Piercing Blue Eyes Quotes

Want your boat, Georgie?' Pennywise asked. 'I only repeat myself because you really do not seem that eager.' He held it up, smiling. He was wearing a baggy silk suit with great big orange buttons. A bright tie, electric-blue, flopped down his front, and on his hands were big white gloves, like the kind Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck always wore. Yes, sure,' George said, looking into the stormdrain. And a balloon? I’ve got red and green and yellow and blue...' Do they float?' Float?' The clown’s grin widened. 'Oh yes, indeed they do. They float! And there’s cotton candy...' George reached. The clown seized his arm. And George saw the clown’s face change. What he saw then was terrible enough to make his worst imaginings of the thing in the cellar look like sweet dreams; what he saw destroyed his sanity in one clawing stroke. They float,' the thing in the drain crooned in a clotted, chuckling voice. It held George’s arm in its thick and wormy grip, it pulled George toward that terrible darkness where the water rushed and roared and bellowed as it bore its cargo of storm debris toward the sea. George craned his neck away from that final blackness and began to scream into the rain, to scream mindlessly into the white autumn sky which curved above Derry on that day in the fall of 1957. His screams were shrill and piercing, and all up and down Witcham Street people came to their windows or bolted out onto their porches. They float,' it growled, 'they float, Georgie, and when you’re down here with me, you’ll float, too–' George's shoulder socked against the cement of the curb and Dave Gardener, who had stayed home from his job at The Shoeboat that day because of the flood, saw only a small boy in a yellow rain-slicker, a small boy who was screaming and writhing in the gutter with muddy water surfing over his face and making his screams sound bubbly. Everything down here floats,' that chuckling, rotten voice whispered, and suddenly there was a ripping noise and a flaring sheet of agony, and George Denbrough knew no more. Dave Gardener was the first to get there, and although he arrived only forty-five seconds after the first scream, George Denbrough was already dead. Gardener grabbed him by the back of the slicker, pulled him into the street...and began to scream himself as George's body turned over in his hands. The left side of George’s slicker was now bright red. Blood flowed into the stormdrain from the tattered hole where his left arm had been. A knob of bone, horribly bright, peeked through the torn cloth. The boy’s eyes stared up into the white sky, and as Dave staggered away toward the others already running pell-mell down the street, they began to fill with rain.

I took a closer look. Jesus had piercing blue eyes, dark hair that hung in a flawless mess, his body was emaciated and taut, his hands and feet dripped with blood, and nothing but a gauzy loincloth hid what looked like a nice package underneath. “Sexy,” I said. “He looks like a rock star.

The old man slowly raised himself from the piano stool, fixed those cheerful blue eyes piercingly and at the same time with unimaginable friendliness upon him, and said: "Making music together is the best way for two people to become friends. There is none easier. That is a fine thing. I hope you and I shall remain friends. Perhaps you too will learn how to make fugues, Joseph.

When her blue-black eyes lifted to his, everything disappeared. Their bodies dematerialized. The room they were in ceased to exist. Time became nothing. And in the void, in the wormhold, Wrath's chest opened up sure as if he'd been shot, a piercing pain licking over his nerve endings. He knew then that there are many ways for a heart to break. Sometimes it's from the crowding of life, the compression of responsibility and birthright and burden that just squeezed you until you couldn't breathe anymore. Even though your lungs were working just fine. And sometimes it's from the casual cruelty of a fate that took you far from where you had thought you would end up. And sometimes it's age in the face of youth. Or sickness in the face of health. But sometimes it's just because you're looking into the eyes of your lover, and your gratitude for having them in your life overflows...because you showed them what was on the inside and they didn't run scared or turn away: they accepted you and loved you and held you in the midst of your passion or your fear...or your combination of both. Wrath closed his eyes and focused on the soft pulls at his wrist. God, they were just like the beat of his heart. Which made sense. Because she was the center of his chest. And the center of his world.

Suddenly gator was framed in the doorway, grinning at them, his black unruly hair tumbling into his face and his piercing blue eyes bright with laughter. "Oh, I see you are most friendly with each other. And Lily was so worried." He turned his head. "Ian Tucker, come look at this. Our man has found himself a little kitty cat." "Shut up, Gator, or I'm going to shoot you." Nicholas put the gun away and looked down at dahlia. She had the covers pulled up to her chin. Here eyes were enormous and getting bigger by the moment as more Ghost Walkers crowded into the doorway to gape at the sight of Nicholas, the loner, in bed with Dahlia. "And you said he didn't know what to do with a woman," Tucker Addison accused the tallest of the group, Ian McGillicuddy. "I stand corrected." Ian gave Nicholas a small salute. Dahlia made a small distressed squeak. Nicholas picked up the gun. "I'm going to start shooting if the lot of you don't get out and close the door." "What a poor sport," Gator groused. "And this is my house.

Navigating through the throng of people, I found myself standing at the forefront, face-to-face with him. A brief pause ensued as his gaze met mine, and in that suspended moment, time seemed to hold its breath. His piercing blue eyes held an unspoken connection, rendering me momentarily deaf to the world around us.

Mama’s gaze pierced her. As a girl, Minerva had envied her mother’s blue eyes. They’d seemed the color of tropical oceans and cloudless skies. But their color had faded over the years since Papa’s death. Now their blue was the hue of dyed cambric worn three seasons. Or brittle middle-class china. The color of patience nearly worn through.

Her life has seen little light. She is twelve years old but has a woman’s weathered poise. Her abyss-blue eyes have a piercing focus that some adults find unsettling. [...] She has fired a gun into a human head. She has watched a pile of bodies set alight. She has starved and thirsted, stolen food and given it away, and glimpsed the meaning of life by watching it end over and over.

Watching. Watching with those piercing, clit licking blue eyes.

He had piercing blue eyes, built like a Greek God and looks that a male model would sell their soul for

Breathe, sweetheart,” he said quietly, his piercing blue eyes holding hers.

I love you, Ruby,” he says when he pulls back. Visibly overcome, he presses my hand over his heart, and his piercing blue eyes stare into mine. “From this heartbeat until the last, I am yours.

When the fight ends you can afford to relax. That’s the worst part. Winner or loser you have again eyes to see around you. Blood, butchered bodies, bodies pierced by arrows. You stir inside, your heart tightens, the feeling of loss wells up. The sense of smell is the next thing to revive, adding a new dimension of pain. I closed the eyes of the last cadet, blue eyes, unseeing, his body, so small, almost a child, the youngest cadets were all gone, their faces surprised in death. Cold lips never able again to kiss a girl. It’s then that the emptiness swallows you and you mourn inside. Damn you, Scharon. No! Damn you, Travellers.

For a nanosecond, I meet her gaze. Despite the dark, I can see her eye color—it’s the prettiest, strangest shade of blue I’ve ever seen in my life—piercing, dark, and shiny. And then she is gone.

Those piercingly beautiful blue eyes were looking down at him, stupefying him as they met his own, evoking images of sapphire jewels and a starry sky and… Good Lord, was her hair truly the shade of moonbeams?

I turned, feeling steady but somewhat dazed, and looked from the hand, now on my elbow, up the strong arm, around the curve of the bulky shoulder, and over the angular jaw and chin, until my eyes met the breath-hijacking sight of Sir Handsome McHotpants’s piercing blue eyes. I cringed.

In winter darkness, the Baghdad Arabian keen blue deepness of the piercing lovely January winter's dusk--it used to tear my heart out, one stabbing soft star was in the middle of the magicalest blue, throbbing like love--I saw Maggie's black hair in this night-- In the shelves of Orion her eye shades, borrowed, gleamed a dark and proud vellum somber power brooding rich bracelets of the moon rose from our snow, and surrounded the mystery.

Dobby would never be able to tell them who had sent him to the cellar, but Harry knew what he had seen. A piercing blue eye had looked out of the mirror fragment, and then help had come. Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it. Harry dried his hands, impervious to the beauty of the scene outside the window and to the murmuring of the others in the sitting room. He looked out over the ocean and felt closer, this dawn, than ever before, closer to the heart of it all. And still his scar prickled, and he knew that Voldemort was getting there too. Harry understood and yet did not understand. His instinct was telling him one thing, his brain quite another. The Dumbledore in Harry’s head smiled, surveying Harry over the tips of his fingers, pressed together as if in prayer. You gave Ron the Deluminator. You understood him…You gave him a way back… And you understood Wormtail too…You knew there was a bit of regret there, somewhere… And if you knew them…What did you know about me, Dumbledore? Am I meant to know, but not to seek? Did you know how hard I’d find that? Is that why you made it this difficult? So I’d have time to work that out?

She moistened her lips and lifted her lashes to look into his piercing blue eyes. There was a mixture there. Possession. Desire. Triumph. Demand.

The piercing fanfare of the brass against the brutal boom and rattle of the drums surged through the air. At the head of the Ferris band marched the drum majorette. A crimson and white shako crowned her long dark hair which flew out behind her and across her radiant face flushed with excitement. Her blue eyes flashed and her smile registered triumph at having been chosen.

A Black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels, Someday I shall tell of your mysterious births: A, black velvety corset of dazzling flies Buzzing around cruel smells, Gulfs of shadow; E, white innocence of vapors and of tents, Spears of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of Queen Anne's lace; I, purples, spitting blood, smile of beautiful lips In anger or in drunken penitence; U, waves, divine shudderings of green seas, The calm of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of furrows Which alchemy prints on wide, studious foreheads; O, sublime Bugle full of strange piercing sound, Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels; - O the Omega, the violet ray of her Eyes!

She moistened her lips and lifted her lashes to look into his piercing blue eyes. There was a mixture there. Possession. Desire. Triumph. Demand.” "There's no taking it back, Francesca." He warned.

I remember that day very clearly: I had received a phone call. A friend had been in an accident. Perhaps she would not live. She had very little face, and her spine was broken in two places. She had not yet moved; the doctor described her as “a pebble in water.” I walked around Brooklyn and noticed that the faded peri-winkle of the abandoned Mobil gas station on the corner was suddenly blooming. In the baby-shit yellow showers at my gym, where snow sometimes fluttered in through the cracked gated windows, I noticed that the yellow paint was peeling in spots, and a decent, industrial blue was trying to creep in. At the bottom of the swimming pool, I watched the white winter light spangle the cloudy blue and I knew together they made God. When I walked into my friend’s hospital room, her eyes were a piercing, pale blue and the only part of her body that could move. I was scared. So was she. The blue was beating.

Darcy looked at Graham for the first time in months, and realized that her memory had not done him justice. He was gold and bronze, perfect like a statue. His eyes were ice blue. They were eyes that could pierce a man's resolve, and probably had many times. But not now. Now they assessed her, ice fading to liquid sky...

Mesmerized, Noah looked back at his mask, and then at Ethan’s blue eyes, which were scanning Noah’s shocked face. Ethan’s cunning eyes were saying what he had planned for the night. Noah fell on his shoulder and immediately Ethan took a hold of him, “Babes, are you alright?” and spreading his arms around his naked shoulder.

What fascinated me most were her eyes... with a single glance, she could convey the most intimate message. She had beautiful lips but almost nothing needed to be said with those eyes. Those eyes pierced mine. There are many blue eyes in the world, but her blue eyes meant heaven to me in a way that blue had never meant before.

Before she knew it the afternoon was done, and the trainees were taking their new mounts to the stables for grooming. Daine, Onua, Buri, and Sarge helped then too, though Daine couldn't see how she could ever be comfortable telling a twenty-year-old man he was missing spots on the pony he was grooming. She did try it: "Excuse me, trainee what did you say your name was?" Blue gray eyes twinkled at her over his cream-colored mare's back. "I didn't. It's Farant. " His blond hair curled thickly over his head, almost matching the pony's in color. "Thank you. Trainee Farant, you're missing spots. " "Not at all, sweetheart. I'm just combing too fast for you to see. " "Trainee Farant, you're missing spots!" Sarge boomed just behind Daine. She thought later she actually might have levitated at that moment certainly Farant had. Next time the assistant horsemistress tells you something, don't flirt correct it!" He moved on, and Daine pressed her hands against her burning cheeks. Farant leaned on his mare and sighed. "Yes, Assistant Horsemistress. Right away. " He winked at her and went back to work. Daine went to Sarge as the trainees were finishing up. "Sarge, I-" He shook his head. Daine thought if he leaned against the stable wall any harder, it would collapse. How did a human, without bear blood in him, get to be so large? "Not your fault. These city boys see you, you're young, sweet-lookin'",he winked at her,"they're gonna try to take advantage. If they can't keep their minds on the job after I've had them two weeks already in my patty-paws, then I ain't been doing my job right. " His grin was wolfish. "But that can be fixed. " Seeing her open mouthed stare, he asked, "Something the matter, my lamb?" She closed her jaw. "No, sir. I just never met nobody like you. " "And if you're lucky, you won't again, " muttered Buri, passing by.

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

Why the devil couldn’t it have been blue?” I said to myself. And this thought—one of the most profound ever made since the discovery of butterflies—consoled me for my misdeed and reconciled me with myself. I stood there, looking at the corpse with, I confess, a certain sympathy. The butterfly had probably come out of the woods, well-fed and happy, into the sunlight of a beautiful morning. Modest in its demands on life, it had been content to fly about and exhibit its special beauty under the vast cupola of a blue sky, al sky that is always blue for those that have wings. It flew through my open window, entered by room, and found me there. I suppose it had never seen a man; therefore it did not know what a man was. It described an infinite number of circles about my body and saw that I moved, that I had eyes, arms, legs, a divine aspect, and colossal stature. Then it said to itself, “This is probably the maker of butterflies.” The idea overwhelmed it, terrified it; but fear, which is sometimes stimulating, suggested the best way for it to please its creator was to kiss him on the forehead, and so it kissed me on the forehead. When I brushed it away, it rested on the windowpane, saw from there the portrait of my father, and quite possibly perceived a half-truth, i.e., that the man in the picture was the father of the creator of butterflies, and it flew to beg his mercy. Then a blow from a towel ended the adventure. Neither the blue sky’s immensity, nor the flowers’ joy, nor the green leaves’ splendor could protect the creature against a face towel, a few square inches fo cheap linin. Note how excellent it is to be superior to butterflies! For, even if it had been blue, its life would not have been safe; I might have pierced it with a pin and kept it to delight my eyes. It was not blue. This last thought consoled me again. I placed the nail of my middle finger against my thumb, gave the cadaver a flip, and it fell into the garden. It was high time; the provident ants were already gathering around…Yes, I stand by my first idea: I think that it would have been better for the butterfly if it had been born blue.

They were silent for a second. The whispers of the candlelight were the only sounds, and the light outside the window began to fade to night. After a moment, Rachel opened her eyes back up and looked down at her chest, lips pursed. “Do I really have small breasts?” Notak seemed to freeze solid in his chair. Stiffly, he turned his piercing blue eyes onto Rachel, his face intensely blank. “I do not how to answer that.” She frowned at him. “Yeah, you probably aren’t the best person to ask…” she said, almost to herself. “Indeed,” Notak said dubiously. “Do I even want to know what prompted such a question?” Rachel shrugged and put her head back again. “No, not really.” “I shall not ask, then.

His stare never left mine, his blue eyes hot and harsh, piercing my soul as he fucked me mercilessly against the wall.

Held in his piercing powder-blue vision, I froze. A butterfly awakened in my chest.

His wavy hair sits perfectly, just touching his forehead and his tan is deep, making his intense blue eyes seem even more piercing. Shit. What was I mad at him for again?

Cooper didn't look away. His blue eyes pierced through the tendrils of his hair like a wolf in the woods. He held Peter's gaze. He didn't smile, but Peter saw one all the same. He didn't speak and yet they were speaking now as if for the first time. There was friendship waiting to come in from the cold. But it was more than that. There was closeness. Unbound possibility.

that’s what we are - at least, that’s what we should be. Not “husband and wife,” not even “friends.” It’s just business. Except “just business” shouldn’t get my cock this hard. “Just business” shouldn’t get my pulse roaring like a fucking stadium and my head going blank when the thought of those piercing blue eyes, and that innocent mouth, and those legs for days dance through my head.

Her hair, which was a coppery red, and her eyes, which were light blue like her mother’s, were all the more vivid by contrast with the scramble of freckles and sunburn which formed her complexion.

Piercings in his ears, nose and lip revealed his edgy nature. He was casual in faded blue jeans and a black t-shirt that hugged his well-muscled chest in all of the right places. His eyes were a deep, drowning blue. His hair was slightly spiky and bedroom messy with just a hint of the early Elvis style. To say that I found him attractive would be putting it lightly. He was absolutely gorgeous.

Rusty flinched as she turned her gaze on him. Her piercing blue eyes made him feel even more vulnerable. “He’s no threat,” mewed Graypaw quickly. “He’s not another Clan warrior, just a Twoleg pet from beyond our territories.” Just a Twoleg pet! The words inflamed Rusty, but he held his tongue. The warning look in Bluestar’s stare told him that she had observed the anger in his eyes, and he looked away.

There was a small stone in her palm, a deep blue opal. I leaned a little closer, eyeing it. It was set on a silver stud—an earring. “It should suffice to contain the parasite for what time remains,” Mab said. “Put it on.” “My ears aren’t pierced,” I objected. Mab arched an eyebrow. “Are you the Winter Knight or some sort of puling child?” I scowled at her. “Come over here and say that.” At that, Mab calmly stepped onto the shore of Demonreach, until her toes were almost touching mine. She was several inches over six feet tall, and barely had to reach up to take my earlobe in her fingers. “Wait,” I said. “Wait.” She paused. “The left one.” Mab tilted her head. “Why?” “It’s . . . Look, it’s a mortal thing. Just do the left one, okay?” She exhaled briefly through her nose. Then she shook her head and changed ears.

