Screaming Reels Quotes

I walked a block on rubbery knees, feeling the way I did the time a van clipped my bike and sent me reeling into a line of parked cars. Ella had dropped her cigarette and jumped on the fallen bike, screaming at the top of her lungs as she sped after the car. Bleeding in three places, I watched her go, glad she knew I'd rather have retribution than comfort.

Sciona was far -irretrievably far- from steady. She was miles out to sea beyond the edge of the known world, where no rope could reel her back and no one would hear her scream. "No thank you, sir. I'm fine.

There was a scream. From Logan. He stood just inside my open window. At the sight of me — and after the scream — he spun around and tried to duck out. In his panic, he miscalculated and slammed his forehead into the edge of the frame. The impact reeled him back. He stumbled and landed on his backside, holding his hand to his head, moaning.

I pull back my fist and slam it into his face, then, as he’s reeling backward, I do it again and again, but he catches the last one and slams my hand to the wall next to me, crushing my wrist until I cry out. He pushes his face into mine, his smirk transformed into a snarl. “You want to hate me? Fine. You will still be screaming my name when you come on my cock.

The boats bumped against the side of the ship, the sailors and passengers shouted lustily, and somewhere a child, as if crushed to death, choked itself with screaming. The damp wind blew through the doors, and outside on the sea, from a reeling boat which showed the flag of the Hotel Royal, a fellow with guttural French exaggeration yelled unceasingly : '* Rrroy-al ! Hotel Rrroy-al ! " intending to lure passengers aboard his craft. Then the Gentleman from San Francisco, feeling, as he ought to have felt, quite an old man, thought with anguish and spite of all these " Royals," " Splendids,' 1 " Excelsiors," and of these greedy, good-for-nothing, garlic-stinking fellows called Italians. Once, during a halt, on opening his eyes and rising from the sofa he saw under the rocky cliff-curtain of the coast a heap of such miserable stone hovels, all musty and mouldy, stuck on top of one another by the very water, among the boats, and the rags of all sorts, tin cans and brown fishing-nets, and,remembering that this was the very Italy he had come to enjoy, he was seized with despair. . .

Turn it beautiful. His words came faintly at first, but they came again and again, always softly, always with the insistence of an elder commanding wisdom. Turn it all to beauty. She walked to the rail. When she turned and sat upon it, she heard a sailor in the crowd murmur that she might play them a tune. She hoped he was right. She needed the voices to be wrong. Fin raised the instrument to the cleft of her neck and closed her eyes. She emptied her mind and let herself be carried back to her earliest memory, the first pain she ever knew: the knowledge that her parents didn’t want her. The despair of rejection coursed through her. It fathered a knot of questions that bound her, enveloped her. Waves of uncertainty and frailty shook her to the bones. Her body quivered with anger and hopelessness. She reeled on the edge of a precipice. She wanted to scream or to throw her fists but she held it inside; she struggled to control it. She fought to subjugate her pain, but it grew. It welled up; it filled her mind. When she could hold it no more, exhausted by defiance and wearied by years of pretending not to care, Bartimaeus’s words surrounded her. Got to turn it beautiful. She dropped her defenses. She let weakness fill her. She accepted it. And the abyss yawned. She tottered over the edge and fell. The forces at war within her raced down her arms and set something extraordinary in motion; they became melody and harmony: rapturous, golden. Her fingers coaxed the long-silent fiddle to life. They danced across the strings without hesitation, molding beauty out of the miraculous combination of wood, vibration, and emotion. The music was so bright she felt she could see it. The poisonous voices were outsung. Notes raged out of her in a torrent. She had such music within her that her bones ached with it, the air around her trembled with it, her veins bled it. The men around fell still and silent. Some slipped to the deck and sat enraptured like children before a travelling bard.

The glove comes off, flops loosely over, and there's suddenly horror beating into his brain, smashing, pounding, battering. He reels a little in his chair, has to hold onto the edge of the table with both hands, at the impact of it. A clawlike thing - two of the finger extremities already bare of flesh as far as the second joint; two more with only shriveled, bloodless, rotting remnants of it adhering, only the thumb intact, and that already unhealthy-looking, flabby. A dead hand - the hand of a skeleton - on a still-living body. A body he was dancing with only a few minutes ago. A rank odor, a smell of decay, of the grave and of the tomb, hovers about the two of them now. A woman points from the next table, screams. She's seen it, too. She hides her face, cowers against her companion's shoulder, shudders. Then he sees it too. His collar's suddenly too tight for him. Others see it, one by one. A wave of impalpable horror spreads centrifugally from that thing lying there in the blazing electric light on O'Shaughnessy's table. The skeleton at the feast! ("Jane Brown's Body")

