Obsessed With My Hair Quotes

The first time I saw you, my heart fell. The second time I saw you, my heart fell. The third time fourth time fifth time and every time since, my heart has fallen. I stared at her. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Your hair, your eyes, your lips, your body that you haven't grown into, the way you walk, smile, laugh, the way your cheeks drop when you're mad or upset, the way you drag your feet when you're tired. Every single thing about you is beautiful. I stared at her. When I see you the World stops. It stops and all that exists for me is you and my eyes staring at you. There's nothing else. No noise, no other people, no thoughts or worries, no yesterday, no tomorrow. The World just stops and it is a beautiful place and there is only you. Just you, and my eyes staring at you. I stared. When you're gone, the World starts again, and I don't like it as much. I can live in it, but I don't like it. I just walk around in it and wait to see you again and wait for it to stop again. I love it when it stops. It's the best fucking thing I've ever known or ever felt, the best thing, and that, beautiful Girl, is why I stare at you.

I named my camel Katrina. She was a natural disaster. She slobbered everywhere and seemed to think the purple streak in my hair was some kind of exotic fruit. She was obsessed with trying to eat my head. I named Walt's camel Hindenburg. He was almost as large as a zeppelin and definitely as full of gas.

Sometimes there’s no cure for the crazy.” Dale sighed, stroking my hair. “I think we all just have to keep loving through it. Maybe that’s the cure.

I hadn’t simply taken a fancy to you.” “No?” He shook his head slowly. His thumb traced the shape of her lips. “Fancy doesn’t begin to describe it. This is closer to . . . an obsession. An enchantment, or perhaps a curse. You’re like a little fair-haired witch who cast a spell on me, and I can’t concentrate. I can’t sleep. I can’t think of anything but hearing you laugh and holding you close and imagining what you’ll look like naked in my bed.

The way of the world is full of judgmental people. People size me up and down with their eyes. I am told that my hair is too curly to be white and too straight to be black. People ask me questions as if I owe them an answer—what does my race have anything to do with you—and why do you care. The fact is, race shouldn’t exist—it is not real. It is made up, but race does matter.” Race shouldn’t matter, but it does. In society's eyes, race is stubbornly real.

one night, they went down to the Village for dinner at an italian restaurant. most of the band had picked up young girls and had them hanging on their arms. janis was feeling lonesome and said, "goddamn, you guys have all these groupies and i don't have anybody." turning to mark, the youngest person in the crowd, she ordered, "go out on the street there and find the first pretty boy you see and bring him to me." aw, i dunno," mark said. go ahead," janis said. after a while, mark returned with a handsome, long-haired youth with a british accent. he was wearing a floor-length embroidered afghan wool coat. looking him over, janis nodded approvingly and said, "he's cute, mark!" turning to the young man, she said, "well! hi, honey! sit down! my name's janis joplin. have you ever heard of me?" yeah," he said, "i've heard of you." oh," she said, "what's your name?" eric clapton.

Andromeda.” Allister moved closer. “An autumn constellation, forty-four light-years away.” His steps were smooth and indifferent, but his voice was dry, as though he found my panic attack positively boring. His attitude brought a small rush of annoyance in, but it was suddenly swayed as my lungs contracted and wouldn’t release. I couldn’t keep a strangled gasp from escaping. “Look up.” It was an order, carrying a harsh edge. With no fight in me, I complied and tilted my head. Tears blurred my vision. Stars swam together and sparkled like diamonds. I was glad they weren’t. Humans would find a way to pluck them from the sky. “Andromeda is the dim, fuzzy star to the right. Find it.” My eyes searched it out. The stars weren’t often easy to see, hidden behind smog and the glow of city lights, but sometimes, on a lucky night like tonight, pollution cleared and they became visible. I found the star and focused on it. “Do you know her story?” he asked, his voice close behind me. A cold wind touched my cheeks, and I inhaled slowly. “Answer me.” “No,” I gritted. “Andromeda was boasted to be one of the most beautiful goddesses.” He moved closer, so close his jacket brushed my bare arm. His hands were in his pockets and his gaze was on the sky. “She was sacrificed for her beauty, tied to a rock by the sea.” I imagined her, a red-haired goddess with a heart of steel chained to a rock. The question bubbled up from the depths of me. “Did she survive?” His gaze fell to me. Down the tear tracks to the blood on my bottom lip. His eyes darkened, his jaw tightened, and he looked away. “She did.

As if I didn't have enough to worry about. My kingdom is threatened by war, extinction, or both, and the only way to solve it is to give up the only thing I've ever really wanted. Then Toraf pulls something like this. Betrays me and my sister. Galen cant imagine how things could get worse. So he's not expecting it when Emma giggles. He turns on her. "What could be funny?" She laughs so hard she has to lean into him for support. He stiffens against the urge to wrap his arms around her. Wiping tears from her eyes, she says, "He kissed me!" The confession makes her crack up all over again. "And you think that's funny?" "You don't understand, Galen," she says, the beginnings of hiccups robbing her of breath. "Obviously." "Don't you see? It worked!" "All I saw was Toraf, my sister's mate, my best friend, kissing my...my..." "Your what?" "Student." Obsession. "Your student. Wow." Emma shakes her head then hiccups. "Well, I know you're mad about what he did to Rayna, but he did it to make her jealous." Galen tries to let that sink in, but it stays on the surface like a bobber. "You're saying he kissed you to make Rayna jealous?" She nods, laugher bubbling up again. "And it worked! Did you see her face?" "You're saying he set Rayna up." Instead of me? Galen shakes his head. "Where would he get an idea like that?" "I told him to do it." Galen's fists ball against his will. "You told him to kiss you?" "No! Sort of. Not really though." "Emma-" "I told him to play hard to get. You know, act uninterested. He came up with kissing me all on his own. I'm so proud of him!" She thinks Toraf is a genius for kissing her. Great. "Did...did you like it?" "I just told you I did, Galen." "Not his plan. The kiss." The delight leaves her face like a receding tide. "That's none of your business, Highness." He runs a hand through his hair to keep from shaking her. And kissing her. "Triton's trident, Emma. Did you like it or not?" Taking several steps back, she throws her hands on her hips. "Do you remember Mr. Pinter, Galen? World history?" "What does that have to do with anything?" "Tomorrow is Monday. When I walk into Mr. Pinter's class, he won't ask me how I liked Toraf's kiss. In fact, he won't care what I did for the entire weekend. Because I'm his student. Just like I'm your student, remember?" Her hair whips to the side as she turns and walks away with that intoxicating saunter of hers. She picks up her towel and steps into her flip-flops before heading up the hill to the house. "Emma, wait." "I'm tired of waiting, Galen. Good night.

I’d once again see that bob of blonde hair back on my pillow, that pink hot smile beaming toward me as I heroically win her heart in some kind of Count of Monte Cristo or Great Gatsby-esque gesture… you know minus the long imprisonment or swimming pool death!

My attention caught on something. I dropped my gaze to his grip on me, to the elastic band on his wrist. “What is . . .?” I trailed off when I realized what it was. And only because I’d worn the same wide-banded black hair ties since I could remember. My heart picked up as the memory came back, of him slipping that hair tie into his pocket while I was naked in his bed three years before. The surprise hit me so hard I went on the offensive. “That’s mine,” I accused, like it was something important he’d stolen from me. I reached for it as if to take it back, but he stopped me by grabbing that wrist, too. “It’s mine now.

Redhead All over the house Strands of copper hair Like filaments from a cobweb Collect. If you and I Were ever to part— For months, perhaps years, I’d be combing out, Brushing or picking up Strands of significance, Traces of you In my life

In the music industry I get a lot of public judgement. Any time the topic of my religion surfaces, there are always people who react negatively, telling me to leave my crazy beliefs out of it. The problem is, I can't. My beliefs are as much a part of my being as my music, or my family, or my obsession with earthy-tasting cereal. Luckily, after all the rejection I faced on my mission, I'm no longer afraid of negative reactions. I've already heard it all--- face-to-face. Hateful comments still hurt, but they don't hold the same weight they once did. Besides, say what you want, but I'm a short-haired angel. (Or at least I was to one man on a subway.)

As Tuck reverses out of the driveway, my gaze rests on Garrett’s black Jeep, all shiny in its parking space while its owner spends the night with the coolest girl on the planet and— And enough. This obsession with Hannah Wells is really starting to mess with my head. I need to get laid. ASAP. Tucker is noticeably quiet during the drive to Omega Phi. He might also be frowning, but it’s hard to tell considering someone shaved off all of Hugh Jackman’s body hair and pasted it on Tuck’s face.

It's a physical sickness. Etienne. How much I love him. I love Etienne. I love it when he cocks an eyebrow whenever I say something he finds clever or amusing. I love listening to his boots clomp across my bedroom ceiling. I love that the accent over his first name is called an acute accent, and that he has a cute accent. I love that. I love sitting beside him in physics. Brushing against him during lands. His messy handwriting on our worksheets. I love handing him his backpack when class is over,because then my fingers smell like him for the next ten minutes. And when Amanda says something lame, and he seeks me out to exchange an eye roll-I love that,too. I love his boyish laugh and his wrinkled shirts and his ridiculous knitted hat. I love his large brown eyes,and the way he bites his nails,and I love his hair so much I could die. There's only one thing I don't love about him. Her. If I didn't like Ellie before,it's nothing compared to how I feel now. It doesn't matter that I can count how many times we've met on one hand. It's that first image, that's what I can't shake. Under the streeplamp. Her fingers in his hair. Anytime I'm alone, my mind wanders back to that night. I take it further. She touches his chest. I take it further.His bedroom.He slips off her dress,their lips lock, their bodies press,and-oh my God-my temperature rises,and my stomach is sick. I fantasize about their breakup. How he could hurt her,and she could hurt him,and of all the ways I could hurt her back. I want to grab her Parisian-styled hair and yank it so hard it rips from her skull. I want to sink my claws into her eyeballs and scrape. It turns out I am not a nice person. Etienne and I rarely discussed her before, but she's completely taboo now. Which tortures me, because since we've gotten back from winter break, they seem to be having problems again. Like an obsessed stalker,I tally the evenings he spend with me versus the evening he spends with her. I'm winning.

She was finally looking at me. I could have gotten lost in her blue eyes. And her red hair was calling for me to sink my fingers into… Breathe.

That’s what makes us special,” she continues. “This isn’t just a courtship of boy meets girl. They fall in love, yadda, yadda. This is a lifelong commitment to men who aren’t satisfied living ordinary lives. It sometimes seems more of an obsession than a mission. One that can test a woman to her absolute limits.” She grins over at me, “But for him, for that man, I’ll do it. I’ll be there when he fucks up so badly he can’t celebrate how good he is or what he’s done. I’ll be there whenever he doubts himself and our relationship suffers because of those doubts. I’ll be there with my hair done, and my lipstick on, in my best heels, with my head held high on his darkest days, because that’s what he needs. And I don’t want him changing. I don’t want him to stop being who he is, not ever, not for me, and not for any baby we make.” She turns her gaze to me. “But I will use the tips of these heels to pierce and pin his brass balls down if he ever stops giving me what I need.

Olivia’s head rests against my arm the whole ride back to her place. Our legs are aligned and pressing, our hands entwined on top of my thigh. I turn my head just slightly and inhale the addictive jasmine scent of her hair. There’s a cable show, My Strange Addiction—one of the most insane things I ever saw, one episode was about a wanker who was obsessed with sniffing women’s hair. I’m sorry I judged you, wanker. I get it now.

I wanted her and I couldn’t have her, so I fed the temptation, I flooded the craving, I would’ve fucking nursed the obsession from my own tits if I could’ve. I made sure I got little doses of her here and there. Except something incredibly enlightening happens when you spend enough time in one woman’s company. You start noticing shit about her, little useless crap that actually begins to mean everything, like how she brushes the hair out her face—even if there isn’t any in her eyes—whenever she’s unsettled, or how she chews on the end of a pen during class whenever she’s listening to something that captures her attention. You learn all her different laughs and know what each one means. You learn what pisses her off the most, or what makes her the happiest. You discover how smart and witty and sarcastic she is, and that her mind is almost as dirty as yours. You see how passionate she becomes when she defends those she loves, and you start to fall. Hard. So, this is my Pathetic Loser’s confession: I am Oren Tenning, and I have fallen. Hard.

One hobby I did not pick up was crocheting, an obsession among prisoners throughout the system. Some of the handiwork was impressive. The inmate who ran the laundry was a surly rural white woman named Nancy whose dislike for anyone but “northerners” was hardly a secret. Her personality left a lot to be desired, but she was a remarkable crochet artist. One day in C Dorm I happened upon Nancy standing with my neighbor Allie B. and mopey Sally, all howling with laughter. “What?” I asked, innocently. “Show her, Nancy!” giggled Allie. Nancy opened her hand. Perched there in her palm was an astonishingly lifelike crochet penis. Average in size, it was erect, fashioned of pink cotton yarn, with balls and a smattering of brown cotton pubic hair, and a squirt of white yarn ejaculate at the tip.

Oh, and another time he gave me a sex concussion. I can’t really go into the details, because my mother will probably read this, but basically he had a bunk bed in his dorm room (because he’s an only child and only children are obsessed with bunk beds for some reason), so we were on the bottom bunk and I tossed back my hair in what I envisioned would be a total porn-star move, except the wooden beam of the bunk bed above us was too low, and so I violently head-butted the wood plank and totally knocked myself out, which is pretty much the least sexy thing you could ever possibly do. Like, if I also lost control of my bowels that would be worse, but not by much. Then when I’d recovered, Victor was all, “Sex concussion, motherfucker!” like it was something to be proud of. Basically it was like autoerotic asphyxiation, except instead of being choked you get whacked in the head with a two-by-four. And instead of having an orgasm you lose all muscle control and pee on yourself. Which I totally did not do because that would be disgusting. I hardly ever pee on myself.

Del Toro wearing sculpted and molded gelatin makeup, including fake hair and acrylic dentures and gums.

He just looks so damn nice and put together, that I have this obsessive desire to mess him up. Get him dirty. Rumple his hair a bit. Spray my come across his face. Smear it into his skin. Whoops, too far.