I didn’t know what it meant to have a nervous breakdown. I’d heard people jokingly exaggerate that they’d had one. Until that moment on my bathroom floor, I had no concept. Then the frayed strands of my sanity that I’d fought so hard to keep together snapped in two, and I started to free fall into chaos. First, I screamed. I screamed and I screamed until I was hoarse. Then my screams turned over to cries of agony. Pain, both physical and emotional, consumed me. Will tried to console me, but it was useless. He panicked and called my parents. When they heard my sobs in the background, they told him to call the paramedics. So he did. By the time they arrived, I was spent of emotions. Instead, I lay motionless on the floor. They were a hazy blur of blue uniforms and soft voices. I could hear them calling my name from far off—like I was under the surface of water. But I couldn’t muster the strength to reply. I heard crying behind me. It must’ve been Will because one of the paramedics said, “Don’t worry, son, we’re gonna take good care of her.” Then I felt myself floating upwards as they put me on a gurney. I rattled and shook as they pulled me out of the house. The flashing lights hurt my eyes. But then a needle pierced my vein, bringing liquid peace to my soul."--Melanie

Zane Hollander stood in profile a few feet away. Sophie's breath caught. Up close, he looked like he'd been carved from the most glorious, most gorgeous stone on the planet. His blond hair was straight, on the longer side and sticking up in GQ messiness. Square jaw, high cheekbones, perfect nose. Then he turned and pierced her with ice-blue eyes that knocked her off-balance. Literally. She tripped over her own feet and face-planted right into the sand.

His voice was so low, she could barely understand him. “Love me back, Vi.” An invisible pick pierced her chest and sank deep. “What?” He lifted his head, blue eyes spearing hers. “I’ve been in love with you since I was fourteen.

Noah, I want this. I want us.” “Baby.” His hands frame my face, his palms shaking. “I want you. Only you.” His lips throb against mine, his eyes closing, only to open, satin blue piercing mine as he whispers, “Say you swear.” My chuckle is more of a cry, and I smash my lips to his, my emotions whirling. He kisses me back, the sweep of his tongue against mine serving as a promise. An unspoken whisper, from his heart to mine. A whisper I’m ready to answer with one of my own. “I swear.

I turn around and see Trey standing in front of me. I would usually consider his navy blue T-shirt and white baseball cap attractive on him, but now I just see bare arms, void of tattoos, and boring blue eyes with boring pierced-less lips. I want my delinquent.

I turn around and see Trey standing in front of me. I would usually consider his navy blue T-shirt and white baseball cap attractive on him, but now I just see bare arms, void of tattoos, and boring blue eyes with boring pierced-less lips. I want my delinquent.

I’m not telling you what I look like in any detail. I hate those endless descriptions of a heroine’s physical attributes: “She had piercing blue eyes and a heaving milk-white bosom blah blah,” or “She hated her frizzy hair and fat ankles blah blah, blah blah.” First of all, it’s boring. You should be able to imagine me without all the gory details of my hairstyle or the size of my thighs. And second, it really bothers me how in books it seems like the only two choices are perfection or self-hatred. As if readers will only like a character who’s ideal—or completely shattered.

You, the woman; I, the man; this, the world: And each is the work of all. There is the muffled step in the snow; the stranger; The crippled wren; the nun; the dancer; the Jesus-wing Over the walkers in the village; and there are Many beautiful arms around us and the things we know. See how those stars tramp over the heavens on their sticks Of ancient light: with what simplicity that blue Takes eternity into the quiet cave of God, where Ceasar And Socrates, like primitive paintings on a wall, Look, with idiot eyes, on the world where we two are. You, the sought for; I, the seeker; this, the search: And each is the mission of all. For greatness is only the drayhorse that coaxes The built cart out; and where we go is reason. But genius is an enormous littleness, a trickling Of heart that covers alike the hare and the hunter. How smoothly, like the sleep of a flower, love, The grassy wind moves over night's tense meadow: See how the great wooden eyes of the forrest Stare upon the architecture of our innocence. You, the village; I, the stranger; this, the road: And each is the work of all. Then, not that man do more, or stop pity; but that he be Wider in living; that all his cities fly a clean flag... We have been alone too long, love; it is terribly late For the pierced feet on the water and we must not die now. Have you ever wondered why all the windows in heaven were broken? Have you seen the homeless in the open grave of God's hand? Do you want to aquaint the larks with the fatuous music of war? There is the muffled step in the snow; the stranger; The crippled wren; the nun; the dancer; the Jesus-wing Over the walkers in the village; and there are Many desperate arms about us and the things we know.

By the end of the second day a very fine head was revealed. Yes, a very fine head indeed, sharp beard, drooped mustache, heavy-lidded eyes outlined black. And no cinnabar on the lips; that was a measure of my painter’s caliber: excitingly as cinnabar first comes over, he’d known that, given twenty years, lime would blacken it. And, as the first tinges of garment appeared, that prince of blues, ultramarine ground from lapis lazuli, began to show—that really confirmed his class—he must have fiddled it from a monastic job—no village church could have run to such expense. (And abbeys only took on the top men.) But it was the head, the face, which set a seal on his quality. For my money, the Italian masters could have learned a thing or two from that head. This was no catalogue Christ, insufferably ethereal. This was a wintry hardliner. Justice, yes there would be justice. But not mercy. That was writ large on each feature for when, by the week’s end, I reached his raised right hand, it had not been made perfect: it was still pierced. This was the Oxgodby Christ, uncompromising… no, more—threatening. “This is my hand. This is what you did to me. And, for this, man shall suffer the torment, for thus it was with me.

Brentwood stands on that fine and wealthy slope of country, one of the richest in Scotland, which lies between the Pentland Hills and the Firth. In clear weather you could see the blue gleam-like a bent bow, embracing the wealthy fields and scattered houses of the great estuary on one side of you; and on the other the blue heights, not gigantic like those we had been used to, but just high enough for all the glories of the atmosphere, the play of clouds, and sweet reflections, which give to a hilly country an interest and a charm which nothing else can emulate. Edinburgh, with its two lesser heights - the Castle and the Calton Hill - its spires and towers piercing through the smoke, and Arthur's Seat lying crouched behind, like a guardian no longer very needful, taking his repose beside the well-beloved charge, which is now, so to speak, able to take care of itself without him - lay at our right hand. From the lawn and drawing-room windows we could see all these varieties of landscape. The colour was sometimes a little chilly, but sometimes, also, as animated and full of vicissitude as a drama. I was never tired of it. Its colour and freshness revived the eyes which had grown weary of arid plains and blazing skies. It was always cheery, and fresh, and full of repose. ("The Open Door")

Lying in bed, she would alter the plots of the novels, the dialogue, and even the situations and locales to suit herself, but she never, ever, changed her imaginary hero. He and he alone remained ever constant, and she knew every detail about him, because she had designed him herself: He was strong and masculine and forceful, but he was kind and wise and patient and witty, as well. He was tall and handsome too--with thick dark hair and wonderful blue eyes that could be seductive or piercing or sparkle with humor. He would love to laugh with her, and she would tell him amusing anecdotes to make him do it. He would love to read, and he would be more knowledgeable than she and perharps a bit more worldly. But not too worldly or proud or sophisticated. She hated arrogance and stuffiness and she particularly disliked being arbitrarily ordered about. She accepted such things from the fathers of her students at school, but she knew she wouldn't be able to abide such a superior male attitude from a husband.

And then I saw her, who I could have only assumed with Aura Tsang, a very petite women, with the exotic features of those you associate with an Asian background complete with slick dark hair but the most amazing piercing blue eyes, the type that any Aryan would have be proud of. She seemed to have the persona that made her a person of the world,Yet, there was the energy that she was giving off, a energy of a powerful and brave woman who could and would take on the world and yet she had the gentlest smile complete with dimples. I was transfixed by her and I felt that my heart would burst into a thousand of pieces if she spoke to me, which of course she would and it did.

A, Black, E, white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels, Someday I shall tell of your mysterious births: A, black velvety corset of dazzling flies Buzzing around cruel smells, Gulfs of shadow; E, white innocence of vapors and of tents, Spears of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of Queen Anne's lace; I, purples, spitting blood, smile of beautiful lips In anger or in drunkin penitence; U, waves, divine shudderings of green seas, The calm of pastures dotted with animals, the pece of furrows Which alchemy prints on wide, studious foreheads; O, sublime Bugle full of strange piercing so und, Silences crossed by Worlds nad by Angels: - O the Omega, the violet ray of her Eyes!

His breaths are coming faster, his blue eyes piercing me even as his cock begins to push its way in. I release a breath at the sensation of him filling me up. He feels … sublime. Pestilence has only partially sheathed himself when he pauses, his forehead dropping to my shoulder. He releases a shuddering breath, then lifts his head once more to stare at my face as he enters me, his expression one of rapture. His gaze continues to brighten until he’s fully seated inside of me. “This is suffering,” he says. “Exquisite suffering.” God is he right. This is that place where pain and pleasure meet. I reach for him. My fingers brush his crown, which somehow managed to stay on his head this entire time. Gently, I set it aside. He tracks my every movement but doesn’t protest. Can’t believe he’s inside me. If he was breathtaking before, now, this close to me, he’s almost unbearable to look at—like trying to stare down the sun. Slowly he pulls out of me, then thrusts forward. A groan slips out of him. “Cannot unknow this sensation … surely it will haunt me for all my days.” He starts out slow, savoring each stroke of his hips like I do good chocolate. But like good chocolate, the savoring gives way to indulgence. His pace picks up, and soon he’s not gently stroking me, but fucking me in a frenzy, his hands finding my hips and pulling me closer, closer.

She stared at him, her heart in her throat. ‘Robert…” “Ah. fuck it,” he growled. blue eyes piercing her in the garden’s muted light. 1 can’t wait anymore.” He grabbed her wrist and, nostrils flaring. yanked her to his body and crushed her mouth with his. His tongue plunged past her lips, stroking over her tongue in a kiss that was far more forceful than the one they’d shared in his hospital room fifteen days ago. That kiss had been gentle in its molten hunger. It had filled her with aching desire. This kiss, however.. .there was nothing gentle about it. He took complete possession of her mouth, invading it with not just hunger but ravenous greed. Its ferocity flooded her sex with damp pressure and made her head swim.

Daniel!" She waved the letter. "I have news," she called in the English she always used with him. Her son straightened up from the horse. "What, Mama?" Eager expectancy glowed in his blue eyes, and for a moment he looked so much like his father that a familiar pain pierced her heart and tempered her excitement. From long practice, she shoved her sadness aside. "I've inherited Uncle Ezra's ranch in Montana.

Ultimately, Roger learned only of the encounter with the urban bees. The boy remained thoroughly fascinated by what he heard nonetheless, his blue-eyed stare never once straying from Holmes; his visage passive and accepting, his eyes wide, Roger's pupils stated fixed on those venerable, reflective eyes, as though the boy were seeing distant lights shimmering along an opaque horizon, a glimpse of something flickering and alive existing beyond his reach. And, in turn, the gray eyes that focused sharply on him - piercing and kind at the same instant - endeavoured to bridge the lifetime that separated the two of them, attempting to do so as brandy was sipped, and the vial's glass grew warmer against soft palms, and that seasoned, well-lived voice somehow made Roger feel much older and more worldly than his years.

The monstrous versions of himself and Hermione were gone: There was only Ron, standing there with the sword held slackly in his hand, looking down at the shattered remains of the locket on the flat rock. Slowly, Harry walked back to him, hardly knowing what to say or do. Ron was breathing heavily: His eyes were no longer red at all, but their normal blue; they were also wet. Harry stooped, pretending he had not seen, and picked up the broken Horcrux. Ron had pierced the glass in both windows: Riddle’s eyes were gone, and the stained silk lining of the locket was smoking slightly. The thing that had lived in the Horcrux had vanished; torturing Ron had been its final act. The sword clanged as Ron dropped it. He had sunk to his knees, his head in his arms. He was shaking, but not, Harry realized, from cold. Harry crammed the broken locket into his pocket, knelt down beside Ron, and placed a hand cautiously on his shoulder. He took it as a good sign that Ron did not throw it off. “After you left,” he said in a low voice, grateful for the fact that Ron’s face was hidden, “she cried for a week. Probably longer, only she didn’t want me to see. There were loads of nights when we never even spoke to each other. With you gone…” He could not finish; it was only now that Ron was here again that Harry fully realized how much his absence had cost them. “She’s like my sister,” he went on. “I love her like a sister and I reckon she feels the same way about me. It’s always been like that. I thought you knew.” Ron did not respond, but turned his face away from Harry and wiped his nose noisily on his sleeve. Harry got to his feet again and walked to where Ron’s enormous rucksack lay yards away, discarded as Ron had run toward the pool to save Harry from drowning. He hoisted it onto his own back and walked back to Ron, who clambered to his feet as Harry approached, eyes bloodshot but otherwise composed. “I’m sorry,” he said in a thick voice. “I’m sorry I left. I know I was a--a--” He looked around at the darkness, as if hoping a bad enough word would swoop down upon him and claim him. “You’ve sort of made up for it tonight,” said Harry. “Getting the sword. Finishing off the Horcrux. Saving my life.” “That makes me sound a lot cooler than I was,” Ron mumbled. “Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was,” said Harry. “I’ve been trying to tell you that for years.” Simultaneously they walked forward and hugged, Harry gripping the still-sopping back of Ron’s jacket. “And now,” said Harry as they broke apart, “all we’ve got to do is find the tent again.

--- He knit his brows as she stared at him. "Do I have a pustule on my face?" "No." She continued to stare. He may be a bit more time-weathered, but that only served to increase his allure. And his eyes. Lord, his eyes were the same crystal blues that could pierce through her soul. Tilting his chin up, he folded his arms. "Then why are ye looking at me like that?" "I want to remember." His gaze softened. "I've never forgotten." "Nor have I.

dawned, even for her, that the end was here. Spots swam before Mark’s eyes, flashing lights. His heart wouldn’t stop racing, and it felt as if the organ pumped acid through his veins. Trina, silent, kept up with him. Into the cargo room. Down the ramp of the hatch door, into the brightness of day. They’d barely stepped off of it when squeals pierced the air and the slab of metal began to close. Alec lifted the Berg off the ground, blue thrusters roaring. Mark was barely holding onto his mind, but he

THE MONSTER & THE MAN One obstacle pierces his soul and calls him down the dark road - heavy sighing he must carry on and at last, the thorn is retrieved - with agony in his brown eyes - he suddenly sees: Fever dreams, scarlet on blue velvet, like ink drowning in words - words drowning inside his veins - words that pleaded in vain - words so scarlet... so stained. Empty lines for empty souls that carry too much inside; empty pages for empty hands with nothing else to hide nor to control the beast inside his soul.

With a resounding bang, the door burst open. A crazed man gaped at her with piercing and anguished blue eyes. Grunting, he staggered inside and collapsed face first to the floor. Max launched into a cacophony of barking, racing around the man as if the spaniel had made a conquest. A cold wind chilled the cottage while Jane tried to steady the poker with both hands and point it at the burly form. He didn't move. Max whimpered and licked the man's face. Then the dog curled up beside him. Jane gaped. "Merciful father.

He grew old strengthened by intelligence and reinforced by experience. He died with a full head of white hair and blue eyes as piercing as those of his youth. “How hard it is to die,” he told me one day when he was already very weary of pain. He spoke in proverbs, he knew hundreds of folk tales, and recited long poems from memory. This formidable man gave me the gift of discipline and love for language; without them I could not devote myself to writing today. He also taught me to observe nature and to love the landscape of Chile.

Do not think the weight of the world is not felt by me, Languoreth. It is only that I have learnt there is little we can do but trust,” she said. “We may fashion such things as might give us opportunities. For healing. For wheat to grow tall. For visions of what is yet to come. For love.” She lifted her blue eyes to mine. “But there is always a measure beyond our control. The wind and the weather. The stray pierce of an arrow. Sickness. Death. A wise woman realizes this. She keeps her heart as full in times of pain as she does in times of good fortune. This is because her heart is full with trust.

Closing the distance between them, he had savored the modest allure of her walk and felt his body respond to the graceful sway of her hips as they approached the pool. He had envisioned her taking off her robe and showing him her slender nakedness, but instead, she had just stood there, as though searching for someone. It skipped through his mind that when he caught up to the girl, he would either apprehend or ravish her. He still wasn't sure which it would be as he stood before her, blocking her escape with a dark, slight smile. As she peered up at him fearfully from the shadowed folds of her hood, he found himself staring into the bluest eyes he had ever seen. He had only encountered that deep, dream-spun shade of cobalt once in his life before, in the stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral. His awareness of the crowd them dimmed in the ocean-blue depths of her eyes. 'Who are you?' He did not say a word nor ask her permission. With the smooth self-assurance of a man who has access to every woman in the room, he captured her chin in a firm but gentle grip. She jumped when he touched her, panic flashing in her eyes. His hard stare softened slightly in amusement at that, but then his faint smile faded, for her skin was silken beneath his fingertips. With one hand, he lifted her face toward the dim torchlight, while the other softly brushed back her hood. Then Lucien faltered, faced with a beauty the likes of which he had never seen. His very soul grew hushed with reverence as he gazed at her, holding his breath for fear the vision would dissolve, a figment of his overactive brain. With her bright tresses gleaming the flame-gold of dawn and her large, frightened eyes of that shining, ethereal blue, he was so sure for a moment that she was a lost angel that he half expected to see silvery, feathered wings folded demurely beneath her coarse brown robe. She appeared somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two- a wholesome, nay, a virginal beauty of trembling purity. He instantly 'knew' that she was utterly untouched, impossible as that seemed in this place. Her face was proud and weary. Her satiny skin glowed in the candlelight, pale and fine, but her soft, luscious lips shot off an effervescent champagne-pop of desire that fizzed more sweetly in his veins than anything he'd felt since his adolescence, which had taken place, if he recalled correctly, some time during the Dark Ages. There was intelligence and valor in her delicate face, courage, and a quivering vulnerability that made him ache with anguish for the doom of all innocent things. 'A noble youth, a questing youth,' he thought, and if she had come to slay dragons, she had already pierced him in his black, fiery heart with the lance of her heaven-blue gaze.

You.” Hard thrust. “Go.” Another thrust directly to my spot, my pussy walls clenching and holding his fingers but he doesn’t let me. “When. I. Say. So.” He fucks me with his fingers so hard and I come just as hard, so loud with a scream that pierces my ears. I literally hear a buzz and see color behind my eyes. Maybe it’s the bitter taste of the truth on my tongue, or the answering silent, yet volcanic anger from Ace. Maybe it’s the grief that slices the room into uneven dimensions of breathless agony—but for whatever reason, my orgasm is hard and intense. It’s the type of climax that I knew Ace could easily give me, but we both knew it was heightened by misery and grief. A kind of grief that we both refused to face. Grief heightened by orgasm. Orgasm heightened by grief. . . My entire body shakes, Ace flips me over to my side and somehow in the darkness of my room, our gazes connect and I can see the blues like I do in my nightmares and my dreams. I see them as much as they see me. I know these eyes belong to the devil, the spawn of my hate. But they still see me. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. To be seen and he has, since the very first day we met. “You will fucking die when I say so.” He growls, like a solemn vow. “You will fade away like the kind of nothing that you think you are, when I say so. But for now, you fucking stay here and you fight that shit for me. I fucking need you to fight it.