Just as they reached the door to the accommodation section, it opened, and a small boy towing a travel bag along the floor behind him came through. A small dog poked his head out of one end of this bag—the pup had been zipped up inside. “Out of the way, son,” Harper said. The child stopped, and gaped up at the battle-archon. Behind him, his trapped pup growled. The rear end of the leather and cloth satchel oscillated wildly. “I wanted to see the angel,” the boy said. “Aunt Edith promised I could watch it kill something.” Hasp halted, still reeling, and looked down at the boy and his pet. “You want to see me kill?” he muttered. “Then order me to do so. You’re all Menoa’s fucking people on this train.” The boy brightened. “Do it!” he said. “Kill something now.” “As you wish.” Hasp kicked the dog with all of the strength he could muster. Had the animal been made of tougher stuff than flesh and bone, or had its bag been composed of something more substantial than woven thread, it might have made an impact hard enough to shatter the glass wall at the end of the corridor sixty feet away. Instead, the creature and the torn remains of its embroidered travel bag spattered against the opposite end of the passage in a series of wet smacks, more like a shower of red rain than anything resembling the corpse of a dog. The boy screamed. Hasp cricked his neck, then shoved the child aside and stomped away, his transparent armour swimming with rainbows.

Calmly We Walk Through This April Day Calmly we walk through this April's day, Metropolitan poetry here and there, In the park sit pauper and rentier, The screaming children, the motor-car Fugitive about us, running away, Between the worker and the millionaire Number provides all distances, It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now, Many great dears are taken away, What will become of you and me (This is the school in which we learn...) Besides the photo and the memory? (...that time is the fire in which we burn.) (This is the school in which we learn...) What is the self amid this blaze? What am I now that I was then Which I shall suffer and act again, The theodicy I wrote in my high school days Restored all life from infancy, The children shouting are bright as they run (This is the school in which they learn . . .) Ravished entirely in their passing play! (...that time is the fire in which they burn.) Avid its rush, that reeling blaze! Where is my father and Eleanor? Not where are they now, dead seven years, But what they were then? No more? No more? From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day, Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume Not where they are now (where are they now?) But what they were then, both beautiful; Each minute bursts in the burning room, The great globe reels in the solar fire, Spinning the trivial and unique away. (How all things flash! How all things flare!) What am I now that I was then? May memory restore again and again The smallest color of the smallest day: Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn.

And as I caught Louie with an “oomph” that knocked half the wind out of me, I accepted that I’d go through everything with Christy all over again if I had a homecoming like this from my boy. “I missed you, Buttercup,” Louie practically screamed into my ear as his arms went around my neck and he hugged the little bit of breath I had left right out of me. “I missed you. I missed you. I missed you.” “I missed you too, poo-poo face,” I said kissing his cheeks. “Oh my God, what have you been doing? Are you planning on hibernating for winter? You weigh like ten pounds more than you did before I left.” Just like when he was a baby, Louie reeled back, smacked his hands—which I was 99 percent sure were dirty—on my cheeks, and jiggled them as he leaned close enough to touch the tip of his nose to mine. “Grandma gave me a lot of pizza and chicken nuggets.

The tree house convulsed. A huge hole gulped away the center of the floor and Reggie felt one of his legs flop through. He loosened his grip on Willie’s pants leg and immediately got an eyeful of Willie’s shoe. Reggie reeled away, letting go of Willie to save himself. Willie’s body slid out the doorway and James wrapped his arms around Willie’s thigh, then his calf, now his foot, desperately clawing and clinging, shouting something, maybe, Don’t go, please Willie don’t go! For an instant the world narrowed down: gone were the tree house, the tree, the truck, the noise, the night. The world reduced to two things: James’s hands and Willie’s left foot. And then the tree shook and the truck backed up and Willie wriggled and the truck spun its tires and James screamed and the truck lurched ahead and then Willie dropped like a stone, heavy and silent, and James held only a single, tiny tennis shoe that was once worn by a boy named Willie Van Allen.

