Pump Cover Quotes

I knew it!" He pumps a fist into the air. "You've fallen in love with me. You want to have my babies. We'll get a team of horses and a covered wagon and we'll journey to South America and raise goats.

My adrenaline started pumping anytime I was within a hundred yards of a bookshop. I loved books nearly as much as I loved clothes. And that's saying something. The feel of them and the smell of them. A bookshop was like like an Aladdin's Cave for me. Entire worlds and lives can be found just behind that glossy cover. All you had to do was look.

He was a filthy fucker. Figuratively. Literally. Need crawled through the front of his stomach, to cover Gia and pump all his love into her. He wanted to cover her in his need and love until she was sticky. Sick monster he was. And she loved him.

I’d already tasted her, and nothing would have stopped me from seeing her virgin blood coat my cock as I pumped in and out of her, filled her with my cum until it dripped down her ass and covered my sheets—sheets I stripped from my bed afterwards and kept.

On the cover of this publication a bikini-clad young woman disported herself with a medicine ball, both articles looking as though they had been inflated with a bicycle pump.

The early anatomists were dealing with a chronic shortage of bodies for dissection, and consequently were motivated to come up with ways to preserve the ones they managed to obtain. Blanchard’s textbook was the first to cover arterial embalming. He describes opening up an artery, flushing the blood out with water, and pumping in alcohol. I’ve been to frat parties like that.

She was teetering on the cusp of adulthood. Three-quarters child, one-quarter yearning. Her dreams were confused kaleidoscopes of swanning through the sets of TV shows, drinking cocktails that looked like vodka martinis and tasted like Sprite, wearing lipstick and pumps covered in red craft glitter, and marrying someone who was half pop star and half stuffed animal.

I move to the next aisle and find Brae studying the silicone cups of a breast pump on display. He turns it in his hand, sticks one cup to his eye, and then the other. What is he doing? I cover my mouth to avoid him hearing me giggle as he presses the cups to his swollen pecs.

What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade" Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas, how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark. After lunch she distributed worksheets that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something else— something important—and how to believe the house you wake in is your home. This prompted Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks, and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts are all you hear; also, that you have enough. The English lesson was that I am is a complete sentence. And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions, and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking for whatever it was you lost, and one person add up to something.

Some nights he sat up late on his front porch with a glass of Jack and listened to the trucks heading south on 220, carrying crates of live chickens to the slaughterhouses—always under cover of darkness, like a vast and shameful trafficking—chickens pumped full of hormones that left them too big to walk—and he thought how these same chickens might return from their destination as pieces of meat to the floodlit Bojangles’ up the hill from his house, and that meat would be drowned in the bubbling fryers by employees whose hatred of the job would leak into the cooked food, and that food would be served up and eaten by customers who would grow obese and end up in the hospital in Greensboro with diabetes or heart failure, a burden to the public, and later Dean would see them riding around the Mayodan Wal-Mart in electric carts because they were too heavy to walk the aisles of a Supercenter, just like hormone-fed chickens.

The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp. ... The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes under one of which I found the late tenant’s rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.

Vacuum pumps driven by electric motors are forced into American households for the purpose of cleaning an obsolete form of floor covering, the carpet or the rug, whose appropriateness for use in interiors, if it did not disappear with the caravans where it originated, certainly passed out of existence with rubber heels and steam-heated houses. To count such pathetic examples of waste to the credit of the machine is like counting the rise in the number of constipation remedies a proof of the benefits of leisure.

An asteroid or comet traveling at cosmic velocities would enter the Earth’s atmosphere at such a speed that the air beneath it couldn’t get out of the way and would be compressed, as in a bicycle pump. As anyone who has used such a pump knows, compressed air grows swiftly hot, and the temperature below it would rise to some 60,000 Kelvin, or ten times the surface temperature of the Sun. In this instant of its arrival in our atmosphere, everything in the meteor’s path—people, houses, factories, cars—would crinkle and vanish like cellophane in a flame. One second after entering the atmosphere, the meteorite would slam into the Earth’s surface, where the people of Manson had a moment before been going about their business. The meteorite itself would vaporize instantly, but the blast would blow out a thousand cubic kilometers of rock, earth, and superheated gases. Every living thing within 150 miles that hadn’t been killed by the heat of entry would now be killed by the blast. Radiating outward at almost the speed of light would be the initial shock wave, sweeping everything before it. For those outside the zone of immediate devastation, the first inkling of catastrophe would be a flash of blinding light—the brightest ever seen by human eyes—followed an instant to a minute or two later by an apocalyptic sight of unimaginable grandeur: a roiling wall of darkness reaching high into the heavens, filling an entire field of view and traveling at thousands of miles an hour. Its approach would be eerily silent since it would be moving far beyond the speed of sound. Anyone in a tall building in Omaha or Des Moines, say, who chanced to look in the right direction would see a bewildering veil of turmoil followed by instantaneous oblivion. Within minutes, over an area stretching from Denver to Detroit and encompassing what had once been Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, the Twin Cities—the whole of the Midwest, in short—nearly every standing thing would be flattened or on fire, and nearly every living thing would be dead. People up to a thousand miles away would be knocked off their feet and sliced or clobbered by a blizzard of flying projectiles. Beyond a thousand miles the devastation from the blast would gradually diminish. But that’s just the initial shockwave. No one can do more than guess what the associated damage would be, other than that it would be brisk and global. The impact would almost certainly set off a chain of devastating earthquakes. Volcanoes across the globe would begin to rumble and spew. Tsunamis would rise up and head devastatingly for distant shores. Within an hour, a cloud of blackness would cover the planet, and burning rock and other debris would be pelting down everywhere, setting much of the planet ablaze. It has been estimated that at least a billion and a half people would be dead by the end of the first day. The massive disturbances to the ionosphere would knock out communications systems everywhere, so survivors would have no idea what was happening elsewhere or where to turn. It would hardly matter. As one commentator has put it, fleeing would mean “selecting a slow death over a quick one. The death toll would be very little affected by any plausible relocation effort, since Earth’s ability to support life would be universally diminished.

Was it Roosevelt who said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”? But he was never locked in a store in the dark, pumped full of adrenaline, covered in motor oil, with dozens of eager monsters banging on the gate six feet away, determined to kill him. I’m sure he would’ve been afraid. Fucking afraid.

It was the Gypsy, the boy with the eyes of a hungry panther. He had removed his coat and waistcoat... and his necktie as well... so that his upper half was covered only in a thin white shirt that had been tucked loosely into the waist of his close-fitting trousers. The sight of him elicited the same reaction Daisy had felt upstairs- a swift sting in her chest followed by the rapid pumping of her heart. Paralyzed by the realization that she was alone in the room with him, Daisy watched with unblinking eyes as he approached her slowly. She had never seen any living being who had been fashioned with such dark exotic beauty... his skin the color of raw clover honey, the light hazel of his eyes framed with heavy black lashes, his thick obsidian hair tumbled over his forehead.

I remember Nuland, in the opening chapters of How We Die, writing about being a young medical student alone in the OR with a patient whose heart had stopped. In an act of desperation, he cut open the patient’s chest and tried to pump his heart manually, tried to literally squeeze the life back into him. The patient died, and Nuland was found by his supervisor, covered in blood and failure.