Nu uh. If I’m not drinking, you’re not drinking.” I shot a sideways glance at Chase, “Well then why don’t you have one?” “Because I don’t drink anymore.” He shrugged and looked around the kitchen for a moment. “Since when?” I hadn’t seen him drink in months, but I didn’t know he’d actually stopped. Chase stopped looking around and pierced me with his blue eyes, “Since I was a jackass and hurt my Princess.” He said my Princess. My. I had goose bumps covering my body. “Huh … I didn’t realize.” “You’re the one that told me I should stop.” He said it matter-of-factly. “But I didn’t mean you had to Chase. You’re grown, you can do whatever you want.” “I know. Nothing good ever came from drinking though.” Who

Travis raised his head from sighting down the rifle as shock radiated through him. Those eyes. Such a vivid blue. It was as if he’d seen them before. But that was impossible. Females didn’t exactly pay them calls on a regular basis. Clearing his throat, he readjusted his rifle. “We don’t cotton to trespassers around here, lady. You best skedaddle back the way you came.” “I will. But not until I say my piece.” She pivoted to face him fully, her lashes lowering for just a moment before she aimed her gaze directly at him again. Even knowing what was coming didn’t stop the jolt from ricocheting through his chest when those piercing eyes latched onto him. “I came to warn you, Travis.” Travis? She knew who he was? Most folks meeting the Archers all at once had no way of knowing him from Crockett or Jim. Yet she said his name with the confidence of recognition. He squinted at her. “Look, lady. I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but I want no part of it.” “This is no game. Please, Travis. Just listen.” “You know this gal, Trav?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his youngest brother start to lower his rifle. “Hush up, Neill, and hold your line.” The kid obeyed without question, firming up his grip. “The man who wants to buy your land is sending men out here tonight to persuade you to change your mind. They plan to set fire to the place while you sleep and force you to accept the next offer in order to recoup your losses.

We didn’t talk any more about Boris’s love interest, at least not that day, but then a few days later when I came out of math I saw him looming over this girl by the lockers. While Boris wasn’t especially tall for his age, the girl was tiny, despite how much older than us she seemed: flat-chested, scrawny-hipped, with high cheekbones and a shiny forehead and a sharp, shiny, triangle-shaped face. Pierced nose. Black tank top. Chipped black fingernail polish; streaked orange-and-black hair; flat, bright, chlorine-blue eyes, outlined hard, in black pencil. Definitely she was cute – hot, even; but the glance she slid over me was anxiety-provoking, something about her of a bitchy fast-food clerk or maybe a mean babysitter.

Blessedness is within us all It lies upon the long scaffold Patrols the vaporous hall In our pursuits, though still, we venture forth Hoping to grasp a handful of cloud and return Unscathed, cloud in hand. We encounter Space, fist, violin, or this — an immaculate face Of a boy, somewhat wild, smiling in the sun. He raises his hand, as if in carefree salute Shading eyes that contain the thread of God. Soon they will gather power, disenchantment They will reflect enlightenment, agony They will reveal the process of love They will, in an hour alone, shed tears. His mouth a circlet, a baptismal font Opening wide as the lips of a damsel Sounding the dizzying extremes. The relativity of vein, the hip of unrest For the sake of wing there is shoulder. For symmetry there is blade. He kneels, humiliates, he pierces her side. Offering spleen to the wolves of the forest. He races across the tiles, the human board. Virility, coquetry all a game — well played. Immersed in luminous disgrace, he lifts As a slave, a nymph, a fabulous hood As a rose, a thief of life, he will parade Nude crowned with leaves, immortal. He will sing of the body, his truth He will increase the shining neck Pluck airs toward our delight Of the waning The blossoming The violent charade But who will sing of him? Who will sing of his blessedness? The blameless eye, the radiant grin For he, his own messenger, is gone He has leapt through the orphic glass To wander eternally In search of perfection His blue ankles tattooed with stars.

It's hard to form a lasting connection when your permanent address is an eight-inch mailbox in the UPS store. Still,as I inch my way closer, I can't help the way my breath hitches, the way my insides thrum and swirl. And when he turns,flashing me that slow, languorous smile that's about to make him world famous,his eyes meeting mine when he says, "Hey,Daire-Happy Sweet Sixteen," I can't help but think of the millions of girls who would do just about anything to stand in my pointy blue babouches. I return the smile, flick a little wave of my hand, then bury it in the side pocket of the olive-green army jacket I always wear. Pretending not to notice the way his gaze roams over me, straying from my waist-length brown hair peeking out from my scarf, to the tie-dyed tank top that clings under my jacket,to the skinny dark denim jeans,all the way down to the brand-new slippers I wear on my feet. "Nice." He places his foot beside mine, providing me with a view of the his-and-hers version of the very same shoe. Laughing when he adds, "Maybe we can start a trend when we head back to the States.What do you think?" We. There is no we. I know it.He knows it.And it bugs me that he tries to pretend otherwise. The cameras stopped rolling hours ago, and yet here he is,still playing a role. Acting as though our brief, on-location hookup means something more. Acting like we won't really end long before our passports are stamped RETURN. And that's all it takes for those annoyingly soft girly feelings to vanish as quickly as a flame in the rain. Allowing the Daire I know,the Daire I've honed myself to be, to stand in her palce. "Doubtful." I smirk,kicking his shoe with mine.A little harder then necessary, but then again,he deserves it for thinking I'm lame enough to fall for his act. "So,what do you say-food? I'm dying for one of those beef brochettes,maybe even a sausage one too.Oh-and some fries would be good!" I make for the food stalls,but Vane has another idea. His hand reaches for mine,fingers entwining until they're laced nice and tight. "In a minute," he says,pulling me so close my hip bumps against his. "I thought we might do something special-in honor of your birthday and all.What do you think about matching tattoos?" I gape.Surely he's joking. "Yeah,you know,mehndi. Nothing permanent.Still,I thought it could be kinda cool." He arcs his left brow in his trademark Vane Wick wau,and I have to fight not to frown in return. Nothing permanent. That's my theme song-my mission statement,if you will. Still,mehndi's not quite the same as a press-on. It has its own life span. One that will linger long after Vane's studio-financed, private jet lifts him high into the sky and right out of my life. Though I don't mention any of that, instead I just say, "You know the director will kill you if you show up on set tomorrow covered in henna." Vane shrugs. Shrugs in a way I've seen too many times, on too many young actors before him.He's in full-on star-power mode.Think he's indispensable. That he's the only seventeen-year-old guy with a hint of talent,golden skin, wavy blond hair, and piercing blue eyes that can light up a screen and make the girls (and most of their moms) swoon. It's a dangerous way to see yourself-especially when you make your living in Hollywood. It's the kind of thinking that leads straight to multiple rehab stints, trashy reality TV shows, desperate ghostwritten memoirs, and low-budget movies that go straight to DVD.

Mag Rogan and I stood on the edge of a cliff. Below us, the ground plunged so far down that it was as if the planet itself had ended at our feet. The wind tugged at my hair. He was wearing those dark pants again and nothing else. The hard muscle corded his torso, fueled by an overpowering, almost savage strength. Not the mindless brutality of a common thug or the cruel power of an animal, but an intelligent, stubborn, human strength. It was everywhere: in the set of his broad shoulders, in the turn of his head on a muscular neck, in the tilt of his square jaw. He turned to me and his whole body tightened, the muscles flexing and hardening, his hands ready to grip and crush, his eyes alert, missing nothing, and blazing with the brilliant electric blue of magic. I could picture him getting his sword and walking alone onto the drawbridge to defend his castle against a horde of invaders with that exact look on his face. He was terrifying, and I wanted to run my hands down that chest and feel the hard ridges of his abs. I was some special kind of idiot. Magic roiled about him, ferocious and alive, a pet monster with vicious teeth. He moved toward me, bringing it with him. “Tell me about Adam Pierce.” I reached over and put my hand on his chest. His skin was burning hot. The muscle tensed under my fingers. An eager electric shiver ran through me. I wanted to lean against that chest and kiss the underside of that jaw, tasting his sweat on my tongue. I wanted him to like it. “What happened to the boy?” I asked. “The one who destroyed a city in Mexico? Is he still inside?” “Nevada!” My mother’s voice cut through my dreams like a knife. I sat straight up in my bed. Okay. I was either way more messed up inside, or Mad Rogan was a strong projector and could shoot images straight into my mind. Either way was bad. What happened to the boy . . . I needed to have my head examined.

After picking up the lamp, she went to Joyce, who was clutching her injured shoulder. I should leave you here, she thought. She was unaware she had said the words aloud until Joyce replied. "You can't let me die!" "You're not going to die." Disgusted, terrified, Sara removed her own petticoat, wadded it up, and pressed it firmly against the wound to staunch the blood. Joyce screamed like an enraged cat, her eyes slitted and demonic. Sara's ears rang from the piercing cry. "Be quiet, you bitch!" Sara snapped. "Not another sound!" Suddenly her entire body was filled with furious energy. She felt strong enough to push down a stone wall with her bare hands. She went to the crumbling entrance of the castle and saw that the hack driver was still waiting, craning his neck curiously. "You!" she shouted. "Come here right away, or you won't get a bloody shilling of what she promised!" She turned back to Joyce, her blue eyes blazing. "And you... give me back my necklace.

Marcus had a natural arrogant air to him, thanks to his striking facial features, with his slim nose, square cut jawline and high cheekbones. He also had high arched brows with one that always seemed to be raised as if he was judging every single action you made. But those elongated red diamond shapes that ran through his eyes and curved slightly an inch above his brows reminded me of horns. The opposite ends were drawn down in long points that reached his jaw until they were nothing but a thin line. A set that mirrored the same triangular design starting from under his bottom lip. This thin red line continued all the way down his chin until it disappeared under the shadows of his long neck before it dipped under a crimson red cravat. A colour that matched his unusual hair, with its strands that were twisted back from his face into sections with the ends pointed with little bells attached. All of which adding to the theatrics that rest of his outfit provided. Piercing dark blue eyes studied me as I approached.

Outside Caracas patriots hardly fared better. The “Legions of Hell”—hordes of wild and truculent plainsmen—rode out of the barren llanos to punish anyone who dared call himself a rebel. Leading these colored troops was the fearsome José Tomás Boves. A Spanish sailor from Asturias, Boves had been arested at sea for smuggling, sent to the dungeons of Puerto Cabello, then exiled to the Venezuelan prairie, where he fell in with marauding cowboys. He was fair-haired, strong-shouldered, with an enormous head, piercing blue eyes, and a pronounced sadistic streak. Loved by his feral cohort with a passion verging on worship, he led them to unimaginable violence. As Bolívar’s aide Daniel O’Leary later wrote, “Of all the monsters produced by the revolution . . . Boves was the worst.” He was a barbarian of epic proportions, an Attila for the Americas. Recruited by Monteverde but beholden to no one, Boves raised a formidable army of black, pardo, and mestizo llaneros by promising them open plunder, rich booty, and a chance to exterminate the Creole class. The llaneros were accomplished horsemen, well trained in the art of warfare. They needed few worldly goods, rode bareback, covered their nakedness with loincloths. They consumed only meat, which they strapped to their horses’ flanks and cured by the sweat of the racing animals. They made tents from hides, slept on earth, reveled in hardship. They lived on the open prairie, which was parched by heat, impassable in the rains. Their weapon of choice was a long lance of alvarico palm, hardened to a sharp point in the campfire. They were accustomed to making rapid raids, swimming on horseback through rampant floods, the sum of their earthly possessions in leather pouches balanced on their heads or clenched between their teeth. They could ride at a gallop, like the armies of Genghis Khan, dangling from the side of a horse, so that their bodies were rendered invisible, untouchable, their killing lances straight and sure against a baffled enemy. In war, they had little to lose or gain, no allegiance to politics. They were rustlers and hated the ruling class, which to them meant the Creoles; they fought for the abolition of laws against their kind, which the Spaniards had promised; and they believed in the principles of harsh justice, in which a calculus of bloodshed prevailed.

I brushed my teeth like a crazed lunatic as I examined myself in the mirror. Why couldn’t I look the women in commercials who wake up in a bed with ironed sheets and a dewy complexion with their hair perfectly tousled? I wasn’t fit for human eyes, let alone the piercing eyes of the sexy, magnetic Marlboro Man, who by now was walking up the stairs to my bedroom. I could hear the clomping of his boots. The boots were in my bedroom by now, and so was the gravelly voice attached to them. “Hey,” I heard him say. I patted an ice-cold washcloth on my face and said ten Hail Marys, incredulous that I would yet again find myself trapped in the prison of a bathroom with Marlboro Man, my cowboy love, on the other side of the door. What in the world was he doing there? Didn’t he have some cows to wrangle? Some fence to fix? It was broad daylight; didn’t he have a ranch to run? I needed to speak to him about his work ethic. “Oh, hello,” I responded through the door, ransacking the hamper in my bathroom for something, anything better than the sacrilege that adorned my body. Didn’t I have any respect for myself? I heard Marlboro Man laugh quietly. “What’re you doing in there?” I found my favorite pair of faded, soft jeans. “Hiding,” I replied, stepping into them and buttoning the waist. “Well, c’mere,” he said softly. My jeans were damp from sitting in the hamper next to a wet washcloth for two days, and the best top I could find was a cardinal and gold FIGHT ON! T-shirt from my ‘SC days. It wasn’t dingy, and it didn’t smell. That was the best I could do at the time. Oh, how far I’d fallen from the black heels and glitz of Los Angeles. Accepting defeat, I shrugged and swung open the door. He was standing there, smiling. His impish grin jumped out and grabbed me, as it always did. “Well, good morning!” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist. His lips settled on my neck. I was glad I’d spritzed myself with Giorgio. “Good morning,” I whispered back, a slight edge to my voice. Equal parts embarrassed at my puffy eyes and at the fact that I’d slept so late that day, I kept hugging him tightly, hoping against hope he’d never let go and never back up enough to get a good, long look at me. Maybe if we just stood there for fifty years or so, wrinkles would eventually shield my puffiness. “So,” Marlboro Man said. “What have you been doing all day?” I hesitated for a moment, then launched into a full-scale monologue. “Well, of course I had my usual twenty-mile run, then I went on a hike and then I read The Iliad. Twice. You don’t even want to know the rest. It’ll make you tired just hearing about it.” “Uh-huh,” he said, his blue-green eyes fixed on mine. I melted in his arms once again. It happened any time, every time, he held me. He kissed me, despite my gold FIGHT ON! T-shirt. My eyes were closed, and I was in a black hole, a vortex of romance, existing in something other than a human body. I floated on vapors. Marlboro Man whispered in my ear, “So…,” and his grip around my waist tightened. And then, in an instant, I plunged back to earth, back to my bedroom, and landed with a loud thud on the floor. “R-R-R-R-Ree?” A thundering voice entered the room. It was my brother Mike. And he was barreling toward Marlboro Man and me, his arms outstretched. “Hey!” Mike yelled. “W-w-w-what are you guys doin’?” And before either of us knew it, Mike’s arms were around us both, holding us in a great big bear hug. “Well, hi, Mike,” Marlboro Man said, clearly trying to reconcile the fact that my adult brother had his arms around him. It wasn’t awkward for me; it was just annoying. Mike had interrupted our moment. He was always doing that.

Camille heard the rustle of grass. She opened one eye and saw Oscar settling down beside her. “We can spare a few minutes,” he said. She sat up and cradled her knees in her arms. He plucked a blade of grass and commenced peeling it down the center. They heard the Australian snoring from his spot a few yards away, completely hidden in a blanket of green. “I guess we can spare more than a few minutes.” Oscar smiled and met her gaze, holding it a moment. She suddenly realized how horrible she must look-her hair, her clothes, her skin. “Do you miss him?” he asked, not seeming to notice any of those things. Camille uprooted a purple flower and a white daisy near it. “Of course I do. But I’m hoping with the stone I won’t have to very long.” “Not your father, Camille. Randall.” She took a deep breath, shocked she hadn’t thought of her fiancé for so long. How many days had it been? A full week, maybe more. “Oh. Well…I suppose I do.” Oscar raised an eyebrow and laughed at her clear lack of conviction. Camille shrugged. “What? A lot has happened and right now getting back to San Francisco isn’t something I’m concerned about.” Oscar nodded and chewed on the tip of his blade of grass. “It’s not that Randall isn’t a perfectly good man,” she said, fiddling with the flowers in her hands. The roots crumbled dirt onto her lap. “He’s kind and caring and handsome and an excellent businessman.” Oscar continued to nod. “And he’ll make a fine husband, I’m sure,” she added, knowing he really was all those things. If only all of them combined could make up for what she didn’t feel while with him. “I’m sure,” Oscar repeated. Had he been mocking her? She thought she had caught a trace of sarcasm. All this talk about Randall had her itching. “Why do you ask?” “Just wondered if you missed home,” Oscar answered and threw the mangled blade of grass behind him. “Do you?” she asked, ashamed to her Oscar know how little she desired to return. He thought for a moment, tugging up another switch of grass and rolling it between his fingers. “No,” he answered with stark certainty. “I have everything I’d miss right here.” Every inch of Camille’s body smoldered under Oscar’s gentle, and so very forward, gaze. He’d miss her. She looked into his gray-blue eyes, rimmed by thick, honey-colored lashes-had they always been so full? The bridge of his nose crooked to the left slightly, perhaps broken in a fight after he’d moved from her father’s carriage house to a small apartment along the San Francisco harbor front. She’d never noticed the charming imperfection before. She watched as his eyes traveled over her own features, touching on the wound by her temple and settling on the heart-shaped fullness of her lips. Oscar held his piercing stare. “We probably won’t arrive home in time for your wedding.