Oh God, my chin. I have a cluster of five hairs on the left side of my chin. They’re coarse and wiry, like boar hair, and for the past couple of years, they’ve been my hideous secret and my sworn enemies. They sprout up every couple of days, and so I have to be vigilant. I keep my weapons—Revlon tweezers and a 10X magnifying mirror—at home, in my Sherpa bag, and in my desk drawer at work, so in theory, I can be anywhere, and if one of those evil little weeds pokes through the surface, I can yank it. I’ve been in meetings with CEOs, some of the most powerful men in the world, and could barely stay focused on what they were saying because I’d inadvertently touched my chin and become obsessed with the idea of destroying five microscopic hairs. I hate them, and I’m terrified of someone else noticing them before I do, but I have to admit, there is almost nothing more satisfying than pulling them out.I stroke my chin, expecting to feel my Little Pig beard, but touch only smooth skin. My leg feels like a farm animal, which suggests I haven’t shaved in at least a week, but my chin is bare, which would put me in this bed for less than two days. My body hair isn’t making any sense.

WE ALL DO IT, YOU know. Distract ourselves from noticing how time’s passing. We throw ourselves into our jobs. We focus on keeping the blight off our tomato plants. We fill up our gas tanks and top off our Metro cards and do the grocery shopping so that the weeks look the same on the surface. And then one day, you turn around, and your baby is a man. One day, you look in the mirror, and see gray hair. One day, you realize there is less of your life left than what you’ve already lived. And you think, How did this happen so fast? It was only yesterday when I was having my first legal drink, when I was diapering him, when I was young. When this realization hits, you start doing the math. How much time do I have left? How much can I fit into that small space? Some of us let this realization guide us, I guess. We book trips to Tibet, we learn how to sculpt, we skydive. We try to pretend it’s not almost over. But some of us just fill up our gas tanks and top off our Metro cards and do the grocery shopping, because if you only see the path that’s right ahead of you, you don’t obsess over when the cliff might drop off. Some of us never learn. And some of us learn earlier than others. —

I want to know why you’re so obsessed with my leg hair and the idea of me losing a limb. Is it because you secretly want to come to San Diego and take care of me? I’ll let you tweeze my legs if it means I have you on your knees in front of me.

I’m going to give you a two-minute head start,” I say softly, still pinching her hair in my fingers. “And then I’m going to hunt you down. You’ll know I’m coming. When I catch you, you fight me. Do your worst. And I suppose you should pick a safe word…

I’m opinionated, obstinate, and obsessive. I am quick to anger, quick to cry, quick-witted and a slow runner. A very slow runner. I don’t know if you can really call it running, really. I don’t know what I want. Some heavy making out? Someone to text me for no reason? A person who is absolutely, positively in love with me? It varies, day by day. I know that I want you to play with my hair while we lay on the couch and listen to records. I want you to hold my hand while we’re driving and take out the trash before you’re ever asked. I want you to want me, but not need me. To be there for me without my asking, and to go away without being told. I want you to keep me company and keep your promises. PS: Please, don’t be shorter than me. Chapter Seven Finders Keepers

know I’m floating into anxiety when I find myself obsessing. Obsessing over the next speech, the kids, the house, my marriage, my body, my hair. Anxiety is feeling terrified about my lack of control over anything, and obsessing is my antidote. Writing is clawing the ground when I’m sinking too low, and obsessing is clawing the ground when I’m hovering too high. I thought I’d been hiding my anxiety until my wife touched my arm and said, “I miss you. You’ve been gone for a while.” Of course, we’ve been by each other’s side virtually nonstop. It’s just that living with anxiety—living alarmed—makes it impossible to enter the moment, to land inside my body and be there. I cannot be in the moment because I am too afraid of what the next moment will bring. I have to be ready.

At thirteen, I thought more about my acne than I did about God or world peace. At thirteen, many girls spend more time in front of a mirror than they do on their studies. Small flaws become obsessions. Bad hair can ruin a day. A broken fingernail can feel tragic.

Two young men drinking beer on the steps of a closed bookstore across the street fixed their eyes on Savannah. Even from that distance Gregori could see their instant fixation, the obsession she so easily produced in men.It was in the way she moved, her flowing hair and enormous eyes, her aura, at once innocent and sexy. There as no hope that they would not recognize her. She embodied magic and fantasy. Gregori sighed heavily,his gut tightening. She was going to drive him crazy and maybe get some innocent drunk killed. The two men had risen, whispering excitedly, working up their courage to approach her. He could hear them pumping each other up. He fixed his silver eyes on them and concentrated briefly. He wiped their thoughts away and planted in them an urgency to leave the area immediately. "Do me a favor,cherie. Try to look plain and uninteresting." Savannah laughed softly in spite of her growing sense of dread. "Get over it already," she suggested. "You are more than disrespectful, woman. I cannot remember a single time in my existence when anyone spoke to me as you do." She rubbed her cheek along his shoulder in a small caress. Gregori's breath seemed to still in his throat. "That's why I do it.You need someone to give you a little trouble." Her teasing tone slid over him, into him, the tiny threads that tied them together multiplying every moment. "I would not mind a little trouble. You are big trouble.

At the end of the vacation, I took a steamer alone from Wuhan back up through the Yangtze Gorges. The journey took three days. One morning, as I was leaning over the side, a gust of wind blew my hair loose and my hairpin fell into the river. A passenger with whom I had been chatting pointed to a tributary which joined the Yangtze just where we were passing, and told me a story.In 33 B.C., the emperor of China, in an attempt to appease the country's powerful northern neighbors, the Huns, decided to send a woman to marry the barbarian king. He made his selection from the portraits of the 3,000 concubines in his court, many of whom he had never seen. As she was for a barbarian, he selected the ugliest portrait, but on the day of her departure he discovered that the woman was in fact extremely beautiful. Her portrait was ugly because she had refused to bribe the court painter. The emperor ordered the artist to be executed, while the lady wept, sitting by a river, at having to leave her country to live among the barbarians. The wind carried away her hairpin and dropped it into the river as though it wanted to keep something of hers in her homeland. Later on, she killed herself. Legend had it that where her hairpin dropped, the river turned crystal clear, and became known as the Crystal River. My fellow passenger told me this was the tributary we were passing. With a grin, he declared: "Ah, bad omen! You might end up living in a foreign land and marrying a barbarian!" I smiled faintly at the traditional Chinese obsession about other races being 'barbarians," and wondered whether this lady of antiquity might not actually have been better off marrying the 'barbarian' king. She would at least be in daily contact with the grassland, the horses, and nature. With the Chinese emperor, she was living in a luxurious prison, without even a proper tree, which might enable the concubines to climb a wall and escape. I thought how we were like the frogs at the bottom of the well in the Chinese legend, who claimed that the sky was only as big as the round opening at the top of their well. I felt an intense and urgent desire to see the world. At the time I had never spoken with a foreigner, even though I was twenty-three, and had been an English language student for nearly two years. The only foreigners I had ever even set eyes on had been in Peking in 1972. A foreigner, one of the few 'friends of China," had come to my university once. It was a hot summer day and I was having a nap when a fellow student burst into our room and woke us all by shrieking: "A foreigner is here! Let's go and look at the foreigner!" Some of the others went, but I decided to stay and continue my snooze. I found the whole idea of gazing, zombie like rather ridiculous. Anyway, what was the point of staring if we were forbidden to open our mouths to him, even though he was a 'friend of China'? I had never even heard a foreigner speaking, except on one single Linguaphone record. When I started learning the language, I had borrowed the record and a phonograph, and listened to it at home in Meteorite Street. Some neighbors gathered in the courtyard, and said with their eyes wide open and their heads shaking, "What funny sounds!" They asked me to play the record over and over again.

He guided me into the house and walked me to the shower. He ran the water and cared for me as if I was an upset toddler or an elderly person who could no longer care for herself. He washed me hair and gently washed my body, while I cried as if the world was ending. For me, it seemed it was. -The Art of Leaving

Mrs de Winter’s obsession with her insures that Rebecca will triumph over anonymity and effacement. Even a bullet through the heart, and burial at sea cannot quench her vampiric power. Again, one is reminded of Plath’s embodiment of amoral, anarchic female force – I rise with my red hair/And I eat men like air.

When my eyes scanned the room, all the air left my lungs. There she was. Sitting in the back row of my classroom right next to a window. She was staring out the window, not even listening to me. The sun shining through the window made her hair even brighter. It practically shimmered, drawing all my attention to her.

We can take things as slowly as you want, but you know it’s too late now to change your mind, Pierce,” he said, in a warning tone. “Of course,” I said. I could see I had approached this all wrong. Where, when you actually needed one, was one of those annoying women’s magazines with advice on how to handle your man? Although that advice probably didn’t apply to death deities. “Because the Furies are after me. And I promised you that I wouldn’t try to escape. That isn’t what I was-“ “No,” he said, with an abrupt shake of his head. “The Furies have no part in this. It doesn’t matter anymore whether or not you try to escape.” He was pacing the length of the room. A muscle had begun to twitch wildly in the side of his jaw. “I thought you knew. I thought you understood. Haven’t you read Homer?” Not again. Mr. Smith was obsessed with this Homer person, too. “No, John,” I said, with forced patience. “I’m afraid we don’t have time to study the ancient Greek poets in school anymore because we have so much stuff to learn that happened since you died, such as the Civil War and the Holocaust and making files in Excel-“ “Well, considering what they had to say about the Fates,” John interrupted, impatiently, “Homer might possibly have been of more use to you.” “The Fates?” The Fates were something I dimly remembered having been mentioned in the section we’d studied on Greek mythology. They were busybodies who presided over everyone’s destiny. “What did Homer have to say about them?” John dragged a hand through his hair. For some reason, he wouldn’t meet my gaze. “The Fates decreed that anyone who ate or drank in the realm of the dead had to remain there for all eternity.” I stared at him. “Right,” I said. “Only if they are pomegranate seeds, like Persephone. The fruit of the dead.” He stopped pacing suddenly and lifted his gaze to mine. His eyes seemed to burn through to my soul. “Pomegranate seeds are what Persephone happened to eat while she was in the Underworld,” he said. “That’s why they call them the fruit of the dead. But the rule is any food or drink.” A strange feeling of numbness had begun to spread across my body. My mouth became too dry for me to speak. “However you feel about me, Pierce,” he went on, relentlessly, “you’re stuck here with me for the rest of eternity.

Look at me, Elizabeth,” he commanded. His voice dark and deep. “Lizzie,” I corrected without thought, completely out of habit. My eyes widened. I couldn’t believe I had just corrected him. Instinctively I felt that was something people just didn’t do around this man. If he said the sky were purple with pink spots, I’m pretty sure everyone would agree wholeheartedly… and worse, actually believe it. He just seemed to exude that kind of authoritative power. The kind that could make you believe just about anything he said. He gave my hair a painful tug with both hands. “Elizabeth,” he stated emphatically, as if he were a god or a king commanding it be so. “I left a package in your dressing room. It’s a dress. I want you to wear it tonight.” Tonight was the cast party. It was taking place right after our final curtain call. I had no idea he was even attending. Wait, a dress? “The party is at The Brewery next door. I don’t think the cast party is that formal,” I offered, still trying to process why this man would buy me a dress. Realizing quickly that I might sound ungrateful, I stammered, “Not that I don’t appreciate it… I mean I’m sure it’s lovely and—” “Elizabeth.” The sharp command of his voice stopped my rambling. “Yes, sir?” “Wear the dress,” he ordered, not expecting a refusal and not getting one. “Yes, sir,” I whispered. Releasing my hair, he stroked the back of his knuckles down my cheek. “Good girl.” The moment I heard the Hall door close on his retreating back, I sank to my knees in the middle of the stage, feeling shaken and more than a little alarmed. What the hell had just happened?

Helen is scrutinizing her eyes in a lacquered hand-mirror. She plucks a stray hair from her brow-line with the ruthlessness she always applies to her own body. Even thirty feet away, hovering in the air like an invisible angel, I find this violence unnerving. I realize that I have only been fully at ease with my wife while watching her through the viewfinder of a camera – even within the private space of our various hotel rooms I prefer her seen through a lens, emblematic of my own needs and fantasies rather than existing in her own right. At one time this rightly outraged her, but recently she has begun to play along with my obsession. For hours I watch her, picking her nose and arguing with me about something as I lie on the bed with a camera to my eye, fascinated by the shifting geometries of her thighs and shoulders, the diagrams of her face.

I became obsessed with anatomy. If I could not put Louise out of my mind I would drown myself in her. Within the clinical language, through the dispassionate view of the sucking, sweating, greedy, defecating self, I found a love-poem to Louise. I would go on knowing her, more intimately than the skin, hair and voice that I craved. I would have her plasma, her spleen, her synovial fluid. I would recognise her even when her body had long since fallen away.

Do you want to know my favorite?” My grip tightened on the railing. In. Out. “Andromeda.” Allister moved closer. “An autumn constellation, forty-four light-years away.” His steps were smooth and indifferent, but his voice was dry, as though he found my panic attack positively boring. His attitude brought a small rush of annoyance in, but it was suddenly swayed as my lungs contracted and wouldn’t release. I couldn’t keep a strangled gasp from escaping. “Look up.” It was an order, carrying a harsh edge. With no fight in me, I complied and tilted my head. Tears blurred my vision. Stars swam together and sparkled like diamonds. I was glad they weren’t. Humans would find a way to pluck them from the sky. “Andromeda is the dim, fuzzy star to the right. Find it.” My eyes searched it out. The stars weren’t often easy to see, hidden behind smog and the glow of city lights, but sometimes, on a lucky night like tonight, pollution cleared and they became visible. I found the star and focused on it. “Do you know her story?” he asked, his voice close behind me. A cold wind touched my cheeks, and I inhaled slowly. “Answer me.” “No,” I gritted. “Andromeda was boasted to be one of the most beautiful goddesses.” He moved closer, so close his jacket brushed my bare arm. His hands were in his pockets and his gaze was on the sky. “She was sacrificed for her beauty, tied to a rock by the sea.” I imagined her, a red-haired goddess with a heart of steel chained to a rock. The question bubbled up from the depths of me. “Did she survive?” His gaze fell to me. Down the tear tracks to the blood on my bottom lip. His eyes darkened, his jaw tightened, and he looked away. “She did.” I found the star again. Andromeda. “Ask me what her name means.” It was another rough demand, and I had the urge to refuse. To tell him to stop bossing me around. However, I wanted to know—I suddenly needed to. But he was already walking away, toward the exit. “Wait,” I breathed, turning to him. “What does her name mean?” He opened the door and a sliver of light poured onto the terrace. Black suit. Broad shoulders. Straight lines. His head turned just enough to meet my gaze. Blue. “It means ruler of men.” An icy breeze almost swallowed his words before they reached me, whipping my hair at my cheeks. And then he was gone.