And there were so many places to go. Thickets of bramble. Fallen trees. Ferns, and violets, and gorse, paths all lined with soft green moss. And in the very heart of the wood, there was a clearing, with a circle of stones, and an old well in the middle, next to a big dead oak tree, and everything- fallen branches, standing stones, even the well, with its rusty pump- draped and festooned and piled knee-high with ruffles and flounces of strawberries, with blackbirds picking over the fruit, and the scent like all of summer. It wasn't like the rest of the farm. Narcisse's farm is very neat, with everything set out in its place. A little field for sunflowers: one for cabbages; one for squash; one for Jerusalem artichokes. Apple trees to one side; peaches and plums to the other. And in the polytunnels, there were daffodils, tulips, freesias; and in season, lettuce, tomatoes, beans. All neatly planted, in rows, with nets to keep the birds from stealing them. But here there were no nets, or polytunnels, or windmills to frighten away the birds. Just that clearing of strawberries, and the old well in the circle of stones. There was no bucket in the well. Just the broken pump, and the trough, and a grate to cover the hole, which was very deep, and not quite straight, and filled with ferns and that swampy smell. And if you put your eye to the grate, you could see a roundel of sky reflected in the water, and little pink flowers growing out from between the cracks in the old stone. And there was a kind of draught coming up from under the ground, as if something was hiding there and breathing, very quietly.

You know, I still feel in my wrists certain echoes of the pram-pusher’s knack, such as, for example, the glib downward pressure one applied to the handle in order to have the carriage tip up and climb the curb. First came an elaborate mouse-gray vehicle of Belgian make, with fat autoid tires and luxurious springs, so large that it could not enter our puny elevator. It rolled on sidewalks in a slow stately mystery, with the trapped baby inside lying supine, well covered with down, silk and fur; only his eyes moved, warily, and sometimes they turned upward with one swift sweep of their showy lashes to follow the receding of branch-patterned blueness that flowed away from the edge of the half-cocked hood of the carriage, and presently he would dart a suspicious glance at my face to see if the teasing trees and sky did not belong, perhaps to the same order of things as did rattles and parental humor. There followed a lighter carriage, and in this, as he spun along, he would tend to rise, straining at his straps; clutching at the edges; standing there less like the groggy passenger of a pleasure boat than like an entranced scientist in a spaceship; surveying the speckled skeins of a live, warm world; eyeing with philosophic interest the pillow he had managed to throw overboard; falling out himself when a strap burst one day. Still later he rode in one of those small contraptions called strollers; from initial springy and secure heights the child came lower and lower, until, when he was about one and a half, he touched ground in front of the moving stroller by slipping forward out of his seat and beating the sidewalk with his heels in anticipation of being set loose in some public garden. A new wave of evolution started to swell, gradually lifting him again from the ground, when, for his second birthday, he received a four-foot-long, silver-painted Mercedes racing car operated by inside pedals, like an organ, and in this he used to drive with a pumping, clanking noise up and down the sidewalk of the Kurfurstendamm while from open windows came the multiplied roar of a dictator still pounding his chest in the Neander valley we had left far behind.

The two sat quietly on the park bench, and Dove liked it. If she sat perfectly still, neither could ruin the moment. He seemed to feel the change as well as they watched two squirrels bound about in front of them. The squirrels were adorable and brave, jumping close to Dove and Johnson—maybe because they were motionless. Dove wanted to comment on the Disneyesque scene in front of them but kept her words on the tip of her tongue, not wanting to spoil the quiet. The two squirrels sat side by side, each a mirror of the other, munching on acorns in their paws. With their fuzzy faces and sweet, black eyes, they reminded Dove of exactly why she loved the park. Next to her, Johnson sighed in contentment. The male squirrel dropped his nut and jumped quickly behind the female squirrel. Oh dear God! Don’t do it. You horny little bastard! The male squirrel refused to read Dove’s mind and started climbing on the female squirrel. Dove heard Johnson’s groan of disgust as the male began the motions of copulation. She shook her head. Fucking figures. The tender new feelings between Dove and this handsome man were now spoiled with the obscene visual of the hairy rodents humping. Johnson had to comment. “Wow. Squirrels usually engage in some style of MATING dance.” He looked around the park for other examples to prove his point. “Much like humans, they’re attracted to the smell of the GENITALS and fancy tail motions.” Dove tried to figure out where she belonged in this conversation that he apparently thought was acceptable small talk. The obscene, public intercourse ended with one final, furry pump. The female never even dropped her nut. “Well, I guess that was a dinner date.” Dove covered her mouth and shook her head. She prayed for a flock of hungry hawks to swoop in and eat the little Snow White porn stars so she and Mr. Gorgeouspants could just stop talking about nether regions for a minute. “This time of the year, NUTS are more important than anything else.

The principal concern of a nuclear reactor - particularly an RBMK reactor, because of its graphite moderator - is that cooling water continuously flows into the core. Without it there could be an explosion or meltdown. Even if the reactor is shut down, the fuel within will still be generating decay heat, which would damage the core without further cooling. Pumps driving the flow of water rely on electricity generated by the plant’s own turbines, but in the event of a blackout the electrical supply can be switched to the national grid. If that fails, diesel generators on site will automatically start up to power the water pumps, but these take about 50 seconds to gather enough energy to operate the massive pumps. There are six emergency tanks containing a combined 250 tons of pressurised water which can be injected into the core within 3.5 seconds, but an RBMK reactor needs around 37,000 tons of water per hour - 10 tons-per-second - so 250 tons does not cover the 50 second gap.92

somebody had taken an old disk of McCartney and the Wings - as in the historical Beatles's McCartney - taken and run it through a Kurtzweil remixer and removed every track on the songs except the tracks of poor old Mrs. Linda McCartney singing backup and playing tambourine. ... Poor old Mrs. Linda McCartney just fucking could not sing, and having her shaky off-key little voice flushed from the cover of the whole slick multitrack corporate sound and pumped up to solo was to Gately unspeakably depressing - her voice sounding so lost, trying to hide and bury itself inside the pro backups' voices; Gately imagined Mrs. Linda McCartney - in his Staff room's wall's picture a kind of craggy-face blonde - imagined her standing there lost in the sea of her husband's pro noise, feeling low esteem and whispering off-key, not knowing quite when to shake her tambourine: C's depressing CD was past cruel, it was somehow sadistic-seeming, like drilling a peephole in the wall of a handicapped bathroom.

Happy birthday,” he whispered, his breath landing warm and suddenly close to my lips, making my insides flip. And just as quickly as he’d surprised me with the cake, he kissed me, one frosting-covered hand moving from my hair to the back of my neck, the other solid and warm in the small of my back, pressing us together, my chest against his ribs, my hip bones just below his, the tops of our bare summer legs hot and touching. I stopped breathing. My eyes were closed and his mouth tasted like marzipan flowers and clove cigarettes, and in ten seconds the whole of my life was wrapped up in that one kiss, that one wish, that one secret that would forever divide my life into two parts. Up, down. Happy, sad. Shock, awe. Before, after. In that single moment, Matt, formerly known as friend, became something else entirely. I kissed him back. I forgot time. I forgot my feet. I forgot the people outside, waiting for us to rejoin the party. I forgot what happens when friends cross into this space. And if my lungs didn’t fill and my heart didn’t beat and my blood didn’t pump without my intervention, I would have forgotten about them, too. I could have stayed like that all night, standing in front of the sink, Matt’s black apple hair brushing my cheeks, heart thumping, lucky and forgetful…

Of all the plants, trees have the largest surface area covered in leaves. For every square yard of forest, 27 square yards of leaves and needles blanket the crowns. Part of every rainfall is intercepted in the canopy and immediately evaporates again. In addition, each summer, trees use up to 8,500 cubic yards of water per square mile, which they release into the air through transpiration. This water vapor creates new clouds that travel farther inland to release their rain. As the cycle continues, water reaches even the most remote areas. This water pump works so well that the downpours in some large areas of the world, such as the Amazon basin, are almost as heavy thousands of miles inland as they are on the coast. There are a few requirements for the pump to work: from the ocean to the farthest corner, there must be forest. And, most importantly, the coastal forests are the foundations for this system. If they do not exist, the system falls apart. Scientists credit Anastassia Makarieva from Saint Petersburg in Russia for the discovery of these unbelievably important connections. They studied different forests around the world and everywhere the results were the same. It didn't matter if they were studying a rain forest or the Siberian taiga, it was always the trees that were transferring life-giving moisture into land-locked interiors. Researchers also discovered that the whole process breaks down if coastal forests are cleared. It's a bit like if you were using an electrical pump to distribute water and you pulled the intake pipe out of the pond. The fallout is already apparent in Brazil, where the Amazonian rain forest is steadily drying out. Central Europe is within the 400-mile zone and, therefore, close enough to the intake area. Thankfully, there are still forests here, even if they are greatly diminished.