Memories whirled in the back of her head. Not frightening this time. The owner of that voice made her smile. He protected her, and he loved her. When she was with him, the world felt right. As long as she was with him, she was safe. He entered the room, crossing at an angle to her so that she saw just his shoulders and a glimpse of flat stomach. Not a stitch of clothing covered him. Not one. She could see the backs of his thighs and his bare behind. Round and strong and firm. Dark hair cut short gave his profile greater sternness. She knew beyond certainty she had every right to be here, with him perfectly naked. Her heart swelled with joy, a feeling so intense she wanted to cry out to the world. He stopped at the window and stood there, one arm resting atop the sash, staring at the hills rising toward Scotland. His arm came forward on the sash, and he shifted so that he faced her. "Well," he said in a soft voice that made her breath catch. His voice was velvet, liquid velvet, and she was drowning in it, filled all the way to her soul. That voice, a woman could love. "Good afternoon." Bluer eyes she'd never seen. Nor more piercing ones. She drowned in eyes of an incredible, piercing blue. The light shimmered as a cloud crossed the sun. But this man, this man with eyes like frost on a window, whose eyes made battle-hardened men quail and who seemed so foreign to tenderness, made her complete...

He hopes at least after pulling himself up from one branch to another he will be able to see farther, discover where the roads lead; but the foliage beneath him is dense, the ground is soon out of sight, and if he raises his eyes toward the top of the tree he is blinded by The Sun, whose piercing rays make the leaves gleam with every colour against the light. However, the meaning of those two children seen in the tarot should also be explained: they must indicate that, looking up, the young man has realized he is no longer alone in the tree; two urchins have preceeded him, scrambling up the boughs. They seem twins: identical, barefoot, golden blond. At this point the young man spoke, asked: “what are you two doing here?” or else: “how far is it to the top?” And the twins replied, indicating with confused gesticulation toward something seen on the horizon of the drawing, beneath the sun’s rays: the walls of a city. But where are these walls located, with respect to the tree? The Ace of Cups portrays, in fact, a city, with many towers and spires and minarets and domes rising above the walls. And also palm fronds, pheasants’ wings, fins of blue moonfish which certainly jut from the city’s gardens, aviaries, aquariums, among which we can imagine the two urchins, chasing each other and vanishing. And this city seems balanced on top of a pyramid, which could also be the top of a great tree; in other words, it would be a city suspended on the highest branches like a bird’s nest, with hanging foundations like the aerial roots of certain plants.

Everywhere you look with this young lady, there’s a purity of motivation,” Shultz told him. “I mean she really is trying to make the world better, and this is her way of doing it.” Mattis went out of his way to praise her integrity. “She has probably one of the most mature and well-honed sense of ethics—personal ethics, managerial ethics, business ethics, medical ethics that I’ve ever heard articulated,” the retired general gushed. Parloff didn’t end up using those quotes in his article, but the ringing endorsements he heard in interview after interview from the luminaries on Theranos’s board gave him confidence that Elizabeth was the real deal. He also liked to think of himself as a pretty good judge of character. After all, he’d dealt with his share of dishonest people over the years, having worked in a prison during law school and later writing at length about such fraudsters as the carpet-cleaning entrepreneur Barry Minkow and the lawyer Marc Dreier, both of whom went to prison for masterminding Ponzi schemes. Sure, Elizabeth had a secretive streak when it came to discussing certain specifics about her company, but he found her for the most part to be genuine and sincere. Since his angle was no longer the patent case, he didn’t bother to reach out to the Fuiszes. — WHEN PARLOFF’S COVER STORY was published in the June 12, 2014, issue of Fortune, it vaulted Elizabeth to instant stardom. Her Journal interview had gotten some notice and there had also been a piece in Wired, but there was nothing like a magazine cover to grab people’s attention. Especially when that cover featured an attractive young woman wearing a black turtleneck, dark mascara around her piercing blue eyes, and bright red lipstick next to the catchy headline “THIS CEO IS OUT FOR BLOOD.” The story disclosed Theranos’s valuation for the first time as well as the fact that Elizabeth owned more than half of the company. There was also the now-familiar comparison to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. This time it came not from George Shultz but from her old Stanford professor Channing Robertson. (Had Parloff read Robertson’s testimony in the Fuisz trial, he would have learned that Theranos was paying him $500,000 a year, ostensibly as a consultant.) Parloff also included a passage about Elizabeth’s phobia of needles—a detail that would be repeated over and over in the ensuing flurry of coverage his story unleashed and become central to her myth. When the editors at Forbes saw the Fortune article, they immediately assigned reporters to confirm the company’s valuation and the size of Elizabeth’s ownership stake and ran a story about her in their next issue. Under the headline “Bloody Amazing,” the article pronounced her “the youngest woman to become a self-made billionaire.” Two months later, she graced one of the covers of the magazine’s annual Forbes 400 issue on the richest people in America. More fawning stories followed in USA Today, Inc., Fast Company, and Glamour, along with segments on NPR, Fox Business, CNBC, CNN, and CBS News. With the explosion of media coverage came invitations to numerous conferences and a cascade of accolades. Elizabeth became the youngest person to win the Horatio Alger Award. Time magazine named her one of the one hundred most influential people in the world. President Obama appointed her a U.S. ambassador for global entrepreneurship, and Harvard Medical School invited her to join its prestigious board of fellows.

Wormtail was speaking. His voice shook; he seemed frightened beyond his wits. He raised his wand, closed his eyes, and spoke to the night. “Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!” The surface of the grave at Harry’s feet cracked. Horrified, Harry watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air at Wormtail’s command and fell softly into the cauldron. The diamond surface of the water broke and hissed; it sent sparks in all directions and turned a vivid, poisonous-looking blue. And now Wormtail was whimpering. He pulled a long, thin, shining silver dagger from inside his cloak. His voice broke into petrified sobs. “Flesh — of the servant — w-willingly given — you will — revive — your master.” He stretched his right hand out in front of him — the hand with the missing finger. He gripped the dagger very tightly in his left hand and swung it upward. Harry realized what Wormtail was about to do a second before it happened — he closed his eyes as tightly as he could, but he could not block the scream that pierced the night, that went through Harry as though he had been stabbed with the dagger too. He heard something fall to the ground, heard Wormtail’s anguished panting, then a sickening splash, as something was dropped into the cauldron. Harry couldn’t stand to look . . . but the potion had turned a burning red; the light of it shone through Harry’s closed eyelids. . . . Wormtail was gasping and moaning with agony. Not until Harry felt Wormtail’s anguished breath on his face did he realize that Wormtail was right in front of him. “B-blood of the enemy . . . forcibly taken . . . you will . . . resurrect your foe.” Harry could do nothing to prevent it, he was tied too tightly. . . . Squinting down, struggling hopelessly at the ropes binding him, he saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Wormtail’s remaining hand. He felt its point penetrate the crook of his right arm and blood seeping down the sleeve of his torn robes. Wormtail, still panting with pain, fumbled in his pocket for a glass vial and held it to Harry’s cut, so that a dribble of blood fell into it. He staggered back to the cauldron with Harry’s blood. He poured it inside. The liquid within turned, instantly, a blinding white. Wormtail, his job done, dropped to his knees beside the cauldron, then slumped sideways and lay on the ground, cradling the bleeding stump of his arm, gasping and sobbing.

Marlboro Man paused, his eyes piercing through to my marrow. We’d started out watching the sunset over the ranch, sitting on the tailgate of his pickup, legs dangling playfully over the edge. By the time the sun had gone down, we were lying down, legs overlapping, as the sky turned blacker and blacker. And making out wildly. Making out, oh, so very wildly. I didn’t want to wait for him to bring it up again--the dreaded subject of Chicago. I’d avoided it like the plague for the past several days, not wanting to face the reality of my impending move, of walking away from my new love so soon after we’d found each other. But now the subject wasn’t so scary; it was safe. I’d made the decision, at least for now, to stay--I just had to tell Marlboro Man. And finally, in between kisses, the words bubbled suddenly and boldly to the surface; I could no longer contain them. But before I had a chance to say them, Marlboro Man opened his mouth and began to speak. “Oh no,” he said, a pained expression on his face. “Don’t tell me--you’re leaving tomorrow.” He ran his fingers through my hair and touched his forehead to mine. I smiled, giggling inside at the secret I was seconds away from spilling. A herd of cows mooed in the distance. Serenading us. “Um…no,” I said, finding it hard to believe what I was about to tell him. “I’m not…I’m…I’m not going.” He paused, then pulled his face away from mine, allowing just enough distance between us for him to pull focus. “What?” he asked, is strong fingers still grasping my hair. A tentative smile appeared on his face. I breathed in a deep dose of night air, trying to calm my schoolgirl nervousness. “I, umm…” I began. “I decided to stick around here a little while.” There. I’d said it. This was all officially real. Without a moment of hesitation, Marlboro Man wrapped his ample arms around my waist. Then, in what seemed to be less than a second, he hoisted me from my horizontal position on the bed of his pickup until we were both standing in front of each other. Scooping me off my feet, he raised me up to his height so his icy blue eyes were level with mine. “Wait…are you serious?” he asked, taking my face in his hands. Squaring it in front of his. Looking me in the eye. “You’re not going?” “Nope,” I answered. “Whoa,” he said, smiling and moving in for a long, impassioned kiss on the back of his Ford F250. “I can’t believe it,” he continued, squeezing me tightly.

There are halibut as big as doors in the ocean down below the town, flapskimming on the murky ocean floor with vast skates and rays and purple crabs and black cod large as logs, and sea lions slashing through the whip-forests of bull kelp and eelgrass and sugar wrack, and seals in the rockweed and giant perennial kelp and iridescent kelp and iridescent fish and luminous shrimp too small to see with the naked eye but billions of which feed the gray whales which slide hugely slowly by like rubbery zeppelins twice a year, north in spring and south in fall. Salmonberries, thimbleberries, black raspberries, gooseberries, bearberries, snowberries, salal berries, elderberries, blackberries along the road and by the seasonal salt marshes north and south. The ground squirrels burrow along the dirt banks of the back roads, their warren of mysterious holes, the thick scatter of fine brown soil before their doorsteps, the flash of silver-gray on their back fur as they rocket into the bushes; the bucks and does and fawns in the road in the morning, their springy step as they slip away from the gardens they have been eating; the bobcat seen once, at dusk, its haunches jacked up like a teenager's hot-rodding car; the rumor of cougar in the hills; the coyotes who use the old fire road in the hills; the tiny mice and bats one sometimes finds long dead and leathery like ancient brown paper; the little frenetic testy chittering skittering cheeky testy chickaree squirrels in the spruces and pines - Douglas squirrels, they are, their very name remembering that young gentleman botanist who wandered near these hills centuries ago. The herons in marshes and sinks and creeks and streams and on the beach sometimes at dusk; and the cormorants and pelicans and sea scoters and murres (poor things so often dead young on the beach after the late-spring fledging) and jays and crows and quorking haunted ravens (moaning Poe! Poe! at dusk) especially over the wooded hills, and the goldfinches mobbing thistles in the meadowed hills, and sometimes a falcon rocketing by like a gleeful murderous dream, and osprey of all sizes all along the Mink like an osprey police lineup, and the herring gulls and Caspian terns and arctic terns, and the varied thrushes in wet corners of thickets, and the ruffed grouse in the spruce by the road, and the quail sometimes, and red-tailed hawks floating floating floating; from below they look like kites soaring brownly against the piercing blue sky, which itself is a vast creature bluer by the month as summer deepens into crispy cold fall.

He'd found a sweet-water stream that I drank from, and for dinner we found winkles that we ate baked on stones. We watched the sun set like a peach on the sea, making plans on how we might live till a ship called by. Next we made a better camp beside a river and had ourselves a pretty bathing pool all bordered with ferns; lovely it was, with marvelous red parrots chasing through the trees. Our home was a hut made of branches thatched with flat leaves, a right cozy place to sleep in. We had fat birds that Jack snared for our dinner, and made fire using a shard of looking glass I found in my pocket. We had lost the compass in the water, but didn't lament it. I roasted fish and winkles in the embers. For entertainment we even had Jack's penny whistle. It was a paradise, it was." "You loved him," her mistress said softly, as her pencil resumed its hissing across the paper. Peg fought a choking feeling in her chest. Aye, she had loved him- a damned sight more than this woman could ever know. "He loved me like his own breath," she said, in a voice that was dangerously plaintive. "He said he thanked God for the day he met me." Peg's eyes brimmed full; she was as weak as water. The rest of her tale stuck in her throat like a fishbone. Mrs. Croxon murmured that Peg might be released from her pose. Peg stared into space, again seeing Jack's face, so fierce and true. He had looked down so gently on her pitiful self; on her bruises and her bony body dressed in salt-hard rags. His blue eyes had met hers like a beacon shining on her naked soul. "I see past your always acting the tough girl," he insisted with boyish stubbornness. "I'll be taking care of you now. So that's settled." And she'd thought to herself, so this is it, girl. All them love stories, all them ballads that you always thought were a load of old tripe- love has found you out, and here you are. Mrs. Croxon returned with a glass of water, and Peg drank greedily. She forced herself to continue with self-mocking gusto. "When we lay down together in our grass house we whispered vows to stay true for ever and a day. We took pleasure from each other's bodies, and I can tell you, mistress, he were no green youth, but all grown man. So we were man and wife before God- and that's the truth." She faced out Mrs. Croxon with a bold stare. "You probably think such as me don't love so strong and tender, but I loved Jack Pierce like we was both put on earth just to find each other. And that night I made a wish," Peg said, raising herself as if from a trance, "a foolish wish it were- that me and Jack might never be rescued. That the rotten world would just leave us be.

Closing the distance between them, he had saved the modest allure of her walk and felt his body respond to the graceful sway of her hips as they approached the pool. He had envisioned her taking off her robe and showing him her slender nakedness, but instead, she had just stood there, as though searching for someone. It skipped through his mind that when he caught up to the girl, he would either apprehend or ravish her. He still wasn't sure which it would be as he stood before her, blocking her escape with a dark, slight smile. As she peered up at him fearfully from the shadowed folds of her hood, he found himself staring into the bluest eyes he had ever seen. He had only encountered that deep, dream-spun shade of cobalt once in his life before, in the stained glass windows of Chartres Cathedral. His awareness of the crowd them dimmed in the ocean-blue depths of her eyes. 'Who are you?' He did not say a word nor ask her permission. With the smooth self-assurance of a man who has access to every woman in the room, he captured her chin in a firm but gentle grip. She jumped when he touched her, panic flashing in her eyes. His hard stare softened slightly in amusement at that, but then his faint smile faded, for her skin was silken beneath his fingertips. With one hand, he lifted her face toward the dim torchlight, while the other softly brushed back her hood. Then Lucien faltered, faced with a beauty the likes of which he had never seen. His very soul grew hushed with reverence as he gazed at her, holding his breath for fear the vision would dissolve, a figment of his overactive brain. With her bright tresses gleaming the flame-gold of dawn and her large, frightened eyes of that shining, ethereal blue, he was so sure for a moment that she was a lost angel that he half expected to see silvery, feathered wings folded demurely beneath her coarse brown robe. She appeared somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two- a wholesome, nay, a virginal beauty of trembling purity. He instantly 'knew' that she was utterly untouched, impossible as that seemed in this place. Her face was proud and weary. Her satiny skin glowed in the candlelight, pale and fine, but her soft, luscious lips shot off an effervescent champagne-pop of desire that fizzed more sweetly in his veins than anything he'd felt since his adolescence, which had taken place, if he recalled correctly, some time during the Dark Ages. There was intelligence and valor in her delicate face, courage, and a quivering vulnerability that made him ache with anguish for the doom of all innocent things. 'A noble youth, a questing youth,' he thought, and if she had come to slay dragons, she had already pierced him in his black, fiery heart with the lance of her heaven-blue gaze.

All beauty calls you to me, and you seem, Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea, To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe Here on the ship's sun-smitten topmost deck, With only light between the heavens and me. I feel your spirit and I close my eyes, Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun, The eager whisper and the searching eyes. Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile The blue unbroken circle of sea. Look far away and let me ease my heart Of words that beat in it with broken wing. Look far away, and if I say too much, Forget that I am speaking. Only watch, How like a gull that sparking sinks to rest, The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the world. I am so weak a thing, praise me for this, That in some strange way I was strong enough To keep my love unuttered and to stand Altho' I longed to kneel to you that night You looked at me with ever-calling eyes. Was I not calm? And if you guessed my love You thought it something delicate and free, Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind, Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam. Yet in my heart there was a beating storm Bending my thoughts before it, and I strove To say too little lest I say too much, And from my eyes to drive love’s happy shame. Yet when I heard your name the first far time It seemed like other names to me, and I Was all unconscious, as a dreaming river That nears at last its long predestined sea; And when you spoke to me, I did not know That to my life’s high altar came its priest. But now I know between my God and me You stand forever, nearer God than I, And in your hands with faith and utter joy I would that I could lay my woman’s soul. Oh, my love To whom I cannot come with any gift Of body or of soul, I pass and go. But sometimes when you hear blown back to you My wistful, far-off singing touched with tears, Know that I sang for you alone to hear, And that I wondered if the wind would bring To him who tuned my heart its distant song. So might a woman who in loneliness Had borne a child, dreaming of days to come, Wonder if it would please its father’s eyes. But long before I ever heard your name, Always the undertone’s unchanging note In all my singing had prefigured you, Foretold you as a spark foretells a flame. Yet I was free as an untethered cloud In the great space between the sky and sea, And might have blown before the wind of joy Like a bright banner woven by the sun. I did not know the longing in the night– You who have waked me cannot give me sleep. All things in all the world can rest, but I, Even the smooth brief respite of a wave When it gives up its broken crown of foam, Even that little rest I may not have. And yet all quiet loves of friends, all joy In all the piercing beauty of the world I would give up– go blind forevermore, Rather than have God blot from out my soul Remembrance of your voice that said my name. For us no starlight stilled the April fields, No birds awoke in darking trees for us, Yet where we walked the city’s street that night Felt in our feet the singing fire of spring, And in our path we left a trail of light Soft as the phosphorescence of the sea When night submerges in the vessel’s wake A heaven of unborn evanescent stars.