So,” John said, “I’ll meet you at your place at eight, and we can walk over together?” “What? For what?” “The vigil.” “I’m not going to that.” I tried to ignore his surprise, his dogged faith. “Of course you are.” “I don’t know this person.” John continued to stand there, arms hanging down. The knife skidded so much I lost my grip and had to pick it up again. “It could’ve been you,” he said finally. “No,” I said, chopping bluntly, breaking more than slicing the lettuce, “it couldn’t. I’ve worked my whole life so that it couldn’t be me.” White flash of a face. Where did they go, those boys, after they left us behind? “Last night,” John began. He paused, still looking wounded. “You were so happy.” I gathered the lettuce into a bin and held it against my stomach like a barrier. “If it had been me, it would’ve been your fault.” John reeled as though I’d struck him. “You’re a coward,” he said. “You’ve worked your whole life because you’re a coward.” “What do you know? What do you know about anything?” His family moved for him. The hormones. The surgery he was allowed to accept or reject. I waved my arm around the kitchen, at the stunned cooks watching us. “Nobody has to know about you! You can blend in whenever you want!” “You honestly believe that? You think my life’s been easy?” “Yes, I think it’s been fucking easy!” I screamed. “They don’t know! I didn’t know! I wish I still didn’t know!” I tried to shove past him. He touched my back. I remembered Humphrey Bogart’s hand, I remembered dancing, I remembered the gown twirling, I remembered the boy who complimented my ass, I remembered being told I was beautiful. I remembered the woman staring back at me in the Métro windows, her wink. I tried to pull away. John embraced me with my arms pinned to my sides, the lettuce bin between us, its raw, wet smell pushed toward our faces. In full view of the entire kitchen, he kissed me. A kiss that made me think of the woefully few people I had kissed in my life. A kiss that reminded me I had never been loved. A kiss that said I could not be John unless I risked being Dana.   My

One more question.” Henry waited until Faith put her finger down before continuing. “Do you ever remember your father wearing a baseball hat?” Like a kid flipping through the pages of a scrapbook, she ran through images of her father in her mind. No baseball cap. But it didn’t matter. Faith just wanted to stop seeing the man the world believed killed her sister. Yet the tighter she closed her eyes, the faster the images came. Her father at her horse show, sitting in the stands at Kim’s soccer game, his smiling face as he pushed her on the swing . . . Faith pressed her palms against the sides of her head and started screaming. The office door flew open. Dr. Rodgers, Titus, and two men in navy-blue suits rushed into the room. Like a boxer against the ropes, the images rained down on Faith like blows, but she was helpless to stop them. Each one sent her head reeling until she felt like she was falling—tumbling into oblivion, welcoming the darkness and an end to the pain. She felt Titus’s strong arms around her, carrying her back to her room.

Then a low voice murmured in my ear. "Clea." I screamed and shot an immediate hammer punch to the side. "Whoa!" cried Ben. He reeled back to avoid my fist and tripped over the rug, tumbling to the ground and spilling a fresh mug of coffee over his gray shawl-neck sweater. "OH!" he gasped. "Hot. Very, very hot. Oh, not good." "Ben! Oh my God, wait-" I darted into the bathroom and grabbed a hand towel, then raced back to him, knelt down, and sopped the spilled coffee from his chest. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know you were there! You didn't say anything!" "I yelled from downstairs...I thought you'd heard me." A strange smell tickled my nose, and I bent closer to Ben, just inches from his face. "What's that smell?" I asked. "Cardamom clove coffee," he said, gesturing to the now empty mug on the floor beside us. "I thought you might like it." "I like the smell. Maybe you should wear it as a cologne." "Could work," he agreed. "You could give a testimonial that it makes women crazy." "Not crazy-nimble. Ten years of Krav Maga gives you catlike reflexes. If you'd been an intruder...

