Sleek Love Quotes

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. I hunger for your sleek laugh, your hands the color of a savage harvest, hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body, the sovereign nose of your arrogant face, I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes, and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, hunting for you, for your hot heart, Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Believe this," he whispered, and kissed her with the sharp, sleek kiss, the silver kiss, so swift and true, and razor sharp, and her warmth was flowing into him.

You could love the sleek, efficient beauty of a brand-new bullet train, but only a fool could imagine it would love you back.

Maybe for girls made of snow, love was worth the melt. But she was made of stolen bones and sleek fur, grave dirt and strange blood - her heart wasn’t even hers to give. Her soul was all she had, and no love was worth losing it.

There once was a miller with a daughter as lovely as a grape. He told the king that she could spin gold out of common straw. The king summoned the girl and locked her in a room full of straw and told her to spin it into gold or she would die like a criminal. Poor grape with no one to pick. Luscious and round and sleek. Poor thing. To die and never see Brooklyn. (Rumpelstiltskin)

He extended a finger to her face, the simple gesture bringing into play the sleek muscles of his shoulders and arms. “You are so beautiful, so adorable. I know full well you’re my doom, and I don’t care.

I am chic, sleek, and so unique.

He had liked her enormously, and he loved Krug with the same passion that a big sleek long-flewed hound feels for the high-booted hunter who reeks of the marsh as he leans towards the red fire. Krug could take aim at a flock of the most popular and sublime human thoughts and bring down a wild goose any time. But he could not kill death.

He bends over me, curls his sleek, cut body all around me, making himself my world. Flicking his eyes all over my face, he whispers, “Dark curls; Golden eyes.” He rubs our noses together. “Thirteen freckles; Flowers between her thighs.” He skims his lips over mine. “Sweet; So sweet; My heart; My sweetheart.

The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half submerged balls. I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience, who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again. I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who stand in the line and haul in their places, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident. Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were made to be used. The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.

Man is the hunter; woman is his game. The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, we hunt them for the beauty of their skins; they love us for it, and we ride them down.

There are transitions in life whether we want them or not. You get older. You lose jobs and loves and people. The story of your life may change dramatically, tragically, or so quietly you don´t even notice. It´s never any fun, but it can´t be avoided. Sometimes you just have to walk into the cold dark water of the unfamiliar and suffer for a while. You have to go slow, breathe, don´t stop, get your head under, and then wait. And soon you get used to it. Soon the pain is gone and you have forgotten it because you are swimming, way out here where it´s hard and where you were scared to go, swimming sleekly through the new.

But I've always been a sucker for externals alone: the shape, the shine, what the surface suggests to my palm. So mechanically disinclined it's verging on criminal, I never understood the beauty of an object's workings until Linny sat my reluctant self down one day and showed me her camera. Within fifteen minutes, I had fallen hard for the whole gadgety, eyelike nature of the thing: a tiny piece of glass slowing, bending, organizing light - light - into your grandmother, the Grand Canyon, the begonia on the windowsill, the film keeping the image like a secret. Grandmother, canyon, begonia tucked neatly into the sleek black box, like bugs in a jar. My mind boggled.

Try not to breathe,” I tell Lira. “It might get stuck halfway out.” Lira flicks up her hood. “You should try not to talk then,” she retorts. “Nobody wants your words being preserved for eternity.” “They’re pearls of wisdom, actually.” I can barely see Lira’s eyes under the mass of dark fur from her coat, but the mirthless curl of her smile is ever-present. It lingers in calculated amusement as she considers what to say next. Readies to ricochet the next blow. Lira pulls a line of ice from her hair, artfully indifferent. “If that is what pearls are worth these days, I’ll make sure to invest in diamonds.” “Or gold,” I tell her smugly. “I hear it’s worth its weight.” Kye shakes the snow from his sword and scoffs. “Anytime you two want to stop making me feel nauseated, go right ahead.” “Are you jealous because I’m not flirting with you?” Madrid asks him, warming her finger on the trigger mechanism of her gun. “I don’t need you to flirt with me,” he says. “I already know you find me irresistible.” Madrid reholsters her gun. “It’s actually quite easy to resist you when you’re dressed like that.” Kye looks down at the sleek red coat fitted snugly to his lithe frame. The fur collar cuddles against his jaw and obscures the bottoms of his ears, making it seem as though he has no neck at all. He throws Madrid a smile. “Is it because you think I look sexier wearing nothing?” Torik lets out a withering sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. I’m not sure whether it’s from the hours we’ve gone without food or his inability to wear cutoffs in the biting cold, but his patience seems to be wearing thin. “I could swear that I’m on a life-and-death mission with a bunch of lusty kids,” he says. “Next thing I know, the lot of you will be writing love notes in rum bottles.” “Okay,” Madrid says. “Now I feel nauseated.” I laugh.

There are transitions in life whether we want them or not. You get older. You lose jobs and loves and people. The story of your life may change dramatically, tragically, or so quietly you don’t even notice. It’s never any fun, but it can’t be avoided. Sometimes you just have to walk into the cold dark water of the unfamiliar and suffer for a while. You have to go slow, breathe, don’t stop, get your head under, and then wait. And soon you get used to it. Soon the pain is gone and you have forgotten it because you are swimming, way out here where it’s hard and where you were scared to go, swimming sleekly through the new.

One morning at home, Tik Tok had Tiger Lily try on her wedding dress. He seemed disappointed that it fit so well. Despite their expectations, it became her. Its simplicity and sleekness were subtle enough to highlight her strong, high cheeks, the shine in her hair. It was a dress made by someone who knew her. It was her freedom and her silence sewn into a dress. She hated what it meant. But she loved the dress because it was from Tik Tok's hands and because it made her feel like herself. She took it off.

Blake smiled while greeting him and turned to introduce me to his friend from Camp Lejeune. Blake made the formal introductions while I studied the two distinguished men. I liked the way they both carried themselves in a dignified manner with confidence, but not too much that they seemed arrogant. I was fascinated by them. Sleek. Forget eye candy. These two are like eye caffeine. I feel energized just looking at them.

It's true,' Mathilde said after some time, 'I could breathe fire.' She thought of how Lotto, in later years, had been called the lion. With his dander up, he could roar. He looked leonine too, his carrona of white-shot gold, the fine, sharp cheekbones. He'd leap on stage, offended by some actor flubbing his precious lines, and there he'd pace, sleek and swift with his long lovely body, growling. He could be deadly, fierce, the name was not inapt, but please, Mathilde knew lions. The male lolled beautifully, lazy in the sun. The female, less lovely by miles, was the one who brought back the kill.

A dark shadow rose from the depth of the watercourse. Forced to crawl out of the oceans rolling waves, it struggled against the pull of the undertow. Rising, it moved further up the white sandy beach away from the cold water. The creature collapsed onto the cool sand as the crescent moon above shone on his sleek gray skin revealing two immense leather-like wings protruding from his back. Exhaustion clouded his mind. The darkness of night was soothing, refreshing. Somehow he knew it would bring him strength and sustenance. The creature watched as a great rolling storm cloud sunk into the salty water before him and he tried to remember why he had come.

Kazu, now that she thought of it, realized that for all her headstrong temperament, she had never loved a man younger than herself. A young man has such a surplus of spiritual and physical gifts that he is likely to be cocksure of himself, particularly when dealing with an older woman, and there is no telling how swelled up with self-importance he may become. Besides, Kazu felt a physical repugnance for youth. A woman is more keenly aware than a man of the shocking disharmony between a young man's spiritual and physical qualities, and Kazu had never met a young man who wore his youth well. She was moreover repelled by the sleekness of a young man's skin.

My whole family — well, for the most part — is like this. Spitting in a can, all spool-headed, one minute. Sleek and lovely and mesmerizing the next.

loved his car. I loved being with him in his car. It was sleek and powerful, just like him.

once there was a beautiful young panther who had a co-wife and a husband. Her name was Lara and she was unhappy because her husband and her co-wife were really in love; being nice to her was merely a duty panther society imposed on them. They had not even wanted to take her into their marriage as co-wife, since there were already perfectly happy. But she was an "extra" female in the group and that would not do. Her husband sometimes sniffed her breath and other emanations. He even, sometimes, made love to her. but whenever this happened, the co-wife, whose name was Lala, became upset. She and the husband, Baba, would argue, then fight, snarling and biting and whipping at each other's eyes with their tails. Pretty soon they'd become sick of this and would lie clutched in each other's paws, weeping. I am supposed to make love to her, Baba would say to Lala, his heartchosen mate. She is my wife just as you are. I did not plan things this way. This is the arrangement that came down to me. I know it, dearest, said Lala, through her tears. And this pain that I feel is what has come down to me. Surely it can't be right? These two sat on a rock in the forest and were miserable enough. But Lara, the unwanted, pregnant by now and ill, was devastated. Everyone knew she was unloved, and no other female panther wanted to share her own husband with her. Days went by when the only voice she heard was her inner one. Soon, she began to listen to it. Lara, it said, sit here, where the sun may kiss you. And she did. Lara, it said, lie here, where the moon can make love to you all night long. and she did. Lara, it said, one bright morning when she knew herself to have been well kissed and well loved: sit here on this stone and look at your beautiful self in the still waters of this stream. Calmed by the guidance offered by her inner voice, Lara sat down on the stone and leaned over the water. She took in her smooth, aubergine little snout, her delicate, pointed ears, her sleek, gleeming black fur. She was beautiful! And she was well kissed by the sun and well made love to by the moon. For one whole day, Lara was content. When her co-wife asked her fearfully why she was smiling, Lara only opened her mouth wider, in a grin. The poor co-wife ran trembling off and found their husband, Baba, and dragged him back to look at Lara. When Baba saw the smiling, well kissed, well made love to Lara, of course he could hardly wait to get his paws on her! He could tell she was in love with someone else, and this aroused all his passion. While Lala wept, Baba possessed Lara, who was looking over his shoulder at the moon. Each day it seemed to Lara that the Lara in the stream was the only Lara worth having - so beautiful, so well kissed, and so well made love to. And her inner voice assured her this was true. So, one hot day when she could not tolerate the shrieks and groans of Baba and Lala as they tried to tear each other's ears off because of her, Lara, who by now was quite indifferent to them both, leaned over and kissed her own serene reflection in the water, and held the kiss all the way to the bottom of the stream.

Their mothers did not notice the other moments that made color bloom in their daughters’ cheeks. How Azalea flirted with girls in ruffled dresses. How the thing that first made Estrella fall a little in love with boys or girls was so often their hands, whether they were showing at the edge of a shirt cuff or a lace sleeve. How Gloria blushed when she caught the eye of women in sleek gowns, women who wore their hair in low, smooth chignons and who preferred gray or black or navy. And how she shared her laughter, her true, fluttering laugh, with boys who could more easily be called pretty than handsome.

Wild Peaches" When the world turns completely upside down You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color. Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown. The winter will be short, the summer long, The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, Tasting of cider and of scuppernong; All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all. The squirrels in their silver fur will fall Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot. 2 The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold. The misted early mornings will be cold; The little puddles will be roofed with glass. The sun, which burns from copper into brass, Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass. Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; The spring begins before the winter’s over. By February you may find the skins Of garter snakes and water moccasins Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear. 3 When April pours the colors of a shell Upon the hills, when every little creek Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell, When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird’s beak, We shall live well — we shall live very well. The months between the cherries and the peaches Are brimming cornucopias which spill Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black; Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches We’ll trample bright persimmons, while you kill Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback. 4 Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones There’s something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. There’s something in my very blood that owns Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, A thread of water, churned to milky spate Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves; That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath, Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

This youngster gradually became an intimate visitor of the family. He talked little, but he sat long. He filled the father's pipe when it was empty, gathered up the mother's knitting needle, or ball of worsted, when it fell to the ground, stroked the sleek coat of the tortoise-shell cat, and replenished the teapot for the daughter from the bright copper kettle that sang before the fire. All these quiet little offices may seem of trifling import, but when true love is translated into Low Dutch it is in this way that it eloquently expresses itself.