Education is one of the Grand Christianson Obsessions. They’ve been whole years my mother’s kept us home for intensive private study. As a result of that, Paul will perform the first brain transplant, James will someday build a bridge across the Atlantic Ocean, Charlie – who is an actual musical genius – will probably end up writing the Great American Symphony, and I – I know a little bit about a lot of things. I can tell you the chemical composition of the stuff your stick in your hair; how long it would take you, at just under the speed of light, to get to Alpha Centauri – and how old your body would be when you finally got there; the middle name of the third president of the United States; the amount of the present budget deficit; the author of the Brothers Karamazov, and how many feet there are in a line of trochaic heptameter. The Little Girl Who Had to Know Why, Paul used to call me. But even my mother couldn’t reconcile me and math.

Most people think the Lego corporation assembled a crack team of world-class experts to engineer Mini-Florida on a computer, but I’m not buying it.” “You aren’t?” asked Coleman. “It’s way too good.” Serge pointed at a two-story building in Key West. “Examine the meticulous green shutters on Hemingway’s house. No, my money is on a lone-wolf manic type like the famous Latvian Edward Leedskalnin, who single-handedly built the Coral Castle back in the twenties. He operated in secret, moving multi-ton hewn boulders south of Miami, and nobody knows how he did it. Probably happened here as well: The Lego people conducting an exhaustive nationwide search among the obsessive-compulsive community. But they had to be selective and stay away from the ones whose entire houses are filled to the ceiling with garbage bags of their own hair. Then they most likely found some cult guru living in a remote Lego ashram south of Pueblo with nineteen wives, offered him unlimited plastic blocks and said, ‘Knock yourself out.

I am a person of binges. I have never understood the phrase “too much of a good thing.” Look: it’s irrational, impossible. See fig. 1: when I was a child, I became obsessed with horses. I know, I know, all little girls are obsessed with horses. But I lived for them. I gorged on them. I begged for them in any incarnation: films, toys, patterns, photographs, posters. Once, I cut the hair off a Barbie and superglued it to the base of my spine. I thrilled to wear my pony tail under my clothes, in secret, my parents knowing nothing, thinking me merely human, but it rubbed off after two days, leaving long blond doll hairs clotting in the corners of the house. My birthday came, and my parents, who were still together then, splurged on an afternoon of horseback riding lessons. When it was time to leave, they found that I had knotted my hair into the horse’s mane so elaborately that they had to cut me away from it with a pair of rusted barn shears. I still have the clump of matted girl-and-horse hair hidden in a drawer, though after all the times I put it in my mouth, I admit that it is somewhat the worse for wear.

WE ALL DO IT, YOU know. Distract ourselves from noticing how time’s passing. We throw ourselves into our jobs. We focus on keeping the blight off our tomato plants. We fill up our gas tanks and top off our Metro cards and do the grocery shopping so that the weeks look the same on the surface. And then one day, you turn around, and your baby is a man. One day, you look in the mirror, and see gray hair. One day, you realize there is less of your life left than what you’ve already lived. And you think, How did this happen so fast? It was only yesterday when I was having my first legal drink, when I was diapering him, when I was young. When this realization hits, you start doing the math. How much time do I have left? How much can I fit into that small space? Some of us let this realization guide us, I guess. We book trips to Tibet, we learn how to sculpt, we skydive. We try to pretend it’s not almost over. But some of us just fill up our gas tanks and top off our Metro cards and do the grocery shopping, because if you only see the path that’s right ahead of you, you don’t obsess over when the cliff might drop off. Some of us never learn. And some of us learn earlier than others.

I’m here because I spend all of my spare time watching you and wanting to be like you but you’re mean to me and won’t be my best friend forever like I sooo wish you would. So I decided to become you instead. I’m starting off by creeping up here to seduce your precious Darius and screw him senseless just to make you cry. Then I’m going to dye my hair the cheapest, shittiest shade of red I can find and finally I’ll become the head cheerleader because I fucking love being cheery. Mostly I’m going to do it because I’m obsessed with you but partly because I’m a psycho bitch who just wants to ruin your life.

March 1898 What a strange dream I had last night! I wandered in the warm streets of a port, in the low quarter of some Barcelona or Marseille. The streets were noisome, with their freshly-heaped piles of ordure outside the doors, in the blue shadows of their high roofs. They all led down towards the sea. The gold-spangled sea, seeming as if it had been polished by the sun, could be seen at the end of each thoroughfare, bristling with yard-arms and luminous masts. The implacable blue of the sky shone brilliantly overhead as I wandered through the long, cool and sombre corridors in the emptiness of a deserted district: a quarter which might almost have been dead, abruptly abandoned by seamen and foreigners. I was alone, subjected to the stares of prostitutes seated at their windows or in the doorways, whose eyes seemed to ransack my very soul. They did not speak to me. Leaning on the sides of tall bay-windows or huddled in doorways, they were silent. Their breasts and arms were bare, bizarrely made up in pink, their eyebrows were darkened, they wore their hair in corkscrew-curls, decorated with paper flowers and metal birds. And they were all exactly alike! They might have been huge marionettes, or tall mannequin dolls left behind in panic - for I divined that some plague, some frightful epidemic brought from the Orient by sailors, had swept through the town and emptied it of its inhabitants. I was alone with these simulacra of love, abandoned by the men on the doorsteps of the brothels. I had already been wandering for hours without being able to find a way out of that miserable quarter, obsessed by the fixed and varnished eyes of all those automata, when I was seized by the sudden thought that all these girls were dead, plague-stricken and putrefied by cholera where they stood, in the solitude, beneath their carmine plaster masks... and my entrails were liquefied by cold. In spite of that harrowing chill, I was drawn closer to a motionless girl. I saw that she was indeed wearing a mask... and the girl in the next doorway was also masked... and all of them were horribly alike under their identical crude colouring... I was alone with the masks, with the masked corpses, worse than the masks... when, all of a sudden, I perceived that beneath the false faces of plaster and cardboard, the eyes of these dead women were alive. Their vitreous eyes were looking at me... I woke up with a cry, for in that moment I had recognised all the women. They all had the eyes of Kranile and Willie, of Willie the mime and Kranile the dancer. Every one of the dead women had Kranile's left eye and Willie's right eye... so that every one of them appeared to be squinting. Am I to be haunted by masks now?

Isaiah tucks a rogue strand behind my ear, running his palm over my hair until he wraps my ponytail around his fist once. Twice. He tugs, ensuring I’m looking up and making eye contact with him. “Make sure you keep your eyes on me tonight, wifey. I have a feeling I’m going to have a good night at bat, and I want you to watch.”  “You always want me to watch.”  “Mmm, and I like to watch too, you know.”  My mouth goes dry at his insinuation.  “But yes, I do love your attention.”  “Because you’re obsessed with me.”  He chuckles close to my ear. “I think that’s the perfect word to describe how I feel about you, Doc.” Isaiah nips my earlobe before soothing it with a soft kiss on my neck.

Still, the limitations of what we can know, no matter how obsessed we are, have, inevitably, become clear to me. She walks ahead of me and I don't get to see her face. Was her hair brown or pale? Was she slim? Did she get heavier as she bore her children? Or was she petite, like a bird? What did her voice sound like? Did she argue with her husband? Did she like to cook? Was she as ambitious as I think she was? Would she have approved of my writing about her? But the closer I have drawn, the more she has receded, her figure diminishing, no matter how I strain to catch up. Those shores of early America are irretrievable, as is Anne. I have tried to retrieve her here, but some of the most important things are bound to be left unknown.

Colin hid a grin. His stare, keen despite the deceptive softness of his lavender-gray eyes, settled on his admiral as he held the girl so tenderly in his arms. Sir Graham loved women, yes, but never had Colin seen him treat one with the sort of obsessive, worshipful devotion he’d bestowed upon Maeve Merrick from the moment he'd brought her aboard. He’d made a bed for her on the sofa tucked beside the starboard bulkhead, bathed her damp skin, and braided her hair to get the hot, heavy mass off her neck. He’d flung open all the stern windows and gone into a rare fit of temper when the tropical breezes had dimmed and the air grew sultry, hot and still. His demands had sent the harassed Dr. Ryder running for the escape of a rum bottle, a midshipman into tears, and the company into hushed and strained eagerness to obey every order relayed through the lieutenants’ speaking trumpets. And to top it all off, Sir Graham had had a blazing argument with Maeve’s formidable lieutenant, Enolia, over who would get custody of the convalescing Pirate Queen.

Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress bids me wear them, warm them, until evening when I'll brush her hair. At six, I place them round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her, resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope. She's beautiful. I dream about her in my attic bed; picture her dancing with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent beneath her French perfume, her milky stones. I dust her shoulders with a rabbit's foot, watch the soft blush seep through her skin like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass my red lips part as though I want to speak. Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see her every movement in my head.... Undressing, taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way she always does.... And I lie here awake, knowing the pearls are cooling even now in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night I feel their absence and I burn.

Two men enter the room, one old and mustached and the other young and tawny-headed, wearing sweats and a worn T-shirt. He looks like Silas, actually—god, what am I, obsessed? But there really is something of the woodsman in the younger man’s face, with his full lips, his slightly curled hair that turns like tendrils around his ears . . . I look away before studying him too closely. “All right, ladies, are we ready?” the older man says enthusiastically. There’s a loud rustling of paper as well flip the enormous sketchbooks on our easels until we find blank sheets. I draw a few soft lines on my page, unsure what— Non-Silas rips off his T-shirt, revealing lightly defined muscles on his pale chest. I raise an eyebrow just as he tugs at the waist of the sweatpants. They drop to the floor in a fluid, sweeping motion. There’s nothing underneath them. At all. My charcoal slips through my suddenly sweaty fingers. Non-Silas steps out of the puddle of his clothes and moves to the center of the room, fluorescent lights reflecting off his slick abdomen. He’s smiling as though he isn’t naked, smiling as though I didn’t somehow manage to get the seat closest to him. As if I can’t see . . . um . . . everything only a few feet from my face, making my mind clumsily spiral. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment; he looks like Silas in the face, and because of that I keep wondering if he looks akin to Silas everywhere else. “All right, ladies, this will be a seven-minute pose. Ready?” the older man says, positioning himself behind the other empty easel. The roomful of housewives nod in one hungry motion. I quiver. “Go!” the older man says, starting the stopwatch. Non-Silas poses, something reminiscent of Michelangelo’s David, only instead of marble eyes looking into nothingness, non-Silas is staring almost straight at me. Draw. I’m supposed to be drawing. I grab a new piece of charcoal from the bottom of the easel and begin hastily making lines in my sketchbook. I can’t not look at him, or he’ll think I’m not drawing him. I glance hurriedly, trying to avoid the region my eyes continuously return to. I start to feel fluttery. How long has it been? Surely it’s been seven minutes. I try to add some tone to my drawing’s chest. I wonder what Silas’s chest looks like . . . Stop! Stop stop stop stop stop—” “Right, then!” the older man says as his stopwatch beeps loudly and the scratchy sound of charcoal on paper ends. Thank you, sir, thank you—” “Annnnd next pose!” Non-Silas turns his head away, till all I can see is his wren-colored hair and his side, including a side view of . . . how many times am I going to have to draw this man’s area? What’s worse is that he looks even more like Silas now that I can’t see his eyes. Just like Silas, I bet. My eyes linger longer than necessary now that non-Silas isn’t staring straight at me. By the end of class, I’ve drawn eight mediocre pictures of him, each one with a large white void in the crotch area. The housewives compare drawings with ravenous looks in their eyes as non-Silas tugs his pants back on and leaves the room, nodding politely. I picture him naked again. I sprint from the class, abandoning my sketches—how could I explain them to Scarlett or Silas? Stop thinking of Silas, stop thinking of Silas.

Beauty Killer" If I can't be beautiful.. I'd rather just die. So self-obsessed with my mascara and mistakes. Vanity's like a funeral an everyone's at my wake. Before I run out of air there's more makeup to apply. Doll eyes stare into Valium colored skies... I gotta sweet tooth and strawberry youth. You wanna be my licorice and misguided truth. And right now - I'll show you how.. I'm a beauty killer. Rhinestone my eyes closed and please fix my hair. This concealer can't hide all my pink nightmares. Before I run out of air there's more makeup to apply. Doll eyes stare into Valium colored skies. I almost died but it felt great. Faking perfection wasn't worth the wait. I may be easy, easy to hate. But you're so fucking easy.. easy to break. I gotta sweet tooth and strawberry youth. You wanna be my licorice and misguided truth. And right now - I'll show you how.. I'm a beauty killer. I almost died but it felt great. Faking perfection wasn't worth the wait. I may be easy, easy to hate. But you're so fucking easy.. easy to break. Tell me your secrets and ill tell you my lies. Everything is monotone in my dead eyes. If I cant be beautiful..I'd rather just die. I'm a beauty killer. I gotta sweet tooth and strawberry youth. You wanna be my licorice and misguided truth. And right now - I'll show you how.. I'm a beauty killer. Gorgeous killer. Hot pink killer. Fierce killer. I'm a beauty killer. I'll fucking kill you...

