and never existed. Man! Life took a real beating! Life got groined and sliced and belly-punched and the horn, it didn't stop until everything had all spilled out, every bit of the hate and mad that's built up in a man's heart. ("Black Country")

When he looks up, his sapphire-black eyes and kiss-swollen lips pull me in so wholly I feel like I’m falling into all that he is and all we’ll become. He sinks his teeth deep into his bottom lip and shakes his head in wonder. “You and me, B,” he murmurs. He trails light kisses along my jaw between his words. “We can make things better. Make it good. Together.” I tip my head against the door and think of forever.

Nick grinned, swooping in for another kiss and then leaning back and scruffing his hair up. “Harriet Manners, I’m about to give you six stamps. Then I’m going to write something on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope with your address on it.” “OK …” “Then I’m going to put the envelope on the floor and spin us as fast as I can. As soon as either of us manage to stick a stamp on it, I’m going to race to the postbox and post it unless you can catch me first. If you win, you can read it.” Nick was obviously faster than me, but he didn’t know where the nearest postbox was. “Deal,” I agreed, yawning and rubbing my eyes. “But why six stamps?” “Just wait and see.” A few seconds later, I understood. As we spun in circles with our hands stretched out, one of my stamps got stuck to the ground at least a metre away from the envelope. Another ended up on a daisy. A third somehow got stuck to the roundabout. One of Nick’s ended up on his nose. And every time we both missed, we laughed harder and harder and our kisses got dizzier and dizzier until the whole world was a giggling, kissing, spinning blur. Finally, when we both had one stamp left, I stopped giggling. I had to win this. So I swallowed, wiped my eyes and took a few deep breaths. Then I reached out my hand. “Too late!” Nick yelled as I opened my eyes again. “Got it, Manners!” And he jumped off the still-spinning roundabout with the envelope held high over his head. So I promptly leapt off too. Straight into a bush. Thanks to a destabilised vestibular system – which is the upper portion of the inner ear – the ground wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Nick, in the meantime, had ended up flat on his back on the grass next to me. With a small shout I leant down and kissed him hard on the lips. “HA!” I shouted, grabbing the envelope off him and trying to rip it open. “I don’t think so,” he grinned, jumping up and wrapping one arm round my waist while he retrieved it again. Then he started running in a zigzag towards the postbox. A few seconds later, I wobbled after him. And we stumbled wonkily down the road, giggling and pulling at each other’s T-shirts and hanging on to tree trunks and kissing as we each fought for the prize. Finally, he picked me up and, without any effort, popped me on top of a high wall. Like Humpty Dumpty. Or some kind of really unathletic cat. “Hey!” I shouted as he whipped the envelope out of my hands and started sprinting towards the postbox at the bottom of the road. “That’s not fair!” “Course it is,” he shouted back. “All’s fair in love and war.” And Nick kissed the envelope then put it in the postbox with a flourish. I had to wait three days. Three days of lingering by the front door. Three days of lifting up the doormat, just in case it had accidentally slipped under there. Finally, the letter arrived: crumpled and stained with grass. Ha. Told you I was faster. LBxx

So there’s this annual dance in a couple of weeks.” “The Winter Ball,” I interrupt. “There have been signs up everywhere.” “You want to go?” I think about it for a half second. “Will you dress up?” He nods. I move forward so my hands are flat on the towel and my face is much closer to his face. Something inside my chest warms up like a nice kind of heartburn and I say, “And will we slow dance?” He nods again. His bottom lip turns in toward his mouth for a second, just disappears and then comes back. Stretching out my spine so my lips are nearly touching his I say, “And will you press yourself against me and we’ll move really close together and then your hand will stretch out across the back of my head and your fingers will wrap into my hair and then . . .” He doesn’t nod. He just tilts his head down, moves his fingers into my hair, and his lips touch mine in a forever kiss. His lips are soft and hard all at once. His breath mixes with my breath. Everything inside of me whooshes out.