No one wanted the job. What had seemed one of the least challenging tasks facing Franklin D. Roosevelt as newly elected president had, by June 1933, become one of the most intransigent. As ambas-sadorial posts went, Berlin should have been a plum—not London or Paris, surely, but still one of the great capitals of Europe, and at the center of a country going through revolutionary change under the leadership of its newly appointed chancellor, Adolf Hitler. Depending on one’s point of view, Germany was experiencing a great revival or a savage darkening. Upon Hitler’s ascent, the country had undergone a brutal spasm of state- condoned violence. Hitler’s brown- shirted paramilitary army, the Sturmabteilung, or SA—the Storm Troopers—had gone wild, arresting, beating, and in some cases murdering communists, socialists, and Jews. Storm Troopers established impromptu prisons and torture stations in basements, sheds, and other structures. Berlin alone had fi fty of these so- called bunkers. Tens of thousands of people were arrested and placed in “protective custody”— Schutzhaft—a risible euphemism. An esti-mated fi ve hundred to seven hundred prisoners died in custody; others endured “mock drownings and hangings,” according to a police affi davit. One prison near Tempelhof Airport became especially no-torious: Columbia House, not to be confused with a sleekly modern new building at the heart of Berlin called Columbus House. The up-heaval prompted one Jewish leader, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise of New York, to tell a friend, “the frontiers of civilization have been crossed.

Jackson stood quietly as Alani came into the house. Unlike the other women, she didn’t wear a swimsuit. Shame. He’d love to see her in one. Everyone had duly celebrated Trace’s engagement, and Alani seemed taken with Priss—but then, who wouldn’t be? Priss was funny, smart, cute and—luckily for Trace—stacked. Unaware of Jackson, Alani stopped to look out the patio doors. She looked . . . wistful. Like maybe she wanted to take part, but couldn’t. In so many ways, despite being kidnapped by flesh peddlers, or maybe because of that, she was still an innocent. At just-barely twenty-three, she acted much older. Like a virgin spinster. Every night, in his dreams, they burned up the sheets. Here, in reality, she avoided him. She avoided involvement. But he’d get her over that. Somehow. Suddenly Priss came in, wet hair sleek down her back, rivulets of water trailing between her breasts. She spotted Jackson right off and, after smiling at Alani, asked them both, “Why aren’t you guys coming down to swim?” Alani jerked around to stare at Jackson with big eyes. His crooked smile told her that he had her in his sights. “I was just about to ask Alani that.” Priss laughed. “You’re still dressed.” “I can undress fast enough.” He looked at Alani. “What about you?” Her lips parted. “No, I . . . didn’t bring a suit.” “Pity. Maybe we could move up to the cove and skinny-dip in private?” Pointing a finger at him, Priss said, “Behave, you reprobate!” And then to Alani, “Beware of that one.” Still watching him, Alani nodded.

As he watched her sleeping, under wretched and insufficient blankets, in the cold nights which swooped down after the panting sun-drenched days, his dry heart blossomed in tenderness. . . . To think that he had once esteemed people because they understood Goossens's music or James Joyce's fiction, because they wore sleek clothes and were clever at the use of forks, because they could set up wooden words as a barricade against roaring life!

At some indefinite passage in night's sonorous score, it also came to her that she would be safe, that something, perhaps only her linearly fading drunkenness, would protect her. The city was hers, as, made up and sleeked so with the customary words and images (cosmopolitan, culture, cable cars) it had not been before: she had safe-passage tonight to its far blood's branchings, be they capillaries too small for more than peering into, or vessels mashed together in shameless municipal hickeys, out on the skin for all but tourists to see. Nothing of the night's could touch her; nothing did. The repetition of symbols was to be enough, without trauma as well perhaps to attenuate it or even jar it altogether loose from her memory. She was meant to remember. She faced that possibility as she might the toy street from a high balcony, roller-coaster ride, feeding-time among the beasts in a zoo—any death-wish that can be consummated by some minimum gesture. She touched the edge of its voluptuous field, knowing it would be lovely beyond dreams simply to submit to it; that not gravity's pull, laws of ballistics, feral ravening, promised more delight. She tested it, shivering: I am meant to remember. Each clue that comes is supposed to have its own clarity, its fine chances for permanence. But then she wondered if the gemlike "clues" were only some kind of compensation. To make up for her having lost the direct, epileptic Word, the cry that might abolish the night.

Everything was so beautiful in this magical moment before sunrise. The wild blue irises around the pond, the violet shadows in the curves of the dunes, the white, filmy mist hanging over the buttercup valley across the pond, the cloth of gold and silver thtat was called a field of daisies, thye cool, delicious gulf breeze, the blue of far lands beyond the harbour, plumes of purple and mauve smoke going up on the still, golden air from the chimneys of Stovepipe Town where the fishermen rose early. And Teddy lying at her feet, his slim brown hands clasped behind his head. Again she felt thye magnetic attraction of his personality. Felt it so strongly that she dared not meet his eyes. Yet she was admitting to herself with a secret cadour which would have horrified Aunt Elizabeth that she wanted to run her fingers through his sleek black hair- feel his arms about her- press her face against his dark tender ne- feel his lips on her lips- Teddy took one of his hands from under his head and put it over hers.

The black-haired man she had seen in the courtyard was indeed McKenna. He was even larger and more imposing than he had seemed at a distance. His features were blunt and strong, his bold, wide-bridged nose set with perfect symmetry between the distinct planes of his cheekbones. He was too masculine to be considered truly handsome- a sculptor would have tried to soften those uncompromising features. But somehow his hard face was the perfect setting for those lavish eyes, the clear blue-green brilliance shadowed by thick black lashes. No one else on earth had eyes like that. "McKenna," she said huskily, searching for any resemblance he might bear to the lanky, love-struck boy she had known. There was none. McKenna was a stranger now, a man with no trace of boyishness. He was sleek and elegant in well-tailored clothes, his glossy black hair cut in short layers that tamed its inherent tendency to curl. As he drew closer, she gathered more details... the shadow of bristle beneath his close-shaven skin, the glitter of a gold watch chain in his waistcoat, the brutal swell of muscle in his shoulders and thighs as he sat on a rock nearby.

This is the worst idea ever,” Lend shouted from behind the closed door as Arianna finished pinning my hair under a brunette wig. “I’ve been having a lot of those lately, but one of us wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my most recent one.” “Well, you look the part, at least,” Arianna said, standing back to admire her handiwork. I was in a fitted, sleek black pantsuit with a blouse underneath. The blouse was white. I hated it already. That, combined with the too-dark hair and colored eyebrows making my tragically pale skin even white, and I was not loving life. Still, sacrifices had to be made. Jack was lying on the bed with his head hanging over the side, his face slowly turning more and more red as the blood rushed to it. He looked phenomenally bored for someone about to break into a secret international high security facility. I slipped into my favorite stilettos, took one step, and fell over. “Ouch.” Shaking off the shoes, I rubbed at my still-tender feet. The stilettos were so not happening. That did it. If I didn’t already want to destroy the Dark Queen, the fact that she had ruined my ability to wear high heels put her at the very top of my hit list. She was so going down.

Crouching over her, St. Vincent teased and fondled until he felt her hips rising tentatively against his hand. "I want to be inside you," he whispered, kissing the side of her neck. "I want to go deep into your body... I'll be so gentle, love... let me turn you over, and... God, you're so lovely..." He pressed her on her back, and settled between her widespread thighs, his whisper becoming frayed and unsteady. "Touch me, sweetheart... put your hand there..." He sucked in a quick breath as her fingers curved gently around the hard length of his sex. Evie stroked him hesitantly, understanding from the quickening of his breath that the caress gave him pleasure. His eyes closed, the thick lashes trembling slightly against his cheeks, his lips parting from the force of his sharp respirations. Awkwardly, she gripped the heavy shaft and guided it between her thighs. The head of it slipped against the wetness of her sex, and St. Vincent groaned as if in pain. Trying again, Evie positioned him uncertainly. Once in place, he nudged strongly into the vulnerable cove. It burned far more than when he had put his fingers in her, and Evie tensed against the pain. Cradling her body in his arms, St. Vincent moved in a powerful thrust, and another, and then he was all the way inside. She writhed with the impulse to escape the hurtful invasion, but it seemed that each movement only drew him deeper. Filled and stretched and opened, Evie forced herself to lie still in his arms. She held on to his shoulders, her fingertips digging into the hard quilting of muscle and sinew, and she let him soothe her with his mouth and hands. His brilliant eyes were heavy-lidded as he bent to kiss her. Welcoming the warm sleekness of his tongue, she drew it into her mouth with eager, awkward suction. He made a low sound of surprise, shuddering, and his shaft jerked violently inside her in a series of rhythmic spasms.

Now let me tell you something. I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers. I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk or blue as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously. I have felt winds straight from the South Pole, bleak and wailing like a lost child; winds as tender and warm as a lover’s breath; winds that carried the astringent smell of salt and the death of seaweeds; winds that carried the moist rich smell of a forest floor, the smell of a million flowers. Fierce winds that churned and moved the sea like yeast, or winds that made the waters lap at the shore like a kitten. I have known silence: the cold, earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends. I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your bones. I have heard tree frogs in an orchestration as complicated as Bach singing in a forest lit by a million emerald fireflies. I have heard the Keas calling over grey glaciers that groaned to themselves like old people as they inched their way to the sea. I have heard the hoarse street vendor cries of the mating Fur seals as they sang to their sleek golden wives, the crisp staccato admonishment of the Rattlesnake, the cobweb squeak of the Bat and the belling roar of the Red deer knee-deep in purple heather. I have heard Wolves baying at a winter’s moon, Red howlers making the forest vibrate with their roaring cries. I have heard the squeak, purr and grunt of a hundred multi-coloured reef fishes. I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have seen Spoonbills flying home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a Versailles of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling, while the sun irons their wings smooth. I have watched Tigers, like flames, mating in the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an angry Raven, black and glossy as the Devil’s hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk, soft as silk, while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things. But— All this I did without you. This was my loss. All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain. All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet, ever-surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve.

-did you just ask something?" "I asked if you can undress any faster." Evie huffed with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. "No, I can't. There are too many b-buttons, and they're very small." "What a pity. Because in thirty seconds, I'm going to rip away whatever clothing you have left." Evie knew full well not to take the threat lightly- he'd done it before, on more than one occasion. "Sebastian, no. I like this dress." Her husband's eyes glinted with devilish humor as he watched her increasingly frantic efforts. "No dress is as beautiful as your naked skin. All those sweet freckles scattered over you, like a thousand tiny angel kisses... you have twenty seconds left, by the way." "You don't even h-have a clock," she complained. "I'm counting by heartbeats. You'd better hurry, love." Evie glanced anxiously down at the row of pearl buttons, which seem to have multiplied. With a defeated sigh, she dropped her arms to her sides. "Just go on and rip it off," she mumbled. She heard his silky laugh, and a sluice of water. He stood with streams runneling over the sleek, muscled contours of his body, and Evie gasped as she was pulled into a steaming embrace. His amused voice curled inside the sensitive shell of her ear. "My poor little put-upon wife. Let me help you. I have a way with buttons...

The air is crisp on my skin, and though my hands are wrapped under thick gloves, I shove my fists into my pockets anyway. The wind penetrates here through every layer, including skin. I’m dressed in fur so thick that walking feels like an exertion. It slows me down more than I would like, and even though I know there’s no imminent threat of attack, I still don’t like being unprepared in case one comes. It shakes me more than the cold ever could. When I turn to Lira, the ends of her hair are white with frost. “Try not to breathe,” I tell her. “It might get stuck halfway out.” Lira flicks up her hood. “You should try not to talk then,” she retorts. “Nobody wants your words being preserved for eternity.” “They’re pearls of wisdom, actually.” I can barely see Lira’s eyes under the mass of dark fur from her coat, but the mirthless curl of her smile is ever-present. It lingers in calculated amusement as she considers what to say next. Readies to ricochet the next blow. Lira pulls a line of ice from her hair, artfully indifferent. “If that is what pearls are worth these days, I’ll make sure to invest in diamonds.” “Or gold,” I tell her smugly. “I hear it’s worth its weight.” Kye shakes the snow from his sword and scoffs. “Anytime you two want to stop making me feel nauseated, go right ahead.” “Are you jealous because I’m not flirting with you?” Madrid asks him, warming her finger on the trigger mechanism of her gun. “I don’t need you to flirt with me,” he says. “I already know you find me irresistible.” Madrid reholsters her gun. “It’s actually quite easy to resist you when you’re dressed like that.” Kye looks down at the sleek red coat fitted snugly to his lithe frame. The fur collar cuddles against his jaw and obscures the bottoms of his ears, making it seem as though he has no neck at all. He throws Madrid a smile. “Is it because you think I look sexier wearing nothing?” Torik lets out a withering sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. I’m not sure whether it’s from the hours we’ve gone without food or his inability to wear cutoffs in the biting cold, but his patience seems to be wearing thin. “I could swear that I’m on a life-and-death mission with a bunch of lusty kids,” he says. “Next thing I know, the lot of you will be writing love notes in rum bottles.” “Okay,” Madrid says. “Now I feel nauseated.