All beauty calls you to me, and you seem” All beauty calls you to me, and you seem, Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea, To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe Here on the ship's sun-smitten topmost deck, With only light between the heavens and me. I feel your spirit and I close my eyes, Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun, The eager whisper and the searching eyes. Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile The blue unbroken circle of the sea. Look far away and let me ease my heart Of words that beat in it with broken wing. Look far away, and if I say too much, Forget that I am speaking. Only watch, How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest, The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the world. I am so weak a thing, praise me for this, That in some strange way I was strong enough To keep my love unuttered and to stand Altho' I longed to kneel to you that night You looked at me with ever-calling eyes. Was I not calm? And if you guessed my love You thought it something delicate and free, Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind, Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam. Yet in my heart there was a beating storm Bending my thoughts before it, and I strove To say too little lest I say too much, And from my eyes to drive love's happy shame. Yet when I heard your name the first far time It seemed like other names to me, and I Was all unconscious, as a dreaming river That nears at last its long predestined sea; And when you spoke to me, I did not know That to my life's high altar came its priest. But now I know between my God and me You stand forever, nearer God than I, And in your hands with faith and utter joy I would that I could lay my woman's soul. Oh, my love To whom I cannot come with any gift Of body or of soul, I pass and go. But sometimes when you hear blown back to you My wistful, far-off singing touched with tears, Know that I sang for you alone to hear, And that I wondered if the wind would bring To him who tuned my heart its distant song. So might a woman who in loneliness Had borne a child, dreaming of days to come, Wonder if it would please its father's eyes. But long before I ever heard your name, Always the undertone's unchanging note In all my singing had prefigured you, Foretold you as a spark foretells a flame. Yet I was free as an untethered cloud In the great space between the sky and sea, And might have blown before the wind of joy Like a bright banner woven by the sun. I did not know the longing in the night-- You who have waked me cannot give me sleep. All things in all the world can rest, but I, Even the smooth brief respite of a wave When it gives up its broken crown of foam, Even that little rest I may not have. And yet all quiet loves of friends, all joy In all the piercing beauty of the world I would give up--go blind forevermore, Rather than have God blot from out my soul Remembrance of your voice that said my name. For us no starlight stilled the April fields, No birds awoke in darkling trees for us, Yet where we walked the city's street that night Felt in our feet the singing fire of spring, And in our path we left a trail of light Soft as the phosphorescence of the sea When night submerges in the vessel's wake A heaven of unborn evanescent stars.

The first time Christina and Lachlan Meet ...Christina wasn't about to stop fighting—not until she took her last breath. Boring down with her heels, she thrashed. "Get off me, ye brute." She would hold her son in her arms this day if it was the last thing she did. And by the shift of the crushing weight on her chest, she only had moments before her life's breath completely whooshed from her lungs. The very thought of dying whilst her son was still held captive infused her with strength. With a jab, she slammed the heel of her hand across the man's chin. He flew from her body like a sack of grain. Praises be, had the Lord granted her with superhuman strength? Blinking, Christina sat up. No, no. Her strike hadn't rescued her from the pillager. A champion had. A behemoth of a man pummeled the pikeman's face with his fists. "Never. Ever." His fists moved so fast they blurred. "Harm. A. Woman!" Bloodied and battered, the varlet dropped to the dirt. A swordsman attacked her savior from behind. "Watch out," she cried, but before the words left her lips the warrior spun to his feet. Flinging his arm backward, he grabbed his assailant's wrist, stopped the sword midair and flipped the cur onto his back. Onward, he fought a rush of English attackers with his bare hands, without armor. Not even William Wallace himself had been so talented. This warrior moved like a cat, anticipating his opponent's moves before they happened. Five enemy soldiers lay on their backs. "Quickly," the man shouted, running toward her, his feet bare. No sooner had she rolled to her knees than his powerful arms clamped around her. The wind whipped beneath her feet. He planted her bum in the saddle. "Behind!" Christina screamed, every muscle in her body clenching taut. Throwing back an elbow, the man smacked an enemy soldier in the face resulting in a sickening crack. She picked up her reins and dug in her heels. "Whoa!" The big man latched onto the skirt of her saddle and hopped behind her, making her pony's rear end dip. But the frightened galloway didn't need coaxing. He galloped away from the fight like a deer running from a fox. Christina peered around her shoulder at the mass of fighting men behind them. "My son!" "Do you see him?" the man asked in the strangest accent she'd ever heard. She tried to turn back, but the man's steely chest stopped her. "They took him." "Who?" "The English, of course." The more they talked, the further from the border the galloway took them. "Huh?" the man mumbled behind her like he'd been struck in the head by a hammer. Everyone for miles knew the Scots and the English were to exchange a prisoner that day. The champion's big palm slipped around her waist and held on—it didn't hurt like he was digging in his fingers, but he pressed firm against her. The sensation of such a powerful hand on her body was unnerving. It had been eons since any man had touched her, at least gently. The truth? Aside from the brutish attack moments ago, Christina's life had been nothing but chaste. White foam leached from the pony's neck and he took in thunderous snorts. He wouldn't be able to keep this pace much longer. Christina steered him through a copse of trees and up the crag where just that morning she'd stood with King Robert and Sir Boyd before they'd led the Scottish battalion into the valley. There, she could gain a good vantage point and try to determine where the backstabbing English were heading with Andrew this time. At the crest of the outcropping, she pulled the horse to a halt. "The pony cannot keep going at this pace." The man's eyebrows slanted inward and he gave her a quizzical stare. Good Lord, his tempest-blue eyes pierced straight through her soul. "Are you speaking English?

He’s striking. Dark, slicked-back hair and fair skin, with piercing blue eyes. One hand is resting on the bar, revealing tattoos that snake up over his hand and arm under the sleeve of his black t-shirt. As I get closer, I can see that he has a large tattoo across his throat—a bird, with a wingspan that wraps around the sides of his neck.

The princess shall have what the princess wants,” Damien says, grabbing the chainsaw from the sled. “Don’t be a brat.” “Shut up,” I say under my breath. Without warning, Damien grabs my jaw, tracing his gloved thumb over my lips. “What was that?” he asks, staring at me with piercing blue eyes, leaving my knees weak. “You’re the best,” I playfully murmur, lustfully gazing up at him. “Daddy.” “Yeah.” He crookedly grins, leaning into me. “That’s what I thought.

His hauntingly beautiful and piercing blue eyes will surely be the end of me. But I’m ready for oblivion.

Baby.” His hands frame my face, his palms shaking. “I want you. Only you.” His lips throb against mine, his eyes closing, only to open, satin blue piercing mine as he whispers, “Say you swear.

I know.” I lower my forehead to his. “But I don’t want any part of anything that could hurt this.” My nose begins to tingle. “Noah, I want this. I want us.” “Baby.” His hands frame my face, his palms shaking. “I want you. Only you.” His lips throb against mine, his eyes closing, only to open, satin blue piercing mine as he whispers, “Say you swear.

One of them hides his face beneath a black hoodie like he doesn’t want to be spotted, dark streaks of wavy hair peeking out, and both hands stuck in pockets of his track pants. Tattoos can be seen under his sleeves. Another one with light blond hair and a side sweep, along with sharp, piercing blue eyes, has his hand tightly tucked into his expensive jeans like he’s clutching a knife. A bunch of tattoos peeks out from underneath the white shirt covered by a leather jacket. The third is tall and thin but muscular looking in a lean way, with short red-dyed hair in a side part. He’s wearing an actual white button-up shirt and tie. How odd.

No,” Cecelia shakes her head furiously, demand in her deep blues. “Sorry, you can’t go, Dominic, because I dreamed your future up for you. Hang on, and I’ll tell you all about it.” Staring up and into the soul of the woman worth warring over—who gave me a glimpse of heaven on earth, aware of just how much power her love holds—I again curse the fucking fate that allowed it to be taken from me. But just as that thought drifts in, what I thought I’d been robbed of is gifted in the way it always has been, through her, because it was never about the weather, time, or place. Whoosh . . . Whoosh . . . Whoosh . . . Her warmth engulfs me. The atmosphere shifting as tumultuous storm clouds gather in her eyes, and her rain begins to pelt me—all burden lifting, along with any remnants of anger. A bone-deep chill sweeps through my body as the pain abates, and her turbulent blues pierce and hook me, sweeping me away.

She's a tall skinny old girl in a tweed jacket and brown corduroy trousers, long restless hands stained yellow, rings on every finger. Hair tied up in a bandanna and clear, fierce blue eyes like mine. You'd know us anywhere as brother and sister, lanky, beaky customers with these piercing eyes and silver hair.

His hauntingly beautiful and piercing blue eyes will surely be the end of me. But I’m ready for oblivion. He stares at me, and even though it’s only for a few seconds, it feels like an eternity.

I want a big, chaotic family to fill this house. I want to step on toys in the middle of the night. I want to break apart fights and bandage up skinned knees. I want the mess. I want the passion. I want to watch you grow our kids.” In his piercing blue eyes, I saw that future. It was full of best days. It was full of love for the man who’d stolen my heart. “Promise?” Knox grinned. “I swear it.

You keep saying stuff like that, but are you all talk or do you really want to take me on?” “Oh, I would take you on, right here, right now if you’d let me.” Her x-ray vision feels like it’s piercing all the way to my soul as she blinks those icy blue eyes at me. “I can’t say I’m not tempted, but I’d hate to take advantage of you in your injured state.” “I’m not injured. Typical day for me.” “You crash into unsuspecting women and hit the floor on the regular?” “Nope. I crash into fully suspecting men and try not to hit the ice.

Who is that?” Ice formed in the room. No clothing could protect against the cold this demon brought with him. It pierced through every layer, snatching the breath from Hunt’s chest with clawed fingers. A shuddering inhale was the only sign of Bryce’s discomfort as she remained facing the circle on the other side of the room. The male now contained inside its dark border. “Aidas,” she said softly. Hunt had always imagined the Prince of the Chasm as similar to the lower-level demons he’d hunted over the centuries: scales or fangs or claws, brute muscle and snarling with blind animal rage. Not this slender, pale-skinned … pretty boy. Aidas’s blond hair fell to his shoulders in soft waves, loose, yet well cut around his fine-boned face. Undoubtedly to show off the eyes like blue opals, framed by thick, golden lashes. Those lashes bobbed once in a cursory blink. Then his full, sensuous mouth parted in a smile to reveal a row of too-white teeth. “Bryce Quinlan.” Hunt’s hand drifted to his gun. The Prince of the Chasm knew her name—her face. And the way he’d spoken her name was as much greeting as it was question, his voice velvet-soft. Aidas occupied the fifth level of Hel—the Chasm. He yielded only to two others: the Prince of the Abyss, and the Prince of the Pit, the seventh and mightiest of the demon princes. The Star-Eater himself, whose name was never uttered on this side of the Northern Rift.

He looks over at me with those piercing blue eyes; they remind me of one of those lagoons that you see on the internet, a meme saying, “Don't you want to be swimming here right now?” Well, I am right now, swimming in those gorgeous eyes and drowning fast.

So unrealistic.” “Excuse me?” Liam asked, eyeing the offending book. “Nothing,” I huffed. “Doesn’t look like nothing,” he countered. “Freaking Natalie and her fairy tale bullshit.” I let out a breath so heavy a lock of hair blew away from my face. The tiniest smirk curled on Liam’s lips. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” “Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled she got the happy ending she was searching for, but that’s not for everyone. These books she reads—there’s no way ninety-nine percent of these scenarios would ever happen. It’s false advertising for how life and love actually unfold, creating unrealistic expectations for men and women alike.” How so?” Narrowing my eyes across the table at him, I challenged, “Have you ever read one of these romance novels?” “Can’t say that I have,” he admitted. “Well, let me enlighten you. They’re all variations of the same story—the girl usually has some kind of a hang-up, and this perfect man comes along and makes her believe in love. Blah, blah, blah. Then something happens, a conflict, and they break up—every damn time. Then someone realizes they’re an idiot and apologizes—sometimes there’s a grand gesture—but they always end up back together. Life doesn’t work like that. Not all women are broken, and not all men are perfect. And don’t even get me started on how all the men are gods in bed with huge dicks.” Liam snorted. “Are they not, then?” “Don’t.” I was not in the mood and threw him a death glare. Throwing his hands up in defense, he asked, “What? I can only speak for myself, so I don’t know what all the other men are up to.” “Not funny, Liam.” Those piercing blue eyes found mine. “Who said I was joking, Amy?

There aren’t many who can put up with my sometimes-moodiness or the craziness that is the life I’ve been born into, but Amy has never been one to shy away from a challenge. I know how lucky I am to have a strong, confident woman like her by my side as we navigate our complex lives together.” “Not to mention she’s way out of your league!” Hannah interrupted, eliciting a laugh from the crowd. “For once, Hannah, we can agree.” Addressing me like there was no one else in the room, his piercing blue eyes bore into my soul. “There’s no one in the world better suited for me than you.

Don’t forget your place, boy,” Lionel snarled, grabbing a fistful of Darius’s shirt and yanking him half off of the ground so that they were nose to nose. “I may have use for you thanks to your brother’s disgusting condition, but the moment you put an Heir in Mildred’s belly, your value will greatly diminish. Perhaps you should consider making yourself more valuable to me before then.” Darius gritted his teeth against the pain of the knife lodged in his gut, grunting as Lionel threw him back down against the wooden floor and blood pooled out to further stain his blue shirt red. Lionel slammed his foot into Darius’s side as he straightened and only Xavier’s grip on my arm held me in place as tears burned the backs of my eyes and I fought with everything I had against the desire to start screaming. But I couldn’t do anything about it. Even now, I couldn’t bring myself to truly consider hurting Lionel and the knowledge of that was cutting into me as surely as the knife piercing Darius’s flesh.

His eyes—midnight blue and piercing

Your brother—” “Is not my keeper,” I say with conviction. “Tell me something and be honest. If I wasn’t Callum’s sister, would you take a chance on us?” His blue eyes pierce my soul. I feel his hands tighten on my waist possessively as he answers gruffly. “You’d already be mine.

His eyes flamed, twin bursts of heat piercing blue ice, and his nostrils flared. No question about it — that huge body caged a wild animal, aroused and waiting to burst out.

She reached for a nearby bowl. “Would you like more sauce, sweeting?” His fingers strangled the stem of his wineglass. She could practically hear the grapes calling for help. She hoped that was a good sign. “If you don’t cease that nonsense,” he said, “you will regret it.” “Is that so, my heart?” He plunked one forearm on the table and turned to face her. Piercing blue eyes, striking scars, and all. “Yes.

Some people ask me what it’s like to be forgiven, to feel grace. It’s like walking on a long stretch of beach with nothing in sight but sky and waves and sand. With the sun piercing its brightness, the water tickling my toes, the roaring of the sea singing omniscience and power and yet, a deep peace, the waters changing from sandy brown to light green to a heavy blue, the waves cresting with the white peaks and then rushing to find my toes.

It was a last-year’s-generation parrot-cat, a hyacinth-blue puffball on sim-yellow paws rimmed round the edges with brownish stains. It had a matching tuxedo ruff and goatee and piercing golden eyes that caught and concentrated the filtered sunlight.

He looked to me then. Piercing blue-green eyes and a mass of dark curls. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen.

We file into the suite and are instantly greeted by Rena and the three younger Noires, all various shades of trouble. While Axel and Ryker sport suits, charm, and a chiseled edge, the rest of the family boasts self-expression. Jax has blue hair, highlighting the dark blue rims on his golden-brown eyes, gauges in his stretched piercings, and colored tattoos. Maddox has wintry-gray eyes, messy onyx-black hair, and black tattoos all over his pale skin, even his fingers. Cash is less extreme—tousled blond hair, complementing his baby blues, and a few less tattoos. His menacing smile is what sets him apart. No question he’s a miscreant, shoving anyone within reach to the depths of Hell. Although I suspect the fall from grace would be the trip of a lifetime. And last, but far from least, there’s Rena, the gothic-punk Noire princess.

She needs to get familiar with what a man truly is. A beastly animal at his core. I pull out my hard cock before her, gripping it at the base, causing her eyes to widen and the sound of a gasp to leave her lips. Stroking myself a few times, I run my finger over the piercing at the tip, watching as terror and fascination run wild behind those stunning, blue eyes. “Touch it.” Her chest rises and falls as she glances from my cock to my eyes and back. “Touch it and get familiar. It’ll be your favorite new toy, little doll. I promise you.” Unsure eyes gaze at it before a shaking hand reaches up and wraps around the middle. I try to control myself, shuffling on my feet as her eyes light up with fascination. The sensation of her palm finally on me has my head dropping back, my jaw clenching tightly. “It’s smooth,” she whispers in disbelief to herself. “So...thick.

Oh, God,” she moans, her eyes closing. I release her hair before slapping the side of her face with my free hand, gripping her cheeks, as the fingers of my other hand remain lodged deep within her, curling toward myself. “Open,” I order, needing her eyes on me. She blinks her long, dark lashes, gasping as the fire in her gaze penetrates mine. I remove the top of the mask from my head and place it on hers. She looks confused as I pull it down over her face messily with one hand, the eye holes fitting over her piercing blues, and the mouth opening settling over her wet lips. Pulling my fingers from her sopping pussy, I bring them to her exposed mouth, smearing her arousal across them. “Whoever drinks of the water I give him will never be thirsty again.” I mutter the scripture as she parts her lips. I shove the two fingers into her mouth, sliding them over her tongue to the back of her throat until she’s gagging around them, her eyes wide and watering beneath the mask.

One piercing blue eye and an entire galaxy of untold rage. She peers back at me with the most seductive, most possessively savage stare. Within that one look, my entire world shifts on its axis.

It’s me,” I said fiercely. “What can I do to prove it?” “No need, Blue,” Orion said, taking me in with a piercing look. “I’d know you anywhere.” “Yeah, that’s fucking romantic and all, brother, but I require more proof than that,” Caleb said, narrowing his eyes at Tory. “We can test their magical signature,” Orion said. “I’ll get a guiding crystal.” He shot away and returned at speed just as Geraldine and Darius came running up the path behind him. “Hey husband,” Tory said, stepping up to the gate and reaching for Darius through it. “You can feel my heart beating, can’t you?” He smiled roguishly, taking her hand. “It’s them,” he confirmed to the others.

She was stunningly beautiful. Her dark hair was almost jet black, but her eyes were icy blue, piercing the room even from the distance between them. She was the kind of woman who men turned to stare at if she passed them on the street.