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

What are you doing abovedecks, anyhow?” “The cry went up for all hands.” “You’re not a hand. You’re a passenger.” “I may not be a hand, but I’ve got two perfectly good hands, and if I sit on them a second longer, I’ll go mad.” Joss stared at Gray’s open collar, where his cravat should have been knotted. “She’s really getting to you, isn’t she?” “You have no idea,” Gray muttered. “Oh, I think I do.” Gray ignored his brother’s smug tone. “Damn it, Joss, just put me to work. Send me up to furl a sail, put me down in the hold to pump the bilge…I don’t care, just give me something to do.” Joss raised his eyebrows. “If you insist.” He lifted the spyglass to his eye and began scanning the horizon again. “Batten the hatches, then.” Gray tossed a word of thanks over his shoulder as he descended to the quarterdeck and went to work, dragging the tarpaulins over the skylights and securing them with battens. As he labored, the ship’s motions grew more violent, hampering his efforts. He saved the vent above the ladies’ cabin for last, resisting the urge to peer down through the grate. Instead, he first secured one end, then blanketed the entire skylight with one strong snap on the canvas. “Ahoy! Ahoy!” Wiggins leaned forward over the prow, hailing the approaching ship, its puffed scudding sails a stark contrast against the darkening sky. Gray moved to cover the companion stairs, reaching inside the gaping black hole and groping for the handle to draw the hatch closed. Something-or someone-groped him back.

There was something of an unwritten code about working in the office of Rudy Giuliani, as I suppose there is in most organizations. In his case, the message was that Rudy was the star at the top and the successes of the office flowed in his direction. You violated this code at your peril. Giuliani had extraordinary confidence, and as a young prosecutor I found his brash style exciting, which was part of what drew me to his office. I loved it that my boss was on magazine covers standing on the courthouse steps with his hands on his hips, as if he ruled the world. It fired me up. Prosecutors almost never saw the great man in person, so I was especially pumped when he stopped by my office early in my career, shortly after I had been assigned to an investigation that touched a prominent New York figure who dressed in shiny tracksuits and sported a Nobel-sized medallion around his neck. The state of New York was investigating Al Sharpton for alleged embezzlement from his charity, and I was assigned to see if there was a federal angle to the case. I had never even seen Rudy on my floor, and now he was at my very door. He wanted me to know he was personally following the investigation and knew I would do a good job. My heart thumped with anxiety and excitement as he gave me this pep talk standing in the doorway. He was counting on me. He turned to leave, then stopped. “Oh, and I want the fucking medal,” he said, then walked away. But we never made a federal case. The state authorities charged Sharpton, and he was acquitted after a trial. The medal stayed with its owner.

What does one wear to a ranch early in the morning? I wondered. I was stumped. I had enough good sense, thank God, to know my spiked black boots--the same boots I’d worn on basically every date with Marlboro Man thus far--were out of the question. I wouldn’t want them to get dirty, and besides that, people might look at me funny. I had a good selection of jeans, yes, but would I go for the dark, straight-leg Anne Kleins? Or the faded, boot-cut Gaps with contrast stitching? And what on earth would I wear on top? This could get dicey. I had a couple of nice, wholesome sweater sets, but the weather was turning warmer and the style didn’t exactly scream “ranch” to me. Then there was the long, flax-colored linen tunic from Banana Republic--one I loved to pair with a chunky turquoise necklace and sandals. But that was more Texas Evening Barbecue than Oklahoma Early-Morning Cattle Gathering. Then there were the myriad wild prints with sparkles and stones and other obnoxious adornments. But the last thing I wanted to do was spook the cattle and cause a stampede. I’d seen it happen in City Slickers when Billy Crystal fired up his cordless coffee grinder, and the results weren’t the least bit pretty. I considered cancelling. I had absolutely nothing to wear. Every pair of shoes I owned was black, except for a bright yellow pair of pumps I’d bought on a whim in Westwood one California day. Those wouldn’t exactly work, either. And I didn’t own a single shirt that wouldn’t loudly broadcast *CLUELESS CITY GIRL!* *CLUELESS CITY GIRL!* *CLUELESS CITY GIRL!* I wanted to crawl under my covers and hide.

One and two and three and four and five and six…” Oh, God don’t let me hurt him. “…and seven and eight and nine and ten and eleven…” Am I really doing this? Here? Is this real? “…and twelve and thirteen and fourteen and fifteen…” We’re in the middle of nowhere. No one is going to find us. Even the fire has gone out. “…and sixteen and seventeen and eighteen and nineteen…” He’s dead. I’m just beating on his body. “…and twenty and twenty-one and twenty-two and twenty-three and twenty-four…” My arms hurt. How can my arms hurt now? Blake. I can’t. I can’t be here without you. “…and twenty-five and twenty-six and twenty-seven and twenty-eight and twenty-nine and thirty.” The next step was simple: cover his mouth and fill his lungs with air. Breathe into him with life’s breath. Livia did so, licked her lips, and started compressions again. “And one and two and three and four and five and six and seven…” I’ve got to be positive. I have to know he’ll make it. “…and eight and nine and ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen and fourteen…” We’re going to grow old together, Blake. We’re going to hold hands and kiss. “…and fifteen and sixteen and seventeen and eighteen and nineteen…” I’m giving you all my energy. All this love and hope. It’s going from my heart to yours, through my hands. “…and twenty and twenty-one and twenty-two and twenty-three…” Feel it, Blake. Feel it. “…and twenty-four and twenty-five and twenty-six and twenty-seven…” I love you so much. I’m going to love you forever. Can you feel that, Blake? “…and twenty-eight and twenty-nine and thirty.” Livia leaned down, repositioned Blake’s head, and filled his lungs twice more. As she put her hands on his chest to keep her rhythm, she looked down at his face, at his skin. “And one and two and three and four and five and six…” Am I imagining that? Your skin? “…and seven and eight and nine and ten and eleven…” Blake! Blake, your skin! It’s just like glass, Blake. You’re really sparkling. I can see it. I can really see it. Your skin is amazing! Livia’s tears landed on her hard-pumping hands. Nothing would stop her from beating Blake’s heart for him now. Nothing. Not even the sound of people crashing through the woods. “…and twelve and thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and seventeen…” You’re glistening, Blake. I’ll never stop. I’ll never stop.