Of course, people find beauty in things without wet noses, too. But there is something unique about the ways in which we fall in love with animals. Unwieldy dogs and minuscule dogs and long-haired and sleek dogs, snoring Saint Bernards, asthmatic pugs, unfolding shar-peis, and depressed-looking basset hounds - each with devoted fans. Bird-watchers spend frigid mornings scanning skies and scrub for the feathered objects of their fascination. Cat lovers display an intensity lacking - thank goodness - in most human relationships. Children’s books are constellated with rabbits and mice and bears and caterpillars, not to mention spiders, crickets, and alligators. Nobody ever had a plush toy shaped like a rock, and when the most enthusiastic stamp collector refers to loving stamps, it is an altogether different kind of affection.

Crossover' is a word scientists use to describe dolphins' soaring over seas, their traveling so free and fast, so high-spirited and almost effervescent that their sleek bodies barely skim the waves. The suggestion of splashes from tail and pectoral leaves a luminous wake across the water. For these crossover miles, the dolphins, like their human terrestrial mammal kin, belong more to the element of air than the sea.... Held in [the dolphins'] fluid embrace, I pulled my arms close against my sides and our communal speed increased... Racing around the lagoon, I opened my eyes again to see nothing but an emerald underwater blur. And then I remembered what I had either forgotten long ago or never quite fully realized. This feeling of being carried along by other animals was familiar. Animals had carried me all my life. I was a crossover--carried along in the generous and instructive slipstream of other species. And I had always navigated my life with them in mind, going between the human and animal worlds--a crossover myself. By including animals in my life I was always engaging with the Other, imagining the animal mind and life. For almost half a century, my bond with animals had shaped my character and revealed the world to me. At every turning point in my life an animal had mirrored or influenced my fate. Mine was not simply a life with other animals, but a life because of animals. It had been this way since my beginning, born on a forest lookout station in the High Sierras, surrounded by millions of acres of wilderness and many more animals than humans. Since infancy, the first faces I imprinted, the first faces I ever really loved, were animal.

What do you see when you look at me?” “I see you,” he answered as if it was obvious. “It’s not like I see a place, or a time, or a name: just you. Your essence. Your soul. That’s how I find you every time you come back. I know it’s hard to understand, but your soul calls me…and I’m drawn to it. I couldn’t keep away if I tried.” Sage raised his hand to my cheek, cupping it gently. I closed my eyes, resting against the warmth of his palm. When I opened them he had moved closer. I closed the distance between us and kissed him. I felt dizzy and hot and floaty, like every cliché…but it was true. I couldn’t feel my feet. I finally felt like I was where my soul belonged. There was only one problem. The gearshift was digging into my side. “Ow!” I winced. “You okay?” “Yeah…it’s just…” I gestured down, feeling like an idiot for ruining the moment. Sage didn’t seem to mind. He reached down and moved his seat back to its maximum leg room, then held out his hand. I grabbed it and clambered over the center console, clumsily ducking and folding myself until I finally settled onto his lap, straddling his legs. It was the least coordinated act of seduction ever. “Better?” he asked. “Better.” He kissed me, sliding his hands up the back of my shirt. It felt incredible. Without breaking away from his lips, I reached underneath his tee and felt his bare, sleek chest. My breath came faster, caught up in the frenzy of finally letting go and doing what I’d been dying to do from the second I’d seen Sage on the beach. “Wait,” he said. He reached down and pulled a lever. I let out a little scream as his seat back dropped all the way and I fell on top of him. I loved the feel of his body under mine. I didn’t want a single part of us not touching. “Better now?” Sage murmured into my ear. It wasn’t fair of him to ask me a question when he was doing that. I could barely function, never mind put together an answer. “Much better,” I said. “It’s practically a bed.” “Is it?” Sage agreed, and in his eyes I saw exactly what that could mean. “Oh,” I said, suddenly nervous. “But…we can’t. I mean, we don’t have…” “I do,” he said, leaning down to kiss the hollow where my neck met my shoulder. “You do?” I tensed up. Why did he have one? For who? The corner of Sage’s mouth turned up. “For us, Clea. The drugstore in Rio? I kind of had a feeling…” He moved his lips back to my neck. He nibbled on my earlobe, and I whimpered. “Oh,” I managed. “Well…then…” “I love you, Clea.” Everything tunneled in, and I heard the words echo in my head. Sage loved me. Me. I didn’t even realize I’d stopped breathing until he said my name, concerned. “Clea?” I looked at him and immediately relaxed. “I love you, too.” We kissed, and I actually felt myself melting into him as my last coherent thoughts gave way to pure sensation.

Something is bothering you. I have sensed it all morning.” He slid his communicator back into his pocket then took her hand in his, linking their fingers together. The action took her off guard, but she welcomed it. The first time she’d held his hand he’d been confused by it, but this was the second time in the last few days he’d initiated it. She loved it. “Nothing, just… I was hoping that this evening we could talk about something.” His shoulders stiffened just the slightest fraction. She was getting good at reading the subtle changes in his body language. “What about?” “Not now. I know you need to get to one of your job sites. Or there’s an emergency at the Samio.” He raised a dark eyebrow. “How do you know this?” “Because your communicator has been buzzing like crazy since we…” Her cheeks heated up and she cleared her throat. It had started going off when she’d been sitting on his face this morning. They’d both ignored it. Then when she got out of the shower she’d found him responding to what seemed like dozens of communications, one buzz after another. The sounds had been maddening. He’d stopped responding when they left his place, but she understood how busy he was and didn’t want to get in the way of that. “Since we what?” he murmured, leaning closer as they came to a stop in front of another elevator. This one had a shiny, sleek-looking silver door. “You know what,” she whispered, glancing around. There were two males waiting at the next elevator and though they weren’t looking in their direction she wasn’t going to talk about that in public. “I want to hear you say it.” “That’s because you’re a pervert.” He gave her one of those grins that made her wonder how she’d ever lived without knowing this male. It still stunned her how much he’d come to mean to her in the past week and a half. “That’s very true where you’re concerned.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead. -Con & Leilani

Nah. That is na what I see." He pulled her hair away from her neck and kissed the thin edge of her ear. "Ya look deceptively fragile, like a deer, but yer solid muscle, a perfect predator. Yer agile and graceful, and ya do na walk anywhere, but glide, as if the ground gives way ta ya. Yer skin is as pale as fresh snow, and yer hair, it's like some metal I've never seen, white, shiny, and priceless. Yer eyes." He chuckled. "Ya dunno how many times I've thought it'd be worth it. Ya'd put me in the ground, but it'd be so worth it ta just get lost in yer eyes. They are na completely white, ya know? They're like clouds, hints of color reflected back ta me. And I love yer nose. Humans always look like someone hit them in the head with a pipe. Ya don't. Yer nose," he chuckled again. "Yer face is sleek and elegant, like a work of art, kitten. Ya look like someone sculpted ya." "And didn't finish," Sal said. "And got it right," he corrected.” ― Auryn Hadley, Instinctual

How To Make A Human Take the cat out of the sphinx and what is left? Riddle Me That. Take the horse from the centaur and you take away the sleek grace, the strength of harnessed power. What is left can still run across fields, after a fashion, but is easily winded; what is left will therefore erect buildings to divide the open plains so he no longer must face the wide expanse where once his equine legs raced the winds and, sometimes, won. Take the bull from the Minotaur but what is left will still assemble a herd for the sake of ruling over it. What is left will kill for sport, in an arena thronged with spectators shouting "Ole" at each deadly thrust. Take the fish from the Merman: What is left can still swim, if only with lots of splashing; gone is the sleek sliding through the waves, alert to the subtle changes in the current. What is left will build ships so he can cross the oceans without getting his feet wet, what is left won't care if his boats pollute the seas he can no longer breathe so long as their passage can keep him from sinking. Take the goat from the satyr but what is left will dance out of reach before you have the chance to get that Dionysian streak of myschief, the love of music and wine, the rutting parts that like to party all the day through. What is left will still be stubborn and refuse to give way; what is left will lock horns and butt heads with anyone who challenges him. Take the bird from the harpy, but the memory of flying, a constant yearning ache for skies so tantalizingly distant, will still remain, as will the established pecking orders, the bitter squabbling over food and territory, and the magpie eye that lusts for shining objects. What is left will cut down the whole forest to feather his sprawling urban nest. At the end of these operations, tell me: what is left? The answer: Man, a creature divorced from nature, who's forgotten where he came from.

When she finally reached it, she bent forward and looked through the peephole. Jay was grinning back at her from outside. Her heart leaped for a completely different reason. She set aside her crutches and quickly unbolted the door to open it. "What took you so long?" Her knee was bent and her ankle pulled up off the ground. She balanced against the doorjamb. "What d'you think, dumbass?" she retorted smartly, keeping her voice down so she wouldn't alert her parents. "You scared the crap out of me, by the way. My parents are already in bed, and I was all alone down here." "Good!" he exclaimed as he reached in and grabbed her around the waist, dragging her up against him and wrapping his arms around her. She giggled while he held her there, enjoying everything about the feel of him against her. "What are you doing here? I thought I wouldn't see you till tomorrow." "I wanted to show you something!" He beamed at her, and his enthusiasm reached out to capture her in its grip. She couldn't help smiling back excitedly. "What is it?" she asked breathlessly. He didn't release her; he just turned, still holding her gently in his arms, so that she could see out into the driveway. The first thing she noticed was the officer in his car, alert now as he kept a watchful eye on the two of them. Violet realized that it was late, already past eleven, and from the look on his face, she thought he must have been hoping for a quiet, uneventful evening out there. And then she saw the car. It was beautiful and sleek, painted a glossy black that, even in the dark, reflected the light like a polished mirror. Violet recognized the Acura insignia on the front of the hood, and even though she could tell it wasn't brand-new, it looked like it had been well taken care of. "Whose is it?" she asked admiringly. It was way better than her crappy little Honda. Jay grinned again, his face glowing with enthusiasm. "It's mine. I got it tonight. That's why I had to go. My mom had the night off, and I wanted to get it before..." He smiled down at her. "I didn't want to borrow your car to take you to the dance." "Really?" she breathed. "How...? I didn't even know you were..." She couldn't seem to find the right words; she was envious and excited for him all at the same time. "I know right?" he answered, as if she'd actually asked coherent questions. "I've been saving for...for forever, really. What do you think?" Violet smiled at him, thinking that he was entirely too perfect for her. "I think it's beautiful," she said with more meaning than he understood. And then she glanced back at the car. "I had no idea that you were getting a car. I love it, Jay," she insisted, wrapping her arms around his neck as he hoisted her up, cradling her like a small child." "I'd offer to take you for a test-drive, but I'm afraid that Supercop over there would probably Taser me with his stun gun. So you'll have to wait until tomorrow," he said, and without waiting for an invitation he carried her inside, dead bolting the door behind him. He settled down on the couch, where she'd been sitting by herself just moments before, without letting her go. There was a movie on the television, but neither of them paid any attention to it as Jay reclined, stretching out and drawing her down into the circle of his arms. They spent the rest of the night like that, cradled together, their bodies fitting each other perfectly, as they kissed and whispered and laughed quietly in the darkness. At some point Violet was aware that she was drifting into sleep, as her thoughts turned dreamlike, becoming disjointed and fuzzy and hard to hold on to. She didn't fight it; she enjoyed the lazy, drifting feeling, along with the warmth created by the cocoon of Jay's body wrapped protectively around her. It was the safest she'd felt in days...maybe weeks... And for the first time since she'd been chased by the man in the woods, her dreams were free from monsters.