I need you to say it." Ryker's hot breath was on my neck, his hand on my hip, and he was ready to sink into me the second he got his answer. All I had to do was admit it. Or I could try to take matters into my own hands just to fuck with him. I pushed forward suddenly, the head of his cock teasing my entrance open in bliss. But a sudden jerk from Ryker left me painfully empty once more, and I whined in frustration. "Just say it," he teased. "Do you like it a little rough? All you have to do is say yes." Fine. Ass. "Yes," I hissed. "Yes, I do." Instant pressure hit me as he slid his length into me in one go. I was so wet, there was no friction stopping him as he filled me completely. Tight, hot, hard. I took in a sharp breath and he gave me a satisfied hum. "There now, that wasn't so hard," he mused. Smack. Ryker shoved into me just a little harder at the same time he smacked me right on the mark, and I screamed. I was so hot, and wet, and full of him that I could hardly keep myself from unraveling. Thankfully, his hands stayed firmly in place, helping to hold me still as he slid out again, only to thrust inside once more. "Fuck, Danica," Ryker rumbled. "Your pretty little ass is turning the hottest shade of pink." I was breathless as Ryker thrust again and again, pushing me higher and higher. Sometimes he would smack the mark again, and I was sure I would be feeling it in the morning but I couldn't bring myself to care. All I could care about was Ryker and what he did to me. I felt wholly and truly right with him, and my head was in a fog as the orgasm hit me hard. "Ryker!" I shouted as he thrust at just the right moment and all the tight muscles in my body came loose. Floating, floating and falling and clenching and dropping into a boneless heap. I was still reeling from the high he had started in me when I felt his hot release as well. Ryker came hard, gripping my hip as he shoved in as deep as he could. The hot, burning stretch of him shoving so hard coupled with the intensity of my own postorgasm shaking pulled another cry from me. When we were both spent and he was still over me, staring down in satisfied confidence, he leaned in with a light kiss. "Good girl, you take me so fucking well." My ass stung, I was filled to the brim, and I liked it. Releasing my hip, he slid out of me and I groaned at the fleeting feeling of fullness. When wetness trickled out of me, more than just my own arousal, I pressed my thighs together.

On the second Sabbat of Twelfthmoon, in the city of Weep, a girl fell from the sky. Her skin was blue, her blood was red. She broke over an iron gate, crimping it on impact, and there she hung, impossibly arched, graceful as a temple dancer swooning on a lover’s arm. One slick finial anchored her in place. Its point, protruding from her sternum, glittered like a brooch. She fluttered briefly as her ghost shook loose, and torch ginger buds rained out of her long hair. Later, they would say these had been hummingbird hearts and not blossoms at all. They would say she hadn’t shed blood but wept it. That she was lewd, tonguing her teeth at them, upside down and dying, that she vomited a serpent that turned to smoke when it hit the ground. They would say a flock of moths came, frantic, and tried to lift her away. That was true. Only that. They hadn’t a prayer, though. The moths were no bigger than the startled mouths of children, and even dozens together could only pluck at the strands of her darkening hair until their wings sagged, sodden with her blood. They were purled away with the blossoms as a grit-choked gust came blasting down the street. The earth heaved underfoot. The sky spun on its axis. A queer brilliance lanced through billowing smoke, and the people of Weep had to squint against it. Blowing grit and hot light and the stink of saltpeter. There had been an explosion. They might have died, all and easily, but only this girl had, shaken from some pocket of the sky. Her feet were bare, her mouth stained damson. Her pockets were all full of plums. She was young and lovely and surprised and dead. She was also blue. Blue as opals, pale blue. Blue as cornflowers, or dragonfly wings, or a spring—not summer—sky. Someone screamed. The scream drew others. The others screamed, too, not because a girl was dead, but because the girl was blue, and this meant something in the city of Weep. Even after the sky stopped reeling, and the earth settled, and the last fume spluttered from the blast site and dispersed, the screams went on, feeding themselves from voice to voice, a virus of the air. The blue girl’s ghost gathered itself and perched, bereft, upon the spearpoint-tip of the projecting finial, just an inch above her own still chest. Gasping in shock, she tilted back her invisible head and gazed, mournfully, up. The screams went on and on. And across the city, atop a monolithic wedge of seamless, mirror-smooth metal, a statue stirred, as though awakened by the tumult, and slowly lifted its great horned head.

On speed, my mouth is a machine and my body is a limitless supply of social energy that shoots out around me, drawing people in like moons sucked in by the gravitational pull of a planet. Once I was on that dance floor in Legends it didn’t matter what was playing, I was moving, shouting, screaming... I acted, thought, felt, and experienced everything with an electric edge. I talked to all and sundry, jabbering incoherent nonsense, reeling off a tsunami of words thrown together from the intoxicated bubbling flood of my brain.

She flew at Harriet and tore the flowers from her hair and scratched her face. Harriet, too dazed to defend herself, reeled back. Agnes flew to Harriet’s aid and got her face well and truly slapped for her pains. “Slut!” screamed Cordelia, panting. “Jade! How dare you disobey my orders? You have given Arden such a

I looked around, my heart pounding faster, trying to spot it before it could get the jump on me. The creature was near, but the noise sounded like it was coming from everywhere at once. No, I realized, not everywhere. It’s just very, very close. I looked up. Nine arms clung to the ceiling above my head by their twisted, blackened fingernails. Five heads looked down at me and screamed as one. 15. I felt the creature’s scream more than I heard it, a rippling shockwave that scorched through the air and hit my heart like a fist. The shock sent me reeling, jumping backward as the arms let go and the creature fell, slamming onto the living room floor where I’d been standing a heartbeat before.