THREE BIG MISTAKES. But, of course, it’s never that simple. Before we even got to the third one, we were down and done. As much as our willingness to believe in the constant rise felled us, as much as our eagerness to conquer risk opened us up to more risk, as much as Greenspan stood by as Wall Street turned itself into Las Vegas, there was also Greece, and Iceland, and Nick Leeson, who took down Barings, and Brian Hunter, who tanked Amaranth, and Jérôme Kerviel and every other rogue trader who thought he—and it was always a he—could reverse his gut-churning, self-induced free fall with one swift, lucky strike; it was rising oil prices, global inflation, easy credit, the cowardice of Moody’s, the growing chasm of income inequality, the dot com boom and bust, the Fed’s rejection of regulation, the acceptance of “too big to fail,” the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the feast of subprime debt; it was Clinton and Bush the second and senators vacationing with banking industry lobbyists, the Kobe earthquake, an infatuation with financial innovation, the forgettable Hank Paulson, the delicious hubris of ten, twenty, thirty times leverage, and, at the bottom of it, our own vicious, lingering self-doubt. Or was it our own willful, unbridled self-delusion? Doubt vs. delusion. The flip sides of our last lucky coin. We toss it in the fountain and pray.

And were you immediately taken with Charlotte, when you found her?" "Who wouldn't be?" Gentry parried with a bland smile. He drew a slow circle on Lottie's palm, stroking the insides of her fingers, brushed his thumb over the delicate veins of her wrist. The subtle exploration made her feel hot and breathless, her entire being focused on the fingertip that feathered along the tender flesh of her upper palm. Most disconcerting of all was the realization that Gentry didn't even know what he was doing. He fiddled lazily with her hand and talked with Sophia, while the chocolate service was brought to the parlor and set out on the table. "Isn't it charming?" Sophia asked, indicating the flowered porcelain service with a flourish. She picked up the tall, narrow pot and poured a dark, fragrant liquid into one of the small cups, filling the bottom third. "Most people use cocoa powder, but the best results are obtained by mixing the cream with chocolate liquor." Expertly she stirred a generous spoonful of sugar into the steaming liquid. "Not liquor as in wine or spirits, mind you. Chocolate liquor is pressed from the meat of the beans, after they have been roasted and hulled." "It smells quite lovely," Lottie commented, her breath catching as Gentry's fingertip investigated the plump softness at the base of her thumb. Sophia turned her attention to preparing the other cups. "Yes, and the flavor is divine. I much prefer chocolate to coffee in the morning." "Is it a st-stimulant, then?" Lottie asked, finally managing to jerk her hand away from Gentry. Deprived of his plaything, he gave her a questioning glance. "Yes, of a sort," Sophia replied, pouring a generous amount of cream into the sweetened chocolate liquor. She stirred the cups with a tiny silver spoon. "Although it is not quite as animating as coffee, chocolate is uplifting in its own way." She winked at Lottie. "Some even claim that chocolate rouses the amorous instincts." "How interesting," Lottie said, doing her best to ignore Gentry as she accepted her cup. Inhaling the rich fumes appreciatively, she took a tiny sip of the shiny, dark liquid. The robust sweetness slid along her tongue and tickled the back of her throat. Sophia laughed in delight at Lottie's expression. "You like it, I see. Good- now I have found an inducement to make you visit often." Lottie nodded as she continued to drink. By the time she reached the bottom of the cup, her head was swimming, and her nerves were tingling from the mixture of heat and sugar. Gentry set his cup aside after a swallow or two. "Too rich for my taste, Sophia, although I compliment your skill in preparing it. Besides, my amorous instincts need no encouragement." He smiled as the statement caused Lottie to choke on the last few drops of chocolate.

[[ ]] K-tactics. The bacterial or xenogenetic diagram is not restricted to the microbial scale. Macrobacterial assemblages collapse generational hierarchies of reproductive wisdom into lateral networks of replicator experimentation. There is no true biological primitiveness – all extant bio-systems being equally evolved – so there is no true ignorance. It is only the accumulative-gerontocratic model of learning that depicts synchronic connectivity deficiency as diachronic underdevelopment. Foucault delineates the contours of power as a strategy without a subject: ROM locking learning in a box. Its enemy is a tactics without a strategy, replacing the politico-territorial imagery of conquest and resistance with nomad-micromilitary sabotage and evasion, reinforcing intelligence. All political institutions are cyberian military targets. Take universities, for instance. Learning surrenders control to the future, threatening established power. It is vigorously suppressed by all political structures, which replace it with a docilizing and conformist education, reproducing privilege as wisdom. Schools are social devices whose specific function is to incapacitate learning, and universities are employed to legitimate schooling through perpetual reconstitution of global social memory. The meltdown of metropolitan education systems in the near future is accompanied by a quasi-punctual bottom-up takeover of academic institutions, precipitating their mutation into amnesiac cataspace-exploration zones and bases manufacturing cyberian soft-weaponry. To be continued.