Alicia Brown loved the feeling of swimming. Face in water, smooth stroke, face out of water; another smooth stroke. It was a soothing and peaceful series of motions that carried her from one end of the pool to another, with the sleek turns at each end. Her hand touched the end of the pool, her body turned, her foot danced on the pool edge and she was off to the other end of the pool. There was no time for thought or worry or tension when she swam. There was no need to talk or compare swimming sessions. She looked at Sophie bobbing swiftly beside her, trying another stroke. Alicia preferred her tried and true basic swimming stroke that carried her powerfully from one end of the pool to the other and back again. Sophie had a variety of strokes she used. Alicia was aware that Sophie was coming to the end of her swim. She could see her slowing as she reached the end of a lap. Alicia didn’t want to stop. Not yet, anyway. For one thing, once she was out of the water, the same long list of tasks awaited her. She could feel the tension in her shoulders at the mere thought of having her water therapy end. That’s what she called

I turned my focus to clothes, immediately endeavoring to find just the right dress for the occasion. This was huge--my debut as the girlfriend of Marlboro Man--and I shopped with that in mind. Should I go for a sleek, sexy suit? That might seem too confident and brazen. A floral silk skirt? Too obvious for a wedding. A little black dress? Too conservative and safe. The options pummeled my brain as I browsed the choices on the racks. I tried on dress after dress, suit after suit, outfit after outfit, my frustration growing more acute with each zip of the zipper. I wanted to be a man. Men don’t agonize over what to wear to a wedding. They don’t spend seven hours trying on clothes. They don’t think of wardrobe choices as life-or-death decisions. That’s when I found it: a drop-dead gorgeous fitted suit the exact color of a stick of butter. It was snug, with just a slight hint of sexy, but the lovely, pure color made up for it. The fabric was a lightweight wool, but since the wedding would be at night, I knew it would be just fine. I loved the suit--not only would I feel pretty for Marlboro Man, but I’d also appear moderately, but not overly, confident to all his cousins, and appropriate and proper to his elderly grandmothers.

Zaphod's attention however was elsewhere. His attention was riveted on the ship standing next to Hotblack Desiato's limo. His mouths hung open. "That," he said, "that ... is really bad for the eyes ..." Ford looked. He too stood astonished. It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened salmon, twenty yards long, very clean, very sleek. There was just one remarkable thing about it. "It's so ... black!" said Ford Prefect, "you can hardly make out its shape ... light just seems to fall into it!" Zaphod said nothing. He had simply fallen in love. The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost impossible to tell how close you were standing to it. "Your eyes just slide off it ..." said Ford in wonder. It was an emotional moment. He bit his lip. Zaphod moved forward to it, slowly, like a man possessed - or more accurately like a man who wanted to possess. His hand reached out to stroke it. His hand stopped. His hand reached out to stroke it again. His hand stopped again. "Come and feel the surface," he said in a hushed voice. Ford put his hand out to feel it. His hand stopped. "You ... you can't ..." he said. "See?" said Zaphod, "it's just totally frictionless. This must be one mother of a mover ..." He turned to look at Ford seriously. At least, one of his heads did - the other stayed gazing in awe at the ship. "What do you reckon, Ford?" he said. "You mean ... er ..." Ford looked over his shoulder. "You mean stroll off with it? You think we should?" "No." "Nor do I." "But we're going to, aren't we?" "How can we not?

He learned what made her shudder, what made her sigh. He became so attuned to her that every touch of teeth or lips or fingers offered pleasure. She writhed in his arms, tangling her legs with his, fighting for air. He trailed one hand across her stomach to the soft curls that hid her sex. She made a soft sound of desire and arched up. He slipped his hand between her legs. The merest brush of his fingers in her moisture and she jerked in response. She was so sleek and hot. Not being inside her was torture. But it was still too soon. Even while she shivered and quaked with reaction. He found one particular place that made her cry out. He scraped his teeth over a tight nipple and touched her between the legs again. Her spine bowed and she bit back a scream. A hot flood drenched his fingers. His nostrils flared as the scent of her arousal rose stronger, sharper. How could she call herself a cold woman? She was living flame. She flickered and burned and glowed and her heat warmed him to the depths of his soul. "Oh, Matthew," she said on a long sigh, opening herself wider to his hand. "Matthew..." He loved the way she no longer hesitated over his name. He loved the way she moved restlessly under his seeking fingers as if she wanted more. Perhaps at last she wanted him. He rained kisses down her ribs and over her belly and across her thighs. Then he used his hands to nudge her legs further apart. The flushed, plump folds of her sex were as beautiful as any flower. More beautiful. As with any flower, his impulse was to bury his face in it, to inhale its essence.

The next morning was the second time Kate awoke in Rohan's bed since her arrival at the castle. But unlike that first bewildering day, this time, when she opened her eyes to the morning sunlight flooding his chamber, he was the first lovely thing she saw, right there beside her. In no hurry to arise, they stayed peacefully abed together. She passed a dreamy spell stroking her drowsing lover's bare back in tender affection. What a long, majestic line it was that flowed from the bulky ridge of his shoulder down to the sleek, lean curve of his lower back. Of course, he had more scars on him than one body ought to bear, she thought, but he was not inclined to answer her mild inquiries about them. "What happened here?" she murmured, tracing what appeared to be a saber scar along his rib cage. Lying on his stomach, his face resting on his folded arms, he feigned an in-between state of sleepy inattention, though he was clearly enjoying her touch. "Hm?" She saw through his evasion but forgave him with a knowing smile. Whatever trouble he had been in, it hadn't killed him. That was all that mattered. She leaned closer and kissed all his old hurts. Her light kisses soon followed the same path her admiring hands had taken, until at length, he rolled onto his backhand showed her the regal evidence of her effect on him. He drew her closer, wanting to make love again, but she was still sore from her first time and softly pleaded his forbearance. With a husky chuckle at her reluctant denial, he stole a kiss, gave her a ruefully doting look, then arose in all his magnificent naked glory to order a bath for both of them.

THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAHHOTEP Part II If you are one among guests At the table of one greater than you, Take what he gives as it is set before you; Look at what is before you, Don’t shoot many glances at him, Molesting him offends the ka. Don’t speak to him until he summons, One does not know what may displease; Speak when he has addressed you, Then your words will please the heart. The nobleman, when he is behind food, Behaves as his ka commands him; He will give to him whom he favors, It is the custom when night has come. It is the ka that makes his hands reach out, The great man gives to the chosen man; Thus eating is under the counsel of god, A fool is who complains of it. If you are a man of trust, Sent by one great man to another, Adhere to the nature of him who sent you. Give his message as he said it. Guard against reviling speech, Which embroils one great with another; Keep to the truth, don't exceed it, But an outburst should not be repeated. Do not malign anyone, Great or small, the ka abhors it. If you plow and there’s growth in the field, And god lets it prosper in your hand, Do not boast at your neighbors’ side, One has great respect for the silent man: Man of character is man of wealth. If he robs he is like a crocodile in court. Don’t impose on one who is childless, Neither decry nor boast of it; There is many a father who has grief, And a mother of children less content than another; It is the lonely whom god fosters, While the family man prays for a follower. If you are poor, serve a man of worth, That all your conduct may be well with the god. Do not recall if he once was poor, Don’t be arrogant toward him For knowing his former state; Respect him for what has accrued to him. For wealth does not come by itself. It is their law for him whom they love, His gain, he gathered it himself ; It is the god who makes him worthy And protects him while he sleeps. Follow your heart as long as you live, Do no more than is required, Do not shorten the time of “follow-the-heart,” Trimming its moment offends the ka Don’t waste time on daily cares Beyond providing for your household; When wealth has come, follow your heart, Wealth does no good if one is glum! If you are a man of worth And produce a son by the grace of god, If he is straight, takes after you, Takes good care of your possessions. Do for him all that is good, He is your son, your ka begot him, Don’t withdraw your heart from him. But an offspring can make trouble: If he strays, neglects your counsel, Disobeys all that is said, His mouth spouting evil speech, Punish him for all his talk They hate him who crosses you, His guilt was fated in the womb; He whom they guide can not go wrong, Whom they make boatless can not cross. If you are in the antechamber, Stand and sit as fits your rank Which was assigned you the first day. Do not trespass — you will be turned back, Keen is the face to him who enters announced, Spacious the seat of him who has been called. The antechamber has a rule, All behavior is by measure; It is the god who gives advancement, He who uses elbows is not helped. If you are among the people, Gain supporters through being trusted The trusted man who does not vent his belly’s speech, He will himself become a leader, A man of means — what is he like ? Your name is good, you are not maligned, Your body is sleek, your face benign, One praises you without your knowing. He whose heart obeys his belly Puts contempt of himself in place of love, His heart is bald, his body unanointed; The great-hearted is god-given, He who obeys his belly belongs to the enemy.

A splash of light snuck beneath the a dressing room door. He heard a groan. A shuffle. A bump. A heavy sigh. "Uh, too tight." He walked toward the back, stopping outside the dressing room. The door was cracked a fraction. He rested a shoulder against the wall, and glanced inside. Grace as Catwoman blew his mind. A feline fantasy. The three-way mirror tripled his pleasure. He viewed her from every angle. Hot, sleek, fierce. The lady could fight Batman in her skintight black leather catsuit and come out the winner. After a moment she scrunched her nose, slapped her palms against her thighs. Stuck out her tongue at her reflection in the mirrors. He saw what had her so frustrated. Sympathized with her disappointment. Her costume didn't fit. The front zipper hadn't fully cleared her cleavage, which was deep and visible. She wore no bra. She gave a little hop, and her breasts bounced. Full and plump. He felt a tug at his groin. Superhero lust. He cleared his throat and made his presence known. She caught his image in the corner of the glass, and reached for the fitting room chair, positioning it between them. Like that would keep him from her. He should've looked away, but couldn't. He sensed her embarrassment. Her panic. Flight? She had nowhere to go. He blocked the door. He wasn't leaving until they'd talked. "Archibald's going to love your costume," he initiated. She didn't find him funny. Her gaze narrowed behind the molded cat-eye mask with attached ears. Her fingers clenched in her elbow-length gloves. Inspired by the movie The Dark Knight, she'd added a whip and a gun holster. Her thigh-high stiletto boots were killer, adding five inches to her height. Her image would stick with him forever. She backed against the center mirror, and nervously fingered the open flaps over her breasts. A yank on the zipper broke the tab. The metal teeth parted, and the gap widened, revealing the round inner curves of her breasts. A hint of her nipples. Dusky pink. All the way down to the dent of her navel.

His mouth brushed over hers with kisses of soft fire. And as he possessed her, she gradually came to understand the pattern he was working within her… eight shallow thrusts, two deep… seven shallow, three deep… progressing until he finally gave her ten heavy, penetrating plunges. Lottie cried out with wrenching pleasure, her hips lifting against his sleek weight as she was filled with volatile sensation. When the burning delight had begun to fade, Nick altered their positions subtly, moving farther over her, nudging her knees wider, adjusting the angle of his sex. He thrust deeply, sealing their bodies together, and circled his hips in a slow, steady rhythm. “I can’t,” Lottie said breathlessly, realizing what he wanted, knowing that it was impossible. “Let me,” Nick whispered, tireless and wickedly adept as he continued the gentle circling, using his body to pleasure her. She was astonished by how quickly the heat rose again, her senses welcoming the patient stimulation, her sex turning slick and swollen as he moved inside her, over her, against her. “Oh… oh…” The sounds were torn from her throat as she reached another crest, her limbs jerking, her cheek pressed hard against his shoulder. And then he began the entire cycle again. Nine shallow, one deep… Lottie lost count of how many times he brought her to ecstasy, or how much time passed while he made love to her. He whispered in her ear… endearments… intimate praise… telling her how hard she made him… how sweet she felt around him… how much he wanted to satisfy her. He gave her more pleasure than it seemed possible to bear, until finally she begged him to stop, her body trembling with exhaustion. Nick complied with reluctance, pushing deep inside one last time, releasing his pent-up desire with a shuddering groan. Compulsively he kissed her again, as he withdrew from her sated body. Lottie barely had the strength to lift her hand, but she caught at his arm and murmured thickly, “Will you stay?” “Yes,” she heard him say. “Yes.” -Lottie & Nick

Where is Albert?" "He'll be here momentarily. I asked our housekeeper to fetch him." Christopher blinked. "She's not afraid of him?" "Of Albert? Heavens, no, everyone adores him." The concept of someone, anyone, adoring his belligerent pet was difficult to grasp. Having expected to receive an inventory of all the damage Albert had caused, Christopher gave her a blank look. And then the housekeeper returned with an obedient and well-groomed dog trotting by her side. "Albert?" Christopher said. The dog looked at him, ears twitching. His whiskered face changed, eyes brightening with excitement. Without hesitating, Albert launched forward with a happy yelp. Christopher knelt on the floor, gathering up an armful of joyfully wriggling canine. Albert strained to lick him, and whimpered and dove against him repeatedly. Christopher was overwhelmed by feelings of kinship and relief. Grabbing the warm, compact body close, Christopher murmured his name and petted him roughly, and Albert whined and trembled. "I missed you, Albert. Good boy. There's my boy." Unable to help himself, Christopher pressed his face against the rough fur. He was undone by guilt, humbled by the fact that even though he had abandoned Albert for the summer, the dog showed nothing but eager welcome. "I was away too long," Christopher murmured, looking into the soulful brown eyes. "I won't leave you again." He dragged his gaze up to Beatrix's. "It was a mistake to leave him," he said gruffly. She was smiling at him. "Albert won't hold it against you. To err is human, to forgive, canine." To his disbelief, Christopher felt an answering smile tug at the corners of his lips. He continued to pet the dog, who was fit and sleek. "You've taken good care of him." "He's much better behaved than before," she said. "You can take him anywhere now." Rising to his feet, Christopher looked down at her. "Why did you do it?" he asked softly. "He's very much worth saving. Anyone could see that." The awareness between them became unbearably aware. Christopher's heart worked in hard, uneven beats. How pretty she was in the white dress. She radiated a healthy female physicality that was very different from the fashionable frailty of London women. He wondered what it would be like to bed her, if she would be as direct in her passions as she was in everything else.