Watch out, he’s loose!” I screamed to a nearby suit, reeling back toward him and fighting to keep the sudden grin off my face. “He’ll tear us all apart!

Will you go with them? Back to Virki?” I looked at the house, where my father was still talking with the Riki. How did we get here? How could we ever go back? I wanted to push my face into the snow. I wanted to scream. He stepped toward me, taking my cut hand into his. He turned it over before wrapping a strip of cloth around it, knotting it on my palm. I breathed through the feeling flowing through me, like candle wax melting. “Don’t.” The word hit me in the chest as he said it. I bit down on my lip until my eyes watered. To keep myself from speaking. I was afraid of what I would say if I did. “Stay with me and come with us to the valley. We’ll meet the Aska there.” I closed my eyes as a tear rolled down my flushed face. Trying to escape. Trying to leave this moment and pretend like I hadn’t chosen a path to get here. It wasn’t a command. It was a request. One that I didn’t think I could deny. He’d left his family and come with me down the mountain as his people reeled in the aftermath of a raid. He’d taken me home. Helped me find my father. Now it was my turn to make a choice. To choose him the way he’d chosen me.

Now look,” he said. He felt the back collar of his shirt and jacket clutched in an iron grip and he whirled on the giant, hitting him square in the jaw with his fist. He suspected he’d broken his hand, but no way was he letting on. He did wince in pain, however, while the very large man merely turned his brick of a face to the side. “You shouldn’t’a done that, little man,” the guy said. It took him roughly one second to draw back his fist and plaster Sean in the face hard enough to send him reeling into the melons. Then to the floor. Sean saw a lot of stars and was aware of the melons as they began to bounce around the produce section. And there was blood—he wasn’t sure where from since his entire face felt as if it had been through a meat grinder. “Hey!” Franci shouted. “What’s the matter with you? I told you to leave it alone, he’s harmless!” “No good deed goes unpunished, I guess,” the big man said. “It looked like you needed help. Maybe you like being grabbed like that in the grocery store, huh, babe?” Sean muttered something about not being harmless and tried to get to his feet, without success. The big man said, “Just stay down where you are, buster.” But Sean was intent on getting up and he’d just about made it to his feet when the man took two giant steps in his direction. That was all it took for Franci to launch herself on the lumberjack with a cry of outrage. She had her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist and screamed bloody murder while pummeling him on the back. “I. Told. You. To. Leave. Him. Alone!” she shrieked. Paul Bunyan whirled around and around, trying to shake her loose, but she was on him like a tick on a hound. Then the scene got a lot more interesting. “No! No! No! No! No!” screamed a store manager, running up to them, followed closely by another man and a couple of young bag boys. A crowd gathered and the grocery employees peeled Franci off the lumberjack, but she was kicking her heart out the whole time. “The police are coming!” the store manager yelled. “Stop this at once! Stop!” And Sean absently thought, This really isn’t going how I planned. Right

She sensed the blow only a heartbeat before Arobynn struck her. She toppled out of her chair and didn’t have time to raise herself properly before Arobynn grabbed her by the collar and swung again, his fist connecting with her cheek. Light and darkness reeled. Another blow, hard enough that she felt the warmth of her blood on her face before she felt the pain. Sam began screaming something. But Arobynn hit her again. She tasted blood, yet she didn’t fight back, didn’t dare to. Sam struggled against Tern and Mullin. They held him firm, Harding putting a warning arm in front of Sam to block his path. Arobynn hit her—her ribs, her jaw, her gut. And her face. Again and again and again. Careful blows—blows meant to inflict as much pain as possible without doing permanent damage. And Sam kept roaring, shouting words she couldn’t quite hear over the agony. The last thing she remembered was a pang of guilt at the sight of her blood staining Arobynn’s exquisite red carpet. And then darkness, blissful darkness, full of relief that she hadn’t seen him hurt Sam.