So Seals throws down his napkin and pushes back his chair and rises and demands to know who did it. Christ. We’re going to get to the bottom of this, he says. And then he began to point out possible culprits and to demand that they own up. It was you, wasnt it? Jesus. I tried to hiss him down. By now several large and unruly-looking chaps had gotten to their feet. The manager arrived just in the nick and we got Seals seated but he continued to mutter and they rose all over again. Do you know what I find particularly galling, he told them. It’s having to share the women with you lot. To listen to you fuckwits holding forth and to see some lissome young thing leaning forward breathlessly with that barely contained frisson with which we are all familiar the better to inhale without stint an absolute plaguebreath of bilge and bullshit as if it were the word of the prophets. It’s painful but still I suppose one has to extend a certain latitude to the little dears. They’ve so little time in which to parlay that pussy into something of substance. But it nettles. That you knucklewalkers should even be allowed to contemplate the sacred grotto as you drool and grunt and wank. Let alone actually reproduce. Well the hell with it. A pox upon you. You’re a pack of mudheaded bigots who loathe excellence on principle and though one might cordially wish you all in hell still you wont go. You and your nauseating get. Granted, if everyone I wished in hell were actually there they’d have to send to Newcastle for supplementary fuel. I’ve made ten thousand concessions to your ratfuck culture and you’ve yet to make the first to mine. It only remains for you to hold your cups to my gaping throat and toast one another’s health with my heart’s blood. Ah well, Squire, I tell you everything and you

I'm completely out of control, and I can hear the beginnings of the chant, get/out/, but now that I'm not being touched maybe I can master it and I shut the world out: separating an orange into skinless sections. Peel it, but not with your fingers. Level off the top and bottom. Set it on the board. Remove the peel in strips with a paring knife, pushing down from the top to bottom with slow, curved strokes. Nick off all the white parts. Cup the cool, wet skinless fruit in your hand. Take care. Don't rush. Press the blade into the flesh of the orange, sink it down, a segment at a time, along the left side of the skin and then the right. Left and right. Left and right. As close as you can to the membrane. Press to the center with your knife, level and easy. If you cut right, the segment will fall out onto the board, triangular, gleaming. Left and right. Left and right. If you rush you'll cut yourself. Take care with it. Cut right along the seam, right where the sweet fruit meets the tough membrane. Let and right. Left and right. As close as you can.

independent of the normal planning and budgeting processes, to allow bottom-up ideas to flourish. “No one has ever before brought together such a global and diverse set of business thought leaders on this scale to discuss the most pressing issues and opportunities of our age,” says Nick Donofrio, IBM’s executive vice president of innovation and technology. “We have companies literally knocking at the door and saying, ‘Give us your best and brightest ideas, and let’s work together to make them a reality.’ It’s a golden opportunity to create entirely new markets and partnerships.

Jack scowled blackly as Nick came up behind her. He couldn’t see what was happening through the crowd, but he noted that a smile grew on Nick’s face just as Mel’s chin rose up, her eyes grew round and startled and she threw a panicked look in Jack’s direction. Jack pushed himself off the bar and was making fast tracks to the other side when Mel reacted. Mel felt a hand run over her bottom and inch between her legs. She was stunned for a moment, disbelieving. Then her instincts kicked in and shifted her beer to her other hand, threw an elbow back into his gut, brought that same elbow up under his chin, swept his legs out from under him with one booted foot, lifting him off his feet to send him crashing to the floor, flat on his back. She put her foot on his chest and glared into his eyes. “Don’t you ever try anything like that again!” All this without spilling a drop of her beer. Jack froze at the end of the bar. Whoa, he thought. Damn. A second passed. Then Mel looked around the now silent room in some embarrassment. Everyone was shocked and staring. “Oh!” she said, but her foot still held Nick on his back. Nick who, it seemed, couldn’t draw a breath, just lay there, stunned. She removed her foot. “Oh…” she said. A laugh broke out of the crowd. Someone clapped. A woman yelped approvingly. Mel backed away somewhat sheepishly. She ended up at the bar, right in front of Jack. Right where she felt safest. Jack put a hand on her shoulder and glared in Nick’s direction. *