Gene looked at me, and smiled kindly. “You never learn how to write a novel,” he told me. “You only learn to write the novel you’re on.” He was right. I’d learned to write the novel I was writing, and nothing more. Still, it was a fine, strange novel to have learned how to write. I was always aware of how very far short it fell of the beautiful, golden, gleaming, perfect book I had in my head, but even so, it made me happy. I grew a beard and I did not cut my hair while I was writing this book, and many people thought I was a trifle odd (although not the Swedes, who approved and told me that a king of theirs had done something very similar, only not with a novel). I shaved the beard off at the end of the first draft, and disposed of the unfeasibly long hair shortly after that. The second draft was mostly a process of excavation and clarification. Moments that needed to grow grew and moments that needed to be shorter were trimmed. I wanted it to be a number of things. I wanted to write a book that was big and odd and meandering, and I did and it was. I wanted to write a book that included all the parts of America that obsessed and delighted me, which tended to be the bits that never showed up in the films and television shows. I finished it, eventually, and I handed it in, taking a certain amount of comfort in the old saying that a novel can best be defined as a long piece of prose with something wrong with it, and I was fairly sure that I’d written one of those.

Where are you from?" She asked without thinking. "I was born in the mountains." Runach said with a shrug. "The place doesn't matter." "Do you have siblings?" "Yes, several. Not all are still living. He smiled faintly. "You are full of questions this afternoon." "The library was a bad influence on me." Runach smiled briefly. "And I believe that was three questions you asked me, which leaves me with three of my own for you to answer." "That was two." "I don't count very well." "I think you count very well," she said grimly. He only smiled again. "I'll contemplate which answers I'll have and let you know." Aisling thought she just might be dreading them, but couldn't bring herself to say as much. "What was your home like?" she asked. "Another question." "You look distracted." He smiled and a dimple peeked out at her from his unscarred cheek. "You are more devious than I give you credit for being. I am keeping a tally, you know. I will expect a like number of answers from you." She stared at him for a moment or two. It was difficult not to, but he didnt seem to mind. "Why?" She asked finally. "Beacause you are a mystery." "And do you care for a mystery?" "I am obsessed by a good mystery," he said frankly. "More than enough to pry a few answers out of you, however I am able." "And what if I am not inclined to give them?" She asked, her mouth suddenly dry. "Then I will wonder about you silently." "In truth?" she asked, surprised. Runach smiled, looking just as surprised. "What else would I do? Beat the answers from you?" "I don't know." She said slowly. "I don't know what soldiers do." He shook his head. "Hedge all you like, if you like." "Your mother must have been a well-bred lady." She said, frowning. "Why do you say that?" "She seems to have taught you decent manners, for your being a mere soldier." "She tried," he agreed, looking out over the sea. Aisling turned and looked at him. "How long ago did you lose her?" Runach took a deep breath and dragged his hand through his hair, before he bowed his head and slid her a look. "That answer will cost you dearly." Her first instinct, as always, was to say nothing. But the truth was, she lived and breathed still. She could tell him perhaps a bit about herself, without bringing the curse down upon her head. Aisling took her own deep breath. "Very well." "My mother died twenty years ago, though I vow it feels like yesterday." "How did she die?" Runach was very still. "My father slew her and half my siblings. Time has done the rest of that terrible work I suppose. She shut her mouth, and put her hand on his arm. "I'm sorry." "I am too," he agreed. Runach shook his head, then reached for her hand to draw it through his arm. "Let's walk whilst you spew out the answers you owe me. You'll be more comfortable that way, I'm sure." "I'm not sure you should worry about my comfort" Aisling managed, "not after those questions." "But I do. And now that I have bared my soul, I think you should worry about my comfort and do the same.

And don’t get me started on Canadians. It’s a whole thing. Remember when the feds busted in on that Mormon polygamist cult in Texas a few years back? And the dozens of wives were paraded in front of the camera? And they all had this long mouse-colored hair with strands of gray, no hairstyle to speak of, no makeup, ashy skin, Frida Kahlo facial hair, and unflattering clothes? And on cue, the Oprah audience was shocked and horrified? Well, they’ve never been to Seattle. There are two hairstyles here: short gray hair and long gray hair. You go into a salon asking for hair color, and they flap their elbows and cluck, “Oh, goody, we never get to do color!” But what really happened was I came up here and had four miscarriages. Try as I might, it’s hard to blame that one on Nigel Mills-Murray. Oh, Paul. That last year in L.A. was just so horrible. I am so ashamed of my behavior. I’ve carried it with me to this day, the revulsion at how vile I became, all for a stupid house. I’ve never stopped obsessing about it. But just before I completely self-immolate, I think about Nigel Mills-Murray. Was I really so bad that I deserved to have three years of my life destroyed for some rich prick’s practical joke? So I had some cars towed, yes. I made a gate out of trash doorknobs. I’m an artist. I won a MacArthur grant, for fuck’s sake. Don’t I get a break? I’ll be watching TV and see Nigel Mills-Murray’s name at the end. I’ll go nuts inside. He gets to keep creating, and I’m the one who’s still in pieces?

Why did I obsess over people like this? Was it normal to fixate on strangers in this particular vivid, fevered way? I don't think so. It was impossible to imagine some random passer-by on the street forming quite such interest in me. And yet it was the main reason I'd gone in those houses with Tom: I was fascinated by strangers, wanted to know what food they ate and what dishes they ate from, what movies they watched and what music they listened to, wanted to look under their beds and in their secret drawers and night tables and inside the pockets of their coats. Often I saw interesting-looking people on the street and thought about them restlessly for days, imagining their lives, making up stories about them the subway or the crosstown bus. Years had passed, and I still hadn't stopped thinking about the dark-haired children in Catholic school uniforms - brother and sister - I'd seen in Grand Central, literally trying to pull their father out the door of a seedy bar by the sleeves of his suit jacket. Nor had I forgotten the frail, gypsyish girl in a wheelchair out in front of the Carlyle Hotel, talking breathlessly in Italian to the fluffy dog in her lap while a sharp character in sunglasses (father? bodyguard?) stood behind her chair, apparently conducting some sort of business deal on his phone. For years, I'd turned those strangers over in my mind, wondering who they were and what their lives were like, and I knew I would go home and wonder about this girl and her grandfather the same way.

You know those statistics people are always spouting off, about teenage boys thinking about sex every seven seconds? Is that really true?” “Nope. And I just want to point out that you’re the one who keeps bringing up sex. I think teenage girls might be more obsessed than boys.” “Maybe,” I say, and his eyes widen, all excited. Hastily I add, “I mean, I’m definitely curious about it. It’s definitely a thought. But I don’t see myself doing it anytime soon. With anybody. Including you.” I can tell Peter is embarrassed, the way he rushes to say, “Okay, okay, I got it. Let’s just change the subject.” Under his breath he mutters, “I didn’t even want to talk about it in the first place.” It’s sweet that he’s embarrassed. I didn’t think he would be, with all his experience. I tug on his sweater sleeve. “At some point, when I’m ready, if I’m ready, I’ll let you know.” And then I pull him toward me and press my lips against his softly. His mouth opens, and so does mine, and I think, I could kiss this boy for hours. Mid-kiss, he says, “Wait, so we’re never having sex? Like ever?” “I didn’t say never. But not now. I mean, not until I’m really, really sure. Okay?” He lets out a laugh. “Sure. You’re the one driving this bus. You have been from the start. I’m still catching up.” He snuggles closer and sniffs my hair. “What’s this new shampoo you’re wearing?” “I stole it from Margot. It’s juicy pear. Nice, right?” “It’s all right, I guess. But can you go back to the one you used to wear? The coconut one? I love the smell of that one.” A dreamy look crosses his face, like evening fog settling over a city. “If I feel like it,” I say, which makes him pout. I’m already thinking I should buy a bottle of the coconut hair mask, too, but I like to keep him on his toes. Like he said, “I’m the one driving this bus. Peter pulls me against him so he’s curved around my back like shelter. I let my head rest on his shoulder, rest my arms on his kneecaps. This is nice. This is cozy. Just me and him, just for a while, apart from the rest of the world.

this thing—his thing—still well and alive inside me. # I dreamed of clawed hooks and sexual abandon. Faces covered in leather masks and eyeliner so dark I could only see black. Here the monsters would come alive, but not the kind you have come to expect. I watched myself as if I were outside my own flesh, free from the imprisonment of bone and conscience. Swollen belly stretch-marked and ugly; my hair tethered and my skin vulnerable. Earthquake beats blared from the DJ booth as terrible looking bodies thrashed, moshed and convulsed. Alone, so alone. Peter definitely gone, no more tears left but the ones that were to come from agony. She was above me again, Dark Princess, raging beauty queen, and I was hers to control. The ultimate succession into human suspension. Like I’d already learned: the body is the final canvas. There is no difference between love and pain. They are the same hopeless obsession. The hooks dived, my legs opened and my back arched. Blood misted my face; pussy juice slicked my inner thigh as my water suddenly broke. # The next night I had to get to the club. 4 A.M. is a time that never lets me down; it knows why I have nightmares, and why I want to suspend myself above them. L train lunacies berated me once again, but this time I noticed the people as if under a different light. They were all rather sad, gaunt and bleary. Their faces were to be pitied and their hands kept shaking, their legs jittering for another quick fix. No matter how much the deranged governments of New York City have cleaned up the boroughs, they can’t rid us of our flavor. The Meatpacking District was scarily alive. Darkness laced with sizzling urban neon. Regret stitched up in the night like a black silk blanket. The High Line Park gloomed above me with trespassers and graffiti maestros. I was envious of their creative freedom, their passion, and their drive. They had to do what they were doing, had to create. There was just no other acceptable life than that. I was inside fast, my memories of Peter fleeting and the ache within me about to be cast off. Stage left, stage right, it didn’t matter. I passed the first check point with ease, as if they already knew the click of my heels, the way my protruding stomach curved through my lace cardigan. She found me, or I found her, and we didn’t exchange any words, any warnings. It was time. Face up, legs open, and this time I’d be flying like Superman, but upside down. There were many hands, many faces, but no

The rain spattered against the window in a wind-driven sheet, and he dropped his forehead to her shoulder. “Sleep with me tonight,” he said, “or let me sleep with you.” “You know we cannot.” “Just sleep, Emmie. I will not bother you.” In the dark, she could not read his expression, but she did know he was ripe for another setback. He wasn’t sleeping in his bed, it was after midnight, and his memories were tormenting him. “I will scream the house down if you misbehave, and I will not let you seduce me.” It was a terrible idea—almost as terrible as the thought of not seeing him for weeks, not hearing him banter with Lord Amery, not watching as he slowly coaxed Winnie into a semblance of civilized behavior. It was a terrible idea, for she could not think of refusing him. “Tonight, Emmie love, I could not seduce my own right hand. I’ve already tried.” She shot him a puzzled look but kept her questions to herself. “Take me upstairs, Emmie.” He rose and drew her to her feet. “Please.” She made no reply, just took his hand, picked up her candle, and led him to her bedroom. While she finished braiding her hair, he locked the door then undressed, washed, and climbed under her covers. When her fingers hesitated at the ties of her nightgown, he met her gaze. “It’s up to you. Sleep however you are comfortable.” She blew out the candle before taking off her clothes and climbing in beside him. “You will sleep?” she asked, her voice hesitant in the darkness. “Eventually,” he replied, pushing her gently to her side, “and so will you.” He trailed his fingers over her shoulder blades then down her spine. “Relax, Emmie. I’ve given my word I will behave, and I would not lie to you.” She sighed and gave herself up to the pleasure of having her back rubbed and then, only moments later, to the pleasure of slumber. “Better,” he murmured, content just to touch her. The smooth, fragrant expanse of her flesh under his hands soothed him, distracted him from the rain and the rain scents coming in the windows. Her breathing evened out, and the tension in her body eased. Slowly, so as not to disturb her, he curved his naked body around hers and slipped a hand around her waist. She sighed again and snuggled back against his chest, then laced her fingers through his. He felt himself drifting into sleep, Emmie’s hand in his, her warmth against his heart, her fragrance blotting out the memories that had denied him sleep. Peace. Finally, finally, I have experienced that thing referred to as peace. ***

There’s my girl.” He tossed the rag to the hearth. “Now, cuddle up. Do you know, I think you put bruises on my arse, woman?” He stretched out on his side, right smack beside her. “You have slain me, Emmie Farnum.” He sighed happily and felt cautiously for her in the dark. His hand found her hair, which he smoothed back in a tender caress. “I badly needed slaying, too, I can tell you.” He bumped her cheek with his nose and pulled back abruptly. “I would have said you were in need of slaying, as well,” he said slowly, “but why the tears, Emmie, love?” There were women who cried in intimate circumstances, a trait he’d always found endearing, but they weren’t Emmie, and her cheek wasn’t damp. It was wet. “Did I hurt you?” he asked, pulling her over his body. He positioned her to straddle him and wrapped an arm around her even while his hand continued to explore her face. He thought he’d been careful, but at the end, he’d been ardent—or too rough? “Sweetheart.” He found her cheek with his lips. “I am so heartily sorry.” “For what?” she expostulated, sitting up on him. “I am the one who needs to apologize. Oh, God, help me, I was hoping you wouldn’t learn this of me, and I tried to tell you, but I couldn’t… I just…” She was working herself up to a state. Even in the dark, her voice alone testified to rising hysteria. “Emmie.” He leaned up and gathered her in his arms. “Emmie, hush.” But she couldn’t hush; she was sobbing and hiccupping and gulping in his arms, leaving him helpless to do more than hold her, murmur meaningless reassurances, and then finally, lay her gently on her side, climb out of bed, and fish his handkerchief out of his pockets. All the while though, he sorted through their encounter and seized upon a credible source of Emmie’s upset. “You were not a virgin,” he said evenly as he tucked the handkerchief into her hand and gathered her back over him. “I was n-n-not,” she said, seizing up again in misery. “And I h-h-hate to cry. But of course you know.” I do now, he thought with a small smile, though had he thought otherwise, he wouldn’t have been so willing to bed her—he hoped. “Cease your tears, Emmie love.” He tucked her closer. “I am sorry for your sake you are so upset, and I hope your previous liaisons were not painful, but as for me, I am far more interested in your future than your past.” A moment of silence went by, his hands tracing lazy patterns on her lovely back, and then she looked up at him. “You cannot mean that.” “I can,” he corrected her gently. “I know you were without anyone to protect you, and you were in service. One of my own sisters was damned near seduced by a footman, Emmie. It happens, and that’s the end of it. Has your heart been broken?” She nodded on a shuddery breath. “Shall I trounce him for you? Flirt with his wife?” “That won’t be necessary,” she said, her voice sounding a little less shaky.