She knocked at the door and was admitted by Corporal Pierce, the good-looking, dark-haired young man who worked in Colonel Tibbet’s office and had leave time coming up soon. He smiled broadly and ran one hand over his slicked-back hair. “Hello, Miss Lily,” he said, and he made a great business out of helping Lily off with her cloak, as if she hadn’t removed it on her own a thousand times. “Would you like some punch and cake?” Lily cast a surreptitious glance around the crowded parlor and saw Caleb standing on the far side of the room, a cup of punch in his hand, speaking with Sandra’s friend, Lieutenant Costner. He met Lily’s look, as quick as it was, but there was time enough for her to see the lack of interest in his eyes. “Yes, please,” she said brightly to Corporal Pierce, who was still standing attentively at her side. “Punch and cake would be very nice, thank you.” While the corporal hurried off to the refreshment table Lily scanned the room again, this time slowly, her gaze deliberately skirting Caleb. Despite her cool demeanor, however, she felt bruised. Just a day before he’d brought her candy and demanded that she come and live with him. Now he didn’t seem aware of her existence. “My first name is Wilbur, ma’am,” the corporal confided, returning with a plate of cake and a cup brimming with pink punch. Lily spotted a nearby chair and wended her way toward it. Reaching her destination, she sat down, balancing her cake plate on her knees, and gazed up at her new friend with her most devastating smile. “Wilbur,” she echoed, saying the name as though it were somehow Olympian and anyone bearing it would surely have wings upon his feet. Wilbur crouched beside her. “I know those rumors aren’t true,” he said earnestly. “About your washing business, I mean.” Lily might have choked on her first bite of cake if she hadn’t seen out of the corner of her eye that Caleb was watching her. She set her punch on the figurine-cluttered table beside her chair and patted Wilbur’s cheek affectionately. “Thank you, Wilbur,” she said softly. The young man fairly beamed. “I’ll bring, my wash over tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.” Lily risked a glance at Caleb and found that he was concentrating on a conversation with a plump blond woman wearing a blue sateen dress. “That’ll be fine,” she answered distractedly. “Of course, if it’s raining again, everything will take longer.” Before

That spot was taken," Kara sat up to look at them. Stylized, short, black hair with bangs. Piercing blue eyes. Proper posture. Lean. It was Oliver. "I don't think a bag counts as a person," he smiled down at her.

Before me is a man, a leader, a legend in the making. I fell for his mysteries, his smile, and his piercing blue eyes.

To the west, the sinking sun was a red orb, streaking the evening sky with wisps of dark gray and pink. Loretta no longer sat erect on the horse to keep her breasts from touching the Comanche’s naked back. She slumped against him, her lolling head pillowed by the muscular cleavage of his spine. Pain shot up her cramped legs from the bonds of coarse wool braid. The rawhide around her wrists had cinched tight, cutting into her skin. Her tongue was a parched lump. One more mile, and she felt sure she would die. She imagined herself sinking into blackness, escaping. It would be cool and dark in heaven. The water there would flow sparkling and icy. There would be no Comanche with cruel, midnight blue eyes. Hunter’s voice rumbled inside him, vibrating against her cheek. Loretta felt the stallion slowing down. Angry words in a language she couldn’t understand ricocheted around her, high, low, growling, shrill. She fluttered her lashes, too miserable to care why the men argued, just thankful for the reprieve. She felt Hunter shift his weight backward, felt his hard hands fumbling with the tight band of leather that bound her wrists. The next second her arms were freed and fell like dead weights to her sides. Hunter’s strong back disappeared. She slumped forward on the horse, not caring about anything as long as she could rest. Something cold touched her left ankle. In some distant part of her mind, she realized that someone was cutting the wool braid that bound her feet. She kept her eyes closed, her cheek pressed against the horse’s sweaty neck, her arms hanging. A moment later her right ankle was freed as well. And then came a new kind of pain. Not fire, but thousands of needles pricking her legs, the agony shooting to her hips. She gasped and bolted upright. When she did, she pitched sideways. The world turned upside down. Arms caught her. The sky spun above her. Someone yelled. Torture. She was being carried, but the arms that cradled her were made of white-hot fire, singeing her wherever they touched. She didn’t think there could be any pain more excruciating. Then cruel hands lowered her to a soft mat of grass, but the blades of the grass turned to sharp spikes, piercing her flesh. Loretta closed her eyes and gave herself up to the pain. Someone held her and rocked her--someone strong with a deep voice that whispered like silk through her mind. The words were sometimes strange, but the few she understood made the meaning of the others absolutely clear. She was safe where she was, sure enough safe--forever.

A blur of movement, Hunter threw the fur onto the riverbank and waded toward her. She couldn’t touch bottom and, despite the desperate pumping of her arms and legs, went under again, taking another draft of water. Grabbing her by the hair, he dragged her to the surface and nearer to shore so her feet touched. Bringing his face close to hers, he tightened his grip on her braid. “You will obey me.” He enunciated each word with venomous clarity. “Always. You are mine--Hunter’s woman, forever with no horizon. The next time you shake your head at me, I will beat you.” A measure of the water she had inhaled surged up her throat. Unable to stop herself, she choked and then coughed. The ejected spray hit him square in the eyes. He blinked and drew back, an incredulous look on his face. Loretta clamped her palms over her mouth, angling her arms to hide her breasts, her shoulders heaving. As angry as he appeared, she fully expected him to lay her flat with his fist. Instead he released her braid and caught hold of her arms. When she finally got her breath, he let go of her and returned to shore, his leather-clad legs cutting sparkling swaths through the water. After wiping his face dry with the buffalo robe, he turned to glower at her. He sat on his haunches and rested his corded forearms on his knees. Glancing upstream and down, he said, “Your wooden walls are far away, Yellow Hair. If you try to slip away, this Comanche will find you.” Until that moment, the thought of swimming off hadn’t occurred to her. She shot a glance over her shoulder at the swift current. If only she had clothes… “You do not make like a fish so good. Save this Comanche much trouble, eh?” She thought she detected laughter in his voice, but when she looked back at him, his gaze, blue-black and piercing, was as unreadable as ever. He studied her for several endless seconds. She wondered what he was thinking and decided, from the gleam in his eye, that she didn’t want to find out.

Your wooden walls are far away, Yellow Hair. If you try to slip away, this Comanche will find you.” Until that moment, the thought of swimming off hadn’t occurred to her. She shot a glance over her shoulder at the swift current. If only she had clothes… “You do not make like a fish so good. Save this Comanche much trouble, eh?” She thought she detected laughter in his voice, but when she looked back at him, his gaze, blue-black and piercing, was as unreadable as ever. He studied her for several endless seconds. She wondered what he was thinking and decided, from the gleam in his eye, that she didn’t want to find out. “Your eyes say I lie when I call you my woman. This is not good. It is our bargain, eh?” He plucked a wisp of grass and ran it slowly between his fingers, watching her in a way that suggested he would soon touch her--just as slowly. “It was a promise you made for me, and now you make a lie of it? This is the way of your people, to say empty words. Penende taquoip, honey talk, eh? But it is not the way of the Comanche. If you make a lie, I will carve out your tongue and feed it to the crows.” The breeze caught his hair, draping strands of it across his chiseled features. For an instant, the knife slash that marred his cheek was hidden, and he seemed less formidable. Her attention was drawn to his lips, full and sharply defined, yet somehow hard, perhaps because of the rigid expression he always wore. Deep crevices bracketed his mouth--laugh lines, surely. Ah, yes, she could imagine him cutting out her tongue and smiling while he did it.

Your wooden walls are far away, Yellow Hair. If you try to slip away, this Comanche will find you.” Until that moment, the thought of swimming off hadn’t occurred to her. She shot a glance over her shoulder at the swift current. If only she had clothes… “You do not make like a fish so good. Save this Comanche much trouble, eh?” She thought she detected laughter in his voice, but when she looked back at him, his gaze, blue-black and piercing, was as unreadable as ever. He studied her for several endless seconds. She wondered what he was thinking and decided, from the gleam in his eye, that she didn’t want to find out.

Axe was a quiet man, six foot four, with piercing blue eyes and curly hair. He was smart and the best Trivial Pursuit player I ever saw. I loved talking to him because of how much he knew. He would come out with answers that would have defied the learning of a Harvard professor.

The forest smelled fresh here and the ground was soft, carpeted by leaves and fallen pine needles. It was tranquil and enchanting in its way. Ursula was lovely; she just wasn’t a naiad. Her hair was dark and sleek, and so long it fell below her waist, swaying this way and that as she walked. Her eyes were a piercing blue, always aware, and she had a keen eye for the smallest details. She may have been a merchant, but she’d also trained as an archer for the city militia, and she could easily spot movement at a distance. That was her intention now; it was just a different kind of movement.

All eyes gravitated towards him, regardless of sexual orientation. There was great strength and seductiveness in his deep, blue, piercing eyes. His glowing golden tan reminded me of the angel I dreamed of the night I decided to accept the E.R.O.S. scholarship offer.

The eyes she had wondered about turned out to be the most startling shade of blue-green she had even seen in her life. Ringed by raven lashes and a dark foreboding brow, they pierced her very soul.

Well, she’s a deepspace mulebitch, all right,” Pytha murmurs in a monotone delivery that erodes punctuation and inflection. “Probably packing a hundred million credits of iron. Slag me but that’s a crew I’d like to be on.” “Must you swear so early in the morning?” I ask. “Shit, sorry, moon boy. Forgot to mind my fucking manners.” Pytha is in her late fifties, with distant, pale blue eyes and skin the color of a walnut. Like all Blues, she still harbors the neurodevelopmental sculpting that enhances human-to-computer interaction but impairs communication outside her sect. She doesn’t have the social niceties of the Palatine shuttle pilots.

Light brown hair—short on the sides, long and wavy on top—piercing blue eyes, high cheekbones, a wide, easy smile. Ugly wasn’t a word anyone ever used to describe Jameson Walker, dubbed Whiskey by the national sports media given his first and last names.

deep voice was laced with cynicism, and his blue eyes pierced me with a look that said now he’d heard everything. I know it sounded outrageous, but good lord. It’d been several years since “Local Beautician Valentine Beaumont Uses Perm

And again, those piercing blue eyes.  A slight shiver worked its way up my spine.

There was something about that cypress-lined track that drew me to it, tempted me further along it, in spite of the rough road surface that strained the car’s suspension to the limit. I began to feel strangely elated, my early tiredness slipping away. I unwound the window to let the dusty air bring the scents of spring woodland to me and I laughed out loud. It was like being on a ride at the fair, bumping over stones and swerving around the torturous bends while breathing in unfamiliar scents and a general air of excitement. I came to a fork in the road and stopped, unsure which direction to take. As I hesitated, an old woman stepped into view, startling me as she emerged from a half-hidden track in the undergrowth. She stared at me piercingly with clear blue eyes set in a maze of sun-baked wrinkles. She looked such a part of the landscape, in her faded brown dress, her white hair shimmering in the sun like fluffy dandelion seed, and I was so taken aback by her sudden appearance, that I just sat and returned her stare. The sound of the engine idling quietly seemed to echo the beat of my heart.

I don't know. I think..." He cleared his throat and looked up finally, green eyes piercing into Carhart's blue ones. "I think I may have problems with the mental examination." He'd known for a long time that there was a lot wrong with Sin because of what he'd been through as a child and, really, all of his life, but this was the first time that Sin was actually saying it out loud. And he wasn't really sure he knew what that meant.

With his hair tied back and about three days worth of beard Win looked more like a vagrant than a comm guru. Except for those keen, blue eyes. Eyes currently alive with that uncomfortable piercing quality, as if he were reading his mind.

You’ve got your hands full with Ayla.  The clock is ticking Pierce.  You’re the only one that can’t hear it yet.” “I’ve got perfect hearing.” Pierce looked over at his companion who was watching him and wondering what he’d say next.  He’d stopped just short of insulting her on several occasions this evening and she wondered when he’d cross the line.  He was a Sloan and it was coming, she could feel it.  “Tell them Ayla.  Tell them how things are between us.  They obviously don’t believe me.” God only knows what possessed her. She bowed in deference to Pierce and then smiled serenely at Deacon and Dorothy. “Gladly Pierce.” She winked at Dorothy before saying, “I wouldn’t marry a Sloan if every other man on the planet had the last name of Marconi.” Dorothy erupted in a giggling fit and Deacon fought to stay in control of his own laughter. Pierce was the only one at the table that found no humor in her remark.  His eyes darkened to a violet shade of blue and he tilted his head slightly towards her.  Ayla knew that look and knew it well.  Her skin grew hot and her hands itched to touch him.  She wouldn’t though.  Not unless he gave her permission.  Even though he’d never caused her one second of pain, he was still Dominant to her Submissive.  He might be her big Teddy Bear, but she still called him Sir.

Still onto This Day, I Dawdle to Be Plagued With The Same Unfortunate Reoccurring Nightmare. In My Horrifying Dream, there is an Attractive Women With Piercing Blue Eyes And Light Brownish Hair, Sporting A Lengthy Red Dress With Extended Dark Black Heals Who Kills Me On Christmas Day. In My Dream I am Listening to A Christmas Song… “Jingle Bells” While Rambling Down a Dark Corridor Inside A Home. I am Shot in The Back of The Head And The Music Box Lingers Playing The Same Tune. I Can See Nothing but The Bottom of Her Mends, And Then All Becomes Ample Dark.

The moment Jace Calder saw his sister's face, he feared the worst. His heart sank. Emily, his troubled little sister, had been doing so well since she'd gotten the job at the Sarah Hamilton Foundation in Big Timber, Montana. "What's wrong?" he asked as he removed his Stetson, pulled up a chair at the Big Timber Java coffee shop and sat down across from her. Tossing his hat on the seat of an adjacent chair, he braced himself for bad news. Emily blinked her big blue eyes. Even though she was closing in on twenty-five, he often caught glimpses of the girl she'd been. Her pixie cut, once a dark brown like his own hair, was dyed black. From thirteen on, she'd been piercing anything she could. At sixteen she'd begun getting tattoos and drinking. It wasn't until she'd turned seventeen that she'd run away, taken up with a thirty-year-old biker drug-dealer thief and ended up in jail for the first time. But while Emily still had the tattoos and the piercings, she'd changed after the birth of her daughter, and after snagging this job with Bo Hamilton. "What's wrong is Bo," his sister said. Bo had insisted her employees at the foundation call her by her first name. "Pretty cool for a boss, huh?" his sister had said at the time. He'd been surprised. That didn't sound like the woman he knew. But who knew what was in Bo's head lately. Four months ago her mother, Sarah, who everyone believed dead the past twenty-two years, had suddenly shown up out of nowhere. According to what he'd read in the papers, Sarah had no memory of the past twenty-two years. He'd been worried it would hurt the foundation named for her. Not to mention what a shock it must have been for Bo. Emily leaned toward him and whispered, "Bo's… She's gone.

...She remembered why he'd caught her eye the first time she'd seen him, at Ivy and Landon's wedding. He was absolutely gorgeous. Tall, with broad shoulders and well-muscled arms, he had dark-blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and a square jaw covered with just the perfect amount of stubble. Then there was his mouth... There were books written about lips that kissable.

My little man,” she said. “No.” She stretched out her hand to him. “Come.” “I can’t,” he said. “Sam, I’m your mother. I love you. Come with me.” “Mom…” “Just reach out to me. I’m safe. I can carry you away, out of this place.” Sam shook his head slowly, slowly, like he was drowning in molasses. Something was happening to time. Astrid wasn’t breathing. Nothing was moving. The whole world was frozen. “It will be like it was,” his mother said. “It was never…,” he began. “You lied to me. You never told me…” “I never lied,” she said, and frowned at him, disappointed. “You never told me I had a brother. You never told—” “Just come with me,” she said, impatient now, jerking her hand a little like she would when he was a little kid and refused to take her hand to cross the street. “Come with me now, Sam. You’ll be safe and out of this place.” He reacted instinctively, the little boy again, reacted to the “mommy” voice, the “obey me” voice. He reached for her, stretched his hand out to her. And pulled it back. “I can’t,” Sam whispered. “I have someone I have to stay here for.” Anger flashed in his mother’s eyes, a green light, surreal, before she blinked and it was gone. And then, out of the bleached, unreal world, Caine stepped into the eerie light. Sam’s mother smiled at Caine, and he stared at her wonderingly. “Nurse Temple,” Caine said. “Mom,” she corrected. “It’s time for both my boys to join me, to come away with me. Out of this place.” Caine seemed spellbound, unable to tear his gaze away from the gentle, smiling face, the piercing blue eyes. “Why?” Caine asked in a small child’s voice. Their mother said nothing. Once again, for just a heartbeat, her blue eyes glowed a toxic green before returning to cool, icy blue. “Why him and not me?” Caine asked. “It’s time to come with me now,” their mother insisted. “We’ll be a family. Far from here.” “You first, Sam,” Caine said. “Go with your mother.” “No,” Sam said. Caine’s face darkened with rage. “Go, Sam. Go. Go. Go with her.” He was shouting now. He seemed to want to grab Sam physically, push him toward the mother they had not quite shared, but his movements were odd, disjointed, a jerky stick figure in a dream. Caine gave up trying. “Jack told you,” he said dully. “No one told me anything,” Sam said. “I have things I have to do here.” Their mother extended her arms to them, angry, demanding to be heeded. “Come to me. Come to me.” Caine shook his head slowly. “No.” “But you’re the man of the house now, Sam,” his mother wheedled. “My little man. Mine.” “No,” Sam said. “I’m my own man.” “And I was never yours,” Caine sneered. “Too late now, Mother.” The face of their mother wavered. The tender flesh seemed to break apart in jigsaw-puzzle pieces. The gently smiling, pleading mouth melted, collapsed inward. In its place a mouth ringed with needle-sharp teeth. Eyes filled with green fire. “I’ll have you yet,” the monster raged with sudden violence. Caine stared in horror. “What are you?” “What am I?” the monster mocked him savagely. “I’m your future. You’ll come to me on your own in the dark place, Caine. You will come willingly to me.