Truth or dare,” I ask, my voice edgy with anticipation and yearning. I know he’ll answer dare – and it will be the last one I give him. “Dare.” “Fuck me,” I beg. He immediately rolls over, gently resting his body on top of mine. I spread my legs, positioning his trim waist and hips in between my thighs. The hard outline of his cock grazes the front of my panties, sending my eyes rolling into the back of my head. He slides his hands under the covers. His fingers sneak under the waistband of my panties. He sits up to slowly glide them down my legs, revealing body in the moonlight. He tosses them, dripping wet, by the side of the bed and the then slides off his tight briefs. His erect cock stands at attention once removed from its fabric confines, pulsing up and down in rhythm with Cole’s racing heartbeat. With the covers now cast to the side, Cole leans over me, devouring my lips. My lips open and I yield him my tongue, which he handles adroitly, flicking it with his own and sucking it with his lips. He leans over to the side of the bed and bends down, picking up his shorts. The movement of his body over mine sends the peaks of his deeply sculpted abs gliding across my soft skin, generating a shiver that trembles through my body. He pulls out his wallet from his shorts pocket and extracts a condom. He kneels on the bed and works the condom down the expansive length of his solid shaft. He imposes his body back over mine, covering me with his huge torso. The length of his cock rests against my warm pussy, throbbing against it. I wrap my legs around his waist and lock my ankles together, pulling him closer toward me. His rough, masculine scent fills my nostrils. He kisses my neck, the light stubble on the side of his check rubbing against my skin. I buck my hips toward him, pressing his cock against me. The bottom of his shaft rests on my warm opening, the tip extends up to my belly button. A delicious anxiousness overtakes me. Will I really be able to fit all of him inside me? “Fuck, Emma, you’re so sexy,” he moans while raking his lips and tongue up and down my neck. He nibbles lightly on my earlobe, his hot, staggered breath brushing against the side of my face. “I want you inside me,” I pant to him. He lifts his hips up and steadies his cock at the precipice of my slick center. He looks me in the eye, and I nod, imploring him to plunge inside me. He does. I shut my eyes as a brief wave of pain washes over me, the shock of accommodating his massive size inside. It soon subsides and my body comfortably accustomed itself to his presence. He slowly pumps in and out of me. I bite down on my bottom lip, waves of pleasure erupting from my center and traversing every inch of my body. My stomach is in knots and my breath is quick and sharp. Every time he lifts his hips to thrust out, my wet cavern craves for him to come back – and he immediately does, pushing himself back in, the length of his shaft rubbing against my insides, the friction driving me wild with ecstasy. I lose track of time as he continues to thrust in and out. I buck my hips against him, hungry for his full length. I tighten my grip with my legs around his waist, greedy for his body to press against mine. “Fuck, Emma, shit,” he moans. I can only respond with unarticulated moans of pleasure and gasps for breath. “Oh, fuck, Cole, I’m gonna come,” I announce. I shut my eyes tight and wrap my arms around his neck, pulling him into me. He thrusts one more time, strongly, and my orgasm erupts. Pulses of pleasure shoot up and down my spine and turn my insides, my chest beats and my heartrate booms against my eardrums. The outside world disappears as I feel my body melting into Cole’s. Cole collapses next to me, a sheen of sweat glistening over his body in the moonlight, highlighting the twists and turns of his musculature. Slowly the world comes back into focus and a blissful

Merle took off to hide his front end under a dining room chair, ass in the air like always, as I scooped up the shoe he’d been gnawing on like a damn rawhide bone. “Just a shoe?” I asked in a deadly-quiet voice. “Just a shoe? This is a goddamned Manolo Blahnik! It cost four hundred and seventeen dollars!” I stared down at the ravaged shoe in my hand and felt a whimper bubble up from my chest. I swear to God, I was this close to crying as I looked down at my poor, ruined baby. “Holy shit! You paid four hundred and seventeen dollars for a pair of friggin’ shoes?” Trevor asked in astonishment. “Are you insane!” “Nooo, I said this shoe cost four hundred and seventeen dollars. As a pair, they cost eight thirty-five!” I shouted like the math made the situation more understandable. “Fuck me, cher. It’s a shoe. You walk around with it on your foot; you don’t live in the damn thing! You’re telling me that ugly-ass thing cost more than I paid in rent for a month at my apartment?” I sucked in an audible gasp. How dare he call my precious ugly. “Take it back,” I whispered. “What?” Trevor looked at me like I was a crazy person. “Take it back. This shoe is not ugly. It’s stunning,” I said, holding it to my chest and giving it a loving stroke. He let out a sarcastic grunt and eyeballed the pump like it was garbage. “Not so stunning covered in dog slobber,” he laughed. And I was a second away from stabbing him with the chewed-up stiletto heel. Those shoes deserved to be praised. They deserved to be worn to the most expensive restaurants and balls and red carpet premiers! And they deserved to be buried with dignity in the backyard under my pretty oak tree. And I didn’t think I was being ridiculous at all!

the American journalist Martha Gellhorn wrote after trekking across much of China in 1940. No worse luck could befall a human being than to be born and live there, unless by some golden chance you happened to be born one of the .00000099 percent who had power, money, privilege (and even then, even then). I pitied them all, I saw no tolerable future for them, and I longed to escape away from what I had escaped into: the age-old misery, filth, hopelessness and my own claustrophobia inside that enormous country. Skinny, sweaty rickshaw pullers strained at their large-wheeled contraptions to provide transportation to the rich. The scenes of nearly naked coolies towing barges up canals and rivers, leaning so far against their harnesses as to be almost horizontal to the ground, were an emblem, picturesque and horrible at the same time, of the unrelenting strain of everyday life in China, as were such other standard images as the women with leathery skin barefoot in the muck planting and weeding, the farmers covered in sweat at the foot pumps along fetid canals or carrying their loads of brick or straw on balancing poles slung over their shoulders or moving slowly and patiently behind water buffalo pulling primitive plows. The fly-specked hospitals, the skinny, crippled beggars, the thousands and thousands of villages made of baked mud whose houses, as one visitor described them, were “smoky, with gray walls and black tiled roofs; the inhabitants, wearing the invariable indigo-dyed cloth … moving about their business in an inextricable confusion of scraggy chickens, pigs, dogs, and babies.

Because, visible through the slashed covers, the bone-deep wounds that crisscross the couple’s bodies pump blood. Some of the flaps of skin resulting from glancing blows are like gills, breathing. Yet even as the cries die away, he carries on.

It was the last of the dancers whom my Master embraced next. He caught the man’s face in his hands as if it were love, and drank again, grasping at the man’s throat so that I saw the blood just for an instant, a veritable deluge which my Master then covered with his mouth and his bent head. I could see the blood pump into my Master’s hand. I couldn’t wait for him to raise his head, and this he did very soon, sooner even than he had left his last victim, and he looked at me dreamily and his countenance afire. He looked as human as any human in the room, even crazed with his special drink as they were with their common wine.

What they were attempting to do was to bring all the different points of view closer to each other. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad notion, but the methods that were being used to realise it were built almost entirely on hushing up any antagonism and difficulty. They lied away the problems. They glossed over them with constant improvements in material standards, and hid them behind a fog of meaningless talk pumped out via the radio, press and TV. And the phrase that covered it all was, then as now, ‘harmless entertainment’. The idea was, of course, that the contained infections would heal themselves over time. It didn’t happen. The individual felt physically looked after but robbed of his spiritual autonomy; politics and society became diffuse and incomprehensible; everything was acceptable but nothing was interesting. The individual reacted with bewilderment and gradually growing indifference. And at the bottom of it all there was this indefinable terror. ‘Terror,’ the man went on. ‘I don’t know what of. Do you?

On an bed, surrounded by a confusion of potted pants, exotic palms and cut flowers, faintly over-sung by the notes of unseen birds, which seem to have forgotten - left without the usual silence cover, which, like cloaks on funeral urns, are cast over their cages at night by good housewives - half flung off the support of the cushions from which, in a moment of threatened consciousness she had turned her head, lay the young woman, heavy and dishevelled. Her legs, in white flannel trousers, were spread as in a dance, the thick-laquered pumps looking too lively for the arrested step. Her hands, long and beautiful, lay on either side of her face.