Surely you’re not going to destroy another book, are you?” “I’ve decided my obsession with reading has gotten me absolutely nowhere, so . . . I’m tossing all the nonsense out of my life and intend to travel forth with less baggage.” “You love to read.” “And I’ll occasionally indulge that love, but enough is enough.” She held up her copy of Pride and Prejudice. “This, for all intent and purposes, is a fairy tale. I’m done with fairy tales for good, as well as anything by Shakespeare. I loathe his stories, don’t understand most of what he’s written, and I was only reading them because of any future children I hoped to have. But since I’m destined to remain a spinster forever . . . I’m chucking them into the fire.” “What do Shakespeare and any children you might have in the future have in common?” Millie sent him a look that clearly said she found him a little dense. “I wanted to be knowledgeable so that my children wouldn’t suffer any embarrassment because of my ignorance and lack of education.” Everett’s mouth dropped open before he had the presence of mind to snap it shut when she shot him a glare. Bracing himself in case she got it into her head to punch him as she’d done Mr. Victor, Everett stepped closer to her and pried the copy of Pride and Prejudice out of her hand. “Any child would be lucky to call you mother, Millie. You’re smart, well-read, curious about everything, and have a true love for children.” Staring at him for a long moment, Millie tilted her head. “I knew we should have summoned the physician to take a look at you after your last brawl.” “My wits are not addled, Millie. Quite honestly, my mind is clearer right now than it’s been in years.” He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it, relieved when her eyes widened just a bit. “And I have to tell you something else.” “What?” she asked in a voice that sounded somewhat breathless. “I can’t allow you to burn any Jane Austen book—but especially not Pride and Prejudice.” “That’s what you have to say to me—that I can’t burn a silly book?” “I finished the story, Millie. I read Pride and Prejudice from cover to cover, and . . . I’m your Mr. Darcy and you’re my Lizzy.” “You . . . finished . . . the story?” “Indeed. And if you didn’t hear me the first time, I’m Mr. Darcy.” “I’m fairly certain Mr. Darcy would have had an English accent, but since Lizzy did enjoy reading, I suppose it’s not too much of a stretch to compare me with her, although. . . .” As Millie continued talking, really rapidly at that, Everett simply watched her, taking in every detail of her face. Her green eyes were sparkling and her cheeks were flushed a delicate shade of pink. Brown curls had begun to escape the pins someone had put in her hair, and a spray of flowers that had been tucked into that hair was hanging somewhat forlornly over her ear. Her lips were still moving incredibly fast, but the second his gaze settled on them, he couldn’t seem to look away. They were delightful lips, just the right shade of pink, and . . . Everett leaned forward and claimed those rapidly moving lips with his own. For

Mazel Amsel- I have the obsession of destroying Nevaeh, she is so perfect, I cannot stand it! My girls have to be on top, and I am never going to let her be anything, I will make sure of it! That is what I have been doing for years. Nevaeh that no good little pussy licker; even if she knows it is me, she will not be able to ‘Prove it.’ I am just that well-liked by everyone, I am so powerful that no one will ever defeat me. I am the master manipulator, Nevaeh- yes, she is the tower! She is about for a hundred pounds, unnatural blond hair, lime green glowing eyes, and a voice that bellows! To me, she looks like a bulldog in the face, yet evil wicked witch-like also, yet to everyone else she blends in, to the others she looks as they do, just a normal mom, with normal kids. Yet I think she is crumbling, I think some people are seeing through her veil, because of what happened recently. Mazel- I have everyone wrapped around my little finger. Likewise, if they do not bow down to me, I will make their life a living hell. That is the way; I have to have it, all the time for Nevaeh! I have to know what she is doing at all times. I have to hack into her social networking and get her pears to think she is a ‘Creep’ and ‘Stocker’ to young girls. So, she has no friends at all. So, my girls can be the supreme of this area, so that they can do as they please, without anyone stopping them from being the best, no matter what, and from getting what they want, and what I want for them. Besides, foremost I wanted to make sure that she would never date anyone. So, I came up with the story of telling everyone that she was into girls and that she is just plain crazy. I should know my eyes are on her always. I did not want to see her go to proms; I did not want to see her succeed. I did not want her to be loved. I would like to see her die, and not walk away from it. I have dreamed of ways to kill her repeatedly. Like this one, I would like to see her be impaled on a sharp wooden stick, starting through her butt hole, and then slowly have gravity have it go up into her delicious miniature body until it hits her brain, and she screams out my girl’s names, as we get what we need. I would love to see a Nevaeh- kabob! I would love to see her stoned out in the open with rocks! I would love to see my girls bite their nipples off with their teeth! I want to see my girl claw her up to head to toe. I hunger to see them scratch her sweet blue eyes that are so heavenly right out of her face! I want to see her gush that cobalt blood like a waterfall from her naked sliced-up body. Yes, I want us to torture her any way we can until she says yes to us. We are going to get at anything of hers we can until she comes with us! As we would, all dance around her, as we would light her up, cheerfully for the last time. How I would love to bleach and fry that perfect hair with chemicals. I and we all in our family want to fuck her up and down anyways we can! Mwah Ha, ha! Yes, Beforehand, we all would kiss, touch, lick, and stick her, and do what we want to get the life from her by sucking away. We would eat her soul away as it would come down from the heavens then through her body, and into ours, as we would drink it out, the way we do. Yes, yes, hell- yes, I can see it now! Yes, I want her soul! Besides, anything or everything I can get out of her to add to my shrine. We even have a voodoo doll of her with pins in it. I have a few things of hers like her hymen-damaged red blood tarnished pink polka-dotted gym underwear, and her indigo pantiliner she had on. That my girl ripped off of her in school, the more things we have the more we can control her mind, but I want more!

Hey, baby girl. Daddy needs your chocolate ass to get better. Me and you got some unfinished business, young lady. Plus, daddy needs some more of those scrubs. They are working for my hair and my face, Nae. I never told anybody this before, but I need you, baby.” Wait a minute… I think I know that voice, or do I? Damn it, my brain is starting to hurt. “She smilin’ a lil’ bit, bro. Keep talkin’.” “Baby, you need to get better so we can figure out what hoe ass nigga did this to you. I promise they are gon’ die. You mine, shorty. I don’t care about that wack ass nigga you got. You can believe that shit, T-Rose.” Is this the guy from California my dad was talking about? He knows me. He sounds good as hell and he likes my scrubs. I hope he looks as good as he sounds. T-Rose? Someone called me that before. Damn it! No one can hear me. Why can’t nobody hear me? “We have to go now, Trenae. Get better.” Finally,

For me, the flow of information was an apt metaphor. As surfing became my obsession at a young age, my innovation had been to remap my tactile sense into the water around me. Sitting on my surfboard, bobbing up and down between the swells, I could feel the pressure, shape, and temperature of the water’s surface around me through my skin. The thousands of neurons attached to each hair follicle could sense even tiny subsurface eddies and water currents. After nearly twenty years of dedicated practice, my brain had neuroplastically reformatted to devote a large part of itself to my water-sense, and I now had the most highly attuned tactile array of any pssi-kid, or for that matter anyone else in the world. Sitting with my eyes closed, I could feel the water moving and undulating around me as a perfectly natural and integral part of my body. I was one with the water, and it was one with me.

But she did have a sulky bursting prowling sort of energy, because she was in that state so many young girls go through―a state of sexual obsession that can be like a sort of trance. When I was fifteen, still living in Baker Street with my father, I spent some months in that state, so that now I can't walk through that area without remembering, half amused, half embarrassed, an emotional condition which was so strong it had the power to absorb into it pavements, houses, shop windows. What was interesting about June was this: surely nature should have arranged matters so that the men she met must be aware of what afflicted her. Not at all. That first evening Maryrose and I involuntarily exchanged glances and nearly laughed out loud from recognition and amused pity. We did not, because we also understood that the so obvious fact was not obvious to the men and we wanted to protect her from their laughter. All the women in the place were aware of June. I remember sitting one morning on the verandah with Mrs. Lattimer, the pretty red-haired woman who flirted with young Stanley Lett, and June came into sight prowling blindly under the gum-trees by the railway lines. It was like watching a sleepwalker. She would take half a dozen steps, staring across the valley at the piled blue mountains, lift her hands to her hair, so that her body, tightly outlined in bright red cotton, showed every straining line and the sweat patches dark under the armpits―then drop her arms, her fists clenched at her sides. She would stand motionless, then walk on again, pause, seem to dream, kick at the cinders with the toe of high white sandal, and so on, slowly, till she was out of sight beyond the sun-glittering gum-trees. Mrs. Lattimore let out a deep rich sigh, laughed her weak indulgent laugh, and said: 'My God, I wouldn't be a girl again for a million pounds. My God, to go through all that again, not for a million million.' And Maryrose and I agreed. Yet, although to us every appearance of this girl was so powerfully embarrassing, the men did not see it and we took care not to betray her. There is a female chivalry, woman for woman, as strong as any other kind of loyalty. Or perhaps it was we didn't want brought home to us the deficiencies of imagination of our own men.

You look rather thirsty," a voice says from behind me, and I turn to face Benediction de la Lucia--the Devil himself. He is a striking man; his long, orange-red hair is as bright as a tropical sunset, and his skin is like freshly-fallen snow. His large, expressive eyes hold all colors, and I feel myself being drawn into them. "G-good evening," I stammer. "I was just looking for--" "I know whom you seek," he purrs "although I was hoping that you would agree to spend a little time with me, first." He tucks a wad of bills into my vest pocket and drapes his arm around my shoulder. "I would be happy to, Lord de la Lucia," I smile, grasping him around the waist. "Do you Hunger?" His eyes glide up and down the line of my body, and I feel a strong desire to swoon. "Always," he murmurs "and please...call me Beni'." The room is spinning, and reality is fading fast...I press my face against his chest and strive to cling to consciousness. He sweeps me up into his arms and carries me to one of the bedrooms, where he feeds from me...and all of a sudden, he is atop me, his snow-white wings outstretched. I feel as if I will die--the pleasure and pain are so intense. I can feel myself bleeding out and being reborn, over and over upon that silken bed, every nerve of my body alive with his essence. We are almost like one, body and soul...and then he pulls back and looks down into my eyes. "You want something," he leers at me "or is it someone?" He sniffs the air. "I can smell it on your sex, My Darling! Don't be afraid to ask, young one--that's why I came to you! Love falls under my realm, Dearest...the human heart is full of darkness, yes?" I curse at him in Japanese and try to push him off of me, but he holds me fast. "Don't be so rude, Darling! I only want to help you! Matthieu-Michele can't do anything for you--he's simply out of his league! He's only a young God, still finding his footing! I am older than the ages, and I know what love is! I know the agony and the ecstasy and the razor's scar that it leaves upon the heart! I know of the poison and the betrayal and the all-consuming obsession! I have ridden the crest and scrabbled in the desolate valleys! I know what you want...I know whom you love...and I can make it happen for you--for a price." "I don't make deals with the Devil," I hiss at him from between clenched teeth...

My love for her knew no boundaries. And it was love, not just need or obsession. I didn’t know that I was capable of that and knowing I loved her should scare the fucking hell out of me. But it didn’t. It just made me want her more. Whether she knew it or not, she was fucking mine. Her moonlike hair was the only light in my darkness.

Xavier and Catalina sat in the VIP box, waving down at us enthusiastically and I waved back before giving Darius my full attention. The entire right side of his face was covered in mud, not to mention the rest of him and his torn jersey fell open to reveal the firm cut of his abs and that perfect V which dipped beneath his waistband. “You’re killing it out there,” I told him truthfully, flashing a sweet smile which instantly had him narrowing his eyes in suspicion. We hadn’t exactly talked much since the whole three way thing and I was really curious about how he was feeling about that. But I was even more curious as to how he was going to react when he realised I’d been playing with the sack of treasure I stole from him oh so long ago. There were plenty of times when I’d thought about the little stash we’d hidden out in the woods and wondered why he hadn’t asked for it back and there was only one reason that made any sense – he assumed I didn’t have it anymore. I didn’t know if he thought I’d sold it or destroyed it, but I was about to remind him that I still had it and see how nice he was when his temper flared. I was pretty sure there was a guide book or two out there about not poking a Dragon, but I guessed I was just too stupid to care. “Thanks. Are you looking for me to make some cheesy statement like I’m thinking of you every time I tackle someone?” he teased and I laughed, tossing my hair. He frowned at me and I had to admit that might have been overkill, but whatever. “Nice to know I’m on your mind every time you have someone pinned beneath you in the mud,” I purred. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Mildred rising to her feet in the stands with a face like an angry Koala which had been hit by a car. I didn’t have long before she came over here to stake her claim on her Dragon, but I didn’t need much time. “I think I’ve made my desire to pin you beneath me pretty clear,” Darius replied in a low voice which had my toes curling, but I wasn’t here to flirt, I was here to poke a Dragon. “Good luck for the second half,” I said in a sweet voice, reaching out touch his bicep, making sure that the gold rings pressed against his skin. Darius looked down the moment he felt his magic stir in response to the gold and his eyes widened in surprise which was quickly followed by a flash of fury as he recognised the jewellery from his stash which I’d stolen. I whirled away from him with a dark laugh before he could do any more than suck in an angry breath and I jogged out to join my squad just as they started up a chant. V – E – G – A! She’ll wipe the floor with you today! Veeeeega! Veeeeega! I fell into the moves of the chant, clapping my hands as some of the others rustled pom-poms and Darcy offered me an appreciative smile from the side of the pitch. We had little chants like that for all of the team members, but we often forgot to call out for the Heirs. The music suddenly dropped and 7 Rings by Ariana Grande burst from speakers around the stadium as we moved into a full routine filled with dance moves and tricks. The song choice turned out to be perfect for taunting a gold obsessed Dragon as well as performing a badass routine to and I couldn’t help but smirk like a psychopath throughout. Darius stood glaring at me from the side of the pitch even when Seth tried to drag him into the locker rooms and my heart thundered at the pure fury in his eyes. Remind me again why I thought poking the Dragon was a good idea because he looks ready to shit a brick! I turned my eyes from him, grinning out at the crowd as I moved between my girls, running forward as I performed a set of hand springs which ended in me throwing a huge blast of multicoloured petals up into the air so that they fell over the crowd. (Tory)