Forgive me, Sophia. I didn’t mean to offend you. I was just coming over to apologize for hurting you during the, er, ceremony.” “It’s all right.” She looked down at the ground, feeling awkward all over again when she remembered the strange sensations that had flooded her body during the Luck Kiss. “No, it’s not. I drew your blood and for that I must beg your forgiveness.” He sounded formal again, just as he had when he was talking to the priestess. “The gift of blood must be freely given—never taken or forced.” “The…the gift of blood?” She looked up at him uncertainly. “Is that some kind of Kindred ceremony?” He looked uncomfortable. “It is part of the mating ritual of the Blood Kindred. And since you have made it abundantly clear you have no wish to be called as a bride, I shouldn’t have taken your blood.” “So if you did call a bride that would be part of it—of your relationship, I mean? You’d always be…biting her?” She couldn’t help looking at his fangs again and feeling glad they were still small. “Only when we made love,” Sylvan assured her as though that made it all right. Sophie felt her stomach do a slow forward flip but she tried not to show her dismay. “That’s…uh interesting.” “And off the point.” Sylvan frowned, as though irritated with himself. “What I’m trying to say is, please accept my apologies and my best wishes for your health and happiness. I truly did not mean to bite you.” “It’s…I know it was an accident but…” She wanted to ask him more. Wanted to know why his fangs had grown when he kissed her. It wasn’t just his fangs that grew, whispered a little voice in her head and a wave of embarrassment swept over her. “Yes?” Sylvan looked at her earnestly but she shook her head. “It’s okay,” she mumbled, not meeting his eyes. “Seriously, I’m fine. Let’s just…leave it at that.” “I appreciate your willingness to put the incident behind us but I need to examine the wound.” “Why?” Sophie asked. “I know you’re a doctor…er medic but—” “I need to know how serious the injury I inflicted was.” He looked so stern that she tilted her chin up to allow the examination. “It’s not bad at all. See?” she pointed at her bottom lip which, to tell the truth, was still pretty sore. Sylvan cupped her cheek in one hand and leaned forward, studying her hurt lip. For some reason Sophie’s face got hot at the gentle touch and she had to close her eyes. What is he looking for? What’s taking so long? She wished he would hurry up and finish the examination. His hand was so warm and the feel of his skin on hers made her nervous. “Is…is everything all right?” she asked at last. “It appears to be.” He sounded cautiously relieved. “I nicked you pretty badly but I don’t think you got any of my essence.” “Your what?” She opened her eyes to see him looking at her intently. Blushing, she looked quickly away. “My essence. It’s…never mind. You should recover normally.” His voice dropped. “I would offer to heal it for you but I don’t think you’d care for my method of healing.” “What do you mean?

Jamie considered herself outside that, but there was a definite feeling of distrust that underpinned every conversation, and a palpable sense of contempt that beat in the background.  She put it out of her mind and pressed on, hoping to hell that they weren’t going to find Grace dead with a needle in her arm.  That would turn a shit-clap into a shit-pie.  Her dad had practically been a poet.  But she wasn’t hungry. A two-lane road swept across a bridge headed north out of the city. Below it, an old line ran perpendicular, the rails buried in stone chips grown over with brambles. It hadn’t been used in years, and provided a sheltered area stretching across its width.  The banks on either side were fenced off and let down around twenty feet onto the flat at the bottom, and the space beneath the bridge was filled with tents and tarps, all huddled together out of the worst of the weather.  A section of fence had been pushed down, one of the posts dug out and shoved over. It had been trampled flat and an old blanket had been laid over the crushed barbed wire at the top so that the denizens could make the traverse without getting nicked.  They’d walked the last stretch up a pretty much deserted street that had been blocked off at the bottom when the line had been put out of commission. Jamie and Roper moved between the bollards and up the cracked pavement towards the gap in the fence in silence.  Three homeless people were sitting on the street — two by the makeshift entrance to the old line and one opposite.  He was wearing a bright green wind-cheater and had his arms folded under his armpits.