Lilian felt a fire burning in her soul, which manifested into ethereal flames that burned around her like an aura. She was so pumped up. They were going to do this! They had to do this! Then, once they started protesting, their sheer awesomeness would make everyone else snap to their senses and join them—just like in a shōnen manga! Yes, she could see it all now: Lilian stood in front of the camera, Kevin by her side, holding her hand. In front of them was a woman with a microphone and a cameraman stood behind her, filming their triumphant moment. “Ms. Pnév̱ma, you and your mate have just brought peace between humans and yōkai. What are you going to do next?” asked the woman with the microphone. “We’re going to celebrate by having sex!” Lilian declared. “Lots and lots of sex,” Kevin added. “Uh huh…” “And then we’re going to Disneyland!” The newscaster stared at her oddly, and even Kevin was looking at her like she’d said something strange. In response to their expressions, Lilian covered her mouth with her hand in a very Kotohime-esque manner. “Ufufufu, sorry. I’ve always wanted to say that at least once.

Ed, are you still seeing that redhead?” ... Alex counts out his spaces and sets the dice in the center of the board. “You’re talking about the one with the eye patch?” Okay, that jogs my memory. Ed isn’t amused. “She did not have an eye patch.” “Actually, I remember her, too,” I say. “I distinctly recall seeing a patch covering an eye.” I motion to the board and the neat row of hotels lined up there. “PS, it’s your turn and if you roll anything other than a two—which will land you in Jail—you are fu-ucked.” “Slumlords,” Ed mutters, but rolls the dice anyway. I have no idea how, but he does—miraculously—roll a two, and does a celebratory fist pump before scooting his little car into the space marked Jail. A momentary reprieve from the rows and rows of Alex’s hotels. “And it wasn’t an eye patch, it was a small bandage. We were being . . . amorous and things got a little crazy.” “A little crazy as in . . .” I trail off, deciding I might not really want the answer. Reid laughs over the top of his glass. When Ed doesn’t immediately clarify, though, his smile slowly straightens, and a hush falls over the room as we’re all left to mentally unravel this, logistically. “Wait. Seriously?” I tidy up the meager remains of my money. “He did say it was a small bandage.

Lily pulled the quilt over her and rolled to one side so that her back was to him. Now that her passion had been appeased, her pride was back in force, and it was painfully bruised. She heard the clank of metal against metal, then felt a cold rush of air as Caleb opened the back door and went out. She knew he’d gone to the pump for more water. Lily didn’t move until much later, when he crossed the room to swat her lightly on her quilt-covered bottom. “Your bath water is hot again,” he said quietly. “Lock the door when I go.” Lily turned to look up at him. “Caleb—” He laid an index finger to her lips to silence her. “There’s been enough nonsense,” he told her matter-of-factly. “I’ll be away for a day or so. When I get back I want to find you living in my house, where you belong.” Before Lily could recover enough to respond, he was gone. She

Guys, he’s hurt bad.” The blonde scrambled to him. She tore the wounded boy’s shirt open. A river of blood ran down his chest. “Oh, God, no,” the blonde cried. Lana pushed her aside and laid a hand against the pumping wound. “He’ll live,” Lana said. “I’ll fix him.” “What do you mean, you’ll fix him?” the blonde demanded. “We need stitches, we need a doctor. Look at how he’s bleeding.” Lana said, “What’s your name?” “Astrid, what does it matter? He’s…” She stopped talking then and leaned in close to see. “The bloodflow is slowing.” “Yeah. I noticed that, too,” Lana said dryly. “Relax. He’ll be fine. In fact…” She tilted her head to get a better look at him. “In fact, I’ll bet when he’s not covered in blood, he’s cute. Your boyfriend?” “That’s not what it’s about,” Astrid snapped. Then, in a low voice, like she didn’t want the others to hear, she said, “Kind of.

I don’t get it,” she said. “I mean, why teenagers? Why pick the most immature people on earth to handle such a huge responsibility?” Driggs looked up at the stars, then back at Lex. “You know Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?” Lex stared. “The world of pure imagination?” he added. “I’m familiar with the world of pure imagination,” Lex said dryly. “I’m just skeptical as to how manufacturing candy is in any way similar to reaping mortal souls.” “You know how at the end, Willy Wonka gives Charlie the factory?” Driggs went on. “Do you remember the reason he chose a child?” “Yeah, he said adults would want to do everything their own way, whereas a child—” “Would learn all the secrets,” said Driggs, “and keep them secret.” He flicked a pebble off the roof. “I mean, now that you’ve seen what really goes on here, have you thought for even a second of ratting us out?” “No, but—” The wordless anxiety that had been pumping through her veins ever since Uncle Mort touched that old woman came spilling out all at once. “I just find it disturbing that people—we ordinary, mortal, dumbass people—are in charge of all this. And we’ve covered it up for, what, millennia? You really expect me to believe that?” “Just because it’s the biggest secret in the history of the world doesn’t make it any less true.” Even Lex couldn’t think of a snarky answer to this. “Did I just blow your mind?” Driggs asked. “I think I just blew your mind.” With that, he pulled out a handful of at least a dozen Oreos from his pocket and shoved three into his mouth

Because the amygdala can become hypersensitive, chronic stress can make you more jumpy and anxious. This is why a war veteran with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will hit the floor and cover his head when he hears the loud blast of fireworks. Before he has a chance to think about it, the blast reminds him of an improvised explosive device (IED) exploding or a gunshot. His amygdala triggers the fight-or-flight response—a false alarm. When you experience severe trauma or excessive chronic stress, the once-cooperative partnership between your hippocampus and your amygdala becomes skewed in favor of the amygdala. This is because the hippocampus is assaulted by excess cortisol and glutamate when the amygdala is pumped up. Cortisol and glutamate act to excite the amygdala, and the more it is excited, the more easily it is triggered.

Oh, I see how it is.” Matt reached both his arms into the air. “Hang on, let me just do a few stretches.” Then he rolled his head from front to back. “Loosen up a bit.” His little spectacle made me laugh, a genuine These are my friends; why not enjoy myself? kind of laugh, and my body finally relaxed. “Hey, laugh all you want, but just remember half of my team is completely sober. We have a fifty-percent advantage.” He slung his arm around Taylor. “Or disadvantage—have you never seen me play beer pong? I kind of suck,” she admitted. “Shh, babe, this is the mental game. We’re just psyching them out. I know you can’t play for shit.” I lifted my hair into a ponytail and pulled a hair tie from my wrist. “You do realize we can hear you, right?” “You do realize I can hear you too?” Taylor added. “I mean, way to boost my confidence right before the big game,” she teased. “I know, babe, and I’m sorry, but look—it’s working. Isla’s getting ready for a throwdown. She’s pulling her hair up and she’s all ‘Hold my purse.’ ” “Purse?” Taylor mouthed. I shrugged and forced back another smile. Game face, right? Landon chuckled. “Okay, okay, let’s go. Someone needs to get their ass kicked before they just pass out altogether. I’m winning this game by merit, not default.” As the game started, I found myself letting go. Colby drifted from the forefront of my thoughts. Forgotten were Landon’s supposed feelings for me. And I had fun. I laughed at how incredibly off our aims were. And when one of us succeeded by chance, we’d turn to one another and high-five without even a second thought. We were in sync. We were having fun. And we were winning. The perfect team. Landon tossed the final ball. It bounced effortlessly into a cup, and I squealed as he covered his mouth with his hand. “Ohh, is that what I think it is?” he mocked the losing team. “Isla, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe we just kicked some serious ass.” I stared at the table and nodded, my expression one of mock-seriousness. “Why Landon, I believe you are correct.” He then busted out some sort of celebratory end zone dance. Laughing, I nudged him and shook my head. “Okay, okay.” But when he wouldn’t stop, I finally grabbed both his hands. “Oh my god, we won. Now don’t spoil that with whatever this is!” He flipped his hands so that he was now holding my wrist and tugged me into his arms. Then he pumped one hand into the air and shouted, “Victory!