The priest and his desires Not alone, but a lonely monastery priest, Resisting hard not to venture out and pursue the need for love and passion driven heist, Bound by his sanctum and religion, He tries not to give in to any seduction, Adam and Eve blamed the devil, The priest is baffled to decide who shall he blame for this evil, He rolls and turns restlessly in the bed of his desires, And every night after the Church service he deals with these raging fires, He is dressed in his black robe on the much anticipated Sunday mass, But he is distracted and sees passions and desires cast on peoples faces and even on mosaic glass, At the end of the service he serves all some fine and red wine, And when he stands face to face with a beautiful woman his inner self says “I wish you were mine!’” His Sunday night is spent in her curled hair locks, He is shackled to her beautiful face and desires that fasten around him like unbreakable locks, He often touches his cross that he wears always, Still his nights are restless and now it is so even during the sunny Spring days, He bows before the Altar and makes a solemn confession, “My Lord! her face and her overpowering beauty have become my obsession, Am I still worthy of worshipping you my God? For I have silently started worshiping this feeling of loving her and I do not feel odd, It is her thoughts that possess me even during my sermons, In her absence, not yours My Lord, everything presents itself like bad omens, To tame my wandering thoughts I refer to the Holy Book, But through it too peeps her face and her mesmerising look, I wonder if I shall quit clergy, And adopt this new synergy, I am drowning farther and farther in this mental eclipse, And I only want to think of her beautiful face, her warm skin and her red lips, Shall I forsake my black robe, My Lord, and not Thee? Or Forsake her and thereby my black robe and Thee? Because without her I do not feel anything that is a part of me, And without being me, how can I anything else be, Perhaps I am supposed to be a man of God but not a man, Never to fulfillmy own desires for I am busy fulfilling Your plan, So let me live with my state and the social taboo, While every night I place my desires in the coffin along with the happy morning cuckoo.” The Lord smiles at him, “It is your personal battle and it is grim, You desire her, her face, her charming ways, You think of her during nights and during the bountiful days, But you think of me too and that is enough for me to know, So seek her and kiss her grace, for then you shall better baptise in my glow, And before you fall too low, Rise to your calling and you shall reap as you shall sow, Whether you wear a black robe or her kisses, I shall judge you on how you made others feel with or without your kisses.” Said the Lord in His emphatic voice, And the priest stood up and made the right choice! To love the woman he loved and missed, And he felt something divine within him, whenever her deep beauty he kissed! Source of inspiration : The Thorn Birds 1983 Drama

The priest and his desires Not alone, but a lonely monastery priest, Resisting hard not to venture out and pursue the need for love and passion driven heist, Bound by his sanctum and religion, He tries hard not to give in to any form of seduction, Adam and Eve blamed the devil, The priest is baffled to decide who shall he blame for this evil? He rolls and turns restlessly in the bed of his desires, And every night after the Church service he deals with these raging fires, He is dressed in his black robe on the much anticipated Sunday mass, But he is distracted when he sees passions and desires cast on peoples faces and even on mosaic glass, At the end of the service he serves all some fine and red wine, And when he comes face to face with a beautiful woman, his inner self says “I wish you were mine!’” His Sunday night is spent in her curled hair locks, He is shackled to her beautiful face and desires that fasten around him like unbreakable locks, He often touches his cross that he wears always, Still his nights are restless and now it is so even during the sunny Spring days, He bows before the Altar and makes a solemn confession, “My Lord! her face and her overpowering beauty have become my obsession, Am I still worthy of worshipping you my God? For I have silently started worshiping this feeling of loving her and I do not feel odd, It is her thoughts that possess me even during my sermons, In her absence, not yours My Lord, everything presents itself like bad omens, To tame my wandering thoughts I refer to the Holy Book, But through it too peeps her face and her mesmerising look, I wonder if I shall quit clergy, And adopt this new synergy? I am drowning farther and farther in this mental eclipse, And I only want to think of her beautiful face, her warm skin and her red lips, Shall I forsake my black robe, My Lord, and not Thee? Or Forsake her and thereby my black robe and as well Thee? Because without her I do not feel anything that is a part of me, And without being me, how can I anything else be, Perhaps I am supposed to be a man of God but not a man, Never to fulfil my own desires for I am busy fulfilling Your plan, So let me live with my state and the social taboo, While every night I place my desires in the coffin along with the happy morning cuckoo.” The Lord smiles at him, “It is your personal battle and it is grim, You desire her, her face, her charming ways, You think of her during nights and during the bountiful days, But you think of me too and that is enough for me to know, So seek her and kiss her grace, for then you shall better baptise in my glow, And before you fall too low, Rise to your calling and you shall reap as you shall sow, Whether you wear a black robe or her kisses, I shall judge you on how you made others feel with or without your kisses.” Said the Lord in His emphatic voice, And the priest stood up and made the right choice! To love the woman he loved and missed, And he felt something divine within him, whenever her deep beauty he kissed! Source of inspiration : The Thorn Birds . 1983 Drama

Scotty” is not his real name, by the way; I only call him that because of his obsession with Star Trek, the same way he calls me “Ursula” because of my love for bears. Scotty’s brother, Trevor, is also waiting on the sofa. My stomach does its usual flip-flop when I see him. I knew he would be here, of course—he and I have an appointment to talk privately after the movie—but I can’t help the effect he has on me. Trevor Lehto is twenty-eight, ten years younger than Scotty and two years older than me. Today he’s wearing a lumberjack shirt with the sleeves turned up to his elbows, Converse sneakers, and jeans, which work well with his brown hair and eyes and a scruffy beard that manages to look both natural and groomed. I also have brown hair and eyes and am wearing jeans and plaid because this is practically the uniform for men and women in the U.P., but Trevor pulls off the look in a way that people tend to notice. I’m reasonably certain I’m not the only person at the hospital who has a crush on him.

eye combination my mother always made a fuss about. Maybe that’s why my skin crawled every time someone commented on how attractive a couple we were. It was more a reflection on me than us. He lifts his hand and moves my hair off my forehead. The gesture is intimate, but I’m too stunned to stop him. He brushes his thumb over the scar on my temple. “I was worried about you. You wouldn’t let me see you in the hospital. Or after?” A sigh escapes before I can school my features into something a little more… regretful. “Well, I was embarrassed.” That’s a lie. I just didn’t want to face whatever the fuck emotional roller coaster I was riding the last six months. Seriously. My life went from normal to shit in a split second. Adding Jack—and the life that I thought I had, the one that seemed to go up in a puff of smoke when I woke up in the hospital—would’ve been more pain than I was ready to accept. “Violet!” I step away from Jack, ignoring his wounded expression, and turn to my other friends. Half the dance team is here, and they all crowd around me. Someone pulls at my coffee-stained blouse, and another swoops in to clean the floor where my cup dropped. I had forgotten, in my Jack-shock. “Lucky it wasn’t hot.” Willow nudges me. “Luck and I aren’t on speaking terms.” She visited faithfully every day while I was stuck in the hospital. Kept me sane, kept me looped in to the gossip. She’s the only one who knows what I went through, and I’m keeping it that way. I’m not in the habit of airing my dirty laundry—or my newfound nightmares. I’ve been plagued by bright lights, crunching metal, and snapping bones. She rolls her eyes at my luck comment. “You need to change. We’re taking you out.” Oh boy. My first instinct is to say no, but honestly? I could use a bit of normalcy. My therapist—the talk one, not the physical one—said something about getting back into a routine. Well, for the last two years, I’ve gone out with my girls on Friday nights. There’s nothing more normal than that. I’m actually looking forward to it. She leads the way to the bedroom I haven’t been in since… before. She steps aside and lets me do the honors. Opening the door is like cracking into a time capsule. Fucking devastating. Willow stands behind me, her hand on my shoulder, as I stare around at the remnants of the person I used to be. If I wasn’t aware of how different I was after six months away, I am now. Mentally, physically. There are still clothes that I left on the floor. My chair is pulled out and covered in clothes. There’s a pile of books that I had planned to conquer over the summer in the center of the desk. My bed is made. “I kept the door open

But that’s what makes us special,” she continues. “This isn’t just a courtship of boy meets girl. They fall in love, yadda, yadda. This is a lifelong commitment to men who aren’t satisfied living ordinary lives. It sometimes seems more of an obsession than a mission. One that can test a woman to her absolute limits.” She grins over at me, “But for him, for that man, I’ll do it. I’ll be there when he fucks up so badly he can’t celebrate how good he is or what he’s done. I’ll be there whenever he doubts himself and our relationship suffers because of those doubts. I’ll be there with my hair done, and my lipstick on, in my best heels, with my head held high on his darkest days, because that’s what he needs. And I don’t want him changing. I don’t want him to stop being who he is, not ever, not for me, and not for any baby we make.” She turns her gaze to me. “But I will use the tips of these heels to pierce and pin his brass balls down if he ever stops giving me what I need.

I’m gonna say sorry right now, Pen.” My eyes went wide as trepidation filled my chest. “What? Why?” He fisted my hair, tipping my face back. “Because I’m already completely obsessed with you. I’m going to be wildly inappropriate now that I know what glory you’ve got between your legs. I am going to need to be down there all the fucking time, and you’re going to need to learn to allow it.” I breathed a sigh of relief, then I giggled. “I think I’m going to need more information.” “I don’t have any more information. I’m unpredictable, even to myself.” He trailed his fingers from my hair to my shoulders and skimmed across the top of my towel, which was hanging on by a thread. Slowly untucking it, he watched me as he spread it open to reveal my breasts. “Jesus,” he murmured.

Woman?" he asked me. "Yeah, the woman you were kissing, the one in the little apartment with the baby boy in a crib-" The memories flashed to life all around me then and my heart began to race as I looked around at memory after memory of him and my mom. They'd met while she was working in The Sparkling Uranus and he'd become somewhat obsessed with her, paying for private dances night after night before finally plucking up the courage to ask her to be his. She'd been heart broken when they'd met after Gareth's father had left her for his Elysian Mate and she'd been left to raise a baby all alone, but then she'd slowly fallen in love with this man. A man who had the same golden hair as I had naturally. A man whose penetrating gaze was running all over me like he was noticing the same similarities I was.  "That woman is my mother," I breathed. "And my father disappeared before he ever even knew she was pregnant with me-

I’ve never really enjoyed oral sex. I guess I was always too much in my head to enjoy it. Worrying about what I tasted like, if my pussy hair was short enough, if I looked pretty down there. Then I would worry I was taking too long and the guy was probably only doing it out of obligation and I would start to feel anxious and guilty and eventually just pretend to come to get the whole stressful event over with.

Max let out a breath through his teeth. “Listen. Many people believe that Fragmented Valtain are less capable. The idea being that Valtain magic bleaches hair and skin, so by that logic, someone like you…” Someone like me would be inherently less powerful. I nodded, glancing down at my hand and my two tan fingers. Those patches of gold had hurt my value as a slave, and now they hurt my value as a Valtain, too. “It’s not proven. The point is, many people, especially full Valtain, will be expecting you to fail. They’ll be looking for a reason to prove that you’re not capable of doing this. We’ll make sure that you knock their moon-obsessed robes off, absolutely. But when you do it, you need to be technically perfect.

You hug like a mannequin. Stroke my hair.” He muffles a laugh. “How are you making this about you?” “I’m a self-obsessed diva, remember?

I like you, Ambrose,” I whisper, “but I really like your dick.” I grip his hair and turn his face toward me. “You’re my little plaything now, aren’t you? Useful for nothing more than my pleasure. You can’t talk or move, but you can lie there and let me fuck myself with your cock, huh?

Bailey sat on the edge of the couch and fed Maddy grapes. The very swollen mommy-to-be initially complained about being fed like a pet. Eventually, she gave in and enjoyed the attention. Not to be outdone, Sawyer turned a fan towards Maddy and was painting her nails. I watched them baby her and wondered about when I would be that big and uncomfortable. “I’m in no hurry to have a baby,” Tawny said, maybe for the tenth time since arriving. “Not in any hurry at all.” Farah grinned from where she was cutting carrots into little perfect sticks for dipping. “Coop is obsessed with getting me pregnant. First, his little brother is about to have a baby then his best friend. I swear whenever we’re alone, he’s inside me,” she said then her smile grew. “It’s awesome.” “Huh,” Tawny muttered. “Judd is in me all the time too and not because he’s trying to plant his flag or lay his seed or whatever.” “Jealous?” Farah asked and Tawny fake glared at her. “Sometimes, my sister irritates me too,” I said and they both laughed. “I’m going to brush the baby’s hair,” Bailey announced to no one in particular. “When she’s old enough, I’m going to put those little barrettes in her hair and make her wear headbands and turn her into a doll. Then when she cries, I’m giving her back to Maddy.” “Yeah for me,” Maddy whispered with her eyes closed. “Are you suffering?” Bailey asked. “Like should I do more for you to ease away the horror of how huge you’ve become?” Opening her eyes a crack, Maddy muttered, “Stop charming me.” Bailey grinned. “Seriously, you look pretty miserable today.” “I’ve been having those Braxton Hicks contractions since yesterday.” “Is that bad?” Sawyer asked, looking up from her meticulous work on Maddy’s toes. “Is it like hemorrhoids?” When we laughed, Sawyer beamed, even though she likely had no idea what was funny. “They’re like practice contractions,” Maddy explained. “They don’t hurt much, but they’re uncomfortable.” Bailey frowned. “How do you know all this stuff?” “I read a book.” “Yeah, I did that once. Not a fan.” “You guys don’t have to hang out here,” Maddy said. “The guys are out having fun and you’re pampering me. You could go to the movies if you want.” “No,” Bailey said quickly. “I need to be super nice because I had a dream that being nice will lead to a handsome awesome guy who is the fucker. I want that guy. He belongs to me and I’m sick of waiting, so shut up and let me be nice to you.” “Sure,” Maddy said, sighing. “This is nice, but I’m going to have to pee soon.” “Do you need me to carry you?” Bailey asked. “Maybe. Ask me in a few minutes.