Lyra stood shivering in the fo’c’sle and laughed with delight as her beloved Pantalaimon, sleek and powerful, leaped from the water with half a dozen other swift gray shapes. He had to stay close to the ship, of course, for he could never go far from her; but she sensed his desire to speed as far and as fast as he could, for pure exhilaration. She shared his pleasure, but for her it wasn’t simple pleasure, for there was pain and fear in it too. Suppose he loved being a dolphin more than he loved being with her on land? What would she do then? Her friend the able seaman was nearby, and he paused as he adjusted the canvas cover of the forward hatch to look out at the little girl’s dæmon skimming and leaping with the dolphins. His own dæmon, a seagull, had her head tucked under her wing on the capstan. He knew what Lyra was feeling. “I remember when I first went to sea, my Belisaria hadn’t settled on one form, I was that young, and she loved being a porpoise. I was afraid she’d settle like that. There was one old sailorman on my first vessel who could never go ashore at all, because his dæmon had settled as a dolphin, and he could never leave the water. He was a wonderful sailor, best navigator you ever knew; could have made a fortune at the fishing, but he wasn’t happy at it. He was never quite happy till he died and he could be buried at sea.” “Why do dæmons have to settle?” Lyra said. “I want Pantalaimon to be able to change forever. So does he.” “Ah, they always have settled, and they always will. That’s part of growing up. There’ll come a time when you’ll be tired of his changing about, and you’ll want a settled kind of form for him.” “I never will!” “Oh, you will. You’ll want to grow up like all the other girls. Anyway, there’s compensations for a settled form.” “What are they?” “Knowing what kind of person you are. Take old Belisaria. She’s a seagull, and that means I’m a kind of seagull too. I’m not grand and splendid nor beautiful, but I’m a tough old thing and I can survive anywhere and always find a bit of food and company. That’s worth knowing, that is. And when your dæmon settles, you’ll know the sort of person you are.” “But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don’t like?” “Well, then, you’re discontented, en’t you? There’s plenty of folk as’d like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they’re going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.” But it didn’t seem to Lyra that she would ever grow up.

She stayed with buses after that, getting off only now and then to walk so she'd keep awake. What fragments of dreams came had to do with the post horn. Later, possibly, she would have trouble sorting the night into real and dreamed. At some indefinite passage in night's sonorous score, it also came to her that she would be safe, that something, perhaps only her linearly fading drunkenness, would protect her. The city was hers, as, made up and sleeked so with the customary words and images (cosmopolitan, culture, cable cars) it had not been before: she had safe-passage tonight to its far blood's branchings, be they capillaries too small for more than peering into, or vessels mashed together in shameless municipal hickeys, out on the skin for all but tourists to see. Nothing of the night's could touch her; nothing did. The repetition of symbols was to be enough, without trauma as well perhaps to attenuate it or even jar it altogether loose from her memory. She was meant to remember. She faced that possibility as she might the toy street from a high balcony, roller-coaster ride, feeding-time among the beasts in a zoo-any death-wish that can be consummated by some minimum gesture. She touched the edge of its voluptuous field, knowing it would be lovely beyond dreams simply to submit to it; that not gravity's pull, laws of ballistics, feral ravening, promised more delight. She tested it, shivering: I am meant to remember. Each clue that comes is supposed to have its own clarity, its fine chances for permanence. But then she wondered if the gemlike "clues" were only some kind of compensation. To make up for her having lost the direct, epileptic Word, the cry that might abolish the night. In Golden Gate Park she came on a circle of children in their nightclothes, who told her they were dreaming the gathering. But that the dream was really no different from being awake, because in the mornings when they got up they felt tired, as if they'd been up most of the night. When their mothers thought they were out playing they were really curled in cupboards of neighbors' houses, in platforms up in trees, in secretly-hollowed nests inside hedges, sleeping, making up for these hours. The night was empty of all terror for them, they had inside their circle an imaginary fire, and needed nothing but their own unpenetrated sense of community. They knew about the post horn, but nothing of the chalked game Oedipa had seen on the sidewalk. You used only one image and it was a jump-rope game, a little girl explained: you stepped alternately in the loop, the bell, and the mute, while your girlfriend sang: Tristoe, Tristoe, one, two, three, Turning taxi from across the sea… "Thurn and Taxis, you mean?" They'd never heard it that way. Went on warming their hands at an invisible fire. Oedipa, to retaliate, stopped believing in them.

A whimper escaped her as he slid low between her thighs, his head bending to the swollen place he had been tormenting with his fingers. He put his mouth on her, licking along the delicate, salty strait, spreading her with his thumbs. She tried to sit bolt-upright, but fell back against the pillows as he found what he wanted, his tongue strong and wet. She was spread beneath him like a pagan sacrifice, illuminated by the daylight that now flooded the room. Merripen worshipped her with hot, glassy licks, savoring the taste of her pleasured flesh. Moaning, she closed her legs around his head, and he turned deliberately to nibble and lick at one pale inner thigh, then the other. Feasting on her. Wanting everything. Win curled her fingers desperately in his hair, lost to shame as she guided him back, her body arching wordlessly...here, please, more, more, now...and she groaned as he fastened his mouth over her with a fast, flicking rhythm. Pleasure seized her, wrenching an astonished cry from her, holding her stiff and paralyzed for excruciating seconds. Every movement and measure and pulse of the universe had distilled to the compelling, slippery heat, riveted there on that crucial place, and then it all released, the feeling and tension shattering exquisitely, and she was racked with hard, blissful shudders. Win relaxed helplessly as the spasms faded. She was filled with glowing weariness, a sense of peace too pervasive to allow movement. Merripen let go of her just long enough to undress completely. Naked and aroused, he came back to her. He gathered her up with brute, masculine need, settling over her. She lifted her arms to him with a drowsy murmur. His back was tough and sleek beneath her fingers, the muscles twitching eagerly at her touch. His head descended, his shaven cheek rasping against hers. She met his power with utter surrender, flexing her knees and tilting her hips to cradle him. He pushed gently at first. The innocent flesh resisted, smarting at the intrusion. He thrust more strongly and Win caught her breath at the burning pain of his entrance. Too much of him, too hard, too deep. She writhed in reaction, and he buried himself heavily and pinned her down, gasping for her to be still, telling her to wait, he wouldn't move, it would be better. They both stilled, breathing hard. "Should I stop?" Merripen whispered raggedly, his face taut. Even now in this flash point of need, he was concerned for her. Understanding what it had cost him to ask, how much he needed her, Win was overwhelmed with love. "Don't even think of stopping now," she whispered back. Reaching down his lean flanks, she stroked him in shy encouragement. He groaned and began to move, his entire body trembling as he pressed within her. Although every thrust caused a sharp burn where they were joined, Win tried to pull him even deeper. The feeling of having him inside her went far beyond the pain or pleasure. It was necessary.

He was but three-and-twenty, and had only just learned what it is to love—­to love with that adoration which a young man gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself. Love of this sort is hardly distinguishable from religious feeling. What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. And this blessed gift of venerating love has been given to too many humble craftsmen since the world began for us to feel any surprise that it should have existed in the soul of a Methodist carpenter half a century ago, while there was yet a lingering after-glow from the time when Wesley and his fellow-labourer fed on the hips and haws of the Cornwall hedges, after exhausting limbs and lungs in carrying a divine message to the poor. That afterglow has long faded away; and the picture we are apt to make of Methodism in our imagination is not an amphitheatre of green hills, or the deep shade of broad-leaved sycamores, where a crowd of rough men and weary-hearted women drank in a faith which was a rudimentary culture, which linked their thoughts with the past, lifted their imagination above the sordid details of their own narrow lives, and suffused their souls with the sense of a pitying, loving, infinite Presence, sweet as summer to the houseless needy. It is too possible that to some of my readers Methodism may mean nothing more than low-pitched gables up dingy streets, sleek grocers, sponging preachers, and hypocritical jargon—­elements which are regarded as an exhaustive analysis of Methodism in many fashionable quarters. That would be a pity; for I cannot pretend that Seth and Dinah were anything else than Methodists—­not indeed of that modern type which reads quarterly reviews and attends in chapels with pillared porticoes, but of a very old-fashioned kind. They believed in present miracles, in instantaneous conversions, in revelations by dreams and visions; they drew lots, and sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossible for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as liberal. Still—­if I have read religious history aright—­faith, hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords, and it is possible—­thank Heaven!—­to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon which clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry it to her neighbour’s child to “stop the fits,” may be a piteously inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost. Considering these things, we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our sympathy, accustomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows of heroines in satin boots and crinoline, and of heroes riding fiery horses, themselves ridden by still more fiery passions.

Tem loved the mortuaries, though no one he knew was dead. Still he would beg to go, to grasp the hand of any adult willing to wind down those plush-carpeted stairways, past the sleek vaults, inviting and bright.

It is for this reason that the anxiety about the boundaries between people and machines has taken on new urgency today, when we constantly rely on and interact with machines—indeed, interact with each other by means of machines and their programs: computers, smartphones, social media platforms, social and dating apps. This urgency has been reflected in a number of recent films about troubled relationships between people and their human-seeming devices. The most provocative of these is Her , Spike Jonze’s gentle 2013 comedy about a man who falls in love with the seductive voice of an operating system, and, more recently, Alex Garland’s Ex Machina , about a young man who is seduced by a devious, soft-spoken female robot called Ava whom he has been invited to interview as part of the “Turing Test”: a protocol designed to determine the extent to which a robot is capable of simulating a human. Although the robot in Garland’s sleek and subtle film is a direct descendant of Hesiod’s Pandora—beautiful, intelligent, wily, ultimately dangerous—the movie, as the Eve-like name Ava suggests, shares with its distinguished literary predecessors some serious biblical concerns.

chest. Speaking of chests, hers fits politely inside her shirt, two nicely rounded lady bumps. ========== Mis recortes - Tu subrayado en la posición 66-68 | Añadido el sábado, 2 de mayo de 2015 23:39:29 Madison is my opposite in every way. I wear my hair loose like a curtain to hide behind –the longer, the better. Madison’s is cropped close to her shoulders in a sleek bob that she threatens to chop on a regular basis. ========== Mis recortes - Tu subrayado en la posición 65-65 | Añadido el sábado, 2 de mayo de 2015 23:39:43 She has soft, delicate features, high cheek bones, a full mouth and pretty wide-set eyes. She’s lovely. ========== Mis recortes - Tu subrayado en la posición 63-63 | Añadido el sábado, 2 de mayo de 2015 23:40:58 Her eyes are a mesmerizing shade of green and her hair looks faintly red when it catches the ========== Mis recortes - Tu subrayado en la posición 61-62 | Añadido el

oozed power and sex appeal. ========== The Impact of You (Kendall Ryan) - Tu subrayado en la página 14 | posición 203-203 | Añadido el domingo, 26 de abril de 2015 23:05:30 Her eyes are a mesmerizing shade of green and her hair looks faintly red when it catches the ========== The Impact of You (Kendall Ryan) - Tu subrayado en la página 14 | posición 203-204 | Añadido el domingo, 26 de abril de 2015 23:05:46 light. She has soft, delicate features, high cheek bones, a full mouth and pretty wide-set eyes. She’s lovely. ========== The Impact of You (Kendall Ryan) - Tu subrayado en la página 22 | posición 330-331 | Añadido el domingo, 26 de abril de 2015 23:23:24 Madison is my opposite in every way. I wear my hair loose like a curtain to hide behind –the longer, the better. Madison’s is cropped close to her shoulders in a sleek bob that she threatens to chop on a regular basis. ========== The Impact of You (Kendall Ryan) - Tu subrayado en la página 22 | posición 331-333

there lived a young spirit of a lagoon so deep in the rain forest that even now only monkeys live there. He called himself Ikne, and all the world loved him. The nearby trees grew their greenest leaves, flowers unfurled their brightest petals and exhaled their sharpest scents. If a fish was lucky enough to live in the lagoon, it grew sleek and fat and happy, and spent every day singing of Ikne to his less fortunate fishy friends. If Ikne wasn’t always happy, he was more often than most. His life was good. Bright. He could live a long time like this, become an ancient spirit like the ones of caves and mountains, live to complain about kids these days and play arthritic peteca on the municipal courts. And so Ikne walked away from his idyll and got a job sharpshooting for the Pernambuco guerrillas in Salvador. It wasn’t an easy life, and one day he got shot in the stomach by a lead bullet. The bullet fell in love with him, of course, but she couldn’t stop the slow bleed of his gastric cavity into his pancreas, and she felt terrible, which was too bad, since he’d known all along what would happen. He died; he always said he would. Someone had to take out the bullet.