The joy of Loretta’s homecoming was overshadowed by Henry’s rage. Friends with a murderin’ savage, was she? A Comanche slut, that’s what, kissin’ on him in broad daylight, comin’ home to shame them all with her Injun horse and heathen necklace. His land looked like a bloomin’ pincushion with all them heathen lances pokin’ up. He was gonna get shut of ’em, just like he had those horses. Half of ’em stole from white folks! Some trade that was! Loretta listened to his tirade in stony silence. When he wound down she said, “Are you quite finished?” “No, I ain’t!” He leveled a finger at her. “Just you understand this, young lady. If that bastard planted his seed in that belly of yours, it’ll be hell to pay. The second you throw an Injun brat, I’ll bash its head on a rock!” Loretta flinched. “And we call them animals?” Henry backhanded her, catching her on the cheek with stunning force. Loretta reeled and grabbed the table to keep from falling. Rachel screamed and threw herself between them. Amy’s muffled sobs could be heard coming up through the floor. “For the love of God, Henry, please…” Rachel wrung her hands in her apron. “Get a hold on your temper.” Henry swept Rachel aside. Leveling a finger at Loretta again, he snarled, “Don’t you sass me, girl, or I’ll tan your hide till next Sunday. You’ll show respect, by gawd.” Loretta pressed her fingers to her jaw, staring at him. Respect? Suddenly it struck her as hysterically funny. She had been captured by savages and dragged halfway across Texas. Never once, not even when he had just cause, had Hunter hit her with enough force to hurt her, and never in the face. She’d had to come home to receive that kind of abuse. She sank onto the planked bench and started to laugh, a high-pitched, half-mad laughter. Aunt Rachel crossed herself, and that only made her laugh harder. Henry stormed outside to get “those dad-blamed Indian lances” pulled up before a passing neighbor spied them and started calling them Injun lovers. Loretta laughed harder yet. Maybe she had gone mad. Stark, raving mad.

Aye, I’m not much of an umbrella drink kind of chap. I thought I would keep your appetite wet.” He wanted to push her little, trying to gauge her reaction to his double entendre. Years with the company taught him that you needed to be able to read people well or suffer the consequences—which, in this case, may end with his shattered heart. His body tensed, aware of the tug between fight or flight. He wanted to walk away but staying seemed to be winning this war. She peeked up at him from under her hat, her eyes soft and sincere. “I took you for more of a whiskey guy. Like the whole bottle, from the looks of it.” She gave him half a smile. “I want to thank you for putting up with me on the flight. You’re a real gentleman. There aren’t many of those left in the world.” Picking up her drink, she stirred it with the umbrella. God, if she only knew, she would probably run for the hills. The dark side of him wanted to take her to edge to find out if he could bring out her wild side. He wanted to possess her until she screamed out his name, begging for release. Reel it in, mate.

The fleeing man stumbled. He threw up his arms and reeled to the edge of the narrow rock bridge. Almost, he recovered his balance… Then he fell, turning over and over slowly, for a thousand miles, it seemed. Kitty and her mother screamed together. “It’s better so,” White murmured at last as he put his glasses back in their case. “A clean death. Cavanaugh made that fourth touchdown after all.

I smirked. “Careful, Aussie, that almost sounded like a compliment.” I reached to take the knife, but Matthias caught my wrist, reeled back his arm, and stabbed the blade into my hand. I screamed. The Aussie laughed. Okay, it was only a prick. On my finger. But his serial-killer plunge and deranged look of delight got my heart pumping.

I pushed forward suddenly, the head of his cock teasing my entrance open in bliss. But a sudden jerk from Ryker left me painfully empty once more, and I whined in frustration. "Just say it," he teased. "Do you like it a little rough? All you have to do is say yes." Fine. Ass. "Yes," I hissed. "Yes, I do." Instant pressure hit me as he slid his length into me in one go. I was so wet, there was no friction stopping him as he filled me completely. Tight, hot, hard. I took in a sharp breath and he gave me a satisfied hum. "There now, that wasn't so hard," he mused. Smack. Ryker shoved into me just a little harder at the same time he smacked me right on the mark, and I screamed. I was so hot, and wet, and full of him that I could hardly keep myself from unraveling. Thankfully, his hands stayed firmly in place, helping to hold me still as he slid out again, only to thrust inside once more. "Fuck, Danica," Ryker rumbled. "Your pretty little ass is turning the hottest shade of pink." I was breathless as Ryker thrust again and again, pushing me higher and higher. Sometimes he would smack the mark again, and I was sure I would be feeling it in the morning but I couldn't bring myself to care. All I could care about was Ryker and what he did to me. I felt wholly and truly right with him, and my head was in a fog as the orgasm hit me hard. "Ryker!" I shouted as he thrust at just the right moment and all the tight muscles in my body came loose. Floating, floating and falling and clenching and dropping into a boneless heap. I was still reeling from the high he had started in me when I felt his hot release as well. Ryker came hard, gripping my hip as he shoved in as deep as he could. The hot, burning stretch of him shoving so hard coupled with the intensity of my own postorgasm shaking pulled another cry from me. When we were both spent and he was still over me, staring down in satisfied confidence, he leaned in with a light kiss. "Good girl, you take me so fucking well." My ass stung, I was filled to the brim, and I liked it. Releasing my hip, he slid out of me and I groaned at the fleeting feeling of fullness. When wetness trickled out of me, more than just my own arousal, I pressed my thighs together.