Fuck,” Syn growled. He was still thinking of solutions when he heard something scrape against his doorknob. Something metal was tampering with the lock. If he were anywhere else in the apartment he wouldn’t have heard it, but he was right next to the door, so he could hear someone trying to get in. He instinctually moved to stand in front of Furi, pulling his Sig from its holster and unlocking the safety. He felt Furi tensing behind him. He could hear the tool manipulating the lock mechanism. Is this bastard really fuckin’ brave enough to break into my home in broad goddamn daylight? Syn was in awe at the size of this guy’s balls. The closet door was arm's length away. He yanked it open and grabbed the blanket off the top shelf, pulling his loaded twelve-gauge shotgun down just as the door eased open. All Syn could see was the tip of a black boot. Furi griped his shoulder. “Hey. Listen to this!” Syn yelled out. He put the stock of the gun firmly against his shoulder and pulled the pump back in two extremely swift moves. The sound was extremely loud and intimidating in the quiet room, by far the scariest sound an intruder could hear. “Don’t shoot, Dirty Harry.” The irritating chuckle that followed was unmistakable. “Son of a bitch,” Syn grumbled. “Day, have you lost your fuckin’ mind?” His Lieutenants came all the way through the door, Day laughing at the pissed look on Syn's face and Furi leaning on the wall behind him recovering from a panic attack. “Syn. What the hell is going on man? Are you really gonna put a buckshot in someone you think is breakin’ into your little-ass apartment? Because, you do know that that’s excessive force, right?” God asked, looking at him expectantly. “I was just scaring them off. No one comes in after hearing that sound, trust me.” Syn removed the shell and placed the gun back in the closet, covering it with the blanket. He turned to look at Furi. He looked a little pale but he was okay. Syn spun back around, “Day. Knock on my damn door like a normal visitor and wait for me to say come in!” Day pfftd, plopping down on the couch. “You don’t invite the wind. The wind just–” “Stop saying that stupid wind bullshit. Because if your door is shut and you weather guard that bitch then the wind stays the fuck out until ... You. Open. The. Door.” Syn’s dark eyes bored into Day’s hazel ones. God’s laugh was raspy, while Day looked bewildered. “But we’re family.” “Oh for fuck’s sake,” Syn grumbled, he had to get going; he had no time to explain to Day about how to behave in civilized society. He turned serious eyes back on Furi. “I gotta go, but I really think–” Furi pulled Syn to him before he could finish the sentence, kissed him hard on the mouth before turning, heading to the bedroom. “Just concentrate on your job and don’t take any officers away from their assignments to follow me. There could be someone out there who really needs their help.” Syn didn’t get to say anything else because Furi had closed the bedroom door. End of discussion.

Damn it, Ash. Fuck me!” Ash folded himself over Cael and pulled partially out before snapping his hips against Cael’s ass, making Cael cry out. Ash snapped his hips again. The sound of his skin smacking against Cael’s coupled with Cael’s pleas for more drove Ash over the edge. He pumped himself into Cael, pushing in deep and fucking him hard. With a grunt, he wrapped an arm around Cael’s neck, his hand covering Cael’s mouth. “That’s it, sweetheart. Fuck yeah.” Cael covered Ash’s hand with his, their fingers lacing together. Cael held on tight, his cries and moans muffled by Ash’s hand as he pounded Cael’s ass, his larger body covering his younger lover and his weight pressing him into the mattress that moved beneath them. The headboard slammed against the wall as Ash drove himself deep into Cael over and over. He rotated his hips, his breath coming out ragged as the pressure built inside him. “Fuck.

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McSorley: "Anderson, this is the Fitzgerald. I have sustained some topside damage. I have a fence rail laid down, two vents lost or damaged, and a list. I'm checking down. Will you stay by me ‘til I get to Whitefish?" Cooper: "Charlie on that Fitzgerald. Do you have your pumps going?" McSorley: "Yes, both of them.” It was at this point, according to a report issued later by the National Transportation Safety Board. that water began to pour “into the ballast tanks and tunnel through topside damage and flooding into the cargo hold through non-weather tight hatch covers”. This led the Fitzgerald to list to one side, even though the crew was running two of her six bilge pumps.

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

Eye Hate U" U have just accessed the Hate Experience Do U wish 2 change your entry? Very well, please enjoy your experience I never thought that U would be the one After all the things that we've been through U gave your body 2 another in the name of fun I hope U had some baby, if not, boo hoo It's so sad but I hate U like a day without sunshine It's so bad but I hate U cuz U're all that's ever on my mind Honey, I hate U - Now everyday would be a waste of time Cuz I hate U I never thought that I could feel this way 2 fall in love was a table reserved 4 fools Say U're sorry if U wanna but it's all in vain I'm out the door sweet baby, that's right, we're through It's so sad but I hate U like a day without sunshine It's so bad but I hate U cuz U're all that's ever on my mind Honey, I hate U - Now everyday would be a waste of time Cuz I hate U This court is now in session Would the defendant please rise? State your name 4 the court Never mind (Billy Jack Bitch) U're being charged with one 2 many counts of heartbreaking In the 1st degree I don't give a damn about the others My main concern is U and me Your honor, may I call 2 the stand my one and only witness? A girl that know damn well she didn't have no damn business I know what U did, how U did it and uh.. who U did it with So U might as well plead guilty cuz U sure can't plead the 5th Now raise your right hand Do U swear 2 tell the whole truth Not the half truth like U used 2 so help U God? Nod your head one time if U hear me If U don't, I'll have 2 use the rod Anything 2 make U see that uh.. U're gonna miss me Yeah, U're gonna miss me Uh, uh, uh, oh! If it please the court I'd like 2 have the defendant place her hands behind her back So I can tie her up tight and get into the act The act of showing her how good it used 2 be I want it 2 be so good she falls back in love with me Close your eyes I'm gonna cover your ass with this sheet And I want U 2 pump your hips like U used 2 And, baby, U better stay on the beat Did U do 2 your other man the same things that U did 2 me? Right now I hate U so much I wanna make love until U see That it's killin' me, baby, 2 be without U Cuz all I ever wanted 2 do was 2 be with U ... ow! I hate U (I hate U) Because I love U (Because I love U) But I can't love U (I can't love U) Because I hate U (I hate U) Prince, The Gold Experience (1995)

He had to get away—no matter what, he had to escape. He ducked into a yard and effortlessly vaulted a six-foot fence. Running for all his life was worth, he headed toward the Santa Ana Freeway, leaving his black knapsack in the yard of a house that abutted the highway. He went over another fence and ran down a hill covered with thick foliage to the freeway. Cars zoomed by at seventy miles per hour. Breathing hard, his heart pumping blood furiously, his legs weak, so covered by sweat it looked as if he’d just stepped from a shower, Richard waited for the right moment and darted across the freeway, nearly getting run over. Once on the east side of the freeway, he made his way up another hill, vaulted yet another fence, and grabbed a bus going south, paid his fare, and sat down.