Although in 2005 compact discs still represented over 98 percent of the market for legal album sales, Morris had no loyalty to the format. In May of that year, Vivendi Universal announced it was spinning off its CD manufacturing and distribution business into a calcified corporate shell called the Entertainment Distribution Company. Included in EDC’s assets were several massive warehouses and two large-scale compact disc manufacturing plants: one in Hanover, Germany, and one in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. Universal would still manufacture all its CDs at the plants, but now this would be an arms-length transaction that allowed them to watch the superannuation of optical media from a comfortable distance. It was one of the oldest moves in the corporate finance playbook: divest yourself of underperforming assets while holding on to the good stuff. EDC was a classic “stub company,” a dogshit collection of low-growth, capital-intensive factory equipment that was rapidly going obsolete. In other words, EDC was a drag on A that added little to B. Let the investment bankers figure out who wanted it—Universal had gone digital, and the death rattle of the compact disc had grown loud enough for even Doug Morris to hear. The CD was the past; the iPod was the future. People loved these stupid things. You could hardly go outside without getting run over by some dumb jogger rocking white headphones and a clip-on Shuffle. Apple stores were generating more sales per square foot than any business in the history of retail. The wrapped-up box with a sleek wafer-sized Nano inside was the most popular gift in the history of Christmas. Apple had created the most ubiquitous gadget in the history of stuff.

There are transitions in life whether we want them or not. You get older. You lose jobs and loves and people. The story of your life may change dramatically, tragically, or so quietly you don’t even notice. It’s never any fun, but it can’t be avoided. Sometimes you just have to walk into the cold dark water of the unfamiliar and suffer for a while. You have to go slow, breathe, don’t stop, get your head under, and then wait. And soon you get used to it. Soon the pain is gone and you have forgotten it because you are swimming, way out here where it’s hard and where you were scared to go, swimming sleekly through the new. That’s the gift of a Maine vacation: you survive it.

When Almanzo went into these great barns, he always went through the Horse-Barn’s little door. He loved horses. There they stood in their roomy box-stalls, clean and sleek and gleaming brown, with long black manes and tails. The wise, sedate work-horses placidly munched hay. The three-year-olds put their noses together across the bars, they seemed to whisper together. Then softly their nostrils whooshed along one another’s necks; one pretended to bite, and they squealed and whirled and kicked in play. The old horses turned their heads and looked like grandmothers at the young ones. But the colts ran about excited, on their gangling legs, and stared and wondered. They all knew Almanzo. Their ears pricked up and their eyes shone softly when they saw him. The three-year-olds came eagerly and thrust their heads out to nuzzle at him. Their noses, prickled with a few stiff hairs, were soft as velvet, and on their foreheads the short, fine hair was silky smooth. Their necks arched proudly, firm and round, and the black manes fell over them like a heavy fringe. You could run your hand along those firm, curved necks, in the warmth under the mane. But Almanzo hardly dared to do it. He was not allowed to touch the beautiful three-year-olds. He could not go into their stalls, not even to clean them. Father would not let him handle the young horses or the colts. Father didn’t trust him yet, because colts and young, unbroken horses are very easily spoiled.

At the end of that happy summer, Whitepaw came to his full size, as big as a calf, his tawny hair sleek and rich with a dark tingle, his breast white and fluffy, his slender legs remarkably white-tipped, his great, understanding, lively eyes radiant with the love he bore everybody, well-mannered, well-behaved, with a sense of humor as evident as the good-will that glowed all over him.

She felt a soft touch on her ankles. She held very still, feeling no fear even as she sensed something moving beneath the surface of the water. Another touch... a hand... long fingers smoothed over her feet and massaged tenderly, rubbing over the sore insteps until she sighed in pleasure. The big masculine hands slid higher, caressing her calves and knees, while a large, sleek body emerged from the depths of the well. The spirit had taken the form of a man to court her. His arms slipped around her, and the feel of him was strange but so lovely that she kept her eyes closed, fearing that if she tried to look at him, he might vanish. His skin was hot and silken, the muscles of his back rippling beneath her fingers. Her dream lover whispered endearments as he embraced her, his mouth playing over her throat. Everywhere he touched, she felt a glow of sensation. "Shall I take you?" he whispered, carefully drawing away her clothes, baring her skin to the light and air and water. "Don't be afraid, little love, don't..." And as she shivered and held him blindly, he kissed her throat and breasts, and touched her nipples with his tongue. His hands coasted over her front, slipping down to cradle her breasts while his half-parted lips brushed over a budded peak. His tongue darted out to flick the sweetly aching flesh again and again, until a moan rose in her throat and she slid her fingers into his thick hair. Opening his mouth, he covered her nipple and drew on it with a gentle tug, then stroked with his tongue and pulled again... licking and suckling in a soft, clever rhythm. She arched and gasped, helplessly widening her thighs as he moved more tightly between them...

Pansy stroke the sleek blond hair off Malfoy’s forehead, smirking as she did so, as though anyone would have loved to have been in her place.

There Are Many of Us Alike in Form There are many of us Alike in form, upright In constant motion, Profoundly self-absorbed And without notion Of the universe and love. Furtive eyes on sleek cement, Harassed mind on stocks and rent, Ears attuned to blaring horn, No part seeking why we’re born Being often less than kind To each other, brutal, blind In performance miles apart From potential of the heart. Words we hear and hear unhearing Sights we also see unseeing. It is madness that we don’t, unfearing Learn the art of human being.

This book asks quite a lot of you in your quest to be fit and fierce. Twelve minutes of exercise, though astoundingly short in terms of the benefits they provide, is still not trivial. You are swinging a heavy weight for dozens, even hundreds of times a day. There had better be a pretty good reason why. There is! The kettlebell swing, with its mix of cardiovascular effort and fat-burning, muscle-building, strength-training may well be the best single exercise! Your kettlebell swings reward you, per swing, and per minute: • You look better! Fat loss, muscle tuning, body shaping, booty toning and posture improvement benefit your appearance, just as they improve your endurance, strength and health. • Your body is reshaped rapidly and muscles strengthened by your swings. Flab on your arms is replaced by functional muscle. Flabby thighs become sleek. • Your training makes you smarter. Well, at least helps you think better. Your swings flood your brain with fresh, oxygenated blood and top it off with a dose of testosterone. • Your general physical abilities improve markedly. You are better able to move, to carry things, to pick up kids, to play sports, to make love, to respond to emergencies with strength and endurance. • Your swings help your posture, allowing you to stand tall. The posterior chain, so well worked with kettlebell swings, includes the key posture muscles. • Your training makes your butt look smaller! Actually your butt becomes shapelier, as the gluteal muscles in the buttocks are key lifters of the kettlebell. You strengthen and shape you entire posterior chain. This focused exercise lifts, firms, tightens and highlights these assets. Each swing makes your butt look better! • The kettlebell swing may be the most effective single exercise for your heart. Swinging the weight rapidly brings your heart into the training zone.

If there is a moral to my tale, it's something like this. In spite of everything the little princess had been taught by the male-supremacist elements of her society, by high-school scandals about why Sallie dropped out of school in March, by novels extolling motherhood as woman's sole function, by the gynecologist's furtiveness, by the existence of a law declaring abortion to be a crime, by the sleek extortionism of the abortionist - despite all those messages repeating ABORTION IS WRONG! - when the terror was past, she pondered it all, and she thought, "I have done the right thing." What was wrong was not knowing how to prevent getting pregnant. What was wrong was my ignorance. To legislate that ignorance, that's the crime. I'm ashamed, she thought, for letting bigots keep me ignorant, and for acting willfully in my ignorance, and for falling in love with a weak, selfish man. I am deeply ashamed. But I'm not guilty. Where does guilt come in? I did what I had to do so that I could do the work I was put here to do. I will do that work. That's what it's all about. It's about taking responsibility.

The winter garden turned out to be a glass conservatory, two stories high and at least one hundred and twenty feet long. Lush ornamental trees, ferns, and palms filled the space, as well as artificial rock formations and a little streamlet stocked with goldfish. West’s opinion of the house climbed even higher as he looked around the winter garden. Eversby Priory had a conservatory, but it wasn’t half as large and lofty as this. An odd little noise seized his attention. A series of noises, actually, like the squeaking of toy balloons releasing air. Bemused, he looked down at a trio of black-and-white kittens roaming around his feet. Phoebe laughed at his expression. “This room is also the cats’ favorite.” A wondering smile spread across West’s face as he saw the sleek black feline arching against Phoebe’s skirts. “Good Lord. Is that Galoshes?” Phoebe bent to stroke the cat’s lustrous fur. “It is. She loves to come here to terrorize the goldfish. We’ve had to cover the stream with mesh wire until the kittens are older.” “When I gave her to you—” West began slowly. “Foisted,” she corrected. “Foisted,” he agreed ruefully. “Was she already—” “Yes,” Phoebe said with a severe glance. “She was a Trojan cat.” West tried to look contrite. “I had no idea.” Her lips quirked. “You’re forgiven. She turned out to be a lovely companion. And the boys have been delighted to have the kittens to play with.” After prying one of the kittens from his trousers as it tried to climb his leg, West set it down carefully.

I waited for her outside her house and saw her approaching in the aqua-blue dress I had gifted her on her last birthday. She obviously remembered my love for that colour on her and how I always told her that it complimented her skin beautifully. My heartbeat increased just a little as she sat in my car and the scent of her signature perfume- Chanel No 5- diffused in the air of my car. Her sleek-straight hair fell on her face. "Hi Neel. How have you been?" I thought about the first month of sleepless nights, crying, sulking and overthinking and said, "I've been okay.

He's sleek with happiness, somehow, like the man I fell in love with lives on the surface now, not hidden deep inside, and it blows my mind to think that's for me and because of me.

An exercise in illusion via allusion. Wear it and after a few hours you will find your daily life suffused by the same feeling of peace you get when you settle into an armchair after tidying your apartment from end to end. If you think of all the best Chanel fragrances as varieties of little black dress - sleek, dependable, perfectly proportioned - Bois des iles is the one in cashmere. I have worn it on and off for years, whenever I felt I needed extra insulation from the cold world. To my nose Chinatown ( Bond No. 9 ) smells like a corner of a small French grocery in summer, in the exact spot where the smell of floor wax meets that of ripe peaches. Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us. Perfume is, among other things, the most portable form of intelligence. Oman was making perfumes when Europeans only bathed once a year on doctor's orders. Chanel No. 5 is a Brancusi. The beauty and fragrance industry has lied to women for so long, convincing us to fork over cash for crud in shiny packages, that at this point event pure quality has trouble getting taken seriously. Clever marketing can get us to buy something once, but rarely again. We don't wear Chanel No. 5 because Marilyn Monroe wore it, we wear it for the same reason that Marilyn did: because it''s gorgeous. Sycomore, Chanel. If putting it on does not make you shiver with pleasure, see a doctor. Aside from beautiful aircraft, nuclear power stations, food and wine, perfumery is France's biggest export, yet there is no perfume museum in Paris. The ability possessed by certain fragrances to briefly turn the most arid mind into a fairy garden, to make us lament the passing of loves and losses we know full well we never had, is a miracle specific to perfumery.

she begins to understand what it is that the older orogenes display: control. They have mastered their power. No ringed orogene would ice the courtyard just because some boy shoved her. None of these sleek, black-clad professionals would bat so much as an eyelash at either a strong earthshake, or a family’s rejection. They know what they are, and they have accepted all that means, and they fear nothing—not the stills, not themselves, not even Old Man Earth. If to achieve this Damaya must endure a few broken bones, or a few years in a place where no one loves or even likes her, that is a small price to pay.