Emotional territory I had never been there before, An emotional territory that was weighing on me and my soul, everyday a bit more, There were relays of feelings printed on the reels of mind, Where each feeling sought something that it could never find, That unfulfilled desire, a darling wish that always remained a dream, Now lost in the confusion where desires become wishes and wishes turn into desires representing heart’s every scream, And this is where I was now, a territory that I owned, but knew nothing about, It was like a reality based on known facts, yet the mind had its reasons to doubt, Every feeling, that rushed to seek this unknown desire, Not knowing what to like, what to love and what to admire, Because desires had turned into wishes and wishes into desires, Resulting in a quest of mind and heart that first seduces, and then tires, As I stood in the middle of this unfamiliar emotional territory, I thought of her and our love’s moments eternal and transitory, And then desires were vanquished by once felt emotions, Nothing was left of the wishes too, because now they were reduced to known and loving sensations, Her and my feelings, in our territory of known feelings, Then I reposed in this territory to think of her and let her old sensations be the cause of my temporary healings, I am here in the same territory still, with the few known and many unknown feelings, And I often wonder what defines my mind’s endeavours and my heart’s beatings, Maybe one may never know and I may know the least about this emotional reality, So I see no harm resting here in her emotional territory and her old memories, my own space of tranquility!

Emotional territory I had never been there before, An emotional territory that was weighing on me and my soul, everyday a bit more, There were relays of feelings printed on the reels of mind, Where each feeling sought something that it could never find, That unfulfilled desire, a darling wish that always remained a dream, Now lost in the confusion where desires become wishes and wishes turn into desires representing heart’s every scream, And this is where I was now, a territory that I owned, but knew nothing about, It was like a reality based on known facts, yet the mind had its reasons to doubt, Every feeling, that rushed to seek this unknown desire, Not knowing what to like, what to love and what to admire, Because desires had turned into wishes and wishes into desires, Resulting in a quest of mind and heart that first seduces, and then tires, As I stood in the middle of this unfamiliar emotional territory, I thought of her and our love’s moments eternal and transitory, And then desires were vanquished by once felt emotions, Nothing was left of the wishes too, because now they were reduced to known and loving sensations, Her and my feelings, in our territory of known feelings, Then I reposed in this territory to think of her and let her old sensations be the cause of my temporary healings, I am here in the same territory still, with the few known and many unknown feelings, And I often wonder what defines my mind’s endeavours and my heart’s beatings, Maybe one may never know and I may know the least about this emotional reality, So I see know harm resting here in her emotional territory and her old memories, my own space of tranquility!

No,” he thundered in a voice that drowned out all other speech. Sansa was shocked to see the king on his feet, red of face, reeling. He had a goblet of wine in one hand, and he was drunk as a man could be. “You do not tell me what to do, woman,” he screamed at Queen Cersei. “I am king here, do you understand? I rule here, and if I say that I will fight tomorrow, I will fight!

She reeled back, not only because she’d smacked into Leo’s chest. She mentally reeled. He came back. That more than anything shook her off balance, and she went over— someone yell timber. She didn’t fall alone. Her flailing hand caught Leo’s shirt, her foot somehow tangled around his ankle— totally accidental, really— and together they hit the floor. Although, somehow, she ended on top of him. The man had rolled his body at the last moment so he took the brunt of the fall. What have I done? How badly had she squashed him? Please don’t let him cry. She hated it when they cried. “You okay, Vex?” He lived! She raised her head and beamed his way. “You’re not screaming.” He arched a brow. “Why would I be?” “We hit the floor kind of hard.” “Hard is right,” he grumbled. “But not in the way you think.” Surely he didn’t imply… She squirmed into a better position to check— we have confirmation of an impressive erection. He sucked in a breath. Dammit, had he lied about her injuring him? “Are you hurt, Pookie?” “I am hurting bad, Vex. Want to kiss it better?” His wink had her lips twitching. “I am beginning to think I misjudged you.” “Misjudged me how?” Rolling her to the side, Leo got to his feet and then hauled her up. “You are much more wicked than I gave you credit for.” She grinned. “That is so freaking awesome.