On one particular night, I was determined to get a half-decent night of sleep because I had a big meeting at work the next morning, where I was talking to the school board about the special education program at our school. It was a really, really important meeting, and I didn’t think I could get through it on an hour of sleep. I pumped Emma full of two bottles of milk, hoping she’d conk out, but knowing it was a crapshoot. I told Noah about the meeting and emphasized how important it was. I had to get a decent night of sleep. He swore he understood. So when Emma woke up screaming at two in the morning, I expected him to get up with her. “I’ve got a headache, Claire,” he mumbled into his pillow. “Can’t you get her?” I had a headache too. I had a headache almost all the time these days, as well as big purple circles under my eyes. Skipping out on my parental duties was never an option. “You know I have a big meeting tomorrow.” Noah squeezed his eyes shut. After a long minute of Emma’s cries increasing in volume, he got out of bed. And slammed the door shut behind him when he left the bedroom. Just as the cries subsided and I started to drift off again, the screams abruptly started again. A few seconds later, Noah came back into the bedroom. He flopped down on the bed and covered his head with the pillow. “I can’t deal with her,” he said. “You have to do it.” “But I told you, I have a meeting tomorrow!” “Well, I have a headache. I’m not getting up.” And that was it, as far as he was concerned. He acted like Emma was my baby, he was doing me a favor by trying to help, but if he didn’t want to do it, he didn’t have to. I remember staring at him in the dark bedroom, waiting to see if he would change his mind. He didn’t budge. I had to get up and spend the rest of the night comforting Emma. He never apologized for that one. Even though I was a wreck at my meeting the next day, and he ended up sleeping in after I dropped Emma and Aidan off at daycare. It was so incredibly unfair. After that, it seemed like we were at war more and more frequently. He never carried his weight when it came to the children and the housework, and what’s worse, he didn’t care. He told me all I did was nag him. We stopped doing things together as a family—I preferred to go out with the kids myself so I didn’t have to watch him play with his phone instead of talking to me. And we never did anything together as a couple. I can’t remember our last date night. For a while, we were making an effort to get a babysitter and go out, but I can’t remember the last time either of us even suggested it. I kept telling myself things would get better as the kids got older. But now they’re older. And it turned out, our marriage got too broken to fix.

When the time comes, fight with all your heart. We’re warriors, Hadjar. We don’t stay at home and wait for our wife to milk the goats and cook us dinner. No, our dinner is the enemy’s flesh and blood. We don’t die in our beds, surrounded by our children and their children. No, we die in our own shit, on the battlefield, amongst the stench and corpses of our comrades. We don’t sow, we don’t plow, we don’t write poetry, we don’t sing ballads. We fight, Hadjar. We fight so that others can caress their tired spouses, hold their grandchildren, paint great works of art, and write songs. Preferably about us. We’re warriors, Hadjar. Our hands are covered in the blood of our friends and enemies alike. But that doesn’t mean that we have to suffer for it. And that’s why I’m telling you to enjoy your life. What is your life, disciple? What is the life of a warrior?” He gripped the Black Blade. The answer was simple: a warrior’s life was their sword. The only thing that stayed with them until their death. Hadjar opened his eyes. He looked at the world around him as if he were seeing it for the first time. His heart was still beating, pumping blood through his veins. If his heart was still beating, his sword wasn’t broken. His sword was his heart. Every wind current that was one with him was his sword. Every rustle of the autumn leaves that was one with him was his sword. Every ray of sunshine, every unshed tear, every musical note, every speck of dust, every stone… was his sword. The world was one with him, and therefore, with his sword as well. But if the world and Hadjar were one with his sword, then who wielded the blade? The same person who controlled his life — Hadjar. Tarisfal Orune, the greatest swordsman in the history of Darnassus, hadn’t committed suicide, but had instead taught his disciple his last and most important lesson: Hadjar ruled his life and his sword. And his sword ruled the world around him.

Chief I believe I can honestly say that although you're an honest-to-Buddha one-man deathsquad and that if you were to ask nicely I would give up my lucrative career in the Corps and start pumping out your babies as fast as you can put them in me, there is no way I'm gonna run across fifty goddamn meters of open terrain covered by 3 jackal snipers that I can SEE just to jump into an open vehicle.

The Human Heart CONSIDER, FOR example, the human heart and its accompanying circulatory system. The human heart is vastly superior to any human artifact. Every second it undergoes a cycle of contraction and expansion, and beats continually and faithfully for the duration of a human lifetime. It starts beating in the womb and in eighty years will beat about two billion times. The cardiac muscle itself consists of an interconnected syncytium of billions of muscle cells specially adapted to resist fatigue and contract autonomously without external activation or control. Within the cardiac muscle cells there are trillions of tightly packed molecular arrays of contractile filaments whose regular rhythmic lengthening and shortening generate the cardiac cycle. At rest each of us needs about a fourth a liter of oxygen per minute to satisfy our energy needs.30 This involves the movement every minute of one hundred trillion oxygen molecules across every square millimeter of the alveolar surface of the lungs. And with every contraction the heart pumps one hundred billion red blood cells through hundreds of kilometers of tiny capillaries.31 Coursing through the capillaries in the lungs, each of these tiny nano-machines carries one billion molecules of oxygen (O2) from the lungs to the tissues, each loosely bound to an iron atom in the hemoglobin. By the heart’s unceasing activity it ensures a bountiful supply of oxygen to provide us with the vital energy of life. The red cells themselves, no less than the heart, are also miracles of bioengineering. During its 120-day lifetime in the circulatory system, each red cell makes hundreds of thousands of circuits, covering hundreds of miles. It is only because the red cell membranes are uniquely soft and strong—one hundred times softer than a latex membrane of comparable thickness but stronger than steel32—that they can withstand these repeated deformations as they squeeze though the smallest capillaries, which in many cases have a diameter of five microns, almost half the diameter of the average red blood cell.

Our kiss was messy, biting and slamming our teeth together, but I couldn’t be smooth or sensual with a random man slobbering all over my throbbing cock. And God did he slobber. I could feel spit sliding down my shaft, my balls, and his fingers pumping the root of my dick while getting covered in the mess. And he was groaning around my meat. Releasing sexy noises that made my balls seize up tightly. The sound of him drew Oli’s attention, and he spoke against my swollen lips. “He looks gorgeous on his knees.” Suspenders

As cadets, we constantly hammered, scraped and wire brushed rusting steel, before applying red lead paint. Most of the paint we used was Navy surplus or a concoction made up of fish oil, lampblack and china dryer. We found that by mixing all different color paints, we would wind up with a paint we called “Sh-t Grindle Brown.” Inventiveness was key as we repaired, replaced, and painted the State of Maine from stem to stern. This work, being in addition to our studies, consumed all of our time. How we managed to fit all of this into the time we had, is still a mystery. The conversion of the ship was labor intensive and expensive, but the U.S. Maritime Commission contributed to the Academy’s financial needs where possible. The mounting expenses remained a challenge but we didn’t give up. We never did finish the entire conversion prior to our first cruise, but one thing we managed to do was paint over the name “USS Comfort” and hand letter in her new name “State of Maine.” If you looked carefully, you could still see her previous name outlined by a welded bead, but this was a minor detail that would eventually be taken care of. Perhaps because of my experience with the letters on the front of “Richardson Hall,” the task of lettering her name and her new homeport on the stern became mine. Much of the ship’s superstructure was still covered with a sticky preservative made up of paint and crank case oil, which never really dried and indelibly got onto our working uniforms. However, from a distance, you couldn’t tell the difference and it looked all right, but more importantly it prevented further rusting. One bulkhead at a time, using a mixture of gasoline and paint remover, we scraped the gunk off and repainted it. The engineers had been busy rebuilding the pumps and generators, as well as repacking steam pipes with asbestos wrapping. We finally got the ship to where we could sail her to Portland under her own power. The twin Babcock and Wilcox heater-type boilers had to be repaired and re-bricked there. After this, we would continue on to the dry dock in Boston for additional work and the hull inspection that was required below the water line.