Eril-Fane had been gone for more than two years by the time Skathis took Azareen, and she might been the first girl in Weep who was glad to mount the monster Rasalas and fly up to her own enslavement. She would know, at least, if her husband was still alive. He was. And Azareen had learned how you can be glad and devastated at the same time. She heard his laugh before she saw his face--Eril-Fane's laugh, in that place, as alive as she had ever heard it--and she broke away from her guard to run toward it, skidding around a corner of the sleek metal corridor to the sight of him gazing at Isagol the Terrible with love. She knew it for what it was. He had looked at her like that, too. It wasn’t feigned but true, and so after more than two years of wondering what had become of him, Azareen found out. In addition to the misery of serving the gods’ “purpose,” it was her fate to watch her husband love the goddess of despair.

My, my—don’t we think highly of ourselves?” Eloisa recrossed her absurdly shiny legs, and the sleek movement resembled scissors slicing the air. “You think you belong in the pantheon of Julian Zelding’s great loves, do you?

The city could be nothing but a woman, and that’s good because your business is women. You know her tossed head in the auburn crowns of molting autumn foliage, Riverhead, and the park. You know the ripe curve of her breast where the River Dix molds it with a flashing bolt of blue silk. Her navel winks at you from the harbor in Bethtown, and you have been intimate with the twin loins of Calm’s Point and Majesta. She is a woman, and she is your woman, and in the fall she wears a perfume of mingled wood smoke and carbon dioxide, a musky, musty smell bred of her streets and of her machines and of her people. You have known her fresh from sleep, clean and uncluttered. You have seen her naked streets, have heard the sullen murmur of the wind in the concrete canyons of Isola, have watched her come awake, alive, alive. You have seen her dressed for work, and you have seen her dressed for play, and you have seen her sleek and smooth as a jungle panther at night, her coat glistening with the pinpoint jewels of reflected harbor light. You have known her sultry, and petulant, and loving and hating, and defiant, and meek, and cruel and unjust, and sweet, and poignant. You know all of her moods and all of her ways. She is big and sprawling and dirty sometimes, and sometimes she shrieks in pain, and sometimes she moans in ecstasy. But she could be nothing but a woman, and that’s good because your business is women. You are a mugger.

You can have your dogs and cats, your gerbils and hamsters and sleek sparkling fish. But you will have lived just half a life if you never love a cow.

When Ellen announced that supper was ready Douglas Starr told Emily to go out to it. “I don’t want anything tonight. I’ll just lie here and rest. And when you come in again we’ll have a real talk, Elfkin.” He smiled up at her his old, beautiful smile, with the love behind it, that Emily always found so sweet. She ate her supper quite happily—though it wasn’t a good supper. The bread was soggy and her egg was underdone, but for a wonder she was allowed to have both Saucy Sal and Mike sitting, one on each side of her, and Ellen only grunted when Emily fed them wee bits of bread and butter. Mike had such a cute way of sitting up on his haunches and catching the bits in his paws, and Saucy Sal had her trick of touching Emily’s ankle with an almost human touch when her turn was too long in coming. Emily loved them both, but Mike was her favourite. He was a handsome, dark-grey cat with huge owl-like eyes, and he was so soft and fat and fluffy. Sal was always thin; no amount of feeding put any flesh on her bones. Emily liked her, but never cared to cuddle or stroke her because of her thinness. Yet there was a sort of weird beauty about her that appealed to Emily. She was grey-and-white—very white and very sleek, with a long, pointed face, very long ears and very green eyes. She was a redoubtable fighter, and strange cats were vanquished in one round. The fearless little spitfire would even attack dogs and rout them utterly. Emily loved her pussies. She had brought them up herself, as she proudly said. They had been given to her when they were kittens by her Sunday School teacher. “A living present is so nice,” she told Ellen, “because it keeps on getting nicer all the time.

The drowned kitten floated just beneath the water. Too young for his eyes to be opened, he dangled weightlessly in the sea’s grip. His fur floated around him, but as Nettle reached in to grip him by the scruff of the neck and pull him out, his coat sleeked suddenly flat with the water. He dangled from her hand, water streaming from his nose and open red mouth. She cupped the little creature fearlessly in her hand. She bent over him intently, experimentally flexing the small rib cage between her thumb and forefingers. Then she held the tiny face close to hers and blew a puff of air into the red mouth. I’m those moments, she was entirely Burrich’s daughter. So I had seen him clear birth mucus from a newborn puppy’s throat. “You’re all right now,” she told the kitten authoritatively. She stroked the tiny creature, and in the wake of her hand, his fur as dry and soft. He was striped orange and white, I suddenly saw. A moment before, I thought he had black. “You’re alive and safe, and I will not let any evil befall you. And you know that you can trust me. Because I love you.” At her words, my throat closed up and choked me. I wondered how she knew to say them. All my life, without knowing it, I had wanted someone to say those words to me, and to have them be true and believable. It was like watching someone give to another the gift you had always longed for. And yet, I did not feel bitterness or envy. All I felt was wonder that, at sixteen, she would have that in her to give to another.

everything registered in black and white. The sleek, red fox was born to freedom and I loved him … his enemies were my enemies and because they came from another class they were easy to misunderstand and dislike.

In answer, he put his hand up to cup the back of her neck, entangling his fingers in her hair, and like the moth at the candle, she stepped into his arms, and his mouth was on hers, not in friendship, but in deliberation and desire and something else, and she was lost, everything she'd felt and seen and grieved and loved welling up in her. She could not have enough of him, his mouth, his taste, his tongue, his body against hers. She ran her hands along the sleek bones of his face, the strong muscles of his neck. She would die for him. She was his to do with whatever he pleased. She was fire and light and love from head to foot.

Shallow. Harmless. A little bit stupid. Crazy in love with you. Needs access to every part of the house. Let’s see . . . Who am I? Well, Roman’s trophy wife, of course. I am pretty, elegant, and extremely snobbish. I love wearing expensive clothes, just the best labels. I’m not really into dresses unless the occasion requires it. I much more prefer designer jeans, paired with silky blouses. The heels are a must.” She pauses, opens her eyes, and turns toward me. “Are heels a must, do you think?” She scrunches her tiny nose. “Of course they are. Damn it. I hate wearing heels.” She closes her eyes again and continues. “The heels are a must, and I have dozens of them. Roman loves when I wear them, he says they make my butt look amazing. I’m also very self-conscious about my height, and wearing heels all the time makes me forget how short I am. My favorite pastime is shopping, and I buy a ton of clothes. My husband has to allocate one driver specifically for me and my shopping sprees.” Another pause and she turns toward me again. “Roman, I’ll need funds to support her addiction with clothes. She is an impulse buyer.” “You’ll get anything you need,” I laugh. She’s completely nuts. “My husband is crazy about me, and he allows me to do whatever I want with the house, like rearrange furniture, so the vibe of the house works better with the earth vibrations. The house feels terribly cold, so I buy a bunch of indoor plants and spread them everywhere. I also tour every single room because I want to make sure the unobstructed energy flows, so I rearrange paintings and mirrors. I also hate the dining room table, it’s so overstated, and I decide to swap it with a sleek glass one I found in an interior design magazine.” Another pause. “This woman is expensive, Roman. I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into.” “I’ll manage.” “Your funeral.” She shrugs and continues. “My husband doesn’t like it when he’s interrupted, but of course, that doesn’t apply to me. I often come into his office just to check up on him and exchange a few kisses. It annoys his men so much. They wonder what he sees in me and why he allows me so much freedom, and then decide he’s thinking with his dick. I’m always around, and they hate it.

He’s not furry, not at all. He’s sleek and taut and provocative and scaled. Every inch of him shimmers in the overpowering sunlight. Every inch of him—his stance, his smile, his exposed body—screams sex, sex, sex.

The girl is nine and narrow-faced like a sleek hunting dog. Electra, the eldest of Sevro’s three daughters, is taller than my son and twice as thin. But while Pax radiates an inner joy that makes adults’ eyes twinkle, there’s a deep grimness to the girl. Her eyes are dusky gold and hidden behind heavy lids. Sometimes when they look at me, I feel them judging with an aloofness that reminds me of her mother. Sevro leans forward eagerly. “I’ll wager Aja’s razor against Apollonius’s helm that my wee monster beats the piss out of your boy.” “I’m not going to bet on our children,” I whisper in indignation. “I’ll throw Aja’s Institute ring in as well.” “Have some decency, Sevro. They’re our children.” “And Octavia’s cape.” “I want the Falthe Ivory Tree.” Sevro gasps. “I love the Ivory Tree. Where else will I hang my trophies?” I shrug. “No Ivory Tree, no bet.” “Bloodydamn savage,” he says, sticking out a hand to shake. “You have a deal.

While reading some old articles to jog my memory for this book, I came across an article in the Chicago Sun-Times by Rick Kogan, a reporter who traveled with Styx for a few concert dates in 1979. I remember him. When we played the Long Beach Civic Center’s 12,000-seat sports arena in California, he rode in the car with JY and me as we approached the stadium. His recounting of the scene made me smile. It’s also a great snapshot of what life was like for us back in the day. The article from 1980 was called, “The Band That Styx It To ‘Em.” Here’s what he wrote: “At once, a sleek, gray Cadillac limousine glides toward the back stage area. Small groups of girls rush from under trees and other hiding places like a pack of lions attacking an antelope. They bang on the windows, try to halt the driver’s progress by standing in front of the car. They are a desperate bunch. Rain soaks their makeup and ruins their clothes. Some are crying. “Tommy, Tommmmmmmmmy! I love you!” one girl yells as she bangs against the limousine’s window. Inside the gray limousine, James Young, the tall, blond guitarist for Styx who likes to be called J.Y. looks out the window. “It sure is raining,” he says. Next to him, bass player Chuck Panozzo, finishing the last part of a cover story on Styx in a recent issue of Record World magazine, nods his head in agreement. Then he chuckles, and says, “They think you’re Tommy.” “I’m not Tommy Shaw,” J.Y. screams. “I’m Rod Stewart.” “Tommy, Tommmmmmmmmy! I love you! I love you!” the girl persists, now trying desperately to jump on the hood of the slippery auto. “Oh brother,” sighs J.Y. And the limousine rolls through the now fully raised backstage door and he hurries to get out and head for the dressing room. This scene is repeated twice, as two more limousines make their way into the stadium, five and ten minutes later. The second car carries young guitarist Tommy Shaw, drummer John Panozzo and his wife Debbie. The groupies muster their greatest energy for this car. As the youngest member of Styx and because of his good looks and flowing blond hair, Tommy Shaw is extremely popular with young girls. Some of his fans are now demonstrating their affection by covering his car with their bodies. John and Debbie Panozzo pay no attention to the frenzy. Tommy Shaw merely smiles, and shortly all of them are inside the sports arena dressing room. By the time the last and final car appears, spectacularly black in the California rain, the groupies’ enthusiasm has waned. Most of them have started tiptoeing through the puddles back to their hiding places to regroup for the band’s departure in a couple of hours.” Tommy

A writer wasn’t a body, just a byline. My words would be sharp and spiky, punchy and pointed; my stories would be swift and lean, sleek and enviable, moving fast and hitting hard. I would not, I vowed, write like a fat girl.