He hung up and then turned to the mirror and examined himself for the second time that night, but for the first time in a long time, he actually paid attention. He saw a man who had seemingly aged years in the span of months. A man who could no longer, by anyone - superior or otherwise - be described as a "kid". He wondered when it had happened. When the world had passed him by and he'd become his father, when he'd become "old". People at the pub on the bottom floor of the building he lived in joked about his "old man" Corolla, as if it were some old-school ride and not just an efficient, affordable vehicle. He wondered when he'd stopped thinking of himself as youthful, eager, and driven and instead started thinking of himself as experienced, capable, and bold. Barely forty, he wasn't old by the world's standards, but he wasn't young, either. He was reaching the early years of middle-age, but the career he'd had in both the military and then in law enforcement seemed to tack on a decade or two.

The dessert plates were arranged with delicate biscuits and pineapple cream served in cunning little glazed pots. Sir Ross introduced a new topic of conversation concerning some recently proposed amendments to the Poor Law, which both he and Gentry supported. Surprisingly, Sophia offered her own opinions on the subject, and the men listened attentively. Lottie tried to conceal her astonishment, for she had been taught for years that a proper woman should never express her opinions in mixed company. Certainly she should say nothing about politics, an inflammatory subject that only men were qualified to debate. And yet here was a man as distinguished as Sir Ross seeming to find nothing wrong in his wife's speaking her mind. Nor did Gentry seem displeased by his sister's outspokenness. Perhaps Gentry would allow her the same freedom. With that pleasant thought in her mind, Lottie consumed her pineapple cream, a rich, silky custard with a tangy flavor. Upon reaching the bottom of the pot, she thought longingly of how nice it would be to have another. However, good manners and the fear of appearing gluttonous made it unthinkable to request seconds. Noticing the wistful glance Lottie gave her empty dish, Gentry laughed softly and slid his own untouched dessert to her plate. "You have even more of a taste for sweets than little Amelia," he murmured in her ear. His warm breath caused the hair on the back of her neck to rise. "We didn't have desserts at school," she said with a sheepish smile. He took his napkin and dabbed gently at the corner of her mouth. "I can see that I'll have a devil of a time trying to compensate for all the things you were deprived of. I suppose you'll want sweets with every meal now." Pausing in the act of lifting her spoon, Lottie stared into the warm blue eyes so close to hers, and suddenly she felt wreathed in heat. Ridiculous, that all he had to do was speak with that caressing note in his voice, and she could be so thoroughly undone.

Bag of Mice" I dreamt your suicide note was scrawled in pencil on a brown paperbag, & in the bag were six baby mice. The bag opened into darkness, smoldering from the top down. The mice, huddled at the bottom, scurried the bag across a shorn field. I stood over it & as the burning reached each carbon letter of what you'd written your voice released into the night like a song, & the mice grew wilder.

Wind howled along the earth, attaining a voice as it gusted around the rocks and spindly trees: a low muttersome sound like children whispering at the bottom of a well.

The man looked worse in the lamplight. His skin washed of pigment. Tim’s mind conjured a weird image: the last few sips at the bottom of a Slurpee cup, the color all sucked out, only the tasteless ice crystals left.

Hitherto, those days’ change. The water would splash as we touched each other everywhere ever so gently all around each other’s most ticklish parts. A hand lightly flicking over my raised nipples. Under the water you can see him rubbing my clit in the opposite directions, then his hand moves up my tummy, and slightly tickles brush me as they go under my armpits. He nibbles on my one nipple, now I am completely leg wrapped sitting on him in the bath. He was behind me rubbing my whole body with his hands, kissing me on the neck and cheeks, whispering in my ear, I bite my bottom lip, moving the movements of sweet love, as he was squeezing my boobs, I go from behind to the front his penis was pointed up, hitting my tummy, as I hold his face with my small hands… Once again, we were two lovers creating a feeling of warmth, and intimacy, just being happy being together. Then we kiss, with much passion, my hair wet, I glide hump up and down on him and it on my tummy as we sit. His soft fingers on my butt cheeks. Then he holds me in the middle of my back arm wrapped as he sucks in my nipple longer, then he picks me up, like a little girl that I am, I am hugging his neck and have my legs wrapped around his back, as his penis bonging un my butt crack. Still kissing and moving to the feelings within us for each other. I flip out my weather in the hold with my nick going for a long-desired kiss. He kisses my lower lips with his lips, it feels good. I arch my back to his licking, my tongue glides up and down the shaft, rimming the head, then I go all the way down, bobbing for his sighing, I love when there are strings of my spit hanging being pulled away by me- from my lips all attached, then I squeeze him and below the tip. I lick from the bottom up to the bell- end.