A moment later, the glass door opens again. Tobias and Uriah storm in as if to fight a battle--Uriah coughing, probably from the poison--but the battle is done. Jeanine is dead, Tori is triumphant, and I am a Dauntless traitor. Tobias stops in the middle of a step, almost stumbling over his feet, when he sees me. His eyes open wider. “She is a traitor,” says Tori. “She just almost shot me to defend Jeanine.” “What?” says Uriah. “Tris, what’s going on? Is she right? Why are you even here?” But I look only at Tobias. A sliver of hope pierces me, strangely painful, when combined with the guilt I feel for how I deceived him. Tobias is stubborn and proud, but he is mine--maybe he will listen, maybe there’s a chance that all I did was not in vain-- “You know why I’m here,” I say quietly. “Don’t you?” I told out Tori’s gun. He walks forward, a little unsteady on his feet, and takes it. “We found Marcus in the next room, caught in a simulation,” Tobias says. “You came up here with him.” “Yes, I did,” I say, blood from Tori’s bite trickling down my arm. “I trusted you,” he says, his body shaking with rage. “I trusted you and you abandoned me to work with him?” “No.” I shake my head. “He told me something, and everything my brother said, everything Jeanine said while I was in Erudite headquarters, fit perfectly with what he told me. And I wanted--I needed to know the truth.” “The truth.” He snorts. “You think you learned the truth from a liar, a traitor, and a sociopath?” “The truth?” says Tori. “What are you talking about?” Tobias and I stare at each other. His blue eyes, usually so thoughtful, are now hard and critical, like they are peeling back layer after layer of me and searching each one. “I think,” I say. I have to pause and take a breath, because I have not convinced him; I have failed, and this is probably the last thing they will let me say before they arrest me. “I think that you are the liar!” I say, my voice quaking. “You tell me you love me, you trust me, you think I’m more perceptive than the average person. And the first second that belief in my perceptiveness, that trust, that love is put to the test, it all falls apart.” I am crying now, but I am not ashamed of the tears shining on my cheeks or the thickness of my voice. “So you must have lied when you told me all those things…you must have, because I can’t believe your love is really that feeble.” I step closer to him, so that there are only inches between us, and none of the others can hear me. “I am still the person who would have died rather than kill you,” I say, remembering the attack simulation and the feel of his heartbeat under my hand. “I am exactly who you think I am. And right now, I’m telling you that I know…I know this information will change everything. Everything we have done, and everything we are about to do.” I stare at him like I can communicate the truth with my eyes, but that is impossible. He looks away, and I’m not sure he even heard what I said. “Enough of this,” says Tori. “Take her downstairs. She will be tried along with all the other war criminals.” Tobias doesn’t move. Uriah takes my arm and leads me away from him, through the laboratory, through the room of light, through the blue hallway. Therese of the factionless joins us there, eyeing me curiously. Once we’re in the stairwell, I feel something nudge my side. When I look back, I see a wad of gauze in Uriah’s hand. I take it, trying to give him a grateful smile and failing. As we descend the stairs, I wrap the gauze tightly around my hand, sidestepping bodies without looking at their faces. Uriah takes my elbow to keep me from falling. The gauze wrapping doesn’t help with the pain of the bite, but it makes me feel a little better, and so does the fact that Uriah, at least, doesn’t seem to hate me.

Across the road from the lighted window and the slender figure, two pairs of eyes looked on avidly as she moved. One set of eyes was a pale, piercing blue that was almost white and the other set was a warm amber-gold that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the face of a tiger. Neither pair of eyes was human. “Mine.” The low rumbling growl came from the owner of the amber eyes. He was tall, six foot seven at least, with shoulders so broad he would have to turn sidewise to go through most doorways, but he moved silently, with a feral grace that belied his muscular physique. Dark stubble covered his cheeks and chin and matched the thick black hair on his head. “Not

The Kindred were split into three distinct branches, all outcomes of their past genetic trades. There were the Tranq Kindred—a group of males with piercing blue eyes and a double set of short, sharp vestigial fangs. There were rumors that the fangs grew and they bit when they had sex with the female of their choice and other rumors that they could heal any illness with a bite. Liv wasn’t sure how much of that was true and how much was just media hype but the buzz about their sexual habits had earned this group the nickname “Blood Kindred.” Then there were the Twins, a branch of the Kindred in which the males always came in pairs and had to share a woman. No one knew exactly why and they declined to offer an explanation. Some said they were telepathic and needed sex to communicate but that hadn’t been proven—not that anyone had ever gotten a chance to study them. The Kindred as a whole kept strictly to themselves and refused to participate in any kind of scientific research or experiments. So no one really knew anything about the Twin Kindred other than they refused to make love to a woman individually. And then there were the Ragers—also known as the Beast Kindred. Working for so long in a hospital as she went through nursing school, the sight and idea of drawing blood wasn’t frightening to Liv so the Blood Kindred didn’t scare her. And being a twin herself, she wasn’t terribly afraid of the Twin Kindred either. But the Beast Kindred, well…they scared the ever-loving crap out of her. As tall and dominant as the rest of the warrior race, the Beast Kindred were said to have the most unpredictable tempers. Rumor had it that they could go into berserker-like rages when protecting their women, killing anyone that stood in their way no matter how many opposed them. But it was the other rumors, the sexual rumors, which put a lump in Liv’s throat. Besides being filled with animalistic lust, the Beast Kindred were said to have sexual stamina unequaled by anyone. Rumor had it that they could come again and again without going soft and their marathon love-making sessions put even practitioners of tantric sex to shame. Just

Slowly she became aware that the tiny compartment was filled with a sharp, spicy scent. It was like nothing she had ever smelled before—wild and somehow completely masculine. Mmm, nice. Her nose twitched—it seemed to be coming from Sylvan. But when did he have time to put on cologne? “Are you wearing aftershave?” she asked dreamily. “Aftershave?” He sounded confused. “You know—cologne. Perfume. A scent you put on your skin to make you smell good. Don’t the Kindred have anything like that?” “No, we have a very enhanced sense of smell. We don’t like anything that covers up our natural scent.” “Then what smells so good?” She was rubbing her cheek against the warm, hard wall of his chest in a way that would have seemed terminally wrong and uncomfortable just a few minutes ago. Yet now it seemed perfectly natural and right. Why was that? And why didn’t she want to let him go? She could feel the hard ridge of his cock branding her belly, just as it had during the Luck Kiss but even that didn’t alarm her. Instead, she felt herself responding. Her nipples were suddenly tight and achy and the small pair of bikini underwear she had on under her green bridesmaid’s dress felt too tight. Their lace crotch seemed to rub against her in a way that was both irritating and pleasurable. She took another deep breath. “Mmm…smells like…I don’t know what, but incredible,” she murmured, still rubbing against him like a cat. Sylvan stiffened against her. “Sophia, you’re not acting like yourself. This scent…you say it smells extremely good?” “Yes, can’t you smell it? I—” She looked up as she spoke and saw that he was looking down at her again. There was a troubled look in his pale blue eyes, but it wasn’t his eyes that bothered her—it was his mouth. His fangs were out. Long and sharp and prominent, they gleamed in the dim light of the tube like daggers ready to pierce flesh. My flesh! she realized in a flash. “Oh!” She jumped away from him and would have fallen backwards out of the transport tube if he hadn’t caught her by the arm. “Let me go!” She pulled away from his hand and took another step back. Her kitten heels made clattering echoes in the vast open space of the docking bay. “What? What’s wrong?” Sylvan frowned at her as he unfolded himself from the small space and stepped out of the tube. “Y-your fangs.” Sophie pointed with a trembling finger. With a muffled curse he clapped a hand over his mouth. A look of painful concentration crossed his face and then he took his palm away from his lips and she saw that his fangs were back to their normal length. “Forgive me.” He spoke as though it hurt to get the words out. “I didn’t…didn’t realize…” “It’s okay.” She shifted uncomfortably, not sure what to do or say. It was clear she’d offended him by pointing out his fangs.

Scientists have offered the illustration of a rapidly moving wheel, top, or cylinder, to show the effects of increasing rates of vibration. The illustration supposes a wheel, top, or revolving cylinder, running at a low rate of speed — we will call this revolving thing "the object" in following out the illustration. Let us suppose the object moving slowly. It may be seen readily, but no sound of its movement reaches the ear. The speed is gradually increased. In a few moments its movement becomes so rapid that a deep growl or low note may be heard. Then as the rate is increased the note rises one in the musical scale. Then, the motion being still further increased, the next highest note is distinguished. Then, one after another, all the notes of the musical scale appear, rising higher and higher as the motion is increased. Finally when the motions have reached a certain rate the final note perceptible to human ears is reached and the shrill, piercing shriek dies away, and silence follows. No sound is heard from the revolving object, the rate of motion being so high that the human ear cannot register the vibrations. Then comes the perception of rising degrees of Heat. Then after quite a time the eye catches a glimpse of the object becoming a dull dark reddish color. As the rate increases, the red becomes brighter. Then as the speed is increased, the red melts into an orange. Then the orange melts into a yellow. Then follow, successively, the shades of green, blue, indigo, and finally violet, as the rate of speed increases. Then the violet shades away, and all color disappears, the human eye not being able to register them. But there are invisible rays emanating from the revolving object, the rays that are used in photographing, and other subtle rays of light. Then begin to manifest the peculiar rays known as the "X Rays," etc., as the constitution of the object changes. Electricity and Magnetism are emitted when tile appropriate rate of vibration is attained. When the object reaches a certain rate of vibration its molecules disintegrate, and resolve themselves into the original elements or atoms. Then the atoms, following the Principle of Vibration, are separated into the countless corpuscles of which they are composed. And finally, even the corpuscles disappear and the object may be said to be composed of The Ethereal Substance. Science does not dare to follow the illustration further, but the Hermetists teach that if the vibrations be continually increased the object would mount up the successive states of manifestation and would in turn manifest the various mental stages, and then on Spiritward, until it would finally re-enter THE ALL, which is Absolute Spirit. The "object," however, would have ceased to be an "object" long before the stage of Ethereal Substance was reached, but otherwise the illustration is correct inasmuch as it shows the effect of constantly increased rates and modes of vibration. It must be remembered, in the above illustration, that at the stages at which the "object" throws off vibrations of light, heat, etc., it is not actually "resolved" into those forms of energy (which are much higher in the scale), but simply that it reaches a degree of vibration in which those forms of energy are liberated, in a degree, from the confining influences of its molecules, atoms and corpuscles, as the case may be. These forms of energy, although much higher in the scale than matter, are imprisoned and confined in the material combinations, by reason of the energies manifesting through, and using material forms, but thus becoming entangled and confined in their creations of material forms, which, to an extent, is true of all creations, the creating force becoming involved in its creation.

Because at the heart of me, Rowan, I’m evil.” His gaze pierced me, the blue in his eyes shot through with shadows. “And sometimes, I’d like to forget that.

I think of those piercing blue eyes one final time, praying that even in the darkness they will follow me. Though I know I have no power to make demands in death.

Somehow one feels unfettered by any of the harsh, restricting influences of human existence as we live it these days. There are no buildings, no roads, no street lights, no artificial or even natural noises, no hustle and bustle, no need for anyone to shout or to have money or to pretend about anything; those human beings who are with you are probably fairly well known to you, and are there for the same reason that you are—they know the dangers and delights of solitude just the same as you do, and they will react to the unblemished and staggering loveliness of a huge expanse of desert sky, deep blue by day and of a marvellous purple at night sprinkled haphazardly with hundreds and thousands of stars silently lighting up that great canopy of night-time that drifts down with the close of day. I personally think I know of nothing more restorative than lying on the soft sand—cool now after the retirement of the day’s sun— and just staring at the miracle of such a sky. And then you fall asleep, rolled up in a sleeping bag against the considerable fall in temperature as the night goes on, perhaps waking an hour or two before dawn for just long enough to notice that those little stars are still there—as bright as ever—and do not even look as though they are getting ready to be extinguished by the advent of another day. It is a lovely, comforting feeling when the world around you is quite still; and there is no sound anywhere to penetrate the delightful peace that surrounds you. When the dawn comes, and the stars have all gone away, there is something sharp and exhilarating about the smell in the air. It is fresh and clean and tantalisingly different to the atmosphere which will pervade the day once the sun has come up over the distant horizon. Then there will be no escape from its merciless and desiccating heat, which drains you of energy and leaves you burned and incapable of any prolonged activity. And the bright reflection of the sun off the light-coloured sand can be piercing and painful to the eyes. There is probably not even a tiny breeze to move that sullen, sultry air, and there can be no relief from its effects until once more, and inevitably, the great ball of fire that is the sun will slide slowly below the land and allow it to grow cool. It would be foolish to pretend that all of those who served with the LRDG saw the desert in the way that I have described it, all or even much of the time. But I am quite sure that when their minds were not diverted by rather more pressing considerations concerning the enemy, there were few who were not moved by the beauty of the sky at night. They all spent quite a number of hours on sentry duty, when, alone with his thoughts and in such surroundings, no man can be oblivious of such a miraculous revelation.

shoulder-length blond hair and piercing blue eyes. She introduced her partner,

Android Girl Just Wants to Have a Baby! The first thing I do when I wake up is run my hands over my body. I like to make sure all my wires are in place. I lotion my silicone shell and snap my hair helmet over my head. I once had a dream I was a real girl, but when I woke up I was still myself in my paleness under the halogen light. The saliva of androids emits a spectral resonance, barely sticky between freshly-gapped teeth. After they made me, the first thing they did was peel the cellophane from my eyes. I blinked once, twice, and cried because that's how you say you are alive before you are given language. They named each of my heartbeats on the oceanic monitor: Guanyin, Yama, Nuwa, Fuxi, Chang'e, Zao-Shen. I listened to them blur into one. The fetus carves for itself a hollowed vector, a fragile wetness. In utero, extension cords are umbilical. Before puberty, I did not know there was such a thing as dishonor. Diss-on- her. This is what they said when I began to drip petrol between my legs. A tension exists between ritual and proof, a fantasy and its execution. Since then, I have been to the emergency room twice. The first time for a suicide attempt, and the second time because my earring was swallowed up by my newly pierced earlobe overnight, and when I woke up, it was tangled in a helix of wires. The idea of dying doesn't scare me but the ocean does. I was once told that fish will swim up my orifices if I am no longer a virgin. Is anyone thinking about erotic magazines when they are not aroused, pubes parted harshly down the center like red seas? My body carries the weight of four hundred eggs. I rise from a weird slumber, let them drip into the bath. This is what I'll leave behind - tiny shards purer than me. I have always been afraid of pregnant women because of their power, and because I don't yet understand what it means to carry something stubborn and blossoming inside of me, screeching towards an exit. The ectoplasm is the telos for the wound. A trance state is induced when salt is poured on it, pixel by pixel. I wish they had made me into an octopus instead, because octopuses die after their eggs hatch and crawl out into the sea, and I want to know what it's like to set something free into the dark unknown and trust it to choose mercy. If you can generate aura in a non-place, then there is no such thing as an authentic origin. In Chinese, the word for mercy translates to my heart hurts for you. They say my heart continues beating even after it is dislocated from my body. The sound of its beating comes from the valves opening and closing like a portal - Guanyin, Yama, Nuwa, Fuxi, Chang'e, Zao-Shen. I first learned about love by watching a sex tape where a girl looks up from performing fellatio and says, show them the sunset. Her boyfriend pans the camera to the sky, which is tinged violet like a bruise. In this moment, the sky displaces her, all digital and hyped, and saturates the scene until it collapses on me too, its transient witness. I move in the space between belly ring and catharsis. That night I have a dream where I am a camgirl, but all I do on screen is wash my laundry. Everybody loves me because I am a real girl doing real girl things. What lives on the border between meditation and oblivion, static and flux, a pomegranate seed and an embryo? I set up my webcam in the corner of the room and play ambient music while I scrub my underwear, letting soap bubbles rise up from the sink, laughing when they overflow on the linoleum floor - my frizzy hair, my pockmarked skin, my face slick with sweat. A body with exit wounds. I ride the bright rails of an animal forgetting. And when I wake up, the sky is a mess of blue.

His eyes were an icy blue, but the light in them was warmer than the sun. I supposed someone capable of piercing the veil between life and death would have an odd balance to them.

May the Lord of Love who projects himself Into this universe of myriad forms, From whom all beings come and to whom all Return- may he grant us the grace of wisdom. He is fire and the sun, and the moon And the stars. He is the air and the sea And the Creator, Prajapati. He is the blue bird; he is the green bird With red eyes; he is the thundercloud, And he is the seasons and the seas. He has no beginning; he has no end. He is the source from whom the worlds evolve. From his divine power comes forth all this Magical show of name and form, of you And me, which casts the spell of pain and pleasure. Only when we pierce through this magic veil Do we see the one who appears as many.

Rose is the epitome of a hard-scrabble professional, complete with a practiced resting bitch face. Dark, smoky makeup accentuates her piercing hazel eyes that bore into anyone catching her gaze. Her short auburn hair perches in an all-business cut, with a slight flourish over her right cheek. A chain made of thick silver links adorns her neck, complete with a prominent cross. Is she a devout Christian or will it all be a ploy to curry favor with the salt-of-the-earth jurors in this county? A tight, merciless navy-blue skirt and blazer stress her athletic frame. She is all business, and in it to win it.

While I think Beckett Riley is gorgeous, he's not as hot as Landy. No, Landy has the whole dangerous sexy vibe going on with his longish dark hair and piercing blue eyes and tattoo sleeves... whatever. Not that it matters, right?

Tatarsky felt a sensation of instantaneous, piercing recognition. The shoes had pointed toes and high heels and were made of good leather. They were a light yellowish-brown, stitched with a light-blue thread and decorated with large gold buckles in the form of harps. It wasn’t that they were simply in bad taste, or vulgar; they were the clear embodiment of what a certain drunken teacher of Soviet literature from the Literary Institute used to call ‘our gestalt’, and the sight was so pitiful, laughable and touching (especially the harp buckles) that tears sprang to Tatarsky’s eyes. The shoes were covered by a thick layer of dust: the new era obviously had no use for them.

He had imagined it, there was no other explanation; imagined it, because he had been thinking of his dead headmaster. If anything was certain, it was that the bright blue eyes of Albus Dumbledore would never pierce him again.