Perched in the briars above your head is a raven, black and sleek as the curlicued moustache of the guardsman. The raven looks at you and you look back at it. "I'm looking for someone," you say. "A boy named Kay." The raven opens its big beak and says, "He doesn't love you, you know." You shrug. You've never liked talking animals. Once your lover gave you a talking cat, but it ran away and secretly you were glad. "I have a few things I want to say to him, that's all." You have, in fact, been keeping a list of all the things you are going to say to him. "Besides, I wanted to see the world, be a tourist for a while." "That's fine for some," the raven says. Then he relents. "If you'd like to come in, then come in. The princess just married the boy with the boots that squeaked on the marble floor." "That's fine for some," you say. Kay's boots squeak; you wonder how he met the princess, if he is the one that she just married, how the raven knows that he doesn't love you, what this princess has that you don't have, besides a white sleigh pulled by thirty geese, an impenetrable wall of briars, and maybe a castle. She's probably just some bimbo.

Kestrel waited outside Arin’s tent. It was a muzzy sort of night, too warm for a fire. The camp was a dark terrain. He didn’t see her clearly, just the shape of her. “I brought you something.” She held out her hand and dropped a round object into his. I knew it instantly. He ran fingers over its firm, lightly pebbled surface. “An orange.” “I found a tree not far from camp and took as many as I could carry. Most I gave away. This one, I thought we could share.” He jumped the orange from one hand to the other, marveling at it. She said, “I didn’t know whether you like them.” “I do.” “Did you tell this to me once? Did I forget?” “I never told you. Actually…” He rolled it in the well of one palm. “I love them.” He could have sworn that she smiled in the dark. “Then what are you waiting for?” He dug his thumb in and peeled it open. Its perfume sprayed the air. He halved it and gave Kestrel her share. They sat on the grass outside his tent. They’d camped in a meadow not far from the road. He touched the grass, sleek beneath his fingers. He ate. The fruit was vibrant on his tongue. It had been years. “Thank you.” He thought he saw her mouth curve, and he was washed by a breathless nervousness. He spat a seed into his palm and wondered what little kernel lay in the folds of this moment. Then he told himself to stop thinking. An orange. A rare enough pleasure. Just eat.

It’s my turn. The only one I’m likely to get. I’ve got a month, Starfish.” Her eyebrows narrowed a bit at his use of her nickname, and he relaxed further as they eased into a far more familiar back and forth. Lord, but he’d missed her. “Like I said, let’s take the time we have now and find out what we find out. Then, when it’s your turn, we’ll already be that much closer to knowing what we know.” Her eyes remained narrowed, his feisty Kerry fully back at the fore. “Why is it that I feel like I just got played?” His grin got bigger. “Oh, we haven’t begun to play, love. There was nothing playful about that kiss. But next time?” He let that statement linger with no immediate follow-up. Instead, he dug the keys to his rental from the pocket of his Daks and unlocked the door to the sleek black roadster. At least he’d walked to the correct side this time. Took some getting used to, the whole wrong side of the road thing. Still, the little two-door BMW was a beauty. And about as far away from anything he’d ever driven on the station as it was possible to get. Which was exactly why he’d rented it. He looked back over to where she stood, arms folded now, defenses fully back up and battle ready. Good, he thought. Do what you need to do. Be sure of yourself, of me. Of us. Just remember, I know how to get you to lower those defenses. And he was looking forward to finding out how she’d come apart for him when he melted them completely. “Thirty days,” he said, opening the door. He tugged at the sunglasses that had been hanging down his back on a pair of Croakies and slid them around, putting them on before popping his hat back on his head. He rested folded forearms on the top of the open door, his grin still in place. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m really liking how Day One has worked out.” He tucked his long, rangy frame into the low-slung car and lowered the window as the sport engine purred to life. “Can’t wait to see what Day Two holds in store. G’day, Starfish.

Arzokh was easily ten times the Drake’s size. If Devil was a sleek sports car, then Arzokh was the love child of a coal train and an aircraft carrier.

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

I was away too long,” Christopher murmured, looking into the soulful brown eyes. “I won’t leave you again.” He dragged his gaze up to Beatrix’s. “It was a mistake to leave him,” he said gruffly. She was smiling at him. “Albert won’t hold it against you. To err is human, to forgive, canine.” To his disbelief, Christopher felt an answering smile tug at the corners of his lips. He continued to pet the dog, who was fit and sleek. “You’ve taken good care of him.” “He’s much better behaved than before,” she said. “You can take him anywhere now.” Rising to his feet, Christopher looked down at her. “Why did you do it?” he asked softly. “He’s very much worth saving. Anyone could see that.” The awareness between them became unbearably acute. Christopher’s heart worked in hard, uneven beats. How pretty she was in the white dress. She radiated a healthy female physicality that was very different from the fashionable frailty of London women. He wondered what it would be like to bed her, if she would be as direct in her passions as she was in everything else.

Last chance,” he said in guttural voice. “Get out, or get in my bed.” “Is there a third option?” Beatrix asked weakly, her breast throbbing beneath his touch. For answer, Christopher picked her up with stunning ease and carried her to the bed. She was tossed to the mattress. Before she could move, he had straddled her, all that sleek golden power poised above her. “Wait,” Beatrix said. “Before you force yourself on me, I would like to have five minutes of rational conversation. Only five. Surely that’s not too much to ask.” His eyes were pitiless. “If you wanted rational conversation, you should have gone to another man. Your Mr. Chittering.” “Chickering,” Beatrix said, squirming beneath him. “And he’s not mine, and--” She swatted his hand away as he touched her breast again. “Stop that. I just want to--” Undeterred, he had gone for the button placket of her shirt. She scowled in exasperation. “All right, then,” she snapped, “do as you please! Perhaps afterward we could manage a coherent discussion.” Twisting beneath him, she flopped onto her stomach. Christopher went still. After a long hesitation, she heard him ask in a far more normal voice, “What are you doing?” “I’m making it easier for you,” came her defiant reply. “Go on, start ravishing.” Another silence. Then, “Why are you facing downward?” “Because that’s how it’s done.” Beatrix twisted to look at him over her shoulder. A twinge of uncertainty caused her to ask. “Isn’t it?” His face was blank. “Has no one ever told you?” “No, but I’ve read about it.” Christopher rolled off her, relieving her of his weight. He wore an odd expression as he asked, “From what books?” “Veterinary manuals. And of course, I’ve observed the squirrels in springtime, and farm animals, and--” She was interrupted as Christopher cleared his throat loudly, and again. Darting a confused glance at him, she realized that he was trying to choke back amusement. Beatrix began to feel indignant. Her first time in a bed with a man, and he was laughing. “Look here,” she said in a businesslike manner, “I’ve read about the mating habits of over two dozen species, and with the exception of snails, whose genitalia is on their necks, they all--” She broke off and frowned. “Why are you laughing at me?” Christopher had collapsed, overcome with hilarity. As he lifted his head and saw her affronted expression, he struggled manfully with another outburst. “Beatrix. I’m…I’m not laughing at you.” “You are!” “No I’m not. It’s just…” He swiped a tear from the corner of his eye, and a few more chuckles escaped. “Squirrels…” “Well, it may be humorous to you, but it’s a very serious matter to the squirrels.

After bringing Beatrix to his room, Christopher sent for cans of hot water and a hip bath, and a bottle of champagne. And he insisted on washing her, despite her cringing and protesting. “I can’t just sit here,” she protested, straddling the metal tub and lowering herself carefully, “and let you do something I’m perfectly capable of doing myself.” Christopher went to the dresser, where a silver tray bearing champagne and two fluted crystal glasses had been set. He poured a glass for her, and brought it to Beatrix. “This will keep you occupied.” Taking a sip of the cool, bubbly vintage, Beatrix leaned back to look at him. “I’ve never had champagne in the afternoon,” she said. “And certainly never while bathing. You won’t let me drown, will you?” “You can’t drown in a hip bath, love.” Christopher knelt beside the tub, bare-chested and sleek. “And no, I won’t let anything happen to you. I have plans for you.” He applied soap to a sponge, and more to his hands, and began to bathe her.

Audrey,” Beatrix implored, “do let me sit next to Lord Annandale.” As if it were some coveted privilege. “If you insist.” Audrey leaped from the settee as if she had been launched by a spring mechanism. Before Beatrix took her place, she bent to rummage beneath the settee. Dragging out a drowsing gray cat, she settled it on Annandale’s lap. “Here you are. Nothing warms you faster than a cat in your lap. Her name is Lucky. She’ll purr if you pet her.” The old man regarded it without expression. And to Christopher’s astonishment, the old man began to stroke the sleek gray fur. “This cat is missing a leg,” he remarked to Beatrix. “Yes, I would have named her Nelson, after the one-armed admiral, but she’s female. She belonged to the cheesemaker until her foot was caught in a trap.” “Why did you name her Lucky?” Annandale asked. “I hoped it would change her fortunes.” “And did it?” “Well, she’s sitting in the lap of an earl, isn’t she?” Beatrix pointed out, and Annandale laughed outright. He touched the cat’s remaining paw. “She is fortunate to have been able to adapt.” “She was determined,” Beatrix said. “You should have seen the poor thing, not long after the amputation. She kept trying to walk on the missing leg, or jump down from a chair, and she would stumble and lose her balance. But one day, she woke up and seemed to have accepted the fact that the leg was gone for good. And she became nearly as agile as before.” She added significantly, “The trick was forgetting about what she had lost…and learning to go on with what she had left.” Annandale gave her a fascinated stare, his lips curving. “What a clever young woman you are.

When at last he sprang to his feet, she retreated a step, lifting her chin so the lapping water couldn’t reach her mouth. He bent to retrieve the buffalo robe and beckoned for her. “Keemah.” She knew by now that the word meant “come.” She shuddered and looked longingly at the fur he held. “Keemah,” he repeated. When she made no move to obey, he sighed. Sinking lower into the water, Loretta accidentally took a mouthful and choked. He glanced skyward, clearly exasperated. “This Comanche is not stupid. You would run like the wind if I took my eyes from you.” She shook her head. Frowning, he studied her for a long moment. “This is not pe-nan-de taquoip, the honey talk. It is a promise you make?” She nodded, her teeth chattering. “And you will not make a lie of it?” When he assured him she wouldn’t with another shake of her head, he dropped the fur to the ground and pivoted on one foot. She could scarcely believe he truly meant to keep his back to her. She stared at the broad expanse of his shoulders, at the curve of his spine, at his long, leather-clad legs. Like the wild animals he hunted, he was lithe and lean, his large frame padded with sleek, powerful muscle. If she tried to run, he would be upon her before she had gone more than a few steps. Plowing her way through the water to shore, she kept her eyes riveted to his back. A small rock cut into the sole of her foot as she scrambled up the bank. She bit her lip and kept going, afraid to hesitate even for a second. By the time she reached him, her heart was slamming. She grabbed up the fur and slung it around her shoulders, clasping the edges tightly to her chest. Standing this close to him, she could see the sheen of oil on his skin, the dark hair that dusted the crease of his armpits. She didn’t want to touch him. The seconds ticked past. Was his hearing so keen that he knew she was still behind him? She sensed he was waiting her out, testing her in some way she couldn’t fathom, proving his mastery over her. She worked one hand free from the heavy robe. So fast that she scarcely felt her fingertips graze his skin, she tapped his shoulder and snatched her hand back. He turned to look at her, his gaze lingering a moment on her bare feet and legs. Humiliation scorched her cheeks. He stepped toward her, stooping as he did to catch her behind the knees and toss her over his shoulder. As Loretta grabbed his belt for support, she realized two things: the cold water had eased her headache, and the hilt of the Comanche’s knife was within her reach… Without stopping to think of the possible consequences, she reached out, imagining how it would feel to bury the blade into his back, to be free of him. Just as her fingers curled around the knife handle, he spoke. “Kill me, Yellow Hair, and my friends will avenge me. The blood of your loved ones will be spilled as slowly as sap drips from a wounded tree.” He kept walking and made no move to grab her hand. “My friends know the way to your wooden walls, eh? Make no grief behind you. It is wisdom.

He greeted me in his usual attire - pajama pants. "Hey stranger!" he said, hugging me for a few long seconds. "I've already set up the board. Can I get you some rose" I nodded, overwhelmingly relieved to be with another human being - even if he was really a wolf in grandma's clothing. Or was he just a wolf in wolf's clothing? After all, he wore pajamas... Hmmm. I contemplated all this as he poured me a glass of wine. "Mind if I smoke?" he asked as he lit up a joint and motioned me over to the sleek brown couch. Italian, of course. Through the three windows that faced south, north, and west, I saw the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island, where I had paid to have my parents' names inscribed in the immigrant wall of honor. Some American Dream this was!