It was that, more than anything else, which had eventually alerted me to the fact that I was with someone different. Joel was the definite bottom in our relationship. There was nothing wrong with that of course. Indeed, I loved fucking him very much, but I couldn’t deny it had been exhilarating, not to mention incredibly pleasurable, being the one getting fucked for once. Or, as it had turned out, more than once. “How come you never told me you had a twin?” I countered. “If I’d known about Daniel, all this might have been avoided.” It might not have too, but at least I would have felt a little guilty about cheating on my boyfriend. As it was, I didn’t feel that sorry at all. Sex with Daniel had been way too good to feel bad about it. “I was in a third world country with fuck all phone signal!” was Joel’s indignant reply. “I had my backpack stolen with my plane ticket home. He was supposed to explain to you who he was at the airport, not leave you to explain to me how he ended up with his dick in your ass.” Okay, again that was partly my fault. I’d leapt on Daniel the moment I’d seen him at the airport, thinking he was Joel, and I hadn’t given him a whole lot of opportunity to explain his true identity before I had him home naked on my bed with his cock down my throat. “Oh well. What’s done is done, Joel. I can’t give him his cum back.” Joel winced at my words, as he sat down on the edge of our bed. I’d changed the sheets—again

I’ve hit a lot of rock bottoms, but this time I must have rolled my sorry ass into a trench. “Get up.” I let my hand fall away, squinting to see Nick’s figure in my doorway. Get… up? “Worst idea you ever had,” I say, voice rough as gravel. “And that’s saying a lot.” - Remy to Nick

Many of us have become habitual overthinkers because it gives us the illusion that we’re doing something about the problem we’re overthinking about. So, if James is worried about his health, it’s natural that him overthinking endlessly about the various causes and solutions makes it seem like he’s trying to get to the bottom of the issue. But the truth is that overthinking often doesn’t lead anywhere, because the overthinker gets trapped in the cycle of analyzing, rejecting, and reconsidering different possibilities. It’s like scratching an itch that just won’t go away. You can scratch it to feel some momentary relief, but it won’t make the itching stop despite how good scratching might feel.

That wasn’t enough for her wolf; she wanted Shaya to bite him. So Shaya did, right on his pectoral. Nick winced, peering down at his mate, who was grinning in self-satisfaction. “Did you just bite me, baby?” “Yep.” The possessive glint in her eyes made him smile. Leaning down, he bit Shaya’s bottom lip hard and then licked across it to soothe the sting. “You’re never going to get away from me, you know. You’re mine. I’m keeping you. For good.

We had climate change, we had Black people being murdered by police officers, we had our usual national menu of violence against women, we had all kinds of discrimination happening, and if you're still here with me for part 3, then you know the list: all the societal evils that blossom at the bottom of the barrel in a population and fester and spread the cankers of hate and fear and greed. The qualities in humanity against which some of us strive to progress, and thereby improve, in the hopes that one day nobody will have to endure being systemically shat upon. Accordingly, and accurately, this relative stance causes us to be labeled "progressives," but it doesn't stop at that, apparently. We are also radical, socialist, communist, Marxist, leftist libtards whom our detractors love to see cry.

I keep hearing “Should I buy? Should I buy?”. When I start hearing “Should I sell? That’s the bottom.