Far below the waterline in the very lowest compartment of a ship you will find a deck covering the bottom of the vessel from the centerline, most frequently the keel, to the sides creating a space called the inner bottom. The purpose of this space is to protect the ship from flooding if the hull were to become compromised or breached by a grounding. This deck, known as the bilge is also the collecting place for water and oil that flows from spills, rough seas, rain, leaks in the hull, engine oil and lubricant. The bilge being a vast expanse would be difficult to pump dry if it wasn’t for collection wells that are designed to pump the contents into holding tanks. These wells were and are still known as a stuffing box or a rose box. In years past these wells were pumped directly into the sea without considering the adverse consequences to the ecology. The discharge of bilge sludge is now normally restricted and for commercial vessels discharging this toxic waste is totally outlawed and regulated under Marpol Annex I. On larger ships waste water can be passively treated by methods such as bioremediation, which uses bacteria or archaea to break down the hydrocarbons in the waste and bilge water. Once treated the water could be safely returned to the sea. Pumping the bilges was a constant undertaking by the ship’s engineers and was necessary to keep the ship afloat. There were times however when the drain in the rose box would become clogged, and that was when the lowest ranking member of the engine department was called upon to clear the blockage. On most ships this task would fall to the “Wiper” or on a training ship a “Mug or Plebe.” Never knowing what had clogged the drain in the rose box we were ready for anything. When, as a midshipman, my turn came to reach into the rose box I came up with rags, paper and thick gunk. Disgusting as it was it could have been worse! I have heard tales of dead rats and once the ship’s pet cat clogging the drain, but it was all in a day’s work. Coming back up on deck the sun shone brighter and the flying fish were a welcome sight!

Aren’t our dresses exquisite?” Performing a few happy waltz steps, Corinna turned in a circle. “Um, yes. Pull your sleeves up, Juliana, will you?” She tugged at them, but the dress was designed to be off the shoulder. “They won’t go.” He eyed their dresses’ high waistlines and scooped necklines, designed to accentuate the bust. “You’re all going to cover”—at an apparent loss for words, he patted his own chest—“with one of those scarf things, right?” “A fichu?” Madame sniffed. “I think not. These are evening gowns, my lord.” “They don’t look like the pictures my sisters showed me.” “The pictures were but a starting point, my lord. By the time the fashion plates make it here from France, they’re already beginning to pass out of style.” “We shall not be caught in last month’s fashions,” Juliana added. “These gowns are the thing.” “Not in this house, they aren’t!” “Griffin. Good news. The foundry will have the new part cast by the end of the day.” Tris walked in, scanned the room with a low whistle, and settled on Alexandra. “By George, you ladies will put every other girl to shame.” “My sisters won’t be wearing these dresses,” Griffin said. “Of course they will.” Tris tore his gaze from Alexandra and turned to his friend. “While I take apart the pump, you’ll want to head out to the vineyard and see that work on the new pipeline is resumed.” “Very well.” Griffin turned to leave, then swiveled back. “I’m not paying for those dresses,” he warned. “Not until they’re made decent.” Madame Rodale gave a little French-sounding “hmmph.” Tris laughed. “Listen to yourself, old man. You’ve been on campaign far too long. Don’t you want men to find your sisters appealing? Irresistible? Marriageable?” “Not if they’re men like…” “Like us?” Tris suggested helpfully. Griffin’s “hmmph” put the mantua-maker’s to shame. “I need to get to the vineyard,” he muttered and left. “Madame

So goddamn hot. Fuck you so good. Fuck you until you belong to me,” Furi demanded, pumping his hips like he was a man possessed. “Yes.” “Yes. What?” Furi wheezed. He gripped Syn’s wet hair, his own sweat pouring off him like rain. Although Syn’s face was contorted, Furi recognized it as a mask of sheer ecstasy. He looked so damn beautiful. Furi began to lose his rhythm, “Gonna make me fuckin’ come, baby.” “Yours. Yours. Yours,” Syn chanted. Furi didn’t know if Syn was just lost in the pleasure, but he’d take that declaration for now. “Yes, mine.” Furi reached around and gripped Syn’s ... what the fuck? ... very soft cock. Furi’s brow furrowed. For a moment he thought he wasn’t making him feel good, but then it hit him like a slug to his chest. Syn had already come. Furi leaned over Syn’s back and drug his hand along the covers beneath him, his fingers landing in a pool of cooling come. “Motherfucker,” Furi hissed. The thought of Syn coming without Furi even touching his cock sent Furi hurling into his own orgasm.

He took my hand and led me to a slightly less crowded corner of the large dance floor. “Watch,” he said, placing my hand on his shoulder and cupping my waist. He took my other hand in his. “The man leads. As I’m stepping forward, you’re stepping back. It’s an eight beat—one, two, three, pause. One, two, three, pause…” I looked down at his feet, trying to catch the rhythm. It seemed simple enough. After a minute I was able to follow, although I admit I stepped on his toes one or twice in the process. “Good, good,” Victor murmured encouragingly. “How did you learn to do this?” I asked, concentrating on getting my feet right. “My big sister—the same one that picked out your dress. She made me come with her when she took lessons so she never had to worry about getting a partner.” “You’re really good,” I said admiringly as he moved me around the dance floor. “You will be too,” he assured me. “You’re getting it—you’re just a little stiff. Here…” He spun me around suddenly so that my back was to his front. Then he put both large hands on my hips and began to move me in time to the thumping, Latin beat. I bit back a gasp as we moved, my body finding the perfect rhythm at last now that his front was flush against my back. The music pumped and all around us couples were flashing by in the dark but I barely even saw them—my entire attention was given to Victor—his hands on my hips, his body against mine. His big body covered me, surrounded me. His scent filled my senses—leather and fur and warm shafts of sunlight in the forest but something else too—a heat that matched my own.

The rounded, transparent covers from the growth capsules radiated a warm bluish-white light in the darkened hall, and inside each lay a naked body attached to a ghostly face. Affixed to the control panel of every capsule were lines containing air and liquid nourishment, pumping and maintaining the lives within while creating a constant hum that vibrated faintly throughout the room. The scientists shuffled amongst them. They spoke quietly and checked the ever-present dials, blinking lights and graphs, as they constantly monitored the life signs of the valuable occupants inside each chamber.

The trash had no intelligence value. But it was useful as a prank. The next day the trash went out with every item, including a few well-thumbed Playboys as a special gift, covered in a thick slime of Aqua Lube, a green grease used for lubricating pipe joints that is designed for use in deep-ocean environments. It is detergent- and solvent-resistant and is famous for its ability to ruin clothes and stay on skin for days, even after vigorous washing. To make sure the Soviets didn’t miss a single bag of slimy mail, the crew began to pump acetylene gas into the bags. This made them extra-buoyant, so much so that they’d skip across the waves when thrown overboard, often causing the SB-10 to change course and chase them.

Two days later, on June 19, Tobias and Chappell arrived on the island. Chappell had never been on the island when the pump was running and he was delighted. So delighted, in fact, that he agreed to extend Dad’s contract until the end of the year. Tobias agreed to cover the fuel costs during that time. Everyone was happy. The next day, Dad and Bobby resumed drilling in the Money Pit and, almost immediately, instead of encountering hard clay, they hit beach sand. That caused great excitement, as it indicated that their drill had found the spot where the original inlet water tunnel joined the Money Pit. But the next day, the pump shaft snapped and water immediately began to rise in the Money Pit. Bobby and Dad had to evacuate immediately. Later, in a letter to Frank Sparham, Dad described the event: Today we took the diamond (drill) and everything needed down. We got all set up and in the same hole and only a few inches of progress when the shaft snapped. Mildred heard the change of racket at once and nearly had a fit. We got everything out of the way and loaded in the (hoist) car in time. Could have done it faster but you know how these sudden emergencies are, both of us tried to do what the other fellow had been doing. We soon saw that was no good so we just went back to loading the (hoist) car as if we were through for the day and let the hoist bring up the electric cable.

Fuck, I love when you make those sounds.” His admission only makes me moan again, grinding against his hand as he pumps his fingers, thumb teasing my clit. “I—I’m close.” “You’re doing so good,” he purrs in my ear, bringing a hand up and covering mine with it, squeezing my breast and rutting against me. “You’re being so good for me. I might just let you come.