Nimrod continued, “These were the one percent of wealthy pigs who ruled over the ninety-nine percent of people with their greed and their selfishness! But I swear to you by my very head and by the head of my queen Semiramis, that as our subjects you will never go hungry!” The crowd burst out in applause. He milked it, “You will never be without shelter in the great city of Babylon!” More applause resounded. “You will never be without health and welfare!” The applause turned to jubilation. Nimrod reeled them in like a fish on a line. “You will be taken care of from birth to death under the mighty rule of Nimrod, emperor of the earth!” The masses swarmed with worship and screams of orgasmic release. Nimrod had secured their total dependency upon city-state and king. Nimrod had become their lord and savior.

I led my portion of the rearguard across the open ground to the right of the prince’s battalion, and surged into the first company of Castilian reinforcements as they tried to arrange into a defensive line. They were well-equipped foot with steel helms and leather jacks, glaives and axes, but demoralised and unwilling to stand against a charge of heavy horse. I skewered a serjeant in the front rank with my lance and rode over him as the men behind him scattered, yelling in fear and hurling their banners away as they ran. If all the Castilians had behaved in such a manner, we would have had an easy time of it, but now Enrique flung his household knights into the fray. It had started to rain heavily, sheets of water blown by strong winds across the battlefield, and a phalanx of Castilian lancers on destriers came plunging out of the murk, smashing into the front rank of my division. A lance shattered against my cuisse, almost knocking me from the saddle, but I kept my seat and slashed at the knight with my broadsword as he hurtled past, chopping an iron leaf from the chaplet encircling his basinet, but doing no other damage. My men held together under the Castilian charge, and soon there was a fine swirling mêlée in progress. I was surrounded by visored helms and glittering blades, men yelling and horses screaming, and glimpsed my standard bearer ahead of me, shouting and fending off two Castilians with the butt of his lance. Another Englishman rode in to help him, throwing his arms around one of the Castilians and heaving him out of the saddle with sheer brute strength, and then a fresh wave of steel and horseflesh, thrown up by the violent, shifting eddies of battle, closed over them and shut off my view. I couldn’t bear to lose my banner again, and charged into the mass of fighting men, clearing a path with the sword’s edge. A mace or similar hammered against my back-plate, sending bolts of agony shooting up my spine, and my foot slipped out of the stirrup as I leaned drunkenly in the saddle, black spots reeling before my eyes.

During World War II, rationing in Russia had made vinyl prohibitively expensive, and cheap X-ray film became the bootleg music industry’s substitute. After purchasing a used X-ray plate for a ruble or two from a medical facility, music lovers could cut the plate into a disk with scissors or a knife before having it etched with their favorite tunes. Students studying engineering, I was told, particularly excelled in this bootlegging process. But even a thawed Khrushchev regime had its standards to uphold, and in 1959 the government began a crackdown on this illicit music market. One government tactic was to flood record shops with unplayable records, many intended to damage record players. Some of these records included threatening vocals placed in the middle of a recording, which screamed at the unsuspecting listener, “You like rock and roll? Fuck you, anti-Soviet slime!” Eventually the use of bone records declined as replacement technologies, such as magnetic reel-to-reel tape, took over. But until then, bone-record makers were hunted down and sent to the Gulags. Particularly offensive to the Soviet government were bootleggers who reproduced American jazz records, music Stalin had declared a “threat to civilization.” Despite

In his most thrilling military victory to date, Napoleon had defeated an Ottoman force eighteen thousand men strong at Aboukir. It had been Javert’s first real taste of battle, watching cannon fire blow ships into splinters and hearing the last screams of drowning men. The French army, stinking and spluttering with plague, had emerged victorious but exhausted. They had taken refuge in Alexandria, though it hardly felt safe. Very recently, Napoleon had left with a few of his nearest friends for a voyage into the Delta. Now Javert was just one of the confused mass left reeling in the wake of the chaos.

her head reeling at the way he pounded into her so hard that each thrust had the car rocking. He kept his eyes on her the whole time, memorizing every little expression that crossed her face as she screamed his name. And when she finally came, she pushed him to find his own shuddering pleasure, too. “Bobby.” He groaned her name out as promised. She collapsed against him, and he shuddered again when he felt Bobby tenderly kissing the side of his neck. It was these little things, the ones that she only allowed him to see when she remained a tough little chick to everyone else, which made Leandro love her even more. She loved him, and with every little secret she shared only with him, she proved her love