She looked at me again, and the sweet and shy Nicole disappeared. Her eyes blazed. "The others aren't here, are they?" she said. "You have no intention of rescuing me. Why would you? I'm competition for your precious Daniel. You don't want him, but you don't want anyone else to have him either. You're a selfish b*tch, Maya Delaney. A sl*t, too, fooling around with every guy in sight, right under his nose." As Nicole raged, the hair on my neck prickled, because in her eyes, I saw madness. Obsession and madness. "Everything comes so easy for you, doesn't it, Maya? School, boys, friends, sports. Even your precious animals. You can't just take care of them like any normal person. You have to be some kind of animal whisperer. Magical healer. So damned special. Like Serena, captain of the swim team and the best singer on the freaking island, and how much does she practice? Sings in the shower. Paddles around the lake. Do you know how hard I work? It's never enough. You two get the trophies and the solos and the As and the boys." You're crazy, I thought. Did they do this to you with their experiments? Or is this just you? I started inching back. "You're just going to leave me here?" she said. "Well, you know what, Maya? I could use a little company." She screamed, a long drawn-out shriek of feigned terror.

You do seem different.” He touched her arms, pulled her in closer. “I’m happy to see you too, if you’d know. I think I missed you a bit.” “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” “I’m certain I could think of something nicer.” He looked up, thinking before turning back to her again. “I’m sorry about what I said before. All the other women I’ve seen at Pembrook Park seemed to be toying with ideas of affairs while their husbands were on business trips. I couldn’t reconcile what I knew of the women who come here and what I knew of you. When I saw you that day walking with Mr. Nobley and the others, I realized you’re here because you’re not satisfied--you’re looking for something. And when I finally realized that, can you imagine how lucky I felt that out of everyone, you would choose me?” “Thanks,” she said. “That was honest and encouraging, but Martin, you were going for nice.” “I wasn’t finished yet! I also wanted to tell you that you’re beautiful.” “That’s better.” “Unbelievably beautiful. And…and I don’t know how to say it. I’m not very good at saying what I’m thinking. But you make me feel like myself.” He swept a loose lock of hair from her forehead. “You remind me of my sister.” “Oh, really? You have that kind of sister?” “Yes, confident, funny…” “No, I meant the kind that you want to smooch.” Martin swept her up again, this time in a more romantic style than the over-the-shoulder baggage. She fit her arm around his neck and let him kiss her. She pressed her hand to his chest, trying to detect if his heart was pounding like hers. She peered at him and saw a little frown line between his eyes. “No, my sister doesn’t kiss half so well.” He walked her around, singing some ludicrous lullaby as though she were a baby, then set her down on a tree stump so they were nearly the same height. “Martin, could you lose your job over this?” He traced the line of her cheek with his finger. “At the moment, I don’t care.” “I’ll talk to Mrs. Wattlesbrook about it at our departure meeting tomorrow, but I don’t think my opinion means much to her.” “It might. Thank you.” Then there was silence and with it a hint of ending, and Jane realized she wasn’t quite ready for it. Martin was the first real guy she’d ever been able to relax with, turn off the obsessive craziness and just have fun. She needed to be with him longer and practice up for the real world. “I’m supposed to leave tomorrow,” she said, “but I can stay a couple more days, change my flight. I could find a hotel in London, far away from Wattlesbrook’s scope of vision, and I could see you. Just hang out a bit before I go home, no weirdness, no pressure, I promise.” He smiled broadly. “That’s an offer I can’t refuse because I’m simply mad to see you in pants. I have a feeling you have a very nice bum.

The reason,” he whispered, caressing my cheek and neck with his lips, “guys obsess over these lips is because they’re so fucking sexy. Soft too. Little pink pillows that taste sweeter than candy.” When he lifted his gaze and stared down at me, Cooper laughed. “You’re pouting again.” Unsure what would happen next, I said nothing. Cooper spent another minute kissing my neck then he climbed off of me and fell back into the corner groove of the couch. Running his hands through his hair, he sighed. “You’re still pouting.” “It’s my lips. They always look like that.” “No, they don’t,” he said, grinning. “I want to see you this weekend.” “I told you I’m getting settled in and need to study.” “A quick lunch.” “You want more than lunch.” “Yeah, but you won’t give me what I want so I’ll settle for lunch. Think about it as a free meal, plus my wonderful company. We can take a drive and I’ll show you fun places. Then, when you’re settled in, we’ll visit those places and I’ll get what I want.

I cannot allow you to burn the candle at both ends, Emmaline,” St. Just scolded. “Either we find you some assistance in the kitchen, or we get you some more rest. You look exhausted, and Douglas agrees, so it’s a bona fide fact. I’m going to take Winnie out with me tomorrow morning, and you’re going to sleep in.” “Sleep in,” Emmie said, the way some women might have said “a dozen new bonnets” or “chocolate” or “twenty thousand a year.” “It isn’t a baking day tomorrow,” the earl went on. “Winnie has acquainted me with every detail of her schedule, and baking isn’t on for tomorrow. So you will rest?” “I will sleep in,” Emmie said as they reached her room and pushed her door open. He preceded her into the darkened chamber and lit several candles while she watched. “You will go directly to bed,” he admonished. “No languishing in the arms of Mr. Darcy or whatever it is you read to soothe you into slumber.” She listened to him lecturing as she drifted around the room in slow, random motion. “Emmie?” He set the candles down and frowned at her. “What is amiss?” “Nothing.” But her voice quavered just the least little bit as she sat on her bed. “I’m just tired. My thanks for a pleasant evening.” He went to the bed and paused, frowning down at her mightily. He let out a gusty exhalation, then drew her to feet and wrapped his arms around her. “We will both be relieved when your damned menses have arrived.” For an instant, she was stiff and resisting against him, but then she drew in a shuddery breath, nodded silently, and laid her cheek on his chest. He held her, stroking her hair with one hand, keeping her anchored to him with the other, and the warmth and solid strength of him left her feeling more tired but in some fashion relieved, as well. Winnie would thrive in his care. Thrive in ways Emmie could never have afforded. “There is no crime, Emmie, in seeking a little comfort betimes. Being grown up doesn’t mean we can’t need the occasional embrace or hand to hold.” She nodded again and let her arms steal around his waist. Slowly, she gave in to what he offered, letting him support more and more of her weight. His hand drifted from her hair to her back, and when he swept his palm over her shoulder blades in a slow, circular caress, she sighed and rubbed her cheek against him. She could have stood there all night, so peaceful and right did it feel to be in his arms. His scent was enveloping her, his body warming hers. “Thank you,” she said, mustering a smile when he stepped back. “And good night, good knight.” He must have comprehended her play on words, because he returned her smile, kissed her forehead and her cheek, and withdrew. She

I will understand if you are done… flirting with me. We will be neighbors when you complete your renovations, at least until you sell the place.” “Flirting.” Val frowned. “I am very persuasive, and yet you consider my best efforts at seduction to be worth only the label flirting.” Ellen’s gaze dropped to her lap. “In any case, I will understand.” “Good of you.” Val’s frown intensified as he tried to puzzle out what exactly was bothering him. “And am I to understand if you’ve lost interest in me? If you decide a man who seeks some honesty with his lover is a little too much work? If you prefer weeding your daisies to sharing passion in my arms?” Ellen’s gaze swiveled to meet his. “I have not lost interest, Valentine. I wish I had, because I don’t understand how you can tolerate the sight of me, and yet I still crave your embrace. I crave the simple scent of you, all cedar and whatever else it is you wear. I crave the texture of your hair against my fingers and the taste of you on my tongue…” She stopped herself, maybe shocked at her own words and the vehemence of them. The truth of them. Val gently pushed her head back to his shoulder. “That’s putting it plain enough.

It will be easier, my lord, if you will sit, as even your collar is above my eye level.” “Very well.” He dragged a stool to the center of the room and sat his lordly arse upon it. “And since you don’t want to have stray hairs on that lovely white linen,” Anna went on, “I would dispense with the shirt, were I you.” “Always happy to dispense with clothing at the request of a woman.” The earl whipped his shirt over his head. “Do you want your hair cut, my lord?” Anna tested the sharpness of the scissor blades against her thumb. “Or perhaps not?” “Cut,” his lordship replied, giving her a slow perusal. “I gather from your vexed expression there is something for which I must apologize. I confess to a mood both distracted and resentful.” “When somebody does you a decent turn,” she said as she began to comb out his damp hair, “you do not respond with sarcasm and innuendo, my lord.

Evie is our beautiful, dark-haired, green-eyed child,’ I say. I can hear the tremor in my voice. ‘Like many seven-year-old girls, she’s obsessed with princesses. We think she looks more like a fairy. She loves Lego and painting. She laughs easily. She has pretend tea parties in a tree in our garden and invites all her dolls. She wants to be an artist when she grows up. Please find her. Please bring her back to us. We miss her beyond measure. She is the love of our life.

Ellen?” “I know I told you I would explain,” she said, turning her back to him, “but does it have to be now?” “For God’s sake.” Val ran a hand through his hair. “If not now, then tell me when, please? I will be on my horse leaving for London at first light, and the sun set an hour ago. We are down to hours, Ellen, and bloody few of those.” “I know, but I don’t want to see your eyes when you learn what I have to tell you. I don’t want to see what you think of me writ plain on your face.” Val stepped closer to her. “You are being cowardly and asking the impossible of me. You are not a cowardly woman, Ellen Markham.” “Cowardly.” Ellen winced and crossed her arms. “I am merely asking you for patience. We’re at the local assembly, for pity’s sake.” “You’ve had weeks, Ellen,” Val shot back, his temper rising through his frustration and bewilderment. “You want to send me off for what amounts to no reason.” “I can write to you.” “You won’t, though. Why in the name of all that’s holy can’t you just, in the smallest, least significant way, trust me? There’s nothing you can say or do or think or imagine that will make me stop loving you. It isn’t in me to do that.” She shook her head, and Val saw the glint of fresh tears on her cheeks. “Blazing hell.” He crossed to her and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry, Ellen. I’m sorry I’ve made you cry, sorry I can’t be more patient, sorry you are so frightened. What can I do to make it better?” She drew in a slow, shuddery breath. “Let me collect myself. The evening has been long, and we are both exhausted. You find Nick and Darius, and I’ll be along in a minute.” Dismissed,

Hello, Miss Emmie.” Bothwell smiled back at her, and to the earl’s watchful eye, there was just a bit too much longing and wistfulness in that smile. When the vicar brushed a kiss on the lady’s cheek, St. Just would have rolled his eyes, except Winnie was watching him too closely. Winnie rolled her eyes though, and that restored his humor. “Hullo, Miss Winnie.” The earl swung her up onto his shoulders. “You are the lookout, so spy me some of these cheese breads.” “Over there.” Winnie pointed. “On the bench near the lemonade.” The earl ambled over and bent at the knees to retrieve one. “Hold my gloves.” He held both hands up for Winnie to whisk off his gloves. “On second thought, you need to eat, too. I can barely tell you’re up there. Toss the gloves to the bench.” She complied and accepted a small, golden brown roll. As she munched, crumbs fell to the earl’s hair. “These are good,” the earl pronounced, taking a bite of his own cheese bread. “Aren’t you going to have one, Miss Farnum?” “I believe I will,” Emmie replied, avoiding his eyes. “Vicar?” “But of course.” “Lock your elbows, Winnie.” St. Just hefted her up and over his head, then set her on the ground. “You have crumbs in your hair,” Winnie said around a mouthful of bread. “I am starting the latest rage in bird feeders. May I have some lemonade, Miss Farnum?” “You may, but bend down.” He complied, bending his head so she could swat at his hair. Except she didn’t swat; she winnowed her fingers through his hair and sifted slowly, repeating the maneuver several times. The earl was left staring at her décolletage and inhaling the fresh, flowery scent wafting from her cleavage. “Now you are disheveled but no longer attractive to wildlife.” “Pity,” he murmured as he accepted a glass.