We’ll fix it,” he said, tipping her chin up so he could see her eyes. “Your conservatory was going in on that side, and this will just speed up construction. Dare, get my crews over here to clear this mess. Nick, we’ll be needing the team for sure. Day and Phil can go through the outbuildings and find a suite of bedroom furniture, then pick out a room in the house that’s close enough to done we can move Ellen into it.” He braced a hand on either side of Ellen’s neck. “You are going to let me take care of this and no argument, please. God”—he hugged her to him—“if you’d been home, puttering at your embroidering, putting up jam…” She nodded, eyes teary, and let him hold her. “Ah, look there.” Val pointed to the base of the fallen tree. “Your greatest treasure is unscathed.” Marmalade sat on his fluffy orange backside, washing a front paw as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “I want…” Ellen stretched out a hand toward the cat, who pretended not to notice. “I’ll fetch him for you.” Val kissed her nose and made for the cat, who strolled back a few paces closer to what had been the bottom of the tree. Val reached for the beast then froze and looked more closely at the tree. He tucked the cat against his middle and stole another glance around at the surrounding trees before taking Marmalade back to Ellen. Val handed her the cat. “He says you have abandoned him shamelessly, and for your sins, you must allow him to accompany you up to the manor, where all his friends, the mice, are waiting to welcome him.” “Oh, Val.” Ellen managed a watery smile but leaned against him as she clutched her purring cat. “I’m so glad he’s unharmed. You’re a good kitty, Marmie. A very good, brave kitty.” “He’s also a very heavy kitty.” Val said, taking him from her grasp. “Let’s move him up to the manor, where I’m sure we can find him a dish of cream and you a cup of tea.

And next is RICE for the ankle." She smiled at the little girl who had latched on to the bottom of Nick's shorts. "We're going to fix mama'a boo boo." "You brought rice in your pack?" asked Justin. "What didn't you bring?" Nick offered to help. "Do we have to cook it?" he asked. "I'll build the fire." "RICE stands for rest, ice, compression and elevation," Jackie explained, as she worked.

You can't pour enough business into the top of the funnel to sustain real growth if customers are leaking out the bottom at a high rate.

The gang of us sat around, and moved our thighs on the horsehair or on the split-bottom and stared down at the unpainted boards of the floor or at the design on the linoleum mat in the middle of the floor as though we were attending a funeral and owed the dead man some money. The linoleum mat was newish, and the colors were still bright—reds and tans and blues slick and varnished-looking—a kind of glib, impertinent, geometrical island floating there in the midst of the cornerless shadows and the acid mummy smell and the slow swell of Time which had fed into this room, day by day since long back, as into a landlocked sea where the fish were dead and the taste was brackish on your tongue. You had the feeling that if the Boss and Mr. Duffy and Sadie Burke and the photographer and the reporters and you and the rest got cuddled up together on that linoleum mat it would lift off the floor by magic and scoop you all up together and make a lazy preliminary circuit of the room and whisk right out the door or out the roof like the floating island of Gulliver or the carpet in the Arabian Nights and carry you off where you and it belonged and leave Old Man Stark sitting there as though nothing had happened, very clean and razor-nicked, with his gray hair plastered down damp, sitting there by the table where the big Bible and the lamp and the plush-bound album were under the blank, devouring gaze of the whiskered face in the big crayon portrait above the mantel shelf.

Women get it wrong when they complain about media images of women. Men understand that not everyone has Bardot's breasts, or Jamie Lee Curtis's neck, or Felicity Kendall's bottom, and we don't mind at all. Obviously we'd take Kim Basinger over Hattie Jacques, just as women would take Keanu Reeves over Bernard Manning, but it's not the body that's important, it's the level of abasement. We worked out very quickly that Bond girls were out of our league, but the realization that women don't ever look at us the way Ursula Andress looked at Sean Connery, or even in the way that Doris Day looked at Rock Hudson, was much slower to arrive, for most of us. In my case I'm not at all sure that it ever did. I'm beginning to get used to the idea that Laura might be the person I spend my life with, I think (or at least, I'm beginning to get used to the idea that I'm so miserable without her that it's not worth thinking about alternatives). But it's much harder to get used to the idea that my little-boy notion of romance, of negligées and candlelit dinners at home and long, smouldering glances, had no basis in reality at all. That's what women ought to get all steamed up about; that's why we can't function properly in a relationship. It's not the cellulite or the crows feet. It's the... the... the disrespect.