Jack's eyes were huge, he was nervous and excited at the idea of fighting off so many blazes. “There were that many?”  Dad nodded, a frown on his face. “Yeah, I saw some other things in there, too. In the few seconds before they poofed me, anyway. Some skeletons that had dark gray bones. I hadn’t seen those before, but there weren’t nearly as many. Only a handful. I also saw some regular skeletons. But the sheer number of blazes was just...It was impossible to count.”  Mom huffed. “Well, that is not at all what I was hoping for. What are we going to do now?”  Dad opened his shulker box and pulled out his stronger set of iron enchanted armor, and a gold helmet, and put it all on. Then he took out two tower shields, equipping one in each hand. “Well first off, I should have gone in more prepared.”  Mom snapped her fingers. “Speaking of prepared, that reminds me.” She pulled out potions from her inventory, handing everyone a few. Then gave out stacks of golden apples and cooked pork, followed by healing potions. “This should help a lot for when we go in.”  “Wait,” Dad said. “You still want to go in after what I told you is behind that portal?”  Mom opened her shulker box, also getting dressed in her enchanted iron armor. “Yes, dear. We will not let some floating fire monsters stop us from reaching our goal.”  Kate grinned. “Go Mom! I have an idea too. STOMPY!” she called over to the huge ravager.  “What are you doing?” Jack asked. He had put on his enchanted iron armor, while handing Bruce some diamond armor and diamond sword, and some golden boots, just in case. Bruce ate them up, his entire body turning the blue of diamond, and his claws growing longer and sharper and shinier, piercing through his new, golden paws.  “I think we should have Stompy charge through and open a path for us. He’s perfect for the job,” Kate said as Stompy stomped up to them. She patted his neck lovingly.  “Aren’t you worried about him getting hurt?” Mom asked.

He’s quite tall with broad shoulders and an athletic physique that even his suit and tie cannot hide. My eyes continue their upward travel to his strong square-shaped face framed with brown curly hair that falls to his shoulders and deep, piercing blue eyes. The corners of his mouth curve upward when he notices me staring a moment too long.

Lie.” Slowly I face him, and my lungs expand. “Don’t lie to me, Noah.” His blue eyes pierce mine, and he gives a curt nod. “Okay.” “Say You Swear.

Blue-gray she-cat with piercing blue eyes and silver hairs tipping muzzle and tail. Wise, kind, beloved, and strong.

I heard his voice first, a captivating melody that stirred something deep within me. And then, our eyes met in an electric exchange, his piercing blue gaze locking onto mine. In that instant, I felt an irresistible pull, as if my soul had already chosen to surrender to him. That’s where it all began. He was like a quagmire, drawing me in with an allure impossible to resist. Once you step into the mire, its grip tightens, pulling you deeper with each struggle. Despite your efforts to break free, you find yourself sinking, consumed by its darkness. And in the end, you stop fighting and yield to its embrace.

Tu subrayado en la posición 81-83 | Añadido el sábado, 2 de mayo de 2015 23:33:30 And what a man he is. Tall, but not too tall. Five o’clock shadow. Late twenties, early thirties. Piercing blue eyes. Short, brown hair that juts forward, matching his angular face. He’s wearing an untucked, button-down white shirt and dark-grey slacks. He looks disheveled in the best way possible. ========== Mis recortes - Tu marcador en la posición 223 | Añadido el sábado, 2 de mayo de 2015 23:36:35 ========== Mis recortes - Tu subrayado en la posición 77-79 | Añadido el sábado, 2 de mayo de 2015 23:37:51 1:21:06 She’s got long dark hair, neatly secured at the nape of her neck, and wide honey-colored eyes with the same thick, dark eyelashes as Jase. Her eyes are weary though, and are currently sizing me up. I wonder what Jase has told her about me. ========== Mis recortes - Tu subrayado en la posición 75-76 | Añadido el

And what a man he is. Tall, but not too tall. Five o’clock shadow. Late twenties, early thirties. Piercing blue eyes. Short, brown hair that juts forward, matching his angular face. He’s wearing an untucked, button-down white shirt and dark-grey slacks. He looks disheveled in the best way possible.

Adam inclined his head toward Owen. “Two questions. Was I Fabio in that scenario? And who is Fabio?” Brown eyes rolled. “Yes, and Google that shit.” And he did. “Ho! My nose is way smaller!” Cam grabbed the smartphone out of Adam’s hand. “Look at those baby blues, though. Piercing. Erotic, even. You could totally be related.” A grin tipped Adam’s mouth. “Really?” Cam slapped the phone against Adam’s chest. “Dude. No. Not really.

wore thick black eyeliner around his captivating ice-blue eyes, and had extremely long jet-black hair, all pierced up from ear-hole to asshole.

The forlorn notes of Cristofori’s Dream replaced the eerie silence, sending a chill up my neck. The piano sang in desperation. Lamenting strings pierced the air as if grieving on my behalf. The notes edged through my mind, and I stared across the room, right through the beige wall to the void beyond. My eyes labored through nothingness, searching for the tiniest fragment of hope to no avail.

I just assumed it was another cabinet so I never actually opened it until just now. Pretty cool, huh?” “Yes, pretty cool, pretty boy,” she agreed, marveling at how his short blond locks stayed perfectly coiffed, no matter how disheveled the rest of him got. “You’re the pretty one,” he said, brushing Jessie’s shoulder-length light brown hair out of her green eyes and staring at her with his own penetrating blue ones. “It’s a good thing I got you out of LA. I was tired

Just the slightest wobble thanks to her preternatural balance and she kept going, but couldn’t look away from him, especially not when he stared back at her with those piercing ice blue eyes and the smile that’d haunted her dreams for so long.

Groaning inwardly, T.J. turned to find the grim face of his father looming over him. Six feet tall with graying chestnut hair and piercing blue eyes, Thomas Jason McKendrick was a commanding figure whose mere presence was enough to make anyone who crossed him shudder.

my champagne glass. As I hunt, a hand brushes my arm. I startle, turn, and look into midnight-blue eyes that pierce me. Like in a movie, or a book. Okay, I’ll admit, I’m a certified romantic. I grew up on a steady diet of romantic-comedy

He has the kind of physical beauty that is literally stunning.  Golden hair that falls around his shoulders in thick waves. Eyes so piercing blue they hurt to look at. Skin carved of golden marble. A face that could slay armies with its beauty. A body that is so perfect he looks unreal. Like, I can't walk anymore, because I'm literally stunned into place. When he sees me, he smiles and I nearly choke on my own tongue.

Charlemagne is the first great man of action to emerge from the darkness since the collapse of the Roman world. He became a subject of myth and legend. A magnificent reliquary in Aix-la-Chapelle, made about five hundred years after his death to hold a piece of his skull, expresses what the High Middle Ages felt about him in terms that he himself would have appreciated – gold and jewels. But the real man, about whom we know quite a lot from a contemporary biographer, wasn’t so far from that myth. He was a commanding figure, over six feet tall, with piercing blue eyes – only he had a small squeaky voice and a walrus moustache instead of a beard. He was a tireless administrator. The lands he conquered – Bavaria, Saxony, Lombardy – were organised a good deal beyond the capacities of a semi-barbarous age. His empire was an artificial construction and didn’t survive him. But the old idea that he saved civilisation isn’t so far wrong, because it was through him that the Atlantic world re-established contact with the ancient culture of the Mediterranean world. There were great disorders after his death, but no more skin of our teeth. Civilisation had come through.

It was... amazing,” whispered Zak, seeking Stitch’s fingers with his hand. “Never done this bare before, and you... agreeing to this, letting me come inside you. I just... don’t know what to say without making it seem cheaper than it was, you know.” Stitch squeezed Zak’s hand and delighted in a slow kiss. “My inhibitions were bullshit. Now I know. I had the shittiest day and you made it better. Thank you.” Zak pushed his fingers into Stitch’s hair and looked into his eyes. His were this beautiful, deep blue that Stitch could look into all the time. It was different to lie in Zak’s arms for a change, him being a bit sore in a way that Zak sometimes mentioned but Stitch could never understand. It really was pleasant, hot, tender. A remainder of being so close with another man, closer than he ever imagined. “I’m here to serve,” chuckled Zak, but his face became more serious when he leaned in for another kiss. “You are an amazing man. Nobody’s anything like you.” “I love you,” Stitch whispered and kissed Zak’s lip piercing. Everything about his man was perfect

He has piercing blue eyes that almost appear to be contacts because they are deep indigo.

You work too hard," she warned him on his way out the door. "I worry about you." Really, what she wanted was for him to stay here. They deserved a night together. No responsibilities. Just the two of them up late talking like when they were engaged. "This is only temporary," he said on his way out, "things'll get better." She looked away. He was pouring himself into this place. The weight he'd lost made his blue eyes even more piercing and prominent above the hollows of his cheeks. He was pouring himself out as she tried to hold what fell in her hands.

And he stayed. For three years he stayed in the shadow of Meerlust; a model of the uttermost devotion; a lost soul in purgatory. It would have been better, as the doctor had said, if Catherine Stone had died. Within twenty-four hours of the original disaster she recovered consciousness, lying, as the half-dead lie, with one side paralysed and without the power of speech. She could not speak, but she could see. Her eyes never stopped seeing. Through the long hours of day and night when Morton sat by her, watching in silence, those blue eyes dwelt on him. There was no bitterness, no accusation in them — only a supernatural power of penetration, terribly impersonal, which seemed to pierce through into the depths of his consciousness, stripping bare the pretences of tenderness, the realities of remorse with which he comforted him- self.He might easily deceive himself, but never Catherine’s eyes.

wind moving through the high branches of the trees made wavering leaf shadows. The new kid was wearing a blue dress that was too big for her, sneakers with white socks pushed down, and a heavy-looking backpack. Her jumbled mopflop of hair made her face look smaller and her eyes look bigger. The tiny metal balls that ear-piercers put in newly pierced ears glinted in her lobes. She hovered behind a pillar at the far end of the entrance, away from the crush. Fewer students now, mostly single ones hurrying to beat the bell. Each time the metal-and-glass doors swung shut, a mirror image of the sidewalk clunked back into place, and each time, the new kid’s eyes shifted toward it. She looked like she might be asking her reflection to tell her that everything was going to be all right. But then her eyes always went down again, like maybe her reflection had shaken its head. Now a minute with no one using the leftmost door.

Alaric grabbed her elbow, despair surging from him in waves, and pulled her to him. She let out an indignant squeak as she found herself sprawled on top of his bare chest, her nose inches from his. She held still, careful not to disturb the bandages, and his hand darted from her elbow to her lower back, exposed by the cut of her blue dress, his warm fingers trailing static charges along the base of her spine. She hadn’t realized that she was so sensitive there. “Don’t go,” he murmured hoarsely, fitfully, a man caught in a fever-dream. “I won’t bring up the rebels again. I won’t breathe another word. Just—don’t leave me, Tala.” The name he had first called her on their wedding night sent a mess of starlit recollections swirling through her at the same time that it caught in his throat, along with what he said next. “Please.” Talasyn stared into the hollow desolation in Alaric’s gray eyes, the utter defeat. She knew this loneliness. She understood it in the marrow of her bones. “I was going to clean up, that’s all,” she whispered. “I’m not leaving. It’s just—the bucket and—” “Forget the bucket,” he told her, a hint of his usual imperiousness breaking through the valerian fog. “Stay here.” “All right.” Not her wittiest moment, but it was difficult to think when she was pressed up against his solid body, his hand on the small of her back. “I’ll stay.” He looked like he didn’t believe her, and it pierced her heart.

Those crystal-blue eyes of hers…they cut through all the bullshit and pierced my soul. I was forever lost to her. That twenty percent angel, eighty percent devil mix made me want to dive headfirst into whatever underworld she’d take me.

vanished from public view. Charles John McCloskey III was a fifty-year-old priest who had grown up in Falls Church, Virginia, a small town on the outskirts of D.C. Fresh-faced, with piercing blue eyes, thick black eyebrows, and prematurely silver hair combed neatly to the side,

They were this piercing blue, like the hottest part of a fire. You only see eyes like that in paintings, in Lorrain and Salvator Rosa. Those who were in love with color.

Colton Darling, friend to everyone in town but me, with his pretty boy looks and windswept hair, the dark stubble, and those piercing blue eyes women like Sierra seem to love. I hate blue.

Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!” The surface of the grave at Harry’s feet cracked. Horrified, Harry watched as a fine trickle of dust rose into the air at Wormtail’s command and fell softly into the cauldron. The diamond surface of the water broke and hissed; it sent sparks in all directions and turned a vivid, poisonous-looking blue. And now Wormtail was whimpering. He pulled a long, thin, shining silver dagger from inside his cloak. His voice broke into petrified sobs. “Flesh — of the servant — w-willingly given — you will — revive — your master.” He stretched his right hand out in front of him — the hand with the missing finger. He gripped the dagger very tightly in his left hand and swung it upward. Harry realized what Wormtail was about to do a second before it happened — he closed his eyes as tightly as he could, but he could not block the scream that pierced the night, that went through Harry as though he had been stabbed with the dagger too. He heard something fall to the ground, heard Wormtail’s anguished panting, then a sickening splash, as something was dropped into the cauldron. Harry couldn’t stand to look . . . but the potion had turned a burning red; the light of it shone through Harry’s closed eyelids. . . . Wormtail was gasping and moaning with agony. Not until Harry felt Wormtail’s anguished breath on his face did he realize that Wormtail was right in front of him. “B-blood of the enemy . . . forcibly taken . . . you will . . . resurrect your foe.” Harry could do nothing to prevent it, he was tied too tightly. . . . Squinting down, struggling hopelessly at the ropes binding him, he saw the shining silver dagger shaking in Wormtail’s remaining hand. He felt its point penetrate the crook of his right arm and blood seeping down the sleeve of his torn robes. Wormtail, still panting with pain, fumbled in his pocket for a glass vial and held it to Harry’s cut, so that a dribble of blood fell into it.

dour mask this day, eyes a piercing blue, his expression as sour as a squeeze of lemon. Even his familiar little smirk was gone.

pom-pom, NIL… A.B.C. scratched his head, then looked up, his piercing blue eyes sweeping slowly round the War Room.

Long legs covered in light blue jeans; a decently muscular torso clothed in a dark red yet well-fitted jumper. His cocky smirk is easily a panty dropper if it were to ever be used with that intention. His piercing blue eyes stare back at me, and his... blonde hair. Well, that's unfortunate. moving on.

She should be feeling a tingle of hope, of trust that St Margaret would favour her, but she felt nothing at all. At this moment, if she brought Jon to mind, he was a featureless figure. She could remember the piercing blue of his eyes, but not his smile. Or his voice. Or his lovemaking. He had moved to the periphery of everything.

Wolverines winning the championship. The cheers are almost deafening, but it’s nothing compared to the way my heart pounds in my ears at the sight of Carter ripping his helmet off, his black hair flopping into his piercing blue eyes

It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s chest in his sleep. Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea. But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them. Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the girdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion—most seen here at the equator—denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away. Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl’s forehead of heaven. Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how oblivious were ye of old Ahab’s close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain. Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world, so long cruel—forbidding—now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop.

Black hair spilling, blue eyes piercing. Enchanted by the lies that he was singing.

The Jackal walks into frame to stand behind him. “Is that…” Holiday whispers beside me. “Yes,” I say. The man is Uncle Narol. The Jackal holds a pistol in his hand. “Darrow. My Boneriders found this one sabotaging beacons in deep space. Really is tougher than he looks. Thought he might know your mind. But he tried to bite off his own tongue instead of talking to me. Irony for you.” He walks behind my uncle. “I don’t want a ransom. I don’t want anything from you. I just want you to watch.” He lifts up the pistol. It’s a slender gray slip of metal the size of my hand. The Blues in the pit gasp. Sevro rushes onto the bridge just as the Jackal points the gun at the back of my uncle’s head. My uncle lifts his eyes to look into the camera. “Sorry, Darrow. But I’ll say hello to your father for—” The Jackal pulls the trigger, and I feel another part of me slip away into the darkness as my uncle slumps in his chair. “Turn it off,

I won’t,” he promised, looking down at me. I froze as his gaze dropped to my lips. He looked like he thought about kissing me, but I wouldn’t give him the opportunity to do something so stupid. Some sculpted muscles and piercing blue eyes weren’t enough to make me forget how badly he'd hurt me. I stepped around him and went to the door. 

Her blue eyes cut through the crowd, searching and swift and so unsure. I step behind one of the many marble pillars framing the room, avoiding her piercing gaze for perhaps the first time. I’ve been nothing but willing when it comes to drowning in those ocean eyes. But now, I can’t fathom drowning if she is not the anchor I’m sinking with.

Sappho The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep, And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea, The temples glimmer moon-wise in the trees. Twilight has veiled the little flower-face Here on my heart, but still the night is kind And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast. Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk Along the surges creeping up the shore When tides came in to ease the hungry beach, And running, running till the night was black, Would fall forespent upon the chilly sand And quiver with the winds from off the sea? Ah quietly the shingle waits the tides Whose waves are stinging kisses, but to me Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest. I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands And cried to love, from whom the sea is sweet, From whom the sea is bitterer than death. Ah, Aphrodite, if I sing no more To thee, God's daughter, powerful as God, It is that thou hast made my life too sweet To hold the added sweetness of a song. There is a quiet at the heart of love, And I have pierced the pain and come to peace. I hold my peace, my Cleïs, on my heart; And softer than a little wild bird's wing Are kisses that she pours upon my mouth. Ah never any more when spring like fire Will flicker in the newly opened leaves, Shall I steal forth to seek for solitude Beyond the lure of light Alcaeus' lyre, Beyond the sob that stilled Erinna's voice. Ah, never with a throat that aches with song, Beneath the white uncaring sky of spring, Shall I go forth to hide awhile from Love The quiver and the crying of my heart. Still I remember how I strove to flee The love-note of the birds, and bowed my head To hurry faster, but upon the ground I saw two winged shadows side by side, And all the world's spring passion stifled me. Ah, Love there is no fleeing from thy might, No lonely place where thou hast never trod, No desert thou hast left uncarpeted With flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet. In many guises didst thou come to me; I saw thee by the maidens while they danced, Phaon allured me with a look of thine, In Anactoria I knew thy passion, I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes; But never wholly, soul and body mine, Didst thou bid any love me as I loved. Now have I found the peace that fled from me; Close, close against my heart I hold my world. Ah, Love that made my life a lyric cry, Ah, Love that tuned my lips to lyres of thine, I taught the world thy music, now alone I sing for one who falls asleep to hear.