He brought his hand up and pressed her head to his shoulder, then sifted his fingers through the soft, silky abundance. “Why is your hair not yet braided?” “I do it last thing. My schedule yet called for drinks with the earl, creation of a dreadful stain on his carpet, and a fit of the weeps like nothing I can recall.” “You are entitled to cry. Sit forward, and I’ll see to your hair.” His hands were gently taking down her bun, then finger combing through her long blond hair before she could protest. “One braid or two?” “One.” Which disappointed him, as two would take a few moments longer. “Will you be able to sleep now?” he asked as he began to plait her hair. “The storm is moving on. What of you?” “I don’t need much sleep.” His answer was a dodge; he took his time with her hair. He hadn’t looked for this interlude with her tonight, but after that exchange with Douglas, it eased him to know he could provide comfort to another. And it angered him such a decent woman was so in need of simple affection. “I cannot think of you as Miss Farnum,” he said as he worked his way down her plait. “May I call you Miss Emmie as Winnie does?” “You liken your status to that of a little girl?” Some of the starch had come back into her voice, and the earl knew she was rebuilding her defenses. “Emmie.” He wrapped his arms around her from behind and pulled her against his chest, his cheek resting against hers. “There is no loss of dignity in what has gone between us here. I will keep your confidences, as you will keep mine.” “And what confidences of yours have passed to me?” “You knew I was unnerved by the thunder. Douglas knew it, too, and offered to read me a bedtime story. You let me hold you.” “I should not have.” She sighed, but for just the smallest increment of time, she let her cheek rest against his, as well, and he felt her accept the reality of what he’d said: Maybe not in equal increments, maybe not to the same degree, but the comfort had been shared, and that was simply good. “I

You are not leaving.” “I will not argue the matter with you when Winnie can walk into the kitchen at any minute.” “Fair enough, but you will listen to what I say, Emmie Farnum. You are too damned skinny, you aren’t getting enough rest, your temper is short, and I don’t care if your menses are going to start this afternoon, you have no call to be treating me like I’m your enemy.” “Do not,” she hissed, “mention my bodily functions outside of a locked bedroom door.” St. Just ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. “I want to help, all right? All I’m saying is you seem frazzled, and if Winnie is part of the problem, I’ll tackle that, but we need to find a way to talk that doesn’t leave us at daggers drawn.” His tone was reasonable, almost pleading, and when he saw her shoulders relax, he knew he was making some progress—not much, but some. “If you would keep Winnie occupied today, I’d appreciate it.” “Done. And when you are through here, please just take a nap, Em.” He glanced around the kitchen. “Leave the mess. I’ve got staff, and they can clean up for once. Don’t come down to dinner if you don’t want to, either. Val understands—he plays his piano for hours most days, and if we see him at meals, it’s a coincidence. Just…” He looked her up and down, trying to keep the worry from his expression. “Just get some rest,” he finished with a tentative smile. “Please?” She nodded, able to return a small smile of her own. Taking his chances, St. Just stepped over to her, brushed a kiss to her forehead, and took his leave. He was more alarmed that she merely bore the kiss silently rather than swat him again with her towel. He

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I absently run my fingers through my hair. “You’re always doin’ that.” “Doing what?” “Fixin’ your hair or makeup.” “So, what’s wrong with trying to look good?” “Nothin’, unless it becomes an obsession.” I put my hands down, wishing I could superglue them to my sides. “I’m not obsessed.” He shrugs. “Is it so important that people think you’re beautiful?” “I don’t care what people think,” I lie. “’Cause you are…beautiful, I mean. But it shouldn’t matter so much.

Do you have children?” the earl asked from the depths of the towel around his head. Her hands went still, but her voice was steady when she answered. “I do not. Do you?” “None. But marry me, Anna, and you can have all the children you can carry.” In fact, he would enjoy having children with her, he thought, feeling—in the midst of his other discomforts—his cock stir. “I will not marry you,” she said, going to stand behind him. He felt the first gentle tug of the brush through his hair. “But you should have children. You will be a very good father, and children will be good for you.” “How so?” He closed his eyes, the better to enjoy the feel of the brush stroking gently across his scalp. “My father has hardly given me an example I want to emulate.” “That’s just bluster.” Anna waved a hand. “You paint him as a pompous, self-important, old-fashioned aristocrat, but he apparently went to tremendous lengths to attempt to secure access to his granddaughter.

What makes you think we would ever do more than fairly well should we marry?” “Ah, Emmie.” He sighed. “Do you think I’m not a man because of a silly little collar? Do you think I can’t see the fire and life in you? You are one of God’s finest creations, and I want you for my own.” Her alarms went off in shrieking peals of dismay as she realized the man was going to kiss her. He was fair about it, too, taking her gently by the shoulders and looking her square in the eye before bending his head to hers. Emmie found him far more proficient at the whole business than any rural vicar had a right to be. He was tall, nearly as tall as St. Just, though not quite as muscular or broad, and he brought Emmie against his chest with a surprising strength. “Let me kiss you, Emmie,” he murmured, his thumb feathering over her cheekbone as he angled her head to meet his lips. He moved his mouth over hers softly, slowly coaxing and inviting, not demanding. His tongue, when he deftly brought it to her lips, tasted of lemon and sweetness, and Emmie thought she should have found the contact enticing, except that it wasn’t—quite. “Open for me,” he coaxed, but Emmie wasn’t willing to mislead him that far. The truth was, his kiss—skilled, tender, caring, and in every way well presented—left her indifferent. She stepped back but allowed him to keep her in a loose embrace. “I’m sorry,” he said, dropping his cheek to her hair. “But I’m not sorry, either. I desire you, Emmie, on many levels, and I could make marriage at least pleasant for you. Promise me you’ll think about it.” “I will think about it,” she said. “Were I to answer you today, Hadrian, I’d respectfully decline.” He nodded but smiled, and Emmie realized all he’d heard was that she hadn’t said no. “I’ll accept that for now.

She marched up to the door, banged it open with a satisfying crash, brandished her scythe, and announced herself to any and all therein. “Get your heathen, trespassing backsides out of this carriage house immediately, lest I inform your papas of your criminal conduct—and your mamas.” “Good lord,” a cultured and ominously adult male voice said softly from Ellen’s right, “we’re about to be taken prisoner. Prepare to defend your borders, my friend. Sleeping Beauty has awakened in a state.” Ellen’s gaze flew to the shadows, where a tall, dark-haired man was regarding her with patient humor. The calm amusement in his eyes suggested he posed no threat to her, while his dress confirmed he was a person of some means. Ellen had no time to further inventory that stranger, because the sound of a pair of boots slowly descending the steps drew her gaze across the room. Whoever was coming down those stairs was in no hurry and was certainly no boy. Long, long legs became visible, then muscles that looked as if they’d been made lean and elegant from hours in the saddle showed off custom riding boots and excellent tailoring. A trim, flat torso came next, then a wide muscular chest and impressive shoulders. Good lord, he was taller than the fellow in the corner, and that one was a good half a foot taller than she. Ellen swallowed nervously and tightened her grip on the scythe. “Careful,” the man in the shadows said softly, “she’s armed and ready to engage the enemy.” Those dusty boots descended the last two steps, and Ellen forced herself to meet the second man’s face. She’d been prepared for the kind of teasing censorship coming from the one in the corner, a polite hauteur, or outright anger, but not a slow, gentle smile that melted her from the inside out. “Mrs. FitzEngle.” Valentine Windham bowed very correctly from the waist. “It has been too long, and you must forgive us for startling you. Lindsey, I’ve had the pleasure, so dredge up your manners.” “Mr. Windham?” Ellen lowered her scythe, feeling foolish and ambushed, and worst of all—happy. So

You will not be my mistress,” Westhaven said, sifting his hands through her hair in long, gentle sweeps. “And you did not sound too keen on being a wife.” Anna closed her eyes. “I said it depended on whose wife, but no, in the general case, taking a husband does not appeal.” “Why not?” He started with the brush in the same slow, steady movements. “Taking a husband has some advantages, you know.” “Name one.” “He brings you pleasure,” the earl said, his voice dropping. “Or he damned well should. He provides for your comfort, gives you babies. He grows old with you, providing companionship and friendship; he shares your burdens and lightens your sorrows. Good sort of fellow to have around, a husband.” “Hah.” Anna wanted to peer over her shoulder at him, but his hold on her hair prevented it. “He owns you and the produce of your body,” she retorted. “He has the right to demand intimate access to you at any time or place of his choosing, and strike you and injure you should you refuse him, or simply because he considers you in need of a beating. He can virtually sell your children, and you have nothing to say to it. He need not be loyal or faithful, and still you must admit him to your body, regardless of his bodily or moral appeal, or lack thereof. A very dangerous and unpleasant thing, a husband.” The

He slipped off the bench and took her right hand in both of his as he went down on one knee before her. “I love you,” he said, holding her gaze. “I love you, I cannot foresee the rest of my life without you, and I hope you feel similarly. For only if you do feel similarly will I accept your proposal of marriage or allow you to accept mine.” “You love me?” “For God’s sake.” He was off his knee in an instant, dusting briskly at his breeches. “Why else would I have tried to keep my bloody paws off you when you were just eight and twenty feet down the hall? Why else would I have gone to my father—Meddling Moreland himself?—to ask for help and advice? Why else would I have let you go, for pity’s sake, if I didn’t love you until I’m blind and silly and… Jesus, yes, I love you.” “Westhaven.” Anna reached out and stroked a hand through his hair. “You are shouting, and you mean this.” “I am not in the habit of lying to the woman whom I hope to make my duchess.” That, he saw, got through to her. Since the day she’d bashed him with her poker, he’d been honest with her. Cranky, gruff, demanding, what have you, but he’d been honest. So he was honest again. “I love you, Anna.” His voice shook with the truth of it. “I love you. I want you for my wife, my duchess, and the mother of all of my children.” She cradled her hand along his jaw, and in her eyes, he saw his own joy mirrored, his incredulity that life could offer him a gift as stunningly perfect as the love they shared, and his bottomless determination to grab that gift with both hands and never let go. She leaned into him, as if the weight of his honesty were too much. “Oh, you are the most awful man. Of course I will marry you, of course I love you, of course I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But you have made me cry, and I have need of your handkerchief.” “You have need of my arms,” he said, laughing and scooping her up against his chest. He pressed his forehead to hers and jostled her a little in his embrace. “Say it, Anna. In the King’s English, or no handkerchief for you.” He was smiling at her, grinning like a truant schoolboy on a beautiful day. “I love you,” Anna said. Then more loudly and with a fierce smile, “I love you, I love you, I love you, Gayle Windham, and I would be honored to be your duchess.” “And my wife?” He spun them in a circle, the better to hold her tightly to his chest. “You’ll be my wife, and my duchess, and the mother of my children?” “With greatest joy, I’ll be your wife, your duchess, and the mother of all your children. Now please, please, put me down and kiss me silly. I have missed you so.

A gentleman doesn’t go down to dine unless he’s properly bathed, and you, I fear, will take a deal of bathing.” “I am not a gentleman,” the child said, the truculence back in full force. The earl glanced down at his own naked chest and recalled that grown men were not necessarily an easy thing for not-so-grown men to compare themselves to. He shrugged into a dressing gown and tossed his shirt to the child. “For your modesty. Now let’s be about it, shall we? The sooner we’re clean, the sooner we eat.” He eyed the child’s hair and suspected getting clean might involve a quantity of shampoo, but merely held out his hand again. “Come along, child.” “I am not a gentleman,” the child said again, scooting back against the sofa. “We can remedy that,” the earl said with what he hoped was a reassuring tone. “A little scrubbing, some decent attire, small refinements of speech.” He slipped the child’s shirt off in a single motion. “If I can master it in not quite thirty-two years, there is certainly hope for you.” “I am not a gentleman,” the child ground out, standing on the sofa cushions and swatting at the earl’s hands, “and I do not want to be a gentleman.” “Then you can be a pirate,” the earl reasoned. “But if you are eating my food, you shall do so with clean fingers.” He made a deft grab for the scruffy britches, yanking them down over narrow hips and bony knees with a swift jerk. The child stood up on the sofa, naked and indignant. “I am not a gentleman. I do not want to be a gentleman!” “Jesus, God, and the Apostles!” The earl swiftly wrapped the child in his shirt and stood panting in shock. “You are a benighted damned female!” “Do I still have to take a bath?

My lands,” Emmie panted softly. “Oh, my lands, my lands…” He smiled down at her and brushed her hair back with one hand. “A triple ‘my lands,’” he said, smiling. “I am content.” He

There is a pleasure you could allow me, Anna.” He kept using her name, she thought, using it like a caress, a reminder that he knew the taste of her. “There are many pleasures I could allow you,” she said, caution in her tone, “few that I will.” “So I’m to earn your favors?” He merely smiled. “Then, allow me this: The heat and our rambling are threatening the integrity of your coiffure. Let me brush your hair.” “Brush my…?” Anna blinked and gave him a puzzled look. “I used to brush Her Grace’s hair when I was small, then my sisters’. I’ve taken a turn or two with Rose, but she demands a certain dispatch only her step-papa and mama seem to have perfected.” “You want to brush my hair,” Anna said, as if to herself. “That is an unusual request.” “But not too unusual. It requires no removal of clothing nor touching of the hands nor lascivious glances.” “All right,” Anna said, more perplexed than alarmed, but then, she was in the company of a man who scheduled his passions. She fished inside the hamper and withdrew her reticule, producing a small bone-handled brush. “Pretty little thing,” the earl remarked, thumbing the bristles. “Now”—he sat up—“sit you here.” He thumped the blanket beside him, and Anna scooted, only to find that the earl had shifted so she sat between his bent knees. “Is this decent?” she murmured. “Have another glass of wine,” the earl suggested. “It will feel frustratingly decent.” They fell silent, and Anna felt the earl’s fingers easing through her hair to find her hairpins. He slid them free carefully and began piling them to one side. When the bun at the nape of Anna’s neck was loosened, he let her thick plait tumble down her back. “I like this part,” he said. “When you free up a braid, and a single shiny rope becomes skeins and curls and riots of silky, soft hair. How do you keep it so fragrant?” She felt him lean in for a sniff, and her heart nearly skipped a beat. “I make a shampoo scented with roses.” And ye gods, it had been a struggle to utter that single coherent sentence. His hands were lacing through her unbound hair to massage her scalp and the back of her neck. His touch was perfect—deliberate, knowing, and competent without using too much strength. He trailed her hair down her back, leaving little trickles of pleasure to skitter along her spine, and then she felt him gathering the mass of it, to move it to one side. “It’s beautiful,” he murmured, his words breathed near her ear. “I’m going to forbid you to wear those hideous caps of yours when we return to Town.” His

Penny for them,” the earl said softly. He was standing just a hair too close to her, but there was nobody save the young stable hand to see, and much to Westhaven’s pleasure, Anna let herself drift back against him. “It is lovely here,” Anna said. “You are to be commended for taking such care with a sister’s welfare.” He heard the wistful, almost despairing note in her voice, and knew with absolute conviction Anna Seaton’s brother had somehow disappointed her or played her false. His mind turned back to those ideas, the ones he’d been formulating earlier about how to uncover Anna’s troubles and assist her with them. “I love my sisters. As any brother should love a sister.” “They don’t all—brothers, that is,” Anna said, stepping away from him. “Some of them love their gold more or their drink or their flashy Town habits. Being a sister is sometimes not much more of a bargain than being a wife.” “You simply have to choose the right brother”—Westhaven smiled at her gently—“or the right husband. I have enjoyed our time here, Anna. I hope you did, as well.” “Even when I cried,” she said, a world of resignation in her tone, “I was glad to be here with you, Westhaven. Believe that, if you believe nothing else of me.” He